Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

MAPMAKER "This is Sheriff Keller." The principal pressed a button, put the call on speaker, looked at the woman standing too-near his chair, a disapproving scowl on her face. "Yes, Sheriff." "My daughter Victoria will not be at school today." "I, ah, I see ... is she unwell, Sheriff?" There was a long silence, then the man's voice -- cold, hard, an edge to it -- "That idiot teacher that ran my son nearly killed him. He had to be flighted out and he's in Intensive Care, not expected to live. The doctors want to try some kind of a Hail Mary and they need donor tissue from his twin sister." "Oh, dear," the principal murmured: the look he gave the woman beside him, was suddenly much less understanding than it had been. "I am in conversation with the County Prosecutor," the Sheriff continued. "We are discussing criminal charges against Clara Fritter. I expect to have his decision before noon." "I, ah, I see," the principal said hesitantly. "You might want to give her a call and let her know not to set foot on school property. I don't think she'd want to be seen arrested in her workplace." "I, ah, I will ... tell her. Thank ... thank you for letting me know, Sheriff." He pressed the hangup button, looked at Clara Fritter. "I suggest you leave," he said quietly. "I will do no such thing --" "If I call the Sheriff and ask to have you removed for trespass ..." the principal said, letting the threat dangle. The principal was honestly surprised. He didn't know it was possible to stomp indignantly down the hall and out the door, while wearing soft soled Hush Puppies. Angela knelt, took her little sister's hands in her own. "We need your help," she said in a quiet voice. Victoria nodded, big-eyed and solemn: her Big Sister would not ask unless it was serious. "You remember you let the doctors biopsy your heart muscle so we could grow a new heart for Michael." Angela nodded. "We need something similar." Victoria blinked, tilted her head a little, the way she did when her curiosity was starting to prickle. "We need to map your spine." "Michael." The voice was a whisper on the breeze, a voice from far away -- "Michael." Michael opened his eyes. "Welcome back." Michael blinked, slowly, swallowed. "Thirsty," he whispered. He felt a straw touch his lips. He drank. Water never tasted so good. Michael looked up, saw his sister Angela smiling down at him. "Hi," he croaked. "Can I go home now?" "Not yet, but there's someone here who'd like to say hello." Michael felt something heavy hit the mattress, felt something warm and heavy land beside him as if it were taking root. "Bear Killer," he whispered, as a great, black, curly-furred mountain Mastiff laid his blunt muzzle up beside Michael's ear. "Michael, we had some problems." Michael smiled, just a little. "We fixed the damage in your chest, but there were ... complications." The Bear Killer snuffed at his ear, taste-tested the corner of his jaw, laid his chin down beside Michael's head and gave a great, noisy, dramatic sigh. "We think ... a clot lodged in your spine and we were afraid your spinal cord was starved for blood." Michael looked up at the surgeon, his pale eyes wide, attentive. "We seem to have removed the clot before it could cause permanent damage." He looked at Angela, nodded. "We mapped Victoria's spine and used it as a guide to check yours for function." "Did it work?" Michael asked. "We have yet to find out," the surgeon admitted. "Whattaya need?" Michael asked. "It's going to hurt, Michael," Angela warned. "So what else is new," he muttered. "Let's do it." Surgeon and nurse each lowered their respective siderail. "Michael, I'm going to swing your legs --" Michael swung his legs, hooked his heels over the edge of the mattress, then clenched his jaw as the pain hit him: eyes squeezed shut, he crossed his arms tight across his chest and hissed in a breath through his tight-locked jaw. The Bear Killer was behind him, warm, reassuring, a constant pressure against his back. Angela's hands were tight on his upper arms. "Not so fast," she cautioned. "Like hell," Michael snarled: he worked his bony backside against the mattress, twisted forward, pushed off, into his sister's arms: Angela caught him under the arms as his feet hit the floor, as Michael snarled, willing his legs to work. The surgeon watched as Michael lifted one leg, then the other, placed each bare foot with an exaggerated care on the polished, spotless floor. "Bear Killer," Michael groaned. The Bear Killer flowed off the bed, sidestepped up to Michael's left side, looking up at him with an expression of canine concern. Michael was panting from pain -- his chest still hurt like homemade hell -- he shook his sister's hand from his arm, then seized her wrist to steady himself. Angela heard her little brother snarl, deep in his young throat, as he brought his left leg up and forward. The surgeon was watching closely, assessing his patient's efforts with professional eyes. He could not hear Michael's muted words. Angela could. Michael took one step, a second, a third, a fourth, and with each step -- an effort greater than any he'd ever had to put forth in his entire young life -- "Work, damn you!" The rehabilitation was carefully monitored; it took longer than anticipated. Michael's procedures were groundbreaking, the stuff that guarantees a surgeon's career: lessons learned in his surgeries, in his rehabilitation, were disseminated throughout the several medical communities in the Confederacy. Michael's misfortune proved a boon to the healing arts; lives were saved, thanks to procedures invented to keep him alive; even back on Earth, lives were saved in his name. When the Irish Brigade rolled up their sleeves and gave blood, two of their number were found to be Baby Baggers -- they lacked a particular antibody on their cell surfaces, which made them ideal donors for infants in Rh crisis, infants in need of an emergency, whole-volume transfusion -- they gave blood because they didn't know what else to do to help the son of one of their own, and in so doing, they too saved lives, and not a few of them. That, too, is its own story.

SATISFACTION Law and Order Harry Macfarland cultivated a semi-indolent appearance. The man was often seen leaning against a post in front of the Carbon Hill Marshal's Office, surveying the street with quiet eyes. The man gave the appearance of a cultivated laziness. It was an illusion he wished to preserve, for he often used that misconception to his benefit. Carbon Hill was in Firelands County, and on occasion, their pale eyed Sheriff would come to visit, sometimes on official business, but more often than not, just to come over and say howdy. When he did, the Sheriff would prop up that same porch post as the Marshal; one on one side, one on the other, each ensuring the other kept the post upright so the overhang would stay up and shade the boardwalk, or continue to shed rain water, or snow. Silence lay over both men's shoulders like a cloak. It was not uncommon for them to spend an hour or so, just standing, leaning, watching. Those who took note of such things -- if they abandoned their own attentions and turned their observations to the lawmen -- observed that, within that hour, at least one individual would be approached by one or both of these quiet, watchful guardians: what followed could be something as benign as a greeting, a handshake, perhaps quiet laughter, there in the middle of the street. Rarely did it come to something unpleasant, but when it did, the effect was noteworthy: one sunny afternoon, as Law and Order Harry Macfarland laid hands on a man who didn't wish to be the object of his attention, Harry took him by the front of his coat, shook him and spun him and hooked a leg behind the other's knee to down him: Harry found himself gripped in a similar manner, and it wasn't his erstwhile prisoner who hit the ground first. It was, however, his erstwhile prisoner that hit the ground second, and when he did, he just laid there, at least until that pale eyed Sheriff handed Harry the war club he'd liberated from a nearby woodpile, and used to belt the offending party a good one across the back of his head. It was understood to be a courtesy, from one lawman to another, that the Sheriff picked up the limp form, packed him to the nearest horse trough, and gently slid him -- face first -- into the cold, shimmering, fresh-pumped water. Once the prisoner was relieved of his proud-ofs and a few things he shouldn't have in the hoosegow, he was locked in the iron box provided by an earlier railroad, the one that went bankrupt, the one the Sheriff bought, gave to his wife for a wedding present, the one that became the successful Z&W. Harry peeled out of his coat, held it sadly at arm's length, shook his head. He and the Sheriff stepped out the back door and took turns brushing the dirt from it. Harry finally allowed as he'd have to have a new one made, for that was his last coat and he was trying to keep it clean: the next day, two carriages pulled up: one with four well-dressed ladies from Firelands, another with two hired men, two sewing machines and a variety of packages. The village hall was the only building in town with room enough to work: it was commandeered, the treadle Singer sewing machines brought in, along with bolts of cloth and satchels containing measuring tapes, shears, pins, needles, thread, chalk and other tools of the tailor's trade: not only did they fit Law and Order Harry Macfarland with a new suit coat (actually two, a fact they hid from the Mayor, who came by to see what the excitement was), they also provided him with two new pair of trousers, two vests and four shirts. Bonnie McKenna was in the middle of it all: she, like the other ladies, knew cloth and knew not only how to cut from a bolt to get the maximum finished product per square foot of material, she was also helping, pinning, adjusting, measuring, spooling up bobbins, and as the ladies of town found they were there, and in business, Bonnie opened another container and began unloading dressmaking fabrics. When the Mayor arrived to see what was going on in His Village Hall, he was seized by the ladies, divested of his coat: he found himself being measured, assessed, cloth of different types were held across his chest, he was measured again, and his politician's mind realized he may have arrived at a fortuitous moment: it did not take long to fit the Mayor with a new suit and send him on his way, with the whispered promise to fit his wife with a new Sunday gown if she'd stop in: the Mayor's suit was at no charge, Bonnie told him with a conspiratorial wink, and today only, women's dresses were half off! The town hall was suddenly a popular place: the McKenna Dress Works, which usually produced its wares for shipment to larger population centers, fabricating and distributing sized-up exemplars of current styles from the Parisian dolls they received by train, months ahead of the sea-borne exemplars of the newest French fashion via ocean-going vessel: the McKenna Dress Works also provided fashions for the local population, and well-to-do visitors from far-flung lands who passed through the Silver Jewel invariably expressed their delight that this rustic and rural location was capable of providing its ladies with fashionably contemporary attire. The Sheriff came away with a feeling of satisfaction. He'd provided his friend with two new suits and the promise that his original would be returned to him, laundered, mended and ready to wear. Bonnie McKenna came away with a feeling of satisfaction, measured in profit: the Sheriff paid her well for her expedition, and she'd turned that much coin and more by sewing ladies' attire alone. The Mayor came away with a feeling of satisfaction. His wife had a fine new gown (at a good price!) and he had a new suit, as unofficial payment for the use of their town hall's spacious meeting room. Perhaps the most satisfied was the Sheriff's wife, two days later, when she accidentally encountered the mayor's wife, who took pains to tell Esther just how much of a gentleman her husband was, and also her son Jacob: she'd been very favorably taken by Jacob's natural courtesy, and she laid gentle fingertips on the back of Esther's hand as she almost whispered, "The apple falls not far from the tree, and there is only one place your Jacob could have learned to be a gentleman!" -- and she'd shifted her eyes to look at the Sheriff, discussing matters with a local rancher, then looked back at Esther, and two women shared a silent, unspoken understanding, and after the Mayor's wife went on her way, Esther Keller looked at her son, handsome and well-mounted as he rode up the street. It is very fair to say that, of all who came away with a good feeling that day, it was Esther Keller who felt the greatest degree of satisfaction.

THAT'S NOT WHAT I TOLD HER Deputy Sheriff Dana Keller was tall enough to look her long tall Daddy right in the collar bone. Deputy Sheriff Dana Keller was a horsewoman, a dancer, trim of waist, toned of muscle. Deputy Sheriff Dana Keller did not so much walk, as she glided: she'd walked into a barfight, picked up a beerbottle, laid a man out with one blow across his face, she'd snatched up a pool cue and beat the hell out of a second, then she tossed the broken stick aside, seized a third one by his wrist and his waist and spun the startled combatant around in a quick two-step, in perfect time to the beer joint thumping out of the scarred juke box, right before she drove him belt buckle first across the bar so Jelly could belt him across the back of the head with a lead-shot-filled, leather war club. Deputy Sheriff Dana Keller was known as a pale eyed badge packer with a quick smile, a contagious laugh, and a tolerant, very fair nature: like her long tall Daddy, if it was at all possible, she would separate two parties in dispute, hear one out, hear the other out, and take it from there. Deputy Sheriff Dana Keller was well known, and well liked, in the community. She was also a walking lie detector, with no tolerance for being lied to. When a smiling, womanly Sheriff's deputy, with a great, shining-black, curly-furred Bear Killer at her side, tilted her head, smiled pleasantly, then told the school's principal that he would produce the person of one Clara Fritter forthwith, the principal considered that things were about to go badly, or extremely badly, and in either case, his best bet would be to produce said person. Forthwith. The grade-school principal returned to his office with the disapproving, scowling teacher following, with ill grace. Angela waited until they were inside, then she shut the door, firmly, stooped, slid a wedge under the door and kicked it once. She turned, smiled, and so did The Bear Killer. Neither smile was particularly pleasant. "I have something you need to see," she said, and opened a manila file folder. "I don't see what this has to do with me," Fritter snapped, until Dana showed her the picture. Principal and teacher looked at the glossy enlargement, shocked. "This," Dana said quietly, "is the student you forced to run at recess." "I .. but ... he's ..." "My brother Michael," Dana interrupted coldly, "had heart surgery. You were presented with doctor's orders that he is not to be exerted, and you forced him to run." Dana did not raise her voice. As a matter of fact, she spoke quietly. "I cannot trust a teacher who intentionally, knowingly, violates a physician's written order. A teacher that would do that, would retaliate, and I am not going to allow you to place a vulnerable student at risk." "I didn't -- didn't know --" "You knew," Dana said, her voice hardening. "Michael told you himself. You were handed the doctor's orders. I am giving you two choices. I take you out of here in irons, right here and right now." -- Dana reached behind her, unsnapped the cuff case, spun a shining set of stainless Smith & Wessons on her bent middle finger as she brought them forward into view. "Or you can leave under your own power. You have time enough to retire. Now's the time." "This is blackmail," the shocked teacher whispered. Dana leaned forward a little. "This," she hissed, "is attempted murder, and nothing would make me happier than to put you behind bars for the rest of your disagreeable life." Angela Keller looked up, her eyes pale and marble-hard. "She did what?" "She forced Michael to run at recess." Angela Keller closed her eyes, closed the folder she held, took a long, steadying breath, then opened her eyes and looked at her sister. "How's Michael?" "He's being evaluated." "Miss Angela?" one of her students asked, approaching uncertainly. "We saw on the news where ... Michael was hurt, that he'd ... had a procedure ..." "Word travels fast," Angela said bitterly. The class was silent, every student nurse's eyes on the uniformed Sheriff's deputy, and the huge, shining-black mountain Mastiff that stood beside her, looking up adoringly at the pair. The students knew them , at least by sight, thanks to the Inter-System, and the knowledge that their own Miss Angela's brother -- the same one they'd seen punch through a cloud of steam with a Winchester rifle and a hard-running Appaloosa -- underwent a major surgery of some variety, something to do with war narrowly averted, something to do with a major diplomatic event that spared lives and brought peace. It wasn't until then that they put all the pieces together and realized the cost of that peace had almost been the death of that young and heroic figure. Another of her students stood. "Miss Angela, Miss Dana," she said, "what do you need us to do?" "Where is he now?" Angela asked. "Cardiac Intensive Care." Angela began a quick mental review of her students' progress on the cardiac system. "He's so far skinned everyone there at poker." Angela stopped, turned, looked at her pale eyed sister with an open, honest, genuine expression of surprise. "Poker?" Dana shrugged. "He is his father's son." Angela dropped her face into her hand, shook her head slowly, groaned, looked up. "Deuces, treys and one eyed jacks wild?" "What else?" "He's skinned 'em out of their eye teeth?" "In spades." Angela looked at her class, spread her hands helplessly, her mouth open: she shook her head, sighed loudly, looked at The Bear Killer, looked at her sister, looked back at the class. "See what I have put up with?" Michael Keller clenched his teeth -- carefully -- he rolled over, eyes closed, willing himself not to hurt. It didn't work. His fingers grazed the switch that could have shot morphine, or something much like it, into his system. No. Gammaw's Mama was ... I don't want to be like her. Pa said addiction skips a generation. It might skip more than one. "Here, let me --" he heard, felt gentle, gloved fingers brush his. "No," he gasped. "No?" "I don't want it!" -- his voice was low, vicious, he looked at the masked nurse, startling her with the anger in his young eyes. "But ... you're in pain ..." "I'm alive." His voice was hoarse, a harsh whisper. The gloved hand withdrew. Michael finished rolling up on his side, then he eased bare legs from under the covers, pushed his elbow deep into the mattress, levered himself slowly to an upright position. "Help me up," he gasped. "Michael, if you --" "I gotta get rid of some second hand coffee!" The startled nurse blinked, then gripped him under the elbows, steadied him. Once necessaries were tended, once he was returned to his bed, pale, shivering, but relieved, the nurse looked at him and said quietly, "You don't drink coffee." Michael looked at her and tried to grin. "It's what my Pa says." The nurse sat carefully on the side of his bed. "I'll bet you say lots of things your Pa says." "Yes, ma'am." "I'LL KILL HER! WHERE IS SHE?" Shelly demanded. Linn raised supplicating palms toward his wife, opened his mouth to say something. Shelly thrust a stiff finger at her husband: "DON'T YOU TRY TO SHUSH ME, MISTER! SHE COULD HAVE KILLED OUR SON AND I'M GOING TO KILL HER!" "She's been taken care of," Linn said quietly. Shelly glanced to the left, where a big set of pale eyes, framed with red-auburn hair and ruffles, regarded her from over the stairway banister. "Angela, go back upstairs," Shelly said sternly. "No," Linn said. "If you're going to commit murder, she should watch." "What?" Shelly snapped. "She's been taken care of, dearest," Linn repeated patiently. Linn turned to their solemn-faced daughter. "Victoria?" he asked gently. "Have you ever seen your mother this angry?" "No," Victoria said in a small, uncharacteristically little-girlish voice. "Do you know why she's this angry?" Victoria nodded, then looked at her mother. "Mommy, please don't kill her," she said in an exaggerated little-girl's voice. Shelly glared at her daughter, at her husband. Victoria spoke again, still in her uncharacteristic, lisping, innocent-little-girl's voice. "I'm going to kill her, Mommy. I know where she lives, and I know how to pick the locks she uses, and I'm going to use a knife 'cause it's quiet." Let 'em blow off steam, Linn thought. Let 'em vent. De-escalate. Two days later, Angela Keller tilted her comm-pad so she and Michael both could see her pale eyed Daddy. "Got kind of an odd call the other day," Linn said. "Michael, you any better?" "Yes, sir," Michael lied. "I know what two cracked ribs hurts like," Linn said solemnly. "I can't imagine what it's like to have my brisket hacksawed in two and spread with hydraulic jaws." Michael blinked, nodded. Angela saw gratitude in her younger brother's eyes, and she realized how important it was that her Daddy just validated her brother's God's-honest pain. "The odd call, Daddy?" Linn was looking steadily at his son: he blinked, remembered how Michael just plainly astonished that salesman with the automated paintball mannikin, the day before everything happened to him -- he looked at Angela's image, nodded. "It seems someone threatened the teacher that nearly killed Michael." "Do we know who?" Linn was quiet for several long moments, his jaw thrust out thoughtfully, then he looked back. "It seems she found a knife driven into her mattress. No sign of forced entry. Just the knife someone drove into her mattress, right where her heart would be if she'd been in the bed." "Knife," Angela echoed. "How big?" "Big," the Sheriff said. "Eleven inch butcher." "Prints?" "None. No tracks, no cameras, nothing taken." "There's something else." "There is." Sheriff Linn Keller took a long breath. "She got a phone call afterward. She said it was something out of a horror film, a little girl's voice saying she was going to kill her and she'd never know when, or where." Angela stood on the far side of Michael's bed, as if she were intentionally staying out of Angela's comm-screen's camera. She waited until the screen went dark, until Angela slid the screen into her carryall, that she said in an exaggerated, uncharacteristic, little-girl lisp, "That's not what I told her."

BACK TO THE VALLEY “Where’s Michael?” Victoria looked up, gave her pale eyed Daddy her very best Innocent Expression, which of course told the suspicious old lawman that she was not innocent in this situation. “Is Michael in trouble?” she asked, lowering her head a little as she did. “No, darlin’ … but I need to keep track of him.” Victoria chewed on her bottom lip, then looked back up at her Daddy. “He went to ride the Fanghorn again.” Victoria saw her Daddy veil his eyes, the way he did when he didn’t want anyone to know how he was going to react: he turned, headed for the door: she watched as he swiped the bottoms of his feet, thrust sock feet into his boots, straightened: he set his Stetson on his head, considered, then turned and went into his study. Victoria watched from the kitchen table as her Daddy divested himself of his duty belt, as he went to a gun case and pulled out a double gunrig. Victoria knew what that meant. When her Daddy parked his everyday hardware and belted on a pair of .44s, it meant he was going into a serious situation. Linn looked at the rifles in the gun case, considered his options, then pulled out his Uncle Pete’s Garand, slung the cloth bandolier of stamped-steel, brass-filled clips across his chest. “Old Timer,” he said softly, “I have need of your services.” Linn slung the Garand muzzle down from his off shoulder, strode out the front door. A little girl’s scared eyes watched the door shut behind him. Linn went out into the pasture – he’d hung saddle and saddle blanket on the fence – he brought two fingers to his lips, whistled. He lowered his hand, thumbed his lock back open, pulled out a plug of molasses twist tobacker and casually shaved off several thick curls, dropped the plug back in his pocket. Of the several in his herd that came to his summoning whistle, one was dominant, the Herd Stallion. Linn bribed him with the tobacker, rubbed his neck. “I need your help, old friend,” he whispered, then he parked the Garand against the fence, slung saddle blanket and saddle over the dancing stallion’s back. Linn looked at the stallion, stepped back, reached for the Garand. He turned back, quickly, drew the cinch tighter. It was a game the stallion played. Linn disliked knuckling a horse to keep it from swelling up with air when he tightened the cinch; if he turned away, his stallion would exhale, and Linn could turn and cinch it up snug: honor satisfied, the rider was secure, and the stallion was satisfied he’d pulled another one off on his rider. Linn drew the Garand’s bolt back just enough to see shining copper, eased the bolt shut again, thrust a boot into the doghouse stirrup, swung aboard. Three heartbeats later, a tall, well-built Appaloosa stallion cantered out of a vertical black cat’s eye of an Ellipse, with a rider propping a Garand rifle up on his hip. Horse and rider rode in a slow circle, looking, listening: Pig Iron’s ears swung, listening to unfamiliar sounds. Linn had never been here. He’d studied it – he’d read the reports, he’d called up maps of the area, he knew where his children were introduced to the Fanghorn, he’d followed Michael’s wild ride on the maps, at least until a nervous sentry did his level best to incinerate both rider, and mount, and damn neart succeeded. Pig Iron froze, ears forward, muttered. Linn’s hand was firm, reassuring on the Appaloosa’s neck. “I see ‘em,” he whispered, then dismounted, dropped the reins, made a hand-gesture: Stay. Pig Iron’s ears laid back, then came forward, but he stayed. Sheriff Linn Keller, a stranger in a strange land, eased the bolt back on the Garand and fed a shining brass round into the steel chamber – slowly, carefully, silently as he could. Michael Keller sat dejectedly on a rock. Lightning – that’s what Michael called the Fanghorn, for the forked burn patterns growing in pure white on his tan-furred hide – was different from some Earth horses in that he wasn’t afraid to lay down. The Sheriff saw his son, sitting, a caressing hand on one hell of a horse’s neck – if horses had a blunter, blockier head, a head with fighting canines and a projecting, blunt horn in the middle of their forehead. Linn crept closer, squatted, lowered one knee to the ground, the Garand across his middle. He saw Michael swallow, saw him look with an unhappy expression at the distant treeline. “How come I couldn’t stay dead?” he asked. The Fanghorn made no reply. Linn froze in place. He was more than familiar with what the courts call a “Spontaneous Utterance.” He had no intent to use anything Michael said, in a court of law, but he had a serious worry on for his youngest son, and that one rhetorical complaint told him his worry was well founded. “They grew a near heart for me,” Michael continued, then he was silent for almost a full minute. He looked up, saw his Pa. So complete was his misery that he made no effort to greet him. Linn rose, slung the Garand, muzzle down, looked at the Fanghorn with its big head laid companionably across Michael’s thighs. “This is Lightning,” Michael said softly. “He’s m’ bud.” The plug ugly creature grunted, closing its eyes with apparent pleasure at Michael’s caress. “I didn’t want to come back, Pa,” Michael admitted. Linn nodded. He didn’t want to get too close to the Fanghorn, didn’t want to startle it – there was an obvious affinity between his son and this imposing quadruped – he stopped again, went back into his squat with one knee down. This time the Garand stood upright beside him, his left hand around the fore end. “I saw the Valley,” Michael said, his voice a little softer. “I … didn’t want to come back.” Michael stared, wide eyed, at a memory only he could see. “I laid on my back on the ceiling like Old Pale Eyes and I looked down at myself like old Pale eyes and I was kind of surprised, sir.” Linn waited. “I saw Angela and a big ugly woman layin’ on the floor with a bloody nose. I saw people working on me, machines – they cut my chest open but I couldn’t feel it –" He looked at his Pa, his eyes wide, unblinking. “I didn’t realize how small I was.” Linn waited. “The Valley is green,” Michael whispered, then added, “I didn’t hurt there.” Linn nodded, carefully, thoughtfully. “You’re not the first one to tell me that.” Michael looked half-hopefully at his father. “I didn’t want to come back from the Valley my own self.” Michael’s expression went from hopeful to surprised. “I recall ‘twas green,” Linn almost whispered, “and it smelled of spring, it smelled of a thousand green growing things. There was a spring, and water runnin’ over a rock, and I drank, and it was cold and it was sweet.” Linn’s expression was distant as he spoke; he blinked, looked at his intently-listening son. “I got sent back because my work wasn’t done,” Linn said, his voice gentle, fatherly: “I’ll tell you how I ended up there, one of these days.” “Was Marnie there for you too?” Linn shook his head slowly. “No, Michael. Marnie didn’t come for me.” “Oh,” he said, disappointed. “When you saw Marnie … she was horseback?” Michael’s pale eyes widened. “How’d you know?” he breathed. “Because when Sarah Lynne McKenna came for me, she was a-ridin’ that big black Snowflake mare, only she … the mare she rode, had wings, and Sarah wore armor and she had the lost Lance of St Mercurius upright and socketed in her right stirrup.” “So did Marnie,” Michael whispered. “Only I wasn’t … I didn’t think …” “Didn’t think I’d believe you?” “No, sir,” Michael admitted in a small voice. Linn took a long breath, blew it out, nodded. “Some doctors told me … afterward, when I described what I’d seen … they said what I saw was a brain dying from anoxia, a comforting hallucination before death.” Linn looked very directly at his son. “What I saw, what I lived … was no hallucination, Michael.” Father saw relief in his son’s eyes. “I was worried for you, Michael.” Michael looked down at the lightning-patterned Fanghorn. “I had to come back here,” he said in a small voice, then looked at his Pa. “You told me if I fell off a horse, if I got throwed, I had to get right back up into the saddle.” Linn nodded. “I had to come back, sir. I had to ride Lightning again. I had to jump the fence yonder and run into where we’d been.” Michael leaned forward a little, his eyes, his voice beseeching: “I had to!” Linn nodded slowly. “I understand,” he murmured, then asked with the hint of a smile, “Reckon you can make it home all right?” “Yes, sir,” Michael said, looking down at the nearly-sound-asleep Fanghorn. Linn rose. “Come on home when you’re ready, then. Your Mama is fixin’ meat loaf.” Michael’s quick grin, his anticipating look of innocent delight, said more clearly than anything that the Sheriff’s fears had but little foundation. A lean waisted man with a brace of .44s on his belt and a Garand rifle propped up on his hip, rode into a black ellipse on a distant planet, emerged in his own pasture: not long after he’d hung up his hat and hooked off his boots, not long after he wiped the Garand with a silicone rag and parked it back in its glass door gun case, the front door of the solid-built ranch house opened again, and a pale eyed lad stepped inside, hooked off his boots and hung up his Stetson as well. That night, after supper, Victoria and Michael were talking quietly as they sat, side by side, freshly showered and in their flannel jammies and parked on the top step of the broad staircase. “Pa said he’s seen the Valley like I did,” Michael whispered, his knees drawn up, arms around his shin bones, his chin on one knee. “He was afraid you’d go back,” Victoria whispered. Michael looked at her curiously. “Back to the Fanghorn?” Victoria’s eyes were big, luminous, almost fearful, as she whispered her reply. “He was afraid you were going back to the Valley.”

THE MAIDEN'S LAST VOYAGE Angela Keller had doubts, when His Honor the Judge asked her to go to a distant place, and find a certain man, and try to find out certain things. His Honor the Judge, she thought, was perhaps too impressed by Sarah McKenna's skills. Yes, Angela had the same blood as Sarah, and yes, Angela was the daughter of that pale eyed old lawman, and yes, Angela was possessed of the wiles and the skills of a truly lovely maiden of the mountains, but still ... Still, she doubted. Angela was not about to let doubts stand in the way of an attempt. The Judge would not have asked her to find this man unless the matter was important, very important, and so she kissed her Daddy and packed her grip, she rode the steam train and hired a hack and traveled to the saltwater seaport she'd heard so much about: she purchased passage on a ship headed north, north along the seacoast, north where rumors of gold were only just starting. She stood at the ship's bow, one hand on smooth railing, she felt wind and salt spray in her face, she felt the great canvas boom above and behind her, she rode the deck as she rode a horse, easily, naturally -- others, landsmen, inexperienced in riding the saltwater sea and the wooden steeds that breasted the waves, bent over the railing and lost their appetites and everything they'd eaten for a week, but not Angela. She stood, beautiful, laughing, she looked over as the ship's-captain came up to her with an approving look: it was rare to find a woman of such beauty, a woman who could walk his holystoned deck with the ease of a veteran sailor: a voice called, he turned, then turned back to the maiden, touched his cap-brim, and strode off to attend the summons of his first officer. "I saw them leave port," a man said quietly -- a man whose skin was darkened, toughened by sun, by salt-spray, by wind, a man with palms like horn and the perpetually, half-curled hands of a seaman, used to hauling lines and hoisting rigging. " 'Twas a day of rare beauty," he said, "and aye, your daughter stood at the prow." He stopped, closed his eyes, remembering the moment. " 'Twas the ship's maiden voyage, it was, and she left harbor like a maiden sheds her cloak on her wedding night -- young and untried and beautiful, and she slipped into the open sea, and there was a beauty about her." He bowed his head a little, nodded. "And your daughter was aboard." The Sheriff's fingers rested on the telegraph flimsy. His hand was steady, his eyes were quiet, but his eyes were very pale as he listened to a saltwater sailor's words. "She foundered on a Northern reef, she did." "Foundered," the Sheriff echoed. "Aye. She was gutted, she was. We saw her roll over." The Sheriff stared at the far wall, nodding very slowly, very slightly. "We searched, we did, but we saw her go down by moonlight, an' damned few souls it was we hauled from th' watter." The Sheriff looked sharply at the sailor, at his suddenly haunted expression. "Requiem, there were," he said after a moment, after swallowing a knot in his throat: "great fishes they are, wi' teeth fit t' bite a man in two." He looked at the Sheriff. "We hauled what was left o' the Captain aboard, an' the mate said t' drop 'im back, an' we did." "What did you see?" the Sheriff asked quietly, and the sailor looked at him with the same eyes as men he'd seen after battle, after the internecine slaughter back during That Damned War. "He was bit in two, he was," the sailor whispered hollowly. "All gone fra' th' belt, down." Sheriff Linn Keller closed his eyes, took a long breath, nodded. "There were damned few bodies, an' but three left alive." The Sheriff nodded, looked very directly at the man. "No sign of my daughter," he said -- it was a statement, not a question. "No, sir. Not so much as a ribbon from her hair." Linn nodded, his fingertips still on the folded flimsy. He rose, thrust out his hand. "Thank you. This is more information than I'd gotten from anyone else." The sailor's gaze was direct, his grip firm: "I know what 'tis t' lose a mate," he said quietly. "I've no idea how hard it is t' lose a daughter." Linn watched the man's shoulders as he turned, as he walked away with the rolling gait of a man more at home on living water than here, where the deck underfoot was still and unmoving. He turned back to his desk, picked up the flimsy, unfolded it, reread it. Ship dead. I live. Home soon. Angela Sheriff Linn Keller folded the flimsy again, slid it into an inside pocket, took a long breath, raised his chin. I have to tell the Judge, he thought. I have to tell Esther -- He closed his eyes as he realized, again, that his Esther, his beloved, was long since cold and dead and buried. I still want to talk to her he thought, and he ached at the thought. Sheriff Linn Keller closed his eyes for a long moment, then snatched his Stetson vigorously -- almost angrily -- from its peg, settled it firmly down on his head. He had to tell the Judge, yes, and tell him he would. Right after he went over to their little whitewashed church and talked to God about it.

THE WHITE ONION Marnie Keller turned sideways, smiled a little at her full-length reflection as she caressed her expanding middle. She spun a robe around her shoulders, thrust her feet into a pair of fleece lined slippers, tied the ribbon belt around her waist, glided into the kitchen. Pancakes, she thought. Blueberry pancakes. Marnie tapped the screen on the wall-unit, said "Six stack of blueberry pancakes, bacon fried crispy, two eggs fried over medium and wheat toast with butter." She released her finger from the screen, then touched it again. "And tea. Earl Grey, big mug, teaspoon of honey." Angela Keller keyed in her destination, stepped through the Iris, stopped, blinked in surprise. Marnie's fist was cocked, her other hand holding a plate with a half dozen cylindrical cans -- "YOU IDIOT MACHINE, I SAID A SIX STACK, NOT A SIX PACK! I DON'T WANT PANCAKES IN A CAN, I WANT A STACK OF SIX PANCAKES!" Marnie ran out of wind, stopped, took two deep breaths. "IS THAT SUCH A HARD CONCEPT FOR YOUR TRANSISTOR BRAIN TO UNDERSTAND?" Marnie's face was dark, the cords in her neck were standing out, and Angela was not at all sure whether her sister was going to drive the plate full of canned pancakes into the control panel, whether she was going to drive her fist through the touch screen, or whether she was going to step back and throw the cans, one at a time, just as hard as she could. Part of Angela's mind considered that the ceramic plate that held the cans, would make a fine Frisbee, if flung as a weapon at the offending dispenser. Marnie turned -- as she saw her sister, her rage fell from her face like water cascading off an oilskin, and was gone. She placed the plate and its wobbling cargo on the table, blinked, tilted her head a little. "Hello," she smiled, "you're just in time for breakfast!" The dispenser hummed again: Marnie reached in, pulled out another plate: bacon and eggs, hot and steaming, and then a big mug of shimmering-brown tea. "Why ... don't ... I try some canned pancakes," Angela said hesitantly. Marnie set her plate down, waved a hand at the dispenser: Angela walked gracefully, delicately, as a matter of course. As she approached her now-quiet-voiced sister -- her full-powered screaming RAGE ringing in Angela's memory, if not off the walls -- she walked as if she were treading on eggshells. "Earl Grey, honey, big mug," she told the dispenser, then reached in and retrieved her steaming-hot beverage. Angela picked up a can -- it was about the size of a beer can, back home -- she pressed both thumbs under its lip, popping the top up. She ran a butter knife inside the can, between its cargo and the sidewall, turned it upside down. A stack of pancakes fell out -- smaller than she was used to, hot, shining with butter and honey and a dusting of cinnamon. "Blueberry?" she asked. Marnie glared at her. Angela picked up her plate, set it over with her sister's platter. Marnie glared daggers at the dispenser as Angela went over and spoke to it; she came back just as Marnie opened another can of pancakes, dumped it without ceremony atop the first can's contents. "Did you enjoy your time back home?" Marnie mumbled through a full mouth. "I did," Angela replied, daintily spreading a napkin on her lap, unfolding a second, tucking it into her collar and draping it delicately over her bodice. "I saved a child's life." "Show-off," Marnie muttered, took a noisy slurp of tea. "You act like you're starving." "I am." Marnie bit savagely at a bacon strip. "What else?" Angela blinked innocently, cut into her pancakes with her fork. "I went in disguise," she said quietly. Marnie grunted, seized the pepper shaker, peppered her eggs severely. Angela withheld comment, though privately she considered just how much of an inferno her own throat would feel, had she seasoned her eggs to that degree. "Disguised. As what?" Angela smiled, forked up a bite of blueberry pancake. "An onion." The Lady Esther whistled cheerfully to the depot as she departed. A good percentage of the passengers in the only passenger car, were tourists, and of these, the very young were restless and impatient, deprived of their screens and hand-held entertainment. Children are, however, resilient, and when they can't entertain themselves with the familiar, they will look for something interesting, and one little boy regarded the unmoving figure, all in white. "How come you have a scarf over your face?" he asked with the bluntness of the young. The featureless female figure turned its head, which reminded the little boy of a special-effect he'd seen on TV, where a marble statue turned its head and spoke. "I'm a nun. I am one of the White Sisters." "What's a White Sister?" "We are of the Order of St Mercurius," she replied gently. "We are Sworn Religious, and as part of our sacred vows, we hide our faces from the world." "How come?" the lad persisted. Angela smiled as Marnie inhaled the last of her eggs, cut into another can's worth of pancakes. "So what did you tell him? -- oh God this is so good!" Angela's eyebrows raised a little and she laughed quietly, smiling behind her heavy mug of burgamo-scented tea. "I told him he had to promise never, ever to tell, and then I lifted my veil." "You didn't!" Marnie breathed, delight in her eyes and a smile broadening her face. "Oh, yes," Angela nodded. "I thought ... if I'm disguising myself like Sarah McKenna used to, why not go all the way?" "The scar?" "The scar," Angela nodded, lowering her mug, tracing a line from the corner of her eye down her cheek, down over her jaw bone and across her throat. "Nonflexible collodion, a painted-on scar line. I lifted my veil and whispered to him that I used to sing opera." Angela sighed and laughed quietly. "When we arrived at Rabbitville Station, I stood to get off, and as I walked to the back door of the passenger car, I could hear the little boy -- he was probably pointing at me -- tell someone, "She's a White Onion!"

Please get better, dear heart!

A GOOD TEACHER Michael Keller took a long breath, closed his eyes, blew it out. He knew he stood a good chance of being shot. A very good chance. He'd just watched two of his father's deputies hit, saw them drop. His young hands clutched his 92 Winchester. So far he hadn't been spotted. He knew he had to move, and when he did, he had to be fast and accurate. Likely he could make hits that counted, at least until he crossed what his pale eyed Pa called the Dead Line -- the point at which he could be seen. And shot. I'm damned if he's going to beat me! Michael thought -- fear and anticipation warred for primacy in his young chest, in his anxiety-twisted young guts. Neither won, but Michael's adrenaline pump was hammering right up against the governor. He rolled over, dropped prone. He knew the other deputies started out by running. He didn't. He rolled out from behind cover just far enough -- Six shots, six fast-levered shots, the shining brass bead of a front sight going right where he wanted them to -- Michael rolled back behind cover, drove six handloaded .25-20s into the loading gate. Now. Move! Michael rose, dove behind the next plastic 55 gallon drum, shoved a boot out, yanked it back. Paintballs drove into the cinders where polished boot leather had just been. Michael reached up, grabbed the rim of the barrel, dumped it over, kicked it, hard. Paintballs hammered against the rolling blue plastic drum and Michael snapped a shot at the mannikin's head. The automated opponent's head detonated in a great showy flash of flame. Michael Keller came up on one knee, his rifle's muzzle still trained on the mechanical opponent: he rose slowly, covering the mortally-wounded enemy, advanced on it, hammer back, finger curled around the trigger. He walked up to it, lowered his rifle's hammer to half cock, then reared back and drove a kick into the track-mounted mechanical monster, folding it over backwards. He turned, looked at his father, standing with a clipboard and a pleased expression. He looked at Victoria, jumping up and down like a cheerleader, he looked at Sheriff's deputies, whistling and grinning and air-fisting him -- him! -- then he saw Victoria's eyes widen and he spun, drove three fast rounds into the resurrected, radar-guided, headless paintball mechanism. A stranger stood beside the Sheriff, regarding Michael with professional eyes. The stranger and the Sheriff walked up to the sizzling, snapping, shorted-out mechanical device. Michael slowly ran three more rounds into his loading gate, listened to the spring whispering as he topped off his rifle, then he walked up and joined them. Two men and a boy looked at the ruined device -- a high-priced, high-tech, computer-guided, radar-eyed, track-mounted paintball machine built into an anatomic mannikin. "Between the eyes," the salesman murmured. "Yes, sir," Michael replied. "You cleared the six-plate rack as fast as I can with an AR." "Yes, sir." "Young man" -- the salesman looked at the Sheriff, looked at Michael -- "you are the only one so far, to survive!" "Yes, sir." Michael looked at his Pa, who was trying hard not to grin. "I have a good teacher, sir."

BATTLE CAT The descending hand was big. The kitten it swept up, wasn’t. A set of pale-blue eyes looked into the deeper blue eyes of a young kitten. A Sheriff’s deputy had just stepped out of the little log fortress that was their Sheriff’s office. The deputy saw this uncertain, wobbly, fuzzy little kitten, and did what came natural. He swept it up, brought it up to eye level. “Why hello there,” he said softly, then turned the little fellow, set the kitten on his right shoulder. A tiny kitten dug tiny claws into black suit-coat material and looked around with wide and shining eyes. Jacob looked around for a Mama-cat. Finding none, he considered the boardwalk’s construction, allowed as maybe there was a Mama-cat gave birth under the lower end, where the street went downhill some, and about that time he heard raised voices, and the voices did not sound pleasant. A little blue-eyed kitten clung to a shoulder as Jacob swarmed up into his Appaloosa’s saddle, turned, paced across the packed-dirt street. Two men were squared off to one another, angry words and angry gestures declaring their mutual unhappiness. Jacob considered for a bare moment that it would be handy to have The Bear Killer with him, then pushed the thought aside. Jacob rode up between the two, turned his stallion, crowding the two men back and away from one another. Jacob’s appearance, this stallion thrusting between them and then turning, forcing their backstep, so startled them that they forgot for the moment their particular pique. Jacob turned his mount end for end, slowly, looked from one man to the other, waited. The man on his right half-asked, half-demanded, “What’s that on your shoulder?” Jacob had honestly forgotten the kitten. Jacob’s Pa was quick on his feet when it came to disarming a situation with humor. Jacob looked the man square in the eye and said solemnly, “This? Why, this is my Battle Cat.” Jacob looked from one man to another: the other fellow leaned over far enough to see the kitten on Jacob’s shoulder. “Be damned,” he murmured. “How’d you get ‘im to stay up there?” “Oh hell,” Jacob grinned, looking from one to the other – as long as Apple-horse was between them, they weren’t fighting – “he rides my shoulder right along reg’lar. I was out for a gallop and a fence jumpin’ yesterday and Battle Cat hung on like he’d been sewed to me!” “Battle Cat.” Jacob nodded solemnly. “Gen-you-wine, feerce froshus man eatin’ attack critter.” If his intent was to disarm a disagreement with humor, it worked: one man, then the other, chuckled: the fellow on his right shook his head. “Battle Cat,” he sighed. “Hell, I cain’t get away with nothin’!” “You two get everything out of your systems, or do I have to sic this-yere flesh rippin’ monster of a man killer –” “No, no, don’t do that,” the fellow on his left protested, raising his palms as if warding off evil: “I wouldn’t want t’ spoil m’ good looks getting’ all clawed t’ pieces!” Jacob waited until the pair went about their business, sat there looking around, and saw a Mama-cat carrying a kitten, at the lower end of the boardwalk in front of the Sheriff’s office. He eased Apple-horse on across the street, dismounted: he squatted where he’d seen the cat disappear through a little gap between warped, dried board, and packed dirt: he reached up, stroked the kitten, brought it down from his shoulder: he held it in against his chest, stroked it, whispered “You saved me some work,” then set it down. A little blue eyed kitten mew’d and scampered happily in under the boardwalk. Jacob rose, turned, led Apple-horse to the hitch rail, dropped the reins over and went on inside. His Pa was standing behind the desk, sorting through some papers and frowning a little. He looked up as Jacob hung his Stetson on its peg. “I heard some excitement,” Linn said distractedly. “Amount to anything?” “No, sir,” Jacob replied. “I let my Battle Cat sort things out.” Linn’s hands froze in mid-sort: he looked at his son, raised an eyebrow. Jacob grinned, something he shared in private, and with family or trusted friends. “I don’t reckon their heart was in a fight,” he said. “I rode up with a kitten on my shoulder and allowed as that was my Battle Cat, and they laughed and that was the end of it.”

ONE MORNING, ON THE MOUNTAIN He was being followed. Some things a man just knows. Jacob knew. Jacob's Appaloosa stallion picked up on his rider's alertness: Jacob felt the stallion's head come up a little, felt his step lighten, quicken, the way a horse will when it senses an imminent conflict. Jacob had gone to war on this horse. He'd ridden among men who wished him harm, and he'd found a fellow warrior under his saddle, a fighter who was only too happy to lay about the Philistines with faster and more powerful anatomic structures than the jaw bone of a jack mule. Jacob gigged the stallion ahead, quickly, turned him, got a rise between himself and whoever might be following: pale eyes busy, Jacob waited, then reached back and down and slid his Winchester from its scabbard. If there was war to be had, he'd chosen his battlefield, and he'd chosen to have the terrain working with him instead of against him. The path narrowed: there was only one approach, and unless whoever was following had wings, they'd have no choice but to come up to where he'd turned his stallion, in order to turn around and talk to him, or turn around and leave. A voice -- a woman's voice, soft, pitched to carry but a short distance -- "Can I help?" Jacob turned, saw a familiar figure: he laid his thumb over the Winchester's hammer, eased it down to half cock, stood. Was he able, he'd have hopped on one foot while booting his own backside with the other. Sarah Lynne McKenna tilted her head a little, regarded her pale eyed half brother with interest. She was a-straddle her big black Frisian mare. His stallion and her mare knew one another. The mare wasn't come fresh yet, so the stallion had no romantic interest in her, but the stallion did not alarm at the approach of a stranger. Neither Sarah nor her horse were strangers. "Anyone behind you?" Jacob asked quietly. "No. I made sure." "You took the cutoff to get up here." "I knew you'd be waiting here, so I took the cutoff, yes." Jacob shook his head, disgusted: his bottom jaw thrust out, he stomped back to his stallion, thrust the rifle viciously back into its floral carved, background dyed scabbard. He heard Sarah drop from her saddle -- she dismounted like he did in carefree moments, she'd throw up a leg and drop and land flat footed -- she skipped over to him, laid a gloved hand on his forearm, her expression serious. "I would speak with you," she said quietly. Jacob went from aggravated with himself to silent, calm: he cast his emotion from him, slung it over the rim of the drop-off, imagined his insides to be a still, dark pool. Emotion clouded the mind and fogged up a man's reason, and he'd learned long ago to divest himself of such distraction -- even if he'd selfishly indulged, when he realized Sarah pulled a fast one on him. "You know the Judge recruited me, Jacob." Deputy Jacob Keller, a lean young man in a tailored black suit, nodded, just a little. "His Honor wanted me to slicker information out of wanted men." Again that shallow, careful nod, his pale eyes betraying nothing. Sarah's eyes paled a little and she smiled, if you could call it that. "One of the men I was beguiling fancied me a common ... he fancied he could put his hands where I don't allow." Jacob nodded again. "I teased him, Jacob. I led him on and I fired his boiler and I whispered in his ear and genuinely lit his belly on fire inside, and I got him to tell me what I wanted to know, and when he ran his hand where I don't allow, I ran a blade up under his wish bone and put an end to it." Jacob nodded. "Then I seized him by the throat and crushed his wind pipe to keep him quiet" -- her eyes were wider, she was seeing it happen again, she was feeling cartilage crush and splinter under her grip -- "and I opened the door to the private car and threw him off the steps. "We were on a long trestle and he fell far enough to kill a man from the fall alone. "I'd moved fast enough there was no blood on the floor. I washed my blade and scoured it clean, I threw the wash water out the door while we were moving, I dried my steel and rubbed it down with limestone dust like the Japanese, and I put the knife away, I changed clothes and then I sat down at the desk there in the private car and wrote my account of what he'd told me." Jacob nodded, again, no more than a quarter inch arc-of-travel on the brim of his brushed black Stetson. "Of course he didn't go to Hell with a full wallet," Sarah whispered. "Why throw a man off a train unless you strip him of his money first." "Practical," Jacob grunted: he was not sure whether his pale eyed half sister was telling him the truth, or telling him a tale to see how he'd react, and he reflected that as a Sheriff's deputy, should his sister confess to a crime, he would be duty bound to uphold and enforce the Law. If, he thought, the Law was the right thing to do. "Jacob, he's not the first man I've killed." "No?" "You don't seem surprised." "I wasn't but a boy when I killed the man that killed my Mama and tried to horse whip me to death," Jacob said quietly, and he saw a shadow of sadness cross behind his half-sister's eyes. "I can kill a man and sleep well afterward. I reckon after all you've been through, you're the same." Sarah nodded. "That's why I wanted to talk to you." Sarah turned, sat heavily on a convenient shelf on the rock towering beside them: she lowered her face into her hands, then lifted her head a little, her palms pressed against her cheeks. "I keep thinking about Angela," she said in a soft little voice. "Papa found her in a wreck and took her in like his own. She's never" -- she looked at Jacob -- "she's never known what we have, Jacob. She's never been hurt like we have." Jacob nodded, slowly: his younger brothers and sisters had all been raised without the brutal -- indeed, the deadly, violence he and Sarah survived in their early childhood. "Angela is like an angel," Sarah murmured. "She's innocent. She's ... soft." Sarah swallowed, looked out into the distance. "Jacob, what if ... what if I'd been raised like Angela? Would I be ... soft?" Jacob looked at Sarah, considered. "How does it feel to kill a man?" he asked quietly. "This last one?" Sarah almost smiled. "It felt good, Jacob." She tilted her head, looked at him -- she looks happy, he thought -- maybe because I'm the only one she can be honest with? "He grabbed my leg and he said the filthy things I'd heard before when ..." Sarah closed her eyes, took a long, shivering breath: Jacob saw her stiffen, he almost felt the cold rolling off her as she remembered every time things were done to her. "It felt good," she whispered. "Tell me why you've killed the men you did." "They deserved it, Jacob. Every last one I've killed, earned it." She looked very directly at her half-brother. "You?" Jacob nodded, again, just that little bit of a head tilt. "They earned it," he said quietly. He looked at her again. "Tell me about the ones you didn't kill." He felt satisfaction at the surprise in her eyes. "You haven't killed everyone you've gone after." "No." "When you gussied up like a dance hall girl and went after that man the Judge said killed Pa ... you could have brought in his carcass, and you didn't." "No," she whispered, looking away. "You banged him over the head and brought him in, in irons." Sarah looked half sick, nodded. "I wanted to kill him," she whispered. "I wanted to, but I had to bring him back ... " Jacob waited. "If I'd killed him, Jacob, I could have -- I could have! -- and nobody would blame a mere girl for shooting him in the back from a distance, but I had to bring him back, Jacob, I had to! -- Papa means so much to the entire --" She dropped her head, bit her bottom lip. Jacob laid a hand on her shoulder. "Yes he does," he said softly, then he got up, swung his bony backside closer, until his hip touched hers, until his arm was around her, holding her tight against him. "What would I have been if I'd been raised by Pa from the word go?" he asked quietly. "I'd not be able to kill a man so easy. I'd not be hard like I am." He looked out, toward the horizon. "Maybe I'd be able to feel ... happy." "Oh, Jacob," Sarah groaned, "you're not supposed to imitate my bad examples!" Jacob released her shoulder, leaned back, looked at her in honest surprise. "Come again?" he protested. "Little Sis, I've seen the look on your face when you hold them fuzzy little kitty cats, I watched you down on your knees with Mother when she was tending her prize roses and you'd close your eyes and smell a blossom, I've seen the delight in your face when you come out to show off a new dress you particularly like --" Sarah lowered her head and looked over a nonexistent set of spectacles at her pale eyed counterpart. "I've seen you do the same," she whispered, and Jacob dropped all pretense of reserve, and grinned. Sarah laughed, quietly, hugged Jacob, laid her cheek against his and sighed a breathy whisper in his ear. "Thank you," he heard the careful sibilants, her breath warm as it stirred the fine little hairs on his ear: "I'd forgotten that!" "Sis," Jacob asked quietly, "when you reported to the Judge ... did you tell him you knifed that fella?" Sarah shook her head. "I told him what the man told me, I gave him a verbatim account of his exact words -- my memory in these matters is quite good -- I said he left the room and did not return." "The room." Sarah's eyebrows raised, her eyes widened: "A private railcar is a room on wheels, isn't it?" Jacob made no reply: finally Sarah shrugged and said "I didn't lie to the man. I did tell him everything he wanted to know." "That's why he swore out a warrant for his arrest." Sarah nodded. "How long until someone finds his carcass?" "It's already been found. I picked his pocket earlier and stripped his money and put the wallet back. He'll be identified tomorrow." Jacob nodded, slowly, thoughtfully. "I don't reckon," he said as slowly as his nod, "that Angela could do what you're doin'." "Nor could your brothers do what you've done." Jacob held both Sarah's hands, lightly, loosely, as he studied Sarah's features. "Might be what was done to us, gave us what we need to do what's needed." Sarah's hands tightened on his. "Might be," she whispered, "you're right!"

A SHORT LIVED AFFAIR The Silver Jewel was a high grade saloon. Stamped tin ceiling, genuine mahogany bar -- not just the bar's top, the whole bar, an unimaginable expense with its ornately carved panels, its heavy brass, brightly polished boot rail, with well made furniture and good solid tables and a large float glass mirror behind the bar -- mirrors behind the bar were not at all rare, the size of this one, was definitely rare, for most had a mirror the size of a schoolboy's text book, as a matter of simple economics. When that pale eyed Sheriff took office, he hired the outgoing Sheriff to work the Jewel and keep it peaceable: Tom Landers was a man who knew men, and a man who could spot a card sharper, a man with a quick eye who could, more often than not, spot a double deal, or a deal from the bottom of the deck. It was rare that hostilities escalated beyond the level of a minor skirmish in the Silver Jewel. The barkeep, Mr. Baxter, a jolly sort with slicked down hair parted in the middle, a ready laugh and an immaculate white apron, was cobra-fast with a bung starter; fights that started in reach of his good right arm were generally ended with a brisk application of his war hammer, and it was suspected that he kept a double barrel street howitzer under the bar (he did). The Silver Jewel rarely saw serious disagreements. When they occurred, they were very brief. Sheriff's deputy Jacob Keller, the pale eyed son of that pale eyed Sheriff, knew that his apparent youth would invite comment, especially by those with distilled stupidity poured down their neck and swimming behind their belt buckle: when he came through the Silver Jewel, nodded to Tom Landers and received the man's return nod, with a shift of the eyes, Jacob knew there was something out of the ordinary, and so he set a boot up on the sparsely populated brass rail and asked Mr. Baxter politely if he might have a sandwich and coffee. Jacob intentionally stood nearest the individual Past Sheriff Tom Landers indicated, with that simple shift of his eyes: Jacob was just out of arm's reach, and Landers was mostly hidden behind the gathered drape of the little stage's curtains, elevated above floor level, with a carbine in hand. Jacob looked frankly at the individual, taking him in from his townie shoes to his round-crowned Derby. "What are you lookin' at?" came the expected snarl. Mr. Baxter lifted his chin; the hash slinger slipped behind the bar, Mr. Baxter murmured to her, nodded to Jacob: she blinked, smiled at the lawman's neatly-attired son, turned and skipped out from behind the bar and around to the kitchen -- she blushed as she did, and Mr. Baxter would not have been surprised to hear her giggling like a schoolgirl. To her credit, she didn't. She did, however, skip quickly, lightly, on the balls of her feet, down the hallway and past Daisy's kitchen, she slipped out the back door, turned, snatched up her skirts and ran up the alley and into the main street, looking hopefully for the Marshal. Mr. Baxter moved casually nearer the two men and the trouble he expected to start: he casually polished one of the spotless, heavy-bottom beer mugs, held it up, inspected it closely and polished it a little more, until he was in easy reach of his bung starter. He didn't hear the exact exchange between Jacob and the troublemaker. He did see movement -- fast, violent -- Mr. Baxter blinked, he gripped the smooth hardwood handle, leaned over the bar a little, and realized he wouldn't have to intervene after all. It was a short lived affair. Jacob Keller was a man who knew men; despite his youth -- the troublemaker's sneering reference to his Mama's milk being wet on Jacob's lips brought no reaction -- as a matter of fact, it wasn't until Jacob quietly told the man to keep his tongue behind his teeth lest it be ripped out by its roots, that anything happened. Nobody there was quite sure what they just saw, not even Tom Landers, who was ready to snap his carbine down to level. The stranger didn't see Jacob move. Jacob was moved in too close for anyone to see. Jacob Keller, not yet in his sixteenth year, was the firstborn son of that pale eyed lawman, and a student of his father's methods. He was a student of anyone who could teach him useful skills. Jacob said once that he was a thief, and proud of it: if he saw a move that would keep him alive, if he saw a trick or a slight that would keep him alive when it counted, he'd steal that move or that trick or that slight. He'd seen how Town Marshal Jackson Cooper would get in close to someone -- too close, by common wisdom -- but the man had a cat's reflexes -- he had the fastest hands of anyone Jacob ever saw -- and so Jacob came in close to this troublemaker, he seized the revolver around the cylinder, locking it up, before it could be brought anywhere near level -- and he brought his knee up, hard, as he did. By the time Town Marshal Jackson Cooper got there, Jacob had the stranger's guns on the bar, both the stubby Smith and a hideout, and he was dragging the groaning, curled-up, too-sick-to-resist prisoner across the floor toward the ornately frosted double doors. Barfights in the Silver Jewel were a rarity, seldom spreading beyond an initial encounter, and like most of them, this one was a short-lived affair.

LIGHTNING ROD "Yes ma'am," Sheriff Linn Keller said politely. "Thank you for calling. Goodbye." He hung the phone up, leaned back, shook his head, sighed. "Trouble, Boss?" Linn looked up at his Chief Deputy, shook his head. "Just part of the job," he said quietly. "She raisin' hell, was she?" "Yep." Linn looked at the yellow pad under his hand, added a few words, struck a bold line beneath. "How's Uncle Will?" Linn smiled, just a little. Paul Barrents was one of the few people outside of immediate family that referred to their again-retired police chief as "Uncle Will." Linn sighed, shook his head, leaned back in his chair. "He does like cabbage rolls." "Uh-oh," Barrents said, frowning and looking closely at his old friend. "Uh-oh what?" "When I know it's not that good a situation and you put a good face on it, it's worse than I thought." Linn nodded, looked off to the side, sandpapering callused palms together, looked back. "You know he has a pacemaker." "I know he complained to high Heaven he can't run a welder now because of it." "Yeah." Linn flattened his palms on the green desk blotter. "When they put in the pacer, they only wired the left half of his heart." Barrents frowned a little, leaned forward, obviously listening closely. "Now that his heart is depending more and more on the pacer, the right half lags, it backs up fluid into his lungs, he wakes up suffocating and has to spend the rest of the night sitting up." Barrents grunted, his face suddenly expressionless. "The girls brought him cabbage rolls and mashed potatoes and he really liked those. His cardiologist gave him water pills and they're doing a fine job. You wouldn't know anything's wrong, to look at him." "He's what ... ninety?" "Will be in a few months." Barrents waited. "They're arranging an appointment to get him in and rewire him some." Barrents chuckled. "Rewire him?" "I can say that," Linn grinned -- that sudden, ornery grin Paul remembered well -- "he's the one ... a buddy of his had a heart valve replaced and Uncle Will said something about the man having a valve job done." Barrents laughed a little, nodded. "That sounds like him, all right!" "If he can joke about a valve job, I can joke about him getting rewired!" Chief Deputy Paul Barrents hadn't been gone ten minutes when Linn looked up at the delicate knuckling of his door: Angela slipped in, closed the door behind her, set a steaming paper cup from the All-Night in front of him. "Vanilla and chocolate coffee, just the way you like it," she said quietly. "Have a set and speak your mind." Angela looked at her Daddy, raised an eyebrow. "What happened, Daddy?" "Nothing. Sit." Angela swept her white nurse's skirt under her, sat, frowned, then looked at her Daddy. "It's Uncle Will." "Go on." "Daddy" -- Angela laced her fingers tightly together, dropped her hands into her lap, she looked at her pale eyed Daddy with an expression of honest distress: in that moment she looked less like the competent, professional, honestly beautiful Nurse and Healer that she was, and instead looked like a distressed little girl, not far from crying. Angela's words tumbled out the way they did when she was a little girl, distressed over something that grieved her young heart, when she was with the one person in all the world she trusted could make anything right, no matter what it was. "Daddy, I ... there was an ... undiagnosed pancreatic cancer in the pediatric ward. If they'd found it, that would've meant surgery and chemo and radiation and I found it first so I waited until the family left the room and I took it out." "And this was ... where?" "Here. Firelands. Our hospital, here." Linn nodded. "I used Confederate technology. I took it out without cutting ... I never broke skin ... Daddy, I got it all, I swept the entire body and I got it all and I didn't tell anyone and I won't, Daddy" -- Angela looked at her father as her tears started to glitter, just before they started running over the forbidding dams behind her eyes -- "Daddy, you remember Nancy died of pancreatic cancer and there wasn't one, damned, thing, I could do!" Angela's hands were fisted, pressed into her thighs, her voice was a strained whisper, almost a squeak: she brought a hand quickly to her mouth, bit her knuckle, closed her eyes: Linn waited until his little girl collected herself. She took a long breath, blew it out, sat up very straight: she uncrossed her ankles, placed her feet flat on the floor, her palms flat on her knees. "Daddy," she said -- a Daddy knows his little girl -- in that moment Linn knew how difficult it was for Angela to contain herself, but she was managing. "Daddy, I took the cancer out of a child and nobody knows and I can fix Uncle Will and he won't let me!" Angela Keller, nurse, Healer, Sheriff's deputy and Big Sister, gave up trying to hold her distress. She dropped her forehead into her hands, and as her big strong Daddy sat down beside her and gathered her into his arms, she turned to the warmth and the strength and the comfort her Daddy had always been, and for a minute or two, or maybe longer, she was a little girl again, sorrowing her distress into her Daddy's shirt, safe and protected in his strong, manly arms. She let him drape a bedsheet handkerchief over her nose, let him pinch lightly and whisper "Blow," and Angela blew her nose, and her Daddy dabbed at her reddened beak and very lightly, very carefully, swiped the wet from her cheeks and held her as her storm passed, and he murmured in his deep, resonant, comforting Daddy-voice, "Darlin', a prophet is not without honor save in his own country. Likely Will still sees you as the pretty little girl you used to be. He's an old man, dear heart, and old men have long memories." She sniffed, shivered a little, nodded, her winged cap whispering against his shirt collar as she did. "They've got a treatment plan. He's doin' fine on those water pills. He complains about gettin' up three times a night to get rid of some second hand coffee, but he's alive to complain about it, ain't he?" Linn curled a finger under Angela's chin, lifted her face to his: his eyes were light blue, his expression was open, unguarded, something few people ever saw: he kissed his little girl on her forehead, content to sit and hold her however long she needed held. That evening, Michael presented himself at his father's side, frowning. "Now there's a serious expression," Linn said, squatting and looking very directly at his son. "What's on your mind?" "Sir" -- Michael considered, frowned again. "Sir, I thought the Confederacy would be better than it is." "How's that?" "Well ... sir, you recall Victoria and I ... there was a shootout and we put a stop to it." "I recall." "You recall I had to bust those rock snakes to keep Victoria safe." Linn's expression was serious and he placed a firm hand on his son's shoulder: his voice was deep, resonant, the voice he used when speaking of important matters, whether with his son, or with an adult. "Michael," he said, and his tone brooked neither dissent nor discussion, "you kept yourself and your sister both alive that day, and I am still pretty damned proud of you for that!" Michael's eyes widened with surprise: like his pale eyed father, he practiced a poker face, he practiced a neutral expression, but sometimes his surprise slipped through, and this was one of those times. "Sir, Marnie was nearly killed. We helped keep her safe. I took cover like you taught me, Victoria advanced to distract and when she saw an opportunity, she took out the team leader and I laid into 'em with rifle fire from cover." "And you were presented with a military award of merit, and offered admission into their elite military college." "Yes, sir." Michael shifted uncomfortably. "Sir, I thought they'd be better than us, but they're not." "No, they're not, Michael," Linn said softly. "Sir ... Uncle Will was talking about that and he said 'People is people wherever ya's goes,' and I didn't want to believe it." Linn nodded slowly. "I know, Michael. We want to believe the best of someone, and when they disappoint us ... well, it's disappointin'." "Yes, sir." Michael considered for a few moments longer, frowned, then looked at his father again and said, "Sir, it's the bad apples that get all the attention." Linn rose, dropped his bony backside onto the handmade pillow in his office chair, glad to get his weight off his knees. "Yes it is, Michael. Squeaky wheel and all that." "Sir, am I right in believing most folks are good?" Linn considered for several moments before nodding thoughtfully. "Most folks aren't really bad, Michael," he finally said. "I'd like to think most are good, yes" -- he grinned -- "but in my line of work I generally don't see many of the good ones!" That night, as Linn and Shelly stared at their nighttime ceiling, his hand found hers, squezed gently. "Darlin'," Linn murmured, "now that we've got a minute, how was your day?" Shelly sighed, rolled over, laid her arm across her husband's chest, sighed. "It was worse than two terribles," she groaned, then kissed his bare shoulder. She felt her husband chuckle, then sigh. "What happened, dear heart?" Shelly hesitated, then almost whispered, knowing her lips were in a straight line with her husband's ear. "Fitz broke a shoelace." Shelly felt curiosity prickle all out of her husband's hide. "That's it?" "That's it." "Oh." "What do you mean, oh?" she asked, nuzzling her nose into his warm, soap-scented shoulder. "It's been ... I've felt like a lightning rod all day," Linn explained. "I figured if things were that bad all over, I'd better ask you and get it off your chest." He felt his wife giggle silently, the way she did in such moments: she hugged her arm tight around his ribs and whispered, "Fitz's shoelace is really the only thing that went bad all day! Honest!" Husband and wife laughed quietly in the darkness.

GYPSY CRYSTAL Daciana closed her eyes, remembering what it was to ride her Buttercup. Buttercup was her trick pony. Daciana was young, once ... she'd grown up in the zirkus, in the Old Country, an acrobat -- she'd fallen love with the pale-gold Buttercup, she'd disported herself bonelessly over its ornate, gaudy, silver-mounted saddle: it was nothing for her to do handstands, to tumble, to dance a-horseback as her beribboned, gilt-hooved companion galloped like a living hobby-horse in the circus ring. Daciana would ride down the main street of the next town as their advance men pasted up colorful posters, as clowns juggled and barkers cried the announcement that the circus was coming: Daciana, young, beautiful, lithe, supple, wearing bodystocking tights with brief little slippers, wearing face paint and hair ribbons and a smile, a smile to enchant men's hearts and set women's eyes ablaze with jealousy -- Daciana bowed her head over the scarf, and what the scarf covered. She'd hidden the ancient Gypsy crystal years before, when she saw her beloved Sarah, murdered, in its shining, miles-deep heart: Daciana stared into the crystal's heart many times, and every time, she saw something, something past, something yet to be. When first she met Sarah, she'd studied the crystal orb, she'd seen Sarah laughing, dancing down the long table and leaping into the arms of her beloved. She'd seen Sarah, great with child, she'd seen Sarah, her skirts hiked up, racing a laughing little boy; she'd seen Sarah, her face dark with anger, and in the next heartbeat, crumpled with grief, as a boy, nearly grown now, turned his back on the West and rode for Cincinnati on shining steel rails. Daciana saw Sarah take her broken heart and her widow's weeds across the great salt water, she'd seen Sarah, surrounded by flame and hatred, screaming defiance and laying about with lead and with death and with blades, until she herself fell, before the great Schloss collapsed in over her, burying her for a century and more, and she saw a tombstone -- so real, so certain, Daciana wrapped the grandmother's scarf around her head and shoulders and walked, alone, to their little cemetery, up on the side of the smaller mountain overlooking the town behind the school and the church and the bank, and she'd stood where her dearest friend's grave would be. Daciana bowed her head over the scarf she carried, draped over Gypsy crystal, and she felt her friend die all over again, here where her bones would be interred in years to come. Daciana, a Gypsy healer, an herb woman, wife of the town's elderly telegrapher, looked to her right. There. This will not be disturbed. Daciana ran, light, swift, on the balls of her feet, as if she were a girl again, instead of an old woman, an old widow. She knelt on a grave, looked at the six point star engraved on the left, at the rose incised on the right. "Sheriff," she whispered, "keep this safe." She reached into a hidden pocket, withdrew a pinch of glowing dust, philtered it in a circle in Old Pale Eyes' grave. A hole opened. Daciana raised the crystal, wrapped in her Grandmere's scarf, raised it to her head in final salute, then lowered it slowly, reverently, into the hole over the dead Sheriff's breast. A whisper, a gesture, her hands left a pair of glowing arcs as she passed them over the grave, and the hole was no more. A pale horse moved like a ghost across the pasture. Its rider glowed in the moonlight: the moon was full, the sky was clear, and another rider on a black gelding, wearing concealing black, followed. Victoria jumped her Apple-mare over the far fence. Michael rode his Pa's shining black Outlaw-horse: unlike his sister, who rode upright, Michael was nearly laid down over the gelding's neck, standing up in the stirrups. Black as sin and arrow-swift, the pair soared over the whitewashed pasture fence, landed easily, followed his twin sister in her moon-luminous white blouse and skirt. Victoria was not far ahead of him; she was not running hard, but she had a surprising lead, and Michael's black racer grunted with the effort of pursuit. Michael came around behind the bank, looked up, saw her like a fuzzy comet streak under the black cast iron arch of the cemetery. "Gotcha," he whispered: "Outlaw, go!" Outlaw stretched his neck out and reached steelshod hooves eagerly, thrust powerfully against the night-dark shadows blanketing the earth beneath. Michael and Outlaw surged up the grade, crested: Michael leaned back, suddenly, and Outlaw slowed. What is she doing? Michael cantered Outlaw forward, then slowed through a trot, to a walk. Victoria tilted her head a little, smiled. "Hi," she said. "I'm Victoria!" An old gypsy woman with a scarf over her head and her shoulders beckoned her closer. Victoria Keller, eleven years old, beautiful, innocent, unsuspecting, followed: she stepped closer, watched as the wrinkled old woman knelt, as she philtered something glowing and powdery onto the old grave, as her hands did something. The ground almost shone in the moonlight, all but a hole the size of a man's fist. Something levitated slowly from the hole, something the gypsy woman almost touched: she turned, presented it to the pretty girl. Michael watched as the old woman faded, disappeared, as Victoria stood, staring curiously at something she held. Michael rode up, swung down, stared at whatever his sister was holding. Victoria unwrapped a silk scarf -- a pristine, clean, flower-scented scarf -- Two children stared with wonder, their faces illuminated by what the girl held. Well below, one of the Irish Brigade, restless, relieved himself of some second hand coffee, got a drink, prowled restlessly across the front of the firehouse, looked out the broad, narrow window in the overhead door, frowned curiously at the bluish light in the cemetery. He'd heard legends of a railroad lantern, red and flickering, on an old railroader's grave, whenever there was trouble on the rail line. The bluish light went out. An Irishman shrugged, wandered back to his bunk. Michael waited for his sister to bring the matter up, and she did. They sat together, their homework done, with books still open as if they were still at labor, in case their curious mother might look in on them. "Michael," Victoria said softly, "do you remember Daddy reading to us about Daciana the Gypsy?" "The one who married Lightning? Sure." "She gave me this." Victoria unwrapped a sphere of flawless, shining crystal the size of their pale eyed Daddy's fist. "A crystal ball?" Michael asked, and Victoria nodded. "Does it work?" Victoria looked at him, and her eyes were haunted, and she nodded, but that was all the answer she gave.

Thank you for this. One of our patients we used to transport regularly on the non emergency ambulance, collected Minnie-Mo tractors, he and his father; they restored them, they showed them, we talked tractors on many an otherwise boring two hour drive to Columbus and another boring two hour drive back! (Rumors to the effect that we told outrageous lies to one another are to be discounted, of course!) 😁

THE DRUNKARD IS THE LAST TO KNOW "Jacob?" Ruth's voice was gentle, quiet: Jacob stopped, turned toward his wife. "My dear?" Ruth smiled at the genuine affection in his voice, then she blinked and hesitated. "Jacob, you seem ... restless." "I'm not restless," Jacob said, almost sharply -- uncharacteristic for him -- he stopped, closed his eyes, took a long breath. Jacob paced over to his wife, went to his knees: she was seated in her rocking chair, and he reached up, took her hands in his. "Dearest," he said in a gentle voice, "you know me better than I know myself. The drunkard is the last to know he's impaired. What are you seeing?" Shelly Keller walked quickly across the kitchen, took her husband's arm as he reached for his Stetson. "Linn," she said quietly, "what's wrong?" Sheriff Linn Keller, his left hand on the door handle, Stetson in his right, stopped and looked very directly at his wife. "Linn, you're pacing like a pregnant cat." "I'm not pacing," he said, an edge to his voice -- then he stopped, frowned, hung his Stetson back on its peg and let go of the door handle. He turned, took his wife by her elbows. "Darlin'," he said softly, "what are you seeing?" Angela Keller quietly ran a scanner over her young patient, grateful the family was out of the room. She'd waited until they left, then touched the transdermal injector to the young throat: the child was relaxed now, paralyzed, with memory inhibitor preventing any recollection of what she was about to do. Angela consulted the screen, frowned, tapped it a few times, then moved it over the youthful ribcage, lowered it a little, smiled. "Gotcha," she whispered. She released the scanner -- it hovered over the patient as she reached for an extractor -- a quick series of coded commands, entered through the broad, square keypad -- Angela worked quickly, efficiently, her expression one of quiet concentration as she extracted the cancerous cells from the child's pancreas, from the bile duct; she expanded her search, found the hidden, primary cancer, removed it as well: blood vessels were seared shut, tissues shifted as the masses were removed -- had she not injected her young patient as she did, the procedure would have been uncomfortable at best, intensely painful in all probability. She nodded a little, then gathered the extractor, the scanner, slid them into her small, horizontal ellipse of a medical-grade Iris -- healers in years past carried what she called a "warbag," she preferred to use this interdimensional storage -- she removed the scanner, made one last, comprehensive search, scalp to toenails, searching for any hidden cancer cells, any seeds waiting to take root again. She pressed the transdermal injector against the young throat, pressed the control, then she stepped back, into her personal Iris, and disappeared. Marnie looked up as her sister's black cat's-eye ellipse appeared, as she stepped out, smiled. "Knock, knock!" Angela called cheerfully. "Got any chocolate chip cookies?" Marnie laughed, clapped her palms gently together: "Little John just ate the last of them!" "Question." "You feel it too." Angela nodded, her face suddenly serious. "I don't know," Marnie admitted, "but it's something. Have you heard anything from home?" "No." Marnie sat, took a long breath, blew it out. Angela went to the slot, keyed in a command, withdrew two steaming, delicate-bone-china cups of Earl Grey with honey: she handed one to Marnie, placed hers on the corner of Marnie's desk, sat. The annunciator lit up: Marnie turned the screen, keyed her camera for wide angle. Jacob looked out of the screen, his face serious. "Sis," he said, "what happened?" "We were wondering the same thing." Retired (again) Chief of Police Will Keller accepted the oxygen cannula with ill grace. He patiently endured the examination, the auscultation, the electrodes, cold hands and cold fingers why do doctors always have cold fingers? he thought sourly. The cardiologist sat down on the rolling, stainless-steel stool, looked at the patient old lawman. "Will," he said, "when they installed your pacemaker, they attached wires to the left half of your heart." Will nodded. "It appears your heart has become more and more dependent on the pacemaker for function. Unfortunately, when the left half fires, the right half isn't wired, so it lags a little." "Lags?" The cardiologist nodded wisely. "Just enough that you're getting pulmonary congestion. This is why you're accumulating fluid in your lungs. You've been waking up at night with difficulty breathing. When you sit upright for a few hours, the discomfort passes." Will nodded, his bottom jaw thrust out. "I'll prescribe diuretics. That should relieve matters in the short term, but we need to go in and connect the right half of your heart as well." "So it's a simple rewire, right?" The cardiologist smiled, then laughed. "You could call it a wiring repair, yes." "At least I don't need a valve job," Will muttered. "Mechanic's fees are bad enough!" It wasn't until that evening that Will gave Linn a call and they discussed what had happened. Linn admitted later he about went through the floor when his Uncle Will said he'd had to sit up in a chair to ease his breathing -- Linn listened as Will continued about fluid accumulation and the pending surgery -- Will's account was concise, without drama or hyperbole. When Linn contacted his son Jacob, he found several sets of eyes regarding him solemnly: nurse, Ambassador, Sheriff, wife, husband and son all regarded him from the screen as he recounted what Uncle Will told him. Shelly, Linn and the twins looked at the rest of their family on the oversized screen. Michael was hard pressed to stifle his smile as Angela and Marnie looked at one another and said with one voice, "Cabbage rolls." Marnie reached over, gripped Ruth's hand. "How are you at sweet rolls?" "My warbag is packed," Jacob said, his voice quiet, serious. "Let me know when you need me." Michael waited until the screen darkened, then turned to his father. "Sir," he said in a worried voice, "how come Uncle Will didn't tell us?" Linn sat, ran one arm around Michael's back, ran the other around Victoria's back, drew them close, looked from one to the other. "I reckon he didn't know himself," Linn admitted. "It's the drunk that's the last to know he's impaired."