SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CONSTIPATED

Michael and Victoria sat side-by-side on the hook rug, legs crossed, listening to their Daddy read from their Gammaw's account of her first years in Firelands.

Victoria frowned, looked at her seven year old twin brother.

The two looks remarkably alike, for fraternal twins: Victoria took one of her ribbon-tied braids, chewed thoughtfully on its end, looked at her Daddy with big innocent eyes and asked, "Daddy, what's mant-sti-pated?"

"It means constipated," Michael hoarse-whispered.

"Dad-deee!" Victoria complained in a distressed-little-girl's voice.

Linn opened the center drawer of his desk, pulled out a pair of spectacles, slid them on his face:  he ran them halfway down his nose, then leaned over his chair and looked over top of them at his son.

"Sorry," Michael mumbled. "Dunno what it means."

Linn removed the ancient set of Uncle Pete's spectacles from his face, replaced them in the drawer where they'd lived for at least half a century.

"It means," he said gently, looking at Victoria the way a father will look at his youngest daughter, "that your Gammaw Willamina became an adult in the eyes of the law."

"You can do that?" Victoria breathed, and Linn nodded solemnly.

"Yep," he said in a deep, reassuring Daddy-voice. 

"Butbutbut," Victoria stuttered, and Michael mocked "Butbutbutbutbutbut" -- while parading around in a circle, like an orbiting motorboat.

Linn lowered his head, glared over a nonexistent set of spectacles at his grinning, unrepentant little boy, who stopped and reached behind him to turn a nonexistent key:  "Brrrr," and his pretend outboard purred to a stop.

"Your Gammaw was seventeen years old," Linn explained, and Michael interrupted:  "I thought you had to be twennyone!"

Linn rolled his wrist, dropped a finger at him: "Twenty-one is the legal Age of Majority, the Age of Adulthood," he agreed. "It's possible for a minor to be emancipated, given special circumstances."

"What kind of cir-cump-stantces?" Victoria asked carefully.

"Well, in your Mama's case," Linn said, "she came out here to live with Uncle Pete and Aunt Mary."

"Howcomwhy'd she do that?" Michael blurted, running his words together the way an excited little boy will when he's trying to keep up with his quick-running thoughts.

"Daddeee, howcum Gammaw an' Marnie looks alike?"

"Howcum you an' Jacob look alike?"

Linn raised his palms, stopping the sudden surge of youthful interrogation.

"Stand up, the both of you."

Brother and sister stood.

Linn squatted, ran an arm around the back of his daughter's bare thighs, around the back of his son's denim-sheathed thighs:  he stood easily, two giggling children happily gripping his muscled upper arm as he packed them both upstairs.

Linn eased his bedroom door open with the side of his sock foot, packed the two inside this nocturnal sanctum, squatted again, released.

"Now. Michael, you stand in front of me and face the mirror."

Michael slid in front of his long tall Pa, looked at Linn's image towering behind him in the reflection.

"Victoria, stand here beside me and look in the mirror at Michael and I."

Victoria sidled up beside her Daddy's leg, looked in the mirror.

"Now. Victoria, do Michael and I look alike?"

Michael and Victoria both looked at the reflection, both looked at their Daddy's reflected face.

Both children shook their heads.

"Trade places now."

Two children of very similar height switched spots.

"Michael, do Victoria and I look alike?"

Two sets of solemn young eyes regarded their long tall Daddy.

"No, sir," Michael said.

Linn squatted again: he gathered his twins into his arms again, turned sideways to get through the bedroom door, squatted and set them down.

He picked up Michael, laid him belly down on the bannister, released:  Michael, ankles crossed behind him, feet hooked over polished railing, slid down until he hit the end-post, bent legs taking up the impact: Victoria shook her head when Linn opened his hands toward her.

"No thank you Daddy," she said, and Linn smiled: his little girl preferred to walk downstairs, holding her Daddy's arm: she practiced this with the mincing step, the nose in the air of a Princess of the Blood.

Michael swarmed off the bannister, got his feet under him, waited until father and daughter were at the bottom step before hissing "Show-off!"

Victoria turned her head, stuck out her tongue.

Linn went over to his desk, opened a deep bottom drawer, pulled out a photo album: he crossed his legs and sat, in that order, and his twins piled up on either side of him.

"Here," Linn said, opening the album to a full page sized portrait, "is your Gammaw.  She made that gown.  And this" -- he turned the page -- "is Marnie."

"It is?"

"Yep. See how much they look alike?"

Linn turned back two pages, revealed another full-page-sized portrait.

"And this is Sarah Lynne McKenna."

Linn paged back and forth between the three photographs.

"Wow," Michael breathed.

"Your Gammaw made this gown," Linn said, "she made it off Sarah's portrait, and this very gown" -- he tapped the picture with a nail-trimmed finger -- "is in the Museum.  This one" -- he turned the page -- "Marnie made, using the museum gown, your Gammaw's gown and the photograph, all three."

Michael looked at his Pa and intoned solemnly, "She's ver-ry very-ry pretty."

"Of course she is," Linn winked. "Why do you think I married your Ma?"

"Daddy howcum I don't look like GammawnMarnie?" Angela blurted in a distressed voice.

Linn smiled at his little girl's discomfiture.

"Darlin', you remember when you stood in front of me and look in attair mirror?"

Victoria nodded sadly.

"Who did you see in that mirror?"

"Us."

"If I'd stepped to the side and left you there, who would you have seen?"

"Me."

"Do you know who you look like?"

Victoria looked at her Daddy with big innocent eyes and shook her head.

Linn knelt and touched his little girl, very gently, on the tip of her nose.

"You look very much like yourself, Princess," he said, "and I think that is a very good thing."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JOURNEY

"I can hear you thinking," Linn said gently.

Marnie blinked, her train of thought disappearing in a little puff of vapor: she turned, barn fork in hand, smiling a little, then laughed.

"I'm sorry," she said gently. "I should've drunk some ninety weight to keep my mental gears quiet!"

"I do the same thing," Linn said in a soft voice. "Is all well, darlin'?"

Marnie parked the fork -- she'd been mucking out stalls, she'd gotten them scraped out, clean, hosed, and not for the first time, she considered the good work of previous horsemen who'd built the barn tight, windproof against winter's cold fingers, who'd dug it into the hillside and kept a slope for drainage, and how subsequent generations plumbed in water, then boxed this in to keep it from freezing: she picked up a hose, turned the valve, hosed off her muck boots.

Marnie coiled the hose neatly, shut off the valve, relieved the pressure, closed the insulated door: she turned to her Daddy, her head tilted curiously.

"Daddy," she said, "where's Jacob?"

"He'll be home directly."

"Assignment."

"Nnnnooo," Linn said slowly.  "At least ... not exactly."

Marnie looked around: she'd spread fresh straw, she'd grained the mares, she'd swept up afterward, she was warm with exertion:  she reached for her Carhartt, spun it around her shoulders, knowing if she put on her coat now, she'd preserve that exertional body heat.

Father and daughter spread a double thickness of saddle blankets on a hay bale, sat side by side, hard up against one another -- Marnie found this reassuring, and it helped keep her warm.

Besides, she liked being Daddy's girl, even if she wasn't the youngest.

Linn hugged his daughter to him.

"Jacob is on funeral detail," he said quietly.

"Oh, no," Marnie murmured, looking at her Daddy with wide and serious eyes.

"Nobody we know," Linn said reassuringly, "and not a line of duty death."

Marnie nodded, tilted her head again, a nonverbal prompt for her Daddy to expand on the idea.

 

Jacob Keller cultivated his father's talent for turning invisible -- that is, if a handsome young man of just over six feet, wearing a well fitted, Western cut suit, with a Stetson correctly tucked under his arm, can ever be invisible: he looked around, considering how many men chose to attend a funeral in ... well, casual attire.

He'd discussed such matters with their Parson, and he'd told Reverend John Burnette that he was of the opinion that dressing up for Sunday showed due respect for the Almighty, just like dressing up for a wedding, told the newly wed couple that they were worth the trouble of getting dressed up, they were worth the trouble to journey to the church to witness the service.

Reverend John nodded and smiled a little, and said he was of the same opinion, but styles had grown casual over the years: Jacob's pale eyes were busy, his mind mentally cataloging potential trouble spots, gauging voice tones:  he'd been called, as a deputy, to more funerals than one, when passions overrode good sense.

Here, though, he saw no such tension.

It was a funeral; it followed the usual service; when Jacob went past the open box, he reached in and placed a small telegraph key beside the dead man's hand.

 

"You remember you and Jacob set poles for his long wire antenna."

"I remember."

"Jacob would sit up late with a set of headphones, his fingers running a telegraph key."

Marnie nodded.

Linn smiled a little, remembering Jacob's description.

"He told me once he can talk to the other side of the world on less power than it takes to light the bulb in our refrigerator."

Marnie nodded.

"He said one of his regular correspondents passed away, and I asked if he wished to attend the funeral."

Marnie's head raised, slowly, then lowered: that explained his absence.

"He'll be back right here directly."

Marnie smiled: her Daddy was prone to interesting turns of phrase, and she'd giggled when he described an inundating rain as "sounding like 'twas pouring dried peas on a rawhide" -- Marnie never forgot the phrase, but used it rarely herself: she preferred to listen to her Daddy, hoping something inherited from his native Appalachian Mama would fall unexpectedly from between his teeth.

 

Marnie looked up from her homework, waved her brother in.

Jacob leaned into his sister’s room, grinning, held up three sheets of paper.

“Thank you,” he said: Marnie dropped her pencil on the open book, slid her chair back, surged from her chair and skipped happily across the floor.

Jacob opened the door the rest of the way to receive his sister’s happy hug.

If one were there to view the scene, one would see the sheets he held, were pencil drawings, skillfully rendered indeed: they showed Jacob on the tractor, turned to look back at three poles, chain-bundled and being dragged behind; another, of Jacob, running the three-point-mounted, tractor-powered auger, digging postholes: other sketches, arranged in a circle, showed Jacob stretching wire, connecting a hand-held instrument of some kind, connecting wires to a telegraph key: in the center, Jacob, hunched over a little, frowning in concentration, fingers light on the paddles of an antique Vibroplex bug, earphones in place, eyes distant.

He looked at his Sis, smiled.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Marnie murmured. “How was the funeral?”

Jacob shrugged.

“That good.”

“Never met the man.”

“Why’d you go?”

“We talked every night on forty meters.”

“Ham radio.”

“CW.” 

“Morse code?”

Jacob nodded, his jaw sliding out a little.

“I’d heard of the man but never knew he’s the one I’d been talking to.”

“Oh?”

Jacob nodded, suddenly solemn.

“He was Vietnam. Proximity blast, I think a satchel charge. Left him deaf and blind. He had an old set of worn out headphones. He couldn’t hear a thing but he could feel the vibrations, and that’s how he communicated. Morse code was his … well, it’s all he had.”

Marnie’s eyes were big and serious.

“I used to tell him about riding Apple-horse, he’d ask the colors and how cold the wind was in my face when I rode. He asked me to describe the inside of the barn and the back pasture, I told him about the colts and how they’d run and romp and play tag and how Pa’s Outlaw-horse liked to steal the bandanna out of my hip pocket.”

Marnie’s smile was soft as his words brought up those very memories.

“His sister came up to me at the funeral and thanked me for those late night conversations. She said she used a computer program to be able to read Morse code, and he’d tell her how much talking with me meant.”

Marnie patted her brother’s chest with a flat hand.

“Jacob,” she whispered, her expression serious, “never doubt the good that you do.”

Jacob looked at the sheets he held, looked back at his Sis.

“I could tell you the same thing.”

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MICHAEL’S CHOICE, PART ONE

 

Michael felt every hair on his arms stand straight up.

Michael yanked Outlaw’s reins free of the hitch, swatted the black gelding across the hinder with his Stetson:  “YAAA!” – the startled gelding gathered his strength, surged into three long hops, stopped and looked back.

The last thing Michael remembered was feeling like his hair was standing straight out from his head, and Outlaw’s tail wasn’t floating like a nest of snakes now.

Then the world exploded.

 

“FIRELANDS FIRE DEPARTMENT, POLE DOWN, MAN DOWN, IN FRONT OF THE DRUGSTORE, TIME OUT THREE-FORTY-ONE.”

 

Victoria heard her twin brother’s shout – she’d heard Michael’s voice when he was happy, when he was angry, sad, hurt – she’d never heard his voice this loud, this sharp … this … desperate!

Startled, she turned, and the moment burned itself into her memory and her retinas.

Michael, bent at the waist, arm extended, Stetson in hand; Outlaw, jumping away from him, bitless reins dragging.

She saw this, but she did not remember it afterward.

The magnesium explosion of a lightning strike slammed her back against the building, deafened her, knocked her to the ground.

 

Chief of Police Will Keller braked hard, surveying the scene: a pole was down, half across the street: wires were down, a transformer was smoking: he saw fire trucks and the squad just coming off the apron onto the street in front of the firehouse, headed his way.

Will lit up, pulled his white Crown Vic crossways of the street:  he popped the trunk, got out, grabbed the lightweight, yellow-and-black-striped sawhorses: he snapped the legs open, clamping them tight on the striped crossbar, hauled them out on either side of his cruiser so nobody would try to go around him (it had happened in the past).

Only then did he turned and take a second look at the scene.

He thought he saw the hind quarters of a horse disappear down an alley, but he wasn’t sure.

His pale eyes hardened as he saw a still figure lying on the sidewalk, its scorched Carhartt coat, smoking.

Two-tenths of a second later, Will’s stomach dropped to his boot heels as he recognized who was inside that smoking, scorched Carhartt.

 

Victoria opened her eyes, blinked: something yellow and blobby overlaid a quarter of her visual field, something that was sparkly and diminishing.

Victoria’s ears were ringing: she rolled over, reached up, touched the back of her head.

Wet.

Sticky.

Ow.

Michael …?

 

“DO NOT APPROACH! THOSE LINES ARE HOT! GET THAT DAMNED POWER TURNED OFF!”

 

Michael fought his way to consciousness.

Light.

Glare.

Explosion.

Hurts …

… why am I lying on cold concrete? …

 

Captain Crane and Shelly froze, looking at the deadly rat’s-nest of wires.

“Around the alley!” Shelly snapped: she and her Daddy seized go-box, monitor-defibrillator and demand valve, and legged it down the gap between the drugstore and what used to be a dry goods store.

They could come around behind, down the next alley, they could get to the patient.

Neither one knew it was Michael.

 

Sparks, rippling blue arcs, a wire whipped around, coiling, a sizzling, deadly cobra: one of the Irish Brigade spun a line overhead, a wooden block for weight: he’d made this one himself, for just such an occasion – nonconductive rope, thrown over a live wire – someone would have to get around this mess to throw it back, so he could drag the wire out of the way.

Fitz clumped at an awkward run toward the scene, bent a little.

His gloved hand brought a talkie up.

“Dispatch, advise Unit One to get here five minutes ago.”

“Unit calling identify and say again your traffic.”

“Chief One, tell Linn it’s Michael!”

Curved fingers rose, described a tight, brief arc toward the transmit bar on the desk mic.

The fingers froze in mid-air as the deep, throaty sound of a large displacement engine under heavy throttle, underlay the agonized, yelping scream of a hundred watts of Federal electronic siren, poured like an audible waterfall from the wall-mounted speaker.

“DISPATCH THIS IS UNIT ONE ENROUTE.”

 

Michael felt himself move.

He was confused, he couldn’t straighten out his thoughts, he remembered a blinding, searing light, a detonation, the world slammed up against him …

… he hurt …

 

“MICHAEL LAY STILL!” Fitz yelled.

Michael began to convulse.

If he hits that live wire he’s dead, Fitz thought: he saw one of the Brigade on the other side, seize the wooden block weight, skid it underhand, under the wire as it tried to roll.

Gloved hands seized braided polypropylene, pulled, just as a set of well polished black boots stopped in front of Michael’s nose.

He felt his body, tight, twitching, try to thrash – his movements were jerky, not controlled, not of his volition – he remembered seeing a familiar face, a neatly-curled, Clan-Maxwell-Red handlebar mustache, a brushed black Stetson, a grim expression …

Jacob, he thought, and a set of strong and skinny arms rolled the casualty up into his chest and strode boldly, fearlessly, through the tangle of wires, stepping on sizzling copper that was still throwing blinding arcs against the damp pavement.

Angela sagged, came up on all fours, raised her head.

She saw Jacob, in his black suit, carrying Michael – she heard a whistle, a shout – “OUTLAW!” – saw her Daddy’s shining-black gelding trot out of an alley, throwing his head in either greeting or discomfort – Angela fell sideways, against the brickwork that faced the building.

She heard the sharp sound of steelshod hooves on pavement.

She heard the rider’s voice.

“I’M NOT GOING TO LOSE ANOTHER SON! YAAA!”

Angela fought to her feet, stood, her shoulder digging painfully into the brickwork as she willed herself not to fall.

 

“Emergency room, Karen.”

“Karen, this is Sharon, the Sheriff is inbound, his son was either hit by lightning or by falling wires, he’ll be there any moment!”

“Got it.”

 

Automatic doors hissed open; a shining black gelding trotted easily across parking lot pavement and through the open doors.

The rider ducked to get through the doorway, straightened, looked around: he ducked again as another set of doors opened, and a horse and rider, and the limp form the rider held, walked through heavy wooden doors marked EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

It was the only time in recorded history that a pale eyed man in a black suit, rode a horse into the hospital, dismounted beside the emergency room gurney, laid a still, barely breathing figure on the white-sheeted bed, looked at a blue-eyed nurse in a white uniform and a white winged cap, and said, “Save my son.”

Angela’s response was automatic: she started stripping the still figure, laying the seared Carhartt open: practiced fingers sought the life that pulsed at his throat, she whipped the stethoscope from around her neck, thrust the eartips home, pressed the bell against the laboring chest.

“What happened to him?” she said crisply, her voice was all-business.

There was no reply.

Angela looked up.

There was no horse, there was no man in a black suit.

Only then did his curled handlebar mustache register, only then did she think, Jacob,

Only then did she realize this was her youngest brother under her hands.

Angela Keller, RN, was instantly madder than hell:  she glared at Michael, glared at the shocked-still room, screamed “I NEED SOME HISTORY HERE!”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MICHAEL’S CHOICE

PART TWO

 

Michael sat up, looked around.

He squinted at a familiar figure.

“Jacob?”

The solemn-faced figure nodded, once, slowly.

“What happened?”  Michael rubbed the side of his head, frowned:  it hurt like hell earlier, but now it felt normal.

“Lightning,” was the reply: Michael looked up again, surprised.

Jacob isn’t usually that short-tempered, he thought, then he blinked a few times, looked again.

“Jacob?”

The figure nodded, again, once.

“No. You’re not that old.”

The figure stared, unmoving, unblinking, and Michael had the sudden realization something was very wrong.

 

The ER cart was surrounded by professionals in scrubs: IVs and oxygen, wires and electrodes, shining, stainless-steel shears whispered through material, destroyed remnants of what used to be clothing was tossed to the floor, kicked aside, picked up and bagged by orbiting members of the team.

Two revolvers and a knife were handed off to Security; that Michael was armed, and well armed, was neither surprising, nor unusual: they had a protocol in place for securing weaponry from a law enforcement casualty, and that was the protocol they followed here.

Quiet voices, orders, assessments: one nurse stood back, writing quickly: for all their technology, the ER still used a veteran nurse with a clipboard, to note down treatments, orders, medications and rates of administration: of all the nurses in the hospital, Bill was the designated scribe – whether for a critical ER patient, or a Code Blue either one: he printed, rather than wrote in cursive, his spelling was flawless, as was his command of the foreign language that is the Lingua Medica, the medical terminology employed in the professional setting.

“Rhythm?”

“Irregularly irregular, multifocal PVCs.”

The trace across the green EKG screen suddenly went all spikes: gloved fingers pressed down beside his Adam’s apple.

“Defib,” the ER doc said, reached for the defibrillator, keyed in the watt-seconds: 

“CLEAR!”

 

Shelly stood back, white-faced, one hand tight in her father’s grip, the other in her husband’s.

Linn’s face was hard and unreadable.

Angela came over, spread her arms.

“We know what happened,” she said, “we know how to treat him. Perhaps if you waited outside –”

“CLEAR!”

Capacitors discharged, Michael’s lean young body convulsed.

“They know what they’re doing,” Linn murmured: he steered Shelly toward the door, opened the heavy wooden portal, guided her outside: he waited for the Captain to exit, turned and looked at Angela.

“Stay with him,” Linn whispered, not trusting his voice.

Angela nodded, once, then turned back to the team and its efforts: at the doctor’s order, she picked up a vial, withdrew a measured volume: she called out the medication, the dosage, announced the injection point: her voice went into Bill’s ears and came out the smooth-rolling ball of his gel pen, appearing on paper in regular, block-formed, very legible print.

 

“You’ve a choice to make.”

Michael stood, looked around, looked at this older version of his brother.

“You’re not Jacob,” he said.

“I am Jacob.”

“Jacob’s on Mars and he’s younger than you!”

“I am Jacob’s grandfather, several times over.”

Michael felt his stomach shrink as he remembered the picture on his pale-eyed Pa’s office wall, the one that showed Jacob Keller, Old Pale Eyes beside him, Sarah McKenna, their horses – he remembered the albums he loved to page through, the albums that showed Old Pale Eyes and his Pa looking like twins, the albums that showed Jacob Keller looking like the both of them.

“Why am I here?”

“You’re not supposed to be.”

Michael frowned. “So send me back.”

“Can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Jacob Keller the Elder frowned, set a boot up on a stone that wasn’t there a moment before: the scene shifted, Jacob’s boot was up on a polished brass rail.

Michael was dressed as he’d been before – whatever it was – happened to him.

Michael turned and leaned against polished mahogany, looked around:  it looked like the Silver Jewel, only … older.

“I got hit by lightning.”

“Yep.”

“I thought that would blow me apart from a steam explosion.”

“Wasn’t a square hit. It hit that pole beside you first.”

“So what happens now?”

Jacob Keller the Elder considered.

“I,” he said, “am going to have a beer.”

He looked very directly at young Michael.

“You can have a beer with me, if you like.”

“If I stay, you mean.”

“Choice is yours. If you go back it’ll hurt like hell. You’ll likely wish it had blown you apart so you’d be dead and not hurtin’.”

Michael thrust his jaw bone out and he saw a look of approval in the older man’s eyes, and for the first time since he picked Michael up and carried him through the deadly rat’s-nest of tangled, live wires, for the first time since a man in a black suit stepped boldly on wires that would have incinerated a living soul, he laid a hand on Michael.

His hand was warm, firm, strong on Michael’s shoulder.

Michael glared at his ancestor.

“I’ll go back.”

Jacob removed his hand from Michael’s shoulder, thrust it out:  Michael gripped it, and Jacob smiled for the first time.

“I know what it is to lose a son,” he said softly. “His name was Joseph Michael.”

The world twisted, blurred: suddenly he was in more pain than he thought possible.

Voices, distant, confused: a black horse, huge, powerful … he felt the horse lean forward into a slow gallop, and suddenly he was moving faster than any horse could possibly ever run.

 

“He’s not breathing.”

Strong hands gripped Michael’s head, held it steady: a thin pad under the back of the head, fingers pressed the rear corners of the jaw, thrust it forward, pulled the unmoving figure’s jaw open.

“Straight blade, please.”

 

Pain, light, fear: Michael responded on a very primitive level.

Michael Keller, youngest son of Sheriff Linn Keller, inhaled – he inhaled as deeply as he possibly could, then screamed just as powerfully as his young muscles could drive air out his throat.

 

Michael’s jaw quivered: he gave a weak, “Owww,” and the approaching intubation blade stopped.

“MICHAEL! DO THAT AGAIN!”

Michael took a quick, gasping breath, another.

Angela Keller twisted the bag on an oxygen rebreather mask, handed it to Respiratory: the stainless-steel ball rose in the graduated flowmeter, oxygen hissed through clear-plastic tubing.

“Sinus tach, rate of 120.”

“Let’s see how he does at high flow. Pulse ox?”

“Coming up. Pressure rising.”

The ER doc stayed at the patient’s head another six minutes before looking at the blue-eyed nurse in the white uniform.

“Angela,” he said quietly, “please tell your parents their son will be with us for a while longer.”

 

It took two days and a night for Michael’s thoughts to order themselves along their usual paths.

It took longer than that for him to regain full function of all four limbs, for him to return to normal: it took work, it took effort, it took time.

The first time he was able to saddle his own horse, the first time he rode, was the first time he realized that he was going to beat the perverse fate that tried to kill him.

Shelly watched him ride across the pasture, ride back: she cupped her hand over her mouth and whispered, “No,” as Michael leaned forward, as his Pa’s black Outlaw-horse gathered speed, as horse and rider rode the wind itself and soared over the whitewashed fence.

Michael knew where he had to go.

 

A lean young man dismounted stiffly, ground-reined his shining black gelding, walked up to a tombstone, removed his Stetson.

He looked at the name, his lips soundlessly tracing the incised, chisel-cut letters:

On one side, Sheriff Jacob Keller, and on the other side of the stone, Wife, Annette Keller.

He looked at the smaller stone beside.

“Joseph Michael Keller,” he read aloud.

Michael looked at Joseph’s tombstone again, turned his Stetson slowly in his hands.

He felt a fatherly hand on his shoulder.

“Was it worth it?” he heard, and he smiled.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “It was worth it.”

He felt an approving squeeze on his shoulder, and he turned, and nobody was there.

Edited January 24 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

"DADDY, CAN I COME HOME?"

Angela's hand shot out like a striking viper.

Michael tried grabbing for the banister rail: instead of his arm lifting and extending his hand, his body twisted, his right knee collapsed and he pitched forward.

Angela seized the back of his belt, pulled hard: Michael tried to regain his balance but he was too far gone -- he went over backwards -- Angela twisted, got her shoulder under his head.

Victoria yanked open her bedroom door, her eyes big and scared: she looked at Angela, flat on her back, Michael trying to get up and not having much luck.

Victoria went down on her Prayer Bones, grabbed Michael's nearest wrist, looked at Angela.

"You've got a hard head," Angela muttered, working out from under her little brother: she came up on her knees, pulled Michael's lower eyelid down, tilted her head and frowned.

"Peekaboo," Michael said, then his hand spread, clutched, as if trying to claw up a handful of varnished wood floor.

"What's going on?" Victoria asked, and Michael squeezed his eyes shut.

Angela gathered his hand into hers: he relaxed her fingers, she squeezed his, carefully.

"The world is spinning?"

"Yeah," he gasped.

"You gonna get sick?"

Michael's jaw muscles clenched: Angela knew if his pale eyes were open, he'd be glaring defiance: she'd seen her pale eyed father, sicker'n hell, absolutely refuse to allow himself to be sick, and she knew Michael Joseph was every bit as hard headed and contrary as his Pa.

Even if he was too young to grow a mustache.

"Just lay there until things aren't so dizzy," Angela murmured.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller's eyes were pale, hard: to his credit, he did not try to crush the telephone in his left hand, nor did he snap his pen in two and heave it across the room.

His voice was controlled, tight, the voice of a man who was more than ready to commit murder, and worse.

"How badly was she hurt?" he asked.

His pen was steady above the blank pad.

"Her mental state?"

Linn sat up a little as another voice came on-line.

"Daddy?" Dana Keller asked, her voice near tears, "can I come home?"

 

It wasn't hard for the detective to recognize the Colorado sheriff.

When a tall man with a lean waist, a black suit that would be at home in 1885, and pale eyes blazing from under his Stetson, steps down the short stairway from a chartered Learjet, when that man looks at a younger man standing beside a dechromed, unmarked police vehicle, when that hard-jawed man with an iron-grey mustache strides across tarmac, with no trace of a smile ... well, it wasn't difficult for the detective to realize that, not only had an undercover officer's Chief arrived, this Chief was also a father who looked like he'd be comfortable reaching down someone's neck, grabbing them by the ankle and yanking them inside out.

For starters.

To his credit, the detective didn't flinch: the two men shook hands.

Linn spoke first.

"Where is she?"

"Get in."

 

Linn's eyes were busy as they drove.

Very little was said; Linn reasoned the detective was the luckless soul sent to pick up an unhappy father: he knew what it was to be low on the totem pole, to be given the details that left a man feeling like a recently-incinerated lightning rod.

Until he found this detective was complicit in his daughter being hurt, he reserved any harsh words.

In the process, he reserved nearly all his words, which only added to the aura of driving with a bomb sitting in the passenger seat.

A bomb, with a sizzling fuse.

Traffic was thick, aggressive: the detective was perfectly at home in these conditions, he swam like a fish among fishes: their drive to the hospital was without incident.

They were met in the hospital lobby by another man in a suit, who introduced himself as Captain Mandrake.

Linn cut him off.  "Are you this young fellow's boss?"

Detective and supervisor shared a glance, then Mandrake said, "Yes. Yes, I am."

Linn's eyes were as hard, as cold as his voice.

"This fellow needs a raise in pay. He looked me in the eye and he didn't make any excuses, and he did not flinch when I walked up to him."

Linn looked at the suddenly uncomfortable, younger detective.

Good God, every year doctors and cops get younger, he thought, then looked back at Mandrake.

"Now where's my little girl?"

"Sheriff," Mandrake said carefully, "we need to talk."

Linn took a step closer: he was taller than the Captain by half a hand, and he had not the least trace of kindness in his face as he did.

"You are my daughter's supervisor."

The Captain hesitated.

"Yes.  Yes, I am."

"You were her handler."

The Captain would have traded a year's pay to be somewhere else.

"Yes I was."

"Now she's hurt."

"Things ... didn't go as planned."

"I trusted you with my little girl," Linn said, his voice low, a menacing edge to his tone:  "I trusted you with one of my deputies. You gave me your personal assurance she'd be safe. Now I'm going to find out anyway, but you might as well tell me now.  How bad is my little girl hurt?"

 

The morgue curtain chuckled back, allowing two detectives and an out-of-district Sheriff to view the body.

Linn took a long look.

"Cause of death?"

"Multiple."

"Coroner's report."

"Officially? A fall with lacerations secondary to landing in a recycled glass bin."

Linn waited: silence grew in the viewing room.

The Captain turned, lifted his chin: the morgue curtain closed.

"That was not from falling on glass."

"No."

"My little girl did that?"

The Captain nodded.

"How did it come to this?"

"Things got out of hand, Sheriff, you know how undercover operations go."

"She wasn't supposed to be that deep undercover. You said she'd be in an office, she'd be listening, she'd be a secretary, gathering information!"

"That was the plan --"

"You told me you would keep my little girl safe," Linn said, advancing a menacing step. "Now she's in critical condition. You lied to me, mister, and I don't take kindly to liars."

"Sheriff, Captain," the detective said, "perhaps if we went upstairs and saw her."

Linn's hands were not clenched into fists.

The detective honestly considered the possibility he'd be witnessing a Western Sheriff ripping his superior's head free and hurling it against the nearest brick wall.

 

Two officers nodded, stepped aside as two detectives and the Sheriff approached.

Linn's six point star was out on the front of his lapel now, and his coat was unbuttoned.

One of the officers knocked, pushed the door open, stepped back.

Sheriff Linn Keller swallowed hard, stepped across the threshold.

A lesser man would have stopped, shocked.

He didn't.

Linn strode over to the raised siderail, reached a gentle hand down, gripped his daughter's hand, looked at one barely-open eye.

"I look a fright," she slurred through swollen, discolored lips.

"You look fine, darlin'," Linn rumbled. "I'm takin' you home now."

"She'll need to testify --" the Captain said, and Linn spun.

This time the Captain flinched back.

"My little girl," Linn rumbled quietly, "is coming home with me. Testimony can be via video link. You lied to me, Captain. I can't trust you. My little girl is coming home with me!"

A knock at the door again: a uniformed officer leaned in.

"Sir, you're needed out here, please."

"Which one?" the detective asked.

"The Captain."

 

A half dozen hard-eyed young men in grey uniforms, with shotguns at port arms, stood on either side of the hallway as Dana Lynne Keller was brought out on an ambulance cot.

Her armed guard preceded, flanked, and followed her into the spacious rear elevator: the guard poured out of the elevator and onto the rooftop helipad, ready for an ambush, took up positions as she was brought out.

The detective and his captain stopped, stared.

"That," the Captain said, "is not a helicopter."

The Sheriff walked beside the ambulance cot, one hand on the siderail, the other holding his little girl's bandaged hand: the entire rear wall of a boxy, stainless-steel craft of some kind hinged down, forming a ramp.

Dana was rolled in, with her father, and the guard.

A man in a suit came up to the Captain, presented his credentials.

"US Diplomatic Service," he said, "what you've just seen is covered by the Official Secrets Act, and will not be discussed with anyone. Please come with me for debriefing."

Angela Keller rose from the copilot's seat, paced back into the passenger section as Dana's cot was secured, as Confederate medics took over her care.

"Sissy," Angela whispered, her voice near tears.

"I'm sorry," Dana squeaked.

"Don't be," Linn rumbled as he eased down onto his Prayer Bones, still holding is daughter's hand. "You kilt the b'ar that tried to kill you."

"He hurt me, Daddy," Dana squeaked, tears running from her barely-open eye.

"He'll never hurt anyone again," Linn said, his voice gentle. "Let's go home."

A young man in Confederate grey looked up at the Sheriff.

"We've erased their records," he said. "Cameras on the landing pad recorded nothing but birds."

"This will feel funny at first," Angela said as she slid a pad under her injured little sister's bruised, discolored, swollen and misshapen head, as she brought a curved plate over her beaten, cut, devastated face.  "Let's see about fixing things here."

Dana relaxed as whatever this device was, began to repair her swollen, throbbing, aching face.

 

Victoria bent her head forward a little.

Dr. Greenlees snipped the black stitches from the shaved area on the back of her head, pulled the cut sutures free, dropped them in a stainless steel pan.

"Your incision looks really good," he said: Dr. John Greenlees Sr. had the gift of both looking, and sounding, like a reassuring, kindly, Old Country Doctor.

"I'm not seeing any signs of infection, I'm not seeing anything unusual."

Victoria debated whether to counter with a comment about the unusual nature of being blasted back by a bolt of lightning, but decided against it.

"I understand your sister is coming home today."

"Yes she is. She was on an undercover assignment back East."

"Oh?  How'd it go?"

Victoria sighed. "Not very well," she admitted.  "Daddy said there were complications."

 

Sheriff Linn Keller glared at the heavy bag.

He was alone in the Big Round Barn, there was nobody to see him.

Had there been someone to see him, he might have given the impression of a man ready to detonate, and had there been someone to see, they might have seen him vent his every hatred, his every aggression, his every violence that he'd kept contained for the past four-and-twenty hours.

Sheriff Linn Keller was well practiced at a variety of disciplines related to less than gently persuading thy neighbor to stop doing whatever had earned the Sheriff's displeasure.

He employed multiple fast, vicious, violent and brutally effective techniques.

His control was absolute, his attacks were delivered in silence ... again, had there been someone to observe, his silence, his absence of angry roars or shouts of aggression, would have made his performance all the more frightening.

He tore into that heavy bag like he wished to tear into the monster that beat his little girl, while she was being held.

He tore into that heavy bag like he wished to tear into every one of the criminal association who took turns brutalizing his little girl.

He tore into that heavy bag with every last ounce of utter, unadulterated hatred for the lying son of Perdition who put his little girl into harm's way.

Heavy bags did not have much of a life expectancy when the Sheriff decided to let his badger out.

His Mama acquired a quantity of surplus sleeping bag covers, which were then filled with sawdust, hung in a convenient place, and used as heavy bags: boot heels, batons, rifle muzzles, blades, all had a deleterious effect on taut canvas, and when Linn was done, the bag was torn open and spilling sawdust onto the already sawdust covered floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JUSTICE 

Six men stood on the edge of a floor, where an outer wall used to be, twenty feet off the ground.

The floor was splintered, crudely demolished where the edge used to meet a wall; each man stood with a noose around his neck, elbows tied together behind his back.

One started to scream that this wasn’t right, he wanted his attorney, he wanted a trial:  a man with pale eyes drove his fist into the man’s wind.

“ANYBODY ELSE?”

Jacob’s voice was hard and unforgiving, the voice of a man who’d had more than enough with crime and with criminals.

“NOBODY HERE DESERVES A LAWYER,” he declared: “EVERY ONE OF YOU EARNED A HANGIN’ FOR WHAT YOU DID TO MY LITTLE SISTER!”

Jacob went to the man who was still doubled over, trying to choke some air back into his shocked lungs.

Jacob Keller held a photograph up in front of the man.

“Take a look,” he said quietly. “This is my baby sis. She’s a Sheriff’s deputy and I’m the Sheriff.”

Jacob Keller lowered the photograph, stepped behind the man, set the sole of his boot against the condemned man’s backside and kicked him over the edge.

Twisted hemp snapped taut.

Jacob went to the next man in line.

He held up the photograph.

The man wouldn’t look at it.

Jacob grabbed his stubbled face, held the picture in front of bloodshot eyes.

“Look at her, damn you,” Jacob hissed, then shifted his grip to the back of the man’s neck, threw him over the edge as well.

Each man, one at a time, saw the face of their victim one last time.

Each man carried that memory into Eternity with them.

Every man had been identified with trace DNA and other Confederate technologies Jacob neither understood, nor pretended to; the guilty were seized from places they believed were secure, from places they believed themselves safe, and they were brought here.

Their bodies would be found, dead, each at the end of a hemp noose, hanging side by side from an abandoned building: there would be no trace DNA on the ropes, no notes claiming responsibility – just six known criminals, executed, dead.

Jacob knew this would cause trouble for the jurisdictional police department.

He frankly did not care.

Sheriff Jacob Keller turned to a woman who waited for him.

Ambassador Marnie Keller took her brother’s arm, and they stepped through an Iris, and were gone.

 

Angela looked up, looked across the hospital bed, toward the closed, heavy-wood door.

Dana saw her sister’s hand slide into a slit in her uniform skirt, saw the slight bunching of her forearm that meant she’d closed her hand around the handle of a pistol she favored.

The door opened and a pale eyed man in a black suit stepped into the room, Stetson in hand, and with him, a pale eyed woman in a McKenna gown.

Sheriff Jacob Keller strode across the shining, waxed tile floor: he looked at Angela, nodded gravely – “We need to talk,” he said quietly – then he looked at Dana, his face serious.

“You are safe now,” he said. “They’re dead. All six of ‘em.”

“Show me.”

Jacob pulled out his phone, swiped through two screens, held it so Dana could see.

She looked at the first picture – a man, noose around his neck, fear in his eyes.

“Yes.”

A swipe, another face.

A swipe, another: Dana identified each and every last one of them with a quiet, “Yes.”

“In accordance with the laws of our world,” Marnie said quietly, “they have been hanged, and are dead.”

“Good,” Dana whispered.

“Who betrayed you, Dana?”

Dana Keller looked at her big brother, looked at her big sister, at her other big sister: her face was almost normal now, thanks to the Confederate devices employed earlier: her expression had been one of relief, but flowed into distress.

“Someone on the inside, Jacob.”

"Who was it?"

Angela swallowed, clenched even, white teeth as she remembered.

"I trusted him," she whispered.  "I trusted him, Jacob."

"Who was it?" Jacob asked again.

Dana looked at Marnie, at Jacob, knowing her words would condemn a traitor to the same fate as the six who'd hurt her.

Deputy Sheriff Dana Lynne Keller whispered a name. 

Jacob leaned down, wiggled his mustache, tickling her nose like he used to do when she was a little girl: he drew back, then leaned in again, kissed her forehead.

“We’ll talk later,” he said quietly.

Jacob and Marnie walked back across the room; as they approached, an Iris opened, then closed, and they were gone.

 

A week later, a police captain looked up as an attractive, blue-eyed woman in a pantsuit and heels,  rapped on his open door.

He sat up, frowned – “Can I help you?” – he watched, surprised, as the woman stepped inside, closed his office door.

It took twenty minutes for someone to knock on his door, to open it, to look around the empty office, to wonder where in the hell he’d gone, how he’d managed to leave without being seen.

 

A blue eyed woman in a nurse’s uniform, and a pale eyed woman in a Colorado deputy’s uniform, watched with no softness in their faces as the red-faced, gasping police captain was fitted with a hemp noose.

Sheriff Jacob Keller jerked the hangman’s knot tight, twisted the noose viciously, digging bristles of hemp into the condemned man’s neck as he positioned thirteen turns of braided rope behind the man’s left ear.

Sheriff Jacob Keller held up a picture.

“You betrayed my baby sister,” he said quietly.

“Sometimes you have to make sacrifices,” the Captain hissed. “We had to give one up to get what we wanted!”

Jacob’s punch drove every bit of wind out of the man’s lungs.

He seized the police captain under the jaw, hauled his head up.

“My sister,” he grated, “is not a sacrifice!”

Sheriff Jacob Keller stepped behind a police captain, raised his leg for a kick.

A feminine hand seized his arm.

Jacob wobbled, lowered his leg, looked at his pale-eyed, younger sister.

Dana Keller shook her head.

Jacob’s jaw slid out, then he nodded, and stepped aside.

Dana leaned close to the man’s ear and whispered, “I trusted you.”

She went around behind him, planted her boot in the man’s backside, drove him over the edge and into eternity.

The last face he saw was not that of the pale eyed, diminutive Dana Keller.

He saw instead a cluster, a cloud of pale eyed women.

One woman, in a tailored blue suit dress and heels, walked up to him and backhanded him, hard.

“My name,” she said, “is Willamina, and you hurt my granddaughter.”

She stepped back and another woman – identical, but for the old-fashioned gown she wore – belted him with her open palm, hard.

“Name’s McKenna,” she said. “I’m the Black Agent.”

Another – in a colonial dress and a mob cap, who handed a musket to someone before belting him across the face – another, tanned, in a brief, Grecian gown, with a gracefully recurved bow in her free hand: there were more, many more: the very last one wore a white nurse’s uniform, and had startling blue eyes instead of ice-pale eyes.

“This,” she said, “is for my sister.”

Just before that last open-handed slap landed, he saw in a bright, brief moment, all of these women, ranked against him.

His last memory was every set of those hard and pale eyes, looking at him, utterly, absolutely, without forgiveness.

Just before his neck snapped.

Just before his eternal soul was ripped from his miserable, traitorous carcass.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

Jacob didn't look right.

Jacob is like me, he's a walking appetite on two hollow legs, and when he sat down to supper normally feedin' him is like feedin' a whole company of Infantry.

His color wasn't good and he was barely pickin' at his plate.

I looked at Esther and she looked at Jacob and then she looked at me and I could tell she noticed it too.

I rose and took two steps and Jacob bent over a little and I grabbed his chair and pulled him back from the table.

He was hot and he looked sick and I ran my arm under the small of his back and under his knees and the hired girl went a-runnin' down the hall ahead of me.

We got out the back door and down the steps and into the yard before he started and I set him down on his feet, he went to his knees and then his hands and he heaved up two weeks' worth of meals.

Jacob didn't roll over on his side, he fell over on his side: his eyes was squeezed shut and I heard his teeth click as he bit back the pain that was engravin' his face.

I unfast his drawers and run my hand under his belt line, I pressed gently and released of a sudden and Jacob just God's-honest SCREAMED with pain and curled up on his side like he'd been gut shot.

Esther was standing on the back porch, hands cupped over her mouth, her emerald eyes wide with shock and with fear and with distress and I r'ared up on my Prayer Bones and I looked at her and said "Get Doc here fast!"

Now Esther was never one to let a decision wait, bless her, she snatched up her skirts and she went a-runnin' for the barn, and I'm there in the yard with Jacob and him shiverin' and tryin' not to show how much he hurt and I've got my hands on him and I'm a-talkin' to him and God as my witness I have no idea what-all I said.

I recht down and took his hand in mine and he grabbed holt of me and whispered "Pa, I'm scared," and that run the fear through me like I'd just been run through with a bayonet.

Esther went a-streakin' out the open gate on that paint mare of hers and I figured things were well beyond my abilities or my troop strength, so I called in reinforcements.

I commenced to talk to God about it.

Now Doc, bless him, had an eye for good horse flesh, and Doc had him a Physician's Surrey, it was short coupled and two wheeled and he come out at a wide open go-to-hell and that chestnut of his was known for bein' a racer and I reckon Doc rattled his liver loose for I don't think that-there surrey had much by way of paddin' between the axle and his bony backside, but by golly he got here and Esther with him, and we packed Jacob back into the kitchen and Doc already knowed what was wrong with him and he commenced to put a surgical mask over Jacob's face and trickled somethin' on the mask and I looked away and felt half sick.

Doc had done this durin' the War, and I'd seen him do it, before he'd saw off a shattered limb.

Now I'm not a man with a weak stomach a'tall but there's just an awful lot of memories come Rip Roarin' up from where I'd hid 'em and I stumbled back out on the back porch and I couldn't go back inside no more than fly.

God forgive me, my own son was gettin' his appendix cut out right there on our kitchen table, I knowed Doc had attair certificate that said he was trained in takin' out parts when an appendix decided to attack, but I couldn't go back inside no more'n fly.

Esther told me later that Angela watched, all solemn and watchful, she listened to what the Doc was tellin' Esther -- Esther, bless her, was right at Doc's side, when Doc washed his hands the way he always did, Esther did too, and he put her right to work -- Doc come out once all was done and finished and allowed as Jacob ought to be put to bed, could I come and pack him upstairs, and once I was inside, why, Doc showed me that neat row of stitches on that frash cut on his belly and he said Jacob was my son, all right, he was young and tough as whang leather and here in the high country he did not expect any infection or any complications, he was talkin' about how Jacob ought to have good broth and not much chewin' substance for his next several meals and his voice kind of faded away into a dull drone and I stood there and looked at my son and I recall thinkin' I never want to feel that absolutely helpless again.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller looked up from the ancient Journal, looked at the bright and attentive young faces hanging on his every word.

Joseph and Victoria looked at one another, looked at their Daddy.

Joseph ran a hand down to his belt, looked at his hand, looked at his father.

"Sir, do they still take out appendixes on the kitchen table?"

Linn smiled, slipped an Eight of Diamonds into the Journal as a bookmark.

"No. I reckon they could if they absolutely had to, but no, anymore they prefer to operate in an operating theater."

Joseph frowned, considering this.

Victoria tilted her head curiously and said "Daddy, do they have fat ladies in an operating theater?"

Angela, standing between the kitchen and my study, giggled: she cupped her hand over her mouth to try to muffle her amusement, turned away.

Victoria turned, then stood, shook her Mommy-finger at her big sister:  "Angela that's not funny!" she declared, which only made things worse: Angela began to laugh, and as Angela laid an arm across her belly and bent over, propping herself against the doorframe with her other hand, Victoria planted her little pink knuckles on her belt line, hoisted her nose with a "Hmpf!" and a pooched-out bottom lip, then sat suddenly, crossed her arms and glared at me.

"Daddy, it's not, funny!" she declared.

Michael Joseph looked at me, chewed on his bottom lip, and demonstrated his increasing wisdom about the female of the species by wisely saying nothing at all.

Edited February 4 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

 

THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM!

 

Sheriff Jacob Keller stood with his arms folded, his eyes on his father.

Sheriff Linn Keller was on a video conference with an Eastern department’s Chief of Police.

Neither man was happy.

Linn had the privacy mode on: only he could hear the Chief’s words, only the distant Chief could hear the Sheriff’s words.

Jacob, however, had direct line of sight with his father.

He had a lifetime of interpreting the man’s body language.

He had a lifetime’s training in lip reading.

Sheriff Jacob Keller glared at the side of the screen, content that his father could see the image, content that the Chief could not see someone else was in the room with him.

Sheriff Linn Keller spoke quietly – Jacob could tell this from his father’s skin color, the lack of cords standing out in his neck.

“Don’t know a thing about it, Chief.”

A pause.

“It would be difficult for me to have done anything from clear the hell and gone out here. Would you like surveillance to confirm that I’ve been here all the time, or will sworn affidavits do?”

Linn’s smile was slight and tight: Jacob was not privy to the Eastern chief’s reply – retort, more likely – Linn asked, “Just what is it I’m supposed to have done?”

Linn leaned forward a little, apparently interested.

Jacob imagined Linn was being told something that caught his father’s imagination, or at least his attention.

“Now that,” Linn said slowly, “is inn-terr-resting.”  He considered for a moment, then asked, “Was there any touch DNA on the noose?” – then, “You’re the one that said he was hanged. Kind of hard to hang someone without a noose, Chief.”

Another pause.

“Chief, your people said you needed a pretty young face for an undercover. Your people said it was strictly information gathering, in an office setting.”

Linn’s face colored a little, and Jacob saw the man’s neck start to bulge, and Linn raised his voice, his hands closing into fists.

“YOUR PEOPLE LIED TO ME, CHIEF! YOUR PEOPLE GAVE ME TO UNDERSTAND A SHORT SKIRTED CHEERLEADER STUDYING TO BE A SECRETARY WOULD DO! I TRUSTED YOU WITH MY DAUGHTER AND SOMEONE SOLD HER OUT!”

Linn’s hammerfists were pressed hard against the desk top: he hadn’t SLAMMED his fists down in anger, but Jacob knew he was putting a little over fifty pounds’ pressure on the edge of the ancient desk.

“You find the rat in your own woodpile, Chief. You find out who sold out a SHERIFF’S DEPUTY” – he paused, and Jacob saw his father’s face grow white, saw the skin draw tight over Linn’s high cheekbones, and he knew the distant Chief was getting the full glare of a pair of polished-granite, cold, hard and unforgiving eyes.

“Yes,” Linn said, his voice quiet now, a menacing lowering of his voice tone that told his Eastern counterpart that, were it possible, this Western lawman would reach through that computer screen and seize the nearest throat in an utterly deadly grip.

“Your people” – Linn’s words were a hiss – “betrayed a veteran deputy Sheriff in the course of her duty. That deputy is MY LITTLE GIRL, and I want whosever head is responsible, ON A PLATTER, ON MY DESK, WITH THE BLOOD STILL RUNNING!”

It was rare – very rare – for Sheriff Linn Keller to let slip the reins on his temper.

Jacob knew his father, in that moment, had not let them slip.

He’d cast them aside and set his spurs deep into his temper’s flanks.

“Do you know what they did, Chief? Do you know how many of them –”

Linn paused.

“Six, you say. So you know who they are.”

Another pause:  Linn frowned, leaned closer again.

“You found them where?”

His surprise was genuine: clearly, this was new information.

“And they were hanged, like your Captain?”

Linn raised an eyebrow, leaned back.

“Chief, it looks like your Captain was dirty. If I were you, I’d start looking there first.” 

A pause.

“Chief, I don’t care how decorated he was. Your investigation starts there. As far as what you tell his widow, that’s your problem!”

Jacob saw his father take a long breath, blow it out.

“Now, Chief, there’s the question of damages. How would your administration like to defend one hell of a civil lawsuit that would very publicly launder the corruption your Captain seems to have headed up?”

A wolfish smile, a quiet voice.

“Oh, yes I would, Chief, and it would be a separate action from my daughter’s. She would have the bigger claim.”

Linn leaned closer to the monitor, his anger now very plain to see on his parchment-white face.

“Here’s the deal, Chief. You’re going to strip the corruption. That’s your job, you’ll handle that internally. You’re going to come to a nice, quiet, sizable settlement with my daughter, and you’re going to extend her your full, formal, official apology, and you are going to fly out here personally to extend it to her.  In person. Before my entire department.”

Linn reached forward, tapped a key; the screen went dark.

Jacob waited.

Linn lifted his chin, rose:  Jacob triggered the Iris, and two men stepped through, into a smaller room.

“Welcome to my office,” Jacob said. “My quarters are through here.”

A green ferroplast door slid open; two lawmen stepped into what looked identical to a parlor in the mid-1800s.

A smiling woman holding a blanket wrapped infant rose, turned, smiled.

Linn glided forward, took her offered hand, brought it to his lips: “Mrs. Keller,” he murmured, looked down at the drowsy infant she held: “Hello, four wheel drive!”

“He’s not four wheelin’ yet,” Jacob said quietly, and Ruth looked at her husband, smiled to see that gentle look on his face that fathers get when they look at their firstborn.

“He’s not far from it, if I’m any judge.”  Linn put his finger in the child’s grip, grinned at the strength of the youthful grip.

“You teachin’ him any bad habits yet?  Chasin’ women, smokin’ cig-gars?”

Ruth Keller gave her father in law a patient look, and considered that grandfathers must all be cut from the same cloth: her own father asked those very same questions, not a week earlier.

Linn frowned, considered the pink-cheeked, yawning, arm-waving bundle of possibilities his daughter in law held:  he shook his head sadly, looked at his son.

“Doesn’t look a thing like you,” Linn said, sorrow in his voice.

Ruth’s eyes widened with alarm.

Linn looked at her, solemn as the old judge, and said, “No mustache.”

Jacob stepped over to a cupboard, brought out a cut-glass decanter, worked the decorative, heavy glass stopper from the long neck, poured two splashes of a rather good brandy in squat, heavy bottom glasses.

Two men raised their glasses.

Two men drank.

Linn nodded his approval.

“Now that,” he said softly, “is sippin’ likker!”

“My father’s latest batch,” Ruth smiled.

“His latest?”  Linn raised an eyebrow. “If it’s that good without being aged ten years in charred oak, that is some fine product!”

Jacob decided not to correct his father: he and Ruth shared a look, and he knew this daughter of a Suth’n gentleman, would know that whiskey is aged in charred barrels, while brandy is distilled from wine.

Linn handed back the glass.

“Now that I’ve responded, on video, with complete honesty,” Linn said, “fill me in.”

Jacob took the glasses, set them to the side.

“Sir,” he said, “we used offworld technology to identify Dana’s DNA signature on her attackers.”

Linn nodded.

“There were other … factors … for which they scanned, with which they identified the guilty.”

Linn nodded again, his face solemn.

“We extracted each of the criminals.

“As we had them dead to rights, no trial was held. They were each declared guilty and hanged.”

“I understand their hanging was in a rather public place.”

“Yes, sir. Executions are a deterrent, but only when they are in public. Their criminal element would recognized the deceased. That corrupt Captain was hanged the next day, in the same place.”

“Fitting,” Linn nodded.

“Sir … how’s Dana?”

Linn lifted his eyes, gave his son a long look: after a lengthy silence, he finally answered.

“She’s not taking it well, Jacob. Her hurt is more than physical.”

Jacob’s eyes were hard and pale: he nodded, looked away, looked back.

“Justice was done,” he said quietly. “Dana kicked the Captain over the edge.”

Linn’s eyebrow rose again.

“Good.”

“Before each man went over the edge, I held up Dana’s picture in front of each one. I wanted them to see her face as the very last one they’d see this side of the Valley.”

Linn nodded, his own face hard, unforgiving.

“I am glad,” he said slowly, “I did not know this before talking to the Chief. They’ll be using voice stress analysis and they’ll scour that video for signs of deception. When I talked to him, my responses were absolutely honest.”

“That’s why I waited until we were here, sir. No possibility of a hot mic on the computer or anything of the sort.”

“Sheriff,” Ruth said in a gentle, motherly voice.

Father and son both turned, both smiled, both replied, “Yes?”

Ruth laughed; she bounced their child a little and said, “Will you join us for dinner?”

Linn paced back over to Jacob’s wife, lifted her knuckles to his lips once again.

“Darlin’,” he said in a gentle voice, “my wife will have a meal on the table when I get back, and if I don’t eat with a good appetite, why, she’ll feel my forehead for a fever and then prime me with Dr. Seltzer’s Powders and ground willow bark or somethin’ of the kind” – he made a squint-eyed, tongue-running face, like a little boy tasting a bitter nostrum – “and that stuff tastes awful!”

Ruth Keller laughed quietly, looked at her husband: Jacob grinned and opened the Iris.

Only one lawman stepped through this time.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE QUIET MAN

I know Shelly looked in at me a number of times.

She does that when she's worried.

I don't mean to worry her, but she notices things, and she's a mother, and she's a damned good wife, and sometimes I let my tunnel vision screw down too tight on something, and I reckon that's why she was looking in at me.

I'd been reading Old Pale Eyes' account of his little girl, his Angela, recruited by His Honor the Judge.

She hadn't gotten to wherever she was going -- she took a sailing ship out of San Frisco, the ship hit a reef, she was lost at sea and had to fight her way to the surface, and her in all those yards of drag-you-down material of a long dress.

Shelly came in and started rubbing my shoulders.

"You're quiet," she murmured.

She said that when she meant "I'm worried about you."

"I'm readin' about the Old Sheriff's little girl," I said.

Shelly bent over, laid her ear against mine, her chin almost on my shoulder.

"What does he say?" she whispered.

"He's describin' what his Angela told him about going down with the ship."

I felt Shelly's breath catch.

"She was ... she said it was all black and she wasn't sure which way was up. She said there was sudden moonlight and she started to swim up toward the moon and something black and fast cut through the water at her.

"She come out with her knives and whatever 'twas hit her.

"She got away and it come at her again and she got one knife through its hide but the other skidded off, and the knife she'd drove in stripped out of her hand.

"Something else come whippin' through the water and hit that first black fish and she saw teeth and about then she broke for the surface and looked around.

"There was some floatin' trash but nothing in reach and whatever 'twas hit that black fish come up and damned if it didn't come up under her for all the world like a saddlehorse."

Shelly's hands tightened on my shoulders; my eyes were busy -- I read at better than a thousand words a minute, more if I'm not interrupted -- "he says sailors have legends like anyone else, and drowned sailors come back as dolphins, and one come up under Angela and damned if it didn't tow her to shore."

I felt Shelly nod, just a little, her cheek against mine, hangin' over my shoulder like she was.

I leaned back, reached up, laid my hand on hers.

"You smell good," I murmured.

"I had a bath last Saturday," she replied, and we both laughed: it was an old joke between us.

"Old Pale Eyes writes that he felt like such a failure."

Shelly's surprise was honest:  "Why?"

"Same reason I am. We didn't keep our little girl safe.  I should have told the Chief to look somewhere else. I shouldn't --"

"She volunteered," Shelly reminded me.  "She was standing beside you when he called and she spoke up before you could reply."

"I should have told her no."

"You should tell the tide not to come in."  Shelly turned, backed up, sat on my desk:  I leaned back and we looked at one another.

"Linn Keller, your sons look like you, they walk like you, they sound like you, and God help me, they all eat like you!"

Shelly smiled, that gentle, patient smile of hers, and she leaned forward and caressed my day-stubbled cheek.

"They are also just as hard headed and contrary as you are, and so is every last daughter you ever sired!"

"Even the ones I haven't told you about?" I teased, and Shelly laughed.

"Yeah, right."  

She leaned down a little more, until she was almost nose to nose with me.

"Once Dana gets an idea in her head, you pale eyed old badge packer, you can't pry it out with two Irishmen and a sledgehammer! She wanted that undercover assignment."

Shelly leaned back, tilted her head:  I looked away, and I know I looked kind of distressed.

"I failed her," I said quietly.  "I failed my little girl. I should have told her no but I didn't, and look what happened!"

"I knew you were going to blame yourself," Shelly whispered, picking up my hand and rubbing it between hers:  "a father always does. Mine did."

I looked sharply at my wife.

She'd never mentioned being hurt.

"There is blame, yes, and there's no way they can get out from under investigating their own corruption because of it. There's blame, yes, but the ones that hurt our daughter" -- she emphasized the words and squeezed my hand tighter as she did -- "were found, and found quickly, and they've been ... disposed of."

"That's the trouble with revenge," I muttered. "Even when it works it's never satisfyin'."

"I know."  

She looked at the open Journal, with the Eight of Diamonds marking my place.

"How did Old Pale Eyes get over his guilt?" Shelly finally asked.

"He never said," I admitted.  "I read every one of his journals, and many times ... and he never speaks of his feelin's on the matter again."

My eyes shifted, from my wife, to the foot of the stairs beyond.

I knew Dana was upstairs, likely asleep, then I looked back at Shelly.

"You were hurt."

She nodded, looked away, bit her bottom lip.

"Your father blamed himself."

She nodded again.

"How did you get over it?"

Shelly got up, turned, her arms folded:  she turned back.

"Your mother was a nurse."

I nodded.

"Mine was too."

I nodded again.

"I read somewhere that most nurses have been ... hurt ... mostly in their teens, and the head shrinker that wrote the article theorized that they became healers, because they knew what it was to be hurt. They wanted to help others heal."

I nodded; I'd read a similar article in one of my mother's professional nursing magazines.

Shelly shrugged.

"I survived," she finally said. "I didn't get over it, I got my revenge."

I raised an eyebrow.

Revenge was one thing I honestly didn't expect out of this woman. 

"I got my revenge by surviving. When the ... when he died ... was killed ... I was there trying to keep him alive."

"Did he know it was you?"

"I don't know," she admitted, "but when he took his last breath, I was holding his face between my hands and looking into his eyes and telling him to hold on, we were getting him out."

I nodded.

"I avenged myself upon him," Shelly said distantly, her eyes seeing something miles beyond the far wall, "by surviving. I'm alive. He's not."

I nodded.

I knew what it was to be attacked, to have someone wanting to do very terrible things to me, at a very young age: my Mama was attacked and knew the evil men can do, and so she taught me in my childhood, against my Pa's wishes, how to be deadly.

I was.

The monster that wanted me for very bad reasons died, but not until I'd driven a knife into him like a sewin' machine, not until I'd cut him hell west and crooked, not until I was a nine year old animal, snarling and covered in a dying man's blood, and 'twas not until I collapsed, exhausted, that my Mama had me come to the barn so she could hose me off, and she burnt my clothes and the man's carcass in a veterinary incinerator, and we ground the burnt bones and poured them into a running stream so he'd never know any peace even in death.

It wasn't the first time she disposed of a body.

I looked back at the Journal.

"The nightmares afterward," I said quietly, "were terrible."

"Excuse me?"

I looked at her. "Nightmares are a normal result of trauma."

"Did I miss something here?"

"No."  I stood.  "No, but I sleep on a hair trigger anyhow, so if I come balin' out of bed, I might be hearin' Dana havin' a nightmare."

 

 

 

Edited January 29 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TO HIT A FISH

Deputy Sheriff Jacob Keller slowed, hit his roof lights, then pulled crosswise of the paved road.

“Dispatch, Two is on scene, we’ll need Hunter’s wrecker and tell him to wear hip boots.”

Jacob waited for the response, then hung up his mic, got out and went to the back of the cruiser: another moment, he’d traded well polished Wellingtons for a near-new pair of fireboots, pulled them up, ignored the slacking rain that pattered loudly on the plastic cover he’d slid over his uniform Stetson.

He slogged through slow-moving water, its cold penetrating the fireboots:  a young man and his date sat on top of the car:  Jacob looked from one to the other and said, “Howdy!”

“Hi,” the embarrassed teen-ager replied:  the girl sat, cross-legged and cross-armed, wet, aggravated and not speaking.

“We got your call,” Jacob said. “Wrecker is enroute. How about we get you two inside where it’s warm?”

He opened his mouth to caution the driver not to jump, but too late – the young man’s head snapped back, his breath hissed in between clenched teeth as he realized, too late, just how unbelievably COLD!!! that water really was!

To his credit, he slogged around the front of the car – the engine was drowned out, he’d turned off the headlights – he came to the passenger side, opened his arms.

His girlfriend gave him the Cold Glare of the Indignant Female – Jacob was honestly surprised the water didn’t freeze a foot deep around that young fella – then she allowed him to run his arms under her, he brought her off and slogged toward the trunk, toward the idling cruiser.

Jacob came up beside him: he knew how fast limbs can lose strength in such icy waters, but the young fellow made it to the cruiser.

Jacob got in the back, pulled out two blankets: one went on the seat, then his passengers, the second blanket over them – “I’m sorry, I don’t have any towels, let me turn that heater on high for you” – he shut the door, got into the back again and pulled out a fistful of thirty-minute road flares, scratched the first one into life and set a row of burning-red signals across the pavement.

He knew this stretch of road, he knew the water was deepest where the car was: he waded across to the other side, laid four across the pavement on the far side of the rippling, night-dark waters, slogged back, changed his fireboots for nice warm Wellingtons, got back in.

Jacob waited for the wrecker before heading back for town: he ran the plates, driver’s license, he wasn’t about to ask his shivering, soaked and rain-wet passenger for the vehicle’s registration: once Bill Hunter got there with his hook, once the driver shivered the ignition key off his ring and handed it over, Jacob turned around, killed his roof lights and headed back for the warm and dry.

He handed his cell phone to the young man, who wanted to call his father, and when he wrote up the incident back at the Sheriff’s office, he included verbatim the young man’s conversation, explaining how he’d just drowned the family sedan:

“Dad? Dad, I hit a fish.”

The young man finished his conversation, handed the phone forward with his thanks, then leaned back and looked at his date.

“Do you think I could ruin a date any more completely?” he asked.

“No,” came the frigid reply: Jacob’s glance in the rearview showed the young woman, arms crossed, face turned to the window.

“I’d like to try to ruin another date.”
She turned, looked at him with honest surprise.

“Hey, it’s not my fault that road was flooded!”

Jacob kept driving, though he admitted to his father later that he might have to stop and sort out a minor domestic:  nothing of the kind happened, though: Jacob dropped the young lady off at her house – he and her date went inside, and to his credit, the damp and shamefaced young man looked her father in the eye and took full responsibility for what happened: Jacob’s next stop was at the young man’s house, where he had a quiet conversation with the father there.

Jacob described how the man’s son had not hesitated to carry the young lady across the floodwaters, how the young man gave her his jacket to keep her as dry as he could as they sat on their car's roof:  Jacob looked at the young fellow, who was shifting from one foot to the other, half from embarrassment, half from wanting to get into a hot shower – “I’d not be too hard on him,” Jacob said.  “After all, he did hit a fish.”

Edited January 29 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SILVERSWORD

 

A scared little girl curled up in her bed, shivering, crying into her pillow, her face buried so no one could hear her.

She knew they surrounded her, she knew they were watching.

She knew they were enjoying her fear, her terror.

She could hear them.

She heard them whispering to her, their voices like dry bones stalking a sandy desert path: used goods, soiled goods, she heard: spoiled, contaminated, dirty, dirty.

Dana convulsed with fear, screamed as her bedroom door SLAMMED open.

A man stood, a black silhouette, framed in her bedroom door: something silver, like a living, blazing, very deadly snake, twisted in the black silhouette’s leather-gloved hand, and beside the silhouette of a man, something the size and shape of a young bear … something menacing, muscled, with searing-bright fangs, with red eyes that blazed like a furnace.

Dana Keller, Sheriff’s deputy, daughter of that pale eyed Sheriff, was no longer a woman grown.

Dana was healing from hurts to her body, yes, but worse ones to her soul, to her living spirit: she’d been nearly shattered by what was done to her, and here, here in the bedroom she knew from earliest childhood, she was twisted up in her bedcovers, cowering against the wall,, afraid.

Dana was a terrified child, backing up into a corner –

Only she wasn’t in her bedroom anymore.

Dana cowered against a boulder – huge, rough – hot! – bare feet pushed against the hot, black sand underfoot.

The black silhouette was still there.

The black silhouette advanced toward her.

She was surrounded by the voices, only now the voices had form, they were less human, more skeletal than they had been.

More … more demonic.

We will have her, she is ourssss, the voices hissed.

The silhouette wore a long black duster, a broad brimmed hat.

He moved easily, like a young man in the green strength of youth, a young man ready for a fight.

The young bear at the figure’s side opened its blunt, muscled jaws –

That’s not a bear, Dana thought, her breath coming fast as she sank into helpless panic –

She didn’t know where she was –

She was in her flannel nightgown –

She felt the unholy desires of those terrible figures surrounding her, she knew they wanted to do more things to her, evil things, they wanted to ruin her body, rip her very soul from her, after they finished shattering it –

She was so near shattered already –

The man in black raised a silver blade, a blade that twisted like an angry rattlesnake, a blade that left liquid fire in its wake:  Dana heard a voice, her father’s voice, deep, angry, louder than ten oceans in a storm, shaking the very ground beneath her –

“DAMN YOU, LEAVE MY CHILD ALOOONE!”

The Bear Killer launched into attack, sounding like an entire legion of war-hounds –

It was war, fast, vicious, deadly, bloody: a man’s voice, powerful, enraged, as he lay about with a blade that blazed like a star’s breath, searing through figures gone demonic, figures with claws and teeth and weapons and hatred, figures that wore their evil like armor –

Dana fell to her side, clamped her hands against the sides of her head, screaming.

 

Linn thrust his arms into the bedclothes, around his daughter: he hauled her out of bed, blankets and all, clutched her to him:  Dana was curled up into a tight little ball, whimpering, eyes wide and unseeing:  Linn turned and sat on the side of her bed, The Bear Killer surged up and began laundering at Dana’s head, trying to reach her buried face.

Linn rocked her a little, the way a Daddy rocks a terrified child having a nightmare:  he murmured quietly to her, using that reassuring Daddy-voice she remembered from childhood:  it was what she needed, for her night terrors were those of a child, not a thinking, rational adult.

The Bear Killer persisted, grunting, snuffing:  Dana uncoiled enough for the mountain Mastiff to taste her face, her tears:  Dana was sobbing now, crying, choking:  she was in her own blankets, she could smell them, line dried and smelling of sunshine and wind and soap, she smelled her Daddy, and her dams broke.

Her reserve was gone.

Her walls were shattered.

She was a hurt little girl, in her Daddy’s arms, safe, crying for what had been done to her, crying with relief that it was over, crying because she was safe now.

The Bear Killer leaned back, sat, growling, a deep, menacing snarl:  he stood, and Linn saw the fur rise down his spine, across his shoulders.

Linn stood, his daughter’s weight on his hip: his strength was more than a man’s as he looked around the nighttime bedroom, as his hand raised, as a silver blade blazed into existence, and they were back in that dark and sandy place again.

Stalactites, like rocky teeth, black, tinged with red, overhead: in the distance, a dull red glow: the misshapen, evil figures that menaced his daughter’s sleep surrounded them.

Sssheee is ourrsss, he heard.

“I BEAT YOU ONCE, DAMN YOU!” Linn challenged.

You cannot defeat usssss, we are manyyyy, he heard, their voices like snakescales on dry rock.

“SO ARE WE!”

Linn set his heels, swung: his blade slashed, thrust, he fought with a fierce joy, he fought one-armed, his daughter clutched against his side:  he spun, he ducked, twisted, lunged:  beside him, The Bear Killer, no longer a mountain Mastiff: now he was more than flesh and fur, more than bone and fang: he was Death itself, sounding like he was personally ripping a hundred enemies apart at the same time.

Something silver lanced past Linn’s ear and he thrust to his left: a huge, shining-black horse drove past him, twisted, kicked: Linn spun, slashed, a fierce, unmitigated joy firing his soul, his blade splitting shoulders and skulls and slashing through cadaverous legs.

More there were, swarming over rocks, over boulders, infernal troops coming to claim his daughter’s soul, and if possible, his.

Something bumped his back: he felt another human body, he pushed against it as it pushed against him: the massive black horse reared, twisted, lashing out with steelshod forehooves that blazed bright as molten silver in the hellish, red-edged dark as the pale-eyed woman riding it took her lance in both hands, thrust with it like a spear, driving it through demonic armor.

Behind him, the woman who’d bumped into him as she swung, a pale-eyed woman in pirate boots and a crimson skirt lay about with a cutlass and a main-gauche, harvesting what passed for lives, for souls, in this infernal realm –

War-pipes screamed for joy, battle-drums throbbed and commanded; a tanned, pale-eyed woman in white – only a woman could move that gracefully – ran up onto a rock, raised a bow, loosed an arrow, another:  she fired quickly, thinning the numbers of the infernal league that sought to overwhelm one man with one blade holding one vulnerable soul.

Something silver thrust through a hole in the dark air overhead, the nose of a ship more at home between the stars than in this dark cavern under the mountain: the hole under its chin blazed energies unseen, turned, scything through legions of attackers: the ship burned a great arc through their numbers, banking with the silent thunder of a tightly-controlled star drive, before disappearing.

It was over quicker than it started: as if at signal, those misshapen, demonic, half-skeletal, half-misty figures turned, ran, evaporated, before they’d taken three fleeing strides.

A silver-helmeted woman in a shining silver curiasse and a skirt-of-plates raised her lance in salute, her black mare rearing, then disappeared: they were in Dana’s bedroom once again, father and daughter and a watchful, bristled mountain Mastiff.

Dana twisted a little as Linn sat her down on the side of her bed, still wrapped in her bedcovers.

She shivered, leaned into her Daddy’s shoulder, sniffed:  The Bear Killer came muttering over to her and laundered her face again.

Linn sat and held her, until she finally whispered, “Nightmare.”

“We were fightin’ monsters, all right,” Linn whispered back.

Dana pulled back, looked at him, alarmed.

A figure filled the doorway, a feminine silhouette in a long gown.

Linn looked up, his arm still around his daughter.

“It was your time,” Linn whispered as Marnie glided into the room, as she, too, sat beside her sister, as she looked over the shivering Dana’s head at her pale eyed Daddy.

“We women,” Marnie explained, as she caressed her sister’s hair, “carry a bloodline that will fight at the Last Battle. The Infernal wants to stop us before we can get there, and once in a lifetime, our very soul is tried.”

“But … but I didn’t … I was too scared …”

“That’s why we’re here,” Linn rumbled. “You weren’t alone.”

“I was tried as well,” Linn whispered. “I’ve had three near death experiences so far and I honestly don’t know which of them was my trial. Jacob had his.”

He looked over Dana’s head, looked into his daughter’s pale eyes.

“Marnie had hers, and she wasn’t four years old yet.

“Gammaw Willamina had hers. It made her … she didn’t get mean, but she … she started the Valkyries because she knew what can happen. She survived what happened to her. So did Marnie. Since then we’ve … all … been tested. You’re not the first to be tested under the mountain.”

Dana looked at Marnie, startled.

“Under the mountain,” she whispered, remembering.

“The story Papa read us,” Marnie explained, “the one Sarah Lynne McKenna wrote, where she was sent into a narrow little tunnel under the mountain. No weapons, not even a flint knife. She fell into … where you were and … when she was young, like I was, the demons tore half her soul from her and took it below. They tried to get all of her soul so they could stop her from passing her Gift through her bloodline, and they only got half of it.

“She had to go Under the Mountain to where they were, to get the other half of her soul back.

“Since then they’ve never failed to come after us, generally once in our lifetime, and most often they hit us when we’re weakest.

“It wasn’t until our bloodlines came together” – Marnie hesitated, frowned.

“It wasn’t until we manifested pale eyes,” Linn explained, “not until the necessary hereditary characteristics converged in our bloodline. We’ll be very effective when the time comes. That’s why we train, Dana. That’s why we’ve been warriors since dirt was young.”

“I’m not ready to be a warrior,” Dana said hesitantly.

Linn hugged her to him, still wrapped in her nighttime quilt.

“Darlin’,” he said softly, “you’re still m’ little girl and you had one hell of a nightmare.”

Marnie opened her mouth to add “In more ways than one,” thought better of it, and close her lips on words unsaid.

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Dana mumbled.

“Me neither,” Linn admitted. “You want I should make waffles maybe?”

Dana nodded, leaning her head into her Daddy’s chest.

Linn looked at Marnie and winked:  he turned, slid his arms under his little girl again, laid her back on her bed:  she rolled up on her side, half curled up, and he and Marnie waited until she was relaxed a little, asleep and breathing easy, that they catfooted out of her bedroom, drew the door most of the way shut.

Linn took his daughter’s hands in his own.

“Thank you for coming.”

“I knew she’d be tried,” Marnie said frankly, “and … well, it seemed natural that they’d try to hit her after she’d just been through … what she was.”

Linn nodded.

“How are you doing?” Ambassador Marnie Keller asked the pale eyed Sheriff.

“Darlin’,” Linn admitted softly, “I’m hungry.”

Marnie smiled.  “It’s been too long since I had some good homemade waffles!”

Linn laughed silently, turned, patted her hand as she wrapped her gloved fingers around his arm.

“Talked me right into it,” he murmured.

 

Edited January 30 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

OLD DON’T MEAN DEAD

 

Dana Keller woke in her own bed, in her own room, under her own roof.

Her arm was over something solid, big, furry and warm, something that breathed and twitched and groaned, something that twisted as she batted the sleep from her eyes and rolled over on her back.

The Bear Killer half-jumped, half-fell from the bed: he hesitated awkwardly, and Dana was reminded painfully of the fact that her beloved Bear Killer was …

… old …

She thrust bare feet into fur-lined moccasins, snatched up a heavy flannel robe and wrapped it around herself: she picked up a pistol, dropped it in her robe’s pocket, a habit she’d gotten into before her teenage years: she descended the stairs slowly, letting The Bear Killer proceed at his own arthritic pace.

Her need was similar to his, but she wasn’t going to abandon him to morning’s chill: no, she waited, and when a massive, curly-black-furred mountain Mastiff labored back up the front porch steps and looked up at her, grey-muzzled and wise-eyed, she rubbed him with affection and opened the door to go inside.

She came back downstairs dressed, bareheaded: her hair was Marine-short – Marnie favored twin braids that she wrapped around her neck as protection against a knife-slash, but Dana wished no such convenient handle for an attacker’s use:  she froze, halfway down the stairs, memories searing through her belly, and she sat, shivering.

Stop that, she thought.

It’s over.

You survived.

They’re dead.

The Bear Killer looked up the stairs at her, made a querulous sound, then a quiet yow-wow, as if asking if she was all right, or asking her to come down to where he was: Dana rose, walked slowly, like a hesitant old woman, the rest of the way down the broad, solid stairs, sat again.

The Bear Killer rested his chin on her lap, closed his eyes and muttered contentedly as she worked practiced fingers into his curly fur.

Dana closed her eyes, too, took a long breath, blew it out.

A pretty young woman, a pale eyed woman in a skirt and knee socks, an attractive young woman with a black pistol belted around her slender waist, sat on the stairs the way she had as a little girl, happily communing with a massive, powerful, hard-muscled guardian the size of a young bear.

I could stay in my room.

I would be safe there.

I could stay in the house.

Mama can always use a hand with … no, everything’s already caught up …

Dana opened her pale eyes, looked at the closed front door, the heavy door that kept the world shut out from this, her sanctum, her safety.

They’re dead.

They can’t hurt me anymore.

If I make myself their prisoner, they win.

She felt something inside her that honestly surprised her.

She felt a hard, grim knot of anger that wasn’t there before.

“Damn you,” she whispered through clenched teeth, “you’re not going to win!”

Dana looked around the empty house.

Her Daddy and her Mama were both at work, her siblings, off to school, Angela to hospital: she was alone with The Bear Killer and the ghosts that walked these floors, memories modern and ancient, and suddenly Dana felt the need to “go stir around” – and she smiled as her thoughts condensed into those words, “go stir around” – her Daddy said that, and told her it’s what his Mama, her Gammaw Willamina used to say.

 

Dana walked into the All-Night, preceded by a slow, stiff-limbed Bear Killer and her own lovely smile.

She didn’t really need anything; her Jeep was topped off, so she didn’t need fuel; she’d breakfasted and their refrigerator at home was stocked, so she didn’t need milk or eggs.

She dropped to the side once she came through the front door – old habit, she realized, but not until after she’d done it – pale eyes were busy as she approached the All-Night, and after she’d entered.

She watched The Bear Killer pace slowly over to the coffee island, turn around, lay down and look at her as if to say “This is where you’re going anyway”, and Dana smiled and thought, Do you know me or what?

An attractive young woman in a denim skirt and jacket, in knee socks and saddle shoes, a young woman who could have been anywhere from sixteen to thirty-six, almost skipped over to the coffee island.

The Bear Killer’s head came up, his ears raised:  he labored upright, paced stiffly to the front door, waited for it to automatically open, went outside.

Dana smiled at Marsha, behind the register, asked how her mother was as she stirred creamer and contentment into her steaming, towering foam cup, squeaked a sippy lid on it, picked it up to walk over to the register.

The moment she set the cup down, something in her gut twisted, tightened.

She looked to the right, at three young toughs who came sneering through the door.

She watched one snatch a handful of candy bars, shove them into a pocket, turn to leave as another grabbed a bag of chips, toss them to the floor.

Dana turned – “HEY! YOU’LL HAVE TO PAY FOR THOSE!” – her voice was sharp, commanding, and the leader came up to her, raised an open hand to grab her breast and sneered, “I got somethin’ for you –”

Marsha’s clawed fingers mashed the silent alarm button as Dana just plainly came unglued.

Marsha testified later that she saw Dana lay into the first one and then the second, that she kicked another’s knee, grabbed his arm and twisted him around, driving his face into the floor, she made two running jumps and tackled a third and she wasn’t sure what-all happened after that.

It took careful study of the surveillance video to discover what-all happened, and how close an off-duty deputy came to getting killed, a fact corroborated by a slash and a puncture in her new denim jacket.

Dana felt time shatter when she saw the toughs start their assault.

Her wounded self blew apart like dust before a hurricane wind: a puff, and the hurt little girl was gone, replaced by the hard concretion of someone whose hurt shrank her down to a very hard, very condensed, very explosive version of what she used to be.

Dana responded according to her training.

Dana responded according to long, hard and sweaty practice with the Valkyries.

Dana responded with all the hate and all the hurt and with all the strength in her toned and smooth-muscled horsewoman’s body.

She watched the video later and honestly marveled at her reaction.

When he reached for her, she drove the web of her hand into his throat while her knee came up and raised him off the deck: she closed her hand about his windpipe and threw him aside, her eyes wide and white, teeth bared: she seized the wrist as it came at her, twisted, kicked the back of the second guy’s knee as she brought his shoulder out of socket and ran his face into the edge of the counter: the third tried to run, until she seized the back of his jacket, pulled hard, kicked the back of his knee and SLAMMED him to the floor: she twisted, landed on him, hard: one knee went into his gut, her other shin was down hard across his breastbone and she snatched the tape-wrapped .38 from his waistband, flipped it toward she shocked, staring girl behind the counter.

Marsha, startled, caught it, tossed it under the counter, then picked up the short shotgun that lived under the countertop, considered that Dana had things in hand, put the scattergun back.

The phone rang and – out of habit -- she reached over, lifted the receiver.

“All-Night Convenient, eat here and get gas,” she said automatically.

“Yes, that’s right, I hit the alarm.  Get out here fast.  Dana is beating the snot out of three of them right now.”

 

After Dana straightened, after she went from one to the next to the next, checking for weapons, after picking up two knives and another handle-taped pistol, after she stopped and closed her eyes and took a long, steadying breath, she slipped a hand under her jacket and checked to make sure her own pistol was still in its holster.

She looked up at movement in the front door.

The Bear Killer came pacing slowly, arthritically though the door, rumbling dangerously:  he sniffed at one, then another, of the groaning criminals on the floor, stopped at the first one Dana decked, his hair bristling, black lips rippling back from polished ivory fangs.

Behind him, a miniature version, black as a sinner’s heart, curly-furred, fat and waddling – a little Bear Killer – strutted in, sniffed at one criminal, then another, and hiked his leg to express his opinion of scoundrelly humanity bleeding on the deck.

“No,” Dana said quietly, and the little Bear Killer lowered his leg, looked curiously at Dana, and made a querulous sound.

He almost looked disappointed.

Dana reached down (The Bear Killer is big enough she didn’t have to reach down more than an inch) and caressed the grey muzzled old war dog’s ears.

“Your son?” she asked, and The Bear Killer’s tail swung slowly, the way an old dog will.

Dana considered this newest Bear Killer, looked up as the first cruiser came into the lot, lit up and braking hard:  she kissed at the little Bear Killer, squatted, extended a hand.

“C’mere, fella,” she cooed, “let’s get you over here now.”

A fat little Bear Killer half-waddled, half-hopped happily to where his sire was sitting with half-slitted eyes and a contented expression.

“Bear Killer,” Dana sighed, “I guess old doesn’t mean dead.”

She read her lips as she reviewed the video, and smiled as she did, for the expression on The Bear Killer’s face was one of absolute pleasure.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A CHARMING OLDER MAN

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna turned to her left, gave her reflection in the full length mirror a critical appraisal:  she turned to the right, assessing her image, slowly, methodically, from top to bottom: from the fashionable little hat, held by long and very sharp hat-pins, to the fringed hem of her fashionable, floor-length gown: she examined her curves, her contours, she leaned closer to the reflection, considered her face: she was close enough to the silvered glass for her breath to condense in a light fog.

She leaned back, gloved hands on her trim waist, glared at the pale-eyed reflection, and hissed, “Hussy!” – then seized her skirts, turned and flounced to the door, smiling with satisfaction.

The maid looked up as she descended:  “Will there be anything, Miss McKenna?”

“If I’m not back by nightfall,” Sarah said, lowering her head slightly and giving the maid a knowing look, “tell my mother I’ve gone to consort with a married man!”

The maid clasped her hands in her apron and laughed: “Tell the Sheriff I said hello!”

Sarah raised her hands to the ceiling, shook her head.

“Window glass!” she declared.  “I am as transparent as window glass!”

 

Sheriff Linn Keller drifted up from the depths of Lake Takeanap.

His breathing changed ever so slightly – probably due to the tickling effects of the fuzzy end of a broomstraw, being drawn carefully across the bottom of his mustache, just fringing on his lip – Sarah laughed quietly as the lean waisted lawman with the iron grey mustache rumbled, “There’s only one soul who’d interrupt my nap like that.”

Sarah drew back as Linn raised a hand, pushed his hat brim back with a forefinger, looked at his lovely visitor.

“To what do I owe the honor?” he asked: Sarah batted her long-lashed eyes and gave him her Very Best Innocent Expression (unlike the Sheriff’s efforts at The Innocent Expression, Sarah pulled it off flawlessly, whereas Old Pale Eyes failed miserably in his attempts)

“Can’t a young lady seek the company of a charming older man?” she smiled, fingertips dramatically to her bodice:  Linn uncrossed his legs, let one booted foot hit the floor, then the other:  he stood, frowned, shifted his weight: Sarah’s eyes went from merry to concerned, for she knew he would never show such weakness in front of anyone else.

“Mileage,” Linn rumbled as he caught Sarah’s look.

“Mileage,” she echoed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You shouldn’t have to, dear heart. You don’t climb in and out of the saddle like I do.”

“You’re right.”  She laid gloved hands on her sire’s shoulders, looked up at him, as gorgeous as a nubile maiden, as innocent as the child he wished she’d remained. “I don’t climb in and out of the saddle like you do.”

She tilted her head and smiled, just a little.

“I climb the board fence and have the hired man bring my horse under me, then I jump on it backwards.”

“Darlin’,” Linn rumbled, bending his head down and kissing her forehead, “you are as full of it as I am, and I thought I had a corner on the market.”

Sarah hugged the Sheriff, laughing, looked up at him, declared, “Flattery, sir, will get you everywhere!”

“If it’ll get me to the Silver Jewel,” Linn said, “I’ll buy you a meal.”

“Something light,” Sarah said, batting her eyes at him and looking very maidenly:  “I must watch my girlish figure!”

“Darlin’,” Linn said frankly, as Sarah wrapped a gloved hand around his forearm, “the way you’re lookin’, you are not the only one watching your girlish figure!”

 

Dana looked up from the account her Gammaw published privately.

“I see a question in your eyes,” her pale eyed Daddy said, his voice gentle.

Dana’s eyes were haunted.

“Daddy, I know what happened to Sarah.”

I stopped.

I stood dead still and looked directly at her.

I wanted her to understand she absolutely had every bit of my attention.

I nodded for her to continue.

“Daddy,” Dana said uncertainly, “Sarah” – her fingers tracked quickly across the page, down a couple lines, to the side again – “here.  It says she laughed, and then …”  another quick scan – “here, she smiled.”

Dana looked up at me, looking small, looking vulnerable.

“Daddy, how did she smile?”

I blinked, considered.

“Daddy, I kicked that crooked captain off the edge.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went to the edge and I grabbed the rope and I felt him kicking his last.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Dana’s eyes went from vulnerable to … dangerous.

Her eyes were hard and her eyes were pale and I’ve seen those eyes before.

I saw them reflected in a car’s window after I killed the man that tried to kill me.

I saw them in my son, when he had someone by the throat, pinned against the wall, when he wanted nothing more than to crush the throat and rip the throat out and then get just plain mean with the subject.

I saw them in Marnie, when she cut the gold bullet out of the back of the Jack Doe’s scalp after she shot the man she’d been told shot her Uncle Will.

“How do I feel about that?” Dana echoed, her voice quiet, tight, controlled.

She rose.

Dana is her Mama’s height and Dana is her Mama’s build, and when her Mama was her age, I took my hands and spanned her waist, I touched the tips of my thumbs together and touched the tips of my middle fingers together and completely circumnavigated her waist … I’ve never tried that with Dana, but I reckon she was just awful close to that same circumference.

“Daddy,” Dana said, and her voice shook a little, “I stood there and I gripped that rope and I felt him kick his last.  I looked over the edge and I watched him strangle!”

This was the very first time I ever saw my pretty little girl genuinely, to the core of her soul, angry.

“How do I feel, Daddy?  You’re asking me how I feel?”

Dana’s fists were clenched, tight, her knuckles bloodless, her arms quivering a little as she allowed herself this sudden, impassioned, absolute, frighteningly silent, rage!

I expected Dana to rear up on her toes and scream in my face.

I expected her young throat to shred itself with the most powerfully shouted reply she could frame.

She didn’t.

For the very first time in her young life, my daughter’s voice washed my soul with a cold bucketful of God’s honest fear.

She did not raise her voice at all.

Her voice did not quiver, not one little bit.

“I’m glad, Daddy,” she said, her eyes hard.  “I, am, glad.”

I nodded, slowly.

“Darlin’,” I said, “you know you are a sworn deputy.”

“I know.”

“I understand you were in uniform when you put your boot to his backside and kicked him into eternity.”

She nodded.

I rested my hands on her shoulders and looked her very directly in the eye.

“Darlin’, we are guardians of the Law. We uphold the Law and we enforce the Law, and when one of our own suborns the Law, they must be stopped.

“Nothing was going to stop that crooked son of Perdition short of a noose or a good dose of shotgun therapy.”

Dana looked up at me.

My hands were very light on her shoulders; I did not grip her, I did not confine her, I did not hold her – I didn’t want her to feel held or confined, only reassured.

“You did what was necessary in that moment. He betrayed you and you were hurt. He paid for it and if I had a bushel basket of gold coin, I’d pay the Witch of Endor to resurrect his sorry carcass so I could kill him again.”

“I’ll check my phone,” Dana replied. “I might have her on speed dial.”

I released Dana’s shoulders and drew her into me.

She was still shivering, just a little.

In that moment we were not Sheriff and deputy.

My little girl needed her big strong Daddy, and frankly I needed to know that my little girl was here, she was home, she was where I could keep her safe.

“Darlin’?”

“Yes, Daddy?” she mumbled into my flannel shirt front.

“What did Sarah do next in that account you were readin’?”

Dana looked up at me, surprised:  she let go of me, turned, looked at the page, ran her finger down several more lines.

“It says here that she … was seen in town in the company of an older man, but that it was not considered scandalous at all.”

I grunted.

“Darlin’, I happen to know your Uncle Will could use a good square meal, and he does enjoy the company of an attractive younger woman.” 

Dana was solemn as she took my arm.

“It’s been three weeks, Daddy. Mama is worried because I haven’t smiled since it … happened.”

“Healin’ takes time, darlin’.”

“How long did it take Gammaw?”

I blinked.

“I … don’t really know.”

“How about Marnie?”

I shook my head, my eyes going to the communicator screen.

“I reckon we could ask her.”

Angela looked away, chewed uncertainly on her knuckle.

She needn’t have worried.

You see, a leash-dragging Beagle dog scampered up to her when we came down the boardwalk in front of the Silver Jewel:  Dana squatted down and fooled with the happy, tail-wagging rabbit dog, and Will and I looked at one another as Dana smiled, and so did the dog.

We looked at the dog and we looked at Angela, then we looked at one another.

It was the first time we’d seen Angela smile since everything happened.

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DRY WORK

 

Sean, the big, red-headed Irish fire captain, laughed and roared and drove another punch from the shoulder, flattening a fellow who’d turned, found himself face-to-face with a wall of muscle and foolishly decided to try and head-butt his way through it.

Sean swatted aside another punch, took an unexpected set of knuckles to his ribs: he twisted, brought a hard elbow around, caught someone squarely on the ear and knocked him into another knot of fighters, all of whom stood back, surprised, then all of whom addressed this unwanted interloper into their particular circle of pugilistic prowess.

Sean stood head and shoulders over what had suddenly become a general, all-encompassing, everybody-including-the-piano-player, knock-down drag-out, good old fashioned, saloon brawl.

It wasn’t unexpected, this kind of thing generally happened after competing fire companies had a baseball game: one side won, one side lost, there were shouts, accusations, punches were thrown, and a good time was had by all.

Cincinnati was always a rough town, it was a river town, it was the great Porkopolis, home of riverboats, railroads, slaughterhouses and meatpacking, firemen and firefighting machinery, and the manufacture of both: if there was a fire and two competing fire companies arrived, there was not infrequently a fistfight to see who fought the fire.

Sean caught a fist coming in like he’d caught the baseball that tried to hit him out.

In these early days, a player wasn’t out because the ball was thrown to the base, the batter was tagged out by virtue of hitting him with the baseball as he ran.

Sean was legging it for second base when he heard the warning shout, he turned, he reflexively caught the ball – he extended one big hand, opened his fingers, seized the hard-thrown, sewn-leather spheroid, then he stopped and stared at it, and looked around, and laughed.

Instead of twisting to keep from being hit, he’d reflexively guaranteed that he was hit – and because the big Irishman laughed at the irony, both teams stopped and laughed, and pounded his back in hearty good-fellowship and commiseration.

Sean caught the fist coming in, held it:  he threw back his head and roared, and the angry roar of a giant Irish warrior is an incredible thing in an enclosed place:  the barfight stopped, suddenly – even the piano player, who was happily laying about with a heavy beer mug, stopped in mid-swing, surprised and staring at Sean’s bellowed summons.

“MAKE ROOM HERE! MAKE ROOM!” – men backed up, an opening about eight feet across – “YOU, LAD! YOU PUNCH BADLY!”

The young fireman, barely able to start a mustache, glared at the big Irishman: he was realizing he’d just written a check his bony backside couldn’t cash, but pride wouldn’t let him back down before his fellows and especially not in front of this rival fire company.

“HERE NOW! WHEN YOU PUNCHED, YOU PUNCHED LIKE THIS” – Sean closed his big, scar-knuckled paw into a Warhammer, launched it dead slow – “SEE HERE, YER KNUCKLES ARE LEVEL! Y’DON’T WANT T’ DO THAT!”

Sean was still shouting – he glared round about, daring anyone to interrupt: off to his left, a swing,a punch,a man swore, Sean turned and looked and heard a ringing BLANG as a red-headed, green-eyed Irish woman swung her frying pan hard, flattened a fellow who’d dared to interrupt the man upon whom she had womanly designs.

“NOW DAMN YE LOT YE’LL KEEP QUIET WHEN YON MAN’S TALKIN’!” Daisy shouted, glaring coldly about, frying pan upraised:  she looked down at the fellow with a flat nose and crossed eyes.

“AN’ GET HIM T’ TH’ WATTERIN’ TROUGH AN’ GI’E HIM A BATH!”

Daise hoisted her nose with an audible “Hmph!” and stomped back toward her kitchen, her cast iron frying pan held up like a scepter: men did not hesitate to draw back from her and allow her free and uninterrupted travel.

Sean grinned at the young man before him, shook his head.

“Daisym’dear,” he chuckled, and the feminine screech shivered up the wood-paneled hallway, “AND DON’T YOU DAISYMEDEAR ME, YOU RED-HEADED SON OF BRIAN BARU! I’LL HAVE YE KNOW I’M A DECENT WOMAN!”

Sean threw back his head and laughed with genuine delight, then looked down at the young man with whom his tutorial had been interrupted.

“Now, lad,” he grinned, no longer at a full-voiced shout, “ye want t’ punch like this” – he advanced a fist, dead slow – “wi’ yer knuckles up an’ down, like, this way ye’ll no’ be so likely t’ break a bone in yer hand!”

His uncomfortable student grunted, nodded.

“NOW WHERE WERE WE, LADS?” Sean roared, and a voice shouted back, “HEADED FOR THE BAR, WE NEED A BEER!”

“YOU HEARD TH’ MAN!” Sean roared with a good-natured grin.  “FIGHTIN’ IS DRY WORK! BEER IT IS!”

And just as quickly as the Cincinnati saloon erupted into a general, fists-feet-and-elbows brawl, the fight ended, and when the cops showed up, all frowns and scowls and nightsticks, they were seized, dragged to the bar and plied with mugs of frothy, fresh-drawn beer, and later that night, as men staggered happily for their firehouse, or for their home, or for wherever they were headed before everything started, firemen, cops and piano player alike had a belly full of beer, a general sense of having worked hard and been treated to a good session of manly disagreement, and absolutely no recollection of who in the hell won that baseball game anyhow.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE PEERAGE

Jacob Keller smiled and thanked the new teller in his gentle voice: his hand slipped the envelope into an inside coat pocket and the teller asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Jacob looked at  her and smiled gently.

“Last thing on my list,” he said, “but there were only two things on it ‘cause I hate long lists” – he winked, patted his coat – “this is one, and the last item … thank you for bringing your smile to work today.”

The teller blinked, colored a little, murmured her thanks:  beside her, an older woman gave Jacob a knowing look, and Jacob winked at her too: he turned, Stetson in hand, headed for the door, bootheels on polished tiles as noisy as a passing cloud on a summer’s day.

 Jacob’s eyes were busy, as they always were: the inside of the bank was quickly but efficiently scanned, and as casual as his appearance was, the older woman behind the counter knew his appearance was most deceiving.

If there was a detail, he picked up on it.

He’d personally prevented serious trouble, more times than one, because of his low key but very effective habit of observation.

Jacob’s cover rose, settled in place as he crossed the inner threshold: he pushed the outer door open and swept off the cover, leaned back against the door, to hold it wide open.

A woman about his age, and what appeared to be her elderly mother, were coming into the bank:  the woman dropped her eyes and murmured a quiet “Thank you,” but the soul Jacob described later as “That Sweet Little Old Gal” stopped dead.

She turned and peered up at him through a thick set of spectacles and said in a quavering voice, “He holds the door, and he takes off his hat!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jacob said with a straight face.  “My Mama worked hard to beat some manners into mmm … --”  he cleared his throat – “I mean, she worked hard to teach me good manners.”

It was a good fifteen minutes they stood there, collectively and happily con-damning this plastic, Godless and modern generation, and when they were done, a tall, lean-waisted young man, a woman about his age, and her elderly mother, went their separate ways, each with a pleased expression.

For the rest of his days, Jacob remembered that moment when he pleased “that sweet little old gal” who peered up at Jacob, through what his father called “coke-bottom glasses,” as she remarked on his good manners.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THERE’S WORK ENOUGH HERE

 

Mr. Baxter reached across the bar and cheerfully banged the protesting, fighting stranger over the head with the base of a heavy glass beer mug.

The double impact of being belted, then bounced off the burnished mahogany bar, was enough for Dana to get control of the assailant.

She took him by the back of the neck, his wrist cranked up between his shoulder blades: she twisted, threw him face down on the floor, landed on top of him: her weight was stiff-armed into the clawed hand gripping his unwashed, greasy neck, her other hand tight around his hand, bending it painfully into a pain-compliance hold.

“Don’t,” she hissed between clenched teeth, “move!”

The fight did not end there.

Stupid people tend to do stupid things, and this one insisted on a continued stupidity.

It did not end well for this unwise soul who’d groped a cute little waitress and then tried to grab a pretty young woman who walked up to him and demanded he KEEP his HANDS OFF THE MERCHANDISE!

Two other lawmen, also off duty, casually strolled over to the struggling, swearing pair, two off-duty lawmen performed a less than religious “Laying On of Hands” followed by the “Ton of Bricks Maneuver.”

A fighting, swearing subject was suddenly silent, the wind knocked out of him, under the impact of a couple hundred pounds of lean lawman landing on him.

Something big and black with fangs three feet long, crouched in front of the offender’s face, snarling quietly, saliva dripping from vibrating black lips peeled back from fighting ivory.

At this point, the suspect realized he was overmatched and outfought.

Worse, he realized he faced the distinct prospect of having his face ripped from his skull and summarily turned into second hand dog food.

This was when the subject gave up fighting and commenced to screaming instead.

Two lawmen picked him up and packed him out the front door, preceded by a pretty young woman with pale eyes, and a white-lipped waitress with a torn bodice and the color standing out on her pale cheeks like they’d been painted: behind them, the offender screamed as he was carried out the door and carried across the street and carried into the Sheriff’s office, where several thousand volts of a hand-held pacifier sufficed to silence the screaming scoundrel. 

 

Dana Keller was, first, last and always, a student.

She did her best to learn from every experience.

She also tried hard to learn from other peoples’ mistakes, from others’ experience: before her catastrophic loan to an Eastern department, she’d been known as a bright, bubbly, cheerful student of both law enforcement’s in-service classroom learning, and of the hands-on phase of said in-service sessions.

Afterward, she was not … somber, but she was much more serious: she seldom smiled, her laugh was very rarely heard, and her application of skills in the Arts Martial became faster, more powerful, more … deadly.

She remembered something her pale eyed Daddy mentioned, when using a cheater pipe on a breaker bar to bring a recalcitrant lug nut off a rusted bolt:  he’d looked at her and laughed at her curious-little-girl expression and declared happily, “When in doubt,” he said, “cheat!” – at which point he dropped his full body weight on the end of the cheater pipe – and despite heating, penetrating oil and profanity, the nut did not come off but the bolt did break off, and her pale eyed Daddy held up the broken off part, looked at the broken lug bolt and said “Well, hell, it’ll never aggravate me again will it?”

Dana brought this lesson out in her memory, and looked at it, and smiled.

She carried a C-cell flashlight in the long, slender pants pocket of her uniform trousers: she’d sleeved it with bicycle inner tube after attending a seminar where mention was made of a court case, a case in which an officer’s aluminum flashlight was described as “a length of pipe” – Dana immediately sleeved hers with rubber innertube, as protection against such an accusation, and her training with the light as baton, as a tool of defense, and of offense, became much more energetic.

Her sessions in the barn at home, with heavy bag, with ballistic dummies, with simulated opponents, became more frequent, more prolonged, more vigorous.

She became cold, controlled: she didn’t walk anymore, she stalked, whether in mirror-polished uniform Wellington boots, or a pretty pair of dainty little heels; she did not hide her beauty in oversized or shapeless clothing, but neither did she disport herself to intentionally attract the eye.

To her Daddy’s practiced eye, she was a tightly packed keg of explosive with a concussion fuse, and he wasn’t sure quite what to say, or quite what to do.

Her performance on duty was exemplary.

Her perfection of the cold-eyed glare proved unnerving to those who thought they could intimidate a mere woman: her quiet voice carried a rare authority: she was unfailingly polite, but when she gut-punched and then kidney-punched a known bully, bent him over the hood of his own car, cuffed him, stripped him of some rather illegal pharmaceuticals and a few devices he really shouldn’t be carrying – right in front of his buddies, right in front of God and everybody, right on the main street – word spread, and spread fast, this this was someone you genuinely did not want to mess with.

Linn pulled his daughter aside, discreetly, when they two were off duty, when it was just the two of them.

His fingertips were gentle as he caressed her cheek; she was surprised to see a sadness, an uncertainty in her father’s expression.

“Dana,” he said softly, “your Gammaw would be pretty damned proud of you.”

Dana blinked, surprised, whispered, “Thank you, Daddy.”

His voice was soft, little more than a whisper.

“She would also caution you that nobody is invulnerable.”

It was Linn’s turn to see something unsettling in her little girl’s eyes – his daughter, this child of his loins, his deputy.

He saw a hardening of her eyes, of her face: she drew back, just a little, from his fingertips, then she seized his shirt front – she grabbed a double handful of flannel, pulled – he watched this pretty young woman’s face go dead pale, saw the skin stretch tight over her cheekbones, saw her very lips turn white.

“I know that, Daddy,” she hissed. “I know how close they came to killing me – they hurt me, Daddy, and I am DAMNED sure not going to let that happen, ever again!”

Dana’s voice was genuinely vicious, Dana’s voice was an angry hiss from between clenched teeth.

“Dana –”

Dana pushed her father, pushed hard – she backed up three steps, hands yanking savagely at her belt buckle – “You don’t know what all they did to me, Daddy!”

She turned, dropped her drawers, and Linn’s heart fell to his boot tops.

“See that?  See what they did? They branded me, Daddy. They burnt their sign into me. You didn’t know that, did you?”

She turned, her anger blinding her to the shock in her father’s expression.

Dana tucked her shirt tail back in, fast up her jeans, cinched her belt viciously, tucked in the tag end.

“Marnie says there’s a way to remove that. I hope so. They also tatted me, Daddy. Marnie says that can be removed, too.”

Dana’s face was pale, her breath was coming quick, short little gasps as her hands closed into balled fists.

“Never again, Daddy.”

Linn collected himself took a long breath, blew it out.

“Maybe I didn’t say it right,” he began.

“You’re afraid I’m going to overreact,” Dana interrupted him. “You’re seeing how much rage I’m carrying and how badly I want to hurt everyone who hurt me. Well I can’t hurt them, Daddy. I can’t hurt them. They’re dead.”

Dana closed her eyes, took a long breath, blew it out, opened her hands.

“I was there when they were hanged, Daddy. I watched them go over the edge and I knew they drop was too short to break their necks and I know they strangled to death, I knew that when I kicked that crooked Captain over the edge myself.”

Dana took a few moments to steady herself and to steady her voice.

“Revenge is not satisfying, Daddy. It’s not enough.

I’m going to talk to the Parson this afternoon about forgiveness, but right now all I want to do is drive my hand into their bellies and rip their beating heart out and show it to them as they die!”

Linn looked half sick; he sat heavily, suddenly, on a hay bale.

“Dana,” he whispered.  “I’m so sorry. I failed you.”

Dana turned, dropped onto the bale beside her father, laid her hand over on his shoulder.

“You did not fail me, Daddy,” she said softly. “I kept listening and I kept observing and I committed their faces to memory and I was able to get away and sketch their faces, all of them.  That’s how they caught ‘em.”

She felt Linn nod a little.

“Daddy, you taught me to keep my head, you taught me how not to panic.” She stood, abruptly, came around in front of her father, gripped both his shoulders.

“Look at me, Daddy,” she said urgently.  “Daddy, look at me!”

Dana lowered her head, stared very directly into her father’s eyes.

“Daddy, everything you taught me, kept me going.  You, kept, me, alive!”

She shivered, swallowed, turned and sat again: she slid her arm under his, gripped his callused hand.

“Daddy, if you hadn’t taught me all those things, I would’ve killed myself.

“I would’ve.

“I never understood how a victim could suicide but now I know, I’ve been there, and” – she gripped Linn’s hand tightly with both of hers – “Daddy, everything, everything! you ever taught me, kept, me, alive!”

“When do you get … those … taken off?” Linn asked slowly.

“After the Chief comes out to give me his apology in person.”

“He might chicken out.”

“Not if it’s one of the conditions of the settlement.”

Linn nodded.

“They’ll agree to the settlement amount you named if they can send their new Captain to extend the apology.”

“The new Captain has to bring the money when he comes out.”

“They might not want to do that.”

“Cash, no checks, otherwise it’s full court press and I’ll have the media there in force with confidential sources giving them the inside skinny on things they don’t want brought out.”

“Don’t tell me, tell them.”

Dana snorted in derision, her voice cynical.

“I already did.”

“And?”

“I told them through my attorney. Now it’s a horse race whether they call you, or my attorney calls me.”
Linn’s phone rang:  Dana rose, glided discreetly away from him as her own phone rang.

She stopped on the other side of the shining-red Farmall, spoke quietly, briefly: she nodded, then thanked the caller, punched her screen, slid it back into her vest pocket.

Linn’s lower jaw slid out, his head was up, his eyes were half-veiled: Dana saw him nod, read his lips: “Thank you,” and then he too hung up and returned his phone to his vest pocket.

Dana looked around – even here, where she felt safe, she was guarded, watchful, suspicious – she walked backwards a few steps, eyes penetrating to the far corners, scanning the hidden places where someone might lie in concealment -- then turned toward her Daddy, came over and sat again.

“The Captain will be here first thing Monday morning.”

Dana nodded.

“With cash in hand.”

Dana nodded again, looked at her Daddy.

“My favorite credit system,” she murmured. “One hundred percent down and no monthly payments.”

“World’s fastest settlement.”

“The Chief wants to keep the stink of scandal from his coattails.”

“Politics,” Linn spat.

Father and daughter were silent for some long time, each comforted by the other.

“Dana?”

“Hm?”

“I’m not going to ask you if you’d be willing to work for another jurisdiction, ever again.”

Dana nodded, ran her arm around behind her Daddy.

“There’s work enough here,” she agreed.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE LIGHT BRIGADE

“You’re quiet.”

Sheriff Linn Keller looked up at his untouched plate, regarded his wife with what she recognized as the Thousand Meter Stare.

He blinked, returned to the Here and Now: “I’m sorry, dear, what was the question?”

Dana, Angela, Shelly, Michael and Victoria all looked from one to another, looked at Linn, at the head of the table.

“Nothing,” Shelly said quietly, slicing through a tender cut of truly exquisite backstrap.

Linn looked down at his plate as if he hadn’t noticed its being set in front of him: he picked up his fork, sampled his whipped potatoes (just a bare hint of garlic and onion) and another with gravy (rich and flavorful, perfection on a plate) and he lowered his hand, stared at the plate.

His family saw his shoulders start to quiver.

Michael and Victoria’s faces showed alarm, Angela’s expression was one of concern: Dana’s eyes widened as Linn raised his face and tears were starting to run down his cheeks: only Shelly realized – probably because her husband’s face was starting to redden – that he was not consumed with grief.

He was trying hard not to laugh, and his efforts were what could politely be called “A Miserable Failure.”

Linn laughed quietly, shook his head, threw his hands wide and declared, “Have you ever had one of those days!”

 

The Bear Killer was in the back seat of the Sheriff’s cruiser.

Short Stuff was happily cuddled into Linn’s chest: he drove with one hand, the warm, bright-eyed pup in the other arm – not because he wanted to, but it was the position he was caught in, when the alarm went down.

An Eastern police captain sat in the passenger front: he was silent as the Sheriff took the call, as the Sheriff quietly pointed out the pushbutton release for the overhead shotgun.

They’d been in the big round barn under the mountain’s overhang, The Bear Killer was demonstrating his prowess in taking down an opponent in a bite suit.

The best way for a young dog to learn, is to pair it with an older dog: the miniature Bear Killer danced on his front paws, eager, anxious to go streaking across the sawdust and add his own milk teeth to his sire’s powerful efforts.

Dana hadn’t made it to the big round barn yet, she had some banking to do, and when the alarm came in, Linn curled his lip and whistled, strode for his cruiser: “Captain, with me, silent alarm! Bear Killer, IN!”

Linn ducked, scooped up Short Stuff.

Three commissioned officers and an apprentice headed for the bank.

 

Dana shrank back against the wall, looking as fearful and uncertain as two mothers and three children.

Dana whispered the children behind the big, comfortable chairs in the lobby, getting them at least out of sight: she eased away from the wall, moved slowly, slowly to get the two mothers behind her.

The heavy glass outer doors pulled open, then the inner –

Two holdup artists turned, peering through their ski masks, swinging weapons carelessly as they did –

Something small, black and fast moving came screaming across the gleaming, polished, waxed tile floor, something swift as Death’s arrow and just as black –

YAP YAP YAP YAP  YAP YAP YAP –

If it hadn’t been in the middle of an armed robbery in progress, it would have been honestly funny.

Something the size of an underfed volleyball, in a flat-out, ears-back, fangs-bared charge, loudly declaring in his tiny voice that he had full intent to rip their legs off, tear them utterly apart, and then get really, really mean with them.

Dana moved while the pair was distracted, two quick steps to her left, a black pistol appearing as if by magic in her extended arms –

Dana saw them bear their gun muzzles toward the doorway as they saw the Sheriff –

Her red dot settled on the nearest armed robber’s right ear --

Who in the hell is shooting my pistol?

She brought the red dot down out of recoil and saw it land solidly on the surprised face of the second armed robber as he turned and her pistol fired again and The Bear Killer’s screaming roar filled the vacuum where two gunshots had been.

Something big, black and deadly came baying into the bank’s lobby, swift as Death’s arrow and ten times as deadly, declaring his intent to bite someone in two for starters.

 Something little and black was snarling and worrying the hell out of a pants leg, then stopped, looked over at Dana with a pleased expression.

The Bear Killer paced up to the two unmoving bodies, sniffed at them, came over to Dana, then opened his big blunt jaw in a doggy grin as three children yelled “BEAR KILLER!” and charged the big mountain Mastiff.

The Sheriff came in, looking around, eyes busy: he swung left as the Captain swung right, they looked at frightened eyes just peeking over the counter at them, at the attractive young woman in a tailored suit dress and heels, with her pistol pulled back into administrative position.

Three scared kids seized a big, black, dangerous Bear Killer of a mountain Mastiff they knew from schoolhouse visits, seizing this potent totem of their absolute safety, then ran to their mothers

“CLEAR!” Dana shouted: she swept back her coat tail, holstered her pistol, then squatted and picked up the wiggling, tail-swinging, grunting, forepaw-dancing little ball of mountain Mastiff, swung it up.

A fuzzy ball of wiggle and grunt happily laundered her chin, whipping its fuzzy little tail like a two-dimensional propellor.

The Captain stood back, shotgun tipped up over his shoulder, his badge hung from his suit coat pocket to prevent misunderstandings:  he watched as the Sheriff relieved his daughter of her sidearm, then handed her his own, which she holstered: the Sheriff came over and explained that, as one of his deputies was involved in a shots-fired incident, the State Police would investigate the event, as would the Federal boys since it involved a bank.

Dana brought out her own six point star, clipped it on her own lapel: her expression was serious as she came over to the Captain.

“Hello again,” she said solemnly.  “Congratulations on your promotion.”

She looked around.  “Things like this don’t usually happen here.  Usually it’s quiet and boring and that suits me just fine!”

The Captain took a long look at two unmoving figures, watched as blue-shirted medics made the requisite checks, covered their bloodied and unmoving forms with sheets.

He looked back at Dana.

“I hadn’t intended to meet quite like this,” he admitted.

“Let’s go outside, we need to talk.”

The two drifted outside, stood to the side as more units arrived.

“Captain, if I recall correctly, you argued against my going on that meet-up.”

The Captain nodded, clearly uncomfortable – Dana looked at him and thought he looked just short of miserable.

“I was told there had to be a sacrifice. One of yours for one of theirs.”

“That was the deal.”

“And now?”

He looked away.

“Let me guess. Now there’s a hole in the power structure and rival gangs are all on fire to fill it.”

He nodded.

“How close did you come to being sent on that meet-up?”

“I was to have been the sacrifice, until you showed up.”

“Why the change?”

“You were … I was told you were just a secretary, a nobody.”

“You have plenty of nobodies in your city. Why me?”

“No connections. No family to ask questions.”

“And once I got away?”

“There was hell to pay,” he admitted. “The deal broke and two of our units came under fire. We mobilized tactical and took out the hit squad and war was declared.”

And after the perps that mauled me were found dead …?”

“The Chief convinced them the guilty parties were all dead, both the incompetent and the man who broke his word.”

“What’ll happen now?”

“What always happens,” he shrugged. “We’ll hit them, they hit us.”

“So the Chief is dirty.”

“What Chief isn’t?”

“Mine isn’t,” Dana said bluntly. “Neither is my Uncle.”

“Your Uncle?”

“Daddy is Sheriff, and Uncle Will is police chief, and they are both straight as a die and clean as hound’s tooth.”

“You’re lucky,” he said bleakly.

The Captain tilted his head, regarded the snoozing ball of black fluff in her arms.

“Why ever did this little fellow go all Charge of the Light Brigade in there?”

Dana shrugged.

“It’s what Bear Killers do.”

Two tiny ears raised, then a nose-wet muzzle: Short Stuff looked at the Captain, yawned, cuddled back into Dana’s front and gave a contented sigh.

“Bear Killers?”

Dana turned her head, made a kissing noise:  something the size of a young bear came lumbering over toward them, something black as a sinner’s heart, something with a shining-wet nose, button-black eyes and a happy doggy grin.

“Bear Killer, say hello.”

The Bear Killer dropped his square bottom, raised a paw in greeting.

The Captain reached down somewhat uncertainly, slipped his palm under the paw: honor satisfied, The Bear Killer rose, paced over beside Dana, sat.

A State Trooper came over, looked down:  “Hello, Bear Killer,” he grinned, then looked at the little Bear Killer in Dana’s arms.  “Does he bite?”

“He’ll take your finger off clear up to the elbow,” Dana said with a straight face.

“I’ll need a statement.”

“No you don’t. 72 hours, you know the rules. I will tell you we installed better cameras. Much better resolution. Dual recording units with battery backup, you should have really good quality video.  Let me know what you find.”  She looked down.  “C’mon, Bear Killer.”

The Bear Killer rose.

Dana turned.  “Captain, I’m sorry. We weren’t finished. Is there anything else?”

“The Chief wanted me to make a formal and very sincere apology on his behalf.”

“The Chief can make his own apologies and be damned,” Dana said bleakly. “The settlement?”

“In the Sheriff’s cruiser. Cash, as agreed.”

“Full amount?”

“Full amount.”

“You counted it?”

He looked uncomfortable.

“Captain, I can’t trust your Chief and you can’t either. If it’s not the full amount, we’ll handle things accordingly, but in the meantime, if I was giving free advice, I’d say get the hell out of that nest of snakes before you become the sacrifice.”

Dana’s eyes were very pale, very unblinking as she looked very directly into his.

“Captain, if you’re the only straight arrow, they’re going to get rid of you too. Don’t let ‘em.”

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CHEW ON THIS

 

An old, grey-muzzled mountain Mastiff thrust his blunt nose into the bundle of cloth, snuffed loudly, snuffed again: the little Mastiff beside him danced impatiently on his forepaws, wanting to play, too: a hand lowered the wadded cloth, the little Bear Killer thrust his short muzzle into the cloth and snuffed loudly, his brushy tail swinging with obvious enthusiasm: he wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was with his people and he was with his sire, and he knew something was going to happen, and like any developing young, this little, bright-black-eyed student was delighted at the prospect of learning something new.

The best way to train a young dog is to pair it with an old dog: when The Bear Killer cast about, stopped, looked up at a man with pale eyes and muttered, the little Bear Killer did the same:  upon discovering the same scent he’d just whiffed, at finding this trace clinging near the ground that he’d just gotten a good snoot full from the cloth, he looked up, tail whipping with youthful enthusiasm.

Hands, caressing, approving, a quiet, approving voice: “Good boy,” the Sheriff said.  “Find ‘im!”

A lean waisted lawman in a black suit thrust a polished boot into his black doghouse stirrup, swung aboard an Appaloosa stallion, and an old, stiff, arthritic Bear Killer became young again, trotting, scenting the ground, scenting the air.

Behind him, tail waving like a youthful banner, a little black Bear Killer followed.

 

A pale-eyed young woman wearing a dark-blue medic’s ballcap and a serious expression rode side-by-side with a uniformed County Sheriff right down the main street of beautiful downtown Firelands.

Hooves were loud, sharp in the chilly air: the young woman wore a dark-blue jumpsuit with a gunbelt around her middle, a slim backpack between her shoulder blades.

In lieu of a badge, she wore a patch on her left breast, above the buttoned-down pocket, a gold six-point star that said DEPUTY across its equator, and below, in an arc, PARAMEDIC-RN.

Angela Keller rode like her Daddy: her spine was straight, but she was relaxed; her right hand rested on her thigh, not far from her holstered sidearm, and out of habit, her reins were in her left.

Neither horse had a bit; both horses were knee-trained, and very well-trained: the Sheriff’s horses were all steady, reliable, their training, like his own, never ended: these reliable saddlehorses were not only transportation, they were also riot control vehicles, and they were highly mobile weapons platforms in their own right.

Today, though, it was not a riot that demanded their attention.

It was an adventurous boy, strayed from the tourist train: hopefully wandered off and lost and not abducted.

Something big and black with grey just starting to silver its muzzle, something silent and deadly and the size of a young bear, coasted along with them.

Behind Angela, in a saddlebag, head and forepaws out and happily regarding the world with button-bright eyes, a very miniature version of the Elder Dog contentedly came along for the ride.

Apparatus was pulled out onto the apron: it was above freezing, though not by much, there were no worries about leaving pumper and tanker exposed to the weather for a time: space was needed within, and where apparatus waited patiently, tables, easels, supplies and commo replaced them.

The Sheriff and his daughter tethered their mounts, came inside:  Angela skipped happily up to the Chief and gave him a big hug, kissed him on the cheek like a delighted little girl and chirped, “How’s my favorite Valentine?”

Chief Fitzgerald blushed furiously, ran his arm around her waist and frowned:  “Darlin’, you’re wastin’ your time bein’ a nurse.  Why’n’t you go full time paramedic?”

“What, and put my Mama out of a job?” Angela laughed, patting the older man’s shirt front and frowning.  “You need a good square meal, you’re losing weight!”

Fitz sighed, shook his head, looked at the smiling young woman with a patient and almost grandfatherly expression.

“Darlin’,” he murmured, “a hot woman an’ a cold glass o’ water and I’d die of a heart attack!”

Angela giggled, pirouetted on her toes, ran lightly over to where the others were assembling before the map projected on the newly-hung bedsheet.

“Okay, folks,” Linn declared, and murmuring and speculation stopped:  even The Bear Killer sat, looked very directly at the Sheriff:  beside him, something furry-black and the size of an underfed volleyball sat, looked around, yawned.

“This is our subject,” Linn said.

A little boy’s picture appeared on the hanging bedsheet, a grinning, blue-eyed towhead in swim trunks, taken at the beach.

“Timothy Robbins. Eight years old, no known medical. He’s not dressed like this, though. His mother said he’s in blue jogging pants, green sneakers and a red hoodie.”

“And I didn’t dress him!” the mother called, trying to hide her distress behind motherly humor:  she turned, leaned against her husband, chewed on her knuckle.

“Last seen here” – the grinning little boy’s full-length photo was replaced by the familiar map of Firelands proper – “the train stopped at the depot as it always does, he was on the depot platform with his parents. Surveillance shows him looking at something, then jumping off the end of the platform” – at the Sheriff’s words, the surveillance camera’s capture was shown: an active little boy stopped at the far end of the depot platform, squatted, put his hand on the platform and swung his legs off, dropped.

“Distance to the ground here is only three feet, which is why he didn’t use the stairs. From there, direction of travel unknown. As of right now” – the Sheriff pulled out a pocket watch, pressed the stem to open the spring-loaded cover – “he has an hour and a half head start on us. We’ll start in town. Angela, you’re with The Bear Killer. Mother, have you the exemplar?”

The mother pulled open the plastic bag, squatted: The Bear Killer came padding over: had he not been wearing his black Sheriff’s K9 vest, she might have shrunk back or (probably) run in fear: the dangling six-point star from his collar, and the miniature (read cute little) K9 beside him, wearing a miniature K9 vest, brought a hesitant smile instead.

The Bear Killer thrust his muzzle into the ball of clothing: he snuffed, snuffed again, tail swinging:  the bright-eyed miniature, beside him, half-whined and half-muttered, dancing impatiently on his forepaws, and the double handful of jeans and T-shirt were lowered so he, too, could take a good whiff.

The anxious mother almost smiled when this little black dog with bright eyes and a fitted vest that said K9 TRAINEE in gold embroidery, looked up at her and yapped, a single, sharp note.

“Chief, are your teams designated?”

“They are and we’re ready!”

The Sheriff touched a control: the map now had four zones indicated.

“Net frequency F4 for the search. Other conversations will go to an adjacent channel. Questions?”

Linn looked around:  there were none.

“Mom and Dad, you’re with me.  Angela, you’re K9, saddle up. Everyone else, move out.”

Overhead doors hummed open, humanity poured out, headed for their assigned search zones as they’d trained many times in the past.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller followed The Bear Killer and the pup, his eyes busy.

He looked back toward the depot, looked down: he wished mightily for Jacob – Linn was good at tracking, but Jacob was better – given his druthers’ he’d druther have McNeil.

That man could track a horsefly across a pane of glass!

Linn studied the ground, drew up, smiled.

I might not be as good as McNeil, he thought, but I must not be all that bad.

He looked ahead, frowned.

I wonder …

What would he be following, to go for Graveyard Hill?

Linn’s eyes widened as something gripped his stomach.

No.

He wouldn’t.

Linn turned his stallion, headed for the base of the dropoff.

 

The Bear Killer was not terribly fast, but he was steady.

Angela knew from the mountain Mastiff’s focus that he was on scent.

Short Stuff followed: like his sire, he sniffed, trailing the ground, raised his muzzle to scent the air:  when he did, he stopped, eyes closed, then opened his eyes again and followed what was clinging to the ground.

Search teams were swarming through town, looking in rain barrels, up into the elevated water tower (the gates were still locked so very unlikely there), under the Depot, under buildings that still stood on original, hand-carved foundation stones:  powerful, hand-held lights lanced under the Mercantile, into the alcove where several jugs of very ancient moon likker had been found not many years before:  a few remained, for a study of the Mercantile’s records showed these were not purchased as sippin’ likker, but as solvent to make shellac for woodworking, or for paint mixing:  these were the firsts and lasts from the distillation runs, these contained what the lean Kentucky carpenters and moonshiners called “Fusel Oil” – they refused to sell this, keeping it for other, non-potable purposes, as they declared only the middle of the run made decent drinkin’ likker, the firsts and lasts were “Pop Skull” that gave headaches and hangovers.

Nothing was found under the Mercantile but a couple of stray cats and some cobwebs.

Search continued: one team swung through the big round barn under the mountain’s overhang, and came up empty.

Sheriff Linn Keller remained at the firehouse, frowning at the projected map, listening to radio traffic, traveling with them in his mind, seeing through their eyes.

 

Angela raised her talkie.

“Firelands Actual, Angel One.”

“Angel One, go.”

“Scent leads up the back of Graveyard Hill.”

Linn tapped a few keys, projected a topographic map of that search quadrant.

Pale eyes regarded the topography, anxious parents tried to make sense of curved lines and the frown on the man’s face.

 

Linn looked at the Tree of Justice.

He’d left messages for Sopris there, rest the man’s soul: the ancient, solid tree would wear scuff marks on its big branch until it died and was cut down for stovewood.

Here’s where Linn would tighten the noose around the neck of the condemned and then shove, or sometimes kick, them off the tailgate of the dead wagon.

There was a dropoff, not terribly far, but enough to hurt a man if he fell.

If a boy fell that distance, he could bust himself up pretty bad.

Linn saw The Bear Killer and his sawed-off shadow heading uphill.

Linn turned his stallion, advanced toward the base of the drop-off: the stallion hopped a little, rather than splashing through the little stream, and Linn smiled – at least the corners of his eyes did – part of his mind remembered what Dr. Flint told him, about stepping over a running watercourse so as not to disturb the spirits of the stream.

His stallion stopped, ears pricked.

Linn looked up, saw The Bear Killer looking over the edge of the dropoff, saw the little round Bear Killer beside him, casting back and forth, tail swinging.

Linn looked down, at the crumpled form of a boy, jacket askew, one leg at a bad angle, hat off to the side.

Linn’s eyes went pale:  he raised an empty bottleneck rifle case to his lips, blew across it, the metallic whistle’s note clear, high, piercing:  he turned Apple-horse, pulled a dainty little mirror from a coat pocket, caught the sun and flashed a bright lance of discovery back toward town.

 

The Bear Killer stopped.

The scent went on ahead, but he was air scenting now:  Short Stuff, beside him, raised his young muzzle, nose bobbing in the cold air, before he gave a puppy-like yip and scampered away from his sire, toward the base of a twenty-foot dropoff.

The ground folded here and he was out of sight for a moment.

The Bear Killer peered ahead, where the scent was leading, then he raised his massive head, scented the air:  he turned, looked back at Angela and woofed, once, quietly, and followed the happily scampering Short Stuff.

“Firelands Actual, Angel One.”

Linn picked up the black Motorola talkie, keyed up.

“Go for Actual.”

“Have a visual. Hangman’s Drop. Stand by for further.”

Linn looked at the anxious parents, raised a forestalling palm.

“Let’s not get our hopes up just yet,” he cautioned.

 

A little boy was carried out on a canvas military stretcher, carried by four mustachioed Irishmen in bib-front shirts.

The boy’s leg was splinted: his face was pale, lined with pain: he held a whittled stick, thick as two of his fingers, and the stick bore tooth marks.

An Irishman cut a short length from a streambed willow, stripped the outer bark, slipped it between the boy’s teeth and whispered, “Chew on this,” before the Doc gripped the lad’s slender ankle, pulled steadily to reduce the broken femur: men worked with hatchets and knives to cut a timber brace, padded it well under his armpit, bound it tightly to his ribs and his pelvis and clear down to his ankle, where Doc was leaning back, using his weight for leverage.

They fabricated a winch of sorts, twisting a cloth foot-harness to pull the broken bone’s ends back into alignment, as best they could work there at the base of the drop-off:  Irishmen carried this shivering young casualty, wrapped in blankets, back to their fine stone hospital, where Doc could work his magic on the injury.

Beside them, a grey-muzzled Bear Killer, and beside this bear-sized war dog, a smaller, rounder, terribly-proud-of-himself version.

 

A year later, a mother paged through her scrapbook, smiling at pictures of vacations, of memories frozen in snapshots.

She looked at one picture, and her hand came to her mouth: her little boy, his face pale, all wrapped up in blankets and being carried on a folding aluminum stretcher: one leg was cut off his jogging pants, a metal frame of some kind held his leg – apparently the picture was taken as they were raising the blanket to cover this as well.

Beside it, another picture: her little boy in a hospital bed, grinning, his leg wrapped and held up at an angle by the orthopedic traction device, his arm over a small, round, black, curly-furred dog with button-bright eyes and a happy doggy grin: beside the bed, another of the kind, just as bright-eyed, just as black-curly-furred, but the size of a young bear.

On the older dog, a black Kevlar vest with a gold six-point star and SHERIFF’S K9 in gold embroidery; on the fuzzy black miniature, in bed with her son, a black, curly-furred miniature Bear Killer in a black vest with a gold six point star and the embroidered legend, K9 TRAINEE.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

OPAL AND JADE

Two serious-faced young women sat at a conference table.

An attorney, another woman, a Sheriff and his son also sat a-gather around this shining, polished tabletop.

The two women were the youngest present: they were women grown, the twin daughters of the more mature woman, Bonnie McKenna, owner of the dress-works and a variety of other business ventures.

Since the death of Esther Keller, the Sheriff began to either liquidate assets, or to assign assets to worthy recipients, and Jade and Opal McKenna, half-sisters raised as twins, looked across the table in honest surprise as the attorney quietly read the terms of the Sheriff's assignment.

Linn's green-eyed bride Esther was dead; her holdings, under law, were now his.

The sisters thought this divestiture was due to the man's grief.

Only Jacob, seated beside his father, knew the true reason, and the reason troubled him: that morning, the Sheriff discussed with Jacob, over brandy and prolonged silences, the possibility of his pale-eyed son and chief deputy, becoming Sheriff rather sooner than he'd anticipated.

Jacob fully expected his father to remain the chief lawman for the county until the stars fell from the heavens, and the skies rolled up like a parchment scroll: to have his father confess a secret, then suggest that Jacob become Sheriff, was like being hit by the noon freight.

Twice.

This meeting was not a last-minute affair: Bonnie and her twin daughters met with Jacob and the Sheriff in the back room of the Silver Jewel; after an excellent meal and laughter, after Linn put them absolutely at ease -- for all that he was a hard man, a blooded warrior, for all that he had a mercurial temper and was known to seize a rowdy by the throat and hoist him off the floor before slamming him into the nearest wall, or dunk him in the nearest horse trough -- Linn was also a charming and entertaining host: in private, and in private only, he had a quick smile, a quiet laugh, and a way of spreading that smile round about, with obvious ease.

Here, though -- here, Opal and Jade sat side-by-side, in identical gowns, with identical jewelry; though they were half-sisters, they looked enough alike to be taken for twins ... if you disregarded Opal's wavy, bright-gold hair as opposed to Jade's dead-straight, shining-black tresses, if you paid no attention to Opal's blue eyes as opposed to Jade's absolutely black eyes, and though each had an identical smile, Jade's epicanthic folds at the corners of her eyes spoke of her Oriental blood.

They walked alike, they framed their words identically, at the local dances in the big round barn under the overhang of the granite mountain, they danced the same -- and now, now each was, suddenly, a wealthy young woman.

Linn leaned forward a little, looked across the table, his voice gentle, his face solemn.

"Ladies," he said, "Esther delighted in watching the two of you grow and become ladies in the finest sense of the word. She was so very proud of your every achievement."  

Linn looked away, swallowed: Jacob held very still, wishing mightily that he could take away the grief that hollowed Linn's soul:  his pale eyed father took his wife's death hard, and though Jacob had no fear that Linn would choose to breakfast on a .44 slug in order to join his beloved, Jacob still felt troubled that nobody, not even himself, the firstborn, could assuage this lean-waisted man's sorrow.

Linn cleared his throat, tried again.

"My wife acquired a number of profitable business ventures in her lifetime, and several that weren't. Those that were not profitable were still saleable, and she did: to this end -- Jacob, if you please?"

Jacob rose: he walked over to the corner, picked up a strongbox with some visible effort, brought it back:  Linn spread a bandanna and Jacob placed the strongbox on the protective cloth.

Linn rose, unlocked the big brass padlock, opened the lid carefully.

He reached in, gripped two canvas sacks, hoisted:  he paced around the table, placed one in front of Jade, one in front of Opal.

"Ladies," he said, "I doubt me not you both have a dowry already."

His boot heels were quiet on the polished, bare-wood floor as he came back to the strongbox, picked up another sack, carried it around the other end of the table and placed another canvas sack in front of Bonnie.

"I have sold Esther's Eastern interests. She was able to manage them remotely, but she had a special gift with that kind of thing. I was able to divest them and make a fine profit. You each have ten thousand dollars in gold coin sitting in front of you."

Three sets of feminine McKenna eyes widened: twin mouths opened to the same degree, closed as Linn raised a flat palm toward them.

"Ladies, I give you this, on behalf of my late wife."

He swallowed again, cleared his throat, looked away, looked back.

"Esther was an independent sort. I reckon that's from growing up in a house full of brothers. She had to be independent just to survive. She told me once a woman should have a reserve so if the need arose, she could take her assets and prosper elsewhere."

Linn's chin thrust toward them.

"You each have assets enough to do just that."

He walked slowly back to his chair as he spoke; nodded to Mr. Moulton.

"Ladies, you each have a silver mine. The titling deed and letters of ownership are made out to you in your maiden names. The Sheriff has made so bold as to give you free advice. As Miz Esther's legal counsel, I give you this:  keep these in your maiden names. Should you be married, maintain them separate from your other holdings, whatever they may be, lest a scoundrel of a husband steal them, or appropriate them for his use."

Mr. Moulton looked at Bonnie, who nodded gravely in agreement:  she was a survivor of just such marital theft -- a theft that squandered her entire fortune, and both resulted in her and her eldest daughter being sold into slavery -- a venture which was stopped with gunfire and blood -- and subsequently cost her thieving husband his very life, at the hands of his criminal creditors.

"Esther bequeathed a benificence to the orphanage down in Stone Creek," Mr. Moulton continued. "I believe your cousin is the Parson who operates it, is that right, Sheriff?"

Linn roused from his introspective misery: he blinked, took a deep breath, frowned as he looked at the attorney.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Moulton, my ... forgive me, my thoughts were elsewhere."

Mr. Moulton smiled, just a little:  he, too, knew what it was to lose a wife.

"My apologies, Sheriff. I'd made mention of Miz Esther's bequest to your namesake's Stone Creek orphanage."

Linn nodded.  "The orphanage, and our little church."  He smiled a little.  "And the Duzy Wales Memorial Library."  His smile was gentle as he framed the words. "She was so proud of that library."

"It is an asset to the town," Mr. Moulton agreed. "There is also a bequest, in perpetuity, for the continued operation of our Fire Brigade."

Linn nodded; Mr. Moulton frowned, sorted through the papers, brought his hand to his mouth, his brows raising a little.

"My apologies, Sheriff. This is your bequest."

"It is, sir."

"It is ... effective now?"

Linn nodded.

"This is ... unexpectedly generous, Sheriff."

"Most men would rake in their profits and sit on it," Linn agreed.  "Why bother. The Irish Brigade is an asset. I've put my life into keeping people safe. You already have on file my bequest that takes effect upon my demise to keep them in operation."

Mr. Moulton nodded, smiled:  that particular bequest was a secret between himself, the Sheriff and the Sheriff's wife, and was not generally known to the public.

"Most cities," Mr. Moulton said carefully, "have a fire levy, or businesses and citizens pay a subscription for fire protection. I understand there is an increasing move to levy taxes to pay for them."

Linn's eyes were quiet as he looked at the attorney.

"I've lived my life," he said. "Let me do what good I can while I still draw breath."

Jacob and Bonnie exchanged a concerned look: the twins looked at the attorney, at the Sheriff, their expressions almost alarmed.

"Don't worry," Linn added.  "I'm not dying today and I don't plan to die tomorrow, but I do plan to retire right here directly."

He stood, dropped the heavy brass railroad padlock into the strongbox, closed the lid.

"Bonnie," Linn said, looking directly at the woman, silhouetted against the sunlit window behind her, "Esther considered you her especial confidante and her very best friend. Thank you for being her friend."

He looked at the twins.

"Ladies," he said, "if the word of a greying old grandfather means anything, I am very proud of you both. You already know Esther was just as proud.  Jacob."

Jacob rose. "Yes, sir?"

"Jacob, please see that the ladies make it safely home."

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. Moulton, does this conclude our business?"

"It does, Sheriff."

"I thank you all for your kind indulgence," Linn said, "and I bid you all a very good day."

"Sheriff?" 

Opal and Jade rose as one, spoke with one voice, as was not unusual with this pair.

Linn's smile was gentle, fatherly.  

"Ladies?"

"Sheriff, thank you."

Linn dropped his head a few degrees, studied the tabletop, chewed on his bottom lip for a moment:  he came around the table, his pace slow, deliberate:  the twins turned to face him as he approached.

Linn took each by her gloved hand, raised feminine knuckles to his lips, one, then the other.

"That," he said "is from me."

He took each in a firm, fatherly hug, one, then the other, and in each pink-scrubbed ear, he whispered, "This is from Esther."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TO HONOR THE SPIRITS

Chief Deputy Paul Barrents studied the ground with efficient sweeps of unreadable black eyes.

He’d approached the area as he always did, like an infantryman: he quartered the area, searched each quarter from near to far, satisfying himself no threat lay in wait: only then did he satisfy his curiosity.

He knew the Sheriff’s footprints intimately and easily picked his out of the confusion left behind after the Irish Brigade carried a little boy in a traction splint and on an aluminum stretcher, from the base of the dropoff, to their waiting squad.

He was not surprised to see the imprint of fireboots, some half in the water, depressions in the sandy streambed where the Irish Brigade made their crossing:  that the Sheriff’s tracks told him the man half-strode, half-jumped across, avoiding the water, told Barrents two things:

First, the man was wearing leather Wellington boots, and did not want to wade the stream in something not intended for wading, and second, it told the Navajo chief deputy that his boss, his best friend since grade school, the Sheriff, remembered a conversation he’d had many years before, with Paul’s father, JW.

 

JW Barrents watched, silent, solemn, as a skinny lad, not yet old enough to drive, swung down from an Appaloosa stallion.

He waited until Sheriff Willamina Keller’s son Linn worked the loose knot out of the reins, draped them over the welded-casing-pipe hitch rail in front of the Sheriff’s office – he waited until Linn looked up at the blocky Navajo.

“There is a question in your eyes,” JW said, his voice deep and reassuring.

The two sat on the Deacon’s bench in front of the stone Sheriff’s office.

Long years before, when the Sheriff’s office was a little log fortress instead of the spacious stone structure it had become, there’d been a Deacon’s Bench under the shake-shingled overhang that sheltered the boardwalk from snow, sun and sleet, and the Deacon’s Bench, back when, was the site of cussin’ and dis-cussin’, lies and war stories, jokes and jests and good-natured complaints: the dry-warped boards were scarred from jackknives and mumblety-peg, stained with tobacco juice and second hand horse feed tracked by careless boots: this modern bench had ornate scrollwork cast-iron ends, heavy wooden slats, painted a shiny green and wiped down every morning, but like its woody predecessor, it too saw its share of tall tales, war stories, outright lies, cussin’, dis-cussin’, and other forms of reliable communication.

“I,” Linn finally said, pale eyes looking into the distance, “know just enough to get in trouble.”

JW Barrents nodded solemnly: personally, he thought this the mark of a wise man, but offered no comment, only a single nod of encouragement.

“I heard something in school …”

Linn frowned.

“Nothing earth shaking. Nothing criminal. That was last week.”

“That was good information,” Barrents replied in a quietly-voiced rumble that seemed to echo in his chest like a giant’s words from a deep, stone-lined well.

“Mama said it broke a distribution network.”

“It did.”

“Too bad we couldn’t convict.”

“Don’t count us out just yet. There are facets of the investigation that are bearing good fruit.”

Linn nodded slowly.

“You had a question, something you heard at school.”

Linn nodded, his jaw sliding out.

“Every time I think I know something,” he said softly, “I find out I don’t know it after all.”

“I’ve done that.”

“I heard tell a man ought to step across water instead of wade through it.”

Barrents nodded again, half-lidded eyes deceptively sleepy.

“I’ve done that.”

“I know.”

Linn looked at him, surprised, one eyebrow rising, then dropping.

He gets that from his Mama, Barrents thought, and considered how much like Willamina Linn was in the face.

“I tracked you,” Barrents explained. “I saw where you took a quick step to pick up speed and then a long stride across the water.”

Linn nodded. “I was told it honors the spirits of the water.”

“Where’d you hear it?”

“Your son.”

“Do you believe in water spirits?”

Linn’s jaw slid out again: he frowned, stopped just short of shaking his head, then looked very directly at the older man.

“I would not doubt their existence,” he admitted. “There is just an awful lot I don’t know” – he looked up at grey granite monoliths, tall and solid against the clear blue sky – “and these mountains are way the hell older than I am.”

Barrents nodded.

“You’re not sure, but you stepped over anyway.”

“I did, yes, sir.”

“I think I know why.”

Chief Deputy JW Barrents laid a thick-fingered, work-hardened hand on the skinny teen-ager’s shoulder and gave him a look of genuine approval.

“You did this out of respect for what you were told. It was Paul who told you.”

“It was, yes, sir.”

“And you stepped over out of respect for our customs.”

Linn considered for a moment, nodded again, slowly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you,” JW Barrents said, his deep voice soft, fatherly. “You honor our beliefs when you do this.”

Linn nodded, his young face serious.

“Seemed like the right thing to do.”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A LETTER, UNSENT

“Sharon said you’d be here.”

The Sheriff looked up: he sat at the same desk in the same back room that had hosted his pale eyed Mama, when she was compiling her extensive ancestry research, when she was studying documents, when she was cross referencing their place in the timeline.

Linn looked at his daughter, nodded, looked back at the open book under his fingertips.

“I never read this one before,” he said, his voice soft. “Come and take a look.”

Dana, curious, came breezing into the room, flowed up the three steps, swung around and laid herself over her Daddy’s upper back, her chin over his right shoulder, her soft cheek against her Daddy’s cheekbone.

They read together in silence:  Dana’s mouth opened a little, then closed: her pale eyes tracked the lines of regular script, written with a steel nib dip quill on good rag paper: she read words placed there by her pale eyed Gammaw Willamina, and her hands tightened on her Daddy’s muscled upper arms as she did.

Dana sat heavily, looking like an absolutely astonished little girl more than she did a woman grown and a deputy Sheriff.

The fact that she wore a silky pastel dress and matching heels did nothing to dispel the appearance.

Linn picked up a single, tri-folded sheet, handed to her.

“She wrote this,” he said, “and never gave it to me.”

“Why not?” Dana asked, surprised, as she extended feminine fingers to accept the document.

Linn looked away, looked through the doorway, at a gown worn by their hell-raising ancestress, Sarah Lynne McKenna, a gown his Mama faithfully copied, and wore, many times.

Dana looked up, her eyes big.

“Daddy …?”

“Your Grandma used me as bait,” Linn said bluntly. “I didn’t know how close I came to being killed until now.”

“Wow,” Dana whispered. “She says here that … the … assassin knew … he thought he knew you were not a decoy, because you had that little scar on your jaw that was never released to the newspapers.”

Linn nodded.  “She was crushed when he told her the detectives stopped his shot just as his crosshairs settled on my left eye.”

“And you never knew?”

“Not until just now.”

Linn swallowed, tilted his head back, took a long breath, blew it out.

Dana read deeper into a letter Sheriff Willamina Keller wrote to her son, a letter that explained her unwillingness to assume the liability of recruiting someone else  for something dangerous, and her regret that she’d put her own child in harm’s way.

Dana nodded slowly, re-read the letter, set it on her Daddy’s desktop, scooted her chair closer.

“Daddy,” she said softly, “you thought you were doing the right thing.”

“I did,” Linn said, “and my decision caused you harm I can’t undo.”

Dana squeezed her Daddy’s hand.

“You,” she said firmly, squeezing again for emphasis, “did not cause me harm.”

Linn closed his eyes.

Dana released her Daddy’s hand, cupped her fingers under his chin, turned his face toward her:  she leaned her head forward, as if to look at him over a set of spectacles.

“You self-righteous old poop,” she whispered, “you can forgive anyone, anything, except the Man in the Mirror!”

Linn’s lips pressed together and he nodded.

“Daddy,” Dana whispered, “do you remember telling me about the bullet that just tickled the hairs on your ear? You were overdue for a haircut and you said you had ear hairs like a kitty cat, and when that nine-millimeter freight train screamed past your ear and just clipped your ear hairs, you realized how close you’d come.”

Linn nodded.

“Do you know what you taught me?”

He shook his head.

“Daddy, you taught me that you are still alive!”

Dana’s voice was quiet, insistent, the voice of someone who not just wished, but needed to teach a lesson, to convey an idea.

“Daddy, you said in your young life you’ve been shot, stabbed, cut, run into, run over” – she leaned back, raised a pontificating finger while laying the other fingers dramatically spread on her bodice – “and a street evangelist tried to save your corroded soul-a!”

Her voice was so exaggerated, such a marvelous caricature of the pale eyed lawman’s own words, that he couldn’t help it.

His guilt receded; he shook his head, then nodded, laughing quietly as he did.

“Daddy.”  Dana seized her father’s hands.  “Yes what happened to me was terrible. Yes I was hurt. Yes it’ll haunt me for the rest of my entire life, it’ll screw me up inside and I’ll never be able to have any kind of relationship with anyone ever again, I’ll live and die an old maid in a drafty cabin in the mountains, I’ll wear burlap and sack cloth and adopt a hundred cats.” 

Dana stared steadily into the pain and the self accusation that filled her big strong Daddy’s eyes, and watched as her words pushed them away, as just a little bit of a smile tightened the corners of those same pale eyes.

“Now Daddy,” Dana said, “suppose you tell me about what happened here” – she tapped the handwritten sheet on the desktop – “that caused Gammaw so much guilt!”

Linn took a long breath, considered, rose.

“You might be too young to remember,” he said thoughtfully, “but years ago there was a moll with a price on her head who came in from the cold. She agreed to plead no contest to murder in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, if she agreed to testify against some people we’d been – that is, every police agency in three states and my Mama wanted to take down, for a very long time.”

“I see.”

“Mama had the … let me look that up …”

Linn turned to the computer, worked some magic with the mouse, typed in a word, another: he frowned, leaned forward, grunted.

At his grunt Dana looked at the screen, for the man did not grunt at a computer screen unless he was happy with what it showed.

“There.”

Linn picked up a pencil, tapped its eraser against the screen.

“Perp walk?”

“Yep. Right out the front door of the court house and into a prison van, with God and everybody watching.”

Another plastic patter of experienced fingers on the keyboard, another picture.

“This is from a later trial. This fellow, at his conviction. The detectives grabbed before he could kill the convicted prisoner.”

“That close?”

“That close.”

Linn looked at his daughter, considered, backed up to the first picture.

“Dana,” he said, “do you remember reading about Sarah Lynne McKenna and how her Mama used her as a model for the dresses she made, parading her ten year old daughter on stage?”

Dana nodded.

“And how Sarah would slip into the theatre next door and became a favorite of the players, how they taught her quick-change, how they taught her to change her appearance with paints and powders and foundations?”

“I remember she was still painted up from such an evening,” Dana said slowly, studying the image of the prisoner – a pretty young woman with oversized, mirrored sunglasses, a black flak vest over her pastel dress, transport irons shortening her steps and securing her wrists to her chained waist.

She looked back at her Daddy.

“I remember she was ten years old when the son of a Spanish grandee proposed to her. He thought her a woman grown and he turned the color of wheat paste when Charlie Macneil growled in Spanish that she had only ten years.”

Linn nodded, considering that his daughter still remembered her proper Spanish sentence structure, even when she was not speaking Spanish.

“So what does that have to do with a perp-walk almost being killed?”

“That,” Linn said, tapping the screen again with the eraser, “is the decoy. That’s the one the assassin had a sight picture on. The real prisoner was smuggled out through an underground tunnel.”

He looked at the picture, looked at the letter, looked at his daughter, watched as Dana’s mouth fell open in absolute and utterly sincere, astonishment.

“Darlin’, it’s possible to work magic with face paint and powder and foundations.”

“No,” Dana whispered.

“Yep,” Linn nodded, his expression solemn.

“Dana, I was the decoy.”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DECOY

The teen-ager lay back in the reclined beautician’s chair.

A cosmetician worked her magic on the unmoving face: what had been a clear, pale, but healthy complexion, was altered to look like someone else.

A fine brush was dipped in something that smelled strongly of ether, a short line painted along the jaw at midline: it was cold, it drew as the ether evaporated, pulling the skin into a short, puckered scar.

There are tricks to cosmetics that can enhance a feature, or de-emphasize a feature; these were employed, with frequent consultations with four portrait views of a young woman’s face: a frontal shot, left profile, right profile.

The teen-ager in the beautician’s chair was fitted with a carefully-brushed wig, the wig anchored in place, styled to match the photographs.

Long, stockinged legs ended in pretty, low-heeled pumps; nails were shaped, filed, given a light pastel coat.

The teen-ager heard the crackle of paper, looked to the side, saw sterile surgical gloves being laid out:  a woman in scrubs worked her hands into the gloves, a sterile sponge wiped off the powder:  professional fingers held the teen’s eyes open, one, then the other; drops were administered, the teen warned not to touch – “You could scour your eyes with a wire brush and you would not feel it!” the woman behind the surgical mask admonished.

It would not have been possible for the teen to have reached up, whether to try to rub away an imagined itch, or to swat aside the sterile-gloved hands that held one eyelid, then the other, wide open, in order to install a set of scleral contacts.

A set of high-security handcuffs held young wrists to a locked waist chain; a set of shackles confined the crossed, stockinged ankles, and a uniformed Sheriff watched silently as a recruited decoy in a silky pastel dress was transformed into the blond-haired, blue-eyed, absolute twin for a high-value prisoner.

 

There were hostile eyes in the courtroom.

The Sheriff’s office engaged the cell phone jammer when the jury went to deliberate; there were secure communications available through hard lines, should there be need to summon assistance, and the jammer did not work on the lower wavelengths used by the Sheriff’s officers’ talkies:  the court came to its feet as the Judge came in, as the Judge remained standing, watching the jury file in and resume their seats.

The Judge rapped his gavel, sat; so did everyone else.

At the verdict – guilty, and remanded to the women’s prison – pale eyes noted which spectators tried to surreptitiously employ their cell phones.

This information was quietly communicated to waiting officers.

Sheriff Willamina Keller rose and accompanied the bailiff as the young woman was removed from the courtroom:  Willamina fitted the bulky black flak vest over her silky, pastel dress, ran the waist chain around her, secured her wrists, ran the box over the cuffs, secured this through the waist chain and locked it: a chain dangled behind, and was communicated with a set of leg shackles, which were closed over stockinged ankles, over a pastel set of low heeled pumps.

A camouflaged door opened, the prisoner was escorted into a chamber few knew about, helped down two flights of stairs into a tunnel, walked to a waiting windowless van, and secured within.

Her last words before the van’s sliding door closed behind her were, “What about my sunglasses?” – then the sound of the heavy steel door closing and locking into place, silenced her protest.

The sudden realization that she was actually going to prison – for real! -- became frighteningly, absolutely, unmistakably clear.

 

Above them, a teen-ager in an identical dress, with identical hair, an identical scar cosmetically painted on the right jaw, was fitted with a bulky black flak vest, was cuffed and shackled and looking so much like the convicted prisoner as to draw honest surprise from staff who’d just come in.

A set of oversized, mirrored, monogrammed sunglasses were slipped over the tastefully made-up face and an officer’s voice murmured, “Showtime, sweetheart!” – hard hands gripped the chained prisoner’s upper arms, and the doors were opened to the flashing glare of cameras, to shouted questions:  “Miss Mapes! Miss Mapes, over here! Miss Mapes, what do you say to your conviction?” – an attorney, an annoyed frown on his face, raised a hand:  “Miss Mapes will of course challenge the verdict. Give us room, please!”

The crowd parted reluctantly as the shackled prisoner was brought out, led down the marble hallway, down the stairs and perp-walked out the front doors of the courthouse: a waiting van with PRISON TRANSPORT stenciled on its side, a windowless white van with guards standing at the ready, received the prisoner: news cameras captured the scene, the lovely, deadly prisoner who was spared the death penalty by agreeing to testify against certain elements of the criminal world, was helped into the van, secured in a locked cell for transport, all captured by the unblinking, ground-glass eyes of shoulder-carried news cameras.

While the media and the watching cameras howled for attention at the front of the courthouse, a windowless ton-and-a-half van with JACK’S HEATING AND COOLING on the side rolled quietly down the alley behind the courthouse, turned onto an outbound street, and disappeared into city traffic.

 

The prisoner felt the van slow, turn, stop:  the confined, isolated prisoner heard doors open, doors close, heard the sound of high-pressure water, as if the van were being run through a carwash.

Doors again, a little rocking as if someone got back behind the wheel, or maybe two someones, then they began driving again.

When a white, windowless van pulled out of the carwash bay, a second white, windowless van pulled out behind it, followed for two blocks, then turned off: the two now-unremarkable vehicles each headed their separate way.

 

A windowless white van disappeared through the heavy, old-fashioned prison gates:  cameras followed it in, watching as stone-mounted portals closed behind it, then a solid steel wall rolled across, blocking all view through the barred gates.

Talking heads commented solemnly to their hand-held microphones that a dangerous murderess was now arrived at the private prison to which she’d been remanded, and where she would remain under high security, for the remainder of her natural life, with no chance of parole.

About that same moment, an unmarked white van drove slowly up a rural driveway very near the county seat, followed by a Jeep driven by a pale eyed woman in a tailored blue suit dress and heels.

Willamina Keller backed her Jeep into her usual space.

She strode briskly across gravel and grass and up her front porch steps:  she unlocked the front door, watched as a pair of mirrored sunglasses were carefully removed from a shackled, manacled, blue-eyed, blond-haired prisoner with really nice legs, stood aside as two prison guards took the prisoner’s upper arms in a control grip.

“Bring her in,” Willamina said.  “Thank you, gentlemen, that will be all.”

Willamina took the prisoner’s arm.

“Hold still. I’m going to get these off you.”

The disguised decoy held very still as Willamina thrust her long key into keyholes, opened and removed cuffs, padlocks, shackles, set them aside.

“Turn around and have a seat.”

The designated decoy swallowed nervously, shot an uncertain glance at the door as it closed behind the departing guards.

“Sit,” Willamina said. “Tilt your head back and hold very still.”

Willamina opened a sterile package, slipped her hands into a pair of sterile gloves, wiped them off with a sterile sponge.

Sheriff she was, but nurse she was as well:  she carefully, expertly, extracted the blue scleral contacts from the prisoner’s eyes, dropped them in a sterile solution.

She drew up a chair, sat, looked very directly at this apprehensive soul in a stylish pastel dress, flowing blond hair, sculpted legs, nylons.

“You pulled it off,” she said softly. “You were convincing. Well done.”

Pale eyes blinked.

“By the way, there were two people in the gallery who tried to send a heads-up.”

The decoy’s voice was quiet, a hesitant whisper.

“You were right.”

Willamina nodded.

“Because of you, we kept a high value witness alive, and because of you, we caught the assassin before he could put a round between your eyes.”

Sixteen year old Linn Keller watched as his mother gathered manacles, shackles, waist chain:  she opened a cupboard, stowed them away as casually as if she were putting away a pair of winter gloves.

Willamina turned.

“Feel like going out for dinner?” she teased.  “You’re dressed well enough.”

In all of her entire life, Sheriff Willamina Keller honestly never remembered Linn’s face becoming so red, so fast.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TERROR, AND DELIGHT!

 

Jacob Keller looked down-slope, at the long, natural ski slope that stretched before him.

He’d found it two years before.

Summer saw him cutting deadfalls, swinging them out of the way: those close enough to a trail, and not too badly rotted, got hauled out by the Daine boys – those skinny Kentucky mountaineers favored mules for their timber harvest, which periodically got them in some newspaper or another – it amused these skinny, hard-muscled mountain folk that Flatlanders, as they sneeringly referred to anyone without the good sense to live in God’s mountains – as these staring, gawping strangers allowed as haulin’ timber out with a team of mules was “quaint” or “charming.”

Timbering is neither: it is just plain hard work.

A couple of the Kentucky clan went back East and showed relatives and kinfolk back in Kentucky how to timber with a team, and they laughed at their blood relatives’ amazement, and how they themselves sweated in the hot and humid hollers of the Appalachians: back home in the Shining Mountains, sweat evaporated nearly as fast as it squeezed out of a man’s hide.

Here in the humid East – among these little bitty mountains -- having sweat run down into their eyes, was at once annoying, and a source of amusement.

Jacob located boulders that did not suit him, here on this  natural downhill run: the boulders were few, as years before, this same run had been cleared of rocky impediments by hard rock miners, hired for the purpose.

Jacob labored alone, a very young man, obsessed: that was the year he’d scavenged a 1930s-era car hood from a local junkyard, how he’d turned it from a sheetmetal engine bonnet into a tapered, streamlined toboggan: he’d sanded off rust and corrosion, dismounted (and saved) the hood ornament.

He’d painted, repainted, then waxed and waxed again:  board seats bolted in place, he’d screwed floor flanges into the two inch thick seates, made pipe handles to grab onto:  he painted his homemade toboggan a dark enamel blue, simply because it’s what he had on hand: multiple coats of paint, well cured in the Colorado sun, and before the several coats of wax, he’d painted a crude daisy-on-a-stem, bent as if blown by the passing wind, and beneath, the words, Bloomin’ Idiot.

Marnie, Dana and Angela all had the gift of drawing, his pale eyed Pa had that same gift, though he was best at diagrams, and pretty good at map making:  Jacob was lucky to squiggle out a recognizable stick figure with a #2 lead pencil, though he’d proven surprisingly skilled with an airbrush, the only time he’d given an airbrush a try.

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna glared at the mountain slope.

It was a natural sled run: the Daine boys, at her request, came through here the summer before and harvested out the deadfalls, and turned the seasoned, downed wood into profit: this was McKenna land, and the Daine boys had asked about timbering it, and Sarah – young though she was – went as the family’s representative, and carefully selected trees to be cut.

The Daine boys were, for all their carefully cultivated poor-dumb-hillbilly appearance, shrewd businessmen: they’d seen other lumbermen clearcut a mountain and then bewail their ill fortune when their sons, without work, left for the more prosperous East, or the far West: the family Daine chose instead to harvest out select trees, and leave others for seed, so that their sons’ sons would have timber to harvest.

Sarah McKenna surveyed this long strip from a distance, with field-glasses; she arranged to hire miners – her youth was offset by her mature appearance, her use of the feminine subterfuges of paint, powder and foundations, enhanced with a mature and well spoken presentation – plus cash in hand: young and pretty though she was, the gold coin she offered spoke perhaps louder than her words, and hard rock miners drilled and shot the offending projections and boulders from the slope.

Winter arrived, as it always did, and with frost on the ground and plans in mind, Sarah McKenna rode her big black Snowflake-mare to strategic points, surveyed her slope again, and felt a quiet satisfaction.

No mineral wealth was discovered when boulders were busted and rolled safely downhill, where the grade carried them naturally to the left and to the right; harvested timber was given, not sold, to the Daine boys, which guaranteed their future business:  Sarah returned to the slope after a few snows, and when the time was right, she and her sisters and her shining black mare, hauled a carefully-crafted, lovingly-runner-waxed, New England sled to the top of the grade.

 

Jacob Keller stood at the top of the slope, his car-hood sled beside him.

He looked down the long slope, snow covered and smooth: pale eyes paused where he’d brought the few boulders from their nests, made one last-minute check for new deadfalls.

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna wrapped her knit scarf three times around her lower face, worked her artist’s fingers in their rabbit-fur-lined leather gloves:  she pulled up her skirt, planted her feet on the heavy wood foot-rests.

Her stomach contracted as her twin sisters piled on behind her, bundled and gloved and scarved as well as she: they’d insisted on coming, having never ridden a sled before, and Sarah, big sister though she was, realized in the bright moment before they started to move, that she was indeed young enough to be foolish, and looking at the length of that long, straight, white, steep grade before her, she indeed felt the veriest of fools!

 

It has been speculated that ghosts are the vibrations, the energies, perhaps the emotions, of those who went before; it has been postulated that strong emotion leaves a psychic echo in a location.

However it was, when Jacob leaned forward, when his homemade car-hood sled began to hiss and slide and fall down the snowy slope, when Jacob’s eyes slitted against the cold wind of his passing, when snow falling from branches detonated in a frosty spray against what little flesh wasn’t wrapped in a knit scarf, when his stomach dropped ten stories and the rest of him hissed downhill so fast his Guardian Angel was hanging onto the back of his belt with a desperate, one-hand grip, while the rest of the streaming seraph looked like a ghostly bedsheet stretched out in his slipstream –

Three of the daughters McKenna expressed their terror, and their delight, in a long, shrill, sustained, shared, shivering screaming laugh that hung on the cold mountain wind, and Jacob Keller, his own jaw clamped shut against his own wild wahoo of utter delight, heard a distant, delighted screaming, shivering on the cold mountain wind, that sounded just like what his stomach was feeling.

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller stepped into her skis, pressed her heels down to lock them in place.

The hang glider she wore felt awkward and top heavy.

She reached up, settled tempered-glass goggles in place, reached down, laid a gloved hand on her belt-box, smiled grimly.

If things went catastrophically wrong, she’d have life support and heat, thanks to that waist-worn marvel of Confederate technology: its enveloping force-field should spare her broken bones, were she to have a disastrous loss of control and hit something other than open air.

Marnie wore her white Sheriff’s skinsuit and gunbelt:  this would offer far less wind resistance than the McKenna gown she favored for ambassadorial duties, and when she’d explained that her credentials as Sheriff were still valid on her home planet, the representatives of a planet called Nawlins not only offered no objection to her coming armed and armored, so to speak, but sparked a very interested and surprisingly productive discussion with their own law enforcement community about the advantages of a uniform slippery enough to make it more difficult for an opponent to grab the officer – or the officer’s sidearm.

Now, though, Marnie shuffled forward just a little, her eyes following the long, straight finger of disaster as it fell away from her, steeply, down the side of the mountain.

She remembered a mountain slope back home, a natural ski run that ended in a jump across a stream, a broad flat area where the sisters McKenna parted company with their New England sled, landing and rolling through deep, powdery snow, blowing like frosty whales as they wallowed happily upright, giggling and beating snow from their sleeves, their coats, from one another: the same slope, the same landing zone her brother Jacob knew as he fell through space on a recycled Pontiac hood, ending up headfirst in a drift half again deeper than he was tall, and Marnie looked to her right, nodded to the ski-jump’s operator, then leaned forward and started down a long, natural slope on a planet she’d only just arrived at two days before.

Ambassador Marnie Keller sailed on waxed wooden skis, leaned forward, crouched, settling deeply into a coiled-spring readiness, glanced at her wrist-dial, glanced again as her windspeed approached go-no-go velocity, thought, Three, two, one, LAUNCH!

Marnie was a dancer, Marnie was a horsewoman, Marnie was a daughter of the high Colorado mountains: Marnie used to run with Willamina’s Warriors, singing their obscene cadences as happily as they, building muscle and endurance in the thin mountain air:  Marnie was a warrior in her own right, and her regular and vigorous attendance in high-grav gymnasia guaranteed that she remained muscular and well-toned.

Marnie Keller, crouched, coiled and ready to explode, thrust suddenly upright: the wind ran cold fingers under the taut, lightweight fabric of her bright-orange hang glider, hauled her into the sky.

There were granite mountains on this Confederate world: lightly populated they were, known to a very few lean-waisted folk who knew hard work and asked little of anyone else:  these mountains had heard human voices, yes, but this was the first time a scream of terrified delight, a girlish scream that became high-pitched, happy, girlish laughter, a distant voice that echoed from its cold, high reaches.

It wasn’t the first time Marnie flew from a hang glider, it wasn’t the first time she soared the skies of this particular planet, but she would happily admit in the years that followed, this had to be one of the very best launches she’d ever made!

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THAT AIN’T NO HAUNT

 

His name was abbreviated from Kolascinski to Kohl, and right now his middle name could have been Aggravated.

Kohl was a miner, and a good one.

Kohl and his partner were following a vein that looked like it was going to peter out and disappear.

They cut higher, lower, left, right, searching for the elusive trace: finally, aggravated, Kohl took his pick, made a mighty, sideways swing – there wasn’t enough room to stand up straight, a man had to hunch over and swing his pick sideways – the pick drove through what he didn’t realize was just a thin web of busted rock.

He worked the pick, tore it out, drew back, hit it again.

His partner grabbed his forearm as the pick drew free, bringing a peck basket of loose rock with it.

“Listen.”

Two men looked at one another, their eyes white, stark in the mine’s lamp-lit gloom.

Kohl saw panic widen his partner’s eyes, then the man turned, ran, dropped his pick like a terrified sentry faced with an oncoming wave of screaming infantry, will drop his musket and run like a scared little girl.

Kohl frowned, leaned closer to the hole he’d just made, listened.

That ain’t no haunt, he thought.

 

Kids, Fitz thought.

No thought for anyone, they just go –

He looked around, swinging his smoke-cutter flashlight slowly as he went.

Radios were useless underground, save for line-of-sight only, and that a limited distance; minerals in the walls drank RF energy like a thirsty man drinks beer – still, he had a talkie in one hand, his light in the other.

They were looking for a child, a high school kid who’d taken his trumpet (or his Fluglehorn or whateverthehell they played in Marching Band these days) and his Mama feared he’d gone into an old mineshaft to practice, since a cranky neighbor complained about noise when he practiced on his back steps.

Fitz knew the kid, the boy was nice enough, but like most kids, his train of thought was really short and tended to leave station prematurely.

His Mama speculated he’d gone down into the old mineshaft to practice alone and got lost, and he’d not come home, and she’d gotten worried and then panicked and called in the cavalry, and now he, his medics, his firefighters, were penetrating the gloom in a spaced-out file, each one with a talkie, each one a radio relay point.

At least there’s air, he thought as the chilly breeze moved past him: he could see his breath, carried deeper into the mine: it was already cool underground, constantly cool but not terribly cold: they’d set up their ventilation fans, run by a portable generator, near the mineshaft’s opening, they were blowing an impressive number of cubic feet per second into the mineshaft, pushing cold, clean air in, shoving old, stale air ahead of them and out an opening God only knew where – there were old mining maps, but none reliable, and only a handful of locals knew where all the mine openings were: most were an uninviting hole in the ground, a very few – like this one – still had a timber framing, and a man, crouched over, could navigate it.

His Mama thought he came down into the mine to practice, he thought.

She thought he came down here.

She said she didn’t know for sure.

Now I’m in a hole in the ground that could drop a mountain on top of me.

God save me from women that speak a fear as if it were a fact!

His pique yanked itself away from him faster than the fog of his breath on cold, steadily moving air, was blown own the mineshaft.

He heard a scrabbling ahead, then breathing – fast, panicked breathing –

Something moved in the distance.

Fitz raised his talkie, keyed up:  “This is Fire One, I have movement ahead.”

He crouched, shoved his light forward, damning its limited range: he’d meant to replace these with higher-intensity lights, there was a conversion available now –

Something was headed toward him, he saw a pale oval, two more pale ovals, he realized this was the kid he was looking for, and then he realized the kid’s face was dead white, his eyes were wide with panic, and his mouth was open, as if he were trying to scream and nothing would come out.

“FIRELANDS FIRE DEPARTMENT! WE’VE GOT YOU, LAD!” he shouted, just before a skinny high-school kid clutching a trumpet to his chest, barreled into him, knocked him over and continued in blind flight down the mineshaft.

 

Kohl used the pick to rake loosened dirt and busted rock, he swung hard, shattering chunks that didn’t want to cooperate:  he bent, looked through a hole the size of a bushel basket.

“HELLO!” he called. “WHO’S THERE!”

His voice did not quite echo, it was more like his voice shivered as it disappeared down the gloomy shaft.

“I HEARD YOU. SING OUT, MAN! ARE YOU HURT!”

‘Twas a mouth organ I heard, he thought, frowning, wishing for a better light: the butter lamp on his miner’s cap cast a weak glow that didn’t push back much of the surrounding darkness.

Kohl cut a bigger hole, thrust his pick through, then his head and shoulders, wiggled into a larger chamber.

He came up on his worn trouser knees, looked around.

His head came up, his stomach tightened: Kohl knew when the mountain started to mutter, a man was better off elsewhere: rarely it was that the overhead gave any warning before it failed, and the wise man fled at the first sound of the mine’s roof cracking, shifting or starting to trickle debris down the back of miner’s neck.

He’d heard a muffled crack from overhead.

He looked down, froze.

Kohl sank to one knee, groaned.

He knew the man: Eli, he’d said his name was: Kohl remembered he had neither family nor many friends, a morose and disagreeable sort, preferring to wrap his sorrows about him like a cloak: Kohl tried to draw him out on occasion, but without any luck a’tall, and now here the man lay, dead.

Not just dead.

His hands were nearly fleshless, bone showed through a tear in one trouser leg; he’d been killed when part of the overhead fell, swift, silent, crushing the soul from his body like a man would squeeze a seed from a ripe fruit.

He lay face-up, what used to be a face, now a rotted mask of horror.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” he whispered, “speak kindly to Your Son on behalf of Eli’s soul.”

Something hit Kohl’s miner’s cap and he jumped back, looked up, caught a philter of dirt in the face: he turned, dove back through the hole he’d just made, legged it down the mineshaft as fast as a man can move, bent over double.

His worn brogan just missed crushing a mostly skeletal hand, and the still-shiny harmonica in its fleshless fingers.

 

Chief Charles Fitzgerald, in his class A uniform, ceremoniously placed an ancient but still-shiny mouth organ on a blue-velvet-covered tea saucer: the glass display case was closed as Fitz stepped back into the ranks of the Irish Brigade, formally assembled for this presentation.

Angela Keller wore a handmade gown of unrelieved black, a sheer black veil misting down from her fashionable black hat, draping over her unrelieved black shoulders: she’d spoken the graveside elegy an hour before, when what was left of a mine-rat-chewed skeleton was retrieved from an old mine, from a chamber forgotten until a high-school kid wanted to find a solitary place to practice his trumpet, without disturbing a crotchety neighbor whose heart’s delight was to complain.

Abbot William sent a delegation from the Rabbitville Monastery, tonsured Brethren and veiled White Sisters alike: the skeleton, in a handmade wooden coffin, was committed to the earth with due ceremony, and the White Sisters sang in a glorious a capella harmony, committing the eternal soul of this unknown miner to its reward.

It might make for a good ghost story if we added that the high school kid would sneak into the Museum and play during the full moon, and as the echoes of his softly offered brassy notes faded, he would hear a mouth organ’s accompaniment following his notes into the darkness.

That didn’t happen.

Once, and once only, when the kid went to the graveyard and played his trumpet, very softly, at the foot of a recent grave.

When he finished, when he lowered his trumpet, he heard the harmonica, as if from a great distance.

He never knew that a woman in a long black gown, a woman with a sheer black veil misting down from her fashionable little hat, stood still and unmoving beside a graveyard fir, listening as he played, and he never knew that a woman's black-gloved hand noted in a handwritten journal that the unknown miner's music was heard by perhaps the only living soul that knew his name.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND WHAT OF MY FATHER?

 

Dr. John Greenlees, Jr, looked at his wife with a diagnostic eyebrow raised, as if he were a piece of his own medical equipment, scanning his beautiful bride for some condition she didn’t even suspect.

Marnie Keller, Sheriff Emeritus and Diplomat-at-Large from the planet Mars, looked at her husband with bubbling amusement.

Beside her, a happy little boy in a high chair, learning the intricacies of using a spoon to get his meal into his mouth and not all over his face.

“I know that look,” Marnie murmured, and Dr. John heard the smile in her voice.

“You’ve changed,” he said quietly.

“Changed,” Marnie said thoughtfully, pausing to look very directly at her husband.

“We sleep for a year in zero gravity, we colonize a desert planet and we discover and reverse engineer alien technology. I’m the Sheriff for a Wild West colony that was attacked by aliens, I get recruited by a Confederacy we never knew existed, I’ve carried the flag in one hand and a shotgun in the other, I’ve borne children that were killed and I’ve given you two more, I’m married to one of the most gifted physician savants in the solar system and I’m related to some of the most high-demand fighter pilots in thirteen star systems, and I’ve changed?”

Dr. John pointed at her with a half-eaten sweet roll, nodded.

“You are more relaxed than I’ve ever seen you,” he said quietly. “You aren’t as … hair trigger as you were.”

“Hair trigger?” Marnie laughed.  “John, I turn that on and off like a switch. Here, I’m relaxed. We live in Fort Knox. Nobody can get through those doors with anything less than a rock cutter, we’ve got solid rock above, below and on most sides, we’re self-contained here. We’ve rippers to dispose of all waste, the Recyclos will fabricate anything at all from the waste we feed it, we could exist in this room, in comfort, for the rest of our lives! Of course I’m relaxed – here!”

John took a speculative bite of sweet roll, considered as he masticated.

“You are less … hair trigger … when we go to Church,” he said quietly.

Marnie nodded.  “Again … John, I know our people, and our people know me. They’ve seen me kill and they’ve seen me kill fast. Jacob the same. They know if someone tries to kill them, I’ll be nearby and if it’s at all possible I’ll stop their killer first.”

John raised that diagnostic eyebrow again.

“I remember what you were like back …”  John blinked, looked away.

“Do you remember when that yahoo ran us off the road on our way to Prom and you knocked the dog stuffing out of him?”

“Dog stuffing,” a happy little boy in a high chair repeated.

“That’s right,” John said to his son, then looked back at Marnie.  “I was still seeing stars where he slugged me, and you genuinely pounded him into the ground.”

Marnie shrugged.  “He made me mad,” she said offhandedly. “It’s not wise to make the women of my line angry.”

“So I gather.”

“So what brought all this on?” Marnie asked, looking at her son’s plate and nodding with approval: she opened a round container of sliced apples – his favorite – dusted a little cinnamon on them, placed them on his tray.

Chubby young fingers abandoned the spoon in favor of simply seizing a slice of apple and bringing it to his young mouth.

“It’s good to see you can relax,” John said frankly.  “You couldn’t, all the years you were – back there.”

“I know,” Marnie said softly, remembering how she would arrange to sit in the choir, where she could watch the congregation: she watched the people and her father watched her, and there were moments when her vigilance prevented unpleasant things from happening.

Like the time she signed to her father a quick message – they both trained and practiced AMESLAN, the system used by the deaf – Linn pulled a little stamped-steel clicker from his pocket, hit it twice, rose: there was always a medic in church, and at two clicks, the medic rose as well.

That was the day Rose Cranwell had a heart attack right before the sermon, the day Shelly hauled her out of the pew and into the aisle, the day the Irish Brigade charged in with cot and oxygen and boxes in hand, the day the entire congregation turned to face them as they worked … the day the Irish Brigade learned what it was to be hit by an incoming wall of prayer.

Two months to the day after, Rose Cranwell walked slowly into their little whitewashed church under her own power, a sweet little old lady who saw Marnie rise, saw her lift her hands and sing the opening words to the Doxology, and the entire congregation surged to its feet, and not for the first time, Old Hundred rang loud against the inside of the old Firelands church.

Marnie never forgot Rose’s look of delight in that moment.

“I never relaxed, even in church,” she admitted. “Not in school. Remember when that light plane went down at the far end of the field? I was out of my desk like a streak!”

“I remember,” Dr. John nodded.  “I also know how hard it is on the system to keep yourself under that kind of strain, that watchfulness, that tension, constantly.” 

John leaned forward, laid his fingers gently on the back of his wife’s hand.

“I’m glad you can relax,” he murmured.

Marnie’s expression was bleak as she remembered, as she nodded, then she looked at her husband and whispered, “But John … what of my father?”

Her whispered question hung in the still air for a long moment, at least until a very young John Greenlees tossed his empty plastic apple container to the floor and crowed, “Dog stuffing!”

Marnie’s cheeks pinked, she lowered her head:  she looked up at her husband, shook her head, laughing quietly.

“John,” she sighed, “he’s your son!”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DEAD WRINGER

 

“Mama,” Marnie said impatiently, “sit!”

Shelly Keller, wife of that pale eyed Sheriff and paramedic with the Firelands Fire Department, glared at her nine year old daughter: she glared, her lips pressed together, then sat with an exaggerated sigh.

Marnie stomped up to her mother, gripper her Mama’s face in both hands, pulled her lower lids down with both thumbs, then laid the heel of her hand on Marnie’s forehead.

“I thought so,” she muttered, then reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a wrapped candy bar.  “You’re low on chocolate!”

Shelly’s surprised hand closed automatically around the unexpected bounty.

She looked at it, blinked; her fatigue lifted momentarily and she realized – as she looked toward the back porch, toward its adjacent laundry room, beside and behind the kitchen – the Maytag was humming, and Marnie was quickly, efficiently (if viciously) sorting clothes into piles on the floor, the way Shelly sorted them.

Shelly took a bite of dark chocolate, realizing Marnie remembered Shelly’s preference – a half-remembered moment with her pale eyed mother in law Willamina, where the older woman confided quietly that “Dark is only real chocolate!” – Shelly relaxed a little, letting the past 24 hours drain away from her.

 

Esther Keller, the green-eyed wife of that pale-eyed Sheriff, laughed as she turned the crank on the laundry mangle.

She and the maid were tending laundry, which was little short of just plain hard work, and laundry enough for a family was quite a bit of just plain hard work: Esther insisted on helping with laundry – which at first distressed their hired girl, who took pride in her ability to keep the household clean, supplied with meals and with clean clothes – but Esther’s charm, her motherly approach, assuaged any misgivings, any feelings that she might be suggesting the hired girl wasn’t up for the task.

Esther knew she was up to the task.

Esther also knew how much just plain hard work it was, for she’d done without a hired girl before, and had all that work to do, in addition to her other activities: she had a lull in her business efforts, and so turned a hand toward helping with the family’s laundry.

Not infrequently, with Esther’s example, the family’s young would turn out to help as well:  the hired girl was very much taken aback by this, for she was used to working for Eastern families, where the hired help was treated like a rented mule, spoken down to, given impossible tasks and either beaten with a cane when they were unable to complete three days’ work in an hours’ time, or given such a tongue-lashing as to make them wish they’d been caned:  no, here in the far West, the girl, as she was called, was more a part of the family than a rented hireling.

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna lay, stiff, unmoving, eyes wide, staring at her bedroom ceiling.

She did not dare move.

Her limbs were rigid, her breath controlled, her heart was hammering, she knew her hair was wet – those damned nightmares again – but this time she’d charged into her nightmares, she’d seized up a policeman’s gun and laid about the monsters that chased her, she’d taken up a policeman’s billy and her nighttime screams were dreadful indeed, for all that they were locked in her sleeping body’s throat and echoed only in realms unseen as she twisted the turned-hickory head-knocker apart and released a living blade that hissed as it sliced through grasping, laughing monsters that sought to seize her, sought to despoil her yet again: Sarah Lynne McKenna, the nine year old daughter of Bonnie Lynne McKenna, had had enough of being terrorized by her nightmares, and went on the offensive.

Sarah did not dare move as she lay flat on her back.

Her bedclothes were twisted, damp, thrown aside: she’d been fighting monsters in her sleep, apparently; she hadn’t been screaming, at least not with her body, for her throat wasn’t sore.

Sarah took a long breath, blew it out, then carefully, cautiously, she began to move.

Her first move was simply to blink.

Nothing happened.

Reality did not shatter, she did not fall through a glass floor back into the black-sand inferno deep underground, where muttering monsters laughed and chased her, slowly enough so as not to catch her, fast enough to cause her panic, the panic and fear they fed on and feasted on and relished as a delightful treat.

Evil like few things more than causing absolute, unreasoning, blind-panic terror in an innocent child’s soul.

Sarah’s breathing was steady, controlled: she willed her young heart to slow, to stop hammering: she felt more than heard blood screaming through her ears, and disciplined her thoughts until this, too, diminished.

Sarah Lynne McKenna moved a hand – one hand, then the other.

Nothing happened, other than her fingertips whispered against cotton sheets.

Sarah rolled over, swung her legs over the side of the bed.

The floor looked slid enough, reality did not crack and shatter:  she stood, looked up to the ceiling, whispered “Thank You.”

Later that day, Sarah and her Mama went to the Firelands bank: Bonnie Lynne McKenna ran the McKenna Dress Works, and she had some business to transact; she and Sarah wore matching gowns – young girls usually wore shorter hemlines, but Sarah preferred a longer skirt – they were only just come up to the teller’s window, and Sarah’s Mama’s voice smiled as she spoke with the girl behind the grille, when Sarah’s hand thrust of its own volition through a pocket she herself had fashioned in her skirt.

A rough and unwashed man shoved Bonnie aside, thrust a less-than-well-cared-for pistol barrel through the teller’s bars:  Sarah did not hear what was said, only that she’d heard that voice before, and Sarah seized her nightmare, and Sarah ruled her nightmare.

Nine year old Sarah Lynne McKenna eyes were dead white and cold as polished ice as she cocked the Derringer pistol in her hard and crushing grip, punched it hard into the holdup’s soft ribs and pulled the trigger.

 

Shelly rose, walked across the kitchen and toward the kitchen door.

Marnie drifted over toward the corner.

Marnie had known absolute terror in her own young life; Marnie had known brutality, back in New York, when she lived there with her drug-addicted mother: Marnie learned to fear that demanding knock on the door, and when the door was shoved open and Shelly was knocked back, hard, when she hit the stairway’s end-post and fell with a little sound of pain, Marnie’s hand slipped into the narrow little cupboard she’d seen her Daddy use: she shrank back into the corner as someone dragged her choking, struggling Mama, by the throat, dragged her through the kitchen, clear out onto the screened-in back porch, bent her backwards over the unused, old-fashioned wringer Maytag they hadn’t gotten rid of yet, hands crushing-tight tight around her neck.

Marnie’s eyes were dead pale, her face was the color of putty and drawn tight over her cheekbones as her young fingers pulled the bolt back on the .22 rifle

she’d pulled from the narrow little cupboard where her long tall Daddy kept it.

Marnie Keller, the nine year old daughter of Sheriff Linn Keller and Paramedic-Firefighter Shelly Keller, heard the rifle firing, saw strings of red float slowly through the air as the bad guy went limp, fell forward.

Marnie Keller, her young hands bloodless with the crushing grip she had on the .22’s walnut stock, growled softly as she realized she’d just emptied the rifle’s magazine, that it wasn’t firing anymore, that she didn’t know what to do now.

Marnie Keller stood, frozen, eyes wide:  she blinked, her Mama was falling back, coughing, one hand to her throat.

Marnie just stood there, staring at what she’d done.

Shelly staggered into the kitchen, fumbled the wall phone off its hook; she steadied herself with an effort, punched 9-1-1.

Marnie heard her Mama’s voice as if from a distance.

She just stood there, staring at a dead man slumped over the old Maytag on their back porch.

Marnie remembered hearing running feet, a confusion of voices, she remembered her Daddy, his face pale, the flesh stretched tight over his cheekbones: she remembered seeing his face in front of hers, she heard his voice from a distance, she felt his hands on her fingers:  she blinked, looked down, let go of the rifle, looked up as Captain Crane looked closely at the dead man’s wounds,  shook his head, reached out a hand:  an anonymous hand gave him the corner of a sheet, and he draped it over the dead man still laying over the old Maytag wringer washer.

Marnie stood there, numb; her Daddy came back into view and she felt his fingers, gentle on her cheek:  the spell was broken, Marnie could move again, she threw her arms around her Daddy, held him as tightly as she possibly could.

 

Dr. John Greenlees served not only as the hospital’s Chief Surgeon and their chief ER doc,  but also as the county Coroner: he lifted the sheet away from the dead man, looked at the evidence markers indicating where Marnie stood when she emptied the .22 into the would-be murderer’s skull:  he looked at blood spray, gloved fingers checked for a pulse as a mere formality – a magazine of rimfires through the skull had been far more than lethal – he looked at the appliance over which the deceased was draped, looked at the Sheriff.

“Marnie did this?”

Sheriff Linn Keller nodded wordlessly.

Dr. John Greenlees looked at the deceased.

“Shame about the washer.”

“It hasn’t worked in years.”

“So it’s a dead wringer in more ways than one.”  Doc gripped his old friend’s shoulder.  “I’ll leave you to your investigation.”
Dr. Greenlees frowned, hesitated, looked at the Sheriff.

“I know you’re not a drinkin’ man,” he said quietly, “but maybe a shot of medicinal alcohol wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

Linn looked at the Maytag, watched as gloved hands brought the deceased off the appliance and onto the coroner’s cot.

“Dead wringer,” he muttered.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HIDE IN PLAIN VIEW

 

A pale eyed nurse in a white uniform dress pulled the chair closer to a hospital bed.

The man was dying, and he knew it, and he wanted to talk.

The nurse lowered the siderail so she could hold his hand.

His grip was weak – his strength was nearly spent, he could barely squeeze her hand, and she had to strain to hear his words.

Her face was shining, angelic, beautiful: her expression was that of patience, of kindness, of rapt attention.

Most nurses wore their hospital ID clipped to their scrubs; this Angel in White wore hers on a rectangular leather brace, custom fitted into her uniform dress’s bodice pocket: it was thicker, heavier than the hospital’s ID.

At its center top was a small glass lens, and on either side, a microphone: one directional, one omnidirectional.

Sheriff’s Deputy Angela Keller, RN, held a dying man’s hand and recorded the deathbed confession to which she was intently listening.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller looked over at  his shining-gold stallion, muscular and healthy, glowing in the long red rays of a mountain sunrise.

Rey del Sol looked absolutely majestic: as if understanding he was being appreciated, the stallion almost posed, and the Sheriff remembered the words of an Arab he’d met, years before, describing their blooded mares:

“A neck arched like the Crescent Moon, and a nose small enough to fit in a teacup.”

You’d need a teacup the size of a water bucket, Linn thought, but the neck looks pretty good.

He looked down at the Smith & Wesson he held, a gun fired three times and not reloaded.

Its owner lay on his back, one bloodied hand on his belly.

Linn considered the dying man, went down on one knee.

“You’re done for, Karl,” he said quietly.

“I know,” the dying man gasped, twisting a little, grimacing. “Damned townie, wisht he’d shot me right!”

Linn nodded.

“I had me a run, didn’t I?” Karl asked with a cough, with a sardonic grin that faded into a grimace.

The pale eyed old lawman nodded.  “Yep,” he said.  “That you did.”

Linn looked at the man, assessed his labored breathing, his pallor: he rose, pulled the bedroll off Karl’s horse, brought it back, lifted the dying man’s legs, ran the bedroll under his knees, pulled his own and set the man’s heels down on it.

“Thanks,” Karl gasped.  “Helps.”

“Figured it would,” Linn nodded. 

“You wanta tell me what-all you did?” Linn asked mildly. “Be nice to get your death song right.”

Karl gasped, tried to swallow, coughed weakly.

“That townie shot me ‘cause he thought I was after his wife,” he wheezed.

“Were you?”

“Hell no!”  The man rallied for a few seconds, then sagged again. “Don’t even know his wife. Or him.”

“What did you do?”

“I was gunna rob their bank.”

Linn nodded.

“I robbed three of ‘em, y’know. Back East. Hit ‘em hard and run like hell, that’s my motto. Went in dirty an’ in wore out clo’es, ride out on a stolen horse, turn it loose an’ get all cleaned up and in a new suit, shave off my whiskers” – he coughed again – “I was all nice and clean t’ ride th’ steam train.”

“That’s how you got out here.”

“Yep. I was gonna do th’ same thing til that townie gut shot me.”

Linn took the man’s hand, bent closer.

“Yer that damned old pale eyed lawman, ain’t’cha?”

Linn nodded.

“Ain’t no wonder you found me.” 

His words were weaker, his breathing more labored, his hand was cold, damp in Linn’s grip.

“Least I got found by an honest man.”

Linn saw him take a breath, then a shallower breath: after that second breath, it was like he sighed out his soul, and his body shrank a little when it did.

 

Deputy Sheriff Angela Keller tapped a key to end the video chat, looked over the top of the computer monitor at her pale eyed Daddy.

“That solves four murders,” she said, “and it’ll cause four families that much more grief.”

“How’s that?”  Linn asked, setting down a steaming mug of coffee, turning it so its glazed-ceramic handle was toward his uniformed daughter.

Angela trickled a little milk into the hot black delicacy, took a sip, closed her eyes and tilted her head back as she swallowed.

“I needed that,” she whispered.

“Figured you did.”

Angela looked at the darkened computer screen.

“I sent my statement, but I knew the chief investigator would want to talk about it.”

Linn nodded.

“I also sent the contents of my body cam.”

“The hospital doesn’t know you wear it.”

“The hospital doesn’t have to know it,” she smiled. “Anything said in the presence of a law enforcement officer, in uniform or out, on duty or off, can be used as admissible evidence in a court of law. I was receiving a deathbed confession, and that’s admissible as well.”

Linn nodded slowly.

“You didn’t mention to the investigator,” he said slowly, “that you received this deathbed confession in the course of your nursing…?”

Angela smiled, tilted her head a little like her Mama: she crossed her forearms, leaned forward a little.

“This is ugly on my face, not stupid,” she said softly, and winked, and father and daughter both laughed.

“No… no, I told him that the deceased said I was easy on the eyes and it was easy to talk to a pretty girl, and here I sit in my Deputy’s uniform and wearing my body cam …”

She blinked innocently.

“He can see I’m wearing my body cam, here I sit, a Sweet Young Thing in uniform, and a dying man wanted to unburden his soul.”

Linn nodded.

“What’s that about causing more heartache for the families?”

Angela took a long breath, sighed it out.

“Sometimes,” she said softly, “I wonder just how evil people can be, and then I find out.”

Linn waited.

“He had access to a crematorium, back when … regulations were looser in those days. He cremated the bodies, ground up the bones, packaged them in rice paper … he had access to a cement plant and he’d toss rice paper packages of bone dust into the cement as it was mixed. He said every one of them got poured as Interstate highway. He said he did it so even in death his victims would know no peace.”

“That was after torturing them to death.”

“That was after torturing every last one of them slowly and at length until they finally died.”

Damn.”

“That’s their case, their court. All I did was pass along my body cam recording and my account of what I heard.”

 

Sheriff Linn Keller rose at Judge Hostetler’s summons.

“Sheriff,” the Judge called, “do I understand the deceased confessed to multiple crimes?”

“He did, Your Honor.”

“Were any of these crimes committed in our jurisdiction?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Have you notified those jurisdictions in which the offenses were committed?”

“I have, Your Honor.”

“Is there anything else you wish to bring before this Court?”

“Your Honor, the deceased intended to commit further crimes in this area, but he was prevented by a jealous husband.”

His Honor the Judge removed a hand-rolled Cuban from between yellow-stained teeth.

“Come again?”

Sheriff Linn Keller shook his head slowly.

“Your Honor, he was all set to rob another bank when some fellow claimed he’d been fooling with his wife, and gut shot him.”

“Damn,” His Honor frowned.  “Did that offense occur in our jurisdiction?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Have you spoken with the responsible jurisdiction?”

“I have, Your Honor.”

“Good,” the Judge grunted.  “It’s their problem now.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

 

Linn leaned forward, looked very directly at his daughter.

“It is not wise,” he said carefully, “to play fast and loose with confidentiality.”

Deputy Sheriff Angela Keller smiled, just a little, tapped the screen on her phone a few times, enlarged the picture, turned it so the Sheriff could see it.

“This,” she said, “is my ID badge at the hospital. Look at the several pins across the bottom.”

Linn frowned, studied the picture, smiled, nodded.

“Right there in plain view,” he chuckled. “You’re covered.”

Angela Keller smiled, swiped the screen, pressed the screen lock to prevent an unwanted dial.

“If I have a stork pin and a CPR save pin and a pediatrics pin, why not a miniature badge pin to go with it?”  She tilted her head, ran delicate fingertips around the rim of her still-hot coffee cup. “You’re the one who taught me to hide in plain sight!”

Linn laughed, rose, looked at his deputy, his little girl, with open approval.

“Remind me never to play poker with you!”

 

 

 

Edited February 13 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A LITTLE CHILD

The Sheriff and his family traditionally sat in the very front pew.

At least one of the Sheriff’s daughters sat in the choir, both because the ladies of his line all have truly lovely voices, and because they were the Sheriff’s eyes on Sunday, in case something was not as it should be, behind him.

Church was always a solemn and reverent occasion, except when it wasn’t: the Parson was given to a dry and understated humor, except when he wasn’t, like the Sunday he began his sermon with, “Chuck Norris can make an onion cry,” and though nobody remembered the gist of his message, nobody forgot that he got a laugh out of them to start with.

The Sheriff was a man who collected guns, tall tales and children, and given his druthers, he’d druther have a dozen young or more: fortunately, he and his wife mutually agreed that after the twins, she would bear no more young, and so when the Sheriff’s family filled a good percentage of the front pew on the left hand side, nobody was really surprised when a little boy scampered away from where his Mama parked him, happily pattered up the center aisle, made a turn and stopped to look, surprised and solemn-eyed, at the silent, pale, serious-faced Sheriff.

Little boy and pale eyed grandfather looked at one another for a long moment, at least until the Sheriff twiddled his mustache – wiggled it like a bunny rabbit wiggles its nose – a little boy in knee pants and a bow tie giggled, Linn closed one eye s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y and wiggled his mustache again, and the little boy laughed – he was not yet to see his second birthday, if Linn was any judge – and by the time a young mother got her infant clean, powdered, diapered and returned to her pew, when she found her child missing, when she looked up, panicked, and saw Angela in the choir wave at her, put a finger to her lips and point at the front pew – well, as the Parson was holding forth on the benefits of patience and longsuffering, a young mother clutching a blanket-wrapped infant ran on the balls of her feet to the front of the aisle, turned, stopped, cupped her hand over her mouth.

Shelly scooted just a little bit, patted the bare pew beside her:  the mother sat, or more accurately, collapsed: Shelly laid gentle fingertips on the young mother’s arm, whispered to her as the young mother leaned over to take a long look at her adventurous little boy, sound asleep on the Sheriff’s lap, curly haired head laid against the grinning lawman’s chest.

Later that day, as Linn and his family guested the young mother, Michael and Victoria took the boy out to see their horses, while Linn and Shelly plied the young mother with tea and little cream filled finger desserts after Sunday dinner: when they went out to take a look at the horses, the mother’s face changed, she looked at her infant and started carrying it a little awkwardly.

“Her, let me,” Linn said, taking the bundled child:  he strode over to his aging, mud-spattered orange Dodge and lowered the tailgate, set the diaper bag and the child on the cleanest part of his workbench, and proceeded to change a little child’s diaper with the swift and sure experience of a father who’d changed a great many of them – a significant number on this very tailgate.

Shelly and the young mother watched as a laughing little boy straddled a saddle, as Linn’s twins rode hard up close on either side, leaning over and gripping his belt: they walked their horses over to their parents, grinning, for children and horses have a natural affinity, and this was not the first time their patient old grey carried an active, impatiently shifting, young cargo.

A little boy in knee pants and a bow tie laughed happily, his cheeks pink in the afternoon sun, as the Sheriff took the freshly changed infant and hoist the flannel-bundled payload up to arm’s length, suddenly, then spun around, laughing, and the baby’s laughter scattering all around him:  when he brought the adventurous little boy off the mare, he flipped him, took him by his ankles and lowered him until the child could just touch the grass underfoot, then swung him around in a big circle, scattering more happy laughter as he did.

Shelly and the young mother stood close, their heads inclined toward one another: as the baby fed with a good appetite, they two mothers looked at the pale eyed old Granddad, then looked at one another.

Linn hauled the boy up, hipped him, dunked his Stetson on the lad’s head, then hoist him onto his shoulders:  he galloped happily around the yard, laughing, as a just-shy-of-two-year-old boy picked up a brushed black Stetson by its brim and squealed in absolute delight.

“There is nothing to make a damned fool out of a grown man,” Shelly sighed, “like a little child.”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HOSPITALITY

 

A curious young woman frowned as she looked down the main street of a Colorado town, trying to imagine how it had been when … well, when horsepower was under the saddle, or in harness, when the citizens’ world was lighted only by fire.

Back when a schoolhouse still had only one room, when there was only one church and everyone went there, when things were slower, less stressful.

She felt someone come up beside her, but she did not feel a threat: she was a woman who paid attention to her feelings, and her feelings on such matters were rarely wrong.

She still looked to her right.

A pair of amused, pale eyes looked at her from beneath an ornate coiffure, a fashionable little hat: her visitor tilted her head, the way a woman will when she is welcoming, interested.

“There is a question in your eyes,” she smiled.

“I, um, yes, that is –”

“You’re wondering what Firelands was like back when.”

“Um, yes.”  She blinked, surprised. “How did --?”

“How did I know?” 

She nodded to the saloon across the street, and the visitor’s eyes followed.

“That,” she said, “is the Silver Jewel Saloon. It’s been here just forever, and it has a history, and the original tin ceiling.”  She turned back, smiled again.  “But no bullet holes.”

“Oh.” 

“You sound disappointed.”

“I was expecting … I don’t know …”

“Saloon fights, gunfights in the street, cattle being driven through town?”

“Yes,” she admitted.  “That.”

“The Silver Jewel,” her fashionably gowned companion explained, with a directing nod of her head, “was then, and still is, a center of … well, everything.  If you wished to know anything about anyone, that’s where you went. Lawmen looking for a criminal, someone looking for family, if it was to be known, it would be known there. We have an historical society that meets in the meeting-room of the Silver Jewel – we only just adjourned – the Ladies’ Tea Society has some very informative presentations, almost always historical in nature.”

“Tell me,” the modern visitor asked, half-uncomfortably, half-hopefully, “are there … ghosts?”

“These mountains are beyond ancient,” the pleasant, pale eyed woman in a truly gorgeous gown explained, “and that means that – to answer your question – yes, there are ghosts here.”

“Have you seen any?” the Eastern visitor asked eagerly.

Her guide laughed quietly. “I have been asked that,” she smiled, “and a little girl asked me once if I was a ghostie.”  She lifted her chin.  “Let’s walk.”

The Easterner stopped, turned, startled:  her eyes widened as a horseman approached, a tall man in a black suit and Stetson, a man with remarkably pale eyes, an iron grey mustache, a man who reached up and touched his hat-brim as he passed the pair:  he turned, clattered up the alley:  it wasn’t until after she blinked a couple of times that she realized she’d just walked past the Sheriff’s office.

“The Sheriff,” her gowned guide explained, “likes to transact certain business from horseback.”

“I see,” came the faint answer.

“We do have a haunted fire engine, though.”  Her guide smiled. “My name’s Sarah and I’ve been here a very long time. Are you hungry?”

 

Two ladies sat at an intimate little table in the back of the Silver Jewel.

The ladies of their Tea Society were just finishing their lunches, several came over: the conversation was brisk, charming, spontaneous, and the curious visitor from back East was soon charmed, delighted, made to feel very welcome: after the third mention of the haunted fire engine, the visitor realized there must be something to this, and so a clutch of ladies in hand-sewn gowns of a more romantic period, flowed down the boardwalk, down the few steps and onto the modern, poured-concrete sidewalk.

Sunlight and femininity flowed into the firehouse, pastel gowns and lilting voices advanced toward the kitchen deck.

Chief Charles Fitzgerald turned, surprised:  “Hello there!” he exclaimed, grinning. “What brings you to my humble abode?”

“Humble my Aunt Fanny’s billy goat,” Shelly muttered, shooting the Chief a look.

“I’m told you have a haunted fire engine…?” the woman in blue jeans and a puffy jacket hazarded.

“You must’ve heard about that bad one we had.”

“Well, no, I, ah, that is …”

Shelly draped her polishing rag over the back of a convenient chair, came over, thrust out a hand:  “Shelly Keller, fire paramedic. If we’re going to have a bad one, you’ll see our steam fire engine coming through town, or into town, or out of town – it’s always moving toward where the fire will be.”

She thrust a bladed hand at their horse-drawn Ahrens fire engine.

“We have three white mares that pull this one, and yes, she does work. She’s been restored and we keep her in working order.”

“Oh, my,” came the wide-eyed murmur.

“If you see this hell-a-tearin’ up the street pulled by three mares and an Irishman standing in the driver’s box swinging that blacksnake whip, sound General Quarters and make it no drill, there’s going to be a bad one!”

“And she’s dead silent,” Fitz added from his position by the shining-stainless coffeepot.

Shelly nodded.  “He’s right.”

They watched as an Eastern woman walked up to the shining, restored, pinstriped, buffed, gleaming, Ahrens steam engine.

“The engine would be drawn by three mares,” Shelly explained, “and either a ladder wagon would be hitched on behind, or the ladder and hose wagons would come with their own teams. Generally they combined both ladder and hoses in one wagon, hitched on the back of the pumper here and” – she giggled – “I’ll bet they made a grand sight, Irishmen hanging on, laughing like schoolboys!”

Speculative fingers caressed the big, iron-rimmed wheels, gazed with wonder at the upholstered driver’s seat.

“She’s haunted?” she asked.

“Mm-hmm. I’ve never seen any ghosts on her, but the living soul of every Irishman loves his Lady with a passion unknown to mere mortals.  Some of that energy has to stick around, wouldn’t you think?”

 

That evening, as Linn sat down for supper with his family, after receiving his daily briefing on how school was going and how one of the mares was quickened, they saw the colt move in her belly, how a stretch of fence would want attention right here directly, after Linn and his son discussed the right boards to use for the fence repair and talk turned to having only just heard a U-joint in the old orange Dodge power wagon start to squeak, after Linn decided he’d just take it to Emmett’s garage and have Uncle Emmett change it out for them – only after all this did the Sheriff look at his wife and say, “We had the same visitor today, I believe.”

“The ghost hunter?”

“Is that what she was?”  Linn leaned back as his plate was removed, as fresh coffee was poured, as pie replaced the empty plate.

“She was fascinated by Sean’s Legend.”

“The Firetruck Fetch.”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“You’ve never seen it.”

“And you have?”  Shelly forked up still-warm blueberry pie with a thick layer of whipped cream on top, looked at her husband, half-challenging, half-amused.

“Twice,” Linn said quietly, lowering his fork without cutting into the pie:  “once was when we lost three kids on that mutual aid call, and once was the Widow Spencer fatal.”

Shelly saw a look come into her husband’s eyes, one that meant he was seeing something he’d tried hard to bury – but like he’d told her a number of times, no matter how deep you bury some ghosts, they still come philtering up out of the grave to say howdy, no matter how many rocks you pile on top to try and hold ‘em in.

“Every time the Steam Masheen rolls,” Linn said quietly, “it’s a bad one, and I’ve seen it twice now. The three-mare hitch, a big blacksmith of an Irishman standing up in the driver’s box, swinging that whip and they’re running like Hell itself is on their heels – the mares’ noses are punched out into the wind and she’s dead silent, Shelly.”

Linn looked very directly at his wife, his voice quiet.

“Dead silent.”

He blinked, remembering.

“I can see the whistle blowing a cloud of steam into the air and I know she’s screaming like a damned soul, but she’s silent!”

Linn’s words were nearly a whisper, the words of a man haunted by things he’d seen:  he stopped, closed his eyes, took a breath.

It took several moments for the man to slip all this from his shoulders:  he shivered, like he was shimmying an unwanted cloak off his back, then he opened his eyes and looked at his wife.

His voice was quiet, controlled, factual.

“The woman that was asking about the haunted engine – she went to the Silver Jewel afterward and looked at the pictures hung behind the bar.

“She saw a portrait of Sarah McKenna and smiled and said something about how nice it was that one of the Ladies’ Tea Society had her picture hung up behind the bar, and how she’d been just the nicest soul to show her around, and how she and the Ladies had taken her into the firehouse to show her that haunted engine.”

Shelly frowned, looked curiously at her husband.

“Took her,” she said slowly, “into the firehouse?”

Linn nodded, happily chewing good fresh homemade blueberry pie and whipped cream:  it took him a few chews to swallow and take a sip of coffee to answer his wife.

“She said she had no idea where to go, but this pale eyed woman in a long gown took her right to the firehouse, her and the other ladies, and she specifically mentioned how colorful their gowns were.

“They took her inside like they owned the place, and she’d never have just gone in by herself, but since it was the Tea Society ladies–”

“She came in alone,” Shelly interrupted, and it was her turn to speak in a solemn voice.  “She was alone, Linn. There was nobody with her.”

Edited February 15 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND THE PREACHER'S FACE TURNED RED

Sarah Lynne McKenna spoke quietly: she addressed her co-conspirators in groups of no more than three, she spoke in low voice and most persuasively: ladies young and old pressed flat fingers to their lips, their eyes shining with contained amusement; the conspiracy was spread with whispers, with knowing looks, and not entirely without sympathy.

When the ladies fanned out and drew the men aside, agreement was instant and universal: low voices murmured in the quiet of their little whitewashed Church, and plans were firmed, duties delegated: select members of their Choir were recruited, sorted according to their musical range, and the church emptied out quietly, with each heading for their respective residences, to tend the necessary chores of the day, and to prepare for the thickening plot to be performed on the morrow.

The Parson had been holding forth with a focus on the Last Days, and the idea of being Raptured, as often happens, gripped the common imagination.

The Parson was a good speaker, a better scholar, but the man was running on short sleep, and it showed: he'd been pushing himself too hard for too long, doing his best to care for his flock; he'd run himself right next to personal bankruptcy too many times, caring for those who'd run into ill fortune, and the community knew there were times when he'd depleted his larder to care for others -- most recently, two house fires and a house lost to a runaway boulder, loosened with rainfall and with time: it was God's mercy alone that nobody was killed, though both husband-and-wife, and their three children, sat bolt upright at the sound of a God's-honest explosion, sat bolt upright in bed to see something fast moving and grey sail through, just missing the foot of their bed and taking the biggest part of their house with it.

Charity was part and parcel of Firelands, for all had known privation and loss: quietly caring for one another was practiced, though not universally -- there is good and bad in each living soul, that good and that bad is seen in the living body of a community, and yes, there were those tight fisted residents who grudgingly added a miserly coin to the plate on Sundays.

And as usual, it was those who'd lost the most in their lifetimes, that were freest with their sharing.

One other thing they shared, and that was the joy of laughter, and this was not manifest with public smiles or audible sounds of entertainment, save in rare moments: no, a rough people will have a rough humor, and when Sarah Lynne McKenna had an idea, and began to whisper her thought to her compatriots, the idea spread like fire in dry grass-stubble.

The choir assembled at a given hour, in the big round barn where Daciana, the circus trick rider who'd jumped ship from a failed circus passing through town, still rode Buttercup, her trick pony: the barn was far bigger than she needed, thanks to the Sheriff and his purse, and the choir gathered in ranks and in rows, as if they were standing in the three-pew choir loft behind the Altar and the Parson's podium.

Sarah stood before them: she was younger than most, but a natural leader:  she coached each individual singer, tilting her head a little and listening, coaxing a single, pure, sustained note -- only one note -- then at signal, with an encouraging smile --

"Now everyone, on my signal. We'll have only one chance to get this right."

She raised both hands, touching her fingertips together as if she held an invisible conductor's baton..

"Ready?"

She nodded, her hands swept down, back up, as if offering a pair of timid bird, their freedom to fly from her open palms: a single, harmonized note, beautiful to hear:  Sarah's palms raised a fraction, a fraction more, the volume increased a step, a step again --

She spun her hands, as if pulling a thread taught between her left thumb-and-forefinger, and her right --

The music stopped, suddenly, cleanly --

"Perfect!" Sarah declared, clapping with delight, her eyes shining with approval:  "again, please!"

Sarah was bouncing on her toes, her face was alight with happiness: with this encouragement, with her raised hands, the choir performed, again, a single note, and this time, Sarah thrust a finger to her right, where one of the Irish Brigade raised a trumpet and blew two summoning notes, held them as the choir held its single note:  the musical moment ended as cleanly as broken glass.

"Once more, please, I think this will work fine!"  Sarah exclaimed:  once more the raised hands, the beautifully harmonized sound of voices raised in glory, then the sharp, two-note summons, silence.

The next day, the choir filed into their pews behind the Altar and behind the Parson: their expressions were subdued, knowing:  the Irish Brigade sat in the main pews, in a group as they usually did, positioned to make a quick exit if need be, but attentive, listening, as the Parson welcomed them, as they continued their study of Scripture.

The Parson stood through the Sunday service, but he sat for this study; he had a little table he'd set beside his handmade pulpit.

The rest of the community had been given to understand there was a plot afoot, and the rest of the community came in with bundles concealed as best they could, bundles they secreted on the pew beside them, or behind them, or on their laps: the Parson, probably due to his overwhelming fatigue, nodded off partway through his presentation, his head sagging, then dropping.

Sarah slipped out of the choir pew, raised her hands for attention: she swung left, swung right, guaranteeing she had the eyes of the entire Church.

She stepped down, silent on felt-soled slippers she'd worn for the occasion.

She turned, signaled to the Choir, who began singing, very softly as they did before the Parson began his Bible study, a song chosen for its gentleness, its soothing nature, a song to help cover the sound of the evacuation.

Sarah catfooted to the first two rows of pews, held up a bundle of folded clothing: she motioned for them to rise, then turned and bent as if placing a folded stack of garments where they'd just been sitting: she then motioned them out, finger to her lips.

The grinning townsfolk placed these donations on the pews, filed out, silently, some chewing on their knuckles or pressing coat-sleeves or dress-sleeves to their lips to prevent any sounds of mirth or merriment from spoiling the surprise.

They walked carefully down the steps to ground level, then quickly swarmed to the sides of the church, looking in the windows, watching for what they suspected was about to happen: children were shushed, hoist on men's shoulders: there were whispered admonitions not to step on Esther's roses, but no other sounds were heard, save the stray "Ssh!" directed at the incautious.

The last row was just without the doors; the choir rose, carefully, slowly, moved with an exaggerated care from their station behind the rough-timber Altar, and down the aisle, still singing very softly: they drew back into strategic, hidden locations, where they would be out of the Parson's direct line of sight.

A grinning Irishman watched Sarah, in the center of the church, as she sidestepped between two pews:  she looked around, saw the many eyes were upon her.

She raised her hands, brought them down.

A single not filled their little whitewashed Church, the sound of a heavenly choir in praise: Sarah raised her hands, bringing up the volume, then she punched a hand at the Irishman.

At the sound of a trumpet, the Parson jumped like he'd been stung: startled, he failed to see Sarah duck down out of sight, failed to see the Choir members pull or twist or quickly kneel: is eyes found  the Scripture that described the Rapture, his ears still held the summoning note of the Trumpet shivering in the still air, and he looked around, trying to come to full awake, realizing that he was the only living soul there.

He was absolutely the only one left in the Church, with neatly folded bundles of clothing where he last remembered seeing his seated congregation.

 

Humor was a way of life, humor was a survival mechanism:  the Parson found himself red-faced with embarrassment as the congregation charged back into the Church, as they came laughing up to him and surrounded him, found himself suddenly buried in donations of clothing and other supplies for the families who'd been burned out and bouldered out of their homes; he found himself glad-handed, back-pounded, and surrounded by a laughing, delighted community, and he could not but laugh as well, for he'd just been gotten, and gotten good.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ENTRANCE, AND EXIT

 

Victoria crouched just a little, hands open and bladed: what she faced was intimidating, her grade-school-sized soul shrank a little, a voice in the back of her mind screamed “ARE YOU INSANE? RUN! RUN, YOU IDIOT!”

Victoria Keller stood, her jaw thrust out, crouched a little as pounding, steelshod hooves bore down upon her, as a hard-running horse promised to put footy-prints right up her middle if she stood there another two seconds –

Victoria glared, her face as serious as a pretty little girl in a pleated skirt and saddle shoes can look, then she uncoiled, her legs thrust hard against the earth --

Her hand clamped around as much shirtsleeve as she was able to snatch up in a tenth of a second; something clamped around her arm like a circumferential vice, she was hauled off her feet, wrenched mercilessly from the earth –

she fell, upwards and back –

she spread her legs, landed, seized a double handful of fleece lined denim vest –

Victoria Keller straddled the back of a fast moving stallion, her hands clutched up and locked into the rider’s vest.

Her face felt funny.

Victoria Keller, the youngest daughter of that pale eyed Sheriff with the iron grey mustache, realized her eyes were big and round, and her face was split into a grin, and that her stomach was only just catching up with being snatched off the earth from a dead-gallop pickup.

Victoria clung to her long tall Daddy, laughed as she pressed the side of her face against Linn’s back, delighting in the feel of a good horse under her, of a big strong Daddy in front of her, in the wind whistling past her bare knees, just before her just-returned stomach fell away on the mountain wind as they soared over a board fence and kept on a-goin’.

 

It was not at all unusual for the Keller young to arrive at school, horseback.

Victoria had some unavoidable interruptions that morning that caused her to miss the school bus – Michael told the driver she wouldn’t be coming, and the yellow people hauler rumbled on its way – when the Sheriff cantered up to the schoolhouse on a prancing, strutting, head-bobbing stallion, envious eyes watched as the long legged lawman kicked free of his stirrups, slid off, then reached up and brought his darlin’ daughter down:  he went down on one knee, hugged his little girl and kissed her on the cheek, rose as the bus she’d missed hissed to an air-braked stop and the doors swung open to release a stream of laughing, yelling, chattering children.

Victoria hadn’t been dressed for riding, she was dressed for school; that did not prevent her from thoroughly enjoying having made an Entrance.

 

Angela turned, smiling, handed her Daddy a tall, sleeved, paper cup of sippy-lidded coffee.

The two turned so their backs were to the coffee island out of a lifelong lawman’s habit: Linn learned it as a child from his pale eyed Mama, Angela learned it from her pale eyed Daddy: Linn sipped, swallowed, nodded.

“That was a good pickup with Victoria.”

“She enjoyed it.”

“I know. I saw her preening before she went into the schoolhouse.”

“Figured you were watching.”

“Didn’t see any sign of Dottie.”

“She’ll turn up sometime. When she does, we’ll nail her.”

Two uniformed officers raised their coffee, took a speculative swallow, lowered.

“Marnie used to ride to school. She preferred it.”

“I know. She still pays stable rent.”

Linn chuckled: Jacob and Marnie commonly rode to school, both grade school and high school.

“She used to,” Linn said quietly. “When old man Kyle died, I bought his properties. His stable and the ground it sits on belongs to me now.”

“Good.”

Two uniformed officers raised their coffee, swallowed, lowered.

Traffic was brisk into and out of the All-Night:  Linn and Angela slid out of the way so the rest of the general public could get coffee, Angela gave a new arrival, directions to the local bakery, Linn listened carefully to a young father who was somewhere between mad as hell and about to cry, because he’d been cheated out of a thousand dollars by some fellow who’d promised to build him a wheelchair ramp for his handicapped son, and hadn’t.

Angela knew something was serious when Linn turned and set down his coffee, when he pulled half a steno book from his hip pocket, flipped it open and quietly asked questions while his pen busied itself on the long, narrow page, and when Linn nodded, satisfied, shoved the split-longways notebook back into his back pocket and spoke quietly to the distressed young father, Angela was more than satisfied the Sheriff would have a hand in fixing the problem.

 Angela went over to a peck basket, angled up invitingly on the counter, pulled out an apple:  Linn reached in the basket beside it and selected a glowing-ripe tomato. They each laid a dollar on the counter, Linn winked at the cashier, picked up a couple salt packets from the basket by the plastic-wrapped deli sandwiches, tore the packets open by biting one end and tearing with pinched thumb-and-forefinger: he licked the tomato, sprinkled, took a bite, chewed happily: Angela reached up with a napkin, caught the dribble threatening to run off his chin, laughed a little as she did – partly at the fact that she was wiping the Sheriff’s chin, and partly because of Linn’s mumbled “Moom funkle,” which roughly translated to “Thank you very much” when translated from the original Mastication.

Marnie bit into her apple as they walked toward the front door:  Linn wiped his hands on a napkin, dunked the wadded-up napkin in the can by the front door as Angela split the rest of her apple with a folding lockback:  a quick wipe of the blade on her trousers, a click, the knife disappeared and two horses thrust their noses hopefully toward Angela’s approaching hands.

“You’re spoiling them, you know that,” Linn grinned, and Angela smiled:  “Getting in practice for my husband!”

“Got anyone in mind?”

Angela stopped, gathered her mare’s reins, looked very frankly at her long tall Daddy.

“You really like to cause me problems, don’t you?”

“How’s that?”

Angela was trying hard to look aggravated; Linn was trying just as hard to look innocent.

Neither one succeeded.

They both laughed, mounted.

“You,” Angela finally continued, “have set the bar so high I may never find a husband!”

“Whoa now,” Linn said, looking at his daughter, his deputy, his designated wing: “Could you run that a-past me at half speed?”
Angela glared at her father, then gave up, shook her head, smiled.

“Child Rearing 101,” she said. “Children learn far more by observation and by imitation than by didactic education.”

Linn nodded, slowly, his eyes never leaving hers.

“You did not teach your sons how to treat women, Daddy.”

Linn generally had a poker face: Angela saw the walls come up, the veils drop behind his eyes.

“No?”

“No,” Angela declared firmly, raising her hand and gesturing like she’d seen done in Tony’s barbershop, an Italian gesture of emphasis:  “You did not teach them how to treat a woman, you taught them how to treat” – the palm-up, curled-finger gesture again – “a Lady!”

“I … see,” Linn said slowly.

“And what did you teach me?”

Linn turned his head a little, as if to shake his head slightly, stopped.

“You’ll have to tell me, darlin’.”

Angela planted her knuckles on her thigh, sat very straight in the saddle.

“Daddy” – Linn knew this comment was very personal: they were in the public eye as law enforcement, yet Angela was not calling him “Sheriff”, she was calling him “Daddy” – “Daddy, you’ve taught me what to look for in a husband.”

Angela sidestepped her mare closer, until their stirrups nearly touched:  she reached over, gripped her Daddy’s hand the way a little girl will, even when she’s a grown woman.

“Daddy,” Angela said softly, “you have set the bar so high, showing me what a husband and father should be, I may never find a husband that measures up!”

“Sooo … if you become an old maid, it’s all my fault!”

“No, Daddy,” Angela sighed, fluttering her eyelashes dramatically, “if I become an old maid” – her voice became reedy, peevish – “I’ll wear my hair up in a walnut with a pencil stuck through it, I’ll wear mousy-grey dresses and I’ll be an old-maid schoolmarm, fit only to teach other people’s children!”

Linn had all he could take.

He’d genuinely reached his absolute limit.

His laugh started about his belt buckle, it rumbled around his gut, echoed in his chest, gathered steam as it roiled up his neck:  Sheriff Linn Keller, his hand gentle around his daughter’s grip, laughed, shook his head, chuckled, threw his head back, took a quick, deep breath, laughed again and looked at her with genuine affection.

“You look so much like your Mama,” he said quietly, “and thank you. I think that’s the nicest thing any daughter has ever said to me!”

Linn’s talkie chirped as the repeater kicked the frequency. “Firelands Actual, Firelands.”

“Firelands Actual, go.”

“Seven minute warning, county meeting.”

“In route,” he replied.

Two mounted badge packers turned their mounts, clattered noisily across the cement pavement of the All-Night: they dropped off the edge, climbed the trail on the other side of the little stream, disappeared into the woods.

Two women’s eyes followed the Sheriff’s shoulders as they disappeared into the brush; at least three young men’s gaze followed the attractive female deputy that rode with him, until she too disappeared, and four children with big eyes just admired the hell out of the fact that the pair was riding horses and that really looked like fun!

 

Two riders came off the mountain that afternoon, following a path that was ancient before the first red-bearded Vikings made landfall far to the East.

Two riders followed the natural contours of the land, along a thoroughfare chosen for ease of travel, the curve and grade working in harmony with the easiest route to walk.

They came out in the field above the schoolhouse, watched, waited: cars waited in file, school buses idled, doors open: Linn slid the pocket watch from his vest pocket, pressed the stem, flipped the hunter case open, smiled as he looked at his wife’s portrait skillfully painted on its inside.

Railroad watches were made without a case; Esther Keller, back when she’d been given the Z&W Railroad as a wedding present, had a special run of railroad watches made, with the hunter case: each one was engraved with Z&W RR in an ornate arc on the upper curve of the cover, a hand engraved rose at its center, and on the bottom arc, the name of the employee to whom the watch was presented.

Esther’s husband, that pale eyed old lawman with the iron grey mustache, had Esther’s portrait painted inside his watch’s spring loaded cover.

Angela saw the soft expression come across her Daddy’s face as he looked at his own wife’s portrait:  he watched the hand swing around, looked toward the schoolhouse, pressed the stem and eased the watch case closed, thumbed the watch back into his vest as the doors opened, as yelling, running, celebrating schoolchildren just plainly exploded out the doors toward the buses, toward the cars.

The explosion was short lived: the children, having expended this happy surge of emotion, fell into their assigned lines.

All but one.

A little girl in a pleated skirt and saddle shoes turned very deliberately away from her teacher’s summons, started running.

Linn leaned forward a little, his stallion lowering his head, swinging his ears forward.

Angela had the momentary impression of a cat, crouched, haunches rippling as it wound its springs up for the pounce –

“YAAAA!”

Linn leaned forward, heels locked in his stallion’s barrel: somewhere in the Appaloosa’s bloodline was the fiery blood of the legendary Cannonball, and Angela knew that the moment felt like being driven from the brazen throat of a field-gun like a cannonball, for she’d ridden her Daddy’s stallion and she’d reveled at the strength and the fire contained in his spotty hide.

Angela did not take long to consider this, because when her Daddy started to lean forward in the saddle, her mare started to quiver, because she felt Angela lean forward in her own hurricane deck, felt her rider’s legs tighten, then she, too, launched down the grassy hillside toward the running child and the Sheriff, on an intercept course.

Linn and Angela turned, a hard 180, two horses leaning hard as they did, cutting chunks out of the springtime sod, swinging around to follow a pursuit course after the swift-running child.

The little girl turned, crouched a little, then jumped.

Movement was stopped in front of the school; young eyes were envious as they saw Angela jump, saw her Daddy seize her, swing her up, heard her squeal of delight as she came up and back and down, as she landed and seized her Daddy’s vest, as two horses and their riders ran flat-out for the ancient mountain path once again.

Angela Keller followed her Daddy’s stallion as they charged uphill and around the knob, then took the left hand fork and headed for the back road that would come down and cross the highway, the path on the other side that would curl around and come in the back of their little ranch.

Angela smiled as her long tall Daddy reached up, pulled his little girl from her high seat, swung her down, but not before he tickled her nose with his muts-tache, which of course brought another freshet of happy giggles from the wiggly little girl-child.

That night, as the Keller young were bedding down, as Angela was discussing her day with Dana, Victoria came running barefoot from her bedroom to hug one, then the other, before running back in and rolling up in her blankets for the night:  Dana watched as Victoria turned herself into a blanket burrito, then turned to Angela and murmured, “She’ll be asleep in ten seconds!”

“She should,” Angela agreed. “She made a grand entrance and a grander exit!”

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

"STAND AT ATTENTION, SOLDIER!"

It was one week to the day since a pale eyed woman in three-inch heels and a tailored blue suit dress, swivel-hipped into the Firelands council meeting, took the Mayor by his Italian-silk tie, dragged him across the table and decked him, cuffed him, dragged him across the floor and shoved him into the Police Chief's startled arms and recited a litany of charges against the man, then slapped two warrants into the Chief's chest:  she turned, took three steps back toward the Council table, stopped, spun -- spun like a dancer, graceful, on the balls of her feet -- turned over her lapel to expose a six point star.

"Name's Keller," she snapped.  "Sheriff, Firelands County."

It was a week to the day from the night Willamina Keller, for her very first act as Sheriff, hauled open the bottle-and-chair-leg-scarred door of the Spring Inn, strode in with a double handful of riot gun, and drove a charge of 00 buck through the ceiling, which instantly froze a barfight in mid-air: a week to the day since she strode through the middle of astonished, staring battlers, shoving one and another aside as she did -- a week to the day that she laid unkind hands on the root cause of the barfight, slamming one woman face-first into the wall and giving the other (who was foolish enough to break a beer bottle and invite this interloper to take a taste) a good look at the muzzle of a laser sighted .45 automatic.

Sheriff Willamina Keller came into town like a Texas twister and established her authority quickly and unmistakably, and for their yearly parade, she chose not to ride in an open convertible, waving to the constituency as had done her predecessors.

She marched in the parade in her Marine Corps uniform, as part of the veteran's group.

Their Commander invited her to inspect the troops.

Colonel Willamina Keller, her uniform immaculate, stepped very close to the commander and said very quietly, "Are you sure you want me to do this?"

He nodded.

She nodded, stepped back, saluted: she stepped to the parade-ready ranks: they came to attention, and she walked silently along the first rank, then the second, then the third:  she nodded, came up before them, started with the last man on the end.

She gave him a very cold, very frank assessment, slowly, head to foot: she stopped, squared off with him, her face serious, then she reached up and very gently worked his necktie a little, tugged at his collar and said quietly, "My late husband could not tie a necktie to save his sorry backside. Thank you for caring enough to present a proper uniform appearance."

She spoke just loud enough so her words could be heard by the man beside him, the man behind.

Another:  again, the cold-eyed inspection, the frank appraisal, the quiet words:  "I've not seen that good a shine on a pair of boots in my years in the Corps.  Well done."

She stopped at the next to last man in the front rank, took his rifle, opened the bolt: here she showed her experience:  her moves were precise, exact, as if she'd done this many times before: she ran caressing fingertips down the length of the stock, turned her fingertips and looked very directly at them, as if she'd just white-gloved the rifle: she spun the rifle, looked at the veteran, down at the rifle:  she executed a flawless right-face while bringing the rifle up, she looked down the bore -- only then did anyone realize, the rifle's bolt was held by the handle between two fingers of her right hand -- the stock wobbled in a tiny little circle as she cast the long shaft of reflected light around the bore's circumference -- she brought the rifle down, reinserted the bolt without looking, held the trigger as she closed the bolt, handed it back.

"Damn fine rifle," she said, her voice hard, her face unsmiling:  she backed up a step, turned, marched to the center of the formation, stopped, turned, rejoined their waiting Commander.

Her about-face was flawless.

She raised her chin, she took a breath, her voice carried the ring and crack of command:

"JAY-SUS KEE-RIST, TWO LEFT HANDED SAINTS AND A BROKEN MIRROR! WHY COULDN'T I HAVE HAD SUCH MEN UNDER MY COMMAND! YOU LOOK DAMNED GOOD, EVERY ONE OF YOU!"

She turned to face the Commander, saluted.

"SIR! THE MEN ARE YOURS!"

The Commander returned her salute: at his quiet command, he and Willamina turned, faced the parade route.

"RIGHT SHOULDER, HAHMS!  FO-WARRR' MAHCH!"

 

"Mom, I look stupid," a six year old boy whined, restless in hand-sewn fatigues.

"You look fine," his mother murmured, tugging unnecessarily at his shoulders, the way a mother will: she kissed his cheek, which he rubbed off with the back of his hand and an "Awww, Maaaw!"

"Now remember how your Daddy taught you to handle your rifle. Just stand right here, now, here they come!"

A little boy with a wooden rifle and an impatient look sniffed, rubbed his nose, then came to attention like his Daddy taught him and held his little wooden rifle up in front of him.

"Mom, there's a woman with 'em!" he said, surprised.

He was more surprised at the woman's surprisingly loud command, "DETAAAAIL, HALT!"

The woman -- in a really good looking uniform -- turned, her face stern:  she marched over to the six year old boy in hand sewn fatigues and a little bitty pair of shined-up boots, holding a wooden rifle up in front of him.

His expression was uncertain -- something Willamina had seen on the faces of new recruits.

She looked him up, looked him down, stepped to the side, made it very clear with an exaggerated move of her head that YES I AM INSPECTING THIS SOLDIER.

She returned to her position in front of the little boy.

His mother stood behind him, biting her lip:  "I made ... his father was killed ..."

"MADAM ARE YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?" Willamina demanded loudly. "I HAVE NOT SEEN SUCH A PROPERLY PRESENTED SOLDIER IN A VERY LONG TIME!"

She squatted quickly, went carefully to one knee, took off her aviator sunglasses and hunkered just a little, to get on the little boy's eye level.

"Well done, soldier," she murmured:  she ran gentle fingertips across the name tape over his pocket.

"Is this your Daddy's name?" she asked softly.

The six year old boy nodded, his eyes big.

Willamina caressed his cheek with the backs of motherly fingers, smiled just a little.

"He'd be pretty damned proud of you, son.  I know I am."

Willamina carefully, gently, slid her sunglasses onto his face, then she rose.

"DETAIL!" she called.  "RIIIIGHT FACE!"

The veterans behind her executed a proper right-face.

"PRESEENT HAHMS!"

A little boy in a hand sewn set of fatigues, a little boy with his dead Daddy's name tape sewn over his own fatigue pocket, received his first salute as he stood stiffly behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

"AAWDUHHH HAHMS!"

Willamina lowered her hand, turned, marched back to her position beside the Commander.

"DEEETAIL!  FOWARRRD MAHCH!"

 

That night, a tired little boy never stirred as his bedroom door opened.

His Mama came in, picked up the fatigues she'd sewn for him:  she ran gentle fingertips over the name tape, bit her bottom lip as she did, then she draped it over the back of a chair, turned to smile at her sleeping son.

She carefully, gently, gripped the sunglasses, eased them off his sleeping face, placed them on his bedside desk.

Someone told her the woman in the parade was their new Sheriff.

The young mother didn't care who she was.

She'd gone out of her way to speak to her child, and after the parade, she'd gone to the graveyard and stood at the foot of a new grave for several minutes, silent, unmoving, then she'd raised her hand in salute before leaving.

Years after this, a tall, lean young Marine came into the Sheriff's office and spoke quietly to the pale eyed man in charge.

He'd looked at the portraits on the wall and he thrust his chin at one, and spoke of a pale eyed woman who stopped a parade so she could come over and talk to him, and him just a little boy, and she's the reason he became a Marine -- her, and that one moment, when she took the sunglasses off her face and put them on his.

Sheriff Linn Keller grinned and shook the young man's hand and said yes, that sounds just like my Mama, and the two of them adjourned to the Silver Jewel Saloon, where an old man with pale eyes shared breakfast with a young man due to be shipped overseas, a handsome young Marine who'd come into town a day before his family expected him, a young man who remembered what it was to be a child, restless and impatient before the yearly parade.

 

Edited February 17 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

STUPID RIDER

Morning briefing, and Sheriff Linn Keller stood up, coffee in his off hand, his other hooked in his gunbelt.

“Criminals,” he said, “are generally not the brightest knife in the chandelier.”

He frowned, looked at his mug of coffee, took a long drink.

“Like I was saying, they’re not the brightest bulb in the kitchen drawer.”

He frowned again, drank the rest of the mug, looked into its empty depths.

“Empty,” he grunted. “Must be a hole in it.”

He set his mug down, looked at the off-going shift and the on-coming shift, all seated in the conference room for shift-change briefing.

“Back when Old Pale Eyes was Sheriff, a fellow named Cooperrider held up the general store over in Carbon Hill. The proprietor’s wife took a shot at him with a two-barrel Derringer and that spooked him, so he ran out of the store and saw he hadn’t tied his green-broke horse off well enough and it was pulled loose and gone.

“She’d already shot at him once and he wanted to get the hell out of town before she got that little pistol cocked again, so he committed Grand Theft Horseback and stole the next horse at the hitch rail and lit out at a full panic gallop.

"Damn fool didn't realize the horse was wallin' his eyes and pullin' away from the gunshot and not from a stranger grabbin' his reins. He was stealin' a gunshy horse and didn't know it.

“Telegraph was coming into use about then, and since he was headed this-a-way, why, good old Law and Order Harry Macfarland fired a telegram to Firelands, and about the time Cooperrider came over the rise into town, Old Pale Eyes was standin’ there in the middle of the road with a two pipe shoot gun acrost his elbow.

“Cooperrider fetched out his pistol and took a shot.

“Now you’ll recall I said the criminal element isn’t hittin’ on all cylinders and he surely wasn’t.

“Not only did he steal a horse – a hangin’ offense right there -- he cut loose with a .38-40 right over top that gunshy horse’s ears and it just plain come unglued without losin’ any speed a’tall, and Cooperrider found himself sailin’ through the air with the greatest of class, and once he quit a-rollin’, why, he saw them twin bores lookin’ very seriously at the end of his schnozz and he allowed as he’d ought to give up, which Old Pale Eyes allowed was a fine idea, he’d let him.

“Old Pale Eyes walked him into town and locked him up and I don’t know if anyone ever did find that gunshy horse, but I do know by the time His Honor swung the gavel and allowed as the man would spend some time enjoyin’ prison cookin’, he’d already gotten his prison nickname.”

Linn looked at his coffee mug as if hoping it had magically refilled itself; it hadn’t, so he looked up and concluded.

“Stupidrider.”

He picked up his empty mug, turned it over, smacked its bottom: pale eyes followed something nonexistent as it fell from the cup, floated to the floor and was stepped on: the Sheriff replaced the offending implement on the table.

“Spontaneous utterance is admissible in a court of law, so if the criminal wants to talk, we let ‘em. If they’re stupid enough to dig their grave with their words, be smart enough to hand ‘em the shovel.”

He looked around. “Off-going shift, good work last night. Oncoming shift, you’ve got new rubber and new brakes on your cruisers. Questions?”

Linn looked around, waited, nodded.

“Dismissed.”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

INSURANCE

Jacob Keller kicked loose of the stirrups, came out of the saddle, hit the ground: he seized his wild rag, pulled viciously -- horsemen tied an insurance knot so if their silk neckerchief was caught by a stay branch or seized from behind by hostile hands, it would slip through the knot and not strangle them, or break their neck -- he spun it, wrapped it around a tall boy's arm, high up.

"Reach me that kindlin' stick yonder," he said, thrusting with his chin, and a smaller boy, big-eyed and scared, did what came natural: he did what an elder told him.

"Hold really still, now," Jacob said softly. "Do not so much as wiggle your fingers."  He wrapped the wild rag, making sure the band was broad across the inside of the upper arm, he inserted the kindling stick and twisted, once, not enough to shut anything off.

"What's that for?" the smaller boy asked -- he was scared, but he was curious, and Jacob counted that a good thing, for if he was curious, his mind was not froze up with fear, and he could learn.

"Insurance," Jacob grunted.

He looked at the long slender glass shard sticking out of the inside of the arm, he slipped exploring fingers under the arm -- it hadn't come clear through -- he thought for a moment.

The shard was long, slim, curved a little, as if from a broken bottle: there was some bleeding and it only just happened as Jacob rode up, and 'twas happen-stance that Jacob showed up when he did.

The little brother reached, quickly, seized the shining glassy dagger impaled into the inside of his big brother's forearm --

"DON'T --"

Blood squirted, bright and spectacular, and Jacob twisted the kindling stick: the blood shut off and Jacob tied off the stick.

"This'll hold til I get you in to Doc," he muttered. "I'm leavin' that uncovered. I don't know if there's more glass in there and I don't want to press down with a bandage and cut you up inside."

Jacob looked at the smaller boy.  "Where's your folks?"

"Ma's off tendin' the neighbor woman, she's havin' a baby an' Pa he's helpin' the neighbor get in his cows."

"We're headin' for Doc Greenlees in town. I'll fetch your brother back oncet he's done."

"But Pa ain't got no money!" the little boy protested.

"Your lucky day," Jacob grunted, picking up the injured child as Apple-horse came head-bobbing over. "Today's payday and I'm buyin'."

It was awkward but Jacob got into the saddle with a long legged, shivering child in his arms: he turned Apple-horse toward town and set out at a spanking trot.

 

Orrin McVey looked up at the thin, distant sound of a child's quavering shout.

They'd just got the cattle into the new graze and set the fence shut, he was about wore out and personally he'd have liked to taken a singletree to a few of them-there stubborn hard headed contrary don't listen to him a'tall cattle, but by God! they got 'em in there, and them only two men and a herdin' dog that was worth any two men itself!

He straightened, leaned against a fencepost, shaded his eyes, just as his wife called from the porch of his neighbor's solid-built cabin.

"Orrin," she called, looking around:  Orrin raised an arm to show he saw her, he heard her.

Mrs. McVey looked around, searching for something, or someone -- Orrin's stomach tightened down some -- but his wife didn't look distressed -- he looked over to his neighbor, waved his hat, whistled.

His neighbor raised an arm, started crossing the field toward him with long, powerful strides, the vigorous gait of a man used to hard work, a man who reveled in the strength of the body God Almighty give him.

Orrin raised his arm again, lowered it to point to the cabin.

His neighbor leaned forward into a run.

Orrin turned, grinning, then turned a little more and his grin fell away.

His youngest boy -- he was no more'n five -- was running toward him, stumbling a little, and Orrin knew something was wrong, bad wrong.

Orrin swung a leg over the fence, then the other leg, he took off a-runnin' toward his youngest boy.

 

Mrs. McVey was smiling as a running man charged the back porch, as he stopped, as he leaned over a little to catch his wind: he straightened, his expression anxious.

Mrs. McVey stepped off the porch, took his arm and patted his chest like his Mama used to: she tilted her head a little, smiling.

"Hello, Father," she said gently. "Your son would like to make your acquaintance."

The man blinked, grinned.

"My ... son?" He took a few more long breaths.  "My wife?"

"Is fine. We're getting her presentable now."

She steered him to a handy keg, set on the porch for that purpose earlier that day:  he eased down, staring sightlessly at the far mountains, the expression of a man who'd just been clobbered with a happy stick.

"I have a son," he said, his voice quiet, wondering.

"I think your wife may have had something to do with it," Mrs. McVey smiled.

He rose as another neighbor woman came to the door, motioned:  Mrs. McVey slipped a hand under his arm, pulled.

"Up with you now," she said, "wash your face and comb your hair before you go in. You want to make a good first impression on your firstborn!"

 

Jacob tugged at the bell-pull, twice: he swung down, carefully, the boy still in his arms.

He shoved open the door, strode across the waiting room, used the side of his boot-sole to drum a summons on the inner door.

Nurse Susan pulled the door open, frowning, until she saw Jacob held a child with a bloodied arm and a tourniquet around his upper arm.

 

Orrin McVey hugged his youngest, a five year old towhead, who was panting, shaking, about done in: he'd run just over a mile and a half in a blind panic and he just honestly collapsed as his Pa knelt and opened his arms to him.

Orrin picked his boy up, carried him back to the neighbor's cabin, letting his son get his wind, let his son get the comfort he needed:  something scared the boy bad and Orrin remembered being scared like that, and how his Pa caught him up and held him until he'd soaked up enough reassurance from being held and knowing he was safe, to string two words together so they made sense.

Orrin's wife looked up as he husband opened the cabin door:  she frowned, then shot a look to the other women, turned, walked quickly to her husband.

"It's Luke," Orrin said. 

 

That evening, over a simple supper, a pale eyed Deputy and a boy with a bandaged arm and the rest of his family, bowed their heads as the father talked to his plate: after the meal, he and the young Deputy stepped out on the front porch and spoke quietly, as men will in such times.

"Doc probed the wound," Jacob said, "to make sure there was no more glass in it. There was and he got it out. He said to keep it clean and watch for infection and if it swells up or gets hot and red and especially if it starts leakin' corruption, fetch him back and he'll take care of it so it don't get the gangrene."

The father nodded; he considered, then asked quietly, "How much do I owe Doc?"

Jacob smiled, just a little, looked frankly at the man.

"Sir, your youngest son was distressed that he had not a cent to pay toward the bill, and I have a younger brother that gets distressed like that, so I told him today's payday, I'd take care of the bill."

"It's you I owe, then."

"Wellsir, let me sharpen my pencil and figure this'n out," Jacob said, raising his eyes to the underside of the porch roof and rubbing his beardless chin thoughtfully.  "If we add Doc's fee, transportation and three or four other long words, why, I reckon a good square meal will take care of it."

Jacob stuck out his hand and they shook.

"I was taken care of when I was hurt, and that's the best meal I've had in quite some time."

 

 

Edited February 18 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ANOTHER MAN'S SON

Jacob Keller gathered himself and launched at the other young man.

Jacob had something the other did not:  absolute, raw, blazing fury, a raw, animal, unforgiving, deadly aura that crackled around him, that shot ahead of him, that seized his opponent's heart and turned it to water.

Each had a knife: Jacob was publicly backhanded and accused of tryin' to take his accuser's girl: Jacob's reply was instant -- he backhanded in reply, hard, snapping his challenger's head around and bringing blood from lips mashed against yellowed teeth.

His challenger did not wear a gun, but he did wear a knife: honed steel slipped from hand-sewn sheath, Jacob crouched slightly, drew his own: he held the knife up, spun it in his fingers, stopped: the blade was held like an icepick, laid back against his wrist, edge out.

The world held its breath, until Jacob detonated into a flat-out charge.

The challenger was about his age, blond haired, taller by half a head, lean as were most young men of the era: he'd have Jacob by maybe a hand's-breadth in reach, but the advantage was negated by Jacob's charge: he stiff-armed the out-thrust blade, drove his fist hard into the exposed gut: as was his habit, his knuckles rotated to the vertical, his honed blade pressed through belt leather: Jacob whirled, a move he'd practiced ten thousand times -- fast, like a short, squatty top -- he spun, hooked his heel behind the other's knee.

Jacob was on top of him, his boot on the other's wrist:  he stood a-straddle of the flaxen-haired accuser, and Jacob still had his knife.

"Now," Jacob said quietly.  "Suppose you tell me about this girl I'm supposed to be stealin'."

A woman's voice quavered, "Alan?" -- then, louder, "Allen!" -- Jacob turned as a young woman ran toward him.

He let her see his blade.

"Is that her?" he asked.

Allen was trying hard to get some wind into his shocked lungs:  his face was twisted, it felt like the noon freight just drove him barely south of his ribs -- he reached fearfully for his middle, as if exploring to see if his guts were hangin' out yet.

The young woman ran at Jacob, screaming, her claws out, and he thrust at her, hard, caught her in the belly.

She folded with a wide-eyed grunt, fell back, clutching her middle.

Jacob raised his blade: it was still laid back against his wrist, clean, unbloodied.

"You could be dead now," he said quietly. "Now suppose you tell this fellow who's been shinin' up to you."

Jacob stepped back, removed his boot from the entrapped wrist: he bent, snatched up the other blade, stepped back.

"I reckon you two ought to do some talkin'," he said quietly, as the bent-over, gasping girl removed her hands, looked at them with wide and wondering eyes, as if astonished there was no blood.

Jacob slid his knife back into its hidden sheath, casually tossed the other blade in the nearby horse trough.

"Free advice, mister," he said quietly. "Dig your own grave first before you challenge another man to a duel."

 

That evening, after supper, Linn and Jacob withdrew to Linn's study.

Linn closed the door, went to the sideboard, poured two brandies, handed one to his son.

"You could've killed him, you know," Linn said without preamble.

"I know that, sir."

"The law would have sided with you."

"It might not, sir. His Honor has an antipathy toward dueling, especially on a public street."

Linn raised an eyebrow; Jacob grinned.

"Like that fancy word?" he asked. "Got it off Sarah. Cost me sixbits and a paper of pins."

Jacob saw amusement tighten the corners of his father's eyes.

Jacob swirled his brandy, untasted, frowned into its amber depths.

"Sir," he said slowly, "I saw how you grieved when Joseph died."

He looked up at his father.

"That fellow was younger than me."

Linn nodded slowly, a single incline of his head: I hear you, the movement said, say on.

"Sir, he's young and he was stupid to do that, but he's another man's son. Likely I shamed him there on the street, but he's alive to complain about it, and his Pa won't have to bury his own boy."

Jacob looked closely at his father, at the older man's discomfiture: Linn turned, walked slowly to the window, his brandy forgotten in his hand.

Jacob waited.

He'd seen this before.

His Pa carried ghosts, he knew, and one of 'em just walked up and said howdy to the man.

Jacob waited.

Linn finally took a long breath, spoke without turning.

"I made that same choice, once," he said.

Jacob nodded.

"I've no idea what the offense was. Some fellow backhanded me and I belted him right back. He fetched out a set of dueling pistols and allowed as we'd settle it.

"There were witnesses and he had a head of steam up and I knew if I tried to back out he'd cry me a coward and then I'd have to kill him, so we had the witnesses come up close and watch as the two pistols were both loaded, as they were both primed, as they were set on the table and we tossed a coin to see who picked first.

"He did.

"We paced by the count, we turned, we both fired, and we both missed."

Jacob nodded: he, too, had forgotten the brandy he held.

"We each fetched out our knives.

"I reckon he expected the two of us to walk up to one another and cut each other to gentlemanly ribbons, but when it comes to knives, ain't no such thing."

Jacob remembered the feel of his own knife's checkered rock-maple handle as he crouched and prepared to charge his obviously inexperienced opponent.

"I let out a roar and I charged him, I drove into him and laid into him with my fists.

"Whatever he'd accused me of was not worth a man's life and I didn't want to kill him, I hit into him hard enough he lost his knife so I threw mine and I give him just the worst beatin' he'd ever had in his entire life, and when I was done I picked him up off the ground and swung him overhead and threw him down face first into the dirt.

"Everyone was drawed back and big-eyed and I glared round about and then I taken up them dueling pistols, I set 'em back in their box and closed the lid and allowed as I was not going to kill a man over something that petty, and I left."

Jacob remembered his brandy:  he tilted it up and took a swig, and so did his father.

Linn looked out the window again, then he turned and set down his brandy snifter.

He opened his desk, took out a key, opened a hidden door on the side of his desk and pulled out a wooden case.

He set it on the table beside his brandy snifter, swung the latch and opened the lid.

Jacob paced slowly over and regarded the matched pair of flintlock dueling pistols.

Father and son looked at one another.

"A man decides, sometimes, who lives and who dies," Linn said quietly. "The choice he makes is not to be questioned."

Linn tilted the snifter, drank, set the empty brandy balloon on a hand crocheted doily.

"I've watched men grieve their sons, too," he said quietly. "If I can give a father back his son, I'd rather do that."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 18 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103