The Sheriff's Grandson

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

40. DREAMSTATE

The narcotic loosened Willamina's fences, allowed her mind to wander further than she usually allowed it.

Perhaps that's why she heard a voice in her sleep.

She stood on hot sands and looked around at stone pillars, the massive Standing Stones she'd seen shattered, in a chamber she remembered was devastated, collapsed ... or did she collapse it? ... somewhere, she couldn't quite remember where, or how, she seemed to remember channeling the energies of a dark star, blasting the chamber and the mountain overhead and launching like a missile through the shattered rock ...

"Oh, it happened," the voice said, and Willamina turned.

Her twin stood there, or someone who looked enough like her to be her twin.

Willamina wore her tailored blue suit dress and heels; this twin wore a matching-blue dress, but a McKenna gown that would be perfectly at home in the year of our Lord 1889.

Willamina's hair was attractively feminine, and Marine Corps short: this archaic twin's hair, like her dress, was appropriate for an earlier age.

They were otherwise ... identical.

Willamina raised careful fingertips to her breastbone.

"It's fixed," Sarah said, "just like my arm is fixed."

She held up her right arm, drew back the sleeve to display deep and fearful scarring. "It still aches when the weather changes."

"I suppose I will too."

"You already do, remember?"

Willamina grimaced. "Tell me about it."

Sarah laughed and walked toward Willamina, circled around her, exaggerating the swing of her hips, taking her skirt in both hands and swinging it as well, clockwise, counterclockwise.

"So what brings me to your dark kingdom?" Willamina asked.

Sarah stopped at Willamina's right and dropped her skirts, looked sharply at the pale-eyed woman.

"He walked with you, you know," she whispered.

"Who walked with me where?" Willamina demanded, turning to face Sarah, folding her arms and frowning a little.

"I did," a voice said -- a powerful, masculine voice, familiar and fatherly.

Willamina turned to her left and faced the Old Sheriff.

"You wanted to know about my youth."

"I did."

"You wanted to go home too."

"I did."

"You didn't go to the house you grew up in."

"No."

"I don't blame you." His face was carefully expressionless, all but his eyes: she saw them tightening a little and she knew she had his approval.

"You hung a wreath for your father," he nodded.

"Did he approve?"

"I didn't ask him."

"Isn't he here too?"

Linn blinked slowly, shook his head. "It doesn't work like that."

"I see." Willamina considered for a moment, then stepped close to the man, laid her palm on his chest, feeling his warmth, his solidity.

He brought his arms around her and she couldn't help herself.

She leaned into him -- not the way a woman molds herself to a lover, but the way a trusting daughter will press herself into her Daddy, and he held her snugly, the way a strong man will hold his little girl, the way a strong man will say without words that he will take care of his little girl, that he will protect her.

"I need this," Willamina whispered.

"You have a husband."

She looked up, a lost expression on her face. "No. No, I don't ... I have a husband, yes, but ... I miss ... my Daddy."

He nodded, hugged her a little tighter, laid his cheek down on top of her head.

"I know, liebchkin. I know."

"Does it ever go away?" she whispered.

"No," he said, and she heard his voice rumbling deep in his chest, with her ear pressed against his wishbone. "No, it never does. You'll always miss him, just like I missed my folks, and I missed my Esther."

Great-great-grandfather and great-great-granddaughter held one another for several long moments, each one comforting and giving comfort, and finally, reluctantly, they loosed their embrace and drew back a little.

"You are a fine wife and a wonderful mother," the Old Sheriff said softly, a deep sadness in his eyes. "If the words of a greying old granddad mean aught in this day and age ... I am proud of you, Willamina."

Willamina the warrior, Willamina the Marine, Willamina the Sheriff, Willamina the woman who bounded her feelings with strict limits and controlled her feelings with a rigid sternness, bit her bottom lip as a tear streaked wetly down her left cheek.

"You kept me alive in Afghanistan," she whispered, "when you used Esther's double gun ..."

He nodded. "I remember."

"Why didn't you ... why weren't you at the Sheriff's office when ..."

Her fingertips rose to her breastbone and she looked at him with the expression of a lost little girl.

Linn laughed. "Didn't you figure it out?" His teeth were white, even, his eyes merry: "Jacob ... I still think of my Jacob when I say the name, but your Jacob ... didn't you ever wonder how his Apple-horse showed up outside his schoolroom window, saddled and ready to go? Didn't he tell you about the voice, the hand on his shoulder as he sat at his lessons?"

"N-no," Willamina admitted.

The Old Sheriff looked over her head, amusement in his eyes, and Willamina turned to look at Sarah, who was tapping a cheek with a gloved forefinger.

"Well don't look at me," she said, "all I did was tell him where to go, and he already knew how to get in your back door, and since I just happened to see that other revolver ..."

She shrugged and managed to look at once innocent as the babe unborn, and guilty as a crooked gambler.

"It was his turn," Linn said. "The men of our line protect our women, and he started in fine shape. You should be proud of him. Damn few grown men could make that shot under stress."

"One shot, between the eyes, twenty feet," Sarah said. "You taught him well."

"What of his future?" Willamina asked. "What can I expect?"

Sarah reached into a pocket, withdrew a small book, handed it to the pale-eyed Sheriff.

"This is the book of his life," she said. "It's all right here."

Alarmed, Willamina took the book, flipped it open, paged quickly through the first several pages.

"It's blank," she said. "I don't understand."

"His book has not yet been written," Linn said from behind her. "He alone can write his future. He will be helped along the way, we all are, but he will be the product of his own decisions, just like the rest of us." He laid strong, gentle hands on Willamina's shoulders.

"It will be helpful to him to know where he came from. It has helped you to learn of me. You grew up not three miles from where I did, and you never knew it until you read what I wrote."

He turned her, looked earnestly into her vulnerable eyes.

"You learned about me because I spoke to you with ink and with paper, and you built on that foundation. Write, my dear granddaughter, and let our future know from whence we came." His whisper was urgent, compelling. "You found photographs, you found artifacts, you were given my grandson's copper plated Colts that I gave him. Make the past real again, Willamina, make it real to him and to his sons, and yes he will have sons." He smiled secretively. "You already saw your descendant, years hence, on another world, Sheriff on a red planet fighting desperately for her life. She will be of his line.

"Give him your love of reading, and give him your time, just as you have been doing.

"Give him those early mornings, when the world is quiet and the air is cool, give him rides over the mountain and hide with him in a bush screen and watch the elk come down out of a high meadow. Put your arm around his shoulders and feel his excitement as he watches a bull elk bugle and he feels that whistle run cold fingers down his spine. See through his eyes as the cow elk and the calves following walk and bob their heads and steam out their breath and he hears their ankles click as they walk.

"Teach him what you've learned, how to invest and how to save, for you have all my acumen and all my thrift ..." -- he chuckled -- "I have to admit that buying my gold interests back was a gamble, but it's paid off well, hasn't it?"

Willamina nodded, blinking in surprise.

Of all the things she thought she would ever discuss with a ghost, it surely wasn't finances and investments.

"Let him inherit, but remember this, my child."

He curled his forefinger gently under her chin, raised her head a little, pale eyes gazing deep and intense into pale eyes.

"Remember this and do not ever forget it, for this is worth more than all the gold mines in the world."

He stopped, swallowed, looked again into his descendant's soul.

"My father spent time with me and he invested his experience and his knowledge in me.

"I may have spent my life with no coin at all in my pocket but those memories -- those memories he gave me, by spending time with me -- were-- are -- worth more than any earthly fortune."

He paused, his eyes smiling again.

"Those memories, Willamina, make me the richest man to ever fill a pair of boots."

He hugged her again, quickly, tightly.

"Make him rich, Willamina," he whispered fiercely. "Give him a saddleful of horse at sunrise and laughter at sunset and give him your time and your wisdom, for that is the only wealth worth passing on."

"I will," she whispered back. "I will!"

 

Richard cautiously laid his palm in the middle of his wife's chest.

He'd done this in the past, when she had a nightmare, and her hand would sear out from under the bedcovers and slap hard on his, pressing his palm into her, and she would gasp like a swimmer coming up after too deep a dive, and the nightmare would run off her like water off an oilskin.

Her hand tore out from under the bedclothes, as always, and she slapped his hand hard into her, and then she opened her eyes, and smiled, and turned her head to look at him.

He saw her smile, thanks to the little night light he'd turned on earlier.

"I had a wonderful dream," she whispered.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

41. THINK

Willamina lay on her back.

The look on her face would have stopped a mean bull.

It didn't stop her son.

Jacob watched his Mama bench press an empty bar.

He was used to seeing her load it with weights, lock them down and labor, red-faced and growling deep in her throat.

She wasn't red-faced, pushing the empty bar, she was pale and sweat was popped out on her forehead and she was biting her bottom lip.

Jacob stood at her head and reached out and grabbed the bar.

"That's enough, Mama," he said, his young voice as serious as his youthful face.

Surprised, Willamina released the bar, blinked as Jacob set it carefully in the Y-hooks, then came around the bench and held out his hands.

"Here. I'll help you up."

"Hold on," Willamina said, then threw a leg up and over and kind of rolled off the bench, bent over: her boot sole hit the floor harder than she intended and she gripped her elbows with her opposite hands.

"I know it aches, Mama," Jacob said quietly, setting down beside her on the bench. "My shoulder still aches when I use it too much but I'm gettin' better."

Willamina nodded, shivering a little.

Even an empty bar hurt like homemade hell, but she'd managed to bench press it ten times ... ten times more than she'd been able the day before.

"Are you done, Mama?" Jacob asked.

Willamina nodded. "Yes, Jacob. All done."

"Good. I don't like it when you hurt."

Willamina gripped her son's hand gently. "Bless you for that," she whispered.

"Supper's ready," Richard called, and Willamina smiled at her son.

"Talk about timing," she smiled; she stood, and though she tried to hurt her pain, Jacob saw she was still hurting, and her pain reflected in his pale eyes.

 

Homework was minimal and quickly disposed of, and Jacob considered what he might like to do with the rest of the evening.

His Mama insisted he have a nightly bath (he couldn't see the sense in it, his Very Great Granddad got along fine with a Saturday night bath, or so he'd been told), but his Mama was not to be disobeyed: bath time was at a particular hour, and that limited his travel radius, even if he did mount up on Apple-horse and cover more ground than he could on foot.

"C'mon, Bear Killer," he called, and the black-furred mountain Mastiff went from sound asleep to bright-eyed and tik-tik-tikking industriously down the hall behind the lad.

Jacob went around the house, eyes busy, like his Mama: he didn't know why she was forever looking, but he'd gotten into the habit as well, and after he circumnavigated the structure and satisfied himself that there were no threats, monsters, UFOs or other forms of unwanted intruders in sight, he parked his backside on a convenient rock and rubbed The Bear Killer's curly black furred head.

The pup was growing at an incredible rate; already he was fast, strong and protective, and Jacob smiled a little as the black head draped itself across his thigh, warm where it covered, and looked up at him with button-bright and utterly adoring eyes.

Jacob looked out toward the horizon, breathed deep of the evening air.

Think, he told himself.

Everyone keeps asking me what I want to be when I grow up.

I'm just a kid.

Why do I have to decide already?

He turned this over in his mind, eyes busy, contemplating long purple shadows as the mountains threw their nighttime cloaks across the landscape.

Can't I just be me?

"Of course you can be you," a familiar voice said, and a man sized hand reached down and rubbed The Bear Killer's ears, bringing a groan of pleasure from the luxuriating animal.

"Grampa!" Jacob exclaimed in a breathy whisper, then he looked around as if afraid he would be found out.

"Nobody's around," the Old Sheriff said reassuringly. "How's the shoulder?"

Jacob worked his arm. "It's fine, sir," he said quietly, "as long as I don't work it too hard."

The Old Sheriff nodded, his eyes smiling a little.

"Your Mama," he said, "is just as impatient as I used to be."

Jacob looked at his Great-Great-Great Granddad with as neutral expression as he could manage.

"I was hurt too," the lean old man with the iron-grey mustache murmured. "And I was just as impatient to heal up so I could get back to livin'."

"Yes, sir," Jacob said uncertainly.

"Now what's this about not knowing what you want to be?"

"I just want to be me," Jacob complained, throwing a weed stem impatiently to the ground and frowning petulantly. "Everyone thinks I know what I wanna do and I don't wanna decide yet!"

"Then don't," the old man said reasonably. "Tell 'em you just want to be you, and you want to take your time deciding something that important."

Jacob blinked, looked at his honored ancestor.

"Good idea," he nodded. "Thanks, Grampa!"

Linn smiled a little, stood: he looked out across the back meadow, his eyes climbing the mountains beyond.

"Jacob," he said, "when I was your age, there was no decidin' what I wanted to be."

"There wasn't?" Jacob screwed his nose up in a puzzled frown, the way a little boy will.

"Hmp," Linn nodded. "There was work, from kin-see to cain't-see. Split wood, haul water, hunt, grow crops, fix the roof, chink the cabin logs ag'in -- the chinkin' was forever either dryin' out and fallin' out in chunks, or bees would bore through it, or it'd wash out with a long rain. I hated rain, the roof always leaked. Keep varmits out of the chickens and out of the garden, work all the time. A man grows up and he has a family and does the same thing he's always done, just to stay alive." He looked thoughtfully at his great-great-grandson. "It's not until a country gets itself civilized and a man has more than two minutes to rub together that you can give thought to much of anythin'. You've got schoolin', Jacob, and you'll have a darn sight more than I ever did, and that's good."

"Mama said I was college material."

"I reckon you are," the old man said, and there was the brief flash of white, even teeth: "your Aunt Sarah surely was. I wish she could have gone back East and got a proper university education ... but if she had, she'd likely have taken over the entire West and everything this side of the Mr. and Mrs. Sippi would have seceded, and the East would have petitioned to join us afterward!"

"Really?" Jacob asked, big-eyed.

"No," Linn chuckled, "but if she'd had that kind of education she likely could have."

"What did she do, Grampa?"

"She married a rich Count and ended up the hell and gone over in Europe."

"Mama was in Europe. She said it was all choked up with people and it was dirty."

"Parts of it are, Jacob. Parts of it are beautiful."

He put strong, gentle hands on the boy's shoulders.

"Jacob, you will know what you are supposed to do, when it comes walkin' up to you and you look at it and it feels right."

"Is that what happened to you?"

"No." The Old Sheriff's eyes smiled a little. "No, Jacob, I was hurt pretty bad by that damned war, so I went to bein' a lawman. I could have been a preacher or I reckon I could have gone to one of them-there college things and got my doctorin' ticket but I figured I could do more good with a tin star than anythin' else."

Jacob's eyes swung to the right, his head following a few degrees, and the Old Sheriff knew the lad was thinking of his Mama, the Sheriff.

"She made the same choice," the Old Sheriff said, "for the same reason. She's doing good in the world, Jacob. It's a powerful thing to know that you're doing something good."

Jacob blinked several times, then said in a thoughtful voice, "I'll remember that, Grampa."

The Old Sheriff gripped Jacob's hand, pressed it between both his own. "You are a man to be proud of, Jacob," he said, then stood: he turned, and from someplace not of this earth, an absolutely huge, absolutely black mountain Mastiff turned and followed the lean lawman, then looked back at Jacob, wagged its great, plumed tail, then turned again and followed the Old Sheriff ... and they both faded, and disappeared.

Jacob looked down at The Bear Killer, his hands slowly caressing the tongue-lolling pup.

"I think," he said, "I will remember that."

"Jacob?" his Mama's voice called.

"Coming, Mama," he called back, standing and running toward the back door, the furry black Bear Killer bouncing along beside him.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

42. WHAT ABOUT THE KID?

Jacob's eyes were busy as they came into the parking lot.

His Mama's eyes were as well; she parked near a particular light pole, one with four cameras mounted on it, cameras that looked to the north, to the south, the east and to the west: she knew her butterscotch Jeep was clearly seen on the near camera, and she knew two others had it on overlap.

Not that she was superstitious, but she considered it bad luck not to have some record of anyone trying to trifle with her car.

She drew the "modesty panel" over the AR in its overhead rack, up against the ceiling, a light, opaque panel that rolled out like a window shade: the rifle itself was secured to a steel rack that attached to the Jeep's roll bar, but she considered "out of sight, out of mind" a perfectly viable approach to preventing the Baron von Ripemoff from targeting her buggy.

Jacob knew his Mama was considering a new swim suit, he'd heard her discussing it with his Pa: she wanted something one-piece, something that would cover her healing bodice -- "once the scab is gone and it's safe to get in the water, I want to cover up the scarring," she said frankly, and Jacob considered this, but said nothing: as he and his Mama climbed out of the short wheelbase Wrangler, he relegated any further speculation to the back of his mind, thinking instead on availability of .22 ammunition.

His Mama sponsored the school's rifle team and he knew she'd placed an order, and though he hadn't said as much, he hoped most sincerely she'd budgeted some .22s for their use as well.

They got just short of the main doors when one, then three, then a half dozen people ran out, eyes wide, absolutely silent -- in the movies people scream and run and shout warnings, but when they run in silence, the wise observer knows something is very wrong -- Jacob stopped, dropped directly behind his Mama, and Willamina stopped, one hand down and fingers flared -- Stop, the gesture said -- then they saw smoke inside, fast and active and rolling toward the doors, hard against the ceiling.

"Jacob," Willamina said, her voice tight, "get back to the car" -- she ran a hand in her purse, thrust the keys at her son -- "get in, lock the doors and nobody gets in if they're not me!"

"Yes, Mama," Jacob said crisply: he waited for no further instructions he turned and sprinted for their Jeep, keys tight in his fisted grip.

Willamina wove through the fleeing humanity, ran inside.

The fire alarm strobes were snapping alarm from walls and pillars, a buzzer was annoying the atmosphere: Willamina's eyes swung to the thick column coming up from a particular location and she fought for its origin.

"PLEASE PROCEED TO THE NEAREST EXIT AND EXIT THE STORE IN AN ORDERLY FASHION," a voice announced from the overhead speakers, then a click and the background hum disappeared -- he's leaving too, Willamina thought -- a store associate in his striped vest stood, frozen, beside the column holding a folded, white-linen, never-used firehose.

Willamina grabbed the red-plastic nozzle, yanked savagely, tearing the fan-folded firehose from its chromed wire rack: she seized the frozen kid by the shirt front, jerked his face close to hers.

He's hardly shaving, she thought, then she remembered the Marines she'd served with, and how some of them looked just as young, and her eyes and her heart both went stony-cold and rock-hard.

"WHEN I YELL," she shouted, nose-to-nose and boring her pale eyes into his "TURN ON THAT VALVE!"

He had the look of a half-frozen turkey that just climbed out of a cyclone.

Willamina dropped the nozzle, seized his hands, placed them on the blue-enamel standpipe valve.

"WHEN I YELL, YOU OPEN THIS VALVE! UNDERSTAND ME?"

He nodded, his jaw quivering, and Willamina knew if he hadn't been wearing long pants, his knobby knees would probably have been banging together -- likely the first time he's had to face the Devil, she thought as she bent and snatched up the nozzle.

She ran toward the dirty yellow flame, just coming into a pallet of charcoal.

"TURN ME ON!" she yelled, and the kid seized the blue-enamel wheel valve and cranked it open with the power of fear and adrenaline: the line surged and gurgled, went turgid, Willamina's plastic nozzle hissed and then threw out a wide fan spray.

She turned it to a straight stream and advanced, half-crouched, snapping the straight stream into the heart of the conflagration.

 

Jacob released the spring loaded shade and let it roll back up.

He thrust his Mama's key in the ignition, turned it; he pressed the button under the dash, heard the solenoid click, reached up and pulled her M4 carbine loose.

He grabbed the suppressor with one hand, the bolt with the other, hauled back against the spring, ignoring the pain in his shoulder as he did.

The bolt came back and he let it fly forward, feeding a shining brass round of Winchester salvation into the chamber: he looked squarely at the selector, turned it to SAFE and sat back in the passenger seat, the short carbine in his lap, his heart well up in his throat, his eyes busy.

He wanted to be in there with his Mama, but she said to go to the car, and Jacob did what he was told.

He looked at his cell phone, then he heard sirens and he knew the Fire Department was already on the way.

His mouth was dry, he felt butterflies crawling around in his guts and all of a sudden he really, really had to get rid of the tea he'd drunk that morning, but he willed himself to hold very still and to wait.

 

Willamina felt a human body against her back, an arm around her shoulders.

It was the kid that opened the valve.

"GRAB THE HOSE," she shouted, "AND HELP ME PUSH AGAINST THE RECOIL!"

There was an explosion, a fireball the size of a pickup truck mushroomed above the burning pallet, rolled up to the ceiling.

The sprinklers were active and they were getting soaked, and Willamina yelled "WITH ME! FORWARD!"

The kid had direction, the kid had a purpose: gripping the line with strong hands, he pushed forward, dragging charged, linen-jacketed firehose, moving step by duck-walk step with this pale-eyed woman in blue jeans and a flannel shirt.

She turned the nozzle a little, widened the stream, swirled it around in big circles.

Another explosion and something sharp seared her cheek: she flinched, swore, yelled at her backup, "YOU OKAY?"

"YEAH!" he yelled back, then he thumped her shoulder with an open hand: "THAT'S PROPANE TANKS!"

Willamina did not need to be told twice.

"LET'S GET THE HELL OUT!"

She dropped the nozzle and the pair turned, headed down the aisle, scuttling bent-over like a pair of frightened crustaceans.

There was a much bigger BOOOOOMMMM behind them and Willamina ran her arm around the kid's ribs, shoving him down: they proned out and something hummed viciously over them, buzz-sawed into the shelves beside them, knocking goods off onto the cowering pair.

"MOVE! NOW!!" Willamina yelled and they came up on all fours, then onto their feet: they joined hands and sprinted through the lowering smoke for the square light patch ahead.

Another explosion as they cleared the registers and they never slowed, they came sprinting out through the doors and ran into a knot of firemen advancing cautiously toward the smoke-breathing portal.

Willamina's teeth clenched together and she balled up and let herself fall, rolling twice before coming up hard against a set of black Firecraft boots.

Hissing between her teeth, she uncoiled and coughed, spat, got her legs under her.

Strong hands under her arms helped her up and she straightened, leaned against Chief Finnegan's white firecoat.

"The kid," she gasped. "He was with me, is he out?"

"He's out," Finnegan said, nodding. "What's in there?"

Willamina coughed, straightened. "Someone lit up a pallet of charcoal, I think they threw propane tanks in it. Two of 'em cooked off while we were in there."

There was another explosion.

"Make that three."

Finnegan frowned. "Sprinklers?"

"Working."

"I thought so. You're soaked."

"I got a hose line on it," she husked, sagging: she offered no protest as several hands grabbed her, laid her down on a sheeted mattress.

"The kid," she murmured. "The kid that was with me."

"He's fine," a voice said, and pushed a plastic-smelling oxygen mask over her nose and mouth, raised her head, ran the elastic around her head.

She heard the hiss of oxygen, looked up at the ceiling and realized she was in an ambulance, and no recollection of how she got there.

Dizzy again, she blinked; something felt different and she realized she wasn't wet ... and now the ceiling was ... a room?

A familiar face shoved over hers. "Hi, Sis," Will grinned.

"Jacob," Willamina said, her voice muffled by the oxygen mask.

Will laughed. "You're awake, good."

She reached up with an arm that weighed twenty pounds, lifted the mask. "Jacob," she repeated.

Will took the mask from her thumb-and-forefinger grip, lowered it back in place, took her hand in both his.

"Sis," he said, "Jacob was right where you told him to sit." He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "He had your carbine across his lap."

Willamina quirked one eyebrow in lieu of a voiced comment.

"Good thing he did, too," Will grinned. "Two fellas came over and raised a crowbar to bust your sideglass. They'd just hit three other cars. Jacob showed 'em the business end of his rifle and they dropped their bars and ran."

Willamina nodded.

"They must have figured the fire would knock out surveillance and everyone would be looking at the fire instead of them. They figured they could smash and grab until the fire trucks got there."

Willamina thumbed up the bottom of her mask. "Get 'em yet?"

"Got a BOLO out and we've got Jacob's cell phone video. Sharon just called me and said they got a hit on the prints we lifted off the wrecking bars they dropped."

He pressed the mask back into place.

"Keep that on, Sis. You breathed some nasty stuff in there."

She lifted curious fingers to her cheek, found a row of adhesive strips.

"Yeah, that'll leave a mark," Will said quietly.

"How deep?"

"I don't think it's too bad. They took a couple chunks out of your back."

Willamina puzzled her brows together, shook her head a little.

"You don't remember getting hit."

She shook her head again.

"Shrapnel."

"Hell of a homecoming," Willamina muttered, and Will laughed.

"Get some rest, Sis. Jacob is fine, Richard came and got your Jeep."

"My carbine?"
"No shots were fired, it's back in the car, your car is in your garage, God's in heaven and the Tsar's in Russia."

Willamina's eyelids drooped. "I'm tired," she admitted.

"With all that stuff you breathed, no wonder. You'll be blowing off CO from that charcoal fire for some time."

There was a knock at the door; Will turned, looked, turned back with a grin.

"You've got company," he whispered, then bent down and kissed his twin sister's forehead.

Willamina felt something hit her mattress and of a sudden this big, broad, black, shiny-wet nose filled her vision and a busy, anxious pink tongue started laundering her forehead, and she felt the hospital bed shaking just a little as an anxious, plumed black tail swung with such vigor an observer thought it might fatigue the hind quarters it was bolted onto and fall off.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

43. YOU WANTED TO KNOW

They sat on the broad front porch of an old farmhouse, the old man and the young girl.

The old man wasn't that old, really, but compared to the girl -- who looked to be about four, maybe, or five -- he was old.

In point of fact he was in the green strength of manhood, young enough to pick up anything he damn well pleased and walk off with it, but old enough to know what was too heavy to grab onto.

The little girl looked around, wrinkled her nose, curious.

She'd never seen this place before.

"I come here sometimes," the man said, and she looked at him again, and he was older -- much older -- and as she watched, he became a familiar, grandfatherly figure with an iron-grey mustache and a horseman's lean waist.

"This became the home place. My mother's people settled here. This old house will have seen three generations and more before it was abandoned by everyone but bees."

"Bees?" Willamina asked, blinking, and her Great-Great-Grandfather hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

There was a hole in the front wall, through the plank siding, and a steady stream of honey bees made either entry or exit as they watched.

"Oh," she said, as if that explained everything.

"I was long gone from the Ohio country ... this place was built about the time I made Kansas."

Willamina blinked, realized she wasn't in a little girl's body anymore.

"No, you're yourself," the Old Sheriff said gently. "I don't like talking down to someone like they're a child."

"So this is your dream?"

"Ours. If it were mine, you'd still be four years old."

Willamina laughed and she saw those pale eyes smile in response.

"I so loved being father to my children," he said, and she heard something in his voice -- not quite regret, but ... resignation?

"You don't like where you are now?" she asked carefully.

"I am given a dispensation," he explained, "but where I ... was ..."

His smile was gentle, like clouds at dawn drawing away from a rising sun.

"Glorious," he whispered. "Utterly ... glorious."

Willamina nodded.

She'd been given a moment in the Valley of the Shadow and that had been her word, as well, when she described the experience.

Glorious!

"Did you find out enough about me, or should I take you back and have you live through some signal moments?" he asked, and she saw the twinkle of merriment in his half-lidded eyes.

"I think I saw enough," she nodded.

"Good. Do you think you can write that book now?"

Willamina laughed. "I'm working on one right now, the one I'll put in the safe deposit box for my descendant on Mars."

"Ah, the Sheriff, yes," the Old Sheriff nodded. "She'll need your help."

"You helped me."

"And you'll use that as an example."

"I like good examples."

"You are a good example." He shifted, turning toward her a little. "Look at a man's dog and you see the man. Look at a son and see the parents. Your son learns much from you both." He smiled approvingly. "Your Jacob is so much like is father."

"I'm trying," Willamina replied slowly, "to come up with a good smart aleck reply and the mind just went blank." She pointed into the distance and continued, "You see that puff of smoke on the horizon? That's my train of thought, leaving at a good velocity."

The Old Sheriff chuckled. "I hadn't heard that one before," he admitted.

He stood. "Time I was gettin' on." He picked up a pearl-grey Stetson from somewhere in mid air and turned it slowly in his hands, then flipped it neatly onto his head, patted it once to settle it in place. "I grew up in the woods, Willamina. I grew up in woods and hills and that's where I ended up, just ... bigger hills and different woods."

 

Willamina opened her eyes, blinked, unsure where she was.

Jacob looked through a window at her, hands cupped around his eyes, his breath fogging the thick glass a little.

There was a click, a hum.

"Willa?" Richard's voice said, and she turned her eyes the opposite direction, saw her husband seated behind a control panel, leaned close to a small diameter pencil microphone.

"Willa, you're in a bariatric chamber. Your carbon monoxide levels were too high so they're using this."

Willamina nodded, blinked slowly.

"Try to get some rest, dearest."

Willamina blinked again,nodded shallowly, closed her eyes.

Richard made sure the microphone was off, then leaned back, rubbed the heels of his hands into his closed eyes.

"I wish," he muttered into cupped hands slowly rubbing his face, "she would quit trying to save the damned world!"

It may have been a trick of the heavy glass, but he looked through one window, across his wife's supine form and through the other, and for a moment it looked like a grandfatherly old man with pale eyes and an iron-grey mustache stood behind Jacob, his hands gentle on the boy's shoulders.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

44. SIMPLE

Acting Sheriff Will Keller stood facing the wall, three of five fingers shoved in his hip pockets, staring at the photograph his sister had hung and framed.

To his left was a Victory Model Smith & Wesson revolver.

Its twin was still in evidence and likely would be until the last appeal or civil action was finished; he was satisfied this one in the frame, with six ancient rounds of round-nosed ammunition standing on what looked like a short piece of popsicle stick glued like a miniature shelf to its backing, was the twin to the revolver his late father carried as Trimble marshal.

At the moment, though, he was staring at the picture behind its pane of protective glass, and an image with ice-pale eyes stared back at him.

Actually three such figures did, but the one he was regarding with such intensity, might as well have been him.

He shook his head, sighed.

He didn't know if Willamina had some explanation for why this Sarah McKenna in the photograph looked like her twin, and he didn't know if she had some explanation as to why this Jacob Keller could be his own twin: all he knew was, it was an interesting photograph, and he personally did not care what the reason was.

He was alive, he was breathing, he had work to do, and that was enough for Acting Sheriff Will Keller, twin brother to Sheriff Willamina Keller.

 

Willamina, on the other hand, was glaring at the nurse's aide who was bent down, locking the brakes on the wheelchair and keeping up the cheerful chatter she usually dispensed when a patient was being discharged to home.

Willamina had several sessions in the hyperbaric chamber to help rid herself of near-lethal levels of carbon monoxide; she'd been visited by the Mayor, the Fire Chief, the Police Chief, several reporters, two mothers and a life insurance salesman -- with whom Willamina had an amusing several moments, as she described certain risk-taking actions of her past, before he bade her good day and made a hasty exit.

All but the last was there to thank her for her efforts.

It seems her pit-bull attack on the heart of the conflagration bought time enough for the rest of the store to evacuate -- "God invented insurance to rebuild brick and mortar and replace damaged stock," Chief Finnegan declared firmly, "but human souls are a bit more dear" -- and somewhere in all the adulation, she managed to recommend that nameless teen-age kid who backed her on the fire line for a commendation, simultaneously playing down the insistence that she be awarded the Legion of Merit or something of the kind.

Now, though, as the cheerfully chirping aide positioned the chair beside Willamina's bed, fussed over the placement of her two bags near the door and stood deferentially back as the stout and matronly Nurse Susan came in like a tug under half-throttle, pushing smaller vessels out of her way by the strength of her approaching bow wave alone.

"Are you ready to get out of here?" she demanded loudly, and Willamina stood and planted her knuckles on her belt and declared just as loudly, "You bet the house I'm ready to get out of here!"

"Keep your bet," Nurse Susan snarled, "you cleaned me out at poker last night!" -- each one glared at the other until neither could stand it another moment, and they both laughed, to the relief of the half-dozen others in the room, who were somewhat uncertain whether a minor war would erupt.

Jacob Keller handed his Mama her Stetson -- she'd decided she would leave the hospital in blue jeans and boots and a flannel shirt -- as she accepted the skypiece, her nine year old son tipped her a wink, and Willamina acknowledged the wink with the slightest of nods.

Nobody noticed when the lad slipped quietly out the door.

Nurse Susan bent down and released the left brake, then the right; Richard hauled the heavy wooden door open and Willamina thrust forth a commanding forefinger at the end of her extended arm: "Gimme a shotgun and wheel me into battery!" she declared, and they laughed, for she'd threatened to use that line in her decrepit old age, when she finally became a Seasoned Citizen and took up trap shooting for entertainment.

Willamina smiled at the townsfolk who lined the hallway, applauding as she was rolled to the entrance; Richard took care of signing the discharge instructions back in the room, he promised to make his wife behave herself (silently hoping not to go to hell for lying, for the named task was little short of impossible), and he followed at a discreet distance, not wanting to be illuminated in his wife's well deserved lime light.

They got to the main doors, and just outside, and two men were waiting for her.

One was the school's janitor, grinning, standing beside the folding steps he usually had ready for young Jacob when school let out for the day.

The other was Jacob, standing at Cannonball's head, grinning, his Mama's gunbelt over his left shoulder.

He stepped up as his Mama stood, and handed her the gunbelt.

Cannonball managed to look bored, waiting patiently for Willamina to settle the familiar and welcome weight around her hips, then bringing her bright, shining, copper colored head around as Willamina approached her and held out a thick pinch of molasses cured chawin' tobacker on her flat palm.

"You bum," she whispered, rubbing Cannonball around the ears, then turning and mounting the three steps before thrusting her polished boot into the doghouse and swinging aboard.

It was much less difficult to hide her grimace of pain, for enforced rest allowed her bones to knit that much more.

She lifted her Stetson; Cannonball, with a slash of her tail, raised her head and stepped out with that butter-smooth Paso Fino gait of hers.

 

Jacob caught up with her: mother and son, Paso and Appaloosa, rode together out of town and up the side of the mountain, to that ancient bench an old man with an iron grey mustache first called High Lonesome.

Willamina swung out of the saddle, whispered to her mare, walked over to a natural seat: Cannonball followed her like a dog, content just to be near her as she sat and contemplated the distance.

Jacob slid out of the saddle, cascading to the ground as he always did, landing easily with knees bent: he walked over and sat beside his Mama, and she put her arm around his shoulders, pulled him in close.

"Your Very Great Granddad used to come here," she said softly.

"I know," he said, thinking of the undercut ledge carefully cribbed in with rocks.

"You're thinking of The Bear Killer."

"Yes, Mama."

"Me too." He felt her embrace tighten a little, then ease off.

"You know his old Bear Killer is here too."

"Yes, Mama," Jacob nodded, then pointed. "Over there --"

He half hoped the White Wolf would be at the far end of the rock shelf, but there was just some grass, and Apple-horse grazing.

"That's where he was when he came to me."

Willamina nodded.

"Mama?"

"Hm?"

"Mama, how come you ran into that fire?"

Willamina considered her answer.

"I ran into a fight," she said, her voice tense. "It's what I've always done."

"Why?"

Willamina laughed. "Jacob, we see the world through the spectacles of our experience."

"Huh?"
"I was ... attacked ... when I was still very young. I was badly hurt and I've never really gotten over it. I suppose that's why I'm always fighting. I'm fighting that terrible wrong that was done to me."

"Who did it, Mama?"
"Someone long dead."

"Did you kill them, Mama?"

Willamina took a long breath.

"No, Jacob. No, I didn't."

"Did you try?"

Willamina barked a sharp laugh, her eyes going pale and hard.

"I tried to, Jacob. I tried."

"What happened?"

"I found one of them," she said. "The other was long dead. I ... found him on a coroner's slab two hours after someone else killed him."

Jacob felt his Mama take a long breath.

"It's ever been my way, Jacob. Ever since I learned nobody was going to keep me safe but me. I learned to take the fight to the enemy, to charge into what was trying to hurt me and to hurt it faster and harder and more viciously than it was able to hurt me."

Her voice was a whisper, tight, edged, as if her words were a butcher's steel, honing the edge of her favorite fighting knife.

"I knew that fire had to be stopped, Jacob. I ran to the fire and I hit it as hard as I could with the biggest weapon I could get my hands on."

"But you got hurt, Mama."

"Yes I did, Jacob. I got hurt, but everyone else got out." Her breathing was quicker now, the memory raw in her mind as she saw the blast of rolling yellow fire rising above the conflagration, a boiling cloud of mushrooming hell spreading yellow and dirty against the metalwork ceiling overhead. "They got out, Jacob, and they're alive. I can heal up from being hurt but they can't heal up from being dead."

"Mama, how come the fire department didn't go in?"

Willamina laughed, tension gone from her voice. "Because they are younger, smarter and better looking than me, Jacob."

"Huh?"

"Sometimes the right thing to do is let it burn. Chief Finnegan knew there was a display of propane tanks close to that fire and he knew once they started cooking off they wouldn't be able to approach without walking into a wall of steel shrapnel, so they waited until the explosions stopped before he allowed anybody inside."

"Mama," Jacob said quietly, "I was kinda scared when you were in there."

Willamina leaned her cheek over on her son's cowlick and whispered, "Want to know something, Jacob? I was kinda scared too!"

"Mama, was Old Grampa ever scared?"

Willamina smiled, though her son couldn't see it. "I suppose he was, Jacob. I don't really know."

"He went after people that went after him."

"Yes he did, Jacob."

"It sounds simple."

"It is simple," she replied softly, "but you have to be right before you make that decision, and that part's not always simple."

"Oh."

Mother and son sat for a while longer, sat in silence, listening to the wind, before they finally saddled back up and made their way home where they belonged.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

45. "JACOB CAN DO ANYTHING!"

Willamina blinked, surprised, then picked up her cell phone.

"Keller," she said, and the doctor heard the annoyance in her voice.

She usually had her phone turned off for her appointments; he imagined her pique was with herself, and not with the caller.

Dr. Bankes, the orthopedist, saw her eyes go pale and hard and her nostrils flared a little.

"I have heard nothing of this," she said slowly, deliberately, enunciating each separate syllable in an I'm-gonna-kill-someone tone of voice, then she reached up behind her neck and pulled savagely at the bowknot holding the hospital gown together.

"I'll be right there," she said crisply, thumbed off the screen, shoved the phone into her pocket like it was unclean, and turned her pale eyes on the eyebrow-arched physician.

"How good are you at lacing a corset?"

 

When a pale-eyed woman with a set to her jaw moves quickly across the waiting room and out the door, people notice; when she jumps into a butterscotch-colored Jeep and suddenly red-and-blue lights begin to strobe and flash in the grille and from the back of the rearview mirror, people speculate; when the flashing Jeep backs out and then accelerates with a little chirp of rubber, followed by the pulsing wail of an electronic siren, they begin to consider that perhaps something just went wrong.

Such folk just might be right.

 

Jacob Keller sagged against the wall, soaking wet, eyes wide, shaking a little: he stared at the pool's restless surface, heard voices echo as if from far away; someone handed him a towel, someone else wrapped him in a blanket: of a sudden he pushed against the blanket twisted away from them and staggered a few steps before grabbing the trash can and heaving up his guts.

He raised his head and looked down the edge of the pool at the EMTs doing CPR on a still figure, a small figure, a classmate.

He heard a voice bark "Off!" and the expectant hush that followed: practiced fingers felt gently at a young throat, seeking the life that should be there, pressing against the arterial wall beside the windpipe, and Jacob's eyes stung a little as he heard the medic's triumphant "Pulse!"

Jacob sagged again, the strength running out of him like someone pulled a cork out of his boot heel and every bit of energy in his young body ran out like the shining liquid that filled the school's swimming pool.

My bones are poured out like water, he heard the Parson's voice again, remembered from the previous Sunday's sermon.

Now he knew what the man meant.

 

Willamina stormed through the open doors and down the hall.

She didn't need to ask directions; frightened looks and turned heads directed her toward the scene.

She ignored the pain in her ribs as she hauled open the natatorium's heavy doors, just as the EMTs came charging through with a small, pale, soaking wet figure on the ambulance cot, oxygen mask on her face, eyes closed: she pulled to the side, let the cavalry sail right on by, then she looked inside and felt at once the distress of a mother, and the pride of a warrior.

Her son sat against the wall, his knees drawn up; his teacher knelt beside him, her arms around him: instead of leaning his head against her to be comforted, Jacob's head was upright, his eyes wide and hard, and he was staring at the pool.

Willamina looked around.

People were staring at Jacob; some stared at her.

She walked quickly across the wet concrete, squatted.

Jacob looked up, blinked; he struggled against his teacher's well-meaning embrace, pulled free, stood, shucked the damp blanket.

Jacob rose when his Mama walked in a room, any room, and it was proper in his young mind that he should stand here, too.

Even if his boots were full of water and he was soaked to the skin.

"Report," Willamina said in the crisp tone of a commanding officer.

"Ma'am," he said, lifting his chin, "I was at recess. Natalie came running up to me and said Cindy was in the pool and she needed help. I responded as I have been trained.

"Upon my arrival I observed a single figure at the bottom of the deep end.

"I dove and downstroked, I grabbed her blouse to pick her up and I took her under the arms.

"I got my feet under me and pushed off from the bottom.

"We broke surface and I got to the edge and had to work my way to a ladder to get her the rest of the way out.

"Upon my arrival at the ladder adult help was arrived and they pulled her out."

Mrs. Shaver stared at the nine year old child, consecutively reciting facts as if they were a rote lesson, or as if he were reporting to a military superior, and she shivered, for a voice that young shouldn't be so concise, so factual, so ...

So deadly calm, she thought, remembering this was the child who'd killed twice in his young life.

A little girl walked uncertainly up to the pair, looked up at the Sheriff.

"Natalie," Willamina asked, "why did you come get Jacob?"

Natalie blinked, then smiled.

"Easy," she said, dropping her eyes and swinging back and forth a little the way a little girl will do when she's a little shy and kind of uncertain.

She looked at her soaking wet classmate and smiled.

"Jacob can do anything!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

46. AT A THOUSAND METERS

Willamina briefed Richard as he came through the door.

Jacob was upstairs, drying off and changing clothes.

"I never knew Jacob could dive," Richard said quietly, his eyes rising to the ceiling, as if he could see through timber and see their remarkable son.

"He did what was needed, when it was needed," Willamina said, just as quietly, her palm flat on her husband's chest. "Just like you."

Surprised, he looked at his wife, and he saw absolutely no trace of humor or baloney in her expression.

He nodded, suddenly thoughtful, for she was right.

He'd done remarkable things, when they were needful, things he never thought himself capable of.

They heard Jacob's door open, heard his slow tread down the stairs, as if he were walking to his own execution.

Richard and Willamina turned to face the foot of the stairs.

Jacob had dried off and changed clothes, at least most of them: he stood in his sock feet, and his expression was somewhere between guilt, distress and confusion.

"I understand congratulations are in order," Richard said, stepping toward his son, "but I don't know the whole story."

He squatted and looked at his son, rested his hands on his offspring's shoulders.

"How about a debrief?"

 

Jacob sat at the kitchen table, his parents seated as well; each had a steaming mug of Earl Grey, hot and fragrant, with most of a teaspoon of raw honey stirred in.

Jacob stared at the vapors rising from the familiar ceramic.

"It didn't work," he said in a small voice.

"What didn't work?" Richard asked, puzzled.

Willamina's phone rattled -- it had a most annoying ringtone, sounding like kitchen matches shaken in a Prince Albert tobacco tin -- she rose and murmured, "Excuse me," and withdrew to the living room to take the call.

Jacob shifted in his seat, trying to find a good starting point.

"I, um," he said, then looked at his father, considered taking a drink to stall for a moment longer, then closed his eyes and shook his head.

"It didn't work," he whispered.

"I'm ... not understanding," Richard said slowly, pitching his voice to be gentle: he knew his son was working through something he'd never experienced, and his wife described the lad's thousand meter stare upon her arrival, and during their ride home.

Jacob looked at his father.

"You know how when someone is drowning and the hero jumps in and there's sharks and a minefield or something and he gets to her and pulls her out from under an anchor or something, they get to the surface and she's awake and she's alive and she kisses him and all that mushy stuff --"

There it is, Richard thought. That thousand meter stare again.

"Jacob," he said quietly, "tell me the very first thing that happened."

Jacob blinked, his loop of stressful memories derailed.

"Natalie ... I was on the playground. It was recess. Natalie came and grabbed me and said Cindy was in the pool and she was on the bottom."

Richard nodded.

"And what did you do?"

"I ran to the pool with Natalie and I yelled at her to get Mrs. Pompey. I had to yell twice and she turned and ran ... I think I scared her ... I had to yell real mean to make her go!"

Richard nodded. "Sometimes you have to use the Command Voice," he said understandingly.

"Yeah," Jacob gasped.

"Okay. You've run to the pool. You sent Natalie for the principal. What happened then?"

"I saw her," he whispered, his eyes seeing the water again, seeing the bright reflections on the troubled surface, restless after an unexpected visitor. "I saw her on the bottom."

"And what did you do?"

"She was deep, Pa. She was deep end and way down there and I knew I could not reach her with the shepherd's crook so I took a big breath and I bent over double and I drove down into the water hard."

Richard nodded. "Go on."

"I knew I was going to float so I dove hard, Pa. I pushed off the side hard and I stroked and kicked and I knew I had to see her to find her so I kept my eyes open." He grimaced. "It burned."

"It does," Richard agreed, "and your eyes are still bloodshot. Are they getting better?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay. You dove in and made for the bottom. What happened next?"

"I saw her, Pa. I saw her and she was not moving, there wasn't even ... no, there was." He looked up at his father, almost an alarmed expression. "I saw one bubble, Pa. One bubble. It was wobbly and silvery and I knew I had to get her up fast."

Richard nodded. "You're doing fine, Jacob. Tell me what happened next."

"I grabbed her, Pa. I was ... I was tryin' to float. I didn't want to but I couldn't hardly stay down so I grabbed her blouse and pulled her up and when I got her under the arms I wasn't floatin' no more."

Richard nodded, keeping his face carefully neutral.

"I set my boots against the bottom, Pa. I knew it would be hard to get her up so I shoved off hard, I squatted and then I jumped up just as hard as I could."

"Did it work?"

Jacob blinked, shivered.

"Yes, sir. I had to give up one arm to stroke and I kicked with the stroke and I broke water.

"I got a lung full of air and I hollered and I made for the side."

"What happened then?"

"I saw the ladder, sir, and I grabbed the gutter that runs around the pool and I kicked and pulled myself along and Mr. Albert -- he's the janitor -- he was at the ladder and yellin' at me and I grabbed the ladder and set my boot on the rung and I pulled her up out of the water two steps and he grabbed her and pulled and he had her."

Jacob's breathing was faster, his eyes staring at something only he could see, then he looked at his Pa, distress flooding his features.

"It didn't work, Pa. She didn't ... she wasn't ..."

He shivered hard, peeled pale lips back from even white teeth and shivered again.

"Mr. Albert broke her over his arm like a shotgun, sir, and she barfed up about a gallon of pool and whatever she'd et." He was panting a little now, his fists clenched, pressing against the edge of the table, his tea forgotten.

"He laid her down and I backed up 'cause here come Mrs. Pompey and a bunch of other people and I pulled back to get the wall behind me and I didn't have no strength in my legs, Pa." He looked at his father with a sorrowful expression. "I didn't ... I couldn't stand up. I just sort of set down and there I set."

Richard nodded slowly, reassuringly. "That is a perfectly natural reaction," he said soothingly. "I've done that very thing myself."

Jacob blinked, clearly surprise. "Sir?"

Richard laughed quietly. "Have your Mama tell you about the time I delivered a baby at a bus stop sometime." He winked at his son, then steered them back to the subject at hand.

"Okay. Cindy is out of the pool and the adults are there. What happened next?"

"She was dead," Jacob whispered hoarsely. "Sir, once she was out of the water I could see she was dead color."

Willamina leaned against the doorway, listening.

"They started CPR and kept it up until the squad got there and I just set and watched and they said they had a pulse and they took her away and Mama come and got me ...."

He looked at his father with a woebegone expression.

"Sir ... I was not in time. She's dead because I failed her."

"I think she might disagree with you," Willamina said from her slouch at the doorway.

Father and son turned their heads to look at her.

"Cindy is not only alive, she is awake and talking. Natalie thinks you're the greatest thing since sliced bread, and Cindy's father runs the shoe store and he said you can pick out the fanciest pair of boots you want to replace the ones you wore into the pool."

"She's ... alive?" Jacob squeaked.

Willamina nodded.

"You didn't fail," Richard said, his voice deep and reassuring. "As a matter of fact, Jacob, you did what you seem to do very well."

Jacob looked at his father, puzzled.

"You save people," Richard said firmly, "and that is a very good thing. Now what say we talk about the kind of boots you'd like to replace your old wet ones?"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

47. IN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION

The Ladies' Tea Society met, as they usually did, in the back room of the Silver Jewel.

As they usually did, the ladies dressed for the occasion.

And as she usually did, Willamina presided (unofficially) ... partly because she always had, and everyone was more than content with her gentle leadership, but also because Willamina invariably presided from inside a McKenna gown, which helped lend an additional air of gentility to their tea.

Rarely did the meetings take on a formal structure: most times they were pleasant get-togethers, a loose confederation of relaxed conversation, where the ladies of Firelands and its environs could assemble and discuss those matters that concerned them: almost always, this involved kinder, kilder, kirk: their families, their children, their church: at other times, though, the discussions took a more serious tone, and sometimes it was necessary to use a semi-formal structure, moderated by the Chair, and for those occasions, Willamina excelled.

Today much of the conversation turned to safety and the keeping of selves and homes safe, and when did the Sheriff think she would be back to work, and wasn't that a shame about that little girl that nearly drowned, and Willamina swum gently between the swirling subjects like a pilot fish in the depths, maneuvering through schools of predator fish in search of a meal.

 

Jacob frowned at the spiral bound notebook, and then at his computer screen, and back to the notebook, and back to the glowing screen.

He'd been working on an idea.

The boy had a remarkable memory and he wished most sincerely to recall the stories he'd learned of his Great-Great-however-many-times Granddad.

He remembered his father's quoting an ancient Chinese sage: "The weakest ink is stronger than the strongest mind."

He remembered his mother considering the blank page before her carefully before staring out the night-dark window, tapping the end of her wood pen-holder thoughtfully against her lower teeth, before dipping the steel nib in good India ink and carefully putting thoughts to good rag paper.

I want to do that too, he thought, and slipped two fingers into his shirt pocket.

He withdrew a flash drive and plugged the black-plastic rectangle's steel tip into the school computer, smiled a little as he looked at the red rose he'd painted on the dongle to distinguish it from its fellows.

He only used this particular flash drive for this secret project.

He tapped a few keys, leaned closer to the screen and smiled, then he began to write.

At the front of the room, Mrs. Shaver saw the lad's activity.

Curious, she tapped a few keys of her own, brought up Jacob's screen on hers.

She knew he would have no way of knowing she was reading what he wrote.

Mrs. Shaver, too, leaned closer to her screen as she read.

 

"Yes, but ... you're the Sheriff," the woman protested uncertainly. "You can do that."

"I was fourteen when I killed the man who tried to rape me," Willamina said, her voice flat, her eyes hard. "I wasn't Sheriff then. You don't have to be a badge packer to keep yourself safe."

She'd just come in from her Jeep with something in an irregular carry sack, a sack she placed on her chair behind her when she came in and wove to the front table where she usually sat.

"There is nothing in the law that says you cannot keep someone from causing you or your family harm."

She yanked open the sack's neck, brought out a base, an upright; she planted the flat, square base on the table and made no attempt at stealth or gentility.

The ladies turned and watched as Willamina quickly, efficiently, assembled an upright holder of some sort.

She looked around, leaned on the table, waited until she had everyone's attention.

She bent down and picked up the M4 carbine that normally lived, hidden, in her Jeep.

She planted its butt loudly against the table top, she yanked the bolt back, let it fly forward, guaranteeing the chamber was empty, and guaranteeing the metallic sound of an action being cycled would seize the common imagination.

She picked up a 30 round magazine, looked at the contents, nodded; she smacked it against the heel of her hand to settle the rounds as she always did, then thrust it firmly into the magazine well, picked the rifle up and smacked the mag hard on its bottom, grabbed and pulled, making sure it was seated and latched.

She set the rifle in the just-assembled holder and looked around, looked through the expectant silence.

The tik-tik-tik of claws on polished hardwood was loud as The Bear Killer wove happily through the crowd, toward the front table.

"The law is no respecter of persons," Willamina said firmly, "at least in an ideal world. Here in the real world, well, if you're Rich Tycoon McPolitician and your son is also in politics and married another politician's daughter, weeeelllll ..."

Her spread-hands gesture and wry face brought a laugh; as serious as the Sheriff could be, she had just as broad a streak of rotten humor, which she sometimes allowed to come out and play.

"My point is this." She raised a teaching finger. "My job as a wife and as a mother is to make a good home. I cannot do that if the forces of evil and darkness try to come in and cause my family or me, harm. The law recognizes this." She looked suddenly uncomfortable. "And there is a higher Law to which we will all eventually answer." She looked around, her pale eyes most sincere as she continued, "And when that day comes, I don't want to have to say that I failed to keep my family safe."

She considered a moment.

"We women are too often the victims of violence. Someone who's been victimized once will statistically be victimized again. Maybe that's why I was ... brutalized ... when I was sixteen." Her expression was bleak. "It was prom, my boyfriend's drink was spiked and so was I.

"We were made helpless.

"They made me watch while they tortured him to death, and then they started on me."

She closed her eyes for a long moment and shivered: for a moment the inner woman could be seen, but only for a moment.

"I decided to live, and live I did. They tried to kill me and they didn't succeed. Since then I became a Marine, a nurse, and now Sheriff" -- they saw her eyes harden, saw them go from just pale to ice-pale -- "and I will never let that happen again."

She closed her eyes and took a long breath.

"I want you to notice something."

She took a step to the side, waved an arm at her carbine, sitting in the middle of the table, muzzle to the ceiling.

"This is the dreaded AR-15 the news has been telling you about. Contrary to the uninformed news media, it cannot fire seven hundred rounds a minute -- not even this one, which is military grade, select fire, it is a true machine gun." She nodded toward it. "That is a 30 round magazine. If I want, I can turn the selector to full auto, hold back the trigger and stutter out all thirty rounds.

"According to the New York newspapers, a grown man tried firing an AR and it bruised his shoulder, he got sick from the sulfur fumes and dizzy from flying brass and he had PTSD for a few hours after." She shook her head, looked at a friend two tables back, shook her head sadly. "Leah, I wish I had your curves."

Startled, Leah laughed, looking around uncertainly.

"Now if a grown man bruises from just a few rounds fired semi-auto, how would a skinny little thing like me, with no meat on my bones, fare against such a fire breathing rip snorting man beater as this?"

She laughed.

"I fire this one in competition, I run through fifty rounds in a match and no problem! And look at me -- if I went to a topless beach, someone would come up to me and say 'Hey Mac, got a light?'"

Her nasal imitation of a beach bum scrounging a cigarette triggered the laugh she'd been generating in her audience.

"And notice something else." She folded lace-gloved hands very properly in front of her. "That Evil Black Rifle is loaded with a 30 round magazine. It's full of Winchester ammunition, I always preferred Winchester, probably because Uncle Pete always used it."

There were several quick smiles among the ladies: Pete and Martha had been well liked in the community, and Martha's custard peach pies, donated to every fire department fundraiser dinner, were legendary.

"Please notice that this infernal killing machine has not jumped off the table, run across the floor and bit someone on the shin bone."

 

Mrs. Shaver read Jacob's words, fascinated.

She knew him a superior student; she remembered in first grade he was borrowing books from the sixth grade library just to have something to read, something to rescue him from the stultifying boredom of his classmates' lessons.

His sentences were sometimes awkward, and his vocabulary was appropriate for a third grader, but even so --

Ezra Shaver nodded approvingly as she looked at a crude outline, the boundaries he'd set for what he intended to write.

She read, fascinated, as he painted, as best he could with a young boy's brush, a word portrait of early Ohio, and of the life of a pale eyed lad his own age.

 

Leah gave the Sheriff a quick hug, leaned her head close to the pale-eyed woman's, her eyes bright and happy.

Leah always was self conscious about her weight, and to have the lean-framed Sheriff express a degree of envy at the heavier woman's structure felt ... good.

"Sheriff," she said softly, "I'm not that good with a pistol, and I'm kind of afraid of a shotgun. My brother's shotgun kicked me when I tried it and I've never wanted to shoot another."

Willamina ran her arm around her friend's waist, turned and pointed to the carbine still sitting in the middle of the front table.

"In answer to your question," she said just as quietly, "this is the ideal solution for the lady of the house."

"Sheriff," the postmistress asked hopefully from a few feet away, "will there be classes for this rifle? I'd like to learn too."

Willamina smiled. "Yes," she said firmly. "There will."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

48. GLARE

The strokes of her curry comb were uniform, precise, consistent.

The hand holding the curry was without tremor or shake.

The eyes, however, were very pale and very hard.

Richard watched his wife for a few minutes.

He'd come out from the house, walking on grass and not gravel, he'd trod softly and come wordlessly into the barn and sat on a convenient bale and just watched.

Willamina was the first to speak.

"Richard," she said, "are you familiar with a boxer's fracture?"

Richard blinked, then raised an eyebrow and said "Yes, why?"

"I don't have one."

Richard looked down at his own good right hand, opened and closed his fingers slowly, made a fist, remembered driving his knuckles into his locker back in Quantico when his team was too slow and the kidnap victim was found dead.

He'd learned the hard way about a boxer's fracture.

"What happened with Children's Services?" Richard asked quietly.

Willamina's curry never altered its rhythm, to Cannonball's obvious pleasure.

 

Willamina met with the Children's Services pair in the conference room of the Sheriff's Office.

She glared the length of the conference table at the smiling twin with pale eyes, the pretty young woman in a shimmering, electric-blue McKenna gown simpered as the official questions were asked, and answers given; Willamina was professional, she was polite, and she was not about to let these bottom polishing bureaucrats take her child.

Apparently her pique was sufficient to summon the shade of her ancestress.

Agent Sarah Lynne Rosenthal, or at least her essence, stood -- Willamina saw the movement, but knew only she could see the McKenna -- and in a schoolteacher's voice that Willamina knew her unwelcome visitors could not hear, announced "I think I'm going to cause some trouble," and there was a peremptory knock on the conference room door.

Willamina rose, but before she could move from her place at the head of the table, the door thrust powerfully open and a tall, lean young man stepped in: he closed the door behind him, swept the visitors with cold, pale eyes and declared angrily, "My name is Jacob Keller. I am the Sheriff's firstborn. Now what's this I hear about your wanting to take me away from my rightful home?"

 

Willamina lowered her arm, turned to look squarely at her patiently listening husband.

"Once they decided a grown man with a brace of Colts at his belt wasn't what they'd expected, they left."

"Will they be back?"
"Not unless they realize the difference between nine and nineteen."

"So she forged their documents as well."

Willamina laid a gentle hand on Cannonball's flank.

"She said she was a troublemaker," she sighed.

"And I'm good at it," a familiar voice laughed.

Husband and wife turned to look at the interloper.

"I'm afraid if they ever look at that case file again they will be confused and dizzy," Sarah sighed, shaking her head sadly. "Pity."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

49. "UNCLE WILL, I NEED YOUR HELP."

 

Jacob knew when his Uncle Will came home from work.

Jacob had a question, and Jacob had a project, and Jacob had a digital camera the size of his hand.

Jacob knew he wanted to make his Mama proud of him, and so Jacob decided to enlist the aid and assistance of his pale-eyed uncle Will.

Will turned the Firelands police cruiser around, backed it in beside the house and got out, grinning.

Jacob sat easily in the saddle -- Will's personal opinion was that his twin sis had him riding before he could walk, not just in a papoose ruck but in a saddle of his own -- whether this was true or not, Jacob was more at home in the saddle than most of his generation was at home in front of a computer screen, and that was saying something.

"Now there's a sight," he greeted his nephew, striding up to the Appaloosa gelding. "I'm awful glad you're on your horse and not mine! I've got mares fresh and it's the Devil's own time I'm having keeping my stallion away from 'em!"

Jacob grinned and his ears turned red and he whipped his right leg over his horse's hinder and leaped happily out of the saddle, the way he generally did: Will would have been alarmed had it been anyone else leaping from such a height, but Jacob was used to it, he knew, and the lad didn't have too terribly much body mass to have to decelerate when his boot soles hit the ground.

Jacob stood and squinted up at his uncle. "Uncle Will," he said, "I need your help."

Will nodded. "Got some bodies to dispose of?"

"No, sir."

"Hmm. Woman trouble, then."

"Ummm ..."

Will laughed, laid a gentle hand on Jacob's right shoulder.

"Out with it, man! Who's the pretty girl you've got in trouble?"

Jacob looked down, his ears positively aflame and his cheeks not far behind.

"She's married, sir," he mumbled.

Jacob stopped, squatted, chuckling. "You womanizer," he said in a mock-admiring tone. "Nine years old and a homewrecker already!"

"It's my Mom."

"I think," Jacob said slowly, "we need to start at the beginning."

Jacob turned, extended an arm, kissed at his mount: the gelding came head-bobbing over and Jacob fumbled with the strap on his saddle bag and brought out a sheaf of paper.

"I wanna make somethin' for Mama," he said, "but I need some help with it."

He handed the bundle to Will.

"Old Grampa," he read aloud: the words were in big print, centered on the front page.

The sheets were loose, unbound, but numbered: he put the front page in back, scanned the next page, then the next, and the next after that: Jacob saw his Uncle Will's left eyebrow shoot up and he saw the man nod, slow and thoughtful, and Jacob let out his pent-up breath, for he knew this was a sign of his uncle's approval.

"Let's go inside," Will said slowly. "This bears study."

 

Willamina thumbed the screen on her phone. "Keller," she said bluntly, hiding the grin, for she'd seen the caller ID before she took the call.

"Hi, Little Sis," Will's cheerful voice teased.

"Who you calln' little?" Willamina riposted.

They both laughed, then: "Sis, Jacob is workin' on a project with me, can he stay for supper?"

"What kind of project?" Willamina automatically asked, shifting smoothly from sister to mother mode.

"I've got him on the roof replacing rotted wooden shingles without a safety line, then I'll have him digging out an unstable mine shaft that's had two roof falls already."

"That's nice, dear," Willamina deadpanned in a horrible nasal drawl, "have him back before bedtime."

"Yes, dear," Will replied in an equally nasal voice, which brought a broad grin to the hazel eyed lad seated across from his equally-broadly-grinning uncle.

"Now," Will said briskly as he placed the phone down beside his computer, "come on over here and let's take a look at this. Here ..."

A few key-clicks.

"Here. Perry County, Ohio. Where do you want to zoom?"

"Monroe Township."

A few more clicks.

"Okay. Here is Monroe Township today. Print?"

Jacob nodded.

"Now. Do you have an old map from the period?"

Jacob shook his head.

"Do you know the area?"

"Well enough, sir."

"Good." He looked up as Crystal's voice sang up the stairs to them "Will! Supper!"

"Be right down," he called, then grinned at his young co-conspirator.

He hit a few more keys, the printer hummed.

"Let's eat!"

 

Jacob's shoulder ached a little as he came into the house.

It was full dark but he was triumphant.

His work wasn't yet finished but he'd put a dent in it, and -- better than that -- he had his Uncle's wholehearted approval.

They'd taken the printed out map of Perry County, then the Monroe Township map, traced over both: the traced-out Perry County map they left blank, with Monroe Township outlined and shaded in, and it was its own stand-alone page, but their hand-traced and drawn-in Monroe Township map was as detailed as Jacob's young mind could make it.

The roads were renamed according to the original names -- Fay Iver Ridge Road, Fisher Ridge Road, Sunday Creek Road, Mile Long Hill and the Mile Long Hill Bridge, Hatfield's Mill -- and carefully drawn with a fine-lead mechanical pencil, a house and a building and a little meandering creek.

The original home place, the cabin that stood for a century before it was rotted down and tore down and a drunken Irishman named Kilkenney dug out a basement and laid up brick and a chimney and built a frame house out of green, white oak timbers, wired it for a Delco plant and sold it years later.

None of this was on the hand drawn map, however ... just the cabin, and the out building, the barn and the garden, for that's where Old Grampa was born and grew up.

It took some time and ended up in a three way collaboration: Jacob, his teacher, and his uncle, and somehow this secret didn't seep out into the small town information network: usually nothing is secret in a tight community, but this one was, and it wasn't until Jacob handed his Mama a brown paper wrapped package, tied with red string, that Willamina had any inkling her son actually paid attention to anything but his next meal when they went back East to visit the land of her nativity.

The cover had a pale-eyed man looking at the reader: a man in a broad brimmed hat and a black suit, one hand on the neck of a red mare, a six point star on his lapel, a '73 rifle balanced in his off hand, a solemn expression behind his iron-grey handlebar mustache: inside, as she paged slowly through a leather bound hardback book, she found a picture of a nine year old boy in a sacky shirt and knee high boots and loose, wrinkled britches with suspenders, his ax just buried in the block and chunks of kindling in mid-air on either side.

She turned back to the title page.

She bit her bottom lip, then she laid it down and hugged her son and whispered, "Thank you!"

Richard stood behind her, his approving hand on her shoulder, and his eye fell on the title page.

Old Grampa, it read, by Jacob Keller.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

50. SIXTEEN POUND HAMMER

 

The Spring Inn was its usual noisy, smoky, rowdy place.

Locals and transients, ranchers and hardhats, merchants and miners and oilfield drillers, all laughing and swearing and bending an elbow and flirting with the short skirted waitress, at least until the door opened.

One, then three, then a tableful and finally every single head turned.

Someone unplugged the blaring juke box.

A pale eyed figure wearing a long black duster and a broad brimmed black hat, black boots and a frosty expression, and in her left hand, gripped near its metallic head, a sixteen pound oilfield sledge hammer.

The Sheriff paced off on the left, her boot heels loud on the oiled boards; her hard glare did not bode well for any one or for any thing, and nobody, not one soul, said a word as she paced to the center of the floor.

She stopped, turned slowly, looking around, as if looking for someone, and finally she spoke up.

"I am looking," she said in a cold voice, "for the man with a shirt sleeve clear full of arm."

Here and there an eyebrow raised; men looked at one another, there were murmurs.

Willamina's eyes narrowed and she paced slowly over to a table full of men.

She looked at a man with a day's stubble, a man who smelled of beer and sweat and she said "Stand up."

"Who the hell are you, lady?" the man demanded.

"I'm the Sheriff. Stand up."

He stood, slowly, a smoldering resentment in his eyes.

"How strong are you?"

"Strong enough to break you over my knee."

Willamina hoist the sledge hammer, drove it into the man's chest, hard.

"Take this," she said.

He raised a hard hand, seized the handle.

"Now run your hand down to the end of the handle."

He took the hammer in both hands, one under the head, the other finding its end; he gripped it easily, curious.

"I will buy you beer for the night if you can hold that out at arm's length" -- she held her arm out -- "then using your wrist only, bring the hammer back and just touch your nose, then bring it back upright."

"Beer for the night."

"Yeah."

He shoved the hammer back into her hands.

"All yours, lady," he growled.

Willamina looked long at the glowering driller.

"This man," she declared loudly, "has a shirt sleeve that's clear full of arm. I would say he could hug an anvil and pack it off if he wanted." She turned, hammer in both hands. "Any takers? Anyone can hold this at arm's length and bring it down to their nose and back up?"

There were a half dozen who tried; four could not hold it arm arm's length, one got it back toward his face a few degrees before dropping his arm, and finally a quiet man stood up and walked over to the last fellow who tried.

He took the hammer by the end of the handle, swung it experimentally; men cleared back away from him as he brought it up, swinging it, using its momentum to bring it up to a stiff-armed posture.

He stood for a long moment, holding sixteen pounds of forged steel straight-armed in front of him, the hickory handle vertical, and slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, he leaned it back, bending only his wrist.

Back, slowly, the hammer descended; men held their breaths, watched, mouths open, eyes unblinking, as the blunt, businesslike striking surface descended ... and just touched the man's nose ...

Willamina's eyes were quiet, attentive, as the man held the hammer's cold face against his beak for the space of ten heartbeats, then slowly raised it using only his wrist.

He raised it to the vertical, then lowered his arm, turning only the shoulder joint, holding the handle level as his arm came to the vertical: he lowered the hammer's head to the floor, set it down quietly and looked at Willamina.

"What's your pleasure?" the Sheriff asked, a smile just starting to tighten the corners of her eyes.

"Same deal as him?"
She nodded.

He looked over her head at the barkeep. "My usual," he called, and Jelly raised an acknowledging hand.

He looked back to the pale eyed woman standing in front of him.

"You wouldn't be Ted's little girl?"

She nodded again.

"I heard you were here."

She hugged the man, cuddling the side of her face into his solid chest.

"I knew this was the best way to find you," she murmured. "Uncle Neil, how in the hell have you been?"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

51. THE BETTER WARRIOR

 

"Mama?"

Jacob looked up from staring at a print of one of his Mama's ancient glass plate photographs.

"Yes, Jacob?"
Willamina looked up from her book; she shrugged her right shoulder, then her left, mentally kicking herself for handling something as heavy as that sixteen pound oil field sledge in such a cavalier manner.

"Mama ... Old Grampa ..."

Most boys his age obsess over Tonka Trucks or video games, Willamina thought as her son frowned a little, arranging his far ranging thoughts.

He rolled over on his side, sat up: "Mama, Old Grampa was in the War."

Willamina nodded.

"Aunt Sarah wasn't."

"No."

"But Old Grampa's grandson was."

"Yes, Jacob. Joseph was in the First World War."

Jacob frowned, looked back down at the print.

"You were in the War."

Willamina chuckled. "You could say that."

"Mama, how come?"

"How come what?"

"Old Grampa was in the War and he ended up here. You were in the War and you ended up here too."

"I started here, Jacob."

"Yeahbut ..." Jacob frowned, trying to make an association.

"Are you asking ... why were we both in the war and we both became Sheriff?"

"Yeah," he said, looking at his Mama with bright and sincere eyes, "but Old Jacob wasn't."

"Wasn't ... in the war?"

Jacob nodded. "But he was Sheriff. And there were other Sheriffs."

"Tom Landers was first," Willamina nodded. "I don't think he was a soldier, but he was a frontiersman."

"Oh."
"But you're right, Jacob. We ..."

Willamina hesitated, wondering how much to divulge.

"I think I can help," a man's voice said, and they both jumped a little.

"Grampa!" Jacob exclaimed happily, as if the appearance of a man dead more than a century was a perfectly natural thing.

Linn bent a little as Jacob ran into him, wrapped his arms around his young descendant and hauled him off the floor, grandfather and grandson both laughing with the same and very mutual delight.

"Now what's this about the War?" Linn asked, bouncing Jacob a little to get his forearm under the lad's backside.

"Grampa, howcome you were in the War an' so was Mama but your Jacob wasn't and Joseph was but he wasn't Sheriff and --"

Linn raised a teaching finger. "Whoa, now," he said, "slow down now and let's try this again! How's that shoulder of yours?"

"It's okay," Jacob grinned, working his wing, and Linn looked at Willamina.

"How about you, Sunshine?" he asked, his voice a little quieter.

Willamina took a long breath, grimaced. "It's better," she admitted.

"Well since the two of you are the picture of health," Linn grinned, "let's take a trip, shall we?"

Jacob looked down at his Mama and opened his mouth and the world twisted around him.

Dizzied, he clutched at his Old Grampa, seizing the man's coat with the desperate strength of a startled child.

He felt the man's hard muscle under the cloth, he smelled sweat and horse and saddle leather and whiskey, and then he smelled a field and he blinked, squinting, raising his free hand to shade his eyes.

Willamina laid a hand on her son's back and he felt the tension in his Mama's voice as she said "I remember this."

"You should," Linn said, his voice suddenly serious.

Linn bent and Jacob's toes pointed, seeking the ground: he landed bent-kneed, fear searing his nerves, making every sense acute: he saw the sparkling blue ocean beyond, he smelled the sea-grasses, he tasted copper and his left hand went to his hip, gripped the handle of his Grampa Ted's revolver.

"I thought you might want that," Linn said quietly.

Blued steel whispered from carved leather and Jacob's eyes locked onto ranks of armored warriors, spearpoints and bronzed helmets bright in the Grecian sun: he looked over at his Mama, and she was looking around with the deceptively casual air of a military commander sizing up the situation.

Behind her, two ranks of tanned young women stood between a stone temple with fluted columns, and the ranked warriors facing them.

"This is the herald," Linn said quietly, and Jacob turned, looking back toward the warriors. "He will demand their surrender."

A single figure in bronze armor, carrying a spear and a shield, strode through the grass, boldly breasting the wind-waving vegetation until he was within ten yards of the front rank of white-robed young women.

Young women with ornately-styled, curly-black hair, black eyes, tanned skin ... young, beautiful, and each with a recurve bow in one hand and a nocked arrow in the other.

"Maidens!" the herald challenged. "Lay down your weapons and surrender, that you may be honorably made wives of our finest warriors!"

A woman -- older than the Maidens -- walked between the ranks, then turned and came to within five feet of the herald.

"You seek to despoil our Temple," she called loudly, pitching her voice to be heard to the ranks behind him. "You will soak your blood into our soil and enrich our crops!"

The herald laughed. "You are few," he sneered, "and we are many!"

"We will not be moved," the Temple Mother snapped, hoisting her nose in the air and turning her back on the herald.

"A pity," the herald called to her retreating backside. "You would make a fine wife!"

She turned.

If it were possible to kill a man with a glare, the herald would have been blasted to ashes and cinders on the spot.

Jacob watched as the herald returned to his place among the ranked spearmen.

"The soldiers are not yet arrived," Linn murmured. "Right now the Maidens are all that stand between these invaders and their nation."

"I remember this," Willamina whispered. "My God, I was here! I was ...."

She looked down the length of the first rank, then the second, and she saw ...

She saw herself.

She felt the bowstring in the pads of three fingers and her thumb as she brought the bone-nocked arrow back to the anchor point beside the corner of her chin, and she felt the smooth, shaped handle of the horn-laminated recurve press into her palm and the arrow was an accusing, metal-tipped finger, ready to drive the lesson of death to the designated invader.

Jacob watched, fascinated, terrified, as tanned knees and leather greaves rose and fell like waves on a beach, listened to the advancing tread of hardened warriors, saw spears swing down to level -- one rank, another, a third, their long, gleaming, honed points shining and glittering in the hot sun.

The world twisted again as the first wave of arrows arced over the short distance between them, and Jacob saw every last arrow find a vulnerable point in the invaders' armor -- generally right through the eye-slits.

Nearly the entire front rank of spearmen fell, right before he was cold, cold with a damp wind, and the wooden deck of a ship rolled underfoot.

A woman screamed, another female voice snapped "Shut up!" -- and Jacob looked, surprised, for it was his Mama's voice, only it wasn't his Mama, she was right beside him and his hand tightened on the walnut stocks of his Grampa's revolver and he realized on some level he was not in this fight.

Linn nodded approvingly as the lad holstered his revolver and made fast the snapover.

Grappling hooks sailed through the air and jerked tight against the rail, against the gunnel, wherever they could get a purchase: horny-palmed seamen hauled in line, drawing the two ships close, drawing them together so they could board.

A few crewmen with cutlasses and pistols stood waiting for the onslaught they knew would overwhelm them.

The other ship flew a black flag, a black standard with a white skeleton, and an hourglass.

As the pirates came swarming over the railing, a woman came screaming through the single rank of defenders, swinging a cutlass at the top of her lungs: she slammed into the raiders, laying about with the cut-toe, and suddenly she was not the only voice screaming.

The fight did not last long, the raiders were practiced and numerous and the victims had not the heart to be slaughtered -- but not so the woman with pale eyes and a tiger's heart: she, too, was killed, but not until she'd taken a half-dozen of the enemy with her, and even in death her claws were locked into the throat of a man whose eyes were bulging and glazed with the strength of her dying grip.

Jacob turned and looked at his Mama with wide and frightened eyes.

"Mama?" he asked in a hoarse whisper. "Mama, was that you?"

Willamina nodded, slowly, remembering the feel of the cutlass that clove her from shoulder to brisket.

"I remember this," she whispered through the taste of blood, just before the world twisted again, and they were inside a railcar.

Jacob grinned.

This was old home week -- or at least far more familiar than ancient Greece or the deck of a bluewater sailing ship -- he'd ridden on his Mama's railroad any number of times, and this looked very much like the passenger car he'd ridden in.

Old Grampa pushed him hard, knocked him over sideways into his Mama, who fell into the seat, almost banging her head against the window.

Jacob opened his mouth to yell "Hey!" when his Old Grampa drew his right-hand Colt and drove a round up the aisle, the concussion of twice twenty grains of FF black concussing his chest more than slamming his ears.

Up the aisle, a man dropped his arm and the pistol he'd just fired.

Behind the Sheriff, Jacob saw a slender woman with violet eyes as she sagged and dropped her own pistol and gave a little choking cough.

Horrified, Jacob saw her cough up a little blood, and he saw the red stain start to spread on her white bodice.

Willamina grabbed him, lifted him up and slid out from under him, went to the woman and slid a short, very sharp knife into the material, splitting it open, then she looked up at the Old Sheriff.

"What help is available?" she asked, her voice tight, and the Old Sheriff punched the empty out of his revolver as if it were unclean and dropped in a fresh round.

"If we can make Firelands," he said, "Doc Greenlees might save her."

He looked at the woman and his eyes were suddenly unreadable and Willamina had the terrible feeling that he knew the woman.

"Not on my watch," Willamina snarled. "Jacob!"

"Yes, Mama?"

"Jacob, make for the engine. Tell the engineer we need all the speed he's got."

Old Grampa looked at Jacob. "Tell them my niece is shot."

"Yes, sir," Jacob blurted, then sprinted for the front of the passenger car, jumping easily over the dead man laying across the front of the aisle.

Willamina cut viciously at the choking woman's underskirt, slapped squares of crudely-cut cloth in the woman's own blood, then laid them across the wound, front and back, pressed them firmly in place.

"Breathe, honey," she said, her voice tight. "I've used this dodge with lung-shot Marines and it works."

The woman tried to say something.

"Don't try to talk. Just lay still, we're getting you to help."

Jacob scrambled up the short ladder, onto the coal piled in the tender, slid down the front, just in time to step on the surprised fireman's shovel.

"The Sheriff said his niece is shot and he needs all you've got!" Jacob shouted.

The frightened boy's scared expression and anxious voice was all the authentication engineer and fireman needed.

"Stay here, boy," the engineer shouted, making himself heard over the engine's chant, "and we'll show you how to make cast iron fly!"

The fireman turned, slung coal into the boiler with a practiced tilt of his flat-bottom shovel: left-front, right-front, left-rear, right-rear.

He thrust the shovel at Jacob.

"Hold this!" he shouted, and Jacob clutched it with both hands.

The fireman flipped open a tin lid on a tin box, pulled out a side of bacon, bent and tossed it into the boiler.

"Here's where she gets hot!" he yelled, closing the cast iron door and lifting it just enough to latch.

The engineer turned a valve, tapped a gauge with leather-gloved fingertips, nodded.

"We're coming into a down grade," he yelled. "We'll pick up some speed there. Tell the Sheriff we'll make it!"

Jacob nodded, handed the fireman back his shovel, turned and surged back over the loose coal, back toward the fatal passenger car.

He got halfway down the ladder at the back of the tender when the world twisted again and he fell through space, landed on his back in a plowed field.

A blue-uniformed horseman glared down at him.

"You hurt, boy?" he shouted, and Jacob rolled up on his bottom, stood.

"No, sir," he blurted, looking around.

"You'd best skedaddle, boy," the officer said a little more kindly. "There's fixin' to be a fight and you don't want to be here when it happens!"

Jacob's Old Grampa took his arm and drew him gently to the side.

"Where's Morgan?" Willamina asked,and Jacob's Old Grampa handed her a telescoping spyglass, pointed.

She extended the telescope, scanned the distance.

"I see a group of men on horseback," she said.

"See the man in the lead?"

"I see him."

"General John Hunt Morgan, and that's the closest I have ever gotten to him. Ever!"

Willamina whistled, lowered the telescope.

Just that fast they were back in her living room, back in Firelands, back in the modern day.

Old Grampa handed Jacob the brass telescope, hitched up his pants legs and sat slowly in the rocking chair.

"Jacob," he said, "what you just saw is ... where we all came from."

"Sir?"

"Jacob, women have a very special place in this world, and the women of our line even moreso.

"We men are the protectors and the warriors. You already are. You kept your Mama safe when that fellow tried to kill her."

"Yes, sir," Jacob said, his left hand going to his hip, closing on empty air.

Linn laughed at the lad's puzzled expression.

"I know how much comfort comes from the worn walnut grips," he said quietly. "You needed to know beyond any doubt you could keep yourself safe in any situation. Now that you're home, your Mama is heeled and you're safe."

"Yes, sir," Jacob replied, sorting through everything and looking for the sense in it.

"Now back to the lesson. Jacob" -- he raised a teaching finger again -- "your women, our women, the women who are blood of our blood, all carry through time with a very important purpose."

"Yes, sir?"

"They must continue our blood. I can't tell you why, but I can tell you it's more important than either of you will ever know that you, that we, continue our line."

"Can't you tell me why, sir?" Jacob asked plaintively.

"No," Linn said flatly. "I can only tell you that it's far more important than we are. Now we -- as men" -- he squatted and put his finger tips on Jacob's shoulders -- "we men have a solemn obligation to keep our women safe." He looked up at Willamina, and she saw an unexpected sadness.

"Believe me when I tell you that not keeping your women safe is the greatest heartache a man can ever have."

"You still blame yourself," Willamina almost whispered.

He looked at her, his eyes hard.

"I can blame no other," he said through a throat full of gravel.

"Is that why you came back to save me ... because you could not save her?"

Linn considered this for several moments, then finally nodded.

"Yes," he said quietly, almost hissing the word. "Yes, that's why."

"Then why will I save Mars?"

"You remember that."

"You're damned right I remember."

Linn took a long breath, blew it out with cheeks puffed and lips pursed: he lifted his hands, palms out, shook his head.

"Grampa," Jacob asked, "I asked Mama about being in the war."

Linn looked curiously at his several-times-great grandson.

"Grampa, did you have to go" -- Jacob stopped, frowned and blinked, then rephrased with words his Mama might have used:

"Grampa, was it necessary?"

Linn nodded.

"Yes, Jacob. It was. I wasn't ... hard enough. I had to be tried as metal in the forge. I had to be ... proofed, if you will ... in the ... smelter of battle."

"Like Mama?"

"She was a warrior before she went."

"But she's a better warrior now?"

Linn considered this a moment, then a slow smile spread across his tanned face.

"Yes, Jacob. You could say that."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

52. A DAY'S WORK

A lean old man with an iron grey mustache rocked slowly, his eyes closed, letting the day's tensions fall away from him.

He sat in his own rocking chair, in his own house, under his own roof.

His belly was full, the taste of good coffee still fragrant on his tongue; he tilted his head back until it touched the high back of his handmade rocker, his eyes closed, his back and his belly still tense.

He still felt saddle leather between his legs, he still felt his Cannonball mare laboring under him, he still felt wind in his face and he still heard the sizzling rumble of the rifle bullet that burned a spinning hole through the air beside his good ear.

The sleepy child in his arms cuddled a little and made a drowsy little noise, the way a man's young will, and his strong arms held his get comfortably, firmly, the way a Daddy will when he and his little one are both close to sleep.

His breathing was slow and regular, as were his child's breaths, unlike earlier in the day when he scrambled over sun-hot rocks, running straight uphill, bent double and scrambling on all fours to keep moving on the steep slope, moving at a pace a sane and rational man would never consider, not on a slope like that, not with the drop-off below him.

He didn't care about any of that.

A man tried to kill him, and he didn't stand for that, he didn't allow that to happen, and he knew when the man cycled his rifle's action desperately, futilely, that he was out of rounds.

The Sheriff found a narrow ledge, ran along it, jumped a gap, kept running, a predator in pursuit of his prey.

He heard his wife's step as the woman came into the room.

Linn opened a drowsy eye and smiled a little, and his red-headed Esther, holding the twin to the child he held, settled in her own rocking chair.

They shared a look, and in that moment the Old Sheriff knew he was where he was supposed to be, and that he was doing what he was supposed to be doing.

 

A century and more later, in that same house, another Sheriff, another child, another husband and another wife.

There were differences.

The black curly furred dog beside her rocker was much younger, the child she held was some older, the Sheriff now dressed rather differently than the lean old man with an iron-grey mustache, but they were of the same blood and they wore the same name and they wore the same six-point badge.

Each had worked hard that day, though each of their days was separated by more than a hundred used and discarded calendars; each ran hard in pursuit of the lawless, and each was successful in their chase, and each admitted quietly to their spouse, "I shook like a whore in church!" -- describing that letdown moment, after all was said and done, and they each realized just how close they'd come to losing their individual contest with the forces of evil facing them.

Jacob was a fine, tall lad, Jacob was strong and capable and Jacob was as deadly as the past Sheriff's son whose name he too bore: for all this, Jacob was also nine years old, and sometimes a boy of so few years has the need of his Mama's embrace, and sometimes a pale eyed woman who wore a six point star had need to be a Mama to her child.

Willamina, too, leaned her head back until her head touched the tall back of the handmade rocking chair, and her arms were firm and strong around her son, and he cuddled into his Mama and made a sleepy little sound, the way a boy will when he's almost asleep, and Willamina, her eyes closed, smiled a little as the day's stresses fell away from her as well.

She was where she was supposed to be, and doing what she was supposed to do, and in this, she was content.

Jacob did not remember when his Pa picked him gently from his Mama's lap; part of his mind knew it was his Pa, and knew he was safe and was borne to his own bedroom; he had no recollection of being carefully undressed, nor of having his own quilt drawn up over his sleeping carcass.

He rolled up on his left side and took a long breath and submerged his soul into the dark lake of slumber.

Jacob was in his own bed and under his own roof.

 

The Old Sheriff laid his little one in her bed and drew the hand sewn quilt up around her chin.

She rolled over on her left side the way Angela always did, and she took a long breath and he stayed for a moment, watching the face of his sleeping child, and then he smiled at his wife, his eyes a distinctly darker blue, and Esther laid the other twin in the bed and covered him as well.

Husband and wife held hands and stood in the darkened bedroom for a few minutes, watching their young, then they slipped quietly out of the room and back down the stairs.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

53. RIDERS

Jacob had the several advantages of a child.

He was selfish, as are all children, and so was not at all bashful to consult his Old Grampa.

His Mama, his Pa, adults both, had adults' viewpoints and adults' thought processes and adults' manners.

It would not have occurred to either of them to deliberately summon the shade of the long dead lawman.

Jacob was not so handicapped.

He sat on the front steps, holding the leather bound book his Uncle Will arranged to have printed up and bound for him, the book Jacob wrote about his Old Grampa.

When he wrote it, he thought it perfect, complete, ideal.

Now that his work had time to ripen, so to speak, it didn't seem nearly as good.

He looked over at the curly-furred, sinners-heart-black pup with the shocking-pink tongue.

"Bear Killer," he said, "I need to go talk to Old Grampa."

At the word "go," The Bear Killer's ears came up.

"Come on."

The Bear Killer happily romped down the steps, following Jacob as he strode purposefully toward the barn.

 

"Jacob?"

"Sir?"

"Jacob, I am expecting company."

"Yes, sir."

Linn twisted a little in his chair, frowning as his lower back gave a sudden, almost-painful *pop!*

Linn's firstborn son winced to hear the sudden sound; it always made him uncomfortable to see the expression of pain that crossed his father's face when he did that, even if it was followed with the more relaxed expression of relief.

Jacob also considered it a good thing that the chair didn't decide to kick out from under his father again.

 

"Going somewhere?"

Jacob tried not to jump: he should have been alone in the barn, just he and his Apple-horse and The Bear Killer.

He turned and looked up at his Aunt Sarah, smiling down at him from the impossibly-large, utterly-black mare's altitude.

"Yeah."

He blinked, laid the stirrup over the saddle horn and swung the saddle over Apple's back.

"Not bad," Sarah nodded. "I like your standing on a bale of hay."

Jacob twitched at the saddle blanket, tugging out any late wrinkles.

"It helps," he muttered.

Sarah waited until after he'd knuckled the stallion's belly to get the wind out, guaranteeing he could cinch up snug and not end up with the saddle hanging under his mount's belly and he on the ground somewhere.

He'd only made that mistake one time.

"Where are we headed?"

"I need to go talk to Old Grampa."

"I see." Sarah managed to look at once regal and understanding, probably because she had experience as a schoolmarm.

Jacob stood back up on the bale of hay and thrust his boot into the stirrup, bounced three times and powered himself into the seat.

"Where are we going to talk to my father?"

"Where else?" Jacob asked with the innocent sincerity of a child. "The cemetery!"

Jacob kneed his Apple-horse out of the barn; the Appaloosa stallion stepped out, happy to stretch his legs again, The Bear Killer happily bounding alongside.

Sarah's giant Frisian, Snowflake, kept easy pace with the Appaloosa, and so did a shining red mare and her unsmiling rider.

Jacob did not know he had such a thorough entourage, at least not for a few minutes; not until Cannonball paced easily up beside him and his Old Grampa spoke up, did he realize the man he sought was already with him.

"How about we go to the office?" the Old Sheriff suggested. "We can set down more comfortable in chairs ruther'n park on a tomb stone."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

54. CHANGES

"Grampa," Jacob said with all the directness of a child, "I wrote Mama a book."

Linn nodded gravely, his eyes smiling, only the eyes, the way a grandfather will when his young describes an achievement.

"But Grampa ..."

Sarah clasped her hands and pressed her lips to her interlaced fingers, her eyes shining to see the gentle expression in her father's eyes as he leaned forward a little, listening closely to what this little boy was telling him.

"Grampa, I don't think I wrote enough."

"Oh?" He raised his right eyebrow, smiling with more than his eyes now, and Jacob frowned, twisting a little in his hardwood chair.

"Grampa, you were more than a little kid."

The lean old lawman with the iron-grey mustache, this taut-waisted warrior, blooded and bloodied in wartime and peacetime, a man who dealt wholesale in justice -- peacefully or otherwise -- a man with scars small and silvery, some large and puckered, this man who knew what it was to run a knife up to Green River between another man's ribs -- this hard man, this bad man to cross, leaned back in his chair and laughed, the good easy relaxed laugh of a man completely at home with who he was and what he was, and where and when he was.

"I never heard it put like that before," he chuckled, nodding.

"Well you were!" Jacob protested, wide-eyed and sincere, "or was -- are --"

Linn laughed all the harder at his great-great-great-or another great-maybe, grandson, holding up a hand to stave off any juvenile distress.

"Jacob," he gasped, wiping tears from his eyes, "I needed that good laugh, thank you!"

"You're welcome," Jacob said, a little uncertainly.

"You're right." Linn sniffed, snorted, spat, rubbed his palms together, palmar calluses rasping audibly as he did.

"I was more than ... a little kid, but I was that too."

Jacob frowned, thinking he should have brought something to write on.

"Don't worry about writing," Linn said gently. "You should hear a tale before you think about writing it."

Jacob blinked, surprised and a little confused, and Sarah laid a gentle, gloved hand on his shoulder.

"He's right," she almost whispered. "Just listen."

"You and your Mama went to Shallagatha," Linn began.

"Shallagatha?" Jacob echoed.

"You call it Chillicothe. The original name, the native name, when it was a major city before white men came to the continent --"

"Shallagatha."

Linn nodded. "It was on major trade routes and it had cultivated fields of corn and beans and pumpkin, and a wood stockade surrounding."

Jacob's young mind quickly raised the mental image of such a place.

"When I went there -- when I met my first wife Connie -- none of that was there anymore."

"Oh," Jacob said, disappointed.

"It was a town. It was Ohio's first capital, did you know that?"
Jacob shook his head.

"It's where they figured out Ohio's state seal. Ever see it?"

Jacob shook his head.

"They were hammer and tongs at one another, everyone had their idea of what it should look like and everyone tried to persuade everyone else their idea was best and it near to come to fist fights a number of times and finally about sunup the man in charge said the hell with it, everyone go home and get some sleep."

Jacob nodded, solemn-faced.

"When he opened the door to go out to his carriage, he saw the sun rise over Sugar Loaf Mountain. Did you and your Mama see the Sugarloaf?"

Jacob shook his head.

"Ah. Well, when he saw the sun come up over the mountain -- it's an old mountain and rounded, not like these young and sharp toothed mountains we have here --"

Jacob's young imagination endowed several of the peaks he knew with great gnashing teeth, then quashed the image: his Grampa was still talking, and he wanted to pay attention.

"He pointed and said, 'There, gentlemen, is your seal,' and everyone crowded out the door and took a look.

"They were so taken by its beauty that they all agreed that it should indeed be Ohio's State Seal.

"That lasted about as long as some artist painted it, for he put several hills where only one should be, but that's how it became."

"Oh."

Jacob's single syllable was sufficient to state his understanding.

"Now after I met Connie ..."

Jacob tilted his head a little, blinking, and the Old Sheriff knew this meant he had a question but he was too polite to ask it.

"What did Connie look like?" Sarah asked for him, and he turned his head and looked up at her and nodded.

Linn took a long breath, his face that of a man looking at an old and very favored memory.

"I remember her hair," he murmured. "It was straight as a die and brown as a nut. She was a wee slip of a thing ... I could span her waist like this" -- he made a circle with his hands, touching the tips of his thumbs and his middle fingers -- "she had deep eyes, bottomless eyes .... I could swim in those eyes ..."

His voice trailed off as his expression saddened.

"And I loved her more than any man could ever love a woman," he whispered.

"We were going to raise horses and young'uns, at least a dozen of each."

"What happened?" Jacob asked, his voice bright, innocent.

"The pox." Linn's voice was flat. "And that damned war. I ... got slickered ... no."

He shook his head, looked away, looked down, then looked directly at his young grandson.

"I listened to a slick talking recruiter and I went off to war, damned fool! that I was" -- he spat the word --

"You could not have known the smallpox would sweep through," Sarah said quietly.

Linn glared up at her. "It doesn't matter. I should have been there!"

"You can't change that."

"I know." His voice was tight, full of self-accusation, full of grief.

"What did you do then?"

"I came here," Linn said slowly, "by kind of a round about route."

Jacob puzzled over this, studying the close-laid floor boards, then he looked up and asked, "Aunt Sarah is your daughter?"

Linn nodded. "That was part of the round about route."

"I'll fill you in," Sarah whispered, and Linn's eyes flicked up to the pretty young woman and he nodded, once.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

55. ABOUT HORSES

 

"Jacob, tell me about horses."

"Yes, sir," Jacob replied, surprised. "Horses ... are big and they're four wheel drive with leather upholstery and color coordinated fur trim --"
Sarah snickered and Jacob turned around, eyes big and distressed: "Well they do! Mama said so!"

"I'm sure your Mama is exactly right," Linn said gently, trying hard not to smile. "What else can you tell me about horses?"

"We ride 'em and they're fast."

"Anything else?"

"They eat grass and hay and corn or whatever you grain 'em with and it's every day work to muck out the barn."

Linn nodded approvingly. "A man's got to take care of his horse," he agreed quietly.

"Yes, sir."

"There's something you forgot."

"What's that?" Jacob's question was spontaneous, surprised.

"Your horse is your life."

"Sir?"

Linn looked up at Sarah and Jacob saw a smile -- no, not quite a smile in the man's eyes ... he saw something he saw in his Mama's eyes, right before she did something unexpected.

There was a gust of wind, sand stung Jacob's cheek: he slammed his eyelids reflexively, shutting them against any airborne grit, and of a sudden it was hot, hot and ... and the sun was on him -- but he was in his Old Grampa's office --

The wind fell away just as fast as it gusted up and Jacob opened his eyes, blinked.

The three of them were in the middle of a trackless prairie.

"How much water do you have, Jacob?" his Old Grampa asked.

Jacob blinked, looked around.

His Apple-horse was contentedly cropping grass, slashing his tail; he was still saddled, Jacob's canteen hung from the horn, his rifle was scabbarded.

My rifle? he thought, staring at the crescent butt plate.

My rifle is a .22. A bolt. What's ... that's my rifle?

"You have one canteen of water. Apple-horse here can get some water from the grass he's eatin' but not near enough, not even with a heavy dew. He'll need water too. Which way is the nearest water?"

Jacob frowned and walked in a slow circle, eyes busy in the distance.

Father and daughter watched with approval as the lad's thoughts were evident by his survey.

Water runs downhill, he thought, assessing the lay of the land: he raised an arm, pointed. "There," he said. "There ought to be a crick there."

Sarah, surprised, looked at her father, then at the lad.

"His Mama's from Ohio," Linn explained. "It's how they pronounce it. You've heard me say it."

Sarah considered this but offered no comment.

"Jacob, you are exactly right. There is a crick that-a-way. Now that sun is pretty high and pretty hot and the air is dry. You could walk it from here to there but it's considerable farther than it looks."

"I could ride," Jacob suggested.

Linn nodded, his eyes tightening a little at the corners, they way they did when he approved of an answer.

"That's exactly right. Now suppose this was desert and not prairie. Could you walk it?"

"Yes, sir."

"You could try." Linn's voice was quiet. "You might even make it. Havin' a horse makes it more certain. Steal a man's horse and you condemn a man to walk and that's a death sentence in some places. That's why it's the law that we hang horse thieves."

Jacob's expression was solemn as this hard lesson, these several hard lessons, sank in.

"Yes, sir," he said in a small voice.

"Now let's get you in saddle leather and head out."

Jacob took a step toward his Apple-horse and nearly tripped over a stump that wasn't there a moment before: grateful, he heaved his little-boy leg up onto the smooth-cut surface and used it as a mounting block: he did not fail to notice that the stump disappeared as soon as his weight came off it.

Grampa's magic, he thought, grinning.

The three turned their mounts toward the high country.

"Now Jacob," his Old Grampa said as they rode three abreast, "why does a man wear a pistol?"

"To keep himself safe, sir," Jacob replied immediately.

Linn nodded. "You're on horseback. What is your main reason for wearing a shortgun?"

"Mmm ... main reason?" Jacob echoed uncertainly.

Linn nodded. "It's to kill your horse."

Jacob's jaw dropped and his eyes betrayed amazement, dismay and even disappointment.

"Jacob, what would happen if your foot was caught in your stirrup when your horse reared and started to run?"

Jacob thrust his boot toe against the doghouse stirrup. "It can't," he protested.

"Why can't it?"

"I use doghouses, sir."

"Right, and what do they prevent?"

"They keep my foot --"

Jacob stopped, realization settling in with a solid ker-thunk.

"They keep my foot from going through and getting caught, sir."

"What would happen if you used open stirrups and you couldn't get your foot out?"

"I'd be hung up, sir."

"You'd be kicked to death," Linn said flatly. "Horses don't like things they don't understand. They're used to us walking around them and riding on them but they don't like us hangin' off one leg and bouncin' our gourd off the rocks. They'll panic and run faster and kick at us when they do."

"Ow," Jacob said softly.

"That's the big reason a man carries a pistol. If you fall and you're tangled, shoot the horse. Put five through his boiler room as fast as you can, kill it before it kills you."

His voice was emotionless, the voice of a man who knew his subject from hard experience.

Jacob's hand came up to the Smith & Wesson's handle at his belt.

It hadn't been there a moment ago.

"That's not a heavy enough gun for the job," the Old Sheriff said quietly, "but you're using doghouses and Apple is behavin' himself so we won't trouble to change out just yet."

"Yes, sir."

"Now Jacob, what advantage does a horse give over a man on foot?"

"You can run faster," Jacob replied immediately, "and farther."

"Right you are," Linn agreed, then gave his grandson a warm look.

"Jacob, do you like to run Apple?"

"Yes, sir!" Jacob grinned.

"I reckon you get that from me," Linn said, and the smile just started to spread over about half his face, and then he looked over his shoulder.

"Might be a good time to do just that," he said, his voice climbing in volume. "YAAAHHHH!"

Jacob looked over his shoulder.

Apple-horse, knee-trained, knew to the tenth of a heartbeat the moment Jacob saw a living flood of shaggy brown fur come over the low rise behind them, thundering at a wide open gallop, cloven-hooved death covering the prairie at an unholy velocity, and the only thing to keep him alive was the horse beneath him.

Sarah, riding upright with a composed expression, might as well have been trotting mildly down the middle of the street on a sunny afternoon; her big Snowflake-mare stretched out her long Frisian legs and proceeded to cover ground at a surprising rate, and Cannonball, being Cannonball, was quite ready to squirt forward, then double back or dodge to the side: Paso Fino she was, with their butter-smooth gait, but when her blood was up, she loved nothing more than to pin her ears flat back on her skull, shove her nose into the wind and imitate a shining copper arrow streaking across the ground.

Father, daughter and quadruple-great grandson streaked across the waving grasses ahead of the living flood that was a native herd of American bison that turned the land from there to the horizon behind, a sea of uniform dusty brown.

 

Willamina smiled as she opened the white cardboard box.

She withdrew the rifle, removed the plastic wrapping, the tags, the chamber plug; she cycled the action, laid a thumb over the hammer spur, tried the trigger, nodded, then she shouldered it.

Too short, she thought. Just the way it should be.

"Is that why you were measuring Jacob the other day?" Richard asked, resting his hands on his wife's shoulders and squeezing gently: it was their private exchange, the wordless way he could say to her, "I love you," even in public.

Willamina nodded, replaced the rifle in the box. "The scabbard is there. Floral carved and background dyed."

"Those look like ... bottleneck ... .44-40s?"

"Yep."

"Willa ... he's only nine."

"He's big enough."

She opened another box and removed a birdshead handle single action with adjustable sights.

"Ooohhh," Richard purred. "Niiice."

"Glad you approve."

"If they're for me, I do!"

"Jacob's."

"Willa!"

"Yours are over there."

Richard laughed.

"Are mine as good looking as these?"

"Better," she purred, turning and running her arms around his neck. "Yours are engraved."

"So I can't sell 'em?" he murmured as his lips sought hers.

"Mm-hmm," she giggled, and conversation was suspended for several long moments.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

56. A BIG-EYED LITTLE BOY

Jacob was still shivering a little.

The Old Sheriff saw the tremor as the lad gripped the brush and curried his Apple-horse.

The Old Sheriff watched without comment as Jacob tended his horse's hooves.

Shaking a little or not, his hands knew their work: Linn nodded quiet approval at his quadruple-great-grandson's efforts.

Sarah leaned her shoulder against his arm, her arms folded; she, too, watched the lad with approval, for she knew what it was to tend properly to one's mount.

"He's not from Texas, is he?" she murmured, and father and daughter looked at one another and shared a mutual moment, and Jacob's quick young ear caught the comment.

His Mama read him that phrase when she was reading him the Old Sheriff's journal, and every time he heard it, he thought of that lean old lawman with the iron grey mustache, and it is a powerful thing for a young boy to know he has the approval of an older man.

Conversation did not resume until Apple-horse was turned out into the pasture, where he paced the periphery of the fenced field, his mane rippling in the wind and the sun shining in snakelike curves on his spotted hide.

The Old Sheriff folded himself like a jackknife to set down on a hay bale, but not before he'd tossed a saddle blanket over another and waited until Sarah sat herself with a queen's grace on another: Jacob dropped without ceremony on a third, and the Old Sheriff asked quietly, "What did you think of the buffalo?"

Jacob's eyes widened. "That was something!" he said sincerely, then tilted his head a little as he regarded his honored ancestor.

"Grampa, where was that?"

"Kansas," Linn grinned.

"I never been to Kansas before," Jacob protested.

"You were never in the late 1860s, either," Sarah pointed out.

Jacob blinked, his quick mind racing.

"Does that make me old?" he asked, and both the Sheriff and Sarah laughed.

"Heavens no," Sarah smiled. "You are still you as you've always been. You just ... saw something ... nobody alive today has ever seen."

"They haven't?" His eyes were wider and his memory flashed back to the sight of a shaggy flood pouring at him from over the rim of the world, suddenly filling all of creation with dust and thunder.

"Nope," Linn smiled a little.

"Can I see it again sometime?" Jacob asked hopefully.

"I don't know," the Old Sheriff admitted. "I won't lie to you, Jacob, I ... honestly ... don't know."

Jacob closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the desperate ride, the pounding gallop, the urgency of his knees as he gripped the Apple-horse's barrel and the three did their best to outrace the hoof-thunder death that threatened to sweep over them like a living ocean of cloven hammers.

He opened his eyes again.

A bull buffalo stood before him.

Jacob's eyes were big before.

Linn did his best not to laugh as they dilated to truly impressive proportions.

He walked around the head of the buff, laid a familiar hand on the shaggy head. "Ever see one of these up close?" he asked.

Sarah leaned a little to the right so she could see Jacob around the front of the buff, cupping her hand as she stage-whispered, "He likes to show off!"

Jacob stood, face shining with awe, and he reached up his hand -- hesitantly, carefully, then bolder as he worked his fingers into the thick, curly fur, and the Old Sheriff remembered something from a very long time ago, from when he too was a big-eyed little boy, that feeling of amazement as he realized just how utterly huge and powerful a living creature could be.

 

Willamina walked out to the barn -- if Jacob wasn't in the house or around the house, he was out at the barn, and if he wasn't in the barn, he would be somewhere in sight of the barn, almost certainly horseback.

"Jacob?" she called, looking into the darkened interior.

Jacob stood, dropping his arm, almost as if he'd been reaching for something.

"Yes, Mama?"

"Jacob, I have something for you, and supper's ready."

"Yes, Mama."

Willamina looked around, frowning a little; all she saw was the familiar inside of their barn.

She looked down, frowned a little.

Cow track? she thought. I don't have any beef ...

"Jacob ... did you see a cow in here?"

"No, Mama." He looked back to the empty center of the barn and Willamina's quick mother's eye saw her son had ... if not a secret ... at least a memory, of something... in his expression.

"Mama," Jacob asked, "did you ever see a buffalo up close?"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

57. WJ GARRISON

"Did you ever see one of these?"

Jacob blinked.

He was fully dressed and standing at the edge of a corral.

Old Grampa was holding a funny looking revolver.

Jacob knew it was a revolver, he knew how it probably worked, and he knew it looked ... funny.

The Old Sheriff laughed. "It's called a LeMat," he explained. "Here, stick in your ear plugs and we'll try it."

Jacob's hands went to his collar bones.

He usually wore his shooting plugs around his neck and sure enough, they were there.

It never occurred to him to wonder how he could have a set of plastic ear plugs in an era when plastic had yet to be invented.

"All in?" Old Grampa asked, and Jacob nodded, grinning.

"This is just over a 40 caliber, she's a 42, and she carries nine balls. Think you can handle it?"

"I think so, sir."

"It's not got the beef of a .44-40. You can handle a .44-40."

Jacob nodded, grinning.

"It's some heavier but you'll do all right. See that plank yonder?"

Jacob looked across the empty corral, to the plank leaned up against a stack of hay bales, at the bare hillside behind.

"I see it, sir."

"You see that white square about head height."

"Yes, sir."

"Hit that."

"Easy peasy," Jacob grinned, accepting the revolver: he took it in a two-hand grip, hefted it once or twice, frowning a little, then he fetched back on the heavy percussion hammer and raised it, his young face serious as the tiny front sight came up where it should be.

He grinned at the recoil: the pistol's weight soaked up the worse of it, the rest was controlled with young muscles, and a hole appeared in the white rectangle as the plank shivered under the impact.

"Again."

Jacob stopped, frowning.

"Grampa?"

"Yes, Jacob?"

"Grampa, this is a percussion."

The Old Sheriff nodded. "Yes, Jacob, it is."

"Sooooo ... a percussion cap busts when you fire it ...."

Linn looked at his grandson, a smile lurking at the corners of his eyes.

"Grampa, if this was a Navy Colt I'd have to raise it up before I cocked it again."

"You mean like this?" Linn grinned, and his hand raised and a gleaming blued-steel Navy Colt went BANG and he raised the muzzle to the zenith and hauled back the hammer and cap fragments sprinkled down on the back of his wrist.

"Yeah!" Jacob grinned, bringing his own pistol barrel to the vertical and cocking it as it came back down.

The LeMat drove another .42 ball through the clear air and the plank shivered again, the second black hole a thumbnail's width from the first.

Jacob drove three more into the seasoned pine and the fifth shot bounced the wood hard enough it fell toward them and Jacob looked up at his Grampa with an innocent expression and said "Grampa, I think I broke that target," and the Old Sheriff threw his head back and laughed, his callused hand squeezing his grandson's shoulder in approval.

Linn relieved his very grand son of the heavy revolver and they walked across the corral, their boots silent in the hoof-powdered dirt.

"Set that plank back up, Jacob."

"Yes, sir." Jacob scampered ahead, seized he warped wood, slammed it back upright against the hay bales.

Of course it fell down again, a woody note echoing off the hillside as it dropped face-down and threw up a double curlicue of dust in the process.

Jacob tried it again, shoving hard against the top of the plank and teasing the bottom out with the toe of his boot.

"That'll do right there," Linn said quietly, approval in his voice: "now step behind me."

He cocked the hammer, backed up four paces, then reached up and flipped the hammer nose.

Jacob looked curiously at the big pistol, not quite sure what his Old Grampa just did, and then the shotgun barrel spoke and Jacob jumped a little, his eyes going wide and his mouth widening into a delighted grin, for the concussion of most of an ounce of shot was considerably more potent than the report of pushing a single .42 ball out the barrel ... and then Jacob turned to look at the chewed-up whitewash rectangle that just inherited a swarm of shot the size of a man's hand.

"Wow," he said quietly.

He turned to look up again at his Old Grampa and just that quick they were in a really old-fashioned general store.

"Welcome to the Mercantile," his Old Grampa grinned, handing him a canteen: it was heavy, the blanket was damp, but the water was sweet and tooth-aching cold. "I'll show you where I got that revolver."

An old man came out from the back, flipped the neck loop of his long storekeeper's apron over his neck and turned around, allowing Linn to tie the apron at the middle of his back.

"Thank'ee kindly," he said quietly. "My poor old shoulder won't let me reach back like I used to."

Linn nodded understandingly. "You're not supposed to imitate my bad examples," Linn chuckled.

"I didn't have all these aches and pains when I was young," the merchant muttered, shaking his balding head, then he stopped and looked at Jacob, frowning.

"You look like ..." he said slowly, looking suspiciously up at the Sheriff, then shook his head.

"Can't be related to you," he muttered.

"No?" Linn asked, and Jacob saw hidden laughter dancing merrily in the man's pale eyes.

JW Garrison shook his head. "Can't be," he said firmly, thrusting an analytical finger at Jacob. "No mustache."

This time Jacob laughed with the men.

 

Mrs. Garrison was every bit the sweetheart Jacob remembered from his Mama reading his Very Great Grampa's journal aloud to him.

She also calculated (correctly) that both Keller men would welcome some good berry pie, and fussed at them until they sat at her table with its spotless red-and-white-check tablecloth and partook thereof.

"WJ," Linn said afterward, as he took a noisy slurp of coffee from a huge glazed-crock mug, "tell me again about that LeMat revolver of yours."

WJ Garrison nodded a little, smiling quietly, looked over at Jacob.

"Young man," he said in a voice that held laughter under its surface, "tell me what you know of the Navy."

"Theyyyy," Jacob said carefully, "wear really clean uniforms and they ride ships and they've got the best fighter pilots in the world!"

WJ Garrison might not have known what a "fighter pilot" was, but he knew respect in a young boy's voice when he heard it.

"We tried to keep our uniforms clean," WJ Garrison agreed, "and the black gang -- the men who stoked the boilers -- weren't nearly as clean. But we did our best."

"Tell me about this revolver."

WJ nodded, picked it up: Jacob blinked, uncertain as to just what happened, for he was familiar with black powder revolvers and he knew how filthy they got when fired.

This one was pristine.

He knew he and his Old Grampa fired that revolver empty.

This one had round balls seated precisely below the chamber mouths and were freshly greased with ... something white ...

Lithium grease? Jacob thought, then he realized he wasn't when he came from, and this probably wasn't lithium grease ...

"I used this to repel boarders one dark night," WJ said, memory thickening his voice, "and I used all nine plus the shotgun." He chuckled. "My last shot was into a rowboat, and it was enough to discourage everyone in it." He looked ruefully at the Old Sheriff. "And then I took one step backward and caught my heel, I tried to twist back onto my feet and fell right into the water!"

"How did you get out?" Jacob blurted, dismay on his young, pre-fuzzed face.

The world twisted around him.

Jacob felt the LeMat grip in his hand as he wobbled, trying not to fall, realizing he was going to go over the side: rather than fall uncontrolled, he thrust hard as he went over center and managed a somersault, drove into the water feet first, thrusting the pistol overhead in a desperate hope of keeping it dry.

Jacob felt his feet hit sand: he pushed up and a hard hand seized his wrist, pulled him clear of the water.

WJ Garrison leaned back in his chair and Jacob was back in the tidy little kitchen.

His hands went to his thighs, pressing against the denim, seeking the least trace of wet.

Bone dry.

"And that," WJ Garrison sighed, "is how I kept that good old revolver out of the drink." He looked over at Jacob with an understanding expression.

"Now." Linn's voice was suddenly businesslike. "WJ, did those packages come in?"
"They sure did," WJ grinned. "Got 'em right here."

Jacob watched as two wooden boxes were set on the red-and-white tablecloth check.

Linn opened one, then the other: he reached into the nearest, withdrew a factory new Colt revolver, handed it to Jacob.

"Think you'll be able to handle one of these?" he grinned.

Jacob turned the muzzle away from then, flipped open the loading gate, fetched the hammer back to half cock, turned the cylinder six clicks: he closed the loading gate, cocked the hammer the rest of the way and lowered it, then examined the pistol closely.

".44-40," he murmured, then handed it back to his Old Grampa.

"Yes, sir," he said. "I reckon I could handle that one."

Linn replaced it in the box. "Figured you could." He stood. "We'd best go."

He shook hands with WJ Garrison, proprietor of the Firelands Mercantile. "Many thanks."

"A pleasure," WJ said, and he looked at Jacob, extended his hand. "You still don't look a thing like this old man."

"I know, sir," Jacob said sadly, "but I'll grow me a mustache just as soon as I can."

Jacob was falling, falling of a sudden, and then he was in his own bed, cuddled into his own pillow, under his own quilt, and he realized drowsily that all was well, and he sank again into the dark lake of slumber.

 

Next morning there were two wooden boxes on the kitchen table, on his Mama's red and white check tablecloth.

Jacob came scampering downstairs in his sock feet like he always did, boots in hand, and when he saw those two wooden boxes stacked beside his plate, he dropped his boots and stared.

Willamina smiled across the table and placed a plate of bacon in the middle of the table. "Breakfast is ready," she said, turning back to the frying pan and reaching for two eggs. "Have a set and get started."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

58. TWO SHERIFFS, TWO SHOTGUNS

Sheriff Linn Keller casually raised his good old double gun to belt height, wiped the hammers back with a sweep of his thumb and fired one, then the other barrel at the punished plank across the canal.

He was within ten feet when he fired; the heavy shot knocked chunks the size of a man's fist out of the seasoned pine, and the protesting plank spun and shivered and fell dramatically into the dirt.

Linn broke the gun and casually plucked out the empties, slipped them into his coat pocket and removed another two rounds, dunked them into the chambers and raised the britch end to close it.

He bent easily, leaned the ragged plank against the sagging bales with a little daylight showing through the middle of the pile, and laid the barrels against the front of his shoulder, twin muzzles to the zenith: he sauntered casually back across the corral, handed the shotgun to Jacob, then -- quickly, unexpectedly -- spun, dropped to a low squat and fired both revolvers.

Nobody saw him draw.

One moment the man stood tall and relaxed, handing the shotgun to his chief deputy and firstborn son ... the next, he was halfway into a squat, his coat flared and both revolvers in hand, and the shot on the way.

He stood, holstered both revolvers, picked up an empty peach can, tossed it in the air right handed.

He shot it left handed.

The lean old lawman with the iron-grey mustache sauntered slowly across the finely powdered dirt, picked the can up left handed, flipped it high in the air and drove it with his right hand Colt.

He holstered again as the spinning can wobbled back to earth; he picked it up, his eyes quiet and his face expressionless, elaborately ignoring the little crowd that leaned against the corral rails, some leaning on a post or draping forearms across the top rail, ignoring the accumulated dirt: little boys hung over the lower rail, hats shoved well back on their heads, faces shining with admiration as their local lawman paid them no attention at all.

Linn paced slowly back to Jacob, tossing the holed can from one hand to another; he stopped and relieved his quiet-eyed, poker-faced son of the double gun, turned and paced back out a third of the way, and stopped.

"What's he gonna do now?" a little boy's voice whispered, and Jacob's ear twitched to hear it, but he never changed expression: he'd heard his own boy whisper in just that manner, watching old Grampa shoot.

Linn dropped his hand, then heaved the can straight up, and Jacob took off a-runnin'.

Linn brought the double gun up and drove that can at the height of its rise -- once, twice -- tinned steel shredded under the double charge of swan shot -- Linn thrust the shotgun to the side without looking and released it, drew both revolvers and proceeded to hammer .44 slugs into the clear Colorado sky by virtue of punching a hole through what was left of a tin can first.

Jacob snatched the shotgun as his Pa released it; it was a game they rehearsed, for neither wished to be embarrassed by dropping the shotgun right there in front of God and everybody; they'd done this many times, at least half a hundred so far, and Jacob always loafed against a post until just the right moment.

He knew his Pa's timing and he knew his speed and the length of his stride, and so far he'd consistently judged his speed well.

Now to be perfectly fair, a .44-40 bullet is not slowed much by passing through both sides of a tinned can.

It's slowed even less when the can is made up mostly of holes held together by a loose webwork of shredded steel.

Ten concussions later, the can wobbled and spun and hit the ground.

Two little boy streaked out from where they'd swung under the bottom rail: the can was a prize, and each was determined to beat the other to it, and they ended up colliding rolling in the dirt and finally one snatched it triumphantly out of the dirt and bore it off, holding it at arm's length overhead, while the other chased after, yelling.

Father and son shared a look, for they knew the value of demonstrating to the public that they were fast and they were good.

It tended to cut down on misunderstandings.

 

Same corral.

Same town.

Same cloudless Colorado sky.

Another century, another Sheriff, but the same salutary reason.

Sheriff Willamina Keller smiled at her brother and winked conspiratorially.

Acting Sheriff Will Keller handed her a tin can and her favorite pump gun.

Willamina wore her usual tailored blue suit dress and heels, a pleasant smile; it had been a while since she was out in public like this, and she knew the many eyes on her would be watching for stiffness, for a grimace, for a sign of discomfort.

She dipped her knees just a little as she swung her arm down, came up on her toes as she winged the can straight up as hard as she could sling it.

The Winchester came to shoulder easily, the way it always did, the Winchester she'd bought herself as a graduation present, a gift to herself for surviving nursing school.

Her eye was pale and steady behind the Williams receiver peep and she shot with both eyes open, she saw the can and she willed the barrel to point where she wished it to and little boys watching from the bottom rails of the rebuilt corral squealed happily and held their ears as the good looking woman with pale eyes and a Marine-short hair bob slammed eight fast charges of sevens and a half skyward, the tin can bouncing with each shot, each swarm shoving it further into the azure overhead.

Will took out at a dead-out sprint when she started shooting, skidded to a fast stop when number eight launched, seized the hot barrel as it was thrust to the side: he was just starting his rearward step when Willamina's hands came up again, and a pair of black-plastic Austrian justice fired together, both pistols speaking with one voice.

In spite of its perforations, the can spun again as two larger holes knocked it a good one.

Willamina was holstered before the can hit the ground.

She drew her coat back over her pistols, turned: it was a dancer's move, on the balls of her feet, and she dropped flawless curtsy, then she and her twin brother paced back to the side of the corral.

It took a special dispensation from town council to allow this little demonstration; it was becoming a regular feature of their Sunday afternoons there in town, usually with Barrents plugging in a long magazine for his AR and punching a rabbit silhouette in a sheet of tin, there in that self-same corral, or one of the other deputies elaborately setting up a row of penny lollipops or soda crackers on a plank nailed to a corral post, and then dispatching these with carbine or pistol -- crackers were a favorite, as they shattered with a spray of tan crumbs, though the sight of shattered sugar and torn paper was a crowd pleaser as well.

Far and away the most popular, though, was their pale-eyed Sheriff in her suit dress and heels, this courteous and ladylike soul who could (and had) held her own in a good old fashioned knock down drag out bar fight, who'd decked one a man well more than a head taller than she, hauled another of like size off his feet and introduced him into a nearby horse trough (despite his vigorous and physical protests), and later that afternoon, helped a young and inexperienced mother change the diaper on her very young child on a park bench.

The public saw that much of their Sheriff.

They did not see her bring the young mother into the Silver Jewel and sit her down to the first good meal she'd had in two days, nor did the public hear the telephone conversations that garnered the young woman lodging not far south of there, and nobody knew of Willamina's suggestion to a certain tall, bald cleric, that he might have need of an experienced secretary.

When twin brother Will looked up a week later and greeted Abbot William -- "please, just Brother William," the tonsured monk smiled gently as the two old friends shook hands -- and the Abbott asked after Willamina, and why ... well, it was the first that Will put things together, and realized that young woman his sister ran into there in the town's little park had turned into just a crackerjack secretary for the Monastery, and a marvelous organizer with the White Sisters, and was already in charge of what the Abbot laughingly called "the Infantry" -- most of the Sisters were beyond mothering age, and this younger blood was just what the young mothers and their children needed.

The Abbot went on out to Willamina's place, just as his predecessor had done well more than a century before, and for the same purpose.

It seems the Old Sheriff, in his time, did something very much the same.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

59. AN OLD MAN'S TEMPER

Jacob was uncharacteristically quiet at the supper table.

Willamina knew something was troubling her son; Richard, too, made that connection; the two shared a look, each finding the other studying their offspring.

As he usually did when a matter weighted his mind, Jacob kind of shoved his green beans around for a while, then after they were cold and no longer palatable, he suddenly started eating them, almost as if he were punishing himself.

Conversation was not always guaranteed at their table.

There were nights when few words were spoken; there were nights when the conversation involved both parents and child and was animated, free-wheeling and generally punctuated with laughter.

Jacob finished his green beans and laid his fork quietly on his plate.

Willamina knew a question was to follow; Richard was just finishing the last of his elk backstrap when Jacob asked, "Mama, are you going back to work tomorrow?"

"Yes, Jacob," she said quietly. "I am."

Jacob nodded, took a drink of milk, set the glass back down.

"How do you feel about that?" Richard asked, looking at his wife and then his son.

"Like I want dessert," Jacob said frankly, with the disarming smile of a child trying to swindle, wheedle or flatter his way into the good graces of the fresh baked pie on the cooling racks over on the counter.

Richard raised an eyebrow and Willamina nodded, then tilted her head to the side and back slightly.

Richard grinned, understanding her unspoken communication.

"I think that can be arranged," he grinned, and Willamina watched her son's brow furrow as he glared at the curved, chilled side of his half-glass of milk.

"All right, out with it," she almost whispered. "If you blast that glass with another hundred kilovolts it'll shatter and the milk will boil and I'll have a mess to clean up!"

Startled, Jacob blinked, then grinned, then his face fell again and his brow resumed its worried furrow.

"Mama," he said, "they told me today you gotta bad temper."

"Who told you, sweetie?"

Richard neatly bisected the blackberry pie, one swift slice of the ancient, handle-worn butcher knife that probably saw kitchen duty on the Ark: he turned the pie a little, sliced a second time; another turn, another slice, and the pie was divided into six equal pieces.

"At school." He squirmed in his chair. "I gotta temper too," he muttered, and Willamina's ear twitched: a mother's ear can pick a hidden truth out of an otherwise innocuous statement, and her intuition told her this was more the source of his distress than any action of hers.

"Oh?" she said in a carefully neutral voice.

Richard slid a slice onto a small plate, listening carefully.

"Mama, I'm almost 'fraid 'a ma temper," Jacob admitted. "But you gotta temper and you do all right."

"Every man should have a good amount of temper about him," Richard opined quietly as the third slice slid out of the pie tin and onto gleaming china -- that looks like the stuff my mother got out of oats boxes, he thought absently before continuing -- "matter of fact I read that in a Western somewhere."

"Owen Wister, The Virginian," Willamina affirmed. "Did something happen at school, Jacob?"

"They were talkin' mean about you, Mama, and I wanted to pick up a desk and slam 'em a good one!" Jacob flared.

"So did you?"

"No ma'am," he muttered, dropping his eyes.

"Did you do anything?"

Jacob's ears were already red; they were positively scarlet now, his face coloring more slowly. "I walked away," he said thickly, as if ashamed.

Richard began twisting the ice cream scoop through good vanilla, cutting big curls and placing them precisely on the still-warm slices.

He placed the first one in front of Jacob, rested a fatherly hand on his son's shoulder.

"It takes a man to walk away from a fight," he said, his voice deep and reassuring. "You wanted to put them through a wall."

"Yes, sir."

"You didn't."

"No, sir."

"You could have bounced their faces off the brickwork."

"Yes, sir."

"You could have dislocated or fractured their knees with one kick, you could have slammed their windpipe and they would choke to death on their own blood, you could have driven a pencil through their atlantoaxis and killed them in half a heartbeat."

"Yes, sir."

"But you didn't."

"No,sir."

Richard handed his son a fork. "Ya done good, son."

Jacob blinked, not entirely reassured. "Mama," he said, "how do you handle your temper?"

"I'll tell you how I handle mine," Richard said, turning and picking up a second pie and ice cream and leaning over the table to set it in front of his wife: "here, you need a fork" -- he turned back, picked up two forks, turned again and handed one to Willamina.

Jacob waited until the last plate of pie and ice cream was on the table before fixing his father with bright and curious eyes.

Richard grinned as he chewed happily. "Oh Gawd that's good," he mumbled, and Willamina smiled indulgently at his overt lack of manners.

Uncharacteristic for one of so few years, Jacob waited patiently, putting his time to good use, devouring his own pie and ice cream.

"I think we were talking about your temper," Willamina said gently. "I'd like to hear about this."

"You're a fine one to talk," Richard grinned. "Remember that fellow you picked up left-handed and dunked in the horse trough?"

"Which time?" Willamina riposted, bringing a quick, quickly-hidden grin to (and from) her son's face.

"Never mind. Jacob."

"Yes, sir?"

"Jacob, you're what ... nine now?"

"Yes, sir, nearly ten."

Richard gave Willamina almost a helpless look, as if to ask how this happened so fast -- he'd said as much before -- and Willamina's warm expression showed her understanding.

"Jacob ... I was ten ..."

Richard shifted uncomfortably in his chair, cleared this throat. "I went fishing with a group of boys about my age."

"Yes, sir?" Jacob slid his empty plate back, fixed his father with bright and sincere eyes.

"They thought it would be funny to grab me and break open a cattail and rub the fuzz in my face." He frowned. "I nearly choked.

"When they finally let me go I grabbed my cane pole and broke it over my knee. Ever fish with a cane pole?"
Jacob shook his head.

"It's bamboo, it's dry and when it breaks it splinters. It's sharp, like spearpoints."
Richard's hands closed slowly, as if about the shaft of a freshly broken bamboo shaft.

"I went to drive that pointy end right through their guts."

"What happened?"

"They ran faster than me," he admitted. "But I wanted more than anything to kill especially the one that rubbed cattail fuzz in my face, it nearly suffocated me."

He looked directly at his son. "That was my temper, Jacob. I still have that temper. If I let it go ... I could do a great deal of harm." He smiled a little. "But I don't and you didn't either."

Willamina nodded slowly, for she understood exactly what her husband was saying.

She smiled a little, remembering what she'd read of her ancestor with the iron-grey mustache.

She remembered how he, too, seized a miscreant, left-handed, and bore him to a horse trough, just like her short-tempered ancestor.

Willamina considered that her husband had illustrated the point adequately, and there was no need to affirm his account by recounting the Old Sheriff's impulsive violences.

An old man's temper would remain an old man's secret.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

60. WANDERING

I usually know pretty much what I want to say before I set down.

Usually I write down an account of occurrences, or significant events, or maybe lessons I've learned.

Tonight ... tonight I set down and heard a distinct whizzing and that must have been my mind, sailing out the nearest open door.

 

"I thought I read this," Willamina murmured, blinking: it had been a long day, her eyes felt like they were full of sand, she felt a tremor in the small of her back.

It had been a long and difficult day but she and her people prevailed; there were days when reason and logic were sufficient to alter others' behavior, and then there were days -- like today -- when you have to speak the language the evil-doers understand, and she had, quickly, brutally, and very physically.

It was her habit to relax by reading, and tonight she wished to read the words of her honored ancestor, written in the days when men with callused hands and hard knuckles made their way peacefully or otherwise, and it was considered the right thing to do -- with no media second-guess, without social media postings, without the ubiquitous cell-phone videos suddenly sent to the local news station.

"All right, Granddad," she whispered. "Take me away."

 

I considered my years and I considered my young.

Little Dana sat on the couch opposite my chair, playing quietly with her china headed doll.

I could not but smile, looking at her ... she had Esther's features, or so I fancied, though her hair was much lighter and much more curly.

I remembered another little girl, a child not much older, a little girl holding a tired looking woman's hand.

I remembered the night I first came to Firelands.

 

Willamina's pupils dilated as she read, her lips slightly parted, eagerly converting her thrice-great-grandfather's precise script into a full-color movie, complete with sound and texture ... the warrior in her soul uncoiled and stood, tall and dark, quivering with eagerness, for that part of her rejoiced in a good knock-down, drag-out fight ... that part of her that was a survivor, an overcomer, rejoiced that she had survived the many attempts on her life, and made no apologies for this.

This part of her quivered like a hound striking a hot scent.

She knew there would be war.

 

I was where I intended to be.

I did not know quite how I knew this, only that this is where I should be, and where I should stay.

I learned long ago to listen to my gut.

I did so, as an officer, and that instinct kept myself and my men alive.

I did so, as a lawman afterward, and though it took me into harm's way, it kept me alive there as well.

A man's life is as long as the Almighty intends, and in that, I was content: so was I content with this knowledge, come to me in the dark of early evening, high in the mountains, in a town I'd never heard of.

I'd guested with two young, the children of a man I met, and lost: a hardened survivor of the same damned war that took his arm and nearly took my sanity, he dove into the muddy waters from the deck of a riverboat, fighting the hungry waters to bring out a child, a little girl-child who'd fallen over the rail where she'd leaned over out of curiosity and fascination.

My friend, a man I'd known mere hours, found the child -- how deep, I know not; somewhere between choppy, moon-shattered surface and muddy, leg-sucking bottom, he seized her around the waist and thrust hard against whatever was on that dark river's bottom.

He got the child to the surface and the boatmen seized the girl's frock and hauled her aboard, and my friend slid under the waters and was seen no more.

The riverboat's captain entrusted me with his few effects, gleaned from the small cabin he'd occupied, and I'd borne them to his children; with what little he had, and with what I'd earned recently, I staked the two children to pay off their ground, buy seed and a few cattle.

From their hospitality I'd ridden the mile on into Firelands, rode in on my good old plow horse Sam, rode in and found lodging for my horse and with Spencer rifle in hand, I followed the hostler's recommendation.

I set my boots toward the Silver Jewel Saloon.

 

Willamina looked over, across the room, wondering if she was looking at where the couch had been, whether some trace of curly-haired, blue-eyed Dana Lynne remained, then she smiled a little, eyes wandering to the black-glass mirror of the nighttime window, and she could feel hard ground underfoot -- irregular with wagons and horses' hooves leaving their impress, smelling the night air, feeling the evening chill, looking ahead, to the sides, the near-hypervigilance that was legacy of a warrior and a lawman.

Willamina took a long breath of the night air and lowered her pale eyes to the page again.

 

I knew I was going to tear into him.

I wanted nothing more than to drive his head plumb off his shoulders.

I carried a rifle and I wore a revolver and I had two good knives and I'd killed men with all of them but I wanted nothing more than to lay hands upon this sinner and give him a good dose of rip-him-to-pieces.

The woman's voice was pleasant, soft, just a trace of the Old South in her near-sibilant syllables: "Mr. Slade, please, just let us pass."

The man was fat, at least by Western standards, where honest workin' men were thin as a lath and seasoned as dried raw hide: he was a townie, he wore a townie suit and a townie hat, and his lips were moist and almost flabby.

My good right hand clenched and I slipped around behind him, not hard to do, for though I am a tall man and not at all small, I can move fast and I can move quiet, and I did both.

"Mr. Slade?" I said in as respectful a voice as I could muster: surprised, he turned, clearly not expecting anyone else -- especially not a man -- to call his name, and from this close.

"Yes?"

I knew if I hit him with a closed fist I would bust at least one knuckle and two bones in my hand on the point of his jaw, so I cocked my hand back and hit him right on the point of the chin just as hard as I could, with the heel of my hand.

When I hit him I felt the earth itself sing power and drive a bolt of lightning through my boot heels and up my spine and out my arm and Slade's head snapped back, his teeth met with a surprisingly loud click and his shoe soles came off the dirty, warped board walk.

I recall his hat flipped twice and he straightened out and he fell backward like a cut down tree.

Dirt squirted up from between the boards when he hit and his hat rolled on its brim, wobbling a little, until it finally straggled off the edge of the boardwalk and his Derby fell to the street below.

I recall the wolf in my belly threw back its head and screamed victory.

Rage seared my veins and I saw the world through a sparkling red curtain and I knew I must seize my emotion and shove it back down in its iron kettle and screw the lid down tight, and so I did, and a good thing.

The woman and her little girl were looking at me with big and frightened eyes.

I took a long breath, closed my eyes, opened them, then I lifted my skypiece and said quietly, "Ladies, may I be of any further service?"

That was Bonnie McKenna and her daughter Sarah, and I feel a tremor in my shoulders as I look again at this memory, for I look across at my little girl ... my dear child, all I have left of Esther, rest her soul ...

God, how I miss that woman!

 

Willamina's pale eyes studied the words.

She noted how the last sentence was less steady, as if the scribing fingers were affected by some strong feeling, and she noted the slight wrinkles on the paper.

She took this original journal, the same journal her ancestor's fingers knew, she turned this journal a little to catch the light across it.

"I thought so," she whispered.

Just below the words, the shakily-scrawled statement of grief and of loss, she made out the faint stain-patter.

Willamina bit her bottom lip and her own eyes stung as she realized this hard man, this warrior, this lean and pale-eyed lawman, was so deeply grieved over his red-headed wife's death, and she had not the voice to frame the word.

Her lips, though, uttered the single sibilant, the whisper that brought a sting to her own eyes.

"Tears," she whispered, and she rested trembling fingers on the faint water stains.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

61. SOAPY

 

When the big red-headed Irish fire chief first set foot in Firelands, he was met on the train depot by that pale eyed old lawman.

Linn knew he was the authority in the county and his word was law.

He also knew a fire chief would have to carry an equal authority.

His solution made a lasting impression.

The Irish Brigade came boiling out of the passenger car, laughing, joking, looking around, marveling at the mountains, the clear air, staring at what would be their little kingdom, for a fireman owns his fire district -- they were all grown men, but one stood out: he stood a full head taller than the others, his hair was a bright carrot color, his skin was pale and his eyes a clear blue, and his black handlebar was carefully, precisely, aggressively curled.

The Sheriff paid out of his own pocket for the new fire engine chained down on the flatcar following; the Sheriff paid out of his own pocket for the men to run it -- he'd set up a fund to pay their wages, and he'd paid for their trip West, from the Queen City, Porkopolis itself, where Ahrens steam powered fire engines were made.

He'd bought Firelands' first fire engine, he'd arranged the construction of their firehouse, according to the pattern deemed best by the men actually doing the work, and now he set about to establish the authority of their fire chief.

He did this by walking up to the tall, muscled Irishman and standing squarely in his path.

The Irishman was no stranger to a good fight.

He was no stranger to having lesser men stand in his way.

He was paused for a moment by this particular stranger: tall as he, as broad at the shoulders, leaner in the middle, and with the air of a man who got what he wanted, peacefully or otherwise.

"No Irish need apply," this pale eyed stranger declared, and Sean unbuttoned his coat, slipped it easily from his shoulders, handed it to one of the Irish firemen.

The Sheriff slid just as easily out of his coat and handed it to the pale-eyed boy beside him.

The Irishman took off his Derby hat and laid it atop the coat he'd just assigned his trusted deputy.

The Sheriff unbuckled his gunbelt and handed it and his Stetson to the lad who bore a distinct resemblance to the lean man with the iron-grey, carefully-curled mustache.

The two men backed up not one step: they each looked the other up and down, then set one foot back and raised their dukes.

 

Willamina's eyes were merry as she looked over the Ladies' Tea Society.

"Of course," she smiled, "in this advanced age, we know the fire department has lawful jurisdiction over any emergency." She smiled at Mrs. Finnegan, the fire chief's wife. "There is no longer a need for two warriors to knock the dog stuffing out of one another in public to establish that a man's orders will be followed."

"Oh, my," Mrs., Ecksenkemper, the Sunday school teacher murmured, "did they really do that?"

Willamina laughed. "Yes, Elsie, they did" -- Willamina could get away with addressing the dignified, matronly woman by her first name -- after all, Elsie was the closest thing Jacob had to a godmother, and Elsie fluttered around Richard when Willamina was in labor -- "RICH-ard! RICH-ard, how can you do that! RICH-ard, that poor girl is having your child! RICH-ard, how can you just sit there and eat like that?" -- while Richard slowly, methodically, spooned another curl of chocolate ice cream out of the round, quart sized cardboard container.

Richard sat there in the waiting room, systematically consuming the entire quart, and not tasting a single bite of it.

 

A month later, after the stone foundations were laid for the new firehouse, after the new fire engine was paraded up the street and back down, after the town was introduced to the sight of a three-horse hitch instead of a single nag or a pair, after the red-shirted Irishmen galloped the engine, smoke trailing, down the street to a burning brushpile and showed the world that yes, steam power could indeed throw water, and in a good volume, and at an impressive pressure -- after all this, the Sheriff had the entire Irish Brigade, including the Fire Chief, to his house for supper.

It was crowded but it was jovial, and neither he nor the fire chief bore any ill will for the good knock down drag out brawl the pair of them held on the depot platform, a fist fight that was still talked about with admiration and with wonder.

The fight hadn't been finished; the pair ended up sharing a rain barrel, they'd trooped to the Silver Jewel, they'd each borrowed a bar towel to dry their dripping hair and their wet, bruised faces, and each drank to the other's health, the other's pugilistic prowess, to the other's manhood, and each wished the other many fine sons and an equal number of beautiful daughters ... after which each pledged the other the use of knuckles, setting maul or shotguns as necessary, to protect the virtue of the many daughters each wished upon the other.

The meal was good, the meal was in fact excellent, the meal was well prepared of the best meat, the best-creamed mashed potatoes, the gravy was excellent, the bread fresh and fragrant and the coffee stout enough to chase hair out of a man's chest from the inside.

It was after the excellent meal, after good pie and after a series of unmannerly but relieving belches from nearly every man present, that cigars were produced, brandy was poured, and the men engaged in a highly informal, rather raucous, free wheeling discussion of several things at once, all of which came to a screeching halt when Sean asked of the Sheriff, "Now I would be knowin', like, why yon fellow at th' Silver Jewel called ye Soapy."

The Sheriff's face reddened a bit and he took a quick gulp of brandy, taking the moment to order his thoughts.

"I could tell ye a big lie," he began, and Sean threw his big Irish head back and laughed, happily pounding the Sheriff's shoulder blades with a paw big as half a plowshare.

"Aye, do that," the Irish chieftain roared happily, and the Sheriff set down his brandy snifter, raised both hands as if to fashion a reply from the empty air.

The man couldn't talk without his hands.

"I've known men who would lie where the truth would fit better," he began, "but in this case ..."

He looked up kind of sheepishly and the Irish Brigade leaned back or sat down, grinning and nudging one another with eager elbows.

"I'd been hurt," the Sheriff began, "and we had neither doctor nor doctor's office -- hell, we were lucky to have the livery stable and a barkeep -- you have to have the important stuff taken care of, y'see" -- the Irish Brigade nodded, for they definitely approved of a community that took care of its horses and its thirsty men.

"I was laid up in the upstairs of the Jewel, and the ladies were seeing to my recovery."

"I'll bet they were," the Welsh Irishman muttered, grinning wickedly, and there were knowing looks at this pronouncement.

"One of the ladies was Sarah McKenna, and she about yea tall" -- the Sheriff held his hand out, indicating a height of, oh, say just under shirt pocket tall.

"I was a-fever and out of my head, y'see" -- he paused, picked up his delicate-glass snifter, took a long drink.

"I was back in the War, y'see, and I was calling for the bugler, but soldiers are a profane lot, and I" -- he looked down into his nearly empty snifter, at least until Sean leaned over and dumped a good volume of good California brandy into the voluminous balloon -- "I swore."

The Brigade shared a common confused frown.

"You ... swore?" the German Irishman asked.

The Sheriff nodded, took another drink.

It was rare for him to get a load on, but tonight he was letting the badger out; he was by now feeling no pain a'tall, and was only feeling half his fingers and none of his toes.

As a matter of fact it was to his credit that he stood without swaying ... well, not very much, anyway.

"I swore," he said, "when I called for the bugler, and little Sarah McKenna picked up a block of lye soap and dunked it right between my teeth."

"She what?" Sean cackled delightedly.

Linn nodded. "Oh, yeah. Her Mama said if Sarah ever swore, her Mama would wash her mouth out with soap, so when I swore ... well, I reckon she figured she was helping her Mama."

"And that's why you're called Soapy."

"He's the only one I allow it from," Linn replied.

The good laughter of grown men greeted the Sheriff's admission; more tales were told that night, more brandy was drunk, and next morning, more head than one felt as if it were first cousin to the Montgolfier hot-air balloon that was flown in France.

 

"And that," Sheriff Willamina Keller concluded, "is how my Great-Great-Great Grandfather was known to one, and only one, man ... as Soapy."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

62. WHITTLIN'

There is a comfortable silence that grows between friends.

Good friends can set together and work on something, or just set, and nary a word between the two of them, and this is a comfortable silence, a silence that is not filled with strained conversation or forced levity.

Even that famous detective Sherlock Holmes was known to have remarked, " 'Pon my word, Watson, you have the most marvelous gift of silence!"

A father and son can become so blessed; it is more common, though, for such easy, un-strained silences to exist between grandfather and grandson.

Jacob sat on one bale of hay, his many-times-great granddad on another; each had a knife, each had a stick, and each was whittling.

The Old Sheriff made a half dozen fuzz sticks, good to start a fire in the stove, and Jacob tried -- to his credit, he did try, though more often than not the fuzz he whittled up ended up being lost to a too-enthusiastic stroke of his blade and he'd have to start over.

When this happened, he'd give his old Granddad a guilty look and start over, or sometimes he'd grab a fresh stick and try on that, in case he'd whittled the luck out of the first one.

Whittling often gives a grandboy time to think and time to work up a question, and whittling is one way grandfathers wait patiently for such questions.

Sure enough, Jacob hesitated, the looked up. "Grampa?"

Linn looked at his grandson, his pale eyes quiet. "Yes, Jacob?"

"Grampa, I'm kinda worried."

Linn nodded. "A man does worry, time and again," he agreed. "What's a-worryin' ya?"

He lifted his fuzz stick to eye level, turned it, regarded it critically, then dropped it in the galvanized bucket they were using to collect the finished product.

"Grampa, that man tried to kill Mama."

The Old Sheriff nodded.

"Aunt Sarah come to school an' she told me Mama needed me and when I got to the Sheriff's Office she told me to get her Pa's revolver."

The Old Sheriff regarded his knife's edge, testing it with practiced fingertips.

"I could ride this sad old thing to Buffalo," he observed, then bent to pick up his damp whet stone. "So you went in and fetched that Stiff and Worthless right out of its frame."

Jacob stopped, blinked, then smiled a little. "Yes, sir."

"What particular worries you?"

The Old Sheriff spit on the whet stone, spread the wetness with a back stroke of steel on stone, then began slow, measured circles, good German steel whispering secrets to the grey, close-grained Berea sand stone sent out from back East some years ago.

"She nearly died," Jacob said, his voice tightening, and the Old Sheriff nodded.

"So she was shot."

"Yes, sir," Jacob nodded, setting down his lock back knife and tapping his breast bone with bunched-together finger tips. "Right here."

The Old Sheriff stopped his whetting and set down stone and knife, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and regarded his quad-great grandson with a serious expression.

"That would kill a normal man," the Old Sheriff said and Jacob nodded, swallowed.

"Yes, sir," he affirmed, "but she was wearing her vest and her steel bone corset!"

The Old Sheriff unbuttoned his own vest, slid it off and draped it across the hay bale he was setting on, stood.

"A man shot me oncet," he said, "right where your Mama was standing." He stood and turned and Jacob's mouth went dry as he saw the ragged tear in the old lawman's shirt and the spreading wet-red stain.

"He laid off with a rifle and shot me and he shot my horse," Linn said, his voice steady, but Jacob could hear anger hidden behind the words.

"I went down hard, it took the air from me and I hadn't the strength to raise my arm, let alone my pistol."

He passed a hand over his bloody side and suddenly the shirt was undamaged and clean and linen-white again.

"What did you do, Grampa?" Jacob almost whispered.

Linn laughed, picked up his vest, spun it around and thrust one arm, then the other through it. "Why, I didn't do much a'tall," he said quietly as he buttoned the emerald-green silk. "Now Jacob and Charlie -- you never knew Charlie Macneil."

"No, sir."

"Your Uncle Will lives on his place now. Charlie ... was my friend." Linn sat and Jacob's ear twitched at something he half-heard in his Grampa's words, and he knew that "friend" went just awful deep.

"Charlie looked out the open door and saw me hit. Jacob -- my son, Jacob" -- he looked affectionately at the lad, and this young Jacob grinned, quickly, his ears reddening -- "my Jacob fetched out an Army Colt revolver and proceeded to fire at that fellow one handed whilst tryin' to haul my limp carcass off the dirt street and up over the board walk."

"What happened?" Jacob asked in a subdued voice, half expecting to be there and see it first hand.

"Charlie stepped out the door with my buffalo rifle and settled the argument with one shot, then he leaned down and his hard brown knuckles clamped down right beside Jacob's and them two hauled me off the dirt and into the office and slammed the door shut. Only ..."

He looked at Jacob, and Jacob looked into his ancient Granddad's pale eyes, and he saw two tunnels bored back into Eternity itself -- "only I didn't have no vest like your Mama wore, and I generally don't wear no corset."

Jacob blinked, his Granddad winked, and they both grinned as Jacob realized that even when he was being serious, his Old Granddad had a streak of ornery humor he sometimes let the lad see.

"Your Jacob," the young Keller asked, "he ... was he ... am I him?"

Linn smiled, shook his head slowly. "Pass me your knife." He accepted the hilt-first folder and picked up the whet stone. "No, Jacob, you ain't him."

He spit on the stone again, spread the wetness, began his methodical sharpening.

"You are the only one of you there's ever been, Jacob. Likely you're the only one of you there ever will be."

"Oh."

"You thought maybe because you were named for my son that you were my son come back for another go-round."

"Yes, sir."

"No." Linn smiled a little. "My Jacob done all right in his lifetime. He's gone on to his Reward."

"Grampa, do you know what I will be?"

"Of course I do," the Old Sheriff replied, easily, casually.

Surprised, Jacob blinked. "Really?"

The Old Sheriff nodded solemnly. "I can tell you exactly what you will be." He hooked his left boot heel with his right boot toe, pulled his sock foot out of the high top Cavalry boot and laid it across his lap: drawing it tight, he began to strop Jacob's knife on the soft leather like it was a straight razor.

"Jacob, you will become what you are right now, and that is the product of every decision you have ever made.

"You will not be the result of what anyone has give you or what you inherited from your Ma or your Pa, you won't be the result of what anyone does to you, or any thing." He tried the knife on his left wrist, shaved a little patch of hair free, puffed his breath on the blade; arm-hairs floated away in the still air.

"You will be the result of every last decision you've made, your every choice."

"Oh."

"You sound surprised."

"It sounds kinda simple."

"It is," Linn agreed, handing Jacob back his blade.

"Grampa," Jacob asked, his quick mind jumping to another subject, "them buffalos was somethin'."

Linn laughed. "You liked that, did you?"

Jacob nodded. "I never saw buffalo run like that!"

"That was common, Jacob, least until they got all shot off. I was ... I got caught ahead of a stomp-pede like that." His voice was soft as he remembered, the corners of his mouth curled up just a little as he did. "I wanted you to have that memory too."

"It was somethin'," Jacob whispered: he blinked, looked down at the barn floor. "Mama saw the track and asked if we'd had a cow in here."

Linn laughed, shook his head. "Trust me to cause trouble."

"Grampa ... when you were my age .. when you were growin' up ..."

Linn waited patiently for the lad to work his mind around the idea so he could put it into words.

"Grampa, didn't you get married kinda young?"

"No, not specially." Linn stropped his own blade on the boot top, his strokes slower, more thoughtful. "Bear in mind now we worked from the minute we could walk. Boys followed after their Pa and worked much as they were able and girls did with their Mama. A girl would be fixin' as much of the meal as she was able soon as she could. You're what, near ten now?"

"Yes, sir."

"By that age a boy was puttin' in a man's work, kin-see to cain't-see. He'd muck out the barn if they had one, he'd cut wood, split wood, help round up pigs for slaughter, he'd trap and fish and put meat on the table, he'd work in the garden and there was never enough hours in the day to get ever'thin' done, but we did it." Linn took a long breath, smiled just a little.

"It's all we knew so it's what we did."

"Yes, sir."

"We never had much by way of schoolin'. My Jacob went clear to eighth grade. That's all we had back then." He smiled a little, kind of a knowing smile. "From what I understand, an eighth grade graduation test was considerable harder that what's used in your Consolidated."

"Yes, sir."

"And your Aunt Sarah ..."

Jacob saw a quiet sadness in the old lawman's eyes.

"I wish I could have sent her to a proper university," he almost whispered. "I wish I could have kept her home and ... "
He swallowed, shook his head.

"She was her own woman, Jacob, and she had her own mind, and she got married and had a fine son."

"Was that the German fella?"

"No. No, she married one of the Irish Brigade. Daffyd Llewellyn. Friend of mine. Fine voice ... fine voice ... my God, that man could sing!"

"My Mama can sing!"

"I know, Jacob. She can sing considerable better than she realizes. I'd like to hear her let go of her hold back and sing like Sarah did. She's got the throat for it."

"Aunt Sarah sang?" Jacob asked innocently.

Linn looked at Jacob, honestly surprised, then he wiped his blade on his pants leg, slid it into his boot top sheath, brushed off the heel of his sock and thrust it back into the Cavalry boot. "Jacob, your aunt Sarah could sing like the angels themselves."

"Aunt Crystal sings," Jacob offered.

Linn laughed. "Do you know what she's singing?"

"Nah." Jacob frowned. "She only sings at cows."

Linn raised an eyebrow, leaned closer, intrigued.

"She sings kinda like opera. I think she said it was Viking. Cooning or something. The cows come right up to her. Mama never saw the like."

"I think it's called kulning," Linn suggested. "Viking women call cattle like that."

"Yeah," Jacob agreed uncertainly. "It sounds kind of spooky."

"Your Aunt Crystal can probably sing too."

"She does," Jacob nodded firmly. "Mama said she can sing really well!"

Linn nodded again.

"Grampa ... you sure I'm not your Jacob?"

Linn stood up, took a half step closer and then went down on one knee: he placed strong, work-callused hands on young Jacob's shoulders and looked the lad square in the eye.

"Jacob Keller," he said seriously, "if you were my son I would be pretty damned proud of you!"

Jacob flushed and grinned bashfully, not quite used to such unadulterated praise.

Linn squeezed the lad's shoulders gently, then stood.

"You'd best fetch those fire sticks in to your Mama," he suggested, and Jacob looked down at the galvanized bucket, plumb full of whittled-up pine.

"Yes, sir," he said, then looked up --

He was alone.

Jacob shrugged.

This was a normal part of his world and it troubled him not at all that his ancestor just kind of disappeared.

Picking up the bucket, he began the trek back to the house, strutting a little, for he was doing a good thing for his Mama, fetching her fire startin' sticks for the wood stove.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

63. MR. BAXTER

Jacob didn't quite have the knack of digesting material for research purposes.

He read with the ease of an eighth grader, but he was still only in third grade, and when he read his Old Grampa's journals, he read them for their adventure and not for what lay behind his carefully scribed words.

Practice enabled him to read the script of an earlier era; vanity, perhaps, prompted him to imitate his Old Granddad's hand; pride bade him form his own cursive letters clearly, legibly, uniformly.

Jacob frowned a little as he read, and as he read, The Bear Killer sighed contentedly, half-stretched and half-curled on the couch beside him, his backside warm and firm against Jacob, a canine statement of confidence -- the equivalent of a human saying "I trust you to have my back."

Jacob considered what he was reading, looked up at the opposite wall, his imagination busy.

He looked down again, read.

I watched as Mr. Baxter heated the darning needle red hot.

He took hold of the end with a pointy pair of pliers and gave it a quick twist, another, and the eye of the fish hook was formed.

Another session in the fire and another pair of pliers and working with the two pair, he threw a short bend and then a hook in that hot metal.

I recall he frowned as he worked.

Once he got the bend of the hook to his satisfaction, he heated it one last time and took a knife he maintained for that purpose only and cut a barb in the hook.

I must have been studyin' on that pretty hard for he looked at me and laughed and said that barb is what most folks forgot when they made a fish hook.

He heated the whole hook again but not red hot, just enough to sizzle when he dropped it in the oil, whatever kind of oil it was -- I don't know if it was whale oil or somethin' else, never did ask, but he had it hot and a little bees wax melted on top of it so when he fetched out that oil quenched fish hook it was waxed.

He said the wax contained the smell of that oil and the two kept the hook from rustin'.

He made probably a dozen fish hooks that afternoon, and me studying his work.

He offered to let me try my hand and I said no, I didn't want to ruin no darning needles, and he nodded and said needles and pins were a dear thing this far out.

I know a young fellow who offered a girl a paper of pins if she would go to the dance with him and darn if they didn't end up married the next fall.

Jacob looked up as his Mama came into the room.

"Mama," he asked, puzzlement in his voice, "who was Mr. Baxter?"

Willamina's mind was elsewhere; she blinked, came back to the here-and-now.

"Hello to you too," she smiled. "And how was your day, my fine young man?"

Jacob grinned: he knew from this greeting his Mama was in a good mood.

"Mama, Old Grampa watched Mr. Baxter making fish hooks," he explained. "Who was Mr. Baxter?"

 

It was quiet in the Silver Jewel, unusually so.

Business is like that, I thought ... there's times when more men want beer than a barkeep can keep up with, and sometimes there's more beer than men can drink, and this must be one of those times.

I took a pull on my own beer and cocked an eyebrow at Mr. Baxter.

It didn't matter what he was into, Mr. Baxter always managed to appear ... neat.

Tidy.

His hair was slicked down, parted in the middle, his mustache was full, rich, symmetrical and curled, his apron was spotless, or nearly so (other than the stains that inevitably took up permanent residence, but they were clean stains) ... was I to lean over the bar and take a look, I knew I would find his elastic sided townie shoes would be immaculately brushed and gleaming, and his neck tie was precisely knotted and exactly centered down his broad chest, at least until it disappeared under the top of his apron.

He'd been fishing, I knew, he'd had some success in the local streams, and when he fished, he prospected a little, and a surprising number of times he'd come up with gold nuggets. I always encouraged him to file claims on those streams before someone else did, and if the stream was claimed already, why, nobody could accuse him of claim jumping if he was quite obviously a-fishin'.

Mr. Baxter was another old friend.

I'd hired him when he come out to Firelands, drivin' that ratty old wagon and wearin' that good natured grin of his.

He loved to fish and he loved a good joke and a well told tale and he was a natural to run the bar, so I sold him part interest in the Silver Jewel just like I give the kitchen interest to Daisy, Sean's wife, and she run that kitchen and the restaurant part like a ship's-captain runs his vessel.

Best business moves I ever made.

I got a cut of the saloon business and I got everything from the hotel business and what cut I got from Daisy's end (which was a surprising amount) I give back to her.

Now that part wasn't really good business sense but I had plenty and I knew Sean was busy sirin' his own tribe of wild Irishmen, and was I any judge of the situation, Daisy was more than willin' to birth him a whole herd of red headed offspring, and on the one hand Sean had his fire chief's pay and Daisy had the kitchen's income ... but I know what it is to be scratchin' to make ends meet, and the more young ones under his roof, the more it drained his purse, and ... hell, I must be an old softy, for when I went over, his young'uns mobbed me and I ended up on the floor, covered with a bunch of happy Irish young and laughin' like a damned fool, and I generally ended up with most of 'em crowded around me beggin' to be picked up.

You know how little kids are.

Mr. Baxter was always ready with another beer, he had see-gars ready for sale and Daisy kept the bar crowd supplied with sandwiches if they wanted 'em, she made fresh pretzels and when she throwed out a tray of Bear Sign, why, the Silver Jewel got real popular real fast.

Mr. Baxter, now, he tended bar through the day and he cut wood some and every chance he got, he fished.

I stood there at that polished mahogany bar with one boot up on the burnished, bright foot rail, and I took another long cool drink of beer and nodded.

Beer varied a little from batch to batch and this one was more to my likin'.

He'd had some in a couple weeks before, freighted in on the steam train from back East, and it was kind of bitter, but this was not.

"Banquet beer," Mr. Baxter said quietly, polishing a glass.

"Eh?"

"Banquet beer. Better than that Eastern stuff and cheaper. I don't have to freight it as far."

I nodded, took another drink. "Good stuff." I set down my mug. "How do those new fish hooks work?"

Mr. Baxter grinned. "I had to temper 'em some, they were soft. I hooked onto a good one and it nearly straightened the hook out."

Daisy came sashaying out of the kitchen -- no, that's not right, she didn't sashay so much as she waddled, I swear her belly stuck out so far it got to me three foot before the rest of her did.

"Daisy," I said, setting my boot down off that brass rail, "you are lookin' better every day!"

"And ye'll go t' hell f'r lyin'," she snapped in that Irish accent of hers, shaking her wooden spoon at me like she was going to clobber me with it. "I brought ye summat, yer wife doesna' love ya any more!" She smacked me across the belly with that spoon of hers, her green eyes half-snapping, half-laughing. "Ye're thin as a rail an' she's no' feedin' y' a bit! Was ya ta turn sideways ye'd disappear!" She shook the spoon in my face and added, "Ye'd need a guid square meal t' throw a decent shadow!"

She slid the sandwich tray off her hand and onto the bar top, then with one hand on her maternal belly, the other holding that spoon before her like the Queen's scepter, she whirled and stormed back into the kitchen, hard heels loud on the close-fitted, oiled board floor, and Mr. Baxter and I looked after her retreating backside, then looked at one another.

"She wants me," I said, solemn and straight faced, and Mr. Baxter snorted and turned his head whilst his face took the color of a rotten strawberry trying not to let Daisy hear his choked-off laugh, and Daisy hollered out of the kitchen, "I heard that!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

64. STUPIDITY

"Mama?"

"Yes, Jacob?"

Jacob rolled over from where he was doing his math homework in the middle of the living room floor, lying on his flat flannel shirted belly.

"Mama, what if someone tries to kill you and I'm not around?"

Willamina's pen stopped in mid-air.

She'd been working on the ranch's expenses, converting figures into ledger entries; she blinked a few times, turned the pen around twice in her fingers, slowly, as if it were a majorette's very miniature baton, and then she set it down in the open ledger book.

She turned to look at her son, considering her answer carefully.

"Jacob ... walk with me. Get your Smith."

"Yes, ma'am."

Willamina routinely wore her duty sidearm with her jeans -- it was so much a part of her that neither she, her husband nor her son regarded it as anything but normal -- and so when she reached for hat and vest, she was ready to go, as-is.

It took her son maybe all of 45 seconds to get his gunbelt on and buckled and sock feet swiped off and thrust into polished boots.

"We goin' far, Mama?" he asked, and Willamina smiled.

"No, Jacob. Not far."

She looked through the front window, the way she always did; Jacob noticed her expression was taut, as if looking for something, a something she might not like to find, but was looking for anyway: after her initial looking-over, she opened the door and gave it another scan, then stepped out on the porch.

Her son came with her, eased the door shut behind them.

They walked silently down the steps and through the yard, across the pasture; Jacob realized his Mama always looked around the way she was doing now, but his young mind was realizing why.

She was looking at all the places she would hide if she were going to kill someone coming out of the house.

"Jacob," Willamina said, "do you remember where that man was when he shot me?"

"Yes, ma'am. He was right in front of your office."

"That's right. He was close, Jacob, too close to miss. He was also very accurate."

"Yes, ma'am."

"He was too accurate, Jacob. Had he walked his shots up into my face, no power on Earth could have kept me alive."

Jacob made no reply.

"Jacob, do you know what I did today?"

"You went to work, Mama."

"Yes, I did. I went to work. And do you know what I did at work?"

"You kept us safe?"

"I killed two people."
She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were not at all out of the ordinary.

Jacob was silent for several long moments as he considered this new information, then: "Did they deserve it, Mama?"

"Oh, yes," Willamina replied quietly. "They most certainly deserved it."

"What did they do, Mama?"

"They did something terminally stupid," Willamina replied, an edge to her voice. "They tried to kill me."

Jacob stopped and so did his lean, pale-eyed Mama.

"Did they hit you, Mama?"

"No."

"But you hit them."

"Yes."

"Good." His young jaw was thrust out and he nodded.

Not an hour before, Willamina had kicked the door open at the Spring Inn: she never, ever kicked the door open unless she'd just killed someone, and when the sole of her boot drove the heavy wood door open against its stop, conversation ceased.

Willamina wore what she was wearing now.

She wore black jeans and black boots, she wore a black flannel shirt and a black vest, she wore a black Stetson and a black pistol in a black gunrig, and she carried a model of 1894 Winchester balanced in her left hand, a pre-'64 in .30-30 that wore her father's name engraved on the barrel.

Her hat brim was down low and her eyes fairly burned with cold fire as she glared out from under pressed felt, and more than one spine felt cold bony fingers walking slowly down their vertebrae as her eyes met theirs.

She paced slowly into the little block building, boot heels loud on the tobacco stained floor, and she rotated the rifle's muzzle down as she came to the bar.

Not one word did she speak.

Not one word did she have to speak.

The barkeep set a water glass on top of the knife-and-tooth-scarred bar top, he opened a bottle of top shelf whiskey, and he aimed to decant two fingers' worth ... that is, he intended to leave two fingers' worth of room between the liquid surface and the rim of the glass.

Willamina picked it up, nodded once: she paced slowly to the table in back, laid her Daddy's Winchester rifle across it, set the glass down and slowly, deliberately, folded herself into the chair.

Someone unplugged the juke box and silence, ringing silence, filled the Spring Inn.

Every last eye was on the pale eyed Sheriff as she sat, her head bowed a little as she stared at that glass of distilled headache, then she picked it up and drank.

She took one long breath and she drank the entire glass down, then she stood and picked up her Daddy's .30-30 and kicked the table, kicked it hard enough to flip it over and land it on its top.

"I SENT TWO OF 'EM TO HELL TODAY!" she yelled, anger powering her words, then she strode for the front door, slamming the heavy bottom glass down on the bar top as she went.

So far she'd never broken a glass, but Jelly knew one of these days a glass would just plainly explode when she did, for she did not slam it down gently.

 

Willamina did not tell her son about the drug dealer that did not want to be caught, the drug dealer that tried to out run her, at least until he blew a radiator hose and his engine seized up: she did not tell him about the drug dealer's partner, and she did not tell him about how the pair came out of their vehicle, shooting.

She did not tell Jacob that they missed, and she did not, nor did she tell him about all the sequelae that comes with a law dawg forced into punching someone's ticket -- no matter how justified, it always meant procedures, and she did not wish to worry him with details.

He'd be worried enough the way it was.

And she did not tell him about pumping tooth-aching-cold well water into a tin cup and drinking, and drinking, and drinking again, then sticking two fingers down her throat and throwing up all that whiskey she'd just downed: she didn't divulge how she purged herself of her personal punishment, then followed with water and some aspirin powder she kept for that purpose, and she did not tell him how she would review the crime scene photos in her office, and the reports, the coroner's findings, the inquest, and the probable fallout from the families of the deceased, for the criminal was never, ever guilty in the eyes of their families; they were always good boys, just turning their lives around, angels singing in the Sunday school choir would would never, ever have had anything to do with -- what was it you said, drugs? Impossible, they'd say, and there would be at least one lawsuit, there always was.

Willamina allowed herself a long breath, but not a sigh, and for just a moment she wished things were simpler, they way things were when her thrice-great Granddad was Sheriff.

 

"Don't try it," Linn said, his voice tight.

His next statement was made with lead and with smoke and with noise: two shots from his double gun settled the question, and in a right positive manner.

Positive, that is, for the Law.

Rather negative for the lawless.

Linn had been trailing this pair for three days, patiently laying back, reading their tracks, watching ahead in case of ambush; he knew the country, and this pair didn't, judging from the way they searched back and forth, occasionally doubling back, and finally the Sheriff decided to move in, coming face-to-face with them as they came out of a confusing loop in the creek.

"Nice horses," the Sheriff said conversationally, the twin muzzles of his favorite persuader looking at them with unblinking black eyes. "Where'd you steal 'em?"

"If you didn't have a gun on me, mister," the one blustered, "I'd whip you for callin' me a horse thief!"

"You are a thief," Linn said mildly, "and a right poor one. You stole those horses from my son, and he is a Sheriff's deputy. You can't sell that brand anywhere in three states. Now you can give up peacefully" -- his thumb rolled the twin hammers back to full stand, the quiet click, click carrying well in the high mountain air, "or you can give up ... otherwise." He smiled a little. "Your choice."

Cannonball pawed at the ground -- once, twice.

Good girl, he thought. Good girl, you remembered --

"Now see here! We bought these fair an' square, we got a bill o' sale and ever'thin' --"

"Unbuckle and drop, the both of you."

They didn't.

Cannonball surged to her left and the Sheriff drove a charge of heavy shot into each of the would-be murderers.

He had them dead to rights and they still tried to draw, he would tell Judge Hostetler later, and the Judge would nod solemnly and allow as cause of death must be terminal stupidity and the Sheriff would agree, then they would have a drink and the Sheriff would invite the Judge out for supper.

His Honor would accept, of course, he always did, and he ended up staying the night as well: sometimes it was nice to sleep under a friend's roof, instead of alone in his private rail car.

The Judge never asked about the bodies.

He never had to.

After the Sheriff stripped them of anything valuable, anything their families might want, something that could be sent or delivered to them -- a man who goes wrong was once a boy, and a family might want to remember him as the boy he was -- the bodies ended up in the common grave maintained in the Potter's Field for that purpose.

 

Willamina thought of a particular creek crossing she knew of, one not five miles from where she and Jacob stood in the darkening field: she'd used a topographic map and a lensatic compass to find the general area, and with her triple-great's skill at map drawing and her own practice with map-and-compass, she'd found the exact place described in the Old Sheriff's Journal.

Times were simpler then.

Mother and son walked for a little more, then with The Bear Killer pacing them like a sinner's skulking spirit, they turned and returned home.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

65. "I'M NOT MARRIED TO YOUR BROTHER!"

A less intelligent man might seize his spouse's upper arms, jerk her close and bore his gaze into hers.

Richard, fortunately, knew better.

He'd not read any of the Old Sheriff's journals in some time, so he picked one of the later ones and immersed himself in another time, seeing Firelands County through the pale eyes of an old man with an iron-grey mustache.

He saw what had been, a century ago, saw it through pale eyes, hard eyes, saw them through a man long dead and yet so very alive, so alive as he read.

Not many men in my line of work live long enough to retire, he read, and he smiled a little.

The same could be said about his own line of work, though more agents died of cardiovascular disease than direct combat, these days.

There were exceptions, of course; he still practiced as if he were intending to address the Philistines with his own version of a mule's mandible, but he was retired from the Bureau -- retired, and glad for it.

Richard brought his thoughts back to the printed page.

My son Jacob is Sheriff now.

I still doubt the wisdom of my move.

I know his peril is just as great as a deputy ... but somehow, somehow I feel as if I am the choicer target as Sheriff.

I had to fall back on the belief of the Stone Wall himself.

I understand he was a devout Presbyterian and he went fearlessly into battle, believing the Almighty had already decided the time and manner of his death, and so he rode forth without fear, secure in his belief that all would be as God intended.

Richard nodded a little, finding himself in agreement with the man.

Matter of fact, if the Almighty is takin' suggestions, I might suggest that I walk into a bank robbery and get shot right between the eyes.

Snuff my candle's flame instantly.

No doddering old age, no enfeebled legs, no hands too shaky to hold my own fork.

"Aren't you just a cheerful sort," Richard muttered aloud.

Willamina laid warm hands on his shoulders, rubbed the back of his neck.

"I see you're talking to Granddad again," she whispered, her breath puffing on the fine hairs of his right ear.

"Mm-hmm," Richard nodded a little. "I see where you get your ideas."

"Which one?"

"Retirement."

Willamina laughed, squeezed his shoulders, paced across the room and swept into the easy chair opposite. "You mean about being shot in a bank robbery the day of my retirement" -- she punched a thumb against the bony web squarely between her eyes -- "right here, lights out? No Alzheimer's, no cardboard underwear, no broken hips?"

Richard shook his head. "You're as cheerful as Old Granddad."

"He has the right idea, you know." She looked at her husband, her expression steady. "You may as well ask. I can see the question in your eyes."

Richard closed the Old Sheriff's journal, looked at his wife.

"Willa," he said gently, "you are the dearest thing I know."

"Flattery," she smiled, "will get you everywhere. Now out with it. What's eating you?"

"Termites," he said with a straight face.

"Termites? Are you made out of wood? Do you weigh less than a duck?"

Richard looked at his wife, saw the many selves he'd known since they first met -- she was as lean as the day they met, her figure was still tight, sculpted, she still had phenomenal legs, thanks to her disciplined exercise, thanks to her runs with the high school football team, thanks to dancing ...

Richard saw his wife great with child, sweating with labor, grimacing with that final contraction as she threw her head back and crushed his hand with her grip, her teeth locked, refusing to utter a sound as her uterus contracted and new life came bloody and screaming into the world.

He saw his wife, her eyes shining as they danced, a Queen in her King's arms, as they cleared the floor around the circled F in the middle of the Firelands gymnasium, where the Alumni dances were held.

He saw her bloodied and unmoving, laying on the ground, her chest ground into hamburger where the assassin's machine gun hammered into her body armor and steel-stay corset.

He saw her astride her Cannonball mare, streaking across the field at a wide-open gallop and then shrieking like a delighted girl as they launched together into low Earth orbit, soaring out over an arroyo at its narrowest point, landing light and easy on the far side and pounding toward the blood-red sun lowering into the saddle-notch beyond, Cannonball's tail twisting in her slipstream.

He blinked and he saw his wife, his beautiful bride, his life's chosen partner ... he saw the other half of his heart, and he saw the mother of their son, and his heart ached a little for all that he felt for her.

Richard set the book aside and got up, he walked across the living room in sock feet, and he knelt before his wife.

Willamina sat with her stockinged legs tucked under her, smiling a little, like a setting cat curled up.

Richard took her hands, looked up at her, swallowed.

"If you're thinking of proposing, forget it," Willamina said innocently. "I'm already married."

Richard's mouth opened, then closed, and he dropped his head a little and she saw his shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

He raised his head, tried again.

"Willa," he said, "Will did a fine job as Sheriff."

Willamina nodded. "Yes, he did."

"Willa ... you could retire."

Richard saw her eyes cloud over a little and she looked away, but her hands tightened on his: he knew her first inclination was to say no, but she held onto him, not wanting to pull away from the idea.

She looked back at him.

"Richard," she whispered, "I don't want Will killed."

"I don't want you killed."

"Richard, he's my brother --"

"I'm not married to your brother!" Richard snapped, "I'm married to you, and I want to grow old with you!"

He pulled a hand free, thrust an accusing finger almost directly aft, at the closed book abandoned on the arm of his easy chair.

"I read your Granddad's words and I can feel his ache, Willa! He missed Esther so badly it hurt!"

Richard's eyes were bright and he was blinking rapidly, his breath came more quickly now and his color was stronger in his cheeks.

He took her hands again, held them ... not firmly, really, but fervently.

"Willa, you've done your part. You've done more than your share. I don't ... I don't want to be a young widower, dearest, and I don't want Jacob to see his Mama laid out cold and waxy in a long box!"

Willamina pulled her hands free, unfolded her legs from beneath her, slid out of the upholstered chair and knelt with her husband.

"Richard," she whispered, taking his face between her hands, "I learned the hard way my time is not my own. I will live until I die and when that day comes I will stand before the Throne and I will be the product of every last decision I ever made." She leaned her forehead against his. "If I stand with an enemy's blood dripping from my blade and my boot on an enemy's throat, so much the better, but Richard" -- her hands were firm and warm and very, very real -- "Richard, I am not going to quit now!"

Willamina let go of Richard's face and seized him in a fierce hug. "Hold me, Richard," she whispered, her voice hoarse, urgent. "Hold me and let me feel you real and alive and warm in my arms because I don't want to lose you either!"

Richard really did not know what to make of that last, but he did know he wanted very much to crush his wife to him, to embrace her as if he would never let her go, and so he did.

 

"Grampa," Jacob said, "where are we?"

Linn laughed, his hand firm and reassuring on his very great grandson's shoulder. "Jacob, we're in a barn I had built."

"It's big!"

"It's round, too. Ever see a round barn?"

"No, sir."

"I built this for Daciana. She was a circus performer. Trapeze, acrobatics, but especially a trick rider."

"A trick rider?" Jacob brightened.

"Yep." The Old Sheriff nodded solemnly, looking around the inside of the echoing, vacant barn.

"What kinda tricks, Grampa?"

"She had a golden pony ... Buttercup, her name, and she wore a silver-and-gilt saddle. Gaudy thing. Make your eyes bleed to look at it."

Jacob raised a curious eyebrow. "Is she here, Grampa?"

"No, Jacob. No, she ... finished her work."

"Oh." Disappointment colored his voice. "Why are we here, then?"

"I wanted to see it again," Linn whispered, and Jacob heard the sibilants chase themselves through the rafters. "Maybe I hoped ... to see ..."
He let the thought trail off into the dusty silence, then: "No."

"No?"

"No. That's not ... why."

"Why what, Grampa?"

"You asked why we're here."

Jacob nodded.

"Your folks are talking."

Jacob gave his old Granddad a confused look.

"They need some time to figure something out."

"Figure what out, Grampa?"

The Old Sheriff sat down on a bale of hay and Jacob dropped onto another opposite.

"Jacob," the Old Sheriff said thoughtfully, "have you given any thought to becoming Sheriff?"

"I'm kinda young," Jacob said uncertainly, and Linn grinned and then chuckled, and then he leaned back and laughed at the rafters overhead.

"I needed that," he said when his mirth finally slowed enough to let him wipe his eyes and take a long breath. "Jacob, thank you. How about when you get some years under your belt?"

"I suppose," Jacob hazarded.

Linn nodded. "You've got time," he nodded, "and you are preparing already." He gave his grandson an approving look. "Jacob, I want you to remember something."

"Yes, sir?" Jacob sat up a little straighter as his old Granddad leaned toward him, elbows on his knees and his boots set wide apart.

"Jacob ... you might have to sort through several girls to find the right one, but when you do, you'll know it." He frowned a little. "Jacob, remember this: when in doubt, son, follow your gut."

"Yes, sir."

"A wise old lawman told me that once and he's right. I have and it works. The other thing" -- Jacob saw something cross his Old Grampa's face -- "when you find the right one ..."

Linn looked squarely at his grandson, pale eyes bright with memories.

"Treat her like a Queen, Jacob. Know that there is no finer thing on this earth than the right woman. Treat her like a Queen and let her know she is the dearest thing in all your life. Tell her that, Jacob. She'll need to hear the words. Don't never let her heart go untended." He blinked, dropped his eyes to the straw-covered floor. "That's how I treated my Esther, and I never, ever had cause to regret that decision!"

He looked at Jacob, his expression changed, and Jacob knew he was changing the subject again.

"My Jacob became Sheriff after I did I retired while I still had some life in me. I didn't travel -- I've seen enough of the world -- but I didn't have to."

He stood, and so did Jacob, and of a sudden they were in Jacob's barn, and the sky was on fire with a brilliant red sunset.

His Old Granddad was a silhouette against the spreading crimson clouds.

"When the day comes, Jacob, treat her like a queen."

"Yes, sir."

 

Willamina finished tucking Jacob in as she always did.

She bent and kissed his forehead, then she turned and walked to the partly open bedroom door.

Jacob spoke without preamble.

"You could retire while you've still got some life in you," Jacob said. "Grampa did."

Willamina stopped, shocked, then turned slowly.

She closed her mouth on whatever it was she was going to say, turned her head a little, then slipped out the door and turned at the last moment.

"Night, Jacob," she murmured, and drew the door to.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

66. DEATH, AND LIFE

Willamina attacked the barn like a personal enemy.

She wasn't needed at the Sheriff's office until at least noon.

She mucked out the barn -- if it's possible to savagely muck out a barn, she did: there was nothing gentle about her movements, even her trundling the rubber tired wheelbarrow out to the manure pile was vicious.

It did not take terribly long to tend this particular detail.

It took even less time to spit what little kindling was needed.

She did make an effort to temper her energies when swinging the ax; kindling wood is dry and splits cleanly, and she knew if she drove that ax the way she wanted to, she'd be picking up splinters on the far side of the fence.

No, she reserved the majority of her energies for her usual session on the living room floor, gripping the hex-headed, cast-iron barbell and using it as her push-up handle.

Today she had classical guitar as her background; today she pushed herself through the pain in her chest; today she dropped her taut, rigid-spined body toward the floor, stopping an inch from the polished hardwood, and thrust back up, keeping her beat with the music.

Today she sweat, she ached, she felt like she was going to rip her breast bone open, but she kept the count and she knocked off as many push-ups as she had before she was injured.

Willamina was no stranger to killing.

Willamina was most profoundly unhappy when she was forced into killing someone, and that's what happened two days before, when the pair she wanted to detain decided they'd just kill her and make their escape.

"Maybe that's not the reason," a familiar voice sneered, and Willamina came off the floor like a scalded cat, drove a floor kick into her unexpected visitor's gut.

She was gratified at how solid Sarah's middle felt.

Sarah recovered almost instantly -- there are some benefits to being dead, Willamina thought -- and Sarah nodded approvingly.

"Not bad at all. I would not have expected that."

Willamina stood slowly, her eyes pale, her expression far less than welcoming.

"I think you're unhappy because the pair you grassed just might have gotten lucky and put you down first."

Willamina's hands tightened into fists.

"I think you are ready to rip someone's guts out with your bare hands at the thought that your little boy would have to look at your cold and waxy carcass in a long box."

Sarah's words were cold and harsh and intended to cut, and they did.

Willamina turned slowly and Sarah knew the woman was assessing her for a manual dissection, without the help of bladed instruments.

"Get used to the idea, sister. As long as you pack a badge you're a target. I did and I was an it nearly killed me. I got out when I got married and had Daffyd, and I didn't go back into the profession. I left for Europe. I thought I could --"

"Could what?"

"Daffyd ... ran away."

"What?"

Sarah bit her knuckle hard, nodded.

"He was twelve. He thought ... we argued and ... he ran ..."

"So that's why you're still here," Willamina said slowly.

Sarah nodded.

"What happened to him?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "I ... don't ... know."

Willamina embraced the younger woman -- she dismissed the thought that she was actually much, much older -- for in that moment they were two mothers, and Willamina knew what it was to grieve, and she knew this Sarah McKenna grieved harder than she had, for there is no loss like the loss of a child.

"Maybe we can find him," she whispered, and Sarah shook her head.

"No. No, it's been too long ..."

"I have ways," the Sheriff smiled, and Sarah saw something in Willamina's eyes ... something she'd seen in an old lawman's eyes, many years before ... a lawman with an iron grey mustache, who used those same words, and made them stick.

 

Angela was the Sheriff's little girl, at least in his eyes.

Angela was a woman grown, married and with two children, but as she smiled down at her Papa, rocking slowly in his chair with a grandchild on each knee, she remembered the feel of his broad, strong hands around her, and she remembered sitting on his lap, and she remembered how secure and how ... how right she felt at their age.

Linn looked up at Angela and he smiled that same quiet smile he always saved just for her, and she saw just a trace of sadness in his eyes.

"Penny for your thoughts, Papa," she smiled, and he took a long, slow breath, and let it out, and he said, "Angela, you are the sunrise in an old man's life, you know that."

Angela laughed. "Papa, the day you are old is the day I grow long grey ears and bray at sunrise!"

Linn shook his head and smiled sadly.

"No, Angela. No, I am an old man, and I have failed."

Angela looked up as the maid came in.

"Children, we have cake," she offered, and the pair fairly flew from their Granddad's lap, for children of their few years are walking appetites on two hollow legs: Angela waited until they were out of the room, and the door closed, before she pulled up a chair and seated herself, a worried look on her face.

"Papa," she said hesitantly, "what happened?"

"I found him," Linn whispered.

"Found who?"

"Daffyd."

Angela's eyes widened and her mouth opened and Linn raised his hand.

"He's upstairs, crying, or was."

"But -- Aunt Sarah -- she's --"

"Dead. Yes. I had to tell him."

Angela lowered her face into her hands, crushed.

Linn's eyes were bleak as he stared across the room and through the far wall.

"He'd come home to beg forgiveness for being a headstrong and prideful fool. He had no idea she took her sorrow to Europe and tried to lose herself in courtly society. I haven't told him all that yet."

Angela moaned into her palms.

"He's a fine young man, Angela. He ... looks ... so much like his father. Like Daffyd."

Linn almost smiled as he remembered the laughing Welsh fireman who shouted in triumph when he found his firstborn was a fine, strong son, the strong man with a grand voice who made Sunday hymns a delight, singing duet with his wife.

"He wanted so much to run to his Mama's arms," Linn whispered, closing his eyes, either holding in the memory or trying to shut it out, he wasn't sure which.

"And not even Esther here ... not even Esther ..."

Linn bit his bottom lip and he turned his head, and Angela turned hers as well, but not before she'd seen the first tear squeeze out of his tight-shut eyes.

 

Willamina's pale eyes were fixed on the computer screen; her fingers had a life of their own.

Plastic keys rattled under her quick touch; Sarah stared, fascinated, at the information cascading across the glowing laptop's face.

"Census records ... herrrre ..."

Willamina's eyes and fingers were much faster than her almost-slurred, laggardly narrative; she sifted, winnowed, bulldozed, plowed, skipped, sprinted and otherwise chased across impossible mountains of data, discarding what was obviously unhelpful, following an elusive trail, until she stopped, frozen, staring, reading the words, almost not daring to believe.

"I found him," she whispered.

"Where?" Sarah blurted, swinging around behind the Sheriff, her lace-gloved hands clutching Willamina's shoulders as she stared past her right ear, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

"There. I thought that might be it!" She seized the mouse, running the cursor back and forth, then with a few more clicks, sent the page to the printer.

Sarah looked up, surprised, as the printer whirred and spit out a sheet of paper.

Willamina said "Grab that. Take a look."

Sarah made a long leap to the printer, snatched up the page, lifted it and read, her right hand cupping her mouth as she saw a Welsh fireman wearing a white leather hat, sitting in the passenger seat of a shiny-new gasoline powered fire engine.

She blinked, almost giggling as she realized it had been most of a century since she felt her eyes sting with tears, for directly aft of the gilt letters on the hood that read CINCINNATI ENGINE 121, she saw a man who looked much like her late husband Daffyd, her late husband who'd died in a house fire, who died after saving a trapped infant and tossing it across a flaming chasm to Chief Fitzgerald, the big red-headed Irishman who caught the blanket-wrapped bundle and screamed in horror as he watched his right-hand-man try to leap the same chasm as the floor collapsed under him.

Sarah saw her son, her little boy, her Daffyd, all grown up ... grown up and wearing the Chief's hat.

"Chief," she choked, swallowing hard and wiping at tears that hadn't welled since before she'd been killed, back in Germany, over a century before.

"Chief. He made chief." She gave a little hiccup. "Daffyd was going to be Chief when Sean retired."

"I know," Willamina whispered. "Is that ... does he look like your husband?"

Sarah nodded.

"He looks good." A few more key-clicks. "He's buried in Cincinnati. Would you like to go there?"

Sarah shook her head, staring at the printed sheet.

"May I keep this?"

"I can laminate it if you like."

"Laminate?"

Willamina smiled, printed out another copy: "Hold onto that one. I'll laminate this one. Keeps longer that way."

 

"You're sure you won't stay?" Linn asked quietly.

"No, sir," Daffyd replied, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "I ... asked leave from the Cincinnati fire department to come out. They ... the Chief was one of the first firemen out here, and he said yes, and to tell you he still remembers when you and Sean knocked the daylights out of one another on the depot."

Linn laughed. "I remember it too," he admitted, raising a hand to his cheek bone. "The man can hit!"

And so Daffyd Llewellyn went back East, never to return: he lived his life out on the wrong side of the Mr. and Mrs. Sippi, but he did good work, and he showed those Easterners that Western men can out-work the soft-handed city types any day of the week, and make it look easy.

In the fullness of time, he too married, and like his father, he shouted in triumph when his wife bore him a child, and just like his mother, the child had pale eyes.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

67. RUNAWAY

 

"Aye," Sean sighed. "It'll take 'em a bit t' get used t' the thin air this high up" -- his Irish-red cheeks glowed in the morning sun -- "but once they do, they'll pull like two hells when they return t' th' lowlands, an' tha's what brings in th' dollars!"

Young Daffyd continued currying the white mare, gentling her with whisper and with touch, getting her used to strange hands and strange voices in this very strange place.

Three mares they were, and three more in an adjacent corral: the other three were now acclimatized to the Firelands altitude, their blood thicker, their hearts stronger, their lungs larger: three experienced mares would depart on the same train that brought these most recent three, bound for for back East, where they would pull fire engines in Cincinnati, that river city from whence the Irish Brigade originally came.

"Ah,ladies, wha' a fine sight ye'll make," Sean murmured, caressing a moist, pink, velvety nose. "Ye'll be th' envy o' ever' common saddle horse --"

The air was shattered by a vigorous arm hammering on a sheet of steel with a wagon bolt, the firehouse alarm: Sean, for all his size, was a man of uncommon speed, and he was in three steps at a full-on sprint, charging the whitewashed board fence: he slapped his big paws down on the top board and vaulted it easily, his brogans slapping the dirt as he landed: he disappeared into the firehouse, and as Daffyd dropped the curry and ran to the fence, thrust head and shoulders between the boards to watch, the heavy wooden valves of the firehouse doors swung open and a three-horse hitch, three white, gleaming mares harnessed up and ready hauled into view, and behind them, standing in the driver's box and swinging a blacksnake whip, Sean -- but not Sean who'd been sweet-talking the new mares, no! -- this was an Irish Chieftain, a man harkening back to those wild Hiberinans driving their war-chariots, and as he swung the plaited leather in a great circle and shattered the air a yard above the middle mare's ears he roared, "SAINT FLORIAN, SAINT CHRISTOPHER AND THE SACRED MOTHER HERSELF, LADIES, RUN!" -- and Daffyd's breath caught at the sight of the gleaming, smoking Ahrens engine, an engine he himself had burnished and waxed and fussed over, as had his father before him, as engine and Irishmen and the ladder wagon swung out and up the street at a hard gallop, Sean's obscene roar as he bellowed a Celtic song of unsavory vein (which was fine, Sean had confided in the lad, because nobody but his darlin' Daisy spoke Gaelic, an' she was't tellin'!) -- young Daffyd Llewellyn stared after them, his eyes shining with admiration, his young heart hammering with the absolute conviction that what these men did was right, and that there was no finer thing in all the world than to be a fireman!

Daffyd's eyes stung a little as he watched the steam engine and its crew disappear up the street, and his chest tightened a little, as did his grip on the whitewashed corral railing.

His father was dead before he was born and he knew it was irrational, but he wished mightily that he could look at that steam engine and know that one of the men clinging to it was his father.

Young Daffyd's refuge was ever the firehouse.

The Irish Brigade took to him as if he were their own get, the Chief's wife clucked and fussed over him like a Banty hen, and as happens when a young boy will listen to an older man,the Brigade filled him with their collective content -- their wisdom and experience, their training and enthusiasm, their war stories and tall tales, and in this son of a man with whom they'd laughed and drank and fought and warred against the breath of the Evil One himself, they found a most receptive audience.

Daffyd listened especially to "the other Welshman," Daffyd's brother, who'd come out from Cincinnati's number one firehouse when he heard his brother was killed fighting a fire, and from this man as well young Daffyd learned: Ron Llewellyn spoke of the fabled Porkopolis, as some called her, the Queen City as others had her: he spoke of her culture and her opera, the opportunities for a young man of ambition, and he offered, when the day came, to make the right introductions to get Daffyd into their Fire Department -- unless, of course, he wished to serve here, where he'd grown up.

And so Young Daffyd grew tall and lean in the high mountains, he grew swift and strong, he trained with the men and laughed with the men and if he'd had his way he'd have bunked with the men, but his Mama still held him back, still regarded him with those ice-pale eyes, seeing him as her child, her baby, her little boy ... and he chafed under this restriction.

That very morning their disagreement had come to raised voices -- Sarah, shocked, stared at her son as if at a stranger, and Daffyd, shocked, glared at his jailer and his captor as if at a mortal enemy: each withdrew from the field of conflict -- what was it about, you ask?

What is it ever about?

Something that appeared small and petty in hindsight, but of momentous importance at the time, because neither was willing to admit any fault, neither was willing to back down from the line each drew in the dirt, and so young Daffyd Llewellyn, son of a Welsh warrior and a pale-eyed, warring mother, considered that he had a bag in the firehouse, a bag of clothes that would be just enough to get him a start back East; he had some money in the bank ... and there were three mares, bound from the Firelands fire department to Cincinnati, and if he told the conductor he was traveling with them to make sure of their care, why, the conductor would nod and smile and allow as that was a good idea.

Two weeks passed.

Two weeks, in which Sarah fretted and paced and asked of her son; two weeks in which she discovered he'd taken a single grip and all the money from his account, he'd boarded a train and traveled with three white mares, that he was bound for Cincinnati.

Sarah was ready to follow him, at least until her pale-eyed father laid a gentle hand on her arm and murmured that boys are sometimes impetuous, she would be better served to stay home, for he'd likely come dragging home sheepish and crestfallen and he'd want nothing more in that moment than to fall into his Mama's arms and beg her forgiveness.

Sarah, for once in her life, listened to another's counsel, and for the rest of her life, cursed her stupidity for listening.

Days went into weeks, months into years: no word came, and Sarah became a recluse, a woman alone: no longer did she teach at the little one room school, neither was her lovely voice heard in their little whitewashed church: Brother William called on her, and listened to her, and held her as she poured out her fears, her self recriminations, her grief: he, and he alone, saw her tears, and he alone received the confidence of her correspondence, for she'd met a certain Count, an honorable man years before, when she was but a girl, and Brother William held her hands and watched her lips move as she spilled her plans on the tabletop.

It was Brother William who went to the Sheriff, three days after Sarah's departure, and placed a folded page in his callused palm: it was he who described her sorrow, the deep loss of her beloved Daffyd, and now her son, whose hot words laid like a red brand against her mother's heart, as did her own heated reply: and it was Brother William who sat with his old friend, as the Sheriff sat suddenly, heavily in his chair, Sarah's note falling from nerveless fingers.

"She could have told me," he whispered. "She could have come to me. I would have given her my blessing."

 

Daffyd Llewellyn knew the city was foreign territory.

Daffyd Llewellyn knew he would stand out and very likely his grip would be taken from him.

Daffyd Llewellyn purchased a money belt, and in a changing room, secreted his small fortune beneath his clothes.

His grip contained clothing and little else; it could be replaced, if need be: his funds would be a greater loss, and so he emerged from the store, stepped onto the sidewalk (stone, he thought, smooth ... not dusty and warped like a boardwalk!) -- and then he heard it.

His heart picked up a little at the sound: hooves, horses a-gallop, a bell ... a fire engine!

Daffyd looked up the street and his heart shrank in his young breast.

The driver's hand was to his chest and his face was contorted: he fell sideways, reins falling loose, and the mares, lacking a firm hand, did what they loved best, and that was to run.

Daffyd Llewellyn began to run.

Men shouted, there was a scream, Daffyd remembered --

He'd practiced this, with the Sheriff's son Jacob, running to catch a runaway team, running at an angle, the seize the harness and bounce once to slam his shoe soles into the pavement and bounce himself up, and power onto the mare's back, and seize the reins --

Daffyd ran.

Wild-eyed, nostrils flaring, polished hooves punishing the street, the mares thundered toward the running lad, steel-shod hooves a tangle of sharp-edged killing machinery, and Daffyd gauged his power and he reached --

Young fingers seized harness leather --

Stiff-legged, he hopped, he SLAMMED down against the pavement so hard his teeth met and he launched, he turned and spread his legs and came down a-fork of the mare and he laid down on her back and hauled himself forward, yelling.

It was a white mare.

It was a Firelands mare.

It was a mare that knew his voice.

Daffyd Llewellyn grabbed one rein, then the other, leaned back, yelling, swearing Gaelic oaths he'd heard Sean Fitzgerald roar: the mare slowed, and as she slowed, so did her teammate: the center mare slowed, and the third, and the three-mare hitch cantered down and men's hands grabbed for their bridles and Daffyd sat up straighter and soothed "Ho, there, ho now, ho there," and the mare's ears swung back to listen to him and she stopped, chewing at the bit, and a little boy with bright, shining eyes ran up with Daffyd's grip in his hand and he held it up as if offering incense to a god and said in an admiring, little-boy voice, "Hey, Mister, you dropped this," strong hands seized him around the waist and hauled him off the white mare, pounded his back and wrung his hand and hoist him to men's shoulders while cheers echoed off the big-city buildings surroundings, and Daffyd Llewellyn knew -- knew! -- he was going to be a fireman!

He was going to be -- by God! he would become fire chief! -- and in the fullness of time, when he was formally invested with the scarred, stained white helmet, he looked around at muscled men with curled mustaches, men with whom he'd fought the hot breath of the Evil One himself, and he personally led their thirsty and celebratory assault on the nearest tavern, the one that gained most of its business from the Cincinnati version of the Irish Brigade, the men of Station One itself.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

68. GOOD GIRL GONE

Sarah McKenna looked around, one last time.

She turned and looked at the stone stairs, the wide staircase her husband climbed when they came back from their wedding night in the overhauled line shack.

She remembered how safe and how wanted she felt, carried in Daffyd Llewellyn's strong, muscled, manly arms.

She remembered how they two supervised the house's construction, how she marveled at her fiancee's wisdom -- he specified how it was laid out, he described to her terms like fire progression and smoke inhibition and fire stop construction, and the house was mostly stone as a result: even the roof shingles were slate, and wood construction was at an absolute minimum: he spoke of how stone held heat, and would moderate the severe Colorado winter's cold, and temper its sun-blazing summer's rays, and he'd been right.

They had been happy here.

They had been so very happy.

Sarah McKenna stepped out her front door for the very last time, closing it quietly behind her.

The Bear Killer waited on the porch.

Sarah paced out into the yard, made a quick, palm-out motion -- stay -- and when she was twenty feet from the house, she stopped, head bowed.

Sarah bit her bottom lip and her shoulders slumped a little, then she took a quick, deep breath, bared her teeth, snarled.

She reached over her shoulder and gripped the wire-wound handle of her favorite fighting blade.

Nearly a yard of good German steel whispered death as it cleared her back-scabbard.

Sarah fell into a blade-fighter's stance, feet shoulder width apart and one a little ahead of the other, and she hummed a note, and in her imagination she heard the rosined horsehair bows drawn over cello strings, a deep, near-harmonious, almost dissonant note, and then she conducted her mental orchestra in a harsh chorus.

In the Hall of the Mountain King, she thought, and as the music began, slow, near-stately, she began to dance.

Sarah danced in the sunlight, the her blade describing graceful, slow circles; she stepped in a stately box-pattern, forward, left, back, right, and The Bear Killer watched patiently from the porch.

As the music's tempo increased, so did the blade's: Sarah's moves were graceful, flowing, the shining steel gained a life of its own in her hands: she turned, facing the house as if facing an enemy, stopped: she reached over her shoulder with her left hand and now she held two blades, and suddenly she was in motion again.

She danced faster now, the blades singing a whispering promise of death, the blades weaving a shining web of destruction around her: she turned, she dipped, she swayed, and her young beauty, her lithe and youthful steps and turns, all contrasted with the deadly promise that shone and gleamed and flashed in the high mountain sun.

Sarah danced through tears and sorrow: she danced for her dead husband, she danced for his child she carried, the infant she bore, the boy she raised, and she danced in grief for that child's love lost, gone, splintered with harsh words and pride.

Six months she waited, and his return was not yet, and she'd heard from Daisy that the Brigade heard from their Cincinnati brethren that young Daffyd, son of his Welsh father, was in Cincinnati, and was well, and was become part of their fire department, and already a near-legend, and her mother's heart was engulfed with sorrow as she realized her son was gone, he was happy where he was, and that meant he would not be coming back.

A certain Baron extended his invitation, and intimated that his son was marriageable, and that it would be an advantageous union for a young woman of her remarkable skills: until her son swore and spat and turned his back, until her inflexible pride demanded his return and his apology, until neither yielded and now he was gone ... until that moment she never considered taking the Baron up on his offer.

One week to the day before, she'd written a carefully worded letter, accepting his hospitality, informing that she would be enroute in a sevenday, and so she was.

Sarah danced until her shoulders ached, and she collapsed, her blades crossed before her, head bowed, the grief she denied herself finally coming to surface, and The Bear Killer was there with her, and licked her tears and washed her face and she held the great black mountain dog and wept bitter grief into his curly black fur.

She hadn't told anyone else of her departure, but when her rented buggy rolled up to the depot, her father was waiting.

She'd sent most of her goods, what little she was taking, ahead the day before; it would travel by steamship and then by the Baron's personal staff, to his great schloss, but she would travel with but little, for she was in the habit of traveling light, and with a minimum encumbrance.

The Sheriff rose as she ascended the depot platform.

Father and daughter embraced, each crushing the other as if never willing to surrender the other to the vicissitudes and inclemencies of their lives to come, but they had to, for time, tide and the Z&W Railroad wait for no man.

"I could never wish for a better daughter," Linn whispered, his head bent and his lips to her ear, and Sarah's breath caught for a moment, and it was all she could do not to break down again: instead, she made a fist and thumped her father gently in the center of his chest.

"Take care of the twins," she whispered, "and when you walk Angela down the aisle, give her this."

She slipped her wedding ring from her silk-gloved hand and pressed it into her father's palm, closed his weather-browned fingers over it.

The Bear Killer leaned companionably against Sarah's leg as Sarah pulled off the other ring she wore.

It was an ancient stone, a ring Linn knew she cherished: it was the ring Daffyd Llewellyn spoke of, one night, when he described how he knew Sarah was to be his wife, and how his Grandam would have been so pleased, for the ring had been hers, by the ancient and hereditary right.

His Grandam was a Welsh Princess, and this was the Ring of the Princess, and only given to Women of the Blood.

"If Daffyd ever comes home," Sarah whispered, "give him this."

She turned quickly, dropped to hug The Bear Killer, quickly, almost desperately, then she nearly ran for the waiting train car.

Linn watched her board the private car, saw her settle herself in the seat, saw her proud head erect and composed, silhouetted against the curtained windows opposite, and he heard the conductor bawling and the whistle scream into the cloudless sky and he heard the Baldwin engine shoulder into her load, and he watched the train pull out of station.

Sarah waited until Firelands was out of sight, beyond the second curve in the track, before her proud head bowed once more, and she buried her eyes in a lace trimmed kerchief, and wept for the home she knew she would never see again.

She could not hear the sorrowing howl of The Bear Killer, as his blunt, black muzzle thrust skyward and he grieved his own sorrows to the cloudless sky above.

Had she looked out the window she might have seen a white wolf, watching as she passed, but as she was sobbing bitterly into her kerchief, she did not look, and could not know.

Not many years later, when Daffyd Llewellyn finally returned, fully intending to beg his mother's forgiveness, he was given the Ring of the Princess, and the Sheriff's best hospitality, and when he returned that next day to Cincinnati and his duties with their fire department, he did not know -- he could not have known -- the private car the Sheriff arranged for him, was the same car that carried his mother when she, too, departed Firelands for the very last time.

 

Willamina tilted her head a little, studying the surprisingly solid shade of her honored ancestress.

"So now you know."

Sarah Lynne McKenna nodded.

She wore the traveling-dress she wore the day she left Firelands.

Somehow, Willamina thought, it must be significant, or at least fitting.

"Thank you for reading me that," Sarah said quietly. "Now I know."

"I am curious."

She turned pale eyes to the Sheriff. "What's that?"

"I thought the dead were closer to God and therefore they had a more complete knowledge of things."

Sarah's eyes were far away, almost lost.

"Sometimes," she said quietly, "I think we still have to find out for ourselves."

"Is that why you're here?"

Sarah blinked. "I think so. And ... you buried me." Her smile was tinged with grief. "Thank you for planting my bones here."

Willamina nodded. "They should be here."

"What wasn't retrieved ... just isn't there. Mice ate them, they rotted, dust to dust and all that."

Willamina nodded.

"I still cause trouble," Sarah said, smiling a little, and Willamina lowered her head a fraction, raising an eyebrow.

"Saraahhhhh," she said in a warning voice, and Sarah laughed, clapping her gloved hands with delight.

"You sound just like Papa!" she exclaimed, "he used to do that -- with his eyebrow --"

Willamina shook her Mommy-finger at her and said, "Out with it, young lady! What have you done?"

"Do you remember ... no, you wouldn't," Sarah murmured, then looked up. "Safe deposit boxes are useful. You're going to use one to guarantee that book you're writing gets to a certain Sheriff on Mars."

Willamina blinked, remembering. "Oh, yeah."

"Well, two can play that game. Or three." Sarah smiled. "And the diplomatic courier that delivered my bones ...?"

"What about him?"

"I'm glad you're dressed. It wouldn't do to answer the door in your nightgown."

The Bear Killer's head came up, ears pricked, looking from Willamina to the front door and back, just before a brisk, businesslike rat-tat, tat alarmed the wooden portal.

When Willamina returned to her seat and the black Mercedes had departed their driveway, Sarah Lynne McKenna was nowhere to be seen.

Willamina frowned, opened the latches on the beautifully crafted wooden box, opened the lid.

She stared at the matched, balanced, German-steel blades with the wire-wound handles, for a very long time, then she picked up the rolled and ribbon-tied note in the lined case, between the hilts.

A wedding gift from the Baron, she read, who delighted in watching his wild American daughter-in-law dancing with blades.

Sarah

Next day at the bank, the manager waved at Willamina, then held up a ribbon-tied package.

Curious, Willamina stepped into her glass-walled office, drew the door shut behind.

"This came from Cincinnati," Beatrice chirped, "and I think it's yours!"

"Mine?" Curious, Willamina read the papers Beatrice handed her, paged quickly through them, until she came to the original safe deposit box's owner's name.

She blinked, read it again, her mouth opening, and she looked up at the plump, cheerful bank manager, looked back at the paper in her hands.

"It can't be," she said, shaking her head. "It can't be!"

She looked up, stood, dropped the papers and accepted the proffered box.

The signature on the papers she'd just dropped was clear and legible, despite its age, and she looked down at it once again, just before she untied the ribbon.

"Daffyd Llewellyn," she murmured, and there was a whisper of breeze against the side of her face and she heard a familiar voice murmur, "Told you I was causing trouble" just as Willamina opened the box.

She sat, suddenly, heavily, blinking, then she looked up at Beatrice and declared, "Well I will be sawed off and damned!"

She turned the box so Beatrice could see the contents.

"Ooh, pretty," Beatrice gushed. "What is it?"

"This," Willamina said reverently, "is the fabled Welsh Ring of the Princess."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

69. THE RIGHT THING TO DO

Jacob saved his money like a miser -- no, not just a miser, but a paranoid miser -- and he dipped into his personal till but rarely.

He'd learned at a very young age, how easy it was to fritter away his young fortune.

He learned a similar lesson recently, when he was thinking seriously of asking his Mama about getting another .22 rifle.

He'd bought a box of shells off a friend's older brother and he and a boon companion were well removed from town with his buddy's laundromatic rimfire, and Jacob discovered the delight of seeing just how fast he could put lead into a particularly offensive tin can stuck in the creek bank.

Splitting the box of shells in half with his buddy ... and then feeding a ten round magazine ... and discovering the hard way just how fast his precious box of shining brass hulls turned into gleaming scrap on the ground ... well, Jacob considered this carefully as he policed up the tiny empties.

That night, in his bedroom, he laid out both his gun belts and all three of his revolvers, and he pulled a chair up and hunched over with his elbows on his knees, chin on his fists, and frowned.

He considered how fast he'd run through lead and equated this with the speed with which he'd turned currency into noise and voids, punching holes in that can with what must have looked like a steady stream of projectiles, and he decided this was a waste of effort and especially of his slender funds.

Jacob looked up and discovered a lean old lawman with an iron grey mustache sitting opposite him, regarding him with a quietly amused expression.

"I know that look," he said quietly, and Jacob saw the flash of white teeth beneath the old man's handlebar. "Out with it, what's eatin' ye?"

Jacob frowned even more, took in a great breath and sighed it out silently, the way a boy will.

"Grampa --"

Linn waited patiently as the lad arranged his what-I-want-to-say with what-I-should-say and how-do-I-say it, and the lean old lawman understood exactly what was running through his descendant's head, for he too had been a boy at one time.

"Grampa ... I bought a box of shells and now they're all shot up."

Linn nodded, once.

"It was fun -- it was fast ... but ..."

"But you have an empty pocketbook and a full memory."

"Yes, sir."

"What do you plan to do now?"

"I've got to make some more money."

"Do you have any left?"

"Yes, sir, plenty."

"But you want to replace what you just spent."

"Yes, sir."

Linn nodded again, slowly. "Good."

Jacob waited.

"Now when I come in here you were a-studyin' that hardware and I could hear the gears turnin' behind your eyes."

"Yes, sir."

"What were your thoughts?"

 

Willamina looked up as Richard drew his chair up beside her desk.

"When you get a package," he said, "it's generally interesting."

Willamina smiled and opened the larger of the two. "These were in a safe deposit box for better than a century."

"Uh-oh." Richard grinned sardonically. "I can just guess where those came from."

"Only one of them."

"Only one?" Richard leaned closer, suddenly very interested.

Willamina hesitated, absently rubbing her chest: she'd taken to doing that since she healed from the blunt-trauma injury where she was machine-gunned. Her body armor and steel-stay corset prevented penetration but it was like being jackhammered with a dull bit, or so the doctor explained, to which she riposted, "Brother, you don't know the half of it!"

"Richard ... you know I wear armor."

"I'm glad you do."

"You know I usually go corseted."

"I'm very glad you do." Richard raised an eyebrow and leered at her like a dirty old lecher.

"It seems there is precedent."

"Precedent?"

"Richard, you remember we watched that re-enactment special where different armor was tested ... Japanese silk armor, paper armor, that silk parachute ballooned out behind the galloping horse archer?"

"I remember."

"Wyatt Earp was once accused of wearing a steel shirt. He denied this. It seems that a steel shirt was a disgraceful thing, the mark of a coward."

"Not when you need it," Richard muttered, and Willamina smiled her agreement.

"There are those who theorize he wore a thick silk vest -- many layers of silk will act as armor, but it's really thick and bulky."

"Okay ... where are we going with this?"

Willamina opened the larger of the two boxes, drew out a rather ancient photograph.

"You recognize this one."

"Your twin."

"You could say that."

"Good God, she's pregnant!"

"You noticed!" Willamina exclaimed, batting her eyes in mock dismay. "She is, but do you see what she's holding?"

Richard blinked and looked at the photograph of the attractive young woman with pale eyes ... a woman who was obviously very pregnant, a woman wearing only her underthings -- scandalous in that age! -- but what drew his attention was the steel shell standing on the floor beside her.

It resembled the Spanish armor he'd seen in illustrations of the Conquistadores, kind of a rotund steel T-shirt.

"It's proportioned to fit he perfectly," Willamina explained, showing him the second photograph -- same woman, same scandalous attire, but wearing the turtleshell.

It appeared to perfectly mirror her gravid figure.

Willamina handed him the note that came with the photographic plates.

Sometimes this is the right thing to do, he read, then looked up at his wife, puzzled.

"Apparently," Willamina explained, "she intended this to be delivered to me before I was shot."

"Oops." Richard half expected to be smacked by an unseen palm, but it didn't happen.

"Who made the armor, does she say?"

"She had a favorite blacksmith. Black Smith, his name was ... Smith, and he was a freed slave. He chose the name himself, and Sarah speculated it was a sales gimmick."

Richard smiled. "I suppose."

"He was a gifted metalworker, I understand. He made all her fighting knives, he made this armor, I understand the man was a craftsman of the first order."

Richard nodded slowly, staring at the picture.

"Willa ... you're not pregnant again, are you?"

Willamina blinked, smiled. "Not as of this morning's check."

He nodded, frowning again. "How would Jacob take to being a big brother?"

Jacob came running across the living room floor, eyes shining: in a delighted voice -- as he ran into his Pa and grabbed the man's arm to keep from falling over -- "Am I gonna be a big brother? Ma, is it a boy or a girl? Can I teach him to whistle? I know where to show him where the frogs are and I cans show him how to fish --"

Richard picked up his tall, skinny son and set him on a denim covered knee. "Whoa, Tiger, slow down now, let's wait for something definite, shall we?"

Willamina showed Jacob the two photographs.

"Aunt Sarah!" Jacob crowded happily, then he frowned. "How come she ... oh, she's pregnant." He looked suspiciously at his Mama.

"You sure you're not?"

 

Willamina waited until husband and son were both stretched out and sound asleep before slipping out of bed and into her fur lined moccasins.

She drifted down the broad wooden stairs like a ghost; shotgun in hand, she slipped out the front door, the young but protective Bear Killer beside her: she watched him as his muzzle raised and he sampled the still night air.

Willamina had a shawl around her shoulders; one step, two, three, and she was down the stairs and onto gravel: she walked slowly, silently, balancing the double gun in her off hand.

"Full moon," a familiar voice commented.

She turned her head, smiling at the surprisingly solid shade of her Great-Great-Great-Grandfather.

"I hear tell ghosts walk in the full moon's light," she smiled.

"You look like a ghost."

"You don't."

He chuckled and she did too, and he put his arm around her shoulders, drew her close.

He smelled of horse sweat and leather and just faintly of whiskey, and Willamina felt like a little girl being held by her big strong Daddy.

"Jacob has a good amount of sense about him."

"He gets it honest."

"I would hope so."

They walked together in companionable silence for a time.

"I see you like a double gun."

"Always have."

"I did too. It spoke loudly and most persuasively in some situations where I desperately needed a friend."

Willamina nodded, suddenly sober.

"Yeah," was her raspy reply.

"What did you think of Sarah's cabinets?"

"Cabinets?"

The Old Sheriff bent a little and kissed the top of her head. "The ... portraits."

"Oh, those. I was a little surprised."

"How about the Ring?"

"That was quite a surprise."

"You didn't show Richard."

"No. No, we got sidetracked when Jacob got all excited."

"My Jacob did too," the Sheriff said, his voice softer, the voice of a man seeing a favorite memory again.

A few more steps.

"Is ... my brother William ... is he you?"

"Oh, no."

"Is he your Jacob?"

"Nope."

"Is he somebody else?"

The Old Sheriff laughed quietly, his arm tightening around her shoulders.

"No, dear heart, and you are not Sarah,for all that you could be her twin." Linn stopped and Willamina did too, and he put his fingertips lightly on he shoulders, his expression that of a fond father looking at a favorite daughter.

"Esther and I used to walk in the moonlight like this," he murmured. "She wore a shawl very much like that one."

"I like wearing a shawl. It makes me feel ... more womanly."

"You're complicated, Willamina. You are deeper than anyone would realize. You are most assuredly womanly, for all that you are a warrior." His expression was suddenly bleak. "That is one thing I would bequeath nobody."

"Sometimes it's necessary."

He nodded. "Sometimes it is," he agreed, "but my God! the cost!"

Willamina nodded, the stray memory of a historic video coming to mind, the image of a helicopter being tipped off the deck of a carrier to make room for more refugees landing from the air-evac in the last days of Vietnam.

She refused to allow the memories of her own wartime experience.

"Will Sarah be back?" Willamina asked.

"She likes it here," the Old Sheriff said speculatively. "She might. Then again, if she's found what she's been looking for, she might leave."

"I hope she finds her good rest," Willamina whispered.

Linn's hand was warm and gentle as he caressed his palm against the side of her face. "Dear Willa," he whispered, "you are as wise as you are beautiful!"

"I'm not beautiful," Willamina muttered, turning away from his touch, then turning back and embracing him suddenly, almost desperately.

"But thank you for telling me that I am," she mumbled into his shirt front, and Linn laughed again.

"You might want to head for the house."

Willamina released the lean old lawman's middle, stepped back, shifted the shotgun to her strong hand. "Why? What --"

Linn gestured to something wallowing out of the shadows: "Skunk," he explained, and Willamina backed up a few more steps, shotgun at high port.

"Bear Killer, come."

The Bear Killer, curious, pricked up his ears, looked at the spotted intruder, then turned with a show of reluctance and padded after Willamina.

The first thing Willamina smelled when she went back in the house was tea, hot and fragrant, with a hint of citrus ... her favorite blend, Richard must have --

Sarah sat at her kitchen table, wearing an electric-blue gown with a touch of white lace at throat and cuffs, and a tiny electric-blue hat with a rakish white feather.

Sarah sipped her tea, regarded Willamina with wide, pale, innocent eyes.

"I thought you were gone." Willamina hung the double gun back up on the rack.

"Not yet." Sarah smiled. "I made a pot."

"Good."

"It's a little chilly out."

"It's not bad."

Sarah nodded approval as Willamina draped the shawl over the back of a chair. "Esther had a shawl very much like that one."

"So your father said."

"Do you like the gifts?"

"I'm curious."

"I'd be disappointed if you weren't."

"Am I pregnant?"

"You already answered that."

"Will I be?"

Sarah laughed quietly. "I'm not telling."

Willamina dropped her forehead into her palms. "Oh, Gawd," she groaned, "not again!"

"I didn't say yes."

"You didn't say no."

"I'm too old for that!"

Sarah gave her a wise look and sipped her tea.

"What about my ring?"

"Now that," Willamina said, "is flat forevermore gorgeous!"

"It is also a Welsh national treasure."

"Then I should return it."

"It is worn by the hereditary Princess."

"I am not ..."

"Oh but you are, my dear Warrior." Sarah's carriage was very proper as she placed her delicate, bone-china teacup very precisely in the very center of the matching eggshell saucer. "You are royalty. You need only look."

"Look where?"

Sarah's eyes shifted; she looked into the other room, looked back.

Willamina blinked. "The box?"

"Both boxes. They contain the written lineage, thanks to my son Daffyd."

Willamina shook her head "Princess," she muttered.

"Ladies of the royal line are not shinking violets," Sarah lectured, a forefinger upraised: "the crowned heads commonly went to war, and if the castle were invaded, the ladies fought like tigresses. Welsh princesses were archer-maidens and not infrequently added their firepower to the famous Welsh bowmen."

Willamina, for one mad moment, imagined herself in fine silks and gown, a jeweled diadem on her brow, cranking a round into her Winchester as armored pikemen advanced across the field: she shook he head, dismissed the notion.

"I'm staying here, thank you very much," she said firmly, and Sarah nodded.

"I thought you might." She picked up the teapot, decanted the fragrant liquid into Willamina's forgotten cup.

"But if you do become pregnant," she said, smiling wickedly at the alarm in Willamina's eyes, "remember those pictures. You wore armor because you have a son and a husband, you wore armor because it was the right thing to do." Sarah set the teapot down gently, soundlessly.

"That's what you do, Willamina, it's what you've always done, and if that's the only thing you inherited from Papa I will be overjoyed."

"What's that?"

"You do the right thing," Sarah said seriously, "for one and only one reason: because it's the right thing to do!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

70. A GARAND TIME

 

Crystal's head came up and she looked, surprised, out her kitchen window.

The Sheriff's butterscotch-colored Jeep was just skidding to a broadside stop, dust and gravel flying, and as her happily-squealing little boy anticipated another bite from the baby spoon his Mama held, Crystal saw the Sheriff hop twice as she came out of the Jeep, then sprint toward their front door.

Crystal set down the spoon and wiped her hands quickly in her apron as she powered to the front door: she had it open just in time for the Sheriff's knuckled fist to swipe at where it had been.

"Thanks," she threw over her shoulder as she skipped across the room and down the hall.

The cell phone buzzed in her apron pocket and she automatically scooped it out: "Hello?"

"Crystal darlin'," her husband's familiar voice smiled in her ear, "Sis will be over any time. She needs my Garand. I didn't want you to be surprised."

"Ah, okay," Crystal told her husband Will. "She just got here --"

Willamina came running up the hall, the walnut stocked battle rifle in one hand, a small canvas grip in the other -- "Thanks, back shortly," she blurted as she sailed out the door, across the porch and down the steps.

"I take it Sis got the rifle okay."

"Um, yeah," Crystal replied, and back in Firelands, seated in his police cruiser, Will heard the sound of a Jeep throwing gravel in an uncharacteristically abrupt takeoff.

"I don't know who she's after," Will observed, "but I feel sorry for 'em!"

 

Linn watched, interested, as the modern day horse thieves gathered the small herd.

In his day riders would gather the herd, then chivvy them to whatever destination -- generally a holding area of some sort, where they could ply their running irons and blot the brands; sometimes they opted for speed and distance and didn't bother to change the brand at all.

He considered the big aluminum trailer and frowned at rubber tires and thought of paved highways, unknown in his day, and how impossible it would be to track the stolen herd.

"Let's see what happens," he whispered to Cannonball, raising a tin cup of steaming coffee to his lips.

It was one vice he allowed himself, in his own day, and in this.

 

The Jeep sang power under Willamina's heavy foot.

She knew the stolen horses were headed east, and she was headed west, and she'd just hung up the hands-free phone, and her smile was tight and not at all kindly.

Her brother's Garand was muzzle down beside her -- it had taken the thousand yard trophy at Camp Perry twice, she knew -- it was also the only .30-06 she had available to her, and she knew the ammunition in these two clips were steel core.

Willamina intended to cause trouble and she knew just how to do it.

She skidded to a stop in the Firelands high school parking lot; a lean young man with a bowl haircut and a knowing grin waited beside a gleaming, polished, jacked-up, wide-tired muscle car, a GTO that his father built up into a genuine racer, a GTO that got his father in trouble (when the man was his son's age), a car that slept under a tarp for several years, a car his son discovered and went over and brought back to racing form, a GTO that could honestly out-run damn neart anything on the road today.

Willamina called ahead and asked to have this young worthy meet her in the parking lot, she needed his help, and as she brought her Jeep to a fast stop, he slouched against the hand-rubbed lacquer, arms crossed, grinning.

"Mike!" Willamina yelled as she boiled out of her Jeep, the Garand in one hand, her M4 carbine in the other, running easily across the blacktop, as completely at home in jeans and boots as she usually was in a skirt and heels -- "Mike, fire it up!"

Mike Hall did not need to be told twice.

He slid behind the wheel and touched the key -- just a touch is all it took, one bump, the starter gave one quiet YAW and the engine opened its eyes and began to purr, a deep, rumbling, menacing purr, like a lion with a full belly that spots a toothsome morsel that it just might kill in spite of its satiation.

Willamina slung her carbine from her off shoulder, hauled the passenger door open, propped the man-sized rifle muzzle down beside the console and tossed the more modern counterpart into the back seat.

"Where to, boss?" Mike asked casually, making a show of thrusting the tongue into his seat belt's buckle.

Willamina made fast her own belly belt, pulling experimentally on the chest strap. "Head east," she said, her voice tight, "and fast!"

Mike did not need to be told twice.

He did not burn tubber until they were off school property, and as Willamina's weight pushed her deeper into the seat, she felt a deep, visceral joy that comes only when a warrior is running hard toward a battle.

 

A lean old lawman with an iron grey mustache leaned into his mare's gallop.

Cannonball loved to run, and Cannonball ran for the love of running, and Cannonball streaked across the high mountain meadow, a red arrow in the morning sun.

The Old Sheriff was interested in seeing what his offspring was going to do.

 

Crystal finished feeding young Charles William: she burped him, she rocked him, she cleaned him up and powdered his round little bottom changed his diaper and rocked him again, feeling very motherly as she closed her eyes and delighted in the smell of a clean little baby in her arms.

Just like his Pa, little Charles William was like an old b'ar: when he got his belly full and he got nice and warm, why, he fell asleep, and it wasn't long before Crystal put him down for his morning nap.

As soon as she did she went to the scanner and began puzzling together the pieces she was hearing.

It helped that she could call her husband.

"Yeah, hon," he said, "Sis got called on a horse theft. She's pursuing a trailer truck, she's got a deputy behind them lit up and they ain't stoppin'!"

"What's she going to do?" Crystal asked.

"She's going to stop 'em, peacefully or otherwise."

Willamina smiled.

She knew when it came to Sheriff Willamina Keller, more often than not, "Peacefully or Otherwise" generally meant ... otherwise.

"Does this have something to do with your rifle?" she hazarded.

She could hear her husband's broad grin in his clipped reply.

"Yep!"

 

"Okay, Mike," Willamina yelled as she lowered her cell phone. "Cut 'er loose!"

Mike grinned and caressed the gleaming chrome shifter, then he double-clutched one gear down and just plainly mashed the throttle.

The GTO was not purring now.

Now she screamed, and Willamina laughed with delight as the Gallopin' Goat got her legs under her and launched like a metallic green streak.

They sailed past the Sheriff's cruiser -- Barrents had dropped back a quarter of a mile, slowly, as if unable to keep up with the speeding truck -- Willamina twisted the sunroof's release, pressed the button, and the transparent panel hummed smoothly back.

She released her seat belt, stood, brought the Garand up.

Mike slowed a little so they came up slowly beside the truck, and Willamina shouldered the World War II battle rifle and drove eight fast rounds through the side of the fender.

Mike flinched: he was wearing ear plugs, but the concussion was nothing short of amazing, and as soon as he counted the eighth round, the Green Goat roared ahead: Willamina warned him the truck's driver might try to side swipe them and she was right: the Goat's driver's-side tires lost traction as Mike shied away from the truck's violent maneuver, but speed and momentum were his friend, and he got back on the pavement as Willamina dropped back to her seat.

She locked the bolt back, held it with one thumb while she drove another clip into the receiver.

"Slow down," she said, "now I go for the radiator!"

Mike laughed. "Yes ma'am!" he yelled, "hang on!"

Willamina surged out of the sunroof, dropped the rifle level.

 

Linn nodded approvingly as his little girl popped out of the car and brought that big rifle down level.

Linn knew what it was to fire rifles that carried a genuine authority.

He'd had occasion to use a battlefield pickup Henry during that damned war, and he knew the value of rapid, repeat, aimed shots, and he nodded again as Willamina's shots drove through the intervening space between she and the thieves' truck.

Spaced shots.

Aimed shots.

She was picking her targets, deliberately placing her rounds where they would do the most good.

"She's doing something," he murmured to Cannonball as he patted her gleaming-copper neck. "Look at that thing smoke!"

 

Crystal sipped her coffee, staring at the scanner's running red lights.

It was an old scanner, obsolete; it also had crystals for everything she wanted to listen to, and so far neither the police, the Sheriff's Office nor the Fire Department went with scramblers or trunking; she could still listen for her husband's voice, and she could still listen to their local guardians, and she smiled a little as she recalled one medic's triumphant report to their hospital: "One-seven-one, Firelands medic one. IT'S A BOY!"

Her head came up at Barrents' quiet voice.

"Firelands Base, Firelands Two."

"Two, base, go."

"Subject vehicle has stopped, Unit One on scene, I'll be out of vehicle."

 

Willamina triggered two fast rounds at the driver's feet.

He'd tried to pull a Jesse Owens on her.

Willamina did not feel like a foot race, she knew Barrents' Suburban could handle some off-road but not much, and so she stopped the foot pursuit by virtue of shooting off the runner's right boot heel.

it didn't hurt any that both he and the co-pilot, still in the truck when Barrents walked up and shoved the business end of a twelve-gauge shotgun in his side, were armed: this tended to reduce the complications that arose with any shots-fired investigation.

Linn was close enough to hear the runner's comment when he turned and saw he was facing that pale-eyed Sheriff he'd heard so much about, that cold-eyed woman who tended to rip men apart with her bare hands and drive them into the ground like a fence post for entertainment, that hard and uncaring badge packer that killed more men than the Black Plague and nailed scalps on her barn door for funzies and who was so deadly she turned her little boy into a cold-hearted killer.

"Not you," the man groaned, and Willamina's smile was humorless.

"Yeah, me," she replied. "On your knees."

 

Crystal lifted the lid on her slow crock and flared her nostrils, closing her eyes with pleasure at the fragrant steam that rose into her face.

"You can stay for supper," she invited. "Charles William would like it!"

Willamina picked up the grinning, squealing little boy, brought him in against her flannel shirt.

"What are you feeding this fellow? High nitrogen fertilizer and T-bone steaks?"

Crystal laughed. "Just about!"

Willamina kissed the happy little boy on the top of his head, set him back in the crib. "I've got to get back, sorry," she said with a rueful expression, "and I do mean sorry! -- that smells soooo good!"
"Will likes it," Crystal smiled.

Crystal busied herself with setting the table and getting ready for her husband's arrival home.

Had she looked out the window, she would have seen the Sheriff talking to a tall, lean man standing beside a gleaming copper mare.

Had she looked more closely, she might have seen an expression of approval on the older man's face.

 

When Willamina finally got home that evening, her kitchen smelled really, really good.

It was a long day; it always was, when she had a shots-fired incident, and of course there were such additional complications as processing the truck -- stolen -- and the gooseneck horse trailer -- stolen -- there were other agencies to contact, and there was the insurance company (insurers usually think in terms of crash damage, not gunfire) and of course the horses had to be returned to their rightful owner, there was the usual photography and documentation and phone calls and Willamina was very, very glad to get home that night.

Willamina closed her eyes as she hugged into her husband, and she hummed a little with pleasure as he hugged her back.

"I hear you had some excitement today," he whispered, kissing the top of her head.

"Yeah," she said in a tired voice. "You could say I had a Garand time of it!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

71. WELL STAGED

 

Willamina was very quiet when she returned to the Sheriff's office.

It had been a day of depositions and of testimony.

She had been obliged to explain her reasoning behind using deadly force to stop a motor vehicle; she'd had to justify involving a civilian -- an underage civilian at that, never mind the high school senior was more mature than the attorney raising the questions, and a damn sight more intelligent (not to mention marginally better looking) -- she'd brushed aside the questions about not laying out spike strips, for instance, by pointing out that one had to get ahead of the fleeing criminal to deploy spikes, and that hadn't been possible with the departmental vehicle, and that bringing a truck and trailer to a stop without causing a jackknife, a rollover or some other catastrophic event meant slowing them gradually, and that in her professional opinion, taking out the engine was the more effective means of achieving a controlled stop.

Usually men resent being questioned, as men often consider a question as a tacit accusation: Willamina knew that each question asked was indeed an accusation, but she kept her cool -- without having to resort to the oft-replaced card in her blouse pocket, the card with the Miranda warning on one side and the hand-written "Don't let him make you mad" on the other that she'd used at times in the past.

When Willamina walked in the heavy-glass double doors, her step was slow, she was tightly controlled, but her eyes were very pale, and Sharon knew that was as much a warning as a dog's bristle and bared fangs, as a skunk's raised and shivering tail, as a rattlesnake's brisk tail-shaking rattle.

Willamina paced slowly, deliberately, her ugly Marine Corps issue shoes silent on the polished marble floor; she went into her office and closed her door quietly, and Sharon knew this was an even more potent sign that her boss was several degrees past madder'n hell.

 

The Silver Jewel was crowded; it was on a monthly payday, not only for miners, but for the local ranches, and Daisy's kitchen was as busy as Mr. Baxter's bar.

The piano player was happily thumping the ivory 88 (and doing a right fair job of it, unlike most saloons of the era) and, to the disappointment of the patrons, the stage curtains remained closed.

When fortune smiled upon them, they had a dancing girl or three, or some entertainment; the men knew the night was young, and so they drank and swore and laughed and gambled, and Mr. Baxter beamed beatifically as he dispensed beer and whiskey from behind the polished mahogany bar, only occasionally resorting to a well-swung bung starter to pacify the occasional unpleasantness that visited itself upon his demesne.

 

Willamina seized her doorknob, yanked the door savagely open.

"BARRENTS, GET IN HERE!" she yelled, and SLAMMED the door shut, and Sharon's hands clawed and raised a few inches in spontaneous startle-reflex: Willamina folded her arms tightly across her chest and leaned back against her desk, glaring at the frosted glass of her sanctum's portal.

She didn't have to wait long.

There was a knock at the door, the quick rat-tat, and the door opened about a foot.

"In," Willamina snapped, and JW Barrents, one eyebrow raised, opened the door and came on in.

"Close the door."

Barrents turned, closed the door quietly, then turned to face his boss squarely.

"Barrents," Willamina said, her voice tight and her arms still folded, "you and I have known each other for a long time."

She looked up at her chief deputy as he nodded slowly. "Yes we have," he said quietly, obsidian eyes impassive, unreadable.

"You had my six in Afghanistan and I had yours."

Barrents nodded again, a little more easily; his eyes were on hers, not at all intimidated by her pale orbs.

"Your work here has been flawless and more times than one you kept me out of trouble -- either directly or by keeping me from making an absolute horse's backside out of myself."

Barrents nodded once again. "Yes," he agreed. "Yes, I did."

Willamina shoved away from the desk, turned away from him, paced a few steps, turned and paced back, stopped in front of the big, broad-shouldered Navajo, looked up into his weather-browned face.

"I wasn't sure I could say this without jumping down your throat," she admitted.

"Do I deserve it?" he asked, his expression unchanged, but Willamina could see amusement in his black eyes, and she could hear just a trace of humor in his voice.

"No," Willamina said firmly. "You don't."

"The attorney." It was a statement, not a question.

Willamina nodded, her gaze distant. "I wanted nothing more than to lock my teeth around his Adam's apple."

Barrents whistled. "Boss," he said gently, "you are the most patient of souls. If he made you that mad ..." He shook his head. "Damn-nation, he must have practiced to get you that mad!"

Willamina laid a hand on a flat box on her desk. "When I came in here and saw you'd brought me my Daddy's pistol, and .."

She stopped, swallowed, cupped her hand over her mouth.

"I read your note."

Barrents waited for her to complete her thought.

"That had to be the most thoughtful thing I've been given in a very long time."

Barrents smiled.

"Boss ... it looks like there will be no appeals from Jacob shooting that assassin. Given that assurance I took it out of impound. It belongs with you."

She nodded. "Thank you," she whispered, then she looked up at him again, patted his chest, almost a grandmotherly gesture.

"You told me once if I ever wanted to rip crossties out of the railroad and use them to beat someone to death, just let you know and you'd cover for me."

He nodded solemnly. "Anytime."

"Is tonight a good time?"

Barrents grinned. "I was hoping you would ask," he said. "Take the time you need, Boss. We'll hold the fort."

Willamina nodded, biting her bottom lip.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I need tonight."

 

Richard read the note again and grinned as he laid it atop the dresser.

Turning to the full length mirror, he ran a hand down his flat belly and nodded at the nattily dressed figure in the full length mirror.

"Men's suits really haven't changed much," he murmured, and the figure in the tailored, late-1800s-era suit nodded back at him.

He settled the Bowler hat on his thick thatch and turned as the door opened.

 

"I need your help," Sarah said abruptly, and Willamina stopped at the top of the stairs, not yet to her bedroom's closed door.

She looked at Sarah, surprised.

"You? Need my help?"

"Yes," Sarah said abruptly. "I need you in the worst way to accept an invitation."

"Invitation to what?" Willamina asked suspiciously.

"You need to go dancing," Sarah said, reaching out a hand and caressing Willamina's shoulder: just that quickly, Willamina was wearing what must have been a dancing girl's costume from the late 1800s, quite modest by 21st century standards, but happily indiscreet by the mores of an earlier era.

Sarah reached for the doorknob, twisted, pushed, shoved Willamina through the opening portal.

Richard looked up, delighted at his wife's appearance.

"You," he said admiringly, "look like a million bucks!"

Willamina blinked, got her mental feet under her, then planted a hand on her hip, put one stockinged leg out and raised the other elbow-length-gloved arm theatrically over her head: "You're quite a sight yourself, stud!"

Sarah laughed and came into the room, took Willamina's hand and wrapped it around Richard's cocked elbow: she seized the other and said, "You two need a night out" -- and just that quickly, they were in the hallway of the Silver Jewel.

"Now Richard," Sarah said, turning him and giving him a little push, "go get yourself something cold and wet and we'll be on stage here directly!" -- then gripping Willamina's arm, tugged her through the stage door and pulled it shut behind, giggling like a schoolgirl.

"Here's the drill," she said as she hustled Willamina through the dressing room and up the few steps to the back of the stage. "We're going to be the entertainment tonight, at least for a little while, then you and that handsome man of yours are going up the back steps to a room we've reserved for you, and you're going to forget all about your troubles for tonight!"

"Oh yeah?" Willamina challenged. "What about Jacob?"

"He's taken care of, don't worry," Sarah replied, and snapped her fingers.

Willamina heard the stage curtains whirr open.

She and Sarah were hidden behind the rearmost curtains; she looked out a little gap and saw three lean mountaineers and a shorter man in a worn suit: the long, skinny men bore five-string banjos, one had a fiddle, and the man with the florid complexion and the scuffed billycock on his head apparently had his voice and little else.

There was applause, there were whistles, and when the patrons saw there were no girls, whistles turned to boos and catcalls.

"Here," Sarah whispered, handing Willamina a gaudy, spangled half-mask with plumes of flowing feathers atop: she fitted one to her own face, and Willamina assumed the other.

"Now the step is quite simple," she said, "it'll be a basic four-four beat, we'll step, kick, back, dip, step, kick, back, dip -- just a basic little step, then an occasional turn or side step. Just follow me. I've seen you dance, you can handle it easy. Besides" -- her eyes glittered wickedly behind the half-mask -- "these guys don't care if you can't dance a lick. A pretty girl in a short skirt, a girl with legs like yours, honey? You could stand there and turn in circles and they'd be happy!"

 

"Now we'll be needin' o' your help," the Irishman in the worn suit called, his arms up and out stretched as he raised his voice to be heard: "when we're singin' o' the chorus we'll need ye t' stomp yer feet an' beat on th' table, like. We'll show ye!" -- another fellow, looking much like the first, stepped out from beside the bunched-up curtain and the two of them sang loudly, stomping their feet to keep time -- "Oo-ray an' up she rises, oo-ray an' up she rises, oo-ray an' up she rises, ear-ligh in the mor-nin!"

"The Drunken Sailor?" Willamina asked, surprised.

"This bunch wouldn't care if it was Three Blind Mice, as long as there are dancing girls," Sarah whispered back. "Can you still high-kick?"

Willamina kicked her leg up and swung her high heeled dancing pump over Sarah's head.

"Not bad," Sarah whispered. "Try that again and I'll slap you!"

Willamina punched Sarah hard in the gut, her strike faster than the eye could follow: Sarah doubled over with a pained grunt and Willamina dropped back a step, hands bladed and ready.

"Oh damn that hurts," Sarah gasped, then closed her eyes and straightened, all traces of discomfort gone. "There, that's better!"

"There are advantages to being dead," Willamina muttered, and not for the first time.

"All right, pony, let's get ready to prance!" Sarah said, seizing her skirts: Willamina did too, and as their curtains parted, the two danced out on the stage, swinging their skirts left and right in time with the Irishmen happily bellowing the ancient sea-shanty.

 

Richard was seated back against the wall, between the windows, a beer in front of him and a quiet smile on his face.

It was not often that his wife's magic involved him -- he always thought of these unexpected events as woman's magic, with his wife as its lens -- and when it did, it was invariably interesting.

Tonight it promised to be not just interesting, but enjoyable.

As the two Irishmen on stage, backed by five-string banjo and a curly-back fiddle, set the rhythm with "What Do y' Do with a Drunken Sailor," two long-legged dancing girls came tossing their skirts out from a back curtain: they were unusually well-matched -- twins, possibly -- and they danced surprisingly well, delighting the crowd with their synchronized high-kicks.

One turned and slung her kick over the other one's head, to the roar of approval of those watching, and the other riposted with a fast, near-miss backhand, to which the first withdrew, laughing, and the pair resumed their synchronized, stocking-flashing steps.

At the chorus, Richard joined the other patrons in happily stomping on the floor and slapping the tabletop with the flat of his hand: townie shoes, dirty miner's boots, riding hands' fancy-stitched boots, all punished the floor in happy agreement, to which the pair on stage replied with dancing high kicks.

There were a half-dozen more songs of the type, shivering not only the stage under the dancing-girls' feet, but also the entirety of the Silver Jewel, to which the skirted pair on stage happily disported themselves with skill and with precision; when the Irishman begged a little break so th' ladies could catch their breath, there were boos, disappointed calls of "Nooo," and one of the masked ladies leaned over and whispered into the Irishman's ear, and he nodded, raising his hands once more.

"If they promise t' come back, then, will ye gi'e them a bit o' rest?" the Irishman offered, and Sarah turned to Willamina, hustling her behind the rear curtain.

Richard was there.

Sarah stripped off Willamina's half-mask, pushed the startled woman into her husband's arms, then thrust a key into his hand.

"Room two-oh-five," she said, "it's on the key's tag. Down the hall, up the back stairs, scoot, get out of here!"

"What about you?"

"Oh, we've three more girls," Sarah waved a limp-wristed hand dismissively. "G'wan, go, get out of here, you're tired and he's" -- she looked at Richard speculatively, raising an eyebrow and then looking at Willamina.

"He's looking ... interested," she finished, and her smile was little less than absolutely wicked. "You two have the night. Take advantage of it, shoo!"

Shoo they did: down the hall, past Daisy's kitchen (where The Bear Killer was taking full advantage of a plate of biscuits and gravy), and just at the back door, they turned right and almost ran up the narrow stairs.

Richard thrust the big, old-fashioned key in the lock, turned it; he scooped Willamina up, to her muffled yelp, and he packed his giggling wife across the threshold and back-heeled the door shut.

"You'd better lock that," Willamina said, her voice thick, and Richard realized that he wasn't the only one whose expression was ... suggestive.

He locked the door, picked up a chair and wedged it under the knob.

Willamina stretched luxuriously, rolled up on her side, one leg bent.

Richard turned, took in the sight of his beautiful bride regarding him with wanton light-blue eyes, and he grinned lasciviously at the sight.

 

Later that night -- well later, when they were both happily tired, and cuddled, and deliciously relaxed, Willamina wondered just how Sarah had guaranteed Jacob's safety in their absence.

She wasn't sure quite how it was being done, but she doubted not that it was accomplished, and she was right.

Had she been at home, she would have found two faithful guardians at the top of her staircase, lying on either side of the stairs landing, in front of her son's bedroom door.

One was The Bear Killer, the young Tibetan mountain dog curly-black and watchful, and the other was a white wolf, yellow eyes blinking lazily until they too were asleep.

Willamina did not know this, nor would she, for when she and Richard woke, they were under their own roof, and in their own bed, and the landing was untenanted when Willamina opened their bedroom door.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

72. "DON'T YOU DARE!"

 

Willamina reached down and behind her, gripping her Winchester and hauling it out of the carved-leather scabbard.

She bent low over Cannonball's neck, willing the mare to greater speed.

The pale-eyed warrior did not feel fear, nor did she recognize desperation in her soul.

She felt a more basic sensation, a baser need that obliterated all else.

Willamina and Cannonball were not horse and rider, they were a shining copper arrow loosed from a drawn bow, and like an arrow, she flew with a deadly purpose.

She was focused on killing, and determined to do just that.

 

Jacob laughed as his Apple-horse crow-hopped and sunfished under him: the stallion was not bucking in earnest -- had he been, the lad would have been halfway to the moon by now, and both Apple and Jacob knew it -- the stallion spun, swapping ends once, twice, a third time, then twice in the opposite direction.

Jacob laughed again and Apple-horse shook himself like a dog shivering off a pesky fly, and stepped out across the back field, covering ground fast and easy, at least until he saw the intruder.

Jacob knew when his stallion stopped stock-still, stopped and his ears swung forward, that he was looking at something that should not be there.

Jacob patted the stallion's neck, murmured reassuringly to him, sweeping the distant meadow with hazel eyes, then he saw it.

Whatever it was.

His knees tightened a little, and the stallion eased into a trot, hooves whispering through dry grasses, until they got close enough for the stallion to freeze again, then Jacob made it out.

A longhorn bull.

Children don't think in words.

Adults handicap themselves by thinking in words: it slows them down, but children are wiser than their elders, and think in a rapid series of impulses, if you will.

Were his swift thoughts put into words, he might have wondered what a longhorn was doing on their property, and perhaps a comment he'd heard the old gunsmith make once:

Now that's a nice set of powder horns!

But we don't really know what he thought, only that to a boy, life was adventure, and it was natural for him to pluck the lariat from its place on his saddle horn, and the hand laid leather came alive under practiced fingers.

Apple-horse had some knowledge of roping, but not much, and he shied, dancing sideways, and that was enough for the bull.

A Texas longhorn is not a domestic animal.

A Texas longhorn is a survivor, a creature built to face off against any predator coming or going and survive the encounter.

Apple-horse had no firsthand experience with those curved, chitinous daggers growing out of the bull's head, but perhaps some racial memory, some lingering sense from the ancestral blood that ran hot through his great heart and his strong limbs, something bade him vacate the premises before this approaching danger got much closer.

Jacob fought the stallion -- but without reins and bit, the fight was futile -- he twisted in the saddle, trying to keep the bull in sight, and saw it go from a fast walk to a trot, then to kind of a humping gallop, and he realized that maybe his horse had the right of it.

He took a deeper seat and locked his heels into his stallion's barrel and forgot about trying to coil the lariat again: he leaned over Apple's neck and yelled "GO!"

 

Willamina saw her son lean over the stallion's neck and she saw that longhorn getting closer and her eyes were pale and hard and narrow in the wind, and tears stripped out of their corners and ran wet and cold along her cheekbone and into her ears and she felt more than heard an animal growl snarling into life in her throat.

Cannonball's blood was up and her ears were back and she streaked past Apple-horse, cutting in front of the longhorn, startling it.

Apple had his speed up now and there was no chance the bull was going to win: frustrated, the bovine spun, cloven hooves digging into the dirty grass, hind quarters bunched and thrusting hard after this new tormentor.

Cannonball, too, skidded and turned, steel-shod hooves digging into the grassy thatch: Willamina cranked a round into her Daddy's Winchester, the gears between her ears spinning, calculating approach velocity, intersection angle, elevation: the bull, however, was not content with providing her a predictable target: he swung to the side, throwing those broad, needle-pointed tines into Cannonball's path, and the mare leaped, soaring into low Earth orbit, and the bull twisted his neck, trying to bring one horn high enough to gut this copper tormenter.

Cannonball's hoof just clipped the tip of the horn -- not enough to cause harm, not enough to throw her off balance: she hit the ground running and they pounded after Jacob's retreating backside.

Jacob was coming around in a big circle: he had the lariat in hand again, his heels were tight into Apple-horse's ribs, and the stallion's blood was up and ready for his own fight: a stallion will defend its mares and its pasture, and this intruder, this interloper, just took a swipe at one of his herd.

Jacob's lariat floated in the air as they came near, his arm extended and the plaited reata hissed a little as the loop sailed for the longhorn's head.

"JACOB DON'T YOU DARE!" Willamina screamed as Cannonball came about again, and Jacob's teeth clicked together as the stallion slammed stiff forelegs into the ground: somehow -- and neither mother nor son were sure how -- the stallion bit like a rabid snake and kicked like a long ear mule, and still leaped out of the lashing return-stroke's range.

Jacob's butt was welded to the saddle, or so it seemed, and he hauled in the lariat, coiled it again for another throw.

Willamina came pounding up beside Jacob, yelling: "JACOB! RUN!!!"

Jacob's arm slashed out and the lariat had eyes of its own: as the bull bellowed and kicked at the biting stallion, the lariat seized the hind legs, Jacob took a quick dally around the saddlehorn and Apple ran backwards.

The leather came taut with an audible hum, cutting into the top of Jacob's thigh: the bull's legs, hauled out from under it, dropped its hind quarters: the bull bellowed, struggled, and Willamina looked up as a neighbor on a red Honda four-wheeler came screaming across the field, apparently pursuing the wayward beef.

Willamina lowered the Winchester's hammer to half-cock and thrust the rifle back into its scabbard, noted with cold eyes the stallion had instinct enough to keep the line taut: she glared at Ralph, who came rip-roaring up beside the bull, watched as he walked fearlessly up to the big bull's head, dipped his hand in a bucket of oats and held it out for the bovine's inspection.

"Okay, let him go," he said quietly, and Jacob loosened the three turns he had around his saddle horn, slacked the line: he threw up a leg, slid off the saddle like he was cascading down a playground slide, hit the ground on the balls of his feet: he walked casually up to the bull's legs, twitched the honda and fetched the loop loose, jerked: the line came away and the bull curled its hind legs up under it.

Jacob didn't wait to watch the creature get its legs under it: he was back in the saddle, coiling the reata, and Apple-horse danced sideways, walling his eyes, plainly not liking this interloper at all.

Ralph went over to his four-wheeler, loosened a bungee-wrapped bucket, held it down at ground level.

The bull sniffed loudly, his surprisingly long tongue flicking out and up over his moist, pink nose, and he stood, following the five gallon bucket of molasses flavored oats and whatever else Ralph had in there.

"Thanks for holding him for me," Ralph grinned, securing the bucket on the back of his Honda: the bull shoved his muzzle into the bucket, brought it out, oats clinging to his nose, and sneezed, blowing a cloud of rolled oats all over the back of Ralph's four-wheeler ... and his jacket.

"Come on, Spot," he called, adding a few choice descriptives that generally don't bear repeating in polite company, and proceeded to putter leisurely along his return path, the big wild-looking long horn beef following as docile as the family dog.

Mother and son watched the pair all the way across the back field; Willamina was sure Ralph would fix whatever fault with his fence allowed the beef's escape in the first place, and so they waited until the pair dropped over the little rise at the far end of the field, most of a mile distant.

Willamina looked at Jacob, and Jacob looked at Willamina.

"Nice rope job," she said.

"Thanks," he grinned. "I been practicin'!"

Willamina's eyes swung back across the field, then back to Jacob.

"Once you had him roped," she said, "what did you plan to do then?"

Jacob blinked, dismay claiming his young face as he considered what could have happened with a full grown longhorn bull at the end of his riata.

"Umm," he said uncertainly, "... run?"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

73. "THAT AIN'T ME!"

 

Linn squatted beside the carcass.

It used to be a man.

Someone who knew a knife did these things, someone who knew how to make a man scream, someone who wanted to prolong a man's agony, and by appearances, they'd been successful.

Linn turned his head, coughed, spat: he'd had breathin' trouble here of late -- ever since that damned cannon blew up and killed one of his best lieutenants, why, he'd been susceptible to the wheezes, and a couple times he'd woke up and it was awful hard to breathe, and he ended up staggering out of his tent, throwing his arms wide and bending back and taking several deep breaths to inflate his partially collapsed lung.

A sergeant -- a battle hardened veteran -- looked at the mutilated corpse and turned the color of wheat paste.

"My God," he said in a husky voice. "Who could do that?"

"The fella I just killed," Linn replied, looking up, his pale eyes unreadable.

A couple of privates turned away and Linn knew they were going to lose their stomachs over the sight.

He was right; they did, retching quietly, one bent double, the other on hands and knees.

Captain Collins shook his head as Linn rose and quietly instructed his men to burial detail; he went through the dead man's pockets, withdrew what little there was, entrusted them to his orderly.

"Colonel?"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Colonel ... doesn't this bother you?" The Captain gestured to the form being wrapped in a blanket.

Linn fixed the Captain with hard and pale eyes.

"Captain," he said, "I am alive and I draw breath, and" -- he gestured to the still form -- "that ain't me. That's all I have to know."

 

Willamina's eyes snapped open.

The dream had been real, so very real ... she could smell death, she could smell blood and bowels and man-sweat, she could taste stale coffee --

She swung her legs out of the bed, found her fur-lined moccasins, stood.

I can't sleep.

Might as well get up.

She looked at the clock -- it was but minutes before her usual get-up and she smiled -- at least I didn't lose much sleep! -- and she quietly turned off the alarm.

No sense troubling her still-sleeping husband.

Willamina was what Doyle called "an old campaigner" and her shower-and-dress was both quick and efficient: she was downstairs, fixing toast and boiled eggs for breakfast, browsing the morning news on her laptop: coffee added a welcome bouquet to the silent kitchen's atmosphere, and both eggs, toast and coffee came ready at the same moment.

Her eyes were busy scanning world headlines but her mind ran back to the sight of Jacob, grimacing in pain as the strain came on his lariat and across his young thigh -- he'll have a bruise there this morning! -- and she remembered how that lariat sailed leisurely through the air, slow and lazy and as fast as a striking cobra.

She knew boys tended to get themselves in trouble and she knew they had to learn some things the hard way, and she smiled a little, for she was most grateful he hadn't paid a rather high price for his adventurous folly ... and she was even happier she hadn't put a thirty caliber pacifier through the big beef's brain.

Willamina cold-rinsed the hot eggs, peeled them quickly, expertly, dropping the shells in the rolled-down plastic bag she used for kitchen trash: they would go into compost, and she would compost her garden with her scraps, unless the bag began to stink -- in which case she would just pitch it.

Willamina dropped the four eggs in a bowl, feeling their jelly-like bounce, carried it to the table with her four slices of toast; the butter slept in the middle of the table, under the cheap, fake cut-glass dome (98 cents at a yard sale), so the butter would be soft and easy to spread, and as she salted her eggs and filled her belly for the day's work, her mind ran back to that dream, the dream where her honored ancestor was still in that damned War, a Yankee Bluecoat surveying the damage done by a man he'd just killed with all the regret of swatting a horsefly.

I suppose I should fret about Jacob roping that bull, she thought.

If I were a proper modern mother I would worry myself into a lather and take him to counseling and drink myself into a stupor.

Her smile was close-mouthed, sardonic, and she snorted.

Old Granddad was right.

I am alive, and that ain't me.

She bit into the egg, peppered the bitten remainder as she chewed.

I'll remember that line next a reporter asks me about my military service.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

74. ANOTHER CASE OF BEER

Willamina's twin brother Will was very quiet when he came home.

Crystal noticed it right away; he held her for a moment longer than he usually did, his embrace was tighter, she felt his breath on the side of her neck, and she knew something was wrong.

Of course the happy young came charging into the room and seized Mama and Dad's legs and clamored to be picked up and hugged and otherwise made their usual noisy nuisances of themselves, and Will went down on one knee and dispensed hugs and laughter as he always did, but something was ... different.

Subdued was the word that came to mind.

Crystal managed to steer her noisy, boisterous family to the kitchen, where the promise of a fragrant, flavorful supper was sufficient to bring the young to some semblance order: this was the only time of day when the children were so lively, at least in a mass (usually they were as noisy, adventurous and otherwise active, just ... outside) -- and throughout supper, in between those offspring old enough to go to school, recounting their day's lessons or adventures, Crystal studied her husband, and twice he gave her The Look.

The Look meant, in their personal shorthand, "Story at eleven," and Crystal remained patient, knowing her husband would fill her in later, and he did.

It was after the dishes were washed, dried and put away, after Will changed clothes and trooped his young recruits to the barn, after chores were tended and stock fed and homework was done and filed in folders and backpacks, after children were bathed and dried, dressed in warm flannel jammies and tucked into bed, that the adults sat at the kitchen table.

Crystal rocked the baby and Will frowned at the milk-glass sugarbowl and finally he said, "Dear heart, you are married to a damned fool."

Crystal never missed a beat.

"Not damned, surely," she said softly, and Will raised an eyebrow and smiled with half his face.

"Don't bet on it," he muttered.

"What happened?"

"Shots fired incident."

Crystal stopped rocking, her eyes suddenly serious.

"And?"

"A second shots fired incident."

Crystal's expression was plainly one of worry: she got up, carried the sleeping infant to his crib, came back and pulled out a chair beside her husband.

She laid a hand on his -- she was always careful to take his left hand, for he was right handed, and she knew he carried his off duty pistol where he could get to it with either hand, but he preferred his right -- she waited a long moment before squeezing gently and whispering, "What happened, Will?"

Will took a long breath, then shook his head and laughed quietly.

"Sis would appreciate this," he said, "and I don't doubt she'll have heard about it by now."

"Heard what?"

"I shot myself."

Crystal's eyes widened, her glance dropping down his chest and flat belly, then back up.

"No. No, not like that," he said in a tired voice. "Crystal, do you remember ... beside the trophy case, that floor to ceiling mirror?"

"In the schoolhouse? Yes ... the boys used to preen worse than the girls, just the girls primped in the girls' restroom."

"Yeah. Well, that mirror isn't there now."

Crystal's eyes widened and her jaw dropped.

"You didn't."

Will nodded numbly.

"Does ... who knows?"

"Not the school, at least not yet. I may have gotten ahead of it. The janitor had an extra and I paid him fifty bucks and a six-pack if he'd make sure nobody found out."

 

Chief Taylor and Sheriff Willamina Keller lifted the trash can lid and looked inside.

What was left of a heavy glass mirror gleamed in the darkness, their faces reflected back twice a hundred times and the looked down at the fragments.

"So it did happen," Willamina murmured.

"Yep." Chief Taylor replaced the lid.

"Does the school know?"

"I don't think so. I've gotten no incensed calls, no reporters wanting a quote."

They turned as the back door opened and the janitor took two steps out before seeing the pair.

He froze.

Willamina motioned him over. "We need to talk," she said quietly.

 

"But that wasn't all," Will added reluctantly.

Crystal gave her husband as sympathetic a look as she could, given the circumstances.

Will just described how he'd found a door with the big glass pane broken out, and he'd gone in to clear the building.

He'd heard Eddie Smith was in town and Eddie swore he'd not go back to prison, and Will was a bit edge with this knowledge, and when he came around the corner and found an individual pointing a gun at him, all he saw was the gun so he fired.

Twice.

Killed the blue hell out of that floor to ceiling mirror.

Of course in that big empty building the concussion just plainly BOOOOOOMED and echoed and the janitor came on the run to see Will standing there looking sick and guilty and shamefaced as a little boy.

Will told his wife how the pair entered into a conspiracy to keep things quiet.

The janitor said he could have the glass cleaned up in jig time, a little patching plaster would take care of the two pocks in the brickwork, and he'd mount the new mirror that night, and Will offered the man half a hundred dollars and a six pack of his choice to keep quiet about the whole thing.

Things were working well, too, until the janitor got caught like a deer in the headlights.

 

Chief Taylor listened to what the janitor had to say.

They, too, knew Eddie Smith was back, and they were hoping to lay hands on the miscreant, and later that night they did, for the fellow was engaged in his favorite pasttime -- siphoning gasoline -- and when they caught him, he confessed to taking a cement block to the schoolhouse door, but got scared when it made a lot more noise than he'd expected.

The janitor counted this a fortunate evening indeed, for he was a man with a thirst, and Chief Taylor offered the man a case of long necks if he'd keep it on the Q.T., and it wasn't until the two badge packers watched the janitor chuckling his way back into the schoolhouse that Taylor turned to the Sheriff.

"Will had another ... incident ... today," Taylor said, and Willamina raised an eyebrow and folded her arms.

"What did my little brother do this time?"

 

Will's face reddened and his ears were positively aflame as he turned in his chair and held both his wife's hands in both of his.

"Crystal," he said, "you know I don't like snakes."

Crystal nodded.

Crystal knew that Will not only didn't like snakes, Will was terrified of snakes, and Will made it his personal business to stay as far away from snakes as could possibly be arranged.

"I, um," he swallowed, harrumphed, swallowed again. "I made a mistake."

Crystal nodded, once, slowly, her eyes on his, her hands gripping tightly.

"I, um, let Chief know how ... about how ..."

"You told him you were afraid of snakes?" Crystal prompted.

Will nodded, turned his head away.

"Oh, no," Crystal groaned.

Will rasped, "Yeah. He put a rubber snake in my desk drawer."

Crystal's mouth fell open again. "He didn't!"

"And I put two .357s through the desk drawer. And through the desk. And off the floor and off the wall and I finally found what was left of the slugs."

Crystal honestly did not know how to respond, and so she responded as she usually did when she was uncertain.

She giggled.

She giggled, and Will looked utterly crestfallen, and Crystal laughed, and Will looked absolutely crushed, and Crystal laughed harder, and tried to stand up, and ended up falling into her husband and holding onto him while she made the approximate sound of a chicken laying a paving brick, and she laughed so hard she started to hiccup, and she wiped her eyes and laughed again and hiccuped and she shoved her face into his shoulder to muffle her hysterics, and Will held his wife as she recovered, and she raised her red, tear-streaked face from his shirt, and looked at him, and fell off the cliff of hysterical laughter all over again.

 

"You did what?" Willamina gasped, her jaw dropping, and Chief Taylor's ears turned a remarkable shade of scarlet as he nodded.

"I thought he was kidding," he admitted, "or that he wasn't really afraid ... I didn't think he'd ..."

Chief Taylor looked like a little boy who'd just been caught drawing an unflattering stick figure of his teacher wearing a dunce cap.

"Y'know, it's amazing just how loud a full-house .357 is, inside a brick police station."