SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE IRISHMAN'S RIGHT

Sheriff Linn Keller stopped and stared in sheer, unadulterated admiration.

Sean Finnegan, the big red headed Irish fire chief, was frozen in that one bright moment, frozen with his good right arm almost straight, his hand doubled up into a fist at the end of it, and about a yard away from the fist, drifting away in absurdly slow motion, a man whose nose was now much broader than it had been a moment ago.

Like most experienced bare knuckle brawlers, Sean's knuckles were aligned up and down: were they horizontal when hitting something as bony and inflexible as a man's face, the boxer's hand was prone to fracture: its vertical alignment was much more resistant to breakage, especially with the raw, unadulterated power Sean could muster in one punch.

The moment was gone, as quickly as it came: Linn's mind replayed the angry, shouting rider who went storming up behind the men beside the working steam engine; he remembered Sean turning, looking less like the broad shouldered Hephaestus, and more like an angered panther: one moment, solid, stony, a muscle-sculpted figure, solid and immovable, well rooted in God's good earth, and the next, a fast moving, lithe, agile, avenging warrior, doing his best to drive his fist through a shouting man's face and out the back of his skull.

Linn looked at Jacob, then at the unconscious, face-bloodied soul who was so unwise as to address Sean at a working fire, then Linn looked around.

As usual, when there was a fire response, a crowd gathered, and crowds tend to observe things, and not a living soul there missed the fact that a man approached their beloved Irish Brigade, shouting indiginantly about some offense or another, and was given a face full of knuckles for his trouble.

Linn lifted his chin in summons; he recruited from this Unorganized Militia to carry this careless soul further from the fire scene: Linn led them far enough down Main Street to come to the first horse trough, where the offended party was given a bath, whether he needed it or not.

Later, as the Sheriff listened to men's talk, he discovered the Irish Brigade was resonding to this fire, and their sudden appearance startled the man's horse and caused it to buck, offending the rider, who gave pursuit, waited for the right moment, and then advanced, shouting his grievance in what most testified to be much less than a polite manner.

For his part, Sean dismissed the event from his mind: anyone who could not see three white mares, thrusting hard against polished black harness, if they could not hear a troika of galloping hoofbeats and the Steam Masheen's shrill whistle, if the most careless among them could not hear the big Irishman's great barrel chested voice, nor hear the blacksnake whip as it demanded of the air itself to give way -- well, any who could not see this, who could not hear this, deserved to be trampled, knocked aside and otherwise disposed of however may be necessary.

None gathered that day to witness this, doubted this, and none who witnessed this, debated the matter.

 

Fire Chief Charles Fitzgerald did not often let slip his temper.

Fire Chief Charles Fitzgerald had been a bull rider, he'd worked oilfield in his youth, he'd been Navy and he'd had to handle himself in some interesting situations, so when a man made so bold as to throw a punch at him, why, he reacted as he'd been trained.

Fire Chief Charles Fitzgerald just honestly beat snot, liver, lights and stuffing out of the man who'd come up and challenged him there on the broad, concrete, firehouse apron.

It seems that a motorist objected to being startled by the sudden appearance of a red Kenworth pumper, screaming up behind him -- all chromed and screaming mechanical siren and twin three-foot-trumpet air horns, all chrome front bumper and momentum, and the idiot motorist who tried to pull out in front of the oncoming rig, nailed the brakes barely in time: later testimony from the modern day Irish Brigade agreed with the careless motorist's estimation that you could not have passed a paperback book between the front bumper of the motorist's vehicle, and the shining side of the onrushing red fire truck.

Some men detest admitting they're wrong, and this fellow was one of them: instead of swallowing hard and realizing he'd been careless, he turned the blame on the pumper, he waited until they were back in quarters and he went down to raise hell with anyone he could find.

He found the Chief.

Chief Fitzgerald did not rise to the white hat by being hot headed, precipitous nor premature: the Chief, as a matter of fact, was known to hear anyone out, no matter how wrong they might be, but he was also known as being extremely fair, and rather plain spoken: when this Jack Doe declared his dissatisfaction with the situation, when he progressed into accusations and then into threats, the Chief told him quietly to go straight to hell  and get off firehouse property and don't bother coming back.

Apparently this Jack Doe did not like being addressed in such a manner.

He took a swing at the Chief.

A certain pale eyed Sheriff happened to be watching, and a certain pale eyed Sheriff waited until the Chief was finished with his address, and a certain pale eyed Sheriff did the same thing in this modern day as was done a little over a century ago, when redress was demanded without justification.

He spoke to the Chief and expressed his admiration of the man's style, and then he introduced the worse for wear party to the nearest horse trough, reasoning that anyone with such bad manners was likely due for his Saturday night bath anyhow.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE NEXT HOME GAME

 

The parachutist slapped the special delivery package in its zippered nylon chest carrier.

The UH1B, well older than either pilot, copilot, jumpmaster or parachutist, clattered noisily through the Colorado darkness, beating the air benath it into submission in order to stay aloft.

They circled the objective, twice, then came to a hover at a prescribed altitude.

It was an easy jump; the LZ was scouted, the hazards memorized: gloved hands reached down, triggered the strobes at the jumper's ankles, then the big side door slid open, and with it, a noisy, tumultuous blast of rotorwash and the stink of burnt JP-4.

A slap on the shoulder, a thumbs-up, the athletic form in the military coveralls dove into the darkness.

Well below, young eyes saw twin white strobes separate from the bird: strong young hands bent plastic glowsticks, shook them, illuminating a long row beside the stadium, back from the lights, marking a power line, invisible in the darkness.

"Sheriff's supposed to have a special surprise tonight," a football player speculated.

"Betcha that's her that jumped out of the helo."

One looked at another, laughed: they agreed that sounded just like something their pale eyed "Cool Little Old Lady" would do.

Chief of Police Will Keller slid his eight point milkman cap back on his head and grinned at the descending parachutist: it was one of those flying parachutes, the kind a man can steer and land on a car hood if need be, instead of the round, to-whom-it-may-concern variety he was used to seeing.

A little boy with big and wondering eyes bumped his elbow:  pointing at the descending strobes, he said "Is that her, Chief?  Is that her?"

Will laughed, rested his hand on the boy's shoulder, a fatherly gesture:  "It wouldn't surprise me," he admitted.

The crowd was on its feet, standing, heads craned back, screaming their encouragement: the announcer's voice, tinny over pole-mounted speakers, declared that tonight's game ball was being delivered by the United States Marine Corps.

The home team bench was on its feet, whistling, cheering, thrusting their helmets into the air, and the crowd picked up the chant:

VAL-KY-RIE!

VAL-KY-RIE!

VAL-KY-RIE!

VAL-KY-RIE!

 

 

Chief Keller and a breathless lad stood, heads craned back, watching the rectangular patch and two strobes beneath become a human figure, watched as a lean and athletic form came in for a very skilled, on-both-feet landing: home and visitor crowds alike absolutely roared their approval as the parachutist, anonymous in helmet and visor, unzipped the chest pack, pulled out a football, pitched it underhand to the approaching referee.

Eager hands helped gather his chute and retreat from the field, and Firelands High School Marching Band strutted out from the end zone.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, please remain standing for the presentation of the Flag, followed by the National Anthem!"

 

Later that night, Will and Willamina sat in the Chief's cruiser, sipping scalding coffee from the All-Night and talking quietly, their eyes busy.

"I expected you to be under that parachute," Will admitted.

Willamina laughed. "I've had more people tell me that tonight!"

"You could've, you know."

"I know."  She took a cautious sip, took another.  "I didn't want to steal the Corps' thunder. They needed a real Marine, not --"

"Willaaaaa," Will said, a warning note in his voice. "Didn't you tell me once a Marine, always a Marine?"

Willamina sighed.  "I did."  Another sip, a snort, she wiped at a dribble escaping down her chin.

Will looked at his twin sister, grinned.

"I know that snort," he said.  "Out with it, little sis, what is it?"

Willamina harrumphed, blinked, wiped at surprised tears:  "Swallow, don't inhale," she gasped, coughed, coughed again.  "I hate it when I do that!"

"You're not supposed to imitate my bad example," Will muttered. "Now will you tell me what's so funny?"

Willamina smiled, checked the mirror on her side of the car, swung her pale eyed gaze to the side, the unconscious habit of a soldier who'd served in-country, or a veteran badge packer who knew what it was to be ambushed.

"The Valkyries came to me," she said, "and told me they'd been practicing the Can-Can."

"Oh, really?" Will rumbled.  "That's a show I'd like to see!"

"You'd like it," Willamina smiled.  "I showed them how."

"Somehow I don't doubt that!"  Will declared.  "How did they have it choreographed?"

Willamina sighed.  

"Eight of them were going to run onto the field before the game, or at halftime, whichever fit the schedule better. Four, a hole, four more. Old fashioned uniforms -- you know, pleated skirts and sweater shells over white blouses, knee socks, saddle shoes."

"Your style uniform."

"Mine still fits."

"Braggart."

Willamina smiled quietly.  "Most women my age can still fit into their earrings.  I can still fit into my cheerleading uniform."

"Most women hate you for that."

Willamina took a cautious sip, swallowed.

"That's better."

She looked at Will, smiled.

"I was going to be number nine, running onto the field in a mid-calf skirt, something purple and white, like theirs, but loose -- something I could throw back and forth."

"Throw your skirt?" Will frowned.

"Didn't I tell you?  The Marching Band has unofficially been practicing the Can-Can."

"And ...?"

"And the other eight Valkyries were going to handle their short pleated skirts with a dainty little grip, I would have a good two-hand grip on mine and throw mine back and forth, we would spin, we'd high-kick -- they've been practicing, and they're pretty good."

"You wouldn't be practicing with them?" Will asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow.

Willamina managed to look very innocent.

"Will, if I can help motivate the home team, I'll work with the Valkyries, no problem!"

"Yeah, right," Will muttered.  "Why didn't you do it tonight?"

"Well, tonight we had the game ball drop in by parachute, and besides ..."
Willamina hesitated -- this was very uncharacteristic for her -- Will saw her ears reddening and she was studying the sippy lid on her coffee cup like it was of great importance.

"Willaaaaa ...?"

Willamina looked up at him with her very best Innocent Expression, which did not work at all.

"The plan was for all of us to wear white tights and purple knee socks, but at the end of the Can-Can, when the dancers turn their backsides to the crowd, bend over and flip up their skirts --"

"Yeeesssss?" Will drawled out the question, marveling at just how hot and scarlet looking his sister's ears were becoming.

"The plan was to spell out FIRELANDS on the dancers' bottoms."

"With you dead center in the lineup."

Willamina sighed, nodded.

"And you didn't."

"I could lie to you and say the principal vetoed it," Willamina said slowly, looking back out the windshield, toward the harshly-illuminated gas islands:  "I talked them out of it."

"Which means they're going to do it anyway."

"Just not for Homecoming."

"You'll be in the middle?"

Willamina sighed.  "Will, I end up in the middle of a lot of things."  She gave him a beseeching look.  "Will you be there next home game?"

Will grinned, nodded.

"I'll be there."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CAMEO APPEARANCE

Angela Keller was Daddy's little girl.

Angela Keller delighted in being Daddy's little girl.

When Angela was a little girl, her Daddy would swing her waaaaay up in the air and she would laugh and throw her arms wide like she was flying, and she would laugh, and her Daddy laughed with her, and she was safe.

When her Daddy rode his big horsie, Angela stood up on the saddle behind him, holding a good double handful of her Daddy's coat, and is big gallopy horsie would run reeeeally fast and Angela would throw her head back and laugh, and the sky would be full of the happy laughter of a little girl who was where she should be, where she wished to be, doing the one thing that made her the happiest.

Little girls grow, and little girls become big girls, and Angela admired her big sister Marnie and she wanted to be just like her, and when a package arrived -- an unseen messenger left the ribbon-tied box at their front door -- Angela stood, curious, as her Mommy untied the pink-and-red ribbons tied around the box.

It had a label that said simply:  ANGELA.

Just that one word, her name, nothing to indicate from whence it came.

Mommy untied the pretty big ribbon bow and pulled the criscross ribbons loose and opened the box and Angela blinked and tilted her head a little to the side as her Mommy pulled out a dress.

It was an Angela-sized dress, and Angela tried it on, and it fit: there was another box, a smaller one, with a black sillk ribbon, and in the middle of the ribbon, something her Mommy called a Cameo.

Her Mommy scooted her upstairs and set her on Mommy's seat in front of Mommy's vanity and her Mommy worked on her hair -- Angela watched, fascinated, as her Mommy worked some hairbrush magic and turned Angela's twin braids into something poofy and rolly and on top of her head, something she'd seen in old timey pictures.

Angela put on her shiny little slippers and came downstairs with her Mommy and gave her Daddy a hopeful look.

Sheriff Linn Keller was sorting through the day's mail, frowning a little:  he looked up, looked at Angela, blinked.

Sheriff Linn Keller, just come home from work, having left the stresses of the office behind him, came home to the usual evening stresses of whatever was in the mail, demanding his attention: he looked up from the handful of the ususal stuff and saw his little girl, in an absolutely gorgeous McKenna gown, with a cameo about her neck and her hair done up elaborately after the fashion of a previous century, and he did what a Daddy should do in that moment.

He set the mail aside and he went down on one knee, and he looked very directly at his daughter.

Angela was just above average height for her age; she had absolutely flawless skin, she had a smile that would melt the stony heart of a marble statue, and right now, she was looking nothing short of absolutely beautiful.

Linn looked up at Shelly:  "You made this?"

Shelly shook her head, held up a note.

"You need to read this."

Linn took Angela's hand, raised it to his lips, kissed her knuckles, carefully, as if she would break if breathed on.

"Darlin'," he said, "you are gorgeous."

He rose, took the note as Shelly extended it.

He studied the scarlet wax seal, tilted it to catch the light across it, frowned.

Linn turned, took a quick step into the kitchen for better light, pulled out his phone, took a shot of the seal:  only then did he bend the seal to break it, and unfold the note.

Angela saw her Daddy's face grow serious, saw his eyebrow raise, saw him nod.

He looked at his little girl.

"Darlin'," he said, "could you come over here, please."

He pulled out a kitchen chair, picked up his ten year old daughter, stood her on the chair:  Angela shot a look at her Mama -- they weren't allowed to stand on the furniture! -- Shelly tilted her head ever so slightly, a silent, womanly communication that it was all right -- Linn very carefully, very delicately placed his fingertips under his daughter's chin.

"Tilt back," he said softly, and she did:  her Daddy studied the cameo closely, frowning a little:  "Chin down."

Angela dropped her chin.

Linn lifted up the back of her hair, looked at the simple catch at the back of her neck, lowered her hair carefully:  he came around in front of Angela again, looked at her with a serious Daddy-face.

"Darlin'," he said slowly, "I was right."

"What's that, Daddy?" Angela asked uncertainly.

"You," he said, lowering his face and coming nearer, until their noses just touched, "are gorgeous!"

Angela giggled, threw her arms around her Daddy, and Linn seized his little girl in a big enveloping Daddy-hug, stood up straight, picked her up off the chair:  he turned around once, twice, shoving the rest of the world viciously from his mind, reveling in this moment, this one moment, with his little girl in his arms, under his own roof, free from the decisions, the action, everything incumbent with being Sheriff:  for this brief slice of time, he was what he'd always hoped to be.

He was a big strong Daddy, in his own home, holding his child, and for this one moment, all was right with the universe.

 

Linn and Shelly slipped into Angela's bedroom, after she was asleep, silent in sock feet:  husband and wife held hands, watched their little girl, innocent and curled up under the hand stitched quilt, and after several long moments, Linn gestured toward his little girl's dresser.

It was an old dresser; it had seen many generations of use; a box lay atop the crocheted doily, an artifact from Aunt Mary, rest her soul: the box was long and narrow, and contained a hand carved cameo on a black silk ribbon.

The likeness was almost photographic in detail, and was that of a young girl in profile.

Marnie, Linn thought, then he blinked and smiled and shook his head.

That's Angela, it's gotta be.

Linn and Shelly went back downstairs, careful to make no sound; they settled at the kitchen table, side by side, and Linn withdrew the note, unfolded it, read it for the hundredth time.

It was in Marnie's handwriting.

I had this cameo made, she wrote:  it is of a native Martian stone that is particularly suited for cameos, with an ivory colored layer naturally bonded to a darker underlayment. The silk is from a planet in the Richmond sector, and was part of a gift from the daughter of a man I kept alive when a meteor ripped the side out of an Ambassadorial shuttle.

No doubt you or she will be asked where you bought it.

Show them a picture of Sarah Lynne McKenna.

She and I look identical, and there is a picture in her museum.

It is of Sarah as a young girl, and she is wearing a cameo.

Show them the picture and say nothing more.

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna breathed deeply, strongly, rejoicing in the strength of her young limbs.

She was stripped down to her frillies and stockings, she was facing an opponent, a grown man with sidewhiskers and a curled mustache, who was likewise in a similar state of undress -- improper, perhaps, for a young girl's company, but necessary for this phase of her training.

The attack was swift, her defense was merciless: a grown man was hard pressed to land without hurting himself, and not for the first time, he was grateful for the padding under their woven practice mat.

Twice more he came at her; twice more she used what he'd taught her, twice more she'd used leverage more than strength, twice more she -- a girl of twelve years -- threw a grown man.

He rolled over, came up on all fours, then stood up on his knees:  he raised a palm in surrender, nodded.

"Enough for today," he said.  "Tomorrow, knives."

Sarah Lynne McKenna, daughter of the mountains, bowed formally as the man rose to his feet:  he too bowed; they turned their backs on one another and each walked to their end of the broad Denver theater stage.

Sarah opened the door to her dressing room, felt the air shift, took a quick step back, teeth bared, hands up, ready to block or strike.

There was silence from within.

She hooked the door, pulled it suddenly open.

Nothing.

She looked inside, cautiously, looked around: the room was small, Spartan, with nowhere to hide an adult assailant: Sarah, in her young life, knew what it was to be attacked, assaulted, hurt: nostrils flared, eyes going steadily to an ice-pale shade, she thrust a hand into her waiting dress, came out with a double-edged fighting knife: she spun, ready --

Nothing.

Sarah closed the door, latched it: no one could get in now --

A box lay on the vanity table.

Curious, she lay down the knife, picked up the box, opened it.

Inside, a cameo, beautifully carved, an exact likeness of herself, in profile:  ivory it was, on a gleaming jet oval.

Sarah turned to the mirror, held it up against her throat, froze.

Someone was standing behind her, someone -- a woman, but wearing grey, something that clung to her body like she was naked --

Sarah turned, slashed, thrust --

Her blade skidded off the woven-grey belly --

A grey-gloved hand caught her wrist --

The woman knelt, placed her fingers against the side of her head --

The grey face cover lifted, suddenly --

It was like looking in a very strange mirror.

Sarah's eyes widened with surprise, going from ice-pale to a very slight shade of blue.

The woman pressed her fingers flat against the side of her head again, and the woven-grey, skin-tight cap snapped back off her head: her hair was short, but she looked --

She looks like me!

"My name," the woman whispered, "is Marnie, and I'm not from around here."

She looked at the cameo about Sarah's neck, smiled.

"I wish to have your portrait painted," she said, "and for that I will need to take your photograph."  She looked at the dress, still hanging behind Sarah.  "Please.  Get dressed."

"Who are you?" Sarah asked, debating whether to make a slash or a stab at the now-exposed face.

"I am your several times great-granddaughter."

Sarah puzzled over this, then shrugged, turned to her dress:  the knife disappeared into the material, somewhere; Sarah was dressed with an incredible speed -- the experience of modeling her Mama's fashions, she was very much a quick-change artist -- she slipped into her high shoes, ran the buttonhook with the speed and ease of much experience.

She was elaborately ignoring the woman behind her; when she turned, the woman was holding up something square and silver, something wide as a deck of cards and half as thick:  the woman pulled the stool from the vanity, spun it toward the side of the little dressing room.

"Sit here," she said.  "Now... gloves, yes, just like that, and fold your hands in your lap, just like this... perfect, you have a natural gift for ... oh, just like that, hold very still!"

Sarah froze, willing herself not to blink, not to breathe: she had no idea where the camera was -- cameras were big boxy affairs, and here inside she'd have to use flash powder, and that didn't work well with formal portraiture and it would make a lot of smoke and it would stink --

"There.  All done."  

The woman slipped the silvery square thing into her woven grey, skintight suit, smiled.

"Sarah, I am very proud of you," she said, then she raised her forearm, tapped the back of her wrist a few times, looked at Sarah and winked: she shimmered, and she was gone, and Sarah felt air rush in, saw dust pulled up under the door.

The pale eyed woman in grey was gone ... but she didn't go out the door.

Sarah pulled her knife, quickly, slashed through the space the woman had occupied a moment before --

Gone --

How'd she do that?

Sarah Lynne McKenna looked in the mirror, raised her fingertips to the cameo at her throat.

It's real.

It must've happened.

Two days later, the Sheriff and his wife came driving out in their shiny, black, gold-pinstriped carriage:  Sarah watched as the pale eyed lawman helped his wife down, took her under the arms and swung her down with the ease of a lean man of deceptive strength: Esther descended to earth, secure in her husband's strong grip, one foot down and pointed, the other leg up behind her, pointed as well, the pose of a woman who knows her beauty, and declares it for the man she loves.

Sarah watched as the Sheriff brought something square, wrapped in brown paper, from the folded quilting in the back of their carriage: something came in by train, something important enough to be padded, something important enough for him to carry very carefully and deliver personally.

Sarah stood back as the Sheriff brought this package into their parlor.

Family gathered, curious, as the Sheriff untied the string holding paper around the object: he pulled the string free, handed it to the maid -- nothing was wasted, the string would be reused, as would be the paper in which this mysterious object was wrapped.

Beneath the first layer of brown wrapping paper, a note, a single octavo sheet, tri-folded and sealed with scarlet wax: the Sheriff frowned, turned it to catch the light across it, handed it to Esther, then to Bonnie, who handed it to her husband.

Levi frowned, looked at the Sheriff, who inclined his head slightly.

Levi broke the seal, opened the paper, read the few words aloud.

"A granddaughter remembers," he read slowly, then looked up, puzzled.

"It's signed Marnie."

"Who's Marnie?" Bonnie asked, taking the note, studying it.

"That's all it says.  Just Marnie."

Linn unfolded the paper, froze.

"Levi," he said, and Levi leaned over: they heard his quick intake of breath, his slow hiss of admiration.

"That," he said slowly, "is an absolutely gorgeous portrait!"

"You didn't tell me you sat for a portrait," Bonnie said, startled, looking at Sarah.

Sarah shrugged.  "I didn't tell you about performing on stage, either," she admitted.

Bonnie looked at the portrait.  "That," she admitted, "is absolutely beautiful."

Sarah's cheeks were a distinct pink:  she looked down, looked away:  the ladies were immediately discussing where to hang it, Levi rescued the Sheriff with an offer of brandy, and Sarah raised her fingers to her throat, remembering how the cameo felt, about her neck, as if it belonged there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MEDICINE MEN

Dr. John Greenlees pressed practiced fingers against the inside of the dying man's upper arm.

He'd nearly lost his arm -- unfortunately, it was a clean cut, which means the transected artery was pumping his very life out on the ground.

From the absolute pallor of the man's face, the dusky shade of his lips and his fingers, the frontier physician knew he was looking at a dead man, but the hard headed and contrary Army surgeon in him seized the artery above the cut, pressed, desperately trying to hold life inside the body, where it belonged.

A man in a fine suit stomped up and down beside his dying son, his face contorted with grief: he tore at his hair, threw his hands up and down, turned and bent at the waist and screamed "YOU'RE A DOCTOR, DO SOMETHING!"

Dr. John Greenlees looked at the quiet, watchful ranch hand, kneeling close by:  "I need your help."

The ranch hand lifted his chin, his eyes bright, interested.

"Grab his upper arm here. Press in with your fingers flat. Here, where my hand is.  Tight."

The ranch hand reached down, pressed the brachial artery against the humerus:  Doc opened his warbag, pulled out a bottle of carbolic, sloshed it across the exposed upper arm.

He'd already split the sleeve, cut it at the shoulder seam: he set the bottle aside, reached into the case again.

"Do you have a weak stomach?" he asked quietly.

"Nope," the ranch had said firmly.

Doc saw the cut he'd have to make: the artery was gone, the cut would have transected the radial nerve, the arm would be dead from there down -- he'd seen it before -- he reached into the bag, pulled out a tourniquet, ran it around the man's arm, drew it tight, screwed the pad down to shut off the artery.

He brought out another, smaller case, selected a scalpel.

"MY GOD DON'T CUT HIS ARM OFF!" the distraught man screamed.

"It's the only chance he has," Doc grated, froze when he heard the pistol cock.

The ranch hand launched from his knee-down squat: Doc ignored the conflict beside him as he made the cut with the speed, the precision, of too many field amputations during that damned War.

He made the cut, set the scalpel across the small case, reached in, brought out a small, specialized saw.

He looked at the injured man's face, hesitated, then laid practiced fingers into the carotid groove, finding the Adam's apple, dropping his fingers down beside it, questing, searching, looking without eyes for the slight pressure that would tell him life remained in the body.

He replaced the bone saw in the satchel, withdrew a new purchase, the very latest innovation from France, something called a stethoscope: he fit the ends in his ears, pulled the still figure's shirt open, pressed the long, polished-brass bell against the still chest.

He looked up, saw the ranch hand rising, a little nickle plated pistol in hand: the other fellow was in the ground, shaking his head.

Doc went over to the horse trough, washed off the scalpel, washed the blood off the tourniquet, then washed his hands with his usual thoroughness.

He put his tools away, closed his satchel, looked down at the man who was dead before the doctor even began.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.  "I tried."

The distraught man rolled over, came up on all fours, looked at his son, dead, lying in a shining pool of thickening blood.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Greenlees said.  "He was too far gone."

He turned and walked to his physician's surrey, set his satchel behind the seat, picked up his coat, spun it around his shoulders.

He tried to forget the sight of a father, on his knees beside his dead son, bent over with his face in his dead son's belly, muffling his agonized screams as he mourned the loss of his firstborn.

 

Dr. John Greenlees seized the stainless-steel instrument tray in both hands, swung it up in time to block the punch: Dr. John was a man with an uncommon delicacy of touch -- not uncommon among surgeons -- but when necessary, his grip could be quite strong, and his grip on the rolled edges of the steel tray was quite good.

A good thing it was.

The punch was hard enough to bend the tray in its center.

The first punch was high -- at his face -- the second just grazed Doc's side, and he brought the tray down hard on the side of his attacker's face.

Dr. John Greenlees was honestly surprised as his attacker's eyes snapped wide open, as his mouth opened, as he recognized the reaction of a man suddenly without any control at all over himself, the moment before he collapsed beside the ER cart.

A pale eyed woman in a deputy's uniform had a three-cell flashlight in her hand, one he'd seen before: she'd shown it to him earlier in the shift, and joked about slipping a bicycle inner tube over the aluminum body "so no fancy lawyer can claim I belted their client with a length of pipe."

Dr. John Greenlees raised the instrument tray, considered how badly distorted it was: he looked at the young man on the ER cart, pale, sweating, in pain.

"Kidney stones?" he gasped.

Doc nodded.

"I'm not dying."

"You might wish you were dead, but no, you're not dying. Let me give you something for the pain."

"What about Dad?"

"He's going to jail, son, you don't have to worry about him."

 

Dr. John Greenlees, M.D., physician and surgeon, squatted, gripped the screaming girl's foot: one hand laid over her arch, the other cupped just above her heel, he leaned back, using his weight for leverage.

There is no scream like the absolute, shrill agony expressed from the female throat, especially in a small rock chamber melted away by the mining machinery: Doc leaned back more, and as the broken ends of her thigh passed one another and drew apart, the girl's eyes widened, her hands pressed hard against the smooth floor, her full-voiced, super powered scream, trailed off to nothing.

Her eyes were wide with surprise instead of clenched shut with pain.

Doc considered that sometimes the old and the simple works just fine; he'd fabricated a selection of an ancient design splint, and there on Mars, surrounded with technology from their own world, and others, Doc worked the newly-manufactured Thomas half ring splint under the girl's high thigh, tied the hitch, attached the winch and drew the windlass just taut enough to hold the broken bone ends apart.

Two miners helped lift her just enough to get the folding litter under her, two miners hoisted her, they moved two steps to the left and six feet back when a chunk of rock fell -- swift, silent, deadly -- where the injured girl had been not thirty seconds before.

Dr. John Greenlees flinched, turned his face away, raising a hand to block the stinging spalls that stung his face, then he looked at the rock, at his patient, shook his head and asked, "Is anyone selling lottery tickets?  We all need to buy one today!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

"SHERIFF, WHY?"

Sheriff Linn Keller was a pretty good judge of men.

He might admit, in a private moment, that he wasn't nearly as good a judge of women: he'd said to his old and dear friend Jackson Cooper that "Women can pull the hood wink right over my eyes fast and easy and I never know it!" and Jackson Cooper nodded solemnly and allowed as that was why both men kept company with their wives, that they'd each married women who could spot bad women that looked not bad, and each man raised a solemn stein of beer in salute to the other's bride and their perceptiveness.

On this one particular Sunday, the Sheriff was all shined up and presentable, he was barbered and his suit and hat were brushed, his boots polished to a fine shine: the sons that came with him to church were, in like wise, presentable, and his daughters were as lovely and presentable as his beautiful bride.

The Sheriff was a quietly watchful man, as were his sons, particularly the tall Jacob, who looked enough like his father to be a younger twin:  Jacob's mustache was a rich auburn, like his hair, and where Linn's mustache was iron grey and carefully sculpted into a villainous handlebar, Jacob's mustache was finer, thicker, and just a bit more elegant, which made him the subject of ladies' envious glances -- a fact that did not escape the young wife on his off arm.

The Sheriff shook hands and talked with anyone who approached him: he was affable and personable, he was quick to listen, and when he listened, he appeared to give his full attention to the speaker: Jacob, nearby, maintained a silent overwatch, while his wife chatted happily with friends and acquaintances.

Linn noticed a little boy watching him curiously, a little boy with an expression somewhere between puzzled and thoughtful.

Linn concluded his conversation with WJ Garrison, the mercantile's proprietor, then he turned, squatted, looked very directly at the little boy who'd been studying him.

"There is a question in your eyes," he said in a gentle and fatherly voice, and the lad's ears immediately reddened:  in his eyes, the Sheriff was almost a legendary figure, and to have such a figure step down from the Olympus of a pedestal upon which the lad had him, to address him, a mere mortal, was ... well, at once very flattering, but kind of intimidating as well.

The boy frowned and looked at the ground, but immediately raised his eyes to the pale eyed lawman.

"Sheriff, my Pa said we go to church to clean up our corroded souls."

The Sheriff nodded slowly.  "I would say your Pa is right," he affirmed, knowing how important it was to reinforce the father's stature in a son's mind.

"Well how come you're here!" the boy blurted.  "You're the Sheriff!"

Sheriff Linn Keller grinned; Sheriff Linn Keller dropped his head, nodding; Sheriff Linn Keller laughed, and he laid a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Son," he said, "I'd like to make sure I'm still right with the Lord."

The boy frowned.  "But you're the Sheriff! Wouldn't you know?"

Linn knew this conversation was being listened to; he knew he'd have to reply with some wisdom: he apparently had a really good reputation in a little boy's eyes, and he didn't want to lose any of that, if only because of vanity: few things are more meaningful to a grown man, than the rapt attention of a young boy's ear.

"When I'm Sheriff," Linn said slowly, "I rub shoulders with all kind of people. I have to go amongst the Philistines with the jaw bone of a jack mule and bring the bad ones back to face the Judge, whether they want to come along, or not."

The big-eyed boy nodded his understanding.

"Now if the only folks I see are the bad ones, why, I might be thinkin' there are nothing but bad folks in the world."

The boy frowned, then looked at the Sheriff, almost in alarm, as he realized the truth of the man's words.

"When I come here to church on Sunday, what kind of folks are here?"

The boy looked around, looked at the surprising number of people leaned in close to hear the quietly worded conversation.

"We've got just all kind of folks here. Those that are here, are good people, and those that aren't, are made better by comin' here.  Y'see" -- the Sheriff leaned a little closer, gripped both the lad's shoulders -- "you are one reason I'm Sheriff."

"Me?" the boy asked, his lips barely moving.

Linn nodded.  "You are one big reason I'm the big chief law dog in this county. I keep the peace so you don't have to worry about it."

The boy's eyes widened as he took this in.

"You asked how come I come to church."  Linn smiled a little, looked up, looked around.

"It's because of everyone you see here. Good people, doin' the best they can, and that reminds me that there are good people in this world."

He winked, stood.  "I'd best go in before my wife grabs me by the ear and drags me in."

The boy looked at Esther, who was smiling patiently, looking at her husband with a gentle expression.

"Naaw, Miz Esther wouldn't do that!"

Sarah Lynne McKenna swept up beside the Sheriff, took his arm:  "But I would!" she declared, reaching down and taking the boy's hand:  together, the Sheriff, his wife, his daughters, his sons and a little boy who was curious enough to ask a question, went into their little whitewashed church, where the Parson was all set to scrub the tarnish off any corroded souls that might cross his threshold. 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A STRANGE AND WONDERFUL CREATURE

Captain Crane drew a mug of coffee, trickled a thin stream of milk into it.

This, in and of itself, was not that unusual: if it's true the Navy runs on coffee, it's twice as true for the fire service.

What was unusual was the way the Captain drew his scalding beverage.

Chief Fitzgerald picked up his own mug, drew it mostly full: unlike the Captain, his hand was steady; unlike the Captain's mug, the Chief's did not shiver and slop over the rim.

Captain Crane sat down, set his mug down, closed his eyes, took a long, steadying breath.

The Chief sat beside him, laid a hand between the man's shoulder blades.

"Out with it, lad," he said quietly.  "I know it was a code and I know it was a child."

"She didn't make it."

"You followed procedure."

"I did."

"You skipped no steps."

"None."

"What you did, you did well."

"She was dying," the Captain said flatly.  "Brain tumor. There was no saving her."

The Chief waited:  an anonymous hand slid a dishrag in under the Captain's mug as he raised it to take a sip, left it in place to soak up the heavy tan drop clinging to the bottom edge.

Captain Crane looked up, laughed.

"Chief," he said, "women are strange and wonderful creatures."

"Oh?"  Fitz took a sip, took another.

"We were on our way in, Shelly was on the radio givin' report to ER. She quit breathin' and I went for her carotid.

"Now Shelly was between me and the driver's bulkhead, she was squatted down and I was on my prayer bones beside that little girl when she coded.

"I said "Shelly, code!" -- I established the airway and went down mouth-to-mouth, we were seconds from the hospital and no time for anything else -- Shelly told ER we were running a code.  She didn't climb over my shoulders, she just tossed the microphone.  It's on the end of that curly cord, y'understand, and if she wanted it again all she had to do was pull it in, hand over hand, like -- she didn't climb over top of me and she didn't climb widdershins over the squad bench behind me."

Crane took a thoughtful pull on his coffee.

"No, Chief, mothers are strange and wonderful creatures," he said thoughtfully.  "She just kind of levitated over me, she dropped into compression position, she landed on her knees with her arms straight, her fingers laced and she had the positioning perfect."

"Do we have a signed no-code on file?"

"No. No, and she didn't have one with the hospital either."

"I see."  

Crane took another pull on his thick-walled mug, hung his head over the steaming vessel, staring sightlessly into its tan depths.

"I tried to save her, Chief. We both did, we had her at ER within thirty seconds."

"Sounds like you did all right."

Crane took a long breath, stared at something miles beyond the far wall.

"Mothers," he repeated softly, "are strange and wonderful creatures."

"Aye," Fitz agreed.  "That they are."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SIR, A WORD

Sheriff Linn Keller had his horse's off forehoof between his knees when his son spoke.

Linn lowered the hoof slowly, patted the mare's neck, turned to face Jacob.

"A word, sir," he'd said -- the Sheriff heard it again, as if spoken anew, between his ears.

"Yes," he said curiously.

Jacob was scrupulous in his manners, as a matter of habit -- good manners were the rule, and not the exception: indeed, the deadliest gunfighters the Sheriff had ever known, met, spoken with or heard about, were also the men with the most correct manners, for every one of them knew the fell consequece of a harsh word.

"Sir" -- Jacob frowned, took a breath: Linn saw his son's bottom jaw come out, as he bit his bottom lip.

"Sir, I have a fear."

Another man might have paused before naming the beast that gnawed his guts.

Not Jacob.

Not the Sheriff's pale eyed get, the lean young man who'd already established his reputation as a man not to be trifled with.

The Sheriff nodded, once.  "Go on."

"Sir," Jacob said straightforwardly, "I fear my own temper."

Sheriff Linn Keller considered this for several long moments:  finally, he picked up his coat, draped it over his arm, paced slowly up to his son.

"Walk with me."

Father and son paced slowly out of the barn and over to the pump: fresh water in the washpan and the Sheriff washed his hands, dried them on the sun bleached towel, he and Jacob shared a tin cup of good cold well water apiece.

"Now."  Linn shrugged into his coat, settled it into place:  "you fear your temper."

"I do, sir," Jacob said. "I fear I will let slip my beast, and I will very likely kill someone, or hurt them very badly, and I'll do it with my bare hands."

"Why with your bare hands?" Linn asked thoughtfully.

"Sir, there is no satisfaction in shooting a man," Jacob said flatly. "If my badger is tearin' loose it's because someone deserves the laying-on of hands."

"I see," the Sheriff replied thoughtfully.

He thrust a chin at the back porch steps.

Father and son walked across the thin grass and seated themselves on the back steps.

Linn took off his Stetson, considered the sweat band carefully before speaking.

"Jacob," he said, "when I was a boy, I had me a genuine cane pole."

"Yes, sir?"

"Genuine cane. Cost me enough, too. I was proud of that'un.

"Well, I was up on Fisher Crick, we had particular bends in the crick we liked to fish, and the boys from town come down and they was another one, Billy White, he come up from Fay Iver Ridge to loaf with the townies."

"Yes, sir?"

"We trompled a good patch down and it was high enough we could throw down a good bet of Cat Tails and sleep without gettin' all soaky wet, and the Musquitters weren't bad, only that Billy White, he taken one of them Cat Tails and twisted it to bust out the fuzz and he rubbed it in my face.

"He got it up my nose and in my mouth and I couldn't breathe and he thought it was funny and got to laughin' and I twisted away from him, I grabbed that genuine cane pole and broke it over my knee and I come after him. Could I have caught him I intended to use that sharp broke-off end like a spear and I purposed to drive it through his guts and out his back.

"He taken off a-runnin' and I taken out right after him.

"He was bigger and he was faster but I knowed the woods and he didn't, I got to home and I got the shotgun and I lay wait knowin' he'd come down a pa'tickelar path.

"He come, all right, but he must've figured I had bad blood for him, for he stopped out of shotgun range.

"I laid behint a log with both hammers back and he hollered and said he didn't mean nothin' by it and he was only funnin' and I allowed as he could come right on ahead and I'd show him how much fun it was, and he hollered at me for a while and I got kind of cooled off and then I allowed as hell, come on ahead and go home and I'd do the same."

Silence grew long on their back porch steps as each saw the scene play out in his mind.

"Jacob, I fully intended to murder him. It was in me to run that spear point into his guts and stir 'em around some and then shove it out his back, it was in me to hit him with both barrels up close, and I was runnin' on pure red hot hate when I did."

Jacob nodded, slowly.

"After I cooled down some, why, I looked back on what I'd nearly done and I turned cold for the fear of it, for I realized had I done things just a little different, I'd have kilt him graveyard dead."

"Yes, sir."

"If a man is afraid of his temper, Jacob, he is aware of his temper, and he is that much less likely to turn his badger plumb loose. Now there's times when you want to do just that, an' there is times when the layin' on of hands is needful."  Linn looked at his son and grinned.  "Like you done with Danny Spears."

"Yes, sir."

"I am afraid of my temper as well, Jacob, and I must discipline myself most strictly when it comes to family."

Linn felt his son's surprise: Jacob turned his head, looked at his father:  "Sir?"

Linn nodded, his expression haunted.  "Oh, yes, Jacob. I have felt anger and then the shame for feeling it, but I never acted on it. God willing I never will. Times I'd been writing an important letter, and got interrupted, or I was studyin' on an important matter and got interrupted, and the interruptions were by family --"

"I have offended, sir," Jacob said slowly.

"No," Linn said firmly.  "No, Jacob, you most certainly have not offended."  Linn looked over his shoulder to make sure young ears were not eavesdropping. "Of all my young, Jacob, you alone have never offended!"

"Thank you, sir," Jacob said uncertainly, feeling at least a little relief.

"It is a constant fight," Linn admitted. "That temper of ours is a beast, it's a monster and it wants to eat us from the inside out. If it ever wins, it'll burn us out from the inside and we'll just turn into a pile of ash."

Father and son lapsed into a long silence, broken only when the hired girl came to the back door looking for them, to let them know supper was ready.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

INDIRA

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna stared out the black glass mirror of the private car's nighttime window.

She'd gone into a fine hotel in a fine gown, yellow with black trim, her hair piled atop her head with a gem dangled in the middle of her forehead: she met men's eyes, her screaming scarlet lips kissed at men of power and influence as she swept past them: she flowed up the grand staircase, knowing that just as she drew a rippling train of skirt behind her, she drew men's eyes as well.

Three minutes after she was out of sight of the main lobby, a modestly dressed woman in a dark green but rather plain gown walked quietly down the hallway, toward the back stairs:  she turned at the hotel detective's command, fumbled at the door frame beside her: the detective stopped suddenly as she turned her face toward him, her black-lensed glasses pronouncing her blind:  "I am terribly sorry, can you help me?  I seem to have lost my room," and the detective blinked, turned, looked behind him:  when he realized this wasn't the hussy in the yellow dress, he thought perhaps this woman might have seen her: he came closer, looked over top her glasses, looked at her eyes and shivered.

Her eyes were white, the milky white shade he'd only seen once, eyes that were permanently scarred from an acid-throwing.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, suddenly uncertain: "I was looking for a, a, a woman in a yellow ..."

The blind woman blinked, reached forward, patted the hotel detective's chest: her hand slipped under his lapel, her fingers read the badge on its reverse.

"Oh, you must be the hotel detective," she said, sounding even more like an old woman: "did this ... this yellow dress smell of cheap perfume and cigarettes?"

"It could have, yes, ma'am."

"She ran past me and that's how I got turned around. Where am I now?"

"Ma'am, you're on the second floor, this is room 209."

"Oh, dear, I am in room 201," she quavered, "but before she spun me around and dizzied me, she was running from the staircase and I heard her go on down the hallway."

"Down the hallway," he said. "Where were you when she spun you around?"

"I think halfway from here to the stairway."
The detective launched into a sprint, down the hallway, startling a maid who was coming out of a room: the maid squeaked, jumped back, dropped a handful of folded linens: she watched the detective charge to the stairway door, run through it, saw the door slam behind him.

The blind woman followed slowly, fingertips trailing along the wall:  she stopped, crossed the hallway:  "Well, dearie," she said in her old-woman's voice, "how did I do?"

Sarah laughed and hugged the Sheriff's pale-eyed daughter. 

"Indira," she whispered, "you even sound like a little old lady!"

"Daddy's eyes and dark glasses," Indira giggled, "and everyone thinks I'm stone blind!"

They looked back down the hallway, pulled back into the room.

Sarah handed Indira a satchel: Sarah drew the door shut behind her, turned a key in the lock, and Indira took her aunt's arm.

It looked for all the world like one of the hotel maids was helping a blind woman down the back stairs and out to a waiting carriage: the hack clattered away, headed for the depot, and with it, the woman with dark glasses and enough evidence -- and a yellow dress -- in the satchel to put two powerful and influential men behind bars, for a very long time.

Not long later, another woman descended the grand staircase: though well dressed, she did not draw undue attention to herself: she glided down the stairs and into the dining room, she sat, smiled at the polite, bowing waiter, and ordered a light meal: "If a Mr. Donovan inquires as to Miss Susan, could you please seat him here," she smiled, gesturing with feminine, gloved fingers to the chair across the table.

Mr. Donovan arrived before her meal did.

Mr. Donovan was a nervous man, darting glances to his left and to his right: he wore a suit, yes, but it was not well tailored: he fumbled with his hat, his necktie was askew, and as he approached, Sarah noticed one shoe was wet, on its outer edge, wet with something that looked sticky, from the street dust and fluff adhering to it: she couldn't tell the color, not on a black shoe, but she was ready to bet it was blood.

Mr. Donovan nearly ran to her table.

Sarah looked up and smiled: her expression turned instantly to sympathy as the waiter turned quickly, angling his tray to keep the contents from spilling: Donovan nearly fell, cursed at the waiter, seized the back of his chair and yanked it away from the table, sitting abruptly and awkwardly scooting back in.

The waiter said not a word, but the look he gave this uncouth intruder spoke volumes, and pleasantly worded, the volumes were not.

"Mr. Donovan," Sarah purred.  "How nice of you to join us. Can I offer you something?"

"You can give me what you took," Donovan hissed, shifting in his seat and lacing his fingers together.

Sarah picked up her fork, sampled the pheasant.  "Mmm," she hummed.  "Exquisite, and I am simply famished."  She looked at her twisting, uncomfortable dinner partner. "But the Chinese do have a saying, Mr. Donovan.  Hunger makes the best sauce."

"Sauce?" Donovan hissed.  "You broke into the offices and ... sauce?"

"Mr. Donovan," Sarah sighed, "I have no idea what you are talking about."

Donovan's hand raised --

There was the flash of light on a nickle plated pistol --

The table flipped up, a pair of stockinged legs and a flurry of skirts --

The table knocked the man's hand upward, slung pheasant, dressing and drink into the air.

The pistol fired, punched a hole in the carved chapiter of a decorative timber column --

The heavier BOOM of a .44 bulldog followed the flip of the table --

Sarah Lynne McKenna slipped the blocky little revolver back into its hidden holster:  she rose, her eyes wide, gloved hands came to her mouth: she backed up, her chair fell over, hit the polished floor with a sharp, woody sound --

A woman's scream, shrill, piercing, and a woman ran out of the dining room, fled blindly through the lobby, out the front doors, into the nighttime street --

A shabbily dressed man sagged in his chair, then fell sideways, blood seeping from the hole just below his breastbone.

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna stared at the black-glass mirror that was the private car's nighttime window.

She blinked at the rattle of a china teacup on a china saucer: there was the inviting gurgle of tea being poured, the welcoming odor of fresh-brewed oolong tempted its way to her, and she smiled as Indira poured a second cup for herself.

Two pale eyed ladies smiled knowingly at one another and sipped their tea.

 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TROOP STRENGTH

 

Marnie Keller's spectacles were halfway down her nose.

She wore a tailored suit dress and heels, just like her pale eyed Gammaw; she was in front of a rolltop desk, like her Gammaw; she had shelves of books behind her, beside her; she had the library's computer at her disposal, and she had two large monitors, both showing information she wanted.

Marnie knew the public expected librarians to be mousy, studious, school-marmish sorts -- three things Marnie most certainly wan't -- no, Marnie was a young woman who chose to follow certain drives, and one drive was to discover facts.

Her brother asked a question, and the question piqued her curiosity: Jacob was reading one of Old Pale Eyes' journals, then he frowned, marked the place with a finger, carried the reprinted volume to their library and ran his finger across some newly printed publications.

Marnie watched him pull a volume from the shelf: she saw the gold words, embossed in black binding: 

The Black Agent, volume 3, by W. Keller, Firelands Press.

Marnie felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth: her Gammaw's humor tended to be understated, or dry, unless it was rude, crude, socially unacceeptable, obscene, illegal, immoral or fattening: after all her Gammaw had seen in her lifetime, Marnie reasoned, she was entitled to whatever rotten and perverse humor she pleased, and besides, her Gammaw's humor was honestly funny.

There was no "Firelands Press" ... her Gammaw paid to have these volumes privately printed, and the "Firelands Press" on the spine, and the title page, was extra expense -- worth it, to tickle her Gammaw's funny bone, and however many generations handled these same volumes.

Jacob marked the first reprint with half of an Ace of Diamonds -- a card he'd split edgewise with a Keith .44 that afternoon -- he paged quickly through the second volume, frowned, ran his finger down the page, stopped.

"Marnie," Jacob said, puzzled, "you know these volumes better than anyone."

Marnie tilted her head, curious, came a little closer.

"Old Pale Eyes' children. I just found one I'd never heard of."

"Oh?"

"Indira."
Marnie frowned.  "Which volume is that?"

"Black Agent 3."

"I haven't read that one yet.  It just arrived from the printer's last week."

"Along with a bunch of others," Jacob muttered.  "Old Pale Eyes was discussing Sean's unholy number of young and he was ignoring his own brigade."  Jacob puzzled a moment more, then looked at Marnie and asked, 

"Irish Brigade, Sheriff's Brigade ... Sheriff's Regiment?"

"Depends on total troop strength. Did Old Pale Eyes mention Indira?"

"Only once. I'm surprised I never noticed it before."

"Indira," Marnie repeated, blinking, and Jacob saw his older sis lean back a little and run her eyes along the cove molding where wall met ceiling.

Recollection, he thought, noting which way her eyes swung: good God, I am my father's son!

"You are your Gammaw's gandson," Marnie said absently, and Jacob's jaw dropped open.

Marnie looked at him and laughed.

"I'm sorry, Jacob, but really, you are so transparent!"

Jacob raised both hands to the ceiling.  "O Lord," he intoned, "spare me the curse of the perceptive female!"

Marnie came over, gripped the back of his chair, laid her chin out over his shoulder.  "Show me," she murmured.  "I want to see this Indira."

 

Marnie looked over her spectacles at the visitors to their library: as much as the Silver Jewel and the Firelands Museum, their little library seemed a tourist destination: it, too, had artifacts from  Firelands' past, and the sight of a well dressed young woman immersed in research was perfectly in line with what tourists expected to see.

Marnie looked up at the visitors, smiled a little, returned to her research.

All right, Pale Eyes, she thought, which of your daughters is Indira?

Sarah smiled with delight, looked at her niece with approval.

Indira lowered a slender tube, as long as a schoolboy's ruler: her eyes were bright, excited:  "How's that?"

Sarah looked again at the target, ten feet away, an oval with two circles representing eyes: each eye had a sailmaker's needle sticking out of it, fired from the blowpipe her niece held.

"That," she said, "is nice!"

Indira laughed, picked up something: her hand was flat, palm up: she laid something between two fingers, or maybe two somethings, then she spun and made a throwing motion.

Two more sailmaker's needles drove into the hand drawn face.

Sarah's mouth opened with astonishment, smiled with approval.

"I can do that with knives," she said, "but not with ... needles!"

Indira laughed, the delighted laughter of a girl when she earns the approval of someone she respects.

Indira picked up a square nail, held it by its pointed end: she laid this in her flat palm, slung it as if slapping something -- her delivery stroke was horizontal, instead of overhand -- and the nail drove into the target, just a little to the right of dead center.

Sarah nodded, clapped her hands, bounced on her toes like an excited little girl.

"Now."  Indira tilted her head, looked at her aunt.  "You were going to show me how you used that theater face paint to make me look old!"

Sarah laughed.  "A deal is a deal," she agreed.  "Come with me and I'll show you how to be an old woman."

"And a woman of easy virtue?"

Sarah looked at her niece through lowered lashes -- at once lascivious, and a warning:  "Leave that disguise to me, Indira," she said quietly.

Indira knew better than to argue.

 

Marnie made notes on a legal pad, just like her Gammaw did: her handwriting was quick, exact, elegant; she used a fountain pen, but unlike Willamina, she preferred a reservoir pen instead of a dip quill.

Indira could have been one of two daughters, she wrote:  she returned to the volume she was studying, looked at a monitor's screen, scrolled through the census report:  she laid down the pen, placed spatulate fingers on the keyboard:  a burst of activity, a quick, plastic patter, another screen, another scroll.

Marnie's eyes narrowed with satisfaction.

"Gotcha!"

 

Jacob dumped the double handful of cartridge brass in the tumbler, poured in media, added a dryer sheet: the vibrating case cleaner sat on a rubber mat, on the basement's cement floor.

He looked up at the sound of hard heels descending the stairs.

Marnie gripped the support post, swung around like she was swinging around a post on the playground:  she held up her legal pad and smiled.

Jacob slid the lid into place, spun the retaining nut down, turned on the tumbler.

He straightened, looked at his pale eyed older sis.

"Indira," she declared triumphantly, "isn't her name!"

"What?"

"She did exist, though."

"Fill me in, Sis!"

Marnie laid the legal pad on the workbench, ran her finger halfway down the page.

"Old Pale Eyes was a stud and no two ways about it," she said. "He had enough young to start his own army. He accused Sean -- you know, that big red headed fire chief --"

"I remember," Jacob interrupted.

"Old Pale Eyes accused Sean of trying to sire a whole damned Brigade of red headed young."

"As I recall, he did, too."

"Beside the point.  Old Pale Eyes was raising a tribe of his own.  Company strength."

"All out of Esther, that poor woman?"

"Sarah and your namesake Jacob were the only woods colts we know of, so yes."  Marnie smiled, just a little.  "I found out why they called her Indira."

"What was her name?"

"Her given Christian name was Rebekha. Here, note the spelling, it's not the Anglicized version we see today."

"O-kaaay," Jacob said slowly. "Gorgeous handwriting, by the way."

"Thanks. Now ... it was when Old Pale Eyes found out his nine year old daughter could throw sewing needles and stick 'em like darts, that he started to call her Indira."

"I don't follow."

Marnie sighed patiently.  

Jacob raised his palms, a wait-a-minute gesture:  "Look, Sis, you're fourteen going onto twenty-one. I'm only thirteen and I don't know straight up from go-to-hell. You look like a million bucks and I look like I just fell down a manhole, okay? I've got all the fashion sense of a paving brick, so take pity on poor old stupid me and tell me why did Old Pale Eyes turn Rebecca into Indira?"

Marnie rested her forehead on her knuckles for a moment, shook her head.

"Okay. Here's the short form. Ancient India. Indira was a warrior who fought the gods or something like that. She used what sound like guided missiles -- from their sacred writings, it sounds like she was using guided missiles with nuclear warheads. Her spears never missed, not once, not ever.

"Old Pale Eyes knew the legend, and when he saw his pretty little girl throwing nails and sticking them, saw her throwing sewing needles and sticking them, then when she learned to shoot she learned to out shoot him -- well, he knew the legend of Indira's Arrows and that's what he called her, and it stuck."

Jacob looked over his sister's notes, ran his eye down one of her tidy, hand written columns.

"Good Lord, Sis, how many children did Old Pale Eyes have?"

Marnie laughed, shook her head.

"Jacob," she said softly, "he said once he wanted to raise horses and children, and he was a man who took in stray kids and lost dogs. I honestly don't know how many children he had. There's confusion in the census records, it seems the Reverend Linn Keller down in Stone Creek ran an orphanage and they were all listed as his children, and somehow his young got confused with Old Pale Eyes, plus he did adopt more than Esther bore him."

Jacob whistled.  "Company strength," he said thoughtfully.  "Are you sure it wasn't brigade strength?"

Marnie laughed, picked up her legal pad, hesitated.

"I'm still trying to correlate census records with three different family Bibles," she said softly.  "I have no idea as to total troop strength."

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ROUNDHOUSE

Sharon reached over and hit the button.

Shelly came out of her chair like she'd been stung: the alarm klaxon was loud, harsh and commanding in the confines of the hand-laid brick firehouse, guaranteeing that all hands any any corpses present would be AWAKE!!! -- like it or not!

Shelly admitted later she felt like she should have been hanging from the ceiling beams by her claws, and that she'd let go and dropped back to the deck before Sharon's voice came over the speakers, further acceleratring her hammering heart.

"FIRELANDS FIRE DEPARTMENT AND EMERGENCY SQUAD, RESCUE AT THE ROUNDHOUSE, TIME OF CALL ZERO EIGHT FIFTY TWO."

Men's hands reached up, hauled Kenworth hoods back down into place: latches secured, shorelines pulled free, shining Wellington boots hooked off and kicked to the wall: sock feet thrust in fireboots, bunker pants pulled up, suspenders thumb-hooked over shoulders: Nomex hoods savagely ripped from coat pockets, yanked over heads, arms thrust in smoke-smelling, sweat-stained firecoats: fingers ran top-down or bottom-up, fasting up the metal clasps.

Men ran for the shining trucks before their helmets were dunked on their hooded heads: run up the steps behind the cab, turn, drive backwards into the seat, slam the shoulders against the walkaway bracket, fast up the helmet, thrust coatsleeved arms through the self-contained air pack's thick, padded straps, pull the belt around the belly, drive tongue into buckle with an absolutely vicious thrust of firegloved hands.

Warriors, armored against the enemy, leaned their warriors' helms back against padded headrests, their beavertails pointing sharply down, their necks back a little as they closed their eyes, each addressing the Eternal, as warriors always do when facing battle.

Drivers twisted explosion-proof switches, heard the plastic click, click as they engaged both batteries --

Fingers forked into a stiff V, drove into the two buttons on the dash the moment the plugs were hot, two buttons pushed, two starters engaged --

Large displacement Diesel engines shivered into valve-snarling life --

Bay doors clattered open, shivering a little as they did.

The squad was first out, then the first-out pumper, then the rescue: the tanker remained in the bay, with the second-out pumper: the second crew would respond to staff station while First Crew was out: bay doors clattered shut, and the firehouse suddenly felt very empty.

Ghosts and truck exhaust twisted, smoky and faint in the bright sunbeams slanting through windows and shattering brightly against the scrupulously-clean floors.

Captain Crane's polished Wellington boot was heavy on the throttle: Shelly pressed her bootsole on the floor button, winding the shining chrome siren into screaming life: the electronic siren blasted alarm straight ahead, but the Federal Q was better for lateral warning: the Captain drove with one hand on the wheel, the other hooked on the air horns' lanyard.

A driver who didn't hear the electronic, who ignored the windup siren, would jump like a scared rabbit at air horns: nobody wants an eighteen to eat them for breakfast, and more times than one, the Captain laid on the air, blasting a last-moment warning through twin three-foot International Harvester air horn trumpets.

Shelly slung the stethoscope around her neck, gripped the aluminum clipboard with both hands.

Both medics had the same thought.

Roundhouse.

No report of explosion or burn.

Possible crush injury, everything they have is cast iron and heavy, and father and daughter both had the momentary image of a drive wheel, fallen off The Lady Esther, squashing a man against the stone floor like a stepped on stink bug.

 

"Dr. Greenlees."

Dr. John Greenlees raised his head, raised an eyebrow.

"Sir, they've been toned out to the roundhouse."

Dr. Greenlees considered this brief, simple statement.

"Shall I sound General Quarters?"

"No," he said finally.  "Let's see what they have first."

 

His name was Chipalinski, he was known as Chip, and right now he was looking at his boss and trying hard not to laugh.

He was flat on his back at the bottom of the turntable, ten feet below the concrete paved deck above.

He looked at his boss and gasped, "You caught me layin' down on the job."

His boss looked at the rebar sticking out of the man's chest.

He'd fallen -- no idea what caused the fall -- he'd impaled on a four foot re-bar sticking up from a project they'd barely begun, a project that came to a screeching halt when their safety officer brought his chrome coach's whistle to his lips and blew a long blast, blew so strongly the whistle made kind of a weak wobbly squeak from being overblown.

It was enough: work came to a fast stop, the turntable was already locked out:  men ran over, panicked, then froze as they saw the thumb-sized wrought-iron lance sticking out of a living man's chest.

Dorsey straightened, pointed to the engineer, leaned over the rim and looking down.

"BILL! THE STEAM CRANE! IT'S ON THE TURNTABLE, IS IT FIRED?"

Bill looked at the steam crane, looked at the boss, nodded.

"GET THAT WINCH LINE DOWN HERE NOW!"

 

Shelly and the Captain punched their seat belt releases at the same moment.

The Captain ran for the gesturing men, Shelly seized the door latch -- had it not released, she felt like she could've ripped the doors off their hinges -- she SLAMMED her hand down on the box's black-plastic handle, turned, ran.

"JESUS CHRIST DON'T DO THAT oh God no too late," Crane groaned.

Strong men were just lifting the impaled man off the rebar, carrying him over to where the winch line was lowering into the turntable's depth.

Crane turned, raised his talkie.

"ENGINE ONE I NEED A LADDER DOWN INTO THE TURNTABLE. GRAB THE STOKES."

He turned to Shelly, his face grim.

"Two ABDs, Vaseline dressings and tape," he said quietly.

Shelly set the boxes down, threw back the trays, drove her hand into the bottom compartment.

Crane looked at the black box in his hand, turned a silver knob two clicks, raise the talkie.

"Firelands General Hospital, Squad One."

"Firelands Squad One, go."

"A man has fallen about twelve feet and was impaled on a re-bar. It looks like it took him through the liver. Patient was already lifted off the rebar prior to our arrival. Preparing to pressure dressing and large bore IVs with positioning."

"Roger your impalement with liver involvement."

The ER nurse reached over and hit her own big red button.

Given this information, she did not need Dr. Greenlees to tell her.

The nurse, on her own authority and in accordance with disaster protocol, sounded the hospital wide alarm:  the recorded GONG, GONG, GONG of a battleship's recording sounded throughout the hospital, followed by a nasal voice with a Suth'n accent:

"GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS, ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS, THIS IS NOT A DREEYIL, THIS IS NOT A DREEYIL."

The hospital hummed like a swatted hornet's nest: the emergency room and surgical suites pulled on their gloves, tucked in their elbows like boxers, prepared to do battle, however difficult it might be.

 

"Chip, we'll do the work," Captain Crane said, fitting the green-plastic mask on the man's face:  "just breathe normally, stay on your side, don't move."

Chip's eyes rolled up and his face relaxed.

The Captain sealed both entry and exit with the foil wrapping from the vaseline gauze: the inside of the wrapper was sterile, and greasy: applied to the wound, it would make an airtight seal, though it would not stop the liver from bleeding out.

For that, they had one, and only one treatment.

The Captain secured the two large-bore IVs, made sure they were both running, stepped back, tilted his head back: he pointed at the man leaning out of the steam crane's cab, then raised both arms.

The engineer engaged the clutch, advanced the throttle; the ancient seam crane began to chuff industriously, greasy-black gears chuckled to themselves, and the Stokes basket with its unmoving cargo began to hoist out of the pit.

The Captain ran for the ladder, nearly ran up the ladder: it was seized by gloved hands, hauled out, the turntable was rotated: two quick tweets on the crane's shrill little whistle and it rolled forward, to the edge of its tracks, stopped: willing hands gripped the Stokes as it was lowered, willing hands, frustrated at their inability to help earlier, crush gripped the cot's rails, ran the dying man toward the waiting ambulance.

Captain Crane slid in behind the wheel, looked in the rearview at his daughter, who was bent over the patient.

"Ready!" Shelly snapped as she hung the IV bags into the ceiling hooks.

Shelly wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Chip's upper arm, set her feet wide apart, bent her legs so her knees rested against the cot.

At this point, their best treatment lay with the Captain, and he applied Diesel Therapy with a will, and with a heavy foot on the throttle.

Dorsey, the boss, laid a gloved hand on the Chief's shoulder.

Fitz turned, looked at the man.

"Sit down, man," Fitz said quietly, "you're white as a ghost!"

"My God, Chip," Dorsey gasped, collapsing on an upturned five gallon bucket.

He looked at the Chief.

"Is he going to die?"

"I don't know," Fitz admitted, considering whether to tell the man that his and his men's actions probably killed their co-worker: if they'd left the re-bar in place, it would have stopped the liver from bleeding, at least not as severely -- but with the man lifted off the impaler, he had a hole in his liver like he'd been shot by a Vietnamese sniper.

He decided not to tell Dorsey anything of the kind.

The man was torn up enough already, no sense to make it worse.

"Do you have an emergency contact for him?" Fitz asked, and Dorsey blinked: he went from helplessness, to a man with a purpose, and stood.

"Yes I have!" he declared.  "My office, in the roundhouse!"

 

Sheriff Marnie Keller was reading the newspaper.

It was called a newspaper, though there was no paper to it: it was some kind of recycled plastic, it was thinner than newsprint and a little hard to turn the pages, but it was the Firelands Gazette from back home.

Dr. John Greenlees Jr. saw his wife's serious expression, then her frown: he watched as she leaned forward, elbows on her desk, finger across her upper lip.

"Bad news?" he asked quietly.

Marnie raised an eyebrow, stood: she picked up the flimsy newspaper, handed it to her husband.

"In Old Pale Eyes' day, the man would be dead," she said, her voice tight: "he came close to it in the here-and-now."

Dr. Greenlees read the account, read it again: he looked up at his wife, one eyebrow raised.

"I think I would like to consult on this one."

"I'll arrange the commo."

"They saved the man," Dr. John said thoughtfully.  "I'd like to find out how."  He looked at his wife, his expression as serious as hers.  "I may have need of that information."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FLIMSY

 

Rebecca's fingers were light, gentle on the mainmast: her eyes were half-closed, she was singing with the ship, she was cutting, light and free, through the waves, rejoicing in the strength in her sails, feeling the sailors flowing among her lines, her sails, her masts, like blood through a healthy body --

Rebecca's stomach fell as she felt the ship's pain, as something broke, well below -- her hull, broken --

Rebecca remained unmoving,  beside the mainmast, as men shouted, as orders were given, but the ship wept with pain and Rebecca wept with her: she was a fine lady, and she was gutted, she was badly hurt, she was dying --

Rebecca felt the deck list underfoot, but she did not hear shouted voices; she felt the ship's pain, but not hands grasping at her.

Rebecca remained on the deck while seamen and passengers alike seized anything that would float, and leaped overboard.

Rebecca did not have to leap over the starboard rail.

The ship sank, steadily, rolled over: Rebecca climbed onto the mast, stood: the ship groaned, the awful sound of timber, strained beyond its strength: Rebecca took a deep breath, then three more, quickly, pumping her blood full of oxygen, just before the ship gave herself to the deeps.

Rebecca joined the saltwater sea.

Something dark and fast came at her, something dangerous, and Rebecca rolled, snatched two blades from her hidden vest: her shawl floated away from her, she somersaulted in the dark waters --

Requiem, she heard a voice whisper, just before she twisted, drove the blades into the shark's head: she hung on, grim, desperate, feeling herself dragged at an unholy velocity through the waters --

She locked her legs around the twisting, thrashing killer, knowing she'd driven steel lethally deep --

Another attack, from beneath, something fast --

Rebecca felt herself driven off the shark, something kicked it like a mule landing both hind hooves in a man's belly: she lost her grip on the knives, saw light, stroked for the surface --

Something came up under her and she gripped a broad, stubby fin, she felt herself moving and moving fast, and she was at the surface, she could breathe! -- the sound of a great breath just ahead of her and she realized she'd just been driven to the surface, towed back to the Land of the Living by another swift creature of the seas: she opened her mind and she felt laughter, she felt joy, she felt herself, strong and swift and she felt an absolute hatred for sharks, and she felt the memory of the porpoise's blunt snout driving into the shark after a fast, deadly and absolutely merciless vertical attack from the depths!

Rebecca remembered vaguely stories she'd heard, stories of porpoises bringing sailors to the surface: some said they were the souls of men lost at sea, reborn to help their shipwrecked brethren:  all she knew was, she could breathe, and she could see land, and whatever shore that was, she was bound and determined to make it there.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller was a hard man.

He was a man who knew what it was to charge into people who wished him dead, he knew what it was to be shot, stabbed, cut, he knew what it was to lay dying on the office floor and to look down from the ceiling, where he lay on his back, watching with interest while Esther and the doctor worked their magic to keep him alive.

Linn knew what it was to bury a wife, and a daughter, and he knew what it was, later in life, to see a daughter leave for Europe, knowing he would never see her again: he was a man of great depth, a man with an immense love for family, a man who was an utterly merciless enemy to those who deserved his enmity.

He knew when the boy brought him the flimsy it was bad news, and he was right.

Sheriff Linn Keller crossed the rutted, dusty, dirt-cold street, pulled open the door to the Silver Jewel.

Tilly looked up from her ledger book, a smile on her face that faded almost instantly as she saw the Sheriff's expression.

Linn walked up the stairs to Esther's office on the second floor, his tread that of a condemned man.

He opened the door marked Z&W RAILROAD, E. KELLER, OWNER.

He stepped inside, closed the door.

Esther knew her husband's tread; she'd heard him on the stairs in good times, and ill, and she knew from the sound of his footfalls that there was trouble.

Esther rose, almost ran to her husband.

Linn swallowed, looked at his wife, then seized her in a crushing embrace.

Only then did she realize the man was shaking like a willow in a windstorm.

"Indira," he whispered; "No," Esther moaned, and husband and wife held one another.

A telegraph flimsy fell from the Sheriff's nerveless fingers; it flipped twice as it fluttered to the floor, landed print side up.

In Lightning's regular block print, it read:

SHERIFF FIRELANDS FROM SHERIFF KING COUNTY

COTTONWOOD STRUCK REEF LOST WITH ALL HANDS

 

 Four hours later, a tap at the door, a boy turned the knob, peeked in.

The Sheriff raised his head, extended a hand, accepted the telegraph flimsy.

Esther pressed a kerchief to one eye, then the other: she took a long breath, sat up straight and squared her shoulders.

She was a Wales, after all, and women of her line faced hard news straight-on.

"Have they found her body?" she asked quietly.

Linn took a long breath, unfolded the half-sheet.

He read it.

He read it again.

He stood, his face wooden, unreadable.

Linn reached for his Stetson, then took his wife's elbow, brought her to her feet: his jaw was set, his jaw muscles bulged and he took his wife's hand and placed it on his arm.

"I should have done this already," he muttered:  together, they descended the stairs:  together, they went to the end of the boardwalk, down the end stairs and into the alley: they crossed the alley, walked down the dirt street, to their little whitewashed church.

Linn's face was hard, stony, expressionless: Esther walked with her chin up, defiant, a woman determined to face whatever news this was with the strength for which she was always known.

Linn opened the door for his wife, removed his cover: together they walked down the aisle, with a slow and solemn step.

Esther watched, surprised, as they stopped, and her husband did something she'd never seen him do, even once.

Linn gripped the altar rail and went down on his prayer bones.

He lifted his face to the handmade Cross on the back wall -- a face wet with saltwater, running down both cheeks -- he lowered his forehead on the altar rail, his shoulders heaving, silent in his grief.

The telegraph flimsy, forgotten, dropped, lay beside him.

Esther picked it up, unfolded it.

She read it, read it again:  Esther's hand went to her mouth, then she, too, went to her knees, one hand on her husband's back:  her tears ran more freely than her husband's, but for the same reason.

The forgotten message lay face up on the church floor.

In Lightning's block print, it read:

SHIP SANK I DID NOT

I AM UNHURT

COMING HOME

INDIRA

The Sheriff had told someone, long ago, that tears were the prayers, the words we offer when we can't get the words out of our throat.

This was one of those times.

 

 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GIN AND TONIC

Jelly's eyes swung hard left, assessing his usual crowd: he swung right, toward the door, with a pale eyed woman coming in.

She wore a denim coat and a Stetson, she wore blue jeans and boots, and she was not carrying a rifle, so the Sheriff wasn't coming in to punish herself for having killed another deserving soul.

Willamina stepped in, stepped to the side to get a wall to her back, as was her habit.

The door closed quietly, cold air quit rolling in, hard and pale eyes surveyed the Spring Inn from under a black hat brim.

Conversation slowed, stopped altogether.

Willamina's boot heels were loud on the oiled floor as she paced slowly to where Jelly stood, leaning on the bar, toothpick jutting from under his unkempt, untrimmed mustache, waiting to see what kind of hell this pale eyed hellraiser was going to raise.

Willamina set one foot up on the tarnished, scratched, dented boot rail, ran her eyes over his stock, nodded.

"Gimme a shot of that blue sapphire gin."

Jelly looked at the barmaid, surprised, then back to the Sheriff:  he stepped away from the bar, carefully, as if stepping away from a just-uncovered land mine.

Blue fires gurgled into a short, squat glass.

Willamina looked at it, looked at the barkeep.

"Now mix me a gin and tonic, same stuff."

Jelly could have gone through the floor.

Willamina was known to have a sociable beer with a meal, she was known to slug down a water glass of distilled sledgehammer when she sent some deserving soul to Hell, but this is the first, the only time she had ever, EVER ordered a drink, just to have a drink.

Jelly looked up the recipe.

He generally sold beer and straight whiskey, or whiskey and ditch: seldom did he mix a drink, but he had the ingredients.

Willamina looked at the barmaid, shaking the fryer, and said "I'd take a bacon cheeseburger and fries while you're at it."

She slid a twenty across the bar.

Every set of eyes in the dirty little beer joint followed the pale eyed hell raiser as she paced, slowly, deliberately, for an empty table in the very back.

She sat, and she did not move.

Conversation started up, slowly at first, hushed: men glanced uncomfortably at her, a pool game started up again, someone slugged the stained jukebox with a crack in the glass:  the usual sounds of a beer joint resumed, and Willamina did not move one single muscle, other than her eyes.

Pale eyes, shadowed under a black hat brim, scanned constantly: her face was expressionless, as pale as always, but without the hint of healthy pink that usually tinted her cheek bones.

Jelly brought her back the shimmering shot of gin, the mixed drink.

Willamina did not look up.

"Sit."

Jelly sat.

Willamina did not move.

"His name," she said, "was Shah, and he was a friend of mine."

Jelly leaned his forearms on the table, slouched in his chair, looked very directly at the Sheriff's chin, which was about as much of her face as he could really see.

"This," she said, picking up the blue shot of gin, "was his guilty pleasure.  He was a Sheriff's deputy back in Athens County and he like his bacon and eggs."

She tilted the shot up, slugged it back, sloshed it around in her mouth, swallowed.

"God, that's awful," she gasped.

"Your burger and fries will be right up."

"I'll need 'em."  She picked up the gin and tonic, slugged it down, grimaced, set the glass soundlessly on the table.

"That's not much better."

"My uncle told me the British used gin and tonic to cure malaria."

"That stuff tastes like it would cure paint off a pine board."

"Another drink?"

"No."  Willamina resumed her deathly stillness: Jelly's slouch allowed him to see her bottom lip was firm up against her top lip, he saw the wrinkles above her chin:  this, and this alone, betrayed the depth of her grief.

"He died last July, Jelly.  July, and this is November, and I'm just now finding out."

Jelly waited, debating whether to collect her empty glasses, deciding against it.

"He was half a world away. We hardly had contact any more but --"

Willamina shook her head, slowly.

"July," she whispered.

The barmaid came back with a tray, set a platter in front of the Sheriff:  she picked up the empties, held up a glass of beer.

Willamina looked at her, nodded.  "I'll take that too."  She looked at Jelly and winked.

"I salt the hell out of my fries," she admitted, "and that make me thirsty!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE LADY SAYS NO

Rebekha did not advise her pale eyed Daddy when she would be coming in.

She did not have to.

Her Daddy had ways of finding things out.

Rebekha knew it was probably her Mama who knew -- her Mama had a knowing way about her, much like Sarah's friend Daciana -- it was something she'd grown up knowing, and she accepted it, the same as she accepted that one person could tell another with words.

Rebekha felt the train slow, heard brakes underfoot bang and sigh and she heard The Lady Esther whistle her greeting into the clear air, and Rebekha closed her eyes and whispered her thanks -- again, for the several hundredth time -- that she was alive, that she was breathing air instead of salt water, that she had the deck of a passenger car underfoot instead of the deck of a ship.

Rebekha traveled light, something she learned from Sarah: her luggage consisted of a single large grip, not enough to consign to the baggage car: she rose, glided to the back of the car, waited for the train to ease to a stop.

She smiled at the conductor, took his hand as she stopped at the bottom step: a set of strong hands gripped her under the arms, hauled her into the air, swung her around:  Rebekha laughed like the little girl she had been, and her big strong Daddy lowered her and wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, tight.

Linn felt his little girl's hands grip his upper arms; he relaxed his hug, held her out a little, her feet still a foot off the ground.

"You said you didn't sink."

She smiled, lowered her lashes like a bashful maiden.

"Rebeccaaaaa ...." Linn said, and his darlin' daughter laughed.

"The boat went down, and so did I," she murmured, "I came back up and the boat didn't."

Linn brought his little girl in close, until their noses just touched:  he wiggled his mustache against her nose, felt her twist and giggle in his hands the way she did when she was a little girl.

"I'm glad you came back up," he whispered. "Let's go see your Mama."

"Not yet."  Rebekha's voice was a whisper, but her eyes were troubled.  "I have to see Judge."

Father and daughter walked to the carriage; Linn hoist his daughter easily, and more men than one looked at the maiden, this beautiful young woman, her head thrown back, a laugh and a smile engraving the moment on their memories.

Not long after, the reverse, but with a quiet smile instead of a happy laugh: Rebekha took her Daddy's arm: father and daughter walked into the courtroom and across the space between the spectators' seats and the Judge's table: Linn opened the door for his daughter, and they went into the back hall.

Linn's knuckle rapped a quiet rat-tat, tat at the Judge's door.

He waited for the summons from within before opening His Honor's chamber door.

The Judge rose, concerned.

"Young lady," he said, "we were ... standing up on our knees for you."

"Thank you, Your Honor," Rebekha said quietly. "I regret that I was not able to find that for which you sought."

His Honor looked at Linn, at his daughter.

"I don't care about that," the Judge muttered. 

"You cared enough to send me," Rebekha said quietly, "and you cared enough to authorize me to warrant the jurisdictional law enforcement authority."

"Yes," he admitted, "I did that."

"I don't like to leave a job half done, Your Honor," Rebekha said, "but I think this is a job for someone else."

The Judge nodded.

"The lady says no," he said, "and I am inclined to listen to she who is younger, smarter and better looking than me!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

INDRA'S ARROWS

The Silver Jewel was a hostel, a lighthouse, a hub of rest and of refreshment for travelers of all stripes.

It was not unusual, in the homogeny of the American West, for a Mexican vaquero and a British nobleman to rub elbows in a saloon; Russian nobles, European princes, businessmen, the educated, the rough, all gravitated to that great adventure that was the West: men of learning and of letters were seen, and men high and low, polished and rough, require sustenance, and such could be found in the mountains, in the high country, in Firelands.

The Sheriff was well enough read that he could prime a better educated man like a pump, and get him to pour forth what he knew: the Sheriff listened attentively, sorting wheat from chaff, the Sheriff observed men of culture and men of power and polished himself accordingly, and the Sheriff gained those skills his Lady-Wife had from birth, the ability to make any man, highborn or lowborn, powerful or not, feel comfortable.

And so it was that a British colonel, who for some reason known only to God Himself, ended up in the Silver Jewel, drinking whiskey-pegs and lamenting the lack of good gin, leaned his head confidentially toward the Sheriff over a poker table: food and drink were provided, cold dishes switched out for warm, and the red-faced nobleman seemed not to notice, nor to consider that he might be paying for all these amenities.

The Brit was taken by the appearance of the ladies in the saloon:  "By Jove, Sheriff," he declared, "I though your American saloons had dirt floors and slatterns!"

"I've known them that did," Linn agreed quietly,"though most had sawdust instead of dirt."

"Sawdust," the British officer muttered, shaking his head.

"And your women."  He nodded toward a young woman in a fine gown, a young woman who looked at him and smiled gently, then continued toward the back room, where a few well-dressed ladies had already preceded.  "There, for instance."

The Sheriff's smile hid behind his eyes: he knew the young lady in question.

The Brit looked very directly at the Sheriff and said quite frankly, "Your American women -- especially these remarkable creatures in your mountains -- are far more attractive than ... well, Sheriff" -- he leaned back, assumed a stuffy pose, a professorial air -- "I have seen much of the Queen's Empire, Sheriff, and I will say with utter frankess that the ladies I've seen here today surpass the beauty of women in most of the world!"

"There is something in the mountains," the Sheriff nodded slowly, "that refines a woman's beauty."

"That last one" -- the Brit nodded to the back door, shook his head -- "remarkable!"

The Sheriff waited.

"Sheriff, might you arrange an introduction?"

Linn heard a sharp, distinct thump from the back room: his smile extended no further than the corners of his eyes, though it was an effort to confine his expression.

"Come with me, sir," Linn said, "and I shall."

 

Rebekha danced.

Tables were drawn back, chairs slid under and stacked atop, freeing a space: the ladies of their Tea Society were back against the walls, watching.

There was no music: Emma Cooper, the schoolmarm, patted her palms quietly together, setting the rhythm, one-two-three, one-two-three, and the Sheriff's pale-eyed daughter smiled as she danced.

Her arms were up, as if embracing a partner: her gown swung, flowed, it appeared that she was more floating than propelling herself on mere feet: an oval, the size of a face, was marked with a charred stick on a scrap rectangle of cloth.

Rebekha turned: her hand snapped out, a knife drove into the picture with a woody thump.

She resumed her dance: on her next graceful, waltzing turn, thump and another knife appeared, beside the first.

Two men, just inside the doorway, watched.

One man watched with his mouth open, astonished: the other man watched, his eyes quiet, his face shining with pride.

Rebekha stopped, raised a teaching finger: her skirts continued to turn, then swung back, as their momentum faded and was lost.

"We ladies," she smiled, "are known to carry sharp and pointy things as a matter of routine."

She stood with gloved hands clasped lightly together in front of her: one arm snapped out, she turned, the other arm:  two longer, more slender blades, thump-thump, appeared before their more lanceolate sisters.

"My sleeve knives," she explained. "Invisible, until they're not."

Rebekha tilted her head, regarded her attentive audience, smiled just a little at the newly arrived guests.

"Even if we are at our distaff duties," Rebekha smiled, gliding around the circle, picking up a sewing-bag and stirring about in it -- "oh, yes, I simply must do some embroidery" -- she dropped the bag, and the Brit's eyes followed the calico as it fell, as it hit the floor, spread out.

He blinked, realizing the remarkable young woman had just done something with one hand, then the other -- almost like a witch's mystic passes --

His eyes, drawn by movement, followed the bag as it fell, registered the swift move of her hands --

He could not help himself.

The British officer strode over to the hand drawn target, stared at the pair of sailmaker's needles, driven into the target's eyes from two arm's-lengths away.

This world traveler, this noble of fine lineage, stood in the back room of a Western saloon, goggling at the performance of a pretty young woman, a woman of remarkable beauty, a woman who glided over to him, tilted her head curiously, and observed, "I see you have been to Bombay."

A sputter, a glance at the Sheriff, a shake of the head:  he drew himself up, raised her knuckles to her lips:  "Forgive my lack of manners, my remarkable lady," he murmured, "we have yet to be properly introduced."

And so it was the Sir Reginald Farnsworth Dunwoody the Third, late Colonel of Her Majesty's Second Bombay Regiment of Foot, was introduced to Rebekha, daughter of the Sheriff: afterward, Rebekha would admit that he was an interesting sort, for the first five minutes, but he tended to tell the same braggart's stories over and over and over again, and it was genuinely a relief when the fellow finally departed.

In quiet conversation with her Mama, she confided that Sir Reginald told her of an Indian subdeity named Indra -- a male -- and that apparently her Papa's reference to her as Indira was a garbled version of this.

Esther patted her daughter's hand and smiled.

"If memory serves," she said quietly, "Indra's chief weapon was a lightning-bolt."

Rebekha nodded, big-eyed, leaned back as the maid leaned in to warm up her tea.

"Indra's lightning bolt was referred to as Indra's Arrow, and it never, ever missed!"

Esther's hand rested lightly on her daughter's.

"I have it on very good authority," Esther smiled, "that your lightning bolts are just as impressively precise, and just as deadly, as Indra's arrows!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GOOD RIDDDANCE

Linn watched the moving van pull away.

He looked at the empty house, then at the van's retreating backside.

"Can't say as I'm sorry," Paul Barrents said quietly.

"Same," Linn agreed.

"City folk."  

"Yep."  Linn turned his head, spat, and Paul Barrents, beside him on a tough, scruffy paint mare, chuckled.

"You said more with that one hawk than a politician can say in an hour!"

"Flattery," Linn replied dryly, "will get you everywhere!"

"Wonder why they thought to come out here in the first place."

"They wanted sompelace they could walk all over folks."

Paul snorted, and Linn looked over at him, grinned.

"My sentiments exactly."

"I understand one of the boys tried to put the moves on your daughter."

"Two of their boys, and both my daughters."

"Was that why you had to go to the high school?"

"Eeyep."

"Never did hear how bad she beat him."

"Neither of 'em did bad, Buddy Joe."

"Your little girls listened to dear old Dad?"

Linn laughed, nodded.  "And they got some from Shelly, too."  Linn shook his head, stood in the stirrups to ease his backside: Paul looked over as his old friend crossed his palms on the saddlehorn, leaned forward: the Navajo grimaced as he heard Linn's back *pop* a few times, and he remembered hearing his father telling about that pale eyed woman Sheriff's back making sounds that absolutely made him cringe.

"Shelly's got a temper."

Linn gave Paul a wise look.  "She's sweet, she's kind, she's all woman, but God help me, when her fuse is lit, it ain't safe to be in the same county!"

Paul laughed, nodded. "Kind of figured."

The two deputies turned their mounts, waved at the approaching truck:  they walked their horses up to the well-maintained white Dodge, grinned as the driver came out of the cab, looked at the house and shook his head.

"Did they pay their rent, George?" Linn asked, and the older man coughed as he slung his tool belt over a Carhartt shoulder.

"Yes they did," he said, "but I had to get after 'em to do it."  He sighed. "Now I've got to drill out m'own door, they changed locks on me and didn't leave the key!"

"If Marnie was still here, she could pick the lock," Linn said helpfully.  "Paul, think you could bump key that one?"

Paul grinned, walked his shaggy mount up to the house's front door: he leaned down a little, still mounted, gripped the doorknob, turned it, pushed.

The door opened.

Paul turned and looked at George and at Linn and asked innocently, "Does this mean I can charge a locksmith's fee?"

George whipped off his hickory stripe engineer's cap and swatted Paul's leg three or four times:  it was an old joke between them, and both men laughed.

"If you find anything in there that shouldn't be, let us know."

"Yeah, yeah," George waved them off, laughing. "You just want a cut of the profits!"

"'A soof is a soof, as the Catwizard said'," Paul quoted as he walked his mare back to his grinning partner.

"Now suppose you tell me some more about you havin' to go to school that day."

Linn threw his arms wide, palms up, the picture of pleading innocence:  "Well, ya see, it was like this," he said in an exaggerated nasal voice, and both men laughed.

Linn twisted a little in his saddle, worked his shoulders, coaxed one more protesting *pop* from his swaybacked spine.

"Two of their boys allowed as they'd each maul a girl at the same time, and they picked mine."

Barrents' eyebrows went up.

It was hard to surprise the man: Paul Barrents was normally as wooden faced as an Easter Island statue, but in this case, the Great Stone Face showed genuine and honest surprise.

"Both your girls?"

"Both of 'em."

"At the same time."

"At the same time."

"I heard they got beat pretty bad."

"You heard right."

"The whole football team was after 'em and so were the Valkyries."

"Quite a sight, I'm told."

"How were they when you got there?"

"Bloodied."

Barrents considered this as they rode, side by side, at a leisurely walk: two uniformed deputies on mounted patrol, their objective completed.

"How bloodied?"

"I'll put it this way."  Linn's pale eyes were busy as they always were, looking ahead, looking to the side, looking at places where he himself would hide if he were intent on an ambush.

"One grabbed my little girl's cute little backside and the other one grabbed her, umm ...."

Paul looked at Linn, allowed himself a small smile as Linn's ears turned a truly incredible shade of scarlet.

"He didn't!"

"He did."

"What ever in God's green earth possessed the idiot that he could grab a girl like that and live to tell the tale?"

"City boy," Linn shrugged.  "They were used to doing that where they came from. Football jocks, big man on campus, tell the girls what they were going to do, grab any girl they wanted."

"And ...?"

"And my little girls responded as they've been trained."

Barrents considered this, nodded.

"Good."

"I got there as the squad was leaving.  The parents, of course, were raising blue hell and threatening legal action.  I pulled surveillance and all of us watched as my little girls just plainly unloaded on two big burly football players, and then we went into the gym, where my two sweet little girls were waiting.

"They walked across the gym floor toward us."

Barrents waited.

"I will never forget how they looked, Paul," Linn said softly.  "Two ... hell, I keep callin' 'em little girls, they're not, they're young women, but ..."

His voice trailed off.

"They're my girls," he almost whispered.

Barrents' eyes were as busy as Linn's, and for the same reason: he knew what it was to be attacked, and had no wish to be taken by surprise.

"Doesn't matter how old they get," he agreed:  "they're always Daddy's Little Girl!"

"Damn straight," Linn muttered.  "Anyway, I signaled them to stop and they held at the very center of the gym. I wanted them to look as small and insignificant as possible.  Kind of like putting a fifty caliber round ball in the middle of a pool table makes it look like a sweet pea."

Barrents nodded.

"I turned to the aggrieved parents and said, 'You are telling me, these two little girls" -- he paused to emphasize the term -- "these little girls beat up your big strong strappin' football players?  You claimed the whole football team held 'em down and took turns beatin' 'em, and that was a lie. You saw the video, nobody else laid a hand on 'em."

Linn grunted. "Of course they protested that nobody helped their boys, and I reminded them that surveillance showed their boys grabbing my girls, and I started talking things like sexual assault and sex offender status and mandatory reporting to the Sheriff wherever they went, and they didn't like that, and it seems their father was not gainfully employed as he'd claimed --"

Linn's cell phone went off.

He pulled it out, frowned at it, tapped the screen, swiped the screen, talked to the screen.

He looked at Barrents.

"Office says they're going to run the drug dog through the house.  Dollars to doughnuts we find his revenue source."

"George found something."

"Yep."

They rode in silence for several minutes, then:

"Y'know, the back side of that moving van headin' out of here looked pretty good to me."

"Yep. Good riddance."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WHERE MAMA CAN'T WATCH

 

Esther Keller's hands came to her mouth, her eyes widening with alarm.

Linn took three long, fast strides to his wife, came up behind her, took her elbows, looked where she was looking, froze.

Where Esther was looking with shock and distress, Linn was looking with admiration and a very broad, very genuine grin.

Halfway across their pasture, their little girl, their Angela, was standing up.

On a saddle.

On a horse.

At a wide open gallop.

Esther turned quickly, eyes clenched shut:  she seized her husband in a fearful embrace and whispered, "I can't!" -- the she pushed from her husband, ran for the house.

Linn watched his darlin' daughter, her arms outstretched as if flying: she bent, laid both hands on the saddlehorn, lifted her legs, spread them wide, her divided skirt bunching and fluttering with the wind of her passing.

Linn nodded, legged it for the barn:  moments later, a pale eyed Sheriff and a shining-black Outlaw-horse streaked out from behind the building, over the whitewashed fence, and out into the pasture.

 

Little Esther Wales laughed the way happy little girls laugh, when they are doing something they really, really love.

Esther Wales was standing up, her little flat soled slippers gripping the saddle skirt: her Papa's favorite mare ran easily under her, and Esther lifted her arms like she was flying, flying --

A tree branch SLAMMED across her belly, snapping her a-double, every bit of wind knocked clear out of her lungs: Esther  tried to hold onto the branch, but her strength had gone with her breath, and she slipped, she rotated backwards, she couldn't hold on, she was going to fall --

Her arms flew up, she wan't even able to scream --

Strong hands caught her, strong arms held her, a strong man picked her up and flipped her around and seized her wrists and pulled her arms up over her head, and from behind her, a father's voice:

"Breathe, me darlin', breathe," and he lowered her arms and raised them again, bending her backward as he did, then lower again and raise again, until finally Esther could gasp in a little air -- a little, but so sweet! -- it took every ounce of resolve, of what little strength she had left, to fight her lungs open again --

Her father's arms around her, his voice reasurring in her ear --

Esther Keller blinked the tears from her eyes, fumbled for a kerchief.

Esther knew what it was to fly without wings.

She'd gotten back on her Papa's mare, and he beside her, and he held her hand as she stood on the saddle-skirt again, and then he released and Esther tried a handstand, but her grip failed and she fell, face first into the mare's mane, and rolled off to the side:  her Papa helped her up and wiped dirt and tears from her face, and whispered that she was a fine rider and a brave girl, and up ye go an' try it again, and Esther looked back at the memory and wept into her embroidered kerchief, for part of her was still a little girl who missed her big strong Papa.

 

Linn rode like a black arrow across the broad pasture, swung around, came up behind and beside his laughing little girl.

Angela dropped back down into the saddle, found her shortened-up stirrups:  "Daddy, did you see it?" -- and Linn laughed:  they turned together, away from the barn, away from the house, toward the far end of the pasture.

A red mare and a black gelding soared over the far fence like they had wings, a father and daughter rejoicing at the feeling in their bellies when they arched over, creatures of flight and not of the earth.

They rode together for a distance, slowing to a canter, then down to a walk:  Linn looked at his daughter, his beautiful little girl, her cheeks flushed with triumph and the passing wind, and he saw something in this child with Kentucky-blue eyes and cornsilk curls, this growing girl in a riding skirt and a smile, something all Daddies see, given time ... for a moment, he saw the beautiful young woman his little girl would become, and then she was Daddy's girl again, her eyes bright and delighted at her Daddy's words.

"Darlin'," Linn declared, "that was some of the finest trick riding I've seen in a very long time!"

"Daddy, it was fun!"  Angela laughed, and Linn winked at her.

"Darlin', I need a favor from you, though."

Angela's face fell, just short of pouting out her bottom lip.

"Your Mama got kind of distressed watchin' you ride like that."

Her bottom lip did pout out and she dropped her head.  "I sowwy," she said, sounding very much like a contrite little girl.

"Look at me, darlin'," Linn said, his voice gentle:  Angela looked up at him, half-hopeful.

"I can't ride nearly as well as you can, but I would admire to ride with you," Linn said confidentially, and Angela's face lit up like the sun itself was on her face:  "what say we do more of it together, but we'll do it where your Mama can't see!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ONE THEM-THERE WITCH WOMEN

Western saloons, even the Silver Jewel, were primarily and predominantly men's establishments.

The ladies of Firelands did attend that fine emporium; they had free and frequent use of the meeting-room in back, and good use they made of it, and when the Ladies' Tea Society adjourned, coarse language, coarser jests and lustful comments were stifled -- at least, until the pleasant stream of colorful femininity passed, and were safely gone.

One hung behind: she tilted her head a little, the way a young woman will when something interests her: she slipped silently, almost ghost-like, among the tables, among the men, stopped and looked very directly, very frankly at a man at a poker table.

He'd just won a small pot; he looked at the pretty young woman, remarkable both for her beauty, and for her unsettling eyes.

Years and miles and peoples he'd seen, but never in his life had he seen eyes the shade of a mountain glacier's frozen heart: was she not very obviously looking into his eyes, he might've thought her blind, for if there was shade or color to her eyes, he was sawed off and damned if he could see it.

She looked at the cards on the table before him, reached forward, laid gentle fingertips on the face-down pasteboards.

"You'll lose the next hand," she said, "you'll win one, then lose two more. Let me give you better odds."

Something told this fellow this was not a common saloon whore -- far from it, her gown was well made and of the best material, she had a flawless complexion, and nothing of the slattern about her: of a sudden a memory whispered in his mind, as clear as if the words were breathed into his ear:

Old Pale Eyes.

She gripped his sleeve, just above his elbow: he rose, his eyes never leaving hers, he rose as if lifted from his seat by a remarkably powerful force.

Her hand ran down his sleeve, gripped his hand: she stopped, looked up at him, nodded.

"Your hat," she said.

"My hat?"

"It tell me I'm right."  She turned, drawing him along as if she were a dray-horse towing a postage stamp.

He could not have resisted her summons if he wanted to.

She brought him to the bar, lifted her chin: she slid two coins across the bar.

"Mr. Baxter," she said, "these two men need a beer."  She looked at the surprised fellow at the bar, then at the man whose sleeve she still held.

"You need a man to run the ranch you just bought," she said to the well-dressed fellow at the bar, "and you need a ranch you can run and run right."

The two men looked at her, looked at one another.

"There now. I've brought the two of you together, and I've bought you each a beer. Start talking, you two, you have business to discuss."

A pale eyed girl, barely more than marriageable, smiled, dipped her knees quickly, swept out the front door, knowing full well that -- just as she drew the sweep of her dress behind her -- she also drew several sets of men's eyes, and she walked as if she knew this: just as she reached the front door, she stopped, turned, smiled, and it felt to every last man there, as if she smiled for him, and him alone.

A year later, a ranch owner and his foreman stood looking over their saddle stock and spoke of their mutually increased fortunes.

"You recall when that girl brought the two of us together over a sociable beer?"

"I remember."

"Did you know her?"

"Know her?  Hell, I never saw her before!"

"Me neither."

Silence, except for the horses, except for cattle in the distance, then:

"I didn't know her neither."

"Good lookin' gal."

"Yep."

"Did you see her eyes?"

A snort, a laugh:  "I never got that far uphill."

Two men laughed quietly, the way men will when they understand exactly what the other hadn't said.

"She knew us, sure enough."

"I believe."

"Do you reckon she was one of them-there witch women?"

"I reckon she's worse than that."

"How's that?"

"Why, man, that was the Sheriff's daughter!"

"What, Old Pale Eyes?"

"The same!"

"Dear God."  A headshake, a quiet laugh.  "Reckon I'd ruther she was one of them-there witch women!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ENOUGH

Linn drew up, surprised.

He'd been out on a remarkably unsuccessful manhunt -- a rare thing for him, he was certain he'd find his quarry, and discovered the information he'd gotten had been current ... current, that is, two weeks ago.

Pale eyes assessed the sky, considered the heavy, lead-colored clouds: his nose gauged the wind, he shifted in his saddle, and then he smelled woodsmoke.

His black Outlaw-horse sidestepped into the brush beside the trail, froze: Outlaw was arguably one of the most intelligent, and easiest to train, horses he'd ever had -- once he got over fainting, that is: the Sheriff got Outlaw-horse from an outlaw who had no further use for him, thanks in large part to a .44 caliber freight train from the Sheriff's engraved '73 rifle.

Outlaw had been badly treated by some previous owner, the Sheriff found out, and if he raised his voice, why, that poor horse's eyes would wall up and it would fall over on its side and hit the ground like he was dead.

His little girl Angela was instrumental in helping Outlaw get over his terror, and his little girl was equally helpful in showing the Sheriff the horse's intelligence:  when his little girl, just old enough to talk clearly, shook her Mommy-finger at the horse and declared, "Bad horse! Dead!" -- why, Outlaw hit the ground like he'd been drove a good one between the eyes, and he'd just lay there until Angela came over to it and patted its neck and said "Good horsie! Up!" -- and Outlaw would lift his head and then thrash and lever himself back onto his feet.

Linn found to his delight that Outlaw knee-trained easily and well: as a matter of fact, from the day he took the bit out of his mouth, once he got him home, Outlaw never again knew the taste of steel in his mouth, and Linn was satisfied that was the way to ride him.

Likely the man that beat him so bad as to terrify him into fainting at raised voices, was equally brutal with a set of reins, and Linn reasoned that knee-training the horse, and treating it well, would be beneficial to both man and beast.

So far it was working out fine.

When Linn's nose caught a twist in the wind, and that swirl brought the scent of woodsmoke and maybe something on the smoke, why, Outlaw didn't hesitate to sidestep just nice as you please into the brush, and then hold just dead still.

Linn listened; he looked; he knew there was a sheltering cleft in the cliff ahead, he'd taken refuge there before, as had others: it was deep enough for a half dozen horses, there was a wide place in back where they could corral easily, there was even some winter-dead grass back there, and water trickling through it.

The cleft was crossways of the wind, and a man back in it with a fire could keep warm with little effort.

Linn shifted his weight and Outlaw just plainly cat footed ahead, walking slow, walking silent -- Linn didn't teach him that, but right glad the man was, that the horse showed that talent -- he came in sight of the cleft, he eased ahead a little more, and was he not a man who practiced a poker face, why, his chin might have fell so far as to bang off his saddlehorn.

Rebekha looked up at her long tall Daddy, smiling at the snow dusting his Stetson and his heavy coat: she was stirring a kettle of something that was steaming, and likely smelled really good.

"I made enough," she said simply, leaving the wooden spoon in the kettle and rising: "there's bread in the checkered cloth, I've tin plates enough" -- she turned, extended a hand, her mare came head-bobbing out of the darkness, begging for attention -- "and now I am for home, for I promised Mama I would play the piano tonight!"

Linn dismounted, looked at the tidy pile of firewood, smelled something bubbling in the kettle, felt his daughter's hands grip his:  he looked into her pale eyes and he saw laughter, and he saw that indefinable something that women have when they look at a man, and they know more than they're saying.

"There is enough," she whispered, then she came up on her toes and kissed her long tall Papa on the cheek: giggling, she and her mare slipped out into the wind, and a moment later, Linn heard her hoofbeats fade and disappear, then -- faintly -- he heard a delighted laugh, floating on the wind, then it, too, was gone.

Linn led his Outlaw-horse back into the cleft, pulled his saddle, hung the saddle blanket on an ancient branch that had fallen in however many years ago: the fire reflected off flat rocks she'd stacked up behind, she'd set rocks to support the kettle.

She'd fixed some kind of a stew.

It was thick and it smelled really good, it was just at a simmer, she'd set her fire just right so it would heat and not scorch: he stirred the stew, looked up, shifted so he was facing the opening.

He heard the horse, the squeak of saddle leather, and a minute later, a voice:  "Hello the fire!"

"Come on in, we've got enough," Linn sang in reply. "Bring your horse, we've enough room to stable in back!"

A familiar figure, a young man of his acquaintance, led his buckskin into the cleft:  he looked around, marveling:  "I never knew this was here!"

"Most folks just ride right on past," Linn grinned.  "How the hell you been? Pull up a rock and have a set!"

Two more travelers, about five minutes apart, came in: the snow was thickening, big fluffy flakes that rode the wind like downy feathers on a stiff breeze, the kind that'll dizzy a man and get him lost, fast: the cleft soon held a half dozen travelers, and a half dozen men ate from a like number of tin plates, good woman-fixed stew with bread tore up to soak up the soppin's.

Six men ate their fill; six men ate with a good appetite, and when they were done, there was barely enough gravy in the kettle to mop out with the last of the bread.

An older fellow, his half inch of beard-stubble long since gone to grey and mostly white, peered out into the darkening snow.

"How much d'ye reckon we'll get?" he speculated, and a half dozen men considered what they were seeing.

"Don't reckon it'll be much longer," Linn replied.  "Now was it snowin' cross legged, why, I'd expect it to be deep."

"I was hopin' to make to the Silver Jewel," came a quiet voiced answer, to which several of the others agreed, and comment was made about with the lot of 'em in the Silver Jewel, it would get deep, all right, and not with snowfall.

There was wood enough to keep the fire up, and they did; kettle and plates were sand-scrubbed in the little bit of a stream, men drank aching-cold water and wished for coffee: the Sheriff considered that he had coffee, he had a pot to boil it in, but it would not be a kindness for him to inflict his coffee on these poor fellows, and so he kept quiet.

Next morning, a column of men rode into Firelands, having had a good night's rest: the ground was sandy, and every man Jack there had slept on harder ground before: the last of the wood was added just as the sky was lightening.

They shared the last loaf of bread before they saddled and rode out; like the wood, and like the stew the night before, there had been enough, and when Linn came in with the kettle in hand, and a half dozen tin plates nested in the empty, scrubbed-out kettle, his pale eyed daughter looked at him with a well-practiced, innocent expression and asked, "Well?"

Linn laughed and handed the kettle to the maid, he ran his arm around Rebekha's shoulders and marveled at how tall she was getting, and he laughed, "Darlin', there was enough!" 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ALIVE

Gracie screamed, her voice loud and shrill in spite of her close fitting earphones.

Her mindship was screaming with her, the reactors were at overload, structural integrity warnings were flashing on her panel and in her ears and she could not get away, the black hole had her, she'd come out too close, too close --

I am not going to die out here, she thought: they told us these were gateways, wormholes --

They said once we crossed the event horizon, we'd be stretched like a fiddlestring and torn apart --

I can't get away --

I AM A VALKYRIE AND I WILL NOT GO EASY!!!

Gracie brought her weapons on-line, the Gauss guns, the Confederate Hellbore, that weapon she was told was a last resort because it belched powers stolen from the heart of a collapsing star and she'd likely not survive the effect it would have on her speed-bent universe --

The ship came around, gathered her energies around her like a woman gathers her cloak against a hard wind, and Gracie and her ship, one living soul with fire in her heart and war in her throat, drove full throttle into the black hole, and as she felt herself being ripped apart, Gracie Daine, the fiddler, wife and mother and Valkyrie, fired her weapons in a salvo, blasted hyper-dense missiles the size of old fashioned telephone poles ahead of her at half-lightspeed, ripped reality apart with the discharge she was told never to use --

Nancy's head came up, she smacked the big red button at the top right corner of the control panel.

Every member of Valkyrie flight felt Gracie being ripped from them --

 

"Jacob?"

Jacob looked up, surprised: his little sis had the damndest habit of slipping in or out, unseen, and damned if he could figure out just how she did it.

"Jacob, I found something on the mountain."

Jacob rose, frowned a little as he looked at his sister.

She was an old maid -- hell, she was eighteen and unmarried, a spinster -- his late father left her enough by way of investments that she'd not want for income, but it was such a shame she hadn't found a husband --

"What did you find?"

"I found a ship, Jacob."

Jacob frowned: the idea of a sailing-ship, this far from the ocean, was ludicrous: any boats built for Colorado rivers were small, too small to be called a ship --

"It's metal, Jacob, and someone is inside it, and you need to see it."

Sheriff Jacob Keller picked his Stetson off its peg: his expression was serious as he approached his sister.

She pulled the sleeve up, showing a wide silver band about her glove: she smiled, stepped into him, gripped his belt and touched a jewel on the silver band.

Jacob felt more than heard a sizzle, and he looked around, drew back a step.

He was inside a cavern -- he looked around, blinking; he expected stalactites hanging like teeth above him, but there were none; the floor was ... it was stone, but dead smooth, and bone dry.

This did not claim his attention.

There was light in this cavern -- by rights it should have been black as a sinner's heart -- and what he was looking at was not a ship.

At least it was no ship he'd ever seen.

It looked like a shining steel cigar on sled runners, one in front and two behind, it had bulges that ran its length and ended in holes at the front, two big as his thigh and one in the middle, big enough he could have slid into it if he'd take off his gunbelt and grease his hips.

Rebekha laid a hand on the ship, closed her eyes, and Jacob's blood ran cold for a long moment.

He'd seen her do as much with a sick horse, or a fevered child, or a locomotive: she'd sworn him to silence when she reached through a horse's belly, through its side, she'd reached in clear up to her elbows and the horse stood there stock still and calm and she said she'd untwisted a torsion or drawn out an intussusception or cleared a blockage, she'd come out with a handful of thorns or a piece of wire and you couldn't see where she'd had her arms through its hide a moment before --

She'd told the foreman at the roundhouse, when she laid a hand on the side of The Lady Esther, back when his Pa was still alive -- she'd told him a rivet was ready to fail and the crown sheet was almost burnt through, and when the foreman came to Jacob a few days later and said they'd taken the engine down for some work because it blew a rivet through the roundhouse roof and once they got her apart, why, the crown sheet was only just burnt through -- Jacob was minded of these moments when Rebekha laid a gloved hand on the silver cigar's pointed ... nose? ... and closed her eyes, and then Jacob's hand started to slide under his unbuttoned coat, for it looked for all the world like this was less a cigar and more a great bird, opening its lower jaw.

Rebekha turned to Jacob, paced over to him.

"In years yet to come," she said, "when science was greatly advanced, I flew this ship."

"Flew?" Jacob asked, gripping his sister's shoulders gently: "This thing flies?"

"It flies, Jacob, and I flew through the heart of a black star, but I blew a hole in reality and traveled back in time."

"Ho, now, hold it," Jacob protested. "You are my little sis. Mama birthed you, then she birthed Dana and died in that effort."

"That," Rebekha whispered, "is what we conspired."  

She chewed on her bottom lip, took Jacob's hand.

"Jacob, you are the very best brother I could ever have, and I ... cannot go back to where I came from."

"You came from here."

"I came from ... "

She hesitated.

"Actually, Jacob, you are right.  I did come from here.  I was Gracie Daine, I was a mountain fiddler --"

"I know Gracie the fiddler, and you ain't her."

"No I'm not her," Rebekha agreed. "I am her granddaughter. The Gracie you know is married now and she has a daughter, and your son will marry her."

"What?"

"I am from the far future, Jacob."

Jacob turned as something like a silvery blanket slid off a human-looking, silvery-grey, female human form, lying inside the hinged-down, lower jaw, of whatever this thing was.

The form raised a hand, gripped the shining black sphere that covered its head: a click, a twist, a hiss, and the gleaming, flawless, black sphere was lifted off its wearer's head, set aside.

"Hello, Big Brother," Gracie said, blinking.

Jacob looked from one to the other.

"This ... ain't right," he muttered.

"You're right.  It's not, and it should not have happened, but here we are."

"What do you mean, here we are?"

"Jacob, this is my ship. This ship is as much a part of me as your hand or your heart is part of you. We were both damaged getting here, and we needed a living template so the ship could heal me while it healed itself."

"We?"

"She and I have the same mind, Jacob."

"The same mind," he echoed skeptically, his eyes narrowing. "Go on."

"Jacob, we're from your future, we're from nearly two centuries to come. I made a mistake and was nearly killed. I blasted a hole in reality because I was not going to let my mistake kill me, and that threw me back in time.

"I needed" -- Gracie looked at Rebekha -- "a living pattern so my ship could heal me while it repaired itself. It's taken all this time because we were both very badly damaged. My computers were hardest to repair, but we're back on-line and ready to go."

"Go?"

"Back to where we came from."

"So why bring me here? Why not just ... go?"

Rebekha and Gracie looked at one another, and Jacob realized with a mental lurch just how much they resembled each other, and then he remembered ...

... the Gracie he knew didn't have pale eyes, and this one does ...

"You have pale eyes."

"I told you, your son will marry --"

Jacob raised a hand. "Okay. I accept that my son must marry her. What do you need from me?"

"Keep the mineral rights for this mountain, Jacob. Don't allow any drilling or any mining or anything. Your house is directly above us, this cavern here is sheer luck. I found it and we slipped into it before I passed out and nearly died.

"I won't go into details, Jacob, but we" -- she looked at Rebekha -- "have to survive ... she, for her natural lifetime, and I will sleep here for the two centuries it will take to get me back to my own future."

The bald woman in the silver suit raised her arm, tapped at the same silver band Jacob saw on Rebekha's wrist.

"Jacob, what is today's date, and the time, if you please?"

Jacob blinked, surprised, then he recited the date, consulted his watch, gave her the time.

"Thank you. Temporal recalibration complete."

She looked at Jacob -- almost a pleading expression.

"Jacob, my very life depends on your keeping me safe. Keep your property in your family. Do not allow any mining and do not allow any drilling. It is absolutely imperative, Jacob. This cavern must be kept safe, kept from penetration, for another two centuries."

Jacob nodded, his face solemn.

Rebekha turned, gripped his arm:  "My very life depends on this," she whispered.

Jacob nodded.

"You two go now. Rebekha?"
Rebekha removed the silver bracelet, laid it on the floor, pushed Jacob back: it flared, bright, then was gone.

"I have energy reserve enough to get you two home, but only if I do it in the next four minutes."

She picked up the shining black helmet, eased it down over her bald head: a twist, a click, and the silver bird-thing closed the lower half of its pointed beak, for all the world like it was slowly swallowing the bald woman in the silver-grey suit.

"Hold very still, Jacob," Rebekha whispered. "Hold my hand, but hold very still!"

 

Nancy glared at the display inside her own helmet, her fingers crawling, spider-like, over the control screen before her.

She heard the voices in her mind, a quick burst of triumph from every one of the Valkyries.

There!

Each one ran a triangulation on the signal.

Hans saw Nancy's head come up.

She pressed flat fingers to the side of her helmet, the face panel opened, and she looked at the squadron leader with honest puzzlement.

"We found her."

"Where is she?"

"Earth."

"What!"

"It's like she just appeared --"

Nancy's smile spread slowly, delight shining in her expression, and Gracie's voice came over the speakers in the launch bay.

"I'm alive," they heard, "and I'm coming home!"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HE PICKED ON ME

 

Deputy Sheriff Marnie Keller stood, dignified, aloof, spotlighted on the dark stage, impressive behind the podium.

Before her, in the darkened audience, classmates and instructors; beside her, in the spotlight, a young lady in a hand-sewn McKenna gown – period correct, down to the authentic buttons and correct thread count of the material: the pretty young woman’s hair was in the correct period coiffure.

Marnie and her assistant were of a like height; the assistant appeared to be about fourteen: she curtsied, turned, disappeared.

The main screen behind Marnie lit up, but silent: it was in the sepia tones of an ancient moving picture, and silent.

It showed a trunk being placed with others, by men dressed as railroad agents of well more than a century ago. The trunk was one of many, anonymous in a freight car: the side door was slid shut, a conductor stepped up on the cast-iron bottom plate of the caboose, hung well out, raised a hand: the camera cut to a close-up of a steam engine, drivers, wheels, steam.

The spotlight came back onto the podium.

Deputy Sheriff Marnie Keller addressed her fellow law enforcement students. She herself was, by now, a veteran law enforcement officer, but rules are rules, and she had to go through the same Police Basic as her less experienced fellows: unlike them, she had years and centuries of pale eyed badge packing blood in her veins, she had her pale eyed Gammaw coaching her, and she just happened to have the hereditary and ancestral influence of one Sarah Lynne McKenna, or at least how Marnie imagined she must have been, and so Marnie recruited the aid and assistance of the theatrical crowd, much as Sarah must have, long ago.

"Murder investigations are generally informative, one way or another," she said, "and there is no statute of limitations on murder. Sometimes, as in this case, the perpetrator is long dead, but we want to find out who, what, where, why and how -- because there is nothing new under the sun, murder is murder, motive is motive, a century ago or today.  People just don't change."

The screen lit up again, showed a building, desiccated by desert winds and sunlight, the windows long gone: had it not been a small building, it would have dry rotted and fallen in on itself: as it was, the only thing holding it up seemed to be habit.

"This freight station was politely forgotten," Marnie said, "after the tracks were taken up for the War effort. We have no idea how it remained almost untouched all this time. When it was rediscovered, the University sent researchers and they found the contents mostly intact."

A camera zoomed in on a telegraph sounder; they key, below, was missing, a pair of wires ending as if waiting for its return.

Pack rats had shredded any documents, books, records; a wooden chair, thick with dust, and little else, other than a collection of trunks.

cameras were uncased, video taken, and beneath a coarse burlap, a trunk.

The trunk was removed with proper technique, brought back to University, carefully documented: another trunk, beside it, apparently vandalized: they found the latch was shot up, the straps cut, and when they opened the lid, they found a child-sized set of handcuffs, an adult-sized set as well, and instead of gunshot residue outside the trunk, they found scorch marks and muzzle blast inside the trunk.

That's when another team, still at the abandoned freight station, opened another trunk.

The audience watched as a University researcher swung the lid open, took a look inside, fell back in horror: the lid, released by a suddenly nerveless hand, slammed shut on the mummified body inside.

 

“That’s when they called us,” Marnie said, and smiled.

The spotlight on Marnie shut off, another bloomed, stage left, illuminating a figure in black, a character in a broad brimmed black hat, black knee high Cavalry boots and black trousers, a long black coat: the figure raised a hand, displayed a bronze shield.

“Name’s McKenna,” a feminine voice declared, a voice that sounded very much like the deputy who’d been addressing them from behind the podium:  “You may know me as The Black Agent. Commissioned through the Firelands District Court, I am a special investigator.”

The figure spun quickly, like a dancer: where she’d been in trousers and boots, now she stood in a McKenna gown, holding a fan, suddenly a beautiful young woman: “Sarah Lynne McKenna was one of the most effective agents the Court ever had. She was a quick-change artist, and she was as beautiful as she was deadly.”

She paced across the stage, hard little heels loud in the surprised silence: she stopped behind the podium, smiled, snapped her fan shut, laid it on the podium.

Her move was as absolutely surprising as it was dramatic.

She raised both fisted hands, drove two hammerfists down against the podium's wooden top, stepped back.

Two knives stood where her fists had been.

She held up a blocky, bulldog .44, and the class of law enforcement students – and their instructors – blinked with surprise, for none saw how she’d drawn the revolving pistol.

“I am quite accurate with Mr. Webley’s pistol,” she smiled. “It carries a point four five five ball, and I amuse myself by splitting playing cards edgewise with it.”

The spotlight illuminating her smiling beauty went out: on the big screens behind, the Ace of Spades, in a spring clip, suddenly leaping like a scared bullfrog – or at least half the card leaped away, fluttering – the other half shivered once, still in the black spring clip's jaw.

The screens shifted to the researcher jumping back, to the trunk lid slamming shut, the puff of dust as it did: the lid was raised again, the camera loomed over its interior, showing the mummified form of a man, bent over; the camera moved, zoomed on a set of handcuffs around the withered wrists, moved again, showing the cloth over the mouth.

"Fortunately," Marnie's voice came from somewhere as the camera zoomed out, "the scene was properly processed by one of the best criminal investigation divisions in the area, and here are their conclusions."

The screens went dark, the spotlight came on again: its light was oval now, and shone only on the figure in black.

"Human trafficking is as old as humanity," Sarah McKenna said, pale eyes barely visible under the shadowing hat-brim: "a young girl was to be trafficked, by whom and for what nefarious purpose, we don't know."

The spotlight shrank, swung to the side, picked up a girl in a shinbone-length dress, a pretty girl with curly hair and a scared expression.

"Some bad people wanted to do bad things," she said, her voice tight and childlike with fear: behind her, on the big screen, it showed her being seized, restrained, gagged, blindfolded: it showed her being shoved into a trunk, folded like an unwanted accordion, the lid slammed, the latch slapped shut, a key turned, leather straps buckled.

The Black Agent stepped into the illuminated oval where the girl had been, and when she did, they realized she and the child were of a like height ... the Black Agent wasn't that small ... but the illusion of a child's dress and a childlike voice, lent her the appearance of being much younger.

"I was that child," the Black Agent said.

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna felt herself wake ... she was cramped, she couldn't move ...

Calm, she thought, disciplining herself against struggle: don't let anyone know you're awake.

She steadied herself, twisted ever so slightly.

She had a little room to work.

Her dresses were all custom made, with things in mind never intended by the designers; her fingers explored her wrists, reading the locks as if they had eyes.

I have time, she thought.

I can unfast these.

It took her some time, but at this point -- with the vague, drug-hazed memory of being moved, picked up, rolled on a platform, dropped a few times -- she had no idea how long she'd been ...

Where the hell am I anyway?

 

Sarah McKenna stepped from behind the podium, picked up her fan, snapped it open: not until she came around in front of the podium, fanning herself delicately, did her audience realize --

Where'd she put the pistol?

She used the fan to distract us!

Sarah turned her backside to the audience, reached behind with one hand, did something with thumb and forefinger, then turned and held something up, not visible against the pattern and texture of her dress.

An invisible camera zoomed in on her hand.

"I am the Black Agent," she smiled, "and a particular hobby of mine is picking locks. I have a small collection of handcuffs, shackles, manacles, padlocks, door locks, and I have a regular correspondence with locksmiths in a variety of cities."  She smiled as the camera zoomed in on lock picks, delicately held between thumb and forefinger.  "I considered where my hands might be if they were secured behind my back, and I installed a series of pockets, that I might discreetly secret a series of picklocks where I may need them."

She stepped quickly out of the spotlight; there was a pause, the sound of impatiently rapped knuckles on wood, Marnie's voice:  "Hey! My eyes are up here!" -- and the spotlight swung to the podium, where Deputy Sheriff Marnie Keller stood once more.

"That's better.  Now" -- she smiled -- "for the fun part:  how did she get out?"

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna chewed the beeswax carefully: it had been hidden in her bodice, it was warmed, she transfered it to her mouth to warm it further, then plugged one ear, plugged the other ear.

The trunk was confining, but she managed to twist herself, to bring the blunt muzzle of her Bulldog revolver to where she figured the lock mechanism was.

She closed her eyes, whispered a silent prayer that the beeswax in her ears would be enough, otherwise she would be permanently deaf.

 

"It seems the Black Agent had more than lock picks in that pretty dress she wore."

Marnie held up a block of something amber.

"Beeswax. She had some in her bodice. She used softened beeswax to stop up her ears before she blew the lock off that trunk from the inside."

Marnie pressed a control; another picture came up on the tall screen beside her, a close-up of the bullet-blasted latch, then the splintered and scorched interior view.

"I'm glad I was not in that trunk," Marnie admitted. "Those were blackpowder rounds, and by the time she got out" -- the picture blanked out, was replaced by an exerior view -- the shining blade of a slender knife thrust out from under the lid, slid to the side, sawed a few times, withdrew as the leathern strap parted: the lid lifted a fraction, the knife reappeared, slid to the side, sawed again, the lid flew open.

"I can only imagine," Marnie remarked, "just how good it must've been to get out of that trunk!"

The spotlight swung again, rendering Marnie and her podium invisible: the lid flew back on a trunk, a young woman in a child's frock stood, knife in hand, smoke swirling about her as she stood, tilting her head, frowning as she worked a wax plug out of her ear.

She turned a little, the knife disappeared; she dropped the wax plug, tilted her head the other way, dropped the second plug: she stepped daintily out of the trunk, looked into the darkened audience, her jaw set, pale eyes blazing.

"Nobody," she said, her voice tight, "nobody! does that to ME!"

The spotlight shifted again.

Marnie lifted her chin.

"Forensics have not identified the deceased," she admitted, "and cause of death was probably asphyxiation."

Her eyes were quiet, but her quiet smile was truly frightening as she continued, "Once he found he was being treated to the same delights as he'd just tried to give a pretty young victim, he probably panicked, hyperventilated, used up all his air and suffocated.  He died alone, in the dark, one of his own victims, and by picking on an Agent of the Court" -- she turned, extended a hand as if to someone --

-- the spotlight swung, illuminated a figure all in black, holding a very short, double barrel shotgun casually by its pistol grip --

"You could say," the Black Agent said slowly, "that by picking on me, the damned fool committed suicide!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AN ARROW, LOOSED

Indra's eyes opened, and she smiled.

It was time.

She moved carefully, for she was old -- very old now -- her health was remarkably good, for a woman her age, and her age was as remarkable as her health.

By her count, she was over a hundred thirty years old.

She'd had help, she'd taken care of herself, and now it was time for her to die, and she smiled.

She'd had a good life, a long life, she'd known many good people, and she'd lived among the Daine and Maxwell clan, hidden among them -- just one more skinny old mountaineer, she'd laughed -- 

A knock at her door.

Indra turnred, pressed a button; the door opened, she heard a young woman's footsteps.

Old eyes and young eyes met; there was a silent understanding, a mysterious communication that occurs between women: there was no need for morning's ablutions, for a more important task was at hand.

Indra was grateful for help getting dressed: not long after, fortified with coffee and toast, the two emerged into the early morning: Indra stopped, and smiled, and tilted her head back.

Just over two miles away and a hundred yards underground, another face smiled, hidden by a grey cover: the body here, very slightly older than Indra's, but showing none of the effects of advancing age.

Both women looked out Indra's eyes, dimmed with cataracts and years, both women felt the ground beneath her boots, both women tasted the air, both women felt the warmth, the life of the faithful young woman beside her.

Indra walked slowly, patiently, as she did these days, walked toward the waiting truck.

It was rare for her to go to town, but when she did, she'd lay down on a litter and the litter would be hoist into the truckbed, and she'd ride to town in the back of one of the boys' trucks.

Today she was going to the doctor.

Today she was going to say goodbye.

 

Gracie woke.

Gracie's mind was linked with Rebekha's mind, and had been since Rebekha was birthed.

Rebekha was a remarkable child, gifted with joy and intelligence and a gift for music: she played piano, she sang, she grew up as one of the Sheriff's daughters: she never married, she lived her life as a Maiden Lady, she joked that the postmaster should preside over her funeral and stamp her coffin "Returned unopened" -- she went to live, alone, in the mountains, and in time she was forgotten, as old people too often are.

Rebekha was Gracie's rehabilitation, her healing: Gracie spent great stretches of time unconscious as her ship repaired itself, as her body and her mind healed themselves, with the ship's technology keeping her from aging, from suffering the ills that accompany forced immobility.

When Rebekha danced, alone in her little cabin, she often felt someone danced with her, and she was right: far underground, a solitary figure in a silver suit danced as well, and when Rebekha slept, the figure in the silver suit slept as well: Rebekha ate of the mountains' bounty, Gracie ate of the recyclers' bounty, and both tasted meat and bread and good coffee, and when Rebekha played piano, Gracie played fiddle to accompany, and both women heard the full duet as they played.

Rebekha felt the canvas beneath her as the boys gently lifted her, slid her carefully into the bed of the truck, covered her with quilts and laughter: Gracie saw their faces, she felt her ancient face smile and she heard her voice teasing them gently, telling them they were fine, strong boys, and asking them if they'd heard the one about the farmer's daughter and the Harley-Davidson motorcycle: when the one, as he always did, knelt beside her and leaned close to hear her words, and he said as he always did, "No, Grandma, I've not heard it," and Rebekha laughed quietly and replied, "I've not heard it either, and I've been asking for a hundred years!"

Gracie laughed with them as she came to full wakefulness, as her ship woke around her: the systems checks had been underway for a day and a half, and every system was either optimal, or at the very least, nominal.

Gracie was repaired, and Gracie was awake, and Gracie was returned to her own time by simply living long enough, and Gracie looked up into the Colorado sky with Rebekha's eyes for the last time.

"You are fine young man," she whispered. "Sire fine tall sons and raise your daughters as ladies, and teach them music and dance."  She slipped a wizened, wrinkled old hand free of the blankets, gripped his, shook it back and forth a little. "Do this for a little old lady."

He laid his other hand on hers and smiled.  "I will that, Grandma," he nodded.  "I will that."

It wasn't much longer that they carried her out of the truck and into the hospital room where her personal physician always received her.

Dr. John Greenlees came over, smiled at her, gripped the ancient hand that slipped out from under the covers.

"And how's my favorite patient this morning?" he asked with that smile he reserved for very few.

"It's time for me to go, Doctor," she replied, and the Doctor's face grew suddenly serious.

He'd learned early in his career that when the knowledge of death was on a patient, and they said as much, they were generally right.

"I will be sorry to see you leave," he said, frowning a little, and she smiled, squeezed his hand one last time.

"Time to go, my dear," she whispered, "and thank you for your every kindness."

 

Gracie felt herself gathering the necessary energies; her reactors sang power, she started the reaction that would split realities, that would let her slip between universes like a dog torpedoes under the bedcovers to cuddle with a beloved master.

She looked at the Doctor's face, but her words were for her life-companion, for her Rebekha.

"Thank you for your every kindness," she whispered.

In a granite cavern deep under a long-dead deputy's stone house, a shining silver ship disappeared, and the cavern was once again silent, and empty.

 

Dr. John Greenlees, Jr, looked up from their comm panel, looked at his wife.

"Dearest?" he asked, and Marnie looked up, her expression serious.

If it were Colony business, he would address her as "Sheriff," but if it was a matter from home, or something between the two of them, it was always "Dearest."

Marnie looked very directly at her husband, rose.

"Do you remember Old Rebecca, from up on the mountain?"

Marnie blinked, smiled, nodded.

She'd known Old Rebecca, she'd taken piano lessons from her, as a little girl she'd followed her gathering yarbs and berries and fixing meals.

"She was an old woman when I knew her," Marnie nodded, coming over to her husband, frowning.

"She finally died. My father said she came into his office and told him goodbye and thank you for all his kindnesses."

Marnie gripped Dr. John's shoulders, sighed.

"Your father liked that old woman," she murmured, and she felt her husban laugh gently.

He reached up, laid a hand on hers.  "She told me I looked so much like my father --" he began, and the alert howler went off.

"SHERIFF TO THE LAUNCH BAY," Hans' voice came over the speaker, and Marnie went from just-standing-there to full-wide-open-sprint in two steps: she drove into the door, slammed it three times with her fist before it opened:  John heard her running footsteps down the stone-melt hallway, he heard her full-voiced "GET OUTTA MY WAAAY!" before their doors slid closed, cutting off any more shouted claim of her right-of-way.

Dr. Greenlees rose, considered, reached for his physician's satchel -- his War Bag, as Marnie called it -- if the Sheriff was summoned on priority alarm, that generally meant death or injury --

The comm opened and Marnie's delighted face appeared on the screen.

"JOHN!" she shouted.

Dr. John ran back over to the comm panel, thumbed the ack button, moved into the camera's field so his wife could see his face.  "Talk to me!"

"IT'S GRACIE! SHE'S ALIVE AND SHE'S HERE!"

"On my way!" Dr. John Greenlees barked, and before the screen blanked, Marnie saw something rare, something that delighted her heart even more than Gracie's return.

Sheriff Marnie Keller saw her husband's face split into a sudden, unexpected, very rarely seen, broad and absolutely genuine, grin.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PREPARATION

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna frowned a little, industriously buffing the upturned sleigh's runner.

She'd carefully, precisely, rubbed beeswax on the other smooth steel runner, then burnished it until it was slick as a gut: this was not their only sleigh, but it was their good sleigh, the bigger of the two.

Sarah already had the smaller sleigh's runners waxed up and ready for snow: it was sized for a single horse, where their good sleigh was generally drawn by a pair of horses.

Winter was coming, and like every family in the territory, the Rosenthal household was preparing for winter, and had been preparing for winter since thaw the year before.

The cellar had ranks and rows and shelves of canned goods, gleaming jars of summertime, waiting for their summons to the kitchen: the barn loft was stacked and packed full of hay and straw both, harnesses were polished, repaired, replaced as necessary: Sarah was neither lax nor remiss in her own preparations.

She wiped at sweat-beads with the sleeve of her dress, rose, ran her polishing-cloth the length of the runner, seeking anyplace that was not polished, burnished, slick.

Sarah's pale eyes narrowed with satisfaction; she stepped back, and men's strong hands gripped the sleigh, brought it back down on its runners.

 

Chief Fitzgerald pulled the spark plug from the deepwell socket, studied it, nodded:  he tossed it casually into a five gallon can half full of the day's trash.

He looked up as a new plug was thrust at him.

"Here y'go, Chief. Gapped up and ready."

"Ah, thank you," Fitz breathed: he spun the plug back into the snowmobile's cylinder head, snugged it just a little, replaced the ignition wire.

They'd torn down the carburetor, rebuilt it: lines were flushed, fresh fuel mixed, they'd test run the engine before changing the spark plug.

"Once snow hits," Fitz explained, "we're going to depend on that thing.  Spark plugs are cheap. When I need it to work I need results, not excuses!"

Over in the far bay, father and daughter had the squad doors open: their painstaking attention to their rig was legendary, and on a bet, two of the firemen surreptitiously made an inventory of the number of angiocaths, the number of bags of IV fluid, the number of sheets, folded and inserted into their overhead cubby: after three months, no matter how many runs, or how severe, before sunrise the next day, the squad had exactly the same number of needles, of admin sets, of bags of Ringer's or saline or D52, the identical number of sheets and blankets and 4x4s and every last thing else, without exception. 

Fortunately for the bettor and bettee both, payment of a case of beer meant the off-going shift was treated to libation for the next few rotations, and no feelings were bruised by losing the bet.

Winter preparation for the squad was almost nonexistent; winter prep for the pumpers, this year, meant insulation kits installed on the pumps.

Fitz fought fire back East, back during the Deep Freeze of '77, and he was in on the Slaughter Hill fire, where every fire department in the County sent a pumper to back the city's fire department ... and every last truck's pump was frozen upon arrival.

20 below will do that.

One truck, and one only, was able to pump: it was a volunteer department's truck, running an obsolete old gear pump; the abbreviated exhaust ended at the back of the mufflers, and the hot breath of a 427 Chevy engine blasting directly onto the cast iron casing, kept that old pump from freezing.

Fitz never forgot that hard lesson, and he'd made sure his trucks were ready for the cold weather.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller squatted, one hand on the cruiser's fender: she regarded the new tires with a critical eye, nodded her approval.

This was the last of the cruisers to be winterized: Willamina knew the value of good tires in winter, and she saw to it that her entire fleet had winter shoes.

One of the County Commissioners short-sightedly demanded she replace only the back tires, as they did all the driving, until she remined him coldly the front axle does most of the braking, and all the steering -- "besides," she pointed out, "every machine we have is four wheel drive" -- then their secretary read from an earlier set of minutes, where the Sheriff's tire request was approved in perpetuity, and another of the commissioners observed quietly that the manufacturer's warranty is voided if they don't keep equal rubber on all four corners.

The aforementioned suffferer of short sight had cause to appreciate the Sheriff's preparations, later in the year and deeper into winter, but we're getting ahead of ourselves: no, let us return to the firehouse, where a fragrant kettle of meat-heavy chili simmered, sending its fragrance into the air and setting men's stomachs to rumbling in anticipation.

The Sheriff was invited down, as were any available badge packers; Sharon was promised a bowl, as was the jailor.

Willamina sat down with the Irish Brigade, laughing, and when the Sheriff called "Hey, pass me a biscuit!" that's exactly how she got it.

Airmail.

She caught it neatly, laughed, closed her eyes and inhaled the steaming fragrance as her nail-trimmed thumbs split it open.

"Looks like you've been busy," she observed as a brimming bowl of steaming chili landed in front of her.

"Gettin' ready for winter," the engineer confirmed, sliding a sleeve of crackers toward the Sheriff.

"Winter," Willamina groaned, looking over at Crane.

"Hey Cap," she called, "I know Fitz was in on Slaughter Hill, were you on that goat rope too?"

Captain Crane laughed, shook his head. "No, I missed that one," he said, "I was on squad that day."

"Anything good?"

"Best one of my life!"

"You delivered a baby!"  Willamina spooned up some chili, slurped it noisily, napkin-caught the dribble that escaped down her chin.

"I wish!" Crane laughed.  "No, wasn't a birth."

"What happened?"  Willamina managed another spoonful without spillage, looked down the table at the grinning paramedic.

"We got the call at station. Speakers all over station, so everyone could hear both sides of the call. A young mother all in a panic, it was blue cold and she'd left her engine running to keep her kids warm while she went inside on an errand. She came out and the doors were locked, and her kids were inside and unresponsive."

Every spoon stopped, every chewing jaw halted and every set of eyes turned toward the Captain.

"We got there and a neighbor used Paving Brick Therapy on the passenger front sideglass."

"Paving Brick Therapy," an anonymous voice commented. "I'll have to remember that one."

Crane grinned. "When we arrived, three kids were staggering around crying and holding their heads. Second-in car got those, they were getting air in 'em, I wasn't worried."  Crane looked down at his bowl of chili and said softly, "I was looking at that little girl the neighbor was holding. She was boneless as a rag doll and he had this God awful expression like he knew she was dead."

The Captain stirred his chili, slowly, seeing something other than the steaming bowlful.

"I said 'Scuse me,' I scooper her up and ran for the high top Cadillac" -- he grinned, looked around -- "tells you how long ago that's been!"

"Deep Freeze of '77," Fitz said softly. 

"Sure was," Crane agreed. "I turned and yelled "MARKO! OPEN UP!" and he opened the side door and I plainly dove in.

"I laid her on the squad bench, I grabbed the first oxygen mask I could -- it was an adult, covered her from scalp to chin, and I did not care" -- his voice was tight now, tight with the memory of the moment when he laid what looked like a dead child on his workbench and started his work.

"I plugged her into the onboard oxygen.

"I went from 3 litres to 5 litres to 15 to FLUSH and said 'That's about right,' then I rubbed her belly and said 'Breathe, honey."

Curious eyes regarded him and he explained, "With a newborn, you flick the soles of their feet or rub their belly to stimulate breathing. I figured if it works for a newborn, let's try it.

"It worked. She took a big gasping breath so I rubbed belly again and said 'Breathe, honey,' and she did, and she took another big breath and about the fourth time, why, she took off breathing like a steam engine."

He stopped, swallowed, looked out across the bay, toward the overhead doors, remembering.

"She opened her eyes and she didn't like something green plastic on her face, and she didn't like a homely stranger with big ears leaning over her, and she started lettin' the world know it."  He smiled a little, swallowed.

"I looked forward and yelled "MARKO! SHE'S BREATHING!" and he told me later I had water runnin' down both cheeks."

The Captain looked down at his chili, stirred it slowly, smiled again.

"That wasn't our only interesting run that winter," he said slowly, "but by God! that's the best run of my entire career!"

 

The hired girl studied the linens, clean, folded, smelling of mountain air and sunshine, nodded her satisfaction.

The Mrs. was a tidy and orderly sort, and the hired girl appreciated order: the larder was full, as was the fruit cellar; they had flour in tin containers, proof against mice, and God willing, against weevils: there were libations, neatly ranked in gleaming bottles, they had herbs, dried and stored.

She stopped, straightened, smiled: firewood was being stacked, the sharp, woody notes penetrating the house's clapboards, and the maid knew bark would be laid over the neatly-ricked-up firewood to keep off snow and wet.

Preparation for winter was underway, and would continue until winter's cold hand clamped down, but in the interim, wood would be stacked, supplies laid in against whatever length of winter's cold the year would bring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE REASON WE PICKED YOU

 

Chief of Police Will Keller surged forward, fingers clawed, trying desperately to grab the screaming mother.

Ahead of them, a dirty, unshaven meth head had a girl by the neck, choking her, his knife quivering an inch from the girl's left eye: the druggie was screaming something, nobody could tell what -- later, Will would remember someone yelling "YOU'RE SHOUTING TOO LOUD, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" -- but at the moment he was making a desperate, full-powered dive for the girl's mother.

Marnie had her model 70 Winchester almost to shoulder when the girl's mother screamed "NOOOO!" and ran for Marnie.

Will was a tenth of a second too late to get to her, and right now, Marnie and her rifle were the only things standing between the girl losing her eye, and maybe her life, or not.

Deputy Marnie Keller drew back, twisted: she drove the butt of her rifle into the woman's face just as hard as she could, then she dropped to one knee, set her elbow on her other knee: Will saw her finger tighten, ever so slightly, and the .308 shoved the lean deputy's shoulder back.

The hostage felt her attacker's sudden slack -- she twisted, dropped, pulled, ran, she didn't know which way she was running and she did not care --

The meth head's knife and a finger flew spinning into the air --

"BEAR KILLER, GET 'IM!"

Something fast, black, ruthless and deadly launched from beside the kneeling deputy:  Will remembered how the sun shone on healthy dog fur, he remembered the spinning .308 empty frozen in mid-air, just before something the size of a young bear drove into the screaming druggie, seizing his good arm and bringing the full weight of his high speed momentum to bear: man and dog went down, The Bear Killer's snarls inviting any resistance at all as he dragged the man back, back, until Marnie ran up, drove the butt of her rifle into the druggie's crotch and then into his gut:  "BEAR KILLER!  OFF!"

She reversed the rifle as the druggie rolled up on his side, the tapered, blued-steel gunmuzzle taking a close-up look at the meth-head's skull:  "GIVE ME ONE EXCUSE, DAMN YOU!  JUST ONE EXCUSE!"

Lawmen and citizens alike stared, some in admiration, some in shock, but none in sympathy.

Two men watched, two men notable for their impassive expressions: they looked at one another, nodded once, then turned and walked casually up the street.

 

Sixteen-year-old Marnie Keller stood in the very center of the road.

She held a rifle the way an experienced rifleman will:  she brought one foot back a little, her thumb brought the hammer to full stand, she brought the rifle to shoulder, sighted on the windshield of the onrushing vehicle.

She'd received the report her Uncle Will was murdered, and this fleeing son of Perdition was the murderer.

There were cruisers behind, in screaming, high-speed pursuit, but there was a pale eyed young woman who loved her Uncle, standing in the road ahead of the fleeing felon, a pale eyed woman who'd prepared for a moment such as this.

She'd dropped the lever on the octagon barrel rifle, she'd single loaded a bottleneck round, a round she'd hand loaded most of a year before.

The bullet was solid gold.

Marnie found the nuggets, she'd melted them down, fluxed them, cast them like any of the thousands of bullets she'd cast of lead: she'd gas checked, lubed, sized and weighed the bullet, and its two twins: she'd fired these solid gold bullets, carefully targeting them, she'd recovered the gold from the sand trap, melted them down again and re-cast them, and today, today her pale eye steadied behind the rear peep and her finger caressed the trigger and she calculated its oncoming velocity and probable deflection and she thought Uncle Will, guide my shot, and the rifle's smooth crescent butt plate shoved back into her shoulder.

After the fleeing vehicle drifted to the left, hit a ditch and flipped, after Marnie got there, she'd crawled into the mashed-down car -- with lawmen surrounding, watching -- she slit the dead man's scalp at the back of his shattered skull, she retrieved the bullet, sloshed it in the water-filled ditch to clean off the gore, and she'd dropped it in her pocket.

 

Marnie Keller staggered out of the smoking ruin that used to be a car dealership, a man across her shoulders:  she threw him down on the ambulance cot, turned, sprinted back inside.

The responders heard her full-voiced scream.

"GET IN HERE, NOW!!!"

She was asked later why she chose to do CPR when the building could have collapsed in on her.

Marnie laid a hand on her father's shoulder and looked him squarely in the eye.

"That building collapse was a maybe," she said.  "If I did nothing, he was dead.  That was a definite.  If I started running a code, he had a chance. I had to give him that chance."

Right about then the building collapsed.

Father and daughter looked at the rising dust, looked at one another.

Marnie shrugged.

"I'd do the same thing again."

 

Two men in suits talked quietly at a table in the back of the Silver Jewel.

They ate a light meal, they drank coffee, they sorted through file jackets and slid documents across the table, one, then the other, pointing out highlighted sentences.

A photograph lay among their papers, a photograph of a young woman, a pale eyed Sheriff's deputy, twin braids wrapped neatly about her neck: on her uniform blouse pocket, a six point star that said, simply, DEPUTY; on the other pocket flap, the silver name tag that said, simply, KELLER.

"I think," one man said, "we've found our candidate."

"She's got the guts, all right."

"She doesn't hesitate, and she doesn't do anything halfway."

"Top grades in school. Graduated early, she and her boyfriend."

"I think he's more than her boyfriend."

"He's already selected. I certainly hope he's more than a boyfriend."

"Does she know he's going to Mars?"

The two men looked at one another, smiled, ever so slightly.

"When do we talk to her?"

One looked up, toward the bar.

"Now would be good."  He rose, lifted his chin, and a pale eyed young woman in a deputy Sheriff's uniform paced back toward them.

She stuck out a hand.  "Took you long enough," she said bluntly. "How soon do we leave?"

Two government agents looked at one another, trying hard to maintain their professional expressionless.

"You seem to have some knowledge of our purpose."

"You're going to Mars and you need to staff your security forces. I'll suggest a Sheriff's office. You'll need that level of absolute authority. You'll need medical, likely you've made your choice."

"Can you recommend someone ...?"

"I can," she said without hesitation.  "John Greenlees Junior. He's just finished med school and he's a medical prodigy. Unofficially he's been performing surgeries with his father, he's an ace diagnostician and he does not get excited when it's hitting the fan and everyone else is screaming in circles. You'll need more than just a doctor, but I'm not going to recruit your entire staff for you."

Two men looked at one another: one turned, slid the papers neatly back into the file jacket.

"We'll let you know."

Marnie nodded.  "By the way," she said, "if you're in town for a while, I can recommend the blackberry pie."

Marnie turned to leave.

"Is it true" -- Marnie turned back, fixed the questioner with a quiet gaze -- "is it true that you split playing cards, edge-on, with a .357?"

Marnie unbuttoned the right hand uniform blouse pocket's flap, reached in with two fingers, pulled out four, halved pasteboards, handed the halved cards to the nearest of the Government men.

"The two of diamonds," she said, "was with Daddy's .44, and the three of diamonds was with Uncle Will's .357, and yes, those were full-house loads."  She smiled, just a little.  "I usually use much milder loads, but some fellows were running their mouths, and we laid bets, and" -- she shrugged -- "they didn't win.  And yes."

Her faint smile had not faded.

"I split playing cards edgewise, as a matter of routine."

"Why?"

She shrugged.

"Everyone has to have a hobby."

 

 

Edited November 22, 2022 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ANOTHER FIVE MINUTES, MAMA

Esther put her finger to her lips.

The maid stopped, folded her hands in her apron, backed up a step.

Esther carefully, gently, slid her hands under the open Bible: she lifted it off her husband's lap, where it just started to slide away from his relaxed hands: she closed it, silently, placed it carefully on the side table.

The maid came up on the balls of her feet, slipped silently out of the room, almost as quickly returned, with a quilt: Esther's eyes smiled as the maid unfolded it, quickly, without stirring the air.

A curly haired little girl was sound asleep on her Daddy's lap, her head laid over against his chest, just under his collar bone: Daddy's arm was around his little girl, his eyes closed, his head back against the embroidered back of the chair: he, too, was relaxed, the strain of several difficult days draining slowly from his face.

It was Linn's habit to read the Bible aloud, after supper, after business was conducted, guests received, matters pertaining to running their businesses discussed: Linn's final duty, before bedtime, was to consider the Word, and he preferred reading the Word aloud, and his children preferred to hear their Daddy's voice, reading the Word in his strong, confident, reassuring Daddy-voice.

His little girl was relaxed, content, warm: when Esther saw her husband's eyes grow heavy, she whispered to her drowsy daughter that it was time for bed.

Rebekha gave her Mama a sad look and said, "Another five minutes, Mama?" and Esther caressed her daughter's hair and whispered, "Five minutes, sweets," and that was a half hour ago.

Esther thanked the maid, took the unfolded quilt, draped it carefully over their little girl:  Linn's eyes came open, slowly, and he gave his wife a gentle smile, something she saw too little of here of late: slowly, carefully, he brought out one arm, then the other, wrapping the child carefully, picking her up slowly, gently, holding her close to him as he carried her, warm, quilt-wrapped, safe in her Daddy's strong arms, upstairs, the ladies following.

Linn laid his little girl down on her turned-down bed, slowly, carefully, one hand behind her curly head, then he bent over and kissed her forehead, quietly: he withdrew, for it would not be proper for him to undress his daughter, especially when there were ladies present for that detail.

Linn withdrew to the hallway: as she always did, the maid withdrew, then Esther, and as he always did, Linn said in a quiet voice, "Thank you, Mary," and the maid lowered her eyes and dipped her knees, and then turned and glided down the stairs.

Esther came out, turned to her husband, allowed herself to be drawn into the warmth of a masculine embrace.

Linn smelled sunshine and lilac, he bent and kissed his wife on the side of the neck, under her shining red ear-bob:  Esther hummed and molded herself to him and whispered, "My dear, it is late."

Linn's arms tightened, just a little, and he raised his head, looked into the depths of his wife's emerald eyes.

Carefully, delicately, his lips kissed hers, then he hugged her tighter, brought his lips to her ear:

"Another five minutes, Mama."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

OVERHAUL

Gloved hands drove down on the accordion-folded canvas supply line, seized, pulled: hose peeled out of the hoselay as the truck paused, the coupling end was spun around a hydrant: a fireboot stomped down on the hose, a go-away gesture, the man's voice, loud, echoing:  "GO, GO, GO!"

The pumper pulled ahead, hose peeling neatly from the hosebed: while men's hands seized the inch-and-a-half crosslay and ran for the fire, other hands spun the hydrant's cap off, drove the threaded coupling into the brass threads, spun it, a hydrant wrench dropped into place:  a pull, a spin, water hissed and roared into the large diameter supply line: the other end was already spun into the side of the pumper, the engineer climbed to the flying bridge, the pump howling to life under his gloved grip.

He looked to his left, where the hose team was approaching the fire, and a hell of a fire it was:  bright, hot, angry, roaring:  he seized the black knob on the end of the polished chrome lever, pulled.

Firehose surged, stiffened, the nozzle hisssed, then a hundred and a quarter pounds of water hit the chromed Elkhart nozzle and the Irish Brigade set their boots against the back-thrust of the fire flow, throwing cold water on the fire: to the family, it was a year and a day until the fire was out, to the Brigade, it was a second and a half:  little boys in dress shirts and neckties goggled, delighted, fascinated -- they'd seen fire trucks before, they'd squirmed impatiently, the way little boys will, when Fire Prevention Week brought the Irish Brigade to their grade school, but here -- here, little boys with big and admiring eyes watched their very own firemen attack this fire, charge this fire, absolutely MURDER this fire:  one reached down, shut off the propane bottle, a final whip and circle of the fan spray and the fire was out, cold, gone.

Gloved hands hauled the turkey out of the deep fryer, held it up in triumph:  "WE CAN SAVE THIS!" came the shout, and Fitz came stomping up to the turkey, turned to the homeowner, seized the man by the shoulders:  

"MEDIC!"

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller ran back to the pumper, seized the passenger door, hauled it open.

She climbed the running board, thrust inside, laid over the passenger seat, drove a hand down between the seats; she found the release, flipped the door open, gripped the prize, brought it out:  to the onlookers, it appeared as if this dignified woman in a tailored suit dress and heels, dove into the pumper, laid over the seat and very nearly did a backflip out of the seat.

She arrived at the patient at the same moment as the medics.

Captain Crane frowned at the man's face, accepted the sterile-saline-wet 4x4 from his daughter:  he wiped the man's face, carefully, frowned as he worked:  satisfied, he nodded, dropped the wet gauze, turned to the Sheriff, took the bottle that was officially not part of the Brigade's equipment, but lived between the seats of the pumper.

He worked the cork out, handed it to the man.

"Drink."

The homeowner with scorched eyebrows and what used to be a fairly neatly trimmed mustache, took a gurgling tilt of Two Hit John, handed the bottle back, grimaced, coughed.

"You're alive," Captain Crane said cheerfully, corking the bottle and handing it back to the Sheriff. "For this, O Lord, we give thanks!"

"I thought I was dead," the homeowner admitted.

"You could'a bin," Fitz growled.  "How's the bird?"
"We can salvage it, Chief!"

"Get to it, then!" he snapped.  "Make sure that oil's not contaminated, if it is, we've oil at station! WELL DON'T JUST STAND THERE, LET'S SAVE THIS MAN'S THANKSGIVING DINNER!"

The Sheriff returned the bottle to its hidden home -- antifreeze, you understand, kept there against winter's chill, or when medicinal alcohol may be appropriate, such as soothing a householder's screaming nerves after a turkey just blossomed into a great geyser of living flame when he put it wet into the boiling oil -- and the Irish Brigade shut off the hydrant, disconnected and drained hose, rolled and loaded hose, after which they turned to the task at hand, and that was to save this poor fellow's turkey.

The official report listed their time out as mostly overhaul.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A FRIEND OF MINE

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna wore a rich, royal blue gown: her fashionable little hat and her gloves matched, of course, because she was going to see a family she knew was experiencing grief and sorrow, and their women would be in black: it would be an affront, Sarah knew, to wear anything bright or cheerful in the face of their grief, but the deceased was not Sarah's blood, so it would not be proper if she, too, wore mourning black.

Not for the first time she considered her brothers and her pale eyed father, all in black suits, and considered that men's attire choices were considerably simpler.

She dismissed the matter from her thoughts as they arrived, as they carried in covered dishes, crocks, baskets: the family would not feel like cooking, they would not feel like sitting down to a formal meal, but the young especially would be hungry, and so Sarah supervised the manufacture and fabrication of meat-rolls and finger-sandwiches and edibles that could be eaten easily, without the formality of a sit-down meal.

The deceased was known to her; he was not an especially close acquaintance, but he was someone Sarah knew and respected: she glided to the coffin, set up on sheet-draped sawhorses in the parlor: Sarah looked through the filmy gauze protecting the deceased from flies or other airborne contaminants, then she slipped her gloved fingers into a hidden pocket and withdrew two silver coins.

Carefully, respectfully, she lifted the corner of the veiling gauze, and placed a silver coin over the dead man's eyes.

Young eyes, of course, watched curiously -- children miss nothing -- Sarah replaced the gauze, turned, glided to the ladies, who were pretending not to watch: words were spoken, quiet womanly words that are always said in such a moment, and then Sarah reached down and took two small hands, young hands, hands belonging to children she knew, children she'd taught, and she drew them and their siblings into another room.

Sarah sat, regally, as she always did: the children dropped into a semicircle in front of her, the more curious among them looking very directly at her.

Sarah had most of them in school; she looked at the oldest, blinked, tilted her head a little.

"There is a question in your eyes," she said.

"Miss Sarah ... are the coins for the Ferryman?"

Sarah clapped her hands gently together, obviously pleased.  

"Peter," she declared, smiling, "you listened in class!"

"Yes, ma'am," Peter mumbled, his ears reddening a little.

"Peter made a study of Greek mythology," Sarah explained to the others -- they would study the same material in their years to come -- "and in the Grecian mythos, when one dies, one goes to the Underworld and one waits beside a broad, black river."

"The River Styx!" Peter blurted.

"The same," Sarah smiled. "And to cross this broad black river, a ferry comes to the shore and the dead step aboard -- but there is a price."

"A coin," the children breathed.

"A coin," Sarah nodded gently, looking from one to another, the way she did when she stood before them in their little whitewashed schoolhouse.

"But Miz Sarah," a young voice protested, "if it only takes one coin, why did you put two coins --"

Sarah smiled gently, looking at the questioner with a patient expression.

"It would look kind of funny to just have one coin on one eye, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am," the questioner mumbled, looking down.

"Besides" -- Sarah raised a teaching finger -- "I seem to remember he liked helping people. Let's say someone is there and they don't have a coin, and he has two."

"Oh," several children murmured, comprehension lighting their young eyes.

"But Miz Sarah," another young voice protested, "how come they gotta cross a river when we just go to Heaven?"

Sarah leaned forward, looked from one set of eyes to another.

"I'll tell you something," she said, her voice low, confidential, "but this is between us, and nobody else." She looked at the doorway, to their left, looked back.

"I've died," she said quietly, "and I was sent back because my work wasn't done."

Young eyes widened: Miz Sarah had a way of gripping their attention, a way that no other adult had: when Miz Sarah spoke, her quiet words drove deep into them, for the young know truth when they hear it, and her words were sharpened against the whet stone of truth and of absolute, correct, fact.

"The last time I died," Sarah said quietly, "I was sitting beside the river Styx, only it wasn't underground, it wasn't dark, it wasn't scary."

She bit her bottom lip, considered a moment, pushed forward.

"I had ... a dog ... and we dove from the riverbank into the waters."

She bit her bottom lip again, dropped her eyes.

"We swam the waters and climbed out on the opposite bank, we rolled in the grass to dry off and we ran and laughed and we lay down in the sunlight, and we knew we were where we were supposed to be.

"When the sun was just about to touch the far horizon, I sat up and said I had to swim back.

"My dog" -- Sarah wiped at a tear, bit her lip again -- "Rascal-dog said he couldn't go with me.

"I said I know, but I'll be back, and I swam back alone."

"But Miz Sarah," a little girl asked, her bottom lip quivering in sympathy, "did you have a coin?"

Sarah smiled, shook he head.

"No, sweets, I didn't.  I didn't need one, but what if I was old, or sick, when I died?  I'd need help because I couldn't swim the river.  I'd need that ferry to get across."

"Oh," the little girl blinked.  "Heaven is across a river?"

Sarah laughed.

"Why do you think we sing Shall We Gather By the River?" she smiled, and childrens' faces brightened with understanding.

"The Ferryman," Sarah said, and the children heard a deeper, underlying story under her words, but knew better than to ask -- "the Ferryman is a friend of mine, and I wanted to make sure he'd be paid for his work today."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SPEAK FOR US BOTH

 

Pale eyes glared from under drawn brows.

A heart contracted powerfully, slowly, behind a strong young breastbone, lungs filled with cold air, blood ran hot through a shivering body.

Bare feet on the cold rock, in the cold water, nearly numb: here, there, snow: if one could see heat as we see light, a figure blazed at the top of the cliff, a figure running, teeth bared, hands bladed: a half dozen running steps, a gather, a thrust, a dive, and the fire-blazing figure launched off the sheer granite face, droplets falling away from blanched, aching feet -- toes pointed, arms out to the sides, swung forward into twin fists:  pale eyes glared like howitzer muzzles, then the head bent a little, the eyes shut.

Twin fists blasted a hole in the icy water, the naked figure knifing into the deep mountain pool: the shock was like being slapped all over, all at once, cold fingers clutching at warm flesh, seeking to rip the warmth of living from this rigid figure, driving for the sand and gravel below.

Young fingers opened, seized a double handful of gravel and sediment: a turn, a gathering of strong young legs, a hard push against the bottom, eyes slitted, just enough to see light, not enough to let in the cold, burning mountain runoff.

Liquid diamonds slung from a head thrown like a proud stallion: Jacob Keller raised his hands, examined his hard-got treasure, laughed.

He opened his hands and let gravel and sand fall, to return to their rocky bed far enough below him to not worry about breaking his neck when he dove.

Jacob took a long breath, ducked underwater, stroked powerfully, a pale torpedo making swiftly for the shore:  he climbed out, buck naked, soaking wet, water cascading from him: the fire he'd laid was warm, welcoming, he toweled off quickly, almost viciously.

He looked up at the cliff.

It did not look nearly as frightening as looking down from its height.

Fire and towels and dry socks, insulation and clothes and a deep breath: Jacob Keller glared at the water, still restless from his attack: he glared at the cliff, cold and solid and absolutely unimpressed at his cold-eyed gaze: he kissed at his Apple-horse, thrust a polished boot into the doghouse, swung aboard.

Equine ears swung, swung again, locked, Apple turned his head toward the sound, a lonely, mournful, whistling wail, as if something not of this world was being tortured: The Lady Esther's whistle faded, strengthened, faded again as she ran between valleys and cliffs, mountains and rivers:  Jacob was a statue in saddle leather, seeing the brightly-painted, brass-polished engine in his mind, feeling the heat radiating from her boiler, remembering how it felt to stand in the cab, feeling -- not, not feeling, living! her four-count chant as she labored against her load.

Jacob remembered seeing his father jump his shining red Cannonball onto a flatcar, when the train was going dead slow, jumped on from a low rise beside the roadbed: it was like jumping a horse across a bushel basket, Jacob thought at the time: he and Apple had jumped twice as far and more, and he doubted not that he could land his stallion on the flatcar at a considerably greater velocity than the uphill crawl the train managed for his father.

He'd ridden to the place he thought of, watched the train, gauged his speed, he felt his breath quicken, then he leaned back, shook his head.

I will risk myself, he thought, but I will not risk Apple.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller looked up from his correspondence as the door opened, as Jacob and a great blast of cold air came into the office.

Jacob shut the door, latched it, hung up Stetson and blanket lined coat: he stepped over to the stove, held out his hands, tilted his head back, eyes closed, reveling in the warmth.

Linn assessed his son, smiled a little.

"Prospecting?" he asked.

Jacob smiled, just a little.

"Yes, sir."

"Do any good?"

"None a'tall, sir."  Jacob lowered his head, opened his eyes, turned his back to the stove, toasting his tenderloins in the welcome radiation.

"If you ever do find anything," Linn said quietly, "be sure not to tell anyone at all."

"Yes, sir."

Linn leaned back, laid a finger over his mustache, considering the less than tidy script straggling across the page.

"Jacob," he said, "have you ever heard of a fellow named Hammersmith?"

"No, sir," Jacob said, frowning and coming over to his father's desk.

"Draw up a chair and take a look at this."  Linn handed him the sheet.

Jacob turned it over, folded it back together, frowned at the broken wax seal.

"Never thought to use a cartridge case as a wax stamp," he smiled. "Nice cloverleaf."

Linn grunted, twisted carefully in his office chair to keep it from dumping him out again.

Jacob considered the missive, handed it back.

"Sounds like the man can't find his hat with both hands and he wants someone else to do his work for him."

"That's what I thought," Linn agreed. 

Jacob reached for a chair, drew it up beside his father's desk.

"There is a question in your eyes."

Jacob's eyebrow twitched up in surprise, then he laughed a little: he and his father were a great deal alike, and he realized yet again the Grand Old Man has probably been through everything his son had.

"Sir," he said, "there is somethin' about takin' chances."

Linn nodded slowly, leaned back, kicked one boot, then the other, up on the corner of the desk.

"Yes, Jacob," he agreed.  "There most certainly is."

"Sir, my temper takes some effort to tame, some days."

Linn twisted again and Jacob saw a moment's discomfort, then profound relief, on the man's face as he worked a knot out of his back with a muffled *pop*.

"You'll recall the time I took out after that townie that like to smothered me with catty-nine-tail fuzz."

"I recall your sayin', sir."

"That damned War took a lot of that out of me," Linn admitted. "I taken enough chances there to last ten cats their nine lives apiece and then some."

"Yes, sir."

"I'll take chances, Jacob," Linn admitted, "but anymore I decide whether it's worth it first.  Didn't used to and it's God's grace alone I'm still alive."

"Yes, sir."

"What was yours today?"

"I taken a long dive into Cliff's Pool, sir."

Linn nodded: there was only one pool deep enough for diving, it was at the foot of a cliff, and so it became known as Cliff's Pool -- to his knowledge, no one named Cliff had ever been through that part of the country.

"I taken me a run from the top and I dove out and down I went."

"Good dive?"

Jacob grinned, something the general public never saw, and Linn smiled a little to see this shared confidence between father and son.

"Yes, sir, it was."

"Good."

"I made bottom, sir, I came up with a good double handful of gravel, but nary a fleck of gold did I see."

Linn nodded again.

"If it's anywhere in that crick, it'll be in that pool," Linn said quietly. "Too deep for floodwater to run it out, gold's heavy enough it'll hit bottom and stay there."

"Yes, sir."

"On the other hand, if I know so much" -- Linn shrugged elaborately -- "you took a runnin' dive off that cliff?"

"Yes, sir."

"Cold, I'd reckon."

"It was, sir."

"You thawed out yet?"

"I am, sir."

Linn nodded. "Like a snort?"

"No thank you, sir."

Linn leaned back, then brought his boots quickly off the desk, leaned suddenly forward.

"Close," Jacob observed.

"Close hell," Linn admitted.  "Chair damn neart throwed me again!"

The Sheriff rose, rolled his chair back under the desk, straightened.

"Jacob," he said softly, "when I do things like dive off that cliff, that's the only time I really feel alive."

"Yes, sir," Jacob agreed.  "Me too."

Father and son shared a look and an understanding, for each knew in that moment that when one spoke, he spoke for the other as well.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A  CURSE THEY SHARED

The Sheriff did not walk.

The Sheriff paced.

Watch one of the great cats, padding across the dusty savanna: a feral feline's movement is silky, graceful, gliding, at once effortless, and absolutely dangerous, capable of going from a relaxed walk to a blazing, blinding, utterly lethal attack in a tenth of a second or less.

So it was with the Sheriff.

It may be because she moved her office to the Spinner, where gravity was 1.25 Earth-normal; it may be that she disciplined herself most strictly, practicing a variety of armed and unarmed combatives against a variety of simulacra, in this intense gravity, and in Mars-normal gravity.

Or it may be that she was an unusually attractive woman who knew she could seize any man on Mars and break him over her knee, throw him across the room and then proceed to get really mean with him.

It has been said the  deadliest gunfighters of the American West were also men with the most immaculately polite manners, for they better than anyone knew the consequence of a harsh word: whether it for this reason, or perhaps because she was raised among folk who still subscribed to the Western ethos of courtesy and politeness, the pale eyed Sheriff Marnie Keller was soft-spoken, unless otherwise was called for; she was polite, unless otherwise was called for; she was known to treat everyone she met with the very best of courtesy, and her manners were open and absolutely genuine... unless, of course, it was otherwise was called for.

Sheriff Marnie Keller was known to be a tornado with a side dish of dynamite, should the occasion demand, and the entire Firelands colony was aware of situations where it had been demanded.

Somehow the  Firelands colony took great pride in knowing that she was their Sheriff, that she had gone to war on their behalf, that she had told Earth to go pound sand when bottom polishing bureaucrats wanted to micromanage their colony.

Firelands Colony was by now almost entirely underground.

Underground meant protection from meteor strikes -- though incoming meteors were detected, slowed, force-netted and guided into a decaying orbit, destined for solar furnaces for smelting, for recovery of useful elements: this kept Earth happy, as there were certain elements in great demand back home, which these incoming asteroids supplied.

Underground also meant protection from radiation: there was a weak and irregular Martian magnetic field, not enough to deflect radiation from the Sun or a distant gamma pulse, but enough to bollux the ill-conceived force guns originally issued by Earth for the Sheriff's use.

There was a need for absolute fireproofing, and this was rigidly enforced; there were automatic systems to isolate equipment -- if a motor, for instance, caught fire, it was enveloped in a force-bubble to keep burning insulation from poisoning the atmosphere; overheated circuts, in like manner, were instantly enveloped, and fire-suppression teams summoned, and here we find the Sheriff again, sitting in on their training.

Another Sheriff, back on Earth, was sitting in on the Irish Brigade's training: Linn and the Parson both took fire training, both were certified firefighters, though Linn lacked the issue coat, boots, helmet, gloves, Nomex hood -- he had no intention of riding a big red truck when he had his tan Blazer, or a good horse -- but he knew what it was to wade into the Devil's parlor with a squirtgun under his arm, and he knew what it was to go belt buckle to belt buckle with a conflagration that wanted to eat a house and him with it.

He'd taken training enough he could've gotten his EMT, but declined to go for the test: he and his men could, and did, assist as necessary at a scene, but their primary duty was law enforcement, and he saw no need in too much overlap.

They all shared common elements, though: all of them felt more alive when the alarm went off, when they hit the saddle -- whether Kenworth or Blazer or equine, when the big Diesel engine shivered and clattered and snarled like a big an dangerous animal, when a lawman faced off with an angry and violent subject who wanted to cause harm to anyone possible, when that bright moment came that training and experience was brought to bear on a situation no sane and rational person would ever want to face.

It wasn't until each and every one of them was in danger of being killed that they felt genuinely, truly, alive, and they lived for those moments.

On Mars, containing a fire that could poison the confined atmosphere underground, whether Colorado, taking down a combative drunk with a broken beer bottle and an attitude, whether blasting a hundred and a quarter pounds per square inch of water through an Elkhart nozzle and slapping the Devil's face in a fully involved structure, they reveled in such moments, each and every one of them.

It was something they could not discuss with normal people, for normal people would never understand.

In any age, in any place, it was a curse they all shared.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I'VE NEVER BEEN MORE SCARED IN MY LIFE

 

Reverend John Burnett sat, staring across the altar, seeing and not seeing the far wall's texture, its color: the wall, the altar, the Sunday service itself were far from his thoughts.

The ushers were passing the plate with their usual quiet efficiency; distantly he heard and dismissed a fussy baby, a quiet laugh, a cough, restless feet: he rose, mechanically, blinked, turned to face the congregation.

As he rose, so did they: he accepted the plates, set them on the little table behind the Altar.

He turned back, clearly troubled, but he lifted his chin and his hands and as he always did, gave thanks for this return of the Lord's blessing, and led his congregation in singing Old Hundred.

No one looked at their hymnals; no one had to, the Doxology was something with which they were more than intimately familiar.

"Thank you," the Reverend said in his kindly, distance-pitched voice.  "Please be seated."

He returned to his pulpit, picked up the small sheaf of notes he worked from when delivering his Sunday message:  he frowned, considered them, then turned, obviously searching:  he reached behind the chair he'd been occupying, picked up a trash can, brought it up beside the pulpit, set it down.

Reverend John Burnett dropped his sheaf of notes in the trash can, shook his head.

"Y'know," he said, "every time I think I have it figured out, something sails in from left field and knocks me galley-west."  He smiled a little, mostly with half his mouth, took a long breath:  he swallowed, looked over everyones' heads to the back wall, looked back down at everyone looking expectantly at him.

"I've been taking everyone for granted," he said with an unaccustomed frankness. "It wasn't until our Irish Brigade wrapped a firecoat around my shoulders and snugged a helmet down on my head, it wasn't until I stood inside a burning building with a firehose and wet gloves and suddenly I had no idea what to do ..."

He took another breath, chewed on his bottom lip.

"They took me in like one of their own, but they took me in like one of their own."  He laughed a little. "You haven't really lived until you've been kicked in the backside by a fireboot and screamed at to put the wet stuff on the hot stuff" -- he grinned, the red-shirted firemen in the congregation looking alternately embarrassed and amused, elbowing one another like little boys -- "I'll omit the exact language that was used."

This got a quiet laugh from the congregation and several nods of understanding.

"I was on the street when one of our deputies was obliged to take a rifle to someone who more than richly deserved it.  I'll withhold judgement on the subject of the death penalty, because that is the first time I ever saw someone ready to drive a knife into an innocent face."

He looked at Marnie, his face solemn.

"On that day I learned the meaning of the phrase, performance under stress.
I've ... it wasn't until after I saw the Sheriff turn The Bear Killer loose on a bad guy, and then she put me in a suit and turned him loose on me."

The Reverend John Burnett laughed, shook his head.

"I've heard people say it felt like they'd been hit by a freight train."  He looked at the black, curly-furred canine drowsing beside the Sheriff's well-polished boots.  "I found out that day what it really feels like."

He looked at the Irish Brigade again:  two of their number wore medic's blue; the Captain had an earpiece, wired to his talkie.

"I rode with them on squad when a man's heart attacked him and until that day I never knew what it was to try to pump life into someone's chest." 

He swallowed, nodded.

"I'd trained in CPR, like most of us here, but that's the first time ... the first time I ever did it for real."

He looked at the Captain, at Shelly, nodded thoughtfully, as if communing with a memory more than with the actors in the event.

"I learned what it was to start an intravenous line. I didn't start it, but I did what I was told, handed them this, handed them that, spiked the bag and bled the line and plugged them in when they called for it."  He considered, nodded.  "Nothing like firsthand learning.

"I've been named Chaplain for the fire department, for the squad, for every law enforcement and emergency response agency in the county.  I wanted to find out what their jobs were" -- his grin was quick, genuine, like a schoolboy's delighted grin of discovery -- "and when I made the mistake of saying so, hey presto, it was come in, stranger, and step into our boots!"

He took a long breath, swept his gaze slowly across every redshirted fireman, both blueshirt medics, the Sheriff and his family, his eyes sought out and found the police chief, every lawman, every on-duty and off-duty soul in his church who knew what it was to put their lives under the lights-and-siren.

"Let this, then, be my Sunday sermon," he said. "I have one hell of a lot more respect for everyone I've just talked about, because they let me walk in their boots."

His quick grin flashed again.

"I've never been more scared in my life, and I never felt more alive!"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE WINNER

Cold blew around them, father and son, wind carrying a few tiny, pioneering crystals of frozen promise, harbingers of the white that would cover the pasture, and soon.

The horses were shaggy with winter coats; Jacob had ridden the immense pasture, studied where the herd would shelter from wind, from weather, he and his father cut the standing dead trees and bucked them up for stovewood -- what they didn't use, somebody would.

Linn wanted to get the standing dead cut so they would not fall in a windstorm and kill any livestock sheltering among them.

The resultant stovewood, of course, was a welcome bonus.

Father and son worked in companionable silence, neither speaking.

Neither had to.

They tossed wood in a surprisingly tidy stack in the back of the truck.

Warmed from their labors, they hung their coats hung on a convenient stub: each periodically dusted his leather gloves together to knock off dust and dirt so their grip would be sure and firm and not slick: neither wanted a sizable chunk of seasoned wood slipping from their hands and landing on a foot.

Superstition, you understand: each man considered crush injuries as bad luck.

They looked around, satisifed, forced and fitted the small branches they'd stacked for the purpose -- kindling they wouldn't have to split -- they retrieved their coats, shrugged into blanket lined insulation, peeled off sweat-damp work gloves and shared a thermos of steaming-hot coffee.

Jacob looked at his father and grinned and Linn looked at his son and laughed.

"Out with it," he said, and Jacob took a noisy slurp of coffee, steamed out a breath, nodded.

"You recall Grant, works for water and wastewater."

"I recall."

"He's got that big busy beard."

Linn nodded, swirled coffee in his red-plastic thermos cup. "The one his wife gives him hell about?"

"The same."

"She cut another big gouge in it?"

Jacob laughed, his mirth expressed in expanding clouds of vapor, snatched away by the cold wind.

"He won't let her trim his beard anymore, not when she cuts big gouges in it to try and get him to shave it."

Linn sighed.  "I grew a beard once," he said softly. "Shelly give me hell for it. I tormented her and said I wanted to grow it clear down to my belt buckle like ZZ Topp, and she threatened to smear bacon grease down its full length so squirrels would eat me alive."  He laughed.  "It never got more than an inch long and 'twas so thin, why, I give it up for a bad job and mowed it off."

Jacob rubbed his own smooth chin, frowned.

"Figure to grow a beard, Jacob?"

"No, sir," Jacob grinned.  "Least not today."

Linn nodded.  "Your Mama has that big tub of bacon grease she cooks with."

Jacob looked at his father, suddenly, the way a son will when he realizes he'd just put another puzzle piece in place.  

"Sir, is that why that plastic butter tub is marked ZZ Topp?"

Linn laughed, nodded.  "That's the reason, Jacob," he affirmed.  "Every time she reaches for cookin' grease, why, it reminds her she won that round."

He gave his son a meaningful look and added, "The wise husband will let his wife know when she's won."

"I'll remember that, sir."

"More coffee?"

"No thank you, sir, don't want to water every fencepost from here to there."

"Me neither."  Linn corked and capped the thermos, set it back in the cab, looked around.

"We got all the tools?"

"Loaded up, sir, and secure."

"Good show."  Linn took a deep breath, blew it out, looked up at lead colored clouds, considered.

"Well, I reckon we'd ought to get rid of this-yere wood."

"Yes, sir."

"How we set for stovewood back at the house?"

"We could use another stack, sir."

"We got room for all this?"

"No, sir."

"Still a couple trees to cut."

"Yes, sir."

"Reckon the Widow Hostetler could use some winter's heat?"

"I reckon so, sir."

"We'll drop off the saws and the cans and we'll hitch on the wood splitter."

"Yes, sir."

"We swear an oath in Freemasonry to extend relief to worthy distressed Master Masons, their widows and orphans."

"Yes, sir."

"That charity is contagious. You're familiar with Shriner's Hospitals."
"I am, sir."

"Don Hostetler wasn't a Mason," Linn said softly, and Jacob saw a memory in his father's eyes. "Poor fellow was born poor, he lived poor, he died poor.  He wasn't a Mason, but he was one of the best men I ever knew."

He looked at Jacob and grinned.

"You drive. I want to sightsee."

Father and son climbed in the cab of their fading orange Dodge; the aging four wheel drive groaned, ground and cackled its way back across the pasture, father and son once again comfortably immersed in companionable silence.

Later that evening, when Jacob raided the refrigerator (the way a lean son will), he stared into its depths and laughed, then closed the door:  Shelly was about to remonstrate him for standing there with the door open when he closed it and paced over to her, gave her a big hug:  his head was leaned over against the top of hers (good God, how'd you get so tall! she thought), and Jacob slacked his embrace, held his Mama's shoulders with a light, very careful, fingertip grip (you even hug like your father!) and grinned, "Mama, thank you."

"For what?"

"It's not every day I get to hug a winner!"

Jacob kissed his Mama's cheek, turned, paced across the kitchen, silent in sock feet: he sat down in their living room, picked up a book, leaned back in a chair, began to read.

Linn looked up from his own study, saw the puzzled look Shelly was giving their son.

Linn's eyes went to the refrigerator, tightened a little at the corners, then returned innocently to his own reading.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE DOCTOR'S WIFE'S SECRET

The Bear Killer was enjoying the benefits of Firelands' expansion.

Already that day he'd been slipped a few toothsome dainties in their bakery: he'd been trotting happily beside Sarah as she did her Mama's marketing, he'd dropped his broad bottom to the scrupulously clean floor, burnished the boards with his tail's hopeful sweeps, as he employed that most potent of canine persuasions:

The Bear Killer regarded the baker with big, shining, puppy-dog eyes.

As Sarah collected a dozen spiral soemthings with cinnamon in them and sweet sticky and nuts on top, the proprietor winked at Sarah and tossed a few treats high in the air, amused as The Bear Killer snapped them easily from their descending ballistic trajectory.

The butcher shop was another stop: this was a new innovation, and the townspeople took pride in having their very own butcher's shop, for this meant they were Prosperous, and like the bakery, they could afford to purchase what -- until then -- they did for themselves.

Here The Bear Killer's wet nose was working, his tongue was hanging happily, he was panting, a hopeful expression to his canine face: when this did not produce the desired airborne treats, The Bear Killer tried The Ultimate Canine Weapon of Persuasion.

The Bear Killer regarded the butcher with big, shining, puppy dog eyes.

The entire town knew The Bear Killer, this curly furred creature the size of a young bear, to be a formidable enforcer of the Sheriff's will, they knew The Bear Killer to be a loud and most persuasive guardian of his young charges' safety, but the butcher was a man with a fondness for dogs, and a weakness for this visual persuasion, especially from the well mannered The Bear Killer, and so -- again -- dainties were tossed and caught, and The Bear Killer's forepaws fairly pranced with delight as the miniature meats were masticated.

Sarah and The Bear Killer had occasion to encounter Dr. Greenlees, not long after: the physician's frowning eyes were on the ground as he walked,  obviously deep in thought: he stopped suddenly, blinked as he saw Sarah, lifted his Homburg and greeted her politely: Sarah spoke to him and his wife both, and Dr. Greenlees hesitated, assessing Sarah with a professional medical eye, and also the eye of a man who was realizing (with some surprise) that a living soul he'd known as a wee child, was suddenly a woman, and a very attractive one, at that.

Dr. Greenlees considered for a moment, then asked with his usual frankness, "Miss McKenna, forgive my being forward, but how would a man begin to earn your good graces?"

Sarah smiled at Nurse Susan -- they shared one of those looks that women use for swift and silent communication -- then Sarah blinked innocently and lay gloved fingertips on the good physician's forearm and came up on her tiptoes.

Dr. Greenlees bent to bring his ear close to her whispering lips, to receive her feminine sibilants.

"It's when you give me those puppy-dog eyes," Sarah whispered, knowing the wall behind would help reflect her words, knowing full well Nurse Susan's hearing was excellent:  Sarah looked over the back of the bowed surgeon's head, smiled a little as Nurse Susan nodded slightly to show she'd heard:  Dr. Greenlees straightened, Sarah dipped her knees and dropped her eyes, and continued on her way, The Bear Killer happily pacing along beside her.

Nurse Susan smiled just a little as they, too, continued on their journey.

"Dr. Greenlees," Nurse Susan said quietly, "do you know what first endeared you to my heart?"

Dr. Greenlees looked at his wife, smiled gently, his hand on her gloved fingers.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Greenlees," he replied, "I do not."

Mrs. John Greenlees stopped, turned to face her husband squarely:  she reached up, caressed his smooth-shaven cheek, looked deep into his dark eyes and smiled.

"It was those big puppy-dog eyes," she whispered: her hand tightened on her arm, they both turned, and continued their journey down the boardwalk.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MY GREATEST FAILURE

Willamina drew her mare to a halt.

She'd come to the graveyard the back way, winding up the mountain, across the saddle and then to the Firelands garden of stone: her mare's hooves were muffled with grasses and a slow pace, and she drew up when she could just see over the natural rise, between the tomb stones, to where she could look down on the family section.

She saw her son, sitting cross legged on the ground, his head hung in misery, his hat beside him, his stallion wandering, grazing, relaxed.

The wind was carrying toward her, and her mare was not fresh, so she had little fear her scent would alert Apple-horse: still, she held station, silent, her mother's heart sorrowing within her breast.

Her mare's ears swung back at Willamina's whispered words:

"My greatest failure."

She ignored tears that ran, scalding, then cold, down her cheeks: she turned her mare, rode silently back the way she'd come.

Linn sat on the fresh grave, raised his head to glare at the newly set stone.

Damn you, Sis, he thought, why'd you have to leave?

Why'd you have to try and tear our family apart?

Damn you, why'd you have to come back and then die?

Linn swallowed hard, remembered how he'd managed to mediate the storms his older sis blew up, the tempests she'd ignited, the lies she'd told: he'd been grounded for tearing up the football field with a borrowed truck, until his mother went to the president of the school board with her checkbook, ready to pay for the damages, only to find there were no damages -- that nobody had torn up the field, that Linn hadn't borrowed a truck and ripped big circles in the sod -- it wasn't until after his Pa and his pale eyed Mama had quiet, fierce words, his father accusing, his mother defending, and two days later his Pa showed up with flowers and apologies, and then they both turned on his Sis and laid into her for trying to destroy their marriage.

Linn hadn't said a word to her -- when his parents grounded him, took his keys and forbade him to leave the property, he'd turned white to his lips, for he was falsely accused and he knew it -- he'd tried to deny, through wooden lips, only to be harshly silenced by his father with words that laid a red-hot horsewhip across Linn's young soul.

His mother had the grace to tell him she'd been wrong.

She'd taken him by the shoulders, she'd looked him in the eye, she said in so many words that his big sis lied to them, that Linn had been lied about.

His Pa never had the good grace, the honesty, the character, to make any apology, of any kind,  which increased Linn's hatred of the moment: he was too close to hating his father -- so close, that when the man died, Linn shed not a single tear, and he blamed his sister for that too.

The evening Willamina told her son that she was sorry, she'd been wrong, that Linn had not taken someone's truck and torn up the football field, that his older sis lied about him, Willamina and his older sis had the only screaming match Linn ever heard under their roof.

That was the night his sis left, and that was the last Linn heard from her until her return, years later, when she returned with a little girl and the ghastly appearance of someone dying of pancreatic cancer.

Linn had loved his older sis, once; he'd loved her until she changed, and now she was dead, and too late for any change, for any reconciliation.

"Damn you," he whispered to a cold, unfeeling stone, to the fresh sod, cold under his backside:  "Damn you for not letting me fix it!"

Linn pressed the points of his elbows into the inside of his knees as he sat cross legged, as he lowered his face into his palms, as he allowed his misery to cover him like a suffocating cloak.

"I got you out of trouble, Sis," he whispered, not daring to trust his voice: "I was the mediator and the moderator between you and Mama but when you started lying to my father, I wasn't there and you caused more trouble than I could stop."

He shook his head, stared at the ground ahead of his crossed shins.

"I should have been able to stop it," he whispered hoarsely.  "It's my fault I couldn't stop it."

Linn rose, looked to the right, pale eyes hard, unforgiving.

He walked slowly, deliberately, over to his father's stone.

"Damn you," he snarled.  "Damn you for hittin' me without cause and damn you for never tellin' me you were wrong!"

Linn's hands closed into fists and he glared at his own father's gravestone, his lip sneering back in distaste.

"The Parson said when a man dies, God burns away his sins and he's left a new creature."

Linn spat.

"I hope it hurt like hell when he burned you clean!"

He walked back over to his sister's grave, snatched up his Stetson, then he brought his knee back to his chest and drove a kick into the tombstone, focusing all of his hate through the heel of his boot and into his big sis's memory.

"I don't have to worry about you anymore," he said hoarsely. "When I buried you, I buried my greatest failure!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IT MAKES 'EM MAD

Linn looked at Jacob and nodded approvingly.

"You're not just looking," he said quietly, "you're seeing."

"Yes, sir," Jacob said uncertainly.

"Jacob, you're looking at something you've known your entire life but you're seeing it with new eyes."

"Yes, sir?"

"Your question again."

Jacob considered, looked back at their little whitewashed church, looked back at his father.

"My question, sir."  Jacob frowned. "Sir, you've had to deal with right unpleasant sorts and you can still be polite."

Linn nodded. "You've grown up watching that, Jacob. You've been polite all your own life, even when you yourself have dealt with folk we'd not have at the dinner table."

"Yes, sir."

"But you looked at me and realized that quality in me."

"Yes, sir."

Linn lay a fatherly hand on his son's shoulder, looked the lean young man in the eye.

"It's because you and I have dealt with truly bad people," he said softly, "that we know the value of good manners."

"Yes, sir."

Linn looked left, swinging pale eyes over the street, and Jacob saw amusement slip into his father's expression.

"Besides" -- he lowered his voice, as if imparting a confidence -- "when aggravatin' folks try and aggravate us, and we don't get aggravated, why, it makes 'em mad!"

Jacob's grin was quick, momentary, there-and-gone, but in that moment he filed the idea away for use as necessary, for he saw the truth in it.

 

"Daddy?"

Marnie Keller tilted her head, the way a little girl will when she's puzzling on something.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

Marnie watched her Daddy roll back from his desk, open his arms:  she stood, her red cowboy boots strutted her across his office, presenting her so her big strong Daddy could take her under the arms and hoist her onto his lap.

She turned to face him, her face serious.

"Daddy, that was a ver-ryy bad man," she said in as serious a voice as a little girl with pale blue eyes can manage.

Linn laughed, quietly, nodded: "You could say that," he agreed, and Marnie blinked several times, shifted restlessly, leaned against her Daddy's chest, gave a great, oversized sigh, contenting herself with the feel of her Daddy's arms, warm and strong and reassuring around her, then she twisted again, pushed away, looked with -- well, she almost looked surprised as she said "But Daddy, you were nice!"

Linn's eyebrows raised and he tried his very best Innocent Expression, which as usual didn't work.

"How's that, darlin'?"

"He was loud an' he called you anythin' but decent," Marnie protested, "an' you called him sir an' you never even raised your voice!"

"You're right," Linn affirmed.  "I didn't. There was no need. If I spoke quietly, he'd have to work to hear me, an' that would make him mad, and if a man gets mad he'll make a mistake, and when he made a mistake I took him to the ground."

Marnie tried to look Very Grown Up and Mature as she admonished, "He deserved it!"

Linn chuckled again, hugging his little girl to him:  he bent his head down, whispered into her little pink ear, "He deserved a bath in the nearest horse trough!" and Marnie giggled: they both looked up as the door opened, as Sharon, the dispatcher, came in.

"The State Police will be here in an hour to pick up the prisoner," she said, looking at Marnie, happily leaned against her big strong Daddy.

Linn looked at the dispatcher and deadpanned, "Nothin' to see here, darlin', just a greying old Sheriff carousin' with a younger woman!"

Sharon shook her head, muttered something about two million comedians out of work and he's got to come along, and closed the door behind her.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JACOB KELLER, NOT ON YOUR LIFE!

 

It wasn't that unusual for one or another of the several of the pale eyed Keller clan to ride to church, instead of arriving in their usual Jeep.

It was not a rare thing to see a lean waisted man, or a pretty girl, swing down from saddle leather in Sunday-go-to-meetin's, nor was it out of the ordinary for a huge, curly furred Bear Killer to come padding silently into church with them -- though in fairness, The Bear Killer was generally received with a greater overt enthusiasm, especially by the very young ... and, deeper into the church service, The Bear Killer was a known soother of fussy babies, to the amusement of their sky pilot, who more times than one diverged briefly from a Sunday sermon to remark about making a joyful noise unto the Lord, when a fussy baby began wailing inconsolably, until a surprisingly gentle canine howl -- more a soothing "Oooooooooooo" -- harmonized with the child's voiced distress, almost always bringing a look of surprise from the infant, and a cessation of juvenile vocalizations.

Jacob Keller sat with his family, as was his habit: he was not yet sweet on a girl, though his parents discussed the eventual ignition of his pilot light, and agreed that when his automatic pilot took over, Katie bar the door, they might have their hands full.

Jacob tended to play his cards close to his vest, so to speak, in such matters: he stood when his family stood, sang when his family sang, sat when his family sat, arrived when his family arrived, and departed when his family departed.

Linn watched with deceptively quiet eyes as his son worked his way over to a young lady about his age, spoke quitely with her, Stetson in hand: Jacob was as immaculate with Hat Etiquette as his pale eyed father, and as he spoke with this pretty lass, his skypiece was correctly tucked under his arm.

Shelly, too, noted his absence: she turned, unobtrusively locating their son; she looked at her husband, saw the Sheriff was already studying the situation, in between sweeps of his vigilant gaze: Shelly's grip tightened a little on her husband's arm, and his hand came reassuringly over her knuckles: "Wait," he said softly, and Shelly felt that uncertain fear that every mother fears when she sees that her son is looking at a girl differently than he ever had.

Jacob's eyes smiled as Victoria tilted her head a little, looked past him at the Appaloosa grazing in the little park between their church and the restored schoolhouse:  "You rode a horse to church?"

"Beats walkin'," Jacob said dryly.  "I can arrange an introduction."

"He's beautiful," she breathed, then she looked at Jacob uncertainly.  "But ... does he bite?"

"Sure does," Jacob grinned.  "Why, he took a travelin' salesman's hand off clear up to the elbow."

Victoria's eyes widened, then narrowed skeptically: "Jacob Keller," she said warningly, and Jacob's hand slipped around hers, tightened gently:  "C'mon, we can ride double!"

She felt her heart quicken -- what girl doesn't want to ride a genuine Western stallion behind a well-dresssed, good-looking young man? -- they turned, went around the other side of the church, around its back:  Jacob released her hand, she heard a sharp, metallic snap: as if summoned, the Appaloosa stallion came around the corner of the church, head up, ears forward, the very image of attention, of interest.

Jacob sliced thick shavings of molasses cured tobacco off a plug, held them out on a flat palm:  the stallion lipped them off his hand, Jacob rubbed the stallion's ears, patted his warm, furred neck.

"Apple, this is Victoria," he said formally.  "Victoria, this is Apple.  He's a friend of mine."

Victoria held back, a little uncertain.

Jacob thrust an immaculately-polished boot into the black doghouse, swung up with the easy power of lean young legs, settled into saddle leather: he opened his mouth, extending a hand, ready to invite his girl aboard, at least until Apple decided it was time to show off.

The stallion took Jacob by surprise: he locked his legs around the Apple's barrel by reflex, and barely that: the first buck drove a shock up his spine, snapped his teeth together: he caught his Stetson as the shaped felt launched off his head, swatted Apple fore and aft with his brim-gripped cover, wishing he had claws in his backside to grab the saddle with:  man and horse contested, each one very good at what they did:  Victoria backed up, eyes wide, shocked, as Apple's steelshod hooves punished the cold sod, as he ducked, kicked, twisted, sunfished, jumped: he came down hard on his side, Jacob's right boot hit the ground flat footed, his left still in the port side doghouse: he was still in the saddle as Apple thrashed upright:  Victoria's hand clapped over her mouth as Apple spun, an insane, furry top, as the horse stopped, forelegs spread, head down: the stallion jumped straight up, but no more than a hand's breadth, before shaking himself as if shivering off a horsefly, then as Jacob settled his Stetson on his shining-clean hair, the stallion minced daintily over to the wide-eyed, shocked-silent, staring girl, lowered his head, begging for attention.

Victoria stroked his velvety nose uncertainly, looked up at the grinning Jacob.

He kicked his left boot free of the doghouse, leaned down, hand extended:  "Climb on!" he invited.

Victoria honestly did not see that at least half the congregation was behind Jacob, staring, grinning, nodding, laughing:  all Victoria saw was a whirlwind on four hooves, an insane, self-propelled machine designed to launch the unwary into the stratosphere, or worse.

"Climb aboard?" she squeaked, then planted her knuckles on her hips and declared loudly, "Jacob Keller, not on your life!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

LEFT HAND, RIGHT HAND

The Deacon's Bench in front of the Sheriff's office was the frequent home of a variety of folk: loafers, liars, tellers of tall tales, whittlers, spitters, the Sheriff, the Parson, ranchers, miners, railroad engineers -- a broad cross section of Firelands' backsides polished the Deacon's Bench at one time or another, and when it was populated, it often got kind of ... well, it generally got rather deep, and rather quickly.

Subjects under discussion ranged from weather to women, fast draw to fires, weaponry to women, knives to kindnesses, wax candles to women ... did I mention that women were a favorite subject of discussion? -- didn't want to leave that one out.

A particular schoolboy dropped his hind quarters firmly beside the Sheriff, who was frowning at the box elder twig he was working on: the schoolboy watched, fascinated, as the Sheriff fashioned a whistle, gave it a test tweet, frowned, made a miniscule adjustment to the slanted hole, tried again, nodded his satisfaction.

He handed it to the boy and said quietly, "Don't blow this in school or Miz Sarah will cloud up and rain all over you."

The big-eared lad grinned happily, short legs swinging as he regarded his freshly-whittled prize.

Linn hunched over, elbows on his knees, turning his head slowly, swinging his pale eyed gaze up the street: the boy could not see the man's eyes were busy, picking out places where a man might lay ambuscade, might wait with a rifle, might skulk or try to look like he wasn't hiding when he really was: satisfied that no such skulkers lay to the up hill, he looked to the down hill.

Linn looked at the lad.  "You splittin' much wood these days?" he asked gently.

"Yes, sir," the lad grinned:  he had a tooth missing, the new one just coming through the gum line recently vacated by its predecessor.  "Ma had me fill the wood box this mornin'."

Linn nodded.  "I did the same," he said in a gentle voice.

The lad's eyes widened.  "Your Ma makes you fill the wood box?" he asked in a surprised, little-boy's voice, and Linn laughed, ran his arm around the lad's shoulders, hugged him a little, released.

"Worse than that," he affirmed, looking across the street at the Silver Jewel, then runnning his gaze up to the window where the Z&W's corporate office lived:  "if I don't keep that wood box filled, why, the hired girl and my wife would gang up on me and drive me through the floor like a fence post!"

"Really?" came the breathy, awe-struck reply, and Linn laughed again, something few saw in public, something that was safe to share with a little boy:  "Why of course," he replied.  "They'd each take 'em a fryin' pan and commence to takin' turns hittin' me over the head just like two gandy dancers spikin' down a rail!"

"Ow," the schoolboy said sympathetically.  "That would hurt!"

"Once they were done with that," Linn added,"they'd make me fix the hole in the floor where they drove me plumb through it!"

Miz Sarah popped out of the double doors of their little whitewashed schoolhouse across the street, for all the world like a cuckoo bird out of a German clock:  she stepped out, schoolbell in hand, looked around:  she saw her pale-eyed Papa sitting on the Deacon's bench with one of her young charges, she looked around at children approaching the schoolhouse, at others busy at marbles or tag or mumblety-peg beside the tidy, whitewashed building:  Miz Sarah raised the handbell, swung it briskly:  at its clear, shining cl-clang, cl-clang, the boy fairly levitated off the Deacon's bench, running before his feet hit the ground:  he ran with a child's careless abandon across the lightly-rutted dirt street, joining the tide of youthful scholars responding to Miz Sarah's morning summons.

Linn's eyes tightened at the corners, all the smile he allowed to show as they clustered around Miz Sarah like a bunch of chicks around a hen:  she turned, her young flock flowing in around her, and before she drew the double doors shut, she turned, raised a hand in greeting, and Linn's heart swelled at her smile, shining and pink-cheeked in the long caressing rays of morning's sun.

A child of his loins she might be,  but she was still a beautiful young woman, a young woman Linn loved fiercely and protectively.

The schoolboy was not the only morning visitor to the Deacon's bench.

Morning's sun warmed the bench and the Sheriff's shins; other men, older and younger, joined him, spoke, departed: lies and information were traded, tales spun, there were coarse jests, laughter, the usual manly raillery, but in this wise the Sheriff came across a surprising amount of information, and part of that information was thanks to preparation he'd made, asking discreet questions here there and yonder.

Thanks to information he'd gathered a week before, he handed one of the lean young men an envelope and gave him a quiet voiced instruction: the younger man listened, solemn-faced, to the Sheriff's instructions, nodded: coin slid from the Sheriff's callused hand to the young man's leather-gloved palm, disappeared:  later that day, a freight wagon drew up in front of a young widow's home, and two strong young men began unloading firewood, stacking it neatly where the widow's husband used to rick it up close to the house, close at hand against winter's oncoming cold.

The widow's hand went to her mouth as she was handed an envelope, as she opened the envelope, as she read the "Paid in Full" written on the delivery slip: she did not see another of the young men, working quickly, quietly, while she was distracted, stacking canned goods and sacks of flour and coffee at her front door:  it wasn't until the freight wagon was pulling away, not until after the young widow was gone back inside as the dray-horse swung the wagon around, that there was a sudden, urgent knock at the front door:  before she got to the door to answer the alarm, a grinning young man sprinted after the freight-wagon, seized the tailgate, soared over the smooth, painted boards and landed, laughing and awkward, in the now-empty wagon bed, flattening himself out so he'd not be seen by the staring, surprised widow-woman.

 

The next day, instead of running for home after school, the same schoolboy came over and looked at the Sheriff, puzzlement in his expression and a question in his voice.

Linn had just emerged from his office and saw the lad approach: something told him a conference was requested, and so he stood to receive his young guest.

"Sheriff," he said, "Miz Sarah said something about a Dutchman named Sinterklaas and she said you knew him."

Linn laughed, squatted so he would be closer to the lad's eye level.

"I know the man," he said.

"Well ... Miz Sarah said Sinterklaas was the one who brought Mama a wagon load of wood an' a bunch of dry goods."

Linn nodded.  "He's been known to do that."

"Sheriff" -- the boy frowned, shuffled his feet uncertainly, the way an impatient little boy will -- "that Sinterklaas feller has been kind of busy this year."

"How's that?"

The boy looked at him, trying to puzzle some things together, throwing them out on the air so they could both see how they sounded.

"Our fence busted down an' we didn't get it fixed but it got fixed an' our cows back in where they'd got out an' there's a new milk cow with 'em an' Mama said she got a bill of sale for it that said paid in full an' she never bought it an' she made me a new shirt an' she said they was a bolt of cloth showed up on her porch an' --"

He wrinkled his nose, frowned, looked at the Sheriff with his head tilted over and one eye screwed shut.

Linn raised a teaching finger, winked.

"That-there Sinterklaas feller," he said, "was a Dutchman a lot of years ago that ..."

Linn dropped his head, considered, then looked back up at the boy.

"He was a rich man who knew who the poor folk were. Come Christmas time, why, he loaded up goodies for the folks that didn't have much and he delivered 'em, he'd drop a sack full of goods at their door, he'd beat on their door and run.  Might be folks heard about his example and allowed as they'd Sinterklaas someone that needed some help."

"Sheriff" -- the boy looked at the lean, pale eyed lawman with a troubled expression -- "do you reckon that Sinterklaas fella can bring me my Pa back?  I miss him somethin' fierce."

Linn rolled forward, dropped his knees to the dusty boardwalk, took the lad in a fatherly embrace.

A lean old lawman who knew what it was to lose people he loved, held a shivering little boy who knew what it was to lose a father.

"I don't know, son," he whispered, "but I do know good things happen.  Reckon we'll have to wait and see."

Linn held the boy as long as the boy wanted held, then he slacked his grip, pulled a bedsheet hankie out of his sleeve:  he wiped the wet from the schoolboy's cheeks, pinched material over his nose and said gently, "Blow," and then he wiped the lad's blown-clean beak, tucked the kerchief in the lad's coat's breast pocket.

"Go on home now," the Sheriff almost whispered.  "I reckon your Mama has supper waitin'."

 

Jacob watched silently as his father rolled back onto the balls of his feet, stood, brushed the dust off his knees.

Linn turned.

"Is he there now?" he asked, and Jacob nodded.

Linn grinned.  "That little boy will think that Sinterklaas fella must be magic."

Jacob nodded.  "Reckon so, sir."

"How long has he been sweet on the Widow Hinkle?"

"Since before she was married, sir."

"I reckon she'll fix him supper."

"Reckon so, sir."

"He lost his wife and little boy back East."

"Yes, sir."

"Looks like they'll pair up pretty well."

Jacob looked long at his father.

"You arranged it, sir."

He said it was a statement, not a question.

Linn looked his firstborn in the eye and nodded.

"Yes, Jacob.  I arranged a widow who misses her husband, and a widower who misses his wife and child."

"And you've kept her in wood and groceries when she didn't have two pesos to rub together."

"Yep."

"You had me round up her stray herd and fix the fence once they were back inside."  Jacob's eyes tightened a little at the corners, all the smile he was allowing himself.

"You never did let her know where all that come from."

Linn laughed, clapped a hand on his son's shoulder:  "Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth, Jacob. When it comes to charity, why, I like to be sneaky."  He winked confidentially and added, "It's more fun that way!"