On the Trail

From the vast prairies and rugged mountains, this story world explores the grit, romance, and resilience of those chasing new lives across the untamed frontier.

So saddle up (couldn't help it) to ride the trail, and rails, of the American Wild West.*

*Look for the raven 🐦‍⬛ to mark a scarier story.

The Sullivan Sisters and the Sin of Letty Grant: A Sullivan Sisters' Tale

Madame Sue Soderburg stopped, her face drawn, a cigarette burning in between her fingers despite the early hour. “They’re framing me for Roberta’s murder.”

Jun 18, 202521 min read

🐦‍⬛ The Haunting of Black Hollow Ranch

On the mantle, a photograph in a tarnished frame showed a stern man, two children, and a woman with a hauntingly blank stare.

Jun 18, 20257 min read

The Midnight Wrangler

The canyon stretched before them under a half-moon. Cattle shuffled along the dusty trail below. Someone was stealing her livestock again.

Jun 11, 20255 min read

Letters from the Prairie

It is with reverence and a hush of winter stillness that I present to you this series of letters from Mrs. Marian Tate—a young widow dwelling alone in the Kansas Territory during that first long, uncertain season of 1855.

Jun 2, 20258 min read

Letters from Sagebrush Ridge

Sagebrush Ridge Territory of Kansas September to April 1855 The wind whispered secrets through the tallgrass of the Kansas prairie, rustling the pages of Marian Tate’s latest letter. Ink stained her calloused fingers as she carefully formed each word, her gaze often drifting towards the figure resting on the cot in the corner of her small cabin. Hank Dawson. He’d arrived weeks ago, a broken man found near her property line, feverish and clutching a shattered leg. Marian,

Jun 1, 20257 min read

Dust and Deliverance

Her badge caught the sun just as a rider thundered down Main Street, raising a cloud of red clay behind him. Mercy recognized the horse before the man: the gray Appaloosa with a split ear. Wild Rye, Everett Tate's mare.

May 28, 20255 min read

The Schoolmistress of Cottonwood Springs

Cottonwood Springs Nebraska Territory 1863 The stagecoach rattled to a stop, sending plumes of dust into the parched air of Cottonwood Springs. Lillian McAllister clutched her valise in one hand and steadied her bonnet with the other as she stepped down onto the wooden platform. The town stretched before her, a single dusty street lined with weathered buildings that had seen better days, much like the weary faces that turned to appraise her. "Schoolteacher?" the stagecoach

May 18, 20256 min read