Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

COLOGNE Sheriff Willamina Keller honestly hobbled into the Sheriff's office. Sharon stopped, turned, openly stared at the normally-immaculate Sheriff. She stared for multiple reasons, each one compelling in and of its own right. The Sheriff established herself as efficient, she established herself as the boss -- with absolutely no doubt! -- she established herself as efficient and competent, and she established herself, in every way possible, as PROFESSIONAL. It was honestly no wonder that, when she limped into the Sheriff's office, clearly in pain -- but with that damn-that-was-fun look on her face that betrayed there was a story behind her appearance -- that Sharon and two other deputies stopped, and turned, and openly stared. Sheriff Willamina Keller knew she would never be One Of The Guys. She didn't try to be. Instead of wearing the standard, man-tailored Colorado State Sheriff's Association uniforms, she established herself by wearing a tailored, electric-blue, suit dress and heels: she was an Administrator, she was very definitely not "One Of The Guys," she was distinctly different -- and her appearance was, uniformly, unfailingly, tidy, neat, and professional. Until today. Sheriff Willamina Keller came through the doors, holding one arm like her shoulder hurt, moving like the rest of her matched her shoulder: she was dirt-filthy down one side, her jeans were torn, the Stetson in her hand looked distinctly like it had inherited at least three separate hoof stomps (four, actually, but who's counting?) and Willamina's cheek bone was scraped and seeping a little blood. She also had the satisfied look of someone who'd just grabbed hold of the meanest beast in the mountains and fought it to a bloody standstill. "What," Sharon said slowly, "happened?" "I bought a horse!" Willamina declared happily, touching her swelling cheekbone. "Aaaannnddd ... the horse ...?" "I named her Cannonball," Willamina grinned, easing herself slowly into a chair, grimacing as she did, which worried Sharon. Willamina was a Marine, Willamina had a high pain tolerance, and Willamina was so absolutely different from the way Sharon had seen her thus far, as to cause the dispatcher significant concern. "Where's Barrents?" Willamina asked quietly. "He's already inbound" -- Sharon turned, ran her finger down her handwritten log -- "he should be here in --" The outer door opened, then the inner: the blocky, broad-shouldered Navajo's obsidian eyes swung left-to-right as they always did, stopped on the Sheriff's still form. Barrents moved. Three fast steps, long, silent: he went to one knee, reached for her hand, stopped, pulled his palm away like he'd almost laid it on a hot iron. "Boss?" he asked quietly, and Willamina opened her eyes and grinned crookedly at her Chief Deputy. "You didn't," he breathed. "I did." Barrents closed his eyes, took a long breath, shook his head. "Hoghead said you'd bought that horse," Barrents muttered. "I'd hoped you hadn't." "Cannonball," Willamina began, and Barrents gave her a hard look. "That damned horse has broken three collarbones, two arms, two legs and gave a man a concussion! Hoghead was ready to ship it to the slaughterhouse when you came around askin' about an Appaloosa mare and he'd made his brags afterward you might not be so damned tough without that shotgun!" Willamina gave him a soft look, blinked innocently, at least as innocently as a woman can when her cheek bone is swelling and starting to turn colors a woman's cheekbone really shouldn't. "Why, JW," she said quietly, "I didn't know you cared!" Barrents looked away, looked back, thrust out a blunt finger. "Look," he snapped, "you told me to speak plainly and here it comes. So far you've rattled this entire damned county and that's good, nobody knows what to think of you and you've established your boot as belonging three feet up anyone's backside that crosses you. That's good. You've got to establish your authority." Barrents paused, glared, continued, his voice quieter. "Look," he said, his voice almost dangerous now. "We served together, over there." His jaw thrust forward a little, polished obsidian eyes hard, almost angry. "I draw breath because of you, and you're alive because of me." He stopped again, clamped his teeth together, turned his head a little, frowned, looked back. "You're the only one of you we've got," he whispered fiercely, and she saw something he'd kept hidden under his native reserve, something strong, something angry and powerful and simmering in a veteran's grief. Willamina blinked, slowly, and he felt the cold cascading off the woman as she withdrew into herself, as stone walls raised the way she did when someone got too close. He'd seen it before, when they'd lost men, when she lost her husband while they were deployed. "What do you need from me, Boss?" Barrents asked, his voice pitched so only she could hear it. "Take me to ER," Willamina whispered. "I don't think I can make it." His eyes flashed once -- not alarm, not really, but ... concern. He moved as if to pick her up and she raised a hand. "I'll walk," she said, and he heard the pain in her voice. "Help me stand." Sharon watched as the pair made their slow way across the polished-quartz floor, toward the front door. Willamina stopped, leaned heavily on Barrents, one hand wrapped with what deceptively looked like a gentle grip on his forearm. "A lady," she told Sharon firmly, "does not leave the room unless she is on the arm of a gentleman." Sharon watched Barrents, outside, look left, look right, then quickly, unexpectedly, seize the Sheriff around the belt, hoist and tilt and insert her into the passenger side of the cruiser: nobody but the Chief Deputy heard her teeth click together as she locked her involuntary response behind her white ivories, nobody saw her momentary grimace as the cumulative effect of encountering Terra Firma at a respectable velocity -- more times than one -- reminded her that maybe that particular horse wasn't such a grand idea after all. Barrents did not bother with the front desk. He drove around back of the hospital, to the ambulance entrance. He did not give Sheriff Willamina Keller a choice in the matter. He reached across, released her seat belt, drove his arms under her thighs and behind her back and lifted her out, carried her toward the automatic doors. Willamina offered no protest. She reached out and snatched a handful of swirly-red-and-white peppermints from a plastic barf basin on the counter at the nurse's station, as they passed by it. Not many minutes later, the automatic doors hissed open again, and the measured pace of steelshod hooves, loud and surprising, brought every head up. Sheriff Willamina Keller was halfway undressed when a still-saddled Appaloosa mare thrust her head through the exam bay's curtains. Nurses and the ER doc drew back as cellophane crinkled, as Willamina clamped her jaw against the pain, as she rotated her hand palm-up and offered the peppermint. Cannonball lipped the peppermint, crunching it between strong, yellowed teeth, then crowded a little closer and laid her head over the Sheriff's belly, blinking, almost as if apologizing. Sheriff Willamina Keller lay on the ER cart, holding an ice pack to her steadily-coloring cheekbone, when her twin brother knocked on the doorframe and growled, "Permission to come aboard!" "You'd better have coffee," Willamina muttered sourly. "I have not," Chief of Police Will Keller snapped, thrusting a small ribbon-topped box at her. "What's that?" Willamina asked suspiciously. "Open it." Willamina glared at her twin brother, managed to work the slip-over lid off the box one-handed. Inside, a note, and a small square bottle of perfume. "Read the note," Will said, and Willamina could hear the smile in his voice. She gave him a raised-eyebrow glare and he gave her his very best Innocent Expression. Willamina unfolded the note, grinned slowly, in spite of the discomfort it caused her banged-up cheekbone. In her twin brother's regular block print, she read: You've earned the right to wear that new cologne. Eau de Payne!

Okay, first off, please forgive that odd braying sound in the distance, that's me laughing at your reference to a fart in a windstorm ... that was one of my Mama's favorite sayings ... maybe not her favorite, but she used it frequently! Jews in the West is INTERESTING, and buffalo chip fires ... well, my professions included municipal wastewater treatment, but the burning of dried sewage sludge in a purpose built incinerator bears little resemblance to trying to ignite second hand buffalo feed. I knew of buffalo chips being gathered and tossed in the under-wagon collection sling, but honestly never knew they were so terribly hard to ignite! As usual -- solid information, well presented with a good leavening of humor! Many thanks!

I understand the liquor store has made advertising hay off this bottle-breaking misfortune. Can't help but wonder if Rackety Coons get hung over. At least it passed out in the latrine. I wonder if it was a college man, I've known college students to pass out in the bathroom before!

FIFTY MISSIONS! OUTSTANDING! Twenty missions was the goal. My mentor, years ago, spoke of his Twenty Missions Cap, and the general don't-give-a-damn attitude of a twenty-missions pilot or crewman. FIFTY MISSIONS??? My profound respect, and my absolute admiration!

THE SNOW HAS EYES Death waited patiently in the snow. Death was the natural consequence of life, for life feeds off life: death was patient, hidden, dug into a snowdrift, unmoving as more snow fell, smoothing the signs of its disturbance, until only a pair of eyes remained visible. Warm breath melted a channel to the outside air: paws were tucked in against warmth and fur. Hidden, insulated, warm, feral-yellow eyes and ivory-white fangs and a nearly empty belly watched, and waited, and a moist black nose scented the mountain air. "Grampaw," the little boy asked, his voice quiet in the cabin's hush, "are there monsters hereabouts?" A slow moving old man fed another two splits of wood into the cast iron stove, closed the door carefully: he hesitated a moment, eyes closed, remembering how he and his wife laughed with delight when the stove was delivered, freighted in from the Mercantile, how strong young men packed it in and put it together, set it on a sand bed bordered with sawmill planks and lined with burlap to hold the sand in -- "No sense in gettin' this nice clean floor all sandy," one of them grinned -- his wife fixed them a meal and they managed to sneak a peach crate of canned goods and a sack of flour up against the cabin before they left, with a note: "From a man who knew a good wife, to a man who is just learning." He honestly had no idea who wrote the note and paid for groceries, for the delivery, for the setup: all he'd wanted, all he'd paid for, was the pot belly stove. He'd planned to pick it up himself, and he'd planned on having more money earned so he could afford stovepipe, but here come the freight wagon a-clatterin' with his stove in it, with stovepipe and sand and planks and laughing young men who swarmed in, one fetched out a mouth organ and played a jig while another snatched up his wife's hand and spun her about in a quick dance step -- startled she was, but pleased, the way a woman is when she is surprised in a good way. He remembered the times he and his wife sat close to this self same stove, soaking up its heat: the young fellows who set it up, ran the chimney pipe the length of his cabin, which was not far, but one of them explained as he fitted the ends together and cut a careful hole, as he made sure 'twas fire proofed between timber and stovepipe, "That smoke is just singin' hot. No sense to shoot it straight up and out and be lost. This-a-way you'll get as much heat out of the pipe and into the cabin as you can." "Grampaw?" The old man blinked, frowned, turned, trying to remember what his grandson was saying before memories wandered him off. He turned. "Come again?" he said gently, and the boy looked out from under hair that needed cut again: his Mama used the practical method of dunking a bowl over his head and scissoring around its rim, and like any healthy child, his hair grew at a surprising rate, so much so that he was looking at his Grampaw through a hanging forest of dirty blond bangs. "Grampaw, are there monsters in the mountains?" The old man considered, turned, backed into his rocking chair -- one of the very few luxuries he allowed himself. "Monsters," he said thoughtfully, and his grandson crossed his shin bones and sat, in that order, with the easy movements of youth -- was I to try that, the old man considered, I'd break legs and knees both! "I've known monsters," he said thoughtfully, nodding as he did. He saw his grandson's eyes grow wide. "Most of 'em," the old man admitted, "were two-legged." Disappointment clouded the boy's face. "But" -- the old man raised an aged, wrinkled finger, which brought delight and anticipation in equal amounts to the boy's visage -- "there are" -- he looked left, looked right, leaned forward a little and lowered his voice. "Injuns talk about Windigo," he said, his voice serious. "Windigo changes dependin' on who's tellin' it, but was you to see big footprints in the snow -- bloody footprints -- find yourself somewhere else to be." "Really?" the boy breathed, and the old man nodded solemnly, then the boy saw a smile hinting across the wrinkled old face. "Now there was this Frenchy wanted to scare some folks off," he said thoughtfully, "so he made a set of snowshoes that kind of looked like feet instead of snow shoes, like, and he'd put a drop of red paint in the middle of every one of them snow shoe prints." The old man winked. "Worked, too!" The boy considered this, shifted a little, waited. "Now there's somethin' called a Hidebehind," the old man continued, warming to the subject. "It likes to watch. It'll hide behind anythin' and peek around at you. Y'know that feelin' you get when someone's watchin' ye?" His towhead grandson nodded. "Like as not 'twas a Hidebehind. It don't matter how fast you turn around, you can't ketch 'em lookin' at you. "Now there's somethin' called a Hatchet Hound." The old man leaned forward, easing his poor old back: he rubbed his ancient palms thoughtfully together, then he looked at his grandson and admitted, "I think this'un's just porcupine, m'self." "How's that, Grampa?" "The Hatchet Hound looks like a hatchet on four legs, but it sneaks into camp and eats the handles off yer hatchets and yer axes. Me, I think it's porcupines huntin' salt." The boy nodded thoughtfully as he considered the wisdom being dispensed. Lean muscles tensed: breath silent, feral-yellow eyes followed. Snow detonated silently, canine jaws snapped shut, crushing lungs and spine and the life from a luckless rabbit, and life fed on life yet again. Silence filled the cabin, a steady reminder of the woman he missed, of the beautiful young wife he'd married, the apple-cheeked mother she'd become, sleeping now in a cold bed in a hole he'd dug, under a stone he'd selected, a stone flat on one side, a stone with the name RACHEL carefully incised. The silence was all the more profound for the insulating snowfall. The old man shifted again, spoke, more to fill the silence than anything else. "There's ghosts," he said flatly, and the boy's face turned toward him, young imagination engaging instantly. "Ghosts?" The old man nodded. "A man dies sudden-like, his shade can stay around, not realizin' it's really dead." "Ghosts," the boy repeated quietly. "That's why we drape mirrors, so the soul won't get trapped, an' so guests won't see Death lookin' back out at 'em. That's why we open a window to let the soul out, so it'll move on to Paradise an' not stay here." "Ghosts." The boy's voice was quieter now as he tilted his head a little to regard his wise old Grampa with all the innocent sincerity of a child of but few years. "There's one down south of us I heard of," the old man said, nodding slowly, as if to affirm the veracity of his words: "one of them White Sisters that sings s' nice. You heard 'em." "Yes, sir." "They's one -- Sister Mercury or some-such -- her ghost rides a big black ghost horse an' them that seen it says she's got a big black dog runs with 'em, attair horse has big white wings an' horse an' dog both has red eyes, Hell's eyes, an' her ghost carries a long spear with a burnin' silver star for a tip, like she fetched a star out of Heaven itself and stuck on the end of a twenty foot broom handle." He saw his grandson blink a few times, rapidly, as he processed this. "She's a Healer, or was, I been told she healed when she lived. She blew fire out of a burn an' she stopped blood with the Word, she'd ride just a-tearin' when someone was sick enough they was afraid they were t' die and she'd touch attair spear to their gate or their door and she'd ride that big black horse in an' she'd heal 'em. Just boom, healed up." "Her ghost, Grampa?" the boy asked, his wondering voice almost a whisper. The old man nodded, slowly. "I heard tell it was." A pale-eyed little girl tilted her head, listened, frowned, then closed her book and laid it carefully on the parlor table. Black-patent slippers were silent on the rugs and she glided to the back door, slipped the latch, opened the white-painted, black-trimmed portal, letting in a brisk curl of cold wind, a few snowflakes a-swirl, and a snow-speckled Bear Killer. Sarah -- she'd been named after her grandfather's woods-cold get -- pattered industriously toward the kitchen stove, snatched up a towel and began briskly working the melting snow-crystals off The Bear Killer's curly-black fir: a swipe beside his jaw and she found blood. The Sheriff's pale-eyed granddaughter frowned, cupped her hand under The Bear Killer's jaw, lifted fearlessly: another swipe, more blood, and she looked closely, frowning, carefully gripped The Bear Killer's upper and lower jaws and coaxed his mouth open. She tilted her head left, then right, studying The Bear Killer's gums, his tongue, the inside of as much of his cheeks as she could eyeball, then she let go and pulled a chair up to the stove. She dispensed water from the teakettle into a pan, wet the corner of the towel: The Bear Killer waited patiently, as he always did, and she wiped all the blood she could find, from his muzzle, then she nodded, briskly, once. The Sheriff's granddaughter considered the towel, then got into the cupboard, stretched to reach a sack of salt: she'd salt the blood stains on the towel so they'd come out, left the towel in a dishpan on the floor so it wouldn't be inadvertently used, then she and The Bear Killer returned to the parlor. A little girl picked up her book and sat very properly in her chair near the parlor stove, and The Bear Killer's tail thumped as he curled up on the hook rug, laid his strong, blunt muzzle on curly-black forepaws and regarded a little girl with the same feral yellow eyes that beheld the rabbit earlier, just not with quite the same expression as when they watched from his hidden vantage. Not quite the same as when the snow had eyes.

THE WITCH SAID COME QUICK! Nobody noticed the little boy running toward the big automatic glass doors in front of the hospital. Everyone heard his fist hammering on the glass. He was moving faster than the motion detector and motors could accommodate. He streaked through the opening, shouldered past startled visitors, slammed hard into the wooden double doors -- he hit them hard enough he got his fingers behind the outward-opening-only doors, hauled it open, twisted, got inside. A scared little boys with running-pink cheeks and big, searching eyes looked around, saw a man in a white coat, an older man with a dignified face. He ran for the doctor, seized his coat, pulled hard, once, yelled "THE WITCH SAID COME QUICK!" Dr. John Greenlees, startled, laid down the aluminum patient chart, dropped into a hunker, gripped the boy's arms -- carefully, gently -- looked him very directly in the eye, his mind running like water down a steep grade. "What's the situation, son? Why does the Witch need me?" Sheriff Linn Keller grinned as he hauled the delighted child out of the saddle, turned, placed him carefully in the wheelchair. This was his weekly escape, his ritual of refuge, his moment of shared delight: if there were children able, he'd come to the hospital and wait outside the ambulance bay in back, and as sick and healing young were brought to him, he'd hoist, swing or carry them into the saddle, and if they weren't up for that, Apple-horse would nuzzle and snuff and carefully lip broke-in-half carrots or a striped peppermint off a child's clean-scrubbed palm. The boy he placed in the wheelchair shivered, not with cold, but with delight -- he was bundled in a puffy coat three sizes too big, and the Sheriff wrapped the blanket around his legs, looked at him, winked. Linn faded sideways and looked up, his face serious as Doc Greenlees came out of the ER doors with an anxious little boy. Doc was talking on his cell phone, his expression was serious, and the Sheriff felt contentment and happiness drop away like a fallen cloak, then he heard the rising liquid whistle of the Irish Brigade's first-out ambulance, followed by air horns. Squad and rescue, he thought. Whatever it is, it's bad! Gracie Jean looked at the knife she'd just been offered. In her entire life, she'd neither handed someone a scissors, nor a knife, nor had she accepted either from someone else's hand. To do so would transfer the Sight, and that wasn't to be done until she lay on her deathbed, when she would hand a scissors to her successor, and with it, all her healing gifts, all her Second Sight, all her Power. Gracie Jean was related to Gracie Mae, who'd gone off to the Navy and was now clear the hell and gone away on Mars, likely still playin' that fiddle of hers and likely not witchin' at all. Gracie Jean was a midwife, and a good one: she'd birthed nearly every baby here on Daine Mountain, and several elsewhere, but when she saw the cord come first from the laboring mother, she knew this was trouble, and she whistled up one of the boys who stood ready in case he was needed. When Gracie Jean was offered the knife, she said "Lay it there on the table," and only after the offering hand was withdrawn, did she take the knife. Gracie Jean lifted the pillow, slid the knife beneath: "Steel cuts the pain," she breathed, then accepted the mule shoe she'd been offered: this went under the bed itself, as near to centered under the laboring mother as she could arrange. "Brian." The midwife's voice was pitched differently: lower, compelling, it penetrated the soul, not with its sound, but with its meaning, something that must be experienced to be understood. Brian Maxwell came into the room, uncertain, chin defiant. Gracie Jean looked at him and it felt like her sight penetrated him like he'd been punched with a lance. "Run and fetch the Doc," she said. "Tell him it's a breech birth and come fast!" Doc Greenlees climbed in the rescue: the shotgun rider bailed out, held the door for him, yelled "Belt in!" and slammed the door -- the driver waited for his partner to bail in the side door, slam it, then he came off the brake, heard his partner's backside hit the jump seat, heard the yell "GO GO GO!" He go'd. The boxy red Fireland Fire Department's rescue accelerated up the driveway, the driver cleared left-right-left, swung out and mashed the throttle. "How far?" Doc asked, his medical grade warbag white-knuckled in his lap. Angela Keller frowned at the hologram projected above her wrist-unit. The rest of her class could see Sheriff Keller, Angela's father, grim-faced: they saw about the top third of the Appaloosa stallion he was riding, the grinning little boy straddling ahead of him, with the Sheriff's denim coated arm wrapped around the boy's middle. "Angela here, go ahead," she said -- her voice was cold, professional, not at all the instructor's voice her class was used to hearing. "Doc is headed for a breech birth, we need your expertise." Angela's head came up, eyes busy. She tapped her wrist-unit. "Betsy, I need you." "On my way." "Daddy, are you headed there?" "As fast as Apple can get us there," Linn yelled, leaning a little as his stallion leaned into a turn, the little boy gripping his denim-sleeved arm grinning fiercely with the delight only the young can feel. "I'll follow you signal there." Another tap of her wrist-unit. "Gracie, are you available?" "Gunfighter, Angel One, state situation." "Medical emergency, I need the Stonewall." "Stand by one." A little boy raised his arm, pointed, and the Sheriff's knees tightened a little: he bore down on the group of men standing outside a tidy little house on the mountainside, arms on one another's shoulders, in a circle, heads bowed, just as the Omaha-orange-and-white ambulance, and the boxy red rescue, crested the grade and braked to a stop. Gracie's hologram turned to look at her passengers. Betsy, in her Confederate nurse's armor, looking almost like a little girl in a white-with-red-trim plastic playsuit, at least until you looked at her eyes: her medic's bag was on her lap, she was in the seat, belted in, helmeted head pressed back against the headrest, ready for a high-acceleration takeoff. Angela drew the shoulder belts over, drove the steel tongues into the central, quick-release buckle. Gracie's holographic image turned -- it was as if she herself was in the Stonewall's pilot's seat -- Gracie herself was in Gunfighter, piloting both craft simultaneously. Both medical transport and Starfighter lined up on the Iris, drove through, disappeared. The Sheriff swung down with a double armful of laughing little boy. "That was FUN!" he declared, and the Sheriff laughed, remembering his own little boys who'd said the very same thing after a run with their long tall Grampaw: one of the Maxwell boys came over and caressed Apple's neck, whispered to him, led him off to walk him down after the hard run he'd just had. The Sheriff approached Old Man Daine, stuck out his hand as the Irish Brigade made entry with haste and with big orange boxes. Solemn-faced men shook hands as the sky split open overhead and two ships appeared, stationary, stainless steel, turning slowly, until the boxy one found room enough to descend: landing feet extended with the whine of hydraulics, a hatch opened, two women ran out -- one wearing a winged nursing cap and a red-trimmed blue cloak, the other in white-with-red-trim combat medic's armor, and each carrying their respective warbags. "Where is she?" Angela snapped, eyes pale, her voice clipped, the voice of a woman who expected to be obeyed instantly if not sooner. Dr. John Greenlees came out of the rescue, hit the ground, sprinted after Angela's flaring, blue cloak. Men spoke quietly: they'd withdrawn to the gunshop, where a variety of firearms, modern and less modern, lay in various states of disassembly: it smelled of gun oil and solvent, it smelled of wood shavings and sandpaper, it smelled of linseed and leather. It smelled the way it ought to. Boys young and not quite as young, took turns walking Apple-horse around their back pasture. They did not presume to seize the Sheriff's stallion by his bridle, nor did they fetch the knotted reins from off the saddle horn: no, they walked, and Apple walked with them, steaming a little in the cold air: willing hands rubbed the Appaloosa down, knowing eyes examined teeth and hooves and tapped and scraped horse shoes: Apple, for his part, was eating up the attention, slashing his tail with contentment: he laid a long jaw over one adulator's back, lipped another's offering of tobacco shavings from a proffered palm. Something was dispensed into several tin cups and dirty glasses, something gurgling from a stone jug, something a little lighter than, say, grape juice: the Sheriff knew what it was and he murmured, "Just one finger's worth," and accepted the libation of twice that volume: nobody drank, not yet, not until the seniormost Daine bowed his head and talked to God about it, not for himself, but for his great-granddaughter who travailed in labor as women do: not until the "Amen" were the glasses, the tin cups hoisted, not until the "Amen" did Uncle Will's Finest go down like mama's milk, and not until the shared "Amen" did this half-and-half of moon likker and homemade wine, slip easily down swaller pipes and blow the socks off every foot in the assemblage. Yes, Uncle Will's Finest is honestly that good, and yes, Uncle Will's Finest is honestly that potent, and yes, one finger's worth is genuinely all that you want. Dr. John Greenlees looked at Angela. "Clamps." Angela slapped a pair of plastic cord clamps into the physician's gloved palm. The cord was exposed, which was bad -- very bad -- but they were working fast. Plastic chattered shut, clamping the cord in two places. "Extraction." Angela and Betsy moved together, manipulating Confederate medical technology. It was the first time an Earth child was dematerialized from inside the mother, and rematerialized in the treatment chamber adjacent. Skilled hands of the pediatric team tended the baby. A second team, equally skilled, tended the mother. For all that technology could do, some things were best handled by women. An old mountain man's granddaughter saw she was surrounded by women, some she knew, some she did not: voices were distant, her vision was sparkly, out of focus, but it cleared, and her hearing cleared, and she heard a voice -- warm, reassuring, as something blanket-wrapped and wiggling a little was placed on her chest: she lifted her arms, she held her baby as Dr. John Greenlees leaned close and murmured, "It's a fine little baby boy!" A new mother squeaked, and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. The pale-eyed Sheriff and a clutch of tall, lean mountaineers with Kentucky-blue eyes looked up as Dr. John Greenlees opened the shed door, his face solemn. "Who is the father?" he asked quietly. A lean young man with calluses on his hands and uncertainty in his gut lifted his chin, then his hand. "I be." Men moved aside as the physician approached. Dr. John Greenlees stuck out his hand and the young man took it. "You have a fine, healthy son. Ten fingers, ten toes, and a good set of lungs." Silence, the silence that follows the hissing ring of a grenade spoon flying free, then: "A son?" -- a grin broad as a Texas township -- "my wife?" "She's fine too." The new father felt his mug weighted a little as more of Uncle Will's Finest gurgled from a stone jug. The Sheriff followed ambulance and rescue down-mountain, cut across a trail he knew while the Irish Brigade took the paved roads: he remembered how he'd felt when each of his own young were born, he remembered how helpless he'd felt ahead of time, how relieved he felt after, and he remembered riding home on a different Apple-horse after automatically drinking what had been dispensed into his own tin cup: he was lucky, it too had been Uncle Will's Finest, and he'd been more powerfully intoxicated than he'd been in his entire life, but because this was Uncle Will's Finest, he had absolutely no trace of a hangover the next day, just thirsty, and a little fuzzy-headed, but not much. Nurse Angela Keller and her class stood in semicircular ranks around the nose of the Stonewall. They had several skilled folk who delighted in the nose art they applied to the Starfighters, men and women gifted with pigments and brushes who drew a short-skirted woman with pale eyes and a pair of blazing revolvers, standing defiant atop the stylized banner that said, Gunfighter! This new image, on the portside nose of the Diplomatic shuttle Stonewall, was not the defiant image of a warrior-maiden, charging into battle. This was the image of a bespectacled bird wearing a mailman's cap and an expression of peering benevolence, a long-legged stork carrying a blue-cloth bundle in its beak. When the artist leaned back and wiped his brush with a colorfully-stained cloth he kept for the purpose, when he backed away and began cleaning his artist's brush with a fragrant, pleasantly-scented solvent, when Angela and Betsy and her entire current class of nurses crowded in close to study the gleaming-wet artwork under good light, applause spontaneously pattered into life. Back on Earth, when a child was delivered on squad, a stork, pink or blue, was applied to the rig, and Angela intended this tradition to continue. Sheriff Linn Keller rode back up Daine Mountain a few days later. He carried a thickly-lined wicker basket, folded quilts insulating its fragile payload from the snowy cold. He'd learned from his Mama, and he knew who to ask, and he knew what to grow, and when he knocked on Gracie Jean's door, it was with a grin on his face and a red painted withie basket in hand. He set the basket down on Gracie Jean's kitchen counter. He opened the hinged lids and brought out four potted plants -- herbs they were, healing herbs he knew she used, for his own Mama not only cooked with them, she knew the healing herbs, as had Wise Women of her line for generations preceding. He told his wife later "I couldn't have pleased her more if I'd given her a hundred dollar bill."

Ate there once. Liked it!

(admiring whistle) Nice knife work!

I'm not far south of Rye Myles and the soggy south shore of Lake Erie. Pat Riot said it well -- overcast and groundscatter light -- all we got was a weak greyish glow in the suth'n part of the county! (My typical luck. If I want to see meteor showers or Northern Lights, Mama Nature wags a finger and says 'Nuh uh uh!' )

Michael and Victoria danced Irish hardshoe to this one, at a formal ball ... not at all what was expected, but it was to the general and delighted approval!

THE DANCE Victoria Keller, the pretty, graceful, feminine twin sister of Michael Keller, dropped a deep, elaborately formal curtsy to her dance partner, an Admiral in full dress uniform. She rose, lifted her gloved hand, placed it gently in his palm: her other arm reached around, she laid her other hand flat on the small of his back, and two skilled dancers moved as one, spinning their waltz in time to the orchestra's music. Victoria had her Gammaw's flawless complexion, her Gammaw's pale eyes: she had her Gammaw's grace and coordination, and when provoked, she had her Gammaw's temper as well. Victoria grew up hearing stories of the woman she called "Gammaw Shewiff." Victoria grew up cultivating the skills and virtues of her Gammaw: a young woman now, she was a skilled dancer -- no, not skilled -- she was genuinely gifted -- so much so that she could make a poor dancer look good, a good dancer look expert, and when paired with a dancer of this Admiral's talent, she could conspire music into motion and turn sound into visual delight. Michael's pairing, not far away, was not nearly as pleasant. Michael danced, yes -- but his dance was at once simpler, and more complex: like any dance partner, he adjusted his moves to those of the individual he faced, but his moves were swift, powerful, vigorous, and although a watching eye might admire Michael's moves, they were not those of a genteel synergy. Where Victoria closed her eyes, leaned her head a little to the left, then spun, her skirt flared and her appearance that of genuine beauty, of pastels and ruffles and femininity as she spun under the pivot-point of the Admiral's hand, looking perhaps like a magical incarnation of a music-box figurine on pirouette, Michael's eyes did not close -- though he did fade his head to the left, just enough to miss the incoming, hard-knuckled punch. In fairness, Michael's moves were as smooth, as coordinated, and yes, just as graceful as his twin sister's, but only if viewed with the eye of someone who appreciated the deadly dance in which he was engaged. Where his sister moved both with the music, and with her partner, Michael moved without music, but very definitely timing his moves with those of the individual with whom he was vigorously engaged. Truth be told, where Victoria's moves were intended to enhance and magnify the skills and abilities of her dance-partner, Michael's moves were intended for very much the opposite result. Fencing, lovemaking and listening to music is best done from the subconscious. Michael disengaged his thinking mind and worked from a deeper, more complete understanding: a fist came in, he seized wrist and elbow, twisted, hard: leverage, as he'd practiced ten times ten thousand times, and the opponent's elbow made a sound elbows should never make: more leverage, a hook with the back of his boot, one attacker down, blind with pain and a badly broken and shoulder-dislocated arm. Another -- close, too close! -- Michael drove a palm strike into the bottom of a breastbone, more to get distance, but effective: the club's strike almost missed, the impact barely striking the curve of Michael's backside, down low, ineffective. He grabbed an arm, drove his knee up, got his arm around the attacker's neck: he pulled, twisted again, blocked the incoming knife with the body he was holding: his free hand came up with a Sheriff's-issue pistol and he drove three rounds through the third attacker's face, ending the fight. His knee was in this attacker's spine: he raised his pistol, drove the pistol's butt into the top of the skull, felt bone break. The two remaining attackers decided this would be a good time to explore the general climate in some other county. Unfortunately, though their departing velocity was impressive, their respective velocities were insufficient to outrun two more shots from Michael's pistol. The music ended, Victoria spun out to the length of the Admiral's arm: she stopped and again gave him a deep, formal curtsy, and received his gentlemanly bow in return: her hand laid over his, they lifted their chins, and departed the dance floor, to the pattering applause of the entire ball. The Admiral accompanied her to the refreshments table, and thence to the ladies, seated, watching with admiration -- some with envy -- Victoria seated herself and sipped her fruit punch, snapped out a fan and began waving it delicately, ignoring hissed comments from behind her. Most of the ladies with whom Victoria sat were young, and pretty; Victoria's gown differed from theirs in that hers had a high neck and long sleeves, which contrasted sharply with most of the other ladies, whose gowns revealed a shocking square footage of flesh. This, of course, made Victoria look all the more feminine. One girl -- young enough to be inexperienced, old enough to not know better -- turned a little. "Will your brother be coming?" she asked hopefully, which of course raised a whispered chorus of comments at such a presumption -- Michael was, of course, well known, thanks to the Inter-System, and as unattainable as Victoria might be to the men, Michael was equally so to the ladies, except to those who thought themselves exceptional in some way. From the number that leaned slightly toward Victoria to hear her reply, this seemed to be most of them. As if summoned, Michael appeared, or seemed to appear, from nowhere: he looked at his twin sister with the expression she'd seen on his face after he'd booby-trapped a rival's outhouse as a boy, or surreptitiously inserted a particularly obnoxious exhaust whistle into a high school bully's car's tailpipe. With epoxy. "I just had a conversation with the bandmaster," Michael said quietly, his ears reddening as he realized he was being sized up like a side of meat by most of the ladies. "Oh?" Victoria asked innocently. Michael bent a little, whispered: Victoria's eyes widened, as did her smile. "You didn't!" "I did!" "Let me change my shoes!" Moments later, brother and sister paced to the center of the ballroom floor: the conductor watched, smiling, for a conspiracy is best when shared, and he was sharing this conspiracy with a fiddler, not a violinist, and with a pale eyed young man he'd only just met. The two stopped in the very center of the ballroom floor, sidestepped carefully away from each other, their arms extended until their fingertips just touched, then they looked straight ahead, lifted their chins, placed their hands on their belts, elbows out. Similar melodies had been played, yes, and this one sounded almost familiar to those who'd heard fiddle music, well played, but it was the first time "The Irish Washer Woman" was played on this planet, and the first time a well-matched couple danced Irish hardshoe to the melody. Michael grinned at his twin sister. Victoria threw her head back and laughed with honest delight.

ICEWATER Sheriff Linn Keller rubbed his eyes and let out a slow breath. It had been one of those shifts. He felt Angela -- he didn't hear her -- like her Gammaw, like her sisters, she moved in stealth and in silence, and it didn't matter if she wore well polished Wellingtons boots, or dancing heels, or -- hell, it wouldn't matter if she wore tap shoes -- she moved with all the thundering racket of a butterfly coasting on a friendly summer breeze. Her hand was warm, light, on his shoulder: he nodded, then he rose, not as Sheriff, but as a father: a long tall Daddy hugged his pretty little girl, his little girl hugged her Daddy and held his manly strength and smelled his scent and laid her face into his chest with a little-girl sigh of contentment. Each surrounded them both with a moment's silence, a moment's refuge from reality, because -- let's face it -- sometimes reality genuinely sucks, and at such times, a quiet moment of refuge is not just pleasant, it is vital. Mac still looked kind of green. He'd been first on scene, he'd made the call, he'd still been on speaker phone with Sharon describing what he'd found when he turned around and threw up two or three days' worth of lunches, and the Sheriff couldn't blame him one bit. Mac heard a yell, he'd heard the woody crackle of a tree falling, he'd turned in time to see the tree slam to the earth, he'd seen branches waving goodbye where it passed on its way down. He'd gotten curious and he'd gone up to see what happened. He'd found a father -- a man he knew, a man he liked -- his son wasn't right, Mac didn't know exactly what ailed the boy, but he'd never matured, he was about nine and had the mental processes of a three-year-old -- Mac found them both, and he'd had to look at the phone in his hand and stare at it for a few moments before he remembered how to operate it. He'd called 911, he'd told Sharon a tree fell and killed two people, and Sharon heard his stomach rebel: she had the Cavalry headed his way before he went clear down to his knees, retching. The Sheriff responded from the office. It wasn't far from the roadway to the scene, it didn't take long to start documenting the event, though by the time he was set up, the Irish Brigade already had the fatal section of crushing tree-trunk chainsawed away and thrown to the side. The Sheriff didn't protest. This was necessary for the saving of life. The Sheriff set up the laser measurement device, documented the scene, then he went up to where the tree parted company from the hillside and documented this as well. The Sheriff knew trees and he knew the mountains, he knew what to look for, and he knew when something did not look right. He didn't find any signs of foul play. It looked like the tree took a lightning strike sometime in its lifetime, it looked like rot set in at the base, it looked like the tree finally gave up on life and just fell over: from what was left, from what little was left of its rotted, powdered and barely splintered stump, it's a wonder the tree hadn't fallen long before. Damn shame the wind didn't take it down last week, Linn thought sourly, then pushed the thought aside as he took several photographs, one looking down the length of the trunk with the rotted out stump in the foreground. Parson Belden came rolling up in the rescue, and the Sheriff met him: the rescue wasn't needed, it was released from scene, and the Parson got in the Sheriff's cruiser with the man. "Parson," the Sheriff said quietly, "you told me once you started your ministry the hard way." The Parson chuckled quietly. "I did that," he agreed. "Something about your first ten funerals were for family or for very close friends, including your old police partner." The Parson's eyes changed, and he looked toward where the Coroner was supervising the removal of two sheeted forms to his van. "I was in conversation with fellow clergy," he said softly, "and an old veteran clergyman said the hardest funerals were for people he knew." The Parson looked at the Sheriff, and the Sheriff saw an old, deep hurt in the sky pilot's eyes. "That's the only kind I'd done, Sheriff. My first ten funerals were for family and for friends -- two best friends ..." "That's kind of how I feel, bein' Sheriff where I grew up." Linn thrust a chin toward the second cot being placed carefully, respectfully, in the Coroner's unmarked white van. "I knew the man, and now I have to go give the news to his wife." The Sheriff's words were quiet, then he looked at the Parson and added, "Thank you for coming with me." Linn stood, his eyes closed, his cheek laid over on top of his daughter's Marine-short hair -- she wore her hair the same way his Gammaw wore hers, and though Angela was not the image of her Gammaw that Marnie was, there was still a resemblance. "I'll need my plumber's license," he murmured. Angela lifted her face toward her Daddy's, curious. "A plumber," she said, and he heard her smiling tease hiding inside her voice. "I want to imbed a medic with each shift. Ideally I'd like a medic with every two-man team." Angela nodded, once, remembering her Daddy telling an adjacent county's Sheriff that the military embeds a medic with every team in-country for the same coldly practical reason he wanted to imbed a medic with his troops. The Sheriff took a long breath, sighed it out. "It's not workable, Angela. When you're on shift, you're the designated medic. I've one basic EMT and of course everyone else is first aid and CPR." "But ...?" "But I want a medic in every cruiser." He looked at his daughter and she saw the smile at the corners of his eyes. "That's why I need my plumber's license." Angela frowned, puzzled. "I don't follow." "I want medics, Angela, and people in hell want ice water, so if I'm going to bring ice water to Hell, I'll need my plumber's license so I can pipe it in!" Angela laid her cheek against her Daddy's chest again and he felt her silent laughter.

Carried one back in the days when I put my life under the Lights-and-Siren, for that very reason!

Last time someone tried to get into our hacienda without our let-be, some fellow was impolite enough to take a shot at a Sheriff's deputy before rabbiting up our street, yanking on doors, trying to find a place to hide. Our two dogs were at the door, loudly inviting him in for supper. As the main course. Said sorry soul declined their invitation. The only things I said was something like "Good puppy," and "Treat?" (Both dogs got pets and treatskis afterward!)

HANGMAN, HANGMAN "Hangman, Hangman, "Fetch your noose, "I was Bit "By a Nas-tee Goose! "Put your Noose "A-round its Neck, "All I wanted "Was a Peck!" Schoolgirls chanted their rhymes as they skipped rope. One little boy hung, one-armed, from a tree branch, the other hand around his neck as he crossed his eyes and ran his tongue out while making awful choking sounds. Not far from the graveyard, not far from the Tree of Judgement, the Sheriff stood in the wagon bed backed up to the edge of Hangman's Cliff. He looked up at the hangin' rope, tied off to a tree branch, then he set foot in the noose and gripped the rope in both hands and swung out off the wagon bed, swung back. The rope creaked ever so slightly under his weight. He swung his arc wider, once, twice, then swung back onto the wagon bed, set his off boot and stepped easily back on. Satisfied, he climbed over the back of the driver's seat, clucked up the steady old mare and released the brake. His prisoner was less than cooperative at the prospect of being hauled up the hill to have his neck stretched. The Sheriff did not particularly give a good damn about the prisoner's opinion. Between the Sheriff and the Town Marshal Jackson Cooper, the prisoner was subdued, secured: the lawmen tied the prisoner's elbows together behind his back, as they'd both seen wrist-bound men roll out of their bindings under the extremis of being hanged. Jackson Cooper sat casually on the prisoner for the ride up the hill, effectively stifling struggling attempts at escape, and once the big town Marshal rose, he casually gut punched the prisoner to prevent any further abortive attempts from leaping from the wagon bed. The Sheriff dropped the noose over the prisoner's neck, snapped it viciously tight. "Any last words?" he asked, his voice thick with menace. "Yeah, I ain't --" "Don't wanta hear it," the Sheriff grunted, and shoved the prisoner off the wagon bed and let him drop. The Sheriff looked at Jackson Cooper. "I have no interest in anythin' he has to say." "I got that impression," Jackson Cooper deadpanned. Two lawmen ran their eyes down the rope to the figure twitching at its tied terminus, then looked at one another. "Reckon he's dead?" Jackson Cooper asked quietly, his voice rumbling like rolling boulders grinding together at the bottom of a deep well. "I'll give him til sunset to make up his mind," the Sheriff replied matter-of-factly. "Reckon if he's not dead now, he will be by then." Jackson Cooper and the Sheriff both pushed their watches up out of their vest pockets. Each man considered the time. "Just short of high twelve." "Yep." "You hungry?" "Yep." "You buyin'?" "Nope." "Your lucky day, I am." "Yep."