CARBON HILL

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

140.  I COULD USE YOUR HELP

 

Jimmy’s chest tightened and his stomach started to wind up in knots.

The Sheriff’s question raised old fears – part of his mind knew he was not going to get beat, but he was afraid of being yelled at too and sometimes that hurt as much as the belt he remembered, the belt the Sheriff had never, ever, not even once, used.

This didn’t keep the rest of Jimmy from stiffening and starting to shiver and he had to go pee really, really bad, but he did not dare move out of his tracks, not even a little bit of a step.

“Jimmy,” his Sheriff asked in that quiet voice of his, “I found my hatchet stuck in a fence post and rusted up some.  Do you know how it got there?”

Jimmy had heard similar things in the past. 

Sometimes he’d taken a tool and left it, the way boys will, sometimes the tool was left by that man and he didn’t want to own up to it, he wanted to blame someone else and Jimmy was handy.

Raised voice, terrible words, that awful fist gripping Jimmy by his upper arm and dragging him around the corner, always around a corner, any corner, and then that belt, that belt would come whipping through the air –

Jimmy’s mouth opened a little and his lips quivered visibly and he replied in a tiny, terrified little voice, “N-no.”

Linn went down on one knee and set his finger tips real light against Jimmy’s shoulders, and he winked.

“Let’s go take a look at it,” he said, and then rose, and took Jimmy’s hand.

His grip was warm and surprisingly gentle, his strong and manly fingers curled into Jimmy’s palm – it was a light enough grip Jimmy could have pulled free – he did not pull, for the fear was still in him, and he dare not show any sign of resistance.

Like a leash-trained dog, Jimmy walked hand-in-hand with his Sheriff and did not put any pull at all on their grip.

It was a little distance out to the fence line where they’d been working the week before.

Linn looked down at Jimmy’s stiff face, uncomfortable that he was causing the boy distress, but knowing it was a lesson the lad needed.

They got to a particular fence post, where a particular hatchet was bit-drove into the wood:  the metal was rusted after the preceding night’s rain.

“Jimmy,” Linn said, releasing the boy’s grip, “do you know how this hatchet got here?”

Jimmy did not dare answer.

He knew, but he dared not put it into words.

Linn squatted down, tilted his head a little, then looked up at the hatchet, held up his thumb and grinned.

“Do you recall me hittin’ my thumb instead of that fence steeple?”

Jimmy nodded.

“As I recall my language was less than Christian in nature.”

Jimmy nodded again.

“I was hurtin’ and when I git hurt I want to hurt whatever hurt me.”  He laughed a little, pointed to the hatchet’s waffled face.  “That-there is a rig builder’s hatchet.  Ever build a rig?”

Jimmy shook his head.

“Many years ago my people were in the Perry County oil field.  They used a Parkersburg drillin’ rig.  When they bought it, it was an engine and it was cast iron hubs and bearings and straps and wheels, but the fly wheels, the bull wheels they’re called, the pulley for that broad belt – you know what a fan belt is.”

Jimmy nodded.

“Now a fan belt runs in a grooved pulley.”

Jimmy nodded again.

“Imagine a belt that’s thick as a fan belt but … oh, about yea wide.”  He held his hands two feet apart.  “Now coat the inside with rubber and run it over two pulleys just that wide, only flat, not V-grooved.”

Jimmy nodded again.

“They would cut timber around the drill site and build the drillin’ rig on the spot.  When they’d spike boards together they used that rig builder’s hatchet because it has a waffled face and you can hit a nail and she won’t slip off.”

Jimmy nodded his understanding.

“They’d use the blade to true up what was needful.  That hatchet was right handy when it come to buildin’ a drillin’ rig on site, and so it became known as a rigbuilder’s hatchet.”

Jimmy nodded again.

“Now Jimmy” – Linn hooked a thumb upward, toward the red handle of the hatchet – “when I hit my thumb I wanted to hurt somethin’ but if I’d try bustin’ my knuckles ag’in that waffled face I’d get nowhere fast.”

Jimmy dared hazard a slim, tentative smile.

“So I stuck attair hatchet in that wood post and left it hang there and repent of its sins.  I left it and now it’s rusted.  My fault, Jimmy – mine! – and I wanted you to see that.”

He rested his fingertips on Jimmy’s shoulders again, light, barely felt through flannel and wool.

“I messed up.  I left my own tool out in the weather and now it’s rusted.  I’m going to have to wire wheel that off and then hit it with a coat of spray paint.”

Jimmy could have collapsed.

His shoulders sagged a little and he almost swayed as big and strong hands took his elbows to steady him.

“You thought I was gonna beat you.”  It was a statement, not a question.

Jimmy nodded.

“No, Jimmy.  I needed to show you the Old Man is falliable.  I can make mistakes same as any man and sometimes I really come up with a dilly, and sometimes it’s just rust on a hatchet blade and sometimes it’s worse.”

He withdrew his hands, raised a finger to make the point.

“Do not ever, ever think I’m going to jump down your neck because of something I screwed up.”

Linn was a little surprised as the lad rushed him and seized him in a seven-year-old’s bear hug, but Linn was not the least hesitant to wrap his own arms around the boy, nor to hug him close and hold him for a few minutes.

 

The Faceless Sisters moved in silence, gliding as if on wheels:  the burnt-out family was put up in their own quarters, they were fed, the Sisters had a store of donated clothing and what didn’t fit, was altered so it did:  they even came up with shoes for husband, wife and two boys.

The Abbott knew they’d rented the property and he knew the property wasn’t a terribly well maintained home to start with; he knew the landlord personally, and though he charitably kept his opinion to himself, the Abbott knew the man to be on the lazy side – kind of like Ben Striver, when the Abbott worked a Guernsey County dairy farm back East:  old Ben would rather let something fall off rather than tighten down a loose nut, and he’d told the Abbott (while that good worthy was yet a stripling, working for his summer’s wages) “If you break down in the field, boy, fix it with string until you can get it back to the barn and do the job right … with waahhhhr.”

The Abbott began a discreet inquiry about town, and located another rental for the family:  investigation and careful conversation revealed the new digs to be within a handful of dollars a month of the cost of the ruin, and the landlord found his palm crossed with three months’ rent and a quiet voiced request for good serviceable furniture.

The husband had started out from nothing twice in his life, and he saw the same thing happening again, but the last time it happened he was yet a single man, and had made do in mild weather living in a tent on the edge of town and showering at work.

He’d been powerfully worried, with a wife and children, how he was going to provide for them and keep a roof over their heads when the roof (such as it was) no longer existed.

He swallowed hard and nodded when the Abbott handed him keys to their new house and told him where it was, and that he’d see their refrigerator and cupboard stocked before they got settled in:  the young husband and father nodded, for he had not voice to crowd past the lump in his throat.

 

Brother Florian hung up the phone.

The Abbott knocked on the door frame.

“Sparks,” he greeted the tonsured radio operator, “what’s the word?”

“I just relayed a fishing boat in distress to the Coast Guard in Mayport Station.”

“Mayport?”

“Florida.  Vessel is two miles offshore and taking on water.”

“I see.”  The Abbott’s voice was serious.

“My call was several minutes ago.  That was Mayport’s return call to let me know they made it in time.  All hands are saved, but the Coasties got there just in the proverbial knick of.”

He shivered and continued solemnly, “The boat sunk as they got the last one off.”

The Abbott smiled. 

This was not the first time his young radioman had provided succor to someone in distress.

The first time he’d done it was when Brother Florian was still Florian Bruce, working midnight shift for a city in Missouri:  he had a brand-new, two-meter talkie in his pocket and caught a slurred voice:  “I need help!”

He’d replied to the voice and gotten a location, and he admitted to the Abbot a sense of urgency when the voice said “I’m bleeding!” – and then responded to no more hails.

He’d called 911 and given them his information; it was in another 911 district, so one 911 operator talked with another and kept Florian Bruce on the line until they got the necessary particulars.

An hour passed, another:  Florian Bruce was being eaten alive by curiosity, so he called the jurisdictional police department and said “I’m the ham radio operator who called in a subject bleeding at such-and-such an address.  I know confidentiality keeps you from saying much, but could you tell me whether it was a righteous call, or did I just send the Forces of Good and Light chasing the wild waterfowl?”

The dispatcher chuckled and said no, it was very much a legitimate call:  as a matter of fact, when their officer arrived, the ambulance right behind him, the inside of the man’s car looked like it had been hosed down with red paint.

Brother Florian was on the air one week later when this same fellow who’d asked for help, came on their nightly ham radio net to thank the fellow radio operator who saved his life.  It seems that the clot blew where he’d been cannulated for hemodialysis, and the thick, ropy vein spliced into the radial artery proceeded to shoot blood all over his car.

He hadn’t the coordination to manipulate the fine little buttons on a cell phone, but that nice friendly two-meter ham radio mike hung on the dash, and he grabbed it, squeezed the button, and said (ahem!) “Help!”

The Abbott smiled to himself as he remembered the story, and he heard the satisfaction in Brother Florian’s voice.

“I like the sound of that,” the Abbott said. “ ‘All hands are saved.’ “

Brother Florian nodded, his face sober.

“Carry on, Brother Florian.”

“Yes, Brother Abbott.”

 

Jimmy was not at all surprised to see Jacob standing beside him.

Children are wonderfully flexible in their thoughts, and the appearance of a man dead well more than a century didn’t bother the seven-year-old in the least.

“Jimmy,” Jacob said, “I could use your help.”

“Sure,” Jimmy grinned.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

141.  PARTICIPATION

 

The pale eyed Jacob Keller was very much like his pale eyed sire, only younger, and his mustache had a distinct red cast to it, and his voice didn’t have that deep, reassuring quality Jimmy liked so well, but he had a nice voice and he seemed to have more of an understanding of boys.

Jimmy and Jacob’s boys got along fine – they were cousins, after all, or close enough, and then Jacob took Jimmy from his fine stone house and to another fine home, this on the other side of Firelands beside a long brick building he called the McKenna Dress Works:  a pretty lady with a narrow waist and a motherly manner hugged him and called him such a fine looking young man, and she asked if he was related to the Sheriff, and then a girl about Jimmy’s age came marching up and laid claim to his hand and said “Hi, I’m Sarah, come and see what I got,” and Jimmy, startled, looked to Jacob (who nodded and gestured that he should go with the girl) and directly Jimmy found himself conducted to the house near to the long brick building.

They went scampering around the house, hand-in-hand, giggling, and up a short set of stairs onto a mostly-enclosed back porch.

There was a big copper tub and Jimmy exclaimed in delight as he saw The Bear Killer again – The Bear Killer, as big and black and impressive as he always was, sitting regally as he always did, his shining, black, curly-furred bulk pretty well filling the copper tub … only the tub was filled with steaming-warm water, with a layer of soap suds, and The Bear Killer had a tapering crown of suds atop his head, for all the world like a regent’s crown, and The Bear Killer looked hugely pleased with himself.

Seven year old boy and the girl of a similar vintage proceeded to finish The Bear Killer’s bath.

The girl chattered quietly, her hands busy, Jimmy helping as best he could:  he held up a towel when The Bear Killer’s rinse was finished and the great mountain Mastiff flowed easily out of the tub and onto the porch rug, where he shook and slung an incredible volume of water an impressive distance, the two children refuging behind big cloth towels held up to shield themselves:  side-by-hide behind their woven shields, they both giggled, and Jimmy decided he liked it when this girl his age wore a big ribbon bow on top of her head.

They rubbed The Bear Killer’s fur, moving into an interior room where the sun slanted steeply through a window:  The Bear Killer flumped over on his side, on a folded blanket, allowing the pair their ministrations:  he patiently endured their careful toweling, seeming to enjoy the attention, and when they two were finally done, with black hairs thickly decorating both their hands and arms and their towels, the great black canine snored quietly in the sunlight, and Sarah put her finger to her lips and they tiptoed out of the room and out back to the wash basin.

The towels were draped over the tub; the maid, Sarah explained, would wash them separately from the rest of the family’s laundry, and they had a genuine Sears Roebuck machine that the maid used, and it was the very latest thing and would Jimmy like to see it, and Jacob came around the corner and Jimmy looked at Jacob and back at seven-year-old Sarah and blinked in surprise, for suddenly she was no longer a pretty little girl with a big ribbon bow in her hair, she was The Pretty Lady, and a woman all grown up, and Jimmy grinned again, delighted.

“Jimmy,” The Pretty Lady smiled, “Jacob and I have an idea,” and Jimmy considered their idea as she described it, and he blinked slowly the way he did when his mind was busy and he finally nodded.

Yes, he could do it, and Jimmy set himself busy with the project.

 

Jimmy returned to the studio there in the Silver Jewel, returned several times, worked on the project until it was done:  when he was finished and the paint dried, a man with a funny hat and a funny accent helped him stretch the canvas and frame the painting, and Jimmy sat and stared at what he’d done, stared for a very long time.

To see his work was to see his memory, and his memory was a good one.

The Bear Killer was in the background, mouth open, he was half reared, excited:  in the foreground, a red mare, forehooves just off the ground and rear hooves well off the ground:  she was spinning, twisting, her tail streaming to the side and her nose down between her forelegs, and on her back, a pale-eyed man with his hat in his hand, perfectly at home in the saddle, legs straight, his coat open and flying in the wind:  Jimmy’s young eyes were quite good, and he’d used the finest brush in the jar to detail the watch chain:  he’d taken pains to get the drape right, for it wasn’t a perfect parabolic curve of a man standing still:  no, the watch chain was half-floating as the horse dove and drove, and Jimmy captured the fob as well, standing away from the pale eyed Sheriff’s vest.

It was not the first oil portrait Jimmy did, but it was the first one in which he took great pride, for it turned out well indeed, and he, Jimmy, the artist, was most pleased.

The Pretty Lady hugged him and thanked him and put him in a funny baggy shirt with baggy sleeves that clung snugly at the wrists, and she put a funny hat on him like the funny-talking man who showed him how to stretch canvas and frame it, and Sarah declared as she adjust the beret on his fine hair, “There!  Now you look like a proper artist!”

Jimmy looked in the mirror and laughed.

He looked like those artists he’d read about, those Frenchmen in his Sheriff’s history book.

 

Jimmy approached his Sheriff that night.

He stood patiently at the man’s elbow until Linn stopped and turned and smiled a little at the lad’s quiet expression.

“And how was your day today?”  he asked in a gentle voice and Jimmy blinked uncertainly.

What if he doesn’t like it? he thought, and a familiar voice whispered, He’ll love it, and Jimmy impulsively grabbed his Sheriff’s hand and said “I got sumpin’ ta show you,” and pulled, and the Sheriff rose, curious.

Jimmy led him upstairs, to the room he shared with his little brother (but not for much longer, the Sheriff was having a second-story room added).

Jimmy’s room was neat, tidy, organized:  the bed was made, his brushes were laid out in order by size, grouped by function, and a cloth drape hid something rectangular on his easel.

Jimmy pointed to the easel.

Curious, the Sheriff looked at the concealing cloth, then at his son.

“Take a look,” Jimmy grinned.

Linn picked up the cloth, drew it carefully away.

He stopped, stared, took a step back, his mouth falling open.

Jimmy turned on the overhead light and Linn’s breath hissed out in an admiring, whispery “Ahhhhh!”

He saw a pale-eyed Sheriff, a lean old lawman in a black suit, bucking out a shining copper mare, a horse with flowing mane and tail, a horse in a twisting mid-buck:  Linn could almost smell saddle leather, hear hooves hit the ground, feel the delight in the rearing, grinning canine behind them:  his stomach was not sure whether to float in zero gravity, or to fall down a shaft as he relived this moment, captured in oils on canvas.

He knew what it was to buck out a good horse, and he himself had taken his hat in his off hand, whipped it at arm’s length as a balance, used it to fan the horse to greater effort when man and horse both enjoyed a good buck-out on a frosty morning.

Linn looked closer and saw the paints were old, with fine cracks, like the picture had hung somewhere for a very long time.

Jimmy’s signature was in the corner – a horseshoe, with a J in the middle – this was Jimmy’s work, just … old.

“I gave it to the other Sheriff,” Jimmy explained, “and Jacob gave it back to me.”

“When?”  Linn asked.

“Today.  He helped me set it up here.  He paid me when I painted it.”

Linn nodded.  “This is excellent work, Jimmy.  This is superb!”

He sat, cross legged, gestured the boy over, wrapped lean and strong-muscled arms around the gifted lad.

“That is beautiful,” he whispered.  “Jimmy, I am very proud of you!”

Jimmy realized that if he died in that moment and went to his eternal Reward, he could go happy, and he could go satisfied.

Someone he loved just told him they were proud of him.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

142.  HIGH BALL

 

Bill grinned as he coaxed a long, mournful howl from his Lady.

She was polished, she was shining, she was emerald green and brass and glossy black, she had fire in her belly and steam in her muscles and she breathed like a great, powerful animal, waiting to be turned loose against the mountain.

The steam whistle threw her song into the blue sky, a sorrowful note echoing from mountains and buildings alike.

A figure came running toward them – someone running along the railroad track’s coarse-gravel ballast – a man waving his arms, screaming something, and as he came up beside The Lady Esther, the engineer could finally make out what he was saying – or, rather, shrieking.

The engineer reached up, yanked the whistle’s chain, a quick, coded series of abrupt jerks, visible as white, condensing vapor, and audible as steam blasted from the whistle’s polished brass throat.

The Lady Esther was due to depart from Carbon Hill to Firelands – as a matter of fact, according to the engineer’s Ball watch, they should have started 30 seconds before, and he knew the conductor would be frowning at his own company-issued, nickel-cased pocket watch.

Given that they were not moving, and the engineer had given the alarm signal, the conductor slid down the handrails, landed flat footed on the ballast, and took off running past the shining green passenger car, headed for the engine as hard as he could run.

 

The Z&W dispatcher’s head came up, surprised eyes glaring at the brass sounder.

It wasn’t supposed to be clattering, routine traffic was already passed, unless –

He felt his blood cool several degrees, quickly, as if he was getting an IV of ice water.

His hand snatched up the pencil and the message clattered into his ears and out the pocketknife-whittled tip of the smooth-sanded, eraserless pencil.

He laid down the pencil, gripped the edges of the black gutta-percha straight key’s button between thumb and middle finger, index finger centered on top of the broad black button, and he tapped out his reply.

He felt his scalp prickle up, he waited for the acknowledgement, he slid open the drawer where they hid the telephone – they tried to keep an old-timey appearance to the depot office – he picked up the receiver, slid the writing drawer out and ran his finger down the typewritten names, slid sideways to the number.

“Firelands Hospital.”

“Emergency room, please.”

 

The Lady Esther backed steadily, the engineer hanging out as far as he could to see past the cars he was pushing.

He knew the tracks went well past the old mines; he knew these tracks were in good shape – they’d been maintained as well as the main line against the day when mining started up again – indeed, he’d backed a freight load of equipment not two months ago.

Roof fall, he thought, and shivered.

He remembered coal mines back in Kentucky and West Virginia, remembered how fast and silent the fall was, remembered finding a set of legs and miner’s boots sticking out from under an immense slab of stone, and not learning for two days that he’d found his best friend – recognizable only by the military dog tags he insisted on wearing; they alone had survived, and barely that – everything from the waist up was red paste.

An arm raised, his signal to stop: air brakes set up in sequence, he throttled her back:  his hands had eyes, minds of their own; they knew his Lady like a man knows his lover’s every curve and dimple, and The Lady Esther hissed disappointment through her popoff that she was made to stop.

 

Messages seared through copper wires like invisible lightning through a spiderweb.

Off duty nurses were called in, lab and x-ray technologists summoned:  the Firelands hospital tucked in its elbows and laced up its gloves, preparing for a fight.

Grim faced women in colorful scrubs moved on silent, crepe-soled feet, setting up trays and supplies, locking the wheels on sterile, shining gurneys, checking their pockets, retrieving extra trauma shears or penlights or checking their pens to make sure they were going to write the moment they were needed.

They clustered around sinks by twos and by threes, scrubbing in preparation for the work that would be coming, and soon.

 

Dean Carter strode for his ambulance, certain that at any moment the tones would drop and he would be told launch, launch, launch, and the carrier’s steam-powered catapult would fire his rig through the night like a fighter jet –

He shook his head, sighed.

Wait for it, he thought.

Don’t be in a hurry.

You’ll be needed soon enough, just … wait for it.

 

Tools and empty beer cans slung into the air and clattered to the corrugated pickup bed with an awful crash as the Dodge accelerated down the rough road:  wrenches and a toolbox slid across the truckbed, banged against the steel sidewall, punishing what little paint was left and adding a few more character dents to the already pebbled fenderwalls.

Two men were inside the cab, one gripping the wheel with white knuckles, the other gripping the ohmygawd handle.

Neither spoke as their headlights slashed the darkness aside, as they flew to the roundhouse.

The double doors slid open as they approached; the truck cackled quietly as they backed into a parking space, then both men rolled out of the cab and hit the ground running, running for the roundhouse, running for the second engine, the one that had been fired when the alarm came over the wire.

 

“It’s coming, lads,” the Chief said quietly, one hand on the squad’s West Coast mirror:  “pull out on the apron and stand ready.”

“Right, Chief,” the medic nodded, pulling the shifter down one click.

It was all he could do to allow his rig to idle out onto the apron, all he could do to stop and wait.

The bay door closed behind him, cutting off the cold fluorescent light streaming into the darkness like a man will cut a stick of butter in two.

“It’ll take us fifteen to twenty to get to Carbon,” the right-hand medic muttered.

The bay door opened behind them and a second squad nosed out into the night, pulled up beside them, stopped.

“Empty the house, why don’t’cha,” Dean said quietly, his voice tight.

“Firelands Squad One,” the dispatcher’s voice came over the cream-colored Motorola speaker.

Dean seized the mike, snatched it out of its clip, key down, professional voice.

“Dispatch, One, go.”

“Proceed to the depot and wait for rail transport, ETA three.”

Dean and Fred looked at one another, their mouths open.

“Dispatch, Squad One, say again your traffic,” Dean transmitted, giving the glowing radio head a glare as if to say My radio has gone insane.

“Firelands Squad One will proceed to the depot.  You will be taken to the scene by rail.”

“Squad One roger,” Dean said unbelievingly.

 

Marsha slapped the shower curtain back, grateful for the pocket scanner she’d brought in with her.

She dried of and dressed with a professional’s efficiency:  her clothes were laid out and ready, she didn’t have to hunt for anything, she was out the door with voice recorder, cell phone, camera and the excitement she’d come to love, her reporter’s love of the excitement that came of responding to a situation.

She looked at her car, looked down the street, considered.

It would be quicker to run to the depot, and Marsha had kept herself in shape, and Marsha had been back in her beloved Colorado high country for two years now, running every day, and she breathed deep and easy of the thin air as she sprinted for the depot, her girlish ponytail swinging with each step.

Nobody seemed to take it amiss that an attractive woman in a skirt and low-heeled pumps was sprinting down the street like a teen-ager running after the school bus.

She stopped, marveling a the sight of nylon webbing cupping all four tires of their ambulance, at the black exhaust cackling from the stubby pipe thrust out the top of the railroad crane, at the wire line coming tight and the boom sagging down an inch or two as the weight came on it.

Get the shot, her own voice shouted in the echoing space between her ears, and Marsha took a few deep, quick breaths to steady herself.

She brought her camera up, focused quickly on the black-and-gold New York Central railroad crane swinging an ambulance onto the only flat car on the train, she took the shot – several shots, grateful for the camera’s capacity.

She ran towards the knot of men talking quietly, intensely, ran toward the medic with a big orange tacklebox, sprinting with his partner from a second ambulance toward a boxcar with its door slid open.

Side door Pullman, she thought, smiling a little at the memory:  her father used the term once, when she was a little girl, explaining that during the Depression, when men used railroads as highways to walk from one place to another, the professional hobos referred to an unlocked, open boxcar as a “Side Door Pullman.”

This was no Pullman, she realized.

Pullman cars didn’t have screaming, bleeding men laying on their bare wooden floors.

 

“Last stop, all off,” the conductor sang.  “Last stop, all off, thank you for riding the Z&W and please enjoy your stay in Firelands.  The Silver Jewel Saloon is open for business, and there will be tours of the one-room schoolhouse.”

A hand gripped Marsha’s upper arm, towed her toward the private car.

“Get in,” a woman’s voice said, and Marsha turned, surprised.

“Are you a docent?”  she asked, surprised, for the pale-eyed woman wore an immaculate, beautifully-fitted blue-satin gown with yellow trim, and a hat to match – a lady’s attire of the late 1800s, but hardly something a tourist would wear.

The woman laughed, grabbed one of the porters’ stools, swung it into place under the cast-iron step.  “Up with you, now,” she said, “you’ll want to be in on this.”

Marsha slung the camera across her back, grabbed the painted, cast-iron railing, set foot on the pinstripe-trimmed, black-painted step, climbed aboard, grateful she was not in the docent’s floor-length skirt.

The docent followed her in, closed the door.

“Welcome to your office,” she said.  “Desk here, writing materials top drawer right and broad drawer under.” She rolled back the desk’s roll top.  “If you need more light, feel free to light the Aladdin” – gracefully-curved fingers and upturned palm indicated the green-shaded lamp atop the desk – “now if you’ll come over here, you can draw this curtain round about you, lift this lid and you have a private toilet.”  She gave the reporter an understanding look.  “Excitement can have an effect on a girl’s kidneys, you know!”

Marsha laughed at the docent’s frankness.  “Don’t I know it!”

Marsha heard The Lady Esther’s whistle, sharp and harsh, unlike her usual sorrowful, steam-dirge coaxed out of her by the engineer’s skilled glove.

Marsha dipped her knees, bending a little to see, looked out the original, wavy-glass windows.

“But we’re not connected to the train!”  she protested.

The pretty lady in the McKenna gown laughed.  “That,” she said, gloved finger upraised like a schoolteacher, “is about to be remedied!”

 

The Lady Esther was the pride, the flagship of the Z&W Railroad.

She was a Baldwin, made by one of the premier locomotive manufacturers of the day:  she’d run on the Z&W, she and her sister engine, until the owner’s death, when the new owner sold her:  she’d been shipped to South America, she’d been abandoned in the high desert, where she dreamed under the stars in the dry air, waiting for the day that she should be either broken apart and turned into something else, or returned to her home, to the Colorado mountains.

She’d been found, purchased, freighted back to skilled hands and an anxious public; she was in surprisingly good shape, for the dry desert air kept her from rusting (much).

She’d been restored; old photographs were consulted, journals read, sketches studied, she’d been repainted in the original Z&W livery.

Skilled hands re-traced the original numbers on the side of her cab, careful strokes of the artist’s brushes brought the ribbon-tied rose to life beneath the engineer’s window, gold lettering was aligned beneath, and The Lady Esther was alive again, steam-driven wheels singing on steel rails once more.

She had a twin engine, known simply as “Number Two” – where the name The Lady Esther proudly shone in bright, gold leaf on the side of the flagship’s cab, supported by an upright, ribbon-tied rose, her twin’s white lettering on the green-painted flank read Z&W RR, and beneath it, the number 2, with a single rose lying under.

Number Two eased backward, slowed; Marsha watched the black wall of the tender come nearer them, steadily nearer, guided by the watcher on the ground:  a broad, arm-waving signal and she knew the engineer had been given the stop command, just as the couplers banged into one another, each half seizing the other in a steel-knuckled grip.

Men disappeared between the observation car and the tender and she heard air sing into the lines beneath her feet.

“We have steam now,” Marsha heard the docent say.  “There is water in the overhead reservoir for handwashing.  Would you like some tea?”

Marsha blinked, surprised:  the woman was placing a tray of dainty little finger-sandwiches on the intimate little table, placing delicate china teacups on fragile-looking saucers, and she realized the question was more of a gentle command.

“Yes, thank you,” she murmured, kicking herself for not replying with a genteel “That would be lovely, thank you.”

“We will follow the relief train to Carbon Hill,” the docent explained.  “There may be the need for a swift return.  The engineer is not comfortable pushing a train when speed is required – but with Number Two on this end, they will have two engines’ effort, they will have a leading engine for the return trip.”

“I see.”

“Have you ridden behind steam before?”

“Twice … back East, both were scenic railway excursions.”

“Excursions.”  The pretty lady’s laugh was gentle.  “This is a rescue mission.  There are still men trapped underground.  I understand the mining firm has a vehicle convoy enroute with men and with tools.  Are you familiar with coal mining?”

Marsha shook her head.

“It’s some of the most dangerous work there is.  I don’t know what happened, exactly, only that several wounded were borne off and taken to hospital while we were loading up.”  She gave Marsha a warm look of genuine interest, then laughed.

“I’m afraid you’re not really dressed for rough mining.”

“I dress professionally,” Marsha said stiffly, bristling a little.

“You can see how I’m dressed, dearie!”  the docent smiled.  “At least you won’t have to snatch up your skirts to climb over rocks.  Although” – she tilted her head, looked pointedly at Marsha’s legs – “I could dance in those shoes!”

 

Two men were trapped.

“Rob,” one called, his voice quavering.  “Rob, you still alive?”

“Yeah,” Rob coughed.

“Rob, I can’t feel my leg.”

There was the sound of dirt shifting, dust flavored the air, making his teeth gritty as he swallowed, shivered.

“I see something,” Rob gasped.

“Where?”  The voice was desperate, its owner twisting his head back, trying to see something, anything in the overwhelming black of the utterly lightless mine.

They heard the sound of digging, then light blazed out of the dirt and seared a bright oval against the low ceiling overhead.

Both men blinked, their eyes protesting the intensity of the industrial miner’s lamp, neither willing to look away, desperate for this sign that the dark had not yet won.

Their eyes watered and they focused on the figure of a boy, a dirty-looking boy in a ragged shirt and knee pants, bare feet thrust into worn miner’s boots, a boy wearing gloves and digging in the dirt with both hands.

“Who else is with you?”  Frank quavered.

The boy stopped, looked at him, blinking. 

“I’m sorry, mister.  I live here.  I’m all there is.”

Rob coughed, spat gritty phlegm, shivered.

“Can you get us out?”

The boy excavated grimly, pulled a rock loose, rolled it aside.

“I’ll try.”

 

The Lady Esther screamed defiance as she shouldered into her load.

The engineer opened the sanders to give grip to steel wheels on steel rails; he eased her throttle open, giving her all the power his experience told him she’d take, and when she exhaled, smoke blasted into the air, defiantly boiling into the afternoon sky.

Behind her, Number Two, running in reverse, pushed her tender and the private car:  they weren’t sure why some idiot left the private car in the way, and they didn’t care:  they hooked on, connected up, and reversed after the relief train.

The engineer and the fireman in both locomotives looked at the signal as they left the Firelands station.

The signal was up, the white was showing, the semaphore’s arm pointed toward the heavens, and both engine crews proceeded to fire their boilers a little more heavily.

They’d been given the high ball.

“Come on, my Lady,” the lead engineer muttered as he adjusted the water, “show us what you got!”

The Lady Esther screamed like a Fury and thrust powerfully against the steel rails.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

143.  BOX 65

 

“We’ll get there faster.”

Dean grunted.

“Ride’s smoother.”

Another grunt, a frown.

“Hell, Dean, think of the mileage we’re gettin’!”

Dean blinked, looked at his partner, then laughed, his sour tension broken.

“Yeah, Fred,” he agreed.  “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Say, what does policy say about running lights to an emergency?”

Dean snatched off his Navy-blue ballcap with the round Star of Life on the front and swatted at his partner.

“Boys,” Maeve scolded gently, shoving up through the bulkhead door, “remember now, we’re representing the Department and we have to remain dignified since we’re in the public eye.”

“Yes, Mother,” Dean and his partner chorused, “we’ll be good!” – Maeve shook her head as Dean stuck his tongue out – “Nyahh!” and she sighed as Fred’s expected “Nyahh, nyahh, nyahh!” came back.

It was a ritual between the two.

Maeve knew they only did it when nobody else was around, she knew they used rotten humor to defuse tension, she knew they were both not just good medics, but damned good medics.

She also knew she had a role in this little play, and she played her part with an exaggerated sigh, uplifted hands, eyes rolled to the cloth ceiling panel: “Children!  I am inflicted with children!” – and withdrew back into the patient module, turning to settle into the rear-facing seat against the driver’s side of the bulkhead.

 

The boy was making good progress.

He was standing spraddle-legged, digging with both hands, throwing dirt and rocks behind him, laboring steadily.

“Your shoulders have to be getting tired,” Frank gasped.

“I’m okay.”

Frank managed to work his left hand down back of his backside.

It took most of his strength to do it, to work through sandy dirt and find the gloves he’d taken off and rolled up and thrust into a pocket.

He pulled them free, extended them as best he could.

“Here,” he coughed.  “Spare your hands.”

The boy stopped, his face shadowed; the miner’s lamp was stark, white, sterile against the ceiling, and everything was cast into light and shadow, almost black-and-white.

There was no mistaking the delight in the boy’s voice.

“Gee, thanks, mister,” he exclaimed.  “I never had gloves before!”

Frank sagged, coughed, spat.

“Rob?”  he called.

Silence.

“Rob!”  Frank’s voice was sharp, harsh in the mine’s profound silence.

A grunt, a snort, then a drowsy “Yeah, Frank!”

“Rob, I need a beer!”

Rob’s voice was pained.  “People in hell want ice water,” he countered.

“Well aren’t you just the bundle of sweetness and light,” Frank muttered.

“You watch it or I’ll come over there and knock you into the middle of next week!”

“Yeah?  Wednesday or Thursday?”

Rob wheezed, groaned.  “I can’t feel my legs,” he moaned for the fiftieth time.

“Yeah, well, your legs don’t look that good anyway.”
“I reckon yours are better!”

“You should see me in a mini skirt!”

“Oh Gawd,” Rob groaned.  “First my legs an’ now I’m gonna go blind!”  He pulled futilely, trying to dig his elbows into the rocky floor, trying without success to so much as budge himself from the debris that pinned him.  “You in a mini skirt?  Hell, you got chicken legs!”

“Yeah, God loves you too!”

The boy kept digging, grabbing rocks, rolling them back.

He exposed the rest of the miner’s light – it had been slung over Fred’s off shoulder, before the supporting belt broke – he worked more quickly now, almost desperately.

Frank noticed the boy wasn’t breathing hard, and he wasn’t sweating.

He was in too much pain to do anything with this realization, and as dirt and stone was cleared off his legs, fresh circulation sent pain signals screaming through newly-refreshed nerves.

Frank pulled, pulled again, felt himself shift – it was less than an inch, but his heart soared.

Maybe he wasn’t buried alive after all.

 

Men with jacks and timbers ran into the mine.

Specialized mine rescue equipment rumbled off the rollback and up the grade into the mine:  flanged wheels hummed and whined apart and down and engaged the ancient mine rails; the small continuous miner was run forward, followed by the close-coupled conveyor:  men and tools rode these low cars, the men bent over or laid down, for the mine was not generous in its height.

Once the collapse was found, the work started:  a heavy metal shield was brought up, braced; continuous-belt diggers bit into the loose material, began dragging it back and onto the conveyor:  material dumped from one conveyor to another, all daisy chained together with secure metal couplers and heavy electrical cables, the heaviest running to the outside, to the big military grade Diesel generator.

Floodlights bleached the color from the landscape as The Lady Esther came whistling into the Carbon Hill depot with its cargo of medics and relief supplies, and a reporter in a skirt and blouse, camera on her left and her “warbag” – a messenger’s bag, roomy but efficient, slung across her chest and hanging on her right.

She started taking pictures just as dirt began pouring out of the end conveyor, thrust half its length out the drift opening, cascading rock, sand and dirt into the waiting dump truck.

 

Fire Chief Fitzgerald took a noisy slurp of reheated coffee.

Fresh coffee was brewing, but he’d poured stale coffee in his mug and run it through the microwave:  he wanted to charge his system for the night’s work, and the day that followed.

He frowned as the Welsh Irishman shouldered through the man door:  “Fresh doughnuts!” he sang in that glorious tenor of his.  “Still warm!  Hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry!  Get ‘em while they’re hot!”

The Chief waited until the Brigade swarmed the doughnut box, until they’d drawn their coffee, until they’d stuffed their faces and looked to him for orders.

“Fellas,” he announced, “we’ve got one squad over there.  Second squad is released from hospital and is on its way back here.”

He looked around, meeting every eye.

“I can’t gut the department to stand by over there.  There’s little we can do.  The company has mine rescue on site already.  They were in town for some kind of a demo or so I was told and they’ve got Coxy’s army over there.”

“Do we send the second squad?”  the Welsh Irishman asked.

“No.  Not unless they ask for it.  We’ve got the town to cover.”

The phone rang and the English Irishman strode across the bay, snatched the receiver off the wall unit.  “Firehouse.”

He listened for a moment as every eye in the station turned to him, waiting, listening.

“Can do,” he said, and hung up.

He turned to the Chief.

“They need support staff, Chief.  Food, drink, they’ve got generators and lights but they need someplace for people to set down and take five.”

The Chief nodded.

“Call Box 65.”

The English Irishman turned to the wall phone, punched a number from memory.

It was answered on its first ring.

“Box 65.”

“Mark, have you copied traffic for Carbon Hill mine collapse?”

“Ah-firm.”

“Need you to respond, they’re asking for rest and refreshment.”

“On our way.”

 

Frank pulled free of the fall.

“I’m alive,” he whispered, incredulous, then: “Rob!”

Labored breathing is all they heard.

Frank’s head came up.

“Rob, hear that?  They’re digging through for us!”

“Light,” Rob whispered faintly.  “Shine the light so they don’t eat me up!”

Fred nodded, dug out his hard hat, knocked the dirt out of it; the head lamp shone brightly, steadily, its thick power cord still tethered to the heavy rectangular battery.

He gripped the battery awkwardly – his belt was broken, useless – and he managed to work the red-plastic power source into a torn pocket.

The corner dug into his thigh.

He ignored it, pulled on his extra set of gloves and began digging.

“Hang on, Rob.  We’re gettin’ you out of there.”

 

The dead came out first.

They came out in black-rubber-looking body bags, each with a solemn-faced miner:  these were carried to a tent set up for the purpose.

A red ambulance-looking vehicle with BOX 65 in gold lettering stood nearby.

Tables, chairs, coffee pots, a grille:  the sun was long since set now, and rescuers and support staff both knew that men would drive themselves at the scene of an emergency, neglecting their own hydration, their own meals:  the grille ensured that all were reminded by the fragrance of burgers and coffee that they should refuel their personal engines.

Box 65 may have been volunteer, but each volunteer was prior law enforcement or a prior firefighter or a prior medic:  every one of them had put their lives under the siren and every one of them knew what it was to be where every one of the rescuers was.

Knives sliced through fragrant, fresh tomatoes, piled them on platters; onion added its sting to the air.  Mustard in yellow squeeze bottles, ketchup beside the mustard, paper plates, disposable trash cans set up and ready, and periodically a blueshirt would load a tray with coffee and water, with sandwiches and cookies, and make his rounds, and every time he returned with an empty tray.

 

Marsha watched, her experienced eye sorting through the men: she smiled as she remembered something the pale-eyed Sheriff told her once: “Leaders like to point,” and so she walked up to the man who appeared to be pointing and giving orders.

“You’re in charge?”  she asked.

“Who’s asking?”

“Marsha Jones, the Firelands Gazette.  I don’t want to get underfoot.  What can I tell friends and family at this point?”

The foreman opened his mouth for a retort, sighed, closed his mouth.

“Thank you,” he said quietly as a blueshirt stopped with a tray of refreshment:  he gulped black coffee and bit savagely into a burger; he chewed, swallowed.

“Thank you,” Marsha smiled, accepting a burger and a coffee.

“There was a collapse,” the foreman said, the edge taken off his temper by her consideration and by the food: “we’ve got dead and we’ve got injured.  Four injured went to Firelands on the train, and God bless that railroad! – it would be a bear, getting an ambulance out here and over that damn-rough dirt road –“

“It is a mess,” Marsha agreed.  “Ruts, washboard.  I think the Sheriff said it was as smooth as the inside of a brick chimney.”

The foreman blinked, looked closely at Marsha.

“My God,” he blurted.  “You’re Bruce’s little girl!”

“You’ve got me,” Marsha smiled.

“Dear God.”  He shook his head.  “You’re all grown up!”

“I get that a lot,” she said innocently, then stuffed the last of her sandwich in her mouth.  “How many dead, or do we know?”

“Three so far,” he said grimly.  “Three more not accounted for.”

“How far back in?”

“About two hundred feet.”  He shook his head.  “These old mines are usually stable. Dry, you understand.  Back East it’s so damp timbers rot out and they subside, but here …”  He shook his head.  “It looked stable.  It looked for all the world like it was okay.”

“Are you okay?”  She gripped his shoulder, eyes full of concern.

“No,” he admitted.  “No I’m not.  I knew every last one of those men.”

 

“Here,” the boy said, handing Frank a spud bar.

Four feet long with a chisel tip, it was the perfect tool for what he needed, and Frank knew how to use it.

Frank began driving at the top of the pile, thrusting hard:  he assaulted the top of the pile like a personal enemy, grunting, desperation lending to the strength of his assault.

“Anything?”  Rob coughed.

Frank looked down and saw blood … Rob coughed again and Fred turned grimly back to his work.

The bar drove through into emptiness.

“I’M THROUGH!”  he yelled, working the bar frantically, enlarging the hole, dropping a little to shine his light through the hole.

He slashed at the edges with the bar, enlarging it, dropped the bar, began digging with gloved hands, yelling.

He could hear the continuous miner’s counter-rotating belts gathering debris and dragging it back, he could hear shouted voices and he shone his light through the hole, screaming triumphantly.

The continuous miner shut down and he saw men running for the pile of debris.

He turned to the boy, grinning.  “WE MADE IT!  WE’RE GETTING OUT –“

The boy was gone.

 

RESCUE AT CARBON HILL, the masthead read in its old-fashioned lettering:  under it, the sub-titles, arranged as had been the newspapers of the 1800s.

AMBULANCE TRAIN, one read.

FOUR MEN DEAD IN MINING ACCIDENT

ENGINEERS TO ASSESS PLANNED MINE WORKS

 

Beneath the mastheads, the pictures:  the Firelands Fire Department ambulance, riding on a railroad flatcar, with the caption Swift and Efficient Transport of Injured.

Another, a general shot of the scene, showing conveyor and dump truck, men and machines, harshly limned by the big quartz floodlights:  Rescue in Progress, the caption.

Unlike her father, Marsha made good use of Internet subscriptions:  she wanted to get the electronic edition of the Gazette into the ether before the ubiquitous cell phone photos flooded her scoop.

Most of her e-content would be reprinted, either in her own newspaper, or picked up by the wire services, another reason she used the long-obsolete format.

It was unusual, and the unusual caught the eye.

Editor Marsha Jones, of the Firelands Gazette, hit SEND, spent another several minutes arranging the articles for the newspaper’s next printing, then she shut down her computer and picked up her warbag, slinging it across her body and heading briskly for the door.

She hadn’t changed clothes since responding to the emergency, but that did not matter.

She was headed for the hospital to see if she couldn’t interview one of the survivors.

 

Marsha leaned on the hospital bed’s siderail, gripped Frank’s hand.

“Rob made it,” she whispered.  “He’s out of surgery.”

Frank nodded, bit his lip, squeezed his eyes tight shut, his hand tightening on hers.

“How is he?”  he whispered hoarsely as a tear ran out the corner of his eye and down into his ear.

“I don’t know,” Marsha admitted.  “He is alive.  I don’t know what they had to do and I don’t know what they found.”  She squeezed his hand again.  “I will try to find out, and I’ll report back.”

Frank nodded, looked at her, almost pleading.

“Nobody found the boy,” he blurted.

“Excuse me?”

“The boy.  When we were trapped … the boy dug me out.”

Something cold trickled down Marsha’s spine.

“He was in the mine?”

Frank nodded, swallowed.  “Said he lived there.”

“Describe him.”

“Maybe ten or twelve, skinny.  Dirty shirt too big for him, a shock of greasy hair half standing up, looked like cobwebs in it.  Knee pants all ragged and a wore out, and a pair of miner’s boots that looked too big.”

Marsha nodded, looked up as a woman came to the bed.

“I’m his wife,” she said uncertainly, not really sure who Marsha was.

“Then you’re just what the doctor ordered,” Marsha said briskly, patting Fred’s hand.  “Heal up.  Any man with such a beautiful wife has to get better!”

 

Frank was in hospital another three days.

On the day of his discharge, Marsha came to his bedside again.

Frank was asleep.

She left a tin can on his bedside table, an immaculately clean can that used to hold peaches, a can with its label removed and folded and placed carefully inside the can.

A pair of gloves was also thrust into the can, dirty and scarred-up fingers sticking out.

Marsha left without waking the man.

After her conversation with this survivor of the mine’s collapse, after his description of a skinny, underfed boy who never got short of breath, who didn’t tire, who didn’t break a sweat, a boy who delighted in a pair of gloves – “Gee, thanks, mister, I never had gloves before!” – after their conversation, Marsha went to the Mercantile and bought a large can of peaches, a can opener and a box of forks:  she drove over to Carbon Hill and to their ruined Mercantile:  she stepped carefully over fallen timbers and around collapsed walls, smiling at the memory of the pale-eyed docent who’d told her she could dance in her shoes – well, aren’t I dancing now, getting to the back room? she thought, and almost laughed.

Marsha squatted, thumped the can of peaches down on the floor:  she set the can opener atop it, deliberately making a racket, placed the forks beside, then she knocked on the floor and said loudly, “The man you dug out thanks you.”

She hesitated, then added “I thank you as well.”

Marsha rose, made her way to the slanting doorway in the leaning wall.

She heard a quiet, woody sound behind her, turned.

Peaches, can opener, box of forks …

Gone.

Marsha waited until the next day to come back.

She went to a particular grave in the Carbon Hill churchyard.

The can of peaches was there … open, empty, spotlessly clean inside and out.

The label was removed; a pair of gloves was thrust into the can, fingers up.

Curious, Marsha pushed the gloves aside, saw the label was folded and inside the can.

Carefully, delicately, she teased the gloves out, unfolded the label.

It was folded so the blank side was out, and in a childish scrawl, written in pencil, the words, You’re welcome.

 

It’s said that a woman’s tears are a powerful talisman.

Tear bottles were not uncommon in the Victorian era; saltwater, shed in grief, was caught, and kept – that this was done, is well known; the use of the tears shed in the powerful, soul-ripping moments of sorrow, is not so well known.

Perhaps there is more to this than one would believe.

You see, when Marsha read that pencil scrawl on the reverse of the paper label, she sank slowly to her knees and rested her hand on the tombstone.

She considered what it must have been like, to be alone, knowing death was imminent, and only the intervention of a boy saved a man’s life.

She never told anyone of the tears that ran down her face, for she knew the legend of the boy, and in his short, hard lifetime, just how lonesome he must have been, and where her tears fell, a patch of blue flowers sprouted, and for years that little cluster of forget-me-nots grew at the foot of an orphaned boy’s tombstone.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

144.  DEPOT

 

Chief of Police Will Keller sat in the dispatcher’s office, looking around at the carefully-blacked cast-iron stove, followed its tin chimney pipe up and over and across the wall and then out the roof.

He looked up at the big Regulator clock, steady and solid and with its big, easy to read face, its shining brass pendulum wagging metronomically inside the glass faced enclosure.

He looked at the telegrapher’s back, at the neat, sharp creases down the back of his shirt, at the black galluses that crisscrossed just below his shoulder blades, at the elastic sided townie shoes the man wore, and he was grateful for the hidden but very effective air conditioner.

He swallowed.

His mouth was dry, his throat sticky, he was wound up like an eight day clock.

You’ve no reason to be nervous, he thought.

People get married every day.

Things will go just fine.

He thought of the basket weave carved gunrig he wore under the black suit.

“Brown, so it will stand out,” his bride-to-be said with that quiet smile of hers, “basket weave because you don’t like the fancy carving the Sheriff favors” – she tilted her head a little and smiled – “and you strike me as a two-gun man.”

She’d found a second Security-Six, twin to the one that rode his right hip.

The left-hand revolver had a delicate, gold-filled vine-in-a-border around the muzzle; the infamous billboard warning was gone from the side of the barrel, replaced with “To my dear husband Will, from your loving wife” – with scrollwork fore and aft, just a little bit of tasteful gold curlicue, standing out from the blued-steel gunbarrel, flawlessly duplicating the engraving about the muzzle of his dead sister’s pistol.

He wore the double gunrig under his hand made black suit, he balanced his black, broad brimmed Stetson on one knee, he wished for a moment he were in a rocking chair instead of the armless wooden chair, surplus of the Masonic Lodge.

A neighboring Lodge caught fire; they had padded stadium seating, originally from a movie theater; the seats were not damaged, the insurance sold them off, their Lodge now had padded seats and the original hard-bottom wooden chairs migrated out into the community.

Two lived here in the telegraph office in the old Firelands depot, and Will occupied one.

Linn sat in the other.

Neither man spoke.

Occasionally the brass sounder clattered; the telegrapher reached a casual hand over to the key, tapped a reply, picked up his pencil and turned clicks and clatters into a coherent message.

He tore the sheet off the pad.

“From Denver this time,” he said, laying it on a small stack:  “so far that’s Carbon Hill, Cripple Creek, Denver, Snowshed, the State Police – multiple posts – three military installations, two Congressmen, a Senator.”  He tapped the stack, grinning.  “You’re a popular man, Chief.”

“Yeah,” Will said, his voice strained, then he cleared his throat.  “I suppose.”

There was a knock on the door; the dispatcher looked as Parson Belden opened the door, looked in.

“Chief?”  he asked, and Will could hear the smile in the man’s voice.

Will rose, feeling distinctly like a man going to the gallows.

Linn rose with him.

Parson Belden nodded at the Chief’s appearance.

“Chief, you clean up well,” he said approvingly.

“Yeah,” Will gasped through a throat the diameter of a coffee stirrer.

He hadn’t felt this puckered-up nervous since he’d found that bomb wired into a road grader during a coal mine strike back East.

 

Jimmy grinned at the big-eyed boy, sketching quickly, confidently.

“Wish I could draw like that,” he sighed.

The boy wore a shirt too big for him; it was out at the elbows, his knee pants were ragged, worn in the seat; his miner’s boots were scuffed, the soles gone to nearly nothing, and they were clearly too big for him.

Jimmy grinned again.  “It’s easy,” he said.

The lad shifted uncomfortably.  “I’m hungry,” he admitted reluctantly, and Jimmy thrust his pencil between his teeth, reached into a coat pocket, pulled out a pressed fruit and nut bar of some kind his Mama gave him in case he got the hungries.

“Here,” he said.  “Try this, they’re good!”

From the manner in which the tousel-haired lad gobbled the bar down, it must have been.

“Are you here for Uncle Will’s wedding?”  Jimmy asked hopefully.

“Nah.  I just came ‘cause of the train.”

“You like trains?”  Jimmy asked eagerly and the other boy’s face brightened.

“Yeah!”  he said enthusiastically, then his face fell.  “I only get to ride in the box car, though.  If nobody catches me.”

“There’s gonna be food after the wedding,” Jimmy offered, turned the page on his sketch book, looked up at the video cameras – two mounted on the depot’s porch posts, another on a tripod at ground level.

“Mama said it would mean an awful lot to Uncle Will if I’d draw what happened.”

“Wish I could draw,” the ragged boy said mournfully, then he turned and said “Uh-oh,” and Jimmy looked up, looked around.

The boy was gone.

Jimmy shrugged, perched himself on the barstool that was placed for his convenience, pad across one thigh, grinning.

He’d never been to a wedding before!

 

“No!”  Wesley Albert grinned, showing little white teeth and a happy expression.

“Yes,” Connie said in her I’m-the-mommy voice.  “You will sprinkle those flower petals out just like we practiced.”

“No!”  Wesley laughed, then chewed happily on the edge of his finger, looked around with big and wondering eyes.

It didn’t matter to the almost two-year-old that he was all dressed up – a white shirt and bow tie, vest and short trousers, shining shoes and cuffed-down knee socks meant as much to him as his favorite cowboy boots and underwear – and, of course, his hat, which he missed.

“Hat?”  he said hopefully as the two violinists nodded to one another – one was a third of the way in from this end of the platform, the other was a third of the way in from the far end; they wore their Sunday best, newly made, just like Will’s suit, and cut from the same pattern:  they’d struck a deal with the seamstress, via the wedding planner, who looked suspiciously like the Sheriff’s wife – she’d worn her best Innocent Expression while negotiating – but in exchange for these new suits, the Daine twins would provide the wedding processional and such music as might be suitable for the dance that followed.

They agreed that these fine new suits would be payment in full, and neither seamstress nor planner had any doubts that these would become their Sunday-go-to-meetin’s, marryin’ and buryin’ duds.

Truth be told, that was the twins’ full intent, and if we were to skip forward for the next few years, those were the suits they did indeed wear for matters of state.

For the moment, though, their rosin-blocked bows stroked the strings in unison, and the crowd, gathered in front of the depot platform and across two sets of railroad tracks, stilled their happy chatter:  a goodly percentage of them wore garb of the mid-1880s, due in large part to the example set by the Ladies’ Tea Society – who were there as well, looking at once feminine, dignified, and as pleased as if they themselves had a hand in this happy event.

In a way, they had.

Will had gone to the one-legged seamstress and entered into a conspiracy:  she would make Marsha a fine gown of emerald green, and Marsha would have it to wear to the Ladies’ Tea Society, and when she did, Will stepped in the back door under color of being invited as their guest speaker.

His presentation was brief and to the point, and involved wearing his newly-made black suit, cut after the fashion of the mid-1880s, with his Stetson tucked properly under one arm as he went to one knee and asked this beautiful woman in the emerald green gown if she would consent to be his bride.

Connie squatted behind young Wesley Albert, handed him the woven basket of rose petals.

His Honor the Judge, scratching the beard he was growing, grinned broadly through his growing thatch of salt-and-pepper whiskers:  he’d seen portraits of his predecessors, and every last one of them had a dignified, spade-cut beard.

The Sheriff told him over coffee and fresh hot sourdough one night that every man ought to grow a beard at least once in his life, and His Honor decided he’d give it a try, and so he chuckled and scratched the itchy growth as he watched young Wesley Albert claim their depot platform, now a stage, as his very own.

The crowd watched the mother point and speak with a quiet smile to the little boy, video cameras followed the happy patter of eager young feet as he positively strutted to the middle of the depot, where he dumped the basket out, threw it down and happily declared, “No!”

The Bear Killer gave a quiet “whuff!”, trotted out to the laughing little boy and nosed him from behind:  Wes went sprawling and began to protest most vigorously as the big black Mountain Mastiff picked the lad up by the seat of his pants and bore him rather unceremoniously back to his Mama.

This, of course, was met with a good ripple of laughter:  even the engineer, leaning out of The Lady Esther’s cab in bib overalls, flannel shirt and hickory striped hat (in honor of the occasion, he wore a clean hat), laughed at the little episode played out there at the Z&W depot.

Not to be outdone, the Daine boys stopped their violin-like Wedding Processional and went into a brisk Turkey in the Straw for The Bear Killer’s recessional:  juvenile howls of protest and a red-faced, arm-waving, stereoptical fit added to the moment, and three tall men in black at the end of the platform were by now red-faced with laughter.

Linn bent down and picked up the lad, hoisted him quickly to more than his own head height, slung him down between his legs and up again:  tears and a little boy’s scarlet-cheeked fury turned to laughter, and Linn brought the boy up and declared in a loud voice, “Hey Wes!  Your Uncle Will is gettin’ married!  You wanta help?”

“No!”  Wes declared happily.

“Good!”  Linn flipped him around, took him by his crossed overall straps and carried him like a piece of luggage, casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world:  Connie marched out to the middle of the depot, ahead of the men, turned with her arms crossed, patting her foot, and gave him The Look.

Linn brought Wes up and looked at him, then looked at Connie, and looked at Wes again.

“I think we’re in trouble,” he said, pitching his voice for the crowd to hear, and Wes nodded and declared, “No!”

Linn handed the laughing little boy off to his Mama, who carried him to the end of the platform and down the stairs at the end, coming around to the chair waiting beside Jimmy’s stool.

Parson Belden walked out with the men, red-faced and chuckling.

He’d read accounts of his predecessors, and his dear wife came into the kitchen the night the Parson was reading about Sarah McKenna and Daffyd Llewellyn’s wedding, where there were hilarious interruptions, and ending with “Turkey in the Straw” as their wedding recessional, where even the dignified, hard-as-nails Sheriff ended up skipping down the aisle with his Lady on his arm, following the newlyweds’ joyfully childish gait.

Somehow the Parson imagined that one of his own successors might be entertained by the account he planned to write that night.

Will and Linn looked down at the pile of flower petals, now scattered by the depositor’s ungainly fall and removal.

Linn frowned, tilted his head and pointed.

Will looked at Linn, looked down, tilted his head, took a step to the side, frowned at the deck and pointed.

Linn circled the spot and pointed again, looked to the crowd, made a face, lifted his foot and looked at his boot sole, made another face, and Will took off his hat and swatted Linn across the shoulders, which brought more laughter.

“We’re supposed to be serious about this!”  Will declared loudly.

“I am serious!”  Linn countered. 

“No you ain’t!  Now if we don’t straighten up your wife is gonna beat us both and my wife is gonna beat us all over again!”

“Don’t worry, Uncle Will,” Linn declared, his hand on his uncle’s shoulder, playing to the crowd:  “as long as we don’t hear the whistling launch of the Dreaded Inter-Continental Ballistic Frying Pan, we’ll be all right!”

Connie stood up, held a cast iron frying pan at arm’s length over her head, turned slowly around so the crowd could see it, then she turned and shook her Mommy-finger at the pair.

Linn put his knuckles on his hips.  “Connie,” he challenged, “have you been givin’ lesson to that poor bride-to-be?”

Connie brought the frying pan down to shoulder height, planted her free knuckles on her own hip and replied in a clear and ringing voice, “I have been giving her husband beating lessons and a matched set of four frying pans, and I told her she could get in practice by beating you!”

Will spread his hands helplessly.  “Folks, I’m sorry,” he laughed, “this is not at all what we’d planned!”

As if on cue, the left-hand Daine played a quick “shave-and-a-haircut, two bits” on his curly-backed fiddle.

Will and Linn removed their hats, ran their hands over their hair, resettled their black Stetsons and executed a crisp military right-face.

There was a collective in-draw of breath as Marsha came around the corner.

Will’s mouth went dry and he felt his stomach drop about twenty feet and his hearing kind of faded and things sounded far off and tinny and his world shrank until he was looking down a culvert, down a tunnel, his world shrank to oh my God she’s beautiful and what did I ever do to deserve this and she chose me and oh God let me be worthy and she’s coming toward me and that dress looks really good –

Will never noticed the two ladies that marched with her, their step slow, dignified, stately:  a mother and her young daughter:  the mother’s gown was a dark shade of blue, just matching her eyes, and the daughter’s gown, appropriate for a child of their past era, was a little below knee length, and the same shade.

It would not have mattered if they’d worn grease paint and circus attire.

Will would not have seen them.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

145.  YOU’RE DAMNED RIGHT I DO!

 

 

The one-legged seamstress had done her work well indeed, for there was a significant amount of firepower on the depot platform:  the chief’s matched pair of revolvers, with the border-and-vine, gold-filled engraving about each of their muzzles; the Sheriff’s belt gun and its twin in a shoulder rig; the Parson’s slab side .45 automatic with its checkered panels, worn from years of use, comfortable to his hand, flat and hidden inside his waistband and under his coat:  even the ladies who flanked the bride had their Persuaders of an Ungentle Nature, and knew how to use them very well indeed.

Connie alone was not armed, for she reposed full faith and confidence that her men would keep her safe, and in this, for this moment, she was content.

 

The boy flinched at the man’s unexpected voice. 

“Is the weddin’ over already?”

He turned and saw a set of sympathetic eyes over a boldly curled mustache:  the man’s black hair was divided down the middle, absolutely black and gleaming with slickum, he wore sleeve garters and an apron, and he was industriously buffing the mahogany bar:  the man behind the bar saw a slender lad in a black suit and boots, his hair neatly combed, greatly different from the tousel-haired waif in what amounted to rags who’d quietly voiced his distress to the younger boy with the drawings.

Coincidentally, the attire Mr. Baxter saw was identical to the outfit Jimmy was wearing, but of course Mr. Baxter had no way of knowing this, and even if he had, it would have made no difference.

“I was hungry,” the boy admitted, his stomach complaining at being tormented by the tantalizing smells from Daisy’s kitchen.

“I was the same myself at your age,” Mr. Baxter admitted.  “Let’s see if we can’t scare you up something.”

Man and boy, they walked together down the hallway toward the kitchen.

A set of Irish-green eyes and a brisk, “You’re just in time!” greeted them, and the boy found himself pressed into service carrying trays of unbelievably good smelling food into the big main room of the Silver Jewel saloon.

 

The Parson’s presentation was not lengthy, but neither was it unnecessarily brief, and neither Will nor his bride heard a single word of it.

Matter of fact, when the Parson said “Do you, Will, take this woman –“  Will blurted “I do!” – to which the Parson said solemnly, “Read the fine print before you sign the contract, son!” to the entertainment of the assembled, the flame-eared blush of the groom, and the quiet amusement of the bride, who was trying with no luck at all to hide her smile.

Will waited for all the have and holds, better and worse, sickness and health, and he looked quizzically at the sky pilot when the Parson added the phrase, “For fair and for slab” – but he looked at his bride and she felt his hands tighten a little on hers and she saw him grin.

Uh-oh, she thought, here it comes – and it did.

Will took a deep breath, declared loudly and happily, “YOU’RE DAMNED RIGHT I DO!” – to which a voice in back yelled “You tell ‘em, Will!” – which released another wave of quiet laughter, followed by hearty applause.

Jimmy looked up, grinning – his hands were busy, he was sketching fast – but he looked up just in time to take that mental snapshot, and he turned it into graphite on paper, and Uncle Will’s delighted expression, his mouth open in solid declaration, ended up framed and matted on the happy couple’s living room wall for many years, but that’s getting ahead of our story.

Connie remembered the thrill of that absolute, that unequivocal declaration that her betrothed gave in front of God and everybody, on what amounted to a stage: her memory was a series of snapshots – her nervous swallow before her own demure “I do,” how his hand trembled just a little as he slipped the ring on her finger, how she marveled at his big thick finger as she worked the ring over his knuckle … she remembered the Parson pronouncing them man and wife, the feel of her husband’s arms around her, his mustache against her face and how he dipped her back as he kissed her, then picked her up like she was a child, how he turned to the crowd and shouted “May I present Mrs. Will Keller!” and how the cheers and whistles soared over them like a wave on the ocean, how The Lady Esther screamed happily, her whistle blasting a pure-white steam-cloud into the flawless blue sky, how Will carried her across the depot platform and down the steps, and how he carried her to the waiting private car and set her feet on the cast iron step.

“I won’t risk dropping you,” he said, “you’ll have to climb up yourself” – then she was in his arms again, and he kicked the door open, carried her across the ornate, restored, private car’s threshold and back-heeled the door shut.

Still in his arms, still giddy with excitement, her eyes shining, she raised her face to her husband, and her husband accepted her invitation.

For an old guy, Will was a pretty good kisser.

 

The Daine boys fiddled their way up the street toward the Silver Jewel, and the crowd followed, chattering and laughing, anticipating the evening as the streetlights came on.

The thoroughfare was blocked for the occasion.

It wasn’t every day a man as well liked as their pale eyed Chief of Police got married, and when there’s reason to celebrate, people liked to do just that.

After a good old fashioned square dance right in the middle of the main drag, the assembled just plainly packed the Silver Jewel, and did full justice to two days’ worth of food preparation.

 

Marsha decided in very short order she liked their private car.

The Lady Esther took them as far as she could legally run, then they were switched to a string of passenger cars, and taken on a scenic excursion.

They had no real destination.

Marsha had seen Niagara Falls and two oceans, she’d been to Hawaii as a teen-ager, she had absolutely no overwhelming desire to ever return to an Eastern city, and so their itinerary was pretty much a big, looping circle.

A very nice, big looping circle.

Twice they found themselves mistakenly coupled between passenger cars, part of a chartered sightseeing trip, and through some confusion or miscommunication, there was a steady traffic through their old-fashioned, plush, ornate car – mostly porters, a few guests – but every visitor was received with a quiet grace, host and hostess attired in the period of the velvet-trimmed car, and Marsha learned from her pale-eyed husband’s presentations the history of this particular private car:  how it had been the rolling office of one of the first Territorial Judges, the Honorable Donald Hostetler, and even yet, Will added with a wink and a twinkle, there was occasionally the rich, fragrant odor of a freshly-lighted cigar, the half-glimpsed figure of a dignified, older man with a spade-cut beard seated at his desk, reviewing legal briefs or other matters of importance.

Marsha made the discovery they never told their guests about.

When the car was restored, it was restored according to what was read in a very old journal, hand written by the second Sheriff of Firelands County, Colorado.

What appeared to be a closet was actually a jail cell, a jail cell that was quite functional, very secure, and even contained a few sets of irons that had, in their time, been applied to some very undesirable people.

Will would explain to their visitors that this was their honeymoon, and they had reserved this car for that purpose, which invariably garnered an apology for the intrusion; he spoke of the furnishings, the décor, the car’s history, but he never, ever mentioned what was in that closet.

It was easier to prevent misunderstandings than it was to try and explain them away.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

146.  GHOSTS, OR SOMETHING?

 

Wilma Kincaid re-read the e-mail.

Ms. Kincaid, if you wish more information on the subject of your visit our area, please advise.

L. Keller, Sheriff

Firelands County, Colorado

“Formal, aren’t we?”  she murmured aloud, then smiled a little behind the finger curled across her lips, leaned her chin into her cupped hand.

“Wordy, too.”

She switched screens, consulted her calendar, smiled again.

A week, she thought.  I can go for a week.

She raised her head, considered for a moment, then switched back to the messaging screen.

On my way, she typed, hit ENTER, waited, biting delicately on her knuckle.

Her eyes widened with delight.

“Janet?”  she called, not looking away from her screen.  “Could you do me a favor?”

Her roommate came barefoot from the bathroom, bundled in a white terry robe, briskly toweling her long, straight hair.

“When you’re dressed, could you run me to the airport?”

“Airport?  Wilma, what’s gotten into you?”

Wilma turned her laptop and Janet’s mouth fell open.

“Tickets, prepaid,” Wilma giggled.  “I’ve got to pack!”

 

Linn and Connie watched the private car disappear around the far bend:  it was a sure bet Uncle Will’s attention was not on the shrinking view of the Firelands depot, nor would he see his nephew standing with his Stetson upraised in a farewell salute, but Linn did it anyway, tall and straight and proud to be seen with his wife on his arm and young Wesley Jacob hanging onto his pants leg, swinging out over the dropoff at the edge of the depot platform.

They followed the Daine twins as they struck up a familiar air, and the crowd streamed after them, funneling in an orderly chaos out into the street.

“Did you plan this?”  Connie asked, leaning close to his ear to be heard over the community of voices that surrounded them, and Linn grinned down at her, picked Wes up, then turned him upside down and casually carried the laughing little boy by his ankles.

“This is Will’s doin’,” Linn replied, raising his voice to be heard:  they stopped beside a rain barrel and Linn held the laughing little boy over it, letting the lad reach down and just touch the water’s shimmering surface.

He brought Wes quickly upright, dizzying the red-faced lad and bringing another cascade of delighted little-boy giggles:  these were contagious, and like fast-sprouting seeds, they scattered smiles through the already good-natured crowd.

Jimmy worked his way through the crowd, pencil in one hand and his sketch pad in the other, and he fell in the little clear eddy behind his Sheriff’s long legs.

There were those who thought the identically-dressed lad beside him was perhaps a cousin, come for the wedding, but none took note of the second boy with him, the one with a grin on his face and bread crumbs and a dusting of powdered sugar on his coat’s lapels.

“Where are they going?”  Connie asked, and Linn stopped, gave her a long look … Connie saw sadness in her husband’s eyes, and as the crowd flowed around them, he ran his arm around her waist and drew her to the side, she and the boys, up onto the boardwalk and into the shelter of a store’s recessed front doorway.

“Will,” he said, then closed his eyes and cleared his throat and tried again.

“Will and Crystal  had their fallin’-out, you recall.”

Connie nodded.

“It … Will found out after her first seizure, when her personality went bad … he found out it was a brain tumor and he blamed himself for not seeing it earlier.  She died soon …”

Linn closed his eyes again and took a steadying breath.

“Will blamed himself for it.  He told me he was the husband and he was the provider and the protector and he should have known somehow.”

Connie reached up, gripped his forearm.  “I’m sorry.  I … I knew Crystal …”
“She went downhill fast, you’ll recall.  Went from healthy and normal to …”

Linn swallowed, lowered his head enough that his hat brim hid is eyes.

Connie reached up, pushed up the Stetson’s felt with her forefinger.

“She meant a lot to you,” she whispered.

Linn nodded.

“Nasty as she was there at the last … Will knew that personality change was the tumor and not the Crystal he’d known.”  Linn threw his head back, took a great, gut-stretching breath.  “He’s going to … he’s taking her ashes back to where her family has a graveyard.  That’s one stop they’ll be making.” 

A circle formed spontaneously out on the main street, with multiple smaller circles inside, and the caller chanted into his chrome microphone on the Silver Jewel’s boardwalk, “Two more couples!” and Linn turned his back on the community’s happiness, took his wife in his arms.

Linn was a strong man and Linn was a hard man when the need arose, but there were times when Connie saw his vulnerable self, and she realized that if she ever got in such a way, he would have a really hard time of it, for the loss of Crystal was tearing him apart … not because he loved his aunt, but because he knew his uncle loved her with every fiber of his being, and now he was going to say that final goodbye when he should be rejoicing instead.

“I’m glad Marsha is with him now,” he said hoarsely, drawing her close, holding her tight, and Connie held him just as tight and pretended not to notice the man’s slight shiver as he laid his cheek down on top of her head.

 

A young woman in a short skirted suit and a chauffeur’s cap stood patiently with a sign, and Wilma spotted her right away.

It was hard not to, with KINCAID in big, old-fashioned letters on the white rectangle, letters that looked like they would be at home on the masthead of the Tombstone Epitaph.

“Wilma Kincaid,” she said, and the chauffeur smiled and said, “Let’s collect your luggage,” and Wilma heard a trace of an accent – she couldn’t quite place it – then she followed the younger woman to the carousel, and finally out to where a silver Crown Victoria was waiting.

“How was your flight?”  the pretty young chauffeur asked, opening the heavy car door; Wilma slid in, the door closed, and Wilma brought the seat belt across her, made it fast.

The car was immaculately clean – spotless, inside and out – it was obviously several years old, but could have come off the showroom floor an hour earlier.

All but the smell.

Instead of that cloying, new-car smell, it was more like … mint, after a spring rain.

The chauffeur climbed in, touched the key, shifted into gear.

“My flight was fine, thank you.  I took the Sheriff’s advice and I’ll rent a laptop when we get to Firelands.  He said I might not want the Powers that Be pawing through my files and copying everything they could find.”

The chauffeur laughed.  “He and my father,” she smiled, merging smoothly into traffic.  “Daddy never liked the idea of the government snooping like that.”

“Your father?”

“Roger Taylor.  He was chief of police.  Did you know him?”

“No … no, I’m sorry, I don’t believe I met him.”

“He died of a heart attack a few years ago.  The Sheriff’s uncle, Will Keller, came out of retirement and took the Chief’s job and frankly the community was just as happy.  They know Uncle Will and they like him.”

“Uncle Will?”

The chauffeur laughed. 

“He’s not related but he might as well be.  He’s giving me away when I get married and he was there right beside Daddy for school plays and Marching Band and graduation.  He’s more like a favorite uncle than just someone I know.” 

Wilma nodded, remembering someone like that from her own high school years.

Conversation lulled for several minutes, then the chauffeur said “My name’s Marlene.  So you’re the ghost hunter?”

Wilma laughed a little.  “I didn’t … I didn’t intend to be,” she admitted, “but when I saw some things I couldn’t explain on the train ride, I started asking questions, and … well, someone stuck me with the name and here we are!”

Marlene laughed.  “Firelands is haunted, all right,” she said in a confidential tone.  “When I was a little girl I saw a golden pony with shining gilt hooves running down the street.  It had just an awful saddle – all yellow and black and silver and gaudy as a cheap hooker’s pumps!” – she made a nose-wrinkling face – “and an acrobat was doing handstands and somersaults in the saddle.

“I was excited and I told Daddy about it and he told me it was my imagination and to stop telling stories and he came out to look and she was gone.”

“Daciana,” Wilma breathed.

Marlene looked over at Wilma, eyes wide and startled.  “You know her?”

“I’ve read about her,” Wilma said carefully.  “Have … have you read the Old Sheriff’s journals?”

“I kind of read at them,” Marlene admitted.

“He discusses Daciana in … I think it’s the second volume.  I would have to …”

Marlene looked at Wilma, surprise and delight in her expression.  “You mean it wasn’t –“

“You may have seen the real Daciana,” Wilma nodded.  “She was a trick rider and her circus pony’s name was Buttercup, and her saddle was just as gaudy and flashy as you’ve described.”

“Then it wasn’t imagination!  I did see it!”  Marlene squeaked, bouncing a little in her seat.

“Did you see anything else that you remember?”

Marlene laughed.

“I’ve been told the ghost of Sarah McKenna walks the streets regularly, and sometimes she teaches school, but honestly I wouldn’t be able to tell.  The Ladies’ Tea Society all wear the old-fashioned outfits and they are volunteer guides on the scenic railway and for tours of the town.  If Sarah’s ghost did walk among them, you wouldn’t be able to tell one from another!”

“Has there been anything … recent?”  Wilma asked carefully.

Marlene blinked, frowned.  “No … no, nothing that I’ve heard.  Why?”

 

They were just coming in sight of Fireland when Wilma said “Slow down!”

Marlene’s foot was quick on the brake and she brought the Crown Vic down from the speed limit in a hurry.

Wilma’s pointing finger directed the chauffeur’s attention to the right, to something off their passenger front fender, something less than a hundred yards from them.

It was an enormous horse, a truly huge, black horse, with a woman riding … a woman in white silk, streaming out behind her, cloak and skirt and her hair was flying back with them, and she gripped the shaft of a lance in her right hand, a lance socketed in her right stirrup, a lance with a shining, silver-white tip, so bright it was almost too bright to look at.

They saw this rider for several seconds, and the immense black hound coursing along beside, saw them with utter clarity and unmistakable certainty, then they … disappeared.

Marlene brought the silver Crown Vic to a stop, stared through the curved windshield with big and astonished eyes, then looked at Wilma.

“I didn’t just see that, did I?”  she asked slowly.

Wilma’s eyes were just as big and she nodded.

Marlene swallowed.  “Was that a ghost, or something?”

“Horse, rider and dog,” Wilma said faintly, then she looked at the pretty young chauffeur.

“Ghosts,” she affirmed.  “Or something.”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

147.  CALL ME TILLY

 

Wilma smiled as she stepped into the Silver Jewel again.

She had one suitcase, Marlene carried the other, and they laughed quietly as Marlene looked around and speculated on how many ghosts they would find here.

Tilly tilted her head a little, regarding the newcomer – she knew Marlene, she’d gone to school with her – as it was evident the two knew one another, she waited until a lull in the conversation before greeting Wilma.

“You’re back!”  she said and her voice smiled as she spoke the words:  Wilma turned and laughed a little, blinking as she focused on the discreet little name tag pinned to the hotel clerk’s bodice.

Call me Tillie, it said, and Wilma’s face reddened a little, for she tried to call people by their right name whenever possible, and she really wanted to remember the desk clerk’s name.

“I got the Sheriff’s e-mail,” she explained.  “What’s been going on?”

Tillie laughed.  “You’ll have to ask the Sheriff.  I’ve been working and taking care of Mama.”

“Oh, dear!”  Wilma murmured.  “What’s going on with her?”

Tillie looked helplessly at Marlene, and Marlene looked away, then looked back.

“We’re taking turns staying with her,” Tillie explained.  “We had to get a sitter to stay with her while Marlene came for you.”

“I’d better get back,” Marlene interjected. 

“Tell Rosie thank you for staying with her,” Tillie called after Marlene’s retreating backside.

“Mama has Alzheimer’s,” Tillie explained, typing quickly:  keyboard and printer were hidden behind and under the counter, retaining as much as possible the original appearance of the hotel’s desk.

“The Sheriff already took care of your lodging.”  Tillie turned, plucked a key from one of the pigeonholes, then reached in with two fingers and withdrew an envelope.  “I’ll see you to your room – here’s the key – Marlene looked a little funny.  Did something happen?”

Wilma gave Tillie a long, appraising look.

“It was a ghost, wasn’t it?”

Wilma dipped her knees, gripped the grey Samsonite’s handle, stood.

“Marlene laughed when you were here before.  She doesn’t believe in ghosts and she wasn’t very kind when she told people how much she thought you were a fraud.  She stopped when the Sheriff explained you just came out to ride the scenic railway and you saw some things you couldn’t explain, and the Sheriff said you were doing what any good detective did.”  Tillie picked up the other suitcase and the two women started for the stairs.

“He didn’t come out and say you were a detective, but that’s kind of the impression he gave.”

They stopped at a familiar door, the same room Wilma stayed in when she was here last.

“The Sheriff has everything paid for.  Whatever you need.  Room service, meals in your room if you like –“

“He’s done all that?”

Tillie nodded, smiling a little.

“He’s adopted a little boy,” Tillie continued, “and his own boy is about two, and he’s cute and he knows it!”  Tillie giggled.  “His uncle Will got married” – Tillie stopped, looked at Wilma with dismay. 

“You … did you know the Sheriff’s mother passed away?”

Wilma nodded.

Tillie blew out a relieved breath, looked around.

“Everything here in the room is right where it was when you were here last.  We try not to change anything.  Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“Thank you.”  Wilma stared at the bed, her eyes distant.

“Is everything all right?”  Tillie stopped, turned, raised a hand and laid her fingers delicately on Wilma’s shoulder.

Wilma bit her bottom lip, shook her head, reached up and laid her own fingers over Tillie’s.  “I’ll be all right,” she whispered, “but thank you for asking.”

Tillie withdrew, wondering what she’d just seen, wondering what grief their semi-infamous Eastern Ghost Hunter brought with her.

 

Neff was all they ever called him.

His given name was Brian Neff, but somehow his last name became generally used as if it were his first; it was unique in the community, he didn’t seem to mind, and when the Captain handed him coffee and asked “Neff, what was that out there?” … well, Neff looked thoughtfully down the street, leaned back against the cruiser, looked back at the Captain.

“I can tell you this,” he said quietly.  “That was no ghost.”

Cap laughed.  “No it wasn’t,” he agreed, “but by God! for a minute I thought it was!”

Neff nodded, tasted his coffee, wished he had a sandwich to go with it.

“How long do you reckon that poor woman will live?”

“Her?”  Neff chuckled, took a noisy slurp, swallowed.  “Strong as she is, she’ll outlive both of us!”

“Sad.”

“Yeah.”

Neff looked at a stray cat, flowing up the empty street, moving with the stealthy grace of the hunting feline.  No prey was seen on the bare concrete apron of the local gas station, but cats are creatures of habit, and had a mouse or a bird magically appeared, the perpetually-hungry cat was already in the hunter-killer mindset.

“I remember when she sang in church.”

“Played piano, too.”

“Good voice.”

A nod, both men sipped their steaming coffee.

“Good thing Rosie was with her.”

“Good thing.”

They sipped again, each man remembering how Tillie’s mother, (poor old soul!) tended to wander, how she’d made it halfway to Carbon Hill one night, and how she’d been brought back by a man they’d never seen before, a man who looked somehow …

somehow … familiar …

… a man driving a physician’s surrey drawn by a good-looking chestnut:  he’d helped her out of the surrey with the grave courtesy of a century ago, he’d kissed her hand and walked her to her front door, talking quietly.

Neff saw the man bring her back and he asked afterward who the man was, and the silver haired old woman blinked and caressed Neff’s cheek and exclaimed happily, “Brian!  Why, you’re all grown up!” and she’d insisted he come inside for tea, and he had.

One advantage to being a small town cop, he knew, he could take such moments, especially when he was figuring out something he really didn’t understand.

Tillie’s Mama was delighted that she had a guest, and Rosie, who’d stayed with her while Tillie worked and Marlene was called away on an assignment, was grateful for the respite:  she sat in an overstuffed chair, her head rolling over against the headrest, and she was almost instantly asleep.

“Who was that fine looking gentleman who brought you home?”  Brian asked, sipping his tea and smiling gently, looking more like the schoolboy she remembered than the grown man he’d become.

“Oh, dearie, didn’t you recognize him?  That was Doctor Greenlees.  He is such a nice man."

She nodded a little, he head tilting to the side, and her hands cupped the teacup as if savoring the warmth the way she'd savored the flavor a few moments ago.

Neff waited as the minute stretched into two, then three, and finally he cleared his throat and asked, "Ma'am, what was Dr. Greenlees doing out this time of night?"

She blinked, then her eyes followed something that traced a diagonal path across the room.

"He’d been out delivering a baby at one of the ranches."

She laughed a little, the polite, little-old-lady laugh he remembered so well, and it was not until two days later, when he carried a little boy into the hospital, a lad who’d fallen from a tree and broken his arm, a lad whose arm he’d splinted with tight-rolled newspaper and duct tape (to the astonishment of the newly minted paramedic working ER that day) – not until two days later that he stopped in the ER hallway and stared at a glass-plate photograph’s print, one of a stash found under the stairs of the old photographer’s office, one of the several that had been reprinted and sold as a fundraiser.

Neff stood and stared at the print, and he remembered the dignified man in the old-fashioned suit, the man with a spade-cut beard, a man with the good manners of a previous century.

The man whose print he was looking at, hung on the hospital’s wall, matted and framed, a spade-bearded man in just such an old-fashioned suit, standing with a good looking chestnut hitched to a physician’s surrey, a man standing beside a pale eyed Sheriff with an iron grey mustache.

The engraved brass plaque beneath the print read Dr. John Greenlees and Sheriff Linn Keller, 1889.

A nurse stopped and tapped his upper arm with the back of her hand.

“Hey, stud,” she murmured, “have you heard?  The ghost hunter is back in town!”

Neff swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, and he was grateful he’d disciplined himself on such matters, otherwise he knew he was liable to open his mouth and his thoughts would fall out and hit the floor.

He turned back to the print, quite frankly staring at the images that looked at him from across better than a hundred-year-wide gulf.

It’s about time, he thought.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

148.  A GOOD CONSPIRACY

 

Their private car was switched yet again; they were on their long eastward leg, and they were not to be disturbed:  the doors were locked, the solicitous porter assured them he would personally see they were not troubled, and after his final delivery of a light meal, he withdrew and closed the door carefully, waited for Will to lock it from the inside, tried the latch and knob and found them secure:  he touched the short, shining bill of his cap, winked, returned to the shining aluminum passenger car from whence he’d come.

A flatcar was hitched behind the private car, for the sole purpose of holding Dumb John, the sensor box and flashing red light that replaced a good honest caboose on modern rail lines:  somehow, Will preferred the caboose, but then as a boy he always wanted to ride in a caboose, and never had.

He turned out all the lamps in the private car, all but one, and he turned it down low, down to where the mantle was just glowing and that was all:  it had oil enough to burn all night, the wide base was secure enough, and on a rubber gripper pad that looked almost like a lacy doily, if you squinted some and used your imagination – then he considered if the train went into an emergency braking situation, and thought of that oil reservoir falling to the floor and breaking and probably catching fire.

He turned the wick down until the flame died.

Marsha heard his chuckle, smiled to hear it, for he had a quiet way of laughing that delighted her.

She didn’t ask, but if she had, Will would have told her about the lamp, and how he’d realized that for what he intended, no light was needed.

Will turned and walked over to the bed, looked down at what he knew was his wife, waiting for him.

“Mrs. Keller,” he said in a gentle voice, “may I join you?”

“Mr. Keller,” she replied, “you may.”

It was the last conversation they held for the rest of the night.

 

Jimmy slept soundly.

Linn considered this a profound statement of trust, that the boy would surrender himself to defenseless slumber, and he vowed to never, ever violate that trust.

When he slipped into the room, it was in his sock feet, with just enough light from the doorway to see that his boys were both covered, were both breathing.

He slipped back out and drew the door shut.

As the wedge of light diminished and then disappeared entirely, its last probing finger streaked down across some papers on Jimmy’s desk.

The top sheet was the last drawing he’d made.

He’d put four vignettes on a sheet of the eggshell drawing paper:  all four drawings were of two boys, identically dressed in neckties and coats, trousers and boots:  one was very clearly Jimmy, the other a lad whose hair wanted to go a-tousel, but was mostly combed down:  the boys were, in one vignette, running together, with the expressions of happy boys:  the next, they were hunkered down, one with an open jack knife, the other apparently having just flipped his, and stuck it in a circle drawn on the ground – a boyish game of mumblety-peg, no doubt – the third showed one boy just coming in the door, while the other carried a heaping tray of steaming food toward a well loaded serving table, and the fourth, the boys were sitting side by side and apparently eating with a good appetite.

The Sheriff would see these, but not for another full day.

 

Marlene wiped the dash of the silver Crown Vic.

Mike Hall had done most of the work, bringing it back to new condition:  it was not the Chief’s original Miss Vickie, but it was close.

It was an Interceptor Crown Victoria, it was completely overhauled, and it was back in the garage.

Mike asked Marlene to use it for the airport run, and to report any shimmies, shakes, whines, squeals, jerks, groans or anything at all that wasn’t just A-number-1 hunky dory.

She’d given it a clean bill of health (after taking it up to 120 on a particular section of Interstate), and so Mike began the final phase of the general conspiracy.

He’d put so much work into restoring the body, getting it to his standard of absolute perfection, that he couldn’t stand to watch while the electronics tech drilled holes for the police band antennas:  for this, he turned his garage over to the man who knew what he was doing, the man who’d done this countless times before for a variety of agencies, the man who took advantage of previous radio mounts and previously drilled holes and previous wire runs.

He’d taken a full day to do it, but when he was finished, not only were the radios mounted, but also the slim, low-profile light bar and the new taillights with built in LEDs, as bright and abrupt as strobes of the previous generation had been, but with a longer service life, less electronic noise and lower operating temperatures.

The tech had assumed a particularly undignified position, his head under the dash, the rest of his body twisted and wedged down between the front of the seat and the door frame; he could barely see a tall man with a Stetson and flannel shirt, and he had a glimpse of curled mustache and a pale eye.

“That,” he heard the man say, “looks right uncomfortable.”

“Yeah,” the tech grunted.  “You could say that.”

He labored a few more minutes.

“Say, could you hand me that –“

He wiggled out, sat up, looked around.

“Be damned,” he muttered.  “Now where’d he go?”

 

Linn tapped a quick sequence of keys, gripped his mouse, started to smile, then his pupils dilated and Chief Deputy Barrents saw the Sheriff’s face go serious.

Pale eyes looked up into black eyes and held for a long moment.

“You’d better take a look at this,” the Sheriff said, and Barrents came around back of the boss’s desk to see what was on his screen.

Barrents saw a dignified, older gentleman in a severely-cut black suit and a black Stetson, standing with an exaggerated, lapel-gripping, chin-up, stuffed-shirt posture, in front of a private railcar:  they could just see the signature Z&W rose beside his left elbow:  on his right arm, a good looking woman in a lovely emerald-green gown, holding what looked like a fresh-plucked daisy:  her gloved hand was wrapped around his arm, and as exaggerated a self-important pose as he struck, hers was just as much the opposite:  warm, genuine, and most pleased to be seen on this man’s arm.

Linn’s voice was soft as he read the caption.

“Never knew so many railfans here.”

A click, another picture, the same pair standing on the platform of the railcar:  Uncle Will had his Stetson off, raised in salute, Marsha was waving with one gloved hand, her other on her husband’s arm, and the pair looked immensely pleased with themselves.

Linn read the caption aloud:

“I could run for office with a reception like this!”

“This third one is the one I wanted you to see.”

Barrents watched as the third picture slid across the screen.

Linn felt his segundo’s sudden stillness as the man absolutely froze.

In the foreground, a tombstone, a small square of sod displaced and replaced, barely visible unless you were looking for it, and on the stone the name, CRYSTAL VICTORIA KELLER, and beneath it, Loving Wife and Mother, and beneath this, her birthdate and deathdate.

Linn touched the mouse, scrolled the little wheel on top to zoom in.

Barrents leaned closer to the screen, his hand gripping the Sheriff’s shoulder.

“Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit,” he whispered.  “I didn’t know they were headed that far East!”

“Will said he had a surprise in mind,” Linn nodded, “but I don’t think he figured on that!”

The tombstone in the background, the old stone Linn zoomed in on, was a simple slab as was common in the mid-1800s:  a winged skull was relief carved into the top margin, and underneath, the italicized Memento Mori, a common motif of the age.

This is not what caught their eye.

Linn saved this screenshot, this old tombstone, darkened with age but still visible, still plainly read despite the years.

Connie Lee Keller, it read:  18 y 2 m 2 w

Wife of Colonel Linn Keller

Daughter Dana Lynne

2 y 1 da

Barrents nodded and Linn heard his breath sigh out his open mouth, and the Navajo gripped the Sheriff’s shoulder as one man does another in such moments.

Linn went back to the first shot.

“Crystal Victoria,” he murmured.  “I never knew her middle name.”

 

Across town, in Mike Hall’s garage, the painter was nodding with satisfaction.

He’d done a good job lettering the cruiser.

The Firelands PD door decals were smooth and straight, and above each, in italic script, the word Chief, and on the front fenders, in smaller letters of the same style, the special request he’d received from the Chief’s fiancée.

He raised his phone, took a full-broadside shot, then came in close for the fender detail, took that second shot.

He entered a number, hit SEND, watched the green bar reach across the top of his screen, and he knew the work he’d just done would be seen by the newspaper editor who requested it.

Crystal reached into a hidden pocket, pulled out her phone and touched the screen:  a few quick gestures and she smiled, a secretive and womanly smile, and she slipped the phone back in her pocket.

“Is all well, dearest?”  Will asked as a uniformed porter knocked, then opened the end door of their private car:  another white-jacketed fellow brought in a tray with shining silver plate-covers, placed it on their table and bowed silently back out, back to his aluminum passenger cars.

“I’d placed an order,” Marsha smiled.  “It’ll be delivered after we return home.”

Will nodded, drew out a chair, and his wife settled gracefully into it.

“I am so very glad I had more of those McKennas made for you,” he said.  “You do look good in a long dress!”

“Why, Mister Keller, flattery will get you everywhere!”

 

Sheriff Linn Keller looked at his own phone, at the script Miss Vickie on the front fender.

“Marsha, dear heart,” he said aloud, “you are a fine and understanding wife!”

He chuckled and shook his head.

“I do love a good conspiracy!”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

149. HOMECOMING

 

The Captain clapped his hand heartily on Neff’s shoulder, handed him a steaming cup of coffee.

They were parked in front of the bakery again.

Whenever possible, the two lawmen loafed against the fender of their cruiser as they drank their coffee:  it allowed them to see the street, it gave them the chance to interact with passers-by; not infrequently, a local, motoring past, would either stop and exchange greetings, or give a bit of news, or pull over and come hustling up with the latest off-color joke, or a report of a repair that went particularly well … stuff that people share in a small town, where everyone knows everyone else.

“Neff,” the Captain said as he handed off the steaming paper cup of US Navy Motor Fuel, “you run into the damndest things!”

“Yeah,” Neff sighed, taking an experimental sip and frowning.  “Dag-gone, Cap, I just scalded the hair off my tongue!”

“Warm, ain’t it?”  the Captain agreed. 

They sipped their coffee, then the Captain said “Now tell me again just what in the hell happened at McFann’s.”

“Well, y’see, it’s like this,” Neff began, at which point the Captain thrust his left arm straight in the air and he intoned in a sepulchral voice, “It’s over the boots, save the watch!” – to which Neff retorted, “Do ya know me or what?”

They both laughed and then Neff told him about the call he’d taken earlier that morning.

 

The boy was as any other – active, curious, perpetual motion on two hollow legs, a walking appetite with an intense interest in everything.

He’d studied ants marching in column, smelled his Mama’s flowers, marveled at a bird’s nearby swooping arc and threw a smuggled dog biscuit to his Beagle in its wire pen.

He’d found an arrow.

This wasn’t unusual.

Boys have a bad habit of dropping something when they’re done with it, which is why dear old Dad’s tools end up disappearing, or rusted up some; he and his little brother were practicing archery with their father, and somehow one arrow was dropped, or otherwise misplaced, and the lad found it.

He picked it up, tossed it cheerfully in the air:  he caught it, twirled it like a drum major, strutting for several yards, leading an imaginary marching band, then he remembered seeing his Pa check a shaft for true, and he held it up, looked down its length, turning it slowly.

He’d pointed it down the street when he did and he heard a juvenile yell, “Pa, he’s pointin’ a gun at me!”

He focused at the voice and there, a block and a half away, a little boy was pointing and jumping up and down.

Now the subject of our story knew better than to try to run or hide; instead, he thought, I’ll show ‘em he’s a dirty little liar.

He tossed the arrow up again, caught it, shot a look down the street.

A man ran out, put his hand behind the alarmed liar:  the arrow descended, was caught:  this time he stuck the arrow out at right angles, so the man down the street could see it was an arrow, and he turned it, knowing the fletching would be seen:  he then turned toward them, sighted down its length again.

It worked.

The man cuffed the protesting child on the back of the head and harsh words were heard, and shortly a police cruiser pulled up and a conversation was held.

The cruiser came on up the lad’s driveway, and another conversation was held, in which the boy was assured he’d done nothing wrong, and he was not in trouble, and that was a fine looking arrow and when the worried-looking mother came out, wringing her hands in a dishtowel, Neff had assured her he was sharing a pleasant memory with a little boy who’d discovered an arrow, for he had been a little boy once and he’d delighted in his own bow and arrows.

Cap nodded and took a pull on his coffee.

“A man has to be King Solomon sometimes,” he said thoughtfully.  “Sounds like you handled it well.”

The bakery door opened with its cheerful tinkle of the spring mounted harness bell above:  “Cap, we’ve got your order ready!”

Cap grunted, shoved up off the cruiser’s fender.  “By golly now,” he declared, handing his coffee to Neff and stepping up to the baker, “that does smell good!”

“Will’s coming home today, I take it?”  the baker grinned.

“Yep.  The man only took a week.  I told him hell, take a month, we’ll still be here, but he said no, a week would do them in fine shape.”

“I put a little extra in there,” the baker winked.  “I know you like the powdered sugar cream filled.  They’re over in this corner.”  He tapped the sizable, white-cardboard box.

“Why thank you!”  Cap exclaimed with a quick, boyish grin, and the baker grinned back, for it wasn’t often he got to surprise the man in such a way.

 

“Whoopee cushion on the driver’s seat.”

Cindy’s expression was absolutely innocent as she made the suggestion.

“Office filled with balloons,” Barrents added.

“His, or hers?”

“Mmm.”  He frowned.  “I don’t think it would be a good idea to put a clown mannikin in beside her desk.”

“Not unless you want it shot,” Linn laughed.  “She’s getting pretty good with that revolver!”

“Good point.”

“We could just tell him welcome home and here’s your car.”

There was a long silence.

“Are you sure you don’t want to fill his office with balloons?”

Linn laughed.  “I’m full of hot air,” he agreed, “but not that full!”

“Where is Miss Vickie?”

“She’ll be driven down to the Depot once the train comes in.”

Barrents looked up at the big Regulator clock, checked his wrist watch, looked at Cindy, who was checking her phone.

“Am I the only one in the world that still uses a watch?”

Linn closed the hunter cased railroad watch and slid it back into his vest pocket.

“Nope.”

 

The Lady Esther came ghosting into station, almost silent, her exhaust absolutely white, no trace of any visible smoke, just the steam huffing out with each piston-stroke, drawing fire to a fierce temperature as the Venturi effect hauled air through the controlled conflagration.

She came in with a hiss, her bell clanging, and eased to a stop with the private car at the end of the depot platform.

Will climbed down, then turned and raised his arms:  his bride, in a blue-and-white McKenna gown, took one dainty step down, another, and leaned forward into her husband’s grasp, and he picked her off the cast-iron step and brought her around and gently down.

Linn lifted his Stetson, stepped forward.  “Mr. and Mrs. Keller, welcome home,” he grinned.  “I’m pleased to report you don’t have to worry about a house full of jellybeans and shaving cream.”

He and Will laughed.

When Linn was married, Will had their table set when they came home, and Linn’s plate was heaped with jellybeans and covered with shaving cream, and they laughed at the memory.

“Your luggage at the door?”

“It is,” Will said.  “I can get it.”

“You’ll let us handle that,” his Captain challenged, shaking the man’s hand.  “I’m pleased to report nobody pried the town up and packed it off in your absence.”

“Job security!”  Will exclaimed with a grin as the Captain picked Marsha’s hand up and kissed her knuckles.

“You did that right well,” Linn said admiringly.

“I’ve been practicing,” the Captain admitted.  “Chief, we’ve got something to show you.”

He and the new Mrs. Keller exchanged a look, which did not escape the Chief’s notice.

The happy little group walked around the end of the depot and around back.

Neff was standing in front of the new Crown Vic’s front fender, grinning like a schoolboy.

“Boss,” he declared, “your wife had an idea.”  He turned and patted the silver Crown Victoria’s hood like he was patting a favorite horse. 

“This is yours.  She might as well be factory new.  She’s been completely redone, she runs like a sewing machine, and your Mrs. thought she needed a proper name.”

Neff stepped to the side and Marsha’s fingers tightened on her husband’s arm.

She looked up at the tall, lean-waisted police chief with the handlebar mustache going to an iron grey, and she saw him swallow and blink quickly a few times.

Will looked the Crown Vic over, walked around her, slowly, listening to his Captain point out the changes:  siren speakers in the grille, the high-intensity grille lights, cameras fore and aft inside the windshield and rear window, the narrow transparent slits on the outside mirrors that held more high-intensity flashing lights, the improved, simplified switch panel, the Chief’s favorite, woven, ventilated seat cushion.

Will nodded slowly, listening closely, bent over and looked inside for several long moments before he finally withdrew from the cabin, stood.

He paced slowly around the car again.

“New rubber.”

“Yep.”

“New brakes?”

“New brakes, hoses, belts, everything.”

Will studied the fender’s inscription again, the script Miss Vickie in beautifully italicized lettering.

His fingers traced the letters, then he looked at his wife, who was looking at him almost hopefully.

Will stepped up to her, ran his hands around to the small of her back, drew her close.

He looked down at her and whispered, as if he didn’t trust his voice.

“Your idea?”

She nodded.

Will bent down a little and wrapped his arms around his wife, picked her up, crushing her to him.

He never heard the applause that surrounded them.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

150.  A WOMAN’S RESPONSE

 

Twenty-four hours later, the newly married Editor found herself standing in the Sheriff’s office, under the hard and pale gaze of the lean waisted lawman, in the company of the pale, uncertain-looking woman the community knew as “The Ghost Hunter,” and in the company of a head-hanging, foot-shuffling, handcuffed teen-ager that smelled of gasoline and failure.

The Sheriff, seated at the head of the table, glared at them all.

He looked at the revolver on the table before him, at the old-fashioned cigarette lighter (or what was left of it), he looked from the prisoner to the women, and he finally said “Isolate him.  I’ll take his statement separately” – and as the shamefaced teen was hustled out of the lobby and back to a cell, Linn said, “In my office.  Both of you.”

They followed him into his sanctum, jumped a little as he closed the door.

“Please be seated, both of you.”

Linn’s voice was carefully neutral as he went around behind his desk, laid the transparent evidence bags on his desk.

He pulled out his lockback pocket knife and sliced open the bag containing Marsha’s revolver.

He opened the cylinder, saw one round was fired.

He closed it, gently, placing the spent round precisely under the hammer.

“These proceedings are an informal discussion of what happened,” he began.  “I will determine whether charges should be placed and whether a formal arrest should be made.  Marsha, you have the right to counsel and if you wish you may have your husband present.  Miss Kincaid, I am given to understand you are a material witness.  As such you are neither subject to arrest, nor are you compelled to answer any questions, though it would be most helpful if you did.”

Both ladies nodded.

 Linn leaned his elbows on his desktop, leaned forward, regarded his … niece-in-law?  Cousin? – he wasn’t sure which, and asked softly, “Marsha, what happened over there?”

Marsha was staring, big-eyed, at the mutilated lighter in its transparent evidence envelope, shivering a little as she remembered.

“Let me tell you what happened,” she said softly, her eyes very distant.

“Marsha, you’re not under arrest, but you are being interrogated in a shooting.  You may want to have counsel or your husband –“

Marsha was not listening.

She was remembering, and as she saw events unfold again, she narrated, steadily, her voice almost steady as she did.

 

Wilma Kincaid handed the new bride a card in an envelope and apologized that she didn’t have a gift, she’d only just found out they were married, and shouldn’t she still be on her honeymoon, and Marsha laughed and said she had a newspaper to get out, and would Wilma want to go to Carbon Hill with her to try the cans of food on the mercantile floor again?

They’d driven out and walked in, and they found a local pickup truck parked in front of the Mercantile and a teen-ager packing in a beat-up GI jerrycan.

Alarmed, Marsha followed him in, and dismayed, saw he was pouring gasoline in the back room.

“Stop that!”  she exclaimed, taking the teen by surprise:  he dropped the jerry can, pulled out a lighter:  a whip of his thumb, the lid clanked back, he yelled “Get back or I’ll light ‘er up!”

“You’ll kill all of us!”  Marsha screamed.  “You’ll kill yourself!”

Wilma was behind her, eyes wide, staring, frozen:  she had no experience with such crises and she did what the untrained always do.

She just stood there.

Marsha, on the other hand, reacted.

The youth raised his hand a little the way a man will when he’s getting ready to roll the abrasive wheel against the flint, and as his arm just started down, Marsha responded as she’d been trained.

The revolver was a familiar weight in her hand and her thought process was as simple as the sharpened edge of a fighting knife.

If he flicks that wheel I’m dead.

Stop the threat.

The revolver came up, the sights came into focus, the narrow, grooved trigger rolled smoothly against the mechanism and she felt the cylinder start to roll and the sights were sharp and clear just like she’d practiced –

The teen-ager half-yelled, half-barked as the lighter flew out of his hand, its chimney and striker wheel gone, his hand stinging:  neither of them heard the gunshot that slapped Wilma’s ears like a giant’s hands.

“I responded as I have been trained,” she said.

Marsha’s voice ground to a halt and she sat there, big-eyed, looking at her revolver, looking at the lighter, remembering the moment when she realized she’d just used deadly force against someone who was trying to KILL HER, and how she’d failed to stop the threat, she’d meant to shoot for the magic triangle, she remembered she was supposed to imagine a rusty old tin can floating in front of his chest just below his chin, and instead she must have flinched like hell –

“Wilma,” Linn said in a gentle voice.  “Could you tell me what happened?”

“I, um,” Wilma hesitated, swallowing nervously.

“I, we, went over like she said – we wanted to, I wanted to, the cans, the – tombstone –“

Wilma shivered, took a long breath.

“It’s all right. Take your time.”  Linn’s voice was quiet, reassuring.

Marsha started to speak and Linn raised a forestalling hand.

“It’s Wilma’s turn.  We’ll give you another turn afterward.”

His voice was kindly, gentle reassuring, which is just what Marsha needed in that moment.

“This kid, he was spilling … it was a flat can, I’ve never seen one like it, it was squarish and flat and all beat up and it was gasoline, I could smell it and if he’d used that lighter it would have we would have burned oh my God …”
Her words ran faster and ran together, until she kind of squeaked and lowered her face into her hands.

Linn could see she was shivering, hard.

Wilma felt warm hands on her wrists, then on her shoulders, and she heard the Sheriff’s gentle voice in front of her.

She lifted her hands and the pale eyed lawman was on one knee before her.

“Wilma,” he almost whispered, “you have been through a terrible experience.  You have every right to be upset and I would not blame you one little bit if you were jumping up and down with the Screaming Meemies right about now.”

He saw just the trace of a smile, somewhere in the change in her eyes, when he said the words, and he knew he’d said the right thing.

Linn reached behind him, pulled a box of tissues off his desk, offered it.

“Here.  Dry your eyes and blow your nose.  We’re not in any kind of a hurry here.”

Linn rose, turned again:  he picked up the trash can from the corner of his desk and set it between the two women, confident that it would not be used as a weapon.

“Marsha, let’s go back to you.”

Marsha blinked, nodded.

“Did you believe your life was in danger?”

“I thought he was going to burn us to death!”  she blurted.

“So you acted to keep yourself alive.”

She nodded.

Linn picked up the lighter, still in its evidence bag.

“Looks like you shot the lighter fair and square.”

Marsha swallowed.  “I meant to shoot him,” she whispered, feeling like her world was falling out from under her.

“I think you were so focused on the threat that you shot the threat.”  Linn smiled gently.  “We’re hard-wired to lock onto the threat.  Our eye goes to the threat and welds itself there.  The lighter was a threat and that’s where your focus went.  I’ve seen it before.  Back East a deputy shot a bullet squarely down the barrel of a bad guy’s gun when he shot to keep himself alive.”

Linn looked up as an authoritative knock rattled his door.

“Come on in, Uncle Will,” he called.

The police chief came in, his face hard, his eyes pale and glaring as he regarded his relaxed-looking nephew.

“Sit down, Uncle Will.”

“I’ll stand.”

Linn regarded him frankly.  “You and my mother!”

“My wife has nothing to say and will speak only through counsel!”  Will declared, his voice raising in pitch.

“Your wife is not under arrest and I do not anticipate anything but a no-bill.”  He held up the lighter.  “Take a look at this.”

Will blinked, took a step closer, accepted the lighter, considered the .38-caliber half-moon in the upper margin of its case.

He stared at the lighter for several long moments, then looked at his wife with new respect, handed the lighter back.

“Here.”  Linn handed Will the revolver.  “In my professional opinion, charges are not warranted.  If anyone asks I will refuse to arrest her, as I am convinced this was a righteous shoot.  Matter of fact you might want to spoil her with roses and chocolate.  If she’d shot the subject instead of the object you’d be in for an expensive time of it.”

Linn looked at Marsha.

“It is no light thing to know that you just made a sincere attempt to stop someone with an implement of deadly force,” he said almost formally.  “Will and I both have the resources and the contacts to help deal with the psychological ramifications that follow a line-of-duty shooting.  Should you need to talk to someone, we have the professionals who will lend a listening ear and wise counsel with complete confidentiality.” 

Linn rose, as did the women.

“Miss Kincaid.” 

Wilma looked from one tall lawman to another.

“Connie and I would be most pleased if you would have supper with us tonight.”

Wilma looked at Marsha, almost dismayed, and Marsha laid a gentle hand on the ghost hunter’s forearm.

“Go ahead,” she whispered.  “I think … with the stress … I’ve forgotten how to cook!”

Will looked at Linn, raised an eyebrow.

“Take her home, Will,” Linn said quietly.  “She’s not under arrest and I’ll fight any order to do so.”

Linn touched the intercom.

“Bring the prisoner into my office.”

 

When Linn sat down at his desk, after supper, after he’d tucked the boys in, he picked up the ancient dip quill and opened his own Journal and looked up, past the green-shaded banker’s lamp.

A quiet voice said “Aren’t you even going to say hello?”

He sighed and laid the pen down, turned the swivel chair to the left.

“Don’t you ever knock?”

The Bear Killer raised his head, his big brush of a tail thumping happily on the floor, and the pretty lady with pale eyes and a mousy-grey schoolmarm gown caressed the big mountain Mastiff’s head affectionately. 

“Normal men don’t entertain ghosts as a rule,” Linn said quietly, but Sarah heard the smile in the pale-eyed lawman’s voice.

“Whoever said you were normal?” Sarah replied, her smile taking the sting out of her words.

Linn nodded. 

“You have a question.”

Linn nodded again.

“Sheriff,” she said carefully, “I think it’s because I was a teacher, and because teachers answer questions.  Otherwise my work would be done on this earth and I would be moved on.”

“So you have questions too.”

She raised a teaching finger.  “You’re wondering about Richard.”

“Richard?”  Linn echoed, frowning a little.

“The mysterious consumer of cans in Carbon Hill.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, ah.  In life he was a starving orphan who met with a premature death.  You remember that account.”

“I do.”

“His work is now concluded.”

“I don’t understand.”

Sarah smiled, sitting on something invisible – a habit of hers, probably because she herself was no longer of this earth. 

“You remember the recent mine collapse.”

Linn nodded.

“He was able to do something necessary.”

“Necessary?”

“He was given a choice.  He could watch two men die and become ghosts like him, with their work on earth not yet complete, or he could help get them out.”
“I see.”

“If you were to read the survivors’ accounts closely, you would find their description of that poor underfed boy who worked like a grown man but never broke a sweat, who labored like a giant and was never short of breath.”

“I recall.”

“He made a choice, Sheriff.  He chose to forego the company of his own kind.  He was terribly lonely.  Did you know he and Jimmy are friends?”

Linn blinked, surprised.

“Oh, yes.  The drawings are upstairs on Jimmy’s desk.”  She smiled, the understanding, quiet smile of a teacher with a pupil who is slowly coming to an understanding on a complex subject.  “Richard was able to make an unselfish choice.  He was also given a little more time because there were two things he really, really wanted.”

“And these were?”

“He wanted the company of someone his own age, or near to it, and Jimmy was that.  Jimmy was just the right one, too, because he knew what it was to be rejected, and he didn’t reject Richard.  He showed Richard how to draw – Richard’s attempts were awkward as a beginner’s always are, but Jimmy was very patient – they played together.  You’ll see with the drawings.  And Richard was so very hungry, and not only did Jimmy invite him to Will and Marsha’s wedding feast, Richard was also put to work carrying trays of food.”  She clasped her hands in her lap, leaned forward, he expression intent, delighted.  “He was included, Sheriff.  He was invited.  He was made welcome.  He’d never known that in life, but this community gave it to him, freely and in joy.” 

She leaned back.

“And he was able to express his thanks.  That was his final step.  Marsha left him a big can of peaches on the floor of the Mercantile.  He returned the gloves one of the miners gave him in that collapse, and he wrote his thanks on the backside of the peach can’s label, torn free and folded and placed inside the can.”

Sarah smiled, rose.  “His work on this earth is done, Sheriff, and now he can move on. Unless he’s needed again.”  She tilted her head, then she stepped forward, gripped his hands, bent and kissed him quickly on his cheek.  “Thank you,” she whispered.

Linn nodded.  “That kid that tried to burn the Mercantile …”

Sarah nodded.  “He was rather put out because his offerings of soup and bread were untouched, so he decided to fire the structure out of a sense of pique.”

“They were untouched because he’s not there anymore.”

Sarah smiled brightly.  “That’s right.”

Linn nodded, considering.

“Sarah, I’ve given thought to rebuilding the Mercantile over there.  Restore it as it was.  The depot is already a popular stop with tourists and they’re almost disappointed at how little of the town is left.”

Sarah laughed.  “The Silver Jewel has them spoiled!”

Linn nodded.  “If mining does start up again in Carbon, they’ll need a Mercantile and a saloon.”

“They will that,” Sarah nodded.  “Miners work hard and play hard and they’ll need a watering hole.”

“Until they get enough population, they won’t be able to have a Marshal’s office,” Linn said thoughtfully.  “Maybe a Sheriff’s substation.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”  Sarah smiled.  “But I do know that you are a wise man.”  She tilted her head.  “Your poor wife looks like an olive on a toothpick.   Do you realize how helpful Jimmy is to her?”

“I know he does help,” Linn admitted.

Sarah gave him a warm, approving look.  “I am very proud of you,” she said, and disappeared.

Linn sat and considered this for a long several minutes, then he rose, turned out the banker’s lamp.

“Come on, Bear Killer,” he said finally.  “Let’s go to bed.”

The Bear Killer flowed up the stairs beside him, curled up on the rug on his wife’s side of the bed, lowered his big head down between outstretched forepaws, and was instantly asleep.

Linn hesitated before climbing into bed, then he picked up his flashlight, smiling in the dark.

Sarah said something about drawings on Jimmy’s desk, and the man’s curiosity was getting the best of him.

He slipped out of his bedroom, silent in sock feet, and when he returned, he wore the expression of a man satisfied with what he’d found.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

151.  HIGH DIVE

 

“Jacob?”

Father and son stood at the rocky lip of a cliff, overlooking an unusually deep pool.

Its depth was just shy of twenty feet – plenty deep for diving – there were no boulders to break a man’s neck, the water was cold and clear and looked like living crystal, fed as it was by springs and streams and mountain runoff.

Jacob was only newly come into the Sheriff’s life.

He looked up at the tall, pale man, the man with the ugly puckered scar about elbow level on his ribs, an older scar with a new, bright pink gouge cut in his ribs:  it was healing, as wounds do, but Jacob shivered to look at it.

He told himself it was the cold, he told himself it was because he stood barefoot and naked on the rim of a long dive, he told himself it was because the sun wasn’t terribly warm, but Jacob knew he was lying to himself.

His own back was a scarred map of hell.

He’d been horse whipped by a man who lived in a state of rage – either drunken rage, or cold sober rage:  when drunk, he used a whip, and when sober, he used a whip, a club, his fists, his feet.

He’d beaten Jacob bloody and then he’d beaten Jacob’s Mama to death, while Jacob lay choking and paralyzed with pain and with his own cracked ribs, and then the man drank the rest of the bottle of rot gut and threw himself down on the bed he’d usurped when he forced Jacob’s Mama to marry him.

Jacob looked up at the tall, pale man with the pale eyes and the iron grey mustache and marveled at how different his life was now.

Jacob had waited until his strength came back, waited until he could take a deep breath – it hurt like homemade hell but he did it – he managed to get to his feet and stagger over to his Mama.

Jacob’s tears were long since gone, but there were a few left, and he bent over this one kind and gentle thing in his life, lying dead and bloodied, her face darkening in death, her soul flown, her body still, still.

Jacob turned and looked at the snoring sot that filthied his Mama’s bed with his mere presence.

Jacob was a child of his era.

Jacob had one way out, and only one way, and that was to grow hard on that moment, hard and cold and his young heart turned to stone.

He was ten years old when he hobbled across the floor, when he pulled the snoring man’s stolen .44 Army revolver out of its stolen holster.

Jacob laid the barrel level with the man’s left ear and sank to his knees.

He hadn’t the strength to stand but he had strength enough to lay the barrel on the pillow until he could ear the hammer back.

He picked the barrel up off the pillow a little and laid it level with the man’s ear.

He imagined a straight line, a chalkline drawn taut through the murderer’s ears, and Jacob set the gunbarrel along this line and pulled the trigger.

Jacob used a quilt to drag his Mama outside, a quilt under her and pulled up and tied in a knot on the corner.

He tied a line around the knot and the other end to the horse and used horse power to pull his Mama outside.

It took him most of the rest of the day to dig a hole, but he got it dug, and he wrapped his battered, bloodied, broken, dead mother in the quilt she’d hand sewed and he rolled her into the hole because he hadn’t strength enough to pick her up and set her in.

Jacob filled his Mama’s grave and mounded dirt up over it and he laid flat rocks over it and he took a rock and scratched the word Mama in one of them.

It was the best he could do.

Jacob went back into the house.

He reloaded the .44 revolver’s spent chamber and he put together what he’d need and he tied himself a noose in the rope and he put the noose over the dead murderer’s head and snugged it around his neck.

He used the horse to drag the man’s carcass out of the house.

He drug it a distance til it was out in the open, then he removed the rope and coiled it up.

It took a monumental effort to saddle the horse before he started all this, but it was saddled, and Jacob led the horse to a handy rock and he mounted up.

Jacob set his face west, toward the mountains.

He was ten years old.

 

The lean waisted lawman with pale eyes looked down at the skinny underfed boy looking up at him.

He hadn’t seen fit to ask about the whip scars on the boy’s back.

The boy was hard and the boy was angry and the boy lived with war in his heart, like a kicked hornet’s nest, madder’n hell and ready to kill anything that crossed him.

He was also immaculately polite and he wanted desperately to gain the Sheriff’s approval.

A particular Agent had sent the boy his way.

Old Pale Eyes had lost his family, his wife and his little girl, to small pox at war’s end, he’d lost men and he’d lost good friends and true, he'd lost them all to that internecine insanity that was … well, he called it That Damned War.

His soul was bleached out and dry and when the boy came up to him, Linn went down on one knee and looked the lad in the eye and said “You look like you could use a good square meal,” and the two of them went over to the Silver Jewel and set themselves down in the back corner.

The Sheriff parked his rifle and his Stetson before he parked his backside.

“This is my pa’tickelar corner,” he explained.  “I can set here with my back to a wall and see both entrances.”

Jacob nodded.

It was their first meal together and it would not be their last:  the Sheriff took him home and give him a bunk, he took the boy to a friend of his – Bonnie McKenna, a seamstress of considerable skill, and had her make him some clothes, he bought some at the Mercantile, and he got the lad some decent boots while he was at it.

The Sheriff never noticed how Bonnie’s pale eyed daughter studied his pale eyed son.

Not at first.

Jacob took quickly to a return to being clean.

The two were generally seen together, and Doc Greenlees and the Parson discussed this new development, and both physician and sky pilot agreed that each was helping the other heal.

Doc had served in That Damned War with his pale eyed friend; he knew some, but not all, of the Sheriff’s griefs and losses, and he knew some of Jacob’s as well.

The Sheriff almost immediately began introducing Jacob as his son.

He did not see the look of surprise on the lad’s face the first time he did.

It was an expression of surprise, with a little fear, for perhaps he feared being rejected.

The rejection never came.

Those to whom he was introduced accepted the Sheriff’s statement, for Jacob’s eyes were as pale as the Sheriff’s:  though shockingly thin, at least until good food and a good home started to put some meat on his bones, Jacob did bear a resemblance to the tall lawman, a resemblance Linn alone didn’t see for some years.

Time would reveal that he was indeed the get of the Sheriff’s loins, but that too was not quite yet.

No, that time had not yet arrived, and wouldn’t for a while.

The Sheriff did nothing without reason, and there was a reason he’d brought Jacob to this isolated pool, this high cliff.

The Sheriff had a temper like a volcano.

There was a rage in his blood, a fury in his soul, if not entirely due to his experience in battle, at least honed and sharpened there.

The Sheriff saw this same rage in Jacob.

The Sheriff was afraid of damned little, but two things he admitted to, and one of them was his temper.

When the lawman was shot, there in front of his little log fortress of a Sheriff’s office, Jacob pulled out that long heavy Army revolver and began whistling pistol balls at the rifleman who put a bullet through Linn’s lower ribs, through the scarring from a cannon explosion:  Jacob squatted, firing with one hand, seizing the choking, bleeding Sheriff by the back of his shirt collar and trying desperately to haul him up across the board walk and into the log structure.

Linn vaguely, very vaguely, remembered the utter, absolute, pure distilled murderous rage in the boy’s face, how pale he got, how taut the flesh over his cheek bones, and how corpse-pale, how granit-hard, absolutely glacier’s-heart cold his eyes were as he did.

He knew he had to bring Jacob here.

Father and son, naked in the mountain sunlight, stood overlooking the deep, clear, cold-water pool.

“Jacob,” the Sheriff said in his quiet voice.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’ve been scared a time or three in my young life.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know how I handled being scared?”

“No, sir.”

“I run right toward what scared me and I laid hard hands on it and I bent it to my will.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am scared of heights.”

“Sir?”  Jacob looked at the lean waisted lawman with broad shoulders and a curled, iron-grey handlebar mustache, his eyes wide with honest surprise.

Jacob didn’t think the Sheriff was afraid of the Devil himself.

“It is all I can do to stand here and look down.”

Jacob looked down.

“I want to back up and get dressed and ride out of here,” Linn said in a quiet voice, and Jacob’s young ear caught just the hint of a quiver as the words were spoken.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m not a-gonna.”

“Sir?”

“I’m scared of heights, Jacob.  I’m afraid of falling.”  He took one step back, another.

“I am scared, Jacob, so I am going to run right into that fear!”

Linn powered into two running steps, thrust off the cliff’s lip, his feet slipping a little on wet and slimy rocks:  he went down, rolled into a dive, fists extended, and hit the water in a flawless dive.

Jacob’s eyes were big and his breath came quickly and he swallowed.

He looked up and then quickly to the water’s suddenly-roiled surface.

Jacob was not afraid of falling down.

He was afraid of falling up.

Jacob backed up two steps, three, then launched himself in a long-legged sprint, ran off the vertical drop-off, still running in mid-air:  he felt himself falling through space, falling for most of an eternity:  he straightened, thrust his legs down, pointed his feet and clapped his hands flat over his face, knifed into the water, a great lungful of air sustaining him as he coasted down through burning cold, shocking cold, until he unfolded arms and legs and stroked strongly for the surface.

They dried themselves beside a fire the Sheriff had laid and ready, near the water’s edge:  their clothes, their towels and a meal were set out, for the pair had climbed to the clifftop buck naked.

The Sheriff was meticulous as he dried his feet.

He’d known the foot rot that plagues a man in muddy and wartime conditions, and he was particular to keep his feet clean and dry – another reason he’d gotten Jacob good boots, well made, and showed him how to black his boots, and how to keep them polished up and thus protect leather and stitching and seams.

The two dressed wordlessly, shared their cold meal of meat and cheese and a big lump of sourdough bread, and listened to the water chuckling its way down the mountain.

Not a word was said until they’d finished eating, not until the Sheriff scattered the little fire and drowned it very thoroughly and then buried it, not until they kissed at their horses and coaxed them near and bribed them with a twist of molasses cured chawin’ tobacker, whittled off the plug each of them carried.

Not until they mounted up was the first word spoken, and it was Jacob who spoke.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Jacob?”

Jacob looked to the clifftop, looked at the living crystal water.

“I was scared too.”

Linn nodded.

“Sir, if you hadn’t showed me, I never would have jumped.”

 

Sheriff Linn Keller lay awake beside his sleeping wife.

Connie was indeed great with child, and her time was near:  she walked carefully now, with what Shakespeare called “the proud walk of pregnancy,” and the Sheriff remembered Doc Greenlees explain this was because the bonds that hold the pelvic ring were separating, allowing her pelvis to shift as she walked – which would allow the child room to pass through the bony opening as it descended the birth canal.

“You make it sound like the baby will be mountain climbing!” Linn laughed, and Connie reached over and swatted him.

“You try carrying for nine months,” she grumbled, and Linn took her hand and kissed her knuckles.

“I’ve had kidney stones, Sweet Pea,” he said reassuringly.  “I don’t know what it is to have Junior stomp on my bladder but I know what it is to pass a clipper ship.”

Linn squeezed Connie’s warm, relaxed hand, just a little, and smiled as he remembered how Doc laughed – one of his very rare moments where he let someone see past his professional mask.
Linn lay awake and stared at the ceiling, his hand in his wife’s in a loose embrace under the covers.

They often fell asleep holding hands, and woke still holding hands; they held hands in church – for all that the Sheriff was a hard man and a warrior born, he was also an incurable romantic.

He considered the account Old Pale Eyes wrote in his Journal.

The man had been in an introspective mood when he scribed those words of his early days as a family man.

Linn thought of the parallels with his Jimmy.

There were similarities but there were differences, he realized, and he considered that Jimmy’s abuses were at a much younger age.

Will that have beat the spirit out of him? he wondered.

Will Jimmy fold up and cry for the rest of his life, because of that?

Linn knew people who were just like that – who’d been brutalized at far too young an age – who had the spirit beat out of them, who would submit to any authority out of a state of perpetual terror, a vain hope that if they submitted, they would not be punished further.

As a matter of fact he’d seen that professionally:  he’d encountered people under investigation who’d given false confessions, and he’d found out these people were neither mentally deficient, nor were they seeking attention.

They’d been brutalized as children and they reverted to what he’d heard called “Victim State” and they’d confessed, cringing, hoping they wouldn’t be punished too terribly.

It made twice the work for him, but he’d managed to find the truth of the matter; he’d found the actual perpetrators, and he’d found the abuse in the pale, trembling false-confessor’s past, and he’d arranged to not only expunge and exonerate those who confessed falsely, but he’d gotten help for them, for their wounds were deep and their wounds were far from healed.

Now he lay awake, holding his wife’s hand, thinking of Jimmy and the unmitigated hell that poor boy suffered.

Will there be a rebound effect when his automatic pilot takes over? he wondered.

Come puberty, will he ride the Testosterone Stallion and become the monster that brutalized him so often?

He drifted a little in the darkness, not quite asleep; part of his mind registered the change in Connie’s breathing, part of his soul felt her hand grow warmer, and when she clutched his hand – quickly, firmly, suddenly – he was instantly awake.

Linn rolled over on his side.

“Dearest?” he whispered.

He saw the sheen of new labor on her forehead, reflected from the faint light from the window:  a crescent moon slashed an arc in the night sky and shone just enough for him to see her lips part and he felt her move, grip his hand tightly.

She turned her eyes to him, he could see their reflection in the dark, and he heard her lips frame the whisper, “Honey, it’s time,” and then her whisper became a groan and her back arched, her heels digging into the mattress.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

152.  IS IT TOO EARLY FOR A DRINK?

 

Jimmy was awake the moment his door opened.

“Jimmy?”  Linn called softly, not wanting to startle the boy.  “I need your help!”

Like the Sheriff, Jimmy slept with his clothes laid out and ready to go.

Jimmy wore boots like his Sheriff, he wore blue jeans like his Sheriff, he wore button up shirts like his Sheriff, and when Connie mentioned how the Sheriff laid out his clothes so he could grab them in a hurry, Jimmy immediately adopted the practice.

“Your Mama is ready to have the baby,” Linn explained as Jimmy swung his legs out of the bunk.  “I need you to get dressed and I’ll be back in to get Wes.”

Jimmy’s eyes were big and he nodded, then he grinned, and part of the Sheriff’s mind was pleased.

He’d expected Jimmy to wake with fear like he had a time or two in the past.

He was big-eyed with … surprise, apprehension? – but his quick grin dispelled any fear he might’ve felt.

Linn ducked back out and Jimmy heard movement, discussion, he heard his Sheriff’s voice, all calm and official the way he talked when he was on the phone. Wes climbed out from under his covers and sat on the side of his low bunk, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

“I gotta pee,” he complained, and Jimmy went over to him and took his hand.

“C’mon,” he said, “we’ll go together,” and the two boys made their way down the broad stairs, and through the house, and out the back door.

Like little boys everywhere, the world was their urinal, and they did not bother going to the outhouse to tend their necessary drainage, nor was it really necessary:  the hour was late, no one was around to see the sight, and besides, they not uncommonly did such things, they just didn’t tell their Mama about it.

Linn thrust open Jimmy’s door, his summons dying on his lips:  the boys were gone.

I’ll find them, he thought, then turned back to his wife.

Linn backed down the steps, one arm up and across his front as if blocking an attack:  Connie gripped his level, muscled forearm, walked carefully, one step at a time, breathing steadily, shivering a little.

“The squad is on its way,” Linn said reassuringly, “we’ll have you there in jig time –“

“Hurry,” Connie whispered, her voice tight.  “Tell them hurry!”

A step, another:  they made it to the foot of the stairs and Linn looked to his right, through the living room window, and saw the red-and-blues just making the turn into their long driveway.

He dropped Connie’s suitcase, swept her up in his arms, headed for the door.

“Mama?”  Jimmy called, alarmed at the sight of his Sheriff carrying his Mama.

“Jimmy,” Linn said, turning, “there’s a suitcase at the foot of the stairs.  Bring it.  Wes, you help.”

“I wanna!”  Wes declared loudly, seizing the handle and dragging it awkwardly.

“I’ll help you,” Jimmy said.

“No!  I wanna!”

Linn ignored the sounds of juvenile distress as he dipped his knees a little and reached for the doorknob.

The Bear Killer came to his feet, greeted the squad’s arrival with a great, deep-toned OOOFFF! – having discharged his guardian’s duties, he turned around on the rug and dropped back to a snoozing position, watching as the Sheriff carried Connie out, lifting his head as Jimmy and Wes quarreled their way out the front door, each declaring the suitcase their exclusive property.

Connie’s teeth were clenched as the Sheriff laid her on the ambulance cot:  she was the very first customer on their new powered cot, and the very first patient to be hoist into the rig with hydraulic power instead of the good old Olympic clean-and-jerk:  the cot was drawn in, latched automatically into place, the chief medic flipped a sheet over her with the ease of long practice and said “I need you to undress from the belt down,” and Connie arched her back and screamed “I ALREADY AM, YOU IDIOT, THE BABY IS COMING, NOW!!!”

Jimmy watched as his Sheriff stepped back – almost fell back – out the boxy ambulance’s back doors.

He reached down, relieved the boys of Connie’s suitcase.

“Fellas,” he said, “saddle up!”

Wes turned and ran yelling for the barn.

“NOT THAT KIND OF SADDLE!”  the Sheriff yelled, turning as the doors shut.

He just saw one of the medics grin as the doors swung to and latched, and Linn picked up the suitcase, then squatted and spread his arms wide to intercept the running little boy that executed a fast 180 and came yelling back to his waiting Pa’s embrace.

Jimmy settled into the back seat with his little brother, reaching over to make sure Wes’s harness was fastened.

“No!”  Wes smacked at his hand.  “I do!”

Linn climbed behind the wheel, stopped, took a long breath.

Jimmy watched the squad start to move, red-and-white lights spitting alarm all over the darkness, and Linn shoved the key into the ignition, twisted it, waited until the Jeep’s engine started.

He pulled the stick back into gear, watched the squad head down his driveway.

“Aren’t’cha gonna go?”  Jimmy asked, and Linn swallowed, then said “Uh-oh.”

Jimmy’s heart fell about twenty feet along with his young stomach and he twisted in his seat belt to look down the driveway.

Linn came off the brake and rolled up behind the ambulance.

“Boys, stay put,” he said, shutting off the engine and pulling the keys:  the back door opened and one of the medics gestured urgently, an arm-extended, palm-down, come-here sweep that betrayed the man’s Vietnam experience.

Linn strode for the back of the ambulance.

The medic handed him a pair of gloves.  “Sit there,” he commanded, and the Sheriff turned as Jimmy picked up Wes and swung him up onto the back bumper:  Wes scrambled into the back of the squad and Jimmy climbed in just as Connie slammed her heels into the cot’s narrow mattress and drove the back of her head into the pillow and locked her jaws and the cords stood out in her neck and her water broke and Jimmy jumped back and the Sheriff picked him up and set him on the bench seat beside him and he set Wes on Jimmy’s lap and Connie began to gasp and pant and then she grunted and her face turned red and then kind of purple and the medic said “Sheriff, stand up here now, your name is Willy Mays and you are going to make the catch of your life!”

Jimmy held Wes and Wes looked at his Pa’s backside, and blue denim is really all the boys could see, but they could hear their Ma gasp and grunt and then she gave kind of a funny long groan and then there was a little gurgly squeak and the medic leaned down and was busy with something.

Jimmy shivered a little – he didn’t know what was going on – then he heard his Sheriff’s voice, calm and strong and confident.

“Jimmy,” he said, “here’s a set of gloves.  Put these on.”

Jimmy slid out from under Wes, sidled up between his Sheriff and the medic.

Connie was crying a little now, crying and reaching for her baby, and Jimmy heard the medic’s quiet, professional commentary, using those funny doctor words he’d heard before, and in a minute the medic handed Jimmy a pair of cheap stamped steel scissors and held up a purple rope that connected to a wiggling little baby’s belly and said “Okay, champ, cut this between the clamps, right here,” and Jimmy did.

Linn laid his hand between Jimmy’s shoulder blades.

“Jimmy,” he said quietly, “you are a big brother again.”

The medic paused, reached down beside the shuddering, sweating mother’s head, picked up a single, fresh-cut, bright-red rose, beaded with dew.

“Now where,” he murmured, “did this come from?”

Jimmy solemnly studied the infant as the medic wiped his brand-new baby sister, and wrapped her up and handed it to Connie, and the pink skinned infant was grunting a little and rooting, looking for her first meal, and as his brand new baby sister began dining at the topless restaurant, Jimmy looked at his Sheriff and asked, “I was one of those?”

The medics would later agree that the Sheriff’s boy and his solemn-voiced question gave them the best laugh they’ve had in quite some time.

Linn looked behind him before he sat down, not knowing quite where Wes was.

He needn’t have worried.

Wes was so excited over all these events, he’d curled up on the squad bench, sound asleep.

 

Linn and the boys followed the ambulance in to the hospital.

When the three of them emerged, it was to the congratulations of most of the Irish Brigade, his uncle the police chief, the Mayor, Tony the barber and three or four other notables – word travels fast in a small town – and as Connie and the brand new baby girl would be in for a day at least, Linn took his young charges by their hands and they walked up the street to the Silver Jewel for breakfast.

When they came through the door, the place was not well populated, but the few who were there for breakfast saluted the Sheriff most cheerfully, and he returned their congratulations with his quiet thanks.

He and the boys made their way back to the Lawman’s Corner and got themselves settled in (the moment Wes’s backside hit the seat he yelled “Pancakes!”) – and when the cute little hash slinger in her calico dress and stiff petticoats came sashaying back, Linn looked up at her, fatigue just starting to hit him, and said, “It’s a girl.  Is it too early for a drink?”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

153.  WANNA BET?

 

Jimmy knew fear, perhaps better than any in Firelands in that age.

Jimmy lived with fear most of his life.

He knew its clammy touch, he knew its copper taste, he knew the screaming anticipation of the belt or the blow, he knew the words that drilled into his ears, he knew the tight-chested, heart-hammering feeling, he’d known them so long it was almost a normal condition for him.

Of a sudden, now, all that was gone, save for moments when he himself brought them back – like when the Sheriff fell off the ladder and knocked a full gallon of white paint to the floor, and landed right in his own puddle:  Jimmy scuttled backwards until he hit the wall, paralyzed by fear, the fear he resurrected from his own memories of the stuff, for he expected the response to be that of the man who’d caused him fear all of his young life.

It hadn’t happened.

Jimmy shrank and tasted copper when his Sheriff mashed his thumb with the rig builder’s hatchet, and squeezed his eyes shut and set his teeth against the pain, but the only blow the pained man delivered was to drive the hatchet’s blade into the fence post (we will omit the man’s profane utterances in an archaic dialect) instead of taking his rage out on the defenseless boy.

Jimmy was beginning to relax a little, relax to the point that the Sheriff’s abrupt summons brought joy instead of fear:  his Sheriff needed his help, and his young heart rejoiced! – like any young boy, he was fearful at his Mama’s walking funny and making faces and being laid down on the ambulance cot, he felt like an Important Big Brother that he was watching his little brother (even if they did both have a quarreling death grip on Mama’s suitcase!) and when all he could see was his Sheriff’s hip pockets – until the man turned and handed him a pair of gloves and a serrated-blade scissors and told him to cut something he’d never seen before, he was more excited and interested than anything else, because his Sheriff was right there, and he was being tasked with Something Important.

He had absolutely no idea what it was, but it had to be Something Important, judging from the men’s expressions.

He wasn’t sure where that ugly little purplish yucky looking baby came from and maybe his Mama was kind of disappointed ‘cause she was red-faced and crying, but it must have been okay, ‘cause his Sheriff took him in to the hospital to see his Mama and she was looking tired and looking happy and a little pink baby with a little pink ribbon tied around her forehead slept cuddled up against Mama’s bosom and Jimmy tilted his head a little out of curiosity.

They took lots of pictures and they even set him down and set the little pink girl baby in his arms and he looked up, big-eyed, and said “But, but, but, I’ll break it!” and everyone laughed, and then the baby went back to Mama and his Sheriff took his hand and Wes’s and after they got through a whole bunch of people and lots of handshaking and cigars and congratulations, his Sheriff walked them down to the Silver Jewel for breakfast.

Mr. Baxter brought him a shimmering, cut-glass shot of something water clear and not over 30 days old (that’s what he called it, anyway) and his Sheriff thanked Mr. Baxter for his kindness, and as Mr. Baxter beamed and turned and went back to his bar, his Sheriff leaned close and whispered, “Want a sip?”

Jimmy took a careful little sip from the brimming shot glass, recoiled, grimaced:  Wes had the same reaction, and the Sheriff hoisted the shot glass as Mr. Baxter stepped behind his mahogany office and began happily polishing beer mugs.

“Fellas,” he said quietly, “I’ll let you in on a secret.  This stuff makes good paint thinner or motor fuel and that’s about it!”  He downed the shot, made an awful face, squinted his eyes and suck out his tongue and wheezed, “God, that’s nasty!”

Jimmy grinned and Wes laughed, the genuine, unaffected laugh of a happy little boy, and that cute little hash slinger came sashaying down between the tables with a tray in one hand and a coffee pot in the other, and Wes bounced a little on the padded seat and yelled “Pancakes!” in a delighted voice.

 

That afternoon, construction began on a new room on the Sheriff’s house, and Jimmy was a shadow attached to his Sheriff’s backside.

There were trucks and tools, men and machines, tape measures and marks and the smell of sawdust as the Daine boys cut and considered and braced and propped and wedged and laughed, and Jimmy listened carefully as his Sheriff explained – as he squatted, with Jimmy beside him and Wes leaning against the lawman – that he’d discussed the new construction with the Daine boys some time ago, that they’d already planned and figured and milled out the lumber they’d need, and Jimmy listened with big and solemn eyes – he had no idea what milling lumber meant, he had some vague idea about milling grain into flour, and his young imagination fancied a mechanical claw feeding a plank into a rotating millstone to produce a great pile of flour-fine sawdust.

Jimmy watched, fascinated, as the Daine boys fairly swarmed the worksite, as wordless as a squad of Amish carpenters:  everyone knew their job and knew it well, and their moves, even to Jimmy’s uneducated eye, were the efficient, abbreviated actions of men who knew their jobs more than intimately.

Jimmy’s quick mind filed a series of snapshots, scenes he knew he would draw later in the day:  one of the lean Kentucky carpenters was in the habit of squinting one eye when he cut a board with the screaming, one-hand saw with the black power cord:  another grinned a little as he drew up a chalkline, just before the snap and the cloud of blue dust that flew from the twisted nylon strand.

Jimmy and Wes retreated into the house with the Sheriff, Jimmy with a purposeful step, and Wes with most of a dozen cut-off pieces of wood – triangluar, rectangular, square – with which both boys occupied themselves, creating structures on the front porch and in their imaginations.

 

Later that afternoon – after the Sheriff and the boys all got cleaned up, got into their “Presentables,” after Jimmy carefully, almost delicately combed his little brother’s hair over, with Wes sitting big-eyed, marveling at this new experience – after the Ladies’ Tea Society withdrew with all their happy chatter, Linn and Connie made the formal entry of the child’s name on the birth certificate.

After their quiet-voiced conference, after Linn carefully printed the name on the blank reverse of an index card and laid it on Connie’s bedside tray so they correct spelling could be ensured (so far he’d found seven wrong ways to smell “Smith,” and by his own admission, he’d found every last one of them the hard way!), they looked up at Marsha and her camera, mother and child, husband and sons, a portrait that went on the front page of the Firelands Gazette:  after the picture was taken, after Linn intoned formally, “Our daughter’s name is Esther Lynne,” and he and Connie looked at one another and smiled, and Linn added, “And she will be a Lady.”

Jimmy heard the whisper and he stifled a giggle as he felt a familiar hand on his shoulder, and an unseen voice for his ear alone said, “A lady?  Wanna bet?”

He looked up as his Sheriff frowned, drew back, pulled the phone from his pocket, swiped at the screen. 

Professional voice.

“Keller.”

His bottom jaw thrust out a little and he said “I’ll be right there.”

He looked at Connie.  “Gotta go, honey.”

“What about the boys?”

Linn looked at his bright-eyed, expectant charges, his fine young men with shining-clean faces.

“Boys,” he said, “work to do, I need your help!”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

154.  VANESSA

 

“Boys,” he said, “work to do, I need your help!”

Two sets of eager young feet pattered quickly after their long tall Sheriff as he strode out the hospital’s front door.

“Boys,” Linn said, “have you ever heard of a rescue?”

He did not wait for an answer:  he buckled Wes into his car seat’s harness, nodded his approval as Jimmy buckled in beside him.

“We,” he said, then he drew back, shut the door and opened the driver’s door and climbed in, “are going on a rescue!”

He looked in the mirror at Wes, laughing and waving his arms happily.

The Sheriff twisted the ignition, backed carefully out of the parking space, then wiped his finger across the row of rocker switches.

Wes looked to his left, delighted at the reflection of red-and-blue lights firing angrily from side windows and fenders, shining on the polished glass doors of the Firelands hospital.

“Gogogogogo,” he giggled, and Linn grinned and said, “Showtime!” and the boys laughed as his heavy boot on the throttle pushed them deeper into their seats.

Linn snatched the microphone from its clip.

He didn’t notice another car swinging in behind him and if he had, he would not have given a good damn.

 

Marnie caught the call on the scanner.

The fire department was already out, the matter was urgent, the Sheriff had been summoned:  there was something about a tower or a windmill or something of the kind.

She’d only just gotten the Sheriff’s happy-family portrait loaded into her computer when the call came:  she’d grabbed her camera and her pocket recorder, slung her warbag over her shoulder and run for her car, and she’d just had time to start the engine when the Sheriff went sailing by, all red and blue lights and a square-nosed, butterscotch-yellow streak.

Marsha checked her mirror, mashed the gas, gripped the wheel grimly, determined not to let that long, tall, pale-eyed Sheriff get away from her!

 

Vanessa tried to speak.

Her throat was sticky and welded shut, she was having trouble breathing, her arms were wrapped around the steel ladder, she was hugging welded steel with the desperation of the truly terrified, and all she could hear was the screaming of blood as it blasted through the fine capillaries inside her ears.

She could not hear her father’s shouts from below, she could not see the broad blue sky above her, she had no realization of the sound of an approaching siren, nor the sound of tires skidding on blacktop and gravel as a butterscotch Jeep made an accelerating, tire-punishing turn with two laughing little boys in the back seat.

Vanessa shivered as she felt something vibrate the ladder.

She whimpered as the vibrations continued, regular, metronomic.

Her eyes were squeezed hard shut and her mind ran screaming from the last memory of looking down, when the earth seemed to reach up and beckon her to fall, to fall, to fall, and she seized the ladder and buried her face in the top rung, too afraid to even whimper.

She’d climbed the silo to unclog the auger, she’d told her father she’d take it, she’d never been up the silo ladder before but she was willing to give it a try, and when she took too shallow a step onto the rung and her muck-slick rubber boot’s worn tread slipped off and she caught herself and then she looked down, her heart did its best to jump through her breastbone and she began practicing Zen Climber:  she did her very, absolutely, utterly utmost best, to become one with the ladder!

“Boys,” Linn said quietly, “stay in the car.”

He strode over to the farmer, leaning on his crutches, a fiberglass cast over most of his right leg.

“Vince,” he said, shaking the man’s hand.  “Fill me in.”

“I couldn’t climb,” Vince said ruefully, looking down at the leg, “so Vanessa said she’d go up and free up the auger.”

Linn looked up. 

“Vanessa was doing good until he foot slipped.  I heard her squeak and she grabbed that ladder and I can’t get her to move.  She won’t talk, she won’t …”

He looked at the Sheriff with the expression of a frustrated, frightened father.

“Is the fire department coming?”  he asked hopefully.

“They’re out on a structure fire.”

Vince swore.

Linn looked up, handed Vince his Stetson.

“Here, hold my beer,” he said, grabbed the ladder, started to climb.

Vince’s response was less than polite, generally not printable and quietly, sincerely heartfelt.

 

Jimmy popped his belt, he reached over and hit Wes’s release:  he gripped the wiggling little brother, pulled him free of the seat, then opened the door and half-jumped, half-fell:  he could not manage to keep his feet with Wes in his arms.

Jimmy went over backwards, Wes on top of him:  he hit with a grunt and so did Wes, and both boys came to their feet, then turned and ran toward where their Sheriff was climbing the silo.

 

Marsha wheeled in beside the Sheriff’s Jeep, got out, looked up the side of the silo were a blond-haired girl in a red jacket and black gum boots was clinging to the ladder.

Clinging is right, she thought. 

Dear God, she’s hugging that ladder like a lover!

 

Jimmy stopped and looked up, then looked at the farmer, balancing on aluminum crutches and one leg.

Wes looked up at the farmer, one eye screwed shut, and grinned that happy little-boy grin and declared, “Hi!”

Vince couldn’t help but grin back and then laugh.

 

Linn climbed steadily, came to the level of Vanessa’s barnyard-dirty, black gum overboots.

“Vanessa!” he called, stopping, eye level with her boot heels.

Vanessa did not move.

The Sheriff habitually climbed ladders by gripping the sides, not the rungs, an old habit from an old-timer who taught him the trick:  “Don’t grab the rungs, son,” he’d been admonished, “rungs are filthy and you want to keep your hands clean. Grab the sides of the ladder” – and so he did, which allowed him to climb up behind Vanessa.

“Vanessa,” he said, his chin over her shoulder.  “Vanessa?”
Vanessa whimpered, shivering.

“Vanessa, I’m right here.  I’m going to get you down.”

Vanessa breathed heavily, quickly, through her nose.

Linn ran one arm under Vanessa’s right arm, grabbed the rung in front of her.

He ran his other arm under her left arm, grabbed the rung.

He squeezed his forearms together, against her ribs.

“Vanessa,” he said, “I need you to grab the next rung down.”  He slid his hand inward, bumped gently against her gloved grip.

Marsha looked up at the red jacketed girl against the grey silo, at the cloudless sky above, then looked at the farmer.

“Vince?”  she asked, blinking.

“Marsha?”  he blinked, then laughed as Vanessa grabbed him in a quick, careful hug.

“What happened to your leg?”  she asked, looking down, then back up, her expression concerned.

“I got clumsy,” he admitted.  “Vanessa has been doing yeoman’s work but …”

He shrugged.

“Vince … if you don’t want this in the paper …”

“Nah, go ahead.  Word’s gonna get around, might as well tell ‘em what really happened.”

Thank you.”  Marsha lifted her camera, stepped back.  “I wanted to ask first.”

 

“Vanessa, grab the next rung down.  I’ve got you.”

He shifted to the side, brought his knee up under her bottom, set his boot on the rung, pushed his thigh up into her.

“I’ve got your weight, Vanessa.  Move your right hand down.  Do it now.”

The Sheriff’s voice was calm, deep, reassuring, a voice she’d heard before.

Vanessa slowly, reluctantly, surrendered her grip, slapped her hand down hard, fast, seized the next rung down.

“Good,” the Sheriff said.  “I’ve got your weight.  I’m holding you, Vanessa, I’ve got you.  You are not going to fall.  I will not allow that.  Take your left hand and take the next rung down.”  His hand slid sideways, bumped her gloved hand.  “Switch your grip, Vanessa, do it now.”

Vanessa shivered a little, but she let go of her left hand’s clutching grip and slapped her left hand down on the next rung, seized it hard.

“Okay.  I want you to bring your right foot back.  I have your weight.  Step down one, Vanessa, but just one.  No more than that.  I’ve got your weight.”

One step at a time, one grip at a time, one step at a time, the Sheriff coaxed her down:  it took most of an hour, an hour in which the Sheriff’s back began calling him unkind names, an hour in which Vanessa began to whimper a little.

Bored, the boys in their increasingly dirty dress clothes wandered around a little:  they looked between boards on the fence, they scampered over to the sheep pen, laughed as a curious ewe came over and sniffed at young hands reaching through the whitewashed boards, they squatted and drew circles and squiggly lines in the dirt with their fingers, and Wes laughed and fell over as Jim’s blue heeler came over and said hello, washing behind the little boy’s ears and laying down beside the laughing little boy sitting in the dirt.

“Okay, Vanessa, we’re almost down,” Linn said. “I’ve got your weight” – he squeezed his arms tighter against his ribs as he dropped his leg, stepped flat footed off the ladder and onto the ground.

“Okay,” he said.  “We’re down.”
Vanessa shivered, squeaked a little, then she raised her head, opened one eye.

She turned her head, saw the base of the silo, saw her father.

The Sheriff stepped back and Vanessa stepped down, looked up the ladder, looked at her father, swallowed.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Vanessa squeaked, her bottom lip quivering.  “I didn’t fix it.”

 

Marsha followed the Sheriff and his boys back to their Jeep, laughing a little as Linn spread out trash sacks for his dirty-bottom boys to sit on:  as usual, boys got into their own mischief, and that involved sitting in the dirt.

“It’s a good thing your Mama won’t see you like this,” Linn muttered good-naturedly as he fastened Wes into his seat:  little hands grabbed big hands and Wes declared “No!  I do it!”

Marsha ran her camera on video, smiling as she did.

This would go neither on the website nor in the newspaper; rather, this would be sent to Mars, sent to the Sheriff’s daughter, sent for morale and for entertainment value.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

155.  THE BLACK DEATH

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna drew her arm back, threw.

The knife was heavy, hand-forged and surprisingly well balanced.

It spun like a silver wheel, swift, silent and most effective:  the blade went through the woman’s left eye and pinned her skull to the well-finished door trim.

Sarah smiled grimly, reached primly into her ornate hairdo, then reached down to the manacle snugly locked about her ankle.

It was fast with a large, strong, serviceable and ridiculously simple padlock; three twists and she had the stiff wire deep into its mechanism, a thrust and it opened:  Sarah removed the shackle, wiping at the stain the steel left on her stocking.

She knew she had to work fast, and fast she worked, going to her trunk.

It had been opened, its false bottom undiscovered:  Sarah stripped quickly to her riding corset, pulled out what the exploring kidnappers must’ve thought were a husband’s clothes, or perhaps a brother’s.

The other abductees watched, silent, afraid, barely daring to hope.

Like the murderer in their midst, this girl named Juliette, they’d all been gulled, tricked, brought to a fine hotel, then with threats and raw strength (and sometimes a fist, though not often – and if used it was applied where it wouldn’t show), the women were stripped to their stockings, shackled to a crib, congratulated on their new status as moneymakers, and left.

Sarah watched the conversations, the whispered words, the looks, and she saw right away one girl didn’t fit.

There was trouble when a customer came and apparently was about to do something that would have damaged the merchandise he selected:  the girl whose behavior didn’t match the others, had just enough chain to reach a concealed button beside the door’s frame.

When Sarah greeted her customer with willing hands and an eager voice, when she ran her hand sensually down his leg, when she slipped the slender boot knife from its sheath, then straightened, gripping it in her fist so it stuck out between her middle and ring fingers, when Sarah punched hard as she’d often practiced, driving her fist up under the man’s jaw, when she hit him so hard the slender, tempered blade sliced through jaw and tongue, through the roof of the mouth and the floor of the skull and thrust out into his greasy hair, when this Juliette jumped up and ran to the limit of her shackling chain, reaching for the signal button, Sarah pulled the heavier knife from her collapsing customer’s belt sheath, gripped the blade, yelled “Hey!” as she brought the knife’s handle back over her shoulder.

Sarah Lynne McKenna dressed quickly, assuming the black boots and drawers, knee socks and shirt and vest, she tied the wild rag comfortably around her neck and draped it half over one shoulder, the black silk neckscarf caressing her throat as sensually as a lover.

The other three girls stared as Sarah changed from a pretty young woman, all face paint and hairdo and stockings and frillies, chained by her right ankle to her dirty crib, to a black-garbed wraith that moved with the lithe grace of a hunting mink and all the sound of a passing summer cloud.

Sarah went from one girl to another, using her picklock to open their ankle cuffs:  her words were quiet, for there was no need for raised voices:  Sarah gave orders and the girls, grim-faced, nodded.

They knew if they stayed they would have no life; they would be ridden like rented horses, worn out, discarded, as they’d seen another girl die already in their short time in this imprisoning whorehouse, this product of the city.

“We are getting all of us out of here,” Sarah said gently.  “We are all going to live and we are all going to go home.”

“I … can’t …” the youngest of them whispered, shivering, drawing her shawl tight around her shoulders, as if hoping it were a protective armor of some sort.  “I can’t … I’m … used goods.”  She looked to the side, ashamed, her face turning scarlet.

Sarah seized her by the shoulders, jerked her face close, her voice hissing and angry.

“I don’t have time for this!”  Her eyes were pale, hard, her teeth gleaming.  “What was done to you was done TO you, not WITH you!  You did NOT consent and it is NOT, YOUR, FAULT!” 

She shook the girl a little as her voice slithered from her throat, dry and scaly as a desert viper. 

“When you are helpless, it is NOT YOUR FAULT!  Now we are getting you the hell OUT OF HERE and we can worry about everything else after that!”

The girl nodded, biting her bottom lip.

“Now.”  Sarah looked around.  “I am the Black Agent and I get people out of trouble.”  She lifted the short, stubby, double barrel shotgun.  “I’m going out that door and I’m going down the back stairs and all of you are coming with me!”

She walked up to the dead woman, pinned to the door trim by the heavy-bladed knife.

Grabbing the handle, she pulled twisted; the body fell to the floor and she planted her boot sole on the dead traitor’s face, worked the blade free, wiped it clean on the dead woman’s hair, looked up.

“One more thing,” she said casually.  “You might want to get some clothes on.”

 

Marsha paged through the Judge’s records, fascinated.

He’d kept the accounts given him by the Black Agent.

There was a pencil drawing of her – at least that’s what she’s supposed to look like, Marsha thought – the woman was all in black and dressed like a man, her long black duster open and catching the wind as she ran down a hallway.

Marsha marveled at the life this simple pencil drawing captured, and she looked up and said, “You have to see this.”

Wilma Kincaid came over, tilted her head a little, smiled, then her smile faded and she bent quickly and thrust he face closer to the page.

“Is there an account with this?” she breathed, and Marsha nodded, set the handwritten ledger-book on her desk, scooted back a little.

Wilma pulled up a folding tin chair, its rubber tipped legs protesting against the scrubbed-clean floor:  she could have set on a fence rail or a bale of hay and she’d never have known, for the moment she began to read, she was seized by the story, sucked into it, guided by this drawing, this image of a charging woman with cold fury in her eyes and flame blasting from the muzzle of the stubby, one-hand shotgun she had gripped at waist level.

 

There was neither challenge given, or quarter asked.

Two men stood at the top of the stairs, two men who turned, blading their hands under their coats.

Sarah came out of the room, looked left, looked right, her lips peeling back from even white teeth in a smile that was far less than delicate or feminine either one.

Her good right hand was absolutely welded around the hand-checkered pistol grip of the cut-down twelve-bore, and she seized the barrels around the fore-end, a pair of brass hulls between the fingers of her support hand, and she felt that fierce, consuming joy! that comes of running into battle, and she charged.

The two men had been talking, quietly; they were stationed at the top of the stairs to prevent people from ascending without paying, they were placed here to prevent too much damage to the girls – which is why they didn’t investigate the sound of a body hitting the door frame, nor squeals of dismay – but the sound of light, running feet brought them out of their quiet-voiced conversation, and the sight of a small man running toward them with a street howitzer thrust toward them shocked them from complacency and turned them to square off with this new threat.

They turned in time to inherit two charges of swan shot, driven by a like volume of coarse powder:  the concussion was shocking in the hallway, the girls just coming out of the room clapped their hands to their ears and grunted, squinting and turning away a little, and Sarah charged the pair, driving into them as they fell back, shocked and dying.

She skidded to a fast stop, went to one knee, opened the double gun:  she released the suddenly-hot barrels, dunked the two reloads between her fingers into the smoking chambers, snapped the stubby deck gun shut, swiped her thumb over the hammers and brought them both back to full stand.

She glanced over her shoulders, jerked her head.

“Come on!”

The three girls followed, stumbling, skirts gathered up out of the way, running, half-tripping over the bodies, but running, escaping!

 

“Love the handwriting,” Wilma breathed.

“Handwriting isn’t what it was,” Marsha sighed.  “It’s almost an art form!”

“I’ll say.”  Wilma read further.  “The Judge must have written this as she dictated it.  It’s …”

Wilma’s eyes were absolutely welded to the story.

“It’s like I was there,” she whispered, and Marsha nodded.

She’d felt the same.

 

Sarah laid about with the horse pistol, breaking noses, teeth and jawbones, driving a charge into a man’s belt buckle, kicking another under the knee:  she fired the other barrel, bought out a stubby, blocky, bulldog .44 and proceeded to drive five rounds of frontier justice through the wishbones of the lawless:  pistol and shotgun were reloaded and Sarah turned to the last man standing, the man in front of the locked door.

Sarah drove the muzzle of the double gun into his crotch.

“Open it,” she snarled, a woman’s voice horribly distorted with rage and war-venom, and the last man who stood between them and freedom stepped back, back another step, turned and ran with a scream of sheer terror.

He’d seen her eyes and he’d seen death looking at him and every bit of fight ran down his pants leg and into his townie shoe.

To his dying day he never, ever forgot the night when the Reaper grinned with bony jaws out the hard and pale eyes of the most murderous, the most feared, the most legendary law dog in all of the Colorado Territory.

He lived the rest of his life a broken man, drinking whiskey-shots with a trembling hand, jumping at noises, hiding in lonesome places, forever afraid that black harbinger of justice was going to descend upon him and rip the very soul from his miserable carcass.

He was one of the only outlaws who ever went face-to-face with the Black Agent, with Black Death itself, and lived.

 

Wilma looked at the drawing, at this rendition of a warrior at the peak of battle-frenzy, at the fearful and feminine faces behind her, their skirts gathered, terrified but following.

The drawing was well enough done she could almost feel the concussion of the gunshot, see the swing and rustle of petticoats, the bounce of hair-curls as they ran.

 

Sarah set the gun muzzle against the door’s lock, pulled the trigger, kicked the door.

It swung open.

She fired again as fire bloomed at her:  she felt the burn of a near miss, enough to bring blood but barely, and she swarmed into the few who stood without the door, wondering whether they should enter to challenge whatever was happening within.

Sarah knew she had no friends here, no allies – even the law was corrupt here in the city – she slashed with the double gun, using it as a one-hand club, her .44 punctuating her efforts with its heavy-voiced concussion, until she alone stood, until smoke, layering into hazy eddies, drifted a little, until she opened the gun and jerked it hard to kick out the empties, until another pair of brass cartridges dunked solidly into the hot and smoking breech.

She snapped the breech shut, looking around, glaring, teeth bared, put two fingers to her lips, whistled.

Down the street, the sound of hooves:  a dark, cloaked figure on an enclosed cab dropped the cloth from a lantern, lifted it, dropped it again, then whipped up the nag:  Sarah shoved the girls into the cab, climbed in with them, thumped the ceiling of the cab with her fist, and the black handsom lurched into a brisk trot.

A black cab, drawn by a black horse, containing three terrified young women and a black-coated Agent embracing the warrior’s adrenalin like a drug, rattled into the darkness, and were gone.

Two days later a train pulled into station.

Two women disembarked; two more watched from the private car.

A well-dressed man met them:  he listened carefully, nodded, handed the woman in the electric-blue McKenna gown a leather wallet, which disappeared into her skirting somehow:  another half-day, another train station, another disembarkation, but with a man and a woman waiting.

Here, too, the woman in the blue McKenna gown was given a wallet:  here, too, her words were carefully received, and the man and woman nodded their understanding:  as was proper for the era, they too waited until the train was underway before they embraced the daughter they thought they would never see again.

They continued their journey.

The engine bore white flags on the front:  it was an express, it had priority over all other rail traffic, and it wasted no time in building speed as they headed south, leaving Colorado for New Mexico.

The young woman who sat in silence, clutching a silver-mounted Rosary, was dressed after the Spanish style:  she wore a mantilla and a silver comb, tall and ornate in her carefully-styled hair; her eyes were distant, lost.

Sarah waited.

The young woman looked up, her eyes utterly black, like deep lakes.

“I am no longer pure,” she whispered, her throat tight. 

“Did you consent to it?”  Sarah asked quietly.

“No.”

“Have you had your moon-time since?”

The beautiful young daughter of a Spanish grandee dropped her eyes, colored furiously.

“Yes.”

“You are not pregnant.”

“No.”

“What they did was against your will and without your consent.”

She nodded.

“Then your purity remains and your chastity is intact.”

“My family knows why I was taken.  I was to be despoiled, shamed, disgraced, sold.”

Her words were quiet, her expression that of a sorrow-filled, lost, unredeemable soul, cast forever from the bosom of God and man, to wander a desolate and bleak landscape for all eternity and beyond.

“That didn’t happen.”

Pale eyes met black eyes; neither blinked, and the Spanish grandee’s daughter raised her chin as Sarah paced slowly across the private car to her.

Sarah wrapped her hands around the woman’s fist, still clutching the silver-mounted rosary.

“You remain pure,” she whispered.  “You are without blame.  Our Mother was a woman, she was in this earth, she knew our sorrows, and I cannot see Her placing blame upon you!”

Sarah saw something in the young woman’s dark and lovely eyes, and she gave the woman’s hands an encouraging little squeeze.

She saw hope.

“But will my family see it that way?”  she whispered.

Sarah hugged her – quickly, impulsively, the way a woman will – and the two young women held one another, held each other until the shivering was gone, until sorrow was retreated, until the engine’s whistle told them they were coming into another station.

Two vaqueros waited with a dignified, older man, and the dark-eyed woman with him:  the vaqueros bore a distinct resemblance to the young woman Sarah was bringing home, and she suspected rather strongly these were her brothers.

The women descended.

As reserved and dignified as the old man was, the mother was equally impulsive:  mother and daughter embraced, both of them talking too quickly to be understood, and the acalde turned to Sarah.

“You were successful,” he said in accented English.

“El Senor Dios granted our success,” Sarah replied. 

She took the Acalde’s arm, turned him, walked slowly toward the end of the depot platform.

“Your daughter,” she said carefully, “will have terrible nightmares.”

She felt the father stiffen a little as he received the news he feared.

The brothers followed closely, listening without comment.

“A woman who is brought to fear will live with that fear.  It will pursue her in the day and it will haunt her nights and she may have to have a lamp lighted in her bedroom.  This is normal and in time it will pass, but it will take time.”

She stopped, looked the man directly in the eye as she spoke, and she repeated herself.

“It will take time, Acalde.  Give her this time.  She will need to heal, for her spirit is injured.”

She seized the man’s upper arms, her expression intense.  “Her spirit is injured, Acalde.  Not her body.”

Her eyes were hard and cold as a mountain glacier’s frozen heart.

“They laid hands on her, Acalde, and I cut their hands off.”

She looked away, her eyes pale and her face tight, and she took a long breath, looked back.

“Three men are screaming in hell for their sins, Acalde, three men who sought to disgrace your family, and failed.”

She looked at the two stone-faced vaqueros standing close behind the dignified older man in the well-tailored suit.

“You have heard talk.”  It was a statement, not a question.

The black-eyed brothers nodded.

“May El Senor Dios ride with you.”

The Acalde raised his hand, stopping the pair before they could turn to their horses.

“She is my daughter,” he said quietly, “and my daughter is returned safe and whole.”

There was a stillness about the man, a depth that belied his quiet and dignified appearance.

“I know who did this.”

His wife looked up, her eyes wide, fearful.

“I will ride.”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

156.  LIAR

 

Linn lifted his binoculars, watched Jimmy ride out of the barn, his face wet.

Linn’s face was impassive as he saw honest, open grief on the boy’s face.

“Wes,” he said quietly, “would you like to go for a ride?”

“Yis!”  Wes jumped up, eyes bright and delighted, and Linn ran his arm around the back of his son’s thighs and hoisted him quickly, the way that brought a happy giggle to the apple-cheeked lad.

Linn strode down to the barn, The Bear Killer following, death on four paws:  Linn was not at all unhappy to see the mountain Mastiff coming with them.

He stopped, turned, looked at the house.

“Bear Killer,” he said softly, “go Mommy.  Bear Killer go Mommy.”

The Bear Killer lifted his great black head and gave an almost inaudible whuff before turning and trotting back to the house.

He set Wes down on a hay bale and said “Now don’t you move,” and Wes giggled, and the moment Linn was turned to seize the saddle blanket, Wes hopped off the bale, grinning.

Linn carefully paid him no mind a’tall as he swung the blanket, catching the air and settling smoothly on Apple-horse’s back.

“You better not be moved,” Linn said, and Wes laughed again: “I not!” he declared in his happy little-boy voice, and Linn dropped the near stirrup over the saddle horn.

“You’d best not,” he said, swung the saddle up and over and the stirrup fell and smacked the spur of his .44 revolver’s hammer the way it always did.

Five beans in the wheel, he thought.  It’s not just a good idea!

Wes climbed awkwardly back up onto the bale as Linn knuckled Apple’s gut.

“You bum,” Linn muttered, “you ain’t gonna pull that one on me again!” – words he spoke as if reciting a litany, or a protective spell perhaps, against a repeat of the one and only time he didn’t prevent the stallion from a loose cinch.

Terra Firma, as he recalled, was considerably more firma than he really wanted.

He turned, plucked the grinning, towheaded lad from the bale, stood him up on the edge of the stall.

Wes reached over, gripped the end post to stabilize himself, waited, balancing easily on the narrow board.

Linn swung into saddle leather, sidled Apple over and Wes stepped onto the wide, carved saddle skirt behind his Pa, grabbed the back of his Pa’s vest.

“Good grip?”  Linn asked.

“Grip!”  Wes crowed.

Linn kneed Apple into a turn and they left the barn at a trot.

 

Jimmy knew his Mama was buried in the Firelands cemetery.

He didn’t know quite where – he’d been there but he was beyond lost, he was a frightened little boy wandering among stone markers, guided by strangers’ hands gripping his, standing beside the plain wood box, taken home by the Sheriff.

He hadn’t been back since that sunshine morning when they buried his Mama, when they sang “Shall We Gather At the River” and the Parson said kind words in a gentle voice.

The only thing he really remembered was leaning on the Sheriff’s leg, and then the man squatting and taking Jimmy in his arms, and Jimmy hugging him back, for the boy really, really needed that hug.

Jimmy rode blind.

Stomper, on the other hand, seemed to divine where they were going; he swung around the back half of Firelands, cut through the quiet streets, trotting slowly down alleys, down between the back of the Silver Jewel and where Jimmy heard the livery used to be:  it was a used car dealership now, but Jimmy didn’t have any interest in cars, and so he didn’t even look over at the selection of shining automobiles waiting patiently for a buyer.

Jimmy and Stomper paced behind the schoolhouse and the bank and they swung around behind the hospital and kept on going, crossed the creek and climbed the bank on the other side, came onto the packed gravel road leading up into the cemetery.

When Jimmy and Stomper passed under the ancient, cast iron archway, it felt for a moment like maybe he’d just been swallowed.

 

“This is an account of what the Black Agent told each of the parents,” Marsha said slowly, her voice lagging behind her racing mind as her eyes drank words from the page like a thirsty man drinks a free beer on a hot day.

“She told them all the same thing, that the girls were pure and untouched, that …”

She paged back, re-read what she’d been consuming, confirming what she remembered.

“Apparently they believed her.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”  Wilma breathed.  “She had it right that they would need a night light, that their spirits were wounded.”

“She said here” – Marsha thumped the page for emphasis, her trimmed nail barely touching the paper – “that she’d cut off the hands that touched the acalde’s daughter, that three men screamed in Hell for what they’d tried to do with her, that … yes, here, she emphasized that it was her spirit that was injured and not her body.”
She and Wilma looked up, blinked.

“But that’s the girl that said she was used goods?”

“She’s the one.”

“She was the one so ashamed because she was …”

“That’s right.”

Wilma looked down at the page, quirked an eyebrow.

“So this Black Agent was a liar.”

“She was,” Marsha nodded.  “I’d say she was a pretty good one, too.”

 

Jimmy unbuttoned his shirt cuff, used it to wipe his eye, his other eye:  he looked around as Stomper wandered slowly along the lower section, the older section.

Keller, Jimmy read on a wide stone:  Esther, loving wife, some dates carved into polished quartz.

Jimmy shivered as he read the name on the other end of the stone.

Sheriff Linn Keller, he read, and a moan escaped unbidden from his young throat.

“Nnooo,” he whined, feeling his heart sink, and a familiar voice said, “You look like you’ve lost your best friend.”

He wiped his eyes again, looked to his left.

The Pretty Lady was riding beside him on her big black horse.

“Now what brings a fine looking young man to a garden of stone on such a lovely and sunny afternoon?”  Sarah asked, and Jimmy sniffed and remembered he had a hankie in his hip pocket.

He pulled it out, gripped the corner, gave it a snap.

“The Sheriff does that,” The Pretty Lady smiled, nodding her approval.

Jimmy blew his nose, noisily, the way a little boy does:  he wiped his beak and his lip and folded the damp hankie carefully and then shoved it carelessly into his hip pocket.

“Jimmy,” Sarah said gently, “what brings you here?”

Jimmy’s voice was as sorrowful as his face.

“I miss Mama,” he admitted.  “I know I’m not s’pos’ta but I remember how she smelt and how she felt when she held me an’ she useta make me cinmannon rolls an’ she’d read to me –“

Sarah nodded, smiling.  “Those,” she agreed, “are good memories, Jimmy, and you should keep them.”

Jimmy nodded.

“Come on down,” Sarah said, swinging her leg over her shining-black mare’s rump with a flare of skirt and petticoat, dropping easily to the ground:  she came around Snowflake’s head, caressing her velvety nose, reached up.

Jimmy leaned waaaaay over and let Sarah bring him down.

Sarah knelt on her skirts, brought Jimmy into her, and Jimmy hugged her back, a lonely little boy who missed his Mama, held by a woman long dead who understood exactly what that felt like.

Linn drew up.

Wes rode standing up behind him, laughing with happy delight as Linn galloped Apple-horse across the high meadow, squealing his young approval as his pale eyed Papa jumped Apple across the creek and climbed the hill as if assaulting an enemy’s position:  Wes looked around, big-eyed and interested, as they were suddenly in among what looked like really old teeth thrust out of the ground.

Linn saw the woman in the dark-blue McKenna gown, kneeling between two truly huge horses, one a light tan and the other a gleaming black:  he saw the woman’s quiet smile, saw her shoo-go-away wave of a gloved hand.

Linn touched his hat brim, turned Apple-horse, walked him down the packed-gravel road into Firelands.

“Wes,” he said, “how does an ice cream sundae sound?”

“Yis!”  Wes declared, happily gripping his Pa’s vest.

Father and son trotted right up the center of the street, the little boy riding standing up behind his father, looking around, big-eyed and absolutely sure of himself:  Linn tied off Apple-horse to a handy post, and the pair went into the drugstore, because their old-fashioned drugstore with the old-fashioned soda nozzles and a soda jerk in a paper hat made absolutely the best ice cream sundaes the Sheriff had ever tasted, and it is a father’s duty to teach his sons about the good things in life.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

157.  THE PRIVATE CAR

 

“You want to see ghost.”

Marsha smiled a little as she closed the ledger book.

“Ummm … okay,” Wilma said, looking at the ledger, wishing she could have read more about the Black Agent.

Marsha patted the closed book.  “We’ll get back to her,” she laughed.  “Don’t worry about that.”  She stood, looked around, picked up her cloth messenger bag, slung it over her off shoulder, then placed her hand on her side, nodded.

“When Will and I were honeymooning” – she stopped, colored a little – “um, there were times when we didn’t think we were alone.”

“I, um, what?”

Marsha laughed.  “No, not an intruder.  We had, oh my goodness, we had so many people who came through just fascinated with the private car.”  She sighed, gestured Wilma to go first.  “I mentioned to some of our visitors that the car belonged to His Honor the Judge, the same man who wrote these accounts of the Black Agent.”

Wilma waited for Marsha to unlock the door, followed her out, waited for her to make fast and set the alarm.

“I still have the key to the car and it’s still in the trainyard.  If we’re lucky we might smell the Judge.”

“Excuse me?”

Marsha laughed.  “He smoked cigars.  We smelled a fresh-struck match and a freshly-lighted cigar.  You know how the very first smoke off a fresh cigar always smells really good?”

Wilma nodded; her father had been a cigar smoker.

“That’s what we would smell.  It was momentary, it never lingered.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“No.”  Marsha looked almost disappointed. 

“What would you have done if you’d seen him?”

“I don’t know,” Marsha admitted.  “I think that would depend on what Will and I were doing at the moment.”

Marsha stopped, her eyes widening, and she closed her mouth slowly, the way a woman will when she thinks she’s just let the feline out of the burlap.

Wilma pretended to not notice.

 

 

Will looked up at Linn’s knock, gestured:  Linn and the boys came into the Chief’s office, Jimmy cautious and quiet, Wes bouncing, grinning, greeting the Chief with his irrepressible “Hi!”

Will placed his ballpoint exactly parallel to the edge of the paper he’d been working on, leaned back, grinned at the happy towhead.

“Looks like chocolate sauce,” he said in a fatherly tone.  “Your wife won’t be happy you spoiled their supper.”

“I’m taking her a sundae as well.”

“On the other hand,” Will chuckled, then gave Linn a closer look.

“I know that look,” he said slowly.  “My sister …”

“Looked like this when she had to give the news, yes.”

Will stood, quickly, easily, his bottom jaw thrusting out.

“No easy way to say it, Will.  I just heard myself.  Nelson Bell is dead.”

Will closed his eyes, took a long breath in, held it, sighed it out.

“Go on.”  The police chief’s voice was flat, emotionless, quiet.

Jimmy’s hand tightened on his Sheriff’s and he shrank a little behind the lean-waisted lawman’s leg.

“You recall he found out his kidneys were bad.”

Will nodded.

“He refused dialysis.”
Will looked away, his jaw muscles working, then he looked back.

“We’re requested for the funeral.  There will be nineteen other riflemen.”

“What should I bring?”

“I’m bringing my flint gun.  I reckon your Hawken unless you’ve another.”

“I just finished an under hammer that turned out well,” Will said slowly.  “When and where, and what should I wear?”

 

The half-dozen tourists gawked and marveled at the inside of the private car.

“Windows had real curtains,” their guide, a pleasant young woman in an immaculate ivory-and-red gown explained, “and the seats are upholstered with real velvet.  A private car was a residence on wheels, a stateroom on the steel waves undulating over the nation’s soil.  In winter it was heated by a coal stove” – she gestured with a gracefully gloved hand – “lighted with oil lamps, a small kitchen was carefully concealed in this cupboard” – she opened two doors, a table folded down, and behind it, bread and cold meats, wrapped in waxed paper and cloth, a few canned goods, and table service for four were revealed in their recessed cubbies.

“Space was very much at a premium.”  Their guide tilted her head and smiled pleasantly at a boy who could not have been over twelve.  “You, sir, you have the mark of a mariner about you.  I can smell the salt water on your clothes and I hear canvas boom and fill with air as you turn.  Tell me, did you serve with our navy, or another?”

The boy’s ears turned an incredible shade of red as his parents chuckled quietly.

The guide raised a teaching finger.  “I do not speak thusly to trifle with this fine young man’s feelings, but rather to illustrate a point.  Life aboard ship is an efficient life, because there is no room for the superfluous.  In like manner” – she gestured round about with both hands, palms up – “in like manner, we have not one inch of wasted space.  Everything is in its place and efficiently so, and whenever possible all things have a multiple purpose.”  She marched forward, through the small assembly, patted an upholstered bench.  “Even this seat” – she lifted it to reveal what looked like the seat of an old fashioned outhouse, only made of polished and varnished hardwood – “does double duty for … relief.”

She nodded slightly as she pronounced the word, then gestured as if directing their attention downward.

“Sanitation in the 1880s was far different than today.  This simply opens onto the tracks below us.  Modern cars have holding tanks, but not this one!” 

She laughed with the tourists and added, “It’s also rather drafty, especially in cold weather!”
“Is this car rented out?”  a young married asked hopefully, and several faces looked as if they were considering making the same inquiry.

“No, I’m sorry, it is not.  You see….”

The pretty young guide tapped her cheek with a meditative forefinger.

“How shall I put this? – people of your era expect a certain number of … accomodations.

“Look around and you will see little entertainment.  Perhaps a deck of cards in a desk drawer, there may be a newspaper on the side-table, even a small selection of books discreetly shelved, but there is no means of communication as you know it.  Neither are there Edison lights.  There are rules of” – she frowned, thought for a moment.

“I believe you call it Interstate Commerce, or something of the kind.  Rail cars of your modern age must have holding tanks” – she looked back to the now-closed bench seat – “and Edison lights, they have steam heat, much safer than oil lamps and a coal stove.  Plus modern rail cars have porters and a kitchen and grand meals.  No,” she sighed sadly, “I’m afraid it would be quite out of the question to rent out this museum display.”  She tilted her head and looked at the questioner as if at a dear friend.  “But wouldn’t it be a marvelous way to travel?”

She spun, flaring her skirt, then made a great sweeping gesture toward the door:  “And now if you will kindly disembark, we will continue to the depot, where I believe a gentleman named Lightning is actually using a telegraph key for actual communication.  Right this way, please.”

As she followed the happy, chattering tourists out of the private car, the pretty young woman with pale eyes turned, lifted her chin.

The dirt they’d tracked in, the carpet scuffs, a discarded wrapper … gone.

Just like their guide was gone when a few of them turned back to see if she was still following.

The twelve-year-old who’d been immediately nicknamed “Saltwater” by his father ran back to the car, swarmed up the cast-iron steps, seized the doorknob, turned it, shook it, then cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed his face to the glass, looking about the interior.

He turned back, shaking his head, spreading his arms and his hands.

“Gone,” he declared in a puzzled voice.

“Maybe she was a ghost,” a familiar voice suggested, and they all turned and looked, and their tour guide smiled at them from the far end of the platform.

“This way, please!”

 

By ones and by twos, the tourists approached Wilma’s table in the back room, the private room where the Ladies’ Tea Society met:  tentatively they asked if she were The Ghost Hunter, and then they sat and blurted out their story:  by ones and twos they came, and they stayed as more of their party arrived, and Wilma’s pencil ran swiftly over lined paper, trying desperately to keep up with their accounts of what they’d seen.

The twelve year old Saltwater, hands shoved in his pockets, was affecting a casual air, at least until he came to a pair of portraits, side by side.

“Hey Dad,” he called softly.  “Take a look at this.”

“Not now, son,” his father said, waiting his turn to divulge his observations of the woman who couldn’t possibly move that fast.

“Dad,” Saltwater said, his voice tight.  “You want to see this.”

The boy’s voice was so filled with certainty that his father came over.

He stared at the two portraits and swore, quietly, but most sincerely.

“Honey,” he called, not taking his eyes off the pair of women:  they both wore an ivory and red gown of the mid-1880s, they both wore their hair styles in the same manner, with an ornately-spun ribbon in their coiffure:  more significantly, as they stared at the portraits, as the mother joined them, and then the tourists broke away from The Ghost Hunter’s table and clustered about the twin portraits hung neatly on the wall, their voices stilled and they stared at the attractive women in identical dresses, standing identically, each with a double barrel shotgun delicately held in their gloved hands … each of the woman staring coolly back at the observers, staring back with ice-pale eyes.

Wilma came over, smiled.

“This one” – she indicated the left-hand portrait with a bladed hand – “is a colored reprint of a glass plate photograph taken in the late 1880s.  Her name is Sarah Lynne McKenna and she was the thrice-great grandmother of this woman here.”  She indicated the other woman, identically dressed, identically posed.  “This is the late Sheriff Willamina Keller.  Her son is our current Sheriff and they both have pale eyes.”

“That’s her,” Saltwater breathed.  “That’s the woman who was in the private car!”

Wilma blinked and her mouth fell open.

“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “I should order coffee.  I want to hear what every last one of you has to say!”

 

Nelson Bell had been a rifleman, but a very specialized rifleman.

His was a love for hand made rifles of the frontier era.

His son stood with his father’s rifle in hand, a .54 Hawken, built off original blueprints reproduced from the J&S Hawken Rifle Works archives.

Linn and Will stood shoulder to shoulder, each in flannel shirts and blue jeans, Linn with his favorite, beat-up and shapeless felt hat, its wide brim sagging down for its entire periphery; Will’s was more a Joe Crane style, something a Mountain Man might have worn, with a single feather dangling from the apex of its crown.

Twenty-one men, in three ranks, all charged with blank rounds for this final salute to their fallen comrade.

The Parson intoned the solemn words, bowed his head:  the riflemen bowed theirs as well, and when the sky pilot declared, “Amen!” the man’s son shouted, “NELSON!”

Seven rifles came to shoulder and their answering shout of “NELSON!” was followed by the deep concussion of a sulfurous septet.

Seven men stepped back, seven stepped between them.

“NELSON!”

BOOOOMMMMM!

“NELSON!”

BOOOOMMMMMM!

Pillow ticking patching spiraled smoking over the grave; bread used as wadding for the blank rounds was blown into particles too fine to be noticed, and twenty-one of his friends and fellow riflemen grounded their rifle butts on boots and moccasins and said his own, silent goodbye to a big, bluff, good-natured friend they would miss terribly.

Connie held Jimmy’s hand, her grip cool, gentle; Wes squirmed, barely able to hold still:  he’d jerked his hand free of his Mama’s grip and clapped his young and pink palms over his ears until the third volley was loosed:  to his credit, he did not squeal with delight, but he did jump up and down, excited and delighted.

Miss Esther slept, warm and comfortable in her blanket-padded, woven-withie picnic basket, not the least troubled by the concussion.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

158.  ESTHER, THE LADY

 

Mr. Baxter looked uncomfortably out the corner of his eye at the stranger at the end of the bar.

He was sweating, he was nervous, he startled easily:  he’d paid for a beer, he’d drunk about two-thirds of it, but he did not act like a man with a thirst.

He looked like a man either ready to explode, or run screaming from something.

Mr. Baxter lifted his chin to the waitress, grabbed the front of his apron, flipped it once:  the cute waitress with the calico dress nodded once, raised her empty tray overhead and skipped like a little girl around behind the nervous stranger and down the hall.

 

Jimmy watched as the Sheriff explained the sequence for cleaning a muzzle loading rifle barrel.

“You want to start with cold water,” he explained, “and give it a good scrubbing with just plain water.  Powder salts are what cause rust, they pull moisture out of the air and form salty acids and they’ll rust a good gunbarrel fast, hard and nasty.”

He pulled out the flannel patch, chosen for its snug fit and its fluffy character, dropped the black, sulfurous square into a plastic grocery sack cuffed down for that purpose.

“I’ll scrub it cold for a while and then add a little soap when I start with warm water.  Ivory soap is best, it’s genuine soap and it’ll cut the crud good as any.”  He grinned, vigorously pumping the striped hickory ram rod.  “Once it’s warm to the touch I’ll run several spit patches through it.  Enzymes in your saliva dissolve black powder fouling right well.”

Jimmy nodded solemnly, his eyes never leaving his Sheriff’s hands.

“Now I’m going to change this out” – he lifted the barrel’s breech from the plastic bucket, sloshed the contents out onto the gravel, refilled it – “for warm water.  I’ll run it warmer yet and then I’ll go to boilin’, I’ll pour boilin’ water down it.  That’ll flash dry the bore but it’ll flash rust also, but it’s absolutely clean by that point.”

He pointed to a pint canning jar on the shelf.  “That’s where this comes in.”

“Oil?”  Jimmy guessed.

Linn grinned and nodded.  “Right you are,” he affirmed.  “Genuine b’ar oil.”

“Bar oil?”  Jimmy asked, puzzled.  “Chain saw bar oil?”

Linn laughed, twisted a rag around the gunbarrel for a handle, pulled out the patch, looked at it and nodded his satisfaction.

“Um, no,” he said, running hot water down the bore and swabbing it again.  “B’ar as in big, furry, lots of teeth, big claws.”

“Ooh,” Jimmy’s eyes widened as understanding dawned in his active young mind.

“Kind of like the B’ar Killer,” Linn said quietly, pouring a dipper of boiling water down the bore, “only the b’ar was kilt and then rendered for awl.  Got quite a bit of it too.”

Jimmy blinked, his fast-running thoughts scampering off on a tangent.  “Sheriff?”

“Hm?”  Linn poured a second dipper full down the bore, and while it was draining out the nipple, brought down the pint jar of rendered out bear oil and dipped three patches, set them ready to hand.

“How come you named the baby Esther Lynne?”

Linn grinned quietly, began rubbing the octagon barrel with one of the patches.

“You always want to oil it right away, while it’s singin’ hot,” he replied.  “It’s hot and the grain is open and you want to oil it so it can soak into the grain.”

Jimmy waited patiently, or as patiently as a seven year old with a question.

“Esther Lynne,” Linn said softly, and a quiet smile drew wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.  “Your Mama and I thought it a pretty name.  She’s a pretty little girl, and your Mama intends that she should be a proper lady.”

“The Lady Esther,” Jimmy breathed.

“You could say that.”

 

The cook opened the kitchen window, hung a dishtowel over the sill so most of it was outside, closed the window.

Across the street and one flight up, a young man in a wheelchair saw the signal.

He picked up the phone, dialed a number.

“Firelands Police Department.”

“This is Dean.  The Silver Jewel just hung out a towel.”

“I’ll tell the Chief, thank you!”

 

Wilma Kincaid stood back behind the Silver Jewel, studying the rear of the building, trying to imagine the several things she’d been told.

She walked slowly to the back door, climbed the three steps, opened the door – a little surprise there, she thought it would surely have been locked – she closed it behind her, waited a few moments for her eyes to get used to not being out in bright sunlight.

Two women were in the kitchen:  one, with Irish-red hair and a brisk manner, closed a cupboard door:  Wilma just caught a glimpse of a green-glass Rosary before the door passed center, then the other woman – a rather attractive, matronly sort with just as red a head of hair, and startling, Irish-green eyes, turned and smiled at the newcomer.

“It’s so good of you to join us,” she said, and Wilma had the instant impression that the woman was indeed pleased to see her.  “Daisy and I were just discussing the improvements to the Jewel.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Wilma said uncertainly.

“No, no, it’s all right, dear.”  The woman was obviously used to being in charge, but equally used to putting people at ease.  “Now don’t you worry, you are more than welcome here!  Why don’t we go have some tea in the back room – Daisy, I’m sorry, is there tea yet?”

“And when is there not?”  the woman with Irish-blue eyes retorted sharply, but the expression was one of deep and abiding friendship, and Wilma realized it was just the way the two talked to one another.

The matronly redhead was wearing an absolutely gorgeous gown, with a little matching hat and feather; she and Wilma turned into the hallway, and the woman froze, her left arm outthrust to stop Wilma’s progress.

Shocked, Wilma realized the woman was raising her arm to point down the hall, and she was pointing with the octagon barrel of an old-fashioned revolving pistol.

 

Chief of Police Will Keller took the three steps to the Silver Jewel in one long-legged stride:  he seized the door handle, hauled it open.

The nervous man at the end of the bar heard the door open, stepped back, halfway into the hallway, eyes wide with panic.

Mr. Baxter dropped, as did most of the bar’s patrons, as the man yanked a revolver from his waistband, brought it up.

Wilma heard the gunshot as if it were far away, and she watched the man’s head spray blood as if in slow motion:  smoke squirted from the Navy Colt and rolled down the hall in an evolving doughnut, turning itself constantly inside out as it drifted in the still air.

Wilma shrank back against the wall as the gentle, matronly, ladylike woman strode briskly down the hall, pistol in hand, stopped just short of the dead man’s feet.

Chief of Police Will Keller was just holstering his pistol when the woman emerged from the hallway and glared at him, as plain a challenge as any words.

“Nobody,” she declared, “NOBODY shoots at MY GRANDSON!”

Mr. Baxter, the bar patrons, the Police Chief and Wilma stared as the woman slipped the slender barreled percussion revolver into her skirts, into a hidden holster; she tilted her head to the side, gave a quiet tsk-tsk, then looked at the boldly-mustachioed barkeep.

“Mr. Baxter, I am so very sorry,” she said in a kind and gentle voice.  “I honestly did not wish to cause you such a mess.”
If Chief of Police Will Keller’s thoughts could have been heard, everyone in the Silver Jewel would have been in complete agreement.

A woman kills a man who’s trying to ambush me and then she disappears in front of a dozen witnesses.

How in the hell do I put that in my report?

 

“Sheriff?”

“Yes, Jimmy?”

“What was Lady Esther like?”

Linn hooked the breech into place, laid the barrel back into its channel, slid the captive wedges back into place:  he took the toothbrushed, boiled, greased and oiled lock works and wiggled them back into their tightly inletted home, ran the long, flat headed screws through the escutcheon plate and tightened them delicately, carefully.

“Lady Esther,” Linn said thoughtfully, laying the assembled rifle across his lap.

“I understand she was a Lady all the way.  She had red hair and Irish-green eyes and when she spoke it was with a gentle voice.  She dressed well and she had immaculate manners, and one time she shot a man who was trying to shoot her husband, the Sheriff.”

“Which Sheriff was that?”

Linn laughed.  “It was Old Pale Eyes, the Sheriff for whom I am named.”

“The one you look like?”

Linn nodded.  “Yes.  The one I look like.”

“Will she ever come back?”  Jimmy asked hopefully.

“I don’t know,” Linn admitted.  “I honestly don’t know.”

 

Wilma Kincaid swallowed the lump in her throat and looked at the portrait of Esther Keller hanging on the wall in the  Silver Jewel’s back room.

“I can get you something if you’d like,” Marsha offered, and Wilma jumped, startled at the voice and the hand cupping her elbow.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, “I, she, we, the hall, she –“

Wilma pointed helplessly at Esther Keller’s portrait and Marsha nodded.

“This isn’t the first time something like this has happened,” she almost whispered as the waitress came back:  “Ladies, what’s your pleasure?  I can recommend high wine, it’s half-and-half blackberry wine and the Daine boys’ product.  Very good for the nerves!”

“If it’s not asking too much,” Wilma said faintly as she sank into a chair, “I’m sorry – if it’s not asking too much – is there tea?”

The waitress stood hipshot, the knuckles of her off hand on her belt:  “And when is there not?”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

159.  HE DID NOT LOOK BEHIND HIM

 

The Sheriff had his Apple-horse’s forehoof between his knees.

Apple managed to look bored – it was an act, of course, he was biding his time until that tempting bandanna sticking out of the man’s pocket came into range of those strong yellow teeth.

Until then he patiently endured the Sheriff’s scraping at his hoof, inspecting the horseshoe, giving his mount the attention that horsemen have done since they first began partnering with a four legged fighting platform.

Jimmy watched, silent, his eyes big and dark they way they were when he really, really wanted to learn.

Jimmy turned around, looked behind him, blinked, then he turned back to his Sheriff.

“Sheriff?”  he asked hesitantly.

Linn scraped a little with his Barlow knife.  “Yes, Jimmy?”

“Sheriff, are there any horses as big as Stomper?”

Linn wiped his blade off on the edge of the horseshoe, folded the knife and thumbed it back into his pocket:  he lowered Apple-horse’s forehoof, straightened, grimaced, put a hand to the small of his back.

“No, Jimmy,” he groaned, “Stomper is the biggest horse in these parts.”

“Oh.”

Linn patted Apple-horse’s neck, ducked under, ran his hands up under the mane, nodding; he murmured to the stallion, ran his hands down the muscled foreleg, bent a little.

Apple-horse saw his chance.

Jimmy laughed as Apple’s neck and head snapped down, lithe, quick, for all the world like a striking viper:  he whipped his head up, nodding victoriously, waving Linn’s bandanna like a flag of triumph.

Jimmy laughed and so did Linn, but Linn did not look behind him.

Jimmy blinked and watched as Linn retrieved his bandanna, rubbing the stallion’s ears and almost whispering to him, folding the worse-for-wear cloth and thrusting it back into its denim home.

“Sheriff?”

Linn looked up, then back down as he patted Apple’s foreleg.  “Up, boy.”

Apple bent his leg and Linn clamped it between his knees.

“Yeah, Jimmy.”  He ran his hand back into his pocket, fumbled for the Barlow.

“Sheriff, do horses have wings?”

Linn laughed, lowered Apple’s forehoof, folded the knife and twisted it back into its front pocket.

“Can horses fly?”  he asked Apple.  “Apple, what do you say?  Can horses fly?”

Apple blinked and regarded him solemnly.

Linn whipped out the bandanna, floated it up in the air by one corner, drifted it down, and Apple nodded enthusiastically.

“There,” Linn declared, stuffing the aforementioned textile back into its rectangular home, “straight from the horse’s mouth!  Apple is a horse and he says horses can fly!”

Jimmy’s eyes were big and amazed and he had the delighted expression of a little boy beholding something really, really special.

Linn grinned, congratulating himself that he’d brought delight to a young heart, but he did not look behind him.

His world was a horse’s hoof, a bandanna, the delighted look on a little boy’s heart, and in this he was content, and so there was no reason to look behind him.

 

“Why, yes,” Connie said, surprised:  she looked up from changing the baby’s diaper, smiling a little at the memory.  “Yes, there was a rose on my side table.  I’d forgotten it until just now.”

“A rose,” Wilma nodded.  “And would you remember if there was a rose when Linn went out in the field to call his mother for supper …?”

Connie swallowed and did not look up.

“I remember that morning,” she said, and Wilma heard a quiver in the woman’s voice:  she swallowed, rested her hands on either side of the cradle, focused on the little baby girl smiling up at her.

“Yes.”  She looked up, her eyes bright.  “Yes, there was a rose then, too.  On the kitchen table, at her place, on her plate as a matter of fact, and I knew she was dead.”

Connie’s voice grew thick with the memory and she picked up her wrapped, clean, dry baby and brought her up, held her close, to the infant’s obvious delight.

“Nobody has a baby in this town,” she whispered, “and nobody dies, without a rose.”  She bit her bottom lip, as if considering for a moment.

“If any of our family goes up to the graveyard – but it only happens with family, only with our blood, nobody else – a rose … there’s a rose on all the family tombstones.  If you go into the upper room over the Mercantile, it still smells of roses, just a whiff when you first go in, and out at the museum, it used to be … it used to be Sarah … it was the Llewellyn household.”

“Llewellyn?”

“Sarah McKenna married Daffyd Llewellyn.  He was killed … he … it was a house fire, and nobody had carried the news to his widow yet when she showed up in black, with his waiting coffin in their … she had his coffin.  She knew.” 

Connie looked up, her eyes bright with tears.

“There is a terrible knowing to our blood, Wilma.  I see it in my husband’s eyes.  He knows things he shouldn’t.  His mother miscarried her first child, you know.”

Wilma shook her head, slowly, wondering what she’d gotten herself into.

She certainly did not expect such a strong grief response.

“She told me once … she said if she’d … if her daughter …”

Connie wiped at her cheeks with an impatient palm.

“Her … Willamina was the sixth firstborn female in six consecutive generations.  If she’d been the seventh firstborn female, she would have had the Clearsight – not just the Sight – she would have been a Woman of Power.”  Connie wiped her eyes again, clearly troubled by the memory.  “Her miscarried child was female.  They didn’t tell her but she knew.  She knew! – and when Linn was born, she knew this soul had come back, she’d borne the same life twice, and …”
She closed her eyes, leaned her cheek down until it just touched her daughter’s fine, auburn hair.

“He knows things about people,” she whispered.  “When Nelson Bell’s wife crossed our threshold, Willamina said ‘Nellie Bell, you’re pregnant!’” – she was … but the seed had been planted that morning, so to speak.”

She blinked, swallowed.

“Linn spoke up and said “Yeah and it’s a girl and she’ll be born on Christmas!  She’ll be your Christmas Bell!” and of course they shushed him up and said he had a wild imagination and he went outside with his arm around The Bear Killer’s neck, because they’d hurt his feelings.”

Connie sniffed, snatched up a paper hankie, pressed it to her nose.

“Nellie had a little girl on Christmas Day and they sent the nicest Christmas card – it was late, we’d already gotten their card, but Nelson sent us another and he wrote” – she swallowed – “he wrote in the card that Linn was right and they had their Christmas Bell.”

Wes looked up at his Mama with a woebegone expression.

“Mama, I bad?” he asked in a tiny little voice, and Connie squatted, hugged him quickly to her.

“No, Wes, you’re not … you’ve not done anything bad.”

“Mama, I sorry, I not bad,” Wes said sorrowfully.

“There’s more,” Connie gasped, looking up defiantly at the intruder, the interloper, this Easterner, this … this Ghost Hunter!

“There’s more.  When one of our blood dies, they’re met by our ancestors, all of them.  All the Women of Power.  All the Wise Women.

“When we buried Willamina, there were … soldiers, they came … they served with her overseas, and the German … there was a German …”

“Wermacht?”  Wilma suggested.

“Yes.  Hauptmann Einrich von something-or-another.  Descendant of The Red Baron, or so Linn told me later.  Tall, slender, blue eyes, handsome!” 

She shook her head.

“The Hauptmann told me Willamina was not just a warrior.  He’d fought beside warriors before.  He said Willamina was almost a berserker, she was … her ferocity …”

Wilma hiccupped, blew her nose:  Wes helpfully held up the box of hankies and she pulled three out, quickly, nodded her thanks.

“He said when they fought a desperate battle and it looked like they were going to be overrun and wiped out, she stood up and tore off her helmet, she threw it at the enemy and the charged them, screaming, a sharpened bayonet in each hand.  He said she’d traded for someone else’s bayonets and she’d sharpened them and she’d said she would need them both.

“She charged the enemy and she was a woman transformed.  He said he would not have recognized her.  Her eyes were dead pale and her face looked like parchment stretched over a skull, and in spite of concentrated enemy fire, not one bullet touched her.

“The Hauptmann said her rage filled him and he said he knew what it was … he’d never known the true, fierce joy of a warrior screaming into battle, but he felt the berserkergang that day.

“He said they all surged to their feet and they charged the enemy and they killed them with rifle butts and blades and their hands and he said he knew what it was to crush an enemy’s throat with his teeth.”

Wilma shivered.

“He was … he was such a cultured and polite man … I would never have thought …”

Her voice faded and she rocked the baby as she sat cross legged on the floor, her eyes vacant, remembering.

“He said they did take casualties, but the enemy took more, and he said the waulkyren were there, the … Valkyries … Odin’s daughters, who overfly the battlefield and bear only those deserving souls to Valhalla, to feast at Odin’s board.”

She looked up, her face wet again.

“There were Scandinavian troops, Swedes, Norsemen, all in uniform, all listening closely to the Hauptmann’s words, and they all looked me squarely in the eye and they agreed – every last one of them agreed – that they’d been led into battle by this woman’s berserkergang, they followed this pale-eyed Berserker who laid about with steel and with blood, and they knew whenever Willamina died, she would become one of the Waulkyren.”

She wiped fiercely at her cheeks.

“I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  I can’t …”

She shook her head, then looked up again.

“But if you see a warrior-maiden in white silks, with a silver headed lance, on a winged horse, you’ll know.  That’s her.  That’s the Valkyrie, and she’s come to take a warrior’s soul to Paradise.”

 

Jimmy was silent for a time, then he could stand it no longer.

“Sheriff?”

Linn looked up, set down Apple’s hind hoof, satisfied with his labors.

“Yeah, Jimmy?”

“What would it mean if I saw a pretty lady on a big black horse with wings an’ she’s got a spear an’ a helmet with shiny silver wings an’ she’s wearing a shiny silver vest?”

Linn blinked, surprised:  he really didn’t expect that particular question.

“That,” he said slowly, “would be …”
He stopped, his eyes serious as he realized his son was serious as well.

“Jimmy,” he said slowly, “is this pretty lady on the ground, or is she flying?”

Of a sudden Linn had this feeling …

… the hairs on his neck started to stand up, almost in ranks, one after another …

… and it finally registered that Jimmy had been watching something behind him, and he hadn’t turned around!

No chest pain, he thought, vision is clear and balance unaffected, I am not dying of a heart attack or a stroke –

“JIMMY, DUCK!” Linn yelled, diving under his Apple-horse’s belly, coming up on one knee, revolver in hand, hammer back, turning slowly, circling, seeking the enemy that was ready to kill him –

He had to wait until later that evening, until Jimmy drew what he’d seen, when they sat around the kitchen table and discussed Wilma’s several discoveries.

With the help of glass plate prints, with Journals and newspaper records, Linn showed Wilma the links, the paths, the connections, at least until Wilma came to the portrait of a young man with pale eyes in an American Doughboy uniform.

She stopped, tapped her finger on the picture.

“Yep, he’s blood,” Linn affirmed.  “His revolvers – he’s wearing them here – copper plated and engraved.”  Linn drew his own .44, laid it down. “Look here, on the frame.  This engraving?”

Wilma looked at the squarish, angular, stylized bird with spread wings.

“This is the Thunder Bird.  When he went off to war, he asked … he asked one of our doctors, George Flint, a full blood Navajo … he’s … my chief deputy is descended from Dr. Flint … he asked what their most powerful totem was.”

Wilma tilted her head, caressed the gold inlaid engravure with delicate fingertips.

“The Thunder Bird,” she whispered.

“Yep.”  Linn nodded, holstered his blued-steel revolver.  “Ever since then, every lawman of our line wears the Thunder Chicken on his sidearm, duty and personal.”

“And his revolvers are in the museum?”

“Yes, with the story of how they were returned.”

Wilma looked up at him, looked up at the portrait of a pale eyed woman in an electric-blue McKenna gown, a woman carrying a double barrel shotgun and wearing a quiet, knowing smile.

“I’d like to see them.”

She looked at Jimmy’s drawing again, at what he’d seen behind his Sheriff, at what his Sheriff never saw.

She picked up the pencil drawing and held it up beside the colorized print.

It was the same woman, but instead of a McKenna gown, she wore a winged helmet, a shining silver breastplate over a flowing white silk tunic, she had a lance socketed in her right stirrup, and she was astride a horse.

A horse with wings.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

160.  THE MUSEUM

 

Wilma stared, openly and frankly, admiring the architecture, the workmanship.

The house was stone, and well built:  it looked as if it were part of the mountain itself:  her guide explained that Italian stonecutters fashioned it, but its first owners, the fireman and the pale-eyed Agent, designed it and specified what it must have.

Wilma listened as such features as an overhanging balcony, supported by great colonnades, afforded a clear field of fire for better than 180 degrees; that the house itself, made of stone, was proof against fire; where possible, all was stone instead of wood, for stone could neither rot nor burn.

They went inside.

Wilma was surprised at the spacious feel, not common for houses of that era.

The stairway, her guide pointed out, was twice as wide as was standard, something both husband and wife insisted on:  though it had the appearance of openness, there were multiple angles which would prevent an attacker from sweeping the entire depth of the structure with gunfire, yet defenders could return effective fire from multiple locations:  she was shown the kitchen, restored to its original, late-1880s appearance and furnishings – “the stove is an original Monarch,” the guide explained, “and meals are prepared on it, and served on this very table.” 

Wilma followed the guide to the main room, where she stopped and nodded and said, “This is what I wanted to see.”

“I’ll just be outside,” her helpful guide said, and was gone, and Wilma did not miss her.

She was too busy taking in the exhibit.

She saw photographs with a military cartouche in the corner, then another:  German, they were, and American, the German photographs of a better quality, both in clarity, and in detail.

She read of the funeral detail, under a white flag, formally bearing the remains of a single American in an ornate coffin, an ox-drawn wagon his carriage:  this one man, this warrior, was so respected for his actions in getting a wounded German officer back to his own lines, that his body was returned with full honors to the American field headquarters, under a rare but very significant safe-passage.

She blinked at the German officer, and the American commander, saluting one another:  a beautiful, two-toned Shepherd dog sat at the German’s heel, and behind the American, on the other side of the ox-cart, a white … was it a Shepherd? – Wilma was unsure, save that it was beautiful.

The hand-written account was under glass, but its transcription was beside, and Wilma read the transcription, then looked again at the coffin, its lid up, gauze draped over to keep off flies, and barely seen through the gauze, an American soldier, in uniform.

She moved on.

Two revolvers lay in a beautiful, chip-carved case, a case with a sealed glass lid.

They were black, except for bright copper wear points; the holsters were old, the belt looked dried out, but they were beautifully carved, background dyed:  she knew very little of leatherwork, but she recognized art when she saw it:  the revolvers were engraved around their muzzles, she smiled at the Thunder Bird graved clearly, cleanly on the frame, and she stared long at the yellowed ivory grips with the Masonic Square-and-Compasses on one, and the Arc-and-Compasses on the other.

Her fingertips rested lightly on the polished walnut and she whispered aloud, “Why the difference?”

A familiar hand rested, warm and reassuring on her shoulder, a familiar voice replied gently, “He wasn’t a Mason.”

Wilma frowned at the grips, then looked up at the uniform, also in a glass case, glanced over at the curled mustache, the six-point star on the coat’s lapel, looked back through exhibit glass, tapped it with a trimmed fingernail.  “I don’t understand.”

“The pistols were a gift,” the familiar voice explained:  it was a little rougher than she was used to hearing, as if the Sheriff had the beginnings of a cold, or perhaps this brought out some emotion he wished to keep hidden from the common eye.

“A gift?  From whom?”

The Sheriff chuckled, his hand still on her shoulder.  “From his old Granddad.”
Wilma reached up, laid her hand on the Sheriff’s, somehow needing the reassurance of that kindly, masculine touch.

“You see … it was a … vote of confidence, if you will.”  His hand squeezed her shoulder gently, carefully.  “He was too young to be a Mason, so that was a statement.  Every time he looked at them he knew we wanted him to come home, to … not just be part of our Lodge, but to ascend to the Master’s chair.  The Square-and-Compasses are the insignia of Freemasonry,” he continued, then took a long breath before concluding, “and the Arc-and-Compasses are the insignia of the Past Master.” 

Wilma nodded.

“I wanted him to come home and resume his life with us.”

“And that didn’t happen.”

“No.”

“It says … he … got a wounded German officer back to his own lines.”

“Yes.”  The voice was deeper now, softer, perhaps a little sadder.  “The officer said it was quicker … that my grandson told him he needed seen by the nearest aid station, and that was behind German lines.”

“He risked his own life to get a wounded man to care.”

“A fellow Mason, yes.”

“Why didn’t he just kill him and move on?”

“He’d wiped out a German company by himself.  His Lieutenant led them into an ambush and he was the only survivor.   He scrounged weapons and made the Germans think they were facing a full company, at least until he killed every one of them and then he found the officer.  The … his rank was Captain, and in their language that’s hauptmann – thought he would be killed.

“He offered his pistol in surrender and it was refused.  He was told to keep it, then he dressed the wound as best he could and packed him over his shoulder toward the German aid station.  Had to fight his way in and was killed in the process, but not before he …”
She felt the lawman take another long breath.

“He got the Hauptmann back to his own lines, but he was badly hurt in the process.  The Germans were most impressed by this noble warrior who sacrificed himself to get this wounded man back to medical help that they cleaned up his carcass and returned his body with honors.”  He chuckled dryly.  “The Hauptmann asked to keep the revolvers and they were returned with his hand-written account when he died, not two miles from here.”

“From here?”  Wilma blinked, surprised, turned.

Her mouth opened in surprise.

The man whose hand was returning to his side was not the Sheriff she expected.

“He emigrated to the US after the war,” Old Pale Eyes explained.  “My thrice-great-granddaughter received them, in that very box, with his hand written account, and so this exhibit came to be.”

Wilma swallowed, staring, finally closed her mouth.

“That’s better.  A closed mouth gathers no flies,” the old lawman said gently, amusement in his pale eyes.

Wilma swallowed hard at this manifestation from a century agone, talking to her as he would talk to anyone, and she finally asked, “How come you’re here … how … so many times I’ve seen …”

“Why are you seeing ghosts?”  he asked, amused, and she nodded.

“Well, first off, I’m still here because I’m needed.  Questions need answers.  Then there’s work.  If a man’s work isn’t done in his lifetime he tends to want to finish it before he moves on.”

“I see,” Wilma said faintly.

“There’s purpose to your being here,” Old Pale Eyes said, conviction in his voice and a smile in his eyes.  “You’re supposed to know these things.”

“Why?”

“Step over here, let me show you something.”

They walked over to the tall windows with the old-fashioned curtains.

The lean lawman in the immaculate black suit drew a curtain back.  “Look yonder, see that fence post?”

Wilma frowned a little, then nodded.

“See that arrow in it?”

She looked closer, saw the arrow.

“That’s the one our young soldier drove into the post from way back here.  He said he’d be back.  Him and his Mama got into quite a set-to for his leavin’.  He didn’t want to let someone else go fight, he wanted to go stop the Hun on that side of the Big Salt Water so we wouldn’t have to fight ‘em here.”

“Is that the same arrow?”

“Yep.”

“I’m surprised nobody has tried to break it off.”

She looked up at the pale eyed Sheriff with the iron grey mustache.

“Has anyone tried?”

He smiled a little, as if he knew a secret, and made no reply, which was answer enough.

“Then answer me this.”

He tilted his head a little, nodded.

“Were there this many ghosts in your time?  In the 1880s?”

He considered carefully before replying.

“Are you familiar with the Celi Dee?”

“Celi Dee?”

“Some call it ‘Kaylie.’  Celtic Christianity.  They hold that the Scriptural passage that says we’re surrounded by a great cloud of believers … that this great cloud is our honored dead, and at the moment of death, they haul us off this earth and sling us into Paradise.  If” – she saw the twinkle of amusement in his pale eyes – “if that’s what we deserve!”

“Jimmy drew a picture of a Valkyrie.”

The pale eyed old Sheriff laughed gently.  “My trouble making daughter again.  She was Daffyd’s mother.”

“Daffyd?”

“This fine young soldier you’ve been admiring.”  He turned and walked toward the front door.

Wilma followed.

He stepped out on the broad front porch, walked down the two steps, then sat down on the edge of the porch, black Stetson in hand. 

Wilma sat beside him.

“Daffyd Llewellyn,” Old Pale Eyes said softly, “was a fireman, and by all accounts a damned good one.  He and their red headed Irish fire chief went into a burning boarding house.  He fought his way upstairs while the fire was blasting up the center like a chimney and he found the only occupant that hadn’t got out, a baby.”
His eyes were distant as he stared at the fence post with the arrow pointing off at a slight angle.

“He threw the wrapped child across that blast of hell’s own breath and Sean caught it.

“Daffyd saw the floor starting to collapse and he knew the way he’d come was sagging underfoot when he got to where he was, and the only way out was to try and jump the gulf, and jump he did.”

Old Pale Eyes looked down, swallowed, turning his hat slowly around in his hands.

“That morning … he was married to my daughter, my Sarah … they loved each other … she had a knowing about her …”

“Is she … she came into town in widow’s black, with his coffin, before anyone went to her with news of his death?”

He nodded.

“That morning he’d planted a good seed and planted it deep, and nine months to the day from his father’s death, young Daffyd Llewellyn was born.  His death you already know about.”

Linn turned and smiled a little.

“Sarah and I used to sit right here and talk like we’re talking now.”

Wilma smiled.

“Now you are here and I know why.”

Wilma’s surprise was evident in her expression.

“Daffyd’s name was Llewellyn.  He was a Welshman by blood and he had a glorious voice. He and Sarah sang duets in church and it was enough to bring tears to a hard man’s eyes for the beauty of their song.” 

He took a long breath, blew it out. 

“Your blood is Welsh, or part of it is.  That’s why you sing so well in church.”

Wilma’s mouth fell open.  “How do …?”
“Your Grandmother’s family Bible will tell you.  Look well back in the family tree. You will see a name, Llewellyn, the word “Married” and they are crossed out.”

Linn looked at her, chuckled.

“I sired my troublemakin’ daughter Sarah on a woman I wasn’t married to.  God has forgiven me that but I haven’t.  I missed her growin’ up years.  Reckon that’s why I always liked my grandyoung so well.”  

He cleared his throat. 

“Daffyd run off and became a sojer boy like his old Grampa and he run into a pretty lass an’ … well, he was intendin’ to come home and marry her and he got killed instead.  Her family lied and said she was a war bride and a widow young in life, but they crossed out that “Married” entry in the family Bible and spoke of it no more.”

“So I’m related.”

He nodded.

She shook her head.  “But that doesn’t answer my question.  Were there as many ghosts manifesting in your day as I’m seeing here?”

He looked at her and smiled quietly.

“Nope.”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

161.  TAKE THIS, DAMN YOU!

 

Sand hissed against the waxed, heavy-paper walls of the cylindrical tube.

The tube had been carefully warmed and unfolded at one end, rolled between the miner’s dirty palms to loosen the oily-sawdust-looking explosive.

He’d shaken it out, tamped the new, high-percent dynamite into the drill hole.

The empty dynamite tube was carefully smuggled out, intact; now it was being filled with inert dirt.

The miner was a quiet sort and slow to anger but by God! when that fat, unwashed barkeep insulted him and then threw him out, he earned the ire of the wrong man!

The miner wasn’t about to blow up the only watering hole in town, but he wasn’t above throwing one hell of a good scare into that fat greasy toad behind the bar, and this was going to be a good way to do it.

He cut a length of safety fuse, stuck into the loose dirt, shook it to settle it in:  he crimped the end along the original folds, frowned, opened it back up and added more dirt:  tapping it gently on its end, he settled the sand further, added a bit more:  satisfied, he re-crimped the end, warmed it over a candle, added just a bit of wax, the fuse sticking out in its characteristic arc.

Good.

He smiled, holding it up, turning it between his fingers.

He looked up at his partner.

“Let’s go cause some trouble,” he chuckled, and his chuckle was that of a man bent on raising hell, and knowing he could do just that.

 

The new dynamite was more potent than sticks of powder.

Loose powder blew up; this new dynamite blew down – as a test, they’d cut an X in the rock with a pick, filled the X with powder, then laid newspaper over the powder, shoveled on half a foot of sand, lit the fuse.

It blew the newspaper into powder, the sand into a cloud of dust and grit.

The rock beneath, though stained, remained unimpressed.

They cut open some sticks of dynamite and poured Big Dan into the X, covered it with newspaper and a like amount of sand, lit the fuse.

They were wise to have withdrawn the distance they did while the fuse was burning.

Not only did it blow the sand up, it blew most of the explosive force down – into the rock – busted it into four chunks along the original cut line.

This was a very public test, witnessed by bosses, foremen, plenty of miners, the Marshal and several hangers-on from town:  word passed quickly, and the bosses decided they’d better keep a closer eye on this new and most potent commodity.

That afternoon, while four teams drew slip scrapers in the natural bowl above to form a reservoir, a wag wired a half-dozen sticks around a tree above town, wired them side-by-side on the side away from town, secured this to the tree trunk.

Below them, a miner strolled across the street, whistling, unconcerned, two of his fellows with him.

They sauntered into the low, dirty bar with its low, dirty barkeep, slapped callused palms on the wet, streaked bar:   “Gimme a beer!”

The barkeep turned, glared.  “I told you to get out of my place!  You’re barred!”

“You hear that, fellas?”  the miner laughed.  “He won’t serve an honest man!”

“I SAID GET OUT!”  the barkeep yelled, pointing to the door, extended finger quivering with the full surge of his righteous rage.

The miner pulled out the stick of … well, it looked like a stick of dynamite … he relieved one of the patrons of his smoldering stub of a cigar, lit the fuse, held it, smiling, as it sizzled and smoked and men shrank back and silence claimed the bar as the realization spread that this idiot just lit the fuse on a stick of DYNAMITE!!!

“If I can’t have a beer,” the miner said cheerfully, “then you can’t have a beer joint!”

Men scrambled for the door, cards were abandoned, pool cues dropped; one man paused long enough to gulp down the contents of his mug, a drowned fly and all, before joining the galloping exodus.

The miner casually waited until the fuse was burned to within an inch and a half of the stick, then turned to walk out, flipped it casually over his shoulder with a laughing, “Take this damn you!” --  the barkeep stood frozen, unbelieving, until the stick spun through the air and landed beside his scuffed, dusty brogan:  a yell of sheer panic, a quick spring and the barkeep shoved the out-strolling aside in his panicked, screaming escape, and the miner realized the barkeep’s fortuitous departure (and the remaining fuse) left him just enough time to duck behind the bar and grab four bottles of beer before he, too, ran out, handing two bottles to a dirty boy in ragged knee pants and a miner’s shirt two sizes too big.

The barkeep ran, yelling, dove behind a perpetually-leaking watering trough, cowered up against it, shivering, hands over his greasy, unwashed hair.

The miner handed a bottle to the man at his left, he flipped the wire bail, the cork popped out, he tilted the bottle up, drank –

BOOOMMMMM!
The tree was on the promontory overlooking town, but really not far from them when the dynamite wired to its trunk went off.

The barkeep screamed, cowered deeper into the mud, and chunks of tree bark fell around them.

The miner drained his beer, tossed the empty into the horse trough, splashing water on the whimpering barkeep, before he turned and sauntered casually back across the street, as unconcerned as if this were an everyday occurrence.

The barkeep came up on his knees, shaking, felt wet penetrate his worn-shiny trousers as he peeked carefully over the edge of the seeping, rough-lumber horse trough.

A tumbling chunk of wood spun out of the heavens, splashed into the water an inch from his nose, gave him a Methodist baptism:  he jerked back, whimpering, shook the water from his eyes, stood.

He was wet and mud all down his front, he was weak, he was shivering, he rose to look at what he expected to be the smoking ruin that used to be his saloon –

Marshal Law and Order Harry Macfarland clapped a heavy hand on the barkeep’s shoulder.

“Now what’s this I hear about you dynamitin’ the town?”  he asked casually, and the ragged boy in knee pants and worn out miner’s boots lifted the loose board in front of the Mercantile and slid the empty beer bottle underneath, with its several fellows.

 

Old Pale Eyes laid back in the barber chair as the straight razor whispered secrets to its strop.

Jacob sat back against the wall, watching the door, watching his father’s relaxed posture in the red-leather barber chair.

The barber was a talkative sort – a good-natured man, perpetually smiling, a man with deft and precise fingers:  a man had to be precise with a shaving-sharp blade against someone’s cheek, against their throat.

“The-a da miner he’s-a throw-a da stick of-a dynamite behind-a da bar and he blows up-a da tree over lookin’ da town!”  he chattered, black eyes bright and animated in stark contrast to the dead steadiness of his gifted grip:  “he’s-a got-a da good revenge without-a hurtin’ a t’ing!”

Jacob smiled, ever so slightly:  he’d heard about that disagreement over in Carbon, and personally he approved of anything that brought shame, disgrace and distress to the fat and greasy barkeep.  The man short changed Jacob one time and one time only, and he’d steered quite a bit of business away from the place as a result.

The Sheriff sat up, freshly barbered, smelling of bay rum and shaving soap; he wiped the last of the soap from his face, nodded at his reflection in the mirror.

“An excellent job, as usual,” he said approvingly, quietly pressed coin into the man’s hand: “Thank you again.”

Jacob and the Sheriff stepped out of the barbershop, one sweeping the street to his right with his pale-eyed glare, the other swinging his gaze to the left:  they stepped out together, then sauntered with the grace of truly strong men who knew they had to prove nothing, walked as do warriors, up the street and to the Silver Jewel saloon.

Man does not live by bread alone.

That’s why there is bacon and fried taters and fried eggs, and right now that sounded pretty good to two hungry men.

Father and son walked alike; father and son dressed alike; father and son glared alike, and when father and son addressed their breakfast in silence, neither thought it unusual that the other said nothing, at least until two-thirds of their provender was disappeared.

Jacob gave his father a thoughtful look.

“You’ve something on your mind.”
“Yes, sir.”

Linn buttered a roll, looked at his son with amusement.  “Say on.”

“I’m remembering the day some years ago we jumped off that tall cliff.”

Linn shifted his half chewed roll to the other side of his mouth.  “I recall that water was pretty damned cold.”

Jacob chuckled, nodded, reached for a roll.  “Yes, sir, it was.”  His expression shifted … half puzzled, almost uncertain.

“Thank you, sir.”

Linn raised an eyebrow.  “For …?”

Jacob considered for a long moment, lowered his torn-open roll, frowning.

“Sir, you showed me it was all right … you showed me a strong man can be afraid and still go into the fear.”

Linn nodded.

“I never forgot that.”

Linn nodded again.

“I recall the first time I went up against a man that intended to kill me.”

It was the old Sheriff’s turn to look uncomfortable.

“There is something just Almighty personal about a sharpened blade.”

Linn nodded slowly.  “You could say that.”

“There were … other …”

Linn waited, knowing Jacob was gathering from some uncomfortable memories.

“Sir, you showed me I could go into what scared me, and I did.”

Linn nodded.

“I am obliged to you for that.”

Linn leaned back a little, almost frowning.  “A father’s duty is to teach his sons.”

“You have, sir.”

Linn nodded again, smiled a little.

“Did you know Sarah jumped out the top of the hose drying tower down at the fire house?”

Jacob grinned, a quick flash of a shared memory, then he resumed his usual impassive expression.  “I remember, sir.”

“I know the Irish Brigade had that canvas catcher thing under her and I know it’s made for that, but” – the Old Sheriff shivered, looked with an unwonted openness at his son – “I kid thee not, Jacob, there is no way in two hells and three fortunes I would ever, EVER!! climb that tower and jump out!”

Jacob blinked, considered, looked at his father’s pale eyes.

“No, sir,” he agreed, “I don’t reckon I would either!”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

162.   ADMISSION

 

Linn dipped his quill in good India ink, wiped the excess on the inside of the bottle’s neck.

It helped him order his quick-running thoughts, to marshal them in orderly ranks, to be transferred to good rag paper.

His own Pa one time observed, “The mind is never still,” and it was as true of the son as the father.

Linn never said as much to Jacob but he suspected his son would agree with the statement.

Linn rarely wrote in any but a formal and factual manner, but today he considered that someone would read these words after he was long dead, and he addressed himself as if speaking to that unknown, future reader.

I will admit my loneliness, he wrote.

A man who has a good woman is a man with a treasure.

I knew that while my Esther was yet alive.

I know it even more that she is gone, and yet she is not entirely absent.

He smiled a little as he re-read that last line, for it was true.

Esther had been his wife, his balance-wheel, his wise counsel; she was financial advisor, listening ear, but most of all, his best friend.

So many people he’d known, were dead, gone:  he missed every last one of them, but he was wise enough to realize that he should cherish the living all the more, and he did.

Though a widower, I have a rich and full life, he wrote, yet at times the grief comes upon me again, and I sorrow in the night:  unmanly tears stain my pillow and I reach in vain for my love, for my Esther, my hand seeking hers, for we would fall asleep holding hands, and we woke holding hands.

My last words before submerging in the dark lake of slumber were “I love you,” and every morning, when I looked over at her, relaxed, her hair a little askew with the pillow, smiling at me with those green eyes that seized my heart so many years ago … my first words were always and without fail, “I love you.”

He paused, considered, wrote on.

In those darkest, those most difficult nights, when sorrow bore most heavily upon my lonely heart, I fancied she slept beside me again: once it was as if she’d rolled up on her side and laid her head upon my breast, for I could smell her soap and her lilac scent, and when I woke, the sheets beside me had the impress of a body where no body had lain.

I would like to think that she’d come back, in those most difficult times, and gave me some measure of comfort as I grieved, for I grieve even in my sleep.

 

Wilma traced the long-dried ink with careful fingertips, reading the introspection of a man she’d just spoken with that day.

“Is that why you come back?”  she whispered.  “Because you don’t want anyone else to feel as lost as you did?”

 

The Abbott looked up, smiled.

“Miss Kincaid,” he said, rising.

“Abbott,” she nodded, taking his extended hand.

He smiled a little, tilting his head.

“There is a question in your eyes.  Would you care for some tea?”  He drew out a chair, gestured her to sit.  “Iced, of course.”

“That would be lovely, thank you.”

She waited until the lean, tonsured, white-robed cleric tugged gently at an embroidered bell-pull.

“I have questions, yes.”

“Please.”  He smiled again, eased himself down into a wicker chair.

Wilma heard it creak a little as his weight came on it.

There was a tap at the door, the sound of sandals scuffing gently on the painfully-clean floor:  a young man, a novice, brought in a tray, placed it on the side table:  he handed Wilma a tall, sweating glass of amber tea, another to the Abbott, placed a coaster and a pitcher on his desk:  he slipped his hands inside his sleeves, bowed, then turned and picked up the tray and whispered back out the door.

“Andrew is one of our newest postulants,” the Abbott said approvingly.  “He came to us well recommended.”  He raised his glass in salute, drank.

Wilma drank as well.

“Ohhh, that’s good,” she whispered thankfully, the hint of mint aftertasting her throat.

“Our own blend.”  The Abbott sipped again, placed his glass on a coaster.  “Please speak freely, Miss Kincaid.”

“You and the Sheriff sound so formal when you say that,” Wilma admitted a little uncomfortably.

“Would you rather we called you ‘Hey You?’” Brother William smiled.  “A degree of formality is good for the soul.  It helps maintain objectivity.”

Wilma nodded, set her own glass on the coaster the Abbott slid across the table to her.

“I know about the Lance of St. Mercurius,” she blurted.  “I know about the White Rider.  I know the Old Sheriff comes to answer questions and there was a boy at Carbon Hill who doesn’t come anymore because his work here on earth was done and maybe the Old Sheriff comes because he doesn’t want anyone to sorrow the way he did when his green-eyed Esther died.”

Wilma took in a quick breath, picked up her tea with a shaking hand, gulped too quickly and ended up coughing until her eyes watered.

To her credit, she did not spill the tea.

“All in one breath,” the Abbott murmured admiringly, nodding.  “You’ve also seen our … the archive I showed you, with the Faceless Sisters who were established by the Singer.”

Wilma nodded, patting the base of her throat, harrumphing a little, trying to get the last of the liquid out of her windpipe without making a red-faced spectacle of herself.

“You have many of the parts to your puzzle already,” the Abbott said thoughtfully.  “Let us walk.  Finish your tea, Miss Kincaid.”

The Abbot rose, stepped from behind his desk, waited while Wilma downed the rest of the mint-infused iced tea.

The tall, tonsured monk extended his hand.

“Every man wishes to walk with a beautiful woman on a sunny day.”

Wilma laughed nervously.

“I thought you were celibate.”

The Abbot laughed a little as they stepped out of his office, turned at his gesture and climbed the broad staircase to the second story promenade.

“A man would have to be a fool not to recognize that male and female made He them,” he said thoughtfully.  “I was not always oathed to celibacy.  Besides” – he clasped his hands behind him, his eyes thoughtfully on the swept-clean promenade before him – “I enjoy the company.”

Wilma nodded.

“Now let’s start at the beginning.  You’ve come with a question, or questions, so let’s start over.  You first.”

“What happens when we die?”

The Abbot nodded thoughtfully, his pace slow, meditative.

“Did you know I am a nurse?”

“No,” Wilma admitted.  “No.  I … no.”

The Abbot nodded.  “I went into nursing after a career as a paramedic.  Biggest mistake I ever made.”

“What?”  Wilma’s surprise was genuine.

“Oh, yes,” the Abbot nodded.  “As a paramedic I could perform invasive procedures, I could run a cardiac megacode, I could perform an emergency cricothyrotomy or perform an emergency C-section.”  His voice was as gentle as ever, but she heard just the beginning of an edge creeping into it.  “As a nurse?”

He snorted.

“As a nurse I had to take my hat in my hand and say to the doctor, ‘Mother May I’ before I could give an aspirin or a Band-Aid!”

He shook his head.

“To be brutally honest, nursing school taught me absolutely nothing I couldn’t have gotten with one week of on the job training.  For my money, if I am sick or injured, I would rather have a veteran EMT than what your Sheriff’s mother called ‘a damned book-learnin’ paramedic’ or a nurse either one!”

“That’s kind of harsh,” Wilma said, surprised.

“Harsh, yes, but honest.  I’ll do penance for the harshness but not the honesty.”

They walked a few more paces.

“I’ve worked a great deal with the terminally ill.  End stage renal disease, cancers of various kinds, I worked for a non-emergency transport ambulance service, and I held many a conversation with folk who’d died multiple times.  I’ve died twice so far.”

“What?”  Wilma stopped, startled, then hurried to catch up with the slow-pacing monk.

“Oh, yes,” the Abbot said quietly.  “I was twenty-five years old when a nurse killed me in surgical recovery.  The other time, I was a child and died in my sleep.”  He smiled a little, just a little.

“My patients were tentative when they mentioned having died, but when they found out that not only did I believe them, that I’d been there as well, they were greatly comforted.”  He looked over at Wilma, smiling at the memory.  “They were greatly comforted that someone else had been where they were.”

“Oh dear Lord,” Wilma breathed.

“That’s what I said,” the Abbot replied, to which Wilma responded with a wide-eyed look and an open mouth.

They stood aside as a column of the Faceless Sisters marched silently past them.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

163.  “DO YOU SING OPERA?”

 

“I think,” the Abbot said thoughtfully, “we should look at the archives again.”

“The archives.  More pictures?”

“Perhaps,” he agreed, turning.  “Sister Meredith here has been researching into your period.  Sister” – he turned to the silent, veiled nun, her hands modestly in her sleeves, her forearms across her belly – “could you show Miss Kincaid to the library, and give her the benefit of the Sisters’ research?”

Sister Meredith bowed, turned, walked silently away.

“You’d better follow her,” the Abbott suggested.

“Thank you,” Wilma blurted, quickly gripping the tonsured cleric’s hand:  she skipped a little to keep up with the retreating Sister.

She followed the silent, steadily gliding Sister down the hall and down a stairs, into a spacious, high-ceilinged, high-windowed library.

Sister Meredith drew out a chair, then went to a shelf and brought over two leather-bound volumes.

Wilma looked up at the veiled nun as she positioned the volume on the table, opened it to a slender ruler used as a bookmark.

Wilma frowned a little, studying the neat script.

“This is … from the … Judge?”  she asked hesitantly, and she felt gentle fingers press against her temples, and of a sudden she was no longer sitting in the Rabbitville Monastery’s library.

She was suddenly in the middle of the story.

 

His Honor Judge Donald Hostetler regarded the unseen visage of the white nun with less than his usual equanimity.

As a matter of fact, as he struck the Lucifer and puffed his hand-rolled Cuban back to life, he noted a distinct tremor to his hands.

He knew the Sisters of St. Mercurius were a newly established Order, and he knew there was more than one faceless nun, as they were called:  the Sisters not only wore the habits, which  hid their bodies from the eyes of man, lest any man be tempted:  he knew they wore the wimples, to hide their hair, that men be not tempted by the crowning glory of womanhood:  he knew that the Sisters were veiled, hiding their faces from the world, that they may be completely separated from its temptations, its distractions, that they may be simple and humble servants of the Faith.

He did not expect to see one of the Sisters in his private car, and he sure as hell didn’t expect her to expose herself to him.

 

The boy’s knuckles were brisk, harsh on the glass of the Judge’s private car’s back door.

His Honor rose, his hand automatically caressing the smooth walnut handle of his banker’s pistol:  he wore the revolver as regularly as he wore his trousers, and a time or three he’d had more need for the hardware than the drawers.

Shrugging into his coat, he trailed a swirling cloud of tobacco smoke as he approached the door, his eyes narrowing a little in amusement at the rawboned boy standing without, hat in his hand and uncertainty in his expression.

“Come in, son,” the Judge said in a kindly voice, and the lad took a half-step back, swayed as he thrust an arm toward the wagon drawn up beside the Judge’s railcar.

“She, um, told me you’d need to,” the boy stammered, stopped, swallowed, continued.

“You’d need to see this, sir.”

His Honor quirked his shaggy brows in puzzlement, then looked at the wagon and frowned.

It contained a rough box, a crude coffin, knocked together from unfinished boards that still bore coarse saw-marks.

The Judge reached up without looking, plucked his brushed, pearl-grey hat from its peg, settled it on his fine, snow-white hair and stepped out onto the railcar’s rear platform.

He looked at the wagon, at the coffin, then turned and frowned at the white nun sitting motionless on the wagon’s seat.

“Hmp,” he grunted.  “Sister?”

“She don’t talk, sir,” the boy said, thrusting a folded paper at the Judge.  “I was to give you this and bring her an’ this – him – here.”  He indicated the coffin with a jerk of his knuckled fist.  “I’d like t’ get this … him … it … off m’ wagon, sir, where do you want I should take, um, deliver …?”

“Digger will handle the arrangements,” the Judge mumbled around his cigar.  “You do know where our funeral parlor is, don’t you, son?”

“No, no, sir,” the lad replied – the Judge thought him less than twelve years old, and he was right – “I, um, never been here before.”

“I see.”  The Judge extracted the Cuban from between stained teeth, plucked a fragment of tobacco leaf from his lip, spat over the side.  “Where you from, son?”

“About ten mile back that-a-way, sir.”

“And you’ve never been to Firelands.”

“No, sir.”

“Can you read?”

“Yes, sir, some.  I can cipher some an’ sign my name proper.  Ma taught me that as best she could.”

The Judge grunted again, pointed.

“Son, if you drive that wagon of yours down track about, oh, you see that water tower?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Swing your mare to the right and you’ll come to the main street.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Swing her right again and you’ll bear uphill.  You’re looking for the Sheriff’s office on the right.  It’s beside the Sheriff’s office.  Beat on the door and have Digger take it from there.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy swallowed hard, nodding.  “Thank you, sir.”  He hesitated.  “Sir?”

“Yes, son?”

“Sir, she said you’d need to see it, sir.”

The Judge sighed.  “Very well, son, show me what I have to see.”

The two descended from the private car onto coarse railway ballast – the boy jumping easily, the Judge turning to descend backward, slowly lowering a leg until his exploring toe touched before allowing his weight to come off the railcar.

He turned and started, dropped his cigar.

The faceless white nun was less than a foot from him, utterly still, absolutely silent, and the Judge had no idea how she got off that wagon unnoticed.

He turned his head and spat again, considered the ruined cigar smoldering on the gravel at his feet.

“Sister,” he growled, looking from the stogie to the veiled woman, “either my chaw caught fire or my cigar is nearly drowned out.”

He waited for some response to his humorous thrust.

The woman remained silent, unmoving.

“I understand you wanted me to see this.”

She made no move, no response.

“Are you going to tell me what this is about, or are you just going to stand there?”

The nun neither moved, nor did she speak:  she may as well have been a veiled carving.

The Judge swore, pressed his lips together.  “Dammit,” he snapped, then stomped around to the back of the wagon, slammed down the tail gate, grabbed the rough box lid, flipped it up.

He looked long at the dead man within, saw deep rope marks around his neck, stared at the face.

“Boy,” he said quietly, “go in my car and fetch me out that lantern beside the front door.”

“Yes, sir.”

The boy swarmed back up the cast-iron steps and into the private car; the Judge heard the lad’s worn boots, swift and imperative as he almost ran the length of the car, snatched up the lantern, brought it out.

The Judge fished for a Lucifer, found one:  he scratched it into life, levered up the globe and touched match to the trimmed wick, adjusted the flame:  holding it by its bail and tilting it a little to cast its light down, he studied the corpse’s face.

The boy saw him lift his gaze from the dead and silent, to the veiled and silent:  handing the lantern to the lad, the Judge replaced the coffin lid, closed and made fast the tail gate, took the lantern.

“Thank you, son,” he said quietly.  “You can take it now.”

“Yes, sir.”  The lad wasted no time a’tall in scrambling into the wagon, spinning the reins free of the brake handle.

The Judge watched the lad leave, took a long breath, shook his head.

“I wanted him alive,” the Judge snapped, turning to look at the still, white figure –

Gone?

How did she –

He looked up and saw the nun, standing motionless inside his private car.

He tilted his hat back, scratched his scalp and wondered aloud, “How in the hell did you do that?”

 

MacTavish straightened up, rubbing his eyes and shoving the ledger book back a little.

His wife watched as he thrust a shirtsleeved arm straight up, pencil still in his grip, as he twisted a little to ease his back, the way he always did.

She did not need to ask how their accounts were.

Her husband was a thrifty man and careful with his shillings, a legacy of growing up poor in the Scottish lowlands:  here, though, he was a man of substance, with a strong young wife, two fine sons, cattle and horses and a ranch. 

If the accounts were balancing poorly, if they were close to arrears, his expression would be sour, his brows close-knit and his forehead wrinkled:  as he finished his accounting, his expression was much less tense than it had been.

“Do ye think,” he finally said, and smiled a little as he said it, “do ye think the Sisters bring luck wi’ ‘em?”

His wife smiled, for one of the White Nuns guested with them again that day.

The last time one of the Sisters passed through, she’d set a man’s broken leg and splinted it well, she’d brewed boneset tea and left the healing herbs with the ranch wife, with whispered instructions for their uses, and two days later they found a half-dozen tin cans on their front porch, half-filled with dirt and each with two small plants – more of the herbs, but not dried and crumbled in a pouch, but alive, ready to transplant into her kitchen garden.

This day one of the Sisters asked to borrow a wagon and mare, and his youngest son; she did not say why, and husband and wife looked at one another as they heard the wagon come into the barn lot.

MacTavish went out to help his son unhitch, and his wife turned back to the kitchen, back to the note she’d been reading, a note the nun had written for her.

It was a letter to her sister back East.

The goodwife MacTavish could not see well enough anymore to write a clear letter, and her though her son could write, he wrote slowly:  when she voiced her dilemma to the nun, as the two simmered herbs and kneaded bread dough together, the nun laid gentle fingertips on the back of the woman’s hand, raised a finger:  a moment later she went to her traveler’s pouch and cloak, parked by the door, reached into her pouch and withdrew a small box.

She sat up to the painfully-clean table, laid out paper and a ruler, a pencil, three small vials and three fine-tipped pens, and Mrs. MacTavish watched as the nun quickly scribed four lines with the pencil, lightly bordering the page:  she leaned close and watched, marveling, as the nun dipped one pen, then another, tracing along the penciled line, the pen’s wandering in lazy S-curves suddenly becoming a green vine, then leaves, then colored berries in clumps, hanging from the vine.

She placed this sheet aside, took a second sheet, circumscribed this one with straight, unadorned black lines from another pot of ink; she wrote, quickly, her script neat, flowing, and Mrs. Mactavish wished most sincerely she could see better, that she may appreciate what must be absolutely beautiful handwriting:  she wasn’t sure how she did it, but the nun produced a magnifying glass, pressed it into the housewife’s hand, leaned back.

Mrs. Mactavish breathed a little “Ahh” of appreciation as she read the first line of script – “To the Honorable Judge Donald Hostetler” – then she shifted the glass to the first page, delighted to see the precise rendering of a springtime creeper winding around an invisible support and spreading leaves and berries to the sun.

The housewife dictated, the veiled nun wrote:  it was a simple letter to her sister, letting her know the oldest son’s fracture from early spring was healed and he was well, that they were making a success of the ranch, and that her husband wished that they guest here in America at their earliest opportunity.

The nun folded the finished letter carefully, folded another sheet into an envelope:  she addressed it according to the housewife’s words, sealed it with wax and a stamp, and the housewife placed the missive carefully out of harm’s way, that she may have it sent by trusted messenger into town, and dispatched to Scotland from there … and so she could look at the envelope again, with the precious glass the nun pressed into her hand, and indicated she was to keep.

 

Her son went with the nun to Carbon Hill – it was closer than Firelands, though much smaller, far less prosperous, and truth be told, it was a wonder the place didn’t just collapse from neglect – the boy watched the nun ascend the scaffold, whisper to the condemned man – she always whispered, someone said close to him, as he stood in the small crowd watching – she always whispered because someone tried to kill her and they cut her throat and she couldn’t speak normally ever after.

A pity, that, someone else said, I saw that scar and it’s awful.

Worse, another voice added, she used to sing opera.

The trap banged open, the condemned criminal dropped; within the hour, they were driving back past the ranch, and from there, to Firelands, and at the silent, veiled nun’s hoarsely-whispered instruction, along the railroad tracks and up beside what was obviously a private railcar.

 

His Honor the Judge read the account the lad gave him, an account written in a familiar hand, and signed “McKenna, Agent,” and he frowned.

“I am not particularly happy with you,” he snapped, glaring at the unmoving nun, faceless and anonymous behind the veil:  a trickle of moisture stained one side, as if an eye watered constantly.

He ignored this sign and stepped menacingly closer.

“I told you to go find me information and you bring me a corpse!” he snapped.  “I imagine you were instrumental in his death!”  He turned, paced away, turned, came back, accusing finger thrusting at her white-silk-draped face. 

His Honor raised his voice, allowing anger to power his words.

“Is that why you can’t even show me your face?”

The nun shrank back a step, then raised her hands:  slowly, reluctantly, she grasped the hem of the veil, then raised it, slowly, turning her head a little to bring the lamp light to bear on her exposed flesh.

Eyes closed, she raised it diagonally, barely exposing the side of her face, just enough – but only just enough – to reveal a horrible scar-line running from the corner of her eye down to where the puckered, reddish-brown weal crossed her throat and dove into the high collar of her habit:  he had a glimpse of the closed, ruined eye, the scar-pulled eyelid, dependent and wet, red and raw-looking:  a glimpse she gave him, but no more, and she lowered her veil, bowed her head, her face in her hands.

“Dear God,” the Judge whispered, shocked, his mouth suddenly dry with the realization that he’d just made an awful mistake, a terrible, terrible mistake.

He thought he was raising hell with his Agent.

His Honor knelt, slowly, hands on his thighs, and he too bowed his head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely, his mouth dry.  “I am so sorry, Sister.  I thought –“

He shook his head.

The nun knelt as well, her hands gentle as she touched him delicately under the chin with a curved finger.

“You thought,” she too whispered, “that I was another.”

He looked away, ashamed.

“I used to sing opera,” the nun whispered, her tortured voice deteriorating into a squeak; she coughed, bowed her head, then rose:  the Judge could not raise his eyes from the floor, not until he heard the door shut, felt the car move ever so slightly as the nun left the bottom step and was gone into the darkening night.

 

“You got my note?”   Sarah asked without preamble.

The Judge tried to conceal his startle:  the room was not yet filling with the inevitable spectators as well as jury, bailiff, counsels, the Sheriff, the Marshal and whoever else chose to wander in, and so the Judge didn’t show his surprise to any but his pale-eyed Agent.

He looked long at Sarah, then answered, “Yes.  Yes, I did.”

“I was not able to interrogate the prisoner,” Sarah said, her voice flat, unemotional.  “He was on his way to the scaffold by the time I got there.”

The Judge blinked, nodded.  “I understand.”

Sarah turned her head slightly, gave the Judge a long look, frowning a little.

“Your Honor, is something wrong?” she asked quietly.

“No,” the Judge said firmly.  “No.  Nothing’s wrong.”  He picked up a sheet of paper, frowned at it, tossed it aside.  “Don’t you have something to do?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Sarah said neutrally, choosing to let his peevish tone slide.  “I’ll be teaching school today.”

His Honor nodded impatiently.  “Right.  You do that.”

“Will there be anything else, Your Honor?”

His Honor considered the question for a long moment.

“No, Agent  McKenna.  No, there will not.  I made a serious error last night, and I have yet to make amends.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t see,” the Judge snapped.  “I made an absolute –“ 

He snapped his jaw shut, biting off his choice of personal pejoratives.

“Let’s just say I made a mistake.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“I may have something for you later in the week.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Sarah turned, then froze as the Judge suddenly changed his mind.

“No,” the jurist said sharply.  “No.  There is something.”

Sarah turned, blinked light-blue eyes, her hands folded demurely in her apron.

“Sarah,” the Judge asked, his voice low, urgent – “Sarah, do you sing opera?”

Sarah spread her arms, leaned her head back and opened her mouth, and a flawless, pure, pitch-perfect high-C launched out of her soul and danced, shimmering and lovely, in the courtroom’s still air.

She held the note for five seconds, then looked at the Judge, dropped a flawless curtsy, turned and snatched up her skirts:  she skipped from the courtroom, looking less like the mousy-grey schoolmarm and more like a happy schoolgirl.

His Honor the Judge sighed tiredly.

“If I were twenty years younger,” he muttered, “I would have her for my wife!”

 

 

Wilma gasped as she blinked, as her vision came back, as she seized the edge of the table:  she’d just been in the Judge’s private car, she’d smelled his cigar, she’d seen how fine his silver hair was –

She blinked, took a sudden breath.

The Abbot stepped into the library, paced slowly over to her.

“I take it Sister Meredith was helpful?”

“I was there,” Wilma whispered, her eyes wide, her hand rising to the side of her head.  “I was there!” – then, “How did you do that?”

The Abbot gave her an innocent look.

“Sister Meredith is yet under a vow of silence.  She is new to us but she is a consummate researcher.”

“But I, she, how …?”

The Abbot shrugged.  “She has a gift.”

Wilma shivered, blinking, looked at the silent, veiled nun.

“Thank you, Sister,” she breathed, then to the Abbot:  “A gift?  I’ll say!  I was there!”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

164.  THUS SPAKE I

 

The Black Agent watched from behind the little stage’s curtain.

Ice-pale eyes watched as the pale-eyed Sheriff paced into the Silver Jewel, his boot heels loud, his pace measured, deliberate:  she watched from between velvet drapes as his gaze swung around, assessing each individual there, and there was something about his … was it his look, or his expression, the way he carried himself?

The Black Agent was not certain, but she knew the man was ready for a fight, and if any were foolish enough to engage him, they would surely come out in second place.

She’d seen it before, and she nodded, once, her jaw thrusting out a little as she did.

He had his Winchester in his off hand, the way he favored, at its balance point.

He was a snake with that rifle – casually carried, he was unbelievably fast, and equally accurate, at ranges near and far, for all that it carried a pistol round, the ubiquitous .44-40, the same cartridge that fit his twin Colt’s revolvers.

His expression was normally relaxed, almost amiable:  tonight his features were chiseled, taut; men thrust their chins at him, looked at one another, and grew quiet, and the hush spread like a mute contagion, until the Silver Jewel grew still, grew absolutely quiet.

No cards whispered secrets to the green-felt tabletops, no dice rattled in their hourglass-shaped cage, the roulette wheel was stilled:  men watched, and men waited.

Mr. Baxter poured a water glass full of something water clear and not over 30 days old, placed it gently on the bar, slid it toward the lawman.

Linn turned, picked it up, held it up and turned it a little, contemplating the secrets it held against the lamplight, then he began to drink.

A water glass full of liquid rock-buster it was, and it went down as comfortably as a lighted kerosene lamp; he drained the glass, set it down on the mahogany, glared around him and with a hard-edged voice declared, “I SENT ANOTHER ONE TO HELL TODAY!”

Men drew back from him as he strode down the darker hallway; they watched the back of his coat retreat down the shadowed corridor, the saw the back door open, then close, and the lean lawman with hard and pale eyes was gone.

Conversation began, but low-voiced:  men speculated, men guessed, men wondered; the piano started up again, the roulette-wheel spun and flashed and the hourglass shaped cage turned and turned and turned again; among the snap of cards and the bright clink of hard coin, none heard the silent tread of the Black Agent as she slipped out the back of the stage, and followed the lawman into the night.

Daisy held his rifle as the Sheriff pumped another tin cup of wellwater, drank it down.

She waited until he’d turned away, ran two fingers down his throat and thrown up again; she waited until he’d washed out his gullet a third time, then she snapped the towel off her shoulder and thrust it into his hands.

“Here,” she said, low-voiced.  “Wipe yer face, mister.”

Linn wiped his face and his hands, twisted his handlebar back into shape, accepted the rifle and handed back the towel.

“Thank you, Daisy,” he whispered, not trusting his voice.

Daisy lay a gentle palm against the lawman’s fevered cheek.  “We’ve only one o’you, you pale-eyed scamp,” she whispered.  “Be you considerate of an old woman who thinks well of you” – she pushed past him and back up the steps, yanked open the door and slammed it shut behind her.

“You got him.”

The Black Agent appeared as if one of the Genii, summoned by magic and appearing without a puff of smoke, standing before him, all in black, with her arms crossed.

“Yeah,” Linn husked, then coughed, spat.

“Good,” the Agent replied, then took the lawman by the arm.  “Come with me.  I’m hungry and you are too.”

It was just twilight, just sliding from evening’s half-light into night’s seductive darkness; they rode up to the fine stone house, handed their horses to the stable boy, went inside.

The maid took their hats and their coats, disappeared; they knew their garments would be returned brushed, having been neatly hung:  any mud, any soiling would be gone, any holes or tears mended, and anything in the pockets would be undisturbed, including stray pine needles and the like.

They sat at the kitchen table, father and daughter, Sheriff and Agent of the Court.

Neither spoke until after their plates were set in front of them, not until creamy mounds of whipped, butter-rich mashed potatoes were cratered out and poured full of steaming-hot, fragrant gravy, not until the green beans with bacon and onions crowded one side and back strap waited their pleasure on a separate plate, for they knew the Sheriff took his backstrap seriously, and planned accordingly.

“Papa,” Sarah said quietly, “if you would kindly talk to your plate, we’ll get started.”

It was an old joke between the two, begun when Sarah was but a little girl, guesting with the Sheriff, and he joked about eating with a fellow who talked to his plate before he’d eat.

She saw just the hint of humor in his expression as he nodded, deliberately solemn, and intoned the familiar words of their thanks for this blessing of a meal.

Not until their meal was finished, not until coffee was served afterward with good fresh-berry pie, not until the Sheriff leaned back, patted his flat belly and groaned with pleasure, did Sarah push back her own plate and look directly at her father.

“What happened?”  she asked quietly.

Linn blinked slowly, debating whether to tell his daughter.

He was the law in the county, his was the office of Justice and Fairness and the Law, and to be real honest, he’d set out to just plainly kill a man, and he’d done it.

He come close to being killed his own self, and that was especially the part he wasn’t sure he wanted his little girl to know about.

“I hear that Tennessee bounty hunter is in the territory,” she said conversationally.  “You didn’t happen to see him, by any chance?”

“I did.”

“Is he well?”

Linn nodded slowly.  “He is well but he’s goin’ up ag’in the wrong man.”

Sarah nodded her understanding; her father said no more on the subject, nor did he have to:  it was plain he believed the bounty hunter was either wrong, or going to get himself killed, or both – more than likely both.

She’d learned long ago to listen to her father’s unspoken words, and his silence told her much.

“You recall that set-to over in Carbon.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed a little; they grew pale, they grew cold and they grew hard, just as her father’s eyes had done when he was first advised of the terror visited upon a miner’s family.

One of the miner’s daughters was brutalized – horribly so – it shattered her will, it blasted her mind:  she was hollow-eyed afterward, an automaton, and she’d whispered to her Mama she couldn’t stand it – “I can’t stand being soiled,” her last words – she’d gone head first down a two hundred foot deep shaft, and what was left of her that got brought out was considerably less pretty than the apple-cheeked girl that went in.

Linn knew the girl, and liked her; the mother took in washing and mending, she did her best to raise her several young and to keep her hard working husband out of trouble, and Sarah remembered holding the woman as she wept, as she grieved:  she was a woman of the time, a woman of the West, she held her grief and gave a brave face to the world, to her family, but in privacy, in loneliness, in the company of an understanding soul, she could loose the floodgates of womanly tears and give voice to the lamentations and sorrows that tear open the breast of a mother who loses a child.

Linn turned hard and pale eyes from the crushed, grieving mother to the hard-palmed, hard-muscled miner.

“I know who did this,” the Sheriff said quietly, “and I can move fastest alone.  Stay and take care of your wife and I will bring justice to the lawless.”

It took some persuasion, he told Sarah, then he smiled a little crookedly and said, “Thus spake I, and I rode off.”

“And you got him.”

His eyes hardened again and Sarah felt a chill roll across the table toward her as he said quietly, “I got him.”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

165.  THAT STUFF CAIN’T BE GOOD FOR YOU

 

I rode out of Carbon Hill on that dark-gold stallion, a gift from the Rancho Vega y Vega:  I’d rounded up some stolen stock of theirs and brought ‘em back, along with the heads of the thievin’ souls who stole them.

Horse theft is a hangin’ offense and once they were hung proper, why, they had no further use for their heads, and I knew the sight of heads impaled on sharpened stakes at the perphery of their range would be a plain warning, understandable to any who came or went, and so I took their heads in a gunny sack along with the stolen horses and it troubled me not one little bit.

The dark-gold stallion was their thanks, and a magnificent thanks it was.

It was descended from the famous Rey del Sol, and crossed with that bright-copper Cannonball mare I had … this stallion’s line was crossed again, which brought out its paso fino blood, and as butter-smooth as Cannonball’s gait was, this fellow put her to shame!

Not only was he sure footed, he was as much a Swiftrunner as any of his ancestors, and he was smart.

He’d never known a bit and given my way he never would.

My stock was all knee trained, all were bitless, that lesson was given me in the Cavalry, back during that damned war – back when dirt was young, and so was I – when a man has a pistol in one hand and a sabre in the other, there’s no hands left for reins:  my daughter Sarah studied many things, and she said knights in armor trained their destriers after the same wise, and for the same reason:  when a man in a tin suit has a shield on one arm and an ax, a lance, a mace or a sword in the other, he’d better be able to direct his mount without resorting to the reins.

I’d followed the man and I’d let him know I was following.

My stallion was known and so was I, and I let him get a good eye full of us while we were yet out of rifle shot.

I knew him and I knew how good a shot he was, and at what distance; I knew his liking for an ambush, and I knew his liking for a fast horse.

The one he’d stolen was not fast and it was not a particularly good horse and he’d be a-scratchin’ for better, but he’d come into a section that didn’t have anyone settled and livin’ there so chances were right fair he would not be able to switch mounts.

That meant he’d want to Bush Whack me all the more … to get pursuit off his back, and to get him onto my stallion’s back.

I smiled kind of crooked.

It wouldn’t be the first time I’d used myself for bait.

 

Sarah and the Sheriff sat together on the upholstered sofa, holding hands.

She’d taken the liberty of taking his hand, and he’d offered no objection:  she felt the need for her Papa’s reassuring grip, and suspected that he just might have a similar need, and she must have been right.

She blinked, her full attention on her lean-waisted Papa with the pale eyes and that great pall of sadness he seemed to wear ever since his wife, his Esther, died in childbirth.

His words were quiet, and as he spoke, Sarah let her imagination slip its leash and run ahead, run into the world his words were spinning around her.

 

“You might as well come on in, Tennessee.”

He came slouching in, grinning the way he always did.

“Please tell me you hid your horse.”
“Hell, an Apache couldn’t find him!”

“Good.”  I set the coffee pot on the rocks I’d set for that purpose, got the water to heating.  “There’s a horse thief hereabouts and I intend to kill him.”

Tennessee nodded.  I knew him to hunt bounty time and again and he had the look of a man on the hunt.

“You et?”

His look was reply enough.

I untied the red and white checkered cloth, laid it open on the ground, grabbed one and took a bite.  “You’d best he’p me eat these ‘fore they go to spoil.”

He didn’t need to be invited a second time, and he ate with a good appetite:  between the two of us we put away that whole stack of good home made sweet rolls, split open and buttered, loaded up with back strap and seasoned up with onion, garlic, some salt and I’m not sure what-all else.

They were genuinely good.

“You didn’t make these,” Tennessee hazarded, one cheek pouched out like a lopsided chipmunk.

“Nah,” I grinned “One of my daughters put them up for me, bless her!”

“She ain’t up to marryin’ yet now is she?”

I laughed.  “Hell, she ain’t but about eight years!”

Tennessee nodded.  “Best let that one ripen on the vine some.”

Once that water heated up, I dunked that cloth ball of fresh ground coffee and let it set and repent of its sins – Tennessee watched closely as I philtered in a pinch of salt – we set there appreciatin’ the smell, and for a little bit I was almost able to forget that a man I intended to kill was likely figurin’ out how to kill me.

Once the coffee got hot and I figured it was about ready, the first shot come a-whistlin’ from some rocks I was payin’ no obvious attention to.

That-there rifle ball drove right through my blue granite coffee pot and spanged into a rock and sprayed sand and spalls all over my face and it made me mad.

Tenessee rolled over backward and grabbed his rifle and I set down off the log and got my butt on the ground.

Tennessee fetched a round into his britch and commenced to studyin’ after those rocks – the smoke was there but it was drifted and neither of us wanted to send a wild shot, we might have need of that one round – and I saw movement.

I drew up my right leg, cocked the hammer on that engraved Colt, laid the inside of my forearm against the side of my knee.

Tennessee squinted some and BANG come another shot and that one buzzed a-past my right ear.

I saw where he was and I held up three bars on that front sight – I’d had it coppered, then blacked, I’d had gold bars laid in every so far apart on the back of the sight – three bars, I judged, was about right, and I sighed out my breath and tickled back on that trigger.

That fella raised up a little to get a better shot and my pistol ball laced into him and he lost interest in much of anything from that moment on:  Tennessee’s jaw hung a little as the fellow toppled from behind that rock, his rifle sliding down the scree, followed by the dead carcass of a man who honestly didn’t care any more that his nose was plowin’ a furrow in the loose rock as he slud down hill.

I looked at the steaming mess that used to be a fire, at the brown puddle that used to be coffee, I picked up the pot and the bottom fell out.

“Y’know, Tennessee,” I said casually, “might be he done us a favor.”

“There is only one of ‘em?”  Tennessee asked, and I nodded.

“Just one, of that I am sure.”  I held up the coffee pot and the bottom hung down, hinged to the sidewall by about an inch of rusty material.

“Looks like I done rotted out another pot.  That stuff cain’t be good for you.”

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

166.  I DO KNOW BETTER

 

“So you set your backside in the dirt,” Sarah said slowly.  “I’ll bet you leaned back on your elbow too.”

Her pale eyed papa nodded, slowly, once.

“And I’ll bet you took one shot.”

Again that one, slow, nod.

“A lesser man might doubt your tale.”

She saw the barest hint of a smile at the corners of his eyes, and she knew that she, and she alone, of all the people in the world, could say that:  such a statement, the inference, the hint, let alone the saying in so many words, that a man be a liar, was an invitation to a killin’, or at the very least, a most public beating.

“Do you doubt me?” he asked, his voice soft, and she saw his eyes lose their pale and become a light blue, something he never, ever did except in unguarded moments, with someone he trusts implicitly.

The Black Agent, a beautiful young woman of no more than fifteen years, a blooded warrior who’d sent her share of evil souls to blistering perdition, smiled gently and caressed her Papa’s carefully-barbered cheek.

“No,” she whispered.  “No, Papa, I doubt you not.”  She smiled, remembering, then giggled.  “I know better!”

She reached into her skirt, withdrew her own persuader of an ungentle nature:  she, too, had a custom front sight, and like her Papa’s, it had gold bars spaced up its straight face.

“I have hit a head of cabbage at that distance,” she said as his eyes tightened at the corners, as they tightened in approval at the sight of her own pistol’s modification.  “As a matter of fact, had it not shredded terribly, I might have put all six into it at that distance, but it seems to have wilted under the influence of my attorneys, the Messrs. Smith, and Wesson.”

“I can’t help but think,” the Sheriff replied, and she heard the smile in his voice, “that your counsel argues powerfully and most persuasively on your behalf.”

“And you would be right, sir.”  The Smith disappeared into a hidden slit in her skirt.

 

The Abbott sat beside Wilma, sharing the account they read:  it was a reprint of one of the Old Sheriff’s several journals, and as Wilma leaned back, blinking, the Abbott raised his sweating glass of mint-infused tea and took a careful swallow, savoring the cool, sweet liquid.

“I know the place that happened,” he said, and Wilma blinked, turned to look at the man.

“They were … I don’t think I can describe it as well as the author here,” he smiled sadly, “but I went and took a long look at where this happened.  It’s described in another Journal, right after they discuss an interesting fellow they encountered on the trail.”

“Oh?  Interesting, how?”

The Abbott laughed.

“I am not certain how much his description … whether he was recounting fact, or perhaps he was having a joke at future generations’ expense.”

“Don’t tell me he ran into Paul Bunyan!”

No, no.  Paul Bunyan was French-Canadian and I don’t believe he got further south than Minnesota.  Pecos Bill, perhaps, but not Big Paul.”

“What, then?”

“He said something about this interesting fellow being” – he held his hand out, as if describing a child’s height – “short, maybe three and a half feet tall, wearing a stovepipe hat almost as tall, but a man terribly afraid of black-and-white dogs, especially border collies.”

Wilma’s eyebrows raised.  “That would be unusual,” she agreed.

“I think he may’ve been pulling our leg, though,” the Abbott added.  “He said the poor fellow was so short, he had to wire a wheel on the end of his holster to keep it from dragging the ground!”

Wilma laughed a little.  “I see.”

“He said something about the fellow being named Unlucky Jones or something of the kind.  Said he’d been cursed by an old Indian, wrapped in green hides and left for a week in the desert sun.  When they started he was six foot four tall but when they were done dryin’ him out there on the hot sands, he was about half that, and dogs suddenly had an affinity for his backside.”

Wilma tried to hide her equal parts of skepticism and amusement behind another sip of tea.

“He went home from there.  I think he was profoundly … probably today we would say he was terribly depressed at having lost his wife.  He certainly seems to have engaged in risk taking behavior, using himself as bait, but when that Tennessee fellow came into the picture, Old Pale Eyes decided to stop fooling around and put a pistol round into the criminal at …”

The Abbott paused, considering the referents Miss Kincaid might be more familiar with.

“It was a football field and a half he shot, and hit a man target, first try.”

Wilma had shot very little pistol in her day and not much more of anything else, but she did recall her uncles complaining about their sidearms being next to worthless:  “They might make a good club in a bar fight,” one declared, “but for anything more than arm’s reach, they’re worthless!”

“Can that really be done, that far away?”  Wilma asked, and the Abbott nodded.

“Oh, yes,” he said firmly.  “I have done as much myself.”

 

A curly headed streak of blue-and-white checkered dress charged across the porch, jumped the steps, landed with a stumble and a flat-handed slap against the ground before she was on her feet and running, running with a delighted “Daddeeeee!” – and the long tall lawman on that good lookin’ dirty-gold horse swung down out of his saddle and went to one knee, his arms wide:  the man rocked back with the impact of the running child, almost falling over, and it wouldn’t have mattered to either one if he had.

Daddy’s little girl was in his arms, and Daddy’s big strong arms were around his little girl, and for a moment, their worlds collapsed around them, leaving only each other and their mutual embrace, and in that moment, it was enough.

Sheriff Jacob Keller stood back and grinned, for he knew what it was to be a father; Dana was young enough to be the man’s granddaughter – matter of fact he had grandchildren the same age as this, his youngest child – but his Dana was his beloved, and Jacob had remarked to someone that he’d known a youngest would always, always be Daddy’s Little Girl, no matter how old she got, but until he saw his pale eyed Pa and this laughing, apple-cheeked, curly-haired little spitfire child of his embrace like this, he never really knew why.

Now, he did, and as he stood there with a big idiot grin on his face, he looked down at his own son.

“That,” he said, “is how your Grampa likes bein’ greeted when he comes home.”

The young lad looked at his pale-eyed Granddad, standing now, with his little girl in his arms, and she with his Stetson on her head and giggling, and the young Keller said, “Yes, sir,” in a half-lisp that betrayed the preceding night’s loss of a front milk tooth.

Linn rode on up to the house with his little girl standing up on the saddle behind him, the way his other young had ridden, and now his grandchildren, and his little girl hung onto her Daddy’s coat, his hat coming down to the bridge of her nose and over her ears.

 

The Journal in question was not the only copy that had been made.

Connie re-read the passage where the Old Sheriff described a shrieking streak of curly hair and blue-and-white dress material, and how he braced himself to receive cavalry, how he’d ridden back to the house with his little girl giggling behind him, so warm and solid and very, very real as she clung to his coat, and she looked at her pale eyed husband and asked, “Is that why Jimmy rides standing up behind you?”

“Wes does too,” Jimmy offered, to which Connie replied, “You men will give me a heart attack yet!” and fanned herself with the closed, finger-bookmarked volume.

Linn gave her his best Innocent Look, while Jimmy grinned, and little Wes, laying on the floor with his back cuddled up against The Bear Killer’s back, sighed in his sleep, perfectly comfortable with nothing but a hook rug padding the polished wood floor beneath.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

167.  THE ONLY ANSWER I HAVE

 

“Abbott … forgive me, but you haven’t answered my question.”

The Abbott nodded.  “You are right, Miss Kincaid.  My apologies.  Please restate your question.”

How formal, she thought.  Is this an attempt to discourage me?

“What happens when I die?”

The Abbott nodded.  “Yes.  You did ask the question and I distracted myself.”

The Abbott tented his fingers, frowned a little.

“When I was in seminary,” he began, “we … it was practice in New Orleans that we take a peach crate out and set up on a street corner, and do some good old-fashioned street corner preaching.”

Wilma shifted in her seat, leaned forward a little, clearly interested.

“My roommate was holding forth on the love of God.

“Now … you have to understand … tourists and locals alike loved it when we did this.  They got to hear the Word and they got to do a little heckling, or sometimes a lot of heckling.  It was considered local entertainment by the natives.

"The seminary knew it gave the young priests practice at handling unexpected questions, at handling hecklers, at thinking on their feet in public.

“My roommate, as I said, was preaching the love of God and a woman elbowed her way to the fore, and she was not at all gentle about it.

“She was well enough dressed, but she was angry – upset – she nailed a fellow in the ribs to fight her way to the front and she shook her finger at my roommate and screamed, ‘My husband and my son were killed today!  They were killed in a car wreck, boom, dead!  Where is God’s love in that?”

My roommate generally spoke in a smooth, almost a soft voice, and even when he projected himself to be heard to the rearmost rank, his voice retained that gentleness that was his trademark.

“It … took the wind out of his sails, so to speak.

“He stopped and looked down and considered for a moment, then he looked up and he went down on one knee, right there on that peach crate, and he spoke to her, and he looked her in the eye when he did.

“He said, ‘I have an answer.

“ ‘It may not be the right answer, but it’s the only one I have.’”

“He took a breath and said, ‘It could be that – in the moment of their death – it could be they were in prayer, and if they were, they would be immediately in the presence of God – directly taken to the Throne, no Purgatory, no Judgement, just instantly in the presence of God.

“ ‘I do not know this is what happened, but it is an answer.  It may not be the answer, but it’s the only answer I have.’”

“The woman bit her knuckle and was silent for a long moment, and she nodded and turned and the crowd parted to let her pass.”

Wilma blinked, considering; she could not help but mentally put herself in that young priest’s place, and wonder if she could have done as well.

“I too have an answer, Miss Kincaid.  It may not be the right one and it may not … well, here it is.”

He rose, began pacing:  the man paced when he thought, and as he arranged his thoughts in some semblance of order, he clasped his hands behind him, looking at the floor before his advancing step.

“At the moment of death … when I died … it was as if … as if one released the throat-clasp of a soiled and worn cloak, and the cloak fell to the ground, allowing the soul to rise, free, clean, triumphant.”  He pressed his lips together, nodded.

“I worked with the dying, Miss Kincaid, with those who’d died and been brought back.  Cardiac patients, kidney dialysis patients, cancer patients … they all shared their experiences with me, and I with them, and there were common elements, and there were differences.

“Some were met by loved ones, some were suspended in limitless space and chose to turn to the Light and chose to advance into it.”

He smiled a little.  “I didn’t.

“I was in Intensive Care and I was lying on my back on the ceiling, looking down at myself and …”

He smiled again.

“I … can tell you … that the Valley of the Shadow is not a dark and foreboding place.”  His smile was different, almost sad, the smile of a man remembering something truly significant, something he missed terribly.

“It is green, Miss Kincaid.  The Valley is green, and it smells of spring, and of a thousand green growing things.  I felt such relief – I was relieved of the pain of living, the seething ocean of agony into which a child is born, which is the real reason a baby cries, at least until they get used to being in pain, nonstop, constant, penetrating agony.  We are so used to it we think ourselves painless, but it’s not until that moment of death – when we are relieved of all the responsibility, the responsibilities of living, relieved of the pain of living – not until that moment, Miss Kincaid, do we realize how much agony we sustain on a daily basis.”

“Then why do some souls remain?”

“You’re talking about some souls we know,” the Abbott chuckled.  “The Old Sheriff.  Sister Mercurius.  Even that little boy you helped in Carbon Hill.  Oh, don’t be surprised, Miss Kincaid.  We know many things.”  He laughed.  “Actually, Sister Mercurius told us, and we held a Mass in celebration of the event!”

Wilma blinked, confused, then she realized the full import off the man’s words.

“I’m … not sure about something,” she said hesitantly.

“Yes?”  The Abbott picked up his tea, took a long drink.

“Have I been seeing the Sheriff’s mother, or Sarah McKenna?”

“You’ve been seeing that complex soul we knew as Sister Mercurius, as Sarah McKenna, and as the Black Agent, and also as the many things she was.”  The Abbott stopped his pacing, considered for a long moment.

“There is still a question in your eyes, Miss Kincaid.  Please.  You’ve come a very long way.  Please speak freely.”

Wilma nodded slowly.  “Abbott,” she said hesitantly, “why are they still here?  Why did that ragged little boy move on and the others have not?”

A voice at her elbow – a boy’s voice – and she jumped, startled:  she looked, and the thin, dirty-faced little boy in the torn, dirty shirt much too big for him, the ragged drawers and skinny legs thrust into worn out miner’s boots – he grinned, that infectious, little-boy grin she remembered – and then he closed his eyes and swallowed, tilted his head back a little:  he was no longer rail-thin and dirty, he wore a robe much like the Abbott’s, but a bright, shimmering white.

“My work was finished,” he said simply.  “When the work is done, we can move on.”  He grinned at her, that quick, impulsive grin of a happy, contented lad:  “I’m back because you have a question, and I was … I like answering it.”

He nodded to the Abbott:  “Thank you, sir,” he said gently, and then he was gone.

Wilma blinked at the empty space he’d just occupied, looked back at the Abbott.

“Their work.  The Old Sheriff.  The … Sarah, all that she is.  Their work isn’t done?  Why didn’t … Daffyd Llewellyn.  He was a happy and loving husband to Sarah and he was killed in that boarding house fire, why isn’t he –“

“My work was done,” a man’s voice explained, and she turned and openly stared at a fireman of the earlier century, a good looking man with a curled, absolutely black handlebar mustache, clear blue eyes that glittered with amusement, a red bib front shirt with a gold Maltese cross embroidered in its front.

“I watched while my wife brought up the coffin.  Poor darlin’, she was ready to cry but she dare not, not with everyone watchin’.  She waited until the lads went in an’ brought out what was left o’ me, an’ she lay a hand on the box and I felt her sorrow.

“I stood behind her and tried to lay my hand on her shoulder but of course I could not, and all I could do was stand there and grieve for my poor wife, my widow now, an’ no’ a thing I could do t’ help her.

“I was allowed to see wha’ was to come, an’ I realized my work was finished, an’ so – I left.”

His words were plain and without guile, and Wilma considered this.  “And you’re here because I have questions.”

“Aye, my Lady, that is the size of it.”

Wilma rose, took his hands:  they were warm, strong, callused, and as she squeezed them, he squeezed back.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“’Tis my good pleasure,” he whispered back, touched the brim of his pressed-leather helmet, disappeared.

Wilma sat, slowly, her mind busy.

The Abbott sat as well.

“I almost feel guilty,” she admitted.  “They’re back from Beyond because of me.”

“Do not feel guilt,” the Abbott said in his gentle voice.  “Rejoice that you have answers.”

Wilma nodded.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

168.  OPEN THE MINES!

 

Sheriff Linn Keller stood on the elevated wooden platform built in the middle of the newly paved Carbon Hill street.

Carbon Hill didn’t smell like wind-blown dust and decayed dreams anymore.

It smelled of sawdust and Diesel exhaust, it sounded like saws and air nailers, of heavy equipment and heavy trucks:  the decision had been made to blade in an access on the back side of town, to mash down a heavy rock foundation, then finer gravel, and finally pavement:  there would be a great deal of heavy traffic in the near future, heavy equipment and people, and what had been a dirt road was now widened more than fourfold.

The reservoir’s depth was plumbed, its volume calculated, the necessary dredging volume decided on; a growing town needed water, mains had to be ditched in, but at the Sheriff’s insistence, as much character as possible of the original Carbon Hill would be preserved.

The dirt street, while fine for character or local flavor, was a poor choice for traffic, even though heavy traffic, equipment, trucks and haulers would be going out the back way:  it, too, was paved, the boardwalks built after the paving was laid, after the water mains and sewers were ditched in.

Much had been done in little time, but the work was done right; restored buildings had modern plumbing, sprinklers, power, but all was engineered to minimize the visual footprint of the modern amenities.

The Mercantile was rebuilt, as was the old Saloon:  the Marshal’s office would be a Sheriff’s Office substation, until the day a permanent population of sufficient size warranted a municipal constabulary, at which time the plan was to establish a Marshal’s Office once again.

The old iron cube was cleaned out, graffiti stripped from its sides and insides; the Sheriff knew the value of tourist draws, and so he had the Mercantile refitted with not only the aforementioned modern necessities, but this building particularly was set up so it very much reminded guests of the original flavor of the building … complete with the proprietor’s wiry-rim glasses run well down his nose, the shin-long apron, the fussbudget air as he swept the floor in short, nervous strokes and scolded a nonexistent cat for sleeping in a barrel of plastic-wrapped saltine crackers.

Carbon Hill was found to have more coal remaining than anyone believed, and mining engineers calculated how it could be extracted without collapsing the mountain on top of them – the Sheriff flatly ruled out longwalling, used back East to the detriment and destruction of water bearing strata overhead:  longwallers ground out all the coal in sections, pulled back and allowed the overburden to collapse, then continued grinding at the coal and allowing its collapse, which ruined wells, cisterns and water veins.

Water was a precious commodity in the West, then and now:  the Sheriff controlled the mines’ ownership, and as its major shareholder and majority owner, he could swing a decision all by himself, and did.

As a matter of fact, when the moist brown coal began leaving the Carbon Hill tipple by rail, in greater amounts than had ever been extracted by pick and shovel and sweating, hard-muscled men, houses were built on the foundations of the old Company houses, the church was rebuilt (to the Abbott’s delight), families were moving into the houses, and arrangements were made to bus children to the Firelands Local schools.

And the tourists came as well.

Miners are a superstitious lot, and when the found the headless skeleton of a miner, still in rotting shirt and boots and out-at-the-knees overalls, they carefully, reverently hunted until they found his skull and placed it on his lap, then they brought him out, still seated in his cracked and sagging wooden chair.

They took him first to the church, where the very first Mass was said for the repose of this old-timer’s soul, then six miners hoisted the coffin to shoulder height and marched with solemn tread outside, to the churchyard cemetery, and laid him to rest in a hand made wooden box, a box lined with quilts donated for the purpose, in new boots and with a polished, filled and wick-trimmed miner’s lamp, an old lamp found near the skeleton, a lamp that looked like a brass teapot:  the skeleton wore a new flannel shirt, and new denim overalls, and a new pair of boots.

Just before the lid was closed, a skinny boy in a dirty shirt several sizes too big for him, an unwashed urchin in ragged knee pants and worn out miner’s boots, wiggled through the assembled and placed an old-fashioned bottle of beer in the box with him, a beer bottle with a cork and a wire bail, and the lid was closed and made fast, and the old miner was given his honorable interment.

 

The tourists laughed and chattered and took pictures as they always did, and a smiling woman in an old-fashioned dress led them into the Mercantile:  canned goods wore custom printed, old-fashioned reproduction labels, overlaying the modern labels; penny candy stood invitingly in glass jars, old-fashioned shoes and bolts of cloth, sewing notions and rag dolls were displayed, and the long-haired cat jumped up onto a stool and then into the barrel of crackers, where she looked around and complained in her feline voice that no one was paying the least bit of attention to her – which, of course, got her considerable attention, in which she basked with the attitude of the royal to whom adulation is their just due.

The woman in the old-fashioned dress explained that the Mercantile was the center of Carbon Hill’s household marketing:  it carried all the goods a housewife would need, everything from genuine corn brooms to looms and spinning wheels, sewing notions, knives, grindstones, hatchets – if it was a household necessity, it could be had here.

“Of course,” she smiled, “an old store has its ghosts, and if you’ll follow me” – she picked up a can of peaches – “we’ll show you where a legendary local ghost lived!”

They swarmed into the back room, part of the Mercantile’s back stock storage; the woman in the old-fashioned dress squatted in a graceful and feminine manner, placed the cans on a particular floor board, rapped her gloved knuckles on the board – shave-and-a-haircut – and then stood, hands clasped as if a schoolteacher lecturing a class.

“The resident ghost was that of a boy who died of disease and malnutrition in the late 1800s,” she explained.  “He lived the last days of his life under this Mercantile, where he found a loose board in the floor here.  He would reach up and snatch the odd canned goods to keep himself from starving.”

Beside her high-button shoe with the sharp little heel, the board in question was pushed up; they saw a thin, unwashed, almost clawlike hand reach out, grip the can of peaches, draw it silently back down, then the board lowered.

“In the years that followed, up until the time this Mercantile was rebuilt – and everything had to be replaced, everything except the stone foundation pilings – even this floor is a complete replacement, and every board is nailed down firmly, fitted tightly, underlaid with building paper to stop air leaks, so it is not possible to purloin foodstuffs in that manner today.

“In days past, though, the locals would come out here on a dare and place cans of any kind of food here on this board.

“It would never disappear while they watched, but if they looked away, even for a second” – she snapped her fingers – “they looked back and their offering was gone, and the absolutely clean and very empty tin cans were found on the boy’s grave in the town’s cemetery, beside the Catholic church.

“But of course,” she smiled as the board lifted and the dirty, clawlike hand gripped the second can and drew it silently down, “we all know there are no such things as ghosts.”
She looked around with a bright smile.  “Shall we move on to the railroad depot?”

A schoolgirl raised her hand, a little timidly:  “What did you say he did with the cans?”

“They were emptied and found, as clean as if they’d been scrubbed, and neatly placed on his grave.  It was unmarked for many years, until our Sheriff found it and had his stone set.  When the new stone went in, the cans were placed up against the base of the marker.”

“Can we go there?”

Wilma Kincaid smiled and nodded.

“Yes.  Yes, we can definitely go there!”

 

The Firelands High School Marching Band played their attention-getting fanfare: they’d provided the entertainment leading up to the speechmaking and the formal declaration, and now the group of tourists stopped as the Sheriff was introduced and stepped up to the microphone.

“My friends,” he said gently, his voice amplified but not distorted by the carefully-calibrated sound system, “I have a few things to say so I wrote them down.  I don’t want to forget anything.”

So saying, he pulled a roll of wallpaper from behind him, held the corners, let it unroll, hit the ground, bounce and roll a little distance, until it hit the feet of the first row of seated spectators.

He looked down, looked at the crowd, then muttered “Maybe not,” and dropped the delicately-gripped wallpaper, which of course brought a good laugh.

“My friends, my father taught me two useful rules of public speaking,” he said:  thrusting one finger in the air, he declared, “The longer the speaker’s wind, the harder those chairs get” – he punched up another finger beside the first – “and the mind will absorb only until the backside grows numb.

“Let me neither belabor your backsides nor your sensibilities.

“Carbon Hill is alive again, thanks to the mines.  We’re setting houses and settling families, we’ve got stores, a barbershop, a saloon – gotta have a saloon” – he winked with a little turn of his head, which gained him an appreciative chuckle – “we’re moving in both Fire Department and Sheriff’s Office substations, we’re providing paychecks to the honest workin’ man, and all this starts right now.”

The Sheriff stepped back from the microphone, waved an arm overhead, looking at a figure in an orange miner’s hat and overalls at a drift opening.

“FOREMAN!” he yelled, his voice carrying without need for the microphone he’d stepped away from.  “OPEN THE MINES!”

The foreman turned, raised his arm, gave the command.

A steam whistle on a tall, cast-iron pipe screamed, blasting alarm and steam into the clear air, and the bull wheel, the big crown pulley visible at the top of the vertical shaft building, started to turn:  the band struck up a lively air, men cheered, hats were thrown into the air.

From just inside the mine drift, just out of sight behind the happily waving foreman, a skinny boy in ragged pants and worn out miner’s boots and a skinny old miner in a faded shirt and out-at-the-knees overalls stood side by side, grinning.

“She’s alive again, son,” the old miner said.

“Yes, sir, she is!”

“Our work’s done now.  Time to go home.”

 They turned and walked down the shaft, into the darkness.

Just before they disappeared, the boy looked up and said, “Will we ever be back?”

The old miner stopped and found a Lucifer match, touched the wick of the miner’s lamp, slid the little brass teapot with the butter fueled flame back into the metal clip on his cap.

“If we’re needed, I reckon,” he said.  “Nobody knows these mines like we do.”

Father and son, old man and young boy, resumed their journey into the mines they called home.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

169.  THE IMPOSSIBLE COPPER

 

Wilma Kincaid had not come West to find ghosts.

She’d come West because she was single, she had disposable income and vacation time, she thought steam trains were romantic and she’d grown up on Westerns and romance and nothing was more romantic, in her young mind, as a ride on an Old West steam train.

Numerous tourists came to Firelands because of the train, the scenic railway, made even better because engineer, fireman, conductor, porters, ticket agent, all looked the part, all acted the part, all obviously took pains to research their character, their persona, their alias, if you will:  each of the docents knew their history, the origins of the railroad, the significance of the spray of roses painted on the side of each car.

There was an occasional voiced disappointment that there was no staged “train robbery” nor a theatrical shootout on the main street, and here the docents would explain that the walkdown and the shootout actually happened rarely in the Old West, that this was the product of imaginative Hollywood, that it made good theater up on the silver screen, but it almost never happened.

Almost.

There were, of course, exceptions.

 

His name was lengthy, his titles impressive; for convenience, let us call him Johann.

Johann stood in front of the fine stone house, assessing this impressive structure with the eyes of a world traveler.

He’d known castle and schloss, manor house and humble cottage; this, however … this one was different.

It looked substantial, it looked solid, but it looked very livable.

Johann had done his research.

He’d read every one of the Old Sheriff’s journal reprints, he’d tracked down and purchased an original copy of Lies, Damned Lies and Tall Tales of Firelands County, Colorado, by one Sarah L. McKenna, and he read stories he recognized as factual, but altered slightly to appear to be fiction.

He’d learned this fine stone house had been the married home of that selfsame Sarah L. McKenna, after she married a fireman, Daffyd Llewellyn:  he knew her home was now a museum, he knew she’d died in his thrice-great-grandfather’s schloss, fighting to keep himself and her daughter alive, screaming like a Valkyrie and laying death about her as efficiently as a squad of infantry with magazine rifles.

He knew that a man, a twice-great nephew, brought a pale eyed enemy soldier's body back to American lines, brought him back with honor and interred him in a French farmer’s field in a Masonic service, conducted jointly by his twice-great-nephew and the American commander.

He knew the man whose life this pale eyed American saved, was also an ancestor, he knew he’d kept the copper plated revolvers the American used to such good effect, that he’d brought them with him when he emigrated to America, and he’d finally discovered where his honorable ancestor died and was buried, and then he’d found where the revolvers were kept.

He’d heard of this legendary warrior, this cowboy in soldier’s garb, he’d grown up watching American westerns, marveling at the phenomenal fast-draw and uncanny accuracy of the American cowboy, and he’d dreamed of being one such, some day.

Neither he nor the Ghost Hunter knew one another:  neither knew the other existed:  they did not bump into one another at a train station and make an acquaintance, as a matter of fact neither came within three statute miles of the other – we realize it would make for a terribly romantic story if they met and fell madly in love and raised a minor division of enthusiastic little cowboys, but that didn’t happen.

No, as Miss Wilma Kincaid returned East, our Johann arrived at the McKenna Museum of the Firelands, and as he studied the architecture and the workmanship, he nodded his approval:  he stopped to bend over and study the corner stone, with its relief-carved Square and Compasses, and he smiled a little, for he, like his ancestors, were Freemasons, lucky survivors of the Second War, where Freemasons were hunted and sent to the camps with Jews, Gypsies, schoolteachers, authors, artists, Mayors and other undesirables.

Johann grew up hearing about the wild American’s exploits:  how he’d carried the wounded man back to German lines, because the German aid station was closer; how he’d fought his way through, how he was injured, which only made him fight all the harder, how he’d shot spinning, hard-thrown grenades out of the air, all with those magical, those amazing, those copper plated cowboy revolvers – the Impossible Coppers, for it was not possible for a man to perform such a feat of marksmanship.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller rode down the back trail behind the museum, his Appaloosa stallion sure-footed on the narrow, bare-rock path:  it was narrow for most of its passage, he could stretch his arms out and touch both walls with his fingertips in several places:  he came out behind the Museum and rode down between the barn and the side of the house, his eyes tightening a little at the corners as he remembered reading Sarah McKenna’s account of coming out this very side door – here, on his right – looking around, then slipping into the barn, where she found the intruder she’d expected, and killed him with a pitchfork.

“You know,” he said to himself, “I’m dry” – and so saying, he leaned back in the saddle and ho’d quietly to Apple-horse, halting the stallion as neatly as if he’d had a snaffle bit buckled in place.

The side door opened and one of the staff waved to get his attention.

“Sheriff,” she called, “a gentleman has some questions.”

 

Johann was like most of his line:  pragmatic, practical, efficient:  his question to the pale-eyed lawman was direct, straightforward.

“I am giffen to understandt,” he said, his accent at once pleasant yet crisp, “that the man who wore these” – his fingertip thumped the glass lid on the copper plated revolvers’ chip-carved case – “shot Stielhandgranates as they were thrown.”

The lawman with the curled, iron-grey mustache nodded, his pale eyes quiet, assessing.

“How can that be – is not that impossible?”
“Let’s find out,” was the quiet voiced answer. 

He opened the ornate wood case’s lid, placed his own two revolvers beside it:  he took the copper plated revolvers, loaded them, slid them into his holsters.

“Come with me.”

The two walked out the front door.

 

Linn laid gentle fingertips on the docent’s arm, stopping her as efficiently as if he’d seized her wrist and pulled hard.

She stared at the open case, at the revolvers beside it, at the empty interior, then she flinched a little at the first concussion, the first deep booooom of a pistol shot.

She turned frightened eyes to the Sheriff, who put his fingers to his lips, took three long strides across the room, picked up one of the engraved revolvers, studied it.

She saw him turn and motion her closer.

“Do nothing,” he said quietly.  “This is family business.”

She swallowed and nodded.

It was not hard to forget the Sheriff was a pale eyed descendant of the pale eyed Old Sheriff, and of the pale-eyed Black Agent:  she’s seen portraits enough, read many accounts, and she knew the Sheriff held legal title to land, structure and every exhibit inside the Museum.

If he was satisfied all was well, then she was satisfied too.

“Shall I … fix something?”  she asked hesitantly, flinching again at two shots in quick succession.

“Yes, thank you.  Something that would have been eaten during the time of the Black Agent.”

 

The pale eyed lawman turned, thrust out his hand.

Automatically the German took it.

“This is what you want,” the Sheriff said, his voice low, rumbling, yet reassuring, confident:  “a good handshake grip.  This is the ideal pistol grip when shooting, especially instinctive work.”

He bent, picked up an empty Borden’s Eagle Brand milk can.

Johann smiled, noting the label, delighting that even a discarded tin can held a reproduction of the original label.

“The trick is,” he said, “to hit the can at the top of its flight.  It’ll be stationary and only a few feet away.  You can hit anything coming at you in the same manner.  Like this.”

He turned, flipped the can in the air, raised his left hand, copper plated revolver, drove a hole through the can, spinning it and dropping it not ten feet from his boot toes.

“That no more than ten foot from me when I pulled the trigger.”  He smiled a little.  “If I throw it higher” – the can sailed into the air – “same thing” – boooooom – “just like that.  Like to try it?”

Johann knew there was no way in the world this man could know just how badly he wanted to try it!

 

When Johann walked around the corner of the house, heading back between the barn and the structure, the Sheriff was there … was it? – it has to be, Johann realized, for the man wore the same clothing, had the same iron-grey, curled mustache, had the same ice-pale eyes, wore the same two-gun rig.

“Wash up,” he said, gesturing to the freshly-refilled wash basin, “and we’ll eat.”

Johann rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands, dried them on what he recognized as a genuine flour-sack towel:  he followed the tall, quiet lawman into the kitchen, smiling a little at the smell of good beef, and sat down to backstrap and green beans with onions and bacon, sourdough bread, coffee – “I didn’t make the coffee, so it’s fit to drink,” the Sheriff deadpanned – and as the two men ate, the docent slipped back out into the front room, looked at the gun case.

The original, copper plated revolvers were clean again, spotless, showing no sign of having been fired:  they were back under glass, and she quickly, impulsively, gripped the lid, pulled.

Locked.

Like it always was.

She blinked, shook her head, thought Well, it is his museum, and returned to the kitchen.

 

“I am familiar with the story the revolvers tell,” Johann said.

Linn tented an eyebrow.  “Oh?”

Johann nodded.  “It was my grandfather – several times removed – that he carried to safety.”

Linn’s eyes tightened a little at the corners and he stuck out his hand again.

This time when the men shook, they exchanged a grip, and each knew the other to be a Freemason.

“I grew up wanting to be a cowboy,” Johann admitted.  “I wished to ride and shoot and” – he colored a little – “I did not wish to kiss my horse!”

Linn laughed, nodded.

“Thank you for letting me shoot the impossible copper.”

Linn favored him with a curious look.  “Impossible copper?”

“I thought it impossible to hit something thrown, with a pistol.  Copper, for we knew the revolvers to be copper plated, and I could not imagine a copper plated pistol.”

Linn nodded.  “It oxidizes black but the wear points are polished bright.”

Johann nodded, then laughed.

“My brothers,” he admitted, “will be so very jealous!”

Linn laughed.  “How would you like to ride back into town?”

“Ride?”

“I have a spare mount and a saddle that ought to fit your backside.  Are you a horseman?”

“I have never ridden … Western … but yes.  Yes, I ride.”

“Good.  Are you staying in town?”

“I am, at the Silver Jewel.”

“Good.  Get enough to eat?”

Johann nodded.

“I’ll give you Diamond.  He’s steady and smooth gaited.  Go easy on his mouth and he’ll do you fine.”

 

The docent stood staring at the copper plated revolvers.

She saw the Sheriff pick up the well ventilated tin can, bring it inside.

“No sense to leave this a-layin’,” he rumbled.

“Here, I’ll pitch it.”  She took the can and carried it carefully to the kitchen, dropped it in the trash.

“How did you get back so fast?  You two only just left –“

The docent looked out the window as Johann and his pale eyed host rode past.

She looked back at the Sheriff and realized this might not be her Sheriff after all.

Her mouth opened and closed as she remembered tales she’d heard, stories of ghosts, how they reappeared when there was a question, or before some important event –

She tasted copper and a silvery, sparkly curtain descended over her vision –

The Old Sheriff caught her as she fell:  one arm behind her knees, the other under her shoulder blades, he straightened, with the docent in his arms, and he looked across the room – “What’ll I do with her now?”  he blurted.

“Take her upstairs and lay her on the bed,” Agent Sarah L McKenna said sympathetically.  “Then leave.  She’ll wake up and think she got tired and laid down and had a wild dream.”

Sure enough, when the docent stirred and laid the back of her hand on her forehead to check for fever, she considered that she must have had one wild dream, to come up with all that.

She laughed a little, shook her head at her own wild imagination, and went back downstairs.

Everything was as it should be; no dishes were out or dirty, the prop can of Eagle Brand Condensed Milk was in the trash – clean, dry, essentially a prop, one with a very realistic label from 1885 pasted about its solder sided self:  though in the trash, it was a prop, a very authentic prop.

The docent thought nothing more of it for two days, not until she received a short envelope with absolutely beautiful hand writing.

She zipped it open with a small knife she kept for that purpose, read the hand-written card inside, read it again, and the color drained out of her face like red ink out of an eyedropper.

Thank you for the lovely meal, she read, and thank you for keeping my thrice-great-grandfather’s memory alive, for your American cowboy in a soldier’s uniform bore him back to German lines, and your Black Agent married a twice-great grandfather, and died fighting to keep him and her daughter alive.

I am honored to have a connection to American nobility.

My thanks as well to your pale eyed Sheriff, who was kind enough to allow me to shoot the same pistols with which the cowboy saved the life of my ancestor.

Johann

“I’m jealous,” a voice said, and the docent looked up, looked into a set of ice-pale eyes, framed by an ornate, 1885-era hairdo, a flawless complexion, rich red lips that framed the words, “Nobody asked me if I’d like to shoot them,” and the docent blinked at this living incarnation of the framed portrait in the living room, and she felt her knees buckle as that silvery curtain cascaded down across her vision again.

The Old Sheriff caught her as she went down, carried her back upstairs, laid her out on the bed.