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GILEAD

Tilly stood in the doorway and watched the Sheriff pace by on his shining gold stallion.

Normally it was a sight to quicken a woman's heart:  a tall, handsome man in a well-fitted suit, a man who rode erect and with confidence, a man whose head was erect, his gaze direct and challenging, a man who could look anyone in the eye and say without words, "Jump right on, mister, and I will stomp you into the dirt!"

This lean-waisted horseman, this lawman with the iron grey mustache, rode with a hard-jawed determination, rode with purpose, and a deadly purpose, if she was any judge: her breath caught in her throat and her hand raised to her lips as she realized his face was tight, and pale, the way it was when he'd been obliged to treat another soul most unkindly.

Tilly knew the Sheriff was a hard man, a bad man in Western parlance -- that is, a bad man to tangle with -- she'd seen Sheriff Linn Keller with his fuse lit, and she didn't ever want that cannon pointed at anyone she knew! -- but he was past the Silver Jewel, and gone, and Tilly backed up a step, shut the ornate door with frosted-glass curlicues in its panes, shut out the terrible sight of a hard-eyed man who'd just released a soul -- or souls -- from this worldy existence, and would likely turn around and do it again.

The saloon-piano played a brisk and merry tune, men arranged cards, tossed poker chips conservatively or carelessly, as was their wont; she heard laughter, she saw layers of pipe and cigar and hand-rolled smoke layering deep in the Saloon, and she smoothed her skirts under her and sat, trying to dismiss the generall feeling of disquiet, and having no luck in the effort.

Tilly looked up, turned, looked into the saloon as another lean waisted man stood: like his father, Jacob wore a well-fitted black suit; like his father, his handlebar mustache was carefully curled; like his father, he was reserved, pleasant, immaculately polite: was he not a married man, and she not a married woman, Tillie would have considered approaching either father, or son:  at the dances, she indulged momentary fancies, as she danced with one pale-eyed lawman, then the other, imagining herself the wife of such an iron willed husband -- then she blinked, and the moment's reverie was shattered.

Jacob nodded to Mr. Baxter, looked at Tillie, touched his hat brim, hesitated, frowned.

"Is all well?" he asked quietly, and Tillie dropped her eyes, nodded, then looked up, toward the ornate doors.

"The Sheriff," she said, then looked at Jacob.

She saw the muscles tighten in his jaw as he waited for her to finish her thought.

"He rode in with purpose," Tillie concluded, lifting her chin:  Jacob's eyes were suddenly, distinctly pale, and he turned, seized the door's knob, turned it viciously, pushed.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller drew up at the home he shared with his beautiful bride and their several children.

He dismounted, a small, blanket wrapped bundle carefully cradled to his chest.

His eyes were pale and hard, his jaw set, his step was firm and with obvious purpose: his young drew back, for they knew these signs meant their Papa had a purpose, and none dared interfere, as much as they wished to shout joyfully and beg for his embrace, for his laugh.

Linn's boot heels were loud on the hallway's rugs and flooring:  the hired girl looked around the corner, surprised:  "Sor?" she asked, and Linn lifted his chin.

"Alfdis," he said, the single word clipped, almost bitten off.

The hired girl turned, nodded to a room off to the side.

Linn's pace never wavered in its measured cadence.

Alfdis, the wet-nurse, was happily powdering and diapering one of the youngest of her charges.

Alfdis delighted in her role in the household; she was a motherly sort, of generous proportions, a favorite of the children, and her especial skill was tending the youngest of the Keller tribe.

It was a standing joke between the red-headed Irish fire chieftain, and the pale-eyed old Sheriff, that each accused the other of siring a whole doggone brigade, and no doubt Sean would accuse Linn of cheating.

If that's the case, Linn thought, so be it.

Linn handed the blanket wrapped bundle to Alfdis, who unwrapped a little baby boy, obviously newly born:  she looked up, surprised.

"Mother's dead," Linn said, his voice tight. "I tied the cord with strips from his Mama's petticoat."

Alfdis unwrapped the child and looked him over, then bundled him back up and set him to her breast, where the lad made it quite evident that he hadn't had a meal for nine months and was fully intent on making up for lost time.

Linn heard rapid boot heels coming down the hallway:  Jacob stepped into the room, sidestepped out of the doorway, getting a wall to his back.

"Sir?" he asked, and Linn turned, laid a hand on Jacob's shoulder.

"Jacob," he said quietly, "may I introduce my youngest son, Gilead."

Jacob looked at the dark-haired lad at Alfdis's ample bosom, and Sheriff and wet-nurse both silently noted the change in the Sheriff's firstborn son's expression:  Jacob was like his Pa, he had a liking for the young of any species, and like his Pa, he regular made a damned fool of himself, playing with his own young, or any that might come into his personal sphere of influence.

"Gilead," the Sheriff said to the feeding infant, "this is your brother Jacob."

Gilead offered no comment.

"Reckon he's busy," Jacob said quietly.

Linn took Jacob's arm; two men turned, slipped out of the room, drew the door to behind.

Sheriff Linn Keller, blooded and bloodied veteran of That Damned War -- Sheriff Linn Keller, a hard man who knew what it was to keep the peace and maintain order, peacefully or otherwise -- Sheriff Linn Keller, who knew what it was to face up to and face down a variety of large and angry people bearing a variety of weapons -- Sheriff Linn Keller sagged back against the wall, pulled off his Stetson, dropped his head back against dark-varnished wood, his eyes distant, almost lost.

Jacob waited, his eyes never leaving his father's face.

Linn raised his hands, looked at them, turned them over, turned them again.

"Draw me some warm water," Linn said, "about a half gallon. Fetch it out to the wash pan."

"Yes, sir."

Linn turned, strode down the hallway toward the kitchen -- the hired girl drew back at their approach -- Jacob turned as they passed, raised a forestalling palm, winked, whispered "It's all right, Mary," then he picked up a kettle, tapped hot water out of the stove's reservoir, followed his father outside.

Linn had his coat off, hung on a handy post:  he was pumping fresh water into the wash basin, slung out half:  Jacob carefully decanted the rest of the volume, watched as his father seized the hand pressed cake of lye soap, drove his hands into the steaming water, watched as his father absolutely viciously laved his hands.

Linn snatched the scrub brush off its hook, brutally scoured his fingernails -- both from the fingertips, and then from the sides -- as if getting off some invisible gore -- he sandpapered his knuckles red -- he hung up the scrub brush, SLAMMED the lye soap back onto its wooden holder, slung the washwater out into the yard and drove another volume from the backyard pump into the basin.

Jacob dumped the rest of his kettle into the washbasin.

Linn washed his hands a second time -- he was shaking now -- his breathing was fast, almost gasping, his eyes wide and staring:  he scrubbed his hands briskly, sloshed the soap off, then pumped water onto one hand, then the other, snatched up the sun-bleached flour sack towel, dried his hands, his expression that of a man trying hard to contain himself.

Jacob set the kettle down, waited.

Linn stopped, closed his eyes, took a long breath and blew it out:  he rolled his shirt sleeves back down, fast up the cuffs, plucked his coat off the post, shrugged into sleeves, worked his shoulders, buttoned it closed.

"Walk with me."

Father and son paced up the wooden stairs to the small porch off the back door; they came inside, and Linn went directly to the hired girl, took her carefully by the elbows with an intentionally gentle grip.

"I startled you earlier," he said in a gentle voice.  "I'm sorry. You've done nothing wrong."

He turned, looked at the several young faces regarding him solemnly from the hallway.

Linn went to one knee, opened his arms, and was instantly swarmed by happy young humanity.

 

Father and son raised delicate crystal balloons in salute, then raised them and took a ceremonial sip of distilled California sunshine.

They lowered their drink:  Linn considered the swirling gold in his delicate snifter, smiled.

"Jacob," he said, "I've had cheap brandy."

"Yes, sir."

"It tasted like kerosine."

"Yes, sir."

Linn laughed a little, looked up, looked out the window.

"Life is too short to drink cheap brandy, Jacob.  A man ought to treat himself as if he's worth something."

"Yes, sir."

"Now."  Linn drained the contents of his snifter, set the balloon back on its shelf.

"You are probably wondering how you inherited another little brother."

Jacob smiled, swirling his drink thoughtfully.  "I was wondering, sir," he said gently.

"Finish your brandy, we've work to do."

Jacob tilted up his snifter, took a short snort, took another.

"I was coming back from Carbon. The situation over there is taken care of, by the way."

"Yes, sir."

"I saw where a carriage left the road and Rey del Sol and I looked over the edge."

Jacob raised an eyebrow.

"Rey took off down that bank and he wasn't foolin' around."

"Which bank, sir?"

"You'll know it when you're over there next.  I'd never ask him to ride down something that damned steep but he went down it a-gallop and me and my guardian angel holdin' onto one another for fear both of us was about to die and damned if Rey didn't hit bottom and gallop out on the flat just nice as you please" -- Linn shook his head, laughed a little -- "if you take a look at it, please don't try it!"

"No, sir," Jacob said seriously.

"The horse was dead, the carriage all broken up.  The man was dying, neck broke, he was having trouble breathing, his wife's chest was crushed.  He said she was just gone into labor and please do something for her."

"Yes, sir?"

Linn was quiet for several long moments.

He raised his hands and looked at them again, turned them over.

"Jacob," he said, "the mother was dead but I felt the baby move inside of her so I cut her open and brought the child out."

Jacob's eyebrow raised again.

"I've helped deliver babies -- didn't want to, but warn't anyone else to help -- I got it breathin' and I cut strips off its dead Mama's petticoat to tie the cord, and I cut the cord and bundled the little fellow up and by then the man was dead too."

Jacob nodded.

"His last breath ... he asked my help, and I ... wasn't a thing I could do for the woman."

"No, sir."

Linn closed his eyes, took a long breath.

"I have seen too much of death, Jacob."

"Yes, sir."

"I've no idea why they went over the bank. Wheel could have broke, the horse could've shied, hell I don't know -- "

Linn passed the back of his hand over his eyes, chewed on his bottom lip.

"I cut open a woman's belly," he said, his voice and his eyes both hollow, almost lost.

"You saved a life, sir.  You brought life out of death itself."

Linn nodded, looked at Jacob.

"Hell of a way to gain a son."

"Yes, sir."

Linn frowned, looked at the floor, looked up at his son.

"I reckon we'd best go tell your Mama."

"Yes, sir."

 

Father and son strode boldly into the Silver Jewel, and men drew back as they came in, two men with purpose, two men with curled mustaches and well-fitted suits.

Two men stood up to the bar, each set his well-polished left boot up on the brass foot rail.

Linn fetched out a poke, opened it, dumped it over, producing a minor cascade of hard coin.

"Mr. Baxter," he said quietly, "drinks on the house."

Father and son turned and went past Tilly's hotel counter, turned, went upstairs.

Esther Keller rose from her desk, turned, folded her hands very properly in her apron as her husband and eldest son came in.

Sheriff Linn Keller and his lookalike son swept off their Stetsons, tucked them very correctly under their off arm, stood tall and confident in the owner-manager's office of the Z&W Railroad.

"My dear," Linn said firmly, "I have news."

Esther stepped forward, placed her palms on her husband's broad chest, looked up into his pale eyes:  Linn held his wife and smiled a little, a smile he reserved for her and for her alone.

"I have a son," he whispered.

Jacob saw his Mama's eyes widen, and he offered no comment as Linn explained to his wife the occurrences of the morning:  husband and wife embraced with delight, then Esther looked over at Jacob.

"Have you seen him?" Esther asked, and Jacob grinned, shifted his weight.

"Yes, ma'am," he said quietly, "and I am looking forward to teaching him the brotherly things that are incumbent upon my office."

"Jaaacooobbb," Esther said, a warning note in her voice, belied with the laughter in her eyes and the knowing expression of her face.

Jacob gave her his best Innocent Expression.

"Mother," he said formally, "I am the Oldest Brother.  It is my place to teach him to whistle, to whittle, how to spit, spin yarns, throw rocks and green apples --"

Esther sighed, shook her head, looked at her husband.

Linn squeezed her hands.  "We have to get Digger and fetch out the dead wagon, and I need to find out who they were and from whence they came."
Esther nodded, patted her husband's hand.

Father and son trooped down the stairs, pushed open the ornated, polished-brass-trimmed doors.

 

 

 

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CONFERENCE

The Deacon's Seat had known many backsides.

Some belonged to men more at home in the saddle, come to take their ease on a deck that didn't move, shaded by the split-shake roof run out over the boardwalk in front of the Sheriff's office.

Hardy souls sat there, pretending an imperviousness to cold, sheltered from snow when the winds were calm; men of business were known to take their ease, in conference with one another, or the pale eyed Sheriff, or whoever else might have migrated to this welcoming resting-place.

The Sheriff wiped it down of a morning, disposing of dust settled in since the last cleaning; it was, after all, right on the street, and the street was dirt, and in dry weather, dust was a part of life: visiting backsides kept it clean, to a degree, but not reliably.

High and low, rich and beggarly, resident and transient, at one time or another, were seen on the Deacon's Bench, and where two or more were gathered, it generally got kind of deep, for where men congregate, tales are told, lies are crafted, jests and coarse laughter shared, and so universal and catholic was the visiting cross section thereon, that the Sheriff was not at all surprised to see a schoolboy sitting on the Deacon's Bench.

The lad held an open book and his face held a studious frown, and the Sheriff, a father himself, came over and eased his bony backside down onto the polished smooth bench seat.

"Learnin' anything?" the Sheriff asked, his voice gentle, and the boy looked up at him.

"I can't read much, Sheriff," he admitted.

"Are you lookin' for anythin' pa'tickelar?"

The boy's eyes raised to the whitewashed schoolhouse, across the dirt street and diagonally downhill from the Sheriff's office.

"Miz Sarah said all the knowledge in the world is in books," he said, "and I want some of it!"

Linn nodded slowly.  "She's right," he said quietly.  "My Pa told me the very same thing."

The boy looked at him quickly, the way a lad will when he realizes he's just received corroboration on a theory.

"How much of this can you read?" Linn asked, laying his arm across the back of the bench, above the boy's shoulders.

"Just the little words."

"Can you make much sense of what you can read?"

"Not really."

"Well, now, let's take a look here.  May I?"

The boy surrendered the book to the Sheriff's fatherly hands.

Linn marked the place with careful fingers -- the boy noticed white lines crisscrossing the Sheriff's fingers, and looked at his own, marked in an identical manner from mistakes made with a Barlow knife -- Linn closed the cover, read the title, nodded, opened the book again.

"History of the United States," he said.  "That is an important book."

"That's what Miz Sarah said," the boy affirmed.

"Do you know what you're looking at -- this page, here?"

"No, sir."

"This here is the Ohio and Erie Canal.  It's talking about Irishmen digging that big ditch with hand shovels and how they were able to float cargo and settlers here, there and yonder.  See this?"

His finger rested momenarily on the copperplate engraving of a map: he knew the outline, for it was familiar to him; within, squiggly lines, some running along the south shore of the northern border, others running the length of the state.

"Yes, sir."
"Know what it is?"

"No, sir."

"This used to be the West," Linn said.

"Huh?"  The boy's nose screwed up a little as his face wrinkled up in a little boy's puzzlement.

"Do you know what Ohio is?"

"No, sir. I think I heard Miz Sarah talk about it maybe."

Linn nodded, closed the book.

"Come with me."

He rose, the boy following:  the two went into the Sheriff's office.

"Pull up a chair, here beside mine."  Linn went to a cabinet with broad, shallow drawers, opened one, another, pulled out a large sheet of paper.

"This," he said, settling the large sheet on his desk top, "is a map of the You-Nited States."
The boy leaned forward, hands turned backward, gripping the smooth, rounded edge of the Sheriff's desktop.

"Here's the East Coast.  Atlantic Ocean.  Nation's capital, Washington, DC.  Here" -- his finger thumped on a light-blue-tinted area -- "that is Lake Erie.  This under it, recognize the shape?"

The boy blinked, opened his book again, laid it open on the map, compared the two.

"That's it?"

"That," Linn said, "is Ohio.  Now we are clear ... out ... here."

His finger traced westward, thumped again, on a hand-drawn squarish shape.  "Here we are, in the Shining Mountains. These lines here are railroads. These are rivers. Now I don't have the Ohio and Erie Canal system drawn in here, but you have them in your book."

The boy was looking from one to the other, frowning, trying to justify the disparity in size between the two.

"This country is an awful lot bigger than a man would realize," Linn said quietly.  "You're Joe Adam's boy."

"Yes, sir.  Michael, like the Archangel."

Linn stuck out his hand.  "Pleased to meet you, Michael, and that is a fine name indeed."

Michael grinned, that sudden bright grin of a delighted boy, and he took the Sheriff's hand the way he'd seen his own Pa shake hands.

"Now.  Let's go back out on the Deacon's bench and see if we can't rassle some knowledge out of this book."

Ranchers, miners, business owners and a pale eyed schoolmarm, at one time or another that day, looked over at the front of the Sheriff's office.

Every last one of them counted it a good thing indeed that this chief law enforcement officer, this hard-eyed keeper of the Law, could still sit with a young schoolboy, and help the lad explore the wonders to be found in the printed word.

Michael grew, as all boys do; he became a man, a husband, a father and grandfather; he never rose to any great office of influence or power, he never became a tycoon or a business magnate, but even as an old man, sitting with his grandsons on either side of him and a book open on his lap, he never, ever forgot what it was for a lean old lawman to tell him, with actions instead of words, that he, Michael, was worth it -- worth the time -- that this skinny, pale eyed old Sheriff thought him important enough, to help him explore the marvels, the wonders, the worlds and the adventures, to be found in a book.

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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THE WOMAN IN THE PORTRAIT

It was not often that a New York banker came to Firelands.

It was not often that a worldly man, someone who'd rubbed shoulders and shaken hands with rich, powerful and influential folk from many nations, came to an honest and astonished stop.

It was an equally rare moment when such a man walked into a meeting of the Ladies' Tea Society and found himself feeling something he very rarely -- very rarely -- felt.

He felt astonished.

The general sensation of the floor dropping out from underfoot was further compounded by the woman at the front, the woman behind the little podium, set up on a folding table, covered with a blue drape ... a woman who'd been dead for a century and a half.

She looked up from the podium, looked at him with those pale eyes he'd seen ten thousand times, those eyes he'd seen since childhood, hung there in his grandfather's office, then his father's office, and now his, the portrait of a woman who'd invested wisely, a woman who'd instructed how to invest the returns on her money.

A dead woman, whose portrait he'd studied countless times, alive, before him.

The same gown.

The same pale eyes.

The same feminine cast to her hand, as if she were about to speak to him.

And then she did.

"Mr. Baker," she smiled.  "So good of you to join us.  Tea?"

Charles Baker, banker and investor, a worldly man of influence and finance in his own right, opened his mouth and realized he was utterly without a response.

"Mr. Baker," Sheriff Willamina Keller smiled, "is the great-grandson of the banker with whom Sarah Lynne McKenna first consulted on matters of investment. Their partnership was most profitable, in spite of multiple embezzlements, the Great Depression, two wars and the petty interference of certain governmental entities.  Mr. Baker, I trust you've come to see the matter which concerned your bank's seminal investress the most?"

Charles Baker closed his mouth, swallowed, cleared his throat.

"Yes, that's right," he said, intending to sound powerful and decisive.

He didn't.

He squeaked.

Willamina flowed up to him, a steaming cup of fresh-brewed oolong in a decorated china cup:  she held it up, delicately, gloved fingers supporting it, her scent enveloping him ... lilac and sunshine, soap and a mountain breeze, and those eyes, those pale eyes he'd studied as a child, looking wise and beautiful from a portrait as tall as he'd been as a lad in a little boy's knee pants and oxfords ...

he felt himself swallowed by a mystery, enveloped in a cloud made up of the past and these mountains, these towering cathedrals with snowy shoulders and frosted caps ...

He drank, mechanically, warmth and fragrance saturating into his soul, steadying him: he'd run boardrooms, he'd faced up to and faced down rich and powerful men who sought his destruction, his ruin, men who'd sought to take over his bank, his bank! -- and he'd stopped them, stopped them with sheer force of will, with utter determination and with absolute ruthlessness.

None of that rallied to him now.

A screen hummed down from the ceiling; an anonymous hand on his shoulder guided him to a seat, he lowered himself as this woman from the portrait turned, gestured to the first image on the screen.

"Just after the mid-1880s," Willamina smiled, "the Town Marshal and his wife sat down with the Sheriff and his wife, a woman of commerce, of business, and a family friend."  She turned.  "On the left, Sheriff Linn Keller; beside him, with the emerald brooch, his wife, Esther; on her left, Bonnie McKenna, owner of a dress-works, and beside her, Bonnie's daughter, Sarah."

She turned, faced her roomful.

"Sarah had already approached the Sheriff and his wife with her concerns.

"It seems that even in the 1880s, school nutrition was a concern -- as Sarah observed, the mind will absorb, but not on an empty belly."  She smiled, lowered her eyes, remembering, then looked at her audience and said, "I have a teenage son who seems to be a walking appetite on two hollow legs."

Charles Baker did not so much as smile as the Ladies' Tea Society laughed quietly: neither a wife, nor a family, suited him, and so he was still an unmarried man, though he'd heard from others' comments that the adolescent male was expensive to feed.  He registered the idea in terms of finances, of expense required; in listening to colleagues discuss the matter, he'd personally weighed cost-vs-benefit, and frankly he saw no profit in having a family of his own.

"Sarah Lynne McKenna was privy to very sound financial advice, and she had what we now call 'insider information' on silver mines, on railroads, on industry that might prove profitable.  Both her mother Bonnie, and her beloved Aunt Esther, were women with a nose for profit, and Sarah learned well from them both -- and from the Sheriff as well.

"Our guest, Mr. Baker, is owner of a New York bank that was founded on Sarah McKenna's monies.  Its initial entry into the financial world was springboarded by Sarah's investment instructions.  Once the bank entered into what a subsequent investor called 'a self-sustaining reaction,' Sarah's monies became a minor consideration when compared to the bank's total assets.

"Still, they continue to build profits, and one recipient of these profits is our own Firelands school system.  Mrs. Drake?"

Joanna Drake rose: her gown hid her foundations, of course, but both foundations and tailoring served to flatter her matronly figure, moreso than modern fashions: she adjusted her pince-nez spectacles and consulted a list held carefully in her gloved palm.

"To date," she said in response, "the Firelands School District has yet to avail itself of any Government funds for our school lunch programs. These were expanded to include breakfast, and ever since the Firelands School District was formally established -- even before, when it was a one-room schoolhouse, the one that stands today beside the Church -- we've fed our students, without a nickel out of Uncle Sam's pocketbook!"  She looked across the seated ladies' heads, gave the banker a challenging look.  "Which means we can actually feed our students!"

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna laughed as she threw the picnic cloth into the air: she held two corners, she snapped the floating cloth, guided it down to the ground: lunchtime with Miz Sarah was always popular, mostly because she had an enormous basket, and she handed out lunches liberally when it arrived.

Miz Sarah smiled at Daisy, pouring tea from the steaming tin coffeepot: Daisy was Sarah's partner in crime:  Daisy knew what it was to go hungry, and when a runner brought Daisy a head count for the day, she fixed a large basket with enough to feed hungry students, and generally extra:  Sarah paid Daisy more than fairly for her victuals, and Daisy brought the booty over personally, giving her a break from her perpetually busy kitchen in the back of the Silver Jewel.

Besides, Daisy was a mother herself: she dispensed a motherly glare when it was needed, she passed out little cakes for dessert, and her Irish heart fit to melted as grateful children hugged her, quickly, with a whispered "Thank you, Miz Daisy," before scampering back to the schoolroom.

 

"In researching journals, diaries, letters and other records of the era," Willamina smiled from behind the podium, "I found a sermon from the period that was very likely the impetus for Sarah McKenna's idea.  The sermon spoke of legacies, of memories, of how a man's life was brief, but his deeds live on after he does, and in examining correspondence between Sarah and Mr. Baker's honored ancestor, we have a good picture of the legacy she was forging."

 

Sarah sat regally in the straight-backed chair, looking from Michael Moulton, attorney-at-law, and Sheriff Linn Keller.

"Are you very sure this is where you want your fortunes to go?" Linn asked quietly.  "Not to your son?"

"My son left," Sarah said simply.  "He decided he was man enough to go, and go he did.  He will return and he will wish to make amends and he will find his return most futile."

Her words were quiet, without rancor, without bitterness, without heat: they were a beautiful young widow's statement of fact, emotionless words that dealt only with reality.

"In effect, gentlemen, I have no son with whom to invest my fortunes. I therefore choose to invest in something that will return beneficent dividends.  If my name is remembered with it, fine, if my name is forgotten, that's fine too."  

Sarah bit her bottom lip, took a long breath, closed her eyes.

"I know what it is to go hungry," she said softly.  "This will ensure the children of Firelands have at least that one meal a day."

She opened her pale eyes, looked from one man to the other.

"Yes, gentlemen.  This is where I want my fortune to go, and Mr. Moulton, you have my instructions for its investment."

Michael Moulton frowned, rested his upper lip on a bent forefinger.

"I know someone," he said slowly, "a classmate of mine.  Fellow named Baker.  Brilliant man, absolutely brilliant.  On a bet he took two bits and in a week's time he owned a saloon, another week and he had a cartage business and two more saloons."  He nodded.  "I'll arrange it."

Sarah rose.  "Then it's settled."

 

Charles Baker considered the ancient portrait on his office wall.

There was a portrait, in an envelope, on his secretary's desk.

It had yet to be seen.

The portrait was of a dignified older man in a severe but well tailored black suit, looking sternly at the camera.
On his arm, a beautiful, pale eyed woman, in a rich, shimmering blue gown and matching hat.

The picture was taken on a glass plate with a thick emulsion, with a long exposure time; it was formally posed, after the fashion of a century and  a half before.

A portrait on one wall of Charles Baker's office was of his grandfather, wearing just such a severely well-tailored suit; on the opposite wall, the portrait of his beautiful benefactress.

A third portrait was hung a year later, carefully placed where it could be easily seen:  it was of a black-suited banker, a blue-gowned woman, and this new portrait was hung by the new bride of a man who decided it was time to begin a legacy of his own.

 

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IT DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK

A soaking wet, water-dripping and thoroughly chilled Deputy Sheriff Linn Keller waited for the summons from within, before he gripped the antique, faceted-glass doorknob.

He turned the ancient doorknob and pushed open the equally ancient door.

Sheriff Willamina Keller looked at her son's knuckles as he came in, presented himself before her desk.

"I need to pay for a locker door," he said quietly.

Willamina looked at his bloodied knuckles, nodded: she closed her eyes, took a long breath, rose.

"Your grandfather," she said quietly, "came home one night with bloody knuckles.

"My mother was sotted -- as usual -- she gave him hell for brawling like a common hoodlum.

"I saw the hurt in his eyes, so I went up to him and took his sleeve and I said "Daddy, let's take care of that," and I helped him wash his knuckles and put peroxide on them and then bandage them."  She tilted her head a little, nodded.  "He'd had a bad one that night, and he'd punched a big dent in his locker door."

Linn nodded, looked at his pained flesh, opened his hand, closed it.

"Damned fool thing to do," he muttered.

"Yes it was," Willamina agreed.  

She tilted her head a little, came around her desk.

"Let's get that taken care of."

Her voice was less that of the Sheriff, and more of the mother:  to his credit, Linn did not flinch, hiss nor draw back as she poured peroxide over his injuries, as she carefully applied the white cream antibiotic, as she placed nonstick sterile dressings over them and wrapped them in place.

"You'll get questions," she said quietly.  "You can tell 'em the other guy came out in second place."

"Yes, ma'am."

Willamina gripped her son's wet shoulders, surprised at how warm he was through what had been a well saturated uniform.

"I'm proud of you," she said firmly, and Linn bit his bottom lip.

It had been a very long time since Willamina saw her child cry.

Something told her he was very close to it.

"We lost her, Mama," he whispered.  "I tried my best but we lost her."

Sheriff Willamina Keller did not hesitate.

Deputy or son, it did not matter: in that moment, he needed something other than words.

Willamina hugged her long tall son with a mother's fierceness, and a son hung onto his mother to keep from collapsing with grief.

 

The call didn't come through Dispatch, the alarm didn't arrive via radio.

Linn rolled down the cruiser's sideglass.

The air smelled clean, smelled of spring a-comin', and welcome that would be, after the winter they'd had.

Linn and Paul Barrents were cruising at a very modest speed up Fisher Ridge Road when Rita came running down the driveway at the top of her lungs, flapping her apron overhead:  Linn nailed the brakes, hauled the wheel hard left, turned up the driveway:  Rita skidded to a stop, ran back up the drive, and as Linn and Paul saw a car was missing a front wheel, a set of feet was sticking out from under and the jack was laying on the ground, they both uttered a certain profane and scatalogical word common to the emergency services upon realizing that the just-named compound, just hit the fan.

Two doors flew open, two deputies hit the ground at a full-on sprint.

One of the boys was trying to get the jack under the old car's brake drum:  Linn seized the jack, whipped it around into position, drove the flat plate into the ground:  he jerked the traveling hook up, then bellied down to look under.

Old Man Fisher was on his back, his forearm flat, pinned between a timber block and the steering crossarm.

"We'll get you out," Linn said, to which Fred replied with a fine string of most colorful invective, legacy of his career in the Merchant Marine:  translated, his lengthy string of profound language would probably translate to "Please do," but what he actually said involved three languages, a variety of impieties, two Voodoo curses and at least six acts which are not only physically impossible, but distasteful to contemplate:  when he got wound up, ol' Fred could heat the air like a coal furnace, and lying on the ground, his arm pinned with the full weight of a 40 year old car, one could correctly infer that the man was indeed inspired, given the warmth of his reply.

Linn clattered the jack up and wasted no time in doing it:  Paul went around back, kicked the rear wheel chocks to make sure they were in place, seized another good chunk:  as the weight came off Fred's forearm, Paul slid a chunk under the front axle, where the A-frame bolted on:  Fred wallowed out from under, sat up, leaned back against the car, threw his head back and yelled "GOD ALMIGHTY I NEED A BEER!"

Linn had, in that moment, though to himself He'll be fine, if he can cuss and yell for a beer he's golden, and Rita came running out of the house with a pint bottle of something amber and the cordless phone.

Linn looked up as Paul thrust the medic kit in his hands:  Linn unfast the straps, spun it open, ran his finger down the several pockets, pulled out an inflatable splint.

Fred lowered the pint.

"Now whattaya gonna do with that?"

"Fred, I reckon your arm's broke, this will splint it til you get to the Horse Pistol and get it fixed."

"My arm ain't broke, dammit!"

"I'll bet you a case of beer it is!" -- Linn's reply was calculated, as he knew Fred was a betting man, and the prospect of getting one over on a Sheriff's deputy was likely something he couldn't resist.

"You're on!"

"Good enough, let me know after they X-ray that."

Fred handed the pint back to his wife.  "Help me up," he said. "Mother, you're drivin'."

Linn brushed the dirt off the black-nylon roll-up kit, fast up the straps:  Rita fretted and asked if she should call for the squad, and Fred brushed her off; Linn gave the man a stern look and said "Fred, you let me know how bad that's broke, and if it ain't, the beer's on me."

If there was any doubt at all about the man going into ER, the doubt flew on the wind and was gone: at the prospect of winning a bet, Fred would've run barefoot down a bobwarr fence.

Linn and Paul backed their Suburban out of the driveway, waited until Rita and her profaning, arm-cradling husband were on their way:  they looked at one another, Linn pulled the shifter into gear and they both laughed.

"How," Linn asked, "do we get into these things?"

"Damned if I know," Paul admitted.

They continued along the ridge road:  Linn rolled his window down -- it was still chilly, but the air smelled clean, smelled of spring a-comin'.

Linn nailed the brakes and Paul's head snapped hard right at the scream.

"There!"

The Blazer threw dirt and gravel as Linn powered up the driveway.

Less than a mile from where Fred was pinned under a car, two deputies bailed out of their tan Suburban.

Linn vaulted the belt-high chain-link fence.

He shoved the mother back away from the pool, jackknifed and dove into the water.

There was a half-inch of ice on the pool, or was, before he blasted a man-sized hole in the deep end, but just before his twin fists piloted a hole for the rest of him to follow, another hole, considerably smaller, could be seen.

Linn stroked hard, straight down.

He seized a small form, something child sized, something with cloth floating around its waist -- part of Linn's mind recognized a little girl's skirt, floating in the deep end's cold water -- he got his arm around her, rotated, looked up.

Polished Wellington boots drove hard against the bottom of the swimming pool.

Linn roared to the surface, drove through thin ice, ran an arm over the lip of the pool:  he twisted, kicking against the side, searching desperately for something to push against: he twisted, Paul ran hiis arms into the cold water, took the child.

Linn seized the pool's cement gutter with both hands, dropped back down in, then hauled out, crawled out:  he snatched the child from Paul, broke her over his forearm like a shotgun, pushing on her water-distended belly.

The child threw up an impossible amount of secondhand lunch and mostly water.

Linn spun her around, laid her down, looked at his old and dear friend.

"AED and make the call," he said, his voice quiet:  he thrust a bladed hand at the mother:  "I NEED TWO BATH TOWELS, FAST!"

Linn tilted the child's head back, listened, his hand on her belly:  two breaths, two fingers on the cold flesh of her throat, pressing lightly, searching for the thrust of life against his fingertips.

Paul Barrents slapped a leather-gloved hand on top of the poolside fence, vaulted it easily, landed running, headed for the stern of their cruiser, for the lifesaving machine that was this child's only hope at living.

 

Willamina held her son as he shivered, as he held her tight enough she thought her ribs might crack: she felt him take a long breath, he slacked his grip, he looked down into his Mama's eyes.

"I did everything right," he whispered.  "Compressions ... at the right rate and the right depth, we got her chest dried off so the AED pads would stick, we ..."

He looked away, bit his bottom lip again, looked back.

"The squad worked her, Mama.  They worked her and we followed them into ER.

"I waited while ... they warmed her up, they didn't stop, they ..."

Willamina waited.

She already knew the child didn't make it.

She also knew that Linn had to face this and he had to push himself through it.

Willamina knew her son was no stranger to death and to life; he'd been first on scene at some truly terrible situations, he'd done his best in times past to keep someone's life from dribbling out from between his fingers, he'd done CPR on adults, he'd actually had a field save, something most of their medics hadn't yet achieved.

Linn closed his eyes, took a long breath: Willamina had the impression he was gathering his composure like he would settle a cloak in place around his shoulders.

"I did everything right," he said quietly, "and it didn't work."

"I know you did," Willamina said quietly.  "Sometimes ... sometimes it just doesn't work."

She tilted her head a little.

"Go get a hot shower and change into dry clothes.  Your shift ends in a half hour."

"Yes, ma'am." 

Linn turned, walked slowly toward the office door, stopped, turned.

"Thank you," he said quietly.  "I needed your ... counsel."

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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WORKING THE PERCENTAGES

Sheriff Linn Keller placed his pen very precisely along the right margin of his green desk blotter.

He leaned back in his wooden office chair -- carefully, so as not to get thrown again -- he looked toward the opening door.

"Now there," he said in a fatherly voice, "is a familiar face!"

Michael grinned, closed the door as Linn rose, came over to the pot belly stove, picked up the heavy crank:  the schoolboy watched as the Sheriff inserted the crank, shook down the ashes, then loaded some more firewood into the hungry bowl.

"Learn anything today?" he asked casually, knowing full well it was a question that generally caused young boys' minds to go instantly blank.

The lad responded almost the way Linn expected:  he did have that surprised look on his face, an expression that seemed to say "What did I learn?" -- then he frowned a little as a thought floated to the surface.

"Sheriff," Michael said hesitantly, "Miz Sarah said you're very brave!"

Linn laughed -- a rare thing, to allow someone outside his inner circle to see him relaxed enough to laugh -- he went down on one knee, more on a level with the schoolboy's eyes, and said quietly, "Miz Sarah thinks I'm brave?"

Michael nodded solemnly.  "She said you recht down a man's throat and grabbed his ankles and yanked him inside out and he ended up runnin' up the street buck nekked!"

Linn laughed, shook his head.

"She wasn't supposed to tell about that," he replied.  "Now if you want brave, why, I soldiered with some truly brave men!"

"Really?"  The combination of an adoring little boy's widening eyes and the breathy, worshipful voice, served to warn the Sheriff that if he did not tread carefully, he would end up talking his way into resembling the north end of a south bound horse:  the man nodded, gestured toward his desk.

"Grab a chair and drag it up beside mine, we'll talk 'er all over."

Eager young feet pattered industriously across the smooth puncheon floor, seized a chair, pushed it into place.

The Sheriff sat down -- carefully, clearly not trusting his seat -- he set his elbow on his desk top and looked at his young visitor.

"Miz Sarah said I'm brave, did she?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, she's a better judge than I am," he said thoughtfully, knowing this statement would increase Miz Sarah's stature in his eyes -- it was a calculated reply, as he wished to enhance Sarah's stature as a schoolteacher, and absolutely he did not want to diminish that status, even accidentally.

Linn frowned, considered.

"I've been told ninety percent of success is just showing up," he said slowly.

"Huh?"

"Do you know what ninety per cent is?"

The lad shook his head.

Linn frowned, raised a teaching finger.

"Have you taken Latin yet?"

The lad shook his head.

"Mmm.  Latin is a root language for most languages we know, except for Greek.  I don't reckon you've been taught Greek."

"No, sir."
"Neither have I.  Let's talk about Latin."

"Yes, sir."  The lad's brows puzzled together a little, for he didn't see the connection between being brave, and a language Miz Sarah referred to a couple times.

"Per cent," Linn explained, "is short for Per Centum, which is latin for 'out of a hundred.' Ninety percent, therefore, is ninety out of a hundred."  He winked.  "Therefore.  Like that word?  Traded a good saddle for it!"

Michael grinned, not entirely certain whether the Sheriff was funnin' him, or speaking fact.

Linn turned, reached up on a shelf, brought down a box of cartridges, opened it.

He began setting .44-40 rounds out on the desk top:  he set ten of them in a row, side by side, neatly and closely spaced.

"How many is that?" he asked.

Michael counted them as the lawman set 'em up and so was able to reply with an immediate "Ten, sir."

Linn nodded:  another row, a third; he had five rows of ten apiece, stopped.

"Is Miz Sarah teaching you numbers?" he asked.

Michael nodded.

"Are you multiplyin' yet?"

Michael shook his head.

Linn leaned a little closer to the schoolboy, lowered his voice.

"I'm gonna tell you a secret," he said, looked left and right as if to ensure neither cowans nor eavesdroppers were about:  "Michael, I'm kind of lazy."

"Huh?"  The lad's forehead and nose wrinkled up in puzzlement.

"How many have I set out here?"

"A full box, sir."

"How many in a box?"

"Fifty, sir."

"How many in each row?"

"Ten, sir."

"How many rows?"

"Five, sir."

Linn thrust his hand out over the metallic rows, pointed at the end cartridge:  "Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty."  He looked at the boy.  "Lots faster than counting one, two, three."

"Yes, sir."

"Let's count this way.  Five, ten, fifteen, twenty" -- he looked at Michael -- "again, lots faster than one, two, three."

Michael's eyes shone with new discovery.

"I'm too lazy to count these one at a time, but if I can count them by tens, why, I've got a count lickety split."

"Yes, sir."

"That's multiplication."

"Sir?"  Michael's expression was honestly surprised.  "I can do that!"

"I know," Linn nodded.  "You're an intelligent young fellow.  Now watch."

Another box, another careful stacking of loaded rounds.

"Here's how many?"

Michael counted rows, soundless lips moving: he looked triumphantly at the Sheriff.

"One hundred, sir!"

"Exactly right!"

Linn looked at a century of .44-40s, ranked in rows on his desk.

"Now."

He turned, picked up a yardstick, lowered it behind a single row, slid it closer to the front of the desk blotter.

"We have one hundred all told."

"Yes, sir."

"One hundred years is a century."

"Yes, sir."

"One hundred Roman soldiers is a century."

Michael looked at the Sheriff curiously.

"The man in charge of a century is a centurion."

"Ummm ... yes, sir?" Michael agreed uncertainly.

"One hundred all told."

"Yes, sir."

"Ninety here, ten here."

"Yes, sir."

"Ninety per century ... ninety per cent."

Michael's delighted grin was instant.

"Michael, if you want to succeed, ninety percent of success" -- the Sheriff's open hand hovered over the majority of the loaded rounds -- "ninety per cent is just showing up."

"Yes, sir."

"Bravery is doing what needs done even if you're scared stiff."

"But ... "

"But the Sheriff never gets scared?"

"No, sir!"

Linn laid a fatherly hand on Michael's shoulder:  he leaned forward, spoke softly.

"Michael, I have been scared lily white before," he almost whispered.  "I've faced things that would curl the hair on a bald man's head. People said it was brave but it was the right thing to do. Charlie Macneil and I faced up to a wounded grizzly b'ar one time and I kid thee not, that just shivered my eternal soul lily white.  We stood right there and we didn't back up, not one step, and we were called brave for it, but it was the right thing to do, that's all."

"A bear?" Michael whispered.

"A big bear," Linn nodded.  "Dear God, the claws on that thing would cut you up just to look at 'em!  Teeth was three foot long, he stood twenty hands and more, he ripped boulders the size of a locomotive out of a hillside with one swipe of them paws!"

"Did you kill him?" Michael asked, his eyes wide, innocent, sincere.

Linn winked.  "We did worse than that," he said quietly.

Michael's mouth opened and finally a whisper trickled out:  "How?"

Linn frowned a little, planted his elbows on his knees, hunched forward a little.

To Michael, it was as if the entire world shrunk down to just the two of them, and this great man, this legendary lawman, was giving him, Michael, his full, his absolute, his undivided attention.

For an adoring little boy, it was a deep and significant moment.

"Michael, Charlie Macneil is counted a brave man, and for good reason. 

Now Charlie, he stepped up to attair b'ar and allowed as he was Territorial Marshal Charlie Macneil, and he'd barehand ripped the hide off bigger b'ars then him, he allowed as he, Territorial Marshal Charlie Macneil, could whip any man in the territory and then he pointed at me and said the Sheriff yonder can whip me, and he's about to kick your furry backside right up between your shoulder blades.

"Now Charlie Macneil is an honest man, and Charlie Macneil is an impressive man, and Charlie Macneil is a brave man indeed, and in that moment, why, that b'ar allowed as if Charlie could whip any man and the b'ar too, and I can whip Charlie, why, that b'ar stood no chance a'tall ag'in me, so it give up and went home and we've not seen it since.  Likely it's still afraid to show itself hereabouts for fear of bein' sent home nekked."

Linn leaned back, set a box of cartridges back up on the shelf from whence it came.

"Now you remember about percentages."

"I will, sir.  Thank you, sir."

 

A little over a month later, schoolteacher Sarah McKenna puzzled over young Michael Adams' firmly convinced reply that ninety out of one hundred is a centurion.

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

It was Willamina's seventeenth birthday.

She'd been living with her Uncle Pete and Aunt Mary for just over a year.

They'd taken her in as one of their own, and by this time she looked -- and acted -- for all the world like a daughter, more than a runaway niece who'd left her damned drunk of a mother back East.

Her mother, and her father's grave.

Mary smiled but offered no comment when she saw two sets of feet sticking out from under their faded orange Dodge pickup:  Pete's big ones, and Willamina's smaller ones, side by side; she would stand and watch as the feet would wobble a little, as she would hear grunts, snorts, metallic banging and other mechanic's sounds from under the truck; invariably there would be laughter, and Mary delighted to hear it, for it had been long, too long, since young laughter brightened their mountain home.

Willamina took to the mountains like she belonged there.

Part of her daily routine was to run -- and how she would run, Pete's mongrel hound coursing along on her right, an equally mixed-blood gelding running on her left: Willamina was determined to build herself up, here in the thin mountain air, to the same endurance level she'd enjoyed back East, back where the air was thick, humid, heavy.

Willamina pushed herself in everything she did.

If Uncle Pete set a fence post, Willamina set two of them: Pete watched as she wrapped leather-gloved hands around his homemade tamper, and tamped dirt in around the posts, setting them fast in auger-drilled earth:  she'd swung what she called his light weight sledge hammer (a 12 pound hardware store sledge) until she was sick, then she pushed herself through this and kept hammering, busting rocks as they crowded up through the pasture sod:  Pete didn't know for a year that she used to swing a 16 pound oilfield sledge back East, competing with her Daddy, and this when she was not yet in her teens.

Willamina looked up at the shadowed underside of the barn's corrugated tin roof.

The rain was heavier now, not that it mattered; she'd gone out with a lantern, alone, gone out in the soaking rain that came through like undulating grey curtains, until a cold, fat raindrop at the leading edge of another rain-curtain, hit the hot glass globe and shattered it; she'd found the mare anyway, brought the reluctant horse back to the barn -- she parked the dead lantern on the bench, hung up her dripping coat, scrounged another, lantern, lit it -- 

Pete came out to find Willamina's hands bloody, a red streak of gore along one cheek, a grin on her face as broad as two Texas townships, and a foal just levering itself up to stand, wobbly and uncertain, for the very first time.

Pete laid a callused, approving hand across Willamina's shoulder blade.

"What'll you call her?" he asked quietly, just as thunder rippled the air outside, and a stark glare blasted through cracks in the siding boards.  "Stormy?"

"As in a dark and stormy night?" Willamina laughed.  

She picked up the lantern, came a little closer, shone the yellowish light on the nursing foal's flank.

She glowed like living copper.

"Cannonball," Willamina said firmly.  "Her name is Cannonball."

Pete gave Willamina a long and serious look.

"I've heard your grandmother use that tone of voice," he said slowly.  "It always meant something was comin' down the pike."

"I'm comin' down the pike, Uncle Pete," Willamina said, conviction in her voice, as if she had some preternatural knowledge.  "I'm comin' a-horseback, and Cannonball will be under me."

Later that night, after Willamina was stripped out of her soaking-wets, after she'd had a hot shower, clean clothes, after she set her boots to dry and got her wet and soiled clothes thrashing in the ancient wringer Maytag, Willamina was shaking out her run-through-the-wringer jeans to hang them on the back porch clothesline when she heard Uncle Pete talking quietly to his wife, so only she could hear.

He'd forgotten his hearing wasn't what it used to be, and Willamina, with the acute hearing of the young, picked up his every word, while pretending not to.

 "She looks just like her grandmother," Pete said slowly, "she's got her pale eyes, and damned if she didn't sound just like her."

Mary tilted her head, laid a wrinkled, gentle hand against the burn scar on his cheek, legacy of a certain Korean disagreement.

"Women of her line have a way of knowing things, Pete," she said, and Willamina was just stretching up to thrust wooden clothespins over the cuffs of her wet, washed jeans when she heard her aunt's words of reply.

She didn't have to look to know Aunt Mary was looking at her when she said it.

Lightning forked and seared with broad and skeletal fingers across the rain-heavy clouds; Marnie fell asleep that night to the sound of rain on the roof, to the memory of helping a laboring mare birth her foal.

Just before she immersed herself in the dark lake of slumber, Willamina smiled in the shadowed hush of her nighttime bedroom as she thought of the perfect entry in a diary of the day:

It was a dark and stormy night.

 

 

 

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BEWARE THE ADDICTION!

 

== A quick departure from our story line ==

 

My friends, you've all borne up most patiently while I wander from the distant past to the far future, from horsepower under the saddle to horsepower under the hood to interstellar travel: you've read of addressing the lawless with fists, feet, blades, lead, telephone poles made of tempered tungsten with a harder alloy core, and energies stolen from the heart of a collapsing star: you've ridden with me over fences, across gullies, through rain, snow and sun, in saddle leather,  the comfortable seat of a Jeep or of a Suburban Sheriff's cruiser, or the clattering, rumbling, shining-red beast of a Kenworth fire pumper.

You've strode boldly with me down a warped boardwalk and smelled dust, horses, cigarette smoke, heard the piano and men's laughter, trace-chains and harness-bells and the tortured scream of a chromed Federal model Q siren; you've gripped the curved handle of a heavy mug and watched bubbles rise in column from amber refreshment, and you've scalded your tonsils with a good slug of Two Hit John.

Some of you have ridden with me since just after the American Revolution; more have flown with me, been shoved hard into their contoured couches under the kick-in-the-pants acceleration of a set of screaming reactors that twisted Einsteinian space into a confused vortex.

Through all of it, Firelands has been home, and remains so; several generations of pale eyed hell raisers have kept the peace ... peacefully, or otherwise.

Triumphs, failures, gains, losses, great gusting laughter and scalding tears: you've felt the gamut as I've written it, and I bear you this warning!

Create as I have, write as I have, run with a desperate speed over your keyboard in a near-futile effort to keep up with the action playing out behind your eyes, do this for better than a decade, and too late, you'll realize ...

... you're addicted.

I came to that realization as I was scrubbing the latrine's porcelain, ahead of a guest's arrival.

Squeeze bottle of Crud Cutter in one hand, long handled brush in the other, I'm bent over and laughing like a damned fool.

Y'see, while I was removing stains and wiping down surfaces, while I was running the Shop Vac (laminate and linoleum clean up well with the Shop Vac!), I'm seeing the Firelands cheerleaders, Valkyries, in a row, swaying in gentle, feminine harmony, pleated skirts swinging as they sing, arms around each others' shoulders before the home bleachers:  behind them, in a stolid row, the Firelands Football Team, looking stern as manly young faces can manage.

The Valkyries ran up in single file, yelling, screaming, shaking purple and white pompons overhead: they lay them down at their feet, lay their arms around each other's shoulders as the football players came running up behind them, in pious and masculine imitation of bipedal bulldozers, and just before the National Anthem, the girls lifted their voices in a clear, soothing, gentle,

          "Michael Rowed a Boat Ashore,"

... well, behind them, in booming, powerful, masculine, lower-register harmony,

          "CAUSE HIS OUTBOARD WOULDN'T START!"

The Valkyries give a dainty, feminine, skirt-spread curtsy, while the football players behind turn to each other and do a brisk slap-and-poke woo-woo-woo Three Stooges imitation, then they all turn and run off the field ...

I'm standing in front of the latrine holding a squeeze bottle of Crud Cutter and a long handle brush, laughing like a damned fool, my patient and longsuffering wife is giving me a patient and longsuffering look, I imagine the scene again, I can hear their voices, I can hear the nyuk-nyuk-nyuk, "Woise guy, eh? *SMACK!*" -- and now I am making the sound of a chicken laying a paving brick.

Friends, kindred and brethren, this warning I give you:

Create not a world as have I, for it will draw you in and you will be addicted indeed!

And now I return to your normal Short Stories.

 

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A HANDFUL OF GUTTIES

Jacob Keller looked at the Mercantile's proprietor with a skeptical expression.

"Balls they are," he said, "but what are they for?"

"Those are gutties," came the puzzled reply. "I have no idea why they sent them to me. I didn't order them, they didn't bill me for them, the company that sent 'em is out of business so I can't have a bad attack of honesty and send them back."

"No one to send them back to?"

"No."  The one-armed storekeeper picked one up, rolled it experimentally between thumb and forefinger.  "Funny lookin'."
"Yep. All dimply, like someone beat 'em with a ball peen."

"Think the boys will like 'em?"

Jacob laughed.  "Boys always like stuff, sir! I'll buy 'em off of you, how much would you take for the box?"

"One dozen ... I'd have to look up what they sell for ..."

Jacob dropped a few coins on the countertop, satisfied he was more than overpaying the man.

"Think that'll cover it?"

"Oh now Jacob, I don't want to cheat you --"

"If I'm fool enough to think it's a good buy, be wise enough to make a good sale."  Jacob grinned.  "Long as that'll cover your expenses and it won't short you any. I wouldn't want to lose sleep thinkin' I'd cheated a man."

"Oh, no, no, you've not cheated me a bit, no."  The coins disappeared, rattled into the cigar box under the counter.

Jacob laughed, picked up the box.  "Appreciate your kindness."

He turned, walked out of the Mercantile: the bell dingled cheerfully as he opened the door again as he closed it, and as he set foot out on the boardwalk, he thought Jacob Keller, what in the hell are you goin' to do with a box full of funny little balls?
Gutties, didn't he say they were?

What the hell are gutties?

Jacob looked down the street and across, at the Silver Jewel.

Hell, someone there might know what gutties are!

 

Daisy snapped her ever present towel, flipped it over her shoulder, snatched up one of the dimpled little balls, tossed it in the air, caught it.

"Aye, I know what they are," she said, "an' Jacob Keller, if ye're wastin' yer time beatin' a little ball aroun' wi' a stick, I c'n gi'e ye work enouw to keep yer idle hands busy!"

Jacob gave the green-eyed, sharp-tongued Irish cook a quiet smile, opened his mouth to make reply: Daisy placed the ball back in its box, swatted his forearm and planted her knuckles on her hip, shaking her other finger in his face:  "Jacob Keller, now, do ye no' gi' me those blue eyes a' yours, you an' yer father, sweet talkin' the ladies! Ye're a rake an' a scoundrel an' I'll nae fall f'r it!"

"Daisy," Jacob said in a gentle voice, "you are every bit as sweet and understandin' as I've heard."

Daisy seized the towel from her shoulder, jerked it free in mock anger:  "An' there ye go, tryin' t' sweet talk me, an' me old enough t' be yer mither!"

"Daisy," Jacob said, placing gentle fingertips on her elbows, "if you were my mother, I'd be pretty damned proud of you!"

"And ye're no' proud of me now?" she snapped.  "Aye, an' yer true colors are showin', ye scoundrel!"  She looked over his shoulder  at the Irish giant towering behind him.  "Did ye hear that, husband? First he tried t' seduce me an' now he says because I'm no' his mither I'm nothin'!"

A massive hand laid gently on Jacob's shoulder and a familiar voice murmured, "Pardon me, lad," and Jacob turned sideways to allow Sean Finnegan, the blacksmith-shouldered Irish fire chief, to step past him.

"Daisymedear!" he roared, seizing his wife and crushing her into him:  she struggled, she kicked, she sizzled like a cat: "Let me go, y' great Irish oaf! EEK!" -- Sean hoisted her up, just touching her hair to the ceiling overhead, his great gusting laugh filling the interior of the Jewel:  "Ye're a lucky woman, Daisymedear, ye've a husband who loves ye an' ye've the respect of every man here!"

Daisy beat her husband's red hair with futile fists, swearing and struggling until Sean lowered her, planted his mouth on hers, turned her struggles into snuggles, until she ceased to fight him and commenced to mold herself to him.

Jacob raised an eyebrow, picked up his dozen gutties, looked at Mr. Baxter, who paused his perpetual polishing.

"Have ye e'er heard of somethin' called golf?" he asked quietly.

Jacob's puzzled expression was reply enough.

"They used to make those out of cowhide an' stuff 'em wi' feathers."

"Feathers," Jacob said skeptically, holding one up.

"A whole hat full of feathers," Mr. Baxter affirmed solemnly. "They'd wet the feathers and stuff 'em in, they'd dry the whole thing an' they set it on the ground and hit it wi' a club."

Jacob frowned. 

"Why?"

"They're tryin' t' smack it into a hole in the ground."

"If they clubbed it wouldn't the just drive it down into the ground?"

Mr. Baxter laughed.  "No, no, y' swing th' club and smack th' ball a distance --"

Jacob frowned, tilted his hat back, scratched his head in puzzlement.

"And I thought 'twas bad enough, the Irish Brigade playin' ... oh hell, what do they call it --"

"Baseball."

"Somethin' like that."  Jacob shook his head.  

He was enlightened, at least a little more, by Sarah McKenna's explanation, though for the life of him, he couldn't see the sense in beatin' a little ball around until it fell in a hole.

He mentioned his puzzlement to his father, who nodded wisely and then frowned, tilted his head back, considered the ceiling.

Jacob knew his father was considering something:  he watched as his pale eyed Pa looked down, at his desktop, at the dozen gutties in their little wooden box.

Linn sat, drew open his wide, shallow desk drawer, pulled out a quarter-sheet of note paper and a pencil:  Jacob knew his father was an expert mapmaker, he'd long delighted in his father's skills at sketching, and in making diagrams:  Jacob leaned his palms onto his father's desktop, watched as a broad, short-barrel, very heavy wall cannon flowed from the whittled pencil point.

"Jacob," Linn said slowly -- if he spoke at all when his pencil was busy, he spoke slowly, distantly -- "we used Coehorn mortars in that damned War. Was a man to machine out a miniature Coehorn, why, a man could fire one of those" -- he looked up toward the box on his desk, looked back at his work -- "on a high arc, drop it near the hole and sink it with a pool cue."

Jacob nodded solemnly.  "That would make more sense, sir."

"You'd have to account for wind, of course, you'd vary your powder charge for the range you wanted."

"Yes, sir."

"Shouldn't take all that much powder, not with that small a bore."

"Yes, sir."

Linn's pencil scratched industriously: the sketch went from a very clear outline, to a working mortar: it was stained, shadowed, the grain in the flat carriage could be seen, or at least suggested well enough to be understood.

Linn stopped, leaned back in his chair: he placed the pencil very precisely in the tray, leaned back, his expression gone from intent and inventive, to haunted, lost.

Jacob swore, silently, powerfully: of all things he hated, he hated it when memories swarmed over his father's soul, hated to see those memories looking out his father's eyes.

Linn shut his eyes, shook his head: his hands closed into fists, pressed slow and firm against the smooth desktop.

Linn saw his father's shoulders raise, then lower, watched as Linn opened his eyes, as he smiled, just a little.

"All things are choices, Jacob," he said quietly. "It's up to us how we react."  He placed careful fingertips on the sketch, slid it across the desk.  "That's just an idea."

Jacob accepted the sketch and his father saw the smile hiding at the corners of his son's eyes.

"This makes more sense than beatin' it with a stick, sir."

Linn laughed, nodded.  "Yes, Jacob, it does."

"If you see me pullin' a gun carriage with a pool cue at sling arms, sir, you'll know what I'm about."

 

 

 

 

 

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ON LITTLE CAT'S FEET

Alfdis had seen it before; she knew, from her ache, that she would be needed, and soon, but for the moment, she had not the heart to intrude.

Alfdis was the buxom, blond, laughing young woman whose duties were many, but whose delight was to be a nurse to the very young: in an age where mothers died in childbirth with a distressing frequency, such women were needed, and very much appreciated.

Alfdis was a confidant and a presence, she was a bright and cheerful presence, she had an almost magical way with the young of any age; she also had an appreciation for moments, and as Esther Keller approached, Alfdis waited in the doorway of their main barn, one hand gripping the door frame, the other, holding a finger to her lips.

She'd watched, earlier, while the Sheriff's pale eyed son growled, snarled, approached on all fours, low and menacing, she'd watched as Gilead laughed and shreiked and ran on swift, awkward, chubby little legs, bouncing off bales of hay, rolling in loose straw, squealing with delight as Jacob Keller pounced, snatched the child from the ground, swung him high in the air, laughing, two brothers at play: Gilead, the youngest of the Keller young, not of the Sheriff's loins but most certainly of his heart, romped and jumped and wore himself out:  the ladies slipped into the barn as silent as little cat's feet, each hugged the other with delight, for a mother's heart rejoices in such moments.

Jacob Keller lay back against a propped-up hay bale, covered with a nice friendly saddle blanket; lying across him, arms thrown wide in embrace, little Gilead, his cheeks red with good health and exertion, sound asleep on his big brother's chest.

Jacob's arms were around his youngest brother, his head thrown back: Esther knew he'd been without sleep for two days, she knew he'd returned with a torn suit and a dead man across its former owner's saddle, another in irons, tied on behind: she knew Jacob got the surviving outlaw locked up, she knew he'd filled out the requisite report, he'd discussed the arrest, the chase, the fight that ensued, to his pale eyed father, and she knew he'd not made it to his own home, choosing instead to come to his father's house to engage in said discussion.

Esther listened from the next room, aching to run to her tall, lean waisted son, to embrace him, to ask if he was hurt, but she knew he was coming into his manhood, and she knew he had a wife who would embrace him, and ask if he was hurt: she knew he'd gone to one knee when Gilead looked up at him with big bright eyes and tugged on his trouser-leg, and she knew he picked up young Gilead, who pointed to the door, and she knew Jacob asked in a gentle voice, "You want to show me something?"

Esther Keller and Alfdis gripped one another's forearms and beamed as they looked at a tired -- no, an exhausted -- big brother, a young man deprived of his good rest, who still had the time and the inclination to play with his youngest sibling, and the little child who knew what it was to play, and to trust, and to accept the hospitality of a big brother's warm, safe embrace.

Two women wore very pleased expressions as they drifted back out, as silent as if they crept along on little cat's feet.

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SIXTEEN YEARS OLD AND

SOME SIGNIFICANT HORESPOWER

Sheriff Willamina Keller waded through some significant snow just to get to her own barn.

She heard the metallic hum of the chain hoist; that, and a set of tracks she was shamelessly using, told her Linn was already out here, and he was busy with something -- whatever it was, couldn't be small:  a powered chain hoist is not used for trivial matters.

Unless, of course, it's for a gag video, like the time Linn used the chain hoist to pick up a toy Tonka truck and place it on the flat bed of a tractor-trailer, and boom it down like it was a major cargo.

(In years to come, some wise wag would do this very thing, and would whistle down the Interstate with a single package of toilet paper boomed down dead center of a forty foot flatbed, but that wouldn't be for many years)

Willamina opened the door enough to slide in sideways -- that's all the further the door had been opened already -- she closed it behind her, turned.

An ancient sleigh was hanging from the ceiling, hanging by its side:  Linn was industriously running the power buffer along its waxed bottom, the machine's grinding whine filling the barn more thoroughly than the propane heaters.

Linn worked steadily, patiently, from stern to bow of the port-side runner:  he released the black-plastic trigger, lowered the heavy steel surface grinder with the buffer attachment, pulled his glove loose with his teeth and ran assessing fingertips over his work.

He looked over at his pale eyed Mama, smiled.

"How was the driveway?" he grinned, and Willamina laughed, laid motherly fingers on his flannel-shirt-sleeved arm.

"You must've been at that for a while," she smiled.

Linn winked.  "'Specially for you, dear heart!" he declared, placing the surface grinder upside-down on the floor to keep the buffer pad clean:  he hugged his Mama, carefully, like he generally did.  "How was work?"

Willamina shrugged.  "Eh."

"That good?" Linn murmured, and Willamina saw mischief in her son's pale eyes:  he took a deep breath, then in one long, run-on sentence:  "Do ya really wanta fix supper I'll take that as a no I have it ready already," and then laughed, and she laughed with him, shook her head.

"I saw you had it ready, thank you."  She patted his chest with a gentle, gloved hand.  "You spoil me, you know."

Linn gave her a funny look -- almost sad, maybe distressed.

"You're the only Mama I've got," he said quietly, and Willamina nodded.

As difficult as widowhood was for her, she knew her son was having no easier a time with half-orphanhood: each tried to put up a good front for the other, but sometimes their carefully crafted mask slipped, like that funny look when Willamina said her son was spoiling her.

Linn looked at the sleigh, bent, picked up the surface grinder, unplugged it.

"I've done as much damage as I'm going to for one day," he muttered.  "She's ready to harness up."

"I saw you'd been working with the horses."

"Yes, ma'am. They do well with the wagon, but there's no way I want to run a wagon in this kind of snow."

"I don't blame you."

"If I had one of those Fordson snow machines like we saw at the Henry Ford Museum, I'd run that!" -- his grin was quick, ornery, and for a moment Willamina saw that look her late husband used to give her in such moments:  Linn might have her temper, her reflexes and her pale eyes, but he had Richard's rotten sense of humor, his mobile face, his quick and reassuring smile.

And his kindness.

Willamina closed her eyes, leaned into her son, held him:  Linn let the surface grinder slide back to the floor by its cord so he could dedicate both arms to holding his lean, wiry Mama.

Mother and son held one another for several long minutes, there in the barn, until finally they turned off the propane tanks, shut off the lights and waded back to the house to have supper.

 

Next morning, harness bells and muffled hoofbeats, children's laughter:  in spite of the road crews' efforts, it was difficult for the buses to make the more distant routes, but between individuals on horseback, snarling snow machines, and in a few cases, some honest long walks with the eldest breaking path for the younger siblings, children still made it to school.

The central picture on the weekly newspaper, though, was of a brightly-painted sleigh, tastefully pinstriped, loaded to the gills with laughing, red-cheeked children: ahead of the sleigh, a matched pair of Frisians, big, high-stepping and powerful, towing the sleigh as casually as they might pull a carriage on a fine summer's day, and in the driver's black-leather, tuck-and-roll upholstered seat, a grinning young man with a fleece collar turned up, snow dusting his broad-brimmed Stetson, a little boy on his left and a little girl on his right: it was a picture that was carefully snipped from the paper, laminated to preserve it, placed in a scrapbook:  for all that Willamina was Sheriff, for all that Willamina led the Valkyries in their training, for all that she ran in full combat kit with Willamina's Warriors, for all that she could walk up to and take down anyone she damn well pleased, Willamina was still a mother, and mothers like to remember their children's achievements: long years later, Linn would find this scrapbook, and he'd look long at this laminated picture, and he would remember, and nod, then look up at his Mama's formal portrait, and he'd smile, just a little, remembering how it felt to hold his Mama there in the barn, while the world outside was being hushed and purified with a deep, silent, snowfall.

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FIRST TIME HERE

Pete was not terribly different from the other men in church that Sunday.

Pete was on in his years, like many of his fellows; he wore his suit -- he had another one, but it fit the young man he used to be, forty years before, and he just hadn't given it away -- he sat in the second row back, his wife on one side, his niece Willamina on the other.

He held his wife's hand because he'd held his wife's hand every Sunday, in church, since they sat together as man and wife -- well, they'd held hands in church before then, too.

He held hands with his niece because she gripped his callused palm, and he felt her shivering a little.

Willamina was a contradiction.

She'd come up his driveway -- he'd have to say she strode up his driveway like she owned the place -- she'd marched up to him bold as brass and confident as a newly elected politician, she'd set down her suitcase and said "Uncle Pete, I'm your niece Willamina and I need your help," then she'd seized him in absolutely a desperate, crushing hug, shivering like a scared little rabbit, and Pete couldn't help but hold this thin, fair haired daughter of a man he'd loved and respected since the lad was first hatched.

Now she sat beside him in church, rigid, stiff, looking straight ahead, pale eyed -- Pete had pale eyes, as had his own father, one of the past Sheriffs: Pete saw that same look in his father's eyes, and he knew this poor girl had seen things that laid her soul open like a man lays a pig open at slaughter, something that split her soul open like a sharpened blade.

Willamina stood when they stood, sat when they sat, sang quietly, but with a voice that harmonized beautifully with his wife's:  Pete smiled a little, counting himself lucky that he stood between two women who could actually sing, and sing well:  once church was over and they filed out, Willamina hung back, waited until the congregation was filed out, waited until the Parson and his wife stood alone.

Willamina went up to the Parson and his wife, looked at them both.

"I'm Willamina," she said -- not quite hesitantly, but not really boldly -- "I'm new here, and I might be coming to you for advice."  She looked at the preacher's wife and smiled -- Pete saw Ted's quick, reassuring smile in the expression -- "but not today.  Sometime when you'll both be home and I can bring you a pie or something."

The Parson and his wife looked at one another, looked at Willamina, and the Parson laughed and said "Like the old preacher said, all donations cheerfully accepted!" and Pete saw Willamina relax a little.

He saw her lips frame a silent "Thank you" as she looked at the preacher's wife, then she turned and skipped down the steps and up to a fellow Pete knew, took his arm, looked very directly at him, and Pete's stomach dropped.

His nephew Ted had been town marshal back in Ohio, and Ted was killed by a fleeing felon, rammed and crushed between two cars, and Pete knew Willa was devastated by her Daddy's death, but more by her drunken mother's uncaring response: Willamina had always been a Daddy's girl, and she adored her lawman Daddy, and she had so many of his traits, and now Pete saw one of them.

Pete saw his lawman nephew go up to someone who wished him ill, and he confronted him suddenly, directly, and now he saw Ted's little girl doing the same thing.

She was going on the offensive, and for the life of him, Pete had no idea why.

Willamina walked with this man, looked up at him.

"You've been watching me."

He was an older man, he was clearly uncomfortable:  he reddened, nodded, mumbled something.

Willamina stopped, turned him.

"You've been watching me.  Why?"

Pete saw a hard man, a man he knew at least a little, a man who'd known his own tragedies, sit down on a handy bench:  Willamina swept the skirt under her, sat beside him, pale eyes hard and direct as she studied his face.

Mary started to go over to them; Pete gripped her arm, shook his head:  they waited, watched from a distance, not sure what was going on, but knowing it was important -- at least to Willamina.

They were not the only ones to watch.

When an attractive young woman comes to church with an established couple, it is noticed; when that young woman is easy on the eyes, she is noticed; when she walks well in heels and carries herself with an unmistakable confidence, it is noticed, and she ... she was noticed.

"I had a daughter," the man said abruptly, his jaw hardening as he stared off across the street.

"Tell me about her."

"She was beautiful," he said softly.  "I didn't want her to grow up."

Willamina nodded, listening carefully.

"She ... she come in the livin' room and she was wearin' high heels."  He hung his head.  "She was fourteen."

"Go on," Willamina said softly.

"I told her she was too young for those things.  I made her take 'em off and told her to take 'em back and I said ... some things I should never have said."

"What happened?"

"She cried herself to sleep that night.  My wife spoke to me about it and I didn't give her the time of day.  Next mornin' she was gone.  Run off."

"Where is she now?"

The man turned, leaned back a little, raised an arm.

"See over the back roofline of the church? Yonder, up on the hill?"

Willamina followed his pointing arm with her eyes.

"The graveyard?"

"Right there."

They turned; the man slumped forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the ground.

"I seen you and I remembered her.  They found her two weeks later. She'd been killed."

Willamina nodded, slowly.

"When you looked at me ...?"

He turned his head, looked sidelong at the pretty young woman in the handmade dress and high heels.

"Yeah," was his only reply.

Willamina reached over, gripped his hand.

"My Daddy was killed," she said, "and my drunk of a mother didn't give enough of a damn to keep the flag from his coffin nor his gunbelt and badge.  I fished them out of the trash and brought them out here with me."

"You're Ted's little girl."

"Willamina."

He straightened, looked at her with very old, very tired eyes, shook his head.

"You're better lookin' than Ted," he muttered.

"I'm told I don't look a thing like him," Willamina said softly.  "No mustache."

The man blinked, looked at her with honest surprise, then for the first time in a very long time, he smiled ... a slow, genuine smile, and he felt that tight-wound knot of self-accusation, that old grief, loosen up some.

"Ted would've said that," he whispered.

Willamina shrugged.  "I get it honest."  

Willamina stood, tilted her head a little.  "I'm new here.  I might be coming to you for advice."

He nodded, then rose, stuck out his hand.  

"My name's Henry.  You're welcome any time."

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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A DANGEROUS MAN

Linn heard his Mama coming down the basement stairs.

He smiled a little as he lifted the loading press handle, as he extracted the loaded round, as he turned it, looking closely at what he'd assembled, before thrusting the .38 wadcutter round into a hole in the shallow plastic tray two-thirds filled with identical, reloaded rounds.

"I have to go back into the office," she said as he rose:  he saw his Mama's soft half-smile as she regarded her lean, tall son.

He always rises when I come into the room, she thought.

He learned that from his Uncle Will.

Linn hugged his Mama -- he'd been quicker to hug, after his Pa's death -- he whispered, as he always did, "Be careful, Mama," and then he released his grip and kept his fingertips on her upper arms as he withdrew a little:  "You're the only Mama I've got!"

Willamina laughed, caressed his cheek -- though she was in her usual tailored suit dress and heels, though she was the very image of a polished administrator, an office professional, the Sheriff herself, her caress was one hundred percent mother.

"I will," she whispered, then looked past his lean-muscled bicep, at the work of his hands.

"You know I can buy .38 wadcutters loaded in bulk," she said gently.

"I know, Mama," Linn said, "but it helps me order my universe."

Willamina laughed, and Linn's heart lifted to see it, to hear it:  when his Mama laughed, when it was a relaxed and genuine laugh, she tilted her head back just a little, and Linn often wondered if this was how she laughed as a little girl.

His own sister was run off and who knows where, last he'd heard she was elbow deep in drugs and sin and God knows what-all, his Mama wasn't able to bear any more children after him: she'd never said as much, but Linn could not help but think his Mama would have welcomed more young from her womb.

"'Order your universe?'" Willamina echoed. "You and Will!"

"He's a good example," Linn shrugged with that quick grin of his, and Willamina remembered when he was a crew-cut little boy, grinning, shifting his weight impatiently from one foot to the other as she ran quick fingers over his unruly cowlick.

"You know, most boys your age would be out chasing girls or drinking or hot rodding on a Friday night."

It was Linn's turn to laugh.

"Mama," he said, giving her his very best Innocent Expression (which he'd been practicing since birth, and with which he'd had a rousing and utter lack of success!) -- "Mama, that takes money, and I'm just tight as bark on a tree.  I'd just as soon put my drinkin' money and gas money and money for new tires into something useful."

"Like powder and lead," Willamina murmured, giving her son a knowing look.  "You can't ride a gun to work, Linn."

"No ma'am," he said, his face suddenly sobering, "but it'll keep me alive once you hang a badge on me."

Willamina felt a chill run through her soul, the way it did when she heard something that was an absolute fact -- even if it was something she didn't particularly want to hear.

She'd seen war, she'd seen hell on two legs as a child, she'd known things no young woman should ever know, and she'd survived everything that tried to kill her; Linn knew there were scars on her back and ribs and a few other places, burn scars where she was tortured when she was his age: Uncle Will was Willamina's twin brother, and he filled Linn in, one dark night when they sat in Chief of Police Will Keller's Crown Vic, listening to the silence one summer night as they watched the two story brick grade school against the approach of vandals:  he'd said in a flat and unemotional voice what his twin sis endured, how she'd been tortured in too many ways, then secured to a manhole lid and dropped off the highwall of an abandoned quarry:  he'd told Linn about how his twin sis quietly declared war and then came out here, to live with family instead of an abusive, neglectful drunkard of a mother, how she'd joined the Marines to learn how to wage war, how she'd come back and become Sheriff.

Willamina had seen too many things in her young life, and somewhere in all the hell she'd survived, an ancient knowledge woke in her, something ancestral, passed down the bloodline, something -- precognitive?  Psychic?  Or merely the heightened awareness of a mother? -- she'd developed a legendary ability to know when the truth was being spoken.

She would not have objected had her son chosen another career, but he was determined to follow his Mama into law enforcement, and when he said it would keep him alive when she hung a badge on him, she knew this was fact, as clearly as if he'd poked his head through a magic mirror and taken a long, hard look at his future.

"I've cleaned house at the Sheriff's Invitational more times than one," Linn said softly. "Uncle Will --"

"Uncle Will is proud of you, and I am too," Willamina interrupted, placing a finger on his lips and giving him a knowing look:  "I'll be careful if you are too.  Remember" -- she raised one eyebrow, leaned forward as if addressing a fellow conspirator -- "I might be the only Mama you have, but you're the man of the house now."

"Yes, ma'am."  Linn grinned again, then she saw a sudden uncertainty in his eyes, and something else, and she knew he was going to whip a wise one on her.

"Ma'am," he said, frowning, as if puzzling at a stray thought -- "I've heard it said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

"I've heard that," Willamina agreed, tilting her head a little.

"Well, ma'am ... I know at my age, fellows think they know everything" -- there's that grin again, she thought, look out, here it comes --

"Considerin' my age and how little experience I have, and how much I don't know ... why, Mama, I'd best be real careful, for I must be a dangerous man indeed!"

 

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THE DROP

Time flowed across the street like cold, clear honey.

Linn's hand was crush gripped around the worn panels of the Victory model Smith & Wesson: Parkerized steel whispered from the Jordan holster as the Cogswell & Harrison conversion cleared leather, as young eyes went pale and hard, as young lungs -- born in the mountains, raised in the mountains, as hot young blood, thick and rich from a lifetime in the mountains, suddenly ran both hot with passion and cold with deadly resolve, carrying oxygen from the suddenly-filled lungs -- Linn's voice, sharp, clear, unmistakable, a warning to both lawman and to the lawless:

"DROP THE CHUCKS OR I DROP YOU!"

Chief of Police Will Keller spun, skipped back two strides, his own blued-steel Smith in hand and thrust out in front, the screaming-orange insert bright and steady just below a set of bared teeth, a scruffy beard.

Linn's revolver was up at eye level, he had a radar lock on the target, his world shrank to his sights and the individual just leaning forward into a run, the nunchaku cocked for a strike.

The Victory model was old, older than the teenager that wore it; the old Smith was smooth, glass smooth from uncounted thousands of cycles, and its case hardened bearing surfaces slid smoothly over one another as they had time and time and time again.

Until now, they'd cycled in practice.

Sheriff Willamina Keller's head came up as a pistol shot blasted through the usually quiet mountain air outside: she was on her feet and moving, her hand seized the faceted-glass doorknob, twisted viciously, hauled her office door open:  she had no memory of seizing the Damascus double gun from overhead as she rose, but it swung easily from her left hand: she had no memory of how she crossed polished quartz floor, whether she sprinted, strode, skipped, or sailed: she shouldered through the inner doors, looked through the heavy glass outer doors -- left, then right, powered out onto the sidewalk, leaned forward into a run.

"COMING BEHIND!" she yelled, and Will brought his double handful of machined steel justice back into administrative position, ahead of his breastbone:  she saw his shoulders raise as he took a slow, deep, cleansing breath.

Willamina stopped beside her brother's side, stood with the twin muzzles covering the still form supine on the sidewalk: her left peripheral saw Will, on automatic pilot, open his cylinder, drive the ejection rod hard, dump in a speedloader, close the cylinder and holster.

She, too, had a tunnel vision focus on what was apparently a law enforcement related shooting: she did not see the lean young man, across the street, back up, quietly, into the mouth of an alley; she did not see her son open his revolver's cylinder, extract one fired round, drop in a fresh round and close the cylinder, slowly, carefully, very deliberately.

Linn holstered his revolver, looked left, looked right, strode across the street:  "UNCLE WILL, ARE YOU HURT?"

Willamina did not bother to check for a pulse, not after the subject of her cold eyed attentions had so apparently inherited a round of full-house .357 through the bridge of the nose.

A set of nunchaku lay clutched in the death-grip characteristic of a bullet through the brain.

"Drop the 'chucks or I drop you," Will murmured, and Willamina looked at her twin brother with the barest of smiles.

Their father came home one dark night and said he'd told a fellow that very thing, those exact words, on the street in Glouster, when he went up to help out with a carnival crowd.

"He didn't drop 'em," Willamina snorted.  "Bad case of terminal stupidity."  She tilted her head, regarded the corpse.  "Nice shot."

"Yeah."

"Doesn't look like you had much choice."

"Nope."

Willamina looked around, turned, eyes searching.

"Camera across the street," she said. "I'll get that copied."

"I'll call the State boys, let them investigate. Don't want anyone claimin' nepotism."

Willamina nodded.  "Good idea."

 

Linn slid another pair of silver dollar pancakes on the heaping platter.

He'd made buckwheats, with blueberries, half thawed and stirred in carefully -- he'd made the mistake of completely thawing them, adding them and then running the mixer, which meant he had blueberry flavored pancakes of a funny color -- the dispatcher gave him a call to let him know his Mama was on her way home, so he started frying pancakes, knowing she'd be delayed despite her attempt at leaving the office, in spite of her best intentions.

He'd fried up all the pancake batter and a half dozen eggs, the bacon was crispy, drained and stacked on a warm platter, and the last of the tableware was in place when his Mama came through the door.

Uncle Will came with her, which Linn expected:  it's why he'd fixed as much as he had, it's why he had three places set, it's why he grinned at his Uncle and replied to his surprised "How'd you know I was coming out?" with, "Why Uncle Will, I'm psychotic!  I mean psychic!"

Will and his Mama both looked tired; he knew they'd be stressed, fatigued from the investigation -- even in a righteous shoot, it's hard on a good man's soul -- Will smiled a little at Linn's good-natured rejoinder.

Supper was mostly quiet.

Once the stack of silver dollar pancakes was reduced, once the bacon and eggs were consumed, once coffee was refilled and The Bear Killer given a pancake (or two or three, they're small), Linn gathered dishes and stacked them in the sink:  "I'll tend these, Mama," he said quietly, "you've been workin' all day."

"Y'know, I'm curious," Will said conversationally.

Linn turned, raised an eyebrow.

"Remember when you cut the Ace of Spades six out of six with that revolver?"

"I recall," Linn said quietly.  "The last Sheriff's Invitational. One of the fellows -- Fang, wasn't it? -- ran his mouth so I bet him a case of beer I could put six out of six into a playing card at twenty yards."

"You did it at thirty."

"He never did pay up, either."

"You showed him for what he was," Will said.  "He'll never pay."

"Just as well," Linn grinned.  "I don't drink!"

"There is that, too," Will agreed. 

"You didn't happen to know I'd be in a scrape today ...?"  Will let the question dangle.

Linn raised an eyebrow again.  

"Uncle Will, my crystal ball run out of batteries and the Mercantile doesn't carry that size," Linn said cautiously, "but if I'd known you'd be needful today, I'd have fetched a rifle."

Will and Willamina exchanged a look.

"Think you could do as well with Marnie's revolver?"

Linn's face was serious. "You've seen me do just as well with Marnie's revolver."

"I know you have," Will rumbled:  he stood, faced his nephew squarely, laid a fatherly hand on Linn's shoulder.

"You have the accuracy and you have a steady hand under stress," he said, and Linn heard a very serious undertone in his voice.  "My bullet killed that fellow who wanted to kill me, but if it hadn't, yours would have."

Linn nodded.

"Now if you're going to keep your decrepit old uncle alive, I'd be more comfortable if you had more horsepower on your hip than a .38 S&W I can stop with a catcher's mitt."

"I'll see what I can do," Linn said slowly.

"I've got you covered. Come out to the car."

"He's been waiting for the right time," Willamina said quietly. "Today showed us it's time."

 

Linn was quiet as he processed supper's dishes, stacked them in the drain rack to air dry as his Mama preferred.

Willamina came back downstairs in her long flannel nightgown and slippers.

Linn could tell from the way the nightgown hung that his Mama had her James Bond Walther in its stiff-lined pocket.

"Most boys your age wouldn't stay at home to fix their pore old decrepit Ma supper," she teased.

Linn hung the towel over the oven's bar handle, pulled the wrinkles out, propped a palm on the corner of the refrigerator.

"Mama," he said seriously, "I got drunk here about a year ago."

"Go on."

"I didn't have a morning after," he said, "I had a day after."

"Sounds unpleasant."

"Worst I've felt in my life."

"Is that why you don't drink?"

Linn's bottom jaw slid out.

"Mama, I had to know."

Willamina raised an eyebrow.  "You had to know...?"

"If I was going to be a drunk."  He stared at the floor, his bottom jaw sliding out, jaw muscles bulging.

"Mama, alcoholism skips a generation. Your Mama was, I had to know if I'd ... if I was.  I had to know if I carry the genes for alcoholism."

"And?"

"My sister does. I had to know if I did."  He looked at his Mama.  "I must not."

"No liking for it?"

"No ma'am."

"Good."  

Willamina was silent in her fuzzy slippers as she came up to her son, as she reached down, took his hands.

"Thank you for keeping my brother alive," she said seriously.

Linn was equally serious as he looked into his Mama's pale eyes.

"We lost Pa," he said.  "I don't want to lose Uncle Will."

Mother and son embraced, there in front of the white-enamel kitchen sink.

"You smell like new leather."

"Uncle Will gave me a gunbelt and holster to carry that new revolver in."

"Good."  Willamina smiled a little.  "I suppose you won't be borrowing my heavy barrel model 10 now."

"No ma'am. No need to pester you when I've a Thunder Bird of my own."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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CHARLESTON

It was Senior Night.

Waxed, polished, manicured cars rumbled, rumped or coasted quietly into the high school: family cars stopped in front, young ladies in their finery and young men in neckties, bow ties or no ties disembarked: other cars rumped, rumbled or hushed into the school's parking lot, and their occupants walked, laughed and chattered from steel chariots to the front door, to be met by the watchful guardians appointed for the evening's task.

Cars were waxed, burnished, polished, detailed, inside and out; tires were blacked, chrome was rubbed to a high shine; whether the family sedan, or a young man's Testosterone Express Chariot, every last vehicle was absolutely immaculate -- even the ranch trucks that normally saw hay, tools and mud.

Marnie, of course, could do nothing normally.

Her chauffeur was selected from -- well, from somewhere else; her escorts, in the back seat, were similarly recruited: none of them knew each other, but each delighted in the task when approached, each had been carefully coached in certain theatrical aspects:  speech coaches, dance coaches, costuming consultants, all had been recruited and tasked, and had most satisfactorily given these impressive young men their roles, and they'd role-played extensively enough to bring off ... well, if not an authentic presentation, at least an authentic stereotype.

The American West was not the only era in which Hollywood shaped the popular imagination.

A gleaming, immaculate, museum-grade A model Ford coasted to a chauffeured stop in front of the high school: heads, turned, jaws dropped: in an era of lookalike automotives, the distinctive, flat-radiator, hand-polished and chauffeur-driven A model Ford not only caught the eye, it seized the many eyes that saw it arrive.

The young woman in the front seat regarded the watchers with an icy hauteur, a disdain for the mere mortals with whom she shared the moment: three doors opened, and three truly large men stepped out, each in immaculate, pinstriped suits, gleaming wing-tips, fedoras tilted forward at an aggressive angle.

The driver strode around the front of the idling Ford as if he fully intended to bust a hole in a line of striking workers: his jaw's long scar bore mute testimony to past violence (or a makeup artist's collodion brush) -- he gripped the model A door handle, twisted, pulled.

A set of legs swung out.

A very nice set of legs.

The frosty young woman stepped out, took the hand of one of her broad-shouldered, menacing-looking escorts: an enforcer is impressive to look at, but enforcers in immaculate suits are even more so:  she stood, striking a pose, then threw her fur stole over one shoulder, put gloved hands on her hips, and made for the door, all high heels and glittering necklace and flapper dress and crimson lips.

Al Capone himself could not have wanted for a more impressive escort than the silent, glaring men who followed in a semicircle behind this vision of 1920s femininity.

Marnie Keller stopped at the door, presented her dance ticket:  she lifted her fringed skirt, pulled a silver flask from her stockingtop, opened it, took  a sip, to the shocked dismay of the high-school principal:  she smiled, spun a gloved hand, snapped her fingers:  a shot glass was thrust into her grip, she decanted a volume of something amber, handed it to Mr. Landers.

"You look like you could use a drink," she said, her voice oily, seductive; the man snifffed the glass, tasted it, looked at her with honestly astonished eyes.

Marnie seized the man's necktie, pulled him down, kissed his cheek, leaving a scarlet lipstick print on the man's face:  she slipped the flask back into her stockingtop, seized the stole, spun it carelessly as she swivel-hipped into the high school.

Her escorts gathered in a menacing cluster about the principal.

"Youse will sees dat da lady has a good time, see?" one sneered in an absolutely terrible Al Capone era gangster accent:  "Da Boss won't like it if da Lady ain't happy, see?"

He thrust a rosebud into the principal's lapel; four broad-shouldered, well-dressed enforcers returned to their model A:  three men got in, three doors slammed, the OOO-GAH shivered the air, and they were gone.

"Well," Mr. Landers said to his fellows, "that was different."

 

The Marching Band, in winter, had a busy little subdivision, their Pep Band.

It was not unusual for the Valkyries to have a cheerleading dance number at home games, choreographed to the live and lively music of the Firelands High School Pep Band.

Administration never noticed that most of the Pep Band's recent rehearsals were elsewhere; official sources were unaware of the band's intent to play at this school dance, only that there'd been a last-minute cancellation of the band originally hired for the event, and a substitution made.

Mr. Landers slung the contents of his shot glass into the bushes beside the front door, slid the empty vessel into his suit coat pocket with almost an embarrassed expression.

"What was it?" 

He grimaced.

"Tea," he admitted.  "Weak tea."

"It certainly looked real!"

"Yes," Landers admitted.  "Yes, it did."

 

Marnie Keller was on stage with the band, behind the closed burgundy curtains:  not for the first time, Marnie wondered what dedicated idiot got burgundy curtains, when the school's colors were purple and white.

She looked to her left, into the wings, where three dancers waited:  she looked to her right, and saw three more: she looked at the band, the brass ensemble and the bass fiddle, then she turned and gripped a tall, hulking, impressive looking man's hands:  she patted his lapels, smiled and whispered, "Thank you, Jimmy."

Jimmy looked down at a beautiful young woman, smiled the way a man will when he wasn't sure quite how she'd grown up so fast:  Jimmy was an undercover agent her father knew, a man who'd listened to Marnie's idea, a man who laughed with delight: he'd rubbed elbows with honest-to-God mobsters back East, in the New Jersey casinos, and now he wore a 1930s suit and for all the world looked like a mob enforcer from the Chicago area.

"It's not often I get to go somewhere for fun," he said quietly -- he smiled, hesitantly, as if he was afraid his face might crack and drop off.

Marnie giggled like the little girl he remembered, then she turned to a classmate, a young man in a tailed tuxedo:  "Maestro, are you ready?"

The Maestro nodded solemnly.

"All right, everyone, into character."  Marnie clapped her hands twice, skipped off to the side as the curtains hissed and rattled and swung open.

The spotlight hit the scar faced mobster.

"Awright, youse guys," he declared in a nasal sneer.  "Youse is gonna have a good time, see?  -- nyahh, nyahh -- or we won't like it, see, and I brought along my violin case t' makes sure youse has a good time, see!"

He bent, unlatched the violin case lying on the floor:  he opened it, lifted his head, glared from under his fedora brim, then straightened --

His hands were big, his knuckles scarred, and in his huge mitts, looking like a toy, rising from its violin case, was --

-- a violin.

He raised it, tucked it awkwardly under his chin:  the bandleader dropped his baton,clapped his hands to his ears and screamed in terror:  "NO, NOT THE FIDDLER!  ANYTHING BUT THAT!" -- as the gangster scraped the bow enthusiastically across the strings, bringing forth sounds that approximated a tortured cat.

The curtains swung closed again, then opened:  Marnie was center stage, the enforcer nowhere to be seen, and a 1920s-era band played while a Flapper danced on the stage, as another half-dozen young women, dressed in the same manner, choreographed their way into the stage lights.

Firelands High School was built well after the Great Depression; it was honestly the first time the Charleston was danced, on stage, and later on the gym floor, the first time a live band played the lively music of the era.

It was not the first time Principal Landers admitted frankly that he was honestly surprised, and frankly delighted, by what a pale eyed student came up with, this time.

He did admit, though, it was the first time he'd been offered a drink and hadn't summarily summoned the constabulary.

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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THE TENTH WONDER

Marnie Keller pressed the heels of her red cowboy boots into the soft ground, shoulder width apart.
She leaned forward a little, one hand around the wrist of a Winchester rifle, the other at the toe of the buttstock: the crescent steel buttplate cupped nicely over her young shoulder, young eyes put the shining gold bead on the steel plate, she watched the rear sight rise, too far, as she took a long breath, then settle down and cradle the bead as she sighed her breath out.

Marnie grinned -- inside, where no one could see it -- her cheek was firm against smooth walnut, her pale eye steady, unblinking, she felt the smooth steel under her finger ...

The rifle shoved against her shoulder, the concussion drove into her sinuses and against her chest, she flowed back slightly with recoil, allowing it, absorbing it, shoving forward back into battery, the walnut fore-end sliding smoothly on the blanket over the sandbags:  Marnie leaned back again, far enough to clear the lever, cranked the lever sharply down, then caught the spinning cartridge as it fell.

Ten year old Marnie Keller looked up at her Daddy with an absolutely delighted expression.

"That was fun, Daddy!  Do it again!"

Linn laughed, handed his darlin' daughter a silicone rag:  "Wipe 'er down, Marnie, it belongs to someone else."

"Okay, Daddy!"

Linn straightened, looked at the nurse standing very nearby, watching.

Linn unzipped the pistol case, laid it open.

He took a long look at the Parkerized GI .45, pale eyes taking in the PROPERTY US GOVERNMENT stamping on the side, looked at the nurse.

"This was ... your mother's?"

The nurse nodded.  "She wore it in the South Pacific."

Linn whistled, looked at the slab sided Democratic Laundromatic, looked at the nurse.

"If only it could talk!"

He picked up the empty magazine, thumbed seven hardball into it.

Marnie stepped back, rifle's muzzle carefully downrange:  Linn took the rifle, slid it into its case, zipped it shut, laid it on the table adjacent.

"Marnie," he said, "field strip this."

Marnie Keller frowned, took the .45.

She pushed the magazine release, rotated the pistol and looked into the vacant magazine well, laid her hand over the slide:  she gripped, she pushed with her strong hand, she locked the slide back, looked into the breech with as serious an expression as a ten year old girl in pigtails and red cowboy boots can manage.

"Confirm clear," she said, and the nurse frowned a little at the irony of professional language from what looked like just a happy little girl.

Linn handed her the magazine.

"Lock and load," he said. "At the buzzer, engage seven yard plates."

Marnie's face went from happy and delighted to solemn and serious: to the watching nurse, it was as if an invisible hand wiped the childhood from her expression and replaced it with an adult's mien.

Marnie ran in the magazine, laid her hand over the slide, muzzle downrange: the Parkerized slide slammed briskly forward, a sharp, almost harsh sound.

Linn turned to the nurse.

"Plug your ears," he said quietly.

She did.

Marnie had Old Slabsides in a two-handed grip, holding at low ready: she'd not shifted her feet from where she'd anchored in with the Winchester: she saw the blue box in her periphery as her Daddy brought the timer close to her electronic muffs --

BEEEP!

Marnie raised the old veteran war horse, concentrated on her first shot: even at her tender age, she'd shot enough, coached by her Daddy and her Big Brother Jacob, she knew each trigger was different; she was no stranger to a self loader, and when the .45 slide SLAMMED back and SLAMMED forward, Marnie could not help herself.

The corners of her eyes tightened, just a little, which was all the expression she allowed herself when she was concentrating.

To the watching nurse, it was as if a magical connection existed between her Mama's pistol and the plates: the sudden slap-in-the-face BAM of a GI .45, the clanging slam of a steel plate being knocked back, hard: Marnie fired with a steady rhythm, her second shot just over a second later, the rest came at less than one second intervals:  brass spun, shining and silver, cases Marnie helped her Daddy load up the night before:  the slide locked back, Marnie couldn't reach the magazine release with her strong thumb, so she used her off thumb -- the magazine dropped free -- Marnie drew the pistol back, looked up at her Daddy and the nurse pulled her fingers from her ears in time to hear a happy child's voice, "Confirm clear!" -- then the solemn expression was wiped away by that invisible hand and a delighted child's expression, a matching happy voice:  "That was fun, Daddy!  Do it again!"

Linn winked at his little girl.  "Disassemble," he said, "that's corrosive ammunition."

"Okay, Daddy!"

Marnie pulled a plastic mat over and proceeded to reduce the .45 to its several subcomponents.

Linn picked up the Winchester, slid it back into its flannel lined canvas rifle case, zipped it shut.

He picked up an inverted five gallon bucket, laid a thin pillow on it, patted it:  "Genuine bucket seat.  Make yourself comfortable."

The county Sheriff, a nurse in scrubs, and a little girl in a denim skirt and pigtails occupied the range that morning, and as a little girl in rubber gloves scrubbed, wiped, sprayed and patched a gunbarrel far older than she was, the Sheriff and the nurse talked in quiet tones.

"The other ... my co-workers, some of them are with the Ladies' Tea Society."

Linn nodded, his expression quiet; he gave the impression of someone who was actually listening, someone who was paying close attention to what was being said.

He'd found it an effective means of getting people not just to talk, but to keep talking; it worked with interrogating the lawless, and in gaining the confidence of the law abiding.

"The Tea Society comes out here, and ... my uncle died, you know, and I've had my mother's pistol since she died ..."

"And your Uncle said that rifle would knock you on your backside."

She nodded.

"I know the Society ... most of the ladies have ARs, and your mother and then Marnie taught them how to shoot, but ... I'm still paying off student loans, and I have Daddy's deer rifle, and ..."

Linn smiled -- a quiet, understanding smile; in spite of his Sheriff's uniform, he was relaxed and casual, his skinny backside parked on another five gallon bucket:  he was hunched forward, elbows on his knees, and the nurse couldn't help but feel like she was talking with more of an old friend than the chief law enforcement officer of the county.

Marnie wiped off the barrel, held it up, peered critically through it, nodded.

"And your uncle told you that rifle would knock you on your backside."

Nurse Malloy nodded.

"How did that make you feel?"

"I didn't know whether to backhand him or run away crying," she admitted.

Linn nodded.

"My wife tells me you're a damned good ER nurse."

She dropped her eyes.  "I try to be," she mumbled.

"She said you picked up a surgical tray and smacked a drunk in the face hard enough to dent the tray."

She nodded again.  "Charge nurse said she was going to write me up."

"The charge nurse Doc Greenlees fired for saying it."

She nodded again.

"You did CPR when their chest compression machine broke.  Doc said no man could have kept the compressions that deep, that regular, for that long."

She closed her eyes, nodded.

Linn laid a surprisingly warm hand on the back of hers.

"I am going to admit something," Linn said quietly.  "Call me sexist or a male chauvinist pig if you must, but women in general are a hell of a lot tougher than men."

She looked at him with surprised eyes.

"You just watched a ten year old girl shoot a man sized rifle with absolutely no difficulty.  You just watched a fourth grade girl take a .45 automatic that's supposed to be good as a war club in a bar fight, something that jumps in the hand like a frightened trout, you just watched this child knock down seven steel plates with seven shots, with a pistol she'd never seen before today."  Linn patted her knuckles, winked, withdrew his hand.  "Darlin', women are amazing creatures, and in my entire lifetime, I've never met a single one who was honestly the weak little flower your uncle would claim them to be!"

Marnie frowned in concentration as she squeezed grease out of the tube's narrow, pointed spout, as she anointed slide rails and slide and the other bearing surfaces: swift young fingers reassembled the military issue pistol, cycled it a few times, tried the trigger, frowned:  she inserted the empty mag, turned, gave it a final wipe with the silicone rag and laid it on its filleted-open pistol case.

"I want one," she said, her expression solemn: she laid a hand on the cased Winchester:  "Uncle Will's gonna gimme a Winchester once I get some meat on my bones."

Linn laughed, ran his arm around his little girl's waist, then picked her up and set her on his lap.

"Get some meat on your bones?" he echoed, looked at Nurse Malloy with a father's broad and approving grin.  "That sounds like somethin' he'd say!"

Marnie hugged her Daddy, giggling happily, and Linn hugged his little girl, looked at Malloy.

"She's ten years old," Linn said softly, "she can handle a man sized rifle and she can handle a man sized pistol, she can ride like a Mexican and she's hell with a knife."  Linn kissed his little girl, hugged her again.  "I honestly pity the poor fool who tries anything with her."

"Oh, Daddy," Marnie giggled, reddening a little.

Linn looked at Nurse Malloy.  "Ten years old. I call her my Tenth Wonder of the World, at least until her next birthday."  He thrust a chin at the gun cases.  "If a little fourth grade girl can shoot both of those in complete comfort and no difficulty a'tall, I doubt if that Winchester will knock you on your backside."  He grinned.  "Why don't you bring that to the next Tea Society meeting?  Marnie and I will be there and we'll be running a class on that style of rifle.  We'll teach you how to smoke the Huns out of the wire with the both of those!"

 

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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HAMBURGER

Linn rolled up on his side to keep from being torn open on the snag of a stump coming at him.

He was already mud from chin to knees, he'd already been dragged the length of the park, through a water-filled ditch, he rolled up on his side -- he looked up in time to see the bull calf's tail raise, he got out of the way before he added a dark green streak of secondhand bull feed down his front -- his shoulder hit a rock and his shocked hands surrendered the farmer's rope.

Linn's teeth gleamed in the darkness as he locked any sounds of pain behind bared incisors: he pushed up off the ground, looked after the bull calf's retreating backside.

They were nearly back where they'd started.

Linn stood, looked down at his muddy ruin of a uniform; his Stetson was who-knows-where, his temper was seething, then humor dashed like a bucket of cold water on his molten anger, cooling it suddenly with a rising cloud of ironic laughter.

The farmer's teenage daughter held a five gallon bucket by its handle, she was patting the white plastic side with her other palm and calling "Here kitty kitty," and the bull calf was trotting up to her just as nice as you please.

Linn staggered toward his cruiser, stopped behind the farmer's truck, where the old fellow had pulled off to change a flat, and the bull calf pulled loose and jumped from the truckbed.

 

Willamina's face was serious as she and the dispatcher exchanged a concerned look.

"Send backup," she said, her voice quiet:  Sharon turned, reached for the broad, flat key on the desk mic, when Linn's voice came through the speakers.

It was his voice, but it was his voice under stress.

"Firelands" -- huff, pant -- "situation contained" -- wheeze, cough, pant.

Willamina resisted the temptation to lean over and key the mic herself.

"What happened?" Sharon asked, without the usual preceding identifiers.

Huff, wheeze -- "Story at eleven"  huff, pant -- "stand by for public service."

"Firelands roger your public service."

Sharon released the key, leaned back, looked at the Sheriff.

"This better be good," Willamina muttered, and Sharon glared at the grey grille of the Motorola speaker: Sharon took pride in looking after Her Boys, and Linn was one of Her Boys.

Willamina accepted a mug of steaming-hot coffee, but not until one was set in front of the dispatcher: humanity had quietly moved into the dispatch area, or at least into earshot, waiting to hear back from a motorist-assist, out-of-vehicle mark that hadn't marked back in.

 

Linn shut the cruiser off beside the Carbon Hill depot building.

It wasn't staffed at night, the train didn't run to Carbon most of the year, only during tourist season, or for a special run -- they'd made supply runs, they'd run emergency-evacuation drills, and once, during a mine rescue, they'd run in a full crew and hauled them out again -- but now, after dark and in winter's dying weeks, the depot was closed, locked up, empty.

Linn's tread was slow, tired, as he mounted the few steps: his knees ached, where they'd been beat against rock, ground, debris of multiple varieties, his chest and ribs hurt, his palms were burnt where that rough rope slipped a couple of times, and he was still mad as hell at the bull calf that dragged him through muddy darkness like a harpooned whale drags a whaleboat through saltwater waves.

He opened the lid to a camouflaged metal box, swung it open on greased hinges, keyed in a code: the alarm LED went from steady red to blinking green.

He thrust a key into the lock on the dispatcher's door, pushed it open.

Lights came on automatically.

Linn picked up the desk phone's receiver, punched in a number, sat: he reasoned that his front was filthy, his backside wasn't, and besides he was tired enough and he hurt enough he didn't give a good damn if he muddied the dispatcher's antique hardwood office chair or not.

"Sharon, it's Linn," he said.

"Linn, what happened?  You had us worried, I was ready to send the cavalry!"

Sharon leaned forward a little, turned up the volume on the speaker phone, looked around at serious faces leaning in close to hear.

"I stopped for a motorist assist, gave you the plate."

"I got that, go on."

"A bull calf jumped out of his truckbed when he started to change the tire."

"A bull calf."

"Dragging a rope.  I ran up and grabbed the rope and it was game on."

"What do you mean, game on?"

Sharon heard Linn's tired deep-inhale-and-exhale.

"That bull calf ought to run the damned Iditarod," Linn said, a quiet, menacing anger in his carefully-controlled words:  "he drug me north, south, east, west, the whole length of the Village Park, on my belly" -- they heard the sharpened edge of anger hidden in his voice --, "through a ditch, through a young pond, through another ditch, I had to roll out of the way so I didn't get gutted on a snag" -- he paused, collected himself -- his words had increased in heat, in volume and in speed, and he deliberately stopped and took a moment before continuing.

"I meant to fetch the man's bull calf back to him."

"Did you?"

"Nope," Linn admitted.  "Attair damned Towmotor hauled me around in a big circle, I hit a rock and let go of the rope just as his little girl fetched out a feed bucket and attair damned bull calf come trottin' up to her just nice as you please!"

By now the several faces pressed in close around the dispatcher's desk were grinning, reddening, snickering, hands were laid on shoulders; sniggers, snorts and suppressed sounds mercifully failed to pass through the speakerphone's pickup.

"I am a muddy mess, I'm filth from my chin on down, I reckon my knees are scraped up and bloody, and I'm gonna try to buy that damned bull calf!"

Sharon was chewing on her knuckles, trying not to snort; she managed to stifle herself long enough to ask, "Why would you want to buy that bull calf?"

"I'M GONNA NAME IT HAMBURGER AND TURN IT INTO EATIN' MEAT!" Linn declared loudly, and close-thronged humanity gave up their attempts at stealth:  Linn heard multiple voices he recognized, collectively making sounds similar to a flock of chickens industriously giving birth to a like number of meteors.

"Returning to station," Linn said, and hung up:  he leaned his head back, looked a the ceiling, closed his eyes.

"It'll take me ten years to live this down," he muttered.

He was right.

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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JOSEPH'S COAT OF FILTHY COLORS

Sheriff Linn Keller slouched companionably against the refrigerator beside the coffee pot.

His face was showing the first fine lines men acquire with enough experience, enough years, enough weather: his pale eyes looked out the heavy glass double doors, remembering how his pale eyed Mama used to come through those doors, looking like a million bucks, looking around proud as an eagle, clearly in command, and at the same time, a naturally kind soul anyone could approach with any question, any problem.

He remembered days like this, days that smelled of springtime, days when the sun caressed a man through his coat -- as long as the wind didn't kick up.

 

Joseph Keller looked around with pale eyes, surveyed the pasture as he always did, analytically, with attention to anything different:  he saw foals and colts, calves and his Pa's golden stallion, and big brother Jacob's Appaloosa stallion separated by a high board fence -- one of the mares was unexpectedly fresh, and his Pa didn't want her bred just yet.

Joseph reached up, settled his Stetson down a little more on his head, shrugged a little: he was wearing his newest Carhartt coat, and he was headed for school, and like many of the Keller young, he had a disdain for the school bus, preferring his horsepower under a saddle.

Joseph Keller's eyes tightened a little at the corners, he caressed his black Outlaw-horse -- Old Pale Eyes had an Outlaw-horse, he'd read, a gelding like this one, but Old Pale Eyes had taken his Outlaw from an outlaw that had no further use for it: Joseph had been trying to train this Outlaw to collapse when he shook a fist at it and said "I oughta thump you!" and so far the only thing this Outlaw horse did in response, was to nuzzle his belly, bumming for treats.

Joseph Keller rode bitless, like his Pa did, like Marnie and Jacob did, and Joseph turned his Outlaw horse with knees and with a gentle laying of reins against his neck, then he dropped the knotted reins over the saddlehorn.

Outlaw started to dance.

Joseph's eyes narrowed, he leaned forward, planted his palms flat on either side of Outlaw's shining-black neck, just below the bristling, crew-cut mane:  "YAAA!" he yelled, and Outlaw didn't have to be told twice.

Like generations of Keller horses before, Outlaw had a great love, and his was to run:  he lowered his head and thrust out his nose, he bore for the fence at a wide-open gallop:  Joseph's stomach sailed down a long elevator shaft as his shining black gelding launched from hard earth and sailed through space with the grace and the ease of a creature whose preferred home was flight.

Steelshod hooves caressed the earth, translating descent into forward velocity, and envious eyes through school bus windows saw their classmate's broad and unmistakable grin as the horse ran a slalom between trees and brush, cutting up a fork in an ancient trail and crossing the road a quarter mile behind the bus.

"He'll beat us to school," an anonymous voice complained, and none that heard the words, doubted them to be true.

 

"Don't fall in," a voice murmured, and Linn turned and handed his segundo a fresh, steaming mug off coffee.

"Memories," he said quietly, and Paul Barrents nodded.

"Figured."  He looked out the doors, dark eyes shining with recollections of his own.  "I could do with lots of days like this."

"Granddad used to plant taters on Saint Patrick's Day."  Linn took a long breath, a short drink of coffee.  "We planted him on the same day. He'd appreciate the irony."

Barrents nodded:  he'd heard his old friend say that very thing, every year.

"You're rememberin'."

"Yep."

 

The Ninja hold the belief that a man's soul will flow into the right weapon, will fill the right weapon: a blade is not simply sharpened steel, if it's the right blade for the warrior, it is part of the warrior, and when well matched, he need not look to know where edge and tip are, in three-dimensional space.

So it is when mount and rider are well matched.

Joseph remembered hearing a cassette tape his father still had, where a radio personality -- Paul Harvey, he believed -- read a letter for his noontime closer.

Joseph didn't recall the entire letter, but he remembered the part where the writer described riding his Granddad's Appaloosa stallion:

"We were bare chested GODS, and we rode the wind itself!"

Joseph knew what that felt like: he and his black Outlaw-horse were not horse and rider, they were one magical creature, just as surely as if the living soul of each was comingled with the other: Outlaw twisted around a particularly tight switchback in the narrow, ancient mountain trail, came out in a wind-stripped field, slowed:  Joseph gave Outlaw his head, allowed him to slow, to catch his wind: he'd heard his pale eyed Pa speak with a deadly contempt for those stupid souls who wind broke a horse, especially this high up, and Joseph had no wish to bring harm to his fine, shining horse.

Outlaw's pace was swift, long-legged, effective: Joseph's eyes were busy, as they always were -- he'd seen his Pa's eyes, just as busy, his big brother Jacob spoke in quiet moments of stopping with his back to a wall, or a rock, someplace no one could come in behind him: he'd spoken seriously of observing, of not just looking, but seeing.

The mind, the eyes, can be exercised and conditioned like an athlete's muscles: Joseph was in the habit of actually looking, and of protecting his back, and so when he came in sight of what used to be Kemper Latta's house, he naturally gave it a looking-over.

Outlaw felt his change, slowed quickly, turned:  Joseph's hand reached forward, caressing the gelding's shining neck, the other hand driving inside his coat, seizing the cell phone that lived in the inside pocket.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller was closest to the dispatcher's desk.

Sharon was off on an errand; whoever was closest, became dispatcher, and Linn picked up the receiver, dropped his skinny backside onto the red-velvet cushion on the polished-hardwood office chair's seat:  "Firelands County Sheriff's Office, whattaya need?"

"Pa, I need the Irish Brigade," he heard -- his hand seized Sharon's pencil, paused over her pad: "I'm at Kemper Latta's place where they rebuilt it and there's fire blowin' out the kitchen exhaust fan."

Linn dropped the pencil, thumbed one of several red buttons: taut fingers thumped in concert on the broad, flat General Electric mic key as he leaned close to the chrome-banded desk mic's head.

"Firelands Fire Department, have a reported house fire, Kemper Latta's place, time out zero seven fifteen."

He straightened, brought the phone's speaker back to his lips.

"Joseph, what else do you see?  Is it through the roof?"

"No sir, but the curtains just went up!"

"Joseph" -- the Sheriff's voice had an edge to it -- "do not go in that house!"

"Sir!" he heard, and the connection broke -- Linn swore, quietly, less a profanity and more a prayer.

Sheriff Linn Keller knew his son.

He was talking to God about it when the first shining-red Kenworth fire engine passed in front of the Sheriff's office.

 

Joseph's young ears had not been hammered into insensitivity by a lifetime of air compressors, jack hammers, unmuffled gunshots, explosions or excessively loud speakers: horse, rider and a shining black Dawg heard it:  a scream, a child's terrified voice, a voice calling for its Daddy.

Outlaw cantered quickly up to the back door, the one nearest the fire; Joseph turned him, rode to the front, eyes busy.

He kicked free of his stirrups, threw up a leg, fell through space and mountain air and hit the ground flat footed:  he picked up a sizable chunk of flat-ended stovewood, ran for the front door:  young muscles, fired with adrenaline, swung the weight in a swift and vicious arc.

Sawed wood blasted against the doorknob -- once, twice -- wood splintered, Joseph threw the wood after the swung-open door.

Smoke was layering thick already.

"HELLO!" he called

"Daddy!" a child's voice quavered.

Joseph sprinted for the stairs, charged up someone else's staircase without their leave, let or permission:  he thrust a partly-open door open, saw two scared little kids, one under the bed, one peeking out of a closet.

Joseph thought fast:  what would they understand?

What about school?

What do we do in school?

"FIRE DRILL!" Joseph yelled.  "Downstairs! Outside and line up!"

Two children responded as they'd been trained:  they may be grade school age, but they knew what a fire drill was, and they knew to go outside and line up, and they scrambled out of the closet and out from under the bed.

Joseph stepped back, the way he'd seen teachers do:  "Down the stairs, don't push, outside and line up now" -- he followed them down, and none of them were slow --

Joseph's head snapped around as he heard The Bear Killer's summons, loud, shocking, all the more dangerous for that it was inside, and not outside.

Joseph ran into the kitchen.

A man lay on the floor, eyes wide, staring; he was unmoving -- Joseph looked up at the grease fire on the kitchen stove -- he shut off the burners, opened a lower cupboard, yanked out a cookie sheet and dropped it over the flaming frying pan -- his eyes were burning, he was coughing, he wanted to get OUT, every instinct screamed to get OUT, the fire was alive and consuming above where the frying pan started everything, a smoke alarm was screaming, an insane, irritating note and Joseph seized this grown man by the back of his collar -- he grabbed two hands' worth of material -- he pulled, hard, and gained maybe an inch.

Joseph reset his boot heels, leaned back, using his weight as leverage, and gained half a foot.

The Bear Killer seized as much material as he could get, beside Joseph's hand: together the got the dead weight moving, scooting:  half a foot, a foot, two feet:  Joseph's eyes were stinging, he was coughing, he scooted back a little and pulled again and they were on a rug and they were moving rug and all, so Joseph let go of the collar and rolled the rug up and grabbed this improvised handle and pulled hard, head thrown back, teeth bared, cords standing out in his neck:  between a fifth grade boy and a four wheel drive Bear Killer of a mountain Mastiff, they got to the front door, they got the man's head and shoulders outside, into clean air, Joseph fell back and fell into a set of legs and a familiar voice declared "We've got him, lad! Is there anyone else?"

Joseph surrendered his rug to the Irish Brigade, stood, turned to the fire chief:  "I don't think so, sir. Are they okay?" -- he thrust his chin at two scared-looking children, tentatively approaching their unmoving father.

"They're fine, lad, but you're a sight."

Joseph looked at his coat sleeve, at the other coat sleeve:  it was almost decorated with short little black lines, where airborne strings of soot settled on him as he moved through the polluted atmosphere.

"Ma's gonna kill me," he muttered.

Fitz drew Joseph to the side, squatted as the rescue team sprinted inside, all fire boots and bunker pants and self-contained air packs:  "Lad," Fitz said with a quiet intensity, "ye got two children t' safety an' y' drug a grown man out."  His hands were heavy, firm, tight on Joseph's shoulders.  "I'd say ye've done a grown man's work this fine mornin'."

Joseph bit his bottom lip, his ears reddening:  "I gotta get to school," he said.

"G'wan, then, we've got it from here."  Fitz winked as a  hose line ran into the structure, with two firefighters attached to it:  Joseph  laid an arm over The Bear Killer's shoulder, more for his own reassurance than to bring any comfort to the grinning, panting Mastiff.

 

The Sheriff was not at all an unfamiliar figure at the local grade school.

He was usually seen in assemblies, or for special events.

It was not, however, ordinary for him to come into a classroom, to pace quietly over to the teacher, to speak in a hushed voice.

Joseph Keller's ears turned red again, remarkably so, and he knew his Pa was there for him.

Instead of shrinking down in his seat, he lifted his chin, sat very straight.

He'd take whatever his Pa gave him, even if it was to be bent over the teacher's desk and belted.

"JOSEPH KELLER," the Sheriff said, his voice powerful, summoning.

Joseph stood, lifted his chin almost defiantly:  "SIR!"

"JOSEPH KELLER, YOU WILL PRESENT YOURSELF, FRONT AND CENTER!"

"SIR!"

Joseph squared his shoulders, paced off on the left, walked to the front of the class, knowing full well every last set of eyes in the classroom was on him, and on him alone.

He turned to face his father, arms to his sides, young jaw set, his face a little pale: he felt rather uncertain, but he intended to project no uncertainty at all.

Linn turned his head, swept the hushed, cowed class with pale and unsmiling eyes, looked back at his son.

"JOSEPH KELLER, THIS MORNING YOU SAW A HOUSE WAS ON FIRE."

"YES, SIR!"

"YOU CALLED THE FIRE DEPARTMENT."

"YES, SIR!"

"I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO INTO THE HOUSE!"

"YES, SIR!"

"YOU WENT INTO THE HOUSE ANYWAY!"

Joseph swallowed, took a long breath.

"YES, SIR, I DID!"

"JOSEPH KELLER, YOU DELIBERATELY DISOBEYED YOUR FATHER'S DIRECT ORDER."

"YES, SIR."

"JOSEPH KELLER, YOU DID THE RIGHT THING!"

If Joseph hadn't had his knees locked, he might have collapsed: he blinked, swallowed.

"Sir?"

Linn took a step toward his son.

"Joseph, you got two children out of the second floor of a fire structure. Had you not done this, they would have died of smoke inhalation and maybe been burnt up."

Joseph swallowed again, his voice less powerful, less certain.  "Yes, sir."

"More than that."  Linn looked over the class, looked back at his son.

"Joseph, you dragged a grown man out of a burning kitchen.  You moved a man three times your own weight.  You got him to safety.  The fire chief tells me there was a cookie sheet over a frying pan and he thinks you snuffed a grease fire with it."

"Yes, sir."

"That was good thinking, with the cookie sheet.  The fire chief said he'll incorporate that in Fire Safety Week presentations."

"Yes, sir."

Linn walked up to his son.

"JOSEPH KELLER, YOU DID THE RIGHT THING, AND I AM PRETTY DAMNED PROUD OF YOU!"

Sheriff Linn Keller bent, seized his son in a crushing hug, lifted him off the ground, holding him with the desperate strength of a father who'd been worried about his son.

Joseph hugged his Pa back, and Linn's lips, close to Joseph's ear, whispered, "Sometimes we have to violate orders to do the right thing, and you did!"

"Yes, sir," Joseph whispered back.

Father and son held one another for several long moments.

Normally, when a boy hits eleven years of age, he gets embarrassed when dear old Dad pulls something in public that brings attention to them.

Somehow, though, Joseph didn't mind this one a'tall.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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A MAN'S HEART

Sheriff Linn Keller waited.

Mountains behind and to his right blocked the prevailing winds; the high meadow was a known shelter, and it was not uncommon to find grazers here -- domesticated, and otherwise: part of his mind smiled at the memory of seeing buffalo here, shortly after his arrival, and part of him regretted not seeing these Big Shaggies anymore.

He sat still, or so it appeared to the oncoming carriage's driver: she was not yet close enough to see his eyes.

She didn't have to.

She knew this man, this tall, lean-waisted horseman, would be steadily, methodically scouring his surroundings with those remarkable, pale eyes, those eyes she'd looked into many times, those eyes she wished would behold her the way a man does when he wishes to possess a woman.

She knew he would turn toward her as she approached, she knew he would be polite, he would be formal, even here, where the two of them were alone.

Alone, with nobody to see that she, Bonnie Lynne McKenna, a married woman, was meeting a married man, the husband of her dearest friend.

Bonnie felt a sudden wash of fear: she could bring the mare around, she knew -- she could turn, she could describe a circle here in the grasses, she could return -- her gloved fingers tightened on the reins -- she swallowed -- 

No, she thought.

I must do this.

 

Linn sat erect in the saddle, his eyes quiet, shadowed by his hat brim.

Bonnie could not tell if they were icy-hard, disapproving of her asking to meet him thus, alone; she could not tell if they were that light blue she'd seen when his guards were down, when he was in a moment of affection, something she'd seen when he held his child, when he held his wife, when he was pleased.

Of all things Bonnie Lynne McKenna could see, she wished most sincerely those light blue eyes were looking at her the way he'd looked at his wife.

Her best friend.

Bonnie felt fear, again, fear that she was betraying a friend, betraying her husband, betraying --

Betraying him.

She swallowed, wet her lips, tasted the cosmetic, remembered how she'd chosen her dress very carefully, how she'd prepared her face, stared in the mirror, shivering a little, knowing she was going to see another woman's husband.

She saw Linn's chin lift, just a little, as she slowed the mare, as the mare stopped, and so did she.

Linn removed his Stetson, smiled, just a little.

"Bonnie."

Bonnie swallowed, lifted her chin as well.  "Linn."

Linn felt his ear pull back a little, as if tugged by an invisible thumb and forefinger.

Bonnie very carefully addressed him as "Sheriff" ... to hear her speak his given Christian name shot through him, and he seized his feelings, controlling them with a ruthlessness he'd had to practice ever since he'd seen her for the first time.

"Bonnie."

It was Bonnie's turn to feel that sudden surge of passion sear through her belly.

It was probably her imagination, but his lips almost caressed her name, and she imagined them caressing her --

Stop that! she thought viciously, forbidding herself from feeling anything further.

"You wanted to see me," Linn said quietly, without preamble.

Bonnie blinked uncertainly, looked at him with those lovely, deep-violet eyes, those eyes he could fall into, those eyes he could swim in --

Stop that! he thought viciously, forbidding himself from feeling anything further.

"I must speak my heart," Bonnie said, trying to sound confident: to her own ears, her confidence faded and so did her voice.

Linn nodded, once, slowly, his face a carefully neutral mask.

Bonnie closed her eyes, took a deep breath, pushed into the lake of her feelings like she was shoving out and swimming in treacherous dark waters.

"I have long held ... a ... deep affection for you," Bonnie admitted, her words carefully formal: unless she hid behind a structure of formal language, she feared, she might blurt words of passion and desire and throw herself at the man like a desperate slattern, something she'd actually considered, once, and fortunately hadn't.

Linn's expression never changed: his eyes were quiet, veiled: the sun was behind him, his face shadowed, and she damned her lack of forethought, she should have come around on his other side so she could see his face!

"Ever since you decked that scoundrel Slade --"

"I remember," Linn said, and Bonnie jumped a little: he'd been so utterly still, the effect was that of a stone statue speaking.

"Esther is my dearest friend," Bonnie continued, and Linn could hear a shade of uncertainty in her words. "She stated an intent to have you as her husband, and I was ... a slattern. She could offer an old name. Esther could offer culture and gentility, and I ..."

"Bonnie."

Linn's voice was quiet, rich, it caressed her as if he caressed her cheek with his hand.

"You were never a slattern, Bonnie. You were a mother when I saw you for the first time. You have no idea how close I came to ripping the beating heart from my breast and laying it at your feet."

Bonnie's eyes widened, her hand rising unbidden to the base of her throat.

"Bonnie, had I not been shot and near to death -- had Esther not stopped my bleeding, had she not seized my eternal soul and dragged it back into my broke down carcass -- I was certain that I would ask your hand."  Linn stopped, frowned; she saw his jaw thrust out, the way it did when he'd overplayed a hand, when he realized he'd overstepped himself.

Linn looked away, looked back.

"It would seem," he said carefully, "we have the same feelings."

"Yes," she whispered, her heart light, fluttering, the way it did when she was a maiden, just beginning to realize men were looking at her differently.

"Bonnie, you are married and you are the very best wife Levi could possibly have.  I am married and I am trying my best to be the best husband Esther has.  If things had been different, I would've been pretty damned proud to have had you as my wife."

Bonnie opened her mouth to speak, her throat suddenly dry.

"I've had feelings for you, Bonnie.  Ever since we first saw one another. I've done for you as best I can without ..."

His words ground to a halt, he looked away, looked back.

"You funded my dress-works," she whispered.  "You bought my ranch and gave it to me, just gave it to me."

"I got it back from the thieves that stole it from you," Linn said viciously.

"You never tried to take Sarah."

"Sarah is your daughter."

"She is your child."

Linn nodded.  "Yes she is," he said softly.  "She is the child of my loins, but she's never known me as a father, only as the Sheriff. It's too late to change that. She is your child, Bonnie, she adores you and you are absolutely the very best mother she could have."

Bonnie nodded numbly.

Linn sidestepped his stallion closer.

"Bonnie, I dare not dismount," he said quietly.  "If I were to dismount, I would offer my hand for you to dismount.  Were you to dismount your carriage, I would take you in my arms and I would kiss you" -- he hesitated, then continued, his voice stronger, richer, fuller -- "I would kiss you with all the passion and all the desire I have had for you, for all these many years!"

His eyes were wide, unblinking, driving into hers, his voice as intent as his gaze.

"Bonnie Lynne McKenna, never, ever doubt that you are a beautiful woman, never doubt you are a desirable woman, and never doubt that you are an honorable woman. You've come here and you've spoken honestly, and I thank you for that."

Bonnie looked away, looked down, her face hot, feeling all the passion she'd denied all this time.

"I dare not sully your marriage, Bonnie. I will not be improper with you. You've spoken honestly of your passion toward me. I share that passion toward you."  

Linn raised his hand, settled his Stetson on his head.

"Bonnie," he said softly, "I learned the hard way not to deal in what-if's. You're in love with Levi more than you're in love with me. You needed to speak these feelings because it's hard to keep them hid so long."
Bonnie nodded.  "Yes it is," she whispered.

"I love you, Bonnie."

She looked up, startled:  Linn grinned, that boyish, open, unaffected grin she'd seen so very few times:  he touched his hat brim, touched his heels to his stallion's ribs, rode away.

Bonnie Lynne McKenna turned in her upholstered seat, staring after him, gloved fingers to her lips, wishing he'd at least kissed her, but holding the memory of those final words like a most precious bouquet.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller held his wife, smiled into her eyes.

"Did she tell you?" Esther asked quietly.

"She did."

"And did you tell her?"

"I did."

Esther laid her head against her husband's breast, heard his heart beating slowly, powerfully.

"I'm glad," she murmured.  "It's hard to keep a secret as long as she has."

Linn's arms tightened around Esther, he laid his cheek over on top of her head.

"I still think I made the right choice," he murmured.

Esther sighed contentedly.  "So do I."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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 CHIEF, WILLA, MARK

Deputy Marshal Willamina Keller could dance like a feather on the breeze.

She could, and did, handle the issue PR-24 sidehandle baton like a blademaster handles a fencing foil.

She also had a healthy respect for the usefulness of the police shotgun.

When the cruiser came to a fast, hard-braking stop in front of Cuz's Corner, three uniformed officers bailed out: two had batons in hand, and once had a double handful of twelve-gauge persuasion.

Deputy Marshal Willamina Keller turned away from her partner, laid the shotgun out level and turned it upside down before jacking a round in the chamber.

Neither Joe, the town Marshal, nor Mark, her partner, questioned her action: the sounds of a general knock down drag out barfight from within claimed their attention.

Joe seized the door's handle, pulled: Willamina twisted, drove a side-snap-kick into an advancing pugilist's belly, doubling him up: he folded over, Willa hit him with a hard-swung hip, stepped inside, looked around at the general conflagration.

It was almost cartoonish.

Everyone inside was beating on everyone else: fists, feet, beer mugs, pool cues: with a fight this size and this involved, tossing in a gas grenade and decking everyone as they came coughing out the door would be one approach.

Willamina was less patient.

She triggered the High Standard.

Now a charge of military issue 00 buck, driven through the ceiling, is a truly wondrous thing inside a confined space: there is an instant shock value that brings everything to a halt -- she described it later like a cartoon barfight, a roiling cloud with a fist thrust out here, a foot emerging there, a set of dentures spinning off in a random direction, and when someone yells HOLD IT, everything freezes, including the hard-thrown cream pie, skidding to a stop an inch from its intended victim's surprised face.

Everyone stopped, instantly.

Everyone except the core of the boil, the root cause of the barfight.

Everything but two women in back.

Willamina tossed the shotgun to the Marshal, turned, waded through the mass of bloodied-beer-soaked humanity, seized one of the still-catfighting women by the upper arm.

At this new affront, the screaming, sizzling woman swung at Willamina.

Willamina seized her wrist coming in, spun her, cranked her arm hard up behind her back and seized the back of her jeans: she used leverage to her advantage, drove the party of the second part into the midsection of the party of the third part; both women were slammed back, Willamina stopped, arms stiff, hands fisted at her sides:  she turned, she glared about her with eyes that projected winter's cold and without raising her voice, managed to make herself heard in the floor-sagging, beer-and-cigarette-smoke-smelling, shocked-silent beer joint ...

"ANYBODY ELSE?"

Her words were a challenge, edged with sharpened steel:  she turned a little, bearing her frigid expression round about:  "MY NAME IS HELL AND I'M OPEN FOR BUSINESS!"

She sensed movement behind her, she turned, drove her fist into the attacking woman's gut:  she grabbed the hair of her head and her crotch, hauled her off the floor, high into the air, and slammed her, back-first, onto a table, breaking one of its three legs and sliding the suddenly-pacified combatant to the well-less-than-clean floor.

Willamina emerged with two female prisoners in irons, two women who were getting enough wind in them to swear and threaten:  Willamina got them outside, threw one over the trunk of the nearest car, drove her knee into the other one's belly, bringing her a foot off the ground and knocking the air out of her:  the pale eyed deputy marshal seized the woman's jeans pocket, squeezed, ran a hand in, emerged with a set of keys.

She shoved the gasping woman at the Marshal.

"Search incident to arrest," she snapped, sorting through the keys, thrust one into the trunk's lock, twisted.

A dull *thump* as the heavy trunk lid released.

"First try," Willa said quietly.  "What are the odds! Get her off the trunk, let's see what's in here!"

"DAMN YOU CAN'T DO THAT I'LL SUE --"

The trunk lid was hoist open, three sworn officers looked inside, looked at one another, three hands closed the trunk.

The Marshal turned the High Standard upside down, cycled the action, handed it to Mark.

"Sit on that trunk," he said.

"I'll make the call," Willa said quietly as she looked at the Marshal. "Keep these two separated, see if they know one another."  She went back inside, her jaw set: two fingers to her lips, a whistle.

"IS ANYBODY HERE WITH EITHER OF THOSE WOMEN?"

Men looked at one another, looked at the Deputy, shook their heads.

"GOOD. ANYBODY WANTA PRESS CHARGES?"

Again, a general looking-around, a general negative shake of the heads: most tried to avoid this slender bundle of dynamite's frosted gaze.

"GOOD. I RECOMMEND YOU MAKE YOURSELVES SCARCE. BACKUP IS ON THE WAY AND SO IS THE FBI! MOVE!!"

Willamina swung around behind the bar, stomped back to the telephone, dialed a number.

 

To his credit, Agent Max was in his suit, narrow tie knotted, despite the unholy hour:  he arrived, braked smoothly to a stop ahead of the line of cruisers, nodded to the several deputies, stopped and looked at the Marshal.

"I understand you have a situation, Joe," he said.

Joe looked at his pale eyed Deputy.

"Willa."
Willamina looked at Mark, lifted her chin.

Mark slid off the trunk -- he'd parked his backside on it, shotgun at port arms; now he lifted his boot heels from the bumper, slid down, turned, opened the trunk.

Agent Mack looked inside and turned a little pale.

He bent down, looked closer -- Willamina shot her MagLite's beam in so he could read the stencil -- the agent reached up, closed the trunk, looked at Mark and said in a quiet voice, "Resume your station."

He looked at the Marshal.  

"I need to make a call."

 

One-half hour later, a dechromed government car pulled up beside the cruisers; a pimple-jawed Lieutenant stepped out, the creases on his uniform sharp enough to cut himself; he opened the rear door and a bird colonel stepped out, all medals and bluster:  "NOW WHAT'S THIS GUFF I HEAR ABOUT STOLEN GOVERNMENT PROPERTY --"

"Marshal."

"Willa."

"Mark."

Mark lifted his boot heels from the rear bumper, slid off the trunk, turned the key, lifted the trunk.

Willamina squirted her MagLite into the trunk's poorly lighted interior as the Colonel bent and looked inside.

The Colonel reached up, closed the trunk, looked at the Lieutenant, the FBI agent, the town Marshal, at the several deputies.

"Where is the prisoner?"

"In that Sheriff's cruiser yonder."

"We'll have the MPs pick her up at the Sheriff's office. Hold her but do not process her in.  You never saw what's in there and we were never here, am I understood?"

His voice was quiet, but his tone of voice was that of a man who was used to no disagreement.

Willamina spoke.

"Will our testimony be required, Colonel?"

"It will not. No reports will be made. This vehicle will be removed and processed by our people.  Lieutenant, have the MPs transport from the Sheriff's office, and have this vehicle removed."

"Yes, sir," the young Lieutenant snapped.

The Colonel looked around, nodding.

"You've done the right thing, and thank you," he said: hands were shaken all around:  most of the deputies departed, the bar was empty now, the Marshal and two deputies waited for the tow truck to remove the car -- contents of its trunk, removed by the shavetail and placed in the dechromed government car's trunk -- and as the last taillights departed, Willamina relieved Mark of the shotgun and handed it to the Marshal.

"Trade that in or donate it to a friendly well," she said without preamble. "The damned thing won't feed unless you hold it upside down."

Mark laid a hand on her shoulder.

"You were talking to that Lieutenant," he said quietly.  "What the hell was going on?"

"Story at eleven, I need coffee."

 

Two nights later, the Village Hall door opened and Willamina shouldered her way in, drink holder in one hand, sack in the other:  "Supper's ready, gimme a hand!" she called, and Joe and Mark surged to their feet to aid and assist their fellow badge packer.

Willamina wasn't on duty, but she knew the other two had a busy evening so far, and she'd stopped at Ruby's Boardwalk to get supper for them:  over Western melts and onion rings, and between thirsty pulls at colas of some kind, Mark looked at her and blurted, "Willa, what in the hay-il did we get into the other night?"

Willamina smiled, bit into a hot onion ring, chewed happily.  

"You saw what was in that crate."

"Yeah, four Uzi submachine guns."

"And a crate of ball ammo," Willamina added.  "They had blank firing adapters on the muzzles."

"Uh-huh."

"They were stolen from Wright-Patt air force base."

"What?"

"That idiot woman wanted to charge the state pen with a machine gun in each hand to spring her boyfriend."

"You're kiddin'!"

Willamina shrugged, smiled at the Marshal, who was leaned well forward to keep from dripping grilled onions down his uniform shirt front.

"Nope. Officially it never happened. The Colonel didn't want a stain on his record, so there's no record. Everybody on this end was cooperative enough not to make it official, supposedly there was a barfight, the other prisoner was charged, fined and let go next day, but she didn't know what we found."

Mark shook his head.

"So, Marshal."  Willamina leaned back, reached into the sack.  "Pie?"

 

Jacob Keller paged slowly through his Gammaw's scrapbook.

His Gammaw was busy in the kitchen; good smells claimed his young nose, but curiosity had him looking over this record of Willamina's life.

He turned the page, stopped, looked closely at three officers standing beside a silver police cruiser that said CHAUNCEY MARSHAL down the side.

"Gammaw," he said, "is that you?"

Willamina came over, drying her hands on her apron:  Jacob saw her smile -- he loved it when his Gammaw smiled -- and she said "Yes it is, Jacob.  I was a deputy Marshal, back east."

"Gammaw" -- Jacob frowned -- "how come you're all holdin' fly swatters?"

Willamina looked closer, laughed quietly.

"Look at our ballcaps, Jacob," she murmured.

"They all say SWAT."

"That's right," Willamina laughed.  "We were the only Marshal's office in the county with a SWAT team, and we took that picture to prove it!"

Jacob looked at his Gammaw skeptically.

Willamina's expression, in return, was as innocent as her voice as she said, "Pie?"

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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IT'S THE WOMEN!

Sean planted his brogan firmly on the polished brass foot rail, leaned over, laid his forearm on the polished mahogany bar.

Linn felt the animal heat radiating from the man.

Linn never stared into the depths of his beer; there was a perfectly good mirror behind the bar, and when he wasn't leaned back against the bar, looking out into the Silver Jewel's layered atmosphere, he was studying the same terrain courtesy that big lovely mirror Mr. Baxter kept polished up and spotless.

Rarely had anyone ever attempted to throw a mug at the mirror; twice, guns were drawn with intent to perforate its shining surface: of the two attempts at gunfire, one's wrist was seized just before an anonymous fist drove deep into the would-be mirror-killer's wind; the other was shot -- another instance where the Sheriff's speed entered into local legend: one moment he was enjoying a quiet pull on his beer, turning to regard a fracas with calm and pale eyes; the next, his beer was hovering in mid-air, just before descending to the floor through a cloud of pistol-smoke, and the hand that had been wrapped around the mug's heavy glass handle, was now wrapped around the scrimshawed ivory handle of the Sheriff's left hand Colt.

Linn regarded Sean's shirtsleeved arm (had the man no fear of the cold at all? He's wearing no coat, never mind a hard frost and a dusting of snow!) and smiled quietly, for he well knew the man's muscled condition: when Sean and his Irish Brigade arrived from Cincinnati with their Steam Masheen, not knowing it was Linn's coin that purchased their machine and their services, the Sheriff met the Irishman at the depot: he stood up to the big Irish fire chief, scaled his hat to the side, spit on his hands and declared loudly "No Irish Need Apply!" and raised his fists.

The fight was on.

Sean knew this was more than a set of knuckles.

He knew this man was sending a message.

Each man drove hard and uncompromising blows, neither man pulled his punches; Linn was lighter, faster, but surprisingly hard-hitting: Sean wasn't as fast (fast he was, and no mistaking!) but when he hit, he hit with the authority of a blacksmith belting red-hot metal with a single jack: Irishmen and townsmen alike stared, open mouthed, half in admiration, half in horror: the sight of two tall men, their heels set, hammering one another with absolutely no mercy, is an amazing sight indeed: Sean was no stranger to street brawls, back in Cincinnati, and had a solid reputation as a bare knuckle fighter, but he had to admit this long tall skinny Sheriff was coming close to taking his measure, there on the depot platform, with God and everybody watching them!

Sean saw his opening and caught the Sheriff under the eye:  Linn saw the punch coming, faded back, and a good thing: had he caught the full powered punch squarely, it would've broken his cheekbone and likely removed his head from his shoulders had he not fallen back -- Linn landed flat on his back and Sean stepped back, blowing across his knuckles:  Linn raised his head, shook it to get rid of stars and planets and little tweeting birds circling his head, then he looked up and declared, "Had enough?"

Sean looked down at the man's purpling cheek, at his crooked grin:  Sean reached down, Linn reached up, each seized the other's wrist: Sean pulled the man to his feet, Linn seized Sean's shoulder and turned so both men had their backs to the Depot's clap board wall.

"I AM THE SHERIFF!"  Linn roared, his hand still on Sean's T-square shoulder:  "I CAN OUT SHOOT AND OUT FIGHT ANY MAN IN THE COUNTY, AND THIS MAN HAS OUT FOUGHT ME! THIS MAN IS FIRE CHIEF AND WHEN HE GIVES AN ORDER IT IS WITH MY AUTHORITY!"

Linn glared from hard-left to hard-right, a cold-eyed glare that carried a breath of mountain frost as it swung over the men assembled:  Linn removed his hand from Sean's shoulder, stuck it out and declared loudly, "DRINKS ARE ON ME!"

Ever since that day -- ever since the day the Irish Brigade did their best to drink the Silver Jewel dry, and nearly succeeded, ever since the day that Daisy, the hell raising, sharp tongued cook whose fame was cemented by both the excellence of her provender, and the swiftness of her skillet (stories were still told of how she decked Dirty Sam with a frying pan to the face) came stomping out into the Silver Jewel, berating one and all in three languages for the noise they were makin', an honest woman can't hear herself think f'r all the racket an' wha' in God's name do they think they're celebratin', and Sean turned to look at this Bantam hen swarming down the hall, all apron and wooden spoon and snapping green eyes, and this man who'd just battled the Sheriff to a bloodied, bare-knuckled standstill, dropped his jaw down to his belt buckle and turned the color of wheat paste.

"Daisy!" he'd wheezed, and Daisy dropped her gravy-dripping wooden spoon, she clapped her hands to her mouth, then to her high bodice and squeaked "Sean?" -- 

Linn had to roll Sean over on his back, for the man's eyes had rolled up in his head and he'd hit the deck in a grand boneless faint; Daisy, too, had to be raised from the floor; the party of the second part was dragged closer to the party of the first part, each was set up against the bar as a concerned Sheriff knelt and plied one, then the other, with good California brandy --

Sean's eyes opened, closed, opened again:  he raised his hand, carefully took the glass from the Sheriff, drank it down like water --

Daisy opened her eyes, blinked several times, frowned at the Sheriff, snatched the glass from his hand, guzzled its potent payload of distilled California sunshine -- she thrust the empty at him and snapped, "Ye pale eyed scoundrel, wha' are ye doin' tryin' t' get a good woman drunk? I'll ha'e ye know I'm t' marry a good Irishman, rest his soul, an' I'm nearest a widow as ye'll find!"

She looked down, startled, as a hand -- a huge, strong, warm hand, a hand that her own hand knew, a hand that gripped hers with a gentleness she remembered --

"Daisymedear," she heard, a whisper, the whisper of a man dead, drowned, gone, living only in her dreams --

Linn leaned back on his boot heels, grinning, stood, took another step back, and a good thing:  Sean unfolded from his slumped seat on the barroom floor, stood, seized Daisy under the arms:  rarely did men smile in public, in those days, for a smile was a sign of weakness.

There was nothing weak about Sean, not when he hoist the fair haired cook to arm's length overhead and whirled her about, her heels imperiling many a man's head as she was spun round about.

"DAISYMEDEAR!" Sean roared, then pulled her down into his breast, crushing her to him:  Daisy struggled, sputtered, swore, said something in a strangled voice about not being able t' breathe, y' great Irish lug, and Damn ye Fin MacCool let an honest woman down, and Sean planted his mouth on hers -- she beat at him with milk-skinned fists, until she melted, and molded herself into him, and a general cheer went up, for it was evident here was a union that was truly meant to be.

All this went through Linn's memory like a Comanche arrow searing through a shaft of sunlight, swift, direct, unmistakable: Linn frowned a little, for his mind was never still, and having run a footrace down the trail of this memory, he returned to the puzzle on which he'd been ruminating before his old and dear friend's arrival.

"Ye've the look of a thoughtful man," Sean rumbled quietly.

"Aye," Linn sighed, and took a pull on his beer.

Sean laid a great hand across the Sheriff's shoulders.  "Out wi' it, lad.  Is it the women then?"

Linn nodded, slowly.  "It is that, Sean," he sighed.

Sean's immense head nodded ponderously, like an old b'ar sleepily affirming a great and eternal truth.  

"Women yer own, or women ye're chasin'?"

Linn took no offense.  He'd chased women in his lawman's career, but as a lawman and not a lover; he had an eye for the ladies, aye, but he was a man content with his own wife: though he had a profound appreciation for the feminine form, he'd never strayed from his green-eyed bride.

Still ... within his own circle of ladies with whom he was acquainted, he'd frequently encountered the principle that women were mysterious creatures that men would never figure out, and it didn't matter that this applied to women of his wife's age, or women of his daughters' ages: he'd been puzzling on a darlin' daughter, and his thoughts returned thereto.

"Sean," he said thoughtfully, "do you reckon a man will ever figure women out?"

Sean's beefy red face split into a grin; he looked down into his beer, patted the Sheriff gently between the shoulder blades, his voice deep, sympathetic.

"Ma Granda was an old man when he died," Sean replied thoughtfully.  "He told me no' long before he breathed his last that it's no' for a man t' understand a woman, he'd been tryin' all o' his life an' he ne'er had a bit o' luck at it." 

He raised his beer mug, took a long drink, set it down.  

"Try as I might, I canna' figure 'em.  They're delightful, but they're a mystery." 

He shook his head. 

"I've known Daisymedear since ... oh hell, we were but children when we met.  She shook her wee fist a' me an' said she'd no' put up wi' any funny business"  He smiled, just a little, looking at the memory somewhere in the depths of his bubbling amber brew. "She was just after her fifth birthday."

Linn laughed, nodded.

"Sounds like Angela."

Sean chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound of mirth:  Linn felt the vibrations of the man's ribs as he did.

"Wha'd the wee child do this time?"

Linn turned to face his friend, raised a fist, screwed one eye shut:  " 'I'm wuff an' tuff an' hawd t' bwuff!"

"She didn't!"

Linn grinned, laughed, nodded.  "She did!"

Both men laughed, turned back to the bar:  Mr. Baxter traded their empty beer mugs for full ones.

"I'm afraid they've outnumbered us," Sean sighed.  "Even if 'twas but m'wife an' m'daughter, an' a house full of me an' m' sons, we'd still be outnumbered!"

"Women can do that," Linn nodded somberly.  

"M' youngest -- Aideen -- well, she's no' m' youngest, but she's th' youngest no' crawlin' about on th' floor -- she was struttin' around behind ma Daisy wi' a wooden spoon an' whackin' her brothers f'r bein' too noisy an' just lordin' it over 'em an' her no' five years old yet!"

Linn chuckled.   "Remind me to stay out of arm's reach!" Linn murmured.

"She's a pretty lass, she has a winnin' way, she can gi'e a man those big lovely eyes an' just melt his heart, but good Lord, man, she's as fiery as her name!"

 

Angela regarded the stallion with big and wondering eyes.

"You're ver-ry big," she said in her little-girl's voice as she looked waaaaaay up at her Daddie's horsie.

Her Daddy had lots of horsies but this was his newest horsie an' her Daddy said he was a fire eater and Angela didn't see the horse eat nothing but grass, and her Daddy said the horse was a man eater and so far Angela didn't see any signs of chewed carcasses nor discarded boots -- a horsie wouldn't eat boots, that's silly! -- but she still felt disappointed that the horsie neither consumed flame, nor emitted it.

Sarah read her stories about knights in shining armor riding their great destriers, and she'd helped Angela climb the board fence and swing over onto Snowflake's broad back (which felt to the giggling little girl like she was straddling the dining room table!) to give her an idea how high the knight would've ridden, and Angela liked looking at the world from way up on a horsie's back -- she rode standing up behind her Daddy, her Kentucky-blue eyes wide and wondering and fearlessly regarding the world from her high perch, both hands clutching her Daddy's coat, her little flat soled slippers secure on the saddle-skirt, a broad and delighted smile and childish giggles declaring her happiness to the entire world!

Angela tilted her head a little as the big, wet nose descended to inspect this tiny creature who dared enter his demesne.

Angela caressed the horsie under his jaw and asked plaintively, "Can I wide you, horsie?"

Horsie didn't say no, so Angela pattered industriously over to the board fence, climbed it:  the horsie came over, curious.

Angela stood on the top board, as confident as if she stood flat footed on the earth below, her knuckles on her belt:  "You'll have to get closer, horsie," she scolded, and the horsie turned sideways.

Angela squatted and half-fell on the horsie's back, seizing a double handful of mane:  she sat up, laughing happily, laid over on the horsie's back, pink fingers splayed out, both hands flat on the sides of the horsie's warm furry neck.

The horsie had never had a little girl on his back before.

Always before it had been harsh, shouting men, it had been ropes and saddles, fists and whips, it had been force and anger and the weight of grown men in saddle leather:  somehow a passenger that smelled ... different ... a passenger that didn't weigh much, a passenger that didn't shout, was not objectionable.

Esther Keller looked out the kitchen window, a steaming cup of freshly brewed tea in hand:  she looked out over the whitewashed fence and saw a blue-eyed little girl with blond finger-curls and a frilly dress, a little girl with an expression of absolute delight, astride a proud, strutting, smoothly-pacing stallion, and Esther remembered a Carolina morning, with mists sulking like ghosts between the trees, a morning a little cool but promising to be a truly beautiful day, a morning when she, too, rode her Papa's prize stallion bareback, a maiden, laughing with a child's innocence.

Esther blinked, bit her bottom lip, looked away, then looked back.

If I call her down, she thought, Angela will carry that memory, and it will be a disappointment to her forever.

Esther remembered riding her Papa's prize stallion, a horse with a reputation for speed and for willfulness, a horse her Papa said was too fiery for his sons to ride, a horse he himself could barely control:  Esther remembered, how the horse paced smoothly -- no, her Papa's stallion didn't pace, as much as it glided.

Esther remembered how her Papa's stallion circled the pasture, how she thrilled at this union of horse and rider, how the stallion gathered himself and lowered his head and raced for the far end, how Esther leaned out over his neck, her hands flat on the stallion's neck, how she realized suddenly she was going fast, too fast, far too fast to dismount --

The stallion was coming up hard to the fence and he wasn't stopping --

Esther's scream beat with girlish fists against the inside of her throat as the earth dropped away from them, as her stomach took wings and sailed with them, as the stallion soared easily over the head-high, whitewashed fence, as he landed, smoothly, easily, as Esther blinked with surprise to realize -- 

She was still on her Daddy's stallion --

They were running now --

Esther yelled encouragement as the stallion burned a hole in the wind itself and she rode faster than a steam powered Guardian Angel, and they rode in a huge circle and came back to the pasture and Esther's scream was not fear this time, nor was it locked away in her throat: it was joy, and she sailed across the fence and they landed easily back inside her Papa's pasture, and she saw her Papa standing in the middle of the pasture, watching.

Esther rode up to him, straightened:  her face was flushed, strands of hair were floating, she looked at her Papa with delight, and her Papa gave her a wise look:  he bribed the stallion with sugar cubes, rubbed the restless animal's nose with affection, looked up at his daughter.

"Esther," he declared loudly in a voice that declared his delight, "I've never seen better!"

He rubbed the stallion's nose, looked back up at his darlin' daughter.

Esther Keller, wife of the pale eyed Sheriff, set her teacup down and hugged herself happily as she remembered the approval in her Papa's words, the delight in her Papa's eyes, and she watched as blue-eyed Angela Keller laid down over her Daddy's stallion's neck, as they rode the pasture, as she saw the same look on her daughter's young face as she herself had worn, one magical Carolina morning, when she too was a maiden.

 

"Sean," Linn said after taking a good pull on his beer, "that stallion I bought is genuinely a handful."

Sean whistled.  "Ye're a horseman an' no doubtin' it," he rumbled.  "If he's a handful f'r you, 'twould be unrideable by anyone else!"

Linn gave him a sour look.  "It gets worse," he muttered.

"Now how's that?"

Linn set his beer down, turned to face Sean squarely.

"I get him saddled, see, I get the saddle screwed down tight, he's givin' me the fish eye and I know he's goin' to try and buck me off."

"Aye."

"I swing up and throw my leg over him and the saddle comes up t' meet me and the fight was on!"

"Aye."

"I'm doin' my level best t' straddle that keg o' dynamite an' he throws me."

Sean nodded slowly.  "That'll happen," he agreed.

"Well, I climb back on and we're at it ag'in and  damned if he doesn't throw me ag'in."

Sean nodded, slowly, took a thoughtful pull on his beer as he imagined Linn going backside over tincup through the air.

Linn took a long breath, looked sadly into his old friend's eyes.

"Sean," he admitted quietly, "Terra Firma is a hell of a lot more firma than my bones really care for."

Sean laughed -- it was an Irishman's laugh, sudden, gusting, powerful, spontaneous, and utterly without reservation:  he hoisted his mug in salute, his eyes shining as he declared, "We had a young priest, back in th' Old Country, he fancied himself a horseman an' he wasn't."  He shook his head, chuckling: "He said that very thing, those very words, only his language wasn't entirely that of a man o' the cloth!"

Linn nodded, frowned, then grinned.

"Ayup," he agreed.

"I come a-hobblin' back over to that-there horse and Angela is standing on top of the fence like one of those circus acrobats walk a tight rope."  Linn shook his head as if still disbelieving what he'd seen.  "That damned horse goes right over to her and she drops into the saddle and he takes out just nice as you please and he goes a-pacin' around the inside of that white board fence just as smooth as a perambulator and Angela is settin' in attair slick saddle, she's got no stirrups, she's not got legs enough to hold around his barrel and she's ridin' him like a kitchen chair and damned if that fire eatin' stallion doesn't just plainly look pleased with himself!"

Sean shook his head sadly and said in a mournful voice, "It's the women, Sheriff.  They've got it all over us puir men.  Husband and father and stallion alike, th' women have it all over us!"

"Aye, an' don't ye forget it, Finn MacCool!" a familiar feminine voice declared:  Sean turned, opened his mouth to reply, and Daisy thrust a dripping wooden spoon into his opening yap:  "Taste that, y' great Irish clod, an' tell me if i' needs salt!"  She thrust a finger at the Sheriff.  "An' no' a word from you, ye pale eyed trouble maker! Lettin' that puir little girl o' yours ride that terrible big horse an' her no' in school yet! Shame be wid ye! -- Sean, d'ye like th' stew?"

Sean reached for his wife and Daisy backed away, shaking her spoon at him.  "Sean," she declared, "ye keep yer hands off an honest woman, now, I've work t' do" -- her protestations were cut off with a squeak of surprise, then dismay:  "Ya great Irish oaf, ye set me down now" -- Sean lowered her enough to plant his mouth on hers, stifling her shouts:  she struggled for a few moments, then molded herself to him, and Linn turned to Mr. Baxter and quietly settled up their bill.

 

 

 

 

 

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WISDOM, AND A KITCHEN STOVE

Sheriff Linn Keller preferred to do good work when he did anything.

He also did his best to do his good work in an efficient manner.

His pale eyed Mama taught him at an early age that "The secret to administration is delegation," and so he'd delegated frying bacon and eggs to Jacob.

Linn was working on his specialty -- pancakes -- he'd set the table, he'd set out butter and syrup, cut up melon and some blueberries and a can of whipped cream (he might be Sheriff, but somewhere in that long tall carcass was still a little boy that liked to squirt whipped cream on his pancakes!) -- he tilted his ladle and dispensed minor cascades of waffle batter on his big square frying pan, and five silver dollar pancakes sizzled happily as they went from medium thick batter to fragrant and flavorful brown.

He and Jacob traded places -- Linn fried left handed, Jacob plied his spatula mostly with his right -- each was happy to swap with the other, for neither wanted an elbow in the other's ribs, against an arm (which could cause a cascade, not to mention a misunderstanding!) -- although The Bear Killer, watchful and silent, would doubtless have helped clean up any comestibles cascading to the shining, waxed tile floor.

"I hear you got into it in school," Linn said quietly.

"Yes, sir," Jacob said, just as quietly:  he picked up the heavy glass grinder, twisted it, shaving a mixture of spices onto the eggs he was frying in bacon grease.

"What happened?"

"A kid climbed my frame in gym class."

Linn flipped the five little pancakes with quick slip-and-turns of his shining stainless spatula.

"Climbed your frame."

"Like I was a pole and he was wearin' gaffs."

"Damn," Linn murmured.

"He tore the hair out of my legs with those rubber soles."  Jacob thrust under a fried egg, slid it off on a folded paper towel, then to a plate, warm on a back burner.  "I yelled at him not to do that again."

Linn slid his stack of silver dollars onto a platter on the other back burner.

"Go on."

"He climbed me again, just for meanness."

"Were you ... did he just run up and climb you?"

"Basketball."

"Ah."

"He's short, he's fast, he climbed me to get the ball.  Coach called a foul on him and he climbed me out of spite."

"That was the second climb."

"Yes, sir."

"What did you do?"

"I threw him off and squared off with him."

"What happened then?"  Batter sizzled on cast iron; Jacob picked up another two eggs, cracked one, then the other with quick, careful cuts with the edge of his spatula:  he dispensed the two eggs, one-handed, with a practiced ease.

"He came at me."

"Came at you."

Jacob grinned, tapped his forehead with a bent forefinger.  "Hit me right here, four times fast -- bapbapbapbap -- before I was ready. Fourth hit, I grabbed his wrist."

"You grabbed his wrist."

Jacob's eyes were veiled.

"I knew I had to show him I'd not take his guff.  I grabbed his wrist and took him by the crotch and I hauled him off the floor high as I could and I drove him down face first onto the floor."

"Did it work?"

"It did, sir."

"What did the coach do?"

"He came over and rolled the kid over on his back, told him to go to the showers."

"And?"

"Once we were done and we went in to shower and change for class, he stayed shy of me."

Linn nodded.

"Coach told me later he'd turned his head and he didn't see a thing, and he said as much to the principal."

"Did the kid ... he hit the floor face first?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hurt him?"

"His forehead hit someone's foot so no sir."

Linn nodded, slid another cluster of silver dollars onto the warm platter.

"I did the same thing when I was your age."  Linn's voice was quiet.

Jacob didn't surprise easily, but his Pa genuinely surprised him with this soft voiced admission.  "Sir?"

"Much the same, Jacob. He hit me and I didn't pick him up like you did, I bear hugged him and threw him down and held him. Coach came over, he'd seen the whole thing, the kid got expelled and I was told to watch my back."

"Did he try anything later, sir?"

"He did, Jacob, and he come out in second place."  Linn's smile was grim as he dispensed the last of the batter.  "Might tell you about it sometime."

Linn picked up the heaping platter, slid the frying pan to the back burner, paused.

"He hit you in the forehead."

"He did, sir. Knocked loose a gob of snot like you wouldn't believe."

Linn nodded.  "Known that to happen."  His grin was quick -- there, and gone.

"Sometimes," he sighed, "you have to speak the language they understand."

 

 

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GRAAAAVE YARD DEAD!

Linn's head came up at the explosion.

He was no stranger to detonations, but this one was different.

He'd heard cannon fire in that damned War, gunfire was almost a daily occurrence, he'd heard rocks being drilled and shot ... no, this was sharper, his gut told him it was not anything good, and he rose and reached for his Stetson.

Jacob, too, was on his feet; his eyes were on his father, for the human eye is geared to pick up movement, and he felt himself flinch as something came through their wooden roof with the searing crash of penetrating ordinance.

Something smoking and curled hit the Sheriff's empty office chair, knocked two slats out of its back.

Sheriff Linn Keller's hand was only just gripping his Stetson when their roof was assaulted; Jacob watched as his father, apparently unaffected by this noisy intrusion with its spray of splinters and dirt, as the Grand Old Man settled his Stetson on his head.

Sheriff Linn Keller contemplated his chair, looked at his son, then looked at the front door.

Not a word was said; no word had to be spoken.

Out on the street, men were looking, wondering, calling to one another, asking what they'd heard: they saw the door open to the Sheriff's office, saw the office chair come sailing out the door, to land in the street:  this was not an unknown sight, as the Sheriff was known to have a short temper when it came to equipment that worked against him.

This one, though, instead of appearing intact, seemed damaged by a curled, smoking, metallic ...

... pipe?

 

Behind the Silver Jewel, two boys with smoke-darkened cheeks and smoldering coats staggered away from what seemed to be the epicenter of a young explosion.

They were half dazed; it took them several moments for the red ringing in their ears to subside enough for them to think, for them to hear each other, for them to look with chagrin at where the subject of their long and hard labors was now ruined, shattered, splintered and split, and very obviously, incomplete.

Shorty came hobbling out of the livery and toward them, swearing, shaking a fist:  neither boy could hear his profanities, not until he was much closer:  Shorty looked from one to the other, his expression going from anger and dismay to concern.

The Sheriff and his son rode up about the time Shorty very carefully unhooked a twist of steel where it was fishhooked into one boy's cheek, two fingers below his eye.

Linn turned to the other of the Blaze Boys, took the lad's head gently between wide spread finger tips:  he turned the lad's head one way, then the other, reached up, pulled out a splinter of steel, held it up.

The boy blinked, surprised, raised a hand to where the steel had emerged.

"Likely it's still numb," Linn said, and the lad blinked, raised a hand to his ear.

"Sheriff," he said in a scared voice, "I can't hear nothin'!"

Linn looked at the cannon, looked at the boy, raised his hand palm-up, fingers toward the lad:  

Yours?

He nodded.

Linn turned both palms over, shrugged his shoulders, frowning a little.

What?

Both boys grinned:  the one took the twisted chunk the Sheriff brought with him, hunkered beside the smoke-fouled cut foundation stone some dedicated idiot left out here where no one could use it for anything, set it down behind a split open length of what looked like pipe, only split open for half its length.

"We made a cannon," he declared awkwardly, the way someone will when they can't really hear themselves frame the words.

Linn looked at the split open pipe, considered that lap welding was a pretty poor way to contain pressure:  he thrust a hand toward the ruin of their project, again raised both palms:  

"How?" he asked, and the Blaze Boys grinned at one another, then at the Sheriff.

 

Later, after Linn turned them over to the tender mercies of a solemn Dr. Greenlees and a vengefully-scouring Nurse Susan -- who seemed to think that taking a bristle brush to their hides to remove powder fouling and dirt was also a way to scrub their corroded souls free of mischief -- the Sheriff, his chief deputy and Shorty parked their backsides in the Silver Jewel and discussed the event.

"I let 'em use m' forge, Sheriff," Shorty said.  "I knew if I didn't let 'em while I could watch, likely they'd use it when I wasn't there and damned if I'll let 'em burn the place down!"

Linn nodded, slowly, looked up as the hash slinger set pie down in front of each of the men.

Shorty picked up his shot of Old Knockemstiff, slugged it back, looked hopefully at the empty as he set it down:  Linn looked at the cute little waitress, nodded:  she picked up the empty, smiled at Jacob and sashayed back toward the bar for a refill.

"What did they with your forge?" Linn asked quietly.

"Other'n burnin' up most of m' coal?" Shorty snorted.  "They took attair pipe and heated it good, they beat it flat and folded it over and I saw 'em heat it ag'in and drive a hole through. Must have been a touch hole."

"They made a cannon."

"Yep."

Linn frowned, considered.  "You don't know what they used for a cannon ball, by any chance?"

"Nope.  Didn't know that's what they were makin'.  Don't know where they got the powder.  Stole it, likely."

"Likely," Linn agreed.  

"If they intended a cannon, sir," Jacob said thoughtfully, "would they have a target?"

"Likely they would," Linn agreed.  "I didn't look for anything of the kind, but ..."

He looked down at his pie, smiled.

"Jacob, hurry up is brother to mess it up.  Let's not hurry through this pie.  Whatever's still there will still be there when we're done here."

The hash slinger set the brimming glass of distilled comfort in front of the smiling blacksmith.

Shorty did like it when someone else bought the drinks.

 

The Sheriff and his son dismounted, stood on either side of where the ersatz cannon had blown up.

"Pointed that way," Jacob said, nodding toward the board fence.

"Looks like a board."

"Yes, sir, or what used to be."

Linn raised an eyebrow.  "Let's find out."

Father and son paced over toward the board fence.

They picked up two halves of what had been a weathered, dried-out, brittle board.

A smear of whitewash was likely its intended target.

Whatever they used for projectile shattered the bone-dry, splinter-brittle plank.

"What do you think, sir?  I doubt if they'd actually come up with a cannon ball that small.  Pipe's not over two, three inches across."

"A rock, I'd reckon," Linn said thoughtfully.  "If it wasn't perfectly round it could've bound up on the way out, turned it into a bomb."

"Likely so, sir."  Jacob considered the plank, wide as two hands.

"Killed that plank, didn't it?" Linn asked, and Jacob could hear the quiet smile in his father's voice.

Jacob's reply was solemn, almost sepulchral, as he agreed:

"They killed that plank graaave-yard dead." 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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WANT

Parson Belden ran the square end of his pencil into slicked-back hair, scratched the itch that manifested whenever he was having trouble coming up with a sermon.

He liked to have his sermons ready a week early: that gave him a chance to look up passages he'd need to refer to, maybe polish his language a bit: the Bible was the one most-read book on the frontier, and the Parson knew if he made a reference, he'd better make it correctly, or he'd not just hear about it, he'd likely get into an involved discussion at the back of church as his congregation filed out -- which meant most would file back in, listening closely to any ecclesiastical discussion.

Mrs. Parson's step was quiet, unhurried; her hands were gentle on his shoulders, then firmer as she massaged against the tension she found.

Parson Belden raised his head, closed his eyes:  he groaned quietly, then murmured "I'll give you a week to stop that."

Mrs. Parson smiled, paused in her digital ministrations:  "You have a visitor."

"Oh?"

"It's Sarah."

It was the Parson's turn to smile.

Somehow this interruption to his labor was not at all unwelcome.

 

Parson Belden gripped Sarah's fingers carefully, his wife beside him, looking stout and motherly as she always did.

"My dear," the Parson said, "you'll have to forgive us, we've not a fine parlor for receiving guests!"
Sarah laughed, hugged the man quickly, impulsively, the way a growing girl will:  she took the Parson by the arm, steered him into their kitchen.

The Parson did not miss the paper-wrapped, string-tied packages on the sideboard: when Sarah visited, she was never empty handed, and somehow she knew what supplies Mrs. Parson needed. The Parson suspected some feminine collusion, though he was never able to prove it.

Sarah pulled out two chairs, then a third: she and the Parson stared at one another, each waiting for the other to be seated:  finally Mrs. Parson knuckled her waistline and said quietly, "There will be no Mexican standoffs in my kitchen. Sit down, the both of you."

The Parson and Sarah both blurted "Yes ma'am," and sat, immediately.

Mrs. Parson shook her head, clucked her tongue, set out teacups on saucers and then dispensed fresh brewed oolong from a shining, white-ceramic teapot with hand-painted flowers on the side.

Sarah picked up her steaming cup, held it up, eyes closed, savored the fragrant steam: her smile was genuine, gentle.

The Parson took a tentative sip of his shimmering amber brew, whistled air in over his protesting tongue:  Sarah placed her cup on its saucer, looked up, blinking innocently.

"Parson," she said, "I come to you a sinner."

"We are all sinners," the Parson replied carefully.  "How can I help?"

Sarah considered a moment, then looked very frankly at the sky pilot.

"Parson, I feel like I should lay down a poker hand.  Here's what I've got."  

She was suddenly, intensely adult: the innocent girl was gone as if she never was.

"Parson, I'm going to seduce a very bad man.  I'm going to lie to him, I'm going to pull the hoodwink over his eyes and I am going to betray him seven ways from Sunday."

The Parson's eyebrow raised, suddenly:  this was absolutely the very last thing he'd ever expect to hear from this lovely daughter of the mountains, a young lady he'd seen grow from girlhood into blossoming, young-womanhood, a kind, gentle, soft-spoken soul who'd never given the least sign of impropriety -- not in thought, not in word, and most certainly not in deed.

Sarah slipped a hand into her lap -- she withdrew it -- slid a folded leather rectangle across the table.

"Take a look," she said, her voice serious.

The Parson frowned, reached for the brown-leather case: he unfolded it, blinked, studied the bronze shield.

"Agent?" he asked, puzzled:  "of the ... Agent of the Court?"

Sarah nodded as the man folded it closed, slid it back across the table.

"I will have jurisdiction beyond the Sheriff. My authority will be similar to a Territorial Marshal.  I will be an Agent of the Court and my authority will cover all the territory over which the Court has jurisdiction."

"I don't understand," the Parson admitted:  his wife sat, slowly, concerned eyes on their young guest.

Sarah took a long, cleansing breath.

"Parson," Sarah said, "I was ... in Denver ..."

She looked up, her gaze very direct, very open.

"You know I model my Mama's fashions."

The Parson nodded, slowly:  he'd seen Sarah on stage, looking far more mature than her few years.

"I've become quite the liar, Parson."

"Liar?"  he echoed, shaggy brows puzzling together.

"I am rather expert at the quick change, Parson. I can step behind a screen and step out and look like someone entirely different.  I've been displayed on stage like a prime beef and I've looked like a woman grown."  She laughed, delicately, innocently.  "A Mexican grandee's son proposed to me, Parson.  I was ten years old and he thought me a woman.  Face paint and foundations will work wonders!"

"And ... this makes you a liar?" he prompted.

"It does. If I am just me, I'm unremarkable. The Judge was impressed by my ability to become someone else, on stage, to sell Mama's fashions. He reasoned that if I can become someone else, I can gull men into confessing their crimes. He recruited me as an agent -- thinking I would trick men into telling a pretty girl things they'd never admit to a man, to someone who might be a lawman with his badge hidden."

"This," the Parson hazarded, "does not sound like something a proper young lady would do."

"It's not," Sarah said frankly, planting her elbows on the smooth, flawless tablecloth.

"Parson, I'm used goods. I was despoiled at a very, very young age. I've not told you about walking through Hell itself, I haven't told you what it's like to lose half my soul to demons wanting to drag me to hell while my body lies bleeding and unconscious on a whorehouse floor where my --"

Sarah's eyes were white now, hard: this, too, was something the Parson had never, ever seen.

"Parson," Sarah said quietly, "my Papa was shot to death because he hit my Mama. It was not my hand that did, but I wish it was. Now I have a chance to change things. I can't change what happened to me but I can help stop bad things from happening."

Sarah's hand closed over the wallet, disappeared into her lap.

"My dear ..."

Sarah's ear pulled back as if tugged by a mischevious hand.

Of all the things the Parson ever called any of the ladies, "my dear" wasn't one of them.

"Might this be something best left to ... to the men?"

Sarah closed her eyes, took a breath:  she opened them slowly, gave him a seductive look: one elbow on the table, her wrist bent, she rested her chin delicately on the backs of her fingers.

The Parson felt a wave of desire surge over him, something he'd managed to avoid for a very long time:  those eyes, those pale eyes, regarding him through long lashes --

Sarah blinked, shook her head, leaned back in her chair, sitting up very straight, once again herself.

"If I can do that to you," she said quietly, "think what effect I'll have on someone of far less character!"

The Parson looked at his wife, looked down at his forgotten tea:  he took a careful sip, trying desperately to marshal his thoughts.

"What," he finally asked, "do you want of me?"

"Want is the operative word, Parson," she replied frankly.  "I'm going to be fighting wants. I want to find these criminals. The criminals want to not be found. I'm going to find them and the Judge doesn't realize it, but I'm' going to be bringing them in."

"Is that ... wise?"

His voice was quiet, thoughtful.

"I'll have surprise, Parson. I'll cheat and I'll swindle and I'll lie to them with thought, word and deed. They'll think they're talking to a schoolteacher or a schoolgirl or a widow-woman, a saloon girl, a harlot, a nun."

She paused, took a breath, leaned forward again.

"I'll be lying to them, Parson."  

"What do you need of me?" Parson Belden asked quietly.

"Satan is the father of lies, Parson. I'll be lying to the lawless. I'll be helping divide a house against itself by using the enemy's tools against the enemy."  

Sarah placed her hands flat on the tablecloth to keep them from shaking.

"Parson, I've been to hell.  I don't want to go there again.  I need you to tell me I'm not condemning my eternal soul to boiling in hump fat forever and a day."

Parson Belden considered for several long moments.

"Your father," he said finally, "was in The War."

"My father?"

"I'm sorry, I misspoke.  The Sheriff."

"Yes.  Yes he was, Parson."

"He and I served together.  Dr. Greenlees was with our regiment. Many a night we'd share a fire and we'd try to forget the day's horrors."

Sarah nodded.  "So I understand."

"The Sheriff rose through the ranks. He was a natural leader and an excellent tactician. Many's the time he'd tell a junior officer to use the enemy's strength against them."

Sarah nodded, slowly.

"If you go to war against evil, Sarah, it will war against you."

"I expect that."

"You could leave this to the men, Sarah. Let them fight it out."

"No."  Sarah's voice was quietly firm.  "I'm better suited. I can get information."

"That's as may be, but what about violence?"

Sarah's smile was tight.  

"I'm no stranger to violence, Parson."

"Some men won't care you're a woman, if they believe you're betraying them."

"I won't care either," Sarah said coldly. "The Judge wants me to gather information. I intend to gather information, all right, after which I'll gather the lawless and drag 'em back to Court, peacefully or otherwise, and I don't care which!"

Parson Belden shivered at her quietly spoken words.

He was a man of discernment; he was a man who was pretty good at spotting falsehoods, of sieving braggadocio from fact:  his gut told him this pretty young woman, barely more than girl, was speaking truly -- not just with intention, but with fact.

"It's a matter of wanting, Parson," Sarah said quietly. "The bad guys want to get away with it.

"I want that they don't."

"Want," the Parson said thoughtfully, and realized he'd just found his subject for his Sunday sermon.

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TROUBLEMAKER

Sheriff Willamina Keller walked up behind her son, smiling as she did.

Linn's gloved hands were wrapped around a steel pipe.

The pipe rested in cedar fencepost notches.

The fenceposts were a foot taller than he, and her son was two fingers over six feet: her son was chinning himself, slowly, steadily, counting as he did.

Willamina waited until he made fifty, until he released, until he dropped the short distance to the ground.

"Give me your gloves," Willamina said quietly, "and give me a boost."

Linn pulled off one glove, then the other:  he turned, regarded his mother with quiet, amused eyes.

Once, and once only, had he challenged her to chin-ups, and she'd out-chinned him:  since that time, he'd taken pains never to challenge her -- not in chin-ups, not with weights, not with push-ups or sprints or distance runs:  he would work out with her, each would pace the other, but he'd learned the hard way that Old Maw, as she called herself in such moments, was just pretty damned tough under that lovely, womanly exterior.

Willamina stepped up under the pipe, raised her hands, opened her fingers.

Linn took her around the hips, hands spread wide, his grip firm:  she heard his quiet, "One, two, three," and she was hoist easily off the ground.

Willamina seized the pipe, worked her hands a little further apart:  she bent her legs, crossed her ankles as she always did, and began to chin herself, counting quietly as she did.

Linn outweighed his Mama, Linn was taller than his Mama, Linn was bigger around at the belt than his Mama (but not by much at all -- for Halloween one year he wore his Mama's nursing uniform dress, and it actually fit!) -- he stood back, watching with admiration at his mother's steady labors:  she was neither hurried nor leisurely ... he frowned, trying to find the right word to describe her rate, her rhythm ...

Efficient.

He nodded, as if in agreement.

Efficient was the word.

Willamina got to fifty -- the same number as her son -- she unfolded her legs, dropped lightly to the ground, turned:  her face was flushed, healthy, she pulled off the too-big gloves, handed them to her son:  "Well?  Not bad for a decrepit old lady!"

Linn laughed, hugged his Mama -- his hug was both delighted, enveloping, and careful, as if afraid he'd break her -- he laid his cheek over on top of her head and mumbled, "Decrepit you ain't, Mama!"

"Flattery," Willamina sighed, "will get you everywhere."

"Even chocolate chip cookies?" Linn teased.

Willamina thumped his breastbone with a gentle fist, smililng as she did.  "Watch it, fella," she mock-snarled, and they both laughed.

"Mama," Linn said, his hands lingering on the outside of her shoulders, "I've been causin' trouble ag'in."

"I knew something was up when I saw you chinnin'.  You do that when you're troubled."

"Yes, ma'am."

They turned, walked toward the back of the house, paused at the green-painted, cast-iron, freezeproof pump.

Linn plucked the ancient tin cup from its wire hook, peered into it, turned it upside down, smacked the bottom, looked at an invisible something falling to the ground, stepped on whatever nonexistent resident that was never there in the first place:  he pumped it full of water, swirled, tossed, pumped again, offered his Mama a tin cup of tooth-aching-cold wellwater.

Willamina drank gratefully, ignoring the cold trickle that ran down her chin:  she handed the empty tin cup back to her son, mopped the cold from where it ran down the front of her neck into her bodice:  "That's cold," she hissed.

"I've done that," Linn muttered, then raised the refilled tin cup and drank, hung it back on its hook.

Willamina tilted her head, looked up at her pale eyed son.

"You've been causin' trouble again?"

"Yes, ma'am, I have," he declared proudly, and Willamina air-punched across in front of her flat belly.

"Good for you!" she declared.  "What happened?"

Linn leaned the palm of his hand against the cast-iron cap on the ancient hand pump:  he frowned, considered, then looked at his Mama.

"You mind Sandy over't Cripple -- Sandy, that runs the gun shop?"

Willamia nodded:  she knew Sandy, they'd been friends for some years now.

"She's been taking chemo.  Breast cancer."

Willamina nodded, pale eyes quiet, studying her son's face, his posture.

"Mama, you remember ... Violette.  I went to school with her."

"I remember."

"She ... when she had chemo, it just ruined her taste buds. Come Thanksgiving, not one thing on that Thanksgiving table tasted good to her.  She was skinny and in that wheelchair and I brought in a dozen chocolate iced, white-cream-filled, stick doughnuts for dessert and she lit up like a hundred-watt bulb."  

Linn's voice was quiet, his expression haunted.

"Those doughnuts were the only thing that tasted good to her.  She told me later I rode in like a knight in shining armor and her Pa told me at her funeral how much that meant to him, that I brought something she actually liked."

He swallowed, looked down, chewed on his bottom lip.

"I remember," Willamina said quietly.

"I thought about that, Mama, and I had no idea what would or would not taste good to Sandy, so I got a box of a dozen assorted from the bakery beside the drugstore.  You know, Frank Grubbs' place."

Willamina nodded:  Grubbs' Bakery was a favorite, and it was a standing joke that between the Irish Brigade, their Utilities department, the Sheriff's office and the police department, that the bakery needed no other customers to stay in business.  That wasn't quite accurate, but it sounded good when you said it fast.

"I got an assortment and took over to the gun shop. I don't know where they live and it wouldn't be right to just show up at her doorstep, she's ... chemo makes her sicker'n hell, and I don't want ..."

"I know," Willamina said gently.

He looked at her, his expression open, vulnerable.

"Turns out she can eat apple fritters, Mama.  They taste good to her.  Every Saturday -- the gun shop is only open one day a week since she's been sick -- I've taken over a dozen assorted.  Two apple fritters for her and a note that says she can use the rest of the box for bribes."

Willamina nodded.

"Mama, you recall ... that seminar we went to, they said when one parent is sent to prison, so is the rest of the family. That's kind of how it is with Sandy. She's been just sicker'n hell with that damned chemo.  She calls it Red Devil. Her husband and her uncle open the gunshop of a Saturday and I take pains to talk to her husband, as him how he is doin'."  

Linn looked at his Mama, his bottom jaw sliding out.

"Everyone asks about Sandy, Mama, but I'm the only one who asked him how he's doin'."

"How is he?"

Linn's expression was grim.  "Poor fellow looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. He's ... he said he's okay, he has to be."

Willamina nodded.

"I did get him to laughin'," Linn grinned -- the change was sudden -- from solemn, depressed, frustrated, to a shared laugh -- "you recall I ordered that good high grade target pistol."

Willamina nodded.

"I'd never shot fiber optic sights before. Last week I cleaned it and put it away.  Yesterday I got to thinking about nice weather and shootin' steel again and I pulled it out and rasied it to take a test sight on a bare wall."

Willamina raised an eyebrow.

"It had those green fiber optics lookin' at me from either side of the rear notch, but the front sight just had a hole."

"A hole," Willamina echoed quietly, and Linn could hear a smile behind her words.

He nodded.  "Yep.  I told Rick that rascally fiber optic in the front sight got bored livin' in my range bag and took off on vacation and never did come back!"

Willamina smiled a little, nodded.  "What did he say?"

"I told him the factory was sendin' me a new one, free, and then I bought two boxes of standard velocity.  I want to make sure they'll cycle."

Willamina nodded.

Linn's quiet grin fell off his face and hit the ground.

"Mama," he said solemnly, "I can't do a damned thing for Sandy. Apple fritters are a gesture and that's not much. I wanted to send that big box of assorted so her whole family would know someone was thinkin' of them too."

Willamina stepped around the head-high, green-painted, cast-iron, freeze proof water pump and patted her son's forearm.

"Linn," she said, "sometimes causing trouble is the right thing to do."  She ran her arm around her son's ribs, hugged him to her, pulled.

"C'mon in the kitchen, you troublemaker.  I think I've got some chocolate chip cookies."

 

 

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TUNING FORK

Chief of Police Will Keller poured the coffeemaker's water reservoir full.

He thrust a coffee filter into the basket, added one scoop of freshly ground coffee -- ever since he'd ground his first batch, he'd never gone back to pre-ground -- added a healthy double shake of cinnamon, another coffee filter atop the first; he slid the basket into place, closed the lid, turned.

He regarded his guest with calm eyes.

"I can feel you vibratin' from here," he said quietly. "Have a set, darlin'."

Marnie Keller gripped the back of the kitchen chair, staring down at her knuckles with a distant expression:  she lifted the chair just a little so its travel would be silent, she set the chair's back legs down carefully, seated herself, stared at the sugarbowl in the middle of her Uncle's tidy tablecloth.

"You were right," she said quietly.

"Yeah, I hate that when it happens," Will said, looking at the cupboard as if coming to a decision: he went to the refrigerator instead, pulled open the bronze-toned door, withdrew three-quarters of a pie.

He set the pie on the counter, managed to work two plates out of the stack, set them beside the pie; two swipes with an ancient, age-browned, sway-belly butcher: he slid the wide blade under a quarter of a pie, coaxed it onto a plate, did it again, placed the blueberry-smeared knife in the mostly empty pie tin and returned to the refrigerator.

Marnie looked up at the sputtering hiss of whipped cream being dispensed thickly on each slice of blueberry pie; she watched dully as Will pulled open the drawer, brought out two forks, turned.

Marnie leaned back a little as the white-crowned plate was set before her, fork to the left as she preferred: another moment and fresh brewed coffee, scalding hot and smellin' good, settled in beside the plate.

Will set the plastic milk jug beside the sugarbowl.

"Careful you don't chip that genuine heirloom antique milk pitcher," he deadpanned.

Marnie looked up at him, unsmiling: she twisted the cap off the milk jug, carefully trickled a cooling stream into her coffee, returned the jug to its former position, handle toward her Uncle's chair.

Will drug his chair out, legs chattering noisily on the spotless floor -- like most men, he didn't pretend to stealth under his own roof -- he sat, laid his forearms on the tablecloth, lowered his head and looked at his niece through shaggy eyebrows.

"Report," he said quietly.

"You were right, Uncle Will," Marnie said, her voice tight.

"I generally am."

"That's because you know what you're talkin' about."

Will grunted, his eyes turning toward the living room.

Marnie knew he was looking at a framed portrait, a shot of a young man with pale eyes: his son, the one he buried: his son, the one that was killed while working undercover.

Marnie knew he was thinking how much he'd like to have heard those  words from his own son, but that never happened; had he lived, had Will's son seasoned out some more, he might've told his father that yes, Pa, you were right -- but that didn't happen, and Marnie knew her Uncle Will would give a good percentage of his eternal soul if he could hear his son's voice frame those words.

Marnie picked up her fork, almost caressed the creamy swirl of whipped cream with shining, stainless-steel tines.

"Uncle Will," she said slowly, "I testified today."

"You spoke well."

"I demonstrated how I took them down."

"Do you remember how you did it?"

"No."  Marnie placed her fork back on the plate, her pie untasted.

"No, Uncle Will.  I still don't.  I've watched the videos and I watched video of my testimony, how I threw Paul Barrents like he was a rag doll, how I drove his rubber knife into his redbelly padded suit, but" -- her voice lowered to a hoarse whisper --
"I don't remember doing it!"

Will nodded.

"That's not unusual, darlin'," he said quietly. 

Marnie nodded, twisted her fork delicately in the whipped cream, more to have something to busy her fingers than anything else.

"It was ... unusual ... for you to testify as to your actions ... by performing the actions."

Marnie thrust her fork slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y through the whipped cream, through the top crust, then through the bottom crust.

"I figured if my mind couldn't remember," she said slowly, "the rest of me could."

Will nodded.

"I've seen the same videos you saw, darlin'.  I saw him pull the knife and come at you, that much was clear as a bell."

Marnie's fork froze.

For the first time in his memory, Chief of Police Will Keller, uncle to this pale eyed, very junior Deputy Sheriff, saw something in her eyes he'd hoped he'd never, ever witness.

Marnie had that same thousand yard stare he'd seen in too many eyes, eyes that had seen too much.

He knew his niece had known utter brutality when she was but a wee child, that she'd seen things before she was old enough for Kindergarten ... utter and absolute horrors that would curl the hair on a bald man's head.

Will remembered the quiet discussions they'd held, sitting on the back steps, how Marnie worked through the puzzles of her psyche -- how she'd told her Uncle of her research, how she'd found most nurses were brutalized as young teens, and according to the head shrinkers, became nurses to help others heal, because they knew what it was to be hurt.

She spoke of her pale eyed Gammaw, Will's twin sister Willamina, a woman who'd been brutalized in just such a way, a young woman who became both a nurse, and a deputy Marshal, then Sheriff, a Marine -- she said her Gammaw admitted she went into the Marines because she had enough rage and enough desire to kill to know she needed Marine Corps discipline to contain that Rage.

"Not all girls that were hurt, become nurses," Marnie had said softly, as they sat shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip on his back steps, staring out into the nighttime shadows:  "Gammaw became Sheriff so she could make things right."

"Is that why you went into the Academy, became a Deputy?"

He felt Marnie take in a long breath, sigh it out, felt her nod, her pigtails whispering on Carhartt canvas.

"Yeah.  I wanna make things right, Uncle Will."  She turned her head, smiled ever so slightly.

"I can't save the world. Don't get me wrong. I can't stop it all, but I can do some good."

Now that same girl, that same young woman, sat across his round kitchen table from him, poking at her blueberry pie, remembering what it was to testify, remembering what it was to step into a man with a knife, remembering what it was to turn her badger loose on three at once.

"I've kept myself safe, Uncle Will," she said, laying her fork down again: she picked up her coffee, carefully, using both hands, took a tentative sip, grunted.  "Oh, that's good!"

"Glad you like it.  Cinnamon won't dissolve so I brew it in with the grounds."

Marnie took another sip, set her mug down.

"I've taken men down, Uncle Will. I've proven myself someone you don't want to trouble, long before I put on this uniform."  She looked very directly across the table.  "But you were right.  When you're the new badge packer, you're going to be tried."  She snorted.  "Tried!  Good God, three coming at me at a traffic stop and one pulls a knife!"

"Which you put into his own belly, which you broke his wrist, which you dislocated a second one's jaw with a kick and you hammerfisted the third one's collarbone before he could pull a gun."

Marnie nodded, blinked.

"I'm not a violent person, Uncle Will."

"I know you're not.  You're sweet and you're patient and I know a doctor's son who has you so far up on a pedestal it's a wonder you don't have nosebleed."

"You haven't touched your pie, Uncle Will."

"Neither have you."

Marnie looked at her fork, looked at her Uncle, looked down at her hands, pressed flat on the tablecloth.

She closed her eyes.

"How badly will I be shaking when I lift my hands?"

"You were steady enough with your coffee.  Now tell me about testifying."

"All those practice runs helped."

"My Baby Sis always did like simulations. She thought you always did really well in the witness stand in the simulated criminal cases."

"It paid off today."

Marnie snorted, stabbed her pie viciously, looked up.

"I was reading about Old Pale Eyes. I read where court was entertainment in those days. It was always well attended, and the attorneys were showmen with fine language."

"Some things never change," Will muttered.  "Attorneys, anyway."

Marnie forked up her first bite of pie, frowned at it as if it were a rare specimen, worthy of scrutiny.

"Today, as we left the courthouse, I heard someone say they'd never seen such entertainment on stage, and if I was testifying in court again, they'd be sure to attend!"  She thrust pie and whipped cream between her lips, chewed:  Will nodded, stabbed into his own, steel tines making a bright noise as they penetrated to the porcelain.

"Were you nervous, Marnie?" Will asked quietly.

"No, Uncle Will," Marnie admitted.  "I was dead calm. I came down out of the witness stand and said 'I can show you what I did, better than explain what I did,' and my three assistants in well-padded suits came to the center deck, and the fight was on!"

"How do you feel now?" 

"When I came in here, I was wound up like an eight day clock."

"I could feel you vibratin' clear across the room.  How about now?"

Marnie shrugged.  "I'm not much of a tuning fork."

"I knew it."

"What's that?"  Marnie took another bite of pie, looking at her Uncle with bright and innocent eyes.

Will grinned, took a noisy slurp of coffee.

"Blueberry pie and whipped cream is good for what ails ye!"

 

 

 

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OLD SOFTY

Sheriff Linn Keller's right shoulder dropped.

The troublemaker was fast, he came up to guard against a right-handed punch.

He wasn't expecting the work-hardened left hand that seized a good handful of his collar, he didn't expect to be shaken back and forth, just before he was yanked hard forward and hard back: the back of his head bounced off the Spring Inn's heavy door.

His vision hazed and sparkled and he wondered why the ceiling was suddenly so much closer.

Beside the Sheriff, the Navajo chief deputy, with an abbreviated twelve-gauge, regarded the slowly retreating semicircle of former challengers to the Sheriff's authority.

Paul Barrents' eyes were black, polished, expressionless: he'd come in behind the Sheriff, he'd closed the door quietly, he'd taken his position, established his stance: obsidian eyes were the only things that moved, and every man there felt that hard, uncompromising look, that unmistakable feeling that Barrents was establishing the sequence of men he'd kill:  who first, who next -- and with a twelve-bore inside a concrete block beer joint, nobody there doubted the deadly consequence of that silent, watchful deputy's actions, should he let slip the leash on his blued-steel war-badger.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller seized another man's wrist, pulled:  his fist drove up, hard, blasting through shirtfront and muscle wall, driving the diaphragm up into the lungs, punching every bit of the man's wind out of shocked lungs: when the Sheriff uncorked his punch, the other fellow's feet came off the ground: those watching, staring, mouths open, those on this public street, beholding sudden violence, realized their pale eyed Sheriff was both faster and much stronger than they'd realized.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller sat at his desk at home, hunched over the blotter, frowning a little as he wrote.

He did this, when he'd had one of those days:  sometimes he'd throw himself into cleaning the barn, sometimes he'd whistle his stallion over and spend a great deal of time currying him down, fussing over hooves and fetlocks and brushing out mane and tail, his hands busy, his eyes hard: the stallion stood for these ministrations -- usually the spirited mount would be dancing impatiently, sometimes he'd nip at Linn's backside, sometimes he'd dance just out of reach, snorting and shaking his head.

When Linn was troubled, though, the stallion would come up to him, snuff at his middle, then lay his big head over Linn's shoulder:  Marnie had watched, silent, as her big strong Daddy would caress the Appaloosa's neck, she'd pretend not to watch as her Daddy buried his face in a stallion's mane and grit his teeth as his face reddened and scalding tears ran down his face.

She'd watched her Daddy work seventeen year old summer help into the ground, she'd watched him reduce sinners to a peaceable status through less than gentle means, she'd laid on her belly at the edge of a sinkhole, reaching in and grabbing a desperately extended wrist, her Daddy on his belly on the other side of the same hole:  she'd pulled, with him, she'd fought to her knees, with him, then she'd stood, an adventurous boy hanging from their grip, wet, muddy, scared and glad as hell to be out of a hole that seemed intent on swallowing him, and Marnie looked across at the look of utter triumph on her Daddy's face.

Marnie watched as her Daddy's steel nib dip quill scratched on good rag paper.

He was frowning, concentrating: a quick dip in the black India ink, a wipe on the glass mouth of the ink-bottle:  Marnie knew he was mercilessly marshaling his words, arranging them in neat ranks, disciplining the inner man with the expression of the outer man.

Linn left the single sheet on his desk blotter:  Marnie knew the ink he used took a little to dry; he did not sprinkle it with blotting-sand, he did not press blotting-paper and rocker it firmly down: she knew the rag paper would not suck up the ink like the cheaper wood pulp paper did, and when he left his script to dry, she knew he meant for his words to be distinct, black, legible forever.

Marnie waited for her Daddy to go to bed:  his silent, sock-foot tread up the broad stairs was slow, the walk of a tired man, but his shoulders were back, squared, his back straight: from this, she knew, he was satisfied with his day's work.

Marnie waited, silent in the shadows: she had the patience of a hunter, and she waited until she knew she'd not be seen, before slipping like a ghost through the nighttime shadows.

She had a small light, cupped in one fist: she allowed a cautious crack in her enveloping grip, diffused light fell to the single sheet.

Marnie read, and as she did, she nodded, blinking, and as she read, she bit her bottom lip.

 

This night have I heard true beauty.

I stood in snow-shadowed dark

As shattered clouds drifted earthward round about.

Nearby, in the snowy wood,

The Wild sang their ancient song.

Still and stricken did I stand,

Music-ensorcelled, snowy man:

Heard the Trickster, 

Coyote,

Sing in many-throated,

Untamed,

Harmony.

Cold alone broke enchantment's spell,

Yet is its song laid 'pon mine soul

Like a blanket of sunrise given me

On the first day of Creation!

 

Marnie re-read her Daddy's words, then shut off the little light hidden in her fist.

She felt a shadow move, turned; her Daddy was standing at the bottom of the stairs, silent, unmoving, watching her.

Marnie Keller -- Sheriff's deputy, proven warrior -- ran like a little girl across the nighttime floor, seized her Daddy, held him with a desperate strength, shivering:  she held him tight, tight, as his big, strong, Daddy-arms wrapped around her, held her the way a big strong Daddy will hold his little girl.

 

Next day, as Jacob handed him the weekly newspaper, Sheriff Linn Keller settled into his desk chair, looked over his hand-written list of calls he had to make, then looked at the sheet he'd written the night before.

In morning's light he didn't think that much of what he'd written, but he took a second look at the sheet.

Later that day he took it into town, carefully protected in a brown manila envelope and this, in a file folder:  when he brought that single hand written sheet home, two days after, it was behind glass, in a frame, and he hung it near his desk, where he could see it.

He wasn't all that impressed by his own words.

No artist is ever satisfied with his own work; every author thinks his words are uninteresting drivel; every master carpenter will frown at his finished product and pick out every last flaw and shortcoming in the work of his hands.

No, what inspired this pale eyed lawman to frame the work he'd written after a difficult day, was not the black ink marching in regular lines across rag paper.

It was a single wrinkled spot, where a young woman read those words, and her heart overflowed her eyes, and one spot of her appreciation dropped, wet and circular, onto the paper.

That framed work hung near Linn's desk for the rest of the pale eyed lawman's life, and for several years afterward.

Every time Linn looked at that framed sheet, he smiled a little, every time.

Every time he looked at it and smiled, he remembered a daughter's whispered words as she rubbed maidenly tears into his shirt front, scrubbing her face against the reassurance of warm Daddy-flannel:

"Oh, Daddy," she'd whispered, then sniffed, hiccupped, looked up at him, her face wet, her pale eyes bright, the expression of an adoring little girl:

"Oh, Daddy," she'd whispered, "you're just an old softy!"

Linn Keller, who'd seized a barfight bully by the shirt and pressed him, one-armed, up to the low ceiling -- Linn Keller, who'd seized and disarmed large and angry people bearing a variety of weapons -- Linn Keller, who knew what it was to make that final, tenth-of-a-second decision, whether to put that last tenth-of-an-ounce on this trigger, yes or no -- Linn Keller, who in his time had been shot, stabbed, cut, run into, run over, whose corroded soul a street evangelist tried to save -- 

Linn held his little girl in the nighttime silence of the ancient ranch house, held her tight, felt her shiver a little:  Marnie felt her Daddy's silent laughter, felt him bend a little and kiss the top of her head and heard his whisper.

"I reckon so, Princess."

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
Mis spelling: "utter" instead of "tter" -- sorry, phat phingers!
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PEEKABOO

When a really good looking young woman rides into town on a really good looking Appaloosa mare, men take note.

It would honestly not matter if such a feminine soul wore a burlap sack tied with hay string: men appreciate the feminine form, and true beauty comes from within, and shines easily through such minor concerns as what she might be wearing.

This particular really-good-looking, riding-skirt-and-boots young woman was, fortunately, not wearing burlap, nor did she use hay string in lieu of a good leather belt.

As a matter of fact, she wore a white blouse with blood-red embroidery on the collar and flap pockets, she wore a screaming scarlet riding skirt and a vest to match -- with white embroidery in the same vine-and-blossoms pattern as her blouse -- she wore burnished red cowboy boots, a red Stetson with a white lace band, and a black, floral carved, background dyed gunbelt, with a thunderbird-engraved Smith and Wesson in a matching floral carved, background dyed, thumb break holster.

Firelands was a tourist stop: it had a reputation for the quality of its historic presentations, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Ladies' Tea Society and the Z&W Railroad: the county's year round residents were generally hard working folk who struck tourists as quaint, or colorful -- and so it was not unusual for Marnie to be noticed, and photographed, as she cantered right down the center line, absolutely at home in the saddle, smiling quietly, pale eyes shadowed by her red-felt hat-brim.

Her smile tightened a little at the corners of her eyes as she heard an excited little boy's near-shout: she'd seen the child, big-eyed and delighted at the sight of a real honest to God cowgirl like he'd seen on old movies, with an impressively-large, pure-black canine the size of a young bare pacing alongside:  Marnie turned her mare -- there was no traffic, at least none close enough to worry about -- she came back up the uphill side of the street, her mare halting in front of the Mercantile, where the delighted little boy stared in awe as someone he'd seen on television rode up close to him and looked directly at him, at him! -- and smiled!

Little boys have short attention spans, and are easily distracted, and Marnie laughed as she saw his eyes go from her to her saddlebags: she looked at the mother's upraised phone and smiled just a little, then she laughed as the little boy contained himself no longer:  he thrust an excited arm, a quivering finger, and declared, "Peekaboo!"

Marnie dismounted: she swung from saddle to boardwalk, winked at the mother, then went to one knee, taking the delighted little boy's hands:  "Like to pet him?" she asked, and he nodded, eyes wide and wondering, as he looked again at the saddlebags.

Somewhere back East, a local paper printed the pictures taken in Colorado, in a town few heard of, a town whose name wouldn't gain worldwide attention until the Mars mission, not many years hence: but in a local paper, a county weekly back East with a worldwide circulation throughout most of one rural county, there appeared the picture of an absolutely beautiful daughter of the Shining Mountains on a fine looking Appaloosa mare, a young woman with a great black bearlike dog beside her and a fuzzy, pure-white pup peeking out of a carved-leather saddlebag.

Under this, another picture: an absolutely thrilled little boy sitting in saddle leather, holding a fuzzy white puppy, a dog whose name he insisted was "Peekaboo!" --and in the caption under the pictures, it quoted a happy child's explanation:

"Because the pup peekaboo'd at me!"

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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A GIANT'S SON

Marnie Keller slipped in the back door of the firehouse, the way she always did: the door opened, a great splash of sunlight blazing in around her; she closed the door, dimming the harsh radiance considerably: even as a little girl, she'd come in, shut the door quietly, then take a quick step to the side and stop, her back to the wall, looking around.

Nobody thought a thing of it, for it's what she'd always done, ever since she first came to the firehouse as a little girl, all pigtails and red cowboy boots and big smile and watchful, pale eyes.

Marnie came in today with a briefcase in her off hand.

Her steps were quick, businesslike, brisk, her carriage was erect, confident, her shoulders were back and her spine straight and she marched purposefully toward the Chief's office, on the far side of the building, in the high, haunted alcove where fire horses used to be stabled, where the apparatus that once held their harness overhead, still waited ... the harness was long gone, for horsepower was no longer a matched trio of white mares, but still the pulleys and lines held faithful station, in case their need would ever rise again.

Chief Chuck Fitzgerald looked up as young knuckles rapped on his doorframe, as a smile and bright eyes and athletic legs swarmed into his office, as a briefcase landed on his desk.

Fitz leaned back from what he'd been reading -- nothing important, really, specs for a proposed expansion here in town, something he'd have to attend in person -- Marnie opened the briefcase, stopped, leaned her palms on the desktop, smiled.

"As promised," she said quietly.

Fitz looked at her, not entire sure what to say.

He knew Marnie was leaving, he knew she'd been recruited for the Mars mission -- of all the people in the world, he'd thought, why'd they have to take her away from us? -- Marnie looked very directly at him, bit her bottom lip, frowned, then blinked and looked very directly at him.

"Fitz," she said, her fingertips resting momentarily on the stack of folders, the notebooks in the briefcase, "here's the ancestry I've been working on for you."  She stepped back, turned, looked at the oldest Chief's portraits hung on his wall.

She looked back Fitz, suddenly uncomfortable.

"It needs said, so I'll say it."  Her voice was quiet, musical, it held a warmth he'd never heard before.

"I'm leaving tomorrow and I'll not be back.  I will miss you, you great Irish oaf."

Fitz blinked, surprised.

Of all the things this lovely young woman could've said, this was the last he'd expected to hear.

"You are a direct descendant of Sean Finnegan."  She smiled, a little uncertainly.  "Somehow I feel like I should pull out a wooden spoon and raise hell with you in three languages, but I don't speak Gaelic, so that's out."

She walked up to him, gripped his shoulders, turned him, his office chair swiveling easily: she lowered her head a little, her face close to his, her voice low, so only he could hear.

"You great Irish lug, you are the son of a giant. You're a damned good chief and I'm lucky to've known you.  I'll never see you again and I will miss you and everyone here and I'm going to cry now."  She pressed her lips quickly to his forehead, then drew back, turned, ran out of his office, ran across the squad bay, up the two steps to the kitchen deck: she twisted around the big table, seized the stainless-steel door handle, twisted:  a blast of high mountain sunlight, unfiltered by atmosphere, then gone, not even the sound of her retreating bootheels.

Chuck Fitzgerald blinked, looking at where a lovely, pale eyed woman had just been, and he wondered silently what in the hell just happened.

 

Fitz watched, with the rest of the Irish Brigade, watched on the big screen TV as a pale eyed woman in flight coveralls stood confidently behind the podium.

"I attended a wedding," she began, "where the preacher had the couple turn and look at everyone in the church, then turn back to him.  He said they'd just seen where they'd come from, they'd just seen the foundation their lives would build on -- that no matter where they went and what they did, they would take that good foundation with them, and that's what we're doing.

"We're about to pioneer across an unknown, like our own ancestors did, we're setting off into an uncharted sea of uncertainty. We'll not see home again, but we'll take it with us -- each of us -- because where we've been is our foundation, and we're going to build on that foundation, wherever we end up."

She stepped aside; someone else in a flight suit came to the microphone and spoke, not as confidently -- Fitz rubbed his closed eyelids, smelled coffee:  he opened his eyes accepted the steaming mug of freshly brewed, thanked the engineer for his kindness.

Later that day he wandered back into his office, feeling distinctly lost.

He'd seen the Sheriff and one of his medics, the Sheriff's wife, among family gathered to see the launch, gathered to bid their young a final good-bye: he'd frowned at the screen, watched the figures, anonymous in pressure suits, filing into their shuttle: the camera showed regimented rows of human figures lying back in the contoured couches, saw the auto-dispensers settle about their forearms; he knew microneedles would find the hidden veins, would inject  chemicals and God knows what else into them, to prepare them for a long sleep, to keep them from bone loss and who can tell what else might happen to them in transit: Fitz tried to pick Marnie out of the figures as they filed in, he thought he saw her as the camera made one last pan of the shuttle's passenger section.

He sipped his coffee, watched the shuttle lift off in thunder and fire and rolling smoke, watched it streak across a cloudless sky, curving a little as it went:  he drank without tasting, finally setting his empty mug between his brogans, not rising until the animations replaced actual camera shots.

Fitz picked up his mug, set it in the sink, walked back to his office where three white mares once drowsed and waited for the alarm, waited for harness to be lowered from the ceiling, waited to run, thrusting powerfully against polished and padded collars:  he sat heavily at his desk, blinked at the still-open briefcase, as if he'd forgotten entirely that it was there.

Chuck Fitzgerald reached in, pulled out the notebook, opened it.

A manila folder, with Fitz written in a familiar, feminine hand.

Frowning, he opened the folder.

Chuck Fitzgerald had been a Navy man.

He'd seen much of the world; he'd ridden bulls, he'd laughed and wenched and he'd drunk his share, he'd been led by good men and he'd led good men himself: he was no stranger to the good in life, nor to the bad in life: he was a man not easily suprised, a man who tried to keep his inner self a distance from the world, for that made it easier to make the hard decisions a fire chief sometimes must.

Fitz was a strong man and a man not easily surprised, a man not given easily to deep emotion.

Two of his Brigade came to his office door, then drew back without knocking:  one remained, to shoo away any who might try to interrupt the man, for it was noticed that Marnie had been there, that she'd come in with a briefcase, a case they saw open, a case she'd departed without, and they saw Fitz wipe his eyes and blow his nose and stare long and long again at something, something in a manila folder, laid open on his desk top.

The Chief took the folder, later that day, and walked up the street a little, came back empty handed; two days later he went back up the street, and returned with a paper wrapped rectangle.

Fitz hung two framed drawings in his office.

One was a girl, riding a mare made of star-mist and sunlight, streaking in a bright arc across star-speckled space: the girl wore a look of delight and wore red cowboy boots, her hair and her gauzy gown flowing behind, becoming part of the shining curve of her passing:  the other was complex, and Fitz stood and studied it for a long time after he hung it.

It was a fire chief, done in colored pencil, all red bib front shirt and knee high boots and a white, pressed-leather helmet, it was a fire chief with a red handlebar mustache and a handful of reins, a man standing in the driver's box of a steam powered fire engine: Fitz could almost hear mares' hooves, he could almost smell horse-sweat and coal-smoke and in his imagination, he heard a great Irish tenor singing and swearing as a blacksnake whip uncurled and snapped a hole in the air a yard above the center mare's ears, and the more he studied, the more he saw, and he smiled a little, for in this great and heroic figure of an Irish fire chieftain driving a chariot to war, he saw she hadn't drawn the portrait of his Irish ancestor.

She'd drawn in his own face.

Behind, almost a ghost, he saw the face of Sean Finnegan, saw it in smoke and clouds and distant mountains, saw it as if Fitz were driving through history itself.

It was one of the most skilled pencil drawings he'd ever seen.

She'd drawn in the title, in a corner-scrolled rectangle across the bottom, and when he finally studied the notebooks she'd left, the ancestry she'd researched, and found exactly how she'd tracked his blood line back to their first Chief, the legendary Sean Finnegan, he looked at the hand drawn portrait again, and the title made perfect sense.

In Marnie's slanted print, proudly across the banner, were the words, A Giant's Son.

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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PREVENTION

He was just a kid, and he was scared.

He grabbed his wrist, looked with horror and with fascination at the red river running from his hand, at the dropped knife.

He'd never seen his own blood before, at least not like this -- he'd scraped his knees when he was a child, yes, once he felt off his little velocipede and scraped his knee on a New York mansion's  cement sidewalk, it hurt and he cried but he was just a little boy then --

A young man wearing a surprisingly-clean uniform powered across the muddy ground, knife in hand:  he seized the shocked, shaking soldier's wrist in an iron grip, laid his blade across the bleeding incision.

Not far away, an officer stopped, frowning, watching intently.

He knew the pale eyed young soldier, the one that wore the decidedly non-regulation revolvers in the field: he watched as those pale eyes closed, as lips moved soundlessly, as the bleeding stopped as if a tap were turned off.

The officer knew this young man, the one with pale eyes, was a Westerner, knew he was more skilled at handling Army mules and Army horses than anyone else; he also knew the military bureaucracy that refused to assign this fellow where he could actually do some good, kept him in the rear, mostly with kitchen detail, except for the occasional patrol.

Two young men, their hands tightly joined, proceeded slowly into the kitchen tent.

Curious, the officer followed, watched from a discreet distance as the pale eyed Westerner ministered to his fellow.

Honey, he thought.  

Why is he putting honey on a wound?

He watched as the pale eyed soldier produced a roll of bandaging cloth from somewhere, wrapped the other young soldier's hand: his work was quick, efficient, better than most medical personnel he'd seen here in the field.

He stepped closer.

Pale eyes looked up.  "Good afternoon, Captain," Joseph Keller said courteously.  "Can I help you, sir?"

"Will he be all right?" the Captain asked cautiously.

"A few days and he'll be fine, sir. Until then" -- he addressed himself to his pale, shivering fellow -- "keep that dry and keep it clean.  Come get me if there's any problem."

Joseph patted his fellow roughly on the shoulder, watched as he retreated from the far end of the mess tent, then turned to the Captain.

"How can I help you, sir?"

"I saw what you did," the Captain said slowly. "It would seem your talents are not ... fully utilized."

"Oh, that?" he shrugged, grinning.  "A trick my Grampa taught me. He got it from his Mama."

"Stopping Blood with the Word," the Captain said slowly.

"Yes, sir.  Grampa did that when my Pa was shot in a church belfry."

The Captain's eyebrow raised.  "That," he admitted, "is a bit out of the ordinary."

Joseph grinned.  "Reavers wanted to take the town, plunder and burn and otherwise be less than neighborly.  My Pa helped change their minds."

"I see ... from the bell tower?"

"Him and the Parson each had a Sharps rifle," Joseph explained.  

"I see."

"Pa took a rifle ball under the collar bone and he was bleedin' to death.  They got him down and Grampa laid a knife acrost the wound and spoke the Word and stopped the blood.  Grandma Esther did the same with him when he was shot."

"Sounds like a nice place," the Captain muttered.

"Oh, it was lively, back when," Joseph grinned.  "Grampa is still alive and in good health, Pa is too and they've both been raisin' horses and children and keepin' the county peaceable."

"Private, why in God's creation did you volunteer to come over here?" the Captain asked gently.

He'd asked a number of eager young soldiers the same question; he expected one of the usual answers.

Joseph looked at the man, nodded a little.

"Sir, men who conquer are men with a hunger. They want more. Conquering feels good. The Hun wants to conquer their way to the salt water ocean and if they do that they'll want more, and that means they'll take those conquered navies and come over to our side of the ocean and start raisin' hell. They might be a while doin' it, but they'll try it and I don't fancy fightin' 'em on my doorstep. Likely it would be my sons and grandsons doin' the fightin'.  Now if we can stop 'em over here, if we can bloody their nose hard enough they'll stop, why, that'll keep my grandsons from havin' to hunker behind a tree and educate the sinners on our soil."

"I see."

"Sir, my Pa didn't want me to join up. He absolutely forbade me so I run off and did it anyhow. He didn't want me comin' home with the nightmares and the  haunts that ride Grampa's shoulders. He didn't want me wakin' up in a cold sweat, clutchin' my wife like a drownin' man clutches a float."  Joseph's pale eyes were quiet, intense, as was his voice.

"Sir, your father served with my Grampa in That Damned War."

"Yes.  Yes, he did."

"Sir, it did very bad things to Grampa. He carried scars and cannon fragments to his grave."

Joseph saw something in the Captain's eyes -- he knew from that slight change of expression the Captain remembered a tale told him by his own father, a tale of a pale eyed Captain, nearly killed when a cannon burst as the enemy approached.

"Sir, if I can keep that hell from comin' to our country, I'll take the nightmares. I've seen good people over here lose their land, lose everything they've worked for when this war rolled over 'em. I can't do a thing to stop that, but I can keep it from spreadin' to our country. I don't ever want that hell comin' home."

"Nor do I," the Captain said softly, his eyes wide, unseeing, as he remembered tales told him by his own father, tales told with wide and haunted eyes and a quavering, haunted voice.

Joseph stood -- grinned a quick, boyish grin -- "Captain, if you'll excuse me, I need to go gear up. We're due to go out on a reconnoiter and I reckon I'll have my hands full keepin' that shave tail Lieutenant out of trouble."

The Captain nodded, rose: Joseph saluted, the Captain returned the salute: each turned, and left from opposite ends of the mess tent.

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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EMERALDS, IN THE DARK

The Abbott led the monastery by delegation, as does any administrator, but also by example.

The Abbott, though Prior and the man in overall charge, could still be found tilling the earth, planting crops, weeding; he could be found taking confessions, as did any of the Brethren; he could be found splitting kindling, manning one end of a two-man saw, he was known to run out in front of a runaway team, staff held before him, a shaven-head warrior in an ankle-length robe in the middle of the dusty street, and at his sharp "HO!" and the upraised, wrist-thick staff, held in both hands in front of him, the team halted -- fast, skidding, dancing, throwing their heads, eyes walling, clearly wanting nothing to do with this figure in Cistercian white with a double handful of seasoned locust persuader!

Abbott Wlliam often introduced himself simply as "Brother William," and so it was this day: a young man of his acquaintance asked an anonymous Brother for wise counsel, and a fatherly hand laid upon his youthful shoulder.

"I am Brother William," he said quietly.  "Sit with me and we'll counsel together."

The red-headed son of an Irish fire chief sat down at a small table with a tonsured man in bullhide sandals and a simple, one-piece robe, tied at the waist with a common (but clean) rope.

"You're asking wise counsel," the man prompted gently, and the young Irishman nodded.

"Before engaging any important task, it is wise to talk to God about it," the Abbot said quietly, and they did: his address to the Almighty was spoken with respect, and spoken with brevity.

Young Master Finnegan was especially grateful for the latter quality, for he'd had to suffer through excessively long winded prayers too many times in his young life.

"Now, then," Brother William said, dusting his hands briskly together and looking very directly at his Celtic visitor, "what grand wisdom may I dispense this lovely morn?"

"There is a girl," Michael Finnegan began, frowning.

Brother William nodded, his eyes very direct, his expression intent:  it was obvious to his young visitor that he was actually listening to him -- something the Abbott knew was important when discussing a matter of importance with an earnest young man.

"Ma father," he said, damning his own hesitancy:  "Ma father said he knew his Daisy was th' one, but he'd no' tell me how he knew."  

Irish-blue eyes looked away, blinking; Brother William knew that active mind was running like a runaway freight, behind those shining eyes.

Brother William nodded.

"Tell me how she makes you feel," he said quietly.

Michael's grin was quick, bright:  he sat up a little straighter, his eyes shining with memory.

"She makes me ... I want to ... it's like ..."

The Abbott nodded, once, patiently, his eyes never leaving Michael's.

"I've no' kissed her, I've no' held her ... no' but her hand, an' I was ..."

Michael took a long breath, his smile gentle, genuine, the smile of someone remembering a precious, a fragile, a truly beautiful thing.

"I wanted t' fly.  I was light.  I could ha' floated like the Fae, only wi'out wings."

The Abbott nodded again, smiling gently:  he'd been young, himself, once.

"I've no' been improper an' I want t' be wi' her, but I'm afraid I'll want t' ... be ..."

"It is a powerful thing," the Abbott agreed in a quiet and gentle voice.

"Abbott ... the Sheriff told me a priest once said you canna' bring fire an' straw t'gether an' forbid smoke, an' I know ... if she's th' right one, we'll ..."

He looked miserably at the Abbott.

"There's s' much I don't know," he whispered.  "But if I'm t' be wi' her, I want t' be wi' th' right one, an' ..."
His hands fisted, pressed down onto his knees:  this handsome young man, torn with passions he had yet to really experience, much less master, hung his head, clenched his jaw, groaned with misery.

The Abbott reached out, laid a comforting hand lightly on the lad's shoulder.

"Let me tell you about mine," he said quietly.

 

William bowed slightly to the beautiful young woman.

She was beautiful, and she knew it: young men sought her out as bees seek out a nectar-rich flower.

William placed his delicate glass cup of punch on the table, asked her to walk with him, for there was something he wished to show her.

She took his arm.

They walked out a side entrance and into the night, into the near-stifling warmth of a Louisiana evening, thick with ancient secrets and jasmine and the songs of ten thousand serenading insects: they walked in silence, her gloved hand wrapped around his forearm, his hand on the backs of her fingers.

"There is something I would show you," he said, and she looked at him, her eyes big, dark, almost expectant.

Her slippers and his boots were silent on grass, just beginning to gather evening's dew.

They stopped.

They were not terribly far from the mansion; far enough to be alone, close enough to be on familiar ground.

William took her a few more steps, to where they a shed no longer blocked their view.

"Elizabeth," William said, lifting his arm, "I give you ... the night!"

Elizabeth looked out at his grand, sweeping gesture.

Stars were bright overhead, thick and shining; below, fireflies looking like living jewels cast by a petulant giant's child on thick black velvet:  a light mist, just moving in, trees and shadows, their margins softened by evening mists.

Elizabeth looked at this living tableau, the stars overhead and living stars floating here below.

Elizabeth turned and looked at William.

She said not a word.

She seized her skirts, turned back to the mansion:  she lifted her nose, glided silently back to music and laughter and young men flocking about her, leaving William behind in a pool of disappointment.

"It was the first time," William said slowly to young Michael Finnegan, "that a girl took my heart and threw it to the ground and walked over it on her way back to the party."

 

Michael thought of his conversation with Brother William as he rode the steam train back to Firelands.

That evening, after supper, he went to his red-headed Pa, before the man sat down after supper to read aloud from the Book, as was his habit.

"Sir," he said formally, and Sean looked at his firstborn with honest surprise: he nodded, and Michael said, "I would ask your advice."

Sean rose and he and his son walked through the house and out the back door.

Father and son both had a serious expression; the other children drew back, uncertain whether this meant Michael was going to get a talking-to, or worse: none knew of any offense, but they also knew their father's corrections happened whether they knew what happened, or not.

Sean chewed on his bottom lip as the pair stood behind the house, looking into the gathering night.

"How can I know if ... Pa, I'm sweet on a girl and how do I know she's the right one?"

Sean was quiet for a long moment, then he looked down at the ground in front of his brogans and smiled quietly.

Father and son sat down on the back porch stairs and stared into the gathering dusk.

"Daisy and me, we went t' a dance," Sean said quietly.  "'Twas back in Porkopolis, on th' river, a soft summer night it was.  Threatenin' t' rain but it hadn't yet started.

"We walked a little an' there was somethin' I wished t' show her."

Michael waited while his father rubbed hard and callused palms together, slowly, thoughtfully, his calluses whispering gritty secrets to each other.

"I knew of a place. Uncommon beautiful 'twas, grasses an' wild flowers an' untouched, an' we come around a shed an' it looked like ten thousand stars fell t' earth an' gathered in this little run where a stream cut int' the river in a steep little hollow."  Sean's hands sketched the river -- here -- the stream, coming in at right angles -- his palms smoothed something invisible, as if caressing the steep sides of the notch eroded by centuries of a stream running into the river from the fertile fields above.

Sean's face was almost glowing; Michael marveled at his father's gentle smile, something he knew meant his heart was open, unguarded, and he was sharing something from his past, something precious in his life.

"I gave a grand wave wi' m' arm an' said, 'Daisymedear, I gi'e ye the night!" an' her eyes went big, her hands clapped t' her mouth, she grabbed m'arm an' gasped 'It's beautiful,' an' we stood there i' the night, th' both of us grinnin' like idiots, watchin' what must'a been ten thousand lightnin' bugs i' th' dark."  

Michael tried to imagine it as it must have been: Sean, a strong young man standing beside the dark, oily river, Covington's lights reflecting off the Ohio, his beautiful young sweetheart on his arm; in front of them, a steep, grassy hollow, thick with wildflowers, hidden in the nighttime shadow; among these, greenish-yellow points of floating fires, living lanterns on beetle wings, looking like glowing emeralds cast on a fog-trimmed shadow-blanket.

"I knew then, lad," Sean almost whispered.  "I showed her somethin' I found beautiful, an' she found it beautiful too."

 

In the fullness of time, Michael Finnegan would grow, and would find the right girl, a girl who found Colorado fireflies as lovely as he: like all young men, his heart would be offered, scorned, accepted, bruised, treated badly and treated well:  the right girl became his wife, and he raised fine tall sons and beautiful daughters, and these sons and daughters of Erin would lend their blood and their strength to their land, and their songs would be sung by the generations that followed: but those are tales for another day, and may not yet be told, save only that every generation found again its love of floating emerald stars, magical in the dark, and most beautiful when shared.

 

 

 

Edited by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
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PLUG

Four nuns marched up the hallway, heads bowed, hands thrust into their sleeves:  nurses looked at one another, drew back: the four wore spotless, flawless, pure white habits and wimples, and their faces were covered with white veils.

They marched silently, steadily, a silent avalanche, unstoppable, inexorable: a linen cart was pulled out of the way into a room, and a food cart was likewise pushed momentarily into a room, to allow the four free passage.

Visitors, ordinarily, would inquire at the nurse's station:  where might I find this patient, where is this-or-that room:  none were entirely certain where the nuns came from, but they moved with a silent purpose:  eyes followed them as they passed around the bend in the hallway, stopped, entered a room.

Nurses looked at one another, looked at the doorway, saw the door close.

 

Gilead Keller grinned as he caressed the horse's neck, ran wondering fingers through the long, shining mane.

"Now where did you come from?" he whispered, delighting at the feel of living horseflesh under his hands once again.

Mount.

Gilead remembered a voice, warm, strong, confident, he remembered hands gripping him around the ribs, high up under the arms, hands that hoist him into the air and set him in a saddle -- slick, broad, the Throne of a King, magical, swift -- his pale eyed Pa grinned at him, a look of delight and of approval, and Gilead laughed as his little legs tried to clamp around the saddle, as the horse started pacing, smoothly, around the inside of the corral.

Mount.

Gilead stepped back as the horse took two steps forward, stopped: the saddle -- it wasn't there a moment before?

Maybe it was?

He wasn't entirely sure, but he lifted his leg, thrust a boot into the black doghouse stirrup, felt the laughter bubbling in his young soul as he shoved off the ground and swung a leg over the saddle.

Gilead sat up, sat straight, half-closed hands on his thighs.

He didn't reach for the reins.

He didn't have to.

They'd been knotted and dropped over the saddlehorn ...

Pa does that, he thought.

"Yes, I do."

Gilead looked up, delighted, as his pale eyed Pa grinned at him, just the way he remembered.

"Pa!" he exclaimed.  "What're you doing clear out here?"

Linn shifted in the saddle, turned his stallion toward his youngest son, sidled up beside him, nodded.

"You're looking like this Eastern life suits you."

"It'll never be home, Pa.  There's good folks here but it ain't home."

"I know."  Linn took a long breath, looked around.  "I know."

 

The charge nurse marched purposefully down the hallway, disapproval like a cloak about her shoulders:  to think her patient, her patient! was being seen, without her permission --

She seized the door, thrust it open, glared at four silent, unmoving white nuns, one at each bedpost, facing the patient's silent, unmoving form: the bed was in the middle of the floor instead of the headboard against the wall -- 

"Who moved this bed?" she demanded icily.

Four nuns withdrew their hands from their sleeves and the charge nurse heard the door shut behind her.

Her blood ran cold, she felt fear seize her guts, she couldn't move --

Each nun held flame, living, twisting, hungry fire, blazing from upturned palms --

-- but the fires were blue and icy and cold and each one sparkled with frost --

 

"Sir?"

"Yes, Gilead?"

"Sir ... I think I'm confused."

"I get that way sometimes," Linn admitted:  they turned their mounts, paced across a broad, grassy meadow.

"Sir ... I was taken ill."

"That'll happen."

"I don't remember much about it."

"No, I'd reckon not."

"Sir?"

Their horses drew up:  neither rider used the reins; Linn's saddlestock was all knee-trained, Gilead knew, and though he hadn't learned the knack, he must've picked up something from his old Pa, for his own horse stopped when his father's stallion halted.

"Gilead, you weren't just sick, you were sicker'n hell."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"Not your fault."  Linn smiled with half his mouth, the way he did when he remembered something similar.  "Matter of fact, you're right next to dead."

Gilead looked at his father in honest surprise.

"Matter of fact, so am I."

Gilead raised a hand.  "Hold on," he said, "I'm not a-followin' you a'tall!"

Linn laughed, that relaxed, easy laugh his sons so rarely heard:  Gilead, of all his children, had heard it more often, with his Pa in his elder years, and retired.

"Gilead, right now I'm flat on my back in my own bed. My family is gathered around me grieving the death that prowls outside the door, looking for a way in, and you're flat on your back, you're in a hospital back East and not expected to live."

Gilead reached forward, laid a hand on his horse's neck, reassuring himself that he was, indeed, alive, lucid, not hallucinating.

"Oh, he's real, too.  You've seen him before, from one of the windows at the University."

Gilead looked sharply at his father.

"Sir, the only horse I've seen from the lecture hall has been a sway backed, worn out old plug that looked like he was ready to fall over from exhaustion."

Linn nodded.  "Us old-timers have to stick together."

 

One of the White Sisters began to sing, a gentle, absolutely pure, high alto:  it was the Ave, but sung as the nurse had never heard it:  the others joined, a gentle, flawless harmony, voices that swam through the nurse's living soul, comfort in audible form, beauty she could hear:  the bitterness she embraced like something pure fell away from her heart, leaving her feeling pure, cleansed, open, vulnerable, right before she was suddenly more terrified than she'd been in her entire life.

 

"Gilead," Linn explained as father and son rode, at a walk, across a meadow that looked as broad as the plains of Hungary, "your body is ready to give up. The only thing that will keep it this side of the Divide is your will. You've come to a decision, and I can't tell you how to decide."

"Decide what, sir?"

"Whether to live," a woman's voice said, "or whether to let go of the pain of living."

Gilead turned, surprised.

"You don't know me, do you?"

Gilead looked very directly at this newcomer, this pale eyed woman in an electric blue riding dress.

"I've ... your portrait ... you're Aunt Sarah!"

"He doesn't startle easily, does he?" Sarah smiled at her pale eyed Papa, approval in her voice.

"Pa said he's dying and so am I.  You died in Germany. Does this mean I'm dead now?"

"This means it's time for you to decide, Gilead," Linn said.

Sarah Lynne McKenna's big black Snowflake-mare danced, impatient:  Sarah patted the shining black neck, whispered to her, looked at her young cousin with interested eyes.

"Gilead, I'll tell you what your father can't.  You come from a long line of warriors, and yours is blood of a warrior race. Ultimately we'll fight in The Last Battle, when our bloodlines converge to produce the very best fighters that ever weighed in against Evil Incarnate."

"Har-Mediggo," Gilead whispered.

"The same. Now Gilead, how good a fighter are you?"

"Not very good," he admitted.

Sarah looked very directly at him.  "Gilead," she said, "not all fights are with knuckles or knives or even the finest guns known to man. The best weapon you have is between your ears, and you've a fine one there."

She looked at her father, then at his son.

"Gilead, we need your intelligence in our bloodline.  If you choose to die, we won't be as good as we could be.  Good, yes, but I believe in having every ace in the deck in my hand."

Gilead frowned, nodded.

"When a baby is born, it cries because it's born into an ocean of seething, unremitting, constant, pain. It's not until the moment of death that the pain of living is relieved, that it's taken from us, that we see beyond this world.  Sometimes we're met with family -- as you are now -- and sometimes we go directly into the Presence, but when we die, we're not in pain anymore."

Gilead blinked, surprised.

It wasn't until she put it into words that he realized he wasn't hurting now.

 

The nurse watched as darkness crackled and seethed around the nuns -- as if they formed a living box with their bodies and their voices, holding out something dark, something like black fire with red edges, something that wanted to rush in and consume the pale form lying still, very still, under white sheets and a white blanket.

She saw a set of eyes coalesce in the living hatred burning like a black wall behind two of the White Sisters, a set of eyes that looked at her, at claws that wanted to reach in and tear the soul from the frail body --

Two of the nuns twisted, living silver searing across the figure, blades that came from somewhere, blades of incredible purity, blades made of starlight itself --

An inaudible scream as infernal flesh was seared in twain --

 

"Gilead, when I was a child, evil tried to stop me, because I was a link in our blood-chain. They tore at my soul and ripped half of it away.  I know what hell is like, I've been there, and your father and a brother he had in lives past waded through Hell itself to get me home."  Sarah's voice was quiet, but Gilead could hear the power, the strength, the truth behind her words.  "Now they want to rip your soul away, they want to destroy it. They can't, of course, you're protected, but we all have choices, and this is yours."

Sarah looked at her pale eyed Daddy, back to her blue-eyed boy-cousin.

"Gilead, you can choose to let go. You won't have to fight anymore. You can go into the Presence and be safe."

"What is my other choice?" Gilead asked carefully.

"Pain," Linn said quietly.  "You'll hurt and you'll be weak, you'll have to fight back to full strength."

"Once I'm healed up, what do I then?"

"Then you continue with your education. I recommend divinity school. You've already an excellent grounding in Scripture" -- Sarah's eyes shifted to her father, and Gilead felt as much as saw her genuine deep affection for the man -- "and you'll take that with you into the next world, when finally it is your time to take what you've learned into the next lifetime."

Gilead looked at his father.

"You chose to come through that damned War," he said frankly.  "You've chosen to survive every trial that tried to kill you."  He looked at his Aunt Sarah.  "I wish I'd known you, Aunt Sarah. I gather you were a corker!"

Sarah laughed.  "Oh, I was worse than that, I assure you!"

Gilead took a deep breath.  "I choose to live," he said firmly.  "Now where do I go from here?"

Sarah walked her big black Snowflake-mare in a circle, stopped, thrust her chin toward a building.

"That," she said, "is your lecture hall."

"I see it."

"Opposite is the hospital."

Gilead nodded.

"You are on the second floor, second window from the right hand corner.  See it?"

"I see it."

"Race ya there!"

Gilead Keller, the youngest son of the pale eyed Sheriff Linn Keller, looked over at his Pa and felt the full delight of his approving father:  a Palomino stallion, a shining-black Frisian, and an undistinguished mongrel of a worn-out dray-horse leaned out, thrusting powerfully against the earth:  Gilead wasn't surprised that his Aunt Sarah's gown flowed like shimmering blue waters, became a silver cuirass and skirt-of-plates, that engraved greaves covered her shins, and a winged silver helm, her head:  beside him, his Pa, grinning like a young boy, reached across and drew a shining Cavalry sabre, thrust it forward, revolving-pistol in his other hand:  Sarah's lance lowered, couched under her arm, and three warriors charged the darkness filling the hospital room's window, three souls going joyfully to war --

 

Gilead opened his eyes.

Something cool laid across his forehead and a familiar face looked down into his.

"Angela," he whispered.

"I got here as soon as I heard you were ill," she said.  "I was afraid I'd be too late."

Gilead looked around, frowned.

"I'm hungry," he complained.

"That's a good sign," a woman's voice said:  one of the White Sisters stepped around beside Angela with a tray.  "Can you sit up?"

Gilead twisted a little, looked at his big sis with a distressed expression.  "Guess I'll need a little help," he admitted.

Angela leaned back to allow the Sisters room to work.

He looked at them, surprised, as they piled pillows behind him, helped him scoot back a little.

"Sis, did you just get here?"

"Not five minutes ago."

"Who's been taking care of me?"

"The nursing staff, of course. The Sisters and I arrived at the same time, and the hospital was more than happy to accept their help. The charge nurse ran out of your room screaming something about demons and swords and knights in armor, and I'm told she didn't look like she was going to stop running until she hit salt water."

Gilead stared at his sister, his face suddenly serious.

Angela put a finger to his lips, gave him a warning look.

"Some things," she said, "are best discussed between kinfolk, and not here in the East."

 

Gilead walked out of the hospital, through the same set of double doors he'd been carried in.

His sister Angela walked with him.

Gilead appeared to be looking for something; they walked across the broad yard, around the fountain, down the bank and across a street:  he looked toward the University, then to his left.

"There," he said.  "Yonder."

"I see him."

They walked across a field, up to a fence:  a worn out sway backed plug of a retired dray-horse came listlessly up to them, accepted the bribe Gilead offered, rubber-lipping the sugar cubes from his flat palm.

"Thank you," Gilead whispered.

They stood there for a long time, listening to the noises of an Eastern city; Gilead had something troubling him, and his big sister Angela waited patiently for him to talk.

"Sis," he finally said, "I reckon I've decided on my course of study."

"Oh?"

"I thought I'd get a degree in business, and that's not a bad profession for men of ambition."

Angela nodded slowly, studying the thoughts that ran across her little brother's still-pale face.

"I reckon I'll become a Doctor of Divinity."

"I think that will suit you well."

Gilead looked down, swallowed.

"Pa's dead, isn't he?"

Angela took a long breath, nodded.  "I didn't want to tell you just yet.  The telegram came while you were yet abed."

"Pa had a cousin down in Stone Creek, as I recall."

"He did."

"The man was a preacher."

"A good one, as I recall."

"He ran an orphanage too."

Angela waited.

"There's good to be done in this lifetime, Angela. I'll need the best foundation as I can lay to build my life on.  Pa gave me the ashlars to work with. It's up to me now."  He turned.  "The White Sisters?"

"They've gone back already."

"I wanted to say thank you."

"You'll get your chance," Angela smiled.  "Doctor."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I'VE KNOWN THAT TO HAPPEN

Sheriff Willamina Keller punched a computer key, smiled with unaffected delight at a familiar face on her screen.

"Don, how in the hell have you been!" she declared, then she frowned a little, looked more closely.

"Don, what's wrong?"

Chief of Police Donald Hoisington looked away, looked back, planted his elbows on his desk and laced his fingers together:  he considered for a moment, the fine words he'd planned, gone.

"I needed to talk to someone who wouldn't tell me I'm nuts!"

Willamina raised an eyebrow.  "Don, you're many things, but nuts you're not. What happened?"

 

Small towns in Appalachian Ohio often have just one paid officer.

Don Hoisington was chief of police and an EMT with the volunteer fire department:  he was widowed, his daughters grown, and he spent as much time in the little office in what used to be the high school up on the side of the ridge as  he possibly could.

Home felt like a mausoleum.

A very, very, empty, mausoleum.

Don looked at the clock, rubbed his eyes, went out on one final patrol around town.

That should kill a couple of hours, if he dawdled enough.

A half hour later, as he turned onto the state route, he saw taillights, stationary on the shoulder, just shy of the north corp limits.

Don marked in with County, read off the plate number, stepped out to see if the driver needed assistance, or was perhaps in need of something more official.

The driver's head was bowed, his shoulders were working:  as Don came up beside his window, he reached down, cranked the window down, revealing a wet and sorrowful face.

Behind Don's cruiser, another:  the light bar was solid blue -- State Patrol -- and Don tilted his head and asked gently, "What happened?"

"I'm sorry," the driver gasped.  "It's ... I just lost ..."

He slashed at closed eyes with a wet and crumpled paper napkin.

"My dog is all the family I had left, this side of the Mason-Dixon, and he ... I ... he's ..."

Don nodded.

"Recently?" he asked, his voice gentle.

The man nodded.

"Step out of the car, please."

Don glanced over at the troop, silent and watchful in that good looking uniform the OHP wears:  Don saw movement inside the troop''s cruiser -- K9 unit, he thought -- and as the driver came out of the car, the State Patrol cruiser's back window dropped suddenly and a good looking Beligian Malinois surged through the open portal, came up beside the troop, quivering, watchful.

The driver took one look at the Malinois and it was as if he crumpled inwardly.

He went to his knees, his chin his his chest.

The Malinois thrust past the troop, reared, hit the man chest-first, both paws over his shoulders:  a hot, pink tongue scrubbed salt water off the man's cheeks, then a grieving man buried his face in a police dog's fur and wept -- the hard, racking sobs of a man who'd just lost the last living soul who gave a damn about him -- and the Malinois raised his muzzle to the sky and began to howl.

Don felt his blood chill several degrees.

He'd heard wolves, in the distance, when he was stationed in Alaska; he'd heard neighborhood dogs howl in a happy treble chorus when the fire whistle blew, but this -- this, from a sizable dog, a powerful dog, a song of sorrow and of loss, joining the man's grief with the sorrows of uncounted generations of faithful companions who grieved to have left this earth and the ones they'd loved --

 

Don looked at his old friend's image on his computer screen.

"Willa, that's the first time I've heard a Belgian howl."

"It is a powerful thing," Willamina agreed, nodding slowly, her hand resting on The Bear Killer's shoulder:  she rolled her chair back a little, patted her lap:  "Up," she said quietly, and a truly huge and powerful Tibetan Mastiff came up onto her lap, looking utterly pleased with himself.

It took some effort to keep from going over backwards, even with five casters under her instead of the four of Old Pale Eyes' day.

Don grinned as Willamina made the introductions, as The Bear Killer gave a huge-but-quiet-whispered "Whuff" in response to Don's "Hello, Bear Killer."

"Damn, Willa, you're taming bears these days?"

"Mountain Mastiff.  He's not full grown yet, and he's howled at funerals."  

Willamina looked very directly at her old friend, one hand on The Bear Killer's forepaw, the other rubbing his curly-furred shoulders.

"You're right.  It's impressive.  We attended a police funeral and The Bear Killer and a Malinois sang on either side of the grave, and I don't think any man there was able to keep salt water off his cheeks."

 

Chief Donald Hoisington arranged to meet the motorist the next day in the town's only remaining short order restaurant.

Two men who'd lost every last living soul who gave a good damn whether the lived or whether they died, sat down with no appetite at all, and began to talk -- not as a lawman and a constituent, but as two widowers, as two men in grief: they sat for a long time, each one listening with more than his ears.

Don pulled out his phone, showed the man photos of the dog he'd just lost, and the man pulled out his own, and showed pictures of his own.

A week later, Don attended a funeral for a man he barely knew, a man who'd gone home and taken off his shoes, laid down on his bed and gone to sleep, and never woke up.

He'd been alone in the world, save only for the love of a good dog; Don stopped in to say howdy that afternoon, and saw the still figure through the window.

At the funeral, the preacher said the usual things; Don received the ashes, as there was no family left to tend this final duty:  he carried them to the grave, placed them on the short plank over the small, square hole.

"Willa," he told the face on his computer that evening, as Willamina smiled at the huge black Malinois groaning with pleasure as she rubbed his back, "I'm used to family singing Amazing Grace or Shall We Gather by the River."

Don looked very intently at his screen and said, "Willa, tell me I'm not going around the bend here.

"There was singing."

"It was dogs."

"It was dogs."

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CARRYING CAPACITY

"Paul."

Chief Deputy Paul Barrents looked up at his boss.

Paul was Navajo, and like his father, he was impressive: he gave the impression off being built like a fireplug, until you got close enough to realize he was very nearly six feet of fireplug; he moved silently, as a matter of habit, and he had absolutely the most marvelous poker face of any man Linn had ever known.

At least until now.

Linn paced over to his chief deputy, lowered his head a little.

"How bad?" he asked quietly.

"You remember," Paul replied in a hoarse voice, "how we were taught as children how wonderful sharing is?"

Linn nodded.

"You remember I had the flu."

"You're still hoarse, too, you sure you want to come back already?"

Paul closed his eyes, sagged against the door frame, and Linn's heart dropped several feet to see it:  seeing his old and dear friend leaning against anything was like watching the Washington Monument turn to gum rubber and drape itself over the Capitol Dome.

"My wife," Paul said quietly, his voice still rough with unresolved infection.

Linn laid the backs of his fingers against Paul's cheek bone, then his forehead:  Paul's gleaming obsidian eyes opened, and Linn saw amusement in them.

"My Mama used to do that," he whispered, and Linn nodded.

"Mine too.  You're warm."

Paul nodded.

"I can struggle along without you, Paul. It won't be easy but I need you alive and well. Besides, my wife likes tellin' stories out of school and your wife is the only one she trusts to hear 'em!"

Paul nodded, his eyes closed again:  he turned and walked slowly, like an old man, toward the outer doors:  he pushed them open, stepped out onto the sidewalk, squared his shoulders and returned to his restored, shining, burnished, '67 Ford half-ton he'd put together for his father's birthday, years ago.

Linn watched Paul drive off, slowly, the way he always did.

I don't think the man goes over 35 mile an hour in that truck, he thought, and smiled a little:  he was the opposite in the Sheriff's cruisers, where he was known to practice the art of the heavy throttle whenever possible.

Linn came back into the Sheriff's office, looking thoughtful.

Sharon looked over her half-glasses at the Sheriff, looking worried.

"He's no business comin' in here," Linn muttered, frowning at the coffee pot across the room.  "He's not healed up, now his wife's sick.  If she's like his Pa and hers both, she's flat on her back with the flu, too weak to turn over."

"He just lost his dog, too," Sharon murmured as Linn crossed the gleaming, figured-quartz floor.

"I know.  That hit him hard too.  Coffee?"

"Please."

Linn drew two mugs of hot and steaming, added a drizzle of milk to each, two sugar cubes to the dispatcher's, stirred,

"Poor fellow looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders."  Linn set Sharon's mug down in easy reach, turned the thick, glazed-ceramic handle toward her, took a noisy slurp of his own. 

"My Pa would never have understood how hard Paul losin' his dog hit him."  Linn's voice was quiet, thoughtful. "Pa was FBI and I reckon they taught 'em to regard dogs as objects so they could kill 'em in a raid and not think twice about it.  I know the law regards dogs as objects, as things."  He shook his head, slowly.  "The law has never looked into a good dog's eyes and seen the living soul inside one."

Sharon nodded, blew across the surface of her coffee, took a tentative sip.

"Ah, hell, if I know so damned much, why haven't I made a million dollars and retired, eh?"

Linn's eyes wandered toward the glass double doors, at the empty foyer between the inside and the outside portals, an effective insulation against seasonal cold.

"He lost a child, he lost his dog, the flu hit him like the noon freight and now his wife's got it and he's the only one at home to take care of her."  Linn shook his head.  "I know the Almighty will never burden us with more than we can bear, but dear God, poor old Paul must be gettin' close to his carrying capacity!"

 

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JOHN BRASS

Lightning tilted his head a little, listening to the precision of the sender's "fist."

Each telegrapher had his own unique sound, his "fist": dots and dashes were their own rigid, inflexible cadence, but the individual telegrapher's style, their "swing" or "fist" was very unique and almost always recognizable to the experienced ear.

Lightning's ear, though on in its years, was experienced.

He'd run telegraph when he and Old Pale Eyes were in That Damned War, and it was Old Pale Eyes that sought him out and recruited him as a brass pounder for the foundering Z&W Railroad -- it wasn't called that yet, Miz Esther hadn't taken hold of it and straightened it around -- Lightning realized in very short order that, this high in the mountains, he didn't have wind enough to swing a pick or a shovel, but he could sit on his skinny backside and run a telegraph key, and so he took the man up on his offer.

Even if he had been a damned Yankee.

Lightning fought proudly for the Confederacy, and when the war was over he set all that behind him and faced up to the knowledge that he had to earn a living peacefully or otherwise, and so when the chance to earn an honest wage presented itself, he accepted.

Now, as he sat in his own little kingdom, his ears and his fingers stretched over miles and mountains thanks to copper wires strung between well-set poles, he considered that he'd made a wise choice.

Old Pale Eyes might've recruited him, but 'twas Miz Esther persuaded him that he was in the right place.

Lightning listened to the sounder and smiled, ever so slightly.

"John Brass," he thought:  momentarily, a stray thought, correcting his mental spelling:

"Jean," he thought, hearing the word in a French-Canadian nasal: he and the other telegraphers up and down the line, and into the adjacent railroads, all knew the precise, absolute exactness of Jean Brass's fist.

 

Some years before, a man worked for the railroad, one of the other lines: he'd lost three fingers to link and pin couplers and he'd lost his health to walking the swaying backbone of freight cars in winter, brakeman's club in hand and alternate prayers and curses on his lips: snow, ice, rain, didn't matter, he'd had to navigate these treacherous rooftop pathways with a greater skill than a sailor navigating the deck of a saltwater ship: he'd known good men and true who'd fallen to their deaths, but he had to make a living, and he made his by running hand brakes on railcars.

He'd heard of a small upstart railroad -- it went bankrupt, wasn't worth the big railroads' buyout -- then a woman bought it and turned it around, she bankrupted herself and her husband both installing steel rails and safety couplers and those new Westinghouse brakes, the earliest ones the big railroads weren't even considering --

Maybe I should work for her, he thought.

If she can take a bankrupt outfit like that and make it profitable, she's doing something right!

Jean climbed down from the roof of the freight car, shivering, knowing this was the only way he had of earning a living, wishing most powerfully for a better.

Jean had a daughter, and a bonny lass she was: quick to listen and quicker to hear, a fast learner that put most boys to shame -- though a child in his eyes, she was nearing womanhood, and with her Mama dead, she'd been running his little household, taking in sewing and doing other folks' laundry to make ends meet.

Jean was friends with a telegrapher, and the telegrapher told Jean he should be a brass pounder:  "Your very own stove," he'd been told, "your very own hot pot of coffee on the stove, steal a pillow from a whorehouse and have a nice easy seat," he'd been told:  "no more riskin' yer neck an' their well bein' by fallin' off a boxcar" -- he'd nodded to Jean's young, and Jean shivered, for he'd come perilously close to just such a fall, the night before.

His darlin' daughter Jeannie set coffee in front of Jean and his guest:  she tilted her head like her Mama used to, looked at the telegrapher and said, "Tell me about pounding brass."

Of all things in God's creation, the attention of a lovely young lady is one of the most flattering to a grown man:  three heads converged over coffee as a practiced hand tapped carefully on the tabletop, cadencing out letters and words:  a man with three fingers tilted his head and listened, and a beautiful young woman wearing her Mama's apron tilted her head like her Mama, and frowned, just a little, like her father.

Jean listened with the intensity of a man who wished to bring a great change into his life.

His daughter Jeannie listened because she was fascinated by the idea of this magical process of talking at a distance.

 

Lightning knew Miz Esther took care of her people.

Miz Esther would take the inspection car out to where the track crew was making a repair, or replacing ties, she'd have a specially fitted boxcar coupled behind her inspection car, a boxcar with three chimneys, and inside, three stoves: she'd have women and supplies and a good meal for the men, and when a mine collapsed over in Cripple or there was a roof fall in Carbon, she'd show up with that kitchen car, with supplies and women-folk and anything else that was needed.

When one of her employees was hurt, it was Miz Esther that visited them when they were healing, it was Miz Esther that made sure they were paid while they healed, it was Miz Esther that took care of the families if there was a death under her watch.

Lightning nodded his approval at the skill John Brass displayed.

That's what everyone else knew the new telegrapher by, John Brass.

Miz Esther carefully explained to the other stations, in her personal visits, that Jean was French-Canadian and sounded like it, but his fist was Yankee American and clear as a bell, and all who heard this John Brass on the sounder agreed, and no one was the wiser.

It was a well kept secret that Jean Brass was actually Jeannie Brass, the pretty blue eyed daughter of a man who died of exposure and over work, a man who wished nothing more than to provide for his family, one of the families Miz Esther arranged to be taken care of, and she did this by providing the Z&W Railroad with its first female telegrapher.

Lightning didn't mind sharing his office, not when his relief was kind of easy on the eyes.

Besides, when he came on in the morning, the place was spotless and there was a fresh pot of coffee waiting on him.

Lightning always did like his coffee.

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THE SHERIFF'S STRIPPER

Linn looked up just in time to see something bright eyed with chestnut hair and a white flannel nightgown, bearing down on him: he rose to meet the charge, he seized his wife, he laughed as she hugged him, coughed into his shoulder and groaned "I'm sorry, I didn't even get you a card for your birthday!"

Linn held his wife, lifted her bare feet a little off the hook rug, shook her slightly: Shelly gave a pained groan of pleasure as Linn felt her spine ripple, felt the zipperlike pops as he divested her of her week's labors.

Even with power hoists on the ambulance cots, the work of a fire paramedic is hardly ever easy, and Shelly long ago delighted in her husband's ability to decompress her spine.

"You've been working yourself ragged," Linn murmured into her hair, "and you've not been feelin' good.  Darlin', you're in my arms and you're breathin' and that's a pretty damned good birthday present for me!"

"I could bake you a cake," she offered.

Linn shook his head, lowered his wife, looked seriously into those big dark gorgeous eyes he could swim in, shook his head as he laid gentle finger-backs against her cheek.

"You're warm," he murmured.  "I can get a cake. Let's get you some nice hot tea."

 

When Linn stepped through the heavy glass doors of the Sheriff's office, he saw a cluster of balloons swaying on their ribbon tethers on the front corner of the dispatcher's desk.

Linn hauled open the outer, then the inner doors, stepped inside, took a long and appreciative breath of the coffee scented air, grinned as Sharon rose, blew a curly noisemaker and called, "Happy Birthday!"

Linn stepped in, took her hand and ran the other behind her waist: Sharon was a dancer and a good one, and the Sheriff knew this:  they stepped out onto the polished quartz floor, waltzed a few steps:  Linn twirled her, laughed:  "Ginger, we oughta have music!"

"There's a surprise in your office," Sharon teased.

Linn groaned dramatically, dropped his forehead into forked thumb-and-forefingers:  "I'm about to be humiliated! Right in front of God and everybody!"  He raised his head, looked around, mischevious as a little boy:  "Should we call the newspaper and have 'em put it on the front page?"

And so it was that the Sheriff's picture was on the front of the Firelands Gazette that week.

The front page, full color photo was a side-by-side.

It seems the Department got him a stripper for his birthday.

The first photo was taken with everyone ranked formally in front of the Sheriff's closed office door:  the long, tall, lean-waisted lawman stood in the very center, looking stern and official, holding the stripper, with everyone solemnly regarding the camera's lens:  the second photo was taken a few seconds after the first, when everyone honestly gave up all pretense at solemnity, and were in the process of falling apart with laughter.

The stripper in the photo was a one gallon can, plainly marked PAINT STRIPPER, and accurately reflected the sophomoric humor of both the department in general, and the Sheriff in particular.

The community at large enjoyed this greatly, and the Sheriff's leg was pulled rather often afterwards on the matter.

You see, in a small town, there are no secrets; one year to the day before, in the back room of the Silver Jewel, a discreet get-together was held, where, ummm ...

You see, a certain young lady from Cripple, whose stock in trade was the skill of her undress, disported herself in honor of the Sheriff's birthday, and ... ahhh ...

That is to say, this year's stripper was a one gallon can of liquid.

Last year's ... wasn't.

Fortunately, the gallon can is the only stripper the Sheriff was seen holding in public.

 

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