Short Stories
Bob Kirk is a federal agent, on desk duty and ordered to see a psychiatrist after he killed a man while protecting his team. Carol Marcus is his doctor, prescribing Bob some pills to help ease his pain.
They’ve been secretly seeing each other and want to take their relationship to the next level, more out in the open, as his department-mandated time with her comes to an end.
What better place to start than a crowded beach?
Emory Duvall practices his simple carpentry trade, knows everyone in town, and stays out of trouble. But when a young gunslinger pulls iron on him and makes an unusual request, trouble lands in Duvall’s lap.
Now, the carpenter must figure out how to avoid getting shot…and how many coffins he will have to make.
Isabella Gilmour woke one morning thinking it was just another day. It wasn’t. It was the day the horrifying news thundered down on her: her husband had been shot dead by Bart Conway, the scion of the biggest cattle rancher of Junction City, Texas. In her moment of anguish, she invokes Mosaic Law: an eye for an eye, a life for a life.
She makes a simple request of her father: “Go get Stephen’s rifle.”
Her desperate father begs her to let the legal system work. She claims the right to kill her husband’s killer.
Will she, or will she let justice come in the form of a bullet?
A man shouldn’t outlive his son. Neither should his killer.
Luke Russell was a cowpuncher, making an honest way in the world at one of the biggest ranches outside of Junction City. But he got himself in trouble over a girl, and he paid the ultimate price.
Now, a stranger’s in town, asking after Pete Davidson, the man who put a bullet in Luke’s gut. This stranger is old, and folks realize it’s Luke father, come to kill Davidson. The gunslinger is young and vibrant, just like Luke was. The old man doesn’t stand a chance.
Or does he?
Junction City Sheriff Walt Eason finds himself in his own hoosegow, accused of murder.
Rustlers have stolen heads of cattle from all the biggest ranches including Bartholomew Conway, the nemesis of Sheriff Eason and his deputies. But when the lawmen open fire on a suspected owlhoot, the dead man is not a thief, it’s Lars Fulton, one of Conway’s own ranch hands.
Eason’s fate falls to Diego Lange, his half-breed junior deputy with few friends in town. Lange has only hours to uncover the truth about Fulton and the strange clue discovered in the corpse’s pocket or Junction City will have a new sheriff, one who doesn’t look too kindly on Diego Lange.
John Hardwick loves his wife like a Shakespeare sonnet: full, complete, and without equal. Unfortunately, John now finds himself in the crucible of infidelity. He knows the other man’s name: Alton Raines, a professional gambler.
John is a good man, not prone to violence, but the images in his mind’s eye—of his wife in Raines’s bed—puts murder in his heart and a gun in his hand.
It’s not every day that the passengers of a stagecoach in the Old West see a naked man cowering behind a rock. But the motley group of people stop and question Finnegan McCall, naked as the day of his birth. He claims he’s the new manager at the bank in town and a thief stole all his clothes and money.
But if McCall is telling the truth, then who is the stranger at the bank claiming he is the new bank manager? And why is this stranger asking the assistant manager to open the safe?
Every detective has an origin story. For Houston homicide detective Anne Chambers, it was her sister’s death. And it was Anne who pulled the trigger.
In “Father’s Day,” Anne confronts a horrid sight: a dead man impaled on a bronze military statue. As she digs deeper, she discovers a secret dating back decades, to the Vietnam War.
In the title story, Anne is trapped in New Orleans in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city. No electricity. No lights. No back up. Nothing. Only her, her gun, and the punk holding a gun to her partner’s head. She has the angle. Does she pull the trigger, or repeat the mistake she made with her sister?
The Six-Gun Justice Podcast celebrates the blazing six-gun action of the Western genre in books, movies, TV, and any other media at home on the range.
- A marshal transports a deadly criminal through the hot Colorado summer…
- A cagey snake lays siege to a defiant fox…
- A determined young Texas woman faces an uncertain future…
My story is “Ghost Town Gambit”, featuring gambler John Denton as he finds himself in the middle of of two posses.
A collection of twenty-nine tales of the Old West featuring previously unpublished stories by such classic Western writers as James Reasoner, Douglas Hirt, McKendree Long, and Michael R. Ritt.
My story is “Gunmen Can’t Hide.” Uriah, Blake, and Orim Brink are outlaw brothers. They’re cooling their heels after their most recent bank robbery. And murder. Uriah, after winning at poker and pocketing his money, goes upstairs to celebrate with a woman. But what he finds up there will make him wish he would have lost it all…
This collection features brand-new stories by some of the top Western writers in the world today including Robert J. Randisi, Dusty Richards, James Reasoner, andL.J. Washburn.
My story, “The Poker Payout,” is a Calvin Carter tale where the former actor infiltrates a poker game to outwit his target. But what happens when Carter’s luck runs out?