SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THEIR BEGINNING

 

Fire Paramedic Shelly Keller stood at parade rest.

Her blue uniform trousers were creased knife-sharp, her uniform blouse was military pressed, her black Wellingtons, mirror polished: beside her, Chief Charles Fitzgerald, red-shirted and white-helmeted, his mustache waxed into a properly villainous handlebar, stood in the same posture.

Behind them, the red Kenworth pumper muttered quietly to itself, and beside it, with red-bib-fronted Irishmen flanking, their hand-polished Steam Masheen hissed quietly, smoke rising steadily from its blunt stack.

They stood in front of a firehouse on another planet, facing a triple rank of uniformed firefighters and new paramedics.

Fitz stepped forward, removed his ornate, old-fashioned, pressed-leather helmet, tucked it under his off arm.

“You’ve seen our machinery,” he declared, “and you’ve seen our methods.

“We involved every one of you. We’ve had every man Jack of you on fire runs, we’ve had you on the nob and in the structure, and every last one of you has faced the Dragon with us.”

The Chief’s expression held not the least trace of a smile.

“NOW HEAR THIS!” he roared, his face darkening with the effort.

“I WILL GO INTO A FIRE WITH ANY ONE OF YOU, ANY TIME, ANY WHERE!”

His voice echoed off the brick front of their firehouse.

Fitz turned, nodded.

Shelly dropped her arms, lifted her chin, paced forward, centered herself in front of the blue-uniformed ranks.

“WE’VE GIVEN YOU THE BEST WE COULD DO,” she declared, her voice carrying well on the morning air. “YOU RODE WITH US, YOU WORKED WITH US, YOU LEARNED WITH US. NOW IT’S YOUR TURN.”

Shelly executed a flawless left-face as Chief Fitzgerald executed a flawless right-face.

“PARAMEDIC KELLER!”

“SIR!”

“DO THESE PARAMEDICS PASS YOUR INSPECTION?”

Shelly Keller turned, paced forward, walked slowly across the front rank of blue shirted medics.

She looked into every set of eyes in the front rank, she paced back across, slower, her eyes searching the next two ranks, as if looking for someone.

She turned.

“CHIEF FITZGERALD!”

“PARAMEDIC KELLER!”

“YOU’RE DAMNED RIGHT THEY PASS MY INSPECTION!”

“CHIEF ARMBRUSTER!”

A man in a blue, bib front shirt, with a gold Maltese cross embroidered on the bib, stepped forward, his own white helmet under his arm.

“WE’VE DONE THE BEST WE CAN, CHIEF,” Fitz said, shaking his head sadly: “I REGRET TO INFORM THIS LOT WILL NEVER DO ANYTHING MORE NOBLE, MORE HONORABLE, ANY MORE DIFFICULT OR ANY MORE IMPORTANT, FOR THE REST OF THEIR MISERABLE LIVES!”

The two shook hands.

“Thank you, Chief,” Armbruster said quietly.

 

Four horses clattered down the street, hooves loud on pavement.

They rode in a diamond formation.

The center two, the Appaloosa stallions, rode abreast, and wore black saddle blankets with a gold, six point Sheriff’s star prominent.

The horse in the lead was well taller than those following: it was heavier boned, with a round, bony boss the size of a dinner plate between its bony-crested eyes, a natural ram that thrust forward like a shallow, osseous volcano.

Unlike the Appaloosas, it also had silky-fine, almost blond fur, shining-black mane and fetlocks, and fangs.

The lead horse looked all the larger, not only because it was the largest, but because its rider wasn’t.

Michael Keller wore his trademark black suit and a shining-green-silk necktie with a small, square, ruby stickpin, and a Stetson hat.

Two men in uniform rode side by side behind Michael, two men with six point stars on the flap of their left shirt pocket, two men with gunbelts and sidearms: like Michael, they each had a scabbarded rifle under their right leg.

Behind them, an apple-cheeked girl in a ruffled, feminine, riding skirt with a fashionable little hat and a quiet smile: she rode her Daddy’s shining-black racer as if she’d been born in the saddle.

Her scabbarded rifle was less conspicuous, owing to the drape of her skirt, and her sidearm was hidden about her person, as was her preference.

Fanghorn, Appaloosas and shining-black Morgan horse drew up before three men in the billed, pillbox caps of this planet’s constabulary – or perhaps it would be more correct to say two Sheriffs, and a set of twins, drew up and dismounted.

There were other dignitaries present, politicians, mostly.

These horses and riders were not entirely foreign to this world: thanks to the Inter-System, two pale-eyed uniformed men and the pale eyed-twins were recognized, if not actually known, as were their mounts: the canines coursing beside them, mountain Mastiffs with black Kevlar vests, were unique.

This world had no canids – neither wolf, coyote, dhole, hyena, nor mutt.

The sight of a pair of mountain Mastiffs, one flawlessly snowdrift-white, the other sinner’s-heart-black, was unique enough to merit the attention of the cloaked hover-cams.

Linn walked up to a man he knew, extended his hand.

“Chief.”

“Sheriff.”

“You’ve seen our methods,” Linn said quietly. “Bear in mind every jurisdiction is different. You’re welcome to pick and choose what we’ve shown you, keep what’s useful, scrap what’s not.”

Linn looked past his counterpart at the restless, well-dressed civilians impatient to claim their share of any publicity that might be available.

 

Victoria Keller turned her Daddy’s black racer, eyes wide.

She ran a thumb down the neck of her dress, caught a lanyard, pulled: she bit lightly on the chromed whistle, clapped her hands over her ears and blew, hard.

Her Daddy’s racer, of course, didn’t like this, and decided it was time to buck the kinks out of its back bone.

Victoria Keller, the eleven year old daughter of the pale eyed Sheriff, suddenly had more to worry about than getting her Daddy’s attention.

Michael Keller was still in the saddle.

Lightning snarled, spun, fangs bared: Michael had never seen Lightning’s eyes when her blood was up – he’d always been in the saddle when she lit up under him – but it was the first time Linn or Jacob, either one, had ever seen a Fanghorn with its lips peeled back, fangs shining, mouth open and its eyes burning scarlet red.

Behind Victoria and the bucking, jumping, sunfishing Morgan, was a young woman, bent over at the waist, her mouth open, staring at a little girl with a delighted grin atop a shining-black tornado.

“Racer, down,” Victoria said quietly.

“Lightning,” Michael said, an edge to his voice, “don’t you dare!”

Lightning growled deep in her chest, shook her head, reared, clearly not happy, but she did not attack the gelding.

“Good girl,” Michael soothed.  “Good girl.”

The Bear Killer ran up to the swaying girl, sniffed at her swollen belly, turned, barked – loud, sharp – Snowdrift came up on her other side as she sank to her knees, her arm going over the mountain Mastiff’s snowy-white shoulders.

If a girl was going to go into labor, it was perhaps the best place to do it.

A shining new squad snarled to life in the firehouse, the overhead door clattered open: Shelly stood and let a blue-uniformed tide flow around her, let them sprint for the patient.

She’d done her part.

It was time to let them do what they’d trained for.

 

Victoria stood, whispered to Racer, caressed his muzzle, bribed him with a peppermint.

Lightning nosed in, demanding, insistent:  Victoria laughed, stroked the Fanghorn’s massive jaw, unwrapped another few peppermints.

Michael whistled, two quick notes, balled up a wild rag, tossed it:  Victoria caught it neatly, wiped the horse slobber off her hand, balled it up and tossed it back.

Linn did not miss that Michael did not turn in his saddle: he took the slobbery kerchief by the corners, gave it a snap, reached behind him to tuck the tag ends under the saddle-skirt, where it could dry in sunshine and horse-heat.

Linn was circulating easily among the politicians, shaking hands, speaking quietly: Jacob mounted, disliking this pressing of the flesh, disliking the politics that were part and parcel of every public service position.

He much preferred his much smaller demesne, the personal, I-have-known-you-for-years face-to-face that was the Martian political climate.

Jacob’s stallion was restless.

Jacob’s stallion was also being regarded solemnly by a neighborhood child with big eyes and a hopeful expression.

Jacob leaned over, forearm across the saddlehorn:  he looked very directly at the child, winked.

The hover-cam caught the lean, the wink, the dismount.

Jacob murmured to Apple-horse, who followed him over to the blinking, watchful child.

Jacob went to one knee, to get to the boy’s eye level, spoke quietly to him.

The hover-cam did not catch what was said, but there was no mistaking the quick, hopeful nod, the wide-eyed regard of the genuine Mountain Appaloosa hanging his head over Jacob’s shoulder.

Jacob took the lad under the arms, stood: he hoist the little boy quickly, unexpectedly, easily, dunked him in the saddle.

There was no mistaking the grin on Jacob’s face.

He knew what it was to be a little boy, he well remembered what it was to have a pale eyed lawman take him around the waist and dunk him into the still-warm saddle, he remembered what it was to be a child, suddenly surveying the world from the astonishing, lofty height of a lawman’s horse!

Jacob sauntered casually through the gathering crowd – local folk, attracted by the sight of an unfamiliar, shiny, boxy machine that rumbled and moved on its own, the sight of uniformed personnel, gathered for a purpose: Jacob walked among them, Apple-horse following closely.

Jacob stopped, spoke quietly: he removed his Stetson, addressed a matronly woman with a bashful little girl clinging shyly to her skirts, peeking around at the big horsie and the little boy riding it: Jacob’s nose caught the scent of …

Peanuts?

Hot, roasted peanuts?

An enterprising individual had a handcart set up, which almost everyone ignored, until Jacob saw Michael and Lightning walk slowly, ponderously, over to it, the crowd parting for their passage.

Michael threw a leg over the saddlehorn, dropped, landed flat-footed, crouched to take up the shock of landing:  he stepped up to the vendor, traded coin for a bag of hot roasted peanuts.

Lightning shoved her nose against his arm, sniffed at the unfamiliar scent.

Michael poured out a handful, held it out.

The Fanghorn, this fierce killer of bulls and eater of hot, bloody flesh, delicately lipped hot, roasted peanuts from an eleven year old boy’s palm, crunched them with apparent relish.

The vendor hadn’t sold three bags since he’d set up when the crowd first started to gather.

He sold out in fifteen minutes.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ooops ...

doubled on that one ...

... my American Indian name is Big Chief Hoof in Mouth ...

... my apologies ....

Edited September 1 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A CAN OF BEANS

 

William Linn frowned, slipped the honed edge of his genuine Barlow knife under the paper label’s overlap.

Carefully, slowly, he sliced through the glue holding the paper wrap around the empty can of beans.

The can was carefully washed out, stacked with the others, dried in the sun: they’d be kept for a month, and if they weren’t used for some purpose, then – and only then – would they be consigned to the trash pile.

William Linn felt the blade’s edge slip through the last of the glue –

The label fell free –

Young fingers caught the falling paper, set it carefully aside: he folded the Barlow, thumbed it back into a vest pocket, laid the label face down on a carefully-smoothed plank.

The plank used to be sawmill cut, and anything but smooth.

William Linn scavenged a brick from somewhere and, with fine sand and much labor, polished the plank down until about three feet of it was dead smooth.

He’d wiped it with a wet rag to get the dust off, he’d fine sanded it and wiped it again, he’d taken a brush to it, and now …

Now, he was ready.

He took a whittled pencil, paused before making the first mark.

He was smiling inside.

He felt the smile hiding behind his young face.

He was smiling because he had the mental picture of what he wanted to draw.

William Linn started with a foreleg.

 

Jacob Keller rode up to his fine stone house, looked around.

He looked out across the fence, saw Boocaffie looking at him, heard the genuine Texas longhorn’s greeting.

Boocaffie is kind of like The Bear Killer, he thought.

Seems like there’s always been at least one.

Jacob’s eyes tightened a little at the corners as he remembered his young son, buck naked and running like a streak, slipping between the fence boards like he was oiled, running through the pasture, laughing, running up to Boocaffie and stopping, surprised.

Jacob remembered riding out into the pasture in pursuit of his laughing little boy, remembered how little William Linn stood there, staring at this genuine Texas longhorn, while the longhorn placidly contemplated this hairless little pale eyed human.

Jacob came up behind his son, squatted, ran his arm around his little boy’s ribs, pointed at Boocaffie.

“Who is that?” Jacob whispered, and his young son turned wide and innocent eyes toward his Pa and blurted, “Beeg!”

Jacob remembered the next day, at church, when his young son looked waaaaay up at Marshal Jackson Cooper, a man who stood well more than a hand taller than the six foot two Sherif Jacob Keller:  Jacob hunkered beside his son, indicated the Marshal and said “Who is that?” and little William Linn blinked and declared, “Beeg!”

Jacob closed his eyes and smiled a little, and considered the truth of his father’s observation that men have long memories, and they fondly remember their young when they were very young.

Jacob walked his Apple-horse to the barn, swung down.

His son was busy with something over under a window.

Jacob unsaddled Apple-horse, hung up saddle and saddleblanket, brushed out his stallion, elaborately ignoring his son: the boy was obviously busy with something, and Jacob had no wish to interrupt.

He’d seen too many fathers who would seek to exert their authority by immediately tasking their son with something, anything: Jacob was determined not to be like that.

His Pa did that on occasion, until Jacob asked him about it, and his Pa realized what he was doing, and stopped it.

Jacob took pains to not start.

Jacob was, however, curious, and came over to see what had so absorbed his son.

 

Marnie Keller, in a tailored blue suit dress and heels, sat beside her Gammaw, who also wore a tailored blue suit dress and heels: two women studied what had been a label from a can of beans.

“This was in one of the Journals,” Willamina said quietly. “It was folded and I had to have a conservator help me unfold it to keep the paper from breaking.”

Marnie studied the image, her eyes widening, and Willamina smiled as she heard Marnie’s sharp intake of breath.

“Gammaw,” she whispered, “that looks like –”

“Yes it does, doesn’t it?” Willamina smiled.

Two pale eyed Keller women looked at a hand drawn depiction of an Appaloosa in mid-buck, mane floating, hooves in midair, back legs out-thrust at a high angle: in the saddle, a man with familiar features, Stetson in hand: the artist captured the expression, the quiet delight on the horseman’s face.

Both women knew what it was to buck out a good saddlehorse on a frosty morning, and both women knew their faces wore this same expression when they did, and both women looked up and across the room at two framed, enlarged photographs.

One was the pale eyed Sheriff Linn Keller, his Appaloosa stallion rearing, the other was his son Jacob, on another Appaloosa, head down and hind hooves kicked up and out.

Both photographs looked enough like the drawing to be cause and effect.

Two pale eyed women looked at one another and smiled.

“I remember you drew something much like this for me,” Willamina murmured.  “I have it framed, and hung in my bedroom.”

Marnie smiled, gripped her Gammaw’s hand quickly, lightly, then looked again at the preserved drawing.

“Do we know who drew this, Gammaw?” she asked in the quiet, gentle voice Willamina loved to hear.

“No, I’m sorry, we don’t,” she admitted. “It was in the back of one of Jacob’s Journals, but he does not make any mention of it.”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND THE PARSON'S WIFE LAUGHED

Mrs. Parson opened the kitchen door and smiled.

"Why, Jacob!" she exclaimed, for all the world like a delighted grandmother, "do come in!"

Jacob Keller came in, grinning, his face red, little short of laughing: he handed the Parson's wife a cloth wrapped package, wet his lips, looked away, looked back, then he hugged the stout, motherly woman and laughed quietly as he did.

Mrs. Parson set the package on the counter and laughed with him, not knowing what tickled the lean deputy's funny bone, but delighted to see him laugh.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry," Jacob said, turning his head: his face was little short of scarlet -- he looked back, thrust his chin at the package on the counter.

"They were demonstratin' how coffee was roasted and ground, over at the Mercantile," he said, "and I spoke for two pound. Fresh roasted and fresh ground, it doesn't get much better!"

"Something else happened, didn't it?" Mrs. Parson smiled.

"Yes, ma'am, it did," Jacob agreed: there was a light tap at the door, and this time Jacob answered it: Mrs. Parson heard quiet conversation, then Jacob came back inside, a box balanced on the fingertips of one hand, which he also handed to Reverend Burnett's wife.

"Fresh from the bakery," he said. "I figured you and the Parson could use a good dessert."

"Why, thank you, Jacob."

Mrs. Parson tilted her head to the side, regarded the young man with bright and shining eyes.

"Now what has you all smiles today?"

 

Jacob Keller had he day off.

He had a few errands to run, not many; uncharacteristic for him, he drove, rather than rode.

He drove a circuitous route through town, as he wished to stop and see two or three things, and on a residential street, right where a driveway's concrete met the rolled blacktop, a little boy -- maybe three years old -- was happily pedaling a shiny-new, green tricycle with yellow hubs, his maybe-one-year-older sister industriously following on roller blades.

Jacob slowed down -- he hadn't been going anywhere near fast anyway -- a young mother came hustling out, chivvied the two back into the driveway, gave Jacob an apologetic smile.

Jacob stopped, grinned:  "That," he said, "looks like a genuine John Deere tricycle!"

"It is," the mother smiled. "His grandfather just gave it to him."

Jacob winked at the happy little boy, returned the lad's wave.

 

Jacob stood in the parsonage kitchen, watched as the Parson's wife set the pie on the counter.

"And then I told that young mother that when I was his age, I would have committed INSECTICIDE to have a tricycle that fine!"

Mrs. Parson clapped her hands and laughed, delighted: she gave Jacob a motherly look and said, "I can just see that happening!"

Jacob looked to the door.

"I must be going," he said, "but thank you is only words. Pie and coffee say it better."

Mrs. Parson watched Jacob's tall, lean waisted form retreat through her kitchen door, heard his boots descend the three steps:  she looked at the fragrant bundle of fresh ground coffee, the still-warm pie from the bakery, and smiled, then she looked at the door.

" 'I would have committed insecticide,' she murmured, and then laughed, and sighed.

"Jacob," she said softly, "you sound just like your father!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JUST CUT THE CAKE

 

Pig Iron shook his head and paced left, then paced right, his herd behind him.

Clear on the far end of the pasture, the Fanghorn stood with her neck stuck out, her eyes closed with pleasure as the Sheriff brushed her down, as he lifted one hoof, then the other, running his hand down her flank, then coming back up and nodding to Michael.

Michael unwrapped three peppermints, held them out: Lightning’s lips just grazed his palm as she struck like a viper, crunching happily between flat rear teeth.

She’d let Linn take a look in her mouth – at least, she’d let him look, the only time he tried – Linn saw teeth both sharp and carnivorous, and flat herbivorous.

He’d rubbed her jaw, he’d patted her shoulder, he’d told her, “You, darlin’, are a four wheel drive contradiction,” to which Lightning gave a drowsy, contented, almost birdlike, chirp.

“Do you reckon she’ll be all right out here?” Linn asked quietly.

“I reckon she will, sir,” Michael replied confidently. “Pig Iron has the mares at the far end, and I don’t reckon she’ll go lookin’ for trouble. She never has, anyway.”

Linn nodded.

“Well, come on inside, your Mama will have supper waitin’ on us.”

Michael’s grin was wide and genuine as he replied, “Yes, sir!”

 

Victoria and Shelly had the table set, potatoes mashed, biscuits slid off the cookie sheet and onto the platter: all was ready when Linn and Michael came inside.

The two came in red-faced and red-handed from washing up in freshly pumped, good cold wellwater: they parked their Stetsons, hooked off their boots, came to the table.

Victoria looked very pleased with something.

Michael looked at her, raised an eyebrow.

Victoria nodded, ever so slightly, and she saw Michael’s eyes tighten at the corners.

Linn missed this exchange.

He was too busy hugging his wife, whispering his thanks into her hair for going to that trouble for “just us.”

They were most of the way through a slow cooked, falling-apart-tender pot roast, taters and gravy, garden picked green beans and sweet corn, when Shelly broached the subject of a graduation party.

Linn looked at her, puzzled, as he ran a pat of butter up a steaming-hot ear of corn, turned it a little, ran the butter down.

Shelly looked at Victoria, who brought he hands off the table and into her lap, the way she did when she was trying to Look Very Proper and Ladylike.

Linn knew this generally preceded something important.

Linn blinked, looked at his wife, raised an eyebrow and set both his butter knife and the ear of sweet corn, down on his plate.

“Daddy,” Victoria said carefully, “Michael and I have enough credits that we are listed as having been graduated from high school.”

Linn’s grin was immediate and genuine.

“There is cake and ice cream to celebrate,” Shelly said quietly.

Linn looked down the table at Michael, who looked a little less than celebratory.

Linn nodded to his son, who frowned and ran his bottom jaw out part way before looking at Victoria and then at his father.

“Sir,” he said, “I turned down a promotion today.”

 

Michael Keller removed his Stetson as he crossed the threshold, tucked it correctly under his off arm.

“You wished to see me, sir,” he said formally as the Ambassador came around his desk, advanced with his hand extended.

They shook.

“Michael,” the Ambassador said, his voice serious, “I have been approached by members of the Confederate Council. It seems your name has come up on a list of potential candidates for upcoming negotiations.”

Michael nodded, his face carefully neutral.

“It seems that your generosity in forgiving the man who nearly killed you, your leadership in personally demonstrating the effectiveness of several experimental medical procedures, your tenacity in riding in between men determined to war with one another and bringing them to negotiation instead of bloodshed, augurs well for your future as a negotiator.”

Michael Keller listened to the man, he considered carefully, he looked back up at the Ambassador and said quietly, “Sir, this is an important decision. My father told me that something important … a man should sleep on such a decision. I’d like to do that.”

Michael and the Ambassador shook hands again; Michael turned and walked thoughtfully out of the Ambassador’s fine office, settled his Stetson on his head as he crossed the threshold.

 

“Sir, I slept on it,” Michael said.

“And?”

“And I went back and looked the man in the eye.”

Linn nodded, slowly, as he did when he was listening carefully.

“Sir, I told him I’m too young. I told him that all I’d done was… I told him I’d been lucky, sir, and luck doesn’t make a good negotiator.  I told him I was not experienced enough. I’d have to be a man long enough to learn something, and I’m not there yet.”

Linn nodded carefully, his bottom jaw sliding out as he considered.

“Michael,” he said in his deep, reassuring Daddy-voice, “I believe that was a mature decision that speaks well of your ability to make a mature choice.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Folks will look at the young and run their mouth,” Linn said, and Michael heard an edge to his father’s voice: “I recall the first barfight I went on as a green deputy. Mama warned me and Uncle Will warned me that a new cop is always tried, and a new young cop will definitely be tried, and I had to wade into the hornet’s nest and knock heads.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You chose wisely and well.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Linn looked at Victoria.

“Darlin’, has anyone tried to promote you?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Victoria said innocently, “but he was improper, so I decked him.”

Linn looked sharply at Shelly.

“Story at eleven,” she murmured. “Cut the cake.”

Linn looked at his wife, looked at his youngest daughter.

Angela batted her long-lashed eyes, looking more like a proper young lady than he honestly wanted to admit.

Improper?

Improper with MY LITTLE GIRL?

“Darlin’,” Linn said slowly, “is there someone I should kill?”

“No, Daddy. I took care of it.”

“Are you sure? I’ve got fifty acres, a backhoe and a shotgun!”

“Daddy,” Victoria said patiently, “I broke the arch of his foot and dislocated his knee, and then I called the constabulary and acted all weak and helpless when they got there.”

“What did you do,” Linn asked slowly, “before they got there?”

“I knelt on his shoulder blades and screwed the muzzle of my Walther into his ear and invited him to just try and get up!”

Linn looked at Shelly, looked back at Victoria.

“I’ll testify against him day after tomorrow, Daddy.” 

Victoria looked at her Daddy with big and innocent eyes.

Linn leaned back, looking less like a father and more like a deer in the headlights.

“Linn,” Shelly sighed, “just cut the cake!“

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

COME, THOU FOUNT OF EVERY BLESSING

 

It promised to be a fine sermon.

Parson Belden stood behind the podium, fire in his eyes and thunder upon his brow, he brought his palm down hard beside the Book and declared in an orator’s declaration, “THE LORD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS, HIS WONDERS TO PERFORM!”

He spoke these words loudly, powerfully, which instantly seized the attention of everyone in the Sunday service.

There in the front row, a pale eyed Sheriff looked up at the choir, his expression one of dread: he locked eyes with the cool, demure Sarah Lynne McKenna, who noted that not only did Jacob’s face start darkening, his ears turning a remarkable shade of scarlet, but his lovely wife Annette blushed as well, dropping her eyes and raising a kerchief to her nose, as if to try and hide behind it.

“WHAT WE SEE AS THE UNPLANNED, OR THE MISTAKEN, THE ALMIGHTY USES AS A TOOL IN HIS HANDS!”          

The good Parson punctuated his sentence with a aggressive thrust of a teaching-finger, and Sarah Lynne McKenna was grateful that she was not the one wishing her pew would open up and swallow her.

 

Sheriff Jacob Keller was already ridden off, headed for his office to relive the night deputy, to receive his report, to sort through any early communications that might’ve come in.

Annette and the maid were coordinating their plans for the day.

Anette stopped and frowned, looked around, then went into the next room: the hired girl’s eyes widened heard Annette’s hasty step on the stone stairs.

The maid ran for the front door, pulled it open, ran out onto the broad front porch, brought her cupped hand over her mouth, eyes wide with distress.

Boocaffie was happily trotting down their road, a laughing little boy astride the big Texas longhorn.

A laughing little six year old, fully dressed, at least in his own mind.

Young William Linn wore his Stetson and his boots.

He was dressed.

 

“IT MAY BE THAT WHAT SEEMS A CALAMITY IS ACTUALLY THE WILL OF THE ALMIGHTY!” the Parson declared, then he gripped the edges of his pulpit, looked around, his expression serious.

“Unfortunately,” he added, “we mere mortals are not given privy to His will, and so, too often, we don’t realize that what we are witnessing, is proof yet again that all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord!”

 

Boocaffie’s gait was not the smoothest, but it wasn’t terribly bad, and the young have a marvelous resilience when they are having fun, especially when they have a deliciously wicked feeling that they’re pulling one over on ol’ Maw.

Boocaffie picked up speed on the down grade, slowed when he came out on the road, then turned, looked long to the left, looked long to the right.

“Haw,” young William Linn called, and Boocaffie obediently swung to port.

“Yup,” his young passenger commanded, and Boocaffie yup’d.

The Sheriff headed for town and his young son decided he’d go too.

 

“Misfortune can strike anytime and anywhere, and often what appears to be a misfortune is just that,” the Parson continued.  “I do not believe the Almighty allows the Devil to cause us grief, but I believe most firmly that He is not at all bashful about using such moments to teach something.”

The Parson paused again, looking around.

“You may remember three days ago, when a team shied at something and ran a-gallop up our main street, panicked and without a hand on the reins to stop them.”

The Parson saw heads nod, faces change as they remembered the moment when a runaway team shied, reared, panicked, lunged ahead: frightened by the empty wagon clattering behind them, they ran all the harder, the driver yelling and running futilely after the rapidly departing vehicle.

“In such moments, I like to imagine a beneficent Creator, reaching down and moving things and people like checkers on a board.”

 

A naked little boy looked at the onrushing team, the wagon swinging and bouncing behind it, clearly out of control.

Young William Linn had a very definite sense of propriety.

It was not proper to have a runaway team in his Pa’s town.

“BOOCAFFIE!” he yelled, leaning forward and planting his palms flat on the big Longhorn’s neck.  “GIT ‘EM!”

A Texas longhorn stuck his neck out and bawled, and it was not the contented bawl of a grazing bovine.

A Texas longhorn shook powder horns that swept more than a man’s height in width, leaned forward into a fast trot, and then began to gallop.

A horseman came in from somewhere, whistling:  William Linn knew his Pa’s whistle, and he heard The Bear Killer’s invitation to a young war as the mountain Mastiff came streaking up beside, pacing the Longhorn and singing death and bloody destruction.

 

“It has been said,” the Parson continued, quieter now, “that horses are stupid creatures, and often they are.  A horse will run back into a burning barn, a mule will not, which is why I ride a mule.”

“You got a good price on that mule, Preacher,” a voice called from the back, and the Irish Brigade leaned toward one another, elbows in each other’s ribs, laughing quietly:  the Parson raised a palm, grinned.

“Yes I did!” he declared happily, “and I am most grateful for the bargain!”

He decided not to look sidelong at the choir, for it was Sarah McKenna’s generosity that got him that excellent riding mule.

“It is rather out of the ordinary,” the Parson declared, “to have a Texas longhorn at a full, go-to-war gallop, with a black Bear Killer singing beside him, and a Sheriff waving his lariat and whistling on the other,” the Parson said.  “It is even less usual for the Longhorn to have a rider, and I shall not discuss the state of undress displayed by the Longhorn’s passenger.”

The Parson looked pointedly at the grinning young Michael Keller, sitting between his furiously blushing parents.

“I shall say instead that it is the occasional purview of the innocent young to appear thusly, without malice and without any lascivious intent. As a matter of fact, I cannot say the rider in question was actually naked, for he wore his boots and his hat for the occasion.”

At this confidently voiced declaration, the Irish Brigade gave up all sense of propriety and surrendered themselves to unbridled laughter: they’d heard this tale from several sources, but this is the first time they received an eyewitness account from a man who actually saw it occur.

“It was apparently and very evidently the will of the Almighty that the aforementioned bullrider attire himself thusly; it was the will and pleasure of the Creator to direct the hearts of this pair, uniting them in mischief, in adventure, and in necessary purpose.

“Now I’d mentioned how horses can sometimes be rather stupid.”

The Parson looked around; he knew he had everyone’s attention, and he saw that nobody was sleeping through this sermon!

“I was most pleased to be witness to the dramatic conclusion of this event, when the stampeding wagon was shaking itself loose coming up the street, when a Texas longhorn, a war dog and a whistling, yelling lawman came down the street, and when this runaway team decided that it would be prime and utter foolishness to argue the right-of-way with a pair of horns that could sweep a span longer than the Sheriff is tall, and he a tall man indeed!”

The Parson was grinning, the Irish Brigade was laughing, heads were nodding and women were trying hard not to share in the general merriment: the Parson held up his palms and declared, “I conclude with this lesson: We did not expect a child to run from the house in a state of undress.

This, after the fact, appears to be the will of God.

We did not expect a Texas longhorn to charge down the street – again, something not planned, but quite obviously done for our benefit.

We absolutely did not expect a runway team to gallop up the street, out of control, fit to run over anyone or anything, to great and devastating effect.

“The runaway was not the will of God, but charitably overlooking a child’s undress, and his youthful piloting of a charging bull,  I believe, reflects a lesson on the will of God, and how He uses the unexpected, to our benefit.”

The Parson closed his worn, soft-from-much-use Scripture, looked at Bonnie at the piano.

“Mrs. Rosenthal, if you please.”

Bonnie McKenna Rosenthal lifted her hands, fingers delicate on the keys.

“Let us now sing ‘Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.’ “

 

All agreed, if it wasn’t the Parson’s best sermon, it was certainly one of the more entertaining.

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A MAN WITH NO FACE

There is a dark, oily, silent river that curls along dark rock, a river that comes from darkness and returns to darkness.

The river separates the Land of the Living from the Land of the Dead.

A ferryman, old, ancient, stands in the rear of an equally ancient boat, big enough to convey one, maybe two people, no more.

A little girl in a pretty red-and-white frock skipped along the dark shore, the red swallowtail ribbon on her white-straw hat bouncing as she did.

She stopped, smiled at the ferryman.

They were old friends.

Long years and several lifetimes before, the child came to him, misshapen, ugly, her clothes torn, filthy, her hat broken, the brim torn loose and hanging down on one side.

Early in what some knew as the history of a place called Firelands, a little girl was beaten and hurt so badly that those who wished to prevent the Good in her soul from healing, from blossoming, surged up from the infernal dark and tried to seize her soul: eager claws slashed into her, tore part of her soul free, dropped cackling and screaming with delight with their prize, not realizing until they'd returned to the hot, red sands of Hell that they had not gotten her entire soul.

They only got half of it.

The girl's body healed, thanks to the love of a woman who knew what it was to be hurt, thanks to the protective overwatch of strong and protective men -- one of whom had a mustache the shade of hammered iron, a man with eyes like the frozen heart of a mountain glacier.

The child grew and was not yet a woman when she determined to recover the other half of her soul.

She was guided to a passage by a Wise Women, stripped of all she had, sent through a hole in the granite cliff's face wearing a simple shift.

Of all she'd sought to bring with her -- pistol, blades, tools, rope -- all she had left was the simple woven garment.

That, and her intelligence, and a grim determination to be whole again, free of the nightmares of black sands and red fires in the low-ceilinged distance, free of nights and waking moments filled with the memory of dry and leathery creatures with claws and batlike wings and grinning, thirsty fangs that delighted in the taste of a child's blood.

The little girl in the pretty frock and the shining-white straw hat, smiled at the Ferryman, and she felt his return smile.

She'd never seen his face.

He kept his face hidden.

He masked his hands with long, belled sleeves, his face with a deep, concealing hood: even his unseen feet were draped beneath the long hem of his simple, waist-tied robe.

The whisper, again.

I did not expect to see you again.

The child smiled, a bright, delighted smile.

"I'm not staying," she said.

You're on the wrong side, she heard his mind-whisper.

The Land of the Living is on the other side of the River.

"I'm in the right place," she said confidently. 

You are not afraid of ... them?

The pretty little girl smiled, then laughed.

"They have no power over me."

Something desiccated and bony flowed like a mummified, oversized bat, flowed over a rock the size of a horse, opened dried jaws to expose teeth that hadn't tasted the living sweetness of a child's blood in a very long time.

The pretty little girl turned.

The Ferryman saw the man-sized bat-creature spread its wings, saw it look at the child, heard its scream of utter terror, saw it fall back, scramble over onto its belly and flop awkwardly through the hot sand, flailing in blind panic until it could get airborne.

The child turned back to look at the Ferryman.

"You were always kind to me," she said softly, blinking, and the Ferryman was struck by her remarkable eyes, her pale eyes, and he saw gentleness and kindness as she looked upon him.

"I've never seen your face," she said.

I have no face.

"I rather fancy that you do," she said, her voice changing: she was growing as he watched; her child's frock lengthened, her body reshaped, a beautiful young woman with pale eyes and auburn hair smiled at him, her hands properly folded in her apron.

Your blood still lives.

"It does," she smiled. 

The Ferryman saw more pale eyed women: he saw them as children, happy and laughing, children in frocks and in dresses, women in jeans and flannel shirts, women in skirts of a shocking brevity, women in garments that overlaid the flesh and left nothing to the imagination.

Many women, all with pale eyes.

Behind them, boys, men: some wore Stetsons -- many did -- there were those with pressed leather helmets and villainously-curled handlebar mustaches.

Some of the men, and several of the women, wore hard, rounded helmets, but one element was common to each of these descendants of this one, pretty, little girl.

All of them -- girls and women, boys and men -- 

Each and every one of them regarded the Ferryman with pale eyes.

Then they were all gone.

The pretty little girl stepped fearlessly from the shoreline onto the boat; she was quick, she was light, intentionally landing her shining-black slipper in the center of the seat.

This startled the Ferryman.

He usually ferried the souls of the dead.

Usually a soul came onto his boat with all the weight of a dried leaf, or of a wisp of fog: the boat rocked under this living child, settled deeper in the dark waters.

For the first time in recorded history, a living creature stood with him in his boat.

"I live," she declared.

Dark and batlike creatures swarmed in the distance, wailing: the pretty little girl smiled, turned.

"We can start it here," she smiled, her amplified voice echoing throughout the glowing dark. "Or would you prefer to wait for Har-Meggido?"

Dried and evil legions regarded her with glowing red eyes, muttered their threats; she felt as much as heard their hellish promises.

A child's laughter rippled across the dark waters.

A boat was poled by an old ferryman's skilled hands, out into the dark, oily waters, away from the infernal shores, and back toward the Land of the Living.

When they reached a shore that smelled of green growing things, a shore lighted by sun and scented with flowers, the child turned, extended her hand: the Ferryman poled the boat hard up against the stone quay.

The child reached into the old man's sleeve, gripped the hand that had long hidden itself from view.

She looked with pale eyes into the depths of the old man's hood and saw only the shadow of What had Been.

"You were a friend, when I had no other," she said quietly. "God's blessing upon you."

His hand closed about the coin she'd placed in his palm.

The coin was gold.

On one side was stamped a rose, and on the other, the superimposed Seal of Solomon, and the Christian Cross.

"No creature of evil can abide this insignia's touch," the child said softly.

She gave his hand one last squeeze, then stepped up onto the stone quay, looked back.

An old man in a robe gripped his pole, held his craft against the quay, waited for his next fare.

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IT’S UGLY ONLY WHEN YOU LOOK AT IT

Angela Keller collapsed on her Daddy’s couch.

She wore a rich, ruffled, red Flamenco dress and a pair of dancing heels: her hair was carefully done up, her makeup was exquisite, and she’d just performed, for the first time in public, doing something she’d wanted to try since she was a very little girl.

She’d danced in front of an audience.

Angela swung her legs up, stretched out: her Daddy had the couch special made, it was extra long so he could sleep on it if need be, it was reinforced so he could sit on it with all his family, and as she laid down, exhaustion claimed her: she managed to get a pillow pulled under her head, she smiled a little, and she fell asleep.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller saw the steel plate swing before he heard the bullet hit.

Steel plates were satisfying, though no indicator of precision.

Unless, of course, the plate was small, and at a significant distance, and hitting a two inch diameter plate at two hundred yards was, in his book, not bad at all.

He had a good solid rest, he had sandbags under the fore end and under the toe of the stock, he had his elbows down on the shooting bench, and he felt the grin growing under his face.

He hadn’t let it out to where anyone could see it.

Not yet.

He took a long breath, let most of it out, set the cross hairs right where he wanted to hit, squeezed the trigger.

The rifle had a carbon fiber stock, it was glass bedded, it had a good high grade scope on it, the length of pull and cheek rise were both adjustable, and he and Paul Barrents took turns adjusting it until it was the ideal fit for them both.

Paul was taller than his late father – he looked the Sheriff in the eye – though both men admitted Paul was the more muscled, and Linn made no secret of having been bested by his segundo in hand-to-hand training more times than one.

Many more times, as a matter of fact.

Paul sat beside the Sheriff, one eye to the spotting scope.

“Do that one more time,” he said quietly, “and the beer’s on me.”

“Shut up or I’ll smack you with my hat.”

The two lifelong friends looked at one another and laughed, a little: Paul did not drink, and it was Paul who’d smacked his boss over the head with a hat when Linn whipped a groaner of a joke on the rangemaster, back during qualification in Police Basic, back when the rangemaster turned to Paul and said “Smack him,” and Paul did … with his hat.

Linn settled himself behind the scope once more, sighed out his breath, tightened up on the trigger.

The two inch hardened-steel disc flew back again on its two supporting chains, swung briskly.

“Think that’ll do you for a cruiser rifle?” Barrents asked quietly.

Linn looked into the locked-back bolt, looked at Barrents.

“It’s time we replaced those pantywaist Mickey Mouse guns with these.”

“I’ll place the order.”

 

Angela sighed a little as a blanket settled slowly, carefully over her: she felt soft, folded quilting weight over her feet first, then up her legs; she felt it settle over her shoulders, part of her sleeping mind felt her Daddy’s careful, familiar, gentle hands tucking the quilt in behind her, draping it over her.

Sheriff Linn Keller stood, stepped back, ran his arm around his wife’s waist, pulled her closer.

They both looked at their sleeping daughter.

Linn turned his head, nuzzled into his wife’s hair to bring his lips close to her ear.

“Let her rest,” he whispered. “I’ll get something from the Jewel to bring home.”

Shelly turned her head, and Linn bent his head to listened to his wife’s whispered reply.

“I already did,” he heard, and he smiled when he did: “I’m having it delivered.”
Linn’s arm gave her the barest squeeze, enough to let her know he approved: husband and wife stood, watched their daughter sleep, then turned and walked sock-foot and silent, into the kitchen.

“Is that a new rifle on your desk?” Shelly asked as she poured coffee for them both.

“It is,” Linn said. “That one’s mine. We’re replacing all the Mickey Mouse carbines in the Fleet.”

“That,” Shelly said quietly as she handed her husband a carton of milk, “is one of the ugliest rifles I’ve ever seen!”

Linn smiled as he drizzled a thin stream into his mug, handed the carton back.

"Once you shoot it, darlin', it's beautiful," he said quietly, then smiled a little and looked at his wife with that gentle expression she only saw here, under his own roof, at his own table, and only with his family.

“It’s only ugly,” he chuckled from behind his steaming-full mug, “if you look at it!”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TWO MEN AND A BENCH

Two older men sat on a bench facing the grade school playground.

Neither one spoke for the better part of seven minutes.

“You know,” the Sheriff finally said in a quiet, thoughtful voice, “if you’d set parabolic receivers around that playground, you could capture enough radiant energy to power a small city.”

The other man nodded thoughtfully.

“You’re right.”

Silence, again.

“You’re remembering your daughter.”

Again, a thoughtful nod.

“I remember her.”

“I buried her.”

“I remember that too.”

Two men sat in the sunshine, watched laughing, apple-cheeked children running, yelling, laughing: inflated balls bounced off pavement, sailed through the air, described parabolic arcs and intercept courses as young legs thrust hard off the ground and young hands seized their airborne treasures.

“You lost sons.”

The Sheriff nodded.

“I remember them.”

The lawman nodded again, his face carefully neutral.

“My mother spoke well of you.”

Mike McKay smiled, then grinned: he’d worked with Willamina, he’d come to respect her both as Sheriff, and as a fellow nurse.

“I remember when your daughter went trick-or-treating.”

The Sheriff chuckled, leaned forward, worked his back a little, managed to twist out a single, muffled *pop* and gave a groan of relief.

“I remember it too.”

 

Victoria Keller regarded herself in the full-length mirror.

She wore one of her big sister’s white uniform dresses, altered to fit; she wore white stockings, thick-soled nurse’s oxfords and a winged cap, borrowed for the purpose.

She picked up the blue cape with red piping, spun it about her shoulders, fast it about her neck: she picked up the stethoscope, flipped it over her head, draped it around her neck, bell on one side and earpieces on the other.

She gave the mirror a satisfied nod.

It was Halloween, and it was almost time for Trick or Treat.

 

“That was … Victoria?” McKay asked.

Linn nodded.

“I keep wanting to call her Angela.”

Linn chuckled.  “You’re not alone, my friend,” he sighed. “It happens rather often.”

McKay laughed, watched as the children lined up to go back inside.

“I know I’ve called Angela, Marnie, and” – McKay laughed a little – “I was in the Museum and I called Marnie, Sheriff.”

Linn laughed again.  “She told me about that!”

He looked at the old veteran nurse, a rarely seen grin on his face.

“Marnie was wearing one of her Gammaw’s dresses – it fit her – she was wearing her Gammaw’s heels, she’d come out with an armful of folders and a pencil between her teeth, and you’re not the only one who called her ‘Sheriff’ that day!”

“Well, I don’t feel so bad now.”

Silence, again; two men looked past the now empty playground, and it seemed colder without the laughing, shouting, perpetual-motion confusion of children at recess.

Linn remembered the next day, when Angela pulled Victoria out of school just short of twelve noon.

He didn’t know the whole story until that night, and by that time, the whole town knew.

 

Victoria went trick-or-treating in her sister’s nurse’s dress.

Victoria ran, happy and skipping, with the other children, flowing from door to door and up sidewalks, down sidewalks, while Michael and Apple-horse maintained a silent, solemn overwatch from the street: twice he was obliged to raise his talkie and report an unsafe driver, one resulted in a citation and the other in a pursuit and a crash, but this was well out of town, the State Police made that intercept and it turns out the car was stolen, but that’s a short and uninteresting tale we won’t bother with.

Victoria rang a particular doorbell and the door was opened by a scowling face who berated the child severely for abusing the uniform, for playing like a child when she was supposed to be on shift at hospital, working: the next day, when Angela reported for her scheduled shift, the scowling Nursing Supervisor approached her at the East Wing nurse’s station at shift change, berated her severely for wearing her professional uniform in public while trick-or-treating – “Like a child!” -- and presented her with a write-up.

Angela Keller, RN, smiled and told the nursing supervisor that she had no knowledge of this event, she had no idea what the supervisor was talking about, and it was evident the supervisor was trying to invent something, that she, Angela, was a Sheriff’s deputy, and not only was it a criminal offense to lie to a law enforcement officer, it was a felony offense to falsify an official document, and any statement made in the presence of a law enforcement officer can be used as admissible evidence in a court of law, on duty or off, in uniform or out, and by the way, the write-up form the Nursing Supervisor demanded she sign, had just become evidence.

The hospital’s CEO would not admit the Nursing Supervisor until just after twelve noon.

When the Nursing Supervisor stormed into his office, the door slammed shut behind her.

She turned to see two nurses, side by side.

It took her several moments to realize that only one was a nurse.

The other was her ten year old, younger sister.

The hospital’s legal counsel, standing beside the CEO, said quietly, “We need to talk.”

 

 

“The hospital’s CEO read the written statements he’d gotten from the shift change nurses who were there,” McKay said, smiling a little.  “Mine was among them. He escorted the Nursing Supervisor and both your daughters back to the same nurse’s station. Everyone was there from day shift and midnight shift both – the off duty midnight shift nurses came back, he paid them overtime and gave them a bonus day off for coming back in and losing sleep to do it, and he made the nursing supervisor apologize in front of everyone that was there.”

Linn nodded slowly.

“And then he fired the nursing supervisor, right in front of God and everybody.”

McKay saw a look of quiet satisfaction on the Sheriff’s face.

“The girls wouldn’t talk about it,” Linn said finally.  “I didn’t press the matter. Angela is a deputy, if it was something that concerned the Law, she would let me know.”

“Disagreeable old bat,” McKay muttered.

“Fired, you say.”

“Yyyep.”

McKay smiled a little. 

“I remember when my Nancy was a little girl,” McKay said softly.

Linn nodded, remembering his own daughters as laughing little girls, frilly and silly and girly and he closed his eyes, bit his bottom lip.

“How long has it been?”

“I buried Nancy back in ought-nine.”

The Sheriff nodded.

He’d buried two sons that year.

Two men looked at the empty playground.

“I understand,” Linn said finally, “there are Federal grants for alternative energy production.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“A man might make a dollar with those parabolic collectors.”

McKay smiled, looked at the empty playground, and for a moment he heard children laughing, saw little boys and little girls running happily in disorganized circles.

“I’ll look into that.”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A FATHER, ALONE

 

I do my best thinking in the saddle

I didn't need to think, really, but I wanted to remember.

Pig Iron pointed his nose up hill and the rest of him followed.

We went up to a lonely place I knew of.

Old Pale Eyes and his green eyed Esther slept here, once, long ago.

My eyes swung over to a sandy patch I reckon they slept on.

That would be the least uncomfortable, and it would give a good view of the sky.

They laid there, together, watched a meteor shower, at least that’s what I got from his written description.

I recall there was what must have been a low altitude fireball or something of the kind, jagged slag kind of fish hooked into his back and near to knocked him down.

I believe he thought he’d been shot.

I’d have to go re-read it to refresh my poor failin’ memory.

I don’t recall if it was or was or was not hot, but I don’t recall any subsequent notation of infection.

I looked around, saw the little shelf that still had candle wax staining.

Theirs were not the last Bees Wax Candles to burn there.

I smiled a little, remembering our daughter Dana, how she looked around with those big and wondering eyes and how she smiled when I lined up three candles and lit them and the three of us, her and her Mama and I, set and watched the stars, and she was just a wee thing.

Pig Iron was old now, and I didn’t often ride him, but he was anxious this morning and so I saddled him and he stepped out lively, and I did not task him a’tall, just let him take his own pace, and we ended up here and that suited me fine.

Pig Iron grazed and I set my backside on a natural settin’ bench and leaned back against native rock and I looked into the distance and remembered.

Michael was a man grown.

He'd sure as hell been tempered as iron in the forge.

Him and that Lightning of his were old veteran negotiators with the Diplomatic Corps.

I smiled a little.

The Ambassador – Marnie’s boss – told me Michael was effective as a negotiator because he rode a Fanghorn, and Fanghorns were known meat eaters, and he said the rough analogy would be for an Earth negotiator to arrive riding one of the Man-Eaters of Tsavo, and upon dismount, feed it peppermints and call it a good kitty and have it purr and roll over for a belly rub.

It wasn’t until after he told me this, that Michael told me that when he was a boy yet, Lightning ate three men in my back yard.

 

 

 

Michael and Lightning rode through the Iris.

Michael had a smile on his face, for he was intending a pleasant visit with family, and he wished to test his healing spine against the rigors of scraping out stalls and running the Irish buggy full of second hand horse feed out to the manure pile.

Lightning had no liking for the journey from the moment she came through the Iris.

When her ears flattened and she rumbled deep in her chest, Michael did what his Pa taught him.

He listened to his horse.

“Down,” he whispered, and Lightning folded her legs and bellied down.

Michael slid off, pulled his rifle from its scabbard, cranked a shining round of jacketed .30-30 into the chamber, ran for the corner of the house.

Lightning’s ears were still laid back.

Her fangs were bared and she was snarling, and Michael knew that was not a good thing, and that’s when the first gunshot hit his field.

He knew someone tried to shoot him when the field sizzled into existence, when every hair under his shirtsleeves stood straight up from static.

Michael turned to the right, shouldered his Winchester.

Something tan and fast moving streaked across his line of sight and Michael heard the bony crunch as Lightning bit a man’s head off by virtue of running her fangs through the murderer’s collar bones and shoulder blades.

The body fell to the ground and Lightning raised her head, happily crunching: part of Michael’s mind thought blood and brains must taste good to her, while the rest of him was searching for a target.

He found it.

Another running figure came around the opposite corner of the house with a ball bat and a lighted Molotov cocktail in hand.

Michael yelled “THROW THAT AWAY!”

Michael Keller, eleven years old, green and untested and not yet a man, had to make a decision in a tenth of a second or less: he shot with both eyes open, and he saw with one eye unimpeded and the other eye looking through the generous aperture of his Winchester peep, the individual’s startle, then the shift in body language that meant he was readying to throw Comrade Molotov’s anarchist cocktail through the back window of the home place.

Michael’s rifle spoke.

A dead man fell with a thirty caliber hole between his eyes, the burning bottle rolling a little in the grass, unbroken.

Michael looked up as another shot came from a little further away.

Lightning screamed like an enraged steam whistle and charged the board fence, sailed over it, lowered her head.

The would-be murderer didn’t get a good start on a terrified scream before a short, blunt, conical boss caved in his  left shoulder clear to his spine as he turned to run away.

Michael heard her eating this casualty, heard her snarl happily as she did.

Michael did not stop his Fanghorn from eating all three bodies.

He collected their weapons.

Lightning ate clothes and all, even their rubber-soled Felony Flyers.

He got a five gallon bucket from the barn and dunked it over the burning firebomb, letting it smother from lack of oxygen.

Another sweep, to satisfy himself there was no one else lurking: The Bear Killer would be at the Sheriff’s office, Snowdrift was on Mars with Marnie and Jacob, and Michael bitterly regretted not having one or the other there to help.

He finally eased his rifle’s hammer down to half cock, hunted up his ejected, spent brass and slid it in a pocket, waited until Lightning satiated her appetite, waited until she'd eaten all three carcasses in their entirety.

Only then did he bent his wrist and bring it to his lips, only then did he make a discreet phone call to his father.

 

I looked to my stallion.

Pig Iron, unconcerned, looked back, returned to his grazing.

I relaxed back against the rock.

Word spread after Michael's timely intervention – there must’ve been a watcher Michael missed – but a huge devil- horse that was impervious to gunfire, a horse that bit men’s heads off clear down to their belt buckle and snarled and sang as it ate the bodies, a young boy with unnatural, pale eyes, whose rifle never missed and against whom bullets, no matter how well placed, had no effect – well, for some reason, after this attempt at burning the Sheriff out, after this spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at killing his son and his son’s horse, after this display of something the attackers did not understand and could not fight, things got kind of peaceful, except for the usual, day to day disagreements that always happen in a community.

I couldn’t admit that Michael and Lightning were there, I thought.

I couldn’t open a formal investigation into the attack on our home without revealing Michael and the Confederacy.

The only thing remaining were their weapons -- they were select fire military issue, they were listed as stolen, so I turned them over to the Federal boys and said we'd found them when they were apparently discarded.

 

I closed my eyes and smiled.

I thought of how proud I was when walked Dana down the aisle. 

I remember whispering, “You’re a woman grown now, but you’ll always be my little girl,” and she whispered back, “Daddy, you're gonna make me cry,” and she reached down and snatched the kerchief from my sleeve and used it to blot the tear running down my cheek.

I sat on a rock shelf, a father, alone, looked around and remembered a night when I set short, fat, beeswax candles on a little rock shelf and lit them, how I’d spread a blanket on a sandy place and laid down, with my little girl on one side and my wife on the other, and how we’d watched the stars, and how a little girl giggled and pointed when one of the stars fell, blazing, through the high mountain air.

I sat high up on the mountain, a father, alone, and remembered.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GOLD!

Esther looked up at me with those Irish-green eyes.

Every time I look my wife in the face, I am struck again, struck anew, with just how beautiful she really is.

It doesn’t hurt any that I had my arm around her waist, my other hand holding hers, and that we were treading a measure to the sound of a Denver orchestra.

Esther was wearing the latest of Bonnie McKenna’s fashions, scaled up from the china head doll exemplars Esther arranged to have shipped in from the Eastern seacoast by express trains: I saw women looking at her enviously, and I exercised the mental discretion of considering it was probably the fashion she wore, and not the man with whom she danced, that elicited those feminine expressions.

I one time told Charlie Macneil that I was smarter than I looked.

He looked me in the eye and never cracked a smile as he deadpanned “This proves the Lord is merciful.”

I count Charlie a friend and a good friend: he has the most marvelous way of bringing me back to earth with a solid ker-thump, and for that reason, I attributed the watchers' envy to Esther's fashion.

We danced until the music came to a stop, then Esther spun, laughing, took my hand and drew me to our table: a waiter came over and Esther asked for California wine, and I, a brandy: a man of my acquaintance came over and asked if he might speak with me.

I rose, brought my beautiful bride’s knuckles to my lips: “Forgive me, my dear,” I murmured, “I shan’t be gone long,” and Esther gave me an understanding look and a quiet smile.

I knew the man as Montrose.

I knew the man as a gambler and not necessarily a ne’er-do-well, but I don’t believe he’d ever done anything a man could call “good honest labor” in his entire life: still, if he made his living with pasteboards, he was making a living, and far be it from me to be critical of a man who provides.

Montrose and I drifted to the bar: he ordered whiskey, and I, coffee: he looked at me, surprised, but this did not keep him from imbibing his distilled sledgehammer.

“I understand you found gold,” he said quietly, leaning his head closer and looking suspiciously around him, as if afraid someone was about to shove their ear up against his lips.

“I did,” I said quietly.

“Where?”

I smiled.

“Montrose,” said I, “I found gold in two places.”

“Two!” he gasped, his eyes widening. “Where?”

“Kansas,” I said. “Kansas was the first gold I found. Dust by the handful, some nuggets.”

“By the handful?” he wheezed, his eyes bulging.

“Yep. Trouble is, I never marked the place and I doubt if I could find it again.”

“Kansas.”

He rolled the name around on his tongue as if he were sipping a fine vintage, then blinked.

“I don’t recall as anyone ever found gold in Kansas,” he said doubtfully.

“Hell, Montrose, there’s gold been mined in North Carolina!”

“What!”

His strangled exclamation was an incredulous, throat-tightened hiss.

I nodded.

“Yep. The second gold I found put the first gold to absolute shame.”

Montrose gulped the last of his whiskey, ordered another.

I nodded to the table I’d just abandoned.

“Right there she sits. A good woman is worth more than gold and jewels, and when the sun catches that red hair of hers, I can see the gold in it.”

I finished my coffee, slid a coin across the bar, clapped Montrose on the shoulder.

“My friend, gold minin’ is an awful lot of hard work. Hard on the back, your feet are wet all the time, if you strike gold, why, a boom town springs up and prices go through the roof.” 

I winked at him and murmured, “Try five dollars for an egg!”

Montrose grimaced: I’m satisfied he’s heard of boom town prices.

“Now if you want to make yourself an absolute fortune,” I said easily, “buy up a half dozen shovels, a dozen picks, a dozen gold pans and a mule and head for the nearest boom town. Sell ‘em for a young fortune and use the money to start yourself a general store.  Gold is more easily found in miners’ pockets than in a hole in the ground. Sell ‘em what they want and they’ll pay you well to get it!”

I shoved away from the bar, strode across the dance floor, rejoined my beautiful bride, took her hand.

The waiter arrived as if by magic; Esther picked up her wineglass by its long, delicate stem, I picked up the thin, fragile brandy balloon, swirled the amber sunshine it held, took a long, appreciative sniff of its vapors, sipped.

 

It does a man good to get away and entertain his wife up fancy.

Women folks prize such things.

Was it not for Esther, I’d likely not go to the Big City a’tall, unless ‘twas needful, but thanks to Esther, we’d heard fine concerts, we’d seen stage plays, we’d exposed ourselves to culture and to refinement.

One fellow was selling roses on a street corner.

I paid him twice what he was asking and I give the ribbon-tied rose to Esther, who closed her eyes and inhaled its scent, then she opened those lovely eyes and looked at me the way a woman will when she is content and happy to be with a particular man.

Right glad I am that I am that man. 

I found more gold than I told Montrose about – I recovered a number of nuggets from Kolascinski Creek, and then I encouraged Kohl to get his backside to town and stake this entire creek as his claim – he did, and I helped him sell the gold, some distance away and attributed to a dummy claim I maintained.

I made a fortune and more, but as much wealth as I panned and scooped and otherwise extracted from the earth, the real gold – my true wealth – was this green eyed beauty with milk-fair skin, with green eyes and copper-red hair.

I took my treasure to the city, and we danced well into the night.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DON'T KILL SOMEONE ON MY ACCOUNT

 

Sixteen-year-old Jacob Keller spun the three foot, turned-hickory baton, delivered a backhand strike, a thrust, another thrust: it was genuinely a marvel to watch him work as he assaulted the homemade dummy.

Jacob Keller was young, Jacob Keller was lean, Jacob Keller was a son of the mountains and a pale eyed Sheriff, and in spite of his few years, Jacob Keller was also one of the best baton fighters the pale eyed Sheriff had ever seen.

Linn knew Jacob trained with the very best hand to hand instructors he could find; Linn knew Jacob was attentive and polite and in all ways a credit to his family, and by extension, of the Sheriff's Office to which he aspired, even from a very young age.

Linn could not but stare in open admiration as Jacob worked, as he finally brought the baton up under one arm, bowed to the much-worse-for-wear dummy, turned.

Jacob didn't know his Pa was anywhere near: he reddened a little and grinned like a bashful little boy as he realized the Grand Old Man was standing there.

Linn nodded approvingly.

"Well done indeed," he said softly.

"Thank you, sir."

Jacob's exertions worked up a sweat, but there was almost none to be wiped off, owing to the thin, dry air, this high in the mountains: father and son sat on a blanket covered bale of hay and Jacob hung his war club from a handy peg.

"Mactavish tells me you're one of his best students."

"Thank you, sir."

"Makes me wish we still issued a straight stick instead of that telescoping thing."

"The telescoping baton is lighter, sir," Jacob said, his breathing deep, regular, but rigidly controlled -- like everything else about him.

"Yes, it is. Doesn't get in the way as badly."

"No, sir."

A comfortable silence grew between father and son.

"Sir?"

"Yes, Jacob?"

"Mactavish said he was getting a new instructor, and he'd like me to try him out."

Linn nodded, smiled a little.

" 'Try him out,' " the Sheriff echoed.

"Yes, sir."

"As in see if you can take him?"

"No, sir."  Jacob smiled a little, that easy, relaxed smile of his nobody but family and very close friends ever saw. "Mactavish has tried out several instructors and he's always tried them with me. He said I can appear to be an awkward and uncertain student, and he watches how the instructor reacts."

"I see."

"He has me wait until the instructor is convinced I'm just an awkward kid, and then I Uncork the Genie and Mactavish sees how they react."

"How has that gone so far?"

"One fellow got madder'n a wet hen, sir. He nearly bested me out of spite. Another called a hold, stepped back and disengaged, he called Mactavish a treacherous scoundrel" -- Jacob's ears reddened a little at the memory -- "that's not exactly what he said, sir," Jacob continued in a quiet voice, "but you get the idea."

His father nodded, slowly, for he'd been there, watching from an unseen vantage:  he'd been interested in this well recommended instructor as well, but he'd heard the man had an unpredictable nature, and the instructor's response to Jacob's sudden expertise confirmed the Sheriff's suspicion.

"This instructor he wants you to evaluate," the Sheriff said slowly.  "Tell me about him."

"Little to tell, sir. Never saw the man, don't know a thing about him, just that we'll meet this afternoon."

 

Marnie Keller stormed up to Jacob, seized him by the shirt front, shook him viciously, her teeth clenched.

"Jacob Keller," she hissed, her pale eyes blazing into his, "what in the name of three green goblins have you done now?"

Jacob laughed, gripped his big sister's elbows and dropped his heavy wooden cane, balancing on his good leg.

"I finally went to see the orthopod."

"So what did the medical grade spider have to say?"

"Orthopedist."

"I know that," Marnie snarled, her eyes pale, intense:  she looked down at the black-nylon, full-length leg brace on her brother and said quietly, "Who do I have to kill? Daddy has fifty acres and I can run his backhoe!"

"I've seen you run that hoe," Jacob murmured, "so let's spare wear and tear on the machine, hey?"

Marnie smacked Jacob's shoulder, anger plain on her face: she shoved her nose up against his, pressed her forehead into his and muttered, "Jacob Keller, get this through your thick head, I've only got one of you and I don't want you damaged! Now who did this to you?"

Jacob laughed, hugged his sister.

"Sis," he sighed, "don't ever change!"

"Try and make me," she mumbled into the material of his shirt's shoulder.

Jacob leaned his head down, whispered into her hair, "You saw I'd almost been limping here of late."

"Almost my foot," Marnie snapped quietly: she pulled back, waved a fist under Jacob's nose:  "Out with it, mister, what the hell happened?"

Jacob took her wrist, kissed her fisted knuckles and laughed "You kiss your Mama with that mouth?"

Marnie punched him with her free hand.

Hard.

Jacob laughed, which just made her madder.

Marnie Keller thrust up against him, arms stiff at her sides, hands fisted:  "Jacob Keller, you are the hardest headed, most contrary, infuriating --"

Jacob gave her a patient look and said softly, "I won't need surgery, Sis."

Marnie stopped, shocked.

"Sis, maybe we'd better set down."

Brother and sister sat on the broad front porch of the home place.

"Sis, I managed to grow a bone spur inside my left Achilles tendon."

"You idiot, what did you do that for?" Marnie snapped.

Jacob shrugged.  "Just somethin' to do, I guess."

"Go on."

"I'll be in this leg brace for six weeks or so, maybe a little longer."

"And?"

"And that rascally spur ought to dissolve on its own."

Marnie's carriage was erect, stiff: she reminded Jacob very powerfully of their Gammaw, when the woman had a good head of steam, when she was indignant and waiting for the right moment to very politely rip someone's head off.

"Jacob?"

"Hm?"

"Jacob, I'd feel better if I killed someone."

"You haven't killed anyone yet, Marnie."

"Yet."

Jacob nodded.  "Yet."

He looked over at Marnie, smiled, just a little.

"Until then, don't start by killin' on my account."

Marnie's shoulders rose, fell; he heard her deep, near-silent breath, felt her hand close on his.

"Jacob?" she said softly.

"Hm?"

"Please take care of yourself," she almost whispered.  "You're the only one of you I have!"

Jacob ran his arm around Marnie's shoulders and pulled her close, leaned his head against hers.

"I'll be careful, Sis," he murmured. "You be careful too, hey?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HAVE I FAILED?

Michael Keller emerged, running full-tilt from the Iris with a grin on his face and Little John gripping his hand.

"HiPawe'regonnagoseethehorses!" he called in a cheerful, over-his-shoulder shout as he and his shorter-legged cousin charged for the front door.

"DON'T SLAM THE" --

*SLAM!*

"-- door," Linn called after the boys' retreating backsides: he turned just as a quiet smile attached to Marnie's face came through the Iris, and brought the rest of his daughter with it.

Marnie stopped, tilted her head, gave her father a serious look.

"Daddy, what's wrong?" she asked in a quiet voice.

"I need your advice, darlin'."

Marnie glided up to her father, took his hand: they turned and sat on his big, comfortable couch.

"Darlin'," Linn said slowly, "you are a woman grown, and you are experienced."

Marnie regarded her Daddy, assessed his words, his voice tones, his body language, waited.

"Darlin', have I failed?"

 

Michael showed Little John how to climb the board fence: the chubby-legged little boy grinned as he ascended whitewashed boards, turned.

Michael sidled an Appaloosa mare up to him.

"Now swing your leg over behind me," he said: he reached around, helped Little John get settled.

"Now grab hold of my belt."

Two happy boys and a good looking Appaloosa mare stepped out into the sunlit field.

 

"Darlin', did I lead you and your sisters down the primrose path?"

"What primrose path would that be, Daddy?" Marnie asked quietly.

Linn frowned, ran his bottom jaw out, sandpapered his palms slowly together.

"Darlin' ... you all three followed me into law enforcement."

Marnie waited, betraying neither blink nor nod nor shake of head.

"You've all charged into ... hell, you were ... you ran into Hermey's garage and dodged live wires to get a man out, you started CPR and then you dragged him halfway out and stopped and ran some more CPR and you got him out and onto the cot and you barely avoided getting killed when the cornice broke loose and fell."

Marnie nodded.  "I broke a nail," she said innocently.

"You're trying to make me feel better," Linn growled.

"I'm trying to get you to laugh, Daddy. Yes we followed you into law enforcement, and Dana and Angela went into the old furniture building to get a hostage out. They both engaged with deadly force. I've done more than that, offworld. I intend to raise both my sons to be just as fast and just as deadly as either you or I. Should I have a daughter, I fully intend to see that she rides a winged horse at the Last Battle."

"I should never have taught you what I did, Marnie."

"You couldn't keep me from it. I'd been hurt very young. I was not going to be hurt again. It was either learn and learn well from a known and proven warrior, or get that training somewhere else and maybe not as good a training, and that would get me killed."

"You're missing the point."

"What is the point?"

Marnie sat very properly, very formally: she wore a McKenna gown, she sat like a disapproving Queen, her hands were folded in her lap and cold waves of disapproval cascaded from her as she gave her father a pale eyed glare.

"My point is --"

Linn stopped, took a long breath.

"Daddy, Angela drove a broom handle through an attacker's eye socket and stopped him. He was in the grade school and his notes indicated his intent to kidnap and worse. He tried to catch  her in the hallway and she kept him from hurting her or anyone else, and she did it by using the custodian's broom like a lance."

Marnie's voice was quiet, factual.

"Daddy, you kept us from harm. You did this directly, with your personal intervention, but you did it by training us, you did it by teaching us, you did it by preparing us. You showed us how to prepare our judgement, how to make a decision and how to assess body language and attack posture and I can't count how many other things."

Marnie Keller leaned closer, lowered her head.

"Daddy, you asked if you'd failed."

Linn nodded again.

"Michael and Victoria rode down the main street of a strange town, rode to the sound of guns, they rode down and shot two holdups who were ... "

"Two armed criminals who were putting the public at large in danger. Michael and Victoria saved lives."

"Victoria walked up to a military commander, all pretty and girly, and she disarmed him with a smile and a question, and then she raised my Walther pistol and shot him through the eyes. She took the fire team by surprise. Michael set up behind cover and he just plainly cleaned house. Michael ..."

Linn frowned at the hook rug, took a long breath.

"Michael was damn neart killed. I could have kept him here but he ..."

"Daddy."

Marnie's words were as light as the fingertips she laid on the back of his hand.

"What are you really asking?"

"Darlin', did I cheat all of you out of your childhoods?"

Marnie considered for a long moment.

"Daddy, what was Michael doing when he passed through here, just now?"

Linn smiled, remembered.

"He and Little John ran for the door."

He turned as something caught his peripheral, turned just in time to see to happy boys on an Appaloosa mare, riding down the driveway.

"Daddy, is that the behavior of a child?"

Linn blinked, surprised, then he smiled a little and said "Yes. Yes, it is."

"They ran through here, they slammed the door, they went for the horses, and there they go,"

Marnie said as she leaned a little, looking around her Daddy's muscled shoulder to watch two tandem-mounted boys trot the patient old Appaloosa mare slowly down the newly-paved drive.

"That looks rather childlike to me, Daddy." 

Marnie slipped a gloved hand under her Daddy's palm, laid her other hand atop his.

"Daddy, I am a successful woman. Marnie is a successful woman. Dana is a successful woman. We have you to thank for our successes."

Marnie's voice was quiet, her eyes were serious, at least until she added, "You will understand that Mama had something to do with our successes, too."

"Victoria?"

"Daddy."

Marnie regarded her father through long, curled lashes.

"Daddy, Victoria is still a child, and she is becoming a woman, but trust me" -- Marnie leaned her head a little forward, whispered, knowing the best way to claim a man's undivided attention was to speak softly -- "Daddy, she is still very much your little girl!"

"Even if she did break that fella's arch and kick his knee apart?"

"Especially because of that!" Marnie smiled. 

Linn sighed, nodded.

"Daddy," Marnie said firmly, "you have not failed your children. We all knew childhood, but all children grow out of it. You readied us for that climb into adulthood, and I'm proud of you!"

Linn nodded, leaned back, looked out the window, looked back.

"You'll find Michael still has a good percentage of the child in him, Daddy, especially when he's playing with Little John!"

They both looked out the window at the sound of galloping hooves, of delighted laughter:  Little John was behind Michael, Michael's Stetson gripped in both hands and pulled down over his head, squealing with laughter, gripping with his chubby young bare legs: Michael was leaned forward, grinning, hands flat on the mare's neck.

Marnie felt her Daddy's silent laughter as the mare leaned into her galloping turn, sure-footed now that she was on sod instead of paved driveway.

Linn leaned back and laughed quietly.

"Daddy," Marnie said quietly but firmly, "you did not cheat us out of our childhood. You did not fail."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A SAINTLY DISLIKE

 

Four dirt geysers erupted between two lines of angry, shouting men.

Fists, oaths, clubs, all stilled as something that sounded like an unhappily interrupted steam whistle shivered the air.

Cartridge brass spun, fell, forgotten as a pale eyed rider cantered forward, stopped abruptly, as a truly massive saddlehorse spun, restless, blood-red eyes sweeping the ranks of men gathered for a fight.

Michael Keller thumbed rounds into his Winchester, propped it up on his leg, muzzle to the sky.

Lightning screamed and shook her head, reared: Michael's serious young face never changed, nor did his posture; his back side may as well have been sewn to saddle leather.

Lightning came down, massive hooves shivering the ground as she planted them back on the dirt street.

Michael turned her, walked her slowly along one shocked-silent rank of shoulder-strikers, men who'd come for a fight, men likely hired for the event, or goaded into it; he finally turned her, walked down the opposite side, at working men with callused hands and trousers worn at the knee, gripping the tools of their trade as weapons.

Michael sat straight, very straight, in the saddle, his eyes cold, hard, very pale.

He didn't want this fight and he didn't want to be here, but he'd ended up here through neither fault nor desire of his own.

"WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE!" an anonymous voice shouted: Michael turned Lightning, shoved her in between the rows of angry men.

"LOOK ME IN THE EYE, YOU DAMNED COWARD!" Michael shouted back. "WHO SAID THAT, YOU GUTLESS WONDER? SHOW YOURSELF TO ME!"

Lightning's lips pulled back from her fangs; she lowered her head, swung it, scattering men without touching them.

Michael rode the depth of the men, turned, came back: where they'd been shoulder to shoulder and solid, they were now homogenized, uncertain, and very unwilling to attack something that would take delight in biting their head off and eating it for breakfast.

Michael rode back to the street, turned his back on the one side of the street, rode to the other.

"WHO LEADS HERE!" he demanded.

Men looked at one another, uncertain.

Michael rode Lightning up the street, then came back down the center.

"MY PA TAUGHT ME FIGHTIN' GETS YOU NOTHIN' BUT HURT FACES AND HURT FEELIN'S!" he shouted.

"PA ALSO TAUGHT ME MEN FIGHT WHEN THEY RUN OUT OF WORDS!"

Michael stopped, spun the Fanghorn, glared at one group, glared at the other.

He rode back to one side, reached down: "Let me borrow your shovel," he said quietly.

Startled, a man with dirty and callused knuckles surrendered his shovel.

Michael rode back to the other side, held it up, his Winchester still propped up on his thigh.

"THIS," he called loudly, "WILL CLEAVE THROUGH A MAN'S SKULL. IT MIGHT NOT KILL YOU. CATCH A MAN OVER THE EAR ON ONE SIDE AND HE'LL NOT BE ABLE TO SPEAK. CUT INTO THE BACK OF HIS SKULL AND IF HE LIVES HE MIGHT BE BLIND FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE. THIS CAN BREAK COLLAR BONES AND ARMS AND IT'LL CUT HALF WAY THROUGH A SHIN BONE. DON'T ASK ME WHAT IT'LL DO TO A MAN'S KNEE, I'VE SEEN IT HAPPEN!"

He turned Lightning, rode the little distance between the two lines, handed the shovel back.

He came to the better dressed side of the street.

"Hand me that war club."

"You go to hell!"

Michael shrugged.  "Suit yourself.  How 'bout that knife?"

The man with the Arkansas toothpick surged forward, thrust at Lightning's shoulder, screamed as he brought back a bloody stub.

The knife fell to the ground while Lightning chewed happily: she swallowed, belched as the injured man screamed, as his fellows wound cloth around the stump and twisted.

"TALK IS CHEAPER THAN BLOOD," Michael shouted, his young voice echoing off the buildings. "YOU TEAR INTO ONE ANOTHER, YOU'LL BE DIGGIN' GRAVES AND WIDOWS WILL BE ON YOU WITH THEIR SPURS A-DIGGIN'! YOU WANT THAT?"

Michael rode the Fanghorn slowly down the middle of the street again.

"I DONT RECKON ANY OF YOU HAVE A QUARREL WITH THE MAN ACROSS THE STREET FROM YOU. YOU'RE ALL WORKIN' MEN BY THE LOOK OF YOU. IT'S YOUR BOSSES THAT AREN'T TALKING. DON'T FIGHT WITH ONE ANOTHER. IT'S YOUR BOSSES THAT NEED TO TALK."

Michael was taking a gamble, and he knew it: he wanted to delay this unnecessary violence.

Delay.

That was his goal.

It was working but he didn't know for how long.

Lightning spun as something boxy and silver floated silently, swiftly, down the street toward them.

Michael and men on both sides of the street turned as the silver box slowed, stopped; its entire back end swung open, a broad ramp extended.

Michael watched the men, his eyes lifted and he scanned the roof lines again: Lightning danced under him, restless, turning quickly, suspiciously at his knee-pressure: he waited as a pale eyed woman in a McKenna gown flowed down the ramp, all smiles and charm, one gloved hand on a well dressed man's arm on her right, one gloved hand on an almost well dressed man's arm, on her left: Michael leaned forward, caressed Lightning's neck, soothed her with words and with touch as the bosses, with Marnie still smiling, still charming, still holding their arms, declared to both sides, that agreement was reached, as they declared the particulars, as they told their men to disperse.

 

Michael gave a formal half-bow and raised a woman's knuckles to his lips, as he'd seen his father do, for it seemed the right thing: a woman came to him, her daughters big-eyed and shy behind her, and she'd thanked Michael for keeping men from killing one another.

She'd said she was orphaned at a young age, and was now married, and honestly terrified at the prospect of widowhood, that her husband was the man from whom Michael borrowed a shovel, and she said he would not have backed down and would very likely have been killed that day.

One of the daughters screwed up the courage to advance, just out of arm's reach: she curtsied and asked shyly, "Are you Saint Michael?" and looked almost fearfully at Lightning, who was happily (and loudly) chewing on a loaf of spiced bread somebody offered.

"No," Michael smiled.  "I'm just me, I'm nobody special."

"You kept our Daddy alive," the other girl said, her eyes big and scared, at least until Lightning raised her head and belched, then draped her head over Michael's shoulder and gave a happy little birdlike chirp.

Michael's eyes were haunted as he looked at the girl who'd asked about his sainthood.

"I know what it is to be hurt," Michael said, and there was something in his voice that made the near-widow look at him with alarm, for she heard something in his voice she'd heard in her own.

"I know what it is to be hurt and nearly die," Michael said, then he bit his bottom lip and he closed his eyes, hard: he reached up, caressed Lightning's silky-furred nose.

"I know what it is to have to heal up, and if I can spare somebody else all that, I will!"

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PAY, AND PROMOTION

"I heard you stopped a riot."

Linn's voice was quiet as he stoned the edge of a slender bladed knife.

"Yes, sir."

Steel whispered on stone, long, regular strokes: Linn lifted the blade, dribbled on a little more thin oil, turned the blade over, stoned the opposite edge.

"Was Lightning any help?"

"She ate a man's hand, sir."

Linn's long, careful sweeps of steel on stone never varied.

"You'll have that," he said noncommittally.

"I asked for a man's knife."

"His knife."

"Arkansas toothpick, sir. I wanted to use it to make a point and he tried to stab Lightning with it."

"I see."

Linn laid a few more long, uniform strokes on the stone, lifted the blade, wiped it on a filthy cloth apparently kept on the bench for that purpose: he drew the blade backwards across the heel of his hand, checking for burrs, for a wire edge: satisfied, he gripped the end of the razor strop, began to strop the blade.

"Did he bleed out?"

"No, sir. His buddies got a rag around it and twisted it into a torniquet."

Linn grunted.

"Marnie showed up with their bosses and they allowed as they'd worked out their differences, everyone could go home, the fight was over."

"Did they?"

"I reckon so, sir. Lightning and I left shortly after."

"How'd you get involved?"

Michael drew his own knife, oiled the coarse stone, began to sharpen his own knife: Linn knew Michael would only sharpen one side, and he'd use the coarse stone, to give his knife an edge like an Amish scythe -- a superb combination for skinning an animal, for cutting flesh of any kind, and Michael, like his sisters, was very well versed in the use of the fighting blade.

Michael concentrated on his work for several long, careful strokes, then he stopped, he lifted his blade and looked very directly at his father.

"Sir," he said, "I was drafted."

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller smiled quietly, fanned herself as only a Lady can: she tilted her head to the side, just a little, and asked their secretary to re-read the projected casualties, had the fight become general.

She nodded as the fell numbers were read, as the projected death count was enumerated as well.

"And how many casualties were there?" she asked quietly.

"One," the secretary said.  "Only one."

Marnie snapped her fan shut -- a swift move, an abrupt move, a surprisingly loud strike against her gloved palm.

"Gentlemen," she said -- her voice was firm, she did not raise it at all, but there was no mistaking that she meant what she was about to say -- "I requested Michael's pay equal my own in this little adventure. His intervention was instrumental in the delay necessary to reach an accord."

"But he's not a Diplomat! How can we pay him Diplomatic scale?" a voice protested.

"Because he did the work of a Diplomat," Marnie explained patiently, "and because he was recruited by the Diplomatic Corps."

She turned her head, looked very directly at the Chief Diplomat, who raised an eyebrow.

"My esteemed colleague speaks truly," he said slowly, weighing his words before allowing their passage over his tongue: "he was indeed ... drafted ... owing to the exigent necessity of the moment."  He swung his gaze, looked very deliberately into the eyes of the Council.

"He did the work of a Diplomat. It is only right he receive commensurate pay."

 

Michael slid his sharpened blade back into its hidden sheath.

Linn turned a scrounged shaving mirror, leaned close to his magnified image, tried the blade against his cheek, nodded his satisfaction at the whisker-stubble he shaved off: he ran a finger down the honed edge, examined his finger, wiped it on his jeans leg.

"I've got the oily skin of a teen-ager," he complained.

"Is that why you shave with rubbing alcohol?" Michael asked.

"That's exactly why, Michael," Linn grinned. "Alcohol complexes the skin oil and keeps me from growin' too many more blackheads."

"Yes, sir."

"My father used to give me hell for buying those skin pads -- they look like cleaning patches in a squatty little round jar of scented alcohol -- they were just the berries for getting skin oil off, and even when you washed your face, wipe off with one of those alcohol soaky coarse cloth rounder things and it would bring off dirt you never knew was even there."

"Alcohol soaky rounder things," Michael grinned.

Linn chuckled, slipped his honed steel back into its hidden sheath.

"That's why I keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol on the bathroom sink. I'll dampen the corner of a towel and degrease my face before I go to bed at night."

"Yes, sir."

"How'd you come to get drafted, Michael?"

 

"Just how did you persuade my brother to perform his diplomatic duty?" Marnie asked quietly, once they were away from the Council chamber, once it was just the two of them, and over dinner.

The Chief Diplomat cut a slice of truly excellent steak, forked it to his mouth, chewed appreciatively, his eyes closed: Marnie waited, patient, as she usually was in such moments.

"I knew we didn't have time to waste," he explained, once he'd chewed and swallowed: "I knew you could bring the warring parties to accord. That" -- he waved half a biscuit at her for emphasis -- "is your strong suit. You are one of the most accomplished persuaders I've ever seen.

"Michael was needed to keep the fight from happening. It was progressing much faster than I anticipated. I thought it would be another two days before men lined up for a general riot.

"Had it been anyone else, nobody would have hesitated -- mounted or not, they'd have cut down anyone else on any other horse, but because it was your brother, because it was a pale eyed hell raiser that rode toward danger and killed because they need killin' " --

"Mister Ambassador!" Marnie protested, her eyes widening.

He raised a hand, smiled.  "I know. That was hyperbole. Just wanted to see if I could get a rise out of you."

Marnie threw a biscuit -- hard -- it bounced off the man's breastbone, fell to his plate.

"I deserved that," he muttered, but the mutter could not conceal his grin.

Marnie shook her Mommy-finger at him:  "Do I need to turn you over my knee and spank you?"

 

"They figured you were the right man for the job."

"Yes, sir."

"They figured nobody would want to rush a man eatin' Fanghorn."

"Correct, sir."

"I don't reckon it hurt any that Lightning ate that fellow's arm."

"I don't reckon he liked losing it, sir."

"His own fool fault. He tried to knife her, she made him pay for it."

"Yes, sir."

"Run with that one, Michael. You're making a reputation. Don't ever abuse it or you'll be hated, but don't waste it when that good fortune drops in your lap."

"Drops in my lap, sir? The man lost his arm!"

"And you nearly lost Lighting."

Michael considered. 

"Yes, sir, that's true."

"Make a stupid decision with a chain saw and you lose a leg, the first time, Michael. No second chances. Make a mistake with a table saw and you lose half a hand. Make it with electricity and lose more than that."

Damn, I should never have said that, Linn mentally kicked himself.

Not after what Michael went through!

"I could take that wrong, sir."

Linn nodded slowly.  "Yes, you could."

"Is that one of those hoof in mouth moments, sir?"

You earned it, dummy, Linn thought to himself.

Stand for your beatin', you've earned it!

"Yes, Michael," Linn said slowly, "that is indeed one of those hoof in mouth moments."

Michael frowned, looked at his father.

"Sir," he said, "you are not supposed to imitate my bad examples!"

Father and son looked at one another, each one a little more surprised than the other: they laughed, and the tension between them was gone.

 

Michael Keller picked up the saddle bags, slung them over his off shoulder.

"Thank you, sir," he said quietly, extending his hand.

The Chief Diplomat hadn't been sure Michael would take his hand, not after having been just shy of strongarmed into riding between two factions, ready for battle.

The Diplomat shook Michael's hand.

"You did well," he said, "and your pay reflects that."

"Yes, sir."

"You can take comfort in knowing you saved lives, Michael."

"Yes, sir, I was told that."

"Were you told anything else?" the Diplomat asked, frowning a little -- had someone tried to manipulate him, are there deeper politics than I'm aware of?

"It was not a statement, sir.  It was a question."

"A question," the Diplomat echoed.  "What kind of a ... question?"

"A woman thanked me for not letting her become a widow, and her daughter asked me if I was Saint Michael."

The Diplomat nodded slowly, smiled, just a little.

"Sir," Michael persisted, "does this mean I've been promoted?"

It wasn't until Michael's quiet laugh that the Diplomat realized he'd just had his leg pulled: he looked up and saw Michael's pale eyed sister, her hand discreetly raised to conceal her own smile.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU'RE WELCOME

I stood out on my porch and took a long, deep breath.

Fall was approaching, it was getting cooler, it was getting dark earlier, and I smiled.

My wife knows me better than I know myself.

I made mention of the shorter days and she turned and looked at me, she put her hands on her hips and said, "And the Frost Giants from the North are greasing their boots so they can stride across the frozen landscape spreading cold and snow, dooooooommmm!" -- and I laughed, for I'd made that word for word complaint before.

Several years before, as a matter of fact, and she still torments me about it, so generally I'll torment her right back and go on about the frosty blanket of White Death that settles over the land and invisible hands claw and steal at a body's warmth, and there's nothing between here and the North Pole but a bobwarr fence with two of three strands broke.

Generally that's when she thrusts her arm up in the air and declares, "It's over the boots, save the watch!"

I stood on the porch and smiled a little as I remembered all this, and then I remembered Michael had been uncharacteristically quiet through supper and now he was gone.

I figured I knew where he'd gone, and I was right.

Shelly told me once that when men get hurt, they hide.

She's right, they do.

I know Mama used to tell me she'd started CPR on men in bathrooms more times than one, she'd complained about men having chest pains and going to the bathroom for some seltzer instead of calling the squad, and I remembered burning myself with gasoline, I'd got careless and I still have the scars on the backs of my fingers, but I was just a little boy when it happened and I'd run around the house, dead silent and likely streaming fire as I ran, and I'd dove elbow deep into the spring behind the house and stayed there until my hands were so cold they were numb.

I hid the injury from Mama long as I could, which was until I got back in the house, but yes, typical man, I tried to hide my hurt, and that's when I figured Michael was in pain.

I went out to the barn and he was set down on a bale of hay with a blanket folded under him and he was hunched over some, they way he'd done before when his back was giving him billy Hell.

When it got really bad, he said it made him half sick.

I know he's trying hard as he can to be normal, he is fed up to the gills with being hurt, and I know it cost him to ride that riot and delay things long enough for Marnie to work her magic with their respective bosses.

Michael was just plainly sunk in misery.

He was well enough disciplined he never let us see his hurt face, and I didn't see it until I came sneakin' up on him, and it troubled me to see it.

No father wants to see his son in pain.

I'd known for some long time he was in pain and plenty of it, and not one damned thing I could do to ease that pain, but this is the first time I saw the pain on his face.

I wanted to set down beside him and lay my arm across his shoulders, but I remembered he'd said any pressure on his back hurt terribly, so I cat footed in and eased down on the hay bale beside him.

He leaned over against me, something he's not done since he was ... well, since he was a little boy.

Hell, he's still a boy, he's not but eleven, he's gettin' some height to him but he's ... 

No.

I almost said he's just a schoolboy.

He's not.

He's been graduated from high school, what with the advanced classes he and Victoria took.

That didn't matter.

Right now he was my boy and he was hurtin' so I reached over his shoulders and gripped his shoulder carefully and drew him into me a little.

"I'm tired, Pa," he said in a thin, worn voice, and that genuinely scared me.

The last man that was in pain and said those words, was soul-deep worn from cancer, he'd been in what the doctors called "Intractable Pain" and he got tired of hurtin' and took the Twenty-Five Cent Solution.

I did not want my son to put a deer slug through the roof of his mouth.

"I'm tired, Pa. I'm tired of hurtin' and I'm tired of puttin' up a good front."

"You're doin' a fine job with the good front," I admitted. 

"Thank you, sir."

"You look half sick."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm about give up, sir."

"How's that?"

Michael took a careful breath -- ordinarily he'd take a long breath, but this was a careful breath, and that alone told me he didn't want to stress his back any at all -- he groaned, "Pa, I'm ready to give up and ask for some pain killers."

He closed his young eyes and hung his head a little and whispered, "I don't want to, Pa, but I'm ..."

He looked at me and that was the first time I've seen him that close to crying for a very long time.

"I give up, Pa," he whispered.

I nodded.

"We'll get you some relief," I said quietly. "I know who to call."

 

I rode with Michael in the back of an ambulance.

That would not be terribly remarkable, save that this ambulance had no wheels, it passed through an Iris and set down at a hospital on another planet.

Angela gave him something, I have no idea what, she explained it would relax him and it would block his memory so he would have no recollection of being in such pain.

She also added that the pain might remain in body memory, and that gave me no comfort at all.

Michael was taken into another suite and Angela explained to me that he would be examined carefully, that his spine would be scanned, she said they could simply block the pain, but that wouldn't treat the cause, and whatever was causing his pain, had to be treated.

I nodded, slowly, recalled an hour earlier when I stood on my front porch and had such a feeling of contentment, smelling the approaching night, feeling the air cool down with the changing season.

"Daddy," Angela whispered, "this will take a while. Go home and get some rest. Let Mama know he's in the best hands in seven systems."

"I thought it was thirteen systems."

"These are the seven best as far as medical care."

I nodded.

 

I took a few days off.

I'd built up vacation time, we didn't have anything of note going on, I had all my have-to's tended, and I couldn't do a damned thing to help Michael.

Didn't keep me out from underfoot.

My best use was to see Michael occasionally, but I'd brought Apple-horse with me and damned if the hospital didn't want me to fetch him into the children's ward.

When Angela said they were advanced, she was not kidding: I have no idea how they did it, but Apple-horse was not what you'd call housebroken, and this was a hospital, and though he relieved himself rather casually, nothing hit the floor ... I reckon it must be more of that force field stuff.

I didn't care.

There is a magic when a child forgets, for a moment, why they're in a hospital, and the long nose of a genuine Appaloosa stallion lowers into their bedclothes and snuffs loudly, and a child that lacks strength to sit up, smiles mighty broad when strong hands grip around young ribs and hoist weak legs over a saddle and steady them as the stallion takes a few steps.

I don't mind admittin' my eyes stung a little to see happiness in these young faces.

Of course the picture that made the Inter-System had me standing there steadying a laughing little boy, and him wearin' my Stetson, and it came down to his ears, but you could look at a still image and hear his laugh, and Apple-horse even looked pleased with himself.

 

Apple walked carefully, for steel horseshoes on a polished hospital floor is just awful slick, and I felt bad for scarrin' up that shiny wax job (I found out later there was some debate as to whether they should buff and polish to remove them, or keep them as a permanent reminder that someone famous, this way came), and of course I'd have to hunch over to ride Apple, so we walked together down the corridor and into Michael's room.

I reckon 'twas Angela's doin' that The Bear Killer was there, and I know it was her doin' that she had peppermints ready for Apple-horse, and Michael had some molasses twist for him, and I considered that my children would just plainly spoil my stallion.

Angela opened an Iris and I walked Apple back into my barn, I unsaddled him and hung up saddle and blanket and stepped back into the hospital room, for Angela wanted to talk to me about Michael.

I set foot in the room in time to see Angela press a shining-silver injector against Michael's neck.

She consulted a bank of small screens, nodded, turned to me: my lovely daughter, tall as her mother and just as beautiful, took my arm and whispered, "We'll let him rest now," and I let her steer me out of the hospital room and down the corridor.

We ended up in the cafeteria.

I drew a mug of what passed for coffee on that world -- it tasted like boiled sawdust with vanilla and maybe ground walnut hulls -- Angela swore it kept her awake like coffee, so hell, I've had bad coffee before, I drew a mug and we sat down at a back table.

Angela considered her words carefully: she turned her coffee mug slowly, well-scrubbed fingertips barely touching the glazed ceramic.

"Michael's back," she said finally, "actually is healing."

I waited.

"He hasn't told us about the bone pain he's been enduring."

"Bone pain," I echoed. "I've heard of that with cancer patients."

Angela nodded, looked at me, her eyes carefully expressionless.

"Daddy, he's been in more pain than anyone realized. There are instruments that gauge pain levels and he's off the scale. If he'd ... "

"He said he was tired, that he'd given up."

Angela nodded.

"I was afraid he'd eat a deer slug to stop the pain."

"It's happened," she whispered. "Damaging the trigeminal nerve can cause what's called a Suicide Headache. It's so bad people suicide to get away from the pain."

I waited again.

"We've applied a pain block but that has not addressed the root cause."

"What is the root cause?" 

I saw my daughter's lovely face harden, I watched her eyes grow pale with suppressed anger.

"It's from having been electrocuted," she said flatly. "He ... it's a miracle that even this technology could re-grow bone. It's still growing and restoring original contour, original shape, original volume."

I nodded, slowly.

"How long," I asked carefully, "will he be in pain?"

"Realistically?" she asked. "For the rest of his life. How long at this level of pain? They're applying bonestim right now to hurry up and restore his full-depth structure. Until now he's been at risk of crushed vertebrae."

"He wasn't told about that?"

"They didn't realize it, not until you called me and I arranged transport."

"Should they have?"

"I think so, yes," Angela said quietly, an edge to her voice, "but I have to be fair, Daddy. Nobody has ever survived this particular injury before."

"So Michael is a test case."

"Big time. He's proven several new procedures and still going. I know of two people who can see because of what they learned from treating Michael, there are a dozen people who had broke hips who no longer have a deficit, twice that number of osteoporotics who will not break a hip while standing still -- yes, that does happen."

"How long will he be in here?"

"I would say a week."

I nodded.

"Daddy," Angela said, laying delicate, pink-scrubbed fingertips on the back of my hand, "you helped more children than Michael by bringing Apple-horse. The Bear Killer is good, but a horse is the stuff of legend, at least in the popular imagination, and he helps, Daddy. He really does help."

I nodded.

"Bring him back, Daddy. It'll give us an excuse to get children out of the ward and out in sunshine and clean air."

For the rest of that week, I saw a little of Michael, and a great deal of a great many children.

Many were hospital patients.

I ended up at a grade school and each class let out in turn to ooh and aah over Apple-horse, to pet him and marvel at him and to giggle when he snuffed their hands or the backs of their necks, and of course they all wanted to ride him, and I reckon I knocked their schoolroom schedules into a cocked hat, my arms were tired from hoisting children up into the saddle, but by golly from the looks on their faces, it was worth it!

Angela's estimate was spot-on.

Michael was discharged a week later.

He had a particular prescribed diet, which for the most part consisted of Mama's good cookin', he had exercises prescribed which he did better than what was recommended by either riding, or scraping stalls -- like I'd said, he was hard headed determined to build himself back up to normal -- and he had visitors, among them were men from the riot he'd stopped, and there was a young wife with two daughters who visited with him, one daughter -- the youngest -- who insisted he was "Saint Michael" and she showed me a necklace she'd been given by her grandmother two years before, a religious medal with a man a-horseback on the front, and on its reverse, "Saint Michael protect us."

 

Michael and I sat side by side on the front porch, our legs hung over the edge and resting on neatly trimmed grass.

"I don't reckon we've any fresh ripe tomatoes in the garden?" Michael asked hopefully.

I grinned.

"Two big tomatoes and a double handful of cherry tomatoes," I said. "They're finishin' ripenin' in the kitchen window sill."

Michael nodded slowly.

"Pa?"

"Yes, Michael?"

Michael looked over at me.

"Thank you, sir."

I nodded slowly, reached over, laid my big hand over his, gently, so as not to make him feel trapped.

"You're welcome, Michael."

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

INVISIBILITY: IT'S NOT ALWAYS GOOD!

It's important to dress properly for the occasion.

I wore my best suit for this one.

Dana and Victoria both dressed for the evening as well: two lovely ladies in carefully tailored dresses, their hair fixed, young and lovely enough to bring an ache to a man's heart.

In realistic terms, that's not what they brought to most of the hearts that cast eyes upon them, but we won't talk about that.

I had them out to a fine restaurant and an excellent meal.

The Bear Killer lay between Angela's chair and Victoria's, his back side to the table, facing outward: we garnered several looks -- some curious, some less than friendly, and the snooty waiter disliked being told that he would admit us, peacefully or otherwise, and I'd already cleared it with his boss.

It helped when The Bear Killer bristled and rippled his gums a little and I said I feed him uncooperative waiters and he's not eaten in two days, and then his boss flagged him from across the room.

The waiter didn't come near us the rest of the evening; the boss himself seated us at the best table in the house.

The girls paced themselves, as far as their meal: although a wine list was offered, we did not partake: Victoria was too young, and Dana set herself a hard and fast rule of no alcohol, period -- I think that was because she tried it once and found it very much to her taste, and she didn't have a morning after, she had a day after -- but that's a story I won't get into here.

Suffice it to say that her sisters tended to her misery, and my wife and I very carefully took no notice.

The meal was excellent, as it always was.

The girls were perfect ladies.

It's always amazed me at how feminine a girl can be, and they were.

I remember attending a wedding -- most of the family was Oriental -- the ladies ate rice with their fingers: Shelly explained to me later that it was a sticky rice that held together in clumps, but I was struck by how absolutely feminine they were as they ate something that would fall apart in my clumsy hands.

That's beside the point.

Once the meal was cleared, once the ladies had tea and I had coffee, we settled down to the business at hand.

"Ladies," I said formally, which changed the entire tenor of the table.

I saw Dana's eyes change, she looked at Victoria and then at me, and Victoria was suddenly attentive and carefully expressionless.

I'd addressed them as "Ladies," we were well dressed, we were at what was very obviously an expensive restaurant, and this was not just a nice evening out.

"I brought you here," I said carefully, "by way of apology."

Dana's head tilted ever so slightly to the side; Victoria looked at me with open curiosity, then they looked at one another, looked back at me and quietly chorused, in honest puzzlement, "Why?"

I smiled a little -- kind of sadly, or so it felt from behind my face -- "Ladies, you have both been the very soul of patience with all that's gone on."

They looked at one another again, looked back.

"What's been going on, Daddy?" Victoria asked, and for a moment her voice was that of a little girl, instead of a beautiful young lady.

I swallowed, bit my bottom lip, blinked.

"I've been spending my attention either at work, or with Michael," I said. "I've not ... given the two of you the attention you deserve."

"Daddy," Dana said quietly, "you have not neglected us."

"I didn't want either of you to think you were invisible."

Victoria held very still, blinked those big lovely eyes of hers.

Part of my mind whispered, She's already a heartbreaker, and I could almost feel my spine twisting around her little finger.

"Dana, you brought your boyfriend around twice and I was not there. That is my fault and I apologize."

I looked at Victoria.

"I've done nothing to celebrate your and Michael's being graduated besides having cake and ice cream."

"Daddy," Victoria said quietly, "you have never hesitated to show us how proud you are of us."

"Words are cheap, Daddy," Dana reinforced. "Actions count. You've said more with all you've done, than with all the words you've ever spoken."

I nodded.

"Thank you, darlin'."

I frowned, considered for a long moment.

"Ladies, I am pretty damned proud of you both. You have each achieved more and better than anyone else of your ages I've ever known."

I looked at Dana.

"I had a talk with your boyfriend."

That one took her by surprise.

"We went over to the Jewel and set down in the back room for a while," I continued. 

"What did ... you tell him?" Dana asked, almost hesitantly.

I grinned.

"I told him my Uncle Will once said that when I got sweet on a girl, I should sit down at the table across from her Mama, and I should take a good long look at her Mama, because in twenty years, that's what your girl will look like.

"He said I should eat her Mama's cookin' because that's how your girl's always going to cook, so choose wisely."

"Aaannnddd ....?" Dana asked.

"He allowed as he did, he did, and he was satisfied with both, and then we stood up and he looked me in the eye and asked my permission."

It's not easy to surprise my daughter.

Dana is as perceptive as her Mama, she's as quick to pick up on things as her Gammaw, and quick as she was to resume a neutral expression, for a moment I saw I'd taken her aback.

"He ... asked ... your ... permission?" Dana echoed slowly, her lips very carefully framing each individual word.

"He asked if he may have my permission," I said, "to ask you for your hand in marriage."

Dana's hands drifted down to the tablecloth and she stared at me with big and vulnerable eyes.

"I've already looked into him," I said, "I've spent some time with him. I understand you've been assessing him as well."

Victoria looked at her sister and looked at me, looked back at her sister.

"Daddy," Dana said carefully, "I have been ... looking into his background, as well."

I nodded.

"I think he is a good choice."

"Have you discussed this with your mother?"

Dana smiled, just a little: she colored delicately, lowered her eyes.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Dear heart," I said in a soft, fatherly voice, "when it comes to matters of the heart, women are generally better judges of character than are men. I can find nothing significantly objectionable about him."

"Significantly objectionable," Victoria echoed with an utterly innocent expression, and I couldn't help it, I laughed a little.

I rose.

I came around the table.

Dana stood, looked up at me, bit her bottom lip just like her Mama.

I held my little girl and she hugged me and then she looked up at me and whispered, "Daddy, I will choose very carefully."

I kissed her forehead, I laid my cheek over on top of her head and I whispered, "Choose wisely, dear heart.  I did, and we're just as happy as if we had good sense."

I felt her giggle:  "Oh, Daddy!"

Victoria, for her part, looked at the waitress who brought dessert, smiled with delight at the arrival of her chocolate hot fudge sundae, and on the floor beside her, The Bear Killer gave a great and dramatic sigh, and went to sleep.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JUST LIKE US

 

Angela put her hand on her sister's collarbone.

"You're not going."

Dana smacked her hand aside, leaned closer, hissed "Try and stop me, sister!"

Angela's eyes were already pale.

She already had her belt cinched tight, she already had eighteen ways of dyin' on her right hip and two more magazines in the horizontal carrier, and she had her favorite Ithaca with rifle sights swinging from her right hand, dangling down beside her white-stockinged leg.

"She's my student," Angela said, her voice low, menacing, "and you just got engaged! I'm not risking you!"

"I'm not risking you either," Dana snapped -- if it's possible to snap at someone in a whisper, she did.

Pale eyes stared into pale eyes, then two women drew a little apart, each brought a twelve gauge pump up to port arms, each nodded, once.

They'd gone into situations before.

They were doing it again.

 

Jacob Keller laughed as Little John piled on the couch beside him.

Jacob ran his arm around Little John's shoulders, pulled him close, looked down at the laughing little boy and winked.

The Bear Killer looked from one to the other, his big furry brush of a tail swinging, jaws open, the image of a happy canine ready to romp.

"Littlejohn," Jacob said, running the syllables together so it sounded like an actual name, "I'm glad you're here!"

"Yis!" Little John agreed, wiggling happily against his favorite uncle's ribs.

Jacob's wrist-comm buzzed.

He looked at it, frowned, tapped the screen.  

"Yeah, Sis!"

"I need The Bear Killer, we have a situation."

"He's right here, how can I help?"

"Keep Little John from running after him!"

An Iris appeared: The Bear Killer spun, looked at the cat's-eye opening, tilted his head and made a querulous sound.

Angela poked her head out:  "Bear Killer!" she called, drew back.

"Auntie!" Little John called happily, tried to get up as The Bear Killer took two running jumps and disappeared.

"Awww," Little John said: Jacob looked at the lad, at the hung-forward head, at the bottom lip pooched out in disappointment.

Jacob sighed, leaned back, hugged Little John to him again.

"Ain't that the way of it," he murmured. Leavin' us home to guard the fort."

"Yeah," Little John said. "Guard the fort."

Little John nodded emphatically, crossed his arms, shoved his bottom jaw out and frowned, the very image of youthful rebellion, as Jacob made a mental note never to say anything in Little John’s presence that he didn’t want repeated.

 

Angela held up the vest and The Bear Killer's demeanor changed instantly.

She slipped it over his head, snapped it in place across his back, fast up the straps under his belly.

This vest almost looked like the one he wore when he rode with the Sheriff.

Almost.

There were four rectangular panels in the upper half, four below; the vest was black, like the one he wore when he rode with the Sheriff.

It had a gold, six point star embroidered on the side, like the one he wore when he rode with the Sheriff.

The letters K9 stood out as boldly as the six point star.

The only visible difference -- other than the rectangular panels -- instead of saying FIRELANDS COUNTY in the middle of the gold-embroidered star, it said 13.

Dana looked at it, looked at her sister.

"Thirteen ... star systems?"

"Yep."

The Bear Killer was no longer the mouth-open, tail-swinging, ready-to-play member of the family.

He wore his Vest, and he was all business.

"Your uniform will do fine," Angela said. "You're on detached duty, just like Jacob."

"Do we know where she's being held?" 

"Generally so," Angela replied. 

"Generally. That's why you need The Bear Killer."

"Yyyep."

Angela keyed her wrist-pad.

An Iris opened.

Two pale eyed deputies and a silent black Bear Killer stepped through, and were gone.

 

"Gampaw!" Littlejohn shouted happily, and Linn laughed, or at least his image on the comm-screen did.

"Little John, are you behavin' yourself?" Linn grinned.

"Yis!" Little John declared with an emphatic nod and a flash of young white teeth.

"Sir, the girls have a situation."

Linn's face was instantly serious.

"Report."

Jacob nodded, considered that his father -- although Sheriff -- had no authority to order him to report.

On the other hand, this was Family, so maybe he did.

"Sir, one of Angela's students was abducted. She recruited Dana."

"She knows we can back her up."

"She does, sir."

"She turned it down." -- it was a statement, not a question.

"Yes, sir."

Linn took a long breath, looked to the side, his jaw muscles bulging.

"She's as hard headed as I am," he muttered, then glared back at Jacob. "I hope that independence doesn't get her hostage killed!"

"Yes, sir," Jacob said quietly.

 

Angela squatted, slipped the warbag off her shoulder, opened it, reached in.

The Bear Killer watched as Angela opened a zip top bag of some kind, held it open.

The Bear Killer shoved his muzzle into the bag, took a good whiff, took another: he brought his head out, looked at Angela, whuffed quietly, chopped his jaws once.

She thrust the evidence bag back into the canvas satchel, reached deeper, pulled out what looked like a bundle of tan rods.

She unfolded what quickly became a slender frame, with four foot long handles: she rose, held the tall, door-sized rectangle in front of her, the Ithaca hanging muzzle down from her off shoulder.

Dana turned, looked around, turned again, looking for watchers, snipers, cameras.

Angela advanced quickly, pressed the slim rectangular framework against the front door.

Dana heard a quiet hissing, saw the door fall silently into what looked like ivory colored sawdust.

Angela dropped the framework -- it coiled in on itself, sizzled, disappeared -- Angela brought the shotgun up, advanced.

The Bear Killer paced forward, scenting the floor, lifting his head, scented the air.

He pressed against Angela's shapely, stockinged leg -- she felt his snarl, rather than heard it -- Dana looked behind again, drew over against the wall, looked back.

Angela brought her Ithaca up, fingers tight around the shotgun's fore-end, she felt the switch under her middle finger, pressed --

Her light blasted into a man's face, caused him to flinch back, raising a hand to block the blazing beam.

A pistol raised with his hand, then fell to the ground as Angela's Ithaca spoke.

The Bear Killer roared and charged, all fangs and fury, he ran to a door, yammering, clawing, rearing, trying to dig his way through.

Two pale eyed deputies charged the stairs.

Dana's muscular, equestrian's leg drew back, she brought her knee to her chest, drove her boot heel hard against the door just beside the knob.

Two shotguns thrust into the room and brought two pale eyed deputies with them.

 

"What was the casualty count?" Linn asked, his voice serious.

Dana sat at the kitchen table with her father, her hands wrapped around the welcome warmth of a big mug of coffee.

"Three," she said. "One dead, two injured."

"Go on."

"Angela neutralized the lookout when he pointed a pistol at us.”

Linn nodded, listening.

"We kicked the door.

"The Bear Killer responded as he'd been trained."

She saw her father's eyes tighten a little at the corners.

"That one Angela took into custody."

"That one?"

"I took the other one."

"You took the other one."

Linn knew to echo a statement and wait, knowing it was natural to want to fill the silent vacuum with words.

Dana smiled at him.

She’d participated in enough interrogations to know what he was doing.

"He dropped what he was holding and surrendered," she said quietly, "so I kicked him just north of the belt buckle to soften him up and drove the butt of my gun into the kidneys to make sure he behaved, then I stepped on his wrist and looked around to make sure there were no more in the room."

Linn nodded.

"He didn't resist any when I got him in irons."

"No, I'd reckon not," Linn said softly.  "You know that wouldn't fly here."

"We weren't here."

Linn nodded.

"The girl?" he asked.

Angela looked away, bit her bottom lip.

"How bad?"

She looked back at her father.

“You remember what happened to Angela, back East.”

Linn’s eyes hardened: he veiled them quickly, raised his coffee, took a slow, controlled sip.

"I wanted to kill him, Daddy," she said quietly. "After what he'd done to her, I wanted to kill him."

"You didn't."

She shook her head.

"I got them both in irons. Angela had the local authorities on speed dial.”

Linn nodded again.

“Somehow I thought …”

Linn waited.

“I thought maybe …”

Dana glared into her coffee mug, took a long breath.

“I thought people would be different, Daddy.  I thought they’d be better than us.”

She shook her head, looked up, looked at the black-glass mirror of the kitchen window.

“They’re just like us, Daddy.  Just like us.  Just as good and just as bad and full of the same sins and prone to the same …”

She took a long breath, smiled cynically, shook her head like us, raised her mug, muttered.

“Just, like, us.”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

 

AN EXPLOSIVE SITUATION

 

Walk-in patients were nothing new to the firehouse.

If they needed looked at, assessed, needed some good sound advice, often times they came to the firehouse instead of the hospital – if nothing else, it spared them the expense of an ER visit.

So it was today, when a father and son came through the squad bay’s man door.

Captain Crane was medic-in-charge.

Captain Crane was a widower, a father, and a grandfather.

Captain Crane had Grandfather’s Reflexes.

Shelly Keller was taking care of the patient – he’d stopped in the firehouse for a blood pressure check, and nothing else was amiss, at least with the man who stopped.

His little boy, on the other hand, needed some attention.

The Captain went to one knee before the lad and said gently, “What’s wrong, son?”

The boy looked genuinely distressed as he looked past the Captain, at his father, seated and laughing quietly with whatever line Shelly was feeding him.

The child spoke his fears to the Captain.

The Captain listened carefully to the young boy’s fears, and considered his reply just as carefully.

As Shelly peeled the blood pressure cuff free, patted the man’s hand and winked at him, declaring him a fine and healthy example of Western manhood, the Captain, in a quiet and grandfatherly voice, put the boy’s fears to rest: his explanation was geared to a five year old’s understanding, but his words carried the weight of truth, and coming from someone his father respected, the child accepted the Captain’s explanation without question.

They watched as father and son departed the firehouse, the boy gripping his father’s hand as they did.

Shelly folded the blood pressure cuff, wrapped tubing around it and slipped the compact package back into the orange-plastic bottom tray of their voluminous medic’s box.

“What was that all about?” Shelly asked, looking sidelong at her father.

The Captain took a long breath, ran his arm around her shoulders, hugged her into him: she felt his silent chuckle and so she tilted her head and turned to face him.

Shelly raised an eyebrow, looked over a set of nonexistent spectacles at her father’s increasingly reddening face.

“Do you know,” he said quietly, “that’s the most trouble I ever had, keeping a straight face?”

Shelly exaggerated her blinks: she folded her arms and began tapping her foot, for all the world like a stern and disapproving schoolmarm.

The Captain sighed, shook his head.

“His son,” he said, “was … distressed.”

“So I gathered.”

“He said his Daddy was taking nitroglycerin, and he was afraid to make any noise or do anything for fear his Daddy would blow up!”

Shelly smiled.

Shelly’s ears turned red.

Shelly and her father embraced one another and gave up, and laughter filled the sunlit squad bay.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

 

I AM SURE

 

Dana drew up with a clump of brush behind her, laid a quieting hand on her mare’s neck.

I knew why she did that.

I knew why she didn’t favor the bright and girly colors her sisters loved.

Dana wore a riding skirt, but it would not have surprised me if she’d worn trousers, convention be damned! – and I knew she wore boots beneath that riding skirt.

She was young enough to wear whatever she damn well pleased, and look like a girl when she did, and she was old enough to wear whatever she damn well pleased, and look like a girl when she did.

She was my youngest daughter.

I know why she drew up in front of some brush like that.

Her Appaloosa didn’t have much white on it.

From a distance, holding still, her mare blended into a background.

Dana, in tans and browns and black gloves and hat, did as well, her shining-blond hair was piled up somehow underneath that chin strapped Stetson – how, I’ll never know.

Woman’s magic, I reckon, and her not a woman yet, but she could still get that glorious, shining fall of hair all up under her hat and hid.

Sarah, now, Sarah braided hers and wrapped it around her neck when she was going into something serious, and more times than one it kept her from getting throat cut.

She learned that from another remarkable woman, Bonnie McKenna’s top hand, Clark.

I set there on my black Outlaw-horse – he was old now, likely I’d retire him pretty soon, but he loved the mountains, just like me – I set there and let my mind wander, and I looked at Dana and I remembered her Mama, how she set a horse just like that, she saddled like the Queen on a velvet throne.

Esther rode with a regal dignity.

Dana rides with all the dignity of a five year old after drinkin’ half a pot of coffee, with all the skill of a screaming Mexican: when her horse lights up under her it’s like you lit a fire in a boiler, she and the horse become one magical creature and there’s no tellin’ where one ends and the other begins, and she does all this without reins or bit either one.

I looked at my daughter and considered she’d stopped in front of that clump of brush because that’s what I do, and my little girl picked up a surprisin’ number of my habits.

She was silent, she was watchful: her gloved hand caressed her mare’s neck, and the mare stood absolutely still, didn’t even switch her tail: when they held dead still like that, in front of an irregular structure like that brush or a cluster of rocks, why, she turned invisible.

Invisible.

She learned that from me.

I set there thinkin’ all this but I was not a-starin’ at my little girl.

I turned Outlaw-horse – I stopped twenty foot from her, knowin’ that shinin’-black gelding would draw the eye, and if anyone took a shot at me, I didn’t want Dana hit – I looked around and satisfied myself we were alone.

Always did like the lonesome places.

Earlier, now, Dana stopped at a spring we favored, well down the mountain, she filled three whiskey bottles with good cold water, then we let our horses drink – man and beast dry out fast in the high, thin air – we headed on up-trail and now we stopped, and we looked, and we listened.

It didn’t take much to start a small fire from dry stuff and boil up a little water for tea.

Dana unwrapped a pyramid of sugar she’d bought at the Mercantile for such moments: brown it was, and it tasted of maple, and many’s the time I’d fried up bacon or whatever else we’d brought.

Damned if Dana didn’t fetch out some flour and add some of that spring water, she made little flat cakes and fried them in bacon grease while we drank sweetened tea and ate the bacon she fixed, her mare came over and she whispered to her and fed her some of that sugar and stroked her ears and called her a good girl, and I couldn’t help but smile, for Esther used to whisper to sugar her mare, and whisper, just like that.

Dana could not have learned that from me, and Esther died in childbirth, so I have no idea how Dana got that, not unless it’s born into her.

Dana ate like I did, speared her bacon with her knife, let it dangle and cool and she et off her knife blade, but damned if she didn’t eat dainty.

I reckon she saw the amusement in my eyes, for she looked at me and damned if she didn’t have that same understandin’ look in her eyes Esther used to give me in such moments.

Once we et, once we’d mopped out what little bacon grease was left with that fry bread and et with a good appetite, I scoured the pan out with sand and we scattered the fire and made sure it was sure-enough dead.

I’ve seen fire on the mountain and that’s something a man can’t hardly outrun and Dana saw me makin’ sure a fire was absolutely positively out, so she did the same thing with her own trail fires.

Now as much as Dana watched me and as much as Dana hid herself in plain sight like she’d seen me do, and as much as Dana would kill a trailside fire just graveyard dead like she’d seen me do, Dana was a girl and no doubtin’ it, and I give thanks to Bonnie McKenna and her girls for that.

Sarah was long gone off to Europe and I don’t reckon she was much more’n a wisp of memory to Dana, so Dana could not have learned girl stuff from her … Bonnie told me once that she very much appreciated that I treated her like a lady, and I taken Bonnie’s hands in mine – quick-like, she looked at me, startled, for I’d never been that forward before – I recall I told her quietly that she was indeed a Lady, and had always been.

“Bonnie,” said I, “I treat you like the Lady that you genuinely be.”

I closed my eyes and bit my bottom lip and thought You are making a damned fool of yourself, but that wouldn’t be the first time.

Bonnie’s hands squeezed mine and she got kind of teary and she squeaked “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” and she near to jumped up on her toes and kissed me on the cheek and the she turned and scampered off like a bashful schoolgirl and there I stood with my teeth in my mouth and my elbow halfway up my sleeve, a-wonderin’ what the hell just happened.

“Your Mama,” I said, and I had to stop and harrumph and swallow hard, for memories came rip roarin’ like a Cavalry charge from where I tried to keep ‘em corralled.

“Your Mama always liked it up here,” I said.

Dana looked at me with those big, lovely eyes, blinked, waited.

“You miss her,” Dana said – a statement, not a question.

I nodded, walked over to her, reached thumb and forefinger into my vest pocket.

“I had this made for her,” I said quietly, and pulled out a necklace.

It was a square cut ruby, blood red and polished, faceted and rectangular and silver mounted: Dana lifted her chin, then bent her head down a little as I put the delicate silver chain around her neck, fast it in back.

It rode in the little hollow between her collar bones.

“Daddy,” Dana whispered, “are you sure?”

I took my little girl’s hands in mine and I looked at the infant I’d diapered, at the giggling little girl just learning to walk on chubby little legs.

I looked at the little girl in a frilly frock who tilted her head waaaaay back to look in amazement at this biiig creature her Daddy rode, and I looked at this lovely young damn-neart-a-woman who’d rode up the mountain with me, and I felt her hands in mine and I whispered, “Darlin’, I’m sure.”

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MY DADDY GAVE ME THIS

 

The woman would normally have protested a stranger’s fingers caressing the lid of her jewelry-box; she would ordinarily have vigorously resisted a stranger reaching in and plucking one, but only one, item from its depths: the thief was quick, silent, stealthy: the windows were easily slipped open, the latch quickly defeated with a schoolboy’s metal ruler: the woman lay dead in her bedroom, the thief tiptoed around the bed, to the window.

A quick look without: no one in sight.

Good, good.

A leg, out, then the other: gloved fingers gripped the window-frame, drew it down.

He slipped the ruler back up through the gap, worked the latch over a little, until it was just caught: the ruler went back into an inside coat pocket, a gloved hand pressed carefully against the vest pocket, with the treasure he’d just taken.

He did not need the bauble, he was not lacking money – in fact, he was a son of wealth and privilege, and he was doing this because his heart ran faster, his breath was quicker, his senses heightened: he absolutely thrilled to slip into the inner sanctum, after a death and before the mortician arrived to remove the deceased: his step was swift and silent, and he disappeared into the riverside mists, back into the City, back into anonymity.

A square-cut ruby on a silver necklace-chain was his night’s take.

He could have made off with the entire little casket of pretties, but it would have been noticed: no, better to take one, and only one, item: one item would not be missed for some time, and by then he would be gone, long gone.

A loose cobble caused him to stumble, to fall.

His coat caught the iron spike of the cemetery fence by the graveyard.

He heard something tear, felt the spike drive into his belly: he twisted, pulled, thrust his hand into his coat –

Blood.

It can’t be bad.

Damn, that hurts!

A young man, his bloodied hand inside his coat, walked more quickly: it was not until he was seen in a doctor’s office that he realized the spike had torn not just a button from his coat, but the pocket from his vest.

His night’s treasure was gone.

 

Michael Llewellyn, son of Daffyd Llewellyn, grandson of Daffyd and Sarah Llewellyn of Firelands, Colorado, strode purposefully up the cobbled walkway beside the cemetery.

He looked out over the Ohio River, at boat traffic, at smaller boats: on the far bank he saw boys fishing, and smiled, for he’d been a boy once himself.

He looked back, stopped, took two steps back, frowned.

A necklace hung from the cemetery fence.

Flies were clustered on the dull iron spike.

Michael removed the necklace, held it up curiously.

Gorgeous, he thought.

Ruby.

Nicely cut.

He slipped it in a vest pocket, shrugged, went to the fence gate, unlatched it and swung it open.

It was Michael’s habit to visit his father’s grave.

He walked from the nearby fire station, at noon – it was not far – were there an alarm, the cry would go up and he’d leg it back in time to catch the engine – but whenever ‘twas possible, he’d come out here at noontime and take his flat topped cap in his hand and look long at his father’s grave.

Daffyd Llewellyn, the stone read.

Beloved Husband and Father

Died in the performance of his duty

Michael Llewellyn threw his head back, took a long breath, remembering looking up, seeing fire through the roof, out the windows, saw the heat-weakened cornice break free.

He looked down and saw his father look up, saw Daffyd drop his speaking-trumpet, saw him reach and grab a fireman around the waist and throw him, turn to seize another –

Michael saw it again, as he’d seen it that night, his father had a second fireman in a death grip and was twisting him out of harm’s way, he managed one stride toward safety when the cornice crushed him.

Michael opened his eyes again, looked at his father’s stone.

 The date he was born, the date he was killed fighting a fire, and the Chief’s scramble incised beside the name.

Not much of a monument to a man’s entire life.

Michael was not yet Chief, but he was on his way: he had his father’s white uniform cap, set away and safe, and that would be the cap he too would wear.

Michael looked long at his father’s stone and felt that familiar old ache a man gets when part of his heart is buried in God’s good earth.

It wasn’t until that night, when he felt the necklace in his vest pocket as he undressed for the evening, that he remembered finding it.

He put it in his desk drawer and honestly forgot about it.

 

 A boy with light-blue eyes stopped and stared at a hand-painted portrait.

He’d ridden the train with his mother, he’d ridden in a horse drawn wagon and listened to the guide and he actually found it interesting.

He looked around at this little Colorado town and wondered what it looked like when an ancestress lived here.

It wasn’t until they disembarked at the firehouse, until the boy followed the guide’s gesture toward the row of mustachioed portraits on the wall, that the boy’s eyes widened.

His mother turned, saw her son staring, followed his gaze.

She raised a hand to her mouth and turned the color of putty.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller dragged up a chair, heedless of the noisy chatter of wooden legs on the hand laid brick floor.

She sat.

A pale eyed Sheriff, a woman, a boy, in a triangle, almost knee to knee, the boy looking up at the picture on the wall.

“We’re from Cincinnati,” the woman said.  “Kendra Llewellyn, and my son Steven.”
“Willamina Keller,” the Sheriff smiled, shaking their hands each in turn. “It seems we have a common interest.”

“That’s him,” Steven said, pointing at the picture.

“Which one?” Willamina asked, turning her chair, looking up, looking back.

“Third one from the left.”

“Daffyd Llewellyn.”

Willamina looked back.

“Died in the line of duty. He threw a blanket wrapped infant across a collapsed floor. The Fire Chief caught the child. Daffyd tried to jump the distance and almost made it.”

Mother and son looked at one another.

“I know that look,” Willamina murmured.

“It’s … my Grampa used to tell me …”

Willamina leaned forward, knees demurely together, hands clasped loosely as she nodded encouragement.

“His mother died … I think she died in Europe.”

“Sarah Lynne McKenna.”

Mother and son stared, mouths open.

Willamina reached down, opened her satchel.

“I thought this might be the case, so I brought some pictures.  Here, let’s use the Chief’s desk.”

Willamina laid the picture book open.

“This is Sarah Lynne McKenna.”

Steven looked at the hand-drawn portrait, looked at the Sheriff.

“She looks … just like you.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Willamina smiled. “She married Daffyd – the man on the wall – they had a son, also named Daffyd.”

Mother and son looked at one another, and Willamina did not miss the look.

“He had a son, Michael,” Steven said. “Daffyd was killed getting two firemen to safety when a building collapsed.”

Willamina nodded, listening closely.

“There’s something else,” his mother said, pulling an envelope from her purse.

She opened the small, heavy-yellow-paper container, poured a necklace out onto the Chief’s desk.

“We found this hidden away in an old desk that belonged to Michael.”

Willamina looked closely at the necklace, paged quickly through the picture book, stopped.

It was a close-up, a head-and-shoulders shot of a beautiful young woman, taken on her wedding day.

In the hollow of her throat, riding atop her high-necked wedding gown, a rectangular, square-cut gem.

Willamina picked up the necklace, swept the chain upward, laid the stone on the portrait.

“This is a great-grandniece of Sarah Llewellyn,” Willamina said softly. “Your ancestress, and mine.”

“Who is she?”

“An hour before this picture was taken, her name was Dana Keller, daughter of Old Pale Eyes himself.”

 

That night, at the supper table, Richard looked at his wife, tilted his head a little.

Linn watched as his father said, “Nice necklace. Something new?”

Willamina smiled, cut another slice of chicken breast.

“What, this old thing?” she laughed.

“I don’t think I’ve seen it before,” Richard said in the careful voice of a man who really, really hoped it was something she’d worn many times and he was only just noticing.

 

Dana Keller smiled as she shut the door on her pretty purple Dodge.

She reached up, gripped the mirror, turned it, smiled at the rectangular, square-cut ruby hanging in the hollow of her throat.

“My Daddy gave me this,” she whispered to her reflection, and her reflection smiled back at her.

Dana looked at the scarlet stone, glowing in the dim light, smiled.

“It’s old,” she whispered to her reflection.

“I wish I could get it to talk!”

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE REVEREND'S GET

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller hung the colorfully-ringed dartboard on the opposite wall, walked back behind the desk, heels loud on the polished floor: she swept her skirt under her and sat, the very image of ladylike femininity.

She looked at her granddaughter Marnie with understanding eyes.

"Go ahead," she said softly. "You know you want to."

Marnie Keller, fifteen years old, young and beautiful and the very image of her pale eyed Gammaw, dressed identically to her pale eyed Gammaw, closed her eyes and breathed quietly through her nose.

The heels of her fists pressed down, hard, on the ancient, solid desk top: she took a final, long breath, eased it out, then she opened her eyes.

Marnie's eyes were pale, hard, unforgiving: she opened her hands, lifted them an inch from the desk top: she uncurled her fingers, bent her wrists back, and for a moment, she looked like what she was: a truly lovely daughter of the high mountains, as ladylike and as feminine as her pale eyed Gammaw.

Until she stood, until her hand closed around the weapon, until she drew her hand back and the weapon seared through the air like a streak of silver.

The mechanical pencil drove point-first into the dartboard, stuck.

Willamina nodded approvingly.

"I do the same thing," she said quietly, "when I am frustrated."

Marnie swept her skirt under her and sat, turned her swivel chair, looked at her pale eyed Gammaw's quietly amused face.

"Gammaw," she asked in an irritated voice, "why in God's green earth did they name Old Pale Eyes and his cousin the same?"

Willamina looked patiently at her impatient granddaughter.

"Linn was a name commonly given to the firstborn son, back in the Ohio country," she replied in a quiet voice, "when most of Ohio was still property of the Ohio Land Company in Marietta, except for the northern and northwestern parts, which were given to Revolutionary War veterans."

"Wasn't part of that called the Fire Lands?"

"The Great Swamp, yes. I read somewhere ... I think Old Pale Eyes called it 'The Great Mucken Mire,' I think he was quoting an Irishman he knew in the War."

"It's just so frustrating!" Marnie hissed, glaring at the stack of books and folders at her right hand. "I find a drawing, it's signed Keller, and I can't find if it's from Old Pale Eyes' family, it's from his Stone Creek preacher cousin's family -- I don't know if the artist is blood or adopted!"

Willamina inclined her head a little, gave her granddaughter a patient look.

"It doesn't always make sense," Willamina admitted, "and sometimes we follow the trail as far as we can, but it kind of peters out and it's gone."

Marnie picked up a sheaf of papers from the folder in front of her: copies they were, the originals were being preserved: she riffled through several sheets, stopped, pulled one out, another.

"Here," she said, thrusting them at her Gammaw.  "This is why I want to find out who and how they were related!"

Willamina picked up her rimless spectacles, settled them on her nose, slid them down a little:  she leaned her head back, regarded the page calmly, looking very old-fashioned and schoolmarm-ish as she did.

She looked over the lenses and muttered, "Don't you dare laugh at your old Gammaw's glasses!"

Marnie slipped her own rimless spectacles out of their brocade case, thrust them on her own face, slid them halfway down her nose and gave her Gammaw an innocent look.

Two truly beautiful women held their impassive expressions as long as they could, which was not long: neither could keep from laughing.

"Now take a look at this one, Gammaw," Marnie smiled.

"Wait, wait, let me look at this one again."

Willamina took a look at the sheet she held.

Hand drawn in pencil, in the big round barn under the cliff, by the look of it: there were two fiddlers, a dried up old man in sacky drawers and huaraches, with an outsized guitar, and a banjo player.

The detail was amazing; Willamina could see the family resemblance of all but the Mexican guitar player, clearly the family Daine, those Clan Maxwell carpenters, gunsmiths and fiddlers from up on the mountain overlooking Firelands.

Willamina studied the musicians, turned her attention to the dancers, smiled.

A young man in mid-step -- Willamina blinked, considered his posture, the other dancers' positions --

Square dance, she thought, he's in a Grand Right and Left, and she smiled to remember square dancing in that same round barn, there under the mountain's overhang, handing off to one man and another as she went around the circle, laughing with delight.

"Now look at this one, Gammaw."

Marnie handed her another sheet.

This one had a few basic colors to it: the back of a woman's skirt, flared as she swung, the musicians, yes, but what commanded the viewer's attention was the artist's imagination.

Music flowed from the instruments, and over the dancer's heads, a delicately tinted stream, and in it, notes that looked like horses.

Miniature horses, in full gallop, ears laid back and noses punched straight out.

A living, liquid stream of miniature horses, with wings.

"Now look at this one," Marnie said as she handed her Gammaw another sheet.

This one was an original, not a color photocopy: this one was done in colored pencil, on eggshell paper.

It wasn't often that Marnie ever surprised her Gammaw.

This time she did.

Willamina's expression was halfway between astonishment, and delight: it showed Willamina, laughing, her skirt flared as she spun in a Grand Right and Left, but that's not what caught the pale eyed grandmother's attention.

Music flowed like a pastel stream from the nearest fiddle, rising like living water running down the mountainside, and the musical notes were shaped like galloping horses.

Miniature horses, in full, flat-out gallop, ears laid back and noses punched straight out ... miniature horses, in full gallop, with wings.

Willamina looked at her granddaughter, raised an eyebrow.

"The second one I just handed you," Marnie said, "just came to light. No one but the two of us saw it since it was found in Emma Cooper's long-lost trunk."

Willamina nodded, just a little, unblinking eyes never leaving Marnie's serious young face.

"My sister Angela," she said, "drew the one I just gave you."

"When?"

"She drew it yesterday."

Marnie pulled another sheet, handed it to her Gammaw.

The musicians were suggested, in the background, but the dancers were drawn in great and very accurate detail.

Drawn in colored pencil, drawn with incredible accuracy, Willamina saw herself in a long gown, an expression of delight as she looked at her handsome dance partner, a young man who looked enough like Willamina's son Linn to be ... well, to be him.

Marnie folded her arms, looked at the mechanical pencil still hanging from the dart board.

"Now you understand my frustration," she said quietly. "I don't know if it was one of Reverend Keller's get, or Old Pale Eyes' get, or just who it was that drew it!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE NOTE

 

Sheriff Linn Keller looked up at the summoning rat-tat, tat on the closed door of his Sheriff’s office.

The door opened, spilling bright sunlight with it: Parson Belden came in, closed the door behind him: the Parson hung his flat-crowned hat on a handy peg, looked at the Sheriff.

Linn reached down, drew open the bottom desk drawer.

Parson Belden watched as Linn pulled out two short, squatty glasses and a bottle of something water clear.

“May as well have a seat,” Linn said mildly. “Take the weight off your pins and your soul both, Parson.”

Glass clinked on glass and distilled sledgehammer chuckled into two glasses.

Linn corked the bottle, set it away, closed the drawer, rose.

Parson Belden came over, looked at the Sheriff, nodded thoughtfully.

Two men raised their glasses, saluted one another.

Two men drank.

The Parson regarded his empty glass, set it carefully on the Sheriff’s desk: he turned, pulled a chair up beside the desk, as was his habit.

Linn pulled his office chair up to the Parson’s, set his glass down, then his bony backside.

“I must take care when I sit,” he said, the ghost of a smile in his voice: “this chair likes to throw me.”

The Parson tried to think of a good smart remark and came up dry.

Linn sat, leaned forward, his face serious.

“What’s wrong, John?” he asked quietly. “You normally have a good smart aleck reply for any occasion.”

Parson John Belden nodded, looked past Linn’s shoulder, his eyes distant.

“Linn,” he said quietly, “I just got a good dose of humility.”

“That’ll happen,” Linn said. “Must have been something serious.”

“Some years ago,” the Parson said slowly, “a dear friend’s widow asked me to perform my friend’s funeral.”

Linn nodded, just a little.

“He was a doctor. Good one, too.”

Linn nodded again.

“That …”

The Parson swallowed, looked down, slowly sandpapered his palms together.

“That was the hardest thing I’d ever done,” the man almost whispered, then looked up.

“Since then … “

He sighed, rubbed his closed eyes, lifted his head.

“It’s hardest when it’s someone you know.”

Linn nodded.

He’d had to speak the final words over a closed box before.

“My old friend’s widow sent me this.”

Linn leaned forward, accepted the folded note: he unfolded it, read it, read it again, nodded: he handed it back, and the Parson folded it back up, slipped it in a pocket book, thrust it into the inside pocket of his coat.

“I received that yesterday,” the Parson said, “one hour after someone I had not seen for … years … knocked on my door.

“He was passing through and had to get back to the train, but he thanked me for the first conversation we ever had.  He said he’d used what I taught him to mend things with his sister. Not an hour later, I received this.” 

His hand went to his coat, over the pocketbook he’d carefully put away.

Linn rose, thrust out his hand: the Parson rose and accepted the man’s grip.

“I’ll tell you the same as I was told, some years ago,” Linn said quietly. 

“Don’t ever doubt the good that you do.”

The two men shook, walked slowly toward the door.

The Parson reached up, retrieved his hat: he stopped, frowned, turned.

“Tell me … just out of curiosity … who was it, told you not to doubt the good that you do?” he asked quietly.

Linn’s grin was quick, spontaneous as he clapped a hand on the Parsons’ shoulder.

His voice was deep, rich, his grin was broad and genuine as he replied, “You did, John!”

Linn closed the door quietly after his departing guest.

He stood for several long moments, silent, thoughtful, as he remembered what he’d read.

Losing Timothy was nearly my death, the note read.

Had you and your wife not called on me as often as you did, had I not your voice to bear me up, I would surely have taken poison to still the grief in my heart.

That I live today, is because of you.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller paced slowly down the center aisle of their little whitewashed church.

Reverend John Burnett was wiping down the pulpit; Linn could smell the dusting compound the man used, and knew he was almost done, for he worked from the rearmost pews, forward.

“You know we can probably hire a custodian,” Linn said, his voice rich and echoing in the silence of the empty sanctuary.

Reverend John Burnett laughed, made two final passes down the length of his pulpit, straightened.

“If I get any older and more decrepit,” he said, “I might take you up on that!”

He looked at the Sheriff, the corners of his eyes crinkling with good humor.

“I know that expression,” he smiled. “You found something!”

“Yep.”

The Reverend descended the few steps, walked slowly over to the Sheriff: Linn saw the man was still favoring that injured leg – he’d take a beatin’ before admittin’ it hurts, Linn thought – the Reverend’s only concession to being hit by a driver intent on killing him, was to lean a palm on the back of a pew.

“My leg’s troublin’ me,” Linn rumbled.  “Set.”

Two men parked their backsides in the frontmost pew.

“Parson, I read something in an ancestor’s Journal.”

“Oh?” 

The Reverend folded his wiping rag, draped it over the arm of the pew.

“Boils down to ‘Never doubt the good that you do.’ “

“I see.”

“No idea why, but I figured you needed to hear that.”

The good Reverend nodded slowly.

“I think,” he said, “that’s a good message.”

“Figured if nothin’ else you could add it to your list of topics for a future sermon.”

“Funny you should mention that.”

“How’s that?”

“I got a note in the mail this morning, from an old friend’s widow.”

Sheriff Linn Keller felt like someone stepped on his grave.

Somehow the Sheriff knew what Reverend John Burnett's note was going to say.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DARLIN’, SOMETIMES YOU WORRY ME

 

Jacob Keller slid the window open, carefully, soundlessly.

He removed his Stetson, leaned out.

Sarah steadied the chair as he stepped up, squatted on the windowsill.

Jacob held, eyes wide, bright, waited, waited –

Sarah saw him thrust forward, drop, disappear into the nighttime darkness –

She drew her knife, stepped up onto the chair, ducked through the open window –

Sarah Lynne McKenna’s lips peeled back and she suppressed the feral snarl that wanted to rip loose of her throat.

She held, held, held –

Jacob  rolled off the man he’d just floored, grabbed a second who swung a cudgel at him, introduced his face to the side of the building, hard.

Sarah landed on the man who came running up at Jacob.

Sarah’s sharp little heels dug into the man’s beltline, her weight slammed down across the back of his shoulders: her left hand seized the back of his neck as he went down, her right drove her fighting blade in behind the flattened attacker’s collarbone.

Sarah jerked the handle, swinging the blade forward, twisted, hauled it out: Jacob twisted, kicked the man he’d downed, his boot drove the man’s belly most of the way back to his back bone as Sarah’s kick to the back of the rising man’s knee dropped his support from under him.

“I’ve got this one,” Sarah snapped: Jacob nodded, grimly, turned toward the one with the club.

Sarah’s eyes were ice-white and wide, her skin was death-pale and stretched over her cheekbones, her lips were peeled back: was she not his half sister, Jacob would have thought her a demon, a creature undead, perhaps, but definitely not of this earth.

He picked up the struggling attacker, dunked him headfirst into the horse trough.

Sarah picked up the man Jacob mashed to the boardwalk, added him to the hillbilly bathtub.

The two were eventually dragged out – choking, gagging, and with the very clear understanding that they really should cooperate.

Especially when they watched Sarah slosh her blade vigorously in the horse trough and then wipe it dry on the dead man’s coat tails, and smile, and spin the blade between her fingers and murmur, “I do like a good sharp knife!”

Jacob didn’t bother wondering how someone as diminutive and feminine as Sarah Lynne McKenna could pick up a grown man by the back of his collar and the back of his belt, and pack him three steps to the horse trough.

She’d done things like that before.

 

The Sheriff looked at his son and his daughter.

“I suppose I have you two to thank for our guests, back in the cells?”

“Yes, sir,” Jacob said quietly.

Linn looked at the brief note Jacob left on his desk.

“These two robbed the express car,” Linn said – a statement, not a question.

“They did, sir.”

“They hurt two of our people.”

“They did, sir.”

Linn nodded.

“Good work with the apprehension.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Linn looked at Sarah.

“I suppose you were in the middle of it.”

Sarah smiled, just a little, tilted her head, turned on the balls of her feet, looked at Jacob.

“Actually,” she smiled, “it was a painted hussy who went either by Dolly, or Susie, or Lilly.”

“Oh?” Linn asked, raising an eyebrow.

Sarah planted her hands on her hips, lowered her head – she slipped two fingers into a hidden pocket, pulled out a set of spectacles, slipped them on her face and ran them halfway down her nose, then glared at the Sheriff overtop of the lenses.

“Do you really expect me to jump out of a brothel window dressed like this?” Sarah scolded gently.   “I’ll have you know” – she turned a little, hoisted her nose haughtily – “I am a Lady!”

“She was in disguise again, sir,” Jacob explained. “She was dressed like a dance hall girl when she dropped like a rock on top of someone we didn’t expect to be there.”

“And who might that have been?”

“Mitchell, sir. He was the one that shot at Benjamin.”

“Which makes three. We have two locked up.”

“Yes, sir. Benjamin seems to have … died.”

“Died.”

“Yes, sir. It seems that having a woman of easy virtue drop like a rock on top of him was bad for his health.”

“And what was so damned unhealthy about the man?”

“He was coming in behind the first two,” Sarah said, her voice cold, “with intent to cause Jacob harm!”

“I see.”

The Sheriff leaned back, looked from one to the other.

“I don’t suppose you involved the local constabulary.”

“We went to apprehend, sir,” Jacob said quietly. “That third fellow had a bad case of bad judgement.”

“You weren’t seen?”

“After we near to drowned the pair of ‘em, sir, I don’t reckon anyone wanted to.”

Linn looked at Sarah, who folded her hands in her apron and rolled her eyes innocently.

“And I suppose Jacob didn’t have to baptize both of ‘em all alone.”

Sarah patted her gloved fingertips together and whistled innocently.

Linn turned, looked at the Regulator on the wall.

“Court will start in an hour,” he said. “I reckon His Honor will give this pair a fair trial before we hang ‘em.”

“Oh, but must we hang them?” Sarah whined petulantly. “Drowning them sounds like so very much more fun!”

Linn stood, shook his head.

“Darlin’,” he said sadly, “sometimes you worry me!”

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

LIAR

 

“There’s somethin’ on your mind.”

Angela tilted her head and regarded her Daddy speculatively.

As busy as she was teaching, as busy as she was nursing, Angela still took pains to put in time with the Sheriff’s Office, and it was accepted by the local law enforcement community that when Angela shot qualification, there was a cheering gallery (generally young, pretty, wearing short skirts and enthusiasm) rooting for the Sheriff’s pretty, pale-eyed daughter.

It didn’t hurt any that this entourage mingled with the officers, both Sheriff’s deputies and badge packers from other districts, offering water (or coffee, when the weather was cold), snacks and encouragement.

That they were casually introduced as “out-of-district nursing students” satisfied any curiosity, and in the company of their fellows, the lawmen were, universally, gentlemen, when they interacted with this lovely young entourage.

Angela shot well with her duty sidearm, scoring second overall, but she demonstrated running an assault course with shotgun only: part of her demonstration run was behind a large Lexan panel with a milky patch where she’d intentionally blasted it with a charge of 00 buck from up-close, to show its effectiveness: the section where she was walled off from the rest of the group, was the section where the assault involved a very close range encounter, where Angela used her shotgun like a bayonet in an anatomic mannikin’s gut, where she kicked a dummy to get some distance before driving a charge of buffered double-ought through its middle, where she drove the shotgun’s butt into another’s face when it swung up behind her.

She did not muzzle the rest of the class, but she was taking no chances, thus the thick plastic wall.

Her students were all from offworld, they were all young, pretty, and loud: Angela made the mistake of showing them video of her Gammaw as a cheerleader, of Marnie as a cheerleader, of herself as a cheerleader, and so the skirts her cheering section wore were bicolored and pleated, and they raised colorful paper shakers as they jumped up and down and screamed their encouragement.

In fairness, they did this for every shooter there, which explained why scorekeepers and rangemasters wore headsets with boom mics and the shooters were issued custom made ear protection that let them hear range commands, but not the distracting sounds of cheering enthusiasm.

It was after qualification, after the entire cheering squad and most of the lawmen involved retired to the Silver Jewel for a meal, after the cheering squad retired to the private back room (funny thing, they were seen going in, but nobody saw them leave), it was after all this that Angela emerged alone from the back room, took her Daddy’s arm, looked innocently at him and said “Hi, Handsome, you doin’ anything tonight?”

After the enthusiastic squad of nursing students were returned to their offworld dormitory, after the Silver Jewel emptied of all lawmen but a very few, a uniformed father and a uniformed daughter sat together back in the Lawman’s Corner, talking.

“Daddy,” Angela said gently, “thank you.”

“You’re welcome, darlin’.”

“I wanted my students to know more about where I come from.”

“You’ll have to introduce them to the horses.”

“Several of them already …”

Angela frowned.

“Actually … they don’t.”

“Oh?”

“There are not many true horses in the Confederate worlds,” Angela admitted, “though there’s a demand. You could make a young fortune breeding horses for the Confederacy.”

“Might make for a nice retirement income,” Linn smiled.

“Darlin’,” he continued, “do you know the average score goes up when you bring your cheerleaders?”

Angela blinked, surprised: “I … didn’t realize that.”

Linn nodded.

“Yep.  I let the shooters hear ‘em cheerin’, but not until after they’ve fired their string.”

Angela smiled a little, nodded: she well knew the power of positive reinforcement, for her pale eyed Daddy took pains, all of her young life, to speak with her about what she’d done right, what she’d done well.

“I can arrange ride-alongs if you’d like.”

“Not just yet, Daddy. I think that will be helpful. There are worlds that need law enforcement, or need to improve what they have. You’ve already helped out four of them.”

Linn nodded.

“I do have two students who are interested in becoming deputies on their homeworld.”

Linn nodded.

“I’ll introduce you sometime.”

“I can likely work them into a class.”

Linn frowned a little, turned his coffee cup around a little, looked at his darlin’ daughter.

“Are … do you have two students training here in our little hospital?”

Angela smiled, nodded, sipped her coffee.

“How’d you … nurses are curious, darlin’, nurses talk … they always ask where you’re from, especially when someone has an accent.”

Angela looked innocently at her Daddy and sat up very straight.

“Why, Daddy,” she said, “they tell the truth, of course!”

Linn raised an eyebrow.

“I’m the one that lies to them, Daddy. My students tell them quite honestly they are from a planet on the other side of the next galaxy over, that they commute thanks to alien technology that lets them step across dimensional folds like they would step over wrinkles in a rug. I’m the one that lies and says they’re in witness protection, please don’t pry.”

“I see.”

Linn smiled as he looked down into his coffee cup.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller had a habit of letting her people do their jobs.

She saw to their training, but she did not micromanage: anyone she had to ride close herd on, didn’t last long in her department.

Linn managed his Sheriff’s Office in the selfsame manner.

When the call came in, Angela was closest.

Linn the father wanted to call her off, to handle it himself.

Sheriff Linn Keller knew it was her job, he knew she would take care of it.

It was the Sheriff that received her report, that reviewed her findings, it was the Sheriff who asked a very few questions in a quiet voice.

It was Linn the father that sat with her, out in the barn, after they got home at end of shift.

Angela was quiet when she returned from the call.

She handed Linn the note she’d carefully not entered into her official report, the note she and the County Coroner agreed would be overlooked.

Linn read the note, nodded: he wordlessly handed it back.

Angela folded it into fourths, slipped it into her uniform blouse pocket, buttoned the flap back down, swallowed.

“Daddy,” she said softly, “I lied to his father.”

Linn nodded, just a little, waited: the barn smelled of horses and straw, it smelled of harness and saddles and of cool night air.

“I could read the story like the newspaper,” she said.

“He wasn’t dead when I got there, but he didn’t last long. The squad didn’t even try.”

“Don’t blame ‘em.”

“He’d put the shotgun barrel under his chin and reached down to hit the trigger with a finger. Had to’ve, both shoes were still on.”

Linn nodded.

“He must’ve flinched at the last moment.

“The blast took off his face and took out his forebrain. I read the bone and blood and brains and birdshot in the ceiling plaster, I read the blood trail where he ran across the floor, I read the splatter where he hit the far wall and the claw marks where he tried to dig his way through the plaster board.”

Angela’s voice was quiet, her face was carefully neutral, her voice was flat and without emotion, and two trails of wet ran down her cheeks.

“He died less than a minute after I got there.

“I found that Dear John note from his girl, I read what he’d written at the bottom of the note.”

She looked at her father – she almost looked defeated – “Daddy, he killed himself because a stupid twit of a teen-age girl dumped him!”

Linn took a long breath, nodded.

“I had to cut a friend down two years ago.”

“I remember.”

“Daddy, I lied to his father.”

Linn looked at his daughter, his voice quiet.

“Go on.”

“I told him it was an accident.  I told him it was a terrible, stupid, idiotic accident, but that’s all it was, an accident.”

Linn nodded again, then he stood, held out his hands.

Linn the father, hugged his little girl, and his little girl hugged her Daddy.

“A wise man discussed this very thing with me,” Linn said, his voice deep, reassuring: “we talked about … well, he told me God forgives us these lies.”

Angela looked up at her Daddy, her face wet, and she bit her bottom lip as Linn said reassuringly, “God forgives us these lies, darlin’.  He forgives us these lies because He has to!”

Angela nodded, laid a hand on her Daddy’s breastbone, patted him gently, the way she’d seen her Mama do.

“You have a wise friend, Daddy,” she whispered.

 

Lawmen discuss such matters among themselves.

I myself had this conversation with a fellow badge packer, who gave me the same sound advice as that pale eyed Sheriff gave his daughter, his deputy.

To that fellow member of the Lights-and-Siren Brigade, you know who you are.

My thanks.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HOMECOMING

"Jacob! I haven't seen you in just forever!"

Jacob grinned, picked up a sack of pretzels, set them on the Mercantile counter.

"Hi, Susie!"

"Where in the world have you been?" Susie asked, launching into her motor mouth line of patter Jacob remembered so well from when they were in school together.

"Oh, you know," Jacob shrugged. "Detached duty. I got loaned out to another department!"

"How exciting!" Susie exclaimed, her eyes big, bright. "What were you doing?"

"Oh, the usual," Jacob drawled, looking over the chocolate bars.

He'd had access to many things on Mars, and on his brief sojourns with his pale-eyed sister, but two things he'd not had since leaving, were pretzels, and dark chocolate, and he wished to remedy that situation.

He looked back at Susie, laid two more bags of pretzels and a handful of high-percentage dark chocolate bars on the time-frosted, heavy-glass countertop. "Undercover, investigation, detection, interrogation, infiltration, painting stripes on little baby ducks.  You know, the usual."

Susie made a limp-wristed, go-away motion, turning her head a little and looking at him sidelong: "Oh, Jacob, how you do go on!"

She looked at Jacob's left hand and her mouth fell open.

"Jacob! You're married!"

"Yep," Jacob grinned. "Married a Suth'n girl from a rich family. I stand to inherit the biggest plantation on the continent!"

"No," Susie breathed, dropping her elbows to the countertop. "Tell me more!"

"Well, y'see," Jacob explained, "she's six foot two with fiery red hair and the T-square shoulders of an Olympic swimmer, with a temper to match her hair color. She bench presses the neighbor's Buick just for funzies, and that causes misunderstandings when he's trying to go to work. She'll run barefoot down a bobwarr fence, spinnin' a bobcat in each hand -- by the tail -- just a-darin' 'em to growl!"

Jacob's mischievous expression, his stance, two fisted hands describing tight circles at his sides, brought Susie to laughter: she shook her head, looked away, looked back as Jacob held out his phone.

She saw Jacob, tall and solemn in his trademark black suit, looking severe and stern and very formal: his arm was around a smiling, healthy-looking bride in a pastel yellow dress, holding a large bouquet -- a bride with cornsilk-blond hair, a diminutive, womanly little bride in a long gown and veil, a bride that was tall enough to look her husband squarely in the bottom of his shirt pocket.

"That," Jacob said, "is my wife, Big Red."

Susie stood, hands on the edge of the counter, her eyes big, her mouth open:  she blinked a few times, looked up at Jacob, looked at the phone, looked at Jacob again.

She finally winched her jaw closed, blinked again and squeaked, "Jacob Keller, I ought to beat you!"

"Promises, promises," Jacob grinned.

"So when do we get to meet this mystery woman?" Susie said, and Jacob heard the change in her voice: he knew she'd had a crush on him in school, and he imagined her as a cat, with her claws emerging from their sheaths.

"Whenever she tells me I'm allowed to," Jacob winked. 

He paid for his purchase and made his escape, and counted himself lucky that Susie didn't come around that counter and put knots on his head.

She'd done it before.

 

"Jacob!" Fitz grinned as he glad-handed the smiling lawman. "How in the hell have you been?"

"Beat to death and henpecked as hell," Jacob declared loudly, "and she has the launch keys to the Dreaded Intercontinental Ballistic Frying Pan!"

"Yah, tell me another one! Dammit man, you're lookin' good! Fryin' pan, y'say? Ye've gone and got yourself married?"

Jacob pulled out his phone, brought up the picture, handed it to the fire chief.

Fitz whistled admiringly.

"Now that," he said softly, "is a fine lookin' woman."

He handed the phone back, then took Jacob by the arm, guided him up to the mess deck, gestured to a chair, reached for two coffee mugs off the peg rack.

Jacob dragged the chair out, sat: Fitz dropped himself into a chair, the two sat at the corner of the table.

"Jacob," Fitz said, "ye're married."

"I am."

"Yes, but" -- he leaned closer, his voice quiet -- "are ye happily married?"

Jacob leaned closer as well, winked.

"Chief," he said in a quiet voice, "I am just as happy as if I had good sense!"

Fitz nodded emphatically:  "Good!" -- he looked at Jacob, his face suddenly serious.

"Jacob, does she let you treat her like a queen?"

"She does."

"Don't ever let her forget that she's the most important woman in the world, Jacob. Don't ever stop doin' for her or makin' her feel special."

Jacob nodded slowly, reached for the little cardboard carton of milk, drizzled some Extract of Bovine in his steaming-hot coffee.  

Fitz thrust out a finger, continued:  "Sendin' her flowers at home is all well an' good, Jacob, but ye want to send 'em when she's out! Send 'em when she's at work, send 'em when she's at school, send 'em where she'll be seen receivin' 'em! When Laura --"

Fitz stopped, and Jacob saw an old grief flood in behind the man's eyes, and Jacob remembered the hard morning when they got the call that Fitz's wife finally died, in a hospital bed in their living room, with Fitz sleeping on the couch.

Fitz swallowed hard, accepted the milk carton, added a good splash to his own scalding mug full.

"I sent flowers t' Laura when she was at work," he said softly. "She said th' other women hissed like a bunch o' jealous cats. 'Eww! I hate you! My husband never does that for me! Eww! I hate you!' " -- his voice pitched up in imitation of a jealous female, and Jacob chuckled a little and nodded.

"When she came home, Jacob, she was preening t' tell me how her co-workers reacted!"

"Your advice," Jacob said quietly, "is sound, and I shall take it, and thank you for it!"

"Will ye be havin' any children then?" Fitz asked, and Jacob grinned.

"I have a son."

There was satisfaction in his voice, and delight on Fitz's face to hear it: he thrust his hand out, gripped Jacob's, nodded emphatically.

"Well done now," he said quietly. "A man loves his little girls, but a man puts a fine stock in a son!"

Two men in a quiet, sunlit firehouse raised their coffee mugs in salute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MIND IF I TALK?

 

Angela Keller came out of bed like she'd been clap boarded across the backside.

She landed on the hook rug beside her bed, landed on all fours, landed on the tips of her fingers, the balls of her feet, wide awake, lips peeled back, snarling and ready for war.

She was no longer in her bedroom, back in the Sheriff's house, the old Macneil ranch house where she'd grown up.

She was in a circle of still, silent, hooded, robed figures.

Angela stood.

I own my nightmares.

My nightmares belong to me.

This is my kingdom.

I rule here!

"No you don't," a soothing, almost oily, voice said.

Angela rolled her shoulders, stood with her feet shoulder width apart: she lowered her head a little, glared at the figure in black, the one with red eyes and a shock of spiky-upstanding, flat-topped hair.

The one with demonic red eyes.

Angela stood in boots and Stetson, in her deputy's tan uniform.

"You know you want to cry," the figure smiled, and Angela saw the spiked canines as he did.

"You know you want to scream and collapse -- the injustice of a suicide, the unnecessary death of a foolish, teen-aged --"

Angela gripped the telescoping baton, drew it free.

"Oh, tsk-tsk, is that your response?" the smooth voice said in a pitying tone.

Angela did not snap the baton open.

She extended her arm straight ahead, held the baton level, at arm's length, squeezed.

Six feet of fighting staff snapped into existence.

Angela grounded the staff, hard.

She stood on dark and sandy ground, but she struck the ground hard: sand it might have been, but at her command it was hard, and it boomed with the vigor of her thrust.

"A stick?  Really? Tsk, tsk, tsk ... instead of self-care, violence --"

Angela lowered her head two degrees and smiled.

"Seasoned white oak and Eastern walnut, laminated, tried, tested and ready to go."

"You watched a boy take his last breath -- you watched him drown --"

"I, AND I ALONE, CHOOSE HOW I RESPOND!" Angela declared -- she did not shout, but the strength of her words amplified, echoed, resounded. "YOU DO NOT CHOOSE FOR ME AND YOU DO NOT INSTRUCT!"

"Oh, but let me open your wound and drain your pain --"

Angela brought the stuff up across her, crouched slightly, then spun to face the danger from behind: seasoned white oak hummed as it ripped a gash through the stifling-warm air, as she hooked the knees out from under a vaguely human, demonic form: her moves were incredibly fast, surprisingly powerful, and deadly.

She drove the end of the staff through the demon-figure's ribcage -- a lethal blow -- 

She dropped a hand to her belt, pulled a pressure can from her pepper spray holster, aimed.

"HOLY WATER!" she shouted, sprayed the pinned demon's supine form, turned as it dissolved in a cloud of red steam, and was gone.

"Oh, my child, let me help you," she heard the seductive whisper.

She turned, saw the figure in black, arms extended, palms up, beseeching.

"Your pain is so great --"

Angela thumbed the button, shot a fist-diameter stream into the figure's face, watched it disappear: she ran the stream down, released the button, thrust the pressure can back into its black-basketweave holster.

A dark-red cloud of steam thinned, disappeared.

Deputy Sheriff Angela Keller raised her laminated staff, turned slowly, glared at each and every silent, hooded, unmoving, robed figure there.

"NOW HEAR THIS!" she shouted.

"MY GHOSTS ARE MINE TO CARRY, AND CARRY THEM I SHALL!"

Her powerful voice echoed in the stone chamber, toothy stalactites above doing nothing to diminish her full-voiced shout.

"NOBODY TELLS ME HOW TO FEEL! YOU GOT THAT? I CHOOSE HOW I FEEL!"

Angela turned slowly, easily, on the balls of her feet, her fighting-staff gripped tightly, her senses heightened: she stopped, drove the end into the stone floor, not bothering to wonder what happened to the hot, loose sand underfoot.

"MY WILL, AND MY WILL ALONE, SHALL BE DONE!"

The robed, hooded figures raised bell-sleeved arms, threw back enveloping hoods.

Angela was surrounded by a ring of pale eyed ancestresses.

One paced forward.

As she moved, her robe dissolved and became the brief tunic of a Grecian warrior-priestess, a recurved bow in her left hand, a bristling arrow-quiver in her right.

"I alone, of all the Temple Sisters, survived to fight the enemy champion," she said quietly.

"I was killed, but my sacrifice stopped the invaders, and spared our island their ravages.

"The Dark One -- the one you just faced -- came to me and said those same things, for I'd seen my Sisters, and our Temple-Mother, slaughtered.

"My reply was to put an arrow through his eye."

She reached into her quiver and withdrew an arrow -- wooden shafted, feather-fletched.

She showed Angela its broad, honed-edge head.

Angela saw something engraved on the arrow.

A rose.

The Temple-Maiden stepped back: one by one, each of the pale eyed women came forward, to tell their story, how they had all been bathed in sorrow and in grief and in loss and in pain, and how the Red Eyed Demon invited them to surrender their pain, how they all knew his invitation meant surrendering her soul as well.

Each and every one of them responded in the language he understood.

"You will know the time to release your grief," the last one whispered.

"Gammaw?" Angela whispered, her eyes stinging: Willamina drew back a step, raised her M4 carbine to port arms: she morphed from robe to tailored-blue suit dress, to battlefield fatigues and helmet.
"I saw what happens in war. I saw far more than you have. I was given that same choice, but I'm afraid my reply wasn't as gentle as yours."

Angela saw her Gammaw's M4 morph into an AK with long, curved magazine and the Soviet bayonet: she watched while her Gammaw drove it into the demonic figure's gut, hauled the rifle's muzzle up, splitting evil wide open from belt to chin before she butt stroked the figure across the left ear.

Hard.

Angela's eyes snapped open.

She was in her own bed.

She was safe, under her Daddy's roof.

Angela rolled out, thrust into socks and trousers, into boots and her uniform shirt: she slung her gunbelt around her middle, snugged it tight, checked her sidearm -- magazine, chamber, smack the mag hard to make double sure it was seated -- she slung her Ithaca muzzle down from her off shoulder.

She hesitated.

One more thing.

Angela seized the pillow from her bed, shoved it under her off arm.

 

A deputy rode a shining black gelding through the moonlit darkness.

Steel-shod hooves muffled their way cross country, up the century old roadway into the cemetery.

Deputy Angela Keller rode down the row of tomb stones, looked at each one, drew up.

"I need your protection," she said, her voice clear and carrying well on the night air.

"I need it now."

A black gelding turned, horse and rider set a spanking trot downhill, and when Angela Keller opened the door to their little whitewashed church, she was satisfied she did not enter the Church alone.

She threw the pillow to the floor, in front of the altar, looked up at the rough cross.

"That," she said quietly -- there was no need to raise her voice -- "is in case I have to cry."

She bit her bottom lip, looked down, looked up.

"We had a bad one today, and it's botherin' me some.  Mind if I talk?"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SIR, HOW ABOUT A BEER?

Michael Keller dismounted.

He soothed Lightning with whispered words and caressing hands, he walked the hundred yards from where his Fanghorn contentedly grazed on imported grasses and Earth-native mint, shredded and laced through the fresh-cut vegetation, brought in for today's fell purpose.

Michael's suit was tailored and immaculate, his black Stetson brushed, his boots gleaming: Victoria turned and smiled and held her hand out a little, and Michael stood beside his twin sister and took her hand.

They were gathered in Potter's Field.

Michael listened to the words as their Parson said the things that are always said at a funeral, and Angela squeezed Michael's hand a little: he squeezed back.

There were few mourners.

The grade school principal was present, mostly because it was expected; he looked over at the twins and winked -- at the formal, school-board ceremony where Michael and Victoria were presented with high-school diplomas at eleven years of age, it was the Superintendent who made the presentation, but it was the principal who told them he hated losing good students but he was more than delighted at their excellence.

Michael remembered the disapproving expression, the reluctant tone of voice of the superintendent; he learned later that arguments were presented, and a resolution put before the school board, that would block their being graduated at such a young age; it took direct intervention of their legal counsel to persuade them not to engage a battle they could not possibly win.

Victoria's face was solemn, Michael's was neutral: besides their Parson and the undertaker, there were the two of them, the principal, the Sheriff ... and that was it.

The hated schoolteacher who came far too close to killing Michael by forcing him to run, in direct contravention of doctor's orders, was buried in Potter's Field, face down: there had been no viewing, the coffin was not opened at the graveside: the Sheriff personally saw to it that Digger turned the miserable carcass over, then sealed the box, and the Sheriff applied a secondary, red-wax seal, impressed with a rose insignia, and checked to make sure his seal was intact before the box was lowered.

Victoria shifted her weight, murmured to Michael, "Shouldn't we drop a handful of dirt into the grave?"

Michael was silent for several long moments, then he finally said, "No. I have something else in mind."

 

Lightning paced happily in the upper pasture as Michael sat with his father.

"Hell of a note," Linn said softly.

"How's that, sir?"

"Family gettin' together for funerals instead of supper."

"Yes, sir."

"How are your studies coming, Michael?"

"Well indeed, sir. It seems that I may become the first male to drive an Interceptor."

Linn nodded, then grinned.

"Michael," he said, "you could take everything I know about those Valkyrie ships, tamp it down into a sewin' thimble, and have room enough to pour in a quart of whiskey on top."

Michael laughed quietly.  "Yes, sir."

They sobered.

"I took pleasure in informing you of her death."

"Thank you, sir."

Silence grew between the two, then:

"Sir, how did she die?"

"She was being treated," Linn said thoughtfully. "A staff of asexual androids ... she had an absolute hatred of males, and because she was in a facility, she accused female staff of conspiring with the men she hated, but she went along with naked, sexless, humanoid robots."

Michael blinked, nodded.

"She'd had multiple strokes, Michael, and apparently that's what turned her from a sweetheart into an unreasoning ..."

Linn caught himself.

His Mama raised him to be a gentleman, and much as he wanted, he could not bring himself to utter the term in front of his son: his desire not to set a bad example, overrode the factual accuracy of what he wanted to say.

"She couldn't be treated, Michael. Treatment was not working. She went into a rage again and apparently when her blood pressure spiked, she blew a brainstem stroke and died as a result."

"I see, sir."

"I had Digger turn her face down before she was planted."

"Thank you, sir."

Michael was quiet for several more moments, then he smiled, just a little, and said, "She can see where she's going."

"That," Linn agreed, "is the idea."

"Sir, Angela asked me if I wanted to drop a handful of earth into the grave."

Linn nodded.

"When JW Barrents died," Linn said quietly, "I tossed a healthy pinch of tobacco into his grave."

"I had something else in mind," Michael said quietly, and Linn heard a conspiratorial smile in his son's voice.

"Oh?"

"I thought to donate something else to her grave."

Linn raised an eyebrow as Michael smiled, and the smile was not pleasant.

"Sir," he said, "I thought of pouring a beer on her grave."

Linn grunted.

"I've done as much," he admitted.

"After I was done with it," Michael added.

Linn took a long breath, stared through the far wall, toward where he figured the town cemetery was.

"That," he admitted, "is how I did it."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GUESTING

Angela Keller stepped into the Sheriff's office with her usual pleasant smile.

Sharon looked at her, surprised, sat bolt upright.

"I wasn't sure I'd see you here again," she admitted as Angela laid a box of doughnuts on her desk.

" 'You get throwed off a horse, you get back on,' " she quoted: she laid gentle fingertips on the cardboard box and winked. "Tradin' stock. I have it on good authority you can bribe deputies with these!"

Sharon opened the lid, saw it contained her favorite -- white-cream-filled, chocolate-iced, stick doughnuts -- she pulled open a desk drawer, peeled off three paper towels, tore them free, laid four doughnuts on the paper and squirreled these away in the next higher drawer.

"I might offer these" -- she tapped the box with a bent foreknuckle -- "but I'm making sure I've got mine!" 

Angela laughed, carried the other box over to the coffee pot, put two fingers to her lips and whistled.

 

A half hour later, Angela laughed as the vocal director gripped her shoulders, steered her happily into the front row of high-school students, standing shoulder-to-shoulder for rehearsal.

"I need your help," she said, "we've two French exchange students, we're singing 'Il Est Ne le Divin Enfant', and we need your voice!"

"I, me, Ai Yi Yi," Angela stammered: she found herself standing between two high school students who were looking at her as if she was either a Saint descended from Paradise itself, or a keg of dynamite sputtering with a short fuse.

She and the two girls whispered to one another in French, at least until the director raised her hands, and as she usually did when she sang, Angela relaxed and let her spirit flow through the music.

 

An hour later she was laughing, red-faced, with her father -- both of them in uniform, both at the All-Night, both with freshly drawn coffee -- "I had to get out of there," Angela wheezed, one hand to her upper belly, "I was afraid the vocal instructor was going to draft me back into high school!"

"French exchange students," Linn said thoughtfully. "I wonder if the French class will get a boost from that!"

"They've already been drafted by the French teacher," Angela said seriously, then took a long drink:  "Oh God, I need this!"

"So she plans to spring a French carol at the Christmas concert."

"I think so."

"I'll have to take that one in."

Angela lowered her coffee, looked at her Daddy.

"I know that look," Linn said. "There's more to it."

"Daddy," Angela said, "do you remember how Gammaw told us she went on a trail ride in Israel?"

Linn nodded, took a pull on his coffee.

"And you remember how she told us they really, really like the American West, overseas?"

"Yyyep," Linn drawled, then frowned a little.

"You mean those two French girls ..."

Angela looked toward the door, and so did Linn.

Two high-school girls froze, their eyes big.

They'd just studied the horses tethered outside, a pair of honest-to-God Western Appaloosas, both with the Sheriff's six point star on the saddle blanket.

Now they were face to face with two genuine, honest-to-God Western Sheriffs, one of whom they knew already.

Linn set down his coffee, swept off his Stetson, tucked it correctly under his off arm.

Somehow he knew he and his wife would be entertaining guests that evening.