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572. UNPROFITABLE

It is distinctly unprofitable to trouble a quiet man.

Quiet men generally enjoy the quiet and don't like being aggravated.

The Sheriff was a quiet man, and he'd been aggravated, and he showed his displeasure in a most understandable way.

Jacob's head came up as he heard two gunshots -- muffled, but close -- The Bear Killer's head came up, as did the fur on his back:  the big mountain Mastiff did not stand as much as he levitated, with legs extending almost as an afterthought:  Jacob seized the double barrel shotgun, yanked open the door, cleared the steps in one jump, looking around:  he heard his father's angry shout, he turned, ran toward the barn.

The Bear Killer was a streak of black death, outpacing the tall boy with pale eyes and a white-knuckled grip on the Damascus barrels of his Mama's bird gun:  war and ruin sang in the big Mastiff's throat, and the war-bay of a hound intend on death and the rending of man-flesh offered to run ice through the veins of any who heard.

Jacob's blood was up and hot and did not chill; he sprinted into the barn, skidded to a stop.

His father was angrily forking smoldering straw out the door -- angrily, for his moves were normally smooth, controlled, contained:  he attacked what was apparently a small fire as if he were attacking a personal enemy, and Jacob, seeing a dead man on the floor and seeing no other threat, looked at his Pa.

His question was unspoken, as was his father's answer.

Jacob parked the shotgun, seized a shovel and went outside, smothering the forked-out flames, sliding stamped Ames steel over the fires, the smolders, suffocating them against cold, muddy earth.

 

They worked in silence, father and son; Jacob seized the dead man's ankles, dragged him outside, dropped the legs with an utter lack of ceremony.

There was no need to keep an eye on him.

There was a hole just above the lip, just below the nose; the back of the head was somewhat the worse for the .44's exit: blood, and other matter, left a broad streak as the carcass was dragged outside.

Jacob used the shovel to scrape the floor down to the bare, looked around; smoke still hazed the barn's interior as he looked at his long tall Pa and asked quietly, "Sir, are you hurt?"

Linn's knuckles were white as he stopped, as he set the pitch fork's tines carefully, almost gently against the floor boards -- Jacob did not miss the gentleness of his father's move, and from this he deduced the Grand Old Man was quietly, deeply, to his soul, boiling mad, even yet.

"No, Jacob," Linn said quietly, his words carefully shaped, confirming Jacob's suspicion that his pale eyed Pa was more than madder'n hell.

"What happened, sir?"

Linn's bottom jaw thrust out slowly, he took a long breath.

The Bear Killer padded outside, sniffed at the bloodied carcass and cast his ballot upon the situation as he usually did:  Linn looked at the watering dog, looked at his lean waisted son and said, "Jacob, that fellow tried to kill me."

Jacob raised an eyebrow.

"He was over here" -- Linn thrust his chin in the indicated direction -- "he was behind some straw piled where I hadn't piled it.  He had his pistol stuck through the straw and when he fired, he missed me and fired the straw."  Linn's already tight hand tightened further and Jacob heard two of his Pa's knuckles crack for the strength of his grip on the work-smoothed pitchfork handle.

"He missed," Linn continued quietly, "and I did not."

Jacob nodded slowly.  "No, sir," he agreed.

"I had to get that smoldery straw out before the place went up," Linn said, his voice hoarsening a little as his anger started to wane:  "no way in hell did I want to lose this barn!"

"No, sir."

"Jacob."
"Yes, sir."

"Mount up and ride in to the Irish Brigade.  Tell Sean I want him to come out and take a look at our two wells and see if they're good enough for his steam machine.  It takes water to put out a fire and I want to make sure we have enough."

"Yes, sir."

Linn waited until Jacob whistled up his stallion, until he was saddled up, until he and The Bear Killer headed into town -- Jacob would fetch back the dead wagon, Linn knew, and that would give him time to go through the dead man's particulars and see if he could figure out who this Bush Whacker was.

Linn had put enough men in prison, killed enough who didn't want to be taken, that he had enemies: this had been an amateurish assassination attempt, or an extremely professional attempt:  a rifle or a shotgun at this range would have been fatal, but shoving a pistol through a pile of straw and firing?

Linn considered for a long moment.

Of all the professional killers he'd known, of all the hired murderers he'd heard of, or read about, none to his recollection preferred a shortgun for assassination, and none fired through a pile of straw in a barn.

No, a professional would have waited just inside, with a shotgun, and given him two barrels in the back of the coat.

Linn stood unmoving for a very long time, still and silent, a quiet man in a quiet barn,  a man who simply wished to be left alone to enjoy the moment's peace.

It does not profit to trouble the quiet man.

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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573. I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU

Past Sheriff Willamina Keller's hat brim lowered by a fraction.

Her eyes were as pale as the knuckles gripping the Suburban's steering wheel and she felt an old joy, a dark pleasure in knowing she was about to wade into enemy territory.

There was a freedom to being a deputy -- as Sheriff, she was an administrator; as Sheriff, she directed the troops, as Sheriff she was Big Boss Figurehead -- but as a deputy, she was the arm, the hand, and if need be, the hard-knuckled fist of justice.

Past Sheriff Willamina Keller picked up the heavy microphone, pressed the key:  "Six Papa, enroute," hung it back in its clip, came down smoothly, heavily on the go pedal, and every last cubic inch of big block injected Chevrolet power came to life under the hood.

Willamina was going to war, and it felt good.

 

Jelly pulled the expensive bottles from the shelf, lowered the screen in front of the mirror -- it was not the big, ornate mirror in the Silver Jewel, because the Spring Inn was not as fancy a place as the Jewel -- it was a concrete block beer joint, where hard men came to drink and play pool, to cuss and laugh and pat the waitress's fanny and get slapped, generally in that order.

It was a place where men sometimes settled differences with knuckles, and that was an accepted activity here, unless things got out of hand, which they were about to.

Jelly grabbed a tray, used it as a shield, intercepted a thrown beer mug: the heavy glass container splashed against the tray, knocking it back almost a foot, the mug hit the floor, rolled, but did not break -- for a miracle, Jelly thought, those things are not cheap! -- and as a chair smashed against a tabletop, Jelly groaned, for chairs were not cheap either.

He heard tires squalling outside, his ear had heard such things before, but not since that old Navajo deputy retired:  big engine, broad slide into the parking lot, he'd come wading in with that war club of his --

The door swung open, and with it, cold air rolling through, as plain a warning as any.

A woman stood in the doorway.

She was very evidently a woman, for all that she wore the standard deputy's uniform.

Jelly's stomach shrank a little as he saw those cold and pale eyes under the hat brim and his shrivelling gut told him things just got really, really interesting, and in the back of his mind,his piggy bank began to whimper as well.

A fist shot her way -- the barfight had become general -- the woman caught the fist coming in -- her moves were quick, economical, efficient: a grab, a twist, the man hit the floor, hard, a set of knees drove into his kidneys, used his carcass as a springboard: she was on her feet, kicked another just north of the belt buckle and introduced his face to her uprising knee: she seized a beer bottle coming in, brought her knee up again, left the third attacker wallowing on the floor, in too much pain to so much as whimper.

"ENOUGH!"

The whiplash of the pale eyed woman's voice, following the rolling wave of cold outside air, was enough to shake attention from combatives:  Willamina reached without looking, pulled a pool cue from startled fingers, and looked at the center of the conflagration.

A bar fight is often like a boil.

It has a core, and if you extract the core, the situation will heal up.

Willamina caressed the pool cue, smiling just a little, and Jelly's blood cooled a few degrees to see that smile.

He's seen it before, and men came out in second place every last time he'd seen it.

An unpleasant looking fellow with an unpleasant expression squared off with the woman in the deputy's uniform.

"Play you a game," she said, smiling just a little.

He roared, swung the heavy end of the cue.

Willamina's moves, it was testified later, were those of a dancer: she swung her cue like a blademaster handles a fencing foil, at least for the first second and a half: she got in close and she cut her badger loose on the man.

Past Sheriff Willamina Keller just honestly knocked the dog stuffing out of a man that would make two of her: a compact woman who could dance like a feather on a breeze, turned into a fast moving, tan colored jackhammer, all elbows, boot heels and heelstrikes: three fast strokes and the cue fell from the man's hand, three strikes and he had two broken knuckles and a fractured elbow, and then the woman proceeded to get mean with him.

No man there that night ever forgot the sight of a slender built, pale eyed woman, a woman they were used to seeing in a tailored suit dress and heels, a woman they were used to seeing wear a pleasant expression, a woman they were used to hearing speaking in a pleasant and gently modulated voice -- now this same woman, in the standard deputy's uniform and well polished Wellington boots, moving faster than most could follow, reduced a hard-muscled, hard-drinking barfighter with a speed, an efficiency, a ruthlessness, that left every man there honestly shocked and staring.

The door opened again and another pale eyed lawman came in, a tall and lean fellow wearing a six point star that said simply, SHERIFF: the man came in, shotgun in hand, and silence came in with him, rolling through the shocked-silent beer joint like the draft of cold air that came in with him.

He looked around, meeting every eye: he nodded, looked over at Jelly, who looked at the deputy, who was a-straddle of the proned-out prisoner like she was riding a saddlehorse.

The metallic chatter of a set of cuffs being applied was suddenly loud in the stillness.

Willamina stood.

She still wore her uniform Stetson.

The color was up in her cheeks, she was breathing deeply, and she had a look of absolutely vicious satisfaction on her face as she rose and turned to her firstborn son.

"Not bad for an old woman, eh?" she challenged loudly.  "I've done your light work.  You get him out of here." 

She stepped up to the bar, slapped a sheaf of bills on the countertop.

"There's for the damage.  I'll take it out of that fellow's hide later."

Heads turned like radar dishes following an enemy fighter as it departed over the horizon:  no eye beheld anything but the backside of a pale eyed female deputy as she paced silently into the outer darkness.

Linn looked around, walked over to the cuffed prisoner:  he seized the man by the back of the coat, his hand slapping hard down between his shoulder blades:  he twisted up a good handful of material, hoisted him one handed off the floor, dragged him toward the front door, the toes of the man's steel toed work boots chattering a little as he was dragged.

 

Later that night, in the quiet of the Sheriff's office, Linn and his Mama sat together in the conference room, talking in quiet voices.

Willamina had a satisfied look about her -- "she looks like the calico that ate the parakeet," their dispatcher later described it -- and Linn's expression was concerned.

"Mama," he said, "you are a full deputy and you have full authority as such."

Willamina looked at him, her eyes quiet.  "Go on."

"Mama, I don't want you hurt."

Willamina smiled.  "Shoe's on the other foot now, is it?"

"Come again?"
Willamina leaned forward, laid gentle fingertips on the back of her son's hand.

"All these years and you, the child of my womb ... I never once held you back."

Linn nodded.  "No, Mama, you never did."

"Then don't worry about me.  I did all right."

Linn nodded.  "This business of me being Sheriff is taking some getting used to."

"You'll get used ot it, and you're already doing a fine job of it.  Doughnut?"

Linn chuckled.  "Got any duck tape?  I might as well tape it to my belly as eat it, that's where it's going anyway!"

"Yeah, but what a way to go."  Willamina bit into a cream filled stick dougnut, hummed with pleasure, leaned forward so the cascade of powdered sugar fell on the tabletop and not her uniform.

"You've got the video."

"I've got the video."

"I think you'll find I didn't do bad for an old woman."

"Old woman my foot," Linn muttered.  "Mama, you could die --"

"I know I could die," Willamina interrupted, her eyes intense.  "I have pulmonary hypertension.  I am at risk for right heart failure, clots in the lungs, sudden onset pneumothorax.  I could fall over dead at any moment.  A punch to the chest could kill me.  I know this."  Her voice was quiet, intense, as were her eyes.  

"I learned something from all the people I've known," she continued.  "I can either shrink and shrivel and whimper that I'm afraid of dying, or I can walk up to the Reaper and backhand his bony face and dare him to do his worst."  Her voice was suddenly intense, passionate.  "I intend to live.  Now if there's a problem with that, say so right now.  I maintain multiple commissions and I will be welcomed anywhere I go!"

Linn stared for several long moments into his Mama's fierce, glaring eyes -- they were not marble-cold, they were ... they were more like rawhide tough.

"Mama," Linn sighed, shaking his head, "when you die, if they run an autopsy, they will find you've got a spine laminated from stainless steel and whalebone."

"I know," Willmina said, thrusting a chocolate-iced sprinkle doughnut neatly between her son's teeth.

The dispatcher's ear twitched a little and she smiled.

She caught the sound of laughter from the conference room.

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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574. SHE'S GONE

Nancy Hake closed her eyes, took a long breath, laid a hand on her swollen belly.

"Soon," she whispered.  "Soon, my son."

She opened her eyes and saw gagues, vectors, flight paths; she saw curtains of radiation sleeting through empty space, dust particles moving at unbelievable velocities -- what few hit her shields, surrendered their energies to the Confederate technology, adding to its strength: generations of enhanced minds improved on alien technologies, until her ship was proof against almost anything.

Almost.

Nancy's hands had eyes of their own; she was relaxed, in an absolutely comfortable seat, surrounded by her own field -- an energy shell in which she saw with her ship's eyes, felt and heard and tasted with her ship's sensors: her body was on Mars, safe underground in a room off the main hangar, but her mind ... her mind strode through space with Tarquin's boots, connected with her robot ship.

Nancy was big and pregnant, and she was not going to risk her child's exposure to anything she didn't have to, and sitting here, in a silent control room, while her ship screamed through vast and darkened distances -- this, she felt, was the best way to use her skills while safeguarding her son.

Valkyrie Flight was flanked out from the robot ship, sleek arrows like arrowheads, angled back, echelon left, echelon right: they maintained a precise spacing as a matter of pride, of professionalism.

Nancy saw an anomaly ahead, saw it with sensors unknown back on Earth, sensors that could see well ahead:  what she saw looked like a curved funnel -- and it looked like trouble.

"Valkyrie Flight," she said quietly, knowing her voice would travel well faster than lightspeed, would come out quietly, confidently in her flightmates' earphones, "anomaly ahead.  Weapons authorized, lock and load."

She felt the depleted uranium dart roll into battery in her Gauss cannon, she felt as much as heard capacitors sing power: their resonance was inaudible to the human ear, but Nancy honestly believed she heard them, just as she'd heard the defibrillator sing as it charged up, as Dr. Greenlees knelt beside her dying mother, as he barked "CLEAR!" and pressed greased paddles to the woman's bared chest.

The Ambassador laid a hand on Nancy's shoulder, knelt beside her, peered ahead at the anomaly.

"Hard about," he said quietly, tightening his grip on her shoulder.  "Get away from that thing, maximum thrust!"

Nancy's ship turned like a ballerina under her hands, reactors screaming against her momentum.

"Valkyrie flight, hard about," Nancy chanted into her boom microphone.  "Emergency thrust, get the hell away from that anomaly!"

Five ships' exhausts flared brightly against multiple dimensions:  each of the Valkyries felt themselves shoved hard into their acceleration couches, felt themselves slow, then accelerate: their speed was well beyond the tolerance limits of the human body, but thanks to Confederate technology, they felt no more than one and a half gravities: the conflicting stresses were converted to thrust, and five Interceptors spread their trajectories and streaked away from this unknown phenomenon.

"It's a trap and it might get them yet," the Ambassador said quietly:  Nancy relayed this to her sister Valkyries, her big and pregnant body singing with her ship's acceleration:  she felt the thrust, she felt the reactors behind her, she saw the instruments swinging closer to red line.

"How can we kill it?" she grated, her hands tight on the controls.

"It will have a power source at its rear," the Ambassador said, "about twenty meters square."

"Can my weapons kill it?"

"Hit it on a flat surface and you can blow it to hell."

"Valkyrie Flight, come about and prepare to attack.  There is a power source at the funnel's rear, twenty meters diameter. Hit on a flat surface and you can take it out. Stand by further."

Five ships sent the roger: the Ambassador considered the Valkyries' spread, reached for Nancy's master panel, keyed in a sequence, another.

"Valkyrie flight," he said, "the anomaly is an interdimensional funnel. It automatically turns toward any approaching ship and will try to pull it in.  Attack with equidistant spacing, come at it simultaneously, fire at the first opportunity. The closer you get, the more likely it will turn and suck you into another universe."

Five rogers flashed across the comm screen.

Valkyrie One, the robot ship, hauled about on a broad arc, the legacy of Nancy's fighter pilot father's training:  she could as well have swapped ends, blasted her exhaust against her momentum, and driven straight for the enemy, but she turnred, banked, kicked the rudder and came in on a big circle.

Valkyrie Flight screamed defiance into the silent void, catching up with their leader, running hard to form up into formation.

Valkyie One had a black stallion painted on its nose, a stallion rearing with windmilling hooves: astride the stallion, a woman with floating, pale blond braids, a winged helm on her head: she wore steel plated greaves over knee high boots, she carried a war-lance, star-bright at its tip.

Valkyrie Five had the portrait of her pilot, a compact young woman in a wind-whipped denim skirt and cowboy boots, both hands extended, with an old fashioned Colt revolver in each hand, driving fire and lead toward an unseen enemy: beneath, the word GUNFIGHTER.

Valkyries Two, Three and Four had similar nose art:  all bore the portraits of the pilot, and all were in various acts of less than gentle aggression:  one with a double barrel shotgun, one screaming with apparent joy as she straddled a bronze Napoleon smoothbore, as she touched match to the touch-hole behind her, as the cannon's fire thundered forth from its bore in bright-yellow sulfurous flame: beneath her portrait, in aggressive, sharp-edged letters, HELLRIDER.

One had its pilot in flowing, wind-blown silks, leaned forward with a blade in each hand, hard-swung steel drawing blue fires in their shining arcs

Valkyrie Four's very lifelike portrait danced on her chosen designation.

Blademistress!

 

Sheriff Marnie Keller stood outside the airlock, grinning like a delighted child.

She skipped across the sand-gritted walkway, for all the world like a delighted schoolgirl: if her hair were longer, she might have it in braids, bouncing against her shoulder blades:  she wore a denim skirt and her trademark red cowboy boots and an expression of absolute delight.

She stopped, she drew: her uncle Will's .357 came up, fired, fired again:  steel plates swung with the impact of hard-cast, fast-moving handloads:  she swung, engaged two targets, ducked behind a drum, reloaded: she rose, drove a half dozen rounds at a like number of plates, and had the sixth one hit before the first one finished falling.

Sheriff Marnie Keller rolled the cylinder out, smacked the ejector rod, drew her second speedloader and dumped in a fresh cylinder full, holstered:  she policed up her brass -- she knew the replicators could manufacture as much fresh brass as she could ever want -- but she liked the discipline of reloading her own rounds.

Rolling her own was a familiar act, one in which she delighted when she still lived with her pale eyed Daddy, back in Colorado.

She stood, took a long breath, looked around.

The Martian surface was just as bleak as it had always been.

Marnie laid a hand on what looked like a smooth plastic fanny pack: she had no idea how this little thing enveloped her with what amounted to an invisible skinsuit, but it did -- which is how she could wear a flannel shirt and a skirt out on the Martian surface, and not die instantly of cold and of catastrophic depressurization.

She smiled, turned, pressed the airlock open control, stepped inside:  as the pressure normalized, she said to the empty chamber, "That was FUN!"

 

Valkyrie Flight came at the anomaly from five different directions at once.

They maintained position, each equidistant from the other, converging on the anomaly's backside:  as the Ambassador warned, it turned -- but it swung uncertainly --

"Target the rear," Nancy said quietly.

Five capacitor banks shimmered with contained enrgies, five hardened, hyper-dense darts, silver, shining in the dim starlight, waited patiently for the command-- 

The anomaly turned, surged --

Five fingers tightened on red plastic triggers --

"MELANIE GET OUT OF THERE!" Nancy shouted.  "VALKYRIES, CONTINUOUS FIRE!"

Nancy felt her flightmate turn her ship, felt ten nuclear hells blasting from the exhaust, felt her thrusting hard against multiple realities as her ship tried to escape the funnel, turning toward her, rushing toward her, opening like a great black featureless mouth --

What I wouldn't give for a rear facing gun, Melanie thought, just before she was mashed back into her acceleration couch.

Four silver lances drove at an unvelievable velocity toward something black, cubical, at the rear of the featureless funnel --

Four sides were hit simultaneously --

The detonation occurred half a second later --

 

Nancy ground her teeth, breathing deeply, willing herself to control.

"Valkyrie Five, report," she grated.

The Ambassador looked sharply at her, laid a hand on her maternal belly, his eyes widening with alarm.

"Valkyrie Five, report," Nancy gasped.

She closed her eyes against her sudden discomfiture, opened them just in time to see the anomaly detonate, just in time to see Valkyrie Five wasn't there anymore.

"Valkyrie Lead, this is Two," she heard.  "The Gunfighter is gone."

Nancy threw her head back, stripped the comm from her ears, screamed like a damned soul, then laid both hands on her belly and doubled over.

The Ambassador toggled the red switch:  "Medical emergency, launch bay.  Dr. Greenlees to launch bay."

 

Melanie felt herself drawn out thin like a thread, felt herself snap back like a stretched rubber band.

She felt her ship, solid and real, beneath her.

It took almost a full minute for her vision to clear, for her to realize she was alive, that her hands still worked.

"Valkyrie One, this is Valkyrie Five."

Silence.

"Valkyrie, this is Gunfighter."

She looked ahead, through the augmented-vision field, clenched her jaw.

Ahead of her, a planet:  automatically she ran the calculations, found orbit, coasted into the gravity well, through the keyhole --

I'm moving slow, she thought.  With that much thrust I should have been near lightspeed.

A voice in her earphones.

A man's voice.

"Unidentified ship entering orbit, state intentions."

Melanie blinked, surprised.

Of all her training, of all her instruction, she hadn't been told what to do if she suddenly found herself in orbit around and unknown planet.

"This is Valkyrie Five," she said, thumb heavy on the transmit button.  "I just came through a funnel trap of some kind.  Who is this?"

There was a long silence, then:  "You came through a trap?"

"Wasn't my idea," she admitted.  "We blew it to hell but I was in too deep to get out."

"Who," the voice asked cautiously, "is we?"

"Valkyrie Flight.  We're out of Mars."

"Mars?" 

"Fourth planet from the sun."

"Stand by one."

Melanie looked at her ammunition supply.

She had three darts left.

I am a Valkyrie, she thought.

A Valkyrie will not be taken.

She felt the vibration, the hard klunk as the depleted uranium dart rolled into battery.

Melanie took a long breath, felt her soul riding a sudden wave of fresh adrenaline like it was standing on a surfboard.

She charged the cannon.

If you're not peaceful, she thought, I can make you that way.

Her proximity alarm went off and she looked to her right.

A ship -- not terribly different from hers -- was coming abreast.

The pilot was a young man, not bad looking, regarding her with frank interest.

"Valkyrie Five," she heard, "are you the Gunfighter?"

Melanie turned on her cockpit lights so the other pilot could see her, and she saw his quick grin as she laughed.

"That's me," she said.  "I was trained by the best!"

"Who was your trainer?" he asked.

"Sheriff Marnie Keller."

"Gunfighter, stand by one."  The other pilot's cockpit lighting went out.

Melanie knew she could accelerate, and fast:  she considered her orbital position, she called up the position of orbital bodies, saw a big one ahead, artificial, some kind of orbital structure ... quickly, she calculated how to miss it if she had to get the hell out of Dodge --

"Gunfighter, this is Defense Command," another, deeper-toned voice said.  "Could you tell me more about your instructor, please."
It was not a request.

"Sheriff Marnie Keller.  Daughter of Sheriff Linn Keller of Firelands County, Colorado. She has pale eyes and she wears a white Olympic skinsuit."

She caught a flash to her right:  cockpit lights came back on, and the young man in the stationkeeping ship had a grin on his face as broad as two Texas townships.

"The Sheriff is known to us," the deep-toned voice said.  "You are welcome here.  What assistance do you require?"

Melanie took a long breath, feeling something unwind in her gut.

"I'm kind of hungry," she admitted, "and long range rations aren't that great."

 

The Ambassador looked up at Hans.

"She's alive," the Ambassador declared, "and she's not hurt!"

"How long to get her home?"

The Ambassador consulted his comm panel.

"We can have her back here tonight," he said, "but she's being treated as an Ambassadorial guest. I'd suggest we let protocol play itself out."

"I don't follow."

"The Sheriff went with our Ambassador's body to our homeworld, and she was received as a hero because of her actions when the scoutship was damaged in-flight."

"I remember," Hans nodded.

"Valkyrie Five -- Gunfighter -- came out near one of our planets.  It used to belong to the aliens that kidnapped my ancestors.  It's ours now and a good thing, otherwise she'd have been incinerated by now."

Hans nodded, lifted his chin as the annunciator chimed.

He leaned over, toggled a switch.

"Hake here, go ahead."

Hans Hake turnred a little pale and his knuckles whitened on the corners of the control panel:  he looked at the Ambassador, and then he sat down, slowly, carefully, and a grin split his stubble-cheeked face.

The squeaking cry of a newborn infant came from the speaker; there was something inaudible, then he hear his daughter's weak, "Let me see my baby," and then Dr Greenlees looked out the screen at the new grandfather.

"It's a boy."

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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575  SOMEONE I'D LIKE TO TALK TO

Sarah Lynne McKenna rode very properly.

Sarah Lynne McKenna wore a black riding dress, with a divided skirt (she tried sidesaddle once, and only once) -- she wore a shining silk, black-ribboned top hat with a rear veil, her gloves were black, her riding crop was black: the only touch of color she wore was a brooch at her throat, a cameo, with her face exactly reproduced in profile, framed with four shining, faceted, brilliant-green emeralds.

Her saddle, her tack, her truly huge, featherfoot mare were all black, all shining like Sarah's top hat, and coursing happily beside her, an equally huge, black-furred, ivory-fanged mountain Mastiff.

Sarah drew up as thunder boomed through the mountains, echoing from cliff to mountainside to scree-covered slope and back:  Sarah drew up, frowning, looking around.

Behind and above her, a lean, sun-browned Kentucky mountaineer watched as well:  he was supposed to be about his chores, but he was out with a drawing pad and his pencils, following his delight, taking what he saw and committing it to good rag paper.

He frowned, looking up, looking around, and for the same reason Sarah did.

It was a clear day: a few clouds, very few, there should not be thunder --

Something silver streaked through the thin mountain atmosphere, drew a gleaming circle a mile across, slowed:  Sarah could see it was metallic, needle shaped, with something dark and bulbous at its nose, something dark and menacing under it --

Panels snapped open, jointed metallic plates lowered --

Snowflake shied, dancing, throwing her head:  The Bear Killer ran around in front of Sarah, hair bristling up the length of his spine and across his shoulders:  Sarah soothed her mare with voice and with her hands, watching as whatever this was slowed, as it lowered, settling its square plates down on the ground:  it was silent, utterly silent, it stood up on legs long enough she could ride under it.

Something round and black apparently ran its length.

The diameter was impressive: it looked like a built in cannon of some sort, its bore as big across as ... dear Lord, it's as big across as my lower leg! Sarah thought:  fear was dismissed, her overwhelming curiosity bidding her come closer.

Snowflake reluctantly walked up to the silent, shining needle.

As long as a locomotive, Sarah thought -- no, locomotive and tender, and a freight car, round in cross section, as big across as a freight car is long --

What in God's creation is this?

A click, a hum:  near its ... front? ... something hinged, something swung down.

Sarah turned Snowflake, frowning as she studied whatever this was that opened like a bird opening its metallic lower jaw.

She saw what looked like a human figure, covered with something like a metallic blanket, something with a silver bulb for a head, something smooth, seamlesss --

Sarah blinked, surprised, her hands caressing Snowflake's muscled neck:  she looked up at something painted on its -- on the front part --

Sarah laughed.

It looked like a girl, snarling with pleasure, thrusting a pair of Colt's Peacemakers out in front of her, driving two shots at some unseen enemy:  this had to be someone's idea of a joke, women did not, did not! wear such short skirts -- it was blue material, too coarse for an underskirt, her legs showed, well shaped and very lifelike ... 

Nice legs, she thought, the pistols are well executed ... 

I like the red boots ...

... Gunfighter?

"Something funny?" an oddly accented voice asked, and Sarah looked down, surprised.

The smooth metallic blanket was gone, and a rather attractive young woman sat up from what looked like a form-fitting lounge of some sort:  she wore black boots, laced up the front, she wore a light-blue garment that seemed to merge trousers with a blouse, but all of the same material:  there were decorative patches of some kind on her shoulders, and one over the left breast.

Sarah regarded this newcomer as she stood, twisted, squatted twice.

"Dear God," she groaned, "it feels good to stretch!"

She rose, tilted her head, regarded Sarah rather frankly, looked down at the still-bristling Bear Killer.

"I get swallowed by a Shipkiller, I'm feted on the Confederate homeworld, and now I'm going to be eaten by a young bear?"

Sarah whispered a command:  Snowflake knelt, and Sarah stepped delicately out of the saddle.

The woman in the light-blue, one-piece suit stopped, stared, her mouth dropping open.

"You!" she whispered, the color fading from her face:  Sarah stepped closer, lifted her chin, regarded the visitor cooly.

"It is I," she said dryly.

"No -- no -- you don't understand --"

Sarah waited while the stranger sorted out her thoughts.

"You don't understand.  You're dead!"

Sarah raised an eyebrow.  "With respect," she said coldly, "I must disagree."

Melanie's hands went to her mouth and she shook her head.

"I am going to kill that idiot," she muttered, then lowered her hands, looked beseechingly at Sarah.

"What year is this?"

Sarah's mouth opened and she frowned a little.

"1895," she said.  "July seventh."

The stranger raised her bent wrist to her mouth, chanted a series of commands:  Sarah saw she wore a lumpy bracelet of some kind -- Sarah tilted her head, stepped closer, saw the lump was rectangular, smooth faced, saw there were moving figures of some kind inside it --

"Recalculate time differential. Mark local as seven July 1895."

A pause, a beep.

"Ready for reprogram."

"Damn you reject from a cell phone factory," Melanie swore, "get me home this time!"

"Engage when ready."

Melanie looked at Sarah.  "You're her," she breathed, shook her head.  "I have to get home."

"Where is home?"

Melanie considered.  "I can't tell you.  This is the past.  The longer I stay here, the more likely I am to damage the time stream and alter the future.  I have to leave before I destroy everything."

"So you're from here, from my future."

"Yours -- yes," Melanie said, hesitating.

"Listen," she said stepping close to the pale eyed woman in the elaborate black riding-costume, "it is more important than you can possibly know that I was never here, you never saw me and you never saw my ship!  Promise me you'll forget I was ever here!"

Sarah's eyebrows rose.  "I can't do that."

"Then keep me secret!" Melanie hissed.  "Look, I have to leave.  Live long and prosper and all that."

Sarah raised a black-gloved hand.

"My name," she said, "is Sarah Lynne McKenna.  Might I know yours?"

The pilot thrust her feet into recesses of some kind, leaned back, closed her eyes.

The silver blanket flowed over her again-- Sarah saw her hands close around a stick of some kind on her right, spread her fingers over a colorful panel with several buttons that rose under her left.

Just before something dark, shining and bulbous lowered over her face, she looked at Sarah.

"I'm Valkyrie Five," she said.  "Valkyrie Flight, callsign Gunfighter.  My name is Melanie and I'm from Mars."

Something hummed inside the needleship:  the silver bird closed its lower jaw, and Sarah wondered absently if it was swallowing the young woman in the light blue one piece suit.

There was a click, and Sarah heard, "You may wish to pull back. I don't want to fry you with takeoff."

Sarah had no idea what she meant, but the meaning was clear:  she kissed at The Bear Killer, swung her leg over Snowflake's saddle.

The silver bird jaw lowered again, the silver blanket split, the shining black head-bubble swung up, the woman stepped out again, a rectangular plate in her hand.

"Come here," she said.  "You deserve to know this much at least."

Sarah leaned down a little as the woman held up what looked like a glass rectangle the size of a schoolbook.

"This is Valkyrie One," she said.  "Notice the nose art."

"The flying horse?"

"You are the inspiration.  Here's Valkyrie Two.  Here's Three.  Here's Four.  I'm Five."

Sarah blinked, surprised:  the plate the woman held up at arm's length, for her inspection, showed remarkably clear pictures -- like a magic lantern show, in a pane of glass.

The woman lowered the plate.  "You are the inspiration," she said, looked at the plate, wiping her finger across it a few times, tapping it a few more.

She held it up again.

"Here."

She saw Sarah's eyes widen with surprise.

"This is our Sheriff.  She's on Mars.  Our colony is called Firelands, it's named for a town in Colorado.  Unless I'm absolutely wrong, you are the one we read about in school."

Sarah watched as the bird swallowed the silver-cocooned woman a second time, she and The Bear Killer trotted away by a couple hundred yards, turned:  they watched the silver needle rise, saw its feet pull back into its belly --

It disappeared.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller smiled as she held a little girl on her lap.

The child was five years old, all big eyes and giggle and red cowboy boots.

Willamina had a book open, turned the pages slowly:  the child paid close attention to her Gammaw's words.

"This," she said, tapping a photograph, "is my Very Great Grandmother Sarah Lynne McKenna.  She's fourteen in this picture."

Five year old Marnie Keller regarded the photograph solemnly, turned to look at her Gammaw.

"She's vewwy pwetty," she said, and Willamina smiled, hugged her granddaughter again.

"Yes she is, sweets."

"She looks like you, Gammaw."

Willamina was quiet for several long moments, then she finally said, "She looks exactly like me, sweets."

Marnie hesitated, then touched another image on the page hesitantly.  "Bear Killer?" she asked, and in front of the stove, a curly-black canine raised his head at the sound of his name.

"Yes, Sweets.  That is The Bear Killer."

Marnie twisted in her Gammaw's lap, turned to look again.

"Gammaw," she said, "howcome that's The Bear Killer? He's vew-wy vew-wy oldt!"

Willamina laughed, kissed the top of her granddaughter's head.

"The mountains hold secrets," she whispered, "and someday I'll tell you some of them."

 

Sheriff Marnie Keller watched as the Interceptor eased down into its launch cradle.

Technicians rolled their platforms up to the ship as it was lowered to level, as hatches opened:  there were systems to check, the magazine to reload:  Marnie watched as the pilot's hatch lowered.

It always reminded her of a great steel bird lowering its jaw to disgorge its living brain.

She watched as the empathic coccoon withdrew, as the helmet swung up, as three light-blue-suited Valkyries ran across the bay, seized the fifth, jumped up and down like a clutch of excited schoolgirls:  Marnie smiled at the confusion of voices, for some things never change:  only the female has the ability to hold multiple conversations, while talking, all at the same time, and to understand every word of every simultaneous line of conversation.

The happy, noisy, bouncing pilots had their arms around each other, flowing in an excited clutch over to Hans:  arms dropped and Melanie looked at their squadron boss, seized him around the middle like a little girl seizing her Daddy after not seeing him for a very long time.

Hans bent and hugged her back.

"I'm glad you're all right," he said, his voice husky.

Melanie turned, saw Marnie on the other side of the glass.

She looked up at Hans.

"Debrief," she said, her voice suddenly serious.  "Bring the Sheriff."

 

Nancy looked with gentle and marveling eyes at the little boy-baby dining at the Topless Restaurant.

She drew a blanket up over him, and herself, looked up.

"Enter," she said, and the airtight hatch indicator went from red to green, the ugly green flat-panel door hissed open.

Melanie stepped in, eyes big:  her hands clapped to her mouth and she squeaked, "Really?"

"Really," Nancy said tiredly.  "I was so scared when you disappeared."

"You were scared?"  Melanie laughed.  "Babies aren't the only ones that need diapers!"

 

Five-year-old Marnie Keller was asleep on her Gammaw's lap.

Willamina turned one more page in the book.

This page she'd never shown anyone.

It was drawn by one of the Daine boys, one of those remarkably talented mountaineers, someone who'd seen something he never talked about.

Willamina looked at the picture:  it was a remarkably detailed drawing of a Martian interceptor, long, sleek, its landing gear down:  so well drawn was this picture, that Willamina recognized the location: another page, and several smaller drawings, arranged in a circle, and in its center, a young woman in a one piece flight suit, patches at the left breast and right shoulder:  the long dead artist perfectly captured the drape of Sarah's top hat's back veil, of her skirt: he'd rendered The Bear Killer's suspicious bristle and snarl, and he'd had a good enough look at both women's faces to reproduce them with nearly photographic accuracy.

Willamina put the book away, later, after Marnie returned home, and after her death, another set of pale eyes regarded these drawings:  Sheriff Linn Keller considered the pencil rendering of a Martian interceptor, landed in a particular pasture with which he was more than familiar.

He stared for several minutes at the pilot, then he touched a computer key, another:  his big sis Marnie stood in a cavernous hangar, with a silver Interceptor behind her and a half dozen pilots in light blue coveralls: all young women, all laughing, looking more like a cheerleading squad than warriors.

Linn looked at the pencil drawing, reached for a magnifying glass, considered the nose art faithfully reproduced on the drawing, looked at his screen.

He nodded. 
"Gunfighter," he said aloud.  "Now there's someone I'd like to talk to."

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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576. THE MISTER OF THE HOUSEHOLD

Sheriff Linn Keller leaned back, rubbed his eyes.

He's been writing letters, communicating with a half dozen silver mine owners: some he sent money, some had sent him money; thus far, his investments were paying off, or at least most of them were -- mining is a gamble, only instead of pasteboards, or a spinning roulette wheel, it was a bit slower, carved out of living earth with sweat and muscle and sometimes blood.

He'd had to visit two mine owners, over the years, he'd had to have an understanding with them, just like he had that understanding with Dirty Sam about buying the Silver Jewel.

He'd stabbed two knives into a tabletop, dropped a bag of coin between them:  he opened Dirty Sam's cell door and told him he was buying the Silver Jewel, where is, as is, for that sack of coin, and if Sam didn't like it, why, they could each take up a knife and settle it once and for all.

The crooked mine owners weren't quite as cowardly, nor as bad smelling, as old Sam had been: one, when confronted with the two sets of books he'd been keeping, folded like a bad poker hand:  the other was not as accommodating, and Linn was obliged to swing an ax handle fast and knock the hideout gun from the man's grip.

It hurt the pale eyed lawman's conscience not one little bit that he broke one bone and two knuckles in the mine owner's hand in the process.

Esther's hands rested on her husband's shoulders.

He sat at his desk in a shocking state of undress:  he wore his trousers and boots, and he wore his shirt, but coat and vest were cast aside, hung neatly over the back of a chair: to appear in public wearing but a shirt, was to appear in public in one's underwear:  it was only because he did not expect to be interrupted, that he allowed himself such a sinful luxury.

Esther's hands were not an interruption.

Linn leaned back and purred a little, or rather he produced a coarse rumble:  Esther's fingers were strong, skilled, and she worked the stiffness from her husband's neck and shoulders.

"How are the accounts?" Esther asked quietly.

"They look good," Linn said.  "Ever since I had an understanding with the Excelsior mine, word got around and nobody's tried to high-grade me."

He leaned back, looked at a rifle on the wall, and Esther felt him smile.

She knew the story that went with the rifle -- Linn never spoke of it but when he was relaxed, when his guard was down:  his father built him that rifle, and gave it him when he came into manhood: it was of curly wood and inlaid silver, with the finest flint lock that his Pa could trade for.

It was a rifle of small caliber, a pea rifle they called it, but back East -- with all the large game shot out and gone -- a small rifle was just fine, and Linn took many a groundhog and other small critters for the pot with that rifle.  

Esther felt her husband take a long, slow breath, sigh it out silently.

"You spoil me," he murmured, bringing an arm across his breast and laying a callused hand gently on his wife's cool knuckles.

"I do try," Esther murmured, bending down to kiss him under the earlobe:  she whispered, "You spoil me too," and her breath puffed the fine hairs along the outer curve of his ear.

"When I married you," Linn chuckled, "I as much as looked your Pappy in the eye and said I would take care of and I would provide for, your, little, girl" -- he placed a hand dramatically on his breast, dropped his voice as near to an octave as he could manage -- which brought a delighted little laugh from his Carolina bride.

"My father," she whispered, running her arms around her husband and crossing them over his chest, bending to lay her cheek on top of her husband's head, "would be very pleased with the manner in which you provide for his little girl!"

"I made mention of that, you know."

"You made mention?"

"Mm-hmm."  Linn turned, lifted his face:  their lips met, and conversation was stayed for several long moments:  when they came up for air, Linn swung the swivel chair around, took his wife above the hips, pulled her down on his lap.

"A young man admitted to me he was sweet on a girl."

"Anyone we know?"

"He's from over Carbon way."

"I see."

"He didn't say who the girl is, but I told him that no matter how old a girl gets, no matter that she is married, a mother, a matron, she will always, always be Daddy's Little Girl."

Husband and wife held one another, one seated in a chair, the other on his lap: conversation waned again, after which Linn ran an arm under his wife's thighs.

He stood; her arms were around her neck, and she gave him a knowing look through lowered eyelashes.

"Mrs. Keller," he said quietly, "I have designs on you."

"Mr. Keller," Esther replied, just as quietly, just before her mouth found his again, "I should certainly hope so."

 

The maid looked up, smiled:  when the Mister's tread was heavy and measured on the staircase, that meant he was carrying his wife like a new bride for their bedchamber.

She'd gotten Angela abed in good time; the wee child was well asleep, and the maid knew that, on the morrow, the Mrs. would come downstairs, flushed and smiling and very nearly purring, the way only a contented and satisfied woman will do.

The maid sighed, wistfully, whispered a prayer to the Virgin that she might be so lucky to find a husband half as good as the Mister of their household.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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577. "DADDY, WHY IS THERE GRAVY IN YOUR EAR?"

Angela Keller was Daddy's Little Girl, and she knew it.

Her favorite place in all the world, thus far in her six years of life, was her Daddy's lap:  it was not at all rare for Esther or the maid to come into Linn's study, to find the long tall lawman asleep in his rocking chair, his arms around the little girl cuddled up against his chest, equally asleep: sometimes a gentle hand on his shoulder, a whisper in his ear, sufficed to wake the man; Angela would be carried upstairs to her bed, her Daddy kissing her forehead once she was laid down: other times, a quilt would be draped carefully over both sleepers, and Linn would wake in his own good time, with his little girl content and asleep atop him.

Angela delighted in everything about her Daddy.

Sometimes she would take his big hand between both her little hands and she would study them closely, as if seeking a great and universal truth in its lines, in its wrinkles, in its calluses: sometimes she reached up to carefully, gently stroke his iron-grey muts-tash, marveling at how her Daddy's muts-tash curled better than anyone else's: on this one evening, when Linn retired to his study, Angela went happily pattering in behind him, climbed up on his lap, turned and hugged her Daddy, and then sniffed: curious, she sniffed again, and Linn patiently endured a little girl's curious exploration, until finally she found the source of a familiar odor.

Angela drew back, frowned with the serious face of a puzzled little girl.

"Daddy," she said, "why is there gravy in your ear?"

Linn laughed and regarded his curious little girl, her bright-blue eyes and finger-curled blond hair, all ruffles and frills and ribbons, and he said quite honestly, "Daisy smacked me with a wooden spoon."

 

The Irish Brigade, to be honest, was not feeling any pain.

One of their number was a new father: like any new father, he was hailed by his fellows as if he alone were responsible for the child's existence, gestation and presentation: Mr. Baxter was busy filling mugs and shots, for there was much celebratory hosting of liquid happiness, and even the pale eyed Sheriff was laughing with delight and drinking deeply with his fellows.

Grief, sorrow and sudden death were too common in these men's lives: when there was cause to celebrate, why, celebrate they did, unabashedly and unashamedly.

The Bear Killer's tongue flicked out, caressed the back of Daisy's hand as she lowered a cracked plate of biscuits and gravy: it was a big plate, it was well filled, it was used only for this one duty: Daisy had a deep affection for the sinner's-heart-black Mountain Mastiff, and she whispered "You're welcome" as he lowered his muzzle and happily devoured a torn open, gravy slathered biscuit, groaning a little as he did, almost the sound of a happy puppy -- never mind it had been some long time since his puppyhood: no, one could not refer to a bear killing canine, who filled the entire space under the square-topped table in Daisy's kitchen, as a puppy.

Men were laughing without, singing, their words were unintelligible, but it was evident to Daisy's experienced ear that there was a celebration.

Her quick ear, her wife's ear, pulled a little as she recognized her husband's voice:  raised, yes, and perhaps in anger: another voice, familiar, and Daisy frowned as she stirred a fresh batch of gravy: her head came up, she set the pan on the warming-shelf above the stove, rapped the wooden spoon twice against its rim, marched out into the hallway.

If her husband was angry, Daisy was angry, and at the moment, her temper was rather short.

Sheriff Linn Keller was squared off against the big Irish fire chief.

"AND ANOTHER THING!" he declared, poking a stiff finger in to Sean's chest (with the net effect of poking a brick wall) "THAT WIFE OF YOURS IS AN ABSOLUTE BEAUTY!"

Sean drove his stiff finger into the Sheriff's necktie and roared in reply "SHE'S THE FAIREST FLOWER E'ER TO TREAD THE EMERALD ISLE!"

Daisy shoved in between the two:  "ARE YOU TWO SOTS FIGHTIN' OVER ME THEN?" she demanded.  "It's no' bad enough I'm wife t' yer bed an' mither t' yer children, ye've been draggin' me secrets through th' common slop trough wi' yer discussion!  Men! -- EEK!" -- her shout rose to a surprised squeak, cut off as Sean snatched his wife up, big Irish-red hands spread wide under her arms, hoisting her well off the floor, planting his mouth on hers with the passion of a man truly in love with his wife, with his inhibitions loosed and cast to the wind thanks to the volume of liquid celebration sloshing around behind his belt buckle.

Daisy twisted in protest, kicking: her arm swung, and the Sheriff flinched back, raising a hand to his gravy-smeared face: she'd hit him square across the ear with the narrow edge of a wooden spoon, and she hadn't him him gently -- he'd not be surprised to find she drew blood -- Sean came up for air and Daisy beat at him with her fists, the wooden spoon spinning through the air, landing in the German Irishman's beer mug:   he set the mug on the bar, seized a fresh one and staggered happilly over to the piano, where two of his fellows and the piano player were loudly, happily and less than harmoniously singing the virtues of the dance hall girls, a tasteless, somewhat obscene and rather catchy tune that extolled the virtues of mythical ladies of undress and their assets, along with other anatomical structures.

The Bear Killer, untroubled by the confusion without, continued his single minded pursuit of biscuits and gravy: while Sean threw his wife in the air, caught her over his arm and swatted her bottom, while Daisy's protesting kick caught the Sheriff in the shoulder, while the pale eyed lawman made a staggering retreat, red-shirted Irishmen raised their voices in loud and happy chorus:

Linn's last memory of the place, before the doors closed behind him and the boardwalk assumed a distinct list to starboard, was something about "And they saw her in her gar-terrrs," at which point a strong and friendly hand closed about his upper arm:  Linn looked up into his old and dear friend's face and said "Jackson Cooper, I believe I am drunk," and Jackson Cooper said, "Linn Keller, I believe you are," and the two made their way down the three steps -- it was more like Jackson Cooper picked Linn up, and Linn's feet moved as if he were descending the stairs, more out of habit than anything else -- it wasn't until Linn drank three fast tin cups of cold well water, not until he stirred another with his finger to dissolve that packet of bitters he carried for such moments, not until he'd bent over and heaved up the happiness he'd imbibed -- more water, more bitters, more self punishment -- not until he'd purged himself thusly three times did he straighten, did he look at Jackson Cooper, did he ask, "How big of a Jack Mule's backside did I make of myself?"

"Less than anyone else there," Jackson Cooper rumbled.

Linn belched, frowned, drank again.

"Think you can make it home?"

Linn whistled; his stallion came pacing up to him.

"Don't have to," Linn grunted.  "Rey knows the way home."

 

Linn rode a longer route than usual to get home, letting the fumes clear from his head: he was almost sober when he crossed his own threshold: thanks to divesting himself of the imbibed poisons, he was able to eat a good meal, and Esther -- bless her dutiful soul -- gave him a knowing look but said nothing, and when Linn finished, and rose, Esther raised a finger, pinning Angela most effectively in her seat.

Esther waited until Linn opened the door to his study: he left it open the width of two fingers.

Only then did Esther lower her finger, look very directly at little Angela, and nod, and it was shortly thereafter that little Angela cuddled up with her big strong Daddy and asked him why he had gravy in his ear.

 

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578. I'LL LET YOU KNOW

 

The broken cane clattered loudly off the wall where it had been thrown.

Retired Sheriff Willamina Keller glared at it -- silently, coldly, powerfully: was anyone there to see it, one would expect the telescoping aluminum, padded-dogleg-handled cane to melt into a hissing, steaming puddle of silver-shining aluminum.

It didn't.

Willamina turned her glare  to the heavy bag.

Dust hung in the air of the stone-walled basement of her solid-built house.

Willamina's lower jaw slid out, her eyes narrowed: she hobbled out of the room in an obvious ill temper; several minutes later, she came hobbling back, her irregular gait punctuated by the distinct thump of a cane, driven into the hand laid, stone flagged floor beside her good foot with the vigor of someone whose kindness was long since used up and gone.

Willamina leaned on the turned-walnut riot baton, breathing deeply, then brought it up in a two-hand grip.

"Damn you," she hissed from between clenched teeth, and then she turned her badger loose on the heavy bag.

Willamina's attack was fast, brutal, vicious and delivered at full power:  she intended with all of her pale eyed soul to absolutely, utterly, completely, KILL this heavy bag -- not because it was a heavy bag, but because she was projecting every last bit of her frustration, her anger, her resentment, everything she'd kept hidden, everything she'd kept bottled, everything she'd kept contained.

Willamina's technique was a combination of riot baton training, and bayonet training:  the US military no longer mounted a bayonet on their battle rifles -- her Uncle Pete spoke with contempt of "that damned Made-by-Mattel mouse gun" that replaced God's honest wooden stocked rifles worthy of the name -- he'd used his, in Korea, during human wave attacks that very nearly broke their lines, using the whole rifle as a weapon: once, and once only, had he told Willamina how he'd used both ends of that military issued, wooden stocked rifle to kill as many of the enemy as he possibly could, and it wasn't until they'd broken the human wave, not until he was standing on carcasses three deep to fight the shadowed enemy, not until an eerie stillness gave momentary respite to the slaughter, that he realized he'd taken an enemy bayonet through his side and a round across his ribs.

Only then did he stop and allow fresh troops to relieve his position.

He'd received a Purple Heart for that action, and he should have gotten more, but he never complained about it: he said every man there was fighting to keep his foxhole buddy alive, and every man there should have gotten medals enough that night to sink them and drown them if they fell in the river.

Willamina stopped, stepped back, breathing deep, her face damp, her hair damp: she was stripped down to a T-shirt and jeans, she wore the walking boot on one leg and a lace up work boot on her good foot, she was warmed from exertion and steamed in the still, cool air.

The heavy bag leaked sawdust from several baton-sized holes, where Willamina had honestly punched through the double layer of sawdust-filled, chain-suspended, sleeping bag covers: as she watched, a tear started, ripped slowly from one hole to another, finally dropping the lower two-thirds of the heavy bag to the floor in a splash of spilled sawdust, connected to the upper half by a single irregular ribbon of torn canvas.

Willamina stomped across the floor, stopped, glared at the silent figure standing, arms crossed, watching her with amusement.

"Feel better now?"  Linn asked quietly.

Willamina leaned on her turned-walnut riot baton, still breathing deeply.

"Yes," she finally said.  "Yes, I do."

Linn pulled out a pocket watch, pressed the stem, flipped the cover open.

Willamina saw his quiet smile and knew he was looking at his wife's portrait, rendered in the inside of the watch's spring loaded, outside-engraved cover.

"You've got time for a shower before your cardiac ultrasound. I've arranged a driver for you."

"You're all heart," Willamina snapped, then stopped:  she looked down, her hand tightened around the end of the baton, and she took a long breath.

"I'm sorry."

She looked up at her son, her eyes not as hard as they'd been.

"You didn't deserve that."

Linn stepped into his mother, ran his arms around her, hugged.

"No," he agreed, "but part of my job is being a lightning rod for my ladies."  She felt him take a deep breath, too, felt him let it out:  his arms loosened, he looked down at her, smiled.

"Mama, you recall all the times I was at war with my automatic pilot -- when I was getting used to swimming in a new ocean of testosterone?  You bore up most patiently with me while I got used to a new normal.  How can I do any less with you?"

Willamina laid the side of her head against her son's chest, listened to his slow, steady heartbeat.

"I don't deserve you," she groaned.

"No," he agreed, "you deserve a knight in shining armor with an unlimited supply of coffee, hot chocolate and half-naked bodybuilders to bear your throne on a gilded litter."  He laughed a little, hugged her again.  "If I'm a lightning rod for you, that is a son's rightful duty."

Mother and son walked upstairs, into the silent house, and its crowded memories.

"Shelly's worried," Linn said as Willamina hesitated at the foot of the stairs.  "She wants to know your test results five minutes before you're given the ultrasound."

Willamina laughed, set her uninjured hind hoof up on the first step.

"I'll let you know."

 

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579. SPARE ME YOUR PHILOSOPHY!

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller was not an overly large woman.

Sheriff Willamina Keller was, however, a woman with a rather large reputation.

Sheriff Willamina Keller had torn into and torn down men big enough to make her look like the Tooth Fairy.

Sheriff Willamina Keller, bloodied, bruised, had charged back into a general brawl she'd waded in with intent to shut it down, and when she went back in, she wasn't the one that came flying out.

It was noted with some surprise, then, that when an enraged woman screamed in her face -- their noses about an inch apart -- Willamina's response was to put her hands gently on either side of the purpled, neck-bulged screamer's face, and speak to her in a patient and motherly tone.

Perhaps it's because she was beak to beak with her daughter in law.

Perhaps it's because her granddaughter was watching with pale and judgemental eyes.

Perhaps it's because it was in the middle of the firehouse, and not only Marnie, but the entire Irish Brigade was watching.

Willamina hobbled into the firehouse, dogleg cane in one hand and a walking boot on the opposite leg.

The Irish Brigade was engaged in something -- Willamina didn't know quite what, but she felt the need was there, so she said "Fellas?"

Nobody paid her any attention.

Willamina cleared her throat, raised her voice a little.

"Guys?  Could I have your ... attention ..."

Her voice trailed off as she realized nobody was paying attention to a polite and gentle voice.

Sheriff Willamina Keller was nothing if not effective, and to become effective, she'd made a study of human nature, and that study prompted her next words.

She took a good deep breath, lifted her chin and sharpened her voice, shouted loud enough to echo in the brick interior of the firehouse:  

"HEY, STUD!"

EVERY man stopped, EVERY man turned, EVERY man smiled, and EVERY man said "Yeeesss?"

Willamina laughed.  "Fellas," she declared, "I've got news!"

Chief Fitzgerald raised his voice:  "YOU HEARD THE SHERIFF!" he commanded, "COFFEE AND WHAT'S THERE THAT'S EDIBLE?"

The Brigade abandoned their project -- a mower engine was disassembled on a tarp spread over a table -- hands were wiped, then washed under hot water with dish soap to cut the grease, Willamina laughed and hobbled forward, lifted her chin to Shelly and her father.

The Irish Brigade coalesced around the kitchen table instead of around a torn down motor that wouldn't run when it should:  coffee was poured, good natured insults traded, a plate of light rolls landed at one end of the table, a second plate at the other, each with a saucer of butter and a knife: everyone was ready to be seated, as soon as the ladies were.

Trouble was, the ladies weren't seating themselves.

Shelly was bent over a little, listening closely to Willamina's words: the Irish Brigade hushed, and the quiet voiced conversation was suddenly loud in the silent firehouse's interior.

"My results are back," Willamina said, "and I wanted you to know. Nothing outstanding was found. Age appropriate changes, my ejection fraction is high normal, there's dilation of the aortic arch but this appears congenital and not acquired. Stable for the past five years."

Shelly's face lost its color.

"I thought you were dying," she said, her voice hissing a little as if her throat were suddenly tight.

"I am," Willamina admitted.  "So are you.  Nobody gets out alive.  Everyone dies."

Shelly's face went red, then purple: for whatever reason, Willamina's words hit her crossways:  she shoved her face in her mother in law's face and screamed, "SPARE ME YOUR DAMNED MARINE CORPS PHILOSOPHY! YOU'RE THE ONLY MOTHER I'VE GOT LEFT AND I DON'T WANT YOU DYING ON ME!"

If the Brigade thought they were quiet before, the shocked silence that dropped over the assembled was as extinguishing of conversation as any water soaked quilt.

Willamina reached up, laid her hands gently on Shelly's cheeks; her words were gentle, her face was that of a patient and understanding mother.

"Shelly," Willamina said softly, "I believe that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

Shelly's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open as she realized -- first, what she'd said -- and second, how she'd said it -- and perhaps in that moment, she was wondering why Willamina was not politely handing her, her own ripped-from-her-neck, head.

The two women fell into one another, embraced; Willamina's aluminum cane, forgotten, fell over, slapped loudly against the floor

Fitz broke the spell, broke the tension in his usual wise-guy way.

"If the Mutual Admiration Society is all done," he declared, "there's rolls here that need eatin' up and we ain't going to wait on the two of you!"

Willamina laughed, released Shelly and yelled "Hey Fitz! Pass me a roll!"
Chief Charles Fitzgerald did just that.

He passed Willamina a roll.

Airmail.

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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580. HORSEBACK

 

Two pale eyed, lean waisted lawmen rode slowly along the coach road.

"Back East," Linn said quietly, "these roads were laid out so far as possible along the back bone of a ridge."

Jacob listened to his father's quiet observation.

When the Grand Old Man started to talk -- especially with no preceding impetus -- it meant either something was on his mind, or he was working toward a point he wanted to illustrate.

"When flood time came every year, roads along the ridge top did not flood out."

Jacob nodded a little.

His Apple-horse was not as smooth gaited as his Pa's Paso cross, but Apple wasn't bad; Jacob had ridden much worse -- one of the worst, choppiest gaits was that little ill tempered pony Bonnie's second husband bought for Sarah.  It was a disagreeable little beast, prone to bite, kick and try to stomp on a man's foot, and Jacob was but a boy when he threw a leg over that ill-mannered escapee from a glue factory; he was happy to turn it back into the corral, he punched it hard in the jaw when it almost got him with those stout yellow teeth, and he finally stripped saddle and saddle blanket from the nasty beast, swung the saddle up as a shield, blocking a kick: Jacob backed to the gate, still carrying the saddle, and Sarah pulled him through the opening, pulled the gate shut, latched it after him.

He hung the little saddle back in the barn, turned to Sarah, who was viewing him with quiet amusement.

"Little Sis," he said, "you were right about that pony!" -- at which point Sarah smacked him on the shoulder and demanded, "Who are you callin' little sis, little brother?"

Each one planted their knuckles on their respective waist, each leaned close in toward the other, each gave the other a truly champion grade snarl, until finally they both cracked at the same moment, and ended up laughing, bent over with their hands on their knees, their heads almost touching.

Jacob smiled as he rode, remembering the moment: he came back to the here-and-now as his father continued, "Not much here but high ground."

"Yes, sir," Jacob replied quietly.

"How is Annette taking Esther's death?"

Jacob hesitated.

His Pa was hard to read sometimes.

Jacob knew his pale eyed Pa could not play poker to save his sorry backside, but he still had a most excellent poker face:  losing his wife just plainly tore the man up, ripped the heart from his breast and cast it into a dark and bottomless gulf:  Linn isolated himself, seeing no one for three days after burying his wife:  on the third day he took a hot bath before breakfast, with his repeated apologies to the hired girl for putting her to extra work just for him:  he scrubbed his hide almost viciously -- "I scoured off all the old and some of the new," he admitted later -- he stropped his razor, shaved carefully, put on clean clothes and came to breakfast as if nothing had happened.

Asking how Annette was taking Esther's death was the first time he'd said anything related to his green eyed bride's demise.

Jacob knew the man was only just back from Sopris Mountain, back from mourning at his nece Duzy's fresh grave:  her death, so soon after Esther's, hit the man hard.

Hell, it hit Jacob hard!

Jacob turned and looked at his father's lean-jawed profile.

"She is taking it pretty hard, sir," Jacob admitted.

"I understand her family in Frisco is dead now."

"They are, sir."

"No aunts, uncles, in-laws, outlaws, grandparents?"

"No, sir.  Either dead or might as well be."

Linn grunted.

"Mother was ... she said Mother was the last Mama she had left."

"She knew her grandparents, then."
"She did, sir."

Linn drew up; Jacob's Apple-horse, keeping pace with the golden palomino, did likewise.

"Treat her kindly, Jacob," Linn said softly.  "Women are tougher than men can ever imagine, but they are so easily wounded."

"Yes, sir."

Linn's pale eyes stared into the far horizon.

"Red sun this morning," he said thoughtfully.  "Rain a-comin', maybe snow."

"Snow, I would reckon, sir."

"Did you see the sunrise, Jacob?"

"I did, sir."

"Don't ever fail to appreciate that, Jacob."

"No, sir."

"I remember sunrise, the morning after a battle ..."

Linn's voice trailed off; he was silent for nearly a full minute, then he looked down at his horse's neck, blinked.

"Reckon we'd ought to go back."

"Yes, sir."

"Jacob."
"Yes, sir?"

"I would speak with your wife."

Jacob nodded slowly, considering the formal manner in which his father referred to Annette.

Not as Annette.

"Your wife."

Jacob considered this might be an older man, formallly recognizing his son's maturity and recognizing his son's having come into full manhood -- older men, he knew, sometimes did this, as much as anything, to remind themselves that their son was grown, and a man in his own right.

Sometimes a father will remember his son too often as the child he used to be, Jacob remembered Linn saying, once, some time ago.

Perhaps his Pa was swimming through his own grief by reminding himself of such things.

"Annette was absolutely crushed with Mother's death," Jacob admitted.

Linn made no reply.

The two turned, pointed their horses' noses back towards Firelands.

They continued at the same easy pace, little more than a walk.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Jacob?"

"Did your Paso mare foal yet?"

"Not yet, Jacob."
Jacob smiled a little; Linn saw the slight tightening at the corner of his son's near eye.

"Sir, I recall when you brought that Paso colt into town and set it a-clatter down the boardwalk."

It was Linn's turn to smile:  he'd done it just to be annoying, for the gait of the Paso is rapid, and the cold made such a wonderfully annoying clatter on the boardwalk's hollow, resonant surface: the colt seemed delighted with the noise it was making, and was more than happy to accept crackers hastily purchased from the Mercantile, in exchange for a quick and noisy ambulation down the boardwalk and back.

"Full moon and snow a-comin'," Jacob chuckled.  "Every sheep, every mare and every mother will be in labor now!"

Linn's eyes tightened a little at the corners, and there was just the shade of a smile tightening the man's face as he said softly, "Jacob, I reckon you are right!"

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581.  BE NICE TO THE WAITRESS

 

Something long, slender and metallic described a shining, bronze-colored arc in the Silver Jewel's shocked silence.

Its intended recipient barely had time to register that something was happening when the aluminum cane SLAMMED across the table in front of him, splitting his plate and spattering him with green bean juice and diced onion fragments.

He opened his mouth in anger and found something shooting towards his throat -- it was pale, it was spider shaped and it was moving fast -- and a grown man of better than six feet was yanked out of his seat and hauled off the floor by a diminutive woman with burning-pale eyes and a set jaw.

Retired Sheriff Willamina Keller yanked him out, left handed:  she hoisted him off the ground, slowly, steadily, until she held him at arm's length overhead:  her arm trembled but her gaze did not, and when she finally spoke, her voice was as quiet, and as deadlly, as the whisper of a diamondback's belly scales on bare rock.

"Let me know," she said, "when you get tired."

Whether it was the shock that a mere woman had done this -- whether it was the fact that the Silver Jewel's restaurant and its attached bar was deathly silent -- whether it was the fact that every last eyeball was burning into the man from all sides -- or perhaps it's because he was strangling -- he managed to gasp something, and Willamina lowered him.

Slowly.

The moment his toes touched the floor, she released his shirt collar, where she'd seized and twisted and gotten a death grip on him:  she snatched up her cane, leaned on it and glared coldly at him as he gasped and choked some wind back into himself.

He started to gasp something, tried to utter some threat, which was not a wise thing to do.

Willamina had practiced a variety of methods of un-gently pacifying thy neighbor, and at this moment, her chosen method was neither Marine Corps combatives, Shotokan karate, nor any of the several varieties with which she was more than conversant.

No, she chose a simple haymaker to the gut.

A set of hard hands slammed down on his shoulders, pulled:  a knee in the small of his back brought him off balance and he was twisted facefirst into the floor, both arms twisted painfully up behind him.

Willamina carefully worked her way around, until she was in front of the proned-out prisoner.

She did a one-legged squat, her bad leg stuck awkwardly out to the side, both hands gripping the dog leg handle of her telescoping aluminum cripple stick.

"In case it's escaped your attention," she said quietly, "the Sheriff himself is on top of you, and he does not look very happy."

She smiled, and it was not a kindly smile.

The waitress was shrunk back against the wall, eyes the size of saucers.

Not sixty seconds ago, her eyes were filling with tears.

Her hands were over her mouth as she watched the result of one man's ill-mannered unpleasantness, as she and everyone else witnessed the bitter harvest of harsh words.

"You," Willamina said quietly, "just tore into a girl who's trying to earn enough money to go to school. She did nothing to offend you. I heard you give your order and she brought exactly what you said you wanted. The cook did her best to fix you a good meal, and she fixed exactly what you told the waitress. When she brought your meal you started to raise hell and then you ripped into her like she was Public Enemy Number One. You claimed she brought the wrong meal."

Strong hands held both his thumbs together; the Sheriff's free hand seized the hair of his head, yanked his sagging head back.

"I own this place. I don't have to serve you. As a matter of fact, I'm going to throw you out, and if you ever set foot in here again, I will place you under arrest for criminal trespass, and if you have anything more than a slip of paper on you I will make it weapon specification with an automatic prison term.  Do you understand me?"

"I'll get you --" the man gasped, his voice seguing quickly from threats to a wordless scream of pain as the Sheriff applied jointlock pressure to both his wrists.

"Get him out of here," Willamina snarled, doing a one-legged squat to rise to a standing position: Linn frogmarched the swearing ex-customer to the front door, where the hotel clerk politely held it open and stood back.

Willamina got to the door just in time to see the man pick himself up off the pavement.

He rolled over, got up, reached for his car door, hesitated:  he thrust out an accusing finger.

"DAMN YOU I'LL SHOOT THIS PLACE UP!" he yelled, yanking open the sedan's driver's door:  he reached in, came back out --

Two gunshots sounded as one: inside the Silver Jewel, nearly everone flinched, ducked, clapped their hands to pained, ringing ears.

A dead man collapsed slowly, a pistol falling to the ground beside him.

Linn looked left, Willamina looked right: they looked back at the dead man, Linn backed up a half-step, looked to his right, over his Mama, as Willamina looked around her son's flat belly to her left.

Satisfied, they both holstered.

"I reckon I'd best get hold of Uncle Will," Linn said quietly.

Willamina considered for a moment.  "Yes," she agreed, "and have him bring in the State Police to investigate. We don't want any accusations of family interference."

"Yes, ma'am."  Linn looked over, looked down at his pale eyed Mama, leaning heavily on her cane.

"You shot one handed?"

"I did."

"Left handed?"

Willamina raised her dogleg cane, pale eyes tightening a little at the corners.  "I sure as hell didn't shoot him with this."

Linn's eyes held a quiet smile as well:  Willamina recognized it, and appreciated that it did not spread to the rest of his face, for she knew they were being watched, and quite probably they were on camera.

Linn descended the steps, turned the dead man over, held a stiff finger over one bullet hole, then the other, looked up at his Mama, who nodded:  two fingers found the corpse's Adam's apple, dropped to the side, found the carotid groove, pressed:   Willamina saw the Sheriff's lips move soundlessly and knew he was counting silently, the way she'd taught him.

Dirthy second one, dirty second two, dirty second three ...

Ten seconds later, Linn looked up, shook his head.

"Tell Uncle Will we'll need the coroner."

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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582. STAGE PERFORMANCE

Jacob's reserve was rather sorely tested.

The theater was not the best in town, but far from the worst: even in Denver's finest theater, there were occasionally bawdy acts, generally at an hour that accommodated the less prosperous clientele.

Not unprofitable, you understand, just not as profitable as the swells and the dandies, the society folk and people of business and society.

Jacob sat among men well dressed and men less well dressed; some smoked, some talked, laughed, shared jests and comments, at least until the curtains parted and the dancers skipped out onto the stage, all pastels and flowing skirts and long, stockinged legs.

The dancers were actually quite good, Jacob thought; he had an eye for such things -- most men there had an eye more for for low-cut bodices and short hemlines, than for the dancers' skills -- even an absolutely unskilled dancer could get work, and did, simply by displaying enough flesh.

Jacob's reserve took its first shocking hit when he saw the best dancer of the bunch wore a mask -- a glittery, feathered mask, one that hid enough of her face to conceal her identity, while showing carmined lips and a smile:  the dancer was of a familiar height, and Jacob's stomach tightened as he realized he was quite probably looking at his sister.

He knew Sarah disguised herself as necessary to gull information from unsuspecting men; he'd known her to costume as a saloon girl, he'd gathered she'd performed on stage with such shameless souls as these, but here -- now -- was the first time he'd ever seen his pale eyed sister dancing.

On stage.

Throwing her hemlines to the left and to the right, spinning round about, throwing her skirts high over her back and showing -- horrors! -- her unmentionables!

Jacob was like his father, in that he had a pretty good poker face.

He managed to maintain an impassive expression as the dancers spun and whirled, as they high-kicked and smiled, and finally, as the music came to a happy crescendo, the ladies struck dramatic poses, with their arms uplifted: the curtains swung closed, Jacob turned and his reserve, tested to its very limits, failed him entirely.

Sarah stood beside him, as dignified and as queenly as any society matron.

She laughed as his eyes widened, as he looked from Sarah to the stage and back, as he raised an uncertain hand, thrust bladed fingers at her middle, then to the still-swinging, heavy burgundy curtains:  he lowered his hand, stared openly at his sister, allowing her to take his arm in a firm grip and steer him out of the row and into the aisle.

Sarah smiled coolly, as possessive of his arm as any jealous wife; they looked like any well dressed, married couple, enjoying an afternoon at the theatre: somehow Jacob was not surprised that Sarah had a hack waiting for them, with his Appaloosa tethered behind.

Sarah rapped the ceiling of the hack with gloved knuckles, stuck her head out the window:  "Oh James," she called, "to the hotel, please?" and Jacob heard the obsequious "Yes ma'am," and they started clattering into the city traffic.

Sarah smiled and nodded, acknowledging the greetings she received:  Jacob wondered silently if she knew everyone here, then he remembered how he'd wondered this same thing about their pale eyed Pa, and that perhaps she'd inherited that skill from him as well as her short temper and her pale eyes.

They were shown to a table; Sarah murmured her thanks, and as they were seated, she looked at Jacob and said, "Your stallion will be at the usual livery," and Jacob once again felt a sense of I-should-not-be-surprised, even though he was.

"Little Sis," he said quietly after his coffee was poured, and her tea was placed, "I think I owe you an apology."

"Oh?" Sarah asked archly, stirring a sugar cube into her steaming-hot oolong.

"I thought you were on stage back there."

Her eyes smiled at him over the rim of her fine china teacup.

"Wasn't I?"

"I thought you were," Jacob admitted.  "I looked at the girl in the mask and thought for sure that was you."

Sarah laughed, quietly, the amused sound a woman makes when she knows more than she's said.

"I was one of the dancers," she smiled.  "I was three dancers to the right. I knew anyone looking for me would naturally look at the girl in the glittery mask.  All I wore was face paint."

Jacob lowered his untasted coffee, stared with open and honest astonishment at this surprising creature his father somehow managed to sire.

"I never even saw you," he admitted.

"I know."  She laughed quietly.  "If my own brother couldn't see me, no one else will have noticed me!"

Jacob shook his head, looked at Sarah with new respect.

"You," he said, "ought ..." -- Jacob shook his head, tried again -- "I ought to turn you over my knee and fan your little biscuits!"

Sarah laughed again, her eyes bright with merriment.

"Catch me first!"

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583. IN A CHILD'S EYES

Marnie's little brother was very noisy.

Marnie's Mama was tired and needed her rest and her little brother was cutting teeth and he was screaming and Marnie watched her Mama throw herself on her bed and cover her head with a pillow and bury her face in the mattress and Marnie heard her Mama's scream, muffled in springs and in quilting, a scream Marnie had heard before.

Marnie was maybe six years old, and she didn't know what to do.

She did know who to ask.

 

"Sheriff Keller."

"Gammaw," a little girl's voice quavered, "I dunno what to do."

Willamina blinked, surprised:  when a call came in to her direct line, it was usually some official business:  this very much commanded her attention, as it was a little girl's voice she recognized, and she recognized a baby's pained scream in the background.

"Marnie, is your little brother teething?"

"Yes, Gammaw an' he won't let Mama get any sleep an' Mama has about had it!"

Willamina could not but smile, just a little, at the serious words of her little granddaughter.

"Marnie, do you remember where your Daddy keeps his whiskey?"

"Yes, Gammaw."

"I want you to go get one of Daddy's little whiskey glasses and pour it half full of Daddy's whiskey," Willamina said reassuringly, pitching her voice the way only a veteran Mommy can do:  "I want you to carry it up to your little brother."

"Okay," Marnie said uncertainly.

"Then I want you to dip the pad of your little finger in the whiskey. Only the pad, not the whole finger. Open your little bother's jaw, push down on his chin a little and run the whiskey-pad of your finger along his gums.  Dip your finger as often as you have to, Marnie. You want to paint his gums, top and bottom.  It should help."

"Okay, Gammaw."

"When you're done, I want you to set the little whiskey glass on the side table because you'll have to do it again in a few hours."

"Okay, Gammaw."

There was a click, and Willamina smiled again:  her granddaughter was direct; when she received instructions, when she had a course of action, she did not hesitate, and she did not waste time in unnecessary conversation. 

Willamina gave the telephone an approving look as she hung up her receiver.

 

Marnie's little brother slept, finally, and so did her exhausted Mommy.

Marnie tilted her head a little and watched her baby brother, asleep in his crib: she'd been a Responsible Big Sister and she'd changed his diaper, she'd bottled him, she'd painted his gums again just to be safe.

She turned, frowned, eyes busy, as if she'd heard something, and then she pattered quickly downstairs.

She slipped out of her house shoes and into her red cowboy boots, she whirled her coat around her and fast it up, she took her little Stetson and mashed it down on her head, running the storm strap tight under her chin, and then she slipped outside.

Marnie's face brightened as she saw a familiar figure beside the barn, waiting for her:  she ran happily up to The Pretty Lady, who squatted to receive Marnie's happy charge:  Marnie hugged The Pretty Lady and looked at her with bright and wondering eyes, because The Pretty Lady looked so very much like her Gammaw only younger, and The Pretty Lady always wore such nice dresses!

"I want to show you a secret," she whispered, and Marnie nodded:  she took The Pretty Lady's hand, wishing she had a nice pair of gloves like The Pretty Lady wore, and skipped happily beside her as a huge black horse folded its legs and bellied down for the ladies.

Marnie gave a happy little squeak as the horsie rose:  she and The Pretty Lady rose with the big black horsie, and Marnie giggled as the horsie began to trot, then gallop, as a set of big white wings snapped out and they soared across the pasture and into the air, as wind teased her hair and her ears with cold fingers, as it rippled her denim skirt and chilled her bare knees: they were flying, but only for a moment, and the horsie set down and trotted again, and Marnie recognized the place.

It was the Firelands graveyard.

The horsie bellied down again and The Pretty Lady swung Marnie down, then dismounted herself: still holding hands, they walked over to a new stone, one Marnie had never seen before.

It had an oval in the middle, and in the oval, a formal portrait of The Pretty Lady, and the portrait wore the same dress The Pretty Lady wore today.

Marnie looked up, curious.

"Do you know," The Pretty Lady said, "I had a brother named Jacob?"

"I have a brother named Jacob!" Marnie declared happily.

The Pretty Lady touched a delicate fingertip to the very tip of Marnie's nose, smiling:  "I know you do, sweets, and he is a fine brother!"

"Yes he is!"  Marnie declared with a happy, emphatic nod.

"Do you know what my brother Jacob did on this very spot?"

Marnie shook her head solemnly.

The Pretty Lady made a quick fist, as if snatching something out of the air: she held it up, turned her hand over, opened her hand, blew across her palm.

Marnie felt suddenly dizzy.

She rubbed her eyes, confused: there was fire, smoke, she saw men shouting, screaming, falling, and on the stairs, The Pretty Lady: she was all in black, she had a shotgun in her hands, and she was singing.

She was singing.

Her voice was a high, sustained, soprano note: she slammed the action shut on the 97 Winchester and fired, she shucked the action and fired again: she shoved two more brass rounds into the magazine, took another step, fired four times, fast:  men fell before her, fell back:  she shot until she was out of shells, her hands dropped to her waist, came up with a pair of .44 revolvers.

Sarah felt men's fear, smelled their blood, tasted their rage: she heard The Pretty Lady's song change, she heard her sing a minor note, punctuated with precise shots from her .44s, until they too were empty:  Marnie saw her holster the revolvers, thrust her arm out and deflect a pitchfork, saw her strip it from its user's hands, spin and strike and thrust and spin again, until it fell, broken: she reached over her shoulders and brought out a shining pair of steel blades and began laying about like a double windmill, steel and shining red surrounding her as she laid into the attackers.

Some might have said she was screaming her defiance as she fought and as she died, but she was not screaming.

She was singing.

Marnie saw another Pretty Lady reach down into the fire and into the blood and into the bodies and pull The Pretty Lady out, and hoist her up onto the back of a huge black horsie with big white wings, and suddenly Marnie was dizzy again, and her Pretty Lady smiled at her the way she always did, but she wore a funny tin hat with big white wings and she wore a steel breastplate and a skirt of steel plates riveted to leather strips, and Marnie giggled 'cause they must feel heavy when she walked, and The Pretty Lady laughed and said "Yes, they do, sweets."

She caressed Marnie's cheek and whispered, "Now see what Jacob thought of me," and they turned.

Marnie saw a pale eyed man in a black suit, a man she recognized instantly -- it was Jacob, but different -- and she saw he'd staked out a rectangle, there in the family row, and he was talking with someone, another man in a suit, who wrote down the measurements and nodded and said something about filing the deed for this gravesite in his sister's name, against the time when her remains were returned.

Marnie looked quickly at The Pretty Lady.

Marnie knew what it meant when somebody talked about remains.

 

Jacob Keller waited until Mr. Moulton was departed, before looking at the empty, unused plot, a plot with string and stakes and without a stone.

He drew a short, sharp knife, slowly -- as if torturing himself -- slowly cut his palm, fisted his hand, squeezing his life's blood from him and onto this empty ground.

Marnie was just a little girl, but she could still feel the sorrow in this Jacob's soul as he whispered -- as he choked, with tears stinging his eyes -- "Little Sis, come home to us," and Marnie watched as Jacob slowly, slowly went to his knees, as he raised the knife, as he drove it into the ground as if murdering a personal enemy.

 "He was my brother, just as your Jacob is your brother."

Marnie regarded The Pretty Lady with big and solemn eyes.

The Pretty Lady spread her arms, as if gathering something to her, then drew her arms in:  Marnie was dizzied again, and blinked, and the graveyard was as she remembered it, with The Pretty Lady's stone back where it always was.

Marnie frowned, tilted her head a little, walked over to the grave, stopped.

Blood she saw, fresh and shining.

She looked at The Pretty Lady, who knelt, who took Marnie's hands.

Marnie watched as a single tear rolled from The Pretty Lady's left eye, as it fell, slowly, shining, silver, as it fell on the largest of the shining red drops.

"As much as my brother loved me," The Pretty Lady whispered, "your brother Jacob loves you just as much!"

Marnie blinked, put an uncertain finger to her chin.

"But I don't have a grave," she said in a sad, little-girl voice, and The Pretty Lady laughed, and she hugged Marnie, then she lifted her head, smiled, touched her ear as if hearing a distant sound.

"Listen," she whispered, looked down at Marnie, smiled .  "We need to get back."

The Pretty Lady snapped her fingers and they were back in Marnie's house, beside the crib:  Marnie's little brother was starting to whimper, his face was reddening, and Marnie dunked her little finger in the whiskey and ran it carefully into her little brother's mouth.

Marnie felt a light hand on her shoulder.

"My Mama used to do the same thing," she heard, and she turned her head and smiled at her Mommy.
"Thank you, sweets," Shelly whispered.  "I needed that nap!"

Marnie stepped back and let her Mommy pick up her little brother, and she looked at the chair where The Pretty Lady often sat at night, and she smiled, for there was a fresh cut rose on the seat of the chair, and there was the smell of roses.

 

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584. INSTRUMENTATION

 

Gracie Maxwell caressed the fiddle with gentle fingers.

It had been so very long since she'd played her curlyback fiddle.

This one was cherry wood, and dark: she had yet to touch a rosined bow to brand new strings.

The Ambassador smiled a little, watching.

Confederate fiddlemakers crafted this particular instrument, at the Ambassador's request; they'd made a fleece lined case, a black case with a little brass plaque that read, simply, Gracie.

"It's beautiful," she whispered.

"I know you've been playing one that isn't quite like what you had."

"No," she whispered:  practiced fingers plucked gently at the color coded strings, geared pegs turned slowly, carefully, under her cautious fingers:  she took her time tuning, tilting her head a little as she did, letting the world fall away from her consciousness as she gave her full attention to the task at hand.

The ambassador watched as she inspected the bow, stroked it a few times across a rosin block, tapped it delicately to knock off the excess.

Gracie tucked the fiddle under her chin, closed her eyes, smiled.

She remembered her Uncle's hands -- big, callused, strong, exquisitely gentle -- how his big hand overlaid hers on the bow, warm, strong, guiding her little hand with his big one as he taught her to coax music from the fiddle, from his fiddle, from a fiddle with more years of experience than Gracie had years of life.

The Ambassador closed his eyes, leaned his head back: the first note, the very first sound to spin, shimmering and beautiful from this dark-cherry fiddle, brought him memories as well, memories of growing up on a planet with two moons, a planet with stars enough to read a newspaper at night, if you had good eyes and there were no clouds:  he remembered an old man who rode something that did not look like a mule, something the old man called a mule, something with knees that bent the wrong way, and never went faster than a plodding walk: he remembered how that old man could sit under a shade tree with a jug and spin absolute magic from his fiddle.

He always started with a single, sustained, shimmer-sweet note, one that hung on the summer-still air, shining like a hummingbird in a single shaft of sunlight.

Gracie lifted the bow, smiled, took a long breath.

This, she thought, I am going to like!

 

Nancy wrapped her freshly-fed, freshly-changed infant,  swaddling him in white flannel, picked him up and slid him into the carrier: she had both hands free, the sleepy little baby was warm, close to Mama, content:  Nancy rose, looked around, opened the door, looked out.

It was not far to the launch bay.

It felt good to get out, it felt good to stand up, it felt good to walk!

Nancy pressed the stud, the door slid open, just in time to see the Ambassador throw his head back and laugh with delight as Gracie's first tune, played on the first genuine cherry wood fiddle on Mars, was one he'd loved since childhood, one Nancy smiled to hear, one she remembered hearing on the holovids she'd watched from Earth, holovids taken in a little whitewashed church in a small town in Colorado, a tune played as the traditional recessional for weddings performed in said little whitewashed church.

A sleepy little baby boy in his Mama's chestfront carrier slept soundly.

 

Unlike the long, lean Interceptors, the transports were ... boxes.

Black, ugly, featureless, boxes.

Trucks.

Gracie twisted the collective, rose easily from the sandy surface: her black transport banked left, flying sideways like the helicopters she used to fly, back on Earth, back when she was regularly called on the carpet for running her Super Stallion like it was a Ferrari instead of a Kenworth.

Gracie's left boot eased down on the bar-mounted  pedal, turning her flying truck as if she were using the tail rotor.

Her controls -- all the transports had the same controls -- were recongizable to any helo pilot, other than the instrumentation, which was of course a little different, since combustion based turbines were not quite practical on Mars: her instruments were simple, other than the navigation controls.

Gracie set her autopilot, watched to make sure she remained on course, leaned back a little, taking her hands off the controls.

She remembered how still the Amassador had been as she played the tunes she remembered from home, how they flowed from her soul through her fingers and finally sang from a handmade fiddle gifted her by a man far from home.

He'd been obliged to wipe his eyes before rising, before bowing formally and thanking her in a husky voice:  he'd turned to leave, hesitated, turned back.

"I believe," he said slowly, "there are some people who would like to share their music with you."

Gracie blinked, surprised: he was gone before she could ask who that might be.

 

Not a week later, Gracie Maxwell, in a long skirt and work boots, stood atop a sawed off barrel, flatfooting noisily in time with her fiddle music: behind her and beside her she had a half dozen like minded souls, mountain folk with callused hands and long beards or long dresses, and in front of them, four sets of square dancers, joyfully spinning to the Texas Star, and overhead, enough stars to read a newspaper by, if you had young eyes and no clouds, and a second moon rose, chasing its smaller counterpart across the night sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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585. THEY WANTED CINDY

I'd best light up, I thought.

When Dispatch put out the call, I put my hoof in the Carbon Tater hard enough the fan blade was clippin' my toe nails.

Paul was off that night so I was running a one man unit, I was filling in.

Never mind I'd worked all day.

When you're Sheriff you take care of your people and you take care of your department, and if that means you pull an extra shift you do it.

At least I hadn't worked 36 hours straight ... haven't done that in a long time, didn't much like it, but 'twas necessary.

The call was for possible attempted abduction, subject vehicle was a beat up van, dark in color, no make, model, identifying crash damage, license plate or other identifier.

I was maybe fifteen miles away.

I headed that way, fast.

I kept an eye out for any dark vans, but I was the only soul on the road that night: the location was known to me, hell I went to school with the caller:  I didn't bother to light up -- nobody around to be advised of my high speed status -- but when I hauled the Suburban into their driveway I shed speed fast and I lit up before going on up the hill.

Good thing.

I came rip roarin' up the driveway, nailed the brakes, killed the headlights and roof lights, I came boilin' out of the cruiser, the issue Glock was in hand and I heard myself yellin' "CINDY! CINDY, ARE YOU HURT?" -- Cindy was standing behind the open door of her Cadillac and she had a double handful of genuine Belgian Browning pistol.

I knew that's what it was because I sold it to her husband not a year before, and she liked it so well it became hers instead of his, which might have been their plan anyway.

Rod came down from their porch and he had a double handful of shotgun:  his eyes were busy and he kept looking down the driveway.

Cindy lowered the pistol's muzzle and I came around the back of her pretty midnight-metallic-blue Caddy, holstered my sidearm and came up behind her, ready to seize the Browning if she had a sudden panic attack.

I'd known her for years and knew she was level headed and not prone to panic, but I also knew if she was unhappy enough to pull out John Browning's thirteen word speechmaker, she might be unhappy enough to just plainly weld her hands to its grip and if she turned to face a new stimulus, the muzzle just might go with where her eyes were turning.

I've seen that happen before.

She didn't, though, and Rod came down from the porch, walking kind of sidewise toward us.

"Rod," I said, "what did you see?"

My hand was on Cindy's shoulder:  she hadn't flinched when I spoke gently and laid my hand, warm and strong, and she was glaring towards where their drive run down hill.

Now I'm not a stone statue: I was moving, my eyes were moving, I was turning, I stopped when I saw pry marks on her Cadillac's door frame.

"Cindy," I said, "where do you keep that Browning?"

"Under the seat," she said.

"Why don't you lay it on the seat for now. Lay it down with the handle toward you so you can grab it easy."

She took a long breath, closed her eyes, nodded:  she opened her eyes, tuned, laid the Browning on the wicker seat cushion.

I stepped back, pulled out my belt light, shone it down the edge of her driver's door.

My jaw slid out and I felt my face tighten a little.

Someone tried to pry open Cindy's car door, looked like a large screwdriver -- had they pried it far enough they could have stuck in a couple wedges and slid in something to flip the unlock -- on a hunch I backed up and shone the light on her front tire, then on her rear.

"Cindy," I said quietly, "get in the house.  Take your Browning.  Rod!"

Rod ran his arm around his wife's waist.  "Go on, hon. It's all right.  Kids are asleep."

Cindy went on into the house -- she hesitated after she'd climbed to porch level, looked down the driveway for several long moments, then went on inside.

Rod came over, shotgun propped up on his belt line.

"Rod, anyone giving you grief?"

"No one as I can think of, Sheriff."

"Anyone been giving Cindy trouble?  Any old boyfriends, ex-husbands, anyone calling or troubling her?"

Rod shook his head.  "No.  No one at all."

"Where was she tonight?"

"She was in town.  Eastern Stars tonight.  She came out and found someone pried on her door and she was just madder'n hell.  She's wanted a Cadillac since she was a little girl."

"I know she grew up poor," I agreed.  "Natural she'd want something nice."

"I was finally able to afford one, after all these years."  Rod reached for the damaged door, pulled his hand back.

"Fingerprints?" he asked, looking at me.

"I'll dust for 'em. I'll take photographs, document the tool marks.  Did you look at her tires?"

"Her tires?  No."

"What happened tonight?"

"Cindy looked around when she saw those pry marks.  She doesn't keep the Browning under the seat, she keeps in in her purse and she said she had a good handful of pistol right away when she saw that."

I nodded, considering it was quite possible that the sight of a woman, aware of an attempt on her vehicle, looking around and with a hand in her purse, just might be something they didn't want to try.

"She said when she came home, someone followed her."

I looked at Rod, raised an eyebrow.

"They followed her pretty damn close."
I nodded, slowly.

"When she went to turn in, they swung around in front of her and tried to cut her off.  She swatted 'er right in the throttle, she fish tailed and swung around 'em and she come hell-a-tearin' up the driveway and laid on the horn, three times."

"Mama taught her that."

"She did," Rod agreed.  "Just like your Mama taught her.  I come out on the porch with Oliver here" -- he turned, thrust a chin at his model 12 Winchester -- "she's loaded with alternating double-ought and deer slugs."

I nodded.  "I use the same."

Rod's smile was barely there, and only for a moment.

"Someone wanted her car."

"I don't think so."

I shone my light down on the front tire.

There was a gouge in the sidewall.

Rod swore, quietly, powerfully.

I stepped back, squirted the tight little beam of that high intensity light on the rear tire.

The sidewall was cut, badly enough I would not have been surprised if it blew open and went flat on the moment.

It didn't.

"They didn't want the car, Rod," I said, "they wanted her. If she'd stopped, they'd have swarmed her."

Rod stepped back, looked at the darkened front porch.

His shotgun muzzle lowered, just a little, toward the empty driveway, where it curled down and around the hillside.

I reached for the little square mike on my epaulet.

"Firelands, this is Six."

"Go, Six."

"I'll be here for a bit."

"Roger that, Six. All well?"

"Scene is secure. Story at eleven."

"I roger your scene is secure."

I proceeded to document the damage to the Cadillac, dust for prints, the usual:  I went inside, talked to Cindy and didn't get anything more than I already knew:  I did let Sharon know about the dark van, no other particulars, and we found the van the next day, abandoned:  to this day I have no idea what was intended, only that when Cindy ran her hand in her purse and looked around, she probably prevented further hostilities.

At least I didn't have to process a scene with multiple dead, I thought:  Cindy was one of my Mama's Tea Society ladies, and the Ladies' Tea Society met to do more than discuss history or admire one another's dresses:  they held a steel plate invitational, and though she never brought home a trophy, Cindy proved herself more than competent with John M. Browning's Warmaker, and I doubt me not that if she could do that well under match pressure, she could acquit herself adequately in a real life situation.

I honestly regretted not finding the perpetrators, and in spite of everything I could think of, all the bushes I shook, dead ends I followed, I never did find out who'd done it, or why.

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586. "OH, DADDY!"

Sheriff Linn Keller leaned back and took a long breath, blew it out.

"It's no wonder," he said softly, then looked down at the text again.

He was reading a reproduction of a hand written journal, the original of which was well older than ... well, more than a century old, and now kept in a climate controlled case in a secure location.

It used to live on one of his Mama's shelves, until she finally relented and allowed the Firelands museum to consign it to the dry-nitrogen atmosphere of a front-room display case.

He considered what he'd just read, looked down at the precise handwriting, faithfully reproduced: his mind was not on the shape of the letters, nor on the precision of a dead man's script, but rather what the words were saying.

His fingertips rested lightly on the text, but his eyes wandered over to the staircase.

He smiled a little, rose, and a half-grown mountain Mastiff rose, regarding him with bright, interested eyes.

Linn closed Old Pale Eyes' Journal, lifted his chin:  this young Bear Killer danced happily, his young tail whipping with delight, before falling in beside Linn's right leg.

Together they advanced on the stairs, then together, they climbed the broad staircase.

Linn looked over at the smooth, slick, heavy railing, remembering how a laughing little girl used to slide down it, her ankles crossed in anticipation of intercepting the big wooden ball at the bottom, flexed with young muscles ready to take the shock of the sudden stop.

He came to the top of the stairs, smiled.

Girlish voices, feminine laughter: he paused, remembering, then raised his knuckles, knocked gently.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller climbed the wide, well built stairs, hesitating at the landing: he turned, went up one more flight.

Bonnie was just coming out of Sarah's room, a knowing smile on her face:  she looked at Linn, and he felt those violet eyes reach through his breastbone and caress his heart -- he looked away, swallowed.

She's another man's wife, he thought savagely.  You have no right to feelings for this woman!

Linn's mouth was suddenly dry:  he swallowed again, hesitated:  Bonnie folded her hands patiently as she stood, regarding the pale eyed lawman with the iron grey mustache.

"Is Sarah decent?" Linn managed to ask -- Bonnie did not miss the hesitancy in his voice -- she tilted her head a little, smiled gently.

"She is," she said.

Linn stepped closer:  Bonnie opened her hands, and Linn reached for them, gripped them gently.

Bonnie was not surprised to see this tough old lawman's eyes looking soft and vulnerable, a shade of light blue she so seldom saw:  Linn bit his bottom lip, his eyes swung to the closed bedroom door, then back to Bonnie.

"I need to see my little girl," he squeaked, and his facade crumbled:  he released her hands and ran his arms around her, and she did the same: it had honestly never occurred to this pale eyed old lawman that she might have feelings for him -- truth be said, Bonnie had burnt a candle for him for a very long time, but she kept it secret from everyone, especially from her old and dear friend Esther, his wife.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, clinging to her like a drowning man clings to a float in a dark and stormy sea.

"She's expecting you," Bonnie whispered back:  Linn released her, looked away:  he pulled a bedsheet kerchief from his sleeve, wiped viciously at the feelings overflowing his eyelids -- she heard him snarl a little and she paced soundlessly for the stairs.

He was not watching her at this point.

If he had, he'd have seen a secret and knowing smile as she glided soundlessly down the stairs.

Linn raised his knuckles to rap on the door, blinked in surprise as Sarah pulled it quickly open: she launched herself into him, seizing him around the neck:  he returned the embrace, leaned back, hoisted her off the floor, held her.

"I needed to see my little girl one more time," he mumbled into her hair, and he felt her arms tighten around him as she whispered, "I needed to see my Papa!"

Linn set her down, looked at her with soft and vulnerable eyes.

Sarah had seen her sire's eyes thousands of times, but seldom, seldom had she ever seen them this distinct a light blue.

His defenses were gone.

His little girl was getting married, and he was looking at her with new eyes, he looked at her with a little regret -- he knew children grow, his young had grown at a shocking velocity and still were, Jacob was a man grown, but somehow it was harder to accept that Sarah, this child of his loins, was a woman now.

"This time tomorrow," Linn said uncertainly, "you'll be a married woman."

Sarah nodded, her eyes glowing, luminous, and it was Linn's turn to be surprised at their shade of light blue.

"Darlin'," Linn said, the backs of his bent fingers caressing her cheek, "I had a fine speech all ready and damned if I can remember one word of it."

"I think," Sarah whispered, "that is the sweetest thing you ever said to me."

Linn reached into his coat, pulled out an envelope.

"I'll give this to you now."

Sarah raised an eyebrow.

"Train tickets. You two are planning to go to Frisco --"

Sarah's eyes widened, half in surprise, half in anger:  "Nobody was supposed to know!" she hissed.

Linn raised a forestalling palm.  "Nobody does," he said quietly, then grinned.  "Besides, I'm a lawman, I find things out!"

 

Marnie's bedroom door opened a few inches.

Shelly's face shoved into the gap:  "Who goes there?" she giggled, and Linn laughed.

"A sentimental old man," he declared.

Shelly stepped back, threw the door wide, and Linn stopped and quite honestly ... stared.

White, cascading white, veil, dress, skirt:  the vision of purity and innocence turned and his little girl looked at him.

Linn saw Marnie as the four year old she'd been when she first came to Firelands.

He saw a laughing little girl in red cowboy boots, happily clattering downstairs, making absolutely the most noise she could.

He looked at a little girl, frowning at her homework, lips moving as she sounded out a word.

He saw a creature of magic, silhouetted against an evening horizon, the sky on fire, silhouetting her as she leaned forward, bent over a galloping stallion's arched neck, her Stetson just lifting off her braids and falling back against the storm strap under her jaw.

Linn saw a creature of beauty and of wonder and, yes, a creature of magic, woman's magic! -- this child, his daughter, his little girl, a woman grown.

The diamond on her finger shattered the ceiling light and threw it in bright shards toward him.

"Dear God," Linn whispered, his throat suddenly dry, "you're gorgeous!"

Marnie laughed, skipped over to him, jumped up and seized him around the neck:  he ran his arms around her, leaned back, hoisted her off the floor, crushed her to him.

"I needed to see my little girl one more time," he whispered into her ear.

"Oh, Daddy," she whispered, "you're going to make me cry!"

"Don't wrinkle her gown!" Shellly scolded.  "We're not done with last minute fitting, your Mama will be here with shoes just any minute!"

 

A lean old lawman with an iron grey mustache stood at the back of their little whitewashed church.

A beautiful young woman in an immaculately fitted gown stood beside him, her white gloved hand around the black sleeve of his good suit.

Their little whitewashed church had a piano, and it was in tune, but two fiddlers stood at the front: as one, they raised their bows, caressed genuine gut strings and spun magic from curlyback fiddles.

 

Another lean old lawman, more than a century later, stood in the same boot prints as his honored ancestor: this lawman, too, had pale eyes, and an iron grey mustache, and like Old Pale Eyes, this Linn Keller had his little girl on his arm, a walking contradiction, all white gown and absolute beauty: they looked at one another -- Sarah looked at her Daddy, Marnie looked at hers -- feminine lips whispered, "Oh, Daddy," then they both faced forward, lifted their chins, paced slowly, with dignity, with great ceremony, down the aisle as every seated soul came to their feet, as a half grown black Mountain Mastiff wagged happily at the end of the aisle, forepaws dancing with impatient delight at their approach.

The tradition was begun before Sarah's wedding, that the recessional was not a solemn march down the aisle: no, a wedding was a joyous occasion, and joyful meant dance, and Sarah and her Welsh Irishman husband whirled and spun and danced down the aisle to a brisk "Turkey in the Straw," and when Marnie and the newly graduated Dr. John Greenlees took their first steps together as man and wife, they too whirled and danced to the same tune, and years after this moment, Sheriff Marnie Keller laughed and danced with her husband again as a mountain fiddler danced flatfoot on a sawed off hogshead and played Turkey in the Straw for the very first wedding conducted at the Second Martian Colony (Firelands), and following the bride and groom, following the best man and the matron of honor, a pale eyed Sheriff whirled and danced with the Sheriff's lawful wedded spouse.

Sheriff Marnie Keller kept a hand written Journal, as much for tradition as anything; as she wrote -- with a steel nib dip quill that had been used by Old Pale Eyes himself, with good India ink, from an inkwell that came from the original Firelands Mercantile -- that she had it on good authority that the bride whispered to her father, the night before, the words "Oh, Daddy!" -- as her father hugged her, and leaned back, and hoisted his little girl off the smooth plasticrete floor.

 

 

 

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587. IF YOU NEED A DEPUTY

Jacob Keller frowned at the computer screen, tapped the key: the screen lit up with his frowning image.

"Sis," he said, "this still feels like I'm talking to my reflection. It would be easier if we didn't have that twelve or fifteen minute delay from here to there" -- he shrugged -- "but people in hell want ice water, and that don't work out either."

Jacob bit his bottom lip, considered.

"If you need a deputy," he said, "I'm available."

 

Twenty minutes later, Sheriff Marnie Keller looked up from the medical readout: she wiped the gel from her bulging belly, lowered her top, levered herself upright.

Good God, I look like an olive on a toothpick! she thought as her husband grinned at her, as he wrapped her robe around her shoulders.

Dr. John Greenlees, M.D., tapped a few keys, read the full report on his screen, nodding.

"Well?" Marnie grunted, drawing the robe about her and tying it.

Dr. John came around, gripped his wife's elbows delicately, carefully, kissed her lips, delight in his eyes and a broad grin widening his normally impassive face.

Marnie pressed a finger viciously against his lips.  "Don't," she warned.  "My Mama didn't and I don't want to!"

"But if your husband knows --"

"No."  Marnie shook her head.  "No, John, I was never happy with the mother knowing the child's sex before birth.  I may be old fashioned --"

"And that's one reason I love you," John murmured, embracing his arms-crossed wife.

"I'm the size of a whale," Marnie complained, "I've got more of a belly than the town drunk, I waddle, I'm afraid to sneeze --"

"And you are the most beautiful woman in the world."  John's voice held certainty, his words carried the weight of absolute fact, and Sheriff Marnie Keller bent awkwardly to rub her face into his shirt front like a little girl needing a Daddy's reassurance.

Her ear twitched as the incoming message alarm chimed softly; she sighed.

"Probably another crisis," she muttered.  "Someone's got an ingrown toenail or they want the weatherman arrested for not forecasting snow."

Dr. Greenlees smiled, released his wife; she was both Sheriff and backup dispatcher -- had it been any but a routine communication, the chime would have been neither soft, nor would it have been quiet.

Marnie sat carefully, tiled her head back, sighed.

"John," she said, "how close am I?"

"You could deliver any time."

"So I could start labor now."

"You could."

"I want to get it over with."

"I'd rather not induce."

"I know.  If I don't want to know what sex Junior is" -- she lay a hand on her maternal belly -- "I don't want to shuck him or her out ahead of the right time."  She turned gentle, pale eyes toward her husband, smiled just a little.

"I hate waiting," she whined.

Dr. Greenlees laughed, nodded.  "I understand. I'm waiting for the right time to pass out cigars."

"You got cigars?" Marnie blurted.  "Good God, you'll set off every fire alarm in the colony!"

"Smoke alarm," Dr. John Greenlees corrected gently, smiling again.  "They're actually chocolate cupcakes," he admitted.  "I don't want to order them too early and have them go stale."

Marnie laughed.  "I'll let you know when to place the order."  She turned to her screen, tapped a few keys, reached up, tapped one key with a quick and deliberate thrust of her bent middle finger.

Jacob's image glowered at her from the screen.

"

"Sis," he said, "this still feels like I'm talking to my reflection. It would be easier if we didn't have that twelve or fifteen minute delay from here to there" -- he shrugged -- "but people in hell want ice water, and that don't work out either."

Marnie leaned intently forward, silent, as Jacob bit his bottom lip and considered.

"If you need a deputy," he said, "I'm available."

 

Marnie began her recording.

Dr. John Greenlees watched as his wife lay a hand on her belly, as something crossed her face, as she glanced at him with almost a guilty expression.

"Jacob," she said, "this delay is aggravating. I'm like you, I don't like talking to a screen."  She hesitated, looked at her husband again.

"Jacob," she said as she took a deep breath, blew it out, "I'll have to call you back.  It's time to bake some chocolate cupcakes."

Twenty minutes later, Jacob frowned at the screen, watched as his sis frowned, swallowed, reached for her keyboard, as the screen went blank, then coalesced into the NASA logo.

"Chocolate cupcakes?" he muttered, "Sis, what in the hell just happened?"

 

News travels fast in a frontier town.

Firelands, Colorado, in the early 1890s, saw the Irish Brigade yelling and swarming from the firehouse and up the street, all jubilation and boisterous voices, laughter and good-natured insults: a half hour before, a red-faced, wrinkled, ugly, wiggling little bundle was bathed, dried, powdered, inspected, marveled at; the little one was fed, cleaned again, wrapped, laid on its Mama's bosom; mother and child slept, exhausted:  the pale eyed husband sat beside his wife's bed, holding her hand, marveling at new life, so tiny, so perfect, and not for the first time, he considered the perfection of a newborn's hands, and the exacting execution of the perfectly jointed little fingers.

Of all the features on an infant child, this amazed him the most, those tiny little hands, and not for the first time he considered the perfection of all of Creation in this one wee creature.

Jacob Keller excused himself: Sarah seized his arm, stopping him:  she picked up a fresh cut rose, quickly tied a blue ribbon around it, tied it into a decorative bow, slid this in his lapel.

Brother and sister looked at one another, and Jacob smiled, just a little.

Daisy glared at him from the other side of Esther's bed as she bundled bed-linens to be taken out and washed in saltwater: "G'wan wid ye then," she scolded, "g'e that ne'er-do-well husband o' mine an' those hell raisin' firemen another excuse t' get drunk an' carouse!  Men!  Women do all th' work an' th' menfolk take th' credit!"

Jacob winked at Sarah, backed out, turned; he catfooted down the stairs so as not to attract any more of Daisy's scolding, knowing that if he did, her sharp tongue would follow him down the stairs at an increasing volume to compensate for distance, and her language would be as sharp as her voice!

Jacob was grateful to escape that woman's territory, for Esther was surrounded and crowded by the ladies, by her daughters -- all talking at once, all happy and chattering and spoutin' fifteen to the dozen and not one of 'em actually sayin' a thing, Jacob thought.

He swung up on his Apple-horse, turned his stallion's nose toward town, tickled Apple into a nice easy trot.

He ground reined the stallion at the firehouse:  he raised his fist, hit the man door three times, hard, then went in.

"NOW WHA' THE HELL DO YE ALARMIN' GOOD MEN AN' TRUE!" Sean demanded at the top of his Irish-blacksmith lungs, and Jacob paced silently up to him, as tall and as fearless as his pale eyed father, and for a moment Sean wasn't sure but what this was the Old Man himself, until Jacob's hat brim tilted back and he got a look at the younger face.

Sean's eyes dropped to the rose in Jacob's lapel, and at the ribbon bow tied just under the blossom, and Jacob saw Sean's grin -- sudden, delighted, genuine -- he staggered as Sean smacked him on the shoulder with that big blacksmith's hand and roared "ALL HANDS ON DECK!  NO IRISH NEED APPLY!  FALL IN, DAMN YOU, OR I'LL HAVE YER GUTS FER GARTERS!"
Men ran into the equipment bay, slid down the firepole, jumped the kitchen counter:  instead of falling in, they surrounded Sean and Jacob, for they, like the rest of town, had been anticipating this moment.

Sean gripped Jacob's shoulders, lowered his head a fraction, looked very directly into Jacob's pale eyes.

"Is it, then?"

Jacob lifted his chin.

"Sean," he declared loudly, "you are one of my father's closest friends, and he bade me tell you first."

Jacob's fingers rose to the ribbon tied rose.

"MY FATHER HAS A SON!"

The concerted yell that went up, inside the brick confines of the tall, narrow horse house, could be heard clearly without, so jubilant and so vigorous was its execution:  the Irish Brigade burst forth from the firehouse door like an avalanche from a mountain pass, red-shirted Irishmen laughing and shouting and swearing and singing obscene songs in multiple languages:  Jacob was borne along with this red-shirted, black-mustachioed flood, until they swarmed into the Silver Jewel, until Sean slammed his callused palm down hard on the bar top, until he roared, "MR. BAXTER! DRINKS FOR TH' HOUSE, IF Y' PLEASE! THE SHERIFF HAS SIRED ANOTHER RECRUIT FOR THE WHITE EYED REGIMENT, AND IT'S A FINE BROTH OF A LAD!"

 

Nancy Hake gripped Marnie's hands: Marnie lay on the slanted birthing table, her arms over her head:  Nancy bit her bottom lip as Marnie's hands clamped down hard, as the Sheriff's face went red, as she chewed her bottom lip bloody, as she labored in silence:  she eased off, breathing hard, her grip relaxing:  her husband nodded, leaned back as if taking the ache from a stiff back.

"Deep breaths now," Nancy soothed.  "You've done this before, this is nothing new, you're going to be fine --"

Marnie's head slammed back against the padding, she took two quick breaths, gritted her teeth:  her face went scarlet, the cords stood out on her neck, and she squeezed down hard on Nancy's hands.

Nancy squeezed right back:  she knew if she didn't, Marnie's unholy strength would at the least, dislocate, and at worst, probably break a couple bones in her hand.

There was a wet sound, Nancy heard the impassively-quiet physician's voice mutter something about having the waters of life --

"Whattaya got?  Whattaya got?"  Nancy demanded impatiently.

"We have crowning," Dr. Greenlees said quietly, reaching in, shifting his rolling stool's position a little.

"Whattaya got? Whattaya got?"

"We have crowning," Dr. Greenlees repeated, then Nancy saw his shoulder drop and he said "We have a head, we have rotation, shoulder, shoulder, NURSE!"

The nurse reached in with a clean towel: she hesitated while the physician reached for the tray beside him, picked up a clamp, another:  Nancy heard the little plastic click as the cord clamps bit down on the shining, bluish umbilical -- the Doctor reached for the tray, picked up a scalpel --

The nurse brought something ugly and bluish to her, turned, placed it on the stainless station at the doctor's elbow.

Dr. Greenlees ministered to his wife as she completed her labors, as she and the infant were tended: Nancy watched as the nurse cleared the newborn's airway, as she bathed it, Nancy's eyes stung with the happy memory of having been where the Sheriff was now, and not long ago -- she remembered that sound, that little mouse-squeak of an infant's first breath -- and Nancy released Marnie's hands as the new mother reached for the newest pale eyed Keller to arrive in the Firelands colony.

On another screen, elsewhere in the colony, the image of a rose, with a blue ribbon tied about the blossom's base:  a man appointed to the task, wearing knee-high black boots and a red flannel, bib front shirt, swung around behind the bar:  the barkeep, grinning, stepped happily out of his way, as a broad shouldered man SLAMMED his palm down hard on the bar's top and roared, "SHERIFF MARNIE HAS DELIVERED, AND IT'S A BOY!  DRINKS ON THE HOUSE!"

 

Jacob looked up, rose:  he pulled open the door, smiled.

His pale eyed Gammaw stood in the doorway, holding a ribbon-tied rose.

Jacob looked at the strip of blue ribbon, bow-tied at blossom's base, and blurted, "Gammaw, how'd you know?"

"A woman knows," Willamina smiled, hugged her tall, lean-waisted grandson to her:  "come on, let's tell our Irish Brigade!"

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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588. "YOU ARE THE BLACK AGENT!"

 

Town Marshal Bill Johnson sat slowly, wondering what a cripple was doing this far from home.

She was pretty, all right -- if you didn't count that God-awful scar that ran down her face and across her throat, leastways he thought it probably went across her throat on a long slaunchwise slash -- whoever cut her meant to slice her head in two, he judged, and damn neart took out her left eye in the process.

The woman replaced the veil over half her face to hide the scar.

"I used to sing opera," she said in a half-whisper:  "and yes, he nearly killed me."  Her gloved hand raised to her throat. "My throat is most horribly scarred where he tried ..."

She closed her eyes, turned her head a little: he saw the wet staining the silk veil she'd drawn over half her face.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.  "It is so very ... difficult."

The Marshal didn't really know how to respond, so he put on his best poker face and nodded, once.

"I thought he loved me," she wheezed, putting a hand to her throat, swallowing:  she grimaced, reached for her tea with one gloved hand.

Her other hand, he noticed, was stiff: she hadn't moved her fingers at all, and he wondered if her glove hid a paralysis, or perhaps a wooden simulacrum.

His eyes returned to the hand holding her teacup:  it was shaking, badly enough she sat the teacup back down on the saucer, closed her eyes, obviously attempting to control her palsy:  he saw her jaw tighten, saw her control her breathing.

"Ma'am, if you don't mind my askin' ... why are you travelin' out here?"

It was another moment before she opened her eyes.

"Forgive me, Marshal. No one wishes to display a weakness, but I have little choice."

"Ma'am, how can I help?"

"One question at a time," she said, and there was just the hint of a smile with the words.

"You sound like a schoolteacher."

"I was," she nodded carefully, "until I was married."

"What happened to the man who did this to you?"

"He thought if I were dead, he could marry another. He cut me and he ran to her, thinking I would be found dead."  She lifted her chin, glared at the Marshal with her one good eye.

"I am not that easily killed."

"No, I suppose not."

"He found another man just leaving her cottage."

The Marshal raised an eyebrow.

"When he came back, he found a blood trail, he found where I'd made it to the barn. The gelding and a saddle were missing."

"You made it to a doctor."

"Barely." She closed her eyes again.

"Should I watch for his pursuit?"

The woman was quiet for several long moments, then she whispered, "Yes."

He watched as she leaned over a little, picked up a carpet bag:  she brought out a rolled up sheet of stiff paper, handed it to him.

"This is the man."

The Marshal unrolled the wanted poster.

"Fifty dollars," he grunted. "Not much of a reward."

"He's not much of a man."

The Marshal considered the image, the description, nodded.

"May I keep this?"

"It is yours."

"Thank you. I'll show this around."

 

A pale eyed lawman in a black suit loafed comfortably against one of the posts holding up the boardwalk's roof.

Another pale eyed lawman, almost a mirror for the older man, loafed symmetrically against the opposite side of the same post.

The two men watched the street with a studied casualness, seeming to see nothing, yet seeing everything: silence grew long between them, until finally the younger of the two asked, "Sir?"

"Yes, Jacob?"

"Sir, is Sarah on that case?"

Jacob felt more than heard the long, slow intake of his father's breath.

"She is, Jacob."

"Has she reported back, sir?"

"She has not."

Silence again:  both men knew this was ever her habit: she would waste neither her time, nor her funds, unless there was some development to report, and sometimes not even then: she'd been known to bring in a prisoner herself, though this was not a common development, not since she was pretty badly beaten and was obliged to kill the prisoner to keep him from killing her.

 

Town Marshal Bill Johnson arranged for the newcomer to take a room at the boarding house.

He knew the proprietress had a soft spot for stray kids and lost dogs, and he was certain she'd take good care of this schoolteacher someone tried to kill.

He called on her the next day to get some more particulars on this fellow, and a good thing he did: he was watching at the depot when a man matching the description, got off the train.

The Marshal walked up to the man and said, "You're looking for someone."

He didn't ask it as a question, he said it as a statement: surprised, the well dressed fellow frowned, folded his hands over his nob-headed cane and said, "I'm looking for my wife. She has run away and I shall have her back."

"Can you describe her?"

"She may seek employment as a schoolteacher," he said, his voice edged with disdain: the Marshal had met men like this before, dandies, swells, Easterners -- people who regarded anything west of the Mississippi as an uncultured, brutish, distastefully primitive, howling wilderness.

"What does she look like?"

"She may be recognized by the veil she wears over half her face."

The Marshal nodded.  "I believe I've seen her."

The Marshal took a quick step sideways, crouched behind a barrel of flour at the sound of a Winchester rifle shucking itself into battery, and a woman's tense voice said, "Carl McFann, let go of the cane and raise your hands!"

The Marshal took a quick peek over the barrel.

He saw a compact woman, crouched a little, a woman all in black -- he honestly would not have known her to be a woman, had she not spoken -- she wore a broad brimmed black hat, a black coat and vest, black trousers and boots -- and she held that model of 1873 like she knew how to use it, and as it was to her shoulder and she had a tight cheek weld on the stock, it was evident she intended to use it if necessary.

"I don't believe," McFann said carefully, "we have been properly introduced."

The Marshal watched as the woman reached to the side with her off hand, picked up a dowel leaning against the side of the depot: she kept the rifle to shoulder with one hand, eased forward, just touched his back with the dowel and said, "Drop the cane, NOW!"

He turned -- he was fast, the Marshal had to admit -- the cane fell slowly, slowly, while something long and silver streaked from the cane, as the man spun, as he slashed, as the depot shook with the sudden concussion of a .44 rifle: McFann collapsed immediately, the back of his spine blown out: Blue Whistler took him through the wish bone and carried through the heart, the spine, and anything else that lay between front and back:  Marshal Bill Johnson raised, shocked, stared with a slack jaw at the unmoving form bleeding on the depot platform, at the woman in black who flipped the rifle's octagon barrel casually over her shoulder -- still one-handed -- she turned her lapel over with the other hand, to reveal a bronze shield.

"Agent S. L. McKenna," she declared firmly, "Firelands District Court, and I claim the earthly remains of this wanted murderer!"

Johnson's ears were ringing from the concussion, magnified by the roof overhead:  he stuck his little finger in his ear, twisted it, popped it out.

It didn't help.

"Who," he asked, "did he kill?"

"Do you remember the woman you spoke with last night, the woman with half a veil over her face?"

He nodded.

"That was me. He thought he'd killed her. He ran and I followed, by order of the Judge.

I let myself be seen -- theatrical makeup and I had the scars you saw -- I used the dead woman's name, and sure enough, when he thought the woman survived, he ran.

"I was to find out where he was and then the Judge would wire a warrant to the jurisdictional authority, but" -- she smiled, and the smile was not at all pleasant -- "I did not want to risk him escaping for another year."

She looked at the Marshal, and her eyes were as kind and gentle as polished quartz.

"Nor did I wish to risk another woman's life."

"How long have you been after him?"

"Me?  About a year.  I have ... sources."  She smiled again, an utterly humorless smile. "They let me know he was here and I arrived two days ago. I let myself be seen and I let people know the story I told you, and here we are."

"What will you do now?"

Sarah Lynne McKenna picked up the dead man's sword, sheathed it in the dead man's cane, weighed it it speculatively.

"The Judge will like this one," she smiled.  "I'll take the carcass back to Firelands with me."

"You," Johnson said slowly.  "You're the Black Agent."

"And you," Sarah said quietly, giving him a long look at her ice-pale eyes, "are exactly right!"

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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589. CUPCAKES!

 

Sheriff Marnie Keller snarled as she gripped the weights.

Her Gammaw would have recognized them: her Gammaw's weights were of cast iron, Marnie's weights were nearly so: they'd been meteors not a month before, captured, fed into the solar furnaces, smelted, refined: cast iron was a known quantity, they had the means to cast, and when the Sheriff asked for a set of dumbbells with hexagonal ends, they were delivered in short order.

Like her Gammaw, Marnie used them for handles when she did push-ups.

Unlike her Gammaw, though, the Sheriff exercised in a section generally avoided by the other colonists: this was a centrifuge, and a big one; weight was added, directly opposite her position, to counterbalance her mass, even though the distribution of outer bearings was plentiful enough she could have had a dump truck with no counterweight and the centrifuge would not have shown any sign of shake.

It was a point of pride with the station's engineers that it was that well made, and that they provided a counterweight anyway.

Marnie's push-ups were done under Earth plus point two gravity.

Like her Gammaw, she had music when she punished herself, and today, alone in the fifty meter diameter spin chamber, the massive vibrations of a truly huge pipe organ boomed out the accelerating rhythms off "In the Hall of the Mountain King."

Marnie's labors were not solely push-ups: she ran, she squatted, she swung kettlebells, and when she was luck enough to find one, she sparred: too often, though, she had to trade interpersonal violence with a surprisingly solid, holographic opponent, and this could not be done in the Spinner, as it was commonly called.

Marnie refused to allow herself to be any less than she'd ever been, even if she had just given birth: as soon as she was able, she returned to her punishing regimen, and she returned to duty.

Until she was cleared by her husband, however, she was in need of a deputy: she'd had two good ones, who'd been killed in the alien attack, and until she could get willing and able locals recruited, she fell back on a known quantity.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller paced to the front door: he opened it, surprise hoisting his left eyebrow as a stranger regarded him with frank and appraising eyes.

A young woman with short hair, a young woman with what looked like a very trim, very light weight flight helmet under her arm, handed him an envelope: Linn's eyes went down the length of the stranger, down the length of her silver skinsuit, to her knee high, flat heeled silver boots: there were several rectangular ... pockets? ... in various locations, but when his eyes came back up, they stopped at the helmet.

"Hello, Gunfighter," the Sheriff said slowly.  "Been wantin' to talk to you." 

The young woman's eyes smiled a little as the Sheriff withdrew a sheet from the envelope, unfolded it, read the familiar handwriting.

Howdy Grampa, he read, and his eyes tightened a little at the corners to read his little girl's handwriting.

If you can spare Jacob, I need a deputy.

Mine were killed when we were attacked.

PS, it's a boy.

His name is Joseph Linn.

It was signed, simply, Marnie.

Linn bit his bottom lip, nodded.

He turned, saw his son looking curiously at him from the top of the stairs.

"Jacob," he said, "Boots and Saddles, mutual aid for another department, saddle up!"

"Yes, sir!" came the brisk reply: thirty seconds later, Jacob came down the stairs at little less than a run -- his duty jacket was unbuttoned, he was in full uniform, gunbelt snug about his lean middle, his .357 in its thumb break holster.

"Jacob," Linn said, "you are now detached from our Sheriff's Office and you are hereby detailed as mutual aid to the Firelands Sheriff's Office on Mars.  This is Gunfighter, I've known her for quite a long time" -- at which the fighter pilot raised a skeptical eyebrow and smiled a little as she realized this man was as full of it as her own father, who she thought had a corner on the market.

Jacob plucked his Stetson from its peg, tucked it correctly under his arm, inclined his head.  

"Ma'am."

Gunfighter looked from father to son, grinned:  "I can see Marnie in the both of you!" she said approvingly, then handed the Sheriff a white box, tied with blue string:  she looked at Jacob.

"We'd better leave. I don't want to be spotted, not just yet."

"Yes, ma'am."  Jacob turned to his father.

Father and son shook hands.

"This is kind of sudden," Jacob grinned:  their hands still gripped, they pulled into each other, embraced: a moment later, Sheriff Linn Keller stood in his doorway, holding a white cardboard box, feeling a sudden sense of loss.

He was almost disappointed that there was no window shivering roar of a rocket's exhaust, no streak of burning silver across the night sky.

Sheriff Linn Keller blinked, swallowed, closed his door.

He carried the flat cardboard box into the kitchen, set it down on the table, untied the string.

"Cupcakes!" Shelly declared happily as she came into the kitchen.  "Who was at the door?"

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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590. A BOY AND HIS BULL

 

Joseph Keller laughed and drummed his heels against the big Texas bull's ribs.

Boocaffie grunted, swung his ears, lowered his head: he was used to children climbing on him, seizing his long, gleaming horns, stroking his muzzle: sometimes they offered him delectables, sometimes they ran around him, or just stood and marveled, and he regarded them with patience, with an ancient wisdom, and when one climbed on his back and wanted a ride, sometimes Boocaffie wouild oblige.

Other times, he grazed, or scented the wind, or wandered a little.

Joseph Keller was big enough to get in trouble, young enough he wasn't up to a man's work, sneaky enough to slip away from the house when possible:  he rubbed Boocaffie's hide briskly with one flattened out palm, raised his hand to his nose and sniffed:  disappointed, he threw up a leg and slid off the warm, furry beef's shoulder: Joseph fell a mile and a half at least, until he hit the ground flat footed:  young knees took up the shock of the sudden landing, and Joseph strutted around in front of Boocaffie and regarded the big Texas longhorn with a mixture of wonder and of disappointment.

"Pa said you haddadda coal oil baff to kill them Texas ticks," he said, "but I don't smell no coal oil!"

Boocaffie's jaw muscles rippled as he harvested the tough green grass, flicked his ear as Joseph stuck his nose in the bull's ear and sniffed: frowning, the child drew back:  he was half a hundred yards from the fence, Boocaffie having wandered that far:  Joseph jumped aboard the bull's back while Boocaffie was using a fence post as a scratching post, and now that he'd had a happy belly-tickle of a slide off the bull's back, now that he'd sniffed Boocaffie's ear for coal oil (his Pa said something about never buying a horse that had coal oil poured in its ear), Joseph frowned and realized he was hungry.

The bull's ear swung back a little as a happy little boy scampered toward the solid, sizable stone house.

 

The Irish girl looked up as Joseph grinned his way in the back door:  she put a quick finger to her lips, crooked her finger:  she squatted, held out her hands, palms up.

Joseph showed his palms in the same manner -- wet, pink, scrubbed clean.

The girl turned her hands over.

Joseph followed suit.

The Irish girl winked, raised a finger, rose:  Joseph followed dutifully as she slipped silently across the kitchen, whisked a clean towel off something on a platter, on the stove's warming shelf: she picked up something long as her hand and big around as two of his fingers, handed to him.

Joseph grinned with delight, carefully taking the flaky delicacy from her:  he turned, scampered noisily for the back door, slipped outside:  he bit into the twisted length of baked pie crust, savoring the cinnamon, his favorite: the Irish girl always made a little extra pie dough, she'd carefully sweeten it, either with crushed sugar, or a drizzle of honey, she'd add a sprinkle of cinnamon, if there was cinnamon to be had, then she folded it and rolled it, cut it into strips, twisted them and baked them wtih the pies: it made a handy thing to give a starving little boy, or his lean waisted father -- who, after all, was nothing but a tall boy, now, aren't all men? she thought, smiling.

The plate was full of her baked cinnamon twisties, and by bedtime it would be empty, but in the meantime, she would get to see the appreciation in their eyes as they partook of her thoughtfulness, and she did so love to see that expression!

 

Joseph, like most young boys, had but two speeds:

A wide open gallop, and a dead stop, with nothing in between.

He scampered back out to the whitewashed fence, flowed between the lower planks, ran full tilt out into the field.

Boocaffie lifted his big head, muttered something: moist nostrils flared as Joseph held out the twisted cinnamon pie crust, and Joseph grinned a delighted, little-boy grin as his big, slow moving friend shared this tasty bounty.

It was a moment not seen by any adult's eye, nor was it recorded by any historian; no record was made of this most pleasant moment, but long ago, in the Colorado high country, the laughing son of a pale eyed Colorado lawman rejoiced in a sunny field with his boon companion, a Texas longhorn.

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591. YORE OLD DECREPIT MAW

 

Sheriff Linn Keller frowned at his phone.

Beside him, in their Jeep, Marnie regarded her Daddy with wide and innocent eyes.

She'd been practicing that Innocent Expression, practicing a wide-eyed, little-girl face in the mirror.

So far it hadn't worked.

Her younger brother Jacob saw her gazing in the looking glass; curious, he came in, sat down.

Marnie turned and looked at him.

"You're wondering what I'm doing," Marnie said quietly.

Jacob nodded.

Marnie looked at her reflection again.

"I," she said frankly, "am failing."

Jacob's expression was one of absolute surprise.

Marnie looked at him again. "Not like that," she said, "not ... not school or homework or grades."

Jacob nodded, puzzled.

Marnie looked in the mirror.

"Most girls my age," she said to the reflection, "are trying makeup and styling their hair and trying the fashions they read in teen magazines."  Marnie shook her head.  "I won't waste my money on those birdcage liners."

"You don't wear makeup either."

"Waste of time," she said frankly. "Why paint an old car if it's an old wreck?"

"You're not an old wreck."

"What would I accomplish with face paint?" Marnie complained.  "It's still me. I have no need to be anything but me."

"Are you bragging or complaining?" Jacob grinned.

Marnie turned, raised a fist, waved it under his nose.

"You watch it, Little Brother," she said menacingly, "or I'll knock you into the middle of next week!"

"Wednesday or Thursday?" Jacob jeered:  Marnie thrust out both hands, fingers clawed and wriggling, and Jacob screeched, twisted, grimaced:  "No!" he howled, laughing, "Not the Dreaded Remote Tickle!"

He fell off his chair, rolled over, balled up, laughing:  Marnie stood over him, leering, fingers working in midair:  Jacob looked up, saw her expression, her fingers, cut loose with a howl of mirth and merriment:  Marnie lowered her hands, bent over, palms on her knees.

"You know, Jacob," she laughed, "I can remote tickle you over the telephone!"

Jacob strangled, snorted, coughed, laughed again:  Marnie stepped around him and went downstairs.

Linn looked up as his darlin' daughter skipped down the wide, solid built stairway.

"You done torturin' your brother?" he deadpanned as Marnie brushed the nonexistent dirt off her sock feet, thrust into her fancy stitched red cowboy boots:  he frowned as he realized her boots had more heel than her dress shoes.

Marnie skipped over to her Daddy, seized his one hand, held it out, seized his other and planted it on her waist:  they automatically began to waltz, easily, naturally, and it was Linn's turn to laugh.

"Darlin'," he said as Marnie spun, her denim skirt flaring just before her stop-and-curtsy, "you are every bit as complex as your Mama, and I thought she had a corner on the market! Now get your coat, we're headed out."

"Jacob's not coming?"

"No. I have need of a woman's counsel and it's time you got used to giving sound advice to the men in your life."

 

They'd gotten halfway down the driveway when Linn's phone chimed.

Marnie's eyebrow twitched up a little, lowered; Linn used that chime for his Mama's calls.

Linn stopped the Jeep, opened the phone's screen, swiped:  "Hi, Mama," he greeted her, and Marnie didn't have to look to know her pale eyed Daddy had a grin on his face.

Marnie heard her Gammaw's voice, quavering a little:  "Could you come over and help out your old decrepit Ma?" Willamina's voice complained.

"On my way, what should I bring?"  Linn turned the phone so Marnie could see her Gammaw, trying hard not to laugh as her screen showed the swing to her granddaughter in the shotgun seat.

"I think you've got all you'll need. Marnie, I have some cookies that haven't been eaten yet, do you think you could help me with those?"

"Oh, I suppose I could gag 'em down," Marnie deadpanned:  it wasn't until Linn ended the conversation, slid the phone back into his shirt pocket, that he and Marnie looked at one another and laughed.

 

Linn stood, a clean five gallon bucket in his left hand, looked up at the smoke detector in the lower hallway.

He looked at Marnie.

"Don't follow my bad example," he said, turning over the plastic bucket: he put splayed fingertips on the wall, planted his burnished boot on the left half of the bucket's upturned bottom, thrust quickly off the floor, set his right boot sole in the symmetrically opposite position: he held for a moment, then straightened.

It was but a moment's work to change out the detector's battery.

Willamina leaned on her cane, watching; she still wore the knee-high, black-velcro-strapped walking boot, though Marnie knew she was healing, that she was weaning out of the boot for longer periods every day.

Linn switched out the square nine-volt for a fresh one, tossed the old battery to Marnie.

"Plug that one back in," he said, stepping down: his move was smooth, quick, and Marnie recognized the practiced, straight-down step of a man who knew what it was to fall from a bucket, used as a stepstool, that flipped from under him right at the wrong moment.

Marnie plugged the rechargeable nine-volt into the charger on the shelf beside her Gammaw's rolltop desk, then turned and followed her Daddy upstairs, watched while he replaced the battery at the top of the stairs -- "This one is important," he explained, "smoke rises" -- she watched as he stood flat footed and changed the detector in the basement stairway -- she smiled, behind her eyes, as her Daddy hugged her Gammaw and murmured, "Old and Decrepit my Aunt Fanny's billy goat!"

Marnie remembered practicing that Innocent Expression earlier; she hoped sincerely that practice was paying off as her Gammaw pointed with her cane:  "I've got a platter of cookies on the kitchen table. Why don't you two help me eat those so I don't get fat!" -- she looked at Marnie and the two shared something unspoken, the way women will -- "Marnie, you look so innocent you've got to be guilty of something!"

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592. A HARD TRAIL TO RIDE

Jacob Keller lowered his field glasses.

This was a place he'd only read of.

Jacob read of this trail, long after his namesake rode it; he read of a shack, of horrors and death and hard-fought survival, and he was long curious to see this place.

Another Jacob Keller was very nearlly whipped to death, as a boy: another Jacob Keller introduced the business end of an Army Colt to the murderer's left ear, and blew the killer's soul out the other side, along with a good percentage of grey matter, blood and splinters of bone.

Jacob compared what he saw below him, to the topographic maps he'd reviewed; the hand drawn maps of the 1880s were mostly railroad maps, or military maps, and neither covered this area: he'd mentally reconstructed the scene from the accounts he'd read, written by the Black Agent after conversation with her pale eyed brother.

It's been well more than a century, he thought.

I can't expect the original shack to be standing.

If a man were to build a shack, where ...?

Jacob touched heels to his stallion, walked down the curve of the trail: a man was waiting for him, an old fellow with winters in his hair and weather creasing his face, and old man who'd lived on that property all of his life.

Jacob dismounted, thrust out his hand.

The old man's grip was as firm as his own.

"Mason."

"Jacob."

Silence grew between the two; Jacob's eyes were busy, comparing what he was seeing with what he'd learned.

"I know that look."

Jacob looked at the old man, smiled just a little.

"You're looking for something."

Jacob nodded.

"Findin' it?"

Jacob considered for several moments, then shook his head.

"No."

Mason scratched the corner of his jaw.

"Might help if I knew what you were lookin' for."

Jacob took a long breath, his eyes swung to the left.

"History," he said.

The old man gave him a long look, almost an amused look.

"You," he said, "and your Pa ..."

He shook his head, chuckled.

"Linn always could surprise me."

Jacob nodded.

"You reckoned I was after a man."

Mason nodded.

"The man I'm after is dead more'n a hundred years."

Mason shifted his chaw, spit a brown stream.

"Kind of hard to arrest a dead man."

"Where," Jacob said slowly, "would a man build a shack?"

"Livin' in shack?"

"Yep."

The old fellow lifted his chin, thrust his bottom jaw.  "Yonder."

Jacob turned, followed his gaze.

"Show me."

The two men walked toward a slight rise, a little flat place in the ground.

"Used to be foundation stones," Mason offered as they walked.  "Corner stones they were. Likely they laid sill logs on 'em to keep 'em off the ground so they'd not rot."

"Likely so," Jacob agreed.

They stopped, looked around.

"Warn't no shack here when I'se a boy," Mason said, turning slowly, "but I recall them corner stones. Pa he said they'd been a shack here but it never amounted t' much."

"Did he ever say whether anything ... happened ... at the shack?"

Mason considered, frowned, looked down.

"Now't you mention it," he said slowly, "Granddad allowed as 'twas a killin' here. Said he found a grave an' they was bones off yonder" -- he raised an arm, thrust a bladed hand -- "he said they was a skull an' it'd bin shot by the look of it."

Jacob nodded.

"Did he do anything with the bones?"

"Said he's a boy when he found 'em.  Him an' his brothers got t' kickin' attair skull around an' it finally just fell apart an' they didn't do nothin' with the rest 'a' th' bones. Said critters had 'em chawed and scattered an' come another year, why, they was plumb gone."

Jacob nodded.  "What of the grave?"

"Know right where 'tis," Mason said.

"Show me."

Apple-horse head bobbed along behind Jacob, plodding as if exhausted: when he stood, he slouched, he looked like he was wore plumb out: Mason would not have been surprised if the Appaloosa folded up and collapsed when the men stopped at the rock-bordered rectangle.

"Granddad said someone kept this grave tidied up," he said, "and he never knew who, but if 'twas important enough for someone to tend that detail, why, he allowed as they'd ought help, so we have.  Ever since."

Jacob turned, looking around.

"If you didn't know this was here," he said slowly, "you'd not know it was here."

"That's why I walked you over here."

Jacob looked back to where the shack must have been.

"Where was the skelton?"

"Granddad said 'twas off yonder somewhere.  He never said right particular where."

Jacob nodded, looked back at the grave.

"Do ye know this one?"

"No."  Jacob's jaw thrust out, slowly.

"Figger on settin' a stone?"

Jacob nodded, just as slowly.

"Set whatever y' want. Matter o' fact, if yer buyin', I'd sell you this ground." He was quiet for another long moment, then added, "I got no fam'ly left."

"I'll take it."

Jacob shook hands with the old man, swung back into the saddle: Apple-horse's ears perked, his head came up, he went from sagging and looking like he could collapse, to dancing, alert, ready for a good run.

They rode back up to where the shack had been:  Jacob turned Apple, slowly, looked back toward the grave.

"He buried his Mama there," Jacob said softly, "and dragged the murderer's carcass out there someplace."  He turned, studying the terrain, considering.

Looks like a trail there, he thought.

"Yup, boy."

Apple-horse picked up his pace, eased into a trot.

He was hurt, horse whipped near to death, he'd have pushed himself to bury his Mama and drag the carcass out ... he slept, he set out the next morning.

Is that the trail he took?

Brush grew up on either side; the trail wound through, curved out of sight.

The closer Jacob got, the more his gut told him This is wrong, this is wrong ...

Apple-horse stopped, tail slashing.

Jacob felt cold sweat crowding out of his hide and he was a little surprised that he was starting to tremble.

His father's words, spoken quietly, came back, clear as if the Grand Old Man were speaking them again:

When in doubt, son, follow your gut.

Jacob's gut told him no-go.

He turned Apple, rode up hill, around the brushy thicket:  he made a wide circle, rode back to the horse trailer.

Jacob baited Apple a scoop of grain once he'd got him inside the trailer; he fast up the back gate, got back in his truck, sat there and considered for several minutes.

He finally took a long breath, blew it out, put his thoughts into words, spoken in the stillness of the truck's cab.

"That," he admitted, "would be a hard trail to ride."

His polished boot stomped hard on the clutch, he eased the shifter into gear, steered the Dodge 3/4 ton around in a big, slow circle, pointed his nose back toward Firelands.

 

 


 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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593. A MATTER OF TRADITION

A laughing little boy ran bowlegged across the floor, trailing giggles and soap suds and an incredible amount of bath water: a big set of hands spread themselves wide, and with the help of a quickly snatched up bath towel, seized the slippery, wiggling, laughing lad with bright eyes and two shining teeth.

Linn stood, wrapping his little boy, spinning him around, holding him up to eye level:  little Joseph Keller, the next child after young Jacob, squealed happily and waved chubby pink arms, slinging what few water drops were left.

Linn packed the lad back into the bathroom, where Shelly was sitting on the edge of the tub, her expression a mixture of tired patience, and mild annoyance.

Linn wrapped the towel around Joseph's ankle, dangled him upside down, to the immediate increase in happy squeals:  "Does he need dunked again?"

"No, he's clean," Shelly sighed.  "You'll have him so wound up he'll never get to sleep."

"Oh, don't worry," Linn said confidently.  "I'll feed him and tuck him in and he's like me."  Linn chuckled, winked:  "I'm like an old b'ar, once I get my belly full and I get warm, why, I'll fall right asleep!"

Shelly gave her husband a knowing look; she knew he was right -- he'd exhibited such behavior many times himself, as had Jacob, and somewhere in her archives, she had a blackmail photograph of Jacob when he was not much older than Joseph ... asleep at the supper table, head laid down in his mashed potatoes, out like a light.

Fortunately his face was turned to the side.

This, of course, pulled another memory along with it, like an illuminated toy train, the memory of a picture she'd seen at her mother in law's summons: Willamina was sitting on the sofa with a picture album open on her lap, and she and Shelly giggled like two schoolgirls at a picture Willamina took of Linn, at a smiliar very young age ... Linn, a wee child, standing up on a kitchen chair, all blue jeans and cowboy boots and little-boy grin ... and  blueberry pie filling over most of his face and both his hands, and the wrecked remains of a cooling pie on the table before him.

It did not make it into the Sheriff's hand written journals, but very similar episodes played out in multiple households: long in the past, Sean, the big Irish fire chief, had both chased a bathwater-wet little Irishman, and Daisy stood silent, her hand over her mouth, when on another fine day one of their red-headed lads stood on a chair and partook, barehand, of a fine berry pie, getting it all over face, both hands and a good percentage of his shirt; truth be told, very similar things happened in the tenement of Old Pale Eyes as well:  we don't know why he did not enter such entertainment into his record of the daily goings-on.

Years later, though, Shelly sat on their wide, comfortable couch with a picture book on her lap, and she too showed embarrassed young men pictures of their early childhood: the naked baby on the bearskin rug was a trope and a stereotype, and no such photos existed of either Joseph, or Jacob, or of their sisters, or the younger children:  no, Linn and Shelly's naked babies were cuddled up against The Bear Killer rather than laid out on a bear skin rug, and the big mountain Mastiff's concealing curl kept naked improprieties from being recorded for posterity.

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594. "I BELONG HERE, SIR."

 

A short haired young woman sat at Linn's table.

She was quiet, polite, attentive: Linn's children regarded her with interest, at least at first, but as she did not pull fuzzy rabbits out of the sugarbowl, as she didn't suddenly sprout horns or breathe fire, as she looked so very unremarkably ordinary, children do what children do best: they accepted that she was there, and they turned their attention to supper.

Jacob sat beside the Valkyrie pilot, his ears a little red: he'd been at his sister's side for just over two weeks, and was now returned home, with Marnie's thanks, conveyed via a hand-held tablet with her video recording, in which she expressed her frustration that she could not leave her duty post to come with him, and it was a damned nuisance that she couldn't at least reach through that glowing screen and hug her Daddy!

Jacob ate with a good appetite, clearly savoring good home grown beef, potatoes that Shelly and the Gunfighter mixed up, while sharing womanly confidences, speaking quietly with the stainless-steel mixer whirring any stray conversation inaudible to anyone else:  Jacob and the Sheriff withdrew to the living room, and bright-eyed children hovered at the edges of both conversations, the way children will.

"I'm a little surprised you're home this soon," Linn admitted.

Jacob nodded.

"I belong here," he said abruptly, looked at his father, his jaw sliding out a little:  Jacob frowned, considered.

Linn knew his son was troubled.

Coming from an assignment -- another jurisdiction, isolated, a very long ways from home -- is difficult enough, Linn reflected; that he left suddenly, not a word to his girlfriend that he'd be gone ... if need be, Linn would smooth that over.

The Confederacy was not yet known to Earth's governments; Mars kept up a careful facade to their Earthside contacts, giving the impression they were managing crises as they came, surviving, but little more: if word got out, unbidden, that they had faster-than-light travel, that they had technologies yet unknown on Earth, courtesy the reverse engineered, extinct-Alien technology, plus the additional benefits of the Confederacy, and their interstellar assets ... well, things could get interesting, and Linn thought it wise not to let things get interesting.

"Sir," Jacob began, then he hesitated, frowned, chewed on his bottom lip.

The ladies were laughing at something, in the kitchen; Linn saw Jacob smile, just a little, to see it.

"Sir, I think I'm kind of sweet on her."

Linn nodded.

"This could get complicated," Jacob continued.  "I don't belong on Mars."

"How's that?"

Jacob rubbed his chin, started to hunch over, stopped himself:  he was inclined to rest his elbows on his knees, but chose instead to sit up very straight, with his shoulders back.

"Sir, Doc Greenlees told me of his own troubles."

Linn's eyebrow raised a little.

"Mars gravity is way the hell less than Earth's gravity. Sis and I would run in that centrifuge. She set it at more than Earth-normal. We'd swing kettlebells, we'd hoist weights, we'd spar and do sit-ups and she said she was damned if she was going to get weak and lazy, her words" -- the two looked at one another and grinned, for they'd heard Marnie use those very words before -- "Doc said he's got his hands full with the Earth imports but the children are fine."

"How's that?"  Linn asked, his eyebrows puzzling together a little.

"Sir, without Earth-normal gravity, Doc said they lose muscle mass -- fast -- and their bones lose calcium. He talked about the constant toning of fighting Earth gravity and how it keeps us healthy and in shape, but muscle loss and bone density loss with lower gravity puts calcium in the blood and he's got the Devil's own time treating kidney stones and hypercalcium something-or-other in the blood.  Bad for the heart."

Linn nodded; likely Shelly would understand the medical end of it more than he.

"Doc said babies born there are automatically acclimatized to it. He said they are just outrageously healthy, his words."

Linn laughed a little.

His old and dear friend, Dr. John Greenlees Senior, described both Jacob, Joseph and Marnie, in those exact words, back when.

Jacob shook his head, frowned.

"I will admit, sir," he said slowly, "it still feels funny calling John Junior, Doctor."

Linn nodded.

Jacob's grin was sudden, bright, contagious.  "A prophet is not without honor save in his own country, eh, sir?"

Linn laughed.  "Yes, Jacob, and that's exactly why you had to kick so many backsides up between their shoulder blades when you were first sworn in as a deputy. Too many folks looked at you and recalled the little boy you used to be."

"Yes, sir, that's so."

"How did your deputy's work go ... up there?"

Jacob blinked a few times, rapidly; his gaze turned quickly away, his bottom jaw tightened, then he looked back.

"Sir, I was more than effective."

Linn nodded, once, slowly.

"I was too effective."

"Oh?"

"When a fellow swung a club at me, I caught his wrist coming in -- I stepped out of the strike line -- but when I grabbed his arm and twisted it down, I broke both his arm bones. Didn't realize it at first. I drove a haymaker into his gut and brought him a meter off the ground."

Jacob shook his head.

"God help me, I'm contaminated," he muttered.  "They're metric up there and it shows."

Linn nodded.

"Lower gravity and their bones are fragile now. Strong enough for what they do every day, but I came close to killing three men when they jumped me, and I didn't turn my badger loose on 'em that bad!"

Linn's eyebrow raised.

"Sir, if I can crush a man's forearm with only my grip, if I can cave in several ribs with one hard punch, if I can shatter a man's cheek bone with a punch ..."

He looked at his father, his eyes haunted.

"Sir, some men need killin' and I accept that. If they break that easy on just a takedown, I'm not the man for the job!"

Linn hunched over, elbows on his knees, his palms sandpapering slowly, thoughtfully, as he raised one eybrow and spoke very quietly, and very directly, to the distress he'd felt himself, the first time he realized just how badly he himself could hurt someone with his bare hands.

"Jacob," Linn said quietly, "what are your plans now?"

"I'm returned home, sir.  I asked Sis ... the Sheriff ... I asked Marnie if she'd turn me loose."

"What did she say?"

"She give me a big hug and said she'd miss me, and if she needed me again would I come and I said yes, and that little one of hers was just awful happy to cuddle up ag'in me and sleep!"

Linn nodded, straightened.

"Jacob, you are wiser than most men," Linn said at length: he rose, and so did his son.

Father and son shook hands, and each looked the other very directly in the eye.

"I'm glad you were effective," Linn said quietly, "but I'm damned glad to have you home!"

Father and son seized one another in a very honest, very sincere, bear hug.

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595. PA, YOU WERE RIGHT!

Joseph Keller squinted at the ground.

Of all the Keller young, he had the best eyes and the best tracking sense, and he could see where his older brother Jacob rode his Apple-horse back up toward the horse trailer.

It took him most of the day to get here, riding his Mongrel-horse -- he wasn't sure what-all was in him, but it didn't matter, Joseph and Mongrel got along like they'd grown up together, and that was almost true.

Joseph's pale eyed Pa didn't have to break Mongrel to bitless riding: the first time Joseph climbed the fence and wallered over on the Mongrel-horse's back, they took out across the pasture like they'd done it all their lives, and so Linn fitted his younger son and the boy's gelding with a saddle, shortened up the stirrups to fit the lad's short legs, and the only reason Mongrel even wore a bridle was so he could be tied off to a hitch rail.

Most of the time, Joseph didn't bother with the bridle, and Mongrel-horse followed Joseph like a dog, which caused misunderstandings at times, but these things happen when a boy and his horse are concerned.

Like any of the Keller young, Joseph was quick to listen and quick to remember, and he remembered his big brother Joseph telling their pale eyed Pa that he could not bring himself to ride that trail, there was something there that told him no go, and Joseph recalled how Linn rested a fatherly hand on his son's shoulder and give him a serious look and said "When in doubt, son, follow your gut."

Joseph straightened; Mongrel raised his head, walked slowly down the slope.

Joseph could almost see where a shack had been.

He could almost make out where four foundation stones had been.

He stopped -- they stopped -- horse and rider turned, slowly, turned back, turned again.

Joseph walked Mongrel ahead and stopped.

A little boy with pale eyes and a broad brim Stetson regarded a rectangular plot of cleared ground curiously.

It was bordered with stones -- neatly outlined, the corners were square, the sides and ends were parallel, and the newly troubled earth at the far end held a freshly installed, quartz marker, held it like the earth itself was holding something precious.

The marker bore a word, in large block letters:

MOTHER

Joseph removed his Stetson as he studied the marker, then he twisted his off boot from the stirrup, swung his leg over, fell to earth and landed flat footed.

He walked a little closer, carefully staying outside the neat row of rocks, squatted to read the smaller lettering, sandblasted in old fashioned italics into the mirror polished quartz:

Murdered with child, her murder avenged,

Borne here in grief, she lies now in peace.

Joseph laid a hand on the stone and whispered, "Rest easy, Mama," and he wasn't sure why he did: he rose, walked back to his Mongrel-horse:  it was a stretch and a bounce to get back up into the saddle, but he did:  this child, this young son of a long line of lawmen, looked down on the grave, on the neatly lined stones, on the newly placed marker.

Joseph Keller thought of his Mama's hands, of her smile, the way she looked at him, he remembered giggling in the bathtub as she rubbed down his back with a big soapy sponge, he remembered how it felt to cuddle in her lap when he didn't feel good, he remembered her singing to him when he was very young, and he looked at this stone, this cold polished marker, and for the first time in young Joseph Keller's life, he realized that mothers die.

Mothers die.

Part of him knew that everyone dies, part of him screamed out against the idea, two warring thoughts inside a very still, very wooden faced little boy atop a gelding of uncertain lineage.

Joseph wished he were older.

If he were older he'd have a rifle scabbarded under his leg, and he could take care of whoever put this mother in a cold bed instead of the warm, comfortable bed she deserved.

Joseph Keller's ten year old jaw slid out and hardened and Mongrel-horse paced across where the shack had been, toward the brushline, toward a path, a trail, and as Joseph rode, he saw where Jacob's Apple-horse shied, and stopped, danced, and turned.

Mongrel-horse rode right over the tracks.

 

"I can't find him, sir," Jacob said, his words crisp, distinct, the way he spoke when it was a matter of importance.

Linn looked at Jacob, raised an eyebrow.

"His saddle and Mongrel-horse are both gone."

"Your thoughts."

"Sir, you recall when you and Mama moved in here."

Linn nodded, slowly, curious.

"You recall the wiring was not grounded and the refrigerator started to short out against the sink, started to throw big blue arcs."

"Oh, yesss," Linn hissed, nodding and crossing his arms:  "I recall."

"Sir, you'll recall that after Mama dropped in that sheet of cardboard to break the arc, she told Joseph and me both not to touch the fridge and the sink at the same time."

"I recall you bulled your bottom jaw out and grabbed 'em both."

"And Mama pried my fingers loose with a butter knife. Knocked me across the room and knocked her under the table."

"And Joseph looked at the both of you and did the same thing."

"Yes, sir."

"Your point?"

"Forbid a thing, sir, and you make it desirable. Joseph heard us talking about my not wanting to ride down that trail."

Linn blinked, surprised: he realized that his son was quite probably right.

"Saddle up."

"I'll get the horse trailer hitched back up, sir."

 

Joseph Keller considered his options.

He had no idea what he was riding into, only that his big brother was too chicken to ride down here.

His brother was near to grown, his brother had a belt gun and a rifle and was nearly a deputy.

Joseph considered that he'd seen nothing so far to give him pause, nothing that would indicate danger; he consulted Mongrel-horse's ears, considered the gelding's steady gait; the trail made a sudden turn --

Mongrel-horse stopped.

"Well howdy, stranger," a woman's voice greeted him, and Joseph blinked, confused.

His young mind considered, then discarded, that this was -- wasn't -- his Gammaw, it was -- wasn't -- his big sister Marnie.

No, this was someone that must be a relative, she looked like the both of them, only prettier.

Mongrel-horse didn't seem to be much bothered by the size of the woman's mount:  coal black, shining like a polished black buckeye, but big, big! 

"Hello," Joseph said, touching his hat brim the way he'd seen his Pa do.

"You look familiar," the woman smiled.

"So do you."

Her laugh was like rippling water down a rocky streambed, pleasant, sparkling, bright, and young Joseph could not help but laugh to hear it.

"My brother didn't want to ride down here," Joseph said with the frankness of the very young.

The pretty lady smiled.  "There are hard memories on this trail," she agreed.  "Sometimes when people have a great deal of pain, it sheds off of them and stays behind.  Maybe that's what he was feeling."

"Uh-oh," Joseph replied, his eyes widening.

"What's uh-oh?" she asked, her head tilting a little the way women do.

"Well, maybe they don't, but Jacob and I grabbed the ridgerator an' the sink an' got the snot shocked out of us an' I don't remember bad feelin's there!"

"I see."  She looked up, considered the sun.  "How long will it take you to get home?"

Joseph considered the state of his appetite and was surprised to find he was kind of hungry.

"I'll bet you'd like something to eat first.  I just happen to have a picnic lunch, and it's pleasant to share a meal with a fellow rider.  Shall we dismount?"

 

Father and son thrust a boot into their black doghouse stirrups; father and son swung a leg over their mounts; Linn let Jacob take the lead.

He'd found the trail, Linn reasoned; let him lead the way.

Jacob leaned over a little as he rode, studying the ground:  he drew up, lifted his chin at his father's approach.

"Smaller hooves," he said.  "Likely Mongrel's."

Linn nodded, looked at the trail opening in the brush.

"How's your gut?"

"Ready for a fight, sir."

"Lead the way."

Jacob and Apple-horse started down the trail through the brushy thicket.

 

Joseph helped the pretty lady spread the red and white checkered tablecloth on a sandy flat; she unwrapped sandwiches, thick slabs of meat between slabs of sweet roll:  she withdrew two bottles of sarsparailla from the wicker basket, flipped the bail, worked the cork out with a little *pop* and a fizz of carbonation:  she handed the first to Joseph, opened the second one, placed it on the cloth.

She frowned.

"We should have a plate," she complained.

Joseph looked at her, surprised.  

"A plate?"

"Of course," the pretty lady said, blinking innocently.  "It's proper to talk to your plate before you eat."

Joseph laughed, a little boy's delighted laugh, infectious, bringing a warm smile of genuine affection from the pretty lady.

 

Linn's eyes were busy; he considered his stallion's ears, he turned to regard his back trail: something was out of the ordinary, something was not really wrong.

Maybe I'm just picking up on Jacob's angst.

To his credit, he's not pulled his rifle.

He won't unless there's good reason.

 

The pretty lady raised her head, smiled: Joseph looked up, saw the huge, shiny-black mare raise her head, ears swinging around:  he saw his own Mongrel-horse follow suit, and both horses nickered a greeting.

Joseph rose, grinned as his Pa and his big brother came around the bend, saw them draw up, surprise and maybe a little confusion on their faces.

"I smelled woodsmoke," Jacob said, "and bacon."

Joseph turned to gesture toward the pretty lady that looked so much like his Gammaw and his older sis, and he froze: if the surprised look on his face had been a light bulb, he'd have lit up the edge of the thicket like a searchlight.

Linn's stallion turned, dancing a little:  pale eyes regarded their back trail, swung back around to regard his younger son and the picnic spread out and ready.

"Jacob," he said, "do you still smell woodsmoke?"

"No, sir. No bacon now."  He looked at his father with a little distress and admitted "Damfino, sir!"

"Joseph."

"Yes, sir?"

"Report."

"I rode down the trail," Joseph said, "and I found --"

His arm was extended.

"She's gone."

Linn dismounted:  "Jacob, stand fast. Goldie, hold."

His golden stallion dropped his big head a little, as if nodding understanding.

Linn studied the ground, frowning: he hunkered, studied the ground, stood, regarded the same square footage from a higher angle.

"Jacob."

"Sir."

"Here" -- Linn's bladed hand thrust toward something in the sandy dirt -- "and here. What do you make of that?"

"Big," Jacob said bluntly.  "Gammaw has a Frisian that size. Joseph, was Gammaw's big horse here?"

Joseph shook his head.

"What horse made these tracks?"

"A big black one."

Linn and Jacob looked at one another, laughed.

Joseph, surprised, fisted young hands:  "It was!" he declared, "and that woman that rode her looked like Gammaw and Marnie --"

Linn raised his palm.  "One moment," he said mildly. "How was she dressed?"

"Like the Tea Society ladies."

Linn and Jacob looked at one another again.

"Joseph, what-all is on that picnic cloth?"

"Sandwiches, sir, and two bottles of sarsparilla."

"Looks like three bottles."

Joseph turned, surprised.

There were three bottles.

One was beer, not sarsparilla; it was not opened, but all three were starting to bead up with condensation, as if they were well chilled and ready to be drunk.

"How many sandwiches are there, Joseph?"

"There were two," Joseph said, "but now there's a third."

"Gentlemen," Linn said, including both his sons with an inclusive sweep of his eyes, "it would seem that we are made welcome here on a rough and rugged coast. Let us rest and refresh ourselves."

So saying, Linn lifted his chin toward Jacob, and a few moments later, three Keller men were enjoying the generosity of their mysterious, disappearing benefactor.

Linn ate with good appetite, Jacob more slowly, obviously something on his mind.

Linn looked at him, raised an eyebrow.

"Sir," Jacob said seriously, "Gammaw said she doesn't like a mystery and neither do I. Nobody could have ridden off as we approached, we'd have heard it -- especially a horse that size -- they didn't melt into the thicket, it's too brushy, they didn't come back past us."

"True," Linn admitted, taking another bite of the thick sandwich.

"I smelled smoke and now there is none."

"I recall."

"I smelled bacon and it disappeared when the wood smoke did."

"So you said," Linn nodded: he flipped the bail on the thick-glass beer bottle, let the cork work out on its own.

"What conclusion can I draw, sir?"

Linn considered, chewing the last of his sandwich: he took a thoughtful sip of beer -- it was thick, it was stout, it was cold, it was good! -- he considered the size of the hoofprints, frowned.

"I can't see any lessons, Jacob," he said. 

"What about the tomb stone?" Joseph asked.

"Tomb stone?"  Linn looked from his younger son to his elder son.

"I found out where my namesake's mother is buried, sir," Jacob explained. "I cleaned off the grave, I outlined it with stone and I set a marker."

Linn nodded slowly.

"Gentlemen, when you eliminate that which is impossible," he quoted, "that which remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

"What is the truth, sir?" Jacob asked.

"You did a forgotten woman a kindness, Jacob. It may be that this was a thank-you. Not necessarily hers -- Joseph, you said she looked much like your Gammaw and like Marnie."

"Yes, sir."

"What troublemaker do we know that looks like her?"

"MARNIE!" Jacob and Joseph declared in one voice, both of them grinning at the happy but heartfelt coincidence.

Linn waved a dismissive hand.  "The Pope is Catholic," he agreed, "tell me something I don't know!"

"Sarah, then sir?"

"I'm thinking Sarah," Linn agreed.  "Joseph, what of her eyes?"

"Pale, sir."

"There."  Linn's voice was that of a man satisfied with his conclusion. "Sarah may have been a representative, thanking on behalf of the woman whose grave is now marked and tended."

"She appeared to Joseph. I placed the marker, sir."

"She also left us sandwiches and drink."

Jacob tilted his sarsparilla up, drained the last of it.

"Sir," he said thoughtfully, "you just might be right!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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596. THE SERVICE IN THE FIREHOUSE

 

The Irish Brigade took a fierce pride in all that they did.

Their beloved Steem Masheen was burnished to a fine gleaming finish, waxed and buffed and absolutely spotless: its mechanical innards were lovingly tended and timed and maintained by the German Irishman, for he was a man of precision; the firehouse itself was faultlessly clean within, every man Jack of the Brigade not only tending the obvious needs, but also meticulously dusting, mopping, sweeping, wiping down: no dust could be found atop the two framed portraits that hung in the Chief's bay, straw was changed often in the mares' stalls, their harness polished, the brightwork and harness-bells gleaming: it took but very little effort for the Irish Brigade to convert their firehouse into a chapel, and when the Abbott arrived with the Host, when he and the White Sisters descended from the passenger car, when they sang in processsion past the depot and down the alley, around the corner and down the street, they made a fine sight indeed, and even Parson Belden abbreviated his Sunday sermon so the congregation, if inclined, could join the Catholic service in the tall, narrow, brick horse house.

The firehouse was narrow; in years to come it would be broadened, but as yet it was but two bays: one for the Steam Masheen, and one for the ladder wagon and hose reel: because the ladder wagon was long, the bays were deep -- a fortunate thing indeed, for with the apparatus pulled out onto the apron, there was just enough room, but only just: very nearly everyone who'd enjoyed the Parson's shortened sermon, proceeded to the firehouse for the Catholic service.

It was the feast day of Saint Patrick, a day generally observed with religious ceremony and little more: fine meals under one's own roof, aye, and to that end, the Irish Brigade's cooks had the meal prepared, and held at a warming temperature: the interior of the firehouse smelled less of rubber coats and horses than it did of corned beef and cabbage and fresh baked bread, and Sabbath though it might be, Daisy's kitchen had been busy, and provided both the Silver Jewel and the firehouse with fresh baked pies for the occasion.

Part of the draw, of course, was the uniqueness of a Catholic service: most of the Irish Brigade were of that faith, and few others in town; the service, different from the Parson's presentations, was attractive simply because it was different, but the greatest draw was the cluster of White Nuns, ranked evenly on either side of the Abbott.

The White Nuns sang, predominantly in Latin, their voices harmonizing with the ease, and the beauty, of long practice, and showing their joy of singing: their faces were hidden behind white silk veils, but in the minds of the listeners, each had the face of an angel, for their voices were surely borrowed from the Heavenly Choir itself!

Sheriff Linn Keller stood with his hat in his hand, shoulder to shoulder with his son Jacob: his son Joseph stood on the other side of him, and none there knew that the lad would be dead in less than a day -- he'd been named after the infant son who died a crib death less than a week after his birth -- and Jacob sought to assuage his father's grief by naming his own second-born Joseph as well, but this was not yet accomplished, for Jacob had yet to meet his wife Annette by virtue of getting lost in San Francisco, and seeing her set upon by slavers -- but this is wandering from the firehouse, so let us return to this close company.

Linn had been a brevet-colonel in the internicine war he seldom talked about; he'd met men from many nations, some were observers from distant lands:  one such was Japanese, an interesting fellow who affected Union blue instead of his traditional silk robes and tabi, though he wore a long, curved, incredibly sharp sword in lieu of an issue saber: he spoke remarkably good English, and as men do when far from home, he shared a fire, a meal, stories, and it struck Linn -- as a man far from home -- as interesting that this foreigner spoke of a warrior caste of his people, the Ninja.

He'd spoken quietly, the way a man will when remembering; he spoke of full bluff warriors, blooded fighters who feared nothing, men who could be utterly merciless in combat, and yet quietly weep  at the sight of a perfect sunrise, of a perfect, flawless, beautifully crafted porcelain teacup, at the sight of a truly beautiful maiden.

This he remembered as the White Sisters sang, their voices soaring, weaving their invisible beauty: more than one there glanced over to see the pale eyed lawman with the iron grey mustache, with two wet streaks running down his carefuly-expressionless face, and none spoke of what they'd seen: when a strong man's heart overflows his eyes, it is a powerful statement, and he'd earned the respect of all who noticed, and so they kept the moment to themselves and spoke not of it afterward.

Joseph waited until after the bay doors were reopened, and the assembled decompressed out onto the brick-paved apron, in order to form lines so all could file through and be fed, for the feast following the service was part of the day's tradition: he and his Pa loafed against a low brick wall, mopping fresh, still-warm sourdough into the cabbage juice, leaning forward so any chin-dribbles wouldn't stain the front of their coats.

"Sir," Joseph said, looking curiously at his Pa and at his big brother, on his Pa's right, "how come they didn't pass the plate?"

Linn bit the juicy part off his bread, swiped quickly at his chin to catch a dribble, made a quick, almost guilty nibble at the bread, as if to conceal the evidence of what he'd just done.

"I reckon," Linn said thoughtfully, "the Abbot figured he'd get clubbed if folks were asked to pay the preacher twice in one day."

"Oh."  Joseph frowned, nodded, as if it made perfect sense.

Jacob was quite obviously enjoying his corned beef and cabbage; he'd not said word one since parking his backside against the low brick wall at the edge of the firehouse apron.

He looked almost expectantly at the open bay door, frowned a little:  he turned his attention back to his plate, and Joseph thought his big brother looked almost disappointed.

Joseph jumped a little as dress material swished beside him and a familiar voice said "Can a lady sit beside you?" 

Jacob turned, looked at his sister, grinned.

"I thought you were singing!" he said quietly, and Sarah smiled knowingly.

"Who says I wasn't?"

"You -- but -- how'd you --"

"How did I change?"  Sarah smiled.  "I'm good at the quick change, Jacob, you know that.  Besides" -- she leaned over Joseph, just a little, looked down at him, winked, then looked back at Jacob -- "if you counted the White Sisters coming off the train, you might count one less getting back on for their return to Rabbitville."

"Ah," Jacob replied, as if that explained everything.

 

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597. RECKON SO

Linn sat at his kitchen table, listening to the household's nighttime sounds.

Coffee steamed silently in a heavy ceramic mug in front of him; his fingers turned it slowly, idly, while he stared at the opposite wall.

He'd been sitting there for some while now; his coffee got cold, he dumped it back into the blue granite pot, poured it again: the pot was warm, sitting on the banked stove; the stove was warm, just enough to make the coffee drinkable:  this was the third mug he'd poured and poured again, and he had yet to taste any of it.

He felt, more than heard, movement in the silent house.

Oh, there were little sounds; a creak or a crack, wooden houses have their quiet sounds as they stretch or swell or shrink with changes in the weather, and Linn's old war wounds were complaining as they always did about approaching rain; like the quiet sounds the house made, Linn ignored his aches and pains.

He just sat, silent, unmoving, staring at the far wall.

Jacob came off the bottom step, turned, looked into the kitchen:  silent, like a ghost, tall and ethereal in his nightshirt, he paced barefoot down the hallway.

He stopped and considered his father, then he opened a cupboard door, carefully extracted a heavy coffee mug, poured himself most of a mugful.

He sat to his father's right, as was his custom; father and son leaned over their bitter-black brew, the vapors reaching up to caress their faces, until finally Jacob raised his, took a careful sip.

He grimaced.

"Bad, isn't it?" Linn murmured, his voice soft, gentle in the nighttime stillness.

"It is, sir."

"It's been in the pot all day, repentin' of its sins."

"Yes, sir."

Silence grew long between them.

Jacob knew when his father had that ten mile stare, when he was silent and unblinking and fit to burn a hole in the far wall with the strength of his gaze, the best thing he could do was let the man be: if he was inclined to speak of his troubles, he would; if he was not so inclined, it profited not to try to pry it out of him.

"I used to hate the generals," Linn said slowly.

Jacob tilted his head a little as he looked at his solemn faced father, his face illuminated by the turned down flame of a single kerosine lamp: it was full dark out, stars shone brightly but lent no illumination, and no trace of moon could be seen through the kitchen curtains.

"I hated the damned brass for sending good men to their deaths."

Jacob nodded a little, fingers wrapped around the mug's warmth.

"One night I set down on a log and a man set down beside me. It was late and I couldn't sleep and apparently neither could he."  Linn glanced at his son, smiled with half his mouth.  "Kind of like tonight."

"Yes, sir."

"He said he'd had to write a stack of letters."

Jacob waited.

"I'd had to write some my own self, men killed under my command, men I knew.  Turns out he'd done the same thing and him a general."

Jacob's nod was slow, thoughtful.

"I recall he rubbed his face and dropped his head and allowed as he knew every one of his boys. He might not know every man's name but he said he looked in their faces every day and he saw who they were and where they'd come from and he said he saw the families that entrusted him with their sons and their fathers and their husbands and now he had to tell those same families that their boy was not coming home."

"Yes, sir."

"It's a terrible responsibility, Jacob. A man's life ... everything he's ever been and the worst part is knowing that you ordered a man into battle and he's dead and he'll never do anything more. Every last thing he might have done, every deed, every achievement, a business opened, a kindness extended, kindnesses he'd have given ..."

Linn shook his head, leaned back.

"Gone."

Jacob saw sorrows carved deep into his father's face, grief's shadows unforgiving in the dim light.

"I was responsible for my men, Jacob. I knew them.  Man and boy, I knew every last one of 'em just the way the General described knowing the men under his command."

"Yes, sir."

"And now Joseph."  Linn dropped his head, stared into the shimmering well of his untouched coffee.

"I know here" -- he tapped his forehead -- "Joseph's dyin' was none of my doin', I know here" -- he tapped his forehead again -- "there was not one damned thing I could have done to prevent it."

Jacob looked very directly at his father's face, looked into the face of a man tearing himself apart inside and still managing to look calm and strong on the outside.

"In here" -- Linn tapped bent fingers to his breastbone -- "I can still see him falling and --"

He lowered his face into his hands, took a long breath, rubbed his face, shook his head.

"Doc Greenlees called it the falling sickness. I don't ever recall him fallin' out like that, not even when he was fevered as a baby. It just ... happened ... and all I could do was stand there and watch him."  His eyes were wide, unblinking, his voice shrank to a strained whisper.

"I watched my boy havin' a fit like a rabid dog and not one damned thing I could do to stop it!"

Jacob closed his eyes, nodded.

He'd heard his father's stallion at a gallop, but he had no idea why, not until the hired man ran up and blurted that Joseph fell and your Pa is takin' him to the doc and he said to alarm the household, and Jacob's jaw hardened and his eyes went pale and he turned and strode, long-legged and a-purpose up the front porch steps and into the house and he wished for an insane moment that he might have a bugler to blow "Boots and Saddles" in such a moment.

The maid was quick and efficient, the way she always was: she put together some food, wrapped in cloth napkins, she loaded a set of saddlebags, thrust a bottle of beer in each: a man might need to fortify himself with more than branch water, she'd told Jacob once, in such a moment, and when the maid loaded up food for travel, she made sure two bottles of beer went in, well padded with whatever else was included.

Jacob remembered his sisters flocking like chicks around the maid, how his little brothers, serious faced, clapped round crowned hats on their heads and buttoned their coats and looked down the road, where their pale eyed Pa had gone a-gallop.

Jacob had his brothers stack their rifles in the buggy's rifle-case; it held them without rattle, but with easy access; if they had to travel fast, the family was ready to go: Angela rode up on her shining-gold mare, her young face serious, and Jacob did not have to lean over and look to know she had a bulldog pistol secreted under her riding-cloak, and her '73 rifle in its scabbard, discreetly hidden by the cloak's drape: she was a beautiful girl, aye, and she was very much her mother's daughter, but she well knew that evil strikes anytime, anywhere, and when the general call of "Alarm the household" was given, that meant that she stood ready with the rest of them.

Jacob looked up as a rider came into view -- someone compact, headed their way at a brisk trot.

"Angela, flank left," he said quietly.  "The rest of you, hold for my command."

It was one of the lads that hung around the telegraph office, on one of Shorty's rented horses: he rode up to Jacob, awkwardly, clearly unused to riding any distance, or at any speed.

"The Sheriff," he blurted, "it's Joseph. Jacob, he needs you."

"Where is he?"

"Doc's office."

Jacob nodded, curled his lip, whistled:  he looked around, eyes pale, raised a hand.

"All of you," he called loudly, "with me!"

 

Jacob sat in the darkness with his father.

He listened to a man whose soul was scarred with war and with the whip-weals of self-flagellation, a man who blamed himself for losing every man killed under his command, a man who blamed himself for his son's death, even knowing there was nothing he could have done to prevent it, or to help it, and Jacob considered that if war did this to a good man -- if war tormented and tortured his Pa's conscience a quarter of a century and more afterward -- war was something no son of his would ever endure.

He, Jacob Keller, would see to it that no member of his family would ever, EVER go off to war! -- and so it was that a pale eyed young man sat with his silently sorrowing father, in the hushed kitchen of a nighttime household, and finally when the Eastern horizon began to lighten, and the maid woke and came into the kitchen to start her morning routine, two men took their mugs of cold coffee and went out on the back steps, and sat, and watched the sun rise, and finally -- when two cups of cold, stale coffee were slung into the dirt, and two men stood and stretched -- Linn nodded and said quietly, "I reckon I can make it one more day," and that was the morning Jacob learned how important it was just to set with someone and listen.

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598. YOUR HONOR, YOU NEEDN'T WORRY

 

Sheriff Linn Keller tilted his chair back against the wall, pale eyes raised to the trim along the ceiling in the Judge's chamber.

Jacob Keller came in, his step silent, or nearly so -- moccasins or riding boots, the Sheriff's son habitually trod soundlessly, or nearly so: he stood respectfully, hat in his hand, listening to the Judge reading an account aloud.

When His Honor dropped the paper to the desk top and leaned back, Jacob hung his Stetson on a peg: only then did he reach for a chair, draw it out a little and sit.

The lean waisted Sheriff frowned a little as he considered the jurist's words.

"You are tellin' me," he said slowly, "that the courts back east decided that a man was not guilty because he was insane?"

"That's right," the Judge grunted: he looked up at one lawman, then the other, remarking silently (for the ten thousandth time!) how much the two looked alike, sat alike, stood alike, rode alike.

Hell, they could be brothers, not father and son! he thought: to conceal his straying thought, he frowned at his humidor, decided against reaching for a hand rolled Cuban.

The Honorable Donald Hostetler looked at the Sheriff, thrust his chin at the man:  "Now what was it you were telling me about that man that came in with a notch in each ear?"

 

Bob Holland flinched as Doc Greenlees wiped both fresh wounds with carbolic.

"These will heal better if you leave 'em open to the air," Doc said quietly. "They're raw but not bleeding. Keep 'em clean and dry and they should be fine."

The Sheriff sat down in front of Holland, regarded him with cold and unreadable eyes.

"It was Ellswick," Holland gasped. "It was that crazy Ellswick!"

"What did he do this time?" Linn asked quietly.

Doc picked up the metal basin with the soiled gauze, turned: he handed the basin to Nurse Susan, hitched his trousers and sat down on the rolling stool: whatever happened might be interesting, and whatever happened might mean more customers -- either way, Doc silently allowed as this was need-to-know information.

"Now I was mindin' my own business, see," Holland stammered, "I was headed out on East Fork Branch past Mud Head" -- Linn nodded to show he knew the place -- "well, I come around the turn and there stood Ellswick and that crazy look on his face and he drew them shiny pistols and allowed as I was a-goin' to dance and I allowed as damned if I was a-goin' to dance, an' he upped both them pistols and fired and damned if he didn't clip both my ears all't the same time!"

Doc Greenlees' eyebrow raised.

Linn leaned forward a little.

"What did you do?"

"Hell, what could I do? I drawed and I knowed I was too n'arvous t' put a killin' shot into him so I emptied m' gun int' th' ground in front of him an' he howled and spun around and I reckon I stung him some and I taken out a-runnin' an' I got m' horse under me an' here I am!"

"You got any more holes in you?"  Linn asked slowly, and Holland shook his head.

"No, but that damned Ellswick is crazy! Crazy, I tell ya!"

Linn rose.

"I'll take care of it."

 

His Honor the Judge looked at Jacob.

"Your Honor, I've subscribed to Dutchman's Justice myself," Jacob said quietly, and the Judge nodded.

"If they're so crazy they commit murder, they're too dangerous to be allowed to live, hang 'em anyway."

Jacob nodded.

The Judge was surprised the Sheriff's head did not incline in the same moment and to the same degree.

"I understand the Sheriff sent you out to bring him in."

"I went after Ellswick, yes, sir."

"And?"

 

Jacob Keller slipped through the brush.

It hadn't been hard to find the man in question.

Jacob knew his habits and he knew where and how Ellswick liked to ride.

He hung his coat around a bush and set his Stetson atop the bush and slid off to the side, and back down the trail towards the approaching criminal.

Ellswick came around the turn just far enough to see a coat and a hat, and he twisted and dropped off his horse, drew his nickle plated Remingtons and nearly ran toward the simulacrum.

Jacob waited until the horse was turned and starting away from him, then he stepped quickly, silently out behind Ellswick.

 

Jacob rose and peeled off his coat, turned it around.

He held his hand inside so his hand's flesh could be seen through the .44 caliber hole in the coat.

His Honor the Judge's expression was solemn as he regarded this insult to a lawman's garment.

 

Jacob Keller raised his '73 rifle and sighted quickly.

The trigger was smooth, familiar under his finger; the sear broke cleanly, the .44 bullet driving in the back of Ellswick's skull and ending his insane assaults forever.

 

"Were you wearing the coat at the time?" the Judge asked, and Jacob smiled a little, shook his head.

"No, sir," he said.  "I had it wrapped around a bush as a decoy."

"Ellswick?"

"He shot my coat, sir."

"And?"

Jacob Keller's smile never traveled beyond a slight narrowing of the corners of his eyes.

"Your Honor," he said quietly, "you needn't worry."  He draped the holed garment over his forearm, turned, picked his Stetson off its peg.

"And now, gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, I must needs see Miz Bonnie and have her assign the repair of my poor abused coat to one of her excellent seamstresses."

The Judge nodded; Jacob turned and departed, his tread as soundless as it had been on approach.
His Honor the Judge looked at Sheriff Linn Keller and shook his head.

"Sheriff," he said, "you stamped your brand on that young man plain as day.  You two look alike, you walk alike, good God, you two sound alike!"

"Flattery," the Sheriff said quietly, rising, "will get you everywhere.  Will there be anything else, Your Honor?"

"No, Sheriff. Your deputy has saved us all the expense and trouble of a jury trial, and I for one am grateful."  He picked up the article he'd read aloud, held it between thumb and forefinger as if it were unclean, dropped it in his trash can: as the Sheriff departed the Judge's chamber, he thought the Judge muttered something.

It sounded like "Dutchman's Justice."

 

 

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599. FLYING LESSON

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller stood and stared at the guardrail for several minutes.

Their rented car waited patiently as Willamina's gaze crisscrossed new pavement, from far to near; she finally looked left, looked right, crossed the road.

Linn waited, silent, unmoving.

Willamina wore her usual tailored suit dress and heels; Linn, tall, skinny, wore a black suit: his Stetson was in his hand, his boots were polished, and he watched as his Mama tied a bunch of flowers to the guardrail with a red silk ribbon.

She turned, looked north, looked south.

Traffic was light, in spite of its being midafternoon:  Willamina drew a pocket watch , pressed its stem, considered the watch-face:  Linn did the same.

He looked north, as had his Mama, imagining the oncoming car that killed his Grampa: he looked south, picturing the police cruiser drawn crossways of the two-lane road.

The sweep second hand swung steadily upward.

Linn lifted his eyes, looked at his Mama.

Willamina closed her eyes, bowed her head:  she closed the watch, went slowly to her knees.

Linn waited: his thumb closed the cover of his railroad watch, his finger pressed the stem to latch the cover silently shut.

Willamina rose; she brushed a nonexistent fleck of dirt off her stockinged knees, looked left and right, crossed the highway, heels loud on the pavement, turned.

A State Trooper slowed, pulled in behind their rental car, lit up.

Linn stood there, a tall, slender young man in a suit that would have been completely at home in the mid-1880s, a young man with Stetson in hand, watching with pale eyes as a State Trooper walked slowly past the rental car -- Linn saw the man pause, knew he'd pressed a finger to the car's taillight, smiling because he'd noticed, and because he knew the significance of the move -- and Willamina smiled and turned over her lapel.

Linn had seen this play out many times in the past.

An attractive woman in a suit dress and heels, local law enforcement stops to make sure all is well, she introduces herself as a visiting Sheriff:  her ID would be confirmed, of course, and when it was -- Linn knew his Mama had already contacted the local State Patrol post, informing she would be visiting in the area -- there would be the usual conversation, an introduction, handshakes; Linn knew that today, his Mama would explain that on this spot, this many years ago, her father was town marshal and had been killed when an escaping felon rammed the police cruiser, pinning her Papa and crushing his legs.

Linn was here, with his Mama, two years before, and he remembered the twin gouges burned in the old blacktop, where the felon laid on the throttle and tried to shove the dying lawman and his cruiser out of the way: all he'd accomplished was burn two dig-outs in the blacktop.

Linn's eyes were pale as he half-heard the adult conversation: his head turned as he heard his name.

"Yes, ma'am," he said tucking his Stetson under his arm and advancing at his mother's summons.

He was introduced to the trooper, shook the man's hand, nodded gravely as the lawman murmured the obligatory "Sorry for your loss," to which Linn replied "Forgive my frankness, sir, but you cut a fine figure in that uniform" -- which momentarily surprised the troop, but surprise was followed with a grin of honest delight and a quiet "Thank you."

The troop consulted his wristwatch, looked down the road.

"Sheriff, I'm about to break for lunch," the troop said. "Trace's is just down the road at the bend" -- he nodded -- "you're welcome to join me."

Not long after, the three slid into a booth: the troop was a familiar figure in the little restaurant, and after the waitress took their order, the troop looked up, nodded toward the windows.

"Last year's flood," he said quietly, "came halfway up those windows. They said it was a five hundred year flood. I was afraid it would ruin their business, but they rebuilt."

"Dear Lord," Willamina murmured, leaning forward to look out the window.  "I'm imagining this entire valley flooded to that level!"

"It was bad," the troop nodded, then looked at Linn.

"My grandfather knew your grandfather," he said.

Linn smiled a little.  "What can you tell me about him, sir?"

The trooper laughed quietly.

"Well, one time he taught flying lessons."

Linn's left eyebrow quirked up momentarily and the State Trooper saw a young man's hunger light up behind his ice-pale eyes.

"It was August," the troop began, and Linn leaned forward a little, listening very closely.

 

Ted Keller allowed himself a rare treat this day.

His wife was less than understanding in such matters.

Sometimes a man just wants a quiet beer, away from everyone and everything, and this was one of those days.

Ted was hot and Ted was tired and Ted shoved through the bat wing doors of the corner saloon, the only remaining saloon in the little ex-coal-mining town: it opened on the corner, which was unusual, but unique: he stepped inside, eyes busy: few were there, though he knew it would fill quickly enough when the railroad changed shifts.

He sat at the bar, waited until the white-aproned barkeep came over: Ted ordered a beer and a sandwich, he ate hungrily, and not until he finished the meatloaf with lettuce, tomato and mustard, did he pick up his beer and take a slow sip of the nice, cool drink.

Ted turned as a silhouette darkened the doorway.

Ted's gut told him this was trouble.

He set his beer down.

Ted was changed out of uniform; he'd ridden up on the train; he wore his Smith & Wesson Victory model under his unbuttoned jacket; he was seated at the bar, close to the door.

The newcomer sat down beside him.

Ted took a slow pull on his nice, cool beer.

The stranger, the State Trooper said, insulted Ted, called him a damned strikebreaker.

Ted ignored him.

The stranger swore at Ted and allowed as he was a thief and a liar.

Ted took a quiet pull on that nice cool beer.

The stranger wanted to fight; the stranger, from his walk, from his speech, already had a load on.

Ted sighed; he'd just wanted to be left alone: he got enough grief from his wife, and he'd hoped to find a moment's respite from her harpy's tongue.

The stranger started to talk about Ted's wife.

The stranger, of course, did not know the woman; the stranger, of course, did not let that stop him.

Ted, of course, did.

Ted's wife might be a harpy, a harridan, Ted's wife might give him hell at the drop of a hat, and drop the fedora herself, but she was still his wife: the stranger flew out the bat wing doors, backwards, hit the sidewalk flat on his back, skidded, and just lay there, colder'n a foundered flounder.

"The stranger's name was Froggy," the State Trooper said quietly, "for the size of his mouth."

"What did Granddad do after he drove that one punch?" Linn asked.

The troop grinned.

"My grandfather was bartender when it happened," he chuckled, "and he said your Granddad turned and drove a left right into the man's face. It was a two hit fight.  He hit Froggy, and Froggy hit the sidewalk, and then your Granddad sat back down like nothing ever happened, he picked up his nice, cool beer and took a sip."

Linn smiled, nodded.

"Thank you, sir. I appreciate that."

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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600. HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAKE

It was Jacob Keller's eighteenth birthday.

Jacob already looked his long tall Pa in the eye in his sock feet, and that meant he was boot heel taller than his old man: as Linn looked level on into his son's eyes, he considered that he himself did not reach his full growth until he was 25.

Dear God, he thought, we're raising a race of giants!

"Jacob Keller."

"Yes, Sheriff."

"Raise your right hand."

Jacob Keller raised his right hand.

"Do you swear?"

"I do, sir."

Linn unbuttoned his shirt pocket flap, withdrew a six point star: he weighed it in his palm, then wiped it on his shirt front: he turned, carefully threaded it into the badge grommets on his son's tan uniform shirt.

"Deputy Jacob Keller," he said, "your old man is pretty damned proud of you!"

Linn stuck out his hand and Jacob gripped it:  father and son maintained a solemn expression just as long as they were able, which was another two and one half seconds, before they both grinned, laughed and seized each other in a most heartfelt embrace.

Around them and behind them, men laughed, applauded, whistled: a camera flashed silently, and the image of father and son, united in handshake, made the weekly paper the next day.

Jacob turned, gathered his pale eyed Gammaw up in his arms: he hoisted her off the floor, to the laughter of most there, including Willamina:  he gave her a little shake, as he always did, and he felt the rippling pop of her spine as the stresses shook loose.

"Ow, that hurts good," Willamina gasped, then came up on her toes as Jacob set her down, kissed her grandson on the cheek: he was surprised to see how bright and glistening his Gammaw's eyes were, but the reason was whispered in the next moment:

"I remember pinning that very badge on your father!"

 

Jacob's first official action, that afternoon, was in a disreputable little beer joint on the edge of the county, a place he knew was not friendly to lawmen, a place where someone he knew hung out.

Paul Barrents looked at Jacob and said "Are your sure about this?"

"Yep," Jacob said shortly.

Paul shrugged.  "If you get in trouble, I'll help get you out."
"Obliged."

The cab of the cruiser was silent for another five minutes, until Paul finally said, "You know you're just as hard headed and contrary as your old man."

Jacob's eyes may have tightened just a little at the corners, barely enough to be seen: it was his only change of expression.

"Flattery," he deadpanned, "will get you everywhere."

They pulled up in front of Cuz's Corner.

Jacob turned the Suburban around, so its nose was pointed out: he shut off the engine, handed the keys to Barrents, stepped out and set his uniform Stetson on top of his head: Paul watched him walk, loose, tall and confident, for the front door.

Just like that old man of his, Paul thought: his hand sought the release on the shotgun, pressed the button: the solenoid's click was loud, the mechanism's release louder, and Paul pulled the Parkerized Remington free of its upright holder, eased his door open.

This, he thought, should not take long.

In fact, it did not.

Four and a half years passed before Jacob came back out the door, closed it behind him.

His Stetson was intact, his nose was not recontoured and there were no signs of beer, blood or other unpleasantness staining his uniform blouse.

Jacob sauntered back to the cruiser, climbed in, accepted the keys from Barrents: he slid his Stetson into the ceiling clip, pulled the shifter into gear, pulled slowly away, in no hurry at all.

Paul Barrents was a patient man; Paul Barrents was a man who'd ridden as Linn's segundo for many years, and now was riding beside Linn's pale eyed son:  Paul waited, knowing that, like his old man, Jacob would fill him in, and he did.

"Paul," he said, "do you recall when Danny Spears put a concrete block through the schoolhouse glass door?"

"Two years ago, Fourth of July, during fireworks."

"That's the one. Pa nearly had him."

"He jumped out a window with a computer, I found where he'd landed."

"Spearsie was in Cuz's."

Barrents frowned a little.

"No active warrants on him, I already checked." Jacob eased around a turn, climbed onto the paved road, turned back toward the middle of the county.  "Gorgeous day."

"I could stand a lot of days like this," Barrents agreed.

"I went up to him like I owned the place. Looked him in the eye and said 'Thank you for your help. I don't forget a kindness.'"

Barrents blinked, turned, stared at the pale eyed deputy.  "You didn't!"

"Sure enough did," Jacob drawled. "Didn't raise my voice so everyone could hear, nor did I drop it so nobody else could, just said to him like we were old friends, then I turned and walked out."

Barrents considered this for several long moments.

"Jacob," he finally said, "did I ever tell you just how honestly sneaky your old man is?"

Jacob glanced over at the chief deputy, grinned.  "No, but I recall hearin' a thing or two about Gammaw!"

Barrents shook his head.  "You walk into a hornet's nest, shake hands with a hornet and now nobody there will trust him with anything!"

"That," Jacob nodded, "is the general idea."  He grinned again.  "I understand there's happy birthday cake back at the house."

"I have it on good authority," Barrents deadpanned, "that Happy Birthday Cake contains no calories a'tall."

 

 

Joseph Keller regarded his long tall Pa with a solemn expression and a general sense of anticipation.

"Joseph," Linn said, "unfast your jeans belt and pull it free on the right hand side."

Joseph reached down, unbuckled his belt, drew it free as indicated.

Linn hoisted a gunbelt. "Run your tag end through the holster loop here."

Joseph did.

"Now fast up your jeans belt."

Joseph threaded the belt back through the denim loops, buckled it snugly.

"Now fast up your gunbelt."

Joseph buckled his brand new, stiff, slightly oily, black basketweave belt: the holster was black basket as well, thumb break, experienced.

Linn turned, opened a black plastic gun case, withdrew a Victory model Smith & Wesson.

"This," he said, "is a Cogswell conversion of a Victory Model."  He opened the cylinder, closed it, turned it to show the engraving below the thumb latch. "This was converted from .38 Smith & Wesson to .38 Special by Cogswell Ltd. of London, and it's kind of a rare bird nowadays."

He turned it, handed it to Joseph.

"Holster an empty weapon."

It was a phrase Joseph had heard many times; he'd gone to police qualification shoots with his Pa ever since he could remember, generally as a step-and-fetch-it, target paster, brass picker and cheerleader for his big sis and his big brother: it wasn't until the past year that he'd started competing.

Somehow the local law enforcement community did not take it askance that a little boy with pale eyes -- a lad yet in third grade -- was handling a Smith & Wesson Victory model with ease and with skill, and it delighted man and boy alike for a grown man to toss up a can of cheap sody pop and have the grinning boy draw and fire, driving a spray of shredded aluminum and carbonation across the cloudless mountain sky.

Joseph holstered the Cogswell Smith.

"That one is chambered in .38 Special," Linn said quietly, "which means you'll be using the same practice ammunition as the rest of us."

"Yes, sir."

"You're good with the .38 S&W, Joseph.  Matter of fact, you're damned good!"

"Thank you, sir."

"You've been handling guns since you were big enough to pack one around. You are safe and you are confident, and I would be most pleased if you would maintain that good standard."

"Yes, sir."

Linn rose.

His right knee gave a loud SN-NAP! and Shelly leaned around the corner and called from the kitchen, "I heard that!"

"Sir?"

"Yes, Joseph?"

"This might not be fair, sir."

"How's that?"

"It's Jacob's birthday. I'm tickled to have this, but shouldn't he be gettin' something?"

Linn went down on one knee and spoke quietly to his youngest son.

"Joseph," he said gently, "bless you for thinking of someone besides yourself. Yes it's Jacob's birthday, and yes he's gettin' something good, and yes I'm pretty proud of you for thinking of him!"

Father and son shook hands, their faces solemn for as long as they could manage, which was about two and one half seconds, then Linn rose and the front door opened: Jacob and Barrents were singing a dirge in a sorrowful key, laughing as they did, and Shelly whistled and called loudly, "If you two are done, we've got a cake to eat here!"

 

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601. MEANWHILE, BACK IN OHIO

 

Jacob Keller's Appaloosa stallion put on quite a show, and Jacob with him.

Big-eyed schoolchildren pressed splayed fingers and noses to the chill of the wavy window glass: their teachers, all fuss and scold, came scuttling up behind the marveling children, chiding their young charges, trying to return them to their seats, only to stop and marvel at the sight of a genuine Western lawman, on a genuine Western horse -- a stallion, no less! -- sunfishing, crow-hopping, spinning, kicking; the rider, swatting the horse with his brim-gripped Stetson, raking fore and aft with blunt spurs, grinning and otherwise, quite honestly ... showing off.

The Chauncey schoolhouse was atop the hill overlooking the southeast Ohio mining town; not far north, a photographer was taking a carefully timed photograph of what looked like a young mountain of dirt and rock: this image was made into postcards and sold with his carefully inscribed "One Million Dollars in Zinc Ore," while behind it and up the hollow not far, a conveyor chuckled and scraped and carried waste coal -- bone coal, or coal slack, depending on who was profaning the mine waste -- and dumping it onto another gob pile.

Jacob's stallion whipped end-for-end as Jacob swatted Apple-horse across the backside with his Stetson: Apple stopped, head down, legs splayed, breathing heavily, and as Jacob casually settled his immaculate black hat on his neatly-barbered head, elaborately paying no attention at all to the several windows fogged with children's breath and fingers, Apple gathered himself, trotted back the length of the two story brick schoolhouse:  Jacob lifted his Stetson to the pretty young schoolmarm who'd ridden up the hill from the Widow Hanson's boarding-house, riding carefully behind him, sidesaddle (as modesty would dicate!), with an arm around his lean middle.

Jacob and Apple-horse turned, and went down the hand-laid brick driveway that curved up the hill from main street to schoolhouse.

Jacob had completed the mission for Old Pale Eyes:  he'd found a wanted man, he'd come East with a warrant in his pocket and a set of irons in his saddlebags, he'd fully intended to bring this fellow back to Firelands to have his neck stretched for falsely claiming Sheriff Linn Keller was a murderer, and having a bounty set on the man's head:  it took some doing to disprove that false claim, to rescind the bounty.

This attempt on a lawman's life carried the terrible penalty of death by hanging.

Jacob took it as a matter of honor that he should discover and return the criminal.

He found the man, all right ... paralyzed, unable to move any but his eyes.

Jacob sat with him, surmising that although the man could not move, he could feel, and so Jacob Keller took the man's hand in his own, and sat beside the sufferer's sickbed.

Jacob spoke in quiet words, talking about how his father had to be smuggled home in a coffin, and his new bride in widow's weeds, walking solemnly beside the death box: he spoke of his mother, of her kindness, her green eyes, her laugh, how she felt when they danced -- "it's not so much I danced with Mother," he said, his expression softening, "it's more like I danced, and she floated."

He looked at Douglas's eyes.

The man was staring at Jacob, intent on every word.

"My father is Sheriff of Firelands County, Colorado, and I am his son."  Jacob's hand tightened just a ltitle -- only a very little, to emphasize his words -- "and I have a warrant here in my coat for your arrest."

Don Douglas could only blink to show he was listening.

"I do not believe I will take you home" Jacob said thoughtfully.  "A man ought to die under his own roof and in his own bed." 

He released Douglas's hand, stood.

"Sir, you are punished enough without my intervention."

He turned, walked silently out of the sickroom, and a dying man's eyes followed him as far as they could.

Jacob thanked the maid in a quiet voice, settled his Stetson on his head as he crossed the threshold into morning's sun: Apple-horse tail-slashed at the ever present flies as Jacob lifted his chin, reached for his stallion's dangling reins.

Don Douglas stared blankly at the ceiling, listening to the brisk clatter of a shod horse's hooves on the brick street outside, until the sound faded, and was no more.

A single tear trickled from his left eye, ran wetly back along his cheek and fell cold into his ear.

 

Jacob walked Apple-horse up the ramp and into the stock car.

The train was north bound; Jacob was curious, and wished to see that little town his father spoke of.

Sedalia, he'd called it, a town full of callus-palmed men, knuckle-scarred men with coal dust ground into their faces, their souls, their lungs, a town with more beer joints than churches, with regular street brawls, a town suffocating under layers of coal smoke hanging in the valley's air.

Jacob had no wish to remain in such a place, but he was a curious man, and he knew he would likely never travel this far East again, and so he rode the steam train north from Chauncey to Sedalia, stopping in Trimble, Jacksonville and a couple more little places whose names escaped his quick eye:  once in Sedalia -- since his father's time, it had been renamed Glouster -- he led Apple-horse down the ramp and saddled up.

Glouster was just as his father described it: busy, prosperous, ill-smelling:  Jacob rode to the main street, turned, looked back at the depot building and the green-painted, cast-iron-housed, lollipop clock on the street corner.

I wonder how long before someone will put one of those up in Firelands, he thought, then dismissed the idea: he turned, rode a diagonal brick alley away from the main street, surprised to see two round globes -- gaslight globes, apparently -- with the word POLICE hand lettered across them.

The globes flanked a doorway -- a doorway with two uniformed men shrinking backwards into the brick police-station, and closing the door quickly, firmly.

Jacob heard a heavy bar drop into place.

Another intersecting alley, and a group of men bearing clubs, knives, a few guns in sight.

I've heard this tune played before, Jacob thought: they're not coming this way, yet, but I'd reckon they'll not be long.

Jacob turned his Apple-horse, kneed him into a trot: there was a hardware store, he recalled, and he felt the sudden need for a shotgun.

Harold Vaughan looked up as a tall, lean-waisted man in a black suit strode into the Economy Cut Rate, boot heels loud on the floor's oiled boards -- a man unusually well dressed, a man of means, probably -- but a man who wore spurs and had the air of authority about him.

Jacob lifted his chin.  "I would trouble you for a good shotgun," he said, "double barrel if you please, and a box of heavy shot."

Vaughan turned, considered the several displayed on the rack: he withdrew one, turned, handed it across the counter to the man, hesitating as he saw how pale this stranger's eyes were, and then shivering as those hard and pale eyes pierced him to his very soul.

Jacob broke open the gun, closed it carefully, raising the rearstock rather than raising the barrels: he looked at the maker's cartouche, nodded.

"If I could trouble you for heavy loads, please," he said, his voice mild:  Vaughan turned, ran a finger across the several boxes of shotshells, selected one.

"Will one be enough?" he asked, and Jacob said "Make it two," and as Harold turned, he saw the black suited stranger open his wallet.

"How much?"
A price was named, the bills counted out, laid on the counter: Jacob thrust the wallet back into his coat pocket, broke open the double gun and hung it over his off forearm: balancing two boxes of shells in one hand, he nodded to the proprietor and made for the door.

Jacob unbuckled one saddlebag, added one box of shells, opened the other box, dunked two into the double gun's breech.

He distributed brass shotshells between two coat pockets, thrust a boot into the stirrup.

Jacob and Apple-horse rode back to the police station.

The crowd of men got enough courage up to come to the front of the station:  they were yelling, beating on the door, demanding to be let in.

Jacob sat there, shotgun flipped casually over his shoulder, watched: he was close enough to hear, to see, not close enough for the crowd to consider him a threat, at least until one of the mob looked at him, thrust out an accusing finger, yelled "You! What do you want?"

Jacob made no reply.

"Hey! I'm talkin' to you, cowboy!"

One, then two others advanced menacingly, emboldened by numbers, by their yells, by the crowd behind them.

One made a grab for Apple-horse's bridle.

Apple-horse reared, drove one, then the other in the chest with steelshod hooves: Jacob kneed Apple into a turn, Apple's hind hoof whipped out and missed another man's head, just before Jacob's shotgun drove thunder and death into another of the mob who raised a pistol toward him.

Apple's next kick did not miss, and a third man hit the ground, in too much pain to so much as groan.

A face appeared momentarily in one of the police station's high windows, then dropped back out of sight.

Two empty brass hulls fell smoking to the brick pavement, rang as they bounced off the bricks.

Jacob dunked in two fresh hulls, closed the action.

The sound of twin hammers dropping into full cock was suddenly loud in the alleyway.

"You fellas," Jacob called, "can leave here peacefully, or you can leave here otherwise, and I don't much care which."

 "You ain't from around here!" a voice challenged.

"I'm a lawman," Jacob said. "That means I'm here now. I've killed one of you already and I don't much care if I kill some more."  His grin was broad, easy, casual. "So who's next?"

"You can't kill us all!"

Jacob laughed, and somehow -- a laugh, relaxed, unconcerned, from a pale eyed lawman atop a spotted, tail-slashing horse -- was enough to trickle some cold water into several backbones.

"I can kill you," Jacob said in reply.  "Won't that be enough?"

"GET HIM!" someone yelled, and Jacob brought the two pipe shoot gun down level.

Pale eyes shone above twin hell-black gunmuzzles, and to every miner, loafer and troublemaker who thought to bully and threaten their way into the police station, it felt as if this particular shotgun was aimed exactly, individually, and very, very personally, at him.

The rearmost rank was already turned, and leaving:  two, then three more, began running: the others, hearing running feet and turning to see their rear in collapse, joined the general rout, until the alley was finally empty of all but a mounted lawman in a black suit, the spotted horse he rode in on, plus the dead and wounded.
Jacob walked Apple-horse up to the door, rapped with his knuckles:  "You can come out now, they're gone."

The face appeared again in the window, looked around, eyes still wide with alarm:  the face disappeared, the door opened the width of two fingers, then three fingers.

Jacob turned his lapel over to show his six point star.

"Deputy Jacob Keller, Firelands County Sheriff's Office," he called.  "You fellas might want to fetch a doctor for these three. They disagreed with my horse for the right of way and kind of came out in second place."

 

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602. GOTCHA!

Hashimoto Nambu had a secret obsession.

Hashimoto Nambu brought nothing besides his physical body to Mars -- his body, and his memories: now, several years into living in a colony most thought would fail, with the death of all hands, in less than a year, Hashimoto Nambu dared think of his obsession again.

He was an organized man, he was an efficient man; he was quiet, polite, compact, he was incredibly fast: like the Sheriff, he frequently populated the centrifuge, the Spinner: like the Sheriff, he swung kettlebells, hoisted weights, ran, sparred: and when he found the Sheriff was slipping outside, with a Confederate skinfield in lieu of her trademark white Olympic skinsuit -- how she would delight in wearing her red cowboy boots, a denim skirt, a flannel shirt -- and her revolver, there in the near-vacuum, kept safe by this newest alien technology -- Hashimoto arranged to join her.

Hashimoto Nambu, twice-great grandson of the Japanese inventor of a truly superb machine gun, and an equally dismal sidearm, was obsessed with the American West, and with the art of the fast draw.

He'd requested, and received, an appointment for an audience with the Sheriff, with intent to discuss (and hopefully arrange) his beloved fast-draw obsession.

Hashimoto boarded the underground steam train for his trip to the Firelands settlement: he'd earned time off, he'd carefully scheduled his time away from the engineering facility at Colony Two; he was grateful transport was by train, for he was accustomed to riding the sleek, smooth, swift, incredibly clean and nearly silent trains of his native Japan.

His communicator buzzed; Hashimoto drew his tablet from his coveralls, touched the screen, read the message, frowned.

A problem with the environmental controls.

Hashimoto looked up, consulted the display: there was a stop two minutes away -- fortunate indeed! -- he would be able to access a more complete display, he could view the situation via 3D holography and very likely would be able to fix the problem and still make his appointment.

Hashimoto did not see two adventurous little boys follow him off the train -- probably because, while he exited the forward end of the car, the boys slipped out an emergency hatch at its rear, evading their mother's watchful eye.

Hashimoto stepped into the holopod, remembering the sight of phone booths, a very long time ago: he keyed in a code, felt the moment's unsteadiness as he was taken -- visually -- to the control room of his environmental engineering center.

"That was fast," his partner exclaimed, surprised: he blinked -- "You're a holo!"

"No, I'm a Martian. You're a holo."

"Yeah, whatever" -- Gregory waved a dismissive hand, shook his head. "Look, I've got a problem and I can't fix it."

"Let's see it."

 

Two little boys giggled in a shadowed niche: the train hummed away from them, the steam-engine chant distant and hollow-sounding: even with a complete recycle system, the engine still sounded like a steam engine, like a powerful, living, breathing beast of cast iron and power.

They opened their box lunch, sat cross-legged in the darkness, delighting in pulling a fast one on their Mom.

 

The next train was due in twenty minutes.

Hashimoto was done with troubleshooting in eighteen:  he broke the connection, felt a moment of near-dizziness as his senses realized he was in a holo-booth deep underground and not in his well-lighted engineering control room.

Hashimoto touched the door release, stepped out into the platform, stretched.

He saw the first weak thrust of the oncoming engine's headlight, heard the rails hum:  he stretched, yawned, knowing no one was anywhere near to see it:  he twisted his back a little, twisted the other way, heard a child's panicked yell, an exclamation of pain.

Hashimoto saw the oncoming engine, saw the boy on the track, the angle of the lower leg -- broken -- he jumped from the platform onto the tracks, ran to the boy, seized the child --

Hashimoto straightened, threw the boy up and into the emergency niche, a tenth of a second before the leading edge of the decelerating locomotive blasted into him, knocked him to the tracks, ran over him with several sets of precisely machined, sharply flanged wheels.

Hashimoto's final thought, just before the polished, rounded, shining front end of the locomotive knocked his living essence from his shattered body --

One triumphant thought, which filled his soul with joy --

Gotcha!

 

Ted Keller, husband and father, town marshal of the village of Trimble, threw his car sidways of both lanes.

The oncoming vehicle was coming fast, too fast --

Ted had time enough to bail out, to draw, the revolver came up and he felt the pistol start to recoil, just as the oncoming car rammed him.

Ted Keller, father of a little girl named Willamina, lived a lifetime in that bright moment between the gun's crack and his soul being blasted from his shattered body, but through that fast review of an entire lifetime, one overriding, triumphant thought, as the shot broke and the sights were right, just before the starburst appeared in the windshield right in front of the driver's throat, a starburst he never saw --

Gotcha!

 

Sheriff Linn Keller stood in the prow of the lifeboat, cutting swiftly through the slow, muddy waters, toward where his wife fell from the riverboat, where she'd gone into the hungry river.

Linn snatched a lariat from a saddle there on the deck, he'd swarmed into the lifeboat as it was being readied for launch, he stood with one boot up on the prow, pale eyes straining for the first glimpse of his wife --

Plaited leather coiled in his off hand, he held the loop in his right, ready to throw, part of his soul imploring the Almighty to make his hand sure, his eyes keen, his timing perfect --

Linn saw a hand rise from the water, he saw plastered down red hair, he saw his wife break surface --

A voice, a Nantucket whaler's cry from behind him:  "She rises!"

Linn's arm swung of its own accord, without his command or let: the lariat spun through warm and humid air, dropped precisely over Esther's upraised arm: Linn hauled, quickly, powerfully: the lariat settled around under her arm and across chest and back, and he towed her to the rowboat, where a hard-muscled, blue-water sailor seized her, hauled her aboard and broke her over his arm like a shotgun:  Esther Keller, woman of commerce and industry, the new bride of the pale eyed Sheriff,  choked and threw up at least ten gallons of river water.

For the rest of his entire life, even to the moment of his own death, that one shining moment gleamed in its socket, framed somewhere on a display pedestal deep within Linn's eternal soul, that moment when he hauled on braided leather and felt his wife's weight, and he shouted silently, into the great void of Eternity itself --

Gotcha!

 

 

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603. LINEBACKER

Willamina Keller reached the halfway mark, stopped, leaned on her cane.

She was out of the walking boot -- the foot and ankle specialist told her to wean out of the boot, which to Willamina translated to "Throw it in the corner and go without!" -- and in her zeal to return to function, she'd laid out a course on the dirt road where she usually ran with the Firelands Football Team.

She willed herself to feel no pain: she'd overestimated her ability, completely ignoring that she was more matron than teenager, disregarding that the elder heals less rapidly than the junior: she looked up, hearing the chant of young voices, the running cadence she'd taught them, and she limped to the side of the road to let "Her Boys" pass.

They didn't pass.

The entire football team stopped, milling around her: anxious eyes regarded her, young men's hands sought her shoulder, her back -- "Sheriff, are you okay?" -- to which Willamina reddened a little and admitted, as she leaned heavily on the cane's dogleg handle, "I overdid it, fellas.  I'll be all right."

Sheriff Willamina Keller squeaked a little as a set of muscled arms caught her behind the knees, around the back: she was bounced up in the air a little, settled into the arms of the team's linebacker, a strapping young man who made her tall son look short, a rancher's son who made a weightlifter look puny.

"Ma'am," he said, his voice surprisingly deep for one of so few years, "you told us not to run on a hurt ankle."  His black eyes were concerned, his sweat-gleaming face somewhere between solemn and alarmed.  "And we don't leave one of our own behind."

Willamina brought her cane up, laid it between her knees and over her crossed feet.

"FORM RANKS!" came the front-rank whiplash of a voice: Willamina's Warriors spread -- no one took more than two steps to fall in -- hands dressed front, dressed left, dressed right --

Every throat gave a deep, throaty grunt:  "HU!"

As one, the entire formation began to run.

Willamina leaned her head against the linebacker's chest, smiling a little as she felt the linebacker's voice more than she heard it, rejoicing at the sound of strong young men, singing as they ran, even if what they sang could be called rude, crude and socially unacceptable ... one of the running cadences she herself had taught them.

She was grateful her benefactor could not see her face, could not see her heart was overflowing her eyes.

Willamina Keller, Marine and Sheriff, widow and mother, realized she was harvesting the benefit of the lessons she'd given Her Boys.

A voice whispered in her memory, the voice of a man with an iron grey mustache, a man with eyes as pale as her own:

"For all things there is a season, a time to every purpose under the heavens," and she realized this was the season to accept a kindness.

Willamina's Warriors ran to the halfway point of their own circuitous run --halfway was the Sheriff's front porch -- they stopped, they waited as Willamina was carried up onto her own front porch.

Willamina gripped the linebacker's forearms, which was kind of like gripping two horizontal tree trunks, and looked him very directly in the eye.

"Thank you," she whispered.

She watched as Her Boys resumed their run, joyfully profaning the thin air as they ran, lean and strong young men she'd taught well: they were not afraid to stop and render a kindness, and she realized that she'd actually made a difference.

Sheriff Willamina Keller nodded, wiped the damp from her eyes, and went inside, for she heard some aspirin calling her name.

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604. FACT, OR LEGEND?

Marnie was twelve years old, and curious as are all children of her age: she wore a dress and shiny slippers, for she'd been to church with her family, and now sat on her living room couch, frowning at a grouping of pictures in an album.

Willamina came over, sat beside her, put an arm around her shoulders.

"I know that look," she murmured.  "What's caught your attention?"

Marnie paged back, a second page: "That looks like the bronze plate on the Firelands depot."

Willamina smiled a little.  "Mm-hmm," she affirmed.  "That's the old Glouster train depot."

"Is it still used as a depot?"
"No.  No, for a while it was their paramedic station, and the police used the other end for a substation."

Marnie turned back to the page she'd been frowning at.

"You took these like evidence photographs."

"Habit," Willamina admitted.  "This one, a long view, to establish where I was -- across the street from the Depot -- here on the left is the Wonder Bar.  It's torn down now, and that's a shame.  My Daddy said they had the very best hot dogs."
"The Wonder Dogs?"

"The very ones.  You've heard me talk about them before."

"No, this picture" -- she turned the page again, tapped a bent knuckle on a glossy photograph -- "it's painted on the side of the brick wall."

Willamina smiled.  "I'd forgotten about that.  Yes, that's the one."

"I don't understand ..."  Marnie turned back one page.  "This clock."

"What about it?"

"What is so special that you took a series -- a shot of its full length, then successive close-ups of the face?"

Willamina laughed.

"Well, ya see, it's like this," she said in a horribly nasal voice, and they both laughed:  Willamina lifted her head at Shelly's summons for Sunday dinner.

"We'll get back to this," Willamina said, and Marnie placed a bookmark, closed the picture book, left it on the couch.

Dinner was as it usually was, a cheerful affair in the well lighted, brightly painted kitchen: Marnie helped with food prep the day before, making reheat and serve on the Sabbath a quick and easy move: Marnie learned at an early age that when her Gammaw said she would get back to something, she would, and though impatience warred with the more mature part of her soul, patience won out -- barely -- but only because Marnie's appetite's exclamations were louder than the immature, I-wanna-know part of her soul.

It wasn't until after Sunday dinner, not until after dishes were gathered, not until the assembly line was set up, dishes washed, dried and set away, not until Willamina felt a maturing girl's gaze steady on her shoulder blades, that the pale eyed matron turned and smiled, laid a hand on her son's forearm -- "Forgive us," she murmured, "your daughter and I have unfinished business" -- and so Linn followed, curious, as the pair retired to the living room.

Willamina placed the picture album on a table, opened it, looked at the close-up of the green-painted, cast-iron lollipop clock, smiled.

"Marnie," she said in a voice she used for teaching a variety of classes, "some years ago -- I think it was just after the Great Depression -- the day cop and the night cop got into it over a woman."

Marnie tilted her head a little, interested:  she looked from the picture album to her Gammaw, listening with more than her ears.

"They could not resolve their differences peacefully, so they had an old-fashioned walkdown on the main street, like they saw in the Silver Screen westerns."

Marnie's eyebrow raised a little.

"When they were close enough, one or the other drew -- they both emptied their revolvers at each other -- and the only casualty was this clock."

Marnie looked down at the pictures, following Willamina's finger.

"It's hard to see for sky-glare on the glass face, but there's a .44-caliber bullet hole in that clock's face."

Marnie bent a little, looking closer; Linn reached over, turned on another lamp, which helped.

"The clock still works.  According to what I was told, its gears are hand made of cherry wood. There was only one clockmaker still alive who worked on wooden geared clocks.  He rode the steam train down from Michigan, he repaired their clock and calibrated it, he rode the steam train back to Michigan, pulled off his shoes, lay down in his own bed and died."

Willamina smiled.  "That is the legend."

"What really happened, Gammaw?"

Willamina laughed.  "The day cop and the night cop did get into it over a woman," she said, "but the night cop ambushed the day cop as he came out of the police station.  Gut shot him in the doorway and left him to die.  He was caught, prosecuted and hanged, but they both carried .38s and neither one pulled a walkdown on the other.  To this day we honestly don't know how that clock got a .44 hole in its face."

"What about the wooden gears?"

"I asked about that.  I was told wood -- even something as close-grained as cherry -- would never work for clock gears:  humidity and barometric pressure would swell or shrink the gearing and it would be unworkable.  I can't say aye or nay as I have never had that clock apart to look, but again ... that's the legend."

"When legend and facts disagree," Linn offered, quoting an old newspaper editor, "print the legend."

"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story?"  Marnie countered, and Linn laughed, looked at Willamina, shook his head.

"Is she my daughter or what?"

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605. "UNCLE WILL, WAS THAT A BIG BULLY?"

Young Joseph Keller must be viewed with understanding.

His father was Sheriff.

His Mama was a working firefighter/paramedic.

His big sister Marnie was Sheriff on Mars.

His big brother Jacob was a deputy.

He remembered his Gammaw, and he missed her, and sometimes he looked at her picture and whispered to her.

Somehow he was not surprised that he never heard a whisper back, never heard the rustle of a woman's skirts, never smelled her cologne.

Joseph Keller felt a little freer, a little more relaxed, when he was with his Uncle Will.

Uncle Will was old -- he was old, he was skinny, but he always had a laugh and he always had time for the boy, and tonight, Joseph stood beside his Uncle as his Uncle and every adult in the bleachers stood and removed their hats.

Joseph watched as the Firelands Football Team ran from their benches, ran down the side line, following the black swallowtail pennant with the yellow skull hand stitched in shining thread: he watched as they stopped, each raised his arm and shuffled a little until his outstretched fingertips just touched the next fellow's shoulder blade -- a shouted command, they turned briskly, precisely, facing the field.

The Firelands Marching Band, all shining brass and braided shoulder trim, marched out to a single muffled drum:  they shifted, and when viewed from the announcer's box, went from a rectangle to a five pointed star: a whistle, a spin of the drum majorette's baton, and they faced the flagpole.

Uniformed men brought chromed parade rifles up to stiff attention: Joseph's chin liffted and his Stetsson automatically covered his shirt pocket as the Firelands High School Marching Band's opening notes of the Star Spangled Banner prompted the Colors to hoist briskly up the silver painted flagpole.

It was Homecoming; the stands were crowded; both teams were ready for the game: the local paper was represented, as was the local cable TV channel: Sheriff, chief deputy and local police all stood at correct attention, rendering the correct hand salute.

Hands lowered smartly as the final note ceased, right before several throats vibrated with a muted, surprised exclamation.

Sheriff and Chief Deputy turned and leaned into a full-on sprint.

Uncle Will's knees flexed a little, his feet coming out to shoulder width: Joseph felt his Uncle tense, took a quick step to the side, dropped back one step, looked left and right to find a good place to get out of the way if it should be necessary.

Jacob sprinted for the passenger side of the cruiser.

He unlocked the door, hauled it open, reached down, seized the wrist of the scoped M14: he pulled it free, seized the bandolier, threw it over his head: he turned, driving the magazine home, slamming it with the heel of his hand, yanking to make sure it was latched: he looked up just as something tan, white and brown streaked past the corner of the hood:  his father was astride Apple-horse, and headed for the field.

Jacob twisted, shouldering people aside:  he ran out onto the field, seized the charging handle, hauled back and ran a shining brass round of Winchester .308 into the blued-steel chamber.

Jacob watched as the entire Firelands football team brought their helmets from under their off arm, dunked the brain buckets down over fresh haircuts, fast up the strap: the Totenkopf raised, a voice shouted, "WARRIORS!  FORWARD, MARCH!"

Linn brought Apple-horse about:  the stallion's blood was up, he was ready for a young war:  the Appaloosa's ears were back, he was dancing, throwing his head as he faced the longhorn bull.

Jacob's eyes were busy, calculating angles of fire, background, swearing silently but most passionately at the realization that -- if he did have to lace into that big set of powder horns on the hoof -- there was no safe angle, no solid backstop behind --

Sometimes the target itself is the backstop, he heard his father's voice commenting.

Don't miss!

Jacob held the M14 at high port: he paced off on the left, strode down the field, his eyes welded on an absolute mountain of beef.

Jacob's head came up -- there was a sustained yell, not much less than a scream --

Jacob saw the team captain in a flat-out screaming sprint, straight toward the longhorn --

The marching band's hollow, five point star reformed into a long rectangle, drew back to the edge of the field --

Retired Chief of Police Will Keller's fists clenched as he cursed himself for his complacency: all he had to go to war with, was a two-inch .38, the same backup revolver he'd carried for three decades and more, and that was sure as hell not what he wanted if he was going up against a Texas Longhorn.

Apple-horse reared, screamed a challenge, windmilling his hooves:  the Sheriff was welded to the saddle, sticking like a cocklebur in a bird dog's tail plume:  the longhorn bull, startled, whipped end-for-end to face whatever was coming up from behind at the top of its lungs.

The Sheriff pulled his lariat loose, shook the loop out in his good right hand, kneed Apple-horse into a trot, just as the Firelands Football Team charged the bull.

In single file.

The team captain launched as the bull came at him, head down.

Had Linn not been watching, had he not seen it, he would not have believed it.

He'd read about Sarah Lynne McKenna vaulting a bull -- he knew her inspiration was the copper-plate engraving in a textbook, an engraving of a Grecian urn with naked Cretan youths seizing the incoming bull's horns and somersaulting over its back -- but he'd honestly never thought his pale eyed ancestress actually did that --

The team captain caught the horns and jumped, the bull's head came up --

There was a collective gasp as the football player tucked, tumbled, soared over the bull's back, uncoiled as he fell, landed on his feet --

The bull had just enough time to lower his head again when the second set of hands seized his horns near the boss --

Then the third --

By the time the sixth football player charged the bull, and launched over its back with what looked for all the world like practiced ease, Jacob was standing upright instead of half-crouched, ready to drop into a kneeling firing position, and the Sheriff sat his restless stallion and coiled his lariat as the football team, clearing this obstacle one at a time, lined up in front of him.

Every last one of Willamina's Warriors, every muscled young man in a polished purple and white helmet and freshly laundered uniforms, charged this intruder to their home field.

When they were done, Linn kneed his Apple-horse forward: the Warriors parted to let him through, and Linn rode up to the longhorn ... slowly, ready to turn and run if need be.

Linn dismounted, turning his stallion so he dismounted on the bull's side.

The Sheriff walked up to the bull, tilted his head and regarded the big beef with a solemn expression.

The longhorn blinked, muttered something, and Linn reached slowly down to rub the beef's nose, then reached over and rubbed his neck.

"Well, fella," he said, "what say we find out where you belong."

 

Sheriff Marnie Keller's eyes widened and her head lowered a little as she watched the news report.

The account she was reading was a little over a day and a half old; it was both the newspaper article, the live-action recording from the local TV cable channel as filmed from the roof of the announcer's crow's-nest, and followed with a roving series of interviews of football players, the Sheriff, the opposing team, bystanders:  Marnie laughed a little at the opposing team captain's frank admission that they knew they were outmatched when the entire Firelands football team went head to head with a Texas longhorn and used it for their personal vaulting horse, and she planted her chin on her knuckles and smiled quietly as her brother Jacob -- with the scoped '14 at sling arms -- expressed his gratitude that he didn't have to gut out a beef on the fifty yard line -- "I didn't bring my good skinning knife with me," he'd deadpanned, "but I reckon someone in the stands could loan me a good Barlow once my pocket knife got dull."

Dr. John Greenlees smiled as he watched his wife's expression soften, and he came around to see what was touching her.

He recognized her youngest brother Joseph, standing beside his Uncle Will:  the lad looked up at the retired Chief of Police, pointed at the beef being loaded into a stock trailer just backed up toward the field, and asked in an innocent, little-boy's voice, "Uncle Will, is that a big bully?"

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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606. HARPER'S WEEKLY

Sheriff Marnie Keller rubbed her eyes, stretched.

It had been a long day.

In spite of the glowing reports that went back Earthside, in spite of the propaganda they sent back home, Marnie learned very early that the old saw, "people were people wherever you go," was just as true here on Mars as it was on Earth.

Her Gammaw's namesake Willamina, attacked shortly upon arrival; murder done with explosive-tipped lances, with clubs, shanks, explosive decompression -- the airlocks were supposed to be tamper-proof, and weren't, and two were killed using an airlock as a murder weapon -- Marnie arrived and took over and made it known in short order that pale eyes meant a short temper, and she used sudden, overwhelming violence to make the lawless, peaceful.

She didn't really like working that way.

She much preferred her long tall Daddy's method of a quiet talk, but sometimes the only language the lawless understands is a war club across the side of the head.

Marnie established in very short order that her word was LAW and she would brook no foolishness, and as soon as she made this unmistakably clear, the incidence of trouble dropped precipitously.

Mars colony had been a going concern long enough that it was old hat Earthside; back home, attention turned as it always did to whatever distraction was dangled in front of news cameras.

This suited the Mars colony fine.

Colony Two, known locally as Firelands, was like a family: they might scrap and argue and raise hell within their own ranks, but let an outsider come in and cause trouble and everyone turned on the outsider.

Especially if it was an Earther.

News from Earth was eagerly received, winnowed, the big headlines were bypassed in favor of news from home: local news, familiar faces, were always favored over the screaming-urgent propaganda headlines that perpetually sought to distract the unwary from whatever dirty deals were being dealt by various governments, by the shadowy puppetmasters manipulating from behind the scenes.

The colonists regarded these news broadcasts much as North and South both regarded Harper's Weekly.

Harper's was cherished as Gospel by the Yankee North because it was propaganda, they knew it was propaganda, but it was their propaganda, and if it slandered the South, so what, they were the enemy!

The South received it eagerly, they read it with full knowlede and appreciation that it was nothing but propaganda, and damned Yankee propaganda at that, but knowing it for what it was, they could winnow some grains of truth from its load of second hand horse feed.

Marnie forwarded the local news from the Firelands back home, and this was always well received, and the sight of the entire Firelands football team forming a protective screen between a genuine Texas longhorn and the home folks on the sidelines was regarded with a fierce pride -- to the Colonists, the Firelands football team was "Our Boys," that pale eyed Sheriff on a prancing, rearing stallion was Our Sheriff There (as opposed to Marnie, who was Our Sheriff Here), and there was a generally understanding laughter at the interview with the captain and coach of the opposing football team when they very frankly admitted that they knew they were overmatched when the Firelands team charged this longhorn bull and used it for their own personal vaulting horse.

The ladies of the Firelands colony went so far as to most earnestly petition Marnie to establish their own Tea Society: several years into the colony's existence, thanks to reverse engineered alien technology found on Mars, and the assistance of the Confederacy, they were able to produce the correct gowns, wigs, gloves and other feminine attire required for a proper Tea Society meeting, such as they'd seen in the holovids; the men studied with the Confederate teams who came to train them in defensive tactics against the aliens they'd faced already, against those the Confederates defeated a century before, when their ancestors were abducted from various points during Lincoln's War as a disposable mercenary force; although they became proficient with alien weaponry, they were most pleased to find the firearms with which many were already familiar, were more than adequate against such opponents, and so shooting once again became a very popular activity, especially with use of the Confederate skinfield suits, allowing them to wear their everyday clothes out into the thin Martian atmosphere -- and the skinfield could be adjusted to attenuate gunfire, though this was almost unnecessary, owing again to the lack of air to conduct sound.

All of this was very carefully not mentioned in reports back to Earth.

As far as anyone on Earth knew, the Martian colony still existed, they'd had calamities and lost personnel but they were hanging on with ingenuity and luck, and so it was that Earth sent Mars their version of Harper's Weekly, and Mars sent Earth their own version of that biased propaganda broadsheet.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller opened the door, stepped back.

A young woman with short hair and a flight helmet under her left arm stepped inside.

"Is your ship hidden?" Linn asked quietly.

"I came in cloaked," she nodded, "and parked above your barn."

Linn's eyebrow raised a little.

"Any visual distortion seen by satellite will be disguised by planes and contours of your barn's peaked roof," she explained, "and corrugated tin helps as well."

"I see."

Gunfighter handed Linn a slim tablet.  "Marnie sends her greetings," she smiled, "and she said to give you this."

The slender young woman in the dark blue skinsuit came up on her toes, kissed Linn on the cheek, hugged him quickly, impulsively, like a little girl: Linn's arm went around her, he laid the tablet on the table and ran his other arm around her and hugged.

"Mmmm," Gunfighter hummed, "I can see why Marnie think so much of you!"

"How's that?" Linn asked, and the Gunfighter saw his eyes darken, ever so slightly, and knew that when this lean old lawman with an iron grey mustache suddenly had light blue eyes, it meant his guard was down.

The Gunfighter patted him on the chest, then dropped her eyes and looked away.

"Marnie," she said, "has you so far up on a pedestal it's a wonder you don't get nosebleed."

Linn blinked rapidly, looked away, his bottom jaw sliding out a little: he was clearly troubled, but with a deep breath, a lift of his chin, he dismissed the feeling.

Gunfighter stepped back, thrust her chin at the tablet.  "You'll want to play that," she said: she reached, touched the surface, keyed in a code, turned.  "Is Shelly home?"

"She's upstairs, sewing."

He watched as the Martian pilot skipped across the floor, completely unimpeded by the greater gravity, and wondered if this wasn't some more of that Confederate technology he'd heard about.

He looked at the tablet, smiled at the red circle on the screen, touched it.

Marnie's face appeared, a smaller one under it, and Dr. John Greenlees beside her: Marnie bounced the chubby cheeked bundle of squeal and laugh and looked into the camera.

"Hello, Daddy," she began, and Linn sat down, picked up the tablet, looked into his little girl's face and marveled at the perfection of a healthy little grandchild on Mama's lap.

This, at least, was anything but Harper's Weekly.

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