SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU TRY, YOU DIE!

It wasn't the first time Sheriff Linn Keller was grateful his responsibility ended at the county line.

It wasn't the first time Ambassador Marnie Keller showed herself to be a hand of steel inside a velvet glove.

And it was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that Michael Keller addressed an opponent, while holding an implement of terminal persuasion.

The situation was started in all too common a manner.

Michael rode into town on Lightning, with Thunder and Cyclone flanking.

He'd ridden right up the center of the street, the big Fanghorn at a walk, her colts on either side moving a little faster, just to keep up.

The street was unpopulated this early in the morning, save for Michael, the massive mare, and her colts, but this did not stop a man from loudly and angrily accosting Michael.

 

Sarah Lynne McKenna drove her Mama's fine and shining carriage to a nearby ranch, whispering prayers into the wind -- let her be alive, let her be alive!

Sarah rode out with gold in her poke and determination in her young heart.

She'd heard the man's description of a huge black mare, a disagreeable, dangerous man-killer he couldn't sell.

She'd heard his statement that he was just going to kill her and skin her out, at least he'd get something useful for the money he'd wasted: someone asked what he'd paid, and he said he'd paid way the hell too much, for he was expecting a plow horse that could harness up to a mountain and drag it along behind her, and instead, he'd gotten a damned mare that wouldn't let a man near her!

Sarah took note of the price he'd quoted, of the price he claimed to have paid for a saddle someone had made for her.

She'd put that much in a poke, added a little more to guarantee there would be no protest.

She hung the poke from her belt.

She slid a knife into a hidden sheath, inside her skirt, a blade she'd had Black Smith make for her: long, slender, very sharp.

She'd ridden up as the man was coming out of his ranch house, rifle in hand and determination in his step: she'd hailed him and stated her purpose, he'd shouted in anger and told her to get that damned buggy out of his way, and Sarah stood in the driver's box, pulled her own rifle.

"You have a rifle, and so have I," Sarah declared loudly, cranking a round into the chamber: at this range she was confident she could put a .32-20 between his eyes -- she shouted, "I HAVE THE PRICE YOU PAID FOR THE MARE, THE PRICE FOR THE SADDLE AND A DOUBLE EAGLE MORE!"

Sarah dropped her hand from the receiver, seized her poke, pulled it loose and threw it: as he caught it, startled, she jumped from the carriage, landed easily, laid the rifle across the seat and stormed up to him.

He hefted the poke and shook his head.

"SHE'S DANGEROUS!" he shouted, "I'M A-GONNA SHOOT HER TO KEEP EVERYONE SAFE --"

Sarah's blade pressed up under his chin -- suddenly -- she was close, too close, he tried to back up and felt the blade pierce his skin.

"Don't," Sarah hissed, her voice low, dangerous, her eyes very pale -- "don't."

He didn't.

"You've got your money back and more. I'll take the mare and the saddle."

Sarah lowered the knife, slid it back into its hidden thigh sheath, then turned and walked toward the corral where the head-shaking, muttering mare was watching them.

"SHE'LL KILL YOU TOO!" 

Sarah ignored the shout -- young though she was, she recognized wounded pride when she heard it.

Sarah slipped into the corral and just stood there -- small, slight, watchful.

The mare grunted, muttered, shook her head, came over with deliberate, intimidating hoof-falls, as if she wished to test this tiny two-legs.

Sarah tilted her head a little, less like the young woman she was becoming, more like the child she'd been, and in what was almost a little girl's voice, she said, "Hello."

The big black Frisian mare stopped suddenly, drew her head back as if startled.

Sarah pulled out her knife and a plug of molasses twist tobacker.

The mare regarded her with interest.

Sarah never stirred out of her tracks: she shaved off thick curls, the way she'd seen her pale eyed Uncle Sheriff do.

Sarah slid the knife away, took a step, held out her hand, then she smiled and said in that childish voice, "Here, kitty, kitty."

A horse men tried to break with whips and clubs, with angry voices and fists, a horse who'd fought back, a horse who'd been thirty seconds from a forty-caliber headache, lowered her muzzle suspiciously, snuffed at the flat-palmed offering, then gently, carefully, lipped the sweet-flavored bribe from a pale-eyed girl's palm.

When Sarah rode off on the mare -- with no bridle and no bit, just a saddle and a straight spine, towing her Mama's carriage with a line to the patient old grey's bridle -- an irascible, ill-tempered old rancher shoved his hat back on his head and muttered, "I'll be damned!" -- then he turned to his hired man and snapped, "Not a word, damn you! Not one word!"

 

Marnie Keller looked in the mirror as her Gammaw made the last tugs and adjustments to her handmade McKenna gown.

Willamina placed the tripod, then set the glass-plate-portrait's enlargement on the tripod, beside the full-length mirror.

Marnie Keller looked at the portrait, looked in the mirror: her Gammaw swung her Nikon up, framed the photograph, took the shot, Marnie looking as solemn as the girl in the print, which of course lasted three seconds after Willamina said "Got it!"

Marnie turned, her eyes shining: "Gammaw, you did it!"

"We're not done yet," Willamina said, and Marnie recognized the look of conspiracy, a look she'd seen before.

Willamina led Marnie out the back door and down the back porch stairs, and over to the pasture.

"I've owned the old Macneil place since before Uncle Pete and Aunt Mary died," Willamina said quietly, "and I had the fence removed between our pastures."

Marnie watched as Willamina opened the white-painted, wooden gate, then fastened it behind them.

Willamina turned away from Marnie, whistled -- a long, shrill, steady note that rose at the very end.

Marnie felt the hoofbeats before she heard them.

A horse, moving fast -- but with a slow cadence -- like a big horse, Marnie thought, and then her eyes widened, and she whispered, "A really BIG horse!"

Willamina laughed as a massive Frisian mare slowed from her ponderous-looking but undeniably-swift gallop, came trotting up to Willamina, ruckling deep in her shining-black chest, lowering her head for Willamina's caresses.

Marnie glided forward, eyes wide, mouth open: she raised a hand, hesitated, then ran delicate fingers through the long, coarse, jet-black mane.

"You're gorgeous!" she whispered, then looked at Willamina.

"What's her name?"

Willamina's eyes were closed as she leaned her grandmotherly forehead against the big black mare's forehead.

"I dreamed of Sarah Lynne McKenna one night," she said quietly, "and the next day I saw where this beauty was for sale."

Marnie waited, running her hands over the mare's neck, her shoulder, her back.

"I thought it proper to name her after Sarah's Frisian mare."

Two pale eyed women looked at one another and laughed, in one voice, "Snowflake!"

 

Willamina Keller had another print made, matted, framed, beside one of the only other known photographs of the famous Sarah Lynne McKenna.

Like the photograph of their pale eyed ancestress, this portrait also featured a young woman in a McKenna gown, astride a genuinely huge Frisian mare: a man stood at the mare's shoulder, for scale, a pale eyed lawman with an iron grey mustache and wearing a handmade black suit.

This newer photograph mirrored the older image, even to the blurring of the horse's tail during the longer exposure time used in such early photographic methods.

 

Michael Keller was no stranger to men with either stupidity in their head, liquor behind their belt, or wounded pride in their heart, so he wasn't terribly surprised when the man shouted "DAMN YOU, DON'T YOU IGNORE ME!"

He was surprised when the man ran ahead of him and turned, rifle in hand.

Lightning stopped, muttering, as Michael's rifle came level, as he hauled the bolt back, as he ran a brass panatela into the chamber.

"THEM DAMNED FANGHORNS KILLS PEOPLE AND YOU'RE NOT TAKING' 'EM INTO MY TOWN!" came the challenging shout, which of course gathered spectators and curious faces in windows and doorways.

"Step," Michael said firmly, his voice carrying clear and unmistakable in the afternoon sun, "aside."

"YOU GET THEM OUTTA MY TOWN OR I'LL KILL 'EM!"

Michael's finger curled around his trigger, his pale eye settling behind the one-to-three variable, cross hairs steady on the man's high chest.

"You try," Michael said, his voice tight, "you die."

"I'LL KILL 'EM!"

"Drop the rifle and live," Michael replied, "or stand and die, your choice."

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller saw it live on the Inter-System.

She keyed in her Iris coordinates, swore, cancelled, re-keyed: as the Iris opened, she turned, drove her hand into the hidden panel, swung her gunbelt around her waist and buckled it fast and tight, reached in, draped a bandolier of shotgun shells over her head and across one shoulder, snatched an abbreviated Ithaca and jacked it viciously, thumbed a round into the magazine.

Ambassador Marnie Keller lifted her chin and stepped through the Iris.

 

Victoria's eyes were young and hard as she pressed the honed edge of her handmade Damascus blade against a man's throat.

He looked up to see what didn't look like much more than a girl, looking at him like she was Death with hemorrhoids, and then another pale eyed female leaned into view, and the business end of something he didn't want any part of swung into his visual field like someone just rolled a howitzer muzzle into his face.

Michael raised his rifle to the vertical, waited until the local constabulary arrived and took the prisoner away in irons.

Marnie slung her shotgun muzzle-down from her off shoulder, the way she preferred to carry it: she glided fearlessly up to Lightning and caressed the silky-blond hair under her heavy, square carnivore's jaw and murmured, "Hello, beautiful," and of course Thunder and Cyclone came crowding in, chirping for attention.

Victoria stood between the two, laughing and caressing two necks at once.

"Thanks, Sis," Michael called cheerfully: he pulled the magazine, eased the bolt back and pulled the rimless .45-70 from the selfloader's chamber, thumbed it back into the mag, plugged in, smacked, tugged.

"How'd you pull that off, Victoria? I didn't waste any time getting here!" Marnie murmured as Lightning, eyes closed in shameless pleasure, lipped two spiral candies off Marnie's palm.

Victoria laughed. " 'Pull the trigger means paperwork,' " she quoted, and Marnie laughed, then gave Victoria an approving look.

"I trained you well."

"Yes you did. I kicked him behind the knees, kneedropped him in the gut and got my blade to his throat. After that" -- she shrugged -- "well, here we are!"

Victoria squinted up at Michael, shading her eyes as she did.

"I like your line!" she called.

"What's that?"

" 'You Try, You Die!' "

Michael smiled, nodded. "I heard that somewhere, I forget where" -- he looked very directly at his twin sister -- "and my back thanks you!"

 

Edited July 26, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SSSHHH, DON'T TELL!

Jacob Keller was in disguise.
He never appeared in public dressed ... casually ... at minimum it was a long sleeve shirt and vest, blue jeans and well polished boots.

Nowhere in recorded history had anyone seen him in shorts and sneakers, a T-shirt and ballcap.

Jacob had reason to proceed in disguise.

He pulled plastic grocery bags over the sneakers, shoved into yellow, knee high overboots: he reached into the bed of the rented truck, pulled out an electric string trimmer and an extra battery, and clumped up the sidewalk, trying hard not to smile.

He'd scouted the location earlier, moving on the Cat Foot, finding things that shouldn't be mowed over or mowed into: he nodded, moved into position, pressed the thumb release and squeezed the orange trigger switch.

Mrs. Hill was a widow woman who kept a tidy house, a woman who was distressed at the thought that her riding mower would not be fixed until its parts came in.

In two weeks.

She was one day from asking a neighbor boy to bring his push mower when she heard the whistling whisper of ... something ... out of the ordinary.

She picked up her morning coffee and went to the window.

Someone -- a tall young man with big yellow rubber boots -- was happily, expertly, running a string trimmer around her birdbath, cutting a swath with each swing, as broad as he was tall: he was handling the trimmer like an Amishman swings a scythe, making neat, curved, overlapping inroads into her overgrown grass.

It took her several moments to realize ... she knew this young man ... and she was troubled when she realized who was buzz sawing the growth from those places a mower could not conveniently be run.

Especially a riding mower.

She withdrew from the window, cupping her coffee in both hands, frowning as she worried.

Outside, Jacob moved with efficiency: no move was wasted, he proceeded in orbits, moving steadily, not hurrying, but efficiency equals speed, and it did not take him long at all to trim what he needed.

Mrs. Hill heard the light buzz of the electric string trimmer replaced by a stronger, but still quiet sound: she saw Jacob on a riding mower, passing by one window, then another: she honestly hid, inside her tidy little house, uncertain, almost fearful, the way old women sometimes are: she hadn't asked for this favor, and that fact that it was the Sheriff's son gave her imagination an unpleasant nudge -- what if he demands payment, what if the town is going to fine me, what if they've already fined me and I'll have to pay for this work --

Mrs. Hill honestly dithered herself into a minor tizzy.

Rather than reach for the telephone, rather than bend a neighbor's ear, she turned to her kitchen.

Before her oven was preheated, she heard the sounds outside change again.

She glimpsed Jacob, grinning, then whistling, as he ran an electric blower, clearing cuttings off her sidewalks, off her steps.

Jacob looked around, nodded with satisfaction: he went back to the rented truck, set the rented blower back in the bed: when the Widow Hill pulled two pies from her oven and set them on wire racks to cool, she realized she hadn't heard anything from outside, and so she looked out her back door, then her front door, then stepped outside.

It smelled delightfully of fresh-cut grass in the morning, and Jacob was nowhere to be seen.

 

Mick Drury looked up from his pad, slid Jacob's receipt across the counter.

"I like it when you rent equipment," Mick grinned.

"How's that?" Jacob asked innocently.

"When you bring it back, nothing's broke, and it's cleaner'n when I rented it to you!"

Jacob laughed, nodded:  "Trust me to cause trouble!"

Mick and his daughter followed the Sheriff's son with their eyes as he went whistling out the door, ballcap shoved back on his head: the yellow overboots were gone, and Mick's twelve-year-old daughter leaned against her father and sighed, "Nice legs!"

 

Jacob hooked the wall phone's handset with a bent forefinger, turned and leaned back against the wall there in the kitchen: he was back into blue jeans and a flannel shirt, with a grin on his face and a teen-ager's casual slouch to his posture.

"Hi, Sharon," he said, a grin on his face and in his voice both.

"Whattaya mean, how'd I know it was you? I'm psychotic! I mean psychic!"

A quiet, shared laugh, then:

"She did? Oh heavens, she didn't have to do that!"

Fifteen minutes later, a tall young man in blue jeans and polished boots, flannel shirt and a Stetson, rode an Appaloosa stallion up a widow-woman's front sidewalk with a big bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates.

Mrs. Hill opened the door, pleased and surprised to see her unexpected benefactor, and even more surprised as Jacob dismounted, then handed her the flowers and said "Thank you is only words, Mrs. Hill, flowers say it better" -- he extended the box of chocolates -- "and if you don't like these, you can use 'em for bribes!"

Mrs. Hill could not but laugh at Jacob's conspiratorial wink.

"Sharon said you thought you might've been fined or something. No fine, ma'am, nobody even complained, but it's kind of like when my Gammaw got her Lieutenant's bars."

Mrs. Hill set the chocolates down on a table near the door, tilted her head curiously, puzzlement drawing her brows a little.

"Y'see, Mama was a local girl, and used to doing work when it was needful, so they had some kind of field exercise and she was grabbing and hauling equipment with the rest of the guys and a private said "I'll be damned! An officer doing work!" and Mama give him a big smile and said "Don't tell anyone, you'll ruin my reputation!"

 

Edited July 27, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CORNERING

Sheriff Jacob Keller felt The Bear Killer's warning before he heard it.

He was approaching a corner.

As was his habit, he swung wide from it, in case someone was hiding on the other side with a ball bat, he'd be outside the swing: if he hugged the wall, a bullet skipped off the wall would travel close enough to the wall to nail him: no, he moved with boot-polished stealth, gleaming Wellingtons making as much noise as a passing cloud.

The Bear Killer pressed against the side of his leg and Jacob heard the warning rumble.

He stopped, automatically shucking his .44: his mouth opened, his breathing was steady, silent, and it took all of about one-tenth of a second to go from peaceful ambulation to full wartime battle stations alert.

He twisted his leg slightly, twice.

The Bear Killer surged forward, his powerful bay filling the smooth-sided halls with all the ferocity of every last one of his feral ancestors: Jacob and the threat moved together, and a man intending to ambush someone else suddenly lowered his rifle's barrel and raised his hand from the receiver.

He'd seen what this pale eyed lawman could do with that blued-steel .44, and he had absolutely no wish to have his wish bone perforated.

 

Angela Keller worked stockinged feet in the brand-new, never-worn Irish hard shoes.

Victoria looked at her, frankly skeptical.

"Angela," she said quietly, "you're already so busy you make the one armed paper hanger look like an amateur. Are you sure you want to try this?"

Angela stood, took a few experimental steps: they were on carpet, as Angela was being fitted, and she did not want to mark the soles on a bare floor if they didn't fit.

"Victoria," she sighed, and her little sister did not hear any trace of irritation or condescension in her voice, "yes I am that busy, and yes that's ..."

Angela sat down heavily, sagged: Victoria sat down beside her, laid her arm across her sister's shoulders.

"I'm just so tired," Angela whispered. "There's so much ... I want ..."

She looked at Victoria.

"You've outdone me, Victoria," Angela murmured, and Victoria could see the utter fatigue in her sister's expression.

Victoria's reply was to lay the backs of her fingers against her sister's forehead and raise a skeptical eyebrow.

"Victoria, you and Michael are established in business. You're providing goods and making a good income, and you're one of the best dancers I've ever known. I'm ..."

"You're making a good income at providing needed services," Victoria interrupted. "You're saving lives, Angela, you're teaching others how to save lives, you're keeping people alive!" -- her voice took on a tight-throated intensity -- "Angela, you've outdone me!"

"Then why am I so tired?" Angela muttered, shaking her head and dropping her face into her hands.

"Because you're working too hard. Put your own shoes back on. We're going shopping."

"Now you sound like Mama," Angela muttered, and Victoria gave her a dirty look.

"Don't let Marnie hear you say that," she warned, remembering in her very early childhood when her Mama had a horn lockin' with her oldest daughter, screaming in her face why can't you be like the other girls, and then backhanding her.

Michael and Victoria were watching from the staircase, wide-eyed, silent-shocked.

Victoria remembered how Michael thrust an arm across in front of her, moving to protect her in case this violence expanded from kitchen to staircase.

 

Shelly Keller picked up the cardboard flat of carefully stacked supplies, turned.

They resupplied at the local hospital, some kind of contractual agreement: the hospital's supplier was faster, more reliable and had better selection than what the Firelands Fire Squad had been using.

Shelly came down the hallway toward ER.

She looked ahead and saw the ER nurses were stacked up behind their long counter, leaning over a little, looking at her as if expecting something.

An arm thrust out from around a corner closest to the nurse's station.

The arm ended in a hand.

The hand was closed into a fist.

The fist was wrapped around a bunch of flowers.

Shelly stopped, looked at the nurses' expressions, looked at the flowers: she tapped her foot like an impatient schoolteacher, and Sheriff Linn Keller came around the corner, advanced toward his wife with flowers in hand and a grin on his face.

Shelly was hard pressed to keep her cardboard flat level and not spill the stacked supplies as her husband kissed her, right there in front of God and everybody, and Shelly allowed herself a feminine satisfaction as she heard one of the nurses sigh, "My husband never does that!" -- and then Linn felt his wife laugh a little as he tickled her nose by wiggling his mustache against it and the other nurses started muttering good-naturedly, "Eeww! My husband never does that either! Eeww! I hate you!"

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller rounded the corner and ran full-on into the most adversarial and frankly disagreeable delegate she'd met that day.

The collision was inadvertent, unintentional: Marnie fell, eyes wide: she slapped the floor to break her fall, grunting as she did, and allowed herself an entirely unaffected, teeth-bared, honestly-pained, grimace.

The room shocked itself into silence at the sight of the Confederacy's chief ambassador, suddenly flat on her back, apparently body-slammed by the one most hostile, argumentative, and confrontational negotiator present.

Marnie gasped, blinked: she rolled over on one elbow, dragged her heels to pull her long skirt up and not set her hard little heels on it, then extended a gloved hand.

"Help me up," 

The delegate, whose expression went  from a scowl to concern to uncertainty, blinked twice, and Marnie could predict his thoughts:

I argued with her on every point.

I accused her of collusion.

I fought every proposal she made.

It's going to look like I did this a-purpose.

Maybe if I help her up, I won't look so bad.

He stepped carefully toward her, fierce red beard a-bristle, Derby hat thrust aggressively forward: he bent, reached down.

Marnie seized his wrist with a surprising grip: he pulled, she pulled, Marnie came to her feet: she snapped her wrist out of his grip, seized him quickly, unexpectedly: her hand was in his, her arm around him, and she pulled.

She didn't throw him.

She could have.

Marnie was well versed in joint-locks and throws, come-along holds and tricks of leverage and a variety of empty-hand methods of Less than Gently Pacifying Thy Neighbor.

She didn't do that.

She dipped a little, pulled, turned: he found himself leading in a dance step, and the pale-eyed Ambassador and the argumentative delegate danced, without music, turning in quick, graceful, flowing moves: they spun around in the big space in the middle of the room, and the delegates saw two things that genuinely surprised them.

Ambassador Marnie Keller threw her head back and laughed with honest delight, and a hostile, argumentative, irascible delegate began to smile.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AN ANSWER

A lean lawman with an iron grey mustache removed his brushed-black Stetson and regarded a younger woman with serious, pale eyes.

The attractive younger woman regarded Old Pale Eyes with an equally serious, an equally pale-eyed look.

"Might I counsel with you?" the Sheriff asked, his voice gentle.

A pretty, younger woman, lowered her eyes modestly and dipped her knees in assent.

The Sheriff led the way up the steps and into their little, square Church.

A pretty younger woman in the short skirts that indicated she was not yet fully entered into womanhood, flowed along beside the long, tall lawman, his cover still in his hands: they paced silently down the center aisle -- he, silent in well-polished, knee-high boots; she, equally silent, in hard-heeled, shining slippers: no one else, male or female, practiced such routine stealth, yet this pair, did, and routinely.

They stopped at the end of the aisle, the pretty young woman looking up at the solemn lawman, whose eyes regarded the rough timber Cross on the back wall.

"I am ... uncertain," the Sheriff said, his voice quiet, deep, reassuring.

Sarah blinked, surprised.

Of all the things the man could have said to describe himself, uncertainty was not one of the things she ever expected him to confess.

He turned and looked at her, then at the pew beyond her.

"Please. You need not stand because of me."

Sarah did not sit: she looked very directly at the man and asked, "How can I help?"

"I need to sit down," the Sheriff admitted. "My back is a-givin' me grief."

Sarah's expression was almost one of alarm -- almost -- there, and gone, quickly masked -- just like her mother, he thought, feeling that old familiar rush of protectiveness, of a deep affection he denied himself when thinking of Sarah's Mama.

"I have," he said slowly as they both seated themselves on the frontmost pew, "a terrible disease."

Sarah waited, ankles crossed, hands clasped in her lap, her head tilted, looking very much like a curious little girl.

"It's called hoof in mouth," the Sheriff said, his voice gentle, and she saw the smile hiding in the corners of his eyes.

"So before I end up looking like the north end of a south bound horse," he continued, looking very directly at this child whose pale eyes caused him to suspect he knew her antecedents, "I would ask you: have you been given the name Rosenthal?"

The Sheriff saw Sarah's eyes harden, he saw her face become a mask, he saw her pale slightly: she closed her eyes for a long moment, and it seemed like she didn't so much shrink, as she drew herself together like she was pulling an invisible cloak tight around herself.

"No," she replied in a quiet voice. "Mama married Levi, and Levi is an honorable man, but his brother was not, and" -- her voice took on an edge -- "I will not wear the name of a man who chose to steal from my Mama, and who planned to sell us both into the San Frisco fleshpots!"

Sarah's voice tapered to almost a hiss, and the Sheriff did not miss how her hands started to tighten, then stopped before they became fists.

"Then you are still Sarah McKenna."

"No."

The Sheriff was surprised at how firm -- quiet, but unmistakably firm -- Sarah's reply was.

"My name is changed," she said: she stood, she swung around in front of him, she seized both his hands in hers before he could rise: she looked deep, deep into his eyes with an expression he'd seen only once before, and that was in the mirror, on a morning when he'd arrived at a fell decision that cost men their lives.

"I will not be a Rosenthal, for all that my Mama's husband is an honorable man."

The Sheriff nodded, once, slowly.

"I have taken a middle name."

The Sheriff raised an eyebrow.

"My name remains McKenna, for I would honor my Mama and her family, especially since she had to survive her own family's machinations."

Sarah saw the Sheriff's pale eyes harden, and she knew he was remembering when her Mama was abducted by family who intended she sign them over her fortune, then intended to kill her, at least until the Sheriff kicked the door of the private car where she stood, chained and helpless, and put a single round of righteous judgement through the wish bone of the man who'd done this to her.

The Sheriff nodded, slowly, not pulling away from the young hands that gripped his.

"You spoke of a middle name," he said, his voice quiet, gentle.

Sarah smiled, color returning to her face, with interest.

"I would ... in due time," she said hesitantly, and the Sheriff nodded.

" 'For all things a season, a time for every purpose under the heavens,' " he quoted.

Sarah leaned forward, kissed him quickly on the cheek, then laid gentle fingers against his clean-shaven cheek, tilted her head, gave him a look that made him ache, for in that moment she honestly looked so very much like her Mama.

"I wish you were my Papa," she whispered, then she jerked her hand back like he was hot, she snatched her skirts and ran, her flat heels loud and staccato on the Church's immaculate floor-boards: the Sheriff blinked, puzzled, then rose slowly, picked up his Stetson, turned as the interior brightened and dimmed as Sarah swung out through the doors, shut them firmly behind her.

The long tall lawman with pale eyes looked up at the rough Cross, considering.

"Well, Lord," he said quietly, "I got the answer to my question, and thank You for that," he said, his voice deep, quiet, reassuring, echoing a little in the empty Sanctuary.

"I got one answer and now ..."

He smiled a little, shook his head.

"Now I've got a couple more."

He turned, paced slowly down the center aisle, boot heels no longer silent.

 

 

 

Edited July 30, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ROADSIDE SERVICE

Angela decided the climate was healthier somewhere else.

She knew this section of the Interstate.

She also knew with this unholy downpour, she didn't want to be moving with traffic, especially with that Jack Doe on her back bumper crowding her.

She checked her mirrors, turned quickly onto the off ramp, hitting her turn signal -- "yes, I'm turning," she murmured as she got the hell off this slow moving, low visibility Super Slab, and throttled up a little: she'd used this trick in this location before, she shot off pavement and onto solid, grass-grown stone: she turned hard uphill, dropped off the throttle and cranked the wheel, killed her lights and backed, using gravity and the slope to her advantage, stopped.

Angela was behind guardrail and a ditch, she was uphill, the embankment behind and high on her left broke the wind, but not the rain: she was on what she knew to be mostly stone, with enough dirt to hold it and grow a good thatch of grass, and she waited.

Rain pounded with wet, petulant fists on her roof and her windscreen, the clouds venting their watery pique that they weren't soaking her like they wanted: an occasional gust rocked the low, stable car, and Angela ran her eyes over her instrument panel, turned up the defroster.

"Angel One."

Her radio's receive light brightened with the received transmission.

"Angel One, go."

"Radar Roger has you very close to a 911 call, motorist stuck in weather and traffic, woman in labor."

Angela's jaw set and her eyes narrowed a little.

"Description of vehicle?"
"Restored '71 Chevy Nova, gold in color."

Angela frowned, swung pale eyes over the stopped traffic.

"How far from my location?"

"Caller said they're two football fields from an overpass."

Angela saw the vehicle.

"Have them in sight. Are they on the line with you?"

"Negative. This is scanner traffic relay."

"Contact Jurisdictional, tell them I'm responding on foot and will handle."

"Roger that, Angel One."

Angela hit her trunk release, thrust hard against her door: she set the car to IDLE SECURE, hit her red-and-blues, swung around behind her Dodge and breathed a quiet thanks that her body-worn shield generator was keeping her dry.

 

When a woman in nursing whites and an irritated expression came sprinting the wrong way down an exit ramp, it was something that tended to catch the eye.

When she came from a car that was invisible a few moments ago but was now, suddenly, officially, visible, limned in flashing red-blue-and-white LEDs, it was something that seized motorists' attention.

When she ran up to the restored, hand-rubbed, deep-lacquered, gold-metalflake '71 Chevy Nova with wide rear tires and traction bars, motorists left their traffic-stalled vehicles to come see what the hell was going on.

Angela rapped on the fogged window with a bent foreknuckle.

Men came running up, men in work uniforms and laced boots, men wearing hardhats, more to protect against rain than to keep from being hurt: Angela turned to one with a carpenter's pencil sticking out of his shirt pocket and sawdust in the wrinkles in his faded-green work uniform shirt.

"Carpenter?" she snapped: startled, he stopped, stared at a nurse in pristine white who shrugged off her backpack and unfastened its top flap.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"I need a work table, here" -- her flat palm-down indicated the space at her left hip -- "doesn't have to be big, but I need to lay out my tools, please tell me you have a full sheet of plywood as well!"

"I have!"

She turned to another, read the movers' name on his shirt's ironed-on label, turned her head, saw a moving van.

"You -- Stan -- I'm Angela, I need a moving pad, NOW!"

Stan turned, ran for the back of his boxy truck.

Angela ducked her head, returned to the woman, who was laying back against her husband, grimacing.

"Mother," Angela said, and her voice changed from the I-am-in-command-here voice of a Deputy Sheriff Charge Nurse, to the gentler voice of the nurse she appeared to be: "I'm Angela, I've delivered before, how many children have you already had?"

The mother turned her head, looked at the seat back: two sets of scared young eyes looked over the seat at their Mommy and at Angela.

Angela bent her wrist, spoke into the comm: "Firelands, Angel One, ETA on that squad."

"Traffic and weather delay, Angel One. Enroute but fighting conditions."

"Tell them the stork is walking around on the roof looking for a way in!"

Angela patted the woman's drawn-up knee: "Be right back!" -- she pulled out, straightened.

Two sawhorses slammed down, a short plywood top dropped into place, two bolts thrust through and her table was ready.

She set the backpack in place, looked up as the plywood arrived, carried by two anxious-looking boys -- probably the carpenter's sons, Angela thought -- she lifted her chin.

"I need that moving pad on the roof," she said. "This is a gorgeous paint job and I don't want to scratch it!"

The driver -- an anxious-looking young man who'd been holding his wife's hands, looking down at her head in his lap -- looked up, surprised, then grateful.

This Nova was his baby.

It had belonged to his father, an admitted motorhead: the engine was printed, ported, bored, reworked, it had headers, a Holley carb, it was tuned, timed, his father made sure it was perfect, a year before his son's birth: he'd inherited it, he'd carefully maintained it, he'd never taken it out unless it didn't even think it was going to look like rain.

When his wife went into labor and the family sedan refused to start, Denny did not hesitate.

The harsh, rumping rumble of his Dad's custom race tuned Nova -- street legal, but barely -- rattled loudly, aggressively, harshly off neighbors' siding and neighbors' windows, and he got their children, his wife's suitcase and a teddy bear in the back seat, his wife belted in the passenger front.

He did not, to his credit, burn 'em off as he came out of the driveway.

He waited until they were on the Interstate.

 

Angela grabbed one end of the moving pad, spread it over the car's roof: she motioned the plywood up, over her, laid it down on the heavy pad.

"You're all drafted," she announced, once more the Nurse In Charge: "I need hands on that plywood, and plenty of 'em. If there's a wind gust, I don't want my roof going anywhere!"

The rain started again, almost as heavy as what brought traffic to a stop.

They were on the Interstate's broad shoulder: an anonymous soul set flares behind, striding a hundred yards back to set a second, another hundred yards for a third.

Angela would normally have tried to take note of who did her that kindness -- likely a trucker -- but  the mother bowed up in another contraction, and Angela had her hands full.

Maternal teeth clicked together, the wife's hands tightened mercilessly on her husband's wrists.

Angela washed her hands in sanitizing gel, wiped them on a shop rag she snatched from the carpenter's hip pocket, then gloved.

She pulled out a small package, tore the plastic wrapping free, thrust the plastic into her backpack and broke the sterile seal on the flat cardboard box.

She laid out her tools, selecting what little she'd really need, laid these in front, then turned back to the mother.

The men outside held the plywood roof, grimacing against the rain, but standing the way men will when they have purpose, when that purpose is noble, honorable, and the makings of a really good story once they got back to where things were warm, and dry, and preferably with a hot meal and either coffee, or maybe beer.

Angela backed up and turned her head when a voice asked, "I have a sheet," and Angela reached, smiled -- "Bless you!" -- her face lit up -- she turned again, juggling the folded cotton and said firmly, "Mother, raise your bottom," and planed the sheet in under the woman's backside.

The men holding the plywood roof heard Angela's quiet, "Uh-oh!"

Angela backed up, twisted: "HEADACHE!" she yelled --

The mother looked down, almost crying: "Oh, I'm so sorry!"

Angela looked down, then laughed as a little voice from the back seat said "What happened, Mommy?"

"Her water broke," Angela explained.

"What's wadderbroke?" another curious voice asked.

"That means," Angela said loudly, "My name is Willy Mays, and we're having a BABY!"

A woman's head craned back into her husband's thigh as she arched and groaned and it felt like she was crushing her husband's wrists, as rain ran cold down the back of a half dozen men's necks and Angela supported the emerging head and let it rotate and six men gripped a sheet of 3/4-inch, marine-grade plywood as if their lives depended on it --

Rain sluiced over them in wind-blown sheets and drifting, hazy-wet curtains --

A child's cry, weak, then stronger --

Angela's hand reached back to where she'd staged her working-tools, moving with swift and practiced purpose --

Angela balanced something ugly, wiggling and slick in one hand, resting her hand on the maternal belly, as she reached back for a towel, then she wrapped the newborn:  "Mother, do you plan to breastfeed?"

"My baby," the mother gasped. "My baby, let me see!"

"Mother," Angela announced loudly, so the men outside could hear, "you have a fine little baby" -- she took a confirming, very direct look -- "BOY!"

"IT'S A BOY!" someone shouted from outside.

Angela raised her head and saw the restored gold Nova was almost surrounded.

"Damned vultures," she muttered as she clamped the cord.

The squad finally fought its way along the shoulder; uniformed medics came running up just as Angela pulled the sterile covering off the sharp little scissors, and cut the cord.

Angela laid the child across the mother's belly, maternal hands claimed the terrycloth-wrapped, wrinkled, squinting, grunting little child.

"Typical man," Angela murmured, peeling off a glove and laying a reassuring hand on the mother's forearm as the child rooted, searching with the instinct of someone who hadn't eaten in nine months: "he's thinking about food already!"

A woman held her child and laughed and cried and Angela drew back, straightened as her improvised roof was swung up and out of the way.

"Gentlemen, thank you," she said, looking around, meeting every eye as she peeled off her other glove and dashed her arms and hands with cold alcohol gel again: "it's nice to work under roof!"

Nurse, carpenter, mover and sons drew back as blueshirt medics wheeled their ambulance cot up, as Angela reported to the senior medic, as she bent her wrist and spoke into her comm.

Sharon, back in the Sheriff's office, looked around at lawmen from four jurisdictions, standing around her desk, each with a steaming mug of coffee and an impatient expression, at least until:

"Firelands, Angel One.  It's a boy!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THEORY, AND OPERATION

Medical men assumed thoughtful expressions as they examined screens, as they reviewed test results.

Hands manipulated a young man's spine, turned young shoulders carefully, slowly, watching stress meters, pain meters, watching computerized readouts as stresses were applied: rotational, compression, stretching, lateral bends, flexure, extension.

Questions were asked, answers evaluated, and through it all, a pale eyed boy with impressive, surgical scarring the length of his back, endured their cold fingers on his warm hide, their manipulations, their muttering in the subdialects of radiology and of osteopathy within that strange foreign language of medicine.

Michael went in with a very few, very simple questions:

Will my back ever be normal again?

When can I do normal stuff?

When can I shoulder a hard-kicking rifle, when can I seize a bale of hay and throw it into the haymow, when can I tackle someone who doesn't want to be placed under arrest, and subdue them peacefully or otherwise?

Michael Keller stood buck naked very near a cliff's edge.

It was a place where many pale eyed young stood, hearts quickening, facing the prospect of facing their fear.

Michael knew the pool below was deep.

Marnie saw to that, years ago, when she surreptitously brought in equipment, brought in men, when she extracted a massive boulder, bones, artifacts, when she suctioned the sand-and-rock sediments from the pool and separated a surprising amount of gold.

She'd had the extracted boulders broken, scattered; with time, they looked like the rocky detritus of the mountains, and were accepted as part of the landscape: the sandy sediments were ground, graded, used to make cement, used in highway construction across several states.

What was left was a deep, safe-for-diving, clear-as-a-bell, mountain pool.

Michael was not a trusting soul -- he'd learned that from his pale eyed Pa -- when he and Victoria rode to its shoreline, they'd set up surveillance, using technologies common to certain Confederate forces, but not yet known on this, their native planet.

They'd made sure they would remain unseen, unobserved.

Fanghorns had not been seen on Earth, save only once, when Michael had a wild hair and rode at a flat out gallop through Carbon Hill with his sister in incensed pursuit, when he'd crossed the highway in a downpour right in front of Bruce Jones, who only glimpsed the ridden fanghorn but whose confused brain clearly registered the young woman on a saddlehorse riding in pursuit.

Michael knew Marnie did not yet wish to reveal the Confederacy to this world -- or maybe certain elements of this world already knew, and she didn't want to let slip the feline from the burlap, so to speak, to the general public.

Whatever the case, Michael wished to tend a detail he'd wanted for some long time now.

Michael Keller wouldn't admit it if he were put to the thumbscrews, but he knew it within his own soul, and he was not happy about it.

Michael Keller was afraid of heights.

Michael had faced that fear before, and not a few times: the need was great, in those moments, he'd shoved that fear down into an iron kettle and screwed the lid down hard, fast and nasty, and he'd done what was necessary, but he'd never walked up to that fear, and smacked it across the face, and dared it to do its worst.

Today he was doing just that.

Michael ignored the cold.

His bare feet ached: mountain runoff cheerfully sucked warmth from his toes, his soles, he'd climbed to this clifftop naked, dripping wet from where he'd swum a scouting run through the pool, guaranteeing there were no new boulders, no submerged hazards to a dive.

Victoria waited below; she'd run a small device through the water, flying it through the pool like she might fly a radio controlled airplane through the cold, clear air: she, too, explored and probed and satisfied herself nothing hid beneath shimmering, clean waters.

Michael walked to the edge, feeling the drop pull at him.

He wanted to back away from the edge.

He found a place to stand, a place that did not slope toward the dropoff: he stood, he looked, he challenged his fear.

Michael's eyes grew a little more pale as he did.

Victoria felt his fear, she felt his heart rate pick up.

So did Lightning.

Thunder thrust his head up from the waters -- he was standing, fully submerged, looking around underwater.

Cyclone, nearby, also submerged, found to her amusement that she could just submerge her muzzle and blow bubbles: Thunder blinked in surprise, then lowered his head slightly and snorted, lifted his head for another breath, lowered his head and snorted again, throwing up a spray.

Victoria sighed patiently, caressed Lightning's shoulder, shook her head: "Kids!"

Lightning grunted in agreement, then she carefully eased into the water, curious: she lowered her stout, blunt neck, she submerged her muzzle, then she, too, began blowing bubbles.

Victoria looked up at Michael, shook her head and raised her hands:

"Children!" she called.  "I am surrounded by children!"

Michael grinned, then he stepped back, one step, two steps, three, then three more.

Bare soles found the sand he'd spread for traction.

Michael Keller pictured the drop, he imagined how freefall would feel, he thought of the stories Marnie told them of Sarah McKenna and how she dropped a boulder on a man who was trying to kill her, and how Marnie, a century and more later, retrieved boulder, skeleton, a rusted lump of a revolver, and gold -- gold she harvested, melted down, refined, kept secret -- all this went through Michael's quick young mind.

Victoria felt him take a few deep breaths, she felt him power into a run.

Three Fanghorns and a twin sister looked up as something long-legged and pale ran off the edge of the cliff, as elbows pressed in and hands covered a young face, as Michael hit the waters, toes pointed: Victoria felt him drive down, a swift, fleshy arrow, penetrating the depths: she closed her eyes, a steadying hand on Lightning's hip as she felt the liquid cold embracing her twin brother, as she felt sand under his bare feet: Lightning felt her silent laughter as he turned, as he drove both hands into the sandy bottom, as he turned again, thrust bare feet hard against the bottom and shot upward, fists rebelliously upraised toward the Light, streaming sand from both closed fists.

Michael broke surface, blew, took a breath: he opened his hands, showed Victoria his sandy prize, then ran his open hands through the water and let his prize swim back to the bottom.

Michael breast stroked toward his little audience, rippling the water but not roiling it, backstroked and rolled his legs under him, and stood.

Lightning regarded him solemnly, then lowered her head and blew bubbles in the water, and two Fanghorn colts dropped their muzzles as well, and followed their dam's celebratory example.

Victoria waited with a large, unfolded towel, draped it longways over Michael's front, tossed another towel over his back like a yellow terrycloth cape that came down to his knees.

Victoria Keller hugged her brother, feeling cold and wet starting to soak through the towel and her blouse: he hugged her back and allowed himself a little bit of a shiver, for he was honestly starting to get a little chilled.

"Michael?" Victoria whispered.

"Yeah, sis?" Michael whispered back.

"Michael, I'm proud of you!"

Lightning grunted, lowered her muzzle and blew some more bubbles.

Edited August 1, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JOHN, DON'T YOU DARE!

Dr. John Greenlees, physician, surgeon, husband and father, picked up a colorful plastic straw with a bend in it.

He looked at John Greenlees Jr., and winked.

John Greenlees Jr., four years old, the epitome of fast-moving, curious, spontaneous little boy, simultaneously winked back and grinned, screwing both eyes shut instead of only one.

Dr. John Greenlees dunked his straw in a tall glass half filled with milk.

His preparation was intentional, his preparation was deliberate: he'd set a half-glass of milk before his son, with his meal, which of course the bottomless pit in knee pants promptly slugged down like he was a thirsty ranch hand drinking cheap beer.

Dr. John decanted another half-glass, raised a teaching finger and one eyebrow.

He picked his straw up again, waggled it between thumb and forefinger, dunked it back into his milk, nodded to his son.

John Greenlees Jr. picked up his straw, dropped it in his glass, then looked curiously at his father.

"Joohhnnn," Marnie said, a warning note in her voice.

Dr. John Greenlees gave his wife an absolutely innocent look.

Dr. John Greenlees brought his glass up, closed his lips around the straw, looked at his son.

Little John looked at his father, watching closely.

"John," Marnie said, "don't you dare!"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller tore a long strip from a paper grocery sack.

Paper bags were something new -- the Mercantile only just started using them -- the Sheriff managed to harvest several, and squirreled them away, neatly folded, but today he had need of one he'd scavenged, one torn and not suitable for its original purpose.

He sat on the Deacon's bench in front of the Sheriff's office and handed a length of box elder to the schoolboy sitting beside him.

"Show you somethin'," he said quietly, chewing a strip of grocery sack paper: he sucked the cud into a discrete mass, spat it into his palm, rolled it into a ball.

"Now," he said, retrieving the bored-out length of bark-stripped wood, "y'see this is bored out."

He looked through it, making sure he could see daylight clear through, handed it back to the little boy with two teeth missing in front and a haircut that looked like someone dunked a bowl over his head and trimmed off what stuck out, with a set of sheep shears.

The boy looked solemnly through the bored out hole and handed it back.

"Now. We'll stick this in here" -- he stuffed the damp marble of well chawed grocery sack into the back of the box elder, took a length of ramrod a half inch shy of the box elder's length: he'd taken a chunk sawed off the initial cut of elder, drilled it, glued in a length of ramrod near to the same diameter as the hole bored through the woody stem's pith.

He ran this in about halfway, stopping at a mark he'd ringed in the ramrod with his Barlow knife.

"Now," he said, taking the second well chawed paper sack marble and stuffing it in, "we'll start it in ... like this ..."

He held it with one hand, smacked the sawed off chunk of box elder glued to the end of the ramrod, now stuck into the stem --

A brisk *pop!* and the wet paper wad shot out with a gratifyingly brisk sound --

The Sheriff handed it to the boy, along with two long strips of paper grocery sack, winked.

A delighted little boy with two missing teeth gripped this prize with both hands and looked at the pale eyed lawman with that expression of spontaneous, sunny-faced happiness that is the exclusive purview of little boys.

The Sheriff laughed quietly as a little boy ran scampering across the street to show off his new acquisition to his schoolmates, and shortly the running, laughing, orbiting confusion of school children at recess, gathered around a new novelty, and the *pop* of a genuine Box Elder pop gun brought laughter to children and a quiet smile to a lawman's eyes.

 

Littlejohn regarded his father with wide-eyed attention as Dr. John Greenlees closed his lips around the bent end of his straw and blew gently, foaming up his milk until the glass was full of shimmering white bubbles.

Littlejohn seized his own half-glass of milk and blew enthusiastically, overflowing the glass and cascading bubbles over his hands and onto his plate.

Marnie shook her head and sighed, then looked at her husband with a mother's patient smile.

"John," she said softly, "you clean that one up!"

Father and son set their glasses on their now-empty plates and happily blew big stacks of bubbles in their tall glasses of milk, at once united in childish delight, and managing to capture the overflow before it actually made a mess.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BE LIKE A MOONSHINER

Linn damned the limitations of human physiology.

He was not a man to question the wisdom of the Almighty, but he considered darkly it would be a hell of a lot handier if he had four arms.

He wore a black suit and a black hat, his boots were polished to their usual high shine, and he stood with his family assembled, as the Parson spoke the words that are always said, before a box is lowered into the ground and covered with dirt.

Linn's wife stood with him, and held his hand.

Linn's mother stood with him, and held his other hand.

Marnie stood, between her new Daddy and her Gammaw, unmoving, solemn, dry eyed, in a handmade black dress that caught her halfway down her calves: her Gammaw and her new Mommy took her shoe shopping and she wore shiny new black slippers and black tights for the occasion, and she even wore a black ribbon in her shining, brushed-out hair.

Linn felt a little girl's arm wrap around his leg, and he wished most sincerely for another set of arms, with which to pick up a little child, and hold her, and tell her without words that she was safe here.

When the final words were said, after they'd watched as Digger lowered the small, square box into the small, square hole: Linn's wayward sister, dead of pancreatic cancer and probably from drugs and who knows what diseases she'd acquired, had been cremated; the small box of her dust was easily lowered into the vertical shaft by one man.

Mother, son, daughter, all stepped onto the tarp surrounding what Linn thought of as a square posthole, picked up a lump of dirt and dropped in on the box: Digger turned a sexton's shovel, carefully poured fine dirt into the hole.

Linn released his Mama's hand, released his wife's hand: he squatted, took Marnie's tiny little hands in his.

"Darlin'," he said quietly, and Marnie heard overtones in his voice she'd heard in no man's voice ever -- she heard a complexity of tones, as if multiple throats were speaking -- she heard the quiet affection with which he'd addressed his wife, Marnie's New Mommy, and she heard the laughing part of his voice when he'd called Marnie's Gammaw 'Darlin'," and she heard something deeper, something very sad, and part of her wanted to shrink back, away from him, 'cause when men's voices change and get kind of thick they did bad things to her, but the rest of her shoved herself into him.

Linn reflexively dropped to both knees and ran his arms around her, quickly: she hugged him with a shivering desperation, an orphan, all in black, at her Mama's grave, at once alone in the world and not alone at all, and she held her Newdaddy with both the fearful desperation of someone whose world was shattered, gone, swept away, and the equally fearful hope that maybe this one, this new Strongman, this sudden new world over which she had neither control nor say, would be better than the one her Mama took her from.

Linn lowered one arm to just below her bony little backside, stood, picking her up: she held him tighter, then he hitched her up a little more and she could see over his shoulder.

Four year old Marnie Keller laid her head over and rested her cheek on her Newdaddy's shoulder, and looked at her Gammaw.

Marnie liked her Gammaw.

She smelled nice.

Willamina tilted her head, lifted the black net veil from over her face, brushed a wisp of Marnie's hair back and gave her a warm, understanding look, the way Gammaws do in such moments.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller paged through his Gammaw's Journal, seeing events through her eyes, memories that ran out the tip of her pen onto good rag paper.

He laughed a little as he remembered when Marnie lost her first tooth.

 

Marnie Keller stared, shocked, at the little white tooth in her hand.

Her tongue explored the socket it came from.

She'd wakened, she'd rolled over and her tongue automatically went to the funny tooth that wiggled.

She frowned and shoved against it and it dropped behind her lips.

Marnie blinked, brought her hand up and opened her lips.

She stared, blinked, she felt something cold run through her.

Marnie slipped out of bed, ran with barefoot silence to the bathroom, gripped and set her stool -- silent, silent!

Don't let anyone know what you're doing! 

She stepped up, braced against the white-porcelain sink, opened her mouth and looked in the mirror with shocked, frightened eyes.

Marnie's breath came quickly -- no, no! -- she abandoned the stool, she turned, she ran in near-panic -- quiet, quiet, don't let anyone know! -- one hand clutching the lost tooth, her thoughts those of a frightened child, of an injured child --

Marnie ran barefoot, ran swift, ran for the pasture.

She ran with desperation, a plan barely formed.

Moments later, a terrified little girl in a white flannel nightgown laid down over a patient old mare's neck and guided her with hands and with whispers and with a visceral terror to the one soul in all the world with whom she felt completely safe.

Willamina sat on her porch, savoring the cool and the quiet and her morning coffee.

She was on countdown to retirement.

If this is what every retirement morning feels like, she thought, I'm going to enjoy this!

She took a slow, savoring sip of her coffee, letting the warmth, the flavor, trickle sensually down her throat.

Willamina went from eyes-closed pleasure to fully aware and moving in a tenth of a second or less.

She set the coffee on a little sidetable, she rose, hand automatically going to the slim handle of a slabsided .45 automatic she favored.

Willamina rose fully, released the pistol's handle.

An elderly, dapple-grey mare of her acquaintance, trotted slowly up her driveway, something that looked like a nightgown wearing a little girl laid over its neck, holding awkwardly in place.

Willamina stepped down to ground level, greeted the mare with a caress and a whisper, then smiled a little as a small set of pale eyes lifted from the mare's mane and said "Gammaw it wuddn't my fault!"

Willamina reached up and Marnie reached out, and Willamina brought a tear-faced little girl down into a set of experienced, maternal arms.

She and the mare walked to the gate, and into Willamina's pasture, and Willamina carried a fear-clinging little girl back to the porch, sat with her on the porch swing.

"Now," Willamina murmured, as little Marnie leaned into her, "what brings you here on this lovely morning?"
Marnie held up her fisted hand, looked at Willamina with fear-bright eyes.

"I didn't smokeit da meth pipe, Gammaw, I dindoo it!" she quavered, then she opened her hand to show the tooth.

"Open up," Willamina almost whispered.

Marnie's breathing quickened again, but she opened her mouth.

Willamina lifted Marnie's upper lip a little, saw the gap where a little girl's milk tooth had been.

Marnie felt gentle fingers caress her cheek, she felt safety and comfort wrap around her like a quilt and Willamina gathered a scared little girl into her and rocked her a little.

"It's called a baby tooth, Marnie," she whispered. "It's not meth mouth. Shhh, sshhhh, it's all right."

A grandmother cuddled and rocked her granddaughter, and a grandmother lifted her hand and waved, for Jacob -- who apparently was taking his job as watchful brother more seriously than anticipated, watched from the end of the driveway, and lifted his Stetson in response to his Gammaw's upraised palm.

 

Linn read.

I told Marnie about the only moonshiner I ever trusted, he read.

Casey's product was in demand, because of his quality control.

Linn smiled: trust Mama to talk about quality control at a time like this!

Casey was a local benefactor.

A family was on hard times.

The widowed mother heard a truck backing up their driveway, then heard a dump truck leaving its cargo outside.

She went out on the porch and saw an entire dump truck of coal, dumped where their coal pile usually went.

The driver came up to the porch and touched his soft cap.

"I, but, I didn't, I didn't order, I can't pay for this," she stammered.

The driver smiled and handed her the invoice slip, then touched his cap again and went back to his truck.

The widowed mother stared after him, mouth open, looked at the sheet he'd given her.

She had to sit down.

It was a standard delivery slip, it had her address on it, the tonnage was listed, but what stood out was a man's firm print:

PAID IN FULL

Linn read on, his Mama's written account of a visit, with the two of them -- Willamina, and Marnie, dunking homemade chocolate chip cookies in milk and talking quietly in the kitchen -- she read Willamina's description of this moonshiner, a legend back East with his pale eyed Mama was a working medic out of the Glouster station, when its medics were headquartered in the old train depot.

 

Willamina took a bite of cookie, chewed happily.

"Cookies are better when shared with good company," she mumbled through a soggy mouthful, then wiped the trickling dribble from her chin.

Marnie giggled, tilted her head a little, listening.

"Old Casey was sneaky," Willamina continued. "Come cold weather, why, he knew which families were hurting. There'd be a knock at the door. When they went to the door, nobody was there, but a box was set up against the door.

"There would be shoes for each child, and a winter coat for each child.

"Never a note, nobody saw who left them, but they knew."

Marnie listened to this with wide and innocent eyes, savoring her milk-dunked cookie, but never taking her eyes off her quiet-voiced Gammaw.

Willamina gave Marnie a knowing look.

"Your Daddy reads from the Book every night."

Marnie nodded, her cookie hovering over the half empty milk glass.

"Last night he read about not letting your left hand know what your right hand does."

Marnie nodded.

"Do you know what that means?"  Willamina nibbled at her cookie and gave Marnie that wise look of hers, almost hearing Marnie's thoughts -- Gammaw knows everything! -- Willamina's imagination phrased the words in the breathy, marveling voice of a little child making a profound discovery.

Marnie shook her head, her eyes wide, solemn, attentive.

Willamina leaned down a little, lowered her head as if confiding a Grand Secret of the Universe, and Marnie leaned a little closer as she did.

"It means," Willamina said quietly, smiling that secretive smile Gammaws use in such times, "that we ought to be like a Moonshiner!"

 

Linn looked up from his Gammaw's words and smiled, just a little, remembering secret expeditions he'd run with his Gammaw.

She, too, left a box at a door -- a quick knock, then she ran like a thief, to keep from being seen.

He'd placed such boxes, at her behest, knocking and running in the same manner, often after having bribed the family dog.

His computer chimed: he pressed a key, grinned as the screen showed his youngest, sitting side-by-side: Marnie came into camera behind them, bending a little and taking their shoulders in her hands as her head lowered between theirs.

"Daddy," Marnie smiled, then she looked at Michael, looked at Victoria, looked back at the camera again.

"Daddy, you can be proud of us!"

Linn crossed his arms on the desktop before him, leaned toward the camera: "Darlin', I'm pretty damned proud of all of you already. What'd you do this time?"

Marnie's expression was that of a mischievous child who'd just been deliciously naughty, and who'd gotten away with that deliciously naughty something.

Michael assumed a haughty, stuffed-shirt posture, raised a teaching finger, lifted his chin, then looked at his image on his own screen and started to laugh.

Victoria rolled her eyes, shrugged her shoulders:  "Men!"

Marnie laughed, hugged them closer, looked at the camera.

"We have been sneaky, skulky, surreptitious, we've been conspiring, plotting and executing."

Linn unfolded his arms, leaned back, spread his palms:  "Well don't leave me hangin', what happened!"

Brother and sisters looked at one another like the conspirators they were, then all three looked into the camera and declared, in happy chorus:

"We've been playing Moonshiner!"

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

COMMUNICATION

Old Pale Eyes twisted, caught the wrist coming in: he turned, bent his attacker's elbow painfully the wrong way, his boot planting ahead of the hostile ankle: the Sheriff's off hand shoved hard between his attacker's shoulder blades, driving him down with full intent to formally introduce the party of the second part to what appeared to said sorry soul, to be rapidly rising dirt.

The Sheriff ducked because a second attacker made a clumsy swing and succeeded in tripping over his pugilistic partner.

The Sheriff was not one to stand on ceremony, nor on his own footprints if this proved unwise: he released the wrist he'd captured, dove to the side, rolled, came up in a crouch, hands open, eyes wide, wondering where that snarling sound was coming from, until he realized ...

... he's the one that was snarling ...

Thought runs swift as free-falling water: his thought was there-and-gone, leaving the rest of him free to move, and move he did -- he stepped in, kicked an attacker in the side of the head, brought his heel back up and stomped the hand he'd formerly gripped, and his application of boot leather was neither slow, nor was it gentle.

Doc Greenlees had to sew a split ear back together, and he worked for some time trying to get broken hand bones back in something that resembled alignment.

The Sheriff, having disposed of this pair, found his Stetson, scuffed dirt off its underside with his coat sleeve, dunked it back on his head and glared, pale eyes and wordless gaze a challenge as understandable as an angry shout:

Anyone else?

No one took the man up on his offer.

 

Over a century later, not far from town, an old man leaned one-handed on an aluminum walker.

His other hand gripped a young man's hand.

Jacob Keller bit his bottom lip, nodded: "I'll miss ye, Roger," he said quietly.

"Yeah," Roger said, his voice husky. "Me too."

Jacob cut Roger's grass regularly, ever since the man became unable to push his mower around the yard: Jacob was the one that put out an appeal, Jacob was the one who organized men with tools and with timber and with the rough humor that is part and parcel of mountain life: Roger marveled at how fast Jacob arranged to have a wheelchair ramp built, and when Roger's diabetes left him with one leg of aircraft grade aluminum, it was Jacob he called when he fell and couldn't quite wallow and push himself up off the floor.

Roger was headed for an assisted living apartment, closer to his daughter: Jacob knew family made multiple trips with a pickup truck, transferring goods from here to there.

"I am obliged to you," Roger said quietly, and he held Jacob's hand a moment longer, before releasing human flesh and gripping padded aluminum, before laboring over to his sister's waiting sedan.

Jacob remembered the sister's words, two years later, at Roger's funeral.

"Roger said everyone else gave him words."

She looked at Jacob, blinked, pressed a kerchief to her nose.

"You didn't give him words, Jacob, you gave him help. You didn't ask, you just showed up and mowed his grass and trimmed and you'd show up with groceries, and you sat with him on the front porch and you listened while he talked."

Jacob nodded gravely, his hat in his hand, pale eyes never leaving her face.

"You didn't talk. You just ... did, and he said that was the nicest thing anyone ever said to him."

 

Esther Keller followed her husband up the stairs when he got home.

She glided into the bedroom after him.

He knew she was following, which is why he did not shut the bedroom door: the Girl, who'd glided up behind Esther, discreetly drew the door shut, and waited outside, in case she was needed.

Esther waited until her husband unbuttoned his coat before gripping the garment she'd sewn herself, and slid it off his shoulders and off his arms.

Linn turned, fingertips touching her elbows.

Esther's green eyes were full of concern as she examined her husband's face, as gentle, feminine fingertips caressed the angles of his jaw, searching for marks, for bruises, for cuts.

"I heard about today," she said quietly. 

Linn blinked, then nodded, just a little, his eyes going to the dirt-stained coat she'd draped over the back of a chair.

Esther leaned into him, ran her arms around his solid middle, leaned her head against his breastbone, then pulled back and looked up at him.

"Did you speak the language they understood?" Esther asked, her voice gentle and a little worried.

Linn held his wife and lowered his head, kissed her forehead, then stroked her cheek carefully with the backs of his fingers.

"I spoke the language they understood."

Esther sighed and leaned her cheek against his shirtfront.

"I do wish you would consort with a better class of criminal."

 

Sheriff Linn Keller watched a schoolboy leave the meeting room.

Sharon brought the man a mug of coffee with a drizzle of milk.

"Here," she said quietly as he took a savoring slurp: "have a cinnamon roll, you've earned it!"

Linn took a bite of the still-warm pastry, chewed.

"Did you do any good?"

"I think so," Linn said quietly. "He was so discouraged ..."

He shook his head.

"Grade cards aren't everything," he muttered.

"What did you do?"

"I showed him what he'd done well. He's dyslexic, but he can take a wiring diagram and read it like a newspaper. I had blueprints and had him trace it out for me, and he was in his element."

He contemplated the pastry, his expression thoughtful.

"Something like that may as well be written in cuneiform for me. I look at a wiring diagram and --"

He shook his head.

"I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I'm not all that dumb, but I'll admit ... trying to read that wiring diagram is kind of like backing a trailer. I've known men -- Barrents, for one -- they can back one and make it look easy. Me?"

He snorted, took another slurp of coffee.

"Put a hay baler on the back of an 8N Ford where I can turn around and see everything, and I STILL can't back the damn thing without jack knifing it!"

"So you taught him how to back a farm tractor?"

"I showed him how incompetent I am with a wiring diagram. He was able to go over it with me and help me understand what I was looking at."

"He looked happier leaving here than when he came in," Sharon offered.

Linn nodded. "I hope so. I wanted to show him he wasn't nearly as dumb as he was beatin' himself up to be."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BUMP IN THE DARK

The formal meetings of the Ladies' Tea Society were held in the back room of the Silver Jewel Saloon.

Less formal gatherings were held wherever occasion happened.

Today's gathering was on the Sheriff's shooting range.

The ladies brought gun cases and thermoses of tea, they brought bright-pink earmuffs and Evil Black Rifles and a variety of pistols, and they brought the happy, spontaneous chatter of women gathering for a common and united purpose.

Angela was everywhere, cheerful, laughing, reassuring, bright, prominent and very visible.

The Sheriff well knew that women speak differently than men, and women think differently than men.

Linn knew, even before she'd assumed the function, that Angela was far better suited to function as a range coach, as an instructor, as both teacher and cheerleader and facilitator.

Linn went downrange, hung a single steel silhouette with the flashing-LED hit indicators clipped to its top edge (he had extras, more that one flasher had been shot already): he strode back to his faded-orange Dodge, picked up a clipboard from its lowered tailgate, consulted a diagram, then brought a light timber frame with cardboard stapled into a large rectangle, out of the truckbed, packed it downrange, then four more.

The Ladies of the Tea Society watched as the Sheriff set up ... something.

Angela laid a tray of cookies on one of the benches, draped a red-and-white-check cloth over it, then turned, nibbling on a fresh baked chocolate chip treat palmed from the tray as she placed it.

"Hulda," she called, "could you step up here and tell us what you told the Sheriff two nights ago?"

Hulda looked uncomfortable: she looked down, bit her lip.

"I, um," she said, then cleared her throat and took a deeper breath.

 

Hulda was almost asleep when she woke.

She'd heard something.

She wasn't sure what it was.

She listened, breathing through her mouth, then she closed her eyes and remembered Angela's quiet words.

She took a long, calming breath, blew it out through pursed lips, listening as she did -- another breath, another controlled exhale.

Was that anything?

Was I dreaming?

She heard it again.

Someone's trying my lock --

A steady, gentle tapping, almost metallic but not quite, loud in the silent house.

Hulda's first thought was to shrink back into her covers --

-- hide --

Angela's voice --

When it happens, you are the only one you can depend on.

Someone means you harm.

You are the only one who can stop them.

Hulda thought of her tidy little house.

Hulda took pride in keeping a clean, polished, dusted, organized house.

Hulda thought of someone coming in and tearing her television out by its wiry roots, shaking a vase off the entertainment center, yanking open her drawers and dumping them out, searching for money, dumping her modest little jewelry box into a pillowcase stripped from her bed --

No!

Part of Hulda stood aside, watching in honest surprise as the rest of her rolled out of bed, picked up the rifle she and Angela picked out and shot together, a rifle she'd used to punch holes in cardboard silhouettes, a rifle she'd been afraid of until she actually shot it.

Hulda's hand closed around the textured fore-end and she realized --

Not here.

Not now.

Not me!

 

Hulda looked at the cardboard hallway the Sheriff constructed, at the silhouette beyond.

"I have to thank Angela," she said quietly, as she settled her muffs over her ears.

A cluster of ladies, and one Sheriff, all positioned their muffs, turned them on, adjusted their volume to hear Hulda.

"I took a position," Hulda said.

"I was behind a corner.

"I was down on one knee.

"I had this rifle to shoulder."

"Show us," Angela said, and Hulda turned to the Sheriff's wood-and-cardboard simulacrum of a short hallway.

Hulda advanced, went to one knee, shouldered her rifle, aimed at the silhouette.

"I heard it again, and I waited.

"Someone was doing something with my door lock.

"I heard my ... I heard ..."

Hulda took a breath, closed her eyes, took another, remembering, shivering a little.

"My front door opened and someone started in.

"I gripped the pressure switch -- it's here on my rifle -- like this --"

Her mounted light was powerful, but almost invisible in daylight.

"I hit him with the light and just like Angela taught me, I yelled, and I yelled loud!"

 

Hulda was suddenly very calm as her door swung open.

My door, she thought.

He's coming into MY HOUSE!

A silhouette, dark against the greater dark outside.

Fear turned into resentment, and resentment into hard and uncompromising anger.

Hulda squeezed the flat pressure switch, the light seared into blinding life, the intruder froze, paralyzed by surprise and by tight-focused lumens.

Hulda heard her own voice, as if someone else screamed with her throat.

"I HAVE A GUN! DROP THE WEAPON!"

Hulda heard running footsteps, heard a voice, heard a car door slam, heard tires squall as someone committed that classic military maneuver known as Getting the Hell Out of There!

 

Hulda rose, keeping her rifle's muzzle carefully downrange.

"I did not fire a shot," she said. "The Sheriff said whoever it was, dropped a bump key, whatever that is, and a screwdriver.

"He said the burglar defeated my front door lock.

"Mr. Pompey at the Mercantile came out and installed a bump proof lock.

"At the Sheriff's recommendation, I had longer screws put in the --"

She looked at the Sheriff, suddenly uncertain.

"Striker plate," the Sheriff finished for her, unfolding his arms.

Linn advanced, carefully: he came around behind Hulda.

"Let me tell you what Hulda did right," he said quietly.

"She recognized a threat.

"She took a defensive position -- she was behind a corner, and she was behind a rifle.

"Hulda -- may I?" -- she handed him her rifle, and the Sheriff held it up -- "this light attaches easily, it's BRIGHT, it has a pressure switch -- here, on the fore end, where you're naturally going to grip.

"She lit up the intruder."

He handed Hulda back her rifle.

"Now if there's no time to yell at him, pull that trigger and bang she goes, but if you can yell at them and they realize they're had -- if they don't have a visible weapon in hand -- then your choice is no shoot.

"If they advance, ladies, your life is in peril and you are both justified in, and authorized to, employ deadly force. Even if they come in barehand" -- he stressed the words --, "if they advance on you and yank your rifle from you, then in the eyes of the law, you have a reasonable fear they'll kill you with your own gun.

"Now as far as what Hulda did wrong."

He handed back the rifle, ran an arm around her shoulders like a proud father would a daughter.

"Hulda here, did absolutely nothing wrong, and I couldn't be prouder!"

One of the ladies raised a tentative hand.

"Shouldn't she have ... called 911?"

"If you have time," the Sheriff agreed, "but when the Huns are in the wire, when someone is actively trying to gain access, when an intruder is trying to make entry, your first duty is to keep yourself and your family safe."

He looked around, pale eyes serious and unsmiling as he added, "By whatever means necessary."

The Sheriff swung his gaze over every last one of the Ladies present: he turned to Hulda and thanked her in a quiet voice, turned.

"Angela? I've taken up enough of your instruction time. Could you take over, please?"

Angela gave a loud and exaggerated sigh, which broke the serious moment: the ladies looked at her, smiled as Angela planted her knuckles on her hips and declared, "You just want some cookies! I know you!"

The Sheriff threw innocent palms wide and declared in an exaggerated nasal voice, "Does yas knows me or what!"

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AN UNEXPECTED SCRIBE

Sharon Ann was just coming back to her desk from checking supplies at the departmental coffee table.

The Sheriff joked on occasion, "The Navy runs on coffee, and so do I!" and his mother made the same joke, back when Willamina was Sheriff, and Sharon Ann's mother Sharon was her dispatcher.

Sharon Ann started dispatching when she was seventeen.

Sharon Ann's mother died unexpectedly, the Sheriff needed a dispatcher, and one day after both burying her mother and receiving her diploma, Sharon Ann came to the Sheriff and said quietly, "When do I start?"

She didn't ask for an application, she didn't ask if the position was open, just a simple, straightforward, "When do I start?"

The Sheriff looked into those serious young eyes, then looked at the dispatcher's desk, there in the front of the lobby.

"Let me introduce you to the Bat Phone," he said quietly, and Sharon Ann, just that fast, became the Firelands County Emergency Services Dispatcher, Sheriff's Receptionist, Receiver of the Visiting Public, Nerve Center for All Emergencies, Public Concerns and Media Relations.

In other words, Sharon Ann became just Sharon, and the Sheriff's Office honestly could not have continued running without her.

Sharon did an immense amount of learning, fast.

She learned the solemn, taciturn Chief Deputy Barrents had a quiet, not-quite-hidden sense of humor, she learned The Bear Killer and Snowdrift both knew Doggie Cookies were kept in the lower left hand drawer of the dispatcher's desk, she learned you actually can plug in the three biggest coffee pots in the county at the same time -- but only on the one particular circuit the Sheriff had specially wired and specially breakered for that sole and only purpose.

She also learned there were ... well, not exactly secrets, but things that were not exactly common knowledge.

The Sheriff, for instance, could write in calligraphy.

He generally didn't: when she asked him about it, his ears turned a little red, like a schoolboy whose secret was discovered: yes, he admitted, he could write in calligraphy, a little, but most of the time he printed, like his Mama: he said she'd told him "If you're charting on a patient in the back of a moving squad -- and writing in cursive -- hit a pothole and you lose the entire sentence, if it's a bad hole. 

"If I'm printing, I might lose one or two letters, but the word is still legible."

Willamina printed, as a result, and was as swift printing as she was in cursive: Linn picked up the habit, as it made perfect sense to him, and besides, he adored his Mama, and if it was good enough for her, he'd reasoned as a child, it was good enough for him.

Sharon also learned that the Sheriff's Office had a considerable correspondence, except for a very few items the Sheriff took personally to the post office.

Sharon knocked discreetly at his inner office door, waited for his summons before entering, found him hand writing what looked like a letter.

He looked up, smiled, picked up a rectangular slip and thrust it into a window envelope: he turned the envelope, frowned, tapped it one way, another, looked at it again, nodded.

Sharon watched as he tore a square of tape, opened the envelope, made a final adjustment and taped the rectangle down behind the envelope's window, looked again to make sure it was to his satisfaction, then he folded the letter, placed it carefully in the envelope, twisted a little to pull out a slim leather wallet: he pulled out a twenty, slid into the folded letter, then sealed the envelope and ensured the stickum worked by putting a small strip of tape across the point of the flap.

"A friend's niece," he admitted, his ears turning red again: "she's in college. I write her every week."

He turned the envelope over, opened a drawer, pulled out an adheisive sheet.

"Do you get all those pre-printed return address stickers in the mail?"

"I just got some yesterday."

"Me too," he said. "These have those pretty stickum seals ... I put one on the bar code beside the postage so the envelope doesn't get mis-routed."

"Pretty," Sharon murmured. "Do you want that to go out with the rest of the mail?"

He reached into the drawer, pulled out a near-depleted sheet of stamps, applied one to the envelope.

"It would save me a trip," he nodded, handed the envelope across the desk.  "Thank you."

Sharon looked at the address.

"Now that," she said, quiet admiration in her voice, "is gorgeous!"

The Sheriff grinned.  "Don't tell anyone, I'm too lazy to letter up a stack of wedding invitations!"

Sharon pulled her cat's-eye glasses down her nose and looked over them at the grinning lawman.

"Lazy?" she asked quietly, tapping the envelope against her palm.

The Sheriff shrugged.

"And why, pray tell," Sharon teased carefully, "are you writing love letters to a younger woman?"

The Sheriff's grin was broad, bright and genuine.

He leaned back, raised a finger.

"I ... kept ... young men from here supplied with mail and care packages when they were overseas," he said quietly, "and I remember how much mail meant when I was in college.

"His niece..."

Linn didn't say whose niece she was, but Sharon saw sadness cross his face: he hesitated, closed his eyes for a long moment, swallowed and tried again.

"I didn't want her ... ever ... to feel forgotten," he finished.

Sharon blinked, nodded.

"Anything else while I'm here?" she asked softly.

The Sheriff blinked, considered.

"You came in here for something," he prompted, deflecting the question and reclaiming control of the conversation.

Sharon blinked and realized she'd honestly forgotten why she'd come in.

"I'll ... get this in the outgoing," she said, and turned.

"Sharon."

The Sheriff's voice was quiet, he'd spoken her name gently, but he might as well have reached out and seized her with both hands.

She turned.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "You are in all ways a credit to this county."

It was Sharon's turned to experience a flush of hot blood to her ears and her face.

She did not remember walking from his inner office door back to her desk.

She told her boyfriend later it was probably because she was walking on air.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CONSUMPTION

Michael Keller didn't have much appetite.

Given his druthers, he'd druther have made a sandwich and ended up giving all but a couple bites to three curious, bumming Fanghorns.

He didn't.

He sat at the family's ancient table and dunked a small blob of mashed taters on his plate, he pressed it down into as broad a well as he could with the gravy ladle and then filled it, and took a little meat.

Victoria sat across from him, prim in a handmade dress, pale eyes assessing her twin brother.

Shelly noticed Michael's lack of appetite; Angela deduced it from the look she got from her Mama and her younger sister, but said nothing.

Conversation was as it always was: Shelly described how Chief Fitzgerald cautioned an Irishman's  five-year-old son not to run in the firehouse, how the boy turned and yelled "You're not my boss!", turned and shot ahead, banging his young head squarely, precisely, T-square-exactly into the stainless steel rear bumper of their tanker.

Linn's face turned a little red and his smile was hard pressed not to flow down from his eyes and spread to the rest of his face as Shelly continued, "He hit hard enough ... Linn, that whole truck rang!"

Linn nodded, gave up trying to hold back his amusement: "Was that Marc?" he asked, and Shelly nodded as she forked in another chunk of gravy-dripping meat.

"Kind of figured," Linn murmured, tearing open a biscuit and troweling on a thick layer of fresh churned butter: "I hit my shin bone on the trailer hitch on Paul Barrents' truck last week."

His expression went from amused to rueful as he admitted, "I hit that hitch hard enough that 3/4 ton Dodge rang like the Liberty bell, so when you tell me Marc belted the bumper with his gourd ..."

Michael grimaced in sympathy: he, too, knew what it was to use his shin bone as a hitch finder.

Angela and Victoria proceeded to draw their mother into a feminine discussion of styles and fashions, which Michael politely ignored: he peppered his taters and gravy, then he salted them, he ate slowly, as if he knew he had to eat to keep his strength up, but there was no longer any enjoyment in it.

When Michael passed on good homemade brownies with ice cream, Victoria gave him a serious look, then she slipped out of her seat, came around the table and slid in beside him.

"Michael," she almost whispered, "walk with me."

Michael didn't look up as he slid his chair back, as he and his twin sister thrust sock feet into their respective and then slipped out the door.

Linn looked at his wife, raised an eyebrow -- clearly a question -- Shelly looked at Angela, nodded ever so slightly -- a prompt -- and Angela shook her head slightly -- she didn't know.

Outside, Victoria took her twin brother's arm as delicately as if she were a Grand Lady in a Ballroom, and Michael was of the Bood Royal.

Michael walked as he always did, shoulders back, spine straight as he could manage -- which was within a degree and a half of its natural best, before his injury -- Victoria's expression was neutral.

Michael's was troubled.

"How bad?" Victoria murmured.

Michael stopped.

Victoria turned, easily, a dancer's turn: she stood in front of her twin brother, holding both his hands, searching his face.

"I know something happened, Michael," she said quietly, "I could feel ... your ... you were troubled."

Michael snorted, looked out across the pasture, then looked back at his twin sister.

"Troubled?"

Victoria's eyes were big, vulnerable -- they'd have been hypnotic, had Michael been a mere mortal, instead of a twin brother used to her wiles -- Michael closed his own eyes, took a long breath, looked out over the long pasture and its sunset shadows.

He looked back at his sister.

"Let me tell you what happened."

 

Michael stopped and glared at Thunder.

Thunder danced on hard forehooves, just out of reach.

Michael held Thunder's saddlebags and the shield generator they concealed.

Cyclone came willingly enough: Michael wasn't willing to try saddling them yet -- he knew how old a horse had to be, but he wasn't sure about Fanghorns, and he was not about to cause any harm a'tall to this pair.

Not after the common misery he and Lightning suffered.

"Thunder," Michael said quietly, unwrapping a red-and-white, swirly peppermint, "come."

Thunder fluttered his lips and chirped like a bird, advanced, lipped the treat off Michael's palm.

Michael twisted, got the saddlebags over Thunder's back as the young Fanghorn shifted, the held still and blew out through loose lips like a little boy making a rude noise.

Michael made the same rude noise right back.

Thunder blew a louder raspberry as Michael caught the cinch, snugged it -- it didn't take much to hold the saddlebags in place, and it would get them used to wearing a saddle's cinch -- Michael patted the young stallion's flank, shook his fist threateningly:  "I oughta knock you into the middle of next week!"

Thunder looked singularly unimpressed.

Michael waved his fist, raised an eyebrow:  "What's your pleasure? Wednesday or Thursday?"

Thunder opened his jaw, belched.

Michael gave up on threats and instead, raised supplicating palms to the Heavens:  "See what I have to put up with?"

"Look," Michael said seriously, rubbing Thunder's ears as the young Fanghorn laid his lower jaw horizontally, across Michael's shoulder, "there's supposed to be big cats on this world. I don't want you to end up bit through the back of the skull, capice?"

Michael felt Lightning alert: he was moving toward her as she spun, glaring at the tall grasses.

Michael knew he'd have a snowball's chance of getting Lightning to belly down so he could saddle up, but he could get his rifle -- he danced with her turn to keep from getting knocked over -- he pulled his scoped Marlin free of the floral-carved scabbard, thumbed back the hammer, made a quick chamber-peek -- yep, brass -- crush-gripped the lever closed and came out from behind Lightning.

Things happened kind of fast after that.

 

"Michael?" Victoria asked, her voice gentle: Thunder leaned up against Michael's shoulder blades as Cyclone thrust her muzzle under Victoria's arm, begging for attention.

Michael looked up, swallowed.

"Do you remember," he asked quietly, "how Pa used to read to us of an evening?"

Victoria nodded solemnly.

"Do you recall when he read us about Sarah ridin' out with that sawed off shotgun to deal with a mountain cat?"

"The one she shot as it leaped."

"The one that damn neart got her."

"I remember."

"You know what an African lioness looks like."

Victoria nodded, her face carefully expressionless.

"You know how they like to ... a mountain cat will bite a horse through the back of the skull to kill it and a Bengal tiger will bite a human through the back of the skull, same reason."

Victoria nodded.

"I'd had trouble gettin' Thunder's shielding on him, but I kept at it, and ... if you take a lioness and paint stripes on her, like a tiger, only a lighter tan instead of black stripes."

Victoria considered this, lifted her chin a little as she pictured the cat.

"She ran up on Thunder's back and tried to bite, but the field must be kind of slick and she couldn't get her claws into him, and she couldn't get a bite on him."

Michael's voice was quiet, his eyes distant as he looked at a memory instead of the other side of the pasture.

"Thunder whipped around and allowed as he wanted to fight.

"Lightning come over top of him and allowed as she wanted to fight.

"Cyclone ran under Lightning and around back of Thunder and bit that big cat on the backside -- I mean she nailed the cat right at the root of the tail and she did NOT let go!"

"Oh, my," Victoria murmured.

"I tried to take a shot but, hell, they was all into it, that cat was fightin' and squallin' and couldn't get away, it was slashin' at Thunder and couldn't get those claws through his field but I reckon he was gettin' beat up some, 'cause those paws have power behind 'em! -- and then Lightning drove down and bit that cat's neck damn neart plumb in two, just ahead of the shoulders."

Victoria filed a smile away for later use, for Michael opened his mouth and his father's voice fell out. It was only in unguarded and private moments that her long tall Daddy used his Mama's Appalachian voice, and Victoria always liked it when her Daddy spoke of something being "damn neart."

"So you didn't take a shot."

Michael shook his head. "Not until the second one come a-clawin' up tryin' to get atop of Lightning."

 

Michael took two fast steps back, raised the rifle to shoulder.

The tawny lioness -- if that's what it was -- was trying to claw into Lightning's hide, trying to bite the back of her skull, at least until a hard cast .32 Winchester Special did unkind things to the base of her own skull.

Michael levered his rifle, stepped to the right, saw two lines of grassy movement converging on their position.

His rifle fired and he'd just started to drop the lever when Lightning whirled and her hind leg caught him, knocked him back: he hit the ground, rolled, came up on the balls of his feet, rifle up and ready, and the fight was over.

He eased his rifle's hammer down to half cock, then thumbed rounds into the loading gate.

He turned, pale eyes busy, watching for approaching, linear ripples in the tall grass.

Three Fanghorns snarled and quarreled as they tore bloody carcasses apart, gorged themselves on fresh, bloody meat, as one, then another, raised a gore-dripping muzzle and bugled triumph into the evening sky.

 

"Once we got here," Michael said quietly, and Victoria could hear a note of affection in his voice, "they made for the stream and did their level best to drink it dry.

"I took a gunny sack with us and washed the blood off their faces."

Victoria blinked and then giggled.

Michael looked at her and she saw the humor hiding in his eyes.

"You washed their faces."

"Yep."

Victoria sighed, unwrapped three swirly-red peppermints as three Fanghorns came pacing across the pasture toward them.

"I don't think I've ever washed a horse's face."

"You've never had horses with fangs long as your hand, rip a grown lioness apart and eat everything but the guts!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SANDWICH

"Daddy, you're surprising."

Sheriff Linn Keller's eyes tightened a little at the corners at his darlin' daughter's assessment.

"How's that?" he asked as he slowed, signaled for the turn.

"This morning I watched you throw one man, kick another's legs out from under him, break a third man's arm with a short garden rake --"

Angela smiled as her Daddy turned easily off the southbound route: they'd been at a seminar, they were on their way home, and a particular sandwich shop had a drive-through he'd patronized before.

"He had a knife," Linn shrugged as he turned again, into the drive-through lane, slow now, watchful for idiot drivers backing out suddenly.

"Yet you went from full-on warrior, you went from the Laying On of Hands and the Exercise of the Black Leather Belt" -- she saw her Daddy's grin, the one he tried to keep hidden: the Black Leather Belt was the particular fighting style he used, incorporating a variety of efficient, fast and energetic means of less than gently pacifying one's opponent: its connection with a black belt in the recognized, Oriental martial arts had only one common element -- it involved a belt -- but it conformed to her Daddy's rotten sense of humor.

Linn braked his Jeep one car length behind the speaker. "Anything tickle your fancy?"

"Oh yes, how about the number nine!"

"Good choice, your Mama likes that one."

He eased ahead, placed their order, idled forward when able.

Linn's wallet was in his right breast pocket, which he favored when driving: he eased up to the window and was greeted by a tired-looking but cheerful middle-aged woman who immediately declared, "I love that color!"

Linn laughed, handed over a credit card.

"My wife picked it out," he admitted.  "It's not the first time I've benefitted by listening to my beautiful bride!"

She looked across Linn to Angela, in her white uniform and winged cap:  Linn grinned and hooked a thumb -- "That's my little girl Angela. She's younger, smarter and better lookin' than me, not necessarily in that order!"

It was but a very few minutes before the order was handed out the window to him, and Linn said, "Y'know, I had a really bad week. Thank you so much for bringin' your smile to work today, you have genuinely made thing so much better!"

She laughed and said "It's nice to have a customer that smiles! Come again!"

As Linn eased ahead and around the building, Angela held the sack containing their order and smiled quietly.

"If I'd never been there before," Linn said, his voice gentle, "I'd be a repeat customer, solely and only because of her!"

Angela gave her Daddy a knowing look:  "Oh?"

Linn glanced over at his daughter, his reserves gone, his walls down.

"Your Mama and I were goin' somewhere here a couple years ago and went through a drive-through for breakfast on the road. The girl at the second window about climbed out so she could talk across me to Shelly. She said, 'You have the most polite husband!' -- and your Mama just plainly preened!"

"I can just see that happening!" Angela laughed, then gave her Daddy another one of Those Looks.

"You know, Daddy," she said, her voice gentle, "you have given your children a great deal of trouble!"

Linn blinked, glanced at his daughter, eyes wide: he placed dramatic fingertips on his breast bone and mock-stammered, "M-m-m-meeeeee?  Cause trooouuuubbbllleee?  Noooooooo!"

They laughed together at this private, shared, long-standing joke.

Angela sighed.

"Daddy, you showed Jacob and Michael ... no," she corrected herself.  

"No?"

"I almost said you taught the boys how to handle women."

Linn looked, hesitated, then eased off the brake and accelerated out into the south bound traffic.

"I didn't?"

"No," Angela said firmly, then raised her upraised palm with thumb and fingertips together, shaking them for emphasis:  "You taught them how to treat" -- she shook her gesturing hand -- " a lady!"

Angela saw her Daddy's soundless chuckle.

"Well, at least I did that much right!"

"You caused us girls trouble, too, you know."

"How's that?"

"Daddy," Angela sighed, a great, gusting, dramatic, overly-feminine sigh it was -- "Daddy, you've shown us what a husband should be, but you've set the bar so high, I don't know if we'll ever find a man to measure up!"

Angela unwrapped one of the long sandwiches, tore it in two at the almost-complete knife cut, lifted its blunt end toward her Daddy.

"Sandwich?"

 

Edited August 9, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
Otto had to be corrrected

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SAID, AND UNSAID

Sarah Lynne McKenna lay flat on her back.

Her arms were thrown out to her sides, grass tickled between her fingers, she saw bright sparklies in the blue sky overhead, and she was debating in that moment whether to try and get some wind in her shocked-still lungs, or turn over and pound angry fists into the ground that so impolitely rushed up and SLAMMED into her entire bodily dorsal surface area.

She decided to work on breathing.

It was hard to inhale, at first: she kept trying, while a donkey looked down on her with the wisdom of an ancient sage and the curiosity of a fellow treader of the sod.

Sarah blinked, managed to get a little wind back in her lungs: she tried again, then something big and dark bent over her and she felt herself seized by the wrists and hauled off the ground.

Sheriff Linn Keller hoisted Sarah up, lowered her until her shiny-black slippers were on the ground.

"This'll help you breathe in," he said quietly, his voice Daddy-gentle, his eyes concerned.

Part of Sarah's young mind noticed he wasn't the quiet, contained, walled-off Sheriff he usually presented to the world: no, here was a strong man with gentle hands, lowering her arms, but not letting go, steadying her as the sparklies came back.

He raised her arms again, lifted just a little:  "Breathe in," he murmured, "every time should get a little better," and whether because of his well-meaning ministrations, or because of them, Sarah could indeed breathe in a little more every time he raised her arms and hoisted her up.

When she was breathing on her own again, he swept her up -- suddenly, without warning -- he carried her to the white-painted board fence, slid the latch back, then closed and latched the gate, the donkey watching with that head-tilted expression common to the breed.

Linn packed her over to the barn, swung her up, almost tossed her up so he could reconfugure his arms, then swung her down, landing her easily on the rude bench he'd built a few days before.

He sat down beside her.

"I see you've met the donkey," he said quietly, not looking at her.

Sarah bulled her bottom jaw out, then pooched out her bottom lip and crossed her arms and her ankles, the very image of juvenile pique.

"How long did you stay on?"

Sarah lowered her head and her eyelids, shoving her bottom lip out until it hung most of the way to her belly button, or so Linn would describe it later: she did not answer, because she'd been told not to ride the donkey, and she wanted to ride it anyway, an' it throwed her an' she was mad 'cause he was gonna yell at her like she'd been yelled at before Bonnie was her Mama and maybe he was gonna slap her like had been done to her, and she pulled back, deep inside herself, at once rebellious, and afraid.

"I've been throwed," Linn said quietly.

Sarah made no reply, just sat there with her lip out.

"Didn't feel good, neither."

Sarah blinked several times, her eyes drifting downward.

"Did you break anythin', darlin'?" Linn asked quietly.

"No," Sarah said in a disappointed little girl's voice.

Linn nodded, laid a careful arm around her, gripped her far shoulder, but lightly, not confining, not holding, just ... reassuring.

"Why don't we have the Girl brush off your backside," Linn said at length. "I don't reckon you want to go home all dusty down the back."

Sarah blinked again, this time in surprise.

He was going to have their hired girl brush her off.

He wasn't going to hold her by the arm while he did something with her backside.

Sarah had been hurt and hurt badly, many times, as a very young child: her heart was somewhere in her young ribcage, but it was surrounded by multiple layers of hand-laid quarry stone, walled off and guarded: trust was not something she allowed herself to feel, at least not easily, and when this man her Mama liked, this man her Mama trusted, this man who'd always been kind to Sarah ... when he offered to have a girl run a little brush-broom down her backside, an' not him ...

He felt Sarah's careful nod.

The donkey looked at them through the gate, watched as they departed for the house.

 

"Sarah."

A beautiful young woman looked up from her embroidery, smiled.

The Sheriff swept off his cover, ascended the steps to Sarah's Mama's front porch.

Sarah smiled as he eased himself down in the double rocking chair beside her.

"Darlin'," he said, looking at colorful, lifelike, embroidered flowers blooming in her embroidery hoop, "that is gorgeous!"

Sarah leaned her shoulder against his, tilted her head over against his shoulder, gave a contented sigh.

"You didn't come out here to look at my embroidery," she said, and Linn smiled: Sarah, though no blood relation to her Mama, was still her Mama's daughter, and just as direct.

"No," he said softly.

He shifted, turned a little, looked very directly at her.

"Sarah," he said carefully, "you are comin' on to marryin' age."

Sarah blinked, her eyes wide, innocent, guileless, vulnerable.

"I want you to guard your heart carefully."

Sarah blinked again, nodded:  Go on.

"Find yourself a young man who can provide for you, a young man who will treat you like a Queen."

Sarah raised a forefinger, placed it on his lips.

"I have seen," she said carefully, then hesitated, bit her bottom lip, looked away, looked back.

"I have seen how you treat Aunt Esther," she said quietly.

Linn nodded.

"That is the standard I will use."

Linn reached up, took her young hand, kissed her knuckles, carefully, a deep sadness in his eyes.

"Sarah, don't follow your heart," he whispered. "Your heart will lie to you. The heart is deceitful."

He released her hand, touched her forehead with his thumb.

"Use your noggin, darlin'. Choose a husband like you would choose a business partner. Be ruthless and cold in your choice."

"You're not ruthless with Aunt Esther," Sarah teased.

"No."

Sarah leaned forward, kissed Old Pale Eyes on the cheek.

"I will choose carefully," she whispered, "and I will ask your advice when I do."  She smiled and he was kind of surprised she didn't giggle as she added, "But please understand, he'll have to pass inspection. Mama, Daisy Finnegan, Aunt Esther, Clark ... they'll all want to look him over, and they are hard women to please!"

Sarah smiled as Linn's face reddened, as a smile slipped out from hiding and broadened his face, as he nodded, then rose.

He gave Sarah a long look, then turned, walked silently down the steps, mounted up, rode off.

 

Victoria got to the top of the ladder and stepped onto the corrugated tin roofing.

She put most of her weight on her foot, felt the smooth leather shoe sole slip: she eased herself back to the ladder and descended, deciding the roof was too slick for her pretty girl shoes.

Michael, on the other hand, stood and surveyed the ranch from this hot and shining perch, as proud as an Admiral on the quarterdeck, at least until his leather bootsoles decided if they were going to be part of a Naval discussion, they'd treat their wearer to a Nantucket sleigh ride.

Michael slid downhill -- he tried dropping, tried using his palms as brakes --

Victoria felt her twin brother's belly tighten with fear, with the realization he was headed for the edge, that he was headed for the ground --

Victoria stood, eyes wide with horror, looking up as her brother slid into view --

She heard the sound of someone running --

Michael slid off the edge, fell --

Something fast moving and flannel shot past her --

Michael Keller did not have the reflexes of a cat.

He had the reflex of a scared kid, falling through space.

Michael Keller drove feet first into an ancient, wood stave, rain barrel well older than he was, right through his Pa's grasping hands.

Michael Keller's entry into a nearly full barrel of Cloud Squeezin's politely baptized him and his father both: he hit, knees bent, drove down, his knees hit one side of the barrel and momentum drove his rounded backside down the slime-slick opposite and Michael was suddenly locked  in the barrel as water rebounded, sloshed over his face.

Michael reached up, grabbed frantically at the edge, tried to stand.

Linn seized the barrel, threw it viciously over on its side: he grabbed a chunk of rusty pipe, used it to drive the hoops off the barrel, hard, focused blows, a father's adrenalized attack on something that was confining HIS SON! -- an ancient rain barrel that probably predated Uncle Pete himself fell into staves and hoops and sudden mud, and Michael crawled out, shaking his head and coughing.

Michael, still on all fours, turned his head, looked up at his soaking wet Pa.

Linn reached down, took his son under the arms, hoisted him easily off the ground -- after all that, he could probably have taken hold of his '68 Dodge pickup and hoisted it the same way -- he hauled his youngest son up to eye level, looked his dripping boy with slimy knees up, looked him down, and then asked conversationally, "Ain't this a hell of a way for friends and neighbors to get together?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IT AIN'T TEA

Joseph Keller was his father's son.

Joseph Keller ran.

Joseph Keller gave no consideration that he wasn't actually running the Colorado mountains.

he was interacting with an incredibly realistic holo-simulation: to his young senses, his young muscles, he was running a mountain path he'd tried running, on a recent trip back to his Grampa's ranch in Colorado.

Joseph ran this path, underground, in a dedicated section of mined-out chamber lined with a ten foot thick layer of hyper-dense, melted, recast native rock, shaped into hollow hexagons, designed and engineered and calculated to stand up to a top-scale Richter event.

He ran in Earth-and-a-tenth gravity, with Colony-normal atmosphere -- everyone in the Martian colonies acclimatized early and well to atmospheric conditions of Jacob's native Firelands, which put less strain on their atmospheric processors, and increased survivability.

Joseph did not consider any of this as he ran.

He was determined, with the hard headed dedication of the young, to run the same mountain paths his Pa ran as a boy, and to run them as well as his Pa described having run them as a child.

 

Michael Keller felt Lightning alert.

His legs gripped her barrel, his backside welded itself to her saddle, knowing she was about to become fast and vigorous, and he was right.

Thunder dove to the right, across the ditch, hit the rocky bank on the other side and bounced back like a rubber ball with hard hooves, while Cyclone shot across the vacant oncoming lane, soared easily over the dry ditch, whirled, stood with hooves bunched, for all the world like a mountain goat posing daintily on a shelf the size of a man's fist.

Lightning, for her part, spun like a cutting horse, jumped.

Michael heard hard hooves on sheet metal, he felt more than heard laminated windshield glass crush as Lightning honestly ran over top of the fast moving sedan that seemed intent on ramming her from behind.

Lightning made what Michael later called a "Lipizzaner move" -- she hit the middle of the hood with her forehooves, jumped, her rearhooves grazing the top of the windshield: between her vigorous, hard-muscled leap and the sedan's velocity, she soared over the rest of Detroit's iron, gave a fast, double-rear-hoof kick at the offending vehicle's retreating backside (which missed), then landed easily, shook her head and muttered something that probably was not a compliment.

Michael Keller, as a Diplomatic protectorate, was shadowed by a Diplomatic vessel.

Diplomatic vessels had capabilities not generally discussed.

It came as no surprise to Michael that the vehicle in question was not there when Lightning turned, still muttering something less than complimentary, and still shaking her head the way she did when she wished to introduce her hard head-boss to an offender, at a fair velocity.

Michael laughed, patted her neck, turned her onto a side road, then a trail he knew of, Thunder and Cyclone following.

"Come on, girl," he said softly. "Let's get off the highway."

 

The Sheriff looked up as one of his deputies came in frowning and scratching the back of his head.

"I know that look," the Sheriff said quietly.  "Coffee?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"How'd your drunk driver turn out?"

"Stone sober," the deputy admitted, "but I told him to lay off whatever he'd been taking!"

"Why?" Linn drew two mugs of Hot, Black and Strong, handed the deputy one, trickled a little Extract of Bovine into his own.

His deputy shook his head, smiled a little, turned so his back was to the coffee table -- the automatic, unconscious move of a lawman who didn't want his back facing the front door.

"Kid was asleep. I mean he was sound asleep. He was backed into a hayfield far enough so the rancher could get in and get past him.

"Behind the wheel asleep?"
"Yeah," the deputy nodded, sipping carefully, grimacing as he scalded the hair off his tongue.

"He woke up easy enough when I knocked on the roof of his car.

"He had some wild tale about the biggest horse he'd ever seen ran right over top of his car, busted his windshield, caved in the hood --"

The Sheriff's left eyebrow raised a quarter of an inch.

"Windshield was fine, Sheriff. No cracks, no gravel chips, not even bug splatter."

"What about the hood?"

"Flawless. Not a scratch."

The Sheriff waited, took a pull on his steaming mug, waited.

"Tox screen came back clean. No alcohol, no drugs, he seemed to be in his right mind ... I figured he was smart enough to pull off and take a nap if he was that tired and he just had some kind of a wild dream."

The Sheriff nodded thoughtfully.  "Known that to happen."

 

Marnie raised splayed fingers toward the ceiling, marched around in a circle, shaking her hands a little, eyes closed, her teeth set carefully together, the very image of tightly-contained, maternal distress.

She stopped, slashed her hands down to her sides.

Michael stood, relaxed, his brushed-black cover tucked correctly under his left arm.

His expression was calm, his eyes -- those eyes! -- Marnie's arms stiffened, gloves hands fisted, and she marched around in another circle, stifling the irritated ooooohhh! she would normally have uttered.

Marnie stopped, whirled, planted her knuckles on her belt, lowered her head a little.

"Michael Keller," she scolded in a mother's tone, "you look just like your father!"

Michael laughed quietly, nodded a little.

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment," Marnie snapped: she raised a hand, snapped out a teaching-finger, advanced on Michael, shaking the aforementioned, lace-gloved digit, then turned and marched away from him, marched back, arms folded:  "Michael," she tried again, this time without the edge to her voice, "do you realize -- do you realize! -- that every time you go back to Earth and ride out in public, something happens?"

Michael shrugged, his posture relaxed, his voice calm.

"Nobody got hurt, Sis," he said reasonably, which earned him another snap-out of Marnie's Mommy-finger.

"That's Madam Ambassador to you!" she snapped. "It came to the official attention of the Sheriff's Office, and that makes it a potential problem!"

"No it doesn't."

Marnie took a deep breath, threw her head back, eyes closed: she lowered her head, looked at Michael, chewed on her bottom lip.

"I need some tea," she muttered, stomped over to a cupboard, took out a teacup and saucer and a bottle of something that was very definitely not oolong, poured herself two fingers' worth, looked at Michael, held up the square, heavy-glass bottle.

He shook his head, held up a palm.

Marnie capped the bottle, set it back, closed the cupboard, left the teacup on its saucer and advanced toward her younger brother.

"Tell me why I should not be heading for Denver, Washington, Vatican City, Moscow and Beijing right now with a full diplomatic first-contact fleet."

"Because all he saw was a big horse run over his car, and when he woke up, the car was fine."

Marnie stopped, blinked.

"I ... beg your pardon?" she said faintly.

Michael grinned.

"Sis, I'm not as dumb as I look. Victoria told me that alone proves the Lord is merciful."

"Jokes I don't need," Marnie groaned, putting gloved fingertips to her temples as if a headache was suggesting it might be more desirable than listening to Michael's explanation.

"Look. The ship was right above us. They took the car, he went to sleep, they fixed the car and set him in Dodson's field -- you know, the one above where we found those spearpoints? -- a deputy found him, he got drunk tested, drug tested, he was sound asleep and woke up with a wild tale that was probably a nightmare. No first contact. No ship was seen. You're safe."

"He remembers ... what?"

"He remembers realizing he was going to ram a horse from behind. He remembers the horse spun and jumped over his car. He remembers the windshield busted and the hood was caved in and he remembers waking up and the car was just fine."

"So nobody else saw you."

"Nope."

"Michael," Marnie said faintly, leaning her head to the right in a feminine tilt, "please don't do that again!"

Marnie hugged her little brother, who hugged her back: Marnie watched Michael stroll out of her office, whistling as he settled the cover on his head.

Marnie waited until the door was closed, then she lowered her forehead into her gloved thumb-and-forefinger, shook her head a little, sighed quietly.

Marnie glided over to her cup-and-saucer, picked them up, raised the cup, looked out the window, considering, and finally took a sip, took another, then down the entire payload.

She waited several heartbeats before taking a breath, waiting until distilled sprouts warmed her clear down to her belt line, then she nodded, looked at the empty cup.

She looked up, smiled, uttered a single word before returning the cup-and-saucer to the dispenser.

"There is nothing," she said with a smile, "like a good cup of tea."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE DIVISION OF LABOR

In years to come, with time a precious commodity and plotted on calendars and in scheduling books, a particular block of time might have been written in as reserved.

That tightly managed day had not yet arrived.

Esther Keller, woman of business, of commerce, of society, wife of that pale eyed old lawman, sat on her front porch with an embroidery hoop on her lap, with a needle and embroidery floss at hand.

She sat in a double wide rocking chair.

Her husband had three of the made.

One he set on his own front porch, for himself and his beautiful bride.

One he set on Bonnie McKenna's front porch -- he always thought of it as Bonnie's porch, for all that she was married to Levi Rosenthal, and perhaps he should think of her as Mrs. Rosenthal and the porch as Levi's ... but he'd fought long and hard to recover Bonnie's property for her, and besides, he'd gotten into the mental habit of thinking of it as Bonnie's ranch.

The Sheriff set the third, double wide rocking chair, on Sean and Daisy's front porch.

As broad as Sean was across the shoulders, his hips were not nearly as wide: Daisy was a diminutive woman, but she had childbearing hips, and so they fit well together on their front porch, and it was a point of ... well, half amusement for the community, and half comfort, to see big strong Sean sitting quietly with his arm around his quiet, content wife, she who could bristle up like a Banty hen, she who'd put strong men to flight between screeching at them in incensed Gaelic while addressing them most briskly with a gravy-slinging wooden spoon.

These handmade double rockers are not the subect of our concern.

Let us examine their use.

Esther sat in the rocker, spectacles halfway down her nose, as she pierced taut linen with the embroidery needle: she drew brightly-colored thread taut, examining the underside with her fingers: Esther was particular about her embroidery, and where others might have left tangles or loops or knots on the underside, Esther took pains to have as taut and presentable an underside of her embroidery, as she did the top side the world would commonly see.

Esther embroidered of an evening, while the light was still good; she embroidered while the hired girl tended necessary post-supper meals.

Esther embroidered while her husband sat beside her, his arm laid over behind her shoulders.

Esther remembered sitting in her Daddy's lap, when she was yet a little girl, how she felt warm and included and safe, and she felt that way now, sitting beside her hard-muscled, silent husband.

Sometimes not a single word passed between them when they sat thus together, and yet there was communication, the steady, wordless exchange between a woman who delighted in feeling valued and protected and provided for, and the man who delighted in valuing this woman, of protecting her, and never ceasing to marvel how a prize like her ever chose a broken soul like him.

Esther could tell her husband's mind was busy.

A woman knows these things.

The needle pierced taut fabric again: a tiny popping sound, almost like a miniature drumhead being struck, then the almost inaudible hiss of thread being drawn through.

The Sheriff was indeed considering matters.

Esther waited, content.

She'd made a light trace on the cloth with a pencil, barely enough to see, a trace she was steadily covering with bright embroidery, and her husband's pale eyes marveled at her steady, incredibly precise conversion of a circle of stretched cloth, into something he'd expect to see in a flower garden.

He allowed himself to consider the beauty this incredible woman was bringing to reality, then he turned his head a little and looked into the purpling distance.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller remembered his pale eyed ancestor's words, how he'd described sitting on his front porch in that double wide rocking chair.

He'd had Marnie's son Joseph help him carry just such an implement up onto his own front porch.

He'd had multiple of them made.

One, on Mars, was immediately gifted to Jacob's in-laws: it was received with delight and with honest admiration, and Linn received a handwritten thank-you from a delighted mother-in-law.

He read it as he sat on his own front porch, with his own wife beside him.

Shelly sighed and leaned against her husband, laying her head over against his.

"I could get used to this," she murmured.

"I intend that you should," he replied, his voice soft, gentle, the voice a man uses when he is relaxed and with the woman he loves deeply and passionately.

"Where did you get the idea of having this made?" Shelly murmured.

"I needed somewhere to sit and think," he said, "and I wanted it wide enough for my wise counselor to sit with me."

"Flatterer."  She ran a hand across his flat belly, closed her eyes, content.

"Is there something you need wise counsel for?"

Linn took a slow breath, considering.

"Yes there is," he finally admitted.

Shelly drew her head back and looked at her husband with an interested expression.

"Darlin', I've been encouraging the guys to use their personal time and as much of their vacation as they want."

"Oh?" Shelly blinked -- this was news to her -- "is something going on?"

Linn nodded.

"I have to recognize," he said slowly, "my own mortality."

Shelly lifted her backside, straightened her spine, turned a little, sat back down, focused on her husband, her expression serious.

"What's going on?" she asked, her voice gone from warm-and-cuddle to cold-and-serious.

"Nothing with me," Linn said. "Just ... life lessons."

"Life lessons," Shelly echoed.

"Mortality. Nobody gets out alive. I've told 'em in most places their job will be posted before their obituary goes up. I'm ... encouraging everyone to take their time off."

Shelly considered this.

"We've had some bad ones," Linn continued quietly, his eyes losing their color -- Shelly shivered, remembering exactly how bad they'd been, for the squad was pulled into the unpleasantness, as it generally was -- "I, um ... "

He swallowed, frowned, his expression troubled.

"Everyone thinks that's a fine idea. It's led to ... overtime and some scheduling ... issues ... but we're covering."

Shelly nodded, carefully, listening to what was being said beneath the careful words.

He looked at her, then took her hands in his -- gently, as if he was gathering a little baby bunny into his hands.

"Darlin', I can give the finest advice to my people."

Shelly looked into her husband's uncomfortable expression and nodded, slowly.

Linn's bottom jaw thrust out, he looked away, then she saw the corners of his eyes tighten and she felt him start to laugh, inside, silent, but laughter nonetheless.

He looked at her and his expression was that of a sheepish schoolboy.

"Darlin', do you think I can follow my own good sound advice?" -- she could hear the laughter, hidden in his voice -- "the Man in the Mirror is the one hardest headed slob I've never been able to convince!"

Shelly tilted her head, slipped a hand loose and caressed the light stubble on his cheek.

"I like my Man in the Mirror," she murmured.

Linn nodded, frowned, looked down and to the side.

"I've got the time," he muttered, then looked up, looked around.

"If I take the time off, I'll work myself ragged around here --"

"Nothing here is that critical," Shelly interrupted. "You and the boys have kept up with everything. Nothing's about to fall apart. The crew was in last week and painted all the buildings, you've had the furnace and central air serviced, the water's tested and the well pump is doing just fine. You remember you laid in stainless steel pipe so it wouldn't corrode, the hot water tank is almost new, and the dryer has been flawless ever since you fixed the twisty-knob-thing."  Shelly motioned as if she were turning the aforementioned timer knob.

Shelly patted her husband's hand.

"If you've got the time, follow your own advice. You've soaked up an unholy amount of stress, just like everyone else."

Shelly rose, thrust her face into his, kissed him quickly, by surprise, then looked into those pale eyes and whispered, "Remember, you're not allowed to die before I do!"

Shelly jumped as Linn's cell phone went off.

His ringtone was an old fashioned telephone bell, and it was the ringtone that meant it was the Sheriff's office calling, and they didn't call unless something just hit the fan and he was needed.

Linn kissed his wife, thrust to his feet, strode from the porch, settling his Stetson on his head.

Shelly followed, slowly, chewing on her knuckles: she watched her husband stride to the pasture, watched him saddle the stallion, swing aboard, then she saw that teen-age boy's grin he wore when he and his horse both wanted to run.

Shelly bounced on her toes and waved like a high-school girl as a pale-eyed Sheriff leaned over his stallion's neck, as an Appaloosa punched his nose into the wind, as clods of dirt flew up from steelshod hooves, as they reached that magical moment, soaring over the fence, when they were no longer horse and rider, but one magical creature, riding the wind itself.

Shelly took the mental snapshot and hid it in her heart, and wondered in the years that followed, if that's how Esther felt when Old Pale Eyes was summoned, and he took out on that big golden stallion of his, a lean waisted lawman with an iron grey mustache, a .44 on his belt and a grin on his face!

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AN UNDERSTANDING

The punch caught Jacob by surprise, detonating against his right cheekbone, slamming in from his right peripheral while his attention was on the threat ahead of him.

Jacob's conscious and thinking mind stepped out of the way and let reflex take over.

He turned, rotating impossibly -- his torso level with the ground, one leg lashing out to catch the first threat just above the belt: he was suddenly too low for the follow-up punch to connect, which meant when his feet hit the ground, he was ready to launch into the sucker punch attacker's ribs.

Jacob was lean and hard-muscled, Jacob was fired by all the rage and all the honest fear of a child who'd been horse whpped near to death and was fully intending to die fighting rather than be beat on again, and that's exactly how he responded.

His shoulder drove into the second attacker's breastbone, his arms locked around the attacker, he drove back, running like the noon freight on a down grade, shoving the second back into a third, who had just started yelling encouragement.

Jacob released, twisted again: his first attacker, taken by surprise and hit with a young explosion, continued backward, completely out of control, while Jacob's lean body whipped back like a stepped-on rattlesnake.

Jacob lifted his leg, drove his boot heel into the run-over instigator's ribs -- he hit a glancing blow, felt as much as heard at least one rib crack -- he turned, charged the one that sucker punched him as he tried to get up.

Jacob was at a dead run in three steps.

He came off the ground, turned, drove both feet into his attacker's guts just as hard as he could.

Jacob fell, rolled off, came up on all fours, snarling, teeth bared, hands open and clawed, war in his heart and rage burning joy through his entire body.

His eyes sought the first tormentor, the one who challenged him.

Jacob Keller, the pale eyed son of that pale eyed Sheriff, locked eyes with the one who started this whole thing.

A rabbit, it's said, will freeze when it's looked at by a rattlesnake.

That's kind of what happened.

The instigator, the original match to the fuse, tried to turn, tried to run.

All the farther he got was for his eyes to widen with the realization that Death itself was bearing down on him with long claws and longer fangs.

Jacob drove both fists into the instigator's gut, brought him off the ground and bore him back at a dead run for a half dozen steps before shoving hard, throwing the instigator across the schoolyard.

Jacob Keller turned, breathing deep, his breathing as controlled as he was becoming.

He searched for any further tormentors.

Miz Emma came out, a mother hen surrounded by chirping, alarmed little chicks, looked at Jacob's swelling and coloring-up cheekbone with alarm.

She didn't really realize that something far more serious had happened until Jacob leaned back, clawed hands shaking toward the lone cloud overhead, and roared -- he did not shout, he did not scream, his was not the voice of a schoolboy just entering puberty -- no, his was honestly the raging ROAR of a predator, of a mountain cat, of a monster unnamed who only incidentally looked like the quiet, polite, well-mannered schoolboy she knew and admired.

 

Linn rose as Jacob came in without knocking.

Jacob's face was wet and dripping, as was most of his shirt front.

Linn was on his feet and moving fast.

His fingertips barely touched Jacob's arms, high up, at the shoulders: the effect was the same as if he'd gripped Jacob with a man's strength.

"Jacob," Linn said softly, "you were hit."

"Yes, sir," Jacob admitted.

"Jacob," Linn said, his voice still soft, "are you hurt?"

Jacob's long hesitation felt like the deep bell of doom.

Sometimes saying nothing sends a more terrible message than saying something.

"Sir," Jacob admitted, "might I borrow your kerchief?"

Linn brought his hands together, separated them: a bedsheet handkerchief appeared.

Jacob took it, turned away, grimaced, and just honestly blew the kerchief full of bloody snot.

"I'b zorry, zir," he mumbled, "I'd blowed bore zdot outdda by hed dan I doo I had!"

Linn steered Jacob back outside, mostly to get good daylight on his son's condition: he saw Jacob's kerchief, wet, apparently well used, washed out in the horse trough and draped over the Silver Jewel's hitch rack.

Linn took Jacob's head in a careful grip, turned his head, examined the swelling discoloration.

Jacob saw his father's eyes lighten by several degrees.

"Jacob," Linn said, "is the matter taken care of?"

"It is taken care of, sir."

Linn considered for a moment.

"Do you expect any further hostilities?"

"No, sir," Jacob said quietly.

He straightened, explored the almost-bloodied swelling with careful fingertips.

"Sir, I recall you told me if you're going to beat a man, you'd ought to beat him so bad he'll cross the street to avoid you next he sees you."

Linn nodded, remembering he'd said that once.

"Sir, I don't reckon they'll give me grief now."

" 'They?' " Linn said, and Jacob heard the edge to his voice.  "How many "They" were there?"

"Three, sir."

"You settled it."

"Yes, sir."

"Did you settle it ... understandably?"

Jacob nodded again, raising the sullied kerchief to his beak, blew again, carefully.

"Zir," he mumbled as he blew out another gob of nose stuffin's knocked loose by that hard punch to the cheekbone, "I zboke da lagwitch dey understad."

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SOAPY!

I leaned against the porch post holding the shed roof up over the boardwalk in front of the Sheriff's office.

I heard The Lady Esther start to bark as she leaned into her load, hauling it up grade as she left town.

Few things are finer than a good horse, but I'll admit I kind of like the sound of an engine when she's under load.

Freight wagons, seems like, were forever comin' or goin' ... we had two of 'em come through town yesterday, and another was coming down the street again today.

Plumb busy.

I turned and swung my gaze down hill a little, towards the little whitewashed schoolhouse beside our little whitewashed church, and remembered little boys running toward the front door that morning, where Miz Emma stood beaming proudly from the top step.

It's not hard to see how Jackson Cooper fell for that woman.

She warn't that much to look at, truth be told, but the moment she opened her mouth and spoke, why, suddenly she was angelic.

A man would have to work at it, to become ill tempered around Miz Emma.

My eyes followed my thoughts, wandered here, wandered there, come to rest on the freshly painted, neatly trimmed Silver Jewel.

There were men down on their luck who accepted my offer of cash money for some paint work.

They did just absolutely first rate work and I paid them what it was worth and a little more, and I staked them to their meals as well: it cost me a little more than I might have paid otherwise, but it does well to establish a reputation for fair dealing, and I figured this was one way to maintain that fair dealing reputation.

I looked at the contrast between what one fellow called the "Base Color" and the window trim, and a stray thought slid in behind me and belted me across the back of my thoughts with the war club of a memory.

I thought of Duzy ... my wife's niece, a genuinely sweet soul with big violet eyes, a wild spirit she kept hid most of the time ... she'd established the town's newspaper, before she died, before Agent Sopris and I laid her to rest in a pitch-lined coffin, fragrant with the scent of the mountains she'd come to love.

I'd been given two pieces of linotype and a pen and I set these in the box with her, and Sopris nodded his approval as I set the cast-lead type beside her head so it read "30" -- that's how a newspaper article was ended, in those days, I'd heard newspapermen declare some fact and finish it with "And that's thirty!"

I closed my eyes and took a long breath, shivered a little.

I looked at the Silver Jewel again and remembered Doc's office used to be upstairs.

I got carried up there once when I'd been hurt.

I'd taken a fever afterward and nightmares come and swallered me, I was back in that damned War and I felt that cannon explode again and I felt my soft ribs cave in and I was a-horseback, I recall how the world rolled around me and come up and smacked me in the back and knocked the wind out of me.

I was staring at the Silver Jewel, but I was not a-seein' it.

I was back in that fever and I was back on the battlefield and I looked up and seen the buglers face bent over lookin' at me like I was a curiosity and I scraped up all the wind I had and raged "BLOW ASSEMBLY, DAMN YOU, THE ENEMY IS UPON US!"

But I'd been fevered, there in the Doc's office over the Silver Jewel.

Esther was caring for me, as was Bonnie, and of course Sarah was just a little girl and she was helping her Mama, and when I seen that bugler leaned over me, why, I roared at him, least I tried to, but I was a-fever and a-shiver and freezin' as I did and all that come out was kind of a squeaky "Damn!"

I closed my eyes again and remembered Esther describin' how Sarah's eyes got big, how she'd reached over and grabbed a-holt of that cake of good lye soap, how she'd turned and dunked it between my teeth and I come up off that table like a Jersey bull clap boarded across its backside, I was a-sputter and I hit the floor coughin' and Sarah put her knuckles on her waist and shook her Mommy-finger at me and declared in that adorable little girl's voice she had then, "Mama, he cussed an' you gets your mouth washed out with soap for cussin'!" -- now I don't recall any of this, y'understand, only very vaguely that I recalled bein' fevered up and recallin' bein' hurt in that damned War, but Esther couldn't tell the tale about Sarah droppin' that hand pressed cake of good lye soap into my mouth, without she turned red and sat down all a-giggle with the memory.

When something happens, word spreads, and one of the locals braced me about it.

He allowed as he'd heard a little girl washed my mouth out with soap, and I laid a kindly hand on his shoulder and told him with a grin on my face that no, that didn't happen, I had an appetite so I et me some soap.

He give me kind of a skeptical look and I went on just as sincere as the old Judge that soap was good for the stomach, it cleaned teeth, it cut the leather off a man's tongue, sweetened his breath and made him younger, smarter and better lookin' -- at which point I released the gentle grip on his shoulder, removed my cover and placed it piously over my breast bone, I winked and leaned in closer and said confidentially, "Last I looked in the mirror, I figured if it really does make me younger, smarter and better lookin', why, I need all the help I can get!"

From then on he called me Soapy, and that was kind of the private joke between the two of us.

I blinked, realized I'd been staring at the neatly-trimmed window long enough.

I shoved away from that decoratively-turned porch post, looked around, thought Might as well get some work done.

I mounted up, saw an acquaintance strolling down the boardwalk opposite.

I smiled.

My stallion and I walked quickly up to the Mercantile.

I went in and came out a few moments later, I mounted up and rode across the street, come up alongside my acquaintance.

I handed him a small, paper wrapped, rectangular package.

"Here," I said quietly. "Thought you might have an appetite."

He took it, surprised.

I waited until he started to unwrap it, then I gigged Rey del Sol into a trot and try as I might, I could not keep the grin off my face, and it only got better as he hauled off and threw that cake of lye soap at m retreating backside and yelled "SOAPY!"

 

Edited August 14, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MARKED UNIT, MARKED MAN

Sheriff Linn Keller prided himself on clear and unambiguous communication.

It was not a surprise, therefore, when the prisoner was booked in, that the Sheriff unwound with a fast, vicious and utterly, absolutely sincere, uppercut into the prisoner's wind -- a vertical missile of ranch-hard muscles and knuckles that brought the prisoner off his feet and knocked every last bit of wind and resistance out of him.

It was also not a surprise the Sheriff helped the man breathe by virtue of taking him under the jaw, pinning him hard against the wall with enough upward pressure to stretch his neck.

And it was not to anyone's surprise -- except that of the prisoner -- when the Sheriff leaned in close to the unwashed ear and hissed, "You tried to hurt my, little, girl!" -- and then dropped the prisoner.

This, of course, did not make it into any official record.

When the prisoner gave courtroom testimony, he shouted that he'd been beaten by the Sheriff and he'd done nothing wrong, he'd just stopped to help that nurse with a flat tire, but the prosecutor jumped on this opening with both feet.

The prisoner was asked how he got that colorful bruise over one cheekbone and another on the side of his jaw, and when the prisoner tried to lay this off on the Sheriff, Angela's cruiser cam was replayed, showing it was her fist and her fast moving foot that marked her attacker's face, and also put the lie to the claimed offer of assistance, rather than what it actually was.

 

Angela Keller frowned and eased her pretty purple Dodge to the side, taking advantage of a graveled wide place on the shoulder: she popped her trunk, she set out two triangles and three flares, with a second flare crossing each of the first flares near their base, doubling the available burn time.

Angela was her Daddy's girl: she'd grown up running a tractor, and working on a tractor, and driving her Daddy's sun-faded orange Dodge power wagon, and working on her Daddy's power wagon.

She'd helped her Daddy replace brakes -- by watching him replace the drum brakes on the driver's front, by helping him disassemble the passenger front and then puzzle her way through reassembly, with her Daddy's happy coaching -- she'd done the passenger rear by herself while he watched, and she'd done the driver's rear by herself, without supervision.

When she asked if he wanted to check her work, he turned back to her and grinned.

"Is it put back right?"

"Yes it is!"

"Good enough! Let's get the drum on, then, and you can mount up that tire, do you want the breaker bar?"

When Angela discovered that the disc brakes on a Pontiac she'd owned briefly, needed new pads, she worried to Marnie that "I can change out drum brakes and I can adjust drum brakes, but I don't know where to start with discs!"

Marnie laughed and dropped her wrist in an utterly feminine gesture: "Oh, it's easy, I'll show you!" -- and two sisters laughed and changed out the Grand Am's front pads.

Now Angela looked back, checked for traffic, slid an airbag under the lift point and coupled a compressed-air bottle: she'd dedicated a socket and a three foot breaker bar to Lug Nut Detail, and was just ready to crack the first lug nut loose when a vehicle she didn't recognize slowed quickly, pulled over.

Angela looked up as two males came at her, quickly.

She pulled the socket free of the lug nut, rose slowly: "That's far enough!" she barked, bringing the breaker bar back a little.

The one in back laughed.

The other one charged.

Angela did, too.

Her first strike was to his shin bone.

She hit too close to the knee to cause a tibial fracture, but she took most of the fight out of him.

Angela twisted, rolled, came up, her eyes white, lips drawn back: she launched, her white uniform shoe snapped out, powered by a horsewoman's full leg strength, detonated against the second attacker's cheekbone.

Angela drove the end of the breaker bar into the first one's gut -- he'd come up and started at her -- then she drove the handle end into his kidneys as he went down.

The other came in fast and close and inherited a woman's knuckles in the face, which didn't stop him, but she brought the breaker bar around two-handed and laced it across his back like she was swinging for the back field fence.

Sharon looked up, surprised, as a familiar voice came over the Sheriff's frequency.

"Firelands, Angel One."

"Firelands, go."

"I need a marked unit my location, two prisoners, assault on a law enforcement officer, impersonating a human being, Mopery with Intent to Creep and whatever else we can get on them."

Sharon waited as Angela considered something else, her finger still on the transmit key.

"And have them bring a lug wrench. Mine's missing."

Angela got the two in irons, badged them, read their rights off one of several cards she carried for that purpose, then told them to lay still and she wouldn't tell Gen Pop they'd been bested by a skinny little nurse with a flat tire.

 

Angela stopped in Uncle Emmett's Garage and skipped across the floor like a little girl.

Uncle Emmett had a tray with miscellaneous tools and parts, stray wrenches and the like, and Angela went over to it, frowned like she was studying an interesting medical case, then reached in and daintily retrieved a socket.

She turned and skipped up to the counter, set down the socket and laid down a five dollar bill, tilted her head and considered the display rack behind the man in stained bib overalls and a broke brim engineer's cap shoved back on his fully-thatched crew cut.

"I'd trouble you for two pair of those leather work gloves," she said, as Emmett picked up the socket and considered it curiously.

He took her payment, made change and said, "It's not often a nurse buys sockets and work gloves!"

Angela laughed, picked up her purchases: "I lost a perfectly good socket," she admitted, "when I swung a breaker bar like a ball bat!"

"Now why'd you go and do that for?"

Angela laughed again, turned, skipped across hand laid brick toward the front door and tossed over her shoulder, "It seemed like a good idea at the time!"

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

UNDER A SHADE TREE, ON TOP OF A HILL

Michael Keller frowned as he turned a page.

His book was laid over the soft, silky mane of a Fanghorn mare.

Michael sat on a folded blanket, his legs thrust straight out, he was leaned back against a thick-leaved fruit tree of some kind.

He knew its name but couldn't think of it at the moment, and besides, his attention was on the printed word and not arboreal considerations.

Lightning was bellied down, relaxed, half asleep, her blunt neck thrust out and laying over Michael's legs, for all the world like The Bear Killer did his Pa when his Pa would find a good shade tree to read under.

Lightning's eyes were closed, her ears laid back, contented: occasionally one, then the other, would rise lazily, like a half-hearted sail, turn a little, then lay back down, and Michael could not help but smile a little.

Horses didn't snore.

Lightning did, but hers was a light, delicate, almost ladylike snore.

Michael felt Lightning's breath hitch as he laughed silently; he calmed his thoughts so as not to disturb his somnolent companion.

He'd felt a moment's amusement that Lightning snored just like Marnie -- delicate and ladylike and feminine, unlike his Pa, who snored like a buzz saw, "fit to rattle the windows" as Jacob described it once -- Michael could not contain his silent mirth, and laid an apologetic hand on Lightning's mane as she opened one eye, blinked sleepily, then closed it again and resumed her snooze.

Thunder and Cyclone were reverted to their native watchfulness, orbiting like synchronized satellites, watchful, alert: their instinct was to protect that part of their herd that was getting needed rest, and so their tread was silent, their ears were busy, they tasted the wind, and on occasion they stopped and shared a look, for all the world like Michael and Victoria sharing that wordless communication common to birth-twins.

Michael closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree.

It had been some long time now since he felt relaxed enough to lower his guard and read like this.

It didn't take long for him to close his eyes and relax just that little bit more, for his hand to let the book on Lightning's mane to slide back into his lap.

 

When Michael woke, it was not to a sound, not to a whistled alarm from his vigilant sentinels.

No, it was to the smell of roast beef.

He opened drowsy eyes and smiled, just a little.

Victoria was the only soul in the world who could sneak up on him when he was asleep.

It did not surprise him at all that Victoria was smiling quietly as she laid out a picnic lunch on a checkered tablecloth.

Thunder and Cyclone had stopped their orbit: Thunder was directly uphill from the military crest where the tree shaded Michael and their developing repast; Cyclone, her mane bristling a little -- Michael was always amused at a Fanghorn's bristle, as their manes are silky and long and they raise for three fingers at the neck and then cascade down, flowing like black water down the side of their silky-blond-furred necks -- Cyclone was bristled up and hostile, dancing a little as she increased her watchfulness.

Lightning snored contentedly, the image of Older and Wiser, or perhaps knowing Michael would spoil her from treatskis from his meal the way he always did.

Michael laid his book aside and accepted a thick sandwich: Victoria handed it over with a doubled cloth napkin under it, and a good thing, for like any good picnic sandwich, it was thick and it dribbled components, which the napkin caught.

Neither twin spoke.

Both twins ate, looking out over undeveloped country -- mountains in the distance, what passed for this world's bovine herds in the flat land this side of snow-capped peaks: Michael knew there were predators that followed the herd, just like wolves followed buffalo, back on Earth: this was many miles from them, hazed with atmosphere and with distance.

Michael finished the thick sandwich, wiped tomato juice off his chin, checked his shirt front for dribbled condiments: about half the sandwich went to Lightning's dainty nibbling, her neck still laid over his thighs, and Michael felt her contentment and her amusement as he brought half his meal down for her to sniff, and to sample, and to partake.

He accepted the small jug from his twin sister, took a long drink of mint-infused sweet tea, felt its coolness caress his insides all the way down, handed it back.

Victoria considered the book he'd laid aside, and he felt her silent laughter as she read the gold-embossed letters on the dark-blue cover.

" 'Anthology of Science Fiction' ?" she read aloud.

"Nineteen-fifties vintage," Michael said quietly. 

"Is it good?"

"Classics of the genre."

"Did any of it come about?"

Michael laughed quietly, caressing Lightning's mane, her neck: Victoria could feel the honest love Michael had for this big, muscular, intermittently-carnivorous saddlemount.

He looked at her innocently and said "Well, Pa said he's still waiting on his flying car!"

Victoria laughed inwardly and nodded, then began packing away the picnic.

"Sis?"

Victoria looked up, the vision of young beauty: her cheeks glowed, her complexion was flawless, her eyes were that shade of light blue that spelled contentment, of a feeling of safety and well-being, her long, curved lashes adding to her image of the absolute beauty that is the legacy of Maidens of the Mountain.

"Thank you," Michael said softly, and Lightning took a great, dramatic breath, sighed it out loudly, just like a patient old matron.

 

 

 

Edited August 16, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DAY TWO

"Angel One."

Angela stepped forward, her uniform immaculate, creases sharp enough to cut.

"Yes, sir."

Sheriff Linn Keller took a step forward, his eyes bright and approving.

"I appreciate your communication skills."

"Thank you, sir."

The Sheriff looked around, the corners of his eyes smiling, the expression of a man who shouldn't approve of something, and was approving of it anyway.

"You all know this is Fair Week and we're saturating the place with uniforms, or at least as best as we can," the Sheriff said, his voice not raised at all, but penetrating nonetheless: Morning Watch stood at parade rest, watching the man as he began to pace.

They knew his back gave him grief if he stood too long, and when he started to pace, his presentation was being steadily abbreviated, and as neither he nor they appreciated long winded presentations, all hands silently approved of the man's lateral movement.

Morning Briefing was normally held in the Sheriff's office -- but because this was a multi-agency effort, it was being held in the firehouse: everyone sat down to a good breakfast ( a very good breakfast!) -- the Silver Jewel sent down two cooks and plenty of supplies, and a thirteen-year-old girl with Irish-green eyes and fiery red hair cracked an Irishman's knuckles with a wooden spoon when he attempted to counsel her on the proper way to fry eggs in cast iron: the Sheriff was too busy to pay attention to anything but the yelp and the startled jump back, but Angela's quiet eyes catalogued the event and remembered this particular young relief cook just happened to be descended from a certain short-tempered Irishwoman who cooked for the Silver Jewel, back in the mid-1880s, and she kept her face carefully expressionless as the knuckle-rapped Irishman yelped and drew back and looked around with a guilty expression, hoping no one else noticed.

Angela's face was solemn as she stepped back into ranks.

The day before, during setup at the county fairgrounds, she'd been accosted by one of the carnies, probably for all the stupid reasons transients accost local law enforcement: Angela knew if she didn't establish authority immediately, understandably and preferably violently, no one in uniform would be either respected, or taken seriously, and probably not even obeyed.

What happened was fast, violent, and involved a hard-muscled, hammer-swinging carnie experiencing the disconcerting sensation of flying through the air without benefit of either a trapeze or a safety net below, and it wasn't until he landed flat on his back -- hard -- that the impact of her knee into his gut and her palmstrike into his nose, finally registered.

Angela straightened, turned slowly, relaxed, ready.

"Anyone else?" she asked, almost pleasantly.

She sidestepped as the man she'd just thrown came at her; he shot past, stumbled, turned when Angela whistled, motioned him to approach.

A smart man would have called it quits right there.

Apparently this fellow ... wasn't.

Angela kicked the back of his knee as he came at her again -- sidestep, kick, didn't even raise her hands -- he grunted, came up on all fours, launched again.

This time her boot heel caught him squarely on the left ear.

Hard.

Angela was a horsewoman, and she had an equestrienne's legs, and when she focused some of the strongest muscles in the body, in concert and in unison, through the focus of a stacked-leather boot heel, the result was kind of like watching a Mack truck slam into the sandbed of a runaway ramp in the mountains.

He didn't get up.

He was still breathing, he groaned once, blood trickled from his split open ear, but he did not try to rise.

Angela turned slowly, not smiling.

"You're all here to do a job and collect a paycheck. We won't interfere with that."

As a uniformed Sheriff's deputy walked away, an anonymous voice half-whispered, half-sighed, "Dayum!"

 

"Paramedics Crane and Keller."

The Captain and Shelly stepped forward.

"I understand you had your hands full with that girl that fell from the ride yesterday."

Shelly blinked, her bottom jaw moved a little, but she remained silent: beside her, her father nodded slowly.

"You could say that."

"I saw surveillance when you got to ER," the Sheriff said. "Both of you ... your shirts were sweat soaked" -- his fingers sketched two curves on his own shirt front -- "all but the little strip of cloth between your center two buttons!"

Shelly, the Captain, most of the Irish Brigade and better than half the deputies laughed quietly.

 

Shelly and her Daddy were taking advantage of a pair of genuine bucket seats.

One of the food trailers threw two empty five gallon buckets out the back door of their food trailer, and sure enough, they were scarfed up almost right away.

They ended up, inverted, with a paramedic's backside parked on each.

They looked around, sipped from sweating-cold water bottles, listened, watched.

A rocket plane ride stopped with its arms up at an odd angle.

"That's strange," Shelly murmured. "Wouldn't it just be the berries if someone fell out of that?"

They heard a scream -- a powerful, very motivated, woman's scream, at the same moment they saw the door, open and swinging, on one of the cars.

Two paramedics launched toward the screams.

 

"A girl from out of town fell out of the car," the Captain said. "She bounced the corner of her forehead off the rolled edge of an acetylene tank on the way down."

His expression was haunted.

"We assessed her for closed head injury and treated accordingly."

Something told the Sheriff those few words meant they worked their ever lovin' backsides off on this patient, probably shoulder to shoulder with the ER staff, which was not at all unusual if they had a trauma that required a great deal of attention.

"Did she survive?" the Sheriff asked quietly: Chief of Police Will Keller, out of retirement for Fair Week, as they needed all available hands, shifted his weight and looked at the blueshirts.

"She's alive. Minor concussion."  Crane snorted. 

"Minor!" 

He shook his head.

"I wouldn't have been surprised if her skull cracked like an eggshell!"

"Did it even crack?"

"Not even a hairline. They're keeping her a day or two for observation. Brain bleeds don't always show up for a day or two."

The Sheriff nodded.

Chief Fitzgerald lifted his chin.

The Sheriff nodded at him.

"We found what went wrong," he said, his voice firm, a little rough. "The door latch was rusted off, but it was rusted inside, where it couldn't be seen. They inspected every ride and they have a specific checkoff for the latches. When we found the part that fell off, we all gathered around it, then we went back to the car and made a try-fit of the broken part. State boys have it now."

The Sheriff nodded, frowned a little.

"Sounds like no matter how hard you try, something will manage to mess things up."

The Chief nodded.  "I made sure the fellows running the rides knew this was something they couldn't have found. One of the guys went to the car's other three doors and yanked hard on all three. They were solid. I watched as they tore them apart. No rust. This was ... "

Fitz shook his head.

"This was a fluke."

The Sheriff nodded.

"Today's the second day. Yesterday we had ... what? Captain, what were your other runs?"

"A kid inhaled part of a hot dog" -- he thrust a bladed hand at a red-faced Irishman -- "long, tall and handsome here grabbed him and Heimliched him and fixed the problem. One heart attack, you probably heard about that one" -- he leaned forward, spoke across uniform shirt fronts to the Chief of Police -- "the old man who had a heart attack right after he parked his car."

Will nodded grimly.

"Will and one of his men started CPR and Will laid on that British whistle of his."

"I remember hearing that whistle," one of the Irishmen murmured. "We knew something was gone to hell when we heard it."

"He didn't make it?" the Sheriff asked quietly.

Will shook his head, closed his eyes.

The Sheriff swore, quietly, almost a whisper.

"We'll have the Sheriff's trailer ready for you when you're hungry," the Sheriff said. "It's set up, we have a crew there, we've got two nice friendly shade trees and that's where the horses are. There's air conditioning inside the trailer. We've been running A/C all night, I set the thermostats down to MOURGUE, so it should be okay through the day."

"We got the silver tarps stretched over and high beside it for sun shade," Angela offered quietly.

The Sheriff nodded his approval.

"Well done. Any questions?"

"Carbon Hill will have their pumper ready for fairground response," Fitz said as he consulted a note pad. "We have Angela's nursing students and Shelly's paramedic students staffing the first aid tents, each of them also has air and plenty of cold water, each is set up ..."

He looked at Angela and laughed.

"Each of them is set up a hell of a lot better than I ever imagined!"

"That's only because you found I have homemade chocolate chip cookies!" Angela laughed.

"That too!"

The Sheriff looked around, nodded, grinned, looked out the kitchen window at the Appaloosa stallion looking in at him.

"Saddle up!"

 

Edited August 18, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THEY'RE LOST

The Sheriff's Fairground substation was set up in front of the house trailer rented for the event.

The substation was of heavy timbers, laid up to imitate the original Sheriff's office: it had plank flooring in front, in pious imitation of the original board walk.

It had the overhanging roof, it had turned porch posts to hold up the roof, and it had the Deacon's bench under the unofficial billboard area, where wanted posters in varying state of weathered decrepitude added to the local color.

The Bear Killer was laid over on his side, half under the Deacon's bench, eyes mostly closed, looking like a young bear absolutely filling the space under the bench seat.

The Sheriff hadn't vested The Bear Killer that morning.

He honestly hadn't the heart to disturb the sleeping fellow.

Every year, the Sheriff rode the fairgrounds on his Appaloosa stallion, a pale eyed figure in a tailored black suit of a cut common to the late 1800s: he'd learned he was much more approachable on horseback than in a cruiser, or in his regular office: visitors who came out to ride the steam train and found, by accident or by design, that they were in time for the County Fair, raised camera and phones and recorded the sight of a genuine Western lawman on a spotty, tail-slashing stallion.

A grinning lawman in a brushed black Stetson with a silver-and-turquoise hatband hoisted laughing or giggling or wide-eyed-and-silent children into the saddle, stepped back so the child's picture could be taken: sometimes he'd walk a little distance, Apple-horse head-bobbing along behind him, with a laughing or giggling or wide-eyed-and-silent child clutching the saddle horn, then the Sheriff walked back to the excited parent, or parents, lift the child down with the practice of a man who'd done this many times with his own very young.

Once, and once only, did an adventurous soul try to swarm aboard Apple-horse: the Sheriff threw his arms wide, waved folks back: Apple-horse threw the unwanted passenger, fast, easily, decisively, then paced over to the groaning, would-be pradprig and looked down at him with what could have been interpreted as a genuinely pitying expression.

The Sheriff didn't arrest the poor soul.

He didn't have to.

Being thrown so easily, in front of witnesses, was punishment enough.

Not to mention discovering, as had many before him, that Terra Firma was quite a bit more firma than he could possibly enjoy.

The Sheriff waited until the young fellow got some wind back into him, until he staggered off, then he, too, mounted up.

Apple-horse lifted his head and lifted his ears, muttered the way a happy stallion will, and stepped out, spectators drawing back as he did.

 

The Bear Killer was doing what The Bear Killer did very well.

He snored.

The Bear Killer was not yet to his full growth.

He was, however, black as a sinner's heart, he was well and thickly furred, he was relaxed, and he was comfortable.

A little boy was cuddled up against him, the way a child will when the child is in a strange and unknown place, the way a child will when they find an oasis of safety, when they find welcome and protection.

An adventurous little boy curled up against The Bear Killer's shoulder, felt the warm, protective reassurance as a big, black, furry foreleg laid over him -- not possessive, but as if to say "You are safe here."

A little boy blinked, watched with uncertain eyes as a big spotty horse walked up toward him, as an iron-grey mustache wearing a tall man dismounted, threw the knotted reins over the hitch rail, approached.

The Sheriff squatted, hunkering on the balls of his feet, his eyes smiling quietly.

"Howdy," he said in a gentle and fatherly voice.

"Hi," the little boy said, tentatively waving a hand.

"I see you've met The Bear Killer."

A little boy with big and solemn eyes nodded, still cuddled up against warmth and safety.

"My Mom and Dad are lost," he admitted.

The Sheriff nodded, considered.

"That," he said thoughtfully, "will happen."

"You gonna put me in jail?" the boy asked in a small voice.

The Sheriff laughed quietly, shook his head.

"No," he said finally, "not unless you robbed a bank or something like that."

The little boy shook his head, just a little, almost as if he was afraid of doing something wrong.

"Tell you what."

He winked.

"Why don't you help me get The Bear Killer here dressed."

The little boy felt The Bear Killer shift a little at hearing the name.

"He wears clothes?" he asked in the wondering tones of a child to whom anything was possible.

"Almost."

He held out a hand and the little boy extended his own.

"I'm the Sheriff," he said. "Might I ask your name?"

The boy hesitated.

"It would be handier than callin' you 'Hey You.' "

He saw a grin hiding behind juvenile features.

A small hand reached out and gripped his big one.

The Bear Killer surrendered his enclosing foreleg, rose as the boy stood, shook himself.

The picture made the weekly paper.

Sheriff Linn Keller, on his spotty stallion, a little boy ahead of him, a truly huge, sinner's-heart-black Mountain Mastiff in a Sheriff's K9 vest looking up at the pair.

The Sheriff's Appaloosa was drawn up beside a utility pole with a hinge-front metal box at a mounted rider's height, a curly cord microphone withdrawn from the box, and held in speaking position.

Beneath the front page photographs, in quotation marks, the Sheriff's general, fairgrounds-wide announcement:

"Be on the lookout for lost parents answering to Mom and Dad. Jimmy knows where he is but he tells me his parents are lost."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AN OLD-FASHIONED OFFER

"Michael?"

Victoria's voice was gentle, her hand careful as she claimed his arm.

Michael wore a black suit, fitted, tailored, twin to the one his long tall Pa wore: like his father, Michael's boots were well polished; unlike his father, his hatband was braided leather, rather than silver and turquoise.

He'd heard his twin sister come scampering up behind him, running on the balls of her feet, nearly silent in her shiny-black dress slippers: he did not need to look, to know she wore a colorful, feminine, ribbon-trimmed dress, with a matching ribbon in her hair.

"Michael, what happened back home?"

Michael never broke stride: Victoria fell in step with him, gloved hand tightening on his arm, her face regarding his.

Michael stopped, lowered his arm, took both his sister's hands in his.

"I'm hungry," he said, mischief in his eyes: he tilted his head -- "There's a place I know of," and turned, and Victoria took his arm again.

Michael apparently planned on their destination already, as Lightning waited outside, patient at the curb, standing between two steam-broughams, her colts flanking, facing outward, as they usually did.

The sight of a big, blocky, hard-muscled Fanghorn was a novelty, and there were those who slowed, stared: they found themselves faced with a frank, almost challenging return stare from a creature they'd seen on the Inter-System, but only now in real life.

Michael drew the door wide, held it for his twin sister as she stepped inside, looking around.

Victoria sidestepped quickly, getting a square pillar behind her, as she made her visual sweep.

They were quickly shown to a table: Michael asked for sweet tea for both of them, asked about the special: the twins looked at one another, Michael looked at the hash slinger again and smiled.

"Two specials, if you would, please."

He waited until the red-faced waitress almost ran for the kitchen before he turned, sat, looked at his sister.

"What was it you wanted to ask me, Sis?"

Victoria's eyes were big, her posture feminine, a cultivated affectation that belied what Michael knew to be a strong and athletic young body that was both trained, and well practiced indeed, in some very effective methods of less than gently pacifying one's neighbor -- hidden by the aforementioned facade of an almost-uncertain, definitely pretty, young lady.

"Michael, what happened back home?"

"Back home?" Michael repeated innocently. "What do you mean?"

"You went home for the Fair," Victoria said quietly, and Michael heard the warning note creep into her voice. "Angela said you --"

"Oh, yes," Michael murmured, smiling at the blushing waitress as she set a tall, sweating-cold glass of cold tea in front of each. "That."

"Yes, that," Victoria said quietly, glaring at her smug-looking brother. "Michael, just what did you do?"

 

Michael did not ask permission.

He'd heard the call -- domestic, potential hostage situation -- he bent his wrist, keyed in a command, stepped through an Iris: to the only souls looking his way, it looked as if he'd stepped behind a utility pole and disappeared.

A Sheriff's unit was already outside the residence.

Angela ran for her mare, mounted.

She and her Daddy turned as one, their horses looking synchronized as they did: Apple-horse sensed his rider's urgency, and stepped out quickly, slipping easily through the thinning crowd, until they reached the road, then two horses leaned forward into a gallop.

The situation was on the other side of Firelands, and from the sound of things, they needed to get there fast.

Michael crouched under a rear window, took a cautious look around the house.

He'd removed his Stetson, hazarded one eye, then both.

Cruiser out front, he thought, listened as a deputy's commanding fist hammered the front door:  "Sherif's Office! Open up!"

He heard the shouted, defiant reply, he heard the threat.

He won't kick the door, Michael thought, he'll wait for backup and they'll powwow.

We can't wait that long.

Michael duck-walked back under the window, raised enough to take a fast, one-eyed peek.

A frightened face looked out at him.

Michael blinked, leaned further so the child could see his face.

Michael pointed to the side -- toward the back door -- and framed the word, Open.

The child was about eight or so, old enough to be scared, unpredictable enough for Michael to address the Almighty on the matter.

The child moved to the side and Michael came upright, stepped to the door, bent over so as not to be seen through the back door window.

He heard a lock turn, cautiously, then the knob -- a click -- the door opened a half inch.

It's all he needed.

Michael slipped in, finger to his lips, crouched: he drew the door shut, knob turned for silence, then let the knob back.

The little boy looked at Michael, scared, hopeful.

Michael winked, motioned the boy closer, laid his cheek over the boy's shoulder and whispered, "Who all is in the house?"

"Mama an' that man," came the return whisper.

Michael looked around, moved them out of line of sight in case someone came back and looked through the kitchen doorway.

They squatted again and the boy leaned close.

"He took Mama's phone," he whispered.

"You stay here," Michael said with a wink: he stood, looked around, smiled.

He unbuttoned his coat, rolled his shoulders, stood: he listened, then took a fast peek around the corner.

"Your bedroom -- upstairs?" he whispered.

The boy nodded.

"How do you get upstairs?"

"Stairs are in front."

"Can you run around and run upstairs for me?"

An uncertain little boy shook his head.

"Okay. How about we get you outside then. Think you can run around front where the deputy is?"

The little boy swallowed, nodded.

They went back to the back door, Michael facing the front of the house.

He eased the unlocked back door open, nodded.

A scared little boy slid out sideways, ran like a frightened jackrabbit.

Michael took three quick steps, picked up the cast iron frying pan.

He heard the deputy's fist hit the door again -- three fast, hard blows, and again the command: "SHERIFF'S OFFICE, OPEN UP!"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller dismounted, dropped his reins: he legged it to the front door, turned so his back was to the siding.

"He's inside, Sheriff, two hostages that I saw" -- a little boy ran around the corner of the house, ran and almost fell into Angela's trousered leg.

"He's got my Mama in there," he shouted, loud, urgent.

Michael was watching, one eye around the corner.

The stranger heard the boy's voice -- startled, he turned, shoved his face into one of the rectangular window panes, looked --

Angela's head came up at the familiar sound of cast iron hitting something hard.

The deputy crouched a little as something hit the door from the inside.

A click -- the door unlocked, but did not open.

The deputy reached up, gripped the doorknob, looked at the Sheriff.

The Sheriff gripped checkered plastic, nodded.

The door opened six inches and stopped.

A set of fingers wrapped around the edge of the door, followed by a woman's frightened whimper: she pulled and they pushed, enough for her to twist through the opening, and she half-fell, half-ran, stumbled, snatched up her little boy as he yelled "MOM!" and launched into her unsteady form.

 

"Michael," Victoria said as something that might have been second cousin to a baked potato steamed on her plate, sweating genuine butter and dusted with crushed herbs and salt crystals, "you're not telling me everything."

Michael tried his fragrant, steaming, mashed whatever with rich, flavorful gravy and found it to his liking: he deliberately delayed answering, cutting a slice of meat and finding it both tender, fine-grained, and very much to his palate's approval.

He looked at his glaring sister, swallowed.

"Try it, you'll like it," he said quietly, half expecting Victoria to dip a biscuit in her gravy and throw it at him.

She didn't.

She looked over a set of imaginary spectacles and said warningly, "Michaelllll!"

Michael sighed, sampled his tea, nodded.

"Sis, when they forced the door, they found the transient out colder'n a foundered flounder on the floor.  He'd fallen in front of the door."

"Michael," Victoria said, assuming the tone of a my-patience-is-being-tried schoolteacher, "just why was he out cold?"

"Well," Michael said, "that poor woman was almost in a panic when she come out the door."

"And?"

"They played hell just gettin' her name out of her, she was so shook up."

"And?"

"And they found a frying pan on the floor and a lump on the back of his head."

Victoria leaned back and folded her arms, and Michael could hear her tapping her foot impatiently under the table.

"So what happened, Michael?"

Michael dredged a strip of meat through his mashed-and-gravy, forked it in, chewed happily as he thumb split a biscuit and troweled on a good thick layer of freshly churned gut grease.

He swallowed, sipped his tea, looked innocently at his sister.

"Well, Sis, it looked kind of like he'd got smacked in the head with a frying pan."

 

Michael saw his chance.

He ran forward on the balls of his feet, switched the frying pan to his right hand, swung.

The impact of a Cast Iron, Daisy Finnegan Silver Jewel Persuader against the back of a hostage-taker's skull, is a satisfying thing.

It was also an effective thing.

The first impact was cast iron hitting skull from the back.

Second impact was forehead hitting the framed trim around the rectangle of door glass.

Then there was another impact after the collapse, when the insulted skull's uncontrolled descent, bounced off the hardwood floor, missing the meager padding of a hook rug by two inches.

The woman saw her chance, reached desperately for the door's lock -- she turned it -- the door shoved open the width of her hand -- she ran her hands around the edge of the door, pulled, crying, incoherent against the flaccid weight blocking it shut.

Nobody heard the back door open again, then shut.

 

Victoria resumed her meal, frowning: Michael was happily mopping gravy with his biscuit, deliberately dawdling as his twin sister finished her meal at a more genteel rate.

She waited until the waitress removed their plates, replaced them with generous slices of some kind of a berry pie Michael assured his sister was really good, he'd had it before.

Victoria waited until the waitress floated away before leaning over her plate and hissing, "Michael Robert, do you mean to tell me you solved a hostage situation by ball batting a criminal in the back of the head with a frying pan?"

Michael set down his fork, his eyes big and innocent: he leaned back, ticked off items on splayed fingers.

"I had my choice, Sis," he said. "I could have used hand-to-hand, pepper spray, electronic barbs, baton, or I could go the old-fashioned route."

Michael picked up his fork again, shrugged, then grinned.

"I guess you could say I offered him an Old-Fashioned!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 20, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE WIDOW'S CURSE

Old Pale Eyes touched his hat-brim, then jumped easily from the rented wagon.

A woman stood, silent, unmoving, pale, in spite of the early morning sun.

A drawn-looking woman stood stiffly in front of the rough-timber house she and her husband built, ten years ago and more, built with his hands, and his son's hands.

Her chin lifted as a pale eyed lawman with an iron grey mustache looked at her son, nodded, once, ever so slightly, then went to the back of the wagon and lowered the tail gate.

A younger son ran forward, following his big brother: each was burdened with provender unloaded from the wagon: flour, salt, bolts of cloth: the Sheriff picked up a covered, woven-withie basket, carried it over to the widow.

She glared at him and he saw the slight tremor of her chin.

He drew back the red-and-white checkered cloth, held up a paper of pins, a paper of sewing needles: he placed them back in the basket and said the only word he'd spoken since arriving.

"Daisy."

The widow-woman blinked, looked away, then she nodded, bit her bottom lip and took the basket.

It contained quite a bit more than just the few sewing notions he'd shown her: there were jars of canned goods, jars of dried, ground herbs, each with its name painted on the lid: there were hard candies, there were canned fruits, and more in two more baskets that got packed inside by willing young hands.

Another wagon rattled up, with men, tools, materials.

The widow woman came out, her spine stiff, proud: she glared at these newcomers, turned and glared at the Sheriff.

Old Pale Eyes took off his cover and stepped closer, stepped up to her, his belly-held hat the spacer between them.

He looked into a grieving woman's eyes, he looked at strength and pride and grief, and he spoke the only words he'd brought with him.

"It is a blessing on me."

She blinked as he turned; she stood, unmoving, as willing hands finished unloading the wagon.
The last item out was a red-painted withie basket.

The Sheriff held it out.

"Daisy said you'd not feel like fixin' a meal," he said quietly, then he turned and looked off to the side, toward a fresh grave and a painted plank marker.

Lean, face-lined, dried-out Kentucky carpenters set up ladders, swarmed up to the shake shingle roof: the widow stood unmoving, closed her eyes, listened to the sound of quiet voices, of repairs, of hammer and saw and the occasional snap of a chalk line: she opened her eyes as she felt the Sheriff again, and she watched as he climbed into his wagon, clucked up the rented nag, turned his head and winked at one of the boys who ran up beside, clutching a brand new pair of shoes: "Thank you, Sheriff!"

The widow-woman turned, went back inside.

"Ada," she said quietly.

"Yes, Mama."

"Ada, men will be hungry. Let us prepare a meal."

"Yes, Mama."

 

A pale eyed Sheriff sat unmoving on a shining-gold stallion, watched as a widow-woman labored up the side of the ridge overlooking what they'd hoped would be their ranch, until an infection and the Lock Jaw murdered her husband.

She stood long at the foot of her husband's grave, her eyes closed, remembering how he smelled, how he sounded, she remembered his hands and his laugh and how he'd come up behind her and hug her from behind and murmur that she was still the most beautiful woman in the entire world.

A pale eyed Sheriff watched, silent, unseen, as a widow-woman picked up a hoe handle, used it as a walking stick as she climbed the ridge.

He knew there were rank weeds here, and little else.

He saw the widow raise the hoe handle, swing it -- a fast, vicious arc -- she slashed at the weeds, she attacked them like a personal enemy: she raged, she screamed, trauma-ripped weeds ripped free and whipping through the air.

The Sheriff turned, walked his stallion in the opposite direction, not wanting to see a widow's private grief any further.

He came back to that place, a year later, he looked over the little ranch: there was a marriage in the year subsequent, a good man who'd lost his wife most of a year before: the union was apparently agreeable, and the Sheriff saw the ranch wife and a daughter come out, scattering cracked corn and calling to their chickens.

This did not impress the Sheriff.

He knew what it was to grieve, he knew what it was to lose the entire world and to regain even more.

No, what impressed the Sheriff was where he stood.

This used to be a thick growth of thistle, of rank weeds.

He remembered a widow, raging her grief, ripping weeds with her stick and blasting the land with her words, her screams, her sorrow, and he regarded the bare ground where nothing grew now.

Nothing.

He mentioned this to his own wife, that night, as they sat together on their front porch, holding hands as they often did of an evening.

"Dearest," the Sheriff finally said, "do you remember me asking you about women's powers?"

Esther looked curiously at her husband, her hand warm in his.

"I remember," she murmured softly.

The Sheriff's eyes were wide, unblinking, staring unseeing at the distant mountains, seeing a woman swinging a hoe handle and screaming curses of a widow's grief at the thistle growth underfoot.

Esther blinked as her husband nodded slowly and murmured his quiet analysis.

"Nothing grows there now," he said, then looked at Esther.

"Nothing at all."

Esther blinked, considered, then laid her head over on his shoulder and shivered.

"I've seen it before," she said quietly, "when a woman's grief blasts the earth."

She lifted her head, looked at her husband again.

"It's called The Widow's Curse."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HORSE SENSE

It was a common thing for Sean Finnegan to raise his voice.

There were those in town who believed the man shouted in his sleep.

It was not at all a common thing for Sean Finnegan to shout at his wife.

When Sean came into the Silver Jewel Saloon and walked to the end of the bar, faced down the hallway and shouted "DAISYMEDEAR!" in that great Irish voice of his, men took note.

Few saw Daisy emerge from her demesne, wiping her hands anxiously on the towel that usually lived over her shoulder.

Had he simply shouted "DAISY!" she'd have come out with a wooden spoon, ready to address him for raising his voice, but when she heard "DAISYMEDEAR!" she knew he was summoning her out of a genuine concern, and probably that concern was for one of their own.

She was right.

Sean caught his wife by her elbows and inclined his head, spoke quietly, urgently: those few who could see ths exchange, mostly hidden by the hallway's confines, saw Daisy's hands go to her mouth, saw her eyes widen.

They heard a muttered, "What must ye do?" and Daisy replied not with words, but by the doing of it.

She twisted past her broad-shouldered, hard-muscled husband, seized up her skirts and ran, swung around the end of the bar, past Tilly's desk, and absolutely sprinted up the stairs.

Men heard her summoning fist pounding on a door -- they heard a door shut, suddenly, firmly, not slammed, but decisively closed -- then two sets of hard heels came clattering down the stairs.

Sean was drifted to the near end of the bar as two ladies made their descent.

Daisy did not look at him as she pushed out the heavy, ornate double doors.

Esther looked over at him, extended a hand:  "Sean," she called gently.

Sean could move silently when the mood was upon him, and generally that meant whenever the man moved.

He could also move with the quickness of a truly big man, and he did just that.

Esther took his arm and they departed through the double doors, for a Lady does not leave the room unless she is on a gentleman's arm.

Unless, of course, she's a red-headed Irishwoman with a knot in her belly and a suspicion in her heart.

 

Sean came back into the Silver Jewel.

He came back after a couple of hours.

He came back in with an expression that was not immediately identifiable.

He stood up to the bar, he stared at the mahogany, he looked at Mr. Baxter as the barkeep held up a beer mug and raise one eyebrow.

Sean frowned a little and shook his head.

Sheriff Linn Keller came into the bar behind the man, swung into place beside him, reached into a coat pocket.

He pulled out a leather poke, counted out a stack of coin, slid it across to Mr. Baxter, who raised his eyebrow again.

Sean swallowed, lifted his eyes, stared at his reflection in the mirror.

"I've never done this before," he said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

Linn raised his hand, rested it on the man's shoulder, the reassuring move of an old friend.

"I have," Linn said quietly, then he turned, leaned back against the bar, curled his lip and whistled.

The sound was so sharp and so shocking that everything stopped, all but Mr. Baxter, who quietly slid the stack of coin off the bar and into his hand.

A quick count and he added it to the till.

Her name was Kathy Finnegan, before she got married.

Kathy was Sean and Daisy Finnegan's eldest daughter.

Kathy, like her Mama, had that bright, shining, pure, Irish-red hair, and the startling, deep-blue eyes of a grandfather she'd never met, instead of the bright-Irish-green orbs of her Mama.

Kathy and her husband came into town to visit, and as she always did, Kathy went and visited with the firehorses, three matched white mares that she'd curried and brushed and spoiled ever since she was a little girl underfoot.

Sean watched as the mares clustered around his darlin' daughter.

Sean watched as the mares did not bicker and compete for her attention the way they usually did.

Sean watched as one mare, then another, sniffed at his daughter's belly, as they crowded close to her, one on either side, one working in behind her.

Sean had seen this before.

Sean's mouth went dry as he remembered the mares clustering about his Daisy in this same manner.

Sean strode for the door, pushed into the outer air, uncertain, then looked up the street.

Daisy, he thought.

Daisy will know what to do.

 

 

The Sheriff lifted his chin and raised his voice and shouted into the shocked silence, "SEAN IS GONNA BE A GRANDDAD! DRINKS ON THE HOUSE!"

A general shout went up, and Mr. Baxter began happily pouring Liquid Sledgehammer and drawing much of beer.

There were many congratulations, much back-pounding and hand-shaking, salute after toast after beneficence after hosted glass: the Sheriff poured a shot of Water Clear, Not Over Thirty Days Old, into his beer and contented himself with this one drink.

When finally the congratulatory hubbub subsided, when finally a man could hear himself think, when the Sheriff was able, he asked Sean how long he'd known.

Sean got that funny look on his face again as he admitted, " 'Twas when me dear Cathy came in an' the mares ..."

It was one of the only times Linn ever saw this big, blacksmith-armed, hard-knuckled, red-faced Irishman come close to getting choked up.

"It was th' mares," he whispered. "Th' mares ... they knew ... wi' me Daisy, an' now wi' me dotter!"

 

Pale eyes regarded the handwritten account, more than a century later, and a pale eyed Sheriff smiled a little to read Old Pale Eyes' concluding words:

"I reckon that's an example of Horse Sense."

 

 

Edited August 21, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WHEN IN ROME

Marnie Keller folded her arms, sat down heavily and shoved her bottom lip out an incredible distance.

Her pale eyed Daddy folded his long tall frame and sat down beside her on the front porch.

Marnie was stiff, rigid, controlled, glaring: if attitude was visible, she'd have looked like a sizzling porcupine with quills made of distilled lightning.

Her Daddy took a long breath, relaxed, sprawled his long legs out and laid his arm over the back of the green-painted front porch swing.

Marnie's bottom jaw slid out, she glared her young eyebrows together, and she did her level best to split one of the distant rocks with the power of her pique.

Linn started moving the swing, just a little.

Marnie's young legs were too short to reach the floor.

She did not swing her red cowboy boots in sympathy: she locked her knees, took a long breath, huffed it out.

"Daddy," Marnie finally said, and it is to her Daddy's credit that he neither laughed, nor did he grin: the contrast between a little girl's voice, and the venom in, and content of, her words, stood in a genuinely comical contrast.

"Daddy, I need the backhoe."

Marnie felt, more than saw, her Daddy's slow, thoughtful nod.

"I reckon," he said gently, "we can manage that."

Silence, again, between a rigid, unmoving, jaw-clenched, stiff-necked little girl in a flannel shirt and a denim skirt and a pair of red cowboy boots, and the long tall Daddy sitting relaxed and comfortable beside her.

"Might I inquaaahhrrr," Linn drawled, "why would you be needin' to use the backhoe?"

Marnie surged off the swing, turned around, glared at her Daddy and planted her little pink knuckles on her waist: she raised her Mommy-finger and shook it at her Daddy and declared, "I'm going to take it by the back bucket and I'm gonna use it to beat Susie Decore over the HEAD!"

Linn regarded his little girl with quiet, unsmiling eyes.

He leaned forward, set his boot soles squarely down on the grey-painted board floor, hunched his shoulders with his elbows settling on his knees.

He sandpapered his palms slowly, thoughtfully together, and said in a quiet voice, "Darlin', what did Susie Decore do?"

Marnie's arms straightened, her young hands fisted: she pressed her young lips together, thunder on her brow, then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, sighed it out and looked at her Daddy again.

"Daddy," she said quietly, "Susie Decore tried to bully me!"

Marnie saw her Daddy's eyebrow raise.

He leaned forward a little more, and she saw his eyes lighten a little, and she felt something cold like a chill mountain breeze slid down-slope and washed over her.

"What," Linn said, his voice deep, quiet, serious, "did ... she ... do?"

Marnie turned and jumped a little, trying to get back up on the swing: Linn took her under the arms, hoist her back up, set her down beside him, his arm around her.

Marnie leaned her head against the warm, strong, reassurance of her Daddy's chest and mumbled, "She made fun of me for not wearin' sneakers!"

Linn blinked a few times, considering: he began swinging again, slowly, no more than a few inches, just enough to move forward and aft a little bit.

"Darlin'," Linn said gently, "what do you prefer to wear?"

Marnie's legs straightened suddenly.

"MY BOOTS!" she declared firmly.

"Is Susie Decore any kind of authority?"

Marnie shook her head -- once, almost viciously, her braids whipping as she did.

"So. She's not your supervisor, she's not your teacher, she's not your mother and she's not your superior officer."

Again that vigorous shake of the head, her bottom jaw still thrust out in youthful rebellion.

"Then darlin', you wear what you damn well please."

Linn looked down at Marnie, his expression speculative.

"I need to show you something."

Marnie's head snapped around, she looked up at him, curious.

Daddy and daughter slid off the porch swing, walked to the barn, Marnie's hand gripping her Daddy's, a spontaneous expression of trust and confidence.

Marnie watched as her Daddy set up two saw horses, set two saddles on them.

She tried to keep a poker face -- it was rare enough she'd opened up to her Daddy on the front porch swing, but somehow that had devolved into her It's Safe To Express Myself Candidly zone -- everywhere else, Marnie was drawn into herself, watchful, hypervigilant, which the Sheriff attributed to the hell she survived back East.

That she was showing curiosity -- visibly letting her inner self being seen -- he counted a good thing.

"Marnie," Linn said, stepping back and looking at the two saddles, "how many horses can you ride at one time?"

Marnie looked up at her Daddy in honest surprise.

He bent, picked her up -- "Set one foot on each saddle" -- she did -- he stepped back, looked at his little girl, standing with one foot on the starboard saddle, the other on the port saddle: the sawhorses were close enough their legs overlapped, so she wasn't uncomfortable, standing with red cowboy boot to starboard, and the other cowboy boot on the port beam.

"Darlin'," Linn said, "do you recall I read to you last night?"

Marnie nodded, then looked from one saddle to the other, looked back at her Daddy, puzzled.

"You recall I read to you about Old Pale Eyes and how he described Daciana, that Gypsy trick rider, just a-wallerin' all over her trick pony's back?"

Marnie's eyes lit up and she nodded, her expression almost hopeful.

"Have you ever seen someone ridin' two horses at once, like they used to in ancient Rome?"

Marnie shook her head.

"Boot leather on saddle leather," Linn explained quietly, "is kind of slick."

Marnie twisted one foot experimentally, then the other, her Daddy's hands clamping quickly around her as her foot slipped off.

She dropped all of an inch before her weight was supported by Daddy's big strong hands.

He picked her up off the saddles, brought her in close, twiddled his Clan Maxwell red mustache against her cute little nose, which brought a freshet of giggles from what was suddenly a happy, wiggly little girl.

He ran his other arm around her thighs so she was almost sitting on her forearm.

"Darlin', if you're ridin' Roman -- one foot on one horse and one foot on t'other -- that might be kind of slick for wearin' boots."

Marnie frowned, nodded.

"Now if" -- Linn brought her in closer, laid his cheek against hers and whispered, his breath warm and puffy against her pink-scrubbed ear -- "was you to wear something grippy, like maybe sneakers, you'd stand a better chance."

He extended his arms just a little, kissed her forehead, held her out a little further.

"Would you like to try it?" he asked quietly.

Marnie nodded enthusiastically.

"Do you have sneakers?"

Marnie's face fell.

Linn carried her over to a hay bale, one-handed a saddle blanket on it, set his little girl carefully on the blanket, then set down with her.

She looked up at him, then looked down at the floor.

"Mommy got me sneakers," she said in a discouraged voice. "She said they were cute."

"Ahh-hmmm," Linn said, trying to sound wise: "tell you what, I think maybe ..."

He considered, frowning a little.

Marnie twisted her head around to look up at her Daddy's thoughtful expression.

"Marnie," he said, "do you recall we've been workin' with the Irish Brigade's fire mares?"

Marnie's eyes widened and she nodded, her bottom lip between even white teeth.

"I," Linn said, and a slow grin widened his face, "have an idea."

 

It was the last day of the County Fair.

The Irish Brigade drew up in a red-shirted rank, pressed-leather helmets held over their breastbones, mustaches black-waxed and villainously curled, boots polished.

Sheriff and deputies were drawn up as well, ranked at parade rest, waiting.

The VFW stood beside them, waiting with the patience of veteran military men.

The polished, gleaming Steam Machine was in its place, beside hand polished fire apparatus and squad, but the matched white mares were nowhere to be seen.

The Fireland High School Marching Band raised their instruments on the conductor's signal as the announcer declared, "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLEASE STAND FOR THE PRESENTATION OF THE COLORS, AND THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!"

Three matched white mares were harnessed up, side by side.

Three matched white mares came running around the track again at their preferred speed -- wide open, as fast a gallop as they could manage, necks thrust out and ears laid back, and on their backs, standing with one hand gripping the lariat connected to the center mare's harness, the other hand gripping a flagstaff, a little girl, screaming like an Indian, knees bent, leaned forward, her ribbon-tied braids streaming along behind her, a grin on her face it would've taken a hammer and chisel to remove.

The mares were voice trained: Marnie came around the turn, pounded down the straightaway in front of the grandstand, screamed "HAW, GIRLS, HAW, NOW, HO, LADIES, HOOO!"

Marnie Keller, eight years old, screamed with joy and with triumph as three white mares reared and screamed, slashing the air with polished hooves: they came to earth and she danced them over and handed the Colors to the honor guard, then voice-walked the Ladies over beside the Irish Brigade and stood proudly a-straddle of two of the Irish Ladies, pulled her hat off he head where it had fallen back and bounced on its storm strap, and set it over her breastbone as the Colors went up the flagpole and the National Anthem was played with a properly brisk tempo.

It was the first time a certain little girl would be seen in public without her trademark red cowboy boots, but that's not what anybody remembered.

They remembered the sight of a little girl, her face shining, as she stood with her hat over her breast, watching the Colors she'd brought in at a genuinely screaming gallop, being run up the flagpole.

 

Edited August 22, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I REMEMBERED WHAT YOU TOLD ME

Silence stretched between father and son.

Jacob sat in the passenger seat, unmoving, giving no visible indication of any distress, of any impairment.

His pale eyed father drove, his impassive face giving no indication of judgement.

Finally Jacob's quiet voice, almost harsh in the silence: "I feel like an ass."

His eyes were straight ahead, regarding the roadway, the trees, the terrain.

He did not look at his father.

If he had, he might have seen a look of understanding.

The young forever think their transgressions are unique, are new, are something the world has never seen.

Not another word was uttered by the son, nor by the father, until Jacob's father backed his Jeep into its usual place.

"Jacob."

Linn's voice was quiet.

Jacob popped his seat belt, turned a little.

If he was going to catch hell from the Old Man, he'd face him while it happened.

"Jacob, thank you. You did the right thing."

Jacob blinked.

Linn saw surprise, saw a little relief, saw the mask slip back into place across his son's eyes.

"Sir, you told me if ... I ever ..."

Linn nodded.

"I remember."

He smiled, at least the corners of his eyes did: he'd gotten the text, the coded message, prearranged and given to all the Keller young: if you are in a situation, if you need the hell out of there, I will come and get you -- wherever you are, whatever the hour.

He'd sent the text.

Jacob, like most young men, partook of certain distilled spirits.

Jacob, being unused to drink, was hit fast and with a distressed effectiveness by the effects of Concentrated Sledgehammer.

Jacob did not want to risk driving home.

Jacob sent a text to his Pa.

He did so realizing this was self incrimination, this was an admission he'd not exercised due restraint, it was an admission he'd failed.

He trusted his Pa enough to send the message anyway.

Jacob swallowed, looked at his father.

"Sir," he said quietly, "I am sorry."

"I'm not."

His father's reply was instantaneous, unhesitating: Linn lowered his head, looked very seriously at his son.

"Jacob," he said, and his voice carried that intimate quality a father uses with his son in rare moments like this, "I know what it is to bury sons.

"You are my eldest, you have always done me proud, and tonight -- when you called -- you took a chance that the Old Man would jump down your throat with spurs a-diggin'."

Jacob waited, afraid to even nod.

"Jacob" -- Linn reached over, laid a hand on Jacob's shoulder, squeezed, gently -- "you are alive!"

He huffed a quick half-laugh, half-regret, the way a father will when a memory floats to the surface and bursts in a spray of regret.

"The only time I came home after gettin' ... loaded ... I'd ridden a good old saddle horse and it knew the way home, and I'm glad for that 'cause I didn't."

Jacob blinked, surprised: his expression said as clearly as words, You?

Linn nodded, his expression solemn.

"I got loaded, Jacob.

"I did not have a morning after."

He chuckled a little, shook his head, sighed.

"I had a day after!"

He gave his son an understanding look.

"White rum it was, and I've not tasted it since.

"My Pa didn't ... the only time he ever accused me ... I was comin' down with the flu and he accused me of drinkin' and backhanded me hard at the top of the stairs. I went a-rollin' down stairs just boom, boom, boom, I hit bottom and come up and cocked a fist and allowed as I would punch him to Hell itself and then I passed out from fever."

He closed his eyes, shook his head a little.

"Jacob, we can always go back and get your car. We can send someone to fetch your car back. It's only a thing. You" -- his hand tightened again on Jacob's shoulder -- "are the only one of you that I've got."

"You're not mad at me, sir?" 

Jacob was honestly surprised his Pa was not getting impressive with him.

Linn gave his son a knowing look.

"Everyone has to try it sooner or later. I did. Like I said, my horse knew the way home, 'cause I sure as hell didn't!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DECORUM

"Don't ever say that again."

The Sheriff's voice was quiet, deep, the kind of voice that carries authority and brooks no counter.

He turned his head and looked at a boy who sat uncertain in the saddle.

"You will speak to your strengths."

The boy blinked.

He wasn't used to this.

He'd survived a brain tumor, he was relearning how to command his young body, he was learning to overcome what he'd been told was very nearly dying.

He was used to being treated carefully, treated gently, as if he were delicate and he might break.

The Sheriff hadn't done that.

The boy knew the Sheriff and he'd ridden here on the Sheriff's ranch, but only with someone walking beside him and gripping his gait belt, only when he had a two-hand grip on the saddle horn, or rather one hand laid limp and weak on the saddlehorn and the other hand holding it in place so he wouldn't shame himself with an arm that didn't work.

His arm worked now.

The Sheriff turned his stallion, regarded the boy with an expressionless face.

"Your posture is good," he said quietly. "Heels down. Reins in one hand, the other on your thigh."

"But," the boy started to say, turning his head a little to the left, toward his blind side --

The Sheriff stopped his words with a look.

"You will speak to your strengths," he said, and it was not a request.  "Follow me."

He turned his stallion and started out across the pasture.

The boy's mare followed, more out of habit than by any command from her rider.

The Sheriff whirled, came in behind and then abreast of his mounted companion, came up on his blind side.

"I don't care that you can't see left," he said. "Your mare can. Trust her.

"Do not ever say that you can't do something or you can't see something. Speak to what you can. "Your soul listens to your words. Feed yourself 'I Can!' messages."

The boy felt the Sheriff.

He barely saw the Sheriff's stallion's head -- his left peripheral was gone, all but a few degrees left of midline.

"You ride better than you did. I can see the improvement. How's your foot drop?"

The boy considered, put a little more weight on his stirrups, eased back down.

"It's ... not as bad."

"So it's improving."

The boy nodded.

His hair was coming back in; it was fine, finer than it used to be, it was a shining light blond, not quite white, but close.

They rode together the length of the pasture, then the Sheriff opened the back gate and they rode out and into the woods.

"Trust your mare," the Sheriff said quietly.

They walked their mounts through the woods -- it was fairly open, the mare was a trustworthy old nag and made no attempt at clotheslining her rider, nor of crushing his leg against a tree trunk.

The day was warm, the sun felt almost too good: they turned and returned, they rode back through the gate, they didn't move in any kind of a hurry: an easy, smooth trot was all the faster they rode.

Once they were back at the barn, the Sheriff led them inside, horses' hooves loud and echoing on the concrete floor.

They dismounted.

The Sheriff made no attempt to help the boy down.

 

Pale eyed watched on a distant screen.

Even white teeth bit down on a rich, red, feminine bottom lip, and a young woman with a stethoscope around her neck wanted to thrust fisted hands in the air and jump up and down like a demented cheerleader and scream "YES! YES! YES!" -- but her students were starting to trickle into the classroom, and for that reason alone, she disciplined herself to stillness, and watched the screen.

 

The Sheriff gripped his saddle, hauled it off, carried it over and hung it over a saddle stand.

A fourteen-year-old boy with very short, very fine, very shining-blond hair managed to unbuckle the cinch.

He looked up at the saddle, swallowed.

He felt the animal warmth as his pale eyed riding companion came up behind him.

"Grip here," Linn said, his voice deep, warm, fatherly, "and here, and fetch it off."

"But --"

Hands on his shoulders, warm, firm, but not demanding, then that voice again.

"Speak to your strengths. Now grab it and go."

He did.

It was awkward, it was uncertain, he pulled and found himself pulled down -- gravity was one force with which few can argue -- the saddle hit the floor, hard, the mare sidling away a couple delicate paces.

The boy froze.

He knew the Sheriff took care of his saddles.

On his right -- where he could see -- the Sheriff squatted, his hand laid over the boy's shoulder blade.

"Know what I see?" he asked, his voice gentle.

The boy swallowed, shook his head, his hands still welded to saddle leather.

"You held on with both hands."

The Sheriff saw surprise, and the boy saw approval.

"Last week your left hand wasn't that strong. You couldn't have held on a week ago.  Here ... you did."

"But ..."

The Sheriff raised a teaching finger, silencing the boy's protest.

"Don't ever say 'I can't' because that means you won't. Now let's look at what you did right."

He tapped the upraised finger.

"You got in the saddle yourself. Nothing wrong with usin' a hay bale or a handy rock. Hell, I one time clumb in the saddle after steppin' on a tomb stone to do it."

Linn grinned, winked.

"I'd been hurt and I'd not usually disrespect the dead, but" -- he shrugged -- "sometimes you got to cheat some.

"Now what else did you do right?"

The boy blinked, uncertain.

"I, um ... I don't know."

"You trusted your mare," Linn said quietly. "Usually you'd have your head cranked around to your left to try and see better. Let's have Angela run another visual field on you. My gut tells me your peripheral just might recover.

"Now what else did you do right?"

The boy shook his head slightly, eyes never leaving the squatting Sheriff's face.

"You held the reins in one hand and your other hand was on your thigh."

The boy blinked.

"Last time you had a death grip on the saddle horn."

The boy blinked, surprised, as he realized ... yes, he'd ... he'd not grabbed for the horn, not once.

"Your posture is better. You ride tall and you keep your heels down, but your left leg strength is improved. You've weight on the balls of both feet."

"But ... but I dropped your saddle."

The Sheriff grinned -- sudden, startling the boy -- "No you didn't!"

The boy blinked.

He had so dropped the saddle.

He lacked the strength to bring it off under control, he'd dragged it off, it fell, he'd been pulled down with it --

"If you'd have dropped it," Linn said reasonably, "you'd have let go."

There it is again, deep in those pale eyes.

Approval.

"You kept a grip with your left hand."

The Sheriff rose, gripped the saddle, swung it up onto a saddle stand.

"Jump in."

The Sheriff strode across the barn, out the far door: the boy heard the door slam on the Sheriff's faded orange pickup, heard the engine start.

"We ain't got all day!" he heard as the Sheriff backed up to where the boy had a straight shot, across the floor and out the double doors.  "Get in! Work to be done!"

The boy headed for the Sheriff at his best speed -- kind of a shambling walk -- the Sheriff shouted at him again -- "Come on! Move it!" -- and the boy clenched his teeth and rolled the dice.

He leaned forward and tried to run fast enough to keep from falling on his face.

He managed -- somehow, he managed -- he was running, for the first time, he was running! -- it was awkward, stumbling, shambling, but it was running! -- 

The sun-faded Dodge Power Wagon rang like a gong as a recovering cancer patient who'd been paralyzed on his left side, who'd been completely blind for a week, then recovered half his vision, a cancer patient who took his strength from a lean waisted lawman who'd made him a special project, discovered that -- after fighting to re-learn how to walk, after leaning forward in a desperate attempt at speed, after discovering that yes indeed he could run -- awkwardly, clumsily, but still a run! -- he didn't have the least idea how to stop, and he hit the curved sheet metal, bounced back, grabbed the edge of the bed and fell against it, hung there, not sure whether to shout, fall, laugh, or cry.

He settled on shaking his head and gasping, "Wow!"

Strong hands seized him under the arms, he felt himself hauled off the earth, he looked down at a pale eyed lawman grinning up at him with utter DELIGHT in his face, he felt more than heard the words.

His mother had just gotten out of her car when the Sheriff hauled what she saw as her little boy, off the ground and shouted up at him, and she stood, knuckles to her mouth, uncertain as to just what had happened, but it must not have been anything bad, because she'd seen the Sheriff snatch up children like this in the past -- never mind that her son was fourteen years old and tall for his age -- 

The Sheriff's voice was powered by all the triumph he and the boy shared in that memorable moment.

"DAVID JAMES," the voice declared, loudly enough to be heard at a distance, "DAVID JAMES, I AM PROUD OF YOU!"

 

It took a few moments for a mother to realize what had just happened to bring such loud-voiced approval from a man she'd never, ever, heard to so much as raise his voice.

It took much less time for a pale eyed young lady in front of a glowing screen to realize it.

Angela Keller, instructor, veteran nurse-paramedic, Sheriff's deputy and the very image of instructional propriety, completely disregarded that the classroom was half filled with students when she thrust out of her chair, fists in the air, launching herself like a cheerleader right after the winning touchdown: her students stopped, shocked, as their usually composed, ordinarily dignified instructor, knocked her chair over backwards, as she bounced and screamed "YES! YES! YES!" -- in complete, utter, absolute, disregard, of her usual pedantic decorum.

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CORROSION

The White Sisters were not unknown in Firelands.

On major holidays, it was not unusual for the Sisters to send singers, and a treat this was, for the Sisters had gorgeous voices that were only heard in song -- at least, there in Firelands.

It was somewhat out of the ordinary for one of the Sisters, alone, to appear in Firelands.

Those who noticed such things, noticed that this Sister did not so much walk, as she flowed, or glided: one fellow speculated that she didn't have legs, she had wheels, and his companion snorted his laughter, but did not dissent.

The Sister glided like a corporeal ghost, flowing from the general area of the Depot, up the street, and diagonally, toward their little whitewashed Church.

"You'll see her knees bump her skirt when she climbs them steps."

"A beer says you'll not."

The veiled figure, hands thrust modestly into the bell of her sleeves, paused, head bowed a little, as if listening to the watcher's speculation.

Two men stared as a face-veiled Sister in a pristine white habit, glided up the stairs, as if she rode a set of rails.

One man stood with his mouth open and his eyes wide.

The other clapped him on the back and barked, "You owe me a beer!"

 

Sometimes a man remembers, and things he remembers, troubles him.

Sometimes those memories trouble him greatly.

Some men find solace, or at least seek solace, in a bottle, or in debauchery, or in cruelty.

Others find relief in talking of the experiences -- but only to those who were as metal tried in the same fire.

Sheriff Linn Keller stood before their hand made Altar, his hat in his hand and his eyes on the rough, handmade Cross on the back wall.

He closed his eyes, took a long breath, feeling the memories again.

Something white glided up beside him: a veiled figure stopped, knelt, crossed herself, then rose, stood beside him, unmoving, silent.

"Sister," the Sheriff said, "I am troubled."

The man's voice was quiet, echoing in the empty Church's silence.

"That damned War," he added, his voice strained, his throat tightening around the words as he spoke them -- "one fellow said he was a-fightin' for the South because you damned Yankees come into his land without his let-be, and that's the only reason he fought."

The Sheriff swallowed, bowed his head.

"I was ... I ended up all over hell and breakfast, Sister. Separated from my unit, attached here, there and yonder, I ended up with Sherman, damn him!" -- the Sheriff's hands tightened -- "he died back in February and I am not ashamed I took a drink with men who raised their glasses and hoped he burned in Hell for what he did."

He took a slow breath and added, "I raised my glass and wished the same."

He took another long breath, shivered it out.

"I wish I could forget it all," he whispered. "I still ... I still watch ... I'm not jumpy as some I've known but ... I still ... watch ..."

The silent Sister waited, listening.

"A young trouble maker come up behind me and stuck a kindling chunk in my back like it was a gunbarrel and I near to beat him to death," the Sheriff said, his words coming in a rush. "Had Jacob not been there I likely would have. He pulled my arm and yelled in my ear and --"

The Sheriff's breath came quickly now, and he reached for the back of a pew as if to steady himself.

"Sister, I hope God has some polishin' compound. Parson tells me God can forgive anything, but my poor old eternal soul is pretty badly corroded."

The veiled Sister waited, silent, unmoving, beside the Sheriff.

"I can forgive any man, any thing," the Sheriff said slowly, thoughtfully, "all but the man in the mirror."

He considered this for several long moments.

"Your Abbott asked me one time who the hell did I think I was.

"He said God forgave my sins, who was I to not forgive myself."

The Sheriff snorted.

"I know he's right, Sister, but ... "

He shook his head.

"I got to work on that."

Silence, then, drawn out: sounds from without were muffled, distant: the Sheriff and his unmoving companion remained quiet, each apparently immersed in their thoughts.

The Sheriff blinked, frowned, nodded once, as if coming to a conclusion.

He turned.

"Sister," he said, "thank you --"

She was gone.

She hadn't turned, she hadn't walked away, the door had neither opened, nor shut -- but she was ...

... gone ...

In her place, lying on the floor, a rose -- a single, fresh cut rose, dew-wet and fragrant.

 

The Sheriff set a booted foot up on the polished brass rail.

Mr. Baxter drew him a beer, struck off the foamy head and wiped the dripping excess off the mug before setting it down, turning the handle toward the Sheriff.

He looked at the rose in the man's lapel.

"Celbratin'?" he asked cheerfully.

The Sheriff smiled, just a little.

"Yep."

"Good news?"

The Sheriff sampled his beer, found it to his liking.

"A woman talked some sense into me."

 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103
He "clapped him on the bank" ... umm ... back!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ONE WEEK

Clark and her brother split up, their mares twisting through the brush, grunting.

The cows were out.

Clark saw the troublemaker, a bull calf that had itself confused with a bull elk, or maybe a locomotive: it was a recalcitrant, rebellious, fence busting aggravation that Clark would just as soon turn into slaughter beef, but they were short on bull stock, and so she shook out a loop as her mare lowered her head, her ears laid back, dancing left, dancing right, ready for whichever dodge that damned bull calf might try.

He ran with the elk over winter, Clark thought, her weather-wrinkled eyes narrowing as she eased her weight down a little more in the stirrups.

He's wild and he doesn't like fences.

Clark's brother circled wide, lifted his chin: Clark dipped hers, knowing he'd see her hat brim drop, knew he'd see her acknowledgement.

Clark flipped the lariat a little, just enough to make it move, just enough to hold the bull calf's attention.

She looked at its horns -- not terribly long, but long enough to cause harm.

Clark's brother started easing up on the bull calf from behind, his mare sneaking with practiced care through the sandy, sparsely-grassed terrain.

The bull calf turned his head, snorted, bolted, then stopped, forelegs stiff, splayed, nostrils flared with sudden alarm.

Clark and her mare surged forward, a loop sailed through the air like a flying snake, dropped over the bull calf's head, a second loop, faster, dropping behind the first: leather-gloved hands dallied plaited reata leather around their saddlehorns, two mares backed, tensioning the lines.

Only then did they see it.

Something big, considerably bigger than the bull calf, something with a hell of a lot more horn stuck out either side of its monstrous head.

A Texas longhorn stopped, lowered its head, grunted, once.

 

Michael Keller ran toward Boocaffie, jumped, threw his legs wide, grabbed his beloved play-buddy around the neck.

Boocaffie knew Michael since the days when Michael would run, laughing, buck naked, out the door and into the pasture, delight and giggles scattering in equal amounts as one parent or another would chase after him, diaper in hand and distress on their face.

Michael Keller grew up riding his Gampaw's genuine Texas longhorn, or climbing all over the big bovine, or crawling around underneath and generally using what most men considered death on four hooves as his personal play buddy.

Boocaffie grew up orphaned, Boocaffie grew up convinced these two-legs were all part of his herd, and Boocaffie did not take it amiss at all when Michael -- ten years old now, all legs and grin and boyish laughter -- climbed a-straddle of him and rode him here, there, and yonder.

When the two ended up on the McKenna ranch, Boocaffie trotted easily around their line fence, then angled off into the brush country.

Boocaffie was half wild his own self, but he'd never been fence busting wild like Bonnie McKenna's bull calf: that particular beef was a known problem, but he was one of Bonnie's herd, and more times than one Michael, or Jacob, or someone else close by, ended up bringing the unwilling bovine back at the end of a lasso -- unless, of course, said bovine showed up with somebody's lasso still around his neck and dragging along behind.

Michael and Boocaffie moved easily through the brush -- Boocaffie had considerable strength, and shoving through brush, even with that impressive spread of powder horns, was not a challenge -- at least not until another bull faced off with them.

Michael felt Boocaffie change under him.

He'd done this before.

Michael grinned a little, and it was not a pleasant grin, it was not a friendly grin.

He leaned forward, gripped the big rough bases of genuine Long Horn, he half-murmured, half-whispered, "Git 'im, boy," and he felt Boocaffie gather a great chest full of air, knew he was about to bellow a challenge.

Michael knew what it was for Boocaffie to square off against another bull.

Michael knew what it was for Boocaffie to knock another bull Galley West.

Michael knew what it was to damn near fly off Boocaffie's back at impact -- he'd thrown his legs forward, he'd bent over Boocaffie's forehead, stopped only by virtue of his legs slamming up against the backs of those long Texas horns.

That didn't happen.

Michael was ready to ride this hooved mountain of muscle into battle when he saw one lariat, then another, raise up and snap down and come tight around the bull calf's neck.

He leaned back like he would lean back in the saddle -- he let go of horn and said "Ho, now, ho, boy, ho," and Boocaffie huffed out a great breath and ho'd.

 

Bonnie McKenna looked up and blinked in surprise.

Clark and her brother, mounted, were not an unusual sight.

Clark and her brother, each with a lariat around their wayward bull calf's neck, was somewhat out of the ordinary: one rider on each side, and the bull calf looked rather chastened, and then she saw why.

A grinning boy followed them, and beneath the boy, a massive, powerful, honest to Samuel Langhorn Clemens, a genuine Texas longhorn.

Sarah McKenna came out on the porch, shaded her eyes, smiled: she skipped down the steps like she was a little girl again, she shot back the wooden latch, swung the gate open so Clark and her brother could get the bull calf back in pasture.

Boocaffie held back, as he always did: Sarah shut the gate, slammed the wooden bolt back, turned and tilted her head, regarding Boocaffie with her usual fondness.

Michael Keller grinned at Bonnie as Sarah cooed and made over a genuine Texas longhorn as if this big beast was a favorite pet, and Boocaffie closed his eyes with pleasure and as Sarah's skilled fingers worked around his ears and around the back of his jaw, as he decided he'd give her about a week to stop that.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NOM DE ... SANDWICH?

Clark set her boot up on the bottom fence rail.

Her brother did the same.

Most folks thought they were husband and wife, some thought they were two brothers, at least until Clark unwound the braids from around her neck and let them swing.

Clark grew up on a ranch, doing a man's work because her Pa was dead and her brothers were killed, and work honestly does not care if anyone is there to do the work or not.

Clark grew up in the saddle, handling beeves and horses, hammer and saw and whatever else needed doing, and when her Mama took sick and sold the ranch, Clark and her brother set out to find a cattle drive and ended up on the McKenna ranch.

Levi Rosenthal was a city man and out of his depth, and deferred quickly and without protest to Clark's running of the spread, as far as handling cattle and other necessary operations: his scoundrel of a brother (a disgrace to the honorable family name!) fired Clark multiple times, the last time the morning of the day of his murder in a Denver theater, where a heavy chandelier was intentionally dropped on him.

Since that time, Clark and her brother did honest work for honest wage -- and endeared them both into Bonnie's heart when she told Bonnie she knew her late husband just plainly drove the ranch into bankruptcy and she didn't have to pay her cash money until the ranch was on its feet and making money again.

That didn't take nearly as long as expected ... something to do with a certain green-eyed businesswoman who sold a small silver mine and gave the proceeds to Bonnie to pay off her ranch's mortgage and get her back on her feet.

Clark, like most Western folk, tended to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.

The quick-to-listen part told her that, not only was Bonnie and that green-eyed, red-headed Esther Keller the very best of friends, they'd gone into business ventures together, to their mutual profit and benefit, and Clark couldn't put her finger on exactly what gave her the notion ... but she'd learned long years before to trust her gut, and her gut told her that Esther's husband hid his feelings for Miz Bonnie.

It did not surprise Clark, therefore, when a certain trouble making, fence busting nuisance of a bull calf quietly disappeared, and was replaced with another, this of a good bloodline, a white-faced Hereford with a half-dozen cows of the same persuasion, that just kind of appeared in the far end of the pasture one fine day.

Not was Clark terribly surprised when she and her brother were given wrapped packages of ground beef immediately thereafter.

Clark never knew for sure, but she strongly suspected that the Texan that came through a year before, selling hand cranked meat grinders, provided the device that probably converted a certain trouble making bull calf into something edible and therefore far less troublesome.

She couldn't prove it; the meat arrived by wagon, in a wooden chest packed with snow hauled down from the mountain, from high enough up it never thawed: Clark was impressed, as that was a distance, a haul, a great deal of work just to keep eatin' meat cooled down for a little while.

 

Polly and Opal weren't twins, but they might as well have been.

One was blond haired and blue eyed, with the milk fair, honestly flawless complexion of her Celtic Scots ancestors: her hair was a rich auburn that didn't quite glow red in the sun, but near enough.

Opal was the daughter of an Oriental woman who died in childbirth: she had Polly's fair skin, but the black eyes and straight black hair of her mother.

Half-sisters they were, but identical in build, in height: Bonnie dressed them alike, they often finished each others' sentences, and they seemed to have that curious connection shared only by birth-twins.

It was something they took for granted, as had their families: in the eyes of the community, they were Bonnie's daughters, they were young and beautiful, and Opal's epicanthic folds at the corners of her eyes added to a girl's beauty, and as they matured, added a not of mystery that men's hearts would find captivating.

This, however, is further in future than this account wishes to reach.

Suffice it to say that twin-looking sisters stood on either side of Sarah Lynne McKenna, marveling at the sight of a white-faced Hereford, who was busy eating the biscuit Sarah held with one hand, while caressing smooth neck fur with the other.

The smell of frying meat floated out and teased their appetites.

Three sisters turned and looked toward the house as the maid tapped briskly on the triangle with a wooden spoon: it was a feminine rat-tat, tat, instead of the commanding "Come and get it!" that might be used to summon hard-working ranch hands.

Three proper young ladies washed their hands at the outdoor basin and skipped inside, sat down, then looked at the plates set before them, surprised.

"It's something new, from Texas," Sarah described, picking hers up: she took a long, appreciative breath, savoring the welcome aromas rising toward her nose. "Pick it up and take a bite!"

The maid had prepared patties of ground beef as Sarah instructed her: peppers and onions were worked into the ground meat, pattied out, fried with bacon grease, with diced onion.

Sarah bit into hers without hesitation.

She'd encountered this Texas invention before, a fried patty of ground meat between slices of sourdough.

Her sisters tentatively sampled theirs, found them very much to their taste.

It may not have been a dainty and feminine meal, it may not be what one would consume, nor the way to consume it, in a social and decorous setting.

It was, however quite good, and when the maid offered more, she was not turned down.

 

Clark and her brother fried up as much diced peppers and onions as they'd fried up meat.

Theirs were not sandwiches, on sourdough: they had their bread separate.

No, they ate fried, ground up meat, loose in the skillet, with diced slices of bacon and plenty of peppers and onions and garlic Clark mashed with the side of her knife.

They ate with the appetite of the hard-working.

 

Both groups -- those who ate theirs between buttered sourdough, and those who ate theirs on plates -- agreed this was, indeed, the best use of a certain fence busting bull calf who acquired his name, posthumously, courtesy two sisters who considered the matter and then, twinlike, spoke with one voice.

"Sandwich."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SEAMSTRESS IN THE DARK

Michael Keller walked quietly along the curved flagstone path.

It was cooling now, the temperature comfortable after the day's seasonable heat.

He saw the stone bench, knew there was a curved wall behind: he could sit here and not fear anyone coming up behind.

His newly sewn suit, a replacement for the one he'd ruined, fitted him perfectly.

He'd been told the seamstress who sewed it for him, would be here: he had the sneaking suspicion both he, and the lady in question, had been set up, and when he saw her stop and look at him, startled, almost hopeful, his suspicion firmed up a little.

She'd stopped, as if she, too, had intended to occupy the bench.

Michael removed his Stetson.

"My Lady," he said, his voice gentle, "may I share this bench with you?"

There was enough light to see her face, to see her bite her bottom lip and nod.

Michael waited until she was seated before lowering himself beside her.

He turned his Stetson slowly between his hands, leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

"I wanted --" he began, and "You seem --" she began, and they both stopped, surprised.

Michael said "You go first," and she replied "No, you," and they both stopped again.

Michael felt his ears turning red.

He rose, offered his hand.

"My name is Michael," he said gently.

She took his hand -- her fingers were soft, cool, the way he remembered his Mama's touch -- "I know," she whispered, and Michael felt his face warm a bit.

He took a breath -- he intended to ask if he had the honor of addressing the seamstress that made his suit -- she jerked her hand back, covered her face in embarrassment.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, then spread her fingers, peeked between them like a shy little girl, and giggled.

"I'm Michelle," she squeaked, and lowered her face into her hands and laughed, the way an uncertain girl will when she's sure she's just embarrassed herself beyond any hope of recovery.

Michael went to one knee, took her hand again.

She didn't resist, but her other hand still cupped over her mouth, almost as if she were hiding, shy as a little girl.

"I understand," he said carefully, "I have you to thank for this excellent suit."

"Yes," she mumbled into her hand, nodding.

If her ears get any hotter, he thought, her hair is going to catch fire.

Michael rose, resumed his seat beside her, slouched forward, easing the strain on his lower back.

"I ruined the suit I was wearing," he said conversationally, as if picking up where they'd left off.

He stared straight ahead, saw the sunset line climbing distant hills: he saw her lower her hands again, but carefully did not look at her.

He didn't dare.

"Who was she?"

Somehow Michael was not surprised at the question.

"Her name," he said slowly, "was Juliette."

Silence, again.

A cricket began singing somewhere in the shadows.

Michael stared at the ground, remembering when he sat beside someone he'd come to ...

Love?

What was it she said, when I told her about Juliette?

Puppy love.

Michael blinked, remembering the confused hurt he felt when the term was laid across his soul like a whip.

He'd recognized at once his affection for Juliette, but he also recognized the voice spoke with the experience of years he did not have, and he considered she just might be right.

He'd not told anyone else how he felt.

No one.

Not even Marnie.

He'd gone to Marnie, after Juliette died, and told her he needed a shuttle, he needed taken to a particular block of space, and he'd told Marnie why.

Marnie listened without question as Michael told her he'd made a promise, how he'd told Juliette in her last hour of life, as he sat and held her hand as the plant's poison ate her nerves and her brain, that she wished to be among the stars she'd seen when she'd been given back her eyes, and he'd said he would make it happen.

Marnie did not ask, but he saw understanding in her eyes, and when he returned, after committing her ashes to the Deep, Marnie held him, held him in an understanding silence.

Michael swallowed, remembered what it was to sit beside someone for whom he felt a connection, and now here he was, sitting beside a young lady, in a flower-scented evening garden, with a cricket's quiet serenade, and memories.

"Juliette," Michelle said softly, "is a lovely name."

Michael nodded.

He felt Michelle's hand, light on his shoulder blade.

He did not pull away.

"I'm sorry."

Her words were a whisper.

"No," Michael said, standing.  "I am sorry."

He turned and faced Michelle.

"Thank you for making me this suit," he said. "I ruined the one I'd been wearing."

"What did you do, to ruin it?" she asked, genuinely curious.

Michael didn't laugh -- it was more a sardonic snort -- "I helped sandbag against a flood."

"Oh, my," Michelle murmured, her eyes widening with concern.

"Dirt, sand, abrasion, I should have been in blue jeans but" -- he shrugged -- "when work needs done, you do the work."

"You sandbagged a flood," Michelle said slowly, as if tasting unfamiliar words.

Michael nodded, turned, sat again, hung his head, fatigue rising in his young soul.

The past couple days was catching up with him.

"We laid down tarps and overlapped 'em, we pulled up the sandbagged-down tarps to make a waterproof wall and stacked sandbags on the forward side and then bagged on top of ... that."

Michelle considered this, trying to picture what Michael was describing.

"I forget how many tons of sand we shoveled into bags and stacked up," Michael admitted.

"We loaded 'em on sleds and dragged the sleds to where we needed 'em.

"My back is givin' me billy Hell, and I'll likely cuss myself in the morning, but we stopped the flood."

Michelle waited, then offered, tentatively, "I'm ... glad I got a good fit on your suit."

Michael turned his head, looked at her, smiled -- the gentle smile of a tired young man who is only just starting to allow himself to relax -- he nodded.

"Thank you," he said gently. "It fits perfectly."

Michael blinked, looked away: Michelle felt like he'd just closed a door on her.

"I'm sorry," she said hesitantly. "Did ... I do something wrong?"

Michael looked at her again, quickly, surprised.

"No," he said quickly.  "No ..."
He stopped, closed his mouth, tightened his jaw, swallowed.

"It's ... just ..."

He looked at her again.

"Michelle, I'm sorry. The fault is mine entirely."

"But ... you didn't do anything ..."

"I'm afraid," Michael said, his voice flat, as if realizing something about himself he really, genuinely disliked.

"I don't understand ... afraid?" Michelle echoed in honest puzzlement, for everything she'd seen on the Inter-System -- everything -- told her Michael was not the kind to be ...

Afraid?

He took a long breath, clenched his teeth, stared into the gathering shadows.

"Her name was Juliette," he said quietly. "She's dead now. This" -- he looked at her, as if realizing something he hadn't wanted to admit to himself.

"You're ... this ... this is the first time I've set down with someone since then."

Michael thrust to his feet, turned, his hat in his hand.

"Thank you again," he said, then walked quickly away, clapping his Stetson on his head -- Michelle stood, turned, heard him whistle, saw something big canter across the yard toward him.

Le Chevalier, she thought, near-forgotten words floating up from a dark pool of memory, whispers she'd heard from admiring women, watching Michael and his father on the Inter-System.

Michelle smiled as Michael lifted his Stetson in salute, as Lightning turned, surprisingly briskly for a creature of her tonnage.

Michelle remembered Michael's words, his frank admission of what troubled his soul -- something told her he'd confided a matter he hadn't told anyone else.

Another phrase came to mind, and she smiled at its recollection.

Un homme convenable, she thought, hearing the words in her mother's approving voice.

A proper man.

 

 

Edited August 27, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NO WAY TO RUN A RAILROAD

Sarah Lynne McKenna turned the back-painted, cast-iron wheel, tightened the chain leading down to the caboose's mechanical brakes.

Her speed was pretty well decayed now.

She'd ridden the uncoupled crummy down grade, around the final curve, she'd slowed judiciously, carefully, waiting until she was across the trestle and had the Firelands depot in sight, before turning the wheel a few degrees more.

She didn't make it to the rest of the train like she'd wanted, but she was within one caboose-length of recoupling, and that was enough.

 

The Christmas before, Sarah was given her Mama's Bible, and what information her pale eyed Daddy, and her soft-voiced Mama, could tell her about herself.

Sarah had long hoped the Sheriff was actually her sire.

He confessed he'd sired both her and Jacob on other women.

He offered no excuses, his words were blunt, plain, fact, and Sarah held her Mama's Bible, traded to Filthy Sam for a shot of cheap rot gut of some kind.

The Christmas before, she sat with her Mama, with her sire, with her Daddy and with Esther: she'd placed her Mama's Bible on the table in front of her, she'd seized her sire's hand with one of hers, she'd taker her Mama's hand in a gentler grip: she looked around at expectant eyes, she considered carefully her words.

It was her fourteenth birthday.

A woman of her years was marriageable, Sarah was graduated from eighth grade and had her teaching certificate, His Honor the Judge had recruited her for what he called "Nefarious Purposes Under the Law" -- which meant Sarah put her quick-change and costuming skills to work, it meant she put all the skills she'd surreptitiously acquired from thespians and the theatre, all the tricks of makeup and character acquisition, to work for His Honor the Judge.

When Sarah rode a disconnected caboose to a gentle stop in Firelands, and dismounted with a laugh and a wave to the startled station-master, she was just returned from one such expedition on behalf of the Law and the Badge, and it probably came close to costing her life -- it very definitely came close to damaging her virtue.

Sarah snatched up her skirts, ran up the white oak steps she and that pale eyed Sheriff built together, danced the length of the depot platform and took the startled Lightning's face between both hands, kissed him quickly: she spun, laughing, as he raised stiff and startled fingers to his lips, as he turned to follow her with his eyes.

Sarah skipped happily to the end of the platform: "Yoo-hoo!" she called, "Catch Me!"

A startled Jackson Cooper, summoned at the report of a dead man and an hysterical woman on the train, looked up just in time to see something in a brown dress leap from the end of the platform, right toward him.

Jackson Cooper caught her easily, rolled Sarah up against his chest: Sarah laughed like a happy child, hugged the man quickly around the neck, then said "I need to see the Sheriff!" and twisted out of his startled, strong, gentlemanly grip.

 Lightning, staring from the Depot platform, still hand flat fingers pressed to his startled lips.

He had the distinct feeling he'd just made the grazing acquaintance with a young Kansas twister with pale eyes and a mousy-grown dress.

He and Jackson Cooper looked at one another, each one not entirely sure just what the hell was going on, but both men silently realizing that where Sarah was involved, these things tended to happen.

 

Sarah changed quickly, as she always did.

Her life depended on her speed, on her skill: she'd changed from a fashionable gown to a mousy-brown day gown, the kind a hard-working wife would wear, one of moderate means: gone were the cosmetics, the shining-wet-looking lips, the elaborate coiffure: instead, a woman, young, but tired-looking, her hair braided, quickly, carelessly, twisted up into a bun at the back of her head: Sarah's only cosmetic was to dip a small brush into a tiny bottle of something that smelled strongly of ether, to paint a line from the freshly-scrubbed corner of her eye, down her cheek, a second line crossing this, running across her throat: a dab of sticking-plaster under the eyelid on the affected side, to pull the lid down and make her eye water, and when she spoke, after this clear liquid chilled her skin and dried, after it puckered her skin and created what looked convincingly like two knife-slashes, one down her face and one across her throat -- Sarah would now speak in a raspy whisper, and if actually forced into conversation, would apologize and trace apparently-regretful fingertips over the scar across her throat and whisper, "I used to sing opera."

She'd used that selfsame device before, to good success.

Her gown went in a carpet bag, the carpet bag went into the corner of the baggage-car, anonymous among crates, trunks and valises.

Sarah had been on business for the Judge.

Sarah had her report in a messenger-bag, secured for reliable conveyance to His Honor the Judge in case she herself should be ... interdicted ... by powerful men who did not wish their plans discovered.

Sarah didn't know if anyone followed her, if danger rode the train to Firelands with her, but experience had taught her caution, and that experience taught her she might have been followed.

She proceeded to the next car, smiled at the young woman, a cook laboring at the cast-iron stove: a meal was being prepared, both for hard-working railroaders, and for the passengers in the dining-car.

She looked up at Sarah, smiled -- and made a mistake.

She thought Sarah was her relief.

"Be a dear and tend this, would you?" she asked with the distressed expression of a woman with urgent business elsewhere -- Sarah smiled, nodded, took the wooden spoon, assumed yet another role, changing identity as easily as a chameleon changing its skin patterns.

The stew smelled quite good -- it was thick, almost a gravy instead of a broth -- Sarah sipped a bit of the sauce from the spoon, smiled: she took a towel, used it to open the fire door, added another two sticks of wood, closed the door.

She straightened as the door at the far end of the car opened.

Sarah's gut tightened.

It wasn't so much what she saw, as what she felt, that alarmed her.

Sarah's Mama was a successful rancher with a spread a crooked banker wanted: the banker arranged for her Mama and her husband to be poisoned, he'd prepared forged papers: the poisoner killed her Papa, but her Mama survived, and woke to find herself chained by the ankle, upstairs, in a whorehouse crib: she'd been brutalized, beaten, starved, until her spirit broke.

Sarah was the wee child of a violent man who'd beaten her -- beaten both Sarah, and the woman who would become her Mama -- Sarah saw, and experienced, things no child ever should, Sarah's innocent young soul was long ago scarred, hardened, and every instinct Sarah held, SCREAMED at her that this intruder meant her great harm, and probably in ways Sarah would very definitely not like.

Sarah still had the towel in hand.

She seized a kettle of boiling water from the stove, turned -- the intruer surged forward, intending to seize Sarah's arm, his other hand coming up in a fist, his intent clear.

Grab.

Punch.

Reduce to possession.

His grasping hand was open, fingers spread, driving forward -- through boiling water and hitting the bottom of the kettle.

Hard.

The pain of fingers stoved, nearly broken, was instantaneous.

It took a moment longer for the sensation of FIRE PAIN to register.

Sarah had already released the kettle.

Her towel-gripping hand closed about the handle of a convenient, hot-from-the-stovetop frying pan -- she swung, connected -- she remembered the wounded-animal bellow --

Sarah skipped backwards, looking around --

Frying pan and towel fell, forgotten, as she snapped her arm to the side, seized the stiff-backed butcher, her hand closing as she'd practiced and practiced and practiced again --

She did not take the knife in a normal grip.

She seized it such that its butt was in her palm, the handle stuck out between ring and middle fingers, she stepped into the punch, she drove the knife as hard as she could into the man's face.

She'd aimed for the eyes.

She didn't miss.

Sarah did not look to see how well she did or did not do, she turned and thrust out the far door, swung around.

She lacked the running momentum to get to the next car's platform.

She turned, seized the black-painted, wrought-iron ladder, climbed quickly: she looked to the head of the train, not far away -- no tunnels, no branches, nothing to knock her off -- she looked to the caboose, also not far, saw nobody waiting, no heads poked up to watch --

Sarah surged onto the car's roof, ran.

Sarah Lynne McKenna, Agent of the Firelands District Court, a detective without the title, the woods-colt daughter of a certain pale eyed Sheriff, hauled up a double handful of skirts and petticoats and ran as if the Devil himself was after her.

She leaped the gap between cars, she hit the narrow walkway with one foot and kept right on a-goin', she stopped, turned, swarmed down the baggage car's ladder.

The gap between the crummy and the baggage car was small.

Sarah leaped the gap gracefully, easily.

Sarah came into the caboose with a bulldog .44 in her fist and war in her heart.

Nobody was within.

No brakeman, no conductor, nobody ... she found herself in possession of an untenanted crummy, and the knowledge that someone wanted to do something truly terrible to her, and she'd stopped him.

She did not waste time with feeling sorry for the cook who would return to find her stew scorched on the bottom, a purposed kettle of boiling water spilled, a man dead on the floor with one of her knives hilt deep in his eye socket.

No, Sarah's thoughts were those of a wounded animal.

Her wounds were soul-deep, blazing again, though she herself was not hurt from her recent encounter.

She was still tethered to who knows how many that may try and attack her yet again.

Escape!

Sarah considered, looked outside, frowned.

She knew they were headed for Firelands.

She knew if she were on foot, she'd possibly be outrun, captured again.

Sarah considered, remembered something she'd heard, there in the Silver Jewel, when she was hidden behind the little stage's curtain, listening to men talk.

The railroaders spoke of uncoupling from a moving train.

Sarah smiled as she remembered their talk, considered that it was a down grade from here to Firelands.

She remembered the railroaders' descriptions, talking with the importance of men who knew their trade and wished to impress something on new hires, and so Sarah put what she'd heard, to practical use.

 

The conductor's words were quick, concerned, his gestures powerful.

He'd made his pass through his train -- his train! -- he and the brakeman returned to find a man dead in the cook car, the cook was just short of hysterical, his caboose was missing entirely--

They turned and stared as the caboose came coasting in to the depot, as a woman expertly braked the car to a stop, as the woman laughed her way down the cast-iron steps, up onto the platform and then jumped into the Marshal's arms.

Lightning and the conductor looked at one another, looked at the big Town Marshal as he carefully set the woman down on her feet, as she came up on her toes and kissed the end of the Marshal's nose.

The conductor shoved his black-billed cap back and scratched his thatch.

"This," he muttered, "is no way to run a railroad!"

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A PLACE TO BE FROM

Sheriff Jacob Keller sat down, worked his boy backside into the familiar, thick, hand sewn, genuine hair pillow on his contoured wooden office chair.

His beautiful bride decided to have her nearly-knee-length hair abbreviated: it was  still fashionably done, but not nearly as difficult to maintain: she'd made him two pillows, stuffed with her hair, one for his office chair and one as a shooting pillow when he went out with a rifle for some varmint hunting.

Jacob rose and pressed the door release: there had been a knock, rather than use of the door chime, and that meant it was the Administrator, a man who -- for reasons of his own -- preferred the percussion of knuckles on the portal, rather than pressing his thumb into the doorbell button.

"Mister Administrator," Jacob greeted him with the hint of a smile: the two men shook hands, and Jacob's eyes tightened a little more with amusement at the Administrator's shocked expression.

Jacob knew why.

He was only just returned from vacation, back on Earth.

 

Most barfights are brief, brutal, over by the time the Law gets there.

Jacob was riding shotgun with his father, The Bear Killer in the back seat, distressed to be separated from family by the prisoner cage.

Jacob and his wife Ruth were planning to return to Mars the next day, and Jacob wanted one last ride with his father.

They were just making a routine pasear through the parking lot of the Spring Inn when the front door flew open and a body half-fell out the slammed-open door and hit the ground, unmoving.

Sheriff Linn Keller braked to a stop and sighed, deeply, almost sadly.

"Well," he said, "let's see what's going --"

Another body flew out, this one with arms upraised, mouth open in a sustained scream, though whether of fear, rage, pain or rampant stupidity, neither lawman was sure:  all they knew was, they bailed out and waded in and found they hadn't grabbed hold of a drunk, nor of a standard issue human: no, they had hold of something that was probably fueled by certain illegal pharmaceuticals, as it responded neither to reasonable verbal commands, nor to pain-compliance holds.

They found were obliged to use a greater amount of force than usual to reduce the subject to possession.

In other words, when the part of the first part was landed on by the party of the second part, after which the parties third and fourth engaged, said late arrivals found themselves thrown, hit, charged and otherwise treated in less than a gentlemanly manner.

This suited Jacob just fine.

It had been a while since he'd been in a good knock-down drag-out fight.

He drove a heelstrike into the raging man's forehead -- hard -- he was going for, if not a knockout, at least a stun: Linn got him from behind in a choke hold, Jacob drove his fist into the man's wind, hard enough to punch his guts up into his throat, and Linn pulled the kicking, snarling, thrashing, then fading, sagging, and finally limp subject away from engagement range with his still-unmoving victim.

 

The Firelands Administrator -- a native of the Martian colony who'd never set foot on Earth -- regarded Jacob's shiner with concern.

"I understood you planned to return yesterday," he said carefully, "and I wanted to give you and your wife a day to settle back in."

"Kindly of ye," Jacob said, and the administrator's ear pulled back a little as he heard Jacob's native accent, stronger now that he'd immersed in his native culture for a week.

The Administrator raised a tentative hand to his own cheekbone, nodded to Jacob.

"Have you had that looked at?" he asked, his voice uncertain.

"Oh, ya. Cheekbone's cracked and it's kind of colorful, but it's okay."

"Cracked ... Sheriff, what happened?"

Jacob shrugged.

"I still have a Deputy's commission back home. My father is Sheriff. We came across a fellow on drugs who'd just ... put two other men in hospital, so we took him in."

"And that" -- the Administrator touched his own cheekbone again -- "is the result."

Jacob shrugged. "Another day at the office."

The Administrator took a long breath, clearly uncomfortable.

"From all I've seen on the Inter-System," he said carefully, "I don't think I ever want to go back to Earth."  He nodded to Jacob. "From the looks of ... Sheriff, I've seen you sparring. You're good. If Earth is that dangerous --"

The Administrator shook his head.

"Sometimes," Jacob admitted, "I think Earth is a fine place to be from."

 

Ruth was unusually quiet at supper that night.

Joseph ate with a good appetite.

He looked at his Mama and said, "This is the best looking omelet I've ever eaten!"

"I'll agree," Jacob murmured quietly as he bit down on another strip of bacon.

He looked at Ruth and said quietly, "Darlin', what troubles you?"

He'd noticed how carefully, how precisely, Ruth had cut up the peppers, the onions, he'd noticed her slow precision cuts as she diced the vegetable components: she was normally a tidy and well organized woman, but this was rigid, this was strictly controlled, this was -- to his husband's observant eye -- a sign that she was attempting to bring order to some recent disorder she'd internalized.

"We went shopping," Ruth said quietly.

Jacob grinned. "Mama does like to shop," he agreed. "She'd have turned us all into clothes horses if we'd have let her."

Joseph filed the phrase away for future research: he had the mental image of an Appaloosa in pajamas, but dismissed it as quickly as it materialized.

"She drove."

Jacob was quiet for a long moment, then he nodded, slowly.

"You've never ridden in an Earth motor vehicle."

Ruth stared at her emptied plate, shook her head.

"Darlin'," Jacob said softly, his hand warm as it covered hers, "that would have been genuinely frightening!"

 

Cleanup after supper was fast, the table was wiped down, a clean tablecloth spread, and the family sat down for Jacob's nightly reading of Scripture.

Joseph heard the *pop* of his Mama's embroidery needle penetrating taut cloth, he listened to his Pa's quiet-voiced reading from the Book, and he remembered.

Children learn by observation and by imitation.

Joseph observed how his Pa treated his Mama, not like a woman, but like a Lady -- unfailingly, every time -- he saw how his Pa listened carefully to Ruth, he saw the reassurance of that strong, masculine hand laid over hers.

In the fullness of time, Joseph would put these lessons to use in how he treated a pretty young woman, but that is some time in future: here, tonight, Joseph Keller, son of Sheriff Jacob Keller, was content to listen to the Word, and hear the *pop* of an embroidery needle piercing taut cloth, and to remember watching news from Earth on the Inter-System.

From his father's face, his mother's discomfiture, and events featured on the Inter-System news broadcast, Joseph could not help but consider:

Perhaps Earth was, indeed, a fine place to be from!

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CAN DO!

Jacob Keller ate in silence.

He'd not been with this pale eyed man for ... well, he thought, today made three months.

He still didn't have the Sheriff figured out.

The Sheriff was quiet, polite, soft spoken.

The Sheriff reminded Jacob of water just as it started to simmer, right before it began a vigorous boil.

Jacob had seen the man when he was being ... impressive ... he'd seen the Sheriff take a man by the throat and pin him against a building, he'd seen the Sheriff wade into a man who wanted to club him, watched as he deflected the down-swinging arm while driving a fist into the attacker's wind, hard enough to bring daylight between the ground and the attacker's boot soles.

He had not, however, absolutely, positively, violently, lost his cork and gone all pale eyed rage.

Not so far, anyway, Jacob thought, his face and his eyes carefully expressionless.

Jacob watched carefully, even while pretending not to watch, as this Sheriff who'd taken him in, interacted with his wife, and he studied this green-eyed, red-headed woman who'd taken him in like a mama hen will adopt in a stray chick.

Jacob had precious few memories of life before his Mama took up with that murderous drunken wife beatin' no good that horse whipped her to death, who tried to do the same with Jacob: his recollections of relations between husband and wife were violent, terrifying, horrors.

Jacob did his best to turn invisible as he sat at the table.

The Sheriff looked at Jacob.

"More if you want it," he offered. "We got plenty."

Jacob blinked, surprised: "Thank you, sir," he said quietly.

"Pass me your plate."

The Sheriff's voice was fatherly, warm, his eyes were actually a light blue now -- Jacob blinked, looked again.

He felt his mother looking at him -- he thought of her as his mother, for the woman who birthed him would always be his Mama -- he glanced quickly at the Sheriff's wife and saw she was, indeed, studying him, but with a gentle, patient, maternal expression.

Jacob accepted the refilled plate, and the Sheriff took a little more himself: he lifted his head a little, looked over his wife's careful hairdo and spoke to the Girl, "Mary, thank you. These green beans are wonderful!"

The hired girl blushed furiously: she dipped her knees and mumbled her thanks, and Jacob considered this facet of the pale eyed man who'd taken him in like a son.

Esther spoke quietly, smiling as she did: she mentioned the prospect of drillers moving into the area, and the Sheriff spoke of gas wells drilled in along the Cumberland River, back East, that caught fire and might still be burning today: Jacob listened beneath the words, and heard planning, and business sense, as mention was made of native clay possibly being baked into bricks for construction.

He watched the Sheriff's eyebrow raise as he stopped eating, as he considered his wife's words, as he gave her an approving look and said "My dear, that sounds like a properly profitable enterprise" -- he lowered his head a fraction, looked very directly at her and added, "your properly profitable enterprise!"

Jacob made a mental note to watch, in future, if this meant the Sheriff was recognizing "Your idea, your profits," or if he was saying "You do the work and I'll take the money, you are my wife and I own you" -- as kind as the man had consistently been, as unfailingly considerate as Jacob had seen when this man interacted with his wife, Jacob had been hurt and hurt deeply, and he was ... not entirely trusting.

Jacob finished his second plate: he was comfortably full now.

"Jacob," the Sheriff said quietly.

Jacob froze, his stomach tightening inside of him.

"I need your help."

Jacob swallowed.

"Yes, sir?"

The Sheriff looked over to where the Girl was slicing something in a pan.

"Mary has made us an excellent pie, and I can't eat it all myself," the Sheriff said with a straight face, if you ignored the merriment he tried to hide behind his eyes. "Do you reckon you can assist me in handling that detail?"

Jacob blinked, looked at Mother, who was trying hard not to smile, and having no success at all.

He looked at that pale eyed Sheriff.

"Yes, sir," he said firmly. "I can do that."

Edited August 31, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103