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THE SHERIFF'S BLOOD


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36. SAMUEL, YOUR ASSISTANCE, IF YOU PLEASE

His Honor was as blunt as the half-smoked stogie thrust aggressively from the corner of his mouth.

“Gentlemen,” he said, his eyes narrow and his thumbs hooked in his belt, “we are all the product of every choice we’ve ever made in our lives. You three” – he puffed out a huge cloud of cigar smoke – “you three have made some very bad choices, and your fourth member made the worst choice of all, and paid with his life.”

His Honor pasued, glaring through the bars of the brand new jail door.

“You have two choices in this matter.

“You may choose to fight your charges in court, at which time I will find you guilty and sentence you all for conspiracy, collusion and attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, after which you will, individually and severally, be fitted with a custom-made hemp necktie and you will cut a fine figure when you appear before the Judgement Seat with your neck broke.

“You may choose to plead guilty now and I will sentence you, individually and severally, to lengthy terms in the Territorial Prison. You will be old men by the time you are released, if you survive your term of imprisonment, which is not very likely. The older you get the more likely you will be to die of tuberculosis and of the violence visited upon you by your fellow prisoners.”

He glared at the three, sullen and defiant behind steel bars, slouched in their small cell, eyes glaring at the well-fitted stone walls.

“I will receive your decision in the morning, when you are brought before me for your trial.”

The Judge turned abruptly and puffed his way down the hallway between the cells like a bipedal locomotive, smoke trailing in his wake.

Samuel and Jacob rose as the jurist came into the office area.

“Gentlemen, I am for supper and a good night’s rest,” the Judge said quietly. “Have you any further matters for my attention?”

“No, Your Honor,” Jacob replied.

“Then I shall leave you to your labors.” He picked his hat off its peg, frowned at it, tilting the dignified Homburg one way, then another, finally holding its thick brim with straight fingers and placing it precisely on his thick grey thatch.

“Gentlemen.”

With a final fouling of the atmosphere, the Judge reached for the door-latch and thrust himself into the chill afternoon sunlight.

Samuel looked at his father, saw the gears turning steadily behind the lean-waisted lawman’s pale eyes.

“I want to find out where that shot came from,” the Sheriff said quietly, “and I want to find out to whom I owe the remainder of my life.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jacob pulled open the top center drawer of his desk, drew it wide open, frowned: he closed the drawer, went to what looked like a chest of drawers with wide, shallow drawers, ran a forefinger down the stack, then back up: he opened the topmost drawer, reached in, sorted through large, flat sheets of paper, nodded.

Samuel watched as his father withdrew a hand drawn map, carried it over to the desk, laid it out, frowned at it, studying the hand-drawn diagram.

“Grampa drew this?” Samuel asked, coming up beside his father, his head tilted with interest.

“Umm-hm,” Jacob affirmed, opening the top drawer of his desk again and removing a long ruler. “Now we were here” – he thumped a neatly trimmed forefinger nail on the paper – “in front of the Silver Jewel. The deceased” – thump, again – “was here, in front of the bank.”

He laid the ruler down, establishing a clear, unobstructed line between the two points.

“We already know he had a clear shot at me.

“We have eyewitness testimony from the bank that this fellow did raise a rifle in my direction.

“Now who could have placed that shot?”

Jacob swung the ruler, using the point of the deceased as its pivot.

“Here we are … here is the funeral parlor … the Mercantile and its warehouse …”

Jacob’s mind projected the buildings on the screen of his imagination like a magic lantern show, timing its sweep with the ruler’s slow arc over these points of reference – “and I don’t recall seeing a rifleman on the street, ready to take a shot …”

“Perhaps in an alley, sir, or between buildings.”

“Possible.”

“Could it have come from the Mercantile?”

“There’s a recess at the checkerboard,” Jacob nodded, straightening. “Samuel, your assistance, if you please.”

Father and son strode out the door and across the street, then down to the bank, looked back.

“The checkerboard is a possibility,” Samuel murmured.

“Samuel, hoof it on up to the Mercantile. I’ll need you on the other side to start with.”

“Yes, sir.”

Samuel jogged back across the street, swung into the saddle, turned his stallion, trotted up the street: he tied off the stallion in front of the Mercantile, took several quick steps, rifle in hand, ducked behind the far corner of the building: he stepped out, waved his hat, grinned as his father raised an acknowledging arm.

Samuel stepped up onto the boardwalk and into the little alcove where the nail-keg and checkerboard lived: again the hat at arm’s length, again the older man’s pale eyes narrowed a little, considering the possibility.

Samuel continued his approach, testing each alley, gap and recess for a possible hiding place for the anonymous rifleman’s probable position: finally his father flagged him in, and Samuel whistled up his stallion and rejoined his father.

The Sheriff considered the street, frowning a little.

“It doesn’t fit,” he muttered. “Samuel, with me.”

 

The annunciator tinkled loudly as Jacob thrust the funeral parlor’s door open.

Digger popped around the corner like a jack-in-the-box laid on its side.

“Sheriff!” he exclaimed. “Is there business?”

“I need to speak to your client.”

Digger blinked, surprised. “Eh?”

“That fellow” – Jacob thrust a finger at arm’s length, roughly down-street – “the head shot that was going to kill me. I need to look at him again.”

“Certainly – certainly, Sheriff, this way.”

Digger led the way back to the preparation room.

The deceased was laid out on the white-enamel table, still clothed.

“I cleaned him up,” Digger said, rubbing his hands, “but by your order, Sheriff, he is not embalmed. I have a box for him –“

“Stand him up.”

“Eh?”

Jacob’s pale eyed glare served better than repeating the words.

“Of course, of course.” Digger slid the foot plate in place, then bent, reached under, released a star wheel: the table tilted as he lifted the head end.

“There, that’s far enough.”

The table was nearly to the vertical, but not quite – but it was enough.

“Samuel.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Samuel, step back against that wall.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jacob looked at the dead man’s head, walked around the table one way, then the other.

“Samuel, I don’t think he was shot on the level.”

“Sir?”

“Look here.” Jacob crooked his finger and his son approached, frowning a little.

Digger looked from corpse to Sheriff to deputy and back, puzzling his eyebrows together, wondering what this pale eyed lawman was up to now.

“Jacob, look here. Entrance –“ he indicated with a stiff finger, angled down at the hole over the dead man’s right eyebrow – “and exit back here – come around this side and take a look.”

Samuel ducked his head a little, then grinned.

“Yes, sir,” he nodded. “A higher position.”

Jacob clapped Digger on the back, a delighted grin broadening the lean lawman’s face.

“Digger, thank you! As you were! Samuel, with me!” – and as the pale eyed sheriff’s delighted declaration fairly echoed in the bare-walled chamber of the preparation-room, father and son fairly ran out the door, sprinting for the street, a new inspiration firing their investigation.

Samuel was in the saddle, ready for his father’s dispatch.

Jacob ran over to the bank again, looked up the street, began scanning the buildings’ upper windows.

“Samuel,” he said thoughtfully, “do I recall … no, do you recall … any open windows that day?”

“No, sir … yes, sir, I do!” he exclaimed as his stallion, sensing the men’s excitement, pranced a little: “yes, sir, Digger’s third floor window … the Irish Brigade were drilling and they had their life net out.”

Jacob curled his lip and whistled and his own stallion pulled free of the hitch rail and trotted proudly, head arrogantly high and almost dancing as he crossed the street, and Jacob gathered the reins, tossed them over the stallion’s head and hoist his long tall frame into the saddle.

Father and son turned to the downhill, toward the Irish Brigade’s tall, narrow brick house.

The Sheriff had a question for their fire chief.

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37. I’LL SHOW YOU

Angela looked up and smiled at the preteen girl in her doorway.

“Rebecca!” she exclaimed, and Rebecca scampered across the floor and into Angela’s arms: Rebecca drew back from the embrace, looked at Angela with those big, sincere eyes of hers and said “I got no mommy neither.”

Angela laughed uncertainly and said, “What?”

“Siddown I godda talk,” Rebecca said, plopping most inelegantly into a chair, planting her elbows on her knees and leaning forward, dropping her chin onto her girlish fists, her bottom lip run out in a distinct pout.

“You ‘member your Daddy.”

“Of course I do, sweets.”

“I don’t got one of those neither.”

“You’ve got Jacob. He’s your Daddy now, and Annette loves you like her own.”

“I know, and Caleb picks on me.”

“And you pick on him just as much.”

Rebecca giggled, her face lighting up. “Yeah,” he affirmed, then sadness claimed her face again and she sighed.

“Rebecca,” Angela said softly, in a just-us-girls near-whisper, “I was orphaned in a train wreck. A big man with pale eyes threw timbers and walls off me and he picked me up and he became my Daddy. He was warm and he smelled like leather and horses and gun oil and I remember his laugh.”

“Jacob laughs too,” Rebecca said, smiling a little. “He doesn’t hold me like he used to.”

“I know,” Angela sighed. “When girls get big, Daddies feel funny about holding them.” She gave Rebecca a wise look. “They still do, though.”

“Angela …” Rebecca began uncertainly.

“Yes, sweets?”

“Anchela, I been seein’ a pretty lady.”

Angela tilted he head a little, her pitch-perfect ear catching the change in Rebecca’s pronunciation. “A pretty lady?” she echoed.

Rebecca nodded, then jumped up, snatched two sheets of paper from Angela’s open desk, a pencil, and pulled the writing surface out a little more.

“I’ll show you.”

She began sketching – quick, sure strokes of the pencil, sweeping lines that developed into a skirt, a slender waist, then arms, delicate feminine hands.

Rebecca turned her pencil a little, began something beside the skirt, something drawn more firmly, more distinctly: it took quick shape and became a bear, hulking, its head down, but … no, not a bear, the head isn’t right, and the ears …

Angela’s eyes widened as a monstrous canine looked at her from the paper, and Angela’s pencil went back to the partly-formed woman’s figure.

“She always looks pretty an’ she smells nice,” Rebecca prattled as she drew, and Angela felt her stomach shrivel as the woman’s hair and neck and face took shape.

The face was familiar.

The stance was familiar.

The way the drawn figure carried her hand, with the bent-back wrist and fingers in a feminine spread – even the gloves, buttoned as they were, and then the face –

Angela sat down and swallowed hard.

“That’s the pretty lady,” Rebecca declared happily, turning the page so Angela could see it clearly, then she added sadly, “I wish she was my mommy, she’s nice.”

Angela felt her fingers tremble a little and she dared not unclasp her hands from where they were laced desperately together and pressed into her clasped thighs, buried in a fold of skirt-fabric.

The face of Sarah Lynne McKenna looked up from the paper at her, and The Bear Killer, glaring and watchful, stood with obvious menace at her side.

Angela shivered and remembered a sunny day when she and Sarah were in a carriage, when a man with a Sharps rifle ran out of the brush half a hundred yards ahead of them with a rifle – he looked startled, brought up the buffalo rifle, fired: Angela remembered the sound of the 500-grain locomotive as it rumbled through the air between Angela’s left ear and Sarah’s right.

Sarah rolled out of the buggy with a ’73 rifle in her gloved grip: she fired methodically, precisely, and obviously accurately: Angela found later it was only a .32-20, but in Sarah’s hands it was very, very accurate, and the man who shot at them was not able to complete his reload before Sarah, safeguarding her cousin and herself, drove four rounds through the escaped felon’s boiler room.

Rebecca looked up from her sketch, stared at Angela, surprised at how big and scared her eyes were.

“She’s nice,” Rebecca said defensively. “She smells like soap and roses.”

“I know,” Angela squeaked, hugging the younger girl desperately to her, whispering through a tight, constricted throat.

“I know.”

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38. “I LIED”

Samuel knew the matter was serious when he saw his father’s tracks.

Jacob did not go up on High Lonesome unless it was a serious matter.

Son followed father; Samuel left his stallion grazing near his father’s Appaloosa, and hiked in easy, long-legged strides up the narrow, twisted path.

His father was sitting on a ledge, staring into the distance.

Samuel approached tentatively, uncertainly.

“Have a set,” Jacob invited quietly, and Samuel sat, slowly, almost reluctantly, which prompted his father’s quick glance and a quick flash of a smile and a quiet, “Don’t worry, it won’t blow up.”

Samuel folded his long tall frame and parked his carcass, resting his forearms on his knees, unconsciously imitating his father’s posture almost exactly.

“What did you think of court today?” Jacob asked quietly.

Samuel was quiet for a long moment.

It was quiet up here on the mountain.

Samuel knew this place was … special.

He knew his pale eyed grandfather used to come here.

He knew there were other places the old man went, places where the veil was thin, places where the Second Sight could see farther, more deeply into another world, places where the Old Sheriff journeyed into another realm: he was very young when his old grampa told him about a world lit with dark fire, a place of demons with glowing eyes and a portal, a gateway between that world and this, and how he stood shoulder to shoulder with an ancient warrior to save the soul of another who’d gone in alone to retrieve was rightly hers.

He’d forgotten most of what the Old Sheriff told him those many years ago, but he remembered the sense that there were special places on this earth, and this, well upon the mountain, this High Lonesome, was one of them.

“You got your convictions,” Samuel said, his voice hushed, for this place inspired soft voice and gentle words.

“Had ‘em dead to rights.”

“You had their confessions.”

“Yep.”

“They admitted it under oath.”

“Yep.”

“They said they wanted to kill you ‘cause you killed one of theirs.”

“Yep.”

“When was that, sir?”

“Oh hell …” Jacob looked down, frowning: he reached up, pulled off his black, flat-brimmed Stetson, scratched at an imaginary itch the way he did when he was trying to remember.

“Samuel, I will be sawed off and damned if I even remember.” He looked over at his son. “I was younger than you.”

“That’s a long time to hold a grudge, sir.”

“Yep.”

“They were related.”

“Yep.”

“With one dead and three in prison, is that all of ‘em?”

Jacob nodded slowly. “Yep. Every last one of ‘em.”

“Known associates?”

Jacob smiled ever so slightly, quietly pleased that his son was thinking like a lawman.

“None, but I have … people … studying their come-from.”

“Yes, sir.”

Silence grew between them as the thin sun soaked into their black suits.

“Sun feels good.”

“Yep.”

Silence again.

Somewhere well overhead, an eagle banked, wheeled on the mountain thermals, its voice thin in the cloud-smeared sky.

Samuel squinted up into the blue firmament. “Mares tails and mackerel sky,” he murmured.

“Never long wet, never long dry,” Jacob finished. “My bones are tellin’ me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s another reason not to get shot.” Jacob took a slow, deep breath. “Every war wound I have talks to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That in front of the Jewel about finished me.”

“Sir?”

“It was all I could do not to pass out from the pain.”

Samuel looked at his father, shocked, for it was an era when a man never, ever admitted to a disability, where the wearing of spectacles was seen as a weakness, where smiling in public was seen as a sign of weakness and an invitation to be confronted by those who picked on the weaker. Samuel knew that his father smiled when he damned well pleased, and those who’d taken it as a sign of weakness were quickly and brutally given good cause to regret their testing of a smiling man, and he himself had come to the fast and violent rescue of men (and boys) who were set upon because they wore glasses.

Still, it was a shock to the son that the Grand Old Man made any such admission.

That would be like a mountain whimpering in pain after an earthquake … it just didn’t happen.

“Samuel, did you notice in court …”

Samuel waited for his father to finish his thought.

“Samuel, I lied.”

Samuel waited, eyes caressing the far blue horizon.

“When I was asked under oath if I knew who fired the shot …”

“Yes, sir?”

“When I was asked …” Jacob paused. “I told them the shot that saved my life, the shot that kept an assassin from putting a bullet between my shoulder blades, yes, Sheriff, that’s the one, who fired the shot? – and I told them …”

Jacob’s jaw thrust out and he looked like he’d bit into something half rotten.

“Samuel, Rebecca fired that shot.”

Samuel felt like the entire mountain just dropped out from under him.

“Sir?”

Jacob nodded.

“Samuel, I swore under oath that I didn’t know, but … she was in that room with the open window … “

“In Digger’s funeral parlor, sir?”

“Yep.” The Sheriff nodded. “I don’t know what all happened but I’ve got my suspicions. I just don’t know how.”

“So you don’t actually know …”

“I don’t have all the answers but …”

“Sir, you don’t know.”

Jacob looked sidelong at his son.

“You don’t want the Old Man to prove himself a liar.”

“I don’t want you accusing yourself, sir. Until you have the full story you have to answer ‘no.’”

Jacob nodded.

“You can justify anything with the right language,” he said, his voice bitter.

“Sir, do you remember telling me about the Ragdoll?”

“I do.”

“That was Aunt Sarah.”

“It was.”

“She was … younger than Rebecca.”

“Yes.” Jacob nodded. “Yes she was.”

“She had no choice.”

“Correct.” Jacob looked at his son. “I don’t quite follow the trail you’re a-layin’ out.”

“Sir, right after that rifle shot, did you hear a voice?”

Jacob snorted, turned away.

“Sir,” Samuel pressed, did you hear a voice?”

Jacob turned suddenly back to his son, his face tight and his eyes lighter by several shades. “Samuel,” he said, “if you’ll recall, we had our hands full gettin’ those three over to the lockup!”

Sir,” Samuel persisted solemnly, “did, you, hear, a, voice?”

“Did you?” Jacob snapped.

“Yes, sir, I did,” Samuel said, glaring right back at his pale eyed father and not intimidated by the old man’s stone wall he’d just thrown up between them. “I did hear a voice.”

Jacob froze and a feeling of dread filled his belly like he’d just swallowed something really heavy.

Jacob opened his mouth, then closed it and swallowed, shivering like someone stepped on his grave.

“Sir, I heard a voice, clear as a bell.”

Jacob looked away, looked back, and if someone had asked in that moment, he would have admitted to feeling every last hair on the back of his neck snapping up like a flag pole on the Fourth of July.

“It was a woman’s voice.”

Jacob swallowed, looked back.

“It was Aunt Sarah’s voice, sir, loud and angry and right beside me, and she allowed as no one shoots her little brother!”

“Did you see her?”

“No, sir.”

“Was she there?”

“No, sir.”

“You saw Rebecca.”

“I did, sir.”

“Where was she?”

“I kinda had my hands full, sir, but she was standin’ in an open window in Digger’s building. She give a whistle and jumped an’ that fella I was strong-arm frog-marchin’ acrost the street stopped and he gawped at her and I reckon I did too.

“She spread her arms like a diver and jumped just as pretty as you please and landed one somerset on the way down and boom, flat on her back on the Brigade’s life net.”

“Could Rebecca have shouted it?” Jacob’s voice was husky, like his throat was of a sudden dry.

“No, sir. No, sir, her voice is still kind of girlish. Aunt Sarah’s voice was … ‘twas her voice, sir, and it was right beside me!”

Jacob looked at his son, his own expression haunted, and he searched the face of this, the get of his loins, his deputy, his eldest, then he looked away and he shivered.

“Samuel,” he mumbled, then he coughed, cleared his throat and spat, harrumphed and tried again, “Samuel, I recall my Pa telling me about going to hell and going to war and about that mountain witch back East, and he told me about that spirit cliff west of here, where he saw the Old Ones shadow dance on the cliff wall and nothing between his fire and the cliff face but empty sand.”

A cold gust puffed across the High Lonesome and was gone; above them, a squirrel cussed at something. “I listened politely to what he said but I never put that much stock in it.”

“He wasn’t lying,” Jacob continued, “but Pa was full of … he liked … he was good at storyin’ and I figured he was pullin’ m’ leg.”

Samuel waited.

Jacob looked at Samuel, his expression uncertain.

“Samuel, I’d figured the dead are gone and beyond and won’t never be back here, and I reckon that ain’t the case.”

“How’s that, sir?”

Samuel looked away, looked into the distance.

“Samuel, when that rifle cracked, I heard Sarah too. Plain as day, and I didn’t want to admit to it.”

Samuel reached out and gripped his sire’s shoulder.

“Pa,” he said, “do you recall when we planted Parson Belden, Brother William was a-quotin’ from the Book?”

Jacob nodded.

“He said somethin’ about us bein’ surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. He allowed as it ain’t wrong to pray to the dead because they’re still here with us an’ they’re closer to God than us.”

Jacob nodded again.

“Now I didn’t quite hold with that, sir, I figured I don’t pray to nothin’ but the Almighty, then I read one of the Judge’s legal briefs and it said that whoever wrote it prayed to the court that they might consider this-or-that and I wondered if that warn’t right, so I took Sarah’s dictionary” – he smiled a little; his Aunt Sarah was a schoolmarm for a time, and any dictionary was automatically “Aunt Sarah’s Dictionary” – “and I looked up the word pray.”

Samuel’s hand rested on his father’s shoulder, warm and reassuring, his voice steady, quiet, reassuring.

“Sir, the word “pray” means “to speak with respect.” Not more, not less.”

Jacob nodded, once.

“I rode down and had me a set-down with Brother William and we talked for a while.

“He said there is but one Intercessor and that is the Son, but he said there’s nothing wrong with interceding ourselves – through prayer. He said there’s nothing wrong with asking a friend to pray for us. Hell, I’ve done it, and I’ve bent a knee for others when they were needful.”

Again Jacob’s single, slow nod.

“Brother William allowed as that’s where folks get confused about praying to the saints. They aren’t setting a saint up like a small god, they’re asking a friend to pray for them.

“I asked him about that great cloud of believers and he said that cloud is made up of our honored dead.”

Jacob barked a harsh laugh. “Yeah. My Pa is here watchin’ me go to the outhouse. I can just see my Mama a-lookin’ at me with my drawers at half mast and me flippin’ through the Sears and Sawbuck catalog!”

Samuel laughed and patted his father’s shoulder and withdrew his hand.

“Yes, sir, I said the same, and we both laughed.”

Silence again, and the two men leaned back against sun-warmed rock.

“Sir, I ain’t got all the answers. I know Aunt Sarah is long dead and I have no idea why I heard her voice. Maybe I wanted to hear it, I miss her bad sometimes. Maybe her shade come back. I don’t rightly know.”

Jacob waited several long moments before making reply.

“I don’t know either, Samuel. Might be I never will.” He grinned suddenly, with half his face, the way he did when he was wryly amused. “Whatever the case … hell, if ‘twas Sarah fired the shot, if ‘twas the King of Prussia, I don’t rightly care. I’m alive and that suits me fine!”

“Yes, sir,” Samuel said, and then both men froze as something cold trickled down each of their spines.

They each smelled roses, and soap, and each turned his head slowly to look at the other.

“Sir …?”

“You smell it too?”
“Soap and roses, yes, sir.”

“Sarah,” Jacob said, his voice rising as he stood, “show yourself! You pale eyed troublemaking little sister, SHOW YOURSELF!!” Jacob’s face was pale, his hands fisted in anger, he turned, slowly, his face reddening as the cords stood out in his neck. “SARRAAAHHHHHHH!”

Samuel listened, and another shivering trickle walked down his spine with cold fingers.

His father’s voice should have echoed clearly three times, and indistinctly a half dozen more, but there was no answering echo.

None.

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39. LET ME THAW OUT FIRST

Samuel went up the ladder as fast as a man can run on level ground.

His father and a scared little boy watched from ground level as the slender deputy went coonin’ up attair water tower’s ladder, lariat over his off shoulder, not so much like he was a-climbin’ a stationary ladder … it looked more like he stood still and grabbed attair ladder and shoved it down underneath of him.

He and his father were returning from looking into a water rights issue when a lad of their acquaintance saw them and came running toward them with the desperate expression of a child who knew he was involved in something he shouldn’t have been and things had just gone horribly, terribly wrong.

Samuel and Jacob drew their stallions to a halt as the lad ran up to them, barely able to speak, but the few words he blurted, then his turn and stiff-fingered thrust toward the railroad’s water tower told them all they needed to know.

Two boys had gone up and only one came down.

Samuel reached down and seized the lad by the front of his coat, hauling him up onto the stallion with him, and his Apple-horse glided easily over the frozen ground, hauling around the corner and down the alley to the tracks and then along the gravel ballast until they were in the little railyard: Samuel walked Apple-horse over the high gravel crossing, then jumped him over to the water tower, swung out of the saddle and set the boy down.

“Wait here,” he said, his voice tight and clipped, his face pale and taut as the boy remembered seeing the Sheriff’s face: had he been offered a wagon load of fireworks, a bushel basket of hard candies or a fine new fishing pole, he would not have moved from where the deputy’s words nailed the boy’s feet to the dirt.

Samuel snatched the lariat from his saddlehorn and swarmed up the ladder.

The boy felt the Sheriff’s stallion stop behind him, felt the older lawman dismount, then felt the fatherly hand resting on his young shoulder, and somehow – in spite of the panicked feeling of getting caught, for it was well known they weren’t supposed to climb that water tower – it still felt good to have that strong, warm hand gripping his collar bone.

Samuel made for the top with the speed of desperation.

He’d known drownings in the past.

He’d chivvied adventurous little boys and a couple drunks out of the water tower in the past.

He got to the platform on top.

The tower was open, just a squat cylindrical reservoir fed by a steam pump, and the sky reflected from its restless surface: Samuel leaned close to the surface, shading with his hat, frowning as –

There!

Something pale, something long, something like maybe a boy’s arm –

Hat, coat, gunbelt – two floated down to the ground, the third plummeted like a dropped plumb-bob: a scared little boy felt a scared father’s grip tighten some when clothes and hardware began their descent, and a moment later, a little water slopped over the rim and they heard the sound of a body diving into the cold water overhead.

 

Samuel didn’t swim like a fish, but he wasn’t bad at it – in a warmer season he rejoiced in his lean strength, taking the length and breadth of the mountain pools suitable for a swim, remembering where his Pa said his Aunt Sarah dove off a cliff into one, or swam under ice to save someone who fell in, and Samuel had swum each of the cold mountain pools: here the water was not terribly deep, no more than ten feet, and the reservoir was man made, round, and not extremely large, but it contained water, cold water, and water is perverse – it sustains life, and it takes life, and Samuel knew how quickly young lungs could fill and suffocate, for he’d brought out small and lifeless bodies from those mountain pools he used to swim.

His eyes burned as he searched and his fingers found what his eyes could not see.

An arm, small, slender, cold, like a small corpse.

Samuel’s hand locked around it like a manacle around a prisoner’s wrist and he rolled to get his feet under him and pushed against the oakum-caulked cedar planks underfoot.

The Sheriff squatted.

“Son,” he said quietly, “I want you to run to the firehouse. Get the Irish Brigade and tell them to bring their ladder wagon!”

“Yes, sir!” the lad whispered – he had no more voice than that – but the adrenaline screaming through his blood gave him more than enough fuel to launch like a horizontal rocket, a rocket with sandy hair and pounding feet and pumping arms.

The Sheriff looked up and considered in almost a detached way that the wait was the hardest part of any operation.

He felt his hands close into fists and in spite of his forced calm he whispered, “Come on, Samuel!”

 

When Samuel was about the size of the body he was pulling to the surface, he too had climbed this ladder.

The water tower was being built, and he’d watched, fascinated, from the ground at first – and then he got brave and climbed the ladder – he’d watched the men hoist tapered cedar planks, he’d watched them lay the floor and make them fast, he’d watched as they stood planks on end and hooped them like a barrel, until finally the water tank stood on thick, solid poles, a woody cylinder like a giant’s cone sliced off with a massive sword – straight-sided, tapered, slightly narrower at the top – he’d climbed the ladder after they’d gotten the deck in place, and watched as one man started to caulk the floor boards.

He’d felt young eyes watching him: he turned, squinted at the small silhouette against the painfully-bright sky, and he’d divined, somehow, he was being watched by a curious boy.

Men like nothing better than to dispense wisdom, especially to the sponge on two legs that is a boy eager to learn, and this old man was no different: he summoned Samuel with a crook of his finger, and Samuel swarmed down the temporary ladder inside the tank.

The old man pointed to a spool of something that looked like greasy rope: “Pass me that spool,” he said, his rough voice surprisingly gentle, and Samuel picked it up and brought it over to the man.

The man had been a blue-water sailor, until he’d gotten tired of North Atlantic gales and weevilly biscuits: there was a market for his skills inland, and this suited him, and he’d found himself on his knees in a water tank in Colorado, and now he had a curious boy looking down at him as he prepared to make the decking boards water tight.

“You ever build a ship, boy?” the man asked, and Samuel noticed how his hands were perpetually half-closed, as if around a ship’s rope, and the boy shook his head.

“Hmp. Thought not. Lot of work it is, and you’ve got to make sure it’ll float.”

Samuel looked at the shipwright’s tools, laid out on the deck.

“We’ve got t’ make sure water doesn’t get b’tween th’ boards. It doesn’t matter if it’s a ship and you’re keepin’ water out, or a tank like this an’ you want to keep it in.” He took a wire hook and brought the tucked-in end of oakum out to where he could grip it. “Know what this is?”

“Greasy rope?” Samuel hazarded.

The old sailor chuckled. “Right you are,” he affirmed, “that’s what it amounts to. Oh, them fellers that sells it will say how they’ve got it” – he puffed out his chest as he stood up on his knees, thrust a dramatic finger skyward – “Im-Preg-Nated with Stillborn Dragon Shells and Ground Mica, Beeswax, Earwax and Green Mineral Deposits from China!” – he raised a shaggy eyebrow and looked at Samuel with one eye, then they both laughed, and the old salt’s bushy white whiskers quivered as he did.

“Look here, son, here’s how we do it. See this? This is a caulking iron. Looks like a hatchet, doesn’t it? Now whoever laid these boards did a good tight job and that makes my life easier. See here – we’re laying the oakum right on the joint, now we start here in the corner, up against the wall. I’ve already gone around the edge and the edge is nice and tight, so we’re just going to go down longways with the boards. Ya falla?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good lad.” He winked as if to a shipmate. “Now we’ll start here, and lay the caulking iron down careful-like right on this corner and give ‘er a tap t’ start it” – he gave the head a brisk smack with the hardwood maul – “now we’ll back up a little an’ turn th’ angle down – smack! – “and again – smack!

Samuel watched, soaking in this new knowledge as naturally as a thirsty man will soak up water, and the two of them spent the afternoon in the water tank, taking turns driving oakum between the planks to waterproof it: Samuel mostly did the long straight stretches, with the old sailor using a couple other tools to make sure the caulk was tight at the corners, where it was harder to get a good seal.

This had been years before, when Samuel was a lad, and now, as a grown man, he never looked at that water tower without remembering an afternoon with a saltwater sailor, a man who knew boys, a man whose hands taught as much as his words, and a man whose good work kept the Z&W supplied with water here at the Firelands depot.

 

A big-eyed boy shivered a little as he gripped the side of the upholstered seat.

“SAINT FLORIAN, SAINT CHRISTOPHER AND THE SACRED MOTHER, LADIES, RUN!” the New York Irishman roared, swinging the blacksnake whip in a big circle and snapping a hole in the air three feet over the center mare’s ears, and the three-mare hitch drove hard into their collars.

“RING THAT BELL, LAD, LET ‘EM KNOW WE’RE COMIN’!” the Irishman shouted, grinning, and the engineer reached up and pulled on the steam whistle’s lanyard, and the boy grabbed the bell’s lanyard and he pulled in quick, short jerks, spreading alarm and confusion ahead of them.

The team hauled around the corner and toward the depot and the New York Irishman took horses, engine and ladder wagon across the gravel bridge Jacob and Samuel had ridden over not minutes before, the Brigade’s velocity as swift as the horsemen’s had been, but considerably less gently.

The Sheriff was back in the saddle; he turned his stallion, regarded the onrushing firemen with hard, pale eyes, and as the New York Irishman reined the mares to a stop and hauled back hard on the brake, the little boy in the seat beside him saw that pale-eyed Sheriff look directly at him and wink – a private communication, a message intended only for the lad, one he cherished for years after:

Well done.

“ALL HANDS ON DECK! NO IRISH NEED APPLY! TURN TO, DAMN YE, OR I’LL HAVE YER GUTS FER GARTERS!” the New York Irishman bawled happily at his men as they leaped from the apparatus. “SHERIFF, WHATTAYA GOT?”

 

Samuel grabbed the lip of the platform with a numb hand, pulled the unmoving form to surface, then regripped at the lad’s belt: his hands were cold, barely responsive, and part of his mind remembered a conversation he’d heard between Bonnie McKenna and Parson Belden, years before, after a death, when the Parson told her that not all prayers were on bent knee with a bowed head and softly spoken words: the Parson assured her with the voice of experience that a scream of sheer terror as a runaway team hauls you and your wagon over a riverbank cliff, is as clearly understood by the Almighty as a learned prayer uttered in soft voice with a cultured tongue.

That part of Samuel’s mind hoped most sincerely the Parson was right, and if the man spoke truly, then his own teeth-gritted groan was a potent supplication, not for himself – but rather for this cold, unmoving form he was trying desperately to haul up onto the slimy-slick platform.

His hand slipped; he and the boy fell back into the water, and Samuel got half a breath before the waters closed over him again: he went down, his boots found the plank floor and he focused his anger and drove both feet flat and hard against the wood, came out of the water, grabbed the platform and hauled the boy up again, shoving hard, shoving fast, shoving with desperation.

Samuel would speculate later, when he and his father were discussing the High Lonesome, when his father tried to summon the shade of his troublemaking sister, that not all angels wear white robes and have big feathery wings.

Samuel was ready to swear that some angels wear red wool bib front shirts, a black handlebar mustache and a pressed-leather helmet, and had a gold Maltese cross embroidered on the front of the shirt’s bib, for just such an angel came swarming over the ladder and onto the platform as Samuel shoved the boy out of the water and up, and just such an angel grabbed the boy and broke him over his forearm like a shotgun and handed him off to another red-shirt who’d just crested the ladder.

Samuel accepted the hand up – the temporary ladder was long gone, torn free by winter ice – he managed to wallow up onto the platform, and the Irishman went down the ladder first, then bade Samuel come down: the Irishman was his guardian for the descent, ready to catch the young deputy’s weight if cold hands failed.

They nearly did, twice.

By the time Samuel was on the ground, he was starting to shiver, hard, but he brushed off his father’s efforts to throw a blanket over his shoulders and instead went over to where the New York Irishman was resuscitating the boy.

The new fire chief grew up on the docks, with the smell of salt water and tobacco and rum, with sailors’ oaths and songs and tall tales, and he’d seen men fall off the docks and drown, and some were brought back by laying them face down on a barrel and by holding their ankles like the handles of a wheelbarrow rolling them back and forth on the barrel.

Samuel saw the New York Irishman doing this very thing with the boy.

Jacob clapped his hand hard on his son’s shoulder as the shout went up: “He lives!” – and of course by then half the town was gathered round about and a crying woman snatched the soaking-wet, freezing-cold child to her and wept, and callused hands seized Samuel’s and enthusiastic hands pounded his shoulder and strong men’s voices raised cheers, and Samuel quite frankly would have traded all of it for a warm stove and a change of clothes.

Later that day, once he’d achieved this worthwhile goal, after he was dried off and in warm dry duds, once he was under his own roof and the enormity of his adventure settled in with a solid ker-chunk, he admitted to his wife and his big-eyed, silent children, “Ten foot of water was a hell of a lot deeper than I realized,” and he accepted a water glass of Uncle Will’s Finest just as his grinning father strode into the room.

“Samuel,” Jacob grinned, “are ye thawed out yet?”

“No, sir,” Samuel admitted, “but Annette dunked me in a tub and I like to shot through the ceiling, I thought I’d been scalded!”

“It was just warm, not more,” Annette murmured, coloring a little.

“I know,” Samuel said, gripping her hand carefully. “It’s not the water was that hot, I was that cold!”

Jacob laughed. “Samuel, I thought you’d want to know,” he grinned as Annette poured the Sheriff a smaller volume of Uncle Will’s Finest. “Right now all of Firelands is willing to nominate you for Mayor, the State Legislature, or even the US Congress!”

Samuel nodded, then took a long drink of potent, wine-flavored Two Hit John.

"Sir," he admitted, "I'd like to thaw out before I go to Washington."

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40. YOU DID ALL RIGHT

 

Jacob Keller died.

He leaned back, staring at the pretty young girl with the wooden practice knife, the pretty girl with the solemn face and the uplifted blade, stained with chalk as they did for practice.

Jacob was in the habit of practicing with his sons but he’d never crossed blades with his adopted daughter Rebecca.

He’d long regarded her as what she appeared to be –a dainty, pretty little girl – never mind she was growing as children do, never mind she was beginning to suggest the curves that come with womanhood, curves Jacob did his best to ignore: like his father before him, Jacob had a soft place for his girls, and had he his way, he would set them on a high shelf, with a glass bell jar over them, to keep them forever young and pretty and innocent, forever out of reach of the profaning world.

And, like his father, Jacob knew this was not a possibility, and so he accepted that children grow and mature, and he was doing his best to keep his young safe – all of them – and so he’d had knife practice with his own girl-children, and regularly with his wife, and now, last of all, with Rebecca.

She’d killed him.

Again.

Jacob turned and walked back to the center post in the barn, and dropped heavily down on the saddle blanket he’d spread earlier: Rebecca, puzzled, looked suddenly concerned, the stoic solemnity gone from her face, replaced with what looked like a child’s distress.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked, and the voice was that of an uncertain little girl.

Jacob shook his head, smiled, laid the knife down under his knees.

He patted the blanket beside him.

“Have a set,” he said quietly, and Rebecca obediently paced over to the bale, placed her wooden practice knife beside his on the straw-covered floor, smoothed her skirts under her and sat.

Jacob ran an arm around her and drew her close, reaching over with his other hand and taking her smaller, soft hand in his big, callused man’s paw.

“Did I ever tell you about knife fighting your mother?” he asked quietly.

Rebecca leaned her head over against his shoulder and he felt her shake her head, just a little.

“She was a lot like you,” Jacob almost whispered, and Rebecca could hear the smile in his words.

Out in the pasture, one of the horses whinnied to another: Rebecca felt Jacob’s head turn just a little, then she felt him relax as he identified the sound as just one horse talking to another, nothing to worry about.

“She was like me?” Rebecca prompted – not something a girl of so few years would usually do, but she was observant, and she’d seen and heard Jacob do the same thing when he was interested in whatever information someone might have, and might be reluctant, or uncertain, as to how to express it.

Jacob nodded. “Oh, yes.”

“How was she like me?”

“Well,” Jacob said thoughtfully, “first of all she was a girl.”

Rebecca smiled patiently, for she knew it was just Jacob putting his thoughts together.

“She was pretty – like you – and she was a wonderful dancer – like you” – he turned his head and looked down at her, and she looked up at him, her pupils dilated in the barn’s interior, looking like big dark lakes a man might swim in – “and she was an absolute demon with sharpened steel.”

“I’m not a demon,” Rebecca protested, blinking innocently. “I’m a girl!”

Jacob laughed. “And a very pretty girl you are!”

His hand squeezed hers just a little, very gently, just enough to be felt.

“The Chinese have a saying,” Jacob continued, his voice almost rough as he remembered. “Never give a sword to a man who cannot dance.” He took a long breath, blew it out through puffed cheeks and pursed lips.

“Your Mama could dance like a feather on the breeze.”

Rebecca nodded, and Jacob felt the nod.

“She was … I used to … my mother and I would fence.”

Rebecca lifted her head, gave Jacob a puzzled look. “Grandma built fences?”

Jacob laughed, and Rebecca’s heart lifted to see the quick change in his face, gone from solemn to laughter, the smile lingering in his pale eyes. “No. No … we fenced with swords. Schlager blades. I still have them.”

“Oh.”

“We will try them sometime.”

“Okay.”

“Do you remember those swords you danced with for the Judge?”

Rebecca nodded again.

“I never knew you could dance like that.”

“Oh.” Her voice sounded very much like an uncertain little girl.

“I am very glad you can.”

Rebecca smiled a little to hear it.

“Now I shall have to brush the chalk out of my coat-sleeves and …”

He lifted his hand to his throat, where he’d folded his wild rag and wrapped multiple layers of folded silk against the wooden knife’s chalked edge.

“And everywhere else.”

“Did I do all right?” Rebecca asked in a small voice.

Jacob’s big strong Daddy-arm hugged her gently to him, and Rebecca delighted in the feeling.

“You did all right, sweetheart. You did all right.”

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41. THE SHERIFF’S BLOOD

Samuel inherited his father’s dislike of puzzles.

He discussed hearing his Aunt Sarah in that moment of extremis, talked it out from every possible angle with Abbot William, the only man he really trusted in such matters: the aging Abbott nodded wisely as Samuel recounted his and his father’s experience.

Instead of clarity, he found more puzzlement: Brother William took him to the secret niche behind the High Altar, where the Lance of St. Mercurius slept in its chip-carved box, and the Abbott confessed he never knew whether the Lance would be there, or whether the White Nun – the Little Faceless One, the singer with the great black horse, would have taken it on some urgent mission.

"Then, or now?" Samuel asked, and the Abbott smiled, for the lean young deputy's voice reminded him so much of his old friend, that pale-eyed Old Sheriff he missed so much.

"It happens even yet," the Abbot admitted, "but we try not to talk about it."

Samuel spent the night at the Rabbitville monastery and returned home no wiser for his efforts.

He considered who else he might consult on the matter, and decided that, since reason and logic seemed to get him nowhere, why not go the opposite direction, and so he consulted the closest thing to a witch that he knew.

Samuel removed his Stetson and knocked carefully on Daciana’s door.

The door opened right away and Samuel didn’t get his mouth open to say the first word before Daciana smiled “I knew you vere commink,” and stepped aside, and gestured him in.

Her house always surprised him.

He’d visited here, before Lightning passed away, any number of times, and he was invariably struck by the absolute tidiness, the complete flawless sense of neatness that pervaded: Daciana explained once that she’d lived much of her life in a circus wagon, a gypsy’s caravan, and room was very much at a premium: the habit of neatness she’d cultivated as a young child served her well in adulthood, and so her home remained utterly and absolutely orderly.

It also smelled good.

It smelled of … Samuel smiled a little as he recognized the scent.

Daciana had brewed tea, the same burgamo-infused variety his grandmother preferred.

“You haff qvestions,” Daciana smiled, “undt ve vill zee about ze answers, no?”

Samuel parked his Stetson on the hall tree and advanced to the table, to the chair, pulled out and waiting for him: he did not sit, preferring to stand until his hostess was seated, and she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving her guest waiting patiently while she brought in the tray with a teapot, two cups and two rather large sandwiches.

Daciana placed the tray on the table, set his teacup and saucer at his place, then straightened and frowned at his lean middle.

“You need a goot sqvare meal,” she nodded, gesturing to his sandwich. “Eat.”

Samuel waited until she was seated, then he poured tea for both of them: only then did he lower himself into the chair.

He didn’t realize just how hungry he was until he bit into good backstrap and sourdough: there were spices – mustard, he recognized, and the barest hint of garlic … whatever it was, he surmised as he chewed, it was just pretty darned good, and he had no idea how Lightning maintained his lean waist if he’d eaten this woman’s cooking for his lifetime!

They ate good beef and drank good tea, Daciana eating with as healthy an appetite as the deputy, and when they were finished, Samuel poured more tea from the capacious ceramic pot and they settled down to the subject at hand.

“I zee a qvestion in your eyes,” Daciana said bluntly. “Vass ist?”

Samuel suspected she affected that funny accent to keep herself set apart from the rest of Firelands womanhood – he couldn’t prove it, but he suspected it.

“You heard about the shootin’,” he said. “Three fellows held Pa’s attention and a fourth tried to back shoot him.”

“Undt you heardt Zarah’s voice.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your qvestion?”

“How did I hear her?”

“She shouted,” Daciana blinked, as if it were the plainest thing in the world.

Samuel opened his mouth, looked to the side, looked back.

“Daicana … how did we hear her? She’s dead!

“Ist she?”

Samuel’s thoughts stopped dead and he felt his stomach shrivel a little.

“She’s alive?” he blurted.

“Your grandvather ist …”

Samuel thrust to his feet, his face pale.

“Sszzzit.” It was not a request.

“Your …” Daciana frowned and she tapped the tablecloth thoughtfully with the tips of four fingers.

“I vill tell you a zzzecret.”

“I’m listening.”

“Goot. Lizzen very vell, zis is ze last I vill effer zay zis.”

Samuel nodded gravely, leaning forward, eyes on the aging trick rider.

Daciana closed her eyes, took a long breath, then with her eyes still closed, reached forward to a kerchief-covered object in the very center of the table.

She snatched the kerchief off the ancient crystal sphere.

“Vat you zee, Zamuel?”

Samuel frowned, then stared at the crystal ball.

He blinked as it appeared to fill … with red smoke at first, then … with red … liquid.

“Blood,” he whispered.

“Your bloodt,” Daciana whispered back. “Your bloodt, Chacob’s bloodt, Caleb’s bloodt, Rebecca’s bloodt. Zere ist derrible dinks kommink, Zamuel. Derrible tinks, undt ist ze Sheriff’s bloodt vhat must zdtop it.”

“What … terrible things?” Samuel asked, looking up from the red-roiling crystal, and Daciana dropped the kerchief back over it.

“Zat I must not tell,” she whispered.

“But you know.”

“I know many dinks.”

Samuel leaned over the table, his face tight.

“Daciana, if there is trouble, I must be ready for it. What do you know?”

She snatched the kerchief away again and Samuel’s eyes swung to the gleaming quartz sphere.

It was clear … with no trace of scarlet … just gleaming, flawless, polished crystal.

Daciana stood, slowly, paced around the table, took Samuel’s left hand in hers, laid her right on his chest.

“The Sheriff’s bloodt,” she said, “ist vithin you, undt your zons undt daughters, ist vithin your vather undt vithin others I dare not name. It vill liff through chenerations, Zamuel.” Her grip tightened on his left hand. “You vent in ze coldt vasser after ze childt, yes?”

Samuel blinked. “Yes … yes, I did.”

“You couldt haff tied, Zamuel, but you vent!”

Daciana’s voice was an urgent hiss.

“Your bloodt ist … effery vun uff your bloodt ist like zat, undt it vill be neededt!”

Samuel studied her dark Romany eyes for several long moments, then nodded.

“When will the danger strike?”

“It vill zdrike here und zere, Zamuel, zen in ze future, vhen ze Sheriff’s bloodt ist zdrong undt rich … long after you are deadt, Zamuel, it vill be after your zons are deadt.” Daciana laid a gentle hand on the deputy’s cheek. “Giff ziss to your children, Zamuel. Giff zem vhat you haff, here” – she patted his chest again – “let them know vhat kindt uff man vass your grandvatter undt your vatter.”

Daciana bit her knuckle, then gripped his shoulder, turned him back to the table, snatched the kerchief again, and Samuel looked into its gleaming heart.

He felt himself pulled in, as if down a spinning whirlpool, and he saw –

Samuel saw a pale-eyed man in a sacky green uniform raise up from behind a clump of thick plants he didn’t recognize, with a black, toy-like rifle of a kind he’d never seen, he saw the man tell someone to get his men the hell out of there, and then he advanced toward something, firing as he went, screaming defiance and spitting fire and steel before him –

Samuel saw a pale-eyed woman in a sand-colored uniform, a woman stripping thin boxes of something from what looked like a dirty corpse, before shoving one of the boxes into another funny looking rifle, and he saw her charge a group of dirty, bearded men, firing as she went – he saw her throw the empty rifle down a well, draw squarish pistol of some kind, run zig-zagging from one building’s corner to another, placing single, precise shots, and with each shot, an enemy fell, until there was an explosion and she was blown into a crater –

He saw men and women alike, at particular moments of crisis, and every one of them had pale eyes, the Sheriff’s eyes, and every one of them was fighting … but not against something.

Every one of them fought for something.

Samuel blinked as Daciana dropped the kerchief over the crystal ball, breaking the spell.

“Zey all haff ze Sheriff’s bloodt,” Daciana whispered, and lifted the kerchief one last time.

Samuel’s breath caught as he was pulled into the vortex again.

He stood in a grand stone hall and turned as something heavy boomed against massive, black-oak doors: he saw the door sag and splinter and the mob came screaming in with clubs and pitchforks and even torches, and he turned and his eyes widened as his Aunt Sarah, pale-eyed and all in black, charged down the grand staircase with that 97 Winchester shotgun she loved so well, and she charged the attackers, firing as he went.

Samuel crouched, his hands going to his Colts, and then he was back in Daciana’s house, and he nearly fell, his balance was all awry, and he shoved his revolvers back into their holsters.

“Sarah,” he gasped, straightening.

“She zent her child to safety,” Daciana whispered, taking him by the shoulders and looking deep into his eyes: “zat childt ist your zizter Rebecca. Ze Sheriff’s Bloodt vinds undt braids itzelf until it ist very zdrong, very pure.”

Daciana nodded knowingly.

“It vill haff to be.”

“All those things I saw …” Samuel spoke slowly, trying to make sense of it all.

“Daciana … why can’t … why can’t we just live a quiet life and if our blood is going to weave itself together with time … why not let it?”

“You must be tested,” Daciana smiled sadly. “Effery link uff ze chain must be zdrong.”

“Nice,” Samuel muttered. “Now I’m a chain link. Thanks a lot.”

“No.” Daciana shook her head emphatically. “Each test zdrengthens ze bloodt. Effery time it zdrengthens it.”

Samuel considered this.

“That,” he said slowly, “actually makes sense.”

“Goot.” Daciana took his arm, turned him toward the door. “Now your vife vants you home for zupper.” She patted his flat belly like an affectionate old grandmother. “You need fattendt up, you too thin.”

Her expression, the twinkle of her black Gypsy eyes, her words, and Samuel impulsively hugged her and laughed quietly.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I will go home and fatten up.”

“Goot,” Daciana whispered back. “You vill need” – she drew back, flexed an imaginary muscle – “you vill needt to be zdrong for your grandt zons.”

“Grandsons?” Samuel laughed, and Daciana gave him a knowing look, then made a little shooing motion.

“Now go. Zupper vill be ready.”

Samuel chuckled several times on the ride home, and when he came in sight of his fine stone house, he laughed with delight, shook his head.

“Grandsons!”

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42. EASTERN DIVISION

Firelands had been without a newspaper of its own for some time.

Its library was resurrected and in business for many years before another cast iron press was freighted in; the man who brought it was out to make money, and he knew making money meant selling papers, and fortunately he had experience with an Eastern publication.

At the same time this newcomer was sitting down with Deputy Samuel Keller, an Eastern newspaperman was sitting down with Lieutenant Daffyd Llewellyn.

The difference between the two was mostly a degree of impatience: the Eastern newspaperman in beautiful downtown Cincinnati acted like he was sitting on a nest of stinging nettles and red ants, while the fellow in the Silver Jewel was content to let his backside park comfortably on the upholstered chair.

Llewellyn’s Captain bulled his way into the conversation, thumping a heavy hand on his prize Lieutenant’s shoulder and declaring in the cultivated bellow of a man used to taking fireground command (in spite of his own hearing loss), “Here sits a man wi’ th’ white helmet in his future, an’ on that I’ll wager good money!” – with this firm declaration, he stomped off, satisfied that he’d just dispensed all the information the nosy newser needed.

Llewellyn’s ears turned a little red as he admitted that yes, he’d brought three from the river; yes, he’d used a half-empty keg to keep one afloat while he fought the second, panicked victim, finally slugging him hard on the jaw to keep the drowning man from drowning him – the reporter scribbled busily, knowing he could make literary hay out of this startling vignette – and yes, the three were father and two sons and they were alive and none the worse for their rowboat’s capsize.

Llewellyn’s interview was not interrupted (to the uncomfortably self-conscious Lieutenant’s disappointment) by any matters, important or otherwise; there were no fires, alarms, explosions, no cats up a tree, nothing: in spite of this lack of rescue, the interview did eventually come to an end, and just in time for the Lieutenant to join his men at their long table for the noon meal.

Firemen take their stomachs seriously, and they’d recruited the best cooks from their number; they worked hard, they played hard, their meal was noisy and punctuated with jokes, laughter, good natured insults, the occasional threat, and it was a standing joke that if you demanded the rolls be passed, that’s exactly how

they arrived – airmail, most of the time at a manageable velocity, unless the thrower was in less than a pleasant mood, and the Captain reserved the right to punish either sender or recipient, depending on whose insults were the more odious in the moment before a high-velocity bread products sent a splash of gravy, soup or stew over most of the table.

Appetites were equally vigorous, with food being eaten at a shocking velocity.

It is a maxim in the fire service that an alarm will come in when a man sets down to eat – not before, and not after, but just as he parked his backside and prepared to tear into whatever toothsome repast waited on his plate: as a consequence, firemen ate fast.

Llewellyn didn’t.

The Captain’s eyes were never still at the table; he was forever assessing his men, looking for the associations, the loose politics that formed and flowed and shifted like smoke on a restless breeze.

“LLEWELLYN!” he barked, “YE’RE NOT EATIN’! FILL YER GUT, MAN, THERE’S NO TELLIN’ WHEN TH’ NEXT MEAL WILL COME ALONG!”

Every pair of eyes swung to their young Lieutenant.

The Captain noticed the youthful officer’s eyes change, and he knew the change was often not to the good: their Welsh upstart did not often grow angry, but when he did, his eyes grew cold, and hard, and they were so as he looked down the length of the table at the Captain.

Llewellyn stood, leaned forward a little, knuckles on the table, his pale-eyed glare sending a sheet of chill air down the length of their noontime board.

“Captain.”

His words were distinct, clearly enunciated … and very, very, cold.

“I would speak with you.”

“AND WHAT IN TH’ HELL WOULD YE SPEAK TO ME ABOUT?” the Captain roared, standing and snatching the napkin from where he’d tucked it into his collar.

Llewellyn’s eyes narrowed a little and his knuckled hands closed into fists.

Llewellyn roared his reply, the cords flaring in his neck and his cheeks coloring: it wasn’t until they reddened like ripe apples that everyone realized how tight the skin was drawn over his cheekbones, and how utterly pale he’d been a moment before.

YOU ASKED ME,” Daffyd Llewellyn bellowed, “NOW YOU’LL STAND FOR THE ANSWER!”

He glared around the table, pale eyes sweeping every man’s face, daring any to interrupt him, and there was not a man there that did not doubt their young Lieutenant would visit swift and significant violence upon any who so risked.

“My wife –“

He stopped, took a long breath, dropped his head, and they could see his forearms were shivering, and this was not a good sign: he’d never shown such upset in the past, not even when they were in the middle of a good old fashioned street brawl with a rival fire company.

“My wife,” Llewellyn said again, then he cleared his throat, swallowed, looked away, looked back.

“In my young life I have faced up to and faced down a variety of large and angry people bearing a variety of weapons,” he said, his voice even, with an edge to it: “I have been shot, stabbed, cut, run into, run over and a street evangelist tried to save my corroded soul.” He looked around again, his expression that of a man who could cheerfully rip someone’s throat out barehand.

“I have strode boldly into buildings that sane and rational people were running out of just as fast as they could go, I pulled the fuse out of a dynamite bomb during a strike and God help me I couldn’t keep a man’s life from dribbling out from between my FINGERS!”

He raised clawed hands before him, shaking them with anger, remembering that terrible day when his most desperate grip hadn’t been enough to stop a badly wounded man from bleeding to death.

“All that” – he looked around, nostrils flared, anger heavy on his features, laid over his shoulders like a cloak – “all that, and right now I am scared.”

There were several blank looks at this, and the Captain blinked in confusion.

“Scared?” the engineer echoed, and Llewellyn nodded.

“Yeah,” the Lieutenant gasped, “scared.”

“WHA’ IN RED HELL ARE YE SCARED OF?” the Captain bellowed, his meal forgotten.

Llewellyn’s knuckles were no longer pressed into the tabletop: he’d turned his hands around, so the heels of his hands were resting on the edge.

“I’m going to be a father,” he gasped. “My God, how do I do that?”

“A FATHER?” the Captain bellowed, rising and hauling back a hard-muscled arm: he slung a biscuit the length of the table, intending to bounce it off his Lieutenant’s head, but the younger man faded to the left and let it sail right on by.

“Yeah,” Llewellyn said roughly, his throat tight, his expression fading from anger to dismay.

He looked at the Captain like a drowning man will look at a rescue boat that is yet a hundred yards away.

“My God, Cap, I’ve never been a father,” he said, shaking his head. “How do I do that?”

“D’YE HEAR THAT, LADS!” the Captain bellowed, delighted: “LLEWELLYN IS STARTIN’ HIS OWN BRIGADE!”

Daffyd Llewellyn, Lieutenant at Firehouse One, City of Cincinnati, found himself surrounded by the men of Firehouse One: his hand was wrung, his shoulders pounded, his ears assailed by noisy well-wishing and congratulations, and in the fullness of time, when the first of the Eastern Division’s sons was born, the christening was held at the firehouse instead of the church, for there were several who claimed the proud title of Uncle and Family, and who insisted that the lad didn’t look a thing like young Llewellyn, for the wee lad had no trace of a mustache, and then as Fate would have it, an alarm came in, and mother and child and the Department’s chaplain were left in joint possession of the firehouse, where they waited until the Brigade returned.

The chaplain, a kindly man equally at home in a firehouse, at a fire scene or behind the pulpit, made polite small talk with the young mother, and held the child and marveled as he always did at the perfection of this tiny creature, the amazing symmetry of its tiny hands, and he laughed as the wee lad grimaced and yawned and looked around, and the Chaplain considered that -- while the wee lad had not a mustache, as did his sire -- the little fellow did have those startling, ice-pale eyes.

It was the first time a child was ever christened in their firehouse, but it most certainly would not be the last time a Llewellyn child would be christened therein, and it was to the credit of the family Llewellyn that their pale-eyed tribe increased significantly.

The Eastern Division was begun.

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43. MIRROR, MIRROR

Bonnie McKenna was what she called “on in her years,” and in fairness, she’d aged very well indeed.

Her husband Levi Rosenthal was equally well preserved, though gone mostly to grey: still, he had his own teeth and nearly all his hair, and the elderly couple made what everyone agreed was a fine-looking couple, whether at church, at socials, or at town meetings.

Levi Rosenthal served twice as Mayor; he declined an offer to represent Colorado in the Legislature, he wisely left the running of their small cattle operation in the capable hands of Clark and her brother, and though the brother and sister were nearly as old, they managed to keep the Rosenthal ranch profitable – far more than those dark days when “the other Rosenthal” was busy siphoning off the ranch’s profits.

Bonnie McKenna rose slowly, as she did these days, when the maid announced her visitor, and Bonnie paced slowly forward, extending her hands and smiling in a motherly way as she exclaimed, “Jacob! How sweet! And Samuel, you too!”

She cocked her head to the side and almost giggled.

“Jacob Keller,” she sighed, “you and your son stand alike, you walk alike and I’ll bet you tell jokes the same way too!”

Father and son reddened at her words, and she nodded wisely and added, “Even your ears turn red just the same way!”

“I reckon it comes natural,” Samuel admitted, and Bonnie laughed again.

“Yes it does,” she said, then looked closely at Jacob.

“Now Jacob Keller,” she said, “I knew your father rather well, and you are much like him. You are troubled and you have a question, so you might as well ask it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jacob muttered, his ears even redder, and Bonnie turned, glided across the floor as easily as if she were a half-century younger; she turned, she sat, and not until the Lady of the House was seated did father and son assume the indicated chairs.

“Ma’am,” Jacob started, and Bonnie raised a flat palm toward him.

“Stop.”

“Ma’am?”

“Stand up, Jacob.”

Jacob stood, puzzled, and Bonnie rose again, carefully hiding the pain that plagued her knees these days.

“Jacob, come over here.”

Bonnie took Jacob’s arm, her grip gentle: it was almost feather-light, but Jacob knew she was a woman who got what she wanted, and he was satisfied that butterfly’s touch could turn a mountain around on its foundations, if that’s what she wanted done.

Bonnie steered Jacob across the room and to the mirror hanging between the tall, curtained windows.

“Now look in the mirror,” she said, her voice quiet, “and tell me what you see.”

Puzzled, Jacob looked at their reflections: the mirror was wide – an extravagance that spoke of the Rosenthal affluence – he saw himself, he saw Bonnie, and he thought fast.

“Ma’am,” he said, stopping to swallow nervously, “I see a truly beautiful woman, and I see the fireplace behind, and I see me.”

Bonnie colored a little, pleased: she whispered – her lips close to his ear, he felt the warmth of her breath puffing against the fine hairs of his ear – “Bless you for calling me beautiful,” and her violet eyes were gentle, and full of memories as she looked at the tall, slender Sheriff’s reflection.

She turned, and Jacob turned with her.

“Jacob, I knew your father rather well.” She considered as she crossed the floor to her chair. “He told me once … after your mother died … that he could have torn the beating heart out of his breast and laid it at my feet.”

Bonnie turned, faced the pale-eyed lawman squarely.

“In all my life, Jacob, nobody ever, said anything, to me that meant quite as much as that.”

“He loved you, ma’am.”

“He did,” she agreed, “and he was … he never acted on it.” Her eyes held a mixture of admiration and of regret. “Sometimes I wish he had.”

She’d walked close to him, and at her frank admission, he opened his mouth to reply, or started – but her gloved finger on his lips stopped any utterance.

“Your father was a gentleman,” she whispered, “and you are so much like your father, and bless you for that.

 

223

 

“Now for calling me ma’am.” She laughed a little and patted him on the chest, a very motherly gesture. “I’m old, Jacob, but I’m not that old.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied automatically, then he turned a little redder, and he and Bonnie both laughed.

“Now about that question you have.”

“We heard something we can’t explain,” Samuel spoke up, rising, and Bonnie turned to face him. “When three men distracted … the Sheriff” – he saw Bonnie’s eyes smile and he knew she picked up on his hesitation, where he almost said the men distracted his Pa, then corrected himself before he spoke the error – “the one who intended to back shoot him was himself shot.”

Bonnie looked from Samuel to his father. “You said in court you did not know who fired that life-saving shot.”

“I said that, yes, ma’am.”

“But you have your suspicions.”

“I have a puzzle, ma’am, and I don’t like puzzles.”

“What did I tell you about ma’aming me?”

Jacob spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t feel right calling you Bonnie!”

Bonnie tilted her head again and put her hands on her waist. “Jacob Keller, you are a man grown and you have sons and I still call you Jacob!”

“You do” – he paused, and Bonnie knew he almost called her “ma’am” again – “in private, but your good manners refer to me as “Sheriff” in public.”

“That,” Bonnie said haughtily, “is because I have good manners.”

“If I lacked good manners,” Jacob said softly, “I think Mama would bust out of that gravestone and come and bend me over her knee and take a belt to my backside!”

His tone was so serious, his words so solemn, that Samuel smiled and sat down, hiding his mouth behind his hand: Bonnie was not as reserved – she took Jacob by the shoulders and kissed his cheek, quickly, and hugged him into her.

“Jacob,” she whispered again, “had I a son, I would wish him just like you!”

“I have a son, and he is,” Jacob deadpanned, and Bonnie laughed again, shaking her head.

“Jacob, you are your father’s son,” she sighed. “Samuel, I do apologize. You started to explain the puzzle and I’m afraid we’ve strayed wide of the mark.”

“Can I still call you ma’am?” Samuel hazarded, bringing another delicate laugh from the dignified, attractive older woman.

“You’re young enough, Samuel. “Yes, you may, though …”

She looked affectionately at Jacob.

“Oh, go ahead, then. I would hate to disturb your mother’s good rest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” father and son chorused, then all three laughed.

Once they’d all seated themselves again – once the maid, discreetly hesitating to enter the room until their discussion was at a less personal point, entered with a tray – only then did Samuel resume his question.

“Ma’am, we both heard what sounded like Sarah’s voice.”

Bonnie had just picked up her teacup and was raising it to take her first sip when Samuel’s words penetrated her reserve.

To her credit, she did not drop the teacup, nor did she spill its contents.

Samuel did note the shiver that went through her, the shiver that clattered bone-china teacup against bone-china saucer as she placed it back on the sidetable.

“Samuel, would you repeat that, please?” Bonnie asked, and Jacob was reminded most powerfully of the way Sarah would say those exact words, when she wore the mousy-grey dress of a schoolmarm and stood at the front of their little whitewashed classroom.

“When the murderer raised his rifle to drill Pa between the shoulder blades,” Samuel repeated, “someone put one through the murderer’s head before he could take the shot. Pa and I both heard Sarah’s voice, clear as a bell. She said – and she said it loud – ‘Nobody shoots my little brother!’”

“I see,” Bonnie said faintly, and father and son both saw her turn just a little pale.

“Ma’am,” Samuel said, “neither of us can explain this. We both heard it. If ‘twas wishful thinking, it’s not likely we’d both wishful-think at the same time. Nobody was anywhere near to speak the words. Daciana wasn’t much help. She allowed as our bloodline was weaving together to make it stronger with time because our strength – our strength, that of our bloodline – would be needed sometime in future, but she couldn’t tell us quite what, or when.”

“Wouldn’t,” Jacob corrected quietly. “She knew but she wouldn’t tell us.”

“I …”

Bonnie blinked, and Samuel, watching her closely, remembered his grandfather on a quiet, peaceful evening, one sundown when it was just grandfather and grandson and their horses, high on an overlook, when Samuel was admitting he was starting to look at girls differently.

His grandfather nodded and spoke quietly, and Samuel remembered the conversation, how the old man spoke of the first time he ever saw Bonnie McKenna, how he looked into those violet eyes, those lovely eyes, eyes like pools of deep water, how he could have swum in those eyes, and Samuel wondered if he should confide this to her, but decided that she probably knew it already.

“I don’t know who,” Bonnie finally said. “It was Sarah’s voice?”

Jacob nodded.

“I miss her,” Bonnie whispered. “I was just sick when she left, when we saw her off at the depot, and the … I … I fluttered my kerchief until the last car was around the bend, and …”
She turned her head, pressed a kerchief to her nose, and both Jacob and Samuel looked away, for both had been on the platform with her, and both remembered how she’d buried her face in her husband’s breast and wept, heartbroken, for her mother’s intuition told her she would never see her daughter alive again.

“Ma’am, have you heard Sarah since then?” Samuel asked, blunt as an investigator must be, but soft-spoken as a friend must be, and he wanted desperately to keep Bonnie McKenna as a friend.

Bonnie shook her head, sniffed, pressed the folded kerchief against one closed eye, then the other.

“No,” she admitted. “No tapping, no table tipping, no knocking, no … no shades, no mists floating through a wall.” She lifted her head, took a long breath. “Nothing.”

“How about odors?” Samuel persisted. “The smell of soap and roses in an odd moment?”

Bonnie blinked. “No …” she began, her eyes swinging to the left – Samuel knew from observation this meant she was remembering, not inventing – “no, I … no. Never.” She blinked quickly, and Samuel knew that if she did, she would remember the question, and he had the feeling she would let him know.

Jacob rose. “Samuel,” he said, then he sauntered with an exaggerated casualness over to Bonnie, and took her hand, raising it to his lips.

“Thank you for your kindness,” he whispered, “and know that you are right. My father loved you to his last breath.”

Bonnie blinked quickly, and Jacob looked away, for her eyes were shimmering at his words and threatening to overflow.

Father and son left, settling their Stetsons on their heads as they crossed the threshold, and it was not until they were halfway down the Rosenthal driveway that either spoke.

“Samuel,” Jacob said, “did you find the answer we sought?”

“I did not, sir.”

“I did.”

“Sir?”

“Samuel” – Jacob leaned back in the saddle, and his Apple-horse obediently stopped – “that was indeed Sarah’s voice we heard.”

“Sir?”

“Apparently being surrounded by that great cloud of believers is more correct than I thought,” Jacob said thoughtfully, then he grinned and his voice puffed out in clouds of vapor into the cold air.

“Samuel, when Bonnie took me to the mirror and I told her I saw a beautiful woman, do you recall that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She asked me what I saw.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Samuel, I told her I saw myself, and a beautiful woman, and the fireplace behind.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Samuel, what was on the fireplace mantle?”

“Two lamps, sir. Aladdins, tall chimney. A portrait above and a rifle, late Pennsylvania pattern, I believe, flint lock, a powder horn under the lock work and a warbag under the right.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, sir.”

“I saw one other item in the mirror.”

“Yes, sir?”

“When I turned and looked at the fireplace it wasn’t there.” Jacob’s eyes held a smile, almost as if holding a delightful secret. “Samuel, I saw a rose in the mirror, a rose lying on that walnut mantlepiece, but when I turned and looked at it, there was no rose.”

Samuel blinked, considering this new information, then he nodded slowly and smiled.

“Yes, sir,” was his only reply.

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44. DO THIS FOR ME, JACOB

Sheriff Jacob Keller frowned as he worked his shoulder.

Last night’s fracas left him sore: he’d put a fellow on the floor and persuaded him that he really ought to behave himself in another man’s town, and that individual objected most strenuously to being so reminded, and that fellow didn’t really give a good damn that it was the Sheriff himself saying as much: it wasn’t until Jacob drove the heel of his palm into the man’s chin, rapping the back of his gourd against the swept-clean floor, not until he’d seized the stunned man’s crotch and shirt collar and hauled him off the ground, not until he’d whirled him around in a circle and threw him bodily into the wall beside the staircase – not until he’d shivered the whole side of the building with the impact – not until he hollered for the swamper to open door, and not until he threw the offending troublemaker out into the cold, down the stairs and onto the frozen dirt street, did he really get the mouthy drunk’s full attention.

The next day they both paid for it.

Jacob, fortunately, was only a little sore.

The other fellow was not only considerably more stove up and sore, he was also lighter in his pocketbook, for right after he’d come to an un-gentle landing out in the street, His Honor the Judge came puffing out of the Silver Jewel like a grey-bearded locomotive, punishing his cigar and evolving truly grand clouds of smoke as he strode industriously after the pair: right there on the street, His Honor the Judge fetched the man’s pistol out of his holster, rapped its handle against the hitch rail and declared, “Court’s in session! I hereby find you guilty of – Sheriff, what-all do you want to nail him with?”

Jacob glared at the Judge, then at the groaning, face-scraped prisoner – he’d tried to plow a furrow in the frozen ground with his nose as he landed – and allowed as disturbing the peace, assault on a peace officer, resisting arrest, public intoxication, offenses while armed, destruction of property –

The Judge interrupted the Sheriff with an upraised palm: he reached into the man’s coat, found his wallet, examined the contents.

“Sheriff,” he said, “I hereby fine this sorry soul fifty dollars. That will leave him fifty to get home on. Sound good to you?”

“He’s overnight in the lockup,” Jacob muttered, exploring the bruised cheekbone the fellow gave him – “but damn he can hit!”

“I can fine him another fifty.”

Jacob shook his head. “Nah. He’ll hurt bad enough losing half his holdings.”

“You are unusually generous, Sheriff. Anywhere else would empty his purse.”

“I beat him in public. That’s bad enough. Once he’s sober there’s any number of folks will be happy to tell him what he’d done. That’ll hurt him too.”

Now, the next day, Jacob frowned and came to his feet.

Samuel had turned him loose an hour earlier; the release was without incident, and when someone knocked on the heavy door, Jacob figured it was the former prisoner, come back for whatever reason.

It wasn’t.

“Morning, Levi,” he said, surprised. “Come on in.”

Levi removed his hat with his left hand, his right was occupied with a wooden gun case.

“We found this yesterday,” Levi said.

“What is it?”

Levi laid the wooden case on the Sheriff’s desk. “It’s addressed to you.”

Jacob frowned. “What is?”

Levi flipped the latches, opened the lid, and Jacob frowned, leaned closer, clearly interested.

“This is,” Levi said, picking up a single, folded sheet, sealed with red wax, impressed with a rose.

Jacob took the paper, tilted it to catch the light across the seal.

“I will be sawed off and damned,” he breathed, then turned it over.

He recognized the handwriting.

It was addressed to him, in a way that was uniquely identifying.

To my little brother, he read, and smiled a little.

He bent the seal, snapped it, unfolded the single sheet.

It was a diagram, and a brief note.

I will need this, he read, but not in this lifetime.

Ask no questions, dearest Jacob, please do as I ask.

Do this for me, Jacob.

Jacob studied the diagram.

It was familiar.

He knew the location showed in the diagram.

He looked into the wooden gun case and lifted out a very familiar rifle.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

“Sarah’s?” Levi asked.

Jacob nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It is.” He grinned. “I gave it to her.”

“I’m glad we found it.”

“I am too.”

An hour later he emerged from the schoolhouse.

He never knew there was a hidden cubby on the wall toward the Silver Jewel, a hidden place just sized for a rifle: per his dead sister’s just-discovered instructions, he loaded the rifle, he left a box of cartridges with the rifle, he closed the panel, and he marveled at how well this simple rectangle concealed the recess.

“Little Sis,” he said, “I have no idea why you want this here, but it’s here.”

He looked around the schoolroom, as if looking for someone, but nobody else was there.

He flared his nostrils as he inhaled, seeking a scent.

Nothing.

The mystery of the rifle in the schoolhouse would not be revealed for more than a century, but there is no way the pale eyed Sheriff could know this: it would be revealed to a Sheriff, yes, to a Sheriff with pale eyes, and it would be discovered in a moment of great need, but it would not be revealed to this particular pale eyed Sheriff.

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45. ANGELUS MINOR

The Sheriff’s Office was sizable, stone, solid: the walls were of massive blocks of finely cut, beautifully finished, skillfully fitted, precisely mortared native quartz.

Sound did not penetrate terribly well, and so Sheriff Jacob Keller can be forgiven for not hearing the sound of a horse at gallop, and on approach: in fact, he did not know anything was amiss until he heard two quick, urgent steps on the board walk, and the door thrust open, and his son swung in, slammed the door behind him.

Jacob wiped his steel-nib pen, placed it precisely on the green desk blotter, aligned exactly with the left edge of the sheet he’d been writing on: only then did he rise and turn his pale-eyed attention on his firstborn son, who was waiting like a soldier to report.

“Sir,” Samuel said, then stopped, took a long, deep breath: he closed his eyes and exhaled, inhaled again, opened his eyes.

“Sir, it’s Dana. She’s here and she’s crying.”

Jacob’s face tightened and his eyes lightened perceptibly: he reached up, slowly, his move tightly controlled, and he gripped his pearl-grey Stetson hanging on its peg: he paced off on the left, as did his late father, he settled the hat on his head, he walked over to the gun rack and selected his favorite double gun, then dropped a bandoleer of brass shotgun shells over one shoulder.

He turned and nodded to his son.

Samuel turned, seized the door’s handle, hauled it open, and the two men strode out into the cold Colorado sunshine.

 

Annette laid her blanket-wrapped infant in his crib, looking at the anxious girl standing nearby: “Watch him, Miriam,” she murmured, and the little girl nodded, curls a-bounce and she said “Yes, Mama,” in a tiny, little-girl’s voice, and Annette turned to her red-eyed guest.

Dana Keller had been the youngest get of the Old Sheriff’s loins: she’d inherited her Mama’s red hair and green eyes, she’d inherited her sire’s tall, lean frame, she was as lovely and feminine as the mother she never knew, and at the moment, her flawless complexion was milk-pale, but her cheeks stood out like ripe apples.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered, and Dana’s nine-year-old daughter backed up a step, stopping as her back touched the door frame, her violet eyes betraying her own sorrow.

Annette steered the miserable, younger woman to the kitchen: water was hot and ready and tea was quickly made, and the ladies sat down to fragrant, steaming oolong and began to talk, Annette in the soothing tones of an understanding matron whose heart had been bruised many times in the past, and the pretty, sorrowing mother whose daughter watched her elders with wide and solemn eyes.

The girl looked up, then toward the tall, half-steamed-over kitchen window at the sound of approaching horses: her young ears were keen and not dulled by the repeated insults of adult-level noise, and she picked out the quick cadence of two horses at an urgent pace: they slowed, stopped, the front door opened quickly and two tall, lean men strode into the kitchen.

Jacob handed his double gun to his son and stepped over to his sister, who rose to meet him: he seized her in an absolutely crushing embrace, lifting her off the floor, and he held her desperately, protectively, finally whispering, “Dana, who did this to you? Was it your husband? What did he do, I’ll kill him slow!”

Dana’s arms were around her big brother’s chest, her hands flat against his back: it was perhaps fortunate that she did not return his bear hug, for his ribs still pained him on exertion: rather, she pressed her hands flat into his back, pulling him into her, shivering like a scared little bunny rabbit.

Dana was nearly cried out, but she lifted her wet face to look at her brother’s solemn visage, and she opened her mouth, and she hiccupped like she used to when she was a little girl, and distressed.

Jacob loosened his bear hug, studied her face, frowning: he tilted his head left, then right, studying her face, looking for signs she’d been hit, evidence that her husband was a wife beater and therefore subject to the violent retribution of a big brother, but no signs were to be seen.

He took her hands between his palms, and Dana closed her eyes, squeezing another rush of moisture down the wet-tracks cascading down her cheeks: her Papa’s hands had been like this – big, strong, warm, almost hot … she blinked, looked up at Jacob, smiled wanly.

“You look so like Papa,” she whispered, braving a quivering little smile.

Jacob released her face, turned her, eased her back down into her chair: he went to one knee, took her free hand in both of his and said, “Out with it, Little Sis. What happened and who do I have to kill?”

Dana looked at Samuel, standing unmoving against the far wall: his flat hat-brim was shaded down over his eyes until they were two hazel shadows beneath its overhang: he’d parked his Winchester in a convenient corner and now stood, silent as death and twice as menacing, a tall, lean man in winter’s long coat, and visible under the open coat, an immaculate black suit of the same cut as her Papa used to wear, and across his arm, in front of him, the old familiar double gun her Papa favored.

It took time, tea, patience, a little coaxing and finally Caleb’s arrival before Dana finally started talking, revealing what brought her back out West, back to her home, and away from her married life.

Caleb came into the kitchen, stopped in the doorway: his father had spoken of those Masonic virtues of Silence, and Circumspection, and Caleb practiced both: silent, he looked around, he did not recognize the woman seated beside his mother, the woman his father was earnestly interviewing: he looked at his big brother Samuel, who regarded his younger brother with a stone face, but gave a reassuring wink, then looked at the lost-looking girl in the pale-blue dress standing alone against the wall.

Caleb followed his gaze.

The girl looked so absolutely lost, so utterly alone, almost forgotten.

Caleb went over and stood beside her.

Nobody but Caleb and Dana’s daughter Nancy knew it, but when he stood beside her, his hand found hers, and she gripped his gratefully.

Her hand was warm and soft and there is that in every man that wishes to protect, and Caleb, the son of his pale-eyed father, felt a sudden protectiveness toward this girl he didn’t know, and the two stood, silent and holding hands, watching and listening, until finally Jacob looked up and said quietly, “Caleb, could you check on Miriam and the youngest, please,” and Caleb nodded, once.

He and Nancy, still holding hands, went into the other room.

“He hanged himself,” Dana choked after the youngest pair left the room.

Annette’s hand was warm and reassuring on her arm, and Jacob’s big, callused hands were almost hot as they tightened a little on his little sister’s delicate hand, her bony knuckles pressing into his palm.

“He’d … he wanted money … he invested, but he ...”

She pressed the soggy kerchief to her nose, took a long, steadying breath.

“He lost everything we had. He hadn’t … the investors persuaded him … house … everything.”

She looked up and Jacob saw more misery than he’d ever seen in his baby sis’s eyes.

“We have one change of clothes apiece, that’s all. They took … the house, our mare, the carriage …”

She looked at Jacob and though she was a woman grown, a widow now, a mother … she looked like a scared, lost little girl, at least in her protective big brother’s eyes.

“They even took Nancy’s jewelry box.”

Jacob nodded, patting her hand. “Let’s get you something to eat,” he said, “and we’ll settle you in here. Dearest” – he looked at Annette – “I believe a trip to the House of McKenna Dress Works is in order.”

He looked up at Samuel and it was the pale-eyed Sheriff’s turn to feel that trickle of cold water walk cold-finger down his spine.

Samuel had not moved.

He was immobile as a statue’s shadow and just as dark: he still stood silent, unmoving, observant, with the double gun across his arm, but what struck the Sheriff as significant was his chief deputy’s face.

It was the first time Jacob Keller ever saw his son’s face pale, and taut, with murder itself smoldering quietly under the shading hat-brim.

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46. THAT WHICH IS SEEN

Nancy felt her mother’s tremors.

Mother and daughter sat together in the back of the carriage, with Annette driving: in spite of her anxiousness, Dana looked around, remembering Firelands as it had been, pleased that it was very much the same, with only a few changes.

She remembered her Papa pointing out the corner building – it was newly rebuilt when she was a little girl yet, it had been hastily rebuilt after a catastrophic fire, and then overhauled again for the town’s library, and she was pleased to see that it was a library still: books were ever her refuge against the trials and difficulties of everyday life, and their town library back East was very nearly her second home.

Back East, she thought.

Not back home.

It will never be home again!

She remembered her husband, then she remembered the sight of his ghastly, enpurpled corpse, its neck at a painful angle, tongue and eyes protruding: she remembered reading his suicide note, she remembered the smell of the body and the polite, formal deference of the constable who cut down the body and helped the undertaker lay it out in the rough box.

The disgrace of suicide and of having lost everything to the creditors marked Dana and her daughter almost as pariahs, though they themselves were blameless: they found many doors shut to them, and it was only by the kindness of the Parson that Dana was able to afford tickets for the only refuge she knew of in this, the worst storm of their lives, and that was a pair of one-way tickets to Colorado.

They’d traveled in the least expensive car; she’d been able to afford one, and only one, meal, and that she gave to Nancy: when they arrived at Jacob’s fine stone house, still as solid and as reassuring as she remembered, she broke down and wept – silently as she did not wish to upset her hostess or he daughter either one – they’d been given a bath and clean clothes, they’d been given hot tea, then a meal, her brother said not a word to her, but instead seized her in that crushing, I-will-keep-you-safe bear hug she recalled so very well, and now – now that they had a roof over their heads, now that they were welcomed into the family, now that they were being taken to what was inarguably the finest fashion house west of the Mississippi – now, and only now, could Dana let herself hope, just a tiny bit, that they just might make it after all.

Her hand trembled as she reached across Nancy’s shoulders and drew her close.

Nancy had found her father’s body.

She hadn’t screamed, she hadn’t run in panic: Dana did not know exactly what she did do, how she did react, all she knew was her daughter walking into the parlor, where the creditors were serving Dana with the eviction papers and the court papers that transferred ownership of their house and all their belongings – all Dana knew was that Nancy said in a tiny voice, “Mama? Papa is hanging in the barn,” and Dana was barely able to persuade their hard-eyed and heartless creditors to allow her and her daughter one bag and a change of clothes with which to depart.

Dana’s jewels were long gone, sold to satisfy the failed investments: she’d protested when one of them came downstairs with Nancy’s jewelry box in hand, and she saw the hurt and the loss in her daughter’s young eyes as the contents were dumped onto the fresh tablecloth Dana had laid not an hour before, the contents sorted through and the value estimated against the amount they claimed was due.

Mother and daughter shrank together as the creditors turned and looked at them with appraising eyes.

One of them said, “We could sell them,” and they laughed, and the constable came around the corner and into the room and said quietly, “The first man to touch them will answer to me.”

“Yeah?” one sneered. “And who are you, flatfoot?”

The constable moved faster than any of them expected; his wooden nightstick made a surprisingly sharp sound as he swung it in a fast, abbreviated arc, absolutely flooring the individual who’d challenged his authority.

“Pick him up and get him out of here,” the constable snarled, glaring around: they had their court orders, and the orders were valid, but by God! -- he would not stand for their even implying anything improper toward these ladies!

“Mama,” Nancy almost whispered as they rattled down the main street, past the Silver Jewel Saloon, “what is a McKenna house?”

“The House of McKenna,” Dana replied softly. “It’s where they make dresses.”

“How much will it cost?” Nancy asked, and Dana squeezed her shoulder and laid her cheek over atop her daughter’s head.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but we’ll figure something.”

“Will you have to sell me?” Nancy asked, sounding like a very little girl, and Dana shivered.

“No,” she whispered fiercely. “Under no circumstances! Besides” – Nancy looked up at her Mama, her expression confused as her Mama continued – “besides, that kind of thing is illegal. Your Granddad fought in that damned War to put a stop to it.”

Nancy nodded and leaned against her Mama again, and Dana hugged her daughter firmly to her.

Nancy was grateful for the reassurance of her Mama’s touch, and it was the mother’s turn to feel the daughter’s tremors.

Nancy blinked, and stared at the back of the finely upholstered seat ahead of her, and she saw her father hanging by the neck from a noose in the barn, his head pulled over sideways, his skin a ghastly, dead-man’s purple, eyes bulging and huge and white, like boiled eggs forced out of his skull, and his tongue fat and dry and thrust between his teeth.

Nancy read in school that a harsh word, once spoken, can never be un-spoken; she’d read of a legal case, where an attorney once declared dramatically that a bell cannot be un-rung.

Nancy was beginning to realize that – no matter how powerfully, how sincerely she wished the contrary – that which she had seen, would never, ever, be unseen.

She closed her eyes and shivered harder.

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47. SCHOOLMARM

“Her name is Ezra Shaver.”

Jacob looked up, puzzled.

“She is the new schoolmarm.”

Jacob nodded.

“She wants to talk to you.”

Jacob blinked, surprised.

Daisy’s girl glared at Mayor and Sheriff. “What’ll it be?" she snapped. "I don’t have all day!”

“If I could trouble you for cackle berries,” Jacob said mildly, “and some dead pig if you’ve got it.”

“You?”
Mayor Arthur Sapp raised an eyebrow, looked from the lean and pale eyed lawman to the hash slinger.

“I’ll have the same.”

“How ya want ‘em?”

“Fried up some and splash some grease over top so the top’s done.”

“It’s called basting,” the waitress snapped, “and I suppose you want coffee!”

“If you could please,” Jacob replied, his voice as gentle as hers was irritable, “but not too much, I reckon a gallon or so ought to do us.”

The mayor nodded solemn agreement and Daisy’s girl steamed back to the kitchen, for all the world like a short-tempered tugboat, obviously capable of and perfectly willing to knock anyone or anything out of her way.

“All the personality of a round file,” the Mayor observed.

“What, her?” Jacob replied, his eyes smiling but not the rest of his face: “that paragon of sweetness and light?”

The subject under discussion leaned around the corner and shouted, “And I suppose you’ll want pie!” – then pulled back before receiving an answer.

“Does she know you or what?” the Mayor said quietly. “Now about that schoolmarm.”

Jacob turned his eyes back to the Mayor.

“She wants to talk to you.”

“Why me? I’m not a schoolteacher.”

“You know the community.”

Jfacob nodded. “And this means …?”

“It means she’s intelligent enough to consult someone who knows the people. She wants to know who the good students are, who the troublemakers are, who is likely to raise hell if she takes a switch to their favorite son.”

Jacob grunted. “It’s been a few years since I was in school, Mr. Mayor.”

“You still know the community.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She’ll be here on the noon train.”

“I’ll meet her.”

Daisy’s girl glided between the unoccupied tables, swung her tray onto a vacant tabletop, set plates of breakfast before the men: coffee cups were placed, filled, a small pitcher of fresh cream set between them.

A cloth lined wicker basket of hot, steaming, fragrant biscuits completed the breakfast: “Yer pie’s comin’,” she snapped, throwing the words over her shoulder as she threw up a bow wave on her way back to the kitchen.

“Might be I’d ought to warn her about havin’ breakfast here,” Jacob suggested, and the Mayor sighed.

“No need,” he said, his face reddening. “She’s … today is her last day.”

“Hmp.” Jacob pinched up some salt, sprinkled it on his eggs. “How’s that?”

“She’s getting married.”

“Oh, Lord,” Jacob groaned. “Who’s the unlucky sod?”
His Honor the Mayor turned a little redder, and Jacob’s eyes widened.

“No,” he said, lowering his biscuit unbitten.

His Honor, red-faced, nodded and affirmed, “Me.”

“Well I’d be sawed off and damned,” Jacob chuckled. “Congratulations!”

“Her name is Molly,” Mayor Sapp offered, “and she’s scared. You know we're gettin' married and I know it and she knows it, and that’s it.”

“Do you want it known?”

“No. Not until after.”
“Good enough.” Jacob bit into a slice of thick, crispy fried bacon. “Schoolmarm at noon. Anything else?”

His Honor shook his head, debated whether to try his eggs, picked up a broad strip of bacon instead.

“We won’t be back for a week or so.”

Jacob nodded. “It is wise to take time for the two of you.”

Molly reappeared, clattered two slices of pie to the table, glared at Jacob, then at her husband-to-be.

“Did you tell him?”

Mayor Sapp looked up, nodded. “I did.”

“Good.” She swatted the Sheriff’s shoulder. “Now answer me this, lawman.”

Jacob held very still, as if debating whether to turn her over his knee, then he set his coffee down and looked up at her.

“Why couldn’t I have found you first?”

Jacob’s eyes narrowed and he considered his answer carefully.

“I reckon,” he said slowly, “because you were meant to wait for the right one to come along.”

Molly laughed, looked at her fiancée, and gave him a knowing smile.

“Watch it, handsome,” she laughed, “or this fine fellow will have your office!”

She whirled with a flare of skirts and swayed her hips back toward the kitchen.

His Honor the Mayor Arthur Sapp chuckled ruefully.

“Jacob,” he said, “you are a natural diplomat!”

Jacob cut off a chunk of the fresh, still-warm pie, forked it up.

“Flattery,” he said through a flavorful mouthful, “will get you everywhere!”

 

Ezra Shaver sat very properly on the thinly-padded seat.

She’d wisely brought a pillow to sit on; it took less than an hour for her to realize that, without the pillow, her journey would have been uncomfortable indeed: it was not until she changed trains and assumed a seat in the Z&W passenger car that she actually felt comfortable.

She and her daughter were investing their future with the Western community of Firelands, Colorado, a place of which she knew almost nothing.

Her daughter Ruth, however, discovered a series of thin, cheap books written by a “Lynne Rosenthal,” one titled “RAGDOLL: Legend of a Western Killer,” another was “THE BLACK AGENT” – Ruth found the stories enthralling, and imagined herself as the main character, fancying what it must feel like to ride a horse taller than most men, or disguising herself as a dance-hall girl to get into a criminal’s confidence and trick him into a confession.

She decided not to tell her mother about her discoveries.

Her mother was a very proper lady and did not approve of her reading cheap pulps.

Ruth waited until her mother’s eyes closed before pulling out her latest discovery, another written by the same author.

As the train clickity-clacked westward, Ruth opened the book, found her folded-paper bookmark, and resumed reading this new treasure.

The conductor, pacing the center aisle, glanced over and smiled a little as he saw the cover.

He smiled, for he’d read it, too, and he knew that its contents – presented as fiction – were based on a surprising amount of fact.

Her book was titled THE SHERIFF’S DAUGHTER.

Ruthie Shaver glanced up and saw the conductor’s look, and she smiled as the kindly, grey-haired man in the shiny-billed cap winked at her, then continued his way up the aisle, as completely at ease with the railcar’s sway as an experienced saltwater sailor on the deck of a canvas-spread schooner.

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48. FIRE DOWN BELOW

 

“KOLASCINSKI!”

Kohl turned, frowning: to his men he was Mr. Kohl, but to the bosses above, he was simply Kolascinski.

That, or less complimentary terms.

Kohl was working for the mine again, working as a foreman.

His men didn’t really like him – nobody really likes the boss, simply because he is the boss – but he wasn’t really disliked: as a matter of fact, his reputation was that of a man who got the work done, a man who made sure his men were safe, a man who took care of his men.

Kohl had just inspected the new works, and he had an uneasy feeling, something about the new shaft they’d opened.

They’d broken into an old shaft, one that was blocked off for who knows how long.

Something wasn’t right about it … a smell, maybe, a dampness he wasn’t used to, something … he wasn’t sure what, but he was glad to get out of that new shaft and back into the main part of the mine.

Kohl was an experienced miner.

He'd worked coal mines back East and he preferred the hard-rock mines here in the West, but something, something about breaking into that old works made him uneasy.

He took off his cap and its carbide light, ran a hand over his sweat-damp forehead, and this was not a good sign either.

The mines were never cold, but they were perpetually cool, and he hadn’t worked enough to break a sweat.

Kohl looked at one of the bosses, a finely dressed man with cigar and hat and an air of general self-importance, trying to stride over the loose rubble toward him and ending up in an awkward stumble.

Kohl felt a sudden rush of air and his ears felt like he’d just rode an elevator way too deep way too fast, and he remembered feeling the same way back East, back in a coal mine, and Kohl reacted more by instinct than by any rational thought.

Kohl jumped back and to the side, in the lee of a rock big as a Conestoga, curled up into a tight ball with his eyes scrunched shot and his hands over his ears, and he took a fast, deep breath and held it.

His weight hadn’t fully hit the ground when something hit him.

There was a flash and a sudden sensation of heat, intense, bright, momentary, the concussion hit his face and his chest and Kohl willed himself to melt and flow into the very grain and pore of the rock under him.

Kohl held very still, waiting, but the flash and the boom were not repeated.

He removed his hands from his ears, opened his eyes.

He smelled burned hair and dust, thick dust … an awful lot of dust.

He opened his eyes, blinked, blinked again.

It was dark.

There is dark of outdoors and then there’s the dark in a mine’s guts and there is no absolute, utter, total darkness like a mine’s bowels, and Kohl was well down in the lower levels.

He uncoiled, feeling dirt on him, thick, grainy … he spread his fingers, pressed a cautious hand down on the unseen floor under him.

He came up on his backside, reached up, felt his hair, ruffled it violently to get the dirt out, then started feeling around him, feeling for his cap.

It was easier to search with his eyes shut.

If his eyes were shut it wasn't really dark, it was just that he had his eyes closed.

He reached down, pulled his kerchief up over his face for a filter.

It helped, a little.

He reached down again, feeling carefully, delicately, fingers spread, then he brushed something that wasn't rock or loose dirt.

Cloth, he found, and if it hadn't been so damned dusty he would have smiled, a little.

He'd found it.

Cap … he picked it up, found the carbide light: he cupped his hand over the reflector, then gave it a quick swipe, striking a spark, ignited the acetylene that was still evolving.

The air was thick, grey, dust hung thick and glittering as he swung his beam around.

Kohl breathed slowly, through his nose.

Mine explosion, he thought.

He started looking around.

The nearest living soul had been the strutting boss, the one who’d called him a dumb Pollack: Kohl walked cautiously toward where the man had been.

He found him.

The man wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing.

Kohl blinked, his eyes gritty, and he tried not to cough: he breathed through his nose, looked at the carbide light’s flame, wondering how much good air he had left.

He looked up, saw the boss’s hat.

He’s here, his hat got blown there, Kohl thought.

That means the explosion came from behind me.

Toward that shaft they just broke into.

Firedamp.

He looked at the carbide light and knew it would ignite any firedamp present, but it was the only light he had, and right now light was life.

God willing it’s all burnt up.

If this was a coal mine it would have detonated a second time and we'd be dead and buried, killed in the explosion and crushed in a roof fall.

He turned up-shaft, toward where his men had been working.

 

The porter had the whitest teeth, the neatest uniform, the biggest hands and the broadest shoulders Ruthie Shaver had ever seen.

The porter stood flat footed on the ground and reached easily to the elevation of her Mama’s hand: he took Ezra’s hand and steadied her as she stepped daintily, gracefully down the cast-iron stairs and onto the platform: Ruthie was next, and the porter took her hand with the same grave courtesy as he had her mother.

“Thank you,” Ruthie said in a small, uncertain voice, and the porter’s reply was a broad, genuine grin: he turned and took her under the arms, swung her easily off the steps and onto the platform: “There you go, little lady,” he rumbled in a voice far deeper than she’d ever heard.

“Mrs. Shaver?”

Ezra and Ruth turned and saw a tall, lean man in a black suit, his hat in his hand: his coat was unbuttoned, a watch chain gleamed across his taut middle, and Ruthie saw a holstered revolver as a stray gust lifted the side of his coat, then dropped it.

“I am Mrs. Shaver,” her mother said, formality in her voice and propriety in her spine: Jacob looked at what was obviously the woman’s daughter and nodded gravely.

“Mrs. Shaver, I am Jacob Keller. Mayor Sapp asked me to meet you.”

“Yes, of course,” Ezra said, extending her hand: Jacob raised it to his lips, kissed her knuckles. “A pleasure, ma’am.”

Rapid footsteps brought Jacob’s head up and Ezra was struck at how alert, how feral he looked with that simple move: his eyes were ice-pale, hard, cold … she shivered and thought she would not want that icy gaze directed at her!

The telegrapher glanced over at Ezra: “Ma’am,” he said, then, “Sheriff, the mine just blew up!”

“Details,” Jacob said, his voice clipped.

“Cow Run, the other side of Claybank. She blew out smoke and fire from the drift. No idea what happened, I don’t know if it’s fell in or who’s dead or what.”

“What do they need?”

“Doc, the Brigade and as many volunteers as we can scare up.”

Jacob nodded, turned. “Samuel!”

“Sir!” A younger version of the pale-eyed Sheriff strode across the depot platform, looked at Ezra and her daughter, touched his hat brim: “Ladies,” he said, then turned to his father: “Sir.”

“Mine explosion, Claybank.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We need people and we need supplies.”
“Yes, sir.”

“Get Doc, see who the Brigade can spare, spread the word. We’ll stage at the lower corral the other side of the bank.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lightning!”

“Yes, Sheriff!”

“I want an express to the nearest siding and I want it ready five minutes ago!”

“Yes, sir!”

“I’ll need passenger and freight cars both!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Mrs. Shaver, I was to receive and accommodate you and your daughter, but we have a disaster. With your permission I will see you settled in the boarding house. Your meals at the Silver Jewel are paid for, the food is good and whatever you both want, whenever you want it. Once we settle things down to a dull roar I’ll introduce you around town and fill you in as best I can.”

The Sheriff's words were faster paced now, clipped, very precisely enunciated, but the words of a man accustomed to command, a man ordering his thoughts and arranging his priorities, a man of decision and of action.

Ezra Shaver looked at this lean lawman with the hazel eyes and approved of what she saw.

“Very kind, I’m sure,” Ezra murmured politely, taking the Sheriff’s arm and allowing him to escort her to the waiting carriage.

Ruthie was a little disappointed that the Sheriff didn’t pick her up and swing her into the carriage as easily as that mountain of a porter plucked her off the passenger car.

Jacob had no more than picked up the reins when Ezra reached over and laid a gloved hand on his knuckles. “Sheriff,” she said, and he recognized the command of a schoolteacher’s voice.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Sheriff, will you need bandages, blankets, clothing?”

Jacob considered a moment. “Bandages, I would imagine. Probably not clothing but we’ll need to feed the troops.”

“Have you a Mercantile?”

“We have.”

“Are the children in the schoolhouse?”

“We have a … lay teacher … holding down the fort.”

“Sheriff, are you a military man?” Mrs. Shaver asked, sounding more like a schoolmarm with each word.

“No ma’am,” Jacob admitted. “My father was a brevet-Colonel, but I --“

“Sheriff, we are drafting from the Unorganized Militia,” Ezra said briskly. “I presume I will have access to the county’s exchequer.” It was less a question than an order.

“That can be arranged, ma’am.”

“Arrange it.” As the carriage stopped at the Mercantile, Ezra planted the heel of her hand on the side of her seat, leaped out and to the mounting-block: she snatched up her skirts, raised her chin and stepped up onto the boardwalk: “Come along, Ruth.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Less than six minutes later, the Mercantile was stripped of bedsheets, blankets, kerosene lamps, cans of kerosene, canned goods: the Mercantile stocked a good supply of sewing notions, at least until the diminutive schoolteacher made her raid: she had no demand on their supply of needles, thread or pins, but she snatched up every last pair of scissors in stock, and every can opener.

She noticed the Sheriff’s raised eyebrow as she shoved the box into his hands.

“Sheriff,” she said tartly, “what good are cans of peaches if you can’t open them easily?”

Jacob had to admit that she had a point.

“We will need whiskey, Sheriff, but I expect your physician will have medicinal alcohol available.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jacob offered his hand, but the short little teacher with the brisk manner swarmed easily into the carriage without his help, her daughter climbing a little more awkwardly into the back seat, arranging herself among the several purchases.

Jacob considered that, as effective as their beloved Emma Cooper had been, from what he was seeing, this Ezra Shaver was going to be equally impressive … in her own way.

“Let us off at the schoolhouse,” Mrs. Shaver said quietly. “We will have bandages within the hour.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The new schoolmarm was true to her word.

She divided the students into groups and supervised the cutting of new bedsheets into bandages, varying the sizes: Ezra Shaver had known multiple casualty events in the past, and she knew firsthand the variety of injuries possible with a mine explosion.

It wasn’t a memory she particularly wanted to look at, but it was experience, and Ezra Shaver was not in the least reluctant to put experience to work.

 

Kohl looked at the rock wall and smiled grimly.

He knew this shaft used to open to the outside.

It was walled off because the dead boss didn’t want air moving through, and in the dead of winter he might have had an argument, but Kohl knew right now they needed to clear out the mineshaft.

He wasn’t sure but he was fairly certain the old shaft was still open, and it would not take much to take down this wall.

He picked up a pry bar, drew back and drove its chisel end into a gap in the rocks.

It took him most of an hour but he got the rock wall down, and fresh air blew over him – cold it was, but cold he did not mind, as long as it got rid of the airborne dirt and any firedamp lingering in the main works.

Once he got air moving, he set out his poke of carbide on a flat topped rock, then he unscrewed his carbide light, knocked out the ash: he refilled the chunks of calcium carbide in the bottom, filling it more than he usually did, he screwed the brass bottom back onto the lamp, filled the water reservoir with what he politely thought of as “second hand coffee” – it would stink, he knew, but it would work, and right now he needed light.

He turned the lever to start the water drip into the bottom half, waited a few moments, cupped his hand over the reflector and counted ten before striking the flint wheel.

The carbide light caught first try, squirting out the pure-white flame.

Kohl took a long breath of the cold incoming air, turned his lamp to the shaft that went to the old works they’d broken into.

“May God guard the foolish,” he whispered, wishing he had his wife’s green-glass Rosary in his pocket: he hefted the pry bar, set the carbide light on its metal plate on his cap, snapped it in place, and advanced into the waiting shaft.

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49. THE UNORGANIZED MILITIA

This was not the first time Firelands mobilized for a mine disaster.

The big stove originally donated for future disaster or misfortune, the big stove originally freighted over on the Z&W and given to the mine against some future date when it may be needed, disappeared – as did most of the tables, the benches, the tents.

This caused a shakeup in the Cripple Creek Mining Company, as the old Sheriff was a major shareholder, and had influence over those with less holdings than he: as a result, the entire board of directors was ousted, the books audited, various charges brought: men fled, others served prison time and lost their ill-gotten fortunes, to the shame and disgrace of entire families.

Jacob telegraphed the mine:

CRIPPLE MINE DISASTER FOREMAN X

FIRELANDS RELIEF TRAIN ENROUTE X

FIELD HOSPITAL X MESS TENT X SHELTER TENT

HAVE TRANSPORT AT RAILHEAD READY TO LOAD X

SHERIFF J KELLER FIRELANDS X

“Sir,” Samuel said as the white flags were attached to the nose of the Baldwin engine, “Sir, should we wait for their reply?”

“No,” Jacob said firmly. “We are on our way whether they like it or not.” He looked squarely at his son. “Samuel, you are my right hand. You will have my full authority. Swing that club however you have to.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jacob gripped his son’s shoulder and nodded, then turned, strode off the depot platform as his son swung into the stock car.

The conductor put his whistle to his lips, raised his flag: “BOAARRRD!” he called, blew the whistle, and the engineer hauled down on the whistle lanyard and squirted a finger of pure-white steam into the clear air.

Ruth settled beside her Mama, wiggled a little, clearly uncomfortable: she looked at her Mama, wishing she felt as confident as her Mama’s resolute jaw looked.

Another girl dropped into the seat beside her.

Surprised, Ruth turned her head, blinking.

“Hi, you’re new,” the newcomer smiled. “I’m Nancy.”

The engineer laid on plenty of whistle as they came into Cripple, and he came in faster than usual and braked harder than usual: it was a point of pride to coast into a station with a clear exhaust and a nice easy stop – this wasn’t the case today – his exhaust was clear but their stop was with locked wheels and sanders running and a long wail of whistle right in the station itself.

“Now who in the hell is that?” a strawboss swore, shoving his hat back on his head and staring as a porter swung a diminutive woman in a little blue hat and a determined expression from the passenger car steps onto the platform: he frowned as the small woman looked around, raised her chin and marched up to him.

Behind her, like ants from a kicked anthill, a sudden swarm of sweating and swearing men behind her hauled open freight car doors, hooked ramps in place and set to unloading a truly sizable cook stove, rolled canvas and who knew what-all else.

“Where are the freight wagons we requested?” she demanded. “We need transportation to the explosion and we need manpower to set up the mess tent and the hospital tent. I will need level ground to work on, we will need a good supply of wood and water and we will need men, now are you the man in charge or are you not?”

You need?” he sneered. “YOU need? And who in the hell are you?

“I’ll tell you who I am,” Samuel said, coming up behind her, resting strong, gentle hands on her shoulders, and standing head shoulders and a good part of his chest above the new schoolmarm’s head: “Name’s Keller and you’ll do as she says or I will fire you.”

“Yeah?” he sneered. “Well I say you ain’t no Keller and you’re just a kid –“

Samuel slapped the man across the face, hard, his move faster than the man could see, much less react to.

Ezra Shaver flinched at the sound of a callused hand on face-flesh: Samuel steered the dainty little schoolmarm to the side and drove his foot into the man’s thigh, knocking him back and spinning him half around.

The strawboss was a hard man and used to handling miners – he was used to using a pick handle or fists in a fight, but adding a tiny little woman and then a kick he never even saw coming put him entirely off his game, and the best he could manage was to raise his fists and fall over sideways.

Samuel stood relaxed, his coat unbuttoned and pushed back, showing a pair of Colt revolvers, and his lapel was turned over showing his badge.

He turned slowly, his jaw set, his eyes like polished agate: he had not inherited the glacier’s heart of his sire’s famous pale eyes, but the message his own conveyed was plain enough: every man there knew the lean deputy’s next move would not be with fists or feet.

Samuel turned slowly as a familiar but half-panicked voice voice almost screamed, “WHITE!”

A well-dressed man with a diamond stickpin came puffing up to the pair: White

gathered himself, charged the hazel-eyed deputy, coming in low, intending to drive his shoulder into Samuel’s crotch.

The lean deputy was faster than any man had a right to be.

He stepped to the side, let the strawboss snatch at empty air, overbalance and land on knees and face in the cold, bare ground.

Samuel fetched out his right-hand Colt and drove a thick lead slug into the frozen ground near the man’s face, knowing it would blast the delicate flesh of his cheeks with spalled-out dirt and probably shivers of lead, and he was right.

The strawboss rolled over, mouth open, eyes wide and hands toward Samuel, but not as fists: his palms were toward the lean deputy, his eyes wide: instead of an attack posture, his was the position of surrender.

The detonation of twice twenty grains of the Holy Black on a cold morning has a wondrous effect on the general population: for a moment, every one and every thing froze, and every set of eyes present locked on the sight of a man on the ground and a hard-eyed deputy standing with an engraved Colt’s revolver in his good right hand, the cloud of blue smoke slowly expanding and dissipating.

“If you are quite finished,” Ezra Shaver said coldly, “we do have a kitchen to set up. You” – she turned to the well-dressed man with the diamond stickpin – “appear to be a man of authority. What is your place here, sirrah?”

“He’s on the board of directors,” Samuel said sternly, “and he works for me.”

Mrs. Shaver turned and glared at the tall, slender deputy.

Samuel was not in the least bit intimidated.

She turned her schoolteacher’s glare back to the well-dressed man.

“We have a hospital tent and physician and we wish to set up as close as possible to the disaster. How far are we from it?”

“About a mile and a half, ma’am.”

“What provisions have you to transport us?”

Ezra Shaver's bright, unblinking eyes, her intent expression, her elbows stuck out, reminded Jacob most strongly of a bird ... a little, intent, bright-eyed bird, very focused on its purpose.

The Board of Directors member looked uncomfortably at Samuel.

“If I was you,” Samuel drawled, casually reloading his revolver’s chamber, “I’d listen to the lady.”

Load one, skip one, load four, cock, his mind automatically chanted, just as his Pa taught him when he was Caleb’s age, and he made a mental note to work with Caleb just as his Pa had worked with him: blued steel rotated easily under thumb and fingers and he eased the hammer nose down on the empty chamber.

“Now I reckon you did get my telegram,” he drawled.

Mr. Cook stared, his mouth closed, opened, he looked from deputy from schoolteacher and back.

“Well?” Mrs. Shaver asked quietly, knuckles on her waist. “We have equipment to move and I’m certainly not asking these men to carry it!”

“Wagons,” Mr. Cook muttered. “Yes. Yes, we have wagons.”

 

Manpower was not lacking.

The wagons were well loaded, not only with food and hardware, but with piled-on humanity: men, boys and women rode on rolled canvas, on crates, linked arms to keep from falling off, or followed on foot.

Samuel arranged a carriage for as many of the ladies as could be crowded aboard.

Nancy giggled a little as she rode on her Mama’s lap: she hadn’t set on her Mama’s lap since she was a little girl, but it was necessary in order to crowd as many as possible aboard.

Ruthie was squeezed in tight between her Mama and the edge of the seat: she looked over at Nancy and giggled, clutching her Mama’s gloved hand, and Nancy giggled in reply.

 

Kohl felt dust between his teeth, worked up some spit, tried to get the dirt out of his mouth.

Something ahead – a sound, maybe – he spat, drew in a dusty breath: “Who’s there!” he demanded, his voice loud, hoarse.

There was a cough, the sound of a dropped shovel.

Kohl raised his face from the filtering kerchief, shouted.

“Who’s alive?”

A figure loomed in the hazy murk.

Kohl surged toward him, raising his head slightly to bring the carbide light's focus on the figure's face.

“Oh my God,” Kohl whispered, for the man’s face was bloody, there were fine cuts across his cheeks, and there were two raw craters where his eyes used to be.

 

Mrs. Shaver took fast charge of the scene at the mine’s mouth.

She ordered a flat space enlarged, and skilled men with callused hands and hard muscles skinned off more dirt, made room for stove and tables: the hospital tent went up next, Dr. Greenlees quietly, methodically, setting up his surgery.

He knew what it was to work under wartime conditions, and he felt that familiar twist in his gut he always got when he knew he would be receiving casualties from a battle.

A green-eyed woman with an Irish accent and a sharp tongue, a red-headed woman who’d set up for just such an event before, took charge of the kitchen: Daisy herself, with a handful of daughters in tow, saw to the stove’s setup, the running of its stovepipe – “We don’t want t’ burn down th’ tent, now, set it up high an’ guy it off, we can’t have it blow over wi’ a hard wind!” – boys ran with armsful of wood, barrels were offloaded and rolled quickly, expertly, rolled on their rims and set up, filled with water from three nearby wells.

It was a scene of confusion and of chaos, but it was a controlled chaos: the short schoolteacher was everywhere, supervising, directing, encouraging, scolding; her daughter, like the rest of the Unorganized Militia, found herself drafted: she was fitted with an apron that was almost too long, and she found herself in charge of stoking the stove.

Ruthie knew how to fire a cast iron stove, she’d done it often enough, and it was a mark of her expertise that the red-headed woman with green eyes didn’t have to stop and scold her for too much fire, or not enough.

 

Kohl found three men alive: he sat them down and they did as they were told, for they were dazed, probably in shock: they were shivering, they were silent, and Kohl knew this was not a good sign.

He went deeper into the black shaft, the one he told that dead boss, that damned idiot, that he didn’t want it opened for fear it held the Black Damp, and he was right, and it cost men, his men!

Kohl gritted his teeth and shook impotent fists into the darkness, wishing most powerfully he had a peck basket of gold so he could pay the Witch of Endor to resurrect that damned idiot boss so he, Kohl, could beat the damned fool to death!

Kohl found four more alive, and he found the dead, and he sat the living with their fellows and hauled the dead out into the middle of the shaft so they could be more easily found, and brought out later for honorable interment.

He went back to his men, his survivors: he got them on their feet and he had each man grip the man ahead of him, and he took the lead, for he had the only working light among them.

Kohl knew the mine like a man knows his wife’s body, and Kohl led the column – shivering, shuffling, limping, but alive – and he led his men toward the surface, toward the main shaft, toward the mine opening.

When he came out of the black shaft his nose caught the clean, cooler air he’d allowed by tearing down that wall, and he smiled a little, for he knew if he followed that air out, kept that breeze at his back, he would come to surface, and his men with him.

“Stay with me, lads,” he called with a cheerfulness he most certainly did not feel, and with a blind man’s hands desperately gripping a double handful of his coat’s back, Kohl led the way through the dust-sparkling darkness, the light of a single carbide light their only illumination.

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50. A GREEN GLASS ROSARY

Inge Kolascinski gripped the green glass beads, letting the hand-chased, silver crucifix dangle from her fist: it had been a gift from the Old Sheriff’s wife Esther, and she kept it on a hook inside her kitchen cupboard, looped up double so she could close the door: it featured in their family devotions, she took it to church with her, it had ridden many miles and more in her apron pocket, and today, as their wagon rattled and groaned behind the mule, she gripped it tightly, her knuckles standing out white and shivering a little.

Inge knew what it was when a mine exploded.

She remembered the New Straitsville mine’s explosion, and how it had vomited black smoke and dust and then a spectacular gout of flame, and how she stood, frozen at the magnificent and horribly beautiful belch, until the full realization of what it meant hit her: she did not remember snatching up her skirts, she did not remember running for the mine, she did not remember leaping a ditch wider than she was tall: she remembered screaming and struggling in a man’s arms, reaching vainly for the smoke-streaming portal as one of the miners grabbed her around the waist and hauled her off the ground, held her as she screamed and clawed the empty air, desperately trying to get to her brother.

He died in that coal mine, he and ten others, and it was three days before their rat-chewed bodies were found: Inge did not sleep until the blanket-wrapped forms were brought out, she did not sleep until they’d taken the body and washed the body and dressed the body, she did not sleep until her brother was laid out in the parlor in a closed box on two sawhorses with candles and a crucifix, and not until then, not until the overnight wake, only then did she sleep, and that only fitfully, sitting up in a chair.

People said she aged ten years overnight, that she went into the house a young woman and came out with grey shot through her hair and wrinkles carved into what had been a pretty young face, and it wasn’t a week after she’d committed her brother’s body to the hillside cemetery that she packed her one bag and left town.

Some said she’d left to go back to the Old Country; a few knew she went West.

There was nothing for her back East, and she swore she’d never marry a miner, and then she met Kohl, and of course that changed.

Inge believed her husband when he told her that there was no coal dust to be stirred up, that the dreaded black damp that poisoned men’s lungs and caught fire and detonated with open flame lamps was not found in the hard rock mines here in the West.

Inge also knew men can be wrong, and when word came on panicked feet and shrill voice that the mine just blew up, Inge did what miners’ wives have always done.

She snatched up her coat and shawl, her rosary and her young, and they set out for the mine.

Young Kohl drove: Abraham his name was, but he looked so much like his father everyone called him Young Kohl: his jaw was set, his hands clenched on the flat leather reins, he looked ready to leap from the wagon’s seat and sprint on ahead of their mule.

Inge looked down at her hand as if looking at a stranger’s fist, and she willed her hand to relax and to open, and she tried to take the Rosary between thumb and forefinger: only having it looped around her hand kept her from dropping it.

She managed to pinch the Cross between thumb and forefinger.

For the life of her she could not think of what to say to begin the Rosary.

She’d been a devout Catholic from birth, she knew her prayers and her catechisms before any of the other children in her family, she was marked for the convent until she left her native Poland for America with her brother: her devotions never wavered, her prayers were steady and steadfast and heartfelt, and now, now that she was driving steadily toward the mine, all she could think of was standing and seeing that gout of dirty fire and that huge cloud of dust and smoke, and her dead brother’s filthy, rat-gnawed face when they unwrapped him for identification.

Her eyes stared blindly at the mule’s ears, and somewhere in her memory she remembered the kindly old Abbott’s observation that God hears our prayers even when they’re spoken through tears, or with them.

 

Sheriff Jacob Keller received the prisoner when the train stopped in Firelands.

He read the note his son entrusted to the conductor and looked at the strawboss with cold, pale eyes.

“I understand,” he said slowly, “you tried to hit my boy.”

His hand closed around the man’s upper arm.

Not a further word was said as the Sheriff escorted the manacled prisoner to the new stone jail.

It wasn’t until the prisoner was searched for weapons and locked behind steel bars that the man dared relax.

He would not have been surprised in the least had the silent, cold-eyed Sheriff gut punched him on general principles, or worse.

 

Young Kohl led the mule up to where the other wagons were stacked.

Inge half-rolled, half-fell out of the wagon seat, bruising her hip, and not caring if she did.

She walked quickly toward the activity, the Rosary swinging forgotten in her fist, until a hand shoved against her shoulder and another woman stood before her, blue eyes and red hair filling her vision.

Daisy raised her own fist and her own green-glass Rosary swung from her clenched fingers.

“Ye’re wi’ me,” she snapped.

“I’m not,” Inge challenged. “My husband’s in yon mine!”

“He’s no’ out yet an’ I need yer help!” Daisy flared.

“An’ wha’ would ye need my help wi’?” Inge shouted back.

Daisy raised her fist and shook it in the scared-looking woman’s face.

“I can’t remember the sayin' o' me Rosary!” she shouted back.

Inge’s mouth dropped open and she blinked, then she nodded and the two women headed toward the kitchen tent.

 

The Irishman pulled his kerchief up over his nose, squinted.

“Whattaya see, Yakabowski?”

“I don’ see nuttin’, ya dumb Mick!”

“Ya, God loves ye an’ so do I!”

“Ye’ll go t’ hell f’r lyin’, damn you!”

“Shut up an’ go on in.”

“You go on in! I can’t see a damn’ thing!”

“Did ye fire yer lamp, Yak?”

“Damn ye, Mick, holt still!” Yakabowski snapped, pulling off his miner’s cap and shoving his carbide light reflector-to-reflector with the Irishman’s, catching flame on his own and pulling the cap back on his greasy hair.

“How deep did she collapse, I wonder,” the Irishman muttered, coughing, then grinding his teeth lightly together, tasting the dust in the air.

Yakabowski reached over, seized the Irishman’s wrist. “Sh!” he admonished, “what’s that?”

Both men froze, eyes straining into the darkness: their white acetylene flames shot reflected cones into the shaft, and the pair advanced, slowly, cautiously.

Neither wanted to call out: they were too close to the surface, they did not want those outside to think they were chicken, hollering before they were out of sight of daylight.

They waited, listening to the ringing in their ears, sounds from the surface, their own heartbeats.

“Nothin’,” the Irishman muttered.

The men started further down the shaft, following the narrow set rails.

 

Doctor John Greenlees flexed his hand, staring at his finger joints.

He was waking stiff and sore these days; it felt good to bathe his hands in warm water of a morning, and he found he’d become a very reliable indicator of oncoming rain.

He looked at the instruments, neatly laid out on a clean towel, ready for his pickup: he’d set up his operating table, he had a portable cupboard set up, arranged medicines, ether and ether masks, suture material and suture needles, sharpening stones for his scalpels, dressings – he looked up, looked toward the kitchen tent and smiled a little as he saw that short woman that was turning chaos into organization.

He had no idea who she was, but she’d brought in a half-dozen children, each with an arm load of blankets, sheets and dressings, and he’d marked her as both someone he never saw before, and someone he was most pleased to see.

He set out a basin, knowing it would be filled with hot water.

One thing he knew about mines, they were dug into the earth, and earth meant dirt, and dirt meant he’d have to scrub the wounds clean, and for that he would need hot water, and the hot water was heating in the big kitchen stove’s reservoir.

 

Kohl and his men traveled in silence, except for the blind man's coughing.

Kohl stopped periodically to make sure everyone was still with him.

He’d already lost men to the explosion and he was damned if he was going to lose any more.

Kohl looked anxiously at their faces, speaking with each in turn, calling them by name, giving them the quiet encouragement they needed, wishing he had water as well.

“Not much farther, lads,” he lied, turned his head and coughed, feeling like if he sneezed he’d blow dust.

He went back to the head of the line, took the blind man’s hands, put them on his waist.

“Grip me good,” he said quietly, “you ready?”

The blind man hadn’t spoken once -- he'd coughed wetly, and often, but he hadn't uttered a single word since Kohl found him, and when he put the man’s hands on his waist and he fisted them in a good handful of coat material, he felt their chill, their tremor, and he hoped most sincerely he was going to get them out into open air soon.

 

“Hey Yak!”

“What, ya dumb Mick?”

“Hold up, hold up.”

The two stopped, listening.

They were well underground, sticking with the main shaft for two reasons: it was where the side shafts fed in, and neither knew the mine well enough to venture off this one straight shaft that run dead level back into the mountain.

Both men were grateful that this mine had no vertical shaft, no elevator, at least not yet.

“You reckon we’re deep enough t’ holler yet?”

The Irishman was still breathing through his kerchief: he took a breath, pulled down the sweat-soiled silk.

“HELLOOOOO!”

 

Kohl’s head came up like a hound’s hearing the view-halloo.

He never broke stride.

He didn’t dare.

His men were barely on their feet and he knew if they stopped one more time they would collapse, and if they went down they wouldn’t get back up, and he was damned if this mine was going to take any more of his men!

 

“Ya hear anythin?”

“Shaddap, damn you!”

 

Kohl’s ear pulled back as if it was tugged back by an invisible thumb and forefinger.

He plucked the kerchief from his nose, let it fall.

“HELLOOOOO!”

Kohl’s voice echoed both ways, sounding hollow, haunted.

He never stopped moving.

One of the men stumbled behind him.

“Who’s down?”

Kohl turned, went down the line.

“Just took a stumble,” one of the men mumbled.

Kohl turned and saw two lights, and he remembered a painting he’d seen in his childhood, a painting of an angel with a lighted candle in each hand, and he grabbed men’s hands and gripped them around the coat tail of the man ahead.

 

Inge and Daisy looked up at the shout.

Inge and Daisy dropped their green-glass Rosaries in their apron pockets at the second shout.

At the third shout they looked at one another and took one another’s hands, and with their free hand, snatched up their skirts.

Two old women ran like they were young girls, ran for the mineshaft’s opening, and as they came in clear sight of it, Inge Kolascinski saw her husband with his right hand on one man’s shoulder, his left on another, and four men behind him, each one holding the coattail of the man in front.

Inge let out a squeal and let go of Daisy’s hand and snatched up her skirts with both hands and she drove between men like a wedge through seasoned elm.

Kohl saw her coming and his grin was broad, his face was as filthy as the rest of him and his teeth were white, and when Inge slammed into him and he grabbed her and she grabbed him and he hauled her up off the ground, a puff of dust kind of got knocked off the man’s clothes.

The injured were taken to Doc’s hospital tent: there were shouts, questions, congratulatory hands pounded Kohl’s back, raising great puffs of dirt, and Kohl felt not one of them, heard no one’s voice but his wife’s: his arms were full of the woman he was afraid he’d never see again, and frankly, in that moment, he didn’t give a good damn about anything else.

He’d got his men out.

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51. TWIST

The Powers that Be (which included Inge) informed Kohl that he would report to the hospital tent, that he would submit to the ministrations of medical care, that he would strip and he would wash and he would lay down and he would stay put.

As his wife was the most persuasive of the lot, his wife was the one who got his dust-filthy duds off him, who got him into a tub of warm water, who got him scrubbed off, who got him dried off and who waited patiently while the doctor worked on the injured.

Sheets separated one area from another; when Dr. Greenlees came slowly and tiredly into Kohl’s section, the foreman looked up at the lean, elderly doctor.

“Your friend,” Dr. Greenlees said, then he cleared his throat and looked away.

“He … didn’t make it.”

Kohl’s head fell back against the thin pillow, bitterness on his tongue and grief in his belly.

Dr. Greenlees went over to the miner’s filthy clothing, picked up the man’s coat.

“There is something you should know,” he continued, holding up the coat. “Look at this.”

Kohl looked.

“This is your coat.”

Kohl frowned a little, confused.

“Look how dark it is.” Dr. Greenlees brought it closer. “That’s blood.”

“Blood?” Kohl shook his head, came up on one elbow, looked at his wife, at the doctor. “Doctor … I didn’t … I wasn’t hurt.”

“No. You weren’t.”

Dr. Greenlees draped the coat back over the rest of Kohl’s filthy clothes.

“There is no way on God’s earth than man could have lived,” he said, “but he did.”

Dr. Greenlees reached past the edge of a sheet curtain, gripped a chair, brought it in and swung it around beside Kohl’s cot.

“Raise your chin.” The doctor’s fingers were professional, cool, soft but firm as he palpated the man’s mandible. “Look at my forehead” – he drew down Kohl’s eyelids – “do you feel like you’ve both eyes full of sand?”

“Yeah,” Kohl gasped.

“And you’re dry enough if you sneeze you’ll blow dust, eh?”

“Yah.” Kohl’s hand tightened a little on his wife’s.

“We’ll get you something to drink. Water or beer?”

Kohl smiled, then chuckled. “You have to ask?”

“Beer is a safer choice,” Dr. Greenlees nodded. “Did you know the Pope approved of beer?”

Kohl’s forehead betrayed his surprise; he glanced at Inge, back to the physician, unsure whether the surgeon was pulling his leg or not.

“Give me your hands. Just like that, now slowly, squeeze, stop when I tell you.”

Dr. Greenlees looked closely at the puzzled miner’s eyes, assessed his grip, then nodded. “Okay. Release. Now hold still.”

The bell of the physician’s stethoscope was, of course, cold – it always was – Kohl yelped a little, flinched, but lay still for the frowning healer’s assessment: he listened to the man’s breathing, to his belly, he felt Kohl’s flat, muscled abdomen, finally drew the sheet back up over him.

“I want you to stay for a while,” he said, “why don’t you get some sleep, God knows you’ve earned it!”

“Doctor –“ Kohl reached for the man’s sleeve—“the … you said my coat … what … the blood?”

Dr. Greenlees settled back down in the chair, he gave the miner a long, thoughtful look.

“I have seen,” he said gently, quietly, “men in many … “

He looked at Inge, considered, then continued.

“You remember the Old Sheriff. Old Pale Eyes.”

“Of course,” Inge murmured.

“We were in the War together.” Dr. Greenlees rubbed his forehead, as if to rub away an unpleasant memory. “I … saw things … in that damned War …”

His voice faded and he shook his head.

“The man behind you. He was in an explosion, wasn’t he?”

Kohl nodded.

“He was very close to an explosion.”

“He was in the middle of it.”

Doctor Greenlees nodded. “I’ve seen men lose their eyes before … but only when they were very close to … a very powerful explosion.” He looked over at Kohl’s miner’s coat, the one with a back dark with blood.

He looked back.

“The man behind you.”

Kohl nodded.

“He … should not have …”

Dr. Greenlees shook his head.

“An explosion that powerful shocks the lungs. He couldn’t breathe, Kohl. He was coughing up blood. There is no way he should have made it out. None.”

Dr. Greenlees’ voice was almost a whisper, his eyes were most intense, boring into the miner’s troubled gaze.

“Do you know why he did?”

Kohl shook his head, slowly.

“He had to. You had to get your men out. He knew you had eyes and he knew someone was holding onto his coat and he knew everyone behind him depended on him.”

Kohl blinked a few times, nodded.

“He stayed alive when it was not possible for him to stay alive. Those lungs were shredded, ruined, full of blood” – he leaned forward a little – “but he stayed alive until the men were out!”

He leaned back, looked past the miner and his wife, nodded.

“Some people would like to see you.”

Kohl looked to his right, past his wife, staring.

Men began filing into his curtained off space – miners, men with their caps in their hands, men with dirty faces and dust filled clothes, men with calluses on their hands and men shuffling and crowding into Kohl’s little apartment there in the hospital tent.

“Look around, Kohl,” Dr. Greenlees said quietly. “Take a good look. You saved all these men.”

Kohl looked around, confused.

“I … there weren’t that many …”

“I saw you go by,” one man spoke up, crowding between his fellows to stand beside Kohl. “I didn’t know if I was a ghost, or you were, but I figured I’d follow the ghost I knew. You went past with a light and I – we – followed.”

“We did too,” another man said, “me and these ten here. When the boom hit it blowed out our lights and we fell back and lost ‘em. Couldn’t find a one of ‘em and then we saw yours.”

“You led, Kohl. You led your men and more than you knew followed you out.” Dr. Greenlees bent forward, gripping the miner’s hard-palmed hand, his voice intense. “Kohl, you lost men, but you saved more than you lost. I’ve been in war. I know what it is to lose men. You saved more than you lost.

“And the explosion wasn’t your fault,” Inge added.

Kohl looked around, staring, his mouth open. “All of you –“

“Yep,” one said firmly, and several heads nodded agreement. “Every last one of us!”

Kohl blinked, dropped his head back on his pillow. “I’ll be damned,” he whispered, then he looked at his wife. “I reckon I’ll take that beer after all!”

 

Kohl finally got to sleep, thanks in part to the shot of something stronger Inge gave him.

He slept a little, he woke, he slept again, and finally he hovered in that half-lit world somewhere between the conscious and the asleep, and his bruised, tense body relaxed, and as he relaxed, he drifted.

A voice … he knew the voice, and he smiled, but not with his face, for his face was asleep with the rest of his body.

The voice, he knew the voice, he drifted toward the voice but he could not see it … his wife’s voice, he thought, but when did she learn the Ave in Latin? …

I have to see, he thought, I have to know who is singing, and he opened his eyes a little … but it was so hard, he was so tired …

He saw a woman across the tent from him, he saw a woman in an electric blue gown, a quietly smiling young woman with a hand on the ruff of a big white dog.

He paused, realizing to his surprise that he knew the woman.

The white dog yawned, and stood, and he realized it was not a dog.

It was a wolf.

The woman looked at him, and smiled, and her eyes were pale, ice-pale, and she sang with a voice like a seagull soaring above a sunlit beach, and Kohl rallied his strength and opened his eyes and sat up.

Inge jumped, startled, and rubbed her eyes: she’d fallen asleep in the chair beside her husband.

“Kohl?” she asked. “Kohl, is all well?”

Kohl stared across the curtained space.

He could not see more than ten feet from his canvas cot.

There, in the corner, where the pale-eyed woman and the white wolf had been, was but a twist of fog that seemed to settle into the earth itself, and was gone.

“Inge,” Kohl asked, his voice quivering a little, “were you singing?”

“Singing?” Inge echoed, puzzled. “No … no, Kohl, no one was singing.”

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52. PAPER LENS

A woman frowned at the page before her: she tapped the end of her pencil delicately against flawless white teeth as she considered lines she’d drawn, names she’d written at corners or in boxes: beside her, a stack of books, most hand written and leather bound, some printed.

A rectangular screen glowed at her elbow; occasionally she turned, tapped a few keys, frowned again: a small stack of printed out screenshots lay stacked and slightly askew above the sheet she’d been working on.

Retired Sheriff Willamina Keller reached over, opened a book, turned two pages and stared at the illustration.

It was a reproduction of a pencil drawing, a drawing of a woman with an oval brooch at her throat, of a man with ice-pale eyes: she looked from the picture of her several-times-great grandfather, the second Sheriff of Firelands County, Colorado, and then to his name, near the top of the legal size sheet she was working on.

She’d labored on this one long sheet, well more than legal length, for more than a year, a year of preparation, of research, of mining books, Bibles and computer files, peering into the past through this hand-drawn, red-pencil-lined, paper lens.

She traced the lines of descent, at first from father to son to grandson, then she considered grandsons, she smiled a little at the tombstone she’d drawn, with the name Joseph lettered in its shaded arch, and she remembered the copper plated Colt’s revolvers in a glass case, in a fine stone house that was now a museum, and she remembered the German officer’s testimony of how the Sheriff’s Grandson came to his death.

She looked at other lines coming into her pale-eyed ancestry: there were bloodlines from many nations, but all were lines of strength and of integrity: Irish and Welsh, German and Pole, all contributed their genetic assets to what she’d come to think of as The Sheriff’s Blood.

She looked over at the books and smiled just a little, remembering how a man with pale eyes was fire chief in Cincinnati, leading his men boldly into buildings that sane and rational folk were fleeing as hard as they could run.

She remembered other names and other families, and she looked again at the complex and tangled lines she’d carefully drawn on the long sheet.

She swiveled her chair, reached delicate fingers out to turn the globe, on its tall stand, and as her fingers turned the globe, her eyes wandered its surface, recalling an ancestor’s sea voyage here, a confrontation there, she marveled at the distance from Ohio’s Appalachian hills to Colorado’s shining mountains, and her imagination laid rails and crossties across the entire North American continent and populated it with diamond-stack locomotives and ornate passenger cars.

She remembered the words of a man with an iron grey mustache when he wrote of a little girl that stroked “Daddy’s muts-tash” and giggled, and she looked up as her son strode across the room, grinning the way he usually did.

She rose and she took his extended hands and nodded approval.

Willamina’s son looked both grown and too young at the same time, both mature and boyishly bashful in his tailored uniform and six point star, with a pistol on his belt that had ridden his mother’s side for years… a pistol with a copper-inlaid thunderbird engraved on its slide.

He hesitated and bit his bottom lip the way he did before he left for his first prom, and Willamina gave him The Look, for she knew something was in the wind, and she was right.

“Mama,” he said, “I’m going to be a daddy!”

Willamina’s hands tightened on her son’s and she felt the wedding ring on his finger, and somehow Willamina knew that this was as it should be.

Her little boy was a man grown, and married, a deputy now, a lawman, as had been many of his blood; her son, in his turn, was becoming a father, and Willamina remembered talk among the powers in the county that he should become Sheriff come next election.

“That’s wonderful,” she whispered, her eyes shining proudly. “And how is she taking this news?”

His son grinned broadly and not at all bashfully. “She’s tickled pink,” he admitted, “she … she is …”

His ears turned an amazing shade of red, and Willamina hugged her son quickly, impulsively, then took him by the upper arms.

“I felt the same when I carried you,” she smiled. “Now don’t you have to go clock in?”

“I had to tell you first.”

“Thank you.”

Willamina remained standing for several minutes after she heard the Jeep door slam, after she listened to the tires crunch down the gravel drive; it wasn’t for

several more minutes that she took the back of her chair, turned it and sat, and looked at the long sheet she’d been charting her convoluted, intertwined ancestry.

"A baby," she smiled, her hand caressing her belly as she remembered the feel of new life, crowding her belly and moving in that warm secret beneath her heart, and she looked again at her work sheet.

“The Sheriff’s Blood,” she whispered, looking at the scarlet lines converging and braiding together, and her eyes went to the night-dark window. “The Sheriff’s Blood is alive and well.”

She looked from the window to the sheet and blinked, and then she smiled and picked up the rose that hadn’t been there a moment before.

She smelled the rose and felt its silky petals, she looked at the chart she’d been constructing for the past year, and she whispered, “Thank you.”

Outside, in the darkness, she heard the distant, wild song of a wolf’s muzzle pointed at the stars, a wild heart singing for joy in the starlit dark.

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53. THE BADGE AND THE GODFATHER

Paul Barrents grinned, his obsidian-black eyes shining with pride as he held the wiggling, arm-waving little girl, wrapped in an emerald-green blanket.

He looked up at his lifelong friend, then he looked at the Parson, and he looked around the crowd – it looked like the whole town was turned out – and he said, “You want me to be your son’s godfather. You're sure about that?”

William Linn Keller grinned.

“Yep.”

Paul laughed and shook his head. "God help the child," he replied, his voice pitched to carry to the furthest row and reflect off the back wall of their little whitewashed church. “I’ll do it!”

The service was longer than this, really, coming as part of the Sunday worship, and there was more formality to it, but this was the distilled essence: that Linn asked Paul to be Godfather to his son, and his bosom friend agreed.

We take this brief look because we have to move on to something that’s been coming for a very long time.

William Linn Keller, son of Willamina and Richard, would stand before most of this same audience in less than a half hour: Paul would be very near at hand, not realizing he’d just acquired his nickname, and a legacy would be passed to another generation.

The swearing-in would ordinarily be held in the Sheriff’s office, or perhaps in the Courthouse, but today it was at the train depot, because it was the only place with an elevated stage and room enough for people to gather and watch.

His Honor the Judge presided, standing on depo platform boards well older than his august self, under the shake-shingled roof that had turned Colorado snows for well more than a century: a Baldwin steam engine, painted, polished, fired and breathing quietly like some great fire bellied monster, steamed on the siding, a grinning engineer leaning out her cab window, watching.

Willamina’s heels were loud on the ancient but immaculately kept platform’s timbers, and she looked around, remembering.

Her thrice-great Grandfather gave the Z&W railroad to his wife back in the mid-1880s, a wedding gift, and after her death, he resumed its ownership: it had been forever in Keller hands, save during the War, when the government nationalized all railroads.

Instead of hauling ore, freight and passengers, it hauled lots of ore, it hauled classified and secret freight, guarded by serious-faced young men in immaculate uniforms, it hauled carloads of troops, and sadly, as happens in all wars, it hauled back a number of flag draped boxes: after the War, of course, it came back into private hands, and today remained in those same familial hands.

Hers.

In time, she knew, it would pass to her son.

Linn grew up rejoicing in the green strength of his long, tall and strong young carcass: he could ride before he could walk well, he was more at home in the saddle than behind the wheel of a car; he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, he learned the tricks and slights of caring for a horse’s hooves, how to file their teeth, he worked cattle, put up hay, he swung a sledge hammer and an ax and ran a chain saw, he was part of the track gang on the Z&W and learned from old men the intricacies of caring for a steam locomotive: here his skills at blacksmithing came again to the fore, for her learned to patch boilers, set and hammer rivets, his hands were callused, his muscles lean and tight, and he laughed and rejoiced under the clear blue sky as they maintained the small railroad his family had owned for more than a century.

He’d gone with his pale-eyed mother to South America and watched the diplomatic negotiations with the people who regarded the dead hulk of a locomotive as so much scrap, abandoned in a desert place and not worth breaking apart and hauling to the smelter; he saw greed in their eyes when they found these Yanquis actually wanted it, and were willing to pay good money for it, and he watched his mother’s quiet words as she told them that if they wished to cut it up for scrap, go ahead, their prices would be well less than her first offer and if they insisted on bringing up the price, she would go home because she had the pictures and measurements needed to have a new one built.

Linn learned to negotiate, he learned the art of the hard ball, the art of the flatterer, and that of the logical reasoner; he practiced the Masonic virtues of silence and circumspection when it was necessary, and he himself put long hours into completely tearing down what was left of the Z&W’s very first steam engine, and putting his muscles and his blood into her rebuild.

He himself, when her restoration was complete (an engine is always “her,” the old engineers assured him), he painted the spray of roses on the side of the cab: he worked from a photograph, his hand sure, his strokes precise, and when he was done with both the roses and the lettering, on the green-painted side of the engine’s cab, beneath the red-ribbon-tied spray of roses, the careful, precise, black-shadowed gilt letters that displayed her name:

The Lady Esther.

Willamina looked at the gathering, milling crowd, she looked at the painted, trimmed walls and windows, she knew that behind the restored, carefully-lettered ticket window, there was a meticulously restored office, right down to the cast iron stove, the brass sounder and an old-fashioned straight key.

The telegrapher preferred running a butterfly key, a “bug” as he called it, and so both keys were wired in and worked – Lightning, as the duty operator was known, explained the bug key wasn’t as hard on the wrist for long sessions of brass pounding.

All this went quickly through the pale-eyed woman’s mind as her eyes drifted across the barred express window.

Above her, two antennas thrust into the sky: Willamina knew there was an efficient radio system behind these immaculately-restored depot walls, a land-line telephone system, dedicated to the railroad’s use and isolated from the national telephone systems … she smiled a little, for she’d insisted on both the very best commo, and that the original, simple, telegraph office be both preserved, and used.

Willamina automatically looked around, eyes busy in spite of her ruminations: her pale-eyed gaze swung from the far end of the platform, over the crowd, to the near end of the platform, and back: not a few of those in attendance recognized Willamina’s tireless efforts at historic restoration of the Z&W and indeed of the town itself, and today celebrated their town’s restored history by dressing the part, by wearing attire of the mid-1880s, even the engineer and the telegrapher: there were enough so dressed that a slender, pale-eyed man with an iron-grey mustache in a flawless black suit and a pearl-grey Stetson, and the red-headed woman in the emerald-green gown, on his arm, looked so perfectly at home among them, that Willamina did not see them.

Willamina looked up at her tall, slender son, her lean-muscled son with shining and ice-pale eyes of his own, masculine eyes full of a fierce and abiding pride: Willamina wore her trademark, tailored, dark-blue suit dress and heels for the occasion, she wore a small red rose on her lapel, and she smiled quietly as she turned over the lapel of her coat and unpinned the six point badge – the ancient star her Great-Great-Great Granddad wore, the star with the single word SHERIFF hand-chased across its equator – and she waited as His Honor the Judge solemnly intoned, “Raise your right hand,” and her son did.

Willamina smiled as she recalled how she’d persuaded the dignified old Judge to grow his beard for the occasion: she’d had the Judge’s suit hand-made for the occasion, and had they been magically transported to the mid-1800s, His Honor – with a neatly-trimmed, most dignified, pure-white beard, top hat and handmade suit, would have been perfectly, appropriately at home.

Willamina waited until her son was administered the same oath as she herself had sworn to uphold, then she stepped forward, pinned the star on his shirt that the oldest of their lawman’s line had worn, the star she herself had worn, the star every Sheriff Keller of Firelands County had ever worn, and she slipped a red rosebud through the buttonhole of the other pocket.

Sheriff Linn Keller – he’d never gone by his first name of William – bent down and carefully gathered his elderly mother in a hug, and the crowd applauded, the engineer grabbed the brass weight and hauled down on the whistle’s lanyard, and the recovered and restored Baldwin engine responded with a will: The Lady Esther screamed her approval, the hand-polished brass whistle shooting a finger of pure-white steam into the cold, clear air.

Linn released his mother from a genuine bear hug and kept his left arm around her: he opened his right, gathered his wife and their pale-eyed child in the other, and it would have taken two men with scrub brushes and a whole can of Comet cleanser to grind the grin off the new Sheriff’s face.

“Well, Sheriff,” the Judge shouted to make himself heard over the happy hubbub, “have you anything to say on this momentous occasion?”

Sheriff Linn Keller considered for a moment, looking from his beaming mother to his wife and child, then he nodded and tightened his arms slightly around the shoulders of these most important ladies, released them, and took two steps forward.

A microphone waited at the edge of the depot; he raised his hands, the happy confusion died, and blew gently into the chromed grille and asked quietly, “Is this thing working? Can I get myself in trouble now?” which of course brought a ripple of laughter.

“Friends, kindred and brethren,” Linn said, “we are gathered here to bear witness to the inarguable fact … that I am officially outnumbered.” He gestured to Willamina, ran his arm back around her shoulders, drew her in against his side; he did the same with his left arm, bringing his bride into his embrace on the other side.

Linn raised an eyebrow and ginned, then gave an exaggerated look at his mother, another at his wife, and finally down at his daughter, and he looked up, his ears a distinct shade of scarlet. “Let’s face it, folks,” he declared loudly, “the odds here are three to one. With feminine firepower like this, no two ways about it, I’m outnumbered!”

He grinned and waited for the laughter to die down.

“I reckon there’s always a first official move for a new Sheriff, so I’m going to name my chief deputy right now.” He released Willamina and his wife Wanda, and turned a little and thrust his arm out toward a uniformed deputy about ten feet away.

“How about it, Godfather?” he called, “Paul Barrents, you are godfather to our child, I need a segundo and you’re my first pick. How say you?”

Barrents came up to the microphone with his sailor’s rolling gait, grinning as broadly as Linn had not moments before.

He assumed what he hoped was a Brando expression and said in his best Brando voice, “Godfatha. I like that,” and raised his good right hand in what he hoped was a properly Italian gesture, then he and Linn both laughed and shook hands, and The Lady Esther’s whistle screamed again, and Barrents managed to look at once delighted and a little embarrassed right here in front of God and everybody.

Linn raised his hands again. “Now I could,” he began, and he waited a few moments before continuing, allowing the celebratory voices to die down again, “now I could give you a detailed road map of my office’s direction and how I, as Sheriff, am the most important character to fill a pair of boots and under my leadership chickens will always lay, cows will never go dry, winter won’t be cold and summers won’t be hot and little chipmunks will dance the can-can alongside the road.” He grinned again at the chuckles. “I’m not going to do that for two reasons. First, chipmunks suck at dancing the can-can, and second, a wiser soul than I said ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.’ Well …”

There were several understanding nods and murmurs.

“Well, like yourselves, when I was young I laid out very detailed plans about my own life, and sure enough God got a good tickle out of ‘em, so here’s what I’ve settled on.

“I will do my best. That’s all I can promise you. I won’t say anything beyond that, because every time I take myself too seriously I end up looking like the north end of a south bound horse, so let me end this fine and lengthy speech right here. We’re having a feed over at the Silver Jewel, it’s paid for, come on over and fill your belly.”

“Sheriff,” a voice called, “what did you name your little girl?”

Linn’s grin was quick and genuine, and he looked at his mother, his ears flaming an absolute scarlet.

“Her name,” he said into the microphone, “is Willamina, and she has pale eyes. Now let’s eat!”

 

That night, Linn sat in the Sheriff’s chair, and looked around at the Sheriff’s desk, and then looked around at the walls of the Sheriff’s office.

He looked at the ancient revolver in its frame, the pistol his grandfather carried back in Trimble: he leaned back and smiled a little at the hammer double hung overhead, and the ’73 rifle beneath: he’d retired that fine old rifle, but he’d gotten a modern reproduction, and by his own admission regularly shot hell out of the repro – he looked at the prints his mother had made of the glass plate portraits found under a stairs in the old photographer’s studio, photos of the Old Sheriff himself, and he almost laughed at the memory of pulling up a chair as a little boy, and studying the photo, convinced that his Mama was in the one portrait – the one with the Old Sheriff, and with his uncle Will in it, and his Mama in a long dress like they used to wear, and his mother laughed and said no, it was just coincidence that her twin brother looked like Jacob Keller, and coincidence that she looked like Sarah McKenna, and his persistent questions – “Why was she a McKenna? Wasn’t she Sarah Keller? She looks like you, Mama” – were the initial impetus for Willamina’s lifetime of ancestor research.

Mama said there were ghosts, he thought, looking around.

The Old Sheriff never sat here.

Jacob did, and every Keller that’s been Sheriff has set right here at this same desk.

Old Grampa’s rifle and shotgun up overhead … Grampa’s revolver over there, it was in his fist when he was hit by that car … I’m wearing the star Old Grampa had made, and wore for a lifetime, and Jacob wore, and …

Linn laughed, there in the quite of his inner sanctum.

Hell, I’m settin’ in a regular ghost magnet!

He looked around, waiting, but no shades oozed through the walls, no mists of ectoplasm condensed into human forms, no unseen knuckles knocked at the underside of the desk.

Linn grunted.

“Reckon I’ll go see what the Godfather is up to,” he muttered, and he caught a whiff of fresh brewed coffee, and he knew his segundo was in the outer office.

Paul often told him “The Navy runs on coffee and so do I,” and sure enough, when he opened his office door the aroma of fresh ground and brewed coffee hit him full in the face.

Linn stepped out and drew his office door shut, but before he did, he took a quick, automatic look around, and stopped.

A fresh-cut, dew-sparkling rose lay in the center of his desk blotter.

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54. DRUNK

"You ever get drunk?" Barrents asked, his voice quiet.

The engine was off, the radio turned down; the two men sat in the 4WD cruiser, listening to the manifold crack and ting as it cooled.

"Once."

"Yeah?" Barrents looked over at Linn, grinned. "You?"

"Yeah." The Sheriff's voice was hushed, rueful.

"Do tell."

Linn turned his head, looked over a nonexistent set of spectacles.

"Well, c'mon, fella, fill me in!" his chief deputy grinned wider.

Linn took a long breath, leaned his head to the left, listening: a car was coming, but not at any excessive velocity.

"You remember Jeannie?"

"Jeannie?" Barrents echoed. "Jeannie who?"

"She was on the track gang with us two summers ago."

"Jeannie," Barrents murmured thoughtfully. "Yeah. Hard as nails. Swing a hammer like a man!"

"Yep."

"What about her?"

"She had a birthday."

"Birthday?"

"Yep."

A pickup passed in front of them, intent on getting from somewhere to somewhere else, not seeing the cruiser backed into the side road.

"You didn't party with her."

"Nope."

"What, then?"

"I was going to."

"You?" Barrents laughed. "Strait-laced Linn Keller? Virtuous, virginal, noble, gentlemanly -- you dog!" Barrents laughed again. "I'm proud of you! What happened?"

"I got a box of cupcakes."

Barrents blinked. "Cupcakes?"

"She said once she like chocolate cupcakes."

"Cupcakes."

"With mint icing."

"I never knew that," Barrents murmured, leaning back into the seat.

"And a bottle of white rum."

Barrents' eyes should have clicked when they swung over to his old friend again.

"Rum."

"Yep."

"Rum."
"Distilled fermented Jamaican molasses."

"Rum."

"Jeannie went out of town and I give the cupcakes to the roundhouse crew, then I went home and worked on that rum."

"Rum." Barrents' smile was as uncertain as his expression.

He'd known Linn all his life -- they'd gone to school together, they'd worked together, they'd played together, they'd got in trouble together, the pair of them hauled an injured hiker straight up a cliff face once, both of them hauling the lariat, two powerful young bare-chested giants laboring in the Colorado sunshine to save another's life, a photo that made the local paper and caused them both no end of harassment at school afterwards.

He'd never, ever known his bosom chum to so much as consider taking a drink.

"Rum."

Linn looked at Barrents, grinned that half-wicked grin that meant he was about to divulge something he'd kept hid for a while.

"I had no idea how to drink," he admitted, "and I didn't wake up with my liver aching like a buddy of mine did. No" -- he looked out the windshield at the starlit landscape -- "I ... didn't have a morning after." His ear caught the sound of another vehicle approaching and he grinned at Barrents.

"I didn't have a morning after, Paul, I had a day after!"

He twisted the ignition, cranked the big-block engine into life: Barrents looked at the radar display, his eyes focusing on the yellow numbers just before something dark and fast went blasting past with a roar of unmuffled exhuast.

Linn hauled the shifter into gear, mashed his hind hoof down on the skinny pedal on the right, and threw a double rooster tail of dirt as they came roaring out onto the highway.

They ran without lights for most of a mile -- their eyes were accustomed to the dark, and it was a game they'd both played -- once they got within a few hundred yards, Linn twisted the headlight switch, reached forward and hit the roof lights.

The dark SUV wavered and an amber bottle spun out of driver's and passenger side both.

Linn looked at the speedometer and swore.

Barrents swore louder, then shrank back in the seat and yelled "GUN!"

A head and torso thrust out of the passenger window, chopped down with a pistol of some kind; there was a small flash and something went WHAP somewhere on the cruiser's roof.

Linn's lips peeled back from his lips and he stomped the pedal to the floor.

He'd picked this particular cruiser because it would run like a skinned ape, he'd told Barrents, and it had new tires all around: he'd personally had its suspension checked, new shocks installed: if he had to run like hell itself was after him, he wanted to split the wind like a ballistic missile on steroids.

The cruiser's engine woke up and stretched and it began to sing, that deep monstrous roar that comes from a big engine inhaling impossible volumes of air: Barrents reached for the microphone as the cruiser surged forward, drifted a little to the left.

Barrents chanted into the microphone: "Firelands Dispatch, unit one in pursuit of black Dodge SUV, no rear plate and no identifying marks, we're on 67 headed southwest toward Cripple, shots fired and they've hit us, we're still mobile, advise Cripple to roadblock and shots fired."

"Roger that, Two," Cindy's voice came through the grey GE speaker under the dash, and immediately after there were several "Woo woo woo where you at fella woo woo woo" calls.

Linn did not hear any of them.

He shot ahead, eased to the left, then swung his front end hard right, clipping the fleeing vehicle's back bumper.

The SUV's back end slid smoothly to the side and the heavy four wheel drive pushed through, spinning out the pursued vehicle: Barrents mashed the red button on the microphone again: "Dispatch, subject vehicle crashed, subject vehicle is stopped, request squad and backup."

Linn came down hard on the brakes, pulled a fast bootlegger's turn, which brought a loud and rather profane exclamation from his segundo: Linn did not care, his peeled back lips were the closest thing to a grin the hard-eyed lawman would divulge, but he was enjoying the hell out of the sensation of a big engine, powerful enough to break traction, swing his rear around under power, and launch back toward the smoking, laid-over vehicle.

He laid hard on the brakes to bring the cruiser to a tire-screaming stop, flipped up the high-beams, hit the button to release the overhead shotgun.

He stepped out of the cruiser, jacked a round in the chamber, brought the lawman's howitzer to shoulder and walked up to the passenger side of the car.

Barrents rolled out of the passenger side with a twelve-gauge of his own, its weapon light thrusting a tight, white finger ahead of him.

"SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!" the Sheriff yelled. "DAMN YOU, SHOW ME YOUR HANDS NOW!!!"

Barrents tasted copper as the driver raised his arm, pointed it at the Sheriff, just before two shotguns spoke loudly in the Colorado darkness.

 

Willamina's eyes snapped open and her arm went across the bed to that cold, wide area where her husband used to be.

She wasted no time damning a good man's death -- she'd learned that hard lesson when she was a Marine -- automatically she went into "I'm-the-only-one-I-can-depend-on" mode.

She was dressed, quickly, with the ease of many years of emergency response, and as she usually did, when she got dressed, she slung a gunbelt around her middle.

Something was wrong, she knew -- something was very wrong -- she didn't know just what, but her gut was never wrong, and her gut said it was time to hit the saddle.

She slapped her Stetson on her night-braided hair, picked up the double gun she'd bought to replace her thrice-great Granddad's persuader, which she'd given to her second-born son to hang in his office.

The night air was quiet, fragrant as it always was: it smelled clean, this high up, and her eyes were busy, penetrating the starlit dark, always with that quiet analytical warrior's question:

If I were going to kill me, where would I be waiting?

She smiled a little: it was automatic, after wearing the six point star for so many years, after teaching a new generation of badge packers, after putting away as many criminals as she had ... some had long memories, some had family or friends or associates with long memories, and she'd had to get unpleasant with a variety of such folk over the years, even after her retirement.

The night was quiet, almost silent, and she smiled, until she heard the first squad.

The mare danced a little in the chilly night air.

She could sense her rider wanted to run, and the mare was inclined to oblige.

A pale-eyed woman leaned into the wind, shotgun across the saddle in front of her, part of her dreading what she would find, and the rest of her quite willing to start a young war if she had to.

She gave the mare her knees and the mare leaned out and thrust her nose straight into the wind, ears laid back and tail twisting in the dark slipstream, as if the wind were being torn apart from her velocity: Willamina's hat fell back and bounced at the end of its storm strap, Willamina swung the shotgun down alongside her leg and laid her hand on the mare's mane, leaned down close and whispered, "Run -- run -- run -- run!"

A spotted mare and her pale-eyed rider streaked through the night towards the sleeping town.

 

"YOU DAMNED IDIOT!" the Sheriff screamed. "WHY COULDN'T YOU JUST SHOW ME YOUR HANDS?"

Barrents saw approaching lights and considered whether he'd ought to park his shotgun and start setting flares.

"YOU DIDN'T HAVE ANY BRAINS AT ALL BEFORE YOU MADE ME SHOOT YOU AND YOU SURE AS BLACK PERDITION DON'T HAVE ANY NOW!"

The Sheriff was bent over at the waist, screaming in what used to be a window at what used to be a driver.

Barrents clipped his shotgun back into its mount and pulled out a heavy canvas shoulder bag: he reached in, pulled out a thirty minute red fusee, scratched it into sizzling life.

He walked quickly down the road, getting a hundred yards, another hundred, before the first responding vehicle came in sight.

The Sheriff slung his shotgun muzzle-down from his off shoulder, paced back and forth, glaring at the steaming vehicle.

Barrents stopped and looked down at the dirty fellow in the wife beater T-shirt, a groaning fellow with a bloody face and his hands cuffed behind his back.

"You really shouldn't have shot at me," Barrents said conversationally.

"Go to hell!" the criminal snarled.

"Yeah, God loves you too."

"I'M GONNA SUE THE BOTH OF YOU!"

"You won't live that long," Barrents said casually, walked over to the Sheriff.

"Ever kill someone before?" he asked as easily as if he were asking about the weather.

"No," Linn admitted.

Barrents gripped his friend's shoulder, looked the man in his pale eyes. "Neither have I," he admitted.

Linn stopped -- he'd been vacillating as if to pace within the range of his friend's arm -- he stopped and looked long at the Navajo's quiet eyes.

"I expected some good free advice."

"I have some," Barrents nodded. "Rum."

He saw something in the Sheriff's pale eyes, a tightening at the corners.

"My father told me much about your mother," Barrents said. "I think he would say you are much like her."

Linn nodded slowly, looked up at the string of red-and-blue lighted vehicles speeding toward them.

"Thank you, Paul," he said quietly.

 

Willamina made coffee, her double gun slung diagonally across her back, muzzle down.

"You are probably the only person in the world who can walk into the Sheriff's office with a shotgun," Cindy remarked as the smell of fresh ground and fresh brewing coffee filled the quartz-walled office.

"I've done it often enough," Willamina said. "Any word?"

"You've heard as much as I have."

"I know," Willamina sighed. "One under arrest and being taken to hospital. Shots fired, one dead, no lawmen injured."

"I wish I had more for you."

"Thank you." Willamina looked at the closed door of what used to be her office. "It still feels funny."

"What's that?"

"Knowing that's not mine anymore."

"Baloney." Cindy's response was immediate, and if she hadn't been sharpening her pencil, her knuckles would have been on her waist as she said it. "That'll be yours forever and you know it."

"No." Willamina shook her head. "I've turned it over to someone younger, smarter and better looking than me."

"Speaking of whom," Cindy said as a cruiser eased nose-in at the front door.

"They'd better not spook my horse."

Two lawmen hauled open the heavy glass doors, outer, then inner, and Sheriff Linn Keller strode across the polished quartz floor.

Retired Sheriff and current Sheriff regarded each other solemnly.

"Were you injured?" Willamina asked.

"No, ma'am."

"Was it a good shoot?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Are you all right?"

"I'm mad as hell but I'll get over it."

"Good." Willamina looked at her son, realizing there was some change ... perhaps the tightness of his face, perhaps the hardness of his expression.

Dispatcher and Chief Deputy elaborately paid the pair no attention, for they knew there would very soon be a moment when the pair ceased to be retired and current Sheriffs, and would instead become mother and son.

Linn leaned down a little and wrapped his long arms around his Mama, and Willamina seized her son, squeezing him with a strength one might not expect in a woman of her vintage.

"Why couldn't he just show me his hands?" Linn whispered. "Why'd he have to try'n shoot me?"

Willamina knew he wasn't asking a question, but she gave him the answer he needed.

She hugged him a little tighter.

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55. MOM

 

There were official proceedings -- there always are, after a line-of-duty shooting -- and there were the unofficial proceedings -- there always are, after a line-of-duty shooting.

When Willamina called and said "You and Paul come on out," both Sheriff Keller and his segundo knew this was a necessary part of the unofficial proceedings.

Paul was a frequent guest when he and Linn were growing up -- Willamina fed them both and treated the pair equally, whether it was wisdom, a quick hug, or that frosty-eyed glare that absolutely, positively stopped whatever behavior caused the response -- and Paul was much more at ease coming out to what he called "my adopted Mom's house" than he would have been at someone else's domicile.

Willamina already had a meal prepared, and the three sat down at the table, and ate.

Both of "Her Boys," as she called them, never had a problem with appetite, and so it was this day, and their conversation was brisk, punctuated with laughter as it always was, and the subjects were surprisingly far-ranging.

When they'd finished consuming a shocking tonnage of backstrap and green beans, sourdough bread and mashed potatoes and gravy, after Willamina cleared the table and poured more coffee and brought a pie to the table, Paul grinned, for Willamina made very, very good pies.

When Willamina brought out a rather aged bayonet, both young men's faces grew solemn.

Willamina used a bayonet to cut the pie when it was an occasion when they needed to talk.

Paul wasn't sure how she came by the custom -- he knew the bayonet was Vietnam era, but beyond that he knew nothing about it -- save only that when she cut the pie with that ancient pig sticker, the subject was turning back to the necessary.

This knowledge did not dampen his appetite for Willamina's pie.

To their credit, "Her Boys" waited until she'd slabbed three slices onto plates, distributed them, wiped off the bayonet and laid it beside the sink, and then seated herself, before picking up their forks to assault this toothsome section of their conference.

"Now I didn't cut this like Young Tony," Willamina smiled as she settled into her chair, and both Linn and Paul grinned.

Young Tony ran the kitchen at the Silver Jewel, and Young Tony made truly excellent pie, and Young Tony was famous for waddling out to the customer's table, a short-skirted waitress following like a lifeboat towed behind a seagoing tug: Tony would set a pie on the table and with two sweeps of a big knife, he cut it once, cut it twice, then threw out a quarter of a pie onto the customer's plate: when Tony was in the kitchen, a slice of pie and coffee made a full meal for a tall boy with two hollow legs, and most men did good to down that much at one sitting.

"Now." Willamina picked up her fork. "Linn, how well did that buggy run when you were in pursuit? You topped out at just under a hundred, you said?"

"Yes, ma'am," Linn said, his fork hesitating in its ascent: he set it back down, remembering the feeling of being pushed deeper into his seat while he was shoving his hind hoof through the firewall until the fan blade was clipping chunks off his toe nails. "It was right close to a hundred, and she was startin' to float a little."

Willamina nodded slowly. "It wasn't like running a horse."

Linn grinned -- quickly, then the grin was gone -- "No, ma'am, but I would have been a hell of a lot happier in the saddle!"

"That's your Old Granddad's blood talking," she smiled. "Now tell me, how difficult was it to control your front end when you came over into him?"

"Easier than controlling me," Linn admitted. "Poor old Paul here thought I'd lost my nut when I started screaming at that stupid so-and-so for making me shoot him."

"You," Willamina said knowingly, remembering an account in one of her ancestor's journals, "are your Old Granddad's grandson."

 

The Old Sheriff flinched as the man he was chasing turned in the saddle and chopped his hand down like he was throwing a rock.

It was an awkward move and he missed by twenty feet, but that one shot changed the dynamic of the pursuit.

Eyes pale and hard, mustache tugged by the wind, Linn tucked his heels into Cannonball's ribs and the red mare grunted and shoved her neck out straight and laid on the coal.

The outlaw he was chasing was on a fast horse, but it was a lowland horse, and the high altitude was not kind: Cannonball surged up beside him, on his left, because the outlaw twisted to his right to try and shoot the pursuing Sheriff.

Linn drew his own Colt, raised the muzzle: the outlaw twisted, bringing his pistol across his belly, and Linn chopped his own hand down and fired, once.

Cannonball threw her head to the side to get away from the concussion -- it was a game they played when pursuing calf-killing coyotes, Linn would chop his revolver down like he was throwing a rock, it was the only way to accurately throw lead from a running horse, Cannonball would swing her head away, then come back and stab the rolling 'yote with sharp hooves on her way past.

The outlaw flinched and Linn peeled Cannonball hard left: steel-shod hooves cut into cold ground and she came about, hard, fast, tight, ready for another broadside.

The flagging horse galloped ahead, its saddle empty.

Linn leaned back, slowing his mare: Cannonball dropped her haunches, slowing fast, the coming up level and trotting up on the still figure laying face down on the frozen ground.

Linn studied the form for several long moments before dismounting.

He'd chased this fellow most of the way to Cripple, followed him on the main road.

He wanted to take him alive, to find out the particulars of what-all he'd done.

He didn't want him dead.

Linn's boots hit the ground and he took two steps and bent over and grabbed the man's shoulder and rolled him over, revolver at the ready.

The outlaw was beyond any interrogation.

The Old Sheriff straightened, slowly, his face pale and tight, his eyes glacier-pale and his lips peeled back from shining white teeth.

He punched out the empty hull, reloaded it, eased the hammer down on an empty chamber, holstered.

He looked down at the still form and an old familiar rage built in him and he leaned down and seized the dead man by the front of his vest and hauled him off the ground, screaming "DAMN YOU WHY'D YOU MAKE ME KILL YOU! WHY'D YOU DO IT!"

Linn's face was suddenly flushed, but not a good healthy pink.

He'd purpled with rage as he shook the dead man, hard, screaming into the darkening face, before he threw the carcass back to the ground.

 

"Linn," Willamina said gently as the two men finished the last of their pie, "would it surprise you to find out I did the same thing?"

Linn blinked, set his fork down. "Come again?"

Willamina smiled. "It was at a parking garage in Denver. Some street rat tried to carjack me. There's video of it, somewhere in the files ... there I am in a suit dress and high heels, I just put two rounds into his face, holstered, walked up to him and bent over and picked him up and slammed him against a concrete pillar. It's surveillance video so they couldn't hear me, but two Denver officers on the ground level heard me screaming and came running up the stairs. When they got there I was still slamming this dead guy against the pillar screaming at him that he was seven kinds of a stupid ... well, what I called him doesn't bear repeating in polite company, but Marines have a salty tongue and I let him have it and how ... they said I was screaming at him because he made me kill him, and they weren't sure if they'd need an assault team to take me down!"

She laughed.

"Once I dropped him I turned and threw my lapel back to display the badge and of course they recognized me, but I remember the look on their faces.

"There I was in a dress and heels, five foot six, and I've got this six foot six corpse by the jacket and I'm holding him up like he's a rag doll!"

She sighed, reached across the table, took one of her son's hands, and one of Paul's.

"You both fired shots and you both hit what you aimed at. You did what was necessary to save a life. Remember that.

"People always asked me how many people I've killed, whether as a Marine or as Sheriff."

Her smile was understanding and a little sad, and her hands tightened on theirs.

"Nobody ever asked me how many lives I saved by the shooting of the bad guys."

Her boys squeezed their hands a little in understanding.

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56. TEMPER, TEMPER

 

"I like your office," Linn admitted as he slid the box of doughnuts across the conference room table to his pale eyed Mama, "but with the three of us in there it feels kind of crowded."

 

Willamina dipped thumb and forefinger into the box and came up with a powdered sugar stick doughnut, still warm: cupping her off hand under her chin, she bit into it, humming with pleasure.

 

"Paul?" Linn hooked the box with a forefinger, slid it over to his segundo, and Paul snatched a chocolate iced with sprinkles.

 

Linn hunched over his coffee, long fingers wrapped around the warm ceramic.

 

"I suppose you're wondering why I called you here today," he said formally and with an absolutely straight face, at which Willamina snorted declicately, Paul choked, coughed, turned his head and sprayed crumbs across the floor, and Linn raised an eyebrow.

 

"If I'd known you were gonna choke to death on me," he deadpanned, "I'd have sent you a text!"

 

Paul coughed again, harrumphed, coughed a few more times.

 

Cindy opened the door a little: "Linn, are you killing the Godfather again?" she scolded.

 

Linn gave her a wave-away motion and she grinned her way back to the dispatcher's desk.

 

Willamina laid out a napkin, delicately placed her half-eaten pastry on it, wiped her fingers with another and said "I need a finger bowl."

 

"Use your coffee," Linn muttered, and Paul, just ready to take another bite of his doughnut, withdrew the delicacy before his teeth could slice into it: he dropped his hand heavily to the table, knocking sprinkles loose when his fist impacted the polished particle board tabletop, and he began to guffaw loudly and most indelicately.

 

Willamina looked at the chief deputy with wide and innocent eyes, then slowly, deliberately, dabbled her fingers in her coffee and then wiped them on a napkin, which sent Barrents into another loud and raucous spasm of mirth and merriment.

 

Linn frowned at one, then the other, and finally reached over and seized the morning paper: he snatched the first page free, folded it quickly, placed the paper Napoleon hat on his head and said, "This unseemly outburst is most indecorous," which reduced Chief Deputy Paul Barrents to a sniggering, sobbing, snorting, slid-down-in-his-chair pile of quaking-belly laughter.

 

"AND TAKE OFF THAT SILLY HAT!" Cindy shouted from the other room, which only added fuel to the fire.

 

Finally, when the three were calmed down a little, Linn took off his silly hat, Paul wiped his eyes and took several deep breaths and Willamina examined her nails like a fashion model and said, "There! All better! Now where were we?"

 

"You already know we were no-billed on the shooting," Linn began, and Paul planted his left elbow on the table top, lifting it to wipe away the sprinkles he'd just landed on; he cupped his chin and mouth in his hand and tried to look properly solemn, but as Willamina looked over at him, she saw his eyes go to her coffee cup, and she saw the happy memory in his eyes.

 

"Yes, I know," Willamina murmured. "I was there."

 

"I expected you to look like a little old lady doing her knitting," Linn admitted.

 

"They wouldn't let me take knitting needles into the courtroom." Willamina smiled a little. "I did try. Maybe they thought I would macrame a hangman's noose, or jab the judge's backside if he made a bad ruling."

 

"It also let you get your other hardware through the magnetic arch."

 

"A little subterfuge is good for the soul," Willamina said innocently. "Go through the arch, it alarms, smile sweetly, pull out my knitting and tap the metal knitting needles together, then sigh dramatically, thrust them back into my ball of yarn and surrender them to the bin." She lowered her head a little and gave him a confidential look. "I've used that one before."

 

Linn nodded. "Love it. I need your advice."

 

"Oh?" Willamina's eyes were noticeably darker: she was relaxed, there had been laughter, the no-bill was a relief: at the formal hearing, the shooting was ruled justified, the lawmen didn't have to worry about criminal charges against them -- and the threats of civil action, voiced by the family, disappeared when the family itself was arrested on the follow-up investigation.

 

"It turned out," Linn continued, "once ... that fellow, the driver, was fleeing a botched kidnapping. The other guy decided he wanted to sing rather than be tossed in with general population. We got his testimony" -- he grinned -- "and once he's convicted he'll be in general population at the state pen."

 

"The wages of sin," Willamina murmured, sipping her coffee. "Mm. Tastes off. Kind of like fingers."

 

Barrents snorted, turned his head, grateful he hadn't a mouthful at the moment.

 

"ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT THE COFFEE AGAIN?" Cindy shouted through the closed door.

 

Linn shook his head.

 

"Was Sharon that bad?"

 

"Sharon was worse."

 

"God help us all!" -- he looked sharply at his mother -- "which brings me to my next point. Ma'am, I am scared."

 

"Scared?" Willamina looked up, honestly surprised, and lowered her mug slowly to the tabletop.

 

"Ma'am, my temper scares me." He looked over at Chief Deputy Barrents, solid and hard muscled, black-eyed and the very image of his father, who'd been Willamina's chief deputy in his day. "I was ready to rip that car door off its hinges and grab that ... fellow ... by the ankles and pound him into the pavement like I was swingin' a rag doll."

 

"You come by it honest," Willamina admitted, leaning back a little. "You remember me telling you about your Old Grandfather."

 

Barrents leaned forward, gripping his coffee mug, clearly interested, and Linn grinned a little and nodded, then looked over at Paul.

 

“Old Granddad,” he said, “had quite a temper about him, and it looks like I might’ve inherited that too.”

 

“Too? Whattaya mean too?”

 

“Wa’l now,” Linn drawled, leaning back in his chair, “Old Granddad was set upon by two fellas who had the ill manners to take a shot at him.”

 

“Doesn’t that sound familiar,” Barrents muttered, taking a noisy slurp.

 

“Now Old Grampa … I don’t know why he had his cavalry sabre with him.”

 

Barrents’ head came up as did his left eyebrow.

 

“He had what?”

 

“He was a Brevet-Colonel with the Ohio cavalry.”

 

“Ohio has a cavalry?”

 

Linn and Willamina both laughed. “Thy education has been neglected, Weedhopper,” Willamina said gently. “Back during the War of Northern Aggression –“

 

Barrents’ expression was puzzled: his black eyebrows twitched together and he looked at the Sheriff, shaking his head a little.

 

“I, um … which … war was that?”

 

“Nothing we ever fought in, any of us,” Linn said, thrusting out of his seat. “Refill?”

 

“Yes, thank you,” Willamina murmured, licking powdered sugar off her fingertips.

 

“Paul?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Linn plucked the coffee pot off its warming plate, considering how to answer what he viewed as an impossible gap in another’s education.

 

“The American Civil War,” he began, “had as many names as there were people naming it. Lincoln’s War, the War of Secession, the War for State’s Rights, the War of the Rebellion.” He carefully refilled his mug, set it down, reached for his mother’s. “Old Granddad had a name for it.”

 

Coffee gurgled as he poured; he set the steaming mug down in front of his mother, walked over to his segundo.

 

“He called it That Damned War. That was all. Nothing else.”

 

“I can agree with that,” Willamina said quietly, trickling a little milk into her refilled mug.

 

“Yeah.” Linn stared bleakly at his own mug, alone and steaming beside a few sprinkles lost from Barrents’ retrieval of his chosen pastry. “I never asked Uncle Pete.”

 

“He was in d’Nam,” Willamina explained, “and I did ask him, and that was … he agreed with the name. For the … for Granddad’s war and for his own.”

 

She looked at Barrents, her eyes pale, distant, and he knew she was seeing ghosts from her own time in uniform.

 

“I think any soldier from any time in any war would agree that’s the right name for their war.”

"It was for mine," Linn said hollowly, then shivered, sat up straight and threw his head back, taking a long breath like a swimmer coming up from a long dive.

Barrents shivered a little as he heard stories untold hiding behind the retired Sheriff's words, just under the pitch of her voice.

 

He considered the last bite of his doughnut, and decided against it: curiosity got the best of him as he said, “Now what about Old Granddad and his cavalry sabre?”

 

Linn grunted.

 

“Some fellow took a shot at him. He ran up a rock beside the trail and swung that sword. I don’t think he was entirely sane” – he shot a look at his mother, who was managing to look innocent as she considered the contents of the bakery box.

 

“What makes you say that?” Barrents pried carefully.

 

Linn looked bleakly into the secrets held under the rippling surface of his coffee. “He grabbed the severed head by its hair and he war danced around in a circle, screaming and swinging that head from one hand and that blood dripping sabre from the other, and the fellow riding with the would-be murderer said later every bit of strength run out of him like his bones was water and there was a big hole in his boot heel.”

 

“Okaaaaay,” Barrents said slowly, “and how does that tie in?”

 

Linn took a tentative drink of his refilled coffee.

 

“Do you recall right after we both shot, how I screamed at him?”

 

Paul nodded slowly, remembering the sight of the Sheriff bent nearly double, his face purple with rage, his arms shaking as he funneled all his rage and all his hatred and all his confusion and all his distress through his throat and out his voice.

 

“Paul, my temper honestly scares me.” Linn regarded his friend with hard, pale eyes. “Mama, how about you?”
Willamina smiled quietly.

 

“Do you remember,” she said conversationally, “I mentioned a video filed away somewhere, the video of me after I killed that carjacker?”

 

“I recall you mentioned, yes, ma’am.”

 

“When they had the shots-fired review in Denver – it helped that I was Sheriff, but certainly didn’t let me off the hook, especially there” – she smiled quietly – “they replayed that video.

 

“They watched me shift left and fire one shot, they watched the jack collapse and they watched me holster and walk up to his dead carcass, and they watched me grab the front of his jacket and haul him clear off the ground and SLAM him against a concrete pillar.”

 

Her smile was gentle, unchanged, utterly at odds with the word picture her quiet voice was painting.

 

“I was swinging him and slamming him against that pillar at the absolute top of my lungs, and he was nearly a foot taller than me and heavier.”

 

“And you still grabbed him and slammed him.”

 

“Repeatedly.”

 

Barrents’ left eyebrow raised slowly as he considered this.

 

“Ma’am, I … knew it was … a very bad idea … to get on your bad side.”

 

Willamina hid her expression behind her coffee cup, took another delicate sip.

 

“The review board suggested that I might want to consider anger management.”

 

Willamina chuckled, as did her son, and she gave the Navajo chief deputy a knowing look.

 

“I told them I did not need anger management, I needed stupid people to leave me the hell alone.”

 

Linn nodded, staring at the bakery box, and Willamina hooked it with a finger and slid it over toward him.

 

“That’s why I’m afraid of my temper,” the Sheriff said quietly. “I get it honest and I’m … I’m honestly afraid of my temper.” He looked at his mother, at his chief deputy, at the box of doughnuts, reached in.

 

“I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do to keep from being … uncontrolled when it hits the fan.”

 

Barrents looked at Willamina, and he saw her eyes tighten, and he knew that she knew that he was going to make reply, and she was right.

 

“I know what it’ll take,” he said matter-of-factly.

 

Linn looked at his old and trusted friend, nodded.

 

Chief Deputy Paul Barrents nodded solemnly.

 

“I know the solution.”

 

“Out with it, man, what is it!”

 

“Rum.”

 

Linn stared at the straight-faced segundo, Barrents managed to keep an expressionless visage, and Willamina ducked her head to keep from revealing her stifled grin.

 

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57. THERE YOU ARE

The Sheriff tended to be thorough.

His mother, the retired Sheriff, was just as thorough.

The subject of their hereditary temper came up over doughnuts and coffee, and Willamina was determined to find it, to find her pale-eyed ancestor's account of his own realization that he, too, rode a very dangerous stallion.

She well knew Santayana's dictum that "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it," and she knew the value of research: she paged intently through the earliest of her Old Granddad's Journals, focused on this task, until at last she stopped and leaned back with a quiet smile and whispered, "There you are."

She reached without looking, closed spatulate fingers around the pleasantly warm mug of fragrant Earl Grey tea, took a sip as her eyes tracked back and forth, following her Great-Great-Grandfather's thoughts as recorded here, hand written on good rag paper, with a dip quill and India ink.

A psychiatrist might remark on the ease with which she entered into a voluntary fugue state.

Willamina gave no such thoughts to her effort.

All she knew was, when she wanted to read, what she read became very real, and as her pale eyes caressed the hand written lines of neat script, her soul entered another time and another reality.

Another sip of Earl Grey, and she slipped into the story like she was slipping into a warm, comfortable cloak.

 

I killed a man today.

God help me, I let my temper slip its collar and I LIKED IT!!!

I rode that rip-roarin' temper like I was ridin' a flood and it felt good.

He come at me, him and that other fella, and he up and said "Pale Eyes!" and BANG he upped his gun and pushed a ball at me.

His horse didn't much like that and he hauled hard on the reins and that horse was havin' no part of it.

It throwed its head up and come straight ahead, straight towards me, and I clumb up that rock beside the trail as easy as if I was running on level ground, and I reared back my good left arm and swung my Cavalry sabre hard.

I clove his head from his neck with one swing and I jumped down from that rock and landed light on the balls of my feet.

I took a look at that rock later.

I was collar bone tall off the ground when I jumped and was I to do that sober I'd break both legs, or at least both feet.

I grabbed up that head and I swung it by its greasy hair and I spun around in a circle, war dancin' and screamin' and slingin' blood from one hand and that shining blood-slimed sabre with the other, and I stopped and I looked at that other fella.

He'd drawn up and he was starin' at me like I was a hell-demon come to grab him and maybe I was.

I know I was not entirely sane.

I was madder'n two hells when that fella yelled "Pale Eyes!" and tried to kill me and I let my temper run just as hard as it wished to go.

I write these words with shame and uncertainty at war in my heart.

Shame, that I joyfully threw the leash from my hand and let it run, and uncertainty -- I do not wish to lack control, even if the situation is not in control.

I have long had that rip-roarin' temper.

When I was a boy I went fishin'.

I had a brand new cane pole and we paid good money for it and I prized that genuine cane pole.

I was in the deep bend of Fisher Creek just after Mile Long Hill Bridge and three boys from town come through fishin' and they thought it was great sport to grab me and twist a cattail into fuzz and shove it in my face.

I like to smothered.

They let me go and I grabbed that cane pole and broke it in two over my leg and I sliced it like a spear and laid one of 'em open on the forearm and went to drive the jagged pointy broke off end through another's belly and they took off a-runnin'.

Could I have caught them I would have drove that jagged end right through whichever belly I could reach.

God forgive me but it does feel good when I let my temper go and give it let to raise as much hell as it could and sure enough every time I let slip them dogs of war they do the devil's work.

I get it honest.

Pa has the same temper.

May God grant that none of my get are so afflicted!

Willamina blinked quickly, threw her head back, took a great gasping breath like a swimmer coming up from too deep a dive.

She took a careful sip of Earl Grey, remembering another passage in another Journal, which spoke of the Old Sheriff's wife Esther and how she loved her citrus spiced tea.

"Burgamo," she said aloud, remembering the unique citrus with which her favorite tea was flavored, and she leaned back, cupping the mug in her hands and leaning back in her chair and looking at the ceiling.

"Grandma Esther," she said aloud, "thank you for your recommendation."

She took another sip and smiled again, chuckling.

"Grampa," she murmured, "I know what you mean about letting your temper run."

Her eyes were two shades more pale as she remembered throwing her own temper's leash and running after it, screaming, just before she let loose her own version of the Hellbeast.

"God help us," she whispered, for she knew how deep her own temper ran, and like her pale eyed ancestor, she too had killed in the happy insanity that is an utter surrender of all restraint.

She'd killed, and she rejoiced in the doing of it, for in that moment, with the engine of her insanity running wild, she realized that she, too, liked it.

She really, really liked it, and she shivered a little, shivered for fear of what she could do.

"Keep my son from doing the same," she whispered, and then she remembered watching the cruiser video, and how her son bent at the waist and screamed with rage at the dead man he'd just sent to Hell on a charge of 00 buck, and she realized her whispered prayer was quite probably too late.

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58. THEATER

The Sheriff's body went horizontal in mid-air as he dove at the prisoner.

His Honor the Judge's mouth was open a little, his voice utterly forgotten, the gavel dropping from suddenly-numb fingers.

The tableau was frozen for one terrible moment: the Judge, shocked into immobility, dignified in his carefully-trimmed, snow-white beard and black robe, his eyes the size of tea saucers and resembling a pair of boiled eggs as they regarded the terror in his courtroom.

The Sheriff, eyes ice-pale and flint-hard, locked onto a man's form like targeting radar will lock onto an incoming enemy missile.

The grimacing Bailiff, on one knee and falling over, his hand to the red splotch on his uniform shirt.

The prisoner, unshackled at the strident insistence of the defense attorney, a short-bladed knife in his hand, twisting as he fled.

Jurors and spectators alike shrank involuntarily in their seats.

The violence was fast and unexpected, as violence often is, and in such a moment it is natural for the human to freeze like a prey animal: it is natural, and it is how people get killed: only the actor -- that is, the prisoner, seeking to hurt and kill whomsoever he had to, in order to escape -- and the Sheriff, who was a predator, bred as such for generations -- who moved in this moment.

One other, and only one other, rose, and that was a pale-eyed woman with a .44 revolver in hand.

The gunshot was a thunderclap that broke the spell and the head-shot prisoner convulsed as the Sheriff drove into him, bore him to the deck, hit him fast and hard and lethally -- elbows and the edge of his hands, crushing the voice-box, shocking the carotids into closure, shattering the tracheal cartilage and sealing the larynx with shattered cartilage and mucus and blood -- but the blows were not necessary, nor was the knee to the guts, nor the vicious twist of the hand, tearing the wrist apart and dropping the murderous knife to the floor.

It was all reviewed, of course, and another hearing had to be held on the event, and this too was investigated by an outside agency in order to avoid any taint: the woman with pale eyes, the retired Sheriff, was no-billed, as she was functioning under color of her deputy's commission, as it was obviously what the law enforcement community called a "Righteous Shoot," and because she sat quietly in the Judge's chambers afterward, while her pale-eyed son, the flesh white and tight across his cheek bones, leaned over the Judge's desk and spoke his mind very plainly.

"Your Honor," he said, and he never raised his voice, "I do not give one good damn any more how you feel about guns in the courtroom.

"Your Bailiff may not live, because you allowed his attorney to smuggle him a knife. That, sir, is on you.

"You specifically forbade everyone from having a weapon in your court room and it had to be a smuggled gun that stopped a murderer."

He leaned his fisted knuckles on the Judge's desk blotter, leaning over it ... no.

Not leaning over.

Towering over, for he was a tall man, and to be honest, from the Judge's perspective, the man was intimidating as hell: not only was he tall, not only was he angry, he was also right, and the uncomfortable jurist knew it.

The Judge looked away, shoulders slumped a little, and nodded.

"Sir, from this day forward, I and my people will be wearing our sidearms. If that is a problem, say so now and we'll settle it."

His Honor looked up, his expression hardening. "I remind you, Sheriff," he said quietly, "but this is a court of law and I am the judge."

"Yes, Your Honor, your word is law, and your word damn near got a man killed," Linn countered, his voice low, tight. "I am responsible under law for maintaining security and safety in your courtroom. If you do not rescind your no-guns policy I will pull rank and I will override you and I will not make it a secret. I don't want to do that, Your Honor, but neither do I want to answer for your honored self being killed and having to put down cause of death as terminal stupidity. I think too much of you to want to do that."

His Honor frowned, blinked, leaned back in his chair, and the Sheriff leaned back, straightening, his left hand involuntarily going to the small of his back.

Willamina looked up, eyes veiled, doing her best to remain invisible, but as a mother, she knew Linn's inherited sway back was expressing its opinion at his having bent over for a time.

"Sheriff," the Judge said, "if I were a lesser man I would say I'll take it under advisement." He looked up at the tall lawman, then over at the quiet woman. "We both know that's another way of saying I'm blowing it off."

He considered for a moment, then reached down, drew open his bottom drawer.

"Let me put it this way."

He brought out a bottle of something water clear, and three glasses.

Carefully, precisely, he pulled the cork and decanted two finger's worth into each of the three short, squatty glasses.

"Sheriff, your argument is indelicate, confrontational and it lacks a persuasive merit." He handed the Sheriff two glasses, nodded toward the quietly watching Willamina.

"You are also right."

The Judge stood.

"Sheriff, my order is hereby rescinded. Lawmen may be armed in my courtroom and you have official sanction to take whatever measures you feel necessary and proper to maintain order." He looked over at Willamina. "That includes keeping the company of certain deadly associates."

The Judge swung his gaze quickly back to the Sheriff.

"Linn, I was wrong. You were right. I am a damned fool not to have listened to you before. Thank you for addressing this matter in chambers and not in public."

"Public would not be polite, Your Honor. If I am going to be impolite with you I'll do it in private. I have that respect for you."

The Judge nodded once, gravely, the equivalent of a European bow of acknowledgement.

"Thank you," he said quietly, and raised his glass to the tall, lean-waisted, pale-eyed lawman and his pale-eyed associate in the tailored suit dress to his right.

They drank.

 

The local paper, of course, covered the event; the front page of the paper caught a still shot of Sheriff Linn Keller in mid-leap, dramatically horizontal, teeth bared, wearing the expression of a wolf about to attack a hated enemy, arms upraised and fingers clawed for the grab: it showed the Bailiff, obviously collapsing, hand to his dark-stained belly; it caught the Judge's shocked expression, the gavel in mid-fall: the headline read, "COURTROOM ATTACK," and the following article gave credit for the attempted murderer's lack of success to the Sheriff's multi-layered preparation.

A carefully worded statement had been given the newspaper, one Linn crafted with the Judge's help, and it mentioned the Judge's attempt at following the recommendation that nobody be armed in a court of law, and how this fine theory was brought to ruin by this real-life example.

The Sheriff, for his part, took a good bit of kidding over the next few days, his segundo taking the man by the shoulders and turning him around, rubbing his shoulder blades and complaining that there weren't any wings, where are the wings, the newspaper showed you flying across the courtroom, where's the wings? -- and the Sheriff made several visits to their hospital, and sat by the Bailiff's bed, holding the man's hand in both his own as the elderly court officer admitted the fear that he was going to die right there on the courthouse floor.

Linn's voice was quiet and reassuring as he told the man he could not have defended against the attack, that it was too fast to react to, that it was well within the Tueller distance, and that the Bailiff would go back to wearing a level III vest with knife-and-icepick-rating as soon as he was back to work: "Now that the Judge gave up that idiot no-guns policy," Linn explained, "you go back to wearing your vest, but I'm getting you a new one."

"Good," the Bailiff grunted, squeezing the Sheriff's hand. "My old one smelled bad."

"You can wash the new ones," Linn grinned. "The old ones you weren't ... the old ones got kind of gamey. I know mine did."

The bailiff nodded.

"I'm gettin' out of here now," Linn winked, rising and releasing the man's hand, then gripped it again.

"You did all right in there," he said firmly. "You might not have realized it but you did grab him and you did slow him down."

"Sheriff?"

Linn turned at the door, looked back at the bailiff.

"I remember reading somewhere that ... back when ... folks came to court for entertainment."

Linn grinned. "Yeah. It was their local theater."

"We gave 'em a good show this time, didn't we?"

Linn laughed, nodding.

"Yep."

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59. KICK THE TABLE

 

The last time the Sheriff was here, it had been open less than a week.

He'd come into a good knock down drag out barfight, the kind where everybody is into it, even the piano player had someone around the neck and was cheerfully employing his beer mug to knock some sense into his opponent -- or would, if the place had a piano player, or a piano.

No, it was one of those rare times when you could raise your voice and nobody would pay the least bit of attention.

He looked off to the left, behind the bar, just in time to see the barmaid swing her tray flat-on and smack some fellow in the face -- he was more startled than hurt, and when she began beating him over the head and cackling like a madder-than-hell Banty hen, the man threw his arms over his head and retreated, having lost absolutely all interest in taking advantage of the general confusion to grab a double handful of her keep-your-hands-to-yourself parts.

Linn didn't hesitate at all.

He'd been schooled in such things by good men and true, and by his pale eyed mother, who'd taught at the Academy after her retirement, and when he went into this malestrom of fists, feet, beer bottles, pool cues and hard-swung chairs, his opening statement was the right hand barrel from a two pipe shoot gun, loaded with the Holy Black.

The concussion of a twelve gauge inside a confined space is truly a wonderful thing: it feels like a giant slaps you -- both in the chest, where you can feel the concussion more than hear it, and on both ears, where it registers as sudden, intense pain more than the appreciation of sound.

A normal shotshell load has something of a crack to its report, but when loaded with old fashioned, coarse grained, black powder, the concussion is perceived as a much lower frequency detonation, so far removed from the usual sound of a gunshot as to bring the whole situation to a grinding halt.

The flash from the muzzle, followed by a rolling mushroom cloud bulldozing through the already-stratified air, added to the general perception that this would be a really, really good time to cease hostilities.

He knew exactly where to put the shot, knew where the boiler plate was in the attic, the boiler plate that had stopped a charge of heavy shot when another Sheriff took office, and matter of fact his shot went through the patch covering that first hole.

This was the first time Sheriff Linn Keller set foot in the place since becoming Sheriff, and it was the first time he'd been inside since Jelly sold out and retired, and the new owner re-named it the Cozy Corner.

All this was on the new Sheriff's memorable first visit, when he brought a barfight to an absolute stop before backup arrived.

Now, a month later, he was back.

When he came in it was with the same double hammer twelve swinging from his good left hand.

This time there was no barfight to stop; it was just another evening, after work, another evening with the juke box playing something much less than current, with men smoking, swearing, drinking, laughing at someone's tired old joke.

The front door swung open.

A tall, lean figure stood in the open doorway, just stood there instead of coming on in.

Someone yelled "Shut that damned door!" -- a quick hand slapped his shoulder, a warning glance directed his focus to just who was standing in the open door.

An anonymous boot toe reached out and hooked the juke box's plug out of the wall.

The entire beer joint was inspired to a sudden, united, utter and absolute silence.

The Sheriff's eyes were hard and cold and his jaw was set, and the knuckles on his hand stood out white and bony as he gripped the double gun's straight, checkered wrist.

He paced off on the left.

His cadence was slow, measured: his eyes swept left, swept right, a hard glare like a battleship searchlight: he stopped midway down the bar, turned his head slowly, bringing his visual gun turret to bear on the barkeep.

"Whiskey," he said quietly, then he paced off on the left again, moving slowly, moving as if he were tightly controlled to keep from tearing someone's head off and spitting down their neck.

He stopped beside a table, turned, faced a man's back.

"Stand up," he said.

The chair scraped back and the fellow stood: he was an equipment operator, he was still wearing dirty overalls and his hardhat, and he stood, working his shoulders, as if deciding whether to try and whip this fellow before he tried to effect an arrest.

The Sheriff reached into his coat, pulled out a new pair of leather gloves.

The man in the hardhat blinked, confused.

"You did my mother a kindness," the Sheriff said, his voice clear, distinct, carrying to the furthest corner of the silent, listening, watching tavern.

"I did?" He blinked again, swallowing uncertainly.

"She was all dressed up and she had a flat. You changed her tire barehand and that was a cold, wet, miserable night. A man ought to have a good pair of gloves. This is thank you." The Sheriff extended the brand-new insulated leather gloves and the surprised operator took them.

The Sheriff turned and resumed his slow pace to the back of the Cozy, back to the solitary, unoccupied table against the back wall.

He laid the double hammer gun across the table in front of him and sat down, pulling out the chair with an exaggerated slowness, his pale eyes blazing under the brim of his Stetson, challenging anyone at all, or everyone if they wanted.

Nobody wanted.

The waitress came back with a single water glass of whiskey on a tray, set it down.

Nobody moved.

The Sheriff handed her a folded bill, murmured "The rest is yours, stand right here," then sat unmoving for most of a full sixty-second minute.

Finally -- slowly, deliberately -- he picked up the glass with his left hand.

He gripped the shotgun with his right, surged to his feet, kicked the table viciously, SLAMMING it over on its side: he raised the glass, drank its content straight down without taking a breath.

He set the empty down on the frightened-looking waitress's tray and bared his teeth, looking like a mean old b'ar that was about to get impressive.

"I SENT ANOTHER ONE TO HELL TODAY!" he roared at absolute the top of his lungs, then he grabbed the round table by its rim, yanked it back upright: he paced off on the left and strode out the door, drew it quietly shut behind him.

Every eye had followed the lean lawman to the door, nobody moved as the door swung shut: there was a collective hiss as if everyone there was letting out a pent-up breath.

The barkeep was first to speak up.

"Dear God," the barkeep whispered, "Jelly was right!"

Outside, in the cold, Linn swung his leg over the saddle, turned the Appaloosa, gave the gelding a soothing word, patted his neck, then he fetched up his canteen, drank his belly full, touched his heels to the horse's ribs and started out into the night.

He emptied his stomach and two canteens before he met up with Barrents.

"Well?" the grinning Navajo asked.

"Worked," Linn grunted, then coughed. "Hate the taste."

"Yeah," Barrents nodded, his obsidian eyes smiling though the rest of his face was solemn. "Your Old Grampa's method works."

"Yeah." Linn coughed, spat, drained the second canteen, rinsed and spat. "It works, but I don't particularly care for it!"

"Just think, Buddy Joe, you just established another facet of your don't-tread-on-me reputation!"

"Yeah, thanks," Linn grunted.

"You okay to get home?"

"Oh yeah. I didn't give it time to soak in."

"Wise man," Paul Barrents nodded. "You don't want to, believe me!"

"See you Monday."

"Yeah."

Linn turned the Appaloosa, rode off across the high meadow, toward home.

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60. I DON’T CARE HOW HE HANDLED IT!

The maid ran from window to window, flinging each wide open, not stopping to tie back the curtains she pulled loose.

She ran with the desperation of a woman who did not know what else to do.

She ran with a double handful of petticoats and skirt material, she pounded up the stairs with the speed of the terrified: not until every window in every room on both lower floor and upper were wide open, did she run downstairs, nearly losing her balance but managing to turn and slam her back into the opposite wall at the foot of the stairs: she ran to the front door, threw it wide, ran to the back and slammed it open.

Only then did she stop, shivering, mouth open, panting: she was white to her lips and she never heard the quiet word spoken behind her, she never felt the firm hand grip her shoulder, she never realized the Old Sheriff had shoved a kitchen chair in under her hard enough to break her knees over: all she knew was she was sitting, and she was shivering, and she lifted her eyes to look helplessly at the ceiling, looking in the general direction of the master bedroom, where a woman gritted her teeth and forbade herself to scream as she labored to expel the child that was not coming out.

The lean old Sheriff, he with pale eyes and an iron-grey mustache, waited a moment to ensure the maid was not going to get all fainty and fall over: it wasn’t until she spread her feet wide and bent over, her face in her hands, that he released her shoulder and ignored the woman’s sobbing as he took long, purposeful strides towards the foot of the stairs.

Dr. Greenlees is with her, he thought.

He’s the best there is.

He’ll save her.

He hesitated at the foot of the stairs, then his lips peeled back and he surged up the broad staircase, taking the deep, solid plank steps two at a time.

 

More than a century later, another pale-eyed Sheriff, a tall and lean man who bore the name of his honored ancestor, read the words inscribed with precision and icy control in the hand-written journal.

He read the man’s thoughts, confided to good rag paper: he read of the terrible decision he made, the decision to save the child at the expense of the mother’s life, and he read the words of a man with a heart absolutely sundered by the necessity of the decision, and the fourth-great grandson lifted his head from the text, stared sightlessly at the Aladdin lamp atop the roll top desk, and he wondered aloud, “Could I make that same choice?”

He shivered, for he knew it was quite possible he might have to.

Not with his wife and not in childbirth.

With his mother.

I don’t want to make any terminal decision, he thought.

If I have to take her off the machine … can I make that decision?

It may not come to that.

You’re taking a long look at consecutive worst-case scenarios.

She might do just fine.

His hand rested on the Old Sheriff’s journal and he found himself paging slowly back to where he’d just been reading.

Old Grampa, he thought, how did you handle the grief of your wife’s death?

Pale eyes read what pale eyes wrote a hundred years before.

Finally Linn blinked, closed the book gently, laid it back on the desk’s writing table.

He took a long breath, then stood, looking around.

I’d better find her, he thought, and a general sense of dread filled him like cold syrup filling a stone jug.

 

Willamina grunted as she seized the string-tied bale of hay.

She straightened, hoisting with her legs: she duck-walked several steps, hoist it as far as she could, brought her knee hard up under it to start its swing out away from her body, then pushed it hard away from her, throwing it away from her and out the haymow doors like something unclean.

Linn saw the hay bale sling out of the barn’s upper story, turning slowly end-over-end until hit the ground in a minor cloud of chaff and dried stems: two beeves and an Appaloosa came meandering over to investigate, completely ignoring the possibility of another airmail delivery.

Linn strode into the barn, looking up at the mow overhead: “Mom?” he called.

Willamina stepped over to the polished brass firepole.

She’d added this to the old original barn her thrice-great-grandfather had built, and she had overhauled when the ridge beam started to sag: she’d kept it otherwise mostly unchanged, except to excavate out from under the bottom story to enlarge the small basement area.

Her two great accomplishments, she’d laughed, were to find her thrice-great Granddad’s original bridle hidden in the rafters – the one with hand-engraved roses on genuine silver rosettes – and she’d had the firepole installed, ever since reading that Sarah Lynne McKenna, the Old Sheriff’s pale-eyed hell-raising daughter, discovered how much fun it was to slide down the fire pole in the Firelands Fire Department’s tall brick horse house.

Linn looked up as the polished brass pole shivered with the impact of an embracing body, and a moment later his seventy-something-year-old mother slid down the pole and landed easily on the padded round mat at its base.

“Mama,” he said, “you hadn’t ought to hoist bales like that –“

“Because I’ll tear my stitches, I know, I know,” she finished peevishly, waving a dismissive hand.

“You don’t care.”

“I’m madder’n hell,” she snapped. “Do you know where I was this morning?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I was calling in a favor.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I was sitting on my butt behind a Ma Deuce and I was firing short bursts downrange.”

Linn was silent for a long moment.

“Did you know if you’re careful, you can squeeze off single shots?”

“I didn’t know that, no ma’am.”

“You should. You were a Marine.”

“I was a rifleman, ma’am. I packed an idiot stick. They didn’t let me near anything fun like Ma Deuce or a recoilless.”

Willamina stomped across the floor, seized a saddle blanket from its drape over the side of a stall, snatched it free, stomped back over to her son: she snapped the blanket viciously, once, twice, folded it in two and threw it down on a convenient bale of hay and dropped heavily onto one end.

Her long tall skinny son lowered himself carefully on the other end.

“You don’t need to sit so far away,” Willamina grumbled. “I’m not going to blow up!”

Linn nodded, raised up just a little and eased back down, just enough so when his full weight settled down, he put his arm around his mother’s shoulders and pressed his side warm and reassuring against hers.

“I’m worried, Mom,” he whispered.

She patted his thigh. “You, worried? And why would you worry?”

“I’ve only got one of you,” he said quietly, his voice strained. “I already lost my father and my older and I don’t want to lose you!”

“Why do you think I was firing short bursts downrange?”

“I don’t know, Mom. You just had cancer surgery.”

“I had a lumpectomy. A knot the size of your thumb nail. You know that.”

“And you were shootin’ the Big Fifty.”

“You’re damned right,” Willamina grated. “It’s fun and I like it!”

“You want I should get you one maybe?”

Willamina leaned her head over against her son’s shoulder and sighed.

“No,” she murmured. “No, but I needed the big boomer.”

Linn waited, knowing she would fill the silence with an explanation, and she was right.

“You recall,” she said quietly, “when I belted on my Colts and threw that coffee can out in the field.”

“When you walked up on it,” Linn said quietly, smiling at the memory, “bouncing it with alternating shots.”

“Yeah.”

“I remember.”

“Do you know I still think of that.”

Linn waited.

“I picture my immune system,” she said, her voice tightening. “I picture it striding through my body, shooting cancer cells like I shot that coffee can.”

“And the Ma Deuce?”

“That’s me,” she said, and he heard her eyes turn pale – her voice always changed when her eyes went white, and it changed now – “that’s me, because there are always more resistant cells that are harder to kill. I’m going through there with a mounted fifty and I am hunting them down.”

“It’s personal, then.”

Willamina pulled back, glared at her son. “If you just had part of your carcass cut out and thrown away you’d be personal!”

“Likely I would,” he admitted, looking down at his bristling mother. “Mama, do you know how Old Grampa handled his hard news?”

“I don’t care how he handled it,” she snapped. “I’m handling this one, not him!”

Linn grunted, kissed the top of his Mama’s coarse auburn hair. “He handled it just like you are,” he whispered. “He worked himself to exhaustion, he pushed himself til he was ready to fall over and he got mad, he got good and bite-the-horn-off-an-anvil mad.”

“That’s me,” Willamina muttered.

“Kinda figured that when you tossed that bale out the upper deck.”

“You saw that.”

“Ayup.”

“You wished I wouldn’t do that.”

“Ayup.”

“You’re afraid I’ll tear my stitches.”

“Ayup.”

“You’re right.”

Linn tensed and Willamina patted his leg reassuringly.

“No I didn’t tear my stitches,” she explained, “but yes I could and yes you’re right.”

Linn hugged his Mama’s shoulders again.

“By the way, it happened again.”

“I told you.”

“My good lookin’ wife didn’t believe me.”

“Does she believe you now?”

“Believe hell! She’s not going back!”

“Oh?” Willamina drew back again, gave her son an appraising look.

Linn grinned.

“She wanted to put flowers on the graves,” he explained. “I told her we didn’t do that. She thought I was just awful and I explained how Old Grampa allowed as he didn’t want flowers when he was dead, he wanted ‘em while he was alive so he could smell ‘em and enjoy ‘em.”

Willamina nodded.

She’d expressed the same sentiment herself.

“I told her it’s why I didn’t send flowers when Pa and my brother were killed in that wreck. I explained when we went there, if she paid attention, she wouldn’t hear anything, she wouldn’t see it happen but she’d feel the air shift just a little and no matter the weather – winter’s cold, summer’s heat – when she felt the air shift, if she looked, there would be a single red rose on every tomb stone of our family.

“She … didn’t believe me.

“We went there and she set a little bundle of flowers at each stone and she talked to the tomb stones a little, and we drew back and turned to leave and I felt the air shift.

“She did too.

“She looked back.

“Every one of our family stones had a fresh cut rose on it.

“Had we not had the Jeep right there for her to jump into I think she would have made Jesse Owens look like an amateur!”

Willamina sighed, nodded.

“I read about Grampa working himself like that,” she admitted. “He cut and split an awful lot of wood after Esther died.”

Linn nodded, his eyes bleak. “Yeah.”

“I’m too lazy to cut wood.”

“Lazy my Aunt Jesse’s billy goat,” Linn muttered. “I’ve seen you with a chain saw!”

“You do know they think they got all the cancer when they took out the lump.”

“I heard tell.”

“It was encapsulated. Best case scenario, if there’s a best case with cancer.”

“Yeah.”

“I know, I know,” Willamina sighed. “You are ready to remind me Aunt Martha died of cancer.”

“No, ma’am. I’m reminding you that if they got it all, why did they put a port in your chest so you can have chemo and why are you losing your hair.”

“That’s why I wanted to run Ma Deuce. When I visualize my T-cells on hunt-and-kill patrol, I want the full hands-on knowledge of exactly how that machine runs, so my killer-Ts will be able to.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Richard used to sit like this.”

“I know.”

“That was … so reassuring.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I could lean against him and admit that I was tired, or scared, or mad as hell, and he didn’t have to say a thing, he just ran his arm around my shoulders and held me.”

Linn sat there with his arm around his Mama’s shoulders and nodded.

“Why don’t you cut the strings off those bales,” Willamina said, rising. “Don’t need to feed strings to the stock.”

Linn rose, nodding, and headed for the door. “I’ll tend that detail.”

Willamina turned and walked slowly out the big double doors and toward the house, remembering her husband, wondering if the Old Sheriff walked this same path with the same slowness as he remembered his own dead spouse.

She suspected strongly that he had.

She was right.

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61. A HARD MAN

Linn looked out across the meadow, past the apple trees he'd planted, past the little creek run that meandered off into the distance.

Firelands was to his left, not terribly far: he could hear a freight wagon rumbling down the street, he heard trace-chains and harness bells and big draft horse hooves punishing the dirt street, and he closed his eyes and remembered, he remembered and his hand closed hard around the ax handle until his knuckles cracked inside the buckskin gloves, until his hand and arm shook with the force of his crushing grip.

He remembered driving their carriage down the street, remembered the dun's rhythmic, metronomic pace, he remembered Esther's hip against his, he remembered her scent, soap and water and lilac and roses and he opened his eyes and took a long breath and he looked at the ax as if he'd never seen one before.

Linn raised the ax and dropped its bit into the splitting stump and walked away from it.

He looked up, toward the house, and he almost expected to see Esther smiling at him from the near window.

He looked away from this too.

The barn.

That's safe.

He walked out to the barn, shaved some molasses twist off the plug he carried and bribed his golden stallion with the shavings.

He rubbed the stallion's ears, laughed as the big horse shoved its nose into his middle, snuffed loudly, and he knew Corazon del Fuego was bumming for more tobacco.

"Yeah, all right," the retired old Sheriff muttered, reaching in for the plug and pulling it back, quickly, to keep yellow equine teeth from nipping it out of his thumb-and-forefinger grasp.

"Wait," he said quietly, and the stallion blinked and turned his head, ears swinging, then coming back to bear on the old lawman.

Linn shaved off another half dozen thick cuttings.

"Here, you bum," he grunted. "That's all you get."

He waited until Fire Heart lipped the tobacco off his palm, then turned quickly and walked into the barn.

He leaned a palm against a post, closed his eyes in misery, bowed his head.

"No help," he whispered, shaking his head. "I still remember her."

He raised his head, turned, thought of the brandy in his study, then shook his head again.

"No," he said firmly to the empty air. "No, don't reckon I will."

His belly reminded him he was hungry and he'd been ignoring his hunger, probably punishing himself.

"I reckon," he said slowly, "I had ought to go eat."

He knew the maid would be fretting, keeping supper hot as long as she could, and he sighed, then set one foot in front of another and slowly, walking like an old man, he trudged from the barn back to the house, feeling just as ancient as his laborious gait appeared.

He never saw the man waiting for him in front of his porch.

 

Retired Sheriff Willamina Keller's ear tugged back like someone took it and pulled from behind.

Her hand slipped into a pigeonhole in the rolltop desk and came out with the pistol she kept for such moments.

She reached up as if she had all the time in the world and turned off the green-shaded banker's lamp, then she came out of the chair, bending double and scuttling across the living room, turning to face the front door, pistol thrust out at arm's length, her other hand slipping a small, powerful flashlight from her jeans pocket.

 

"You sent me to prison," the man challenged, legs braced wide apart.

Linn went from a slow moving old man to an impossibly fast gunfighter: he surged to his right, both hands came up and two Colts barked, loud and abrupt in the cold evening air, and the veteran lawman's reflexes served him very well.

A .44 slug rumbled through the space he'd just occupied: the man he faced managed to get off one shot, the last shot he would ever take on this earth, an attempt at revenge on the lawman who'd sent the criminal to a well deserved incarceration.

The Sheriff stood alone in the evening's sunlight, the setting sun just touching the rim of the horizon, bathing the mountains with living blood.

 

Willamina waited, breathing through her mouth, listening, waiting.

A light glared momentarily from the doorway, sweeping the desk where she'd just been.

Willamina's hand tightened just a little more, launching the pistol's targeting laser, her finger tightening on the smooth trigger.

The slide rapped back, spinning the fired casing into the dark air.

 

Linn looked around, eyes pale and hard, and the maid came running out the front door.

She watched as he methodically, deliberately, reloaded each pistol and holstered.

He looked at the maid, then walked to the dead man, grabbed him by the shoulder, rolled him face up.

"I remember you," he muttered. "I remember you."

 

Willamina placed the unused flashlight on the couch, reached into the left breast pocket of her flannel shirt, withdrew the cell phone, pressed and held a button.

"This is Willamina," she said, her words clipped, "I need backup, my residence. Shots fired, man down, I'm not hurt, bring the dog."

 

The Old Sheriff, and his thrice-great granddaughter, each decided in their own time that neither had any appetite after all.

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62. YOU HUNGRY?

Jacob's son Samuel stared at his father like the man had a fish sticking out of his vest pocket.

Samuel was ready to jump out of his hide.

His grandfather, the pale-eyed ex-Sheriff, had just killed a man who tried to kill him, and his pale-eyed father the Sheriff was calmly pouring himself a blue-granite cup of coffee.

"Sir," Samuel blurted, "hadn't we ought to head out there?"

Jacob blew thoughtfully on the coffee, considered the tight-line stress in his son's voice.

"Samuel," he said thoughtfully, "I reckon we'd get there faster if we'd ride ruther'n walk."

Samuel's jaw dropped just a bit and he blinked, regarding his father as if the man had taken leave of what few senses he apparently didn't have.

"Close your mouth, Samuel, you'll catch flies." Jacob slurped noisily at his coffee. "Saddle our horses and report back to me here."

"Yes, sir," Samuel blurted, turning so abruptly to sprint to the door that he nearly fell.

Jacob watched sympathetically as his son scrambled, twisted, recovered, clawed for the door, and took another noisy, thoughtful slurp of coffee.

He was inclined for the fragrant, hot beverage, and he knew if he went to his father's house in response to this sudden summons, the Grand Old Man may or may not have coffee, it may or may not be made by the maid, and if it was made by him and not that Irish housekeeper he'd hired, it would not be fit to drink.

Jacob turned and eyed the gunrack, swirling the coffee in his mug as he did.

 

Retired Sheriff Linn Keller stepped out on the porch as his son and grandson rode up.

Jacob's eyes were busy from the moment his Pa's house came into view: he and his son held up on their mounts, each looking around: the youngest Keller, anxious, nervous, looking here, looking there; his father, unmoving, eyes pale, considering all that he saw, seeing with more than his eyes.

"Sir," he greeted his father.

"Jacob."

"I take it this fellow had an attack of poor judgement."

"You could say that."

Jacob tilted his head a little, eased Apple-horse ahead a few steps.

"One through the left eye," he said thoughtfully, "the other just under the wishbone." He looked at his father and Linn saw just the hint of amusement in his son's pale eyes.

"Why'd you shoot just the one eye?" he asked conversationally. "You could have shot 'em both out."

"Yeah," Linn said slowly, leaning with an elaborate casualness against the porch post. "Didn't want to look like I was showin' off."

Jacob nodded thoughtfully.

"He looks familiar."

"Yep."

"He ain't the one you sent off, now, is he?"

"He's the second one I sent to prison from here."

"He's still pale."

"Didn't get out but four days ago."

"Four days out and he's already here to settle with you."

"Single minded sort, warn't he?"

Jacob dismounted, knelt beside the carcass, bent to take a closer look at what used to be the back of the dead assassin's head.

"He ain't got much mind left now."

"Don't reckon he was usin' it anyway."

"Nope."

"Samuel."

"Sir."

"Samuel, back track and find me where your Granddad was standin'."

"Yes, sir," Samuel said, swinging down out of the saddle and sweeping the ground with his eyes.

Linn and Jacob shared a look and just the barest hint of a smile: they both knew what it was to be young, and they both knew the fire in the blood that warms a young man, and they both knew that setting Samuel to back tracking the Sheriff would help him learn to read the dynamics of what would in later years become known as "The Crime Scene."

Samuel paced back, following his Granddad's tracks -- not much to see, but he'd had plenty of practice, and he'd sought out men, trackers, who helped him learn not just to look but to see what he was looking at, until he was just pretty darn good at it -- Samuel stopped, looked back at his Pa, thrust his jaw out thoughtfully.

"Granddad," he called, "you hit him from here -- and through the eye?"

"Only one of 'em," Linn deadpanned. "Was I to have tried for 'em both, Digger might try to skin the county out of some coin by restorin' a shot up face."

"Yes, sir," Samuel said faintly, considering whether he himself was good enough to score an eyeball at this distance.

Samuel was good -- Jacob saw to that -- and Samuel was in regular practice -- Jacob saw to that as well -- but Samuel's stomach shrank a little as he realized ...

That man tried to kill Granddad.

He got kilt instead.

He looked at his old Grampa, and the older man saw a realization in the younger man's eyes, and he was glad for the seeing of it.

It meant that Samuel would not take accuracy under fire for granted.

The maid came out on the porch, irritated as usual -- Samuel didn't remember a time when she wasn't -- and she snapped her dishtowel as if to fling off some distasteful morsel: "Sure and I've fixed ye a good meal an' here ye stand runnin' yer chin an' lettin' it go cold!" She thrust her chin at Jacob. "Have ye had yer supper?"

Jacob looked at the little redhead in the starched cap and apron and lifted his Stetson. "I have, ma'am," he said gently.

"Now don't you ma'am me or I'll take me rollin' pin to ye!" she flared. "Ye've no' had supper an' yer waist shows it! Why if ye'd turn sideways in th' sunlight ye'd no' throw a decent shadow! Now get in here an' do ye no' wait until it's cold!"

She turned her Hibernian ire to the youngest Keller and snapped, "And would ye starve yon lad? He's ready t' slice up his saddle an' chew on't for fear of starvin' t' death! Shame be wid ye, then!" -- and with that caustic declaration, she spun on her heel and huffed her way back into the house.

"Just the soul of human kindness," Jacob drawled, and Samuel, riding back up to his father, hid the grin that threatened to claim his beardless face.

"Yeah," Linn sighed, "but she does make good coffee."

The maid popped her head around the door frame.

"Well?" she demanded. "You hungry?"

This time Samuel did grin, for he'd had his Granddad's coffee.

Once.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller slipped his Mama's pistol in an evidence bag, sealed it, signed the red-and-black striped evidence tape seal.

He went to one knee and took both his mother's hands in his own.

"Are you hurt?" he asked quietly, and behind him, a camera's flash lit the room with the momentary glare of the high-output strobe.

Willamina nodded, then rose.

"Let's let these people do their jobs," she said quietly, then turned.

"Fellas, when you're done, I'll have pie and coffee in the kitchen."

"Thank you, Sheriff," a State Trooper said, touching the brim of his campaign hat, "that's very kind."

"Ask my son," Willamina said, her voice tired. "I take care of my boys."

Two troopers looked at one another, and both men almost smiled.

They'd worked with Willamina, before her retirement, and they knew well that she did indeed look after any she considered "Her Boys."

Linn faded back against a wall, considering what he knew thus far.

They'd used the dog to determine where the would-be assassin came in: entry was by prying the back door,springing the door frame far enough to defeat the deadbolt (Jacob made a mental note to have every door frame in the house assessed and rebuilt as necessary), the dog tracked the would-be murderer to the living room, and stopped at the dead man's feet, bristling a little as he came to the end of the scent trail.

"Mother," Jacob asked, "did he say anything?"

Willamina reached into her vest and pulled out several notebook sized sheets of paper in a Ziplock baggie.

"Confession and other notations," she said quietly. "He left this in the hallway. I think he left his Manifesto in case he was killed, or he'd pick it up on the way out."

"You've read it."

"I photocopied it."

He smiled. "Always thorough."

"Of course."

"Did he give a motive?"

"Other than the state of the world, conflicting religious views, allegiance to the Moon-Goddess, admiration for murderous dictators and a hatred of the Illuminati?" She shrugged. "Nothing, other than a burning wish to avenge himself on the Sheriff that sent him to prison."

Jacob shook his head.

"No way to know which ones will come hunting once they get out."

"Dollars to doughnuts he didn't buy that pistol legally."

"You'd win the bet and I don't even have to look," Linn agreed.

He looked in the living room, looked back.

"From the end of the couch, in full dark," he said thoughtfully.

"I had the laser."

"Did you use it?"

Willamina smiled. "I did."

"I thought you liked the RMR."

"The RMR won't give away your location," she agreed, "but that little pistol ... the slide's too narrow. You can't RMR that one. Besides" -- she smiled just a little -- "it worked."

"I can't deny that."

He pushed away from the wall. "I'll have plywood screwed over that back door until I can get it fixed."

"Thank you."

"I'll have that done now, I know who to call."

Willamina nodded.

The coffee maker gurgled and hissed, sending fragrance into the living room, and she turned, lifting a blackberry pie off the cooling rack and picking up a knife.

"Have the boys come in. The pie's fresh."

"Somebody say pie?" a trooper grinned, poking his head around the door frame.

"Well?" Willamina smiled, lifting a slab of fresh baked blueberry pie onto a plate. "You hungry?"

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63. GRAMPA, DO HORSES HAVE WINGS?

An old man and a young boy sat on the edge of the depot platform, their legs dangling, the boy’s legs restless, the old man’s relaxed.

The old retired Sheriff’s pale eyes stared sightlessly at the steam engine.

He’d seen it often enough that he didn’t see it.

The boy, on the other hand, stared in awe at the great, cast-iron beast, a living creature in his young imagination.

He looked around, looked up at the pale-eyed man with the iron-grey mustache and asked, “Grampa?”

Retired Sheriff Linn Keller looked down at his grandson, his eyes narrowing at the corners, the irises darkening a little, the way they did when he looked at any of his young.

“Yeeeesss?” he drawled, batting his eyes and then rolling his eyes, sending his young grandson into a happy giggle-fit.

“Grampa,” the lad asked, “is this The Lady Esther?”

Linn looked at the engine for several long moments and his grandson saw something very deep in the man’s quiet eyes.

“No,” he finally said. “No, Leetle, that’s not her.”

“Is that what she looks like, Grampa?”

Linn chuckled, grinned, looked down at his adoring young offspring.

“Yep,” he finally said. “She looks much like that.”

“Grampa, did my Pa ever ask you about …”

His voice trailed off uncertainly at the distant look on his Grampa’s face.

“Your Pa and I used to talk,” Linn said quietly, then he looked down and the younger Keller saw something he’d seen in his Pa’s eyes.

“How would you like to try something that would likely get us both bent over your Pa’s knee and belted good?”

The response was instant and enthusiastic. “Yeah!”

“Come on.” Linn shoved off the edge of the platform, reached up, picked his grandson up and threw him over his shoulder.

“Come on, then,” he laughed, running for the end of the platform, bouncing great gouts of giggles out of his happily squealing grandboy.

A moment later, grandfather and grandson and a great golden stallion trotted briskly down the dirt street, until they got to the corral on the edge of town, when Linn gave Corazon de Fuego his knees and they galloped on out of town, to a place he knew of where he and his grandson could get into trouble together.

Grandfathers are good about that.

 

Jacob stood and stretched, frowned at the record book laying open on his desk.

He’d had a busy day, he’d served warrants, he’d brought two men in and presented them before His Honor the Judge, he’d delivered a letter edged in black to a man he’d known for years and he held the man as his knees collapsed for the reading of it.

Lawmen not infrequently carry secrets, and his old friend’s collapsing in grief at receiving this hard news from back East was one of those secrets Jacob would carry to his grave.

That was not long before noon and it still troubled the Sheriff to think of it.

“I wonder what Pa is up to,” he wondered aloud in the stillness of the stone Sheriff’s office.

The quiet hiss of the gas heaters was his only reply.

 

“Grampa, we really gonna jump on the train?”

Linn chuckled a little, leaned forward, patted the stallion’s neck.

“You think we can?”

“I dunno, Grampa!”

“Wanna try it?”

The locomotive came thundering toward them, pulling hard and barking every time the drivers came around: she was pulling a grade, her ears were pinned back and she was pulling hard and as the flat car came into view, the stallion danced a little, for this was a game he’d played before.

“You ready?”

The little boy wiggled happily, his Grampa’s arm across his middle, holding him snug against his lean, flat belly. “Yeah!”

Linn picked his spot carefully, where the ground was a little higher than the railbed: it was at the head of a long up grade, where the train ran slow, and the stallion gathered himself and leaped onto the slow moving flat car, danced a little, then stood, riding the gently rocking car like he’d done it all his life.

The grandfather laughed as his grandson laughed, and the stallion turned and gathered himself, took a short step and launched again into the air and back to the dirt flat paralleling the tracks, and again a delighted little grandson’s squeal brought a broad grin to his old Grampa’s face.

The stallion leaned into an easy gallop and they curved away from the railroad, following the mountain path, dropping into a steep section and the stallion gathered himself and launched into space, landing easily on the other side of a gully: the path curved alongside the gully, but the stallion knew another way, and a grandson’s breath sucked in quickly as the horse soared into the air and for one glorious eternal stomach-tickle moment, he and the big gold horse and his Grampa with his big strong arm were creatures of the air, and then they landed easily on the grass beyond and continued back down the mountain, finding another path, heading back to Firelands.

The pale eyed little boy twisted his head a little and said “Grampa?”

“Yeah?”

“Grampa, do horses have wings?”

Linn laughed. “Oh, I reckon the might.”

“I think they do,” the grandson said firmly, nodding once to emphasize his opinion.

“You just might be right,” Linn agreed. “How about we see if supper’s ready?”

“Yeah!”

The stallion paced easily down hill and back up the other side, coming out not far from the corral on the edge of town.

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64. TIL VALHAL!

Sheriff Linn Keller reached for the intercom, pressed the button.

"Yeah, Cindy."

"A man here to see you, Sheriff."

Linn rose, swung around the desk, reached for the doorknob.

He looked to the right, to the picture he'd studied as a little boy, the picture of the Old Sheriff, his son Jacob, and a glaring young woman he was prepared to swear was his Mama, and he couldn't help but smile a little: part of him still believed that somehow that actually was his Mama, and she'd pulled a fast one, somehow.

He hauled open the door, swept the outer lobby with pale eyes, stepped out.

A tall, lean man with an unmistakably military bearing turned toward him, paced off on the left: had he not been wearing a three piece suit, Linn would have expected him to salute: instead, this blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordic giant looked at him, not quite alarmed, but clearly puzzled.

"Sheriff Linn Keller," the lawman said, thrusting out his hand.

"Hrolf Johannson," the surprised Norseman replied, accepting the grip: he blinked a couple times, then laughed a little. "I was expecting ... someone else."

"Colonel Willamina Keller," Linn suggested with a grin.

"Ja."

"I can have her here right directly."

 

Willamina almost squealed with delight at the account she read: a letter she'd been sent, part of an estate's documents, sent her because it was well and widely known that she was very deeply engaged in researching her ancestry.

It was a letter, hand written by a young man, describing with almost poetic clarity the delight of a child riding with his Grampa, describing how he felt ten feet tall and mounted on a winged destrier with his Grampa solid and warm behind him, the older man's lean, muscled arm holding him close, the horse alive and moving beneath him, and she nodded as she read the part about soaring over a gully and feeling his belly drop ten miles while the rest of him shrieked in silent and most sincere delight!

She reached for the phone before it rang, started talking before the voice on the other end greeted her.

"Linn, I just found the most delightful letter, can I come over and have you read it?"

Sheriff Linn Keller laughed in reply.

It was not the first time his Mama knew it was him, and began talking before he said an identifying word.

"Someone here to see you," he said, and Willamina looked up, the corners of her mouth curling up a little.

"Is he tall, blue eyed and handsome?" she teased, then stopped dead when Linn said "He is all those thing, yes ma'am."

"You're ... not kidding."

"No, ma'am."

"I'm on my way." Her voice was suddenly serious, the voice she used for years when the dispatcher rolled her out of a sound sleep with some urgent matter.

 

Willamina strode into the Sheriff's office, jeans and boots and snow-dusted Stetson, peeled out of her Carhartt and slung hat and coat carelessly on a handy halltree, nearly knocking it over.

Hrolf Johannson turned and stared, blinked, then started to grin.

The two ran toward one another and slammed into one another and bear hugged one another and laughed, and their laughter was the good hearty laughter of two souls who'd known combat together, who'd known danger and adversity and sharing the last of their rations and covering each other's backsides in some pretty hairy situation.

Hrolf was two fingers taller than Linn, and Linn was six foot two, and Willamina wasn't nearly that tall -- which didn't matter, Hrolf hauled her easily off the ground and spun her around, then set her down and took her hands and looked for all the world like a bashful schoolboy realizing he was holding the hands of the prettiest girl in school ... the searing scarlet shade of his ears only enhanced this appearance.

"Til Valhal," Willamina whispered, her eyes shining. "You Viking troublemaker, what brings you clear the hell and gone out here?"

Hrolf threw his head back and laughed, then looked at her again and grew almost serious.

"I heard you vere dying."

"Nah," Willamina dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. "Had a cancer taken out, that's all. Not even a threat."

"I am glad," Hrolf said, and Linn couldn't but smile a little at the man's voice: his English was flawless, but spoken with a distinct accent he'd never heard before, but he strongly suspected was probably Norwegian.

"Hrolf and I foxholed in the Sandpile," Willamina said to her son, as if that explained everything, then to the Norwegian, "I'm retired. My son Linn here is Sheriff now."

"Ah."

"You came to see if you could help."

"I came to see if you were dead."

"And if I was?"

Hrolf blinked, swallowed.

"You vould become one of die Waulkyren."

"A Valkyrie? Me?" Willamina laughed.

Hrolf's face was serious, as was his voice.

"When you dragged four of our men to safety undt not a round touched you," he said quietly, his eyes serious, "every man there was ready to swear you were a Shield-Maiden, a daughter of Odin the One-Eyed."

Willamina nodded, patted his hand. "I'm not invulnerable, my old friend," she said sadly, "but I'm not dead yet either!"

"We read of you. Your books, your very great Grandfather's Journal."

"You read those?"

"Of course!" he laughed. "We passed them around and read them threadbare! You are a warrior, Colonel, and we read of your riding your great copper mare and keeping the peace in your West!"

"You've been watching too many old West cinemas, Hrolf."

"Then why do you wear a pair of cowboy revolvers?"

Willamina planted her knuckles on her gunbelt, just inboard of the Colts' scrimshawed handles: "Because if I wore just one, I'd limp!" she declared, then grabbed his upper arm. "C'mon, I'm hungry and the Silver Jewel is open. Let's eat and we can talk it all over."

She turned, winked at her son. "I'm carousing with another man," she said. "Don't wait up."

Linn waved. "Be back before moonset," he called, then looked at Cindy.

"What was that he said ... Til Valhal?"

Cindy was sitting at her dispatcher's desk, her elbow on the green desk blotter, her chin in her palm, staring dreamily at the closed, heavy-glass doors.

"Why can't I find a man like that?" she sighed, then straightened up and turned her swivel chair toward the Sheriff.

"Til Valhal," she said, "means Until Valhalla. It's how they jack themselves up before a battle. Norse blood runs hot when you stir it right and that's how they'd get ready for a battle."

"Ah." Linn nodded. "We ... did something the same."

"That's right, you were over there too."

"Yeah." His eyes were pale, distant. "But I didn't get blown up in a Hummer like Mama did."

Cindy took a long breath, sighed it audibly like a schoolgirl mooning after a movie star.

"He came all that way because he heard your mother was dying," she said dreamily. "How romantic."

The cell phone in Linn's breast pocket vibrated, a silent buzz-buzz, buzz-buzz.

He unbuttoned the flap, pulled the phone, touched the screen, smiled.

"Something?"

"She said something about a letter when I spoke to her earlier." He thumbed the phone back to sleep, slid it back in his pocket, buttoned the flap down. "Her typical long winded text."

"How long winded?"

Linn chuckled and quoted the lengthy and voluminous communication:

"Letter later."

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65. FRACTIOUS

The gelding was impulsive, contrary, tried to bite on occasion, shoved out his gut when the Old Sheriff tried to saddle it and once he was saddled he didn't much care to be ridden, and if he couldn't throw the rider he'd try to rub the rider off against the nearest building, side or corner, or maybe a tree or a handy fence post.

The Old Sheriff was not about to put up with such foolishness and allowed as by God! that horse would be ridden, and he would be a-ridin' it, and after a few trips to Terra Firma he thought to himself that the Terra was quite a bit more Firma than he really liked, and the fight was on.

"Fractious" suited the gelding.

It meant a disobedient, self-willed child, and that's how he behaved, but the old man saw something more in the horse, and by dint of handling and talking, of tying him up short and currying him down where he couldn't go nowhere a'tall, by tossing the saddle blanket on his back and murmuring to him and leading him around and smacking him hard across the nose every time he tried to bite, the Old Sheriff managed to tame the gelding down some.

Not entirely.

Horses can be at once incredibly smart and amazingly dumb.

They'll remember every success in throwing a rider but they'll run back into a burning barn, they'll learn tricks and fancy steps but they'll shy at a stump and even at the memory of where that stump used to be, and Fractious was no different.

He was smart, yes; he had endurance, yes; he also had a tendency to strike with forehooves or rear hooves, but only with a rider on board -- something the Old Sheriff discovered when a yodel dog took out from where it had been eating on a fresh killed calf, and that Fractious-horse shoved its nose out like a pointer dog and the Old Sheriff give him his heels and they were off across the field, the 'yote a long, dark streak piercing the winter-dead grasses like a low-flying arrow, and that Fractious-horse just hell-a-tearin' after him, and the Old Man's eyes narrowed with approval and against the cold wind stripping tears out their corners and across his lean cheek bones and into his ears.

The Old Sheriff drew his right hand Colt and prepared to chop down like he was throwing a rock, but that Fractious-horse had other ideas and surged ahead and speared the 'yote in the ribs with a steel-shod hoof, knocking it rolling: horse and rider heeled over and came about, skidding a little and humping hard against the earth, and the Old Sheriff thrust blued steel back into carved leather and yelled encouragement.

The second pass really wasn't necessary, but Fractious nailed the broke-rib coyote again, killing the dying calf-killer with absolute and inarguable totality.

The Old Sheriff's caressing hand conveyed approval, and when they coasted to a stop he swung down and offered the gelding some freshly-shaved molasses twist on a flat palm, and the yellow-tooth snapper lipped the tobacker off the man's palm with a surprising delicacy.

It didn't stop him from taking a nip at the Sheriff's backside once they were back at the barn, but it wasn't a serious attempt.

Linn hadn't dared ride this-yere horse into town -- he'd been altogether too flighty and too hard to control, until horse and rider got used to one another, and each learned the other's individual language.

The big golden stallion was still King of the Herd, and Fractious had to learn his place in the hierarchy: learn he did, but when the King Stallion and the gelding were anywhere near one another, Linn fancied Fractious looked at Corazon del Fuego like a sullen schoolboy who resented his betters.

Fractious did have one bad habit he just didn't want to give up.

He liked to kick.

Linn considered this, especially when one kick just clipped the brim of his Stetson, hitting hit hard enough to jerk his head a little: he grabbed the gelding's headstall and hauled his head around and addressed him in certain Anglo-Saxon labiodental fricatives, calling the paint several kinds of a scoundrel, profaning the horse's antecedents, heritage, ancestry, upbringing and general lack of breeding: once the Old Sheriff's fire was lit, he grew louder and more inventive, discussing in plain language just how the horse would be disassembled and the sundry parts used to produce useful products -- a usefulness, he added in rather loud voice and not at all without a heavy layering of three languages' worth of utterly profane declarations, which was absolutely lacking whenever you, Glue Hoof, decided to take a kick at my noggin, of which I happen to be both attached and rather protective!

When the Old Sheriff paused for breath, actually for several breaths, the gelding gave a moaning sort of a death-rattle noise, kind of like a mule expressing pleasure at seeing an extended palm mounded with coarse salt, and he dropped his head as if dejected.

A shadow detached itself from the barn wall and his son Jacob stepped a little closer.

The Old Man could see his son's eyes were narrowed a little in amusement, though Jacob's expression was carefully neutral, and the Sheriff deadpanned to his pale-eyed sire, "Don't mince words, sir, please tell him how you really feel!"

That night the Sheriff did just that.

He gave an account, in his journal, but unlike his usual factual entries, this one was limned with the experience and tinted with his genuine feelings, and he had no way of knowing that a century hence, when his other Journals came into the possession of a pale-eyed descendant, that his description would be so real ... the reader felt the jarring snap to her spine when Fractious's hooves bunched up and dropped back to earth, her neck cracked a little as her own head snapped down as the gelding crow-hopped under her Great-Great-Grandfather, and she tasted copper as the gelding dropped his head and threw his hind legs high to the behind and launched the Old Sheriff out of the saddle and into a single aerial somersault, and landed him backside first in the only deep pool in that section of creek running below the house, and then added insult to injury by whinnying amusement as the Old Sheriff snorted and blew and wallowed upright and slogged out of that COLD!!! water, and stubbornly led the gelding back to the barn, removed saddle and bridle and grained him, and only then stomped and muttered his way back to the house, back to where he could dry off and get into some dry duds.

And a good shot of Two Hit John.

For medicinal purposes.

Willamina smiled as she read, for she too knew what it was to be thrown.

Her Cannonball mare threw her a few times -- not many, but a few -- and when she read about tasting copper and then getting slung into the blue sky above like a boulder from a trebuchet, she knew exactly what the Old Sheriff was describing.

She turned the page and read more: mesmerized, she read the Grand Old Man's account of how he harvested the gelding's liking for kicking, into a useful fighting tool.

"Now that," she murmured, "has possibilities!"

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66. OLD GRAMPA

Jacob felt Annette's shoulders rise and fall as she sighed happily.

They were watching Linn riding off with Caleb, two lean-waisted riders with an impressive distance between Stetson brim and saddle leather.

"Your father," Annette said quietly, "still treats me as if I were a lady in a grand castle."

Jacob lifted her hand, kissed her knuckles. "Where," he said, his pale eyes shining with mischief, "do you think I learned the habit?"

 

Caleb and Linn rode most of the day.

Linn had already made arrangements for his livestock's tending and Jacob had sons enough to take up the slack left by Caleb's absence, and so the pair's overnight sojourn put neither operation in a bind: they rode a good distance over trails Caleb neither knew about, nor even suspected, and they finally ended up in a high, wild part of the mountains, a place of solitude and snow and cold, thin air.

They did not press their horses, nor did they take them at greater than a walk: Caleb was grateful when they came to a sheltered meadow, a small patch out of the wind, and his Grampa led the way into the windbreak.

"This," he said quietly as they drew to a halt, "is an old place." He looked around, tasting the wind, his eyes pale: Caleb saw memories in those eyes and knew his old Grampa had been here before, and something told him this was not just a sheltered meadow.

Linn stood in his stirrups, shifted his weight, and Caleb did as well: then his Grampa set back down and chuckled and shook his head.

"Caleb," he admitted, "habit is a hard thing to break."

"Yes, sir?"

Linn's eyes were busy as he turned his big golden stallion around, allowing him another circumferential view of their encampment.

"In my memory," he said quietly, "maybe ... my imagination ..."

Caleb saw a quiet smile start to pull at the corners of the old man's mouth.

"I heard the old Irish sergeant sing 'Diiissss- mount!'"

"Yes, sir," Caleb grinned.

They both swung down, dropped their reins.

"Fetch out your glass."

Caleb turned to his saddlebag, unbuckled the flap, withdrew a cloth-wrapped rectangle, carefully unwound the flannel wrapping.

"Bring 'em."

The pair walked across the grassy opening and into the brush, slipped through a path that opened to Caleb's view as if by magic: another hundred yards and his Grampa stopped, squatted.

He turned.

"White boulder," he whispered. "Just past and to its right. Study that."

He and Caleb bellied down on bent, winter-dead grass and Jacob's son put the binoculars to his eyes.

He studied the landscape, sweeping it broadly, then returned to the indicated boulder -- it looked like it was newly cloven from the cliff above, white and fresh and clean-looking, and beyond it, to the right ...

Linn's quiet eyes saw his grandson stiffen.

"Wolves," he whispered.

"Watch," Linn whispered back.

Caleb did.

"Notice the pair faced off."

"I see 'em."

"Watch."

Caleb's brows quirked over the brass rim of the eye pieces.

"Notice what's under the one wolf's forelegs."

"I see it."

"You see two wolves faced off."

"Yes, sir. All bristled up and fanged up."

"What's under the one?"

"Another wolf. Between his legs."

"Why is she there?"

"Fear ... he's protecting the smaller one?"

Linn's chuckle was almost inaudible.

"That's his mate. That's the she-wolf. She's not afraid, she's protecting his throat."

"Her fangs aren't bare."

"I know."

Caleb's mouth dropped open.

Linn waited a few moments, then patted his grandson gently between the shoulder blades.

"Pull back."

They worked their way back, just out of sight, then came up on knees, rolled up on their feet, walked back to the sheltered meadow.

Caleb wrapped the precious binoculars in flannel again, slipped them into the saddlebag, buckled the flap.

"Now Caleb," Linn said, "what did you see?"

Caleb looked frankly at his old Grampa.

"I'm not sure, sir, it happened awful fast."

"You saw the she-wolf between the dog wolf's forelegs."

"Yes, sir."

"You saw a sudden confusion of fur and fang."

"I did, sir."

"You saw one run off limping and the two were side by side."

"Yes, sir."

"The she-wolf was under the dog wolf's forelegs, protecting his neck. She was also ready to launch a attack. The opponent was on guard for an attack from the dog wolf and when the she-wolf came out like a snake, the dog attacked at the same time ... and it's just awful hard to guard against two attacks at the same time."

"Yes, sir."

"Caleb," Linn said quietly, gripping his grandson's shoulders, "you carry my blood."

"Yes, sir."

"Listen close." The old man's voice was serious. "Our blood, the Sheriff's blood, has come a long way. You already know our ancestors were Highland Scots. Warrior blood runs hot and runs way back before that and we need that blood to run far into the future. That is where you come in."

"Yes, sir."

"Caleb, you see how your Pa treats your Ma."

"Yes, sir."

"And you see your Ma conducts herself absolutely as a Lady."

"Yes, sir."

"Caleb, my wife -- my Esther -- was a Lady in the finest sense of the word. So was your Aunt Sarah. You remember Bonnie McKenna --"
Caleb saw his Grampa hesitate.

"I'm sorry. I mean Bonnie Rosenthal."

"Yes, sir."

"She is a Lady born. That is the kind of woman a man wants. Strong as tempered steel and a spine of whalebone with the heart of an angel." His eyes sparkled in the diffused light. "I'm not gonna tell you who to marry nor when, Caleb, but pick your wife-mate carefully, and that's all the advice I'm a-gonna give you."

"Yes, sir."

"Now let's get a fire started. You tend that and I'll get water for the coffee."

Caleb made a face as his Grampa turned, and Linn turned back, an amused expression on his face.

"Don't worry, Caleb. You're makin' the coffee. I don't want to rot out another coffee pot."

"Yes, sir."

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67. “SHOOT THE DOOR!”

Retired Sheriff Willamina Keller brushed out the muttering gelding’s tail.

He was a paint, he was not as tall as her Cannonball mare had been, and he had absolutely no trace of the smooth gaited Paso Fino she’d come to love.

He was contrary and hard headed and so far he hadn’t bit, not even a nip, but he didn’t like being bridled and he didn’t much care to be saddled and so far about the only thing he did like was the sweet horse feed Willamina baited him in with.

She talked quietly to him and she saw his ears swing toward her when she did.

She had a saddle blanket hung on the side of the corral and she made sure the gelding saw her fetch it out and hang it, with a big showy sweep of her arm, throwing it well into the air when the gelding was on the far side of the corral: she saw he was watching, and she saw he swapped ends and trotted nervously one way, then the other, and she figured he wasn’t going to be terribly happy at the prospect of a saddle.

“That’s okay,” she’d said, before going over and baiting him in and grooming him, soothing him with touch and with voice, “that’s okay, knot head. I’ve got time and so have you.”

She had time, and time it took, but she worked her way through getting him near the blanket, to having the blanket just laid across his back, to having a blanket and watching Willamina hang a saddle on the top rail of the corral.

It took time to get him to consent to being saddled, and Willamina took the time, persuading rather than forcing, and when finally she was able to swing into the saddle and he just stood there, she considered it a minor triumph.

Willamina’s saddle stock were knee trained.

She finally persuaded the knot headed gelding to accept a bridle, probably because there was no hated bit to go with it, and to her surprise he was trained to ground-rein – a handy thing, indeed – Willamina dropped the reins and walked away from him, and the trailing leather straps pegged him to the ground as effectively as if he were tethered to a rock shelf.

When Willamina trained horses, she not infrequently had an audience, and word spread that she had a way with such work, and others brought their mounts to her if they had a particular need, or a problem, or couldn’t get a horse to follow some particular instruction.

More often than not her knot headed gelding had his head shoved over the top rail of the corral, watching: occasionally he would mutter, but he’d never nicker, nor did he whinny.

He did kick.

He had a fast, vicious kick and he was good at a twisting kick that came up at a sloping angle in addition to angling up from front-to-back: his hind hooves were deadly accurate, and Willamina decided one fine day to show him off a little.

She’d set up a straw dummy at the edge of the corral and two neighboring Mounted Posse members were loafing against the corral rails, one boot up and arms folded atop, their horses hip shot and drowsing behind them, when Willamina rode in.

She rode with her hands on her thighs, her knot headed gelding barely a-gallop, and circled the corral: neither horse nor rider paid the least bit of attention to the visiting posse members, to her son the Sheriff, to his chief deputy nor a pair of admiring little boys who’d managed to slip away from school either on some pretext, or just because.

They orbited the corral, Willamina easy and loose in the saddle: with no visible motion or signal, of a sudden Knothead streaked diagonally across the corral, snapped around and drove both hind hooves into the dummy’s belly.

The dummy slammed back against the corral post, the straw stuffed head lolling at an alarming angle: they came around the corral again, but this time, instead of a direct-on attack, Knothead twisted as he came abreast and hit it again, tearing the burlap open, throwing a spray of straw into the air and knocking dummy and mount over.

He managed to look immensely pleased with himself as they trotted across the corral toward the watchers.

Willamina saw her son jerk back from the corral bars, turn toward Chief Deputy Barrents, then they looked at her.

Willamina tasted copper and leaned back in her saddle; Knothead coasted to a stop, tail slashing.

“Alarm at the bank,” he snapped, and he and Barrents sprinted for their marked Blazer.

The two deputies from their respective mounted posses looked at the retreating Sheriff, then Willamina.

“You boys ready?” Willamina called, spinning Knothead around in a fast end-for-end.

“Yes, ma’am!” the shouted.

“Follow me!” she yelled. “YAAHHH!”

Knothead dug into the ground and launched across the corral, lifted off like a fighter jet on a full-throttle takeoff, cleared the corral rail and landed easily, laying his ears back and grunting before digging steelshod hooves into the ground and thrusting himself across the terrain, leaning out low and fast as he picked up speed.

Behind her, two men in jeans and Stetsons yelled encouragement and pounded after her.

Once again the Sheriff was responding to a call, and a mounted posse was on its way.

 

The Firelands bank hadn’t been robbed since right after Sheriff Willamina took office, two decades before: her handling of that situation was still taught at Quantico, if not as a recommended method, at least as one method that worked, and it involved her walking in bold as brass and shoving a hand grenade down the robber’s pants. (The fact that it was a dummy was not known to the robber, nor was that fact revealed to the Virginia audience until the end of the story, when the ancient and honored principle of “running a bluff” was brought into discussion.)

Willamina didn’t care that the bank hadn’t been robbed for twenty years.

She didn’t care that she wasn’t Sheriff now, she didn’t care that she was retired and she was what the football team affectionately called “a cool little old lady.”

All she knew was, this was her bank, this was her town, and she was not going to let this happen!

Something long, low and dark streaked like an arrow from Death’s bow, a diagonal shadow, angling to intercept three hard running horses, a howl like a hound from Hell running cold trickles down the following deputies’ spines: The Bear Killer, just over two years old, knew something had his Mistress unhappy, and when she was unhappy, The Bear Killer was unhappy as well, and when The Bear Killer was unhappy, the fur stood up across his shoulders and down his spine and his eyes reddened around their wolf-yellow irises.

 

Linn slammed the action open, then shut on the Remington riot gun, feeding a charge of heavy buck into the chamber: Barrents, his face carved and rigid as a stone idol, hauled back on the charging handle of his father’s M14 and ran a shining brass round of military issue, steel core, metal penetrating into his rifle’s chamber.

They knew they’d been seen, they knew the robbers inside would try and escape and they knew they would very likely use customers as human shields.

Barrents was counting on that.

He’d practiced with his father’s rifle, setting up silhouette targets, a golf ball beside the silhouette’s head: he practiced shooting the golf ball and leaving the silhouette untouched, and he was good at it.

Willamina was out of the saddle and running up to the rear of the cruiser, where her son was thumbing open his phone. “Yeah, Cindy.”

Cindy’s voice came over the speaker. “They’ve got explosives and they’re the ones that wires hostages with individual explosive packages.”

“Did they negotiate?”

“Yes, and then they blew everyone up anyway.”

Willamina’s eyes were ice-pale, hard as polished agate: she looked at Barrents.

“Shoot the doors,” she said quietly, peeling out of her Carhartt coat.

“You sure?”

“Mama,” Linn began, but Willamina wasn’t there: the two mounted deputies from the visiting mounted posses squatted beside Linn, hands gripping their holstered hoglegs’ handles. “Sheriff,” one said, “where do you need us?”

“NOW!” Willamina yelled, and Barrents stood, shouldered the walnut stocked battle rifle and fired four times, driving rounds through the top right hand corners of outer and inner glass doors.

The doors instantly turned into crazed curtains of crumbled safety glass and Willamina drove Knothead through the glass snowstorm, spinning him on the slick marble floor: Knothead lashed out and caught a robber under the ribs, the explosive collar in his hands flipping into the air as the holdup folded in two and raised a full yard off the floor.

Knothead scrambled on the slick floor, fighting to keep his balance, and Willamina landed light on the balls of her feet, screaming and spinning and slinging lead with both hands: witnesses later testified that it was like being in a bank with a cyclone: she never stopped moving, she never stopped screaming, she never stopped killing: Willamina well knew the value of a surprise attack, of shattering an enemy’s OODA loop, she knew fancy tactical terms and textbook explanations of human psychology, but none of it was in her thought process at the moment.

At the moment, all she felt was a combination of hot, unadulterated, genuinely murderous RAGE, and simultaneously the screaming joy the true warrior feels when all inhibitions are cast to the wind and war alone is in the heart.

Of the gang of robbers who’d invaded the Firelands Bank and Trust, one died from blunt trauma from a horse’s hoof, driven hard up under the ribcage, tearing the great vessels, the diaphragm and ripping both the descending aorta and the proximal lung.

Two died as they stood, explosive collars in hand, ready to lock death around the necks of the innocent, standing for a long moment with a .44-caliber hole in their heads – one through his left eye, the other just under the lip, before both collapsed bonelessly and without so much as a twitch.

The last one managed to trigger two fast shots before Willamina’s boot kicked his pistol toward the ceiling: she was spinning, she was screaming, he barely registered that this Dervish in blue jeans had absolutely, stark-white eyes and wheat-paste parchment stretched over sharply defined cheek bones before her other boot caught him just under the ear and he never felt the third kick to his ribs that landed while he was in freefall toward the floor.

Willamina thrust her revolvers back in their holsters and ran across the lobby: she seized a shocked-still woman, yanked her toward Knothead: “MOUNT!” she screamed, and the woman’s foot came up and found the stirrup, and she threw a leg over the gelding like she’d done it all her life.

Willamina grabbed one child, swung the little boy high in the air, landed him a-straddle, behind the woman: “GRAB HOLD!” she shouted, and the boy’s arms locked around his Mama’s waist like a seat belt.

A little girl squeaked with surprise and Willamina dropped her on Knothead’s neck, seized the mother’s hands, ran them around her little girl-child.

“KNOTHEAD! OUT!” Willamina barked, and the gelding trotted happily out the doorway, dainty and light-footed and crunching shattered glass as he hauled these refugees outside to the waiting troops.

The Bear Killer, snarling, bristling, went from one carcass to another, sniffing, growling, and stopped to raise his leg and cast his ballot on the one that had been shot through the left eye.

Willamina sagged.

She looked around at the stunned, pale-faced tellers, then she saw one looking at something behind the counter.

“Bear Killer,” Willamina said quietly, and the black Tibetan raised his head, lips peeled back and fur rippling like it was being caressed by invisible hands.

Willamina saw someone thrust up from behind the counter and her hand had a life of its own.

Willamina did not remember deciding to draw, nor did she remember the draw itself, but she did remember that her right-hand revolver spoke, just before something hit her in the chest.

She remembered The Bear Killer’s roar of utter unadulterated rage as he launched across the teller’s polished-quartz counter.

She remembered someone gripping her arms and shouting at her from a great distance and she was falling she was falling she was falling and her son’s voice was saying something she could almost understand and she was suddenly tired, she was so very tired, and she blinked and tried to ask if they got them all, but her voice would not work, and a silvery curtain descended in front of her eyes and she relaxed, all pain forgotten.

 

Not until the Sheriff ensured the bank was secure, that no living enemy remained, did he stride over to the still figure on the floor, revolver still in hand.

Behind the counter, The Bear Killer sniffed at the bloodied remains of what had been a murdering bank robber: with a half inch hole through the bridge of his nose, and with neither a throat nor a right hand, his criminal career was now most decisively ended.

The Tibetan Mastiff paced from behind the counter, snarling deep in his chest, came over to Willamina and began washing her absolutely colorless face.

Sheriff Linn Keller ripped his mother’s flannel shirt open, ran one hand under her, pressed his palm flat on the exit wound, the other hand hard over the bullet’s entrance.

Barrents’ obsidian eyes were as hard as the Sheriff’s ice-pale orbs: he ran his trigger finger over the safety, pulled til it clicked, the slung his rifle muzzle down from his off shoulder and pressed the button on his shoulder mike.

“Firelands Dispatch, Firelands Two. Shots fired, officer down, need medical.”

Barrents knelt beside the retired Sheriff, beside his best friend: he cradled Willamina’s head with one hand and said, “Your grandson does not have a grandfather. You must teach him to whistle and to whittle, you must teach him that which he must learn only from a grandfather. You must do this, Warrior.”

The Bear Killer looked up at Barrents and rumbled as if in agreement, the he went down beside the Sheriff and laid his chin on Willamina’s thigh.

Linn held his Mama’s wounds until the medics got there, until the seals were placed over the holes in her chest, until she was on oxygen and the IVs were in and running, until she was loaded and rolled out and on her way to the hospital.

Linn picked up his shotgun and walked slowly outside, pale eyes noting the EOD team retrieving and securing the explosive hostage collars that came so perilously close to being used.

The Bear Killer walked beside him, a huge, sinners-black animal that looked more like a young bear than a canine, and Barrents watched expressionlessly as the Sheriff unloaded the chamber of his riot gun, pointed it upward and pulled the trigger, then thumbed the ejected round back into the magazine.

He watched as Linn walked back to the cruiser, secured the shotgun in its overhead rack, came back to the front of the bank.

“It’s okay, Sheriff,” a State Trooper said quietly. “We’ve got this.”

“My jurisdiction, my responsibility,” Linn said, just as quietly.

The troop gripped the Sheriff’s shoulders, looked the man in the eye.

“My mother is dead,” he said, his voice tight. “I will never hold her hand again, I will never hear her voice, your mother is still alive. I’ve got this. She needs you.”

Linn was silent for a long moment, the he nodded.

“Thank you.”

 

A young mother looked up as the Sheriff stepped into the hospital’s lobby.

“Sheriff?” she said anxiously.

Linn removed his Stetson. “Yes, ma’am?” he replied in a gentle voice.

“I … we –“

She gestured to the two children with her.

“She put us on her horse. Your … the Sheriff … she got us out.”

Linn nodded. “Did the horse behave itself?”

The woman nodded, swallowing hard.

“That was fun,” her little boy grinned, and the daughter had a sudden case of the bashfuls and hid behind her Mama’ slacks.

“You’re safe now,” Linn said, winking down at the grinning lad with big ears and a burr haircut. “Were any of you injured?”

The woman shook head head. “No,” she said, “but …”

She still looked a little scared, and a little confused.

“She told me to mount and I did, but Sheriff …
Linn turned his head a little, as if to bring a good ear to bear.

“I’ve never ridden a horse until she told me to.”

 

Retired Police Chief Roger Taylor waited outside the hospital room door.

He’d parked a chair here in the hall a number of times, when he was still Chief, when this same woman lay on the other side of the wall, injured multiple times in the line of duty.

He might be retired but being here, outside her hospital room, was still the right thing to do.

A long tall lawman sat beside him, a younger man with pale and restless eyes.

“Roger?”

“Hm?”

“Does this ever get any easier?”

“No.”

Linn nodded.

“Are they allowing visitors yet?”

“Just The Bear Killer.”

Linn nodded. “He shouldn’t shed too much,” he said quietly. “I brushed him out this morning.”

“The wife got an Australian Shedder,” Tailor confided. “We don’t have dust bunnies, we have hair bunnies.”

Linn leaned his chair back against the wall. “Mama does too. She uses a shop vac to sweep.”

“Sounds practical.”

There was silence between the two men; the hallway was quietly filling up with lawmen from multiple jurisdictions, settling into an uneasy parade-rest on either side of the hall.

A nurse came down the hallway – young and pretty in pastel scrubs and white clogs, stethoscope around her neck and aluminum clipboard in hand, walking with the brisk pace of her profession.

She stopped and frowned at the Sheriff.

“Please don’t lean your chair back like that,” she said, and about that time the reason for her admonition manifested itself.

Linn felt the chair start to slide.

He threw out his arms and kicked up his legs and landed flat on his back, teeth clicking together as he barely kept from banging his head on the polished stone floor.

Roger looked down at the Sheriff as the man rolled awkwardly onto his side, up onto all fours, stood and tugged his shirt sleeves back down.

“And now for my next act,” he said loudly, and lawmen up and down the hall chuckled quietly: the nurse picked up the chair, set it back upright, then gripped the lean lawman’s shoulder, turned him, came up on her tiptoes to examine the back of his head.

“I didn’t hit it,” he muttered.

“I’m glad,” the pretty young nurse said. “You would have broken the floor” – and with that professional medical assessment, she turned and went on down the hall with her professionally brisk gait.

“Does she know you, or what?” Roger Taylor deadpanned, and Linn glared at the chair that so unceremoniously dropped him to the ground bare moments before.

“I wish it was wood,” Linn said quietly, “so I could feed it to the stove!”

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68. NOW ABOUT THAT LETTER

The Sheriff was allowed one visitor at a time – not as a matter of policy, nor of medical necessity, but because the nursing staff knew if they didn’t hold it to one at a time, Willamina’s ICU room would be absolutely packed with uniformed humanity, and not only would she get no rest, the staff would get no work done with this particular patient.

Linn was first in, apparently at his mother’s request.

He drew up a chair and set himself beside his Mama’s hospital bed, gripped her hand and tried to smile.

“You look like your father,” Willamina murmured.

“Can’t imagine why,” Linn deadpanned.

“You even hold my hand the way he did.”

Linn nodded.

“I want you to read that letter.”

“I did.” He took a long breath through his nose. “I went out to feed and muck out the stalls. State police took over the investigation so I would be freed up for here, but you weren’t allowed company, so I went out and tore into the barn so I wouldn’t grab someone and twist their head off out of aggravation.”

Willamina chuckled. “Now you sound like me.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“You read the letter.”

Linn nodded.

“What did you think of it?”

“I think you write like he does.”

“Now it’s my turn to say I can’t imagine why.”

“Yeah.” Linn laid his other hand on his Mama’s as well, frowning. “Mama … I could feel that horse under me as I read it, I could … I leaned back against old Granddad’s flat belly when I read him describe it.”

He leaned down a little bit, his eyes intense.

“Mama, my boy won’t have a granddad to ride him like that. You’re going to have to.”

Willamina smiled tiredly. “I’d like that.”

“You’ll have to teach him to whistle and whittle and spit and swear and chaw tobacker.”

“Dream on, cream puff,” Willamina murmured tiredly, smiling a little.

Linn chuckled. “Just wanted to make sure –“

“That I was listening, I know,” Willamina smiled, then grimaced.

“Mama?” Linn’s voice was suddenly taut with concern.

“Just a twinge,” she gasped, her hand going to her side, her face darkening visibly.

Linn seized the nurse call, hit the button hard.

“Help me up,” Willamia gasped, her shaking hand clawing for his.

Linn ran an arm around his Mama’s back, sat her bolt upright.

The tinny voice from the speaker, almost nasal, almost sneering: “Can I help you?”

“GET A CRASH TEAM IN HERE NOW!!!” the Sheriff shouted, then he reached up and yanked the nurse call’s cord out of its socket, knowing this would cause a continuous alarm that could not be shut off until it was plugged back in.

Willamina’s mouth was open, her eyes wide, she reached up and felt the oxygen cannula to make sure its prongs were still thrust into her nostrils.

“Turn it up,” she gasped, clearly short of breath.

Retired Chief Roger Taylor thrust to his feet and the lawmen lining the hallway flattened themselves against the walls as the Code Blue team came down the polished tile floor at a dead run, pushing the bright-red Sears and Sawbuck toolbox tower with the cardiac monitor atop.

Roger spun, shoved the door open, held it wide as the team came whipping into the room.

Willamina was plainly swarmed: Linn drew back, then slipped around behind the suddenly-busy nurses, turned away: he felt Roger Taylor’s hand on his shoulder, and he reached blindly for the older man’s shoulder: white-faced, trembling, the Sheriff staggered woodenly into the hallway.

Anonymous hands gripped his arms, thrust a chair under his backside, rested on his shoulders: he dropped his head into his hands, gritting his teeth, then he took a long breath, stood.

He looked around.

“Chaplain!” he barked, and the assembled heard purpose in the man’s voice.

“Here, sir,” Father Mayer called from halfway up the hall.

“Chaplain, assemble a detail,” Linn said. “I want sky pilots and righteous men and I want ‘em now!”

A half-dozen men stepped into the hallway.

“Form ranks,” Linn said, and six uniformed officers and the Chaplain formed two lines, with the collared padre in the lead.

“Detail,” Linn said quietly as he executed a correct military about-face. “Forward, march.”

Eight men paced off on the left, and the detail marched in formation to the hospital’s chapel, their polished boots’ cadence metronomic in its precision, the men’s ranks straight, their jaws set and their spines rigid.

Eight men were on a mission, and it showed plainly in their gait.

 

Some time later, they heard the Chapel door open, and close, and the slow pace of a newcomer on the central aisle’s carpet.

Linn waited, his eyes fixed on the simple wooden cross, an ancient fixture originally hung on the back wall of their little whitewashed church there in town.

He knew his Great-Great-Great-however-many-greats it was (he snorted as his mind tried to distract itself!) – he knew his Old Granddad probably stared at this very same cross in times of his own grief, and he took a long breath and waited for the hand on his shoulder and the quietly professional words he expected.

He did not flinch as the hand rested on his shoulder.

“Linn,” a familiar voice said, and Linn rose, turned.

“Howdy, Doc.”

“Your mother said you need to get busy.”

Linn nodded.

“She’s alive, then.”

Doc smiled a little, just a little.

“Her lung collapsed. Good call, that, sitting her up like you did and the pulling the panic plug on that call light. The ICU team came running.”

Their family physician gave the tall, slender Sheriff a patient look.

“She’s a Marine. You know that. She said she has to teach her grandson how to spit and swear and sharpen his knife and she said so far all she has is a granddaughter, so you’d better get busy!”

Linn’s mouth opened a little and he stared at the quietly smiling physician.

“You know your mother. She’s got work to do and she’s not going to die until it’s finished.”

The other men in Linn’s detail were listening carefully: there were nods, there were glances exchanged, there was a general lessening of the tension in the hushed atmosphere.

“When can I see her?”

“Now, if you like.”

Linn shook his old friend’s hand and slipped past him, into the aisle.

“Detail,” he said quietly, his voice easily heard in the soundproofed chapel.

Seven men stood.

“Gentlemen, you interceded with me for my mother’s life.”

He cleared his throat, bit his bottom lip.

“I would be obliged if you would join me in giving thanks. Padre?”

Father Meyer nodded, the corners of his eyes starting to smile a little as he did, and he turned to face the same cross that had faced the faithful in Firelands since their little whitewashed church was first built.

Eight men took a knee and addressed the Almighty with a sincere and profound sentiment.

 

That night the Sheriff stared at the electronic tablet, tapping and swiping it repeatedly, thoughtfully.

The video was silent, taken from the bank’s surveillance.

He kept replaying the same clip, over and over and over again.

His baby daughter yawned and waved her pink knuckled fist and cuddled against her Daddy’s lean belly, warm and fed and freshly changed, smelling like baby powder and milk and lotion, and Linn held her with one arm as he stared at the flat glass face of his tablet.

He watched the bank’s glass door craze and suddenly a horse and rider drove through the crumbled-glass snow curtain.

He played it again, hooked finger hovering over the freeze button, stabbed it just as horse and rider burst through again.

He looked at his mother’s image and marveled.

In that moment, when she was riding to the attack, she wore an expression of utter joy.

“That’s your Grandma,” he whispered to his little baby girl. “She’ll teach you how to ride like that.”

His pale-eyed daughter, his firstborn child, made a sleepy little baby-sound and rubbed chubby knuckles against screwed-shut eyes, the way a little baby will when it’s about to fall asleep.

His wife’s hands closed on his shoulders, rubbed the hard, tense muscles.

“Come to bed,” she whispered.

Linn took a long breath, nodded, turned off the tablet.

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69. I REMEMBER

Caleb closed the door on the stove, quietly lifting it a little to engage the cast iron hook that held the door shut.

He looked over his shoulder and smiled a little.

His Pa was carefully lighting candles on the tree, frowning some like he generally did in such moments, making double-damn-sure none of the candles would set a branch above it on fire. He'd seen what happens when a pine tree caught fire inside a house and he absolutely positively did not want it happening in his hacienda.

His aunt Angela and her husband were there also: Angela was just settling herself onto the piano bench, her husband standing awkwardly beside the piano.

He was a Kansas man and Caleb called him Cyclone, which tickled the man enough that the name stuck: he'd told Caleb about getting caught in a flat land cyclone, about sailing through the air and getting dumped into a hay stack like a sack of taters, and Caleb laughed and called him "Uncle Cyclone."

Jacob suspected the man had a past, but he'd proven himself decent, honest, upright and a fine husband for Angela: he'd quietly told him he was welcome in his house any time, and Cyclone was taken back a step by it, but he'd nodded and shaken the Sheriff's hand and thanked him quietly for that kindness.

Tonight the house was filled with the smell of cooking -- the women and the girls had all been busy, all day, and the men and boys were elsewhere.

Officially they were hunting, the all purpose excuse for getting menfolk out from underfoot when holiday preparation was underway; in reality they rode afield with rifle and shotgun, they made camp at midday and prepared a meal -- Jacob could set a fire fast but Cyclone was faster, and made it look easy to boot, impressing the pale-eyed Sheriff -- they'd all eaten, they drank coffee, even the boys, they sat up close to the fire and while Cyclone and Jacob proceeded to tell each other absolutely outrageous lies (with perfectly straight faces), while the younger Keller boys listened, big-eyed, not at all sure how much was truth and how much wasn't... although they began to suspect there might be some exaggeration when the two tellers of tales began discussing the relative merits of picking up a railroad flatcar from midpoint or one-third of the way back from the leading truck in order to pry out the old babbitt bearing with a Barlow knife.

Caleb blinked, came back to the here-and-now, snatched from reverie by the sound of his Aunt Angela's fingers reaching across the keyboard, chording softly as she ran through her mental repertoire, then began to play.

Caleb's Mama was an accomplished pianist; his sisters all played, to one degree or another, though the youngest played with one finger and a frown, the way a very young child will, while sitting on her patient Mama's lap.

Caleb sang, as did everyone else: such was the custom of the time: a man made his own ax handles, split his own shingles, a family made their own entertainment, and so it was this Christmas eve.

Caleb felt a tug tug on his pants leg and looked down.

He grinned at the sincere young face looking up at him, followed as the little hand closed around his finger and pulled, slipped behind his Ma and Pa and followed the industrious little brother over to the tree.

His brother let go of his big brother's finger, dropped and rolled over and wallowed under the tree, looking up through the branches.

One of Caleb's little sisters, seeing her younger brother's adventure, came over, stopped and bent over a little to look at her face in one of the shiny red bulbs: she giggled quietly, almost inaudibly, and made a face at the distorted reflection, giggled again.

When Jacob relaxed enough to sing, almost always, he was holding his wife's hand, and his head tilted back a little, and his eyes were closed.

He felt Annette's hand tighten just a little on his, and he opened his eyes and looked around.

He saw three sets of feet sticking out from under the tree and he grinned and squeezed her hand in return, for he remembered a similar sight.

It was in the Silver Jewel and it was many years ago, and it was his sister Sarah's feet, and two of her sisters, and they too were looking up through the branches from underneath, making faces in the shiny dangling bulbs, and giggling as they did.

Jacob's voice caught and he swallowed and he blinked rapidly and his wife looked over to the soft, almost silly smile on his face.

Jacob Keller's pale eyes were far away, and she could see his mind's thoughts plainly in his eyes, and she smiled a little as well.

Jacob looked at the young shoe soles facing him from under the tree and he swallowed, then whispered, and Angela looked over and read his lips, and smiled a little as she did.

"I remember," he said to the memory, and the memory was a good one.

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70. TIME TO LEAVE

Sheriff Linn Keller tried to keep a poker face.

He actually did succeed, but it didn’t do him a bit of good.

Sheriff he might be, but son he was, and it was his mother he was trying to persuade, and he was working at a significant disadvantage: she could see through him as if he were window glass, poker face or not.

Linn kept his voice respectful.

“Mama, I know you kept up your nursing license –“

“A fine way to put it,” Willamina interrupted. “I’ve been a nurse for more years than you’ve drawn breath!”

“And you’ve worked CCU, ER, pedes and med-surg, yes, I know, but Mama” – his gaze was as direct as his words – “you’ve not worked as a nurse since you came out here!”

“And?” Willamina’s tone was icy.

“Mama, the man who serves as his own attorney has a fool for a client, and physician heal thyself is so much hokum.”

Willamina folded her arms and glared at the get of her womb.

“Mama, I’m saying you can’t be your own medical care if you discharge to home.”

“You’re saying I don’t know my own body.”

Linn’s patience was thinning, and it showed in his lowered brows and serious expression.

“I am saying,” he said slowly, enunciating each word with an exaggerated care, “I only have one of you, and I don’t want your impatience causing a relapse!”

“Says the man with absolutely no medical experience!” There was an edge to Willamina’s voice, and Linn’s hard look told her that edge just drew blood.

“Mama, if that disappoints you, too bad.” Linn’s voice was hard, cold. “I was a Marine, if you’ll kindly remember. If I’d wanted to be a medic I would have gone Navy and been a corpsman.” He paused. “Mama, you are but mortal.” He thrust to his feet, began to pace. “What do I have to do, park you on a chariot, hold a golden crown over your head and repeat in your ear that thou art but mortal?” He turned quickly, hands fisted, elbows bent: “What does it take to convince you that you’re worth saving?” he hissed, his eyes pale, his voice quivering with intensity.

Willamina blinked, tilted her head a little, her hand caressing the drowsing Bear Killer’s huge head.

“I do believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she said in the honeyed tones of a Suth’n belle.

Linn stared at his Mama, his mouth opening as if to say something: he closed his jaw, looked away, looked back, shook his head.

“Mama,” he chuckled, “you do have a way of getting through my defenses!”

“Of course I have,” she replied smugly: “I’m your mother!”

“Yeah,” he sighed, turned and folded his long tall frame and lowered his hind quarters on the thinly upholstered chair.

“Mama, you’ve told me before that people heal better and faster under their own roof.” He bit his bottom lip, frowned, continued. “I know the bed at home is more comfortable and the food’s better and I’ll grant you all that, but in case it’s escaped your attention, you are in intensive care!”

“Not for long,” Willamina muttered, folding her arms and turning her pale eyed glare to the room’s far wall. “They need a window over there. Can’t tell what’s daylight and what’s dark.”

“I know,” Linn sighed. “24 hour lights, no sense of day or night. It’s so you can heal, Mama, and right now that’s what you need to do. For Christ’s sake” – he stood abruptly – “Mama, you’ve been SHOT, shouldn’t that tell you something?”

“YES!” Willamina snapped, her eyes blazing and her jaw thrust out: “It tells me that robber was a bad shot, it was supposed to be between my EYES!” – she stabbed stiff fingers at the bridge of her nose, and Linn saw an absolute fury in her expression. “That’s what I wanted, Linn! Lights out! Go in on a bank robbery and be shot between the eyes, boom, gone! No old age, no cardboard underwear, no broken hips, no nursing home, stick a fork in me, I’m done!

Linn walked slowly to the bed.

There was barely room enough on the edge for him to sit down, but sit he did, supporting a good part of his weight with his legs.

His Mama occupied less than a third of the bed.

The Bear Killer sprawled beside her, warm and furry and all four feet in the air, huge and black and curly furred and … snoring … and utterly, absolutely, oblivious to the occasionally impassioned exchange between his two packmates.

Linn took his Mama’s hand between both of his: her hand was cool and feminine and almost delicate; his were big and warm and strong … protectively strong, not possessively strong.

“Mama,” he said very softly, “I have spoken those very same words.”

He blinked, bit his bottom lip, smiled a little.

“And for the very same reason.”

He looked up, ran his eyes along the seam between ceiling and wall.

“I went to see Henry in the nursing home here not long ago,” he said softly. “You remember good old Propane Henry.” There was a quiet sadness in his voice as he looked at the memory he was describing. “Mama, as soon as I stepped in the door of that nursing home, it was like looking down the black hall of doom.”

He shivered, remembering how it was like breathing despair instead of air.

He looked back at his mother, his expression troubled.

“Henry said if he knew what it would be like in a nursing home he’d have eaten a deer slug first.”

He looked back at his Mama, tightened his hands a little.

“Maybe that Jack Doe was a bad shot and maybe it would be the best way to end your career, go in on a bank robbery and take one between the lug and the horn.”

He bit his bottom lip, dropped his head.

“Mama,” he whispered, “I don’t often ask you for somethin’ but I’m askin’ now.”

He looked at her and his eyes were bright and she saw a little tremble to his bottom lip and she knew she was seeing her little boy and not the veteran lawman he’d become.

“Mama, let me be selfish.

“My little girl needs to learn some things and my gut tells me you’re the right one to teach her.” He swallowed, took a breath, blew it out.

“Mama, you remember when you married Pa … your wedding dress was emerald green.”

Willamina nodded, her eyes softening a little.

“We’re making … my wife’s making a christening gown for little Willamina.”

Willamina blinked, surprised, and she almost smiled.

“You’re a step ahead of me and you’re right. Willamina’s christening gown will be emerald green. Mama, we had her with us when The Lady Esther came into the depot and blew her whistle. Do you know what Willa did?”

Willamina shook her head.

“She startled – she looked around, all big-eyed, then she laughed.”

The corners of his mouth turned up a little with the memory, and he felt her approving hand grip his.

“Mama, she didn’t scream, she didn’t get scared, she laughed!

Willamina nodded.

“You told me once that I laughed too when I heard a steam whistle for the first time.”

“Yes.” Her voice was a whisper. “Richard and I …” Her smile was soft, vulnerable.

“Mama, you’ve got to teach my little girl how to be a proper woman. She will learn much from her Mama but there are things only … things Old Pale Eyes needs to pass along to her.”

“How to whistle and how to whittle and how to chaw tobacker?” Willamina teased.

“How to conceal a blade and a bulldog .44 and ride like a Mexican and fight like an Apache.”

“You can do that.”

“I can’t teach her how to do it and look perfectly ladylike while she’s doing it.”

“Linn, Linn, Linn,” Willamina murmured in a grandmotherly voice. “You know I don’t look very ladylike when my blood is up.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Mama. ‘Ladylike’ is one adjective that is never far from you, no matter your mood!”

“Oh, I suppose,” Willamina moaned in a nasal exaggeration of a resigned groan, then she and Linn looked at one another, stuck their fingers up behind their heads like bristling feathers and chorused, “Nyuck-nyuck-nyuck, woo-woo-woo-woo!”

A nurse had opened the door, stepped into the room, and was openly staring at this shared silliness.

“Are you two entirely sane?” she inquired, and The Bear Killer yawned and waved his paws in the air, shamelessly begging a belly rub.

“Mrs. Keller, you were asking about going home,” the nurse said as she paced over to the bed, turning one page, then another on the slender clipboard she held.

Willamina gave her an absolutely innocent look as her son drew back to allow the two their conversation uninterrupted.

“You were asking about discharge.”

Willamina blinked, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

“We’d like to move you to Stepdown – a regular room, you can have more visitors than just family and you’ll have a window.”

“I’d rather go home,” Willamina muttered, crossing her arms and looking like a petulant child.

“I know,” the nurse sympathized, tilting her head a little and giving her an understanding look. “You’ve probably got a wider bed.”

The Bear Killer grinned a big doggy grin, displaying a frightening array of dental weaponry, his tail happily (and audibly) thumping the coverlet.

Willamina reached down and caressed The Bear Killer’s jaw and chest. “What, you mean Bed Hog here? Better than a warm brick!”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the guys,” the nurse teased. “We’ll get you out of here today, fear not!” She smiled, drew the clipboard up like she was embracing it: “Oh, and you’ll have some visitors waiting to see you moved to your private room.”

“My adoring public?” Willamina said sarcastically, and Sheriff and nurse shared a knowing look.

“You could say that.”

Willamina gave a loud, ham-it-up sigh and patted her short hair dramatically.

“Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up!” – the nurse rolled her eyes and looked at the Sheriff – “I see where you get your sense of humor!” she declared, and the three shared a good relaxing laugh.

“Just how soon will we make this move?” Willamina asked, one eyebrow quirking up.

“Brush your hair and I’ll bring you a fresh gown.”

“Not until I get rid of some second hand coffee!”

“I think,” Linn said diplomatically, “that’s my cue to leave! Bear Killer, you want to go to Pedes?”

The Bear Killer rolled off the bed, landed clumsily and heavily on his paws and flowed like a river of sin around the foot of the bed, looked up at the Sheriff and chopped his jaws, his broad brush of a tail swinging happily across the polished stone floor and clubbing heavily against the nurse’s white plastic clog.

“Come on, fella, there’s kids want to wool you around some,” Linn chuckled, and Sheriff and canine withdrew discreetly from his Mama’s chamber.

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