Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

GIN AND TONIC Jelly's eyes swung hard left, assessing his usual crowd: he swung right, toward the door, with a pale eyed woman coming in. She wore a denim coat and a Stetson, she wore blue jeans and boots, and she was not carrying a rifle, so the Sheriff wasn't coming in to punish herself for having killed another deserving soul. Willamina stepped in, stepped to the side to get a wall to her back, as was her habit. The door closed quietly, cold air quit rolling in, hard and pale eyes surveyed the Spring Inn from under a black hat brim. Conversation slowed, stopped altogether. Willamina's boot heels were loud on the oiled floor as she paced slowly to where Jelly stood, leaning on the bar, toothpick jutting from under his unkempt, untrimmed mustache, waiting to see what kind of hell this pale eyed hellraiser was going to raise. Willamina set one foot up on the tarnished, scratched, dented boot rail, ran her eyes over his stock, nodded. "Gimme a shot of that blue sapphire gin." Jelly looked at the barmaid, surprised, then back to the Sheriff: he stepped away from the bar, carefully, as if stepping away from a just-uncovered land mine. Blue fires gurgled into a short, squat glass. Willamina looked at it, looked at the barkeep. "Now mix me a gin and tonic, same stuff." Jelly could have gone through the floor. Willamina was known to have a sociable beer with a meal, she was known to slug down a water glass of distilled sledgehammer when she sent some deserving soul to Hell, but this is the first, the only time she had ever, EVER ordered a drink, just to have a drink. Jelly looked up the recipe. He generally sold beer and straight whiskey, or whiskey and ditch: seldom did he mix a drink, but he had the ingredients. Willamina looked at the barmaid, shaking the fryer, and said "I'd take a bacon cheeseburger and fries while you're at it." She slid a twenty across the bar. Every set of eyes in the dirty little beer joint followed the pale eyed hell raiser as she paced, slowly, deliberately, for an empty table in the very back. She sat, and she did not move. Conversation started up, slowly at first, hushed: men glanced uncomfortably at her, a pool game started up again, someone slugged the stained jukebox with a crack in the glass: the usual sounds of a beer joint resumed, and Willamina did not move one single muscle, other than her eyes. Pale eyes, shadowed under a black hat brim, scanned constantly: her face was expressionless, as pale as always, but without the hint of healthy pink that usually tinted her cheek bones. Jelly brought her back the shimmering shot of gin, the mixed drink. Willamina did not look up. "Sit." Jelly sat. Willamina did not move. "His name," she said, "was Shah, and he was a friend of mine." Jelly leaned his forearms on the table, slouched in his chair, looked very directly at the Sheriff's chin, which was about as much of her face as he could really see. "This," she said, picking up the blue shot of gin, "was his guilty pleasure. He was a Sheriff's deputy back in Athens County and he like his bacon and eggs." She tilted the shot up, slugged it back, sloshed it around in her mouth, swallowed. "God, that's awful," she gasped. "Your burger and fries will be right up." "I'll need 'em." She picked up the gin and tonic, slugged it down, grimaced, set the glass soundlessly on the table. "That's not much better." "My uncle told me the British used gin and tonic to cure malaria." "That stuff tastes like it would cure paint off a pine board." "Another drink?" "No." Willamina resumed her deathly stillness: Jelly's slouch allowed him to see her bottom lip was firm up against her top lip, he saw the wrinkles above her chin: this, and this alone, betrayed the depth of her grief. "He died last July, Jelly. July, and this is November, and I'm just now finding out." Jelly waited, debating whether to collect her empty glasses, deciding against it. "He was half a world away. We hardly had contact any more but --" Willamina shook her head, slowly. "July," she whispered. The barmaid came back with a tray, set a platter in front of the Sheriff: she picked up the empties, held up a glass of beer. Willamina looked at her, nodded. "I'll take that too." She looked at Jelly and winked. "I salt the hell out of my fries," she admitted, "and that make me thirsty!"

FLIMSY Rebecca's fingers were light, gentle on the mainmast: her eyes were half-closed, she was singing with the ship, she was cutting, light and free, through the waves, rejoicing in the strength in her sails, feeling the sailors flowing among her lines, her sails, her masts, like blood through a healthy body -- Rebecca's stomach fell as she felt the ship's pain, as something broke, well below -- her hull, broken -- Rebecca remained unmoving, beside the mainmast, as men shouted, as orders were given, but the ship wept with pain and Rebecca wept with her: she was a fine lady, and she was gutted, she was badly hurt, she was dying -- Rebecca felt the deck list underfoot, but she did not hear shouted voices; she felt the ship's pain, but not hands grasping at her. Rebecca remained on the deck while seamen and passengers alike seized anything that would float, and leaped overboard. Rebecca did not have to leap over the starboard rail. The ship sank, steadily, rolled over: Rebecca climbed onto the mast, stood: the ship groaned, the awful sound of timber, strained beyond its strength: Rebecca took a deep breath, then three more, quickly, pumping her blood full of oxygen, just before the ship gave herself to the deeps. Rebecca joined the saltwater sea. Something dark and fast came at her, something dangerous, and Rebecca rolled, snatched two blades from her hidden vest: her shawl floated away from her, she somersaulted in the dark waters -- Requiem, she heard a voice whisper, just before she twisted, drove the blades into the shark's head: she hung on, grim, desperate, feeling herself dragged at an unholy velocity through the waters -- She locked her legs around the twisting, thrashing killer, knowing she'd driven steel lethally deep -- Another attack, from beneath, something fast -- Rebecca felt herself driven off the shark, something kicked it like a mule landing both hind hooves in a man's belly: she lost her grip on the knives, saw light, stroked for the surface -- Something came up under her and she gripped a broad, stubby fin, she felt herself moving and moving fast, and she was at the surface, she could breathe! -- the sound of a great breath just ahead of her and she realized she'd just been driven to the surface, towed back to the Land of the Living by another swift creature of the seas: she opened her mind and she felt laughter, she felt joy, she felt herself, strong and swift and she felt an absolute hatred for sharks, and she felt the memory of the porpoise's blunt snout driving into the shark after a fast, deadly and absolutely merciless vertical attack from the depths! Rebecca remembered vaguely stories she'd heard, stories of porpoises bringing sailors to the surface: some said they were the souls of men lost at sea, reborn to help their shipwrecked brethren: all she knew was, she could breathe, and she could see land, and whatever shore that was, she was bound and determined to make it there. Sheriff Linn Keller was a hard man. He was a man who knew what it was to charge into people who wished him dead, he knew what it was to be shot, stabbed, cut, he knew what it was to lay dying on the office floor and to look down from the ceiling, where he lay on his back, watching with interest while Esther and the doctor worked their magic to keep him alive. Linn knew what it was to bury a wife, and a daughter, and he knew what it was, later in life, to see a daughter leave for Europe, knowing he would never see her again: he was a man of great depth, a man with an immense love for family, a man who was an utterly merciless enemy to those who deserved his enmity. He knew when the boy brought him the flimsy it was bad news, and he was right. Sheriff Linn Keller crossed the rutted, dusty, dirt-cold street, pulled open the door to the Silver Jewel. Tilly looked up from her ledger book, a smile on her face that faded almost instantly as she saw the Sheriff's expression. Linn walked up the stairs to Esther's office on the second floor, his tread that of a condemned man. He opened the door marked Z&W RAILROAD, E. KELLER, OWNER. He stepped inside, closed the door. Esther knew her husband's tread; she'd heard him on the stairs in good times, and ill, and she knew from the sound of his footfalls that there was trouble. Esther rose, almost ran to her husband. Linn swallowed, looked at his wife, then seized her in a crushing embrace. Only then did she realize the man was shaking like a willow in a windstorm. "Indira," he whispered; "No," Esther moaned, and husband and wife held one another. A telegraph flimsy fell from the Sheriff's nerveless fingers; it flipped twice as it fluttered to the floor, landed print side up. In Lightning's regular block print, it read: SHERIFF FIRELANDS FROM SHERIFF KING COUNTY COTTONWOOD STRUCK REEF LOST WITH ALL HANDS Four hours later, a tap at the door, a boy turned the knob, peeked in. The Sheriff raised his head, extended a hand, accepted the telegraph flimsy. Esther pressed a kerchief to one eye, then the other: she took a long breath, sat up straight and squared her shoulders. She was a Wales, after all, and women of her line faced hard news straight-on. "Have they found her body?" she asked quietly. Linn took a long breath, unfolded the half-sheet. He read it. He read it again. He stood, his face wooden, unreadable. Linn reached for his Stetson, then took his wife's elbow, brought her to her feet: his jaw was set, his jaw muscles bulged and he took his wife's hand and placed it on his arm. "I should have done this already," he muttered: together, they descended the stairs: together, they went to the end of the boardwalk, down the end stairs and into the alley: they crossed the alley, walked down the dirt street, to their little whitewashed church. Linn's face was hard, stony, expressionless: Esther walked with her chin up, defiant, a woman determined to face whatever news this was with the strength for which she was always known. Linn opened the door for his wife, removed his cover: together they walked down the aisle, with a slow and solemn step. Esther watched, surprised, as they stopped, and her husband did something she'd never seen him do, even once. Linn gripped the altar rail and went down on his prayer bones. He lifted his face to the handmade Cross on the back wall -- a face wet with saltwater, running down both cheeks -- he lowered his forehead on the altar rail, his shoulders heaving, silent in his grief. The telegraph flimsy, forgotten, dropped, lay beside him. Esther picked it up, unfolded it. She read it, read it again: Esther's hand went to her mouth, then she, too, went to her knees, one hand on her husband's back: her tears ran more freely than her husband's, but for the same reason. The forgotten message lay face up on the church floor. In Lightning's block print, it read: SHIP SANK I DID NOT I AM UNHURT COMING HOME INDIRA The Sheriff had told someone, long ago, that tears were the prayers, the words we offer when we can't get the words out of our throat. This was one of those times.

ROUNDHOUSE Sharon reached over and hit the button. Shelly came out of her chair like she'd been stung: the alarm klaxon was loud, harsh and commanding in the confines of the hand-laid brick firehouse, guaranteeing that all hands any any corpses present would be AWAKE!!! -- like it or not! Shelly admitted later she felt like she should have been hanging from the ceiling beams by her claws, and that she'd let go and dropped back to the deck before Sharon's voice came over the speakers, further acceleratring her hammering heart. "FIRELANDS FIRE DEPARTMENT AND EMERGENCY SQUAD, RESCUE AT THE ROUNDHOUSE, TIME OF CALL ZERO EIGHT FIFTY TWO." Men's hands reached up, hauled Kenworth hoods back down into place: latches secured, shorelines pulled free, shining Wellington boots hooked off and kicked to the wall: sock feet thrust in fireboots, bunker pants pulled up, suspenders thumb-hooked over shoulders: Nomex hoods savagely ripped from coat pockets, yanked over heads, arms thrust in smoke-smelling, sweat-stained firecoats: fingers ran top-down or bottom-up, fasting up the metal clasps. Men ran for the shining trucks before their helmets were dunked on their hooded heads: run up the steps behind the cab, turn, drive backwards into the seat, slam the shoulders against the walkaway bracket, fast up the helmet, thrust coatsleeved arms through the self-contained air pack's thick, padded straps, pull the belt around the belly, drive tongue into buckle with an absolutely vicious thrust of firegloved hands. Warriors, armored against the enemy, leaned their warriors' helms back against padded headrests, their beavertails pointing sharply down, their necks back a little as they closed their eyes, each addressing the Eternal, as warriors always do when facing battle. Drivers twisted explosion-proof switches, heard the plastic click, click as they engaged both batteries -- Fingers forked into a stiff V, drove into the two buttons on the dash the moment the plugs were hot, two buttons pushed, two starters engaged -- Large displacement Diesel engines shivered into valve-snarling life -- Bay doors clattered open, shivering a little as they did. The squad was first out, then the first-out pumper, then the rescue: the tanker remained in the bay, with the second-out pumper: the second crew would respond to staff station while First Crew was out: bay doors clattered shut, and the firehouse suddenly felt very empty. Ghosts and truck exhaust twisted, smoky and faint in the bright sunbeams slanting through windows and shattering brightly against the scrupulously-clean floors. Captain Crane's polished Wellington boot was heavy on the throttle: Shelly pressed her bootsole on the floor button, winding the shining chrome siren into screaming life: the electronic siren blasted alarm straight ahead, but the Federal Q was better for lateral warning: the Captain drove with one hand on the wheel, the other hooked on the air horns' lanyard. A driver who didn't hear the electronic, who ignored the windup siren, would jump like a scared rabbit at air horns: nobody wants an eighteen to eat them for breakfast, and more times than one, the Captain laid on the air, blasting a last-moment warning through twin three-foot International Harvester air horn trumpets. Shelly slung the stethoscope around her neck, gripped the aluminum clipboard with both hands. Both medics had the same thought. Roundhouse. No report of explosion or burn. Possible crush injury, everything they have is cast iron and heavy, and father and daughter both had the momentary image of a drive wheel, fallen off The Lady Esther, squashing a man against the stone floor like a stepped on stink bug. "Dr. Greenlees." Dr. John Greenlees raised his head, raised an eyebrow. "Sir, they've been toned out to the roundhouse." Dr. Greenlees considered this brief, simple statement. "Shall I sound General Quarters?" "No," he said finally. "Let's see what they have first." His name was Chipalinski, he was known as Chip, and right now he was looking at his boss and trying hard not to laugh. He was flat on his back at the bottom of the turntable, ten feet below the concrete paved deck above. He looked at his boss and gasped, "You caught me layin' down on the job." His boss looked at the rebar sticking out of the man's chest. He'd fallen -- no idea what caused the fall -- he'd impaled on a four foot re-bar sticking up from a project they'd barely begun, a project that came to a screeching halt when their safety officer brought his chrome coach's whistle to his lips and blew a long blast, blew so strongly the whistle made kind of a weak wobbly squeak from being overblown. It was enough: work came to a fast stop, the turntable was already locked out: men ran over, panicked, then froze as they saw the thumb-sized wrought-iron lance sticking out of a living man's chest. Dorsey straightened, pointed to the engineer, leaned over the rim and looking down. "BILL! THE STEAM CRANE! IT'S ON THE TURNTABLE, IS IT FIRED?" Bill looked at the steam crane, looked at the boss, nodded. "GET THAT WINCH LINE DOWN HERE NOW!" Shelly and the Captain punched their seat belt releases at the same moment. The Captain ran for the gesturing men, Shelly seized the door latch -- had it not released, she felt like she could've ripped the doors off their hinges -- she SLAMMED her hand down on the box's black-plastic handle, turned, ran. "JESUS CHRIST DON'T DO THAT oh God no too late," Crane groaned. Strong men were just lifting the impaled man off the rebar, carrying him over to where the winch line was lowering into the turntable's depth. Crane turned, raised his talkie. "ENGINE ONE I NEED A LADDER DOWN INTO THE TURNTABLE. GRAB THE STOKES." He turned to Shelly, his face grim. "Two ABDs, Vaseline dressings and tape," he said quietly. Shelly set the boxes down, threw back the trays, drove her hand into the bottom compartment. Crane looked at the black box in his hand, turned a silver knob two clicks, raise the talkie. "Firelands General Hospital, Squad One." "Firelands Squad One, go." "A man has fallen about twelve feet and was impaled on a re-bar. It looks like it took him through the liver. Patient was already lifted off the rebar prior to our arrival. Preparing to pressure dressing and large bore IVs with positioning." "Roger your impalement with liver involvement." The ER nurse reached over and hit her own big red button. Given this information, she did not need Dr. Greenlees to tell her. The nurse, on her own authority and in accordance with disaster protocol, sounded the hospital wide alarm: the recorded GONG, GONG, GONG of a battleship's recording sounded throughout the hospital, followed by a nasal voice with a Suth'n accent: "GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS, ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS, THIS IS NOT A DREEYIL, THIS IS NOT A DREEYIL." The hospital hummed like a swatted hornet's nest: the emergency room and surgical suites pulled on their gloves, tucked in their elbows like boxers, prepared to do battle, however difficult it might be. "Chip, we'll do the work," Captain Crane said, fitting the green-plastic mask on the man's face: "just breathe normally, stay on your side, don't move." Chip's eyes rolled up and his face relaxed. The Captain sealed both entry and exit with the foil wrapping from the vaseline gauze: the inside of the wrapper was sterile, and greasy: applied to the wound, it would make an airtight seal, though it would not stop the liver from bleeding out. For that, they had one, and only one treatment. The Captain secured the two large-bore IVs, made sure they were both running, stepped back, tilted his head back: he pointed at the man leaning out of the steam crane's cab, then raised both arms. The engineer engaged the clutch, advanced the throttle; the ancient seam crane began to chuff industriously, greasy-black gears chuckled to themselves, and the Stokes basket with its unmoving cargo began to hoist out of the pit. The Captain ran for the ladder, nearly ran up the ladder: it was seized by gloved hands, hauled out, the turntable was rotated: two quick tweets on the crane's shrill little whistle and it rolled forward, to the edge of its tracks, stopped: willing hands gripped the Stokes as it was lowered, willing hands, frustrated at their inability to help earlier, crush gripped the cot's rails, ran the dying man toward the waiting ambulance. Captain Crane slid in behind the wheel, looked in the rearview at his daughter, who was bent over the patient. "Ready!" Shelly snapped as she hung the IV bags into the ceiling hooks. Shelly wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Chip's upper arm, set her feet wide apart, bent her legs so her knees rested against the cot. At this point, their best treatment lay with the Captain, and he applied Diesel Therapy with a will, and with a heavy foot on the throttle. Dorsey, the boss, laid a gloved hand on the Chief's shoulder. Fitz turned, looked at the man. "Sit down, man," Fitz said quietly, "you're white as a ghost!" "My God, Chip," Dorsey gasped, collapsing on an upturned five gallon bucket. He looked at the Chief. "Is he going to die?" "I don't know," Fitz admitted, considering whether to tell the man that his and his men's actions probably killed their co-worker: if they'd left the re-bar in place, it would have stopped the liver from bleeding, at least not as severely -- but with the man lifted off the impaler, he had a hole in his liver like he'd been shot by a Vietnamese sniper. He decided not to tell Dorsey anything of the kind. The man was torn up enough already, no sense to make it worse. "Do you have an emergency contact for him?" Fitz asked, and Dorsey blinked: he went from helplessness, to a man with a purpose, and stood. "Yes I have!" he declared. "My office, in the roundhouse!" Sheriff Marnie Keller was reading the newspaper. It was called a newspaper, though there was no paper to it: it was some kind of recycled plastic, it was thinner than newsprint and a little hard to turn the pages, but it was the Firelands Gazette from back home. Dr. John Greenlees Jr. saw his wife's serious expression, then her frown: he watched as she leaned forward, elbows on her desk, finger across her upper lip. "Bad news?" he asked quietly. Marnie raised an eyebrow, stood: she picked up the flimsy newspaper, handed it to her husband. "In Old Pale Eyes' day, the man would be dead," she said, her voice tight: "he came close to it in the here-and-now." Dr. Greenlees read the account, read it again: he looked up at his wife, one eyebrow raised. "I think I would like to consult on this one." "I'll arrange the commo." "They saved the man," Dr. John said thoughtfully. "I'd like to find out how." He looked at his wife, his expression as serious as hers. "I may have need of that information."

TROOP STRENGTH Marnie Keller's spectacles were halfway down her nose. She wore a tailored suit dress and heels, just like her pale eyed Gammaw; she was in front of a rolltop desk, like her Gammaw; she had shelves of books behind her, beside her; she had the library's computer at her disposal, and she had two large monitors, both showing information she wanted. Marnie knew the public expected librarians to be mousy, studious, school-marmish sorts -- three things Marnie most certainly wan't -- no, Marnie was a young woman who chose to follow certain drives, and one drive was to discover facts. Her brother asked a question, and the question piqued her curiosity: Jacob was reading one of Old Pale Eyes' journals, then he frowned, marked the place with a finger, carried the reprinted volume to their library and ran his finger across some newly printed publications. Marnie watched him pull a volume from the shelf: she saw the gold words, embossed in black binding: The Black Agent, volume 3, by W. Keller, Firelands Press. Marnie felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth: her Gammaw's humor tended to be understated, or dry, unless it was rude, crude, socially unacceeptable, obscene, illegal, immoral or fattening: after all her Gammaw had seen in her lifetime, Marnie reasoned, she was entitled to whatever rotten and perverse humor she pleased, and besides, her Gammaw's humor was honestly funny. There was no "Firelands Press" ... her Gammaw paid to have these volumes privately printed, and the "Firelands Press" on the spine, and the title page, was extra expense -- worth it, to tickle her Gammaw's funny bone, and however many generations handled these same volumes. Jacob marked the first reprint with half of an Ace of Diamonds -- a card he'd split edgewise with a Keith .44 that afternoon -- he paged quickly through the second volume, frowned, ran his finger down the page, stopped. "Marnie," Jacob said, puzzled, "you know these volumes better than anyone." Marnie tilted her head, curious, came a little closer. "Old Pale Eyes' children. I just found one I'd never heard of." "Oh?" "Indira." Marnie frowned. "Which volume is that?" "Black Agent 3." "I haven't read that one yet. It just arrived from the printer's last week." "Along with a bunch of others," Jacob muttered. "Old Pale Eyes was discussing Sean's unholy number of young and he was ignoring his own brigade." Jacob puzzled a moment more, then looked at Marnie and asked, "Irish Brigade, Sheriff's Brigade ... Sheriff's Regiment?" "Depends on total troop strength. Did Old Pale Eyes mention Indira?" "Only once. I'm surprised I never noticed it before." "Indira," Marnie repeated, blinking, and Jacob saw his older sis lean back a little and run her eyes along the cove molding where wall met ceiling. Recollection, he thought, noting which way her eyes swung: good God, I am my father's son! "You are your Gammaw's gandson," Marnie said absently, and Jacob's jaw dropped open. Marnie looked at him and laughed. "I'm sorry, Jacob, but really, you are so transparent!" Jacob raised both hands to the ceiling. "O Lord," he intoned, "spare me the curse of the perceptive female!" Marnie came over, gripped the back of his chair, laid her chin out over his shoulder. "Show me," she murmured. "I want to see this Indira." Marnie looked over her spectacles at the visitors to their library: as much as the Silver Jewel and the Firelands Museum, their little library seemed a tourist destination: it, too, had artifacts from Firelands' past, and the sight of a well dressed young woman immersed in research was perfectly in line with what tourists expected to see. Marnie looked up at the visitors, smiled a little, returned to her research. All right, Pale Eyes, she thought, which of your daughters is Indira? Sarah smiled with delight, looked at her niece with approval. Indira lowered a slender tube, as long as a schoolboy's ruler: her eyes were bright, excited: "How's that?" Sarah looked again at the target, ten feet away, an oval with two circles representing eyes: each eye had a sailmaker's needle sticking out of it, fired from the blowpipe her niece held. "That," she said, "is nice!" Indira laughed, picked up something: her hand was flat, palm up: she laid something between two fingers, or maybe two somethings, then she spun and made a throwing motion. Two more sailmaker's needles drove into the hand drawn face. Sarah's mouth opened with astonishment, smiled with approval. "I can do that with knives," she said, "but not with ... needles!" Indira laughed, the delighted laughter of a girl when she earns the approval of someone she respects. Indira picked up a square nail, held it by its pointed end: she laid this in her flat palm, slung it as if slapping something -- her delivery stroke was horizontal, instead of overhand -- and the nail drove into the target, just a little to the right of dead center. Sarah nodded, clapped her hands, bounced on her toes like an excited little girl. "Now." Indira tilted her head, looked at her aunt. "You were going to show me how you used that theater face paint to make me look old!" Sarah laughed. "A deal is a deal," she agreed. "Come with me and I'll show you how to be an old woman." "And a woman of easy virtue?" Sarah looked at her niece through lowered lashes -- at once lascivious, and a warning: "Leave that disguise to me, Indira," she said quietly. Indira knew better than to argue. Marnie made notes on a legal pad, just like her Gammaw did: her handwriting was quick, exact, elegant; she used a fountain pen, but unlike Willamina, she preferred a reservoir pen instead of a dip quill. Indira could have been one of two daughters, she wrote: she returned to the volume she was studying, looked at a monitor's screen, scrolled through the census report: she laid down the pen, placed spatulate fingers on the keyboard: a burst of activity, a quick, plastic patter, another screen, another scroll. Marnie's eyes narrowed with satisfaction. "Gotcha!" Jacob dumped the double handful of cartridge brass in the tumbler, poured in media, added a dryer sheet: the vibrating case cleaner sat on a rubber mat, on the basement's cement floor. He looked up at the sound of hard heels descending the stairs. Marnie gripped the support post, swung around like she was swinging around a post on the playground: she held up her legal pad and smiled. Jacob slid the lid into place, spun the retaining nut down, turned on the tumbler. He straightened, looked at his pale eyed older sis. "Indira," she declared triumphantly, "isn't her name!" "What?" "She did exist, though." "Fill me in, Sis!" Marnie laid the legal pad on the workbench, ran her finger halfway down the page. "Old Pale Eyes was a stud and no two ways about it," she said. "He had enough young to start his own army. He accused Sean -- you know, that big red headed fire chief --" "I remember," Jacob interrupted. "Old Pale Eyes accused Sean of trying to sire a whole damned Brigade of red headed young." "As I recall, he did, too." "Beside the point. Old Pale Eyes was raising a tribe of his own. Company strength." "All out of Esther, that poor woman?" "Sarah and your namesake Jacob were the only woods colts we know of, so yes." Marnie smiled, just a little. "I found out why they called her Indira." "What was her name?" "Her given Christian name was Rebekha. Here, note the spelling, it's not the Anglicized version we see today." "O-kaaay," Jacob said slowly. "Gorgeous handwriting, by the way." "Thanks. Now ... it was when Old Pale Eyes found out his nine year old daughter could throw sewing needles and stick 'em like darts, that he started to call her Indira." "I don't follow." Marnie sighed patiently. Jacob raised his palms, a wait-a-minute gesture: "Look, Sis, you're fourteen going onto twenty-one. I'm only thirteen and I don't know straight up from go-to-hell. You look like a million bucks and I look like I just fell down a manhole, okay? I've got all the fashion sense of a paving brick, so take pity on poor old stupid me and tell me why did Old Pale Eyes turn Rebecca into Indira?" Marnie rested her forehead on her knuckles for a moment, shook her head. "Okay. Here's the short form. Ancient India. Indira was a warrior who fought the gods or something like that. She used what sound like guided missiles -- from their sacred writings, it sounds like she was using guided missiles with nuclear warheads. Her spears never missed, not once, not ever. "Old Pale Eyes knew the legend, and when he saw his pretty little girl throwing nails and sticking them, saw her throwing sewing needles and sticking them, then when she learned to shoot she learned to out shoot him -- well, he knew the legend of Indira's Arrows and that's what he called her, and it stuck." Jacob looked over his sister's notes, ran his eye down one of her tidy, hand written columns. "Good Lord, Sis, how many children did Old Pale Eyes have?" Marnie laughed, shook her head. "Jacob," she said softly, "he said once he wanted to raise horses and children, and he was a man who took in stray kids and lost dogs. I honestly don't know how many children he had. There's confusion in the census records, it seems the Reverend Linn Keller down in Stone Creek ran an orphanage and they were all listed as his children, and somehow his young got confused with Old Pale Eyes, plus he did adopt more than Esther bore him." Jacob whistled. "Company strength," he said thoughtfully. "Are you sure it wasn't brigade strength?" Marnie laughed, picked up her legal pad, hesitated. "I'm still trying to correlate census records with three different family Bibles," she said softly. "I have no idea as to total troop strength."

INDIRA Sarah Lynne McKenna stared out the black glass mirror of the private car's nighttime window. She'd gone into a fine hotel in a fine gown, yellow with black trim, her hair piled atop her head with a gem dangled in the middle of her forehead: she met men's eyes, her screaming scarlet lips kissed at men of power and influence as she swept past them: she flowed up the grand staircase, knowing that just as she drew a rippling train of skirt behind her, she drew men's eyes as well. Three minutes after she was out of sight of the main lobby, a modestly dressed woman in a dark green but rather plain gown walked quietly down the hallway, toward the back stairs: she turned at the hotel detective's command, fumbled at the door frame beside her: the detective stopped suddenly as she turned her face toward him, her black-lensed glasses pronouncing her blind: "I am terribly sorry, can you help me? I seem to have lost my room," and the detective blinked, turned, looked behind him: when he realized this wasn't the hussy in the yellow dress, he thought perhaps this woman might have seen her: he came closer, looked over top her glasses, looked at her eyes and shivered. Her eyes were white, the milky white shade he'd only seen once, eyes that were permanently scarred from an acid-throwing. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, suddenly uncertain: "I was looking for a, a, a woman in a yellow ..." The blind woman blinked, reached forward, patted the hotel detective's chest: her hand slipped under his lapel, her fingers read the badge on its reverse. "Oh, you must be the hotel detective," she said, sounding even more like an old woman: "did this ... this yellow dress smell of cheap perfume and cigarettes?" "It could have, yes, ma'am." "She ran past me and that's how I got turned around. Where am I now?" "Ma'am, you're on the second floor, this is room 209." "Oh, dear, I am in room 201," she quavered, "but before she spun me around and dizzied me, she was running from the staircase and I heard her go on down the hallway." "Down the hallway," he said. "Where were you when she spun you around?" "I think halfway from here to the stairway." The detective launched into a sprint, down the hallway, startling a maid who was coming out of a room: the maid squeaked, jumped back, dropped a handful of folded linens: she watched the detective charge to the stairway door, run through it, saw the door slam behind him. The blind woman followed slowly, fingertips trailing along the wall: she stopped, crossed the hallway: "Well, dearie," she said in her old-woman's voice, "how did I do?" Sarah laughed and hugged the Sheriff's pale-eyed daughter. "Indira," she whispered, "you even sound like a little old lady!" "Daddy's eyes and dark glasses," Indira giggled, "and everyone thinks I'm stone blind!" They looked back down the hallway, pulled back into the room. Sarah handed Indira a satchel: Sarah drew the door shut behind her, turned a key in the lock, and Indira took her aunt's arm. It looked for all the world like one of the hotel maids was helping a blind woman down the back stairs and out to a waiting carriage: the hack clattered away, headed for the depot, and with it, the woman with dark glasses and enough evidence -- and a yellow dress -- in the satchel to put two powerful and influential men behind bars, for a very long time. Not long later, another woman descended the grand staircase: though well dressed, she did not draw undue attention to herself: she glided down the stairs and into the dining room, she sat, smiled at the polite, bowing waiter, and ordered a light meal: "If a Mr. Donovan inquires as to Miss Susan, could you please seat him here," she smiled, gesturing with feminine, gloved fingers to the chair across the table. Mr. Donovan arrived before her meal did. Mr. Donovan was a nervous man, darting glances to his left and to his right: he wore a suit, yes, but it was not well tailored: he fumbled with his hat, his necktie was askew, and as he approached, Sarah noticed one shoe was wet, on its outer edge, wet with something that looked sticky, from the street dust and fluff adhering to it: she couldn't tell the color, not on a black shoe, but she was ready to bet it was blood. Mr. Donovan nearly ran to her table. Sarah looked up and smiled: her expression turned instantly to sympathy as the waiter turned quickly, angling his tray to keep the contents from spilling: Donovan nearly fell, cursed at the waiter, seized the back of his chair and yanked it away from the table, sitting abruptly and awkwardly scooting back in. The waiter said not a word, but the look he gave this uncouth intruder spoke volumes, and pleasantly worded, the volumes were not. "Mr. Donovan," Sarah purred. "How nice of you to join us. Can I offer you something?" "You can give me what you took," Donovan hissed, shifting in his seat and lacing his fingers together. Sarah picked up her fork, sampled the pheasant. "Mmm," she hummed. "Exquisite, and I am simply famished." She looked at her twisting, uncomfortable dinner partner. "But the Chinese do have a saying, Mr. Donovan. Hunger makes the best sauce." "Sauce?" Donovan hissed. "You broke into the offices and ... sauce?" "Mr. Donovan," Sarah sighed, "I have no idea what you are talking about." Donovan's hand raised -- There was the flash of light on a nickle plated pistol -- The table flipped up, a pair of stockinged legs and a flurry of skirts -- The table knocked the man's hand upward, slung pheasant, dressing and drink into the air. The pistol fired, punched a hole in the carved chapiter of a decorative timber column -- The heavier BOOM of a .44 bulldog followed the flip of the table -- Sarah Lynne McKenna slipped the blocky little revolver back into its hidden holster: she rose, her eyes wide, gloved hands came to her mouth: she backed up, her chair fell over, hit the polished floor with a sharp, woody sound -- A woman's scream, shrill, piercing, and a woman ran out of the dining room, fled blindly through the lobby, out the front doors, into the nighttime street -- A shabbily dressed man sagged in his chair, then fell sideways, blood seeping from the hole just below his breastbone. Sarah Lynne McKenna stared at the black-glass mirror that was the private car's nighttime window. She blinked at the rattle of a china teacup on a china saucer: there was the inviting gurgle of tea being poured, the welcoming odor of fresh-brewed oolong tempted its way to her, and she smiled as Indira poured a second cup for herself. Two pale eyed ladies smiled knowingly at one another and sipped their tea.

SIR, A WORD Sheriff Linn Keller had his horse's off forehoof between his knees when his son spoke. Linn lowered the hoof slowly, patted the mare's neck, turned to face Jacob. "A word, sir," he'd said -- the Sheriff heard it again, as if spoken anew, between his ears. "Yes," he said curiously. Jacob was scrupulous in his manners, as a matter of habit -- good manners were the rule, and not the exception: indeed, the deadliest gunfighters the Sheriff had ever known, met, spoken with or heard about, were also the men with the most correct manners, for every one of them knew the fell consequece of a harsh word. "Sir" -- Jacob frowned, took a breath: Linn saw his son's bottom jaw come out, as he bit his bottom lip. "Sir, I have a fear." Another man might have paused before naming the beast that gnawed his guts. Not Jacob. Not the Sheriff's pale eyed get, the lean young man who'd already established his reputation as a man not to be trifled with. The Sheriff nodded, once. "Go on." "Sir," Jacob said straightforwardly, "I fear my own temper." Sheriff Linn Keller considered this for several long moments: finally, he picked up his coat, draped it over his arm, paced slowly up to his son. "Walk with me." Father and son paced slowly out of the barn and over to the pump: fresh water in the washpan and the Sheriff washed his hands, dried them on the sun bleached towel, he and Jacob shared a tin cup of good cold well water apiece. "Now." Linn shrugged into his coat, settled it into place: "you fear your temper." "I do, sir," Jacob said. "I fear I will let slip my beast, and I will very likely kill someone, or hurt them very badly, and I'll do it with my bare hands." "Why with your bare hands?" Linn asked thoughtfully. "Sir, there is no satisfaction in shooting a man," Jacob said flatly. "If my badger is tearin' loose it's because someone deserves the laying-on of hands." "I see," the Sheriff replied thoughtfully. He thrust a chin at the back porch steps. Father and son walked across the thin grass and seated themselves on the back steps. Linn took off his Stetson, considered the sweat band carefully before speaking. "Jacob," he said, "when I was a boy, I had me a genuine cane pole." "Yes, sir?" "Genuine cane. Cost me enough, too. I was proud of that'un. "Well, I was up on Fisher Crick, we had particular bends in the crick we liked to fish, and the boys from town come down and they was another one, Billy White, he come up from Fay Iver Ridge to loaf with the townies." "Yes, sir?" "We trompled a good patch down and it was high enough we could throw down a good bet of Cat Tails and sleep without gettin' all soaky wet, and the Musquitters weren't bad, only that Billy White, he taken one of them Cat Tails and twisted it to bust out the fuzz and he rubbed it in my face. "He got it up my nose and in my mouth and I couldn't breathe and he thought it was funny and got to laughin' and I twisted away from him, I grabbed that genuine cane pole and broke it over my knee and I come after him. Could I have caught him I intended to use that sharp broke-off end like a spear and I purposed to drive it through his guts and out his back. "He taken off a-runnin' and I taken out right after him. "He was bigger and he was faster but I knowed the woods and he didn't, I got to home and I got the shotgun and I lay wait knowin' he'd come down a pa'tickelar path. "He come, all right, but he must've figured I had bad blood for him, for he stopped out of shotgun range. "I laid behint a log with both hammers back and he hollered and said he didn't mean nothin' by it and he was only funnin' and I allowed as he could come right on ahead and I'd show him how much fun it was, and he hollered at me for a while and I got kind of cooled off and then I allowed as hell, come on ahead and go home and I'd do the same." Silence grew long on their back porch steps as each saw the scene play out in his mind. "Jacob, I fully intended to murder him. It was in me to run that spear point into his guts and stir 'em around some and then shove it out his back, it was in me to hit him with both barrels up close, and I was runnin' on pure red hot hate when I did." Jacob nodded, slowly. "After I cooled down some, why, I looked back on what I'd nearly done and I turned cold for the fear of it, for I realized had I done things just a little different, I'd have kilt him graveyard dead." "Yes, sir." "If a man is afraid of his temper, Jacob, he is aware of his temper, and he is that much less likely to turn his badger plumb loose. Now there's times when you want to do just that, an' there is times when the layin' on of hands is needful." Linn looked at his son and grinned. "Like you done with Danny Spears." "Yes, sir." "I am afraid of my temper as well, Jacob, and I must discipline myself most strictly when it comes to family." Linn felt his son's surprise: Jacob turned his head, looked at his father: "Sir?" Linn nodded, his expression haunted. "Oh, yes, Jacob. I have felt anger and then the shame for feeling it, but I never acted on it. God willing I never will. Times I'd been writing an important letter, and got interrupted, or I was studyin' on an important matter and got interrupted, and the interruptions were by family --" "I have offended, sir," Jacob said slowly. "No," Linn said firmly. "No, Jacob, you most certainly have not offended." Linn looked over his shoulder to make sure young ears were not eavesdropping. "Of all my young, Jacob, you alone have never offended!" "Thank you, sir," Jacob said uncertainly, feeling at least a little relief. "It is a constant fight," Linn admitted. "That temper of ours is a beast, it's a monster and it wants to eat us from the inside out. If it ever wins, it'll burn us out from the inside and we'll just turn into a pile of ash." Father and son lapsed into a long silence, broken only when the hired girl came to the back door looking for them, to let them know supper was ready.

A STRANGE AND WONDERFUL CREATURE Captain Crane drew a mug of coffee, trickled a thin stream of milk into it. This, in and of itself, was not that unusual: if it's true the Navy runs on coffee, it's twice as true for the fire service. What was unusual was the way the Captain drew his scalding beverage. Chief Fitzgerald picked up his own mug, drew it mostly full: unlike the Captain, his hand was steady; unlike the Captain's mug, the Chief's did not shiver and slop over the rim. Captain Crane sat down, set his mug down, closed his eyes, took a long, steadying breath. The Chief sat beside him, laid a hand between the man's shoulder blades. "Out with it, lad," he said quietly. "I know it was a code and I know it was a child." "She didn't make it." "You followed procedure." "I did." "You skipped no steps." "None." "What you did, you did well." "She was dying," the Captain said flatly. "Brain tumor. There was no saving her." The Chief waited: an anonymous hand slid a dishrag in under the Captain's mug as he raised it to take a sip, left it in place to soak up the heavy tan drop clinging to the bottom edge. Captain Crane looked up, laughed. "Chief," he said, "women are strange and wonderful creatures." "Oh?" Fitz took a sip, took another. "We were on our way in, Shelly was on the radio givin' report to ER. She quit breathin' and I went for her carotid. "Now Shelly was between me and the driver's bulkhead, she was squatted down and I was on my prayer bones beside that little girl when she coded. "I said "Shelly, code!" -- I established the airway and went down mouth-to-mouth, we were seconds from the hospital and no time for anything else -- Shelly told ER we were running a code. She didn't climb over my shoulders, she just tossed the microphone. It's on the end of that curly cord, y'understand, and if she wanted it again all she had to do was pull it in, hand over hand, like -- she didn't climb over top of me and she didn't climb widdershins over the squad bench behind me." Crane took a thoughtful pull on his coffee. "No, Chief, mothers are strange and wonderful creatures," he said thoughtfully. "She just kind of levitated over me, she dropped into compression position, she landed on her knees with her arms straight, her fingers laced and she had the positioning perfect." "Do we have a signed no-code on file?" "No. No, and she didn't have one with the hospital either." "I see." Crane took another pull on his thick-walled mug, hung his head over the steaming vessel, staring sightlessly into its tan depths. "I tried to save her, Chief. We both did, we had her at ER within thirty seconds." "Sounds like you did all right." Crane took a long breath, stared at something miles beyond the far wall. "Mothers," he repeated softly, "are strange and wonderful creatures." "Aye," Fitz agreed. "That they are."

"SHERIFF, WHY?" Sheriff Linn Keller was a pretty good judge of men. He might admit, in a private moment, that he wasn't nearly as good a judge of women: he'd said to his old and dear friend Jackson Cooper that "Women can pull the hood wink right over my eyes fast and easy and I never know it!" and Jackson Cooper nodded solemnly and allowed as that was why both men kept company with their wives, that they'd each married women who could spot bad women that looked not bad, and each man raised a solemn stein of beer in salute to the other's bride and their perceptiveness. On this one particular Sunday, the Sheriff was all shined up and presentable, he was barbered and his suit and hat were brushed, his boots polished to a fine shine: the sons that came with him to church were, in like wise, presentable, and his daughters were as lovely and presentable as his beautiful bride. The Sheriff was a quietly watchful man, as were his sons, particularly the tall Jacob, who looked enough like his father to be a younger twin: Jacob's mustache was a rich auburn, like his hair, and where Linn's mustache was iron grey and carefully sculpted into a villainous handlebar, Jacob's mustache was finer, thicker, and just a bit more elegant, which made him the subject of ladies' envious glances -- a fact that did not escape the young wife on his off arm. The Sheriff shook hands and talked with anyone who approached him: he was affable and personable, he was quick to listen, and when he listened, he appeared to give his full attention to the speaker: Jacob, nearby, maintained a silent overwatch, while his wife chatted happily with friends and acquaintances. Linn noticed a little boy watching him curiously, a little boy with an expression somewhere between puzzled and thoughtful. Linn concluded his conversation with WJ Garrison, the mercantile's proprietor, then he turned, squatted, looked very directly at the little boy who'd been studying him. "There is a question in your eyes," he said in a gentle and fatherly voice, and the lad's ears immediately reddened: in his eyes, the Sheriff was almost a legendary figure, and to have such a figure step down from the Olympus of a pedestal upon which the lad had him, to address him, a mere mortal, was ... well, at once very flattering, but kind of intimidating as well. The boy frowned and looked at the ground, but immediately raised his eyes to the pale eyed lawman. "Sheriff, my Pa said we go to church to clean up our corroded souls." The Sheriff nodded slowly. "I would say your Pa is right," he affirmed, knowing how important it was to reinforce the father's stature in a son's mind. "Well how come you're here!" the boy blurted. "You're the Sheriff!" Sheriff Linn Keller grinned; Sheriff Linn Keller dropped his head, nodding; Sheriff Linn Keller laughed, and he laid a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder. "Son," he said, "I'd like to make sure I'm still right with the Lord." The boy frowned. "But you're the Sheriff! Wouldn't you know?" Linn knew this conversation was being listened to; he knew he'd have to reply with some wisdom: he apparently had a really good reputation in a little boy's eyes, and he didn't want to lose any of that, if only because of vanity: few things are more meaningful to a grown man, than the rapt attention of a young boy's ear. "When I'm Sheriff," Linn said slowly, "I rub shoulders with all kind of people. I have to go amongst the Philistines with the jaw bone of a jack mule and bring the bad ones back to face the Judge, whether they want to come along, or not." The big-eyed boy nodded his understanding. "Now if the only folks I see are the bad ones, why, I might be thinkin' there are nothing but bad folks in the world." The boy frowned, then looked at the Sheriff, almost in alarm, as he realized the truth of the man's words. "When I come here to church on Sunday, what kind of folks are here?" The boy looked around, looked at the surprising number of people leaned in close to hear the quietly worded conversation. "We've got just all kind of folks here. Those that are here, are good people, and those that aren't, are made better by comin' here. Y'see" -- the Sheriff leaned a little closer, gripped both the lad's shoulders -- "you are one reason I'm Sheriff." "Me?" the boy asked, his lips barely moving. Linn nodded. "You are one big reason I'm the big chief law dog in this county. I keep the peace so you don't have to worry about it." The boy's eyes widened as he took this in. "You asked how come I come to church." Linn smiled a little, looked up, looked around. "It's because of everyone you see here. Good people, doin' the best they can, and that reminds me that there are good people in this world." He winked, stood. "I'd best go in before my wife grabs me by the ear and drags me in." The boy looked at Esther, who was smiling patiently, looking at her husband with a gentle expression. "Naaw, Miz Esther wouldn't do that!" Sarah Lynne McKenna swept up beside the Sheriff, took his arm: "But I would!" she declared, reaching down and taking the boy's hand: together, the Sheriff, his wife, his daughters, his sons and a little boy who was curious enough to ask a question, went into their little whitewashed church, where the Parson was all set to scrub the tarnish off any corroded souls that might cross his threshold.

MEDICINE MEN Dr. John Greenlees pressed practiced fingers against the inside of the dying man's upper arm. He'd nearly lost his arm -- unfortunately, it was a clean cut, which means the transected artery was pumping his very life out on the ground. From the absolute pallor of the man's face, the dusky shade of his lips and his fingers, the frontier physician knew he was looking at a dead man, but the hard headed and contrary Army surgeon in him seized the artery above the cut, pressed, desperately trying to hold life inside the body, where it belonged. A man in a fine suit stomped up and down beside his dying son, his face contorted with grief: he tore at his hair, threw his hands up and down, turned and bent at the waist and screamed "YOU'RE A DOCTOR, DO SOMETHING!" Dr. John Greenlees looked at the quiet, watchful ranch hand, kneeling close by: "I need your help." The ranch hand lifted his chin, his eyes bright, interested. "Grab his upper arm here. Press in with your fingers flat. Here, where my hand is. Tight." The ranch hand reached down, pressed the brachial artery against the humerus: Doc opened his warbag, pulled out a bottle of carbolic, sloshed it across the exposed upper arm. He'd already split the sleeve, cut it at the shoulder seam: he set the bottle aside, reached into the case again. "Do you have a weak stomach?" he asked quietly. "Nope," the ranch had said firmly. Doc saw the cut he'd have to make: the artery was gone, the cut would have transected the radial nerve, the arm would be dead from there down -- he'd seen it before -- he reached into the bag, pulled out a tourniquet, ran it around the man's arm, drew it tight, screwed the pad down to shut off the artery. He brought out another, smaller case, selected a scalpel. "MY GOD DON'T CUT HIS ARM OFF!" the distraught man screamed. "It's the only chance he has," Doc grated, froze when he heard the pistol cock. The ranch hand launched from his knee-down squat: Doc ignored the conflict beside him as he made the cut with the speed, the precision, of too many field amputations during that damned War. He made the cut, set the scalpel across the small case, reached in, brought out a small, specialized saw. He looked at the injured man's face, hesitated, then laid practiced fingers into the carotid groove, finding the Adam's apple, dropping his fingers down beside it, questing, searching, looking without eyes for the slight pressure that would tell him life remained in the body. He replaced the bone saw in the satchel, withdrew a new purchase, the very latest innovation from France, something called a stethoscope: he fit the ends in his ears, pulled the still figure's shirt open, pressed the long, polished-brass bell against the still chest. He looked up, saw the ranch hand rising, a little nickle plated pistol in hand: the other fellow was in the ground, shaking his head. Doc went over to the horse trough, washed off the scalpel, washed the blood off the tourniquet, then washed his hands with his usual thoroughness. He put his tools away, closed his satchel, looked down at the man who was dead before the doctor even began. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I tried." The distraught man rolled over, came up on all fours, looked at his son, dead, lying in a shining pool of thickening blood. "I'm sorry," Dr. Greenlees said. "He was too far gone." He turned and walked to his physician's surrey, set his satchel behind the seat, picked up his coat, spun it around his shoulders. He tried to forget the sight of a father, on his knees beside his dead son, bent over with his face in his dead son's belly, muffling his agonized screams as he mourned the loss of his firstborn. Dr. John Greenlees seized the stainless-steel instrument tray in both hands, swung it up in time to block the punch: Dr. John was a man with an uncommon delicacy of touch -- not uncommon among surgeons -- but when necessary, his grip could be quite strong, and his grip on the rolled edges of the steel tray was quite good. A good thing it was. The punch was hard enough to bend the tray in its center. The first punch was high -- at his face -- the second just grazed Doc's side, and he brought the tray down hard on the side of his attacker's face. Dr. John Greenlees was honestly surprised as his attacker's eyes snapped wide open, as his mouth opened, as he recognized the reaction of a man suddenly without any control at all over himself, the moment before he collapsed beside the ER cart. A pale eyed woman in a deputy's uniform had a three-cell flashlight in her hand, one he'd seen before: she'd shown it to him earlier in the shift, and joked about slipping a bicycle inner tube over the aluminum body "so no fancy lawyer can claim I belted their client with a length of pipe." Dr. John Greenlees raised the instrument tray, considered how badly distorted it was: he looked at the young man on the ER cart, pale, sweating, in pain. "Kidney stones?" he gasped. Doc nodded. "I'm not dying." "You might wish you were dead, but no, you're not dying. Let me give you something for the pain." "What about Dad?" "He's going to jail, son, you don't have to worry about him." Dr. John Greenlees, M.D., physician and surgeon, squatted, gripped the screaming girl's foot: one hand laid over her arch, the other cupped just above her heel, he leaned back, using his weight for leverage. There is no scream like the absolute, shrill agony expressed from the female throat, especially in a small rock chamber melted away by the mining machinery: Doc leaned back more, and as the broken ends of her thigh passed one another and drew apart, the girl's eyes widened, her hands pressed hard against the smooth floor, her full-voiced, super powered scream, trailed off to nothing. Her eyes were wide with surprise instead of clenched shut with pain. Doc considered that sometimes the old and the simple works just fine; he'd fabricated a selection of an ancient design splint, and there on Mars, surrounded with technology from their own world, and others, Doc worked the newly-manufactured Thomas half ring splint under the girl's high thigh, tied the hitch, attached the winch and drew the windlass just taut enough to hold the broken bone ends apart. Two miners helped lift her just enough to get the folding litter under her, two miners hoisted her, they moved two steps to the left and six feet back when a chunk of rock fell -- swift, silent, deadly -- where the injured girl had been not thirty seconds before. Dr. John Greenlees flinched, turned his face away, raising a hand to block the stinging spalls that stung his face, then he looked at the rock, at his patient, shook his head and asked, "Is anyone selling lottery tickets? We all need to buy one today!"

CAMEO APPEARANCE Angela Keller was Daddy's little girl. Angela Keller delighted in being Daddy's little girl. When Angela was a little girl, her Daddy would swing her waaaaay up in the air and she would laugh and throw her arms wide like she was flying, and she would laugh, and her Daddy laughed with her, and she was safe. When her Daddy rode his big horsie, Angela stood up on the saddle behind him, holding a good double handful of her Daddy's coat, and is big gallopy horsie would run reeeeally fast and Angela would throw her head back and laugh, and the sky would be full of the happy laughter of a little girl who was where she should be, where she wished to be, doing the one thing that made her the happiest. Little girls grow, and little girls become big girls, and Angela admired her big sister Marnie and she wanted to be just like her, and when a package arrived -- an unseen messenger left the ribbon-tied box at their front door -- Angela stood, curious, as her Mommy untied the pink-and-red ribbons tied around the box. It had a label that said simply: ANGELA. Just that one word, her name, nothing to indicate from whence it came. Mommy untied the pretty big ribbon bow and pulled the criscross ribbons loose and opened the box and Angela blinked and tilted her head a little to the side as her Mommy pulled out a dress. It was an Angela-sized dress, and Angela tried it on, and it fit: there was another box, a smaller one, with a black sillk ribbon, and in the middle of the ribbon, something her Mommy called a Cameo. Her Mommy scooted her upstairs and set her on Mommy's seat in front of Mommy's vanity and her Mommy worked on her hair -- Angela watched, fascinated, as her Mommy worked some hairbrush magic and turned Angela's twin braids into something poofy and rolly and on top of her head, something she'd seen in old timey pictures. Angela put on her shiny little slippers and came downstairs with her Mommy and gave her Daddy a hopeful look. Sheriff Linn Keller was sorting through the day's mail, frowning a little: he looked up, looked at Angela, blinked. Sheriff Linn Keller, just come home from work, having left the stresses of the office behind him, came home to the usual evening stresses of whatever was in the mail, demanding his attention: he looked up from the handful of the ususal stuff and saw his little girl, in an absolutely gorgeous McKenna gown, with a cameo about her neck and her hair done up elaborately after the fashion of a previous century, and he did what a Daddy should do in that moment. He set the mail aside and he went down on one knee, and he looked very directly at his daughter. Angela was just above average height for her age; she had absolutely flawless skin, she had a smile that would melt the stony heart of a marble statue, and right now, she was looking nothing short of absolutely beautiful. Linn looked up at Shelly: "You made this?" Shelly shook her head, held up a note. "You need to read this." Linn took Angela's hand, raised it to his lips, kissed her knuckles, carefully, as if she would break if breathed on. "Darlin'," he said, "you are gorgeous." He rose, took the note as Shelly extended it. He studied the scarlet wax seal, tilted it to catch the light across it, frowned. Linn turned, took a quick step into the kitchen for better light, pulled out his phone, took a shot of the seal: only then did he bend the seal to break it, and unfold the note. Angela saw her Daddy's face grow serious, saw his eyebrow raise, saw him nod. He looked at his little girl. "Darlin'," he said, "could you come over here, please." He pulled out a kitchen chair, picked up his ten year old daughter, stood her on the chair: Angela shot a look at her Mama -- they weren't allowed to stand on the furniture! -- Shelly tilted her head ever so slightly, a silent, womanly communication that it was all right -- Linn very carefully, very delicately placed his fingertips under his daughter's chin. "Tilt back," he said softly, and she did: her Daddy studied the cameo closely, frowning a little: "Chin down." Angela dropped her chin. Linn lifted up the back of her hair, looked at the simple catch at the back of her neck, lowered her hair carefully: he came around in front of Angela again, looked at her with a serious Daddy-face. "Darlin'," he said slowly, "I was right." "What's that, Daddy?" Angela asked uncertainly. "You," he said, lowering his face and coming nearer, until their noses just touched, "are gorgeous!" Angela giggled, threw her arms around her Daddy, and Linn seized his little girl in a big enveloping Daddy-hug, stood up straight, picked her up off the chair: he turned around once, twice, shoving the rest of the world viciously from his mind, reveling in this moment, this one moment, with his little girl in his arms, under his own roof, free from the decisions, the action, everything incumbent with being Sheriff: for this brief slice of time, he was what he'd always hoped to be. He was a big strong Daddy, in his own home, holding his child, and for this one moment, all was right with the universe. Linn and Shelly slipped into Angela's bedroom, after she was asleep, silent in sock feet: husband and wife held hands, watched their little girl, innocent and curled up under the hand stitched quilt, and after several long moments, Linn gestured toward his little girl's dresser. It was an old dresser; it had seen many generations of use; a box lay atop the crocheted doily, an artifact from Aunt Mary, rest her soul: the box was long and narrow, and contained a hand carved cameo on a black silk ribbon. The likeness was almost photographic in detail, and was that of a young girl in profile. Marnie, Linn thought, then he blinked and smiled and shook his head. That's Angela, it's gotta be. Linn and Shelly went back downstairs, careful to make no sound; they settled at the kitchen table, side by side, and Linn withdrew the note, unfolded it, read it for the hundredth time. It was in Marnie's handwriting. I had this cameo made, she wrote: it is of a native Martian stone that is particularly suited for cameos, with an ivory colored layer naturally bonded to a darker underlayment. The silk is from a planet in the Richmond sector, and was part of a gift from the daughter of a man I kept alive when a meteor ripped the side out of an Ambassadorial shuttle. No doubt you or she will be asked where you bought it. Show them a picture of Sarah Lynne McKenna. She and I look identical, and there is a picture in her museum. It is of Sarah as a young girl, and she is wearing a cameo. Show them the picture and say nothing more. Sarah Lynne McKenna breathed deeply, strongly, rejoicing in the strength of her young limbs. She was stripped down to her frillies and stockings, she was facing an opponent, a grown man with sidewhiskers and a curled mustache, who was likewise in a similar state of undress -- improper, perhaps, for a young girl's company, but necessary for this phase of her training. The attack was swift, her defense was merciless: a grown man was hard pressed to land without hurting himself, and not for the first time, he was grateful for the padding under their woven practice mat. Twice more he came at her; twice more she used what he'd taught her, twice more she'd used leverage more than strength, twice more she -- a girl of twelve years -- threw a grown man. He rolled over, came up on all fours, then stood up on his knees: he raised a palm in surrender, nodded. "Enough for today," he said. "Tomorrow, knives." Sarah Lynne McKenna, daughter of the mountains, bowed formally as the man rose to his feet: he too bowed; they turned their backs on one another and each walked to their end of the broad Denver theater stage. Sarah opened the door to her dressing room, felt the air shift, took a quick step back, teeth bared, hands up, ready to block or strike. There was silence from within. She hooked the door, pulled it suddenly open. Nothing. She looked inside, cautiously, looked around: the room was small, Spartan, with nowhere to hide an adult assailant: Sarah, in her young life, knew what it was to be attacked, assaulted, hurt: nostrils flared, eyes going steadily to an ice-pale shade, she thrust a hand into her waiting dress, came out with a double-edged fighting knife: she spun, ready -- Nothing. Sarah closed the door, latched it: no one could get in now -- A box lay on the vanity table. Curious, she lay down the knife, picked up the box, opened it. Inside, a cameo, beautifully carved, an exact likeness of herself, in profile: ivory it was, on a gleaming jet oval. Sarah turned to the mirror, held it up against her throat, froze. Someone was standing behind her, someone -- a woman, but wearing grey, something that clung to her body like she was naked -- Sarah turned, slashed, thrust -- Her blade skidded off the woven-grey belly -- A grey-gloved hand caught her wrist -- The woman knelt, placed her fingers against the side of her head -- The grey face cover lifted, suddenly -- It was like looking in a very strange mirror. Sarah's eyes widened with surprise, going from ice-pale to a very slight shade of blue. The woman pressed her fingers flat against the side of her head again, and the woven-grey, skin-tight cap snapped back off her head: her hair was short, but she looked -- She looks like me! "My name," the woman whispered, "is Marnie, and I'm not from around here." She looked at the cameo about Sarah's neck, smiled. "I wish to have your portrait painted," she said, "and for that I will need to take your photograph." She looked at the dress, still hanging behind Sarah. "Please. Get dressed." "Who are you?" Sarah asked, debating whether to make a slash or a stab at the now-exposed face. "I am your several times great-granddaughter." Sarah puzzled over this, then shrugged, turned to her dress: the knife disappeared into the material, somewhere; Sarah was dressed with an incredible speed -- the experience of modeling her Mama's fashions, she was very much a quick-change artist -- she slipped into her high shoes, ran the buttonhook with the speed and ease of much experience. She was elaborately ignoring the woman behind her; when she turned, the woman was holding up something square and silver, something wide as a deck of cards and half as thick: the woman pulled the stool from the vanity, spun it toward the side of the little dressing room. "Sit here," she said. "Now... gloves, yes, just like that, and fold your hands in your lap, just like this... perfect, you have a natural gift for ... oh, just like that, hold very still!" Sarah froze, willing herself not to blink, not to breathe: she had no idea where the camera was -- cameras were big boxy affairs, and here inside she'd have to use flash powder, and that didn't work well with formal portraiture and it would make a lot of smoke and it would stink -- "There. All done." The woman slipped the silvery square thing into her woven grey, skintight suit, smiled. "Sarah, I am very proud of you," she said, then she raised her forearm, tapped the back of her wrist a few times, looked at Sarah and winked: she shimmered, and she was gone, and Sarah felt air rush in, saw dust pulled up under the door. The pale eyed woman in grey was gone ... but she didn't go out the door. Sarah pulled her knife, quickly, slashed through the space the woman had occupied a moment before -- Gone -- How'd she do that? Sarah Lynne McKenna looked in the mirror, raised her fingertips to the cameo at her throat. It's real. It must've happened. Two days later, the Sheriff and his wife came driving out in their shiny, black, gold-pinstriped carriage: Sarah watched as the pale eyed lawman helped his wife down, took her under the arms and swung her down with the ease of a lean man of deceptive strength: Esther descended to earth, secure in her husband's strong grip, one foot down and pointed, the other leg up behind her, pointed as well, the pose of a woman who knows her beauty, and declares it for the man she loves. Sarah watched as the Sheriff brought something square, wrapped in brown paper, from the folded quilting in the back of their carriage: something came in by train, something important enough to be padded, something important enough for him to carry very carefully and deliver personally. Sarah stood back as the Sheriff brought this package into their parlor. Family gathered, curious, as the Sheriff untied the string holding paper around the object: he pulled the string free, handed it to the maid -- nothing was wasted, the string would be reused, as would be the paper in which this mysterious object was wrapped. Beneath the first layer of brown wrapping paper, a note, a single octavo sheet, tri-folded and sealed with scarlet wax: the Sheriff frowned, turned it to catch the light across it, handed it to Esther, then to Bonnie, who handed it to her husband. Levi frowned, looked at the Sheriff, who inclined his head slightly. Levi broke the seal, opened the paper, read the few words aloud. "A granddaughter remembers," he read slowly, then looked up, puzzled. "It's signed Marnie." "Who's Marnie?" Bonnie asked, taking the note, studying it. "That's all it says. Just Marnie." Linn unfolded the paper, froze. "Levi," he said, and Levi leaned over: they heard his quick intake of breath, his slow hiss of admiration. "That," he said slowly, "is an absolutely gorgeous portrait!" "You didn't tell me you sat for a portrait," Bonnie said, startled, looking at Sarah. Sarah shrugged. "I didn't tell you about performing on stage, either," she admitted. Bonnie looked at the portrait. "That," she admitted, "is absolutely beautiful." Sarah's cheeks were a distinct pink: she looked down, looked away: the ladies were immediately discussing where to hang it, Levi rescued the Sheriff with an offer of brandy, and Sarah raised her fingers to her throat, remembering how the cameo felt, about her neck, as if it belonged there.

THE NEXT HOME GAME The parachutist slapped the special delivery package in its zippered nylon chest carrier. The UH1B, well older than either pilot, copilot, jumpmaster or parachutist, clattered noisily through the Colorado darkness, beating the air benath it into submission in order to stay aloft. They circled the objective, twice, then came to a hover at a prescribed altitude. It was an easy jump; the LZ was scouted, the hazards memorized: gloved hands reached down, triggered the strobes at the jumper's ankles, then the big side door slid open, and with it, a noisy, tumultuous blast of rotorwash and the stink of burnt JP-4. A slap on the shoulder, a thumbs-up, the athletic form in the military coveralls dove into the darkness. Well below, young eyes saw twin white strobes separate from the bird: strong young hands bent plastic glowsticks, shook them, illuminating a long row beside the stadium, back from the lights, marking a power line, invisible in the darkness. "Sheriff's supposed to have a special surprise tonight," a football player speculated. "Betcha that's her that jumped out of the helo." One looked at another, laughed: they agreed that sounded just like something their pale eyed "Cool Little Old Lady" would do. Chief of Police Will Keller slid his eight point milkman cap back on his head and grinned at the descending parachutist: it was one of those flying parachutes, the kind a man can steer and land on a car hood if need be, instead of the round, to-whom-it-may-concern variety he was used to seeing. A little boy with big and wondering eyes bumped his elbow: pointing at the descending strobes, he said "Is that her, Chief? Is that her?" Will laughed, rested his hand on the boy's shoulder, a fatherly gesture: "It wouldn't surprise me," he admitted. The crowd was on its feet, standing, heads craned back, screaming their encouragement: the announcer's voice, tinny over pole-mounted speakers, declared that tonight's game ball was being delivered by the United States Marine Corps. The home team bench was on its feet, whistling, cheering, thrusting their helmets into the air, and the crowd picked up the chant: VAL-KY-RIE! VAL-KY-RIE! VAL-KY-RIE! VAL-KY-RIE! Chief Keller and a breathless lad stood, heads craned back, watching the rectangular patch and two strobes beneath become a human figure, watched as a lean and athletic form came in for a very skilled, on-both-feet landing: home and visitor crowds alike absolutely roared their approval as the parachutist, anonymous in helmet and visor, unzipped the chest pack, pulled out a football, pitched it underhand to the approaching referee. Eager hands helped gather his chute and retreat from the field, and Firelands High School Marching Band strutted out from the end zone. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, please remain standing for the presentation of the Flag, followed by the National Anthem!" Later that night, Will and Willamina sat in the Chief's cruiser, sipping scalding coffee from the All-Night and talking quietly, their eyes busy. "I expected you to be under that parachute," Will admitted. Willamina laughed. "I've had more people tell me that tonight!" "You could've, you know." "I know." She took a cautious sip, took another. "I didn't want to steal the Corps' thunder. They needed a real Marine, not --" "Willaaaaa," Will said, a warning note in his voice. "Didn't you tell me once a Marine, always a Marine?" Willamina sighed. "I did." Another sip, a snort, she wiped at a dribble escaping down her chin. Will looked at his twin sister, grinned. "I know that snort," he said. "Out with it, little sis, what is it?" Willamina harrumphed, blinked, wiped at surprised tears: "Swallow, don't inhale," she gasped, coughed, coughed again. "I hate it when I do that!" "You're not supposed to imitate my bad example," Will muttered. "Now will you tell me what's so funny?" Willamina smiled, checked the mirror on her side of the car, swung her pale eyed gaze to the side, the unconscious habit of a soldier who'd served in-country, or a veteran badge packer who knew what it was to be ambushed. "The Valkyries came to me," she said, "and told me they'd been practicing the Can-Can." "Oh, really?" Will rumbled. "That's a show I'd like to see!" "You'd like it," Willamina smiled. "I showed them how." "Somehow I don't doubt that!" Will declared. "How did they have it choreographed?" Willamina sighed. "Eight of them were going to run onto the field before the game, or at halftime, whichever fit the schedule better. Four, a hole, four more. Old fashioned uniforms -- you know, pleated skirts and sweater shells over white blouses, knee socks, saddle shoes." "Your style uniform." "Mine still fits." "Braggart." Willamina smiled quietly. "Most women my age can still fit into their earrings. I can still fit into my cheerleading uniform." "Most women hate you for that." Willamina took a cautious sip, swallowed. "That's better." She looked at Will, smiled. "I was going to be number nine, running onto the field in a mid-calf skirt, something purple and white, like theirs, but loose -- something I could throw back and forth." "Throw your skirt?" Will frowned. "Didn't I tell you? The Marching Band has unofficially been practicing the Can-Can." "And ...?" "And the other eight Valkyries were going to handle their short pleated skirts with a dainty little grip, I would have a good two-hand grip on mine and throw mine back and forth, we would spin, we'd high-kick -- they've been practicing, and they're pretty good." "You wouldn't be practicing with them?" Will asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow. Willamina managed to look very innocent. "Will, if I can help motivate the home team, I'll work with the Valkyries, no problem!" "Yeah, right," Will muttered. "Why didn't you do it tonight?" "Well, tonight we had the game ball drop in by parachute, and besides ..." Willamina hesitated -- this was very uncharacteristic for her -- Will saw her ears reddening and she was studying the sippy lid on her coffee cup like it was of great importance. "Willaaaaa ...?" Willamina looked up at him with her very best Innocent Expression, which did not work at all. "The plan was for all of us to wear white tights and purple knee socks, but at the end of the Can-Can, when the dancers turn their backsides to the crowd, bend over and flip up their skirts --" "Yeeesssss?" Will drawled out the question, marveling at just how hot and scarlet looking his sister's ears were becoming. "The plan was to spell out FIRELANDS on the dancers' bottoms." "With you dead center in the lineup." Willamina sighed, nodded. "And you didn't." "I could lie to you and say the principal vetoed it," Willamina said slowly, looking back out the windshield, toward the harshly-illuminated gas islands: "I talked them out of it." "Which means they're going to do it anyway." "Just not for Homecoming." "You'll be in the middle?" Willamina sighed. "Will, I end up in the middle of a lot of things." She gave him a beseeching look. "Will you be there next home game?" Will grinned, nodded. "I'll be there."

THE IRISHMAN'S RIGHT Sheriff Linn Keller stopped and stared in sheer, unadulterated admiration. Sean Finnegan, the big red headed Irish fire chief, was frozen in that one bright moment, frozen with his good right arm almost straight, his hand doubled up into a fist at the end of it, and about a yard away from the fist, drifting away in absurdly slow motion, a man whose nose was now much broader than it had been a moment ago. Like most experienced bare knuckle brawlers, Sean's knuckles were aligned up and down: were they horizontal when hitting something as bony and inflexible as a man's face, the boxer's hand was prone to fracture: its vertical alignment was much more resistant to breakage, especially with the raw, unadulterated power Sean could muster in one punch. The moment was gone, as quickly as it came: Linn's mind replayed the angry, shouting rider who went storming up behind the men beside the working steam engine; he remembered Sean turning, looking less like the broad shouldered Hephaestus, and more like an angered panther: one moment, solid, stony, a muscle-sculpted figure, solid and immovable, well rooted in God's good earth, and the next, a fast moving, lithe, agile, avenging warrior, doing his best to drive his fist through a shouting man's face and out the back of his skull. Linn looked at Jacob, then at the unconscious, face-bloodied soul who was so unwise as to address Sean at a working fire, then Linn looked around. As usual, when there was a fire response, a crowd gathered, and crowds tend to observe things, and not a living soul there missed the fact that a man approached their beloved Irish Brigade, shouting indiginantly about some offense or another, and was given a face full of knuckles for his trouble. Linn lifted his chin in summons; he recruited from this Unorganized Militia to carry this careless soul further from the fire scene: Linn led them far enough down Main Street to come to the first horse trough, where the offended party was given a bath, whether he needed it or not. Later, as the Sheriff listened to men's talk, he discovered the Irish Brigade was resonding to this fire, and their sudden appearance startled the man's horse and caused it to buck, offending the rider, who gave pursuit, waited for the right moment, and then advanced, shouting his grievance in what most testified to be much less than a polite manner. For his part, Sean dismissed the event from his mind: anyone who could not see three white mares, thrusting hard against polished black harness, if they could not hear a troika of galloping hoofbeats and the Steam Masheen's shrill whistle, if the most careless among them could not hear the big Irishman's great barrel chested voice, nor hear the blacksnake whip as it demanded of the air itself to give way -- well, any who could not see this, who could not hear this, deserved to be trampled, knocked aside and otherwise disposed of however may be necessary. None gathered that day to witness this, doubted this, and none who witnessed this, debated the matter. Fire Chief Charles Fitzgerald did not often let slip his temper. Fire Chief Charles Fitzgerald had been a bull rider, he'd worked oilfield in his youth, he'd been Navy and he'd had to handle himself in some interesting situations, so when a man made so bold as to throw a punch at him, why, he reacted as he'd been trained. Fire Chief Charles Fitzgerald just honestly beat snot, liver, lights and stuffing out of the man who'd come up and challenged him there on the broad, concrete, firehouse apron. It seems that a motorist objected to being startled by the sudden appearance of a red Kenworth pumper, screaming up behind him -- all chromed and screaming mechanical siren and twin three-foot-trumpet air horns, all chrome front bumper and momentum, and the idiot motorist who tried to pull out in front of the oncoming rig, nailed the brakes barely in time: later testimony from the modern day Irish Brigade agreed with the careless motorist's estimation that you could not have passed a paperback book between the front bumper of the motorist's vehicle, and the shining side of the onrushing red fire truck. Some men detest admitting they're wrong, and this fellow was one of them: instead of swallowing hard and realizing he'd been careless, he turned the blame on the pumper, he waited until they were back in quarters and he went down to raise hell with anyone he could find. He found the Chief. Chief Fitzgerald did not rise to the white hat by being hot headed, precipitous nor premature: the Chief, as a matter of fact, was known to hear anyone out, no matter how wrong they might be, but he was also known as being extremely fair, and rather plain spoken: when this Jack Doe declared his dissatisfaction with the situation, when he progressed into accusations and then into threats, the Chief told him quietly to go straight to hell and get off firehouse property and don't bother coming back. Apparently this Jack Doe did not like being addressed in such a manner. He took a swing at the Chief. A certain pale eyed Sheriff happened to be watching, and a certain pale eyed Sheriff waited until the Chief was finished with his address, and a certain pale eyed Sheriff did the same thing in this modern day as was done a little over a century ago, when redress was demanded without justification. He spoke to the Chief and expressed his admiration of the man's style, and then he introduced the worse for wear party to the nearest horse trough, reasoning that anyone with such bad manners was likely due for his Saturday night bath anyhow.

GRAB SOME TIMBER Sheriff's Deputy Linn Keller sat on a deadfall, his feet set wide apart and braced. A friend of his sat beside him, white-faced and shaking. Not far away, water chuckled to itself as it raced a rocky course down the mountain. Ahead of them, what was left of a pickup truck leaned companionably against a rock half again bigger than its wrinkled, distorted, half-ton carcass. Linn's eyes traveled back up the mountainside, as it had a dozen times already, following the path the truck tore coming down an impossible grade, following skid marks and tire tracks, small trees knocked off plumb and the occasional rock with paint scraped alongside. They would discover later that the truck's previous owner burned up the tie rod ends from a bad case of Over Greasing: they were worn to the point of falling apart, and did just that, as father and son navigated a turn on their driveway, well up on the side of the mountain. The truck whipped hard right and went straight downhill, one tire steering, the other snapped out sideways, ripped free of the rim and dragging: at first it tried to throw the front end to the side, then as the rubber parted company from rolled steel, it simply dragged: the father desperately tried to steer, his foot reflexively hard on the brake, until a rock tore a brake line and half his hydraulic system failed. Linn was on patrol and caught movement, nailed his own brakes, shot a pale eyed glare through his windshield: he swore as he saw the truck's uncontrolled descent, swore again as he saw the truck was occupied. He made a fast review of the terrain -- he'd been all over this section on horseback, and several times -- he pulled the front axle into gear, ground up a streambed, clawed up on a little bit of a bench. For a miracle he was able to hit the Sheriff's repeater on the radio. He knew the Cavalry would be along, and in short order, or as expeditiously as terrain and distance would permit: he set the switch to light up the repeater in his cruiser, ripped the talkie from its charging cradle, ran for the truck before dust and following cascades of fist-size rocks were done parading after the fugitive vehicle. Neither father nor son were injured, though the father was almost in shock: who wouldn't be, Linn thought, coming down that grade and ramming a rock to stop -- Father and son were both seat belted in. For a miracle, neither had any apparent injury. Linn helped the father out the driver's window -- I probably shouldn't move him, but hell, he seems able, he thought -- the two men came around to the passenger side, carefully ignoring the damage done to the newly purchased, but worse for wear before they got it, vehicle -- the boy was lean and wiry and wiggled out his shattered window without difficulty, into the men's arms. There was a deadfall just behind the boulder that stopped them. A deputy, a father and his towheaded boy made their way to the deadfall. Linn looked at them, indicated the improvised seat: "Grab some timber," he said, and eased his own carcass down onto the bark covered deadfall. The only sign that the pale eyed deputy was excited by this finding, was the fact that he'd set his feet wide apart when he set down: an observer might deduce he was braced for whatever would happen next. The truck was busy steaming out its eternal soul. It hadn't caught fire yet, and Linn reasoned it wasn't likely to: he did not smell gasoline, so the tank was intact -- thank God for small favors! -- he looked over at his friend, a fellow he'd gone to school with, a man with whom he'd been graduated from Firelands High, someone he'd known for years, who -- like him -- married his high school sweetheart, and was just as happy as if he had good sense. "Larry," Linn said gently, "do you reckon you're hurt?" Larry flexed his hands, opened them, looked at them, worked his fingers closed, then open, again. "My hands are sore," he said. "I think I had a death grip on that wheel." "The way it was bent," Linn grinned, "I'm not surprised!" He looked down at the grade school boy beside him. "How about you, Greg? You hurtin' anywhere?" The lad looked at the lawman, shook his head. Linn looked at the steaming wreck; a slight breeze brought him the smell of hot oil, of hot antifreeze. "What do you think of all that?" Linn asked, looking at the boy, and Greg, like most children his age, answered with absolute honesty. He looked at his father and declared loudly, "That was fun, Dad! Can we do it again?" The lead element of the responding rescue team arrived in time to hear two men's loud and hearty laughter, the kind a man hears when two men just dodged a seriously large bullet, and just realized they'd live to tell the tale.

THE FRENCH HERETIC Midnight shift, Firelands General Hospital, medical-surgical wing. A nurse with silent tread moved like a ghost from room to room, making regular checks on the assigned patients: midnight shift was when things were either busy and stressful, or catastrophic: like most hospitals, they ran a short staff, and every nurse had to be as efficient as possible in order to get all the treatments done. Bandage changes, wound vac maintenance, breathing treatments, prescribed or as-needed, IVs alarming, restless thumbs pressing impatiently on the nurse call: the nurse smiled, hesitated in the hallway, reached for the wheeled tower with the several monitors on it: blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation, cords, tubes, Velcro wraps, complex, tangled, awkward: the nurse hooked a white sneaker around its base, pulled at the same moment as pulling on the upper section: the damned thing was top heavy and prone to fall over if carelessly moved. The nurse began shift with a check on every patient. One, a little old bluehair, gave him a surprised look when he said "Hello, I'm Jacques, I'll be your nurse tonight." "You're a nurse?" she asked skeptically, whereupon he proceeded to feed her a good line of second hand horse feed and got her to laughing: after she found out he was as windy as a sack full of politicians, they got along just fine. She'd hit her call button twice more through the night, once with the shamefaced admission that she tried to pour water from her pitcher into the glass and dumped it on the bed. He got her into the bedside chair, winked and said "I'll take care of it" -- he disappeared, came back with fresh linens, a dry gown -- he'd stripped the bed, wiped it down, dried it and made it back up, and made it look easy -- then he picked up the gown, peered through nonexistent bifocals at the label and read, "Hot Cutter," then he looked over said absent spectacles and deadpanned, "That's French for One Size Fits Nobody." Jacques was not the only heretic in Firelands. The Sheriff was a heretic: a woman in a man's profession, good looking, too, but damned good at her job. There was religious heresy as well, in which the populace participated with a glad heart: periodically, the black-robed Bretheren and the silk-veiled White Sisters from the Rabbitville Monastery would come to Firelands and hold a Catholic service: these were invariably so well attended that they had to adjourn from their little whitewashed church, to the more spacious firehouse: apparatus would be pulled out on the apron, chairs provided for those who needed to sit, otherwise the service was held in the ancient and traditional manner, with the congregation on their feet -- which took the Sheriff's tall son by surprise, so he sought out one of the Brethren -- Joseph, a subdeacon -- who explained that this was the rule and not the exception in an Orthodox church, and showed him pictures he'd taken in Alaska of just such a church, with and without congregation. This one particular night, though, it was the French heretic, a male nurse, a man in a woman's profession, who drew laughter from a dour old woman who took a pointed delight in laughing at nothing, and in the years that followed, this French heretic who committed the heresy of becoming a nurse -- was thanked by his fellow nurses for his gentle way of bringing "That Old Witch" out of her perpetual state of criticism, which made their lives far less unpleasant when the old woman was readmitted multiple times before her death.

TO LIGHT A CANDLE The wooden panel slid aside. The inside of the confessional was dark, quiet: the inside of the Sanctuary was always quiet, thick adobe walls kept out blistering heat and quite a bit of sound. "I ain't here to confess," a rough voice said from the other side of the wooden screen. "Speak your mind, son," came the reply, and a rough-dressed man with miles graven on his face, calluses on his hands and dust on his duds, looked with surprise at the screen: he considered, nodded. "Friend of mine's dead," he said bluntly. "A good friend?" "The best." "Where is he now?" "I buried 'im as best I could. He's some miles back. Didn't have much to dig with but I done my best. I piled rocks on the grave so's nothin' could dig him out an' folks would know 'twas a grave and not to just run over it." "How long did you know him?" "Long time, Padre. Since the War." The cowboy barely saw the tonsured priest on the other side of the screen nod, slowly: had his hairless dome not been shiny, he'd have never seen the movement. "How did he die?" There was a long silence. Abbot William was taking Confessions that day, it was his turn in the rotation: as Abbot, he could have delegated this to a subordinate Brother, but he believed a leader should set the example. He half expected his guest to leave, at his blunt question: he felt the man shift on his hard seat, then he said, "He kilt himself." "I've known good men to do that," the Abbot said thoughtfully. The cowboy looked with surprise at the grating. "What caused him to do this?" "He broke his leg. Got infected and then he smelt gangrene and he said he warn't goin' to die of the gangrene." The Abbot nodded again. "He was dead already." "I reckon." "There is no surviving gangrene." "You seen it, Padre?" "I was in the War." Another lengthy silence. "Padre, I been told killin' yerself is a straight ticket to Hell." "It may be," the Abbot admitted, "but he was dead already. No." The Abbot shook his head. "A wise man once said 'God plays fair if He plays a'tall,' and I am inclined to believe that is very true." "I'd not want him to go to hell. He was ... my pard." Such volumes, the Abbot thought, in a single word. "I would say you were fortunate to have had such a pard." "Reckon so." "Come with me." The Abbot slid the latch back, stepped out of the confessional: the cowboy did the same. They walked together to the ornate altar rail. One man crossed himself and knelt; the other stood defiant, his broad-brimmed, sweat-stained hat in his hand, as the Abbot talked to God about it. Abbot William rose, turned to the cowboy. "We have a custom," he said. "We light a candle in remembrance of souls departed. Let us do that in memory of a good man. If you're hungry, I'd be pleased to share supper with you." They turned from the ornate altar, walked to the tiered rack; the Abbot handed him a thin wooden splint, the cowboy lit a fragrant, hand dipped beeswax candle: he licked thumb and forefinger, pinched the flame out on the splint, handed it back to the Abbot. The two stared at the candle's flame, steady and bright in its holder. "I reckon he'd like that," the cowboy said slowly. "Come. Talk is best over a good meal, and I'd like to hear more about your pard."

ACCEPTED Reverend Johyn Burnett sagged, sat heavily on the tailboard of their first-out pumper. He felt like someone pulled a cork out of his boot heel and drained out all his strength. "My bones are poured out like water," he whispered, the sibilants echoing off the lowered fire helmet's visor. A hand on his shoulder: he looked up. "Chaplain?" Reverend Burnett swallowed, tasted smoke, tasted the smoldery-wet-paper-trash-fire smell of a house fire. The Chief turned, dropped onto the tailboard beside the sky pilot. "You didn't have to go in." "Yes I did." Reverend Burnett, Chaplain for the Firelands Fire Department, coughed, hawked, spat. Chief Fitzgerald clapped his Firecraft-gloved hand on the man's shoulder, twice, rose: he went back into the fireground to supervise the overhaul. The Chief stood, watching, then moved in to lend a hand: Chief he might be, but he was a fireman, and firefighting is nothing short of hot, dirty, hard work. The bodies were gone, carried away in two vehicles, one a borrowed van, the other, the Suburban from their coroner's office: the bodies were small, they were shrouded in white sheets from the ambulance, and they were the first fireground deaths their Parson and at least two of the Irish Brigade had to handle. The Chief looked at the ladder, still set up against the highest window, a window where their youngest member dove into the now-missing window, headfirst: they'd arrived, they seized the ladder, ran it up as it was footed and hoist, it slammed against the side of the house with two men climbing it, both of the going up that ladder as fast as a man can run on level ground. The junior member was first into the upper floor of the fire structure: cause of the fire had been an oil furnace under the stairs, and it burnt out the stairs, fast, trapping three children upstairs: mother and infant were downstairs, asleep, the father, at work. The mother got out, with her youngest baby, but the children were upstairs, asleep. The Chief stared at the window, still exhausting a thin trickle of smoke and steam. Chad was inside, the Captain was most of the way up the ladder, and they heard a man's scream, muffled by the tight-cinched mask of his US Divers SCBA: men were running up with hoselines, nozzles, ceiling hooks: men froze to hear the sound of distress, because there's only one thing it could mean, and what it meant was very, very bad. Chad shoved head and shoulders out the blown-out window, something in his arms, something filthy-blanket-wrapped and oblong: "CAP I FOUND ONE AND SHE'S ALIVE!" The Chief closed his eyes and remembered the moment, like a snapshot, permanently engraved on his memory. Chad, his mask dangling from its neck strap, handing off the bundle to the Captain, the blanket suddenly bright in the glare of the spotlight, swung by an anonymous hand: he saw a thin vapor from a child's mouth as Chad handed the survivor off to the Captain. It was strictly against regulation, it was forbidden, but they all practiced it, because it was fun: the Captain kicked his fireboots off the rung, drove his insteps hard against the uprights, tobogganed down the ladder: he landed, men's arms catching him, keeping him from going over backwards: Shelly ran up with the resuscitator in one hand, the oxygen tank turned on, the demand valve ready in the other hand, and the coroner raised his arm to block her. Shelly ran into the man's arm, shocked: the Coroner pulled the blanket open, tried to lift the child's eyelid. The child's face was so badly burned, the eyelid split. Dr. John Greenlees shook his head and said "Don't even try." The Parson had run up with Shelly, as fast in bunker pants and fireboots as she was in Nomex trousers and Wellington boots: the Chief remembered the look on the Chaplain's face, remembered thinking "Now we'll see what you're made of." They brought out the rest of the bodies, handed them down the ladder, quickly, for the fire was advancing: they got the last one out just as fire started out the window. The Parson did not hesitate to help sheet and shround the little bodies; he knelt, and the few men available stood beside him, talking to God about the still, small forms laying on the spray-dampened grass, helmets in their hands, heads bowed, then every one of them -- every man there, Chaplain included -- turned and looked at the involved structure. Hate -- good, honest hate -- hardened every man's face. Every man there settled his helmet on his head, tugged his gloves more firmly onto his hands. The Irish Brigade attacked the fire like a personal enemy. They went into the house and did battle, belt buckle to belt buckle, with an enemy that wanted to consume them and the entire world -- fire is mindless, treacherous, sneaky, hungry -- if it could eat their souls, it would, and then it would eat the rest of the entire world. The Parson was right there with them. Reverend John Burnett took a savage joy in cutting into a wall with a fire ax to expose fire running up the inside of the wall, he drove the point-and-hook of a pike pole into the plaster ceiling, yanked down burnt plaster, chunks rattling off his helmet -- lath, chunks flaming embers, falling on his helmet, his shoulders as he exposed the heart of the enemy: he took his turn on the nob, driving his watery fist into the guts of the enemy, again and again, and the man knew hate. The Parson learned to hate, that night, and he learned that no matter how hard you hate, it does not help. He helped kill the beast that killed those innocent children, he was relieved on the knob by a fresh set of hands, he went outside and pulled his self-contained mask from his face and let it dangle. As hard as he'd hated, as hard as he'd fought the enemy, those children were still dead. Reverend Burnett went back to the side yard where he'd knelt beside the still bodies of innocent children, killed not from carelessness or maliciousness, but dead anyway, and then he walked back up to the tailboard of the pumper. Reverend Burnett sat, heavily, suddenly, he accepted a bottle of water, he spread his legs, he bent over and threw up. That was the night he was accepted by the Irish Brigade. Until then he'd been a preacher, a nice enough fellow with fine words and a friendly manner, but still an outsider. His firecoat still had the blue Scotchlite of the Chaplain, his helmet still had a reflective cross on the left and the right, with the reflective CHAPLAIN on its beavertail, but there was a difference. His gloves were stained and dirty, as was his coat; his helmet, dirty, spattered with water and ash and the filth from a fire, and his coat bore the ground-in dirt common to the profession. Reverend John Burnett, Chaplain and sky pilot, had gone through fire training with them, he'd pulled maintenance with them, polished apparatus and scoured floors and made coffee with them, but it wasn't until he'd shared a working fire with them, it wasn't until he'd gone to war beside them, it wasn't until he engaged in battle as one of them, that he was finally, truly, accepted. He didn't realize it, of course. He'd thought he was already accepted; he thought he was One of Them already, but it wasn't until after he'd performed the funeral service for the children, not until after he'd met the bereaved parents and counseled with them, not until the house was torn down, the foundations bulldozed into the crater that used to be a basement, not until he realized the Brigade greeted him with a little more warmth, their words more genuine, their hand on his back or on his shoulder more frequent, that he finally realized he was accepted into their inner circle. The Parson would remember that night for a very long time; he would wake at night and smell it and taste it and he'd wake, still feeling the weight of the wet and filthy armor of a working fireman; he'd wake, hearing the hiss and click of the air pack as he breathed, he felt the woven-linen, inch-and-a-half firehose, heavy and turgid and alive in his gloved grasp, he heard the steady hiss of water escaping the Elkhart nozzle, soaking his gloves with the backspray, and then it was gone, and he was in his own bed, wide awake, listening to the silence.

QUIETLY, ON THE FRONT PORCH A robed monk and a face-painted slattern held hands. The world was near silent, as it usually is, just before dawn; a few birds, the occasional sound of a horse, a distant dog's bark, but otherwise ... otherwise, silence. The air was ever so slightly damp: cool, almost chill; the pair were not cold, their connection warmed them as they sat side by side in the double rocking chair. The monk released his careful grip on her hand, ran his arm around her, drew her close. "Mmmm," she hummed. "Keep that up and I'll have to corrupt my favorite monk." Sheriff Linn Keller leaned over, kissed his wife under the ear, nibbled at the ear-bob on her earlobe, whispered, "I'd like to see you try." "You, sir, are a cad!" "I'm also a scoundrel, darlin', like to try me?" Esther turned and gave her husband an openly lustful look. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I would." It wasn't the first time she'd left lipstick on her husband's face, and God willing, it would not be the last: their eyes spoke of the lust-fires each ignited in the other's belly, their expressions quickly veiled as the maid rattled the doorknob and coughed before she opened the door and brought out her tray. She placed the tray on the sidetable, curtsied as she always did, turned and swept back inside: coffee, tea, warm cinnamon bread with butter and honey reached over with scent-feathers and teased the two. They heard the hired man open the barn door, as he always did, with a groan and an oath; they heard the maid's near-silent retreat back down the hallway in the house behind them; they knew the world was waking, but now, for this moment, they were alone, and together on their own front porch, and before they went inside and divested theselves of their Samhain guise, they relaxed and looked at the colors, boldly painted above and across the high mountain peaks. "It's been years since we stayed up all night," Esther murmured. Linn nodded, smiled, gripped her hand lightly, released: "It's been too long." "We're getting kind of old to stay up all night." Linn kissed his wife, preventing her uttering any further heresy: her response to his effort showed that she did not believe her own words on the matter. "Do you think the maid thinks we're too old?" Esther whispered, her green eyes glowing, promising delights best left to the imagination: Linn smiled quietly and whispered back, "If she does, I'll spank her!" Esther giggled and Linn grinned, and so the two of them, man and wife, partners in life, looked at hot coffee, hot tea, warmed cinnamon bread, and decided that perhaps they would continue this conversation upstairs. A robed monk swept a short-skirted dancing-girl up in his arms and carried her upstairs, and the maid smiled as she heard the bedroom door close. She and the hired man had coffee and tea and cinnamon bread, which is what she'd planned all along.

GOOD SOWEEN! A still figure in a long robe of unbleached linen, its hood thrown deep over its face, leaned on a traveler's staff: beside this silent, unmoving figure, quite the opposite: a woman with an openly lustful expression: hussy she was, by appearances, she was a dancing-girl with a painted face, a harlot in a short skirt, stockings and high-heeled dancing shoes: Sean's great laugh boomed out into the darkness, bidding them enter, and so it was the Sheriff and his wife came to help their great, red-headed Irish chieftain celebrate the harvest, the Samhain, or as Sean declared it, "Soween!" Linn threw his hood back, handed off his staff to a grinning Irish lad, embraced Sean most heartily: the two men laughed, their ribs cracking as each tried to haul the other off the floor: Sean succeeded, with little effort: the Sheriff did as well, though he had the harder task, as Sean was taller, bigger boned and more heavily muscled than the lean lawman. Green eyes, and more than one pair, regarded this happy contest, each assessing the other's husband, the way that women will: the two turned to each other, each leaning her red coiffure into the others, smiling and talking quietly as they walked away, deeper into the room laughing quietly and sharing some feminine confidence or another. One of Sean's lads came running through the happy gathering, balancing a carved-out gourd in his hand, a gourd he'd hollowed and carved eyes and a mouth, a gourd that trailed smoke from the coals he'd dropped in it: he ran out the back room and out the open front door, yelling into the night: Daisy looked up, gathered herself to scold the wayward child, then shook her head as she realized he was long gone into the darkness. Sarah sat with Daciana, sipping tea and talking quietly. Each knew the Veil was thinnest this night, this Samhain, this Allhallow's Eve: shades stalked the night, shadows moved and whispered: children ran with innocent hearts, their purity proof against such malevolence, but darkness moved to capture what darkness believed rightfully its own, and one such prize was Sarah herself. Sarah, as a young child, was recognized by the Dark as a potent enemy, one whose bloodline could seriously impair the march of evil in the ages to come: Darkness brought horror and shame to her in those very young years, seeking to cripple her spirit: indeed, half her soul had been torn away and taken to the fires of Hell itself, but her natural defenses kept her from being blasted, and she instead became a misshapen waif, sorrowing and alone in the hidden darkness, hiding from those creatures who would torture her while she remained -- at least, until her living self burrowed through a hole that shouldn't exist, a fistula between the Land of the Living and a place that should not be: she'd reunited with her stolen half, she'd emerged stronger, two men stood in armor from their earlier lives, men who'd swung swords together, and they safeguarded the gateway by which Sarah -- and then they themselves -- made their escape. Shadows moved between the moon and their window; whispers, half-heard, promised death and ruin, should either of them leave the protection of Daciana's tidy little house, guarded as it was with wards, charms and spells, as was the adjacent round barn built in under the mountain's overhang. Sarah smiled as the two old and dear friends talked in quiet voices; they ate a light supper and visited for no reason other than they delighted in their visits, and finally, when Sarah took her leave, Daciana smiled to see the gleam of a silver blade, held up alongside Sarah's forearm: the handle was wrapped with sliver wire, the tapered pommel served not only as a fighting knife's counterweight, but also as a skullcrusher: the two embraced, Sarah stepped outside, caressed her Snowflake-mare, stepped up on the mounting-block and into the saddle. Snowflake was black as a sinner's heart, a shade that matched the night; silver on her bridle stood out like silver dollars tossed out on a black-velvet rug, and something dark coasted out of one shadow and into another, something just as black but far more deadly, something with eyes that burned red, like the coals in Sean's little boy's gourd. "Fire and silver and Sarah," Daciana whispered, and the words became a ward, a charm, a spell in and of themselves, and there were those shades, crossed during this thinning of the Veil, which fled to hear the potent susurrant from the trick-riding Gypsy healer's lips. Sarah turned. "Good Samhain!" she called, her words happy, bright on the night air: Daciana raised her hand, like a blessing: "Good Samhain!" In one house, a feast; in another, a visit between two good friends: childhood's innocence, and a fireheart gourd, protected the one, and harder guards, the other.

THE FUEL PUMP AND THE LOTTERY TICKET Dawn was streaking the eastern sky when Linn backed his Jeep into his usual spot. He was not surprised the kitchen light was on, nor that the smell of bacon and eggs, of fresh brewed coffee, of freshly toasted bread, greeted him as he came through the door. It did not surprise him in the least little bit that his pale eyed Mama was dressed for the day and waiting for him just inside the door, her arms crossed, her head lowered a little, and he walked through the radiating waves of her skeptical expression and embraced her, chuckling: he laid his head over on top of her head and laughed quietly, drew back, looked at his Mama and declared, "Mama, I shot a Jeep last night!" Willamina raised an eyebrow, gave him a skeptical look, but he saw the hint of a smile at the corners of her eyes. Linn had long ago given up on figuring how his Mama knew when he'd be home. He did his best to keep regular hours; last night was very much the exception, he hadn't come home all night, and his Mama knew -- she always knew! -- when he was on his way home, and mornings like this were the rule and not the exception: bacon and eggs were hot and ready to throw on the table. They sat, they added some Extract of Bovine to their coffee, they picked up their forks. "Well?" Willamina asked, giving her son a knowing expression. Linn set down his fork, threw his hands wide: "Well, yas sees, it's like this," he said in a nasal voice, not far short of laughing again. "We were out with Mitch's Jeep -- you remember the one, that old Army job they had to replace the gas tank on?" "The one where the plastic lining stripped loose and floated around until it got sucked over the outlet and shut off the gas like a switch. I remember." "His fuel pump went out." "Really," she replied,her voice carefully neutral. "Poor guy, he's the best war-era Jeep mechanic I've ever met," Linn said thoughtfully, shoveling in fried eggs between phrases, with all the enthusiasm of starving youth. "He's not so much on these new ones unless it's strictly a mechanical problem." Willamina nibbled a strip of crunchy bacon, her demeanor deceptively casual. "How did you get home?" Linn laughed. "You wouldn't believe the Hillbilly Engineering we cobbled up to get home!" he laughed, picking up a slice of buttered toast. "Try me." Linn looked at his Mama: her expression was skeptical, his was amused. "His sister used to be a nurse and she had some empty glass IV bottles." Willamina raised an eyebrow. "We murdered the cap loose and dumped it half full of gas, we crimped the cap back on as best we could --" "Uh-oh," Willamina muttered. "Uh-oh is right. He had some epoxy something in his toolbox and it set up fast enough we got a seal around the cap, then he said he didn't have a drill to put a hole in the hood." "And ...?" "I told him to figure where he needed the hole and I made one." "You made a hole." "In his Jeep's hood, right over the carburetor." "And you used ...?" Linn laughed again, took a noisy slurp of coffee. "He's got a 44-caliber hole in his hood now. He ran IV tubing down into the carburetor. I stood up on the passenger side and leaned out over the windshield and regulated the pinch cock for throttle and we made it home -- we couldn't make much speed, but we made it!" Sheriff Willamina Keller was good at gauging expressions and body language; she had the added advantage of Mother's Intuition: she had the added gift of an excellent sense of smell, and she'd detected a particular floral scent when her laughing son embraced her just inside the front door. "And the girls ...?" Linn laughed again, shook his head. "Mama, I blew it. The fuel pump went out as soon as we got to where we were going -- his girl and mine were in the back seat -- they weren't happy, but Shelly pointed out we weren't trying to put the moves on 'em once we broke down." Willamina made no answer. "Shelly let me hug her when I got her home, and I told her Pa what happened. Turns out he'd already got a phone call and knew about it, so he knew I wasn't lyin' to him." "I thought I smelled her perfume on your vest." "She let me hug her at least," Linn said. "I'm surprised she allowed that. She said it was the one worst date she'd ever been on." "Mm-hmm." They finished breakfast; Linn washed dishes with his usual speed and efficiency as Willamina finished getting ready for work. Linn switched his boots and shrugged into his old jacket and prepared to head for the barn; he hadn't slept, obviously, but he was young, and at that age, sleep isn't all that necessary. Willamina stopped at the All-Night -- something she didn't usually do -- she saw Big Mike's truck was at the pumps, and Mitch was filling the tank. She went up to the lad, laid a hand on his shoulder: he turned his head, grinned: "Hi, Mom, whatcha doin'!" he greeted her -- an old joke between them -- Willamina said "How's that good lookin' Jeep of yours these days?" Mitch sook his head sadly. "I'm headed for the parts store right now," he said gloomily. "My fuel pump went out." "Ouch!" Willamina sympathized. "Were you on the road?" "I was way the hell out in the B&W," he admitted -- "the Bushes and Weeds" -- he grinned again, that quick, impulsive grin of the self-conscious young -- "we had to rig up a fuel system to get home." "How could you rig a fuel system with your fuel pump dead?" Mitch laughed; the nozzle shut off, his father's truck's tank full: he turned, placed the nozzle back in the pump, screwed on the gas cap. "I rigged up my sister's vodka dispenser. She wanted to put vodka in an IV bottle and dispense drinks at a party, but they never had the party so she just put it in the back of my Jeep. She thinks it's a trash hauler." "I see." "We had to punch a hole in the hood and run IV tubing through it and direct into the carburetor. Had to take the air cleaner off. One of us stood up and held the IV bottle out over the hood and regulated flow with that IV pinch thing." He shook his head. "Took us all night to get back, but we made it!" Willamina looked at the All-Night. "I'm going to buy a lottery ticket," she said. Mitch looked at her, surprised. Willamina laughed. "I was replacing the bulb in my bathroom exhaust fan light yesterday," she explained. "The old one was only twenty years old, don't know why it failed so soon." Mitch shook his head sorrowfully and intoned in a doleful voice, "They don't make 'em like they used to." Willamina laughed, patted his shoulder. "I dropped the replacement. It twisted out of my fingers just as I tried to screw it in, it did a swan dive over the shower curtain and I just knew it was going to explode when it hit the shower floor!" "Uh-oh," Mitch grunted sympathetically. "It bounced." Willamina's smile was broad and genuine. "It was a new LED bulb, they're plastic instead of glass. I put it in and it worked. With luck like that, I'm buying a lottery ticket!" Mitch laughed, walked with her into the All-Night. "After last night," he said, "I'm buying one too!"

EXPERT OPINION "Sir?" "Yes, Jacob?" "The Silver Jewel will be sending over supper for you." "Good." Linn shifted in his hospital bed, the way a man will when he's uncomfortable from what he considers an excess of bed rest. "Sir, I've been considering the Carbon Mercantile." Linn's eyes were carefully expressionless. "Go on." "Sir, it'll be remarked on that you went in with no more body armor than an irritated expression." "I doubt me not," Linn grunted, "that it will be spoken of. Or more likely I'll get spoken to about it." Half his mouth twisted up, half a wry smile, an intentional expression, not a result of internal or external injury. "I was off duty, ridin' fence, I heard the traffic and I was close by." "Sir, we could've made a tactical entry in front --" "I handled it." "Yes, sir, you handled it well but you were reckless." Pale eyed father glared at pale eyed son, his eyes hardening and becoming visibly more pale. "Sir, over and above the fact that I've only got one of you, and settin' aside that if you'd got killed, Mama would never speak to you again -- that was a tactically poor decision." "It worked," Linn said coldly. "Yes, sir, it did," Jacob agreed, "and this discussion won't leave this room, but damn it, sir, you're the only one of you I've got!" "You said that already." "Maybe I want to emphasize the point." "You were talking tactics, now your'e being selfish." "No more selfish that you were, you pale eyed hellraiser!" Jacob snapped. "If you want to strip your blouse and step behind the barracks, put 'em up because I'll go toe to toe with you whenever you want!" Sheriff Linn Keller eased forward, leaning away from his set-up mattress: he glared coldly at his son and said, "I can fire you at any time." Jacob leaned over the siderail and glared just as hard at his father. "Fire me then." Father and son regarded each other in hard headed, jaw bulged silence for several long seconds; the atmosphere between them fairly crackled, and finally Linn nodded. "Sit down, Jacob," he said, leaning back. "If you hadn't spoken as you did, you'd not have been doing your job." "My job," Jacob said coldly as he settled back down on Doc's rolling stool, "is what you've told me in the past: to keep the man above you out of trouble, and to keep the people under me out of trouble. Right now I am trying to do just that." "You're doing it well." Linn's teeth showed momentarily and he frowned at this betrayal of his pain, his weakness. Jacob hesitated and Linn stepped into the hesitation. "You've hit me where I live, Jacob. I don't want to leave Shelly and I sure as hell don't want to leave while you're here to make life interesting. You have children and I delight in them and I don't want to not see them grow and become all they are going to." His head dropped back against the sweaty pillow. "Jacob, all I could think of was ... hell, I wasn't thinking," he admitted. "The only thing in my head was that no one is going to come into my county and pull something like this." He swung pale eyes to his frowning son, grinned. "Look at the message it sent." "That the Sheriff is a damned fool?" Jacob grinned. Linn raised a hand off the covers, waved it. "Besides that. No, Jacob, you had the place surrounded, and when they looked out the back door and saw two rifles in their faces, they gave up and that left only the one. I couldn't know that, but your tactics are sound. No" -- Linn shifted again, frowning at the IVs in his left elbow, looking up at the chuckling pump, the bag above it -- "Why can't they put some Kentucky Drain Opener in that?" he muttered -- he looked at Jacob again. "Jacob, this sends the message that we don't fool around. Nobody will talk about establishing a perimeter, assessing the situtation and coming up with a plan. The only thing that'll get talked about will be that this county kicks the door and goes in killin' without hesitation." Jacob remembered the two dead men inside the front door, both with a fist sized hole through their wishbone, one with the distinct shape of a shotgun's butt mashed deep into his face where an old veteran lawman engaged the enemy at close quarters in an effective manner. "I'll agree, sir, you didn't hesitate any a'tall." "Had I been on duty instead of ridin' fence," Linn muttered, "I'd just have a bruise instead of a hole in my lung. Your Mama didn't say much when she was in but her eyes said plenty." "Yes, sir." "Sometimes, Jacob, we have to do something even if it's wrong. I did and it worked." "Yes, sir." "We want to send a message, Jacob. This sent the message that we don't negotiate, we kill. We don't hesitate, we kill. We send this message and we prevent future hostilities." "I see, sir." "Bruce Jones helps with that. Did you see last week's paper?" It was a rhetorical question; in an era of increasingly electronic communications, the local newspaper was still quite popular, and a stray thought tickled the edge of Jacob's memory, something about a tourist's review of Firelands describing the quaint habit of actually reading a print newspaper in public, at the barbershop, even on a bench on the public street. "I saw the paper, sir." "You saw how he covered the Lawman's Invitational." "Yes, sir." "He publishes scores like he prints the football team's scores. He shows lawmen on the line, knocking down steel plates, he shows them running an assault course and he's gotten some great photographs of men at a dead run, brass flyin' in the air, knockdowns at half-mast" -- he stopped, nodded. "That is also prevention, Jacob. We want to impress on the criminal mind that if they come here, they leave in a rubber sack." "Yes, sir." "That's not why I went in like I did." Jacob's left eyebrow quirked up. "Sir?" Linn leaned forward again, almost managing to hide a pained grimace as he did: being shot through the ribs is not a comfortable thing, neither at the time, nor when healing up. "It made me mad, Jacob," Linn said. "I won't have that kind of thing in my county so I went in with a full head of steam and I let my badger loose on 'em." Deputy Sheriff Jacob Keller nodded, considered, looked back at Sheriff Linn Keller, rose. "Sir," he said, "you are a hard headed and contrary old man." "I'm not old yet, Jacob, but I fully intend to get there!" Dr. John Greenlees tapped discreetly at the door, pushed it open, just in time to get a face full of laughter as father and son were apparently sharing something amusing. "Are you ready to get out of here?" Doc asked without preamble, then added, "you contrary old man?" Father and son looked at one another, looked at Doc, and Jacob shook his head. "There you have it, sir," he chuckled, "I am now given expert opinion on the subject!"

APEX "You know the rules," Linn said quietly. The boy ran back to the bench, seized a set of earmuffs: he clapped them on his head, twisted the switch, ran up beside the Sheriff. Linn turned, looked around: he and the neighborhood lad were the only ones at the range. Linn nodded. The grinning little boy raised his leg, stomped happily on the board protecting the switch: a well shaken can of something carbonated launched straight in the air. A grinning little boy and a pale eyed Sheriff followed its flight with their eyes. Somewhere near the apex of its rise, the boy's peripheral caught a blur: he hadn't time to steel himself for the concussion to follow -- BAM! -- and the can of cheap stuff EXPLODED in a bright spray against the cloudless late-fall sky. "Reload!" the Sheriff laughed, and the little boy's hand dropped to the open carton -- he gave the aluminum can a half-dozen vigorous shakes, dropped it into a thin-wall tube that looked like some kind of a homemade mortar -- The Sheriff nodded -- A sneakerfoot stomped happily on the weathered pine board -- BAM! An old veteran lawman grinned and a little boy laughed with delight. Linn looked at the lad, came down on one knee. "Like to try it?" The boy's eyes went big and round as he looked at this most potent talisman of the lawman's profession, a blued-steel, .44-caliber, single-action revolver: unlike the blocky plastic he usually saw in a lawman's holster, the Sheriff's revolver held an aura, a magic, whether from the gold-inlaid vine-work bordered around the muzzle, whether due to the gold Thunder Bird hand-chased into the frame, whether because of the red-inlaid rose-stem-and-leaves on the top strap... Or maybe it was because it belonged to this long tall lawman, a quiet man who remembered what it was to be a little boy, looking at his lawman Mama with big and adoring eyes. "Set up four cans yonder," the Sheriff said, and the boy snatched up the torn-open carton: he ran for the plank not far away, set four cans on the plank: he snatched up blasted-open, concussion-flattened aluminum cans and worked them into the empty cardboard carton, ran back, dunked the trash in the burning barrel. A grinning little boy looked up at the Sheriff, and the Sheriff gave the lad an approving expression, and each one's heart warmed to see the other's reaction. Linn rolled the cylinder around and dropped the loaded rounds into his palm, placed them on the loading bench, went to one knee. The loading gate snapped shut with a metallic sound and the Sheriff placed the plow handle in the boy's hand. "You'll grip it like this," he said, "this finger -- like so, above the trigger guard. Keep it there and keep it straight. Now your thumb" -- gentle and fatherly hands covered his, adjusting the lad's hold on the big revolver -- "there, just like that. "Now you remember I showed you how to run the sights." The lad nodded solemnly. "You'll run these just the same as you did the other. Now raise it up and get your sight picture -- both hands, just like that -- reach up with your off hand and ear that hammer back." A youthful thumb thrilled as it laid over the checkered hammer spur, felt the texture, brought it back, feeling machined steel chuckling to itself in the mechanical mystery inside the frame: youthful imagination populated it with wheels and levers and cogs and many more moving parts than there actually were. "Set your front sight where you want to hit, center it in your back blade." Young eyes looked over square black sights. "When it looks right, bring your finger down and ease back on that trigger." The boy didn't have to look. He felt the Sheriff's approval as the hammer dropped. Linn had him lower the revolver for several seconds, then bring it back up: dry fire is instructive for novice shooters and veteran shooters alike, and Linn wanted to accustom the lad to the revolver's feel, to how it handles, before trying live fire. "Okay. What do you think?" The lad surrendered the revolver to the Sheriff, his eyes coveting this blued-steel treasure. "I like it," he said in a small voice. "Shows you have good taste," Linn grinned. He dropped in three rounds -- alternated loaded, butter-soft, full-wadcutter handloads with empty chambers. "Now." He clicked the cylinder one more time, snapped the loading gate shut. "First up will be a loaded round. Same as before. Sights, sights and sights." The lad nodded, accepted the loaded revolver, his demeanor considerably less excited and visibly more serious. "Use your off thumb and bring the hammer back." Youthful imagination was less concerned with the complex mechanical mystery inside the frame, and more worried about how badly it was going to kick. "When you're ready." A little boy, not yet in his double digits, stood beside a long tall Sheriff, holding a double handful of frontier justice: young eyes held an absolutely perfect sight picture, young eyes widened with amazement as something blasted away from the plank with a spraying cloud of carbonation. Forgotten was any apprehension about recoil, or anything else, for that matter. Sheriff Linn Keller knew many delights in his life, and he rejoiced to see one today. He saw the absolutely unapologetic delight of a little boy who knew he'd done a good thing, a little boy who stood beside a grown man he respected, a man who approved of what he'd just done.

NANTUCKET AND GLOSTER Daisy's head came up like a hound hearing the distant horn. She snatched the towel from her shoulder, wiped her hands: she reached behind, seized the dangles on her apron string, pulled hard: she skipped out the door, the forgotten apron dropping to the kitchen floor. Forgotten were the viands, victuals, stews and bread in the oven: her departure was seen, and two girls came in behind her to tend the kitchen in her absence. Daisy skipped down the hallway, her breath coming quicker, her heart lightening: she'd been a child in Ireland, a green-eyed lass still in the Old Sod, when she'd first heard this sung -- she'd danced then, and collected the coins thrown her way, and she'd be damned if she'd miss dancing to this shanty! The voices were loud, they were a little off key, there was a squeeze box: Daisy buckled on her hard-heeled dancing shoes, tied a ribbon quickly in her hair to keep it from falling forward, ran up the three steps to the little stage. Daisy seized the rope, pulled, quickly, parting the curtains: a tin pipe joined the squeeze box, Daisy's soul soared on the music, and her legs followed, to the whistles, yells and appreciation of the Silver Jewel's population. It wasn't often they got seamen this far inland, it was not often at all the Sheriff raised his voice in song, but here he was, that pale eyed lawman and four horn-callused Nantucket whalers, or Glostermen, or whatever the hell they were -- Daisy didn't really know, and she didn't care. Daisy's Pa treated her to the strap when she came home, flushed with success and with a double handful of coin: no daughter of his would disport herself in such a shameful manner! -- Daisy went to bed welted from belt to ankles, and the next night she was back at the waterfront, dancing again, her cheeks red with defiance, and this time she kept her coins -- and her dancing -- secret. Daisy's great delight was the Irish hardshoe, and she was good at it: men pounded hard-callused hands on tabletops in time to the music and Daisy's brisk counterpoint to the heartily-sung saltwater chanty. Upstairs, that dignified matron of society and commerce, Esther Keller, put down her pen and smiled, listening, remembering: not long after, she came downstairs, her steps quick, light, men's voices buoying her heart and delighting her soul, for she, too, knew what it was to dance before men, to the disapproval of a stern and very proper father. Esther slipped through the men at the bar, laughing, skipped down the hall and into the stage door: she nearly ran up the three steps, lifted her skirts, fell in beside Daisy. Shave his belly with a rusty razor, Shave his belly with a rusty razor, they sang, and two women fell into exact rhythm, dancing as if they'd punished the boards together for years: the Silver Jewel's cook, and the Sheriff's wife, danced for the joy of dancing, danced for the men who sang for the joy of singing. Daisy's cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining, and she danced for a man with broad shoulders and big hands, a red-headed Irishman who roared the seafaring song with the Nantucket men, an Irishman who kept time with a half empty mug of beer and an adoring look for the woman on stage: the green-eyed woman of business danced for men who knew what it was to row a boat with desperate speed, a woman who danced her thanks for these Nantucket whalers whose efforts helped haul her from a river, a deep and muddy river, hungry for human sacrifice, and she danced for the pale eyed man who stood shoulder to shoulder with the big Irishman, singing as loudly and as lustily as they. Two women danced for the joy of dancing, and a saloon full of men sang for the joy of singing together, and for the women who loved them enough to dance to their united song.

I ONLY NEEDED ONE Sheriff's deputies, their feet hard down on large displacement throttles, streaked down paved roads and drifted with protesting rubber around poorly banked curves. A pale eyed Sheriff, considerably closer to the situation, eased his Appaloosa stallion into an easy canter. Anxious young men screeched to a tire squalling stop in front of Carbon Hill's rebuilt Mercantile: Jacob Keller followed his pale eyed Gammaw's example and made sure his fellows all understood sign language: he directed two teams without words -- one team behind the Mercantile at the far diagonal corner, the second team halfway down the building to Jacob's left: this covered the exits, the windows. Sweaty-damp palms gripped checkered-plastic handles of double-stack magazine pistols; Jacob was behind his Suburban's engine and front tire, shotgun cocked, locked and ready to rock. He heard hoofbeats, turned, looked. The Sheriff rode right down the center of the paved street: a pale eyed lawman on a good looking Appaloosa, a double barrel twelve-bore propped up on his right hip: he came up behind Jacob and dismounted. "One man with hostages," Jacob said, "said he'd kill everyone if we came in." "Do we know who it is?" "No, sir, not even a description." Linn stood, stepped around the front of the warm engine, strode for the newly-painted, freshly-restored, Carbon Hill Mercantile's front door, a huge black mountain Mastiff following. Jacob rose, flanked left, held at the edge of the boardwalk as his father seized the door, shoved it open, went in muzzle-first. Jacob heard the meaty smack of someone getting hit, he heard the shotgun boom once, twice: shouts, a woman's scream: Jacob ran for the door, the skin tightening on his face, feeling the blood cool several degrees as an old familiar Rage coiled in his belly -- Jacob spun in, dropped to one knee, swung -- Frightened eyes, people on the floor, one man awkward and bloody in death, to his left, the Sheriff tossed his empty shotgun to the wide-eyed proprietor behind the counter. Jacob took a quick step to the left, to get a wall to his back, stepped on a second body: he swore, silently, damning his tunnel vision, realizing that he'd be dead if his father hadn't killed this first door guard first. Jacob watched as his father paced toward the back wall, where several trembling and outthrust arms were pointing: a door, and behind it, presumably, someone they wished to find. The Sheriff's pace was deliberate, measured: time slowed, and each time the man's boot heel hit the floor, it was like an unseen hand raised a padded maul and brought it down, hard, on the drumhead of Doom itself. In that bright, shattered sliver of a second, Jacob remembered later, he honestly never felt anything any more genuinely terrifying, than the deliberate pace of a man who was going to have justice, a man who would have it peacefully, or otherwise ... ... a man who genuinely did not give a good damn which of the two it would be. Jacob saw the Sheriff lean back, kick the closed door. Jacob saw splinters of wood from the boot-blasted door's lock -- -- the door swung in -- -- the Sheriff's leg came down, his hand hard around the plow handle of a single action .44 in a black, floral carved Jordan holster -- Several shots blasted toward Jacob, he felt a bullet nick his hat brim: he saw the Sheriff disappear inside the door, heard a single, sharp, slap-in-the-face BAM! of his father's .44 caliber belt gun, then ... ...silence ... Linn stepped through the door, his broad shoulders disappearing inside: Jacob rose, ran across the floor, eyes busy: he turned, scanned the room, looking for any sleepers, any back shooters: he turned, went into the back room -- Sheriff Linn Keller was standing over a corpse. He brought his revolver up, flipped open the loading gate, punched out the empty, dropped it in his shirt pocket and reloaded: Jacob looked around, barely heard the whisper of blued steel dropping back into gunleather. Jacob turned, looked around here as well. Linn turned, regarded his pale eyed son. "Check the hostages for injuries," he said, his voice steady, and Jacob saw blood drip off his father's trouser cuff and run down his boot, and he saw a stain spreading on the man's shirt. Linn looked down and swore, quietly, powerfully, then he looked at Jacob. "How many times did he shoot?" Linn asked. "I counted four, sir." Linn looked down, squatted, turned the dead man's head, regarded the blue-edged hole just below the dead man's nose. "I only needed one." Later that day, as Linn discussed the shoot with Jacob, Shelly came in, Angela with her: Linn reached a hand through the siderails toward his wife and Jacob surrendered his place beside the bed. Angela waited until her Mommy was seated on that rolling stool thing Doc liked to sit on, then she came up beside her Mommy and folded her arms across the top of the siderail. "Daddy," she said, "you only shot the bad guy once?" "I only needed one, darlin'," Linn grinned. Angela nodded importantly. "I know what Marnie would say," she said, then she shook her little pink finger at her Daddy and declared, "Show-off!"

I DON'T SEEM TO REMEMBER A man with pale eyes stood up in the eddying smoke. He smelled sulfur and he smelled blood and he took a step, took another. He looked around, looked at men dead and dying, at men ripped from shellfire and from bayonets and from Cain's rock, men lying in a lover's embrace, if you ignored each with steel driven into the other's guts and the off hand around the other's windpipe, each crushing and choking and ripping the very breath from the other's soul. A pale eyed man felt a bright detonation beside him, felt himself blown sideways, looked down: his side was caved in and bloody, and he reached down and took a man's head by the hair and pulled it out of his crushed ribs and the bleeding head smiled and opened its eyes and said "Hello," and a flock of birds poured out of his ripped open ribs and spiraled into the clear sky above, forming a tornado, black and twisting and hungry and coming after him, inexorably, inescapably -- Sarah Lynne McKenna sat up in bed, wide awake. She threw back her bedcovers, turned: the Irish Brigade slept with their trousers down over their boot tops, and Sarah did too: she shoved sock feet into her flat-heeled Cavalry boots, hauled up the black drawers, hooked the galluses over her shoulders and cinched the belt: she snatched gunbelt and hat from the bedpost and she was fast up and covered by the time she got to the bottom of the stairs. Snowflake was waiting. Sarah didn't bother with a saddle: she climbed the fence, swarmed aboard her coal-black Frisian, locked her heels in her mare's great barrel and leaned over her neck, her hands flat and pressing just below the long, shining mane. "Go, girl," she whispered, and Snowflake turned, pointed her nose at the fence, soared into the night sky and landed easily on the far side. Sarah's blood ran cold as she heard a howl, mournful, sorrowing into the darkness, grieving to the stars, and she knew which coal-black mountain Mastiff was singing for the dead. Daciana draped a shawl around her shoulders, slipped barefoot through her tidy little house: it was as painfully neat as she'd kept her circus wagon, back when she was still a bareback performer: two steps and she was in the little galley of a kitchen, small, as mercilessly efficient as anything aboard ship. Daciana reached into the shadow, her hands pressing a draping kerchief about something round and smooth, on a very old, hand-carved base, drew it to the middle of her little table, where the moonlight would fall upon it. Daciana whisked off the black-silk cover, stared into the crystalline heart of a truly ancient crystal ball, a flawless quartz sphere as big as two fists together, and older than any two people she knew. "The Veil is thin," she whispered. "Grandmere, what can you show me?" Daciana stared, unblinking, into the crystal ball, and around her, movement, unseen in the shadows. Esther lay limp in his arms, her head bloody, her chest not rising. Gunsmoke and departing souls flowed around him like morning fog, hugging the earth, not wanting to leave, but flowing, flowing like a river of the damned. Linn threw his back and roared, the soul ripping scream of a man whose eternal essence was suddenly of no value at all without this one bright light, this one lighthouse, this one reason he drew breath, and he looked again and it was Angela, bloodied and dead in his arms, and he buried his face in her belly and screamed, he blotted his tears into her dress and raised his head and looked again and it was Connie, his Connie, the woman he'd married in his youth, Connie, slender and beautiful with straight brown hair and he smelled death and he smelled rot and she was decaying, decaying with the pox thick on her face. The hired girl ran, barefoot, terrified, for the front door: she had a lighted lamp in one hand, she seized the cut-crystal knob, twisted, pulled: "He's upstairs!" was all she could manage, and drew back as Sarah snatched the lamp from her and ran upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, ascending at a dead run. Daciana's Gypsy soul sang in the moonlight, her slender body swaying, eyes closed: she rose, she spun, she danced barefoot, the shawl clutched in both hands, above her head: a Gypsy healer, witch-woman some called her, danced with the spirits, those shades crossing while the Veil between the Worlds was thinned: a woman danced barefoot in the little kitchen, and memories and souls danced with her. Linn raised his head. His arms were empty. He was alone, alone in a bare field, a field where darkness and pain lay thick on the grass, smoke and fog drifting past him -- He looked around, turned, searching -- His hand went to his side -- Healed -- He looked up, toward the trees, curious. Someone was beating on a pine board with a setting maul ... slow, ponderous blows, summoning him, calling him. What the hell is going on here? He seized the fog, the drifting smoke-mist, he threw it aside like bedcovers, he strode for the trees -- Pain detonated in his foot and his face and he staggered back, shocked, raised the back of his hand to his nose -- "Papa!" Sarah called, ready to twist, duck or flee: Sarah had become an excellent judge of men and their probable reactions, and she did not see any attack in her Papa's eyes. "What just happened?" Linn whispered, his throat raw, as if he'd been screaming. "Dear Papa," Sarah said, and Linn nearly wept to hear the pain in his daughter's voice: she set the lamp down on the dresser and hugged her pale eyed Papa with the desperate strength of a daughter who knows far too well the agonies that nighttimes bring: she felt her Papa's arms, lean and strong, crushing her to him: she felt his quick breaths, she heard his strained whisper, "You're real!" "Papa, I'm here," she whispered back. "How can I help?" Linn released his daughter, staggered back a step, then two more, until his legs just touched the bed, then he sat, suddenly, heavily, dropped his face into his hands, groaned. "I help," Sarah heard: she had no idea how, but Daciana was there: she held something, like Sarah had been holding the lamp. Sarah saw the bedcovers were completely off the bed, as if a desperate man seized them and ripped them free in order to escape. Escape what? Daciana laid delicate fingers on the black silk scarf covering the ancient crystal. "You saw them," she said, her voice low, musical. Linn nodded. "They were terrible." Again, the nod. "All your fault." "Yeah," Linn gasped hoarsely. "Every one of them." Sarah saw his fists close, seizing the tick in an absolutely crushing grip, tight enough his knuckles blanched and one or two popped: he looked away, fury claiming his expression, his teeth bared: "Every one of them," he hissed. "Every one, my fault!" Daciana backhanded him, hard. Linn looked at her, startled, surprised, too surprised to take offense. She snatched the silk from the crystal sphere and light, pure, silvery, beyond-white-light filled the room, blinding him -- Linn rose, slowly, his jaw dropping open. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes. "No," he said. "No, no, no --" "Oh yeah," Connie declared, plainting her knuckles on her apron strings and looking saucily at him. "No. You're dead. I buried Dana on top of your coffin --" He felt something tug at his trouser leg. He looked down. He wasn't in a nightshirt, he was in his black suit, and a little girl looked up at him with big bright eyes and he saw she had a china headed doll in the bend of her elbow. He'd buried her with that doll, the doll he's bought for her second birthday. "You're ver-ry big," she giggled, and Linn went to one knee, looked up at Connie, looked at Esther -- There were others behind them, men he knew, men in uniform, men he'd led, men who'd -- He stopped, swallowed, closed his eyes hard: he stood, his little girl in his arms. "Connie?" he said in a small voice. Connie smiled that shy smile of hers, the smile he first saw in the shadow of Sugar Loaf Mountain, back near Paint Creek when he'd gone to sell furs to Scotty when he was young, so long ago -- The black silk floated back down over the crystal and Linn stood in his silent bedroom, still in his black suit, the only light was from the single lamp on his dresser, and he looked from Sarah to Daciana to the maid and back to Sarah. He closed his eyes, took a long, steadying breath, opened his eyes. "Ladies," he said quietly, "forgive me, but I don't seem to remember what just happened." He looked at the maid, looked at his own arm, saw he was in his suit: "Have I been to bed yet?" Sarah took his arm, steered him toward the door, Daciana and the hired girl following. "I believe there is pie," she said, "and I'd like to hear more about Connie and Dana."

NO GREAT SHAKES "Jacob?" Annette sat beside her new husband, her head over on his shoulder: they were young, but not too young, they were of proper age to marry, and to raise a family, the bride with the bloom of youth glowing in her cheeks, the groom with the green strength of youth contained in his tailored black suit. Jacob's arm was around his beautiful bride's back, his hand gripping her gently: he leaned his cheek over against his wife's carefully styled and piled hair. "Jacob, can we afford it?" Jacob smiled. He and Annette came up here, one of the few high points accessible by buggy, and then only if you were careful: they'd spread a blanket, they'd had a picnic, and now they sat, looking out over an incredible distance, at the sawtoothed terrain, the flawless blue sky, clouds like freshly laundered cotton. They'd been sitting together, thus, silent, holding hands, leaned against one another, sharing the quiet intimacy of husband and wife: it's been said that silence is a gift, and silence can be shared only with someone with whom we are more than comfortable. Annette spoke first. "Jacob?" "Hm?" "Jacob, can we afford it?" She felt her husband's silent laughter. "Darlin', that house is paid for already. You've seen my balance sheets and you've heard my plans." His free hand laid gently over hers and she felt his breath come in, go out. "We can afford it." Silence for a time, then: "Jacob, will we ever leave?" Jacob considered this for some long time, his eyes busy: they were in the lee of a rock wall, sunlight warming them, the wind carrying its eternal secrets across the high country. "Do you want to leave?" His words were little more than a whisper. "No," Annette admitted. "You've seen the ocean," Jacob murmured. "You've lived in the big city. Do you wish to return?" He felt his wife's deep breath, felt her warmth against him. "And miss this?" she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper. "No, Jacob. If I am with you, I am content." "I'm no great shakes." Annette pulled away from him, gave him a surprised look. "Jacob Keller!" she exclaimed. "You saved me and a half dozen other girls from being taken, you drove us up to police headquarters and turned the girls loose on that lying politician, you rode us out of town, the two of us on your stallion, right down the city street in front of God and evrybody, and now you're building the nicest house I've ever seen, and you're no great shakes?" Jacob shrugged, picked up a pebble, flicked it away. Annette seized his chin between thumb and two fingers, turned his head toward her. "Jacob Keller," she said, her voice low and fierce, "you've shown me your ledgers, you've shown me your investments. You are respected and you are looked up to, and you're no great shakes?" Jacob grinned -- a broad, boyish grin, that grin she fell in love with the very first time she saw him, back when she was struggling in the hands of the man who wished to abduct her, right after Jacob persuaded the Philistine that he was no match for a lawman's Jaw Bone of Jack Mule. "Jacob" -- Annette shook her head, twisted, came up on her knees: she seized his face in both hands, planted her mouth on his: her argument was intimate and persuasive, her arms around him a testimony to her passion: alone on the mountain, the two laid back on the blanket, and when they came up for air, Annette laying across his chest, her palm caressing his smooth-shaven cheek, she said "Jacob Keller, you are my husband and I love you" -- her fingers traced the curve of his ear -- "and if you ever tell me you're no great shakes, I will cloud up and rain all over you!" Jacob laughed, nodded, delighting in the colors in his wife's eyes, and for a moment a stray Scripture quoted itself to him, something about contenting himself with the wife of thy youth, and he considered, just before he gripped the back of her head and brought her mouth back down to his, that he was doing just that. "Darlin'," Jacob mumbled, and Annette drew away barely enough to let him speak, "you've seen the city and so have I, I've seen the East and I came back here." Annette's hands were flat on his chest, barely rubbing his collar bones, her eyes huge, glowing, eyes he loved to gaze into -- I could swim in those eyes -- "I don't reckon to leave these mountains, darlin'," Jacob said finally. "How about you?" Annette's reply was without words, but her argument was most persuasive. Husband and wife were alone on the mountain, and neither had any plans to depart therefrom.