About Stormclouds

by Dallas Coleman
29 pages / 8000 words
Ebook zipped file contains - html, lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, epub

Trace and Dwayne have been together a lot of years when Dwayne decides he's bored and wants to leave. Hurting and growly, Trace tells Dwayne to just go as he prepares the ranch for the mother of all storms his knees are telling him is coming. Will he be able to weather the storms both nature and Dwayne are throwing at him? Or will his life be changed forever?

Originally published in Cowboy Up!

Sample

The first wave of storms came around dinnertime, late enough that Trace'd convinced himself it was gonna miss them and hit closer to San Angelo. He was mending the south-most chicken coop, tacking up some old feedsacks to patch the holes the damned coyotes made when he noticed the birds acting funny, fluttering and bobbing about, roosting down plumb early, given he hadn't done the evening feed yet. That old Leghorn rooster puffed up, beak open like it was drinking of the air, comb flushed deep red. Made him right uneasy, got his nerves to jangling.

He stepped outside into what ought to be sunshine, but wasn't, tugged off his straw hat for a minute to take a look and what he saw sent a shot of pure bottled fear through him. Wasn't a farmer worth his salt didn't fear the sky when she was the color of dull opals, the threat of a heavenly steam engine just on the edge of hearing, clouds rolling in a boil.

Sweet Jesus.

If he'd had the minute to spare, he'd have wished for Dwayne to be home, because the horses and the chickens and the goats needed in and the windows in the house needed opening and someone needed to draw water up for drinking and...

Good thing he didn't have the time.

Dust swirled around his boots as he ran, whistling high and shrill to call the critters into safety. Peg and Candy and Sweetness with her little twin foals came right easy, as did the goats, but the Morgan geldings in the back were a far piece down in the pasture, balking at making the trip across the open grass. The cattle weren't budging, either, just circling the wagons and getting ready to stand against the wind. Shit. Shit.

He didn't like it, the way his arm hairs stood up on end and the back of his neck was tingling. He didn't like it one bit. The rain was on its way, too, black and so thick in the late spring heat it looked oily, pushing hard at the field grass, making the red heads of the Indian paintbrush bob and weave. Trace got the door shut on the barn and took off running to put the Chevy in the garage and tarp the tractor before the hail came.

It started in with a vengeance, just a little at first, enough to ping off the bedliner as he pulled in, but by the time he got the blue tarp to the John Deere, it was the size of dimes, big enough to sting where they slammed into him, big enough to hurt. Peter, Joe and Paul were sitting in a row on the back porch like an omen, looking at him through sad old eyes, howling out.

"Hush up you hounds. I gotta get this…"

The next round of hail broke through the brim of his hat, one slamming into his shoulder hard enough that his arm and hand went plumb dead for a second before waking up with a pure-D scream. He watched the tarp rip free, spinning in a circle, edges snapping before it was yanked away. Oh. Oh, sweet Jesus. Fuck the tractor.