SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NO OBJECTION

Jacob Keller came into the kitchen through the back door, his hat in his hand and worry in his eyes.

"Mother," he said gently, as Esther came into the room, tugging her fingers from her gloves, "I have a concern."

Esther Keller stopped worrying her emerald-green gloves and gave Jacob her absolute, unblinking attention: Jacob never addressed her les than absolutely respectfully, but his address was now carefully formal -- excessively so -- and he'd caught her the moment she got home.

In other words, she knew the matter was serious.

Esther nodded once, her shining, Irish-green eyes on her son's ice-pale eyes.

"The Sheriff's horse is returned home, ma'am, with an empty saddle," Jacob said frankly. "I am about to Back Trail him, but I ... wanted to let you know first."

"You fear some misfortune," Esther said quietly -- a statement, not a question -- and Jacob nodded.

"His rifle is in its place and unfired, ma'am.  I saw neither blood nor damage to his saddle, and his stallion is uninjured as well."

"Please find him," Esther said quietly.

Jacob's gaze snapped suddenly to his left.

Esther saw the look on his face: she thrust forward, took his arm, turned with him to look out the kitchen window.

Sheriff Linn Keller looked up and could just make out two faces regarding him from the house.

His wet and muddied coat hung damp, his feet were wet, he was filthy all down his right side, and his wet Stetson hung from one hand.

Esther and Jacob departed the kitchen by the back door.

 

The Sheriff grinned and leaned forward in the saddle.

His stallion felt the shift in weight, felt the rider's knees tighten: Apple-horse laid his ears back and punched his nose forward, and drove a hole in the still evening air.

They followed the trail down hill, picking up velocity and aiming for the board fence.

Horse and rider kicked the earth away from them, sailed over the fence: Apple-horse landed hard, stumbled, gathered himself and absolutely assaulted the broad, shallow stream

Water detonated underhoof, blasting shining crystal drops up into the last long rays of sunset scarlet: Apple bunched his legs under him and attacked the far bank.

He scrambled, dug, fought his way up, and over, and galloped on toward home pasture.

The Sheriff, however, was recovering from his unhappy discovery that Terra Firma was, indeed, much more firma than he could possibly enjoy.

Very likely hitting a vein of native clay, and sliding down its slick surface into the COLD! mountain meltwater, had something to do with his displeasure.

The Sheriff continued his journey on foot, wet, bruised, alternately profaning his misfortune, and honestly laughing at his foolishness.

When he neared his home and beheld his wife and his son approach, he laughed again.

"My dear," Esther said gently, concern in her voice and worry in her eyes.

The Sheriff lifted her knuckles to his lips, then looked at Jacob.

"I would be very much obliged," the Sheriff said quietly, "if you ever hear me speaking all high and mighty about my skill with horses, please remind me of this moment."

"Yes, sir."

"My dear" -- his attention returned to his red-headed wife -- "I must beg pardon for my sorry appearance, and if the Girl wishes to put my suit a-soak overnight, I shall not object."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AN EQUAL UNHAPPINESS

Sheriff Jacob Keller sat shoulder to shoulder with his sister.

Jacob regarded his sister with knowing eyes.

Ambassador Marnie Keller, for all her leaning into him as if for comfort, gave him a dirty look.

Jacob took a long, patient breath, ran his arm around her shoulders.

Marnie laid her head over on his shoulder and honestly groaned as Jacob's hand squeezed her opposite shoulder the way a brother will when his sister is troubled.

"I have a shotgun, a backhoe and 40 acres," Jacob said softly. "Who do I need to take care of?"

"Won't help," Marnie mumbled.

"What will?"

Jacob's voice was quiet, deep, reassuring, and for a moment Marnie heard her long tall Daddy's voice rumbling out of her brother's throat.

Marnie shook her head.

"Even if I had a time machine," she sighed, "I wouldn't listen to myself."

Jacob grunted and she felt his nod.

"Sooo ... it's the woman-in-the-mirror syndrome?"

"Something like that."

It was Jacob's turn to feel his sibling's motion: Marnie sighed in a great breath, let it out soundlessly.

"It's just that ..."

She hesitated.

"Jacob, who am I, really?"

Jacob's hand rubbed her shoulder a little: he offered no answer, as he recognized she was driving toward her own conclusion.

"Am I just a druggie's daughter with a short temper? What am I, really?"

"Sounds like you're beatin' yourself up over the past," he offered quietly. "The past is out of reach and the future ain't here yet, but we've got us a good double handful of right now to work with."

Marnie sagged against her step-twin's shoulder -- if there is such a thing as a step-twin, and she was sure they two were.

"I keep thinking of all the times I messed up."

She felt Jacob's understanding nod, the same way she'd felt her Daddy nod, when she'd lean against him and voice the fears and stressors of the schoolgirl she'd been.

"I miss my Daddy," Marnie said quietly, sounding lost, and very young.

"Why don't we go see him."

Marnie felt Jacob shift, and she knew he was about to Iris them out of there.

She was right.

 

Linn felt the Iris open.

He'd been carefully drifting the sleeve bearing onto the shaft, stopping to check for flaring, for distortion.

He set down the rock maple block he was using between the sleeve and his ball peen hammer: the hammer hooked into its place on the peg board, he picked up a shop rag and laid the shaft on almost clean cloth and turned to greet his visitor.

Marnie was rising -- she'd apparently been seated -- she came across the floor and grabbed him around the middle, pressing her ear into his belly the way she used to when she was troubled, as a little girl.

 

An Iris snapped open in a formal chamber, tall, black and looking like the horizontal version of a bottomless pit sliced into reality.

Usually an Iris would open with utter silence: this one arrived with the sound of a blacksnake whip snapping a hole in the air, echoing bright and sharp and bringing men's voices to a sudden, shocked stop.

A good-looking Appaloosa stallion paced into this august chamber, steelshod hooves loud on the mirror-polished, smooth-stone floor.

Jacob Keller let Apple-horse advance between the two long tables until he was just shy of halfway, then ho'd quietly.

Apple-horse ho'd, carefully, as if knowing steel hooves on polished stone was not really a good combination.

Jacob looked around slowly, his face expressionless, not reacting to the shocked expressions of delegates whose negotiations were just interrupted by, of all things, a horseman!

"Howdy," he said finally, his voice carrying well in the chamber: "I know you all were expecting my good-lookin' sister in that pretty gown of hers."

Apple-horse turned slowly under him, allowing his address to encompass the entire assemblage.

"Now I know you have certain expectations of your Diplomatic sorts, and I'll admit my sister Marnie cuts a genuinely fine figure in that gown of hers."

Apple horse kept turning, slowly.

"I, however, do not look all that good in a floor length dress."

It was just the quiet humor the moment required: delegates chuckled quietly, the tension breaking just a little.

"Now you-all wanted Marnie here to arbitrate your disagreement because you trust her, and she's got a good reputation for a level head and good sense, and I'll grant she has all those things.

"You know her and you trust her because most of you have worked with her before.

"Me, well" -- he shrugged -- "you know me as Sheriff back in Firelands. You might have some opinion of me as a lawman, but I've never handled a dispute quite like yours.

"Right about now I reckon you're wondering why I'm here a'tall, instead of my good lookin' sister."

Apple-horse shook his head, blew loudly, slashed his tail at nonexistent flies, more a matter of form than utility.

"Gentlemen, I am here for a few good reasons.

"First" -- his voice halted, he waited for the slight echo to die, turned Apple-horse, making sure he had every eye in the house -- "I am honestly here to make sure every last one of you is unhappy."

Apple took a slow step, another, stopped.

"Now I'm Sheriff back home, and I'm good at what I do. 

"Marnie" -- he grinned, corrected himself, his grin easy, natural.

"The Ambassador is what I should have said.

"You'll forgive me if I keep referring to her as my sister, for that is what I've known her as all these years.

"Y'see, we grew up together. We worked our father's ranch together. We played together as children and she used to beat up on me with regularity. 

"Y'know what's worse?" Jacob grinned, his solemn mien disappearing in a moment of brotherly frankness -- he leaned forward, one hand on the saddle horn as he declared loudly, "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT SHE DOES TO ME, YOU CAN'T HIT YOUR SISTER!"

This time the chuckles became laughter -- subdued, yes, but laughter nonetheless: apparently a significant number of negotiating delegates had, in their time, been brother to a short-tempered sister themselves.

"Think about it" -- Apple-horse turned again, as if in response to his rider's encompassing oratory -- "you can't hit your sister in the face. You can't hit her in -- front" -- his hands moved down to chest level -- "and if you gut punch her she'll fold up and start to cry, back hittin' is for cowards and God have mercy on me if I swat her bottom!" -- his voice was louder, his hands animated -- "why, was I to lay a hand on my Sis, my folks would likely beat me plumb to death!"

He waited for the understanding laughter to subside, saw men looking sidelong at one another, then back at him.

"So, gentlemen, if I slip and refer to the Ambassador as Sis, or as My Sister, you'll forgive me that reference, 'cause that's how I've known her all these years."

A voice from the head of the table.

Light, teasing, feminine, Ambassador Marnie Keller arrived as she preferred -- unnoticed, until she wished to be seen -- "Call me anything but late for supper!"

"I can hear the smile in your voice," Jacob grinned as Apple-horse turned in apparent greeting.

"Why hello, Little Sis," Jacob grinned, "glad you could make it!"

Marnie raised a lace-gloved fist, shook it threateningly at him:  "Who you callin' little sis, little brother?" she mock-snarled.

"Gentlemen," Jacob declared loudly, turning Apple-horse again as an Iris snapped open behind him, "my relief has arrived."

Marnie folded her arms, lowered her head as if glaring over a pair of spectacles, patted her foot like an impatient schoolteacher.

"Jaaacooobbb," she said, her voice rising in a warning note, "how much trouble have you caused?"

"I told 'em I'd make everyone unhappy," Jacob grinned.

"And did you?"

"Not yet, Little Sis!"

Marnie shook her gloved fist at him again:  "Jacob Keller, I oughta knock you into the middle of next week!"

"Wednesday or Thursday?" he shot back as Apple-horse turned, trotted into the Iris and disappeared.

The vertical black ellipse closed without the dramatic snap of its earlier opening, and the delegates turned their attention to the smiling, hands-folded figure in a McKenna gown and a quiet smile.

Marnie tilted her head, regarded the assemblage, then clapped her palms briskly together:  "Now then, gentlemen," she called, "shall we get started?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 3, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HANGMAN, HANGMAN

"Hangman, Hangman,

     "Fetch your noose,

          "I was Bit

               "By a Nas-tee Goose!

"Put your Noose

     "A-round its Neck,

          "All I wanted

               "Was a Peck!"

Schoolgirls chanted their rhymes as they skipped rope.

One little boy hung, one-armed, from a tree branch, the other hand around his neck as he crossed his eyes and ran his tongue out while making awful choking sounds.

Not far from the graveyard, not far from the Tree of Judgement, the Sheriff stood in the wagon bed backed up to the edge of Hangman's Cliff.

He looked up at the hangin' rope, tied off to a tree branch, then he set foot in the noose and gripped the rope in both hands and swung out off the wagon bed, swung back.

The rope creaked ever so slightly under his weight.

He swung his arc wider, once, twice, then swung back onto the wagon bed, set his off boot and stepped easily back on.

Satisfied, he climbed over the back of the driver's seat, clucked up the steady old mare and released the brake.

His prisoner was less than cooperative at the prospect of being hauled up the hill to have his neck stretched.

The Sheriff did not particularly give a good damn about the prisoner's opinion.

Between the Sheriff and the Town Marshal Jackson Cooper, the prisoner was subdued, secured: the lawmen tied the prisoner's elbows together behind his back, as they'd both seen wrist-bound men roll out of their bindings under the extremis of being hanged.

Jackson Cooper sat casually on the prisoner for the ride up the hill, effectively stifling struggling attempts at escape, and once the big town Marshal rose, he casually gut punched the prisoner to prevent any further abortive attempts from leaping from the wagon bed.

The Sheriff dropped the noose over the prisoner's neck, snapped it viciously tight.

"Any last words?" he asked, his voice thick with menace.

"Yeah, I ain't --"

"Don't wanta hear it," the Sheriff grunted, and shoved the prisoner off the wagon bed and let him drop.

The Sheriff looked at Jackson Cooper.

"I have no interest in anythin' he has to say."

"I got that impression," Jackson Cooper deadpanned.

Two lawmen ran their eyes down the rope to the figure twitching at its tied terminus, then looked at one another.

"Reckon he's dead?" Jackson Cooper asked quietly, his voice rumbling like rolling boulders grinding together at the bottom of a deep well.

"I'll give him til sunset to make up his mind," the Sheriff replied matter-of-factly. "Reckon if he's not dead now, he will be by then."

Jackson Cooper and the Sheriff both pushed their watches up out of their vest pockets.

Each man considered the time.

"Just short of high twelve."

"Yep."

"You hungry?"

"Yep."

"You buyin'?"

"Nope."

"Your lucky day, I am."

"Yep."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ICEWATER

Sheriff Linn Keller rubbed his eyes and let out a slow breath.

It had been one of those shifts.

He felt Angela -- he didn't hear her -- like her Gammaw, like her sisters, she moved in stealth and in silence, and it didn't matter if she wore well polished Wellingtons boots, or dancing heels, or -- hell, it wouldn't matter if she wore tap shoes -- she moved with all the thundering racket of a butterfly coasting on a friendly summer breeze.

Her hand was warm, light, on his shoulder: he nodded, then he rose, not as Sheriff, but as a father: a long tall Daddy hugged his pretty little girl, his little girl hugged her Daddy and held his manly strength and smelled his scent and laid her face into his chest with a little-girl sigh of contentment.

Each surrounded them both with a moment's silence, a moment's refuge from reality, because -- let's face it -- sometimes reality genuinely sucks, and at such times, a quiet moment of refuge is not just pleasant, it is vital.

 

Mac still looked kind of green.

He'd been first on scene, he'd made the call, he'd still been on speaker phone with Sharon describing what he'd found when he turned around and threw up two or three days' worth of lunches, and the Sheriff couldn't blame him one bit.

Mac heard a yell, he'd heard the woody crackle of a tree falling, he'd turned in time to see the tree slam to the earth, he'd seen branches waving goodbye where it passed on its way down.

He'd gotten curious and he'd gone up to see what happened.

He'd found a father -- a man he knew, a man he liked -- his son wasn't right, Mac didn't know exactly what ailed the boy, but he'd never matured, he was about nine and had the mental processes of a three-year-old -- Mac found them both, and he'd had to look at the phone in his hand and stare at it for a few moments before he remembered how to operate it.

He'd called 911, he'd told Sharon a tree fell and killed two people, and Sharon heard his stomach rebel: she had the Cavalry headed his way before he went clear down to his knees, retching.

The Sheriff responded from the office.

It wasn't far from the roadway to the scene, it didn't take long to start documenting the event, though by the time he was set up, the Irish Brigade already had the fatal section of crushing tree-trunk chainsawed away and thrown to the side.

The Sheriff didn't protest.

This was necessary for the saving of life.

The Sheriff set up the laser measurement device, documented the scene, then he went up to where the tree parted company from the hillside and documented this as well.

The Sheriff knew trees and he knew the mountains, he knew what to look for, and he knew when something did not look right.

He didn't find any signs of foul play.

It looked like the tree took a lightning strike sometime in its lifetime, it looked like rot set in at the base, it looked like the tree finally gave up on life and just fell over: from what was left, from what little was left of its rotted, powdered and barely splintered stump, it's a wonder the tree hadn't fallen long before.

Damn shame the wind didn't take it down last week, Linn thought sourly, then pushed the thought aside as he took several photographs, one looking down the length of the trunk with the rotted out stump in the foreground.

Parson Belden came rolling up in the rescue, and the Sheriff met him: the rescue wasn't needed, it was released from scene, and the Parson got in the Sheriff's cruiser with the man.

"Parson," the Sheriff said quietly, "you told me once you started your ministry the hard way."

The Parson chuckled quietly. "I did that," he agreed.

"Something about your first ten funerals were for family or for very close friends, including your old police partner."

The Parson's eyes changed, and he looked toward where the Coroner was supervising the removal of two sheeted forms to his van.

"I was in conversation with fellow clergy," he said softly, "and an old veteran clergyman said the hardest funerals were for people he knew."

The Parson looked at the Sheriff, and the Sheriff saw an old, deep hurt in the sky pilot's eyes.

"That's the only kind I'd done, Sheriff. My first ten funerals were for family and for friends -- two best friends ..."

"That's kind of how I feel, bein' Sheriff where I grew up."

Linn thrust a chin toward the second cot being placed carefully, respectfully, in the Coroner's unmarked white van.

"I knew the man, and now I have to go give the news to his wife."

The Sheriff's words were quiet, then he looked at the Parson and added, "Thank you for coming with me."

 

Linn stood, his eyes closed, his cheek laid over on top of his daughter's Marine-short hair -- she wore her hair the same way his Gammaw wore hers, and though Angela was not the image of her Gammaw that Marnie was, there was still a resemblance.

"I'll need my plumber's license," he murmured.

Angela lifted her face toward her Daddy's, curious.

"A plumber," she said, and he heard her smiling tease hiding inside her voice.

"I want to imbed a medic with each shift. Ideally I'd like a medic with every two-man team."

Angela nodded, once, remembering her Daddy telling an adjacent county's Sheriff that the military embeds a medic with every team in-country for the same coldly practical reason he wanted to imbed a medic with his troops.

The Sheriff took a long breath, sighed it out.

"It's not workable, Angela. When you're on shift, you're the designated medic. I've one basic EMT and of course everyone else is first aid and CPR."

"But ...?"

"But I want a medic in every cruiser."

He looked at his daughter and she saw the smile at the corners of his eyes.

"That's why I need my plumber's license."

Angela frowned, puzzled.  "I don't follow."

"I want medics, Angela, and people in hell want ice water, so if I'm going to bring ice water to Hell, I'll need my plumber's license so I can pipe it in!"

Angela laid her cheek against her Daddy's chest again and he felt her silent laughter.

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE DANCE

Victoria Keller, the pretty, graceful, feminine twin sister of Michael Keller, dropped a deep, elaborately formal curtsy to her dance partner, an Admiral in full dress uniform.

She rose, lifted her gloved hand, placed it gently in his palm: her other arm reached around, she laid her other hand flat on the small of his back, and two skilled dancers moved as one, spinning their waltz in time to the orchestra's music.

Victoria had her Gammaw's flawless complexion, her Gammaw's pale eyes: she had her Gammaw's grace and coordination, and when provoked, she had her Gammaw's temper as well.

Victoria grew up hearing stories of the woman she called "Gammaw Shewiff."

Victoria grew up cultivating the skills and virtues of her Gammaw: a young woman now, she was a skilled dancer -- no, not skilled -- she was genuinely gifted -- so much so that she could make a poor dancer look good, a good dancer look expert, and when paired with a dancer of this Admiral's talent, she could conspire music into motion and turn sound into visual delight.

Michael's pairing, not far away, was not nearly as pleasant.

Michael danced, yes -- but his dance was at once simpler, and more complex: like any dance partner, he adjusted his moves to those of the individual he faced, but his moves were swift, powerful, vigorous, and although a watching eye might admire Michael's moves, they were not those of a genteel synergy.

Where Victoria closed her eyes, leaned her head a little to the left, then spun, her skirt flared and her appearance that of genuine beauty, of pastels and ruffles and femininity as she spun under the pivot-point of the Admiral's hand, looking perhaps like a magical incarnation of a music-box figurine on pirouette,  Michael's eyes did not close -- though he did fade his head to the left, just enough to miss the incoming, hard-knuckled punch.

In fairness, Michael's moves were as smooth, as coordinated, and yes, just as graceful as his twin sister's, but only if viewed with the eye of someone who appreciated the deadly dance in which he was engaged.

Where his sister moved both with the music, and with her partner, Michael moved without music, but very definitely timing his moves with those of the individual with whom he was vigorously engaged.

Truth be told, where Victoria's moves were intended to enhance and magnify the skills and abilities of her dance-partner, Michael's moves were intended for very much the opposite result.

Fencing, lovemaking and listening to music is best done from the subconscious.

Michael disengaged his thinking mind and worked from a deeper, more complete understanding: a fist came in, he seized wrist and elbow, twisted, hard: leverage, as he'd practiced ten times ten thousand times, and the opponent's elbow made a sound elbows should never make: more leverage, a hook with the back of his boot, one attacker down, blind with pain and a badly broken and shoulder-dislocated arm.

Another -- close, too close! -- Michael drove a palm strike into the bottom of a breastbone, more to get distance, but effective: the club's strike almost missed, the impact barely striking the curve of Michael's backside, down low, ineffective.

He grabbed an arm, drove his knee up, got his arm around the attacker's neck: he pulled, twisted again, blocked the incoming knife with the body he was holding: his free hand came up with a Sheriff's-issue pistol and he drove three rounds through the third attacker's face, ending the fight.

His knee was in this attacker's spine: he raised his pistol, drove the pistol's butt into the top of the skull, felt bone break.

The two remaining attackers decided this would be a good time to explore the general climate in some other county.

Unfortunately, though their departing velocity was impressive, their respective velocities were insufficient to outrun two more shots from Michael's pistol. 

The music ended, Victoria spun out to the length of the Admiral's arm: she stopped and again gave him a deep, formal curtsy, and received his gentlemanly bow in return: her hand laid over his, they lifted their chins, and departed the dance floor, to the pattering applause of the entire ball.

The Admiral accompanied her to the refreshments table, and thence to the ladies, seated, watching with admiration -- some with envy -- Victoria seated herself and sipped her fruit punch, snapped out a fan and began waving it delicately, ignoring hissed comments from behind her.

Most of the ladies with whom Victoria sat were young, and pretty; Victoria's gown differed from theirs in that hers had a high neck and long sleeves, which contrasted sharply with most of the other ladies, whose gowns revealed a shocking square footage of flesh.

This, of course, made Victoria look all the more feminine.

One girl -- young enough to be inexperienced, old enough to not know better -- turned a little.

"Will your brother be coming?" she asked hopefully, which of course raised a whispered chorus of comments at such a presumption -- Michael was, of course, well known, thanks to the Inter-System, and as unattainable as Victoria might be to the men, Michael was equally so to the ladies, except to those who thought themselves exceptional in some way.

From the number that leaned slightly toward Victoria to hear her reply, this seemed to be most of them.

As if summoned, Michael appeared, or seemed to appear, from nowhere: he looked at his twin sister with the expression she'd seen on his face after he'd booby-trapped a rival's outhouse as a boy, or surreptitiously inserted a particularly obnoxious exhaust whistle into a high school bully's car's tailpipe.

With epoxy.

"I just had a conversation with the bandmaster," Michael said quietly, his ears reddening as he realized he was being sized up like a side of meat by most of the ladies.

"Oh?" Victoria asked innocently.

Michael bent a little, whispered:  Victoria's eyes widened, as did her smile.

"You didn't!"

"I did!"

"Let me change my shoes!"

Moments later, brother and sister paced to the center of the ballroom floor: the conductor watched, smiling, for a conspiracy is best when shared, and he was sharing this conspiracy with a fiddler, not a violinist, and with a pale eyed young man he'd only just met.

The two stopped in the very center of the ballroom floor, sidestepped carefully away from each other, their arms extended until their fingertips just touched, then they looked straight ahead, lifted their chins, placed their hands on their belts, elbows out.

Similar melodies had been played, yes, and this one sounded almost familiar to those who'd heard fiddle music, well played, but it was the first time "The Irish Washer Woman" was played on this planet, and the first time a well-matched couple danced Irish hardshoe to the melody.

Michael grinned at his twin sister.

Victoria threw her head back and laughed with honest delight.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE WITCH SAID COME QUICK!

Nobody noticed the little boy running toward the big automatic glass doors in front of the hospital.

Everyone heard his fist hammering on the glass.

He was moving faster than the motion detector and motors could accommodate.

He streaked through the opening, shouldered past startled visitors, slammed hard into the wooden double doors -- he hit them hard enough he got his fingers behind the outward-opening-only doors, hauled it open, twisted, got inside.

A scared little boys with running-pink cheeks and big, searching eyes looked around, saw a man in a white coat, an older man with a dignified face.

He ran for the doctor, seized his coat, pulled hard, once, yelled "THE WITCH SAID COME QUICK!"

Dr. John Greenlees, startled, laid down the aluminum patient chart, dropped into a hunker, gripped the boy's arms -- carefully, gently -- looked him very directly in the eye, his mind running like water down a steep grade.

"What's the situation, son? Why does the Witch need me?"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller grinned as he hauled the delighted child out of the saddle, turned, placed him carefully in the wheelchair.

This was his weekly escape, his ritual of refuge, his moment of shared delight: if there were children able, he'd come to the hospital and wait outside the ambulance bay in back, and as sick and healing young were brought to him, he'd hoist, swing or carry them into the saddle, and if they weren't up for that, Apple-horse would nuzzle and snuff and carefully lip broke-in-half carrots or a striped peppermint off a child's clean-scrubbed palm.

The boy he placed in the wheelchair shivered, not with cold, but with delight -- he was bundled in a puffy coat three sizes too big, and the Sheriff wrapped the blanket around his legs, looked at him, winked.

Linn faded sideways and looked up, his face serious as Doc Greenlees came out of the ER doors with an anxious little boy.

Doc was talking on his cell phone, his expression was serious, and the Sheriff felt contentment and happiness drop away like a fallen cloak, then he heard the rising liquid whistle of the Irish Brigade's first-out ambulance, followed by air horns.

Squad and rescue, he thought. 

Whatever it is, it's bad!

 

Gracie Jean looked at the knife she'd just been offered.

In her entire life, she'd neither handed someone a scissors, nor a knife, nor had she accepted either from someone else's hand.

To do so would transfer the Sight, and that wasn't to be done until she lay on her deathbed, when she would hand a scissors to her successor, and with it, all her healing gifts, all her Second Sight, all her Power.

Gracie Jean was related to Gracie Mae, who'd gone off to the Navy and was now clear the hell and gone away on Mars, likely still playin' that fiddle of hers and likely not witchin' at all.

Gracie Jean was a midwife, and a good one: she'd birthed nearly every baby here on Daine Mountain, and several elsewhere, but when she saw the cord come first from the laboring mother, she knew this was trouble, and she whistled up one of the boys who stood ready in case he was needed.

When Gracie Jean was offered the knife, she said "Lay it there on the table," and only after the offering hand was withdrawn, did she take the knife.

Gracie Jean lifted the pillow, slid the knife beneath: "Steel cuts the pain," she breathed, then accepted the mule shoe she'd been offered: this went under the bed itself, as near to centered under the laboring mother as she could arrange.

"Brian."

The midwife's voice was pitched differently: lower, compelling, it penetrated the soul, not with its sound, but with its meaning, something that must be experienced to be understood.

Brian Maxwell came into the room, uncertain, chin defiant.

Gracie Jean looked at him and it felt like her sight penetrated him like he'd been punched with a lance.

"Run and fetch the Doc," she said.  "Tell him it's a breech birth and come fast!"

 

Doc Greenlees climbed in the rescue: the shotgun rider bailed out, held the door for him, yelled "Belt in!" and slammed the door -- the driver waited for his partner to bail in the side door, slam it, then he came off the brake, heard his partner's backside hit the jump seat, heard the yell "GO GO GO!"

He go'd.

The boxy red Fireland Fire Department's rescue accelerated up the driveway, the driver cleared left-right-left, swung out and mashed the throttle.

"How far?" Doc asked, his medical grade warbag white-knuckled in his lap.

 

Angela Keller frowned at the hologram projected above her wrist-unit.

The rest of her class could see Sheriff Keller, Angela's father, grim-faced: they saw about the top third of the Appaloosa stallion he was riding, the grinning little boy straddling ahead of him, with the Sheriff's denim coated arm wrapped around the boy's middle.

"Angela here, go ahead," she said -- her voice was cold, professional, not at all the instructor's voice her class was used to hearing.

"Doc is headed for a breech birth, we need your expertise."

Angela's head came up, eyes busy.

She tapped her wrist-unit.

"Betsy, I need you."

"On my way."

"Daddy, are you headed there?"

"As fast as Apple can get us there," Linn yelled, leaning a little as his stallion leaned into a turn, the little boy gripping his denim-sleeved arm grinning fiercely with the delight only the young can feel.

"I'll follow you signal there."

Another tap of her wrist-unit.

"Gracie, are you available?"

"Gunfighter, Angel One, state situation."

"Medical emergency, I need the Stonewall."

"Stand by one."

A little boy raised his arm, pointed, and the Sheriff's knees tightened a little: he bore down on the group of men standing outside a tidy little house on the mountainside, arms on one another's shoulders, in a circle, heads bowed, just as the Omaha-orange-and-white ambulance, and the boxy red rescue, crested the grade and braked to a stop.

 

Gracie's hologram turned to look at her passengers.

Betsy, in her Confederate nurse's armor, looking almost like a little girl in a white-with-red-trim plastic playsuit, at least until you looked at her eyes: her medic's bag was on her lap, she was in the seat, belted in, helmeted head pressed back against the headrest, ready for a high-acceleration takeoff.

Angela drew the shoulder belts over, drove the steel tongues into the central, quick-release buckle.

Gracie's holographic image turned -- it was as if she herself was in the Stonewall's pilot's seat -- Gracie herself was in Gunfighter, piloting both craft simultaneously.

Both medical transport and Starfighter lined up on the Iris, drove through, disappeared.

 

The Sheriff swung down with a double armful of laughing little boy.

"That was FUN!" he declared, and the Sheriff laughed, remembering his own little boys who'd said the very same thing after a run with their long tall Grampaw: one of the Maxwell boys came over and caressed Apple's neck, whispered to him, led him off to walk him down after the hard run he'd just had.

The Sheriff approached Old Man Daine, stuck out his hand as the Irish Brigade made entry with haste and with big orange boxes.

Solemn-faced men shook hands as the sky split open overhead and two ships appeared, stationary, stainless steel, turning slowly, until the boxy one found room enough to descend: landing feet extended with the whine of hydraulics, a hatch opened, two women ran out -- one wearing a winged nursing cap and a red-trimmed blue cloak, the other in white-with-red-trim combat medic's armor, and each carrying their respective warbags.

"Where is she?" Angela snapped, eyes pale, her voice clipped, the voice of a woman who expected to be obeyed instantly if not sooner.

Dr. John Greenlees came out of the rescue, hit the ground, sprinted after Angela's flaring, blue cloak.

 

Men spoke quietly: they'd withdrawn to the gunshop, where a variety of firearms, modern and less modern, lay in various states of disassembly: it smelled of gun oil and solvent, it smelled of wood shavings and sandpaper, it smelled of linseed and leather.

It smelled the way it ought to.

Boys young and not quite as young, took turns walking Apple-horse around their back pasture.

They did not presume to seize the Sheriff's stallion by his bridle, nor did they fetch the knotted reins from off the saddle horn:  no, they walked, and Apple walked with them, steaming a little in the cold air: willing hands rubbed the Appaloosa down, knowing eyes examined teeth and hooves and tapped and scraped horse shoes: Apple, for his part, was eating up the attention, slashing his tail with contentment: he laid a long jaw over one adulator's back, lipped another's offering of tobacco shavings from a proffered palm.

Something was dispensed into several tin cups and dirty glasses, something gurgling from a stone jug, something a little lighter than, say, grape juice:  the Sheriff knew what it was and he murmured, "Just one finger's worth," and accepted the libation of twice that volume: nobody drank, not yet, not until the seniormost Daine bowed his head and talked to God about it, not for himself, but for his great-granddaughter who travailed in labor as women do: not until the "Amen" were the glasses, the tin cups hoisted, not until the "Amen" did Uncle Will's Finest go down like mama's milk, and not until the shared "Amen" did this half-and-half of moon likker and homemade wine, slip easily down swaller pipes and blow the socks off every foot in the assemblage.

Yes, Uncle Will's Finest is honestly that good, and yes, Uncle Will's Finest is honestly that potent, and yes, one finger's worth is genuinely all that you want.

 

Dr. John Greenlees looked at Angela.

"Clamps."

Angela slapped a pair of plastic cord clamps into the physician's gloved palm.

The cord was exposed, which was bad -- very bad -- but they were working fast.

Plastic chattered shut, clamping the cord in two places.

"Extraction."

Angela and Betsy moved together, manipulating Confederate medical technology.

It was the first time an Earth child was dematerialized from inside the mother, and rematerialized in the treatment chamber adjacent.

Skilled hands of the pediatric team tended the baby.

A second team, equally skilled, tended the mother.

For all that technology could do, some things were best handled by women.

An old mountain man's granddaughter saw she was surrounded by women, some she knew, some she did not: voices were distant, her vision was sparkly, out of focus, but it cleared, and her hearing cleared, and she heard a voice -- warm, reassuring, as something blanket-wrapped and wiggling a little was placed on her chest: she lifted her arms, she held her baby as Dr. John Greenlees leaned close and murmured, "It's a fine little baby boy!"

A new mother squeaked, and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

 

The pale-eyed Sheriff and a clutch of tall, lean mountaineers with Kentucky-blue eyes looked up as Dr. John Greenlees opened the shed door, his face solemn.

"Who is the father?" he asked quietly.

A lean young man with calluses on his hands and uncertainty in his gut lifted his chin, then his hand.

"I be."

Men moved aside as the physician approached.

Dr. John Greenlees stuck out his hand and the young man took it.

"You have a fine, healthy son. Ten fingers, ten toes, and a good set of lungs."

Silence, the silence that follows the hissing ring of a grenade spoon flying free, then:

"A son?" -- a grin broad as a Texas township -- "my wife?"

"She's fine too."

The new father felt his mug weighted a little as more of Uncle Will's Finest gurgled from a stone jug.

 

The Sheriff followed ambulance and rescue down-mountain, cut across a trail he knew while the Irish Brigade took the paved roads:  he remembered how he'd felt when each of his own young were born, he remembered how helpless he'd felt ahead of time, how relieved he felt after, and he remembered riding home on a different Apple-horse after automatically drinking what had been dispensed into his own tin cup: he was lucky, it too had been Uncle Will's Finest, and he'd been more powerfully intoxicated than he'd been in his entire life, but because this was Uncle Will's Finest, he had absolutely no trace of a hangover the next day, just thirsty, and a little fuzzy-headed, but not much.

 

Nurse Angela Keller and her class stood in semicircular ranks around the nose of the Stonewall.

They had several skilled folk who delighted in the nose art they applied to the Starfighters, men and women gifted with pigments and brushes who drew a short-skirted woman with pale eyes and a pair of blazing revolvers, standing defiant atop the stylized banner that said,

 Gunfighter!

This new image, on the portside nose of the Diplomatic shuttle Stonewall, was not the defiant image of a warrior-maiden, charging into battle.

This was the image of a bespectacled bird wearing a mailman's cap and an expression of peering benevolence, a long-legged stork carrying a blue-cloth bundle in its beak.

When the artist leaned back and wiped his brush with a colorfully-stained cloth he kept for the purpose, when he backed away and began cleaning his artist's brush with a fragrant, pleasantly-scented solvent, when Angela and Betsy and her entire current class of nurses crowded in close to study the gleaming-wet artwork under good light, applause spontaneously pattered into life.

Back on Earth, when a child was delivered on squad, a stork, pink or blue, was applied to the rig, and Angela intended this tradition to continue.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller rode back up Daine Mountain a few days later.

He carried a thickly-lined wicker basket, folded quilts insulating its fragile payload from the snowy cold.

He'd learned from his Mama, and he knew who to ask, and he knew what to grow, and when he knocked on Gracie Jean's door, it was with a grin on his face and a red painted withie basket in hand.

He set the basket down on  Gracie Jean's kitchen counter.

He opened the hinged lids and brought out four potted plants -- herbs they were, healing herbs he knew she used, for his own Mama not only cooked with them, she knew the healing herbs, as had Wise Women of her line for generations preceding.

 

He told his wife later "I couldn't have pleased her more if I'd given her a hundred dollar bill."

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 6, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE SNOW HAS EYES

Death waited patiently in the snow.

Death was the natural consequence of life, for life feeds off life: death was patient, hidden, dug into a snowdrift, unmoving as more snow fell, smoothing the signs of its disturbance, until only a pair of eyes remained visible.

Warm breath melted a channel to the outside air: paws were tucked in against warmth and fur.

Hidden, insulated, warm, feral-yellow eyes and ivory-white fangs and a nearly empty belly watched, and waited, and a moist black nose scented the mountain air.

 

"Grampaw," the little boy asked, his voice quiet in the cabin's hush, "are there monsters hereabouts?"

A slow moving old man fed another two splits of wood into the cast iron stove, closed the door carefully: he hesitated a moment, eyes closed, remembering how he and his wife laughed with delight when the stove was delivered, freighted in from the Mercantile, how strong young men packed it in and put it together, set it on a sand bed bordered with sawmill planks and lined with burlap to hold the sand in -- "No sense in gettin' this nice clean floor all sandy," one of them grinned -- his wife fixed them a meal and they managed to sneak a peach crate of canned goods and a sack of flour up against the cabin before they left, with a note: "From a man who knew a good wife, to a man who is just learning."

He honestly had no idea who wrote the note and paid for groceries, for the delivery, for the setup: all he'd wanted, all he'd paid for, was the pot belly stove.

He'd planned to pick it up himself, and he'd planned on having more money earned so he could afford stovepipe, but here come the freight wagon a-clatterin' with his stove in it, with stovepipe and sand and planks and laughing young men who swarmed in, one fetched out a mouth organ and played a jig while another snatched up his wife's hand and spun her about in a quick dance step -- startled she was, but pleased, the way a woman is when she is surprised in a good way.

He remembered the times he and his wife sat close to this self same stove, soaking up its heat: the young fellows who set it up, ran the chimney pipe the length of his cabin, which was not far, but one of them explained as he fitted the ends together and cut a careful hole, as he made sure 'twas fire proofed between timber and stovepipe, "That smoke is just singin' hot. No sense to shoot it straight up and out and be lost. This-a-way you'll get as much heat out of the pipe and into the cabin as you can."

"Grampaw?"

The old man blinked, frowned, turned, trying to remember what his grandson was saying before memories wandered him off.

He turned.  "Come again?" he said gently, and the boy looked out from under hair that needed cut again: his Mama used the practical method of dunking a bowl over his head and scissoring around its rim, and like any healthy child, his hair grew at a surprising rate, so much so that he was looking at his Grampaw through a hanging forest of dirty blond bangs.

"Grampaw, are there monsters in the mountains?"

The old man considered, turned, backed into his rocking chair -- one of the very few luxuries he allowed himself.

"Monsters," he said thoughtfully, and his grandson crossed his shin bones and sat, in that order, with the easy movements of youth -- was I to try that, the old man considered, I'd break legs and knees both!

"I've known monsters," he said thoughtfully, nodding as he did.

He saw his grandson's eyes grow wide.

"Most of 'em," the old man admitted, "were two-legged."

Disappointment clouded the boy's face.

"But" -- the old man raised an aged, wrinkled finger, which brought delight and anticipation in equal amounts to the boy's visage -- "there are" -- he looked left, looked right, leaned forward a little and lowered his voice.

"Injuns talk about Windigo," he said, his voice serious. "Windigo changes dependin' on who's tellin' it, but was you to see big footprints in the snow -- bloody footprints -- find yourself somewhere else to be."

"Really?" the boy breathed, and the old man nodded solemnly, then the boy saw a smile hinting across the wrinkled old face.

"Now there was this Frenchy wanted to scare some folks off," he said thoughtfully, "so he made a set of snowshoes that kind of looked like feet instead of snow shoes, like, and he'd put a drop of red paint in the middle of every one of them snow shoe prints."

The old man winked.

"Worked, too!"

The boy considered this, shifted a little, waited.

"Now there's somethin' called a Hidebehind," the old man continued, warming to the subject. "It likes to watch. It'll hide behind anythin' and peek around at you. Y'know that feelin' you get when someone's watchin' ye?"

His towhead grandson nodded.

"Like as not 'twas a Hidebehind. It don't matter how fast you turn around, you can't ketch 'em lookin' at you.

"Now there's somethin' called a Hatchet Hound."

The old man leaned forward, easing his poor old back: he rubbed his ancient palms thoughtfully together, then he looked at his grandson and admitted, "I think this'un's just porcupine, m'self."

"How's that, Grampa?"

"The Hatchet Hound looks like a hatchet on four legs, but it sneaks into camp and eats the handles off yer hatchets and yer axes. Me, I think it's porcupines huntin' salt."

The boy nodded thoughtfully as he considered the wisdom being dispensed.

 

Lean muscles tensed: breath silent, feral-yellow eyes followed.

Snow detonated silently, canine jaws snapped shut, crushing lungs and spine and the life from a luckless rabbit, and life fed on life yet again.

 

Silence filled the cabin, a steady reminder of the woman he missed, of the beautiful young wife he'd married, the apple-cheeked mother she'd become, sleeping now in a cold bed in a hole he'd dug, under a stone he'd selected, a stone flat on one side, a stone with the name RACHEL carefully incised.

The silence was all the more profound for the insulating snowfall.

The old man shifted again, spoke, more to fill the silence than anything else.

"There's ghosts," he said flatly, and the boy's face turned toward him, young imagination engaging instantly.

"Ghosts?"

The old man nodded.

"A man dies sudden-like, his shade can stay around, not realizin' it's really dead."

"Ghosts," the boy repeated quietly.

"That's why we drape mirrors, so the soul won't get trapped, an' so guests won't see Death lookin' back out at 'em. That's why we open a window to let the soul out, so it'll move on to Paradise an' not stay here."

"Ghosts."  The boy's voice was quieter now as he tilted his head a little to regard his wise old Grampa with all the innocent sincerity of a child of but few years.

"There's one down south of us I heard of," the old man said, nodding slowly, as if to affirm the veracity of his words: "one of them White Sisters that sings s' nice. You heard 'em."

"Yes, sir."

"They's one -- Sister Mercury or some-such -- her ghost rides a big black ghost horse an' them that seen it says she's got a big black dog runs with 'em, attair horse has big white wings an' horse an' dog both has red eyes, Hell's eyes, an' her ghost carries a long spear with a burnin' silver star for a tip, like she fetched a star out of Heaven itself and stuck on the end of a twenty foot broom handle."

He saw his grandson blink a few times, rapidly, as he processed this.

"She's a Healer, or was, I been told she healed when she lived. She blew fire out of a burn an' she stopped blood with the Word, she'd ride just a-tearin' when someone was sick enough they was afraid they were t' die and she'd touch attair spear to their gate or their door and she'd ride that big black horse in an' she'd heal 'em. Just boom, healed up."

"Her ghost, Grampa?" the boy asked, his wondering voice almost a whisper.

The old man nodded, slowly.

"I heard tell it was."

 

A pale-eyed little girl tilted her head, listened, frowned, then closed her book and laid it carefully on the parlor table.

Black-patent slippers were silent on the rugs and she glided to the back door, slipped the latch, opened the white-painted, black-trimmed portal, letting in a brisk curl of cold wind, a few snowflakes a-swirl, and a snow-speckled Bear Killer.

Sarah -- she'd been named after her grandfather's woods-cold get -- pattered industriously toward the kitchen stove, snatched up a towel and began briskly working the melting snow-crystals off The Bear Killer's curly-black fir: a swipe beside his jaw and she found blood.

The Sheriff's pale-eyed granddaughter frowned, cupped her hand under The Bear Killer's jaw, lifted fearlessly: another swipe, more blood, and she looked closely, frowning, carefully gripped The Bear Killer's upper and lower jaws and coaxed his mouth open.

She tilted her head left, then right, studying The Bear Killer's gums, his tongue, the inside of as much of his cheeks as she could eyeball, then she let go and pulled a chair up to the stove.

She dispensed water from the teakettle into a pan, wet the corner of the towel: The Bear Killer waited patiently, as he always did, and she wiped all the blood she could find, from his muzzle, then she nodded, briskly, once.

The Sheriff's granddaughter considered the towel, then got into the cupboard, stretched to reach a sack of salt: she'd salt the blood stains on the towel so they'd come out, left the towel in a dishpan on the floor so it wouldn't be inadvertently used, then she and The Bear Killer returned to the parlor.

A little girl picked up her book and sat very properly in her chair near the parlor stove, and The Bear Killer's tail thumped as he curled up on the hook rug, laid his strong, blunt muzzle on curly-black forepaws and regarded a little girl with the same feral yellow eyes that beheld the rabbit earlier, just not with quite the same expression as when they watched from his hidden vantage.

Not quite the same as when the snow had eyes.

 

 

Edited December 7, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

COLOGNE

Sheriff Willamina Keller honestly hobbled into the Sheriff's office.

Sharon stopped, turned, openly stared at the normally-immaculate Sheriff.

She stared for multiple reasons, each one compelling in and of its own right.

The Sheriff established herself as efficient, she established herself as the boss -- with absolutely no doubt! -- she established herself as efficient and competent, and she established herself, in every way possible, as PROFESSIONAL.

It was honestly no wonder that, when she limped into the Sheriff's office, clearly in pain -- but with that damn-that-was-fun look on her face that betrayed there was a story behind her appearance -- that Sharon and two other deputies stopped, and turned, and openly stared.

Sheriff Willamina Keller knew she would never be One Of The Guys.

She didn't try to be.

Instead of wearing the standard, man-tailored Colorado State Sheriff's Association uniforms, she established herself by wearing a tailored, electric-blue, suit dress and heels: she was an Administrator, she was very definitely not "One Of The Guys," she was distinctly different -- and her appearance was, uniformly, unfailingly, tidy, neat, and professional.

Until today.

Sheriff Willamina Keller came through the doors, holding one arm like her shoulder hurt, moving like the rest of her matched her shoulder: she was dirt-filthy down one side, her jeans were torn, the Stetson in her hand looked distinctly like it had inherited at least three separate hoof stomps (four, actually, but who's counting?) and Willamina's cheek bone was scraped and seeping a little blood.

She also had the satisfied look of someone who'd just grabbed hold of the meanest beast in the mountains and fought it to a bloody standstill.

"What," Sharon said slowly, "happened?"

"I bought a horse!" Willamina declared happily, touching her swelling cheekbone.

"Aaaannnddd ... the horse ...?"

"I named her Cannonball," Willamina grinned, easing herself slowly into a chair, grimacing as she did, which worried Sharon.

Willamina was a Marine, Willamina had a high pain tolerance, and Willamina was so absolutely different from the way Sharon had seen her thus far, as to cause the dispatcher significant concern.

"Where's Barrents?" Willamina asked quietly.
"He's already inbound" -- Sharon turned, ran her finger down her handwritten log -- "he should be here in --"

The outer door opened, then the inner: the blocky, broad-shouldered Navajo's obsidian eyes swung left-to-right as they always did, stopped on the Sheriff's still form.

Barrents moved.

Three fast steps, long, silent: he went to one knee, reached for her hand, stopped, pulled his palm away like he'd almost laid it on a hot iron.

"Boss?" he asked quietly, and Willamina opened her eyes and grinned crookedly at her Chief Deputy.

"You didn't," he breathed.

"I did."

Barrents closed his eyes, took a long breath, shook his head.

"Hoghead said you'd bought that horse," Barrents muttered.  "I'd hoped you hadn't."

"Cannonball," Willamina began, and Barrents gave her a hard look.

"That damned horse has broken three collarbones, two arms, two legs and gave a man a concussion! Hoghead was ready to ship it to the slaughterhouse when you came around askin' about an Appaloosa mare and he'd made his brags afterward you might not be so damned tough without that shotgun!"

Willamina gave him a soft look, blinked innocently, at least as innocently as a woman can when her cheek bone is swelling and starting to turn colors a woman's cheekbone really shouldn't.

"Why, JW," she said quietly, "I didn't know you cared!"

Barrents looked away, looked back, thrust out a blunt finger.

"Look," he snapped, "you told me to speak plainly and here it comes. So far you've rattled this entire damned county and that's good, nobody knows what to think of you and you've established your boot as belonging three feet up anyone's backside that crosses you. That's good. You've got to establish your authority."

Barrents paused, glared, continued, his voice quieter.

"Look," he said, his voice almost dangerous now. "We served together, over there."

His jaw thrust forward a little, polished obsidian eyes hard, almost angry.

"I draw breath because of you, and you're alive because of me."

He stopped again, clamped his teeth together, turned his head a little, frowned, looked back.

"You're the only one of you we've got," he whispered fiercely, and she saw something he'd kept hidden under his native reserve, something strong, something angry and powerful and simmering in a veteran's grief. 

Willamina blinked, slowly, and he felt the cold cascading off the woman as she withdrew into herself, as stone walls raised the way she did when someone got too close.

He'd seen it before, when they'd lost men, when she lost her husband while they were deployed.

"What do you need from me, Boss?" Barrents asked, his voice pitched so only she could hear it.

"Take me to ER," Willamina whispered. "I don't think I can make it."

His eyes flashed once -- not alarm, not really, but ... concern.

He moved as if to pick her up and she raised a hand.

"I'll walk," she said, and he heard the pain in her voice. "Help me stand."

Sharon watched as the pair made their slow way across the polished-quartz floor, toward the front door.

Willamina stopped, leaned heavily on Barrents, one hand wrapped with what deceptively looked like a gentle grip on his forearm.

"A lady," she told Sharon firmly, "does not leave the room unless she is on the arm of a gentleman."

Sharon watched Barrents, outside, look left, look right, then quickly, unexpectedly, seize the Sheriff around the belt, hoist and tilt and insert her into the passenger side of the cruiser: nobody but the Chief Deputy heard her teeth click together as she locked her involuntary response behind her white ivories, nobody saw her momentary grimace as the cumulative effect of encountering Terra Firma at a respectable velocity -- more times than one -- reminded her that maybe that particular horse wasn't such a grand idea after all.

 

Barrents did not bother with the front desk.

He drove around back of the hospital, to the ambulance entrance.

He did not give Sheriff Willamina Keller a choice in the matter.

He reached across, released her seat belt, drove his arms under her thighs and behind her back and lifted her out, carried her toward the automatic doors.

Willamina offered no protest.

She reached out and snatched a handful of swirly-red-and-white peppermints from a plastic barf basin on the counter at the nurse's station, as they passed by it.

Not many minutes later, the automatic doors hissed open again, and the measured pace of steelshod hooves, loud and surprising, brought every head up.

Sheriff Willamina Keller was halfway undressed when a still-saddled Appaloosa mare thrust her head through the exam bay's curtains.

Nurses and the ER doc drew back as cellophane crinkled, as Willamina clamped her jaw against the pain, as she rotated her hand palm-up and offered the peppermint.

Cannonball lipped the peppermint, crunching it between strong, yellowed teeth, then crowded a little closer and laid her head over the Sheriff's belly, blinking, almost as if apologizing.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller lay on the ER cart, holding an ice pack to her steadily-coloring cheekbone, when her twin brother knocked on the doorframe and growled, "Permission to come aboard!"

"You'd better have coffee," Willamina muttered sourly.

"I have not," Chief of Police Will Keller snapped, thrusting a small ribbon-topped box at her.

"What's that?" Willamina asked suspiciously.

"Open it."

Willamina glared at her twin brother, managed to work the slip-over lid off the box one-handed.

Inside, a note, and a small square bottle of perfume.

"Read the note," Will said, and Willamina could hear the smile in his voice.

She gave him a raised-eyebrow glare and he gave her his very best Innocent Expression.

Willamina unfolded the note, grinned slowly, in spite of the discomfort it caused her banged-up cheekbone.

In her twin brother's regular block print, she read:

You've earned the right to wear that new cologne.

Eau de Payne!

 

 

Edited December 8, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DEMAND, AND SATISFACTION

Will Keller was out of school earlier than his twin sister Willamina.

Will was kneeling on a split rim tire, airing it up after repairing the tube.

He was well aware of split rims blowing free, and he had no wish to inherit a split rim through any part of his long tall carcass, so he turned the tire over so the split rim was down, he knelt on it, three points of contact -- both knees and his right palm -- his left gripped the air chuck, and he plugged it onto the valve stem.

Willamina was in her last class of the day.

She frowned at her wristwatch.

Murdered another one, she thought sourly: for whatever reason, Willamina shocked more easily than anyone she knew.

She personally theorized it was the dry air, but when she'd seated herself in the school desk, her bare knee touched the cast iron scrollwork side of the screwed-down desk.

A classmate across the aisle from her told her later, "When your knee hit that cast iron, the blue fahr just flew!"

Willamina looked at her watch -- the sweep second hand was still -- she sighed, considered that perhaps she should carry a pocket watch like Uncle Pete, and looked with genuine regret at the wristwatch. 

It was a ladies' watch, and if she wore jewelry, she wanted it functional, and a watch served both a function, and as decoration, at least until she touched something metal, and got shocked.

Again.

 

Will's hand was steady, firm, as he held the metal chuck on the valve.

The explosion took him by surprise.

The tire drove up and into him -- he stayed in place, somehow -- 

Will looked to the side --

A shelf, normally at shoulder height, was now at eye level.

He hung momentarily in midair, then fell almost as fast as he'd risen.

He didn't stay in his three-point stance.

Willamina launched out of her seat, arms clutching her ribs, blind with pain: she screamed like a panther and collapsed, out cold.

 

Marnie held the wristwatch, studied its round face, shook it hopefully.

"Deader'n a whore's heart," she muttered sadly.

"I don't know if there's a way to demagnetize it," Marnie's pale eyed Daddy admitted. "Never looked into it."

Marnie looked up at her Daddy.

"I'd like to try."

Linn nodded, once.

"It's yours."

 

Clocks were either advanced and precise, among the Confederate worlds, or they were crude and almost accurate.

Ambassador Marnie Keller's wristwatch was admired; those worlds with the capability, asked for plans, as-builts, manufacturing specs: a few began making wrist watches, patterned very precisely off the ladies' watch Marnie wore: there was an immediate demand for good, accurate, pocket watches, and Marnie found it necessary to pattern out genuine Ball pocket watches, and have those fabricated on two of the Confederate worlds with enough reverse engineered alien technology to manufacture such devices.

Sheriff Jacob Keller routinely wore a pocket watch, with a watch-chain and fob: this, too, became instantly in vogue in men's fashions, and it became a mark of distinction for a man of influence to pull out a Ball watch, or a hunter cased Ball variant, and elaborately, prominently mark the time -- less to know what the time was, and more to establish their prosperity, or their importance.

Generally their imagined importance.

Marnie encountered a businessman's wife wearing a bracelet with a round, engraved-silver device in the center, obviously made to look like one of the still-rare wristwatches.

Marnie drew the woman aside, held a quick, intense conversation, which of course inflamed the jealousies and suspicions of other women in the gathering: when the businesswoman, blushing furiously and smiling a little, the way a woman will when she knows a secret, returned to the gathering, she was immediately set upon by the other ladies, who demanded to know the nature of their little diplomatic tete-a-tete.

Her knowing smile was all the answer they received.

Marnie returned a week later and met the businesswoman for a light lunch, without announcement and without fanfare, and without an audience, which almost worked: as fortune decreed, one of the women who'd pressed her for details, was across the restaurant: this observer dawdled over-long over cooling tea, elaborately ignoring Marnie and the businesswoman.

Marnie unfast her correspondent's bracelet-clasp, dropped the bracelet in a pocket, then wrapped what looked like an identical bracelet around the businesswoman's gloved wrist.

They exchanged a wordless look, then Marnie's eyes dropped to the new bracelet, the one fabricated to look like her watch.

She bade the businesswoman press a small stud, opposite the winding-stem.

The cover snapped open to reveal a watch-face, and a sweep second hand industriously marching in its assigned orbit.

"I will return this bracelet to you," Marnie murmured, "with a wrist-watch inletted into it -- the watch you wear is made to look identical to the bracelet you've been wearing -- no one will know that what you wear, is any but the bracelet you've been wearing, until you choose to reveal its true nature."

Two women exchanged that shared, wicked expression, that deliciously naughty feeling that comes of entering into a feminine conspiracy.

Marnie waited one calendar month before delivering ladies' wrist-watches, and men's pocket-watches, for sale: she let jealousy, and word of mouth, create a demand, and then she very profitably satisfied that demand.

 

Most of the world looks at a cell phone to get the time, he thought as he pushed the hunter cased watch up and out of his vest pocket.

Sheriff Linn Keller pressed the stem to flip open the case.

He smiled a little as he regarded the portrait, hand painted inside the cover: his wife, Shelly, captured flawlessly -- hand painted, not a photograph.

He blinked, wound the stem carefully, considered the time, looked up at the cold, cloudless sky and smiled, just a little.

Somewhere up there, he thought, Marnie is creating another business empire.

He looked around, thumbed the watch back in his pocket, headed for the Silver Jewel.

It was crowding high twelve, and he was hungry. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

 

SUPPER, WITH A NECKTIE

Quiet laughter mixed with the smell of pan gravy and back strap meat -- elk, bovine, it didn't matter, it was all good, and dead tender -- Shelly's Mama cooked with herbs, and Linn's Mama did as well, and Linn well remembered the august admonition when he was getting big enough to actually notice girls:
"When you're sweet on a girl, set down across from her Mama and take a long look at her.

"In twenty years, that's what your girl is going to look like.

"When you set down, eat her Mama's cookin', because your girl will always, ALWAYS cook like that!"

This held true: Willamina and Shelly would collaborate on meals, they compared their methods, each found delight in the other's successes, and now, here, with pale eyed young men in tailored black suits and neckties, with elegant young ladies in dresses and knowing looks, supper was nothing short of honestly ... exquisite.

It was also something Linn did not entirely trust.

Normally supper was considerably less formal.

When his young showed up for supper, every last one of his boys in a suit and tie, every one of his girls in dresses and heels, when the men retreated to the Sheriff's study and began enthusiastically discussing the shooting competitions here on Earth, the competitions on Mars and elsewhere about the Confederacy, when the ladies shared confidences and murmurs and knowing looks, when they cast quick glances at the men as if afraid their feminine secrets might be overheard, Linn noticed: when Michael described how two nearly-grown Fanghorn snorted in what he'd recognized as amusement as he swore at them at absolutely the top of his lungs, as he, Lightning, Thunder and Cyclone all powered out into a river, angling against the current to intercept an amorous couple who managed to either fall off an outcrop into the water, or maybe the outcrop fell out from under them: he wasn't sure, he didn't care, all he knew was Lightning could swim, and he needed to get to the pair before they hit the rapids.

He hadn't counted on the enthusiastic participation of the colts.

Michael screamed profanely at them as they assaulted the shallows, pursuing their adopted dam, powerful, hard-muscled legs absolutely detonating spray up from the clear waters: they got their hooves under them and swam, powerfully, naturally, following Lightning as she followed Michael's thoughts.

Michael, seated on his Pa's big wide overstuffed couch, lowered his forehead into his hand, shook his head and laughed a little.

"We got 'em out," Michael said. "I finally had to put one of 'em on Thunder and t'other one on Cyclone. Thunder was the faster and he'd collected up the girl first and then he swung over and her fella run his arm over t'other side of Thunder's neck, and Cyclone came up all jealous, nippin' at Thunder."

Jacob looked at the kitchen, at his own buxom wife, apple-cheeked and laughing with the other ladies, then he looked at his pale eyed Pa and said quietly, "Sir, is this a good moment for that Innocent Expression?"

Linn looked at his son with an absolutely straight face and nodded, his reply quiet and solemn:

"A closed mouth gathers no foot."

Both men winked, Joseph piled up on the couch beside Michael, and Snowdrift floated up beside Joseph with the curious ease that is the genetic gift of large canines.

The Bear Killer was content to lay up against Linn's leg, sprawled out, relaxed, eyes mostly closed, the very image of contentment.

"Michael, I need your eyes," Jacob said after a few moments.

Michael went from the good-natured, relaxed appearance of a storyteller with a receptive audience, to the silent, attentive look of someone who is listening with more than both ears.

"You're likely too young to remember, but Gammaw once told me if she took us back East we were not to go into the woods alone, and if we did and we heard a whistle, no we didn't. If we heard someone call our name, no we didn't, and if we heard somethin' followin' us, don't turn around and look!"

Michael nodded, slowly: he'd heard these tales, not from his Gammaw, but from sessions much like this, over the years.

"Michael, have you found anything of the kind on any of the Confederate worlds?"

Michael frowned, considered: he thought for several long moments, then shook his head slowly.

"No," he admitted.  "No, never."

Michael looked at his older brother, then at his Pa.

"Sir?" he said. "I can see a question in your eyes."

"Not a question, Michael," Linn admitted: he got up, went to one of the gun cases, looked slowly across the row of blued-steel peace makers, then opened the door and retrieved a blue-worn model 12 Winchester with rifle sights.

He chamber-checked, then opened a drawer, picked up a small blue box with a clear plastic lid.

Linn handed the shotgun to Jacob, the box to Michael.

Jacob knew the gun: he'd shot it, both in qualification and in competition, he'd carried it bird hunting, at least until he realized he could reduce his loadout by going to a double gun, eliminating the weight of the machined-steel receiver.

Jacob traded Michael.

Michael frowned at the box's content.

"Go ahead, open it up," Linn said.

Michael reached in, pinched up what looked like finishing nails with the head end flattened to make ersatz fins.

"Flechettes?" he asked, puzzled.

"Silver flechettes."

"Silver."

Michael's left eyebrow went up, as did Jacob's.

Young Joseph, who was industriously snuggling up against Snowdrift's ribcage, tried raising his own eyebrow, and managed to raise two for the price of one.

"Silver is an ancient charm against evil. So is salt. What you've got there is one of the damndest handloads I ever put together."

Michael picked up the cutaway round, looked closely, looked at his Pa.

"I cast a slug of salt, with flechettes embedded."

"Considerably lighter than a slug," Jacob murmured.

"Three 00-buck sized silver ball bearings cast into the bottom of the salt, flechettes on top looking out. Alternated with silver-ball-bearing 00 buck rounds because I like double-ought."

"So did Gammaw," Jacob nodded.

Little Joseph was already asleep, his head laid over against Snowdrift's shoulder.

For her part, the pure-white Bear Killing K9 had her tongue out in an expression of doggy contentment.

"So why did you make these up, sir?"

"I wanted to see if I could find what Mama was talking about, when she said not to turn around."

"Did you?"

Pale eyed sons watched their father's gaze drop to the side for several long moments.

"The Appalachians are old," he finally said, his voice as distant as his eyes. "Older than the Rockies.

"I'm told they were taller than the Rockies at one time. Something that old, something that absolutely ancient ..."

Michael and Jacob shared a look, each one suspecting the other was considering the feasibility of fabricating silver based ammunition.

"I found a holler -- that's what they call 'em, a holler, and I went up-holler.

"Now was that forty years earlier I'd not dare."  He grinned.  "Moonshiners set up their still at the head of a holler, where they can get good water and have hills behind and on either side, no one can approach but from down-hollow, and it was considered bad manners to just walk up a hollow. If you were lucky, you'd hear a thirty-caliber freight train whistle past your ear.

"If you left, you lived.

"If you didn't, you'd never hear the second one.

"Anyway this holler didn't feel ... right ... so I knew I was going to find something, and directly, why, I heard something a-follow.

"I came around with my gun to shoulder and I'm not sure quite what it was, other than dark, vaguely manlike and it just had the screamin' fellin' of being wrong.

"I slapped the trigger and followed that with a second round and I felt it scream more than I heard it, and it was gone, and I got the hell out of Dodge, and made Jesse Owens look like an amateur when I did!"

Silence, there in the study, save for The Bear Killer's contented sigh from his position laid up against the Sheriff's leg.

"Mama and I were East for a visit, we got home, I considered what happened, and didn't say a word about it to Mama."

"You didn't have to," Jacob guessed quietly.

Linn nodded, chuckled a little, nodded.

"You can't fool ol' Ma."

"And don't you forget it!" a feminine voice called in from the kitchen.

Linn looked at his sons, an encompassing, sweeping turn of the head as he thrust a dramatic hand toward the feminine gathering and commented almost sadly, "And this is what we mean when we say that someone has hearing like your Mama!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HURT FACES AND HURT FEELIN'S

Sheriff Linn Keller lowered his head a little and rubbed his eyes.

He'd waited until grandson Joseph was gone before he allowed himself to react.

"No," he whispered hoarsely at his smooth, polished desk top.  "Oh God, no!"

He wasn't surprised that it was suddenly harder for him to breathe.

He threw his head back, took a fast, gasping breath, groaned, his arms folded across his belly, then he bent over, dropped his forehead onto the desk top, clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut -- hard! -- against memories, too many memories, as Hell itself came roaring out of the shadows he kept hidden, as he remembered things he didn't want to remember.

Joseph's argument was persuasive.

He'd spoken quietly, with the same positive assurance the Sheriff heard in his own voice when he, too, was a young man, fired with the idea that he was Doing The Right Thing, when he allowed that damned slick talking German to recruit him into the Volunteer Cavalry.

A thousand times, ten thousand times, Linn damned himself, whipped his soul with the memory of coming home in time to be too late, coming home from that damned War to a farm empty of voices, empty of laughter, a black wreath on his cabin door, and a note inside from his neighbor telling him his wife was dead and buried, his little daughter had the small pox.

It took him most of fifteen minutes to gather himself enough to straighten up, to go over to the gun case, to unlock a drawer and fetch out what he'd had custom made for Joseph.

He stared at a pair of Colt model P revolvers he'd had custom made.

They were copper plated and custom engraved with roses around the muzzles, with vining along the long facets of the top strap.

He'd planned on giving these to Joseph on his birthday.

He stopped, took a long breath, then thrust the revolvers into the brand-new holsters, wrapped them in their gunbelt, picked up a sign.

The Sheriff closed and locked his office door and hung a sign -- GONE FISHIN' -- then he lifted the reins where he'd just draped them over the hitch rail.

Apple-horse gave him a wise look as the Sheriff knotted the reins and dropped them over his saddle horn.

"At least you ain't a Tennessee walker," he murmured as he stroked his stallion's neck: "Walkers are mean!"

Apple-horse offered no comment.

 

Marnie Keller frowned as she considered the spreadsheets open on the big screen above her desk.

"It costs so damned much," she murmured thoughtfully -- "not so much, so damned much!"

The decision was not hers to make -- the decision was made already, by the Supreme Confederate -- and she had to admit, it was the right choice to make.

A standing military was a necessity when there were territorial neighbors that could become potential rivals, when it came to the possibility of defending sovereign space.

There had to be troops.

Troops had to be uniformed, armed, trained, maintained, fed, housed and more, much more, and every last one of those things cost money.

There were arguments that space was so unbelievably vast as to eliminate the possibility of invasion.

Iris technology rendered distance a non-factor, provided you had coordinates for destination: a single, unmanned probe, launched into the silence, could penetrate undetected and establish locations for invasion.

Provided their interstellar neighbors had Iris technology.

They had to know about the Iris project -- Valkyrie Starfighters used Iris transport to return  trespassing warships back to their homeworlds, unharmed, but with the clear message:

If we can do this without hurting you, imagine what we could do if we were irritated!

 

Joseph Keller's cheekbones were red, as were his ears: this was a sign that his temper was up, but his silence, the rigid control of his movements, told the knowledgeable watcher that his control was under tight rein, that he would not let slip his temper, in spite of its having been tried.

He looked up as his grandfather approached, his boots measured, deliberate, boot heels loud on the warped, dusty boardwalk.

He carried a wrapped gunbelt, two holsters, and Joseph saw the ivory handles of two revolvers.

"Joseph."

"Sir."

Linn held out the leather encirclement, but there was no smile in his eyes.

"See if this fits."

Joseph blinked, then he took the gift: he unwrapped the gunbelt, looked at the smooth-brown gun rig, quirked an eyebrow up as he looked at the US belt buckle.

He looked at his grandfather.

"Joseph," Linn said, his voice tight, "you are fast and you are good with a sixgun."

Joseph's face was solemn as he nodded, once, not quite trusting his voice.

"If you're going over to Europe to fight the Hun, you'll likely need those."

Joseph swallowed something -- unexpected, sticky, a lump -- he ran the gunbelt around his lean middle, drew it snug.

He drew the left hand revolver, turned a little to his left.

He saw cartridge rims -- loaded, which he expected, an unloaded revolver was not much account -- he studied the vining surrounding the muzzle, the rose, in bloom, on either side.

"Copper?" he asked curiously.

"Copper plated," Linn agreed. "It'll turn black with handling. It'll polish bright from holster wear. I've seen 'em before."

Joseph rotated the revolver, looked more closely -- there, low and forward, and he stared hard at the fresh engraving, inlaid black so it would stand out.

The Thunder Bird.

Stylized, angular, bold, aggressive, just the thing a fighting sidearm should have.

Joseph considered the ivory grips, the Masonic square-and-compasses on one panel, the arc-and-compasses on the other.

"Sir," he said hesitantly, "aren't we a little premature?"

Linn took a step forward, gripped his grandson's shoulders firmly.

The look he gave Joseph could have punched through an ironclad's hull.

"I have seen war, Joseph," he said quietly. "Your Pa does not favor your going, but it is your choice and not his."

Linn closed his eyes for a long moment, closed it against the pain that threatened to come a-rollin' out of his memory again: he shoved it brutally back into the shadows of his soul and cleared his throat.

"Joseph, your Pa taught you all we get out of a fight is hurt faces and hurt feelin's and that's the case if it's just a fight, but this is ... not."

Joseph's expression was serious.

"This is war, Joseph, and war is mostly boredom and routine and puttin' up with idiot makework and stupid orders, at least until it's not."

"Yes, sir," Joseph said faintly.

"Your reasoning is sound. We stop the Hun over there so he doesn't come over here."

Linn looked away, took a long breath, released his grandson's shoulders, his voice quiet.

"Was the Hun to win all of Europe, they'd take England, and nothin' a'tall would stop them from sailin' over here and tryin' to take us too."

"Yes, sir," Joseph replied, realizing his Grampa had actually listened when Joseph sat down with him and talked about enlisting in the Great War.

"I had my engraver add the Thunder Bird yesterday. I took the steam train into the City and he was kind enough to chase those in while I set on my backside and counted nails in the ceiling."

"Thank you, sir."

"As far as the grips, Joseph."

Linn's voice was deeper, more serious, more fatherly, or grandfatherly.

"Those are my statement of confidence. I intend you should come home, alive, unhurt, and you should take my place here -- as Master of the Lodge, and as Sheriff."

"Yes, sir," Joseph said, voice firm with resolve.

 

When the news came that Joseph was killed in battle, many back home grieved the loss of a lean-waisted, pale-eyed young man: Sarah's death, a year before, hit hard, and now Joseph, gone, never to wear the Sheriff's six point star, never to wear the hat in Lodge, never to present his father with a grandson.

Up on Cemetery Hill, a solitary figure knelt in grief at a cenotaph: Sarah's bones still lay in the ruins of a burned-out German schloss, but her family placed a stone here, that her memory, at least, might find a place, and it was here that Daciana knelt, shawl pulled up over her head as she looked at her best friends' stone and whispered to the shade of someone she'd trusted as she'd trusted none other.

"I vass midvife vhen he was borndt," she whispered.  "Zarah, you vere zere mitt ..."

Daciana's whisper choked off as she remembered Joseph's emergence, how suddenly he'd rotated and twisted and dropped into her hands -- an easy birth, surprisingly so -- and how she'd been hit with his death at this, his moment in life.

She'd seen him carrying a wounded man -- an enemy, she knew, but in the vision she saw the small Masonic pin the German officer wore, and she saw the matching insignia on the handle of one of Michael's revolvers -- she felt war and rage and battle singing in his veins as he set the injured man carefully at the base of a blasted, shattered tree, then charged the enemy troops converging on him -- she felt the rawness of his throat as he screamed defiance, as he drove round after round into the oncoming enemy, as he shot grenades thrown at him, until a final blast and darkness and she saw a face bend over him as he breathed his last and she looked over at Sarah, standing across the bed from her as Daciana held this slippery-birthed little boy baby, as Sarah bent over him and whispered, "Come with me," as she saw Joseph stand, whole and uninjured, and mount his old Apple-horse, and follow a great, black, winged mare.

Daciana bent double, laid her forehead on the ground, and wept as women have wept in every war known to man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND ON A PERSONAL NOTE, AN APOLOGY

My friends, I am not made of the same iron that Old Pale Eyes.

The preceding entry was written when I was struggling with hard memories.

My apologies, my internal stresses were reflected in the darker tone of what I wrote.

Stress of any kind is stress, and that with which I was inflicted, adversely affected my precision.

I mistakenly wrote "Michael" in several places where I meant "Joseph."

My own fault.

Only a friend will inquire about an error, and a genuine friend did just that -- for which I am profoundly and genuinely grateful! -- I've gone back in and changed all the Michaels to Josephs.

I think.

I won't say that too loud.

There are Evil Demons of the Air that listen to every word we say, and use them against us -- "What's that about a picnic? ZAP! -- thunderstorms and red ants!"

Anyway I believe it's fixed and I'll try and do better.

Linn 

Edited December 13, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

LINE SHACK

Angela Keller fed another few chunks of wood into the tin stove, closed the door, set the draft.

"We'll heat up here directly," she said cheerfully, then pulled two chairs up close to the stove, draped a blanket over each: she took the young mother by the upper arms, turned her, steered her backwards until her calves just touched the chair, and she sat: Angela draped the thick, quilted blanket around her with expert hands, then motioned a twelve year old boy into the other chair.

She pulled the wet sneakers off his feet, then his socks: she quickly, carefully, dried his feet, pulled up a rude, homemade footstool, folded the towel for a pad and propped his cold, wrinkled feet where he could get heat from the stove on them.

She did the same for the mother, excused herself, came back with a bucket of water, set it down.

"We've plenty of wood outside," she observed as she ran a hand into the saddlebag she'd draped over a peg, pulled out two cans: she set these on a short shelf under a window, pulled down a can opener and quickly opened both cans.

She squinted critically into the depths of a saucepan, turned it over, smacked its bottom: pale eyed glared an an invisible something floating to the floor, she planted her boot on the nonexistent whatever and ground it into the floor, muttering "Stay out of my cookpot!" -- then she looked at Oliver and winked.

Oliver wiggled his warming toes and grinned.

Angela draped Oliver's socks over a wire, above the stove, took two clothes pins and hung his sneakers toe-down beside them -- "Heat rises," she explained, "and as these warm up and water evaporates, the warm water vapor will rise and not be trapped."

Angela pulled a few more things from her saddlebag: jars of powdered spices -- "Been meaning to bring these up here," she commented, arranging them in a neat rank on a convenient shelf -- "we'll have a hot meal right here directly!"

Beans, spices, cooked crumbled bacon: Angela stirred gently, looked at the mother rocking the sleeping infant.

"How are you set for formula and diapers?" she asked quietly, and the mother smiled, glanced to her left at the pastel-blue diaper bag with the plaid elephant cutout glued to its side.

"Okay for now," she murmured.

"There's an easy way down from here," Angela said, "but the way that snow's coming down, I don't want to risk it. We'll be warm here, we have supplies. As soon as the solar flares quit, we can call and let everyone know we're all right."

Oliver frowned, looked at his phone again, grimaced.

"Still nothing."

"How's your battery?"

"Low," he admitted.

"Nice watch," Angela observed.

She saw mother and son stiffen, share a look.

"You don't often see a watchband compass in the civilian world. I usually see those with military, especially squad leaders."

The mother swallowed, bit her bottom lip, and Oliver stared blankly at the watch, the band loose on his skinny arm.

"Was he your father?"

Angela's voice was gentle, understanding: Oliver nodded as his mother busied herself tugging the wrap around her baby with an unnecessary thoroughness.

"You've been taking note of our direction of travel," Angela pressed, "and you've been counting steps."

Oliver took a long breath. 

"Yeah."

"You've made notes on your phone."

He nodded.

Angela leaned the wooden spoon against the side of the saucepan, reached inside her coat: she walked around behind Oliver's mother and handed the sixth-grader a stub of a pencil and a brand new, never used pocket notebook.

"Transfer your data onto paper," she said. "If the phone loses power, you're sunk."

 

Tea, sweetened with honey, drunk from repurposed jelly jars.

Beans with bacon eaten off mismatched, secondhand plates with utensils older than any of their users.

A line shack, mostly windproofed, heated by a compact sheetmetal stove with a smoke pipe longer than seemed necessary.

Angela excused herself and went out into the evening's dark to check on Cyrus, the mule they'd ridden in on: the mother in the saddle, Oliver to starboard, checking his watch, or more likely his compass -- Angela to port -- and between them, steady old Cyrus, her Daddy's most reliable mule, the one Angela preferred for rough country riding.

Angela quietly noticed how Oliver would turn and look back the way they'd come, but he did it like his inner voice said "Yeah, I just remembered, I'm supposed to do this" -- Angela, of course, had a lifetime in these mountains, and snow or not, knew them more than intimately: she knew exactly where she was, where the line shack was, and how to get down from the line shack come daylight.

A warm meal, altitude, darkness, and honest fatigue -- plus the relief that came of knowing they were safe -- and Angela had little trouble filling the two bunks.

She padded up the rocking chair, seated herself to the side of the stove: sometime in the night, she smiled as she heard a familiar distant howl, then a scratching on the door.

Neither Oliver nor his mother woke as Angela opened the door, as a pure-white Snowdrift-dog padded in, as a lean, feral-white face regarded her from several yards away: the White Wolf gave her a long look, as if recognizing a fellow predator, then turned and disappeared into the snow-falling dark.

Oliver barely stirred as he felt feminine hands draw the blankets up around his neck, as he smelled lilac, as a hand rested briefly on his covered shoulder.

He barely stirred, but he smiled in his sleep.

Oliver and his Mama woke to the smell of bacon and eggs and hot tea again; the women made over the little boy baby in the voices women use for such things, which Oliver politely ignored, preferring to confer wordlessly with a big furry mountain Mastiff that seemed to think she and Oliver had been friends for a lifetime, and she deserved belly rubs, which he gave with evident and unadulterated pleasure.

Angela explored the mother's shoes with her fingertips, the Oliver's: she put the mother's now-dry socks on her feet, followed by plastic grocery sacks, then her shoes.

She did the same for Oliver and explained to them both that "This won't guarantee to keep your feet dry, but it should help" -- she washed their few dishes in the plastic pickle bucket kept for that purpose, stepped outside and slung the washwater in a big arc, came back inside, looked around.

"O-kay," she said with satisfaction: "beds are made, dishes are washed, we've had breakfast. Oliver, could you bring me your mother's coat, please, it should be dry."

Angela got everyone bundled up and ready, she took their trash in a plastic bag and tied it to her saddlebags with a piggin string.

"I apologize for the primitive accommodations, especially that frosty-cold outhouse seat," she smiled half-shamefacedly -- "I tried not to yelp too loud when my backside hit the picture frame!"

The three did not laugh out loud, but they shared a knowing smile as the mother looked down at a tiny face, just visible in her coat, yawning with the immensity and volume that only a warm, contented baby can.

Angela raised her talkie, keyed up.

"Firelands, Angel One."

"Angel One, Firelands."

"Firelands, we are at the line shack up-mountain from the Museum. Have a mother and two children rescued from a vehicle stuck in the ditch where Pokey White's house used to be. Can you advise if the road near the museum is cleared yet?"

"Oh, honey, that's cleared already."

Sharon's voice had a limp-wrist wave and a smile, even through the talkie.

"I think they just found the car and your note under the windshield wiper."

"If you could have it brought to the Silver Jewel, please, and could you have a unit pick up my guests from the Museum's driveway?"

Angela waited for several moments, long enough for Angela to imagine a food fight involving flying doughnuts, which had actually happened, but that was several years ago, and she was the one who'd started it.

"Can do," Sharon replied, "we'll plow into the Museum parking lot for you."

 

Angela rode up on Cyrus as mother and son came out of the Silver Jewel and descended toward their waiting car.

"It's not supposed to snow for another two days," Angela declared as she dismounted, as Cyrus sighed dramatically, with the expression of someone considering a nap.

"You're not far from here?" Angela asked hopefully.

"Only about an hour."

"I won't tell you to be careful," Angela said quietly, looking the woman very directly in the eye: "you've been a good and safe driver since you were sixteen. I will tell you most of the roads are cleared."

Angela tilted her head, looked from Oliver to his mother and back.

"By the way, did either of you notice anything ... odd ... last night?"

"Odd? ... nnnnooo," the mother said slowly.

Oliver shook his head, his fingers buried in Snowdrift's companionable shoulder.

"Should ... we have?"

Angela smiled quietly.

"People have told me the line shack is haunted," she admitted. "Better than a century ago, a young couple slept there to begin their honeymoon. My several times great grandmother, Sarah Lynne McKenna."

She looked meaningfully at Oliver, saw his eyes widen as she said, "It's said when she visits, you can smell lilac."

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ARTIFACTS

Chief of Police Will Keller was a long way from home.

He'd gone East to pick up an artifact, something he honestly never thought he'd see again.

He raised a wooden cane -- his twin sister Willamina used it when her leg was healing, years before -- he knocked, carefully, on the front door of a house he'd not been to in better than a quarter of a century.

Later that day he climbed out of his rented car and walked the few steps to a tombstone he'd visited a decade before that.

THOMAS WHITINGTON, it read, and beside it, his wife: dates of birth, dates of death, and Will took a long breath, felt the weight of the little pistol in his inside coat pocket, his hand opening a little as if hoping someone was beside him, someone  who would put her hand in his like she'd done when last he stood here.

It didn't happen.

If she was here at all, she was dust, long since sunk into the ground: Rosalee died of diabetic complications -- Rosalee of the dark eyes and desperation, Rosalee who clung to him when she had no one else, Rosalee whose picture he took while she was petting a mink at a friend's farm, the mink laid over her shoulder and a soft look of wonder on her face.

Will considered the stone, the device engraved into smoothed Vermont granite.

"Brother Thomas," he said, "her grandson was supposed to have placed her ashes here on your grave. He never did let me know if he has or if he ever will."

Will reached into a coat pocket, pulled out a small paper sack, opened it.

"Peanuts," he said, "for the squirrels.  Rosie always liked squirrels."

Unsalted peanuts in the shell, sprinkled the length of the grave: another sack, sunflowers, for the blue jays, broadcast the width of the plot, and its length.

Will looked long at the stone, ran his eyes down the grave.

"Rosie," he murmured, "I gave you this little Bearkitty revolver when you left. You sold it to a professor when you were short on money, and I bought it back off him."

Will swallowed, closed his eyes, remembered how she felt when she leaned into him, remembered how she smelled when she laughed into his shirt front.

"I will not forget you," he whispered, then he turned and walked the few steps back to the rental car.

It was an old graveyard, in a founding city, across from a little short order restaurant that got its start selling hot dogs: Will pulled across the street and into the lot, and went inside, and ordered a hot dog like he and Rosie did, back when he was young and she was a librarian.

An old man with eyes full of memories looked across the street at a grave, and smiled as two bluejays landed and seized their treasures, took off as a squirrel hopped over to investigate.

Will bit into the hot dog, tasted mustard and onion and meat and memories.

If her grandson lets me know he's going to place her ashes, he thought, I'll come back for that.

Otherwise ...

He considered the fresh ache behind his breast bone, a too familiar feeling when he considered how many dead people he knew.

Will swallowed, eyes staring across at the grave and at a thousand memories of someone he'd known as a young man.

"Otherwise I'll not be back," he murmured into the end of the bitten bun: "rest easy, Rosie!"

An old man got into his car and headed back for the local crash patch airport.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HORSE FLAVORED BLANKET

"You look tired, Boss."

Linn looked at his chief deputy and smiled a little.

Barrents hesitated, the pressed, "Your new girl?"

Barrents saw Linn's eyes tighten a little more at the corners: this was a genuine smile, showing through his short-on-sleep fatigue.

"Yeah," he admitted.

Barrents hesitated, then:  "Nightmares?"

He watched his old friend's eyes change, saw the fatigue show itself again, and maybe ...

... sadness?

Linn frowned, hesitated, then looked away and smiled, and Barrents knew a memory just walked into Linn's mind and said "Remember me?"

Linn looked back, rose, and Barrents rose with him.

"Any dog nuts left?" he asked.

It was a rhetorical question: it meant the Sheriff was going to draw a mug of coffee, it meant the Sheriff never ate doughnuts alone, and it meant if there were no doughnuts, he'd look at the clock and ask if Barrents would join him in some coffee, and Barrents would say it sounded wet and crowded, and they'd both laugh.

Unless there were doughnuts left.

Which there were.

 

Jacob saw the shadow move.

A shadow crossed in the hallway, visible in the gap under his door.

Jacob was awake, instantly, if not sooner: he had a new sister, Marnie, she was the same age as he, and he might not be Big Brother but he was here first and he knew his Pa expected him to keep an eye on her.

Even at four years old, Jacob took his responsibilities seriously.

He rolled out of the bunk, thrust sock feet into waiting boots -- he'd understood the Irish Brigade staged their drawers down over their boot tops and slept in their socks, and he did the same, for the same useful and practical reason -- jeans up, button, zip and buckle, his flannel shirt spun into place as he eased his bedroom door open just enough to peek one eye out and look down the stairs.

He only just saw his new sister's head disappear, bobbing her way down hill.

As silent as Marnie was, The Bear Killer wasn't: stiff forelegs and canine weight thumped gently, rhythmically on the ancient stairs, toenails a light counterpoint, causing Marnie to stop at the halfway mark, turn to the big black curly furred canine and put a finger to her lips:
"Shhh!"

Jacob faded back half a foot, knowing she would look suspiciously up the staircase before continuing on her nocturnal journey.

Jacob eased forward again.

Jacob slipped eased forward on all fours, barely looking over the wooden edge as Marnie stretched up and shut off the alarm, as she carefully, silently turned the lock knobs, as she opened the door and slipped into nighttime dark, The Bear Killer crowding out ahead of her.

Jacob's thoughts were the rapid, efficient impulses of a child, not the slow, clumsy, speed-limited turn-it-into-words process adults used.

He knew she'd head for the barn.

He also knew if he opened the door too soon, she'd know it and she'd come steaming back, lips pressed together, fingers clenched into fists at being caught.

He didn't want to catch her.

He wanted to make sure she was not going to get him in trouble.

He was her Big Brother, after all, and Big Brothers take care of their sisters.

 

Marnie pulled up loose straw from a broken bale, piled it deep.

She felt safe here.

There were no monsters out here.

When she slept in a bed, she dreamed of New York and of the dirty little tenement apartment, of the unwashed blankets, of hiding when voices were raised, when she heard people being hurt.

Marnie learned to pull the grate off the hot air register, to crawl backwards into the air duct, to pull the grate back into place: she would slither backwards, parallel to the wall, back into darkness and safety, and she would press her little hands over her little ears and squeeze her eyes shut tight, tight, as if shutting out light could shut out sound as well.

Marnie wasn't the only one who knew about her hiding place.

That nasty man that stayed with her Mommy stuffed bags into it and he was drunk and bragging about "the bank job" and "if you touch it I'll cut your fingers off" and then he'd taken Marnie by the back of her dress and he'd hung her out a window screaming "DAMN YOU IF YOU TOUCH IT I'LL DROP HER I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL DROP HER!" and Marnie closed her eyes and shivered and did not dare move and finally she was pulled back inside and thrown into a wall and she fell to the floor and she did not dare move and none of that happened out here where it was cold and silent and there were stars when she looked up.

Marnie curled up and pulled a broad-striped saddle blanket over her and The Bear Killer, and sometime through the night, one of the white horsies came in and laid down with her and laid her long jaw over Marnie's belly and blew loud and contented and Marnie's little hand caressed the mare's white fur.

Marnie felt safe when she smelled straw and The Bear Killer and the horsies.

Marnie woke when the horsie pulled away and worked her way upright, as The Bear Killer snuffed at her ear and washed behind her ear and Marnie giggled and then she got up and brushed the straw off her and scampered back toward the house.

 

Linn knocked carefully at Marnie's door.

"Marnie?" he called gently, pretending not to see occasional shining-gold pieces of straw just inside the door: he'd picked up the vegetative fallout from her ascent of the stairs, from her quick, careful duck-and-dive-into-bed.

Jacob watched silently from his bedroom door.

Linn turned and winked at his son, gave a shallow nod.

Ya done good.

Jacob grinned with all the justifiable pride of a protective Big Brother, made all the better by his Pa's recognition.

 

"She slept in the barn all night?" Barrents asked, right before he took a noisy slurp of scalding-hot, sinner's-heart-black coffee.

"She sleeps better in the barn than in her bed."

Barrents frowned.

"There's a ... reason ... for that?" Barrents asked carefully, and he saw something haunting the Sheriff's eyes.

"I reckon there is," Linn said quietly. "I have my suspicions. My sister ..."

His voice was quiet, but Barrents heard an edge behind the words, a sharpened edge of deep, long-held anger.

He considered a few moments more, then asked, "Wasn't she cold? It was chilly last night."

Linn blinked, any haunting memory, gone: his grin was quick, right before his quiet laugh, for the moment when he wasn't Sheriff, he was a father, telling a good one on how a child surprised him.

"I asked her that," Linn said, "and she give me that big-eyed and real innocent look that little girls use and she said "I had a horsie flavored blanket!"

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

LUG WRENCH

It was Linn's eighteenth birthday.

He'd planned to drive just short of four hours and meet with friends, and pick up a shotgun he'd been wanting for a few years now.

It was a double gun, with a history, and he planned to stop at a grave on the way back and look at the gun and at the tombstone and remember.

He'd planned to be on the road at first light.

He'd come out to find his driver's rear tire, flat.

It was the first flat he'd ever had on this vehicle, and so the lug wrench and factory jack were still in their original packaging.

A sheet of cardboard kept him clean as he laid down under the Jeep's aft end, as he slid under and positioned the jack and brought it up just snug, under the lifting point under the back axle: he did not hoist it, not yet, not until he loosened the lugs.

He put the factory lug wrench on the lug and took a strain on it.

Nothing happened.

He frowned, eased off, then flexed his fingers, laid the coal on the short handle.

Nothing.

Linn was eighteen years old.

Linn was long, tall, lean, and strong.

Linn was twice cursed.

Linn had a young man's temper.

Linn also had the hereditary temper that was the blood lineage of having pale eyes.

This time he laid into that lug wrench like he meant it -- he powered into the torque with the philosophy quoted him by his Uncle Will:

"Now by God! you'll work or you'll bust!"

It didn't work.

When he felt it start to move, he put even more power to it, until two things happened.

The lug nut didn't surrender with its usual brittle pop-and-squeak, and suddenly the lug wrench got way too easy to turn, and fell out of his hands.

He stared at the headless lug wrench on the ground, and at the handle-less socket, still on the lug nut.

Linn blinked a few times, picked up the lug wrench, looked at it with the expression of someone who'd just been personally insulted, then he looked at the socket -- he gripped the socket between thumb and forefinger, tried to wiggle it -- no wiggle -- he rapped it with the broken neck of what used to be a lug wrench, thrust the chisel tip under, and the decapitated socket fell off and hit the ground.

Linn picked it up, straightened, considered.

That is to say, part of him considered.

The rest of him was MAD AS HELL AND I'M GOING TO THROW THIS THING!

He looked around, gloved hands tightening on the offending, broken tool.

If I throw it, he reasoned, I'll just have to go pick it up.

Don't want to hit it with the mower.

I could take a sledge hammer to it.

Too much like work.

He looked at the tire.

"Tire's not changin' itself," he muttered.

Willamina sipped coffee and watched her son through the window, smiling a little as she did.

She watched as he strode purposefully for the barn, returned with a breaker bar and a socket, watched as he changed the tire, nodded with approval as he put the anti-seize compound on the lugs before tightening them, nodded again as he carefully wiped everything down afterward.

Willamina knew firsthand just how messy that metallic-looking no-seize compound was, and how easily, and how fast, it smeared all over everything!

When Linn came inside for breakfast, she waited until they sat down together and talked to their plates before addressing her son.

"You know," she said softly, "I keep a breaker bar and socket in my Jeep for that very reason."

Linn looked up from buttering his bread, his grin bright, sudden -- just the way Will smiles! Willamina thought -- Linn nodded and said quietly, "I'll have to now."

"I broke a lug wrench just like you did," Willamina said conversationally, salting her fried eggs and looking at her son with a combination of mischief and understanding.

Linn bit into a strip of bacon, nodded, not at all surprised that his dear skinny Mama had muscle enough to manage the task.

"I wasn't quite as controlled as you were today," she added quietly, slicing fried egg white from the firm yolk with the edge of her fork.

"Oh?"  Linn thrust his fork under his cut-free yolk, slid the entire yolk into his mouth, then bit, enjoying the explosion of bacon-grease-fried flavor.

"I drove the end of the wrench -- the handle -- into the ground like a stake," Willamina admitted quietly, "and I wound up and threw the twisted-off socket like an outfielder throwing for home."

Linn considered this, nodded thoughtfully: somehow, knowing the occasional detonations he'd seen his soft-spoken, ladylike Mama accomplish, he did not doubt this one little bit.

"I threw it well into the brush so I wouldn't mow into it," Willamina continued, "but I'm afraid my language was less than delicate as I used Uncle Pete's single jack to drive that wrench as deep into the ground as it would go!"

Linn made the mistake of trying to take a swig of coffee as his Mama spoke: the mental image of his sweet, demure, diminutive, ladylike, feminine, beloved Mama, screaming maniacally and profanely at the broke end of a lug wrench while driving it into the ground with a driller's hammer, pounding it as deep as it would go without using an intervening rod to drive it deeper, stuck him as honestly funny.

His laughing snort blew coffee back all over his face and his shirt front both.

He made it to his friend's house to pick up that double gun, just a little later than he'd planned.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A PROPER RETURN

Michael Keller's face was not set in any kindly fashion, and neither was his win sister's.

Michael could have wasted time considering that, even though Victoria was riding rough country with him, although she was a-straddle of a bitless Fanghorn with the red eyes that meant she was hungry and would rather be hunting meat, although Angela rode with rifle in hand and Confederate field generators laid snug against the small of her back and in her saddlebags, she still made an attractive presentation: she wore a flat-crowned black hat with tan trim, she wore a tan blouse with a brown vest, and a brown riding skirt and boots.

She also wore the same expression as her twin brother.

Michael and Lightning moved as one creature, as was their habit: shared trauma created a deeper bond than anyone else realized, and Michael needed neither bit nor knees to commune closely with Lightning: more times than one, Angela realized, when Michael turned his head to the left, Lightning did the same, and when Lightning's ears pricked and swung toward a sound, Michael's attention did as well, moving with the ears.

Not because of them.

Angela rode Thunder, who apparently decided Angela belonged to him, which was probably because he'd found she gave the very best belly rubs and rib scratchies, and maybe because she cooed to him like she cooed to little babies -- men are often suckers for the attention of a lovely lass -- whatever the case, Angela was surprised at first, then intuitively attentive, and finally realized with a degree of honest surprise she, too, had some connection with this broad-headed, forehead-bossed, big-boned, unbelievably strong, fast, vicious and carnivorous, putty-in-her-hands, three-year-old Fanghorn stallion.

Michael's eyes were busy: he and Lightning drew up against some brush to break their outline and Michael raised his wrist-unit, listened without replying to Firelands dispatch.

The three Fanghorns converged, their riders looking around, daughters of the mountains listening with more than their ears, hearing through Michael's ears as a son of that pale eyed lawman listened to the Sheriff's frequency, relayed through Confederate technology.

Michael smiled as he heard Lightning's anticipation, her thoughts: he laid a soothing hand on her neck, looked at Angela, turned his head, looked at Victoria, then straightened, motioned them closer: Lightning turned to face east, Thunder and Cyclone sidled up against her facing West, and three pale eyed riders conferred quietly on a sunlit mountainside.

"We were right," Michael said quietly. "He's wanted for murder times four. Bring him in alive if we can, or otherwise if we must. Air unit is enroute."

"Is he close?" Angela asked quietly.

"Lightning can smell him."

"He's armed."

Victoria did not pose it as a question.

"Yep. Make sure your fields are up."

A silent look, shared: They're up.

"What happens if we don't bring him in?"

"Everyone keeps looking."

"And if we bring him in dead?"

Michael sighed.

"Everybody and their uncle wants to interrogate him. Like they think they can get some great cosmic reason for his killing all those people."

"Cyclone is hungry," Victoria said quietly. "She'll be happy to turn him into a steaming pile, save everyone a lot of work."  Victoria patted Cyclone's shoulder.  "Remember, girl, I get his scalp. You can have the rest."

Michael shook his head, sighed.

"Sis," he said quietly, "for someone so good lookin', you are pretty damned bloodthirsty!"

Victoria was quiet for several moments -- another silent communication whistled right past Michael, connected two pale eyed sisters -- then Victoria said quietly, "I don't want evil to touch my family again."

Michael's jaw slid out and he nodded.

He did not look at Angela.

He'd been too young to help when she was betrayed and brutalized, back East, and he well knew what Marnie told them about her own childhood, and he knew Victoria had used both dancers' speed and strength, and he own skill with a belt gun, to keep herself from being ... mishandled.

His head came up as Lightning's head came up: the colts raised their own, and Michael felt Lightning's eyes go red, and he felt her predatory soul come to the fore.

Lightning waited until Michael's rifle whispered from its scabbard, then she bunched her hind quarters and detonated through brush that would normally have stopped a mere horse and rider.

An exhausted felon turned, saw something big, ugly, blocky and red-eyed, coming at him, then two more of whatever these monsters were, busting holes like assault-model pit bulldozers on either side of the first one: a moment ago, he hadn't the strength to stand, but now, now with a desperate last blast of adrenaline, he raised a stolen buzz gun and triggered it just as the mountain of blond death rammed chest-on into him.

The gun snarled, bullets fell harmlessly to the ground, undamaged: Lightning ran over the murderer, for a miracle not trampling him -- though Michael's jaw clenched with savage joy as he and Lightning heeled hard over, coming around for another pass, with full intent to turn the subject of their attention into red paste stomped into the sandy soil.

Cyclone was faster.

The last thing a convicted felon, on the run from the law, saw on this earth was a fanged mouth driving down over his head.

He did not have time to process this, nor to feel his head being bitten and torn off his body.

Spit it out, Victoria commanded silently as Cyclone thrust the decapitation between spiked molars for a devastating, crushing bite.

Cyclone didn't spit it out.

 

The body, or what was left of it, was found two weeks later.

No one could really say what killed him.

They found the Maschinenpistole, empty, they found fired brass (and, inexplicably, bullets, undamaged save for rifling marks).

They found, the Coroner estimated, about forty percent of the body, but they could not really tell what kind of creature killed him.

Likely not a mountain cat, and probably not a bear.

DNA identification confirmed it was the convicted murderer they were looking for.

Beyond that, they really couldn't say, only that what was left of his carcass seems to have fed local scavengers for a day or two. 

 

Victoria Keller grew up on a small ranch.

Ranches have horses, horses produce second hand horse feed, and horses in stalls are not at all bashful about depositing in the stall.

This deposit has to be removed.

Victoria was no stranger to barn boots and stall scraping, she was accomplished, skilled and well practiced at moving such material by the wheel barrow load out to the manure pile, at least until she talked her Daddy into getting a compact little end loader which made life easier (and which proved to be something grandchildren loved to run like an oversized sandbox toy!)

It would have been no surprise, then, for an observer to note the appearance of a vertical black slash in reality, very near where the murderer's carcass had been, nor would it have been surprising at all to see an Iris widen, to see a barrow roll out and get stood up on end, to see something that was most definitely second hand, but not second hand horse feed, dumped where the body had been.

Victoria shoveled up and set aside what was left of a murderer's masticated and digested head, along with whatever else Cyclone ate in the interim; she saved this, and once the body was located, processed, and the scene cleared, she thought it only right that the rest of the body should be returned to the place from whence it came.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 19, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TO CARE, OR NOT TO CARE,

THAT IS THE QUESTION

When Marnie was fourteen years old, she wore her Gammaw's heels and danced like a feather on the breeze.

When Angela was fourteen years old, she wore her own heels and danced like a seductress.

Victoria did not wait until her fourteenth birthday to dance.

She and Michael were at the Firelands hospital -- they'd come to visit a family friend whose appendix attacked him, and they were there with full intent to deliver sympathy, kind words and a bunch of flowers.

They didn't make it.

They came in the front doors in time to hear a scream, to hear the indistinct sound of someone being hit -- that meaty smack that meant fists at play -- something, probably a body, hit the heavy-wood double doors, hard enough to shiver them and trigger the automatic-open sequence.

Michael and Victoria powered into a run: twins they were, and dressed for a visit, Michael in a black suit and Stetson, Victoria in a dress and heels: they vaulted over someone in scrubs lying across the threshold to the emergency department, scanning, eyes pale.

Michael skidded to a halt, turned, his lips pulled back from even white teeth as the color fell from his face and his eyes went wide and glacier's-heart cold.

Michael's charge was less a running attack and more an arrow's launch: he was a black-coated streak that lifted off the polished tiles and drove boot-heels-first into a half-dressed man's ribs, driving both his momentum, his full weight, and a lifetime's horse-toned legs through the focus of stacked-leather boot heels.

His impact was sufficient not only to break ribs, but to knock an attacker back, throwing him sideways to the floor.

It wasn't until the attacker hit the floor that his grip on a nurse's throat loosened.

Michael turned, spun, swept a second fighter's leg: he drove an elbow into the falling man's solar plexus, rolled away, came up, hands bladed, ready.

Victoria was not so much a pastel arrow as she was a fairy-creature, dainty in pastels and matching hair-ribbon: she flowed instead of charged, she seized the strangling fingers and ripped them back, freeing clutching death from around a nurse's throat: the fall loosened his grip, Victoria tore it away, to the distinct detriment of things like structural integrity of both bony structures, and articulated, cartilaginous joints.

Victoria hadn't come to a stop as she ripped the fingers away with sounds that fingers shouldn't make, leaving a hand with fingers bent in directions fingers shouldn't bend: she kept her momentum, timing her two-legged kick to arrive through the balls of her feet, into the side of the second attacker's head, at the same moment Michael's elbow drove hard under the falling felon's breastbone.

The twins did not come to their feet.

They levitated and only incidentally chose to lower their landing gear until their feet rested on polished ER floor tiles. 

Victoria took Michael's arm, lifted her chin: the twins walked back to the first attacker, the one coming up onto all fours, the one that looked at Michael and snarled.

Michael and Victoria stopped, turned, looked at one another, pumped fists quickly:

"Rock, paper, scissors!"

They both chose rock, which meant they both turned with a feral expression: they turned quickly, Michael to his left and Victoria to her right, allowing the attacker to lunge past them: he landed face-down and immediately inherited a set of knees in the back, detonating an absolute sunball of utter agony that would have floored a sane, rational, sober individual who was not under the influence of certain illicit pharmaceuticals.

The net effect was that of jumping on a horse that didn't want to be ridden.

Michael rolled off as Victoria dove: she got her arm around the rising attacker's neck, locked in and squeezed, a carotid choke that was declared verboten by law enforcement.

Fortunately, Victoria was not a sworn law enforcement officer.

She was a twelve year old girl whose eyes had gone pale, whose face had drawn tight, and whose blood raged with hereditary Berserkergang.

Security came at a flat-out gallop, just in time for Michael to offer a hand, just in time for Victoria to rise and assume a demure posture, looking around and batting her lashes with equal parts of innocence, and assessment.

As this was within the corporation limits, the Firelands Police Department was lead on the investigation: as usual, during the initial debrief, the hospital's administration tried to inject itself, and as usual, limp-wristed protestations were made -- something to do with liabilities and the hospital's image and patient safety.

Michael held up a hand, leaned forward.

"Mister," he said, young voice tight, "someone was thrown against those heavy doors hard enough to shake the mechanism open. We saw a nurse being strangled. I understand she's being tubed to keep her crushed airway from swelling shut. You should concern yourself with keeping your own people safe. Now you just said if these guys were coked out on drugs or something, the drugs made 'em do it, it wasn't their fault."

Michael's voice was as quiet as his eyes were hard and unyielding.

"I don't care what they took. Life was in danger and we stopped murder from happening. I don't care why. Why is useful only to establish motive, otherwise why is worthless. We stopped murder from happening, bottom line. As far as to care, or not to not care" -- Michael rose -- "ask Shakespeare because I don't give a good damn."

He looked at the officers present.

"Are we done here? If we're not I'll need my lawyer before I answer anything else."

 

 

 

Edited December 20, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PROFESSIONAL

There was a Bear Killer in Marnie's life from the day her dying Mama brought her to Firelands.

Of everyone Marnie met, of all the pack -- human, canine, and equine -- with whom she bonded, she bonded first and most deeply with The Bear Killer.

There is a deep understanding between hurt children and watchful, protective mountain dogs, something that goes more deeply than the air they both breathed.

It was something in the pale eyed blood that sang or screamed or waited with a dangerous patience in a little girl's veins, something in the DNA stranding of a hereditary line of mountain Mastiff whose seminal ancestral pair escaped from a Chinese fire into the mountains and acquired a percentage of native wolf in their bloodline.

Marnie was the wife of Dr. John Greenlees, of the Firelands colony.

Marnie was mother to a son and a daughter now, with another child on the way -- another boy, the broomstraw test told her -- she hadn't told her Daddy yet, but she would, in due time.

Until her gravid state made it difficult, though, Marnie continued her work as Ambassador-at-Large.

When her superior -- the Chief Ambassador -- received her quietly worded announcement of her expectancy, he stopped and looked very directly at her slightly expanding belly, and -- as only a dear and trusted friend can do -- he wondered aloud, in a quiet voice, whether "Ambassador-at-LARGE" was not a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The laughter in his eyes was sufficient to keep Marnie from belting him across the chops, which to be honest, she likely would have done to a lesser creature, but she and the Chief Ambassador had been through enough together, that they both laughed as old and trusted friends will.

Jacob found out about his sister's state by observing The Bear Killer, when the sinner's-heart-black mountain Mastiff paced up to Marnie, shoved his muzzle against her belly and sniffed, loudly, sniffed again -- his tail wagged, then he swung around and assumed the same protective, stand-on-my-gun-side stance he'd been trained as a working K9 with the Firelands Sheriff's Office (Earth division).

Jacob flowed up to her, took her hands, looked long into his sister's eyes, then he stepped back, looked at her belly, stepped in again and said "So what are you having? I need to know if I'm going to be an aunt or an uncle!"

The Bear Killer gave them a wise and patient look as brother and sister hugged one another and laughed.

The Bear Killer was well known in Firelands Colony.

The Bear Killer had a reputation like a butler: he was everywhere, all the time, unobtrusive, invisible, until he was needed.

Only then did he make himself ... noticeable.

The Bear Killer nosed the release strip in private quarters, slipped inside where a baby was howling in distress, or in anger, or simply because it wanted to rage against the unjust nature of simply existing: the baby was in a carry-basket, freshly changed, not at all interested in the storm plug a frazzled mother was attempting to coax into the loud and protesting mouth.

The Bear Killer shoved his muzzle into the situation.

The mother knew The Bear Killer.

The mother trusted The Bear Killer.

The mother was also about at the end of her proverbial rope.

The mother was ready to throw a knot in the end of her proverbial rope to keep from slipping off, to keep from running from their quarters at the top of her lungs in frustration and in aggravation.

The mother watched as The Bear Killer carefully bit up the blanket wrapped around the red-faced, arm-waving little howler, as he hoist the protesting package from its padded carrier, as he backed up and laid the child down on the floor.

This change -- the motion, the hard floor instead of warm padding -- was a surprise, enough to bring screwed-shut eyes open, enough to stop the noise, at least momentarily.

The Bear Killer snuffed loudly at the baby's spreading pink starfish of a tiny little hand.

The baby looked around and darkened and opened its mouth again, and The Bear Killer dropped his blocky bottom on the floor and cocked his head.

As the child screwed up and started to screech, The Bear Killer lifted his muzzle and began to howl.

Softly.

The child stopped, surprised, at this canine counterpoint to his juvenile scream.

The Bear Killer tilted his head, regarded the child, then dropped flat to the floor and curled up around the child, nosing the party of the second part into his warm and furry chest.

The Bear Killer, in all fairness, was little short of genuinely professional when it came to napping.

The presence of warmth, fuzziness, and the occasional Song of his People to counterpoint the wee wails of a fussy baby, was enough to persuade this tiny pink-faced bundle of noise that his infant system was worn out screaming, that it was time to take a nap, and The Bear Killer's image made it onto the colony's internal news system yet again, with the whispering mother providing the video, describing in a hushed voice -- with the sleeping Bear Killer and the equally somnolent infant, cuddled up together, in the background -- and how their very own Bear Killer gave her a needed moment of relief when she was about to lose it from maternal frustration.

 

The door to Marnie and Doctor John's quarters was secured with successive and redundant systems of protection.

When the door whispered open and admitted The Bear Killer, Marnie's quick ear caught the sound -- both of the door, and of canine toenails tik-tik-tikking across the floor.

The Bear Killer paused to guzzle down half the contents of his water bowl, ceremonially nosed at the kibble in his feed dish, then paced back into the bedroom area, laid a strong, square jaw on the mattress of one child's bed, then the other, and finally came back to Marnie's bed.

Marnie's back was cuddled back against her husband's warmth.

The Bear Killer vaulted lightly from floor to bunk, turned around once, lay down with his curly-furred back against her belly, and sighed with contentment as Marnie's hand lay over his shoulder, as her fingers caressed into his warm, curly fur.

Marnie smiled in her sleep as she felt The Bear Killer's great sigh of contentment, as he yet again employed his professional level skill, as he closed his eyes, as he led another soul into relaxation and into sleep.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TRAIPSIN'

Michael bit into an oversized apple with a loud, slurping crunch! that immediately drew the attention of two Fanghorn.

It would have drawn the attention of a third, but Michael already bribed Lightning with an apple so he could eat this one in peace.

That didn't work.

He chewed the sweet, textured fruit, pulled out a hand forged Damascus blade: two sets of feral eyes regarded sharpened steel's descent, two heads came up, two mouths opened: Michael tossed half the remainder of his apple to each.

Like their dam, blinking like a sleepy cat as she folded her legs in the sunlight, the twins had an affinity for whatever Michael might be eating: so far, they found cooked meat of any variety suitable for their collective palate, along with bread, biscuits, fruit, ice cream (though each pulled their head back in surprise before coming in for another tentative lick), and chocolate chip cookies.

Michael consulted their best and brightest veterinarians, who assured him that if Michael could digest it, so could they: he spoke of dogs and chocolate, and the veterinarians nodded sagely and assured him that chocolate was of absolutely no threat to Fanghorn physiology.

Michael wiped his blade carefully, sloshed it in a nearby stream, dried it and sheathed it: he knew if he didn't reclaim it, and quickly, curious tongues would try to taste the patterned steel, and he did not wish a careless lick to encounter the honed edge.

Victoria came riding up on her Daddy's steady old mule, the one that looked like he was ready to fall asleep walking: Michael saw the colorful bloom over her cheekbone and asked, "How's the face?"

Victoria raised tentative fingers to what he knew had to be a rather tender bruise.

"You should see the other guy," she said solemnly, and Michael nodded: he would normally have laughed, but laughter is contagious, and his sister was in enough pain the way it was.

He didn't want to make it worse.

Two days before, she'd ridden up on what she didn't know was the only saddlemount in her Daddy's herd that was utterly, absolutely, bust-a-gut terrified of Fanghorns: she counted herself lucky a sprained wrist and a bruised up cheek bone were the only casualties of the mare's vigorous and honestly violent buck-out, fall-over, scramble-up-and-flee.

Her leg fortunately found a sand bed that let her mash down into it rather than be crushed, though it took some bruising as well.

"Uncle Will make it back yet?" Michael asked.

Victoria shook her head and leaned forward to caress her Daddy's steady old mule.

"He's still visitin' tomb stones."

Victoria looked at him with an unreadable gaze, then nodded, just a little bit.

"He doesn't go back East much."

"It's a hard time of year for him."

Michael nodded, remembering one of the only times his Uncle Will spoke of his late wife.

"It wasn't all bad, Michael," he'd said quietly as he stared at the white-gas-fired furnace, waiting for lead to melt so he could mold up another batch of bullets: "all but the last year and a half was ..."

His voice trailed off and he looked into the lead pot at a shimmering silver layer of memories gathering in the bottom.

"We were happy," he whispered, "and then she changed, and it was not her fault."

Michael knew his Aunt Crystal died of a brain tumor, and he'd suspected that was the reason she went from being a genuine sweetheart, to an equally adamant, waspish witch: she'd filed false charges against Will, she'd left him, she'd filed for divorce, and then she died screaming and holding her head in the middle of the street as Will ran up and pulled her into his arms and held her, held her as she thrashed and her eyes rolled back and she went limp and died right there in front of God and everybody.

When she was at her venomous worst, Uncle Will was never less than a saint, and Michael suspected his Uncle Will found a small solace in knowing he was with her when she died, that she did not die alone, that at least one soul in this world cared enough to hold her in her last moments.

"Do we know when he's coming home?" Michael asked quietly.

He saw Victoria's eyes swing up toward the horizon, and he knew what she was looking at.

She was looking at another world, one with gravestones with familiar names.

"He'll be back on Christmas Day," she said. 

Michael nodded.

He'd never intruded on his Uncle Will's most private moments since his wife died, but he'd watched from the firehouse apron, through a good high grade set of Swarovski binoculars.

He'd watched his uncle stop at a particular grave, and he'd watched as his Uncle Will knelt before a particular tombstone, and he watched as his Uncle Will folded his arms over the tomb stone, and he watched his Uncle Will's shoulders work the way a man's shoulders will when he can contain his grief no longer.

"He'll be back," Victoria continued, "but until then he's gone a-traipsin back East."

Her voice was soft a she blinked and looked back at Michael.

"I count that a good thing."

 

 

 

 

Edited December 22, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

EDUCATION

Sheriff Linn Keller had the distinct feeling his living room had been taken over.
The tree itself was impressive.
It was thick, it was well branched, it smelled wonderfully off evergreen; at Marnie's quiet observation that it was still rooted, that it was brought in with a root ball the size of a truckbed, led the Sheriff to wonder what Confederate interdimensional wizardry his darlin' daughter just pulled off.

As much as he might have been tempted to lift the tree skirt to look, he dared not -- partly because he was afraid of the answer, and partly because the space under the tree was no longer occupied with wrapped gifts.

Just shy of a dozen entranced children lay on their backs, looking up through the lighted tree, marveling at the sight off a Christmas tree from underneath.

Bare legs stuck out from pleated skirts and short pants, pink-scrubbed fingers moved as if wanting to reach up into the arboreal beauty above them, yet not quite daring, and watching with what looked for all the world like approval, a snow-white Snowdrift-dog on one side, and an equally pleased-as-punch Bear Killer on the other.

Shelly was more than in her element.

Shelly was the de facto grandmother to every last child from the Mars colonies.

When Shelly sat, she had a lap full of big-eyed children looking expectantly at her, and of course nothing would do but she pick up a book and read aloud to them: little boys scampered happily after Linn, swarming after him, all energy and exertion, laboring against gravity stronger than they were used to: Marnie and her husband, Dr. John Greenlees, arranged for the colony's atmospherics to duplicate Firelands (Earth) in both partial pressure and oxygen concentration -- although every last visitor from Firelands (Mars) agreed ... it smelled so very much better at the Sheriff's ranch!

Little boys frowned with concentration as they shoved sneakered feet into plastic bags, then into rubber muck boots: fascinated but easily-tired youth rejoiced in learning how to shovel second hand horse feed into a barrow, though none were able to dolly the Irish Buggy around to the manure pile: the Sheriff made easy work of that detail, which only elevated the man's pedestal that much more.

Truth be told, to this squad of admiring little boys, the Sheriff was already so high on a pedestal it's a wonder he didn't have nosebleed.

Everything was fascinating.

Distance amazed them.

This was honest distance, not holographic illusion: this was genuine dirt, these were real horses, and something as simple as tapping fingernails against the barn's sheet metal siding, produced a genuine, honest, very real sound -- something that was so far and away better than anything their computers might manufacture!

Getting this many active little boys back inside for supper was actually easier than Linn feared, mostly because he made a show of slinging water out of the wash pan by the pump, and then pumping fresh water from the cast iron, green painted, backyard pump, and then setting the example by washing his hands to his elbows in the cold water.

All of a sudden, most of a dozen active boys wanted to wash in that same pan, in that same manner, and of course water had to be slung as far as possible and hands ranked side-by-side on the green-painted, worn-smooth handle to pump fresh water again.

Shelly saw this out the back window, and smiled as she tied an apron around another little girl: she knew there would be flour on the floor and on little hands and patted into their clothes, but there was also discovery and wonder and laughter, and after the table was stretched and extra leaves and chairs added, after the table was set and restless backsides parked themselves and the Sheriff said in his deep, reassuring Daddy-voice, "Let us return thanks," Shelly looked at him and raised one eyebrow:

Don't you dare, mister!

Linn gave his wife an absolutely innocent look -- I wouldn't dream of it, Sweet Pea! -- and it wasn't until the next meal that Linn piously clasped his hands and humbly bent his head and said in a solemn and ceremonial voice, "Let us now talk to our plate," at which time every last child surrounding the table betrayed their pre-meal coaching by intoning in youthful chorus, "Hello, Plate!"

Shelly looked at her husband like she'd been stung -- she snatched a still-warm sweet roll from the big platter -- she wound up and slung a sweet roll the length of the table at a right fair velocity, and caught her husband right in the forehead.

 

Christmas was not at all unknown in the Firelands colony.

It was enhanced by the presence of rooted, thick-branched trees rooted in dirt and very much alive, trees that were removed from a particular planet without harming them, trees that looked very much like Earth evergreen -- almost, but not quite -- trees that were returned to their exact point of origin afterward.

Every last tree went back with the memory of young eyes and happy giggles and marveling children looking up through them as Martian young lay on their backs and stared up through branches and bulbs and swinging-silver tinsel.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FRAMED!

"Bruce, this is Linn."

No "Let me speak to the Chief Editor."

No "This is the Sheriff."

"Bruce, this is Linn" -- a conversation between two old friends, between two men who each knew a shocking percentage -- or at least recognized, who knew them to see them -- of the residents of Firelands County.

"Yeah, Linn!" Bruce replied, leaning back from his keyboard.

"Out-of-the-way question for ya."

Bruce slid the yellow legal pad closer, picked up a pencil.

"My specialty, whattaya need?"

"I have a non standard sized item I need framed. I don't want it matted."

Bruce's pencil hovered, Bruce's eyebrows puzzled together, his mind running through possitilities.

"How big?"

"Tell you what," Linn said, "why don't I fetch it over."

"That'll work, I'll be here!"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller was not what you'd call a soft man.

In his young life he'd been shot, stabbed, cut, hit, rammed, run into, run over, and a street evangelist tried to save his corroded soul.

He'd waded through burning gasoline to get an overturned car off his wife, he'd swum fully clothed into the old mine reservoir this side of Carbon Hill, to get two people out of a car he saw miss a turn, go through the rotted-out old guardrail and drop nose first into the impoundment, and he'd faced up to, and faced down, a variety of large and angry people bearing a variety of weapons.

Sheriff Linn Keller bulldogged a steer on the main street, not because he wanted to; he'd bucked out horses that didn't feel like being ridden, he'd put the muzzle off a .44 revolver to the head of a man who held a gun to a hostage's head and invited him to either drop it or say hello to the Devil because he was one ounce from blowing him to HELL!

When Sheriff Linn Keller came through Bruce's door with a large bore cardboard tube, he brought kind of an uncertain expression with him, and when he carefully extracted the tube's contents and spread it out flat on the old layout table, Bruce saw why his old friend had that funny look on his face.

"I told my family I had enough Stuff," Linn explained, "so they got together and made this."

Bruce's mouth opened a little and he leaned closer, turned on another light, moved it a little to illuminate the entire incredible, detailed, hand-drawn sheet.

"This," Bruce said quietly, "is incredible!"

Bruce's fingers spread, lowered, but withdrew before they touched the surface: he had no wish to smear the least bit of this amazing work.

"They gave me this for an early Merry Ho Ho," Linn said, his voice thick: Bruce looked up, saw the Sheriff swallow, hard, then wipe at his eyes.

"They said they got their heads together and each of them drew a memory of me."

Bruce blinked, tilted his head a little, studied these pencil drawings: memories, in black-and-white, memories from a multitude of children, all on the same big sheet.

In the center, the very center, the Sheriff in winter, a knit muffler scarf around his neck, flying behind him -- beneath, a hard-driving Appaloosa -- show was sleeting across the two, but more snow exploded up around them as his Apple-horse absolutely BLASTED through a snowdrift -- the look on the Sheriff's face was that of a happy boy having the time of his life, for all that he was a man grown, on a man-sized horse.

Above this, below this, to the sides, more memories.

The Sheriff, bare headed in a plaid flannel shirt, carrying a sleepy little girl, barefoot in a flannel nightgown, her head laid against his chest, her eyes closed, the image of trust, of a child's memory of safety and trust.

Another image: a little girl, no more than two or maybe three, in a ruffly little dress, riding a-straddle of her Daddy's horsie's neck, ahead of him in the saddle, her little legs stuck out to the sides and her arms thrown wide, shining eyes and up-curved lips bringing a child's delighted laugh to the memory she'd drawn.

Bruce studied the Daddy-hand that ran around her, spread wide across her belly, steadying her, every detail of his old friend's good right hand wrought in careful detail.

A growing boy, almost a teen, prone, elbows on grassy ground, andcheeked down hard behind the sight of a Winchester rifle: bellied down beside him, binoculars raised, the Sheriff, waiting for his son to break the shot: they were close enough the father's arm just touched his son's -- warmth, reassurance, but not control.

Bruce looked to a lower corner, at the hand-drawn side of a familiar old truckbed, and in front of it, another young man, running a chain saw and industriously disassembling a dead fork: sawdust speckled blue jeans and boots, the boy's expression serious, and behind the truck, a father, approval plain on his face.

"Dear God," Bruce whispered -- reverently, an address to the Almighty, and not a profanity -- "dear God, these are gorgeous!"

Another: the Sheriff, his stallion frozen in mid-pace, his head turned, laughing in apparent delight: beside him, a girl in a riding-skirt and cowboy boots, her hat fallen back and bouncing from its storm strap, her shining face looking at her Daddy: beneath her, a white mare, pacing with the stallion: an understanding look shared between father and daughter, and both a-horseback.

Linn chewed on his bottom lip as Bruce studied each individual image, entranced: he looked up at the Sheriff, praise on his lips, words that died unspoken as something wet rolled down the Sheriff's cheek.

"You wonder, sometimes," Linn said, his voice husky as he reached for a bandana, "how your children think of you."

He wiped his eyes, took a long breath, wiped them again.

Bruce nodded.

"I can have this framed," he said quietly.  "Twenty-four hours."

"Thank you," Linn said, then turned his head, harrumphed, swallowed, looked back.

Bruce came around the table, laid an understanding palm on his old friend's shoulder.

"I don't think," he said quietly, "you ever need wonder what your family thinks of you!"

 

 

Edited December 23, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ALLELUIA

The projectors looked just bulky enough to be believable, the controls were complex enough to be impressive, the operators were trying hard enough to be inconspicuous to cause onlookers to forgive their presence: when the good Parson spoke his piece, this fine Christmas Day, he did so with a grin on his face and joy in his words, and when he declared it was time to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, he said some of the loveliest singing he'd heard was when certain sisters ranked themselves shoulder to shoulder and lifted their voices.

Marnie, everyone knew, was on Mars, and the mystery of why all this fancy equipment was set up on either side of the Sanctuary, became clear.

A sizzle, a hum, a brief column of fuzzy light, then Marnie appeared.

Solid.

Lifelike.

Real.

At least to the eye.

Marnie, in a shining-emerald gown and a fashionable little hat, Marnie with a sprig of mistletoe pinned to her bodice and on the side of her mesh-draped emerald pillbox chapeau, looked around, almost the self-conscious look of a nervous teen-ager stepping up for her first solo.

Marnie, Angela, and Victoria, in matching gowns, looked at one another, and lifted their chins, and sang.

Christmas Day, a celebration of arrival and of salvation, a rejoicing at a promise kept: Christmas Day, when light arrived in solid form, and gave the world cause to celebrate: Christmas Day, when three sisters who sang together before, sang together again.

No announcement had been made to the media; there were no TV crews, no reporters, beyond their ever-present Bruce Jones, editor, publisher, reporter, photographer, and chief broom pusher for The Firelands Gazette: Bruce was as surprised, as delighted as everyone else at Marnie's appearance, and he determined to rush forward at first opportunity, as no one said word one about her return from what everyone thought was a one way trip to the Red Planet.

The ladies sang, in joy and in celebration: they sang in French, they sang in Latin, they sang in their common tongue, and they sang in careful position: none moved, none swayed, none turned.

When they were finished, the three bowed their heads, they brought green-gloved hands together before them, silence filled their little whitewashed church: Marnie took a step backwards, flickered, and disappeared, and equipment on either side of the Sanctuary, equipment with blunt, tubular emitters in vertical stacks, stopped glowing.

Angela took one step forward and smiled sadly.

"Marnie said to tell everyone hello, and she wishes she could have been here for real," she declared, her voice clear and distinct in the sanctuary's hush: "through the magic of modern technology, we were able to sing together again, and she wanted her hologram to be here, at least."

Angela resisted looking to her right, to the short hallway that led from the Church into the Parsonage: Victoria stood unmoving, though her right ear and her right cheek felt a little warm: both ladies knew a set of pale eyes watched from deep in the hallway, invisible because she wasn't moving: Marnie smiled a secret smile as she took a step back, into the waiting Iris, and when she stepped out of the receiver on Mars, she turned and seized her husband with delight, her shining face betraying the general sense that she'd just gotten away with a good one.

When the Firelands Gazette reported on the happy moment, the Editor uttered no falsehood when he spoke of the incredibly lifelike hologram of their beloved Marnie, and when he waxed eloquent as to the quality of their conjoined voices, every reader who was present, agreed with his shining estimation of the quality of the moment.

There had indeed been a hologram of Marnie Keller, projected at the front of their little whitewashed Church that Christmas Day.

The voice, though, was live, conducted with additional technology from Marnie's concealment in the short hallway connecting the Church with the Parsonage.

 

The Firelands colony celebrated that same day, in that same manner, with the same vocalists, but no holography was needed, nor used: it was a live performance, with three sisters in matching gowns and flawless harmony, backed by a choir of singers that combined the holiday traditions and costumes of the lands from whence they came.

Firelands (Earth) may have been a most welcome surprise, but Firelands (Mars) was -- to be honest -- the better performance!

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND THE SHERIFF STARED

The little whitewashed church emptied according to no particular protocol.

The Parson greeted each departing parishioner with quiet gravity, with the good humor that shone through his expressions -- his wife confided in a meeting of the Ladies' Tea Society that her husband was as transparent as a window, and he couldn't hide his feelings from his face if he had to!

The only real constant was when the Sheriff and his family departed.

They always left with the youngest in the lead, they left in order of age, and the Sheriff brought up the rear, silent, watchful, standing and moving with the relaxed ease of a man with his guard down, in Church, in Safety, while still giving the impression of a dozing cat elaborately pretending to pay no attention to a mouse just coming in striking distance.

Victoria was the youngest, this particular day: she and her sister, in identical gowns and matching hats, were the very image of femininity, of an honest and natural beauty; behind them, their mother, and behind her, the Sheriff.

Linn was close enough to swing his gaze over a wider arc.

He'd watched his daughters' postures as they gained their greater visual command of the outside.

He saw none of the tells that indicated they perceived a threat.

They all took one step forward and Linn felt the shift more than saw it.

His hand was relaxed, on his belly, little finger under the edge of his unbuttoned suit coat: his hand swept naturally under the cover garment, his hand went to Shelly's shoulder, hers to Angela's, Angela thrust forward, and Victoria was GONE.

The Parson drew back, startled, as shining-green streaks moved with a startling velocity, followed by a women in a suit dress, and then the Sheriff.

Victoria saw the problem and Victoria addressed the problem: where the Sheriff surged forward, clearing quickly left and right, returning to the threat, the Sheriff's move was swift, and utterly silent.

Victoria's velocity was considerably greater, and far less stealthy.

As a matter of fact, as the shorthorn came down the street, lowering his head to charge, Victoria's skirts were snatched above her knees, she was driving forward absolutely at the top of her opera-trained lungs, and for one mad moment, as Linn's grip crushed around sixteen stacked rounds of high-velocity death and destruction, Victoria went from running toward a charging bull, to a horizontal, emerald-green-gowned, missile.

Angela flanked left, with a double handful of compact firepower she’d produced from somewhere about her person: she flowed more than ran, and she moved directly sideways, squaring off toward the threat, her pistol at low ready, pale eyes target locked on the sweet spot right behind the foreleg, her Daddy’s voice coaching her when transitioning between steel plates:

Sights follow eyes, move your eyes first and let your red dot follow.

Victoria’s delicate, ladylike, feminine, artist’s fingers seized the stubby horns: she’d planned this, she’d practiced this, she’d read about this.

Victoria Keller, singer, artist, successful young interplanetary entrepreneur and next-to-youngest daughter of that lean waisted, hell raising Sheriff, vaulted the bull’s back, leveraging his head-down velocity with her planned trajectory, with her grip, with her sudden tuck.

Victoria was slim and athletic, a dancer, but a gymnast: she tucked, tumbled, she unfolded and dropped onto the bull’s back, locked her legs around behind his ribs and screamed, “WHOA, HAMBURGER!”

Angela raised her pistol, then lowered it – wait for him to stop, don’t let him carry her into the bullet’s path –

The Sheriff’s pistol was at low ready, he saw the bull moving in slow motion, saw the cloven-hooved forelegs splay and skid, even as pale eyes picked out the spot in the middle of the bull’s broad, flat forehead, where he planned to drive a high velocity, high pressure round of controlled expansion sledgehammer –

Victoria threw up one leg, rolled off the bull’s back, ran up to its head: she seized its horns again and bent to address him face to face, shaking her Mommy-finger the way she’d done a wayward bovine when she was six years old and admonishing a misbehaving steer many years before.

Linn shoved his pistol’s muzzle down to the vertical – he frowned – he advanced a step, another, moved a little to the side, momentarily replaying Victoria’s leggy dismount and wondering, Why is my little girl wearing high heels?

Victoria turned the beef, steered him as she walked him in a large half circle, kept a grip on his horn as she led him back up the street, away from father, sister and staring parishioners: “Come on, Hamburger, let’s get you home!”

Sheriff Linn Keller, lawman, father, husband, keeper of the peace, did what any reasonable father would have done in that moment.

By his own admission, he just stood there and stared.

Edited December 28, 2025 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!

 

Michael Keller stepped up beside the Sheriff’s desk, there in his father’s study, Stetson in hand and trouble in his belly.

“Sir,” he said frankly, “I failed you.”

Linn looked up in honest surprise, turned to face his son: “Failed? How?”

“Sir,” Michael said, grim-faced with a personal confession, “I kept a promise this morning and sang in church.”

Linn nodded slowly, waited.

“I should have been there when that bull came after Victoria.”

Linn raised an eyebrow, and Michael saw the shade of a smile pulling at his father’s features.

“Your sister,” Linn said slowly, “acquitted herself … well … in the face of sudden … surprise.”

“She’s good at that,” Michael admitted, “you should’ve seen her when –”

He stopped, his ears reddening as he gave his father a look as if realizing he’d just let something slip that maybe he shouldn’t.

Linn raised a hand. “I heard about that one. Now tell me about singing in church.”

Michael’s eyes swung away, quickly: he swallowed, looked down, looked back up.

“I messed up a month ago,” he said.

“So did I,” Linn said, “but lucky enough it didn’t amount to much five minutes later.”

Michael took a long breath, blew it out, looked at his father almost shamefacedly, then shook his head and laughed.

“Sir,” he said, “I … a girl asked me to sing in church, and I got the bashfuls and kind of locked up.”

Linn nodded again, leaned back in his chair, his eyes tracking the trim strip between stamped tin ceiling tile and the varnished wood plank paneling.

“I did the same thing, at your age,” he admitted, his voice soft, then his eyes returned to the present and converged on his son.

“You sang yesterday. I take it that was your second go-round.”

“It was, sir.”

“I recall you have a fine tenor voice. Mine cracked right at the wrong time and embarrassed the hell out of me. It was a school concert and I quit vocal that night.”

“Sir?”

Michael’s surprise was spontaneous and genuine.

“Thought … I was sweet on a girl.”

Linn’s face reddened a little and his smile was one-sided, sardonic.

Figured I’d disgraced myself all to hell in front of her. Turns out she didn’t have feelings for me a’tall.”

He raised an eyebrow, took a long breath.

“I sang in the next concert and did a fine job and that’s the last I ever performed in school.”

He shifted in his seat, as if his back was giving him trouble again.

“You?”

Michael blinked, then nodded.

“Yes, sir. I sang again and did a fine job.”

“You wanted to fix what you’d messed up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Linn nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I reckon you get it honest.”

“I’d rather have been with Victoria, sir,” Michael admitted.

Linn chuckled, nodded.

“We’ve only got one of us, Michael. We can’t be in but one place at a time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She handled it anyway. Pulled a Sarah McKenna right over that bull’s back, she come around and grabbed it by the horn and give it hell – you remember when she did that when she was about six years old? Grabbed that steer by the ear and shook her finger in its face and just give it seven kinds of what-for in that little girl’s voice of hers, and she led it back to wherever it come from?”

Michael laughed a little. 

“I recall, sir.”

“Well, she did it again. Angela and I were … we were drawn and ready to punch its ticket, and here she leads it off like it’s a misbehaving pet.”

Michael grinned, took in a deep breath, sighed it out.

“Never underestimate the power of a woman,” he said softly.

“And don’t you forget it!” Victoria yelled in from the kitchen, and two Keller men laughed self-consciously as two sets of Keller men’s ears suddenly flamed a hot and incredibly bright shade of crimson.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HE GOT MY GOOD SIDE

There’s a rule.

You don’t touch a lawman.

You just don’t do it.

When the Sheriff went into the Silver Jewel, men came up to him and shook his hand.

Men’s hands gripped his shoulder, his upper arm, thumped his back in approval and in congratulations: he was, quite frankly, handled like an auction beef at the fairgrounds.

Word travels fast in a small town, and when it did, when it brought attention he honestly hadn’t sought, he did not offer the first word in protest.

He did decline several offers of drink – “Fellas, I’m workin’, but thank you anyway” – and he sat down at his usual table, shoving any embarrassment down into an iron kettle and screwing the lid down on it, containing it with the rest of his feelings the way he usually did.

He’d made the paper.

Again.

Hadn’t meant to.

Bruce Jones had one of those fancy new cameras that use some kind of electronic chip thing – the Sheriff had cameras with the same voluminous storage capacity – he used them, he appreciated that a digital could contain many more images than the roll of 36 that used to be a practical max when Film was King and he still knew how to push a low-light exposure.

That didn’t mean he really understood them.

Bruce Jones, editor, chief reporter, lead photographer, proofreader, copy writer and main broom pusher for the weekly Firelands Gazette, knew his cameras intimately, and so it came as no surprise to the Sheriff to find he’d made the local paper.

Again.

He hadn’t meant to.

He’d been out on road patrol, which he routinely did.

A woman came screaming down her driveway toward him, carrying something small and very limp.

Between how fast she was moving, how loud she was sprinting, how limp her arm-carried cargo appeared, the Sheriff did not hesitate to stomp his hind hoof hard on the whoa pedal and just honestly overrode the anti-lock brakes.

Editor, reporter, photographer and newspaper owner Bruce Jones had a scanner, and his scanner could decode the Sheriff’s radio traffic, and Bruce Jones was a past master at seizing camera and hat and leaving at a dead run to get in on a developing situation: he beat the Irish Brigade to the scene, he was down on one knee, his long nose camera pointing to a lawman sitting on the front bumper of his cruiser, legs spread and boot heels drove into the hardpack, head down and the brim of his Stetson blocking what he was doing.

From the small arms and legs hanging down, from the distress on a hand-wringing woman’s crying face, it looked for all the world as if the Sheriff was sitting on the front bumper of his cruiser, eating a child.

 

Jessie was in trouble.

She was running at the top of her lungs.

She was just shy of outright panic – Jessie has always been a reasonable woman, she’s always been a measured woman, I never once saw her anything but collected and calm.

When I saw her eyes were the size of tea saucers and her mouth was open the size of a dish pan, my stomach dropped about ten feet and hit the floor boards under my seat.

I nailed the brakes and shoved the shifter into park, I bailed out and run toward her and I saw the little girl child in her arms was that God-awful color of slate blue I’ve seen before and I don’t ever want to see again, but here it was.

I don’t know what-all Jessie was machine gunning at me but it boiled down to “She’s Not Breathing!”

I grabbed the child and backed up until I hit the front of the cruiser and I set down on the front bumper.

I stuck my legs straight out and slanted downhill and I laid the little girl down on my legs and I smacked her back with the flat of my hand and I was not gentle a’tall about it.

One – two – three – four – I pulled her up and flipped her over, I put my mouth over her little nose and mouth and puffed.

Just puffed.

I knew – part of me knew – I was running on adrenaline and my lung power was powered like a Diesel engine and if I gave her a hard blow I could bust her lungs, so I just puffed into her.

No air went in.

I flipped her over, I smacked her four more times.

She give a funny little sound and I flipped her over and shoved my thumb against her top front teeth and my forefinger against her bottom front teeth and shoved her jaw open.

I flipped her again and hooked out a half melted hard candy.

I had her face up again before that striped sweet finished tumbling through the air and hit the ground.

I got air into her that time.

I got four breaths into her and something in the back of my mind slapped me across the head and screamed “CHECK FOR A PULSE YOU IDIOT!” and I reached up and pinched her upper arm, I reached my fingers around and pressed them flat against that big arm artery between bicep and tricep and I felt and I counted and it felt like about a week I just set there with my fingers pressed against her upper arm and whatever smacked me in the back of the head was still screamin’ at me “PULSE CHECK TEN SECONDS!” and then I felt it.

Bump.

I got another two puffs of air into her and felt her arm again.

I pinched gentle against the bone and there it was.

Bump.

Another one.

Bump.

Then her pulse kind of picked up and I felt her little engine startin’ back up like a flooded out motor.

Bump … bump … bump bump bump bump …

Jessie was standing there chewing on her knuckles, I reckon she was trying to keep from screaming, she was just short of jumping up and down and I looked at her and when it hits the fan I communicate clearly and I communicate to be heard and I did.

I r’ared back and just plainly yelled “WE HAVE A PULSE!” and Jessie’s hands clapped to her mouth and she kind of collapsed down to her knees and every last bit of color drained out of her face.

I lowered my face and give her little girl another quick puff for she wasn’t breathing on her own yet and damned if I was going to let her go after all the work I’d just put into her.

I was all set to start chest compressions but they were not needed so I did not, sometimes what you don’t do is pretty damned important and if her heart is working I didn’t want to –

That part of me that smacked me in the back of the head earlier, smacked me again and yelled “PAY ATTENTION!” and something in me broke and I remembered my boys, I remembered the twins, I recalled what it was as they lay side by side in the same bed holdin’ hands and they both breathed their last and my hand on theirs and I just laid my head down on Emil’s belly and cried like a lost child.

“DAMN YOU, REAPER,” I whispered fiercely, and I felt that old grief scalding my eyes again, YOU’RE NOT GETTIN’ THIS ONE!”

I lowered my head and give her another puff of air and she give a shiver and a gasp and she taken a breath and I rubbed her belly and murmured, “Come on, honey, do it again!” and she give another gasp and I rubbed her belly again – “Come on, honey!” – another shivering gasp –

 JESSIE!” I said sharply, and then her little girl taken a deeper breath and coughed and started to cry.

I don’t reckon there is any sound in God’s green earth that will turn a woman into a kinetic penetrator any faster than the cry of her child.

I could not have kept Jessie from her little girl if I was wearin’ a suit of armor.

Jessie reached in and grabbed her little girl and I let her, and I dropped my head and of a sudden I felt empty and I just set there, staring at the ground.

I couldn’t save my boys.

They both died of a brain tumor.

I couldn’t do a thing about that, but by GOD!

I SAVED THIS ONE!

I just set there, kind of weak-like.

I felt like a wrung out dish rag.

I just set there on the front bumper with my elbows on my knees and the weight of two dead sons on my shoulders and my head hung and I stared at the ground, just … set there … and stared.

It wasn’t until Crane gripped my shoulder and asked “Sheriff, you okay?” that it finally sunk through my thick German skull that the squad was there, the Cavalry came over the hill, I had backup.

I reached up and laid my hand on his and nodded.

I did not trust my voice.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller sat down to lunch like he usually did.

Someone came over and laid the hot-off-the-press weekly edition on the table before him.

“You made the paper, Sheriff.”

Linn picked up the newspaper and looked at the photograph.

It was him, sitting on the front bumper of his cruiser, legs spread, heels set, head down, elbows on his knees, hands hung limp and fingers a-dangle.

It was, frankly, an absolutely beautiful picture of the top of his brushed Stetson.

The Sheriff looked at the newspaper and laughed a little, handed it back.

“I reckon,” he said quietly, “Bruce got my good side.”

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

 TO RIDE A POWDER KEG

"Where's the Sheriff?"

"Said he was visitin' a sick relative."

"Will he be gone long?"

"You got business?"

"No, just curious."

One of the Sheriff's daughters let her boot heel hit the polished quartz floor, enough to be noticed, enough to be heard: when the visitor turned, he was hit with the full power of hard, polished-ice, glacier's-heart-cold eyes boring into his soul with absolutely no warmth nor welcome.

"If you have official business with the Firelands County Sheriff's Office," Angela said coldly, "state it now, otherwise the Sheriff is not available."

 

Sheriff Linn Keller sat on the floor beside the regeneration tank.

His youngest daughter floated in the rose-colored fluid, eyes closed, looking like she was sleeping.

Most of the scarring was gone now.

Her bones were straight, muscle and skin mended, her hair was growing again: according to what little he could interpret from the rows of screens, she was asleep, she was dreaming.

He laid his hand gently against the glass -- or whatever it was, their advanced sciences meant it could be transparent metal, or a polymer, or hell for all he knew it was pure quartz carved out with a pocket knife -- all he knew was, his youngest daughter damn neart died and he hadn't been there to prevent it, she should have been dead ten times over, and Confederate technology and medical procedures he didn't pretend to understand were within a whisker of giving him back his little girl.

The Sheriff leaned his head against the tank, felt is warmth, laid his splay-fingered hand against it, closed his eyes against the misery he felt.

 

Dana giggled like the happy little girl she was.

She touched an exploring forefinger to the laser-carved portrait of her Gammaw, etched into glass-smooth quartz, looked at her Daddy with the innocent delight of a little child and said in an innocent little girl's voice, "Gammaw?"

Her Daddy squatted, that gentle Daddy-smile on his face, and brushed the curved back of one finger down her pink-with-the-cold cheek and nodded.

"Yes, Sweetheart," he murmured, "that's your Gammaw."
Dana looked at the tombstone portrait, suddenly serious, then looked at her Daddy again and said solemnly, "She's vew-wy pwetty!"

Her Daddy rolled forward onto his knees, his coat open: he hugged his little girl to him, the coat enveloping them both, and no child in all of God's creation ever felt so warm, so safe, as Dana Keller did when her Daddy hugged her close!

The floating patient smiled the regeneration tank.

It was the first spontaneous muscular response that had manifested since she was first brought in, broken, bleeding, mostly dead.

Linn heard alarms -- one, two more, running feet -- doors slid open with pneumatic urgency --

He came to his feet, looking around: one of the white-uniformed technicians ran up, raised a headset, nearly drove it down on the man's head.

"Talk to her," the tech said, his voice low, urgent. "She is starting to wake up. Talk to her like she's been asleep, be gentle --"

Linn turned, looked at his little girl floating in rose-colored regeneration fluid.

"Danaaa?" he said softly, as if waking his little girl from a nap.

He saw her shoulders move.

He bit his bottom lip, planted both hands on the transparent tank, suddenly focused.

Dana's hands opened, closed, opened again: she twisted, slowly, luxuriously, as if she were lying on silk sheets: she opened her eyes, blinked, her eyes unfocused but moving.

"Danaaa," Linn repeated, gently. "Honey, are you waaaaake?" -- the same way he'd wake her when she'd fallen asleep, bundled up on his couch with a quilt and a Bear Killer.

Dana opened her mouth, he saw that smile he recalled so well --

He held up a hand --

"Darlin', don't try to talk, not yet."

Dana's short hair floated a little as she tilted her head the way she did when she had a question.

"Dana, darlin'," Linn said, his voice Daddy-gentle, as careful as if he were tiptoeing between a checkerboard of land mines, "you were hurt. You're in a regeneration tank. You can breathe the liquid, but don't try to talk."

Dana blinked, frowned a little, then looked at her Daddy.

Her elbows bent, her hands came up, spread out against the inside of the tank, and Linn placed his hands against the tank with hers.

Another voice.

"Dana, this is Dr. Fellowes, can you hear me?"

Dana rotated, floating easily: she pressed fingertips against the tank, used the contact to rotate, searching for the new voice.

"Dana, you were hurt. You were brought here to recover."

The doctor's words were careful, spoken slowly, as if to someone who might not quite understand what was being said.

"Dana, when we bring you out of the liquid, your body will have to transition to breathing air again. We'll turn you upside down so your lungs can drain. It will not be comfortable, not at first, do you understand?"

Dana raised her hand, made a fist, the dropped it in a wrist-bent knock-knock motion.

The doctor looked at the Sheriff.

"Sign language," he said. "She's signing yes."

"Dana, your body is weightless now. When you come out of the liquid, you will feel terribly heavy."

Again the fist-knock affirmation.

Linn bent his wrist, spoke into his wrist-comm: "Marnie, Dana is awake. They're bringing her out now. Get here fast!"

 

Marnie Keller's head came up.

She was in her private quarters.

She was in her usual off-duty flannel shirt, a knee length skirt and knee socks.

When the WWII bugle call blasted over hidden speakers, when General Quarters bugled, she was on her feet like she'd been stung: Marnie seized her gunbelt and whipped it around her maiden-lean middle, buckled it tight; she shoved sock feet in red cowboy boots, clapped her Stetson on her head, keyed in a command.

Michael Keller's head came up, his eyes pale: he looked around the table at startled eyes, for General Quarters had never been bugled on this particular Confederate world.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I am needed. Please accept these" -- he thrust a bladed hand at two pallets of goods -- "as my revenge on outrageous fortune!"

Outside, Lightning's head came up quickly: children, who'd been happily marveling at the placid, drowsing Fanghorn, who'd been caressing her, delighting in her silky-soft, lightning-patterned blond fur, drew back as she shivered, as she muttered, as she looked toward the building.

Michael emerged at a dead run, keying in a command: an Iris opened, Michael hit the saddle, Lightning launched from belly-down to thrown-spear dive.

Angela's head snapped around and she went from the smiling, pleasant Miss Angela, to the ice-hard warrior not many knew even existed.

A handful of her class surged to their feet, dove for their in-classroom lockers, the ones sealed with handprint recognition.

An Iris opened and a pale-eyed nurse with four white-and-red combat medics flanking her, marched in formation through the Iris, and were gone.

 

Dana hung upside down by her ankles, choking, coughing, struggling: she was sprayed with warm water, quickly, efficiently, unceremoniously: as the handheld spray nozzles lowered toward her head, towels rubbed her skin, carefully, not wanting to stress new flesh that had yet to be hardened by atmospheric exposure.

Once Dana's lungs were expanded, a table came up under her -- padded, blanketed, warm, soft -- she was carefully dried, rolled over onto her back, covered with a warmed flannel sheet.

Her arms felt heavy, so heavy! -- it took all she had to reach for her Daddy.

Linn took his little girl's hand between his with an exaggerated care: he swallowed, his eyes locked into hers as she opened her mouth, as she tried to say something.

Multiple Irises opened and Dana was quickly surrounded.

Shelly appeared opposite her husband, her eyes wide, her mouth open: Dana tried to speak and managed a husky whisper --

"Daddy?" she managed.

 

Linn and Shelly listened carefully to the clinical discussions, to the explanations, to the professional speculations.

Linn and Shelly conferred with Dana and with their other young.

Dana's arm was laid over The Bear Killer's shoulder: he'd come through the Iris with Shelly, he'd surged up onto Dana's bed and thrust his blunt muzzle under her arm, he'd snuffed loudly and wiggled in close to her and muttered happily as Dana's fingers managed to work into his curly-thick fur.

Dana's bones, they were told, were calcified for Earth gravity; her musculature was toned for full fluid immersion -- weightlessness, essentially, and she would have to build back up to strength, in the meantime a wheelchair would be needed.

"No," Dana whispered firmly.

Linn laid a hand over his daughter's: he'd surrendered her hand to The Bear Killer's attention, and laid his palm over her knuckles as he frowned a little and considered the determined set to Dana's jaw.

"I think," he said slowly, "we can arrange that."

He looked at Marnie.

"Have you any lower gravity planets with horses?"

"Horses?" came the professional medical protest. "Sheriff, she isn't nearly strong enough --"

Dana Keller, youngest daughter of that pale eyed Sheriff and his fire-medic wife, silenced the medico with a pale-eyed glare.

"I think," Linn said carefully, his hand squeezing Dana's knuckles ever so gently, "I understand."  He looked at the frowning physician and said, "Doctor, we have what's called Equine Therapy. It's used with ... individuals ... who need what only a horse can provide. I though it was a load of hokum until I saw it work."

Linn looked down at his daughter.

"You got one in mind?"

He saw the corners of his daughter's mouth quirk up a little.

"Powderkeg," she whispered.

"You're ... surrrrreee?" Linn drawled the word out, turning his head a little to give her a bit of a side-eye: Angela saw her armored combat medics exchange concerned looks, Michael's left eyebrow shot upward and Victoria whistled, a long, descending note, followed by a quiet, "Whoa."

Linn turned his head.  "Angela."

Angela nodded, once:  "We're ready for transport."

She looked at the department head.

"Assemble your team. You'll want immunologists, environmental specialists, physical therapists. We will have quarters for them and you'll have full access to your facilities here."

The head physician frowned.  "Powder Keg?"

"He's a stallion," Victoria explained, "eleven hands at the shoulder. He's mean, he's short tempered, he's thrown the best riders I ever knew and made it look easy. If Dana can manage the Powderkeg" -- she thrust her chin at her little sister -- "she can handle anything!"

 

In the year that followed, the Sheriff's ranch became a de facto, offworld, research station.

Physical therapy in the Confederate medical world was honestly improved with a new innovation the Sheriff called Equine Therapy: horses through the Thirteen Star Systems were suddenly more than a relatively new novelty, they were more than an increasing utility: now they were medical as well, and high demand for horses became even higher.

Dana refused, absolutely, steadfastly, refused, to ride a wheelchair.

Dana drove herself with the single-minded intensity of a pale eyed, preadolescent, female, who had something to prove.

Dana swung kettlebells and Dana relearned to walk, Dana spent a half day in class and the rest of the day wearing herself out: her pale eyed Daddy enforced rest periods, which chafed her terribly, and even though she might have been too big for such things, when it was time for Dana to let  her young body recover from training and from exertion, Linn would pick up his eleven year old daughter and drape her across his thighs and lean her back into him: his arms around her middle, a book in his hands, and he'd read to her, the way he used to when she was but a wee child.

Confederate medical professionals dreaded the day their miracle patient would throw a leg over the fast moving, vicious, short tempered legend called the Powder Keg.

They watched the Sheriff buck out his favorite stallion, they watched horses lunge and sunfish and crow hop and launch up toward the Texas moon, they saw riders and they saw falls and they saw skilled equestrians launched from saddles like fighter pilots punching out of a wounded bird over a battlefield, and they wondered what mental aberration would ever lead a sweet-faced little girl to want to ride a four legged flesh busting monster so fierce it had to be named Powder Keg!

They had their answer on a Thursday.

Dana and her Daddy went off riding together, without the usual examination, the usual high-tech scanning of her young body, without the careful documentation of their findings, of her skin condition, of dermatological discussion of skin adaptation to wear points, chafing points, changes associated with occupying a saddle for extended periods: none of this was done this fine day, when the Sheriff and his youngest daughter rode through the back gate with no word to any one.

A string of riders filed up Cemetery Hill.

Marnie wore a riding skirt and her red cowboy boots, Michael wore a heavy coat, as did Victoria: the Sheriff wore a look of satisfaction, and Dana wore an expression of excited triumph.

The family drew up in a row as Dana rode between the graves, and for the first time -- for absolutely the very first time -- Dana dismounted without assistance.

She turned and she went up to the tomb stone and she squatted in the snow and ran gentle fingers over the laser engraved portrait.

"Gammaw," she whispered, "I think you're very pretty!" -- she took a breath, she stood.

"Gammaw," she said, her voice pitched to carry, "I told 'em I would do this."

Dana walked back to her mule and got a foot up into the stirrup.

Nobody dismounted to help her.

This was all her.

Dana had to hop a few times.

The patient old mule swung his ears, eyes half-lidded as he contemplated deep philosophical insights, the way patient old mules will do.

Dana hopped and Dana gripped and Dana pulled and Dana groaned as she got herself draped over the saddle, as she swung her leg twice to get it over the other side: she laid over the saddle horn for a moment, breathing hard, then she found the other stirrup.

She straightened in the saddle.

Dana rode toward her waiting family, she rode down hill, back out of the cemetery.

She took the memory of this personal victory with her, and she left hoof prints behind to commemorate the event.

Dana led their column back into the barn, back into the section that opened into an interdimensional gateway to the research center.

Before she crossed the threshold, Dana turned her mule and regarded her Daddy with a look the man had seen many times on his daughters' faces.

"Dr. Fellowes is waiting on me," Dana said. "He wanted to scan me before we rode out."

Father, son and daughters regarded her silently, knowing something was coming.

"He said he was uncomfortable with me riding a monster so vicious as to be called Powderkeg."

Linn nodded, once, slowly.

Dana laughed, turned her mule.

Her voice was light, happy, the voice of a healthy, eleven year old daughter of the mountains.

"Come on, Powder Keg!" she called, and Powder Keg lifted his ears and stepped through the barrier into Dr. Fellowe's research center.

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TEXAS KITE TAIL

The sound of the heavy key in the crude but secure jail cell's lock grated on the hurting man's headache.

The jail door was unlocked, opened, slammed shut, hard -- deliberately so -- the booming detonation of sonic assault caused the stranger's hands to rise to his head, caused him to curl tighter on the narrow jail cell bunk, caused him to over balance and fall to the floor with a grunt and a pained click as his teeth snapped together in response to the unplanned descent.

An unsympathetic voice stood in the doorway, surrounded by a long, tall, lean waisted Sheriff: "You want breakfast, get up. You want the outhouse, come with me."

A man with bruises, a thumping head, a man with a foggy memory of something big, strong, fast moving and dangerous cautiously came up on all fours, planted one hand on the steel bunk, hauled one boot under him, then the other: he stood, swaying, his hands going to his head.

"Doc sewed up your scalp," the unsympathetic voice said. "Good thing you're hard headed. Most men would never have survived."

The Sheriff drew back as the groaning man staggered toward him, allowed himself to be escorted to the outhouse.

Once the necessaries were tended, the Sheriff allowed him to wash up in fresh pumped water -- cold, but not as cold as the snow and ice surrounding -- they went inside and a clean towel was tossed into his face.

"Dry off. We got eggs, we got taters, we got beans and bread and I had 'em bring me coffee from across the street."  The man's voice was quiet, the kind of a voice that spoke of fairness but firmness. "Believe me, you do not want to drink coffee I make here. Rotted out another coffee pot this mornin'."

The stranger sat down and ate: he ate slow, not so much to savor the fare, but because his head was giving him honest cause to regret what-all he'd done.

It took him a while to remember.

 

Michael Keller rode his Texas longhorn like most boys might ride a saddlehorse.

Boocaffie – the original Boocaffie had been this particular bovine’s grandsire, but the name carried through two subsequent generations – had the spread of horn, the wild blood, the rangy strength, of his native Texas ancestors.

He also had the placid nature of a creature raised without the particular threats to life, liberty and not getting eaten, that were endemic to his grandsire’s existence down in the Border country.

Boocaffie trotted easily down the main street of beautiful downtown Firelands, hub of industry and commerce, center of culture and learning … that is to say, Firelands, the county seat, with its Silver Jewel Saloon, with its bank, with its whitewashed schoolhouse and the equally pristine church beside: Firelands, with its very own fire department (why, you don’t have one of those outside the big city!) – Firelands, with a wide main street and a library, and soon to have a newspaper, since the original got burnt out years ago when two drunks were hired to burn out the newspaper in another town and got themselves turned around and ended up in the wrong town.

Boocaffie’s gait was not what you’d call smooth, but to a laughing little boy, it was FUN! – besides, if it’s possible for a little boy with a big grin to feel like he was piloting the swiftest, most powerful battleship in the world, it would feel very much like Michael Keller, son of Jacob Keller and grandson of Old Pale Eyes, felt at that moment, straddling a genuine, honest to the Sachem Above, LONGHORN!

Now we have to introduce a young man, we’ll call him Lester.

That wasn’t the name he was born with, but he got into a scrape back East and came West and picked up a name like a man might pick up a dropped cloak, and wrapped himself in it, and so Lester was in town with his pay in his purse and a thirst for adventure and drink, not necessarily in that order.

Now Lester was no stranger to trouble – that’s why he had to leave the civilized East, that’s why he discarded the name he used to have, that’s why he decided paying for drink by the shot in the Silver Jewel was both too slow, and too expensive – a trip to the Mercantile, an exchange of coin for goods, and he had a bottle of something amber, something that gurgled when he tilted it, something that burnt his throat and settled like hot slag in his gut.

Lester fancied himself formidable.

Lester might have decided to walk up to someone and challenge them to a less than gentlemanly bout of fisticuffs, but none were available when he sat down on the edge of the board walk just down hill from the Mercantile.

There was, however, a Texas longhorn trottin’ right down the middle of the street and everybody knows these are wild and fierce creatures who should not be roaming outside of fence, let alone this far North: he frowned at the bottle, squinted at the bovine, considered that little boys didn’t ride wild gut rippin’ monsters like this, let alone ride one in town! – he set the bottle down and stood up and allowed as he would have to take this situation in hand!

He looked around – he was a fair hand with a lariat – no horse was near enough – he’d have to shoot – his hand reached for the revolving pistol in its crude flour sack holster –

A weather-knuckled hand gripped the bottle by its neck and introduced it at a fair velocity across the back of Lester’s gourd.

The bottle was still mostly full, and so had the weight of its contents; the bottle was of heavy glass, and strong, and the bottle did not break.

It did, however, knock consciousness out of Lester’s skull as it tried to knock some sense into said skull.

Whether the bottle’s impact was successful in imparting a degree of wisdom is not really known.

Lester’s hand released its grip on the revolving pistol and Lester’s brain released its grip on motor control and Lester went face first into the dirt, and if one were close enough, one might hear little tweeting birds singing in tight orbits around Lester’s proned-out punkin’ haid.

 

“How much do you remember?” the Sheriff asked, not unkindly, for he knew what it was to wake with a thumping headache – something he hadn’t done since his youth, since his one and only foray into alcoholic exploration that seems to plague young men of any era.

Lester gave the Sheriff a grateful look.

His stomach was still trying to decide whether it wanted to hold onto the meal he’d just shoveled down his swaller pipe: that he was about starved out, argued powerfully for retention, but he was cognizant that this lawman was not only treating him kindly – something he’d not expect after waking up in a jail cell – the man was also speaking quietly.

Part of Lester’s consciousness realized the man was speaking with authority, that even speaking softly, he was very evidently in charge here – but he was making the choice not to inflict further discomfort in his guest, and for this kindness, Lester slowly realized, he was grateful.

Lester frowned, squeezed his eyes tight shut, rubbed the back of his head, skimmed curious finger tips over the bandage tied around the back of his head.

“Doc stitched up your scalp,” the Sheriff said quietly.

“I musta fell,” Lester muttered.

“You could say that.”

Lester opened his eyes, trying to open the rusty hinged gates of his memory.

He looked at the Sheriff, surprised.

“Did that Longhorn come after me?”

“Why would you say that?” the Sheriff said neutrally, his pale eyes following Lester’s uncomfortable expressions.

“They was a longhorn – was there – right down the middle of the street –”

He blinked, squinted again, shook his head, decided that was a bad idea.

“Longhorn,” he almost whispered.

“And what did you do when you saw it?”

“I didn’t have no rope,” Lester said slowly. “Couldn’t let that man killer tear up the town.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t …”

Lester grimaced, raised careful fingers to his temples.

“I don’t recall,” he groaned. “I was goin’ to loop it but hell, ‘twas so big I’d likely been a Texas kite tail behint him …”

“Do you remember what happened next?”

Lester squeezed his eyes tight shut again, as if he could force the memory, then shook his head.

“I don’t recall,” he admitted frankly.

The Sheriff nodded, slowly: he’d already been to the Silver Jewel, he’d already heard how this young fellow spent a good percentage of his pay on strong drink.

Mrs. Garrisson, bless her, already came to him and spoke of the young man laying face down in the dirt, for she was concerned that a man in his condition who bought a bottle might partake too heavily and fall into the ditch, or maybe off the trestle, and she had no wish to see him ride a good horse over the rim of a dropoff.

Silence grew between the pair.

“Your horse is at Shorty’s livery,” the Sheriff said at length. “I could take you in front of His Honor the Judge, but hell” – he grinned – “you feel bad enough, between drink and your” – he raised a hand to the back of his own head.

“Why’nt you just head on out now, go home, heal up. You’ve been through enough.”

 

Sheriff Linn Keller squatted as Jacob’s boy Michael came running at him:  “Gwampa!” he yelled happily, and the Sheriff snatched him up, whipped him around, as much to dissipate the energy of collision as anything – besides, he didn’t want his grandson to knock him over again – Michael laughed with the purity of joy that only happy little boys have, when their Granddad swings them terrifyingly high in the air, yet completely safe in the masculine grip of a truly strong man.

Linn set Michael down and pulled a sack off his saddlehorn – a lumpy cloth poke – he winked at Michael, untied the neck and reached in.

Boocaffie came lumbering over toward the board fence, neck stuck out, nostrils flared.

Michael shot the timber bolt on the gate and pulled it open, and grandfather and grandson entered the pasture.

Linn reached into the poke and handed Michael a couple of sweet rolls, and a genuine Texas longhorn closed his eyes in slow-blinking bliss as he accepted sweet rolls and ear rubs from a happy little boy, and a pale eyed old lawman.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FRONT PORCH

Dana felt a flush of embarrassment as the front door opened.

She hadn't meant to wake anyone.

She hadn't looked at a clock -- she'd known it was late, she couldn't sleep -- she'd disabled the alarm, turned the locks, draped the quilt over her shoulder and slipped out onto the front porch.

She'd spread the doubled quilt on the rocking chair and she'd settled into it, draped the other quilt over her, then she got up and laid the quilt diamond-like on the chair so she could sit and pull the edges over her and pull the top point over her head.

Dana pulled her legs up, crossed them, steamed her breath out into the cold air.

Her light-blue eyes shone in the near-dark, reflecting stars that looked over the mountains at her, looking down at this daughter of the high country who'd been away from home through no choice of her own.

Dana felt her ears flush suddenly as the front door opened, as two figures emerged, soundless in the night, or nearly so: canine toenails whispered against grey-painted porch floor boards as The Bear Killer came around and dropped his head hopefully in her lap, as he looked up at her with dark and adoring eyes.

The other figure -- tall, silent -- eased down into the other rocking chair, not noticing or not caring that it was frosty cold under his backside.

Her Daddy was fully dressed because of course he was.

Her Daddy's pale eyes were busy, studying the dark.

Neither one rocked.

When Linn spoke, his voice was quiet, a murmur, gentle in the dark.

"Your Gammaw," he said, "loved this."

Dana looked at her Daddy, curious.

"She used to sit out here ... just sit here and listen to the night."

We used to do that, Dana thought.

"How much do you remember?" Linn asked, his voice somewhere between warm, loving Daddy, and professional, investigating, interrogator.

It was full dark; the porch light was off, Dana's face was in shadow.

Linn could not have seen her eyes change if he'd wanted.

He didn't have to.

He felt the change.

Blood knows blood, and Dana was the child of his loins: Linn knew she'd drawn the curtains behind her eyes, and she was thinking fast of what and how much to say.

Dana answered with all the wisdom and guile and innocence and hesitation of a ten year old girl, with all the honesty of a child raised to be straightforward and honest when asked a question.

Dana closed her eyes and reached back into her memory, bypassing the fast calculation:
What does he want to hear?

She went back before what she thought her Daddy meant -- did she remember being treated for her injuries, did she remember the regeneration tank, did she see anything while she healed --

Did I see Gammaw or Sarah Lynne McKenna, did I see the Valkyries or Bear Killers or White Wolves -- 

"There are questions about the wreck," Linn said quietly. 

Dana turned her head to look at her Daddy, her fingers working deeper into The Bear Killer's warm, curly fur.

"I haven't been served with any papers to compel you to testify," Linn continued, "but it could happen. Insurance will want to know."

"What about a lawsuit?" Dana asked softly.

"I've been asked several times if we intend to bring suit against either the surviving driver, or the other driver's estate. We've held off on charging either driver."

"You were waiting to see if I would die," Dana said quietly -- a statement, in a little girl's voice, a realization no child should have to handle, but perhaps not surprising for the daughter of a lawman.

Dana felt her father's slow, thoughtful nod.

"Yes."

"So nobody will be charged with homicide now."

"Not for you. One driver is dead, though. The survivor's insurance will probably want to depose you to try and establish something against the dead guy."

"Each side will try to make the other side the bad guy."

"Yep."

Silence, for several minutes.

The Bear Killer never stop staring up at Dana with those dark, liquid eyes.

"I heard Whinny running away," Dana said softly, her voice distant.

Linn waited, listening closely.

"We were clear off the road right at the dropoff. I think that's where Marnie said she had to straighten out an idiot Road Rager on Prom Night."

"I know the place," Linn replied softly.  "Go on."

"We heard cars coming from both directions so we got clear off the road.

"Whinny reared when they collided and I fell.

"I hit my shoulder on the way down."

Her voice was a whisper.

"Then I hit a lot more and I landed face first in water and I couldn't move."

Linn closed his eyes, remembering.

Angela was first to find her -- she'd landed the Diplomatic shuttle by virtue of dissolving the surrounding timber and rocks with the ship's defensive field, then she'd combined Confederate forcefield manipulation with her own nurse/paramedic extrication and immobilization training to remove Dana, to establish her airway, to stop anything from moving until she could get her into a definitive trauma facility.

"We were told your injuries were nonsurvivable."

"What did Angela say?"

"She said hold my beer."

Dana took in a quick breath, and the Sheriff heard the smile on his daughter's face.

"I can just see her doin' that," the Sheriff said slowly.

"You'd have laughed, Daddy. She looked like Mommy. I remember she shook her Mommy-finger in that one doctor's face and her other fist was on her belt and she allowed as he was a quack and a coward and she'd find someone who could save me!"

"You remember that."

"I remember hearing she went back and backhanded the man and challenged him to a duel of honor."

"I didn't hear anything about that," Linn said, surprised.

Dana shrugged, or tried to: healed or not, Confederate medicine or not, sometimes it hurt to move, and her left shoulder assembly lit up in protest when she tried a move that used to be painless.

"She's like you, Daddy," Dana whispered. "She doesn't like to brag."

Dana felt her Daddy's hand descend, warm, comforting, protective, over the back of her hand: she turned her hand over, gripped her Daddy's palm.

"Were you havin' nightmares?" Linn asked finally.

Dana smiled in the darkness, considered stars, distant over the far peaks.

"I wanted to see this," she said. "I've slept through stars on snow too many times. I wanted to see this."

Linn nodded, took a long breath, blew it out, considered the texture of shattered light on crystal snowfall.

"Daddy?"

"Hm?"

"I'm glad you're seeing it with me."

"Me too, Princess," he murmured.  "Me, too."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GRIT YOUR TEETH AND LET IT GO

"Had to have a talk with the school board," the Sheriff said darkly.

Shelly gave him a sharp look, then looked at their daughter, who was quietly working on her supper.

"I was contacted yesterday," Shelly said carefully, her eyes swinging to Dana again, then to her husband.

His voice was quiet, his face carefully neutral, but she saw an anger deep in his pale eyes.

"I know," the Sheriff said, "and I told them that. I asked if they were trying to catch us in a lie, why would they ask you and then ask me the same questions."

"And ...?"

"I told them you'd already asked and answered, and if they had any further questions, address them to my attorney."

"Isn't that ... harsh?"

"Not when the truant officer comes to me and says he's been instructed to try and catch" -- 

Dana looked up at her Daddy, her light blue eyes wide and innocent.

"He knows he can't come on property without committing trespass," the Sheriff said quietly, but both mother and daughter heard the dangerous note in his voice. "If he sets up remote surveillance, the Confederate field will show what I want seen and nothing more."

"Daddy," Dana said quietly, "are they trying to force me back to school?"

Linn's bottom jaw shoved out, he looked away, frowning just a little.

He looked back.

"Darlin', I doubt if they'll let you sit a-saddle in the classroom," Linn said carefully, "and I will not make you ride a wheelchair."

Shelly looked at her daughter and saw something change: anger, for the first time, a deep and abiding anger she was used to seeing in Marnie (oh dear God was she used to seeing that in Marnie!) -- she'd seen it in Angela, but only momentarily, and quite rarely.

This was the first time she'd seen that anchored, that uncompromising ... that deep.

"I can't even saddle my own mule," Dana said in a quiet voice that conveyed both a young girl's honest distress, and a young fighter's deep and abiding anger at her situation.

Dana's soft little hands closed into fists and she started to shiver a little, and then she raised both fists and SLAMMED them down on the kitchen table -- she caught the edge of her plate and spun it into the air, vegetables and meat juice slung in a colorful arc -- Shelly stared, shocked, for it was the very first time she'd ever seen their placid, calm, reasonable, dainty, feminine youngest daughter, give vent to a deep and abiding anger.

Dana snarled -- she shoved her chair back -- she seized the kitchen table, she tried to throw it, she brought it an inch off the floor and her fingers slipped off -- she felt her Daddy move, she felt his animal warmth just before he grabbed her upper arm, turned her, seized her other arm --

Dana's pretty young face was twisted, contorted, it was a mask of anger. of rage, her face was scarlet, as if she were burning inside -- she fought, she tried to kick, with what little strength she'd managed, she tried to hit -- Linn shifted his grip, tossed her up, caught her under the arms so her arms and her fists were free, and Dana's eyes went dead pale and her lips peeled back and she was less a girl-child and more an enraged mountain cat.

A ten year old girl kicked the dam she'd built to hold everything back, she shattered the impoundment she'd built against her own young passions: she was blind now, striking, clawing, twisting, sizzling, the sounds she made were not human, were more feline.

Dana was rage in a gingham dress.

Linn held her, held her far enough out she couldn't hurt him, his flat-muscled belly proof against what little power her kicks could manage, and he still had his hands genuinely full: part of his mind remembered admitting to Barrents that the worst beatin' he'd gotten was from a fourteen year old girl, an honor student someone talked into trying a hand-rolled, without telling her they'd dusted it with PCP.

The fourteen year old had knocked three good cops north, south, east, west, up to the Texas moon and down to oil, they'd finally ganged her from sheer tonnage and got her in irons and into the cruiser, and when she detoxed enough to return to the here-and-now, she learned she'd clawed her best friend's face off her skull, and had to be put on suicide watch.

Linn tossed the memory to the side and gave his undivided to his daughter.

Linn held Dana and let her fight.

Shelly was on her feet, alarmed, but Linn stopped her with a look and a shake of his head.

It took a while for Dana to discharge her emotional capacitor, and when she did, she collapsed, limp, spent: Linn drew her in, held her like the little girl she was, held her and soothed her and murmured to her, his hands warm and strong and safe and reassuring.

Shelly saw her husband's set jaw and his pale eyes, and she saw how quiet he was, and she knew he was beyond rage: he was more than ready to rip someone's head off, to drive them into the ground like a fence post, he was ready to skin someone alive -- with a spoon -- and then get mean with them.

She also knew that, right now, Daddy was what a freshly-detonated, recovering-her-emotional-equilbrium little girl needed, and Shelly knew that her husband both knew that as well, and was providing it as best he could.

Linn slipped around Dana's slid-back chair and leaned down to murmur into Shelly's ear, "I'll handle cleanup, give us a minute," and she nodded and watched as Linn carried their clinging, shivering, shattered little girl toward the front door.

 

Powder Keg walked slowly, as he generally did, and the Sheriff's spotty stallion was content to match the mule's placid pace.

Dana looked almost lost in her Daddy's fuzzy lined denim coat, with her Daddy's hat on her head, the faded, worn, stained brown hat with the beat-to-hell crown and a sun-bleached feather stuck in the hat band, the one she'd worn, giggling, the day before two cars hit head-on and her horse shied and threw her over a short cliff.

They rode up-mountain, together, in no kind of a hurry a'tall.

Linn waited, knowing that sometimes the ride alone was therapeutic, but knowing also that if Dana wanted to sort things out, he'd ought to be there to listen.

Dana's head came up, quickly, as if she'd made a decision.

"I need to apologize to Mama," she said.

Powder Keg stopped. 

Linn's stallion walked on for a half dozen paces, then turned: Linn rode back to his little girl and stopped, his stirrup nearly touching yours.

"For what?" he asked quietly.

"I made a mess, Daddy. I got mad and I broke stuff."

Linn frowned, looked down, at Dana's hands, fisted tight around bitless reins.

"Darlin'," Linn said slowly, "you were makin' a decision."

Dana blinked, surprised.

Her Daddy sat his horse, tall, powerful, strong, the Daddy she'd always known.

"You could rehab on Mars where there's less gravity. You could rehab on Deimos or Phobos -- they have even less."

Dana blinked, surprised: she'd heard discussion of her rehabbing in one-third gravity.

"If you did that, you'd never leave it. You'd be Mars-strong and your bones would be Mars-normal and Earth would be ... difficult."

Dana blinked, blinked again, listening.

"You decided you'd rather ride a powder keg."

Her placid old mule blinked like a wise old man, swung his ears and went back to his Zen meditations.

Linn's stallion took a restless step forward and Linn leaned forward, hands crossed on his pommel.

"You decided you weren't going to take what was give you. You could go back to school and ride a wheelchair. You could be that poor little girl that can't walk and everyone has to open doors for her and get her lunch for her and pity poor me."

Dana saw her Daddy's jaw slide out again, saw him frown.

"You chose to ride a Powder Keg."

Dana swallowed, half-afraid, half-encouraged.

Linn reached across and slipped his hand under hers -- not gripping, not claiming, but warm and supporting.

"You have chosen to come back to what you were. You have chosen strength. The kitchen and flippin' your plate" -- she blinked, surprised at her Daddy's sudden, bright grin, his laugh -- "darlin', that's somethin' your Gammaw Willamina would have done!"

Dana's eyes widened, startled: her mouth opened a little, then closed, confused.

"You expected I was going to chew on your for that?"

Dana nodded, then she looked down, chewing on her bottom lip like an uncertain little girl.

Linn's hand closed, just a little, a strong, callused, masculine nest for her soft little hand to shelter in.

"Darlin', you are just as complex and as confusing as every woman I have ever known. You are so many things all at the same time, but there's a warrior's backbone inside of you, even if you don't feel much like a warrior, and that's okay. 

"I told the school board to go pound sand, that you were learnin' how to walk ag'in, that you were in a specialty hospital quite some distance away and you're still healin', which is not a lie" -- his voice hardened, just a little -- "your spirit was wounded, your self confidence was shattered, your inner strength was as broken as your body."

He looked very directly at his little girl.

"It ain't now. You chose strength and you chose to return and sometimes we have to declare that loud enough and hard enough so we can hear ourselves say it, and if that means slam your fist ag'in your plate and sling vegetables across the kitchen, why, if that's what it takes to get you to listen to yourself, I'll take it!"

"You're not mad at me?" Dana asked in a vulnerable little voice.

Linn withdrew his hand, straightened, grinned at her -- she saw the laugh moving his shoulders before she heard it -- Linn's quiet, strong, Daddy-laugh washed over her like a warm, snug quilt --

"Darlin'," Linn said firmly, "I am pretty damned PROUD of you!"

"But what about school?" Dana asked hesitantly, her swift-running young mind chasing after an earlier subject.

"We'll handle that. Homeschooling, private education, hell, we'll arrange for one of the Offworld academies!"

He gave his daughter a wise look, nodded as if approving of something.

"What say we get back to the house. I promised your Mama I'd clean up after the meal, and if I recall right, I've got some ceiling to wipe down!"

 

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IF YOU HAVE TO HATE SOMEONE, THEN HATE ME!

 

Angela Keller sat tiredly on the padded bench in the break room.

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, face in her hands, exhausted.

She heard the door open.

She didn't care.

Footsteps, light, careful -- Betsy, she thought, nobody else has that pace -- someone sat on the bench beside her, and a sympathetic hand laid itself between her shoulder blades.

"Sometimes," Angela mumbled into her hands, "I teach too much."

Betsy waited.

Their shift was over, their day's tasks, completed: they were two nurses, alone in the silent break room.

Angela lifted her face, straightened slowly, then leaned her head back -- she stopped when she felt her white winged cap hit the wall behind her -- she took a long breath and sighed noisily.

Betsy waited.

Betsy was no longer a student; she was graduated, she was a veteran nurse in her own right, she was one of the elite trauma team, a flying squad of armored medics that responded to disasters beyond the skill of local medics: right now, like Angela, she was off shift, she was tired, and she did not want to go back to her empty apartment to commune with the only other living thing there, a potted plant.

"I checked my account," Betsy said quietly, "payday just dropped into my bank. I'm hungry."

Angela laughed a little, looked at this student she'd watched grow and bloom and mature.

"The usual?"

"The usual."

A half hour later, two white-uniformed nurses rode from the Sheriff's back pasture, across a path and through a gully, up the other side and made a wide circle to come in behind the Silver Jewel.

Two nurses in white stockings and crepe soled shoes and dark blue, knee length cloaks dismounted, and tied off their mares, and pulled open the back door and released a warm, fragrant cloud from Daisy's Kitchen, bringing its promise of welcome and a hot meal.

 

Michael Keller set his jaw and glared at his little sister.

"I DON'T care if you don't like it," he snapped. "It's THAT or the damned WHEELCHAIR and --"

Dana snarled and straightened: she'd been leaned over a little, gripping the hated aluminum walker with both hands: she raised it up and threw it awkwardly at her brother, staggering a little to keep her balance: Michael thrust an arm up and out and deflected the incoming, then took a long step forward and caught Dana under the arms to keep her from falling.

Dana glared at him and Michael was honestly surprised she didn't bare her teeth and snarl.

"That was better," he said quietly. "Your strength is improved."

He half-supported, half-guided her over to the edge of a stall.

Dana reached up, slammed her hand down over a board, got her legs under her.

Michael stepped around her, picked up the walker, brought it back.

"Let's try this again," he said quietly, placing the device and stepping back. "I want you to walk toward me in a straight line, like you did yesterday."

Michael was honestly surprised that her glare did not slice the aluminum tubing walker in two.

Dana took a long, steadying breath, closed her eyes and calmed herself, then she released the stall, dropped her left hand onto the rubber grip, then the right.

She hit too hard with the left and the walker started to tip.

Michael did not move.

Dana caught herself, gripped the walker with both hands, surprised: she looked at Michael as if deciding how to respond.

"You would have fallen yesterday," Michael said quietly. "You didn't fall today."

Dana thrust her weight forward, took a step, took another: the walker half-skidded, half-slammed down on the smooth cement barn floor.

She paused, she realized she was trying to crush the handholds: she looked down at her feet, she took another step, moved the walker -- step, pick, place, step, pick, place --

"Good," Michael finally said.

"Good?" Dana snapped. "You're the one who keeps backing up!"

Michael folded his arms, waited for Dana to shove into him.

"You need to be able to saddle your own mule," Michael said quietly.

Dana's bitterness came out in more a bark than a laugh.

Michael turned, went over behind a stack of hay bales, picked up a saddle, brought it back.

"Here," he said, holding it out.

I can't hold that weight, Dana thought, but I can let it drop onto the walker --

Michael released it without warning.

Dana's hands tightened automatically --

She expected its weight to yank her down --

She blinked, stared at the saddle, then at Michael.

"What's this made of, cotton candy?" she blurted.

Michael did not smile.

"I have no idea," he admitted. "It looks like a full size saddle but it's spun out of something really light. It's probably fragile so I wouldn't beat it around. It's full size and it weighs maybe six pounds and change."

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Dana asked in an annoyed voice.

"Saddle your mule," Michael said unsympathetically. "Get used to the swing-and-toss. Every minute you spend in this gravity is that much more density your bones develop, that much more strength your muscles acquire."

"Is this how you rehabbed?" Dana snapped.

"He was worse," Victoria said from behind her: Dana jumped at this new, completely unexpected voice.

Victoria came around her, voice and eyes entirely without sympathy.

"You said you're not going to be seen in public in a wheelchair. Michael said the same thing and he made it stick. Question is, are you?"

Dana's head lowered and she glared, hard-eyed, from under juvenile eyebrows.

She did not have the hereditary pale eyes of her Daddy and her siblings, but she had the same polished-ice expression behind long, curved eyelashes that a fashion model would die for.

In any other moment, Dana's glare would have been comical.

Now, given all she'd been through, it was not in the least little bit funny.

Michael reached forward, gripped the realistic-looking, cotton-candy-weight saddle, hung it on a wooden peg, giving the impression that it could break off and drop a perfectly good saddle to the floor at any moment.

"If you want dinner with your sister, we'll Iris to the Silver Jewel."

 

Angela and Betsy looked up as reality opened an elliptical eye and the rest of their dinner party stepped into the private back room.

Angela waited until they'd ordered, until after the cute little hash slinger left the room with their orders written in waitress shorthand on her green-and-white pad.

"Michael," Angela said innocently, "I understand you are quite the taskmaster."

Dana glared at her brother.

Michael ignored the glare, smiled a little, considered his older sister's comment before replying.

"Sis, do you remember telling me about that old man you took care of, the one that was unhappy because you didn't put his shoes on him?"

Angela sipped her water, raised an eyebrow, but made no other reply: Betsy frowned a little, then brightened as she remembered the incident.

"You told him to stand up, to bend over and tie his shoelaces."

Angela nodded thoughtfully, shooting a look at Dana.

"He wasn't happy with that either. He wanted you to tie his shoelaces and you told him, 'Bend over and tie your shoelaces today, so you will be able to bend over and tie your shoelaces tomorrow.' "

Betsy murmured "Oh, yes, that one," and Michael looked very directly at Dana.

"You said he needed someone to hate and you said if he has to hate someone, let him hate me."

Angela looked at her brother with a greater appreciation as he looked at Dana again and said "Dana, I'm going to keep pushing you until you're back. I won't push you too hard but I know what it is to have to fight back. If you need to hate someone, and I reckon you will, hate me."

Michael picked up his water, took a long drink, set it down.

"Before you do, though, I want to see you saddle your own mule and run the mountain with us the way we used to."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PATIENCE DOGOOD

Jacob and Sarah walked slowly outside the little whitewashed schoolhouse.

They were near to finishing their schooling, and there was already talk of Sarah getting her teaching ticket since she'd have completed eighth grade.

"I can smell you laughing," Sarah murmured, and Jacob looked at her with that expression that meant Yeah, you caught me, but it's still funny!

"I was remembering  ... New England, Puritan times, names."

"Oh, names," Sarah murmured. "Like Rasling. Short for 'Rassling with the Devil.' "

"Yep."

"Or ...?"

Sarah's drawn-out question brought a knowing look from her half-brother.

"Or Patience Dogood,"

"Oh, yes," Sarah murmured, and it was Jacob's turn to see something beneath the words.

"Okay, Little Sis, out with it, who is Patience Dogood?"

Sarah turned to face him -- turned quickly, a challenge: "Who are you calling Little Sis, Little Brother?"

Jacob thrust out his jaw and muscled his shoulder up against her, raised a fist.

Sarah thrust out her own jaw, muscled her shoulder against his, raised her own fist.

Each one glared fiercely at the other, each with a grimacing frown and the lower mandible shoved out to its ligamentous limit, at least until each one started to crack, and to snigger, and then both snorted and gave up any pretense at seriousness and hugged one another and laughed.

Jacob came up for air first with a deep breath and a sigh:  "I," he groaned, "am window glass!"

"And your mother can see right through you," Sarah added, then she curled two fingers under Jacob's chin, leaned her forehead against his and whispered, "I know who Patience Dogood is."

Jacob's expression went from laughter to focused attention in a tenth of a second or less.

"It's your mother," Sarah whispered.  "It's Esther."

Jacob's brows slammed together, his mouth opened, and Sarah's gentle fingers pressed up under his chin:  "Close mouth," she murmured, "catch flies."

Jacob closed his mouth, grimaced.

"Your father snores," Sarah explained, which brought an expression of honest confusion to her half-brother's face.

"He ... snores," Jacob echoed, then he planted his knuckles on his belt and stared.

"The Pope is Catholic, Sis, tell me something new!"

Sarah turned a little, twisting her long skirt the way she did when she was making a point: she raised a teaching finger and said, "She and Mama were talking and I was practicing invisibility."

"Which you are good at," Jacob admitted.
"Which I am good at," Sarah agreed -- not bragging, just affirming a known fact.

"Esther said when your father sleeps on his back, he snores."

"Boy Howdy, does he ever," Jacob muttered.

"Esther said the windows rattle."

"She ain't kiddin'," Jacob muttered.

"Esther said she didn't want to smother him with a pillow so she could get some rest, and she said if she punched a knuckle into his ribs -- she said she tried punching his ribs one time and he whipped atop of her with one hand on her throat and his other hand raised as if he had a knife, and she said he woke up a-straddle of her ready to drive a steel blade through her wish bone, only the blade lived in his dream and all he had was a fist and he realized what he'd done and she said it nearly killed him to realize he came so close to murdering his wife barehand."

Jacob considered this.

They continued walking, slowly, thoughtfully.

"Now when your father lies flat on his back and snores loudly enough to shake dust from the rafters, your mother will slip out of bed and sit in her chair by the window.

"She doesn't punch his ribs, she doesn't try to roll him over or drown him with her water pitcher.

"He'll feel her loss -- he'll be sound asleep, she said, he'll reach for her and he'll roll up on his side.

"When he rolls up on his side he stops snoring, and she comes back to bed, and she said he'll cuddle into her and he'll sleep and he'll breathe easily, and when he's sleeping on his side, he does not have those terrible nightmares."

Jacob nodded slowly, and Sarah felt something cold shiver through her half-brother.

Probably something to do with those nightmares, she thought.

"Silence Dogood," Sarah speculated, "is your mother. She slips out of bed in silence, she waits until he's up on his side with one arm stretched out, reaching for her. She'll come back to bed and she'll cuddle back into him and he'll hold her and he'll relax and he'll sleep easily the rest of the night."

Jacob swallowed, nodded.

He had no fear of knifing anyone in their sleep.

His nightmares generally included screwing a pistol barrel into a man's ear as he lay in a drunken stupor, and blowing his soul out the far side of his drunken skull on a .44 caliber pistol ball.

"Your mother," Sarah said quietly, "is patient, and silent, and if ever there was a Patience Dogood ..."

Sarah stopped and turned to face Jacob.

"Patience Dogood is your mother."

 

 

Edited January 5 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WOODSMOKE AND ICE

Shelly heard Dana's walker outside.

She'd gotten worried, but she'd pushed the worry aside: on the one hand, the kids were gone longer than she was comfortable.

On the other hand, Dana was not alone, and Dana had the means to call for help, and Dana wore a wrist unit that had an automatic distress beacon.

When the front door opened, Shelly turned and saw the aluminum forelegs of Dana's walker before she saw Dana.

Then she smelled her.

Woodsmoke, and clean mountain air.

Dana glared at her Mama.

Dana's hat was frozen.

Dana's hat was shapeless, draped down over her head, like it froze after a good soaking.

Dana's hat brim had icicles around its periphery.

Dana's hair was stringy and frozen into icicles and Dana's coat and jeans were almost dry, and Dana's jaw was set as she hooked her boot into the boot jack and pulled her wet sock foot out, as she snatched her boot out of the boot jack and stuck it out the open door and poured out a little dribble of water.

Shelly watched as Dana divested herself of several layers of clothing, as she turned and glared at the stairs, as she set her jaw and proceeded to grip the heavy timber upright at the foot of the stairs and go to her hands and knees on the grade and ascend the stairs, laboring uphill with hard eyes and laboring breath and dripping water where it was thawing from her icicle shining hair.

Shelly did not remember moving from the kitchen sink to the stairs.

She did remember the smell of woodsmoke, stronger now.

Shelly reached over to shut the front door and grabbed an unexpected shoulder -- Michael laughed quietly and hugged his Mama, and Shelly jumped a little, for it was as if the door suddenly developed a red-and-black-plaid wood coat and a laugh and two strong arms.

The Bear Killer trotted happily past them, galumphed up the stairs, stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down at the chilled, wet, irritated, light-blue-eyed daughter of a Colorado lawman and dropped his square bottom to the rug and ran his pink tongue out in happy laughter, as obviously pleased as if he'd personally ensured today was a day worth living.

Michael bent and quickly gathered Dana's cold, wet, partly-frozen garments.

Dana stopped halfway up the stairs, breathing heavily: she lowered her knees until they just touched the stair tread.

If she'd had the strength, she'd have shaken a fist at The Bear Killer and snarled, but all she could manage was a tired, "Show-off!"

Shelly took a step toward the stairs.

Michael's hand on her arm stopped her.

"Let her," he whispered. "She has to do this."

Shelly gave her son The Maternal Death Glare, but she didn't pull away.

It took Dana a few more minutes, but she managed to make the top of the stairs under her own steam.

It took her longer to finish stripping down, and longer yet to get into a hot shower.

She did it.

She did it by herself.

It took about all the strength she had left, but by God!  she DID IT!!

She was worn out, exhausted by the time she was done, by the time she'd toweled herself dry, gotten her hair dry enough: The Bear Killer rose as she fell, spent, against the bathroom door frame, he turned around and leaned a little against her hip, and she gripped his fur the way she used to when she was a baby in diapers just learning to stand on her own, when The Bear Killer was her personal walker.

Downstairs, Shelly looked at Michael, smelled wood smoke and leather and horses and clean air -- he smells just like his father! she thought, as she realized with some discomfort just how tall her little boy had suddenly gotten.

"Michael, what happened?" she asked quietly.

Michael turned, picked up Dana's boots, smiled quietly.

"I'll need to set these where they can dry out slow," he said thoughtfully, then he looked up at his Mama, and she saw the mischief deep in his pale eyes -- the same mischief that captured her heart when she was still in high school, and Linn looked at her, really looked at her, as they stood holding hands on her front porch after the high school dance.

Upstairs, Dana tried to sit on the side of her bed so she could gather her strength and decide what to wear, and ended up falling over and curling up, with her arm over a curly-black-furred Bear Killer who decided she really should have a cuddle buddy.

"Mama," Michael said innocently, which only added to the deviltry in his eyes, "you asked what happened."

He looked at his Mother with a straight face, and orneriment in his eyes.

"Dana got her Saturday night bath early."

 

The Bear Killer's eyes were bright, focused, target locked.

Michael unwrapped a long stick of cheese, cut that morning in their kitchen and wrapped for the occasion: he'd prepared plenty, as he knew The Bear Killer was not only a mountain Mastiff, he also carried the blood of Tibetan Mastiff and Caucasian Ovcharka, native wolf and who-knows-what-else, and, apparently, a good percentage of Cheese Hound.

Now, as a soaking-wet, teeth-chattering Dana shivered under a wool blanket, protected from wind by two reflective blankets and warmed by two small wood fires, one on either side, Michael raised a palm: The Bear Killer was cuddled up against a wet girl, and she needed both his insulation and his warmth, but in The Bear Killer's mind, he also needed cheese.

He stopped his muscular bunching at Michael's flat-palmed signal, he accepted the cheese Michael extended, then another: Michael gave one to Dana, turned back to the now-steaming little kettle on the small spirit stove.

Dana sipped hot, honeyed tea and ate cheese and crackers: as she thawed, Michael got her stood up, got her garments off her and spread over crude stick racks he'd assembled with fresh cut saplings and piggin string: he rubbed his sister's bare limbs briskly with what she recognized as an old bath towel from home (how did he think to bring that?) and he inverted her boots near one of the fires, draping her socks nearer -- not that it would really help.

Dana was too miserably cold, and then too blazing aggravated with herself, to wonder how Michael had the forethought to bring a pack horse with supplies enough to set up this little thawing-out campsite near Sarah's Leap, the surprisingly deep pond Sarah McKenna used to dive into, until she dropped a boulder to hide a murderer's body and an old gold miner's secret.

She'd laughed with delight as she skated, flat-footed in leather boots, out onto the ice.

Micael cautioned her away from the one edge -- he said the water was moving and the ice was thin -- she'd laughed and waved him away, just before the ice failed, as she went into that COLD! water!

She'd felt sandy bottom under her boot soles and instinctively shoved hard for the surface, and she had no idea Michael dropped a loop over her as she emerged: not until he hauled her in, at first out of the water and onto the ice, then skidding across the ice, did she realize he'd thrown a lariat and was hauling her in like a prize fish.

He'd gotten her thawed as much as he could, he'd gotten her clothes dry as he could, which was a little better than the half way mark according to his estimation: he judged it best to make a Bee Line for home, where she could get into a proper hot shower and into dry clothes and a warm bunk, rather than risk waiting longer.

Dana left her hated walker at the barn when they saddled up, when she labored up the temporary sawmill-cut plank stairs built against the whitewashed board fence so she could climb into a saddle: she'd resumed the walker after Michael pretty much lifted her out of the saddle, as he got her feet under her, as he pretended to help her down the five steps while he actually bore most of her weight.

He was ready to carry her to the house and she shook her head, teeth clenched to keep them from clattering -- she was still damp, she was freezing, she knew she had to get inside but she would be DAMNED! if she'd be carried in!

Michael was with her, literally every step of the way: he'd honestly picked her up, walker and all, to get up the two stone steps onto the porch: he'd hesitated before hauling the door wide open for her-- "You got this, Sis?"

Dana nodded, not trusting her cold-shivering voice.

 

Michael considered Dana's hat.

It was old, it was soft from much wear, much use, it was faded and sweat stained, it was the hat of the active girl she'd been, before two cars rammed head-on and spooked her mount into a rear that threw her down a cliff and off rocks on the way down until she landed on more rocks and damn neart killed her.

Michael remembered how Dana looked, bundled and shivering under a blanket, her hat brim fringed with crystal dribbles, kind of pretty until you considered what they were, and how they got there.

"Mama," Michael said softly, "Dana's a whole lot like you."

He turned and looked his Mama level in the eye and she realized yet again just how tall her little boy was now, and part of her mind wondered if she wasn't raising a race of giants.

"Dana is an awful lot stronger than she realizes," Michael said softly, his gaze steady and unwavering as he bored the words into his Mama's soul.  

His whispered words carried weight as he said, "She's strong, just like you."

He looked upstairs and she saw something cross his face -- something sad, something she'd seen on her husband's expression at times.

"She's in her bedroom, Mama. I reckon you might want to tuck her in."

He smiled, just a little, looked at the hook rug underfoot.

"She'd like that."

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YA!

The greenhorn jumped back a little as the rock exploded.

He’d set rocks in a small triangle to rest his coffee pot on.

He’d found three of almost identical size, in the stream: he’d slung the finger-numbing cold off them, placed them, warmed his hands, laid his fire.

It was a small fire, of dry wood – he knew it would burn fast, and hot, but that was fine, he wanted coffee and he wanted to fry up some dead pig, he was in a little sheltered pocket out of the wind.

Flint and steel, char cloth and shredded, almost powder dry inner bark, a careful breath: he placed the precious bundle of flame on the bed of small sticks, added more, allowed himself a small smile.

He was a stranger hereabouts, and alone: like many men, he had no idea where he was going, not really, but he did know one thing:

He was not going back East.

“Hellooo the fahr,” a voice called – quiet, gentle, almost with a smile in it.

The stranger looked up, surprised.

A man with pale eyes regarded him with silent amusement from atop a good looking Appaloosa – how they’d got there without his horse alerting, the stranger had no idea – he blinked in surprise, watched as the stranger hefted a cloth tied ball of something and added, “Got some coffee here ain’t been boiled up yet if you’re interested.”

“Coffee?” the stranger brightened. “Oh hell yes!”

A man with pale eyes swung down, patted his stallion’s neck, walked toward the fire the way a man will when he’s been a-saddle for some time.

He thumbed back the coffee pot’s hinged lid, looked in, then untied his little cloth bundle and carefully poured in the contents: fresh ground, by the smell, with little white flakes of something in it.

The stranger felt his eyebrows puzzle together, and this pale eyed visitor grinned under a curled handlebar mustache:  “Egg shells,” he said, “helps settle th’ grounds” – he stuffed the empty cloth into a coat pocket, brought out another, smaller bundle, pinched up some crystals and sprinkled them in – “a little pinch of salt to take out the bitter.”

He pulled a knife from somewhere, stirred the pot’s contents, then flipped the lid shut, wiped off the blade, slid it back.

“Doc said a three finger pinch is God’s aplenty. He said it soaks into the grounds, it’s nowhere enough to even taste, but it cuts th’ bitter.”

He grinned again, ran two fingers into another pocket, extended something in a waxed paper sleeve – the stranger recognized it – coffee was packaged with a stick of peppermint, and that’s what this looked like.

The stranger blinked, surprised, then accepted the unexpected bounty as the pale eyed visitor said, “I missed your birthday last year.  Take that for your birthday present.”

The stranger rose, went over to his horse, fetched off the saddle bags and brought them over.

“I brought m’ appetite,” he admitted, setting out a frying pan, “but it ain’t polite if I don’t bring enough” – he set out a frying pan and untied another bundle, brought out the knife again and proceeded to slice bacon into the frying pan.

The stranger bit off a chunk of the pepper mint stick, crunched it happily, remembering a store back East and the rare treat it was to get a pepper mint stick at the general store.

Something popped – a minor explosion – under the coffee pot: dirt jumped, startled, where rock spalls hit beside the stranger.

“Crickwater,” the pale eyed visitor said. “You want dry rocks in your fahr. Fahr turns water t’ steam and bang she goes.”

He smiled a little at the stranger’s discomfiture, then he picked up the coffee pot and took a look.

“Didn’t bust a hole in yer coffee pot. Didn’t bring blood.”  He set another couple of sticks from somewhere, on the fire, replaced the coffee pot.

“You like eggs? I got eggs I need t’ use up before they get broke.”

“Oh hell yes I like eggs! I ain’t had eggs since …”

His voice trailed off as he remembered several days before, when he’d eaten at a little hash house and he’d been brought a plate of bacon and eggs without being asked.

“Your side hurts,” the stranger said, and the pale eyed man realized he’d been guarding his right ribs again, guarding with his tight clamped elbow.

“Yeah.”

“Shot?”

“Cannon blew up, stove in m’ ribs.”

“Dayum,” the stranger whispered fiercely, grimacing and looking away, the way a man will when he knows what it is to be hurt and hurt badly.

The Sheriff fetched out two mess kits and two tin cups: he crushed something in a small linen poke, poured brownish crystal chunks of something in both, poured coffee, swirled one cup before handing it across the fire, swirled the second and tasted it, nodded.

He set the coffee pot aside and set the frying pan on the rocks a moment before another brisk *pop!* sent sharp-edged spalls to the side.

“Yep,” came the quiet observation as bacon started warming in the thin frying pan, “crickwater.”

Coffee was a welcome scent, as was frying bacon: a brief hover over the small deadwood fire to take the chill out of the stamped-tin mess plates, fried bacon, fried eggs: the stranger was startled when his visitor reached a long arm out and set a thick chunk of torn-off sourdough on his plate.

Both men happily mopped up egg yolk and bacon grease, then they split what bacon grease was left in the frying pan – each took turns making a ceremonial swipe of sourdough, eating with a good appetite, eating the way men will when they are outdoors, and in chilly weather, and their bodies need calorie-dense dietary fats to keep warm.

The frying pan was scoured with sand, given a streamwater rinse, dried, set away: the mess kits were cleaned with the same military efficiency.

The stranger suspected his pale eyed visitor was, or had been, a military man, from the way he moved, from his easy conversation, as if they’d known one another for years,  from the absolute, natural efficiency of his meal prep and cleanup.

They lingered over coffee, two travelers in a snow-dusted world, hunched against the cold, squatting near the welcome heat of a small fire: another stone exploded, not spectacularly, just a quiet *pop!* that scattered wood ash and threw a few sharp pieces into the snowy dirt adjacent.

 

Colorado saw its share of adventurers, many of whom trod the mountains with a backpack and a genuine sense of wonder.

One such soul sat on the side of the road, catching his breath.

A Sheriff’s cruiser eased up and stopped and a female deputy rolled down her window.

“Give you a ride?” she offered. “I’m headed for town.”

The stranger thanked her for the kindness, they set his backpack in the rear, closed the hatch: something truly huge snuffed a welcome through the wire cage separating the rear seat from the front.
“That’s Snowdrift,” the deputy smiled. “She eats traveling salesmen.”  She tilted her head, looked at the stranger with an assessing expression. “You smell like woodsmoke and bacon.”

The stranger chuckled and said he’d been walking for two days, he was ready for a shower and a warm bed that didn’t have rocks for a mattress, and the deputy laughed quietly.

“Did you meet anyone interesting?” the deputy asked as they turned off the dirt road and onto the paved highway.

The stranger frowned.  “An interesting fellow on a horse,” he admitted.  “We had coffee … he brought bacon and eggs, and …”

“I know that look,” the deputy murmured, glancing at the stranger again.  “What happened?”

“He held his arm against his ribs like they hurt,” the stranger frowned, remembering, “and he said something about … a cannon blowing up?”

He saw the deputy’s face change, saw it turn into a professionally neutral mask.

“I need to show you to make an identification,” she said. “If I’m right …”

Her voice trailed off and the stranger had the vague feeling he might be into something he didn’t want to be part of, but there wasn’t much of any way out.

He need not have worried.

The deputy led him into the Sheriff’s office, stopped at the coffee pot and primed her guest with hot coffee and pastry before telling him she’d be right back.

When she returned, a tall man with pale eyes grinned at the stranger and stuck out his hand, and the stranger gripped his hand as the color drained from his face.

“You,” he said, then his voice stalled.

“We need to take a look at your wall,” Angela explained: she removed the coffee cup from the stranger’s hand, took his arm and walked him into the Sheriff’s private office, to the right-hand wall as you face the door, to prints made from glass-plate portraits discovered under the stairs of what used to be a photography shop.

The stranger looked at the image of a man with pale eyes, standing beside a good looking Appaloosa stallion.

The same man with whom he’d shared bacon and eggs, sourdough and coffee.

Angela steered the stranger back into the lobby, back to where her Daddy’s mustache was dusting itself with powdered sugar from his first doughnut of the day.

Sheriff Linn Keller took a noisy slurp of coffee, swiped at droplets clinging to the bottom of his sculpted handlebar mustache, looked at his daughter with quiet, knowing eyes.

“I take it,” the Sheriff said, “he saw him.”

“ ‘Him’ ?” the stranger managed hesitantly.

“Our very great Grandfather. The Sheriff is a direct descendant, and the Sheriff and his son both look just like the man.”

“So I had breakfast with a ghost,” the stranger said faintly.  “A ghost that cut bacon and told me that crickwater rocks explode in a fahr.”

Sheriff Linn Keller chuckled, nodded.

“Yep,” he confirmed.  “He often kept his arm tight against his ribs where they were stoved in when a cannon exploded.”

The stranger swallowed hard, nodded.  “He said … that’s … what he said!”

Linn handed the man back his coffee cup, thrust another pastry into their visitor’s other hand.

“Here,” he said quietly. “Good for what ails ya!”

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THAT WILL TAKE SOME EXPLAININ'

Of a Sunday afternoon, Sheriff Jacob Keller often indulged in one of his genuine pleasures.

He sat his backside down somewhere comfortable, he opened a book, and he read.

Jacob knew if something required the services of his office, a runner -- official or otherwise -- would be dispatched to summon him.

Unless it was fire, murder or the cows gettin' out, Jacob was content to turn another page of good rag paper and consider his late father's thoughts, committed with good black India ink and his usual precision.

Jacob's eyebrows pulled together a little as he read; he nodded on occasion, he smiled, one hand came up and he laid a thoughtful forefinger across his sculpted handlebar.

An observer might observe the thoughtful expression, and conclude that perhaps he was mentally treading the same path entrusted to good rag paper by his honored father.

Such an observer would be right.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller's eyes went dead pale.

His stallion felt the change before he felt his rider's legs tighten: the stallion's ears snapped flat, he drove his nose forward and powerful, mountain-bred legs surged forward, riding to war without knowing exactly what the war was, nor precisely where, only that it was ahead of them, and not too far!

 

Pale eyes and the pale-eyed blood endow gifts not entirely of this world, or so it seemed to outsiders: Sarah felt danger before she heard it, her mount felt it through its own wild blood, Snowflake whipped around like a cutting horse.

Sarah had a double handful of short-barreled twelve-bore, cut just ahead of the fore-end and along the curve of the checkered wrist: she'd used this stubby persuader to good effect as The Black Agent, she'd used it to persuade hard men to her will, the Damascus barrel had a slight distortion where she'd used it as a war club when the fighting was in close and vicious and had to have a gunsmith iron out the slight dent -- she meant to replace the barrels, for genuine Damascus twist could gather fouling and corrode, and fail spectacularly when it was needed most.

Right now she was in desperate need of that double barrel Street Howitzer.

A mountain cat discovered that horses were easy prey.

The cat found a horse's rider could be as easily killed.

Sarah intended to put a stop to this foolishness.

She honestly did not intend for their meeting to be quite this soon.

Her first shot swarm seared into the descending, claws-spread cat's chest just under the chin, and exited two-thirds of the way down its spine: the second barrel, rising in recoil, drove in under its jaw.

Sarah automatically thrust forward, using the short shotgun as she'd trained with a singlestick: when the Sheriff galloped up, when his stallion skidded and reared and shook its head, unhappy as hell at the smell of cat and blood and the war singing in Sarah's veins, the man honestly stopped and stared.

Sarah Lynne McKenna sat on her mincing, muttering, head-shaking, shining-black Frisian, teeth bared: she was dunking another pair of brass hulls into the breech, she snapped the action shut, she looked inhuman and feral as she looked down at what used to be a tawny, healthy, mountain cat, now a bloody mess on the ground.

Sarah looked at the Sheriff.

This was not the Sarah that he knew.

This was a creature of death and of wild and of war, this was one of the Walkurie come to earth, this was a shield-maiden who raided with ax and sword and death itself as her minion and her servant.

This was not the underfed little girl, uncertainly holding a tired, worn looking woman's hand.

This was not the apple-cheeked, laughing maiden in ruffles and dresses who giggled as she tied a pink ribbon around The Bear Killer's neck and called him a good puppy.

This was not the pleasant, smiling young woman who taught school, to whom a certain Irish Welshman was paying court in right and proper fashion.

No, this was a bloody and blooded warrior-maiden who glared at her vanquished enemy, who glared at the Sheriff, who brandished her short shotgun to the uncaring heavens above and threw her other fist into the air and threw her head back and SCREAMED LIKE SHE WAS DEATH AND SHE WAS HELL and the sound that ripped, raw and savage, from what used to be a pretty and feminine and ladylike throat, more resembled the fighting scream of an enraged catamount than anything else.

Old Pale Eyes was a hard man.

Old Pale Eyes was a man tempered in the abattoir of war.

Old Pale Eyes knew death and horror in its many forms.

Old Pale Eyes was a man not given to fancy nor fears.

Old Pale Eyes admitted to his son, through the medium of his journal, that in that moment, he honestly felt Death pour a dipper of cold snow melt right down the middle of his back bone, looking at Sarah, bloody -- there were three parallel slashes in the shoulder of the light coat she wore -- her sleeve was slowly soaking with her own blood, shiny, red, and dark -- and for a long moment, the Sheriff sat, his stallion's forehooves returned to earth, his hand soothing its neck, though whether for the horse's comfort, or his own, he did not specifically say.

Jacob Keller read his father's words.

He remembered hearing of this moment.

He took a long breath, leaned back, closed his eyes.

He remembered Sarah.

He remembered how she felt in his arms, when they danced.

He remembered her smile, her laugh -- dear God, that laugh could bring sunshine through a thunderstorm! -- he remembered how her face shone with pride when she swore to love, honor and obey her husband, how she laughed when Daffyd Llewellyn took her arm and they spun and whirled and danced down the center aisle of their little whitewashed church to a brisk "Turkey in the Straw."

 

Another Sheriff Jacob Keller, better than a century later, read the same words, in a reprinted copy of his honored ancestor's Journal.

He, too, read with a forefinger laid thoughtfully across his lip broom; he, too, read, then leaned forward with clear interest and read, then puzzled his brows together and nodded as he read: his buxom bride smiled as she watched her husband's obvious engrossment with his book, and she smiled, just a little, the way a wife will when she is watching her husband very obviously enjoying something that captured imagination and attention in equal amounts.

Jacob rose and went to his desk -- his personal desk, not his Sheriff's desk -- he tapped a series of keys, opened a narrow door, ran his eyes down a vertical row of pigeonholes.

He reached in and pulled out a rolled-up map.

Jacob unrolled the map, set a coffee mug, another mug bristling with pens, on two corners: he held a third, scanned the multicolored print with pale eyes.

He looked like a bird dog scouring the field for the bird he knew was there, and he was determined to find it.

His finger lowered, traced slowly to the side, up, stopped.

Jacob tapped a curved, dotted line, twice with a fingertip.

"Right there," he murmured, then he laid the reprinted Journal down on the map, re-read the particulars, nodded.

"Right there's where she killed the cat."

Ruth glided nearer, tilted her head and asked gently, "Who killed a cat, dear?"

Jacob looked up and laughed quietly.

In his wife's world, cats were domesticated creatures, similar to Earth cats, who lived in barns and killed vermin, who rubbed against ankles and purred in skirted laps and drowsed in sunny widowsills. 

Ruth's world never contained pumas, catamounts, lynx, bobcat, tigers nor any of the feral felines of Earth.

Jacob chuckled and straightened, came around his desk and lifted his wife's hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles.

"My dear," he murmured, "that will take some explainin'."

`