[SHORT STORIES!]

IS THERE AN ANGEL IN THE HOUSE?

 

Linn frowned as he pulled out his phone, muttered “Why does this always happen now?”

Angela looked at her Daddy with big blue eyes and listened: his eyes went to her and he nodded, and Angela rose, picked up her blue cloak, spun it around her shoulders, fast up the neck clasp.

“Howdy, Doc,” Linn grinned, then his face grew suddenly serious.

The Sheriff’s voice went from a jovial, hello-my-old-friend, to a cold, efficient, I-am-the-Sheriff tone.

“She is, sir, stand by one.” 

Linn took two long paces forward – he’d just come through the front door, he’d stopped when the phone rang; when he locked eyes with his daughter, she came toward him, lifting her chin and settling the blue nurse’s cloak on her shoulders.

Angela took the phone, her voice crisp, efficient, professional. “Angela Keller.”

She lifted her head, looked at her Daddy, her face serious.

“On my way.”

Angela handed the Sheriff back his phone. “I’m needed at the hospital five minutes ago. I need a ride.”  She seized her father’s arm, turned him – her grip and her pull were both surprisingly strong – the two made for the front door, and were gone.

Shelly sat at the kitchen table with the feeling she’d just missed something.

 

Joseph was just pulling the flat off the Sheriff’s cruiser.

Every other vehicle – for one of those extremely rare, it’ll-never-happen moments – every other vehicle was out of action: one was at the dealership for warranty work, one was due back any time, and the Sheriff’s cruiser was up on a jack with its right forehoof dismounted.

“Daddy,” Angela snapped, turned toward the barn:  father and daughter ran for the barn, Angela’s lip curling:  a shrill, demanding whistle shivered in the chill fall air.

“Angela, we’ll have that changed –”

Angela seized the gate, slammed the latch back, hauled it open.

“OUTLAW!” she barked, whistled again.

A whinny from the far side of the pasture:  Angela ran her hand into her Daddy’s coat pocket, pulled out two cellophane wrapped peppermints, pulled one open, then a second.

“I hope you’ve got more,” she muttered as three white mares came trotting toward them, blowing happily, nostrils flared at the happy prospect of the round, peppermint swirled, horse crack that was absolutely their favorite bribe.

Linn slung saddle blanket and saddle onto the shining black gelding – he’d grabbed a Sheriff’s office saddle blanket, to give his daughter the visual imprimatur of his office – Angela stepped up onto the mounting block, found the near stirrup, swung a white-stockinged leg over, thrust the blunt toe of her white nursing oxford into the starboard doghouse stirrup:

“YAAH!”

A shining-black gelding and a woman in a white nurse’s dress and cap leaned out into a dead-flat-out gallop:  Angela stood up in the stirrups, hands flat against Outlaw’s neck, bent low, her face shoved into the wind as Outlaw charged the white board fence.

Linn watched his little girl, this child of his loins, streaking across the pasture, a vision in white with a blue cloak floating behind.

He watched, he saw, he appreciated: there are moments when a father beholds a moment of true magic, and this was one, where his little girl became a creature of wings and of wind and of flight.

 He could not but grin as she soared over the fence, and his memory heard the happy scream of the little girl she used to be.

In his imagination, a happy “Wheeeeeeee!” shivered on the chilly, damp air.

Linn turned, curled his lip, whistled:

“Apple!”

Not long at all afterward, a second horse and rider soared over the same fence, landed easily, a second set of steel shoes dug into punished sod and threw clods and grass in dirty arcs.

A second horse and rider pounded at a gallop across the field, over the stream, around back of the bank and toward their friendly local hospital.

 

Bruce Jones was often kidded for wearing a camera the way most businessmen wore a necktie.

He reached reflexively for the implement, his thumb wiped the power switch on, he raised the Nikon, led the subject of his interest the way a trapshooter leads a clay pigeon: his finger was heavy on the shutter button and he heard the camera happily bite moments in time from the fabric of reality and swallow them into its sizable electronic memory.

Talk about a front page picture, he thought.

Now to find the story behind this!

 

Sheriff Linn Keller stood in the waiting room, too impatient to sit, too controlled to pace: his Stetson was under his arm, his good right arm hung relaxed, over the handle of his sidearm, as was his habit: his wife kidded him that he probably stood like that in the shower, and the Sheriff laughed quietly with his wife.

He didn’t reply that she was right, even though she was.

Angela Keller’s hands were busy – her hands knew the work, and it showed.

Dr. Sprague was the new head of their Firelands hospital, brought in after Dr. Greenlees’ death:  Dr. Sprague’s grandfather gained fame back East, eight decades before, when he went into a coal mine to save a man’s life: the roof fell, trapped several miners, they got all out but one, and he was trapped with several tons of a monolithic slab of slate crushing his leg.

Miners and physician alike agreed the leg would be lost, even if excavated – nothing short of drilling and dynamiting would loosen that slab – and so the seminal Dr. Sprague conducted an emergency amputation, by the dim lights of one Davy lamp and as many miner’s caps as could be passed up for the purpose.

This youngest Dr. Sprague was not the solemn, unsmiling sort Dr. Greenlees had been:  he’d come here from a much bigger hospital, and immediately decided two things:

First, he really, really liked it here, and

Second, things were running just fine before he arrived, and he saw no reason to change anything… at least, not yet.

Dr. Sprague was experienced in pediatric oncology, Angela’s specialty: they were treating two children whose parents expressed the strong preference that their young not be taken to the Big City, but rather be kept here, treated here: when one child started getting really bad, really fast, Dr. Sprague knew he’d need an experienced right hand.

He remembered a particularly skilled and efficient nurse he’d worked with, he remembered she came from here, then the light bulb came on and he called an old friend he’d known for years, a pale eyed man who’d recently mentioned his little girl was a nurse, and that she had remarkably bright, Kentucky-blue eyes.

 

Outlaw knew the way to the hospital.

Angela was like a burr in a hound dog’s fur when she was in the saddle: Outlaw leaned hard around the last turn and Angela leaned with him, grinning wickedly:  she sat up straight as Outlaw slowed, came onto pavement behind the hospital, at the ambulance bay:  steelshod hooves clattered loudly on pavement as Angela rode right up to the automatic doors.

Angela swung down, landing easily on the balls of her feet.

“Stay,” she murmured as Outlaw started to go into the now-open, heavy-glass doors: Outlaw muttered something, slashed his tail, wandered over to the nearest grassy patch.

“Typical man,” Angela muttered. “Feed your face.”

She turned, stepped through the inner door, thrust a bladed hand at the open-mouthed security officer.

“Dr. Sprague called me in for a consult.  Take me to ICU.”

 

Bruce Jones was known, there at the hospital: a small town is a community where everyone knows everyone else, a small town's hospital, even moreso: when Bruce came in with two boxes of doughnuts, he was admitted immediately into ER (he left a small box of the pastries to be split between Admitting, behind the front counter, and Security, twenty feet away)

Bruce strode quickly through the heavy doors that swung open when Admitting hit the switch; he set doughnuts on the ER counter, looked around.

Staff was looking at the ambulance doors, there were smiles: Bruce carried the doughnuts over to them, looked out the doors.

Dogs and horses have an affinity for children, and already two children were regarding Outlaw with awe:  a little boy tentatively reached up, caressed a velvety muzzle, and the delight in a little child’s discovery was not lost on these medical grade spectators.

A good reputation, a few edible bribes, a walk back toward Intensive Care: Bruce saved out two doughnuts, carried them stacked on a napkin, and stopped the security officer as he was coming back toward the emergency department.

Bruce waited until the delighted security continued his journey before pulling out a notebook and starting to write.

 

Angela sat, crossed her legs, regarded Dr. Sprague with interest.

He parked his backside onto the corner of his desk, regarded her with an equal frankness.

“I need a damned good oncology nurse,” he said without preamble. “What are you making now?”

Angela considered the question.

Dr. Sprague almost laughed as he saw her bottom jaw slide out as she thought.

She doesn’t have her father’s eyes, he thought, but she does have his deliberation! Look at that jaw while she’s thinking!

“My father,” she said slowly, “once told me an important decision deserves to be slept on.”
Dr. Sprague waited.

“He also taught me that sometimes you do what’s right, and this feels right.”

Angela named a figure.

Dr. Sprague nodded.

“We’ll match that.”

“Moving expenses?”

“We’ll match that too.”

Angela uncrossed her legs, rose, stuck out a hand.

“Deal.”

They shook.

“How soon do I report for work?”

“Yesterday would be fine.”

“It would be decent to give my current hospital due notice.”

“Let me make a phone call.”

“I’ll be in ER, checking on my horse.”

Dr. Sprague watched as a nurse in an old-fashioned, white uniform dress and stockings, picked up her blue cloak, draped it over her arm, departed.

It doesn’t hurt, he thought, that she’s got really nice legs! – then he frowned, turned his head, dismissed the thought.

 

A little boy looked around with interest as a nurse in a white dress and cap wheeled him down the hallway.

He looked at the pictures as they went, and the nurse went slowly, for she knew how isolated he must have been feeling for too long, far too long.

“There,” he said, his voice faint behind his surgical mask.

Angela stopped, looked.

“That was one of the angels,” he said, his voice little more than a tired whisper.

Angela looked at the portrait.

Doctor and Mrs. John Greenlees, she read from the brass plaque at center bottom of the ornate, old-fashioned frame, Founder of Firelands Hospital: a lean physician with familiar features, a clean-shaven, unsmiling man in a black suit, looked steadily, almost sleepily at the camera: the woman on his arm wore the nurse’s uniform of the day, and though a smile might be seen sparkling behind her oval pince-nez spectacles, she too looked at the camera without smiling.

“One of the angels?” Angela echoed, coming up beside him, squatting modestly, her head tilted to show her interest in his words.

Her patient nodded, just a little.

“She was standing beside you when you were working on me.”

Angela blinked, looked at the stiff, straight-spined, formal portrait of Nurse Susan, wife to the original Dr. John Greenlees. 

“Angels do that,” she agreed quietly.

She looked at her young, bald-headed patient: “You said angels. Were there others?”

“Yes,” he whispered, and she saw his eyes go to her nurse’s cap.

“Angels,” he whispered, “wear wings.”

Angela bit her lip—she was grateful for the mask, as it hid this sign of her sudden uncertainty.

She laid a careful, gentle hand on his arm, resting her fingers between the intravenous locks in the bend of his elbow, and further down his forearm.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll show you my angel wings, okay? I have a big shining set of wings you’ll really like!”

Angela rose, resumed her station behind the wheelchair: she rose quickly, so he could not see her reaction to the fatigue in his face, but the absolute, anticipatory delight that lit his face from within.

 

Two days later, a mother chewed on her knuckle as a nurse in a white dress and a winged cap, placed a peppermint in a little boy’s hand and helped him hold his hand up flat.

The mother leaned against her husband and watched, tears running wet and cold down her cheeks, as their son – dying, they’d been told, but they’d been told a month ago, that he’d not live the week – their little boy laughed as a shining black horse rubberlipped the peppermint from the little boy’s hand.

“This is Outlaw,” the mother heard the nurse say, and she could hear the smile in Angela’s voice. “Outlaw is my shining black angel, and he flies like the wind itself!”

A physician stood above the husband and wife, his breath fogging his office window as he looked down on the same scene: his hands were folded behind his back, and he nodded, slowly.

Dr. David Sprague, physician and surgeon, watched a little boy caress a shining black horse’s nose, saw the look of delight on the bald headed child’s face, or as much as he could see above the green-paper mask.

In a quiet voice, he murmured, “Is there an angel in the house?”

[SHORT STORIES!]

WHEN THE GHOSTS COME OUT

“Shewiff?”

Sheriff Linn Keller went down on one knee and bent just a little, to put himself on more of an eye level with the little fellow with a plastic mask shoved up on top of his head and a sack about a third full of candy at his side.

“Shewiff, when does the ghosties come out?”

Linn was known as a man of patience, a man who actually listened when someone spoke: he was a father and grandfather, he was a man who knew what it was to raise his own young, and to put that experience to work when he was addressed by the young.

Linn considered this, frowned, rubbed his chin, looked at the bench in front of the Sheriff’s office.

“Ghosts here in town,” he said in a deep, gentle, reassuring voice, “are governed by the Spirit and Incorporeal Regulations, section 3a, paragraph four, and I quote” – he held up a teaching finger – “All haints, boogers, speerts, ghosts, ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, are hereby enjoined and prohibited from manifesting themselves until after Trick or Treat is completed, or nine PM, whichever occurs first.”

Linn rose, turned, parked his backside on the bench.  “How’s trick or treatin’ gone so far for you?”

“Awright, I guess,” the little boy shrugged.

“Got very much to cover?”

“Nah.”  He shifted his weight, undecided, then frowned up at the patiently waiting lawman.

“I already give most of mine away.”

Linn nodded slowly.  “Give it away, or someone took it?”

“Nah. I give it.”  The little fellow set his sack down, turned and wallowed up onto the bench beside the Sheriff.

“You ‘member that new kid with the hot rod wheelchair?”

Linn grinned, nodded.  “I recall.”

“He didn’t get much so I give him some and his little brother didn’t have hardly none at all so I give him a bunch too.”

Linn laid a fatherly hand on the lad’s far shoulder, squeezed just enough to be felt, not enough to exert control.

“You did well,” he said in an approving and fatherly tone.  “I’m proud of you.”

The lad’s face brightened, then fell, and he looked up at the Sheriff with a sad expression.

“I wish you was my Dad,” he said, and Linn pulled the young trick-or-treater in against him, held him for a long moment.

“If you were my son,” he said quietly, “I would be pretty damned proud of you!”

 

Later that night, a single mother was talking with that long tall Sheriff.

She didn’t know the man, but she knew a gentleman when she met one: he swung down from the saddle and took his Stetson in his hand, and addressed her with respect as she walked home, holding a little boy’s hand.

“Ma’am,” the Sheriff said, “I understand your son shared his haul with those less able.”

“He did?” she asked, surprised, and looked down at her son, then back to the Sheriff.

“He is also intelligent enough to concern himself with matters of safety.” 

The mother looked a little puzzled, as if she were unsure quite how to reply.

“Ma’am, do you have far to go?”

“We’re … we moved into an apartment on the other side of town.”

“That’s a bit of a walk, and I’d say you’ve been walking some tonight already.”

“Yes I have,” she admitted. “Marty scampered away and I lost track of him and I’ve been almost running, trying to find him again.”

“He and I were sitting in front of the Sheriff’s office, just talkin’ things over.”

Linn looked at young Marty.

“Son, have you ever ridden a genuine Appaloosa stallion?”

A little boy with a plastic mask shoved back on the top of his head, looked big-eyed at the Appaloosa, shook his head.

“Like to?”

Marty nodded, looking waaaaay up at that big tall horsie that long tall Sheriff had been riding.

“Marty,” Linn said, “if us men folk rode and your Mama had to walk, why, that wouldn’t be very good manners, would it?”

Marty looked disappointed, but he shook his head because he knew the Sheriff was right.

“Tell you what.”

The Sheriff winked at the son, turned to the mother.

“Mother, if you’d be pleased to saddle up, we’ll set Marty up there with you, and we’ll all head for your place.”

It took a little coaxing, but the Sheriff, between a gentle smile, a reassuring, fatherly voice, and a healthy application of second hand horse feed, managed to get Marty’s tired mother to step up on one of the mounting blocks that still lived at the curb in front of several of Firelands’ buildings: he helped her fit one sneakered foot into the left hand stirrup – “We’re Irish,” he grinned, “we put on our left shoe first and we step into the left hand stirrup first. Grip the horn and the – there, like that. You’ll bounce three times, on three you’ll swing your other leg over.  Ready?  Marty, count with me” – and two voices in the gathering dusk chanted, “One, two, THREE!” – and a single mother’s eyes widened as she found herself suddenly a-straddle of the hurricane deck of a genuine, oh my God I hope he doesn’t buck, Western Appaloosa stallion.

The Sheriff squatted, took Marty at the belt with his hands spread wide:  “Up you go!” and a little boy’s delighted squeal shivered across the street, echoed back to the wide-eyed child and the grinning lawman.

“Now put your arms around your Mama’s waist, just like that.”

The Sheriff whistled, a quick, quiet whistle:  “Bear Killer,” he called, and something huge, black and very furry padded out of the shadows, came up beside him, stood.

They started out, walking, Apple-horse’s hooves loud in the evening’s stillness:  here and there, giggling children, scampering, getting in their last begs before the fire whistle blew to signal an end to the evening’s harvest.

“Marty,” the Sheriff said, looking up at mother and son both, “do you know why it’s wise to ride a horse on Halloween?”

Marty blinked, puzzled, shook his head.

“Ghosts can’t get you when you’re horseback.”

Marty’s mother looked at the Sheriff, caught the man’s solemn wink.

Lawman, mother, stallion and mountain Mastiff walked through the gathering dark, and though there were ghosts about that quiet Halloween night, none dare cause trouble, for they were strictly enjoined by the Spirit and Incorporeal Regulations, section 3a, paragraph four, but also subsections (a), (b) and (c), regarding the presence of lawmen, mountain Mastiffs, and Appaloosa stallions.

 

 

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

INTERVIEW WITH THE LADY IN WHITE

3.    The How

 

Angela laughed.

“Why be a nurse, if I like being a paramedic?”

She smiled, tilted her head down, studied the ground before them: they walked slowly, together, Angela’s arm and her cloak around Bruce’s shoulders.

He realized his arm was around her waist, and he realized she wasn’t objecting to his arm … matter of fact, she drew him against her, and he drew her as well.

“For the same reason men get up in the morning and go to work, silly.

“Money.

“Paramedic doesn’t pay much.

“I’m working in the City and working at a specialty and the money’s good. It’s hard work and it takes everything I’ve got, but the money’s good.”

Another few steps, gravel crunching quietly under their shoe soles.

“Nurses are overworked, they’re loaded with too many patients and too much responsibility and too many duties, but we do it because it really needs done and there’s no one else to do it.

“I’m young. I can take the long hours for a few years, but when I see myself making mistakes, when I see myself struggling to keep up, I can go to another specialty, or home health care, or something else that’s much less stressful.”

“Or you could come back and be a paramedic.”

“I’d like that,” Angela admitted.  “I said as much to Fitz.”

Bruce felt Angela laugh silently.

Their pace was slow now, slow, with small, thoughtful steps.

“The chief tells me I’ll have to wear a white uniform, or at least a miniskirt.  I told him I’d give him a black eye and he changed his mind.”

“You told Fitz that?” Bruce exclaimed, his eyes wide with honest astonishment.

“He’s known me since I was a little girl,” Angela reminded the newsman with a smile.  “He used to tease me terribly, and he remembers when I shook my little fist at him and snarled, ‘I’m wuff an’ tuff an’ hawd to bwuff,’ and he reminds me of that regularly!”

Bruce laughed and nodded, for he knew the man and he knew Fitz’s affection for children, and his absolute love for the memorable moments they give – like the time Fitz’s own five year old son was running in the firehouse, when Bruce heard Fitz yell “MARC DON’T RUN IN THE FIREHOUSE” *blang!* and Fitz’s five year old son’s forehead unerringly found the smooth, stainless-steel face of the tanker’s back bumper.

Bruce smiled as he remembered how the child staggered, rubbed his forehead and hissed a quiet “Oooh,” then set to running again – another moment Chief Fitzgerald still remembered, and still spoke of, to his now-grown son’s chagrin.

Angela and her former classmate, her old and trusted friend, walked in silence for maybe a minute.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Which one?”

“Why you look like nurses used to.”

“Tradition. At work I wear scrubs. One day I did wear this, and everyone thought I was a supervisor. The older doctors and all the parents loved that I looked like a nurse.”

“What about your co-workers?”
“Someone started the rumor that I’d been hazed by a supervisor and told to dress like this.”

“What happened?”

“I dressed like this for a full week. I work a pediatric oncology unit. When I finally showed up in scrubs, one little boy looked at me and he got this God-awful sad look on his face and he asked me, ‘Does this mean you’re not a nurse anymore?’

“I sat down beside his bed and held his hand and told him no, I’m still a nurse, I’m just not on special duty like I was.

“He asked me what that special duty was, and I smiled and said I had a picture I’d show him.

“I had Grandma’s photo in an album in my locker. That afternoon I took it in and showed him. The one with a little girl on her hip and a revolver in hand.”

“What did he say?”

“He looked at me and complained that I never wore high heels.”

“What did you say?”

“I leaned down and whispered that I’d only wear them for him.”  Her voice softened a little.  “He said okay, and he relaxed, and every time I came in his room, he’d look to see if I was wearing heels.”

“Did you ever?”

Angela bit her bottom lip, dropped her head, frowned a little.

She nodded.

“He was … his cancer … I went in his room in my white uniform dress and heels and I told him… I bent down and whispered in  his ear that I was wearing heels.

“He was too weak to move, he hadn’t opened his eyes in a week.

“When I whispered I’d worn heels for him, he opened his eyes and he lifted his head.

“I stepped back so he could see me:  I turned around, struck a long-legged pose, I said I wore these especially for him.”

“He smiled … this big, happy smile, he was in more pain than narcotics could handle, but he smiled because I wore heels for him that day, and then he laid back and closed his eyes, and he was gone.”

Angela ripped a kerchief from somewhere under her cloak, wiped viciously at closed eyelids.

“I’m supposed to handle it,” she whispered viciously.  “I’m supposed to … I’m expected …”
Her teeth were set hard together, her voice little more than a hiss.

“That’s why I like being a paramedic, Bruce.  I can do something!”

Her voice raised a little and he heard something in her voice that surprised him.

Angela Keller, nurse, paramedic, classmate, a pretty and feminine girl he’d grown up with, raised clawed hands to the cloudy sky and clenched them into fists, her voice thickening with a deep and unexpected anger, the kind that comes out when the stresses have built up too far. 

“That’s why I like being a DEPUTY!  I can LAY HANDS on the GUILTY, AND I CAN BRRRING THEM TO JUSTICE!”

She wiped her eyes again, stopped, took a long, shivering breath, and Bruce realized her tears were not from sorrow.

These were tears of anger.

He remembered something his Mama told him years before, that if a girl gets so boiling, ready-to-detonate angry that she starts to cry, he’d be safer standing beside Krakatoa right before it exploded, than beside such a supremely stressed, absolutely angry, female, who was so mad her anger was leaking out of her eyes.

“You can’t do that with cancer,” she whispered.  “I wish it was a corporeal enemy, an entity, something with a body" -- her teeth clenched, her jaw muscles bulged as she snarled, "so I could LAY HANDS ON IT!”

She wiped her eyes again, took a long breath, blew it out.

“So there you’ve seen my deepest secret.”

Angela shook her head, swallowed.

“I’m fighting something I can’t win, Bruce. I won’t quit. I’ll do anything I have to, whether it’s snatching a child from a kidnapper like my Grandma Willamina, whether it’s wearing high heels with a uniform dress and enduring the wolf whistles and catcalls from doctors and my fellow nurses, just to give a dying boy one last smile.”

Angela stopped, raised both hands again, clenched them into fists, shook her head: her anger was spent now, her face crumpled with grief, tears running down both cheeks.

Bruce Jones, newspaperman and heir to an old, established newspaper – Bruce Jones, photographer, reporter, editor of the weekly newspaper – Bruce Jones, son of the mountains, Journalism graduate and professional wordsmith –

Bruce Jones found himself utterly and absolutely at a loss to understand what precipitated this sudden shattering of a confident young woman’s appearance.

He felt more than helpless as someone he’d known since earliest childhood squeaked like the distressed little girl she’d suddenly become, “I want my Daddy!”

Bruce Jones Jr, heir to the Firelands Gazette, editor, photographer, reporter and chief broom pusher, did what he’d heard a certain pale eyed Sheriff say was the only thing a man can do in such moments.

He gathered this woman in white into his arms and held her while she sobbed out her pent-up stresses and her long-hidden grief into the shoulder of someone she’d long known, someone she’d long trusted, someone with whom she felt safe.

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

THE LAST TO KNOW

Sheriff Jacob Keller lowered his head slightly.

Jacob's Chief Deputy watched his boss, concerned.

He'd rarely -- very rarely! -- seen the man get this quiet.

He knew when Jacob's eyes went dead white, when his face went pale and his shoulders rolled forward, when he looked like a creature of Earth-legend called a bear, that something very, very bad was very likely to happen, and soon.

"Why," Jacob said, his voice barely above a whisper, "was I not told?"

Ambassador Marnie Keller sat almost kneecap-to-kneecap with her brother, both of his callused hands in her gloved, two-hand grip.

Just as he was leaned forward, so was she, and she felt the anger in his hands -- it was like an electric current, sizzling through the material of her gloves, and it told her more clearly than any words just how ready her pale eyed brother was, to go to war, to harvest men's souls, to lay waste with his bare hands.

Marnie raised her head just a little.

"First of all," she said, "our little sister" -- she smiled, the way a woman will when she has some knowledge that others lack -- "our little sister isn't so little anymore."

Angela saw Jacob's shoulders lift as he took a breath, she saw his jaw muscles bulge: his cold, polished eyes were unblinking, drilling through her skull, searching for answers on the back side of her bony calvarium.

"Second" -- Marnie allowed her smile to continue a few moments more -- "your sister is one of the Valkyries, and she is very well trained."

Jacob held his counsel, but she did see just the barest of nods, and again -- powerfully -- she was reminded of their pale eyed father, who would listen through his own great anger, deliberately maintaining a fair and open mind, in spite of a boiling rage that wanted nothing more than to drive his hand into someone's gut and reach up and seize their beating heart and rip it out by its bloody ROOTS!

"You will remember," Marnie continued, her voice quiet, factual, "how Gammaw trained the Valkyries, and how we helped."

Jacob nodded, slowly: he remembered, not just training with them, but also the why of the training.

"Angela never stopped learning. She's fast and frankly she's deadly."

"I know she's deadly. I taught her that."

Sarah's fingers caressed the back of Jacob's hand.

"Don't flatter yourself, little brother," she purred. "I had something to do with forging her into a swift arrow of death."

Jacob's eyes narrowed, then closed: he opened them, looked very directly at his sister, nodded.

"Yes," he agreed.  "Yes, you did."

"Angela is quite the little murderess," Marnie said, blinking, affecting a wide-eyed innocence. "She rode into a robbery and lay about with a twelve-gauge jaw bone of a jack mule, to quote our honored ancestor."

"What about the ones that wanted to lay hands on her and sell her overseas?"

"The Federal boys are all over that one."

"Do we trust them?" Jacob asked with his characteristic, suspicious bluntness.

Marnie lifted her head, laughed, squeezed Jacob's hands affectionately: "Dear Jacob," she sighed, "ever the one to look behind the words!"

Marnie tilted her head, then came off her seat, leaned forward, kissed Jacob quickly on the cheek: she sat back down, reached up, caressed her brother's cheekbone with the backs of her bent, gloved fingers.

"Don't ever change," she whispered. "Please, Jacob, don't ever change!"

Jacob frowned, shook his head.

"I asked you a question, Sis, or are you being more diplomat than family?"

Marnie released Jacob's hands, leaned back.

Jacob was struck by how absolutely feminine she looked, how utterly ladylike -- just like Gammaw could do, he thought -- Marnie unfolded a delicate set of spectacles, slipped them on her face, over her ears: she lowered her head to look at Jacob over top of her spectacles, looking so utterly like a well-dressed schoolteacher that Jacob had to laugh in spite of the seriousness of his questions.

"I think we can trust them, Jacob," Marnie said, "at least in this one instance."

"Why?" 

Jacob's blunt challenge brought a look of approval from his sister.

"Jacob, it's not what you know, it's who you know."

"Go on."

"Who was Gammaw's husband?"

"Ah," Jacob nodded. 

"The Bureau gave it to Daddy to understand," Marnie explained, "that they were taking an especial interest in this case. They did not say in so many words, but they gave Daddy to ... understand."

"I see."

Jacob frowned, considered.

"I can raise a half-dozen heavies," he said slowly, "but that's about all the army I can raise on short notice."

"I can raise a regiment," Marnie countered. "The Confederate ambassador said he could give me one regiment of one thousand men, armed, equipped, uniformed, provisioned, and ready for a fight, given one minute's notice. He said he can raise ten times that in an hour."

"And you said?"

"I told him that Daddy doesn't have that many guest beds."

Jacob laughed -- he sat up straight, he shook his head, he looked at his sister with open, honest delight, and his chief deputy once again watched in surprise, realizing anew that he didn't know this pale eyed lawman nearly as well as he'd thought.

"So what do we do, Sis? Nothing I'd like better than to go home and lift some scalps."

"We stay here, Jacob. We do our jobs. We let Daddy handle it on his end, and if something happens to Daddy, or if Daddy blows the bugle, we'll have a regiment surrounding the ranch in three minutes' time, and more on the way."

Jacob considered this, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then looked at the pale eyed young woman in a McKenna gown and a fashionable little hat.

"One question, Sis."

Marnie nodded, a graceful incline of her head, a gesture better suited to a State visit, perhaps, but one she felt was appropriate.

"Why am I always the last to know?"

 

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

INTERVIEW WITH THE LADY IN WHITE

2.    The Why

 

“You see, Bruce, my other grandmother – Grandma Crane -- butted heads with my Mama about her becoming a nurse. My Mama had the great good sense to become a paramedic instead” – Angela stopped, withdrew her cloak, lowered her forehead until it touched Bruce’s, something she’d done since they were children in grade school – she whispered, “I’m a paramedic too, and for the same reason.” 

She giggled a little and added in a louder whisper, “Being a paramedic is fun!”

Bruce looked a little ill.

“Being a nurse is bad enough,” he said faintly. “But … but, but some of the things I’ve seen – and I’m not a paramedic –”

Angela tilted her head a little.

“It’s not easy,” she admitted.  “Mama and Grampa both carry grief and loss enough to last ten men their lifetimes. So does my Daddy and Jacob and they’re not medics.

“I saw Grampa Crane shiver and almost throw up when a drop of paint landed on the back of his hand. He told me later it reminded him of a bad one where he found the corpse where it was thrown into a tree from a wreck. Nobody could find it until it dropped a stone-cold blood clot on the back of Grampa’s hand, and the he looked up at the bloody and shredded remains of what used to be a friend of his.”

Angela paused, closed her eyes, took a long breath, blew it out.

“There are things that haunt him.

"I’ve seen him … remember … and when he does, I go to him and hold him and I’ve done the same thing with every last man in the Irish Brigade. Even the new ones.”  Angela took another long breath, blew it out through puffed cheeks.

“Some ghosts,” she said quietly, “won’t stay buried. It doesn’t matter how deep you bury them, it doesn’t matter how many rocks you pile on the grave, they still come philtering up out of the ground and say hello.”

Angela tilted her head back, considered a circling hawk.

“Smells,” she said firmly.  “Smells are the most associative of the senses. A smell can take me back to a memory faster than anything else.”

They turned and walked back down the row of her family’s tomb stones.

“If you’re a paramedic, and it’s fun,” Bruce frowned, thinking out loud, “why did …”

He looked at her.

“Why are you a nurse?”

[SHORT STORIES!]

BLIND STAGGERS

“VILHELM!”

Young William Linn did not slack his headlong charge toward their front door.

When his Mama called him Vilhelm, she was mad and she expected him to stop whatever he was doing, and come to her for a scolding or other motherly correction.

He had absolutely no intention in doing that.

He’d snatched his Pa’s Winchester rifle off the rack -- the light rifle, the one he'd shot before -- he gripped blued steel and checkered walnut and sprinted through the parlor and slammed the front door open, and he was headed outside.

Fast.

Part of his young soul wanted to come to a skidding halt in response to his Ma’s sharp summons, but his loyalties came first.

An eight year old boy charged out the front door of the stone house high on the mountainside and ran for the whitewashed fence just as fast as he could run.

Jacob Keller saw his little boy – and his rifle! – running for the fence.

Jacob had no objection to his boys shooting, but he insisted he shoot with them, partly because the boys were still young, and partly because shooting was fun and it was too easy to put holes in things, and partly because Jacob was a thrifty man with no liking for waste.

Jacob had been a boy, and remembered how easy it was to waste ammunition, and until his boys were old enough not to be wasteful, he'd shoot with them.

Jacob turned his stallion, trotted quickly for the gate: he leaned down, threw the latch: he rode through, his Apple-horse turning: Apple-horse was well trained, Apple-horse was trained to come broadside so the gate could be drawn shut and latched before proceeding.

Jacob fast the gate up, Apple-horse turned, and Sheriff Jacob Keller looked out across the field where his little boy was running.

Jacob’s eyes went pale, he leaned down and back and seized the wrist of his own rifle.

Sheriff Jacob Keller pulled out his .30-30, laid his thumb over the hammer spur, and Apple-horse leaned forward into a fast trot.

 

William Linn was one of Jacob’s younger sons.

Of all his boys, Will, as he was known, favored his Pa the most, something everyone else could see, something to which both father and son were oblivious.

Will was happily afield, having tended his chores, and ran off before more could be assigned:  he’d noted early in his life that if he appeared to be idle, something would be invented, if need be, to harness his time: more often than not it was work, and like most boys, he preferred to play.

Today, though, he’d been industrious, he’d been conscientious, he’d been productive, and having finished his assigned work, he was happily pursuing The Bear Killer, at least until The Bear Killer stopped and bristled up.

The Bear Killer looked over at Will, then very deliberately stepped in front of him, faced directly away from the pale eyed little boy, still bristling.

Will had never heard The Bear Killer growl before – not for real, anyway, but he was growling now, and then he let out a menacing, half-howl, half-bay, something that said I will rip you to bloody gobbets and foul the pieces on the ground, and then Joseph saw it.

Dogs were not at all uncommon, every town had them; some ran off and became wild, though they were often killed by coyotes or wolves.

Few survived.

This was a mongrel, lean and underfed, but it was not a healthy animal, and then Will saw how it slobbered, how it looked around – unnaturally looked around – and Will heard his Pa’s voice, a phrase he’d heard but he’d never understood until now.

“He’s got the blind staggers,” Will whispered, and fear claimed his young heart: “Bear Killer, c’mon!”

The Bear Killer bristled, bayed his challenge:  behind him, Will ran for the house.

Pa said he’d have to kill anything with the blind staggers, the hydrophobee!

 

Will ran forward, to where The Bear Killer paced back and forth, bristled, snarling.

Jacob rode up, threw up a leg, slid out of the saddle, landed easily, knees flexing to take up the shock of landing: he looked down at his son and said quietly, “Will, are you loaded?”

Will brought the hammer back, eased the lever down, looked in the chamber.

“No, sir.”

“Load.”

Will ran the lever forward, slammed it closed.

“With me.”

Two Keller men advanced on the enemy, rifle muzzles in the lead, Death on four paws pacing silently between them.

They stopped.

Jacob went to one knee.

“Get a good settin’ position,” Jacob said.

Will squatted, dropped back on his backside, spread his boot heels and drove them into the dirt: he brought his elbows up onto his knees, the crescent buttplate into his high upper arm.

Jacob watched as Will thumbed the tang mounted peep, flipped it up into working position.

“Take him in the head,” Jacob said quietly.

Will took a long breath, just like his Pa taught him.

Will let the breath out halfway.

Will saw the skinny, slobbering dog stagger, look at him, advance.

Jacob’s hand lowered, laid over the back of The Bear Killer’s neck.

Will felt the smooth, curved trigger under his finger, he felt the ground under his backside, he set the shining brass bead between the advancing canine’s eyes –

The rifle shoved back into his shoulder --

The brass bead came up, the passing breeze waved the smoke aside --

Will jacked the lever open, slammed it shut, raised his head.

He looked at his Pa.

Jacob was still down on one knee, his rifle’s butt grounded, his hand on The Bear Killer’s neck.

“We’ll burn it where it is,” he said quietly. “Bear Killer, Will, with me.  If he gets up, bust him again.”

“Yes, sir,” Will said quietly.

 

Will was solemn and big-eyed as he and his Pa looked at the red ruin he’d caused.

Jacob held the .25-20 round in front of the entrance wound, nodded, then handed it back to his son.

“That,” he said quietly, “was an excellent shot.” 

He looked at his son, nodded, a smile tightening the corners of his eyes.

“Well done, Will.”

“Thank you, sir,” Will said quietly, but the son’s smile extended to much more of his face than his father’s.

The two laid wood, dry wood that burnt hot, Jacob took the carcass by the hind legs and dragged it up onto the carefully laid pyre: father and son rode double, back to the barn, The Bear Killer with them, and Jacob rode back with a scythe held crosswise in front of him.

Will held his Pa’s coat as Joseph ceremonially stroked the blade with long, ringing swipes of the sharpening stone, as his Pa handed him the stone and then began clearing grass back from the wood:  he circled the stacked wood twice, cutting a full swath back with each orbit: Jacob was tall, two fingers from his pale eyed Pa’s height, and his swing on a scythe wasn’t much less: he threw cut grass on what would become the fire, looked around, satisfied, drew a match tube from a vest pocket and struck match to the pyre.

Will still held the Winchester rifle; he felt the heat, watched as his Pa judged the fire, listened as his Pa said when they found a rabid animal it had to be burnt so it would not infect anything else, and Joseph looked very seriously at his son and said, “I had hoped you’d be older before I had to tell you this, but I want you to go your way armed. If it’s got the blind staggers, kill it and burn it like we’ve done here. One bite and it’ll infect. I recall a man not far from here that got bit and got the hydrophobees. His family chained him in the barn by one leg and ‘twould have been kinder to have shot him in his sleep.”

Will looked at his Pa with big and solemn eyes and said, “Yes, sir.”

Jacob laid a hand on his son’s shoulder.

“You come out with a rifle, Will. You knew something was wrong and you moved to protect your family. That is what a man does. You did well today.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Jacob looked at the fire, threw the last of the wood on the pile.

“I genuinely hate shootin’ a dog,” he muttered, “that might have been someone else’s dog.”

Jacob looked back to see his son with one arm over The Bear Killer’s neck and his head bowed.

Will looked up to see his Pa looking at him.

“I was askin’ God to keep The Bear Killer safe,” Will explained. “I don’t want to have to kill him.”

Jacob came over, went to one knee again, laid his arm over The Bear Killer and his son’s shoulders both.

He squinted up at the sky.

“Lord,” he said, “my son asked Your help to keep The Bear Killer safe. I’d like to second that notion.”

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

RECKON HE WANTED TO SAY HOWDY

 

Carbon Hill was not what you’d call prosperous.

It had what passed for a mercantile, it had a down-at-heels saloon that had barely enough business to stay open, it had the Z&W depot, and it had several buildings that were standing thanks either to some restoration, or out of habit and little else.

There were still open mine shafts, where back in the day, the low grade brown coal was dug, rolled out to the siding, dumped into waiting rail cars: the wooden, trestle-like structures that used to hold up the mine rails, were mostly gone: an original still stood, but looked ready to crumble at any time; another, emerging from an adjacent shaft, was rebuilt, using good timber and the original design: in season, a mine car would be rolled out the new structure and dumped, for the benefit of tourists and tour groups.

The church had been rebuilt, and still saw a few services; the graveyard adjacent was cleaned up, stones replaced wooden planks, graves were located – ground penetrating radar showed two graves with one atop the other, with only one stone; it showed two other marked graves that were empty.

One grave was mounded, just a little, and outlined with white, fist sized stones. The marker, though new, was carved in the same style as the other stones.

Joseph Keller hung back a little, a lean waisted young man astride an Appaloosa stallion: like his father, he wore a handmade black suit, and like his father, he wore a black Stetson.

Joseph watched his father bend over and lay a hand on the gravestone and bow his head.

Joseph knew an old lawman was buried there.

Linn straightened reached into his coat, withdrew a pint of distilled sledgehammer:  he worked the stopper free, dribbled a little on the stone, on the grave, then he tilted it up and took a tilt, lowered it, then thrust it out at arm’s length and declared loudly, “LAW AND ORDER HARRY MACFARLAND!”

Joseph watched as his father slipped the flask back into an inside pocket, as he ran thumb and forefinger into his red-silver-and-black brocaded vest pocket: he pulled something out, something held between thumb and forefinger, placed it on the stone.

Joseph watched as his father contemplated the stone a few moments longer, as he said something – softly, Joseph could not hear the man – the Sheriff turned, walked carefully between the graves, along the newly replaced and painted white picket fence, and out the open gate to his waiting black gelding.

Linn swung easily into the saddle.

Two lean waisted men rode up the street, alone in the October afternoon:  if ghosts chased one another along the street with the occasional gusts, they didn’t show themselves.

Joseph looked at what had been the Marshal’s office.

Its restoration got as far as restoring the building’s front: within, there was very little; beside it, the iron box the railroads provided for a lockup – and an iron box it was, small, one tiny window, one barred door: years before, a cheerleader was locked in by a classmate, and she’d been let out by someone who looked remarkably like Joseph’s Pa … only Joseph’s Pa never left Firelands that night, and the pale eyed man with the iron grey mustache who’d spoken reassuringly to the scared girl locked in the old original jail, was pointed out later in the Silver Jewel, when the girl pointed at a framed, pencil drawing and exclaimed, “That’s him! That’s the man that let me out!”

It was another Linn Keller, the one known as Old Pale Eyes.

She swore up and down that he’s the man who reached down and picked up a key where metal detectors never saw one, until it was used to unlock the ancient heavy-brass padlock that held a frightened cheerleader behind rusty-brown bars.

Joseph looked again at the front of the Marshal’s office, and for a moment, he saw a figure in a black suit, slouching against a porch post, cleaning his nails with a short, sharp knife:  for a moment, the young man on a spotted horse saw the Marshal’s office as it had been, saw the Town Marshal slouched against the porch post the way Joseph had seen him described in Old Pale Eyes’ Journals.

Then he blinked, he saw the restored front, the sides of the building gone; no one, let alone a man in a black suit with a puffy black necktie, stood anywhere near, and the overhang and porch posts were not their either.

Two men rode in silence for a time.

Partway home, the Sheriff dropped back, rode stirrup to stirrup with his pale eyed son.

“Joseph,” he said, “it is well that we do not forget.”

“Yes, sir,” Joseph replied, knowing there was more than these few words.

“Today would be Old Harry’s deathday.”

“Is that why we came over, sir?”

“It is.”

Joseph considered this, frowning, then looked at his long tall Pa.

“Sir, is that why you dribbled a little from your flask …?”

“On his stone and his grave, yes,” Linn affirmed.  “We shared a drink together, and I declared his name to the wind, so none would doubt the man was remembered.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve done that before.”

Joseph heard something more behind his father’s words.

“I saw him, Joseph.”

“Sir?”

“I looked over at the Marshal’s Office as I rode past with the taste of Kentucky Drain Opener still on my tongue, and I didn’t see the ruin it had become.”

“What did you see, sir?”

Linn smiled, just a little, looked at his son.

“I saw the Marshal’s office the way it was, Joseph. I saw Law and Order Harry Macfarland leaned up against a porch post that’s not there, and I saw him as solid and as real as I see you now.”

“I see, sir.”

“I reckon old Harry just wanted to say howdy, or maybe thanks for not bein’ forgotten.”

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

INTERVIEW WITH THE LADY IN WHITE

1.    The What

 

The Firelands Gazette was a weekly newspaper, started by an Eastern woman, one Duzy Wales, whose name was still on the masthead as “Editor-at-Large” – as the newspaper was established in the mid-1800s, it would be obvious, upon inspection, that this Editor must be long dead, and yet her name still appeared.

This was in accordance with an agreement made after her actual demise, an event that deeply affected a certain pale eyed Sheriff, and a truly remarkable man he felt honored to call friend.

Duzy’s demise haunted that old lawman with the iron grey mustache: his old and dear friend, an Agent who’d worn many hats and done much good, retreated to Sopris Mountain – his home, his haven, a place of refuge from a lifetime of turmoil, loved the violet-eyed Duzy more deeply than he’d realized, and the only living soul he’d allowed help bury this remarkable, this energetic, this lively and fiery and self-willed woman, was the Sheriff.

The two men sat shoulder to shoulder and stared numbly at the grave they’d dug, at the marker they’d fashioned and carved and painted, and as the sun started to slide behind the mountain, they shook hands, and that was the last time any living soul saw a man named Sopris.

Years later, long years later, bones and a skull were found where a stream washed out an old grave.

Forensic examination was made, and the Sheriff exerted a strong influence over the operation: for some reason, this finding was quickly hushed, those involved were persuaded to silence; the Sheriff and his mother consulted certain old records at their disposal, brought official inquiries to bear back East, discreetly asked surviving and distantly related family members to allow DNA swabs to be taken: given a forensic analysis, comparison of DNA from a remaining molar, research, and the finding of two pieces of linotype in the washed-out grave – one bearing the number 3, the other a zero – it was concluded this was the grave of one Duzy Wales.

Her recovered skeleton was almost intact.

It was believed, from nibble marks on some of the bones, that the missing bones, the smallest ones, were either dissolved or eaten: creatures of the wild chew on bones to recover calcium and other necessary nutrients: what was recovered, was given a formal burial, and this in the Keller section of the Firelands cemetery, as what had been identified as the mortal remains of Duzy Wales, was related to the seminal lawman’s green-eyed wife, a woman who’d come West wearing the very latest in womanly fashion, and proudly wearing her maiden name.

Esther Wales.

Esther came west to ride herd on her impulsive, hardheaded newswoman of a niece, found both her niece, and the Sheriff, married him and raised a family: this is well known, and need not be discussed here.

No, we are instead discussing an interview with a woman in white.

History runs deep in Firelands, and the natives, to a man (or a woman) are historians: most are lukewarm, some are ardent, a few are rabidly enthusiastic, but all are rather familiar  with their little town’s past.

The son of the late Bruce Jones stood at a grave with an attractive young woman, a young woman very uncharacteristically dressed as a nurse of generations past: it was almost impossible to find a nurse in a white uniform dress, with a white winged cap, white stockings, and white, thick-soled shoes: this pale eyed woman was so attired, and went so far as to wear the blue cloak with red trim, further adding to her appearance of a genuine anachronism.

Angela Keller laughed a little as her contemporary regarded her uncertainly.

“Go on, ask,” she laughed. “Everyone does.”

“It’s, um, almost Halloween,” Bruce Jones Jr asked hesitantly. “Is that why …?”

Angela shook her head.

“Both my grandmothers were nurses,” Angela explained. “My Grandma Willamina got fired because she rescued a child.”

“They fired her for that?”

Angela lowered her head, regarded Bruce Jr over a nonexistent set of spectacles.

“Rescuing a child didn’t get her fired,” Angela explained.  “Her picture in the paper did that.”

Bruce frowned, shook his head.

“I don’t understand.”

A fashionably dressed woman glided up to Angela, smiled at Bruce: surprised, he inclined his head in greeting: he hadn’t noticed her – she must be a member of the Ladies’ Tea Society, he thought, she’s certainly dressed the part – the well-dressed mother handed Angela a little girl in a frilly frock and white stockings and shining patent-leather slippers,  a laughing little girl with bright-green eyes and shining blond hair in long finger-curls and ribbons, and he watched as Angela opened her cloak, settled the child on her hip and laid the cloak, warm and welcoming, around the child: Angela smiled at Bruce and said, “Surely you’ve seen the picture.”

Bruce frowned a little, confused.  “Angela, I’m …”

“Let me refresh your memory,” Angela said quietly.  “My Grandma tried on a pair of white heels when she got off shift and she was still in her car when she did.

She’d planned to go to a dance that night.

Then she saw a … situation.”

The child’s mother tilted her head, listening, interested.

Angela brought her right hand out from under her cloak, extended it.

A shining, blued-steel revolver gave the characteristic triple-click of a single action coming into battery.

Bruce blinked at this legerdemain: first a woman in a McKenna gown appears where none had been, now a nurse raises a plow handled persuader –

“Grandma Willamina’s picture was taken as she brought a .44 magnum to bear,” Angela explained, easing the hammer down, bringing the revolving-pistol back under her cloak. “The hospital fired her as soon as it made the newspaper. Not for saving a child from having been snatched, but for being identified as one of that hospital’s nurses with a gun.  I don't know which they thought was worse ... that she had a gun, or that she was a deputy marshal as well as a nurse.

"She was given the key to the city, an award by the Mayor, and a boot in the backside by the nursing director.”

“Do you normally …?” Bruce asked, letting the question dangle.

Angela kissed the laughing little girl, handed her back.

“Do I normally what? Go my way armed?”

Angela smiled, bringing her hand out again to display a six-point star in a black-leather wallet.  “My Daddy is Sheriff and I’m a deputy. Of course I go my way armed, and that is off the record, non-negotiable.”

Ruth Keller looked at Angela, gave the newspaperman a pitying look.

“Is this the Bruce Jones I was told about?”

“No, this is his son. He took over after Bruce passed away.”
“I see.”  Ruth glided forward, extended a hand.  “Ruth Keller. Angela is my sister in law.”

“I, um, yes, very pleased to meet you,” Bruce stammered, taking her hand awkwardly.

“Charmed,” Ruth purred: she bounced her daughter a little, bringing a happy giggle from the apple-cheeked child.

“Come along, Esther,” Ruth smiled: she turned, and Angela swung her arm up, and with it, her knee-length cloak: she brought it around Bruce’s shoulders, walked a few steps.

The newspaperman automatically walked with her, at least until he stopped, turned.

Bruce looked back, puzzled.

“Where did she go?” he asked.

Angela laughed, that happy laugh he remembered so well from earliest school days together, and Angela looked at Bruce with genuine affection.

“She jumped on her broom and flew off,” she whispered. “You asked if we were near Halloween.”

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

TO HAUNT, TO KILL

 

Marnie’s fists closed, tightened.

Her eyes were screwed shut, her breathing came more quickly: she felt the hot air duct closing in around her, she smelled dust and she smelled money and she smelled blood.

Harsh voices, the sound of someone being beaten with fists – whimpers, a wet sound, not quite a gurgle –

Her eyes snapped open, wide open, she breathed quickly, silently, her young heart hammering –

She remembered cowering back, back as far as she could go, she remembered the bags stuffed into the vent, she tried to push them further back but they wouldn’t move –

Voices, echoing in her ears as she sat upright in a bed that smelled of sunlight and clean mountain air, voices screaming WHERE’S THE MONEY, WHERE’S THE MONEY, and another voice, COPS! COPS! COPS! –

Marnie shivered, pressed wet eyes into drawn-up knees, her jaw clenched, desperate to be silent, don’t let them know where you are, don’t let them know, don’t let them know! –

Marnie raised her head, stared blindly into her bedroom darkness, remembering how she’d frozen, held her breath as the hot-air register was pulled free of the wall, as something snaked in, something with a light on the end, then voices – other voices – a head shoved into view –

“Honey, I’m the police. You’re safe. Can you come out here for me?”

Marnie shook her head, wiped her wet face on her bedcovers, swung bare legs out, slid to the floor, stood.

Marnie’s breathing was still quick, Marnie’s breathing was still deep, Marnie’s eyes were still wide and staring.

She looked around, padded barefoot for her bedroom door.

The hallway had a night light and the night light showed a little girl with wide, pale eyes, pale, fearful, looking around.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller was asleep, relaxed; his breathing was deep, regular, until something shook the bed a little.

He felt a small child trying to climb in bed with him.

Linn threw back his covers, sat up quickly: he saw a tiny figure shrink from him, as if afraid.

He snatched her up, hands spread wide, hoisted her into bed: he rolled over on his back, pulled the covers over the shivering little girl, let her slip into the gap between himself and his wife.

Marnie shivered a little less, almost daring to hope she would not be slapped, smacked, thrown against the wall for disrupting someone’s sleep: she lay stiff, unmoving, listening.

A mother’s arm rested on her newest daughter, a father’s arm rested across daughter, and mother’s hip: three lay together, warm and safe, and gradually, slowly, fearfully, Marnie began to realize that she just might be safe after all.

 

Marnie looked at her Daddy with big innocent eyes as Linn opened the boot box.

He smiled a little and handed Marnie a pair of fluffy boot socks.

Marnie happily dropped her skirted backside to the floor, pulled off her shiny little-girl slippers and her ruffly anklets and happily thrust her little pink feet into the fluffy boot socks.

Linn pulled the cardboard stiffener out of the ornate, intricately stitched boot top, reached in, teased out the wadded paper, dropped them to the floor: he handed Marnie a brand-new, red, cowboy boot.

“We’re Irish,” he said quietly, “and we put on our left foot first.”

Absolute, utter delight shone in a little girl’s face as she pulled on her left boot:  Linn handed her the right, she drew up her leg, pointed her foot, thrust in, pulled.

Marnie fairly levitated, looking down at her new red cowboy boots.

Linn bent down, squeezed Marnie’s foot, thumbed the top: “Raise your big toe,” he said quietly, then nodded.

“Walk around on the rug, honey,” he said, his voice deep and reassuring, the voice of a Daddy, a voice that had a broad grin in it.  “How do they fit?”

Marnie looked at her Daddy, pale eyes shining.

“Are they too tight, darlin’, are they too loose?”

Marnie blinked, hugged herself, then scampered over to her Daddy, jumped into him, hugged him hard.

“I loves them,” she whispered, and Linn leaned back, stood up on his Prayer Bones, felt the warmth, the life, the happy little girl in his arms.

“There’s a note with it,” he said.

Marnie let go of her Daddy, stood, looked at him with big and innocent eyes.

Linn reached over, picked up the discarded envelope forgotten on the floor.

He opened it.

“It’s from –” he started, then looked at Marnie strutting across the floor: she squatted, then sat beside The Bear Killer, thrust her legs straight out:

“Looky, Bear Killer!” she whispered, and The Bear Killer raised his head, dropped his chin on her lap, closed his eyes and sighed, his tail thumping happily as Marnie rubbed her pink starfish of a little girl’s hand into his curly black fur.

Linn opened the envelope, the card, unfolded the other enclosure, nodded.

“What is it?” Shelly asked as she picked up Marnie’s little-girl shoes and socks.

“The bank,” Linn said quietly. “Marnie remembered bags of money and where they were hidden.”

“Bags … of money?” Shelly echoed, puzzlement drawing her sculpted brows together.

“There’d been a bank robbery and the proceeds just disappeared,” Linn explained. “No word on the street, no recovery, nothing, until Marnie told me where it was.”

“It kept me from hiding better,” Marnie complained, both hands hidden in The Bear Killer’s thick, curly fur.

“The bank sends a check for the reward they offered,” Linn said, “and the red cowboy boots … those are personal, from the bank president.”

“Oh?”

“He asked me what I wanted to do with the reward money,” Marnie said in the careful tones of a Little Girl Who Wanted To Sound like a Big Girl, and Linn chuckled a little, nodded.

“I’ll deposit this for you, darlin’.  The bank president says here that he had a little girl …”

Linn voice trailed off as he realized what the past tense he just read aloud, meant.

He looked at Marnie, he saw how happy she was, wearing her new cowboy boots and sitting with her legs stuck straight out and The Bear Killer snoozing on her thighs.

Some time later, the bank’s president received a card from Colorado.

It held a hand written note from a pale eyed Sheriff, and a photograph of a happy little girl wearing a new pair of red cowboy boots, with a truly huge dog contentedly snoozing with his head on her lap.

 

A pair of red cowboy boots ran across the parking lot, launched off the pavement at running speed, and two stacked-leather boot heels drove into a man’s kidneys.

A pair of red cowboy boots landed on the ground, the pale eyed girl inside the boots balanced on the balls of her feet: she seized the belt the man held, yanked it free of his pain-slacked grip:  she doubled it, brought it back, flailed it down across his shoulder blades, as hard as she could swing it.

He rolled, tried to get up and inherited a bootheel to the side of the head: he rolled over and Marnie raised the belt, swung it as hard as her ranch-toughened arm could swing it, across the back of his thighs.

He tried to get up and she jumped straight up in the air, came down hard on his back, fully intending to bust his ribs and drive the broken bone ends through his kidneys.

She lacked the weight to transect renal tissue, though she did crack three of his ribs, and detonated an absolute sunball of agony: paralyzed, he collapsed.

Marnie proceeded to lay that doubled belt across the man’s back just as hard as she could swing it – parallel cuts, laid side by side, until she got down to his calves, then she walked around to his other side, started again, crisscrossing her blows, not stopping until she curled leather across the back of his neck.

She stopped, breathing hard, lips pulled back from even, white teeth: she threw the belt down beside his face, knelt.

“If you ever,” she whispered in his ear, “if you EVER raise your hand to your wife or your children again, I WILL FIND YOU, AND I WILL KILL YOU, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

Her words were all the more menacing, all the more deadly, for coming from a twelve year old girl’s rage-tightened throat.

She looked at a crying mother, a woman with a belt-weal bright red across her face, and at the child she held, crying with pain and rejection, a child who’d been seized by the back of the neck, bent over a car’s fender and welted from ankles to shoulder blades with the man’s doubled belt.

Marnie burned with hatred, with the hatred of a child beaten in such a way, a child who’d been hurt more terribly than any very young child should ever be hurt:  her scarred soul screamed with rage and screamed for revenge, and Marnie took every bit of hatred and rage and hurt and pain she’d ever been given and put it into every last swing of that heavy, doubled belt.

 

Dr. John Greenlees woke, rolled up in his side, laid a gentle arm across his sleeping wife’s belly.

Marnie was rigid, sweating, her eyes rolling under closed eyelids: Ambassador Marnie Keller was having a nightmare, and as her husband’s arm lay reassuringly over her, she seized his arm, clutched it like a drowning man seizes a float.

Her breathing was fast, her eyes snapped open, focused:  she shivered, looked at her husband.

“A dream,” she whispered.

John nodded, pulled her into him.

Marnie ran her arm over the warm, solid reassurance of her husband.

He felt her take a long, deep breath.

“Did you kill him this time?”

 

Marnie swung the pick handle, hard.

She caught the man on the side of the thigh, aiming for the nerve bundle that would reflexively collapse both his legs, then she swung it again, hard, breaking three fingers, two knuckles and two bones in his hand.

“I warned you,” she said, her voice cold.

He pulled his hands to his belly, the reflex of a man trying to protect an injured hand.

The pick handle spun again, caught his right elbow, detonated in an absolute agonizing sunball of utter undiluted PAIN.

A pair of red cowboy boots stood shoulder width apart as a pick handle was swung with precision and with great strength.

 

The murder was one of the very few listed as unsolved in Sheriff Keller’s county.

The deceased had been beaten, quite obviously with a club of some kind.

He hadn’t been found for two days.

His youngest child managed to call 911, in spite of being beaten more severely than anyone should: two other children escaped, the mother was barely conscious, and bore the marks of the razor strop that was found just outside the back door.

One of the children remembered running, telling someone what happened, then passed out, and woke up being carried – he described it as floating, and not until a year later, in therapy, did he realize what he’d felt was being carried, in someone’s arms, on horseback.

He’d wakened in hospital and no idea how he’d gotten there.

The abusive husband was nowhere to be found.

His vehicle was still present, he had no known associates who would help with something as heinous as beating his family into unconsciousness with a razor strop.

A BOLO was put out for the man, and two days later his body was found, quite by accident.

Whoever killed him took their time, and whoever killed him made him suffer, and whoever killed him, broke both his elbows, both his collarbones, both knees, both shins, broke his hands and fingers with several repeated blows: the only thing not broken was his face and skull, as if the murderer wanted to let the world know who he was, and that he’d been killed, and that he’d been killed by someone who really, really wanted to make him suffer.

Nobody found the murder weapon.

It’s hard to find a bloodied wooden handle when it’s been split and burned as kindling in a line shack’s stove, and it’s hard to find blood spatter on clothes when they’re shredded and blown into an industrial incinerator.

The red cowboy boots that stood silent witness to this methodical murder, remained pristine: any blood spatter was removed when the plastic bags duct taped around the boots was unwound, and fed into the line shack’s sheepherder’s stove with the splintered pick handle.

 

Marnie smiled a little at her husband’s concerned expression.

“Yes, John,” she whispered.  “This time I killed him.”

“That means you probably won’t have those nightmares anymore.”

Marnie closed her eyes and relaxed, and so did her husband, and she dreamed no more that night.

 

In the second Firelands Cemetery, a gravestone: this was the traditional Potter’s Field, this is where criminals and the unwanted were buried, and here is where a man was buried after he beat his family into agonized unconsciousness, and was himself beaten until he died.

It had a name, it had dates of birth and death, and under this, sandblasted into smooth Vermont granite:

WIFE BEATER

CHILD ABUSER

MONSTER

What the stone did not reveal was a last act of vengeance.

Hidden away in the coffin, buried under six feet of dirt, the body lay face down.

His wife wanted him to see where he was going.

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

DEAD COW

Sarah Lynne McKenna was like her cousin Angela.

There was an active mind behind those lovely eyes, and that mind was never, ever still.

Sarah rode up a trail she’d found, one she’d described to Charlie Macneil, a trail that curled high up through a narrow rock-walled passage and came out in a meadow few knew was there: it had good graze, fat beeves, and a line shack.

The shack was in surprisingly good shape.

Sarah knew Charlie knew about the place, she knew her Daddy knew about the place, and she’d be willing to bet that meant Jacob and his brothers knew as well.

There was wood, stacked and ready to hand, there was water nearby; not far from the shack, a truly huge boulder, the size of a house, cloven down the middle and split in two as if by a Leviathan’s ax: Sarah was told by an Elder, long dead now, that the cleft lined up with the sun on the Day of Birth, and she shivered to hear the words: in years to come she would birth her child there, as the first rays of the sun sliced through thin air and bathed her and her child in morning’s light.

That, however, would not be for many years to come.

Today she threw up her leg, slid off the saddle, feeling the delicious sensation of a child, jumping from a height: she landed flat footed, her knees bending until her backside just touched her heels: she rose, looked around, caressed her Snowflake-horse’s neck.

It smelled clean up here.

It was quiet … peaceful, she thought, and her young soul, too accustomed to guarding itself as a matter of habit, relaxed just a little.

The Bear Killer trotted around the line shack, nose to the ground, then in the air, eyes slitted: Sarah read nothing of concern in the massive mountain Mastiff’s posture:  she kissed at him and opened the door to the line shack.

The Bear Killer sniffed at the threshold, padded inside, looked around, looked at Sarah.

If it is possible for a canine to look bored, he managed.

Sarah studied the interior.

It was bigger, not terribly so, than your usual line shack:  smaller meant easier to heat: there was a small, cast iron stove, a coal-bucket of kindling, Lucifer matches in a glass jar, with the lid on – matches had to be kept proof from mice, for mice liked the taste of the sulfurous heads, and more houses than one had burnt down because a marauding mouse bit into a Lucifer, ignited it and its fellows, and caused a conflagration.

Whoever built the shack, though, built it tight, proof against mountain winds.

I could live here, Sarah thought: part of her mind, relaxed, freed of perpetual vigilance, wandered as a maiden’s mind might, and considered this would make a fine wedding bower.

She blinked, shoved maidenly thoughts viciously aside, looking at The Bear Killer, listening, returning herself ruthlessly to a defensive mindset, then to her current project.

What about food? she thought.

There were less than a half-dozen cans on the shelf: a few still had paper labels on them, most did not.

Freezing weather was just past; canned goods would last until the first hard freeze, she knew.

She frowned at the cans on the shelf.

No telling how long they’d been there.

She picked up one, then another, studying them for leaks, signs of having gone bad.

None showed bulging, so they were probably still good, but Sarah had an idea.

That afternoon, she returned to the line shack with a gunny sack tied to her saddle horn, and a scowl on her pretty face.

She’d enlisted her girl-cousin Angela’s help, for Angela was gifted with a brush and a pencil and a fine tipped pen: the paint was barely dry on the lids as Sarah stacked new cans on the shelf – cans which bore Angela’s work on their lids, and Sarah laid two can openers on the shelf with the canned goods.

Angela’s gift with paints allowed her to create on the can’s flat lid, what looked like beans on a plate, and a realistic job she’d made of it: the canned beans, absent their paper label, could still be identified.

Canned beans and tinned beef both showed the streak of humor she’d inherited from her pale-eyed Daddy.

Angela’s artist’s brush painted a cow in silhouette on the tinned beef’s flat, soldered lid.

Sarah and Angela discussed the proper way to indelibly label the cans, knowing mice often chewed off the paper labels, and their giggling discussion resulted in the cans’ lids being marked in such a way as to prevent their being dentally anonymized by marauding rodents.

The beans had a visual and very real-looking representation of a plate of beans: overarching, the word DEAD and beneath, under-arched like the rocker of a rocking chair, the word BEANS.

The tinned beef had the silhouette of a cow.

Overarching above the silhouette, the word DEAD, and beneath, under-arched, the word COW.

They’d decided against removing the paper labels and painting DEAD BEANS and DEAD COW on the sides of the can.

Sarah stacked edible treasure on the line shack’s shelf, knowing she’d be feeding a hungry man she may never meet.

Sarah McKenna rode home that day with a distinct sense of accomplishment.

It was about a year later that Sarah heard someone in the Silver Jewel, a rider she didn’t recognize, comment as he sampled his beer that he’d need to stop over at the Mercantile and replace a couple cans of dead beef and some dead beans while he was at it, and laughing men instantly grafted the amusing terminology into their own personal vocabulary, and for a time it was vogue to tell the cute little hash slinger that someone would like a big plate of dead cow.

Every time Sarah heard it, she smiled quietly, and on the one occasion when she and Angela were together in the Mercantile and heard a stranger buying canned goods, telling the proprietor he needed a few cans of dead beans, they looked at one another and giggled like mischievous girls.

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

PROPERLY HANDLED

Sheriff Linn Keller looked at his old friend, Dr. John Greenlees.

He looked at the distressed young man sitting on a green-painted chair, trying not to grimace as the physician applied powdered yarrow to the bloody groove in his scalp.

A bloody pan with an inch of water held a straight razor, and the strip shaved from the young man’s scalp, just above his right ear, told the Sheriff that Dr. Greenlees shaved hair from either side of the wound so he could have a clean field to work in.

The air smelled of carbolic and Linn saw the brownish stain that told him Dr. John had wiped the length of the wound with what must’ve felt like a rag dipped in liquid fire.

Linn looked around, picked up a chair, brought it around and set it in front of the patient.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice quiet, almost gentle.

Dr. Greenlees picked up a small brush and whisked the spilled coagulant powder from his patient’s shoulder.

The patient was quiet for a long moment: he looked off to the side, trying to order his thoughts, trying to make some sense of what must seem like an absolutely stupid move, and the harsh and uncompromising realization that his utter and unmitigated stupidity came perilously close to getting him killed.

They heard a door slam – someone was in the waiting room, someone with hard heels and a brisk step – and the Sheriff rose, held up a cautioning finger.

Sheriff Linn Keller stepped out of the treatment room, into the waiting room: the floor shone, it was varnished, it was scrupulously clean; chairs were ranked in good order, there was a picture on the wall, and there was a rather angry young woman standing in the middle of the floor.

Sarah Lynne McKenna glared at the Sheriff, opened her mouth.

She abruptly shut her mouth – very abruptly, the Sheriff almost expected to hear her teeth click together – Sarah turned abruptly to her left, marched a few paces, whirled, marched in the opposite direction: her arms were stiff at her sides, her hands fisted, storm clouds gathered on her pretty brow and she turned to the Sheriff, a gloved hand upraised, fingers spread toward the ceiling.

She opened her mouth again, snapped her jaw shut – this time the Sheriff did hear her teeth click together – she stormed across the room, stopped, spun, stormed back, stopped, looked at the Sheriff again and opened her mouth.

She raised a gloved fist, a teaching finger as if lecturing a class, then she swept her arm down, fisting her hand again, turned with an irritated “OOOHHH!”

“Darlin’,” the Sheriff said in a patient and fatherly voice, “I’m not much for mind readin’.”

Sarah stopped, turned her head, glared at him: she turned, paced slowly up to the pale eyed lawman.

She lowered her eyes, chewed on her bottom lip, looked back up, tears shining and piling up on her bottom eyelids.

Linn pulled a kerchief from his sleeve: “Close your eyes,” he whispered, then carefully blotted the bedsheet kerchief against her closed eyelids:  one eye, then the other: he wiped each one, carefully, delicately, with a father’s gentleness.

He unfolded the kerchief, draped it across her nose, pinched very gently, the way he would a little child: “Blow,” he murmured, and Sarah Lynne McKenna, the pretty young daughter of one of the most successful businesswomen in the State, blew with a loud and most unladylike *honk*!

“There now,” the Sheriff almost whispered, wiping her nose very gently, the way he did his own young: he thrust the wadded kerchief in a pocket, spread his hands and took her very carefully by the points of her elbows.

“What happened?”

“I was so scared,” she whispered.

“I can tell.”

“I was afraid of what he would do to me.”

Linn nodded.  “Go on.”

“I was driving back from Pyrite Creek – I didn’t have The Bear Killer with me, it was just me and our dapple Butter-horse and a rider came THUNDERING up behind, shouting at me to WAIT, YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME LIKE THAT! and he seized poor Butter’s cheek-strap and started dragging her to a halt!”

“What did you do?”

“I snapped down the reins and put my foot on them, I snatched up my Winchester rifle and I shot him!”

“Kill him?”

Sarah stared at the pale eyed Sheriff.

He asked the question so innocently, so casually – as if he knew the answer was going to be in the negative – “I tried to,” she whispered, then she hiccupped, she dropped her eyes, shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t kill him.”

“You did burn him.”

“Yes.”

“He ran.”

“Yes.”

“You decided to leave well enough alone and set your rifle back in its rack.”

She nodded, swallowed.

“Sheriff?” she whispered.

Linn tilted his head, looked into the pretty young woman’s face.

“Never mind.”  She turned away, then looked at the door of the treatment room.

“Is he in there?”

“He is.”

“I would speak with him.”

Linn considered, then walked slowly, deliberately, over to the treatment room door:  he knocked, two knuckle-taps, opened the door.

Doctor and patient looked at a pale, visibly upset young woman, and a tall, pale eyed, solemn-faced Sheriff.

The patient rose: he looked half sick, he looked like a man facing a firing squad.

The treatment room was quiet for several long moments, then Dr. Greenlees bent, picked up the washpan of bloodied water, stained rags and a straight razor, and moved them to a counter in the back of the room:  he busied himself washing his hands with his usual, methodical thoroughness.

“I take it,” the Sheriff said dryly, “you two have met.”

Sarah looked at a man who wasn’t as young as she’d thought: he looked half sick, half ashamed: he had a bandage carefully wound around his head, a thick pad over one ear.

Sarah lifted her chin.

“I thought,” he blurted, “you were my wife.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow and maintained a frosty silence.

“She up and left me and – I thought –”

His voice trailed off, then he blinked and tried to bluster.

“A woman can’t just leave a man like that!  After all I done –”

“This man,” Sarah said quietly, and there was frost in her voice, “is my father. He is Sheriff. You tried to lay hands on the daughter of the county Sheriff, and neither he, nor the local Judge, will view that kindly.”

Linn reserved his words: he normally did not allow someone else to speak for him, but instinct told him to let Sarah have her head.

“We can take this before the Judge,” Linn said, his voice deep, strong, confident: “I’m sure His Honor will be happy to rule on this matter.”

The patient blinked, tried to come up with a halfway intelligent retort, and discovered to his profound distress that his mind was utterly, absolutely, blank.

“Or you can get out of my county.”

Linn’s voice had a hard edge to it.

“That’ll be sixbits,” Doc Greenlees said, breaking the spell – his patient blinked, twice, shook his head: he reached into a vest pocket and paid the man.

Sarah and the Sheriff drew themselves to the side: the young man rushed from the room, raising his hat, holding it between his head and the pale eyed pair.

They waited until the outer door slammed shut.

Linn looked at Doc, then at Sarah, as Sarah sank as if exhausted into a red-velvet-upholstered chair.

She gripped the arms of the chair, her knuckles standing out white as she did, she looked across the room, eyes wide, seeing a horror known only to her young soul.

“I was weak,” she whispered: Sarah swallowed, looked at the Sheriff with haunted eyes.

“Inge’s children and I was laughing and we were singing and Inge and I said a Rosary together and I let my guard down.”

Sarah closed her eyes, let her head drop back.

“I was happy,” she said faintly. “I was happy and I drove back and I was not paying attention to my back trail.”

Her head came up and horrors looked out her pale eyes as she said, “When he came up beside me and shouted that I wasn’t leaving him, when he seized Butter’s bridle and started fighting her to a stop, I – all I could – the only –”

Linn went down on one knee, laid a gentle hand on her forearm.

“You’re safe,” he said in that deep, reassuring, confident Daddy-voice. “You are safe, Sarah. Nothing can hurt you here.”

“They hurt me, Daddy,” she squeaked. “I was just a little girl and they hurt me.”  She looked at Linn and tears cascaded down her ghastly white cheeks.  “Why did they hurt me, Daddy? What did I do to deserve that?”

Sarah opened her arms and fell into Linn’s chest:  he seized her in little short of a crushing grip:  he held her and he let her cry, and he looked up at his old and dear friend, Dr. John Greenlees, and both men nodded, for in their time they’d both held people, men and women, young and no longer young, who’d been tried beyond the limits of what anyone should have to endure.

Bonnie Lynne McKenna was on the porch, watching, when Linn drove up in their carriage, Sarah beside him, her head over on his shoulder: Linn’s untethered Appaloosa followed the carriage, came up beside, laid his head over against Sarah.

Linn eased Sarah back upright, dismounted:  he came around, bribed his horse out of the way with some tobacker shavings off the plug he carried for that purpose: he picked up Sarah as if she were a little girl, he carried her up to the porch steps.

Bonnie Lynne McKenna stood with her hands folded in her apron, knowing as a mother always does that something happened, and her face showing her fear of what that might be.

Linn set one boot up on the bottom step, looked at Bonnie.

“Might we have some tea?” he asked softly.

 

Sarah was abed; Linn carried her upstairs, waited until the maid had the bed turned down, then lay Sarah very carefully, very gently in her own bunk: he bent and kissed her forehead, caressed her cheek with the back of a bent forefinger: he withdrew and let the ladies tend her undressing, trading day-clothes for a flannel nightgown.

Linn sat with Bonnie at her kitchen table and spoke quietly of what had occurred.

Bonnie listened, nodding occasionally, her expression as haunted as her daughter’s had been:  Bonnie had survived the horrors that her daughter endured, only worse – age being their only difference – Linn finished his tea and rose, and Bonnie rose with him.

Linn looked very directly into Bonnie’s gorgeous violet eyes.

He was not normally so forward with another man’s wife, but he wished to emphasize what he was about to say.

“Bonnie,” he said quietly, “you are the strongest woman I know. You survived more than anyone could ever expect. Anyone else would have died or gone insane and you did neither.”

Linn turned, looked to the ceiling, as if looking through flooring and joists at a young woman safely abed.

“Your daughter is the strongest young woman I know. That fellow caught her by surprise and it brought back every last memory of everything that was ever done to her.”

Linn looked at Bonnie again.

“She didn’t freeze and she didn’t faint. She addressed the situation the best way anyone could.”

Linn accepted his Stetson from the maid.

“Thank you for the tea.”

Bonnie followed the Sheriff to the front door.

As the maid drew the portal open, Bonnie said “Linn?  How did she … address the situation?”

Linn stopped, turned, settled his Stetson on his head.

“The best way anyone could handle it,” he said.  “With a Winchester rifle.”

[The Aussie Humour Thread]

2 hours ago, Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 said:

 

 ..... that song was quite a hit on Australian radio back in the early '70s  

(shakes head)

(spreads hands)

Ah, what can I tell ye ...

I'm Psychotic!

I mean Psychic! 

[The Aussie Humour Thread]

3 hours ago, Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 said:

 

 

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=ecf8fa4dbad8cad1JmltdHM9MTY5Nzg0NjQwMCZpZ3VpZD0zYmNlMjUxYi1kNWZhLTZmZGUtMjlhMy0zN2ZiZDQ2YjZlYjcmaW5zaWQ9NTE1MQ&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=3bce251b-d5fa-6fde-29a3-37fbd46b6eb7&u=a1L3ZpZGVvcy9zZWFyY2g_cT10aGVyZSt3YXMrYStyZWRiYWNrK29uK3RoZSt0b2lsZXQrc2VhdCZxcHZ0PXRoZXJlK3dhcythK3JlZGJhY2srb24rdGhlK3RvaWxldCtzZWF0JkZPUk09VkRSRQ&ntb=1

 

SCARES ME AND I'M FEARLESS!!!

[SHORT STORIES!]

THE STACK

"Daddy?"

Pale eyes shifted, blinked, focused.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, what was the question?"

It was oh too early in the morning, and the house was silent: the rest of the family was abed, asleep, relaxed, warm and safe under sheets and flannel and quilts.

Father and daughter sat at the kitchen table:  Linn at the head, where he always sat, and Angela at his right, where she wanted to sit.

Linn had a steaming volume of reheated coffee, as did his daughter: Linn's long fingers were wrapped around the warm comfort of his sizable ceramic mug.

Angela's delicate artist's fingers were wrapped around her smaller, thick-walled mug.

"Daddy, if you stare at the front door much longer, you're going to burn a hole in it."

Linn sighed, smiled tiredly, reached over and laid gentle fingertips on the back of his daughter's wrist.

"You sound so much like your mother," he said softly, and Angela knew she was seeing into an unguarded part of her father's heart.

She decided her best reply was to lay her fingertips atop his, widen her eyes innocently and whisper, "I think I get it honest."

Her intent, her effort, succeeded: Linn smiled again, nodded, looked back toward the front door.

"I feel like I've failed you," he almost whispered.

Angela's wide eyes blinked several times.

"Daddy?" she asked, confused.

"Look at what's happened," Linn said quietly, huskily.  "I didn't train you well enough not to go to those bonfire parties, you were grabbed, assaulted -- with weapon specification, we found out -- they're going ... if they ever get out of Federal custody, they'll face a lengthy stay at the State's expense."

"Daddy," Angela said quietly, reasonably, "you had no way of knowing --"

Linn's look was not the cold-eyed glare she expected.

She saw the eyes of a wounded man, of a man in anguish.

"Darlin'," he said quietly, "Marnie lived through worse than hell before she got here. She came here wounded and she came here with calluses on her soul and she killed the man she thought killed your Uncle Will when she was sixteen.  Your age."

Angela nodded, gripped her Daddy's hand with both hers.

"I don't teach you well enough to stay away from those bonfire parties and look what damn neart happened."

"Daddy, you had no way of knowing. I was ready to leave anyway. It was boring. I wasn't drinking and I didn't fit in --"

Linn's look silenced her.

"You were nearly killed at the All-Night."  He bit his bottom lip.  "Angela, you saved lives. You probably saved every living soul in that place and that's a pretty good score. Six people inside when that bunch came through the door. The clerk is still in Intensive Care with a closed head injury. Turns out the one that came into the back room was scouting a place to ..."

He looked away, looked back.

"They were going to do terrible things, Angela, and then kill everyone."

"Leave no witnesses," Angela quoted.

Linn nodded.  "They'd done it before. Same gang. Same M.O. Nobody thought they'd come this far West but they sure as hell did, and fast. Why they picked here, I'll never know."

"Didn't your interrogation ...?"

"They lawyered up, Angela. We found out a little through jailhouse informants, we listen to their cells, we've kept them separate and tried to make deals with the survivors, but their lawyers told them not to talk to anyone."

"Is that working?"

"Not quite. Criminals are stupid and people love to talk."

" 'Guilty people love to talk, why should I stop them?' " Angela quoted.

Linn laughed.  "You've been watching our favorite detective again!"

"Of course, Daddy. He says things I've heard you say over and over again."

Linn nodded, dropped his head:  Angela could see his chin wrinkle and that meant he was chewing on his bottom lip.

"Daddy, you taught me to follow my gut. My gut told me to get out of there. The bonfire.  That's when they grabbed me."

"Mauled you, you mean," Linn rumbled, and Angela saw a deep and abiding anger in her Daddy's pale eyes.

"Yes they did, Daddy. They laid hands on me and I don't allow that."

"And you enforced it."

"No means no, Daddy, and I made it stick!"

Linn looked at his daughter, his little girl, this child he'd known since she was wrinkled and squalling and wrapped up and handed to him for the very first time in the delivery room, this little girl he'd seen grow up, this laughing child that rode like an Apache, sang like an angel, drew like a Michaelangelo and had him wrapped around her little pink pinky before she could walk.

"I saw where you raked that one guy's ankle. Drew blood, he's still scabbed up and looks like it'll scar."

"Good. I wish I'd broken the arch of his foot."

"You caused him enough pain he let go and you got away."

"Not before I broke his jaw," Angela said quietly, and it was Linn's turn to hear a quiet, deep, smoldering anger in her voice.

"You did well testifying, by the way."

"Thank you, Daddy."

"You chose your attire well. You looked modest and you looked pretty."

"Thank you, Daddy."

"I went out that gravel road in the daylight, honey. I looked at ..."

He stopped, took a breath, swallowed.

"I've driven that road and I've driven it on the hot foot.  I pulled Jacob's surveillance out of your Dodge and downloaded it."

He opened his hand and laid a warm, fatherly palm over his daughter's hand, as if he were laying a warm, protective quilt over a sleeping child.

"Darlin', I looked at your speeds on that road."

Angela gave her Daddy a fearful look.

"It is not physically possible for you to have run that fast on that particular road, but you did.  Do you know what that tells me?"

Angela shook her head.

"That tells me first, you were genuinely in fear of your life.

"Second, it tells me you're pretty damned good in a crisis. Normally, under that kind of stress, people scream and curl up in a ball and shut their eyes and wish they were not there, and they get killed.

"You didn't."

Angela blinked rapidly.  "No, Daddy," she said in a quiet voice.

"But I failed you, honey. I wasn't there to protect you and I didn't train you well enough not to go --"

Angela placed a soft hand over her Daddy's mouth.

She tilted her head, blinked: long, curved eyelashes and deep blue eyes and a feminine tilt of the head broke her Daddy's self-accusing thought process.

She reached up with gentle fingertips, tapped his forehead.

"Up here" -- she tapped gently -- "you know that is neither rational, nor is it reasonable."

She lowered her hand, tapped the furry chest showing in the gap of his unbuttoned flannel shirt.

"Down here, though, you're beating up on yourself, and I know why."

Angela turned her hand over, picked his up, held it tight, tight between her own, rested her chin on his bent fingers.

"Daddy, you feel that way because you genuinely do give a good damn about what you do.  About everything you do.  You do nothing unless it's the right thing to do and the right time to do it and I've seen you beat up on yourself when something comes in out of left field, something entirely unforeseen, something absolutely out of your control, and you blame yourself for it."

Angela blinked again, kissed the back of her Daddy's fingers.

"Look at what you've done right, Daddy. 

"You had Paul Barrents teach me pursuit driving.  He wants a Dodge like mine, by the way."  She leaned closer and whispered like a little girl, "He likes that turbo!"

Linn smiled again -- Angela's heart rejoiced to see it, for it was a rare thing for her Daddy to be so relaxed, so open as to smile that genuinely.

"There's somethin' else, darlin'," Linn said, his face going serious:  Angela sat back, sat very straight, folded her hands in her lap like a little girl:  "Yes, Daddy?"

"Angela, you're not the Law.  I am.  I go into situations and I face down large and angry people with a variety of weapons. I'm the one that goes up against goblins.  Not you."

"You weren't there, Daddy," Angela replied quietly, persuasively.  "I was. I saw the girl at the register go down like he'd killed her and I remembered reading about that gang that would come in and --"

She stopped, she took a breath, looked away: Linn saw his daughter's shoulders roll forward, saw her shiver: Angela closed her eyes, threw her head back, took a deep breath, blew it out, looked at her Daddy.

"I was scared, Daddy," she whispered, "but I was mad. I wasn't going to let them hurt my people and kill my people and do things to my people like they'd done before."

"Your people?" Linn asked gently.

Angela nodded.  

"My friends, Daddy. I grew up with them. I went to school with them. I see them everyday.

"We sing in church together."

Angela paused, her lips pressed together, her jaw thrust out.

"How could I look them in the eye if I just sat back and watched? -- they'd be dead!"

Linn nodded, slowly.

"You were nearly shot, Angela."

"I know," she muttered, then looked at her Daddy and smiled tightly, with only half her mouth:

"I know that now."

"Your shotgun will have to stay in evidence until the last appeal."

"My stomacher?"

"That too."

Angela nodded.

"What about Jacob's hatchet?"

Linn considered for a long moment.

"Darlin', there are some things I haven't told you."

He rose.

"Come with me."

Angela pushed her chair back, rose, padded barefoot after her long tall Daddy.

Linn turned on the light in his study.

He turned and picked up a long, shallow, white cardboard box, set it on his desk.

"Open it."

Angela's eyes widened as she looked at the familiar lettering on the box's lid.

She pulled the tabs, opened the lid, and Linn heard her quick intake of breath.

Angela froze, her eyes studying the contents, her quick mind assessing the meaning behind each artifact therein.

"We're not done," Linn said quietly.

He set another box atop the first.

Angela opened it, her head tilted a little to one side, the way a feminine girl will do when she's curious, or when she's interested.

She drew tissue paper aside, saw carved leather: her hands went to her mouth and she looked at her Daddy.

"See if it fits," he said quietly.

Angela snatched up the brand new, hand made, carefully stitched, floral carved and background dyed, leather waist cincher, wrapped it around herself: she drew it snug, twisted a little, looked at her Daddy as he laid a third box atop the second.

Angela saw a brand new knife, twin to the one that still slept in its scabbard, in her original stomacher, in the evidence locker: this one, though, had checkered maple handles, a larger crossguard, a Damascus blade.

Angela's left hand went to the sheath on her stomacher: she turned the knife, smiled at the gold-inlaid Thunder Bird, engraved in the blade, near the hilt.

She slid it into the sheath, reached in, picked up a throwing hatchet.

It was very nearly the twin for the one she'd driven through automobile sheet metal to indisputably mark a getaway vehicle.

Angela gripped it, hefted it, nodded:  she ran her hands behind, slid the handle into into its tubular sheath, the blade into its protective cover, nodded.

"I like this better than the way I had it," she admitted.  "This covers the edge. My old one didn't."

Linn removed the top boxes, exposing the shotgun again.

Angela bent, studied the Ithaca: she ran her fingers over the screw-in chokes, tapped the choke wrench -- "I'll want to get more of these," she said thoughtfully, "these are easily misplaced" -- she stopped, bent, looked closer.

A Thunder Bird was hand-chased into the receiver and inlaid with gold:  left side and right side both, this potent Navajo symbol gleamed against dark blue metal.

"There is something you might want to consider," Linn said quietly.  "Pick up the shotgun."

Angela picked it up, ran her fingers forward, to the sling stud; she shifted her grip, found the matching stud on the toe of the rearstock:  a woven sling lay coiled, waiting.

She picked up one end, let it uncoil, attached it:  fore-end, buttstock:  she adjusted its length, nodded.

"Angela," Linn said, "you should know something."

Linn considered for a long moment.

"The guys in the department passed the hat, and PD kicked in, too.  That" -- he thrust his chin at the Ithaca -- "is from every last deputy under my command. It wasn't my idea. They ... went to your Uncle Will and talked to him and his guys kicked in and glad to, and Will said he'd like to have you as one of his officers."

Linn laid a six point star on the Ithaca's open box.

"I can't protect you, Angela, but I can offer you more training than you've had, and I can offer you a deputy's commission.  Uncle Will will commission you as well so you're double covered, if politics force you out of one department, you've still got the other."

Angela's mouth opened, closed:  she swallowed, blinked, looked at her Daddy.

"But Daddy," she said in a small voice, "I'd thought ... nursing school."

Angela slung her shotgun, muzzle down, from her off shoulder, the way she preferred:  her Daddy came around the desk, took his little girl in a gentle Daddy-grip by her shoulders, then hugged her to him.

"Darlin'," he murmured, and she heard the deep rumble in his chest, "you can be whatever the hell you want to be, and my blessing."  

Linn rubbed Angela's back as she ran her arms around him, hugged.

"I don't care if you want to be a fashion designer or a cartoonist, I don't care if you want to become a police sketch artist or a professional shoelace reweaver, I don't care if you want to be a nurse or a doctor or a bottle picker at the town dump."

Linn kissed Angela on top of the head, the way he used to do when she was a little girl.

Angela looked up at her Daddy.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Is this where I come up with some really silly answer and we both laugh?"

Linn nodded.

Angela frowned.  "I'm hungry. Let's talk about this over breakfast."

"Good enough. Pancakes?"

"Square pancakes," Angela nodded.  "Pour the batter into a greased cookie sheet and let the oven do the work.  No standing in front of a frying pan."  She tilted her head, smiled, rubbed the small of her Daddy's back.

"You've got enough back troubles without buying more just to fix me breakfast.  C'mon, I'll mix the batter."  

Angela laid her shotgun back on its box, took her Daddy's hand, turned, stopped.

Four identical white cardboard boxes were stacked in the inside corner, visible only from the Sheriff's desk.

Angela stopped, looked at the stack, looked at her Daddy.

Linn shrugged.

"When people heard what you'd done and they heard your shotgun was taken into evidence ... "
He grinned.

"Every one of those came with a thank-you note!"

 

 

 

 

[The Aussie Humour Thread]

4 hours ago, Buckshot Bear said:

 

 

 

I am imagining attending a wild party ...

... and staggering for the outhouse, three sheets to the wind ...

... and looking up to see attair spider chewin' on the roof ...

Sure Cure for Constipation!

[SHORT STORIES!]

THE ONE WE WANT

It was a perfect throw.

The hatchet turned over once and drove into the target edge-first.

The target was the driver's door of a stolen car.

The throw was exact and powerful, tempered steel cut through sheet metal, wedged in place, as the driver -- thinking he'd been shot at -- mashed the throttle and squalled away from the All-Night, leaving a cloud of rubber smoke behind him.

The first police unit didn't arrive for another two minutes, and by then, the two surviving robbers were long gone and moving fast.

 

Jacob Keller forged the throwing hatchet's eye from black pipe, even managing a taper: it was just the right size to use broken shovel handles for a hatchet-handle, drop it in, turn it over, tunk it once on a hard surface to seat it, cut to length and sand off any whiskers.

Jacob arc-welded, ground, sanded and shaped a piece of a truck's spring leaf for the blade: the edge was curved like the crescent moon, and his first throw with the hatchet -- at an old porch post he'd salvaged somewhere, and set up for a throwin' post -- turned over once, and stuck.

Jacob was deadly with the throwin' hatchet.

He and his Pa and his younger brother used to take turns, throwing at a leaf -- then half a leaf -- then a shred of a leaf -- they'd throw until they got bored with hitting slivers as thick as two kitchen match sticks stuck together, and Marnie laughed and tried her hand, and showed that she, too, could sling a throwin' hatchet with the best of 'em.

Jacob was long gone now, clear the hell and gone on another planet, as was Marnie: Angela was near to grown, and here of late she'd taken less to driving her pretty purple turbocharged Dodge, and more to riding her Daddy's shining-black Outlaw-horse.

Of course, being a girly girl, Angela dressed for the occasion, to the delight of in-season tourists: a beautiful daughter of the mountains with a complexion a supermodel would sell most of her eternal soul to own, a genuinely sweet nature with a smile to match, wearing fashions of an earlier century and looking absolutely at home in a floral-carved, silver-mounted saddle: Angela Keller harvested the benefit of the conflicts between her mother and her older sister: Shelly, wife of that pale eyed Sheriff, learned how not to interact with a strong-willed daughter, and so did not bear as strongly on Angela to conform to Shelly's idea of behavior.

Consequently, Angela was happy to be very much a girl ... but she was her own girl.

And right now she was mad as hell.

It might be reasoned that Angela preferred horsepower under the saddle, here of late, because even with impressive horsepower under the hood, she'd still nearly been rammed over the rim of a lethal drop-off: had she not had commo with the Sheriff's Office, and had she not had a shotgun in the trunk of her pretty purple Dodge, chances were really good she would not have survived what was recently planned for her.

Another fact the discerning eye might notice was that Angela's saddle had a scabbard, and the scabbard had an Ithaca pump shotgun in it, and Angela wore a wide, carved-leather belt -- almost a fashionable waist-cincher, if it weren't for a businesslike knife in a floral-carved sheath on one side, and Jacob's handmade throwing hatchet at the center of her back.

After testifying in multiple jurisdictions, after enduring the professional browbeating given a witness in an important case, after those found guilty were sentenced and removed to serve their terms, Angela quietly established her network of informants, the way her pale eyed sister had done -- but for a far more selfish reason.

Marnie established her network because she was a sworn law enforcement officer.

Angela established her network because her virtue -- indeed, her very life -- had been placed at risk, and Angela knew the guilty were often vengeful, and Angela knew that her safety could not be guaranteed.

Angela preferred to go her way armed, and a-horseback, she could do just that. 

Angela drew up across the highway from the All-Night.

She sat very straight, very properly in the saddle: she wore a divided skirt, a handmade riding dress after the fashion of an exemplar in their Firelands museum: the original was worn by one Sarah Lynne McKenna, widow of one of the early Irish Brigade's firemen, then to the son of a German nobleman, and killed overseas: the museum was in the great stone house she and Daffyd Llewellyn arranged to have built.

Angela looked at the All-Night and she didn't like what she saw.

She raised a cell phone to her ear.

"Daddy? Something's not right at the All-Night." 

 

The Sheriff had business out in the county.

When his daughter called and said something wasn't right, he was inclined to take her seriously: Angela was not given to flights of fancy, nor was she prone to exaggerate -- plus, somewhere behind those pale eyes, carefully filed and referred to with regularity, was the advice he'd been given as a green-as-spring-grass rookie lawman, by an old veteran of the craft: 

"When in doubt, son, follow your gut."

In this case, Linn's gut followed his foot, and his foot was heavy on the throttle as he headed for the All-Night.

Fast.

 

Angela studied the interior of the All-Night, her lips pressed together.

They'll be gone by the time Daddy arrives.

She saw one of the gang -- black hoodies, surgical masks -- raise something and club the clerk, dropping her like a head-shot beef.

Angela dropped her field glasses, let the neck-strap take care of them:  Outlaw grunted and launched powerfully into the night.

Angela stood up in the stirrups, bent low over Outlaw's neck: her hands pressed flat on either side of Outlaw's neck as the shining-black gelding sliced through the gathering dark.

 

Angela's knife slipped the lock easily.

She opened the back door, slid inside, closed it silently, brought her shotgun up two-handed, eyes busy, listening, smelling.

From the front -- shouts, the stressed, scared, bullying shouts of the robbers.

Angela eased up to the door, knowing it was all that stood between her and whatever hell was going on inside the All-Night.

She reached for the door handle --

It pulled open away from her --

Angela lowered her shotgun just a little, punched the gunmuzzle hard into a masked robber's throat.

She heard an explosion, felt the blast against her side.

Something inside the pretty, blue-eyed Angela Keller decided it had enough.

She pulled the trigger.

 

Inside the All-Night, the sharp crack of a pistol, then the deep BOOOOMMM of a shotgun, froze the lawful and the lawless alike: something from a Victorian fashion plate stepped through the door, racked the slide of a twelve-gauge shotgun, aimed for the belt buckle of the nearest robber --

Bad guy number two turned toward her, pistol in hand.

BOOOMMM

Angela swung, jacked the slide.

The other three ran, colliding with one another in their haste to get out the door.

Angela heard someone screaming and she didn't care, she knew she'd just killed and she didn't care, all she knew was THIS WAS HER TOWN AND THESE WERE HER PEOPLE AND THEY TRIED TO KILL HER AND SHE WASN'T GOING TO LET THEM DO THIS --

A fashionably dressed vision from an earlier century, with a shotgun leading the way, screamed at the absolute top of her infuriated lungs after the reavers that DARED to come to HER COUNTY and try to rob HER FRIENDS!

Part of Angela's mind registered that the robbers' efforts at getting back in the car were almost comical, in their hate and in their panic: one dove through the open passenger-side front window, one tried to dive through the passenger rear window, at least until his head hit window glass, busting it, stopping his momentum.

He fell to the pavement -- 

Angela didn't want to shoot at robbers that were fleeing, she couldn't justify that in court --

Her hand slashed around behind, seized the throwing hatchet: she drew back, let fly --

Angela looked down at the robber scrambling to hands and knees --

She drove the butt of the shotgun down on the back of his black hoodie, drove his face into the pavement, looked at the retreating backside of the robbers' car.

Angela Keller turned the shotgun over, aiming the unblinking black eye of an Ithaca's gunmuzzle at the anonymous soul groaning his way up off the pavement.

He rolled over, looked up at a pretty young woman in an old fashioned gown, holding something with the approximate bore diameter of a mountain howitzer.

The dispatcher was listening to the panicked report from someone inside the All-Night.

In the background, apparently a little distance from the caller, there was a shrill, prolonged, utterly terrified, scream.

 

Chief of Police Will Keller helped process the scene.

He talked quietly with Angela, she walked him through the scene -- from where she'd ground-reined the patient Outlaw-horse, who was still standing, hip-shot, head down, looking for all the world like he was going to fall over at any moment -- she showed him how she used the knife blade to slip the lock on the back door -- she showed him the first body, described how she felt the robber's gun go off but she didn't hear it -- only then did her eyes widen and her hand slapped her midriff.

Her Uncle Will took her by the shoulders, turned her a little to get the light where he wanted it, then he reached down and trailed his fingers along the bullet gouge in her carved leather waist cincher.

His pale eyes were serious as he looked at the robber, looked up at the camera, looked down at the dead man.

Angela didn't remember how she'd gotten over the first man she dropped: she and the Chief of Police stepped awkwardly over the bloody carcass, and Angela quietly, factually described how this one -- she indicated the second carcass, the one in a bigger pool of blood -- turned toward her and brought his gun to bear as he turned.

"I remembered reading about an old Border Patrolman," she said, "who told a young lawman, 'Son, I hope you never have to shoot a man, but if you do, shoot him in the belt buckle. It will paralyze his gun arm and he'll be instantly so sick he'll lose all interest in fighting.'"

Chief Will Keller nodded.

"He certainly did."

They went out the front door -- Angela pointed out each dropped item, Will noted and photographed the guns the first two corpses dropped when they died, two more apparently dropped when the surviving robbers collided in their haste to get out the front door.

Angela and her Uncle Will walked outside:  her pale eyed Daddy was inside, reviewing the surveillance.

"They piled in the car parked here. It'll be on surveillance, I'm sure. Cameras here, here and here" -- she pointed -- "that one should get the plate no problem. Plus there is a throwing hatchet stuck in the driver's door."

"What?"

Angela looked at her Uncle with big and innocent eyes.

"I couldn't shoot them because they weren't shooting at me, but I wanted to mark the car, so I stuck Jacob's hatchet right through the sheet metal. I will want it back, of course."

Sheriff Linn Keller came out, looked from his uncle to his daughter.

"Looks like we got everything on record. They're burning copies now."

"Good." 

"We'll need your shotgun in evidence, darlin'."

"I know, Daddy."

Linn looked down at his daughter's waist, looked harder:  he squatted, gripped her hips as he stared at the bullet gouge in her carved-leather cincture.

He looked up at his daughter.

Angela saw her Daddy's eyes grow cold and hard, saw his jaw muscles bulge.

"Which one ...?"

Angela swallowed, bit her bottom lip.

"The first one I shot, Daddy. He came into the back room where I was and he shot so I did too."

"I saw the shot on video," Linn said quietly -- there was menace in his voice, a deep and implacable hatred -- "but I didn't know ..."
Linn closed his eyes, felt Will's hand on his shoulder.

"She's not hurt," Will said in a fatherly voice.

Linn rose from his hunker, hugged his little girl, and Angela felt her Daddy shivering, just a little.

A deputy came over. "Sheriff?"

Linn looked at the deputy.

"Sir, the State Police were in a high speed pursuit. They pitted him out and said there is a hatchet stuck in the driver's door, and they're asking if that's the one we want."

Sheriff Linn Keller's voice was as cold and as hard as his eyes.

"Tell them that's the one we want."

"Yes, sir."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

THE HELL HE AIN'T!

It was over before the Sheriff had time to duck back into his office and grab a rifle.

Jackson Cooper and a stranger stood toe to toe.

Linn saw the stranger earlier and judged him to be within half a hand of his own height.

The stranger, standing close enough to Jackson Cooper to count the whiskers in the town marshal's beard, looked rather short compared to the tall, broad shouldered, giant of a Town Marshal.

It didn't hurt any that Jackson Cooper had the man's revolver in his grip, raised a little the way a man will when he takes an abused toy from a toddler throwing a tantrum.

Pale eyes swung up the street, then down the street: no one seemed to be backing this stranger's play, so Linn slouched his shoulder over against one of the posts that held up the overhang, shadowing him from the forenoon sun and allowing him a deceptively casual appearance.

Linn watched as Jackson Cooper spoke quietly to the man -- Linn heard the man raise his voice precious few times, and only when dire and absolute need dictated -- the pair turned and crossed the street toward him.

Linn leaned away from the post at their approach, stood relaxed, ready, eyes still busy: it's not that the Sheriff wasn't a trusting man, you understand, but he'd learned the hard way that if a man lets himself get distracted with the obvious, that the opportune will sneak up and bite him on the leg, and the Sheriff had been bit before.

Jackson Cooper handed Linn the revolver -- it was a rust-brown, obviously worn, used-but-not-abused old Remington conversion -- they disappeared inside, Jackson Cooper ducking to get through the doorway.

Linn didn't have to duck to get through the doorway.

Matter of fact he could strut through that open door with his hat on his head and no trouble a'tall.

Jackson Cooper, on the other hand, ducked out of habit, out of reflex: the doors on his own house were tall enough he didn't have to duck, which made his stout and motherly wife look all the shorter, but Linn reckoned a woman is welcome to look short in her own home.

Linn waited a few minutes, then followed the pair inside, closed the door.

Jackson Cooper had the lockup book out and was carefully, painstakingly writing in his slow, methodical hand, recording the prisoner's name, his offense, the date and time he was locked up:  Linn set the time-browned Remington on the corner of the desk, waited.

Jackson Cooper straightened, then he bent again and laid the thick-bodied pen back in the desk, tucked the folded wiping rag in beside it: it was good manners, he'd maintained, to wipe off another man's pen before he set it back, and the Sheriff had that particular pen made specially for his old and dear friend.

Jackson Cooper was a tall man, he was a broad shouldered man, Jackson Cooper could likely pick up a freight wagon and walk off with it if he was so inclined: he was a thick-fingered man, and he'd grinned like a little boy on Christmas Day when the Sheriff gave him a half dozen, custom made, extra thick, pens.

One of the pens lived in the Sheriff's top desk drawer for this very purpose, and Linn waited until Jackson Cooper closed the lid on the ink bottle and set it away: he left the jail book open so the ink could dry.

Linn looked at the man with amusement, waited.

Jackson Cooper frowned, considered:  he turned, parked his broad backside on the edge of Linn's desk, reached up and scratched his thatch.

"Linn," he rumbled, his voice sounding like it started a couple foot below the floor boards, "that feller reckoned you are God's gift to wimmen folks, and he was unhappy that his wife wanted you more'n him."

Linn's eyes widened in honest surprise.

Jackson Cooper raised a hand of surprising breadth.

"Emma has talked about how good a dancer you are and she's told me you are a complete gentleman, and her eyes were just a-shinin' when you found that little boy with his leg all skint up and you cleaned out the dirt from his shin and talked to him and she said you looked like Saint Francis the Sissy."

Jackson Cooper frowned, chewed on something nonexistent, shook his head.

"I've heard of the man and he warn't no sissy."

Linn nodded slowly.

"Hell, Linn, I've heard wimmen sayin' f'r years how lucky Miz Esther is and how much of a catch you'd be was she to fall over dead."  

Jackson Cooper shook his head slowly, ponderous as a sleepy bear.

"When attair fella" -- he thrust his chin toward the hallway that went back through the cells -- "when he allowed as his wife left him 'cause he warn't more like you, why, he allowed you was the cause and he's goin' t' kill you so's his wife'd have no cause to stay away!"

Linn raised his eyebrow but made no reply.

"I asked how he's goin' t' do that an' he pulled attair Remington, so I fetched it out of his grip and allowed as he warn't, so he's goin' t' talk t' the Judge come Courthouse Day."

"You fetched it out of his grip," Linn said slowly, remembering just how fast Jackson Cooper's big hand had been.

"Why Jackson Cooper," Linn drawled, eyes swinging back to the cell block hallway, "you snatched a drawn gun out of a man's hand?"

He tipped a wink to his old friend, who grinned his understanding:  "You are not that fast!" 

From the cell block came a distressed wail:

"THE HELL HE AIN'T!"

[SHORT STORIES!]

TIN ROOF

"Well," Jacob said, "it's shiny!"

"Yep."

Sheriff Linn Keller regarded his new barn roof with approval.

"You're figurin' to roof the house in that too."

"Yep."

Jacob considered for a long moment.

"Won't ketch fahr."

"Nope."

Silence for a time, then;

"Looks funny."

"Yep."

"Reckon that'll rattle some 'ginst we get a hail storm."

"Reckon so."

Father and son considered the shiny new barn roof.

"Reckon we'll start somethin'?"

"Might."

Silence for a time.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Jacob?"

"Sir, I watched them fellers nail that down."

Linn nodded, his pale eyes busy: he was considering the cupola, how corrugated tin roofing had been cut to fit the little cupola roof, and a precise job, too.

"Couldn't help but think, sir ... it looks easy."

Again the slow, thoughtful nod.

Jacob looked at his father with a wry grin.

"I reckon that means them fellers are good at what they do!"

Linn laughed a little, nodded.

"Reckon so."

Father and son stood side by side, two tall men with pale eyes, looking at the barn roof, shining and new, then looked at the house, at men with ladders, at wagons with stacks of corrugated tin, a keg of nails, the other tools necessary to the professional roofer's trade.

"Think you could put up a roof, Jacob?"

"I've nailed down shake shingles more times than I can count."

"You've split a bloody ton of 'em too."

"Yes, sir."  Jacob considered.  "I reckon, sir, when it comes to trimmin' and fittin' I'd need them shears and maybe a few other tools I don't know about."

Linn nodded.  "I reckoned I could put up the roof myself too" -- he looked at his son, a smile tightening the corners of his eyes -- "Esther reminded me I'd be takin' time away from everything else. Then she said that roof is slick and was I to fall, why, if it didn't kill me, I'd play hell fillin' in the dent my fallin' carcass would make!"

Jacob smiled, ever so slightly, nodded.

"That's true, sir."

"Besides ... these fellows are good at what they do, and I'm just as happy to let 'em do it!"

"Yes, sir."

Father and son watched a muscled laborer tilt the nail keg up on its edge, roll it to the wagon's lowered tail gate: he hugged the keg, turned, waddled toward two sawhorses with planks over them for a work table, set it down.

"You want to know the truth, Jacob?" Linn asked quietly.

"What's that, sir?"

Linn looked at his son and winked.

"I'm just naturally lazy."

Jacob's eyes tightened at the corners; his face tightened, a grin appeared: try as he might, he could not hide the entertainment from his expression.

 

A century and some years later, on another Keller house, father, three sons, two daughters and a wife, stood back and watched strong young men laboring to put a new tin roof on their ancient two story house.

Shelly and the girls took a few moments from the kitchen, where they were preparing a meal for the roofers -- this was a local firm, and as often happens in a small community, everybody knows everybody else -- they'd put two leaves in the table and gotten out the extra chairs, the kitchen was smelling really good, but for the moment, the family was watching with open admiration as friends and neighbors they knew, they'd gone to school with, they went to church with, swarmed up ladders and ran power lifts up, then down again, as they worked their magic well off the ground, with all the confidence and ease of those skilled souls who were really, really good at what they did.

"I could have done that myself," Linn said quietly. "Saved money, too."

Angela reached around behind her Daddy and smacked his backside with her open hand: Shelly reached around and swatted her husband's hip pocket as well:  two Keller women glared at the pale eyed patriarch and said with one voice, "Don't you dare!"

Shelly shook her finger in Linn's face and snarled, "Linn Keller, if you fell off that roof, the hospital bills would eat up all the money you'd saved and then where would you be?"

Linn laughed and pretended to bite at his wife's admonishing finger.

"Yeah, Daddy," Angela whined, "and who'd take me to the drugstore for a chocolate hot fudge Sundae?"

Linn sighed, shook his head.

"Risk-benefit analysis," he muttered. "I reckon you're right.  Let them young fellers handle it!"

Linn's utterance of "Them young fellers" was delivered in the peevish, reedy tones of an old man: he rolled his shoulders forward, hung his head forward, extended a quivering hand as if gripping an invisible cane.

Two flat hands smacked his backside again.

Hard.

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

ONE ON THE BELL, ONE ON THE BOILER

 

Reverend John Burnett was as much a student of Firelands history as anyone else in town, mostly thanks to the extensive and untiring words of a certain pale eyed Sheriff.

Reverend John Burnett was re-reading an essay Sheriff Willamina published not long before her death, recounting the night raiders came to town and were trapped and annihilated to the last man.

He read the account, searching for a particular section, and did not find it.

Reverend John went through Seminary in a faith that didn't believe in faith healing.

He'd known preachers from snake handling churches, he'd gone to healings, he'd considered the Word and he'd talked to God about it, and he had serious reservations about anyone who claimed to be able to heal, outside of traditional or folk medicine.

Reverend John and Dr. John had both discussed the matter, on those rare occasions when each could free up time enough to enjoy the other's company: they two held good memories of those meetings when Sheriff Willamina joined them, for her company, her laughter, her natural good nature, all made her a most welcome guest.

It was for this reason Dr. John studied Sheriff Willamina's account of the raid.

Nowhere could he find the anecdotal story of how the pale eyed Sheriff stopped blood with the Word.

Reverend John knew there was a great deal he didn't know, and he was willing to learn things outside his own experience: he remembered Sheriff Willamina describe how Jacob had been hit under the collarbone, how life was running in a red river from his young body, how Jacob had been lowered from the bell tower, how Jacob's father -- that pale eyed Sheriff with the iron grey mustache -- seized his niece's hand, placed a knife in it, then laid the knife crossways of Jacob's wound and told the niece what to say.

She'd said the words, and the bleeding stopped.

Reverend John laid down the account, frowned, leaned back.

He rose, turned, opened a door: there was a short passage between the parsonage and the church, with a door at each end:  he went into their little church, looked around, then turned and strode purposefully down the center aisle.

He stopped in the little foyer just inside the front door, looked up, set his foot on the built in ladder and started to climb.

He released the catch, opened the trap door, pushed it open: sunlight flooded over him, colder air cascaded in around him:  he climbed out, in their steeple, looked up at the great bell that hung there since the church was first built.

Reverend John looked down at the floor, at a little gouge, maybe made with a knife.

He knew a sample of the darkened wood had been taken for forensic testing.

It tested positive for blood; a few years later, another test, another result.

The dark-stained wood had held Jacob Keller's blood for over a century, and the DNA was not degraded: the blood clearly, undeniably, scientifically, belonged to the Keller line -- the current, pale eyed Keller line.

Reverend John straightened, looked at the ceiling.

It had been whitewashed, but it had never been repaired.

Multiple bullet gouges, rough and splintered, whitewashed over, but extant:  he lowered his studying gaze to the bell, to streaks on the bell, streaks the pale eyed Willamina Keller swabbed and tested for free lead, and came up positive.

Dust lay thick on the bell, elsewise Reverend John might have stroked it thoughtfully with meditative fingertips.

He looked around, imagining sandbags piled along two of the knee-high walls.

He looked out over Firelands, looked with the eyes of an infantryman, looked with the eyes of a man who'd been trained to use a rifle, and use it well.

In his imagination he saw alleys, their ends blocked with barbed wire, with wagons, with barrels: he saw raiders, riding down the main street, he saw the Irish Brigade, three mares at full gallop, the boiler up to pressure and the shrill little whistle screaming, a great Irishman standing in the driver's box, swinging a blacksnake whip like the weapon it was, singing an ancient war-chant and calling upon the Blessed Mother, the spirit of Boadicea, assorted saints, while red-shirted Irishmen leaned around the boiler and drove .44 Henry Justice into the onrushing Reavers.

Reverend John imagined a long-legged young man, hit hard, knocked to his back: he opened the hatch, pictured lowering a limp, choking, struggling young man who knew he was dying, into the arms of his father:  as he looked down through the open hatch, feeling warm air ascending to his face, he smelled blood and gunsmoke and he felt a father's grief, for the Reverend John knew what it was to lose a child.

He climbed down the ladder, closed the hatch behind him, latched it: he came on down the ladder, looked at the floor, imagining where Jacob's limp body must have lay.

He turned, pushed open the doors, stepped outside, threw his head back, took a long breath.

He heard a Diesel engine under hard acceleration, a second: curious, he came down the steps, saw the squad coming up the street, lit up and moving fast.

The rescue was right behind:  the rescue truck stopped, fast, the window rolling down: a man in turnout gear and a fiercely-curled black handlebar mustache yelled "GET IN DAMN YE, WE'VE A BAD ONE!"

Reverend John launched into a sprint.

 

Angela Keller lowered her binoculars, let them hang from her neck strap: she thrust a boot into the stirrup, thrust hard against the ground, mounted easily: a mountain born, mountain bred, shining-black gelding leaned forward into a run, sailing easily down the little grade, flowing across the sandy streambed, assaulted the slope on the other side, then forged into a flat-out gallop.

Angela Keller stood in the stirrups, leaned out over the horse's neck, one hand laid across the mane, supporting herself while her other hand went into a vest pocket.

She hit speaker, spoke quickly, urgently:  she rode up to where men were coming down ladders, gathering around one who'd fallen:  Outlaw skidded a little, rearing as Angela kicked free of the stirrups, hit the ground flat-footed.

"DON'T!" Angela shouted as the foreman seized the impaling length of rebar and ripped it out of the injured man's thigh.

Angela thrust at the foreman, shoved him with both hands, shoved him back -- hard -- dropped and mashed the heel of her hand into the wounded man's thigh, trying to stanch the fountain of arterial blood that followed pulling the rebar cork out of the arterial bottle.

"Gimme a knife," Angela grated, looked up, glared at the foreman, then screamed, "GIVE ME A KNIFE!"

An anonymous set of hands snapped a lockback open, slapped the handle into her hand.

Angela laid it across the wound, closed her eyes, her lips moving silently.

 

"FIRELANDS SQUAD ONE AND RESCUE ONE ON SCENE."

"Roger that, advise your needs."

Medics and firemen hit the ground at a dead run.

Shelly ran unimpeded up to the wounded man, to the young woman bent over, her arm stiff, her weight driving through the heel of her left hand as her right hand held down on the wound itself.

"Let me see," Shelly said quietly.

Reverend John ran up, went to one knee, sized up the situation: he would know where and when he'd be needed, and how, but just now wasn't that moment.

He heard Angela's steady, monotonous chant.

"And I saw Clarence Robert Bourne lying in Clarence Robert Bourne's blood in the ditch and I said until Clarence Robert Bourne, Live: yea, I said unto Clarence Robert Bourne, Live."

Angela sagged, looked up at her Mama.

"Femoral penetration, he fell on rebar, it was yanked out before I got here. Arterial and direct pressure."

"Let's see."

Angela lifted her right hand, picked up the knife she'd laid crossways of the wound.

"Can you hold pressure point a little longer?"

Angela nodded.

Shelly looked at her Daddy, opened her mouth, found he'd anticipated her wants: she started two large bore IVs, ran normal saline wide open: she was securing the IV sites as her father laid fingers on the victim's temples, getting a quick and dirty blood pressure.

"Barely there," he muttered.

Trauma shears chattered through work pants and undershorts, a pressure bandage was placed and cinched: Angela straightened, rolled back on her heels, lost her balance, fell.

Reverend John saw the open knife fall from her hand.

Callused hands helped Angela up:  she bent, picked up the knife:  "I need to return this," she said: a gloved hand extended, she placed the handle in the proffered palm.

Willing hands seized the heavy cot, almost ran it to the back of the squad: Shelly reached in, hit the switch, the power lift whined, extended, lowered: they locked the cot into place, hydraulics hoisted it up and rolled it into the rig, where it was rolled into its double-fork receiver, secured.

Angela turned to the Parson and said quietly, "You'd better go with them."

Reverend John Burnett climbed aboard the squad.

 

Not many hours later, Reverend John Burnett was studying Willamina's research.

She did not include the account of how Old Pale Eyes used the Word to stop his son's blood loss, the same way his green-eyed bride Esther stopped his blood loss, when he'd been shot and then dragged into the little log fortress that was the Sheriff's office, those many years before.

Reverend John put down Willamina's essay, went up into his bell-tower: he descended, he went out the doors and down the street and into the firehouse, he went over to their restored Ahrens steam fire engine.

He studied the shining, polished boiler.

Red-shirted firemen regarded their Chaplain curiously as he looked down the sides of the boiler, then stood and studied its gleaming shoulder: they saw him stop, saw him stare at a long dent in the shining metal, a dent that had been preserved when the engine was restored.

Reverend John stepped back from their beautifully, immaculately restored Steam Masheen, his expression serious.

"Chaplain? Everything all right?" a voice called, and the Chaplain, their Reverend John Burnett, blinked, looked at the several curious faces.

He considered what he'd just seen, how a girl-child stopped a man's life from running out in a red river, and he decided that perhaps he should look into the subject a little more thoroughly before he dismissed such things out of hand.

"Fellas," he said finally, "I'm realizing there's just an awful lot I don't know."

 

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

TEST RUN

Angela Keller wore a frilly little dress and matching hat, she wore dark stockings and shining, patent-leather slippers: her complexion was gorgeous, her hair hung in shining curls, and she sat in the tuck-and-roll upholstered carriage seat as if she were royalty itself.

Beside her, cousin Sarah: she, too, was dressed for the day, in a shining McKenna gown and a fashionable little hat: her hemline was of a more mature length, not as girlish-short as Angela (despite her damned Papa's wishes), but not as floor-length as a mature woman.

Sarah and her mother altered this particular gown according to the needs of the moment.

You see, the day before, an outlaw on the run saw Sarah and Angela, in this very carriage, driving toward him on this very path: he had ridden a horse to death, he was afoot, he was convinced every man's hand was against him (which was true), and when he looked at two pretty girls in a carriage, he did not see young femininity: he saw pursuers, and he saw a vehicle in which to escape.

He raised a stolen Sharps rifle, fired.

Sarah thrust the reins into Angela's surprised hands, stood, raised her .32-20: her thumb wiped the hammer back and Sarah began firing.

Their attacker's first round sent a .45-caliber freight train rumbling perilously close to the two girls, passing between them at Angela's ear's height (Sarah would discover a frayed spot later, where the bullet barely grazed her shining blue sleeve), possibly owing to the attacker's inexperience.

Part of Sarah's mind remembered something her pale eyed Sheriff said -- a casual observation in a forgotten conversation -- that if a man were faced suddenly with two opponents, his first shot often went between them, as most men, untried in war, would fire the shot at both instead of at one.

However it was, Angela clapped her fisted hands to her ears: Sarah stood, fired, fired again, methodically, steadily, accurately: the distance was about a hundred yards, or so she judged, and she aimed for the spot between the man's collar bones.

Things got kind of confusing after this.

Her horse bolted, she lost her footing, Angela was reining back, shouting at their horse to whoa, whoa, and it didn't whoa: Sarah lost her balance, dropped the rifle into the back seat, fell.

There'd been the sudden, bright burst of agony as a steelshod wheel rolled over her arm and she felt more than heard something break.

Sarah rolled over on her back, teeth clenched, forbidding the tears that escaped the corners of her eyes: she heard hooves, heard the carriage departing at a good velocity, she heard Angela shouting at the mare, she heard a man's voice:  a shadow, a hand on her shoulder -- both shoulders -- a voice --

"Sarah?" that pale eyed Sheriff with the iron grey mustache said.

She remembered how tight his voice sounded.

She felt a hand -- spread, broad, gentle, on her belly --

She grimaced, peeled red lips back from even white teeth, opened her eyes --

Sarah blinked, shook her head.

Angela looked over at her.

"Sarah?" she asked quietly.

Sarah realized she'd just driven over the exact point where she'd fallen, where the wheel ran over her arm and broke one of the bones: her plastered arm was in a sling that matched her gown, in a sleeve slit and gusseted to accommodate the thick, clumsy plaster cast Dr. Greenlees applied after he'd plied her with something that tasted awful and made her dizzy: when she woke, her left arm was encased in a heavy, clumsy, plaster cast.

"Ho, no, ho, girl," Sarah called to the mare, drawing gently on her reins, and the mare stopped, stood, tail slashing.

"It was there, wasn't it?" Sarah asked.

Angela looked at her with those deep Kentucky-blue eyes and said "Yes it was" in a small voice.

Sarah spun the reins around the peg, then ran her arm around Angela's shoulders.

"Are you all right, Angela?" she asked quietly.

"No."

Blue eyes looked miserably into pale eyes, then dropped, and Angela leaned her head into her cousin's bodice, shivering a little.

"I was scared, Sawwah," she whispered, and Sarah's ear twitched a little to hear the little-girl pronunciation of her name -- something Angela only did under great stress.

"Daddy won't always be there," Angela whispered, then pulled back, looked up at Sarah.

"I need a rifle, Sarah. I need to be able to shoot too."

Sarah blinked, considered, smiled.

"I'll give you mine."

Angela's eyes widened with delight, her face shone with excitement.  

"Really?"

Sarah nodded firmly.  "Really," she said. "And ammunition enough to last you."

"Good," Angela nodded emphatically, setting her curls a-bounce, then she looked troubled.

"But Sarah ... what'll you use?"

Sarah smiled -- that sudden, bright, captivating smile, that contagious smile that, more times than one, had taken an individual with a sour disposition and dashed their bad mood to the ground -- and said, "Your brother is helping me get something bigger."

Angela was a growing girl, but young enough to wear the short skirts and the impulsiveness of the young: she clapped her hands with delight, bouncing a little on the upholstered seat, the way a delighted little girl-child will.

Sarah unwound the reins, clucked to the mare, drew the carriage around in a big circle, and they drove back the way they'd come.

Angela felt Sarah take a deep breath, heard her blow it out.

"Sarah?"

Sarah smiled at her girl-cousin.  

"Yes, sweets?"

"Sarah ... how come why did it we drive where we did yesterday?"

Sarah bit her bottom lip, thought for a moment.

"I needed to test us both," she said, "and the best way was by facing that memory."

"Oh."

Sarah thrust the reins into her sling, gripped them as best she could, ran her good arm around Angela's shoulders again.

"We both passed the test."

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

WHISTLE

Sheriff Jacob Keller stretched, twisted, twisted the other way: he managed to bring an impressive, and somewhat frightening, number of pops and crunchy-crackly noises from his spine.

Ruth Keller winced to hear it: she lowered her book and asked tentatively, "My dear, are you entirely well?"

Jacob Keller laughed, danced the few steps between himself and his bride: he took her hand, spun around her while she sat in her ornately-carved rocking chair: he came around in front of her, took the hand he held with a delicate grip, brought it to his lips, kissed her knuckles.

"Darlin'," he said, "I have come home to you. How could I not be well indeed?"

"There is a message for you," Ruth said, and Jacob heard a worry hiding behind her gentle words.

He went to one knee, laid her hand over his loose fist, laid his other hand atop hers:  "From?"

"Your sister."

"Marnie?"

"No."

"Angela."

Ruth saw concern in Jacob's eyes, she saw resolve firm his jaw and wipe any expression from his face: he rose, strode quickly to his desk, sat, keyed in a series of commands.

Ruth saw her husband's face brighten as the screen lit up: he leaned forward, frowning a little, very nearly glaring at the screen, clearly impatient to receive whatever the message was.

"Jacob," a girl's voice said -- a quavering, uncertain voice -- "shots fired, I had to kill a truck radiator today."

Ruth saw Jacob's eyebrow raise.

"I'll have to testify in Federal court now."

Jacob touched a key, froze the playback, keyed in his sister's private commo.

Angela's image shrank to the top right hand corner, Marnie's filled the screen: she was in a flannel shirt and vest, and she was not smiling.

"It's Angela," Jacob said. "Shots fired, she killed a truck radiator and now she's testifying in Federal court."

"I know."

Jacob stared, his mouth dropping open a little.

"You know?"

"I'll be right over. We need to talk."

 

Marnie had no idea exactly why Jacob's wife Ruth had such a love of something so common, but when Marnie showed up with green Jell-O and a pressure can of whipped cream, Ruth lit up like a hundred watt bulb.

Ruth happily busied herself with setting out dessert-bowls and spoons, and then carefully ladling this wiggling green confection into each.

Jacob stepped very close to his pale eyed sister.

"What do you mean, you knew?" he said quietly.

"Sisters talk and I'm the first one she called," Marnie shrugged.

"I'll give you that. Now what about her Federal testimony?"

"Kidnap is a Federal crime. One implicated the others in a plot to transport across state lines for immoral purposes, then across international lines. She's lucky she doesn't have to appear in The Hague to testify before Interpol."

"Hell of a way to see Europe," Jacob muttered.

"Don't worry."  Marnie smiled, just a little.  "I told Daddy we could land ten divisions at any time, uniformed, armed, provisioned and ready for a fight."

"And?"

"He said a division is 25 to 30,000 men, and he didn't have that many spare beds in the house."

Jacob hesitated, trying to keep a straight face, gave up: he chuckled, shook his head.

"Trust the Grand Old Man," he sighed. "Okay, so you knew before I did. What's the plan?"

"It's done."

"Done?"

"Nobody can get to a single member of the family. Angela wants a shotgun mount in her car. I don't think even Daddy could get away with letting her do that.  Oh, and she's graduated now."

Jacob stared.  "She's not halfway through her sophomore year."

"Remember me, Jacob?  I'm your sister Marnie, remember? John and I graduated early, just like you did, and now she has too."

Jacob nodded. "She always was bright."

"Bright, hell, you're the one who built trench radios out of a golf pencil and a razor blade!"

Jacob smiled, nodded, then grew solemn.

"She'd planned college. How do we keep her safe?"

"By sending her offworld."

"What?"

Marnie smiled, laid her hand on Jacob's shoulder, looked over a set of nonexistent spectacles at him.

"By the time she's graduated," Marnie smiled, "Earth will know about the Confederacy. Imagine how many Fortune 500 companies would throw down fur lined cloaks for Angela to tread upon, just to get an offworld graduate to interview!"
"What about the rest of the family?"

"We're working on that."

"Jacob?" Ruth called.

Jacob and Marnie turned.

"If you are so inclined ..." Ruth gestured to bowls of wiggling green dessert with a thick, whipped-cream cap, each bowl on a saucer, a spoon with each.

Jacob leaned back, laid his hand dramatically over his breast, threw the other arm wide, and in a horribly nasal voice declared:

"Does ya knows me or what!"

 

 

 

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

STUPID RULES

Angela Keller was breathing heavily, her hands were fisted, her jaw was thrust forward: unlike her pale eyed siblings, Angela's eyes were a striking, deep, clear blue, the absolute shade of a cloudless September sky:  she leaned forward a little, the unexpected lines in her face harsh in the artificial glare of crime scene floodlights and the red-and-blue strobing of roof bar LEDs.

Angela's anger was unfiltered and undisguised as she shouted at her Daddy:  "WHY WEREN'T YOU THERE!"

Sheriff Linn Keller looked at his daughter, looked at the open trunk of her pretty purple Dodge, looked at the ruined chrome grille of a pickup truck, at oil and antifreeze running in a thin, steady stream to the shining, headlight-reflecting puddle on the ground.

"Darlin'," Linn said, his voice gentle "why don't you tell me what happened?"

Angela's eyes blazed and her voice shivered, but her back remained ramrod straight, her hands remained fisted as she turned her head, thrust her chin at her car.

"Look at it," she snapped.  "Look at what they did to my car!  MY CAR!"

Angela's breathing was labored, quick: she closed her eyes, took a long breath, blew it out.

"It's all on surveillance," she said finally.  "You should look at the video first."

 

The dispatcher pulled the phone from his ear in surprise.

A female voice, loud! -- it took him a moment to register what she'd said, then he reached for the desk mic, seized its grey-painted neck, hauled it closer, curved his fingers, ready to drive down on the grey-plastic transmit bar.

"THIS IS ANGELA KELLER. I AM INBOUND ON FAY IVER RIDGE ROAD. I AM BEING PURSUED BY A FOUR-BY AND THEY'VE RAMMED ME TWICE! THEY'RE TRYING TO EITHER STOP ME OR KILL ME! I NEED BACKUP AND I NEED IT NOW!"

A blue eyed young woman, old enough to drive but not old enough to drink, drove the go pedal to the firewall.

"Come on, Purple," she muttered. "Don't fail me now!"

 

A Sheriff's cruiser skidded to a shivering, dust-dragging stop, turned a little sideways as it did:  backup lights came on, it pulled rapidly up the Y, close to the ditch, stopped.

The second cruiser stopped just before the Y, waited.

 

"Angela, I need you to take Gary's cutoff, are you familiar?"

"YES!" Angela shouted as her pretty purple Dodge drifted around a corner, as the off side of the road grew perilously close to her passenger side tires.

She'd gained a little distance, but not enough, not enough!

"I have two units at Gary's cutoff, one is pulled up into the Y. Go up the Y and we'll have 'em!"

"Roger that!" Angela shouted:  she nailed the brakes, came off to correct her skid, hit the whoa-clydes again, hauled the wheel around and mashed the throttle.

Dirt, gravel and profanity spun into the air: Angela's hands were white-knuckled as she blasted past the Sheriff's cruiser, she kept the go pedal mashed, hard, then slowed, fast, her lips peeling back.

Angela Keller spun the wheel hard left, shot through a gap in the fence, a gap she knew was there because she used to run a tractor over it in the summer:  she shot into the field, cranked the wheel, stomped the throttle: the car fishtailed around to face the gap in the fence and Angela punched the shutoff button, hard.

She had no memory of getting to the trunk of her car.

She remembered seeing the back bumper, dented, no longer level.

She remembered hitting the trunk release button three times before it klunked.

It opened about a half inch, stopped.

Angela ran her fingertips into the gap, snarled, pulled hard: something scraped, then released and the wrinkled, crash-damaged trunk lid swung open, fast.

Angela dove into the trunk, seized the gun case: she unzipped the case, fast, viciously, drove her hand into the flannel lining, seized the wrist of a Model 12 Winchester, pulled it free, danced backward.

Her fingers had eyes.

She pulled the first round free of the sidesaddle, her middle finger curled behind the trigger guard and hit the release: the action slammed open, she dumped in the round, slammed it shut, waited.

She saw headlights following her dust.

Angela Keller, the pretty, blue-eyed daughter of that pale eyed Sheriff, skipped over behind her car, feeding rounds from the receiver mounted sidesaddle, into the action: she crouched in her car's shadow as the four-by roared up on it.

Angela stood, aimed between the headlights, fired, fired again, fired a third time.

She ran to the side, shotgun to her shoulder:  "SHOW ME YOUR HANDS, DAMN YOU, OR I'LL BLOW YOU TO HELL!  SHOW ME YOUR HANDS, NOW!!!"

A Sheriff's cruiser skidded on the gravel road, turned into the gap in the fence, came bouncing up behind the truck, angled to illuminate the driver's side: a second cruiser came in, angled to the passenger side, swung its headlights over the truck at a long angle.

A pretty young woman and two Sheriff's deputies waited as the doors opened, slowly, and three men emerged, their hands up, palms forward, fingers spread.

Angela dropped back into a rigid port arms as the driver stepped out and the deputy advanced, handcuffs at the ready.

 

"Firelands, Firelands Four, shots fired, no injuries, advise Unit One we need him here five minutes ago."

"He's on his way."

 

Linn looked at his daughter.

"Angela," he said, "are you hurt?"

Angela's arms were folded, she was glaring at the truck, steaming in the cool night air: her eyes were hard and unforgiving as she looked at the two cruisers where she knew the truck's separated occupants were being held in irons.

"No, Daddy," Angela said, her voice a little rough, hard-edged.

"No, Daddy, I'm not hurt" -- she turned quickly, looked at the Sheriff.

"I should not have shouted at you. I'm sorry."

Linn lowered his head a little.

"Darlin'," he said quietly, "I've known grown men to scream like a steam whistle at anyone they can see. You were gettin' rid of some pretty serious stress."

"Stress," Angela snapped.  "Stress?  Daddy, they tried to KILL ME!"

"Sheriff?" a voice called.

Linn raised a finger.

"Wait here, all right?"

Angela nodded.

Linn turned, walked over to one of the cruisers:  Angela heard a door open, heard voices.

She walked over to the truck, stood where the driver's side headlight blasted against her midriff, scattering light over the ruin that used to be a radiator.

Nice shooting, she thought.

Nice shooting under stress.

Angela turned, went over to her Dodge, looked at its dented, damaged back end, at the bumper hanging drunkenly, at the lights broken out.

It's a wonder the trunk even opened, she thought.

"Angela?"

Angela stood, staring at her back bumper in the harsh but indirect light.

At her Daddy's voice, she turned, arms still folded, looked at him.

"Angela, we're playing one against the other over there. It sounds like you refused their advances and they got mad when you kicked their butts."

"Krav Maga lessons came in handy," she said faintly.

"They're claiming they didn't know it was you."

"They knew it was me," she said emotionlessly, her expression haunted.  "That's why they wanted me, Daddy. They wanted to kill me or hurt me because I'm your daughter."

Angela Keller looked at her pale eyed Daddy.

"I stopped them, Daddy. I knew where I could make a stand and I stopped them. I didn't kill them. I could have, Daddy. When I blew out their radiator I aimed for the driver's window and told them to show me their hands."

"It's dark, Angela. You wouldn't be able to see their hands."

"They could see my shotgun when I punched their radiator and they saw me run around to the side. There was light enough. I made sure of that. I wanted them to see I had a twelve-gauge on them!"

Linn was quiet for several long moments.

"Darlin'," he said, "we've got 'em dead to rights. We'll take a look at your surveillance. You had it turned on?"

"As soon as I started the car, Daddy. I was scared and I knew they might come after me. That's what cowards do."

Linn nodded, ran his arm around Angela's shoulders.

"Come on, darlin'.  Let's get you home."

"Daddy?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Daddy, I had my shotgun in the trunk, unloaded."

Linn's hand tightened ever so slightly on her shoulder to show he was listening.

"Daddy, if I had a shotgun mount like your cruisers -- I'm surprised that trunk even opened. He rammed me twice when he caught up to me."

Linn took a long breath.  

"There are rules against having a loaded shotgun in the passenger compartment, darlin'."

Angela was quiet for several long moments, then she muttered: 

"Stupid rules!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

PROPERLY HANDLED

Sheriff Linn Keller looked at his old friend, Dr. John Greenlees.

He looked at the distressed young man sitting on a green-painted chair, trying not to grimace as the physician applied powdered yarrow to the bloody groove in his scalp.

A bloody pan with an inch of water held a straight razor, and the strip shaved from the young man’s scalp, just above his right ear, told the Sheriff that Dr. Greenlees shaved hair from either side of the wound so he could have a clean field to work in.

The air smelled of carbolic and Linn saw the brownish stain that told him Dr. John had wiped the length of the wound with what must’ve felt like a rag dipped in liquid fire.

Linn looked around, picked up a chair, brought it around and set it in front of the patient.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice quiet, almost gentle.

Dr. Greenlees picked up a small brush and whisked the spilled coagulant powder from his patient’s shoulder.

The patient was quiet for a long moment: he looked off to the side, trying to order his thoughts, trying to make some sense of what must seem like an absolutely stupid move, and the harsh and uncompromising realization that his utter and unmitigated stupidity came perilously close to getting him killed.

They heard a door slam – someone was in the waiting room, someone with hard heels and a brisk step – and the Sheriff rose, held up a cautioning finger.

Sheriff Linn Keller stepped out of the treatment room, into the waiting room: the floor shone, it was varnished, it was scrupulously clean; chairs were ranked in good order, there was a picture on the wall, and there was a rather angry young woman standing in the middle of the floor.

Sarah Lynne McKenna glared at the Sheriff, opened her mouth.

She abruptly shut her mouth – very abruptly, the Sheriff almost expected to hear her teeth click together – Sarah turned abruptly to her left, marched a few paces, whirled, marched in the opposite direction: her arms were stiff at her sides, her hands fisted, storm clouds gathered on her pretty brow and she turned to the Sheriff, a gloved hand upraised, fingers spread toward the ceiling.

She opened her mouth again, snapped her jaw shut – this time the Sheriff did hear her teeth click together – she stormed across the room, stopped, spun, stormed back, stopped, looked at the Sheriff again and opened her mouth.

She raised a gloved fist, a teaching finger as if lecturing a class, then she swept her arm down, fisting her hand again, turned with an irritated “OOOHHH!”

“Darlin’,” the Sheriff said in a patient and fatherly voice, “I’m not much for mind readin’.”

Sarah stopped, turned her head, glared at him: she turned, paced slowly up to the pale eyed lawman.

She lowered her eyes, chewed on her bottom lip, looked back up, tears shining and piling up on her bottom eyelids.

Linn pulled a kerchief from his sleeve: “Close your eyes,” he whispered, then carefully blotted the bedsheet kerchief against her closed eyelids:  one eye, then the other: he wiped each one, carefully, delicately, with a father’s gentleness.

He unfolded the kerchief, draped it across her nose, pinched very gently, the way he would a little child: “Blow,” he murmured, and Sarah Lynne McKenna, the pretty young daughter of one of the most successful businesswomen in the State, blew with a loud and most unladylike honk!

“There now,” the Sheriff almost whispered, wiping her nose very gently, the way he did his own young: he thrust the wadded kerchief in a pocket, spread his hands and took her very carefully by the points of her elbows.

“What happened?”

“I was so scared,” she whispered.

“I can tell.”

“I was afraid of what he would do to me.”

Linn nodded.  “Go on.”

“I was driving back from Pyrite Creek – I didn’t have The Bear Killer with me, it was just me and our dapple Butter-horse and a rider came THUNDERING up behind, shouting at me to WAIT, YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME LIKE THAT! and he seized poor Butter’s cheek-strap and started dragging her to a halt!”

“What did you do?”

“I snapped down the reins and put my foot on them, I snatched up my Winchester rifle and I shot him!”

“Kill him?”

Sarah stared at the pale eyed Sheriff.

He asked the question so innocently, so casually – as if he knew the answer was going to be in the negative – “I tried to,” she whispered, then she hiccupped, she dropped her eyes, shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t kill him.”

“You did burn him.”

“Yes.”

“He ran.”

“Yes.”

“You decided to leave well enough alone and set your rifle back in its rack.”

She nodded, swallowed.

“Sheriff?” she whispered.

Linn tilted his head, looked into the pretty young woman’s face.

“Never mind.”  She turned away, then looked at the door of the treatment room.

“Is he in there?”

“He is.”

“I would speak with him.”

Linn considered, then walked slowly, deliberately, over to the treatment room door:  he knocked, two knuckle-taps, opened the door.

Doctor and patient looked at a pale, visibly upset young woman, and a tall, pale eyed, solemn-faced Sheriff.

The patient rose: he looked half sick, he looked like a man facing a firing squad.

The treatment room was quiet for several long moments, then Dr. Greenlees bent, picked up the washpan of bloodied water, stained rags and a straight razor, and moved them to a counter in the back of the room:  he busied himself washing his hands with his usual, methodical thoroughness.

“I take it,” the Sheriff said dryly, “you two have met.”

Sarah looked at a man who wasn’t as young as she’d thought: he looked half sick, half ashamed: he had a bandage carefully wound around his head, a thick pad over one ear.

Sarah lifted her chin.

“I thought,” he blurted, “you were my wife.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow and maintained a frosty silence.

“She up and left me and – I thought –”

His voice trailed off, then he blinked and tried to bluster.

“A woman can’t just leave a man like that!  After all I done –”

“This man,” Sarah said quietly, and there was frost in her voice, “is my father. He is Sheriff. You tried to lay hands on the daughter of the county Sheriff, and neither he, nor the local Judge, will view that kindly.”

Linn reserved his words: he normally did not allow someone else to speak for him, but instinct told him to let Sarah have her head.

“We can take this before the Judge,” Linn said, his voice deep, strong, confident: “I’m sure His Honor will be happy to rule on this matter.”

The patient blinked, tried to come up with a halfway intelligent retort, and

Discovered to his profound distress that his mind was utterly, absolutely, blank.

“Or you can get out of my county.”

Linn’s voice had a hard edge to it.

“That’ll be sixbits,” Doc Greenlees said, breaking the spell – his patient blinked, twice, shook his head: he reached into a vest pocket and paid the man.

Sarah and the Sheriff drew themselves to the side: the young man rushed from the room, raising his hat, holding it between his head and the pale eyed pair.

They waited until the outer door slammed shut.

Linn looked at Doc, then at Sarah, as Sarah sank as if exhausted into a red-velvet-upholstered chair.

She gripped the arms of the chair, her knuckles standing out white as she did, she looked across the room, eyes wide, seeing a horror known only to her young soul.

“I was weak,” she whispered: Sarah swallowed, looked at the Sheriff with haunted eyes.

“Inge’s children and I was laughing and we were singing and Inge and I said a Rosary together and I let my guard down.”

Sarah closed her eyes, let her head drop back.

“I was happy,” she said faintly. “I was happy and I drove back and I was not paying attention to my back trail.”

Her head came up and horrors looked out her pale eyes as she said, “When he came up beside me and shouted that I wasn’t leaving him, when he seized Butter’s bridle and started fighting her to a stop, I – all I could – the only –”

Linn went down on one knee, laid a gentle hand on her forearm.

“You’re safe,” he said in that deep, reassuring, confident Daddy-voice. “You are safe, Sarah. Nothing can hurt you here.”

“They hurt me, Daddy,” she squeaked. “I was just a little girl and they hurt me.”  She looked at Linn and tears cascaded down her ghastly white cheeks.  “Why did they hurt me, Daddy? What did I do to deserve that?”

Sarah opened her arms and fell into Linn’s chest:  he seized her in little short of a crushing grip:  he held her and he let her cry, and he looked up at his old and dear friend, Dr. John Greenlees, and both men nodded, for in their time they’d both held people, men and women, young and no longer young, who’d been tried beyond the limits of what anyone should have to endure.

Bonnie Lynne McKenna was on the porch, watching, when Linn drove up in their carriage, Sarah beside him, her head over on his shoulder: Linn’s untethered Appaloosa followed the carriage, came up beside, laid his head over against Sarah.

Linn eased Sarah back upright, dismounted:  he came around, bribed his horse out of the way with some tobacker shavings off the plug he carried for that purpose: he picked up Sarah as if she were a little girl, he carried her up to the porch steps.

Bonnie Lynne McKenna stood with her hands folded in her apron, knowing as a mother always does that something happened, and her face showing her fear of what that might be.

Linn set one boot up on the bottom step, looked at Bonnie.

“Might we have some tea?” he asked softly.

 

Sarah was abed; Linn carried her upstairs, waited until the maid had the bed turned down, then lay Sarah very carefully, very gently in her own bunk: he bent and kissed her forehead, caressed her cheek with the back of a bent forefinger: he withdrew and let the ladies tend her undressing, trading day-clothes for a flannel nightgown.

Linn sat with Bonnie at her kitchen table and spoke quietly of what had occurred.

Bonnie listened, nodding occasionally, her expression as haunted as her daughter’s had been:  Bonnie had survived the horrors that her daughter endured, only worse – age being their only difference – Linn finished his tea and rose, and Bonnie rose with him.

Linn looked very directly into Bonnie’s gorgeous violet eyes.

He was not normally so forward with another man’s wife, but he wished to emphasize what he was about to say.

“Bonnie,” he said quietly, “you are the strongest woman I know. You survived more than anyone could ever expect. Anyone else would have died or gone insane and you did neither.”

Linn turned, looked to the ceiling, as if looking through flooring and joists at a young woman safely abed.

“Your daughter is the strongest young woman I know. That fellow caught her by surprise and it brought back every last memory of everything that was ever done to her.”

Linn looked at Bonnie again.

“She didn’t freeze and she didn’t faint. She addressed the situation the best way anyone could.”

Linn accepted his Stetson from the maid.

“Thank you for the tea.”

Bonnie followed the Sheriff to the front door.

As the maid drew the portal open, Bonnie said “Linn?  How did she … address the situation?”

Linn stopped, turned, settled his Stetson on his head.

“The best way anyone could handle it,” he said.  “With a Winchester rifle.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SHORT STORIES!]

I, Linn Keller, did carry this very rifle on the aforementioned February morning, in my fourteenth year, when the Lord took pity on my youthful stupidity and sent enough sun to melt that tracking snow!

[SHORT STORIES!]

INTERVENTION

There were several pale eyed men who bore the same name.

It was customary, and still is, to give an infant the name of an honored ancestor.

The name "Linn" was given to the firstborn son, a custom originating on the other side of the Big Salt Water: it carried through to a new colony, to new settlements, to those families pushing west.

Ohio, for many years, was The West.

It was a treasure, a gem: to the north, a navigable lake, timber beyond imagining, deep and fertile soils: to its south, La Belle Riviere, a river for navigation and for fishing and for harvesting the water fowl that arrived in clouds and swam in rafts.

Its mineral treasures remained hidden, at least for a while, and in the hill country, with its thin soil and a profound lack of large, flat areas for cultivation, land sold for less: it was here that the family Keller settled, and it was here that a boy-child was born.

This was the seminal ancestor on this new continent, the first of his line on this side of the salty, stormy Atlantic, to bear the name Linn.

Like most babies, he grew; like all who grew, he worked: he was his father's shadow, learning by doing, and doing nearly everything his father did: he learned to make as much as possible, and became a fair hand at the forge, an expert shot -- he dare not miss, powder was precious and shot was hard to come by: he learned the value of that one precise shot, because one shot is all he had.

He was often afield, a creature of der Vald, as much a part of the land as the trees that grew from it: he knew the plants, the herbs, he learned to cuss squirrels in their own profane language, he practiced sneaking, and his father watched, silent and amazed, as Linn eased up behind a grazing doe, leaned into a tree and damn neart disappeared -- with one arm out, his palm down, fingers curled and stiff.

Linn's father watched, surprised, smiling, as the doe shifted, backed, felt the stiff fingers just grazing her backside:  she humped herself up a little bit, scratched herself on what she apparently thought was a convenient branch.

Linn was supposed to be out looking to put meat in the pot.

They would not go hungry for his not having killed the doe, and the father could not bring himself to upbraid his son for passing up the opportunity.

Before the old man died, he remembered the moment, and honestly regretted not praising his son for his stealth, for that same stealth kept them supplied with meat on the table and hides for makin'.

 

In his own advancing years, Linn would speak of more than one watchful father, or Father: more times than one he would observe that it was a genuine wonder he survived childhood, let alone everything that followed.

One mild February there was a thin snow on, enough to track if he was lucky, and Linn was afield with the flint rifle his Pa made him.

He'd grown more than the Grand Old Man allowed for, and the rifle was too short for him, but Linn honestly did not care: he had a good rifle that his Pa made.

Linn knew the work that went into a rifle.

His Pa built him that rifle -- him! -- and for that reason, he prized it, he treasured it, he carried it, he used it.

He was easing through the woods, making as much noise as a passing cloud, when he stopped and studied on a track, then another.

His middle finger curled around the set trigger and fetched it back until he felt the near-silent *click* as it engaged; his thumb laid around the head of the striker, brought it back until the tumbler dropped past the fly, into the full cock notch.

He'd found a ba'r track.

Now a ba'r would give them a right smart of meat and a b'ar would give them b'ar oil, rendered out and kept in crocks, 'twould be used for cookin' and to grease rifle barls and his Mama would have a nice warm black rug to stand up on when she come out of bed of a morning.

Linn's pale eyes studied the tracks, the direction they took, he looked ahead, listening, smelling.

He followed.

Silent, alert, watchful, he looked ahead, looking for crows overhead, squirrels in the trees, he looked for a moving shadow, he listened for an incautious tread in the woodland leaf-litter.

Nothing.

He studied ahead, reasoning that if he were a b'ar out this early, he'd be hungry, where would he be headed, and his eyes went there.

He followed the tracks down the shadowed side of the ridge -- there, on the far side of the creekbank, something heavy had passed, twisted the leaves a little, exposed some streamside mud, almost frozen where the sun had beat on it since sunup --

He looked ahead, disappointed: here the sun caressed the side of the ridge, melting the thin snow.

Of a sudden it occured to the tall, lean, pale eyed young man that the rifle he carried was just pretty damned light to go after a b'ar.

He'd seen a b'ar tear into a pack of dogs, he'd helped skin out b'ar, and he well knew they were big and they were hard to kill, and he looked at his flint rifle and realized he didn't carry a heavy enough ball to drop a b'ar.

Was he to slip that little squirrel rifle sized ball down the ear hole, or if he got a good square shot right through the eye, it might be enough -- but he was loaded for squirrel, and powder was dear, so he was loaded light.

Linn stopped and leaned against a young hickory and considered.

Pale eyes were busy on the south facing slope as he studied the forest floor, trying to puzzle out any leaf disturbance that would betray the bruin's passing.

The February sun was thin, but enough to warm his back, and the leaves around him, and he considered that the Almighty just might be giving him a sign.

He'd heard folk talk about signs and portents, omens and prophecy: this might not be an omen, but it just might be a sign that God Almighty was sparing him from his stupidity in going after something as big and mean as a b'ar, with a rifle that small.

It was not the first time in his life that the hand of Providence was extended in intervention.

It was, however, the first time he recognized it for what it was.