HILLRUNNER

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

                                                                                                        106.  ASK YOUR FATHER

 

Gracie smiled a little as young feet kicked against the cut quartz back step, knocking snow from a small pair of well polished Wellington boots.
She turned and set a steaming-hot mug of hot chocolate on the table, and a plate of cinnamon rolls, then added a squirt of canned whipped cream to the hot chocolate:  Jimmy came through the back door just in time to hear the fluttering "pffft" and to see Gracie's knowing smile.
"I knew you were coming," she said quietly, and Jimmy grinned – a child will accept something of the kind as simply a fact of life, where a grown man might be spooked by the words.
"I have it on good authority," she said, "that Sarah really liked what you drew for her."
Jimmy's grin was quick and bright, but he was focused on the business at hand:  rather than a verbal reply, he took a bite of the still-warm, freshly-frosted pastry.
Gracie waited for him to finish his kaffesklatsch, sipped at her heavy ceramic mug of steaming, fragrant Earl Grey (a taste she shared with the Sheriff's wife) and closed her eyes in pleasure as the mug's warmth penetrated her fingers.
The house was tight and proof agaist the wind, it was insulated, they had redundant heat sources if the power went out, but she still liked the feel of a hot mug of tea in her hands when winter painted the world white.
Patience was making more sense to her, the older she got; it seemed like she'd gotten much older since coming home, since returning to the mountain where she belonged.
She hadn't, of course, it just felt that way sometimes.
She waited for Jimmy's good pleasure, and after he wiped his fingers on a napkin and then went over to the sink and washed the remaining sticky off his pink digits, he came back over, dropped into the kitchen chair, planted his elbows on the tablecloth and dropped his cheekbones onto the heels of his palms.
Gracie looked at the boy's frown and she knew this was neither anger nor was it distress; it was a studious frown, perhaps because he was trying to arrange something so it made sense, or so it would make enough sense to turn it into a question.
Jimmy finally gave up, leaned back in the chair and blurted, "How come Pa never smacks me?"
Gracie set her tea down, surprise absolutely backhanding any speculation she'd had clear out of her head.
"I didn't expect that one," she admitted, then she looked at her young visitor.
"Should he?"
Jimmy blinked, shook his head.  "No," he admitted.
Gracie gave one slow, thoughtful nod.
"Maybeee ..." she speculated, "that's one good reason?"
"You know what I mean!"  Jimmy said in an exasperated voice.
"I can do many things, Jimmy, but I don't have a crystal ball.  I don't know what you mean."
Jimmy bit his bottom lip, picked up his mug, found to his delight there were two swallows left:  he managed not to run any down his chin, wiped his mouth with the paper napkin and stuffed it in his now-empty mug.
"That man my Mama married," he said, and Gracie's ear pulled back a little as he said it.
That man my Mama married.
Not his father.
That man his Mama married.
An important distinction, Gracie knew.
"What about him?"  Gracie asked.
"He useta beat me," Jimmy mumbled, looking down.  "A lot."
Gracie nodded.
"I figured he had," she said gently.  
"He beat Mama too.  He beat her real bad an' he beat Stomper an' finally Stomper got full of it an' kicked him in the gut.  He allowed as he was gonna shoot Stomper an' that's when my Sheriff an' Chief Unclewill stopped him."  Jimmy sat up a little straighter and added defiantly, "The Sheriff is my real Pa!"
Gracie smiled proudly.
"Yes he is," she agreed.  "He is exactly that."
Jimmy sagged, puzzled again.  "He's never hit me."
"Have you deserved it?"
"Yeah – no – I dunno, maybe."
"Shouldn't you be asking your Pa the question?"
Gracie saw something she'd never seen in his young eyes before.
She saw fear.
"Ah," she said, understanding turning on a lamp somewhere above her head.   "You're afraid he'll take that as a suggestion."
Jimmy nodded miserably.
"And if he did hit you, it would be all those bad times coming back like a freight train."
Jimmy nodded again.
"Tell me about your nightmares."
It was Jimmy's turn to be surprised.
"I ... don't ... I ain't ... I mean, there's no ..."
"You're not having nightmares anymore?"
He shook his head as he realized ... no, he hadn't had any nightmares for a while!
"You're turning your dreams to your own will," Gracie said.
"Yeah," Jimmy agreed slowly, "I guess."
"Good.  I'm proud of you.  Not everyone can do that, only those with a superior intelligence."  She tilted her head a little, pretended to slide a pair of spectacles down her nose (which always made Jimmy giggle).
"Maybe you should ask him," she said, "and I don't think he'll take it as a suggestion!"

Linn shoved three hay bales together, then three more, tossed four saddle blankets over them and laid down.
He drew up his knees, set his heels together, laced his fingers together behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, then he clamped his knees together and rolled them slowly to the left, twisting his spine slowly, carefully, as far as he could comfortably rotate while thinking the words of a slow ten-count.
He rolled his pelvis, swinging his knees the other way, again going to the comfortable limit, moving slowly, deliberately:  to the left again, and once more to the right, and then he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the blanket covered bales and stood.
It was nice not to hurt.
Physical Therapy showed him that trick for pulling his bulging disc back into place:  when it bulged, it pressed against an afferent nerve root in his back, which set his left thigh on fire, making it feel like he had ten thousand red ants running just under the surface of the skin.
Somehow he wasn't surprised to see Jimmy standing there watching him.
"Is your back better now?"  he asked, and Linn grinned.  
"Much better, thank you," he said, patting the hay bale beside him.
Jimmy came over, sat beside his Pa:  the boy was half again bigger than he actually was, or at least that's how he looked:  his brown canvas coat was plenty big, which allowed for both freedom of movement, and for a growing boy's expansion.
"I did that one time at work," Linn said.  "I looked around to make sure nobody was anywhere near and before I got halfway through I had three or four people bent over lookin' at me wonderin' if I was havin' a heart attack or somethin'!"
Jimmy grinned a little, but stopped himself from laughing:  Linn raised an eyebrow and lowered his head.
"Somethin' is troublin' you," he said quietly, reassuringly.
"Yes, sir," Jimmy said, and Linn heard something close to misery in his voice.
"How come you don't beat me?"  he asked suddenly, and Linn looked at him, surprised, then turned and straddled the bales so he faced Jimmy, and he pulled his son in to him, wrapping his arms around the growing boy and pulling him tight.
"Have you shot holes in the roof by any chance?"  he asked in a half-mumble.
"No, sir."
"You ain't spray painted the cat?"
Jimmy giggled into his Pa's chest.  "No, sir.  I can't catch her," he added out of honesty, and Linn laughed again:  both of them knew just how fast the barn cat was.
"You ain't smokin' see-gars or carousin' with older women, now are you?"
Jimmy giggled again.  "No, sir!"
"Then I don't see any sense in beatin' you."
"That other man did."
"The one that married your Mama?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did he beat you because you needed it?"
"No, sir.  He beat me 'cause he was mean!"
Linn nodded, sighed.
"Jimmy," he said gripping Jimmy's shoulders and looking him directly in the eye, "my Pa belted me one time and I remember how bad I felt for it.  I didn't deserve it neither but he thought I did, an' he never, ever did say otherwise.  Mama wouldn't disagree with him in front of us kids but she told me later she give him seven kinds of what-for.
"It didn't help" – Linn stopped, took a long breath, shook his head – "I never really trusted him after that.  Hell of a thing to say about a good man but I can't chznge the truth.
"Now if you was to dynamite the barn, burn down the outhouse and shoot tight little groups through the beef cows, why, that might be good reason for a talkin' to ... for all that, maybe a beatin', but you ain't, so I won't!"
"How come?"
"You are intelligent enough I don't have to smack you to get your attention, and no that does not mean we smack stupid people no matter how much we'd like to!"
Jimmy nodded and considered this.
Gracie told him to ask his Pa, and he had, and it made a little more sense.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

                                                                  107.  JUST ENOUGH

 

Gracie wore work boots.
Gracie wore work boots under her long gown when she performed for the European masters, when her curly back mountain fiddle sang exquisitely pure notes to the ornate rafters of the concert hall, and Gracie wore work boots when her curly back mountain fiddle sang "The Old Rugged Cross" so sweetly in church that the old veteran Parson sat there with his head hung and tears threatening to roll right over the dam he tried to build across his eyes.
Gracie frankly saw no reason not to wear work boots in court, and she did.
She settled heself into the witness stand, casually smoothing her skirt under her as she sat:  an unconscious gesture, a very feminine gesture, a gesture that said she was composed and calm and not terribly impressed by the skeptical looking attorney giving her the hairy eyeball from behind his table.

Linn swung his shotgun to cover the running man and yelled "FREEZE!"
Just as he leaped for the screened window, he twisted, fired one wild shot from a pistol, then he was through the screen and gone into the winter's cold.
Something large and black shoved against Linn's leg, streaked after the fleeing man, and as Linn ran for the window, brought the double twelve-bore to bear, he saw something black rolling on the ground, then a set of blue-denim legs, heard a pained scream:  The Bear Killer had the man's thigh in his jaws, his momentum carried him into a somersault, he threw his muscled neck and THREW the captured runner over his shoulder and onto his back.
Linn brought the shotgun up, then down, hard, drove the butt into the prisoner's gut, knocked the wind and the rest of the fight out of him:  "BEAR KILLER!  OFF!" he snapped, and The Bear Killer, a big doggy grin on his face, dropped the prisoner's thigh and sat back, his big black brush of a tail sweeping snow off the frozen ground.
Linn palmed a dog buscuit, lowered it toward The Bear Killer's muzzle:  "Good boy!" he said softly, watching closely as the prisoner groaned, tried to reach for his bloodied thigh.
Linn looked up as the young deputy ran up to him.
"Cuff him," Linn said, his voice tight, brief:  "wrap up that leg and have him taken to ER.  He's under arrest.  You got a copy of the warrant?"
"Yes, sir."
"Have the house processed."
"Yes, sir."
Linn turned, saw his segundo raise an arm.
"You got this one?"
The deputy seized the prisoner's shoulder, rolled him face-down:  "Yes, sir."
"His pistol is off that-a-way, bag it."
"Yes, sir."
Barrents stepped back as the Sheriff strode up to him, The Bear Killer happily at his heel.
"We found a half-key of heroin and enough carfentanil to wipe out St. Louis."
Linn's eyes were pale, hard.
"Bring in the state boys.  This one's big."
"Yes, sir."

The Judge looked up as the back door banged open and the Sheriff strode in, his shotgun laid up against his shoulder.
"Good of you to join us, Sheriff," His Honor said sourly.  "I was wondering if I would have to have you arrest yourself for not appearing."
"Good morning to you too, Your Honor," Linn grated.  "I just saved a few thousand lives, thank you for asking."
The Judge gave the Sheriff a long look, frowned.
"Was it what you suspected?"
Linn stopped squarely in front of the bench, his shotgun still propped up against his shoulder.
"It was a hell of a lot bigger, Your Honor."
The Judge frowned, considering their earlier conversation, then he asked quietly, "Sheriff, are you hurt?"
"No, Your Honor.  He only shot once and he missed."
"Did you?"
Linn grinned, looked down at the grinning mountain Mastiff happily parked beside his right leg.
"The Bear Killer didn't."
The Judge raised an eyebrow.  "I see."
"You need my testimony."
The Judge glared at the attorney who'd come to his feet, who'd taken an authoritative breath, preparing to utter an objection:  under the Judge's hard look, the attorney closed his mouth and sat back down.
"Sheriff, your timing is just right.  We need your testimony in the affair at the Mercantile."
Linn nodded.  "I figured so.  I'll need about five minutes."
"Granted.  Counsel, you may address the witness."
The attorney swaggered toward the witness stand.  
"Mrs. Daine, please state your full name for the record."
Gracie sat, composed, patient, waiting.
"Mrs. Daine?" the attorney sneered.
Gracie blinked, looked at him, waiting.
"Your Honor," the attorney raised his voice and a dramatic hand, "witness is uncooperative –"
"If you are addressing me," Gracie said in a cold voice, "you would do well to address me by my correct name."
The Judge raised an eyebrow, cupped a hand over his mouth.
"I am not married, sirrah, and my name is Maxwell, not Daine.  You are unprepared, sirrah, and I question your competence if you cannot perform such a basic step."
The Judge cleared his throat and Gracie shot him an apologetic look.
The attorney frowned, opened his mouth just in time to be interrupted.
The janitor followed the Sheriff back into the courtroom, protesting, "Whattaya doin' with my broom?"
"I'll buy you a new one!"  Linn snapped, handing him the bristle head:  the handle was in two pieces in his other hand, the hand that held his shotgun.
Linn stomped over to the nearest table, dropped the two pieces of sawed off broom handle to the tabletop, then a roll of duct tape.
He opened the shotgun, dismounted the fore-end, then the barrels.
"Your Honor!"  the attorney presented as the Sheriff replaced steel gunbarrels with a pair of broomhandles.
"Gracie!"  the Sheriff snapped.  "Step down here!" – then he put two fingers to his lip and whistled.
The far door opened and a tall man in a red impact suit lumbered into the courtroom.
"Your Honor!"  the attorney protested.
"I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOU, JACK!"  the Sheriff roared.  "GRACIE!  SHOW US WHAT YOU DID IN THE MERCANTILE!"
"Your Honor!"
"I JUST SEIZED ENOUGH CARFENTANIL TO WIPE OUT ALL LIFE THIS SIDE OF THE PACIFIC!  I'M GOING BACK TO THE SCENE SO SHUT YOUR MOUTH AND WATCH!"
"I'll allow it," the Judge said mildly.  "Miss Maxwell, would you proceed?"
The Sheriff gestured, summoning the policeman in the padded impact suit:  he handed Gracie what had been a shotgun.  "This" – he waved at the red-suited officer – "is the woman in the Mercantile."
"He's not dirty enough," Gracie deadpanned, bringing the Judge's hand up again to his mouth to hide his smile.
The Sheriff saluted the Judge, turned and strode for the far door:  "Bear Killer," he said, and the mountain Mastiff trotted happily after the long tall lawman, toenails loud and tik-tik-tikking on the hardwood.
Gracie laid the shotgun up against her shoulder, carefully, recognizing that the broomhandle "barrels" were not terribly secure.
"I came into the Mercantile," she said, "with my shotgun just like this, up against my shoulder."  She smiled, brought it down level.  "When I saw a holdup artist holding a gun, I told her I'd spread her all over the far wall if she didn't drop the gun."
"What happened then?" the attorney said uncomfortably, his carefully planned approach disappearing like a wisp of smoke on a summer breeze.
"I surprised her.  She dropped the gun and then she came at me like a tiger."
"A tiger?"
"Screaming, teeth bared, claws out."  She nodded to the padded-up officer, who hesitated, then looked to the Judge.
"Your Honor, do I have to scream?"
The Judge shook his head.
The officer raised padded hands, charged.
Gracie instantly went from flat-footed, shotgun to shoulder:  she came up on her toes and almost danced a step to the left, the shotgun came around and she drove the butt into the oncoming man's forehead, driving him a solid blow, trusting to the padding he wore.
The padding kept him from being bruised, but it stopped him rather decisively.
"At this point," Gracie said, bringing the shotgun's broomhandle "barrels" to the vertical, laid back against her shoulder, "I stepped back and waited for the cavalry."

That week's newspaper had the perfectly timed photo of their soft-spoken, smiling mountain fiddler in her usual wool skirt and work boots, but in a very dynamic pose:  she was in a leg-forward thrust, driving the butt of a double barrel shotgun into a padded fighter's forehead, the frozen moment perfectly capturing the general sensation of being hit with the full force of a vigorous young woman.

The Sheriff removed his cover as he crossed the threshold.
His boot heels were loud, marching a slow cadence down the aisle of the little whitewashed church.
Gracie did not hear him.
Gracie stood with eyes closed, facing the simple, century-old, handmade Altar.
She played softly, reverently, spinning music into the air:  she lost herself in the hymn, segued smoothly from "The Old Rugged Cross" to "Rock of Ages" the way she remembered it, the way she'd sung it as a little girl.
Linn stopped and watched as his mountain fiddler swayed slightly as she played.
He sat slowly, set his Stetson beside him, planted his elbows on his knees and lowered his face into his hands.
The Bear Killer leaned lightly against the side of his leg, solid, warm, then laid down suddenly – almost a collapse – and dropped his muzzle onto his paws, closed his eyes.
The Sheriff took a long breath, breathed it out silently, rubbed his face.
Gracie lifted her bow, turned, walked over to the Sheriff.
She squatted beside the end of the pew.
"Are you okay?"  she asked, almost whispered.
Linn nodded, looking miserably at the altar rail.
"We did good today," he said huskily.
"I gathered."  She smiled.  "I took your advice and didn't say too much."
"Just enough," he smiled tiredly, "and just right."  He dropped his head back again.
"We probably saved a thousand lives with that raid.  Do you know how little of that stuff is a lethal dose?"
Gracie gave him a long look.
Linn leaned back in the pew, let his head fall back, stared at the ceiling.
"I wonder how many sets of eyes have stared at that ceiling," he wondered quietly.
"I wonder how many Sheriffs have come in here to say thank you," Gracie said softly.
Linn looked at her, surprised, and she smiled a little, brushed at a wisp of hair sticking over his ear.
"You need to see Tony," she smiled.  "You're due for a haircut."
"Yeah, I know.  I'll take Jimmy after ... a little later."
Gracie waited, still squatted in the aisle, weight on the balls of her feet, bow and fiddle both in her left hand.  
"I wonder how many fiddlers have come in here because they were wound up like an eight day clock."
"I didn't know it showed."
"It doesn't."  Linn took another long breath, blew it out through pursed lips, his cheeks puffing out a little.  "You look like the most un-stressed soul I know."
"You don't like court either."
"I don't like smart aleck lawyers that want to make me look like a monkey."
Gracie nodded.
"I know it's their job and the best ones are masters of insult and innuendo."
He snorted.  
I'll bet they're a hoot at a party."
"You're right, you know."
Linn waited, knowing Gracie had made a statement, not asked a question.
"I was ... nervous."  She brought her fiddle up, laid it against her collar bone:  she slid it down a little, pressed it lightly into her chest, spun a pure A into the still air.
"I close my eyes when I play like that, Sheriff.  I played for the Viennese masters, back in college, and I played with my eyes closed, because I played for me.
"I did not play for the professors, I did not play for the school or for the audience.  I played for me."
She played a few bars of something stateley and graceful, then stopped.
"I can't sing, Sheriff.  Well, I can, but not very well.  I sing with my fiddle."
"You sing beautifully."
"Flatterer."
"Yep."
Gracie played again, several brisk, bouncy bars, something the Sheriff recognized as an Irish drinking jig, something he'd sung with his fellows years ago, back at the Academy.
"Or I could play that obscene marching song your mother liked so well."
"The one she taught the football team?"
"That's the one," she laughed.  "She used to run with them."
"I did too."
"I know.  She complained that she had the only barrel chested sixth-grader known to man."
"You should have seen me when I competed in track meets down below.  I smoked 'em."
"You've got the lung capacity."  She tilted her head a little and smiled that quiet little smile he remembered so well.  "You sing well, Sheriff."
"I don't close my eyes."
"You never do," she agreed.  "You're forever watching."
"I'm paranoid," he admitted.  "Keeps me alive."
"Alive is good," she agreed.  "I like alive.  I like breathing.  Breathing is very good."
The Sheriff chuckled, nodded, picked up his Stetson, turned it slowly round in his hand.
"Yep.  I'm very much in the habit of breathing."
He stood.  
"Gracie, thank you.  You may have been unwinding your main spring by playing, but you helped me unwind mine."
"What was that about someone taking a shot at you?"
He shrugged.  
"He missed."
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

                                                                     108.  MIRROR, MIRROR

 

Jimmy considered the portrait at the top of the stairs.
He was in the museum – the Firelands Museum, a great stone house that used to be a residence – and he always felt ... something, when he was here.
Felt what? he wondered, looking at the portrait.
It was a newlywed couple, oil-on-canvas, and on the other side of the wall, in what was still a bedroom – in what had been their bedroom – the same portrait, but taken on a glass plate.
Part of Jimmy's mind remembered the glass plate from which the print was made, had been found in a slotted box used for glass plates; it was stored under a stairs in the old photographer's studio, forgotten (along with a jug of Uncle Will's Finest!) – the very same image, the very same pose of the very same couple, and he was satisfied that the black-and-white image should be colorized to match the oil-on-canvas image.
He looked at the resolute man with the firm jaw and the sweeping black mustache, sitting formally and facing a little to the side of the camera:  his hands were very properly on his knees, his spine erect, his expression severe; he wore an immaculate black suit, his townie shoes were polished, his hair slicked down.
The woman standing behind wore a lovely gown of the period; she stood in a far less rigid pose, one gloved hand laid gently, almost delicately on the man's shoulder; instead of looking a little to the side, she was giving the camera – and the painter – a patient, almost amused look, the look of a woman who knows her husband's moods better than he, a woman who knew her husband was trying to look severe and formal and absolutely The Man In Charge Of This New Wedding Union, Head of Household and Absolute Ruler of His New Domanin!
Jimmy went back out into the stairway landing, wishing he had a chair so he could sit and study the oil painting.
It was carefully and accurately done and it looked somehow familiar – not the feeling of someone who just looked at the photograph, not the feeling of someone who'd seen the portrait before, but the general feeling of unease when one artist recognizes another's style.
"Jimmy!"  a woman's voice called, and Jimmy looked down the stairs at a smiling woman in a McKenna gown.
"Hi, Mrs. Corsican," Jimmy grinned.
"Jimmy, just who I was hoping to find!  Come see what was just donated!"
Jimmy turned and clattered down the broad stone stairs:  the staircase was much more than solid, the smooth treads without shiver or shake, but Jimmy still managed to make as much noise as possible happily galloping down them in respond to the docent's cheerful hail.
"Jimmy, we haven't had time to catalogue this or exhibit it, but you'll just love this," Mrs. Corsican gushed.  
"What is it?"  Jimmy blurted, wondering if it was a steam locomotive or a set of spurs or something interesting like a case full of sticks of blasting powder!
Mrs. Corsican gestured to the middle of the room, and Jimmy stopped, half-frowning, half-staring.
It was a mirror – or rather, three tall mirrors, attached – no, hinged – and in front of it, a folding canvas bottom stool, and an artist's easel.
Jimmy blinked, took two slow steps toward these new acquisitions.
"Jimmy, we only just received these," Mrs. Corsican said, quiet excitement bubbling in her voice.  "This artist's easel" – she clapped her hands happily, almost bouncing on her toes – "this folds up for travel, it's very cleverly made! – the artist isn't known but he is very good!"
Jimmy looked curiously at the wood-sided valise on the table.
He'd never seen what looked like an extra wide briefcase with wooden sides before.
Curious, he lifted the lid, tilted his head.
He frowned at the sketch pad – it was cloth bound, he lifted the canvas cover, carefully felt the page.
It was good rag paper and not at all brittle.
He gently slid a fingernail under the first page and lifted it, turned his head sideways to see what was in it.
Mrs. Corsican saw Jimmy's face go dead white and he jerked his hand back like he'd been stung.
Jimmy closed the lid on the case and then he turned and looked at the easel:  he crawled under it, raised up enough to look at the bottom prop, the trough the artist's canvas would set in, or his sketch book, and then he came out from under the easel and grabbed Mrs. Corsican's hand.
"Mrs. Corsican," he said, eyes wide and almost panicked, "please, please don't let anyone else see this until I get back!"
"Why, Jimmy, whatever is wrong –"
"Please, Mrs. Corsican, it's really really important!  Promise me!"
Mrs. Corsican nodded as she realized this urgent, urging little boy was absolutely, positively, dead and completely serious.
"All right, Jimmy, I won't," she said, "but ... why?"
Jimmy released her hand and ran for the door, almost stumbling; he turned, drove his shoulder into the stone casement surrounding the heavy hardwood portal, pulled it open just enough to slip out sideways, and she could hear his high, panicked voice yelling "STOMPER!  STOMPER!"
Mrs. Corsican went to the window, her hands wringing in her apron, looked through the curtains at the little boy running, his big red Frisian in tow, to the mounting block: she watched as the big, furry-foot plow horse looking monsterhorse suddenly became very light, like a ballerina coming up on her toes:  she knew she was seeing the magic of a well matched horse and rider, where they are no longer "A Horse" and "A Rider" ... she watched as Stomper laid his ears back and surged forward, going smoothly from dead stop to a long legged, slow cadenced, deceptively swift gallop, and she realized they were no longer horse and rider.
Jimmy and Stomper had become one magical creature, and at that velocity, they were riding the wind itself.
Jimmy laid down over Stomper's neck, yelling "GO, STOMPER, GO!" and the big Frisian's blood sang with all the war-fury of uncounted generations of horses who charged into enemy ranks, great armored horses bred for war and born for combat, horses whose riders wore armor and sometimes had to be hoist into the saddle with a man-powered crane, so great was their armored weight:  a boy in the saddle? – pfui! – Stomper may as well have been carrying a handful of feathers, for all the weight Jimmy meant to his massive, muscled strength!
Stomper swung hard left and charged the narrow mountain path beyond the barn, sailed through the narrow cleft in the rock and up into the hanging meadow above the great stone house, past the ruin of what was once a line shack and past the tumulus of stone, more ancient than the natives who'd been here when the Spaniards named the territory.
Jimmy and Stomper ran for the people he knew could help.
They ran by a path only they knew, a connecting and very ancient moccasin road that curled past a house he knew of, a house up on Maxwell's Mountain.

Mrs. Corsican looked at the easel; she squatted behind it, looking for something that might catch the eye.
There was an ornate, capital M woodburned into one end of the hardwood trough, but it meant nothing to her:  a maker's mark, she supposed, so she straightened and walked slowly around the easel, her three reflections in the mirror imitating her progress.
She laid a hand on the wood-sided valise and opened it.
I should have my cotton gloves on, she thought, but Jimmy opened the sketch-book, so I suppose it won't hurt –
Mrs. Corsican opened the cover.
Mrs. Corsican turned the first page, carefully, slipping a fingernail under the page rather than pinching it between thumb and forefinger.
She slid her finger under, carefully raised the page, laid it open, turned her head and smiled a little at the drawing.
It was done in pencil, and it was very cleverly done:  a boy, sitting on a wooden crate, and she could see the artist had captured the character of the crate's wooden construction, down to gaps in the slats and grain in the wood, the diamond-shaped logo either stencilled or painted on its front:  she looked at the truly huge, absolutely shining-black dog sitting beside the boy, looking very pleased with himself, and she looked at the boy – a little boy of an earlier era, a little boy in a necktie and jacket, in the short trousers and high stockings and high-top shoes of the period, and she smiled:  the dog was taller than the boy, and looking absolutely delighted to be there, and then she looked at the boy, and she looked more closely at the boy, and her hand clapped to her mouth and she absolutely stared at the boy.
Mrs. Corsican blinked quickly, then closed the sketch book, closed the wooden slided artist's valise, looked around, looked behind her, then she reopened the valise and the sketch book and looked at the drawing again, looked behind her.
Mrs. Corsican swallowed and closed them again and then snatched up her skirts and ran up the stone stairs, and came back down at only a slightly lesser velocity, a folded bedsheet in her bent elbow:  she gingerly, carefully, delicately draped it over the valise, debated whether to try to cover the easel, decided against risking covering the mirror.
She went into the back room, her mouth dry, her chest a little tight.
She came out with an ancient wooden crate, one they'd been given, a crate found in the mine's dry-works under town, a crate that was discovered when the Old Sheriff's desk and effects were found sealed in lead-sheathed wooden crates, hidden there when the original Sheriff's office burned down in the late 1890s.
She placed the crate in front of the mirror, straightened, bent over and moved it a little, then turned it so the diamond shaped Curtis & Harvey logo was visible.
Her eyes went to the sheet covering the valise, concealing the secret it held, and Mrs. Corsican wondered several things very quickly.
She wondered how Jimmy knew that crate was in the back room.
She wondered how Jimmy had gotten in there to make that drawing when they'd only just gotten this donation, this very morning.
And she wondered if the museum was, after all, really, genuinely, haunted as she'd been told.

A horse's gallop makes a distinctive sound.
An unburdened horse sounds different from a horse and rider; a horse running for the joy of running will sound, to the trained ear, different than a horse with a focused mission.
Kentucky-blue eyes knew where the sound was coming from, cold-reddened ears gauged the velocity of the approaching rider:  men turned from their work, eyes went to defensive positions, to corners where octagon barrel flint rifles stood, hands brushed lightly against the comforting solidity of large bore revolvers, worn as regularly as the lean, woodworking, moonshining mountaineers wore their trousers.
They saw Jimmy penetrate the woodline, laid out over Stomper's neck, saw the horse's urgent posture as he drove through cold mountain air, snow and dirt throwing up behind unshod hooves:  the big Frisian coasted down, cantering, then trotting into the big open area in front of their carpenter shop:  the horse was blowing, shaking his head, not in any distress at all:  Jimmy allowed callused hands to reach up and seize his waist, allowed lean, sinewy arms to hoist him to the ground, watched as his Stomper-horse was led off to the wood fenced corral behind the tight, well-made barn, where his Stomper-horse would be trotted around the big corral, then walked to cool him down, where he knew he'd be 
taken into the warm, weather-tight barn and rubbed down and grained and allowed to take his ease.
They heard the SLAM as the back door banged open over at the house, and they heard Gracie's work boots pounding on thin-packed snow.
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

109.  KING STALLION

 

"MAX!"
The Master Chief's voice was loud, commanding, harsh.
Lieutenant Maxwell turned, irritated, clipboard in hand:  she handed off the clipboard, pulled off her bug-eyed flight helmet.
"You rang, Master Chief?" she replied mildly.
"PACK YOUR GEAR, MAX, YOU'RE OFF THIS BOAT!"
Max's bottom jaw eased out and her eyes went dead pale.
"You want to say that again, Chief, or do I kick your liver loose?"
She stood relaxed and easy and the Master Chief knew that his favorite heavy-lift pilot was quite capable of causing him a great deal of personal harm.
In fairness he was no slouch in a good old fashioned knock-down drag-out, but Max had proven herself little short of deadly in real-world, hand-to-hand work, and he honestly had no wish to get into it for real with one of his most valued air beaters.
The Master Chief took a long look at her all-black Sea Stallion, then at her.
"You're being promoted," he grated.
"Oh thanks a hell of a lot," Sarah snapped.  "To what do I owe this great favor?"
"DAMMIT MAX YOU'RE THE BEST DAMNED PILOT I'VE GOT AND I AM NOT GOING TO LOSE YOU!"
"THEN WHY IN THE HELL AM I OFF THIS BOAT, MASTER CHIEF?"
"BECAUSE YOU'RE GETTING A DAMNED KING STALLION, THAT'S WHY!"
Sarah's eyes widened a little and she felt her stomach knot up with anticipation.
"Three engines?" she said, her eyebrows lifting a little.
"Three engines."

"Seven rotor blades?"
"Seven rotor blades."
"Faster and stronger?"
"Faster and stronger."
"Wider cockpit?"
"Wider cockpit."
"I'm leaving for training on my new Snowflake?"
The Master Chief sighed, wished for more than a cigar – he could have used a good stiff drink – he ran his arm around Lieutenant Maxwell's shoulders and started her across the flight deck.
"C'mon, Max.  We've got to talk about this."

 

The pale eyed Sheriff chuckled as he read the e-mail.
It included a grinning Navy pilot's selfie with a big, burly, broad-shouldered, bald headed, and frankly rather ugly, Master Chief, with Sarah's now-famous Snowflake helicopter behind them:  Linn laughed a little as he read her e-mail, nodded as he did, and then re-read the personal addendum from the big ugly scowling fellow with his arm around the Sheriff's pale eyed kinswoman ... almost a fatherly gesture, definitely the move of a man who feels protective toward someone.
I'm being sent for training on the King Stallion, he read.
It already has me painted on the side.
They're using Jimmy's drawing of me as a Valkyrie on a big black winged horse as nose art, I'm told they're making the starburst on the end of my silver lance look like a snowflake, and the King Stallion I'm getting is black!
He read the Master Chief's addendum.
Your mother saved my sorry backside three times in-country, he read.
She was a good woman.
When I found out Max was related I had her assigned here.
Be very proud of her.
"I am, Master Chief," Linn said out loud to the still air in his office.  "Most definitely I am proud of her!"

 

The easel was simplicity itself to make.
Jimmy sketched it out on a sheet of butcher's paper and Kentucky-blue eyes followed his idea without difficulty.
Dimensions, on the other hand, were something that had to be worked out.
Making the valise Jimmy described was interesting, but one of the Maxwell clan had an idea, an old grip he could tear apart for a template, and as an added touch, the blacksmith began making a set of hinges suitable for a fat briefcase, latches of simple but workable construction, and as was his habit with such parts, after he'd tempered them and finished them, he threaded them onto a wire hook and boiled them in a pot of simmering walnut hulls with a cake of bees wax melted and floating on top, the same as he did his traps every fall.
Walnut hulls would stain the furniture black, and the hot bees wax would coat them and make them water proof and keep them from corroding.
More than one set of eyes crinkled with pleasure as Jimmy described the museum's find.
They did not understand quite what he was saying; they believed that one of their early arrivals made such a device, especially when Jimmy drew the ornate capital M, drew out where it was on the easel's trough; this particular cartouche had not been used in most of a century, but it was not at all unknown to them, and so when the trough was ready to finish out, their mark was woodburned into place with a draftsman's precision and an artist's flair.
Gracie watched silently, listening to Jimmy's description, hearing more than his words as he described the find at the museum, and when he started to talk about the portrait at the top of the stairs – a portrait she'd seen, and studied – she spoke, cutting off the excited boy's breathy description.
"Jimmy, with me," she said:  obediently, Jimmy stopped talking, dropping his eyes like he'd done something wrong;  he shuffled over to her almost reluctantly, and she put her hand between his shoulder blades and steered him outside.
Gracie paused at the doorway, stepped back inside, spoke quietly to the nearest carpenter, the nearest who was also watching closely as she steered the young artist to the cold outside air.
"This is more important than you know," Gracie said, her voice low, urgent.  "Do the work and do it well, for it will live well longer than any of us."
She slipped quickly out the door, closed it firmly behind her, as the carpenters looked at one another, and then cleared their benches of current projects.
If this was important, it was important enough to do right now!

 

Linn set the heavy ceramic mug in front of the woman, placing it carefully on the paper napkin.
He laid down another napkin and a spoon and a pint of half-and-half.
"I don't know how you take your coffee," he apologized, "so please feel free to add whatever you like."
"Black is fine," she almost whispered.
"Black it is, then."  Linn flipped open the cardboard lid, slid the assortment of doughnuts over to her.  "Fresh from the bakery.  I recommend the chocolate-iced sticks, they're still warm and have fresh spun whipped cream inside."
The woman shook her head, took the coffee mug in both hands.
The steaming black liquid shivered in colliding, concentric rings as she raised it for a tentative sip, placed it back down onto the napkin.
"I'm sorry," she said, placing her hands flat on the table to keep herself from shivering so hard.
The Sheriff took a noisy slurp of his own coffee – intentionally so – he watched to see if the impolite sound would break the woman's tight spiral of self-induced distress.
It didn't.
He set his mug down, leaned over, laid his hand on hers with a careful gentleness.
That worked.
She startled, looked at him.
"Your hand is so warm," she said, surprised.
"My wife tells me I'm like a warm brick that snores and steals covers," Linn said ironically.  "A mountain witch told me I had hot hands, a Healer's hands.  Now I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I can see something has you distressed."  He turned his chair a little, slouched forward, elbows on his knees.
"First of all you're safe here.  This place is built like a fortress.  Each layer has its defenses and this room is secure.  Please ... speak freely."
She opened her mouth, took a breath, he saw her eyes lose focus a little as she looked inside herself, looked at the fear she carried, and saw her shiver again.
"You're safe here," he repeated quietly, his hand on hers again:  he withdrew his hand this second time, resumed his forward lean, paying close attention to whatever she wished to say.
She nodded, drew her coat a little tighter around her, the protective move of a woman who had been violated in some way.
"I was scared," she said, her voice just a bit less than steady.  "I ... saw ... a truck that looked ..."
She looked at him.
"It wasn't, of course.  But it reminded me."
Linn nodded.  "What happened?"
"It was going the other way and I saw it slow and it stopped and I thought it was going to turn to block me."
"Has that happened before?"
She nodded.  "I ... it ..."
Her breathing was quicker now, her eyes widening.
"You're safe here," Linn said, his voice soothing, gentle.  "What happened next?"
"A man came out with a shotgun and killed my sister."
"When?"
"Five years ago.  Back East.  They caught him, he's in prison and he's not eligible for parole for another ten years."
"Is that why you moved out here?"
She nodded.
"I heard sometimes they get released for good behavior and I didn't want to take any chances of retaliation.  I testified at his trial and he screamed he was going to get me.  He's ... they gave him life without parole and there was an appeal so it was life with the possibility of parole but not for ... he isn't eligible for ten years."
Linn opened his pocket notebook.  "I'll need his name."
Her eyes went very wide.  "You don't think he's released?"
"I keep track of these things," Linn said reassuringly.  "I will find his status and I will let you know of any parole hearings in case you wish to testify against his release."
She nodded.  "Yes I do," she whispered, her throat suddenly dry:  she took another sip of coffee, frowned, sipped again.  
"I felt so helpless," she whispered, her breath puffing at the steam rising from her coffee.  "I didn't know what to do.  I was frozen and my sister died and I was helpless ..."
She looked at the Sheriff, her eyes mirrors of grief.  "I didn't know what do so I just sat there."
"He took you."
She nodded.
"He took you someplace."
She nodded again.
"He did things to you."
"He tried."
"Which made him madder."
"He was insane," she whispered.  "He dropped his gun at the car and they found it and they found my sister dead and oh God I couldn't ... I didn't know ..."
Linn nodded slowly.  
"I don't know what to do," she whispered, shaking her head a little.  
"What have you done today?"
She looked at him, her expression lost; she blinked.
He replied for her.
"You came to a place of safety.  You came to the Sheriff's office.  I am Big Chief Authority and Boss as far as the county line.  You came to the very seat of power, to the most powerful protector here.  You came where you knew you, would, be, safe."  

His words were whispered, intense, and they worked.
He saw her shiver and then relax, just a little.
"What happened to you, first and foremost, was not, your, fault."  His eyes hardened a little.  "What happened should never have.  What happened was beyond wrong.  You lost a sister.  He's still breathing.  By rights he should have been hung naked by his thumbs and flogged with a British cat-o-nine-tails until he died screaming in agony with his back laid open down to the ribs."
She shivered and nodded.
"I've tried to forgive him," she whispered.  "I tried."
"All things in their own time," Linn said.  "We have to heal you first."
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

110.  PORTRAITURE

 

Jimmy slid off Stomper and Gracie dismounted as well.
The graveyard felt colder, somehow, and Jimmy looked at the stone with the winged horse, a stone with a woman riding the winged horse, and he smiled a little, remembering the nice note on real honest to God US Navy stationery, that note from the pale eyed Lieutenant Sarah Maxwell, thanking him for the drawing that the Master Chief immediately impounded.
She wrote that his drawing was immediately enlarged, projected onto her big black Sea Stallion, and that – thanks to him – her callsign was now Valkyrie.
He'd gotten another note very recently, thanking him again and telling him the Sea Stallion was replaced with the Super Stallion and then with the King Stallion – and she was getting a brand new, all-black King Stallion, with his drawing enlarged and applied to its nose.
Jimmy looked at the engraving on the stone and wondered, How come they don't have her flying a Mare? – and his young mind as usual thought in cartoons – he pictured a black, fish-tailed mare, breasting the waves of a stormy sea, a woman with a horned helmet and gold curiasse riding the black Sea Mare, her silver lance upthrust defiantly into the wind-blown mist.
"Can't you find somewhere warmer?"  a familiar voice asked as Gracie opened the sack of salt.
"Hi!"  Jimmy grinned happily as The Pretty Lady tilted her head and regarded them with amusement.  
"I was just about to lay the Sacred Circle," Gracie said uncertainly.
"Then a circle it is!"  The Pretty Lady declared happily, and just that fast, the world twisted around them and they were in the Sheriff's big round barn he'd rebuilt, the one that underlay the big cliff's rock overhang.
"We're out of the wind, which helps," The Pretty Lady smiled, "and I started the gas heaters yesterday, so it's nice and warm now."
Stomper did not seem troubled at all at this unannounced change of venue:  he paced ponderously over to the stalls and began crunching loudly on grain left there, quite obviously for him:  Gracie's Brindle-mule followed, the two flanking a butterscotch-colored circus pony with gilt hooves and a freshly brushed mane and tail.
"Jimmy, I need a portrait," The Pretty Lady said, tilting her head and smiling.  "I'm going to get married, and I need an oil portrait of my husband and I.  He will be seated and I will be standing."
He nodded.  "I saw the portrait," he said.  "I did that, didn't I?"
"Yes you did," she smiled, "and you will do it again so you will have done it.  You've already seen the easel you will use and you're having that same easel built right now.  You saw your painter's valise and you're having it made – well done, that – and there are some other drawings I need you to do, things you haven't seen yet."
"Isn't this time travel or something like that?"  Gracie asked uncertainly.
"Is that a problem?"  Sarah asked quietly, primly, folding her gloved hands before her.
"Isn't that ... dangerous?  What if you change something in the past?"
"Then we'll never know it happened.  It will become reality.  In this case" – she caressed Jimmy's head affectionately – "we're doing what's already been done.  Jimmy and I have done this before, haven't we?"
"Sure!"  Jimmy exclaimed happily.
"Now you'll have to be dressed for the occasion.  I believe a shirt and tie to be appropriate, and a proper suit, but boys of your age wore knee pants. We'll gather them at the knee and you'll wear – oh don't worry, I'll handle the details."  She smiled and tilted her head, looked at Gracie.  "Would you like to come along?"

 

The Ladies' Tea Society discussed almost anything but tea.
Generally they discussed how they were keeping themselves safe in an unsafe world.
What they discussed was understood to be confidential – to be held as sacred as those secrets whispered in a church confessional – and this was made clear on a visitor's first attendance.
Provided, of course, it was the Tea Society meeting, and not a social meeting where unreliable folk such as husband or boyfriends or reporters might be attending.
Marsha, the Chief's wife, was an exception:  not only was she trusted, she was known to them as one who'd used less than gentle means to keep herself safe, and the Tea Society was one thing she never, ever discussed in her newspaper.
They had a newcomer in their midst, a woman with sorrow in her eyes and fear in her glance, a woman recommended to them by the Sheriff.
The Sheriff was their guest speaker; the Tea Society, as usual, was dressed in their period gowns, and gloves, hats and fashionable ladies' boots:  the new member, Shanah, was obviously uncomfortable and obviously felt out of place.
She sat in the front row, to be closer to the Sheriff – he, at least, was familiar, although it meant all those eyeballs were burning into her shoulder blades – and she relaxed a little as he gave her a wink, and then an almost boyish grin to the entire assembly.
"Ladies, good evening," he greeted them, "and allow me the luxury of admitting Dear Old Dad was right."  He gave them a sweeping look before admitting, "I suppose that means I am officially old, admitting that the Grand Old Man was smarter than he looked!"
Shanah smiled a little, allowing herself to relax just a little.
"Dear Old Dad taught me two useful rules of public speaking.  First –"  he held up a finger – "the mind absorbs only until the backside grows numb, and second" – he held up a second finger – "the longer the speaker's wind, the harder those chairs get.  Let me therefore belabor neither your backsides nor your sensibilities."
A young girl – certainly not beyond fourth grade – in a lovely, schoolgirl's frock from the late 1880s, came up to the Sheriff as he extended his arm.
"This lovely child," he said, "is a perfect young lady" – he pointed to a woman seated a couple rows back – "I need you to do me a favor.  When you get home tonight, look in the mirror, reach over your shoulder and pat yourself on the back and utter the words, 'Ya done good.'  There's only one place this fine young lady could have learned to be a Lady, and that's from her Mama." 
The Sheriff looked at the bashfully-smiling child with genuine affection.
"This lovely child is one of the best natural shots I've ever worked with.  She's taken to competition like she was born to it and her reflexes are excellent."
He pressed a button and a projection flashed on the opposite wall, sudden and bright.
Shanah blinked, startled, as the child's hands thrust forward and she realized she held a pistol – a bright-blue pistol, she heard a muffled "phtt, phtt, phtt" and saw the slide whip back, then forward again – she looked to her right again, at the menacing figure that suddenly appeared on the silver projector screen, and saw two red spots on its high center chest and one on the bridge of his nose.
"How much time did she have to decide what to do?"  the Sheriff asked as the quietly smiling little girl slipped the blue, laser-firing simulator back into its hidden holster.  "She had time enough to react but that was all.  She saw a deadly threat" – he indicated the projection – "a weapon was coming up, she reacted, she lived."
He pressed another button; that screen hummed back up into its housing, another one lowered behind him.  
"Here's one I use to train my deputies.  It's useful here too, I'll explain why."
It showed the view from behind a lawman's right shoulder as he executed a traffic stop.
The vehicle ahead pulled over and stopped; the officer raised his microphone and they heard "Dispatch, this is Sixty-Four Charlie, I'm at Apple Ridge and 413 with a traffic stop –"
The driver of the other vehicle jumped out, ran toward the cruiser, and before the officer could react, four shots were fired, the officer's hand flew up, the microphone sailed into the air –
"Hesitation will kill you," the Sheriff said as the picture froze, his voice hard, flat.
"There are multiple ways of handling this."
Another button, the picture flickered:  the same traffic stop, the same call to Dispatch.
This time when the attacker came running out of his vehicle toward the cruiser, the officer put it in reverse, mashed the throttle, got some distance, fast:  he reached over, released the shotgun from its upright rack, and using his door as cover, cycled the action and commanded the subject to surrender.
"Or there's always this."
He pressed a quick series of buttons.
This time, when the stopped driver came charging out of the car and raised a weapon, the officer simply stomped the throttle and rammed the running man.
"Ladies, distance is your friend.  Inside your vehicle you are in Fortress Ford or Battleship Buick.  They have their vulnerabilities, yes – the side window glass is a big weak point – but if someone comes at you from the front, you have a weapon pointed at them.  All you need do is use it."  He pulled a pistol magazine from his belt, shucked out a single round, held it up.
"This bullet weighs 124 grains.  Grains, ladies.  We measure aspirin in grains.  If we are pushing a projectile that weighs no more than a stack of aspirin tablets, or we are pushing a projectile that weights most of a TON" – he raised an eyebrow, looked around – "which do you think would be more effective?"  He smiled a little.  "This is why the Hollywood idea of stopping a car by shooting into it is stupidity.  You can damage a radiator or punch a hole in an engine but you are not going to stop it.  A vehicle's momentum can't be stopped with a shoulder fired weapon of any kind."  

He struggled the round back into his magazine, thrust the mag back into its pouch, fast down the flap.  
"Ladies, I froze one time.  Froze up and just stood there, duhhh" – he crossed his eyes, slacked his jaw and dropped his head to the side, bringing a laugh from the ladies – "it does happen, and if it happens, it's not to be ashamed of!"
He carefully avoided looking at Shanah when he said it.
"We freeze because we haven't trained.  What happens to rational thought and fine coordination when it hits the fan?"
The pretty little girl was seated three chairs down from Shanah:  she raised a gloved hand and said in a clear voice, "They join hands and jump out the nearest window," she declared, "and we're left with training and muscle memory!"
"Exactly right!"  the Sheriff applauded.  "And if we don't train, what happens?"
"Duhhhhh," the child said, throwing her head dramatically to the side and crossing her eyes.
Linn laughed silently, his mirth clearly visible, and his face turned a little red as he admitted, "That answer is exactly why I have to be really, really careful about what I say around my sons.  They listen, and they imitate!"
He pressed another button on the control pad; the silver screen rolled up behind him.
"Ladies, that concludes my presentation.  I'll leave you to the remainder of your session.  We'll have vehicle countermeasures out at the range tomorrow, I'm bringing some running junkers we can beat up and believe me, we will.  I'll have a couple that aren't running and we'll run live-fire exercises from those.  Bring good hearing protection and everyone has good wrap-around shooting glasses – if you don't, see me, I have extras."  He picked up his Stetson, looked directly at the pretty young girl in the frilly schoolgirl frock.
"You, my dear," he said frankly, "are a force to be reckoned with!"
Shanah smiled a little as the child giggled and turned an incredible shade of red.
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

111.  "BUT, GRACIE, WHAT ABOUT THE MEN?"

 

The Sheriff knew he was being set up.
Because he knew, he was ready:  because he was ready, he would be challenged:  because he would be challenged, he was more than willing for a good old fashioned knock down drag out brawl, and he really didn't care, and that was dangerous.
You see, the Sheriff was a man of strong passions – as a Freemason, he was oathed to subdue his passions, and that's too often misinterpreted.
Passion is correctly defined as any uncontrolled emotion – any uncontrolled emotion – not solely those regarding the hormonal insanity that has led too many men astray, baying after the opposite sex.
The Sheriff did his best to keep his passions tightly reined, but he was also partial to Ecclesiastes, and he firmly believed that for all things there was a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens.
He purposed to cause a great deal of trouble, and so he loosed the reins when the time was right, and he let that seductive, addictive, consuming RAGE roar like a steam boiler's firebox under draft with a slab of bacon thrown in to burn it all the hotter.

Jimmy sat beside the photographer's wooden box – the man called it a "camera" but it was like no camera Jimmy had ever seen – it had some kind of a curtain he'd lift up and hide under, and he slid something in and out of it, he pulled the cap off a big round lens on the front.
Jimmy, on the other hand, sketched what he saw with his usual swift economy, memorizing particular details about color and shading and how the pretty woman's skirt draped, or how the stiffly sitting bridegroom held his head and his fine top hat.
Jimmy worked quickly, quietly, leaning out to look around his easel, staying carefully out of the photographer's way; in fact, Jimmy did this so well the photographer thought Jimmy to be a relative, a little boy pretending to draw, and so paid him no attention at all.
Daffyd Llewellyn sat, chin raised, looking severely into the distance, his black handlebar mustache tightly curled:  his hair was slicked down and absolutely in place, he wore a fine broad necktie and a diamond stickpin (a wedding gift from his bride – or, rather, one of multiple wedding gifts, some of which he hadn't been made aware quite yet).
His bride, his pale-eyed bride who looked at the camera with an expression of patience, tolerance, understanding and an undeniable depth of wisdom, wore a McKenna gown, an emerald, shimmering, electric emerald – Jimmy couldn't wait to squeeze the pigments from their tubes and mix them, for he knew exactly how to capture that very color, that very flux of light that gave her the appearance of wearing a living emerald instead of cloth of the same color.
Gracie watched as well, knowing somehow she could not be seen:  Jimmy wore the knee pants and high socks and the high-top shoes common to little boys of the era; he wore a cloth cap, he looked as if he belonged here, and Gracie, feeling awkward and ill at ease, suddenly wished she were not in her wool skirt and work boots:  she, like that woman at the Ladies' Tea Society, wished most powerfully for a gown that would blend in – this despite her having been assured that she could not be seen.
Jimmy's pencil-strokes were swift, sure, even, uniform:  he turned the page, looked to his left, looked over at Gracie, standing on the other side of the photographer's wagon:  under his pencil, the wagon, the hip-shot, sway-backed nag, the wagon with its bright paint and clearly-defined, big-lettered name, advertising his profession, and the photographer himself, visible as a strange creature with five legs – three under the wooden box, two in trousers behind, under the bent-over lump covered by the black photographer's drape... all came to life under the knife-sharpened graphite point.
Daffyd stood as the photographer retreated to his wagon; no longer stiff and formal, he smiled gently at his pale eyed wife and kissed her delicately, carefully, under the ear, under the emerald earbob, whispered a gentlemanly endearment.
Sarah knew Jimmy was watching, and so refrained from what might be the improper response she'd contemplated, but she could not prevent the boy's quick eye from capturing both the nuzzling kiss, and her return look.
She was, after all, a new bride, and anxious, as might be imagined.
Sarah lowered her head just a little as Daffyd smiled and whispered something only she could hear.
Jimmy caught a glimpse, just a glimpse of her face, and in that moment, seized and secured by the swift work of his knife-whittled pencil, captured an image, a snapshot, a frozen slice of Time That Was.
With this captured moment, he captured as well the look of a woman who was completely content to be in the arms of a man with whom she was absolutely, positively, overwhelmingly, in love.

 

Sarah's father, the pale-eyed Sheriff, had been Cavalry back during That Damned War.
The Sheriff had been a brevet-Colonel, completely accustomed to the saddle, far more at home in the saddle than any his fellows:  he'd learned that, good as he was, the Kentucky horsemen they pursued were unbelievably better, until he was ready to swear that General John Hunt Morgan and his men, every man Jack of them, was equally composed of a third ghost, a third fog-wisp, and a third fox.
Alone with being some of the fiercest fighters he'd ever encountered.
The British Crown embedded officers with North and South alike to see how this new nation fought, whether it had the guts to stand belt buckle to belt buckle with the enemy and slaughter each other, and the Sheriff – or, rather, the Colonel – had his fill of their condescending superiority.
He'd seen no reason to change his opinion in the three decades that followed.
As a matter of fact, some Limey horsemen issued a challenge, and word of the challenge came to the Sheriff, and so he made sure the edge on his decades-old Cavalry saber was uniformly sharp – he shaved with it to make sure – and he rode out to see what the challenge was about.
He saw they'd set up something on a post, something swiveled that looked like a sawed off scarecrow, a shield on one arm and a swinging sack of sand on the other.
The game, apparently, was to couch a lance under one arm, ram the shield, and not get knocked out of the saddle.
The Sheriff watched for a time, from a distance, then he rode up and inquired mildly if they'd seen a particular fellow he'd been looking for.
"Now the Sheriff is a good man in the saddle," a rowdy spoke up, and the Sheriff gave him a quiet look from veiled eyes:  the man laughed, not having sense enough to shut up, and continued "I got a gold eagle here that sez he kin hit attair Quint Tain an' not get knocked!"
"How many times you want that?"  came the challenge; bets were laid and laid again, and the chant went up:  "Sher-iff!  Sher-iff!  Sheri-iff!"
"Oh I say," one of the Brits said in a delighted voice, "are you up to the challenge, old boy?"
Linn looked at the length of the rope on the sandbag, estimated its swing distance, took a look at their selection of "lances" and nodded.
"Reckon so."
"Jolly good!"
"You holdin' the bets?"  Linn said to the fellow in the middle, the one with his hat turned over, taking coin and greenback dollars and writing something down on a folded paper braced against the hat-brim.
"Yes, sir, I am!" came the grinning reply.
"Double eagle sez I don't get knocked."
The coin spun through the air, landed in the hat:  the shout went up, more bets were laid, and the Sheriff turned his red Cannonball mare.
The young nobles nudged one another and laughed at the prospect of easy money:  one went over and added an impressive number of coins to the hat.
Linn rode over to where the crude lances -- more long poles than a proper lance -- were leaned against a rail fence, picked the middle one.
He did not miss the triumphant look the foreigners shared:  one lance was significantly longer, one was quite a bit shorter, the middle lance was calculated to give the rider the best chance of being belted out of the saddle, or so the Sheriff figured.
Linn cantered his red Cannonball-mare back to the scratch, lance under his good right arm, drew up.
He knotted Cannonball's reins, dropped them over the saddlehorn, then rested the butt end of his lance down beside his right-hand boot and yelled "You boys ready?"
Several voices, several accents, all assented:  glottal Clydeside clashed with a Suth'n drawl, a Yankee twang affirmed a Spanish syllable.
Linn raised the lance, tossed it up in the air, caught it:  another toss, another catch and he shifted it to his left hand, drew his sabre, curved and honed steel whispering inaudibly from the sheepskin-lined scabbard he'd had made.
"Oh I say," was the mildest exclamation that followed – the speaker's heartfelt Billingsgate does not bear repeating in polite company – but the Sheriff's razor-honed Cavalry sabre spun a tight circle and sliced a core out of the air beside him as his knees tightened and he yelled "YAAHHH!" and Cannonball lived up to her name and shot down the marked lane like a red-furred Parrott ball driven from a field-gun.
Lance under the left, sabre in the right, the Sheriff RAMMED the shield, slashed with his blade:  the sandbag parted company from the rope, passed behind him and caught one of the rowdies in the chest, knocking him and three others galley-west in a tangle of arms, legs, hats and dirt, to the laughing, rough-edged approval of the rest of the crowd, laughing all the harder as one particular soul went over on his back, legs in the air, but triumphantly holding up his inverted hat, and with it, the several bets.
The Sheriff turned Cannonball in a big circle, rode back at a gallop, picking up speed, slashed the coffee can that served as the quintain's helmet, cutting it in two and sending the sliced half spinning into the air.
  Cannonball swung around again, and the Sheriff gave her full leave to split the wind wide open:  screaming like the Eastern Woodland natives he'd grown up with, he and Cannonball blasted through the betting men, parting them like a speeding steam-launch parts the water in its wake:  they cantered back up to the foreigners and the Sheriff tossed one of them his lance.
"Oh I say," came the protest, "bad form, that!"
The Sheriff slid the sabre back between layers of fleece, the blade oiled with natural lanolin as it returned to its curved scabbard.
He didn't say a word, he just turned those cold, hard eyes on the Brit, and then the others with him.
They all looked away as his cold gaze came to bear on each of them.
Not a one of them was able to meet the man's eye.
Nobody noticed a young boy in a necktie and flat cap sitting on an upturned dynamite crate, sketching rapidly, almost desperately trying to keep up with what he'd just seen.

 

Gracie tilted her head a little, marveling at how this boy, this mere child, could work such magic with oils and brushes:  bride and groom were already recognizable on his taut-stretched and toned canvas.

"Gracie," Jimmy asked as he worked on the painting, "I saw the women."
"You ... saw... the women?"  Gracie asked hesitantly.
"Uh-huh."  Jimmy divided paints on his pallette, mixing separate lots, looking at the portrait:  a little oil, a little paint, a stir, a daub of the brush.
"Aunt Sarah has lots of Aunt Sarahs older than her."
Gracie swallowed uncomfortably.
"How do you know this?" she asked, realizing he'd had to have seen it – them – several of them, to even be able to ask the question.
Jimmy stopped and looked at her.
"She's really important.  She does important stuff.  I seen the Old Sheriff shoot that raggedy guy to keep him from killin' the Sheriff's Mama.  I seen the Pretty Lady shootin' a bow with lots of other girls an' then she went in with a sword against a really big guy an' I seen –"
"You're not supposed to know that," Gracie whispered, turning a little pale.
Jimmy was not deterred:  in fact, he pushed on to the question that was troubling him.
"Gracie, what about the men?"

 

A pale-eyed warrior reached up and settled the steel helm down on his long, perfumed hair.
He wore a royal crest on his breastplate, he rode the finest destrier gold could purchase, he'd trained the war-horse himself and he'd practiced since childhood for this moment.
He'd practiced with sword and sabre until his wrists were like steel, he'd practiced with the lance until he could spear a woman's ring at a full gallop, and the ring swinging and spinning from a tree branch:  now he rode in the van, the leading edge of a river of steel, men and mounts armed and armored and charging the ranks of the enemy.
A thousand men on one side of the field, a thousand me on the other, and heavy cavalry down the middle:  the pale-eyed man with the gold band about his helm and the royal crest engraved on his curiasse couched his lance and leaned into the impact that was to come, and when men and horses collided, the sound was as thunder and the roar of an angry sea, and the very earth shivered underfoot.
High in a tree overlooking the bloody field, a little boy sketched, grateful for knee socks and high-top shoes, for his legs were very tightly wrapped around a tree branch.

"But what about the men, Gracie?"
Two warriors drew steel and grinned at one another.
Theirs was the duty to protect, and the one they had to safeguard had, like Persphone, been drawn down to the depths of Hel's blood-dark kingdom.
They'd fought the demon-guards to a bloody standstill, these two men, plus eight more, and now these two were all that was left.
Jimmy watched from beside a conical, ridged stalagmite, his pencil sure and swift, capturing two men who fought as brothers, one with pale eyes, and one with hazel:  they fought as if united, as if they were one soul, they fought as do warriors who've bloodied and been bloodied by each other's side many times, and lived to tell the tale, and Jimmy drew the two men sprinting across the red-dark sands of Hell itself, seizing a waif, a child, a lost little girl in a knee length dress, a girl with a little flat topped straw hat:  one cast a spell and shouted a Word of Power, and the portal opened, and they leaped free, leaped from heat and flame into a rock-slick mountain stream and down into a deep pool, and the boy flew with them, drawn somehow in their magical slipstream:  he saw them fall, fall into that mountain pool, deep and sweet and shocking-cold, and the warriors found bottom and pushed hard for the surface, bearing the child with them.
They broke surface and the boy was on the shore, dry, watching, turning a fresh page:  the pale-eyed warrior turned, blade raised, watchful against attack, while the other brother-warrior bent the little girl, the pale-eyed little girl, over his forearm until she threw up a small river of water and started to cough.
"What about the men, Gracie?"
Jimmy fell back against a dusty wall and watched as a soldier ran through the dark, raised a rifle, fired a quick burst:  the soldier swore and drove into the charging enemy, using the empty rifle as a weapon, thrust-slash-and-ram, so swift and so ruthless that two hardened warriors fell, jaws crushed, skulls stoved in.
An explosion, a blinding flash:  Jimmy blinked painfully, rubbed his eyes to try to get the glowing blob out of his vision:  he looked and saw the soldier, the woman, in the bottom of a crater.
She came up on her knees, raised a pistol, fired, fired again:  another explosion and she was thrown to the side:  Jimmy's breath caught as she lay unmoving, for he'd seen her face, just before that last blast.
The soldier was a woman, and she had pale eyes.
Jimmy caught movement at his left, turned, just as a familiar figure – just as his Pa stepped out from around the corner and raised a shotgun.
Jimmy saw the ragged man grin down at the woman, saw the woman raise her pistol, Jimmy saw the slide was locked back.
The woman threw the pistol from her, drew a knife, screamed "COME AND GET ME, DAMN YOU!"
Jimmy saw the ragged, bearded man with no mustache raise a rifle, and he saw his Pa raise his shotgun and he heard his Pa yell, loud and mean, "NOBODY SHOOTS MY LITTLE GIRL!"

The docent turned the last page in the sketch book.
She saw a tall lawman that looked just awfully familiar, a Sheriff with a six point star on his vest and a double barrel shotgun to shoulder, she saw the wobbling doughnut of smoke-ring shivering out over the shell crater.
She saw a pale-eyed woman in the crater, her face contorted, defiance in her expression and blade in hand, and she saw the AK in midair as its former owner started to fold up under the influence of two charges of heavy shot right through the belt buckle.
She felt someone at her elbow and turned to look.
Jimmy was standing there, in the knee pants and flat cap, the coat and necktie of a well-dressed little boy from the 1890s.
He looked at the easel he'd used to paint the portrait that hung upstairs, and he looked at the canvas backed sketch book he'd only just finished drawing in, and he looked at the docent and smiled the innocent smile of a happy little boy.
"That was fun!"  he declared, and the docent was quite sure she had absolutely no idea at all what he was talking about.
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

112.  "WE WOMEN HAVE OUR WAYS"

 

Jimmy's expression was that of a little boy who was just plainly delighted at whatever it was he was looking at.
What he was looking at was not a what, so much as a him, and a fine looking him it was:  he stepped through the uniform behind its protective glass cover, and he was wearing the uniform:  his hand scooped through another case, completely disregarding wood and glass, and he slung the gunbelt around his lean waist, fast it quickly, easily, then he drew one copper plated revolver and proceeded to load it with nimble, practiced fingers.
"Load one, skip one, load four, cock," Jimmy chanted under his breath, and the pale eyed young man with the shock of blond hair grinned at him.
"You've done this before!"  he said with the contagious grin of a young man in the green strength of youth.
"My Pa taught me," Jimmy said proudly.
"Your Pa?"  the young man said, easing the hammer down on an empty chamber and thrusting the revolver into its left-hand holster:  he drew its empty counterpart, flipped open the loading gate.  "Who's your Pa, sonny?"
Jimmy leaned over and picked up the canvas-covered sketchbook – its display case was open, the docent gone to the kitchen on some errand – and Jimmy laid it open on top of another case, paged quickly through it.
He stopped and looked at the pale eyed young man in the uniform of a WW1 Doughboy.
"Here he is," he said, and the young man picked up his campaign hat, took a step closer, bent a little and frowned.
"Now bless me if that's not Grampa," he said, surprised.  "Where was that?"
"Afghanistan," Jimmy said.  "An' that's The Pretty Lady."
A closer look, another frown, then the look of surprised comprehension.
"Wait a minute," he murmured, "wait just a James J. Minute here!"
He looked at Jimmy.
"Who drew this?"
"I did!"  Jimmy grinned happily.  "You're Jacob's son!"
"Yeah, that's right, but" – he looked at the picture, trying to figure it out.
"Oh, you remember," a familiar voice scolded him, and he straightened, swept the hat off and tucked it under his arm.
"Aunt Sarah!" he declared happily, and The Pretty Lady reached for his free hand, took it in both her gloved palms, looked at Jimmy.  "We met on the battlefield," she laughed.
"You looked quite a bit different!" 
"I know, and you prefer me like this."
"Yes, ma'am," the young soldier mumbled, his ears turning a remarkable shade of red.
"Jimmy, put that back in its case if you please, and come with us."
Jimmy skipped over to the open case, slid the dark-green-canvas-backed sketch book back into its walnut-bound home, turned and followed the pair outside.
Jimmy looked with delight at the big, black horse grazing outside the front door.
"Snowflake!" he breathed, and the huge Frisian mare looked over at him, then spread a truly huge pair of pure white wings that hadn't been there a moment before.
"Whoa," Jimmy whispered, his eyes big and round.  "Neat!"

 

Gracie bent over the sink and stared at cold, clear wellwater in the bottom of the scoured-clean pan.
Women with the Gift can see in a crystal sphere; others will use a scrying-pan, a shallow pan with a thin layer of water; there are those that read tea leaves or peer into chicken entrails.
Gracie had never done any of these things.
What she'd seen, she'd seen as if they were real.
When a boy-cousin's leg was split open and bleeding, she saw the blood, felt the ax's impact, smelled the blood; she was out of the house at a dead run, warbag in her right hand, her skirt pulled up with her left, not out of need, more out of habit.
When the neighbor went into labor suddenly, unexpectedly, after a fall in her back yard, Gracie arrived less than thirty seconds after her fall, riding up on her Brindle-mule with her warbag slung across from her off shoulder, because she'd felt the fall and her guts cramped hard and she knew a woman was in labor, and she heard the child cry, which meant if she was swift and she was there in time, the child would live.
And it did.
Gracie stood now, bent over the sink, staring at people who shouldn't be there, people she saw in the half inch of crystal water in the bottom of a scoured clean pan, as if she were looking at the round screen of a very old fashioned picture tube.

"So far, Jimmy, you've seen the women of our line through the ages."
"Yes, sir?"  Jimmy said, his eyes big and sincere as he regarded this walking, talking resurrection of a personal hero with worshipful eyes.
"Oh, now, call me sir and you'll swell my head," the young soldier chuckled.  "That's my Grampa you drew, by the way."
"Nuh-uh, that's Pa."
Sarah laid gentle fingers on the back of the doughboy's hand.
"They look so very much alike," she almost whispered.  "They could be twins."
"Oh."  He looked at Jimmy again.
"Jimmy, the women are necessary to carry our bloodline into the future.  Every one of the has had to birth children in pain and in blood and they've done that.  Sometimes they had to fight like warrior goddesses, either to keep themselves alive, or to keep family alive, or sometimes to keep a memory alive."
Jimmy blinked, taking this in.  "Okay," he said uncertainly.
"The men go back just as far, and the men by and large protect the women."
"Oh."  Jimmy puzzled a little at this.
"You are related to us, by the way."
"I am?"  Jimmy exclaimed happily.
"Yep.  Your turn already came.  You kept your home safe when that bad man broke in and you had your rifle handy and stopped him."
Jimmy's face fell.  "Yeah," he said flatly.
"You did the right thing" – a wink, a half-smile – "but you're not done yet."
"No?"
"Nope.  I need you to get your rifle, you'll need it but you won't be shooting anybody."
"Huh?"
Sarah rose, gestured Jimmy to stand:  he did, and he was no longer in knee pants and high-top shoes, nor the other items common to a little boy of the 1890s:  no, he was in his usual very well polished Wellington boots, his usual pressed jeans and flannel shirt and Stetson, and he wore a canvas coat, the identical warm, windproof coat as his pale eyed Pa wore.
The young soldier reached into his blouse pocket, brought out an empty cartridge case.
"I shot the pickelhaub off a German soldier's helmet with this round," he laughed.  "Been saving the empty for luck."  He put it to his bottom lip, blew across it and drew a high, piercing whistle from it.  "Here.  You try."
Jimmy put the empty .30-06 hull against his bottom lip, blew carefully, flinched a little at this whistle it produced.
"Just like that.  A gentle blow is all it takes.  Now" – he looked at Sarah – "Aunt Sarah, could you do the honors?"
"A pleasure, good sir."  She extended a gloved hand and he gripped it, pumped it happily:  "Glad ta meetcha, glad ta meetcha," he grinned, and she yanked her hand back.
"You're supposed to kiss my hand, you clod," she said, her smile taking the sting out of the words.
"Yeah, that's for those damned Frenchies!" he grinned.
"Your Grampa does it."
"Oh."  He swept up Sarah's hand, raised it to her lips and pretended to bite her hand.
Sarah sighed, looked patiently at Jimmy.  "See what I have to put up with?"
Jimmy blinked as she lowered her hand, because suddenly the young soldier wasn't there.
"Come with me, Jimmy.  Have you ever ridden a winged horse?"

 

Gracie was almost bent over the sink.
She was consumed with grief and cold, colder than she'd been in a very long time.
She raised her head, looked into the water, looked with horror at the young widow, lying on the grave, prone on a thin blanket.
Her hand was stretched out, just touching the polished stone thrust up from freshly turned earth, and Gracie heard the woman's sorrowful voice as if she were in the kitchen with her.
"Oh God, let me die," she heard, and she felt the tears in the woman's voice and the crushing sorrow in her heart.  "Let me be with him!"
Gracie was suddenly weaker than she'd ever been.
She could not have straightened if she wanted to.

 

"Jimmy," the Pretty Lady said, "you'll need this."
She handed him his rifle.
"Thank you," he said automatically, then, "How'd you do that?"
The Pretty Lady gave him an enigmatic smile.  "We women have our ways," she said quietly.  "Snowflake?"
The huge black mare knelt.
"Up you go," The Pretty Lady said, and Jimmy swung one leg over, settled into a Jimmy-sized saddle that hadn't been there a moment ago.  
The Pretty Lady was behind him, her arm around his middle.
"Snowflake, up," she said, and the mare heaved up – awkwardly, grunting, then Jimmy drew a quick breath as those big white wings snapped out, suddenly, sounding almost like the boom of a ship's canvas as wind filled the mains'l.
"Snowflake," The Pretty Lady shouted happily, "Fly!"
Jimmy's stomach thrilled as the big black Frisian mare spun like a ballerina, drove hard for the cliff's edge, leaped into emptiness and caught the air with outstretched wings, stroked powerfully, curving up toward the clouds, the delighted laughter of a beautiful young woman and an utterly delighted young boy spreading in the cold air behind them.

 

The young widow's forehead was on her wrist and she whispered to the frozen ground, her breath condensing and freezing as her sibilants soaked into the troubled ground.
"If You want me to live, Lord," she whispered, "send me a fleece.  Send me a fleece, Lord, or let me die here, let my bones lie with my husband's!"
She almost flinched at a little boy's enthusiastic, loud "Yahoo!" and the sound of hooves – sudden, loud on the frozen ground – she raised her head as the biggest, blackest horse she'd ever seen landed and trotted toward her.
She blinked.
Landed? – but –
Jimmy swung down, ran over to her, gripped her hand, laid his fingers against her cheek.
"Lady, can you get up?"  he asked, his eyes big and fearful, and she lacked the strength to reply:  her head sagged back down until her forehead was on her wrist, her lips just touching the ground.
She almost felt his desperate young grip on her shoulder, she felt him shaking her as if from a great distance.  "Lady, get up!" he yelled.
Jimmy turned, looked over his shoulder at The Pretty Lady –
Gone.
Jimmy's mouth went dry.
He was here for a particular reason.
He looked at the rifle in his grip, then he blinked, laid his hand on the unmoving woman's shoulder blade.
"Wait here," he said, "I'll get help!"

Jimmy ran to the other end of the row of stones, ran to where he could see Firelands.

He had to get someone's attention and he had to get it fast.

Desperate, he shouldered his rifle, glassed over the empty street, paused on the firehouse, wishing he could seize the wagon-bolt that hung from a length of small chain, wishing he could larrup that heavy sheet metal gong hanging from the post out front, the gong that used to be the original fire alarm.

He saw a movement through the firehouse window, then blinked.

I can hit that from here, he thought, I know just how much to hold over.

He put a hand on top of the nearest tombstone, sat quickly on the cold ground, drew his knees up and dug in his boot heels and leaned back against the stone and got a good cheatin' rest, just like his Pa taught him.

He knew how much to hold over.

He'd been practicing.

The air was cold and dead still, Jimmy took a deep breath, let it out, took another deep breath, let half of it out --

Daffyd Llewellyn's head came up.
"Did you hear that?"  
"Hear what, Chief?"
Two or three heads raised.
They'd been gathered around a disassembled centrifugal pump, discussing its mechanism and how the booster function worked, when Fire Chief Daffyd Llewellyn raised his hand, tilted his head.
Ting!
"THAT!"  Llewellyn yelled, turning and striding for the door.
He yanked open the man door, stepped outside –
The sheet metal gong that hung in front of the firehouse for better than a century was still there, but it was swaying ever so slightly, less than a quarter of an inch ... maybe from the wind? he thought, and before he could consider there was absolutely no wind at all, he heard something else.
In the distance ... a high, thin whistle.
Llewellyn frowned, looked, searched –
That whistle again, drawn-out, sharp, faint, but –
"There!"  The German Irishman thrust his arm out, pointing.  "There, up on Cemetery Heights!"
Llewellyn blinked, looked again.
A small figure, gesturing wildly, desperately.
"SQUAD ONE SADDLE UP!  COLD WEATHER RESPONSE!  NO IRISH NEED APPLY!  TURN TO, DAMN YOU LOT, OR I'LL HAVE YOUR GUTS FOR GARTERS!"

Jimmy turned and sprinted for the prone woman, still unmoving on the ground.

"Lady," he announced breathlessly as he skidded to a stop and squatted down beside her, "I got the Irish Brigade an' they're comin' fast!"
He laid his rifle down, peeled out of his coat, draped it over her, and that's how the Irish Brigade found them -- a little boy with his coat over a nearly frozen woman, and the boy followed the squad down off Cemetery Hill in the passenger seat of his father's Jeep.

 

Dr. John Greenlees, M.D., came out to talk to the Sheriff.
"We're warming her now," he said, "she doesn't appear to have frostbite but it was a near thing."  He looked at Jimmy, arched an eyebrow.  "I understand your son is the one who found her and raised the alarm."
"Yes, sir," Jimmy said in a troubled voice.
"Do you have a name on her?"  Linn asked, and the two men started discussing things the way professional men will in such moments, and Jimmy looked off to the side, toward the row of empty chairs, where a woman sat, knitting.
Jimmy walked over to Gracie, sat down beside her.
Sometimes it's nice to sit beside an aunt, and Jimmy knew she was related somehow, and aunt was the easiest way to think of her.
Besides, she smelled nice.
"I saw what you did up there," Gracie said quietly.
Jimmy hunched forward, chin on his fists, elbows on his knees.
"That was quite a shot, from the hilltop to the firehouse."
"Yeah."
"You saved the woman's life."
"I had help."
"I know."
Jimmy looked at her, alarmed, and whispered, "How'd you know I shot the firehouse gong?"
Gracie smiled reassuringly.
"We women have our ways."

That night Jimmy said "Pa?" as the Sheriff started to leave his room.
Linn stopped, turned back to the son he'd just tucked into bed.
"Pa, what's a pickelhaub?"
Linn gave him a curious look.  "Pickelhaub," he said thoughtfully.  "That's the pointy spike on World War 1 German helmets."
He waited, knowing another question was forthcoming, and he was right.
"Pa ... did Jacob's son, the one that was a soldier in World War One ... did he shoot pickelhaubs?"
Linn laughed.  "Yes he did, Jimmy," he nodded.  "He and another fellow, matter of fact, routed a German company by shooting the pickelhaubs off their helmets and laughing, and the Germans decided if these crazy Americans could shoot the spikes off their tin hats and then laugh about it, why, they could shoot them and laugh about it just as easily, so they kind of ... advanced to the rear."
"Oh."  Jimmy blinked.
"You said you used a fired rifle case for a whistle."
"Yes, sir."
"That was very good thinking."
"Yes, sir."
"Chief Llewellyn said he heard you clear from the cemetery."
"Yes, sir."
"I'm thinking about that old steel gong hanging out in front of the firehouse."
"Yes, sir."
"I'm thinking if anyone were to shoot at it ... why, that would be kind of unsafe, now, wouldn't it, shooting toward the firehouse like that?"
"Yes, sir," Jimmy said in a small voice.
Linn nodded.  "And if someone told me they'd shot that gong, I might be inclined to take the gun that did it."
"Yes, sir," Jimmy said miserably.
Linn winked at his boy.  "You know," he said, "that gong needs a coat of paint, and I'm kind of restless.  I think I'll go spray paint that gong.  Like to help?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Get dressed but be quiet, we'll slip out and saddle up so we don't wake your Mama."  

Linn waited while Jimmy swung out of bed and got into his duds like a quick change artist.
Father and son walked in silence to the barn, a can of black spray paint in Jimmy's big patch pocket:  they rode into town, down to the firehouse, and Linn stayed well back while Jimmy carefully, precisely, gave the old gong a coat of paint – "so's to keep it from rusting," Linn said with a straight face.
Jimmy made his spray lines even and careful, overlapping them a little, but before he did, he made sure to get the lead splatters first.
A .22 doesn't have much energy left at that distance, but there were two, round, telltale lead smears on the side that faced the cemetery, and when Jimmy was done, there was only the new coat of flat black paint, and the Sheriff pretended not to notice when Jimmy picked up two silvery something from the ground, two silvery somethings that were kind of round and a little smaller than a dime.
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

113.  SADDLE UP

 

Jimmy was instantly and completely awake the moment his Pa's hand closed on his shoulder.
Linn's eyes almost glowed in the dark and Jimmy heard is Pa whisper, "Saddle up, Jimmy, we got work to do!"
Jimmy grinned as he threw back his covers, because when his Pa said they had work to do, generally work wasn't what they did – at least, not what Jimmy would call work.
Father and son descended the broad stairs in their sock feet.
Jimmy smelled coffee and toast and he and his Pa set down in the dim-lit kitchen, the windows night-dark over the sink, except for bright spots that were stars peeking shyly through a high-altitude veiling of clouds.
"Moon's set," Linn said, "that'll make it a little more difficult but I figure we can find her."
"Yes, sir."
Father and son folded buttered toast in two and dunked them in milked coffee:  each slurped without fear of offending the women folk, for they two were the only ones awake – well, they and The Bear Killer, who sat beside Jimmy, obviously selecting the softer touch of the two.
Jimmy gave The Bear Killer a bite of his toast, reached for another slice:  his Pa turned to the toaster, and between the three of them, they disposed of about two-thirds of a loaf of good heavy nut-and-whole-wheat bread and a stick and a half of butter.
Linn rinsed out their coffee cups, washed off their plates:  he wiped down the table while Jimmy got into his coat and his boots and rubbed The Bear Killer's neck and chest, and not long after, father and son strode through fresh, fluffy snow toward the barn.
Despite the lack of a moon, they could see,thanks to the snowfall:  they each saddled their mount, turned their horses, walked them out into the snow.
"We're lookin' for the mares," Linn explained. "They'll likely be bunched in the lee out of the wind and I reckon I know where they'll be."  He looked up the mountain, trying to divine any movement among the pines; he frowned.
"I don't feel much wind down here.  Long as it doesn't come singin' down off that mountain we should be okay."
"Yes, sir."
They rode through the snow, Jimmy looking speculatively over at his Pa.
Linn drew nearer, reached back into his saddlebag, pulled out a long, hand knit scarf:  Connie made it for him, but Jimmy could use a little more insulation, so he said "Ho up," and the two stopped.
"Fetch off your Stetson," he said, and unbuttoned Jimmy's top two coat buttons:  he worked the end of the broad, soft, hand-knit muffler in under the coat, wrapped it aroud Jimmy's neck, once, then again to cover the lower half of his face:  he wrapped it once more, tucked the tail end in under the other side of the coat, buttoned Jimmy back up.
Jimmy settled his broad brim beaver back on his close-shorn head, grinning under the concealing grey knit as his Pa pulled out another just like it and wrapped his own head and neck in the same wise.
"No sense bein' cold," he said, and Jimmy said "Yes, sir," and the two started through the snow again.
The mares were in a draw, out of the wind; the snow was not ankle deep, easy to paw aside and find graze:  they were bunched, all right, and Linn knew why.
They rode in among the mares, slow and easy, looking, found the one they wanted.
Linn dismounted, walked up to the skittish Appaloosa, murmuring to her:  he took his time, he didn't hurry, and with voice and touch soothed the chary and very pregnant oat burner:  he clipped a lead on her harness and led her back to Apple-horse, and once the snap closed on her lead ring, she followed as docile as anything.
About half the mares drifted with them as they headed back to the barn.
Linn wanted to get her in where he could keep a foal warm, in where he had light to work if need be, and he and Jimmy led their mounts and the mare into the familiar barn, threw down some hay for the hangers-on, tossing it out a mow window above:  they bribed the mare with grain, and Linn knew it would not be long when she showed no liking for grain.

Connie got up and looked out the window, drawing her robe about her.
She'd wakened to the smell of toast and coffee, and she knew this meant the mare was about to foal.
Her husband never got up at such an unholy hour and made toast and coffee unless one of the horses needed his attention, and the only horse that would need his attention was one particular mare – one he'd selected, and bred to Apple-horse, the king stallion on their little ranch – the mare was one of the Macneil strain, and he was hoping to get a fine colt from the cross.
She saw father and son coming across the field, looking surprisingly small against the huge expanse of snow; she could see there were a few mares following, and following closely, and she smiled to see it:  she followed them with her eyes as they rode nearer, as they came to the barn, as they took the mare and their own saddlemounts inside, closed the siding, crossbucked doors, and she saw the mow doors open and a dark stain tumble down onto the snow.
She nodded.
That was just like her husband, throwing hay out to those matronly mares who'd followed their pregnant member to the barn.
Connie remembered early in their marriage when she would help her husband with foaling, how once he was obliged to reach up into the mare and untangle something, or straighten something – she wasn't sure quite what he did, only that he needed a change of clothes and a bath afterward – she'd helped pull calves, she'd helped her husband cut open a cow that died birthing, but the calf was still alive,and she'd held the nipple bucket as the calf fed on formula instead of its Mama's milk.
She looked at the barn and remembered the very first time she ever saw a foal come into the world, and she imagined how Jimmy must feel, for she knew he'd never helped foal before.
She turned away from the window.
Toast and coffee smelled pretty good, and she realized she was hungry.

Gracie was awake as well.
She padded silent in thick work socks out to the kitchen.
She'd seen into a pan of water like she'd known women to peer into a crystal ball, and she felt restless and she felt like she just might see something, and she was right.
Gracie leaned her hands on the edge of the sink and stared, delighted, seeing young Jimmy's face, and she realized yet again how delightful it was to see the world through a child's eyes.

"Rub the colt like you'd dry him off."
Jimmy did – carefully, awkwardly; the mare snuffed loudly at Jimmy, and at her colt, the mare cleaned her colt off and the colt wobbled to its feet, finally, nudged impatiently at Jimmy, at least until the mare steered it towards its first meal.
Linn was set down on a bale of hay, his backside parked on a folded saddle blanket.
Jimmy came over and set with him, and Linn put his arm around his son.
"You rubbin' down the colt," he said, "will tell the colt you are trusted.  He'll smell you and his Mama at the same time and that'll imprint him with the notion you are part of his herd."  His voice was quiet in the hushed barn.  "Horses are herd animals and they're generally real social.  We'll let the other ladies meet Short Stuff here directly but right now let's let him eat.  I reckon he's hungry."

When Jimmy and his pale eyed Pa waded through the fresh powder, they and The Bear Killer, they kicked the snow off their boots and left their boots on the rubber drip tray, then shucked out of snow-wet britches and come into the kitchen in flannel shirts and sock feet.
Connie was just shoveling another four fried eggs onto the stack, beside the pile of bacon fried up crispy, and a stack of pancakes, and father and son realized that new little stallion wasn't the only one with an appetite.
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

114.  FIDDLER ON THE GRAVE

 

Dr. John Greenlees was more than a surgeon.
He was the highest authority in their little hospital, and his word was law, and when he said a patient was discharged into the care and custody of the Sheriff, the patient was discharged.
The Sheriff didn't take Millicent back to her home, at least not right away.
He knew her sister was waiting there; he knew her sister would be expecting them, but he knew she had to go back to the graveyard where she'd lain in the cold, deliberately exposing herself to the cold, wishing – trying – to die, there on her husband's grave.
Instead of a thin cotton dress, she was well bundled and insulated against the cold:  she offered no protest as he took her up the Graveyard Road and through the old, cast-iron arch, but she was surprised when he drove first to the oldest section of the graveyard.
"Hop out," he said, shutting off the engine:  he came around, opened the door for her, steered her around his Jeep.
"This," he said, "is my Great-Aunt Sarah's grave.  She was killed in Germany.  She faced a mob with torches and clubs to keep her daughter and her father-in-law alive.  This" – he indicated another stone – "is the grandson of my fourth-great grandfather.  He was buried in France during the First World War with full Masonic honors, and his revolvers and uniform are in our museum."
Another stone.
"This is my mother.  She was Sheriff before me – and beside her, my father, and here is my older brother."
He went on down the row:  a name, a stone, a story.
"My father and brother were killed in a car wreck.  It nearly killed my Mama and it near to killed me, in my grief, to see the grief she tried to hide from me."  His voice was soft and caught a time or two, and the young widow stood, listening, hearing with more than her ears.
"I could have laid on Mama's grave like you laid on your husband's grave."  His voice was soft, thoughtful.  "It was summer so likely I would not have died."
They turned and went uphill, crossed time and generations as they walked.
She looked ahead and saw her husband's grave, saw the place where she'd lain, wishing for death and very nearly accomplishing it.
A woman sat on a nearby stone, a woman wearing a brown canvas coat and work boots, a woman in a wool skirt and high work socks, a woman ... and a fiddle.
"This," Linn said, "is Gracie.  She was married to one of our police officers. He was a good man and I liked him and it like to kilt Gracie when he died."
The Sheriff turned, took the woman's hands in his own.
His eyes were normally pale, hard, the shade of a mountain glacier:  they were some darker now, a distinct blue, still pale, but sad ... immensely sad, she realized, and she almost felt ashamed that she'd presumed hers was the only grief there was in the world.
"I reckon Gracie can say it better than me.  I've lost family but I've never lost a spouse."
Gracie chopped at her strings with the rosined horsehair, drew out the first few bars of "Fiddler on the Roof" and then let it drone off like a Scottish bagpipe's dying howl.
"Tell me why you loved him," she said.
"What?"
"Tell me why you loved him.  I've forgotten.  Tell me.  Help me remember."
The Sheriff went off to the side and started setting up the green-nylon tent; it was an easy raise, he'd prepped the necessary tubing and had only to unfold it from the inside.
He unrolled the thick rug on the floor, set two stools, a small table, a thermos of hot tea and two tin mugs, then he set up the small propane heater and got it going.
It ran off the same size bottle he used for soldering and it wouldn't last more than two hours, but Linn figured that was plenty of time for the two of them.
He stepped out of the tent just as the two widows turned and started toward him, and Linn stepped back as they went in, out of the wind, into the warmth.
"I'll be back after bit," he said, and walked slowly back to the Jeep.
He reckoned Gracie could do that poor woman quite a bit more good than he ever could.
He stopped, frowned, then changed course, walked along the row of stones until he came to the end; he looked out over town, looked to the firehouse, nodded thoughtfully.
"Hell of a shot for a .22," he said aloud.  "Amazin' what a body can do when they have to!"
He went downhill a few yards and doubled back to his Jeep, checked his pocket watch, nodded.
"Two hours," he said to the wind, then turned to look at his Mama's stone.
He stood for near to a full minute, remembering how he'd spotted her horse, standing with reins down, how he'd raised his glasses and seen his Mama lying in the tall grass, how he'd thrown a leg over his Apple-horse and run out there just as fast as his stallion could run:  he'd jumped from the saddle too early, hit the ground and had to point shoulder roll to burn off the excess velocity, he'd come up on his feet, turned, seized his mother's shoulder, pulled.
He remembered pulling her up off the ground, picking her up and carrying her.
He remembered throwing his head back and seizing a deep bite of air and then realizing ... no matter how loud he screamed, no matter how potent his petition to the Almighty, his Mama was dead, and nothing would bring her back.
She'd been gone long enough CPR would have been worse than futile, so he didn't even try:  he squatted, he sat, he held his Mama's still carcass tight against him and rocked her a little and he remembered how unfair it all ways, she was not supposed to get old, her hair was not supposed to be that white, there weren't supposed to be lines in her face, she wasn't supposed to be dead! – 
He'd finally pulled out is phone and made the call, and of course there were many people and there were questions and statements and the arrangements and they all ended here, here in this winter-cold graveyard with a stone and a hole in the ground, a box and bugles and rifles firing blanks.
He'd tossed a knife into the waiting hole, and he'd slipped a knife into the coffin with his Mama's still form, and when he spoke his piece, standing at the head of his Mama's box, as he spoke, he held a piece of quartz in one hand and a shot length of iron rod in the other, and rhythmically, slowly, tapped the rod against the rock, and there were men there who understood the significance of his action.
Now he stood, a lean man with an iron-grey mustache, staring at a carved rock, wondering as a man does, wondering if she was warm and well and happy and laughing, if she rode a shining red mare or a gleaming Appaloosa stallion, whether she was a woman there in The Valley, or maybe a laughing little girl, running with bare legs and curly blond hair through fields of columbine or maybe eidelweiss.
He almost smiled as he remembered a tall, Nordic-looking soldier in an immaculate uniform remove an Eidelweiss from his uniform cap and place on the grave:  there were things about his Mama he didn't know, but he did know there were soldiers from many nations came to her funeral, and every last one of them spoke to him, and told them something of her that he'd never heard.
Linn threw his head back and took a quick breath of the stinging-cold air.
He hadn't meant to do this.
He was back two hours later, just as the little propane heater in the widows' tent gave a quiet click and shut itself off, its fuel bottle depleted:  he drove the women, the widows, back up onto Maxwell's Mountain, and the women headed for the Maxwell family graveyard.
Linn went into the work shop and nodded to the craftsman he was looking for.
"Did they work?" he asked the Sheriff without preamble.
"Yep," Linn nodded.  "Worked well."

"I come out here sometimes," Gracie said quietly, "and ... I don't think I play for him."  She nodded at her husband's tombstone.  "I play for me."
Millicent blinked, shivering a little.
Cold as it is in winter, it's always colder in a field of stone.
"I remember what he was.  I remember his laugh and the way he would look at me, and the way he held a little fuzzy kitten one time he picked up out of the middle of the street so it wouldn't get run over."  Gracie blinked, sniffed, and Millicent turned her head, closed her eyes.
"There will always be that ache.  We'll never fill that hole they left."
Millicent nodded.
"I had coffee this morning."

Gracie's intent was to steer Millicent into a memory; she continued talking, quietly, seeing the woman's eyes lose focus just a little, and she knew it was working.

She was remembering.
Millicent was staring into the distance, not listening:  Gracie's words grew fainter, all but one.
Coffee.
Her husband loved his coffee.
He called it their morning "mug-up" – a sailor's term, he'd said, left over from the days when men sailed the salt water under canvas – she remembered how he sat across from her and gave her that quiet, knowing look, and Gracie saw a smile soften the woman's sorrowful expression.
Millicent remembered how warm the mug was in her hands, how warm and protective and strong his hands were on her shoulders, she remembered his laugh.
Gracie's arm was around her shoulders now, and the widow in work boots steered her sister in sorrow towards the house.
It was cold out, and they had coffee inside.
Millicent stopped and turned, saw a round ball of fur rolling over in the snow.
Something red and furry shot straight up out of the snow, something small and suddenly four-legged, and the kitten fell back into the snowdrift and swam clumsily out, hobby-horsed toward Millicent, its tail thrown over sideways, and she stopped and picked it up, cuddled it into her.
Gracie laughed.
"That's Cinnamon," she said.  "The barn cat had another litter and this one is curious.  We couldn't keep him from exploring after the snowfall."
Millicent cuddled the furry little curled-up kitty under her chin, against her throat, and she felt more than heard a purr three sizes too big for its tiny frame.
"Are they weaned?"  Millicent asked, and Gracie heard the hopeful note in her voice.
"They're weaned," she smiled.  "Cinnamon, say hello to your new Mama."
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

115.  OPTION

 

Gracie felt the fear again.
She'd been grabbed in that brick paved alley, back when she was in University back East, she'd been grabbed by one man and another was coming in to help –
She felt strong arms around her, heard their laughter, they dragged her farther back into shadow, one hand across her mouth and his other arm around her middle, hauling her off the ground –
Gracie just plainly came unglued.
She went from a terrified, helpless, almost-limp victim to an absolute fury.
Strong white teeth bit down hard on a finger, she twisted, she felt the hand checkered maple handle of her hand forged knife she wore under her flannel shirt, she seized the handle and stabbed, back, stabbed again – fast, repeated, the honed edge like a broad edged sewing machine needle into the attacker's thigh:  before his arm released, while he still had her weight, she drew her knee up and kicked the other's grasping hand, then kicked again:  a twist, a pull, she was free, she kicked hard, fast, drove the side of her bootsole into the side of the second man's knee –
The Sheriff froze the frame.
"Ladies," he said, his voice serious, "you could not have seen this progression if I hadn't slowed it down considerably."  He looked at the woman in the wool skirt and work boots, the pale woman whose breathing was coming faster, and he stopped talking, stepped quickly over to her, went down on one knee.
"Gracie?"  he asked softly.  "Are you okay?"
Gracie shuddered, nodded, swallowed hard, nodded again.
"I know it was only a re-enactment when we made the video," she whispered, "I knew I was watching a video, but my God! I felt him holding me!"
Linn stood, looked around.
"Voice of experience, ladies.  Some ghosts will come philtering up out of the deepest grave you can plant 'em in.  Even when you're the victim, even when you, did, nothing, wrong" – he spaced his words out, emphasizing them without raising his voice – "it'll leave a mark, it'll scar you.  I wish it didn't.  Good people wear the mark of Cain through no fault of their own."  He turned and returned to the front of the room, to the podium he refused to stand behind, but instead stood beside.
"We are going to work on individual scenarios.  We're going to address those ghosts.  You'll each cycle through them, we have multiple cars set up on the range and we have two cars for actual driving exercise."  
He smiled just a little – not much, just a little.
"Fasten your seat belts, ladies, this will not be a comfortable ride."
Shanah reached over, gripped Gracie's forearm.
Gracie turned and looked at the frightened woman and they gripped hands quickly, the move of two scared little girls about to go through a Fun  House at the carnival:  they knew they would be all right, but they each needed the reassurance of a kindred soul.
"We'll get through this," Gracie whispered.

 

"Mama?"  Jimmy asked as he came bouncing through the door – he was home at midday, school having let out a half-day for a scheduled administrative meeting.
Connie looked up and smiled as Jimmy expertly spun his Stetson onto its peg, just like his Pa.
"Mama, what about that woman we found in the graveyard?"
"The one who was so cold?"  Connie asked, wondering how cautious she would have to be with her words.
Jimmy nodded, his eyes big and sincere.  
"I think she's at home with her sister."
"Pa said an attempted suicide has to be treated.  How are they gonna treat her?"
He listens, Connie thought uncomfortably.
"Counseling, I think," she replied.  "I have cookies."
"Cookies!"  
Jimmy and his little brother scampered happily for the kitchen.
I wish I could thank Linn's Mama, she thought.
She told me once that as a nurse she used distraction techniques to get a patient's mind off something.
Connie smiled as she watched the boys eye the pile of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies with a combination of delight and avarice.
I'll bet she never used home made cookies on a patient!

 

Shanah sat behind the wheel, shivering a little.
"Impala," she whispered, then cleared her throat, stroking the steering wheel.  "It was an Impala ..."
Gracie, in the passenger seat, waited patiently, watching closely.
"We were going down ... it was ... I don't know where he came from."
Through the windshield, they saw the Sheriff in his screaming-green safety vest raise his flag, lower it.
"Come back and get me," Gracie said quietly, opening the door, stepping out:  the closing door sounded like a bank vault shutting Shanah in, alone with her fears.
Shanah pulled the Impala into gear and started down the narrow lane.
"This truck came out of nowhere and stopped in front of us," she said nervously, starting down the quarter-mile dead-end.  "He got out –"
A half-ton pickup went screaming past her, nailed the brakes, went sideways:  the driver jumped out, yelling, a short shotgun in hand: he ran back toward her –
Shanah spiked the brakes, screamed, threw her hands up –
A whistle blew and the Sheriff waved his flag overhead, signaling the end of the scenario.
The door opened; Linn reached in, laid a gentle hand on Shanah's shoulder.
"You're safe," he said in a gentle voice.  "Nothing happened."
Shanah took a long breath, shuddered, nodded.
"Now reverse back to your starting point, we're going to run this again."
It was all Shanah could do to get the Impala in reverse:  she backed up slowly, cautiously; the Sheriff went back to his observation point, and the pickup looped around, taking a parallel set of tire tracks back to his starting point.
The Sheriff's voice came through the car's speakers.
"We're going to try this again.  Remember what we did in the simulator."
Gracie, out of the car and having been isolated, had no idea what Shanah had just done:  she climbed in, closed the door.
Shanah looked over at Gracie, her eyes big and scared.
"Shanah, are you all right?"
Shanah nodded, pulled the Impala into drive, took a long breath and started rolling down the lane again.

 

The young widow pulled the closet door shut behind her and stood in the familiar darkness.
It smelled of him, here.
Of all the places in their home, his closet reminded her most powerfully of her late husband.
This was his cologne, still clinging to his clothes; she reached out, eyes closed, caressed a suit jacket, a shirt, remembering how he looked, how he smelled, how it felt to be in his arms, dancing, looking up at him, thrilled to be in the arms of her husband, of the most important man she'd ever known, the only man she would ever love, and she took a long breath, her head tilted back, smiling at the memory.

 

Shanah took a moment.
Shanah remembered the quiet talks she and the Sheriff had.
Shanah remembered the Sheriff's wife, her reassuring voice, she thought of how the Sheriff stressed that there are always possibilities, always alternatives:  we may not see them right away, but they are there, he said, and this time, when the pickup came blasting past her and cut her off, this time when she hit the brakes hard, she kicked the car into reverse, stomped the gas:  eight cylinders' worth of Detroit go-power screamed happily as she spun the wheel, whipped the car end-for-end:  a vicious yank, the shifter dumped into D for DRAG and she burned half a hundred miles' worth of tread off the tires committing that classic military maneuver known as Getting The Hell Out Of There!
The Impala barreled into the big field beside the range; Shanah realized she'd better stop,and stop she did – by virtue of throwing the car into a broad slide and coming to rest in a cloud of dust and blue smoke.
Shanah gripped the wheel as if to crush it, her eyes were bulging, her nostrils flared; she was breathing like an asthmatic steam engine on a hard pull and she felt like she'd just run five miles trying to escape a pursuing panther.
She looked over at Gracie with the expression of someone wondering if they were in the company of a genuine lunatic.
Gracie gripped the grab handle with one hand, her other was pulling a handkerchief from somewhere, and she was wiping tears from her eyes – tears, because she was laughing with unadulterated, absolute delight!
"My turn!"  she declared.  "Trade me seats!"
The two women opened their doors, ran around the front of the car, jumped in, slammed the doors:  Gracie goosed the throttle, not hard enough to spin the tires, but enough to show she wanted to get back to the starting point.
She stopped the car with the tires on the yellow start line spray painted across the wide dirt lane, hit her horn twice – a quick toot-toot, to let the Sheriff know she was ready.
The Sheriff raised his flag, waved a quick left-right, then down.
Gracie accelerated.
The pickup came rip-roaring past them again, cut them off:  Gracie nailed the brakes, backed up three car lengths, and when the driver jumped out of the truck and came at the with the short shotgun in hand, Gracie stomped the gas, aimed the car like she would aim her own shotgun and did her level best to run the man down.
Apparently this wasn't an expected move.
Shanah screamed and clawed at the dash and saw their attacker pitch the shotgun into the truckbed and jump into the bed after it as the Impala charged past, close enough they caught the open truck door.
Shanah squeaked and ducked, eyes screwed shut and both arms thrown over her face:  she felt the impact, heard the collision, and Gracie laughed again, snapped the wheel around, mashed the gas and pulled an at-speed bootlegger's turn, charged back to the truck, skidded to a fast, tire-punishing stop.
"JESUS CHRIST LADY ARE YOU TRYIN' TO KILL ME?" their "attacker" yelled, until Gracie came a-boilin' out of the car, thrust a stubby, square revolver at him, snapped the hammer on five empty chambers.
"REMEMBER THAT NEXT TIME!" Gracie yelled back.  "YOU JUST GOT FIVE HOLES IN YOUR FACE!"
Shanah's jaw was sagging and she was breathing fast as she realized what Gracie had just done, and then she heard someone clapping his hands, slowly, powerfully.
She turned and the Sheriff was standing beside her window, the rolled up flag under his arm.
"Shanah," he said quietly, "that was one of the best pieces of evasion I've seen in a very long time.  Well done."  He looked over at Gracie.  "You, dear heart, are not a woman I would want to cross!"
Gracie looked at him with a face the color of putty.
She placed the bulldog .44 on the roof of the car, looked at it, looked at the Sheriff, her mouth dry.
"How'd you do that?"  she finally managed to rasp out.
Linn reached around, pulled Gracie's .44 out of his hip pocket, held it up, laid it on the roof of the car as well.
"My mother," he said, "once told me about a pickpocket and I practiced until I got good at it.  Today when you were distracted, I switched yours out."  He smiled.  "You have a very nice holster inside that coat, but you really should carry on something you won't be taking off like that."
Gracie swayed a little, gripping the edge of the door, turned and looked at the grinning man in the truck bed.
"I forgot it was a scenario," she quavered.  "Oh my God.  I was ... I could have ... I intended ..."
Gracie's knees buckled, her grip failed, she fell back and down and ended up sitting on the cold ground, staring slack-jawed at the door hinge.
"I honest to God tried to kill him!"
Linn nodded.  "Shanah," he said quietly, "you see we each approach things differently.  You just wanted to get away.  Gracie went on the attack.  Both ways are right.  Each has its favorable argument.  Both ways work."
Shanah nodded, quickly, jerkily.
"Good enough.  Gracie, Shanah, back to the range trailer, go inside and thaw out, have some hot chocolate, I'll be there shortly."

 

Lieutenant Maxwell watched the video playback of the Coast Guard rescue copter, frowning a little as she leaned forward, intent on sucking every bit of information from the playback that she possibly could.
"Think you could do that?"  a voice asked, a hand – probably the speaker's – resting on her shoulder and gripping it lightly.
The Lieutenant nodded, intent on the screen.  "That," she murmured, gesturing with a bent finger, "is a steady touch.  That pilot is good."
"That pilot is my son."
Sarah turned, looked, then rocketed to her feet, braced to attention.
"Good afternoon, Admiral," she said with an equal stiffness, and the Old Man chuckled and waved his hand back and forth.
"At ease, Lieutenant," he said soothingly.  "I watch that same playback myself."
"Yes, sir."
"I understand you're top of your class."
"Yes, sir."
"How do you feel about that?"
"It's immaterial, sir."
"Immaterial?"  A grey-shot eyebrow raised in surprise.  "That's not quite what I expected."
"No, sir.  I have a bad habit, sir, you ask the question and I'll give the honest answer, even if it's not what you want to hear."  She allowed herself the very slightest of smiles.  "It has gotten me in trouble before."
The Admiral nodded.  "I can see why your Master Chief recommended you so highly.  How would you like to go on a classified mission?"
"You give the order, sir, and I'll storm hell!"
"Mad Anthony Wayne."
"In response to General George Washington, yes, sir."
"You're not Academy, are you?"
"No, sir.  Firelands Local High School, Firelands, Colorado, and an uncle with an encyclopedic knowledge of warfare back East."
"An uncle," the Admiral said thoughtfully.  "He wouldn't be a man with pale eyes, by any chance?"
Sarah looked with surprise at the Admiral, then faced front again.  "He would, sir."
"At ease, Lieutenant.  Have a seat if you'd like, I can't sit until you do."
"Sir?"
"Rank sits first in the military, but my mother worked hard to beat some manners into me.  I mean to teach me good manners, and a gentleman does not sit until the lady is seated."
"Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir."
They both sat.
"Sir ... that line about good manners ... I've heard that one before."
"I expect you have," the Admiral chuckled again.  "Your pale eyed Sheriff is fond of it."
"Yes, sir."
"I knew his mother well."
"Yes, sir."
"You have the same eyes," he said thoughtfully, "and you fight like her."
"Thank you, sir."
"Lieutenant, I will be honest.  I considered having you up on charges."
"Sir?"
"You've done things with that King Stallion that are not only against standard operating procedure, they're not aerodynamically possible."
"Sir?"
"I've watched you from the ground, I've gone over the in-flight videos.  I've seen you flying what's supposed to be a cross between a heavy lift flying crane and a tractor-trailer, and you maneuver that bird like a fighter jet.  You can run it faster, more nimbly and more precisely than any pilot I've seen, and I've seen plenty."
"Thank you, sir."
"It's only because of your expertise that I stopped any such proceedings."
"Thank you, sir."
"Actually that's not completely true.  I need a pilot who can run a King Stallion like a fighter jet because I need insertion, recovery and survivability in one package."
"Yes, sir."
"You're interested?
"I'm not related to Mad Anthony, sir, but I look very much like the woman you knew."
"Yes, you do," the Admiral said thoughtfully, then added, "Oh, yes."  
He opened the folder he carried, produced an envelope.  "This came for you."   He held it out.

Gracie took it automatically.
"Thank you, sir."  Sarah looked at it and the Admiral saw her ears start to turn pink, then red, then an absolute flaming shade of scarlet.
"I'm gonna kill him," she muttered, and the Admiral rose.
"Carry on, Lieutenant."
Sarah was on her feet, rising from her chair as the Old Man lifted off from his.
"Thank you, sir."
She waited until the Admiral was departed from the room before looking at the envelope again.
It was addressed to Lieutenant Valkyrie Maxwell, and its return was in Germany.
"Hans Lukas," she muttered through a tight jaw, "I am going to kick you right in the liver!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

116.  EIDELWEISS

 

Gracie nodded with satisfaction.
The hospital bed was disassembled and packed out to the waiting rental truck; Gracie made quick work of sweeping the rug and then parking the big, noisy, upright vacuum in its closet where it slept like unwanted company; she enlisted two of the strapping young lads to move furniture back around to where it should be, and to make her victory more complete, she stood in the middle of the room with her curly back fiddle tucked under her chin, she closed her eyes and took a long breath, brought her bow around in a big, showy circle, let it drift down to the strings.
As soon as the rosined horsehair bit into wound-steel strings, she knew something was wrong.
She often did this – she played from her subconscious, letting the music find its way out her arm and into the fiddle – but she had no idea, no intent, for the music to proceed as it did.
She had absolutely no idea why she started playing "Eidelweiss," and she knew it was significant, but she loved the tune and she loved to play, and so she played, with grace and with beauty and with her eyes closed, letting her voice sing through hand fitted maple and fretted cherry and wound-steel strings.

 

Lieutenant Grace Maxwell looked at the wallet sized photograph of the tall, handsome Nordic officer with the Eidelweiss embroidered in the side of his cap.
She slipped the picture into a handy seam on her instrument panel, one of the only places that wouldn't obscure an instrument or a readout, and she looked at it for several moments before she began preflight.

 

Jimmy tilted his head, the way a curious boy will, and he pulled the notebook out of his shirt pocket, and then a pencil.
He squatted and studied the flower, growing from a crack in the rock, and he drew what he saw, drew with good detail and flawless perspective.
He'd never seen this particular flower before and he was curious as to what it might be.

 

Gracie fiddled a brisk little Irish air, something that might be played with the evening well on, with good ale behind a man's belt buckle, an air played in high good spirits, when dancing was called for and expected.
Gracie flatfooted to the tune, turning a little as she did, remembering the last time she played this brisk little air, and how the stiff-armed, hard-shoe Irish dancers in her dorm danced to it, their steel taps perfectly synchronized on the hard-maple floor.
She played for the joy of playing, for the happiness that bubbled up inside her.
She knew, part of her knew, she was feeling happiness from another source:  she was too absorbed with her fiddling to study it further, at least until it grew stronger.

 

The Sheriff smiled a little and said "Shanah, if you could move over ... here for me, please," and Shanah obligingly backed up and took two steps to the side; she was at the end of the Sheriff's couch, and Linn picked up the heavy orange impact pad.
Connie paced across the room, her skirt swinging, her pace easy; she always did walk well in heels, and she knew what her husband had in mind.
Linn set the impact pad back down and took his wife's hand, nodded to Jimmy.
Shanah really had no idea what the pale eyed lawman had in mind, especially when, at his obviously planned command, the Blue Danube began playing from somewhere.
The Sheriff took Connie by the hand and around the waist, and Shanah could only stare – stare with appreciation for the ease with which the couple danced:  it was evident that each was well used to dancing with the other, and equally obvious that they enjoyed what they did.
After a few turns around the living room, Linn took a half-step back and twirled Connie, his hand and hers above her head:  she spun easily, naturally, her skirt flaring:  she stopped, spun in the opposite direction one turn, two, stopped.
Linn turned and picked up the impact pad again.
"Shanah," he said, "dancers will commonly wear heels to help them keep their weight on the balls of their feet."  He winked at his wife and added, "Besides, she has the legs to wear 'em!" – he raised the thick, orange-covered pad, leaned into it, just as Connie spun and kicked the pad, hard.
"When you keep your weight on the balls of your feet" – thwak! – "you can also spin out a kick" –thwak! – "and if necessary" – thwak, whak, whak! – "you can kick pretty fast!"
"And I get to beat up on my husband, and it's perfectly legal!"  Connie laughed, then she lunged at the big rectangular pad, drove a heelstrike and an elbow strike into it, hitting hard, hitting fast, backing up, hands raised and open a little.
"Remind me never to make her mad," Linn said quietly, setting the pad down and taking his wife's hand:  he kissed her knuckles and murmured a quiet "Thank you, dearest," and his wife gave him a smoldering look, then turned and walked away, the way a woman will when she knows there is another woman nearby and she wants her husband's eyes to be on her, and not the other woman.
"Gracie," Linn said, "found it necessary to turn on the ball of a foot to kick an attacker.  Her efforts were successful.  Would you have any interest in taking hand-to-hand with the Ladies of the Society?"
Shanah looked after Connie, looked at the orange bag setting on the floor behind the Sheriff.
"I would," she nodded, "but do I have to wear heels?"
Linn laughed.  "I don't care if you wear a burlap sack and flip flops.  The Ladies will be better at recommending what to wear."

Could she not have seen his smile, she would have heard it in his voice.  

I don't teach that.  I learned long ago that women learn best from women.  I'll help train, I'll offer brief vignettes, I'll set up a training session or a course of fire, but for actual instruction I prefer to let the Ladies teach the ladies."

 

You will have half a hundred Marines on board.
You will have an artillery piece slung under your belly.
Your destination is classified.
You will refuel in-flight.
Sealed orders will be opened once underway.
You will maintain radio silence until the point designated in your sealed orders.
Two sets of eyes watched from the bridge as the big black King Stallion lifted off.
"It even sounds like a mean monster," the Marine beside him murmured.
"Yes, General, it does."
The Admiral turned, regarded his counterpart curiously.
"Tell me ... why do the Marines want a Navy pilot and a Navy bird?  This is the only one in the fleet and it took some high-level string pulling to put the first Sea Stallion on this boat."
The Marine smiled ever so slightly.
"You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you we like the way the Lieutenant looks in a flight suit."
The Admiral grunted, gave the general officer a sour look.  
"Actually ... I can't tell you, but if you speculated it might have something to do with plausible deniability, you'd be right."
"What percentage of your men do you estimate will return?"
There was a long silence.
"Not very many."
The Admiral nodded, wishing he'd had the chance to tell Max how proud he was of her before she took off.

 

The Ladies collected Shanah and departed for the Silver Jewel, where they would adjourn; Linn sat down in his office chair, debated whether to compose a video letter for Marnie, decided he'd wait until something actually happened.
He opened his laptop, smiled at the wallpaper: his daughter, her husband, Dr. John Greenlees Jr., and their little daughter Willamina.
I'll bet she's grown since then, he thought.
Doc said she'd likely grow faster because there's less gravity.
He also said she could probably not return to Earth because of it.
"Sir?"  Jimmy asked in a tentative voice.
Linn turned and smiled a little.
"Sir, I saw a new flower today.  What is this?"
Linn accepted the pocket notebook, frowned at the drawing; he turned, reached up and switched on the green-shaded banker's lamp, frowned at the drawing again:  he leaned back, considering, bent forward and regarded the drawing with a serious expression.
He tapped a key, set his hands on the keyboard, typed in a query, selected one of the search engine's recommendations, clicked.
He held the notebook up, compared the hand drawn illustration with the picture displayed on the glowing screen.
He turned, handed the notebook to Jimmy.
"That," he said, "is eidelweiss.  Do you remember where you saw it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Could you find it again?"
"Yes, sir."
"The State considers woad an invasive plant.  Likely they'll say the same about this.  How many did you see?"
"Just the one, sir.  I looked around for more but that's all there was."
Linn nodded.  "We'll go there first thing in the morning."
"Yes, sir."

 

The Marine lieutenant leaned into the cockpit, looking around.
"What were you expecting, curtains?" Max challenged him.
"No ma'am – are you the Valkyrie?"
"Ah-firm, name's Maxwell and my family is made of moonshiners and hillrunners."
The Marine lieutenant nodded.  "I requested you for this mission."
"You got me, fella.  Think you'll be able to nap back there?"
He laughed.  "Lieutenant, I'm a Marine.  I can sleep in a boiler factory!"
"I'll try to keep the noise down," she offered.
"Do you have an ETA or a destination?" 
She handed him an envelope.  "Your timing is perfect, I don't have to send a boy on a bicycle to deliver this!"
He looked at the cover, nodded, disappeared.
Max engaged the Iron Mike, looked at her fellow pilot, held up their sealed orders, motioned her partner closer.
She broke the seal.
They read the orders, looked at one another, re-read the orders.
They both swore.
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

117. THE ORGAN GRINDER AND THE VALKYRIE

 

Gracie raised her Bernardelli, swung quickly, wiped the front bead across the clay bird like she was painting it with a long brush, slapped the front trigger.
The gun's crack galvanized a lean Kentucky arm into slinging a second, faster bird:  Gracie swung on it, blasted another dirty cloud against the blue Colorado sky.
Half a world away, another Maxwell swung to bear on a moving target, but this was not a light, graceful, English-gripped double gun she swung.
This was a flying crane, an airborne barn that wasn't supposed to maneuver like its diminutive pilot with the bug-eyed helmet was demanding:  composite rotors ripped the air apart as the heavy helo swung in a hard bank, driving a twin stream of tracers from pod mounted chain guns that weren't part of the original design.
One of two fighter jets flew into a solid stream of tracer and tungsten-steel; the other enemy fighter, on its attack run, coming in from the side, forgot that this Stallion had more than one set of teeth and ran air-intake-first into  a string of 50-cal from the port side Ma Deuce.
The pale-eyed Lieutenant Maxwell swung the bird hard back and forth, damping the wild oscillation of the artillery piece still slung under their belly.
"Everybody okay back there?"  she yelled into the intercom.
The reply was loud, obscene and in the affirmative, although it did question her sanity, her intent and whether or not she learned to fly thanks to a mail order course out of a Cracker Jacks box.
Max thumbed the transmit button, heard the sidetone in her padded earphones.
"Organ Grinder, Organ Grinder," she chanted into the helmet mike, Valkyrie is hot."
A German-accented voice made reply and her eyes smiled behind the heads-up display inside her visor.
"Valkyrie, this is Eidelweiss," a familiar, German-accented voice called, "sorry I'm late, did I miss anything?"
Another alarm, a fast bank:  they were coming onto base leg, they were supposed to land where the enemy wasn't, and so far it appeared the enemy was not cooperating with their intel:  Max fired starboard flares, pulled up hard as the incoming missile detonated into the flare, felt more than heard the explosion, heard the rattle of static that meant she'd been hit.
Part of her mind remembered her pale eyed Uncle telling her that Vietnam pilots could tell when they were taking small arms fire, when an AK round whistled through the aluminum walls of a Huey, there was a static pop.
Max's eyes were busy, her hands steady; her bird could tell her where the enemy missile came from, and where one was, more might be, and she was right.
She kicked the King Stallion in the tail rotor and snapped smartly around, drove a quick burst from her twin gun pods:  the hillside detonated in a double fireball, rolling a Siamese twin of a mushroom cloud into the air.
"Lieutenant!"  she yelled into the intercom.  "Stand by to deploy!"
Max came in fast and low; the King Stallion's nose rose, its tail dropped, the artillery piece set down nice and easy as the rear ramp yawned, the hydraulics' whine absolutely overwhelmed with engines, rotors and twin 50s hammering from port and starboard both.
Max waited until the cameras showed her cargo was off and running, saw the light go from red to green – her ramp was coming up – the King Stallion took off, tail-high, almost jumping into the air and coming around.
There was ground fire and Max objected to anyone shooting at her Marines.
"Max, whattaya doin', we gotta get outta here!"  her co-pilot protested.
Max put the red dot right where she wanted it, gave the gun switch a quick squeeze:  she felt the slight shudder as the big Gatlings spun, their flatulent belch inaudible:  a row of napalm bloomed where her guns had just blasted and she heard, "Valkyrie, this is Eidelweiss, get out of my way and let me have it!"
Max did not argue.
The King Stallion shot straight up, leaving every stomach aboard feeling like it was still about twenty feet off the ground.

 

Something huge and black screamed overhead, almost knocking Gracie to the ground with the wind of its cold downdraft.
She saw a black helicopter – a HUGE black helicopter – twist, turn, evading something –
She saw men on the mountain –
Brindle came pacing up and Gracie seized the saddlehorn, swung a leg over the saddle, gave the mule her heels:  Bridle laid her ears back and declared HAAAAAWWWW and charged the mountain.
Gracie broke her bird gun open, dropped the empties to the ground, reached in her coat pocket and pulled out two deer slugs, dunked in the chambers, closed the gun.
The men she saw were dressed funny – ragged, dirty, their heads were wrapped, not the Sikh turbans she'd seen back at University – these were simpler, smaller –
Her mind registered that some held the curved-magazine AKs she'd seen on television –
She rode up on them as one slung a shell in the breech, slammed the breech closed; another sat in what looked like a tin tractor seat, spinning wheels of some kind, raising to near-vertical an artillery barrel with Eidelweiss in Germanic script on the barrel –
The black helicopter roared straight up --
The big barrel tracked after it –
Gracie brought her light, English-gripped Bernardelli bird gun to shoulder as Brindle threw her head to the side:  Gracie and drove a deer slug through both shoulders of the dirty, bearded, shouting fellow in the tin tractor seat, knocking him out of his seat like she'd ball batted him a good one.
She dropped the double gun's muzzle and yanked the trigger, driving her left hand barrel's ounce of lead into the primer of one of a stack of artillery shells.

"Gracie?"
Gracie blinked, shook her head, focused.
Her shotgun was still in hand, broke open, empty hulls still in the shotgun's chambers.
"Gracie, are you all right?"
Gracie swallowed, nodded; trembling fingers plucked the hulls out, let them fall.

 

Teutonic-blue eyes saw an explosion where the ancient German 88 had been.
He didn't know quite what happened, but it saved him launching another pair of missiles.
His finger eased off the trigger and he hauled the stick back, punched a hole in the sky, then banked and began circling again, searching for any targets of opportunity.

"Flatfoot, this is Valkyrie."
"Valkyrie, Flatfoot."
"Had my good stiff drink and ready to box."
"Put on your asbestos underwear, it'll be hot."
"Oh, great," her co-pilot groaned, then looked at Max.
"You better not die on me," he said accusingly, "I don't think I can fly as good as you!"
"You will if need be," Max said evenly.  "You'd be surprised what you can do when you have to!"
The King Stallion disengaged from the refueling drogue, dropped:  Max lowered their nose, banked, came around in a big circle.
The copilot swore and pointed and Max's hand tightened on the collective.
"I see it," she snapped, dropping the King Stallion alarmingly:  in her ears she heard the collision alarm's precisely enunciated, "Pull up.  Pull up.  Pull up."
"Oh, shut up," Max snarled, the King Stallion screaming under the cable stretched across the valley, its black belly less than twenty feet off the ground:  whatever high value target the Marines were sent to destroy, was putting a shocking amount of black smoke into the air:  as she screamed across the valley's floor, she overflew a white technical:  what had been a white pickup truck full of armed men intent on shooting down the oncoming black monster, was suddenly an abandoned vehicle with screaming men in turbans diving to the ground.
Only one of them noticed the black rotorstorm's belly smacked the whip antenna on their truck, and he had little time to consider this, for no sooner was Max's big black Snowflake past the vehicle, than a Typhoon rolled into a dive and fired a single missile, vertical down.
Max had to pick her Snowflake up in order to raise its black nose and scream to a fast stop, then settle to earth, not all of its weight on its landing gear:  the ramp came down and men charged up the ramp.

Max kept her bird at speed, engines singing power and rotors beating savagely at the air:  she knew her Marines were charging through nothing short of a gale, but she had every confidence they would make it, and in this she was absolutely correct.
Navy gunners searched for targets, gloved hands tight on their big fifties; overhead, a pair of fighter jets wove a deadly silver crisscross, strafing likely points of concealment:  Max fed her Stallion a good amount of throttle when the voice in her headphones yelled "We're in, GO GO GO!" and the ramp-up light flared in her display.
Max climbed fast, twisting back and forth, waiting for the telltales that would warn of a missile launch, waiting for the sudden detonation of an artillery shell, waited for something like a World War II surplus German 88 to blast through the atmosphere and detonate amidships, but for all her angst, none of these things happened.
"Lieutenant," she called, "what's the count?"
"Two wounded, three high value prisoners."
"No dead?"
"No ma'am!"

Gracie's eyes tightened a little at the corners, all the smile she allowed herself, and she thumbed the comm switch again.
"El Tee, once we get back on land, I'm buyin'!"
"Ma'am, if you're buyin', I'm drinkin'!"
Max switched the intercom over, pressed the transmit button.

"Flatfoot, Valkyrie, set out the welcome mat, we're coming home!"

 

Gracie sagged, collapsed onto the upturned five-gallon bucket, closed her eyes, leaned her head back against the side of the barn.
She was not entirely sure what happened, only that her sister was involved and something felt like her stomach was riding an express elevator, and that her pale-eyed sis was absolutely loving it.
Gracie's eyes snapped open as she realized she felt something about that blond haired, blue eyed Nordic giant Max brought home, and ...
"No," she whispered, a smile creeping across her suddenly-blushing face, and for a delicious moment, Gracie actually felt jealous of her pale-eyed sister, and what she imagined her joy-bellied sis must be doing.

Half a world away, back in the corner table at the Officer's Club, two Marines, two Navy pilots and a Luftwaffe pilot sat, talking quietly – talking, all but the smallest of their number.
Max stared silently at her amber distillate, only half listening to the laughing banter around her.
Finally her co-pilot nudged her shoulder.  "Hey, Max, where'd you go?"
Lieutenant Sarah Maxwell looked up, her eyes very pale.
She raised her shot of Old Stump Blower to eye level, turned it in her fingers, staring at the faceted amber.
"My uncle is Sheriff," she said, "and his four times great grandfather was Sheriff, and when he hunted a man down to kill him, he'd come into the Silver Jewel Saloon.
"He'd go to the back table, back in the corner, and he'd lay his rifle across the table and he'd drink enough to kill three normal men – he'd drink the entire water glass full on one breath."

She raised the double shot, drank it down, SLAMMED the empty glass to the table, the sound loud and sharp, and she thrust to her feet and yelled "I SENT ANOTHER ONE TO HELL TODAY!"
A certain Admiral turned around at the bar, looked at her, raised his own glass.
"Valkyrie!" he shouted.
Men rose, turned, hoist their beers, their whiskey, and with one voice:  "VALKYRIE!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

118.  THE INAUDIBLE PIANO PLAYER

 

The Sheriff was uncharacteristically quiet at the supper table.
Jimmy was quick to pick up on this.
He'd had to walk on eggshells for many years, and so gave his Mama a worried look, then looked at the Sheriff.
Linn realized he'd been staring at the butter dish for some time; he blinked, saw Jimmy looking at him, then saw Connie looking at him.
"I'm sorry," he said gently.  "We had a difficult day."
"Was that the kids that –"  Jimmy started, but he snapped his jaw shut with a click and looked away when Connie gave him the Mommy Death Stare.
Linn nodded.  "Yeah," he said, his voice husky.  
"I heard about it in school," Jimmy mumbled, his bottom lip hanging down to his belly button.
Linn took a long breath, rubbed his eyes, pushed his plate back.
"I did have ..."
He stopped, considered, looked over at Jimmy and smiled with half his mouth.
"A man stopped in today."
Jimmy waited, frozen, afraid to look at his Mama.
"He ... told me something."

 

Linn looked at the fellow with the yellow hardhat under his arm.
He'd kicked most of the snow off his boots before coming in the Sheriff's office, but not all, and he was standing in an expanding puddle of snow melt.
"Careful of your footin', that floor's slick when it's wet," Linn cautioned, reached over to where the rubber backed runner had been rolled up to allow the floor to be mopped:  "my apologies, I hadn't got this back down."
He bent over, unrolled the runner, and the man in the heavy coat and snowy boots stepped over the advancing roll.
"Thanks," he said.
"Cold out," Linn said conversationally, straightening.  "Coffee?"
"Yeah.  Yeah, thanks, I'd like that."
Linn reached for a tall foam cup, poured it nearly full.  "Milk?"
"Just black."
"You're safe," Linn said quietly as he handed the man his steaming cup:  "I didn't make this batch."
The visitor stopped in mid-slurp, raised a questioning eyebrow.
"Standing joke, never mind," Linn chuckled, raising a hand.  "Now what brings you here on a cold day like this?"
"Mph, good," the fellow grunted, lowering the cup.  "I got the wire back up over toward Sand Ridge."
Linn nodded.  "That's some rough country."
"Tell me about it!  I scattered bad language over most of it gettin' power to those folks!"
"Did Bessie come out and give you a good blessing-out?"  Linn grinned.
"Blessing hell," the hardhat laughed, "she give me two loaves of bread and some chocolate chip cookies!"
"That's Bessie," Linn nodded.
"That ... isn't why I'm here."  He looked into his cup, suddenly uncertain.
"Like to set down?"  Linn offered, gesturing to the open conference room door.  "Wipe your feet and come on in."  He casually poured himself some coffee, poured in a good shot of milk, sauntered into the empty meeting room, eased down into a tin chair and set his coffee on the table.
"I, uh," the man began, setting his scarred hardhat on the table, and then his coffee, "I got a call, y'see, and ..."
He worried at the buttons on his coat until he got them unfast, then he dropped his shoulder-dampened coat over his chair before sitting down.  "Y'see, Sheriff, I don't quite know where to go with this an' you bein' Sheriff an' all, you know people, and ..."
The man's voice ground to a halt and he worried his gloves with both hands, looking off to the side as if trying to find the words to say.
"Might help if you'd start at the beginnin'," Linn suggested mildly.
"Yeah.  Oh hell," he said suddenly, thrusting out a callused hand, "name's Mick Murphy."
"Sheriff Keller.  Mick, you've got a good grip about you and your face is weathered, your coat is startin' to fray at the friction points and your hardhat tells me you're an honest workin' man.  If you have somethin' to tell me, I'm listening with both ears."
Mick nodded, bobbed his head, looked up with an almost grin.
"Well first off, nothin's gone wrong an' no complaints," he began.  "Well hell, I could complain but that don't do much good, but ..."
He shook his head.  "I get distracted easy.  Y'see, I got a call from m' boy, and ... he's a Marine, y'see, and ... well, you might know him, Pat, skinny kid, blond hair, burr haircut, scar over this ear where he run into a bobwarr fence sleddin' when he was six or seven."
Linn nodded.  "I remember him.  He used to run with the football team.  Mama would run with 'em."
Mick grinned, the quick, sincere grin of a man who'd just made a connection.
"The one!"
"So Pat's a Marine," Linn said quietly, smiling a little and nodding.  "He made a good choice."
"He said he wanted to be as good a Marine as your Mama was."
Linn whistled.  "Now there's a tall order!"
"Tell me about it!  I seen what your Mama could do in a good knock down drag out street fight!  Anyway, Pat, he said they were someplace he couldn't talk about doin' somethin' he couldn't talk about and I asked him if it involved women or booze or fast cars and he said he wasn't that lucky."
Linn laughed again, and Mick laughed with him, then sobered.
"That's why he called, y'see, there was this Navy pilot a-drivin' that helicopter he was on, and ..."
His voice fell away and he rubbed his palms together slowly, then looked up.
"Sheriff, who the hell is Valkyrie?"
"Tell me what happened," Linn said, his voice suddenly serious.
Fifteen minutes later Linn was in the saddle and pacing his Apple-horse down an alley behind the Sheriff's office, until he came to the depot; they crossed one set of tracks, then the other, went down into the hollow and hit a trail he knew of, rode up the mountain, over a saddle and over onto Maxwell property.

 

"Max," Carolyn said, peeking out from behind the curtains, "are you sure about this?"
"It's what they expect," Sarah whispered back.  "You'll be fine.  I'm the one that'll be making a spectacle of myself!"
It was the shipboard Talent Show, and so far they'd had a ventriloquist, a juggler who insisted he actually could keep seven officers' caps in the air, and almost succeeded; the ventrioloquist had a dummy that looked suspiciously like a sour-face, squinty-eyed version of their Captain, and two fellows billed as "The World's Worst Tuba Players" (they were actually quite good and gave a fine rendition of 'Dueling Tubas' on tarnished, scarred, wrinkled instruments held together with repair straps, machine screws and duct tape, two sad excuses for brass tubas that looked like they'd been run over, beat back out into shape by a drunken deep-mountain dwarf using a rock, and then used for target practice by at least a cohort of schoolboys with slingshots, using up most of the gravel on the playground for ammunition.
When they were done, Sarah strutted out on the stage in her dance-hall girl outfit.
Of course, when your audience is mostly men, especially a bunch of saltwater sailors and hard-as-nails Marines, such an appearance is greeted with whistles, cheers, catcalls and invitations of less than a pristine nature:  Sarah sashayed out into the middle of the stage, blew a kiss, struck a pose and thrust a net-gloved arm toward the piano player:  "Play it again, Sam!" she yelled, and the grinning warrant officer struck a fast, badly chorded introduction, and then launched into the classic and well-known Can-Can.
Sarah Maxwell could do many things well, and one thing she did very well, was dance:  she'd danced the Can-Can many times, and she'd modified her saloon-girl costume accordingly:  she had plenty of open-front skirt to work with, and work she did:  she kept perfect time with the music, she danced enthusiastically and well, she rolled her voluminous Can-Can skirt and threw her stockinged leg out and up in a fine show of fishnet flesh, finishing with a dramatic, cheerleader's split, both arms raised in triumph.
The piano player, truth be told, could have quit after his brisk introductory bars:  Sarah had performed on stage before, but never in her LIFE had she heard such an utterly enthusiastic applause!
She got up – quickly, gracefully, gestured for the microphone:  the cordless mike was handed her, she waved at the audience, and if anything, they got all the louder:  Sarah frowned, planted her knuckles on her hips, patted her foot:  this did not help a bit.
Finally she put two fingers to her lips, blew a high, shrill, piercing triple-note that didn't quite sound like a bosun's whistle, but was close enough that her shipmates' enthusiasm died down to where she could be heard.
"Now I hear," she declared, pacing across the stage, one gloved hand on her belt, making sure her lovely leg thrust well into view with each step, "I hear that we have a hell of a pilot on this boat!"
Two, then two more voices yelled "Valkyrie!"
She shaded her eyes, pointed:  "Did you say Valkyrie?"
The applause started up again, punctuated by whistles every bit as shrill as hers had been.
She waved them down.  "How many of you would know this Valkyrie if you saw her?"
No more than a dozen arms went up.
"Well fellas, I've brought you a treat.  I'm going to show you not just A Valkyrie, I'm going to show you THE Valkyrie!  Would you like that?"
From the absolute, chaotic roar of response, even the most jaded observer would have to count that a clear affirmative.
"All right then!"  Sarah cut a quick few steps, thrust her hip out to the side – the drummer rattled a quick rimshot, to the amusement of the assembled – "Tell me, what does a Valkyrie look like?  Is she tall?"
"Yes!"  a single voice yelled.
"Okay!"  Sarah pointed to the response.  "She's tall!  Does she have blond hair?"
A wolf-whistle, laughter, scattered applause.
"How about a horny hat, an engraved breastplate and a spear?  Wouldn't that be what Odin's daughters look like?  Well I just happen to have one!"
Sarah backed up quickly, caught her heel in the hem of her dress, went over backwards, throwing her legs in the air as the drummer gave her another rimshot:  Sarah laid with her legs up-thrust, then brought the microphone to her lips and said "I meant to do that!"
This, of course, was met with a good laugh, and she scrambled with an intentional awkwardness to her feet.
"Friends, shipmates, in-laws and outlaws, I give you the Valkyrie!"
Sarah's dramatic throw of the arm seemed to cast the spotlight to the side, and a tall, blind giant of a Nordic beauty strode out onto the stage:  blond braids draped over her shoulders and hung to her waist, she wore a conical helm with gold wings laid back along the sides, a fur trimmed silk skirt and an engraved gold breastplate and curisasse:  she strode confidently to center stage on knee-high, crisscross-wrapped sandals, turned to face the audience, raised her spear to the heavens, then drove it dramatically against the floor of the stage ... after which she swore loudly and began to jump up and down on one foot, grabbing the other knee and expressing herself vigorously and harshly in a language only two others recognized.
This, of course, was an act, and it was met with the high good humor it deserved:  Carolyn stopped as Sarah ran up to her, gripped her arm – Carolyn was exceptionally tall, and Sarah was, to put it politely, diminutive – she gestured, a come-here motion, bent over, Sarah cupped her hand as if to whisper in her ear.
The Nordic giantess nodded, picked up her dropped spear, took a great breath and spread her arms and sang a flawless C above high C:  the note rang sweet and pure and held for no more than twelve seconds, whereupon Carolyn stopped, looked at the audience and said "Dass enough, I go now, but first you needs to knowing Walkyrie."
Sarah turned and smiled as her co-pilot, in his flight suit and helmet, ran out on the stage and handed her the flight helmet:  he turned and grinned at the packed house and relieved Sarah of the microphone.
"Folks, let me introduce a pocket full of dynamite, a compass on two legs, the heart and soul of the CH53K!  The one, the only, the genuine article – fellas, here she is – our very own – VALKYRIE!"
Sarah whipped off her curled and styled wig, plopped the flight helmet on her head like a little girl wearing her Daddy's oversized hat, gave an exaggerated curtsy and ran off the stage, waving.
She was obliged to return for three curtain calls, and on the third one, they could almost hear the piano player as he played the Can-Can again.
They could almost hear, but they were too busy watching her scandalous French dance from the 1880s to pay the music much mind at all.

 

"No, y'see, Sheriff, Pat, he ..."
Mick looked down at the insulated leather gloves he was twisting in his hands.
"Pat said that Navy pilot saved their bacon.  He said she was hell on greased skids in the air and he said she shot down a fighter jet.  Can you imagine" – he looked up at the Sheriff, shaking his head slowly – "a helo?  Shooting down a jet?"
Linn's eyes were pale and steady as he studied his visitor.
"I come to say thank you, Sheriff, but I don't know who this Valkyrie is nor ..."
He looked up, his cold-reddened ears a little redder.
"Sheriff, he said that Valkyrie is a woman."

Linn assured his visitor he could find this Valkyrie's family, and he'd pass along a father's thanks for keeping his son alive and in one piece, and he told his dispatcher he'd be on portable; his mountain-bred Apple-horse knew the way and his mountain-bred Apple-horse traveled the high terrain as easily as a lowland horse would have navigated flat ground, down below, and directly the Sheriff had his hat in his hand and was rattlin' his knuckles against Gracie's back door.
Uncle was within, and Uncle was the closest thing Gracie and Sarah either one had for a father, and so it was right and proper that he tell Gracie and Uncle both what he'd just been told.

 

Linn took another long, quiet breath, there at the supper table.
His voice had been quiet as he told his family of a father's thanks, of how much it meant to the man to know his son was safeguarded by someone from back home, someone known to him only by the call sign used when airborne.
He looked at Jimmy and gave him that half-smile again.
"I hold onto those good memories, Jimmy," he said, his voice growing husky again.  "If I hung onto the others, the bad ones, I'd end up piled up in a corner, cryin' like a lost child."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

119.  IRON STALLION

 

Gracie brought her arm around in a big, showy arc, feathered the bow down onto the strings, and began to play a Strauss waltz.
The Admiral pressed a key on his panel, and a recorded Strauss waltz came from hidden, but very good, speakers.
Lieutenant Maxwell stood before the Old Man Himself, absolutely unabashed to be in the presence of, first, the Admiral, and second, not having been given a chance to change out of her can-can outfit.
The Admiral stared at a photograph of a half-dozen grinning young men, lean, suntanned, crouched in front of an attack copter:  the eyes looking into the camera were considerably younger than the eyes looking at his younger self.
"Lieutenant," the Admiral said softly, "did you know I drove an Apache?"
"No, sir," Lieutenant Maxwell admitted.
He nodded.  "I was pretty good, too."  He pressed his lips together, turned back to the young woman in the ornately curled wig.
"I like you better in curls," he admitted.
"Thank you, sir."
"Lieutenant, perhaps you'd better sit down."
"Aye, sir."
The Admiral consulted a opened folder, frowned, tapped the pages impatiently.
"I'll save us a great deal of time, Lieutenant.  First, this is not for dissemination to anyone until further notice."
"Aye, sir."
"You are hereby promoted to Captain."
"Thank you, sir."
"Have you heard of Project Iron Stallion?"
"No, sir," she admitted.
"It's classified, of course.  Some brightboy got the idea that if we take an ace helo pilot and added a heavy-lift for the Martian expedition ..."
Max was suddenly very still, her eyes were very pale.
"Go on, sir."
"They've got a craft that will handle Mars.  I'm not at liberty to discuss its propulsion.  I can tell you I was a huge fan of science fiction as a boy, and I was fascinated by the idea of mag-lev and gravity repulsors."  He raised an eyebrow.  "Can I get you something, Lieutenant?  Water, a soda, coffee?"
"Coffee would be wonderful, Admiral, thank you."
The Admiral touched another button, spoke into his console; a moment later, coffee arrived in an insulated plastic carafe, with two oversized ceramic mugs.
"Cookie knows I like my coffee," the Admiral admitted, pouring the Lieutenant's mug, leaving room for milk.  "If I have ... visitors ... usually a fancy silver service arrives.  I prefer this."  He tapped the plastic lid on the insulated carafe.  "Silver loses heat too fast and I hate cold coffee."
"Thank you, sir."
"Project Iron Stallion is of course a collaborative effort with another agency.  Again I am not at liberty to discuss which one."  He sat down, looked directly at the pretty young officer in the saloon girl outfit.  "Effective now, you are detached from duty with this ship and you will be launched via Mach courier.  You will refuel in-flight and you will touch down in Houston after dragging a sonic boom over most of the Atlantic."
"Aye, sir."  She took a tentative sip of her coffee, nodded.
"You will begin simulator work immediately upon arrival.  I recommend you pack your toothbrush and underwear and have the rest sent home.  Your family will be advised after you're launched into orbit for the slingshot to Mars."
"Aye, sir."
"Lieutenant."  The Admiral set his mug down, his tone serious.  "Your performance with your King Stallion showed you have no regard for reasonable limits, you put your craft overspeed and maneuvered in ways it was never designed for, you shot down a fighter jet which" – he raised an admonishing finger – "which has never been done with a combat helo, not shooting guns instead of rockets."
"Aye, sir."
"Your actions violated multiple orders.  Do you know how much that King Stallion cost the American taxpayer?"
"About 88 million a copy, sir."
"With the chain guns you had bolted on – which I personally approved, over the objections of people who are supposed to know what they're talking about – closer to ninety million.  We did some other work on it as well."
"Thank you, sir."
"Your big black Stallion costs over twenty thousand dollars an hour to fly and she takes a hell of a lot of maintenance and upkeep."
"Aye, sir."
"You put it at risk."
"I did, sir."
"You accomplished your mission."
"Yes, sir."
"There are two ways to approach a situation, Lieutenant, either the way you – and I – always have done, and that's kick down the door and go in with all guns blazing, or stand back and throw rocks at a distance.  Right now we need someone with that kick-in-the-door mentality."  He allowed himself a slight smile.
"I envy you, Lieutenant."
"Thank you, sir."
"I met your ... cousin, was it? – the Sheriff the one you rescued?"
"Cousin, yes, sir.  Sheriff Marnie Keller, Second Martian District."
The Admiral nodded.  "I had you assigned here when I found you were related.  I know how much of a hell raiser she is, and when I looked into your record I saw you are a hell raiser from the word go."
"I come by it honest, sir."
The Admiral almost smiled again.  "Any questions?"
"Yes, sir.  Just so I'm clear, sir, I am being assigned the Mars mission."
"You are."
"I'll be serving one colony or several?"
"Several, Lieutenant.  If this prototype works as well as we're told it does, we'll be shipping you additional helo pilots and we'll be depending on you to train them."
"Can do, sir.  Last question, if I may."
The Admiral nodded.
"Sir, why did we abandon that artillery piece back there?"
The Admiral did smile this time.
"Lieutenant, it had a breech designed to fail.  We knew it would be seized and used against us and we were right, it was, and when it was fired, it blew up and killed the gun crew.  They'll not be comfortable using battlefield pickups after that."  His expression went serious again.
"Two more things, Lieutenant, and then you'd better pack your toothbrush and change clothes.  It would not show proper respect for your new rank to launch off a carrier deck in that outfit."
"No, sir."
"First, I'm pretty damned proud of you.  You got our boys back in one piece."
"Thank you, sir."
"And second, when your cousin ... when you caught her capsule and I met her out on the flight deck, she said she's always wanted to dance with an admiral."
"I remember, sir."
He rose, extended a hand, and the Strauss waltz filled the cabin.
"I should like very much to dance with a Captain."

 

Gracie received the box, stared at the return address.
She swallowed, seized the box and spun it off the post office counter, stopped and turned:  "Thank you, Edgar," she said, her eyes big and fearful, and she turned and almost ran out the post office door.
Brindle let out a HAAAWWWW as Gracie turned the mule and headed for home, fast.
Once she was inside, once she set the box on her bed, she pulled out a hand forged knife with checkered maple handles, slid it under the tape, laid the flaps open.
She knew where to look.
If Gracie had something to say, she knew where it would be hidden, and she was right.
Gracie pulled a rolled up slip from between the layers of cardboard that had been cleverly parted, then pressed back together.
She read the quick note, clapped her hand over her mouth:  shoving the note in her apron pocket, she jumped up, ran out of her bedroom and through the kitchen, BANGED open the back door and ran back out to the barn and grabbed Brindle's saddle blanket.
She had to find the Sheriff.

 

Lieutenant Sarah Maxwell lay on her back on the contoured accelration couch.
Her thin-gloved hand gripped the thicker-padded glove of the man beside her.
She was not making the Mars trip alone; another pilot, a jet jock, selected for his expertise with the man-in-a-missile machines, lay beside her.
They each wore the same logo on their chest.
Lieutenant Maxwell wore the same white Olympic skinsuit as her cousin the Sheriff came to prefer:  like the Sheriff, her insignia was embossed over the swell of the left breast, only instead of a six-point star that said SHERIFF, hers was a Iron Cross, surrounded by the outline of a winged horse, an Eidelweiss in white on the Iron Cross.
Beneath this, her callsign.
VALKYRIE.
Her counterpart wore the identical logo on his more conventional pressure suit; beneath his Iron Cross-and-Eidelweiss and its surrounding winged horse, his read EIDELWEISS.
They reached up with their free hand and lowered their visors; the canopy cover hummed down over their dual couch, and they heard the quiet voice in their earphones counting down to the moment when they would feel the kick-in-the-pants of sudden acceleration, building on the velocity of whipping around Earth in a slingshot orbit.
"I forgot to ask you," Hans said quietly.
"What's that?"
"Will you marry me?"
Her hand tightened on his as the anesthetic took hold:  its effect was near instantaneous, and the reply was not forthcoming until Dr. John Greenlees Jr. stood over them, nodding a little as their vitals returned to normal.
He raised an eyebrow in that high, tented peak, just like his father, as Sarah turned her head and looked at Hans and gave a sleepy, "Yes."
"I wonder what that's about," Sheriff Marnie Keller murmured.
"I don't know," her husband admitted, "but it must've been important."
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

120.  THE OLD RUGGED CROSS

 

"I ain't happy with it," Uncle muttered.
"No," Gracie agreed quietly, re-reading Sarah's brief note.  "No, I am not happy either."
Uncle looked up as Gracie started chewing on her knuckle.
"Talk to the Sheriff?"
Gracie nodded, looked toward the back door as something hard rapped against the door, a shave-and-a-haircut they both recognized.
"Gracie?"  the Sheriff called.
"Come on in," she called.
Uncle looked toward the back porch and Gracie saw him shift his weight a little, his right arm moving very slightly, and she knew someone was with the Sheriff – someone Uncle didn't know.
Gracie turned and saw the Sheriff casually flip his Stetson onto its usual peg.
The man beside him wore a crew cut and a suit-and-tie.
Gracie lifted her chin and the Sheriff felt the air cool several degrees.
Uncle was no stranger to Government men; he'd dealt with them for years, running a legal small-capacity distillery, and he'd come to dislike the breed in general; those few who had themselves confused with someone important, tarred everyone in Government employ with a broad and filthy brush.
The man was brought here by the Sheriff, and so enjoyed the protection the pale-eyed lawman extended; they trusted the Sheriff, and so would hear what the man had to say.
Gracie heard a loud hissing – she'd had tinnitus, a constant, chronic ringing in the ears – since earliest childhood, and it grew loud, like a hot August field full of insects, all singing as loud as they could in the hot afternoon sun.
She didn't hear at all what the man's name was.
No, that wasn't right.
She heard his name but it did not register; she was vaguely aware that he had something to do with the space program, and that he'd come to tell her about her sister.
Gracie felt blindly for one of the high backed kitchen chairs and sat down, slowly, stiffly, as if she were suddenly very old.

 

Dr. John Greenlees shook the tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordic giant's hand.
"Herr Leutnant," he said approvingly, "you have to be one of the finest specimens of good health and clean living that I've ever seen!"
"Danke, Herr Doktor," Hans grinned.  "And Sarah?"
Dr. Greenlees chuckled.  "She's having tea with the Sheriff.  Physically she's nearly flawless, and I haven't laughed as well with a patient in a very long time."
"Do not make her angry," Hans cautioned.  "She is hell on high heels!"
"Sounds like my wife," the physician chuckled.
"I believe Sarah said they are related."
"Oh dear Lord," Dr. Greenlees groaned, and both men laughed.

 

Gracie did not fail in her duties as Matriarch and Hostess: she was gracious, polite, quick to listen; Uncle, his back stiff, sat silent, hard eyes sharp and fixed on the courteous, middle-aged man in the dark blue suit.
"Lieutenant Sarah Maxwell," the government man said, "is a very gifted rotary wing pilot."
Gracie waited, silent, for his next words; apparently he was expecting an interruption:  he looked around the table, considered the contrast between the stoic, unmoving old mountaineer, his tea and cornbread untouched, and the pleasant, relaxed Sheriff, just finishing his slab of cornbread and taking a noisy slurp of tea.
"She has the particular skills that are needed to pilot a Mars vehicle."
"Mars?"  Uncle grunted skeptically.
"Yes, sir.  She is on her way at this time."
"You couldn't get anybody else," Uncle said, dislike coloring his voice.
"We ... felt that she is the best there is."
"She is," Uncle said dryly.  "She's a Maxwell."
"Yes, sir, that's exactly why she was chosen.  You see" – he leaned forward a little, carefully not touching the table – "she has a phenomenal oxygen reserve as a result of growing up here." 
"You needed a Hillrunner," the Sheriff observed quietly.
"We did, exactly that," the government man agreed.  "That, and her absolutely amazing gift at flying a heavy lift ... she has the skills of a fighter pilot and the surgeon's touch of a helo driver."
Gracie maintained a frosty silence.
She had not made a move toward her tea, nor her cornbread.
She quietly approved of the government man's not having made a move toward his, since she hadn't – obviously he had some concept of manners.
The Sheriff was as family, as such it would not be held against him that he'd eaten his cornbread while it was still warm, drank his tea while it was hot and fragrant:  as much as he pretended to pay no attention to conversation, she knew the man was listening closely.
"We didn't feel it ... appropriate ... for your sister to simply disappear.  You deserve to know that she is alive and well and being reassigned."
"Mars," Uncle grunted again.  "Damn fool idea.  Nothin' up there worth it."
"Did she have a personal message?"  Gracie asked quietly.
The government man placed something half the size of a hubcap in the middle of the kitchen table, pressed a button.
A glowing blue field rose quickly, like a short, fat mushroom, a holographic viz-field that became a bright-blue sky with white clouds.
A huge, black helicopter banked sharply, and they heard three General Electric 7500 horsepower engines' whistling scream as background for the big rotor's hammering clatter.
A familiar face thrust up, as if she were popping up out of the hubcap:  Sarah grinned at each viewer, the image looking to each observer as if she were looking at the viewer only, and directly.
"Hi!"  she exclaimed, sounding like an exciting schoolgirl.  "I'm going to Mars!"
Uncle glared at the cheerful vision, but said nothing.
"I wish I'd had time to fill you in earlier, but this came up kind of quick.  I'm needed to fly a –"
She looked to the side, as if at someone, then looked back.
"I'm needed.  That's all I can say."  She grinned.  "This should be fun!"
Another look to the side, a nod, then she looked back at the viewer:  "Gotta go, love you!"
The image and the blue nimbus collapsed into the hubcap.
"You may keep the projector, if you wish," the goverment man offered.
Sarah looked at the Sheriff, then at Uncle, then at the government man.
"No," she said.  "We have our memories."
The government man nodded, retrieved the hubcap.
"Sheriff?"  he said, standing, and the Sheriff stood with him.
"Ms. Maxwell, Mr. Maxwell, thank you for your hospitality," the government man said crisply.
The Sheriff rose, sauntered toward the back door as the government man walked quickly out the back porch and out the back door.
"Come and see us again," Gracie said to Linn, and Linn winked, flipped the Stetson once, dropping it neatly onto his head.
Uncle waited until the Sheriff's Jeep started before picking up the cornbread.
"Thought he'd never leave," he mumbled through a quickly-bitten-off mouthful.

 

Gracie climbed the steps into their little whitewashed Church, her tread slow and tired.
Her shoulders were rounded as if from carrying an immense weight.
She set the scuffed fiddle case in a pew and opened it, picked up the curlyback fiddle and her bow, then she turned and faced the simple, handmade Altar.
"I don't want my sister going to Mars," she said frankly.  "I know how dangerous it is.  I know about bone loss during the flight and I know about ..."
Gracie's voice tapered off.
"I'm scared," she whispered.  "I'm sorry, I'm scared."
She closed her eyes, took a long breath.
She felt the Sheriff outside the back door; she heard the door open, saw it lighten inside the little whitewashed church, then darken as the door shut again.
Linn's boot heels were loud, slow, measured.
Gracie's eyes rose slowly to the big, handmade cross bolted to the back wall.
She heard the Sheriff's boot heels slow; his tread was lighter now, and she never flinched as his hand squeezed her shoulder, light, gentle, just enough to let her know he was there.
"I shouldn't be afraid," Gracie whispered through a dry, sticky throat.  "I should trust."
Gracie heard the Sheriff's breath sigh out, and then the deep indraw of breath, and the Sheriff began to sing – powerfully, confidently, with a strength and trust that was absolutely unlike what she might have been feeling.
"On a hill, far away,
"Stood an old rugged Cross ..."
Gracie's fiddle began to sing with the lean waisted lawman.
Gracie closed her eyes, feeling more than hearing her handmade fiddle sing in the empty church.
Another voice, a woman's voice, coming in on the second verse.
The Sheriff's voice was a truck, simple, uncomplicated, his notes were true, but he sang very ... plainly.
The woman's voice soared like a porcelain dove, sunlit against a cloudless Arizona sky:  it was a flawless work of art, compared to the Sheriff's, at once harmonizing and complimenting his, and easily outstripping his in beauty and control.
Gracie opened her eyes, turned, held her final note, let it fade; she lifted her bow, lowered her fiddle.
Another Sarah smiled quietly at her.
"That," Gracie said, "was gorgeous."
"Thank you."  Sarah tilted her head a little, her pale-blue eyes bespeaking her blood tie with the pale eyed Sheriff.
"Uncle said there was nothing on Mars," she said, smiling a little, shaking her head.  "How little he knows."
Gracie turned as this Sarah paced slowly toward her, moving easily in her emerald green McKenna gown and matching hat.
"We came West," she said.  "Your Maxwell blood and my pale eyed blood.  Albert and Maycel were running from a false accusation.  My family came because they had to.  There was no choice."
"There is always a choice."
"No.  No, we had to come, just as our Sarah had to go to Mars."
"She didn't have to go!"  Gracie shouted, feeling anger heat her ears: she blinked quickly, then turned and carefully placed her beloved fiddle in its case, inserted the bow, turned the leather retainers and closed the black-leather case.
"She had to go," Sarah said patiently, "and you wish you were with her."
"My place is here. There's no way I could go."
Sarah sighed.  "You really don't understand, do you?"
She reached forward quickly, seized Gracie's head, pressing her palms flat, quickly, tight against the fiddler's cheekbones, pale eyes burning with an otherworldly light –
Gracie looked out of the oval hole in the Conestoga's canvas cover.
She saw the wrinkles in gathered canvas and she smelled dust and unwashed bodies and woodsmoke, and she saw the mountains, bright in the morning sunlight, and she felt the excitement growing again behind her breastbone until it felt like she would bust open for happiness.
They were going west, and it's what she'd always wanted, it was a new start, it was a new land –
Sarah drew her hands away and Gracie blinked, suddenly weak.
"A new land, a new start," Sarah said knowingly.  "Who would not want to go?"
Gracie did not pull back as Sarah's hands raised again, pressed cool and firm against the sides of her head.
Sarah's gloved hand gripped the collective, or what felt like her old familiar collective; it was far shorter than what she was used to, shorter than the King Stallion she used to fly, but this wasn't a King Stallion.
Her feet were on pedals just as they would be in her big black King Stallion back home, but she was not governing a tail rotor.
As a matter of fact, there were no clattering rotors overhead, nor was there a trio of 7500-horsepower General Electric engines screaming power around and behind her.  
Sarah banked her boxy bird, grinning with delight as she got used to her new Iron Stallion.
It was big and it was powerful, far more powerful than her King Stallion; it was also very nearly silent.
She smiled wickedly now, her imagination providing the sound of the three big monster turbine engines spinning up to working RPM as she banked again, hard, feeling the G-forces shove her down into her seat a little more.
Behind her, under her, in the fiber-composite belly of her big black bird, she had a delivery for the Sector One colony, as much raw tonnage as two King Stallions could haul, and she was nowhere near her Iron Stallion's capacity.
Sarah twisted the collective and Iron Stallion shot straight up:  she untwisted the grip and whispered "Go, baby," and the ugly black heavy hauler drew an invisible streak across the thin Martian atmosphere.
Lieutenant Sarah Maxwell, US Navy pilot, screamed in sheer, unadulterated delight as she handled what was intended as a flying cargo truck, as if it were a needle-shaped interceptor, as if she drove a fighter jet, as if she burned a hole through the air at twice the speed of sound.
Gracie heard the scream – powerful, joyful, pure, she felt her stomach drop down a mile long elevator shaft and then she blinked and looked around.
 She and the Sheriff were alone in the little whitewashed church, or almost alone.
A single dew-wet rose glistened on her closed fiddle case, and she heard the last shivering echoes of her own throat's triumphant scream, fade in the empty church.
Linn grinned knowingly at her.
"I reckon she's enjoyin' herself, wouldn't you say, Hillrunner?"
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

121.  TO END, TO BEGIN

 

The far horizon is a magnet, the mystery that lies over the rim of the world, a draw:  the human soul years to explain the unexplainable, to understand that which cannot be understood:  each created being years to reunite with its Creator, and this deep, undeniable urge expresses by a thirst, a deep and gnawing hunger, to know more and to understand more and to discover, to discover!
From the days of English oak laid in the shipbuilder's yard, to canvas stretched under a freshening wind; the first shout of "Land ho!" and the first harsh winters, from new lands and new plants and new rivers, there is ever a drive to move on, to stretch, to reach for those shining mountains whose granite teeth gnaw at the sun as it sets in the west, and when finally, finally, the entire world is known, those restless souls look up, look out, and it begins again.
Whether it was leather-sandal feet setting foot on an unexplored island in the Aegean, whether it was a thigh-high boot leaking saltwater as the bearded, curiassed Conquistador waded ashore, whether it was a weathered hand gripping a Hawken rifle or a bewhiskered old man who reached into a California stream to grip a shining pebble that was soft enough to bite into, the urge to explore will not be denied.
Westing, it's been called; the mariners called it that, when they fought their way around the Horn; it was a great contest of man and ship against raw nature, and each Westing was a victory, a triumph.
Westing, it's been called; hopeful eyes raised to the snow capped mountains as migrants, pilgrims in their own right, walked beside the canvas-topped wagons, led the muscled oxen that drew their home on wood spoked wheels.
And it was called Westing in the very first school established on another world, a school built underground, sheltered beneath layers of geologically-stable rock, a schoolroom that was one of a carefully-planned, precisely-engineered hive:  the above-ground structures were still there, preserved, unused, reminders of the first tentative settlement, those first pioneers that crossed a great trackless gulf.
Whether that gulf was wind-spumed saltwater, whether it was an ocean of prairie grass, so unremarkable it was called "The Great American Desert," whether it was the black expanse that slept, cold and arid, between stars and planets, it was all the same:  so, too, was the heart, the soul, of those who crossed these barren gulfs.
As often happens, the first pioneers were remembered, their portraits looked down on the eager young faces in the schoolroom:  one portrait had two people, sitting close together with a little girl on their lap:  mother and daughter, with pale eyes, and the grinning husband in medical green.
The teacher was tall, almost seven feet, and pretty; she had red hair and pale eyes, and the quick quirk of an eyebrow was her trademark expression of sudden interest, just like her physician father, and not five minutes before, another very tall, slender soul, a laughing young man with pale eyes and a six point star embossed on the left breast of his white Olympic skinsuit, stopped in just to say howdy.
Like the next generation of those hardy souls who made the pioneering trip across any trackless waste, these children, these young, were the product of their new land:  they were well taller than Earthers of the same age, a consequence of the lower gravity; their chests were bigger, their lungs larger and more efficient, their blood thicker, the better to carry oxygen in the thinner atmosphere – an adaptation very much like that of those ancestors from Colorado's high country.
And back home, others prepared for the journey, leaving the crowded and the reliable and the established, and this next wave of travelers included those necessary for the survival of the colonies as a whole – but necessary on another, deeper level.
One of the travelers who settled into her acceleration couch took a long, steadying breath, smiling a little at the slight rush she got from such a deep breath at sea level:  her mountain-raised lungs were efficient, much moreso than a lowlander's, and this was one valuable characteristic that guaranteed her recruitment.
The other was her mother's curly-back fiddle, secure in the ship's hold.

We dreamers, we yearners, we incurable romantics.
Our forefathers, our ancestors strode boldly into new lands.
Hard work and determination, laughter and effort, calluses and hard muscled work built homes, railroads, cut timber, dug mines, pulled calves and stretched fence and split wood shakes for the roof, and for the good people who reached for What Could Be, there were those (as the wise man said) who wanted money without working for it, and so good men went their way armed, and established order, and enforced it.
We celebrate their memory.
It is not at all unreasonable to project those dreams from the ox-drawn wagon, to the first wobbling aircraft conquering this new frontier, the ocean of air, to those risk-taking adventurers who rode atop what was intended as a nuclear missile into Earth orbit.
It is not at all unreasonble to stretch our imagination across that bleak and empty desert and step boldly onto another planet, to set up the first fragile shelters, to explore and to learn and to employ new tools, to raise young and build schools and more secure homes, to remember those who went before, and to laugh the laughter of strong young men.
It is perfectly fitting for a fiddler to join the ranks of those who've gone before, for music expresses the inner soul, and music is beloved in any society.
It is even more fitting for this distant settlement to be known, as was a town back in Colorado, by the name we've associated with a rather interesting little town with an interesting history.
The firstborn daughter of Gracie Maxwell swung her legs off the treatment table, blinked, shook her head, looked up at a grinning, pale-eyed and very tall, very slender man wearing an old-fashioned revolver and with a six-point star emossed on his breast.
"You look like your Granddad," she blurted, surprised, and the Sheriff laughed and said "And you look like your Mama!"  
He reached out to steady her as she wobbled a little.  "Easy now, it'll take a few minutes for everything to steady up."
She reached up, gripped the man's forearms, took a couple long breaths, looked back up at him.
"You must be Linn."
"And you must be Gracie."
"You hungry?"
Gracie shook her head and closed her eyes.  "Oh, please, no," she moaned.
"That'll pass.  Here, stand up and let's walk a little.  It'll help."
"Excuse me," Gracie heard, and Linn looked up and smiled, accepted something important enough to be hand delivered.
"I believe this is yours."
Gracie waited until the nausea was passed before she opened the scuffed case and withdrew her Mama's curly-back fiddle.
Somewhere in the hand-written history of the Firelands colony, there is an entry, written with a dip quill made of sintered, polished Martian obsidian, that records the very first live music played on the Red Planet was "Turkey in the Straw," and it was played by a hillrunner named Gracie Maxwell.

And so our story closes.
We leave our pioneers, those brave souls who carry on the legacy of our own ancestors, and we step back, secure in the knowledge that this legacy is in very good hands, as a fiddler closes her eyes and brings her arm around in a big showy arc and feathers the bow down on steel strings, as schoolchildren listen, entranced, to this first live music they've ever, ever heard, as an aging physician squeezes his pale-eyed wife's hand, and overhead, somewhere between red Marian soil and the shining stars beyond, something big and blocky and very fast moving goes streaking across the sky, something with a rearing black horse painted on its side.