SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE MARE

Hand forged steel whispered intimate secrets to a whet stone.

Strong, callused hands caressed the honed edge across the bellied out, fine grained stone.

Thin, pale scars traced their histories across tanned skin, like half-understood script on an ancient palimpsest. 

Pale eyes considered the edge, a hard palm wiped grey dust from the blade.

That's done.

What now?

A pale eyed lawman's eyes wandered across the inside of the solid built barn.

He'd attacked cleaning the stalls like a personal enemy.

He'd scraped, stacked, he'd dollied out second hand horse feed in the Irish buggy, dumped it on the manure pile: he'd scraped the stone flags again -- 'twas a time like this when he laid stone in his stalls -- he threw down fresh straw, spread it out even, he'd stopped to shove his face down into the horse trough, he'd thrown his head back as he came out of the water, blowing and snorting, he'd dashed the water from his eyes and looked at the long and solemn nose of one of his mares, at her dark eyes and dark eyelashes.

Pale eyes and dark eyes regarded one another for a long moment, until the Sheriff caressed her under her jaw, whispered to her, until she laid  her head against his front, until he laughed quietly and pulled out a plug of molasses twist tobacker and shaved off a couple thick curls of good honest bribery.

He slid his knife back into its sheath as she rubber lipped the treat from his callused palm.

"You should run for office, y'know," he said quietly. "You bribe as well as any politician."

Linn leaned his forehead against his mare's neck, his arm over her mane: it was evident the horse enjoyed the company of the human, and a green-eyed wife, watching silently from the doorway, clasped her hands tightly together as she saw her husband, the strongest man she knew, thought himself alone and allowed himself to draw comfort from a horse.

Esther bit her bottom lip: she knew how much her husband hated his temper, how much his own rage tortured him: she turned, intending to withdraw silently, but the mare's ears swung, the mare's head came up, her husband turned, quickly, as alert a creature as the mountain-bred mare.

His knees straightened, his arm extended:  "My dear," he said, his voice gentle.

Esther glided across the hand-laid, stone-flagged floor, littered with straw, but otherwise clean -- she laid her gloved hand on her husband's upraised palm.

Linn turned her, she pirouetted on the balls of her feet: Linn's arm went around her waist, his other hand holding hers, extended: husband and wife waltzed, there in the big, solid built barn: Esther's head was back, and to the side, her eyes closed, and a pale eyed Sheriff's heart swelled to see a memory gentle his wife's face.

A long-nosed mare with dark eyes and dark eyelashes watched solemnly as a herd stallion nibbled at his willing mare's neck.

 

Edited May 7 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE REVEREND DOCTOR GILEAD KELLER

 

The Reverend Linn Keller was cousin to that pale eyed Sheriff up in Firelands.

The Reverend Linn Keller had a church and an orphanage and just shy of a dozen children.

The Reverend Linn Keller was married to a Godly and motherly woman who took on her husband's mission as her own.

The Reverend Linn Keller was just as happy as if he had good sense.

Somehow -- and he admitted he never really understood how -- he managed to instill in the orphaned young, good values and honesty; their orphanage became a de facto schoolhouse, the schoolmarm was an orphan herself, and well knew what it was to have nobody else in the entire world.

Miss Deborah, as she was known, stood in silent, wide eyed delight as Linn brought her into the next room and showed her the stack of McGuffey's Eclectic Readers.

"The latest edition," he said quietly, and Miss Deborah gave a little squeak and laid her hands on two of the stacks.

"How --" she whispered, then she turned -- "I thought --"

"I thought so too," the Parson said quietly. "It seems we have a guest."

A dignified older man came in, a man with a professorish air and a set of pince-nez forgotten on his sunburnt nose.

"Miss Deborah, I presume," he said in a gentle voice, extending his hand.

Miss Deborah took it awkwardly.

"Our schoolteacher, Miss Deborah," the Reverend said formally, then:  "This is the Reverend Doctor Gilead Keller. He is my famous cousin's son."

"I've been serving back East for years," Reverend Gilead said quietly. "I was foolish enough not to come back out until my father was on his deathbed."

"I am so sorry," Miss Deborah said, and the Reverend Doctor saw a genuine regret in the young woman's eyes.

"The Reverend Doctor brought us these treasures," Reverend Linn said, and she heard the smile in his voice: "he also brought slates and chalks, he brought lesson-books and paper, and when he heard that you play piano, he arranged to have one brought in. It should arrive in a few days, it'll have to be freighted in from the railhead."

"A piano!" Miss Deborah said uncertainly. "It's been so long --"

"My dear."

The Reverend Doctor gave her a wise look over his nose-hugging spectacles.

"Whatever skill you have, is leagues and miles beyond mine!"

His words were so doleful, his expression so sorrowful, that Miss Deborah could but laugh, and she turned the most remarkable shade of high pink the Reverend Doctor had ever seen.

 

Jacob Keller stood and stared at his father's tombstone.

It honestly hurt to look at the polished quartz monument.

It hurt to think his father, a man he loved and respected, was dead, and sleeping beside him, the only true mother he really remembered, and as he usually did, he hid his feelings behind a carefully cultivated poker face.

He stood beside his brother, silence growing long between the two.

"You nearly died," Jacob said.

Gilead nodded. "Yes."

"Angela and the White Sisters went East to be with you."

"Yes."

"She wouldn't say much ... other than you changed your studies."

"Yes."

"I know Pa wanted you to have a good education."

"I did."

"I know."

Silence, again: distant sound of industry, a blacksmith's hammer, the barking four-count chant of a steam locomotive's labor.

"Thank you for having that faith in me."

"You're my brother," Jacob shrugged, as if that explained everything.

"When I had surplus," the Reverend Doctor said, "I considered ... I could help others temporarily, or I could invest and help more, later, so I invested."

Jacob looked at his brother.

"I've been able to supply the Stone Creek orphanage with some necessities."

Jacob nodded.  "Thank you."

"What can you tell me about their schoolmarm?"
Jacob frowned, considered, looked with puzzlement at his brother.

"They have a schoolmarm?"

 

A child's frightened shout:  "No! I don't wanna!"

Young legs struggled to run to safety, run to the Reverend, just as a stranger drove up to the orphanage in a rented buggy.

 A man seized the struggling boy by the back of his coat, cuffed him across the face:  "Damn you, boy, I'm buying you, now shut up!"

Something fast moving, pale eyed and wearing a black suit, seized the man's nose in a hard pinch grip, pulled: enraged, surprised, he let go of the screaming child and swung a fist at this interfering interloper.

The Reverend Doctor Gilead Keller smacked the roundhouse up and out of the way and drove a punch into the man's wind, doubling him over: he brought up a knee, hitting him again in the same place, bringing the bully's boots off the ground: he seized collar and crotch and spun him, throwing him into what appeared to be a hired man, coming in to defend his employer.

The metallic sound of a Winchester rifle coming into battery did nothing to halt the hostilities.

The Reverend Doctor Gilead Keller's kick doubled the hired man up, knocked him back on his backside, apparently out of the fight: the party of the first part, who wished to continue hostilities, shook his head to clear his vision, but too late: cupped hands SLAMMED against his ears and detonated an absolute SUNBALL of utter AGONY, destroying his sense of balance: his hands went to his ears, his eyes were screwed shut against the pain, and he had no defense at all to the hard swung punch into his wind yet again.

He went down hard.

Gilead looked back at his uncle Linn, standing in the orphanage doorway with a rifle at port arms.

Gilead reached down, one-handed, seized the hired man's shirt front, twisted: he hauled the man off the ground -- scuffed and dusty boots were a hand's-breadth from the packed dirt -- and Gilead said quietly, "Do you really want to work for a boss who just got beat to hell by an Eastern preacher?"

He set the hired man down, looked at the groaning man, still holding his ears.

"Get him home. He's not welcome here."

Gilead waited until they were both ahorse, until one man, bent over and gripping the saddlehorn with both hands, was led away by his hired man on another horse -- then he squatted, took a scared orphan boy by the shoulders.

"Are you hurt, son?" he asked gently.

The boy shook his head.

Gilead pulled him in, hugged him, tight, then released him: he rose, took the lad by the hand, walked up to where Reverend Linn stood in the doorway with his Winchester across his arm.

Linn grinned.

"You are your father's son," he laughed, and Gilead laughed with him.

"I'm glad you were backin' me."

"We've had their kind before. They think we sell orphaned children. They want slaves, is what they want."

Gilead's hands closed into fists.

"I saw that back East."

"That's why you came out here."

"Yeah," Gilead said shortly. "That's why I came out."

"You're welcome to stay with us."

The Reverend Doctor Gilead Keller considered this.

"I would like that," he admitted, then cocked an eye to his pale eyed Uncle.

"I heard something about Stone Creek, some years back. I think it had to do with a particular preacher carrying a brace of Smith & Wessons and making good use of 'em."

An attractive younger woman -- the resident schoolmarm, matter of fact -- cleared her throat.

"If you two would care to wash up," she said, "the table is being set, and we'll have to have a qualified individual say grace."

She turned and walked away, the way a woman will when she knows a man is watching.

She was right.

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE TOUCH

Which city it was, doesn’t really matter.

It was European, it was old, it was crowded, it was summer.

An old man, hunched over a little, was being wheeled slowly over the time-smoothed cobblestones.

He’d walked these cobbles since childhood; he’d run here, he’d played here, he’d shouted happily to hear his voice echo from the buildings, and he’d walked here with a beautiful young woman who looked at him with bright and adoring eyes.

Long ago … a very long time ago.

Now?

Now … now he was an old man, with a bad heart, who wished to see this favorite place, perhaps for the last time.

A clutch of white nuns flowed through the crowd – maybe a half dozen of them – clergy were not at all unknown here, and when nuns of any of the several Orders were seen, invariably they were (at the very least) in pairs.

That six were seen, flowing in single file, faces veiled, hands modestly hidden in their sleeves, provoked neither attention, nor comment.

As often happens in such settings, a cellist began playing in the square: another came up beside the first, then violins, then an oboe and two French horns.

Music filled the summer air.

The crowd formed a semicircle around them, delighting in this spontaneous entertainment.

All but an old man in a wheelchair.

He grimaced as he did something with his hearing aids; he vainly cupped a hand behind one ear; finally he sagged, a defeated look on his face.

Six white nuns moved in behind him, arranged in a white arc.

One’s hands slipped from her sleeves, her fingertips reached out, touched the man’s stubbled scalp behind his ears, then pressed.

Everyone’s attention was on the music, on the musicians.

No one noticed an old man’s eyes widen.

None could hear aught but music – Bach, it was, and beautifully played.

A nun’s fingers pressed a little tighter, but it was not necessary.

He did not dare move.

He could hear again.

The silent nuns stood, still, unmoving, their eyes closed behind their white veils: their heads were tilted back a little as the music flowed through them, as it sang joy in their hearts, and in the hearts of everyone there.

An old man in a wheelchair, slumped with age and with fatigue, an old man filled with memories of this square, of this city, an old man remembered what it was to hold a beautiful woman’s hand, and hear music played by live musicians, to hear the music flow through them both, to thrill their very souls.

A young woman’s hands withdrew from an old man’s head, slipped back into her sleeves, and a half dozen nuns, all in white, with veiled white faces, flowed again, in single file, through the crowd.

It was several minutes before anyone noticed the old man, bent with age and with years, was dead.

 

Six White Sisters, in single file, turned down an alley and disappeared.

Six Valkyries stripped quickly out of their white robes and veils: they wore their trademark black skinsuits, though they were letting their hair grow out again.

They turned to one of their number.

No words were needed.

Their minds were united, in those beautiful moments when they helped an old man hear again, and he once again heard live musicians in the square that he loved.

He heard them with six sets of ears, in the most glorious, absolutely clear and flawless stereo, that he’d ever known in his entire life.

He took the memory of that gift, of that beauty, of that music, into Eternity with him.

Six Valkyries shared a knowing smile, turned, filed through an Iris, and a narrow alley in a European city was suddenly very empty.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IT DOES CONCERN ME

Two men stood between the railroad tracks and the edge of the depot platform.

Smoke thinned and disappeared quickly in the high mountain air, in the bright, high-altitude sunshine: the last car with its glass-lens marker lights, not lit in the daytime, pulled steadily away from Firelands.

Only one passenger got off.

Only one man was there to meet him.

Two men sized one another up.

Each was at a corner of the platform, separated by its length: each one squared off to face the other, each planted his boots, and each one waited to see what the other was ready to do.

The stranger was relaxed, and so was the man he faced, and watchful eyes saw one or the other of them and knew there was about to be more trouble than a man could possibly enjoy.

"I ain't here for you."

His voice was not terribly loud, but it carried well.

The other man's pale eyes were calm beneath the black brim of his brushed Stetson.

"I'm here for you."

"You ain't him."

"No."

"This does not concern you. Step aside."

"It does concern me," came the carefully-framed reply. "You want him that bad?"

A nod.

Two men waited, their hands almost flat on their bellies, each gauging how willing the other was to die.

Nobody was really sure who drew first, for nobody could see both men at the same time: all anyone knew was that Jacob Keller fired his left hand Colt Peacemaker, one time.

The stranger's shot was almost as fast.

His shot hit the gravelly ground between them.

Jacob's cheek stung where a sharp spall cut it.

He stood for a moment, waited, watched: the stranger's strength ran out of him like someone pulled a cork out of his boot heel and drained it out like water.

Jacob Keller watched as the man's knees buckled of a sudden and he went face first to the hard ground.

Jacob stood, watched; his eyes were for the man on the ground, but his fingers were for his revolver: an empty round went into his coat pocket, a loaded round went in its place, the hammer's nose went down into an empty chamber, and he holstered.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller frowned as he read the note.

He knew the man who was looking for him.

He knew why.

He knew he'd be coming in town with full intent to kill him.

Linn knew the man well enough to feel confident nobody else was at risk, that this would be a contest between himself and this one man.

His son Jacob watched as Linn's fists tightened, as his father's eyes closed, as he took a long, calming breath, as he pushed his fists down hard on his desk top.

Jacob already knew what the note said.

He'd written it himself.

The original note had the man coming in a-horse, from Carbon Hill.

Jacob was a fair hand with imitating someone else's script.

He re-wrote the note.

His father was on the other end of town, waiting for a horseman.

Jacob saw his father, grimacing in his sleep, tormented by demons rooted deep in his soul thanks to that damned War: he'd watched as his father came out of a sound sleep, swinging an ax or a broken musket, sensible only to his own nightmare-fevered fists.

Jacob Keller saw what rage and grief and sorrow and slaughter did to his father.

If it was within his power, he would spare his father anything of the kind, and so it was that Jacob Keller, on his fifteenth birthday, waited at the depot for a man who was coming into town to kill his father on a matter of honor.

Jacob did not give a good damn about someone's imagined honor.

All he cared about was sparing his father yet another nightmare.

Jacob Keller paced over to the dead man, turned him over, studied his features, frowned.

He opened the dead man's coat, glanced at the dark hole where a shirt button used to be: he reached into a pocket, pulled out a thick wallet.

It contained a healthy sheaf of Yankee greenbacks, and a note:

Kill that pale-eyed old man and I'll double this.

It was signed.

Jacob slid the thick wallet into his own inside coat pocket, waited as dress material rustled beside him, as his half-sister crouched beside him.

"Sarah," he said quietly, "do you know this name?"

Sarah read the note, nodded.

"I've met him."

"He sent this man to kill Pa."

Sarah's smile was tight, then as her lips parted, it became positively wolfish, very much at odds with her pretty face.

"I know where to find him, and I know what he likes to drink."

A pretty young woman in a fashionable gown, and a lean young man in a tailored black suit, rose.

Jacob looked around.

"Reckon I'll have Shorty bring the dead wagon around. You need anything?"

"I have everything I need," Sarah said quietly. "I'll let you know when the deed is done."

 

The Sheriff came around the depot platform, frowning as the body was picked up, dropped without ceremony into a rough box.

"Do you know him, sir?" Jacob asked.

Linn studied the dead man's features, shook his head.

"No, Jacob, I genuinely don't."

He looked at his son.

"You're bleedin'."

"He shot the ground between us, sir."

"And you shot him."

Jacob shrugged.  

"Seemed reasonable, sir."

Linn nodded, gripped his son's shoulder.

"Jacob," he said, his voice tight, "I only have one of you."

"Yes, sir."

"Jacob."

Linn's voice hardened as his grip tightened.

"Jacob, there's only one of you. In all of Eternity, in all of Creation, only one of you has ever been made and there'll never be another one." 

Linn's voice tightened as he almost hissed, "I can't replace you, Jacob!"

Jacob's eyes were calm as he said, "Sir, when a man braces me and allows to punch a few holes in my long tall skinny carcass, I reckon the right thing to do is keep him from it, then."

Linn was silent for a long moment, then he nodded.

"Yes, Jacob," he said.  "Yes, it is."

 

Two days later, the boy rapped on the Sheriff's office door, peeked in.

"Deppity?" he grinned.  "Gotcha telegram!"

Jacob rose, extended his hand:  he traded the lad the flimsy for a coin, watched with amusement as swift young feet scampered out with full intent to turn bounty into a good slice of Daisy's pie.

Jacob unfolded the thin sheet, ran pale eyes over Lightning's regular, blocky print.

Deed done, he read, 8K BA.

Jacob nodded, folded the note, folded it again, slid it into an inside pocket.

His father would never see it, and his father might eventually hear that the man that wished his death, and was coward enough to buy it done, was dead: he might hear of it, but not from Jacob, and not from Sarah.

8K, he thought.

Eight o'clock.

She'll be on the evening train.

Deputy Jacob Keller smiled, ever so slightly.

BA.

The Black Agent.

Jacob considered that he and his half-sister just spared his father any more nightmare than already plagued the man's good rest.

He'd arrange to meet Sarah at the depot, and very likely she'd want to get home and get a bath and get to bed, but not before they sat down together over a meal in the Silver Jewel, and she filled him in on her assassination.

Jacob did enjoy associating himself with people who took pride in their work, and his half sister, the Black Agent, prided herself on her skills in bringing about justice.

Peacefully.

Or otherwise.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 10 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

STOCKINGS, A CORSET, A CRIMSONED SMILE

Her corset was snugly laced, emphasizing her maidenly form and enhancing her womanly curves.

Her stockings were fast up, the seams straight; she looked in the long oval mirror, hands on the flare of her womanly hips, smiled with scarlet lips at the face-painted slattern in the reflection.

She turned, looked seductively at a man whose expression was one of open lust.

He held a glass of liquid sledgehammer: he'd sipped from it already, he'd been imbibing all night, expecting to hear from someone -- every time a step passed in the hallway outside, she saw his eyes swing toward the door -- she caressed the curve of his ears, she slowly untied his necktie, drew it aside: she'd poured him a drink, he'd had another, and then she'd walked across the room, she'd walked with one high-heeled foot in front of the other, as if she were walking the top rail of a board fence.

She walked directly away from him, she turned on the balls of her feet, knowing she was dragging his eyeballs along as she did:  she stopped in front of the mirror, she preened, she looked back at him and smiled, and then she ran her tongue slowly across her bottom lip.

She saw his eyes brighten, she saw the change of expression that meant he'd abandoned all other thoughts, that meant he intended to have her:  he gulped the last of his drink, set the glass down on the sidetable, rose.

She wore elbow length, shining-satin gloves: she put one foot in front of the other, one gloved hand on her hip, the other rose, fingers curved, and she beckoned him closer, turning a little as she did, her mouth open a little, her tinted eyelids half-closed.

She was the absolute image of a willing temptress, delicious and available and his, all his!

He took a step toward her, a shadow crossed his face.

She smiled as he sagged, she tilted her head and put her beckoning hand on her waist and watched as his face went from lustful to surprised to shocked, as he realized his body was suddenly failing him, as he sagged and fought to remain upright and went to his knees, then hands and knees, as he looked up at her, realizing it was hard to breathe, and the beautiful young woman in a corset and stockings and high heels smiled with scarlet lips as the man who'd paid to have her father murdered, sagged to the floor, unable to resist the inexorable pull of gravity, as the poison she'd used, took hold.

The man was used to giving orders, and to having those orders obeyed.

He'd instructed that no one should disturb him, that he had a special project he was working on, and it was known that when that special project was a woman, he would be occupied all night, and he was not to be disturbed until mid-morning.

The woman worked quickly.

She had all she needed: the corset and stockings would suit her, under another dress; the slattern's brief attire went into a small valise, as did the tightly-stoppered bottle of poisoned liquor.

It did not take her long to scrub the cosmetics from her face, to change into a modest traveling-dress and hat; she slipped out, the contents of his now-emptied safe in her valise, with the slattern's gloves and her scandalous dancing-girl's dress.

She unlocked his door, looked left, then right: she drew the door shut, locked it behind her, left the dead man on the floor with the scarlet impress of her carmined lips on his cheek, and his blue-silk necktie rolled up in her worn leather satchel.

Knights went into battle, wearing a favor from their lady love -- a ribbon, an embroidered kerchief, a cloth medallion with an ornate border and a boldly-sewn design.

Sarah Lynne McKenna, the Black Agent, took this favor from a vanquished foe, from the man who wished her sire dead: it would serve to discreetly decorate her own attire, at the right time.

 

A young woman made her way back through the passenger-car, stepped out onto the rear platform, dipped her knees and placed her scuffed, brown-leather valise at her feet.

She stood leaning against the substantial, black-painted, wrought-iron railing, smiling a little as she watched the world retreating from her.

She waited.

Sometimes, if a woman traveled alone, a man might follow her out, intending to strike up a conversation, to gauge her interest, away from the other passengers.

None followed.

The evening was cool; she'd waited until her fellow passengers were drowsing, at least, if not asleep, thanks to traveler's boredom and the hypnotic sway and clickity-clack of steel wheels on steel rails: she waited several minutes more, then she dipped her knees, opened the valise.

She brought out a common glass bottle, a quart bottle of strong drink, a blend preferred by a dead man.

She brought out a length of blue cloth, held one end, let it unroll, let it dangle over the railing.

A young woman in a traveling-dress and matching hat stood, silent, alone, in the darkness of the passenger car's rear platform.

She worked the stopper from the bottle, looked at its transparent contents, then she carefully, precisely poured it out.

An amber liquid, fragrant with the distilled essence of apples and apricots, spread and fell and spattered gravel ballast and creosoted crossties.

The empty bottle went back into her valise.

She considered the fine, blue-silk necktie, carefully rolled it again, replace it beside the bottle, padding it to prevent its pressing against another, smaller bottle.

Sarah Lynne McKenna, daughter of a man troubled by nightmares, smiled as she closed the valise, knowing her smaller bottle -- the poison she preferred for such purposes -- was padded on its other side by a thick bundle of Yankee greenbacks.

Her pale eyed half brother kept his thick bundle as righteous payment for keeping his father safe.

Sarah was keeping the other half, for the same reason.

Besides, she thought, a girl has to have walking around money.

She smiled in the darkness, took a long, satisfied breath.

With the amount of walking-around money I took from his safe -- she laughed, quietly, gently, almost inaudibly -- I should be able to walk around for quite some time!

Sarah slipped the unadorned railroad watch from a hidden pocket, consulted its bold black letters.

A pale eyed man consulted a railroad watch of his own.

He waited on a depot platform.

A fine, shining carriage waited as well, with a shining chestnut mare in the traces: the horse stood, bored, as the evening train coasted into the Firelands station, as one passenger disembarked.

Jacob took Sarah's valise with one hand, held his for her gloved hand to steady on as she descended the cast-iron steps.

She took his arm, tilted her head and smiled.

"Thank you for meeting me," she said quietly.

"I brought my appetite," Jacob said, and Sarah smacked his upper arm and laughed.

"Men!" she declared. "You all think alike! You're all alike, you're all mouth and hands! All you can think about is FOOD!"

Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Keller threw his head back and laughed, and Sarah smacked his arm again.

"And you're buying!"

 

 

 

Edited May 12 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A DAY ENDS, A DAY BEGINS

Ambassador Marnie Keller, peacemaker and persuader, arranger of agreements and negotiator of necessities, hung her titles and her responsibilities with her McKenna gown.

She'd had a long, hot bath, she'd hummed with pleasure, her head tilted back and her eyes closed, as her husband dried her, held her, nibbled her neck as he whispered how he'd missed her: they'd eaten, their son fell asleep in her lap, lying against her bosom: she and her husband sat beside their son's bed for several minutes, holding hands, watching young John sleeping.

Dr. John Greenlees watched his son sleep, nearly every night, but he especially cherished those nights when they watched Young John, together.

Marnie tilted her head and smiled, gently, the way a mother will, when watching her sleeping child, when she knew she was safe, when she knew all was well.

Marnie knew Young John's bed was a self-contained life-support unit, that if a meteor crashed through a hundred yards of overburden and managed to crush in the ceiling of their quarters, that their son's bed would snap a protective force field into existence that could withstand the collision of a twenty ton meteor moving at a hundred miles per hour: she knew she wore a personal protection device on the back of her belt, a simple flat plate covered with material that matched her dress, a very unobtrusive device with the same lifesaving capabilities as her son's bed, and their own.

She did not think of these silent devices, ready and waiting and proven capable, nor did she think of the other protections of their quarters: her thoughts were not for matters of State, for the treaty she'd just overseen, the wars she'd prevented, the trade agreements that required every bit of her skills as a persuader, as an orator, as a convincer, a persuader, a negotiator.

Marnie hung all that up when she hung her McKenna gown in the laundry booth.

Marnie Keller allowed herself to relax, to lean against her husband's shoulder, then his side as his arm came around her back: she'd soaked away the stresses in the hot bubble bath, and now she let what remained, flow off her and soak into the smooth stone floor and disappear.

Dr. John Greenlees picked his wife up and carried her to their bed, and Ambassador Marnie Keller, Sheriff Emeritus of Mars, daughter of a pale eyed Earthside Sheriff, was content to be tucked into her bed, and to be held, and to relax, and to let down her wards, her guards, her walls.

Tomorrow would be another day.

Tonight ... tonight she was warm, and she was safe, and in this, she was very content.

 

Hours later, when she woke, when she stretched, when she smelled her own bed-linens and her husband's cologne, when she smelled bacon and eggs and realized how hungry she was, she opened her eyes and just lay there for a long moment ... at least until a pair of bright eyes and a bright smile and a happy "Mommeee!" bounced up on her bed and hugged her with all the happy abandon of an innocent little child.

Marnie came to the kitchen table as Little John industriously climbed into his high chair, as her husband set out warmed plates, as he slid perfectly fried eggs, fresh baked sourdough, fresh churned butter -- Marnie remembered something about Jacob sharing fresh goods from his wife's plantation -- Marnie laughed as Young John happily seized his sippy cup of orange juice and declared, "Warrior's Dwink!" in his child's voice.

"John, John," Marnie murmured, "what have you been teaching him?"

Young John took a pull on his orange juice, looked at his Mama with adoring eyes and asked, "Mommy sing today?"

Marnie looked at John, surprised.

"John, what's today?"

Dr. John shook fresh ground pepper on his eggs.

"Sunday."

"Church today!"

"Mommy sing?" Young John asked hopefully.

Marnie smiled, picked up her coffee.

"Yes, John," she said in a gentle voice. "We have church today."

"Yaaaay!" Young John cheered, waving a strip of bacon in celebration, before introducing it to his shining young teeth.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NOT QUITE WHAT I PLANNED

Reverend John Burnett was Chaplain of the Firelands Fire Department.

He was also Chaplain for the Sheriff's Office, the Police Department, Carbon Hill's emergency services, and elsewhere as his services might be needed -- in addition to his leadership of their little whitewashed church.

Reverend John Burnett was facing backwards, he was belted into the walkaway-bracketed seat on their first-out pumper: he was wearing full turnout, he snugged his helmet down, looked down to check the pressure on his self-contained breathing apparatus, tightened the shoulder straps on his walkaway air pack.

Too often, as a clergyman, he wished he could do more.

Now, in bunker pants and fireboots, turnout coat and Nomex hood, Firecraft gloves and a barely-dirtied helmet, he closed his eyes and had a quiet word with the Almighty.

They were responding to a reported house fire.

A house fire could be anything from "I smell something funny" to a conflagration roaring through the roof before they were even called.

He didn't have to wonder very long.

When he jumped from the cab, when he landed flat-footed, arms out a little to keep his balance, when he looked up, all wondering was gone.

The second story windows blew out with a roaring gout of smoke, then flame, bright and flaring with the new inrush of air.

Chaplain he was, but firefighter he was as well: he seized a Halligan tool and charged the front door, two more men behind him: he drove the curved hooks of his Halligan into the gap between the door and the door frame, threw his weight against the tool: he pulled it free, drove it again, hauled.

Wood splintered.

Another stab, another twist, he kicked the door hard and threw himself against it, slamming it wide open to allow the nozzle and two men free access.

He heard the chrome Elkhart nozzle's vicious hiss as they hit the fire.

He clapped a hand on the nearest shoulder, shouted through his mask: "Upstairs search!"

Reverend John Burnett assaulted the stairs, Halligan in hand: he got to the second floor, bent nearly double as hell itself roared along the ceiling.

"FIRE DEPARTMENT! CALL OUT!" he shouted: visibility was bad -- it was better than most fire structures he'd been in, he could see at least a foot -- he advanced on his belly, swung an arm under furniture, opened closet doors.

He found a leg.

"FIRE DEPARTMENT!" he shouted, and something small and wiry twisted like a terrified animal.

He seized the scared child, rolled over, pulled the child out, bear hugged a scared, fighting kid to him: he came downstairs, half running, half on his backside.

He ran through the still-open front door.

Two medics in coveralls and hardhats ran toward him, took the child, and the Parson turned and ran back into the burning house.

He didn't think it odd at all that the Halligan was still welded in his gloved grip.

 

Sean pressed the talk bar on his black Motorola.

"Roll second squad," he called, "and have Charlie 1 on standby."

Dispatch hesitated a heartbeat longer than usual, and the Chief knew why.

He'd just called for the County Coroner.

 

Reverend John Burnett wallowed on his belly, thumping ahead of him with the Halligan, using it in the thick, poisonous smoke like a blind man uses a cane.

He heard a woman's voice.

"FIRE DEPARTMENT! WHERE ARE YOU?" -- his voice was hollow, unnatural as he shouted inside his air mask:  he pulled it from his face, enough to be heard:  "FIRE DEPARTMENT! WHERE ARE YOU?"

He heard a cough, another cough, a weak "Here" -- he swung to his right --

 

Fitz stood in the doorway, looking up the stairs as a set of fire boots came stomping downstairs, then he saw a pair of bare legs bouncing a little with each step.

For a moment it looked like a robotic monster from a 1950s science fiction horror film, carrying the fainted maiden, then he realized their Chaplain had his air mask on the woman's face and he was coughing, his eyes were watering, and black snot was just starting to roll down his face.

Fitz stepped back as the man came out into the open air, as he threw a quick "Upper floor is clear!" at the Chief, as he headed for the back of the pumper where the rescue truck was coming to a stop.

He held the shivering woman, waited until the ambulance cot was hauled from the rescue, until the blanket was spread, the sheet over the spread-open blanket: he bent, laid her carefully on the sheet, worked his air mask off her face as she was wrapped up, quickly and easily.

Chief appeared beside him, and the Chaplain backed away.

Chief needed to know whether anyone else was inside, Chief needed to know if there were oxygen bottles, propane bottles, anything hazardous in the house or the attached garage.

The Chaplain needed to pull back and get some air.

He sat heavily on the pumper's tailboard.

Someone handed him a bottle of water.

He took a drink, took another, leaned his head back, poured water over his face, drank what little remained.

Fitz was everywhere, or so it seemed: he was checking with the engineer, he was on the radio, calling for a water shuttle, he coordinated setting the drop tank, flagged in the Carbon Hill tanker, saw the lines were run, directed the one-way in and one-way out traffic: the Sheriff's office set up barricades and cruisers and kept local traffic out for the duration, made sure the tankers had free passage: somehow he found time to drop his own backside beside the Chaplain, clap a gloved hand on the man's shoulder.

"Everyone's accounted for," he declared in a loud voice, the voice he used for fireground command: "the Sheriff will take you back to station, or t'yer house. Go get a shower, you'll be needed at hospital."

Reverend Burnett nodded, opened his mouth to ask a question: he stopped as the Chief raised his talkie, pressed the talk bar.

"Firelands, Chief One. Cancel Charlie One."

The Chaplain closed his mouth.

The Chief answered his question before it could be asked.

 

It was almost dawn when the Parson finally got back to the house.

He came through the door, quietly, hoping not to disturb his wife.

She rose as he came through the door: she smiled a little as she poured coffee for them both.

He sat tiredly, savoring the smell of bacon and eggs.

He smiled a little at the sound of the toaster popping up, at the sound of butter spread thick and rich over freshly toasted whole wheat.

He and his wife bowed their heads as he returned thanks for their meal, then she looked across the table at him and asked, "How bad was it, dear?"

He looked at her, smiled, just a little.

"We did all right."

 

 

 

 

Edited May 12 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

LETTERHEAD

Jacob Keller pulled the outside broom off its nail.

He kept a broom outside for moments like this.

Jacob industriously swept grass cutting from his jeans, then broomed off his boots: running the string trimmer was a messy affair, but he didn't care: it was a job that needed done, so when he saw it was needful, he topped off the orange two cycle engine's translucent plastic tank, checked the string left in the head (plenty), and proceeded to make a systematic orbit around the house, the well, clotheseline posts and other obstructions to easy mowing.

Jacob was nearly his father's height: he was over six feet tall and had a six foot swing, and like a young man his age, he pushed himself.

He was tired when he was done, but he was satisfied with good work, well done: he now had a broad margin where he didn't have to mow, and that made his life easier.

He carefully swept grass from his front, from his boots, he kicked his boot toes against a foundation stone to knock loose anything adhering under his instep or packed up against his boot soles, then he went inside, hooked off his boots, left them on the rubber tray by the front door.

His father was sorting through bills and correspondence:  he looked up, his eyes tightening at the corners.

"Jacob."

"Yes, sir?"

"I found something I think you'll like."

"Yes, sir?"
Jacob came around the desk, curious.

He saw his drawing under his father's curved fingers.

"I do admire that," Linn said softly, and they both looked at Jacob's work.

He'd scribed an arc across the top of a page, added decorative S-lines to turn the broad arc into a banner: within the banner, carefully lettered in a period copperplate hand, Z&W Railroad, Firelands, Colorado.

The illustration beneath was of The Lady Esther: he'd carefully plotted his perspective, for the viewpoint was as if one were standing beside the tracks as the steam locomotive approached.

Not just approached.

He'd drawn The Lady Esther in a full-on charge: steam trailed rearward from the pistons, he'd drawn the exhaust BLASTING from the diamond stack and being ripped rearward: it was a picture in motion, it was power and motion and thunder and cast iron on steel rails.

The drawing was both incredibly detailed, without being excessively so: elk's antlers thrust aggressively from the outsized oil light (Linn remembered Jacob asking about The Lady Esther's original light, he'd researched the archives to find when she was converted to an early carbon-arc light), he'd even captured the visual texture of lettering on the circular nose-plate on the front of the boiler.

It was a drawing that looked like The Lady Esther was going to come rip-roaring off the paper and brush the viewer's sleeve as she passed.

Jacob's ears reddened a little and he grinned, almost bashfully.

"I thought to draw up a letterhead for the Z&W, sir," he said.

"That's why I wanted to show you this," Linn said.

He opened a folder, brought out a single sheet of blank paper, yellowed with age.

"We found this in the roundhouse," he said. "It was nearly thrown out."

Jacob blinked, leaned closer, studied the old, original letterhead.

He looked at his drawing.

He looked at the letterhead.

"Identical," he breathed.

"This was with it."

Linn laid a hand written note above the two sheets of paper.

Jacob's grin widened and he murmured, softly, "Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit!"

 

Mother --

This is entirely unofficial.

For your consideration --

A possible letterhead for your Railraod.

Jacob

 

Linn laid a warm, fatherly hand on his son's shoulder.

"History repeats itself," he said quietly: "somehow, over the years, the letterhead changed and the illustration was lost."

"Yes, sir."

"I'd like to restore it to what it was."

He thumped fingertips on Jacob's drawing.

"I want that for our letterhead."

Jacob nodded, feeling suddenly uncertain.

"Your drawing is better than this original copperplate engraving. I'd like to use yours."

"Thank you, sir. That's why I drew it."

He thrust his hand out to his son, and his son took his father's grip.

"Well done, Jacob," Linn said.  "I'm proud of you!"

 

Edited May 14 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JUST A COINCIDENCE

"Victoria?"

Victoria looked up from her homework.

"Victoria, can you pull up the Alamo Cenotaph?"

Victoria took a moment to shift her mental gears -- she'd been knee-deep in quadratic equations -- it was most unusual for her twin brother to disturb her, and this told her it was important enough to look at right away.

Michael heard a rattle of keys on his sister's laptop.

"What am I looking for?"

Michael looked up.

"Sis, you know how ... Jacob drew the letterhead for the railroad and then Pa found the original, and it was identical, only smaller and not as good."

"I remember."

"Old Pale Eyes had an eldest son named Jacob. So does Pa. There's Angela. There's Joseph. Lots of things then are the same as they are now."

"So?"

"Pa was reading to us about Jacob's sons."

"O-kaay."

"His youngest was William Linn."

"Yeah, so?"

"Look on that cenotaph."

Victoria turned to her screen, scrolled for a moment, froze.

"Did you find it?"

She hesitated a long moment.

"It's there."

"I thought I remembered it."

"You and your idiotic memory."

"Eidetic memory."

"That's what I said. Idiotic memory."

Michael sighed dramatically, raised spread fingers to the ceiling, shook his head.

Victoria tilted her head, regarded her twin brother skeptically.

"So why the interest?"

"There's no connection."

"What?"

"Sis, look. There are too many connections from the past to now. How does this tie in?"

"When was the Alamo?"

"Way too late. Morgan's Raid was 1864, so Old Pale Eyes didn't come out here until he was discharged."

"Maybe it's a coincidence."

"Look at the name, Sis.  William Linn."

Victoria turned to her keyboard.

"He was a Boston man. Went south ... New Orleans Greys, went to Texas, saw action, he was Infantry when he was killed."

"So where's the connection?"

Victoria cleared her screen.

"I'm going to finish my homework."

"Lot of help you are."

"Michael," Victoria sighed as she picked up her pencil, frowned at her worksheet, "you're just as flighty as our father!"

"Yeah, at least I got my homework done already!"

"Show-off," she muttered as she dove back into the mental pool of calculations.

 

Two days later -- two days in which Michael set the Land Speed Record tending his chores, two days in which he parked his carcass in study hall instead of going out for recess -- two days in which Michael spent every spare minute excavating computer records, paging through books from his father's bookshelves, two days in which he barely ate, barely spoke, barely smiled -- he finally came up for air.

Michael and Victoria laced their boots, set out at a steady, mile-eating run, rifle in hand and pistol on hip; they ran, they shot, they stopped and swung kettlebells and ran again with the deep energy-well of the young and healthy Mountain Born.

When they came in, pink-cheeked and breathing deep, they wiped down their Winchesters with a silicone rag, stripped down, showered.

When they headed for bed, just before each went into their respective room, Michael hesitated.

"You were right," he said.

"How's that?" Victoria asked.

Michael grinned that crooked grin of his and admitted, "William Linn.  There's no connection."

Victoria considered this for a moment.

"What's Uncle Will's middle name?"

Michael froze, his eyes widening.

Victoria blinked, wondering where the question she'd just uttered, came from ... she would later admit that she opened her mouth and it kind of fell out and she honestly had no idea why she asked it.

"Sis," Michael said slowly, "did Uncle Will fight at the Alamo?"

"He's old, Michael," Victoria scolded, "but he's not that old!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NOT JUST VICTORIA

The Sheriff was in uniform.

The Sheriff was not smiling.

The Sheriff stood with his back to a large sheet of cardboard a little distance behind him.

He pointed to one of the students.

He was not smiling.

"You," he said, "are a volunteer. Step forward."

He handed her a plastic paster gun, gave her a quiet-voiced instruction on its use, had her step to the side.

"Ladies," he said, "please turn on your earmuffs, pull your hair back and put on your muffs."

Two ranks of Firelands femininity picked up their electronic earmuffs, rolled the switch, felt the *click*: they brought their muffs up, stiff-finger swept hair out of the way, settled their muffs in place.

A few snapped their fingers -- left, then right -- then lowered their hands, satisfied their muffs were allowing them to hear normally.

The Sheriff picked up a double barrel shotgun.

"Ladies, when someone is doing something so terrible we must absolutely stop them before we, or one of our immediate family is killed or grievously injured, we have to speak the language that is unmistakably understood."

He turned, dropped an olive-green, military-surplus, 00-buck round into the left-hand barrel of his shotgun: he brought it quickly up, fired, lowered it, broke it open and shucked the empty.

"Paster. Go forward and cover each hole you find."

He slid the shotgun, muzzle down, into its open scabbard: the young woman he'd drafted ran forward, began applying white self adhesive pasters over each of the 00 holes.

"Could you count those, please."

She swiped the last two holes, frowned as she scanned the cardboard to make sure she didn't miss any: she raised a hand, counted in a whisper, then turned.

"Nine," she declared.  "Nine holes."

"Thank you. Please return to your position."

She placed the plastic paster on the bench, skipped back to the hole in the front rank where she'd started.

"Show of hands," the Sheriff called. "How many think a machine gun is effective?"

Nearly every hand went up.

The Sheriff smiled, pulled out a very recognizable firearm.

"Let me introduce you to a true assault weapon. This is the military M4 Carbine. It is a shoulder fired machine gun, this one is marked PROPERTY US GOVT, and it works like this."

He stepped on a foot switch; a target stand turned from edge-on to face-on.

The Sheriff plugged in a magazine, gave it a tug to make sure it was well seated; he charged the rifle, turned.

By his own later description, he "John Wayne'd the target" -- he clamped the plastic buttstock under his arm, mashed the trigger, his support hand was well forward: he ripped the twenty round magazine into the silhouette, allowing the muzzle to climb a little as he did -- he changed magazines -- RRRIPPP -- a second mag hit the ground, a fresh one slammed in, RRRIPPP and the third mag dropped away, empty.

The Sheriff turned, muzzle to the zenith, smoke drifting from the vented handguard.

He was grinning.

"I'll admit," he said, "that was fun, but I can do better like this."

He picked up a dull-grey shotgun, pumped the action briskly -- he fed a round into the magazine -- the first silhouette turned, another turned to face him.

The Sheriff lifted his chin.

"You," he pointed with a bladed hand, recoil pad on his belt and gunmuzzle to the sky above. "You're a volunteer. Step up here."

His students that day were members of the Ladies' Tea Society, the Valkyries, and a few other women of the area who'd expressed an interest in certain social subjects: it was well known that the Sheriff was an excellent teacher, it was well known the Sheriff was an advocate of the ladies' training, and this reputation was enhanced by the presence of two pale eyed daughters, both in feminine dresses and dainty heels, flanking him as he taught.

The volunteer he called upon came mincing, all dainty and little-girlish, from the students' ranks.

A little girl looked up at her Daddy, blinked innocently, stood there in shining slippers and a frilly little dress and said "Yes, Daddy?" in an intentionally little-girlish voice.

The Sheriff handed her the shotgun, picked up the timer.

"Mag dump," he said quietly.

"Okay, Daddy!"

The Sheriff lowered the blue-plastic box to her ear level, pressed the button.

"Stand byyyy!" 

-- BEEEP --

Victoria Keller, ten years old, the Sheriff's youngest daughter and absolutely the darling of his eye -- Victoria Keller, who had her Daddy wound so tight around her pretty little finger he had a standing appointment with the chiropractor (well, maybe not, but it makes a good line!) 

-- Victoria Keller, who'd just finished fourth grade

-- stepped forward with her left foot, dropped the shotgun level: she snapped the comb of the buttstock up into her armpit, clamped down hard, she drove eight fast rounds of military double-ought into the target, each one chewing a rathole through the brittle paper.

Victoria raised her shotgun to its zenith, turned to face her Daddy -- turned so the ladies present could see her broad and genuine smile -- "That was fun, Daddy! Can I do it again?"

"In a bit, sweetheart. Back to your position."

"Okay, Daddy!" -- in her happy child's voice -- a giggling little girl scampered back to her place among the ladies of Firelands, all shining face and fluffy petticoat and French-braided hair tied with colorful ribbons at the ends.

"Each of these" -- the Sheriff held up a loaded shotgun round -- "carries nine balls of .32 caliber.  This" -- he held up his stainless Walther pistol -- "is also a .32. It carries eight pistol balls of the same size."

He looked at the well ventilated target.

"Now imagine, ladies, that someone is about to do something so absolutely terrible, that you have no choice but to stop that individual with a method that might mean ending said scoundrelly soul's earthly existence."

He turned, thrust an arm toward the silhouette.

The little silver pistol barked eight times; eight little holes appeared in the target's face.

"Retrieve the exemplar," Linn said quietly: Angela and Dana walked back to the first big cardboard sheet, brought it forward.

"Nine holes," Linn said, extending his bladed hand to the pasted sheet. "Nine holes spread that much from this short shotgun at that distance, but nine holes -- here" -- he looked at the sad ruin of the silhouette his youngest daughter just ventilated -- "well, it's kind of evident that if a little grade school girl can put 72 pistol balls into a target in the same time it took me to put eight pistol balls into a target, this" -- he laid a hand on his cruiser gun -- "just might be the right tool to use."

He picked up the M4.

"This is light, handy and ideally suited for ladies' use. Victoria gets bored with it, though. She likes to tape nickels to a silhouette for eyes and then shoot the eyes out, she'll hit a dinner plate sized steel dinger at a hundred yards and get bored, so she'll start shooting the two inch pipe it hangs from. That's with an AR15 that several of you already have" -- he grinned, that quick, boyish grin they often saw when he was talking about the achievements of his young -- "not with this police issue, select fire, assault rifle.

"By the way" -- he rested the butt of the shorty AR on the solid-timber shooting bench -- "when I ripped three magazines into the target?"

He looked from left to right, making sure he still had their attention.

"Victoria put more rounds into her target, with a pump shotgun, in less time, than I put into the target, shooting a machine gun."

Sheriff Linn Keller grinned again and declared happily, "It ain't no wonder us old lawmen like our shotguns!"

He slid the AR into a guncase, zipped it shut.

"Ladies, this concludes my long winded Man Splaining session. I hope I wasn't too much of a windbag, and I will now allow two much more capable instructors to take over."

Linn looked left, at one daughter, looked right, at the other.

"Ladies, the floor is yours."

 

Later that day, Michael grimaced manfully as he raised the homemade pipe driver and slammed it down on the new pipe stake.

He'd been pounding at it long enough his shoulders were giving out:  Linn pulled on his gloves and said in a gentle voice, "Here, that'll wear on a man's shoulder muscles. Let me spell you off."

Michael released the rebar handles, stepped back a little, watched his Pa's mighty efforts as he drove the pipe visibly into the ground.

He gave it six licks, then two more -- he stepped back --

"Michael," he said, "we might have it a rock."

"Yes, sir. It's not moved."

"I'll give it a few more and if it hasn't moved, we'll try something else."

"Yes, sir."

Linn raised the driver, SLAMMED it down -- his driving cadence was slower now, he was muscling the driver, and suddenly the pipe drove in two inches.

He paused:  "Michael, I think we're through."

"Yes, sir."

Linn grinned.  

"I reckon you busted it apart for me, you put a hell of a lot of work into that!"

Linn gave it four more, stepped back, looked.

"Sir, that's good right there," Michael said. "It's down to your mark."

Linn released the welded rebar handles, dropped his arms to his sides.

Running that heavy pipe driver -- it was home made, it was Oil Field Grade, big and mean and hell for stout -- was indeed wearing on a good man's shoulders, and it was to Michael's credit that his young muscles endured as long as they did.

"We're down to the mark, you say?"

"Yes, sir, just now."

"Good."

Linn picked up the driver, set it down, picked up the four foot level, laid it up against the pipe.

"How's she smell to you?" he asked, and Michael heard the grin in his father's face.

"Smells real good, sir."

"Is she plumb?"

"She's plumb, sir!"

"We're just awful lucky it broke through that rock when it did," Linn said ruefully. "I'd hate to drive two more of these!"

"Yes, sir."

Linn carried the driver and the level over to the homemade wagon on the back of their little red Farmall Cub, stacked them inside.

He came back with the crossbar, set the ends down into the somewhat battered pipe ends, then hung the new, white-painted, dinnerplate-sized dinger on its two chains.

 "Reckon Victoria will like this one?" Linn grinned.

"Yes, sir," Michael said, watching as Linn applied narrow bands of masking tape and then spray-painted the uprights white as well.

Michael waited until his father was done with the long, vertical strokes, watched as he pulled the masking tape free.

Michael looked closer, at two holes drilled in the thick-wall, black-painted, two-inch pipe.

Linn picked up two bright-green square plates, two inches by two inches, with bolts welded on their backs: he ran them through the holes in the uprights, greased the threads, slid on broad washers and wingnuts.

"Your sister likes to shoot up the pipes," Linn said. "I can replace those plates easier than driving in new pipe!"

Michael grinned, and so did his father, for both of them knew that Victoria wasn't the only one who'd been shooting the uprights when hitting that big dinger at a hundred yards got old.

Edited May 15 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BEEG!

Jackson Cooper was well known, and a fixture in Firelands.

Jackson Cooper was Town Marshal.

Jackson Cooper was also, in a significant and very visible way, handicapped.

Jackson Cooper married their diminutive, stout-built schoolmarm, and the two of them were just as happy as if they had good sense: Emma Cooper was most pleased to be seen, in public, with her husband, and her husband treated her with a grave and unfailing courtesy.

His methods were not always gentle, or genteel, but he meant well.

He was seen, for instance, to sweep his wife up in his arms and pack her across the street, rather than get her skirts muddy making the crossing; he picked her up as easily as a grown man picks up a child's rag doll, in order to place her in their carriage: the man's strength was incredible, his height remarkable, and so it was that when he was treading with his usual measured, absolutely silent gait, down the street, a little boy -- whether engaged in a game of chase, or pursuing another child, or a stray dog, or perhaps just running for the hell of it, looking back over his shoulder, the way boys will -- he ran into Jackson Cooper's leg.

The net effect was that of running into a burlap padded lodge pole pine.

Now Jackson Cooper, like I said, was visibly handicapped.

He was taller than the Sheriff -- enough so that he had to duck his head to pass through most doorways -- and the rest of him was proportional to his height, which is what made it so remarkable when he and his wife were seen together, for as tall as he was, Emma Cooper ... wasn't.

When this fast moving lad of less than six years bounced off the Town Marshal's leg, he fell back, looked up for an incredible distance, and uttered the word that was remembered for some long time:

"BEEG!"

Jackson Cooper had a liking for children: when one got his leg stuck between two close-growing trees, Jackson Cooper had their Irish Brigade respond with good stout hemp rope:  he tied these off high as he could reach, one tree, then the other; he had the Brigade pull the trees apart, and as they did, he lifted the stuck child from his entrapment, and made it look easy: thus was a boy's leg saved from injury, for the circulation was impaired and the limb was quite numb, but undamaged; the tree was spared the saw or the ax, both of which were brought and readied, and once the successful rescue was accomplished, why, nothing would do but that their Irishmen were feted in the Silver Jewel, the rescued lad fed pie, and Jackson Cooper folded his arms and leaned back against the wall and smiled a little, for he did enjoy a good outcome.

When the Sheriff came packing in one or another of his young, Jackson Cooper would delight in hoisting them until they could touch the tin ceiling overhead.

He one time took the Sheriff's youngest son around the waist, swung him upside down with his feet against the stamped metal ceiling tiles, and bade him "Walk On the Ceiling!" -- this at Christmas, and he rumbled that was the lad's Christmas present.

The boy had only just turned two.

Come Christmas the year following, Jackson Cooper came into the Silver Jewel to say hello and make sure the beer hadn't gone bad, and the Sheriff was there with his family, and a pale eyed young lad who'd just turned three looked up and exclaimed happily, "Beeg!"

"He won't remember," Linn murmured to Esther.

Esther gave her husband a knowing look, but said nothing: they watched as the lad ran up to the Marshal, as the Marshal went down on one knee, bent a little lower so he could hear what the wee lad had to say:  even across the length of the Jewel, they could see the delighted anticipation in their son's expression, and the laughter on Jackson Cooper's face, and they watched as he took their boy around the waist, whipped him upside down and planted his little-boy brogans against the ceiling tile and boomed, "Walk On the Ceiling!" -- to the general laughter and good-natured approval of the other patrons, gathered for a sociable drink or a meal that chilly Yuletide evening.

Jackson Cooper was a fair man, Jackson Cooper was a man well respected: simply because of his size, trouble tended to avoid him, and when it didn't, Jackson Cooper had one other asset that served him well.

Like most truly big men, he was also incredibly fast with his hands.

Jackson Cooper, on more occasions than one, seized the weapon from an opponent's grip -- quickly, inescapably, with power and with authority enough that further hostilities were ended before they began.

When Shorty needed an anvil moved, one of the local wags offered Jackson Cooper sixbits to see him pick it up and set it where it was needed.

Jackson Cooper smiled a little and said it would cost the man two dollars, and after exclamations of dismay and loud-voiced protests, the financial demand was met -- whereupon Jackson Cooper turned to a pair of stout lads who Shorty had already recruited to move the anvil for him:  he handed them each a dollar and stepped back and allowed them to sling the anvil to a stout pole, whereupon the pair of them carried the anvil to its new home.

Jackson Cooper was big, and Jackson Cooper was strong, but Jackson Cooper had a rotten sense of humor, and after the crestfallen local watched dolefully as the anvil was indeed moved by Jackson Cooper, but not in a way he'd wanted, the Marshal stood the poor fellow to a cold one in the Silver Jewel, and a good laugh was finally had by all concerned.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A POOR JOB OF HIDING IT

It is a curious fact that an accent disappears when the words are sung.

There is a scientific reason for this, of course.

Let us set those scientific reasons aside, and enjoy the show.

You see, among our population here in Firelands, we have many useful skills, many marvelous talents, we have people gifted with a diverse range of abilities.

The Sheriff, if you ask him nicely, can hammer out a beautifully ornate set of door hinges, for instance, and as a gift to a friend of his -- a Spanish grandee, down on the Border country -- he made a set that ran the full width of a heavy plank door: three hinges there were, top, middle and bottom, each with curled arms and fleur-de-lis panels, each pierced and ready to be riveted in place: heavy steel they were, suitable to support a door thick as a man's hand, stout enough to hold proof against assault.

The family Daine, those skinny, wiry Kentucky mountaineers, made exquisite concoctions with distilled moon likker as their base, any of which went down like Mama's milk and tended to blow the socks off your feet: they were equally skilled at carpenter work, both rough work, and finish work, even to furniture and cabinet making.

Music was a favored art form: Gracie Daine was a superb fiddler, whose talents were regularly requested; her relatives varied in their skills, but most -- if I had to be honest -- could play anything with strings, and most of them, could play very well indeed.

There were ladies in town whose gifts included their voices.

Song was part and parcel of church worship.

Their church had an active choir, enlisting male and female alike: these four particularly gifted ladies sang in the choir, but they sang quietly enough to be part of the tapestry of voices: their skill was great enough they could have out-shone their fellows, and they worked hard to not do this.

Once a year, and once only, would they sing together, alone, standing shoulder to shoulder in the choir, while their choir-mates sat.

When they did, their voices soared with the beauty of seagulls, hovering in a shoreward breeze, with sunlight making their wings look like porcelain: they sang at Christmas, their voices interwoven in feminine harmony, flawless, beautiful, fit to make a man's heart ache for it to never stop.

That pale eyed Sheriff, a hard man with calluses and scarred knuckles, a veteran of war's hell and life's griefs, would bow his head and try to hide saltwater tears that overflowed his heart when he heard this beauty from four women he'd long loved.

Daisy Finnegan, Sarah McKenna, Bonnie McKenna and Esther Keller: Sarah's was a flawless soprano, Daisy's, a high alto, Bonnie and Esther shared a marvelous alto range, edging into the contralto, yet each of them a remarkable purity of tone, and with perfect, flawless control.

They sang thus, together, but once a year, they four standing, with the rest of the choir seated, for if they sang thusly with the full choir, their light would have outshone the others', and so they agreed, in a quiet meeting before Christmas, that they should perform thusly, but only once a year.

Sarah looked from one to another, smiled, nodded: she had, once, and once only, intimidated another singer with her raw skill, and this back in Denver, while she sang, anonymous in a glitter-mask: her fellow singer was so crushed by being out-performed, she nearly left the company, and it wasn't until Sarah emerged without a mask, took her arm and steered her to center stage, in the full glare the sun-bright lime-lights, and prompted her to sing with her, not until Sarah surprised her into a duet on stage in front of God and everybody, not until Sarah sang under her and let her fellow singer take the vocal lead, that the damage she'd caused, was undone.

Sarah listened to the ladies' reasoning and nodded, tilted her head a little.

"We are agreed, then?" she asked with a smile.  "Please pass the bushel?"

Bonnie and Esther looked at one another, puzzled:  Daisy crossed her arms, tapped her foot and looked over a nonexistent set of spectacles.

"So it's hidin' yer light under a bushel now, is it?" she asked sharply, her Irish accent intentionally prominent:  "A'right if we're no' goin' t' sing f'r them, we'll sing f'r us!"

Sarah turned, reached for the piano: her eyes were half-closed, and her fingers caressed the keys, then she played, one-handed, the introduction.

Four ladies took a deep, diaphragmatic breath.

In the Medieval era, when but few were literate, the common folk would gather near monastic walls and listen to the Brethren chant the Psalms.

Every soul yearns to rejoin with its Creator, and the common folk in that far-off time believed these cloistered Brethren had an inside track to sanctity, and so when the Brethren chanted one of their one-hundred-fifty Psalms, those listening outside the walls would recite the Paternoster, or they would stand, and listen, their hearts open to hear this marvelous, sanctified, unity of voice.

So it was, outside a little whitewashed church in a Colorado mountain town, when four ladies stood and lifted their chins and their voices, they never knew that one, then another, and soon many, stood near to their little church and listened to this worshipful beauty, this harmonized tribute to the Almighty.

Esther Keller, Bonnie McKenna, Sarah McKenna and Daisy Finnegan had no way of knowing that they were doing a poor job of hiding their candle under a bushel. 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A TRUCKLOAD OF POST HOLES

Michael sat, silent and watchful, in the passenger side of the old, faded-orange Dodge pickup.

He and his pale eyed Pa just delivered a load of cedar fence posts to a neighbor.

The posts were longer than the truck bed.

Michael helped his Pa set the pipe rack onto the bed, he frowned with concentration as he and his Pa worked and wiggled and tapped with a dead blow mallet to get the bolt holes lined up; his young and dexterous hands reached under, slid on washers, threaded on nuts, and he held a combination wrench on the bolt's head while turning the ratchet and socket beneath.

The back half of the rack, back at the tail gate, dropped into the stake pockets and just sat there.

Michael and his Pa stacked long cedar posts on the headache rack, then they boomed it down to the headache rack: Linn ran chain through the welded pipe assembly, passed the log chain under the stack, wrapped the ends over -- left over right, right over left -- hooked the chain to itself, and applied a snap binder.

Michael had never seen a snap binder used.

His Pa talked as he worked, teaching as he went.

He showed Michael how to slip the chain link sideways into the grab hook -- "Two kind of chain hooks, Michael," he said, "a grab hook and a slip hook" -- Michael originally tried to slip the point of the hook into a chain link, and his Pa laid a fatherly hand on the lad's shoulder and laughed quietly at a memory:  "I did that exact thing at your age.  Here's how it works" -- and Michael felt at once grateful his Pa showed him how to do it right, and felt like a dunce for not realizing the right of it before he was shown.

Linn leaned his weight into the snap binder.

Michael saw how the load shifted, ever so slightly, under the tightening:  Linn grunted, strained, then looked at his son and said, "I need a cheater. Pass me yon chunk of two inch pipe."

Michael walked over to the barn, picked up the indicated tool, brought it back, watched as his Pa slid it over the handle of the snap binder, effectively lengthening its handle.

"Now this'll either tighten up real nice," Linn said, "or it'll break the chain."

He heaved his weight against the handle.

It snapped over center.

Linn slid the pipe off the handle, cheerfully beat on the chain with the cheater.

"That," he said in a satisfied voice, "is not going anywhere. Now let's boom down the back."

They'd taken the load to another ranch about an hour away:  he backed the truck up against an empty hay wagon, he and Michael released the chains, laid the linked steel off the sides: it was easier work getting them off the headache rack and onto the wagon.

The drive back was a little faster.

Michael noticed how careful his Pa had driven, taking the posts to the neighbor: he was too young to appreciate the handling characteristics of a four wheel drive truck with a high center of gravity, but he could not help but notice there was something different, and filed that question away for when next his Pa had him behind the wheel.

"Sir," Michael asked, "Gammaw was a deputy back East."

"She was a deputy town marshal, yes."

"Sir, you said she dearly loved being Sheriff out here."

Michael saw a quiet smile -- there, and gone -- on his Pa's face.

"Yes, Michael. She did."

"Sir ..."  Michael frowned.  "If she loved being Sheriff so much, how come she quit bein' a deputy marshal?"

"She got done dirty, Michael. They screwed her over. She told 'em to go --"

Linn bit off the salty phrase he was about to utter, frowned, reconsidered.

"What she suggested they do was not only anatomically impossible, it was socially unacceptable."

Michael had heard this vague suggestion before.

He hadn't a true appreciation for whatever profanity this represented, but he knew if his beloved Gammaw was mad enough to use less than ladylike language, she had to have a reason.

"Michael, I'll tell you the same thing your Gammaw told me."

"Yes, sir?"

"You know that Webster's Dictionary is stipulated to in every courtroom in the country as the courtroom definition of any word."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, if you look up the phrase 'Dirty Suth'n Politics' in Webster's, you'll find the black silhouette of Athens County, Ohio, right at the head of the column."

"Yes, sir?"

"Your Gammaw carried a two cell Mag-Light. You recall my three-cell, back at the house, the one you helped me convert to LED."

"Yes, sir."

"That one was hers, too. She liked that two cell really well. Council President stole it from her. Claimed he borrowed it. Then the town marshal decided he'd do her dirty and threatened to pull her commission.  She showed up at Council meeting and he threatened to arrest her for wearing a gun without police credentials and tried to take it. She introduced the business end of a .45 automatic to the end of his nose, doubled him up -- I understand she had the fastest knee in town -- once she bounced his head off his own desk, right in front of every Councilman present, she showed him her credentials from another jurisdiction, said if he ever tried to lay a hand on her again she'd rip his head off and drop kick it over the nearest roof line."

Michael waited.

"She talked to the Prosecutor afterward and he allowed as the Marshal was armed when he tried to lay hands on her and take her sidearm, so she was rightfully defending herself, and if he wished to press charges, she had the prior claim and could charge him with aggravated specification, which would have meant he'd be facing a mandatory prison term, loss of law enforcement credentials, things like that."

"Yes, sir."

"Your Gammaw didn't take nothin' off nobody."

Michael grinned.

"I always did like her," he said softly.

"She'd be pretty damned proud of you, Michael."

"Thank you, sir."

"I know I am."

"Thank you, sir."

Linn eased off the throttle, downshifted, cackled up to the stop sign.

"I never did like this intersection," he muttered. "Blind rise yonder."

"Yes, sir."

Linn accelerated, watching his West Coast mirror more than he was looking forward: to his relief, nobody came screaming up over that blind rise behind them.

"We'll make better time on the way back," Linn said after they hit the mile long straight stretch, then looked over at his son and grinned.  "Better mileage, too. We're haulin' a load of post holes."

Michael grinned back.

"Tell you what. I've got to gas up and I've got an appetite for a large vanilla cone.  How about you?"

Michael was growing and Michael was trying hard to be a controlled and maturing young man, but there was no mistaking the delighted little boy in his expression as he replied, "Yes, sir!"

 

Edited May 17 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FETCH ME MY SHARPS

Victoria clapped her hands to her mouth as her Daddy was thrown violently backwards.

He'd only just laid gentle fingertips on the unmoving woman's head.

It was as if he'd just been hit by a minor explosion, or maybe he grabbed a live wire: he landed flat on his back, eyes wide, gasping.

Michael stepped over to the man, knelt, pressed two fingers against his Pa's Adam's apple, dropped down into the carotid groove.

Victoria's eyes were already wide with fear and with surprise.

They managed to widen a little more as she recognized what her twin brother was looking for.

He looked up.

"We have a pulse," he said -- Victoria recognized her brother was responding as he'd been trained -- they were both trained in CPR, though formal certification was not given until the student was at least twelve years old.

Michael bent -- he turned his head sideways, laid his ear against is father's nose and mouth, his hand flat on his Pa's flat-muscled belly.

Victoria blinked, fumbled for her cell phone.

"He's breathin'," Michael said, and drew back.

Linn blinked, took a great, desperate gasp of air, took another, seized his son's wrist.

"Attack," he managed to blurt. "We are under attack."

Michael raised his tight-gripped wrist, grabbed his father's wrist with his other hand, looked into wide, pale, staring eyes.

Another couple of breaths, a blink, a shudder: Linn closed his eyes hard, opened them, looked at Michael, focused.

He sat up.

He looked at the woman in the black skinsuit, threw his head back, breathing deep, desperately, as if coming up from too-deep a dive into a cold mountain pool.

"Sir?" Michael asked. "What should we do?"

Linn looked at Victoria, looked at Michael, looked at their horses.

"I need some things," he gasped. "I'll stay here, with her, you two saddle up and get me" -- he looked at the unmoving woman -- he looked at his son and his daughter again.

"Here's what I need."

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller SLAMMED the ledger down on the council table.

The noise was explosive in the hushed, formal chamber.

It was the first time the President of the Confederacy, the first time the Council at large, had ever seen their esteemed Ambassador's eyes go dead white.

That her face was the color of wheat paste and drawn suddenly tight over her cheek bones -- her lips and the dots of color on her cheeks stood out, bright, like a warning -- did nothing to diminish their surprise at this normally discreet, decorous Ambassador's startling change.

"MY FAMILY IS ON EARTH," she declared loudly, "AND BY GOD ALMIGHTY!" -- she thrust an incensed finger toward the arched, painted ceiling overhead -- "IF THE CONFEDERACY IS NOT WILLING TO INTERVENE IN THIS MATTER, I WILL!"

"But Madam Ambassador, the Council has decided. What can you possibly do?"

"THE COUNCIL?"

Marnie's voice was sharp, harsh, loud, and under perfect, very cold, control.

"THE DAMNED COUNCIL CAN GO TO HELL AND BOIL IN BUFFALO FAT FOR ALL I CARE!  I QUIT!"

The Ambassador rose, followed Marnie out of the chamber, his back stiff with disapproval, his pearl-grey Stetson correctly held under one arm.

He heard a speculative question:  "She's just a woman, what can she possibly do?"

He whirled, his expression as cold as Marnie's eyes had been a moment ago.

"This council has just made the one worst mistake in the history of the entire Confederacy," he said, his voice tight. "If I were any member of this body, I would be looking at retirement. If I'm any judge, your careers are over."

 

Victoria tilted her head, regarded the unmoving woman.

"Daddy, is this a Valkyrie?"

Linn nodded.

"Yes she is. This is Gracie Daine."

"What happened, Daddy?"

"She ejected from her ship before it landed in the gully yonder. She knew it was coming down wheels-up and it couldn't open its lower jaw to let her out, so she punched out."

"Is she hurt?"

Gracie opened her eyes, blinked, sat up, looked around.

"Hi, Linn," she said, then frowned. "You're older!"

"Yeah, God loves you too," Linn grunted. "May I present my youngest children.  This is Michael and this is Victoria."

"I heard your minds," she said softly. "So did my ship."

Gracie looked around at pale eyes, at pale eyes, at pale eyes, and at a huge, curly-black-furred creature that came up and stood beside Victoria, tail swinging, head cocked curiously.

"Hello, Bear Killer," Gracie said in a gentle voice.

 

 A pale eyed woman was received without hesitation in the broadcast studios of Inter-System Main.

Marnie Keller was a well loved figure, instantly recognized -- perhaps the one most recognizable face in the Inter-System -- and when she swept in with a grip in her hand and a fashionable little hat on her head, and she requested an immediate, system-wide broadcast, she was immediately accommodated.

She was, after all, the Assistant Ambassador, the Face of the Confederacy.

Holo-screens lit up throughout thirteen star systems.

Marnie triggered the attention-tones that were only used in the event of a major event.

She looked at the camera and smiled, just a little.

"My friends," she said without preamble, "we all know our ancestors were abducted by aliens, and why. We all know our ancestors used our abductors' own technology against them and wiped them out."

She took a long breath, blew it out.

"You may not know that our abductors, back when, were a jealous race. They did not wish any other civilization to have technology that could potentially threaten them, which is why they warred for two centuries against another, equally-matched civilization, which was just as jealous and just as watchful."

Marnie chewed on her bottom lip, looked to the side, frowned, looked back.

"It seems that one or the other of these aliens -- pardon me while I spit! -- sent out successive waves of drone-ships, searching for the radiation signatures of advanced technology.

"One of those drone-ships found Gunfighter and caught her by surprise.

"There is no more effective attack than an ambush, and this attack was just that.

"Gunfighter got away but not by much, and the drones are in pursuit. They are currently screaming around Earth.  It seems Gunfighter headed for the first safe place she could think of, and that was home."

Marnie paused.

"She ejected and her ship bellied in on my father's ranch, and that's where the fight is going to be.

"I asked the Confederate Council's help.

"They turned me down."

Marnie's face was pale and tight and her lips were bloodless as she glared at the camera.

"I told the Council to go pound sand, I quit, and I have stolen a ship they've kept secret so far."

Marnie picked up a flat, rectangular plate, laid it on the table before her: she looked down, tapped at its screen.

Her image was replaced by that of a great, grey battleship, driving hard through rough seas on a saltwater ocean.

"This is a battleship, back on Earth.  She mounts eight gun turrets. Each gun can fire shells as big across as a man is tall, shells that weigh better than a ton apiece, and there are four guns per turret.

"Any of these can be fired at a target twenty miles away.

"If that target is a man with his back to the ship, the gunner can select which hip pocket to drop that shell into, and hit it with one hundred percent reliability.

"If there's a serious engagement, every one of those guns can fire simultaneously and launch a charge of high explosive hell that will make someone's day very bad indeed."

The image showed just such a broadside, the camera above and ahead of the ship, showing the entire ship shoved hard sideways under the collective recoil.

"The battleship I commandeered makes this look like a penny firecracker."

The image showed Marnie once again, gloved fingers daintily laced together on the desktop.

"This ship is flown and crewed by one living mind. Just one. I've been training secretly to fly this ship against the day when it may be needed."

Marnie's jaw slid out.

"My friends, your Council -- your, elected, representatives" -- she emphasized the words -- "refused to rescue Gracie, refused to safeguard my family, refused to stop these attacking droneships.

"Right now my father's ranch needs me and as much authority as I can bring to bear.

"I would be very much obliged if you could let the Confederate Council know, in no uncertain terms, that they made a very bad choice."

Marnie smiled.

"I already told them to go pound sand. Now it's your turn."

Ambassador Marnie Keller stood, reached down, dropped her grip on the table before her: she seized the bodice of her long-skirted dress, pulled hard.

There was a sharp ripping sound as the dress pulled away.

Marnie Keller reached into her grip and pulled out a metal helmet with shining white wings on either side.

Beneath her dress she wore armor, in very feminine contours: she pulled two hat pins, placed them on the table, placed her dainty little hat with them: a few quick turns and she had twin braids, thick and rich, running down over each shoulder.

She ran these around her neck, tucked in the ends, settled the war-helm on her head.

The table was picked up and moved; the camera drew back to show the former Ambassador in shin-plated, knee-high boots, a skirt of plates, a long knife at her side, and her trademark Smith & Wesson under her right hand, in its ornately carved gunbelt and holster.

"If I am able, I will deliver an after action report," she said. "Right now, goodbye, my friends, I am going to WAR!"

 

"Gracie can't start her ship up," Linn explained. "Her Interceptor is the most lightly shielded in their fleet. There are enemy drones looking for her reactor's signature and -- how long will you have between your startup and their appearance?"

"Fifteen seconds, maybe twenty," Gracie replied, grimacing.

"Easy, easy," Linn said, coming in behind her, sitting to support her as she sat up.

"Easy hell, they're coming."

"I know they're coming. Tell me what we're up against."

"Drones. Living metal. They morph into whatever weapon system will be effective."

"What's their weak point?"

"Living metal is soft as it's reshaping."

"Can they be affected by rifle fire?"

Gracie nodded.  "Until they finish firming up, yes."

"How long?"

"The ones I saw ... they take fifteen seconds to start to go solid."

Linn looked at the twins.

"Victoria.  You remember you put six into that tin can I threw?"

Victoria nodded: she'd been shooting her .22 before her Daddy put a scope on it.

"And you put four more into it at the top of its rise."

Victoria nodded.

"Think you can do it with my .30 Carbine?"

Victoria's eyes lit up, her smile bright and broad:  "Yes, Daddy!"

"Victoria. Get into the bottom drawer of the gun case. I have a box of Israeli steel jacket for the .30 Carbine. Load your mags with those.  Michael."

"Yes, sir?"

"Michael, recall we were wing shooting with the Ithaca."

"Yes, sir."

"You asked about hitting a tin can with a deer slug."

Michael's grin was instant, but not as innocent as his sister's.

"Yes, sir."

"You recall I threw three cans of beans in the air and you hit each one with a slug, one-two-three."

"Yes, sir."

"You were asking about Uncle Pete's Garand."

"Yes, sir."

"Your .30-06 kicks the same as a 12 gauge slug. Think you can handle it?"

"Yes sir!"

"Good. When Victoria gets her steel jacket, you get the steel core for the Garand."

"Yes, sir!"

"And bring me," Linn said, "my buffalo rifle, and my bear loads."

"Yes, sir!"

 

A black gelding laid his ears back flat against his head and aimed his wet nose downhill.

A pale eyed rider was stuck to the saddle like a burr on a blue tick hound, grinning the way boys will when they are running to what, heretofore, had been forbidden.

A little girl was running beside him, her Appaloosa mare just as intent on getting from here to there.

 

Marnie closed her eyes.

She did not need them now.

She could see farther and better, and far more clearly, thanks to her Ship's sensors; her ears weren't neded now, for her ship could hear frequencies insensible to human sensibilities, she had longer legs and a longer reach, and she could hit with a fist made from an exploding star, if she needed that much concentrated, utterly destructive power.

A pale eyed woman in a skirt of plates and a winged helmet, lay in her pilot's couch, belted in, her living soul connected more completely to her ship than it ever connected to her husband in their most intimate moments.

Reality twisted around her.

She took one long-legged stride.

She went from orbit at Drydock to high Earth orbit in one long stride.

"Now," she snarled, "Where are you?"

 

"There will be scout drones, in-atmosphere," Linn said as he dropped the breechblock on the Sharps. 

He'd wanted the Ruger Number 1, but Michael brought him the Sharps.

Linn had handloads intended for bear -- never intended for the Sharps -- but it's what he had, it's what he dunked into the chamber.

Victoria smacked the back of the magazine against the heel of her boot, inserted it into the .30 Carbine, smacked its bottom and gave it a tug.

Michael expertly thumbed the eight round clip into the Garand, painted bullet noses declaring the steel core within their dull jackets: he lifted his hand, the action slammed shut.

"Gracie," Linn said, "what are we looking for?"

"When I wake up Gunfighter," Gracie said, "they'll appear.  They'll start to morph right away. You'll have fifteen seconds."

"How far away will they be?"

"They should be close enough."

"Victoria, you got enough mags?"

"I've got 'em all, Daddy!"

"Michael?"

Michael grinned, slapped the bandolier of Garand clips slung across the chest of his flannel shirt.

"Okay. Michael, when you see one, take it down. Fifty yards -- that way, that rock will give you a good 360 view."

"Yes, sir."

A little boy with a big rifle jogged over to his assigned firing point.

"Victoria."

"Yes, Daddy?"

"Treat 'em like a tin can."

"Okay, Daddy!"

Linn had to laugh, just a little: he was assigning his children to war, and his little girl responded with an innocent voice and a happy expression.

"That flat yonder. Go."

Victoria turned and scampered to the indicated location.

Linn looked at Gracie.

"Whenever you're ready, Gracie."

Gracie watched as Linn raised the tang mounted vernier sight.

He turned the adjustment knob.

"With these loads ... the fifty yard setting should do fine."

Gracie looked at Michael, turned and looked at Victoria.

"I can run a diagnostic first. I need to make sure Gunfighter repaired herself. If she has, we'll start the main reactors and that's when the drones will be able to sense her. Until she's awake, I can't tell where they are."

"Are they invisible?"

"No."

Linn nodded.  

"Good. Now once the drones sense your ship, will they signal anyone?"

Gracie was quiet for a long moment.

"I'll have to get out of atmosphere, fast. The drones will attack me first before sending a signal, but yes, there's a mothership somewhere near."

"How powerful?"

Gracie looked very directly at the Sheriff.

"They'll try to kill my ship. That will leave a crater a mile wide, half mile deep."

Linn looked at Michael.

Michael raised an arm to indicate his readiness, then set the Garand to shoulder, setting his feet and looking around, muzzle down like he was waiting for a clay pigeon to come winging from the trap.

Linn looked at Victoria.

Victoria raised an arm, then brought the M1 Carbine to shoulder, shifted her weight like she was waiting for her Daddy to toss another tin can up in the air.

Gracie closed her eyes and smiled a little as she connected with her ship.

"Diagnostics," she whispered for Linn's benefit -- words were suddenly awkward, clumsy -- "repairs nearly complete, repairs now complete."

Gracie opened her eyes, looked at Linn, smiled.

"Hold my beer," she murmured, and stood.

Gracie Daine, a Kentucky fiddler from the Colorado mountains, extended her arm, opened her hand.

Linn heard the lover's whisper in his mind:

Come to me, my beloved.

He watched as the Interceptor rose, silent, shining, flawless.

The ship turned to face them as dirt and sand was ejected in a stream from the muzzle of her twin Gauss cannon, from the Hellbore's broad black mouth --

Something silver appeared overhead --

 

A lean young man raised the shining bugle to his lips.

The staccato command, brassy, sudden and shocking, went shipwide; another bugler, another ship, did the same.

On both ships, he bugle call was followed by "THIS IS NOT A DREEYIL, THIS IS NOT A DREEYIL. GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS, ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!"

On multiple military bases, the first command was the bugle for "To Arms," followed immediately by "Boots and Saddles" -- young men who'd been watching the Inter-System responded with a will, ran for their field gear: weapons lockers slammed open, men ran past, seized their assigned weapons, legged it at a wide open sprint for the assembly points.

Troopships sang into the air, turned, assumed pickup formation, eased down onto the assembly grounds, their ramps swinging open before landing skids were touching manicured sod.

 

The bolt on Victoria's carbine slammed rapidly, sending surplus Israeli steel-jacket through the thin mountain atmosphere and spinning empty hulls high and to the side.

She had no idea how many shots it would take to stop this drone-thing, all she knew was that Gracie was One of Them and these silver things wanted to hurt her, and she, Victoria, was not going to stand for any such thing!

Michael swung on another, slapped the trigger, saw liquid metal squirt out the far side of the drone.

It wobbled in the air.

He drove another steel-core spitzer through it, swung on a second shape just materializing above it and to its right.

Linn had no time to aim.

He punched the octagon barrel of his Sharps and slapped the trigger.

The distance was about three feet.

Alien technology or not, advanced technology or not, a handload a man put together to stop a grizzly bear with one well placed shot, was sufficient to blow the guts out of this malleable, metal-morphing machine.

Linn swept the big hammer back, dropped the breechblock, dunked in another brass panetela.

 

Gracie turned, stepped back, looking like she was stepping back into a big dangerous flying raptor's mouth.

In a way, that's exactly what she did.

She leaned back in the pilot's couch and she put on her speed and her fists and her legs, she strapped on her voice and her eyes and her ears.

The Interceptor closed its lower jaw, lifted silently, then disappeared.

 

Marnie saw the enemy mothership.

It was starting to move.

She disappeared from where-she-was and reappeared two yards from the enemy ship.

At this range, there was no missing, there was no escape.

Marnie's hand was tight around the control stick, her finger tightened on the red-plastic trigger.

Something metallic slammed into the enemy ship's hull and Marnie's ship disappeared.

A tenth of a second later, lunar sensors recorded a significant, sudden shock.

Earth scientists would speculate it must have been a meteor strike of some kind.

None of them had seen the seismic effects of a microminiature black hole swallowing a ship and then falling into an adjacent universe, where another black hole ripped it apart and belched out a fountain of spinning radiation.

 

Gracie loved flying in atmosphere.

Gracie was a fiddler and Gracie was a dancer.

Gracie had an uncle who'd flown in the Pacific Theater, a man who truly loved to fly, and his stories of flight fired her young imagination and in the fullness of time, she experienced that same airborne joy as a US Naval Aviator.

She loved running atmosphere aircraft in the simulator.

Now she was doing it for real.

Her ship deployed atmospheric wings, she had a stick and she had rudder pedals and she had a throttle lever, and Gracie Daine, fiddler and dancer and Valkyrie pilot, had a grin on her face you couldn't have removed with a hammer and chisel!

There was a total of one dozen drones, not counting the wrecked drones she swept up and ran through her shipboard Ripper: the enemy drones were disassembled at the subatomic level, the energies released were stored in the fiery heart of her own ship.

They would provide most of the power she'd need for the next calendar year.

She banked hard, squeezed off a quick burst of eye-searing energy, then two more: she came level, set a course for the nearest nuclear missile silo.

The drones were simple enough they always went to the nuclear missile sites first, and that's likely where she'd scoop up the rest of them.

 

"Daddy?"

Linn looked at where Victoria's arm was pointing.

Linn looked at the big empty valley -- or a valley that had been empty but moments earlier.

Black, boxy ships were sliding out of rectangular Portals a hundred yards off the ground, dispersing and discharging running men.

Track-mounted, domed vehicles clattered down black-steel ramps, took up station at regular intervals.

"Daddy," Victoria said, as she gave her Daddy an innocent look, "does this mean we'll have guests for supper?"

 

"And now, the latest Inter-System news."

Men stopped talking, turned to face the screen.

"Tonight we are reporting on a dietary change for the Confederate Council-at-Large."

The upper right corner of the screen went white, then a set of gloved hands set a silver platter in the white rectangle; on the platter, a large black bird, its feet in the air.

"The Confederate Council has voted to dine upon crow this evening, and will issue a formal apology to Ambassador Marnie Keller, who located and crushed an Alien Droneship, but not before local efforts had to be deployed in order to stop the Dronescouts."

The dead crow was replaced by a tall, skinny boy, a mountain's peak and blue sky behind him, firing a stout-looking, serviceable, shoulder-weapon of some kind, a weapon that slammed his shoulder back with every shot: the view switched to a pretty little girl with big lovely eyes, showed the action of her lighter shoulder-weapon slamming quickly forward and back, and finally, the more familiar figure of a genuine Western Sheriff, shoving the muzzle of a substantial weapon at a drone and blasting its guts out its back side.

The view switched to the troop deployment in the valley below, to track-mounted defensive vehicles moving into position, then returned to the little girl who asked in an innocent voice, "Daddy, does this mean we'll have guests for supper?"

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MY DADDY'S SHARPS RIFLE

Deputy Marshal Willamina Keller drove steadily north.

The Interstate was not a novelty to her -- she'd driven the Autobahn, for Christ's sake! -- but the Interstate was a welcome change from the twisty secondary roads with their frequent speed traps.

I mean small towns.

She pointed her nose north and headed for a foreign territory, one she'd always regarded with a degree of angst.

To hear her late Daddy tell it, the Yankee North (as he called it) was flat a file and populated with folk who were surly, disagreeable, unpleasant, and generally invested with cloven hooves, a pointed tail, and horns.

So far Willamina had encountered nothing of the kind, and she was well north of the true Mason-Dixon: her Daddy taught her that when the Messrs. Mason and Dixon scribed the state boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Yankee North projected it due West, where it followed the old National Road.

I just crossed Interstate 70, she thought.

God help me, I'm in Yankee territory now!

Daddy told me he had to be careful whenever he went to Cleveland.

A friend of his was bald and he swore he'd been scalped by the Cleveland Indians.

Willamina smiled, just a little, at that memory: their friend was known to pull your leg with a straight face and remarkable expertise, and Willamina would listen, all silent and solemn, when said soul held forth with a genuine line of highly entertaining bull.

She navigated with care, caution and the occasional application of heavy throttle, grateful that she had a big block V8 under the hood: she'd long appreciated a powerful and responsive engine, and more times than one, proper application of the Lead Foot kept her out of a collision.

She wheeled into the parking lot of the East Cleveland Gun Shop, parked, looked around before she emerged.

Willamina was naturally cautious.

Willamina was also a wounded soul.

She'd been abducted and tortured as a sixteen year old, she'd experienced things no girl should ever endure, she'd watched and listened as her boyfriend was tortured to death beside her, as her captors planned her death, cheerfully discussing it freely as she lay helpless, chained down, unable to so much as wiggle.

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

That was a long time ago.

It'll never happen again.

She reached down, wrapped her hand tight around the handle of her .357, and when she opened her eyes, they were a hard shade of ice pale, and she felt a snarl building inside her chest.

"You're damned right it'll never happen again!" she whispered through clenched teeth and a muscle-bulged jaw.

She made a final visual sweep, got out of her white Crown Vic: she turned, slowly, swept the area with hard and pale eyes, settled her uniform Sheriff's-pattern, tan Stetson on Marine-short hair.

She closed and locked the car door.

 

The rifle was heavy in her hands.

It was exactly what she wanted.

"Do you realize what you have here?" the gunsmith asked.

Willamina looked up at him, her head tilted a little to the side, one eyebrow raised.

"This," he said, "is an original."

"That much I know," she nodded, "and that is about all that I know. What else can you tell me?"

The gunsmith grinned.

It wasn't often he got to work on one of these.

"The saddle ring" -- blunt fingers pointed at the lanyard a-jingle on the side -- "means this was a Cavalry carbine. This isn't a Cavalry barrel."

Willamina nodded.  "Go on."

"This was originally a tobacco cutter."

"Not familiar."

"It fired a nonmetallic cartridge. The edge of the breechblock was sharp and would shear off the back of the cartridge and expose the powder, then a percussion cap would be applied to the nipple -- here -- this is factory converted from the tobacco cutter to fixed metallic."

Willamina raised an eyebrow, nodded.

"I don't know what dedicated idiot ruined it," the smith continued, "but some dim bulb hogged out the chamber with a hand drill and hacksawed the original barrel off at about twelve inches. This one is 32 inches. You've a good set of sights on it now."

Willamina flipped up the Vernier peep.  "Tell me about this."

"Adjustable from here to yonder, and with this rifle, it doesn't matter how far yonder is."

Willamina smiled, just a little.

"The firing pin is kind of delicate."  He laid a small brown-paper envelope on the counter. "Keep those in a safe place, you'll need 'em."

Willamina raised an eyebrow.

"The pin -- here let me show you -- see, this is workwise in the breechblock. The hammer originally hit a percussion nipple -- here -- so this pin starts where the nipple was -- it goes down -- over -- then in -- you've got three sharp angles and they tend to break at this first one.

"When you drop the breech block, cock the hammer first, otherwise it'll hold the nose of the firing pin out and it'll shear off."

Willamina nodded, brought the big percussion hammer back to the half cock notch, opened the heavy breech.

"Now you asked about ammunition."

He set two old-looking, buff-cardboard boxes on the counter.

"No charge for these. I've had 'em forever. These are the original black powder Cavalry loads, but I'll warn you now, that's a heavy bullet and it'll kick accordingly."

Willamina nodded.

"If it were mine" -- Willamina looked up and saw a wishful look on the man's face -- "if this were mine, I'd get a Lyman mold and cast some 350 grain Gould's Express bullets. Less weight, less recoil and you've still got 350 grains of lead."

Willamina considered this, nodded, looked up at the man with a little smile on her face.

"350 grains is an Express load?" she asked.

He nodded.

Willamina laughed.

"A .44 Magnum carries 250 grains.  350 is the Express?"  She laughed again.  "I'm going to like this one!"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller drew the hammer back to half cock, dropped the heavy breech block.

He dropped a round the size of a young panatela into the chamber, closed the lever: his middle finger cocked the set triggers as his thumb brought the heavy hammer back to full stand.

The rifle was steady as he looked through the rear peep, at the white-painted plate hanging from short chains a football field distant.

Blue smoke and thunder and the plate swung and went CLANK and two pale eyed children happily chorused, "HIT!"

Linn half-cocked the heavy hammer and looked at it for several long moments before he dropped the breech block.

He looked at Michael.

"Like to try it?"

The delighted grin was all the answer needed.

Later that day, as father and twin children ran successively hot water rinses coursing through the barrel, as young eyes and older eyes scrutinized fresh-cut patches pushed through the bore on a tight button jag, a father told his young the story of this rifle, how it belonged to a long dead lawman, how his daughter fulfilled her Daddy's dream of having it rebarreled and brought back into working order, how his Mama's pale eyed Daddy always wanted a genuine Buffalo Rifle, and by golly now, this rifle was good medicine if a man was going out to put Big Shaggy in the cook pot!

Victoria thought to herself that would require a sizable cook pot, and opened her mouth to say so, but her Daddy's wink told her he'd thought of the same thing himself.

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DISASTER'S SERMON

The Reverend John Burnett sometimes preached from a sheaf of notes, or a stack of file cards, and sometimes just off the top of his head.

At one time he imitated the example of a speaker out in Oregon, who sawed off a roll of wallpaper to the width of a sheet of typing paper, and when he began his sermon, he held the tag end and said "I made a few  notes so I wouldn't forget anything," and let the roll fall, and unroll for an impressive distance ... at which point he leaned waaaaay out to the side, looked at the length of paper, shook his head and said, "Mmmmabybe not," which started his sermon out with a good natured chuckle from the congregation.

Today, the good Reverend didn't bother pulling out notes, file cards nor tight rolled scroll.

He considered for a few moments, his eyes drawn to the ancient, wavy-glass window (the inner windows were the original wavy glass, installed in the 1880s; they were layered between panes of insulated glass, which kept things much more comfortable!) -- and then he looked back at the congregation.

"You know I'm Chaplain with the Emergency Services."

He looked down, bit his bottom lip, drummed his fingertips lightly on the podium, as if considering whether to let a feline out of the burlap.

"I'm not going to embarrass the responsible party by naming him, I'm just going to tell you what he did."

He smiled a little and added, "Kind of like in high school ... you know, 'No initials, but his name is so-and-so.'"

He frowned at the carpet, nodded as if arriving at a conclusion.

"You all now we had quite a wind storm. The National Weather Service said it was straight line winds. They sent a team out to survey the damage and I don't know what they weren't seeing, but we saw bushes twisted like a giant reached down and tried to wrench them out of the ground.  Straight line winds don't twist like that."

He shook his head and added, "On the other hand, if I know so much, why haven't I made that million dollars and retired?"

This didn't quite elicit a chuckle, but there were several smiles at his self-depricating pronouncement.

"The winds tore the side out of a double-wide. You heard about it, I'm sure, but let me tell you what I saw.

"The alarm came in when I was in the firehouse, so I geared up like the rest of 'em -- you all know I'm a firefighter from way back -- we got to the scene and we didn't know what to expect.

"I honestly didn't expect to see almost all of the entire western-facing wall, ripped away and gone. 

"Insulation hanging from trees, sheet metal bent around fence posts, papers, curtains, clothing, pictures, scattered all over, and a man in house slippers and work pants and a T-shirt was doing his best to secure a tarp at one end so he could start to stretch it over the hole."

The Parson stopped, frowned again, continued.

"I can stand up here and talk all day and it's just words.

"I saw one of the best sermons of my entire career that day."

 

A pale eyed man and his auburn haired wife read the sky.

Their mounts were restless, muttering: creatures of the mountains are more sensitive to changes in weather, and the Sheriff knew well that he benefitted from wise counsel, whether that was his beautiful bride's sound advice, or whether it was his stallion telling him things were going to get bad, fast.

They looked at the cloud structure, at an actual rotation.

"I know a place," Linn said.

His stallion stepped out, Shelly's gelding following: they pitched downhill along the ancient, narrow trail, ducked to avoid the branches Linn threatened to cut back for the past twenty years: Linn's stallion turned, threaded into some brush, disappeared.

Shelly laid down over her horse's mane, followed.

The ground was sandy underfoot; horses' hooves were silent as they went deeper into the mountain, into a chamber of remarkable height.

Daylight shone at its apex, a hole above them, maybe ten feet long, a couple feet wide.

"If that's a twister," Linn said quietly, "we're safe here. No way we can make the house in time."

Shelly turned her shining black gelding, looked uncomfortably at the entrance, thirty feet away.

Air moved around them as it picked up outside.

"Don't worry, darlin'," Linn rumbled, his voice ghostly and sonorous in the echoing, shadowed interior: "we've solid rock around us. We'll be safe."

Rain sluiced past the entrance like a sudden grey curtain: there were the first, fat, pioneering, cold water-bombs that precede a deluge, then the blinding sheets of hard, driving rain, angry and vengeful and intent on washing away the entire world, or so it seemed.

Linn looked up, smiled a little as he saw diamond-drops shattering against rock overhead, misting down toward them.

He turned, walked his stallion deeper into shadow.

"I had my Saturday night bath already," he deadpanned.

Shelly watched the entrance, fascinated at the storm's fury -- fascinated, that is, because she knew she was safe, that she could marvel at Nature's assault with the knowledge that she could not be touched.

There was a scraping sound -- sharp, short, repeated -- she turned, curious, saw her husband's face briefly illuminated by a shower of falling sparks.

A few more, and he raised his hands, blew into them:  his face was ghostly, illuminated by a small, smoky flame inches from his curled handlebar mustache:  fire rose from his hands, he was a shaman, bringing mystical light into mysterious darkness, then he lowered the burning ball of tinder onto a waiting bed of small sticks, laid more atop the hungry flames.

He looked up at Shelly, grinned.

"I've used this place before."

"So I gather!"

"If that storm lasts a while, I can boil up some coffee."

Shelly made a face.  "No thanks."

"I have tea, if you'd rather."

Shelly's pager sputtered, then beeped:  she dismounted, almost ran to the cave's mouth, holding the pager out to try and get a better signal.

Linn tilted his head, listened.

There was enough wind noise he couldn't make out what was being said, but he saw his wife's silhouette, how she threw her head back, then turned toward him.

Linn waited.

Shelly came back to the fire, squatted beside the small conflagration.

"I'm off duty," she muttered.  "They have a crew. I'm just being paranoid."

"It's because you actually give a damn," Linn said softly.  "I'll boil us up some water.  How long has it been since I had my wife out on a picnic?"

Shelly thrust to her feet, went to her saddlebag:  she unbuckled it by feel, reached in, brought out a talkie, almost ran for the cave's mouth.

Linn watched his wife and decided he wouldn't be boilin' up some water after all.

 

The storm hit like a meteorological tantrum.

Noisy, spectacular, violent, then gone.

Husband and wife emerged, looked around: the world was dripping, wet, washed clean.

Shelly raised her talkie, spoke briefly: Linn saw her turn, look at him with concern.

"The Colvin place," she said. 

"That's not far."

Linn lifted his chin, his stallion stepped out at an easy trot, then they turned uphill, lunged against the grade, Shelly's shining black gelding easily keeping up with the spotty stallion.

 

"The Fire Department has a unique place in our society, and a unique duty."

The good Reverend looked at his fellows in their red, bib-front shirts and polished, knee-high boots, holdovers from the original Irish Brigade: they had Class A uniforms, yes, but they preferred their red wool bib fronts for affairs of State.

"Our orders are, 'Go to the situation and handle it.'  It doesn't matter what the situation is, we're expected to handle it.

"Upon arrival, we found most of one wall of a double-wide was missing.

"That sounds easy enough, but when you have wind enough to rip a wall open, even a manufactured-home wall, that's wind enough to pretty much gut the interior of anything that's not nailed down.

"The poor fellow trying to secure a tarp over what used to be a wall, was shivering, but persistent.

"I watched as one of the responders -- he got there when we did, we had to chain saw trees out of the road to get there, and that delayed us -- I watched a man take off a brand new coat he'd worn all of one time, and put it on this man, and take off his own gloves and put them on this man's blue, cold, mostly numb hands."

 

Linn swung down, strode up to Bill Colvin.

He was fumbling with a roll of silver tape, he had a claw hammer tucked under his off arm and nails between blue lips.

Linn relieved the man of hammer and tape, he unfast his brand new insulated coat:  he shook it, slid it onto Colvin's right arm, turned the man, took his other wrist and worked his other hand into the still-warm sleeve.

The Irish Brigade was only just arrived, they were swarming over the scene, checking for other hazards -- live wires, gas lines, anything else that would present a hazard to life or safety -- Linn paid them no attention as he shook the coat into place around Colvin's shoulders, then fast it up around the shivering fellow.

Linn frowned, pulled off his gloves -- one, then the other -- he gripped Colvin's forearm, brought his arm up, then carefully, gently, worked his own still-warm gloves onto the man's reddened, shivering hands, as carefully as if he were working gloves on a shivering child.

 

"When the man took off his own brand new coat and put it on this fellow -- when he took off his gloves and slid them on cold, numb hands -- he preached one of the best sermons I'd ever heard.

"Now like I said, I'm not going to embarrass the man by naming him."

He looked pointedly at the Sheriff, raised an eyebrow: Linn shifted uncomfortably, feeling his ears heating up:  Shelly's hand tightened on his arm and he heard her whisper, "I'm proud of you!"

Linn folded his arms, frowned, muttered, "All I wanted was a picnic with my wife!" 

 

Edited May 19 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I AM NEEDED ELSEWHERE

As skilled as Ambassador Marnie Keller was, as careful as Ambassador Marnie Keller was, as scrupulous as she was to be a very proper Ambassador (unless she was called upon to be quite improper, which she could do as well!), the pale-eyed, McKenna-gowned Ambassador Marnie Keller was human.

Humans make mistakes.

Marnie, in a moment of homesickness, stepped through an Iris into the back room of the Silver Jewel.

She looked around and smiled, remembering the times she wore a little girl's frock and watched with big and adoring eyes as her pale eyed Gammaw stood -- here -- behind this little podium, set on a table at the west end of the room -- gloved hands caressed the podium, pale eyes softened to a distinct, light blue with the memory, and she looked up as the door opened.

The Ladies' Tea Society came filing in, smiling, chattering, they looked and saw a very familiar figure, who promptly smiled that smile they remembered, took one step backward, and ... ...disappeared.

Marnie bit her bottom lip, reprogrammed the Iris, stepped out at the foot of her Gammaw's grave.

She looked at the laser carved portrait in the glass-smooth stone's face, she closed her eyes, took a long, savoring breath of good mountain air.

Then she froze.

She heard the tread of running feet, many of them, and running in step.

She turned, nodded as a familiar red guidon came over the rise, as Willamina's Warriors came running, all youthful energy and red faces and an obscene running song, and Marnie lifted her chin as they ran past -- startled, staring --

She couldn't resist.

Ambassador Marnie Keller, in a McKenna gown and a fashionable little hat -- Ambassador Marnie Keller, the very image of her pale eyed Gammaw, Sheriff Willamina Keller -- Marnie Keller, standing at the foot of her Gammaw's grave,  took a deep, to-her-guts breath and shouted, "WHO ARE YOU?"

"WILLAMINA'S WARRIORS!"

"WHAT DO YOU DO?"

"WARRIORS! FIGHT LIKE HELL!"

The Warriors spontaneously coasted to a stop, stared.

Marnie took one step backward, and ... disappeared.

Once more in her Ambassadorial shuttle, she shook her head, bit her bottom lip.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Marnie reprogrammed the Iris.

She stepped out into the Judge's private car, the one His Honor Judge Hostetler used in the day of that pale eyed old Sheriff that started all this.

Marnie heard voices outside: thinking quickly, she opened the top left hand drawer, withdrew a little book she hoped was still there.

It was.

She slipped a dainty little set of pince-nez spectacles from a hidden bodice pocket, slipped them on her nose, sat and assumed a very proper, very erect posture.

In her McKenna gown and matching hat, she knew she would be the very image of a proper Victorian Lady, reading.

The tourists were being given a tour of the Z&W rolling stock, and the Judge's private car was often part of that tour.

Marnie sat, reading, turned the page with a delicate sweep of a lace-gloved finger.

The docent was one of the Ladies of the Tea Society: she stopped, blinked, hesitated.

"This," Marnie said, rising and placing the book on the little table beside her comfortably-upholstered, blue-velvet-cushioned chair, "is the Honorable Judge Hostetler's private car."

She smiled a little.

"It is reputed to be haunted, though we don't believe in such things."

She swept over to what looked like a clothes-press, or closet: she pressed the hidden release, opened the doors to reveal a small, but very functional, jail cell.

"On occasion it was necessary to transport prisoners, and this cell was used for that very purpose. You can see, within, there are irons of various sizes: the smallest are not for children, but rather for women, for women often have a delicate and small bone structure, which makes it difficult for them to be kept in irons."

She closed the camouflaging door, folded her hands very properly before her.

"The Judge often worked as he rode, unless his work was done.  This" -- her hand indicated the bench beside the chair she'd occupied -- "is easily made into a bed, and behind you" -- she thrust a knife-hand across the car -- "if you lift the padded seat, you will see the built in toilet. Overhead, you have the curtain's track to afford privacy, and if you look down through the seat, you'll see it just opens up to the gravel ballast below."

She laughed a little and said, "Sanitation has advanced since the Judge's day!"

She tilted her head a little, smiled gently.

"Your docent will continue the tour, but I'm afraid I have to leave. The car is haunted, after all, and I am needed elsewhere."

Marnie took one step back and ... disappeared.

 

 

Edited May 20 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
Change title

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CHEERLEADER WITH THE VALKYRIES

 

The Ambassador sighed with pleasure, leaned back.

He looked the length of the table at the Sheriff, rose: formally, with the polish of long practice, he took Shelly’s hand, raised her knuckles, kissed the back of her fingers.

“My Lady,” he said, “thank you. I honestly do not remember when I have eaten better.”

He looked at Michael, winked.

“You, young man, were absolutely right.  Your Mom’s meatloaf is the best!”

Linn rose; he and the Ambassador retired to Linn’s study.

His curious young, of course, followed, faded back against the walls, sat cross-legged on the floor with the comfortable flexibility of the young.

“Mister Ambassador,” Linn said, “am I correct in believing that we are not yet informing Earth of the existence of the Confederacy?”

“That is correct,” the Ambassador said gravely. “It is to your daughter’s credit that she capitalized on her inadvertent exposure and made herself look like your mother’s ghost.”

“She always could think on her feet,” Linn nodded.

“I understand pictures were published of her appearance in the Judge’s private rail car?”

“They were,” Linn nodded.

“And they were rather … fuzzy?”

“They were. Almost foggy.”

“Good. An inadvertent effect of …”

He frowned.

“No.  No, we corrected that.”

“I know,” a familiar voice said.

Sheriff, Ambassador and youngest son rose as Marnie came through an Iris.

Michael stood, as had the men: Victoria had no such reserve.

She ran with a delighted “Marneee!” and executed a perfect colliding hug as Marnie dropped to her knees to receive her.

“Marnie, everyone thought you were Gammaw’s ghostie an’ they took some brand-X pictures of you an’ does that mean you weren’t wearin’ any clo’es?” Victoria asked all in one breath, and Marnie threw her head back and laughed:  Linn smiled, just a little, and the Ambassador looked confused.

“No, sweets,” Marnie murmured, touching the tip of Victoria’s nose with a lace-gloved finger: “Brand X means second rate and low grade. You’re thinking of Rated X.”

Victoria nodded solemnly.

“No, sweets. They were Brand X pictures, fuzzy and foggy and kind of low grade.”

“Howcum?” Victoria asked with the utter lack of reserve that is the spontaneous prerogative of a little sister.

“I had to make it look like I was a ghost,” Marnie smiled. “Nobody can know that I’m not Sheriff on Mars.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“You haven’t told anyone?”

Victoria solemnly shook her head, her braids swinging with the effort.

“Good. The day might come when we tell Earth, but that day is not yet here, so …”

Marnie winked, put a finger on her little sister’s lips, then on her own and gave a quiet, purse-lipped “Ssshhh.”

Linn looked at Michael and Michael nodded solemnly.

“You managed to out-phase your protective field?” the Ambassador asked curiously.

“It’s useful for defeating surveillance, yes. It’s a simple modification I’ve used to good effect in the past.  Plausible deniability and all that.”

Her smile was mischievous as she stood and added, “It doesn’t hurt that I am the very image of my grandmother, who often appeared in public in this very attire!”

“Gammaw wore her cheerleader outfit too,” Victoria added helpfully.  “It fit her!”

“I know, Sweets! I used to wear it too!”

“You did?” Victoria bounced on her toes, clapping her little pink hands together excitedly. “Marnie, are you gonna cheerleader with the Valkyries like Gammaw used to?”

Marnie laughed and knelt and hugged her little sister again, then drew back, smiled up at her pale-eyed Daddy and at the grinning Ambassador.

“No, sweets,” she said gently.  “I don’t think I’ll do that.  Ghosts don’t make good cheerleaders.”

 

 

Edited May 20 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

LATER, OVER COFFEE

Later in the evening, as the Ambassador was lingering over the after-dinner coffee, mention was made of Marnie's latest address to the Confederate Council.

Linn watched the video of his daughter's violent and loud-voiced pronouncement.

He read the after action report on the effectiveness of his daughter and her ship.

He listened to the Ambassador's assessment that Marnie and her ship were the equal to a battle fleet.

Linn considered this without comment: instead, he frowned, he rose, he refilled everyone's coffee mugs and he set to brewing another pot.

The Ambassador watched with amusement as the coffeemaker gurgled and hissed, as dark liquid trickled noisily into the glass pot: he was used to replicators, to their near-silence: somehow, watching a beverage actually being brewed, was entertaining.

Linn sat, received the Genuine Antique Heirloom Milk Pitcher, decanted a small volume of Extract of Bovine from the plastic milk jug, set it back in the middle of the table.

The Ambassador looked from Marnie to her father.

When a quiet and agreeable man displays a prolonged silence, it generally means that his next pronouncement will be well thought out, and probably significant.

"Marnie," he said at length, "men often have fragile egos."

"Yes, they do," she agreed quietly. 

"Men often don't like being told they're wrong."

Marnie nodded.  "That is also correct."

"I ... have a concern ... for a direct confrontation to the ruling council."  He looked at his daughter, regal and collected and feminine and beautiful, sitting at his right hand, looking like a 19th century fashion plate.

"I have given those ramifications considerable thought," she replied quietly.

"Marnie, you not only backhanded every man there, you stole their most advanced warship, you went hell-a-tearin' off and fought a war single handed, you admittedly kept us from being killed and Earth from being dragged into an interstellar war, but my God, darlin', think of how many and how powerful the enemies you made in the process!"

Marnie never moved ... at least, most of her never moved.

The Ambassador saw her eyes tighten a little at the corners, he saw her eyes go several shades of pale, he saw her eyes become hard and icy and he saw the skin tighten over her cheekbones.

"Sheriff," she said -- Linn's right ear pulled back a little, as if an invisible thumb-and-forefinger tugged it back --

Sheriff.

Not Daddy.

"You said it yourself."

She lifted her eyes without lifting her head, then she turned her head, slowly, looked very directly at her father.

Her words were carefully shaped, quietly pronounced, and icily spoken.

"I put everything I am, on the line, to keep you and Mother and my family, alive."

Her hands closed a little, not quite into fists: she caught herself, placed curled fingers' gloved tips on the tablecloth.

"Had I not gone to war, you would have no county over which to preside. Earth would be powerless to stop the enemy. If their computerized brains decided Earth was sufficiently advanced to pose a threat, or even significant resistance to an invasion, they would have proceeded to sterilize the whole planet."

Marnie's eyes were half-lidded, her face was very pale now.

"Do you know how they do that, Sheriff?"

Linn was looking very directly at his daughter.

He was seeing something he'd never seen before.

"They use ... what they use isn't important, its effects are."

The Ambassador closed his eyes, lowered his face into his hand, rubbed his closed eyes.

He'd seen what Marnie was about to describe.

"They turn the planet's crust to molten slag, to a depth of about a mile. The entire planet. Liquefied, melted, glowing with red heat, sterile, ruined, destroyed. Do you know what else they do?"

Linn shook his head slowly, the way a man will when he is looking at a nightmare spun of words.

"They very carefully leave every orbital vehicle and station intact. They leave all the technology right where it is. By then the atmosphere is gone, so there's no atmospheric drag to slow the satellites to where they will fall and burn up. Anyone still alive in the space stations can transmit all the calls for help they want. Nobody is left."

Marnie's face was parchment white, her voice, a whisper.

"Nobody."

Linn shivered as if a cold hand stroked his beating heart, ran icy fingers down the inside of his spine.

"Now if the Confederate Council wants to censure me, or chastise me, or smack my knuckles with a ruler, they're welcome to try. They might try to take my ship away from me. They can't. I'm the only one who can fly it, and I don't have to be on board. I can sit right here and my ship can play hide-and-seek in the debris field that makes up the rings of Saturn. I can sit in the Silver Jewel and have tea and chat happily while my ship is slithering through a meteor storm, or launching Hullsplitter munitions at an oncoming squadron. I've located and disabled their fail-safes, their remote takeover systems -- it helps that my mind and my ship's mind are one and the same."

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

"Not to mention my having fabricated and launched a little over two hundred droneships of my own."

The Ambassador's eyes widened: he was an old hand at keeping a poker face, but this was not just news, this was shocking news: neither she, nor her ship, were supposed to have this capacity!

"Space is big and Space is dangerous, and two entire civilizations spread out over more cubic parsecs than most minds can grasp," she said quietly. "There are still packs of Droneships out there. While we sat here talking, two task forces reduced their numbers, herded them into a kill-pocket and crushed them into a miniature black hole. I'm in the process of opening a rift between universes so I can drop this little black hole into a really big one."

The Ambassador and the Sheriff looked at one another and shared an unspoken thought.

Is this whole cloth, or is she pulling our legs?

Marnie blinked, looked at her coffee as if she hadn't seen it before.

She picked up her mug and drank, set it down, rose.

"Please excuse me," she smiled. "I promised to tuck in Victoria."

Sheriff and Ambassador rose: Michael was long since gone upstairs for a shower and bed, and the men waited until Marnie was up the stairs before looking at one another and sitting again.

"Did she?" Linn asked.

The Ambassador withdrew a tablet from somewhere, tapped the screen, frowned, swept, tapped, frowned again, then planted his elbow on the tabletop, gripping his neatly trimmed goatee between thumb and forefinger as his other hand held the tablet.

He raised an eyebrow.

"It seems," he said slowly, "that ... she ... did."

"If she is too powerful," Linn said, "how much a threat will she appear to the Government?"

"She is too valuable at this point."

"What do you mean, at this point?"

"Nobody else can do a thing with her ship."

"Come again?"

"Marnie told me that Sarah Lynne McKenna took a man killing Frisian horse and turned it into a docile pony of a saddlehorse. Nobody else could do anything with it. She" -- he looked at where Marnie had been seated -- "has that same gift."

"But nobody else can run the ship?"

"Oh, they could, but hand controls would be too slow and cumbersome. Even voice command would be far too inexact. Only the human mind is fast enough and perceptive enough and flexible enough to command the ship's performance."

"But why Marnie? Why not one of the other Valkyries?"

"It depends on the degree of their mind's control. Nancy, for instance, can sit in Mars and wear a helmet to control her ship, but without the helmet she can't. It drives microneedles into her living brain. Whatever abilities she has, are there, but are too faint to be picked up by induction.

"The other Valkyries can fly their ships by induction, but only one -- Gracie -- can direct her ship from without. The others have to be in their flight couches, and Gracie's control is line-of-sight, which is why she was able to bring her ship back from its crash. You were there."

"Yes," Linn said slowly.  "I was there."

"Plus none can deny Marnie just saved Earth, or at least several critical square miles, from being slagged."

"Are they certain of her loyalty? With that kind of power, how much fear have they, that she could take over and become Supreme Emperess?"

The Ambassador gave the Sheriff a long, thoughtful look.

"That," he admitted, "has been discussed."

"And?"

"And rejected. I have reservations. The first duty of a government is self-preservation and I have a fear they might try to either test her loyalties, or make a pre-emptive strike and --"

He bit off his words and looked away, the way a man will when he realizes he'd said too much.

"What are the chances they could do this?"

"Slim to none."

"Can her ship be made to self destruct?"

"I don't think so. There are ... secrets ... held from everyone, even the Council, even from me, so it is possible, yes."

"You said there were systems that could take over her ship, but she disabled them."

"Yes."

"Can there be a self destruct somewhere in that ship?"

"It's very likely," the Ambassador admitted. "Something like a black hole, hidden in a suspensor, could crush the entire ship into a single particle of pure neutronium that would fall into the nearest star and be safely gone."

The men rose again as Marnie descended the stairs with a queenly grace.

She stopped halfway down, a soft expression on her face, as her gloved palm caressed the polished banister.

Father and daughter shared a look, and the memory of a little girl sliding down the polished wood, her ankles crossed behind her, legs bent to take up the shock of hitting the heavy banister-post at the foot of the stairs.

Linn rose, took his daughter's hands.

"Darlin'," he said quietly, "if you need to come home, come on and welcome. If you need to go back to Mars and be Sheriff again, do that. Don't make powerful enemies that'll get you killed."

Marnie gripped her Daddy's hands tightly, drew them to her bodice, looked very directly at her big strong Daddy.

"If it comes to that," she whispered, "I'll chuck it all, but Daddy" -- she smiled, tilted her head a little -- "when I'm not going to war, I am doing so much good as an Ambassador!"

Linn released his daughter's hands, seized her in a crushing hug, lifted her just a little, held her tight, tight, his face buried in her hair.

"I've only got one of you," he whispered, his mustache just touching her ear as he did.  "Marnie, I've only got one of you!"

 

 

 

Edited May 21 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU MENTIONED IRONING

Jacob Keller emerged from the hallway that ran between the cells in back.

He was quiet, which is not at all unusual; his pace was deliberate -- again, nothing out of the ordinary.

He went back to the gunrack, picked up the shotgun he'd just parked there: he opened the double gun, set the two brass rounds on the shelf, turned to catch the light through the bores, frowned as he studied the twin steel tubes.

Sheriff Linn Keller waited.

Jacob brought in a prisoner.

Jacob divested the prisoner of some things he really shouldn't have.

Jacob secured the prisoner in a cell.

Again, these things were not in the realm of the odd or noteworthy, but the Sheriff was a curious man, and when Jacob came out and went straight to the gun he'd just parked when he came in, when Jacob pulled the loads and studied the bores, Linn waited, for Jacob did nothing without purpose.

"Sir," Jacob said at length, dunking the rounds back into the chambers, "do I recall your saying that a dent can be ... ironed ... out of a shotgun barrel?"

Jacob held the barrels, raised the buttstock to close it: Linn's eyes tightened at the corners, approval in his solemn expression: a man who treats a shotgun with respect will close it by raising the buttstock rather than lifting the barrels.

"Yes, Jacob, it can," Linn replied slowly, "if it's a fluid steel gun. I wouldn't want to try it with Damascus."

Jacob set the shotgun securely back in the rack.

"Is there a dent?" Linn asked.

"No, sir," Jacob replied, "but I wanted to make sure."

Linn nodded.  "I do like the look of a Damascus barrel, Jacob, but if it's dented it's weak at that spot."

"I remember your saying so, sir."

"There is an artificial Damascus. The old gun -- over toward the end -- pull that off the rack and pull off the fore end."

Jacob did.

"Turn it over and look back near the breech. You'll see a strip that looks like a painted on bare place, only it's not painted on."

"I see it, sir."

"I took acid on a small brush and made that stripe, Jacob. I suspected that was a Damascus pattern etched into fluid steel, and I was right. The pattern came off with that swipe of acid solution."

"I see, sir."

Jacob snapped the splinter fore-end back on the old double gun, parked it as well.

"What happened out there?"

Jacob came over, boot heels sounding a measured, deliberate cadence on the smooth wood floor.

"We had a disagreement," Jacob said. 

"A disagreement."

"Yes, sir."  Jacob sat, considered his father, across the desk from him.

Jacob debated on whether to tilt his chair back, decided against it: his father's chair had a bad habit of kicking out from under him, and he did not care to emulate the Grand Old Man's bad example.

"Sir, when you send someone to prison, they don't forget you."

"No, Jacob, they don't."

"Their families don't forget you."

"No."

"Their criminal associates don't forget you."

Linn nodded agreement:  Jacob's words were his own, spoken some long time ago, but just as true today as then.

"That fellow earned his stay at the Crossbar Hotel."

Linn nodded again, waited.

"He allowed as you put his brother in prison and he was going to do very unkind things to you."

Linn shrugged.  "Men talk."

"Men don't lay wait with a buffalo rifle."

Linn looked sharply at his son.

"Men don't tell other men they plan to do a particular thing at a particular time in a particular location to a particular person, sir."

Linn raised an eyebrow.

"He allowed as he'd figured out your habits, sir. He said he'd lay in wait for you to come ridin' through like you do every day at a particular time. He allowed as everyone would know you'd paid for puttin' his brother behind bars when that good lookin' horse of yours come home with an empty saddle."

"I see."

"I allowed as he might not listen to words, sir, so I fetched along a better speaker than me."

Linn nodded.  "That ... tends to be ... a most persuasive speaker," he agreed slowly.

"He saw the reasonableness of my position, sir, and I reckon with this witness list" -- he reached two fingers into a pocket, pulled out a folded sheet of note sized paper, folded in fourths, handed it across the desk -- "why, His Honor the Judge can have a conversation with the man."

"You have the buffalo rifle."

"And the four rounds of government ammunition he'd laid out ready to hand when he lay ambush, sir."

"That's why you asked to meet me earlier."

"Yes, sir."

"It explains why you weren't there."

"Yes, sir."

Linn nodded.

"Jacob, it turns out my being here early, gained me a conversation with an old friend who let slip information that has already proven profitable."

It was Jacob's turn to nod.

"I know it's a gamble, but I just invested in a silver mine. Apparently they hit a good vein but needed investment money to work it."

Jacob's smile was slow, quiet: he, himself, had just invested in a zinc mine, back East, and his own investment was paying off -- not spectacularly, but steadily.

"You were looking to see if that gunbarrel had a dent in it."

"Yes, sir. When I come up behind him as he lay wait, he was bellied down to bushwhack you from behind a rock and some brush. I come a-catfoot up behind him and invited him to hold reeeeal still."

Linn blinked, slow, like a sleepy cat: Jacob knew the Grand Old Man was a step ahead of him already.

"He was laid out on his belly when I spoke.

"He come around with that buffalo rifle and I knocked his bar'l away with the shotgun."

"Did it hurt his rifle any?"

Jacob grinned. "No, sir, but I wanted to make sure I didn't dent that shotgun barrel none. I've watched Annette and the girl ironin' clothes and if I had to, I reckon I could iron a shirt, but I've no idea how a man would iron a dent out of a shotgun barrel!"

Edited May 22 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I CAN TELL YOU'RE UPSET

"Uncle Will?"

Sixteen year old Marnie Keller opened the front door, looked inside, called again.

"Uncle Will?"

She stepped inside, closed the door firmly -- unnecessarily so, but she wanted to let her Uncle know she was there.

She knew Uncle Will was a little hard of hearing these days, so she took a careful step ahead, another.

His kitchen smelled of dish soap and hot water; a few dishes were still rinsewater-wet, stacked in the drain rack.

Marnie leaned forward and saw a familiar, denim covered backside moving from side to side, just a little.

She took a step to her right, picked up the salt shaker, beat a brisk shave-and-a-haircut on the kitchen tabletop.

She saw the denim swing further right, then Will leaned around the doorway.

"Come on in," he called, "just finishin' up!"

"Can I help?" Marnie called, taking a few steps toward him.

Will straightened; she heard the sound of heavy ceramic, the flush of a porcelain throne, saw her Uncle pull a disposable disinfectant wipe from its cylindrical can, tear it free.

He bent, industriously wiped the already spotless throne: he dropped the used wipe in the trash can, pulled another free, lifted the lid, finished his detail cleaning, then sidestepped to the sink and washed his hands with his usual thoroughness.

He came out, drying his hands on a mismatched towel, grinning.

"Darlin'," he declared, "I can tell your Gammaw put her stamp on the bloodline!"

"Thank you, Uncle Will" -- Marnie curtsied -- "this is one of Gammaw's dresses!"

"Looks like her heels, too."

"They are."  

Uncle Will took a step toward his niece and she took two quick, skipping steps toward him: they embraced and she felt him laugh as they hugged.

He leaned back a little and caressed her glowing cheek with the back of a bent forefinger.

"Your Gammaw one time gave someone hell for spoiling a perfectly good sour mood," he murmured.  "Thank you for spoiling mine."

Marnie looked over at the sink, looked up at her Uncle.

"What happened, Uncle Will?" she asked quietly.

"Oh, hell," he muttered. "I've not a thing baked up. How's for something out?"

Marnie tilted her head and smiled.

"How about a double hot fudge fish cake sundae with diced garlic and floor sweepin's?" she suggested, managing to look wide-eyed innocent as she did, and Retired Chief of Police Will Keller threw his head back and laughed, his hands warm on her shoulders:  he looked down at her, delight in his expression.

"Darlin'," he said sincerely, "whenever you want to come over, please do, I needed that laugh!"

"I thought you might."  She laid a hand on his forearm. "When you're upset, you scrub the toilet."

"Yeah, and I did dishes too, laundry's cycled through and hanged."

"Hanged?"

Marnie batted her eyes, turned her head a little, gave him a skeptical look.

"Why of course," Will explained. "Cottons, y'see, I one time shrunk up one of Crystal's blouses throwin' it in the dryer, and she clouded up and rained all over me, so ever after, why, I hang 'em from a cute little noose of thirteen turns!"

"Riiiiight," Marnie nodded, smiling.  

Will considered for a long, frowning moment.

"Tell you what.  The bakery has pretty good coffee, and they have two tables in front right by the window. We can sit there and eat our fill and watch the world go screamin' by."

 

Uncle and niece sat at the table nearest the window and watched their thriving hub of culture and industry, this industrious and fast-paced metropolitan downtown: coffee steamed in tall, insulated cups, Will savored a cream-filled, chocolate-iced stick doughnut, while Marnie nibbled contentedly on a thickly-iced sugar cookie.

"Aren't you afraid of getting fat?" Will teased quietly, and Marnie laughed.

"Uncle Will," she sighed, "this morning I scraped out stalls, threw bales of hay and tossed three traveling salesmen over the roofline one-handed, I ran five miles between pacing the Warriors and the Valkyries' track team, and I'll be splitting and stacking firewood for the Widow Jones this afternoon."  She dropped her head, looked at him over a nonexistent set of spectacles and said, "I think I can afford this one!"

Uncle and Niece shared a quiet laugh.

Marnie tilte her head a little to the side, the way she did when something interested her.

"Out with it, Uncle Will," she said quietly. "Why were you scouring the pot this morning?"

Will sighed, swallowed the last of his stick doughnut: for reasons of protocol, if nothing else, Marnie slid the last crescent shaped remainder of her sugar cookie between her teeth, as if to demonstrate "You have to talk, my mouth is full!"

"Y'know my tax preparer sent in my stuff."

Marnie nodded, sipped her coffee, swallowed, her lovely, pale blue eyes never leaving her uncle's.

"You recall a hacker hit me and I got my checking account closed before he could drain me."

Marnie nodded again.

"My tax preparer got everything ready, I came over to sign the final papers so she could launch the silly thing and she had me double check the routing number and the checking number."

Marnie nodded, obviously listening very closely.

"The number she had on file -- my checking account number, for direct deposit -- was the closed account."

"Ouch," Marnie grimaced quietly.

"It was bounced back to the Federales and now they say they'll issue a paper check. When that'll happen, who knows."

"I knew you were upset," Marnie said quietly as fresh pastries appeared were placed before them. "When you're upset, you throw a cleaning fit."

Will threw his hands wide and shook his head in mock sorrow:  in a nasal voice, in an utterly horrible Bronx accent, he declared, "Does yas knows me or what!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MY PLACE IS HERE

"Thought I might find you here."

Shelly stared off into the distance, her eyes wandering sightlessly across a mountain's forested expanse.

Chief Fitzgerald eased himself down on the stone bench beside one of his best paramedics.

"I've been offered another job," Shelly said quietly.

Fitz felt his stomach drop.

"Paramedic instructor."

Fitz frowned.

"I didn't know you had your instructor's ticket."

"I don't."

Fitz lifted a hand to his military-short thatch, scratched an itch that manifested in such moments.

"It gets worse," Shelly said quietly.

"I'm losing my best medic and it gets worse?" Fitz groaned.

"It's out of the country."

"It's what?"

"A very long way out of the country."

"How very long way?"

Shelly looked at him, her eyes veiled.

"A really long way."

"You're going to Saudi."

"No."

"Where, then?"

"Nowhere, maybe."

"Now wait a minute."

Shelly shook her head, slowly.

"Fitz, I've never lied to you in my life and I'm not going to start now."

"Like hell," Chief Fitzgerald growled. "You told me you didn't put chiles in that chili!"

"I didn't," Shelly said softly. "That was the engineer."

"Oh." 

"You know me, Chief."

"Yeah."

"I don't ...  I won't do shoddy work."

"You never have."

"I'm being recruited and I don't think I'm the right one."

"Who's recruiting you?"

Shelly was quiet for several long moments.

"Someone," she said at length, "someone whose judgement ... I trust."

Silence, for several long moments, while the morning sun soaked into their shoulders, warmed their backs.

"Who is better to teach," Fitz finally said, "than someone who is really good at what they do?"

"Am I that good?" Shelly asked.  "I can show them mechanical skills, Chief. A mechanic understands splints and immobilization. Applied hydraulics for bleeding control. I'm not sure ..."

Silence again.

Fitz let it grow.

A Chief knows his people.

Fitz knew that she was trying to firm up her reasoning.

He looked over as she shook her head.

"It doesn't feel right, Chief."

Chief, he thought.

Not Fitz.

She's distancing herself from me because she wants to distance herself from this decision.

Fitz leaned back, frowned at the high peaks to the west, read the clouds, considered.

"You're married to the Sheriff," he said at length.

Shelly gave him a patient look.

"The Pope is Catholic, what else is news?"

"Listen to your husband."

"Listen to him how?"

Fitz laid a gentle hand on Shelly's shoulder, squeezed.

"The best advice I ever saw him give anyone was to a rookie deputy," he said quietly. "He said, and I quote, 'When in doubt, son, follow your gut.'  If your gut says no go, then don't."

Shelly blinked, then laughed a little and nodded.

"I don't want to leave here," she said quietly.

"Then don't. God knows we need you here!"

She looked at Fitz, nodded. 

"It would pay very well indeed," she said quietly, "I could train more people than I've met in my life ..."

"But?"

Shelly stood.

"My place is here," she said firmly. "I'll call 'em tonight and turn them down."

"Do you want to sleep on that decision?"

"I've been sleeping on it for three days now."

"That's why you're dark under the eyes. You weren't doing much sleeping."

"No," she whispered.

 

Mother and daughter walked side by side down the busy street.

Angela was well known, thanks to the Inter-System: she intentionally wore her white nurse's uniform and winged cap, and Shelly wore her paramedic's uniform, her military creases sharp, her brogans burnished, buttons polished: she was not known on this planet, but it was evident she was Somebody, and so she was accorded the same deference as her daughter.

"This is their firehouse," Angela said. "Do you know what they use for an ambulance?"

Shelly looked at her daughter, raised an eyebrow.

"They don't. They commandeer a wagon, a truck, a flatbed, a vehicle of some kind. They don't even have a dedicated transport."

Angela looked at her Mama, less like a daughter and more like a fellow professional.

"I've laid the groundwork, I've explained our system back home. You're due to speak before the command staff in five minutes, the Mayor and Council this afternoon."

"You're expecting me to speak with five minutes' notice?"

"You're down to four minutes and change."

"And tell them what?"

"The way we do it back home."

"Angela, I can't do that! How am I going to show them what we do, vehicles, treatment, assessment --"

There was the sound of a pistol shot, but lighter -- a whistle, a yell, the sound of pounding hooves, then the familiar high, shrill whistle --

Shelly turned, startled, as three white mares came pounding straight toward her: they were a few hundred yards distant, the stubby, broad chimney of the hand polished upright boiler of their Ahrens steam firefighting engine blowing smoke into the slipstream --

Hooves, harness, harness-bells, polished brightwork, grinning, red-shirted Irishmen on the engine and the ladder wagon, and behind them, Shelly's squad, lit up and following.

Men in red shirts boiled out of this strange firehouse like hornets from a swatted nest, seized the wooden cover of a stone lined well, hauled it aside: willing hands seized the hard suction, dunked the strainer end, spun couplers together: the mares, dancing, impatient, were unhitched, led away, while the Firelands Fire Department connected the well to their engine, laid hose, threw a Keenan loop and dropped to one knee.

Air hissed out the polished brass straight tip, then water sputtered and launched and shot a bright, streaming arc into the warm, summer-smelling air.

Flywheels, flyball governor, moving parts, water shot at working pressure, a grinning Irishman with a curled black mustache holding the mares, while the overhead doors chuckled open, as command rank emerged, delighting in the sight of a working, steam powered fire engine, at manpower, at this new marvel for field medical care, something called by a strange name ... what was it she said ...

Avalanche?

Fitz came up in front of mother and daughter, a broad grin on his face.

"Did you really think we'd let you stand all by yourself?" he roared happily. 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HOME

Shelly Keller barely picked at her food.

She looked up at her husband.

They were alone in the kitchen.

Their young were showered, clean and abed, asleep as soon as young heads hit their collective pillows: Shelly was dark under the eyes, her shoulders rounded, she showed every sign Linn came to associate with his wife's near-exhaustion.

She looked up and smiled a little.

"Well?" Linn asked gently.

"Fitz and the Irishmen showed up," Shelly said. "They didn't make it a "Here's how we do it, you should too," they made it "Here's where we came from and we're havin' a hell of a lot of fun with it!"

Linn smiled, nodded.

"What about the squad?"

"There was some talk already about dedicated casualty transport. We showed them the concept -- at least the concept -- of prehospital care. Their doctors were skeptical, of course.  It helped that Angela was shoulder to shoulder with me every step of the way."

"You two do look alike," Linn nodded.

"Angela changed out of her nurse's uniform once we ... started ... she's still a damned good medic, Linn."

"Nursing hasn't ruined her."

Shelly laughed.

"She's still causing trouble, Linn.  She went into one of their hospitals and worked a shift on their surgical floor, she charmed the hell out of the doctors, flirted with the patients -- I think she got three proposals of marriage -- she's sneaky, Linn.  She does that to learn their particular system. Every medical system is different and she said that's a good way to learn theirs."

Linn nodded.  "You said she's causing trouble."

"You know how bad doctors' handwriting is."

Linn nodded again.

"Angela used a calligraphy pen and her handwriting has always been gorgeous.  She used what she called a "Neo-Germanic Bastardo" hand and wrote her nurses' charting in calligraphy!"

"She's done that here."

"I know," Shelly sighed.  "She said 'If I can write the VOLUMES a nurse has to chart, in THAT HAND, the doctors can damned well write so I can read it!"

"Has it ever worked?"

"No," Shelly sighed, "but Medical Records thinks very highly of her!"

"That's my girl!"

"We went in to show them this is what we have. We put on a show for them.  We told them this works for us, but we were very careful not to throw it out as a one size fits all."

"Good."

"It helped that Fitz had the Irish Brigade there with the steam engine."

Linn laughed quietly.  "He does love that old machine!"

"He's a big kid," Shelly smiled.  "Loves his toys."

"How advanced is their fire service?"

"On the one planet I visited? In the one city, at the one firehouse?"

Shelly rolled her head left, right, back, the way she did when she was bone tired.

"I think I shook every hand on the continent, I stood up in front of brass hats and stuffed shirts and I told them look, I'm not a public speaker, I'm a medic and here's what I do."

"How were you received?"

"Angela was busy beside me and behind me with a video projector I couldn't see.  She showed video of actual patient care I never knew was recorded. It would have been serious HIPPA violations if they were shown here."

Linn nodded.

"Their doctors were skeptical, of course, they always are. Angela spoke up and said that nursing often saw the paramedic service as a threat to their profession. That's when she stepped behind a screen and emerged in her medic's uniform and said we're not and we have no wish to be."

"I'd like to have seen that."

Shelly smiled tiredly.

"We looked enough alike when she did -- when she came over and stood beside me -- some thought us sisters, instead of mother and daughter."

"You are a good lookin' woman," Linn rumbled.

"I look a fright," she groaned. "I'm tired."

Linn rose, came around the table, his pace slow, measured.

"Stand up, darlin'."

Shelly rose, hugged her husband.

"Take me to bed," she mumbled into his shirt front.

Linn dipped his knees, ran an arm behind his wife's thighs, under her shoulder blades, picked her up.

A pale eyed husband carried his bone tired wife up the broad stairs, and to bed.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE EMPTY SADDLE

Cannonball was old.

Cannonball was out of Cannonball, out of get of Cannonball -- the copper mares bred true, and Willamina's Cannonball, the one that followed her pale eyed owner's last ride in a horse drawn hearse with an empty saddle and reversed boots, was the Cannonball Willamina was riding when she breathed her last.

Cannonball -- the original Cannonball, the one she bought from Hoghead Dodson when she first came to office -- was a fiery, wild, hard-to-handle, spirited mount that suited her pale eyed, fiery, wild, hard-to-handle, spirited Sheriff.

Cannonball had to be bucked out when she was first saddled of a morning, except for the times when Willamina was hurt ... then Cannonball shied away from her, dancing and shaking her head:  she came mincing back with tiny little steps, she carefully sniffed at whatever Willamina had hurt, then she stood dead still to be saddled, and she rode like a baby's perambulator.

This Cannonball that Dana was saddling, was a few generations after that original Cannonball.

It was a day of parades and speeches, of flags and oratory, of picnics and an old-fashioned baseball game played by the Irish Brigade in knickers and brief little short-billed ballcaps, the way it was played when that pale eyed old Sheriff sent off to Cincinnati and purchased the town's very first steam firefighting engine, and hired men to run it.

Cannonball stood drowsing while her mane was brushed, while her hooves were wiped, her tail fussed over: Michael and Victoria were happily anticipating their part in the parade, for their Mama had a tailored, fitted gown, her hair was elaborately done up, she looked for all  the world like a Lady of Society from many years ago, and behind her, Michael, in a black suit and a torquoise hatband -- his sister Marnie told him to wear it for her -- and beside him, Victoria, in a riding gown, with a dainty little Stetson set decoratively atop her own elaborate, upswept coiffure.

The Sheriff's Office was represented in the parade: Barrents had the doors and the top off the Sheriff's Jeep, and drove it, grinning and waving, while his co-pilot tossed nylon-net-tied bags of miniature candy bars to the kids -- deliberate throws, by the way, none of this sling-it-at-random that brought kids out into the parade route to snatch up sweet delectables before they were run over.

The VFW, soldiers old and young, were ranked and marching, colors waved, the Firelands High School marching band played, majorettes strutted their stuff, and a tired old, shining-red mare raise her head and picked up her hooves and pranced, once again.

Sheriff Linn Keller rode just ahead of Barrents and his topless Jeep, Cannonball high-stepping beside him.

On his left, his daughter Angela, in uniform, on her Daddy's shining-black gelding: her hair was nurse-short, efficiently curled under, practical and still feminine:  Dana, also in uniform, had hers braided, and wrapped around her throat, as was her perpetual habit.

The Sheriff's wife, his chief deputy, his young who rode behind, could not see it.

His daughters, who rode on either side, pretended not to.

Sheriff Linn Keller rode beside his mother's horse, the one with the empty saddle, and it wasn't until they dismounted at the cemetery, not until speeches and flags raised and then lowered to half-staff, not until Taps sang, sad and lonesome, shivering its way between the tombstones ...

... not until then did anyone notice ...

The Sheriff held the bridle on his Mama's horse, and he stared at his Mama's tomb stone, and his face was wet with the tracks of a son's memories of his Mama, as they overflowed his heart and leaked out his eyes.

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE LADY'S UNDRESS

The Sheriff and his family lived in the Real World.

They knew what it was to slaughter beef, chickens, wild game; they knew what it was to pay someone to have their mares, their cattle, serviced, if they were after a particular addition to the bloodline.

The Facts of Life, the Birds and the Bees, were something the children grew up seeing, knowing about from earliest childhood, something normalized and not remarked on, because it was just part of ranch life.

When the Sheriff sponsored the local law enforcement academy's cadets for a tour and demo of the Coroner's department, it was his young son Michael who showed an honest interest, who discussed  comparative anatomy between animals he'd dissected, and the body on the slab being dissected.

It was thus not a shocking moment when pretty young Victoria Keller came stomping into the house in her high button shoes, her stockings, her corset, her frillies, and a decidedly sour expression.

Father and mother both knew Victoria wanted to ride her Gammaw's Cannonball.

Father and mother both advised their young daughter against any such thing.

As usual, a pale eyed, headstrong little girl decided this was what she wanted to do, this is what she was going to do: to her credit, she got her Gammaw's aging Cannonball-mare saddled, she got the saddle cinched down tight, and -- still in her decorative little Stetson, her elaborate hairdo, her handmade, divided riding gown -- she led Cannonball over to a mounting-block, she thrust her foot into her Gammaw's stirrup, and she swung her leg over her Gammaw's saddle.

Victoria Keller, granddaughter of Willamina Keller, strongly resembled her Gammaw, both in personality, strength of will (read contrary and hard headed nature), and in sheer, unadulterated stubbornness.

Unfortunately, she had not her pale eyed Gammaw's skills at staying on a horse that insisted she be bucked out properly upon being saddled.

Shelly lifted her eyes from the green peppers she was dicing for casserole.

Linn felt her eyes on him, he looked at his wife and shook his head.

"She has to learn," he sighed.

"I know," Shelly said quietly. "I hope she doesn't break anything expensive."

Shelly's shining knife sliced easily through the halved, gutted pepper: she cut precise, quarter-inch-wide slices, turned these sideways, diced them -- she preferred her ingredients diced fine, it improved the flavor -- she looked past her husband, then back to her work.

The back door opened and Victoria came stomping into the screened-in back porch.

She opened the inside door, saw her Daddy standing there, realized he'd obviously been watching her hang her wet dress and her dripping petticoats up on the clothesline.

Victoria Keller, youngest daughter of the pale eyed Sheriff, extended a finger, glared coldly at her father and snarled, "Don't.  Just ... don't."

Linn's eyebrows raised, but he offered no comment.

Father and mother watched their little girl's departing backside, assessing her gait and her posture with an eye toward injuries gained in departing the saddle at a respectable velocity, and subsequently making what the pilots called an "Unplanned Descent."

Victoria stopped, turned, her knuckles on her beltline, her bottom jaw bulled out, an unladylike scowl on her otherwise pretty young face.

"I know," she snapped, "and I handwashed my dress and my petticoats and they're drying on the line right now!"

"Did you get 'em clean?" Linn asked gently.

Victoria Keller, all four feet and very little, stomped up to her big strong Daddy, held her hands out to show him her reddened knuckles.

"I worked on 'em until I got 'em clean!" she snarled, then glared at her Daddy's patient expression -- the look he wore when he was trying hard not to laugh -- and added, "If you want investment advice, I suggest hand lotion!"

Victoria Keller spun, her elaborate hairdo disintegrating further with the abruptness of her move: she stomped off for the stairway, glared back down into the kitchen as she departed.

Shelly patiently sliced her sharpened blade through another pepper half as Linn set his coffee mug down and headed for the door.

"I'd best see if Cannonball is unsaddled," he said quietly. 

Victoria shouted from the top of the stairs, "SHE'S UNSADDLED, THE SADDLE IS HUNG UP AND SO IS THE SADDLEBLANKET AND BEFORE YOU ASK, YES I FILLED IN THE CRATER WHERE I HIT THE GROUND!" -- SLAM! -- and her bedroom door punctuated her words with a very definite exclamation.

Linn blinked a few times as he stared up the stairs, then he returned to the kitchen, shaking his head.

"Darlin'," he said quietly, "were you ever like that?"

Shelly never looked up as she began dicing the slices, nice and fine, the way she preferred.

"No," she murmured.  "I was worse."

 

Edited May 25 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CHICKEN HUNTIN'

Engineers of several disciplines, manufacturers of transportation devices, leaned forward, fascinated.

It was enough of a draw that one of the Valkyries was addressing them: this was not a symposium of engineers or manufacturers, it was not a formal training session, it was instead a social event.

Gracie Daine was there by coincidence.

Gracie Daine was a Valkyrie, a pilot of one of the now-legendary Interceptors, those impossibly fast defiers of the laws of physics, a carrier of weapons that could slice a planet in two, drag a star across the galaxy whether it wanted dragged off or not, a skilled enough soul to persuade a two-year-old to eat its vegetables, or so went the System-wide legends.

Gracie Daine asked Marnie a favor, because Gracie -- for all that she was wife and mother, for all that she was an Interceptor pilot and a mind-linked warrior, intimately and mentally united with her Star-Sisters and her Ship -- for all this, Gracie Daine was also a woman, and an attractive woman, and when an attractive woman who was obliged to maintain a hairless scalp in order to intimately connect with her Ship, was suddenly able to grow hair again -- well, women like to look pretty, and Gracie was a woman, and she asked the famous Madam Ambassador for help, assistance and recommendations, and so it was that Gracie -- who'd wanted to come to this dance in a lovely gown -- was drafted, on spur of the moment, to give an entirely impromptu lecture on Earth's T model Ford.

She touched only briefly on its technology, on the need to "advance the spark" --adjust the spark's timing, by hand, rather than with an automatic spark advance -- she spoke of starting it with a crank, and cautioned the auditorium of attentive engineers the need to PULL the crank through, and never, EVER to PUSH it through, as the T had a bad habit of firing at the wrong moment and spinning said crank backwards, breaking the user's forearm -- she admitted her lack of expertise with its planetary gears, referring them instead to the manufacturing specs that were being printed out for their reference.

"This is simply the way one vehicle was designed and manufactured," she said, her voice carrying well -- she was always gifted at projecting her voice -- "and this is a very early, comparatively primitive vehicle. Its improvements were swift to follow, and in time a vehicle that could putter along at a very modest speed, evolved into a people mover that ran like the Devil itself was after it!"

The static illustration of the angular, spoked vehicle was replaced by a flickering, black-and-white movie clip of a man in a straw boater and suit, looking sternly ahead as barefoot little boys ran yelling alongside and behind: the picture blurred, morphed, became a Formula 1 racer, screaming down the racetrack and around a turn, followed by a wolfpack of shining, velocity-blurred, metallic beetles, more racers screaming in pursuit of this frontrunner.

"Rather than show you how much I don't know about how this pioneering vehicle was actually made," Gracie smiled, "let me instead tell you how it was used.

"You see, my Great-Granddad, Sullivan Maxwell, had one."

Gracie Daine, in a McKenna gown and a winning smile, looked around at the assembly room filled to the gills with engineers, hanging on her every word, and told the word-of-mouth tale she'd been told as a little girl, a tale about her honored ancestor, and his first motor vehicle.

"Sullivan Maxwell paid cash money for his Model T.

"The young man who sold it to him was, of course, most pleased at the sale.

"He instructed the skeptical old farmer how to retard the spark to start it, to always pull the crank and not push it, otherwise an engine backfire would whip the crank backwards, strike the arm and break it -- this pedal is your shifter, high gear and low gear, two levers on the column are throttle and spark advance, and to stop the vehicle --

" 'Young man'," Sullivan interrupted, 'this belongs to me now and I know all I need to about it.'

"Sullivan Maxwell climbed in his new acquisition and proceeded to drive home on the only paved road in the county.

"He steered off into the secondary, unpaved road, which was" -- Gracie paused, smiled a little -- "to be honest, the secondary road was just a set of narrow ruts.

"Think of railroad rails, elevated, and railcar wheels, flanged on the inside to stay atop these transport directors.

"Invert this.

"Make it narrow Model T wheels and tires, dropped down in narrow ruts.

"He had no choice but to remain on the roadway.

"When he came to his own property, he turned the wheel and steered into his own set of ruts, and up his individual driveway, to home: Sullivan's sons, all thirteen brothers and half-brothers, ran barefoot and yelling beside the car, and behind the car, as the unsmiling, solemn, pleased-with-himself Sullivan Maxwell drove a triumphant circle around the farmyard, then he drove his new prize into the barn to park it.

"It was at this point he realized that perhaps he should have listened to what that young fellow was trying to tell him about how to stop the car.

"Now, Sullivan Maxwell was a hard man.

"Sullivan Maxwell was an exacting man.

"Sullivan Maxwell voice trained his teams, and Sullivan Maxwell voice trained his wives and his children, and Sullivan Maxwell required instant, immediate, unquestioning obedience from his wives, from his children, and from his livestock.

"Sullivan Maxwell brooked absolutely no dissention in the ranks.

"A billy goat that made so bold as to ram Sullivan in the backside, when he bent over to pick up a stick of kindling, was beheaded with one angry swing of the broad ax, as one example.

"Another example was when a plow horse stepped on his foot.

"Sullivan took a single tree and beat that horse to its KNEES.

"When Sullivan Maxwell, in his shiny new T model Ford, disappeared into the barn, thirteen brothers and half-brothers froze, fear running cold water through their veins, for they heard the Old Man shout, then scream, "Whoa ... WHOA ... WHOA, DAMN YOU, WHOA! 

 -- *CRASH* --

"Thirteen brothers and half-brothers stood frozen to their footprints as Sullivan Maxwell emerged from the barn.

"He'd run into the white oak boards at the rear at low speed, which stalled out the engine.

"He climbed out, he emerged from the barn, adjusted his hat, shook his coat a little, looked around at sons too terrified to move or even speak.

"Sullivan declared in a loud voice, 'BOYS, IT'S ALL YOURS! I'LL NEVER SET FOOT IN THE DAMNED THING AGAIN!'

"And he didn't.

"Of course, boys being boys, and boys having an affinity for anything mechanical, noisy or dangerous, immediately knocked the muffler off and tossed it into the scrap pile, where it was cannibalized for something, we don't know what, but the favorite use of that T model Ford became chicken huntin'."

Gracie Daine smiled her charming smile, clasped her hands in front of her, looked around, laughed.

"The boys got their backsides beat because they stole a sheet of tin roofing from a neighbor's shed, they cut down their Mama's clothes line, they bent the corrugated tin roofing into a U, wired one end to the front end of the car's bumper and used clothes line to hold the front end off the ground.

"They'd drive that unmuffled T to the top of a rise on the county road, they'd stop it and prop a chunk under one wheel, then they'd pile in the car and wait, and listen, with the engine off."

Gracie cupped a hand behind her ear.

"They'd listen for 'Heeere, chick, chick, chick, chick,' for people fed their chickens in the roadway in those days, where the chickens could scratch and pick up grit, and traffic was slow, at least until they'd grab the youngest son by his overall straps, swing him down to grab the chunk from in front of the tire, they'd yank him back inside and coast-start that unmuffled model T -- she'd give a mighty BANG and they'd be off, just a-SCREAMIN' down hill" -- her voice picked up, her face shone with enthusiasm, her hands busy illustrating her words, swinging an imaginary sibling down and back up with a sweep of her arm and a dip of her knees --

"When anyone in the township heard that unmuffled Ford, they snatched their children and ran for the storm cellar, for that meant Old Devil Maxwell was a-runnin', and they called him that because he drove as if the Devil himself was after him -- they'd come just a-whistlin' downhill to where the chickens were scratching and feeding and someone yelled "Let 'er go!" and they dropped that roofing tin scoop and filled the back seat with dirt, gravel and chicken feathers" -- her voice was animated, rapid, she painted the picture realistically enough they could see it happening -- "and don't you know ... they never caught one single chicken!"

It was the first time Gracie Daine spoke before an Inter-System gathering, and it was the first time the audience reaction filled her with delight: Gracie Daine waved and skipped off stage, and that night she was ready to swear she danced with every one of those engineers and manufacturers, and every one of them told her she gave them a good laugh, and when the sun was finally peeking timidly over the horizon, Gracie Daine was finally on her way to her quarters, riding with a certain Ambassador, who gave her a knowing look, laid a gloved hand on hers and murmured, "How did you like the dance?"

Gracie smiled tiredly.

"Marnie," she sighed, "I loved it. They were all perfect gentlemen."

"I ran interference for you," Marnie murmured, giving her Kinswoman a knowing look.

Gracie raised an eyebrow, leaned her head a little closer, the way a woman will when something womanly is being discussed.

"I was asked -- discreetly, of course -- whether you were married," Marnie murmured.

Gracie's eyes widened a little, and she smiled, that shy, giggling smile Marnie remembered from their years together as schoolgirls in Firelands, back on Earth.

"What did you say?" she whispered, then pressed her flat fingers against her lips.

Marnie leaned her forehead against Gracie's and whispered back, "I told him you were married, yes, and he looked so very sad, and then he asked" -- she pressed her own fingers against her lips, smiled, looked back up at Gracie --

"He asked if you were happily married!"

Their chauffeur smiled: his hearing was quite good, and although he was a man of discretion, he was also a man who loved a good story, and the question "Is she married?" -- followed by "Yes, but is she happily married?" would make a good tale to tell.

Discreetly, of course.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU SAW THAT, RIGHT?

Victoria Keller glared at her Gammaw's shining-copper Cannonball mare.

Cannonball was more interested in graze than in a mere child's opinion.

Jacob watched his youngest sister.

Angela watched her brother, and Dana watched Jacob and Angela both, and Angela marched up to Cannonball and laid her little pink hand on the mare's neck and said quietly, "We need to talk."

Cannonball lifted her head from her exploration of good blue grama.

Angela offered a red-and-white swirl stripe peppermint on the palm of her hand.

Cannonball, like the rest of her herd, bribed as well as any politician, and accepted the dainty from the little pink palm.

"Cannonball," Victoria said, just loud enough for herself and the horse to hear, "I don't like being thrown. I'm going to saddle you again and this time I don't want you to throw me. Understand?"

Cannonball went back to grazing.

"C'mon, Cannonball," VIctoria said, hooking an arm under the mare's neck: the mare turned, followed, waited while Angela pulled the saddle blanket from where she'd staged it on the fence, then waited until Angela -- with an effort -- hauled the stirrup-shortened saddle off the fence rail and turned, slung it up and onto the mare's back.

Cannonball offered no belly bloating impediment to having the saddle screwed down tight.

Cannonball offered no objection to the pretty little youngest daughter of that pale eyed old Sheriff climbing aboard.

Victoria knew her Gammaw's horse was knee trained, and so she leaned forward a little, pressed her boot heels gently into the mare's ribs and said "Yup, girl."

Victoria felt the mare bunch up under her, and she was ready.

Victoria hadn't driven her boots into the doghouses.

She levitated off the saddle, both hands on the saddlehorn, vaulted off to the side and landed flat-footed, as nice as if she'd practiced the move since infancy.

Cannonball was not expecting this.

She stopped, turned, faced Victoria squarely as Victoria raised her Mommy-finger and said, "Don't.  Just ... don't."

Jacob stifled a smile, for his father told him how Victoria admonished him in just such a wise; Jacob's sisters likewise hid their expressions -- one by force of will, one by casually raising a concealing hand -- Victoria turned Cannonball, stepped back up on the mounting block.

"Let's try this again, shall we?" she asked, which caused Jacob to bite his bottom lip, Angela to bite the base of her forefinger, and Marnie to chew on her knuckle: somehow, the phrase, from such a young throat, struck them as comical.

Victoria thrust a boot into the doghouse, swung aboard, slid her boot back out, waited.

Cannonball's ears swung around, then back, and she started to shift her weight.

Victoria laid a hand on Cannonball's neck.

"Don't," she said, a warning note in her voice.

She thrust her left  boot into the stirrup, her right boot into its twin, pressed her heels gently into Cannonball's ribs.

"Yup, girl."

Cannonball collapsed her legs and rolled over on her side.

Victoria felt her start to go down, start to roll: she pulled her boot free, planted her bootsole on the earth, stood: she walked around in front of her Gammaw's red mare, tilted her head, then she crouched and glared at the side lying horse.

"No," she said quietly. "Don't do that either."

Jacob looked at his sisters; his sisters looked at one another, then Marnie turned her hand over to expose her palm -- a question -- Jacob replied with a quick, brief shake of his head.

They stood fast, watched.

Victoria's expression was stern and determined, her bottom jaw was thrust out, and both her older brother and her older sisters knew this meant either she was bound and determined to out-contrary this horse, or she was going to lose her temper and do unkind things to the mare, and they would intervene if the latter seemed to be the intended course of action.

Victoria bent at the waist, gripped the cheek strap, pulled.

"Yup, girl," she said, and Cannonball came obediently to her feet.

Victoria stood and stroked the mare's long nose and talked in a gentle voice.

"Glue Hoof," she said, "my Daddy is contrary, my Gammaw was contrary, Old Pale Eyes is contrary and I am the child of all that contrariness. If you think you can out hard head me, you got another think a-comin'."

Jacob masticated the cuff of his leather glove; Marnie turned away, the back of her hand pressed firmly against her lips, and Angela managed -- somehow -- to keep from a guffaw and a grin.

By her own admission, Angela had no idea how she managed, for her little sister's expression, her voice tone, her stern-jawed admonition -- from a ten-year-old -- was, quite honestly ... 

... funny!

Victoria could be dainty and Victoria could be feminine and Victoria could be girly, but Victoria had not enjoyed being dressed up like a porcelain doll and paraded in the yearly Little Miss pageant: like her sister before her, when it was her turn to cross the stage, she did not mince across with the dainty gait of a pretty little girl, parading before an audience.

She clumped across the stage with her bottom jaw and her bottom lip both thrust out, stomping across the boards with all the grace of a Jersey bull.

Victoria stepped back up on the mounting block, into the stirrup, swung into the saddle: she tightened her heels, gently, just a little pressure, and said "Yup, girl."

Cannonball yup'd.

Victoria and Cannonball paced out into the fence pasture just as nice as you please, and a fine sight it was: the shining-copper mare with a smooth stride, the determined little girl in a flannel shirt and blue jeans, her braided hair hung down in front of her shoulders: mountain air is good for the complexion, and her complexion glowed with the same good health as her mare's shining coat.

Victoria was used to riding knee-trained Appaloosa saddlestock, and Cannonball was trained for knee-reining: they stopped, well out of earshot, but in easy visual range, and pale and assessing eyes watched as a child talked to her horse, and caressed her horse's neck, and turned her horse, and walked her horse.

Three equestrians assessed their youngest member's skill as she went from walk, to trot, then canter: they came around the far end of the pasture, came around without difficulty, Victoria leaned forward and pressed her hands against warm-furred neck muscle just under the smooth, brushed mane, and Cannonball did what she always loved to do.

Cannonball ran.

Cannonball stuck her neck straight out and she drove her nose into the wind, she laid her ears back and she grunted as she ran, and a little girl on her back slitted her eyes and tightened her legs and clung to the hurricane deck like a cocklebur in a hound dog's coat.

Cannonball was old, and Cannonball was feeling her age, but on mornings like this, when she'd soaked up enough sun-warmth to warm her old joints, she still loved to run, and so Victoria, the hard headed and contrary granddaughter of the hard headed and contrary Sheriff Willamina Keller, aimed her Gammaw's horse at the far end of the pasture.

Cannonball was a jumper, and Victoria wasn't supposed to jump the horses (not that it ever stopped her!) -- but Cannonball was also old, and so she slowed a little, turned rather than jumped the fence, cantered back to where Jacob and his sisters stepped out into the pasture.

They looked to the far end of the pasture, froze: Cannonball stopped, head up, obviously staring, her ears forward.

Jacob looked at his sisters, waited for Victoria to dismount, then pulled the saddle, saddleblanket, drew the bridle from her head.

Jacob rubbed Cannonball's jaw, looked to the far end of the pasture, where a familiar figure in a McKenna gown waited on a huge black horse.

He whispered to his Gammaw's horse, "Tell her we said hello," then he stepped back.

Cannonball's head was up, her tail was up, she stepped out lively, whinnying a happy greeting, as if delighted to see someone she'd not seen in a very long time.

Jacob hoisted the saddle to his shoulder, gripped the saddleblanket in his other hand, turned.

"Get the gate for me," he said quietly.  "I'll get the backhoe."

Victoria stared after the retreating red mare, then her retreating brother: confused, she looked at Angela and at Dana, and then looked back toward the far end of the pasture.

The huge black horse nickered a greeting, and there were two women now: one came down from the big black horse, while one remained -- not as if they were riding double, but more like ... 

Victoria wasn't sure what it was like.

She watched as the dismounted woman scaled a saddleblanket on the mare's back, then a saddle, watched her cinch it down and swing aboard, and Cannonball began to buck, sunfish, crow hop, drop on her right side, raise up, drop onto her left, drop her head between her forelegs, rear and launch with a powerful thrust of hind legs, as if leaping over the top fence rail from a standing position: the rider stayed in the saddle as Cannonball came down, splay-legged, shivered, then paced out just as nice as you please.

They turned, Cannonball stopped, nuzzling the huge black horse, obviously a greeting, then turned so both horses and riders were side by side.

Victoria looked away as the John Deere end loader came cackling out of the barn, its backhoe arm curled up behind like a steel scorpion.

Jacob drove the green tractor into the pasture, waiting for Dana to swing the gate to behind him and slide the latch into place: his face was solemn as he headed for the far end of the pasture.

Victoria looked past him, frowned, confused.

"Where's Cannonball?" she asked.  "An' that big black horse -- was that --"

She stopped talking as two pair of pale eyes looked at her, as the realization sank her young belly about ten feet.

"Cannonball's dead?"

"No," Marnie said firmly. "Gammaw came and got her."

"But ... but ... that big black horse ..."

"You know how much Gammaw and Sarah McKenna looked alike?"

"Yeah ..." Victoria said hesitantly.

"Gammaw wasn't traveling alone."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I DON'T RIGHTLY KNOW

A pale eyed man stood, silent, looking out the small window in the thick adobe wall.

Below him, rows of elevated planters, belt buckle high, twice as long as a man is tall, wide enough to grow a decent amount of table fare, but narrow enough a man could stand at one side and cultivate its full width, or plant full width from both sides, or harvest, weed or tend as necessary ... without bending over.

Jacob smiled a little at the whisper of the bullhide sandal's sole behind him.

"Howdy, Abbott," he said softly, turned.

Brother William -- or, rather, Abbott William -- advanced, thrust out his sun-browned, callused hand: Jacob took it, grinned, and the Abbot laughed, gestured to the small, heavy table.

Jacob thrust his chin at the window.

"I was admirin' your table garden," he said quietly.

The Abbott nodded, rubbed his tanned tonsure:  "It's an old tradition," he replied. "Elevated garden beds have been a feature in castles and in monasteries since time immemorial."

"Looks like you've got the most use out of every square foot."

"Brother Constantine is a gifted gardener."  William looked up as an acolyte shuffled in with a loaded tray, as another followed with a pitcher and two glazed, recently-fired, hand-thrown mugs.

The Abbott waited until their meal was laid, nodded gravely: the acolytes bowed, retreated, silent in their native huaraches.

They ate: the meal was simple, but filling: Jacob ate and drank, surprised at the chilled pitcher of fruit-sweetened tea.

It was not until their meal, not until the table was cleared, that the Abbot laced his fingers together and asked, "What brings you here today?"

"My horse," Jacob deadpanned, "and the Z&W Railroad's south spur."

The Abbott's eyes narrowed, wrinkles at the corners happily betraying the man's amusement.

Jacob's grin was quick, genuine.

"I've been chewin' on a question, Abbott."

The Abbott nodded, once.

"We read in Hebrews," Jacob said thoughtfully, "that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses."

The Abbott nodded.

"Now I'm considerin' that."

The Abbott nodded again.

"I know an awful lot of dead people, and Pa told me the older he gets, the more dead folk he knows."

The Abbott nodded again, slowly: he was paying close attention to Jacob's words.

"A man does nothing without purpose. I'm a-wonderin' the purpose of this passage."

The Abbott leaned back, considered.

Jacob pulled out a cover-worn Scripture: the Bible was one of the most-read books, in those days, and Jacob did his honest share of perusal.

"It's awful easy to cut a little chunk out and hold it up and say this means such-and-such," Jacob murmured, paging quickly through the thin, fragile pages: "if a man sets in in with the rest of the passage, why, it might look like somethin' else."

The Abbott waited, knowing the younger man was following a path.

The cleric's experience told him Jacob just might find his answer by himself, as long as he wasn't interrupted.

Jacob nodded, placed a finger carefully on the open page: his frown was of concentration, not aggravation.

Jacob re-read the passage, leaned back, then bent forward, paged backward and quickly re-read the preceding chapter.

He frowned again, dropped his chin meditatively into a cupped hand.

He looked up at the Abbott, raised an eyebrow.

"That's what it means," he murmured.

The Abbott raised an eyebrow, leaned forward, nodded.

"Abbott, I'd been thinkin' this great cloud was there to protect us or to interfere on our behalf."

He looked back at the open page, tapped the print lightly with a carefully-dried fingertip.

"From the look of this ... yes they're witnesses ... but a witness sees something happen they're not involved in."

He frowned again, rubbed his jaw, his voice soft, thoughtful.

The Abbott raised an eyebrow again as Jacob stood, closed the Book, thrust out his hand with a delighted grin.

"Abbott," he declared, "thank you!"

"I'm not sure what I did," the Abbott replied, rising and taking Jacob's hand again, "but you're welcome."

 

The acolyte came back into the quiet chamber and found the Abbott standing at the little window in the thick adobe wall, looking out as two of the Brethren tended the raised garden beds.

"Will there be anything else, Abbott?" the younger man asked.

The Abbott turned, smiled.

"No, Enoch. Thank you, that will be all."

Enoch hesitated, then gathered the remnants of a shared meal onto his tray, wiped the table vigorously, prepared to withdraw, hesitated.

"Did ... your visitor ... find what he was looking for?" Enoch asked carefully.

The Abbott smiled, turned back to his young student.

"He did."

"You were able to guide him ...?"

"No, Enoch," the Abbott murmured, shaking his head.  "Better than that.  I let him find it himself."

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE DAY OFF

 

Shelly stopped halfway down the stairs and smiled behind her cupped hand.

She was looking over the handrail into the kitchen, looking at a pale eyed lawman on his knees with a double armful of delighted ten-year-old twins.

Many's the time she wished for a magical Kodak, something that would allow her to pull an earlobe and take the picture that came into her eyes, and this was one of them: two children, obviously delighted, having just run full-on into their long tall welcoming laughing Daddy, and her husband, his eyes squinted shut with delight, his head thrown back, mouth open with that quiet laugh of his.

She'd heard Victoria's happy, little-girlish "Daddeeee!" and she knew her daughter was uninhibited about such things, and she knew Michael would have held back, the way he always did, and she knew Linn would swing his free arm open, an invitation, and Michael would take out at a dead run and SLAM into his Pa just like his pale eyed twin sister just did, only now her body mass would help soak up his running momentum.

Linn had done this with all his young

Every last one of them.

It didn't happen every morning, but very nearly: no matter what happened the day before, no matter if their young committed errors, sins, mistakes, screw-ups, every morning was a new start, every morning was the sound of young voice in happy greeting, every morning a Daddy went down on his Prayer Bones and met the youthful charge and hugged his young to him, hard, laughing that good strong Daddy-laugh.

Shelly smiled because her Daddy did that with her.

Linn looked from one to the other, the way he always did with the twins: he frowned, he considered, then he looked at them again and said "I got some eggs all fried up and they ain't never been et yet. Interested?"

Shelly came on down the steps, barefoot and silent, delighting in the layers of aroma:  coffee, bacon, fresh bread, apples: Linn was a very basic cook, but what he did, he honestly tried to do well: Shelly knew breakfast would not be on her this day, nor would cleanup, and for this, she was honestly grateful.

Breakfast table conversation was often animated, on subjects of mutual interest, or entirely unrelated matters -- neither Linn nor Shelly tried to stifle young imaginations, and besides, when the first matter discussed was Jacob coming for a visit, Linn laughed a little, for Jacob called ahead before opening an Iris -- he was ever the cautious sort, and wished not to let the Martian feline out of the burlap of secrecy.

That Jacob jumped on the backhoe and buried Cannonball was a matter of necessity, and Linn was satisfied Jacob had already arranged for anti-surveillance measures prior to his arrival.

Halfway through her first fried egg, Victoria stopped, frowned.

"Daddy," she said, "you never said goodbye to Cannonball."

Linn smiled, picked up a slice of bacon, winked at his youngest daughter.

"Cannonball rides the wind now," he said quietly. "You said goodbye for all of us. Thank you for that."

"I did?" she puzzled, blinking with wide-eyed innocence.  

Linn nodded.

"Cannonball loved to run, Victoria. She wouldn't have run if you hadn't been on her."

"Oh."

Daddy's Little Girl blinked at this new information, as she fit it into her realization that Daddy Is Right.

"If I'd said goodbye," Linn said quietly, "it would have been to a carcass. That wasn't Cannonball.  She was alive, she was warm and shining in the sun, she was ..."

Linn smiled a little, looked to the side, looked back, grinned.

"You recall how she liked to pull the bandanna from my hip pocket?"

Victoria's immediate mental video was of her Gammaw's elderly, aging, stiff, arthritic Cannonball-horse, neck stretched out and lips fluttering, delicately nipping her Daddy's bandanna from where he'd stuffed it in his back pocket -- Cannonball, backing up with the light and mincing step of a horse many years younger, swinging her head triumphantly, waving the captured cloth like a victory flag.

"When I saw her last," Linn said quietly, "you were astride her, you were standing in the stirrups with your hands pressed against her neck, you were leaning forward and yelling for her to go faster, and Cannonball laid her ears back and just plainly punched a hole in the wind."

Linn swallowed, blinked, wet his lips.

"That's my last memory of Cannonball, doin' what she loved, and you helped her do exactly that."

Linn leaned over, gripped his daughter's hand and almost whispered, "Thank you."

Shelly bit her bottom lip and debated whether to reach up and tug at her earlobe, or perhaps pull it and hold, to record video instead of take that mental snapshot.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 28 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

EAU DE PAYNE

Jacob Keller lay on his back on the rocky ground.

Jacob Keller looked up at the deep blue sky.

Jacob Keller hurt to bad to move.

Jacob Keller rode a good horse, a steady and reliable horse, a horse he'd trained, that he'd trusted, that he'd relied on and depended on, and he'd forgotten ...

... sometimes a horse will shy, startle and panic.

Jacob parted company from his saddle of a sudden.

Jacob landed flat on his back, and he didn't land gently, and once he hit -- by his reckoning he hit hard enough to shiver the granite mountains themselves -- why, he just laid there for quite a long while, gathering enough gumption to try and move.

He had no idea where his horse got off to.

Whatever shied him was likely still around.

Jacob took a long breath, listened: he laid there, unmoving, until he was satisfied nothing was close by that might want to take a bite out of his carcass.

Jacob took a long breath, sat up.

He regretted the move, but clenched his jaw and moved anyway.

He rolled over, looked around.

Birds he heard, wind ... a horse's hoof, likely his own mount.

He rose up on elbows and knees, refusing to surrender to the pain: he rocked back, rose, looking around.

Jacob stood, carefully, slowly, willing himself upright.

It still hurt to breathe, but breathe he did, and deeply: Jacob was a contrary and hard headed sort, just like his pale eyed Pa, and when something didn't want to work, Jacob made it work, simply because he was so strong willed -- whether it was a recalcitrant tool, a chunk that didn't want split into kindling wood, or his own body.

Jacob looked around, eyes busy, turning slowly, listening.

Nothing.

He studied the ground.

Apple's hooves went that-a-way, he thought.

Likely the rest of him did too.

He smiled a little, remembering his Pa saying that one time, when they were tracking another of the spotty horses that got out and decided to take a gander at more countryside than usual.

Let's do this the easy way.

Jacob made a kissing noise, pulled out his plug of molasses twist tobacker and shaved some thick curls off it.

He smiled a little at the sound of approaching hooves.

Apple-horse bribed as readily as a politician, and it wasn't the first time Jacob used that tendency to his advantage.

 

Jacob Keller set his boot up on the brass foot rail.

His coat showed signs of having been engaged in some vigorous activity; it was not torn, but its back appeared dustier than its usual immaculate self, as if it had been briskly hand-brushed and swatted to knock off the excess.

"Mr. Baxter," he said quietly, as was his habit, "might I trouble you for a good slug of medicinal alcohol?"

Mr. Baxter gave Jacob a concerned look, then turned, pulled down a dusty bottle from the top shelf.

"Been saving this," he said quietly, setting out a broad, squat glass that held a deceptively generous volume: "looks like you need it."

Jacob slid a coin across the gleaming bar, thanked the pomaded barkeep quietly, raised the libation and drank it like water.

Mr. Baxter polished a mug, watched the lean-waisted deputy set the glass silently back on the bar.

"Might a man inquire what happened?" he said, leaning confidentially closer.

Jacob twisted his hips a little, grimaced.

"Mr. Baxter," he said, "do you recall that drummer that come around a week or so ago, sellin' those par-fumes an' such-like?"

Mr. Baxter nodded solemnly.  "I do recall," he said quietly. 

"He called 'em Eau this an' Eau that an' Eau de Cologne an' a few other fancy words."

"Yes, I recall that too."

Jacob smiled with half his mouth.

"I reckon after fallin' off m' horse, I'd ought to get m'self some of that good smellin' stuff."

Mr. Baxter waited.

Jacob grinned, slid the empty glass back across the bar, straightened his back: Mr. Baxter saw the discomfort in Jacob's pale eyes, though he gave no other indication of his discomfort.

"I reckon I'll be wearin' that new men's cologne," he said solemnly.

"Eau de Payne."