Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

Another from a playlist ... earmuffs and music are grand when the wife is watching something on TV, I'm chasing after the Sheriff or his young on the keyboard, and I don't need the inane distraction of whatever's on the tube!

A THREE MARE HITCH Angela Keller watched, big-eyed, as her Daddy worked with the pretty white mares. Angela knew her Daddy took care of the Fire Department horsies and she knew the horsies would do about anything for her Daddy and her Daddy named them and petted them and called them good girls, and sometimes he let Angela ride one of them when he was working with them. Another Angela Keller strutted into the firehouse and looked around with juvenile approval. Angela liked the firehouse. It smelled of horsies and rubber coats and pipe tobacco and when Angela came in, she went to the window beside the horsies and tilted her head and said "Hello, Kittycat," and Kittycat would switch its tail and blink sleepily and look at her with all the ancient wisdom of an Egyptian goddess. This lasted until the horsies came over to her, impatient for her attention, and if the Irish Brigade didn't know from the sudden flood of sunlight when the door opened and a visitor entered, they knew from the happy giggle of a delighted little girl that Angela came in for a visit. "Daddy," Angela asked, "can the horsies run without a bit?" Linn blinked, surprised, looked at his little girl and then at the mares. "I suppose they can, Princess," Linn said thoughtfully. "I honestly never thought about it." "Daddy, you told me you have to remind Fitz to keep a light hand on the reins," Angela said with a big-eyed innocence, "cause he's not drivin' horsies every day an' every day like they did when Sean was Chief an' he knew how to drive 'em without bruises!" Angela's eyes were wide and sincere, and she gave a single, emphatic, ponytail-swinging nod of her head to for emphasis. "If they don't have a bit in 'em to start with they can't get bruised!" Linn considered this, looked at the mares again. The mares were crowding him: one's head was shoved in under his right arm, one pressed in close on his left, a third was dancing impatiently, and all were looking at the pretty little girl in a denim skirt and muck boots. "Daddy, do you 'member you read to me about dogsleds in Alaska." "I remember." "I asked you how they drove dogsleds without reins or a bridle." Linn nodded, remembering how she used to sound so much like a little girl, with Ws instead of Rs, and he blinked as he realized just how fast she was growing. "What if you train horsies like dogsleds?" Linn laughed, picked up his daughter, hauled her up fast, held her at arm's length overhead: he didn't spin her around, for fear of hitting one of the white fire-mares. Angela giggled happily as Linn lowered her enough to rub noses with her. "I could use your help," he said. "Feel like training some horsies?" Linn's grin was broad and genuine at Angela's delighted "Okay, Daddy!" Angela looked waaaaay up at the driver's seat of their gleaming Steam Machine. In her young imagination, she was standing up like Sean, his big white helmet on her head, laughing with delight as three white mares surged powerfully against their polished, padded collars -- a whistle, a scream from the shrill little whistle on the side of the boiler, and Angela screamed, delighted, at the sight of three mares before her, the wind in her face, the feeling that she was flying, she was flying -- Angela straddled the center mare, the other two flanking: they fell naturally into position, though they were not harnessed. It was two months after she'd proposed her idea to her Daddy, two months of she and her Daddy working with the Ladies, and when her Daddy was busy, Angela worked with the Ladies by herself. Angela sat very straight, very properly. "Yup!" she called, and the mares set out at a nice easy trot. They made a hundred yards or so, and Angela called, "Geeeee!" The Ladies wheeled right, just as pretty as you please: they swung right, and Angela waited a little before calling "Geeee!" again, then "Haaawww!" The mares turned, keeping very neatly abreast, clearly used to working with one another. "Ho," Angela called, and they stopped, head-bobbing and tail-slashing. The center mare felt Angela shift her weight. Angela was riding on a saddle blanket: she rode with confidence, she rode with the natural affinity of a born horsewoman. "Now for it," she whispered. Angela Keller gripped the white mare's barrel with her young legs, drew a great volume of clear mountain air, gripped a double handful of white mane. "SAINT CHRISTOPHER, SAINT FLORIAN AND THE BLESSED VIRGIN, LADIES, RUN!" Angela screamed, Three white mares launched ahead, surging powerfully against pasture's sod, a delighted girl bent over the center mare's neck, yelling "RUN, LADIES, RUN!" Angela hadn't reckoned on just how fast a firehorse can run. She didn't realize until too late the whitewashed board fence was coming up too fast for her to avoid. Her throat locked shut as the earth pushed her away, pushed hard, and she felt her stomach part company from the rest of her and follow twenty feet behind. A little distance away, a shocked mother dropped her dishtowel as three matched white mares soared over the near end of the pasture fence, three mares abreast, magical creatures of the air and not of the earth, and sticking to the back of the center mare, her daughter, her little girl, welded to a shining white horse like a burr on a blue tick hound. It is an advantage to a small town that traffic on the main street is often rather light, for a laughing child on a white mare, flanked by two more, galloped full bore right down the center line, shod hooves a-clatter on pavement. Fitz looked up, frowning, stepped out from behind his desk, went to a window that used to open on the firehorse stalls, and he saw three matched, shining mares, very precisely abreast, and a very familiar figure sitting very upright on the lead mare, calling "Haw, ladies, haw now," and three white mares haw'd, turning with little short of military precision, right up the firehouse apron, and then ho'd at her command. Fitz surged out of his office, strode ahead of the squad, hit the overhead door button. The door clattered and hummed open, flooding the station with sunlight, and perfectly framed in the opening, halfway down the cement apron, a blue-eyed girl in ponytails and a denim skirt, and three matched white mares, tail-slashing and head-bobbing. "Hey Fitz!" Angela called. "It works!" Sheriff Linn Keller looked up at the knock on his door, strode for the glass front doors at his dispatcher's summons. He pushed through the heavy glass doors, then the outer doors, looked down the street. A whistle, a yell, a sight not often seen for more than a century: a shining, polished, steam powered fire fighting engine, pulling the ladder wagon, grinning men hanging onto apparatus, three white mares surging powerfully against their padded, shining, black collars: smoke rolled out of the wide, blunt stack, the whistle screamed shrilly as Fitz hauled hard on the lanyard, clanging the burnished brass bell mounted just below the driver's seat. Fitz was seated, grinning broadly, his white helmet mashed down on his close-cropped haircut, and beside him, a pretty girl in a denim skirt and ponytails, standing. Linn watched as the three-mare-hitch came pounding up the street, as Angela yelled "Ho, ladies, ho there, ho now," and the engine, the men, the ladder wagon, came to a clattering stop, the Ladies dancing impatiently: Angela looked down at her Daddy, her face just a-shinin' with pride. "Hey Fitz!" Linn yelled, grinning. "I thought only the Chief drove that rig!" Fitz stood, lifted his white, pressed-leather helmet, set it on Angela's head, gripped her shoulders, laughed. ""YOU LONG TALL DRINK 'A' WATER!" he yelled. "YER DAUGHTER'S BEEN PROMOTED!"

A LITTLE CHILD LAUGHED Joseph Keller laughed. Joseph threw his head back and laughed for the sheer, pure, unadulterated joy of being alive, of being a healthy little boy playing in the bright mountain sunshine with his very best friend, a little boy who leaned forward and gripped a pair of Texas long horns in his young fingers, a little boy who clamped his knees together against a longhorn bull's neck and yelled "GO, BOOCAFFIE!" Boocaffie did not have to be told twice: no fence could hold him, but this affection between a little boy who'd grown up with an orphaned calf, held him as surely as bobwarr or whitewashed boards. Sheriff Linn Keller ducked, not that he wanted to, but because something that sounded like a large and very angry bumblebee just brushed the fine hairs sprouted from the rim of his right ear: two men were on the ground, shot and bleeding, a third was firing at him, which was not a wise idea. Bystanders, onlookers and a shocked, staring Esther Keller, behind the glass of her office window above the Silver Jewel Saloon, watched as the Sheriff's left-hand Colt came up and spat a brief finger of yellow flame, just before something the color of a little boy's flannel shirt and tan vest and brindle fur came down the street with all the elegance and grace of a freight train on a steep down grade. None present could honestly say which it was that killed the man: was it the Sheriff's .44, delivered through the man's open, screaming mouth, or was it the Texas longhorn that rammed into the fellow a tenth of a second later, knocking him down and to the side, rolling him several times, to lay sprawled and awkward and looking at the dirt with wide and unseeing eyes. Strong men shivered at the scene, for in spite of death done multiple times, in spite of the blasting concussion of a full grown long horn bull hitting a man at a flat out gallop, at the sight of a man that looked like a rag doll hit in the belly with a hard swung war club as the bull's left hand horn caught him just above the belt buckle, slamming him off the ground and doubling him up and throwing him to the side with a sling of that mighty and muscled neck, over and above the sound of gunfire's echoes shivering to death between the buildings -- over and above the sound of cloven hooves, punishing the packed dirt of the main street -- Men shivered to hear a little boy's happy laughter, fading, as Boocaffie, his bestest friend and pasture buddy, tame as a dog and swift as Death itself, never broke stride, galloping the length of the street, and around the far rise and the bend, and was gone.

GUARDIAN Gracie Daine relaxed, searched with her eyes, remembered. She'd been sitting in class, relaxed, looking rustic and out of place in a calf length skirt and work boots: it's what she was used to, it's what she usually wore, and she honestly did not give a good damn about what any of her classmates thought of her. The teacher was going over the test results, paging through the stack of graded papers, looking up, finding the student, announcing the grade. There were quiet comments after each, sometimes an "All right!" and sometimes a sympathetic groan: the test hadn't been easy and the lower achievers in Advanced Algebra had lobbied to be graded on the curve, and then hoped nobody there was intelligent enough to get a high score. "Gracie Daine." The teacher looked up in honest surprise, opened his mouth. Gracie put a finger to her lips, gave the barest shake of her head. "You ... did all right," the teacher said, confused, and made a mental note to congratulate her later, in private, about her exceptionally high score. Of all the bright students, Gracie alone aced this, the hardest Advanced Algebra test he'd given so far. Gracie smiled behind the shining black sphere covering her shaved head, her eyes tracking smoothly across her field of vision. She was tracking fifty times a second, and her sweep went from directly aft, clear around her ship, sweeping a visual sphere of an incredible size. The fact that her brain interpreted this as optical input was completely immaterial, and the objects Gracie tracked were following the trajectory she'd mentally plotted, while sitting immobile in her Interceptor. Starfighter, Valkyrie's Lance, Silver Stallion, many names had been proposed for the flying weapons systems they drove through the distances between stars, and each of the Valkyries had their preference. Gracie, having commissioned her own nose art, had a self portrait painted on her interstellar destrier: a self portrait of herself, taken from a snapshot she'd fancied: she'd been on stage, back on Mars, dancing as she fiddled: she danced flatfoot most of the time, and she was (in all honesty) pretty damned good: this time, she'd incorporated a turn, a spin: her hair was floating in the one-third gravity, her skirt flared, she'd made a skip-hop, one foot up behind her, the other pointed, and she'd been looking at the camera in that moment. The shutter perfectly captured the look of delight, of satisfaction, on her face, and the artist flawlessly conveyed this from photograph to ship's hull. Beneath, a comet, a silver spray of its trajectory the background for the name she'd given her brand new ship. Stardancer. Gracie watched the objects, smiled: she was the ship now, and the ship was Gracie Daine: the computer was as much a living soul as she was, and her mind filled the entirety of her shining silver Stardancer. As proud as she'd been that day back in school, when she smiled quietly and turned her head so her classmates could not see her expression when she was handed back her test, she was just as proud today, as she made the calculations necessary to intercept two threats. Gracie felt the reactors spinning into life, then she was gone. Sarah Lynne McKenna dusted her hands briskly together: the lump of chalk wobbled a little on its shelf at the base of the slate chalk board, and Sarah looked around, frowned. "The Taylor boys," she said. "Are they coming today?" Schoolchildren, schoolmarm and a great, black-furred Bear Killer turned their heads and looked out the wavy glass window: behind her desk, Mrs. Cooper ran her finger down her attendance-book, frowned. The Taylor boys were exemplary students -- not the brightest, but certainly not unintelligent: their attendance was punctual, they were eager to learn, well mannered -- She looked up, surprised, as movement tugged at her peripheral vision. Sarah Lynne McKenna was running across the front of the schoolroom and down along the wall, one hand holding her skirt up as she ran, her left hand raised, fingers curled, as if ready to strike, to claw at some unseen danger. Sheriff Willamina Keller smiled quietly as she looked around at the tourists: this was part of their trip on the Z&W Scenic Railway, which was also used for minor freight hauls, but always behind live steam. The tourists were gathered in groups, conspicuous among students dressed as schoolchildren had been in the mid- to late-1880s: the Sheriff wore a mousy-grey dress of unremarkable cut, and a wig with its hair drawn severely up into a walnut atop her head, and a whittled pencil thrust through the walnut. Willamina addressed the tourists as if they were students, then dropped out of character momentarily to explain, "This was not the blab school some of you were asking about, and here's why." She made an almost imperceptible gesture, and every one of her students began to read, or to recite, all at the same time: some from books, some from hand held, wood-framed slates with a lesson inscribed in chalk, the very youngest happily near-shouting their ABCs in a child's annoying sing-song. Willamina raised her hand, and the cacophony stopped. "I don't think I could learn anything in that din," she smiled, "and so the blab school fell out of favor. Here we have an average student body size for the era -- we have fifteen children, and according to our records, the failure rate was almost nonexistent." Willamina tilted her head a little, hands folded in her apron, gave the interior of her little domain a warm, sweeping, motherly look. "The teachers of the era were single women, with exceptions: Firelands had one of the only married schoolmarms of the time. She was a plump and motherly sort, she was also shorter than I am, poor soul!" -- Willamina laughed disarmingly, and the tourists laughed with her -- "as you can see, we have benches, with the only desk here in front." Willamina's eye caught movement, she leaned forward a little, looked out the window. Students and spectators alike were startled when Willamina snapped, "BATTLE STATIONS!", snatched up her skirt, powered into a quick, skipping run, her left hand upraised as if to claw at an enemy's eyes. Gracie Daine had been told it was impossible to perform a turn-and-bank in space, that travel had to be in straight lines. As she usually did when she heard something she didn't like, she ignored what she'd been told: when she emerged in her own solar system, she was doing one-tenth lightspeed, and she came out in a graceful, banking turn, reactors singing, her Hellbore was charged, her kinetic cannon were chambered,hardened hypermetal lances rolled into battery in the twin, belly mounted, Gauss cannon. Gracie had been Navy, back on Earth; she'd driven the Sea Stallion, she'd driven the Super Stallion, she'd married a German fighter pilot who shared her love of flying, and she'd listened, fascinated, to fighter pilots talking shop, describing their attacks, their maneuvers: she'd never flown an atmospheric fighter, but she used their tactics here in the zero-gravity vacuum of space. Two asteroids were still outside Jupiter's orbit. She'd analyzed their trajectories, she'd tracked them for a month thanks to sensor buoys Earth knew nothing about, and now that they were well inside the Sol system, the asteroids were fair game. Especially when -- according to Gracie's calculations -- they would come within less than a lunar from Earth. Gracie felt her ship's discharge. She didn't like using the kinetic weapons inside an inhabited system; she was responsible for every one of her projectiles, and the results of collisions were notoriously hard to predict: the Hellbore's energies were invisible to the eye, but flared brightly as one, then the other of the asteroids was sliced in two, a third of their mass disappearing in painfully bright, incredibly intense outbursts of visible and infrared radiation. Gracie's Stardancer disappeared, reappeared ahead of them: the wounded asteroids were tumbling, they looked like glowing, tortured corkscrews: two quick discharges, as precise as a surgeon's scalpel, as Gracie flew backwards ahead of them: this time she heated their sheared sides, vaporizing them, the vapors blasting away from the parent asteroid and shoving the remnants off-trajectory. Gracie drew back, sent a mental command to the monitoring buoys, then disappeared. Sarah Lynne McKenna's clawed fingers hit a hidden release: a spring-loaded panel, wide as her spread hand, snapped open. Sarah drove in, seized the fore-end of a Winchester rifle: she'd not broken stride, she was at their back door in three steps, and The Bear Killer flowed down the steps with her as she ran into the street, toward three desperately running children who streaked past her, silent, wide-eyed and white-faced, intent on getting away from a pursuing danger, intent on the haven, the shelter, the safety of their little whitewashed schoolhouse. Noses and spread fingers pressed against wavy schoolhouse glass, young breath fogged the windows as they watched their beloved Miss Sarah run out in the middle of the street. They heard the metallic sound of a Winchester rifle's lever being cycled, fast. Sarah raised the octagon barrel .40-60 and saw the shining front bead was exactly where she wanted it. Sheriff Willamina Keller shouldered past a staring tourist -- "BEAR KILLER!" -- a great, black, curly furred mountain Mastiff launched through legs and stares and ran down the steps with his beloved Mistress. Willamina had smacked the wall, or so it seemed -- Moses, in the desert, struck a rock and got water, but this pale eyed Sheriff, in costume and in character of a long-dead schoolmarm, smacked the wall and got a rifle, and nobody there was at all sure quite how she'd done it. Two of her children were to have portrayed laggardly students, they were supposed to run in, puffing and blowing, they were to have scampered to their places on the smooth wooden benches, snatched up their lesson and pretended to be reading. They hadn't made it. They were running down the street, running in panic, in desperation, and behind them, a truck, moving fast, with a cruiser lit up behind it, in pursuit. The Hellbore's discharge was more felt than heard. For all its power, it was nearly silent. Sarah's Winchester was most certainly not silent as it drove death through the skull of the lead bull, dropping its nose to the dirt street: smoking brass rang, spun from the action as a second round of hold-it-right-there rammed into the chamber. Sarah fired again. Willamina fired for the center of the radiator, drove three rapid rounds through fins and fluids and into the timing chain behind, then she raised the rifle's muzzle and set the shining brass bead on the driver. Two asteroids, sliced apart, blasted with the heat of seven suns, fell away into Jupiter's gravity well, no longer a threat to Earth. The Bear Killer reared, roaring a fang-bared challenge, dancing back and forth beside his beloved Mistress as two more beeves, these leaders of the stampede, fell: the followers, faced with multiple confined concussions, faced with fang and fury, the following bovines tried to turn, collided with their fellows: the stampede, small though it was, almost didn't stop, but stop it did. The truck screamed sideways, shivered to a stop. Willamina's rifle was dead steady, its muzzle one inch from the passenger window, its bore cold and steady and entirely uncaring as it took a good close up look at the passenger's head. Chief of Police Will Keller came out of his cruiser. Driver and passenger heard the metallic sound of a riot gun slamming into battery. Two little boys fell through the schoolhouse doors: one grabbed a tourist's arm to keep from falling, the other one fell, rolled, scrambled to his feet: both out of breath, both wide-eyed, both looking out the door, all thought of resuming their seats, forgotten.

THE SHERIFF, IN THIRDS Chief of Police Will Keller smiled a little as he pulled the envelope out of the mailbox. He knew his twin sister's hand, and this was very definitely from her: nobody else had that elegant, looping script, especially when it came to addressing an envelope. He looked around, as was his habit: he'd looked at the mailbox before opening the lid, he'd looked inside the mailbox before reaching in: caution was an old habit, well ingrained, and had served him well in the past. Will straightened, looked around, took a long breath, smiled: he went on into the house, closed the door behind himself. Coffee, and a letter from his twin sister, was a good way to start the day. He poured a steaming mug, added a drizzle of milk, ran his hand in his pants pocket: he came out with a Barlow knife, sliced the envelope open, wiped the blade shut and dropped it back into its sailcloth home. Will sat, pulled out the letter, unfolded it, read, and as he read, his sister's descriptions seized his imagination and flung him far across the continent. I have business in Ohio again, he read, and there was a parade. Willamina Keller nodded with satisfaction at the reflection in the full length mirror. She wore her Sheriff's uniform, with the optional skirt, and the butt-ugly Marine issue shoes: ugly they were, but comfortable they very definitely were: the funeral was as all funerals are, and she'd stood shoulder to shoulder with fellow badge packers who'd come from a surprising distance. It hadn't been a line of duty death -- diabetic complications, and not a criminal assault, was the cause of death: this didn't matter, for it was One Of Our Own, it someone Willamina served with. Completely by coincidence, there was a parade in town, and Willamina needed something after the funeral: she was a spectator among spectators, at least until she saw an old man in a wheelchair with a veteran's association overseas cap on his thin grey hair. Willamina watched the colors coming down the street, toward the traffic circle in the middle of the village, she looked at the old-timer, then she slipped between spectators' shoulders and strode with a military pace across the blacktop. She discreetly fell in on the right of the hunchbacked old veteran in the wheelchair, she glared with a pale eyed intensity as a local deputy leaned into the driver's window of the village constable's cruiser: his back was to the approaching Colors, and stayed there as the Colors passed, and came around the circle. Willamina looked at the old-timer, who was pushing against the armrests, struggling to stand. Sheriff Willamina Keller looked at people sitting on the curb, or talking, ignoring the Colors. Sheriff Willamina Keller reached down, ran her hands under the old man's arms, lifted. He groaned, he stood: it was an effort, but he managed: he straightened, as best he could, and an old man who'd worn Uncle Sam's baggy green, and a visiting Colorado Sheriff, raised their hands in an absolutely correct and flawless salute. Will read Willamina's words, felt the old man's warmth between his hands, smelled Old Spice and stale sweat, felt the old man's weight diminish as he got his weight on his legs: Will knew what it was to salute the Colors as they passed, and in his mind's eye, he saw his pale eyed sister giving the Death Glare to those pitiful souls who stayed on their backsides, or talked casually, their arms folded, as the flag came abreast, as she and the old man she wrote about, raised their bladed hands to their brow. Will took another sip of coffee, continued reading. Later that morning, the Mayor came in with a newspaper in one hand and a grin on his face. "Hey Will," he called, "your sister made the national news!" Will raised his hands to the stamped-tin ceiling, shook his head: "How long, O Lord," he intoned in a funereal voice, "must I put up with this trouble making sister of mine?" The Mayor laughed. "I think she did fine," he said, and handed the hot-off-the-press weekly to his Chief of Police. Will frowned, unfolded it, raised an eyebrow. Apparently the photographer had been directly across the street from his pale eyed twin sister, and someone else had been behind, probably with a cell phone camera: the full-color, front-page picture was split vertically, split into thirds -- the leftmost tall, narrow photo had Willamina helping an old veteran in a wheelchair, to his feet, the second tall, narrow photo, also from across the street but zoomed in with a good quality telephoto lens, had an old veteran in his pin-decorated cap, and an attractive woman in uniform, both standing and saluting: the third photo, taken while they were in salute, showed the woman's off arm crossing behind the old man's back, gripping the back of his trouser belt, ensuring he stayed on his feet while the honor guard marched the Colors past.

STRUT Sheriff Linn Keller remembered, and smiled. A dear friend, rest his soul, once told him he had the most marvelous way of turning invisible. It was a talent he cultivated since before high school; his sons emulated his fine example, and unless they wished to be conspicuous, they generally weren't. His daughters, on the other hand, knew -- or perhaps were taught, consciously or unconsciously, by their mother -- that the female is a creature to which men's eyes are drawn; that little girls are loved and cherished by their Daddies, protected by their big brothers, and remarked on by adults in general, and so they had to present themselves in public with the knowledge that they will be seen, and they will be remarked on. This, of course, made little difference to the undamaged young. Angela Keller was a pretty little girl, and her Mommy delighted in dressing her like a pretty little girl. Marnie, on the other hand, honestly did not give a good damn about what her Mommy wanted her to look like: she wore red cowboy boots and a denim skirt, unless working conditions demanded blue jeans: it was not at all infrequent for her to "have a bull on" -- to have a jaw-thrust expression of rebellion, or resentment. Simply to be contrary, Marnie would muck out stalls in barn boots and a skirt, just to prove her rebelliousness she'd throw bales of hay in a skirt, never mind this meant getting hay stems and chaff down the tops of her boots: Shelly learned, to her great disappointment, that Marnie had little interest in being a Girly Girl, and quietly despaired at the quiet pride Marnie took in her prowess at the Arts Martial, in all their forms. Angela, on the other hand, had no such broad and bristling rebellious streak. Angela was very much a Daddy's Girl, but she was a sweet and pretty little Daddy's Girl: Shelly was working her regular paramedic shift when Fitz came in, when her fire chief laughed his way through the man door, when he looked at Shelly and pointed outside and sagged against the closed door, laughing. It seems that the Sheriff rode into town on his black Outlaw-horse, and Angela rode in with him, with intent to walk to the firehouse: the Chief looked out the window and opened the door, and Angela came into the firehouse, in full strut. What tickled the Chief's funny bone was, first, his conversation with the Sheriff. Linn explained, as he caressed his shining black gelding's neck, that Outlaw had been abused, that he'd taken a full year and more to gain his horse's trust, but even yet, if he were to raise his voice, the horse would wall his eyes and shy back a step and then fall over in a dead faint, as only a terrified, traumatized animal will. He'd consulted with the few people who knew about such things, and by some happy accident they'd found that making a game of it helped in the healing, and so Linn backed away a little distance, leaving Outlaw-horse ground reined, blinking sleepily, looking around with an utter lack of interest. Angela strutted up to Outlaw-horse, and Fitz felt amusement bubbling inside him, for Angela was a delightful child, and one of her characteristics was that she didn't walk. She strutted. Her Mama tried to teach her to take dainty little mincing steps, but Angela strutted proudly: she marched up to her Daddy's black Outlaw-horse and raised a finger and declared, "Bad horse! Dead!" Fitz stared, open mouthed, as Outlaw wobbled, as Outlaw went down, as Outlaw rolled over on his side, for all the world out colder'n a foundered flounder. Angela planted her knuckles on her waist, raised her nose -- "Hmph!" -- marched purposefully around the horse's head, squatted: she patted Outlaw on the neck and said "Okay, horsie!" in a happy little girl's voice. Outlaw lifted his head, got his legs under him, rose: Angela unwrapped a red-and-white peppermint and let Outlaw-horse rubber-lip it off her palm as she stood there giggling, rubbing the gelding's jaw, talking to him in the happy voice of an innocent little child. Angela took Outlaw's reins and led him around behind the Sheriff's office, into the little stable they kept there for such purposes: when she came back down the alley and back into the Sheriff's office, she was absolutely strutting, smiling bright as the September sun overhead, clearly very pleased with herself. Fitz chuckled his way back to the firehouse, or most of the way there: he turned and looked, and Angela was just come out of the Sheriff's office and was happily strutting down the sidewalk, as confident and as openly bold as if she owned the place. Fitz was a man with children, and Fitz was a man with a liking for children, and Fitz was a man who loved to laugh, and found frequent moments of amusement at the things children did: seeing this pretty little girl just absolutely strutting with the unabashed confidence of someone who owned the world itself, struck him as funny, and so he chuckled and snorted and guffawed his way into the firehouse, where he recounted his amusement to Shelly and a couple grinning firefighters, right before Angela came strutting in the same door, across the squad bay floor, up the two steps to the kitchen level: she planted her knuckles on her belt, looked around with big blue eyes and innocently demanded, "Hi! Got any chok'lit chip cookies?" The fire chief's laughter began again, and a runner was dispatched to the local bakery, for if the Chief wanted chocolate chip cookies on the table, the Chief got chocolate chip cookies on the table. Even if they weren't for the Chief.

GHOST AMONG THE TREES Sheriff Linn Keller dismounted, led his black Outlaw-horse over to the stream: he shoved his hat back on his head, scratched his lightening thatch, looked around. It was damp, not quite cool: winter was coming, he knew, the aspen were just beginning to turn -- Right here directly, he thought, they'll be absolutely ablaze with color, glorious color, and I'll bring my family out here to see it and to smell it-- but for now ... for now, he was alone. He needed to be alone. A lawman carries ghosts, as do all who put their lives under the lights and siren. Like his wife, he'd seen things that would curl the hair on a bald man's head, he'd survived things that would kill a healthy man ten times over, he carried grief and loss enough to last those ten men their lifetimes. And still he carried on. That's what a man does, he thought, squatting beside the cold, clear stream, smelling the light misty fog, listening to birds and water and his horse. And a fiddle, distant, echoing, then closer ... Linn blinked, made a quick shift of his mental gears ... A fiddle? Back during that damned War, his namesake followed a fiddlin' ghost, a young girl who whirled in a diaphanous gown, laughing and playing a violin: a barefoot siren, a beautiful child, forever out of reach, never more than barely seen, until Linn finally saddled up and galloped after her, his heart afire to behold the magical nymph who spun the music, the beauty! that his heart longed to embrace! He'd ridden out into a clearing, and in the clearing, a mansion, and he rode up to the mansion and was received by the solemn old servant, who said quietly that everyone was within, and bowed him into the mansion -- never mind he was a damned Yankee, at this solemn time, all were welcome. The Sheriff's namesake carried the rank of Captain: he left his uniform cover with the servant inside the door, was shown into the parlor, where family was gathered, grieving, where a coffin sat atop two sawhorses draped with a clean sheet. Inside the coffin, its open lid draped with gauze to soften the features of the deceased (and to keep off flies), a beautiful girl -- a maiden, not yet a woman, but with the aching beauty that can capture a man's heart without effort. In her still hands, a violin. The Sheriff had read of this, for his namesake wrote of the experience: when Linn read the words, he could see himself there, he could feel the cool morning mist on his face, he could hear maidenly laughter, see her as a flowing shadow, as moving mist, as a creature of magic in morning's fog, slipping between the trees. Linn rose from beside the stream, listened. He'd long reckoned there to be no difference between a fiddle and a violin, save the surroundings in which it was played, and then not always: Gracie Daine, in a plain, drab dress and work boots, had spun truly glorious classical violin music from her handmade curlyback fiddle, and during her brief sojourn to an Eastern university, in a fine gown and heels, she'd transitioned easily in a public performance, playing Lara's Theme with grace and beauty, following it with a sprightly Irish Washerwoman -- which gained her an F from the scowling professor, and a standing ovation with two curtain calls from the audience. It increased her incensed professor's blood pressure to a dangerous level when, on Gracie's second curtain call, she came out in her gown, and work boots instead of heels: she struck up the Irish Washerwoman again, and danced a fine flatfoot as she fiddled, and when the professor stormed off his dais, waving his conductor's baton and screaming "No, no," Gracie thrust him in the gut with her bow, kicked him in the shin and backed away, dancing and fiddling, and the audience thought it a comedy act, further humiliating the professor with uproarious laughter. Had the curtains not been drawn, it is quite possible the stuffed shirt professor might have succumbed to a good case of apoplexy (which, truth be known, could only have improved his disposition). Sheriff Linn Keller looked around, pale eyes busy, trying to punch holes in the mountain mist so he could see the source of the music, but it was fainter now: he turned, thrust a boot into the doghouse stirrup, swung a long leg over and found the other stirrup without looking. There. Movement, in the trees. He nudged Outlaw with his knees, and the two set off in pursuit. Later that morning, Paul Barrents looked at his old friend, stopped, turned, looked very directly to face the Sheriff absolutely square-on. Paul frowned, turned, drew a mug of coffee, added a short drizzle of milk and handed it to the pale eyed Sheriff. "I know that look," he said quietly. "What happened?" Linn took a noisy slurp of coffee, flipped his tongue up to rake the fat drops hanging from the bottom curve of his carefully cultivated handlebar mustache. "I was chasing a ghost." Barrents raised an eyebrow. "Gracie Daine," Linn explained. "She was fiddling in the mountains again. I could almost see her through that fog we had this morning, but I couldn't find her." "Gracie," Barrents echoed. Linn nodded, took another noisy slurp. Sharon turned. "Did your Mama let you slurp like that?" she scolded. "I'll bet you slurp chocolate cake!" "He does," Barrents confirmed, then turned back to his boss. Linn knew his segundo pretty well, and he knew when Barrents turned like that and burned those black Navajo eyes into his like that, it was a serious matter. "Boss," Paul Barrents said quietly, "you said you were chasing Gracie Daine in the fog." Linn nodded. "Gracie Daine joined the Navy. She left a week ago and hasn't been back." Linn's face paled, just a little bit: he turned, looked at his dispatcher. "Sharon," he said, "any word on Gracie Daine?" "None that I know of," she replied, "why?" Linn handed Barrents the half mug of coffee, strode quickly for the front door. "Where do you think you're going!" Sharon demanded. "House call," Linn threw back over his shoulder. Paul Barrents shrugged, drank the rest of the Sheriff's coffee, then his own, rinsed the mugs and set them on their pegs to drain and dry. He paced slowly to the dispatcher's desk. "Now what was that all about?" Sharon complained. Paul Barrents' expression was unreadable. "He's going to see if there's been a death notice." Barrents looked at the dispatcher. "If there'd been a death notice, the Navy would've sent people out to deliver the news in person, and you would have heard about it." "Yes I would've," Sharon confirmed: if she hadn't been the Sheriff's dispatcher, she would have been the world's most efficient neighborhood gossip: she knew everyone, she knew everything, and she made sure she cultivated her sources. Often times there is an explanation. Music has to come from somewhere, a dancing figure in a gown so gauzy it seems made of fog, had to have come from somewhere, had to have gone somewhere. Sometimes, though, there is no explanation; Gracie Daine, alive and well, wrote home that week, and the week after; their family had heard nothing otherwise, but it was nice of the Sheriff to ask. Only Old Gracie seemed really interested. The old woman, this Wise Woman who seemed to know so very much, drew the Sheriff aside, and over steaming mugs of root tea of some kind -- Linn couldn't place it, it tasted familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it -- she asked him to tell her, very exactly, what he'd seen that morning. As usual, one of the youngest of the Daine daughters sat beside Old Gracie, looking at her with big and solemn eyes, then looking at the Sheriff, listening, saying nothing. When Gracie rose and turned without comment, Linn rose as well, watched as the old woman walked tiredly into another room: he turned, headed for the back door, until a little girl pulled at his sleeve. Linn turned, went down on one knee. "I know who you saw," she whispered, looking back toward the doorway where Old Gracie had gone. Linn nodded a solemn go-ahead. "It was her," she whispered. "She does that sometimes. She'll leave her body and ghost among the trees." "Do ghosts play fiddles?" Linn asked, frowning. As if in answer, from another room, a fiddle began playing an Irish jig, and playing it with all the energy and all the precision of a veteran performer. The little girl looked back at the Sheriff and said, "This one does."

AND TWO MEN SMILED Jacob lay still, flat against the earth, a little rise of rock and grass ahead of him, just enough to break his outline. His chest was down, his chin was up, he was watching through the long, awkward field glasses he'd won years before from some German fellow who'd lost them in a poker game and was too proud to accept them back afterward. Beside him, a quiet, metallic click: Jacob heard the set trigger drop into engagement on his father's Sharps rifle. Pale eyes blinked a few times, rapidly, then resumed study through the glass lenses; another pair of pale eyes blinked in the same manner, then settled behind the Vernier tang peep. Jacob received information that the train -- their train! -- would be robbed: a promise of protection and a small poke of gold, and more information than the speaker originally intended, was given: Jacob surprised a stranger, who pulled a gun and was sent to Hell on a .44 pistol ball for his trouble, and Jacob knew he had trouble when he found the gold he'd paid the informant, on the dead man in the alley. Over beside the tracks, a confusion of hoofprints and boot-heels in the damp dirt, and the body of the man who'd put him wise to the intended robbery. Jacob thought fast. He legged it back to the Sheriff's office, untied his stallion and his father's gelding, ran them to the depot: a whistle to get a handler's attention, a shouted command: "GET THAT STOCK RAMP DOWN! THE TRAIN'S GONNA BE ROBBED AND THE SHERIFF AND I WILL BE ABOARD AND READY!" Jacob knew the whistle, the shout, the hurried loading of two saddled horses, would draw attention: he saw a figure slip around the end of the depot, trying not to be seen. Jacob held up a fist toward the conductor, took the horses, walked them slowly, quietly, down the ramp: his father took their reins, handed them to a boy, gave him quiet voiced instructions, and the horses were led, slowly, silently, down the little alley and around the corner, out of sight. The Sheriff and Jacob swarmed aboard the passenger car, rifles in hand, just before the conductor raised his hand, just before The Lady Esther whistled, just before she shouldered powerfully into her load: nobody saw the two lawmen who'd climbed out of the other end of the passenger car and ducked behind a boxcar, waiting for the train to chuff a little distance, before slipping back to the Sheriff's office. Linn switched his Winchester for his Sharps and a shotgun: the double gun hung from a lanyard dropped over his saddle horn, he wore a bandolier of brass rounds, both swan shot and military ball. Father and son mounted, rode quietly up the street, in the opposite direction: they turned, doubled back on a trail they both knew well, and gave their horses their head. Bill looked at Jim, looked back ahead, swore. He laid on the whistle, a long, desperate scream, the agonies of a damned soul torturing its way between mountains and great granite cliffs: passengers felt the air brakes set up under their feet, heard the warning whistle, felt the train slow and slow fast: couplers banged as the slack slammed forward, The Lady Esther's wheels ground sand into dust-fine powder as she screamed steel wheels against steel rails, desperately trying to stop in time. "Right where they said," Jacob muttered, then he turned. Linn's finger touched the front trigger as Jacob turned, recoiled like a stung cat. Linn dropped the Sharps, seized his double gun, rolled over and didn't bother to sit up. Jacob was on one knee, firing steadily, unhurriedly: Linn's twelve-bore coughed, its deep concussion slamming two men's souls into Hell on a compact cloud of heavy shot. Ten men thought to rob the train, and waylay the Sheriff: killing his chief deputy was a bonus they greedily embraced, but when that pale eyed old lawman with the iron-grey mustache and his pale eyed son argued otherwise, why, the plotters came out in second place. The local paper printed the story; the Firelands Gazette described the vile perfidy, the treachery, the intent to rob good and honest men of their wages yet to be paid, and how the plotters intended to deprive the county of their Sheriff in the process, that he might not track them down afterward: the news account included the trial testimony, how after the robbers were met by a fusillade from the passenger car, after they were met with a coal shovel in the face when they tried to storm the cab of the shining, polished engine, how the Sheriff's Sharps spoke a half dozen times: in the confusion, it was not until one, and only one outlaw remained alive, that it was realized that the pale eyed old Sheriff had indeed not been killed, but every one of the robbers had -- only then did the last man surrender, and live to give his testimony. Two days after the trial, Sheriff Linn Keller rested a fatherly hand on his son's shoulder. "Jacob," he said, "thank you." Jacob was silent for a long moment. Both men were looking straight ahead, across the street, at children yelling and running toward the schoolhouse as Miz Sarah slung her handbell in great, noisy arcs from the top step, and both men's eyes smiled, just a little. "Sir," Jacob finally said, "you are welcome."

AND IN THE EVENING, A VOICE Jacob Keller sat in a handmade rocking chair. He rocked slowly, thoughtfully, considering the book open before him. He'd had a man skilled in wood make a little table that could be laid across the arms of the rocker, a table wide enough to lay a book, and perhaps to write a note, or a letter: he looked over at his wife, in her own rocker -- hers was slightly more ornate, the spindles were turned, tapered, her armrests slightly curved, bent down at the front like a woman's wrists. Ruth Keller smiled at her husband. Her fingers had eyes; she did not need to look to know where a shining-blue pair of knitting needles were, or what they were doing: Jacob smiled, just a little, as the words before him stepped aside and allowed the image of his wife to fill his soul. "There's magic to that," he said softly. "What, this?" Ruth laughed. "Yes, that," Jacob nodded. "Woman's magic. You move two magic wands and consult a spellbook and you create clothing!" Ruth reached down, pulled another length of yarn free of her skein. Jacob considered this further evidence of women's magic, or perhaps even witchcraft: the only time he'd tried to draw yarn from a skein, the damned thing tangled, pulled out several loops, a knot: he'd never touched yarn, nor knitting needles again, preferring to leave this mystery to those whose personal Magick allowed them this witchery. "My mother used to knit," Ruth said softly, "when I was a little girl, before her fingers became so arthritic. I used to sit and watch her knit, and Father would read to us." She looked at her husband, memories filling her eyes. "Read to me, Jacob. Read me from the Book." Jacob smiled again, looked back at the open book before him: he turned the page, nodded ever so slightly -- Ruth knew this meant he'd found what he wanted -- she had much to learn about her new husband, but she was learning, and she'd learned that slight nod was a sign of discovering something he wanted to find. "To everything there is a season," Jacob read, cadencing his words and pitching his voice for an audience of one: "a time to every purpose under the heavens." He blinked, smiled, leaned his head back, and sang: To every thing, Turn, Turn, Turn, There is a season, Turn, Turn, Turn, And a time To every Purpose, Under Heaven." Ruth's eyes grew large and round: Jacob's voice was rich, full, his pitch was perfect, he sang with his eyes cast to the ceiling, as if offering his voice to the Almighty. She listened, entranced, as her husband sang: he paused and looked at her sheepishly. "I'm sorry," he said. "I usually just sing in the shower." "But that was beautiful," Ruth whispered. "Please, sing some more for me?" "I'll tell you who you should hear sing," Jacob said, rocking forward. "My sister." "The Ambassador?" Jacob nodded, frowned: he lifted his table, stood, set his lap table back across the rocker's arms. "Hang on a minute," he said as he paced over to his desk. Ruth watched as Sheriff Jacob Keller bent, ran a quick series of keys: she saw his face illuminated by the screen, saw the light change. "Why hello, Little Brother!" she heard -- Ambassador Marnie Keller's voice, as cheerful as if she'd just wakened after a good night's rest and a good morning coffee. "Little Sis, would you be nearby?" "Who you callin' Little Sis?" Ruth heard the banter behind the scolding words: "I'm right down the hall, silly." "Well, hell, I didn't know if you'd be in a cut throat poker tournament, or maybe swinging a wheelin' deal with offworld traders or something!" "That was this morning. Whattaya need?" Jacob looked at his wife, smiled a little. "Ruth and I would like to ask you a favor." Mrs. Ruth Keller, wife of Sheriff Jacob Keller, of Firelands, Mars, dipped her pen in good black ink: India ink, her husband called it; it was superior to the Lampblack brand she was used to using, and frankly it made writing far more pleasant, as it was much more uniform than the blend she was accustomed to. Her script was large, looping, ornate: she took great pride in her handwriting, and much preferred a communication that did not involve screens and keys. The letter was to her parents: she wrote them weekly, folding her handwritten missive in thirds, applying sealing-wax and her personal seal: she knew her home planet was a great distance from where she sat, she knew that her letter would be delivered, and quickly: exactly how, she wasn't sure, not did she particularly care: she knew it would arrive within a day, and in this, she was content. Her mother heard the papery whisper of a delivery from the newly-installed device, courtesy the Ambassador: she picked it up, smiled as she recognized her daughter's handwriting: she carried the folded sheet into her husband's study, where she showed him the intact seal, allowed him the honor of opening their daughter's latest letter. They found it interesting to view Mars through their daughter's eyes. Ruth sat with her husband and the Ambassador, and they sat with their fellow colonists, and all faced the stage. Firelands determined early on that they were their own entertainment: when the original colonists came, they brought all they were, with them: Gracie, the fighter pilot, was also a fiddler, and of considerable skill: Ruth laughed with delight at the first wedding she attended, where Gracie played "Turkey in the Straw" and the wedding party, led by the bride and the groom, whirled and danced down the aisle, the ladies' dresses floating in the lighter gravity: when Gracie paced onto stage, her shaved-bald head covered by a short, shocking-green wig, applause roared up out of the audience in happy anticipation of another excellent performance. Ruth knew her own skills at voice were limited; she could sing hymns in church, hiding her voice among the others', and she was honestly terrified at the thought of performing before a group, even a small one: this did not prevent her from appreciating, and delighting in, others' skills and abilities -- such as her husband's unexpected singing of her father's favorite passage from Ecclesiastes. Jacob explained, after he'd sung it with his sister, there in their quarters, after they'd harmonized flawlessly, after their voices rejoiced together, that Marnie did not want to be known as the Singing Sheriff, and neither did he: Ruth did not realize quite why her husband was commanding her attention, speaking quietly, urgently, with his hand on her wrist: his subterfuge worked, and Ruth was honestly unaware that Marnie was no longer sitting beside her. Another singer came on stage: a bank of schoolchildren behind her, violins and woodwinds, began a gentle background as the singer, draped all in white, her face veiled -- Ruth blinked, surprised: she'd known women who'd gone into nunneries, dressed in a similar manner -- but they wore black, mostly, and this veiled figure -- Ruth blinked as the figure spread her arms, palms up, as if offering herself to the Divine. Ruth had heard Ave Maria sung as a child, but never since, and she'd never heard it sung with such power, such purity: it was sung in Latin, supported and enhanced by a surprisingly skilled violin section, a section made up entirely of Martian children, all thin, all tall, all very slender ... and all very much enjoying what they were doing. Ruth was mesmerized. There were dancers, and of surprising skill: about half the dancers were Heavies, dancing Irish hardshoe: the Heavies chose to live in Earth-normal gravity: they were normal in height and build, the others, in the softer Irish dance ghillies, were growing up in Martian gravity: tall, slender, but no less graceful: Ruth had never seen Irish dance before, and laughed with honest delight as the dancers all struck a pose, hands on their hips, one foot forward and pointed, while a little girl in an embroidered, ornate, and shining-emerald dress hammered her rhythm into the boards to the catchy tune of "The Irish Washerwoman" -- both she, and Gracie the fiddler, were good enough the audience began to clap in time to the music. Ruth looked over, surprised, as Marnie slipped back into her seat. "Coffee went through me like a freight train," she said quietly. "Did I miss anything?" "I was fearful Ruth would have a barren existence," her mother said quietly as her husband folded the letter again. "It would seem they have a surprising amount of culture." "Ruth is a hard child to impress," the father said thoughtfully, "She has been to the best performances available." He tapped the folded letter meditatively against the desktop. "She said her husband reads aloud of an evening," the mother said softly, coming around behind her husband. She rested her hands on his shoulders and squeezed gently, and he reached across his chest and laid a warm hand on her cool fingers. "I remember your reading aloud, with Ruth on your lap. You sounded so gentle." He nodded, smiling a little the way a father will at a favorite memory. "Jacob?" Jacob's hand was cupped under his wife's as they lay abed, warm in flannel and contentment, under the reassuring weight of flannel sheets and a handmade quilt. Jacob's hand tightened ever so slightly at his wife's voice. "Jacob, when we have children ... will you read to them?" Jacob rolled over, laid his arm over his wife, twiddled his mustache against her nose, which made her giggle. "My Pa used to read to me when I was little," Jacob said softly. "I'd set on his lap and feel his voice inside his chest like an old b'ar rumblin' in a cave." Ruth had no idea what a b'ar was, but she got the idea, especially after she twisted and shifted and laid her head on Jacob's chest and heard his deep, reasurring voice, sounding like it was in a deep cave somewhere. If I am to hear a voice in the night, she thought, let it be this, the voice of my husband!

THE SHERIFF'S NOTEBOOK Sheriff Linn Keller watched the shining steel blade of the paper shear descend slowly through the stenographer's notebook. He'd already taken a pair of sidecuts and clipped the wire binding at top dead center, he'd used needle nose pliers to bend the cut wire back and twist it into a loop to prevent snagging, and now the wire-clipped, grid-ruled steno book was being sheared down its middle, top to bottom. He thanked Bessie for her kindness, asked how her birthday was -- the Sheriff was scrupulous in this respect, he always asked people something that made them feel like he actually had an interest in them -- he listened to her description of the cake, he laughed at her description of an Ugly Sweater she'd been given (a circulating gag gift that was never worn, just passed from victim to victim as a standing joke in her family), and after he'd paid for the steno book and departed, she saw an envelope on the counter, leaned up against the register, with her name on it. It was a birthday card from the Sheriff, and under his big, looping signature, the printed message: "I've never forgotten the smile in your voice." Linn looked around, as he always did, before coming to the glass front door, before emerging: he appeared relaxed, casual, he looked like he had not a care in the world. He intended to present that lie to the world. It had kept him alive in times past. Linn strode up the sidewalk, delighting in the late-fall sunlight, knowing if he stayed out in it too long, he'd burn -- he was rarely seen in short sleeves, and only once in recorded history (outside of Phys Ed in high school) had he worn shorts: he'd joked with his dispatcher that he sun burns in five minutes or less, thanks to his Viking ancestry, and though the two of them had a laugh out of his doleful expression and sorrowful voice, he was actually not kidding her at all. Pale eyes and fair skin meant cataracts and sun sensitivity; it was a fact of life, and he dealt with it. It was not terribly far from the office supply to the Sheriff's office: Linn could have had his bifurcated notebook delivered, but he liked to get out and walk: not only did it keep him awake and alert, it got him seen in town, it allowed him contact with folks, and more times than one, when he was headed for coffee at the Silver Jewel, or meeting the Mayor over at the municipal building, or long-legging it for the hardware store for washers, bolts or a spray can of Old Slickum, he'd be stopped and asked a question, or given information that would come in handy. Today, Linn's military pace and erect carriage conveyed him without interruption to the Sheriff's office without delay or interruption, at least until he was inside the doors, when he stopped and looked very directly at Sharon, at her dispatcher's desk. "Well?" she smiled. "Did she like the card?" "I don't know," Linn admitted with a boyish grin. "I kind of sneakied it in on her." "You're good at that," Sharon scolded, shaking her yellow-painted pencil at him: "how'd you do it this time?" "I waited until she looked away, then I propped the envelope up against the register and left." Sharon laughed. "I've seen you pull a fast one before," she agreed. "You could be a sleight-of-hand artist!" "You're not the first one to tell me that!" Linn grinned. "Is the coffee pot fixed yet?" "No," Sharon sighed. "I'm afraid we might need a new one." Linn frowned, looked at the offending device, looked at the fellow shaking his head and holding an unidentifiable part in his hands: he looked up at the Sheriff, switched the part to his left hand, and dramatically made the Sign of the Cross over whatever it was, intoning "Dominos, Monopoly, Bingos and Euchre" in a sonorous and funereal voice. Linn laughed, shook his head. "Coffee at the Silver Jewel, as necessary, all hands, my tab," Linn told Sharon. "You realize we could just place a standing order for the interim." Linn frowned. "Doesn't the bakery offer boxes of coffee?" "They do, and we've a microwave if it cools off too much." Linn snapped his fingers, winked. "Make the call, two boxes, ask them for a bag of creamers and two dozen assorted. Make sure everyone knows it's here and fair game." Linn headed for what was left of the coffee pot, laid his hand on the work uniformed shoulder of the fellow examining a coil of some kind. "Raymond," Linn said quietly, "this sad old thing is older than I am. I reckon it's time we replaced it. Sharpen your pencil and figure a price, installed. Include plumbing in your price and I'm payin' cash money." Raymond nodded slowly, the way he always did. Of all his customers, the Sheriff always paid in full, always paid on time, and always paid in cash. Linn turned, went into his office, tossed both halves of the sheared steno onto his desk blotter. He looked around, looked at his Mama's portrait, and smiled, just a little: he looked at the Victory model revolver in its glass front frame, hung there on the wall, and he remembered being a mad-as-hell schoolboy, breaking the glass out of that frame and seizing his Granddad's revolver, loading it and running outside, raising it and putting six rounds through a man's head as the man was fumbling to reload a submachine gun. Linn closed his eyes, took a long, steadying breath. Even this many years after, the memory elicited a stress response. He turned back to his desk, went around behind, sat. He opened the middle drawer of his desk, picked up the right hand half of the notebook, placed it within: he closed the drawer, looked at a coffee mug bristling with writing implements of several kinds and colors, selected one of his favorites, opened the cover of the brand-new, left-hand-side field notebook. Linn was not averse to the new technology. An electronic pad at the scene of a wreck allowed for faster and more accurate documentation: photos could be taken of drivers' licenses, passengers' ID, photos of the involved parties, of the wreck, information entered on the touch screen went immediately into the cruiser's hard drive, and then relayed to the Sheriff's office: computers in the cruisers allowed for swift and secure communication, cameras could take a good close up of a license plate, but sometimes, Linn knew, sometimes the good old ink and paper notebook was what Doc called "Treatment of Choice." Linn was old-fashioned with his notebook. The left half was general notekeeping: field contacts, punch lines to dirty jokes, stray thoughts, cartoons, sketches, ideas, things that might not be entirely proper if reviewed in court and under oath: "Official Information" would be transferred to the right hand half of the sheared steno book, and this Official Field Notebook could then be subpoenaed into court -- with material transcribed from his general use notebook, minus phone numbers, comments, stray thoughts or unflattering cartoons of the boss. Linn smiled a little as he clicked the gel pen. He knew the very first thing he wanted to put into this general use, left hand, notebook. Breakfast was bacon and eggs, pancakes and cut up fruit with walnuts and sliced almonds and a little whipped cream on top. Angela was cook this morning and she did a fine job. The Bear Killer looked up, his ears came up and he began to growl, just a little. Angela saw it, rose: "Something's in the garden," she said. "I'll take care of it." She skipped over to the gun case, all skirt and long legs, she unlocked the case and pulled out her .22 rifle: nine years old and she ran the kitchen stove like Gracie Daine runs a fiddle, she didn't walk, she skipped, she slipped out the back door with The Bear Killer. I waited. If Angela said she'd take care of it, she would. I kept working on bacon and eggs, I cut into my pancakes and I heard the back door open again. Angela came back inside. I heard The Bear Killer with her. Angela came up beside me and her face was a little on the pale side and her eyes were BIIIIIG. "Daddy," she said in a very small voice, "there's an elk in our garden!" Sheriff Linn Keller leaned back, smiled at the memory, now gleaming-wet ink on a grid ruled page. He remembered how he stood, how he picked the binoculars up off the stand beside the back door, how he and Angela cat footed out onto the screened in back porch, The Bear Killer shadowing with them, bristled but silent, waiting. Linn watched as a cow elk looked toward the house, then at the garden: she hadn't gotten into it yet, but she was close, and Linn knew her appetite could put a serious dent in their harvest. Linn set down the binoculars. He took a sidestep to the left, another, eased the screen door open. The cow elk's head came up. "Bear Killer," Linn said quietly, then he SLAMMED the back door open CHARGED out the back door, yelling, The Bear Killer baying beside him, rearing and chopping his jaws and sounding like he wanted to rend the offending trespasser into bloody gobbets. The elk whirled, ran: Linn looked around, alert for another, looking for Mama Elk's calf: he ran for one end of the garden, looked down the rows, turned, searching: he finally came back to where Angela was standing, outside the back door, her scoped lever action rifle at port arms. Linn hugged his little girl, kissed her on the forehead. Angela looked at her Daddy with big blue eyes and said "She was big, Daddy!" "Yes she was, sweetheart." "I wasn't sure a .22 would kill her so I didn't shoot." "You did the right thing, darlin'," Linn said reassuringly, stroking her fine, fair hair. "If you're not sure of a killin' shot, it's wise not to take the shot." "Daddy, will a .22 kill an elk?" "Yes it will, sweetheart, if you can place it just right." "Are elk good eatin', Daddy?" "Oh, yes, very good eatin'." "Maybe I should have taken the shot." "Naaaah," Linn grinned, his arm around her young shoulders, hugging her to him. "When the gun cracks, the work starts. I'd have to drag it to the barn, hang it and gut it and either take it to the slaughter house to be cut up, or bone it out myself." "Oh." Angela wrinkled her cute little nose. "That sounds like an awful lot of work." "So does fence buildin'," Linn chuckled. "I'll have to fence that garden now that Mama Elk knows we're growin' beans and sweet peas!" A father carries snapshots in his heart, and Angela's face, all big eyed, half-wonder and half-scared, is one snapshot I'll have for the rest of my days. Sheriff Linn Keller smiled quietly, closed the cover on his long, narrow notebook, stood: he slid it into his hip pocket, looked up at the knock at his door. Sharon pushed it open. "Doughnuts and coffee just arrived, boss."

NOT WHAT SHE EXPECTED Linn looked up, concerned, as did his wife. It unusual for them both to have a Friday night off together; they spent it, at first, laughing about staying home "like a couple old folks," then they sat down and immersed themselves in tasks they'd put off for far too long. Linn hand wrote three letters -- a handwritten letter, in this modern age of IMs, PMs, E-mail and the like, was a rarity: it was his habit to keep certain natives of their county, supplied with at least one letter a week from home: one in boot camp, one in Army basic, and one at the US Navy's Great Lakes center. The letters were all personal, they all contained some news from home, from the familiar landmarks that had been part of their lives until they set out to view the world with a wider lens. Shelly looked up from her paperback and smiled. "You're enjoying that, aren't you?" she asked quietly. Linn looked up, gave his wife a wise look. "Troops live and die on mail from home," he said. "Recall when Joshua went overseas? We kept him supplied with care packages and mail. He said some of his fellows never got the first thing from home." "And that's when you loaded extra into the packages for him." "Yyyep." Linn smiled a little, leaned back, his gaze tracking along the trim strip between wood paneling and ceiling tile. "I recall he said those Hot Wheels cars were their favorite. That, hot rod magazines, fishing magazines ... and cookies." "Always the cookies," Shelly sighed, smiling: she'd baked dozens of chocolate chip cookies that ended up being shipped from here to there: even when they arrived as a general Zip Lock Baggie Full of Mashed and Broken Crumbs, they were still welcomed. When they both heard Jacob's Jeep coming up the driveway, they both stopped and looked at one another with concern. He'd gone out on a date, he'd gone out in a shirt and tie with his boots polished, with a bunch of flowers, with full intent to be out until midnight (he could do that, it was Friday night) and it was barely after ten. They waited until Jacob backed his Jeep into its usual spot, until after Jacob came through the front door, very carefully hung his good Stetson on its peg, waited until Jacob came into his father's study. Linn set aside the letter he'd just finished; addressing the envelope would wait: he nodded to his son, and Shelly, too, regarded their eldest son with interest. "Sir," Jacob said, "I stand before you as either the very image of nobility and integrity, or the biggest fool to stand in boot leather." Linn looked at Shelly, and Shelly looked at Linn, and they both looked at Jacob. "You and your father," Shelly sighed, and Jacob, puzzled, looked at his father. "Grab a set," Linn said, rolling his chair back from his desk, which reassured Jacob: the informal nature of "Grab a set" meant his father was neither annoyed, nor disappointed, and right now Jacob was disappointed enough in himself. Father and son turned their chairs very directly toward one another, a habit they'd gotten into a very long time ago. "What happened, Jacob?" Linn asked gently -- he asked in a father's voice, the voice of a man who remembered what it was to be young, to have a young man's easily bruised heart. Jacob looked over at Shelly. "Mama?" he asked, rising: he drew another chair up. "Could you join us, please?" "This must be serious," she murmured as she set aside the book she'd not really gotten into. "I need your opinion, Mama. You're a girl." "I should certainly hope so," Linn said -- Jacob heard a smile in the Old Man's voice, though his face was carefully impassive. Jacob waited until his Mama was seated before folding his own long tall frame back into his padded chair. Jacob raised his hand to eye level, studied it, turned it around, regarded its back side. "I asked a girl out tonight," he said. Linn nodded; Shelly watched, listened. "I thought I might want to be sweet on her." He blinked, considered, turning his hand again, studying its shape, its contours, the silvery scars that crossed from thumb to wrist. He looked suddenly at his father. "Sir, I was an absolute gentleman," he said, his voice firm, and Linn heard anger under the words: "I treated her like a lady, an absolute Lady --" He took a long breath. "Sir, I take pains to not be ... forward ... but I ... felt ... attracted to her." Jacob's bottom jaw slid out. "I did not realize she thought I wanted ... she wanted me ... to be improper." "How improper?" Linn asked quietly. Jacob looked very directly at his father. "Sir, I took her left hand and held it up ... I ran my finger around her left ring finger and said 'Thus far and no farther.'" Linn nodded. "She didn't like that, sir. I believe she wanted me to take her to a motel and sire a whole herd of young in one night." "But you didn't." "No, sir." "And her reaction?" "She was not happy, sir. I took her home and damn neart had to run the heater, 'twas so frosty cold from her side of the car." Shelly was silent, her eyes were tracking left, tracking right, as she considered what she was hearing. "Jacob, did you do the right thing?" Linn asked bluntly. "Yes, sir," Jacob said firmly. "I did the right thing." "Tell me what you did." "I took her home, sir. We did not pass go, we did not collect two hundred dollars, I had her out to a nice restaurant and we had a good meal, and then we danced, and we got back in the car and things just went to hell." "I see." "I reckon I just blew my chances with her from now to forever." "Could be," Linn agreed, "or now she knows you aren't going to throw her in the sack first chance you get. Don't count her out just yet, just ... give her room." "I'll give her from here to Missouri, sir, and welcome to it." "Most young men would jump at such an opportunity." Jacob shook his head. "I intend to sire a herd, sir, just not yet, and not without a ring on her finger." Jacob's words carried the ring of certainty. Linn was both sympathetic, and understanding: he, too, knew what it was to be rejected by a girl who wanted more than he was willing to give. "There's more to her than just tonight, sir," Jacob said slowly. "You taught me to listen to what's under the words, what's the story behind what I'm hearing. I'm thinking there's a reason she's ... the way she is." "Likely so," Linn agreed quietly. Jacob shook his head, staring at the opposite wall as if seeing it replay all over again. "I did the right thing," he almost whispered, then he looked at his father. "Why do I feel like such a damned fool?" "For the same reason I felt that way, Jacob. You did the right thing and it just didn't work out." Jacob took a long breath, nodded. "Yes, sir." It was most of a week later when the Sheriff was approached by a man who had a daughter. He said he was most impressed by Jacob's gentlemanly behavior. As the Sheriff told his wife that night, the daughter was upset after her date, and confessed to her mother that she'd been too eager, and Jacob hadn't, and she'd just ruined things forever and her world was devastated and she wished she could lay down and die, and in the course of motherly conversation, Jacob's having conducted himself as a gentleman in the finest sense of the word, became apparent: the father told Linn that children learn by watching their parents, and Jacob had to have learned from his father, and if the word of a fellow parent meant anything, thank you for being the gentleman your son chose to pattern himself after. Husband and wife went to sleep, as they usually did, holding hands: uncharacteristic for them, they did not sleep for some time, but stared at the nighttime ceiling in their bedroom. Finally Linn took a long breath, blew it out and muttered, "Well, at least I did that much right," and Shelly rolled up on her side, laid her arm across Linn's chest, laid her cheek into his shoulder. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, you did."

NAMESAKE It wasn't much of a saloon but it was enough. The dirt was cut off level and two empty kags set up, planks set across the upturned barrels: two more kags, two more planks behind, and the big heavy canvas tent had shelves, and the shelves had jugs and bottles and a half dozen mismatched tin cups set upside down over the necks of the half dozen mostly full bottles. The barkeep rejoiced silently when he dealt for a kag of beer, then another: someone give him two heavy glass beer mugs and he spent time polishing them simply to be seen polishing a genuine glass mug, clear out here so far from civilization God Almighty would have to lay pipe or dig a ditch to flow in some religion! Men came, men went: the barkeep learned his trade from the ground up, he learned with no bad habits to un-learn, and he was making a little coin, and he realized he'd struck on a means to a profit that didn't involve pushing cattle, swinging a pick, turning a shovel or cutting sod. There was a hole in his apron, and a bulge behind it: he wore the apron loose, so he could get to the holstered revolver under it: once, and once only, he'd had to shoot a man to keep him from stealing his honest wages, and he'd been obliged to shoot through the apron, and from that day on, the word was that you didn't try anything on this fellow, he'd shoot you as soon as hand you a drink. The man was honest; the man was fair; the man had a good grade of whiskey, and he made arrangements to get more, and did. The hitch rail outside was neither fancy nor over large: two posts and a cross member, neither well dressed, to the left of the tent's entrance, a second on the right. Thanks to the presence of a saloon, other travelers stopped, and set up to sell to other folks passing through: in time, there would be buildings, there would be the amenities that grow up with any settlement, but for now it was a sizable tent, it was two wagons, and it was the only thing to catch the eye on a vast and featureless prairie. Men arrived late one morning, a half dozen of them, riding hard: the wind was picking up, the clouds were low, threatening, and the barkeep, not familiar with the weather hereabouts, was surprised when a man half his age rode into the tent -- rode into his saloon! -- he dismounted, looked very directly at the barkeep and said, "Lay those bottles flat on the ground and cover 'em with whatever cloth goods you've got. We're taking your tent loose. We're going to lay it down flat on the ground and stand our horses on it. God willing, we won't all be lost!" -- he turned, mounted, and rode out. The tent began to shake as men loosed the guy lines: the barkeep, considering his emporium was being collapsed with or without his let-be, started grabbing bottles and laying them down. He laid them between the kegs, then placed planks above and below, padded his precious product as best he could: willing hands disassembled his bar (the work of eight and one half seconds), the poles inside were pulled loose and laid down as well, and the Great Canvas Saloon flattened itself to the earth. The barkeep joined men and livestock and laid down flat on the canvas as the sun disappeared, as the wind picked up: men soothed restless horses: most had been Cavalry mounts, these folded their legs and laid down when given that command with touch and with voice, and lay still, restless and unhappy but obedient, as they and their riders held canvas down against the wind. The young man who'd ridden into the saloon came over, crouched, holding his hat on his head as the wind picked up, as the wind him him hard enough to stagger him: he flattened himself on the canvas beside the barkeep, grinned. "You ever see a twister, mister?" he yelled -- he had to yell, the wind was getting genuinely fierce -- the barkeep shook his head, squinting against windblown chaff and debris. The young man thrust a chin: "Look yonder!" The younger man grinned as the barkeep stared, mouth open, as he spontaneously uttered words that could either be a profanity, or a most sincere prayer. A little girl in a frilly, calf-length frock and bright, Kentucky-blue eyes, and a smile that could absolutely melt the cold heart of a cold marble statue, walked up to a man with dirt under his fingernails and calluses on his hands. "Mits-ter?" she asked. "Could you help me?" Hard men generally have soft hearts, and this fellow did. He went down on one knee and removed his cover. "Yes, ma'am?" he said with a voice that usually uttered language of less than a Christian nature. He was surprised at the gentleness of his own reply, but then it had been long and long again since he'd seen a woman, let alone a pretty little girl! "I'm too short to saddle my horsie," she said. "Could you saddle him for me pweeeze?" A hard man, who'd spent the past week swearing at cattle, profaning men and blaspheming at horses, a man whose knuckles bore the marks of multiple encounters with other peoples' cheekbones, a man whose conversation with his fellow man was usually strongly flavored with sulfur, smiled just a little and nodded. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "I can do that." He looked up as the stock ramp was set, as a good looking Appaloosa gelding came flowing out of the railroad stock car and noisily down the ramp, as the spotty horse saw the little girl, came head-bobbing over and stopped, tail-slashing and patient, looking at a dusty cattleman and a pretty little girl. Angela caressed the long, equine nose that came down to snuff at her. "This is Mis-ter Blit-ster," she said in the endearing half-lisp of a little girl who was trying hard to Sound Very Grown Up when she talked: "Daddy said when he wuns, he just goes a-blisterin' along!" Men who knew horses assessed the gelding and the child with knowing and appraising eyes. Hard-muscled men felt their faces soften, just a little, at the pretty little girl who laughed with delight when this profane, hard-knuckled cattle puncher took her around the waist and swung her into her saddle. He took an extra moment, made sure her stirrups were to her satisfaction, then patted her Appaloosa on the neck. "T'ank you, mits-ter," the blue-eyed little girl said, her smile like sudden sunshine on a mean old rainy day. A callus-handed, dirty-nailed, grinning cattleman touched his frayed, sweat-stained hat brim. A little girl and her good-looking Appaloosa gelding turned and trotted away from the depot, headed purposefully up the street and on out of town. Not fifteen minutes later, another train, a special: this was barely stopped when the stock car door rumbled open, when an Appaloosa stallion launched out and landed, thrusting immediately into a gallop, followed by a truly huge, shining black horse, a horse men there had never seen before, only heard of, and that, only as legend: the Appaloosa was saddled, and in the saddle, a man in a well-tailored black suit; atop the genuinely huge black mare, a plain, unadorned black saddle, and in this saddle, a rider, all in severe and unadorned black. Appaloosa stallion and Frisian mare hit the ground, launched immediately into a gallop, pounded up the street the way the happy little girl and her spotty saddlemount had gone. Curious men drifted over, looked in the stock car of this newly-arrived special as the ramp was replaced, slid in, half expecting something else to emerge like a Jack-in-a-Box. Nothing did. The engine whistled, two short quick tweets, eased ahead to the water tower. A Baldwin steam engine is a thirsty creature, and this one needed a drink. Rain sluiced across the landscape in silvery sheets, then drove almost horizontally with the wind: hail rattled on waxed and oiled canvas, hailstones the size of a man's thumbnail peppered men and horses -- enough to sting, not big enough to cause damage -- the barkeep saw more than one man throw his coat over a horse's head, lay beside his saddlemount with one arm across his horse's neck, talking to the creature, and he marveled as an Easterner does, at this incredible affinity between man and beast. One horse lay as if dead -- that is, if the dead trembled: this horse was black, a gelding, terrified, paralyzed with its fear: it lay as if afraid to move, afraid of the voice or the club or the whip that would descend if it did anything at all: indeed, so deep was this black gelding's terror that it was honestly unable to rise, nor even move, save for the uncontrollable shivering of its legs. Willing hands got the saloon tent set back up. It was not easy, it was not cooperative: waxed and oiled canvas, while water proofed, is heavy, slick, hard to grip, hard to hold onto: still, with effort and with profanity, it was raised, every man there -- save one -- helping raise it to its former height, breadth and glory. Lines were stretched, drawn taut: some were tied, some had wooden adjusters for tension: a few of the men were skilled at setting up a large military tent, and their skill showed: others, willing, were less skilled, but learned quickly: barrels were set back up on end, planks returned across their tops, the barrels were twisted and settled into a more level posture, and the grateful barkeep began pouring libations by way of thanks. The flaps were thrown open, as much for light as to get circulation in to dry out the interior; they were set up on the footprint sheltered by collapsed canvas when the rainstorm hit, but it was still damp: front and back flaps were both open and there was a good breeze: as often happens after a storm, the sun came out, bright, shining, setting the grass a-sparkle as hot and thirsty sunlight drank the fat, shining raindrops. Men laughed and swore and lied outrageously with one another, telling tales of twisters they'd seen, or ridden, or heard of: the barkeep was not at all reluctant to dispense drinks with a free hand: he had more, outside, buried to keep it hidden, keep it from theft or breakage: he looked up and men turned their heads as shadows interrupted the sunlight at the main entrance. Two figures, black against the brightness: one flanked left, one flanked right, no longer silhouetted: black figures against shadowed walls, suddenly invisible. In their place, a much smaller figure. A little girl strutted into this grassland saloon, looking around: her hair hung in long finger-curls, she was a apple-cheeked child, the kind that seems to wear a perpetual smile: voices stopped, men turned, every set of eyes was on this most unusual occupant of a rude and primitive establishment. She planted her knuckles on her belt and looked around like she owned the place, her head tilted a little to the side. "I am looking for a horsie thief," she declared loudly. Men looked at one another; a few chuckled. "A horsie thief stolded my Daddy's black Outlaw-horsie an' I'm angwy," she said frowning at the chuckles -- which only brought more laughter -- she stamped her foot and declared, "Dat's not funny!" "And whattaya gonna do when you find this ... Horsie Thief?" a voice sneered. Something black flowed quickly toward the sneer, something with a young cannon thrust out of a voluminous black coat: the twin barrels of a cut-down twelve-bore floated in the still air, held by a black-gloved hand. In later years, an old man would offer the studied opinion that few things would freeze the evildoer in his tracks any faster than the quiet click, click of a shotgun's hammers coming to full stand: as this deadly punctuation came from a different direction than this menacing figure in black, the occupants were inspired to a great stillness, a dread anticipation of what was to transpire. "We hang horse thieves," a voice said -- the voice came from behind the shortened shotgun -- and between the sound of a pair of scattergun hammers standing to attention, and the sound of a woman's voice declaring lawful intent -- one would be hard pressed to say which was the more surprising, or in that moment, the more deadly. Angela Keller sat at her Daddy's desk, reading intently: across the room, paging slowly through an equally ancient work by another author, her father looked up, smiling the way a father will when he sees his darlin' daughter absolutely absorbed in something: she was leaning forward a little, her expression spoke of concentration -- of intense concentration -- occasionally her head would nod, almost imperceptibly, as if an idea bloomed, a realization clarified, or as if she were transported there through the magic of black ink on paper, and she'd become a character in the adventure she was reading. Angela Keller, the honestly beautiful daughter of Linn and Shelly Keller, looked up, blinked, took a breath: it took her a moment to rise from the ocean in which she'd been immersed, and to realize she was in a different world entirely than she had been a few moments ago. "Must be a good one," Linn said quietly. Angela batted her bright, Kentucky-blue eyes and smiled -- she had her mother's smile, the kind that could melt the heart of a carved marble statue. "I was reading about my namesake," she said softly. "Read on, darlin'," Linn encouraged quietly, and returned to the words of a different, but most interesting, author. Angela led the way out of the tent. She untied the black horsie -- not the great big black one, but the black horsie that ruckled greeting at her when she approached, the gelding that had shivered, paralyzed with fear as the storm raged over them -- the gelding lowered his head, draped it over the little girl's back, tame as a pet. Dark clouds were returning, low and menacing, but without the wind that preceded the just-passed storm. Angela led it up to the men who'd come out of the tent. Hard and pale eyes watched the horse as it was led from man to man, until the horse showed signs of fear: the fellow was separated from the others, marched a little distance away. "What're you goin' to do with him?" a voice asked. Jacob Keller turned, his eyes hard: "Horse thievin' is a hangin' offense," he said quietly. "You gonna hang him?" Jacob's eyes were as hard and unforgiving as his voice. "He stole my little sister's horse, so I'll leave that up to her." Jacob laid the shotgun back over his shoulder, barrels toward the sky. "Angela?" Pretty little Angela Keller looked at the miserable fellow standing twenty feet from them, looked back at the man who asked the question. "I will use my Magic Finger on him." Men looked at one another, not at all certain what a Magic Finger might be, especially one from a little girl. The horse thief's nerve broke, and he ran. He ran as will a desperate man, as will the evildoer when he realizes the hand of Justice is about to clamp tight about the back of his neck, as he realizes he's to be fit with a hemp necktie and, thus attired, introduced to a certain set of pearly gates. Clouds were moving fast, clouds were low and menacing: men felt the hair on their arms stand up, there was the odor of ozone: horses' tails began to fray, to spread, to float, as the lowering clouds drew a dark curtain over the sun's hospitable face. The wind started up again, cold and damp, and Angela Keller raised a finger, then threw her arm down as if casting a stone, or throwing a stroke with a blacksnake whip. "BAD MAN! DEAD!" she shouted. Outlaw-horse threw its head away from the lightning-bolt as it seared across two-thirds of the sky overhead, as it forked and blazed and then drove down to earth, and it seemed to every man present that this little girl had the power to call fire from the heavens: whether it was because of her action, or in spite of it, the horse thief disappeared, detonated, in a combination of immolation and steam explosion, in one blazing-bright lightning bolt. Angela Keller turned and walked up to her Outlaw-horsie. "Come on horsie," she called in a little girl's innocent voice, and a shining black gelding paced up to her, laid his long jaw across her back.

CONTRARY AND HARD HEADED The maid drew back as Dr. John Greenlees, physician and surgeon, strode into Linn's study, hand extended: the pale eyed old lawman shoved his own hand out, his grin quick, broad, natural: the two were old friends, with bonds forged in wartime and since: each had occasion to trust the other with his very life, and had, more times than a few. Linn raised an eyebrow, Dr. Greenlees raised two fingers: there was heard the clink of heavy glass as a cut-glass stopper was twisted from a decanter of California brandy, as distilled sunshine was gurgled into two voluminous, delicate balloons, as two men hoist their delicate glass snifters, swirled the shining payload, took an appreciative sniff of distilled wine, then closed their eyes and drank. It was an old, established ritual with the two. They'd shared small campfires burning on muddy ground, they'd shared the last of their rations, the last of their flask, they'd shared memories and each did his best to keep the other from going insane with the horrors they'd both experienced: in the years that followed, the pale eyed Sheriff saw to it that his dear friend established a medical practice, and with judicious investments and some honestly phenomenal luck, he'd raised funds enough that he and Doc stood side by side as the stones were set and their little hospital was built. Linn raised the decanter, raised an eyebrow: Doc frowned, turned, sat. Linn eased the tapered glass stopper with the fancy cut glass head back into the decanter, drained the last of his brandy, set the delicate glass brandy balloon aside, took his own seat. Only Doc's quick eye -- and the intimate knowledge of his friend -- would have been able to discern the slights, the tricks, Linn used to appear normal. "Your back?" he asked quietly. Linn smiled wryly, with only half his mouth -- truth be told, it was more grimace than smile -- he nodded, slowly. "Not much we can do for a sway back," Doc said slowly, "that you're not already doing." "Doin' that much right, at least," Linn muttered. "Were you a mere mortal," Doc said, frowning, "you'd long ago be crippled up and riding a Bath chair." Linn waited until Doc downed the last of his brandy, set his empty snifter on a handy table. "Doc," Linn said slowly, "I'm as lazy as the next man, but I never seen fit to put a chair in a bath tub!" Doc lowered his head and glared at the retired Sheriff, knowing full well Linn couldn't see his expression clearly. "You know what I mean." "I know what you mean." "Was you anyone else I'd prescribe time in the saddle to strengthen that back. Hell, you're a year and more retired and you're in the saddle as much as you ever were!" "Reckon so," Linn said slowly, shifting to try and find a less uncomfortable position. "Your leg still goin' numb?" "Yep, still." "More often, less often?" "About the same. If I get up and work around some it seems to straighten out." Doc nodded. "Anything particular help it?" Linn frowned, considering. "Twistin'," he said finally. "I was aggravated and got to throwin' wood from one place to another rather'n pack it over and stack it. I'd twist when I threw the chunks and that helped." "Hmp." Doc nodded. "Reckon if it works, keep at it." Doc knew his medical admonition was not necessary, it was more out of habit, but he said it anyway. "I'm gettin' my affairs squared up, Doc." "You figure on dyin' on me?" "Hell, Doc, I'm closer to eighty than I am to eighteen!" Linn grinned. "It don't take a genius to figure I'm ridin' out of here right here directly!" "I know," Doc sighed. "You ain't all that young anymore, Doc. That boy of yours is a right fair medicine man." Doc nodded. "He is that. He's taken over most of my practice, and with my blessing. His hands are young and steady and he's bright, oh he's bright. Knows the old ways, too. Herbs." Linn nodded thoughtfully. "Man ought to know the yarbs," he agreed. " 'Twas all we had when I was a boy at home." "Mine too." They sat in a companionable silence, two old men, comfortable in each other's company: it is a mark of true friendship when two can sit in silence, and be content. Linn spoke first. "Y'know, it's a hell of a note," he said. "Likely it is," Doc replied, "if I knew what was wrote on that note!" Linn chuckled -- Doc saw that quick grin he remembered so well -- and Linn nodded. "I know just a hell of a lot of dead people anymore." Doc waited. "Didn't think I'd fancy towards another woman when Esther died. I was just crushed when she left us." Doc opened his mouth, intending to offer a quiet "I remember," then closed his mouth on the unspoken words. "I ... Doc, I was always sweet on Bonnie." Doc nodded again, a raised eyebrow betraying his surprise. Linn was always a complete gentleman with the ladies; Doc was not surprised that Linn had an interest, but he was surprised with whom Linn had that interest. "She's dead now, her poor husband died of a broken heart two days later." His voice softened. "She was a good woman, Doc." "Yes," Dr. Greenlees agreed quietly. "Yes, she was." "I got kind of sweet on Jeannie," Linn continued, and Doc heard an old sadness slip in under the man's words: "she had that ... oh hell ... apoplexy and never rose from her bed again." Doc nodded again: he'd stood beside his pale eyed friend as Jeannie was buried, not a week ago. Linn looked up, looked across the room. "I have sons, I have grandsons," he said softly. "I've got a whole herd of little ones to spoil. Reckon that keeps me going." He paused. "That, or bein' hard headed and contrary." Doc smiled a little, rose. "My money's on hard headed and contrary," he said as Linn rose as well. Doc came over, stuck out his hand. "I hate to eat alone," he said quietly. "If you don't mind the company of a miserable old widower, you're welcome to have supper with me tonight." Linn took the man's hand, nodded. "Reckon I can stand a miserable old widower if you can stand a hard headed and contrary Sheriff."

CASE CLOSED Grant Johnson was dying. Linn sat beside the man's hospital bed, held his hand. Grant's mother and sister were there earlier; they were exhausted, they needed a bath, a meal, a change of clothes: they'd come when Grant was brought in, and they hadn't left for two days. Linn said he'd sit with him, go get a meal and freshened up, and they thanked him and left. "Glad you're here," the dying man whispered. "Wouldn't be anywhere else," Linn said quietly. "Thank you." Linn squeezed, very gently, by way of reply. The lawman's pale eyes rested on the pink plastic water glass with the bent straw sticking out; perhaps there was some subtle communication, some preternatural knowledge: Grant whispered, "Thirsty." Linn released his old friend's hand, pressed a button on the hospital bed's siderail: the bed hummed, raising the patient to more of a sitting position. Grant felt the straw touch his lip: he drank, drank again, nodded. Linn refilled the glass, set it back on the bedside table. "Confess," Grant whispered. "Go ahead." "I killed Wally-boy." Linn waited. "Your mother took the report," Grant whispered. "Wally died ... drowned in our sewer plant." Linn frowned, thought: it had been some years before, but yes, he recalled the incident, where a self-important, newly-hired municipal manager fell into an operating aeration tank, sank to the bottom, drowned. "I recall," the Sheriff said quietly. "I'd just painted the handrails," Grant whispered, blind eyes staring at the ceiling: diabetes had taken his strength, his eyes, his kidneys, and now it was taking his very life, and nothing medical science could do, to prevent that. Linn waited while Grant gathered his strength, then: "Thirsty." Grant drank another glassful, nodded. Linn refilled the water glass, set it back on the sidetable. "Small man," Grant whispered. "Had himself confused with someone important." "I recall," Linn agreed. "Fitz hated him." "No wonder. Wouldn't let the fire department exercise the hydrants. Lost a house." Linn nodded, remembering the house fire, the lawsuit that followed: Firelands lost that one, had to pay for a new house, furnishings, legal fees, punitive damages ... Wally-boy had been given the very clear understanding, behind closed doors, that he was responsible for a hydrant's failure to function, due to not being exercised with regularity: he'd come out of his meeting with the Mayor and President of Council white-faced and angry, and he'd become even more of a martinet as a result. Few grieved his demise, a week later, when he ended up dead in the bottom of an aquatic version of quicksand. "I just finished the handrails," Grant whispered, his voice weaker: "he came down and raised hell because I hadn't cut grass, because I painted without his telling me to." "Sounds just like him," Linn grunted. "I grabbed his shirt front and pulled hard," Grant wheezed, "and I threw him in that running aeration tank." Linn nodded, then remembered Grant couldn't see his response. "Go on," he encouraged in a gentle voice. "Your Mama came when I called. I told her I couldn't find him, his car was down there and I was afraid he might've gone in the tank -- a safety chain was hanging and I knew I'd fast it up after I finished painting. I shut off the aerators and we did some fishin' and found him." "I was in on the recovery," Linn remembered aloud. "Your Mama called it accidental and the coroner agreed." Linn waited. "I'm dyin', Linn. I'm clearin' off my soul." Linn took his old friend's hand again. "I can forgive nothing," Linn said in a quiet voice, "but God, Who hears our confession, forgives everything. I'd say your account is square now." Grant chuckled, coughed. "You'd make a good chaplain." "I've been told that." "Thirsty," he whispered. Linn stood, turned, picked up the glass, turned back. He frowned, reached over, pressed two fingers into his old and dear friend's neck, then he set the glass of water back on the bedside stand. "Fair winds and a following sea," he said, his voice thickening, then he pressed the nurse call button. Sharon looked up as Linn came through the door with a flat cardboard box tied with string. Sharon wasn't looking at the box of doughnuts. She was looking at the Sheriff's face. Linn carried the doughnuts into the conference room, propped the door open: he picked up his coffee up, filled it, drizzled in a little milk, went into his office and shut the door. The dispatcher and two deputies watched the man, then looked at one another. Inside his office, behind the closed door, Linn opened the bottom right hand drawer of the ancient desk, pulled out a bottle of Old Crud Cutter and a short, squat, heavy-bottom glass: he poured two fingers' worth of something water clear and not over thirty days old. Linn stood, looked at a picture on the wall, a picture that didn't make it into the yearbook: a much younger Linn Keller, almost as tall and just as skinny, holding a blue ribbon in one hand and the cheekstrap of his Appaloosa stallion in the other: beside him, his dear friend since early in their schooling, Grant Johnson, holding a blue ribbon, his arm over the woolly neck of a Rambouillet ewe. Linn raised his glass to the picture, and to the smaller, framed portrait beside, that of a serious faced young man in the white Cracker Jack uniform he hated. He tried to think of something appropriate to say, then he thought of Grant's last words, a confession to a murder. "Sometimes," Linn said thoughtfully, his glass lowering, untasted, "it's best just to leave well enough alone." He looked at the pictures, raised the glass again, for he had the right words to say. "Case Closed."

This one haunts me. It brings something to mind I can't bring myself to write. Much of what I have in Firelands comes from something I either did, or was involved in, in one way or another. This one, when I heard it, drained the color from my face like squeezing red ink out of an eyedropper. Too many memories.

Popeye adopted me! It wasn't the other way around! Popeye is a senior dog, he's like me -- old, fat and tired -- he is the best boi!

FAST, AND GOOD A young man in a black suit and a young woman in a long dress walked slowly, holding hands. Not twenty hours earlier, they'd stood on a high ledge on a Colorado mountainside, they'd strolled through the Firelands museum, they'd explored the museum's library: Jacob already had the contents of his father's library scanned, and thanks to Marnie, everything -- display and reference, book, folder and computer file -- was also scanned and stored electronically. With his new wife's honest fascination with Firelands' past, his copying these scans and bringing them home with him, would guarantee Ruth could indulge her new interest without difficulty. As soon as he taught her how to run a computer. Jacob shook hands with his father, hugged his mother, went down on one knee and gathered a double armful of younger siblings to him: he rose, took his wife's hand: they'd stepped through the iris that appeared in his father's study, and once through, the elliptical portal disappeared as if it never was, and both Linn and his wife agreed that the house was suddenly a little emptier for their absence. Jacob and Ruth stepped through the iris, into the smoothed-stone corridor outside the Sheriff's quarters. Jacob looked at the hand lettered sign hanging beside the door -- Pale Eyes Peacekeepers Inc. -- and grinned: it was a new addition, it hadn't been there before he and Ruth departed for their few days back home. Jacob touched the annunciator as the doorway slid open. Marnie wore her McKenna gown and a delighted smile: she hugged Jacob, then Ruth, drew them inside -- "Come in, come in, this is your house, not mine, everything's taken care of, the report's on your desk and I didn't break any arms or legs this time!" "The ... report?" Jacob asked carefully. "Murderer came at me with an ax," Marnie shrugged. "Cause of death was terminal insanity as manifested by trying to kill me." "That's insanity, all right," Jacob agreed. Marnie turned to Ruth. "Did he bore you with his war stories?" Ruth blinked, surprised. "No, actually," she admitted. "I was too busy learning about ... home." Marnie smiled, winked. "Get him to tell you about Angela reading about a long-ago Angela blowing up the outhouse so the Slimy Monster from the Sulfur Crick wouldn't reach up and grab her." "Oh?" Ruth looked at her husband, raised her eyebrows. "An old family secret?" Jacob laughed. "No, 'twas a mistake, and I didn't make it!" he declared. "Old Pale Eyes had a little girl named Angela, and her older brother Jacob told her the Slimy Monster from the Sulfur Crick lived under the outhouse and was going to grab her sometime when she used it, so she stole one of her Daddy's sticks of blasting powder and a couple Lucifer matches and my ancestral namesake got her around the waist right after she lit the fuse, heaved that stick of powder down into the much and hollered 'Take that you mean old mont-ster!' " -- Jacob shifted his weight, grinned. "And you told your little sister Angela the same thing." Jacob nodded slowly. "After I read it in Pale Eyes' Journal, but ... yes. Yes, I did." "And your little sister Angela ...?" "She didn't use blasting powder." "Oh?" Ruth's tone was that of a schoolteacher, wringing a confession from a reluctant schoolboy. "She used a stick of high test dynamite." Ruth looked at Marnie, puzzled, mouthed the word "Dynamite?" and Marnie, grinning wickedly as only a co-conspirator can, raised a finger and nodded. "I got Angela around the waist and I got her around the corner of a shed before she went boom." "Boom," Ruth repeated skeptically. Jacob nodded. " 'Twas in such poor shape after the kaboom that Pa burnt what was left and built a new one in its place." "Angela," Ruth said, folding her arms and giving her husband a speculative look. "Innocent little baby sis Angela," Jacob nodded. "Because you told her there was a monster that was going to grab her." "Yyyep." Ruth looked at Marnie, smiling just a little. "I rather like Angela," she said thoughtfully. "She didn't say two words while we were in Firelands, but she was quietly working with her mother to make my visit the best it could be." "That's her, all right," Jacob grinned. "A little sister that will use explosives to preserve her virtue," Ruth said thoughtfully. "How old was she?" Jacob looked at Marnie, frowned: he looked away, looked back. "Five, maybe?" Ruth released Jacob's arm, took Marnie's, turned her: the two women paced deeper into the Sheriff's quarters, their heads inclined to one another, the way women will when discussing matters of intimacy. "Madam Ambassador," Ruth said quietly, "do I understand correctly that children you have, male and female?" "Yes, that's correct." "Tell me, Madam Ambassador, do you tell them stories from home?" "Often," Marnie admitted. "Have you told them about this ... Slimy Monster from Sulfur Crick?" "Jacob already has." "And has it caused ... difficulties?" Marnie laughed, patted Ruth's gloved hand with her own. "He was smart enough to warn them that it only lives under outhouses, and they didn't know what an outhouse was until he explained it." "You don't have outhouses." "No." Ruth turned, lifted her chin. "Jacob?" she called. Jacob was standing behind his desk, sorting through the files Marnie had out for his inspection. He looked up. "Dearest?" "Jacob, remind me to keep explosives out of our children's reach." "Yes, dear," Jacob said absently, returning to the open folder on the desk before him. Marnie sighed, shook her head. "He's just like his father," she whispered, taking Ruth's arm and heading towards the door: "I just happen to know where there's some lovely oolong with our name on it." Ruth wasn't at all sure what oolong was, but as she was still learning, she smiled a little and walked with Marnie. Jacob Keller sat at his desk, one elbow on the green desk blotter, his forefinger across his mustache, frowning a little as he studied the report. It could honestly be said he had no idea just how much he looked like his father in that moment. Sheriff Jacob Keller, just returned home with his beautiful bride, nodded a little as he read his sister's account of a rare but troubling incident that required her immediate and vigorous intervention. Jacob called up the surveillance, watched from one camera's angle, from another, re-read the report. "Little Sis," he said aloud, "I'm just awful glad you're fast and good with that Smith!"

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING Jacob Keller considered the ax head, calculated just how he wanted to stone it: he was a man who took care of his tools, and so he sat, ax handle laid over his shoulder, the ax head on a chunk between his boots: he took the round, palm-sized stone he used for the task, began to work the metal, establishing the line he wished to work. He didn't look up as his wife came past with the chamber-pot: she was a modest woman, and to acknowledge her necessary trip to the outhouse would have been less than entirely proper. There is a wonderful freedom between husband and wife, and at times, a ribald freedom at that, but so far as possible, Jacob considered his wife a Lady, and treated her accordingly, and he wasn't going to comment on her trip to the outhouse. He looked up and grinned at his son Joseph: the lad was old enough to get into trouble, though with his short legs, he had to work at it -- He's takin' three steps to the yard, Jacob thought, and grinned again, for he heard the words in his father's voice, in that warm and affectionate voice grandfathers use in such moments. Joseph was busy climbing the fence. Jacob was of no mind to call him down. Annette might, but she was tending her own details; like as not she was already taking her ease in the outhouse and would not want to be interrupted by a fatherly admonition, nor by a juvenile protest. Stone whispered over steel; Jacob's abrasive strokes were long -- he was using what was becoming called a broad ax, rather than the smaller bit axes that were becoming more popular -- this one was hand forged, not store bought, and Jacob himself shaped and fitted the handle, wedged it tight, and used it regularly. Jacob's hand still gripped the round sharpening stone as he jerked his hand away from the blade, as he looked hard to his left: Annette came a-boilin' out of the outhouse, swatting at something invisible, at least invisible to Jacob -- her foot tangled with the bail of the dropped combinet -- Annette slung it a surprising distance with an impatient kick and she backed away, glaring at the outhouse as if it were a personal enemy. Jacob turned his attention back to the ax blade. Long, even strokes, patiently done; an old timer once told Jacob he spent as much time sharpening his ax as cutting wood, and the old man was a timber cutter all of his life, and one time on a bet he drove a stake in the ground and felled a tree right atop the stake. Jacob was still young when he saw this, but he was also quick, and he wagered a sum on the old man's skill and came away richer by sixbits. He could've wagered a twenty dollar gold piece, but that would be a sizable sum for someone to lose to a stripling, and Jacob knew he was safer to win a small sum than a great one, and so his bet was wisely modest. All this went through his mind as his wife came stomping past him, headed back into the house. She came back with a precious commodity -- a newspaper -- nothing was wasted; this newspaper was well read and could be up to six months old, and Jacob was willing to bet Annette found herself a wasp nest, and was determined to burn it out. He didn't think any more of it: the edge was to his satisfaction, and he had wood to split. He looked over at the fence, saw between the boards a little leg kind of floating past, and he grinned again, just before he swung the ax and drove it into a sawed chunk and split it cleanly. Joseph was astride that Texas long horn, a little boy on a great big beef, and as two halves of a cloven chunk clattered to the ground, Jacob's ear drew back a little to hear the happy laughter of a little boy. Jacob was lean and Jacob was strong and Jacob knew how to read grain: he took pride in his skill at splitting wood, and it wasn't until Annette crossed just at the field of his vision, not until she'd busied herself with something out of his sight, not until her startled screech, did he drop the edge lightly into a splittin' chunk to hold it -- he straightened -- he looked -- Jacob blinked, raised an eyebrow. Annette was backing away from the outhouse, distress on as much of her face as he could see -- her hands were cupped up around her mouth -- she looked at Jacob, big-eyed, shocked, scared, then looked back at their outhouse, which by now was starting to burn rather vigorously. Jacob strode over to Annette, seized her by the elbows, turned her to face him, pale eyes busy: she looked at him with honest fear, for she'd never committed such an unbelievable act before -- She'd just set fire to the outhouse he'd built -- She'd never seen him turn his temper toward her -- Annette squeezed her eyes shut, half-afraid of a hard-swung palm -- Jacob raised his good right hand. He did not raise it in anger. Jacob brushed a curl of hair away from her face, his other arm around her now, drawing her close. "Darlin'," he said his voice serious, "did you get burnt?" Annette opened her eyes, more surprised than relieved, then profoundly relieved when she saw the worry on Jacob's face instead of the dark anger her imagination painted there a moment before. She looked at the outhouse and wailed "I've burned up our kaibo!" and collapsed into her husband's shirtfront, weeping like a heartbroken child. Jacob's ears reddened a little. Jacob's face reddened as well. The corners of his eyes tightened, he started to lift the corners of his mouth, then he threw his head back and abandoned himself to laughter, his arms firm around his sorrowing bride: as she wept, he laughed, and the harder she cried, the harder he laughed: Annette twisted away from him, glared at her husband with surprise, with distress, and with anger, and then she hauled off and hit him in the chest with her dainty little hand. Jacob Keller, known practitioner of the less-than-gentle art of Manual Pacification, responded to his wife's fisted attack: he dropped back half a step, planted his palm on her forehead: Annette snarled, frustrated, swung repeatedly as Jacob held her at arm's length, and the more Jacob laughed, the madder Annette got, and their outhouse ablaze behind her: finally, when she showed signs of winding down, Jacob bundled her up in his arms, turned so she could see the kaibo -- he turned just as it collapsed in on itself, with a shower of sparks and a hissing crackle -- "Darlin'," he declared, "if this is the worst that happens to us, we're in pretty good shape!" Jacob released his embrace, stood with his arm around his wife's shoulders, watched as their well-built little outhouse continued to reduce itself to its component elements. "I never liked that little bitty outhouse anyhow," he said. "I always wanted a two-holer." He bent down, kissed Annette's forehead. "How'd the damned thing come to ketch fahr anyway?" He felt Annette giggle, and then sniffle, and she hung her head. "I lit the newspaper to try and burn out that wasp nest," she said, "and I must've kicked the coal oil can over, for when they tried to sting me I jumped back and dropped the burning twist!" Jacob looked down his wife's front, alarmed: he squatted, seized her hemline, pulled it off the ground, ran it quickly through his hands, stood. It was one of the only times Annette ever saw her long tall husband look anywhere near scared. "Darlin'," he said quietly, his voice deeper and very serious, "I know what it is when a woman's dress catches fire. If you were anywhere near when that spilt coal oil lit off, you were just awful close to gettin' burnt plumb up!" Jacob took his bride behind the knees and under her shoulder blades, picked her up, carried her quickly toward the house. He had to do something to burn off the memory of seeing that exact thing happen, and not one damned thing he could do to keep a girl from burning to death when it did. Out in the pasture, oblivious to the drama between his Pa and his Ma, little Joseph Keller laughed as he surveyed his high and sunlit kingdom from the lofty and powerful throne of his fondest playmate, a genuine Texas longhorn named Boocaffie. Dried wood burns fast, desiccated by altitude and sunlight; what little was left of what had been a well-built (but small) outhouse, collapsed completely, falling into the hole beneath: a shaken wife sipped the tea her concerned husband prepared for her, and a little boy's laughter was heard in the mountains, near a little Colorado town called Firelands.

THE IMPOSSIBLE Acting Sheriff Marnie Keller eased herself back into her old chair, smiling a little: she was once again in her immediately-identifiable, white, Olympic skinsuit, with her old familiar gunbelt around her trim waistline, her engraved .357 in a floral-carved, background-dyed, Jordan holster feeling warm and familiar and very, very welcome. She had no pressing Ambassadorial duties; her brother Jacob, who'd been recruited as Sheriff, without Earth's knowledge or let-be, was away with his new bride -- she'd understood he was taking his pretty new wife home to Colorado, to show her off to his family, to show off his Shining Mountains, but most of all to introduce her to their horses. Jacob's wife was a horsewoman, and from all accounts, a good one: Marnie took a long breath, sighed it out, allowed her a moment's reminisce, both for the days when she ran, wild, free, one with her saddlemount -- no longer horse and rider, but one magical creature, riding the wind itself -- she remembered when the Confederate Ambassador, by way of apology, arranged a detour to a particular planet, to a particular continent, to a particular region, where Marnie was introduced to a herd of horses, where she swung up bareback and rode, laughing like a child, delighting in a horse that was pleased to have a rider who knew how a horse should be ridden. Marnie, blinked, sighed: horses were not to be had, not here on Mars: oh, they might arrange pasture and dirt, grasses and room enough to ride, but her husband had written multiple monographs on the subject of the difficulties of acclimatizing to the lesser gravity, and its several complications: no, Marnie would leave horses on their own worlds. She blinked at the rapid tattoo of knuckles on her door, then the sounder: she rose, hit the release. "Sheriff," a young man blurted, "we gotta problem!" Marnie's jaw thrust out and she pressed a button on her belt-box: her visor lowered, she was breathing on internal air, she was surrounded not only by her skinsuit with the embossed, gold, six-point star on her left breast, she was also surrounded by an invisible, but quite formidable, protective energy barrier, courtesy the Confederate technology she'd been given. Jacob Keller nodded his approval as his bride saddled a particular black gelding. "Pa named that one Outlaw," Jacob nodded as he slung his own saddle into place. Outlaw-horse was busy rubber-lipping some red-and-white-striped peppermint candy wheels from Ruth's flat palm. "Outlaw?" she queried, caressing Outlaw's long jaw, feeling as much as hearing the happy crunch of equine teeth on the minty treat. "He's anything but," Jacob grinned. "He's fast, and no mistake, but he's not at all vigorous." "You don't ... use a bit?" "None of our saddle stock do." Jacob grinned at his bride, swung into saddle leather. "Don't worry, Outlaw's used to it!" "Oh, Outlaw is used to it," Ruth muttered. "Jacob Keller, if you're going to pull a fast one on your wife, you'll feel the wrath of Brian Boru down around your ears!" Outlaw's ears swung, listening; he stood for the woman's mount -- she was in the saddle with one easy move -- Jacob looked at his wife, now at his eye level. "I'm not sure where to take you," Jacob said thoughtfully. "There are so many places we could go." "Then let's start at the beginning," Ruth declared. Jacob frowned, considered. "That ... could be the Sheriff's office, or the Silver Jewel Saloon." "I've read mention of the Silver Jewel. Your father's collection of Journals is something I would love to devour!" "You and my Gammaw," Jacob laughed. "Gammaw?" Jacob laughed again. "One of the girls -- when she was little, I think it was Marnie -- she couldn't say 'Grandma' -- it came out 'Gammaw,' and it stuck." "I see." "An overview is helpful. I like to study a map when I'm new to a territory." Jacob's expression was thoughtful, then he grinned -- Ruth saw something almost reckless in that grin, and she knew Jacob was going to do what he'd told himself he wouldn't. He spun his stallion. Ruth watched as the spotty horse bunched and thrust and drove a hole in the very atmosphere, as man and beast melded into one long, lean arrow of flesh and iron-shod hooves. There was no gate where he was headed. Ruth's smile was grim. Her brothers had done the same thing with her, only she'd been on a placid old mare. "Jacob said you can run," she muttered, then shouted joyfully, "Outlaw, GO!" Outlaw-horse did not have to be told twice. Shelly stood at the back door, drying her hands on the dishtowel that lived on her shoulder when she was in the kitchen: she felt Angela beside her, ran her arm around her tall daughter's shoulders. "I was afraid this would happen," she sighed, then she laughed, her arm tightening as Jacob and Apple-horse sailed with invisible wings over the whitewashed board fence, Ruth but a length behind, following the exact trajectory as her swift-riding husband. "She's done that before," Angela said -- a statement, not a question. "I suppose she has," Shelly sighed. "Well, let's make sure supper is cooperating, shall we?" Marnie ducked as something slammed into the bulkhead beside her: her eyes went pale and she felt her flesh tighten over her cheekbones. She took a quick step the other direction, getting a wall to her back: a quick left-and-right -- staring, shocked colonists, two men on the ground in pain, one holding a deformed arm, the other curled up, retching, a gaping wound in his skull, and Marnie knew the man was dead, he just hadn't quit breathing yet. The culprit looked at her, wild-eyed, raised some kind of a tool on a shaft -- in his hands, with this approach, it amounted to an ax, and right before Marnie's Smith & Wesson drove a hole through the bridge of the attacker's nose, she remembered seeing blood sling off it as he raised it around and charged, screaming wordlessly, eyes wide, insane. The report of a full-house .357 in an enclosed, smooth-rock-walled chamber, is a stunning experience in the truest sense of the word: Marnie's hearing was protected, thanks to the Confederate forcefield she wore, but everyone else had the general sensation of being slapped in the face and both ears at the same time. Everyone there froze. All but the fellow with the ax. He collapsed, hit the ground, and moved no more. Jacob led the way up Cemetery Hill, through the ornate, cast-iron arch, held up with hand-laid stones. Ruth followed, looking around, reasoning that they would likely go into the oldest secion of the cemetery first. Jacob rode up the middle, looking to his left, and Ruth realized she'd already passed three tombstones with her married name on them. Jacob stopped, removed his hat, looked at his bride. Outlaw-horse stopped: Ruth swung her leg over his hind quarters, Jacob clapped his Stetson back on his head and took his wife around the waist: she squeaked a little -- she hadn't intended her controlled descent to be interfered with -- and as usual, her husband's strength surprised her: he had her around the bony prominences of her pelvis, his grip was firm, strong, and she knew she was absolutely safe in his hands. Jacob turned, thrust an arm out, indicated the town laid out below them. "Straight yonder," he said, " is the firehouse. It's a horse house, tall and narrow from where they stabled their team of horses with men and machines. Behind and to the left, there's the depot, and you can see the railroad running --" His bladed hand, out-thrust, indicated the steel rails. "Off to the left -- you can see the church steeple. There's history there, too, if you follow the Journals you'll read about my namesake being shot there when the reavers came to town." "Oh, my," Ruth murmured. Jacob turned and faced his bride squarely, his face serious: he took her hands, looked very directly in her lovely violet eyes. "Darlin'," he said quietly, "I am going to show you some things that may give you pause to consider." "To consider ... what?" she asked carefully. Jacob turned, drew her toward a tombstone. "If you'll take a look at my Gammaw's portrait here --" Ruth bent, studied the image laser engraved on polished quartz. "Now if you were to go down to that end" -- he straightened, thrust an arm out the way they'd come -- "you would find the portrait on yonder stone to be damn neart identical to my Gammaw's. If you look at my sister Marnie, she could be Gammaw's twin, but for the difference in years." "I see," Ruth said faintly. Jacob drew her up the row of gravestones. "That one is Jacob Keller. He's not there, he's buried in France, killed in the First World War." "World War?" Ruth asked, horrified. "First World War?" "Yeah," Jacob said cynically. "Once wasn't good enough, they had to light that fire off a second time, only worse. We don't have any pictures of Joseph as a young man. He was my namesake's son, and he was named for a crib death child Old Pale Eyes and his wife Esther had." "Old Pale Eyes?" Jacob's grin was quick, boyish, teeth even and white under his carefully curled handlebar mustache. "Take a look at this portrait," he said, squatting, "then take a look at me." Ruth stopped, frowned, tilted her head a little: Jacob saw her eyes widen, saw her pupils dilate as she first read the names -- then she studied the portraits -- she looked at the one portrait again, then Jacob. "Marnie could be Gammaw's twin. The stone at the end, Sarah Lynne McKenna, could be as well. I'm the image of my father, and we are both the image of Old Pale Eyes." Ruth rose from her own crouch; Jacob rose as well. "I'm not identical to the man," Jacob said quietly. "Old Pale Eyes had back trouble. I never have. Pa does, Gammaw and her husband decided not to have him operated on. He has a sway back. We figure Old Pale Eyes had a sway back also. I inherited my Mama's good spine." Ruth nodded, considered, looked back over Firelands, laid out below them. They watched as two overhead doors opened, then a third, as headlights, then red-and-white emergency lights seized their attention: in the distance, Jacob heard the rising scream of the chrome-plated, bumper-mounted Federal siren. He looked over at Ruth and instantly felt like an inconsiderate clod. Her world hadn't progressed to the internal combustion engine yet -- their technology had not progressed beyond steam and horse power, and now she was seeing motorized fire trucks, motor vehicles -- He heard an airplane engine, looked up -- Ruth looked up as well -- A yellow-and-black Piper Cub was muttering its way overhead, high enough to look harmless, headed for the Firelands airport on the opposite mountaintop. "Yeah, we have manned flight," Jacob sighed. Ruth gripped Jacob's arm firmly. "Jacob," she said softly, "I am not unaccustomed to new experiences." Ruth frowned a little, as if considering, then pushed forward, through her thoughts. "Be patient with me, dear husband. I do not wish to appear slow." Jacob's eyes were as serious as his voice. "Ruth," he said firmly, "you are one of the most naturally intelligent women I've ever known. You are quick and you are given of a great deal of common sense, which sad to say isn't all that common." He took a deep breath. "Machines are built by men and operate according to the laws God laid down for all things to abide by. All that can be learned. I would not overwhelm you with ... too much." "Jacob," Ruth replied, "my idea of distant was the next town. My idea of large was my father's landholdings. My idea of swift was my father's horses. You've shown me distance unmeasurable, mountains I've seen only as white teeth on the horizon, you've crossed the distance between stars by stepping through an iris that opens and closes at your will and pleasure." Ruth lowered her eyes, chewed on her bottom lip, looked back up. "Jacob, I don't understand much of what I've seen, but I know that I trust you, and I know you are my husband, and I know your family has accepted me as one of their own." Ruth McGillicuddy Keller hugged her husband, laid the side of her head against shirt-front linen, sighed contentedly. She looked up at her pale eyed husband. "Now, my husband, what new marvels and wonders shall we explore next?"

AN IRISH WOMAN A wedding is a fine thing, it is! A man takes a woman for his lawful wedded wife, and he takes his fate in his hands, for as good a woman as she may seem before the knot is tied, she could change and not for the better after the ring goes on her finger and the other, through the groom's nose. A man wants to choose wisely, he does, he wants an help meet, he wants a woman who'll let him be her man, who'll let him protect and provide and who'll let him feel like he's performing his husbandly duties -- but a woman who'll also let him follow his likes. Sean Finnegan stood beside a red-headed, green-eyed, short-tempered saloon cook named Daisy, and he swore to protect and provide and to be the upright and honorable sort she deserved, and all was well with the world, for a short time at least. Celebration is part and parcel of a wedding. Celebration means joy, and music, dance, and drink, and unfortunately among the invited guests was not a certain saint who historically admonished, "In all things, moderation." Jacob leaned against the side of his father's desk, smiling quietly at the look of discovery and delight illuminating his new wife's face: she read intently, she read with focus, she read with her eyes wide and unblinking, one hand holding the Journal open on his father's desktop, the other cupped over her mouth. Jacob watched as his wife's face reddened a little, as she began that little shiver that told him she was about to laugh, and laugh she did: she looked at her grinning husband, blinked a few times, quickly, lowered her hand. "Jacob," she squeaked, trying hard not to laugh as she did, "this sounds like us!" "I thought you'd like that," he said quietly: Shelly, just coming in the room to join them, looked at her son, looked at her new daughter in law: she saw the same wise look on Jacob's face as she'd seen so often on Linn's. It was the first time Mr. Baxter mixed whiskey punch. He started with good ingredients and it was sneaky stuff, went down like Mama's milk and near to blowed the socks right off my feet. It's not often I'll take that much of a tilt of Old Crud Cutter, not when I'm responsible, and as Sheriff I knew there'd be celebratin' and there'd be excess and like as not someone would get their temper up and I'd have to take a hand before Sean did, elsewise he might wind up one off those big fists of his and drive the offending soul through the floor like a man drives a fence post in soft ground. That might tend to cause misunderstandings, y' understand. I never found out how the fight started, but Daisy was right in the middle of it: she'd taken a gun off one fellow, she'd turned it around and had it by the barl and she belted the top strap down over the crown of his hat, hard, he went down and Daisy give a whistle and tossed it towards the stage, where Sarah caught it and dropped it in the nearest spitoon: Sean gave a great, gusting and absolutely joyful laugh, seized two men who were converging on his wife, he grabbed them by the backs of their coats and banged their heads together: Daisy was swinging those sharp knuckled little fists of hers and not doing much good, then Sean took her under the arms and hauled her off the floor and let her kick: he hauled her through thronging humanity like a man will haul a child through floodwater to safety -- she was sizzling like a dunked cat -- "UNHAND ME, DAMN YE! I'M THE GRANDDAUGHTER OF BRIAN BARU AND I'LL KNOCK YER HARD HEAD CLEAR OFF YER SHOULDERS! SET ME DOWN, YA GREAT IRISH OAF!" By this time I realized I'd been drinking too well and not at all wisely: I raised my hand and waved most cheerfully to our red-faced, red-haired, swinging, kicking, swearing, Irish cook, I leaned back against the bar, watched the happy confusion as two or three more fights started, but nothing really serious: folks were considerate enough not to step on those fellows a-layin' on the floor, and I reckon that was a good thing. Sean swung Daisy up onto the stage, then he seized Sarah and hoist her up on stage as well -- "Keep ma bride out'a trouble!" he roared, then he seized the mug of beer from the top of the piano, downed it in one breath, set it back, looked around. "NOW WHERE'S MA FIDDLER!" he roared. Ruth's voice was pleasant, well modulated: she read precisely, clearly, as if reading to a classroom: one could imagine her with a set of pince-nez glasses set well down her nose, standing in front of an old-fashioned classroom: the family Keller listened to her words, their imaginations steered with the inflections of her voice: Ruth McGillicuddy had a gift of reading, where she could take a story, and speak the words, and take the listener by the hand and run them into the story as part of it. Only occasionally did she have to stop, to pause, or to laugh. It might be noted that her face was a remarkable shade of scarlet, the deeper she got into the story, until her cheeks were absolutely aflame, just before she looked over at Jacob. Husband and wife shared a look. Silence hung long in the room, or so it seemed, just before Jacob and his lovely bride absolutely dissolved in piles of helpless laughter. The fiddler was late to the party, but arrive he did, and willing hands propelled him to the stage: he stood beside the piano as Sean bent, spoke quietly into the mountaineer's good ear: he looked up at Daisy, standing impatiently as the curtains finished drawing apart, and she glared at the man and nodded, once, emphatically. Daisy looked at Sarah, and Sarah lifted her skirts and came over beside Daisy. I saw them both dip a little as the fiddler nodded: were it quieter, a man might have heard him pat his foot to set the rhythm, but until his curlyback fiddle began to sing, 'twas far too noisy. It was traditional to play "Turkey in the Straw" for a wedding recessional and I reckon I'm to blame for that -- Sean and Daisy danced down the aisle as husband and wife to that good tune -- but now 'twas a different melody, and had anyone else but Sean or Daisy suggested it, why, I'd expect Daisy to take a frying pan to them the way she did Dirty Sam when he tried to work her as a soiled dove instead of the cook. The tune he played was "The Irish Washerwoman," and Daisy and Sarah danced to it. I'd rarely seen what some call Irish dance before: the arms are held to the side, their heels punish the boards in loud and coordinated time with the music: this was distinctly different from what Esther called Tap Dancing, which we'd seen on our own honeymoon, on that riverboat many years ago when she was nearly drowned and when we had to smuggle me ashore in a coffin, thanks to a false accusation. Daisy and Sarah moved as one soul -- remarkably coordinated, they must've practiced this before -- their rhythm was flawless, their performance, perfection. Many -- most -- could waltz, or close to it; all could square dance; a surprising number joined the dancers in as good an Irish jig as they could manage. Something told me that tune would be played again, for other celebrations, and I was right. Ruth released her touch on the book; she glided over to Jacob, took his arm, turned. "Our wedding," she said, "was much as I'd just read ... there was celebration ..." She looked at Jacob, as if half-fearing, half-hoping he would release a feline from the burlap. Jacob grinned. "Ruth didn't belt someone over the head with a revolver," he said, "but she did tear into a fellow who laid improper hands on her, and before I could get there, she had him bleedin' and backin' up, and I had to hold her back before she tore into him for fair and for serious!" "No," Shelly gasped, her hand covering her smile. "Oh, yes," Ruth laughed. "And that part she read about being the granddaughter of Brian Boru and she was going to tear his meathouse down?" Jacob's grin was broad as two Texas townships as he looked proudly at his wife. "She didn't!" Angela gasped. "Oh, yes," Jacob said, looking proudly at his wife. "She most certainly did!" "Did she dance on stage, Jacob?" one of his younger brothers asked. "She danced," Jacob confirmed, "but there was not a stage." "Did she stiff arm dance?" Angela asked,and Jacob looked proudly at his wife again. "Yes," he said. "She did, and she danced well indeed."

ASSESSMENT The Keller young were ranked for inspection. The youngest, a baby in a carry-basket, was the last presented, as certain infant functions are no respecter of time, timing, or family plans: changed, fed, clean, powdered, she drowsed amid folded and fluffy blankets, flanked by a great black Bear Killer on her left, and a shining, flawless-white Bear Killer on her right. Daughters in dresses and sons in suits, Sunday best as far as the eye could see: Linn nodded to the monitor, pressed a button, stepped away from his desk, came around beside his wife. Shelly laid her hand on his arm, looked at him, smiled. The Iris was as sudden as it was silent: one moment it wasn't there, the next, it was: perhaps a *pop* or a hum, a sizzle and perhaps a crackling nimbus would have added to its dramatic effect, but it simply appeared. A tall, slender lawman stepped through, immaculate in a tailored black suit of severe cut: on his arm, a genuinely beautiful young woman with violet eyes, rich auburn hair and a gown of recognizable, but not quite identifiable, cut: floor length, simple and elegant, it enhanced her natural beauty without overwhelming the wearer's features. Jacob Keller lifted his chin: his face was solemn, his eyes were not. "Sir," he said formally, "may I present my wife, Ruth." He turned to address his wife. "My dear," he said, "this is my family. You will be expected to remember all the names, ages and dates of birth, and there will be a written test in twenty minutes." Ruth gave her pale eyed husband a patient look and said, "Do I beat you now or later?" -- and the solemnity of the moment fled, leaving everyone grinning, laughing and converging: Shelly immediately lay claim to this new creature who presumed to marry HER SON, and Linn and Jacob turned and slipped behind Linn's desk -- with the little girls flowing like a pastel cloud of chicks after the women, and Keller boys looking after the ladies, then following the men. "Gentlemen," Linn said, looking at his sons, "the barn." A group of black-suited, black-booted Keller men filed solemnly out the front door, and retreated to Linn's auxiliary office, out in the barn, used for just such overflow events. Jacob automatically checked the coffee maker, pressed a button: the coffee maker sighed, hissed, and set about running hot water over what Jacob's nose told him were freshly ground beans: Linn opened a cupboard, brought out a box and passed out chocolate chip cookies -- "One to a customer," he admonished, "your Mama will insist on throwin' out the feed bag and we don't want to have a puny appetite!" "No, sir," several young voices agreed, a few peppering their comments with a light spray of cookie crumbs. "Jacob." "Yes, sir." "Does this young woman meet your approval?" Jacob's expresssion was quiet, solemn. "She does, sir." "Boys." The Keller young grew still, silent, wide-eyed and attentive to their pale eyed father's words. "Jacob," he said, "has chosen a wife, and a wife is an important investment." "Yes, sir," came the united chorus. "Jacob." "Yes, sir?" "Have you taken a good look at your bride's mother?" "I have, sir." Linn turned his computer monitor around, pressed a button: a couple, side by side, in a man's book-walled study appeared. "Is this her?" "It is, sir." "Do you find her mother attractive?" "I do, sir." "Boys," Linn said to his young, "when you get sweet on a girl, you want to take a look at her mother. You'll be looking at your bride a lot more than anything else. In twenty years she will look like her mother, so bear that in mind." "Yes, sir," came the juvenile chorus of assent. "Jacob." "Yes, sir?" "Have you eaten her mother's cooking?" Jacob smiled, just a little. "Sir, I have eaten both my wife's cooking and before that, her mother's." "What did you find about her mother's cooking?" "Sir, on her world, the mother of the prospective bride fixes the first meal, which the young couple eat: the next meal is fixed by the bride-to-be, and is partaken of by the bride's father and her intended husband." "And your assessment of her mother's skills and hers?" "They are both quite good, sir." "Boys." "Yes, sir?" Shining, scrubbed-clean young faces regarded their pale eyed father as he pressed a button, as the computer's monitor went dark, as he turned it back around. "Boys, when you get sweet on a gal, set down and eat her Mama's cooking. In twenty years she'll look like her Mama, and she will always cook like her Mama." "Yes, sir." Most of the boys were well too young to take such admonition to heart, but all remembered; his advice was put to use in years to come, and at one time or another, every one of his several sons came to him and told him his advice, in that moment, on that day, was sound indeed.

WELCOME It was well known that one simply did not touch the person of the pale eyed Sheriff. One simply did not do it, unless, of course, one wished to have a variety of body parts damaged, or worse. It was a noteworthy moment in the history of the Firelands Colony, then, when a shouting, triumphant throng closed on the Sheriff and his new wife, as willing hands hoisted both of them off the ground, as this surging, shouting, laughing flood of celebrating humanity brought them off the ground and through the door, down the corridor and into the Great Hall: good men and true hoisted man and wife to shoulder height, charged with happy, noisy abandon up to the stage, passed them off to more associates of similar nature: the crowd drew back, laughing, grinning, putting a gap between the stage and the celebrants. To the left and to the right, ranks of colonists, men and women, celebration and delight in their faces: Jacob and Ruth stood, facing this immense hall, facing the hardy souls who'd left Earth to start a new life far from home, faced their children who knew no other life, faced friends, kindred, colleagues. The stage held two ornate chairs, obviously intended for the new husband and his bride, and on each side of the stage, neatly ranked, something new in the Colony's experience. One individual, directly behind the ornate chairs, raised both arms, hesitated, brought them down. These colonists, these folk who looked at Jacob as one of their own, who looked at his bride as a worthy addition to their Colony, simply because she merited Jacob's approval, did what people have done since time immemorial: They welcomed them home, and they welcomed them home, with song. It might not have been exactly what the happy couple expected. This practiced chorus, this harmonious voice of united celebration, sang loudly, sang in practiced harmony: one bank of singers, a second bank, then a third, on either side of the stage. It has been said that there is no surround sound like standing in the center of a hundred voice chorus. The new Mrs. Ruth Keller certainly felt that way. For all that she'd grown up a child of wealth and privilege, she'd never been between two, three-tier-deep banks of singers. Her chair was very near her husband's: she reached over, took his hand. Jacob looked at his wife, saw bright delight in her eyes: she saw an almost boyish grin on his face, and then they both began to laugh. They laughed, because Jacob Keller, the chief law enforcement officer for the Martian Colonies, and his new wife, were being serenaded in carefully crafted harmony, with a lusty, enthusiastic, "What do y' do with a Drunken Sailor, "What do y' do with a Drunken Sailor, "What do y' do with a Drunken Sailor, "Ear-lye in the Mor-ning!" The moment was captured, and would be shown on the big screens afterward, how their pale eyed Sheriff, a hard but fair man, threw his head back and laughed to hear the welcoming chorus. When they finished, Sheriff Jacob Keller stood, arms wide, Stetson in one hand: he turned, grinning, shouting something: as the applause died down, they heard his words, and his words were taken up as an air-shaking chant: "FID-DLE-ER! "FID-DLE-ER! "FID-DLE-ER!" Sheriff Jacob Keller settled his Stetson on his head, turned to his wife, held out his hands. Her lips traced the word "No," her cheeks pinked, then she laughed and nodded. A grinning young man ran onto the stage, a genuine cherry wood fiddle in one hand, bow in the other: he came up to the Sheriff, dropped his head, putting his ear near Jacob's lips: he stepped back, grinned, nodded. The fiddler pulled a white handkerchief out of his hip pocket, flipped it between chin rest and beardless chin: fiddle pulled into battery, he raised the bow, grinned at the Sheriff and his wife as they turned to one another, holding hands, ready. It was a happy moment in the history of the Firelands colony when the Sheriff and his wife danced together, for the first time as husband and wife on this new planet, and it was fitting indeed they danced to "The Irish Washerwoman" -- for they danced a jig, and a brisk jig it was: it was a favorite among the colonists, and while the Sheriff and his wife jigged to the Irish tune on stage, the close packed colonists paired off and danced as well. Not long after, when the Sheriff's wife was interviewed for their news broadcast, she admitted that her seminal ancestors -- those stolen by the aliens, back during Lincoln's War -- her ancestors had been part of the Southern Irish Brigade. This alone made their newest Colonist more than welcome. This guaranteed her immediate and universal acceptance, and cemented the Irish Jig as one of the colony's favorite dances.

THE GHOST'S ONLY FEAR Angela Keller stood very properly. Her chin was lifted, her hands clasped, her shoulders were back and she was standing very straight, breathing from her diaphragm, breathing from something her Daddy called the hara. Angela was a very proper young lady, and Angela had very definite ideas of propriety: one was that she was scrupulous about names, preferring to call people by their name, and not by a nickname: another was to dress properly, as she was today. Angela stood alone in their little whitewashed church, stood before the altar rail, faced the empty pews. She'd warmed up her voice, carefully, methodically, as she'd been taught: Angela was a young woman gifted with both natural beauty, and with a truly gorgeous voice: she was also a curious sort, and had absolutely scoured the extensive family references that detailed the lives of her ancestors ... and especially her pale eyed ancestresses. Angela Keller could recite their names, back to the family that sailed the blue salt water to pioneer their line to the North American continent; she could recite dates of birth, dates of death; children by each, place of birth, place of burial, and now, at thirteen years of age, as she was coming out of girlhood and into young womanhood, she stood alone, in a McKenna gown of her own making -- a gown correct in pattern, cut, construction, even thread count. Angela Keller was a young woman with a definite sense of propriety, and she intended to sing, and she sang best when she wore the style of a certain of her ancestresses. Angela's mind was quick -- remarkably so; she was almost labeled ADHD because her mind was racing so far ahead of her classmates; it took vigorous persuasion, but she'd been tested and advanced significantly in her education, until finally she was working at a level that suited the speed of her developing young mind: this quick young mind, as she took a deep, diaphragmatic breath, seized an idea, stopped running, turned and looked hard at her own question. I read about Sarah McKenna singing. My sister Marnie has a beautiful singing voice, though she didn't share it often. I don't ever remember hearing my Gammaw Willamina sing. Angela blinked, let her breath out, frowned: she shook her head, lifted her chin again: another good deep breath, she heard her voice in her mind, she relaxed her soul and sang. The little whitewashed church, over its many years, had heard many voices, and the best of these had been from singers with pale eyes: perhaps the ancient timbers remembered women ranked shoulder to shoulder, united in glorious harmony, their names as historic and ancient as the church's memories themselves -- Daisy Finnegan, Bonnie McKenna, Esther Keller, Sarah McKenna ... and in years that followed, singers male and female, who wove their magic here as well. Angela sang. Reverend John Burnett was scratching his thinning thatch with the end of his pen, frowning at the few lines he'd started to write: Sunday's sermon was coming, but with difficulty, and when he heard a familiar voice, he stopped, he smiled a little, and he pushed the yellow legal pad from him. Ave Maria was a particular favorite of his: he'd heard it sung, here, and at the Rabbitville monastery: he always suspected the pale-eyed Willamina Keller (rest her soul!) was one of the white-veiled Sisters who sang when he visited the Monastery, but he was never sure, and he never felt forward enough to ask her. Reverend John laid down his pen, relaxed, let the voice soak into his soul. Angela sang with the control and the power of a trained operatic voice: she could, and did, soar high into the soprano, or swim down through contralto, or even range down to a perfectly-controlled alto: she'd heard sopranos who screeched, more than sang: her own voice was mercifully smooth, flawlessly disciplined, and the Ave shimmered in the still air of the empty church. Angela bowed her head after her final note, listened to the echoes fade: she opened her eyes, looked at the pews where her family traditionally sat, remembered what it felt like to sit on her Gammaw's lap when she was very young. Angela Keller glided over to the pew, seeing its occupants in her memory: she sat beside where she remembered her Gammaw sitting. For a moment Angela could hear the brittle crackle of cellophane. She smelled butterscotch, and she smiled, for the memory was a good one. Sheriff Willamina Keller, wife, mother and grandmother, always had butterscotch hard candies in her purse, and peppermints: the peppermints were horsie bribes, but the butterscotch -- of which there seemed to be a truly endless supply -- was handed out freely to the young. Angela closed her eyes, remembered what it was to sit with her Gammaw. "Gammaw," Angela whispered aloud, "why did I never hear you sing?" "You did, child," came the returning whisper. Angela's ear pulled back as if tugged by an invisible thumb-and-forefinger. "When?" "When you were very young," came the whisper again. "But I sang softly." "Did I ever hear you sing after that?" "Once," Angela heard: she felt her Gammaw's hand rest lightly on her own. "The Church went to Rabbitville and the White Sisters sang." Angela smiled a little, her eyes still closed: she remembered the occasion, when the White Sisters -- all in white habits, with their faces veiled -- sang in a flawless harmony, their voices soaring through the high sanctuary like the purest of sun-glowing seagulls. "How come I never heard you sing here?" "Because I was afraid," came the answering whisper. Angela felt sudden uncertainty, hearing this susurrant confession that jarred against her every memory of her pale eyed Gammaw. "But Gammaw," she whispered in juvenile protest, "you're not afraid of anything!" She heard her Gammaw's quiet laugh, she felt her sitting beside her: she wanted so very badly to look, she wanted to believe it was her Gammaw sitting beside her, and not her imagination -- "I've always been afraid of singing in public," her Gammaw's voice whispered. "I kept it hidden, but I've always been afraid of that one thing!" Angela could not stand it any longer. She turned, she opened her eyes, she stared in surprise at her wise old Gammaw, just as young and just as beautiful as she remembered. Angela felt her Gammaw's hand, laid warm and gentle over her own, tighten just a little, and then -- Gone -- Angela blinked, thrust desperate arms through the emptiness that a moment before had been her beloved Gammaw -- She looked down -- A single, cellophane wrapped butterscotch lay on the pew where her Gammaw had been. Angela laid her hand on the bare wood ... stone cold ... she got up, felt where she'd been sitting ... Warm ... Angela Keller swallowed, picked up the butterscotch from the cool, smooth wooden pew. She held it up, studied it intently, then slipped it into a hidden pocket in her McKenna gown. Sheriff Linn Keller looked up at the quick, delicate tap at his office door, as the office door opened, as his daughter looked around, came in. Angela was wearing a McKenna gown, and a beautifully made one, at that: when Angela wore a gown rather than a dress or jeans, she glided rather than walked, and so Linn was not at all surprised when she glided around his desk. He was surprised when she cupped one hand behind his head, pressed the other palm against his forehead, looked up at the ceiling and frowned. Angela released her father's head, curled delicate fingers under his smooth-shaven chin: she lifted, just a little, still frowning as she looked at one eye, then the other. Angela nodded, as if reaching an important conclusion. "I thought so," she murmured. Linn raised an eyebrow. "What's that, Princess?" "Your chocolate levels are low. I prescribe a chocolate hot fudge Sundae, taken in the presence of an attractive younger woman." Sheriff Linn Keller considered the tasks he'd planned for the day, considered his daughter's words, looked at the portrait of his Mama there on the wall, looked back at Angela. He planted a palm firmly on his desk top, stood. "I have benefitted often from listening to my beautiful bride," he said quietly, "and I see no reason why I should not benefit from the wise counsel of my beautiful daughter." He offered his arm, reached for his Stetson, then the ornate, faceted-glass doorknob. "And what prompted this?" Angela looked at him with a serious expression. "I want to talk to you about ghosts and Holy Ground." "Is that all?" "No." Angela stopped, turned: Linn turned with her. Angela took her Daddy's hands in hers, closed her eyes, remembering how safe his big strong Daddy-hands always made her feel. "I also want to talk about fear."

RESPITE Sarah Lynne McKenna slipped into the hotel by a door not usually seen by the common eye: she had one of the only three keys, she slipped in, closed the door, turned the lock. Safe. She closed her eyes, leaned back against the wall, shaking. She swallowed: she'd betrayed a man, a dangerous man, she'd stolen documents and made sketches, she'd gone before one of the few Judges she knew to be trustworthy and filed sworn affidavits that named names, and gave dates, times and places: she'd timed her efforts carefully, almost too closely: when the door was burst open and men with shotguns and badges and loud, harsh voices came roaring into the bedchamber, Sarah McKenna was very nearly in what might be called a "compromising position." Only her proximity to a hidden bolt-hole, behind the dressing-screen, kept her from being swept up in the raid, and even so, she'd gotten away wearing her corset and her stockings and absolutely nothing else. Sarah had planned carefully before engaging in her clandestine operation. She'd been recruited by His Honor the Judge Donald Hostetler as an investigator, a detective in the purest sense of the word -- one who detects -- one who finds things out: he based this wild idea on two things: First, a fellow named Pinkerton was surprised when a woman came into his office, bold as brass, asking for a job -- not as a secretary -- but as an investigator. Pinkerton was a man who could see possibilities, and he found in short order that women were not regarded as a threat; that women could gull a man into telling her things he'd never tell another man, that a woman could find out more, better, faster -- not always, but often enough to prove her worth many times over. For this reason, and because young Sarah Lynne McKenna was a quick change artist, and could cunningly use foundations and powders and the artifices of women to change her appearance: for those two overriding reasons, he'd hired her as an Agent of the Court. Sarah Lynne McKenna had indeed used foundations and powders and wigs to become someone she wasn't, in order to bring down the criminal mastermind of an organization the Law didn't want to see expanded further: rather than try to take this well-guarded man herself, she'd given the Law the information that justified its sudden, door-splintering raid, while she was behind a dressing-screen, supposedly divesting herself of everything but a lustful expression. Sarah slipped through a narrow passage, found the simple dress and shoes she'd stashed there against just such a possibility: she emerged into the night, glided past keyed-up men, watchful in the dark, who deferentially touched their hat-brims to a pretty young woman alone on the street at night. She'd secured the key from its hiding place, she'd gone into the hotel, she'd unlocked another door and cat-footed up the back stairs, coming out on the third floor, where she slipped along the dim corridor, counting doors as they passed: she stopped, leaned back, caught the barest sheen of light coming through the window at the end of the hallway, such that it reflected off the door, showing the numbers in shadowed relief. Sarah turned the key in the lock, opened the door, slipped inside, locked it again. Sarah Lynne McKenna took a long, silent breath, felt herself start to shake, and she knew that -- for a few minutes at least -- she would be worthless, she'd be shaking like a streetwalker at a tent revival. Her eyes were busy; she listened to the stillness, heard laughter, heard music from downstairs, smelled tobacco-smoke: she waited for several minutes, unmoving, then stepped where she remembered the rugs were, weight on the balls of her feet. She reached up, scratched a Lucifer match, turned the gas-valve, touched match: the gas-light was a few moments coming to full brightness, and she averted her eyes so as not to blast her vision. The match went smoking into the match-tray; Sarah went to the closet, opened the doors. She froze, listening: she turned, a little, tilted her head, smiled. Sarah Lynne McKenna, the pale eyed and illegitimate daughter of a pale eyed Sheriff, swept out of the room twelve minutes later, renewed, rejuvenated: she was dressed, she was confident, her heels were intentionally loud on polished hardwood, an ornate black fan held in one gloved hand, two round wood-looking objects in the other. Men's heads turned as Sarah flowed down the stairs. The ruffled train of her lobstertail dress almost framed her as she descended: she was beautiful and she knew it -- her hair was pulled severely back, a tall comb thrust so it stood up at the back of her head -- she descended with confidence, she stopped, snapped her fan open: it was a deliberate move, almost violent: she raised it in front of her face, regarded the room with a slow, left to right sweep of her eyes: conversation slacked, nearly stopped, as more heads turned, as Sarah snapped the fan shut against her hand, as she thrust it up her sleeve, as she removed a spherical, wood-looking object from her other hand. An old man sat near one wall, an old man with his hat inverted on the floor: precious few coins showed for his work, but he played, and his skill with the double-strung, deep-toned Mexican guitar was impressive indeed. His notes softened, grew gentler, slowed as he looked at this young woman, as she raised her chin and gave the room a haughty look, as she raised one hand, brought the other to the small of her back. Castanuelas, or castanets, have a sharp, commanding note: a deceptively simple implement, played with three fingers: she commanded the room's attention with the first chattering address, then she set a rhythm, and she began to move. Women are creatures of magic. A woman can glide instead of walk, and she did: a woman can dance, instead of glide, and she did: Sarah's steps were quick, sure, graceful, and the white-haired old man's fingers remembered what it was to be young, and his guitar sang of the joy of youth, and the woman danced. No stage, no curtains, no announcement: one moment, the hotel's dining room, poorly populated with men and cigars, with whiskey-pegs and conversation, suddenly seemed filled, suddenly seemed ... warmer ... as an old Mexican sang, the guitar his voice, and the young woman in the scarlet-and-yellow dress cadenced heels and castanets with the song of his youth. He played a young man's strength, he played a vaquero a-horseback, dashing and handsome, he played the hot Mexican sun and the love of a maiden, and as he played, the woman spun and bent, swayed and thrust a stockinged, high-heeled foot forward: sharp little heels were as brisk on hardwood as Spanish chestnut was on the smoky atmosphere. The guitarist was not a large man; he was not impressive to look at, but she danced for him, as a woman will dance for her beloved: when she spun, she began and ended her turns, looking at him: when she raised her arms in celebration of his music, she inclined them to him: magic it was she wove that night, and magic filled the room, entrancing the hearts of men, bringing more of them into the dining room, until finally it was filled, with only room enough for a black-haired maiden in a ruffled flamenco dress, and an old man sitting on the floor, against one wall. None was entirely certain how she'd done it, but when she stopped, her head thrown back, chin to the ceiling, one arm upthrust and one arm out, toward the old Mexican and his guitar, she brought her hand down and snapped open an ornate black fan and covered her face, dropping into an elaborate curtsy. It was not accident that she nudged the old man's hat with her foot. Sarah Lynne McKenna, Agent of the Firelands District Court, the pale-eyed, daredevil, hellraising daughter of the pale eyed Sheriff, had been running for three days on nerves and coffee, waiting on a knife's edge for the moment to betray a man who would kill her for the betrayal, leading him on without surrendering her virtue: she'd cut it close, she'd cut it very close indeed, and it wasn't until she'd made her escape, not until she'd slipped, nearly naked, between the walls through a passage she'd discovered by accident, not until she'd gotten into her hotel room and honestly shook like a streetwalker at a tent revival -- When Sarah opened the closet and saw the flamenco dress and the mantilla, and the guitar's voice tugged at her ear as if with an invisible thumb-and-forefinger, Sarah Lynne McKenna knew just how to discharge all the tension, all the stress, of her most recent operation.

TRUE NATURE Dry grass crunched under a man's advancing boot. The fellow that heard it, wished mightily to look, to see who approached: he wanted more than he could say, to get up, to run, sprint, leap, flee! If -- and that was a definite if -- the approaching boot happened to be worn by a man with pale eyes. Get up, he screamed at himself -- roll over, jump up, drop behind the rock, hide! He'd landed flat on his back and knocked every bit of wind out of his lungs; he couldn't breathe, his eyes were screwed shut with pain, it hurt too much to move -- He's close, I can feel him -- Oh God, I'm dead -- Jacob looked up, gauged the distance this fellow must've fallen. The man's mule looked down at him, as if marveling at his rider's stupidity. It wasn't the mule's fault he'd stopped abruptly: a horse might be stupid enough to run over a cliff at his rider's behest, but mules have better sense, and this one stopped, fast. The rider was neither experienced, nor was he expecting anything of the kind when he kicked his stolen mount into blind flight, fearful that a certain pale eyed lawman was going to flow like a lean-waisted wraith from some tree trunk and seize him about the neck and pinch his head off his shoulders with one squeeze of those deadly and murderous hands. Deputy Sheriff Jacob Keller looked down at the unmoving man, saw he was breathing -- not well, but breathing. "Well," he said finally, "you ain't dead." I'm dead, the man thought. You just ain't killed me yet. Jacob studied the unmoving man's pained face. "Reckon you got the wind knocked out of you," he said conversationally, considering the sandy patch, assessing what would in later years be called "Flow Mechanics" where the body's impact blew sand to the side. "Looks like you landed flat on your back." Jacob waited for some reply before continuing. "Looks like you hit the only sandy patch around. Everything else is rock or dirt. 'Less, of course, you landed on a rock that broke your back... now that can kill you." He saw the man breathing more deeply. Won't be long before he can talk. The mule, above them, turned, meandered a little, looking for something green to eat, something wet to drink: there was a much easier way down than the express route taken by his rider, and the mule meandered casually down the rocky path, slow and sure-footed, smelling water and interested in slaking his thirst. Jacob waited until the mule came up for air before speaking. "Hello, Jack," he called. "This fella belong to you?" The mule swung his ears at Jacob's voice but made no other reply. Jacob looked down as he heard the supine man groan faintly. "Mind tellin' me why you tried imitatin' a bird, mister?" Jacob asked quietly. "Mule stopped," came the pained answer. "And you didn't." The fellow opened his eyes, tried to glare at the long tall deputy, closed his eyes against glare and pain both. Jacob squatted, his eyes busy: he couldn't see any suspicious bulges other than the sheathed knife, and the sheath covered all but the ball at the end of the pommel, the better to prevent the blade's falling out. "Can you feel your hands?" Jacob asked. "Make a fist. Both hands. Like that. Now spread your fingers." Jacob nodded. "Can you feel your hands okay?" "What?" "You got any lightning shootin' through 'em, anything numb or tingly or not feelin' right?" The man wiggled his fingers. "No," he finally gasped. "Okay, how about your feet. Move your feet." He looked, saw one foot move, then the other. "They feel okay?" "Yeah." "Does it feel like you landed on a rock?" "Can't tell." Jacob seized the man at shoulder and belt, rolled him up on his side: he heard the pained hiss of breath drawn between clenched teeth. "Don't see a thing," he said, raking his fingers back and forth through surprisingly deep sand. "Good thing this is dry. Was it wet it'd be like landin' on a rock." He rolled the man back onto his back. "Why'd you run?" The man turned his face away -- "man" might be charitable -- he was shaving, yes, but not for very long: Jacob knew what it was to be a tall boy doing a man's job, and having to defend his right to do that job against men who wanted to chaff him for his youth. "You're gonna kill me," came the near-whisper. Jacob was still hunkered down, balancing on the balls of his feet: he frowned a little, considering the face before him, comparing it to a mental file of wanted dodgers back at the office, and finding no matches. "I generally have a reason," he said quietly, "for rippin' a man's soul out from around his spine. So far I don't have one. Now I'm just naturally lazy and killin' you would be too much work without some good reason." "You weren't comin' to kill me?" "Any reason I should?" The mule was sampling a patch of grass growing at the streambed, found it to his liking. "Jackie said -- he said he'd say I stole attair jack mule --" "Did you?" Jacob asked. It felt to the supine man as if those pale eyes were driving steel lances right through to the back of his skull, looking for any sign of cheat or lie. "Hell, the boss told me to take it!" "Old man Hannigan?" "Yeah." "I know him. He sent you ridin' fence." "Yeah." "Jackie," Jacob said thoughtfully. "Yeah." "Think you can stand up?" "I dunno." "You didn't scream when I rolled you over so I don't reckon you've any broke ribs. Try settin' up first." Two men rode up to the ranch house: one was a young man, more than a tall boy but not yet matured: the other was a lean waisted, pale eyed deputy, hard eyes glaring out from under the flat brim of his Stetson. "Mister Hannigan." "Depitty." "Jackie around?" "Jackie? What you want him for?" Jacob's silent glare was all the reply the man got. "He'll be ou't the barn." Jacob's pale eyes turned toward the barn: Apple-horse backed up a few steps, turned. "Now hold on," Hannigan said. "Wha'd Jackie do?" Jacob accepted a beer from Mr. Baxter, set his boot up on the polished foot rail. It was accepted that father and son looked remarkably alike; the two were of a like height, a like build, they stood the same, each studied the mirror before taking a thirsty pull from his heavy, faceted mug. Linn listened to Jacob's quiet recounting of events, seeing the events unfold in his son's words: he watched, as if a spectator, as Old Man Hannigan hauled his troublemaking son to the same cliff his new hire fell from, watched as a father seized his son by the throat and the crotch and hauled him off the ground, as if to throw him from the same cliff. He hadn't, but he'd put the fear of God into his troublemaking boy. The only thing Jacob omitted was the quiet voiced conversation he'd had with Jackie. Apparently, the Sheriff found out much later, Jacob took pains to describe his ... disappointment ... that Jackie lied about him, that Jackie described him as a bloodthirsty lawman who killed -- with no provocation, with his bare hands -- and tried to use this falsehood to bully the new hire. Jackie's nature, unfortunately, emerged again, in spite of the strenuous nature of the Old Man's admonition: not long after, he chose the wrong victim, and ended up with a pick handle bent over his head -- but that was not in Firelands County, so it was not a concern of either the pale eyed Sheriff, nor of his pale eyed son.