SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MY MOMMY’S LOST

 

Sheriff Linn Keller walked his Appaloosa up into the little town park.

Apple-horse blinked, slashed his tail and managed to look absolutely bored.

Linn swung down, dropped the stallion’s reins, caressed the saddle horse’s neck, then he took a step toward the park bench, removed his Stetson and went to one knee.

A little girl sat on the park bench.

She was dressed up – she wore pretty little slippers and a pretty little dress, her hair was carefully brushed and tied with a ribbon, and her bottom lip was pooched out until it almost hung down to her belly button.

Well, not quite to her belly button, but you get the idea.

Sheriff and child regarded one another for several long moments.

“You look just awfully sad,” Linn said gently.  “Is something wrong?”

The little girl nodded, looked down, swinging her legs the way a young child will.

She’s not six years old, Linn judged silently.

I will bet she's supposed to be at the church today, it looked to be set up for something –

The child looked up at the Sheriff and finally said, “My mommy’s lost.”

Linn nodded, slowly, remembering what it was to raise his own young.

“That happens sometimes,” he said in a soft voice. “Would you like to find her?”

She nodded.

“My name’s Linn, what’s yours?”

“Lexie.”

“Hi, Lexie.”  Linn tilted his head a little. “That’s Apple, behind me.”

Lexie looked solemnly over the Sheriff’s head.

“He’s vew-wy big,” she said in a little girl’s voice, and the Sheriff smiled, just a little, remembering the days when his own daughters were this size, when his own daughters sounded very much like this.

“Is your Mommy doing something special today?”

The little girl nodded; a stray sun-shaft penetrated her styled hair, sparkled off one pierced earring.

“What kind of special is your Mommy doing?”

“It’s a wed-ding.”

“Are you helping with the wedding?”

“No,” she sighed, then “Yeah, I’m 'posta throwit flower peddles.”

“I see,” Linn replied, speaking softly, reassuringly. “Is the wedding in church?”

The little girl nodded.

“Would you like to see if your Mommy is at the church?”

Lexie nodded.

“Would you like to help me ride my horse?”

Lexie’s eyes went wide and she nodded hopefully.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller rode a total of less than fifty yards to return daughter with mother.

Lexie was content to be carried in the Sheriff’s arms: Linn swung down, grateful he’d carried his own daughters in this selfsame manner when they were this small.

He stopped so Lexie could pet the horsie – she started giggling when Apple snuffed loudly at her exploring pink fingers – Linn carried her up the steps, squatted enough to reach the door’s handle, pulled it open enough to catch it with his foot, just in time to almost run into a concerned looking woman who stopped in wide-eyed surprise.

“Hi, Mommy,” Lexie said in a loud and cheerful voice, and Linn handed the child over to the mother, touched his hat-brim.

“I only looked away for a minute,” the mother blurted, and Linn winked and said, “A lady enters a room on a gentleman’s arm. Your daughter allowed me to be a gentleman.”

Lexie turned, waved: “ ‘Bye, horsie,” she called, then turned and scampered up beside the bride: a ribbon-trimmed basket was pressed into her hand, she was pushed ahead of the waiting, white-gowned bride, and began the serious business of strutting down the aisle, sprinkling flower petals as she went.

Linn grinned his way down the three steps, he chuckled as he swung back into saddle leather, he laughed his way back to the Sheriff’s office.

Sharon looked at him as he hung his Stetson on the ancient halltree.

“You look pleased with yourself,” she said suspiciously. “What have you been up to this time?”

“I helped a little girl find her mommy.”

“Oh?” Sharon said skeptically.

“Yep,” Linn nodded.  “Her mommy was lost.”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PEACEMAKER

 

I’d quietly been spending as much time with Michael as I could.

My stallion never did develop a liking for the Fanghorn, but he did tolerate her, after a fashion.

The Fanghorn politely ignored Apple-horse.

Considering the Fanghorn was four hands taller at the shoulder, considering the Fanghorn had a longer, more flexible neck, and considering the Fanghorn was both faster and significantly more agile than my Appaloosa – and I always thought Apple would make a fine cutting horse – well, was there a contest, it wouldn’t be the Fanghorn that came out in second place.

Lucky enough Michael’s Lightning saw how delighted Michael was with my mount, so it never came to a disagreement.

At least that’s my theory.

Michael and Marnie had their work cut out for them, convincing the medical community that Michael was rehabilitating faster, better and more completely in the saddle, than he was in a hospital room, and I reckon that’s kind of like my wife telling me the new upcoming generation of paramedics were using pulse oximetry and field chemistry and blood analysis and technology to such a degree, that they were treating their instruments, and not the patient, that, when she fabricated a splint and stabilized a fracture when they were well away from the new generation ambulances, the brand-new, book-learnin’ paramedics were astounded – even moreso when she successfully gauged the state of their patient’s general health with a laying on of hands, with an assessment of skin tone, nailbed and lip color, and when she pressed practiced fingertips to the sides of a victim’s head and began treating for shock – with the quiet voiced announcement that the victim’s systolic blood pressure was less than eighty – she was regarded skeptically, one called her a fraud and a fake, at least until they all got to hospital and the ER doc pulled them all into a conference room and straightened out the skeptical young.

On the other hand, maybe they figured Marnie and Michael were hard headed enough, and had enough diplomatic clout, that maybe they should pull in their horns and let Michael rehabilitate his way.

Victoria came along with me as often as she could.

That big, fast, deadly Fanghorn was putty in her hands.

I don’t know if it was female-recognizing-female, I don’t know if it was because Victoria baby-talked that big hell raiser and called her a good kitty or because she bribed Lightning with peppermints.

I honestly don’t care.

Now Michael, credit where credit is due, and a hell of a lot of it is due him! – worked himself to exhaustion and kept on working, retraining his legs and his trunk: it was painful to watch him saddling the Fanghorn, it was hard watching him swing that big heavy oversized saddle and lose his balance and fall, it was all I could do to keep from going over and picking him up, then saddling Lightning for him.

I didn’t.

I ground my teeth and fisted my hands and turned my head and I let him get up, I let him swat the dust off himself, I watched him grab the stirrup and SLAM it over the saddlehorn and I watched him grab the saddle and wallow it up off the ground and stagger up on the mounting block and try it again.

Victoria would turn away so she couldn’t watch, then she’d look at me and glare like it was my fault and I’d whisper ‘He has to do this himself,’ and if looks could kill I would’ve been impaled, flayed, barbecued slowly and then she’d have got right mean with me.

They both kept up on their studies.

They both learned better, faster, more completely with private education, likely because a class size of two can be run more efficiently.

I’m guessing about the efficiently.

All I know is, they excelled and then some.

Michael was eventually recovered enough to resume martial arts training.

Now here I really have to give Victoria credit.

She trained with him in the dojo just like she rode with him.

She could have outdone him seven ways from Sunday.

She did – but only when it was only her and the instructor – when she and Michael were both in the dojo, Victoria performed to her brother’s level.

Michael’s coordination was not a problem, it was getting signals from his brain to his legs, it was strength and signal in his trunk muscles, and it was frustration.

It did not last forever.

When I found out he and Victoria were sneaking out, alone, at night, courtesy a convenient Iris and a helpful big sister, I carefully paid no attention.

As badly as I wished to see my son on a mountain trail again, I stayed away, in the house or in the barn.

I pretended not to see a smear of mud on his combat boots, where he’d cleaned them off and missed a spot, I pretended not to hear he and Victoria sneaking back into the house, I held Shelly’s wrist and whispered for her to stay still when we heard Michael laboring up the stairs, sock feet clumsy and loud on the stairs, and Shelly tried to pull out of my grip when we heard him fall.

“Trust me,” I hissed, and it was my wife’s turn to glare.

Michael and Victoria showered and went to bed and Shelly treated me to a good helping of cold shoulder.

Next day we talked about the male ego and I told her how Michael told me he was so sick and tired of being coddled as if he were a hurt child.

Shelly’s mood changes like quicksilver, she went from the Death Glare to the Wounded Mother in a tenth of a second or less and she said “But he is a wounded child!” and I nodded, for she was right, and I knew when Michael wanted his Mama’s embrace, he would seek her out.

I was right about that too.

I did not expect Firelands in general, nor Michael in particular, to have such a pervasive effect on the entire Confederacy.

I reckon that’s thanks to the Inter-System.

Publicity is a marvelous tool.

The idea of the office of Sheriff was known, system wide, but suddenly it took on a new respect, a new importance in the popular imagination.

The idea, the romance, even the stereotype of the Old West became more than popular, system wide.

Horses, Stetsons, Winchester rifles, all were suddenly in vogue; Marnie’s trademark McKenna gown (and fashionable little hats) became popular, partly because Marnie was popular, and partly because of the wisps of Western lore they already had.

Western novels were imported from Earth, new Westerns were written, published, devoured, and Michael and Victoria’s news clips from previous broadcasts were resurrected.

Michael was astride Lightning, running free across broken terrain: Michael’s Stetson was mashed down and tilted forward against the wind of their passing, and to his delight, he was finally able to stand in his stirrups for more than a few seconds.

Grinning, Michael had his hands planted flat and firm on either side of Lightning’s coal-black, silk-fine mane, yelling encouragement: Lightning loved to run, and Michael loved to run her, and Lightning would sail easily over boulders or deadfalls or streams of surprising width, she’d land easy and light and never lose any forward speed.

Michael ducked down against her neck to keep from getting clotheslined and they came out into a clearing and Lightning slowed, slinging her head back and forth, almost growling deep in that huge chest of hers, and Michael recognized both the clearing, and the reason Lightning started to snap her jaws.

It was where they’d been very nearly killed.

Lightning threw her head back and screamed the way she had when fires of searing agony blasted bloody burn-trails in her living hide when Michael’s shielding plate failed.

She spun, head snapping left, then right, jaws chopping, seeking an enemy, seeking the one that hurt them, as Michael dropped deep into the saddle and gripped her barrel as best he could.

Neither she nor Michael knew a cloaked hover-cam was abreast of them.

Neither knew it zoomed momentarily on the engraved Colt’s revolver Michael wore.

Neither knew, that night, Michael’s nickname was broadcast, system-wide, thanks to the Inter-System and that one hover cam.

The tribunal was replayed – the one where Michael gave a condemned man back his life, the one that opened with peace being declared between the warring armies.

It replayed Michael’s thrusting himself between two groups of mounted officers, shouting at them that they were stupid, if they wanted to kill one another, dismount and kill each other on foot, just don’t hurt the horses.

Owing to these rebroadcasts, and owing to the plow handle Colt he wore, Michael Keller, twin brother to Victoria Keller, younger brother of Chief Diplomat Marnie Keller and son of Sheriff Linn Keller, earned his popular title.

Michael became known simply as …

 

Peacemaker.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE LORD IS MERCIFUL

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna brushed the mule’s mane, whispering secrets to the black-and-grey Jenny as she did.

The Jenny-mule blinked contentedly, long, dark eyelashes sweeping the air as she did.

Sarah fussed over the Jenny, she curried the Jenny, she lifted one hoof, then another, scraping, tapping, examining, the way she’d seen a long, tall lawman scrape and tap and examine:  she ran her hands down the Jenny’s legs, murmuring to her, sweet talking her.

Sarah caressed the Jennys’ flank, ran her hand back, patted the Jenny’s hind quarters, and the Jenny’s leg flashed back in a swift, powerful kick.

Sarah smiled.

She slid her hand over until it was just above Jenny-mule’s tail, then walked fearlessly behind, beside:  she patted the Jenny’s hinder again, and this time the Jenny lashed out with the other hind leg.

Sarah walked up to the Jenny’s muzzle, caressed her long jaw, fed her some shaved tobacker and murmured, “You are just the sweetest thing, you know that?”

The Jenny made that little death-rattle sound that meant she was very pleased:  she swung her long ears and accepted the treat and watched with wise and patient eyes as Sarah unhitched the reins from the post.

Sarah knotted the reins and dropped them over the saddlehorn, then she whispered, “Jenny, may I ride you?”

Jenny blinked, assented in the silent way such creatures will.

Men watched.

Men, whose business it was to know horses and suchlike, openly stared as a pretty young woman in a riding-skirt thrust her foot into a stirrup, swung easily aboard: she never touched the reins, she leaned forward, caressed Jenny-mule’s neck, whispered to her.

Jenny-mule’s ears swung back, for all the world like she was actually listening.

Sarah sat up very straight, very proper in the saddle, all ribbons and ruffles and pastel dress and fashionable little hat; Sarah lifted her chin and Jenny lifted her ears and the two of them turned and trotted happily across the corral to the gate, stopped.

Sarah lifted her chin and addressed the taller of the two watchers.

“You named a price,” she said coolly.

The man rubbed his chin, regarded the young woman with frosty eyes suspiciously.

“Ma’am,” he said, “ain’t no man ever rode that Jenny.”

“In case it has escaped your attention,” Sarah said coldly, “I am not a man.”

He blinked, looked at his grinning buddy, who slapped him on the shoulder blade and bent over, absolutely braying with laughter:  rough humor is contagious among rough men, and they both laughed, and when they looked back at the pretty young woman on the unrideable mule, she too was laughing:  she leaned over, one forearm laid on the saddlehorn, and she said, “Do you know how hard it was to say that with a straight face?”

Laughter, again:  Jenny swung her ears, backed up a step and blew loudly.

Sarah caressed her neck.

“There, now, sweetheart,” she cooed, “I think we will get along famously.”

Sarah looked up, smiled.

“You named a price,” she said, “and I have cash money. If you will open the gate, please.”

Two men watched as a smiling young woman raised her parasol and rode off on a mule no man, so far, had ever been able to straddle.

Sarah rode in the stock car with Jenny-mule, for it was not far from the rancher just outside Carbon Hill, to the Carbon Hill depot; Sarah had the roustabouts step back, she folded her parasol as daintily as only a woman can, she looked around with a pleasant expression, then she pulled free of the stirrups, turned, threw a leg up and cascaded to the ground – swift, unexpected, laughing like a little girl – Jenny-mule turned her head, surprised, and Sarah caressed her jaw and murmured girlish words, and together they walked noisily up the stock ramp and into the hay-scented car.

When Sarah disembarked at Firelands, when she stepped down the stock ramp and the Jenny-mule followed, no one had any preconceived notion about the beast: they knew Sarah, they knew her smile, they knew when she came down the stock ramp and talked to the roustabouts, when she asked one how his new little baby boy was, when she asked another if his wife still had those big pretty eyes, when he asked a third if his offer of a dance was still good, it was as if she were spreading a thick layer of goodwill and smiles around her.

The Jenny-mule followed Sarah like a dog, keeping her nose four fingers from Sarah’s right elbow, happily maintaining her position.

Sarah tilted her head and smiled: a shining carriage was waiting, her twin sisters turned and exclaimed in a loud and happy chorus, “Sawwah!”

Polly and Opal swarmed out of the carriage in their shining slippers and matching dresses and ornate little hats, decorated with flowers plucked fresh less than an hour before:  they came scampering up, smiling and chattering like little sisters will, and Sarah bent and embraced them both: she straightened and the twins – silk-fine, blond-haired Polly, with her big lovely McKenna-violet eyes, and straight-black-haired Opal, with her Oriental-black eyes and epicanthic folds adding to her bicultural beauty – regarded Jenny-mule with the intense interest of the very young.

Jenny regarded them right back, looking as if she might fall asleep as she did.

“This,” Sarah said, her voice as gentle as her smile, “is my Jenny-mule.” 

Sarah bent and whispered in a conspirator’s voice, and the Jenny leaned her ears forward at Sarah’s sibilants, for all the world like she was one of the girls, sharing some juicy gossip.

“I haven’t named her yet. No man has ridden her. No man can ride her!”

The twins both looked at Sarah, their eyes wide and wondering.

“Sawwah,” they asked in a little-girl’s chorus, “did you ride her?”

Sarah straightened, knuckles on her belt, furled parasol sticking out behind like a cocked tail:  “Of course I’ve ridden her!” she declared, then she laughed and said, “No man has ridden her” – she bent, whispered, “Am I a man?”

“Noooo!” two delighted little girls chorused, and giggled.

The Jenny-mule sniffed loudly at the freshly picked flowers decorating Opal’s flat-crowned, white-straw hat with the swallowtail ribbon.

She squeaked with surprise, reached up and grabbed the narrow brim with quick fingertips as Jenny-mule pulled the flowers free, happily accepting this snack.

Sarah quietly pattered her gloved palms together, laughing with delight.

“Ladies,” she declared, “I think we have a name!”

A mule and two girls regarded Sarah with bright and interested eyes.

“She seems to have an appetite for columbine.”

Polly lifted her hat free, held it out, and Jenny-mule – now Columbine – daintily, contentedly, plucked the fresh columbine from this white-straw, flat-topped serving platter as well.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller rubbed the Jenny-mule’s jaw, offered her some freshly-pared molasses-twist shavings.

The offering was accepted.

“Sarah tells me you won’t let a man ride you,” he said softly, rubbing her ears. 

The Jenny-mule made no reply.

“May I take a look at your hooves?”

Jenny offered no protest.

The Sheriff caressed her, patted her, ran his hand down her leg, assessing her: practiced fingers read her leg, he lifted a forehoof, tapped at the shoe, saw where someone just recently scraped a little: he, too, scraped packed dirt away, practiced eyes assessing the health of the hoof.

He ran his hand down her flank, to her rump, patted gently –

Her near hind leg shot out in a vicious, deadly kick.

Linn laughed, turned, his hand on her spine:  “Jenny,” he said, “you just don’t like a strange man pattin’ you on the fanny, now do you?”

Jenny-mule shook her head.

The Sheriff continued his examination, found her shoes in good shape and tight, her hooves without flaw or bruise: he finally came back to her head, murmuring, caressing.

“Someone’s beat you, haven’t they?” he said quietly.  “That’s why you won’t let a man ride you.”

The Jenny-mule made no reply.

“Sarah said she didn’t need the reins to ride you. That tells me you’ve got some intelligence.”

The Jenny-mule blinked sleepily in the noontime sun.

A pretty young woman with two lovely little girls came flowing across the street, all ribbons and ruffles and feminine laughter: Sarah furled her parasol, rested its tip lightly on the ground.

“Well?” she asked, mischief and merriment in her expression. 

“Looks good to me,” Linn said.

“I got a good price, too,” Sarah confided, “and the look on their faces when I rode her to the depot, was precious!”

Linn chuckled.

“Darlin’,” he said, and neither Sarah, the girls nor the mule, were sure which of them he was addressing, “it looks like you did all right!”

“Columbine,” Sarah called, and the Sheriff unwound the reins from the hitch rail: Sarah knotted them, brought them over Columbine’s long ears, dropped the knot over the saddlehorn.

Jacob came up beside his father and two pale eyed men watched the feminine contingent flow across the street, Sarah’s parasol like a flag leading a column of troops.

“Sir,” Jacob said, “you usually ride new saddle stock.”

The Sheriff nodded, looked at his son, and Jacob saw a smile tightening the corners of the Grand Old Man’s eyes.

“Sarah said no man had ridden that mule,” Linn said quietly, “but she has.

“I figure if she thinks she’s got one over on me, why, she’ll cherish the thought that she can do somethin’ Old Pale Eyes can’t.”

He looked after the ladies, watched as Polly and Opal were boosted back into their carriage: he and Jacob lifted their Stetsons in salute as Bonnie McKenna smiled at them, as she climbed into the carriage with her daughters and her purchases.

Linn considered for a moment, the very first time he saw Bonnie, and Sarah beside her, and he whispered quiet thanks to the Almighty their life’s circumstance was much improved.

“No, Jacob, I did not ride that mule,” Linn finally said.

“Sarah told me no man had ever ridden it” – father and son looked at one another – “and this is ugly on my face, not stupid!”

Jacob’s eyes tightened at the corners, just as his father’s had done, and for the same reason:  father and son shared a look of mutual understanding.

“A good friend of mine,” Jacob said softly, “I’d told him – I forget what happened – but I told him I’m smarter than I look.”

Linn looked at Jacob, raised an eyebrow, the smile still lurking behind his face.

“He looked at me, just as solemn as the old judge, and allowed as if I’m smarter than I look, this proves the Lord is merciful!”

Father and son looked across the street as Sarah, as erect and regal in the saddle as a Queen upon her throne, rode beside the departing carriage.

“I reckon,” Linn said, “you are right, Jacob.  I reckon you are exactly right!”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PEACEMAKER’S RIDE

 

Michael rotated the cylinder, slowly, one metallic click at a time.

He was deliberate, he was precise.

Lightning, his Fanghorn mare, was curious.

She shoved her bony head close, snuffed loudly at the engraved Peacemaker revolver.

Marnie stood facing her youngest brother, her hands very properly folded in her apron, over her modest, gravid expansion: she gave the Fanghorn an appraising look and unconsciously caressed her maternal belly.

The Fanghorn swung her head, sniffed loudly at Marnie’s belly, gave a quiet, snarling nicker, lifted her head, looked around: she turned, restless, as if protecting both Michael and Marnie with her massive flank.

“I’ve been training her,” Michael said quietly.  “The same way Pa trains a bird dog, or a saddle horse.”

“Cap gun,” Marnie murmured, smiling as she remembered, “then percussion caps, then primer blanks.”

“.22 shorts, .22s at a distance,” Michael nodded as he dropped shining-brass .44s into the cylinder.

“Has it worked with Lightning?” Sarah asked, fearlessly tracing a zigzag lightning blaze with gloved fingertips.

“Oh yeah,” Michael murmured quietly, snapping the loading gate shut, holstering the hand-engraved, gold-inlaid revolver with PEACEMAKER engraved on either side of the deep, richly-blued barrel.

“I’m … you remember how Pa hunted coyotes horseback?”

Marnie laughed, nodded.  “We did too!”

Michael nodded, his face solemn.

“Pa taught me hittin’ a runnin’ ‘yote from horseback is like throwin’ rocks, that’s how I did it, just like I’d muzzle-up to cock a percussion revolver and then throw down like I’m throwin’ a rock out of the gunbarrel.”

“As I recall,” Marnie murmured quietly, “you were always pretty good!”

Michael nodded, his eyes distant, remembering.

“I was a-straddle of Lightning and we come on … they’re not ‘yotes, exactly, but they’re a nuisance and I allowed as let’s give it a try, and she took out after ‘em, but Marnie” – Michael looked at his sister with troubled eyes – “I was honestly afraid to shoot!”

Marnie tilted her head, surprised.

“Why?”

“Lightning hates those things,” Michael said, caressing the Fanghorn’s lower jaw, which brought a sleepy-lidded look and a rumbling, dangerous-sounding purr:  Michael blinked, remembering.

“Every time I’d fetch my revolver up and ready to chop down and fire, she’d snap that neck over right where I was about to shoot.”

Marnie nodded.

“She’s deadly,” Michael almost whispered. “I never did get a shot off.”

Lightning’s head came up and they heard her snarl.

Marnie had never, ever, heard a horse snarl – even something that wasn’t quite a horse as she knew it.

She felt Michael’s young body light up and he slapped his hand behind Lightning’s foreleg.

“Down,” he hissed, and Lightning bellied down – sudden, hard, her body flat on the ground, her head up like a periscope, lips peeled back, fangs exposed.

Sarah looked to where the Fanghorn was staring, then she turned, extended a gloved hand.

An Iris opened and a huge, shining-black mare trotted out, head-bobbing excitedly, ears forward: Snowflake walled her eyes, danced away, shaking her head and blowing.

Lightning paid this newcomer no attention at all.

Michael grabbed the saddlehorn, wallowed into leather: “Up!”

Sarah thrust the toe of her high-button shoe into the doghouse stirrup, swung a leg over saddle leather, took a deep seat.

Brother and sister yelled at the same time.

“GIT ‘EM!”

Snowflake, a Frisian mare, was both swift, powerful and surprisingly agile for a horse of her size.

She surged forward, ears laid back as Sarah’s hand gripped her own plow handle revolver, as she leaned forward, yelling: “SNOWFLAKE, GO!”

Snowflake leaned forward into a flat-out gallop, her neck stuck straight out, focused on the pack of tawny neo-canids turning to face the oncoming Fanghorn.

Marnie had an impression of shaggy-furred shoulders, small hind quarters, stripes – Fisi, she thought, remembering the packs of hyenas she’d seen on a planet with a continent that mirrored the African continent surprisingly well.

She was also shocked at the Fanghorn’s speed.

Michael was bent over her neck, both hands on the Fanghorn’s neck.

Sarah saw another pack swarming in like a tawny stream, approaching the Fanghorn’s flank.

Michael leaned with Lightning’s turn – Sarah had the impression of a snake striking – one of the shaggy-shoulder canids screamed momentarily, at least until strong jaws crushed its ribs, slung it high in the air: Michael’s hand raised, chopped down, fired: he switched hands, chopped down to his left, he triggered the shot as Fisi tried to climb Lightning’s shoulder: a hard cast .44 drove through the open jaws, blew the back of the skull off, dropping the limp carcass like a sack of ground meat.

Sarah charged the intercepting pack, screaming her own challenge: Snowflake threw her head to the right as Marnie fired, left-handed, fired again, then the steelshod Frisian went to war.

Sarah found herself riding a black-furred whirlpool: Lightning spun, kicked, she stabbed with stiff forelegs, and had Marnie not the experience of riding her Daddy’s saddlehorses, had she not the experience of bucking out his stallion of a frosty morning before school, she would have been unseated, and quickly.

Sarah’s world became very narrow as she fought to keep a ravening swarm of tawny canines from eating her and her saddlehorse: six shots, six hits, Marnie holstered her left-hand and drew her right-hand revolver and laid amongst them like Samson with the jaw bone of a jack mule.

Michael’s jaw was clenched, his face grim: Lightning dropped her hind quarters, spun, kicked with both hind legs: Michael twisted in the saddle, gripped the cantle, ignored the screaming agony in his back as he fired, one-handed, cleaned three fisi from where they were climbing the Fanghorn’s hind quarters.

Snowflake spun, stabbed with both forehooves, crushed the life from another, and the fight was over.

The survivors ran, the dead lay still, Michael unwound his spine, clenching his jaws against the pain: slowly, carefully, he punched out hot, empty cartridge brass, automatically funneled them into a vest pocket, then reloaded, holstered.

Marnie reloaded one revolver, then the other: Snowflake was still dancing, turning, shaking her head, muttering.

Lightning threw her head back and gave a coarse scream, a sound that no horse ever made – a steam whistle being tortured, perhaps, but no horse – there were answering screams, and Sarah heard hooves approaching, and approaching fast.

She kneed Snowflake, spun her, kicked her into a desperate gallop.

Snowflake was a mare, and the fiercest fighting among Fanghorns was between mares, and Sarah knew there was no way in two red hells her Snowflake could best a Fanghorn – let alone the oncoming herd.

“Michael!” she shouted, just before she and Snowflake dove through the Iris.

Michael rested his hand on his revolver’s handle, made sure it was secure in its holster, pulled the tab up over the hammer spur.

Trust your horse, his Pa taught him at a tender age, and his Pa’s counsel had proven wise thus far.

Horse or Fanghorn, Michael trusted his mount.

Lightning raised her head and screamed greeting, then as the thundering, hoof-driving, fast-moving river of living destruction flowed around them and swept them up, she launched into a flat out gallop, and Michael found himself surrounded by a living river of dark-tawny Fanghorns, all at a wind-splitting, flat-out, air-busting gallop.

Michael Keller, son of Sheriff Linn Keller and twin brother to Victoria, gritted his teeth against the agony in his spine: his legs shivered with pain and with effort, but he stood, he stood in the stirrups and planted his palms flat on the Fanghorn’s neck.

The galloping herd of wild Fanghorns thundered across the gently rolling grassland like a living river, and Michael was part of it.

A cloaked hover-cam flew along with them, and the Inter-System shared an historic moment, the very first time a human – any human -- ever encountered a Fanghorn stampede, and lived to tell the tale.

The news broadcast concluded with a close-up of Michael’s grim and determined face, then the camera swung down to the handle of his revolver in its carved-leather holster, with the words superimposed:

 

PEACEMAKER’S RIDE!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WHO'S GONNA BELIEVE HIM?

Sheriff Linn Keller regarded the man skeptically.

"A monster," he repeated.

"Yes, that's right, my boy said it was a monster with fangs and it nearly killed him!"

"May I see the injuries?"

The angry stranger stopped, blinked, suddenly uncomfortable.

"I am the Sheriff," Linn said. "I require corroboration and evidence. Show me the injuries."

"He knocked him down!" the stranger blustered, mentally back pedaling, trying to get some cohesive, coherent argument to come forward for presentation.

"Let me get this straight," Linn said quietly, spreading his hands, deliberately pitching his voice, and presenting body language, to indicate reasonableness: "Your son trespasses on my ranch. Your son confronts my son, your son falsely accuses my son and then your son attempts to commit grand theft with firearm specification -- which, by the way, is a mandatory prison term. Am I correct so far?"

"I, ah, that's not, ah -- see here --"

"The only thing I see is someone who is trespassing on my property," the Sheriff said in a cold voice. "I will give you one chance and one chance only to get you and your son the hell off my ground and I will recommend you get the hell out of my county. You have thirty seconds to get off property and the clock is running right now!"

Sheriff Linn Keller watched with hard and pale eyes as an Eastern stranger took his protesting son by the arm, half-marched and half-dragged him out to the car, turned around with more vigor than precision, and threw gravel getting away from what was obviously a very poor choice of confrontation.

Linn took a long breath, blew it out.

"Michael."

The door opened behind him.

"Yes, sir."

"Come on out and let's have us a sit."

"Yes, sir."

"Grab a pillow, these deckin' boards are hard on a man's backside."

"Yes, sir."

Michael came out, offered the pillow to his father, who was still standing in the center of the porch, well-polished boots set shoulder width apart, thumbs in his belt, looking down the driveway at the drifting dust kicked up from the speedy departure.

Linn looked at his son, smiled, just a little.

"That pillow's for you," Linn said quietly. "You've hurt enough for one day."

"Thank you, sir."

Michael dropped the thick, foam-filled pillow, set his bony backside carefully on it, worked his back a little to find the position where it hurt the least.

Linn sat as well, looked over at his son.

"How's the pain?" he asked quietly.

Michael's jaw was set, his young face showed the same stubborn determination Linn saw in his own reflection during times of difficulty.

"Still there, sir."

"Any sign it'll get better?"

Michael nodded, carefully.

"It even hurts when you nod."

"Yes, sir."

Linn took another deep breath.

"Michael," he said quietly, his voice pitched to reassure, "you live with more pain than most men I know could stand."

"Yes, sir."

"Takin' anything for it?"

Michael's expression was bleak, and Linn saw what was very close to hopelessness in his son's eyes when Michael looked at him pleadingly, as if hoping his Pa could make the pain go away.

"No, sir," Michael said, and his expression changed again: his eyes dropped half shut and his jaw muscles bulged, and Linn saw his son's native stubbornness again.

"Michael, it's okay not to hurt."

"No, sir," Michael said firmly. 

"I ... don't understand."

Michael took in a quick breath, the way someone will when a fresh bolt of lightning lances through their system.

"Sir, Gammmaw's Mama was ..."

"It skips a generation, Michael. It manifested in my sister."

"That means it might be in me, sir. Addiction is hereditary and I'm not taking the chance!"

Linn was quiet for several long moments, then he said quietly, "Michael, I have failed you."

"No, sir, you haven't."

"Michael, I let you see what I see as a lawman --"

"Sir," Michael interrupted, "you have not failed me!"

He swallowed, looked into the distance.

"I failed, sir. I am responsible and it is my fault. It's all my fault. All of it."

"I could disagree with that," Linn said mildly. "Suppose you tell me what happened today."

"Yes, sir."

 

Michael Keller sat unmoving in saddle leather and rejoiced.

He never moved, he never made a sound, but his young heart filled with absolute, utter JOY at getting back among his beloved mountains, on his Pa's ranch, on trails he'd run and he'd ridden, trails he knew intimately.

Lightning snuffed at the native vegetation but found none of it suitable.

Michael came over a rise, frowned: Lightning's head came up and he felt her warning rumble between his legs.

"Yup, girl," he said quietly, and the Fanghorn mare yup'd.

 

"I saw him a mile back that way" -- Michael thrust out a knife hand, something Linn got from his Mama, something Michael got from his Pa -- "Lightning laid down and I dismounted.

"He said his Pa was there looking for UFOs. I asked if he'd found any and he said no, then he said 'Is that a real gun?' and I said 'Yes' and he made a grab for it.

"Lightning's head came down between us and she threw her head and knocked him back.

"She came up and peeled her lips back and snarled and he screamed and run off.

"I told Lightning to stay and I gave her another peppermint."

"Searching for UFOs," Linn echoed softly.

"Yes, sir."

"Where is Lightning now?"

"She's back in her pasture, sir. I thought this might draw attention."

Linn considered for several long moments.

"You know, Michael, we've had UFOs here."

"Yes, sir."

"Time travel accidents, mostly. I met Sarah McKenna one time."

Michael's eyes widened; he started to turn his head, flinched, closed his eyes against the pain of that intemperately sudden move. "Sarah McKenna, sir?"

Linn grinned.  "She looked just like Marnie. Identical!"

"I know the pictures do, sir, but ... it was really Sarah?"

Linn nodded.

"Some time later, when Marnie brought the Ambassador for one of his first visits, I traded him a modern pistol for a pistol Sarah used."  

Linn smiled gently as his son turned, pivoting carefully on the pillow, for fear of another lightning-bolt of agony should he turn his head.

"It's the Navy Colt in the locked glass display case."

"That's the one?" Michael's eyes widened.

"Yyyep. That's why Marnie has a brace of 'em she wears on occasion."

"I wondered, sir ... the gold inlaid rose and the Thunder Bird both."

"Yep."

Linn and Michael were silent for several long moments.

"You know, Michael," Linn said, and Michael heard the amusement peeking out from behind his father's words, "I could have told that Jack Doe we've had UFOs here."

"Sir?"

Linn looked at his son with an expression of fabricated innocence.

"Who's gonna believe him?"

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FORGET MY HAND, LORD, GUIDE THIS LOOP!

Esther Keller felt her husband shiver, felt his breathing change.

She'd seen this before, there in the darkness, in the warm safety of their marital bed: Linn would shiver, his breathing would quicken: paralyzed, helpless, tortured by something only he could see, trapped in nightmares unimaginable: if he made any sound, it was a quiet, hissing groan, as if his very soul were on a torturer's table being flayed alive, crushed, burned, in too much agony to cry out.

Esther did not know the extent of the horrors, the hells that tortured her husband's sleep.

She did know that there was one, and only one, thing she could do for his relief.

Esther rolled up on her side, lay a gentle, cool, feminine palm on his breastbone, knowing full well what would happen, and it did.

Linn's hand seared from under the bedcovers, slapped down flat, hard, pressing her hand hard against him, and he shivered yet again.

Esther felt his body's heat, felt the damp his pain was squeezing out of his very skin.

She leaned her forehead against his sweat-beaded shoulder, forbidding her own tears, helpless to take his nocturnal nightmares from him.

 

Linn's hand bladed, knifed under his coat, seized the handle of his revolver.

Esther's green eyes were blazing: she'd pulled a slim, very sharp blade from her fan, sliced an attacker's grasping hand from wrist to elbow: she twisted, the blade sliced free, she turned to meet the second --

Linn's hand felt smooth walnut, gripped: the hammer spur was hard under his thumb, he cocked coming out of the holster, the pistol was an extension of his living soul as it came up --

The hand that thrust forth to seize the jewel at Esther's throat failed to close --

Esther was pushed backwards, against the rail --

Her petticoats were shocking white, her shoe soles a pale tan as she went over, backwards, over the steamboat's top rail and she fell, she fell, she fell --

EEESSSTTTHHHEEERRRRRRRRR!

The Colt's revolver lifted in recoil.

He did not feel it.

The concussion of 40 grains of soft coal behind a healthy payload of Frontier Justice was a slamming concussion, more felt than heard.

He did not feel it.

Running feet, men swarmed the surviving attacker.

Linn remembered the expression on the steam-calliope player's face as she turned, shocked, her face suddenly pale --

Steam whistle, the great bell on the fore-deck, then silence as the stern wheel stopped, as a voice commanded "DROP ANCHOR! MAN OVERBOARD! AWAY THE BOATS, AWAY!"

Linn remembered running, he remembered charging down the ornate, carpeted staircase --

He roared across the saloon, missing most of his fellow passengers and not giving a good damn that he knocked a man on his backside --

Linn grabbed the door frame to stop, looked left, looked right --

There.

On the deck, a saddle.

A rope!

Four men, tanned, men who wore seamen's caps, came running, seized the davits-lines, lowered the boat: Linn snatched the coiled reata from a Texas saddle, swung over the rail, dropped easily into the boat.

"THIS IS SAILOR'S WORK!" the nearest shouted, rising menacingly, closing a line-callused hand into a hard-knuckled fist.

Linn's hand gripped his revolver's handle, his lips peeled back, and he felt the flesh tighten over his cheeks.

"MY WIFE WENT IN THE WATER," he shouted back.

The sailor  gave one curt nod, half-turned:  "Y'HEAR THAT, LADS! ROW NOW, LET'S FIND HER!"

Linn turned, one boot up on the prow of the boat.

He'd never had much luck casting a loop, but his fingers knew their work: he shook out the loop, readied the coils in his off hand as the boat knifed through oily-smooth, muddy-dark river water.

Linn Keller, Sheriff of Firelands, Colorado, on honeymoon with his new bride, clenched his teeth and addressed the Almighty with the desperate brevity of a man on task:

Guide my hands, O Lord --

No.

Forget my hands, Lord.

Guide this loop!

 

Esther felt her husband's breathing quicken, felt him gasp, felt his heart hammering as if beating fists against the inside of his breastbone, desperate to escape tortures, agonies unimaginable.

"I'm here," she whispered. "You're safe, dearest, you're safe under your own roof, you're in your own bed."

Esther molded herself against her unmoving husband.

She'd never felt so helpless in her entire life.

 

"HOLD HERE, LADS! KEEP A SHARP LOOKOUT NOW!"

The lean waisted lawman in the black suit clenched his teeth, scanned the surface, swinging his gaze --

There --

No, not that, a fish striking perhaps.

Linn's eyes were busy, his back to the oarsmen --

There.

He turned slightly, squared off to this new --

A hand --

A hand, a ruffled cuff, limp with water, emerging, a desperate, wordless call for help --

Linn shifted his hips, raised his arm.

"SHE RISES! WHALE HO!"

The boat surged under him, Linn set his back heel, swung his arm back, threw --

He watched as the plaited Texas reata floated, sunlit, bright against the muddy water, against dark-green trees on the far bank --

The loop dropped over the hand, the arm, a woman's head broke water --

"A FAIR CAST! HARPOONED, BY GOD!" -- the triumphant shout rolled across the slow-moving water.

Esther came to the surface, thrust her arm up, the loop dropped over her arm and she clapped her arm down, trapping it, seized the line with her other hand, the loop diagonal across her bodice --

Linn felt the man beside him, saw a muscled, sun-darkened arm shoot ahead, grip the reata ahead of his own hand --

Linn released the line, dropped to a squat, as a man practiced in the art drew Esther in, fast!

 

Linn arched backwards in bed, gasped in a great, pained breath.

His near arm slid under Esther, rolled her over atop him, held her with the desperation of a man who'd just seen his wife nearly drown.

His other arm came over her as well, crushing her to him.

"Don't leave me, Esther!" he whispered, shivering as he did.  "Esther, please, don't leave me!"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

APPROVAL

Jacob Keller considered the stone.

Dirt was cut neatly from in front of it, likely to clear the equipment.

Across the bottom of Joseph Keller’s stone, new words, newly inscribed:

He did his duty as he saw it.

Jacob Keller crossed his palms on his saddlehorn, the way he’d seen his father do more times than he could count: he eased his weight off his back, felt a few pops, but nothing as loud or as effective as his father’s hereditary sway back.

He eased his backside back into saddle leather, considered the stone and said quietly, “Joseph, I know your bones don’t sleep here, but if it’s a comfort, your memory lies with your ancestors.”

Wind, whispering secrets as it sighed through tree branches, was his only reply.

Jacob patted Apple-horse’s neck.

“Apple,” said he, “do you reckon I did the right thing, adding to the man’s stone?”

 

Sheriff Linn Keller looked up as Jacob cantered up the main street, Apple-horse’s hooves loud on pavement.

Jacob grinned at his father, swung down, dropped Apple’s bitless reins over the hitch rail in front of the Sheriff’s office.

Linn was sitting hunched over, a length of cotton clothesline rope in his hand: beside him, a schoolboy, frowning in concentration as Linn’s fingers taught how to tie a bowline.

“Scott here is interested in joining the Scouts,” Linn said as he handed the other end of the clothesline rope to the lad. “You try it.”

Scott looked at the still-tied exemplar dangling from the Sheriff’s hooked finger, then looked at his own standing line, turned a loop in it and ran the neatly-whipped end through the loop, around, back down through –

He looked up at Jacob, delighted –

Linn laid a fatherly hand on the boy’s back.

“Well done,” he said quietly, and Jacob wondered if the boy’s grin was going to widen to the point it would meet at the nape of his neck.

Linn picked up a second length of end-whipped cotton rope.

“Let me show you a quick and dirty way to tie a clove hitch.”

Jacob watched as his father patiently, quietly, taught a young Scout-to-be, how to tie a half dozen knots.

Jacob was content to watch, and to remember, for his father had been just as patient, just as skilled, in teaching him at a much younger age.

Jacob cherished the memory of sitting beside his father, feeling his father’s warmth against him, drawing from his strength in times of doubt, or of loss, and he remembered that quiet, encouraging voice, that hand of approval laid warm and firm across his back or over his shoulder when he’d mastered something new.

Jacob waited until the lesson was finished, until the delighted lad fairly strutted off down the street toward the firehouse.

Jacob came over, occupied the now-empty half of the Deacon’s bench there in front of the Sheriff’s office.

“I do admire your teaching,” he said quietly.

Linn chuckled, nodded.

“Mama once told me the mantra in medical school – ‘Learn it, do it, teach it,’ and I recall … she told me, and I don’t recall where she’d heard it, but I never forgot it – ‘Show me and I won’t remember, tell me and I’ll forget, but involve me and I’ve GOT it!”

Jacob nodded, rubbing his palms thoughtfully together.

“That,” he said softly, “is for sure!”

“I remember what it was to be a boy,” Linn said, and Jacob saw something soft and faraway in his father’s pale eyes, “and I remember how much approval meant to me.”

Linn’s jaw thrust suddenly out and he looked down, frowning.

“Not that I got much of it from my old man.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Not your fault, Jacob. I tried to do better with my own sons.”

Jacob nodded slowly, considering.

“I reckon you certainly have, sir,” he finally said.

Father and son sat in the sunlight, sharing a companionable silence.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Jacob?”

“Thank you.”

Linn looked at his son, raised an eyebrow.

“You’re welcome,” he said slowly, then added, “Forrrrrr …..?”

Jacob grinned, lifted his head, studied his drowsing stallion.

“Sir you teach well. I’m satisfied I’ve taught my own sons because of that good example.”

Jacob frowned, looked down again, and Linn knew he had more on his mind.

“Sir … do you recall reading to me about Old Pale Eyes, when he was pretty well blind from cataracts … Jacob rode up to visit and he said ‘Ah, Jacob. I’m just getting ready to ride over to the graveyard,’ and Jacob said ‘Be pleased to ride with you.’ “

Linn nodded.

“I remember reading that to you,” he murmured, smiling at the memory.

“Sir … even after all those years, that … when you read that to me, Jacob taught patience and flexibility, and Old Pale Eyes taught it’s okay to accept help.”

“Reckon so,” Linn said softly.

“You used to read to us,” Jacob said quietly, and Linn heard a familiar softening of his son’s voice as Jacob’s walls went down.  “I recall sitting on one side and Sis would sit on the other and we’d be leaned in against you as you read.”

Linn nodded slowly, his eyes tightening at the corners as he, too, remembered what it was to have his young around him as he read aloud.

“Sir, you taught us that reading was good, and you taught us reading was a pleasure.”

Linn considered Apple-horse, watched the stallion turn his head slowly, looking down the street as if half hoping something interesting would happen.

“Reckon I did that much right, at least,” Linn said quietly.

“I’m glad you reinforced that lesson of patience,” Jacob confessed. “Boys are anything but.”

Linn laughed a little, nodded.

“Yes, that’s true,” he agreed, “but hell, everyone in the Lights and Siren Brigade has all the patience of a five year old!”

Father and son laughed quietly, and silence once again grew as two lawmen sat together on the deacon’s bench, in the sunshine, in front of the Sheriff’s office.

 

Jacob rode back up to the cemetery.

He wasn’t sure quite why, but he rode up anyway – When in doubt, follow your gut, a wise man once told him, and his gut said Go here, and he did.

Jacob Keller looked at Joseph Keller’s ancient stone, with the new engraving across its lower margin.

Jacob blinked, frowned, dismounted.

He walked slowly up to the stone, ran skeptical fingers over unbroken grass ….

This strip of sod was gone, he thought.

It was bare dirt, wide as your hand and two fingers deep.

He gripped the grass, tugged experimentally.

No.

It’s not a strip of sod cut and laid in.

He nodded, looked at the name again – Joseph Keller – and said quietly, “I asked earlier if this met your approval.”

He looked at the laser engraving, then at the name again.

“Reckon this must be your answer.”

He was almost right.

When he laid his hand on top of the stone to stand, he felt something out of place.

He jerked his hand away, looked.

A fresh cut rose lay atop the stone where none had been but moments before.

 

 

Edited August 16 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ENOUGH

Sheriff Linn Keller uncoiled like a spring.

He hit the man three times, with all the strength in his long, tall, lean and mad as hell carcass.

The man he hit didn't make it to the floor before the Sheriff seized the throat of his shirt and twisted, until his other hand seized the man's crotch, until he hauled him off the polished quartz floor and roared like a clap boarded bull and held the man overhead.

It was the first time anyone there ever saw the full blown Rage, the white-eyed insanity that is the horrifying legacy of his bloodline.

It was the first time anyone ever saw him seize a man half again heavier than he, and haul him off the ground, and then throw him to the floor, hard.

Behind him, a woman, bruises on her face, a swollen forearm cradled to her belly, blood still bright and fresh on her face, and beside her, two terrified children, not daring to so much as breathe.

 

It started that morning.

Linn knew the Irish Brigade went out at an unholy hour.

He didn't know what the run was, or where, only that they emptied the house, and that was never a good thing: his personal attention was not needed, and so he got a good night's rest, he ate a good breakfast, he kissed his wife and hugged his children and headed for work, delighting in morning's fragrant coolness, tasting the flavors of mists on the mountain.

When the buzzer went off on his desk phone he knew something was wrong, out front.

He was right.

A woman was bleeding on his floor, a steady dribble from her broken nose; she had ugly bruises coloring up to a shocking degree on her face, and she was trying to talk through mashed, bleeding lips.

Two frightened children did their best to hide behind her.

They shrank even further as they saw the Sheriff coming across the floor, and then he heard them hiccup as someone the Sheriff knew about town, came through the heavy glass doors at the top of his lungs.

He came across the floor screaming at his wife, calling her names that no man should ever apply to a woman, telling her of the violent things he intended to do to her for presuming to go to the Law.

The Sheriff never gave him the chance.

 

The first squad took the woman and her children.

The Sheriff dispatched a cruiser and two deputies with them.

He wanted to make it absolutely clear that no further harm would come to this woman, and that she and her children WOULD be kept SAFE!

The second squad was well staffed with Irishmen, and the Sheriff's wife, who was lead medic on the run.

The subject was given to understand that if he tried anything -- anything at all -- every man on board would give him far more hell than he could possibly enjoy, and if he thought they were kidding, just try anything.

Anything at all.

He tried.

He did not succeed.

 

Sometimes bad decisions are made all the worse by their timing.

The Sheriff had come inside five minutes before the excitement.

The man looked sick.

He heard someone scream, down the street, generally from the firehouse, more or less -- a man's voice, the sound of a soul giving vent to some horror, some sorrow, some anger, something too terrible to contain.

It was one of the Irishmen, giving full-voiced vent to the night's horror.

It was a man they knew, a man they called friend, a man who was found lying atop his children, in a house fire, shielding them with his body.

The children made it.

When a hell-raising wife-beater came through the Sheriff's Office doors only a handful of minutes after the Sheriff learned of his friend's death, the Sheriff's hold-back button was broke.

When the Sheriff told the Irish Brigade to pile into that squad and if he tried anything at all, make him regret it, they took the lawman at his word.

In times past, when the woman had been seen in ER, she claimed she'd fallen down stairs.

For some odd reason, every injury on her soon to be ex-husband's body was attributed to having fallen down a flight of stairs.

 

 

 

[Blackwater 53393]

^^^        ^^
 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RESTAURANT

Mother and son sat side by side, silence filling the cockpit: the engine was well muffled, tires on pavement made the most noise, and each was considering the evening's class.

The class was limited to law enforcement only.

Linn knew when his mother read this specification aloud, that she intended to have fun with it.

Linn's mustache was not yet into its full, matured glory, but he -- and she -- did the best they could with it: colored mustache wax, and he had a good start on the thick, villainously curled handlebar his pale eyed ancestor wore.

Willamina regarded her son with a critical eye, an approving eye: a mother's fingers caressed his lapels, tugged at the shoulders of the coat: she walked behind her son, nodding, regarding the hand-sewn material with a seamstress's eyes: Sheriff Willamina Keller, using the treadle Singer she and her Aunt Mary used when Willamina first came to Colorado as a sixteen-year-old, sewed this carefully-tailored, severe-black suit for her secondborn.

Linn's boots shone, his black Stetson was brushed; Willamina nodded as she came around in front of her son again, as she stepped back, as she compared his left lapel with his right.

I'm glad I used a stiffener, she thought as she saw the very slight asymmetry that betrayed Linn's six point star, pinned behind his left lapel.

Maternal eyes went down to her son's lean waist and she smiled, visibly this time: she knew he wore the tools of less than gentle persuasion, but they were not at all obvious, thanks to her careful tailoring.

"Hold still," she murmured: she pinned a small spray of blue blossoms to his left lapel.

"Forget-me-nots?" Linn murmured, and she saw the approval in his pale eyes.

Willamina nodded.

She wore a matching, tiny spray on her collar.

"Get your hat," she smiled.

Linn offered no comment as his mother turned to the mirror, as she placed a winged nurse's cap on her Marine-short hair, pinned it in place, then picked up a dark-blue, red-trimmed cloak and spun it about her shoulders.

The look she gave him told him she had something planned.

As they drove home, Linn's eyes tightened at the corners as he remembered.

 

"I'm sorry, this is law enforcement only," a uniformed trooper said, moving to block Willamina's entry into the conference.

Linn turned his lapel over to show the hand-engraved, six-point star.

"Check your agenda," Linn said quietly, his voice tight. "You will find the keynote speaker, W. Keller, RN."

Willamina gave the tall trooper an innocent look as he looked hard at her hospital ID, clipped to the collar of her white uniform dress, as he consulted a list, as another trooper leaned over and murmured something quietly to the man's shoulder.

"All right. You can go in."

 

Willamina Keller, RN, did not walk across the stage to the podium, as much as she flowed: she smiled quietly as she laid gentle palms on the podium, smiled again as she looked at her son.

Linn winked back, thought Let 'em have it, Mama.

"Nice legs," an anonymous voice murmured.

"My first day of nursing school," Willamina said, her voice pitched to carry, "I was working a non-emergency transfer squad. We'd taken a patient to the state capitol for hemodialysis, a two hour trip that started at oh-too-early-in-the-morning. I'm sure you're quite familiar with that Ungodly hour."

There were several understanding smiles; the hall was filled with uniformed lawmen and several suits of a more modern cut than her son wore.

"We deadheaded back and I stepped out of the squad and into the classroom.

"Now I'm in uniform," she said, turning a little, animated, letting her hands talk as well, the way a speaker will when they're relaxed, when they're good at presenting a familiar subject -- "my shirt is military creased, you could cut yourself on the trouser crease, Wellington boots polished like mirrors -- how many of you had to spit shine? Show of hands!" -- her hand in the air, her smile contagious, and a young forest of hands rose, then lowered.

"The instructor looked at me like I'd just packed in road kill."

She stood beside the podium now, relaxed, feminine, one leg forward, knowing she was taking full advantage of stockinged, sculpted structure.

"She sniffed as if at a bad odor and sneered, 'What are you doing here?'

"I drew myself up to correct military attention" -- she did -- "I CRACKED my heels together, I lifted my chin and said, 'MADAM!' " -- she dropped out of heel lock, draped a limp wrist over the corner of the podium, bent the other wrist against her beltline -- "Fellas," she said, a little more softly, "if you EVER want to make a woman REALLY, REALLY MAD, address her as 'Madam!'"

Linn heard quiet chuckles as lawmen finally lowered their skeptical walls and let this stranger's words in.

"I said 'MADAM, I AM REPORTING FOR MY FIRST DAY OF NURSING SCHOOL!'

"She didn't like that, she knew she'd just stepped in it, but she lacked the common decency to offer any apology.

"Instead she said 'When you wear the shoes of a nurse, you are only a nurse. When you wear the shoes of an EMT, you are merely an EMT' -- she sneered the word 'merely' -- never mind I was a working PARAMEDIC."

Linn could see his mother's eyes go a little more pale, and he knew she was still feeling the sting of that professional insult.

"I thought 'Old girl, I'll prove you wrong,' and I did, many times over. 

"You see, I went into nursing school as a veteran paramedic, and a veteran law enforcement officer."

She unclipped the hospital ID from her collar, turned it around.

"I should have had this turned around," she muttered. "The reverse side is hospital issue.  I still work hospital nursing to keep my skills up, but" -- she smiled as she fast up the tag, lowered her hands -- "when you're Sheriff, you don't have much time for hospital work!"

She tapped the plastic laminated ID.

"This side has a picture of my badge, it has my photo and my name and title."

She smiled, tapped the ID, said "Willamina Keller, RN, Sheriff, Firelands County."

She looked around, her eyes veiled.

"Now for the reason I'm here. That nursing instructor was so short sighted she couldn't see a Mack truck if it was parked in front of her. Let me correct her most incorrect statement.

"Gentlemen" -- she raised her voice slightly, just enough to emphasize her words -- "when you hire someone, you hire them for a purpose, yes.

"You hire them for a specific position, yes.

"When you hire that individual, you get more than that.

"I have a man on my department who came to us as a fire paramedic. He was also with the Military Reserve back East. He came to us with current training and certification in high angle rescue, trench rescue, hazmat, derailment, Life Flight LZ setup certification, he's got UXP spot reporting certification and I've had him teach our department in the unexploded ordnance procedures."

She looked around, saw she had their attention.

"I'm the Sheriff. I got all that for free. Do you know how much it would've taken from my budget -- in terms of covering one man's shift, overtime, rearranging schedules, then direct fees for training, transportation, meals, possibly overnight stays in a hotel in order to get all that training, for just one man?"

Willamina folded her hands in front of her, tilted her head a little, shifted her weight -- suddenly she was feminine again -- "I don't know about you fellas, but I've got a budget, and I have to fit everything into it.

"When I hired that good man, I just got some relief for my poor abused ledger!

"Now." Willamina consulted her wristwatch. "I've talked for three minutes. The best presentation I ever heard was also the briefest, so there's mine. I'll present later today on psychological issues and interrogation procedures, but this is what I wanted to give you first!"

She lifted a hand, waved, walked off stage, knowing well every set of eyes was on her: she emerged into the auditorium, slipped over to her son, who'd saved a seat for her.

Now Linn sat in the front seat while his mother drove.

"I did enjoy your afternoon presentation," he said softly, the first words that were spoken since they started back from the state capital.

"I'm glad you liked it," Willamina smiled. "Did you learn anything?"

Linn chuckled quietly, and Willamina smiled to hear it: Linn and his late father got along like oil and water, but Willamina had always loved her late husband's quiet laugh, and her son laughed in the same exact manner.

"Mama," he said softly, and she could hear the smile in his voice, "I always learn when you present!"

Silence, again.

"How's for coffee?" Willamina finally said.

"I could get rid of some," Linn admitted.

"Me too. What say we tend that detail. There's a restaurant ahead."

Silence, again, then:

"Permission to speak freely, ma'am."

"Granted."

"Mama," Linn said quietly, "you told me once that a lady neither enters, nor departs, a room save on a gentleman's arm."

Willamina smiled a little; she braked, smoothly, for the approaching stop sign.

"I remember."

"Thank you for letting me be a gentleman," Linn said softly. "I've never been prouder than when you've taken my arm."

A nurse in a winged cap and white uniform dress, her hand on a black-suited, younger man's arm, entered the restaurant, to the approving glances of the late-night patrons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A COLD MOUNTAIN RAIN

Victoria Keller eased her Daddy's black racer forward into a trot.

She knew Michael was ahead of her -- how far, she wasn't sure.

She looked around, standing in the stirrups, nostrils flared.

Victoria was eleven, the same age as her pale eyed, twin brother.

Victoria was being privately schooled, like her pale eyed twin brother.

Victoria did not, however, know where she was.

All she knew was -- there were Fanghorns here, this is where she made friends with Michael's forked-pattern Lightning, and Michael was here somewhere.

There were trees that looked almost familiar.

Victoria was completely at home in the mountains, and mountains described the terrain.

Victoria smelled rain, she considered the clouds, she felt the sudden cooling of the air.

Eleven year old Victoria Keller slipped two fingers into a vest pocket, brought out an empty, bottleneck rifle case, put it to her lips, blew steadily across the neck.

A shrill whistle carried on the high mountain air, flowing like a silver liquid:  she blew a long, steady note, until her wind ran out, then she lowered her hand, laid a hand on the shining-black neck, watched the black's ears.

Victoria felt the black's head come up, saw his ears swing, felt him dance beneath her.

An answering whistle -- long, short, short, long.

Victoria took a long breath, blew the same notes in reply, then tilted her head, leaned forward, whispered "Find him, boy."

The black just stood there.

"You'll never make a Bear Killer," she muttered, then the black shied, danced away.

Victoria reached down, gripped the wrist of her Winchester, pulled it free --

Something big, something brown and shaggy and it has claws and it was coming at her --

A little girl on a shining black horse bent over her horse's neck and yelled "GO!"

A shining black horse walled his eyes, gathered himself and launched like an arrow from a drawn bow.

Victoria chanced a glance behind her.

Whatever it was, part of her mind realized, must be this world's version of a bear.

It was big, it was fast and it was coming after her.

Victoria's right hand was welded around the wrist of her Model of 1892 Winchester, her other hand wound up a good handful of mane and she stood in the stirrups, leaned over her Daddy's horsie's neck and screamed "RUN RUN RUNRUNRUNRUNRUN!"

The Black set his hooves on a well used path, he punched his nose straight out and laid his ears back and did his level best to set the Land Speed Record, at least until the trail came tight around the side of a rock cliff and narrowed down to the point that he could not maintain more than a mincing walk.

Victoria glanced behind --

I hear it, it's coming --

Her Daddy's racer lunged forward.

A meadow.

Victoria brought her Daddy's horse around, drew up behind a rock well taller than she.

Victoria looked around.

River there, don't know how deep.

Meadow there, bears can run like a horse.

Her pink-scrubbed thumb laid over her rifle's hammer spur and she brought it back to full cock.

Victoria kicked free of her stirrups, dropped flat-footed to the ground, scrambled up the rock.

Ground-reined, the Black stood, shivering, hugging the rock.

Victoria realized she just might've lucked into something.

Whatever that bear-thing was, there's only one place he could come from and she could put one right between his eyes 'cause he'd come at her head-first --

Victoria dropped the lever, looked to make sure she had cartridge brass chambered --

Movement, to her left --

The bear, if that's what it was, didn't even try that skimpy narrow path, it came bouncing through the brush, bulldozing over the woody foliage and bounding as it came.

Victoria swung her rifle's muzzle, took a fast breath, looked through the receiver mounted peep and set the shining brass bead right where she wanted it.

She heard something behind her, something loud, not close but coming fast and mad as hell.

She didn't care.

She had a bead on the bear and she had her finger on the smooth steel trigger and she felt her heart beating, slow, slow, and the sear broke and she felt the rifle shove sharply against her shoulder and time returned to normal --

Michael's voice.

What's he doing here?

Victoria saw something tan streaking in from her left, something LOUD, something that sounded like The Lady Esther might sound if she was mad as hell and ready to rip something apart, and Victoria felt the lever drop as she started her reload cycle and Michael was bent low over the Fanghorn's neck and Victoria saw the Fanghorn drop her head and ram the bear in the shoulder at full gallop and Michael jerked forward and the Fanghorn danced back and screamed and her head came up and her mouth came down and Victoria saw bright-ivory fangs right before the Fanghorn drove her jaws down into the bear's spine and Victoria saw the bear sag and collapse and Victoria's lever went forward and the empty hull spun, ringing, out of the blued-steel receiver and spun in the air as she slammed the action shut and Michael was yelling and the Fanghorn released and danced back, shaking her head and screaming and Victoria stared.

A pretty little eleven year old girl lay on top of a rock tall as a dump truck, she lay there with a Winchester rifle to her shoulder, watching as something that almost looked like a horse opened its jaws impossibly wide and drove in for another crushing bite.

Victoria came up on her knees, then stood: she laid her thumb over the hammer spur, eased it down to half cock, then she squatted (it's important to be very ladylike, she kept her knees carefully together as she did) and picked up her fired hull and slipped it into a vest pocket.

Her Daddy always picked up his fired brass, and she did too.

It took a little bit -- the Fanghorn was restless, snarling, but finally allowed Michael and Victoria to examine the massive, wiry-brown-furred carcass.

Neither had seen a grizzly, back home, in real life.

Both were honestly awed by the sheer size of this coarse-furred creature.

Michael peeled its lips back and they stared at the carnivore's long, shining-ivory fangs.

Michael spread both his hands wide as he could and laid them side by side, and the bear's paw was wider than both his hands spread out.

Michael circled around, looked at the creature's face -- distinctly bearlike, similar to bear pictures he'd seen and studied -- he stopped, looked at his twin sister, looked at the skull again, then he looked back at where she'd been proned out atop the rock.

"Sis?" he said softly.

"Hm?"

"You took him through the eye."

Victoria nodded solemnly.

Michael tried to stand -- it took him a few times, he nearly fell backwards, but he caught a sapling, got shaking legs under him -- he looked at his twin sister.

"That's good shootin', Sis."

"Daddy taught us," she reminded him, "and you outshot the deputies."

"Yeah."

Victoria unwrapped two peppermints and baited Lightning over to her, then she frowned and scampered over to the nearby stream.

Horse slobber she didn't mind, but bloody horse slobber was more than she really wanted.

The water was cold, absolutely crystal in its clarity: she washed her hands vigorously, slung shining drops from her hands, looked up as the first drops started to fall.

Victoria straightened, ran for her Daddy's black racer.

Michael slapped a hand against the back of his Fanghorn's foreleg; she bellied down and it only took him two tries to get a leg over the saddle.

It hurt like hell, especially his back, but he did it.

"Up," he grunted through clenched teeth.

Victoria was mounted, coming toward him: she brought the gelding around, sidled him up against the blood-muzzled Fanghorn.

"Here," she said, holding out a rolled slicker she'd untied from behind her saddle. "I brought an extra."

"Thanks, Sis," Michael grinned.

Victoria thrust her rifle back into its carved scabbard; two pale eyed children slipped into their rain slickers, got their Stetsons back on before the rain started in earnest.

A shining-black gelding, slender, swift, and elegant, and a blockier, taller, deadlier Fanghorn, paced steadily through the cold mountain rain, back toward shelter two miles distant.

 

 

 

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

STRIP YOUR BLOUSE AND STEP BEHIND THE BARRACKS

Sheriff Linn Keller drew up at the far end of the abandoned used-car lot.

His chief deputy was waiting for him.

Linn pulled his body cam from his uniform shirt, pulled it loose, set it on a post.

Chief Deputy Paul Barrents did the same.

Linn dismounted, dropped Apple's reins.

The two lawmen walked away from horse and recording devices, toward the center of the crumbling blacktop lot.

"Strip your blouse and step behind the barracks," Linn said quietly, "I need some good sound advice."

Paul looked closely at the Sheriff, then nodded.

"All right."

"Paul, I just failed my daughter."

Paul's eyes hardened.  "Is she hurt?"

"No, no thanks to me," the Sheriff snarled.  "Damn me for a fool, I keep thinking of her as a little girl!"

"Maybe that's because she is."

"Marnie was --"

"She's not Marnie," Paul interrupted, "she's not your mother and she's not you."

Linn's oldest friend squared off in front of the Sheriff, looked at him with unreadable black eyes.

"Linn, you are the most responsible man I know, and you've never failed as a father. You just said she's not hurt so you can't have failed her too badly, now what happened?"

Linn looked away, shoved his hands in his hip pockets, thrust his jaw out.

"Paul," he said finally, "you remember Michael had to have that heart transplant."

"I remember."

"There were complications. Clots. The docs said they ... lodged in his spine and the damage was like being electrocuted."

"I remember you said."

"I had it out with ... "

Linn shook his head.

"Never mind," he muttered, looking away.

"I know we put out that warrant for his teacher and she's never surfaced."

"I don't expect her to," Linn admitted. "Michael and Victoria are being privately educated and they're doing very well. The school is fully accredited and they'll be graduated early, just like their older sibs."

Barrents waited, shining black eyes studying his old friend.

"In the course of their studies," Linn said carefully, "they're ... elsewhere ... they were riding and a bear came after Victoria."

"A bear," Paul Barrents said, turning his head slightly, concern on his face and in his voice.

"Grizzly. A big one, well taller than me."

Barrents nodded.

"She kicked her horse a-gallop, she got some distance, she took a firing position and when he came at her, she put a round through its left eye and killed it, boom, drop, dead."

"Michael?"

"They'd gotten separated before the bear showed up. He found her after he heard her shoot."

"What did she shoot it with?"

"That's why I'm upset," Linn said admitted.

Barrents examined the man's body language, the man's words.

He didn't see anger, he saw ...

Regret.

"Paul, I never moved her up from a .25-20."

"What!"

Linn nodded.

"God must love children, Paul. She shot that bear through the left eye just pretty as you please."

Barrents nodded silently, rested a hand on his old friend's shoulder.

"Marnie was already running a .308 at her age."

"Marnie had a hell of a hard life, Linn, long before she came out here. Victoria has been a normal little girl. You can't expect her to grab an FN-FAL and run an assault course like Marnie used to."

"Yeah, I know," Linn muttered. 

"Angela is how old now?"

"Eleven."

"What are your thoughts?"

"I need to give her a bigger rifle."

Barrents nodded.  "My little girl's been running my .30-30."

"That would be a possibility."

"You could have her run an AR."

Linn shook his head.  "Too light. I don't expect her to visit bear country often but ... maybe the AR-.308 version."

"You could fit that to her short length of pull easier than the FN-FAL. Unless you want to hand her a .458 Weatherby."

Barrents said the words with an absolutely straight face: Linn looked at him in honest surprise, then he closed his eyes, nodded, chuckled.

"How about a custom stocked FN in .458 Moutainbuster?" Linn laughed.

"Just not all in one step," Barrents cautioned solemnly. "Tends to cause flinch."

Paul looked at the Sheriff.

"How far away was the shot?"

"About thirty yards."

"Thirty yards."

"With the griz coming through brush like it was grass."

"Thirty yards," Barrents said softly. "I'm damned glad she did not miss!"

Linn nodded, his eyes distant, haunted.

"I would like to think the 180 grain .30-30 would punch a bear's skull," Paul said speculatively. "She is comfortable with the lever action. You could start her on light bullet loads and build her up to working velocity."

Linn nodded.

He'd done that very thing when Marnie acquired her .32 Winchester Special from her Uncle Pete.

"I wonder," Paul said softly, and Linn saw him look toward the horizon, as if an idea just came over the rim of the world toward him.

"Angela is just pretty damned good with that Ithaca of hers."

Linn nodded.  "Yes.  Yes, she is."

"How's Victoria with a shotgun?"

Linn blinked, surprised.

"I ... never ... thought to try her with one," he admitted.

"Teach her the high tuck position with slugs. That's what your Mama taught my Mama and my wife. Works pretty good, too."

Barrents saw the man's carriage straighten a bit, as if the right decision just walked up and shook hands with him.

"That," Linn said slowly, "sounds like it just might work!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BOILERPLATE

Michael Keller frowned as he read.

He leaned forward a little, studying the glowing screen, reading the words, hearing men's shouts, the heavy concussion of flint rifles, of Sharps rifles, of .44 revolvers: he heard the deep, enraged roar of a wounded grizzly, the juvenile, higher pitched, yammering attack of a very young Bear Killer.

Michael Keller leaned back, blinked.

I should have been there.

I should have protected Victoria.

Pa hasn't said anything to me but it's my fault, I should have --

Michael reached forward, turned off the screen.

Never again.

By Gammaw's cold tombstone and seven left handed saints, NEVER AGAIN!

Michael turned off the screen, crossed his forearms on his father's desk, dropped his head down on his arms and groaned.

He looked up, looked at his Pa's illuminated, glass-door gun cases.

Michael glared at one particular glass door display rack, his jaw set.

He knew what he had to do.

He set his palms flat on the desk, leaned forward, pushed up as he commanded his legs to work.

Michael Keller stood, carefully, jaw clenched against the pain: he turned, slowly, walked with almost a tottering gait over to that one particular gun case.

He turned the lock, opened the glass door, reached in.

The pale eyed son of a pale eyed Sheriff slung a canvas warbag across his chest: handloaded brass panatelas, two sets of muffs, two sets of shooting glasses:  he closed the door, balanced his Pa's Sharps rifle in his good right hand, paced off on the left, and managed to walk almost normally toward the front door.

 

Victoria Keller's head came up.

Her teacher saw alarm on her young student's face.

Victoria brought her bent wrist to her mouth, spoke a few quiet words, tapped the small screen: behind her, an Iris opened, then closed, and a student was no longer in her classroom.

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller flinched, teeth clenched.

That was not false labor.

It's too early for false labor --

Her eyes widened with alarm.

Michael!

 

Michael Keller carefully half-cocked the rifle before dropping the breechblock.

His Pa told him this was an original factory conversion from the tobacco cutter, that the firing pin protruded from the breech block when the hammer was down, and unless the hammer was cocked first, it would shear the nose off the firing pin.

Michael stood upright, his Pa's Sharps laid over the fence rail, a saddle blanket thick and folded beneath: beyond, at a hundred yards, a white-painted steel plate was still swinging from its suspending chains.

Michael knew if he were proned out or sitting, either one, his young carcass would soak up more of the recoil that it would hurt more, but if he stood, he was light enough he'd be rocked back and -- in theory, at least -- he'd take less energy than if he were solid braced.

Hopefully, this meant he would hurt less.

So far it didn't seem to help.

He thrust a warm empty hull into a vest pocket, dropped in another handload, thumbed it into the chamber, raised the breechblock.

"Take this, damn you," he muttered as he brought the hammer to full cock and cheeked down hard behind the Vernier tang peep.

He set the front sight right where he wanted it, he narrowed his universe down until the only thing in all of Creation that existed, was what he saw through the aperture.

Nothing existed but the front sight and the picture.

His young finger caressed the smooth steel trigger --

This is gonna hurt, a voice whispered in his mind.

He shoved the voice viciously from him, closed his eyes, took another breath, opened his eyes, blew out through pursed lips.

The sight steadied on the still-swinging plate.

The trigger was smooth, cool, under his tightening finger, his breath stilled, he felt his heartbeat slow, slow ...

BOOOMMM ...

 

Victoria, Marnie and Angela stepped from their Irises at the same moment.

All three flinched back with the intensity of the pain.

Michael stood, boots set apart, his left hand gripping the blanket padding the fence rail, his arm stiff: they felt him seize the pain, they felt him shove the pain down into an iron kettle and dunk the heavy lid on it, they felt him screw the lid down on the utter screaming AGONY that escaped his spine.

Beyond him, a square of heavy boiler plate swung vigorously, visibly protesting the impact of 350 grains of a cast lead Gould's Express.

Michael brought the heavy hammer back, one click, dropped the lever slowly, then carefully removed the fired hull, thumbed it into his vest pocket.

His teeth were clenched, his head was hanging, he was in more pain than he'd been for quite a long time, but he was still on his feet.

He was still standing.

Victoria came up beside him, laid a gentle hand on his white-knuckled left hand, still gripping the saddleblanket padding the fence rail.

"Michael," she whispered.

Michael was pale, he was breathing deeply obviously controlling himself.

Marnie gripped Angela's wrist:  Wait.

"I shoulda been there, Sis," Michael gasped, then he looked at her -- fiercely, anger smoldering deep in his young soul -- "I shoulda been there!"

"You couldn't have known," Victoria whispered reasonably.

"It doesn't matter," Michael snarled through clenched teeth. 

He lifted the rifle, ignoring the fresh pain, lifted the thick-folded saddleblanket, turned, looked at his sisters, at their expressions of concern.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to hurt that loudly."

"Enough," Angela snapped: she raised something silver, stepped closer --

Michael stepped back, quickly, hit the fence: his eyes closed in pain and he felt something press against his neck, felt a hiss --

He opened his eyes, shocked.

"Sis, what did you do?" -- Angela stepped back, masking her own feelings as Michael's wave of betrayal and anger seared through her like a gust of living fire. "WHAT DID YOU DO?"

He stopped, shuddered, eyes wide, as the carefully engineered nanobots coursed through his system, as they located their preprogrammed destination, as they blocked the constant, gnawing and sometimes blazing pain from a combination of electronic burns and anoxic degradation.

"Don't worry, it's not narcotic," Angela said quietly. 

Michael sagged back against the fence, shivering, his face pale: he was breathing quickly now, almost gasping.

"Is this normal?" Marnie murmured.

Michael's hand found Victoria's, squeezed, and she squeezed back, hard.

Michael looked at Angela, calmed his breathing.

"It doesn't hurt," he whispered -- his eyes were big, vulnerable -- Angela knew she had to tread carefully, for chronic pain will break the strongest man, and Michael had been in unremitting, unyielding, constant pain ever since all this started.

His reserves were gone now, the last of his strength spent at the shock of suddenly being...

Painless!

"Nerve block," Angela explained. "The pain is still there, we're just not letting you feel it."

Michael panted, nodded, tried to swallow.

Victoria gripped the Sharps with her free hand.

"I've got it, Michael.  I've got it."

Michael let her take the rifle.

Victoria reached into the warbag, pulled out her muffs, worked them onto her head.

She found one of the .45-70 rounds.

Victoria Keller, twin sister to Michael Keller, laid her Daddy's octagon barrel rifle over the saddle blanket.

She half-cocked the Sharps and dropped the breechblock, thumbed in the brass panatela, closed the lever: she set her feet shoulder width apart, took a long breath.

A pretty girl with cornsilk hair, with a pastel blue ribbon holding it back from her face, with her shining slippers heel-set into the dirt, gripped the toe of the rearstock with her left hand, holding it to shoulder as she settled into her stance.

She reached up, brought the heavy hammer back to full stand, worked her shoulder into the rifle's steel crescent, moved her left hand forward.

She felt the smooth steel trigger under her finger as the world shrank down to what could be seen through the aperture.

A hundred yards distant, a boiler plate swung loudly at the impact of her shot.

 

Paul Barrents looked at the Sheriff as he drew a big mug of steaming-hot coffee.

Linn looked back at him as he drizzled cold milk into his own scalding payload.

"Well?" Paul asked quietly.

Linn frowned, his bottom jaw slid out: he closed his mouth, considered, then took a noisy slurp of coffee.

Barrents waited, knowing the man's mental gears were turning, that he was whittling down what he had to say, until it was of a manageably brief size.

"I tried her out on my .30-30 last night," Linn said quietly.

"And?"

Linn lowered his mug, looked past Barrents, looked through the far wall at the memory he was putting into words.

"She did all right with regular loads.  Shot it like she'd been doin' it all her life!"

Linn sighed, shook his head.

"Now I'm in the market for a scoped Marlin with a cheek riser. She shot her Mama's rifle and fell in love with it."

"Serves you right," Barrents muttered, hiding his smile behind another slug of scalding starter fluid.

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A MATTER OF POLITICS

Ambassador Marnie Keller (retired) sipped at her heavy, glazed-ceramic mug of Earl Grey.

She'd tried adding ginger to her diet, she'd tried the anti-nausea compounds her husband prescribed, but her best relief, for whatever reason, was tea and crackers when the morning sickness visited itself upon her.

A touch of honey helped, as did distraction, and at the moment, she was distracting.

Her pale eyes studied the glowing screen as she scoured documents, newspaper accounts, historical records from back home: her personal terminal held all the research from the Firelands Museum, and more: she immersed herself in her subject, and her subject was pain.

Until her younger brother's agonies overrode his wards and walls, until the psychic detonation of agony that seared through their shared bloodline and roared like living, gnawing, smoldering misery through her very bones -- or, more exactly, her spine -- not until that moment did she realize, even vaguely, the constant, unremitting, unyielding torture her younger brother endured.

She dove into history like a swimmer into a pool, and what she found, was not encouraging.

Marnie knew what illicit drug use did to a family.

She'd survived its violence and not by much, back East, as a wee child.

She knew, from her years behind the badge, what it did to families, to society.

She well understood Michael's fear of addiction.

Substance abuse, she knew, was hereditary; common wisdom said that it skips a generation, and if that was so, her pale eyed Daddy should be a raging alcoholic, or worse.

The man was anything but.

Michael's deep-seated fears were that he would weaken from pain and allow narcotic relief from his agonies, and that he would like the relief too much and become what he feared.

An addict.

It took considerable effort to develop a line of nanobots that would simply stop the pain.

Michael, once he was recovered from the near-collapse of utter relief, questioned Angela closely -- sternly -- something neither older sister expected from someone who, in their minds, was very junior in the family hierarchy -- whether he would be dependent on these sub-microscopic devices, what their half-life was, how long before the pain returned, would he become dependent on them, either physically or psychologically.

Marnie was not encouraged by what she read.

Intractable pain, as far back as the Firelands records go, was solved by one thing only.

Death.

Account after account of suicide: men hanged themselves, men ate a bullet, if they lived long enough to develop cancers that ate them alive with agonies, or were injured beyond hope of recovery: she read of the man on an invalid train, an account written by Old Pale Eyes, a man who'd lost both legs and one arm to battlefield injuries, how the other wounded watched him roll out of his bunk, watched him drag himself to the rear door of the train car, how a fellow sufferer opened the door for him: the man looked around and bade his mates good fortune, and then he rolled between the cars and under the wheels of the train.

Women commonly chose prussic acid, available at pharmacies and by mail order.

Marnie set her mug to the side, turned off her screen: Little John, she knew, was happily discharging his youthful energies playing with other Martian young; she, alone, stared at the now-darkened electronic oracle and tasted defeat.

The comm buzzed; she touched a key, the screen came to life again.

"Progress," Angela said without preamble. "We found what's causing his pain, finally!"

Marnie's fists pressed into the tabletop as she leaned closer to the screen, her eyes were pale with anger, her tight-throated voice a menacing hiss.

"What in two hells took so damned long?"

 

Victoria Keller unwrapped three peppermints, held them out.

Lightning took them with a surprising delicacy.

The Fanghorn was big, the Fanghorn was powerful, the Fanghorn was inarguably deadly, but the Fanghorn, for whatever perverse reason, trusted this little human two-legs that smelled much like her fellow sufferer.

Victoria wiped horse slobber off on her denim skirt and reached into a pocket, gripped the stainless-steel injector.

She walked fearlessly up to the Fanghorn's muscled leg, thicker, stouter than the horses' legs she was used to: she pressed the injector into Lightning's fur, lifted a little to get through the surprisingly silky hair, pressed the injector's tip against her tough neo-equine hide.

The hiss was inaudible; Lightning flinched a little, as if shivering her hide at a tickling insect.

Victoria pulled back, dropped the injector back into her pocket, tilted her head, looked up at the Fanghorn's curious muzzle, snuffing loudly at her.

"I hope this works," Victoria said quietly, and patted the Fanghorn's leg.

Lightning folded her legs and bellied down, like she'd done so many times for Michael.

Victoria turned, leaned back against the Fanghorn's lightning-forked hide, stared bleakly across the big corral.

"I don't know how long they'll help you," she whispered. "Michael said you hurt like he does and that's the only reason you let him near."
Lightning shivered, dropped her jaw onto the ground, closed her eyes, groaned -- a long, lowing sound, kind of like heavy metal being twisted, as if a giant's hands were seized about a battleship and were twisting it in two.

Victoria closed her eyes, remembering the taste of Michael's bone-gnawing pain when it was finally too much for him to contain, when it detonated into their blood and they felt what he'd been living with since that sentry cut loose on him with energies that would have cut a Dreadnought in two.

She felt the Fanghorn's breath as it snuffed at her.

She turned, looked at the big, dark eye.

Lightning shifted.

Victoria stepped away from her.

She's going to get up --

The Fanghorn rose, shook herself, threw her head, squealed.

I hope this is a good thing, Victoria thought, backing a few more steps.

Lightning swung her head down between her legs, then up: she twisted her neck, she launched into a swift pace, orbiting the big corral, shaking her head and squealing.

Victoria watched, her young eyes widening, as the massive Fanghorn began to gambol, to hobby-horse: she stopped, she jumped straight up, she threw her head up and squealed again, reminding Victoria of a bull elk she'd seen bugling in a frosty mountain morning.

Lightning ran now, still throwing her head -- she ran, swapped ends, ran the other direction -- she stopped, shivered, and began bucking, just like her Daddy's stallion when he was feeling frisky on cold-brittled grass.

Victoria bent her wrist up to her lips, murmured, "Michael, are you seeing this?"

Michael Keller was lying on his belly, wearing a drowsy expression and surgical drapes.

Just before he lost consciousness, he smiled at the image on the screen, of Lightning, free of pain, bucking happily in her one-acre corral.

"I see it," he murmured, then the surgeon said "Let's begin," and Michael's eyes rolled apart as the anesthetic claimed him.

 

Two days later, Michael caressed Lightning's jaw.

"I can't ride you yet," he whispered. "I'm still healin'."

"You shouldn't even be on your feet," Angela scolded gently.

"Try and stop me," Michael grinned.

"So this is Lightning."  Angela tilted her head a little.  "Hello, Lightning, I'm Angela."

Lightning -- as big as she was, as powerful as she was -- lay down, curling protectively around Michael, closed her eyes and gave a contented chirp as he lay down as well.

"She knows I'm healin'," Michael explained. "That's how we got along. We were both in pain and she knew it."

Angela folded her arms, regarded the size of the hooves, the powerful musculature of the Fanghorn mare's sculpted legs.

"How ever did you make friends with something this deadly?" Angela asked. and Michael laughed quietly.

"Sis, you know how Pa said his horses bribe as well as any politician?"

"Um-hmm."

Michael held up a wrapped peppermint, careful not to crackle the cellophane.

"So does she!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

UNFORGETTABLE

Sheriff Jacob Keller took a long breath of good mountain air.

Wood smoke, tobacco smoke, beer, horses, man-sweat: behind him, the piano in the Silver Jewel, surprising visitors with its being in tune, unlike most saloon pianos: his late mother, Esther Keller, insisted on its being kept in tune, and she herself would occasionally play for the assembled.

Jacob smiled, remembering his green-eyed mother, how she smelled, how she danced (dear Lord, how Mother could dance!) -- he remembered when she glided through the men's territory that was the Saloon, a way was cleared for her, as if she were Royalty, and when she seated herself with a Lady's grace at the saloon piano -- she insisted on having a mug of beer set atop the upright -- "It brings luck to the piano player!" she'd laughed -- she never played long, and what she played was invariably bright, lively, suitable for a rowdy saloon crowd: whenever possible, she'd play when there were dancers on their little stage.

In that far-gone day, before recorded music came to be, the piano player positioned himself so he could keep an eye on the stage, adjusting rhythm and tempo to the dancers' skills: his mother did the same, and as good as the dancing-girls were, they were better when she was lively at the piano.

Jacob remembered this, looked down, at water shimmering in the horse trough: if he used his imagination, he could almost -- almost! -- see his Mother's face smiling at him.

He looked away.

Imagination, he thought.

Work to be done.

Still ... he'd breakfasted at home, he'd consulted with his hired men, he'd assigned his sons their tasks, and he'd had coffee with the Mayor and various other notables who met weekly here in the Jewel.

Coffee was warm in his belly and fragrant in his handlebar.

Sheriff Jacob Keller straightened, made a final sweep of the street with quiet and pale eyes, then walked slowly up the boardwalk, away from the Jewel and toward what he considered a genuine treasure.

He looked up, smiled at the carefully lettered, hand painted plank.

DUZY WALES MEMORIAL LIBRARY, he read.

Pa would like that, he thought.

Hell, I like it!

Jacob stepped down -- there was but one step here, from ground to boardwalk; he looked down the alley, looked the street up, looked the street down, then crossed over to the Mercantile.

The late proprietor's widow was busy tending her stock -- dusting shelves, wiping off canned goods, turning them to front the labels -- she smiled as a handlebar mustache came through the door, with a lean waisted lawman attached:  "Morning, Sheriff," she called, "your wife's order came in!"

"She'll be pleased to get it," Jacob said gently: he was careful with his voice, for like his father, he could pitch his words to cut like a horse whip, and he'd unintentionally cut people with the rough side of his voice in the past, and he was not at all proud for having done so. "Can a man get it in one wagon load?"

The widow Garrison laughed, turned, tilted her head and regarded Jacob with bright and grandmotherly eyes.

"You do so favor your father," she sighed.

Jacob blinked innocently and replied "I'd be surprised if I didn't!"

Jacob turned as the Mercantile's bell tinkled cheerfully: one of the schoolboys poked his head in, looked around hopefully.

"Now there's the man I was hoping to find!" Jacob declared firmly, to the lad's startled surprise, and the Widow Garrison's quiet smile: "You're headed for the schoolhouse?"

"Yes, sir," the Ferguson boy replied uncertainly.

"Need your help."

"Yes, sir?"

Jacob looked at Mrs. Garrison, winked.

"Son, if you'd be so kind -- here, take this" -- he pressed coin into the lad's palm -- "once school's out for the day, head over to Shorty's place and tell him I'm needin' the small wagon."

"Yes, sir."

"Have him hitch up the old dapple and don't let her fool you. She'll try and convince you she'd ready to fall over dead. Don't try to drive her, go round in front of her" -- Jacob lifted the lid on the candy jar, brought out a peppermint stick, snapped two inches off its end -- "let her sniff this and back up a little and then turn your back on her and walk over here to the Mercantile. She'll follow you just pretty as you please."

He broke off another chunk.

"This'll bait her for the walk up to my house."

Jacob held up the remaining half a peppermint stick, lowered it with gravity and with ceremony into the boy's delighted hand.

"That half's yours. Mrs. Garrison, would you have a slip of somethin' we can wrap these in so they don't get all sticky?"

An absolutely delighted schoolboy grinned his way out of the Mercantile, full of purpose and peppermint, and Jacob chuckled and looked at the widow.

Jacob lifted the candy jar's lid again, extracted another peppermint stick so his young recruit could bait the rented dapple back to the livery.

"Reckon I'd ought to square up with you, ma'am," he said gently, and they shared a quiet laugh.

Jacob ordered another case of .44-40s, which did not surprise the Widow Garrison at all: Jacob would shoot every Sunday, down in the town's general corral, and more often than not he'd have adoring boys who wanted to shoot a genuine Sheriff's gun -- Jacob remembered the delight in a visiting Eastern boy's face, a lad with the misfortune to have been put (by his mother) in knee pants and a ribbon-tailed hat.

Very fashionable back East, and the subject of derision and ridicule out West.

Jacob knew boys, and Jacob remembered what it was to be excluded, and what it was to be included.

He brought the dandy-dressed Eastern lad into the corral with him.

Jacob was a father and Jacob was used to teaching boys.

He gave the lad an abbreviated lesson in sighting and trigger pull, he worked softened beeswax  plugs into the boy's ears, he squatted and guided the boy's hands in loading an engraved .44 Colt revolver, he set up a big tin can, close up, barely on the back edge of the plank, gambling a gust of wind wouldn't push it off.

It didn't.

Jacob stood beside the boy.

The two stood, side by side.

Jacob extended his own second revolver.

The boy raised Jacob's revolver in imitation.

Jacob eared his Colt's hammer back, looked down, nodded.

The Eastern boy, in knee pants and a ribbon tailed hat, cocked his revolver as well.

Jacob eased his hammer down as his young student fired.

Jacob could not help but grin and laugh with delight at the look of utter triumph on a young Eastern boy's face as the can SLAMMED back, spinning, with a thumb sized crater letting a LOT of daylight through!

Sheriff and proprietress looked at one another over the heavy glass top counter and realized they'd allowed themselves a moment's shared reverie.

To the Widow Garrison, Jacob's ears turned red and he grinned like the schoolboy he'd been, the schoolboy she remembered, as he remembered what it was to become unforgettable to a stranger's son.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CORNFLAKES!

Michael Keller removed his brushed black Stetson and tucked it correctly under his left arm.

His hand-sewn black suit trousers were only just returned to him.

He'd grown again, in spite of his injuries, the generous cuffs were let out to the proper length, re-secured: he stood at the threshold, a young man in a black suit, a carefully-knotted, sky-blue silk necktie with a square ruby stickpin, mirror-polished boots, and a determined set to his young jaw.

Michael paced off on the left, stepped into the airy, spacious dance studio.

He wore a look of grim determination.

He'd fought so long and so hard just to walk somewhere near normally, that a grim expression was almost his normal expression: pain gnawed at his spine so constantly and for so long that he could almost ignore it.

Almost.

It took multiple surgeries to excise slow-dying bone, to stimulate new bone growth, very careful watch was maintained over the new growth, as hard experience taught the Confederate specialists that an excessive or incautious use of bone stimulators could actually cause bone cancer, that it was possible to over-stimulate and trigger uncontrolled cell division.

Michael's was probably the most closely studied spine in all the Thirteen Star Systems.

At the moment, this pale eyed son of a pale eyed Sheriff did not care.

Michael Keller stepped into the dance studio, walked up to the instructor.

"Ma'am," he said quietly, "I am Michael Keller, and I need your help."

The instructor smiled, turned her head, raised an arm.

Michael looked.

Victoria glided toward him, dressed in a McKenna gown, her hair done up: she regarded her twin brother with appraising eyes: she stopped an arm's length from him, gripped her skirt with gloved fingers, executed an absolutely flawless, courtly curtsy.

Michael bowed with the formal gravity of a man of well-polished manners, at least until he fell forward and his twin sister caught him under the arms with surprisingly strong hands.

"You can kiss me later," she stage-whispered, and the dance instructor tried without success to hide her smile.

Michael clenched his jaw, straightened, looked eye-to-eye with his twin sister.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

Victoria took a step back, examined her twin brother with a critical eye: she looked him from scalp to bootsoles, walked slowly around him, regarded him closely, completed her orbit.

"Is everything there, or did I forget my trousers?" Michael deadpanned, and the dance instructor bit her knuckle to keep from laughing.

"Everything's there," Victoria nodded, "in the right place and in the right amount."

She took a step closer, until her nose just touched his.

"Including your hard headed contrariness, little brother!"

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Michael riposted, "little sister!"

Each glared at the other, at least until they both cracked, until they both laughed and hugged each other.

Michael looked up at the dance instructor, who was regarding the pair with an amused expression.

"Ma'am," Michael said, "I am recovering from some ... injuries."

He looked at Victoria; they were still holding hands.

"We used to waltz, ma'am, and I want to make sure I still can."

"I think we can arrange that."  

The dance instructor considered for a moment.

"A Strauss waltz, perhaps, to begin with?" she suggested.

Michael and Victoria looked at her, looked at each other, smiled.

The instructor looked toward the control panel.

"Maestro! If you please, sir, G'schicten aus dem Wienerwald, op. 325!"

"I remember this," Michael whispered, his eyes widening, and Victoria felt a thrill of delight to see this memory in her twin brother's eyes.

 

Michael was his father's shadow on the ranch.

Michael was active, intelligent, motivated: Michael was encouraged by his father, Michael was accepted by his father, Michael was involved by his father in whatever Linn was doing, whether it was rebuilding what he deliberately miscalled the "Carbon Tater" on their aging, faded-orange Dodge 4x4, whether it was resetting fence posts, whether it was tending a horse's hooves or polishing harness or forking out stalls.

Michael watched his father, Michael learned from his father, Michael was with his father when things went according to plan, and when they went absolutely to the contrary.

It was rare -- very rare -- for Linn to express his temper.

It was far more uncommon for the man to lose his temper.

The only time Michael heard his father swear in anger was the time a newly bought horse bit the Grand Old Man and then kicked him in the belly: Michael grabbed a singletree and smacked the horse across the nose, hard -- it was the only thing he could reach, but it worked -- once Linn got some wind in him, he glared at the horse, he wallowed up on all fours, gasping some breath back into his shocked lungs: he got to his feet as his son watched with alarm.

Linn hobbled over to the fence, hooked his arm over a board, hung there, one arm across his belly, his jaw set, as expressionless as he could manage.

He looked at his scared son's face and tried to speak in a normal voice.

"I got careless," Linn said, his voice tight: "let my guard down, my fault."

"I smacked him off you, Pa," Michael said, still gripping the singletree.

Linn nodded, managed to gasp "You gots to get their attention," then he clenched his jaw and said, "I reckon that's all we're goin' to get done today."

Linn only swore once, and that was when he was hobbling back to the house, trying with no luck at all to straighten up: Doc Greenlees gave him hell in the ER and told him the kick should have caught him in the head instead of the gut, maybe it would've knocked some sense into him, trusting a strange horse like that.

Michael's legs were less than cooperative.

He felt clumsy, he fought a running battle to keep his balance, to move with the music, to remember the steps: he fell three times, all three managing to release Victoria, to pull away from her and land on his back, and the third time he made what the pilots call an Unplanned Descent, he lay on the polished floor, looked up at the smooth plaster ceiling, he gathered a great double lungful of air, squinted his eyes, fisted his hands and vented a single, powerfully voiced profanity, swiftly tailored for the setting, and for his genteel companions.

At the top of his lungs, with every ounce of frustration and anger, in pious imitation of his own father's venting a great, pained blast of aggravation and anger, Michael Keller, screamed, and I quote:

"CORNFLAKES!"

Victoria bent over him, concern in her voice and amusement in her eyes: she bent like a girl, with her hands between her knees, and asked in a quiet voice, "Feel better now?"

Michael clenched his teeth, rolled over, came up on all fours, head down, snarling.

He rocked back, came to his feet, ignoring both his own pain and the hands extended to help him up.

He got to his feet, staggered, took a long, calming breath, looked at his sister's patient expression, at the dance instructor's attempt at hiding her alarm.

"You should see me when I fall off a horse," Michael said. "This is nothing."

He set his jaw with the stubbornness of youth, ran his hand around his twin sister's waist, gripped her hand lightly, carefully.

"Let's try this again."

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE MOST, YET THE LEAST

 

It's not often I feel like the world just fell out from under me.

I stood and rested my fingertips on what my son wrote, and every vital organ in my carcass free-fell to the bottom of the Grand Canyon when I did.

I knew Michael was in pain.

I knew Michael forgave the man who near to burned him alive.

I know Michael's forgiveness meant war was averted, that many lives were saved thereby.

I also knew that, when I read my youngest son's words, I'd failed him far worse than I ever failed Victoria.

My fingers rested lightly on the pages of Michael's Journal.

I read his words.

I heard his voice.

I closed my eyes.

I remembered.

There I stood, the most powerful man in the county, able to look anyone in the eye and tell them where to get off, and make it stick.

There I stood, the most powerless man in all God's creation.

My short sightedness, my lack of forethought, put Michael off-planet, put him on the back of a beast that could -- and did -- kill a grizzly bear with one bite to its spine, on the back of a beast that ran into a nervous sentry with a weapon that made a howitzer look less than a penny firecracker.

I blinked, looked at my son's words again, looked away.

What is the alternative? I thought.

I can't contain him in a glass jar.

I can't confine him to the ranch -- hell, he's crossed galaxies, he'd never be content to stay on one ranch! -- 

How else can I keep him safe?

Can I even keep him safe?

I couldn't keep him safe from that idiot teacher.

If he'd stayed here, if he'd stayed on the ranch, hell, he could fall off a horse and break his neck, he could fall off a tractor and get run over, a meteor could come screamin' in from the heavens --

What have I done so far?

I've set with him.

I've held him.

He's eleven and he's gettin' some size on him, but he wanted ol' Pa to hold him, and hold him I did.

I don't know which of us got the more comfort from that, him or me.

The Bear Killer has stuck to him like hot tar on a cotton blanket.

Might be Michael is being tried as metal in the forge.

God knows Marnie was tested and so was my Mama, and what happened to them both should never have happened to either one, especially that young! -- 

I waded through burning gasoline and rolled that wrecked car off Shelly --

-- that's nowhere near what Michael went through --

I, Linn Keller, County Sheriff, stood and re-read my son's hand written words in his Journal, left open on his desk as if he'd only just gotten up and would be right back.

Of all the words he'd written, my eyes were drawn to the ones I knew most to be true.

Pain has a color, and the color is white, and it tastes of metal.

I nodded.

Copper, I thought.

It tastes of copper.

There I stood, the most powerful man in the county, and when I read those words, I was absolutely the most powerless. 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THEY'RE NOT LIKE THE PREACHER SAID

A little girl lay in the burn ward.

She looked very small and very fragile and she looked to be in shock.

She hadn’t moved for nearly an hour.

Children of her young age are usually restless, the injured are either crawling like a fishing worm on damp moss, or twitching like a dreaming puppy, but this pale child with her long brown hair tied in a blue ribbon, lay absolutely still, almost unblinking, staring at the opposite wall.

A nurse came in, one she hadn’t seen before.

The child’s eyes never moved.

The girl’s legs were bandaged: they hadn’t let her see her legs, they carefully avoided saying anything where she could hear it, but she didn’t care.

She didn’t care.

She knew what she’d seen.

When the nurse came in, all white and winged cap and pale eyes, when this new nurse spoke her name in a voice that caressed like a mother’s gentle touch, only then did the child look at her with big and vulnerable eyes.

She hadn’t said a half dozen words since she was admitted, since the first desperate surgeries to excise dead and burnt meat before it could infect, before it could poison her, the way burn injuries will.

Everyone else wore the funny green sterile stuff.

This nurse didn’t.

The little girl knew this nurse.

She’d seen her on the Inter-System.

Normally she would have been delighted to see her.

Normally she would have been awed to see her.

Now … now that she’d seen what she had, she was no longer awed.

This nurse didn’t wear the funny green stuff and masks and gloves that everyone else wore.

The child knew this was because this nurse had some kind of a magic field around her that kept infection from coming near her, and the child knew when this pale eyed nurse took her hand and tilted her head, when she looked at her, that she could be trusted.

“There is a memory in your eyes,” the nurse said softly.  “What did you see, Cassandra?”

Cassandra looked hopefully at her, blinked, then the nurse saw something she didn’t expect.

She saw fear.

 

People are people, it doesn’t matter what galaxy, what planet, what county, what town.

Drivers get careless, whether they’re driving a team, a wagon, a carriage, a riverboat, a steam-brougham, a gasoline truck or a go-kart.

A little girl sat beside her big brother in the back seat of their steam-brougham, sitting very properly and very ladylike in her ruffled dress and shining little slippers.

She watched the buildings, she saw and heard traffic around them, she felt their car jerk suddenly, she heard her Daddy’s startled exclamation –

The brougham spun, rolled up on its side –

PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN –

She remembered hearing screaming, she remembered the world lying on its side, she remembered the sound of axes and someone angry and shouting and then she was being carried and then she saw the Angel.

“Tell me what you saw, Cassandra.”

Her words were gentle, soothing, a gentle caress, a balm to an injured child’s raw-edged soul.

Cassandra looked at the nurse she recognized from the Inter-System, she looked at her pale eyes and the magic wings on her head and she felt the nurse’s hand caressing hers.

“Tell me what you saw, Cassandra.”

Cassandra swallowed and whispered, “Angels are big and scary and they’re very noisy!”

Angela blinked, nodded slowly, carefully.

“Tell me about the angel, Cassandra,” she murmured.

“They’re big.”

The child’s voice fell to a whisper, as if she were recounting something she wasn’t supposed to tell.

“How big?”

The nurse with pale eyes leaned closer, her expression intent.

 

Michael Keller rode upright, a determined look on his face.

There is a curious synergy when horse and rider are well matched, and the Fanghorn and her rider shared a common experience that might have led to some deeper communication: however it was, Lightning tried various gaits, until she came to one that was remarkably smooth: she found this one to her liking, and Michael found it kinder to his healing spine.

Michael knew this planet had steam technology, and he knew he wanted to acclimatize Lightning the way he’d acclimatized his Pa’s saddle stock, and the best way was to ride them into the confusion of Town, and see how they reacted.

Fanghorns were feared in the wild – justly so – but Michael knew, thanks to the Inter-System, that Lightning was seen being ridden like a saddlehorse, and he knew he himself would be recognized, and so he rode into Town like he owned the place.

Ahead – further into town – Michael saw one steam-brougham ram another at an intersection.

T-bone, he thought with part of his mind: he leaned back, his legs scooting forward a little, and Lightning stopped, quickly, raised her head, muttering deep in her bone-reinforced chest as her lips peeled back from fighting canines.

He heard the collision, the detonation as the primary coils ruptured, he saw the cloud of steam blast across the intersection.

He heard screams.

He leaned forward, his knees tightening, and he felt his face tighten.

“YAAA!”

Lightning didn’t have to be told twice.

 

Steam blasted from ruptured coils, filled the passenger cabin.

A pale eyed figure in a handmade black suit slid out of the saddle as his Fanghorn bellied down on the pavement, then stood.

Michael cast about, saw an ax on a nearby woodpile.

For the first time since he made an uncontrolled collision with his father, Michael ran.

He seized the broad ax, twisted it free, ran back for the brougham.

Someone was inside, screaming, the high, liquid sound of a female in death’s terrifying grip.

Michael screamed “DAMN YOU, NO YOU DON’T!” – the ax cut into the car’s roof, he cut the left corner, he cut the right, seized the edge, pulled –

A snarling head came over his shoulder and Michael released the roof’s edge.

Lightning clamped down on the roof material, pulled: wood snapped, metal groaned, canvas tore.

Michael laid a hand on Lightning’s nose: “Good girl!” he declared.  “Good girl!”

He stepped on peeled-back roof, thrust into an opaque wall of drifting steam, reached blindly, found an arm.

He pulled.

People were running up, stopping, staring: Lightning raised her head, screamed: if the sound of collision wasn’t enough to alarm the populace, the sound of an insane steam-whistle surely was:  Michael pulled out a boy about his age, dragged him back several feet, laid him down, drove back into the steam-fogged interior, pulled out a whimpering, twisting little girl.

Michael heard his father describe the smell of burnt flesh.

It was the first time he’d smelled it.

Michael went to his knees, fought the little girl’s limp figure into his arms, wallowed out of the wreck of what had been a luxury car: he stood, turned, ignored the screaming agonies in his back, staggered toward his saddlehorse.

“Lightning! Down!” he called.

Lightning bellied down and Michael staggered to his beloved Fanghorn.

It took two tries to get his leg over the saddle.

Michael’s face was dead white, tight-stretched over his cheek bones: “Up!”

Lightning came up easily, dancing, impatient:  Michael looked around, realized he had no idea where to go.

A police-car braked to a hard stop, an officer stepped out, stared, open mouthed.

“WHERE’S THE NEAREST HOSPITAL?” Michael shouted.

The policeman turned, gestured his partner toward the wreck.

“FOLLOW ME!” he shouted and jumped back into his own steam machine.

Swift though the steam-brougham was, the Fanghorn was its match: it appeared, to onlookers, as if the feared neo-equine with long, polished, ivory fangs and a low, blunt, conical ram on its blocky, neck-muscled head, was chasing the police-cruiser.

Perhaps she was.

Michael didn’t care.

All he knew was, he had a life in his arms, and he would be sawed off and DAMNED if he didn’t do SOMETHING to help!

The police car’s shrill steam whistle was lost in the enraged scream of a pursuing Fanghorn, and witnesses later testified the Fanghorn’s alarm was more effective in clearing the right-of-way than was the tuned, polished, steam-powered penny-whistle of the the police-car.

 

Lightning knelt, then bellied down in front of the hospital entrance.

Michael slid awkwardly from the saddle, staggered a few steps toward the building.

Glass double doors slid open, men in white ran out, a cart between them: they ran for the Fanghorn, then stopped, startled.

Michael staggered for the just-emerged cart.

Careful hands took the child, laid her down on a clean white sheet, rolled her inside at a dead run.

Michael remembered the girl looking at him with big, scared eyes.

Lightning had risen, had come over, knelt again, laid her head over Michael’s shoulder, rumbled as the child disappeared through the doors.

Michael caressed the Fanghorn’s silk-fine fur, shaking a little.

“You did good, darlin’,” he said, his throat tight.  “You did good.”

Michael swallowed, turned, took a long, steadying breath, his hand on Lightning’s neck:  he looked around, stopped.

Michael walked over to the openly staring officer with his flat topped pillbox hat and an uncertain expression.

Michael thrust out a young hand.

“Thank you, sir,” he said. “I had no idea where to go.”

The two shook.

 

A little girl in a hospital bed looked at the nurse with the magical winged cap, looked at her gentle, pale eyes, her understanding expression.

“The preacher said angels have lots of eyes and lots of wings and they’re really scary,” she whispered with the sincerity of an eyewitness.

She leaned a little closer, as much as she was able: her eyes were big and sincere as she added, “They’re not like that!”

“You saw the angel?” Angela asked in a quiet, confidential voice.

Cassandra nodded.

“They only have two eyes an’ they have big teeth an’ there’s little angels that ride ‘em to help!”

Angela nodded, then she turned, pressed a button.

The screen on the opposite wall lit up and it was a news broadcast, cued up and ready.

It showed a Fanghorn, nose thrust straight out, pursuing a fleeing police car down the main street of town.

On its back, a grim faced boy in a black suit and a black Stetson, and in his arms, the limp figure of a girl.

They watched the broadcast, watched as the girl was placed on the hospital gurney and rolled inside, watched as the Fanghorn laid its head over the boy’s shoulder, watched as the boy caressed her jaw, both of them staring at the glass doors through which the patient was just taken.

Angela felt Cassandra’s hand tighten on hers, and she heard the whisper of a child’s voice.

“Angels!”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SUNRISE, AND GOODBYE

I held a man's hand all night.

We were well behind our lines now, the battle shifted, the lines squirmed like a snake: this had been Confederate ground, now it was ours, paid for in blood.

I was told the creek ran pink like sassafras tea.

It hadn't, but I didn't drink it, I'd found a spring and filled my canteens there.

Actually my horse found it and I figured if a horse will drink it, it must be safe.

We'd been in battle.

I'd come near to being hit enough times I quit countin', but when an honest to God hummingbird hovered close to my right ear I ducked behind a tree right quick, and then I looked at that flying jewel and I leaned back ag'in that tree and laughed, quiet-like, whilst war and hell seared around me.

Now I sat on a folding camp stool, my boots set apart and my hand in my friend's, whilst the tent canvas kept the evening dew off us.

He'd taken one through the leg and they'd sawed his leg off and it got stacked outside with the others and much as he wanted to ship it back home for decent burial, there was no way to tell which one was his, so he laid back and laid his arm acrost his eyes and fell back on Scripture like we'd done so many times before.

"Linn?" he murmured.

I gripped his hand tighter.

"Right here."

"You recall that part about if your right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee?"

"I recall."

"Do you reckon I can convince the Parson back home attair rifle ball offended the hell out of m' leg?"

I could not see his face but I could hear that ornery grin in his voice.

The man had to be in an unholy amount of pain even with that leg gone and he was still tryin' to fun me up some.

I nodded, and I reckon he could feel me nod.

"I recon so, Ebenezer," I said quietly.  "I reckon that's a convincin' argument."

"You sound tired."

"So do you."

"Yeah, but I got sense enough t' lay down."

"I'll be all right."

"You're a damn poor liar, Linn."

I grunted.  "Yeah, tell me somethin' I don't know."

"Does your wife know you lie this badly?"

My snort of derision kind of failed and it came out more of a constipated grunt.

"My wife," I said quietly, "kin see through me like window glass. I can lie like a hound dog in front of the fireplace. I just can't lie believably."

"Yeah," came the pained, raspy reply. "Now it's your turn to tell me somethin' I don't know!"

We listened to the night.

I'd packed him out of that hospital tent and back to our officer's tent, hopin' he'd get some rest, hopin' he'd benefit from not hearin' men cry and cry out in pain.

We could still hear 'em, just not as clearly.

Silence; I started to nod, until he murmured, "Bad for morale."

I woke, I jerked my head up, alarmed.

His hand was in mine but his hand was almost cold.

I laid the backs of my fingers against his stubbled cheek, then bent them over his nose and mouth, searching for warmth, searching for an exhaled breath.

I hung my head.

I flattened my hand on his breast, waited, then I rose and ran my arms under my dear friend and tent-mate, I packed him outside and I looked to where the sun was just lighin' up the far horizon.

"Ebenezer," I said, "let go of this earth and all its pain. Today's a new day and you'll start it in Paradise."

I wanted to throw back my head and scream.

I wanted to warn the legions of the Dead that a warrior comes among them.

I wanted to blast this insanity from the earth with the power of my voice.

I was too tired.

I carried Ebenezer over to where other men lay, waiting their turn to sleep forever in a strange soil.

I went back to our tent -- back to my tent -- I lit a candle and I unfolded my portable desk and I started to write a letter to his young wife.

That's been many years ago now, that was most of a continent away.

I dearly love sunrise here in the mountains, I surely do, but every time I see the sunrise, I remember the second letter I wrote, the one to his little daughter, who was but a year old when Ebenezer surrendered his soul to the Almighty.

God needed help raising the sun up in the sky, I wrote, so he called on the strongest, the bravest, the most capable man he knew, to help him with this task.

He called your Daddy to help.

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I AIN'T GOT IT FIGURED OUT

Michael Keller gripped the Fanghorn with new strength in his legs.

Lightning responded to her rider's increased strength.

Her fast, long-legged walk was not as smooth as a horse's, but it was faster than an Appaloosa at an easy trot, and this suited Michael just fine.

Linn's stallion kept pace with Lightning: they rode side by side, father and son, they rode from their ranch around back of town and up Cemetery Hill and drew up at the long row of tombstones that constituted their family section.

Apple-horse was content to ease up to a stop, to listen, ears busy.

Lightning was not so placid.

She came around fast, head swinging, clearly looking, clearly on edge: this was a place foreign to her.

Michael patted her neck, soothed her with touch and with voice, and the Fanghorn muttered in reply.

Linn was not a stranger to seeing a restless horse dance, but a horse's dance is light, almost a ballerina's en pointe: seeing this heavier-hooved, more heavily-muscled Fanghorn dance was ...

... frightening ...

Michael looked around, his young eyes serious.

He looked at his father.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Michael?"

"Sir, how come folks are scared of graveyards?"

Linn considered, frowned, his bottom jaw sliding out a little, then he looked up and admitted, "I don't rightly know, Michael."

"Are they afraid ghosts might get 'em?"

"No ghosts here, Michael," Linn said flatly.  "This is a garden of stone. Anythin' but grass and tomb stones, we bring with us, but nothing lives here.  No haints, no spooks, no speerts."

"No ghoulies or ghosties or things that go bump in the night."

"Them neither."

Father and son looked at each other, unsmiling, each one knowing just how hard it was for the other not to grin or laugh outright.

"We can do nothing for the dead. They're gone. You recall what it was to die."

"I do, sir."

"You didn't want to come back."

"No, sir."

"Everyone I've spoken with who's seen the Valley," Linn said slowly, "did not want to come back."

"Sir, did Old Pale Eyes see the Valley?"

"He did, Michael. So did his son Jacob, and so did Sarah McKenna. So has Marnie."

"Sir?"
Michael's reserve fell away like a dropped ceramic mask, startled surprise plain on his young face.

Linn nodded.

"She might tell you about it sometime. I won't. It's her story to tell if she wants it known."

"Yes, sir."

"How's the back?"

"I'm gettin' my strength back, sir. I see the specialists tomorrow. They still can't believe how much better I'm healin' from bein' in the saddle."

Linn nodded.  "I read somewhere that the outside of a horse is good for the inside of the man."

"Teddy Roosevelt, sir."

"I believe you are right."

"Sir?"

"Yes, Michael?"

"Sir ... Jacob had something laser engraved on a stone, didn't he?"

Linn's eyes tightened, just a little, at the corners.

"He did, Michael."

"He said there was a fresh rose on the top of the tomb stone when he laid his hand on it."

Linn nodded again. "Yes, he did."

"Where'd it come from, sir?"

"That, I honestly don't know," Linn admitted.

"Sir ... if there are no ghosts here, where'd that rose come from?" Michael persisted.

Linn looked at his son and his eyes tightened up at the corners some more, and the ghost of a smile hid behind his face as he looked at Michael.

"I ain't got it figured out," he admitted.

"Yes, sir."

Linn looked off to his right, uphill.

"Let's cut over the rise and run the bow back to the ranch. I'd like to avoid cameras if we can."

Michael grinned, that sudden, bright, boyish grin Linn remembered so well.

"Yes, sir!"

Apple-horse set a brisk gait through the cemetery and over the crest, Lightning following easily.

 

 

Edited August 23 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE BENEFIT OF A BUSTED FENCE

 

Michael Keller sat on a thick cushion, on an equally thick layer of fresh, fragrant straw.

He leaned forward, concentrating on the glowing screen before him.

On his left, The Bear Killer lay, his jaw on Michael's left thigh, button-black eyes turned up adoringly.

On Michael's right, Lightning lay bellied down, her nose just shy of touching Michael's denim covered right thigh.

Michael sat cross-legged, something he hadn't been able to do for more than a year, and as long as The Bear Killer and Lightning were content to sit with him, he intended to stay right where he was.

Michael's fingers danced through this, his final exam, with the delighted abandon of a young child running through a field of flowers, arms outstretched, laughing.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller stabbed another wedge of waffle-and-fried-egg.

"It's your day off," Shelly said in her gentle voice.

Linn looked up at his wife, laughed as he took another bite of her good home cookin'.

Shelly sighed, tilted her head a little the way a wife will.

"Linn," she said quietly, "you work too hard!"

"I don't work hard enough," Linn grumbled, looked at his wife as he cut another wedge of butter-syrup-and-fried-egg free:  "you know me, darlin', I'm the laziest sod ever to stand in boot leather!"

Victoria chewed solemnly, regarding her parents with big and observant eyes.

"I've got to fix that fence first thing."

"I thought you fixed it."

"I threw a hot patch on it."

Victoria blinked, curiosity and maple syrup bright on her young face: she carefully, daintily wiped the miscalculation from her flawless complexion, reached out and forked another hot, steaming waffle off the stack.

"I strung two strands of bobwarr and stretched snow fence along it for a visual," Linn explained, wiping the last of the syrup and butter off his plate with the last two chunks of waffle.

"It worked, didn't it?"

"It worked well. The horses could see the snow fence and didn't try to run through the bobwarr."

"Linn Keller," Shelly scolded gently, "you are a perfectionist, you know that?"

Linn grinned at his wife.

"Darlin'," he chuckled, "I am --"

"I know, the laziest sod, and you're a poor liar, too!" Shelly interrupted: she rose, kissed her husband on the cheek, took his empty plate.

Later that morning, as Linn rolled up the snow fence and ran hay string around it, he looked up as Victoria strutted from the back of his faded orange Power Wagon, carrying Uncle Pete's ancient wooden carpenter's tool box.

She's getting her size to her, he thought: she's tall as Shelly now, and she's changing.

Lord ... I know she'll be a woman here directly, but right now she struts like she did when she was a little girl.

Thank You for this moment.

Father and daughter released the chain binder from the small bundle of fence planks on the truck's homemade headache rack, allowed the boards to slide down: each took an end, carried the three-bundle of planks, from the tailgate to the worksite twenty feet away.

Victoria was her Daddy's left hand, his step-and-fetch-it, his very attentive student.

She'd already aced her finals: for whatever reason, their instructor wanted to test Michael and Victoria separately.

That decision was the reason Linn had to fix fence today.

Boocaffie, the Texas longhorn, regarded them placidly from a quarter mile away.

 

Victoria was astride her Daddy's shining-red mare, Jumper.

Ever since Jumper was a very young colt, she'd jumped everything she could.

Victoria, from the earliest possible moment, took full advantage of this talent.

Once Jumper was old enough, the Sheriff's pretty, pale-eyed little girl delighted in sailing over fences, ditches, creeks, gullies: Jumper absolutely loved jumping, and there was an instant affinity between the Sheriff's little girl, and the Sheriff's red mare.

Victoria was racing Michael and Lighting, there in the pasture: Jumper had her ears laid back and her neck stuck out, and Lightning was leaned out and running -- it was a race between an elegant, graceful ballerina, and a hard-muscled weightlifter of remarkable speed.

Victoria was a half-length ahead of Lightning when Jumper snapped out an invisible set of wings and sailed gracefully over the whitewashed board fence.

Lightning put her head down and busted through it with all the grace of a drag racing D9 Cat.

Seasoned wood just plainly exploded, shattered, splinters and shivers spinning in the Colorado sunlight, and on the other side of the fence, a Texas longhorn, startled, looked up, snorted.

Here was an interloper into his territory.

Boocaffie bellowed a challenge, shook his massive head, better than six feet of powder horns wagging their deadly challenge.

Boocaffie started toward this unknown intruder at an aggressive trot.

Lightning, feral creature that she was, recognized a threat as well.

Texas longhorn and offworld Fanghorn started their attack runs.

Michael's legs tightened, he leaned back:  "LIGHTNING! NO!" he yelled, and Victoria shot ahead, whirled, her Daddy's Jumper whipping end-for-end:  "BOOCAFFIE!  NO!"

Victoria drew Jumper broadside between the two as Lightning slowed:  "BOOCAFFIE, STOP THAT!" she shouted, thrusting an accusing finger at the Texas longhorn as her Jumper-horse minced, dancing, clearly not happy with where she was.

Lightning's lips dropped back over her fighting canines and she slowed, lifting her head and muttering:  Michael leaned forward -- "Down!" -- Lightning stopped, folded her legs, bellied down.

Michael came around in front of the unhappy Fanghorn, peppermints in hand:  he rubbed her nose and wiped horse slobber off his palm, soothing her with voice and with touch, telling her she was a good girl, that Boocaffie was his friend.

Michael looked back at the shatter-field that used to be good fence planking.

Pa's not gonna be happy about this.

 

Victoria held planks in place as her Daddy drilled the pilot holes, then wound in the long, thread-greased hex-heads with their big washers.

"Daddy," she said in a small voice, "I'm sorry we busted your fence."

Linn looked at Victoria, grinned.

"Darlin'," he said, "how else am I going to justify keeping company with a beautiful young woman, and not get beat to death by a wife with a fryin' pan?"

Victoria laughed.  "Oh, Daddy, you're silly!"

"Of course I'm silly!" he declared stoutly. "Silly is an art form and I practice it often!"

They replaced the planks, whitewashed them: "We'll give 'em another coat after bit."

Victoria watched as her Daddy returned the tools to the ancient, heavy, handmade toolbox.

She saw the precision of his work on the fence, the precision with which he placed everything in the toolbox.

Victoria looked at the fence.

If she'd laid a brickmason's long level across the top of the new board, it would lay with precision along the top of the adjacent plank; the ends were butted together, tightly, with a small enough gap as to be almost invisible, especially with their newly applied white coating.

Victoria knew if she took that selfsame brickmason's level, and laid it hard against the cedar fencepost, it would be absolutely plumb.

She looked speculatively at her Daddy, watched as he picked up the carpenter's toolbox, packed it back to the tailgate of the aging orange Dodge four-by.

"Daddy," she said, laying a gentle hand on his forearm, "you have done me a disservice."

Linn stopped, startled, not entirely sure whether he was more surprised with his daughter's use of the term, or at the meaning of her message.

Victoria blinked -- Linn was surprised, he'd looked at his little girl every day and every day and he knew the curves, the contours of her face, but this was the first time he realized behind his breastbone just how much she looked like her Mama.

Victoria felt the hard muscle beneath the flannel shirtsleeve; she stood as her long tall Daddy turned, removed his leather gloves and laid them on the tailgate, then took his daughter's hands in his own.

"How have I done you a disservice?" he asked, his voice deep, concerned, reassuring.

"Daddy," Victoria said seriously, "you're a teacher."

Linn blinked, uncertain: he pulled his voice way down in his throat, and in a silly little voice, said "I'm a Dust Bunny!"

Victoria giggled like a little girl, hugged her Daddy quickly, spontaneously, the way a happy little girl will do, then she pulled back, looked at her Daddy and blinked.

"Daddy, you don't teach with lessons and with classrooms."

"How do I teach?"

Victoria leaned closer, her eyes big and serious:  "Daddy, you teach by what you do."

"So ... I have taught my beautiful daughter the womanly art of ... fence repair?"

Victoria planted her knuckles on her belt:  "Dad-deee!" she scolded.

Linn waited, knowing his little girl had something to say, but she probably wasn't entirely sure quite how to say it.

"Daddy ..."

Victoria tilted her head the way a grown woman will do when she's speculating, or considering, or realizing, or making a point: Linn was struck, powerfully, at how much her gesture reminded him of his wife.

"Daddy, you're shown the boys how to be men by being a man," Victoria said, all in a rush, "and you treat Mommy like a queen and that's how I want a husband to treat me but it's all your fault!"

Linn spread his hands, suddenly feeling utterly, absolutely, lost.

"What's all my fault, Princess?"

"Daddy" -- Victoria gripped her Daddy's hands, suddenly, tightly, her eyes big, shining, almost distressed -- "Daddy, you've shown me what a husband should be!"

"O-kaaaay," Linn said slowly, his eyes never leaving his daughter's.

"Daddy, where am I EVER going to find a husband like you?"

Linn blinked, stopped.

Victoria had a momentary mental impression of a cartoon character coming to a screeching, dust-billowing, halt.

"If I were more foolish," Linn said slowly, "I would say you're just a little girl and you're too young to be thinking about husbands."

Victoria raised an eyebrow.

"Back when Old Pale Eyes was Sheriff, girls of your age could run a household, and generally did. Girls twelve, thirteen, could be married off."

Linn's eyes were serious as he looked at his youngest daughter, nodded.

"I'm not sure I know what to say," Linn said softly.

Victoria stepped up to her big strong Daddy, ran her arms around him, laid her ear against his breastbone, felt his arms around her, strong, warm, protective.

He felt her long, contented sigh.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, Princess?"

"Daddy, will I always be your little girl?"

Linn bent his knees, squatted, took his daughter around the back of her thighs and around her back:  he picked her up, he touched his nose to hers, looked deep into her big, vulnerable eyes.

"Darlin'," he murmured, "it doesn't matter how old you get. Child, maiden, wife, mother, matron, as long as I draw breath, yes."

He hugged her to him, tightly, leaving absolutely no doubt as to the sincerity of his words.

"Darlin', you will always be my little girl!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 23 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

"NOT IF I GET IT FIRST!"

Sheriff Linn Keller rested quiet fingertips on the tabletop, looked with pale, half-lidded eyes at the man in a professional white coat seated across the desk from him.

The Sheriff's voice had been quiet; his best interrogations had been done without raising his voice.

He was after facts.

The doctor was used to hiding behind a wall of authority, he was used to being protected -- at least to a degree -- by his professional status.

One-on-one with a pale eyed Sheriff, this did not work.

The Sheriff steered the interrogation skillfully, avoiding an adversarial footing as much as he could, but the physician had the clear impression that this gifted interrogator -- who'd already gotten the doctor to admit to more than he wanted, much more than he usually did -- could weasel his darkest secrets from him, and make it look easy.

The doctor was, frankly, intimidated.

This was an honest to God, Western Sheriff.

This was the father of two pale eyed children who, far from their age of majority, rode to the sound of guns and put evildoers on notice that Winchester Justice was being dealt, that there would be Law, there would be Order, and that it would happen peacefully, or otherwise, and they were dealing wholesale in Otherwise.

This was their father.

Their father also carried Diplomatic credentials and more political clout than anyone in the State, and the physician weighed his answers against the knowledge that this man could crush him utterly -- personally, professionally, politically -- and make it look easy.

On the other hand, this pale eyed Sheriff spoke with a quiet voice.

This pale eyed Sheriff was anything but confrontational.

This pale eyed Sheriff was, frankly, putting the Doctor at ease -- even though he was getting answers, answers the surgeon would not have surrendered otherwise, and certainly not to the concerned parent of a complicated patient.

Finally he Sheriff nodded, rose: he extended his hand.

"Doctor," he said, "thank you for giving me back my son."

The surgeon rose, took the lawman's callused hand: each gripped the other's hand lightly -- the lawman, out of professional respect, for one grips a doctor's hand lightly, in recognition of the delicacy of touch required of a surgeon; and the doctor, because he was frankly afraid to squeeze this warrior's fingers, lest he cause a detonation of some sort.

 

Shelly peeked around the corner, watched Michael laboring steadily, cleaning out the stalls, forking muck into the wheelbarrow, dollying the Irish buggy out of the barn.

"He won't over-do it," Linn said quietly, his hands on his wife's shoulders: "the Doc said Michael talked it over with him and said he was honestly afraid of doing something wrong and ending up back in hospital."

Shelly raised a hand across her bodice, lay her cool palm over her husband's knuckles.

"I keep thinking what if, what if," she said softly, and she felt her husband chuckle.

"I one time slapped down a Board of Directors when they tried to intimidate me with a what-if," Linn said softly, bending his head down closer to her ear: "I told them I don't deal in what-if's, I deal in reality, and they didn't like it that I stood up to them, but they did respect me."

"Mister Keller," Shelly said, "are you standing up to me?"

Linn ran his hands down his wife's arms, then around her flat belly, hugged her close.

"Mrs. Keller," he whispered, "I am standing behind you."

Father and mother heard the sound of a wheelbarrow being hosed out; they watched as their son came in, hosed out the scraped-out stalls, carefully, methodically: he finally hosed off his bright yellow muck boots, coiled the hose, hung his boots upside down in the wire holders, hung up the plastic sacks he wore over his leather boots to make getting the overboots on and off, much easier.

"He's thorough," Linn murmured.

"He's your son," Shelly whispered back, and she felt her husband's hands tighten on her waist, felt his silent chuckle against her backside.

Linn felt Shelly stiffen with alarm as Michael picked up a saddle blanket, turn: he turned with a stiff back, not twisting his spine, then she brought her hands to her mouth as Michael sat, as he sagged, as he hung his head, the image of exhaustion.

"Wait," Linn whispered as Shelly tried to pull away.

Linn drew her back a couple steps, until they were outside: he turned her, his hands on her shoulders.

"This is the first time he's picked up a fork in better than a year," Linn said quietly, urgently. "Likely he's tired and likely he'll be sore. He might even ask you to rub him down with horse liniment or turpentine."

"Turpentine?" Shelly gasped, looking at her husband with alarmed eyes.

Linn grinned.  "Uncle Pete swore by it."  

Linn brought his wife's hands to his lips, kissed the backs of her fingers.

"I'll spread the straw. He's done work enough for one day."

 

That evening, at supper, Michael was quiet: conversation was subdued but pleasant, Marnie and Shelly discussing matters of pregnancy, Angela asking the Sheriff about current cases under investigation, Victoria taking it all in and sitting beside Michael, and Michael stopping frequently to look around.

Conversations, whether in a room full of people, or around the family supper table, are dynamic, and sometimes there will be a sudden lull, as individual discussions coincidentally stop at the same moment.

Michael looked around, swallowed, cleared his throat.

"Mom?"

Shelly looked down the table at Michael, surprised.

"Mom, there's somethin' wrong with this meat loaf," Michael said.

"What's wrong with it?" Shelly asked, surprised.

"I'm not sure, but I'd better eat it all so nobody else gets sick!"

Marnie threw her head back and laughed silently, one hand on her gravid belly: Angela picked up a sweet roll and threw at Michael, Linn winked at his son and nodded solemnly, and Angela stabbed her fork onto the serving platter and declared, "Not if I get it first!"

When Shelly came to bed that night, she smelled of horse liniment, in spite of Linn's having just heard her washing her hands moments before.

She didn't say anything about it, and neither did he.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU WERE RIGHT, SIR

Jacob Keller smiled.

This was not a good thing.

The man behind the bar shrank back a little, wishing he had some kind of a quick-dropping screen to protect the mirror behind the bar; the barmaid, her eyes big, set her tray and its three glasses of beer, down on the bar and considered which way the bodies were about to start flying, so when they did, she could be somewhere else.

Men came to the Spring Inn to drink, to play pool, to lie and cuss and laugh and otherwise unwind after a work day, sometimes they came because they no longer had a wife at home, and they didn’t want to eat supper alone, again.

Some came because they did have a wife at home, and they didn’t want to eat supper alone, again.

And sometimes, as always happens, there are those who eat wisely, but not well, and who drink well indeed, but not at all wisely.

Had the barkeep the opportunity, he’d have liked to have told a certain customer who’d traded cash money for liquid stupidity, that an Irishman correctly observed that many a man’s tongue had gotten his own nose broken.

Unfortunately, there was neither time, nor opportunity, to offer this profound Iberian wisdom.

It was the first time Deputy Sheriff Jacob Keller had set foot in the Spring Inn since becoming a commissioned law enforcement officer.

There’d been a minor skirmish.

The barkeep was never sure whether it was intentional, whether it was deliberate, in order to bait a brand-new deputy to the concrete block beer joint – he suspected this was the case, though he could never be sure – all he knew was, when he arrived, an unshaven roughneck sneered at Jacob, “Well, here’s the Sheriff’s kid. Your Mama’s milk dried on your lips yet?”

Jacob Keller smiled quietly.

Those who were far more sober, had the distinct feeling that the pin had just fallen out of the grenade.

“Not my Mama’s milk,” Jacob said quietly. “Yours.”

Nobody was quite sure what happened next.

All they knew was, there was an angry roar as an unshaven troublemaker charged the deputy, then the deputy was off to the side and the troublemaker’s face introduced itself into the heavy timber door without benefit of opening the door first.

Jacob’s pale eyes swung left, swung right, that quiet, unexcited smile still on his face.

The troublemaker staggered back, shook his head, raised a hand to his bleeding nose: he saw Jacob – absolute RAGE claimed the man’s face –

Jacob twisted like a matador, grabbed the man’s wrist and the back of his belt and drove him headfirst into a stainless-steel refrigerator door: Jacob twisted, uncoiled, drove his elbow into the attacker’s kidneys, stepped to the front door and turned to look at the shocked, silent interior of the concrete block beer joint.

The place was pretty well crowded for a weeknight, which wasn’t that unusual – Jacob would speculate, later, whether it was because they wanted to see the new deputy’s backside kicked up between his shoulder blades –

“Anybody else want to play?” Jacob called in a gentle voice.

The troublemaker turned, growling, steadied himself by gripping the padded end of the bar: he dropped his head and charged.

He expected Jacob to sidestep.

Jacob didn’t.

He jumped.

Jacob planted a hand in the middle of the bent-over, arms-spread attacker, leaped over him, landed easily: the unshaven attacker turned, just in time to inherit a face full of boot heel, which spread his nose over an impressive percentage of his face.

Blood squirted in two directions with the strength of the kick.

Jacob stepped in, seized the man’s thumb, wound his arm up behind his back, wrist bent in a vigorous pain-compliance hold: he ran the man forward, bellied him hard into the edge of the bar and knocked most of the wind out of him.

Jacob let go of the man’s thumb, gripped his wrist, opened the front door: when he turned, Jacob kept him turning, threw him outside, then slammed the door shut as he departed as well.

Once outside, Jacob drove the would-be pugilist in the belly with another kick, then he stood, boxer's stance, hands open, head down a little, his eyes very pale.

“Give up now,” he said, a warning edge to his voice.

The man didn’t.

An incautious individual opened the door, intending to peek out a small opening.

The door slammed open against him, knocking him and three others back, and the bloodied face of Jacob’s attacker hit the floor.

Sheriff’s Deputy Jacob Keller stepped inside, looked around, looked down.

He unsnapped his cuff case, spun a stainless set of Smith & Wessons around his middle finger, then grabbed the groaning man’s left wrist.

The prisoner tried to get up.
Jacob jumped straight up in the air and drove his weight through his knees, into his opponent’s kidneys, spearing him to the floor in a blinding detonation of sunball-level AGONY.

Steel teeth snarled shut, securing the prisoner’s hands behind his back.

Jacob grabbed the man by the back of his collar and the back of his belt and picked him up off the floor.

This alone was impressive, for the man had some size to him.

“You,” Jacob said loudly, clearly, “have the right to remain silent.”

The snarled reply was neither repeatable in polite company, nor was it anatomically possible.

Jacob swung around, smacked the prisoner’s head against the door frame.

“If you give up the right to remain silent,” he continued, carrying the man outside and dropping him, “anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Jacob looked at the faces crowding the doorway.

“You.”

He thrust a bladed hand at an individual holding a brown longneck.

“Pass me that beer, if  you would, please.”

In that moment, if Jacob had asked for the Koh-i-Noor Diamond, they’d likely have come up with it.

Jacob poured the beer over his prisoner’s face, handed the empty back.

"Thank you," he said in a quiet, unexcited voice. "I like my prisoners awake when I read 'em their rights."

He waited until the man gasped and choked and blew his nostrils free of good cold Brown Pop before grabbing him by the shirt front, hauling him to his feet, frogmarching him to the cruiser.

“You have the right to speak with an attorney,” he said, opening the back door of the cruiser, and the braver of the spectators trickled out, came in hearing distance to hear a muffled but angry “No!” – to which Jacob said, “Now there’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to understand your rights. I’m required to inform you and I’ve done that, I’ve got it on video” – SLAM! he shut the back door – he turned, looked at the spectators, leaned over a little, looked inside the beer joint and its staring customers.

“Anything else before I take off?” he called pleasantly, then raised a hand and smiled.

“You all take good care, now,” he said cheerfully.

 

Later that night, after the prisoner was seen in ER, after the prisoner was cleaned up and processed into the lockup, Jacob filled out his report, logged it into the computer, looked up at his father, who was loafing in the doorway, coffee in hand.

“You were right, sir,” Jacob said.

Linn nodded.  “They always try the new badge packer, always. They tried me, when I was your age,” he said. “I knew they’d try you too.”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NIGHT ANGELS

“Pa?”

A curious little boy lay on a spread out bedroll, on the grass in their pasture, the comforting bulk and warmth of a genuine Texas longhorn bull bedded down beside him.

“Yes, Joseph?”

Joseph’s Pa lay on a bedroll as well, flat on his back like his son, looking up at the starry decked firmament overhead.

“What’s stars made of?”

Jacob considered his answer carefully.

“Joseph,” he said at length, “each and every one of them-there stars is an Aladdin lamp.”

“An Aladdin, sir?”

“Yep,” Jacob replied. “You know how bright a white an Aladdin gets.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you recall what the Bible says about ‘em?”

“That God put the Great Light in the Day, an’ the lesser lights in the night.”

“Doesn’t say why, though, does it?”

“No, sir.”

“Joseph, what is God?”

Joseph considered his answer for several long moments.

Boocaffie’s guts rumbled happily beside him.

“I don’t rightly know, sir,” Josph said in a small voice.

Jacob chuckled. 

“Don’t feel bad, son,” he murmured. “Men much wiser than both of us have tried to figure what God is and most of ‘em don’t have the least notion.”

“Do you, sir?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jacob said reassuringly. “God is lots of things. One of ‘em is an inventor.”

“An inventor, sir?”

“Yyyep,” Jacob replied with the confidence of a man who knew he was right. “He invented the Deep and then He separated it into the waters above and the waters below, He invented fishes and Boocaffies and men folks and suchlike, and He invented them-there Aladdin lamps set up to where we can use ‘em to find our way at night.”

“Yes, sir,” Joseph breathed.

“Now Joseph,” Jacob continued, “you’ve heard of angels.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many angels do you reckon there are?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“There’s an awful lot of ‘em,” Jacob said quietly. “You know how much work it is to clean lamp chimneys and trim wicks and fill reservoirs with oil.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now if you figure every last light up there is shinin’ bright, why, they must all have had their wicks trimmed an’ they’ve been filled plumb full so they’ll burn all night, an’ let’s say one angel can handle … oh, say, fifty lamps through the daytime when we can’t see ‘em a-workin’ … Joseph, you see that?”

A streak of silver-white blazed through the high heavens, then disappeared.

“I saw it, sir! Did a lamp fall?”

“I reckon it did, Joseph, the flame got blowed out from the wind as she fell.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Bear Killer, bedded down beside Jacob, raised his curly-black head and thumped his tail against Jacob’s leg in greeting: they heard the gate creak just a little.

“Come to join us, darlin’?” Jacob asked quietly.

“I was curious what you two were up to,” Annette said, her voice smiling in the dark.

“An angel knocked  a lamp off its shelf,” Joseph said, “we watched it fall til it blowed out and we couldn’t see it any more.”

Annette looked up at a cloudless sky, swarming and thick with stars, looked down at her husband and her son, stretched out on the hard ground with nowt but a spread out bedroll for padding.

“My back would break if I laid down on that,” she said quietly. “Why don’t you two come on to bed?”

Jacob gripped his Stetson – he’d laid it on his belt buckle for the interim – he sat up, crossed his legs, stood: Joseph rolled over, came up on all fours, then stood: they shook the bedrolls to get chaff and grass off them, rolled them quickly, with the ease of long practice.

Jacob tied his, looked over; it was dark enough he couldn’t see much, but it looked like Joseph’s bedroll was rolled up, and the boy wasn’t fighting the piggin strings to get it tied, so he must’ve gotten it already, dark or not.

Father, son, wife and Bear Killing dog headed for the house:  Joseph paused long enough to pat Boocaffie’s shoulder and whisper a good-night to him, and left the genuine Texas longhorn to ponder the mysteries to be found in the starry sky.

Joseph hung back as his Pa and his Ma went into the house: he looked up at the heavens again and contemplated the blazing, milky glory spread out for his inspection:  he stood, he marveled, and just before he turned to come inside, Jacob heard his son’s quiet words.

“ ‘Night, angels!”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I AM THE PEACEMAKER

 

Professional fingers explored the distorted breastbone beneath the long, zipper-shaped scar: professional eyes, closed, saw with touch alone, read the healing bone beneath the young skin: murmured words, quiet-voiced reply, as the repairs were assessed, evaluated.

The patient was turned: practiced fingers moved more slowly, now, down the long zipper scar that overlay the patient’s back bone, from just above the shoulder line, to just below the belt line.

The closed eyes closed more tightly: one hand gripped the patient’s shoulder, lightly, the other hand pressed, massaged, explored.

The patient’s jaw muscles tightened, bulged a few times, but the subject of the examination made not a single sound.

Two sets of pale eyes watched.

One set of pale eyes was closed, a set of young hands held the young hands of the patient.

I’m here, Michael.

The words were the barest whisper in his mind.

I know, he mind-whispered back, and the twins smiled, just a little, as they felt Angela’s silent whisper as well.

It was as if they two turned and extended a hand toward their sister, and it was as if their pale-eyed sister extended her own hands to grip theirs.

Satisfied, the surgeon nodded, looked at the unmoving nurse to his right, looked at Michael.

“I would have expected a flinch, at least,” he said. “Most men would be screaming with my pressing on newly healed bone like that.”

“I’m tired of screaming, sir,” Michael said tiredly.

The surgeon blinked, surprised.

“I’m sorry … I … never heard you scream.”

“You’re not inside me to hear it.”

Michael’s voice was quiet, fatigued: Victoria released his hands, stepped back.

“Hm. Yes. I see. And how do you feel now?”

“Mind if I get dressed, Doctor?”

“Please.”

The surgeon rolled his stainless-steel stool back, folded his arms, continued to visually assess his young patient.

Michael shrugged into his T-shirt and flannel shirt, he sat and pulled on socks and jeans, he tucked in his shirt and fast up his belt and slid into his vest before sitting again and reaching for his boots.

“Won’t those … strain your …”

Michael ignored him, instead dusting his heels with foot powder, and giving his boots a short shake of the stuff:  he picked up one boot, then the other, turning them, patting them briskly to distribute foot powder evenly, bent and thrust one sock foot, then the other, down the tall, embroidered stovepipes.

The surgeon blinked, then nodded, looked at Angela.

“I would not recommend exertion,” he said, “not until the muscles are fully bonded to the bone again.”

“When will I know, sir?”

“When will you know … ?”

“When I can resume normal duty, sir,” Michael said.

“ ‘Normal … duty’,” the surgeon echoed.

“Yes, sir. I have stalls to scrape, I have second hand horse feed to wheelbarrow out to the manure pile, I have fences to mend and it’s been too long since I jumped on the tractor and cut weeds alongside the driveway.”

The surgeon frowned, raised a halting palm, shook his head. 

“I … wait … you do what?”

“Sir, I grew up on a ranch. It’s not a big ranch by any means, but there’s work to be done and I’ve been laid up way too long, now when can I get back to tendin’ chores?”

Michael’s face was solemn as the old judge.

Angela’s wrist was bent in front of her mouth: Michael saw her eyes tighten at the corners and he saw her cheeks and ears redden, and he knew she was containing her laughter.

Victoria sighed, raised her hands, shook her head and exclaimed, “Men!” – which caused Angela to bite her foreknuckle to keep from laughing aloud.

“I wouldn’t … a wheelbarrow, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No. No, I would not recommend it.”

“You recommended against my riding, sir, and you admitted later that I healed faster and better in the saddle than not.”

The surgeon gave Michael a long, assessing look, and finally nodded.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Yes, that’s true.”

“I’ve already been mucking out stalls, sir, and I’ve already run the Irish buggy to the manure pile.”

The surgeon’s eyebrows raised.

“Please don’t,” he finally said. “Reinjury takes longer to heal than the initial –”

Michael Keller, eleven years old, gave the surgeon a cold look that silenced the man’s lecture.

“Are we done here, sir?” he asked.

The surgeon turned, consulted his scanner record, nodded.

“Yes.  I think we are.”

“Thank you for your kind attention, sir.”

Michael Keller picked up his Stetson, settled it on his head, offered his arm to his twin sister, looked at Angela.

“I’m hungry. Where’s a good place to eat?”

 

Angela pressed a button on a device she wasn’t supposed to have, then handed Michael the gunbelt and pistol he wasn’t supposed to have.

Michael slung it about his lean waist, cinched it snug, turned away from his sisters: he drew the pistol, checked magazine and chamber, holstered, he drew the two magazines from their pouches, gave them a look-see, thrust them back, settled his vest over his hardware before the elevator stopped.

Angela pressed another button as the elevator doors opened.

To the watchers monitoring the elevator’s cameras, it was as if there was a brief loss of signal: the image resumed as the elevator’s well-known passengers departed, with no sign of anything at all out of the ordinary.

The three emerged into the hospital’s truly cavernous lobby: it was the biggest hospital, in the largest city on the planet, and the lobby’s sheer volume reflected that.

Angela and her two shadows flowed to the right, between the stainless steel elevator shafts; three sets of pale eyes assessed the lobby – Victoria scanned from hard-right to midline, Angela scanned midline, near to far, Michael from hard-left to front-and-center.

Only when the three were satisfied all was well, did they move.

A well-known nurse in her trademark white uniform dress and winged cap, and her equally well known twin siblings flanking, emerged into the broad stone apron in front of the hospital’s main doors.

“I know just the place,” Angela smiled, bent her wrist, spoke quietly: an Iris appeared, just as Michael froze, pale eyes hard, glaring.

Michael powered into a sprint.

A scream shivered the clear, sunlit air: Michael charged toward a man hoisting a screaming, fighting girl off her feet.

Michael’s hand bladed under his vest, gripped the familiar handle of his common carry: two men moved as if to block him.

Michael’s pistol came up, two gunshots shattered the peaceful atmosphere: a weapon hit the sidewalk, followed by its former owner, and the girl twisted free of suddenly-limp hands, jumped away from her would-be abductor.

The girl ran at the top of her lungs toward safety, toward the Angel in White.

Michael drove his gunmuzzle toward the third: “GET ON THE GROUND OR I PUT YOU THERE!”

Angela’s eyes widened, then she ran her hand down the back of her neck, gripped the wire wound handle of a fighting knife, sidestepped, caught the screaming girl around the waist.

Victoria turned, slowly, a stainless-steel pistol in her two hands: a pretty girl with a blue-satin ribbon in her hair, a pretty girl in a blue-satin dress and matching slippers, a pretty girl with cold, hard and very pale eyes, turned to her left and to her right, her stainless-steel Walther pistol gripped hard in both hands and pointed generally downward.

It seemed to take forever for the authorities to arrive; it always seems to take forever, though in reality their response time was quite good: Angela stood with her blade folded up along her forearm, her favorite knife-fighting grip, and as the terrified teen-ager clung to her and gasped out her fear and her relief and her clumsy thanks, Angela glared round about: when the first police vehicle arrived, she and Victoria were back-to-back, Michael covering his prisoner, and two bleeding, very dead carcasses on the ground.

It took very little more time for the Diplomatic representatives to arrive, to Angela’s relief: she was even more relieved when the hover-cams manifested, a fact which persuaded the surviving abductor to spill his guts as to their plan.

His confession was spontaneous, graphic, and when the intended victim’s parents were apprised of the exact nature of nefarious intentions, they were most grateful for this swift intervention.

After the scene was documented for later use, as the corpses were being bagged for transport, one of the officers remarked to Michael, “You’re … the Peacemaker.”

“Yes, sir.”

A hand waved toward the deceased being loaded into the coroner’s dead wagon.

“That wasn’t a very peaceful thing you just did.”

Michael looked at the man.

Neither Michael’s voice, nor Michael’s face, held the least trace of a smile.

“Sir, I made those two very peaceful.”

Edited August 25 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GO SOAK MY FEET

 Sheriff Linn Keller hung his dripping wet insoles from the clothesline behind their old, solid-built house.

Angela had taken up housekeeping in his Mama's house, the one he grew up in, and Linn was pleased with that development: Angela had duties and responsibilities elsewhere, but she made sure she had time to put in a regular shift with the Sheriff's office, and to work at least a monthly nursing shift at the local hospital.

Linn turned and saw his darlin' daughter smiling at him.

She came skipping up to him like a happy little girl: he turned and she ran into him, hugged him and wrinkled her nose and sniffed.

"Vinegar?" she asked, looking at his soaky-wet insoles.

"White vinegar," he affirmed. "Good for what ails ye."

"Sooooo ... you want your feet to smell like a salad?"

Linn shrugged. "Beats the alternative."

"Which is?"

"Good old GI foot rot. Got a bad case of it from Phys Ed, someone tracked it to school from their brother in the Service. My feet damn near went gangrenous. I still have to soak 'em two, three times a year in hot bleachwater."

"So why not bleach your insoles?"

Linn laughed quietly and looked just a little embarrassed.

"I tried that once," he admitted.  "The damned things fell apart!"

"Aha," Angela said quietly.

"As long as I've got removable insoles, I can soaky them insoles in vinegar and let 'em dry in the sun for a few days and I don't have to dump vinegar in my boots and then run the nozzle of a hot air dryer down my boots and dry 'em out."

"Which feels really good on a cold day," Angela pointed out.

Linn chuckled, nodded: he'd long appreciated the truly sensual pleasure of a fresh clean pair of warm dry socks and a warm pair of dry boots in cold weather.

"I heard you put a stop to a fight yesterday."

"You heard about that," Linn said noncommittally, hanging a second set of vinegar dripping insoles beside the first and clamping them with spring type clothespins.

"I heard you looked at one and you looked at the other, you called each one by the wrong name and said something totally absurd and you made them both laugh, and once you'd broken the evil spell with laughter, you kept them laughing until they realized they weren't mad anymore."

"Yeah, I get lucky sometimes," Linn sighed.

Angela tilted her head, regarded her father with adoring eyes.

"I remember when you had kidney stones that time, Daddy," she said softly. "You were hilarious. The more you hurt, the funnier you got!"

Linn grunted, nodded.

"I know artists are supposed to suffer for their art," he said, "but if it takes kidney stones to be a comedian, I'll stick to Sheriffin'!"

"I don't blame you," Angela sighed, hugging her Daddy again and laying her head against his chest.

Linn was careful not to dislodge his daughter's white winged cap as he hugged her back.

"Stayin' for supper?" he asked hopefully.

Angela looked up, smiled gently.

"Daddy," she said, "I have eaten supper on more worlds than I can count, and there's still nothing better than having supper around Mama's kitchen table!"

"And here I thought I was the only one to think with my stomach," Linn rumbled, which brought a girlish giggle from his darlin' daughter.

"I can't stay, though," Angela sighed. "I have to get home and do laundry and" -- she gave her Daddy an impish look -- "I need to go soak my feet!"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I DID WHAT MAMA TOLD ME

Michael Keller swung a leg over, fell from the saddle, landed flat footed, knees bending deep to take the shock of his landing.

Part of his mind rejoiced in something he'd honestly not been able to do in far too long.

Another part of him was snarling like a cornered wolf, fangs bared and ready for war.

Michael surged upright, turned, shoved, then pulled the strap on his off-side saddlebag, ran a hand into its leathern interior.

His fingers saw as well as his eyes would have.

Michael pulled out the package he wanted and sprinted the few steps to where a vehicle was smoking and someone inside was whimpering.

Michael knew they would likely start screaming right here directly.

He'd seen it before.

Michael pulled at the driver's door, pulled again, set his boot against the car's body, hauled hard: a groan of rubbing, distorted metal, the door opened: he set his backside against it and forced it open far enough to get inside.

The inside of the windshield looked like it was hit with red paint.

Michael pulled the torniquet viciously free of the plastic packaging, ran it around the affected arm, up near the shoulder, pulled it tight and then turned the handle, fast, until life stopped pumping out of the shattered, bone-exposed upper arm.

 

Later that day, in the tourist diner over in Carbon Hill, Michael left Lightning contentedly (and noisily) gorging on grasses and plants from Lightning's native planet, vegetation foreign to Earth: Lightning was having a meal and Michael was in a mood for a quick bite, and as soon as he set foot in the little diner, he turned, he radar locked on a woman just rising from a booth.

He was to her in two leaps.

Michael seized her, spun her around, ran his thigh under her backside: he'd seen that fast moving shade of greying-bluish, oh my Gawd I can't breathe! on her face, he'd seen her panicked look as she rose, as she looked helplessly at him: her weight came down on his thigh as he drove into a deep forward stance, letting the vertical shaft of his shin bones hold her weight while his young muscles kept balance, while his wiry arms snapped around her middle, while one hand gripped the other fist and he drove hard, in and up -- he yanked, hard, once, twice --

He felt as much as heard the blockage blow free of the woman's windpipe.

Michael held her a few moments longer, until she got several ragged, gasping breaths into her, until he felt her legs working, until he released her and she stood and so did he, as she looked at him with big, shocked eyes as her unsteady hands bridged the gap between her booth and the counter opposite.

People were on their feet, staring, mouths open.

Michael raised a teaching finger, opened his mouth and as he said later, "something stupid fell out."

He looked around and declared, "Big sigh of relief, all around!"

 

Michael brushed Lightning's silky fetlocks.

Lightning danced a little and chirped, for all the world like she was giggling at being tickled.

Michael brushed out her black, silky mane, he brushed her fine-haired tail, marveling that there was not a single knot or tangle in it: he came around and Lightning rested her forehead-boss over his shoulder, pressing her long nose into his chest the way she did when her soul was quiet, when all was well.

The two of them managed to survive death, and life: when horse and rider are well matched, they become one magical creature, and Michael suspected Lightning had some actual affection for him.

Unless it's just the peppermints, he thought, and smiled.

Lightning ate her fill; Michael sent the rest of her feed back to her corral, he mounted again: they came around the restored Catholic church on the far end of Carbon Hill, just in time to hear a gunshot, then two more.

Lightning must've felt Michael's change -- gunshots were unknown on her planet, the only sudden noises were thunder, and this was the nitrocellulose crack! of a firearm, not the deep boooom of a thunderclap.

Lightning surged forward, then leaned into a flat-out gallop.

Michael saw the Town Marshal raise a hand -- a shot -- someone coming out of the general store dropped a gun, ran.

"GIT 'IM!" Michael yelled.

Michael stood in the stirrups, laid down over her neck, planted his palms on either side of Lightning's black, silky mane: the Fanghorn screamed a blood-shivering challenge, bringing the Main Street to a shocked halt, for it was the first time in recorded history an insane steam whistle came screaming down the street, fangs bared, hooves loud on pavement, ready for war.

The Marshal called for backup, cleared the general store, checked for casualties and was just keyed up to broadcast a description of the fellow with whom he'd traded shots, when something big and ugly came trotting around the far bend, heading for him at a spanking good gait, carrying the arm-waving, leg-kicking, screaming-in-terror felon, by the back of his brand-new, shoplifted, canvas coat.

"Ho, now, ho, girl," Michael called, soothing Lightning with hand and with voice:  he walked the big Fanghorn up to the staring lawman and said "Where do you want him?"

 

That night, as Michael groomed the sleepily chirping Fanghorn back at her home corral, Victoria tilted her head and regarded her twin brother with a quiet smile.

"Mommy said you saved two lives today," she said quietly, slipping around her brother's backside to hold out three peppermints:  Lightning lipped them off, crunched them happily, blinking her pleasure as Michael turned, leaned back against her shoulder.

Lightning was bellied down, content: she'd had a good run today, her belly was full, peppermints were tingling happily over her tongue and down her throat, she was happy.

"Yeah, well," Michael shrugged, then grinned.

"You remember all those medic classes we sat in on over the years?"

Victoria nodded, her eyes big, luminous in the twilight.

"All I did was what Mama told me."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE GHOST

Sheriff Marnie Keller waited.

She crouched a little, knowing murder was about to step around the corner.

If it looked her way, she would die.

If it did not look her way, she would probably die.

Her hand was tight on the wooden handle of what had been her Uncle Will's Smith & Wesson.

He'd carried it as a lawman, he had two more just like it, he'd kept this one as a spare when he got a matched pair with consecutive serial numbers, and when the time was right, he gave it to Marnie.

His gunbelt and holster were tight around her white-skinsuited waist, his blessing was wrapped around the blued steel sixgun, and Marnie smiled, just a little, behind her atmosphere mask.

The smile was not at all pleasant.

Whatever wanted to kill her, looked generally bulky and bipedal and had something that could be called a head.

Marnie didn't really care what the proper terminology was.

All she knew was, she was going to stop this murderer that had already murdered her children and who knows how many colonists.

She willed herself to stillness, she felt her heartbeat slow, she took a steadying breath ...

The armored monster came out of the hallway, stopped.

It started to turn.

Marnie felt the .357 recoil.

She had no memory of rolling the trigger back through the silky smooth double action cycle.

She brought five inches of gold-inlaid, blued-steel gunbarrel down, she fired again as the murderer collapsed.

She vaguely registered a spray of something hitting the opposite wall: she was up, she spun around the corner, eyes pale, teeth bared --

Nothing.

Marnie turned, listened, turned again: she planted her shoulder blades hard against the smoothness of the fused-stone wall, opened the cylinder, pushed the ejector rod a little and released --

-- two fired empties fell, spinning slowly --

Marnie shoved two rounds in, twisted the speed strip, closed the cylinder: she thumbed the strip back into a pocket, pulled the revolver back into a high compressed ready position --

Marnie's eyes snapped open.

She blinked, she listened; she was lying on her left side, which gained the least protest from the infant she carried; her hand slid silently from under the bedcovers, dropped down, gripped the handle of the laser sighted pistol she'd carried as a deputy.

Marnie listened.

Her husband's breathing was steady, regular; nothing moved in her field of vision.

Marnie slipped out of bed, flowing easily to the floor: she kept a compact, powerful hand light beside the leg of the bed for moments just like this.

Silent, careful, deliberate, she extended her arm, gripped the light.

Marnie came up on her knees, wrists crossed, her off hand cocked back sharply, thumb on the pushbutton switch: she turned, barefoot, soundless.

Nothing.

Marnie sagged, sat on the side of the bed.

She slid off, knelt, replaced the light, rose awkwardly, padded barefoot for the latrine alcove.

It's always the same, she thought.

Always the same.

The dream ends before I find my children, dead from decompression.

Marnie shucked out of her flannel nightgown, pulled on what her husband called her "Hatching Jacket" -- a shapeless, comfortable maternity dress -- she slid her old duty pistol back into its holster, felt the click of the retainer, saw the red telltale come on: it withdrew into the bed, the panel slid shut, securing it against unauthorized hands.

Young John was no stranger to weaponry, thanks to the holosim suites, thanks to trips Offworld, thanks to her pale eyed Daddy who delighted in his grandchildren and saw to it that Little John should know the delights of horses, dogs, dirt, whistlin', whittlin' and how to strut while wearing a proper pair of boots.

And, of course, how to shoot.

Marnie slid into the double shoulder rig, buckled the connecting strap across her chest, thrust bare feet into a pair of fur lined moccasins.

Little John was curled up on his side, covers pulled up and twisted into a spiral the way he always did: Marnie satisfied herself all was well, before going to the door, keying in the release code.

The door slid open, shut, secured itself behind her.

The Firelands colony never slept.

The colony was almost entirely underground, for protection against meteor strikes and radiation, for the advantage of insulating rock in maintaining an even temperature: they'd drawn heavily from Confederate technology to bore tunnels, to fabricate their air handling systems, they'd found isotopes greatly in demand for fuel, with reserve enough to supply Confederate ships for a century, at current rate of consumption.

They also had something else the Confederacy was willing to trade for.

The Confederacy was settled by Southrons abducted by aliens, abducted to form a primitive fighting force against which the aliens' technological equals would have no defense: the Confederates used the alien learning devices, absorbed, processed and understood catastrophically more than the aliens anticipated: the Confederates fought for their very lives, using alien technology against the aliens themselves, but owing to an incomplete familiarity, they found themselves obliged to the technique of the sledgehammer rather than the scalpel, and the alien civilization was wiped out completely, due in no small part to their infrastructure being turned against them.

The suicide golems that attacked their Colony were remnants of doomsday squads fabricated by the aliens, perhaps centuries before: a combination of alien biology and technologic enhancement, they proved anything but proof against the Sheriff's full-house .357.

Marnie knew all this.

Every schoolchild in the Firelands colony, both the spindly-tall Martians and their stronger, more robust Earth-grav children, knew the history of the Confederacy as thoroughly as they knew the history of their own Colony.

The Firelands colony was a source of fascination for the Confederacy, and a rich source of stories, of legends, of tales and yarns from that shining blue marble from which they all hailed.

Marnie wandered the corridors like a ghost in a maternity dress.

The sight of a pale eyed woman, visibly pregnant, with a brace of Smith & Wesson revolvers in a twin shoulder rig, was not at all unusual: Marnie was, after all, their Sheriff, even if she did end up being drafted as an Ambassador: she'd come home to them, and glad they were for it.

Marnie wandered the corridors, when she could not sleep; walking was good for her, she'd said, it tired her out so she could sleep, she said.

She didn't say that she looked here, and saw what was left of a colonist, a hole seared through his belly by the attackers; there, and she saw a mother and her children, sprawled, the mother's arm outstretched toward the airlock door twenty feet away, her other arm around her young, as if she died trying to get them to breathable atmosphere.

Marnie never consciously sought out the place where she stopped, but she always ended up there.

Her children, a boy and a girl, named for ancestor and ancestress, dead, their faces purple, mouths open as if screaming, or trying desperately to breathe.

Marnie remembered their eyes.

Wide, bloodshot, bulging.

She made herself look at the memory.

That was before they had the automatic shutoffs, the individual life support modules in every section of corridor, in every room.

Marnie caressed her maternal belly.

She looked at where she'd found her children, dead, and she felt the child within her move, and she whispered, "I failed them."

She swallowed -- swallowed hard -- her eyes went pale, her head lowered a little and the flesh drew tight over her cheekbones: her hands fisted, her nostrils flared, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, then forced herself to exhale slowly.

Exhale.

Do not shout.

Exhale.

Marnie turned, stepped into the lift, punched in the coordinates, waited.

The doors opened; she stepped out into the Chapel's generous lobby.

Marnie flowed toward the double doors, pushed them open.

A familiar figure stood, waiting.

"Rabbi."

"Sheriff."

"You were expecting me."

The rabbi smiled, looked at her belly, looked back up at her eyes.

"And how are the two of you tonight?"

"I need a sit-down and a drink."

The two walked over to an alcove, one with two chairs, recessed just deeply enough to afford the suggestion of privacy: a curtain could be drawn, if desired.

They were the only ones in the chapel; the curtain was not drawn.

"The dream again?" the Rabbi asked, his voice gentle.

He's young enough to be my son, Marnie thought.

He had to take over when his father was killed in the Attack.

She mentally set his youth aside: Abrahm had long ago shown his wisdom and his compassion, and Marnie recalled her Daddy telling her how his Mama's favorite police chaplain was a Rabbi, back East and years before she became Sheriff.

"Yes," she said quietly. "The dream."

The Rabbi nodded wisely, looked over top of his rimless glasses.

"That is a reflection of your responsibility," he said gently.

"I know that here" -- Marnie tapped her forehead with the tips of curved fingers -- "but here" -- she tapped her breastbone -- "I hear my own voice."

"What does your voice say?"

"That I failed," Marnie said bleakly. 

"Did you?" the Rabbi asked softly.

"Yes. No. Yes. I'm the Sheriff and I'm their mother and --"

"Listen to yourself."

The Rabbi's voice was soft, the voice of a friend who knew what it was to lose family.

"I am hearing the voice of someone who still grieves the loss of her children. Do you know what that tells me?"

Marnie looked at him, misery claiming her pale eyes.

"Sheriff, you have taken care of this colony as no one else could have. You have done everything humanly possible, and" -- he raised an interrupting finger as she gathered a breath to contradict him -- "Sheriff, you are but human, and humans can be in only one place at a time!"

Marnie sighed out her breath, nodded, then she looked at the Rabbi, startled.

Her hand went to her belly.

"The natives are restless, nu?" he smiled.

Marnie nodded.

"My Oma would make mint tea for such occasions," the Rabbi said quietly. 

Marnie nodded, rose awkwardly, and the Rabbi stood as well.

"Thank you, Rabbi," she said softly.

"Will I see you in Services?" he asked hopefully. "You still have the loveliest voice!"

Marnie chuckled a little, laid a gentle hand on her belly.

"I'll be there," she sighed. "Please forgive any hiccups in my singing."

 

A ghost in a maternity dress flowed silently down the fused-stone-walled corridor, paused to let the door to her quarters open, then entered, moccasins soundless on the bare, antiseptic floor.

Little John was still sound asleep: he twitched as Marnie came into the room, and she smiled to see a sleepy smile on his face, to hear a subdued giggle as he dreamed.

Marnie hung the double gunrig back in its alcove, secured the door, traded her hatchin' jacket for the warm flannel nightie.

One last stop for relief and a drink of water, then she carefully lifted the covers, slipped out of fur lined moccasins and into the marital bed: she moved slowly, gently, so as not to disturb her husband.

Dr. John Greenlees, M.D., chief physician and surgeon for the Firelands colony, murmured drowsily, "Yuvs you," and Marnie cuddled up against him as best she could with her belly and whispered, "Yuvs you" in reply.

Pale eyes closed slowly, her body relaxed by degrees, as it always did: had her husband been awake to see it, and had there been light to see by, Dr. Greenlees would have seen Marnie's quiet smile as she submerged her somnambulant soul in the dark lake of slumber.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 27 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A FATHER'S LESSON

Jacob Keller watched.

He'd never seen this woman before.

Jacob's pale eyes swung downhill, then uphill.

She appeared to be alone, she appeared to be well-off, judging by her attire, but she was a stranger.

Her sharp little heels were loud on the boardwalk as she skipped happily up to the pale eyed Sheriff, that lean waisted lawman with the iron grey mustache.

Jacob's eyes were not the only ones to watch as the woman ran up to the Sheriff, as she took his face firmly between gloved palms, as she looked adoringly into his pale eyes, as she pulled his face down to hers and put her lips to his and made her feelings more than obvious.

Sheriff Linn Keller later recorded the event in his Journal.

Well more than a century later, other pale eyes read his hand written words: an industrious descendant made it a personal mission to gather and catalog and cross-reference as many documents, vignettes, newspaper articles, photographs, tokens and mementoes of early Firelands history as possible.

A descendant of this industrious collector of information read her cross-referenced account, and remembered.

 

"Daddy?"

Marnie's face filled the screen: her skin glowed with health, her smile was gentle; Linn could see his daughter's hand rested unconsciously on her growing belly.

"Is everything okay, sweetheart?" Linn asked, leaning forward, concern in his eyes and reassurance in his voice.

"Daddy, it's Michael."

Marnie saw her Daddy's eyes go pale and she mentally kicked herself for her choice of words.

"Nothing's wrong," she said hastily, "but you need to see something. It's from a news broadcast and you know how they love to feature Michael, especially when he's riding that Fanghorn of his."

The screen shifted.

 

Jacob Keller watched as the woman drew back a little, her long, curled eyelashes sweeping the air, as she looked at the Sheriff, her mouth open, inviting, adoration in her eyes and lust in her heart.

Old Pale Eyes took a  half-step back: he removed his Stetson, held it correctly at arm's length at his side and executed a perfect half-bow.

"My Lady," he said, "forgive me, but I do not believe we have been properly introduced."

The woman looked like she'd been slapped.

Jacob saw the color rise in her cheeks: her arms stiffened, gloved hands closed into fists, she whirled and stomped off, heels louder than before on the warped, dusty boards of the boardwalk in front of the Sheriff's office.

Sheriff Linn Keller settled his Stetson on his head, thrust his bottom jaw out, frowned: Jacob saw his father blink twice as he considered, then shook his head.

 

Michael Keller had been guest speaker at a school assembly.

He was formally introduced from the stage; he stood beside the podium, rather than behind it, pulled the wireless microphone free of its chromed stand.

He looked around the auditorium at the young eyes regarding him; he looked closely at the front row.

"Friend," he said, thrusting a bladed hand at a skeptical looking boy about his age, "I need your help."

The student was surprised: he looked left, looked right, looked at Michael, lifted a thumb and leaned it against his breastbone.

"Me?"

"You're the man for the job," Michael said firmly. "Bring your chair up here to the stage ... now set it here and help me down."

Michael steadied himself with a student's hand; he stepped down onto the chair, then to the gym floor level.

"Thank you," he said, thrusting out his hand.  "Your name, sir?"

"Um, Billy," came the uncertain reply.

Michael turned, ran his hand around his assistant's shoulders:  "Folks, this is Billy, he's a friend of mine and we've known each other for quite a while now."

He turned, winked:  "Thank you," he said. "I had a heart replacement and spinal surgery, and if I'd just jump off that stage like I used to, I'd end up crying like a lost child!"

He turned to the auditorium full of students.  "Big hand for Billy here!"

Michael raised his hands, clapped carefully so as not to beat the wireless mic and cause too much noise over the speakers.

Michael spoke briefly: he said he was known as the Peacemaker, "and that's all well and good, but to tell the truth" -- he grinned, chuckled a little -- "I'm just naturally lazy!"

It was the right note.

Michael walked among them, instead of standing behind a podium and talking at them -- he walked among them and talked with them.

"I'm told I stopped two wars," he said, boot heels loud on the burnished hardwood floor.

"I'm told I saved more lives than I could count in a day's time."

Michael turned, looked people in the eye: he was speaking mostly to young people, to students his age.

"Show of hands," he called, "how much does a horse weigh?"

Several hands went up: Michael thrust a bladed hand at a half dozen in rapid succession, nodded at their shouted reply.

"Every answer so far is right," Michael declared. "When you say 'How much does a horse weigh' you're asking 'How long is a stick,' or 'How big is a rock.' "

He turned, pale eyes meeting the interested eyes of the student body.

"However big a horse is, or is not, it's heavy. I know what it is to have to bury a horse. We raised Appaloosas back home" -- he thrust out a hand, a holographic image appeared in front of the stage: an Appaloosa stallion, long mane brushed, spotty hide shining in the Colorado sunshine -- the stallion trotted noisily, incredibly lifelike, turned, came down the center aisle toward Michael.

Michael raised his hand to caress its nose; the image fizzed, disappeared.

"That was Apple," he said. "He's my buddy. 

"Figure your average saddlehorse is a half ton at least, bigger horses can crowd a ton. 

"Now I like horses."  He grinned, that quick, spontaneous, contagious grin that spread fast.

"I stopped two armies from killing a bunch of horses because, let's face it, I'm lazy. It takes a lot of work to bury a horse, and if you have two armies charging into one another, they're going to kill a lot of horses, and you can't just leave 'em to rot. Flies spread disease and it smells really baaaad."

Michael made a face like a Moorish idol: he bent at the waist as he did, and between his exaggerated expression, his body language, his voice, he got a good laugh.

Michael straightened.

"My sister," he said, "is a nurse, and you might've heard of her. She teaches. She taught me that prevention is way cheaper than treatment. Like I said, I'm lazy, and preventing a war saves an awful lot of work!"

He took a long breath, sighed loudly.

"I do wish I had a crystal ball," he admitted. "Maybe then I could have avoided the war that nearly killed me and my Fanghorn. That's why I had a heart transplant and that's why they had to work on my spine so many times, and I'm not done yet."

An Iris opened behind him; a familiar figure from the Inter-System broadcasts stepped out, silver injector in hand.

Michael tilted his head and Angela pressed the injector to the side of his neck: Michael held the mic close enough to hear the hiss of the injection.

Angela tilted her head, slipped the injector into a pocket, withdrew a rectangular scanner:  she held it close to Michael's left ear, ran it down his spine, then down his breastbone: she frowned at the screen, then nodded, looked around.

"I was right," she said. "He's ugly as ever."

Nurse, guest speaker and audience all laughed: Angela waved, stepped through the Iris: the black ellipse closed like an eye, and was gone.

"Let me leave you with this," Michael said, walking back up the center aisle, not quite to the front row: he turned, he looked left, he looked right, sweeping the auditorium slowly with his pale eyes.

"Prevention is cheaper and easier than treatment. Whether it's preventing a fire, whether it's preventing a war, whether it's taking care of yourself so  you don't have to have surgeries like I did" -- he paused -- "walk away from a situation if you can, and if you can't, then don't stop until the job is done!"

Michael turned, tossed the microphone to the startled man on the stage: he raised a hand, acknowledging the applause, bent his wrist and spoke quietly, stepped through an Iris, and was gone.

 

"It's coming up right now," Marnie said. 

Shelly settled beside her husband, watched.

Michael was coming out of a meeting in an impressively appointed, professional looking conference room.

A young woman came skipping up to him, took his face between her hands, put her lips on his and made her sentiments very obvious.

Very ... obvious.

Michael Keller, his Stetson correctly held at arm's length beside his trouser seam, gave a grave half-bow: he straightened and said formally, "Forgive me, my Lady, but I do not believe we have been formally introduced."

"Daddy," Marnie said, "I remember when Michael was reading Gammaw's account of Old Pale Eyes doing that very same thing."

Linn nodded, his arm around his wife's waist, holding her warm and close.

"I remember when you did that same thing," Marnie said, and Linn saw the mischief in her eyes as she said it.

Shelly's arm tightened possessively around her husband's waist.

"I seem to remember," she said quietly, "that Esther saw this exchange from her office window, above the main doors of the Silver Jewel."

Linn nodded, just a little.  

"I recall readin' her note to Bonnie McKenna, her dearest friend. She said she couldn't have been more pleased if her husband handed her a five pound brick of pure sliver."

"And I seem to recall seeing you responding in the same way to that hussy who threw a lip lock on you right in the middle of the Silver Jewel, Mister Keller!"

Linn turned, looked at his wife, smiled gently.

"Why would I want cheap jewelry," he said, "when I have the Crown Jewels at home?"

Shelly leaned her head closer and mock glared at her husband: "And don't you forget it, mister!"

"Do I remember," Marnie interjected innocently, "that was how Michael and Angela came to be?"

Linn looked at the screen, his eyes wide, then he looked at his wife and murmured, "Is this the right time for that Innocent Expression?"

Shelly laughed.

"Mister Keller," she smiled, "your Innocent Expression has not worked for well more than half a century, so don't even try it!"