Sketches in the Air

By Gail Ann Gibbs

Cowboys gather around the campfire to solve a murder... Fear brings out the dragon in good men...The riskiest part of space travel turns out to be the paperwork... and more.

Five speculative fiction short stories are presented here, all of which have won contests or been accepted for publication in various venues. Author Gail Ann Gibbs has gathered them from their various homes, online and off, and assembled them into one enjoyable volume. Tales of murderers, dragons, and bureaucrats mingle cheerfully together in this off-beat collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gail Ann Gibbs
• Release date: Dec 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311291271

Gail Ann Gibbs

Gail Ann Gibbs grew up in the Texas Panhandle, and continues to live and write in the sunny Southwest. She ended up with two college degrees (neither related to writing) and has been employed in a variety of interesting jobs, some of which may end up in novels someday. Gail has four novels with the personalized-romance publisher YourNovel.com, has some short stories published, won a few contests, and owns a very fine collection of rejection letters. She put together five of the short stories as SKETCHES IN THE AIR in 2014, and her latest book is the gentle fantasy THEY CALLED ME DRAGON: A Narrative Account of my Adventures on the Planet Earth. Gail enjoys the Arizona sun with her husband and some really big goldfish.

Book preview

Sketches in the Air

by

Gail Ann Gibbs

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Gail Ann Gibbs

cover design by Jaycee DeLorenzo of Sweet 'N Spicy Designs

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Do No Harm

Dragon Stone

Incident at Ceres Immigration Center

The Hung Gun

Combustion

About the Author

Introduction

All of these stories have won contests or been accepted for publication sometime, somewhere. For several years, they have been lingering in archive files or drifting in cyberspace. I celebrate the opportunity to bring them together in one place for you. The history of each one is listed below, and I hope you have as much fun reading them as I did writing them. Welcome.

Do No Harm - Commendation, Short Story Category, Society of Southwestern Authors Annual Writing Contest, October 2009. Among top 10% (270 entries) Summer Workshop Fellowship applications, Fishtrap Writers Workshop, March 2006.

Dragon Rock - AlienSkin online magazine, May 2007. Received Honorable Mention in OnlineWriters.com monthly contest.

Incident at Ceres Immigration Center - accepted for an anthology in 2009, which ultimately fell through.

The Hung Gun - First Prize, Jim Martin Memorial Arizona Mystery Writers Contest, May 2011. The Hung Gun also resides on Molly McKinney's Mystery Anthology website.

Combustion - Honorable Mention, CopperCon 2012 Short Story Contest, September 2012. Combustion also resides on The Nameless Zine website.

Do No Harm

They were all hung-over, down to the last man. One by one, they crawled or stumbled out of sleep rolls, or maybe just up off the ground where they’d fallen, and made their way to the fire and blessed coffee. Some had to detour to the far side of camp, presumably to admire the pretty dawn sky while they retched.

Once at the fire, they huddled in pitiful lumps of blankets, hats low to guard bloodshot eyes from the pale morning light. The mood was not improved as the news of the previous night’s events was passed around the campfire, as soon as each recovering cowboy seemed alert enough to comprehend it. A hoarse whisper was the favored mode of communication, followed by long silence while the information sunk in.

After a while, Poker Jack felt in the mood for some conversation and cleared his throat. Well, anybody know who done it? he tossed out, to no one in particular.

George, who’d been first to sit at the fire ring, and so was more recovered than the others, snorted. The devil only knows. Happened in the streets somewhere last night. He leaned back and called over his shoulder, Hey, Big Pete! Was he shot, lynched, clubbed, or stabbed?

The other cowboys winced at the sudden increase in noise level. Big Pete looked around from stirring up pancake batter at the chuck wagon. He’d also gone to town the night before, but his carousing days were over and he’d ridden back after a bath and barber-style shave.

Dunno! he called back cheerfully, sending another round of wincing through the huddled mass. Doc just sent a kid out to say he was done in. I writ out a telegram for him to send to the ranch office about what happened. I also asked the boy to send the Doc out if he could. Ole’ Foolish got his flank cut up, needs stitching. Maybe he’ll tell us more, if he comes.

He continued to stir the batter. They may be hurting now, but soon he would have twenty hungry cowboys on his hands and he planned to be ready. Big Pete took a lot of teasing from the other cowboys about how he babied the chuck wagon mules. Anybody else would have just rubbed some kerosene in the wound and bandaged it up. Big Pete always countered that no mules means no chuck wagon, and no chuck wagon means no food.

The sound of hoof beats made the cowboys look back toward town. Sweet Timmy rode up, looking disgustingly refreshed. Timmy was no longer the youngest member of the crew, Little Pete had that honor, but he was a favorite of the ladies of Oak Creek, the little camp town along the trail, and usually got a soft bed for the night along with his satisfaction.

His youthful enthusiasm was showing now, as he dismounted quickly and strode up to the group, almost