SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CASE CLOSED

Grant Johnson was dying.

Linn sat beside the man's hospital bed, held his hand.

Grant's mother and sister were there earlier; they were exhausted, they needed a bath, a meal, a change of clothes: they'd come when Grant was brought in, and they hadn't left for two days.

Linn said he'd sit with him, go get a meal and freshened up, and they thanked him and left.

"Glad you're here," the dying man whispered.

"Wouldn't be anywhere else," Linn said quietly.

"Thank you."

Linn squeezed, very gently, by way of reply.

The lawman's pale eyes rested on the pink plastic water glass with the bent straw sticking out; perhaps there was some subtle communication, some preternatural knowledge:  Grant whispered, "Thirsty."

Linn released his old friend's hand, pressed a button on the hospital bed's siderail: the bed hummed, raising the patient to more of a sitting position.

Grant felt the straw touch his lip: he drank, drank again, nodded.

Linn refilled the glass, set it back on the bedside table.

"Confess," Grant whispered.

"Go ahead."

"I killed Wally-boy."

Linn waited.

"Your mother took the report," Grant whispered. "Wally died ... drowned in our sewer plant."

Linn frowned, thought: it had been some years before, but yes, he recalled the incident, where a self-important, newly-hired municipal manager fell into an operating aeration tank, sank to the bottom, drowned.

"I recall," the Sheriff said quietly.

"I'd just painted the handrails," Grant whispered, blind eyes staring at the ceiling: diabetes had taken his strength, his eyes, his kidneys, and now it was taking his very life, and nothing medical science could do, to prevent that.

Linn waited while Grant gathered his strength, then:

"Thirsty."

Grant drank another glassful, nodded.

Linn refilled the water glass, set it back on the sidetable.

"Small man," Grant whispered. "Had himself confused with someone important."

"I recall," Linn agreed. "Fitz hated him."

"No wonder. Wouldn't let the fire department exercise the hydrants. Lost a house."

Linn nodded, remembering the house fire, the lawsuit that followed: Firelands lost that one, had to pay for a new house, furnishings, legal fees, punitive damages ... Wally-boy had been given the very clear understanding, behind closed doors, that he was responsible for a hydrant's failure to function, due to not being exercised with regularity: he'd come out of his meeting with the Mayor and President of Council white-faced and angry, and he'd become even more of a martinet as a result.

Few grieved his demise, a week later, when he ended up dead in the bottom of an aquatic version of quicksand.

"I just finished the handrails," Grant whispered, his voice weaker: "he came down and raised hell because I hadn't cut grass, because I painted without his telling me to."

"Sounds just like him," Linn grunted.

"I grabbed his shirt front and pulled hard," Grant wheezed, "and I threw him in that running aeration tank."

Linn nodded, then remembered Grant couldn't see his response.  "Go on," he encouraged in a gentle voice.

"Your Mama came when I called.  I told her I couldn't find him, his car was down there and I was afraid he might've gone in the tank -- a safety chain was hanging and I knew I'd fast it up after I finished painting. I shut off the aerators and we did some fishin' and found him."

"I was in on the recovery," Linn remembered aloud.

"Your Mama called it accidental and the coroner agreed."

Linn waited.

"I'm dyin', Linn. I'm clearin' off my soul."

Linn took his old friend's hand again.

"I can forgive nothing," Linn said in a quiet voice, "but God, Who hears our confession, forgives everything. I'd say your account is square now."

Grant chuckled, coughed. "You'd make a good chaplain."

"I've been told that."

"Thirsty," he whispered.

Linn stood, turned, picked up the glass, turned back.

He frowned, reached over, pressed two fingers into his old and dear friend's neck, then he set the glass of water back on the bedside stand.

"Fair winds and a following sea," he said, his voice thickening, then he pressed the nurse call button.

Sharon looked up as Linn came through the door with a flat cardboard box tied with string.

Sharon wasn't looking at the box of doughnuts.

She was looking at the Sheriff's face.

Linn carried the doughnuts into the conference room, propped the door open:  he picked up his coffee up, filled it, drizzled in a little milk, went into his office and shut the door.

The dispatcher and two deputies watched the man, then looked at one another.

Inside his office, behind the closed door, Linn opened the bottom right hand drawer of the ancient desk, pulled out a bottle of Old Crud Cutter and a short, squat, heavy-bottom glass: he poured two fingers' worth of something water clear and not over thirty days old.

Linn stood, looked at a picture on the wall, a picture that didn't make it into the yearbook: a much younger Linn Keller, almost as tall and just as skinny, holding a blue ribbon in one hand and the cheekstrap of his Appaloosa stallion in the other: beside him, his dear friend since early in their schooling, Grant Johnson, holding a blue ribbon, his arm over the woolly neck of a Rambouillet ewe. 

Linn raised his glass to the picture, and to the smaller, framed portrait beside, that of a serious faced young man in the white Cracker Jack uniform he hated.

He tried to think of something appropriate to say, then he thought of Grant's last words, a confession to a murder.

"Sometimes," Linn said thoughtfully, his glass lowering, untasted, "it's best just to leave well enough alone."

He looked at the pictures, raised the glass again, for he had the right words to say.

"Case Closed."

Edited September 16, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CONTRARY AND HARD HEADED

The maid drew back as Dr. John Greenlees, physician and surgeon, strode into Linn's study, hand extended: the pale eyed old lawman shoved his own hand out, his grin quick, broad, natural: the two were old friends, with bonds forged in wartime and since: each had occasion to trust the other with his very life, and had, more times than a few.

Linn raised an eyebrow, Dr. Greenlees raised two fingers: there was heard the clink of heavy glass as a cut-glass stopper was twisted from a decanter of California brandy, as distilled sunshine was gurgled into two voluminous, delicate balloons, as two men hoist their delicate glass snifters, swirled the shining payload, took an appreciative sniff of distilled wine, then closed their eyes and drank.

It was an old, established ritual with the two.

They'd shared small campfires burning on muddy ground, they'd shared the last of their rations, the last of their flask, they'd shared memories and each did his best to keep the other from going insane with the horrors they'd both experienced: in the years that followed, the pale eyed Sheriff saw to it that his dear friend established a medical practice, and with judicious investments and some honestly phenomenal luck, he'd raised funds enough that he and Doc stood side by side as the stones were set and their little hospital was built.

Linn raised the decanter, raised an eyebrow: Doc frowned, turned, sat.

Linn eased the tapered glass stopper with the fancy cut glass head back into the decanter, drained the last of his brandy, set the delicate glass brandy balloon aside, took his own seat.

Only Doc's quick eye -- and the intimate knowledge of his friend -- would have been able to discern the slights, the tricks, Linn used to appear normal.

"Your back?" he asked quietly.

Linn smiled wryly, with only half his mouth -- truth be told, it was more grimace than smile -- he nodded, slowly.

"Not much we can do for a sway back," Doc said slowly, "that you're not already doing."

"Doin' that much right, at least," Linn muttered.

"Were you a mere mortal," Doc said, frowning, "you'd long ago be crippled up and riding a Bath chair."

Linn waited until Doc downed the last of his brandy, set his empty snifter on a handy table.

"Doc," Linn said slowly, "I'm as lazy as the next man, but I never seen fit to put a chair in a bath tub!"

Doc lowered his head and glared at the retired Sheriff, knowing full well Linn couldn't see his expression clearly.

"You know what I mean."

"I know what you mean."

"Was you anyone else I'd prescribe time in the saddle to strengthen that back. Hell, you're a year and more retired and you're in the saddle as much as you ever were!"

"Reckon so," Linn said slowly, shifting to try and find a less uncomfortable position. 

"Your leg still goin' numb?"

"Yep, still."

"More often, less often?"

"About the same. If I get up and work around some it seems to straighten out."

Doc nodded.  "Anything particular help it?"

Linn frowned, considering.

"Twistin'," he said finally.  "I was aggravated and got to throwin' wood from one place to another rather'n pack it over and stack it. I'd twist when I threw the chunks and that helped."

"Hmp."  Doc nodded.  "Reckon if it works, keep at it."

Doc knew his medical admonition was not necessary, it was more out of habit, but he said it anyway.

"I'm gettin' my affairs squared up, Doc."

"You figure on dyin' on me?"

"Hell, Doc, I'm closer to eighty than I am to eighteen!"  Linn grinned. "It don't take a genius to figure I'm ridin' out of here right here directly!"

"I know," Doc sighed.  

"You ain't all that young anymore, Doc. That boy of yours is a right fair medicine man."

Doc nodded.  "He is that.  He's taken over most of my practice, and with my blessing. His hands are young and steady and he's bright, oh he's bright. Knows the old ways, too. Herbs."

Linn nodded thoughtfully.  "Man ought to know the yarbs," he agreed.  " 'Twas all we had when I was a boy at home."

"Mine too."

They sat in a companionable silence, two old men, comfortable in each other's company: it is a mark of true friendship when two can sit in silence, and be content.

Linn spoke first.

"Y'know, it's a hell of a note," he said.

"Likely it is," Doc replied, "if I knew what was wrote on that note!"

Linn chuckled -- Doc saw that quick grin he remembered so well -- and Linn nodded.

"I know just a hell of a lot of dead people anymore."

Doc waited.

"Didn't think I'd fancy towards another woman when Esther died. I was just crushed when she left us."
Doc opened his mouth, intending to offer a quiet "I remember," then closed his mouth on the unspoken words.

"I ... Doc, I was always sweet on Bonnie."

Doc nodded again, a raised eyebrow betraying his surprise.

Linn was always a complete gentleman with the ladies; Doc was not surprised that Linn had an interest, but he was surprised with whom Linn had that interest.

"She's dead now, her poor husband died of a broken heart two days later."  

His voice softened.

"She was a good woman, Doc."

"Yes," Dr. Greenlees agreed quietly.  "Yes, she was."

"I got kind of sweet on Jeannie," Linn continued, and Doc heard an old sadness slip in under the man's words:  "she had that ... oh hell ... apoplexy and never rose from her bed again."

Doc nodded again:  he'd stood beside his pale eyed friend as Jeannie was buried, not a week ago.

Linn looked up, looked across the room.

"I have sons, I have grandsons," he said softly. "I've got a whole herd of little ones to spoil. Reckon that keeps me going."  

He paused.

"That, or bein' hard headed and contrary."

Doc smiled a little, rose.

"My money's on hard headed and contrary," he said as Linn rose as well.

Doc came over, stuck out his hand.

"I hate to eat alone," he said quietly. "If you don't mind the company of a miserable old widower, you're welcome to have supper with me tonight."

Linn took the man's hand, nodded.

"Reckon I can stand a miserable old widower if you can stand a hard headed and contrary Sheriff."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NAMESAKE

It wasn't much of a saloon but it was enough.

The dirt was cut off level and two empty kags set up, planks set across the upturned barrels: two more kags, two more planks behind, and the big heavy canvas tent had shelves, and the shelves had jugs and bottles and a half dozen mismatched tin cups set upside down over the necks of the half dozen mostly full bottles.

The barkeep rejoiced silently when he dealt for a kag of beer, then another: someone give him two heavy glass beer mugs and he spent time polishing them simply to be seen polishing a genuine glass mug, clear out here so far from civilization God Almighty would have to lay pipe or dig a ditch to flow in some religion!

Men came, men went: the barkeep learned his trade from the ground up, he learned with no bad habits to un-learn, and he was making a little coin, and he realized he'd struck on a means to a profit that didn't involve pushing cattle, swinging a pick, turning a shovel or cutting sod.

There was a hole in his apron, and a bulge behind it: he wore the apron loose, so he could get to the holstered revolver under it: once, and once only, he'd had to shoot a man to keep him from stealing his honest wages, and he'd been obliged to shoot through the apron, and from that day on, the word was that you didn't try anything on this fellow, he'd shoot you as soon as hand you a drink.

The man was honest; the man was fair; the man had a good grade of whiskey, and he made arrangements to get more, and did.

The hitch rail outside was neither fancy nor over large: two posts and a cross member, neither well dressed, to the left of the tent's entrance, a second on the right.

Thanks to the presence of a saloon, other travelers stopped, and set up to sell to other folks passing through: in time, there would be buildings, there would be the amenities that grow up with any settlement, but for now it was a sizable tent, it was two wagons, and it was the only thing to catch the eye on a vast and featureless prairie.

Men arrived late one morning, a half dozen of them, riding hard: the wind was picking up, the clouds were low, threatening, and the barkeep, not familiar with the weather hereabouts, was surprised when a man half his age rode into the tent -- rode into his saloon! -- he dismounted, looked very directly at the barkeep and said, "Lay those bottles flat on the ground and cover 'em with whatever cloth goods you've got. We're taking your tent loose. We're going to lay it down flat on the ground and stand our horses on it. God willing, we won't all be lost!" -- he turned, mounted, and rode out.

The tent began to shake as men loosed the guy lines: the barkeep, considering his emporium was being collapsed with or without his let-be, started grabbing bottles and laying them down.

He laid them between the kegs, then placed planks above and below, padded his precious product as best he could: willing hands disassembled his bar (the work of eight and one half seconds), the poles inside were pulled loose and laid down as well, and the Great Canvas Saloon flattened itself to the earth.

The barkeep joined men and livestock and laid down flat on the canvas as the sun disappeared, as the wind picked up:  men soothed restless horses:  most had been Cavalry mounts, these folded their legs and laid down when given that command with touch and with voice, and lay still, restless and unhappy but obedient, as they and their riders held canvas down against the wind.

The young man who'd ridden into the saloon came over, crouched, holding his hat on his head as the wind picked up, as the wind him him hard enough to stagger him:  he flattened himself on the canvas beside the barkeep, grinned.

"You ever see a twister, mister?" he yelled -- he had to yell, the wind was getting genuinely fierce -- the barkeep shook his head, squinting against windblown chaff and debris.

The young man thrust a chin:  "Look yonder!"

The younger man grinned as the barkeep stared, mouth open, as he spontaneously uttered words that could either be a profanity, or a most sincere prayer.

 

A little girl in a frilly, calf-length frock and bright, Kentucky-blue eyes, and a smile that could absolutely melt the cold heart of a cold marble statue, walked up to a man with dirt under his fingernails and calluses on his hands.

"Mits-ter?" she asked.  "Could you help me?"

Hard men generally have soft hearts, and this fellow did.

He went down on one knee and removed his cover. 

"Yes, ma'am?" he said with a voice that usually uttered language of less than a Christian nature.

He was surprised at the gentleness of his own reply, but then it had been long and long again since he'd seen a woman, let alone a pretty little girl!

"I'm too short to saddle my horsie," she said.  "Could you saddle him for me pweeeze?"

A hard man, who'd spent the past week swearing at cattle, profaning men and blaspheming at horses, a man whose knuckles bore the marks of multiple encounters with other peoples' cheekbones, a man whose conversation with his fellow man was usually strongly flavored with sulfur, smiled just a little and nodded.

"Yes, ma'am," he said.  "I can do that."

He looked up as the stock ramp was set, as a good looking Appaloosa gelding came flowing out of the railroad stock car and noisily down the ramp, as the spotty horse saw the little girl, came head-bobbing over and stopped, tail-slashing and patient, looking at a dusty cattleman and a pretty little girl.

Angela caressed the long, equine nose that came down to snuff at her. 

"This is Mis-ter Blit-ster," she said in the endearing half-lisp of a little girl who was trying hard to Sound Very Grown Up when she talked:  "Daddy said when he wuns, he just goes a-blisterin' along!"

Men who knew horses assessed the gelding and the child with knowing and appraising eyes.

Hard-muscled men felt their faces soften, just a little, at the pretty little girl who laughed with delight when this profane, hard-knuckled cattle puncher took her around the waist and swung her into her saddle.

He took an extra moment, made sure her stirrups were to her satisfaction, then patted her Appaloosa on the neck.

"T'ank you, mits-ter," the blue-eyed little girl said, her smile like sudden sunshine on a mean old rainy day.

A callus-handed, dirty-nailed, grinning cattleman touched his frayed, sweat-stained hat brim.

A little girl and her good-looking Appaloosa gelding turned and trotted away from the depot, headed purposefully up the street and on out of town.

Not fifteen minutes later, another train, a special:  this was barely stopped when the stock car door rumbled open, when an Appaloosa stallion launched out and landed, thrusting immediately into a gallop, followed by a truly huge, shining black horse, a horse men there had never seen before, only heard of, and that, only as legend: the Appaloosa was saddled, and in the saddle, a man in a well-tailored black suit; atop the genuinely huge black mare, a plain, unadorned black saddle, and in this saddle, a rider, all in severe and unadorned black.

Appaloosa stallion and Frisian mare hit the ground, launched immediately into a gallop, pounded up the street the way the happy little girl and her spotty saddlemount had gone.

Curious men drifted over, looked in the stock car of this newly-arrived special as the ramp was replaced, slid in, half expecting something else to emerge like a Jack-in-a-Box.

Nothing did.

The engine whistled, two short quick tweets, eased ahead to the water tower.

A Baldwin steam engine is a thirsty creature, and this one needed a drink.

 

Rain sluiced across the landscape in silvery sheets, then drove almost horizontally with the wind: hail rattled on waxed and oiled canvas, hailstones the size of a man's thumbnail peppered men and horses -- enough to sting, not big enough to cause damage -- the barkeep saw more than one man throw his coat over a horse's head, lay beside his saddlemount with one arm across his horse's neck, talking to the creature, and he marveled as an Easterner does, at this incredible affinity between man and beast.

One horse lay as if dead -- that is, if the dead trembled:  this horse was black, a gelding, terrified, paralyzed with its fear:  it lay as if afraid to move, afraid of the voice or the club or the whip that would descend if it did anything at all:  indeed, so deep was this black gelding's terror that it was honestly unable to rise, nor even move, save for the uncontrollable shivering of its legs.

 

Willing hands got the saloon tent set back up.

It was not easy, it was not cooperative: waxed and oiled canvas, while water proofed, is heavy, slick, hard to grip, hard to hold onto: still, with effort and with profanity, it was raised, every man there -- save one -- helping raise it to its former height, breadth and glory.

Lines were stretched, drawn taut: some were tied, some had wooden adjusters for tension: a few of the men were skilled at setting up a large military tent, and their skill showed: others, willing, were less skilled, but learned quickly:  barrels were set back up on end, planks returned across their tops, the barrels were twisted and settled into a more level posture, and the grateful barkeep began pouring libations by way of thanks.

The flaps were thrown open, as much for light as to get circulation in to dry out the interior; they were set up on the footprint sheltered by collapsed canvas when the rainstorm hit, but it was still damp: front and back flaps were both open and there was a good breeze:  as often happens after a storm, the sun came out, bright, shining, setting the grass a-sparkle as hot and thirsty sunlight drank the fat, shining raindrops.

Men laughed and swore and lied outrageously with one another, telling tales of twisters they'd seen, or ridden, or heard of: the barkeep was not at all reluctant to dispense drinks with a free hand: he had more, outside, buried to keep it hidden, keep it from theft or breakage:  he looked up and men turned their heads as shadows interrupted the sunlight at the main entrance.

Two figures, black against the brightness: one flanked left, one flanked right, no longer silhouetted: black figures against shadowed walls, suddenly invisible.

In their place, a much smaller figure.

A little girl strutted into this grassland saloon, looking around: her hair hung in long finger-curls, she was a apple-cheeked child, the kind that seems to wear a perpetual smile:  voices stopped, men turned, every set of eyes was on this most unusual occupant of a rude and primitive establishment.

She planted her knuckles on her belt and looked around like she owned the place, her head tilted a little to the side.

"I am looking for a horsie thief," she declared loudly.

Men looked at one another; a few chuckled.

"A horsie thief stolded my Daddy's black Outlaw-horsie an' I'm angwy," she said frowning at the chuckles -- which only brought more laughter -- she stamped her foot and declared, "Dat's not funny!"

"And whattaya gonna do when you find this ... Horsie Thief?" a voice sneered.

Something black flowed quickly toward the sneer, something with a young cannon thrust out of a voluminous black coat: the twin barrels of a cut-down twelve-bore floated in the still air, held by a black-gloved hand.

In later years, an old man would offer the studied opinion that few things would freeze the evildoer in his tracks any faster than the quiet click, click of a shotgun's hammers coming to full stand: as this deadly punctuation came from a different direction than this menacing figure in black, the occupants were inspired to a great stillness, a dread anticipation of what was to transpire.

"We hang horse thieves," a voice said -- the voice came from behind the shortened shotgun -- and between the sound of a pair of scattergun hammers standing to attention, and the sound of a woman's voice declaring lawful intent -- one would be hard pressed to say which was the more surprising, or in that moment, the more deadly.

 

Angela Keller sat at her Daddy's desk, reading intently: across the room, paging slowly through an equally ancient work by another author, her father looked up, smiling the way a father will when he sees his darlin' daughter absolutely absorbed in something: she was leaning forward a little, her expression spoke of concentration -- of intense concentration -- occasionally her head would nod, almost imperceptibly, as if an idea bloomed, a realization clarified, or as if she were transported there through the magic of black ink on paper, and she'd become a character in the adventure she was reading.

Angela Keller, the honestly beautiful daughter of Linn and Shelly Keller, looked up, blinked, took a breath: it took her a moment to rise from the ocean in which she'd been immersed, and to realize she was in a different world entirely than she had been a few moments ago.

"Must be a good one," Linn said quietly.

Angela batted her bright, Kentucky-blue eyes and smiled -- she had her mother's smile, the kind that could melt the heart of a carved marble statue.

"I was reading about my namesake," she said softly.

"Read on, darlin'," Linn encouraged quietly, and returned to the words of a different, but most interesting, author.

 

Angela led the way out of the tent.

She untied the black horsie -- not the great big black one, but the black horsie that ruckled greeting at her when she approached, the gelding that had shivered, paralyzed with fear as the storm raged over them -- the gelding lowered his head, draped it over the little girl's back, tame as a pet.

Dark clouds were returning, low and menacing, but without the wind that preceded the just-passed storm.

Angela led it up to the men who'd come out of the tent.

Hard and pale eyes watched the horse as it was led from man to man, until the horse showed signs of fear: the fellow was separated from the others, marched a little distance away.

"What're you goin' to do with him?" a voice asked.

Jacob Keller turned, his eyes hard:  "Horse thievin' is a hangin' offense," he said quietly.

"You gonna hang him?"

Jacob's eyes were as hard and unforgiving as his voice.

"He stole my little sister's horse, so I'll leave that up to her."  

Jacob laid the shotgun back over his shoulder, barrels toward the sky.

"Angela?"

Pretty little Angela Keller looked at the miserable fellow standing twenty feet from them, looked back at the man who asked the question.

"I will use my Magic Finger on him."

Men looked at one another, not at all certain what a Magic Finger might be, especially one from a little girl.

The horse thief's nerve broke, and he ran.

He ran as will a desperate man, as will the evildoer when he realizes the hand of Justice is about to clamp tight about the back of his neck, as he realizes he's to be fit with a hemp necktie and, thus attired, introduced to a certain set of pearly gates.

Clouds were moving fast, clouds were low and menacing: men felt the hair on their arms stand up, there was the odor of ozone: horses' tails began to fray, to spread, to float, as the lowering clouds drew a dark curtain over the sun's hospitable face.

The wind started up again, cold and damp, and Angela Keller raised a finger, then threw her arm down as if casting a stone, or throwing a stroke with a blacksnake whip.

"BAD MAN! DEAD!" she shouted.

Outlaw-horse threw its head away from the lightning-bolt as it seared across two-thirds of the sky overhead, as it forked and blazed and then drove down to earth, and it seemed to every man present that this little girl had the power to call fire from the heavens: whether it was because of her action, or in spite of it, the horse thief disappeared, detonated, in a combination of immolation and steam explosion, in one blazing-bright lightning bolt.

Angela Keller turned and walked up to her Outlaw-horsie.

"Come on horsie," she called in a little girl's innocent voice, and a shining black gelding paced up to her, laid his long jaw across her back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NOT WHAT SHE EXPECTED

Linn looked up, concerned, as did his wife.

It unusual for them both to have a Friday night off together; they spent it, at first, laughing about staying home "like a couple old folks," then they sat down and immersed themselves in tasks they'd put off for far too long.

Linn hand wrote three letters -- a handwritten letter, in this modern age of IMs, PMs, E-mail and the like, was a rarity: it was his habit to keep certain natives of their county, supplied with at least one letter a week from home: one in boot camp, one in Army basic, and one at the US Navy's Great Lakes center. The letters were all personal, they all contained some news from home, from the familiar landmarks that had been part of their lives until they set out to view the world with a wider lens.

Shelly looked up from her paperback and smiled.

"You're enjoying that, aren't you?" she asked quietly.

Linn looked up, gave his wife a wise look.

"Troops live and die on mail from home," he said. "Recall when Joshua went overseas? We kept him supplied with care packages and mail. He said some of his fellows never got the first thing from home."

"And that's when you loaded extra into the packages for him."

"Yyyep."  Linn smiled a little, leaned back, his gaze tracking along the trim strip between wood paneling and ceiling tile.  "I recall he said those Hot Wheels cars were their favorite.  That, hot rod magazines, fishing magazines ... and cookies."

"Always the cookies," Shelly sighed, smiling: she'd baked  dozens of chocolate chip cookies that ended up being shipped from here to there: even when they arrived as a general Zip Lock Baggie Full of Mashed and Broken Crumbs, they were still welcomed.

When they both heard Jacob's Jeep coming up the driveway, they both stopped and looked at one another with concern.

He'd gone out on a date, he'd gone out in a shirt and tie with his boots polished, with a bunch of flowers, with full intent to be out until midnight (he could do that, it was Friday night) and it was barely after ten.

They waited until Jacob backed his Jeep into its usual spot, until after Jacob came through the front door, very carefully hung his good Stetson on its peg, waited until Jacob came into his father's study.

Linn set aside the letter he'd just finished; addressing the envelope would wait: he nodded to his son, and Shelly, too, regarded their eldest son with interest.

"Sir," Jacob said, "I stand before you as either the very image of nobility and integrity, or the biggest fool to stand in boot leather."

Linn looked at Shelly, and Shelly looked at Linn, and they both looked at Jacob.

"You and your father," Shelly sighed, and Jacob, puzzled, looked at his father.

"Grab a set," Linn said, rolling his chair back from his desk, which reassured Jacob: the informal nature of "Grab a set" meant his father was neither annoyed, nor disappointed, and right now Jacob was disappointed enough in himself.

Father and son turned their chairs very directly toward one another, a habit they'd gotten into a very long time ago.

"What happened, Jacob?" Linn asked gently -- he asked in a father's voice, the voice of a man who remembered what it was to be young, to have a young man's easily bruised heart.

Jacob looked over at Shelly.  

"Mama?" he asked, rising: he drew another chair up.  "Could you join us, please?"

"This must be serious," she murmured as she set aside the book she'd not really gotten into.

"I need your opinion, Mama. You're a girl."

"I should certainly hope so," Linn said -- Jacob heard a smile in the Old Man's voice, though his face was carefully impassive.

Jacob waited until his Mama was seated before folding his own long tall frame back into his padded chair.

Jacob raised his hand to eye level, studied it, turned it around, regarded its back side.

"I asked a girl out tonight," he said.

Linn nodded; Shelly watched, listened.

"I thought I might want to be sweet on her."

He blinked, considered, turning his hand again, studying its shape, its contours, the silvery scars that crossed from thumb to wrist.

He looked suddenly at his father.

"Sir, I was an absolute gentleman," he said, his voice firm, and Linn heard anger under the words: "I treated her like a lady, an absolute Lady --"

He took a long breath.

"Sir, I take pains to not be ... forward ... but I ... felt ... attracted to her."

Jacob's bottom jaw slid out.

"I did not realize she thought I wanted ... she wanted me ... to be improper."

"How improper?" Linn asked quietly.

Jacob looked very directly at his father.

"Sir, I took her left hand and held it up ... I ran my finger around her left ring finger and said 'Thus far and no farther.'"

Linn nodded.

"She didn't like that, sir. I believe she wanted me to take her to a motel and sire a whole herd of young in one night."

"But you didn't."

"No, sir."

"And her reaction?"

"She was not happy, sir.  I took her home and damn neart had to run the heater, 'twas so frosty cold from her side of the car."

Shelly was silent, her eyes were tracking left, tracking right, as she considered what she was hearing.

"Jacob, did you do the right thing?" Linn asked bluntly.

"Yes, sir," Jacob said firmly. "I did the right thing."

"Tell me what you did."

"I took her home, sir. We did not pass go, we did not collect two hundred dollars, I had her out to a nice restaurant and we had a good meal, and then we danced, and we got back in the car and things just went to hell."

"I see."

"I reckon I just blew my chances with her from now to forever."

"Could be," Linn agreed, "or now she knows you aren't going to throw her in the sack first chance you get. Don't count her out just yet, just ... give her room."

"I'll give her from here to Missouri, sir, and welcome to it."

"Most young men would jump at such an opportunity."

Jacob shook his head.

"I intend to sire a herd, sir, just not yet, and not without a ring on her finger."

Jacob's words carried the ring of certainty.

Linn was both sympathetic, and understanding:  he, too, knew what it was to be rejected by a girl who wanted more than he was willing to give.

"There's more to her than just tonight, sir," Jacob said slowly. "You taught me to listen to what's under the words, what's the story behind what I'm hearing. I'm thinking there's a reason she's ... the way she is."

"Likely so," Linn agreed quietly.

Jacob shook his head, staring at the opposite wall as if seeing it replay all over again.

"I did the right thing," he almost whispered, then he looked at his father.  "Why do I feel like such a damned fool?"

"For the same reason I felt that way, Jacob. You did the right thing and it just didn't work out."

Jacob took a long breath, nodded.  "Yes, sir."

 

It was most of a week later when the Sheriff was approached by a man who had a daughter.

He said he was most impressed by Jacob's gentlemanly behavior.

As the Sheriff told his wife that night, the daughter was upset after her date, and confessed to her mother that she'd been too eager, and Jacob hadn't, and she'd just ruined things forever and her world was devastated and she wished she could lay down and die, and in the course of motherly conversation, Jacob's having conducted himself as a gentleman in the finest sense of the word, became apparent: the father told Linn that children learn by watching their parents, and Jacob had to have learned from his father, and if the word of a fellow parent meant anything, thank you for being the gentleman your son chose to pattern himself after.

Husband and wife went to sleep, as they usually did, holding hands: uncharacteristic for them, they did not sleep for some time, but stared at the nighttime ceiling in their bedroom.

Finally Linn took a long breath, blew it out and muttered, "Well, at least I did that much right," and Shelly rolled up on her side, laid her arm across Linn's chest, laid her cheek into his shoulder.

"Yes," she whispered.  "Yes, you did."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE SHERIFF'S NOTEBOOK

Sheriff Linn Keller watched the shining steel blade of the paper shear descend slowly through the stenographer's notebook.

He'd already taken a pair of sidecuts and clipped the wire binding at top dead center, he'd used needle nose pliers to bend the cut wire back and twist it into a loop to prevent snagging, and now the wire-clipped, grid-ruled steno book was being sheared down its middle, top to bottom.

He thanked Bessie for her kindness, asked how her birthday was -- the Sheriff was scrupulous in this respect, he always asked people something that made them feel like he actually had an interest in them -- he listened to her description of the cake, he laughed at her description of an Ugly Sweater she'd been given (a circulating gag gift that was never worn, just passed from victim to victim as a standing joke in her family), and after he'd paid for the steno book and departed, she saw an envelope on the counter, leaned up against the register, with her name on it.

It was a birthday card from the Sheriff, and under his big, looping signature, the printed message:

"I've never forgotten the smile in your voice."

Linn looked around, as he always did, before coming to the glass front door, before emerging: he appeared relaxed, casual, he looked like he had not a care in the world.

He intended to present that lie to the world.

It had kept him alive in times past.

Linn strode up the sidewalk, delighting in the late-fall sunlight, knowing if he stayed out in it too long, he'd burn -- he was rarely seen in short sleeves, and only once in recorded history (outside of Phys Ed in high school) had he worn shorts: he'd joked with his dispatcher that he sun burns in five minutes or less, thanks to his Viking ancestry, and though the two of them had a laugh out of his doleful expression and sorrowful voice, he was actually not kidding her at all.

Pale eyes and fair skin meant cataracts and sun sensitivity; it was a fact of life, and he dealt with it.

It was not terribly far from the office supply to the Sheriff's office:  Linn could have had his bifurcated notebook delivered, but he liked to get out and walk: not only did it keep him awake and alert, it got him seen in town, it allowed him contact with folks, and more times than one, when he was headed for coffee at the Silver Jewel, or meeting the Mayor over at the municipal building, or long-legging it for the hardware store for washers, bolts or a spray can of Old Slickum, he'd be stopped and asked a question, or given information that would come in handy.

Today, Linn's military pace and erect carriage conveyed him without interruption to the Sheriff's office without delay or interruption, at least until he was inside the doors, when he stopped and looked very directly at Sharon, at her dispatcher's desk.

"Well?" she smiled.  "Did she like the card?"

"I don't know," Linn admitted with a boyish grin.  "I kind of sneakied it in on her."

"You're good at that," Sharon scolded, shaking her yellow-painted pencil at him:  "how'd you do it this time?"

"I waited until she looked away, then I propped the envelope up against the register and left."

Sharon laughed.  

"I've seen you pull a fast one before," she agreed.  "You could be a sleight-of-hand artist!"

"You're not the first one to tell me that!" Linn grinned.  "Is the coffee pot fixed yet?"

"No," Sharon sighed.  "I'm afraid we might need a  new one."

Linn frowned, looked at the offending device, looked at the fellow shaking his head and holding an unidentifiable part in his hands:  he looked up at the Sheriff, switched the part to his left hand, and dramatically made the Sign of the Cross over whatever it was, intoning "Dominos, Monopoly, Bingos and Euchre" in a sonorous and funereal voice.

Linn laughed, shook his head.

"Coffee at the Silver Jewel, as necessary, all hands, my tab," Linn told Sharon. 

"You realize we could just place a standing order for the interim."

Linn frowned.  "Doesn't the bakery offer boxes of coffee?"

"They do, and we've a microwave if it cools off too much."

Linn snapped his fingers, winked.  "Make the call, two boxes, ask them for a bag of creamers and two dozen assorted. Make sure everyone knows it's here and fair game."

Linn headed for what was left of the coffee pot, laid his hand on the work uniformed shoulder of the fellow examining a coil of some kind.

"Raymond," Linn said quietly, "this sad old thing is older than I am. I reckon it's time we replaced it. Sharpen your pencil and figure a price, installed. Include plumbing in your price and I'm payin' cash money."

Raymond nodded slowly, the way he always did.

Of all his customers, the Sheriff always paid in full, always paid on time, and always paid in cash.

Linn turned, went into his office, tossed both halves of the sheared steno onto his desk blotter.

He looked around, looked at his Mama's portrait, and smiled, just a little: he looked at the Victory model revolver in its glass front frame, hung there on the wall, and he remembered being a mad-as-hell schoolboy, breaking the glass out of that frame and seizing his Granddad's revolver, loading it and running outside, raising it and putting six rounds through a man's head as the man was fumbling to reload a submachine gun.

Linn closed his eyes, took a long, steadying breath.

Even this many years after, the memory elicited a stress response.

He turned back to his desk, went around behind, sat.

He opened the middle drawer of his desk, picked up the right hand half of the notebook, placed it within: he closed the drawer, looked at a coffee mug bristling with writing implements of several kinds and colors, selected one of his favorites, opened the cover of the brand-new, left-hand-side field notebook.

Linn was not averse to the new technology.

An electronic pad at the scene of a wreck allowed for faster and more accurate documentation: photos could be taken of drivers' licenses, passengers' ID, photos of the involved parties, of the wreck, information entered on the touch screen went immediately into the cruiser's hard drive, and then relayed to the Sheriff's office: computers in the cruisers allowed for swift and secure communication, cameras could take a good close up of a license plate, but sometimes, Linn knew, sometimes the good old ink and paper notebook was what Doc called "Treatment of Choice."

Linn was old-fashioned with his notebook.

The left half was general notekeeping: field contacts, punch lines to dirty jokes, stray thoughts, cartoons, sketches, ideas, things that might not be entirely proper if reviewed in court and under oath: "Official Information" would be transferred to the right hand half of the sheared steno book, and this Official Field Notebook could then be subpoenaed into court -- with material transcribed from his general use notebook, minus phone numbers, comments, stray thoughts or unflattering cartoons of the boss.

Linn smiled a little as he clicked the gel pen.

He knew the very first thing he wanted to put into this general use, left hand, notebook.

Breakfast was bacon and eggs, pancakes and cut up fruit with walnuts and sliced almonds and a little whipped cream on top.

Angela was cook this morning and she did a fine job.

The Bear Killer looked up, his ears came up and he began to growl, just a little.

Angela saw it, rose:  "Something's in the garden," she said.  "I'll take care of it."

She skipped over to the gun case, all skirt and long legs, she unlocked the case and pulled out her .22 rifle: nine years old and she ran the kitchen stove like Gracie Daine runs a fiddle, she didn't walk, she skipped, she slipped out the back door with The Bear Killer.

I waited.

If Angela said she'd take care of it, she would.

I kept working on bacon and eggs, I cut into my pancakes and I heard the back door open again.

Angela came back inside.

I heard The Bear Killer with her.

Angela came up beside me and her face was a little on the pale side and her eyes were BIIIIIG.

"Daddy," she said in a very small voice, "there's an elk in our garden!"

Sheriff Linn Keller leaned back, smiled at the memory, now gleaming-wet ink on a grid ruled page.

He remembered how he stood, how he picked the binoculars up off the stand beside the back door, how he and Angela cat footed out onto the screened in back porch, The Bear Killer shadowing with them, bristled but silent, waiting.

Linn watched as a cow elk looked toward the house, then at the garden:  she hadn't gotten into it yet, but she was close, and Linn knew her appetite could put a serious dent in their harvest.

Linn set down the binoculars.

He took a sidestep to the left, another, eased the screen door open.

The cow elk's head came up.

"Bear Killer," Linn said quietly, then he SLAMMED the back door open CHARGED out the back door, yelling, The Bear Killer baying beside him, rearing and chopping his jaws and sounding like he wanted to rend the offending trespasser into bloody gobbets.

The elk whirled, ran:  Linn looked around, alert for another, looking for Mama Elk's calf:  he ran for one end of the garden, looked down the rows, turned, searching: he finally came back to where Angela was standing, outside the back door, her scoped lever action rifle at port arms.

Linn hugged his little girl, kissed her on the forehead.

Angela looked at her Daddy with big blue eyes and said "She was big, Daddy!"

"Yes she was, sweetheart."

"I wasn't sure a .22 would kill her so I didn't shoot."

"You did the right thing, darlin'," Linn said reassuringly, stroking her fine, fair hair.  "If you're not sure of a killin' shot, it's wise not to take the shot."

"Daddy, will a .22 kill an elk?"

"Yes it will, sweetheart, if you can place it just right."

"Are elk good eatin', Daddy?"

"Oh, yes, very good eatin'."

"Maybe I should have taken the shot."

"Naaaah," Linn grinned, his arm around her young shoulders, hugging her to him.  "When the gun cracks, the work starts. I'd have to drag it to the barn, hang it and gut it and either take it to the slaughter house to be cut up, or bone it out myself."

"Oh."  Angela wrinkled her cute little nose.  "That sounds like an awful lot of work."

"So does fence buildin'," Linn chuckled.  "I'll have to fence that garden now that Mama Elk knows we're growin' beans and sweet peas!"

A father carries snapshots in his heart, and Angela's face, all big eyed, half-wonder and half-scared, is one snapshot I'll have for the rest of my days.

Sheriff Linn Keller smiled quietly, closed the cover on his long, narrow notebook, stood:  he slid it into his hip pocket, looked up at the knock at his door.

Sharon pushed it open.

"Doughnuts and coffee just arrived, boss."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND IN THE EVENING, A VOICE

Jacob Keller sat in a handmade rocking chair.

He rocked slowly, thoughtfully, considering the book open before him.

He'd had a man skilled in wood make a little table that could be laid across the arms of the rocker, a table wide enough to lay a book, and perhaps to write a note, or a letter:  he looked over at his wife, in her own rocker -- hers was slightly more ornate, the spindles were turned, tapered, her armrests slightly curved, bent down at the front like a woman's wrists.

Ruth Keller smiled at her husband.

Her fingers had eyes; she did not need to look to know where a shining-blue pair of knitting needles were, or what they were doing: Jacob smiled, just a little, as the words before him stepped aside and allowed the image of his wife to fill his soul.

"There's magic to that," he said softly.

"What, this?" Ruth laughed.

"Yes, that," Jacob nodded.  "Woman's magic. You move two magic wands and consult a spellbook and you create clothing!"

Ruth reached down, pulled another length of yarn free of her skein.

Jacob considered this further evidence of women's magic, or perhaps even witchcraft: the only time he'd tried to draw  yarn from a skein, the damned thing tangled, pulled out several loops, a knot: he'd never touched yarn, nor knitting needles again, preferring to leave this mystery to those whose personal Magick allowed them this witchery.

"My mother used to knit," Ruth said softly, "when I was a little girl, before her fingers became so arthritic. I used to sit and watch her knit, and Father would read to us."  She looked at her husband, memories filling her eyes.

"Read to me, Jacob.  Read me from the Book."

Jacob smiled again, looked back at the open book before him:  he turned the page, nodded ever so slightly -- Ruth knew this meant he'd found what he wanted -- she had much to learn about her new husband, but she was learning, and she'd learned that slight nod was a sign of discovering something he wanted to find.

"To everything there is a season," Jacob read, cadencing his words and pitching his voice for an audience of one: "a time to every purpose under the heavens."

He blinked, smiled, leaned his head back, and sang:

To every thing, 

     Turn, Turn, Turn,

There is a season,

     Turn, Turn, Turn,

And a time  

     To every Purpose,

          Under Heaven."

Ruth's eyes grew large and round: Jacob's voice was rich, full, his pitch was perfect, he sang with his eyes cast to the ceiling, as if offering his voice to the Almighty.

She listened, entranced, as her husband sang: he paused and looked at her sheepishly.

"I'm sorry," he said.  "I usually just sing in the shower."

"But that was beautiful," Ruth whispered.  "Please, sing some more for me?"

"I'll tell you who you should hear sing," Jacob said, rocking forward.  "My sister."

"The Ambassador?"

Jacob nodded, frowned:  he lifted his table, stood, set his lap table back across the rocker's arms.

"Hang on a minute," he said as he paced over to his desk.

Ruth watched as Sheriff Jacob Keller bent, ran a quick series of keys: she saw his face illuminated by the screen, saw the light change.

"Why hello, Little Brother!" she heard -- Ambassador Marnie Keller's voice, as cheerful as if she'd just wakened after a good night's rest and a good morning coffee.

"Little Sis, would you be nearby?"

"Who you callin' Little Sis?" Ruth heard the banter behind the scolding words:  "I'm right down the hall, silly."

"Well, hell, I didn't know if you'd be in a cut throat poker tournament, or maybe swinging a wheelin' deal with offworld traders or something!"
"That was this morning. Whattaya need?"

Jacob looked at his wife, smiled a little.

"Ruth and I would like to ask you a favor."

 

Mrs. Ruth Keller, wife of Sheriff Jacob Keller, of Firelands, Mars, dipped her pen in good black ink: India ink, her husband called it; it was superior to the Lampblack brand she was used to using, and frankly it made writing far more pleasant, as it was much more uniform than the blend she was accustomed to.

Her script was large, looping, ornate: she took great pride in her handwriting, and much preferred a communication that did not involve screens and keys.

The letter was to her parents: she wrote them weekly, folding her handwritten missive in thirds, applying sealing-wax and her personal seal: she knew her home planet was a great distance from where she sat, she knew that her letter would be delivered, and quickly: exactly how, she wasn't sure, not did she particularly care: she knew it would arrive within a day, and in this, she was content.

Her mother heard the papery whisper of a delivery from the newly-installed device, courtesy the Ambassador: she picked it up, smiled as she recognized her daughter's handwriting: she carried the folded sheet into her husband's study, where she showed him the intact seal, allowed him the honor of opening their daughter's latest letter.

They found it interesting to view Mars through their daughter's eyes.

 

Ruth sat with her husband and the Ambassador, and they sat with their fellow colonists, and all faced the stage.

Firelands determined early on that they were their own entertainment: when the original colonists came, they brought all they were, with them: Gracie, the fighter pilot, was also a fiddler, and of considerable skill: Ruth laughed with delight at the first wedding she attended, where Gracie played "Turkey in the Straw" and the wedding party, led by the bride and the groom, whirled and danced down the aisle, the ladies' dresses floating in the lighter gravity: when Gracie paced onto stage, her shaved-bald head covered by a short, shocking-green wig, applause roared up out of the audience in happy anticipation of another excellent performance.

Ruth knew her own skills at voice were limited; she could sing hymns in church, hiding her voice among the others', and she was honestly terrified at the thought of performing before a group, even a small one:  this did not prevent her from appreciating, and delighting in, others' skills and abilities -- such as her husband's unexpected singing of her father's favorite passage from Ecclesiastes.

Jacob explained, after he'd sung it with his sister, there in their quarters, after they'd harmonized flawlessly, after their voices rejoiced together, that Marnie did not want to be known as the Singing Sheriff, and neither did he: Ruth did not realize quite why her husband was commanding her attention, speaking quietly, urgently, with his hand on her wrist: his subterfuge worked, and Ruth was honestly unaware that Marnie was no longer sitting beside her.

Another singer came on stage: a bank of schoolchildren behind her, violins and woodwinds, began a gentle background as the singer, draped all in white, her face veiled -- Ruth blinked, surprised: she'd known women who'd gone into nunneries, dressed in a similar manner -- but they wore black, mostly, and this veiled figure -- 

Ruth blinked as the figure spread her arms, palms up, as if offering herself to the Divine.

Ruth had heard Ave Maria sung as a child, but never since, and she'd never heard it sung with such power, such purity: it was sung in Latin, supported and enhanced by a surprisingly skilled violin section, a section made up entirely of Martian children, all thin, all tall, all very slender ... and all very much enjoying what they were doing.

Ruth was mesmerized.

There were dancers, and of surprising skill: about half the dancers were Heavies, dancing Irish hardshoe: the Heavies chose to live in Earth-normal gravity: they were normal in height and build, the others, in the softer Irish dance ghillies, were growing up in Martian gravity: tall, slender, but no less graceful: Ruth had never seen Irish dance before, and laughed with honest delight as the dancers all struck a pose, hands on their hips, one foot forward and pointed, while a little girl in an embroidered, ornate, and shining-emerald dress hammered her rhythm into the boards to the catchy tune of "The Irish Washerwoman" -- both she, and Gracie the fiddler, were good enough the audience began to clap in time to the music.

Ruth looked over, surprised, as Marnie slipped back into her seat.

"Coffee went through me like a freight train," she said quietly.  "Did I miss anything?"

 

"I was fearful Ruth would have a barren existence," her mother said quietly as her husband folded the letter again.  "It would seem they have a surprising amount of culture."

"Ruth is a hard child to impress," the father said thoughtfully, "She has been to the best performances available." 

He tapped the folded letter meditatively against the desktop.

"She said her husband reads aloud of an evening," the mother said softly, coming around behind her husband.

She rested her hands on his shoulders and squeezed gently, and he reached across his chest and laid a warm hand on her cool fingers.

"I remember your reading aloud, with Ruth on your lap.  You sounded so gentle."

He nodded, smiling a little the way a father will at a favorite memory.

 

"Jacob?"

Jacob's hand was cupped under his wife's as they lay abed, warm in flannel and contentment, under the reassuring weight of flannel sheets and a handmade quilt.

Jacob's hand tightened ever so slightly at his wife's voice.

"Jacob, when we have children ... will you read to them?"

Jacob rolled over, laid his arm over his wife, twiddled his mustache against her nose, which made her giggle.

"My Pa used to read to me when I was little," Jacob said softly. "I'd set on his lap and feel his voice inside his chest like an old b'ar rumblin' in a cave."

Ruth had no idea what a b'ar was, but she got the idea, especially after she twisted and shifted and laid her head on Jacob's chest and heard his deep, reasurring voice, sounding like it was in a deep cave somewhere.

If I am to hear a voice in the night, she thought, let it be this, the voice of my husband! 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
Spelling. Yarn, not yard. Sorry. Phat phingers!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND TWO MEN SMILED

 

Jacob lay still, flat against the earth, a little rise of rock and grass ahead of him, just enough to break his outline.

His chest was down, his chin was up, he was watching through the long, awkward field glasses he'd won years before from some German fellow who'd lost them in a poker game and was too proud to accept them back afterward.

Beside him, a quiet, metallic click: Jacob heard the set trigger drop into engagement on his father's Sharps rifle.

Pale eyes blinked a few times, rapidly, then resumed study through the glass lenses; another pair of pale eyes blinked in the same manner, then settled behind the Vernier tang peep.

Jacob received information that the train -- their train! -- would be robbed: a promise of protection and a small poke of gold, and more information than the speaker originally intended, was given: Jacob surprised a stranger, who pulled a gun and was sent to Hell on a .44 pistol ball for his trouble, and Jacob knew he had trouble when he found the gold he'd paid the informant, on the dead man in the alley.

Over beside the tracks, a confusion of hoofprints and boot-heels in the damp dirt, and the body of the man who'd put him wise to the intended robbery.

Jacob thought fast.

He legged it back to the Sheriff's office, untied his stallion and his father's gelding, ran them to the depot:  a whistle to get a handler's attention, a shouted command:  "GET THAT STOCK RAMP DOWN! THE TRAIN'S GONNA BE ROBBED AND THE SHERIFF AND I WILL BE ABOARD AND READY!"

Jacob knew the whistle, the shout, the hurried loading of two saddled horses, would draw attention: he saw a figure slip around the end of the depot, trying not to be seen.

Jacob held up a fist toward the conductor, took the horses, walked them slowly, quietly, down the ramp: his father took their reins, handed them to a boy, gave him quiet voiced instructions, and the horses were led, slowly, silently, down the little alley and around the corner, out of sight.

The Sheriff and Jacob swarmed aboard the passenger car, rifles in hand, just before the conductor raised his hand, just before The Lady Esther whistled, just before she shouldered powerfully into her load: nobody saw the two lawmen who'd climbed out of the other end of the passenger car and ducked behind a boxcar, waiting for the train to chuff a little distance, before slipping back to the Sheriff's office.

Linn switched his Winchester for his Sharps and a shotgun: the double gun hung from a lanyard dropped over his saddle horn, he wore a bandolier of brass rounds, both swan shot and military ball.

Father and son mounted, rode quietly up the street, in the opposite direction: they turned, doubled back on a trail they both knew well, and gave their horses their head.

 

Bill looked at Jim, looked back ahead, swore.

He laid on the whistle, a long, desperate scream, the agonies of a damned soul torturing its way between mountains and great granite cliffs: passengers felt the air brakes set up under their feet, heard the warning whistle, felt the train slow and slow fast:  couplers banged as the slack slammed forward, The Lady Esther's wheels ground sand into dust-fine powder as she screamed steel wheels against steel rails, desperately trying to stop in time.

"Right where they said," Jacob muttered, then he turned.

Linn's finger touched the front trigger as Jacob turned, recoiled like a stung cat.

Linn dropped the Sharps, seized his double gun, rolled over and didn't bother to sit up.

Jacob was on one knee, firing steadily, unhurriedly: Linn's twelve-bore coughed, its deep concussion slamming two men's souls into Hell on a compact cloud of heavy shot.

Ten men thought to rob the train, and waylay the Sheriff: killing his chief deputy was a bonus they greedily embraced, but when that pale eyed old lawman with the iron-grey mustache and his pale eyed son argued otherwise, why, the plotters came out in second place.

 

The local paper printed the story; the Firelands Gazette described the vile perfidy, the treachery, the intent to rob good and honest men of their wages yet to be paid, and how the plotters intended to deprive the county of their Sheriff in the process, that he might not track them down afterward: the news account included the trial testimony, how after the robbers were met by a fusillade from the passenger car, after they were met with a coal shovel in the face when they tried to storm the cab of the shining, polished engine, how the Sheriff's Sharps spoke a half dozen times: in the confusion, it was not until one, and only one outlaw remained alive, that it was realized that the pale eyed old Sheriff had indeed not been killed, but every one of the robbers had -- only then did the last man surrender, and live to give his testimony.

 

Two days after the trial, Sheriff Linn Keller rested a fatherly hand on his son's shoulder.

"Jacob," he said, "thank you."

Jacob was silent for a long moment.

Both men were looking straight ahead, across the street, at children yelling and running toward the schoolhouse as Miz Sarah slung her handbell in great, noisy arcs from the top step, and both men's eyes smiled, just a little.

"Sir," Jacob finally said, "you are welcome."

Edited September 20, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GHOST AMONG THE TREES

 

Sheriff Linn Keller dismounted, led his black Outlaw-horse over to the stream: he shoved his hat back on his head, scratched his lightening thatch, looked around.

It was damp, not quite cool: winter was coming, he knew, the aspen were just beginning to turn -- Right here directly, he thought, they'll be absolutely ablaze with color, glorious color, and I'll bring my family out here to see it and to smell it-- but for now ... for now, he was alone.

He needed to be alone.

A lawman carries ghosts, as do all who put their lives under the lights and siren.

Like his wife, he'd seen things that would curl the hair on a bald man's head, he'd survived things that would kill a healthy man ten times over, he carried grief and loss enough to last those ten men their lifetimes.

And still he carried on.

That's what a man does, he thought, squatting beside the cold, clear stream, smelling the light misty fog, listening to birds and water and his horse.

And a fiddle, distant, echoing, then closer ...

Linn blinked, made a quick shift of his mental gears ...

A fiddle?

Back during that damned War, his namesake followed a fiddlin' ghost, a young girl who whirled in a diaphanous gown, laughing and playing a violin:  a barefoot siren, a beautiful child, forever out of reach, never more than barely seen, until Linn finally saddled up and galloped after her, his heart afire to behold the magical nymph who spun the music, the beauty!  that his heart longed to embrace!

He'd ridden out into a clearing, and in the clearing, a mansion, and he rode up to the mansion and was received by the solemn old servant, who said quietly that everyone was within, and bowed him into the mansion -- never mind he was a damned Yankee, at this solemn time, all were welcome.

The Sheriff's namesake carried the rank of Captain: he left his uniform cover with the servant inside the door, was shown into the parlor, where family was gathered, grieving, where a coffin sat atop two sawhorses draped with a clean sheet.

Inside the coffin, its open lid draped with gauze to soften the features of the deceased (and to keep off flies), a beautiful girl -- a maiden, not yet a woman, but with the aching beauty that can capture a man's heart without effort.

In her still hands, a violin.

The Sheriff had read of this, for his namesake wrote of the experience: when Linn read the words, he could see himself there, he could feel the cool morning mist on his face, he could hear maidenly laughter, see her as a flowing shadow, as moving mist, as a creature of magic in morning's fog, slipping between the trees.

Linn rose from beside the stream, listened.

He'd long reckoned there to be no difference between a fiddle and a violin, save the surroundings in which it was played, and then not always: Gracie Daine, in a plain, drab dress and work boots, had spun truly glorious classical violin music from her handmade curlyback fiddle, and during her brief sojourn to an Eastern university, in a fine gown and heels, she'd transitioned easily in a public performance, playing Lara's Theme with grace and beauty, following it with a sprightly Irish Washerwoman -- which gained her an F from the scowling professor, and a standing ovation with two curtain calls from the audience.

It increased her incensed professor's blood pressure to a dangerous level when, on Gracie's second curtain call, she came out in her gown, and work boots instead of heels:  she struck up the Irish Washerwoman again, and danced a fine flatfoot as she fiddled, and when the professor stormed off his dais, waving his conductor's baton and screaming "No, no," Gracie thrust him in the gut with her bow, kicked him in the shin and backed away, dancing and fiddling, and the audience thought it a comedy act, further humiliating the professor with uproarious laughter.

Had the curtains not been drawn, it is quite possible the stuffed shirt professor might have succumbed to a good case of apoplexy (which, truth be known, could only have improved his disposition).

Sheriff Linn Keller looked around, pale eyes busy, trying to punch holes in the mountain mist so he could see the source of the music, but it was fainter now:  he turned, thrust a boot into the doghouse stirrup, swung a long leg over and found the other stirrup without looking.

There.

Movement, in the trees.

He nudged Outlaw with his knees, and the two set off in pursuit.

 

Later that morning, Paul Barrents looked at his old friend, stopped, turned, looked very directly to face the Sheriff absolutely square-on.

Paul frowned, turned, drew a mug of coffee, added a short drizzle of milk and handed it to the pale eyed Sheriff.

"I know that look," he said quietly. "What happened?"

Linn took a noisy slurp of coffee, flipped his tongue up to rake the fat drops hanging from the bottom curve of his carefully cultivated handlebar mustache.

"I was chasing a ghost."

Barrents raised an eyebrow.

"Gracie Daine," Linn explained.  "She was fiddling in the mountains again. I could almost see her through that fog we had this morning, but I couldn't find her."

"Gracie," Barrents echoed.

Linn nodded, took another noisy slurp.

Sharon turned.  "Did your Mama let you slurp like that?" she scolded. "I'll bet you slurp chocolate cake!"

"He does," Barrents confirmed, then turned back to his boss.

Linn knew his segundo pretty well, and he knew when Barrents turned like that and burned those black Navajo eyes into his like that, it was a serious matter.

"Boss," Paul Barrents said quietly, "you said you were chasing Gracie Daine in the fog."

Linn nodded.

"Gracie Daine joined the Navy. She left a week ago and hasn't been back."

Linn's face paled, just a little bit:  he turned, looked at his dispatcher.

"Sharon," he said, "any word on Gracie Daine?"

"None that I know of," she replied, "why?"

Linn handed Barrents the half mug of coffee, strode quickly for the front door.

"Where do you think you're going!" Sharon demanded.

"House call," Linn threw back over his shoulder.

Paul Barrents shrugged, drank the rest of the Sheriff's coffee, then his own, rinsed the mugs and set them on their pegs to drain and dry.

He paced slowly to the dispatcher's desk.

"Now what was that all about?" Sharon complained.

Paul Barrents' expression was unreadable.

"He's going to see if there's been a death notice."

Barrents looked at the dispatcher. "If there'd been a death notice, the Navy would've sent people out to deliver the news in person, and you would have heard about it."

"Yes I would've," Sharon confirmed: if she hadn't been the Sheriff's dispatcher, she would have been the world's most efficient neighborhood gossip:  she knew everyone, she knew everything, and she made sure she cultivated her sources.

 

Often times there is an explanation.

Music has to come from somewhere, a dancing figure in a gown so gauzy it seems made of fog, had to have come from somewhere, had to have gone somewhere.

Sometimes, though, there is no explanation; Gracie Daine, alive and well, wrote home that week, and the week after; their family had heard nothing otherwise, but it was nice of the Sheriff to ask.

Only Old Gracie seemed really interested.

The old woman, this Wise Woman who seemed to know so very much, drew the Sheriff aside, and over steaming mugs of root tea of some kind -- Linn couldn't place it, it tasted familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it -- she asked him to tell her, very exactly, what he'd seen that morning.

As usual, one of the youngest of the Daine daughters sat beside Old Gracie, looking at her with big and solemn eyes, then looking at the Sheriff, listening, saying nothing.

When Gracie rose and turned without comment, Linn rose as well, watched as the old woman walked tiredly into another room:  he turned, headed for the back door, until a little girl pulled at his sleeve.

Linn turned, went down on one knee.

"I know who you saw," she whispered, looking back toward the doorway where Old Gracie had gone.

Linn nodded a solemn go-ahead.

"It was her," she whispered. "She does that sometimes. She'll leave her body and ghost among the trees."

"Do ghosts play fiddles?" Linn asked, frowning.

As if in answer, from another room, a fiddle began playing an Irish jig, and playing it with all the energy and all the precision of a veteran performer.

The little girl looked back at the Sheriff and said, "This one does."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

STRUT

Sheriff Linn Keller remembered, and smiled.

A dear friend, rest his soul, once told him he had the most marvelous way of turning invisible.

It was a talent he cultivated since before high school; his sons emulated his fine example, and unless they wished to be conspicuous, they generally weren't.

His daughters, on the other hand, knew -- or perhaps were taught, consciously or unconsciously, by their mother -- that the female is a creature to which men's eyes are drawn; that little girls are loved and cherished by their Daddies, protected by their big brothers, and remarked on by adults in general, and so they had to present themselves in public with the knowledge that they will be seen, and they will be remarked on.

This, of course, made little difference to the undamaged young.

Angela Keller was a pretty little girl, and her Mommy delighted in dressing her like a pretty little girl.

Marnie, on the other hand, honestly did not give a good damn about what her Mommy wanted her to look like: she wore red cowboy boots and a denim skirt, unless working conditions demanded blue jeans:  it was not at all infrequent for her to "have a bull on" -- to have a jaw-thrust expression of rebellion, or resentment.

Simply to be contrary, Marnie would muck out stalls in barn boots and a skirt, just to prove her rebelliousness she'd throw bales of hay in a skirt, never mind this meant getting hay stems and chaff down the tops of her boots:  Shelly learned, to her great disappointment, that Marnie had little interest in being a Girly Girl, and quietly despaired at the quiet pride Marnie took in her prowess at the Arts Martial, in all their forms.

Angela, on the other hand, had no such broad and bristling rebellious streak.

Angela was very much a Daddy's Girl, but she was a sweet and pretty little Daddy's Girl:  Shelly was working her regular paramedic shift when Fitz came in, when her fire chief laughed his way through the man door, when he looked at Shelly and pointed outside and sagged against the closed door, laughing.

It seems that the Sheriff rode into town on his black Outlaw-horse, and Angela rode in with him, with intent to walk to the firehouse:  the Chief looked out the window and opened the door, and Angela came into the firehouse, in full strut.

What tickled the Chief's funny bone was, first, his conversation with the Sheriff.

Linn explained, as he caressed his shining black gelding's neck, that Outlaw had been abused, that he'd taken a full year and more to gain his horse's trust, but even yet, if he were to raise his voice, the horse would wall his eyes and shy back a step and then fall over in a dead faint, as only a terrified, traumatized animal will.

He'd consulted with the few people who knew about such things, and by some happy accident they'd found that making a game of it helped in the healing, and so Linn backed away a little distance, leaving Outlaw-horse ground reined, blinking sleepily, looking around with an utter lack of interest.

Angela strutted up to Outlaw-horse, and Fitz felt amusement bubbling inside him, for Angela was a delightful child, and one of her characteristics was that she didn't walk.

She strutted.

Her Mama tried to teach her to take dainty little mincing steps, but Angela strutted proudly:  she marched up to her Daddy's black Outlaw-horse and raised a finger and declared, "Bad horse! Dead!"

Fitz stared, open mouthed, as Outlaw wobbled, as Outlaw went down, as Outlaw rolled over on his side, for all the world out colder'n a foundered flounder.

Angela planted her knuckles on her waist, raised her nose -- "Hmph!" -- marched purposefully around the horse's head, squatted:  she patted Outlaw on the neck and said "Okay, horsie!" in a happy little girl's voice.

Outlaw lifted his head, got his legs under him, rose:  Angela unwrapped a red-and-white peppermint and let Outlaw-horse rubber-lip it off her palm as she stood there giggling, rubbing the gelding's jaw, talking to him in the happy voice of an innocent little child.

Angela took Outlaw's reins and led him around behind the Sheriff's office, into the little stable they kept there for such purposes:  when she came back down the alley and back into the Sheriff's office, she was absolutely strutting, smiling bright as the September sun overhead, clearly very pleased with herself.

Fitz chuckled his way back to the firehouse, or most of the way there:  he turned and looked, and Angela was just come out of the Sheriff's office and was happily strutting down the sidewalk, as confident and as openly bold as if she owned the place.

Fitz was a man with children, and Fitz was a man with a liking for children, and Fitz was a man who loved to laugh, and found frequent moments of amusement at the things children did:  seeing this pretty little girl just absolutely strutting with the unabashed confidence of someone who owned the world itself, struck him as funny, and so he chuckled and snorted and guffawed his way into the firehouse, where he recounted his amusement to Shelly and a couple grinning firefighters, right before Angela came strutting in the same door, across the squad bay floor, up the two steps to the kitchen level:  she planted her knuckles on her belt, looked around with big blue eyes and innocently demanded, "Hi!  Got any chok'lit chip cookies?"

The fire chief's laughter began again, and a runner was dispatched to the local bakery, for if the Chief wanted chocolate chip cookies on the table, the Chief got chocolate chip cookies on the table.

Even if they weren't for the Chief.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE SHERIFF, IN THIRDS

Chief of Police Will Keller smiled a little as he pulled the envelope out of the mailbox.

He knew his twin sister's hand, and this was very definitely from her: nobody else had that elegant, looping script, especially when it came to addressing an envelope.

He looked around, as was his habit: he'd looked at the mailbox before opening the lid, he'd looked inside the mailbox before reaching in: caution was an old habit, well ingrained, and had served him well in the past.

Will straightened, looked around, took a long breath, smiled: he went on into the house, closed the door behind himself.

Coffee, and a letter from his twin sister, was a good way to start the day.

He poured a steaming mug, added a drizzle of milk, ran his hand in his pants pocket: he came out with a Barlow knife, sliced the envelope open, wiped the blade shut and dropped it back into its sailcloth home.

Will sat, pulled out the letter, unfolded it, read, and as he read, his sister's descriptions seized his imagination and flung him far across the continent.

I have business in Ohio again, he read, and there was a parade.

 

Willamina Keller nodded with satisfaction at the reflection in the full length mirror.

She wore her Sheriff's uniform, with the optional skirt, and the butt-ugly Marine issue shoes: ugly they were, but comfortable they very definitely were: the funeral was as all funerals are, and she'd stood shoulder to shoulder with fellow badge packers who'd come from a surprising distance.

It hadn't been a line of duty death -- diabetic complications, and not a criminal assault, was the cause of death: this didn't matter, for it was One Of Our Own, it someone Willamina served with.

Completely by coincidence, there was a parade in town, and Willamina needed something after the funeral: she was a spectator among spectators, at least until she saw an old man in a wheelchair with a veteran's association overseas cap on his thin grey hair.

Willamina watched the colors coming down the street, toward the traffic circle in the middle of the village, she looked at the old-timer, then she slipped between spectators' shoulders and strode with a military pace across the blacktop.

She discreetly fell in on the right of the hunchbacked old veteran in the wheelchair, she glared with a pale eyed intensity as a local deputy leaned into the driver's window of the village constable's cruiser: his back was to the approaching Colors, and stayed there as the Colors passed, and came around the circle.

Willamina looked at the old-timer, who was pushing against the armrests, struggling to stand.

Sheriff Willamina Keller looked at people sitting on the curb, or talking, ignoring the Colors.

Sheriff Willamina Keller reached down, ran her hands under the old man's arms, lifted.

He groaned, he stood: it was an effort, but he managed: he straightened, as best he could, and an old man who'd worn Uncle Sam's baggy green, and a visiting Colorado Sheriff, raised their hands in an absolutely correct and flawless salute.

 

Will read Willamina's words, felt the old man's warmth between his hands, smelled Old Spice and stale sweat, felt the old man's weight diminish as he got his weight on his legs: Will knew what it was to salute the Colors as they passed, and in his mind's eye, he saw his pale eyed sister giving the Death Glare to those pitiful souls who stayed on their backsides, or talked casually, their arms folded, as the flag came abreast, as she and the old man she wrote about, raised their bladed hands to their brow.

Will took another sip of coffee, continued reading.

 

Later that morning, the Mayor came in with a newspaper in one hand and a grin on his face.

"Hey Will," he called, "your sister made the national news!"

Will raised his hands to the stamped-tin ceiling, shook his head:  "How long, O Lord," he intoned in a funereal voice, "must I put up with this trouble making sister of mine?"

The Mayor laughed.  

"I think she did fine," he said, and handed the hot-off-the-press weekly to his Chief of Police.

Will frowned, unfolded it, raised an eyebrow.

Apparently the photographer had been directly across the street from his pale eyed twin sister, and someone else had been behind, probably with a cell phone camera: the full-color, front-page picture was split vertically, split into thirds -- the leftmost tall, narrow photo had Willamina helping an old veteran in a wheelchair, to his feet, the second tall, narrow photo, also from across the street but zoomed in with a good quality telephoto lens, had an old veteran in his pin-decorated cap, and an attractive woman in uniform, both standing and saluting: the third photo, taken while they were in salute, showed the woman's off arm crossing behind the old man's back, gripping the back of his trouser belt, ensuring he stayed on his feet while the honor guard marched the Colors past.

 

 

 

Edited September 23, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GUARDIAN

Gracie Daine relaxed, searched with her eyes, remembered.

She'd been sitting in class, relaxed, looking rustic and out of place in a calf length skirt and work boots: it's what she was used to, it's what she usually wore, and she honestly did not give a good damn about what any of her classmates thought of her.

The teacher was going over the test results, paging through the stack of graded papers, looking up, finding the student, announcing the grade.

There were quiet comments after each, sometimes an "All right!" and sometimes a sympathetic groan: the test hadn't been easy and the lower achievers in Advanced Algebra had lobbied to be graded on the curve, and then hoped nobody there was intelligent enough to get a high score.

"Gracie Daine."

The teacher looked up in honest surprise, opened his mouth.

Gracie put a finger to her lips, gave the barest shake of her head.

"You ... did all right," the teacher said, confused, and made a mental note to congratulate her later, in private, about her exceptionally high score.

Of all the bright students, Gracie alone aced this, the hardest Advanced Algebra test he'd given so far.

Gracie smiled behind the shining black sphere covering her shaved head, her eyes tracking smoothly across her field of vision.

She was tracking fifty times a second, and her sweep went from directly aft, clear around her ship, sweeping a visual sphere of an incredible size.

The fact that her brain interpreted this as optical input was completely immaterial, and the objects Gracie tracked were following the trajectory she'd mentally plotted, while sitting immobile in her Interceptor.

Starfighter, Valkyrie's Lance, Silver Stallion, many names had been proposed for the flying weapons systems they drove through the distances between stars, and each of the Valkyries had their preference.

Gracie, having commissioned her own nose art, had a self portrait painted on her interstellar destrier: a self portrait of herself, taken from a snapshot she'd fancied: she'd been on stage, back on Mars, dancing as she fiddled: she danced flatfoot most of the time, and she was (in all honesty) pretty damned good: this time, she'd incorporated a turn, a spin: her hair was floating in the one-third gravity, her skirt flared, she'd made a skip-hop, one foot up behind her, the other pointed, and she'd been looking at the camera in that moment.

The shutter perfectly captured the look of delight, of satisfaction, on her face, and the artist flawlessly conveyed this from photograph to ship's hull.

Beneath, a comet, a silver spray of its trajectory the background for the name she'd given her brand new ship.

Stardancer.

Gracie watched the objects, smiled: she was the ship now, and the ship was Gracie Daine: the computer was as much a living soul as she was, and her mind filled the entirety of her shining silver Stardancer.

As proud as she'd been that day back in school, when she smiled quietly and turned her head so her classmates could not see her expression when she was handed back her test, she was just as proud today, as she made the calculations necessary to intercept two threats.

Gracie felt the reactors spinning into life, then she was gone.

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna dusted her hands briskly together: the lump of chalk wobbled a little on its shelf at the base of the slate chalk board, and Sarah looked around, frowned.

"The Taylor boys," she said.  "Are they coming today?"

Schoolchildren, schoolmarm and a great, black-furred Bear Killer turned their heads and looked out the wavy glass window: behind her desk, Mrs. Cooper ran her finger down her attendance-book, frowned.

The Taylor boys were exemplary students -- not the brightest, but certainly not unintelligent: their attendance was punctual, they were eager to learn, well mannered --

She looked up, surprised, as movement tugged at her peripheral vision.

Sarah Lynne McKenna was running across the front of the schoolroom and down along the wall, one hand holding her skirt up as she ran, her left hand raised, fingers curled, as if ready to strike, to claw at some unseen danger.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller smiled quietly as she looked around at the tourists: this was part of their trip on the Z&W Scenic Railway, which was also used for minor freight hauls, but always behind live steam.

The tourists were gathered in groups, conspicuous among students dressed as schoolchildren had been in the mid- to late-1880s: the Sheriff wore a mousy-grey dress of unremarkable cut, and a wig with its hair drawn severely up into a walnut atop her head, and a whittled pencil thrust through the walnut.

Willamina addressed the tourists as if they were students, then dropped out of character momentarily to explain, "This was not the blab school some of you were asking about, and here's why."

She made an almost imperceptible gesture, and every one of her students began to read, or to recite, all at the same time: some from books, some from hand held, wood-framed slates with a lesson inscribed in chalk, the very youngest happily near-shouting their ABCs in a child's annoying sing-song.

Willamina raised her hand, and the cacophony stopped.

"I don't think I could learn anything in that din," she smiled, "and so the blab school fell out of favor. Here we have an average student body size for the era -- we have fifteen children, and according to our records, the failure rate was almost nonexistent."

Willamina tilted her head a little, hands folded in her apron, gave the interior of her little domain a warm, sweeping, motherly look.

"The teachers of the era were single women, with exceptions: Firelands had one of the only married schoolmarms of the time. She was a plump and motherly sort, she was also shorter than I am, poor soul!" -- Willamina laughed disarmingly, and the tourists laughed with her -- "as you can see, we have benches, with the only desk here in front."

Willamina's eye caught movement, she leaned forward a little, looked out the window.

Students and spectators alike were startled when Willamina snapped, "BATTLE STATIONS!", snatched up her skirt, powered into a quick, skipping run, her left hand upraised as if to claw at an enemy's eyes.

 

Gracie Daine had been told it was impossible to perform a turn-and-bank in space, that travel had to be in straight lines.

As she usually did when she heard something she didn't like, she ignored what she'd been told:  when she emerged in her own solar system, she was doing one-tenth lightspeed, and she came out in a graceful, banking turn, reactors singing, her Hellbore was charged, her kinetic cannon were chambered,hardened hypermetal lances rolled into battery in the twin,  belly mounted, Gauss cannon.

Gracie had been Navy, back on Earth; she'd driven the Sea Stallion, she'd driven the Super Stallion, she'd married a German fighter pilot who shared her love of flying, and she'd listened, fascinated, to fighter pilots talking shop, describing their attacks, their maneuvers: she'd never flown an atmospheric fighter, but she used their tactics here in the zero-gravity vacuum of space.

Two asteroids were still outside Jupiter's orbit.

She'd analyzed their trajectories, she'd tracked them for a month thanks to sensor buoys Earth knew nothing about, and now that they were well inside the Sol system, the asteroids were fair game.

Especially when -- according to Gracie's calculations -- they would come within less than a lunar from Earth.

Gracie felt her ship's discharge.

She didn't like using the kinetic weapons inside an inhabited system; she was responsible for every one of her projectiles, and the results of collisions were notoriously hard to predict: the Hellbore's energies were invisible to the eye, but flared brightly as one, then the other of the asteroids was sliced in two, a third of their mass disappearing in painfully bright, incredibly intense outbursts of visible and infrared radiation.

Gracie's Stardancer disappeared, reappeared ahead of them: the wounded asteroids were tumbling, they looked like glowing, tortured corkscrews: two quick discharges, as precise as a surgeon's scalpel, as Gracie flew backwards ahead of them: this time she heated their sheared sides, vaporizing them, the vapors blasting away from the parent asteroid and shoving the remnants off-trajectory.

Gracie drew back, sent a mental command to the monitoring buoys, then disappeared.

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna's clawed fingers hit a hidden release: a spring-loaded panel, wide as her spread hand, snapped open.

Sarah drove in, seized the fore-end of a Winchester rifle: she'd not broken stride, she was at their back door in three steps, and The Bear Killer flowed down the steps with her as she ran into the street, toward three desperately running children who streaked past her, silent, wide-eyed and white-faced, intent on getting away from a pursuing danger, intent on the haven, the shelter, the safety of their little whitewashed schoolhouse.

Noses and spread fingers pressed against wavy schoolhouse glass, young breath fogged the windows as they watched their beloved Miss Sarah run out in the middle of the street.

They heard the metallic sound of a Winchester rifle's lever being cycled, fast.

Sarah raised the octagon barrel .40-60 and saw the shining front bead was exactly where she wanted it.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller shouldered past a staring tourist -- "BEAR KILLER!" -- a great, black, curly furred mountain Mastiff launched through legs and stares and ran down the steps with his beloved Mistress.

Willamina had smacked the wall, or so it seemed -- Moses, in the desert, struck a rock and got water, but this pale eyed Sheriff, in costume and in character of a long-dead schoolmarm, smacked the wall and got a rifle, and nobody there was at all sure quite how she'd done it.

Two of her children were to have portrayed laggardly students, they were supposed to run in, puffing and blowing, they were to have scampered to their places on the smooth wooden benches, snatched up their lesson and pretended to be reading.

They hadn't made it.

They were running down the street, running in panic, in desperation, and behind them, a truck, moving fast, with a cruiser lit up behind it, in pursuit.

 

The Hellbore's discharge was more felt than heard.

For all its power, it was nearly silent.

 

Sarah's Winchester was most certainly not silent as it drove death through the skull of the lead bull, dropping its nose to the dirt street: smoking brass rang, spun from the action as a second round of hold-it-right-there rammed into the chamber.

Sarah fired again.

 

Willamina fired for the center of the radiator, drove three rapid rounds through fins and fluids and into the timing chain behind, then she raised the rifle's muzzle and set the shining brass bead on the driver.

 

Two asteroids, sliced apart, blasted with the heat of seven suns, fell away into Jupiter's gravity well, no longer a threat to Earth.

 

The Bear Killer reared, roaring a fang-bared challenge, dancing back and forth beside his beloved Mistress as two more beeves, these leaders of the stampede, fell: the followers, faced with multiple confined concussions, faced with fang and fury, the following bovines tried to turn, collided with their fellows: the stampede, small though it was, almost didn't stop, but stop it did.

 

The truck screamed sideways, shivered to a stop.

Willamina's rifle was dead steady, its muzzle one inch from the passenger window, its bore cold and steady and entirely uncaring as it took a good close up look at the passenger's head.

Chief of Police Will Keller came out of his cruiser.

Driver and passenger heard the metallic sound of a riot gun slamming into battery.

Two little boys fell through the schoolhouse doors:  one grabbed a tourist's arm to keep from falling, the other one fell, rolled, scrambled to his feet:  both out of breath, both wide-eyed, both looking out the door,  all thought of resuming their seats, forgotten.

 

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A LITTLE CHILD LAUGHED

Joseph Keller laughed.

Joseph threw his head back and laughed for the sheer, pure, unadulterated joy of being alive, of being a healthy little boy playing in the bright mountain sunshine with his very best friend, a little boy who leaned forward and gripped a pair of Texas long horns in his young fingers, a little boy who clamped his knees together against a longhorn bull's neck and yelled "GO, BOOCAFFIE!"

Boocaffie did not have to be told twice: no fence could hold him, but this affection between a little boy who'd grown up with an orphaned calf, held him as surely as bobwarr or whitewashed boards.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller ducked, not that he wanted to, but because something that sounded like a large and very angry bumblebee just brushed the fine hairs sprouted from the rim of his right ear: two men were on the ground, shot and bleeding, a third was firing at him, which was not a wise idea.

Bystanders, onlookers and a shocked, staring Esther Keller, behind the glass of her office window above the Silver Jewel Saloon, watched as the Sheriff's left-hand Colt came up and spat a brief finger of yellow flame, just before something the color of a little boy's flannel shirt and tan vest and brindle fur came down the street with all the elegance and grace of a freight train on a steep down grade.

None present could honestly say which it was that killed the man: was it the Sheriff's .44, delivered through the man's open, screaming mouth, or was it the Texas longhorn that rammed into the fellow a tenth of a second later, knocking him down and to the side, rolling him several times, to lay sprawled and awkward and looking at the dirt with wide and unseeing eyes.

Strong men shivered at the scene, for in spite of death done multiple times, in spite of the blasting concussion of a full grown long horn bull hitting a man at a flat out gallop, at the sight of a man that looked like a rag doll hit in the belly with a hard swung war club as the bull's left hand horn caught him just above the belt buckle, slamming him off the ground and doubling him up and throwing him to the side with a sling of that mighty and muscled neck, over and above the sound of gunfire's echoes shivering to death between the buildings -- over and above the sound of cloven hooves, punishing the packed dirt of the main street --

Men shivered to hear a little boy's happy laughter, fading, as Boocaffie, his bestest friend and pasture buddy, tame as a dog and swift as Death itself, never broke stride, galloping the length of the street, and around the far rise and the bend, and was gone.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A THREE MARE HITCH

Angela Keller watched, big-eyed, as her Daddy worked with the pretty white mares.

Angela knew her Daddy took care of the Fire Department horsies and she knew the horsies would do about anything for her Daddy and her Daddy named them and petted them and called them good girls, and sometimes he let Angela ride one of them when he was working with them.

 

Another Angela Keller strutted into the firehouse and looked around with juvenile approval.

Angela liked the firehouse.

It smelled of horsies and rubber coats and pipe tobacco and when Angela came in, she went to the window beside the horsies and tilted her head and said "Hello, Kittycat," and Kittycat would switch its tail and blink sleepily and look at her with all the ancient wisdom of an Egyptian goddess.

This lasted until the horsies came over to her, impatient for her attention, and if the Irish Brigade didn't know from the sudden flood of sunlight when the door opened and a visitor entered, they knew from the happy giggle of a delighted little girl that Angela came in for a visit.

 

"Daddy," Angela asked, "can the horsies run without a bit?"

Linn blinked, surprised, looked at his little girl and then at the mares.

"I suppose they can, Princess," Linn said thoughtfully.  "I honestly never thought about it."

"Daddy, you told me you have to remind Fitz to keep a light hand on the reins," Angela said with a big-eyed innocence, "cause he's not drivin' horsies every day an' every day like they did when Sean was Chief an' he knew how to drive 'em without bruises!"

Angela's eyes were wide and sincere, and she gave a single, emphatic, ponytail-swinging nod of her head to for emphasis.

"If they don't have a bit in 'em to start with they can't get bruised!"

Linn considered this, looked at the mares again.

The mares were crowding him:  one's head was shoved in under his right arm, one pressed in close on his left, a third was dancing impatiently,  and all were looking at the pretty little girl in a denim skirt and muck boots.

"Daddy, do you 'member you read to me about dogsleds in Alaska."

"I remember."

"I asked you how they drove dogsleds without reins or a bridle."

Linn nodded, remembering how she used to sound so much like a little girl, with Ws instead of Rs, and he blinked as he realized just how fast she was growing.

"What if you train horsies like dogsleds?"

Linn laughed, picked up his daughter, hauled her up fast, held her at arm's length overhead: he didn't spin her around, for fear of hitting one of the white fire-mares.

Angela giggled happily as Linn lowered her enough to rub noses with her.

"I could use your help," he said. "Feel like training some horsies?"

Linn's grin was broad and genuine at Angela's delighted "Okay, Daddy!"

 

Angela looked waaaaay up at the driver's seat of their gleaming Steam Machine.

In her young imagination, she was standing up like Sean, his big white helmet on her head, laughing with delight as three white mares surged powerfully against their polished, padded collars -- a whistle, a scream from the shrill little whistle on the side of the boiler, and Angela screamed, delighted, at the sight of three mares before her, the wind in her face, the feeling that she was flying, she was flying --

 

Angela straddled the center mare, the other two flanking: they fell naturally into position, though they were not harnessed.

It was two months after she'd proposed her idea to her Daddy, two months of she and her Daddy working with the Ladies, and when her Daddy was busy, Angela worked with the Ladies by herself.

Angela sat very straight, very properly.

"Yup!" she called, and the mares set out at a nice easy trot.

They made a hundred yards or so, and Angela called, "Geeeee!"

The Ladies wheeled right, just as pretty as you please:  they swung right, and Angela waited a little before calling "Geeee!" again, then "Haaawww!"

The mares turned, keeping very neatly abreast, clearly used to working with one another.

"Ho," Angela called, and they stopped, head-bobbing and tail-slashing.

The center mare felt Angela shift her weight.

Angela was riding on a saddle blanket: she rode with confidence, she rode with the natural affinity of a born horsewoman.

"Now for it," she whispered.

Angela Keller gripped the white mare's barrel with her young legs, drew a great volume of clear mountain air, gripped a double handful of white mane.

"SAINT CHRISTOPHER, SAINT FLORIAN AND THE BLESSED VIRGIN, LADIES, RUN!" Angela screamed, 

Three white mares launched ahead, surging powerfully against pasture's sod, a delighted girl bent over the center mare's neck, yelling "RUN, LADIES, RUN!"

Angela hadn't reckoned on just how fast a firehorse can run.

She didn't realize until too late the whitewashed board fence was coming up too fast for her to avoid.

Her throat locked shut as the earth pushed her away, pushed hard, and she felt her stomach part company from the rest of her and follow twenty feet behind.

A little distance away, a shocked mother dropped her dishtowel as three matched white mares soared over the near end of the pasture fence, three mares abreast, magical creatures of the air and not of the earth, and sticking to the back of the center mare, her daughter, her little girl, welded to a shining white horse like a burr on a blue tick hound.

It is an advantage to a small town that traffic on the main street is often rather light, for a laughing child on a white mare, flanked by two more, galloped full bore right down the center line, shod hooves a-clatter on pavement.

Fitz looked up, frowning, stepped out from behind his desk, went to a window that used to open on the firehorse stalls, and he saw three matched, shining mares, very precisely abreast, and a very familiar figure sitting very upright on the lead mare, calling "Haw, ladies, haw now," and three white mares haw'd, turning with little short of military precision, right up the firehouse apron, and then ho'd at her command.

Fitz surged out of his office, strode ahead of the squad, hit the overhead door button.

The door clattered and hummed open, flooding the station with sunlight, and perfectly framed in the opening, halfway down the cement apron, a blue-eyed girl in ponytails and a denim skirt, and three matched white mares, tail-slashing and head-bobbing.

"Hey Fitz!" Angela called.  "It works!"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller looked up at the knock on his door, strode for the glass front doors at his dispatcher's summons.

He pushed through the heavy glass doors, then the outer doors, looked down the street.

A whistle, a yell, a sight not often seen for more than a century: a shining, polished, steam powered fire fighting engine, pulling the ladder wagon, grinning men hanging onto apparatus, three white mares surging powerfully against their padded, shining, black collars:  smoke rolled out of the wide, blunt stack, the whistle screamed shrilly as Fitz hauled hard on the lanyard, clanging the burnished brass bell mounted just below the driver's seat.

Fitz was seated, grinning broadly, his white helmet mashed down on his close-cropped haircut, and beside him, a pretty girl in a denim skirt and ponytails, standing.

Linn watched as the three-mare-hitch came pounding up the street, as Angela yelled "Ho, ladies, ho there, ho now," and the engine, the men, the ladder wagon, came to a clattering stop, the Ladies dancing impatiently:  Angela looked down at her Daddy, her face just a-shinin' with pride.

"Hey Fitz!" Linn yelled, grinning.  "I thought only the Chief drove that rig!"

Fitz stood, lifted his white, pressed-leather helmet, set it on Angela's head, gripped her shoulders, laughed.

""YOU LONG TALL DRINK 'A' WATER!" he yelled.  "YER DAUGHTER'S BEEN PROMOTED!"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TO DANCE, TO KILL

Jacob Keller rose from his upholstered velvet theater seat, slipped out of the elevated box, down the stairs: his coat was unbuttoned, one hand on his holstered Colt's revolver.

Two men waited, peering through the side-curtains of the stage: each held a shotgun, both were weaving a little, the way a man will when he is willing a champion to greater skill in a skirmish.

One fell back a step.

Jacob released his grip on his engraved Colt, gripped the wire-wrapped handle of his fighting knife.

In the shadowed backstage, a lawman's arm whipped around a murderer's throat and a knife drove deep into a man's right kidney, detonating such an utter sunball of agony as to lock any scream well-deep in the dying man's throat.

Costumed dancers looked at one another, uncertain: like thespians of any age, none were unfamiliar with ad-libbed performances, but this was anything but what they expected.

One of their number was dancing, alone, just crossing center stage: she wore the full, free skirts of the Can-Can, she wore the same elbow-length gloves and the feather-plumed glitter mask they all wore:  she danced with a man, just two arm's lengths away: he, too, wore a mask, though his appeared to have been torn from the lining of an old coat.

The orchestra reached the end of the introductory stanza.

It was a bouncy, lively song, a favorite, if not the easiest to play: the conductor brought his arms down in the downbeat, and Offenbach's Can-Can started, bright, contagious, as a man and a woman crossed swords in the middle of the Colorado theater's stage, brightly lit by the lime lights at the front of the stage.

On cue, the dancers flowed across the back of the stage, their steps, the tossing of their skirts, in perfect time to the music.

Sarah Lynne McKenna's smile was wolfish as the music flowed through her, fired her young heart.

A man came to kill her, and she picked up a blade in opposition to his intent: he'd produced a sword, and so had she, but hers was the Schlager blade, a rapier with which she was more than intimately familiar.

Sword-beats, blocks and thrusts, the ringing of steel, played a near-perfect counterpoint to the bright, brassy, bouncy music:  dancing women, high-kicking legs and tossing skirts, surrounding them, lent an air of unreality to the performance:  the audience applauded, roared its approval, for  this was an unexpected -- but most entertaining! -- part of the dance routine.

 

Sheriff Marnie Keller snarled deep in her chest as the blade swung for her head.

She spun her blade -- a quick, expert arc, short and murderous -- she felt honed steel cut into the golem's arm above the back of the elbow, she dropped and kicked the side of its knee: the golem was not holding anything back, and neither was she.

Marnie Keller fought for the sheer brutal joy of fighting, knowing full well if she did not perform her very best, her husband would have to sew her back together, or worse.

She spun, blocked a blunt hand projector of some kind, drove her main-gauche through the hand that thrust at her, seeking her throat: she turned, a dancer's move, sliced down, hard, cut the tendons above the golem's knee:  she was a tornado in red cowboy boots and a denim skirt, she was Death, weaving a web of shining steel around herself.

She felt her eyes go pale and she felt the Rage uncoiling in her heart and she rejoiced as it filled her, as she released every bit of suppressed emotion, as she surrendered herself to a joyful slaughter.

Marnie remembered her children, killed when the Raiders came to Firelands, dead from traumatic decompression: she remembered laying her daughter and her son, one at a time, in the funeral recycler, laying them as gently as a mother, she remembered their laugh, the feel of their breath against her neck, how they looked when they slept --

Sheriff Marnie Keller screamed her rage, and she drove forward and abandoned herself to slaughter.

 

The man wasn't expecting any of this.

All he was supposed to do was grab a sword and back this dolly-bird, this painted doxy, to one end of the stage, where a shotgun would be put against the back of her head and she'd be sent to hell:  instead, she'd grabbed a sword and given him the definite impression he'd just kicked a hornet's nest.

A hornet's nest, made of blades.

This was no dolly-bird, this was a swordswoman -- here was a woman who knew the blade as intimately as she might know her husband -- here was a woman who danced, who played her steel against his, striking his blade and punishing it away from her, a woman who made him look like the veriest of fools --

Dancers circled them, trapping them center stage --

He turned, dropped the sword, fled --

 

Another Jacob, another century, walked into the exercise chamber, watched his pale eyed sister loose the cork on her personal beehive of hell-demons.

He wasn't sure why, but he stepped over to the control panel, touched the screen, keyed in a few quick commands.

Jacob knew the speakers in this chamber would shake the dust from between your ears.

He knew the bass response would shiver a man's heart on its stainless-steel mounts, would shake the floor underfoot.

He knew what music went well when Hell boiled over and murder sang in a man's heart, and he remembered how his Gammaw used to punish herself with her calisthenics, as she did push-ups between two monstrous speakers, using cast iron dumbbells as handles, driving herself down to the floor and back up to full extension in time to In the Hall of the Mountain King.

Jacob knew there was an arrangement on the computer that sounded like it was played by madmen, screaming their insanity through bass guitar strings and a monstrous pipe organ.

He touched the start button, turned, watched.

Sheriff Marnie Keller's skirt flared as she spun, she smiled as she fought: war-golems fell and were dragged away, more replaced them:  Marnie thrust, slashed, blocked, ducked, whirled: it was a dance from Hell, where Death screamed victory and steel drank the foeman's blood --

 

A man with a ragged mask ran through a gap in the stage curtains, running from the sure death that screamed like a panther and ran after him, one gloved, clawed hand extended, the other with a blade drawn back for the final thrust that would transfix him like an insect on a pin --

He looked forward just in time to see a pair of pale eyes in the darkness, glowing like ice-coals in the shadow of a black Stetson, just before a foot of hand forged Damascus steel drove into his stomach just below his breastbone.

Jacob thrust in and up, seized the man by the throat, as steel drove through the front of the man's coat, surprisingly bloodless, and Jacob felt Schlager steel scrape against his Damascus dirk.

He backed up quickly, allowing the curtains to swallow the plumed dancer in the glitter-mask, as ladies in voluminous skirts danced, high-kicked, whirled, tossed their petticoats left and right in time to the compelling music.

Sarah withdrew the Schlager, wiped it on the dead man's coattails, looked at the other two lying on the floor, silent and unmoving and very, very dead:  stagehands, horrified, watched wide-eyed as the dead man's mask was torn off, as a black-suited lawman and a dancer in a glitter mask looked at the face, looked at one another, nodded.

 

Sheriff Marnie Keller sagged.

She drove herself harder than anyone else had ever driven her.

She demanded more of herself than anyone ever had.

When she practiced, she held nothing back, she fought with a variety of weapons: swords were not the weapon of law enforcement, at least not on the worlds she'd known, but she also knew that skill-at-arms in one discipline, translated well into skill-at-arms in other disciplines.

She drove herself just as hard as had the legendary Sarah Lynne McKenna, an ancestress she particularly admired, whom she knew drove herself to the same deadly standard.

Marnie accepted the towel Jacob handed her, then the water.

"Feel better now?" Jacob asked quietly.

"Yeah," Marnie said, her voice husky.  "I do."

"Little Sis, I'd hate to face you," Jacob admitted frankly.

"I've seen you at war," Marnie replied quietly.  "I'd hate to face you too."

She sat, rubbed the back of her neck, then under her chin.

"I needed that," she said, almost gasping the words.

"I know."

"Grief," she spat.  "I hate it!"

Jacob turned, sat on the floor beside her.

"I know, Sis," he said, ran his arm around her shoulders, held her tight against his side.  "When you love, you love with all of your heart."

Marnie glared straight ahead, her jaw sliding forward, an expression of rebellion.

"We grieve because we've loved," Jacob continued, "and we grieve hard because we've loved deeply."

Marnie took a long breath, blew it out.

"Now you sound like Daddy."

"Thank you."

Marnie sagged against her brother, laid her head over on his shoulder.

"You know what?"

"What's that, Sis?"

"I'm hungry."

Jacob nodded.  "Mama would say that's a healthy sign."

Marnie laughed quietly, sighed again.  

"She always wanted me to be a girly girl," Marnie mused.  "I wonder what she'd think of me working with the golems."

"She's married to our father," Jacob said in a gentle voice.  "If she doesn't know about our family temper now, she never will!"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A FATHERLY RESPONSIBILITY

The white-gas furnace hissed loudly in the cavernous expanse of the barn.

Young Jacob Keller sat on an upturned five gallon bucket with a folded gunny sack for padding: at his young age, he could have parked his bony backside on a pine plank and been comfortable, but he was following his pale eyed father's example, and he admitted to himself it did improve things.

If nothing else, in cold weather, his hip pockets didn't get as cold.

Jacob fed another few ingots into the lead pot.

His Pa enjoyed the discipline of casting, and of handloading, and Jacob watched his Pa, learned from his Pa -- learned more than how to cast a perfect bullet, learned more than how to assemble his own handloads.

He learned due care and caution.

He learned efficiency and organization.

He never knew he was learning these things, but when the father sets the example, the son learns from the father, and so it was here.

His gloves were a little big, but they were thick, heavy leather welding gloves, and he'd had lead spatter before: experience is a hard teacher, and often a painful one, and Jacob did not mind one little bit wearing long sleeves and welder's gloves.

It wasn't unusual for his pale eyed Pa to join him in such moments.

Linn picked up a five gallon bucket, paced across the swept-clean, absolutely bare, concrete floor, turned his bucket over and folded up his long legs.

"Sir," Jacob said as he added a pea sized chunk of candle wax to the melted lead and stirred, "can I offer you a settin' pad for that?"

Linn raised a forestalling hand, smiled as the thick vapors ignited:  "Good of you to offer, Jacob, but if my backside isn't padded, I won't stay over long."

Jacob skimmed the crumbly grey dross off the shining face of his melted Linotype, picked up the mould where he'd had it set, preheating on the thick rim of his lead pot.

"Jacob," Linn said quietly, "let me tell you about my Pa."

Jacob dipped up some lead, poured it out, dipped again, pressed the dipper's spout firmly against the bullet mold's tapered pour hole: he rotated mold and dipper, held for a slow five count, brought the dipper down, twisted it a little:  still cold, he thought, eased the dipper back into the lead: he swiped the sprue plate, knocked the sprue back into the pot, opened the mold and dropped the misshapen casting into his palm, then carefully into the pot.

"Yes, sir?"

Linn watched as his son cast and rejected half a dozen bullets: by the seventh or eighth bullet, they were coming out to Jacob's satisfaction, and they dropped into his palm, then well to the side and into a bucket of water with a folded towel in the bottom: they hit the water with a momentary, vicious sizzle, Jacob checked his glove for any splash -- he was careful to drop from close to the surface to minimize splash -- and Linn nodded approval.

Jacob saw his father's Stetson brim tilt as he did, smiled just a little, but made no comment.

"Did I tell you about my father teachin' me how to drive?"

"Don't think so, sir."  He frowned at the shining lead-puddle on the sprue plate, reached down, turned the needle valve in slightly on the lead furnace: too hot, he thought, they'll go frosty on me if I'm not careful.

"One fine day he allowed as he was going to teach me to drive."

"Yes, sir?"

"You're ... how old now, Jacob?"

"Eleven, sir."

"Fifth grade."

"Yes, sir."

"You've been driving tractors and the truck for a while now."

"Yes, sir."

"You're also pretty good at double clutchin'."

"Thank you, sir."  Jacob's grin was sudden, bright, the way a boy will when he receives an unexpected praise.

"Recall when we went after wood a week ago and that sneaky thank-you-ma'am hid in the grass and about beat our liver loose?"

Jacob made another pour, considered, then nodded.

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry about that."

"Jacob."  Linn's voice was serious and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees.  "The next day I took the truck back for more wood. I knew that damned thing was there and I still hit it!"  Linn's voice was quiet, but Jacob could hear a smile behind the words. "You think I could miss that thing?  Ka-wham and by golly now I rearranged the junk in the truckbed!"

Jacob chuckled a little, turned, dropped another singing-hot, shining-silver bullet in the water quench.

"Jacob, I didn't say word one when you were drivin' and we hit it because you didn't know it was there. You were doin' everything right, your speed was good for that terrain, that damned low place snuck in and hid under the grass. Wasn't your fault a'tall."

"Thank you, sir."

"Now when my Pa was teaching me to drive, why, I couldn't do one damned thing right. I didn't hear anything from him but this is wrong, that is wrong, you can't keep screwing everything up, he did not say one single thing that I did right.

"I'd never got that much butt chewin' all at once in my entire life, and I hadn't really done anything wrong."

Linn took a long breath, looked around to make sure his wife was nowhere near.

"Jacob," he said quietly, "that was the closest I ever came to killin' myself."

Jacob looked at his father with a shocked expression: the dipper went into the lead pot, he opened the mould blocks, set them on the rim of the lead pot, leaned back.  "Sir?"

Linn nodded.  "He brow beat me down so much I figured I'd just kill me and put me out of his misery."

Jacob looked half sick.

"Mama knew somethin' was wrong. She fixed chicken soup and 'twas hot and salty and I recall how good it tasted.

"I looked over to the gun case and I talked to Mama and she talked to Pa and he let up some but that was the last time he allowed to teach me to drive."

Jacob looked half sick.

"That was the last time I ever let anyone brow beat me, Jacob.  It's worse when it's someone you close to you. Pa and I were estranged for a lot of years. Mama put the fear of God into him when I come home one Friday night before deadline. I was fevered and sick and he accused me of drinkin' and when I denied it he backhanded me a good one, knocked me down the stairs.

"I hit the wall and come to my feet, I cocked a fist and allowed as I was going to clean his clock.

"Next I remember I was layin' in a hospital bed with a wet rag over my forehead, Mama and two nurses was lookin' down at me and she said I fevered so bad I went down in convulsions. She told me after his death she'd looked at him when he come down stairs and said if he ever raised a hand to me again, she would kill him on the spot, and that's the first time he ever saw her eyes go dead white when she was a-lookin' at him."

"Yes, sir," Jacob said faintly.

Linn laid a careful hand on his son's shoulder. 

"Jacob, I'm not perfect and I've made plenty of mistakes. I'd like to think my Pa did me a favor when he made those mistakes with me."

"Sir?"

"He showed me what not to do."  Linn squeezed Jacob's shoulder gently, looked Jacob's operation over again and nodded.

"You're usin' an old coffee can for your dross," he said, nodding.  "That's better than I did.  I just threw the dross on the floor and splattered up a terrible mess.  Cleaned up as much of it as I could, then I poured this concrete slab."  

Linn winked, grinned.

"You, sir, are doing it right," he said.  "Carry on."

Jacob turned back to his bullet casting, but there was no mistaking the expression a boy gets when he earns the praise of a man he respects.

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I'VE GOT TO CLEAN OFF MY BOOTS

 

Joseph Keller held up his worse for wear Carhartt.

It used to be new.

It used to be a nice brown, it didn't have holes scorched in it, it didn't have fray-marks where he'd torn it here and there.

It was faded, it was stained, it was patched and sewn and repaired and it was warm and it was comfortable, and right now, it was wet and it was muddy.

Just like Joseph.

He sat down on the back steps, hooked off his boots: he peeled out of his jeans, emptied the pockets, stacked the contents up against the sides of the steps so they wouldn't get stepped on: he slung his belt and its holstered pistol over his left shoulder, shoved sock feet back into muddy boots (he'd get to those later) and picked up coat and jeans and strode across the back yard towards the ancient, green painted, cast iron pump.

Joseph dropped coat and jeans, walked over to the shed, pulled the washtub cautiously from its peg: the galvanized tub was well older than he and tended to grow wasp nests, so he brought it off cautiously, watching for any airborne objections to his removal.

There was none.

He packed the tub over to the pump, proceeded to fill it about halfway, added his muddy jeans and his muddy coat, bent over and proceeded to give them a good hand laundering in cold wellwater.

Joseph Keller pumped and dumped three times before he was satisfied, before he carried his soaky wet and water-drizzling duds into the house, stuffed them in the Maytag, added a little soap and set 'em to thrashin'.

Only then did he go back outside for the stuff he kept in his pockets.

 

Joseph Keller was young and full of fire, like most young men his age: he rode an Appaloosa, he carried a single action .357, he wore a Stetson and an almost perpetual grin, and he was determined to do something better than a personal hero.

He wasn't sure quite what, but it was important that he do something very well indeed.

For whatever perverse reason, Joseph Keller decided he would be better with la reata than his ancestral hero, Old Pale Eyes.

Joseph Keller practiced with rifle and with sixgun, he and Jacob scrounged lead and molded bullets, they hand loaded their own -- it would have been easier to let their Pa buy bulk through the Sheriff's office, but both of the Keller young found a comfort in bringing order to a chaotic universe, by setting up ordered ranks of cartridge brass, to methodically resize and deprime, reprime and consult their loading manuals, their handwritten records, and then after considering different charges, pressures, projected trajectories and the like, they reloaded according to a standard load their father settled on years before, one that performed well and they saw no sense in changing.

Joseph Keller, like his brothers, his sisters and his pale eyed Pa, studied the handwritten Journals like Old Pale Eyes studied Scripture, and when Joseph read the old lawman with the iron grey mustache complaining about his own frustrating lack of success with casting a loop, why, this century-plus-later descendant found a quick and easy way to outdo this shining icon of their ancestry.

Joseph Keller's preferred horsepower was under a saddle: he drove, yes, as did all the Keller young, as soon as they could reach the clutch and the brake, tractor and ranch truck at first and then the other vehicles, but Joseph was most at home with a genuine, four-wheel-drive, Oatsmobile.

Joseph watched his pale eyed Pa working with the matched white mares, keeping them in practice for those state occasions when they drew the steam powered fire engine; his Pa would walk, or trot sometimes, behind them when he was working with them, and one fine day Joseph decided he would work with the mares as well.

This, too, was not unusual.

All the Keller young were known to the mares; all the Keller young were well practiced at harnessing the mares, at attaching a wagon or a drag sled, or trotting along behind them, training them to turn and wheel together, smoothly, so they looked really good in a parade, or the other occasions when they might be in the public eye.

This one fine day, Joseph Keller decided he'd ride the wheeled sled.

They had a drag sled for off road use, but for road work, he'd engineered a sled with four spoked wheels, donated from scrapped out bicycles harvested from somewhere.

Joseph Keller stood on the sled, his ever present lariat dropped over his head and across his chest:  he held what looked like a set of reins, but these connected to the backs of the horses' padded collars.

These ersatz reins were useful to keep Joseph from falling over.

The mares were voice trained, and so Joseph sang cheerfully to them as they trotted down the gravel driveway, ho'd at the intersection, gee'd to the right, and set out on the unoccupied back road.

He honestly did not know what he was about to get into.

 

Joseph Keller stripped off the rest of what he was wearing and donated it to the Maytag with his not-quite-so-filthy jeans and his much-less-muddy coat, then went upstairs, barefoot, wearing his Stetson and nothing else.

He decided he could leave the Maytag to its labors.

He needed a shower.

He looked in the mirror, touched his cheek bone -- it was puffy and starting to color -- he knew he'd likely have some bruises, but it had been worth it.

His Pa came in while his son was upstairs, washing off the signs of his recent adventure.

 

"Ho, girls, ho, now," Joseph called: the fire truck was pulled off the roadway, straddling a ditch: a fireman was on top of the car -- a vehicle was on its side -- the door was propped open, a limp figure was being hoisted out, then another, handed off to the medics.

Joseph was content to watch; the mares drowsed, hip-shot, giving the impression of terrible boredom.

"I CAN'T GET THIS ONE!" Joseph heard:  he stepped off the road sled, strode forward to the mares, rubbed their jaws:  they turned their heads toward him, their ears swinging to him as he spoke.

"Stand, ladies," he said firmly.  "Stand."

His Ladies were voice trained: he'd used "Stand" before, he had no idea if his sisters or his Pa used it, but he'd had success with the command.

Joseph strode around the back of the up-on-its-side sedan.

A hand stuck out from under the car.

Joseph looked at it, looked at the car, turned to Fitz.

"You need this back on its wheels?"

"And fast," Fitz snarled.  "ALL RIGHT, LET'S PUSH IT --"

"I can pull it," Jacob said, unslinging his lariat.  "I'll need another rope, one won't be enough."

"MULDOON!" Fitz roared.  "GET TH' ROPE!" 

Jacob heard the sound of running fireboots:  he grabbed the edge of the broken out window, bounced once, hoisted himself up atop the side of the car.

He ran his lariat around the pillar, twice, ran it through its own loop, threw the tag end toward the mares.

A coarse hemp line was thrust up at him.

He ran it around the pillar as well, threw a fast Bowline in the line, coiled the twisted rope and slung it after the length of his lariat.

Joseph, young, skinny, wiry, jumped from the car, landed in soft mud, and landed wrong: he rolled out, as he'd been trained, smacked his cheek on an anonymous rock, came up on his feet, seized the lines and ran for his beloved Ladies.

He dropped the lines, ran ahead, took the mares by their bridles, turned them:  they turned, easily, lightly, almost daintily:  he released the bridles.

"Stand, ladies," he murmured, strode behind them, bent, snatched up the lines.

Joseph unhitched the wheeled sled and gave it a push, rolling it out of the way:  he tied off lariat and twisted hemp, working fast, spinning a Bowline in each line with a practiced ease.

He stood, raised a fisted hand.

Fitz looked over the car, gave a go-ahead wave.

"Yup, ladies," Joseph called.  "Yup, now."

Three matched white mares leaned into their collars, felt resistance, set their hooves, pulled.

"Yup, ladies," Joseph called again.

The car groaned, came down on its wheels, hard: "Ho, now," Joseph called, and the mares ho'd.

"Back."

Three matched white mares backed, on command, then "Ho," and Joseph worked the Bowline out of the twisted hemp line, then his own.

He left the fire department's line where it was, but coiled his own as he advanced on the vehicle: men were bent over and busy -- Joseph didn't look, he didn't want to see what horror he'd uncovered -- he looked down as his right boot, then his left, ankle deep in the mud.

He realized he'd landed in mud, and he'd gotten up in mud, and he'd been so focused on getting the Ladies to bring the car off whatever the casualty was, that he'd completely ignored the fact that he was wet, muddy, and probably looked altogether a fright.

Joseph Keller hitched the wheeled sled back up, looked around:  seeing himself ignored, he concluded he could do no more here.

Joseph took up his ersatz reins, stood his muddy boots on the wheeled platform.

"Yup, ladies," he called.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller waited until his younger son came downstairs before addressing the matter.

Joseph was in clean, dry clothes, he was silently rejoicing at the sensuous luxury of warm, dry socks, thinking of his muddy boots, still set neatly beside the back steps.

Linn loafed casually against the kitchen sink, looked at his son.

"Much of a fight?" he asked, looking at Joseph's coloring-up cheekbone.

"No, sir," Joseph grinned.  "I hit the ground and the ground hit me."

"I've done that," Linn agreed, nodding, took another pull on his coffee.  

"Sean tells me you gave someone a chance."

Joseph stopped, blinked, his expression troubled.

The Maytag quietly rumbled its displeasure at being off-balance.

"I was exercising the Ladies," Joseph said.  "They did the work."

Linn nodded.  

"I understand you remembered the knots."

Joseph's grin was quick, genuine.  "Yes, sir," he nodded.  "You showed me, and that's what I used."

It was Linn's turn to grin.

When the Old Man teaches something, and what he taught, is put to use, it tells the father that the son was actually listening.

Joseph's grin faded.

"Sir," he said, "I think someone was under the car."

Linn nodded.

Joseph waited while Linn considered the inscrutable secrets to be found at the bottom of his coffee mug.

"Joseph," Linn finally said, "do you remember me telling you about Uncle Pete running over your Grandma Willamina's leg with the tractor?"

Joseph blinked, frowned, then looked at his father, nodded.

"She'd fallen off and he run the back tire over the back of her leg. He thought he'd just crushed her leg, but she was in mud and all she got was filthy."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, she got bruised up some too." 

Linn looked very directly at his son.

"There's a boy in ER that's bruised up some, but he's alive."

Joseph closed his eyes for a long moment, took a long breath, blew it out, nodded.

"Thank you, sir," he said quietly, then:  "I've got to clean off my boots."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FLUENT

"Pa?"

"Yes, Jacob?"

Sheriff Linn Keller and his wife, their children and most of Firelands, had just left the little whitewashed church: Linn knew Shelly had something in the oven that smelled really, really good, the fire was turned off and it was being kept warm from habit -- at least that's how he explained it to one of his youngest sons -- Jacob looked at his Pa with a serious expression, then he looked down and frowned at the gravel underfoot, his bottom jaw sliding out as he did.

Dear God, Shelly thought, he is his father's twin! 

Linn felt his wife's hand tighten just slightly and he looked at her and winked, then looked back at Jacob as his son looked back up.

Linn recognized a moment, the moment when a young man reaches a decision, no matter how small.

"Story at eleven, sir," Jacob said quietly.

"Jacob, if it's important enough to consider, we can surely talk 'er all over."

"No, sir," Jacob said, looking at his Mama:  "Sunday dinner is waitin' and I don't want to mess up Mama's routine."

Shelly gave her son a warm look, a silent thanks: it was one of those rare moments when a woman's silent communication was actually understood by the male of the species.

The short drive home was nearly silent, and Jacob considered that it was almost worth it to harness up the good carriage instead of taking the Jeep: they had a little more room, and he liked to look around, just like his pale eyed father:  in the Language of Linn, the Sheriff would address wife or son or daughter and say "You drive, I want to gawk."

Today, though, Linn drove: when there was no need for haste, Jacob considered, the Grand Old Man lives up to the reputation his wife often accused him of, and drove like an old man.

Young eyes were active, young enthusiasm grew restless in the back seat as Linn backed his long wheelbase Jeep into its usual place: his young were trained to wait until the ignition was off -- but youthful energies made it look like the doors exploded open, and young feet hit the ground running, boys and girls alike, and the happy call went up:

"Brother William!"

A familiar figure rose from the front porch swing: a tall, lean, tonsured man, his bald head tanned, staff in hand and a grin on his face: the Keller young swarmed up onto the porch, surrounded the man: young arms embraced him, and he stooped a little, surrendering his walking stick to a grinning little boy, and somehow managed to hug them all to him.

One of Linn's favorite memories of his old friend was one of these, where his tribe surrounded the cleric in happy, noisy greeting, and the man threw his head back and laughed.

Linn and Shelly's youngest was just talking, and barely that: Linn was packing the little boy and stopped at the foot of the steps, turned so his fist-chewing little boy could see their guest and said, "Who's that?" and the little boy waved his wet fist and declared, "Woom Coffee!"

Linn and the Abbot laughed, and the youngest of the Keller tribe laughed with them: the lad could not frame his words clearly yet, and when the Abbot's love of brewed coffee gained him the nickname "William Coffee," it came out "Woom Coffee" -- the Abbot confided, after the first time he was so called, that the nickname would stick, and he was right.

Linn tapped a code into the panel and applied his thumbprint, unlocked the door, drew it open: the family flowed into the house in a happy, colorful cascade: Linn shook hands with his old friend, and two men of like height took a moment, united in more than their handshake.

"I'm glad you're here," Linn said quietly, just as the smell of Shelly's Sunday dinner came floating out to seize them both by the appetite.

"I'm sorry we don't have fried chicken for Sunday dinner," Linn said, and the Abbot's stomach growled to smell Shelly's roast beef, prepared in an oven top roaster well older than she was.

Aunt Mary had been famous for her roast beef, and she taught Linn's Mama how to make it.

Willamina, in turn, taught Shelly how to make it, and Shelly was grateful for the instruction, for her own mother died several years earlier:  Willamina did not just accept Shelly as Linn's wife, Willamina unhesitatingly adopted Shelly into their family, and Shelly felt Willamina's death as deeply as she'd felt her own mother's.

Today, though, when Shelly put on her mismatched oven mitts and drew the ancient oval roaster from the oven, set it atop the stove, as Angela put a final whip on the steaming bowl of mashed potatoes, as gravy and biscuits and green beans and coleslaw descended to the table, they did so, solely with the power of the distaff: as good as it smelled in the kitchen, the men wisely withdrew to Linn's study.

Jacob knew the Abbot and his father would be seated, and it would be difficult to address them after, so before they sat, Jacob said, "I would counsel with you."

Father and Abbot both stopped, turned, looked very directly at Jacob.

"With both of you," Jacob added, his voice and his face serious.

"Then let us counsel," Brother William said, his voice businesslike.

"Chairs," Linn said, and willing young hands seized three chairs, brought them together in front of Linn's desk, and the three sat.

Three tall men -- two matured, one young, all lean and serious-faced -- sat, and leaned forward, elbows on their knees.

"Sir," Jacob said, looking at Abbot William, "I am missing something."

The Abbot looked very directly at the Sheriff's oldest son.

"Sir, I am not clear on praying to Mary or the Saints."

"Ah, that," the Abbot replied, with a knowing nod.

"Sir, I know you are a man of wisdom and you are a man of honor and of honesty. You would not violate Scripture. I must therefore conclude that my knowledge is not complete."

"You're thinking of idolatry."

"Yes, sir."

The Abbot smiled, nodded.  "A common misconception."  He rubbed his palms together, slowly, meditatively.

"You've been in our Sanctuary."

"I have, sir."

"You've seen statues of the Saints and of the Blessed Mother."

"I have, sir."

"What are they?"

Jacob frowned, turned his head a little.  "Sir?"

"They're painted plaster," the Abbot said gently.  "That's all they are.  Do we pray to a statue?"

"Do you, sir?"

"No."

Jacob waited.

"Jacob, what is used to define any word in a courtroom setting?"

Jacob blinked, looked at his father.

"The dictionary, sir."

"Exactly right," the Abbot nodded.  "Webster's Dictionary is stipulated to in every courtroom as THE definition for any word."  He looked at Linn, who rose, went to a shelf:  he ran a finger along the bound volumes, pulled one, gripped it, brought it back to their little conclave.

"Jacob, would you look up the word 'pray', please."

Jacob accepted the dictionary from his father, paged quickly through the P's, ran his finger down one column, down another.

He read.

He looked up.

"What is the definition of 'pray'?" the Abbot asked.

"To speak with respect."

The Abbot winked, nodded.

"Do you remember reading legal briefs that pray that the court accepts this-or-that?"

"I do, sir."

"Do these legal briefs address the Court as a deity?"

"No, sir."

"Given Brother Webster's definition, does the word 'pray' in a legal brief make more sense?"

"It does, sir."

"Now if we pray to the Almighty," Abbot William prompted.

"We speak with respect," Jacob replied, his face brightening.

The Abbot nodded, raised a teaching finger.

"You're wondering about praying to the saints."

"I ... yes, sir."

"Jacob, if I am having a hard way of it, might I ask you to pray for me?"

"Of course, sir."

"Upon our death, we become closer to God than we are here on earth. Now if I want to catch the ear of a powerful individual, might I consult someone closer to that individual than I am -- for instance, if I needed something from the Sheriff, might I address a Deputy, or if I wished the attention of the Mayor, might I address the secretary?"

Jacob nodded.  "Yes, sir."

"Might we then ask our Sacred Mother, or one of the Saints, if they would pray for us?"

Jacob considered.  "Yes, sir."

"We don't address the Saints or the Theotokos as if they were deity, Jacob.  We address them as a cherished friend, we address them with respect, and ask them to speak with respect on our behalf."

Angela came in the room, looked at the men with the quiet amusement a woman holds for men who are huddled in serious discussion.

"Dinner's ready," she said quietly:  the men rose, young hands gripped the chairs, drew them back to their usual places against the book- and weapon-lined walls.

"Abbot, could I prevail upon you for a blessing on our meal?" Linn asked as they walked into the kitchen.

Bother William waited until they were seated, until only he and Linn were standing.

"Of course," he said in a gentle voice.

"A good Catholic blessing?" Angela asked innocently as she shot a look at her older brother.

The Abbot laughed.

"I can do that," he chuckled.  "I speak fluent Catholic!"

 

 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THESE QUESTIONS ALWAYS COMES UP

Sheriff Linn Keller smiled a little as he remembered.

His pale eyes rose from the blank page before him, swung up to the heavy timbers  of the front wall of his Sheriff’s office, tracked a little to the left, as if looking through them towards their church.

He dipped the pen’s steel nib into good black India ink, and wrote his thoughts.

 

Joseph was quiet as he ate.

The Abbot looked at this fast-growing member of the Sheriff’s family and considered that the lad needed to drink some gear grease, lest the gears turning behind those pale eyes run dry and start to gall.

 

Conversation was easy and congenial: laughter was a frequent guest at the Sheriff’s table, and so it was this Sunday: the Abbot arranged for the day off from his duties at the Monastery, he’d left a trusted adjutant in charge, for there were times when he felt moved to be elsewhere.

 

Joseph seemed inclined to speak, twice, but frowned a little and held his counsel: father, mother and guest all noticed, as did the observant Angela: the Abbot inquired quietly as to Joseph’s having scored well at the last Sheriff’s Invitational, he asked Angela about her having competed in dressage, and apologized when she admitted she hadn’t done Dressage but she’d like to, then a younger Keller spoke up and tattled that “Sissie jumps the fence like it’s not even there!” and then pretended to utter innocence as mother and sister gave her the Feminine Death Glare.

 

The Abbot hid his smile behind a bent wrist: plates were switched out, a thick slice of chocolate cake with whipped cream and a cherry slipped in below the tonsured cleric’s chin, was lowered to the table:  Angela whispered, “I knew you were coming, so I made this for you!”

The men retreated to the Sheriff’s study.

The Abbot looked very directly at Joseph and asked him quietly to join them:  surprised, he did: normally after a meal, it was exclusively his Pa and a guest that entered the Sanctum.

To be invited, to be included, was a signal honor.

The Abbot’s wrist-thick staff was parked by the front door; he saw no need to bring it into the study, and so drew up a chair in front of the Sheriff’s desk, as had been done not long ago for another conference.

Three sat together, and the ladies busied themselves in the kitchen as the men hunched forward.

“Joseph,” the Abbot said quietly, “something occupies your thoughts.”

“Yes, sir,” Joseph admitted.

“I understand,” he said carefully, “the Holy Mother Church recognizes there may be life on other planets.”

It was evident by his careful phrasing, by his looking to his father, that he wished to broach a subject long on his mind, but he did not want to let any felines out of the burlap, so to speak.

Linn and the Abbot looked at one another, looked at Jacob.

“Walk with me,” Linn said, and rose.

His two guests rose.

The three filed out the front door: Linn and his son settled Stetsons on their heads, and the Abbot took up his Eastern ironwood staff, and they walked slowly toward the barn.

Linn waited until they were within.

Joseph recognized the Sheriff’s gesture, near the door frame: there was a nearly inaudible sizzle, and Joseph knew if he reached for the skin of the barn, he’d find a warm, invisible, vibrating barrier of some kind.

His father had just engaged some offworld technology – Joseph wasn’t sure just how – but he did know this made their barn absolutely impervious to surveillance of any kind.

The Abbot looked at the Sheriff, raised an eyebrow:  Linn nodded and said quietly, “You may speak freely now.”

The Abbot rested a hand on Joseph’s shoulder.

“I am aware of the Confederacy,” he said quietly, “and yes, there is a liaison between the Holy Mother Church and those worlds on which the True Faith exists.”
Joseph nodded carefully.  “Does Marnie know about this?”

“Who do you think made the arrangements, little brother?” a familiar voice declared, and a pair of red cowboy boots whispered across the clean-swept cement floor at little short of a run.

Father and guest stepped back and grinned at the happy collision of a big sister and a little brother, at the delighted “MARNEE *ooofff!*”, at the sight of a joyful embrace.

The Abbot caught Joseph’s Stetson before it fell.

Brother and sister released one another; the Abbot handed Joseph back his immaculate skypiece and smiled at the pale eyed Ambassador Marnie Keller.

“Marnie has been instrumental in establishing certain … connections,” the Abbot said carefully.  “Your father has given me to understand you are privy to our secrets, and assures me of your discretion.”

“Yes, sir,” Joseph said seriously.

“Good. I supposed as much from the depth of your question.”

“How did you come to this question in the first place?” the Abbot asked, and Joseph grinned.

“Well, sir, y’see, it’s like this.”

 

Young Joseph Keller was not just quiet, he was silent as the Sheriff drove their fine carriage the little distance from home to their whitewashed Church.

Joseph stood when they stood, bowed his head when his family bowed theirs, sang with a good voice when the family sang, listened with polite attention to the sermon, until he got interested in what the Parson was saying, then he leaned forward, his face intent, very obviously hanging on the man’s every word.

Joseph was just as quiet as they filed out, as he shook hands, smiled a little, nodded politely, helped his sisters into the carriage, climbed in himself.

His father found him in the back pasture, alone, save for his favorite saddlehorse:  Linn walked up to his son, waited.

“Sir,” Joseph said, “I don’t know everything.”

Linn nodded.

He hadn’t addressed his son; Joseph was facing away from him; Linn came up quietly, he’d not spoken, but Joseph had his Mama’s preternatural senses, and knew when someone was there, without looking.

“Then you are wiser than most grown men,” Linn replied, resting a hand on his son’s shoulder.

“I been talkin’ to God about it, sir.”

Linn nodded. 

“Been known to do that my own self.”

“Sir, I was talkin’ to God yesterday.”

Linn waited.

“I wasn’t wearin’ my fancy go-to-meetin’s. I wasn’t in Church.  ‘Twas just me and the Almighty.”

Linn nodded again.

“Sir, I do enjoy wearin’ my good duds, and the girls look really nice all dressed up, but I don’t reckon it’s needful to do all that to talk to God.”

 

Sheriff Linn Keller saw his tonsured guest on his way: he and the Abbot took the Sheriff’s Jeep to the depot, and Abbot William departed for the Rabbitville monastery by steam train, as he usually did: the Abbot had a surprising influence in that part of the state, and was instrumental in getting the old rail line reopened – which also worked well for the tourist runs, for the Rabbitville monastery, being one of the oldest in the region, was a popular tourist and pilgrimage destination both.

Linn came back and parked his Jeep, then went back out to the barn, out the back door, saw his son out in the field.

Linn smiled a little, for he was known to do this same thing, to go off alone when he wanted to think.

He remembered the night before, when he’d consulted his pale eyed ancestor’s Journal, and read of another Joseph, another Sheriff, another Abbot, and their quiet conversation after Sunday dinner, when an earlier Joseph spoke his thoughts, and worked through an idea: he’d come to his own conclusion on the matter, but he wanted to trot it past a greater wisdom than his own, and so he spoke of it to his pale eyed father, and their dignified guest, how he’d concluded that form and formality are necessary parts of society, that the courts and the Church are given due honor by getting dressed up.

Linn stood behind his barn and looked out at his son, and nodded, for he remembered thinking the same thoughts that his predecessor with the iron grey mustache wrote in his Journal.

“These questions,” he said quietly, “always come up.”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I'VE HAD FROSTING ENOUGH

A man sat in a jail cell and stared at the opposite wall.

He'd been brought in, he'd been processed:  fingerprints, mug shots, information gathering, all takes time.

Time it had taken, but it was not enough time for him.

He sat in a locked cell, eyes wide, not seeing what his eyes were staring at, and if one were to lay gentle fingertips on his knuckles, one would not feel him shaking.

One would feel him vibrating.

That's what happens when a man looks Death itself in the eyes, and realizes those cold, bony fingers were starting to close, slowly, inexorably, unforgivingly, about his very soul.

A criminal, a man who'd started as a bully and become a thief and then a knockout artist, a man who'd come to the end of his criminal actions in a little backwater Colorado county, sat rigidly the way a man will when he's finally realizing that his actions brought him to this point, that his actions almost gained him an appointment with the embalmer's table.

It hadn't been the shotgun that brought him to this hard and absolute realization.

It was that pale eyed woman, that frosty eyed Sheriff, who was so absolutely unimpressed with him, with his knife, with his threats, with his apparent willingness to attack.

He'd been faced down by a woman who'd shown absolutely, positively, no fear.

She hadn't even been impressed.

 

A pale eyed Sheriff's deputy stared at the glowing screen in front of him.

He remembered the feel of checkered walnut in his fisted grip, he remembered the feel of machined steel sliding smoothly at his command:  he remembered the sharp, commanding sound of a twelve gauge SLAMMING into battery, and how the rifle sight centered itself in the fuzzy ring of a generous rear peep.

Jacob Keller remembered the feel of the smooth, blued-steel trigger as he began his trigger squeeze, he remembered releasing it at the Sheriff's nonverbal command, at the turn-and-back of her hand she used in such moments.

Jacob Keller took a long breath, blew it out, remembered how cold and frosty his Mama's voice had been when she planted her knuckles on her hips and said "Don't even think about it!"

His Mama faced a knife at half the Tueller distance: Jacob expected her to draw and fire without hesitation, but instead she lowered her head a fraction, he saw her face grow white and the skin tighten over his cheekbones, and he knew her eyes would've been the frosted shade of a mountain glacier's frozen heart.

Jacob brought the shotgun to shoulder, SLAMMED the fore-end back, SLAMMED it forward, his finger ready, he had the ramp front sight on the man's shoulder -- Stop the arm, stop the weapon -- 

The knife clattered to the floor.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller sat at her desk, staring at her own screen.

She closed her eyes for a long moment, then she composed a memo, to be distributed to all members of the Sheriff's Office, with a copy to her twin brother, the town's Chief of Police.

It was brief and to the point, as were most of her communications:

Due to reasons of health, I will be off duty until further notice, more to follow.

She wrote the words, reviewed the words, hit SEND, rose.

Willamina walked to her private bathroom, turned on both sets of lights, looked at her face, leaned closer, her eyes wide:  she blinked, nodded, then turned and picked up her jacket.

Sheriff Willamina Keller, the pale eyed daughter of a murdered Ohio town marshal, granddaughter of a series of pale eyed Firelands County sheriffs, opened her office door and stepped out, her carved-leather saddlebag purse slung diagonally across her body, the way she wore it when she was leaving.

Her pace was as brisk and as businesslike as it usually was.

She tapped on the conference room door, opened it, stepped in.

Jacob rose.

Willamina walked up to her son, looked at him for a very long moment.

"We need to talk."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Have a seat."

"Yes, ma'am."

Jacob lowered himself into his chair.

"You've written your report?"

"I have, ma'am."

"Sign it 'Acting Sheriff.' "

Jacob came suddenly to his feet.

"Ma'am?"

"Effective now, you are in charge."

Jacob looked closely at his Mama's eyes, his expression concerned.

"I'm having cataract surgery," Willamina said quietly.  "I asked the ophthalmologist when the time was right to have them done."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Jacob" -- Willamina blinked, looked away, looked back.

"Jacob, night driving has been more and more difficult, but I've been too contrary to admit it."

Jacob walked around the end of the table, walked up to his mother, waited; his mother leaned into the warm, solid reassurance of her son's uniform shirt front, held him with one arm, then both arms, and Jacob held his mother, leaned his head over, lay his cheek over on top of her head.

"Jacob," she whispered, "I didn't see the knife."

He felt her shiver, once -- it was all she ever allowed herself, no matter how bad the situation -- she drew back, looked up into her son's face.

"I took a long look at my eyes, Jacob," she said.  "It's time. Glare and low light and it's like looking through frost."

Willamina hesitated, then nodded as if she'd made a decision.

"Jacob, I've been thinking about retiring. Consider this your test flight. I want you to think about being Sheriff full time."

Jacob's hands were firm on his Mama's shoulders.

"If you're sure," he whispered.

"I'm sure," she said, with no hesitation. "After today, I've had frosting enough."

She held her son tighter, and Jacob held his mother as she repeated, whispering the words, "I've had frosting enough."

Edited October 2, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I CAST A SHADOW

This is about where he stood that morning.

It was chilly enough my Carhartt felt good, and Apple-horse blew steam as he stopped, head-bobbing, impatient.

We drew up on the skyline with morning sun behind me and our shadow screaming out across the valley and I grinned like a boy at the thought that I'd just cast my shadow over more than a mile.

Try that back in the flat country.

I slouched comfortably in the saddle, looking around, as usual my mind was running in two or three different directions at the same time -- sizing up what I saw, what I heard, thinking back on what I'd read, remembering that long empty shaft shaped like a man on a horse punched through the sunlit half-mist on below me.

I rode on toward a house I knew of, and the man that lived there.

 

Grief is a funny thing and I pack way too much of it my own self.

I've lost family and I've lost friends and maybe that's how I don't come across as clumsy as some I've seen when somebody else loses someone.

Hell, I dunno, I thought viciously.

I'm not God's gift to the bereaved.

Apple-horse picked his way down-trail and I frowned a little, my eyes were still busy but part of my mind was chewin' on that train of thought.

Bein' a lawman, I run across people at their very worst, whether it's their fault or not.

That sticks with a man even when he don't want it to.

Doesn't, I silently corrected myself.

Marnie wouldn't let that stand and she's right, people judge me by how I speak.

I looked on ahead, looked around: all was quiet, the air was a little damp, easy breathin' ... I'd grown up here in the high country and I've been told my blood is thicker than a Lowlander's, and there my mind chased down another rabbit trail.

Highlander, lowlander.

You're part Scots so I reckon you can use the term.

I grinned at that stray rumination, picturing myself in a greatkilt and woad, screaming into battle with a Cleagh Mohr, ready to cut the legs out from under the hated British, then I dismissed the notion as a distraction.

I couldn't afford distractions.

Not even here, amongst my beloved hills, with morning's sun warming my back and nothing a-threatenin' me anywhere near.

I'd learned early in life, and the hard way, that evil strikes anytime, anywhere, and without warning, so even here I practiced the steady vigilance that kept me alive in times past and likely would again.

It took me and Apple-horse a little while to get to the old man's house and by the time we got there, he was awake -- like the legendary Silas P. McGutrumble, the old man had creaked his way out of bed, heartily profaning the day and all it contained -- and I grinned at that stray thought.

Silas McGutrumble was invented by my best friend, rest his soul, for a high school essay, and he knew he'd get a good grade when the teacher read it, when the teacher started to turn red and snicker, when the teacher tried to hide his expression behind a cupped hand over his mouth, when he gave up and laughed openly and told Bob he should become a writer.

Bob died of overwork and diabetes before he could publish and I long thought that a damned shame, for he was like me -- a commodion -- he was so full of it he needed flushed, and I miss the man.

That was a stray thought too and I swatted it aside.

Wasn't far to the house now.

 

"I was up," came the growl from behind the opening door, "ain't got much," and I handed him a wrapped bundle.

"Now what the hell is all this?" he demanded sourly.

I stuck out my hand.

"Jist thinkin' about 'cha," I said ... the same words, same cadencing, same inflection I always used.

He gripped my hand, nodded.

"Well, hell, I got coffee anyhow."

I hung my Stetson beside the door, looked back out at Apple-horse, standing hipshot and head down, looking like he was going to collapse just any moment.

He did that because he'd learned women-folks and girls would feel sorry for him and they'd come an fuss over him and feed him treats if they had any, the bum.

 

"You know how many folks has in-quaaar'd about m' health an' welfare?"

I shook my head.

"You're it.  You're th' only one.  Ain't no one else cared 'nuff since she died."

I nodded slowly.

He leaned an elbow on the table, shook an unused spoon at me.

"That's th' trouble with this world t'day," he declared, then lowered his hand and tapped the handle of the spoon against the tablecloth for emphasis:  "ain't no one concerns themself with no one else! Nossir! Why, in my day was there --"

He stopped, looked up, frowned.

I'd heard it, too, the sound of a car pulling up:  doors slammed, there was the rapid scamper of youthful feet, the front door exploded inward with a burst of sunlight and a happy "Grampa!"

The old man turned his chair away from the table and opened his arms and two happy, noisy grandchildren ran into him and hugged him, their parents coming in at a much lower velocity, closing the door behind them.

I rose, nodded to the wife, shook hands with the husband, drew him a little to the side.

"I brought him a few groceries," I said quietly, "you can likely make a meal out of it and he'll have some left over for later."
I turned and plucked my Stetson from its peg, slipped quietly out the door, strode quickly for Apple-horse.

It had been a year to the day since the old man's wife died, and damned if I was going to let him be forgot.

Apple-horse and I headed back up the trail.

This is about where Old Pale Eyes stopped and looked at his own shadow.

He'd come to sit with an old man who'd lost his wife.

I stopped at the summit and looked back and my shadow was considerably shorter, and I couldn't help but grin, rememberin' how happy that irascible old fellow was to have someone share his table, someone who listened while he cheerfully give the world billy Hell, and how I'd guaranteed he'd have provisions enough to feed him and his family both.

Was I a prideful man I would consider that long morning shadow I'd cast, and I might've puffed up with pride and allowed as yes, I cast a long shadow in this county, but was I to do that I would surely come to grief.

I learned -- long ago, and the hard way -- that it's when I take myself too serious, I end up lookin' like the north end of a south bound horse.

"Yup, Apple," I said quietly, and Apple-horse stepped out and pointed his nose toward home.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND WHAT OF THE MOTHER?

Reverend John Burnett looked up at the sharp rat-tat, tat, at his kitchen door.

Only the Sheriff knocked on the doorframe, only the Sheriff used his closed Barlow knife as a knocker, only the Sheriff used that particular cadence.

Reverend John opened the door, raised an eyebrow.

“You look like you’d better come in,” he said quietly, looking at the stacked Styrofoam trays in the lawman’s hands.

“It’s crowdin’ lunch time,” Linn said, “and I didn’t want to throw a knot in Mrs. Parson’s meal planning.”

The preacher’s wife gratefully accepted the noontime offering – that pale eyed lawman timed it just right, she was mentally reviewing leftovers she could thaw for the two of them, and this spared her that small labor.

Linn parked his Stetson and his backside, in that order, Mrs. Parson poured coffee and passed out forks, Reverend John said a brief grace, and three hungry people addressed the meat loaf, taters and gravy and green beans that was the Silver Jewel’s noontime special.

Linn rose at a knock at the kitchen door: he accepted a flat box with quiet thanks, turned, set the white cardboard special delivery on Mrs. Parson’s immaculate counter, untied the string, opened the box and lifted out a fresh baked carrot cake with cream cheese icing.

Linn wrapped the string into a neat coil, lay it on the counter, as was his lifelong habit: he resumed his seat and resumed his meal.

Conversation was suspended until after cake and coffee, then:

“Parson, I received a letter today.  I believe you collect stamps.”

Reverend John nodded gravely.

Linn reached into a vest pocket, withdrew a rectangle of paper, carefully torn from an envelope, handed it to the sky pilot.

Reverend John’s eyebrow rose.

“Israel?”

Linn nodded.

“You keep an interesting correspondence, Sheriff.”

“The note concerned my mother.”

“And the mystery deepens.”

Linn leaned back as Mrs. Parson whispered a pardon-me, leaned in, refilled the Sheriff’s coffee mug, then her husband’s.

“Parson, have you ever been to the Holy Land?”

“No,” he admitted.  “I’d love to, but … no.”

“Nor have I,” Linn grinned – a quick, there-and-gone expression.

“Parson … I’ve … it’s genuinely humbling to …”

Linn’s voice trailed off and he chewed on his bottom lip, his expression haunted, his eyes lowered and tracking across the table.

This concerned the good Reverend.

“You recall how crowded Mama’s funeral was. We had uniforms from across the country, we had uniforms from several nations. Hell, we almost had a fistfight when that French Foreign Legionnaire allowed as he was going to be a pallbearer, peacefully or otherwise!”

Linn’s eyes stared into a distance only he could see, and his voice trailed off again, which concerned the good Reverend even more.

He’d never in his entire life known Linn to be indecisive.

“I’ve – we’ve – received cards, letters, telegrams, condolences … but today I got the letter with that stamp I gave you.

“The letter,” he said slowly, “was from the Israeli Shin Bet.”

Reverend John raised an eyebrow – quickly this time – “Israeli Intelligence.”

Linn nodded.

“It seems … Reverend, I’ve spoken to a number of men who’ve been there … I’ve been told at twelve noon everything stops.

“Everything.

“Everyone comes out into the street and a thousand spontaneous circle dances start.  JW Barrents told me he and Mama were on leave in Jerusalem and they both got whipped into one of those circle dances.

“JW said he’d … a good looking Israeli Major grabbed his hand and he was part of the circle, and he said that-there Major was a good lookin’ woman.  He said he started at her ankles and went up from there, and he said she had everything in the right place and in the right amounts, she was nothing short of honestly gorgeous, and then he got to her eyes.

“Parson, you recall how Mama’s eyes would go just dead pale when her dandruff was up.” 

It was a statement, not a question.

Reverend John nodded, slowly: he’d seen Sheriff Willamina Keller “with her dandruff up,” face-on, a total of once in his young life, but once was plenty, and he shivered at how cold and unforgiving those icy, shining eyes had been.

“JW said he had no idea what that poor Israeli woman had been through in her lifetime, but he said she had the eyes of a marble statue.

He said he got the impression she could get a phone call, kill everyone in the room, walk out, go home and sleep well that night.”

Reverend John nodded.

“The letter I got was from her husband. He was the one that had Mama’s hand.  Barrents, the Major, the Major’s husband and Mama.”

The good Reverend nodded, considered his coffee, decided against it.

“The letter was from the Major’s husband.  Apparently the two of them took JW and Mama on a private tour and they showed them some … significant places.”

Linn stared at the tablecloth just shy of the salt and pepper shakers, his voice quiet as he saw the handwritten letter again on the screen behind his forehead.

“Mama accepted a set of binoculars and looked up at Golgotha.”

Mr. and Mrs. Reverend John waited, imagining Willamina, in the company of an Israeli couple and her most trusted adjutant, glassing one of the most significant landmarks either could think of.

“The Major’s husband saw a tear run out from behind those binoculars.

“Reverend, you’ve probably heard of Jerusalem psychosis or whatever they call it, when someone will have a mental aberration and fancy themselves an actual character from the Bible?”

“I’ve … heard of it, yes.”

“Well, that didn’t happen.”

“What did happen?”

Coffee gurgled into the Sheriff’s empty mug, then the Parson’s.

Linn swallowed, raised his eyes from the tabletop.

“Mama said, ‘Ma am ham.’”

Reverend John frowned, turned his head a little, trying to remember Hebrew, learned many years before in Seminary, and not used since.

“What does it mean?” Mrs. Parson asked.

Linn looked at her, swallowed, cupped his hands around the mug, his shoulders rolled forward.

“Mama didn’t know Hebrew,” he said, “she didn’t speak it, read it, nor could she understand it, but when she had those good high grade field glasses a-lookin’ at where the Crucifixion happened, she didn’t fancy herself the Messiah nor a thief nor a Legionary.  She didn’t imagine herself part of it at all, but she did ask a question, and that’s what that Shin Bet officer wrote me about, to extend his condolences, and to tell me he’d been so impressed by the open, honest sincerity of an American woman.

“She asked ‘Ma am ham,’ her pronunciation was flawless, her accent was perfect.”

Linn looked at a scene brought to life by another man’s words on paper.

“She asked, ‘What of the mother?’”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THEY'RE WORKING MAGIC!

Sheriff Jacob Keller knew the value of practice.

He also knew the value of play.

If he were to turn to his left and look over one of the colony's pressure domes, he'd be able to see the ancient volcano, dark and brooding and upthrust against a shocking brightness of stars, and if he'd look again, he would very likely see colonists on recycled-plastic sleds, screaming down the side of the cone on a worn-smooth track that was one of the more popular ways of tempting Fate on the planet.

Jacob wore his usual black suit -- when Marnie was promoted to Ambassador, he accepted the Sheriff's position -- and instead of an Olympic skinsuit or the bulky, clumsy-looking Earth-issue pressure suit, he decided he'd fall back on history.

He already had the mustache; he let it grow out further, waxed it, curled it into a villainous handlebar.

A good handlebar mustache fairly begged for proper attire, and so he wore a handmade suit, cut after the fashion of the year of our Lord, eighteen and eighty-five.

With a matching black, flat brimmed, Stetson.

He'd considered the suits of the 1930s, and a more practical snap-brim hat, but he was a Western man and not a big-city detective, and so attired himself as he was most comfortable.

The Confederate belt box provided him with protection against the Martian atmosphere, or rather, its lack: here on the surface, he knew, the atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide, and damn little of that.

One-one-hundredth of Earth's atmosphere, he thought.

Damn glad for this little belt box.

I have no idea how it works.

His eyes tightened at the corners in a quiet smile.

Hell, I didn't understand how electronic ignition on my Jeep worked, either!

Sheriff Jacob Keller, late of Firelands County, Colorado, back on Earth, stood on a sandy-red plain, carefully graded off level.

At one time or another he'd addressed steel plates, exploding clay birds, standard bullseye targets, he'd used anything from little to big.

He'd shot shoulder to shoulder with the Valkyries when they came out, laughing, their spherical helmets dropped back between their shoulder blades, wearing short wigs of bright and improbable colors, and carrying custom fitted shotguns.

The Valkyries were some of the most fiercely competitive wingshots he'd ever burnt powder with.

They were, with no doubt at all, the deadliest accurate wingshots he'd ever shot with.

For all their skill, for all their expertise, for all their status as Valkyrie Squadron, they laughed and chattered for all the world like a happy clutch of high school girls.

Jacob looked at the rack, looked at the control panel to his right.

He could call up steel plates, he could call up silhouettes, he could call up movers or swingers, knockdown plates that would flip a target into the air.

He could address them with revolvers of varying power levels, calibers from mice to moose (so far neither had been found on Mars, but they were still looking) and he could shoot any style from a tea drinking, one handed target stance, to a full-on, running assault.

Jacob's fingers caressed the glowing panel, considered, remembered.

He'd been on assignment, been shot down, he'd used his father's matched .44s to shoot a series of hunter-killer drones before they could cut him open and read his fortune in his entrails.

He'd pulled a .357 on a man who richly deserved to be sent to Hell on a hardcast semi-wadcutter (amazing how fast sanity will return when faced with the business end of a Smith & Wesson, with an unforgiving pair of very pale eyes behind it). He'd waded into a good knock-down, drag-out fight with a double barrel shotgun, driven the butt end into one man's kidneys, another's gut, fired one barrel into the ceiling and stopped a general riot.

He'd delighted in long range rifle work, made easier by the lesser gravity and thinner atmosphere.

Today, Jacob Keller, Sheriff, chief keeper of the peace, a pale eyed man in polished boots and a black, old-fashioned suit, watched as five steel plates the size of tea saucers rolled into position at thirty feet.

Jacob reached under his coat, waited for the timer to beep.

A good high grade target .22 pistol swept from under his coat, bringing Jacob's gripping hand with it.

He fired, five times, reserving the center plate for last: his pale eyes smiled, for each plate swung a little when hit, and he could see the bullet-strike and a little puff of dust with each hit.

The sound of dinging steel was absent.

He consulted the screen, saved the time, holstered, pressed the restart button.

 

Ruth sat with a small group of schoolgirls.

They all sat in a circle, on low, well padded stools, a rope-handled, woven-withie yarn-basket beside each of them.

Each worked a shining set of knitting needles with serious-faced precision.

Ruth smiled as she looked over at one young girl's work, nodded her approval: the child was almost painfully shy, but at this silent affirmation, her face lit up and she gave a quick, delighted smile, revealing the gap where a tooth fell out that morning.

Occasionally one of the boys would slip in and watch, but boys grow quickly bored: Ruth knew boys, she had brothers younger, and older: she paused her knitting needles, looked around the little semi-circle: these children were from races she'd never heard of (in Ruth's world, china was a type of tableware, not a nation), but by some silent agreement, when Ruth worked with girl-children, they all wore the skirts and stockings and shining, flat-heeled slippers the Sheriff's wife favored.

Their little gathering was an image of feminine industry that would have been just as much at home in the Old South.

It was a welcome change for the schoolgirls, whose education thus far would put anything back on Earth to shame: like their brothers, any one of them could run most of the vital systems on the Colony -- everyone, without exception, was crosstrained on multiple systems, from earliest childhood, learning skills vital to keeping themselves and the rest of the Colony alive -- and so this exclusively feminine activity, this creating of bonnets and booties and scarves, was a delightful extension of the useful and vital skills they'd acquired already.

One solemn-eyed little boy, watching, considered the skill with which the Sheriff's pretty wife worked her yarn, and went home that evening to report to his own Mama that Mrs. Sheriff was working magic.

The Sheriff got the story roundabout, after he'd finished shooting and come back in from outside, after he'd picked up his brass (he didn't have to, there were robotic cleanups that would hum across the sandy surface and harvest spent brass for recycle, but habit was a hard thing for Jacob to break) and he ran across a colonist who was chuckling and shaking his head.

It seems the colonist's son reported that the Sheriff's wife was teaching his little sister how to do magic.

Jacob laughed over supper as he relayed to his wife that this man's son solemnly assured his father, that Mrs. Sheriff was consulting a spellbook and working with wands and teaching the girls how to do magic, turning yarn into stuff you could wear!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WHAT THE BLIND WOMAN SAW

The Bear Killer's toenails tik-tik-tik'd down the hallway.

Sheriff Willamina Keller smiled a little as she heard his toenails just touch the glass in the front door: she tasted her tea, savored the sensation of good hot oolong with just a little honey, warming her clear down.

She heard the key in the lock, heard the door open, heard her son's quiet laugh, the way Linn always did when The Bear Killer r'ared up and washed his face:  the door shut more sharply than had been intended, and in her mind's eyes, Willamina could see Linn fall back against the door, laughing, as the full weight of the big black curly furred mountain Mastiff came against his shoulders.

Willamina waited.

When The Bear Killer finally came down on all fours, when Willamina heard that great brush of a tail thumping happily against the wall, Linn was able to lift his head and call, "Permission to come aboard!"

"Is your face clean?" Willamina called back.

"Yes ma'am," Linn chuckled.  

"I take it you mean, 'It is now.' "

"Yes, ma'am!" Linn laughed.

"Come on in, the tea's hot."

Linn's boots came down the hall, and in her imagination, Willamina saw her son as he was in high school:  tall, dreadfully thin, tanned, grinning.

"Would you like cinnamon rolls, Mama?" Linn asked gently.

Willamina's nose told him he had a basket of the delicacies in hand:  she smiled, nodded.

She heard the basket land, light and careful, on the kitchen table, and she relaxed.

A rattle of ceramic as Linn brought two small plates out of the cupboard, the smell of fresh, hot cinnamon rolls as he brought the covering off the basket: "Mama, if you'd rather have bacon and eggs ...?"

Willamina laughed. 

"I would rather sit with my son," she said.  "I always did like the company of handsome men."

Willamina's imagination had Linn open his mouth to reply, then frown a little and turn his head: she had every confidence he'd done just that, even though her eyes were still covered.

"Ma'am," Linn said carefully, "how long will you be bandaged up?"

"Until my eyes heal," Willamina smiled.  "Do you remember what my father tried to teach me at a tender age?"

" 'Hurry up is brother to mess it up,' " Linn quoted, " 'and it's plumb amazin' how often I proved him right!' "

Willamina laughed gently, reached across the table with a gently bent wrist, found the basket with her knuckles: she dipped a hand in, brought out a warm, fragrant, just-crusty-baked cinnamon roll:  she took a long, appreciative sniff of the fragrance, took a delicate nibbling bite, chewed, savoring the flavor, the texture, the warmth.

"I remember," Linn said softly, "how you used to navigate, at night, with your eyes closed."

"I practiced," Willamina admitted. "Night fighting is an art unto itself. I practiced operations in the dark against the time when there would either be no light, or I'd have no eyes to see."

Linn gave his Mama a long look.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," she smiled. "No, that wasn't witchery or precognition, just preparation."

"How'd you know how I was looking at you?" he asked suspiciously.

Willamina leaned forward over her tea, the medical grade blindfold of Kerlix gauze completely unable to hide the knowing look on her face.

"In case you'd forgotten," she said confidentially, "I am your mother!"

Linn laughed, leaned back in his chair a little, nodded.

"Women's magic," he agreed. "Mothers are strange and wonderful creatures."

"Now then."  Willamina sipped at her tea again.  "Tell your old decrepit Ma how goes the world and the Sheriff's office."

"Old decrepit my Aunt Fanny's billy goat," Linn muttered, then chuckled again as he saw Willamina's lips tracing his words as he spoke them -- proof yet again that, in his mother's presence, he was transparent as window glass, even when the woman was healing from bilateral cataract surgery.

"Not a whole lot going on, ma'am. I hesitate to jinx things with the dreaded Q word."

"Thou'rt wise," Willamina murmured.  "Go on."

"Billy and Wilma Kincaid have a fine little girl. Starla Bryan -- you remember Starla, she's about belt buckle tall on me now, cute little thing -- she came rattlin' up the sidewalk pullin' her little red wagon with a bunch of blankets in it and a pup ridin' on the pile. I kicked myself for wishin' I had a camera with me and completely forgot my cell phone has a camera built in!"

"You wished for a Kodak," Willamina suggested, "to capture a Kodak moment. Sounds like the right tool for the right job."

"It was, too," Linn said softly, and Willamina heard a softening in his voice: as hard as her son could be, he still had a deep affection for kids, dogs and horses.

"So. Other than children and royal canines, how goes the Ferguson case?"

"Investigation is wrapped up, we handed it to the prosecutor and he's confident we'll get a conviction."

"Good. Dodson's domestic?"

"The two of 'em still scream at one another but they both allowed as they couldn't leave one another. I don't know if they like havin' a young war every night, hell, it might be their entertainment."

"They've been that way all the years I've known 'em," Willamina sighed. "Have they dropped charges?"

"Yes, ma'am. They both refused orders of protection, no-contact orders, I reckon if they want to scream at one another they can do that without my help."

"Hmm.  Barrents ever get that root canal?"

"Just yesterday, ma'am. Poor fellow said he was eight hours straight in that dentist chair. I felt sorry for the dentist, that's got to be some precise work!"

"I've heard the best surgeons are dentists first," Willamina murmured, nodding just a little. "Used to precision work in very tight quarters. I knew two such ... one was in Texas, the other ... no, they were both from Texas."  She smiled quietly.  "That was a very long time ago."

Linn waited: The Bear Killer yawned, displaying a truly impressive selection of canine ivory, then made a great show of collapsing on the floor, rolling over on his side, then his back: if The Bear Killer's goal was to stir sympathy and gain a belly rub, it didn't work, and just as well, for thirty seconds later he began to snore.

Willamina nodded, smiled gently.  "Let him sleep," she said quietly.  "Poor fellow, he's been up all night.  I don't think he actually heard anything, but he knew I wasn't quite normal."

Linn nodded.

"You were experimenting with Uncle Pete's ought-three rifle."

Linn grinned.

"Yes, ma'am.  I called a buddy of mine and had him give me the dimensions of the pickelhaub on a first-War German helmet."

Willamina's smile was sudden, bright.  "And?"

"I remembered Uncle Pete talking about his Pa in the First War, and how the French soldiers sneered at green and untried American soldiers, and how Uncle Pete's Pa bet a bottle of wine he could snap the spike off one of those German officers."

"I remember," Willamina murmured, for she'd heard her Uncle Pete tell the story too.

"I drew the same contour of a helmet, then drew the helmet spike and set it up at a hundred yards."

"And?"

"I played with a couple different loads, ma'am, but that's just an awful little thing to hit at a hundred with iron sights."

"But ...?"

Willamina could see her son's broad, boyish grin in her imagination.

"You hit it, didn't you?"

"Yes, ma'am," Linn admitted.  "I did.  First shot."

"Well done," Willamina said quietly, her voice warm and approving.  

"Mama," Linn said, and Willamina knew the conversation just went from formal to personal -- otherwise he would have said "Ma'am."

"Mama, when do you get your bandages off?"

Willamina lifted her chin.  

"Today," she smiled.

Linn nodded.

"Dr. John will be taking me, as a matter of fact, and no, I'm not seeing him. He is a widower and I am a widow, but we are not an item."

Willamina could see her son turn his head and frown, just a little, as he considered this -- at least, she could see it in her imagination -- she could see Linn look back at her and say seriously, "Mama, you don't need my approval if you wish to see someone."

Willamina pushed her empty teacup and saucer away from her, tilted her head a little, for all the world as if she were looking at her son with a motherly expression of approval.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"When is he due to arrive?"

Willamina rose.  "I've time enough to get dressed," Willamina said. "Bear Killer, excuse me."

Willamina heard canine claws scrabble on the shining-clean kitchen floor as The Bear Killer came to his feet.

Willamina came around the table, her hand brushing lightly along the back of a kitchen chair: she came up on her toes, kissed her son's clean-shaven cheek, sighed happily as she leaded her cheek into his shoulder.

"You smell good," she murmured.

"I had my Saturday night bath," Linn replied. "I bathe once a week whether I need it or not."

"You and your Uncle Will," Willamina sighed.  

Linn watched his Mama start up the stairs, then turned, reached into the basket, tore a cinnamon roll in two, held up the half:  The Bear Killer's black eyes had a target lock on the delectable, and Linn lowered the treat into the mountain Mastiff's careful bite.

Linn cleaned off the kitchen table, wiped up what very few crumbs there were, washed the very few dishes: he set them, wet and dripping, in the drain rack, wiped off the table with a damp rag, hung this over the faucet to dry (don't want to leave it balled up to rot, he thought) -- he dried his hands, turned, saw a car pull up in front just as Willamina came down the stairs.

Linn made a quick survey of the kitchen -- Willamina brewed tea in the coffee pot, but the pot was unplugged now, oven and burners all turned off: Linn's hand wiped over the already-off kitchen light switch (habit, you understand) and followed his Mama to the front door.

The Bear Killer dropped his stout, square bottom to the floor, tail polishing the bare boards, as Willamina opened the door, smiled, extended her hands.

"John," she said, and Linn could hear the smile in her voice.

Dr. John Greenlees very rarely smiled.

It was said that if he smiled, his face would likely crack and fall off: neither one occurred, but Linn could still see the man was pleased when Willamina took his arm.

Linn locked her front door, waited until Doc and his Mama were off the steps and two paces into the gravel before speaking up.

"You'll have her home by midnight," he called, and his Mama turned, planted her free hand's knuckles on her belt:  "Aw, Daddy, really?" -- and managed to sound exactly like a peeved teen-aged girl.

Linn saw Dr. John's smile, saw him drop his head a little, knew the man was remembering something from his past, likely a daughter wanting to sound rebellious and grown-up but a father's ear still heard, in his memory, that undertone of pleasure that her Daddy cared enough to set that boundary.

Willamina stopped turned to face the doctor, raised her hands.

Surprised, Dr. Greenlees stood stock-still as Willamina's gentle fingers slipped over his face: she lowered her hands, murmured "I thought so."

Dr. John came around, opened the passenger side door for her.

It wasn't until he was behind the wheel, not until he'd started the car, waved at Linn and The Bear Killer, not until he'd turned around and was headed down the driveway that he asked, "What did you thought so?"

"I saw your smile."

"Oh?"
"And I wanted to make sure your face didn't crack and fall off afterward."

"How ... did ... you saw my smile?"

Willamina laughed.  "John, you'd be amazed what a blind woman can see!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TWO GIFTS, AND A VISIT

A little girl's eyes widened and she scampered away from the open door, deeper into the house.

"Mommy!" she called, excited and breathless.  "There's a ghostie at our door!"

The mother rinsed off her hands, dried them quickly, came frowning, puzzled, in the wake of her excited, bouncing, preschool girl-child.

A pace outside her threshold, a diminutive nun in a white habit and face veil, waited patiently, hands hidden in her voluminous sleeves.

The mother came to the door, looked at the nun with a puzzled expression.

"Can I help you, Sister?" she asked, and the little girl's brother hissed, "It's not a ghostie, stoop, it's an onion!"

"It is not an onion!" the preschooler flared at her big brother. "Onions are weg-e-tarians!"

The nun brought her hands out of her sleeves, handed the mother a thick envelope: she bowed, slipped her hands back into her sleeves, turned.

The mother automatically accepted the envelope:  puzzled, she looked at the front -- it had their bank's return address -- she opened the unsealed flap, removed the thick bundle of papers, frowned a little as she read, read again: she turned a page, turned another, her mouth falling open.

She looked up, searching for the little white nun who delivered it --

Gone --

A young mother with two children picked up the phone with a shaking hand: she tapped a quick series of keys, hesitated, pressed another, then looked at her still-standing-open front door as if wondering what other miracle would cross her threshold today.

"Steven?" she asked.  "Ste -- no, no, nothing's wrong, Steven, you're not going to believe this."

She pressed the papers flat on the table, stared at them, somewhere being afraid to believe, and afraid not to.

"Steven, someone paid off our mortgage!  The house is ours!"

 

Another knock, another door:  this time a young husband opened the door to find an envelope on his doorstep.

He picked it up, looked around, saw nobody: the envelope was not sealed.

He turned it over, opened it, withdrew a slim coupon book.

A slow grin split his face and he looked around again, stepped outside, searching for the messenger: finding none, he looked at this unexpected bounty again, then he closed and locked the door, almost ran for his good old truck.

A young man drove on four nearly bald tires to the station he favored, with a coupon book on the seat beside him, a thin little booklet with prepaid coupons good for four new tires, a tune-up, oil change and grease job, and two fill-ups.

 

A woman in a black silk blouse and black jeans stepped out of a Jeep.

She wore a black Stetson and a squash blossom necklace.

She was clearly out of place in this sacred area; she trod carefully, slowly, she stopped, squatted, laid her hand flat on the earth.

"I speak to the spirit of JW Barrents," she said quietly.

"Today I rejoice, and in your name I continue the blessings you gave."

Willamina Keller stood, walked back to her Jeep:  she was an hour getting back, getting to where she intended to be: she traded horsepower under the hood for horsepower under the saddle, she rode a chestnut Frisian mare well up onto the mountainside, to a place she'd often come to soothe her soul, a place she came when her soul was filled with joy, a place she came when she wanted to talk to God about it.

Willamina Keller swung down out of the saddle onto a handy rock -- a Frisian is a tall horse, and Willa wasn't all that tall, and whenever possible she cheated and used a mounting block -- she stood and gazed into the distance for a very long time, soaking in the absolutely magnificent view that can only be had from a high mountainside vantage, and through clear mountain air.

Willamina removed her Stetson, felt something wet run down her face: she swallowed, cleared her throat, swallowed again.

"God," she whispered, as if talking to a dear friend, "I didn't realize how bad my eyes had gotten."

She looked at the thousand colors and tens of thousands of subtle shades in between, she looked at terrain and at distance and whispered again.

"Don't ever let me take this for granted again!"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller rubbed as far back as he could reach.

He was of an age where he really disliked a good knock-down, drag-out fight, but sometimes people would listen to nothing but a face full of knuckles, or being bounced off the nearest wall, the ground, the hood of a car or whatever else was handy.

As it was, Linn found himself obliged to pick up one fellow and introduce him face first into the door of the man's own truck, which did not benefit the man's face at all, but it did get his attention -- plus the sight of the Sheriff himself picking a man clear off the ground and swinging him hard enough to make a half-ton Dodge shiver, sent a clear message to the community.

Now, though, Linn was beginning to feel the effects of an adrenaline fueled weight lifting effort without having warmed up properly beforehand.

He stepped out of his Jeep, walked slowly up onto his Mama's porch, raised his knuckles, knocked.

Something big and black and shining-wet snuffed at him through window glass and he laughed and reached for the doorknob.

"Permission to come aboard!" he called, just before The Bear Killer dropped his forepaws on Linn's shoulders, forcing him back a step:  Linn leaned forward, shoving against the big mountain Mastiff.

The Bear Killer danced backwards on his back legs and Linn shut the door, leaned back against it as The Bear Killer enthusiastically laundered the Sheriff's face and ears.

Mother and guest rose as Linn came down the hall, The Bear Killer happily tik-tik-tikking along behind.

"Abbot!"  Linn grinned, thrusting out a callused palm:  the Abbot's grip was as firm, his hand equally callused, and Linn remembered yet again the many times he'd seen the Abbot unloading concrete blocks or building materials, digging a ditch, or crowded head-and-shoulders under a parishioners' sink to help fix a leak.

"I was just congratulating your mother on her restored eyesight," the Abbot said quietly, then looked at Willamina, who nodded her permission.

"It seems that your mother offers her prayers of thanksgiving in an unusual way."

"Wa'l now, trust my Mama to cause trouble," Linn drawled with a contagious grin.  

"It seems that one of the White Nuns delivered a mortgage payoff to one of our parishioners. Naturally I was curious as to which of the Veiled Sisters it may have been, as ours were occupied all day."

"I see," Linn grinned.  

"As this was definitely within the realm of Charitable Works, it is, of course, very much approved."

"Go on."

"In conversation with your mother, I found she also helped out a young man of industry and ambition, who'd come into a ... narrow point in his purse, so to speak, through no fault of his own."

"Umm-humm," Linn said thoughtfully.

"I stopped at your local station as he was grinning over his good fortune. It seems there was an anonymous knock on his door and nobody there, but there was an envelope with coupons for a set of new tires, grease and oil and a couple tanks of gas."

"And this tells us ..." Linn prompted, knowing the lawman's use of the open-ended question to gain information.

"That your mother didn't simply drop down to her Prayer Bones and say thank you once the bandages came off her eyes."

Linn looked over at his delicately blushing mother.

"And what, pray tell, did my trouble making mother do this time?" he grinned.

"Well, so far she paid off the mortgage for a young couple who are trying to make it in this bad economy, she's kept a young man's truck running so he can keep working in this bad economy ... beyond that, I don't know, but I'd say that is a fine form of prayer."

"Prayer by works," Linn nodded.  "Not a bad idea."

"It seems that women of her line have a habit of ... donning the habit when the need arises."  

The Abbot smiled a little at his pitiful attempt at humor, then he chuckled as he added, "Even if a little child insists that 'nun' is pronounced 'onion!' "

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MORE TROUBLE THAN THEY COULD ENJOY

Sarah Lynne McKenna spun, her skirt twisting with the suddenness of her move: her right hand drove forward, the blackpowder boom of a bulldog .44 almost lost in the general fracas.

The moment froze in the town marshal's memory: a lone woman, partway across the dirt street, fury on her face and a blocky pistol in her gloved grip, her arm nearly straight, her other hand gripping her skirt and hoisting the hem out of the way: he watched, frozen, shocked, as she fired twice more, lowered her aim, fired, fired again.

She straightened, released dress material from her clenched grip, brought the revolving-pistol in close, and then coldly, methodically, reloaded.

Someone screamed -- there was a shout, another gunshot, and the shout ended with an unpleasant, wet sound.

Nothing like this had ever happened in the Marshal's experience, not in his lifetime: he stood, shocked, frozen, wide eyed, trying to sort out what the hell just happened.

The fashionably dressed woman used both hands to lift her skirts, the way a woman will when she walks with a determined step:  he watched her flow, graceful, feminine, beautiful, mad to her core, her face showing her anger: she walked up to one still form on the ground, a man on his side, coughing frothy blood:  she drew back her foot, kicked him in the gut, hard, raised her leg and stomped her sharp little heel into his ribs.

She turned, went around him, went to another, face-down: she kicked him a few times, and it registered distantly on the Marshal's consciousness that she was screaming at them as she kicked them, damning them to Hell and eternal fire for robbing HER BANK! -- she turned, glared at a third one, her lips pulled back from even, white teeth:  as the fog cleared from the lawman's mind, he realized she was snarling, just before she bent over and screamed into an upturned, dead face, a face with a hole between the eyes:  "YOU RUINED MY GOOD DRESS, DAMN YOU!"

Only then did the town Marshal realize this lovely woman, this beautiful example of femininity, this fashionably gowned messenger of Death itself, was bleeding, was herself injured, her life's blood soaking the side and the back of her carefully stitched gown.

 

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna slapped her leather wallet down, hard, on the physician's desk, removed her hand to reveal a bronze shield.

"My name," she said coldly, "is Sarah Lynne McKenna.  I am also known as the Black Agent.  You will send a telegram to Firelands and let Judge Donald Hostetler know that I have been inconvenienced and will be delayed."

The doctor looked at her, astonished, offended:  who was this harpy, to storm into his office, shove his assistant aside, invade his desk in such a way, and make DEMANDS of him?

He rose, a retort on his lips, then it sunk through the cloud of his offended feelings that he'd heard of the Black Agent, he'd heard of Judge Hostetler, and as her credentials were displayed on his desk, and her gloved hand left a smear of blood where she'd slapped the leather wallet down -- hard -- maybe, just maybe, he should take her seriously.

His assistant said, "Doctor," in a quiet voice, then thrust in, ran his knee under Sarah's descending backside, seized her arms, keeping her from hitting the floor.

He bent her over the desk and the town doctor saw her dress was shining-red with blood.

What he said in that moment, does not bear repeating in polite company.

 

His Honor the Judge accepted the telegraph flimsy from the boy.

It was a breach of courtroom etiquette for someone to SLAM in through the doors and run full-tilt to the Judge's desk, but as the intruder was known to the man, and bore what was obviously a message, the Judge did not admonish this intrusion on the court's decorum.

He accepted the yellow, folded sheet, unfolded it.

The Sheriff saw the Judge's teeth clench down on his cigar, saw the cigar fall, saw the Judge turn white, turn his head and spit out the soggy end of the hand rolled Cuban.

The Judge looked at the Sheriff, lifted his chin.

Sheriff Linn Keller rose and strode for the bench.

 

Sarah was undressed to the belt, face down on the table, her arms folded under the pillow cushioning her face: in her grip, the .44 revolver, hidden, but locked in her good right hand.

She did not make a sound as the town's physician carefully, precisely, sewed up the bloody, irregular gouge.

Normally Dr. Robert Allen was a chatty sort, but when he'd had his assistant write out the telegram, when a boy ran it to the depot, when the contents hit the local gossip network, the presence of The Black Agent became known, and the doctor's office was a place of sudden and intense interest.

Imagine -- the Black Agent himself, here, in their town! -- he must've heard about the bank robbery, he must've laid back with a rifle and taken the horse guards first, then one robber, and a bystander shot the other.

Rumor built on rumor: as it firmed up, the mysterious Black Agent swept up an injured bystander and ran her to their doctor's office.

The curious crowded into the Doc's office, and found -- to their disappointment the Black Agent was gone -- all they saw was a woman being stitched up.

"You just missed him," Sarah called from her prone posture. "He made sure I was in good hands and then he rode out."

"Who is he?  What's his name?" came the demands, and Sarah flinched, grunted as the Doc's curved needle penetrated her fair flesh again.

"GOOD GOD, DOC, AT LEAST GIVE ME SOME BRANDY!" she shouted, then she looked around, her voice rising:

"CAN'T A GIRL GET SEWN BACK TOGETHER IN PEACE? YOU WOULDN'T WALK INTO SOMEONE'S BEDROOM! I'M NOT DRESSED!"

Sarah gasped, took a quick, deep breath, then screamed, "GET OUTTA HERE!"

Disappointed, surprised and rather ashamed, the curious crowd withdrew.

"Lock the door," Sarah said quietly, her voice tight, "and I need someone to get me a new dress, mine's ruined."

 

Sheriff Linn Keller rode his stallion out of the stock car, down the ramp: one look at his face and the men who'd placed the ramp knew that trouble just rode into town in a black suit and a pair of hard, pale eyes.

A hard man with hard eyes rode slowly up the street, eyes busy under his Stetson brim: he marked the location of the doc's office, the town marshal's office, the local saloon.

He needed information.

He went to the saloon.

Pale eyes looked hard at every face in this saloon: the Silver Jewel was clean, brightly painted, well kept, and this saloon ... wasn't.

The Sheriff glared at the suggestion of a mirror behind the bar, glared at the barkeep.

"Beer."

A newcomer was of interest, especially this soon after the bank's being robbed, and the robbers, stopped: men's eyes assessed this stranger in a well fitted black suit.

There was some quiet speculation, there was mostly a hushed watchfulness.

Linn accepted the beer with a nod, slid a coin across the scarred, wet-spotted bar.

"You'd be polite to buy a round for the house," a voice sneered.

Linn's hand shot out, seized the unshaven speaker by the throat: his right hand Colt whispered out of smooth black leather, punched into the barkeep's face.

Eternity itself rolled around its axis as the barkeep took a good close-up look at the Colt's cylinder revolve into battery.

"Put that shotgun back," Linn said calmly, "and put both your hands on the bar."

He tightened the grip on the man's neck, drew back, threw him at the nearest gap between the tables

The barkeep very carefully put both hands flat on top of the bar.

Linn turned his lapel over to show his six point star.

"MY NAME," he said, "IS OLD PALE EYES! SHERIFF, FIRELANDS COUNTY, AND MY LITTLE GIRL WAS SHOT HERE TODAY! I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!"

 

Sarah pressed her lips together as she used a borrowed scalpel to rip the stitching from around the ruined steel stay.

The bullet caught her at a grazing angle, ripped into the stay, twisted it and ripped its sharp, sheared edges into her flank: her wound was bloody, it was painful, it felt at the moment like she'd been punched, and now she worked the ruined stays out of her corset so she could at least try to salvage this garment.

A tap at the door, the door opened:  Sarah turned cold eyes toward the intrusion, then she laid the bloodied corset aside, the scalpel with it: Linn bent a little as Sarah ran to him like a scared little girl, her face reddened and twisted up a little.

Linn hugged Sarah to him, tight, tight.

He saw the bandage wound round her middle, he hugged her above that latitude -- but when he held her, he held her tight, bending his head until his lips were near her ear.

She heard his whisper, and she hugged him even tighter for hearing it.

It is not a light thing when a truly strong man whispers "I was so scared."

 Sarah gripped her Papa the way a drowning man will grip a float, and for a long moment Sarah felt like a hurt, scared little girl again, a little girl who suddenly felt safe, who suddenly felt protected, who knew that her Papa would make everything right.

Linn looked at the bloodied corset:  Sarah felt his change, felt him stiffen:  she slacked her grip and Linn drew her back to arm's length, then walked around her, looking at her back.

Sarah slipped her arms out of the frilly shoulder straps, dropped her undergarment to her waist, exposing the bulky bandage and the wraps around her slender middle holding it in place.

"Who did this?" he asked, his voice quiet -- as quiet, and as cold, as the frozen breath rolling off a winter mountainside.

"The first man I shot," Sarah said frankly. 

"Were there others?"

"There were."

"And they are ...?"

"Making the undertaker a nickel a head to gawk at their carcasses."

"Anyone we know?"

"I didn't recognize any of them."

Linn nodded, looked at the bloodied corset.

"Darlin'," he said slowly, "you know we can get you a new one."

Sarah sighed.

Linn took Sarah's hands in his own.

"I heard The Black Agent laid into the robbers with a rifle, he saw you were hurt and got you to the Doc and rode out before anyone could talk to him."

"That," Sarah nodded, "is the seed I planted."

"Well done.  Does anyone know?"

"The doc."

"I've spoken to him and I paid the man well."  Linn handed her back her leather wallet.

Another knock at the door; a tired looking woman came in with a wrapped package:  she saw Sarah bring her frilly under-straps back up over her shoulders, looked at the Sheriff.

"I'm Rebecca," she said uncertainly.  "I work at the bank."

Linn turned over his lapel.  "Sheriff Keller. I take it you've met my daughter."

"Your daughter! -- no -- I'm sorry -- " -- she approached Sarah rather hesitantly.

"I hope it fits," she blurted.  "It's the best I could do."

 

It was not often that a Special arrived at the depot; it was not often that the Special waited, taking on water and fuel: when a pale eyed lawman rode his stallion back into the stock car, with a pretty young woman riding behind him, holding him around the waist, with her cheek laid against his back, a look of contentment about her -- well, the men who removed the stock ramp and slid the door shut, were grateful whatever business this pale eyed lawman had, was concluded.

He was definitely the kind of man who could cause more trouble than their town could possibly enjoy.

 

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ECHO IN THE MOUNTAINS

Jacob Keller crossed his palms over his saddlehorn, leaned forward, pushed up to take the weight off his spine.

His young back was in fine shape, but it still amused him to ripple a few snaps and pops when he stretched his back bone, the way he'd seen his long tall Pa do.

Jacob looked around, his pale young eyes smiling at the shocking gold of fall leaves: he was not far from those aggravating changes that addle a young man's mind, but for now, he could take a deep breath and taste the thousand flavors of fall, mixed and delivered for his exclusive enjoyment.

Jacob honestly could not fathom why his schoolmates preferred phones and tablets and enclosed rooms, why they didn't rejoice with him in his beloved mountains, why they chose not to see history and trails, arrowheads and ghosts, the ideas, the ideals of everyone who'd ever ridden these high trails.

He'd stopped briefly to say howdy to the Maxwell clan, those blue eyed Kentucky carpenters that worked magic in wood and in steel: gunmaking was still in their family, and they still turned out octagon barrel, flint lock rifles of the pattern their ancestors brought West.

He'd inclined his ear to a fiddle, not far distant, and approving blue eyes saw the tall boy's quiet smile, the way he tilted his head just a little, as the unseen fiddler coaxed magic from the curlyback fiddle, teasing a locomotive whistle from it.

Joseph remembered this as he heard The Lady Esther -- far, distant, her brazen throat singing to the mountains, her voice echoing between granite walls: fickle winds conspired to keep her four-count chant from him, but the tuned harmony of her genuine steam whistle sang to his young soul, caressing him the way the sun caressed him through flannel and denim.

Joseph looked around, imagining this trail must look the way it did when his pale eyed ancestors rode here: he wondered what their business was, for nothing was done without purpose; were they pursuing the lawless, chasing stray livestock, searching for a lost soul, hunting meat for the pot?

Joseph rode a little further, looked across a saddle, smiled: he and his Pa set down with a letter, another letter, topographical maps: when Sarah Lynne McKenna was a girl, she and Charlie Macneil brought down an elk for meat -- only Charlie showed Sarah how to knapp out an obsidian spearhead, how to bind it to a shaft she'd selected and cut herself, how to lie in wait until the barren cow was too close for her to miss --

Joseph smiled quietly, remembering, for he too had listened to the clicking of the elk's joints as they walked that same meadow: he'd been alone, and he hadn't been out for meat: he watched, hesitating to breathe, flattened against the ground and barely screened by low scrub: it was a struggle, but he kept his lips over his teeth as he watched a cow elk, big and pregnant, as she turned, as the sun cast its long red rays along her flank, as he saw the new life she carried shift and kick against her tight stretched hide.

Joseph gauged the sun, considered the state of his belly -- he was a young man, and young men are often composed of an appetite carried by two hollow legs: he looked around again, looked across an incredible distance, looked down as the mountain fell away beneath the ancient path.

Some memories stay with you.

Joseph remembered that afternoon, that sun-soaked ride in this, his beloved land of his nativity.

The memory of that echo in the mountains stayed with him for the rest of his life. 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DECLARATION

Ambassador Marnie Keller's eyes were visible over the hand of cards she held -- in that moment, it was as if she were holding a lace fan before her face, and for the same reason.

She blinked, once, slowly, like a cat, closed her eyes a second time, for a very long second, then she folded her cards, placed them face down on the green-felt tabletop, rose.

"Gentlemen," she said quietly, her face considerably more pale, her voice tight, her eyes growing steadily colder with each heartbeat -- "these negotiations are concluded. I thank you for your hospitality, and now I shall leave you before I am obliged to spill blood."

Men looked at one another, shocked: one, the one who offended, showed shock, surprise, anger, fear, each running across his face like runners holding great banners that trailed behind them from an upheld pole at a celebration.

Marnie's heels were loud as she walked to the furthest door, to emphasize that SHE WAS LEAVING, AND SHE WAS VERY DEFINITELY OFFENDED.

Silence filled the room as smoke curled up from the hand-rolled smokeweed stogies, the closet thing this planet had to tobacco, and men's eyes turned to the reddening face of the man who had so offended the Ambassador that she walked out of their trade negotiations.

Fortunes evaporated in that moment, men of influence realized their plans for power and for acquisition just left the room with the pale-eyed, fashionably-gowned Ambassador, and as is usual in such situations, they turned first on one another, and then on the one individual responsible.

 

Earlier in the day, Marnie planted her hands on her waistline, looked up -- cranked her head well back to see the top of this self propelled gargantuan -- her smile was bright and genuine, she raised a gloved hand to shade her eyes as she ran her gaze over the tall, crenellated smokestack, the steam-dome, the sand-dome, her pale eyes lingered on what she recognized as a chime whistle.

She turned, nearly ran from the locomotive for several steps, turned, looked again: in that moment, she was as an excited child, delighting in a new discovery.

The locomotive's name was carefully painted on a panel, on the side of the frame, over the thick, cast-iron drivers:  HERACLES, she read, and nodded, the feather in her fashionable little hat waving as she did.

Marnie lifted her skirts, ran back up to the well-dressed men who'd brought her here to see this new wonder of their industrial might:  she took one arm, she took another, looked up at the uncomfortable soul in the locomotive's cab.

"Would you like to climb aboard?" one of the well-dressed men asked, and Marnie laughed, released the arm on her left so she could pat his kid-gloved hand.

"Long skirts are not conducive to climbing a locomotive's ladder," she smiled, "and I wouldn't wish to get in the way. I've coaled a firebox, but on a much smaller engine!"

She did not miss that men looked at one another: when an Ambassador admits to expertise in a field they thought exclusively theirs, it generally results in the uncomfortable feeling that the Ambassador, this Ambassador, may be more knowledgeable than they'd realized -- and that much harder to take advantage of.

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller laughed as she went to her knees, as she spread her arms to receive the joyful charge of her children:  Dr. John Greenlees would frame the snapshot he took, and would keep it on his desk for many years, the image of his wife, kneeling, both arms full of her obviously delighted children: her head was thrown back, she had a look of delight, of laughter, of contentment restored.

When Marnie returned from a diplomatic assignment, Dr. John Greenlees, M.D., made a point of having the children clean-scrubbed, well-dressed, as he was himself: it was important that they show their Mama, that he show his wife, that her return was an Occasion, to show with deeds rather than say with words that You are worth it!

Marnie rose as her husband approached: she looked up at him, and he saw stress and worry lingering in her face.

He carefully took her elbows as she placed her hands firmly on his ribs.

"My dear?" he murmured.

Marnie lowered her eyes and smiled, then she looked up at her husband and laughed.

"Shut up and kiss me, stud!" she whispered, and husband and wife embraced there in the underground launch bay, beside the shining-silver Ambassadorial shuttle.

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller listened to the presentation, as men described their refining process, how they were excavating ore and making metals, how this Leviathan of a locomotive hauled weights not imagined: the tracks were twice as wide as standard gauge, to accommodate truly massive ore-cars, the monstrous engine it took to draw them:  the effort was impressive, and Marnie expressed her admiration for the expertise it took to build such a truly huge steam engine, the manufacturing skills it took to cast wheels and drivers and forge and rivet boilers and fire-boxes big enough to power such a machine: she held her silent reservations that they'd long since passed the point of practicality, to fuel this beast sufficiently to generate steam enough to run it would be beyond difficult, but this was a crowning achievement, a Proof of Concept if nothing else, and she was not about to throw cold water on their achievement.

No, she was there to negotiate for what they had, she was there to negotiate trade for what she represented:  her duties were no longer solely those of her native Mars, she was assuming more ambassadorial and negotiative duties for other bodies in the Confederacy, and she was proving most effective in those duties.

 

"John," Marnie said as they paced sedately through the glass-smooth hallway, "would you say I am a desirable woman?"

Dr. John Greenlees stopped, turned to face his wife squarely, genuine surprise on his face.

Marnie raised a gloved hand, caressed her husband's clean-shaven cheek.

"I have something to tell you," she said quietly, then raised up on her toes and kissed her husband, quickly, lightly:  she came back down on her heels, looking like a mischievous schoolgirl who'd just stolen a kiss from a favorite teacher:  "Come along, John. I'm hungry and you're buying!"

 

The Confederate Ambassador carefully considered what he'd been told.

He'd already viewed the surveillance -- which none but he and Marnie knew about -- he watched the men settle about the poker table, he'd watched Marnie's gloved fingers shuffle the deck, smiled a little at her skill.

The Confederate Ambassador enjoyed a good game of poker, he'd known some pretty good card sharps in his time, but Marnie's skill at the pasteboards told him she had not just dexterity, she had some expertise.

He'd watched, he'd listened: his eyes narrowed as one of the card players, perhaps too comfortable thanks to more distilled sledgehammer than he'd realized, suggested they make the bet more interesting, and why didn't Marnie make negotiations interesting and bet her virtue, eh?

The Ambassador impassively regarded the men seated at the table, rose.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you have resources you're willing to trade, and we have resources you'd like to acquire. If I understand correctly, this will give certain of your members ... advantages ... in your political circles."

His smile was thin.

"You saw fit to insult my colleague."

A protest; a denial.

The Ambassador glared at the two who protested.

"And now you call ME a liar."

The Ambassador stood, picked up his pearl-grey uniform cover, settled it on his head.

"You saw fit to suggest in so many words that she sell her virtue like a common harlot."

His quiet voice reflected a deep and abiding anger.

"I can tell you quite honestly that if she had not the title of Ambassador, she would have backhanded you and challenged you to a duel of honor."

The Ambassador's voice was quiet, edged with steel.

"The Confederacy will not treat with such. There will be no trade and no commerce for a period of two years. Negotiations may resume at that time. Good day, gentlemen."

Men's fortunes and influence crashed to the floor in that moment; the Ambassador knew as he turned and walked out, leaving by the furthest door to emphasize that he was leaving, and to emphasize that he was very definitely offended.

 

Dr. John Greenlees was quiet that night.

Marnie knew this meant that her husband was angry -- that he held a deep and abiding anger, and that he was considering his anger, and he was considering what he might do about it.

When finally he spoke, his eyes and his hands were both half-closed.

Marnie did not miss the significance off his body language.

"My dear," he said, "how does one challenge a man to a duel of honor?"

Marnie's head was tilted a little, a very feminine gesture, betraying her womanly study of her husband.

She straightened her head, considered.

"You would walk up to him," she said, "and you would tell him that he has impugned the honor of your Lady-Wife."

Dr. John Greenlees, M.D., nodded.

"Then you backhand him."  Marnie's eyes were going pale again.  "Hard."

Dr. Greenlees nodded again, his good right hand closing, then opening.

"A gentleman will return the backhand, and will choose time, place and weapons. If he does not choose, then you choose for him."

"And?"

"And I can provide security enough that no one will interfere."

Dr. John Greenlees nodded.

"You run the risk of coming up against a man with skill-at-arms."

Marnie felt something cold trickle down her spine as she heard something in her husband's voice she'd never heard before.

"So does he."

 

Dr. John Greenlees stood in the middle of a boxing ring.

Like his overweight opponent, he was barefoot, he wore trousers and a serious expression.

The announcer came out in top hat and tails, looked from the portly businessman to the lean-waisted physician, raised both hands and his voice.

"THIS IS A DUEL OF HONOR," he declared. "AS THE CHALLENGED PARTY, MR. EVERETT HAS CHOSEN MINER'S PICKS, AND DOCTOR GREENLEES, AS THE CHALLENGING PARTY, HAS ACCEPTED."

He paused, lowered his hands, turned, continued.

"THE DUEL WILL END WITH FIRST BLOOD OR WITH THE DEATH OF ONE OF THE CONTESTANTS, WHICHEVER OCCURS FIRST."

He looked at one, received his nod of understanding, looked at the other, received his nod as well.

"EITHER CONTESTANT MAY CRY QUARTER AND CAST DOWN HIS WEAPON. THIS WILL END THE DUEL IN FAVOR OF THE OTHER."

Again he looked at one to receive his nod of understanding, looked at the other to receive his as well.

"THERE WILL BE NO INTERFERENCE. THIS IS A DUEL OF HONOR. ANYONE ATTEMPTING TO INTERVENE WILL BE SHOT."

The announcer turned, slowly, a full circle, looking at the packed house.

Dr. John Greenlees was there because a man spoke to his wife in a manner intolerable.

The businessman was there because, frankly, his battleship mouth overrode his tadpole backside. 

The announcer withdrew to the side of the ring, leaned back against the ropes, lifted his shining-black topper

"GENTLEMEN, TO YOUR CORNERS."

Two men paced barefoot to their respective corners.

"RECEIVE YOUR WEAPONS!"

The businessman fairly snatched the miner's pick from the boy extending it: he dropped into a guard position, moving the pick a little, clearly ready to strike.

Dr. Greenlees reached for his, thanked the boy quietly, held his pick loosely, comfortably across his middle, looked to the announcer.

"BEGIN!"

The businessman's shoulders rolled forward, he held the pick tightly, desperately: he'd honestly bluffed when he chose miner's picks, hoping that a doctor -- a doctor, used to the precision of a scalpel -- would hesitate to face something as crude and as brutal as a hard-swung pick.

Dr. Greenlees raised his pick, drove the butt of his handle hard into the smooth stone floor.

He hit it again, knocked the head loose, slid it off the handle.

Dr. John Greenlees tossed the pick-head into the air, caught it in the middle:  he tossed the handle in the air, caught it at its midpoint:  he held the pick out in front of him, crossways, spun the pick-handle like a high-school majorette spins a baton:  he began advancing, bowlegged, taking exaggerated, small steps, slowly, advancing on his opponent:  steel, crossways before him, straight-grained wood spinning beside, his intense eyes boring into his opponent's --

Dr. John Greenlees, physician and surgeon, fairly glowed with confidence.

He honestly did not hear the gathered crowd begin to chant, he barely felt the waves of encouragement from half a hundred throats, then a full hundred, then more:

"JOHN! JOHN! JOHN! JOHN!"

Ambassador Marnie Keller, wife of this quiet, well-mannered physician and surgeon, a woman of decorum and dignity and proper Ambassadorial reserve, raised her gloved fists, pounding the air before her as did every last soul in that arena, screaming her husband's name as their unified chant grew louder and more powerful: a woman with pale eyes stared with big-eyed wonder and womanly admiration at the man who was going to war for her honor, for her virtue!

Dr. John Greenlees' eyes were unblinking, fixed on the businessman: he advanced, catlike, on the balls of his feet: he took a quick double-step, crossing his legs as he did, flowing like water to the side, then back, the new, unused pick-handle spinning easily at arm's length, the pick's bright-red, freshly-painted points a horizontal weapon before him.

The fat businessman had gotten all of one step from his corner, then froze: as men's voices pounded him from all sides like waves slamming him from an invisible ocean, as this hard-eyed, unblinking, confident and very obviously deadly-competent fighter advanced, the businessman did what men of commerce do:

He made a risk-benefits assessment, and concluded the risk was too great.

His pick hit the smooth stone floor.

Dr. John Greenlees, physician and surgeon, stopped:  he brought the pick-handle in under his arm, lowered the pick's head:  he took a long, cleansing breath, blew it out, slid the handle back into the pick's eye, turned it over, drove it hard into the floor to set the head back into its taper.

He turned, walked back toward his corner.

"JOHN, BEHIND YOU!"

A woman's voice, loud, sharp, penetrating:  Dr. John Greenlees spun, dropped his center off gravity, charged.

A fat-bellied businessman was running, barefoot and silent, across the ring, his miner's pick upraised.

Dr. John Greenlees, physician and surgeon, who had absolutely no expertise in the martial arts, whose advance with the pick's head on one hand and the spinning handle in the other had been sheer, unadulterated bluff, spun, crouched: his hand slid up the pick, gripped the head, the other hand guided the handle and he drove the end of the handle, hard, into the businessman's gut, just below the breastbone.

He drove the small end of the pick handle into man's xiphoid process hard as he could.

A primitive part of his soul wanted to drive the handle hard enough to stick out the man's back at least a foot.

Dr. Greenlees hit him hard, twisted, knowing he couldn't stop him, but he took all the fight out of him, he threw him to the side: the man staggered, dropped his weapon, fell face first and lay still.

Pandemonium.

The announcer ran over; the two men seized the choking, gasping businessman over.

He'd broken his nose when his face had a right-of-way argument with the stone floor, and came out in second place.

"FIRST BLOOD!" the announcer shouted, waving his shining topper:  "FIRST BLOOD!"

Dr. John Greenlees rose, looked around, turned, slowly, a complete circle, looking at waving, jumping, screaming humanity, all roaring their approval for this offworlder, this man worthy of the name, this lean-waisted warrior who'd come to defend his wife's honor, and prevailed.

John looked to the right.

He saw his wife.

He saw the dignified Ambassador Marnie Keller in her tailored, fashionable pink gown and gloves, in her fashionable little hat, jumping up and down and screaming like an excited schoolgirl, her arms up-thrust, gloved hands fisted:  men's hands seized her, lifted her, passed her overhead into the ring, Marnie rolled over as she was thrust under the thick, elastic ropes, she came to her feet, snatched up her skirt, ran to her husband.

Dr. John Greenlees, physician and surgeon, sweaty and bare-to-the-belt warrior, snatched his wife under the arms, pressed her up at arm's length and spun her around, then lowered her and crushed her into his embrace:  he kissed her as a man ought to kiss his wife, and Marnie honestly molded her femininity into him as they turned, her feet off the deck, one leg bent and pointed, declaring to the world that she was a woman and she was exactly where she wanted to be.

The announcer was waving his top hat and shouting impotently against the crowd's continuing roar that honor had been served, but for a half-naked warrior and his wife, that they were together in that moment, was all that mattered.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

Forgive me if this is unfinished when you see it. My main laptop decided the F, R and T keys don't want to work anymore. I'm on the downstairs laptop now, at my ham radio shack, and will finish there. 

 

THE OLD MAN AND THE JEEP

I should retire, he thought as he wallowed the restored, late-World-War-II, early-Korean War vintage Jeep through a wash, up the other side.

Just think of the money I could save.

No more malpractice insurance.

Dr. John Greenlees, Senior, grinned like a delighted schoolboy as he caught a gear, mashed the throttle, whined his way up the grade, careful on the throttle so as not to break traction and tear loose the sod.

He'd seen off-road jockeys before, running up-grade until they could go no further, spinning their wheels and exposing bare dirt: this eroded, washed out, gullied: no, he wasn't about to do that, and he'd run people off his land for doing that very thing.

John came to the crest, stomped the clutch, let the Jeep coast to a stop, shut it off.

Dear God, he thought, I love it so up here!

He looked out across an impossible distance, glad to be alone, glad to be here, away from everyone, away from everything.

Dr. John looked up, higher, where mountain teeth tore at the sky, then higher yet: he'd always intended to learn where Mars was, there among the constellations, but he never did: he looked, smiled a little, thinking of his son.

John, he thought, I do hope you are well.

"He is," a woman's voice said.

Dr. John Greenlees looked around, surprised.

"Be damned!" he exclaimed. "Willamina!" -- then he stopped, his mouth open, as his mind whispered, Willamina is dead.

"You flatter me, sir," the woman laughed: she rode a truly huge, shining-black horse with a long, black mane and what he'd heard a little girl call "Fuzzy Feet" -- the woman was pale eyed, she wore a gown of an earlier century, and damned if she wasn't the very image of the Willamina he'd known and secretly burned a candle for, for all the years he'd known her.

"My name," the woman smiled, "is Sarah Lynne McKenna, and you are Dr. John Greenlees, physician and surgeon, father of another John Greenlees. You are descended from yet another Dr. John Greenlees, the man who built our hospital."

Dr. John frowned a little, considered.

"Sarah Lynne McKenna," he said.  "I know that name."

Sarah laughed.  "Everyone in Firelands knows that name!"

She looked with affection at the puzzled physician.

"But you weren't expecting to encounter a ghost."

"A ghost," he said skeptically.

"You've never seen one?"

"Frankly, no," he said, "and you look far too solid to be a ghost."

"Oh?"  

The Frisian walked slowly up to the Jeep, sidled up close to the driver's side.

She sure as hell looks real, Dr. John thought, then he raised his hand, hesitated, caressed the horse's flank, smelled horse and a woman's scent ...

Lilac?

"Lilac," Sarah confirmed.  "I've always loved the smell of lilac water. My mother used it, when I was a very little girl, before she was murdered.  But then" -- Sarah tilted her head, regarded the skeptical physician with interest -- "you know that, too."

"I did not know about the lilac water," Dr. John said slowly.

"I've been sent to bring you home."

"Home," he echoed, frowning a little.

Sarah smiled, sidled her big black Snowflake-mare away from the Jeep: she put two fingers to her lips, whistled.

Snowflake danced away from the Jeep, and Dr. John Greenlees saw a good looking chestnut Morgan, harnessed to what he recognized as a physician's surrey.

"That looks like the one in the Museum," Dr. John said slowly.

"It is," Sarah nodded.  "This is also your Morgan horse."

"My Morgan?"

"Weeellll ...."

Sarah turned her gloved palm up, rolled her eyes innocently.  "Why don't you come over and say hello, at least."

"Why not," Dr. John shrugged.  "Strange as this is, it can't get much stranger."

Dr. John saw a familiar figure break over the skyline, not a quarter mile distant: the Sheriff, on his Appaloosa stallion, headed his way.

He saw the Sheriff draw up, shaded his eyes as Linn pulled out a set of field glasses, looked his way: he saw the Sheriff put the glasses back in their case, saw him lean forward a little, saw his Appaloosa thrust forward into a trot, then a gallop as he hit the down grade.

Dr. John swung a leg out of the Jeep, stood:  he looked up at the pale eyed woman on the tall black horse and asked, "What in the hell is going on here?"

"It's not hell, John," a man's voice said, and he turned, startled.

He had the unsettling feeling he was looking into a mirror.

The man was wearing an old-fashioned black suit and a ribbon necktie, a flat-crowned black hat.

I've seen him before, John thought, that portrait ...

"The portrait of your namesake, in the Museum," the man said, extending a hand.  "Dr John Greenlees, I presume."

"I am, sir," Dr. John said, "but you have the advantage of me."

"Not really."  He gave Dr. John an assessing look, nodded his approval.

"You've done well, John. If the opinion of an old grandfather means anything, I'm pretty damned proud of you."

"Grandfather?"

"Several times grand, I'm afraid, to quote" -- the dignified man in the black suit and flat-crowned hat looked up at Sarah and smiled -- "to quote a certain pale eyed, hell raising Sheriff."

"I'm not sure I understand what is happening."

"I didn't either, John, but I had some help."

 

Sheriff Linn Keller made for the Doctor's Jeep at a gallop.

Dear God, don't let it be!

Linn drew his Apple-horse to a fast stop on the passenger side of the Jeep; he kicked his feet loose of the stirrups, vaulted to the ground, raised his hand and SLAMMED it down on Dr. John Greenlees' shoulder blade.

"JOHN!"

Dr. John Greenlees, M.D., physician and surgeon, watched as his old friend the Sheriff grabbed the still form, hauled it upright, pressed two fingers into the throat beside the voice box: he closed his pale eyes and Dr. John could see Linn's lips move as he counted --

Dirty second one, dirty second two, dirty second three, dirty second four --

Linn released his grip on the limp corpse, ran around to the driver's side, seized the carcass under the arms, dragged him out and onto the ground.

Dr. Greenlees turned to address his lookalike --

Gone.

"John."

Sarah's voice was gentle.

Dr. John watched as his old friend responded as he'd been trained, as he tried to pump life into a dead chest:  he didn't notice her dismount, but she was beside him now, she took him gently by the arm and steered him toward the waiting physician's surrey.

"It's time to go, John," she said softly.

Dr. Greenlees turned, looked back at the Sheriff, pausing to raise his talkie, to radio for backup.

"Let him do what he must," she said. "He has to try, or he could never live with himself."

"So I'm dead."  His voice was flat; he felt his stomach fall to his boot tops.

Sarah squeezed his upper arm, then reached up and caressed his cheek with the backs of her gloved fingers.

"You don't feel dead to me," she smiled.  "Have you ever driven a physician's surrey? Of course you have. Every year in the parade, and you and Willamina used to go driving together, because you told her you didn't want to look like a total dunce."

Dr. John smiled a little:  he remembered using those very words, and the memories of going driving with the pale eyed Sheriff Willamina Keller were good ones.

"I miss that," he admitted.

"I know.  That's why she's going to help you."

Dr. John looked at Sarah with honest surprise, then he looked past her and his jaw dropped open.

A very familiar, pale eyed woman waved at him from the surrey.

"I think," Sarah smiled, "someone wants to show you where to go."

 

Sheriff Linn Keller leaned back against the emergency room's wall.

He fished a bandana from his hip pocket, wiped viciously at his closed eyes: he turned, blew his nose loudly, and the few who remained pretended not to notice.

Linn shoved the wadded up snot rag back in his pocket, walked up to the still form on the ER gurney, laid a hand on the cool flesh of what used to be a good and trusted friend.

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

A lean waisted, hard muscled Sheriff with an iron grey mustache bowed his head for a long moment, the way a man does when he says a final goodbye to someone he's known for a very long time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TO REACH THE STARS

"Pa?"

A little boy shoved his hat back on his head and squinted at the night sky.

Sheriff Jacob Keller looked at his son, looked at the sky, looked back at the little boy marveling at the starry-decked firmament.

"Yes, Michael?"

"Pa, what are stars made of?"

Jacob looked around, went over to the wood pile.

He grabbed a sawed chunk, rolled it over to where his son stood:  he turned it up for a seat, went back, got another.

Long tall Pa and his built-closer-to-the-ground son both sat.

Jacob shoved his hat back as well, looked up at the glory overhead, considered for a long moment.
"What are stars made of?" he asked softly, then looked at his son with a gentle smile.

"I don't rightly know."

Michael's expression, as best Jacob could see it in the dim light, was crestfallen.

"I know what my Pa told me about the sun."

Michael looked up at his Pa, interested: his Gampaw was a wise man, he knew, an' now he was dead an' that meant he was closer to God and that meant he knew stuff Michael's Pa didn't.

Michael remembered his Gampaw Linn and how he smelled, and how he laughed, and Michael wasn't sure which was better, settin' on his Gampaw's lap bein' read to, or settin' on his Pa's lap, bein' read to.

"Gampaw?" Michael asked eagerly.

"Oh, ya," Jacob said, and Michael was instantly suspicious:  he'd heard Gampaw use that 'Oh, ya,' right before he'd tell one of the most outrageous lies that was ever spun on this earth.

"Y'see," Jacob said with a straight face, "the Sun is a big steel ball, an' God Almighty stuffed it with old rags soaked in bacon grease and crude oil. He'll light it off in the east and that's how the East often times looks real red, 'cause the fahr is just startin'. She'll burn bright and hot all day long and there's enough in it to run til sundown. Once it goes down west of us it hits attair big salt water ocean an' goes out and it's night."

Michael wrinkled his nose, not sure whether his Pa was funnin' him or not, though it did kind of make sense.

"Is that what stars are, Pa?"

"Now that, I don't rightly know either. It would take a sizable army of angels to keep all them filled up with oil an' where would they get all that bacon grease and rags?"

"Oh."  Michael's voice was almost disappointed.

"I know stars are useful. You recall how I showed you the North Star and the Dipper and how to tell direction with it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Besides," Jacob said quietly, "they're pretty."

"Yes, sir."

Silence grew between father and son, then:

"Pa?"

"Yes, Michael?"

"What's that red star?"

"Whereabouts?"

Michael pointed.

Jacob had to study a bit, but he found it, and when he did, he smiled, the way a man will when he finds a memory he hasn't looked at for a very long time.

"That's a planet," he said. "It's called Mars."

"What's a planet, Pa?"

"It ain't a star. It's like this-here world we're standin' on, only it's red."

"Oh."

Michael considered this.

"Pa?"

"Yes, Michael?"

"Does anyone live on Mars?"

Jacob looked at his little boy and smiled again.

"Yes, Michael," he said. "There's fellers on Mars ten foot tall. They grow red wheat an' red corn an' their pasture is red clover an' red fescue and all their flowers have red blossoms."

"Is that how come it's red, Pa?"

"I reckon so," Jacob said with a straight face.

"Oh."  Silence again, then:

"Pa?"

"Yes, Michael?"

"Pa, you reckon Ma still has that extra apple pie someone give her today?"

Jacob removed his Stetson, scratched his head, looked at his son and chuckled quietly.

"Michael," he said, "what say we go take a look. If it's still there, why don't we sample it and make sure it ain't spoilt, that way no one will get sick if it is!"

Jacob could just see his son's delighted grin in the dim light.

Father and son settled their hats properly on their heads, father and son stood, and father and son, united in their unselfish and altruistic mission, set forth to make sure that pie wasn't spoiled.

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

"I DON'T SEE NO VEIL"

Sheriff Linn Keller rode his Apple-horse slowly up into the old section of the graveyard.

He drew up, turned: pale eyes started at the far left, where a stone bore a laser cut likeness of a pale eyed woman in a fashionable little hat, and a proper gown of the period: the oval portrait, long as his hand and wide as his knuckles, was in the upper right hand corner, with the name SARAH LYNNE McKENNA beneath:  date of birth, date of death, two lines of sentiment.

Damned poor memorial for all she did, he thought.

His eyes drifted slowly from left to right, lingering on each stone, remembering each soul who slept there -- or at least their bones did: he'd one time told his son there were as many folk in the graveyard as we bring with us and remember, that the spirit, the essence flew from the body at the moment of death, leaving only an empty shell.

Linn heard the quick clatter of a Paso's hooves coming up the grade: Angela, having just sewn a Mexican riding-dress, decided she'd like to show it off, and so she'd thrown her fancy saddle on her Paso Fino, while her brother quietly, stolidly, saddled his Pa's black Outlaw-horse.

Angela drew up on her Daddy's left; Joseph, on his right.

Father and son reached up and removed their Stetsons: Angela, being a girl, did not.

"Pa," Joseph asked, "how come our women all look so much alike?"

Angela lowered her eyes to her saddlehorn, bit her bottom lip, felt her ears turn red under her coiled hair: she waited, not realizing how much she looked like a modest, chaste young maiden.

Linn knew.

He looked over at her and had one of those profound moments when he realizes that HIS LITTLE GIRL was becoming more womanly, but she was still HIS LITTLE GIRL, and he felt an absolute wave of protectiveness rear up in his heart and crash powerfully down over his soul.

"I reckon," Linn said slowly, "God Almighty figured that was better than hangin' a warnin' label around their neck."

Joseph Keller, who was getting some height to him, who was undergoing his own changes from childhood to maturity, considered his father's words, frowned, and replied with the proper degree of thought, consideration, and maturity.

"Huh?"

Angela looked quickly at her long tall Daddy as he threw his head back and laughed -- quietly, the way he did when something tickled his funny bone on a deeper level than he'd expected: she felt a sudden rush of pride, for this was her Daddy -- her Daddy! -- and she'd learned long ago that her Daddy would keep her safe, no matter what, that her Daddy would make things right, peacefully, or otherwise, and she'd learned from direct observation that her Daddy did exactly that.

"Joseph," Linn replied, speaking slowly, the way he did when he was thinking fast, "the ladies of our line are all ... unique."

"Yes, sir?"

"You sister here" -- Linn looked over at Angela, smiled gently, tilted his head a little -- "is that the outfit you just sewed up?"

"Yes, Daddy," she said in a small, almost a little-girl voice.

Linn nodded approval. "Darln', you did a fine job on that."

"Thank you, Daddy."

"Sit up straighter in the saddle -- that's better -- now throw your shoulders back like your Mama does when she's facin' down the Chief."

Angela lifted her chin, squared up her shoulders and felt suddenly very self-conscious, the way a maiden will when she realizes her action is that of a woman proudly displaying her womanliness.

"Darlin', you are gorgeous," Linn said softly, "and you worked on that outfit you're wearin' for some long time, until you got it right."  He nodded and she felt a surge of pride as he added, "Well done, darlin'.  Well done indeed."

Linn looked to his right.

"Joseph," he said, "your sister here is highly intelligent. She's also good lookin', like her Ma."

"Howcome she doesn't look like Gammaw or Marnie?"

Linn smiled a little.  "She looks like herself, Joseph. She is he own unique soul, and I'm pretty damned proud of her."

Angela dropped her head again, grateful her coiled hair was piled over her ears, so her father would not see how flaming-hot and  scarlet- red they'd just become.

"Detail, back," Linn said -- his voice was different, it was the voice he used when he gave an order -- three riders backed their mounts, and a car came up over the crest, slowed suddenly when they saw the three riders.

Linn eased his Apple-horse ahead a step or two, waved, smiled: the surprised driver hit the brakes, waved uncertainly, then backed up a little, pulled into the turnaround just inside the gates, backed again, left, careful not to spin the tires with the pale eyed Sheriff himself watching.

"Kids," Linn grunted. "Thinkin' they could come up here and drink."

"Is that why we're here, Pa?"

"No."  Linn shifted in his saddle, looking around: he turned his Apple-horse.

"Ride with me."

Three riders paced briskly deeper into the cemetery, up over the intersecting road:  Linn made a sweep of their garden of stone, making sure no skulkers or interlopers were present.

"We'll have more of this, closer to Halloween," he muttered, and both Angela and Joseph nodded: children learn by observation, children get good at observing, and they'd observed over the years that their Pa kept vandals out of the cemetery, as best he was able, especially around Halloween.

They stopped at the highest point and looked around.

"Pa," Joseph asked, "who's that?"

Linn looked down at the old, original section, saw two children in what looked like nightgowns.

Joseph saw his Pa's jaw slide out, just a little, and he felt his Pa grow quiet.

Linn eased his Apple-horse ahead, his children following.

"Joseph," he said.

Joseph dismounted, walked over to where a laughing little boy and a giggling girl were playing peekaboo among the stones.  

They stopped as Joseph approached.

"Hi," Joseph said.  "I'm Joseph."

"Me too!" the boy declared -- he was small, he looked to be about three, no more -- the little girl suddenly looked bashful, tried to hide behind a narrow little obelisk.

"Mama said you were coming," the three-year-old boy in the flannel nightgown said, then looked past him, at the shining black gelding.  "Is that your horse?"

"That's my Pa's horse," Joseph said. "That's Outlaw, and he's fast!"

"My Pa had an Outlaw," the little boy said, eyes widening with delight, and then he faded, and was gone.

Joseph opened his mouth, disappointed, took two running steps, looking for the bashfful little girl --

She's gone too --

Linn sat, watched, smiling a little, Angela silent beside him.

Joseph looked around, took a few quick steps left, then right: he turned, gathered Outlaw's reins, walked back to his Pa.

Joseph used a gravestone as a mounting-block, got back into the saddle, looked at his Pa.

"Pa," he asked, "what just happened?"

"I'd say you just run across a couple ghosts."

Joseph frowned, looked back at the small stone, a crouched lamb, symbol of an infant's death.

"That is Joseph Keller's grave," Linn explained. "He died of what we'd call crib death."

"What about the girl?"

"I don't rightly know," Linn admitted.  "I do know Esther Keller -- Old Pale Eyes' wife -- died in child birth, trying to birth a little girl-baby. Might be that was her."

Joseph leaned forward, looked across his Pa to his sister.  "Did you see it?"

Angela nodded, then looked up at her Pa.

"Daddy, how could we see them? It's daylight and ghosts don't come out in the day."

Linn smiled a little.

"I reckon they might."

"But ghosts look like old bedsheets an' they float!"

Linn considered for several moments.

"Darlin'," he said softly, "there's an awful lot I don't know. Ghosts ... I don' know much about, other'n what I've seen."

"But Daddy ... why now, why today?"

"Well," Linn said speculatively, "I've been told around Halloween the veil between the worlds is thin."

Joseph looked around, turned his gelding in a complete circle, eyes busy:  he looked at his Pa and said, "Pa, I don't see no veil."

"Nor do I," Linn admitted.  "Somethin' my Mama used to tell me."

 

Edited October 13, 2023 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU GET AN “A”

 

Fred Jerome looked up, extended his hand to receive the slim green cardboard folder.

“Your story, sir,” Joseph said in his usual quiet, respectful voice.

“Thank you, Joseph.” 

Fred Jerome, the junior-class English teacher, looked out over the classroom.

“Stories are due,” he called. “Stories, please, here on my desk.”

Students straggled up to his desk and placed, tossed or stacked their efforts on the area he kept clean – his “reception area,” he called it – the students’ efforts arrived in various forms of completeness, neatness and appearance:  Joseph’s was the first, it was in a green cardboard binder, it was printed out, as neatly organized as his sister Marnie’s efforts.

Fred Jerome discreetly left the students’ submissions in view on his desk until end of class, then – after the hasty, noisy departure that always occurred when this last class of the day let out -- he stacked them in a voluminous briefcase he kept under his desk for the purpose: he’d budgeted time to go over them during the upcoming break, but he held Jacob’s out.

He was interested to see what his pale eyed student came up with.

His sister Marnie wrote with an almost painful exactness: only the fact that she’d chosen an interesting subject, kept her effort from being nearly too dry for human consumption.

Fred Jerome opened the green cardboard cover, looked at the hand-drawn illustration that was the front page.

It was a marvelously executed view down the street of what appeared to be a frontier town: mountains, there, on the left; boardwalks, a freight wagon and a team pulling it, toward the viewer:  women in long dresses, men in broad brimmed hats and high boots with the long Beagle ear pull straps on the side.

That’s not what seized his attention.

Hovering over the main street, a dirigible; beneath it, a boat shaped hull; on either side, great, stretched-cloth propellors, shaft mounted, and what seemed to be a smokestack.

And an anchor, lowered to the main street, dragging.

 

“JAYSUS CHRIST, MAN, GET THAT THING OUT’A’ MA STREET! YA NAIRLY HOOKED M’ TEAM!” the teamster roared, shaking a scarred, knotted fist and the floating hull overhead.

His team flinched away from the heavy, fluked anchor; the freight-wagon managed to avoid it, though not without leaving behind a loud and wind-shivering dose of frontier profanity.

 

Fred Jerome turned the page: same street, same viewpoint, but now there were men loafing against porch posts in front of the Saloon, holding mugs of beer and staring up at this airborne visitor.

Fred looked more closely at the hull: the drawing was remarkably detailed, precisely rendered, some of the best pen-and-ink work he’d seen in quite a long time: there, leaning over the railing, he saw a figure in what appeared to be a uniform, one arm extended, as if hailing someone below.

He nodded, smiling a little.

This was not at all what Joseph’s sister Marnie used to turn in.

Hers was so dry he’d needed a quart of buttermilk to wash it down when he read it; Joseph’s … well, he felt as if he could take a quick leap and jump into the pages and become part of the story!

 

“Ahoy there!”

“Yeah, whattaya want!” came the challenging reply.

“I say, we seem to be off course. Can you tell me where we are?”

“Off course,” came the laughing reply.  “Why, ya damned fool, can’t ya see the mountains? You’re in COLORADO, man!”

The Captain looked to his right, as if looking at someone, looked back down.

“I say … where?”

The fellow who’d squinted up from his beer to shout a contemptuous reply, curled his lip, whistled, thrust his chin toward a stout log-and-timber building diagonally across from the Silver Jewel Saloon: a boy raised his arm in acknowledgement, ran for the Sheriff’s office.

Diagonally across from the Silver Jewel – but up the street a little, instead of down the street toward the Sheriff’s office – a little rat-faced man in a tall black hat came out, his thin hands nervously polishing the head of a cane: everyone knew the duck’s head was brass, but he tried to swagger as if it were gold, or at least gold plated.

Digger, the town’s undertaker, squinted up at this floating abomination with its dragging, salt-corroded anchor scratching slowly along the packed and rutted dirt of their main street:  he took off his wire rimmed spectacles, breathed on them, polished them with the same kerchief he’d been burnishing the duck’s head with, slipped them back on, squinted again: realizing he wasn’t getting any business just yet, he turned and went back inside, his door closing just as the Sheriff’s door opened.

Someone must have been on the opposite rail as the ship’s-captain: the grey haired man in the blue uniform withdrew from the starboard rail and leaned over the port rail.

A lean man in a tailored black suit leaned his head back, lifted his Stetson in greeting.

“Howdy!” he called. “How can I help ye?”

A gate was opened in the heavy rail; a ladder brought to the side, shoved over: it unrolled, hit the ground, and one man, then another began their descent.

The Sheriff watched the two men with interest.

He’d seen ladders like that before, and had never used one: he didn’t care for the notion that he’d be hanging onto a rung with both hands, and his legs would be swung out ahead of him as he descended: these two, though, descended with the ease of long practice.

The Sheriff settled his Stetson back onto his head.

 

Fred Jerome looked up, blinked, feeling distinctly like he’d just come up from a long, deep dive.

In his mind’s eye he could see a wooden ship’s hull, suspended beneath a cigar shaped dirigible: he turned back to the illustration, marveled at the precision of the hand that drew the crisscrossing lines over the gas bag.

He went back to where he’d been, turned the page.

Here was a drawing – the view was from behind the Sheriff, looking at two men in naval officer’s uniforms, one on the ground, the other about to step off the wooden-rung, chain-sided ladder.

He read.

 

“Captain,” the Sheriff said pleasantly, shaking the dignified older man’s hand: he shook the first officer’s hand, inclining his head slightly as he said, “Commander.”

“Sheriff, we seem to be … lost.”

The Sheriff regarded them with disconcertingly pale eyes: both mariners shifted uncomfortably, looked at one another, looked at the Sheriff.

“We … are not expecting … to be here.”

“Where should you be?”

They looked at one another again, then the Captain lifted his chin, the way a man will when he arrives at a decision.

“We were over the Thames,” he said, “we were on course and on schedule” – he pronounced it like the British, though the Sheriff hadn’t seen a standard flown – “we were outbound for the American colonies when a storm boiled out of nowhere and swallowed us.”

The Sheriff frowned, turned his head slightly as if to bring a good ear to bear.

The Captain stopped, looked closely at the attentive lawman.

“You’ve seen that.”

“I have,” the Sheriff nodded.

“What happened?”

One of the hangers-on in front of the saloon came across the street, approached the men, looked up at the ship’s hull and then looked at the Captain.

“Will that thing float?” he demanded.

The first officer’s eyes widened – a shocked expression – the Captain’s face reddened with anger and he hissed, “How dare you, sirrah!”

“How dare I what?” came the shouted reply: an angry gesture – “That’s a ship, damn you, it’s wood, will it float or not?”

“AND HOW DARE YOU IMPLY THAT WE SHOULD HAVE TO FLOAT LIKE A COMMON BOAT!” the first officer shouted, crowding in between the interloper and his Captain.

“DUFFY! GET OUTTA HERE!” the Sheriff shouted: when the man didn’t, the Sheriff turned sideways, seized Duffy by the throat, shoved: he split Duffy from the sputtering, indignant ship’s-captain and his red-faced first officer, half-pushing, half-dragging the offender into the middle of the street.

“Look,” the pale eyed lawman said, his voice quiet, menacing: “You stay over here and you keep your mouth shut, otherwise you get your Saturday night bath early!”

“Like hell!” came the gasped reply.

The Sheriff seized the offender by his shirt front and his crotch, hauled him off the ground and drove him headfirst into the nearest horse trough.

He didn’t look to see if he’d busted the bottom out or not:  he strode back across the street.

“Gentlemen,” he said, dusting his hands off – an unnecessary act, as they weren’t soiled, but rather a ceremonial act, divesting himself mentally of the impolite interruption.

“Might I offer you the hospitality of –"

“HEY SHERIFF!”

The lean waisted lawman looked across the street, at multiple men pointing at something ahead of the floating ship.

 

Fred Jerome turned the page.

His eyes widened a little and his brows drew together as he stared at the highly-detailed, perfectly-rendered illustration: it was three panels, that took up the entire page.

The top panel viewed the floating ship, but nose to nose with it, another – just as out of place in this 1890s-era mountain settlement as a wooden hull beneath a cigar shaped gas bag.

This was silvery, graceful, with what appeared to be full-length cannon, built into the hull: centered between and below these, a third, larger bore: this was drawn to appear smooth, shining, metallic … graceful, but menacing at the same time.

He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass.

Nose art, he thought.

He looked, he drew the magnifying glass back, enlarging the precise, detailed, tiny pen-and-ink illustration.

“Stardancer,” he read aloud, then looked more closely at the art itself.

A former student’s face looked back at him.

The center panel had the cigar shaped craft with landing legs extended, set down on the street: the front lowered, for all the world like a metallic bird opening its lower jaw, to expose a black sarcophagus.

The third panel showed the sarcophagus open, and a black-suited, sphere-headed, very definitely female figure, was stepping out and onto the dirt street.

 

“Remember our bet,” Joseph said quietly.

Angela smiled as she looked at her older brother.

Spring steel whispered as she thumbed another round of 00 buck into the Ithaca’s magazine.

“JOSEPH KELLER! ON DECK! ANGELA KELLER IN THE HOLE!”

It was not at all unusual for deputies to compete in blue jeans and work boots, even in hot weather.

It was not as common for non-departmental personnel to compete, though on occasion, the Ladies’ Tea Society would run both the Sheriff’s pistol and rifle qualifications.

To have a pretty girl in a dress and heels competing, with a red ribbon in her hair and a winning smile on her face, was very definitely out of the ordinary.

Angela Keller stood with her Ithaca slung from her left shoulder, earplugs in place and the screaming-neon-green cord connecting them, run behind her shining, cornsilk-fine hair: she watched with pride as her father, his deputies, then her older brother, ran the assault course – a shotgun course – then, finally, the last shooter for this stage.

“Angela Keller, you’re up.”

Angela Keller smiled, relaxed, confident, walked up to the white-painted start box, brought her Ithaca off her shoulder: she dropped a dime down its muzzle, held it vertical, pulled the trigger, lowered the muzzle.

She squatted, gracefully, daintily, gunmuzzle lowered to the horizontal and downrange; she picked up the dime, handed it to the timekeeper.

“FIRING PIN CHECKS OKAY!” he shouted. “THE SHOOTER WILL LOCK AND LOAD!”

Angela cycled the action briskly, pulled the safety on, raised the muzzle to vertical, looked at the timekeeper, nodded.

A pretty girl with a red ribbon in her hair and a smile on her lips looked at the first target.

Men watched as a pretty girl (with really nice legs!) ran toward the first plate, thrust her muzzle forward like a bayonet, fired: she swung, drove two charges of go-to-hell buck into two more plates: she stopped, squatted behind a barrel, thumbed two rounds into the magazine, jumped a little and threw herself flat on her back.

This was unusual.

Normally the contestants would lean, almost overbalanced, around the right side of the barrel.

She landed on her shoulder blades, fired around the left side of the barrel, firing from the prone: she knocked down the three round plates, one behind the other (more than one Sheriff’s deputy smacked himself mentally for not going left instead of right on this stage!) – she rolled to her feet, loading as she moved, ran toward the next stage and delivered a flying-mare kick to the dummy, blasted it in the face, swung left, fired at two more, dropped behind a barricade and thumbed two more rounds into her magazine.

Those who could see her face, did not see a smile … well, they saw a smile, just not the pleasant, winning smile of a pretty young girl.

They saw a distinctly wolflike smile, the smile of someone who was enjoying what she was doing.

Angela popped up, dropped back, thrust the shotgun’s muzzle through the opening and drove two deer slugs through two dummies’ heads.

The “heads” contained two-liter bottles of bright-red dye.

The impact of an ounce of twelve gauge slug is an impressive thing, made even more so with its proximity to the “hostage” jug filled with screaming-slime-green dye: shooting a hostage meant you bought beer for the class, and nobody wanted to shoot the hostage.

Angela ran to the final box, drove a fast left-right at two poppers: each fell, and as they did, they kicked a clay bird in the air:  Angela reloaded as soon as she fired the second round, slammed the action, drove a round of birdshot into the chamber, scored a left-and-a-right on the clay birds, kicked her action open:  she turned to the timekeeper, cycled the action three times, raised it, muzzle downrange, to show the orange-plastic follower in the magazine tube: 

“Confirm empty!” she called, and the timekeeper called back, “Empty confirmed!”

Angela turned,muzzle still downrange, closed the action, dropped the striker, slung the shotgun over her left shoulder, skipped toward her pale-eyed Daddy and her pale-eyed brother, threw her head back and laughed like a happy little girl.

One of the deputies came up, clapped a hand on the Sheriff’s shoulder and said frankly, “Boss, I’ve just been outshot by a little girl!”  He grinned at Angela and declared loudly, “By God now, I couldn’t be happier!”

Angela laughed, seized the deputy’s ears, kissed him quickly on the forehead: she turned as her Daddy said, “Darlin’, you shot top score and clean in the women’s division!” and extended a medallion on a ribbon.

Angela snatched it, turned, skipped over to the only female deputy present, dropped the ribbon over her head.

She spoke quietly to the surprised deputy, hugged her quickly, impulsively, intentionally looking flighty and girlish as she did: she skipped back to her Daddy, hooked one hand in her Daddy's elbow and the other in her brother's, and said “Is this worth dinner with the two most handsome men in the county?”

Father, son and a half dozen deputies laughed.

 

The female figure in the shining-black skinsuit reached up, gripped her head-sphere with shining black gloves: a twist, a pull, the sphere came off to reveal a bright pair of pale-blue eyes, a smile, and a scalp that had as much hair as a cannonball.

She tucked the sphere under her off arm, raised a hand in a correct military salute.

Captain, Commander and Sheriff all squared off toward this figure, came to correct military attention and returned the salute.

“Have I the honor to address the Captain of the King’s Arrow?”

The Captain bowed.  “You have the advantage of me, madam,” he said with a grave courtesy.

“Captain, time is of the essence. We must get you aloft so we can get you back home.”

“I am very much at a loss,” the Commander said carefully, “to understand just how we arrived here, my Lady.”

She looked at him and nodded, her face serious.

“Explanations can wait, time is of the essence. Now, gentlemen, before it is too late for you to ever see home again.”

 

Fred Jerome turned the page.

The illustration showed two men, one just being pulled onto the ship, the other still on the ladder, with the ship visibly ascending, the cloth propellors blurring a little, apparently beginning their propulsive rotation.

He read.

 

“Sir, this just arrived for you.”

A shining silver box appeared, hovering about chest high on the deck: its lid unfolded, a screen extended, unfolded, displayed the image of the bald-headed, black-suited woman.

She reached up with black-gloved hands, slipped a shocking-green wig over her bald head.

“There,” she said. “That’s better.  Now Captain, how quickly can you make altitude?”

“I fear,” he said, looking at the glass barometer, “we are near ceiling already.”

“I’ll take care of that. Secure for transport.”

“Will there be stormy or rough conditions?” the Commander asked from his position just behind the Captain’s right shoulder.

“No, Commander. It should be a smooth flight. Pardon me while I bring the spatial generators on-line.”

The first officer looked at his Captain.  “Spatial generators?”

The Captain raised his eyebrows, shrugged.

“We’re ready, gentlemen. Now to make sure you get home … your last confirmed position was over the Thames?”

“It was, yes.”

“Steer course two-nine-zero, dead slow ahead. Is your anchor stowed?”

“Very nearly so, yes.”

“Good. You’ll see envelopment in six, five, four, three, two, one.”

 

Fred Jerome turned the page.

The illustration was of London, but no London he’d ever seen.

Here was a London with airships that combined sail, steam and wooden hulls: here was a black cloud with one such ship, suspended from a cigar shaped gas bag, emerging: here was a ship with men in the ratlines, waving their seaman’s caps with delight at their successful return to the familiar:  and above them, emerging simultaneously, something silver, something with three cannon beneath, something with a projecting silver snout, like the beak of a great, shining bird.

Fred stared at the illustration, re-read the text, leaned back in his chair, smiling a little.

There was a knock; he turned, saw Joesph standing in the doorway.

Fred motioned him in, closed the cover, handed it back.

“You get an A,” he said quietly.  “Thank you for that.”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

INTERVENTION

There were several pale eyed men who bore the same name.

It was customary, and still is, to give an infant the name of an honored ancestor.

The name "Linn" was given to the firstborn son, a custom originating on the other side of the Big Salt Water: it carried through to a new colony, to new settlements, to those families pushing west.

Ohio, for many years, was The West.

It was a treasure, a gem: to the north, a navigable lake, timber beyond imagining, deep and fertile soils: to its south, La Belle Riviere, a river for navigation and for fishing and for harvesting the water fowl that arrived in clouds and swam in rafts.

Its mineral treasures remained hidden, at least for a while, and in the hill country, with its thin soil and a profound lack of large, flat areas for cultivation, land sold for less: it was here that the family Keller settled, and it was here that a boy-child was born.

This was the seminal ancestor on this new continent, the first of his line on this side of the salty, stormy Atlantic, to bear the name Linn.

Like most babies, he grew; like all who grew, he worked: he was his father's shadow, learning by doing, and doing nearly everything his father did: he learned to make as much as possible, and became a fair hand at the forge, an expert shot -- he dare not miss, powder was precious and shot was hard to come by: he learned the value of that one precise shot, because one shot is all he had.

He was often afield, a creature of der Vald, as much a part of the land as the trees that grew from it: he knew the plants, the herbs, he learned to cuss squirrels in their own profane language, he practiced sneaking, and his father watched, silent and amazed, as Linn eased up behind a grazing doe, leaned into a tree and damn neart disappeared -- with one arm out, his palm down, fingers curled and stiff.

Linn's father watched, surprised, smiling, as the doe shifted, backed, felt the stiff fingers just grazing her backside:  she humped herself up a little bit, scratched herself on what she apparently thought was a convenient branch.

Linn was supposed to be out looking to put meat in the pot.

They would not go hungry for his not having killed the doe, and the father could not bring himself to upbraid his son for passing up the opportunity.

Before the old man died, he remembered the moment, and honestly regretted not praising his son for his stealth, for that same stealth kept them supplied with meat on the table and hides for makin'.

 

In his own advancing years, Linn would speak of more than one watchful father, or Father: more times than one he would observe that it was a genuine wonder he survived childhood, let alone everything that followed.

One mild February there was a thin snow on, enough to track if he was lucky, and Linn was afield with the flint rifle his Pa made him.

He'd grown more than the Grand Old Man allowed for, and the rifle was too short for him, but Linn honestly did not care: he had a good rifle that his Pa made.

Linn knew the work that went into a rifle.

His Pa built him that rifle -- him! -- and for that reason, he prized it, he treasured it, he carried it, he used it.

He was easing through the woods, making as much noise as a passing cloud, when he stopped and studied on a track, then another.

His middle finger curled around the set trigger and fetched it back until he felt the near-silent *click* as it engaged; his thumb laid around the head of the striker, brought it back until the tumbler dropped past the fly, into the full cock notch.

He'd found a ba'r track.

Now a ba'r would give them a right smart of meat and a b'ar would give them b'ar oil, rendered out and kept in crocks, 'twould be used for cookin' and to grease rifle barls and his Mama would have a nice warm black rug to stand up on when she come out of bed of a morning.

Linn's pale eyes studied the tracks, the direction they took, he looked ahead, listening, smelling.

He followed.

Silent, alert, watchful, he looked ahead, looking for crows overhead, squirrels in the trees, he looked for a moving shadow, he listened for an incautious tread in the woodland leaf-litter.

Nothing.

He studied ahead, reasoning that if he were a b'ar out this early, he'd be hungry, where would he be headed, and his eyes went there.

He followed the tracks down the shadowed side of the ridge -- there, on the far side of the creekbank, something heavy had passed, twisted the leaves a little, exposed some streamside mud, almost frozen where the sun had beat on it since sunup --

He looked ahead, disappointed: here the sun caressed the side of the ridge, melting the thin snow.

Of a sudden it occured to the tall, lean, pale eyed young man that the rifle he carried was just pretty damned light to go after a b'ar.

He'd seen a b'ar tear into a pack of dogs, he'd helped skin out b'ar, and he well knew they were big and they were hard to kill, and he looked at his flint rifle and realized he didn't carry a heavy enough ball to drop a b'ar.

Was he to slip that little squirrel rifle sized ball down the ear hole, or if he got a good square shot right through the eye, it might be enough -- but he was loaded for squirrel, and powder was dear, so he was loaded light.

Linn stopped and leaned against a young hickory and considered.

Pale eyes were busy on the south facing slope as he studied the forest floor, trying to puzzle out any leaf disturbance that would betray the bruin's passing.

The February sun was thin, but enough to warm his back, and the leaves around him, and he considered that the Almighty just might be giving him a sign.

He'd heard folk talk about signs and portents, omens and prophecy: this might not be an omen, but it just might be a sign that God Almighty was sparing him from his stupidity in going after something as big and mean as a b'ar, with a rifle that small.

It was not the first time in his life that the hand of Providence was extended in intervention.

It was, however, the first time he recognized it for what it was.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I, Linn Keller, did carry this very rifle on the aforementioned February morning, in my fourteenth year, when the Lord took pity on my youthful stupidity and sent enough sun to melt that tracking snow!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PROPERLY HANDLED

Sheriff Linn Keller looked at his old friend, Dr. John Greenlees.

He looked at the distressed young man sitting on a green-painted chair, trying not to grimace as the physician applied powdered yarrow to the bloody groove in his scalp.

A bloody pan with an inch of water held a straight razor, and the strip shaved from the young man’s scalp, just above his right ear, told the Sheriff that Dr. Greenlees shaved hair from either side of the wound so he could have a clean field to work in.

The air smelled of carbolic and Linn saw the brownish stain that told him Dr. John had wiped the length of the wound with what must’ve felt like a rag dipped in liquid fire.

Linn looked around, picked up a chair, brought it around and set it in front of the patient.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice quiet, almost gentle.

Dr. Greenlees picked up a small brush and whisked the spilled coagulant powder from his patient’s shoulder.

The patient was quiet for a long moment: he looked off to the side, trying to order his thoughts, trying to make some sense of what must seem like an absolutely stupid move, and the harsh and uncompromising realization that his utter and unmitigated stupidity came perilously close to getting him killed.

They heard a door slam – someone was in the waiting room, someone with hard heels and a brisk step – and the Sheriff rose, held up a cautioning finger.

Sheriff Linn Keller stepped out of the treatment room, into the waiting room: the floor shone, it was varnished, it was scrupulously clean; chairs were ranked in good order, there was a picture on the wall, and there was a rather angry young woman standing in the middle of the floor.

Sarah Lynne McKenna glared at the Sheriff, opened her mouth.

She abruptly shut her mouth – very abruptly, the Sheriff almost expected to hear her teeth click together – Sarah turned abruptly to her left, marched a few paces, whirled, marched in the opposite direction: her arms were stiff at her sides, her hands fisted, storm clouds gathered on her pretty brow and she turned to the Sheriff, a gloved hand upraised, fingers spread toward the ceiling.

She opened her mouth again, snapped her jaw shut – this time the Sheriff did hear her teeth click together – she stormed across the room, stopped, spun, stormed back, stopped, looked at the Sheriff again and opened her mouth.

She raised a gloved fist, a teaching finger as if lecturing a class, then she swept her arm down, fisting her hand again, turned with an irritated “OOOHHH!”

“Darlin’,” the Sheriff said in a patient and fatherly voice, “I’m not much for mind readin’.”

Sarah stopped, turned her head, glared at him: she turned, paced slowly up to the pale eyed lawman.

She lowered her eyes, chewed on her bottom lip, looked back up, tears shining and piling up on her bottom eyelids.

Linn pulled a kerchief from his sleeve: “Close your eyes,” he whispered, then carefully blotted the bedsheet kerchief against her closed eyelids:  one eye, then the other: he wiped each one, carefully, delicately, with a father’s gentleness.

He unfolded the kerchief, draped it across her nose, pinched very gently, the way he would a little child: “Blow,” he murmured, and Sarah Lynne McKenna, the pretty young daughter of one of the most successful businesswomen in the State, blew with a loud and most unladylike honk!

“There now,” the Sheriff almost whispered, wiping her nose very gently, the way he did his own young: he thrust the wadded kerchief in a pocket, spread his hands and took her very carefully by the points of her elbows.

“What happened?”

“I was so scared,” she whispered.

“I can tell.”

“I was afraid of what he would do to me.”

Linn nodded.  “Go on.”

“I was driving back from Pyrite Creek – I didn’t have The Bear Killer with me, it was just me and our dapple Butter-horse and a rider came THUNDERING up behind, shouting at me to WAIT, YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME LIKE THAT! and he seized poor Butter’s cheek-strap and started dragging her to a halt!”

“What did you do?”

“I snapped down the reins and put my foot on them, I snatched up my Winchester rifle and I shot him!”

“Kill him?”

Sarah stared at the pale eyed Sheriff.

He asked the question so innocently, so casually – as if he knew the answer was going to be in the negative – “I tried to,” she whispered, then she hiccupped, she dropped her eyes, shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t kill him.”

“You did burn him.”

“Yes.”

“He ran.”

“Yes.”

“You decided to leave well enough alone and set your rifle back in its rack.”

She nodded, swallowed.

“Sheriff?” she whispered.

Linn tilted his head, looked into the pretty young woman’s face.

“Never mind.”  She turned away, then looked at the door of the treatment room.

“Is he in there?”

“He is.”

“I would speak with him.”

Linn considered, then walked slowly, deliberately, over to the treatment room door:  he knocked, two knuckle-taps, opened the door.

Doctor and patient looked at a pale, visibly upset young woman, and a tall, pale eyed, solemn-faced Sheriff.

The patient rose: he looked half sick, he looked like a man facing a firing squad.

The treatment room was quiet for several long moments, then Dr. Greenlees bent, picked up the washpan of bloodied water, stained rags and a straight razor, and moved them to a counter in the back of the room:  he busied himself washing his hands with his usual, methodical thoroughness.

“I take it,” the Sheriff said dryly, “you two have met.”

Sarah looked at a man who wasn’t as young as she’d thought: he looked half sick, half ashamed: he had a bandage carefully wound around his head, a thick pad over one ear.

Sarah lifted her chin.

“I thought,” he blurted, “you were my wife.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow and maintained a frosty silence.

“She up and left me and – I thought –”

His voice trailed off, then he blinked and tried to bluster.

“A woman can’t just leave a man like that!  After all I done –”

“This man,” Sarah said quietly, and there was frost in her voice, “is my father. He is Sheriff. You tried to lay hands on the daughter of the county Sheriff, and neither he, nor the local Judge, will view that kindly.”

Linn reserved his words: he normally did not allow someone else to speak for him, but instinct told him to let Sarah have her head.

“We can take this before the Judge,” Linn said, his voice deep, strong, confident: “I’m sure His Honor will be happy to rule on this matter.”

The patient blinked, tried to come up with a halfway intelligent retort, and

Discovered to his profound distress that his mind was utterly, absolutely, blank.

“Or you can get out of my county.”

Linn’s voice had a hard edge to it.

“That’ll be sixbits,” Doc Greenlees said, breaking the spell – his patient blinked, twice, shook his head: he reached into a vest pocket and paid the man.

Sarah and the Sheriff drew themselves to the side: the young man rushed from the room, raising his hat, holding it between his head and the pale eyed pair.

They waited until the outer door slammed shut.

Linn looked at Doc, then at Sarah, as Sarah sank as if exhausted into a red-velvet-upholstered chair.

She gripped the arms of the chair, her knuckles standing out white as she did, she looked across the room, eyes wide, seeing a horror known only to her young soul.

“I was weak,” she whispered: Sarah swallowed, looked at the Sheriff with haunted eyes.

“Inge’s children and I was laughing and we were singing and Inge and I said a Rosary together and I let my guard down.”

Sarah closed her eyes, let her head drop back.

“I was happy,” she said faintly. “I was happy and I drove back and I was not paying attention to my back trail.”

Her head came up and horrors looked out her pale eyes as she said, “When he came up beside me and shouted that I wasn’t leaving him, when he seized Butter’s bridle and started fighting her to a stop, I – all I could – the only –”

Linn went down on one knee, laid a gentle hand on her forearm.

“You’re safe,” he said in that deep, reassuring, confident Daddy-voice. “You are safe, Sarah. Nothing can hurt you here.”

“They hurt me, Daddy,” she squeaked. “I was just a little girl and they hurt me.”  She looked at Linn and tears cascaded down her ghastly white cheeks.  “Why did they hurt me, Daddy? What did I do to deserve that?”

Sarah opened her arms and fell into Linn’s chest:  he seized her in little short of a crushing grip:  he held her and he let her cry, and he looked up at his old and dear friend, Dr. John Greenlees, and both men nodded, for in their time they’d both held people, men and women, young and no longer young, who’d been tried beyond the limits of what anyone should have to endure.

Bonnie Lynne McKenna was on the porch, watching, when Linn drove up in their carriage, Sarah beside him, her head over on his shoulder: Linn’s untethered Appaloosa followed the carriage, came up beside, laid his head over against Sarah.

Linn eased Sarah back upright, dismounted:  he came around, bribed his horse out of the way with some tobacker shavings off the plug he carried for that purpose: he picked up Sarah as if she were a little girl, he carried her up to the porch steps.

Bonnie Lynne McKenna stood with her hands folded in her apron, knowing as a mother always does that something happened, and her face showing her fear of what that might be.

Linn set one boot up on the bottom step, looked at Bonnie.

“Might we have some tea?” he asked softly.

 

Sarah was abed; Linn carried her upstairs, waited until the maid had the bed turned down, then lay Sarah very carefully, very gently in her own bunk: he bent and kissed her forehead, caressed her cheek with the back of a bent forefinger: he withdrew and let the ladies tend her undressing, trading day-clothes for a flannel nightgown.

Linn sat with Bonnie at her kitchen table and spoke quietly of what had occurred.

Bonnie listened, nodding occasionally, her expression as haunted as her daughter’s had been:  Bonnie had survived the horrors that her daughter endured, only worse – age being their only difference – Linn finished his tea and rose, and Bonnie rose with him.

Linn looked very directly into Bonnie’s gorgeous violet eyes.

He was not normally so forward with another man’s wife, but he wished to emphasize what he was about to say.

“Bonnie,” he said quietly, “you are the strongest woman I know. You survived more than anyone could ever expect. Anyone else would have died or gone insane and you did neither.”

Linn turned, looked to the ceiling, as if looking through flooring and joists at a young woman safely abed.

“Your daughter is the strongest young woman I know. That fellow caught her by surprise and it brought back every last memory of everything that was ever done to her.”

Linn looked at Bonnie again.

“She didn’t freeze and she didn’t faint. She addressed the situation the best way anyone could.”

Linn accepted his Stetson from the maid.

“Thank you for the tea.”

Bonnie followed the Sheriff to the front door.

As the maid drew the portal open, Bonnie said “Linn?  How did she … address the situation?”

Linn stopped, turned, settled his Stetson on his head.

“The best way anyone could handle it,” he said.  “With a Winchester rifle.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

STUPID RULES

Angela Keller was breathing heavily, her hands were fisted, her jaw was thrust forward: unlike her pale eyed siblings, Angela's eyes were a striking, deep, clear blue, the absolute shade of a cloudless September sky:  she leaned forward a little, the unexpected lines in her face harsh in the artificial glare of crime scene floodlights and the red-and-blue strobing of roof bar LEDs.

Angela's anger was unfiltered and undisguised as she shouted at her Daddy:  "WHY WEREN'T YOU THERE!"

Sheriff Linn Keller looked at his daughter, looked at the open trunk of her pretty purple Dodge, looked at the ruined chrome grille of a pickup truck, at oil and antifreeze running in a thin, steady stream to the shining, headlight-reflecting puddle on the ground.

"Darlin'," Linn said, his voice gentle "why don't you tell me what happened?"

Angela's eyes blazed and her voice shivered, but her back remained ramrod straight, her hands remained fisted as she turned her head, thrust her chin at her car.

"Look at it," she snapped.  "Look at what they did to my car!  MY CAR!"

Angela's breathing was labored, quick: she closed her eyes, took a long breath, blew it out.

"It's all on surveillance," she said finally.  "You should look at the video first."

 

The dispatcher pulled the phone from his ear in surprise.

A female voice, loud! -- it took him a moment to register what she'd said, then he reached for the desk mic, seized its grey-painted neck, hauled it closer, curved his fingers, ready to drive down on the grey-plastic transmit bar.

"THIS IS ANGELA KELLER. I AM INBOUND ON FAY IVER RIDGE ROAD. I AM BEING PURSUED BY A FOUR-BY AND THEY'VE RAMMED ME TWICE! THEY'RE TRYING TO EITHER STOP ME OR KILL ME! I NEED BACKUP AND I NEED IT NOW!"

A blue eyed young woman, old enough to drive but not old enough to drink, drove the go pedal to the firewall.

"Come on, Purple," she muttered. "Don't fail me now!"

 

A Sheriff's cruiser skidded to a shivering, dust-dragging stop, turned a little sideways as it did:  backup lights came on, it pulled rapidly up the Y, close to the ditch, stopped.

The second cruiser stopped just before the Y, waited.

 

"Angela, I need you to take Gary's cutoff, are you familiar?"

"YES!" Angela shouted as her pretty purple Dodge drifted around a corner, as the off side of the road grew perilously close to her passenger side tires.

She'd gained a little distance, but not enough, not enough!

"I have two units at Gary's cutoff, one is pulled up into the Y. Go up the Y and we'll have 'em!"

"Roger that!" Angela shouted:  she nailed the brakes, came off to correct her skid, hit the whoa-clydes again, hauled the wheel around and mashed the throttle.

Dirt, gravel and profanity spun into the air: Angela's hands were white-knuckled as she blasted past the Sheriff's cruiser, she kept the go pedal mashed, hard, then slowed, fast, her lips peeling back.

Angela Keller spun the wheel hard left, shot through a gap in the fence, a gap she knew was there because she used to run a tractor over it in the summer:  she shot into the field, cranked the wheel, stomped the throttle: the car fishtailed around to face the gap in the fence and Angela punched the shutoff button, hard.

She had no memory of getting to the trunk of her car.

She remembered seeing the back bumper, dented, no longer level.

She remembered hitting the trunk release button three times before it klunked.

It opened about a half inch, stopped.

Angela ran her fingertips into the gap, snarled, pulled hard: something scraped, then released and the wrinkled, crash-damaged trunk lid swung open, fast.

Angela dove into the trunk, seized the gun case: she unzipped the case, fast, viciously, drove her hand into the flannel lining, seized the wrist of a Model 12 Winchester, pulled it free, danced backward.

Her fingers had eyes.

She pulled the first round free of the sidesaddle, her middle finger curled behind the trigger guard and hit the release: the action slammed open, she dumped in the round, slammed it shut, waited.

She saw headlights following her dust.

Angela Keller, the pretty, blue-eyed daughter of that pale eyed Sheriff, skipped over behind her car, feeding rounds from the receiver mounted sidesaddle, into the action: she crouched in her car's shadow as the four-by roared up on it.

Angela stood, aimed between the headlights, fired, fired again, fired a third time.

She ran to the side, shotgun to her shoulder:  "SHOW ME YOUR HANDS, DAMN YOU, OR I'LL BLOW YOU TO HELL!  SHOW ME YOUR HANDS, NOW!!!"

A Sheriff's cruiser skidded on the gravel road, turned into the gap in the fence, came bouncing up behind the truck, angled to illuminate the driver's side: a second cruiser came in, angled to the passenger side, swung its headlights over the truck at a long angle.

A pretty young woman and two Sheriff's deputies waited as the doors opened, slowly, and three men emerged, their hands up, palms forward, fingers spread.

Angela dropped back into a rigid port arms as the driver stepped out and the deputy advanced, handcuffs at the ready.

 

"Firelands, Firelands Four, shots fired, no injuries, advise Unit One we need him here five minutes ago."

"He's on his way."

 

Linn looked at his daughter.

"Angela," he said, "are you hurt?"

Angela's arms were folded, she was glaring at the truck, steaming in the cool night air: her eyes were hard and unforgiving as she looked at the two cruisers where she knew the truck's separated occupants were being held in irons.

"No, Daddy," Angela said, her voice a little rough, hard-edged.

"No, Daddy, I'm not hurt" -- she turned quickly, looked at the Sheriff.

"I should not have shouted at you. I'm sorry."

Linn lowered his head a little.

"Darlin'," he said quietly, "I've known grown men to scream like a steam whistle at anyone they can see. You were gettin' rid of some pretty serious stress."

"Stress," Angela snapped.  "Stress?  Daddy, they tried to KILL ME!"

"Sheriff?" a voice called.

Linn raised a finger.

"Wait here, all right?"

Angela nodded.

Linn turned, walked over to one of the cruisers:  Angela heard a door open, heard voices.

She walked over to the truck, stood where the driver's side headlight blasted against her midriff, scattering light over the ruin that used to be a radiator.

Nice shooting, she thought.

Nice shooting under stress.

Angela turned, went over to her Dodge, looked at its dented, damaged back end, at the bumper hanging drunkenly, at the lights broken out.

It's a wonder the trunk even opened, she thought.

"Angela?"

Angela stood, staring at her back bumper in the harsh but indirect light.

At her Daddy's voice, she turned, arms still folded, looked at him.

"Angela, we're playing one against the other over there. It sounds like you refused their advances and they got mad when you kicked their butts."

"Krav Maga lessons came in handy," she said faintly.

"They're claiming they didn't know it was you."

"They knew it was me," she said emotionlessly, her expression haunted.  "That's why they wanted me, Daddy. They wanted to kill me or hurt me because I'm your daughter."

Angela Keller looked at her pale eyed Daddy.

"I stopped them, Daddy. I knew where I could make a stand and I stopped them. I didn't kill them. I could have, Daddy. When I blew out their radiator I aimed for the driver's window and told them to show me their hands."

"It's dark, Angela. You wouldn't be able to see their hands."

"They could see my shotgun when I punched their radiator and they saw me run around to the side. There was light enough. I made sure of that. I wanted them to see I had a twelve-gauge on them!"

Linn was quiet for several long moments.

"Darlin'," he said, "we've got 'em dead to rights. We'll take a look at your surveillance. You had it turned on?"

"As soon as I started the car, Daddy. I was scared and I knew they might come after me. That's what cowards do."

Linn nodded, ran his arm around Angela's shoulders.

"Come on, darlin'.  Let's get you home."

"Daddy?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Daddy, I had my shotgun in the trunk, unloaded."

Linn's hand tightened ever so slightly on her shoulder to show he was listening.

"Daddy, if I had a shotgun mount like your cruisers -- I'm surprised that trunk even opened. He rammed me twice when he caught up to me."

Linn took a long breath.  

"There are rules against having a loaded shotgun in the passenger compartment, darlin'."

Angela was quiet for several long moments, then she muttered: 

"Stupid rules!"