Cherokee Winter

15 Powerful stories from award-winning western author Troy D. Smith!"Troy Smith has a rare and wonderful gift. His words do more than take you to another time, more than allow you to live another person's life ... they also open that person's heart and allow you to feel its beat. Smith is able to evoke the emotions that will touch your heart, using characters you will remember and think about long after his story is read and its pages closed. His work is a treat. Enjoy!" ~ Frank Roderus, two-time winner of the Spur AwardExcerpt from The Stealing MoonChapter 1Will Rafer felt a chill pass through him. It gripped his heart and squeezed it, making it bleed fear. Will gasped for breath. Fear and shame - old feelings, familiar as his own shadow.Will stood in the autumn air in his longjohns. The outhouse, his destination, was clearly visible just a few yards away. The moon burned orange in the sky like an ember from a forgotten fire. It was the kind of night that Will's neighbors had always called a Comanche Moon - when those fierce, savage horsemen set forth to shed blood and steal lives.Like they had shed blood on the Rafer place the autumn before.A wolf howled in the distance - or was it a wolf? Will strained his ears, trying to isolate the source of the keening noise. Charles Goodnight had once told Will's father that only the human voice produces an echo; a man can tell the call of a real animal from an Indian imitator by listening closely. Will struggled to apply Mister Goodnight's advice, but to no avail.He stumbled his way into the outhouse and half-sat, half-collapsed inside. The darkness was a comfort to him. He crouched inside the little shed, not daring to move - seventeen years old, he thought to himself in disgust, and hiding like a kid.But he did not move. The night crawled by, and the stink settled into Will's clothes.