SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE SHRINK AND THE THRUST

Bonnie Lynne McKenna was genuinely beautiful.

Bonnie had the milk-fair skin of her Scots ancestry, the patient smile of someone whose life had tried her far more sorely than anyone should be.

Bonnie had a sweet nature, a kind disposition, and the ability to be surprised by commonplace things, or things that someone else might consider commonplace.

Not long after her ranch was restored to her by that pale-eyed Sheriff, not long after he'd helped herd cattle from the depot through town and into her pasture, not long after little Sarah pointed and said in the wide-eyed and wondering voice of a little girl, "Cowies?" -- not long after this, Bonnie said in a worried voice, she'd lost track of her daughter.

Sarah was not the daughter of her womb, but certainly the daughter of her heart: Sarah regarded Bonnie's returned, renewed ranch her personal playground, and as much as Bonnie wanted to raise her to be a proper lady, Sarah's spontaneity, her curiosity, took her places Bonnie didn't realize, and in honestly, places Bonnie might not want to know about.

She confided as much to Esther when the two had tea, there in Esther's office.

They were fast friends and confidantes, they'd lived together, with Esther's niece Duzy, in a little house on the edge of town: each used the other as a sounding-board, a counselor, an advisor, the way women will, and so it came as no surprise when Bonnie lowered her teacup and gave Esther a hesitant look and admitted, "I'm not sure what I should do with Sarah."

"Oh?" Esther asked, setting her own cup-and-saucer aside, folding her hands in her lap and giving her old and dear friend her absolutely undivided attention.

Bonnie hesitated -- she bit her lower lip -- she looked away, then looked back, her face reddening.

Esther felt the corners of her eyes tighten a little, recognizing the smile Bonnie was trying to hide.

"I ... could not find Sarah," Bonnie said slowly, "and I feared ... she may be hurt, or perhaps ... I didn't know ..."

"Did you find her?" Esther prompted gently.

Bonnie looked at Esther and almost giggled.

"She was asleep," she whispered, not trusting her voice as her cheeks turned an incredible scarlet: "she was lying on one of our cows, sound asleep!"

Esther's hand rose to her mouth, delicately, the way a woman will when she's trying to keep from laughing: she was not successful, and neither was Bonnie, and feminine laughter filled Esther's office, there on the second floor of the Silver Jewel.

When the ladies paused for breath, Esther heard something -- she always had a quick ear -- she rose, turned to the window, looked out.

Bonnie saw Esther's posture change.

She seized the window-sash, thrust it fully open, allowing cold air to cascade into the room.

Bonnie rose, concerned: she saw Esther's hand start for the double barrel shotgun beside the window, then pause.

Two women looked down onto the street.

The Sheriff was faced off with an individual who was suffering a serious lack of judgement.

"COME ON AND FIGHT ME, LAWMAN!" came the shout.

"You're drunk, Matthews," the Sheriff said mildly. "Go home and sleep it off."

"YOU'RE A DAMNED COWARD! AND A SHEEPHERDER!"

"Been called worse," the Sheriff almost laughed.

Victor Matthews' face was nearly purple, enraged: both hands fisted and he challenged the absolute, ultimate insult he could think of.

"YOUR WIFE IS A CHEAP WHORE FROM BACK EAST!" -- and Esther saw Matthews' hand go behind him.

"That does it," Esther snapped: she bent, flipped open a wooden case, straightened: she whirled, spun past Bonnie, and was gone, her hard little heels loud, brisk on the wooden staircase.

Bonnie's fingers were on her lips as she watched, mesmerized.

She saw Esther emerge, below, saw her march purposefully across the frozen, lightly rutted street, one arm stiff beside her: she shoved her husband aside and gave a very unladylike snarl:

"HE'S MINE!"

Esther lifted her chin as Matthews lifted his blade.

"A WHORE, AM I?" Esther shouted, then she brought her arm up from her side, extended her Schlager blade:  "HAVE AT THEE, VARLET!"

Esther Keller went from a feminine, ladylike, decorous woman of society and commerce, to a blazing warrior in the space of half a heartbeat: she did not wait for Matthews' response, she went on the attack, slicing his cheek, his shirt front, his sleeve: she had a master's control of her blade, she drew blood three times before he moved, and his move was to back up three steps.

The Sheriff stood, calm, unruffled, his unbuttoned coat the only concession to deadly peril.

Esther snapped her blade down, struck Matthews' knuckles with the side of her blade, struck him hard: he didn't drop the knife, but he didn't have to.

Esther's blade was against the hollow of his throat and drawing blood.

Just a trickle.

Just enough for him to feel cold steel pierce his skin.

Just enough to realize his very life was imperiled by his own words.

"Whore, am I?" Esther hissed, and Matthews backed up a step.

Esther moved to the side, moved with him, steered him a little, backed him further.

"You, sirrah, are a LIAR, and you are a CAD, RASCAL, SCOUNDREL, BLAGGARD, BUGGER, AND YOU ARE A DISGRACE!"

Esther's face was white, pinched, the color standing out like painted circles over her cheek bones, her red lips peeled back from even white teeth.

Behind her, the Sheriff stood, watchful, unmoving.

"You can admit to your vile calumny," Esther hissed, her voice low now, "or I will cut your lying tongue out and feed it to the DOGS!"

Bonnie Lynne McKenna, Esther's best friend and closest confidante, felt her heart quail behind her breastbone: she drew back a little, fear watering her blood as she heard the hot and genuine anger in her best friend's rage-fueled voice.

Victor backed quickly, swinging his blade up to knock the Schlager aside.

Unfortunately for his retreat, an inconveniently placed horse trough seemed to disagree with him for the right-of-way, and Victor kind of came out in second place.

He fell backwards into cold water and a skim of ice -- water and crystal geysered up on either side -- Esther raised her blade and waited.

When he seized the sides of the horse trough and pulled himself back into breathable air, his blade lay on the ground and Esther's blade was against his cheek bone.

He froze, which was probably the first smart thing he'd done.

Bonnie shrank back from the window, shivering as Esther extracted the admission from the guilty: she allowed him to exit the horse trough, then sent him on his way with a humiliating slap with the side of her Schlager across his wet backside, and a promise to flay him alive and fry his tenderloins if he ever dared show his scurvy face in her town again.

The Sheriff looked up at his wife's open office window, raised his hand and touched his hat-brim, and Bonnie gave a hesitant half-wave before she found it necessary to turn Esther's office chair about and sit down, and when the Sheriff considered the event later, he thought this might be the difference between the two ladies.

Where Bonnie shrank, in the face of conflict, Esther thrust herself forward, and without reservation, and perhaps that's one reason he loved that green-eyed, red-headed Irishwoman so much!

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SMACK!

Joseph Keller tilted his head and regarded his father with the quiet, attentive eyes of a son, learning.

Jacob Keller embraced his wife -- his face was red, his eyes closed, he was making the sounds of a man muffling mirth and merriment, and as the pair turned a little, Joseph saw laughter in his Mama's red-cheeked face as well.

This was often the case in their household: laughter was a frequent visitor, and Joseph observed this.

Kindness was the rule and not the exception, and Joseph observed this.

When Ruth spoke, Jacob stopped and listened closely and courteously, and Joseph observed this.

Children learn by observation and by imitation.

Jacob saw very similar observations when he grew up, but it was not until he was well into maturity that he realized how difficult this must have been, at times: a lawman's life means he was exposed to grief, loss, passion, stress and dis-tress; he knew his father saw things that would curl the hair on a bald man's head, he knew the man faced up to, and faced down, a variety of large and angry people bearing a variety of weapons; he knew his father, in his time, had been decked, slugged, punched, hit, cut, stabbed, run into, run over; he knew his father routinely saw people having the very worst day of their entire lives, and Jacob well knew that -- like playing with tar -- exposure to these dark and powerful passions, leave their stains on a man's soul.

It was not until well into Jacob's maturity that he realized his mother was exposed to much the same, and that it took a great force of will on both his parents' parts, not to let those adsorbed passions, adversely affect their associations with each other, and with their families.

Jacob considered, in such moments, that perhaps this is why his father insisted on handling bales of hay, by hand: that throwing things around, in the guise of ranch work, was therapeutic: he'd wondered why his father kept a particular bucking horse, why his father would talk to this horse, why his father would bribe this horse with a good thick pinch of shredded Molasses Cured tobacker, why his father would caress its neck and murmur to it and then saddle up and that horse would just plainly come unglued underneath of him and do its level best to either crush the man's spine or stretch it out or sling him up to the Texas moon or throw him like a rock from a catapult.

Jacob remembered the times his father would use a post hole digger -- the kind that works a man's shoulders and blisters his palms if he's not well gloved -- instead of using the power digger on the back of the tractor, and then he remembered how is father would hug his mother and laugh, and how she would hug him back and she'd laugh too.

Jacob, in his turn, modeled this behavior for his son, and thus did Joseph learn the right and proper way a man ought to treat a woman.

In the fullness of time, Jacob and Ruth had a girl child, and this little girl child would grow and complain bitterly to her Papa that he'd made it impossible -- absolutely impossible! -- to find a good husband, and she'd snatch her skirts and storm off, and Jacob would watch her retreating backside with the honestly puzzled look of a father who had no idea a'tall what just happened.

It wasn't until the Rabbi laid a companionable hand on the man's shoulder and spoke quietly that Jacob really understood.

He'd set the bar so high for his daughter -- he'd shown by the living example of his very life, what a husband and father should be -- he'd been nothing but strong, quiet, noble, honorable, courteous and gracious and in a daughter's eyes, utterly perfect! -- that no husband could possibly measure up to this fine and shining example her Papa set for her.

Jacob did not often go Offworld.

There were times when he did, yes; his sister might ask his company, or his counsel, or his presence; his sister might be in a situation where the Chief Ambassador might discreetly send a communication -- rather than mobilize the formal, uniformed security wing of the Ambassadorial Service, the Chief Ambassador might subscribe to the "One Riot, One Ranger" philosophy and ask Jacob's help in an uncomfortable moment.

At such a summons, Jacob did not hesitate to go.

He went on other occasions, as well: there was a surprising commerce and cooperation between Masonic lodges on multiple of the Confederate worlds, and in conjunction with these, Jacob found himself consulted on a variety of matters, some of them a little out of the ordinary -- because he was a trusted Brother of This Degree.

One such summons involved a reprint of his father's Journals, and a request that Jacob give a reading, for a community gathering, on a world that subscribed wholeheartedly to the frontier mindset exemplified by that pale eyed old lawman and what he stood for.

Jacob Keller dressed for whatever occasion he was attending.

Jacob Keller found he preferred the same black suit he'd worn back on Earth, a handmade suit styled after the pattern worn when Old Pale Eyes was Sheriff, before tornado, lightning and a fire destroyed the little log fortress was the original Firelands County Sheriff's Office.

Jacob Keller found himself standing on a low stage in the front of a room, with chairs arranged in a semicircle -- several rows of chairs -- and half a hundred attentive faces turned to him as he stood, with his personal copy of his father's Journal in hand.

Jacob read his honored ancestor's account aloud, in his Public Speaking voice: he spoke slowly, distinctly, clearly, his voice pitched to be heard to the rearmost row: he looked up and smiled a little, and said, "I understand there is some question about a few things."

He laid the Journal down and picked up a hand-forged, Damascus-blade knife.

"The villain, in this little drama," Jacob said, slowly stropping the blade's edge against his palm with an easy familiarity, "is said to have had a knife. Old Pale Eyes did not describe the blade with any particularity, so we don't know how long it was, how wide it was, how heavy it was.  This" -- he held up the curly-maple-handled blade -- is probably close to it.

"Now I will shoot a man faster for pulling a knife than anything else," he said frankly.  "A knife is always loaded, a knife never jams or malfunctions, and I've seen what a knife can do."

His expression changed, his eyes were distant for a moment as memories of knife-related casualties came to mind -- then he blinked, and his usual expression claimed his face again.

"When a man with perhaps too much drink behind his belt, a lack of good sense, hell, he might have been constipated for all I know" -- his quick grin and his ribald humor brought a surprised ripple of quiet laughter from his attentive audience -- "we don't know exactly why Victor Matthews decided to try and gut that old pale-eyed Sheriff.

"We do know that he said some things that would make a chipmunk fight, and we know" -- Jacob stopped and laughed a little -- "we know that Old Pale Eyes' green-eyed bride was not a chipmunk!"

Laughter, again: more husband than one reached over and gripped their own brides' hand in that moment, in recognition of something they saw in their wives, and this moment gave them the chance to acknowledge that quality, without words.

"There's a question about Esther's blade. It's described as a Schlager, and" -- Jacob turned, thrust an arm out to the side -- "my lovely assistant has kindly consented to tell you about it."

A spotlight flared into circular life: a pretty young red-headed woman with startling green eyes, in a shimmering-emerald gown, slashed the air with something long, sharp and silver; she raised the blade in salute, slashed it down again.

"CALL ME A WHORE, WILL YOU?" she challenged, her voice loud, ringing, sharp: "HAVE AT THEE, VARLET!"

Victoria's eyes blazed, she lowered her head slightly, she held the blade as if it were an extension of her living soul: for a moment, for just a moment, fear touched the very heart of everyone in their audience, as if they were alone with this blazing warrior-maiden: then Victoria smiled, and laughed delicately, and looked at her brother and said, "Do you know how hard it is to look serious at a time like this?"

It was just the light touch needed: laughter, again, and Victoria paced over beside Jacob, claimed his arm, looked up at him and then at the audience.

"He's a fine-looking sort, don't you think?" she smiled.  "He looks very much like Old Pale Eyes. It's no wonder Esther thought so highly of him!"

Victoria raised her blade again, ran her eyes up the length of its honed edges.

Jacob stood, silent, unmoving, as his sister described the origin of this particular rapier: she released his arm, paced to center stage and gave a few experimental slices through the air: a remotely controlled simulacrum rolled onto the stage behind her as she spoke.

She inverted the blade, held up the handle: "You can see this is wrapped with wire," she said, her finger tracing the contoured grip, "which was not at all uncommon on both fighting knives then and now, but also for daggers, hangers and other blades made for serious use" -- she spun and addressed the mannikin, her move swift, unexpected, deadly: her strokes duplicated exactly Esther's bladework -- cheek, chest, shoulder -- Victoria turned, one gloved hand on her hip as she gave an honestly seductive look out into the audience, then she brought the blade in, ran her off palm along the flat of the blade.

"I attended a wedding," she said conversationally, "where the bride -- a woman of my acquaintance -- married a military man."

She smiled, not seductively, not wickedly, but with the gentle smile of someone sharing a memory.

"They marched out under the Arch of Sabers, at least until Tail End Charlie" -- she brought her blade down, smacked the simulacrum across its backside with the flat of her Schlager -- "swatted her across the fanny with the flat of his blade."

Victoria grounded the tip of her blade, folded her hands over the pommel, and with an absolutely innocent expression, declared, "It was the ONLY time in recorded history when ANYONE smacked that woman's backside and lived to tell the tale!"

Victoria glided closer to Jacob as a hand went up, as Jacob thrust a bladed hand toward the questioner.

"Was that Marnie?" a voice asked, and Victoria laughed.

Jacob raised both eyebrows, clasped his hands and spun his thumbs, the very image of a schoolboy trying to look very innocent: he rolled his eyes and said, "I can neither confirm nor deny," and Victoria brought her Schlager back and yelped in honest surprise as Victoria smacked her brother across the backside with the flat of her blade.

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TRY IT AND SEE

Generations of Keller young grew up ... not feral, not exactly ... not far from it, in many respects, they grew up on ranches, with cattle and horses, with dogs and with mud, dirt, scrapes, scratches, exertion, exploration, laughter and, yes, at times, broken bones and blood.

In other words, they grew up healthy.

Sheriff Jacob Keller was not about to let any son of HIS grow up as an Isolate.

There were those in the Mars colony who embraced the lifestyle of low gravity and sterile surroundings, to whom the idea of getting dirty brought a shudder and an expression of revulsion.

Jacob and his wife, fortunately, grew up .. otherwise.

Jacob's son had scars on his knees, healing scabs on his palms, the occasional thin white scars on his fingers from misadventures with a pocket knife.

Jacob's son knew what it was to run, laughing, under a hot sun, he knew what it was to ride horses on his Grampaw's ranch back in Colorado and to run with Michael and Victoria when they laced on work boots and ran the mountain trails like they used to, and then the day came when Joseph asked his Grampaw if bulls could be ridden.

His pale eyed Grampaw looked at his grandson and said quietly, "Try it and see."

It took some doing, but Joseph got the bull close enough to a convenient stump to get up on his back.

At first, nothing happened.

This did not last long.

The bull went from zero to wide open with a lurch and a lunge, and Joseph rolled over backwards, a perfect rearward somersault, he held for a moment, bare legs a-straddle of a big black bull's withers, right before the bull kind of twisted out from under him and Joseph learned what it was to hit the ground, or rather, to have the ground hit him.

He rolled a few times, he ended up flat on his back, wondering what just happened, then he sat up and got his feet under him and stood, slowly.

He walked back to where ol' Grampaw was still leaning against the fence, watching.

Linn watched his grandson cross the pasture -- he watched for changes in his gait that might indicate injury, he looked for any progressive stagger that could indicate he'd hit his head, but the only thing he really saw was that -- first -- Joseph was dirty enough he'd have to have a shower before he went back to Mars, and -- second -- he had a grin on his young face you'd need a hammer and chisel to remove!

Joseph looked up at his Granddad's neutral face and said, "I rode him!"

"Yep," Linn agreed quietly, then tilted his head a little and regarded his grandson with a serious expression.

"Turn around, now," he said, "turn around slow and let me take a look."

Joseph turned, slowly, stopped facing his Grampaw.

Linn nodded, once.

"I tried ridin' a bull oncet," he said quietly. "Landed in a fresh cow pile. Hurt m' pride worse'n the rest of me."

Joseph's face wrinkled up like a Tiki idol as he contemplated such a landing, then he tried looking at his own backside -- "Grampa, did I land in anything?"

"Just dirt."

Linn leaned back against the fence again.

"Y'know, was I to try that at my age, I'd be stove up for a month!"

 

Later that day, after Joseph was cleaned up and had clean clothes on, after he'd returned, red-cheeked and full of achievement, Victoria and Angela showed up, and Linn watched silently as they rigged their trick saddles: the two of them apparently had something in mind, and as Linn had other work to do, he went into the barn to tend details while the girls handled theirs.

It wasn't until one girl, then the other, made the feminine sounds of frustration Linn heard in years past, that he came back out to take a look at what was going on.

Both girls were standing in their saddles -- they had the high stirrups they used for riding, standing up -- both girls were frustrated, angry, trying to spin a lariat out of each hand as they rode standing up on a moving mare.

Linn retreated and left his girls to their labors.

They did not need ol' Paw watching, that would only make things worse.

Dana came into the barn, all blue jeans and walking stick, long legs and well polished boots: she took a look outside, withdrew to her Daddy's side with a frown on her young face.

Linn set down the bearing he'd been packing with short fiber wheel bearing grease, wiped his hands thoroughly on a shop rag.

"That's kind of a serious expression," he said quietly.

"I used to ride standing up," Dana said bitterly.

She looked at her Daddy -- she challenged him, the expression reminding him powerfully of Shelly when she got her dandruff up -- "Daddy, do you think I'll ever be able to ride standing up again?"

Linn looked at the steam-bend wooden cane in her right hand.

"I don't see the walker."

Dana's expression darkened -- anger, he knew -- he'd not have been surprised to hear her say she'd fed the hated walker into a scrapyard shredder.

"I'm supposed to be using it," she muttered.

"And you're not."

Dana's jaw thrust out and her lips pressed together.

"No."

Linn nodded slowly, laid the shop rag over the grease-packed bearing: he wiped his hands again, on a clean rag, then took his youngest daughter gently by her shoulders.

"Darlin'," he said, his voice Daddy-deep and Daddy-gentle, "if you can get along without that damned walker, then I am tickled pink!"

Dana's jaw was clenched, and not entirely with stubbornness.

"I got a genuine bucket seat ain't never been set on yet," Linn said, turning over a new-looking plastic five-gallon bucket and snatching what used to be a pillow from somewhere, spun it onto the inverted pail: "have a set now."

Dana sat -- reluctantly, but gratefully: she was paying for her hard-headedness with pain, but she was damned if she was going to admit to it.

Victoria snarled with frustration -- no, snarled isn't the right word -- it was more an exasperated "Ooohhh!" -- father and daughter shared an understanding look, hearing the frustrated feminine vocalization.

"As I recall," Linn said thoughtfully, "you were a fair hand at spinnin' a lariat."

Dana grimaced.

"I could spin, but not lasso."

"Your sisters can't spin in the saddle."

"I can," Dana flared rebelliously, then folded her arms and dropped her head in a good honest sulking pout.

Linn squatted, slowly, his knees making noises like celery being twisted: he looked at Dana and said, "You rode standing up before. I see no reason why you can't ride like that again."

Dana glared at her Daddy, her jaw thrust out, then she nodded, once, looking like a feminine little bulldog in a pink-felt Stetson.

He put his palms on his knees as if to push himself upright.

"Daddy?"

He stopped, hunkered again, turning his head a little as if to bring a good ear to bear.

"What if I tried it now?"

Linn blinked, worked his jaw thoughtfully, then Dana saw the corners of her Daddy's eyes tighten a little.

"Try it and see."

 

Linn left his daughters to their labors.

The three of them stood in the barn, each of them spinning a lariat: left side, right side, overhead; they stepped back from each other to keep their lines from tangling.

Linn went on back to the house, leaving the barn just before Dana had to give up and grab for her cane, before she bent over a little and closed her eyes tight against her healing pain.

He knew she'd Irised in and likely would Iris out, and just as well: word was out that she was still using a wheelchair, and receiving private education, and he'd as soon not have to cross swords with the local school board about her continued absence from the public education system.

He went in and took a long, appreciative sniff of the good smells coming from the kitchen: the girls came in a few minutes later, Dana on her hated walker, the cane clipped to the walker's right front leg.

Linn waited until after supper, until after dishes were washed, dried, set away, waited until after his daughters were retired for the night.

He embraced his wife from behind, leaned his head down, kissed the side of her neck, under her ear, and murmured, "My dear, what would happen if I were to sweep you off your feet and pack you upstairs and honestly seduce you?"

Shelly Keller leaned back into her husband, warm and womanly and very much alive, and purred, "Try it and see!"

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HARD HAT AREA

Jacob hitched up an old car hood.

Emphasis on old.

It was broad, almost square, apparently from what Europeans called an "American Barge" -- Jacob welded eyes on the hinge corners, he had these tied off to the Irish Brigade's troika of matched white mares they used to pull the Steam Masheen in parades, and elsewhere -- Jacob tied a second line from these same hitch points, with enough slack that he could stand on the hood, hang onto the second line, and grin!

The mares were voice trained.

Jacob was comfortable with this.

He had done most of the voice training, once his Pa showed him how.

Jacob stood on the hood, set his feet, flexed his knees.

"YUP!" he shouted, his voice loud, sharp: the mares startled into their padded collars, and truth be told, had Jacob not that good hand hold, he'd have gone over backwards.

"GO GO GO!" he yelled, and the mares, not inclined to waste an opportunity to run in harness, did exactly that.

Long, tall and skinny, Jacob Keller, Martian Sheriff, responsible husband and father, was grinning like a banker collecting money as he and his sled hissed across the wintry pasture: he hadn't counted on snow and dirt clods being kicked up in his face, but he squinted, closed his lips over his teeth, and hung on!

"GEE!" he barked: the mares swung hard right, Jacob squatted to keep from being thrown off: he came back upright -- "GEEEE!" he yelled again, and the mares turned right again, bore down in earnest and proceeded to sail down the pasture just as hard as they could run!

Jacob squinted his eyes against snow and mud and hung on like a man ridin' a tiger and not darin' to dismount, at least until he called the mares around again at the end of the long pasture.

This time he didn't do quite as well.

Jacob squatted, but the turn was harder than he'd anticipated.

He went over on his side: he was skidding along beside his sheetmetal sled, he kicked himself over and rolled back onto stamped sheetmetal, he got his knees under him and then his feet and he came up in a squat as the mares slowed, confused at the lack of command as the far fence was coming up and there'd been no command to turn.

Jacob stood, looked down at the arm of his coat, looked back at the mares.

"Haw, ladies," he called, his voice considerably more gentle than it had been: the mares turned to their left, stopped, took turns looking back at him.

"Yup now," he said gently: "yup, ladies," and the mares took out at a walk.

Jacob looked past the mares and saw a figure at the pasture gate.

He frowned a little, and made for the figure: Dana leaned on her hated walker, glaring at his approach.

Jacob he knew the look.

He knew the square of her shoulders, he knew the white knuckle grip on the walker's white-vinyl handgrips, he well knew the bulldog set to her jaw.

He'd seen much the same, at one time or another, with every last one of his sisters.

Jacob walked the mares up to the fence, turned them to the haw, ho'd them, looked at his sister.

Jacob was honestly surprised there was not a twin spout of steam from his little sis, one out of each ear.

Dana took a long breath, the way she did right before she took action, and for the bare sliver of a second, Jacob wasn't sure but what she was going to take that despised walker and beat it to death against a nearby fencepost.

That's not what she did.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller came through the pasture gate, carrying Dana's walker.

He looked at Jacob, standing at the mares' heads, bribing them with molasses twist.

He looked at Dana, shifting her weight uncomfortably as she tested different foot positions, as she leaned back against the brace rope in her leather-gloved hands.

He watched as Jacob backed up and nodded to his sister, watched as Dana called "Yup, ladies, yup now," and three matched white mares moved out at a fast walk, skidding a repurposed car hood over cold snow and hoofprints.

Jacob drifted back over and joined his father.

Jacob looked at the walker his father still held.

"Plumbing?" he asked with an innocent, absolutely straight face.

"Airmail," his father said quietly, as he watched his baby girl fighting to stay upright at the mares' brisk walk.

"Hard hat area?" Jacob grunted, and he felt his father's chuckle more than heard it.

"I think you could say that," Linn agreed.

They watched as Dana's healing body figured out how to stay upright.

"I never did hear," Linn said quietly. "Did they end up layin' rods in place to fix her back bone?"

Jacob was quiet for a long moment.

"I don't rightly know, sir," he admitted. "I'd not doubt it."

"They didn't with Michael."

"They grew a whole new spine for him."

Linn grunted, nodded.

Jacob carefully avoided looking at his father.

Of all the things that distressed his pale eyed Pa the most, it was not being where he was needed, when he was needed, and Jacob knew the man flogged himself for somehow, magically, not being with Michael when he'd been damn neart killed, that he wasn't there to prevent it.

"Has she ridden this rehab sled before?" Linn asked, his voice thoughtful.

"I don't think so, sir."

"She looks to be doin' a good job of it."

"As long as she doesn't run the mares," Jacob said reluctantly -- as if afraid to voice the idea, as if afraid those Evil Demons of the Air were listening, and would bring his fear to life.

Dana walked the mares up to father and son.

"Your sleeve is a mess," she said as she frowned at her big brother.

"Yeah, God loves you, too," Jacob said neutrally. "How'd it feel?"

"It ... was work," Dana admitted reluctantly, then: "At least I didn't fall of and get dragged!"

"No," Jacob admitted, "there's that."

"Can you make it over here," Linn asked quietly, as he hefted the walker, "or do I need to bring this to you?"

Dana lowered her head a little and just honestly glared at her long tall Daddy.

"If you're goin' out that-a-way," Linn said, setting the walker down halfway between them and then backing back up to stand beside his fence-leaning son, "watch when you're just outside the gate. Seems this is a Hard Hat Zone now."

Dana's face darkened, she half-stepped, half-fell and caught herself with the walker: she got her legs under her, snarled, took a step, another, then hauled back and heaved the walker over the fence again.

She managed to get to the fence before she had to grab it to keep from going down.

Father and son elaborately ignored her as she shot the bolt, as she hauled the wooden gate open, as she labored her way to where she'd heaved the walker.

"Hardhat area," Jacob said softly, looking at the now-closed gate and remembering the jaw-set soul who'd just fought her way through it.

"Yep."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A MOST FOOLISH PROFESSOR

 

Sheriff Linn Keller sat heavily and stared at the documents he'd been given.

It was not often the man was taken aback.

His visitors were gone now, distinguished guests who presented their findings, handed him the carefully-reproduced papers, clearly showing every detail: the meticulous handwriting, careful sketches, a column of notes pertaining to exact dimensions: these reproductions captured damage to the originals -- water staining, singe marks at the borders, holes where book worms penetrated the bundle.

The visitors were delighted when the Sheriff showed them the original glass-plate portraits of the document's author, gave them vignettes from the author's life, brought the glass plate portraits into the briefing room where light conditions were better for them to take high resolution photographs of a pale eyed young woman standing beside a truly huge, shining-black mare, both of them staring rebelliously into the camera's ground-glass eye.

Linn sat and paged slowly through this bounty, this treasure, this unexpected find.

This was part of a university's library that suffered damage during the Second World War.

It was part of the university library's research section that was brought out of the rubble and filed somewhere to keep it safe.

It took a considerable amount of detective work, but by translating notes found in adjacent files that somehow got separated from this original bundle, German librarians turned themselves into consummate detectives, and found that this was a research project by one Sarah Lynne McKenna, who'd married into nobility, who'd been murdered when a mob raided, ransacked and fired the old Count's mountain schloss.

Linn sat and paged through her painstaking work, her meticulous sketches, her precise descriptions, then he keyed his wrist-unit and made a call.

 

The old Count marveled as Sarah's whittled pencil transferred stonework to paper with incredible accuracy.

He'd been instrumental in getting her access to current and ruined chapels, monasteries, churches: he'd happily politicked his way through situations that granted Sarah admission into places mere mortals seldom went: in one monastery, she made a series of sketches showing the Brethren in pious rows, solemn-faced, each face realistically rendered: she'd left them where they could be found, by way of thanks, for she knew a woman in these sacred confines was nearly unheard-of: her only self-portrait was a drawing of her hand, holding a pencil, and flowing from the pencil, a monk's weathered hand, holding a prayer-book and a Rosary.

Sarah was on a mission for her pale eyed Papa.

Sarah was documenting mason's marks, chiseled into the great stones of which these pious edifices were constructed.

Her Papa explained to her years before, that the stones were quarried, dressed, finished, then transported to the building site, that each Operative Mason cut his individual Mark into the stone, so that he might be credited for the work he'd done.

Sarah was carefully, systematically, methodically, documenting these Mason's Marks.

Her work was comprehensive -- she visited as many German structures as possible, in search of these individual identifiers -- her intent was to have her work printed, bound, then sent back to America, sent back to her Papa, that he might present this to his home Lodge.

She was murdered before her work was finished.

Linn considered the conference he'd had with the German scholars: he'd counted himself fortunate that they'd worked for three years in this newly (and literally) uncovered section of wartime damage, that they'd recovered this incredible amount of material, and that they were still excavating, still looking for additional material, though they were satisfied they'd found all that made it out of the original collapse.

He considered himself most fortunate that these scholars spoke better English than he did.

He'd delighted in hosting them for two days, introducing them to Colorado ranch life, to the Firelands library where his Mama and his daughters labored to reconstruct the area's history: one woman, and an older professor, were equestrians, and both were astonished that the Sheriff, like his multiple ancestors, ran their saddle stock bitless: the woman accepted his offer of trying a Western saddle on for size, and she laughed like a delighted schoolgirl as she looked around from the dizzying height of a Frisian mare tall enough the six foot two Sheriff could not look over her back.

There is something freeing about mountains and laughter: stolid, staid Teutonic reserve melted into grins and shouts of triumph as the Sheriff dunked Stetsons on visiting heads, wrapped gunbelts around middles, coached them individually in a careful, draw-and-fire against a steel silhouette, close up (most gunfights are at bad breath distance, he told them, both out of a wish to be factual, and a desire that they should hit the steel -- nothing inspires confidence like hits!)

The entire visiting contingent ended up riding, a short ride to a promontory the Sheriff always liked; they looked into distance and mountains, and the Sheriff told them about the legendary Sarah Lynne McKenna -- at least a well-sanitized version -- and how she became the Black Agent, a detective with a gift for disguise: how she became Sister Mercurius, how she became a schoolteacher, a dance-hall girl, a mousy bank teller, how she became whatever she had to, in order to get the information, or the prisoner, she was tasked with acquiring.

The night before they flew out, the Sheriff had them for supper: women being women, Shelly and the female researcher retreated upstairs, and when they descended the stairs, this scholarly, professorish woman flowed downstairs in one of Marnie's gowns she'd reconstructed from studying Sarah's portraits.

The old Professor, the one who'd laughed like a delighted schoolboy when he fired a blackpowder load from a genuine Colt revolver, frowned as he studied his colleague, then he turned to the Sheriff, cracked his heels together, gave a stiff half-bow and addressed the lawman with words that made no sense to the hosting lawman, but something told Linn the old pedant was having a bit of fun at his host's expense.

His colleague laughed, folded her hands in the apron of her borrowed gown and explained, "Mein Professor says that he is pleased that I am wearing this, for he would look most foolish in it!"

 

A year and a day later, a book was published: the first copy was formally presented to the Firelands Masonic Lodge.

It was leather bound, with gold leaf lettering.

Mason's Marks of German Cathedrals, it said on the cover, by S. L. McKenna.

 

Nobody knows how it got there, but a single sheet of good rag paper was found on the Sheriff's desk the next day.

It was a very realistic, pencil drawing.

It showed a nighttime graveyard, stars and a cloud-shadowed moon high and behind: a man knelt at a grave, one hand on the tombstone, one hand holding a book, and behind him, an Appaloosa, saddled, head down, hip shot, looking for all the world like it might fall asleep and collapse.

Across the top, its title:

Thank You, Sarah, We Got Your Book!

The Sheriff never told anyone about the drawing.

No inquiry was made as to how the man's secured sanctum was penetrated; no effort was made to divine the artist's identity.

The Sheriff had his strong suspicions.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I DON'T LIVE LIKE A PIG

Shelly Keller sighed patiently, as she did whenever her pale eyed husband was irritated, and taking care of something he honestly hadn't planned to, but realized he had to.

When the twins arrived and looked at their mother, when they turned their heads at the sound of an electric cutoff saw screaming in the barn, they looked at one another and then back at their mother.

"Yes, Michael," Shelly said softly, "your father could use your help."

Michael, his smiling face suddenly serious, turned and hauled the front door open again: he closed the door behind him, and his mother smiled almost sadly as she imagined Michael's purposeful stride as he headed out to where his father was busy burning off irritation and making sawdust.

"Mama," Victoria asked softly, "what happened?"

Shelly tilted her head, regarded her daughter with a combination of sadness and admiration -- sadness, that her child was growing so fast, and admiration, that she was growing so well.

"Your father sat down on the bed," Shelly explained.

" -- and the whole damned cob house hit the floor!" Linn declared to his son.

"How many chunks do you need, sir?"

"Three. One for each of the slats on the driver's side."

Michael turned, gripped the shop vac's wand, pressed the rocker switch: it was the work of less than a minute to vac up the accumulated sawdust.

His father said once, "I don't live like a pig, I won't work like one," and Michael took that as a maxim: as had his father, many times, Michael's cleanup was immediate and comprehensive.

Two men came through the front door, the Sheriff bearing three pieces of 4x4, each just under a foot long, Michael with a look of interest.

Shelly and Victoria watched the men troop up the stairs.

"No tools?" Victoria asked quietly.

Shelly dropped three tea bags in the coffee maker's basket, pressed the start switch.

"I expect your father has all he needs," she said quietly.

The two sat down and spoke in quiet voices, discussing the things that mothers and daughters talk about, at least until there was a sharp *thump!* from upstairs, followed by a muffled exclamation, to which Shelly murmured "Oh, dear," and waited, expecting Michael to appear, to bend and speak through the stairway banister's uprights, the way he used to as a little boy, summoning his Mama to tend an injury.

It didn't happen.

At least Michael did not arrive to issue a summons; perhaps fifteen minutes later, they came downstairs, and Shelly could not help but notice her husband was carrying his forearm a little oddly.

Victoria shot her mother a look -- he's hurt -- Shelly's nod was almost imperceptible, and she rose, her tea forgotten.

"Got it fixed," Linn announced, looking ruefully at the back of his right hand, then up at his wife: he held his hand out a little, as if for her inspection.

"Mashed my hand. Box springs and mattress fell on it."

Shelly gripped her husband's wrist with one hand, tilted her head as she assessed the injury.

"It's swelling already," she said, then frowned.  "I don't see a hematoma, so you didn't break the vein. Is there any burning?"

"No."

"Good. Blood is an enzyme, and it dissolves tissue. If you'd broken a blood vessel, you'd have more swelling, it would be really discolored and it would feel like it was burning."

Linn turned, stuck his hand in the sink, turned the cold water faucet, ran a steady trickle over the back of his right hand.

"Pa has the box springs blocked up," Michael said. "The box springs rest on four planks, the planks rest on a stringer that runs the length of the sideboard. The one on Pa's side of the bed splintered when he sat down and --"

Linn worked his hand a little, grimaced.

"Here," Shelly murmured, turning off the water and pulling the hand toward her: "straighten your fingers."

She tapped the tips of her husband's fingers. "Any pain?"

He shook his head.

"Nothing broken, then. I'll get you some frozen peas for that."

Linn wrapped his hand loosely in a dish towel, waited for his wife to apply the Improvised Flexible Ice Pack to his swelling paw, wrapped this with the rest of the towel.

"Well horse knuckles," he said mildly. "This is not what I'd planned."

He looked at Michael, then back to his wife.

"Darlin', you said you were goin' to order a steel bedframe. Show Michael which one it is. Michael?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Note down the dimensions on that bed frame your Mama picked out and go throw the tape measure at the bed, make sure the steel bed frame will fit into the space available."

"Yes, sir."

Linn sat down and looked at his wrapped hand in obvious disappointment.

Shelly and Michael retreated to the Sheriff's study to consult the computer, and to call up the metal bedframe Shelly just ordered; a few moments later, Michael went upstairs, his gait brisk.

Shelly was only just returned to the kitchen when Michael came thundering downstairs and swung happily around the end of the banister like a grinning little boy.

"It'll fit, sir," he announced, "and it's rated for a ton and a half, so it should hold!"

"A ton and a half," Linn said thoughtfully. "I won't have to go on a diet after all!"

"What's it made of, railroad iron and I-beams?" Victoria asked, dismay in her voice and concern in her eyes.

"Nah, it's just well made," Michael said with a dismissive wave. 

Shelly gave her husband a long, assessing look, then she stood, went to a cupboard, opened it and shook two pills, one out of each of two bottles, brought them back to her husband.

He opened his hand to accept them.

"Acetaminophen and aspirin," she said quietly. "Best of both worlds. Analgesia and anti-inflammatory both."

Linn was a hard headed and contrary sort who was not prone to taking pills.

On this occasion, he considered his wife was younger, smarter and better looking than him.

He looked at his hand again, he worked it a little in its dishtowel wrapping, and he took the pills.

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A VOICE ON THE WIND

Snowdrift looked terribly pleased with herself.

She sat spotlighted on stage, there in the Firelands High School, in front of a full house and God Almighty, not to mention notables and folk from some distance who'd heard of what happened.

The gold medal on the tricolor ribbon caught the light and sent bright flashes as she turned her head, surveying the standing, applauding house as if this were her due, as if she richly deserved adulation from these, her adoring fans.

 

His name was Mactavish, and he was a drifter, and right now he was seriously considering whether to just stick his gun barrel in his mouth and end it fast.

He decided against it.

He moved slow -- he was stove up, sore, but he was better than his horse.

The snowstorm came up fast.

Horse and rider leaned forward into the wind, holding a course against the driving snow, gambling that the wind would hold steady and they could travel in a straight line.

He and his horse were beyond lost, but to stand still was to die, to move was a gamble, and Mactavish was a gambler; he'd take a maybe any day over the certainty of a losing hand.

The ground wasn't there when his horse thought it was.

They fell -- rolled -- Mactavish was thrown free, he heard his horse scream and he'd heard that scream before, and when he finally found where his horse ended up, he gave his mount the only mercy he could, right between the eyes.

Now he hefted his saddle over one shoulder, bedroll under his arm, squinting, looking around.

Shelter, he thought.

Rock face.

Depression.

Anything!

Whether because of his staggering progress, or in spite of it, he found a corner, a sheltered V in the rock.

He found it by virtue of running into it.

He dropped his saddle, sagged against cold stone: the wind let up a little and he saw he'd found what little shelter there was.

Mactavish shook out his bedroll, swore at himself for not bringing a second blanket: he threw his saddle blanket down, then picked it up, snapped it free of snow, laid it back down.

He curled up on it, exhausted, covered himself with the bedroll, tucked it in as best he could.

He was working on instinct.

His hands ached, his feet ached, most of him was calling him unkind names for going over an unseen cliff: he didn't break both legs like his horse had, but if he lived that long, he'd be stove up in the morning.

He curled up tight with rock to his back, saddle blanket under, hat mashed down on the side of his head as best he could, blanket over as much of him as he could manage.

Cold, pain, grief: his thoughts slowed, and when something sniffed experimentally, loudly, at his blanket, he figured he was about to become a bear's meal.

What the hell.

At least I'll be warm inside that bear!

He didn't get et.

Something big laid down on top of him, something that gave a snuff and a sigh and just laid there, and right before he passed out, he thought of his dog back when he was a boy, how it used to lay warm on top of him.

 

Snowdrift's head came up and she growled.

The Sheriff frowned, laid his screwdriver down, wiped his hands carefully on a shop rag, frowned.

Wind rattled the sliding side door and snow blew in through cracks and gaps: he'd rigged tarps overhead and for walls, and a hanging-curtain door, and within his little workbench area, the propane heater kept him warm, or reasonably so.

Snowdrift looked up at the Sheriff and muttered, then came to her feet and barked, looked out across the shop, turned back, barked again.

 

Another Sheriff, another century: his Stetson tied down with a knit scarf that wrapped around his neck and tucked in under his coat, pale eyes squinted against the tempest.

He'd followed The Bear Killer into the storm.

He well knew to watch his horse when camped, to watch his dog, for their senses were better than his: when The Bear Killer looked at him and growled, then looked out into the storm and growled, the man knew something wasn't right.

He didn't know quite what, but he knew it was something.

"Hold," he said quietly, making a down-motion with a flat palm: The Bear Killer watched impatiently, prowling and growling as the Sheriff saddled his best mule.

In this storm, with this terrain, his mule was sure footed, strong, and possessed of good common sense.

He looked down at The Bear Killer.

"Get Jacob," he said, and The Bear Killer went from hunkered and muttering, to streaking like Hell's arrow through the storm toward the house.

Father and son and a big Bear Killer of a dog rode into the driving storm.

 

Mactavish wasn't shivering now.

He wasn't warm and he sure as hell wasn't comfortable but he was no longer near-convulsing with cold.

He wasn't sure quite what was laid over on him but he knew it was warm and as long as he didn't move he was almost warm and he didn't hurt quite as bad.

He didn't so much go back to sleep as he just kind of passed out.

 

Snowdrift shot ahead into the storm, the Sheriff on a mule, following.

It was Marnie's Peppermint-mule, and why she named a mule Peppermint was beyond him, but girls do things like that.

He knew Marnie's mule was steady and sure-footed, and he'd ridden her into the mountains before, and his gut told him if whatever this was, was close enough for Snowdrift to hear, it was close enough for him and Peppermint to get there.

He lost the white dog in the snow-blowing dusk almost immediately.

He pulled a fired rifle case from his breast pocket, put it to his lips, blew a quick tweet-tweet across the bottleneck: almost immediately, ahead and to the right, Snowdrift bayed back at him.

Peppermint turned to follow the bay.

She'd trained for this, she was used to this.

Linn squinted against blowing snow, pulled the knit scarf further up over his face.

I should call this in, he thought.

Call what in?

My dog has a fart crossways and she ran out into the snow?

Let's wait until we see what we've got!

 

A pale eyed old lawman blew across the neck of an empty rifle casing, brought a sharp, prolonged whistle out of the bottleneck round.

Father and son listened.

Wind, snow ... nothing.

Linn frowned and blew again, a longer note, shrill, piercing, the kind that penetrates, even at a distance.

He saw his mule's ears swing a little, then she turned her head: the mule moved again, ahead, angling to the right, going downhill again.

"I'm glad you've got eyes in this," Linn muttered, "I can't see a damn thing!"

They rode through horizontal-blowing snow, trusting their mounts, then they heard it.

Both mules stopped, threw their heads up.

A familiar, strong-voiced bay, a canine summons they'd heard before.

Linn and Jacob leaned forward in their saddles: "Go, boy," the Sheriff said, his voice tight.  "Find him!"

 

The wind stopped suddenly, and with it, the snow: the air cleared and Linn's heart dropped down to his belt buckle and slid down his pants leg into his boot top.

He raised his wrist-unit, spoke a command, waited for the ping of the Sheriff's band repeater.

"Dispatch, this is Actual," he called.

A click, a familiar voice: "Firelands Dispatch, Firelands Actual, go."

"We have a rollover accident, it's fresh and still steaming. Radar roger my location, moving in to investigate."

Father and son started toward the rollover a quarter mile distant, just as the wind kicked up again and the snow started.

Two grim faced lawmen rode steadily through the storm, toward the bay of a great white hound.

 

Mactavish was a week healing up enough to ride out.

He'd wakened in what he found was the only hospital in the territory.

He'd wakened with bandages here and there, feeling like he'd been clubbed by a track gang.

He opened his eyes and tried to move and gave that up for a bad job -- he blinked, frowned, realized he was going to have to move, like it or not: a grimace, a groan, he managed to roll over on his side, and came face to face with something truly huge, genuinely black, something that flicked out a bright-pink tongue and gave his eagle beak a companionable lick.

Nurse Susan came bustling in, all worry and importance, as the man was just finishing with the chamber pot: she withdrew quickly, waited until he called "C'mon in, we're done here" -- and she found him sitting on one of the stools, for it was easier to sit on a stool than to climb back up into the bed.

The Bear Killer had his chin laid over on the man's lap like he'd laid claim to him, and Mactavish's fingers were working slowly into black and curly fur.

 

The vehicle apparently left the roadway in the storm.

When it went over, it went end-over-end and landed on its wheels.

Snowdrift didn't really care about the mechanics of its descent: she dove through a hole where window glass used to be, sniffing, investigating.

When Linn and Jacob rode up, when Linn called in his supplemental report, they found Snowflake draped across a baby in the child seat, belted in and secure, and they saw a bright set of curious eyes looking at them from under a soft, blue-and-white knit cap, while happy little baby fingers worked into soft, warm, white fur.

 

The Bear Killer stood with his head laid across Mactavish's lap, eyes closed, immersed in canine bliss as the man massaged warm, curly black fur with fingers that remembered a dog he had as a boy.

Drifter and lawman spoke quietly, each one caressing the slow-tail-swinging mountain Mastiff, pausing only for Mactavish to accept a bowl of steaming, fragrant soup, a lump of bread.

Jacob stood back, hiding his smile, for he could not help but think The Bear Killer looked quite pleased with himself.

 

Snowdrift's tail polished the stage as she sat, as fine words were spoken about how she kept the child warm and comforted while Rescue rappelled down the cliff face, as the mother was stabilized and brought out, and finally how Snowdrift rode on the ambulance cot with the child to provide continued warmth and comfort to a distressed infant.

Even in her picture in the weekly Firelands Gazette, she managed to look inordinately pleased with herself.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 18 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SLIT THROAT

Men of politics and of influence do not usually encounter personal violence.

Usually such men are insulated from the physical unpleasantness of their actions, their decisions, by persons hired to be insulation and protection from such consequences.

None of this occurred to a local governor who, unfortunately, had himself confused with someone important.

When the Governor arrived for a hastily-called meeting, he suspected nothing, until he was met inside the front door of the Governor's Mansion -- not by a stuffy, stiff-collared butler -- but by a pale eyed man in a black suit, and an emerald-green necktie.

A man who seized the Governor by the throat and drove hard knuckles into the politician's prominent paunch.

Hard.

The Sheriff didn't often let his badger out.

The Governor didn't know the Sheriff personally -- he'd seen him on the Inter-System, dismissed him as an insophisticate, a "mere Earther," probably an actor, a construct designed to boost ratings for the Inter-System.

This unsophisticated "mere Earther" whipped the governor around and SLAMMED him into a nearby door frame, hard enough to shiver the wall: normally this would have brought security, it would have brought staff, it would have alarmed the household that all was not well.

The presence of grim-faced young men bearing a variety of weapons, young men who held each member of the Governor's staff in a secure manner, guaranteed that the Sheriff would not be interrupted in his work.

The Governor's arm was cranked up behind his back: the Sheriff had him bent over, one hand tight on the back of the man's collar, the other maintaining a most painful armlock.

An unsmiling member of Marnie's Praetorian Guard opened the door into the Governor's private study.

The Sheriff drove his knee into the small of the Governor's back, hauled back hard on his collar, straightened him up so he could take a look.

Marnie stood before the fireplace, delicately wiping blood from a small, almost surgical blade.

Another man of the Governor's caliber was secured to a heavy wooden chair, head sagged forward, unconscious.

"It didn't take much to get him to talk," Marnie said quietly, her smile gentle as she considered the small, leaf-shaped blade's edge. "Politicians love the sound of their own voice."

She placed the wiped-clean blade beside a half-dozen other blades, on a linen napkin, laid out on the Governor's own desk.

"I enjoyed reading your accounts," Marnie said, her voice pleasant, her expression warm, smiling.

The Sheriff had the Governor around the neck again, still maintaining that iron grip on the gubernatorial wrist, holding him upright and facing the feminine-looking, soft-voiced Ambassador.

"Your handwriting is most distinctive," Marnie continued. "One can tell much from a man's handwriting. I read your damning correspondence, the equally damning entries into your diary. Your associate" -- Marnie gestured at the unconscious man with a feminine roll of the wrist -- "was only too happy to give us the particulars on your attempt at abducting my sister."

The governor shook his head, immaculately-barbered jowls wobbling as he did: "No, no, no," he started to say, until the Sheriff released his grip on the Governor's wrist and drove his fist into the man's kidneys.

Marnie glided over to the fireplace and withdrew something long and slim from the flames.

The tip glowed dully as she brought it over.

"Have you ever seen a man's eye after it's had a red-hot iron pressed through it?" she asked conversationally.  "No? Perhaps you'd like to experience a demonstration."

The Sheriff's arm came out from around the man's neck, held him around the forehead, resumed control of the one arm as Marnie brought the hot iron close to the man's soft, fat cheek, close enough he could feel the heat.

"I'll burn off your eyelashes first," she said conversationally. "Then I'll run the hot iron along the edges of your eyelids ... slooowly."

Marnie's smile remained gentle, terrifyingly so.

"You told your troops they could do anything they wished to my sister."

"No," the Governor wheezed through a throat tight with terror.

"Oh, yes."

Marnie's voice was a whisper.

"They were to abduct her and to keep her hidden and you said she was to be kept alive, but in the meantime they could use her as they pleased, that you are the Governor, that you could keep them safe from the consequences of their actions, that anything they did to her would guarantee the Confederacy would give them anything you wanted to spare her further ... oh, what was the word you used? Unpleasantness?"

Marnie frowned at the slender probe she held, made a little tsk-tsk sound.

"Oh, poo, now it's gone cold," she pouted.  "I'll just have to warm this up again."

Marnie glided over to the fireplace, carefully slid the probe back into the coals, came back, serene and composed as if she were about to address a ladies' garden club.

"You seized a nurse," Marnie said, tilting her head a little: the Sheriff kept his grip, the Governor made a gurgling sound, which only increased the twist on the arm the Sheriff cranked back up behind the man's back. 

"You seized a nurse and my sister shot three of your men and escaped with another nurse. Your troops were overrun with Confederate cavalry. My Praetorian Guard made entry and rescued the nurse you'd taken, before she could be harmed. None of your people survived.
"The dozen or so who fled, were found and interrogated, their fellows were found and interrogated."

Her smile was bright, the smile of a woman delivering good news.

"They were hanged."

Marnie turned and looked at the man, head still lolling, still unconscious, still tied to the heavy wooden chair, smiled.

"It's surprising how little I had to cut him up to get him to talk."

She glided over to the table, picked up the scalpel she'd wiped clean earlier.

"I think perhaps I can cut a confession out of you. Either that, or I can cut your tongue out so you will never utter another word about harming anyone else's sister, or daughter."

Marnie's words were gentle, her smile was soft, which made her words all the more terrifying.

"Or I can just have my big strong Daddy do it for me. The nurse you wanted kidnapped and brutalized, is his daughter."

Marnie stepped back quickly, before life's blood could spray on her carefully-tailored, emerald-shimmer gown.

The Sheriff released his grip on the man's arm, pulled a long bladed fighting knife, and cut the Governor's throat: one businesslike slice, left to right, clear to his neck bone.

The Sheriff dropped the man, stepped back, his eyes cold, then he squatted.

The last thing the dying man heard, were the only words the Sheriff said since he seized the Governor in the mansion's lobby.

"Nobody hurts my little girl."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

OUT WITH IT, MISTER!

The Sheriff's brush stopped.

He turned.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

He looked at his wife.

The Sheriff saw his beautiful bride standing in the barn, arms crossed, giving him That Look, the one that usually worked.

He made no reply to her quiet-voiced demand.

He turned and went back to brushing out his stallion.

Shelly Keller lowered her head a little, glared at her stolid, silent husband from under sculpted eyebrows.

"You know I'll find out eventually."

The brush stopped again and the Sheriff turned to face his wife.

"All right," he said quietly.  "I had an affair."

Shelly snorted.

"Tell me another one, Pale Eyes!"

"I robbed a bank."

Shelly threw her head back, began patting her foot like an impatient schoolteacher and gave a great, exaggerated sigh.

"I can keep this up all night, you know."

"You won't have to," Marnie said from behind her: Shelly jumped, startled, spun.

Marnie's expression held not the least trace of a smile.

"Hello, Mother," she said coldly. "I still don't want to go to the City shopping for dresses."

Linn turned his attention back to his stallion.

He knew this was a barb, a jab, almost unfair: once, and only once, had Shelly backhanded Marnie, and that was when Marnie expressed her teen-aged wish to not go shopping.

It was the first time Shelly genuinely realized, first, Marnie had the same pale eyes as her husband, and second, that Marnie was more than capable of killing her, barehand, in less than two seconds, and not a damned thing Shelly could do to prevent it.

"He won't tell you, so I will," Marnie continued, frost in her voice and ice in her eyes.

"He had an affair with someone he kidnapped from the bank he robbed."

The Sheriff's brush stopped again.

He did not look at his daughter.

He did not dare.

The Sheriff had been lied to by the best.

The Sheriff was quick to appreciate humor, irony, the verbal pull-the-rug-out-from-under-the-victim ... but this ...

Shelly's eyes widened, her mouth opened, she turned to look at her husband.

Linn's head was lowering, slowly, until his face was full of Appaloosa fur and a particular stallion was turning his head and giving the man a curious look: Linn's shoulders were shaking, he turned to face his wife, his face red: he looked over Shelly's shocked expression, locked eyes with his daughter, and absolutely gave up.

Linn slung an arm over his stallion's back and laughed: his face was a shocking shade of scarlet, he abandoned himself to mirth, merriment, and the approximate sounds of a chicken laying a paving brick: had it not been for the good offices of four equine legs supporting him, not to mention the Appaloosa spine over which he'd thrown his arm, the man would likely have dissolved into a helpless puddle of giggles.

Shelly stared at her husband and remembered absently to winch her jaw bone back up into place before it fell off, then she turned and her winch line broke.

Marnie's face was becoming as utterly scarlet as her Daddy's: she'd clasped green-gloved hands together in her apron, then she bent a little at the waist, and her feminine laughter joined her father's, echoing in the barn and bringing cold air and unshod hoof-falls.

Shelly turned and saw Michael and Victoria, each astride a fanged, blunt-headed saddlemount.

Michael held a noose of thirteen turns.

Victoria spoke up.

"Do you need anybody hanged? Michael can tie a fine noose of thirteen turns."

Shelly lifted splay-fingered palms to the hay-dusty rafters: "Comedians! I live with comedians!"

Marnie took a step forward, another: she pressed a kerchief daintily to her nose, then said softly, "Mother, Angela is waiting for you in the house."

Shelly's eyes widened, her flat fingers pressed against her lips: she blurted, "She's pregnant?" -- and without waiting for an answer, she twisted past Marnie, ran out the still-open sliding door.

Michael walked Lightning over, rumbled the big door shut, came back over to where his Pa was rubbing Apple-horse under the jaw.

Marnie glided up to her Daddy, gripped his elbow ever so gently.

"You haven't told her?" she asked in a soft voice.

"No need. Doesn't affect her."

"She knows there's something."

Linn nodded, his expression solemn. "She knows, and I'm transparent as window glass."

Marnie hugged her long tall Daddy, sighed quietly, felt his strong, protective Daddy-arms wrap around her.

"How's fallout from the operation?" Linn asked quietly.

"Their Continental is distancing itself from that particular governor and his political party has absolutely divorced itself from his name," Marnie said quietly. "There was some early attempt to throw mud at us, until we produced his handwritten records and presented the testimony from people they trusted."

"Your bluff with the scalpel looked pretty convincing," Linn chuckled, and Marnie could feel the laugh in his chest more than feel it.

Marnie nodded.  "An injection to put him in twilight, fake blood on the blade, and I've always been a most convincing liar."

"Darlin'," Linn said softly, "the stage lost out when you became Ambassador!"

Marnie pulled back, tilted her head a little, gave her Daddy a speculative look.

"An affair?" she smiled.  "Isn't that skating on thin ice?"

Linn grinned.

"If you're going to tell a lie, do the job right and tell the biggest one you can think of, and thanks for playing along!"

"I didn't want her to think you were actually having one," Marnie admitted.

"I wouldn't dare," Linn said honestly. "One woman's all I can handle!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

EXPLODING TREES

"Gwampa?"

Sheriff Linn Keller thrust another couple of sticks of stovewood into his cast iron, pot belly stove: he shut the door with another stick, not wanting to singe his fingers, tossed the stick into the woodbox and hunkered down to his grandson's level.

Joseph Keller's young face was troubled as he wobbled a little, the way impatient little boys will when they're trying to frame a question so it doesn't sound stupid.

"Gwampa, Johnny Dodson said it's gonna get so cold the trees will explode!"

Linn considered this: he looked down at Joseph's polished boots, looked up at Joseph, turned and looked at the coffee pot on the stove and the steam coming out its speckled-enamel spout.

Linn rose, flipped the lid back, added a dipper of water, hung the dipper back on its nail and looked back at his grandson.

"Cold out now?" he asked quietly.

"Not bad, sir. I think it got clear up to freezin'."

"Oh, hell, I think I'll go for a swim!" Linn said with a straight face, which brought a shy laugh from his grandson: Linn winked at the boy and added, "Maybe not."

He rose, walked around the other side of his grandson and hunkered again: "M'left side was gettin' warm, reckon I'll warm up m'right side now."

"Yes, sir," Joseph grinned.

"Cold enough trees explode?" Linn asked.

"Yes, sir."

Linn nodded solemnly.

"I've known cold so bad they'd freeze and bust," he said quietly, "but they just kind of" -- he held his hands out as if they were gripping an invisible tree trunk, then drew them quickly apart about an inch -- "but they just kind of *pop* and split open and that's it. Kills some of 'em, not all."

Joseph nodded solemnly at his Grampa's wisdom.

"It's got to get blue cold and hold for a while t' do that, though."

"Yes, sir."

"We've got to bust ice so the stock can drink."

"Yes, sir."

"If the snow's on a man ought to have feed enough to rake out for 'em too."

"Yes, sir."

"You helpin' your Pa feed?"

"Yes, sir."

The Sheriff winked, gripped his grandson's shoulder lightly:  "Good man."

Joseph grinned broad as two Texas townships and felt the warmth that comes of genuine paternal approval -- a powerful thing for a young boy.

"School out for the day?" Linn asked, and Joseph's ears turned red.

"No, sir. I wanted to come over and ask about 'splodin' trees."

"Tell you what."  Linn rose, reached for his coat, shrugged into it.  "I'll go over to the school with you and we can tell Miz Emma you were doin' some REE-search on the weather."

Joseph grinned again, that bright, spontaneous, light-up-the-room look of a little boy's genuine happiness.

"We'll tell her you asked about a Scienterrific Spearmint."

"A what?" Joseph asked, nose wrinkling a little as he frowned in little-boy puzzlement.

Linn laughed.  "Never mind. Research it is."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THAT STILL SMALL VOICE

Jacob looked around the familiar-but-strange-again interior of the Firelands church back home.

It was Sunday and for whatever reason, the Parson asked him to give the Sunday sermon, sight unseen.

Jacob's Pa had spoken from the pulpit multiple times, and had done a fine job: Jacob was not entirely comfortable standing up here in front of God and everybody, but he reckoned he could speak his piece, so he squared his shoulders, looked at his wife and son and winked, then grinned that contagious grin that many in the congregation remembered.

"De Lawd," he declared, "lukes out atter fules an' chillins, and I reckon I have qualified under both categories, several times."

That grin again.

"I've been away for a while and I've got to head out this afternoon. Apparently being the son of Old Pale Eyes convinces folks I must be just a whiz bang lawman, for I've been helping out in some interesting places."

He wasn't lying.

He just wasn't letting any felines out of the burlap, so to speak.

Earth knew Marnie was shot off on a rocket to Mars, to become Sheriff for their colony on the Red Planet, but Earth had no idea Marnie was pretty much drafted into the Diplomatic Corps and Jacob replaced her in the Firelands Colony on Mars.

All anyone knew -- well, all but a select, very few -- was that Jacob was working elsewhere, and came home on occasion.

"The Parson asked me to stand up here and give the sermon, sight unseen" -- he turned, looked at the Parson -- "you realize if I end up holdin' this-yere pulpit to keep my balance because I'm standin' on one foot with the other hind hoof between my Pearly Whites, it's all your fault!"

Parson, guest speaker and congregation alike laughed at that one.

Jacob turned back to the congregation.

"Now, y'see, I could tell you about the time we raided" -- he stopped, frowned, considered.

"Well, no, that might not be proper," he added thoughtfully, "though I'll admit that one girl was" -- he stopped again, his face reddening.

"Let's just say she was kind of cute until she come close to knockin' most of the stuffin' out of me."

His grin again, his rueful chuckle, found a sympathetic chuckle in response from the congregation.

"Let me tell you instead about a buddy of mine, back East, who sent me an e-mail.

"Now this fella" -- Jacob's hands were animated -- he spread his mitts, stopped, looked at them -- "Couldn't talk without my hands" -- another quiet chuckle, for in this, Jacob was just like his pale eyed Pa -- "this fella allowed as he was sittin' in his easy chair, mindin' his own business, when that Still Small Voice told him there was snow a-comin', so he'd ought to go to the grocery store and get one of them big clear plastic tubs of chocolate chip cookies.

"I know this isn't what we usually think of when we think of that Still Small Voice, but ...  bear with me here.

"My buddy said he is not prone to jumpin' up and runnn' out for a junk food attack, but this was different, so he got his glad rags on and went out to the car and got in.

"My buddy is a retired town Marshal back East and when he comes out his front door he's a-lookin' all around, and when he's in his car the door's locked and he's checking mirrors and lookin' around while he's gettin' the key in the ignition and his seat belt fast up" -- he looked down at his own hands pulling an invisible belt across his middle -- "couldn't talk without my hands!" -- he grinned again, and Ruth gave him a quiet, patient look, the kind a wife will give when she knows where the story is going because she's heard it before.

"Now about the time my buddy grabbed the key to start his car, he looked off to his left where the Veterans' Services van was picking up his elderly neighbor, and he saw said elderly neighbor on the ground and he considered that it's winter, there's snow on and this ain't normal, so he's out of his car and pretty much skated across that icy cul-de-sac to get to where the past-retirement-age driver was trying with no luck a'tall to get his neighbor up off the glare iced concrete driveway.

"Well, m' buddy got him back on his feet, he'd bruised his dignity but hadn't broke anything, so off they went to the doctor's appointment in the Veterans' van, and m' buddy went in search of chocolate chip cookies."

Jacob looked kind of thoughtful as he looked down at the Parson's cover-worn Scripture on the pulpit: he laid reverent figures on the Book, looked up, continued.

"M'buddy said he sailed right on a-past the grocery store and went on to the hardware store and got a sixty pound tube of sand. He brought it back, clipped the corner and drug it back and forth to make wavy lines of sand across as much icy driveway as he could cover, then he got his push broom and spread it out much as he could.

"His neighbor called that night to thank him.

"I do have a point in all this."

Jacob's hand laid itself unconsciously on the Parson's Bible.

"When we're given a task, God Almighty already factored in our flaws, our failures, our doubts and our shortcomings."

He frowned a little and looked down, blinked a few times and muttered, "God knows I've got plenty!" -- then he shook his head and looked back up at the congregation.

"I reckon that Still Small Voice that said "Go get Chocolate Chip Cookies," put my buddy in the right place to help that fine old man back to his feet, and then guarantee once his poor old stove-up neighbor got home, why, he'd get into his house without busting his backside again."

Jacob looked at the Parson, grinned, looked back at the congregation.

"So that's it. Not the best one you've heard, but when the Parson said 'Stand and Deliver,' why, I r'ared up on my hind legs and gave you what I had!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ENOUGH

A cultured young woman sat at the desk, her fashionable pince-nez halfway down her elegant nose: she read, her posture immaculate, her book illuminated by the lamp bolted to the desk.

It had to be bolted, for the desk was in the Judge's private railcar, the railcar was on steel rails, and a train was attached before and behind this private conveyance, a permanent guest of the Z&W Railroad.

The young woman boarded the private car just before the train left The City.

Back in The City, a ghost in an undistinguished day-dress labored down a back alley with the peculiar gait that spoke of an injury, badly healed: this poor soul disappeared into the back door of the local theater, and when the show let out, she flowed out the front with the other well-dressed patrons, only now, instead of an undistinguished working woman, probably a domestic of some sort, now she was well and elegantly dressed, her hair swept up in a dramatic style, her stylish little hat pinned in place with bow-trimmed hatpins of an illegal length.

One of the doormen put two fingers to his lips, whistled: a cab trotted up, stopped, and the fashionable young woman gave the doorman the kind of smile that would melt the heart of a cold stone statue.

Sarah Lynne McKenna secreted her small satchel, hidden in her dress until she was safely in the Judge's private car, then she looked around the luxuriously-appointed interior and nodded, once, the silent affirmation of a woman who'd just gone over a mental list and found everything completed.

She'd locked the door after she'd let herself in, she'd checked the other door -- also locked -- the windows were fast, she checked each with one quick orbit of the car.

The porter rapped at the window of the far door: Sarah looked up and smiled, and he saw her carefully place a bookmark between the pages of her small hardback, place it on the desk, smile as she rose.

He never saw the pistol she had in hand, hidden in the folds of her skirt.

"Peter!" she greeted the porter happily. "How ever have you been?"

Peter's smile shone like sunrise against a dark sky as he touched his shining-black cap brim: "Miz Sarah, I'se fahn," he said, as he always did: he came in, closed the door carefully behind him, waited for Sarah to lock the door again.

She turned to look at the uniformed porter: gone was the broad, simple-minded smile, gone was the accent.

"Miz Sarah," he said, his voice quiet, serious, efficient, "you were followed to the theater."

"I expected I would be," Sarah said quietly, her eyes on Peter's shoulders, then his face again.

"Young Peter -- my son -- said there were four men looking for you."

"Four," Sarah murmured. "They really were unhappy with me!"

Peter regarded her solemnly: "I will not presume to ask what you did, Miz Sarah. I will presume it was necessary."

Sarah's guarded expression slipped for a moment, then she composed herself, nodded.

"It was."

Peter's smile was quiet now. "Young Peter said two came running around from behind the theater, and two were watching out front. A half-dozen women came out in a group wearing the same style dress you had on when you went in the back door."

"I suggested they come out in a group, and that they make themselves noticed."

Peter's expression was quiet, almost satisfied.

"Young Peter said they came out like a flock of birds, noisy and excited, but all bunched up together. Same hair, same dresses, same height ..."

Sarah allowed herself a slight smile.

"I have friends in the theater," she admitted. "Two of those six girls were young men."

"No!" Peter breathed, eyes widening with admiration.

"Oh, yes. I paid them for their services, but I recognized there might ... be ... the laying-on of hands, and if that happened, I knew the tall boys I hired could handle themselves, especially if they attacked from surprise."

"The documents are in the usual place," Sarah said quietly, her voice serious. "I've placed them and I will not go near them for the rest of the journey."

"I will see they are given over to His Honor tonight."

"Thank you, Peter."  Sarah looked very directly at the porter. "You have been more than a trusted friend. If the word of a younger woman means anything, I appreciate that."

"Miz Sarah, you're the one who takes the chances," Peter said quietly. 

Sarah smiled again, and her smile was not entirely pleasant.

"I think we can get a conviction this time."

Later that night, Sarah Lynne McKenna stood near her Papa's cast iron stove, facing the Sheriff and His Honor the Judge.

After the exertions she'd experienced, the vigor with which she executed her duties and her disguised flight, another woman would have needed an hour, maybe two, for freshening up and presenting herself for debriefing.

Sarah's experience with the theater came to the fore.

She was freshened up and ready to report fifteen minutes after stepping out of the Judge's private car.

The Sheriff stood; His Honor sat, hunched over, the door open on the cast iron stove, drawing in the smoke from his ever present Cuban.

Sarah sat between the two men, facing the stove, as composed as the Queen herself, and looking far different from the plain young woman in the day-dress she'd worn into the back of the opera house.

His Honor examined the documents she'd obtained, documents delivered by a uniformed porter: the Sheriff waited, listening to Sarah's quiet voiced account of how she'd only had to knife two of the criminals to effect her escape after lightfingering the combination lock on the safe she'd found when she'd disguised herself as a hotel maid and had a few moments alone in the room to discover the safe's location.

"Your Honor," Sarah said frankly, "I would have been far more comfortable with my cut-down double gun than I was with the knife."

His Honor finished the final page, closed the folder, grunted: he flicked cigar ash into the stove's open door, spat against its side to hear it sizzle.

"Well?" Sarah asked. "Is it enough?"

His Honor's smile was wolflike as he nodded.

"Yes," he said quietly.  "This will be enough."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HORSES

It was rare for any of the Keller young to watch television.

It was not unknown.

Like anything rare, it held a certain fascination.

Like anything that wasn't done, there was a reason it wasn't done.

I didn't think much of why we didn't even have a television in the house.

I just didn't have any use for the damned thing.

A Chinese correspondent once asked why Americans are so fascinated with the news.

He said in China, the news is all government propaganda, and everyone knows it's government propaganda, and they don't watch it as a result.

Gives a man something to consider.

Never liked the thought of taking time to watch television.

I've got an awful lot to concern me.

I'm the Sheriff.

I'm also husband and father, and an awful lot of other things that generally come up by surprise.

Now I really don't have anything against watchin' TV, at least not until my little girl come home and I could tell she'd been cryin'.

Angela wasn't but about four or five and she'd gone to a classmate's after school, and she'd left there all upset and run nearly every foot of the way from there to home, her in her frilly dress and shiny slippers and it was cold and snowy out and that didn't even slow her down.

Shelly had to fill me in, after Angela give me them big sad eyes and I picked her up and set her on my lap and held her and she cuddled into me the way she did when she was either sick or upset, so I stood up and her with me and we set down on my big over stuffed couch and I leaned back into the corner and she leaned into me and there we set until Shelly got home that evening.

Turns out Shelly got a call from the classmate's mother.

They'd been watching a Western and Angela got upset and started crying and said something about "Don't hurt the horsies" and off she went at a dead run, and here she was cuddled into me.

Shelly set down with us and we talked in whispers, Shelly allowed as little children have trouble distinguishing between real life and what they see on TV.

We woke her up for supper and I picked her up and carried her to her chair with the big thick pad on the seat so she could sit up to the table like the adults, and she was real quiet, and finally she talked.

She'd got all upset when they run horses hard or whipped them and there were scenes where the horses went down screaming and that's apparently when Angela jumped up and yelled at the TV set "Don't Hurt the Horsies!" and then SLAM out the door she went, runnin' hard as she could and cryin' just as hard.

Once I had all that figured out, why, I didn't feel bad a'tall not having an Idiot Box in the house!

 

 

Edited January 26 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

EVENTFUL, AND NOT

Jacob Keller did what old Pale Eyes had done before him.

He crossed his palms on his saddlehorn and pushed.

Where his pale eyed Pa did this to ease his poor old back, Jacob did it with a jump and a thrust, kicking out of his stirrups and yanking his boots up under him while he was still levitating off the saddle: he got his feet under him, Apple-horse had his ears laid back and his nose punched out -- a woman's scream, galloping hoofbeats, the sound of a wagon rattling right down the main street of beautiful downtown Firelands, Colorado, all combined as effectively as a steam-whistle to CLEAR THE WAY, WE'RE COMIN' THROUGH!

Jacob had no idea why the team was runaway.

He had not the least notion whether they were spooked, stung or just shied at a shadow, horses do that sometimes: all he knew was, a woman was frozen in the driver's seat, she'd lost the reins, she was SCREAMING and Jacob was DAMNED if he would put up with a woman's screams in HIS TOWN!

Jacob's feet were under him, he jumped -- horseman's legs are powerful legs -- he launched through the air, landed in the wagon-bed: he seized the back of the woman's wooden seat, swung one long leg, then another over it, dropped down beside her.

She turned to look at him -- eyes like boiled eggs, her face dead pale, her mouth open, but soundless now --

Jacob lifted his hat and winked, then mashed his Stetson firmly down on his fresh barbershop haircut and looked forward.

A wagon roared down the main street just as fast as a runaway team could carry it: men stared, shouted, a few running futilely after them: one, and only one, mounted up -- he'd vaulted the rail out of the Saloon and landed easily, on the balls of his feet, snatched his mount's reins free: a thrust, a jump and a Texas cowboy was in the saddle, lip curled, whistling, as his cutting-horse gave joyful chase.

Jacob's jump was dangerous.

Jacob's jump was fueled by youth and adrenaline and the armor a man grows when he is protecting a helpless woman.

Jacob landed on the back of the portside gelding, seized leather and locked his legs around its barrel: the horse broke gait, throwing its partner into confusion, and for a terrifying moment Jacob though they might fall and be run over by the pursuing wagon: Jacob wallowed forward, almost swimming the length of the chestnut's spine, until he could reach forward and seize one, then another of its reins.

"HO, NOW," he shouted, addressing both horses:  "HO, BOYS, HO NOW!"

The horse under him slowed and its harness-mate shook its head, not wanting to submit.

Apple-horse kept pace and Jacob kicked himself for not having trained his horse to run ahead of a runaway team to slow them, then dismissed the idea as likely to have got his horse run over and killed if he'd tried.

It took a while.

It took until they were a ways out of town to slow the runaway team.

It took longer than that for the woman in the driver's seat to surrender her death grip on its side rails.

 

Marnie looked up and smiled at this Ladies' Tea Society.

She was not in Firelands, nor was she on Earth, but legends tend to travel, and somehow the notion of Sheriff Willamina Keller, in the gown and in the character of the legendary Sarah Lynne McKenna, took root in the popular imagination, and Marnie -- as if she didn't have enough to do, what with her business ventures, her diplomatic duties, her duties as wife and mother -- well, Marnie found herself very much in demand to speak at this suddenly-popular activity.

These Tea Societies, on whichever planet, all had certain common elements: an air of gentility, and as proper a level of attire as could be arranged.

Their popularity was not diminished when Marnie made it her custom to provide the tea for her visits, for this also meant coffee, and baked goods, and sandwiches -- well-dressed men also attended, and men like being fed, and Marnie took a particular point of pride in feeding her men, even if she was the guest speaker.

She looked up from the little portable podium on a folding table, twin to the one used by the legendary Sheriff Willamina Keller:  Marnie looked over her spectacles and smiled, as if she were an old-fashioned schoolteacher giving an approving look to a particularly successful student.

"When we read the Journals Old Pale Eyes left us," she smiled, "we have to remember that it was easier to note down occurrences of significance -- like watching your son streak by on an Appaloosa stallion, and the leap from the saddle into the wagon-bed of a horse-drawn runaway."

She tilted her head a little, looking a little more intimate, as if she were about to share something less historical and more personal.

"Rarely do we see the past through the eyes of the ladies, and that's a shame."

Marnie touched a control: it was as if each member was now alone with Marnie, it was as if they were both behind a house, alone, it was as if only the two of them existed.

Marnie lifted her skirt, pressed the sole of her high button shoe on a cast iron pedal, stomped briskly: a genuine Maytag motor began its surging purr.

"Women rejoiced when machines were invented to wash clothes," she explained, as she introduced soiled trousers and shirts into the water in a very old-fashioned washer.

"Washboards were common, and they were murder on the knuckles -- I tried using one once, and I can't help but think women of the period had calluses on their knuckles!"

It was as if each individual participant was alone with the Ambassador in her McKenna gown and her knowing smile; each individual experienced it as if they, and they alone, were being addressed by this smiling illustrator of a prior era, then the meeting-room materialized around them, without the puttering, sloshing washing machine.

"One common element -- and we can infer this from experience -- little boys put things in their pockets. I remember my Mama going through pockets and pulling out harmonicas, sockets, bolts, Barlow knives and the occasional frog -- which my Mother did not like at all," she confided, looking over her spectacles again as she said it -- "but, sadly, these daily experiences are not found in the literature, and we're left with the Sheriff's observations."

She picked up a few loose sheets.

"We have letters, written from one woman to another. For the most part they are formal, they deal with major events, though there is one" -- she paused, smiled as she regarded the handwritten page -- "this one is reprinted, a copy of Old Pale Eyes' wife's communication with a confidante. The first page is missing, so we don't know to whom this was written, but Esther wrote of her husband's serious expression as he considered a field of conflict.

"He apparently joined in this conflict, and he did not win.

"As a matter of fact, as a result of this contest, he lost all that he'd brought to the contest, and not once.

"You see" -- Marnie's eyes were bright, the expression of a woman whose smile lived within, and glowed like a lamp -- "this field of contest was a circle drawn in the dirt, there in the schoolyard: the Sheriff was on his knees with a bag of marbles beside him" -- another touch, another shift, and each one in the Tea Society's gathering was suddenly standing beside Old Pale Eyes himself ... as he hunched over, planted his knuckles in the dirt, flicked his thumb forward and shot a white, cat's-eye shooter toward the other marbles in the circle.

"According to his wife," Marnie continued, as marbles clicked, as little boys shouted with delight, as eager hands snatched the marbles knocked out of the finger-drawn dirt circle -- "according to  his wife, Old Pale Eyes managed to lose the entire poke of marbles he'd brought.

"She quoted him as shaking his head and saying 'You fellas are just too good for me, but I'll be back!' -- and supposedly this hard-as-nails, knock-down-drag-out brawler, this uncompromising enforcer of the Law, personally kept the schoolboys there in Firelands supplied with marbles for a season!"

Marnie laid the papers down, folded her hands on the podium, gave her attentive, receptive audience a long, thoughtful look.

"If any of you are minded to keep a Journal, a diary, a record of the goings-on of your life," she said softly, "don't forget the smaller things. Anyone can notice a runaway team of horses, anyone can write of fire or murder or flood or avalanche, for those seize the attention, but don't forget to write about things that aren't quite so spectacular, those everyday things that honestly make life worthwhile."

 

Edited January 28 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SOBRIETY!

Sheriff Willamina Keller looked up as knuckles rapped at the frosted glass window of her office.

She laid her pen down, straightened as the door opened, as Sharon leaned in: "Sheriff? Marlene's here."

Willamina nodded, rose: she came around her desk, caught the woman as she came in, steered her to a chair, squatted.

Marlene's face was mottled, her hair was not brushed, she looked like Death on a cracker, and Willamina could feel her shivering as she pressed the woman's cold hands between hers.

"What happened?" Willamina asked quietly -- from anyone else, her abrupt, to-the-point words would have been impatient, offensive, but from Willamina -- spoken in soft voice, with just the two of them there -- it was the voice of someone she could trust.

"I drank," Marlene gasped.

Willamina's hands tightened ever so gently -- enough to say I'm here, I'm listening, without saying I'm the Sheriff and you're in the bag!

"Go on," Willamina almost whispered.

Marlene's head came up.

Her eyes were wide now, wide with fear, wide with memories.

 

Marlene didn't mean to drink, really she didn't, but it felt so good, one wasn't enough so she had another and then she had another one and the glow detonated in her belly and she kept on until she felt her teeth going numb, one at a time, and she realized she'd have to go home now.

 

"I knew I shouldn't drive," she whispered, "but I've done it so often ... the car knows its way home, it's always gotten me home even when I didn't remember driving it home.

"The snow was heavy and getting heavier and I was pushing through drifts and" -- she pulled her hands free, thrust one out -- "there she was, there she was! -- on that big black horse!" -- Marlene's eyes were wide again, panicked as she pointed at the empty wall behind Willamina's desk.

"I nailed the brakes and I skidded and I stopped and the snow quit and the wind stopped and it was clear and I was about to drive off the road and down over the mountain."

Marlene pulled her elbows in and dropped her face in her hands and shivered again, hard, then she raised her face and looked at Willamina as if hoping desperately for --

-- for what? Willamina wondered.

Absolution?

Sympathy?

"I called you because you came to the AA meeting and you said 'Hello, I'm Willamina, and I am the child of an alcoholic parent,' and you were just you."

Marlene's voice was a whisper now.

"I got drunk again and I almost ran over a cliff and I got stopped by a hallucination riding a big black horse."

Sharon looked up as the Sheriff emerged, her arm around Marlene, her good coat around Marlene's shoulders.

"Sharon, I'm taking Marlene home. Please hold my calls."

 

The tan Sheriff's cruiser hummed past the Mercantile.

Neither driver nor passenger looked to the side, looked up the alley between the Mercantile and the newspaper building adjacent.

They did not see two mounted riders, one on a tail-slashing, impatiently-head-bobbing Appaloosa stallion, they did not see a young woman in a riding-skirted McKenna gown astride a truly huge, shining-black-furred Frisian that made the Appaloosa look small.

They never saw the two pair of pale eyes that watched them pass.

And they never heard the quiet voice that said "Little Sis, I'm proud of you."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GET A ROPE!

Firehouse, Sheriff's Office, police station/town hall, water plant, sewer plant, bank, post office, the All-Night, the Silver Jewel: for a moment, everyone stopped, everyone looked around as the lights flickered, then -- muffled, quiet, hidden, patient, waiting -- machinery started, generators began turning, the lights came back on at full power.

Computers on their uninterruptible power supplies, never missed a beat, nor did the radio system: here and there refrigerators or freezers clicked uncertainly, then shut themselves off for a minute before restarting.

Sheriff Linn Keller looked down at a little boy's big and innocent eyes and handed him a chocolate-iced doughnut.

"Like some coffee?" he asked, and the little boy nodded solemnly: Linn tapped him out about a half cup, added a drizzle of milk, handed it to the preschooler.

Jacob Keller was still very young, but Jacob Keller could strut with the best of 'em, and he strutted over to his Gammaw Willamina and held the doughnut out to her.

Willamina laughed and picked him up, set him on a wooden chair, there in the lobby, across from the coffee pot: she squatted easily, ignoring the twisted-celery sounds from her knees as she did.

"That's yours," she whispered, brushing a delicate fingertip against his cold-reddened nose: "you eat that!"

"It'll make you big and strong," Linn mumbled from around a mouthful of doughnut: "look what it did for me!"

"That coffee will stunt your growth," Sharon called over her shoulder from the Dispatcher's desk: "if Willamina hadn't fed him coffee in his baby bottle, he'd be twelve foot tall by now!"

Jacob looked at his Pa with those big, solemn, light-blue eyes, then he blinked and looked at the dispatcher and then at his Gammaw before taking a contemplative bite of chocolate-iced doughnut.

Someone asked the Sheriff if he wasn't afraid of getting fat, eating that stuff, and his wife laughed and said something about burning it all off with ranch work, let alone chasing after criminals -- this, the day the Sheriff honestly outran, tackled and wrestled to a standstill, a skinny high school kid whose foray into crime was brought to a fast and less than gentle halt, never mind it involved a flying tackle, legs spinning in the air in a four-prong cartwheel, and both Sheriff and prisoner ending up in a winded pile on the ground, right before The Bear Killer came running up and began happily face-washing the struggling captive.

Bruce Jones admitted later that "it was the damndest thing I'd ever seen a police K9 do!" -- at least until the Sheriff allowed in a quiet voice as it showed the kid he'd been caught and he could either be friends with The Bear Killer, or he could be his next meal, choice was up to him.

It was not terribly cold out that winter's day.

The Sheriff stood in front of the glass double doors, looked out through the combination foyer and airlock -- a design some unknown genius insisted on, as it preserved heat in winter -- he addressed the dispatcher he knew was watching him.

"Sharon," he said, "I need to get a rope."

He turned and looked at her with mischief in his expression and a laugh shining in his eyes, and Sharon knew she was about to get her leg pulled.

"Okay, I'll bite ... who's on the hit parade today?"

The Sheriff unbuttoned his uniform blouse pocket, pulled out a cheap spiral bound notebook, flipped it open.

"I consulted ... one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight separate sources this morning," he said quietly. "My confuser shows the outdoor temp in the bottom left of the screen and it said we had 3 degrees. I consulted six separate weather sources and they gave me ... 7, 13, 6, 7, 7, and 12."

He frowned.

"I'm sorry. That 12 was my outdoor thermometer at home."

"So ... you're going to hang every weather forecaster this side of the Mr. and Mrs. Sippi?"

The Sheriff blinked in honest surprise, then laughed and shook his head.

"Mr. and Mrs. Sippi," he repeated quietly. "Sharon, I've contaminated you!"

"Constant exposure," she scolded, shaking a pencil at him, "constant exposure!"

"Yeah, trust me to cause trouble," he muttered.  "No, I'm not gonna hang anybody, but I can tie a noose of thirteen turns!"

"Now that," Sharon raised an eyebrow, "I do not doubt!"

"Here's the thing."  Linn came over, hiked a leg and dropped his bony backside on the corner of her desk: "if I get me a rope I can tie it on a tree branch and use that for my weather monitor."

Sharon raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"If it's wet it's raining," she speculated.

"Something like that. If it's froze stiff or all frosted up, it's cold, and I don't have to worry about what the temp really is. Kind of like a man with one watch knows the time, but if he has two watches he is never sure!"

Sharon leaned back in her chair and thoughtfully tapped the eraser end of her yellow #2 pencil against her chin.

"You know," she said thoughtfully, "you might have something there," and then she reached for the phone: "Sheriff's Office," and Linn headed back toward the cellblock for a general pasear, not quite sure whether his dispatcher found wisdom in his rope or in his timepiece.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BUSTER

Angela laid a hand on her Daddy's arm and gave him that look that generally twisted his spine around her little finger.

"But Daddy," she said softly, "it's cute!"

Victoria, not to be outdone, claimed her Daddy's other forearm and added, "I wanna play with it too!"

Linn laughed, dropped his arms and squatted: he gathered both his daughters in his arms and looked from one to the other.

"Ladies," he said, "do you know your Gammaw was a cat skinner?"

Two pale eyed little girls looked at one another uncertainly.

"How big a cat?" Victoria asked, imagining her Gammaw with a skinning knife, removing the pelt from a strung up African lion.

"She's run D9s like I run a Jeep," Linn grinned. "She wore high heels when she did."

"I can do heels," Angela said solemnly.

"I don't doubt you can," Linn said quietly, feeling yet again that sudden I-just-realized feeling that his little girl was growing up faster than he'd really like!

"Ladies," Linn said, "you know your Uncle Will went to ER."

Two little girls nodded solemnly.
"You know he was swinging a mattock, busting up that ice ridge the snow plow left in front of his driveway."

Two juvenile heads nodded in grave agreement.

"You know he got spoken to by your Mama and Marnie."

Two pale eyed little girls managed to look absolutely innocent as they assented in silence.

"Now you know snow packs down and half melts and turns to ice and you have to bust it up so you can get out of the driveway, and that's what Uncle Will was doing."

Two sets of long, curved eyelashes batted at their long tall Daddy, the way little girls will do when they are doing their best to require their long tall Daddy to visit the chiropractor yet again, to get his spine untwisted from around their cute little pink fingers.

Linn released his coatsleeves from around his daughters' tenderloins, stood.

"It's settled, then," he said. "We'll do it."

Victoria pattered her little pink hands together and gave a quiet, juvenile "Yaaaay," while bouncing on her toes: Angela stepped back with a quiet, knowing smile, and her Daddy went inside the rental building to arrange delivery of a genuine D2 Cat to Uncle Will's house.

The diminutive Caterpillar was overkill, he knew, but he honestly wanted to play with it -- never mind his daughters just co-opted him out of the experience, in all likelihood -- father and daughters paid close attention to Bother Kittle's instruction on fuel, oil, lubrication and operation, startup and shutdown: Linn signed the rental agreement and paid cash as he always did, and he and his daughters returned to their Daddy's Jeep.

Linn looked at his watch and smiled.

"I reckon we can stop by and see Uncle Will," he said, "then we'll stop at the Silver Jewel and get lunch. Brother Kittle will give me a call when he's ready to deliver, that way we can meet him there."

Two daughters of the Mountains and the Lawman nodded their understanding.

"Can I wear heels like Gammaw did?" Angela asked hopefully, and Linn laughed.

"I would not recommend it, darlin'," he said gently. "Your Gammaw did but it was summertime and warm. I'd reckon you'd ought to dress for winter."

 

Angela eased the throttle up and leaned to the side, looked down the length of the engine, lowered the blade.

Steel tracks on mostly bare pavement clumped slowly forward and the ice ridge that resisted their pale eyed Uncle's efforts with a mattock, experienced catastrophic structural failure under the influence of a steel blade and a 35-horse, four-cylinder Diesel engine.

Angela busted the ice ridge loose with the care and precision of a surgeon: she started at the far right edge, broke it free enough to move it, but not enough to break the mailbox post behind: she looked behind, backed, angled the tractor and this time she took the broke-off end of the ice ridge with the blade at an angle -- the blade didn't angle, but she came into it on a diagonal and broke it free for the rest of its length.

Angela laughed with genuine delight, while Victoria planted gloved knuckles on her belt and bulled out her bottom jaw and muttered darkly, "I wanted to play too!"

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MICHAEL'S FLYING CLUB

Michael Keller breathed silently through his open mouth.

He wasted no time cussing himself for not having Lightning under him.

He had to work with what he had, and what he had, frankly, felt pretty damned puny.

He eased his head around the big rock and looked, then looked a little wider, slicing the pie.

He saw what he knew wanted to kill him.

It looked something like a cross between a water buffalo and a Cape buffalo, only leaner, probably faster.

Michael hadn't meant to come here.

He'd mis-keyed the Iris and landed in the wrong place.

He saw the waterboo -- he deliberately thought of it as the lesser-lethal of the two -- it was some fifty yards distant.

Not far.

Michael knew how fast the African Cape Buffalo was.

Michael knew the Cape buffalo was short tempered and deadly.

Michael knew all he had between himself and a meeting at the Pearly Gates were his wits and an Ithaca shotgun, and right now that twelve-bore felt just almighty puny in his hands.

He ran a fast inventory.

His Ithaca was custom made with the extended magazine: eight in the tube, one up the pipe: he'd come here stoked with 00 buck, which was normally good medicine for anything coming or going, at least until he dialed the wrong number and landed on a planet where most things bigger than him were deadly to him.

He knew the 'boo had good hearing.

He'd have to be careful.

Michael had four slugs -- four one-ounce, twelve-gauge slugs -- he eased the action open, then closed, open again -- a quick peek, with a slug ready to shove in the tube --

The 'boo was grazing.

Michael's chest felt tight.

A nearby star's mass ejection played hell with Iris transport: his wrist-unit had a single red dot on the display, which meant Michael was stuck where he was.

He had few choices.

He eased out another two rounds, then thumbed in his only four slug rounds, hearing the magazine spring hiss as it compressed.

He dropped the 00 rounds in his left hand coat pocket, took a deep, cleansing breath.

He looked around the rock again.

The 'boo was looking right at him.

Pale eyes and black eyes met and Michael tasted copper.

The 'boo's muscles bunched and it launched straight for him.

Michael knew he'd play hell trying to climb this rock.

He responded as he'd been trained.

Michael's thumb hit the emergency-extract on his wrist-unit, the shotgun came up and he set the fiber optic right between the charging buffalo's eyes, right in the center of that bony boss that could probably deflect a 20mm antiaircraft round.

Michael fired -- the gun felt like it cycled itself, muscle memory taking over -- he drove a second slug after the first, saw the greyish smear where the first slug hit -- 

 

Marnie's voice was tight as she asked her pilot, "Are we in range?"

Acceleration pressed her deeper into her co-pilot's seat as the flight-lieutenant drove through atmosphere, as wings deployed, as fingers with eyes keyed in a command.

Her pilot pulled back on the stick, brought the nose up: this planet had no aircraft, it had few inhabitants, and none on this continent: they were not near Mach, the gravity-induction propulsion was silent, the Diplomatic shuttle's wings cut through the air like sharpened blades through flesh, and with as much sound.

It was not until the hatchway behind the slid open and Michael leaned head and shoulders into the cockpit and said "Permission to come aboard," that Marnie had her answer.

 

The shuttle's sensors were absolutely top notch.

Michael watched without comment as he watched the recording.

The 'boo stumbled with the first hit, staggered with the second: it took several moments for the startled, pained beast to shake off the sudden impact of being hit with two, one-ounce lead slugs.

They were out of range by the time the 'boo decided to do anything but stabilize his sudden, painful imbalance.

Marnie watched the feedback with Michael as her pilot plotted a course away from the troublesome star: they'd be most of an hour getting far enough away to safely Iris back to their own system.

Michael was silent as he watched his own image come out from around the rock and drive two rounds of flying war club into the approaching four-hooved meat masher.

Marnie nodded slowly in approval, looked at her little brother, looked at the Ithaca in its rack -- a repurposed gunrack from one of her Daddy's early pickup trucks, now bolted to the bulkhead for this very purpose.

"A slug didn't do much good," Michael admitted, then looked very directly at his pale eyed sister.  "I am just awful glad you got me out when you did!"

"We were in the neighborhood," Marnie shrugged, then replayed the recording, stopped it right after the first slug belted the 'boo's boss.

"Damn," she whispered.

"Might as well smack it with a club," Michael muttered bleakly.

Marnie gave him a knowing look, reached over, squeezed his forearm with a lace-gloved hand.

"I think that's what you did," she said with a quiet smile: "you introduced him to Michael's Flying Club!"

"Iris in three minutes," the Flight-Lieutenant called cheerfully.

"Abut time," Marnie sighed. "I'm starving!" -- then she leaned back, looked through the open hatchway into the cockpit. "What's on the menu, Lieutenant?"

"Buffalo burgers, ma'am, the Wednesday special."

"Don't say it," Marnie murmured with a warning note in her voice and a suspicious look in her eyes.

Michael grinned and addressed their pilot.

"Would you know if they can make that a club sandwich?"

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CRUNCHY FRIES

The hospital didn't have any clear regulations forbidding the presence of livestock in the children's ward, and neither Michael nor Victoria bothered to ask permission.

Dana opened her eyes and saw something huge, pink, bristle-furred and moist hanging six inches in front of her face.

It took her a few moments to realize this misshapen lump of ugliness was a Fanghorn nose, then the rest of the Fanghorn came into focus.

Thunder turned his head sideways and laid his cheek carefully -- carefully! -- across Dana's belly, half-grunting, half-whistling as he did: Dana closed her eyes and summoned her strength and managed to work a flannel-sleeved arm out from under the hospital sheet, managed to power her arm up through heavy layers of clay and against multiple gravities, until she was able to caress silk-fine Fanghorn fur.

Michael was out in the hall, discussing Dana's recent back surgery with three white-coated physicians, his questions unusually specific, his language couched in that subdialect of surgery within the foreign language of medicine -- but of course he did, he himself was a survivor of an overwhelmingly major back surgery, a procedure that was taught in medical schools throughout the Thirteen Star Systems.

Dana did not care about any of this.

She had a big wide head laying across her, and she had warm and living fur under her fingers, and for this one moment, before she tried to move, she was not in pain.

 

Linn looked at surveillance video of the big buff that Michael encountered.

The computer helpfully superimposed the black silhouette of a six foot man beside the beast.

Linn frowned at the comparison, considered just how BIG that boneheaded buffalo really was.

He called up comparisons of hoof size vs his own boot size, how big the forelegs were as compared to his own diameter at the belt buckle equator, and finally he queried specifics on skull thickness and armor capabilities of the skull along its X, Y and Z axes.

He leaned back, finally, his bottom jaw shoved out as he frowned, blinked.

Michael, he thought, I'm just pretty damned glad you're not a greasy paste on some other planet!

His wrist-unit chimed: he touched a control and Michael's hologram -- well, half his hologram, from the belt up -- appeared like a ghost standing through his desk, grinning at him.

"Dana came through surgery in good shape, sir."

"Glad to hear it. Let's have the unpleasant part."

"She'll be on that walker another month."

"Like hell," Linn muttered.

Michael laughed. "That's what she said!"

"I'll get hold of the International Olympic Committee."

Michael's mobile face flowed into confusion:  "Sir?"

"She's elevated throwing that damned walker to an Olympic sport. The Walker Toss. Ought to be popular."

Michael's smile was subdued, as was his quiet, "Yes, sir."

"Michael, you told me of one planet that was only half terraformed, and native life forms were taking over the earthlike part. The one where apples had switchblade spikes that drove into anyone stupid enough to try to pick one."

"Yes, sir, I remember the place."

"Is that where you were?"

"No, sir. This was somewhere else."

"What was it, Planet Africa, where everything is big and murderous?"

Michael grinned. "That's what I already named it."

"Killer bees?"

"Yes, sir, they have 'em. My doctor wanted to know whether I'd drunk any of the water."

"Why?"

"Bilharzia, sir. River blindness. It's not the same organism, it's like bilharzia on steroids."

"Did you?"

"No siree bobtail I did not, sir!" Michael -- or, rather, his hologram -- declared firmly, then he grinned: "Honestly, sir, I had no time!"

"That looked like a situation. Well done on delaying the attack until you could be extracted."

"Thank you, sir, it kind of worked out."

"I told Marnie I would admire to buy her flight-lieutenant a beer."

"I already did, sir, and he told me he was looking forward to having a beer in the original Silver Jewel!"

Linn laughed quietly, nodded.

"Dana," he said, and Michael sobered.

"She'll be kind of sore, sir, but nowhere near as sore as if they'd used conventional surgical techniques."

Linn nodded again.

"Let her know I'll be there tonight."

"Will do, sir."

 

Dana walked her patient old mare up to the drive-thru window of the All-Night.

Her Daddy watched as she handed over cash money, as she accepted drink and a paper sack, as she walked her line patient old grey over to where her Daddy waited.

He already had his order.

He sat on the picnic table, boots on the newspaper he'd half unfolded on the sittin' board.

Dana held drink cup and paper sack in one hand, tore the paper sleeve from her straw with her teeth, stabbed the straw through the cup's straw port like she was knifing a personal enemy: she took a long drink, grabbed three fries, shoved them in her mouth and chewed, eyes closed with pleasure.

"Oh, Gawd," she mumbled, "you have no idea how good this is!"

The Sheriff bit into a fried chicken plank, frowned as he chewed: he swallowed, muttered "Buffalo need salt," sprinkled salt over the chicken, letting the excess cascade into his open paper sack where he'd dumped his fries in loose: he held the chicken between his teeth as he folded the paper sack over, shook it to salt the contents uniformly, set it back down on one thigh and took another bite of the improved, still-warm, deep-fried chicken.

"How's your back?"

"Tired and sore," she admitted. 

"How many people asked about school?"

"Not many. I told 'em saddle time is rehab for me."

"Did they believe you?"

Dana shrugged, took a bite of chicken.

"I'll leave it to you," Linn said quietly, "to know when you've had enough saddle for the day."

Dana took a quick sip from her paper-sleeved cup's bright-red straw, gave her pale eyed Daddy a long, thoughtful look.

"Thank you, Daddy."

Linn reached into his sack, pinched up some more salted fries, raised an eyebrow.

"For what, darlin'?"

"This picnic," she said. "Hospitals are boring and they don't have these crunchy fries!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 31 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

STRUT!

Tank was a Malinois.

Tank was one of a line of Sheriff's K9 officers.

Tank had his pack and Tank protected his pack and when his handler and family went out to play in the snow, Tank went right with them.

Dana watched through binoculars as Tank tilted his head and watched laughing children pile on a toboggan, as they shrieked their way downhill: she was interrupted when Michael held a big mug of hot cocoa where the slight breeze could carry the scent to her -- by the time she drank half of it and looked again, Tank was halfway down the hill, on his side, sliding beside the toboggan.

Dana's legs shook a little, her back ached, but she stood, insulated snow boots anchored in the knee deep whiteness, her smile broadening under the binoculars as she realized she didn't know which delighted her more, happy children or that idiot Malinois who abandoned all canine propriety and took two long running jumps after the downhill departing sled, and slid along on his side!

Michael waited, patient, silent: finally his little sis lowered her glass and said quietly, "I'm about froze out," and they saddled back up and went back to the house.

Dana was still nowhere near full strength -- Michael realized this when she allowed him to broom snow off her nylon snow pants, to unzip their legs up to the knees and pull off her snow boots for her: like her older sisters, she was fiercely independent, and when she let Michael do this for her, he knew she was nearly at her limit.

Michael stacked their boots in the boot tray to melt off without making a puddled mess.

He got his little sis situated on their Pa's big overstuffed sofa, he got her bundled up under quilts; Snowdrift was with the Sheriff's office that day, so Dana had to make do with insulation and another big mug of hot cocoa, which frankly did not displease her at all.

Later that day, after Dana thawed out and took a nap, her eyes wandered to a picture book her Daddy left open on his desk, a picture book she'd seen before: she slipped sockfoot over to the desk and smiled a little as she looked at Sarah Lynne McKenna's formal portrait, then she turned the page, where Sarah was standing at a horse's head -- a truly huge, tall, broad, powerful, shining-black mare: her gloved hand was under the mare's jaw, an affectionate posture; the photo was sharp, crisp, all but the tail: there was motion blur with the tail, and Dana smiled, for she'd never known a horse that could keep from slashing its tail.

Frisian, Dana thought, and she looked up some videos of the Frisian breed, and stopped and smiled again.

The rider looked almost tiny atop the big mare in the video, and the mare was not moving like a big, heavy horse.

She danced.

She danced, she minced, she absolutely strutted, she was obviously showing off: Dana watched the video clip, read the comments.

Daddy said Gammaw had a Frisian, Dana thought, trying to remember: she couldn't recall ever seeing a horse that big anywhere near her place, or where her Gammaw's pasture still existed -- the old home place was still in the family, she'd stayed there herself, she knew Angela used it rather often, as did nurses she sponsored at their local hospital.

She replayed the video, her chin in her hands, elbows on her Daddy's desk, with the dreamy expression a teen-aged girl will give a movie star's photograph in a magazine.

She looked up as the door opened, as Snowdrift surged in, came around the desk, greeted her with a snuffy-snuffy and a companionable lick.

Her Daddy hooked off his boots and hung up Stetson and coat, and looked at his little girl the way a Daddy will in such moments.

"Must be good," he said quietly, "the way you're lookin' at the screen!"

Dana nodded slowly, tilted her head with interest, looked down at the image of a serious-faced Sarah Lynne McKenna standing beside her big black Snowflake-horse.

"Daddy," Dana asked, with the natural curiosity of a child, "did Snowflake strut?"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

ONE STICK OF POWDER

Old Pale Eyes begat Jacob and several others, and Jacob begat Michael and several others, and when in the fullness of time, the Reverend Michael Keller, Doctor of Divinity, father, husband, leader of their Church, published author, scholar and slinger of hay bales and second hand bull feed, leaned back in his chair and studied the accounts of a new wartime innovation -- something the Germans considered promising, the unterseeboot -- his own begotten son tilted his head curiously as he slid in beside his leaned-back-against-the-wall father and looked at illustrations, read words, frowned and looked at his Pa with puzzled eyes.

Michael looked at his son, his expression gentle.

"Do you understand how this underwater craft works?" he asked in a gentle voice.

Joshua looked at his Pa and replied solemnly, "Sir, the Ethiopian eunuch replied 'How may I understand it, save that a man explain it to me?' "

Michael's smile broadened and he nodded, for it was another moment when a son opened his mouth and his father's voice fell out: Michael was fond of quoting Scripture, and he realized -- yet again -- that he really should not be surprised that his sons should do the same thing.

His chair, unimpressed by intergeneration ecclesiastical quotations, chose that moment to slide out from under the man: Michael's eyes slammed shut as the back of his head bounced off the wall and then the floor, as his feet shot straight up toward the ceiling, as he came to final rest still in the chair, flat on his back, holding the text in both hands as young Joshua looked at his father with big, concerned eyes, waited to see what his Pa would do in the face of this sudden and most unexpected indignity.

Michael opened one eye, kept the other screwed shut.

"Joshua?" he asked, his voice tight.

"Yes, sir?"

"Joshua, do you remember your Mama telling you not to lean your chair back against the wall as you read?"

"Yes, sir."

Michael wiggled a little, ran a fast systems check: sure enough, his dignity was bruised, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage, other than the back of his gourd.

Michael rolled over, handed Joshua his book: Joshua marked the page with a finger, held the book, stepped back to give his Pa room to work.

Michael came up on all fours, then rolled back on the balls of his feet and stood: he took a moment to regain dignity and equilibrium, in that order, and then accepted the tome from his son.

"Thank you, Joshua."

Michael stood the chair back up, regarded the scrape marks on the varnished floor, nodded.

"I'll have to take care of that," he said mildly, then grinned:  "I should have listened to your Mama!"

A rather uncertain Joshua considered that perhaps silence was his best reply.

Michael placed the chair, sat again, opened the book.

"I've always wondered how they navigated, underwater," Michael said in a soft and thoughtful voice. "Obviously they do, and they do it well, but" -- he shook his head -- "I'm afraid I would have to use the periscope constantly!"

"What's a periscope, Pa?"

Michael paged backward in the book -- two, three, four -- found the illustration he wanted, tilted it so Joshua could see.

"Here," he explained. "They raise a mast with prisms -- here, and here -- they can turn it too look round about."

"They must have a pretty good water seal," Joshua murmured thoughtfully.

Michael nodded agreement with his son's incisive speculation.

Joshua looked up, looked out the window.

"I slept in," he said, and Michael heard a degree of disappointment in his son's voice.

"How's that?"

"Sir, I wanted to be at that groundhog's hole this mornin' with a war club."

"Ah," Michael nodded, understanding. "He saw his shadow."

"He did, sir, or at least he saw a shadow."

"Have you been to the groundhog hole?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did it look like he'd come out?"

"No, sir."

"How, then, could he have seen his shadow?"

Joshua thought for a moment, considered, then grinned: "Sir, maybe he's got a periscope."

The Reverend Doctor Michael Keller considered this, somehow managing a solemn face: "He would then see a shadow, not necessarily his own."

Father and son looked at one another, both managing (with some effort) not to crack a smile.

"How would one go about defeating such a creature using good German engineering?" Michael asked: Joshua's head tilted back, bright-blue eyes tracking along the ceiling as he thought, and Michael remembered being very young, and seeing his pale eyed old Granddad study the ceiling in that identical manner.

Joshua looked at his Pa, the corners of his eyes tightening with a developing smile: "Sir, I reckon a body could unscrew the top plate and drop in One Stick of Powder!"

The Reverend Doctor Michael Keller, husband, father, omnivorous reader and cheerful puller of legs, gripped his son's shoulder in approval and nodded, delight in his eyes and color in his cheeks.

"Joshua," he said with a fatherly nod, "you just might have something there!"
 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PORTHOLE

Michael noticed Dana was starting to sag.

Snow stung their cheeks as they rode: they were dressed for the weather -- it wasn't terribly cold, but it was cold enough, and Michael knew where to get in out of the weather, and that's where they were heading.

"Dana!"

Dana lowered her head, let the wind press her Stetson harder down on her braids as she turned her head a little to look at him almost sidelong.

"We'll break trail. We're close now."

The Bear Killer watched this exchange, scented the wind: he turned, looking long into the gathering dusk behind them, then turned and followed, his own progress made easier by a Fanghorn and a mule trampling a path for him.

Dana trusted her mule to follow Michael.

She ached, she was tired: she gripped the bitless reins with fisted mittens, willed herself to not be cold, willed the pain onto the wind so it could be carried away from her.

This did not work, of course, but she did try.

Dana looked up, surprised: it was suddenly dark -- as if they rode through a curtain, into night -- the wind stopped and so did her mule.

Dana raised her head, lifted her chin from its breath-warmed nest of hand-knit muffler scarf, looked around, frowned.

She heard a chuffing, scraping sound, saw a flicker, almost a flash of light -- just a little -- she squinted, frowned, trying to see -- she turned, saw the rounded opening behind where they'd ridden in out of the snow --

She turned again as fire began eating happily at a stack of kindling.

Michael must have had that ready, she thought.

She saw him turn from the just-ignited fire, take a couple steps, squat: another scraping click, another fire.

Two fires? she thought. 

One for each of us?

Isn't that carrying this brother-and-sister thing a little too far?

Dana looked around, and so did her mule: the patient old fellow sidestepped over to a handy rock.

Dana gratefully used it as a mounting block, or in this case, a dismount block: she stood, looked around, letting her eyes get used to the dark, then took two careful steps down to the sandy, dry floor.

She sagged back against the rock, The Bear Killer cuddling up against her chaps.

Michael was busy: he disappeared into the dark, while Dana contemplated the vapor cloud of her own breath: she heard something metallic, then Michael finally reappeared, unrolled a foam mat, then a sleeping bag.

He looked up at her and smiled a little.

"I've had this place ready for some time," he said quietly.

Dana wrapped her misery around her like a cloak, one arm over The Bear Killer's shoulders as he leaned his big head across her belly.

Michael worked quickly, efficiently: they had a lantern set up, hanging from a hook on a ground stake; Michael had a pot of water on, though where he got the water, she wasn't sure, and when he pressed an insulated mug of honey-sweetened tea into her hands, she really didn't care.

Supper was a thick chili, hot biscuits and tea: after supper, Michael got Dana to pull off her boots and lay down, and The Bear Killer was happy to occupy as much of her sleeping bag as he possibly could, which meant Michael threw a quilt over them both and no attempt was made to zip up the bag.

Two fires reflected off the curved, native stone wall, Dana's bed between them: a full belly, a warm, furry cuddle buddy and the sound of horse and mule eating -- what are they eating? she remembered wondering, then she surrendered her grip on consciousness, too tired even to give a mental shrug as she realized Michael must've planned pretty well if he even had feed for the livestock.

Woodsmoke rose and disappeared; Michael's tread was silent as he went to the opening, activated two devices he'd installed some time before: the entrance was now proof against unauthorized entry, whether by animal, entity or cold gusts of wind: Fanghorn and patient old mule tolerated each other with a studied indifference, as if each considered the other somewhat socially inferior, without being so impolite as to make it obvious: when Michael finally lay down, he, too, lay on a padded mattress, unrolled for the purpose, and necessary: he'd chosen Dana's mattress carefully, for he'd learned the hard way his own overhauled back did not take kindly to cheap or inferior padding.

 

Dana woke to the smell of bacon frying.

Michael pointed her to a startlingly out of place door, knowing that Dana was a girl, and girls like certain creature comforts when they get up: when she emerged, she was freshly showered and in clean clothes, she sat cross legged with only a little discomfort, at least for five minutes, when she had to change her posture -- but sit she did, and with a plate of bacon and eggs, with hot biscuits and hot tea.

Dana saw the wood he'd laid in was almost depleted; she shook out blankets and helped him stow goods back into a secure metal locker, breakfast dishes, frying pan, mugs, utensils, all went into a metal hatch Dana recognized, a hatch that looked at once competently chosen, and jarringly out of place: it did not take long for the cave to be cleaned up, even to the point of hot ashes and coals in metal pans Dana hadn't noticed the night before, were dragged into a hatch similar to the one in which their dishes were stacked earlier.

"Story at eleven," Michael said quietly as he saddled Fanghorn and mule.

They rode to the entrance, where daylight was crowding through the overcast.

Michael deactivated the doorway and Dana pulled her muffler scarf up over her nose and mouth again.

The Bear Killer shook himself, scented the wind.

Mule, Fanghorn, Mountain Mastiff and two pale eyed children of the mountains, rode out into the fresh snow on a planet whose mountains were far from the ones in which they grew up.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE SIGN SAYS SILVER JEWEL

Michael Keller looked around, as he always did, sizing up the snow-silent street.

It might have looked like this, Michael thought: buildings were thrown up in an apparent hurry, they were thrown up fast and cheap, and then afterward, effort was taken to wind proof them, and very likely, water proof the roofs.

A Fanghorn and a mule stopped in front of an establishment that showed the most foot traffic: a local riding bovine of some sort was tethered in front, and Michael considered that Lightning was making this native riding beast uncomfortable.

"I think there's a livery out back," Dana offered quietly, and Michael nodded.

They looked up at this rough, sawmill-plank structure, smiled a little as they read the hand painted sign on the plank overhead:

The SILVER JEWEL

Brother and younger sister regarded this proud pronouncement for several long moments, then they turned away from the restless rider-beast and walked their mounts down the alley beside this Silver Jewel, toward where Dana glimpsed what looked like a livery.

A wrinkled fellow lurched out from the livery and openly stared at these two snowy figures, then at the big black Mountain Mastiff happily following their broken trail: the snow wasn't bad here, only about knee deep or so, but The Bear Killer was not about to refuse a broken trail.

Lightning bellied down and looked very frankly at the man who'd come out at their approach.

To her credit, her chin was tucked, which minimized the appearance of her protuberant canines.

"Wonder if Lightning might guest with you for a bit," Michael grinned as the big Fanghorn bellied down: the goggling liveryman watched as Michael reached up and helped his little sis out of her mule's saddle, then waded through snow, the two saddlemounts following.

The hostler blinked, nodded, led the way: Dana followed, waited just inside, smiling a little at the familiar smell of hay, of straw, of fresh manure -- cow manure, she realized, distinctly different from second hand horse feed -- 

Don't they have horses here yet? she thought, her hand resting companionably on The Bear Killer's shoulder as he leaned, warm and strong, against her leg.

The hostler stopped, looked at Michael, looked up at the big Fanghorn.

"You're Michael," he said.

"Yep," Michael grinned, thrusting out his hand, "and I need your good sound advice."

"My ... advice?" the hostler blinked, jaw dropping open as the realization hit bottom that here was a famous figure he'd only seen on the Inter-System!

"I made a list," Michael said, straight faced, "but there's only two things on it because I hate long lists."

Michael raised a finger.

"First off, what do I pay you with. Every world has its own currency. I need to know whether this one uses coin, bills, shin plasters, Yankee greenbacks, jewels or what.

"Last on the list" -- Michael raised a second finger and grinned again, that contagious grin that pulled the hostler into his confidence -- "does your Silver Jewel yonder have coffee?"

 

Two days later, Michael ho'd Thunder and Cyclone.

They were harnessed up to a sleigh with unusually broad runners: they stopped in front of this world's Silver Jewel, rough though it was: Michael read the mashed-down snow and smiled a little as he heard a few tentative notes being played on the brand-new piano inside.

Michael helped the ladies out of the sleigh and through the snow, as soon as they came through the cheap-feeling, lightweight front door, the place went silent.

Michael had a scandalously-dressed young woman on each arm, and two following: he looked at the openly-staring barkeep and asked loudly, "Are those new stoves workin' all right?"

The barkeep blinked, opened his mouth, then grinned: "They are!"

"I promised you a proper saloon piano," Michael replied, still in a loud voice, intending that he should be heard, "and if there is a piano, there should be DANCING GIRLS!"

Dana glided forward -- demure, ladylike, in a proper McKenna gown: a patron vacated the piano stool and Dana daintily laid a well padded, scarlet-with-gold-trim, tassel-cornered pillow on the stool, then swung her backside, smoothed her skirt under her, sat.

Her hands lifted, hovered, hesitated: Michael stepped confidently toward the rough little stage, spun a chair into place, helped the ladies, one at a time, up onto the stage.

Four young ladies, recruited by Michael himself, four young ladies with powdered faces and jacked-up hairdos, four young ladies in stockings and dancing heels and sparkly, dangly earrings, seized their long skirts and pulled, tossed them free, leaving their long, stockinged legs exposed -- scandalous! -- Dana's fingers drove down, and this rough copy of the Silver Jewel was suddenly filled by the brisk, compelling notes of the Can-Can, punctuated by hard heels hitting the boards in flawless rhythm with the music.

The dancing girls were young, pretty, talented: men who'd come for companionship and a drink on a cold winter's night, found themselves unexpectedly entertained, for Michael only gave three days' notice that he was having new stoves installed in this Silver Jewel, that he was bringing in a piano and a piano-player, that he was bringing Entertainment -- he never said they would be lovely, leggy lassies, but when he leered at the barkeep, intentionally pitching his voice to be heard, when he winked and said "En-ter-tain-ment" the way a man will when he has something less than entirely proper in mind -- well, that night, this offworld version of The Silver Jewel, gained both hard assets, and reputation.

Michael knew every world with access to the Inter-System (and that meant every last world in the Confederacy!) knew of The Silver Jewel, and knew of Firelands: he knew that even rough little remote saloons boasted the proud name over their door or on the front of their establishment, and Michael knew that he could have demanded they remove this plagiarizing name, and probably gotten it done.

He also knew it was easier to go with a stream's flow than to dam or divert the flow.

These outlying, smaller communities benefitted from what he was offering, and what he offered, was commerce.

Donating stoves to keep the place warm -- having them installed and wood delivered -- then loaning a piano and providing a piano player, and giving it three days for word of mouth to spread -- Michael knew this Silver Jewel would have a boost in business, and what's good for business is good for the community.

It wasn't long before inquiries were route through the barkeep, from the local church, and the following Sunday, just as people were congregating for morning services, a sleigh drawn by three Fanghorns arrived, followed by two more, these drawn by matched mules with black harness, with silver harness furniture hand engraved with roses: good men and true, recruited for the task, laid down a timber ramp and muscled a brand-new piano up and into the church, down the aisle and into position, and once again, Dana glided over to the piano and laid a screaming-bright-scarlet, gold-tassel-trimmed, thick and comfortable pillow on the piano stool, but instead of the driving, bouncy Can-Can, her gloved fingers flowed over new ivory keys, and The Old Rugged Cross flowed out of the piano, a gentle processional as the community flowed into the church, drawn by a tune known to them all.

Michael stretched a little to hand the Parson a note, and the sky pilot read it, and read it again, and looked at Michael, and nodded: when Dana came to the end of her processional, she straightened and folded her hands in her lap, and waited.

Michael turned to face the congregation.

"Your Parson and I are about to do business," he declared, pitching his voice to carry to the furthest row, as he'd heard his father do, as his pale eyed old Grampaw did as well.

"I would tell you we've been doin' some horse tradin', but I'd be lyin' through my teeth if I said that."

His quick grin, his cheerful words, brought a quiet ripple of laughter from the community at large.

"We'll figure to get stoves in here too before next Sunday's service. Back in the back" -- he thrust his chin toward the back, where doors opened again and men brought in wooden crates -- "one crate is full of hymnals and the other is Bibles.

"Hymnals stay with the church, but the Scripture is yours. One to a customer, everybody gets one that wants one.

"Now as far as cost."

Michael looked up at their Parson, winked.

"It's winter time and I don't want to go puttin' any strain on anyone's supplies, so come fall harvest" -- Michael looked around, and to the women studying him, he looked almost like a hopeful little boy -- "if one of you ladies could bake me a pie, that'll be my price, but" -- he raised a teaching finger for emphasis -- "but not until fall when there's enough to work with. I do NOT want to run anyone short on anything!"

Michael turned and looked at their Parson and grinned, "Do you reckon you can meet my price?"

The Parson looked at the piano, looked back as eager congregants removed precious cargo from the crates, opened the crackling-new books, looked at the Parson.

A woman raised a hand, stiff fingers stabbing into the air: "I'll bake the pie!"

"I will!" three others countered, and Michael sang, "Sollld, to an Americannnn!"

The Parson looked at Dana and quietly asked, "Doxology?"

Dana raised her hands, brought them down in the instantly recognized introduction, as the Parson turned to his flock and raised his arms: "Old Hundred!" -- and a brand new church piano sang with its joyful congregation.

 

"You planned all this, didn't you?" Dana asked quietly as they followed the freighters back to the Iris.

Michael grinned.  "Yep."

"What else have you done?"

"Me?" Michael looked at his little sis with his very best Innocent Expression -- something practiced by every pale eyed Keller man since Old Pale Eyes himself, and with the same utter lack of success enjoyed by each of those subsequent generations.

"Yes, you, Michael Keller," Dana scolded gently. "What have you been up to?"

"Well," Michael said thoughtfully, drawing the word out, "the crates had more than hymnals and Bibles."

"Like what?"

"McGuffey's Eclectic Readers, math books, ledger books, boxes of pencils, student notebooks, there were a couple big books showing schoolroom maps we can provide ... world, continent, ocean, weather patterns, ocean flows --"

Dana gave him a puzzled look. "I thought those were just hymnals and Bibles!"

"Plenty of those," Michael nodded, "and I'm donating stoves, installation and stovewood. I donated piano and hymnals and Bibles, but" -- he grinned -- "the Silver Jewel needs a kitchen.  I can sell them kitchen stoves and the goods they'll need to expand into restaurant as well. I can provide schoolbooks. I can provide coffee, tea, restaurant supplies, spices. Next Sunday when they come into church, there will be a table set up with jars of canned pie filling."

"You're making sure you can be paid."

Michael grinned at his baby sis, shrugged.

"I like my pie!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

UP IN ARMS

Ruth Keller looked a little uncomfortable.

She felt her face warm and probably redden, and she cast a surreptitious glance left and right, as if to see if any of the Matrons of Society were watching her as they always did, when she was a girl at home, waiting to catch her in some indecorous moment so they could clack and yap about it, and speak of it as if she were not there.

The setting sun was warm on her back, long red rays of the low orb bringing the full color out of meadowgrass, out of the Appaloosa stallion cantering toward her, out of her husband's tanned arms and his face, illuminated under the brim of his black Stetson.

Usually Jacob wore a shirt and tie and a tailored black suit, but here, today, working his father in law's plantation because they were short handed, Jacob spent the day in a sleeveless vest, the better to take advantage of the light, dry breeze coming off the long prairie to westward.

Ruth felt a womanly desire as she watched her husband ride toward her, and her eyes focused on the sculpted, muscled, bare arms -- the manly contours brought out by the setting sun -- she licked her bottom lip, then curled it, unable to help herself.

Sne snatched the kerchief from her bosom and waved it overhead and whistled -- sharp, shrill, loud, unladylike -- something a woman of quality would never do, but she could not help herself.

Not looking at those manly arms!

 

Linn looked up from his mail, frowned a little: he rose from his chair, came around the desk, took his wife around the waist.

His hands spread over her hips and his pale eyes looked deep into his wife's -- concern in his expression, warmth in his hands -- he turned his head slightly as he studied Shelly's expression and said gently, "What troubles you, darlin'?"

Shelly dropped her eyes, placed her hands over her husband's, huffed out a long breath, then looked up at him.

"It's Marnie," she said, as if that explained everything.

Linn waited, knowing silence would make his wife uncomfortable, knowing she'd keep talking to fill the silence -- a trick he used in police interrogations, a trick that came in handy here.

Shelly looked up at him, her eyes hard -- "And no, I didn't hit her again!" she almost snapped, then looked away, her face reddening with shame.

Linn ran his arms around his wife, pulled her close, held her: Shelly shoved her face into his shirt front, pushed her forehead hard against his breast bone.

"What did Marnie do this time?" Linn asked, his voice gentle.

Shelly twisted, pushed away from him, glared, her arms stiff at her sides: "You should know!" she hissed. "You put her up to it!"

"Who'd she kill?" Linn asked mildly, which did not make the situation any better.

Shelly turned, turned back, glared.

"I wanted a girl," she snapped. "I wanted someone that could go shopping with me and try on clothes and have a makeover and --"

"Who'd she drive through the floor like a fence post?" Linn asked, his voice still gentle, his expression carefully neutral.

Shelly whirled, took a few steps away, whirled back, snatched her cell phone from her hip pocket: "Look at this!" she snarled. "Just look!"

She pecked at the screen, swiped, tapped, held it up.

Linn frowned, looked at the image, studied what he was seeing.

"Nicely composed," he said in an approving tone, nodding as he did. "You do have the Photographer's Eye!"

"I didn't --" Shelly spluttered, her mouth open in dismay: she looked at the photo she just showed her husband, looked back at him, disbelieving. "Don't you see it?"

"I see Marnie riding toward you," Linn said quietly. "Good sunset shot. She was probably riding blind into the eye of the sun, the way it looks."

"No, no, no," Shelly muttered, turning the phone's screen toward him again.  "Look at her arms! She's wearing that dreadful sleeveless flannel shirt, just look at her arms!"

Linn frowned, took the phone, studied it closer, then nodded and handed it back.

"She's got muscles," he said, and Shelly saw the smile tightening the corners of his eyes.

"Muscles!" Shelly almost wailed. "Linn, she's a girl! Girls aren't supposed to have muscles!"

"She's a horsewoman," Linn corrected her in a soft voice. "She hoists saddles and bales of hay, she helps me change tires on the tractor, she forks manure and dollies the wheelbarrow around to the manure pile and --"

"You're not helping," Shelly snapped.

 

Two nights later, when Hermey's garage burnt down and Marnie dragged a survivor out, stopping at intervals to run another few rounds of CPR -- the night she waded into the abandoned reservoir and came slogging out of freezing water with one child over her left shoulder, another under her right arm, and packed them both up the bank to the roadway just as the Irish Brigade arrived -- Jacob Keller dismounted, peeled out of his coat and threw it around his sister's shoulders, looked around.

"Let's get you inside where it's warm," he said.

"Wait," Marnie said, gripping Jacob's arm for emphasis.

She was watching the two children she'd hauled out of the drink.

Fitz came running over, fireboots clumping on cold pavement: "Was anyone else in th' car?" he asked, voice clipped: Marnie shook her head, feeling her hair stiffen as it started to freeze.

Fitz looked over the guardrail at the dark water below, looked back, nodded.

"Ya done good, lass," he said quietly. "I'm proud of ye. Now let's get you inside th' rescue where it's warm!"

Jacob reached down, took his sis behind the knees: she was still dripping water, she was willing herself not to shiver, and she was having no luck at all in not shivering.

Jacob waited until one of the Irishmen spread out two blankets, one atop the other, before he set Marnie down on the squad bench, before he wrapped her up: the firefighter turned on another interior light and then turned the heater up, wide open.

Jacob looked very seriously at his sister, gripped her upper arms through the blanket.

"I'm proud of you, sis," he said, his face serious.

 

The next night, when Shelly and Linn laid down to go to sleep, she rolled up on her side, which meant she wanted to talk.

Linn rolled up to face her, which meant he was not asleep and could hold a conversation.

"I think," Shelly said uncertainly, "I was wrong."

Linn bent forward and kissed his wife on the forehead. 

"Welcome to the human race, darlin'."

"No," Shelly groaned, grimacing in the dark: Linn couldn't see her expression, but he knew his wife well enough to know the face she was making.

"I'm glad she has those arms," Shelly said quietly, "and I'm glad you encouraged her to build them."

Marnie was not aware of the previous conversation, the one where her Mama expressed distress at her wearing her old favorite flannel shirt she'd ripped the sleeves from, the one she wore that showed her muscles.

Marnie would not have given a good damn of her mother's opinion if she had known.

At the moment, she was not thinking of that moment, or of diving into cold, dark water and pulling out two kids from a sinking car.

Marnie was wearing headphones, listening to bull fiddles playing In the Hall of the Mountain King like her Gammaw used to -- only Willamina used big monster speakers instead of headphones.

Marnie did, however, use her Gammaw's cast iron dumb bells as push-up handles, as she drove herself mercilessly with push-ups, with sit-ups, with kettlebells and burpees, before she finally showered and went to bed.

By the time she got into her usual white flannel nightgown and got herself between clean, line dried bedsheets, her arms burned, but it was a good burn, it was the burn she got when she pushed herself, and before she fell asleep, she smiled in the dark, remembering the moment she grabbed her brother's arm to steady herself.

She didn't realize until then just how full of arm her brother's shirtsleeve really was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WELL, THAT'S PROGRESS

An Appaloosa foal hobby-horsed out into fresh, belly-deep snow.

Linn leaned against the fence and allowed the corners of his eyes to smile as the gangly, awkward, long-legged filly stumbled, thrashed, fell, disappeared: she thrust a spotty head out of the snow, and to Linn's experienced eye, absolutely had an expression of surprise about her equine features.

Shelly tried to argue that horses don't have discernible expressions, they were like polar bears, they did not change expression before they attacked -- this after she'd hit the ground three times in six minutes, and pronounced the entire notion of horseback to be something best left to idiots and masochists, at which point Linn swung easily into the saddle and rode over and took her mount's reins in hand.

Shelly's horse just stood there, calm as milk.

Shelly glared up from where she'd landed and snapped "Show-off!"

Part of Linn's mind replayed this memory clip, then slid it back into a mental drawer where it usually stayed; he watched as the filly thrashed through the snow, deliberately diving into the deep, fluffy stuff, playing as do children of any age, of any species.

Linn felt the small presence near his leg -- he heard nothing, which is what he usually heard when Marnie was about -- she was still big-eyed and mostly quiet, she moved as if wearing armor -- hell, she moved like she was wearing an entire fort! -- and he'd learned she was mistrustful and hard-shell-scared.

He waited.

He'd made the mistake of going down on one knee and telling her he had something to show her, and he saw fear fill her eyes, and he damned his dead sister yet again for taking her child back East into the hell that scarred this innocent soul.

He'd looked over Marnie's head, then back, and said "Your Mama is coming too."

Marnie shifted uncomfortably, which only added to Linn's deepening hatred of a woman dead and well beyond his ability to address.

Marnie's eyes slid to the left.

"Jacob will be coming too," Linn said, and Jacob finished shoving sock feet into his boots: he came over and took Marnie's hand -- she was two fingers shorter than he, though almost the same age -- Marnie's hand welcomed his, and Linn knew he had to tread carefully: her young heart was wounded by people she trusted, and that takes a long time to heal.

It wasn't until Marnie saw a little spotty horsie alternately swimming, scrambling, falling, then running and throwing itself on its side, to slide a few feet, that Marnie squeezed Jacob's hand and then looked up at Linn.

Linn lowered himself slowly, carefully, watching the filly playing and throwing up snow like a happy child, or an insane excavator.

"This is what I wanted to show you," Linn said quietly, very carefully not looking at her.

Marnie didn't hug him.

Not yet.

She didn't pull away from him -- she didn't shrink into Jacob, nor did she move to get Jacob between herself and this tall, quiet man she couldn't read.

Linn considered this, and decided that for now, it was enough.

Jacob looked at Marnie with that ornery grin of his -- "C'mon!" -- he ran after the filly, who squealed and rocking-hopped through the snow, Jacob in a wasteful, inefficient, happy-little-boy slog after it, laughter and snow-crystals scattering in the air, and Marnie chased after, silent at first.

Linn stayed leaned against the board fence, watching three children playing in the snow, with two mothers and their herd stallions watching.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NO BLOOD IN THE SNOW

The eyes behind the binoculars were a deep, clear, Arizona-winter-sky blue.

The eyes on the other side of the field were grey, steady, the eyes of a man who'd seen too much in his young life.

The world held its breath as the charge was rammed down against the powder.

One cannon.

That's all they had.

One cannon and men with rifled muskets, a snowy field and the I-swallowed-a-cannonball weight in the gut feeling of men knowing they were going to charge at one another and do their level best to kill men that looked much like they did, other than the uniform they wore.

The rammer was withdrawn, men stepped back, hesitated, looked at the man behind the binoculars.

He and his counterpart both felt it and he and his counterpart both looked around, looked up.

Both men felt like the world detonated around them.

Captain Linn Keller patted his mare's neck, whispered to her, laid his forehead against her for a long moment.

He thought of his old Sam-horse back home, he thought of his wife and the daughter he'd seen and held and smiled as he did, he thought of how Connie felt when he held their little girl in one arm and her in the other, and then he swallowed and pulled back, he dunked the cover over his greasy hair and looked to where men were drawn up in ranks, ready to march across and open field and get killed.

Then he felt it.

Even under his shirt sleeves and under his coat sleeves, every last hair on his arms stood up -- his mare muttered nervously, he pulled her reins free and swung into the saddle, every instinct screaming this is wrong, this wrong, THIS IS WRONG --
He looked up just in time to see forked hell blazing between Heaven and earth.

Lightning -- jagged, forked, a pitchfork of blue-white death -- blasted between snow clouds overhead and snow-heavy clouds above: it hit the cannon, it blew men back from the artillery-piece, it shattered the axle and dumped the gun over on her side, then the shot blasted forward and into the rock and dirt ahead of the muzzle.

The Captain reflexively screwed his eyes shut, legs tightening around the mare: she drove forward in blind flight, running in panic, the way a horse will.

Trouble was, one lone Captain of the Ohio Volunteer Cavalry was now charging straight for enemy lines across a few hundred yards of snowy field, and nobody coming with him.

From the Confederate side, after the Almighty snapped His fingers and brought everyone to a sudden and startled halt, they beheld what must have been either the unluckiest sod ever to straddle a McClellan saddle, or the veriest fool ever to wear the screaming mantle of utter, absolute insanity.

A bluecoat Yankee clung to a plunging, screaming, dodging chestnut mare, he had his heels locked around her barrel and he was doing his level best to bring a four legged cyclone under some semblance of control, and he was doing this absolutely at the top of his lungs, and using language that brought men to a startled, grinning, then laughing, standstill.

Two sides of a wide, long, snowy field were well populated with men gripping muskets, with men who'd rather be somewhere warm rather than trying to kill somebody, and when this unscheduled entertainment presented itself, why, both sides just plainly stopped and kind of leaned back to enjoy the show.

Captain Keller's mare started to buck.

She didn't really know how, all she knew was, something scared two hells out of her and she wanted rid of the fear it blasted into her soul, and so she dropped her head between her legs and drove her hind hooves straight out behind, she kind of stumbled and nearly fell, she spun around one way and stopped and allowed as that wasn't much good so she tried spinnin' the other, while men on either side of the field crowded out in the open to get a better view:  officers on both sides grinned under their field-glasses, for entertainment was a rare thing, and this was just plainly entertaining!

A big man in a broke brim hat strode toward the bucking horse as the Captain hit the ground: his boot was still in the stirrup but he had a death grip on the reins, and fisted gloves hauled that mare's head hard around and she fell over, the Captain wallowed up on top of the fighting mare, he kicked his boot free of the stirrup, he RIPPED the hat off his head and MASHED it down over the mare's walling eye and screamed "DAMN YOU, STOP THAT!"

The mare, it seems, was not inclined to stop anytime soon: she came up, he went down, she dragged him by the reins for about twenty yards, while he screamed what officers on both sides would delicately inscribe in their reports as "a rather fine assortment of oaths coarse and genteel," at least until the mare stopped, and the Captain laid there, feeling most distinctly like a man who'd just been dragged twenty yards behind a most unhappy horse, over cold and frozen ground.

Something big and butternut came up beside the mare's head and took a hard grip on her cheekstrap, and the Captain heard the quiet voice that strong men use when soothing such a saddlemount.

A rather large, somewhat dirty and distinctly callused hand thrust itself down toward him, and the Captain heard an amused voice rumble, "Friend, you ain't from Texas, now, are you?"

At this point the Captain was beyond caring about blue, grey, butternut or flannel.

He reached up, seized the offered hand and felt himself hauled off the ground with impressive ease.

A hand gripped his jaw with surprising gentleness as a bristle-bearded man peered closely at the Captain's face.

"I reckon your hat can be found," he said quietly. "You're not bleedin'."

Captain Keller breathed -- experimentally -- his ribs were sore, especially the ones that got blown in when that cannon exploded a year ago and more -- careful fingers released the man's mandible and a truly huge man asked speculatively, "You ain't from Texas, now, are you?"

Linn grunted out a pained laugh, clenched his teeth, tried again.

"Not here recent," he admitted.

"I'm from Texas and I never seen anybody stay on a horse like you did, that warn't."

Another shadow: a younger man approached, industriously brushing snow off the Captain's cover, handed it to him.

"Thank you, son," Linn said automatically, as the Texan handed him his horse's reins.

The two men, now three, found themselves the center of an impromptu palaver, and powwow, and council of war: command rank officers from both sides converged, while soldiers on either side stood and grumbled in the cold while the brass had their conference.

To onlookers blue and onlookers grey, it was a meeting, and a short one: salutes were exchanged, the Yankee officer whose horse hadn't been inclined to behave after a nearby lightning-strike, mounted, then leaned down and shook a genuinely big man's hand.

That night, before curling up in his blankets and thinking of his wife and the snug cabin they'd built near the soggy south shore of what the natives called the Sweet Sea, the Captain carefully entered his observations into his journal, noting the general consensus of the Almighty's bright, concussive admonition that perhaps they really shouldn't have a battle, at least not here, not now.

The Captain noted the question propounded him by a big, work hardened Confederate who was, himself, far from home:

"You ain't from Texas, now, are you?"

It wouldn't be the first time someone would ask him that, but it was the first.

He considered for several moments before adding the final line:

"We considered the Sign we were given, and this day, there was no blood in the snow."

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THANK YOU, MAMA

Linn was a high school junior.

Linn was to be graduated later in the week, graduated early, without fanfare, as he wished it.
He'd intentionally not spoken of it, he'd avoided the subject altogether: he'd been an exemplary student, he was a high scoring student, he was National Honor Society and an achiever seven ways from Sunday, and at the moment, he was sliding down the closed door of a hallway locker, clutching his broken left arm, his face the color of putty.

Politics are politics at whatever social strata you inhabit: Linn was not a jock, he was not into sports at all, he was most definitely not one of the "in" crowd, he did not subscribe to passing fads, fast cars, nor the pursuit of cheap Friday night entertainment -- whether found in a glass bottle, or a short skirt -- which meant that he was fair game for those who wished to make themselves bigger, by picking on those smaller.

Linn wasn't smaller.

His left forearm was in a cast: he'd cracked a bone badly enough Doc wrapped it in fiberglass and gave him instructions for its care and feeding, and Linn used broomstraws to slip in between cast and his arm and scratch the maddening itch casts always produce, and when he was attacked in the hallway between classes, he responded as he'd trained.

Linn's Mama was Sheriff Willamina Keller.

Linn's Mama knew the value of training.

Linn's Mama sparred regularly with her son, both with appropriate padding and either barehand, or with "weapons" generally consisting of lightweight, or lightly padded, rattan, or similar material.

Linn was latently left handed and competed with the Sheriff's office, and it was a running joke when he did, which side he'd wear the sidearm on: the department had a variety of batons in supply, and Linn practiced with each style in the equipment room, and when he was assaulted in the hallway, his left forearm snapped up as if it was a baton held along the forearm as an impact block.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller cruised into the house like she owned the place and seized the wrist attached to the hand that tried to grab her arm.

She gave the wrist little consideration for two reasons:

First, she seized it, twisted it, broke it and discarded it in much less time than it takes to say the words, and

Second, she was moving toward the shotgun involved in the situation.

Sheriff Willamina Keller grabbed the gun muzzle and twisted it upward, seized the receiver: it detonated, she remembered the barrel feeling momentarily warm, just before she brought it out of the intruder's grip, just before she reversed its momentum and drove the butt into the exposed elbow (she was aiming for ribs and missed), just before she turned and swung the fired pump gun like a ball bat, spun it in a fast, vicious arc, missed the head she intended to cleave in two and instead broke the shoulder of a second attacker.

When Sheriff Willamina Keller came storming down the high school hallway, heels loud on polished tile, pale eyes blazing ice-fire, she took report from the responding deputies who'd come to handle the situation: she squatted and laid a maternal hand on Linn's shoulder, spoke quietly.

Principal Landers leaned closer, trying to hear their exchange, but all he got was Linn's tight-voiced "I think I broke m' cast" -- Willamina squeezed his shoulder, stood, turned to the principal: she took his arm, she steered him away from the situation and down the hall and said "Let us review your surveillance footage."

 

That night, at the supper table, Linn sat at his father's right as he usually did.

Silence was thick as butter on sourdough.

Willamina carefully poured tea from a white-antique teapot into Linn's cup, silently set a jar of raw honey beside it: Linn gratefully added a thick dollop of honey to the boneset tea to cut the bitterness.

Richard asked Willamina about her adventures of the day, listened with a serious expression as she described the home invasion, the attempted abduction, her intervention, in simple and simplified terms: Linn could tell she was trying to avoid a discussion, probably not wanting to listen to Richard's tendency to tell her how she should have handled it.

He didn't.

He turned to Linn.

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

Linn smiled with half his mouth, reviewing how to respond if his father took  swing at him.

Ever since Richard backhanded him when he thought Linn was drunk -- when Linn was staggering with fever, not alcohol -- there'd been tension between father and son, and Linn was determined either to not be hit again, or if he was, to make his father regret it terribly -- even though he himself would probably come out on the short end of the stick.

His father, after all, was FBI, and the Bureau is known to train its people very well indeed.

"Sore," Linn admitted.

"What happened?"

Linn's eyes went to his mother, then back to Richard, and father saw the curtains close behind the son's eyes.

"It's in the report, sir."

"I want to hear it from you."

Willamina felt her son's change and she knew he was tense as a drawn bow, though he managed to look deceptively relaxed.

"I got jumped, sir. I stopped the attack. Blocked with my cast."

Richard grimaced. "That must've hurt!"

"Fiberglass instead of plaster. A plaster cast would've probably broken apart but it would hit harder."

"You hit with it."

"I blocked with it," Linn corrected. "Like using a baton to block a strike."

"Mmm."  Richard nodded.  "Good thinking."

Richard turned to his coffee; Linn hesitated, then downed his boneset tea, set his cup down, looked at his Mama.

"Thank you for the boneset," he said quietly.

"I thought it might help."

"Yes, ma'am."

After the meal, Linn helped clean up, as he usually did: Willamina let him pack and place, one-handed, without interruption: Linn managed to dry dishes by virtue of laying a plate on the drain rack and steadying it with his injured wing's fingers while carefully plying the towel with the other: it was not ideal, twice now a plate escaped his grip, but because he was using the drying rack, the clean plate fell into the clean rack's cage, and was not harmed.

"Your father," Willamina murmured quietly, as Richard sat in his recliner and unfolded the evening paper, "doesn't know ... how ..."

Her words trailed off uncertainly.

"He doesn't know how to be a father," Linn interrupted quietly: "he's doing the best that he can, but he doesn't know how, so he's making it up as he goes."

Linn stopped and looked very directly at his Mama.

"Same as the rest of us, Mama. Nobody gives us an instruction manual. We just have to handle it as it comes and hope we don't screw up too badly."

Willamina was quiet for several long moments before nodding.

"He blames himself for your sister."

Linn's jaw thrust out a little -- Willamina saw the muscles shift, saw the frown start, then saw them disappear as her son shoved the feeling from him.

Finally Linn nodded and said "Yes, ma'am," in a soft voice.

"When is your graduation ceremony?" Willamina asked, and Linn stopped, raised an eyebrow: his Mama knew damned good and well the date, but he realized she was asking for a reason.

"Thursday, ma'am."

"Today is Tuesday. I'll be there, unless we have another disaster."

"Mama?"

Willamina pulled the plug and let dishwater spiral down the drain, turned on the tap and rinsed soapsuds off her hands.

"I heard about today."

It was Willamina's turn to raise an eyebrow.  "Oh?"

"Mama, please be careful," Linn almost whispered. "You're the only one of you I've got!"

Willamina pulled an imaginary set of spectacles halfway down her nose and glared overtop of their nonexistent lenses.

"I have grandchildren to spoil," she said matter-of-factly: mother and son regarded one another until neither could keep from laughing, and Linn hugged her and whispered, "Thank you, Mama."

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

"THAT'S A JACOB POST!"

Before he was Abbott William, he was Brother William, one of the Rabbitville Monastery's friars, a tonsured cleric that traveled about the territory on one assignment or another.

Rarely would he set out to travel by any means but Shank's Mares.

Brother William had seen enough grief and enough loss to last ten men their lifetimes, and he remembered a girl named Susan, back in New Orleans, a laughing young woman he'd last seen when he rode off to that damned War.

He thought of her, sometimes, how her face shone with pride when she'd fluttered her kerchief as he mounted, as he rode off in his fine, tailored uniform.

He remembered how she smelled, the night he held her, the night before he rode off with his fellows, he remembered how she looked in her fine gown and moonlight.

She was dead now, the dropsy he'd been told: the memory came to him again, and he shoved it aside, turned his steps toward the high country.

He deliberately chose a difficult path.

 

Jacob Keller dismounted from the wagon, walked around its rear, stepped up to a man of his acquaintance and thrust out his hand.

The rancher took his hand, nodded once.

"Sir," Jacob said, "I'd like to hire your boy for the day."

The rancher considered for a moment, then -- as was his conversational habit -- nodded, once.

He watched as his son climbed into the wagon beside Jacob, watched as the Sheriff's pale eyed boy brought the wagon around in a slow, wide circle, as they rattled back toward Firelands.

He'd seen fence posts and post hole diggers in the wagon bed and he knew his son would return home tired.

Just as well.

Things were pretty well set, he'd not need his boy there at the ranch for a day or two anyway.

Jacob and the boy drove far enough to follow the bend in the road, out of sight of the ranch, before Jacob spoke.

"Two times two is," Jacob said.

The boy blinked, looked at Jacob and thought for a moment.

"Two," he said softly, then his eyes widened and he exclaimed "Four!"

"Two threes."

"Six."

"Two fours."

"Eight."

"Two aces."

"Weak hand!"

Jacob turned his head toward his passenger, grinned.

"Wish I'd thought that last night," he admitted. "Sarah and me was playin' cut throat poker and she skinned me out of my eye teeth!"

They drove to a particular field, then out into the field and up hill.

If any were to watch -- and Jacob knew the boy's father watched sometimes -- they would see the pair stretching out string to keep fence posts trued up in a straight line, and they would see the pair digging post holes, and they would see the pair digging post holes and setting posts.

Nobody watched today, and so Jacob did not bother with the string.

They stopped at the last post they'd set, a post flat on one face, a post smoothed unusually well.

Jacob handed the boy a lump of chalk.

"Five ones," he said, nodding to the post.

The boy reached up far as he could and wrote 5.

"Two fives."

The boy blinked, considered, wrote 10.

"Five twos."

The boy blinked, frowned, thought, then realized what Jacob just did.

"You caught it," Jacob said quietly, approval in his voice. "Well done."

Chalk applied itself to sun-dried cedar several more times, until its entire height was covered with chalked numbers.

The rancher's son was young and just learning such things, he'd been too distracted in school, but here, where he could turn away and look around and maybe pick up a couple rocks and heave them and then return to the lesson, he excelled.

Jacob worked with the lad all day.

Finally, at day's end, Jacob handed him a set of gloves: "Here, put these on," he said, then went to the back of the wagon and lowered the tail gate.  "Give me a hand here."

They unloaded three fence posts -- dragged them out, let them fall -- then they picked them up, returned them to the wagon, set the post hole digger after them, closed the tail gate and fast it up.

"Now," Jacob said as they climbed aboard, "we can say we've been throwin' fence posts around!"

The rancher looked up as the wagon rattled back onto the ranch, back up to the barn.

Jacob dismounted and came around back of the wagon and handed the rancher the agreed-on hire: sixbits, for the day, but it was with a small, fragrant package, one that guaranteed the rancher would be inclined to hire his son out to Jacob again: the rancher hefted the cloth wrapped bundle of ground coffee, fresh from the Mercantile, and decided it Jacob was foolish enough to be this extravagant, why, he'd be wise enough to accept!

Brother Willim crested the ridgeline an hour after the wagon departed the fencelne.

He stopped and considered the smooth faced cedar with sums and numbers chalked on it.

He'd seen this before.

"That," he said quietly, laying a work-callused hand on the shoulder-high, smooth-faced cedar, "is a Jacob post!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

KIND OF YELLOW

"Jacob."

"Sir."

"Jacob, I understand you were caught with a white powdery substance today."

"I was not caught, sir."

The Sheriff raised an eyebrow, but maintained a carefully neutral expression.

"I was observed with the powdery substance, sir, but not caught with the powdery substance."

"There was a substance, then."

"There was, sir, and a large amount."

"What happened?"

 

Jacob looked up, blinked, leaned forward in his seat and looked out the physics room window.

Jacob shot a hard look at Dr. Workmann, who continued to read aloud in his accented monotone from his handwritten notes: Jacob powered out of his seat and toward the front door, fast, silent, at least until he made the hallway, then the sound of running bootheels echoed, loud and demanding, as the classroom door closed automatically behind him.

Curious classmates looked at one another, looked out the window: Dr. Workman, puzzled, lowered his sheaf of sheets from where he'd brought them up so he could see them through thick lenses: the old German's hands shook a little as he whispered, "Mein Gott," just before Jacob assaulted the spreading gasoline fire with the first of the two dry-chem extinguishers he'd seized on his way out the side door of the Firelands High School.

 

"Jimmy Hill thought he'd move a car with the hay forks on the tractor he'd driven to school that morning."

"Hay forks."

"Front mounted, sir, the long ones you slip under a round bale."

"I'm familiar."

"He didn't get his elevation quite right and he managed to gut the tank on one side."

The Sheriff grimaced.

"When he hoist the car and drove over the initial spill, something lit it and he panicked and stopped in the pool of burning gas, then he jumped off and ran."

The Sheriff grimaced.

"I ran out with two extinguishers. Didn't know how full the tank was. I only had two hands so two extinguishers are all I could pack, but I hit it and hit it hard."

"I see."

"I was doing fine until the second one ran out of juice and I had to run back inside and grab another one. By then the janitor was legging it towards me. He threw his two at me and went back for more and before the Irish Brigade got there, why, I got it out, but the tractor needs repainted and one front tire is shot. I'd reckon maybe hydraulic hoses and the like are needing replaced."

"So that powdery white substance ...?"

"Dry chem powder, sir. Made a hell of a mess. When the wind shifted, I came in looking like I'd got in a fight with a bakery and come out in second place."
Jacob frowned.
"For the record, sir, that wasn't a white powdery substance."

"Oh?"

"No, sir. Dry chem powder isn't white. It's kind of yellow."

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

RECYCLE

I bent over and looked at Jacob.

I looked up and beheld my Appaloosa stallion looking at me.

At least Apple-horse turned around to look at me.

A moment before, he'd been standing with his backside toward me.

Apple and me, we both looked down at Jacob.

Now Jacob -- all of nine or ten years old, made of whalebone and rawhide cords and politeness and enough curiosity to murder most of the feline population in three counties -- looked up at his Pa bent over and looking at him, and looked at Apple with his neck bent down to look at him, and Jacob did what came natural.

He started to laugh.

A boy's laughter is contagious, and his was.

I lifted my head and looked at Apple, and Apple lifted his head and looked at me, and we both looked back down at Jacob and he went off laughin' ag'in, and we did not know it yet, but Marnie and Shelly were watchin' from a little distance away and they looked at one another and shook their heads and went on back into the house and I reckon that's all to the good.

I did not know it, but some several minutes earlier, they two were shading their eyes with flat hands, looking at Jacob on the edge of the shed roof, half a bale of hay wrapped well in hay string and an umbrella handle hooked through it, right before he give that half a bale a heave off the roof and that umbrella lasted for maybe two-thirds of the trip to the ground before it give up and folded bass ackwards and did not slow down that half a bale none a'tall.

Now when I bent over and looked at Jacob layin' in the snow, I had no idea he'd been up on the roof.

All I knew was, when I come around the corner and seen Apple horse stopped and neck bent down and with snow on, warn't anything he could eat, why, I got curious and come over to the fence to take me a look, and then I went on in, and me and Apple looked at Jacob and I won't presume to speak for my horse -- he can speak his own piece and I won't stop him -- but me, I looked at my boy a-layin' in the snow, I studied on the confusion of boot prints and hoof prints and concluded I had no idea what just happened, so once Jacob finished laughin', why, I recht down and he recht up and we taken holt of one another's wrist and up he come, dustin' snow off his backside and I helped get the snow off his shoulder blades higher'n he could reach convenient.

I looked at Jacob and raised one eyebrow.

I reckon he read my mind for I hadn't spoken a word to ask what in Sam Hill he was a-doin' like that and he spoke up his answer.

"Sir," said he, "you told me if I wished to know something, sometimes the best way to find out was to try it."

I nodded, for I recalled telling him something to that general effect.

"Sir, I got curious."

 

Jacob estimated half a hay bale would be about his own weight.

Jacob was no stranger to work.

Jacob halved the bale and tied each half with string to keep it from falling apart -- hay string is a marvelous repair and maintenance tool -- Hen Shriver, over on the other end of the county, told Jacob once, "If it breaks, ye fix it with hay string til you can get back to the barn and fix it right with wahr."

Jacob was more than familiar with using wire as a repair; he'd slid under a neighbor's truck with a wire coat hanger and a pair of pliers and re-hung a muffler where original hangers failed -- so when Hen told Jacob to fix it right with wahr, why, he knew exactly what the old fellow meant.

This time, though, his youthful curiosity contemplated parachutes and the grand sport of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane just for the fun of it, and he decided to start a little smaller ... he'd try jumping with an umbrella, but he wouldn't jump far, and the shed roof looked about ideal for the experiment.

Jacob threw the tied-off, half-a-bale over one shoulder, climbed the ladder with a furled umbrella in the other hand.

He'd bought it at the Mercantile with this very thing in mind.

He hooked the handle through a string loop he'd engineered into his cubical payload, he'd stood carefully on cold, corrugated tin roofing, he opened the brand-new umbrella -- hoist the payload -- one hand on the bumbershoot's shaft, one under the tight-packed hay.

Jacob twisted, threw, squatted: half a bale of hay and an umbrella not an hour out of the Mercantile fell and disappeared over the edge of the roof.

Shelly's arms were crossed in front of her, one hand brought up, her knuckles against disapprovingly-pursed lips: she watched the umbrella catch the wind, swing, wobble, fail.

She watched Jacob take a careful step sideways, turn, climb down the extension ladder.

Marnie, standing beside her, considered what they'd just watched.

Shelly turned and muttered something about making him pay for his own ER visit, and she loses more umbrellas that way, and the usual things mothers say when they see their young being typical active childish young.

Shelly departed for the house, muttering to herself, hands busy, as if taking ideas she spoke aloud, seizing them from the air and then throwing them to one side or another.

Marnie stayed where she was.

Marnie waited, pale eyes intent on her brother.

She caught movement from her right peripheral, looked.

Their father was just going into the barn.

Marnie looked back.

She knew the sliding door was open, that Linn would be able to see out into the pasture from inside the barn.

She watched as Jacob started running.

Marnie blinked, then realized her Daddy's stallion's backside was toward Jacob, and Jacob was running straight for the spotty saddlehorse, and she felt her stomach sink a few feet as Jacob tried a running mount like he'd seen at the movies.

Apple-horse, patient old soul that he was, did not kick, scream, nor whirl-and-bite: when Jacob's young body collided with the stallion's hind quarters, he kind of bounced off and fell backwards in the snow.

That's when Apple took two steps forward, turned, came back to take a look at what just happened, and that's when Linn came out to see what Apple was looking at, and that's when horse and rider both looked down at a growing boy, laying on his back in the snow in the pasture behind the barn, looking up at two serious faces looking down at him, and laughing like a damned fool.

 

Jacob got his legs under him and turned loose of his father's coat sleeve.

Linn stood, waited, at least until Apple-horse decided opportunism was the order of the day, and came nudging over, bumming a treat.

 

Father and son came into the house as if nothing unusual happened.

Supper was as it usually was.

Marnie watched her Mama, who looked at Jacob a few times with an expression that seemed to indicate an intent to interrogate, then a decision to not ask.

After supper, Jacob went back out to the barn and recovered the ruined umbrella, decided it as beyond repair, eventually gave its central shaft to a classmate, who recycled it as an arrow, launched it at a backyard tree, missed, and drove it through one wall of a neighbor's abandoned chicken house and better than halfway through the back wall before stopping.

The recycled umbrella shaft hung there until the weather turned and the owner came around the corner with the push mower and found his way barred by a worse for wear chromed steel rod sticking out of the chickenhouse he'd been threatening to tear down: he pulled the rod free, threw it into the chickenhouse, and it was eventually repurposed again as a tomato stake after the weather was decent enough to plant the fast-growing, fast-ripening variety.

 

Years later, in college, Jacob had the chance to try parachute jumping, and when he did, he carried a brand new, never opened, umbrella with him when he jumped out of that perfectly good airplane.

He did not, however, open it.

He left that to his parachute.

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AN UNDERSTANDING

Michael Keller cantered along beside his long tall Pa.

Michael was more than at home in the saddle.

Michael was half a hand from being as tall as Jacob: he looked enough like his Pa to be mistaken for the man, at least from a distance, if you didn't notice Michael's mustache was lighter than Jacob's, and finer than his Pa's good rich Celtic red handlebar.

Michael attracted stray children and scared animals like a magnet attracts iron filings.

He also attracted silence.

Where Jacob was open, friendly, gregarious, Michael was quiet -- as if the silence of the mountains were vacuumed up by his passing, and sighed from him when he walked among men, separating him with an invisible cascade of cold.

Michael was his father's left hand.

He'd established himself early and well: when a sneering troublemaker saw the pair riding together and started runnin' his mouth about boys that thought they were men, Michael whipped his mare around and drove right at the troublemaker.

His mare was as short tempered as her rider, his mare would have made a fine cutting horse, and his mare did not hesitate to ram the troublemaker hard enough to plainly flatten him.

She didn't trample him, she didn't put a single hoofprint into his hide, but she just plainly knocked the wind out of him, not to mention a year's growth.

Michael came out of the saddle and brought him off the ground, one-handed -- Michael, skinny, tall, young, maybe fifteen, a man grown in those days, an age often denigrated by those who believed they had every right to badmouth anyone they pleased.

When a grown man is hauled off the ground by a fifteen year old, and when that fifteen year old proceeds to beat the bloody pulp out of the man, a reputation is established.

Old Pale Eyes was known as a man of temper.

Old Pale Eyes would tear into anyone, didn't matter who, and fight them to a bloody standstill.

Michael laid into this fellow, full badger: fists to the soft tissues, elbows to the bony face.

Sheriff Jacob Keller watched, his eyes quiet.

When Michael was done -- when a troublemaker's backside paid the check his big mouth wrote -- and when the community at large saw the result -- Michael Keller, son of Jacob Keller, grandson of Old Pale Eyes -- established his reputation early.

It was a harsh act, a hard and vicious response to what might seem a relatively minor offense, but Michael knew that words can kill, and if a man did not put a stop to a verbal assault, it would escalate beyond mere words.

Later years would judge such a response far less charitably.

Later years would also acknowledge -- however reluctantly -- that such a harsh response was actually effective, and sometimes it was the only means of communication that was clearly and unmistakably understood.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CARRYIN' ON WITH A YOUNGER WOMAN

Dana Keller looked at the aluminum walker that waited for her like a torturer waiting for its victim.

Dana was comfortable in the saddle.

Dana was happy in the saddle.

Dana didn't care if she was a-straddle of her Daddy's steady old mule, or his spirited stallion, or one of the Paso Fino mares with its butter-soft, rapid-clatter gait (though she admitted she preferred the Pasos!) -- if she was in the saddle, she could feel her core working, she could feel her back strengthening, she did not ache the way she did when she used that hated walker.

Someday, she knew, she could throw the damned thing over the fence for good.

Just not today.

Dana hated that her Daddy was waiting to lift her off the mule.

She knew he wanted to do this for My, Little, Girl.

She knew her Daddy blamed himself, kicked himself, damned himself for not having a crystal ball, for not having the Witch of Endor on retainer, where he could have some magical foreknowledge that she was about to be hurt, so he could prevent it.

Dana hated that it was easier to let her Daddy lift her off, than it was to climb out onto the board fence and climb down, or to slide awkwardly out of the saddle and try to land on the mounting block.

Daddy needs to do this, she thought.

Daddy needs to show himself that he is Being a Responsible Father.

Or because he feels guilty for not being psychotic.

I mean psychic.

Angela gave the mule his head, which is to say, she let the mule walk up to her pale eyed Daddy with all the swift urgency of a drowsy octogenarian: Linn fed Peppermint a good thick pinch of molasses twist shavin's and rubbed his jaw and called him a good fellow, and Peppermint swung his big mule ears and gave that breathy death-rattle sound mules give when they're particularly pleased.

Linn looked up at his youngest daughter, waited for her to put her weight on her left leg and swing her right leg over the cantle.

He caught her and swung her down, hunkered -- she was tall enough now that he had to look up a little when he was hunkered -- "That's progress, Princess," he said seriously. "A week ago you couldn't bring your right leg over."

"Vitamins," Dana grunted as she looked away.

They were several feet from the walker.

"You good?" Linn asked, his voice quiet, serious.

"I'm good."

Linn nodded, turned: he unsaddled Peppermint, stripped saddle and saddle pad and packed them into the barn while Dana stood and considered that two weeks ago she couldn't stand this long, unassisted.

Linn came back out, picked up the walker and spun it around, planting it workwise in front of Dana.

"Silver Jewel," he said. "Shrimp special."

"You drivin'?" Dana challenged, and Linn saw both her older sisters in her face and heard their voices in hers.

Dana saw amusement wrinkle at the corners of her Daddy's eyes.

"Yep."

 

Linn opened the door of the faded-orange Power Wagon, set the walker in place and looked at Dana.

"You good?"

"I'm good," she said confidently.

He disciplined himself to not reach out and take her under the arms like he'd done so often, especially after her injury, her surgeries.

He stood and waited.

Dana's descent was mostly controlled.

She managed to seize the rubber grips on the walker to keep herself from going face first into the pavement: she pulled her dragging boot off the running board, let it drop to the ground, stood, looked defiantly at her Daddy.

"Told ya," she said, her bottom jaw thrust out rebelliously.

Linn kept his own counsel in the face of this youthful stubbornness.

He knew it was necessary for her healing, and he knew he had to let her heal.

He'd gone through much the same with Michael, and it had been just as hard for him to let Michael fight his way back.

He closed the truck door and followed Dana to the front steps, he followed closely behind her: when she took too ambitious a step and went over backwards, she fell back onto her Daddy's waiting thigh -- she landed on his leg like she'd drop into a saddle -- he steadied her under the arms while she got her own legs under her again and made the last step up onto the boardwalk.

"Your Mama taught me that," he said quietly, and Dana made a mental note to ask her sister Angela about that: it was Angela who showed tricks of catching a falling patient, and Dana was fairly certain that trick of catching their weight on your thigh, letting the shin bone hold the weight so the caregiver doesn't wreck their back trying to catch the weight of a falling human body, actually came from her sister, not from their Mama.

Dana labored industriously back toward the Lawman's Corner, determination in her gaze and stubbornness in her out-thrust jaw: the Sheriff followed her with his eyes, looked down the hall, lifted his chin, then nodded toward his daughter as the hash slinger looked at him with an upraised eyebrow.

Linn waited until Dana was seated, until she'd folded the walker and leaned it against the table out of the road, before he himself sat.

Dana looked up as the waitress came up with a swing of her handmade gingham skirt, as she planted her palms on her hips and said "Sheriff, what ever are you doing tonight?"

Linn gave her a solemn look, turned his gaze to Dana, looked back and -- with a perfectly straight face -- replied in a serious voice, "Why, darlin', I am carrying on with a younger woman!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NOBODY ELSE DID

Jacob Keller ran away from the downed wire as fast as he could, which wasn't very fast, considering he was hopping on one leg.

He'd run into the yard and whipped out a short, very sharp, fixed-blade knife and cut the clothesline free -- he cut the other one free as well, slid the knife back into its hidden sheath and tied the two slick polypropylene lengths to make one longer length -- he grabbed a brick from the crude flowerbed, ran one end of the lengthened rope through it, tied a fast Bowline, seized another brick, ignoring the incensed shouts from someone on the porch -- he tied this second brick and blessed whoever used recycled bricks with three big holes cast into them.

Jacob drew back, slung one brick hard, skidded it under the dropped line.

The breaker was open, he knew, but it wouldn't stay that way long.

He had to work fast.

He threw the other brick over the wire, ran around, giving it a wide skirting berth, picked up the under-brick and threw it over, the over-brick and threw it under: he ran around again, pulled the rope carefully.

Two wraps of polypropylene around the downed wire and he towed it away from the figure on the sidewalk.

Jacob looked around -- he was in a college town, his Gammaw went to Ohio U back in Athens, back East, and so did he -- he looked in a nearby truckbed and could have shouted.

He didn't.

He dropped the tailgate, seized the sixty pound tube sand placed there for winter weight, dragged it out and threw it over his shoulder.

He ran for the downed wire, where the end was turned back on itself, he flipped the tube sand off and dropped it where the two wires crossed to form a loop.

Jacob raised one leg and hopped away from it, turning and hunching his shoulders against the arc that would come searing from the downed wire as soon as the substation's breaker automtatically reset.

He'd gotten three hops when he felt heat on his back, heard that deep, vicious sizzle, and he did his level best to set the One Legged Land Speed Record getting the hell away from the concentric rings of energy his mind painted.

The downed wire arced, sizzled, snarled, then went silent again.

Jacob turned, sprinted back: he seized the unmoving figure on the sidewalk, hauled him up, across his back, straightened and ran.

The fire truck was just making the corner when Jacob stopped and half-dropped his burden, went to his knees: he was running on automatic pilot now, not thinking, he'd done his thinking when he had to handle the situation back there, he was running on muscle memory now: he seized the head, hauled it back to open the airway -- he fell into the CPR rhythm he'd practiced and practiced and practiced again, driving with merciless strength down onto the breastbone, squeezing the heart between the sternal plate and the spine, chanting his count.

Jacob Keller, college freshman, late of Firelands County, Colorado, ground his knees into an Ohio sidewalk and did his level best to pump life into a still chest, to breathe life into still lungs.

Jacob's form was flawless, his pumping posture perfect: the squad was about one minute behind the fire truck, and Jacob was more than happy to continue doing his good work while the medics got ready to intubate -- he rocked back off the chest when the lead medic yelled "INTUBATING!" -- he stood, retreated to the nearest set of steps, sat his bony backside down on cold concrete and threw his head back and took a long, shivering breath.

 

Jacob sat down with the fire investigator the next day.

He'd come in with a box of doughnuts and set them on the man's desk.

Fire Captain and Fire Lieutenant laughed and accepted his hospitality: coffee arrived, and the three sat down to go over what happened.

Jacob's approach was blunt.

"The guy that got shocked," he said. "Did he make it?"

The two officers looked at one another, then shook their heads.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Keller. He was pronounced shortly after he arrived. Apparently he got hit with enough juice it jellied his blood and he was deader'n a hammer before he hit the ground."

Jacob closed his eyes, took a long breath, nodded.

"Can you tell us what happened?"

Jacob did -- concisely, factually, in as few words as possible, then he said, "Now I understand what my sister meant."

"How's that?" the Fire Captain asked.

Jacob produced his Sherif's Office identification, slid it across the desk.

"My sister is a working deputy," he said, "and she had an off duty ... situation. She said until the Irish Brigade showed up, she felt like she and her patient were the only two people in the universe. Nobody else approached, nobody offered to help, nothing."

Two veteran firefighters exchanged a look.

"You were the only one to try anything," the Fire Lieutenant said. "You stepped into a situation and handled it with... tell me, the rope you used to move the hot line."

"Polypropylene," Jacob said without hesitation. "Someone strung it up as a clothesline so I took it and two bricks from the flowerbed."

"You learned that from ...?"  

The Fire Lieutenant let the question dangle.

Jacob gave him an approving look -- he'd done the same himself, when interviewing a subject -- open ended questions, to elicit a spontaneous statement.

"Our Irish Brigade," he answered. "Firelands Fire Department. Mama is a fire medic and so is my sis. When they train, I train with them."

"Good use of the sandbag, by the way."

"I know when the power comes back on a charged line, if the line forms a loop it'll often uncoil or thrash around. Once I dumped the sandbag on it, why, I got out of there on one leg so I'd not get fried if the power came back on while I was close by."

"You took a chance approaching."

"Wanted to anchor it before anyone else got hurt."

They talked for a while longer: Jacob brought two dozen doughnuts, and the three men put a dent in the supply: when they were done, Jacob shook their hands and frowned a little.

"I'm sorry that fella didn't make it," he said quietly. "I tried" -- then he gave a short, snorting laugh, looked at the officers with eyes that were considerably older than his college freshman aged years.

"Sometimes you have to do something, even if it's wrong!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NEW MODEL

"Sun feels good."

The other two nodded their heads, just a little.

The three of them sat side by side on the New Model Deacon's Bench in front of the Sheriff's Office.

It was newly installed, a hopeful sign of better weather to come: it was removed come snow season, and invariably replaced too early, and ended up snowed on.

This did not really matter.

As long as it wasn't wet, it attracted loafers, idlers, liars and other fine and upstanding folk.

Its predecessor occupied a nearby square footage, when the squaare footage occupied by the current, stone-walled Sheriff's Office was home to a small log fortress, with a snow shed roof over the boardwalk: the Deacon's Bench, attached to the front of the Sheriff's Office, was just under what passed for a bulletin board -- a soft pine plank wall the size of a good window, where wanted dodgers and other notices of public interest were tacked up.

This New Model Deacon's Bench had ornate, curlicue, cast iron ends, painted a cheerful enamel green; the boards were glossy black, sun-warmed, at least until a trio of familial backsides took up residence and happily soaked in the accumulated solar radiation, converted to heat.

Two pair of polished boots were thrust casually out from the bench; one set of stockinged legs ended in shining patent-leather slippers, a truly beautiful face looked at her long tall Daddy, a gentle and feminine voice said "Michael helped round up a herd when the fence broke."

Her long, tall, pale eyed Daddy nodded, slowly, as if he was not at all surprised to hear this.

"I take it," he drawled, "Lightning was kind of helpful?"

"He was, sir," Michael affirmed, "and The Bear Killer was no help a'tall."

Wrinkles appeared at the corners of the center figure's pale eyes, the wrinkles a man develops after a lifetime of finding things to smile at, and from finding another one now.

"He never was much of a herdin' dog," Linn admitted.

"He didn't hurt us any, sir, but he didn't ... help."

"How'd Lightning do herdin'?"

"She did fine, sir, once she realized we wanted to bunch 'em and head 'em back where they come through that broke down fence."

"What broke it down?"

"A fallen tree, sir, a big one."

Linn's eyes were busy, as they always were: rooflines, alleyways, windows.

He did not have to look to know Michael was doing the same, especially angling left.

Victoria, now ... you'd have to step light as a cricket in felt soled shoes to sneak up on her, and he had every confidence she would give due alarm at any approach from the right.

"Cattle, I take it?"

Michael hesitated a moment, then leaned forward and looked across his father to his twin sister.

Victoria, all ruffles and femininity, looked back at him with raised eyebrows and an utter lack of guile, which means she was ready to stuff her Daddy's boots and anyone else's, given half the chance.

Michael leaned back, cleared his throat.

"You could ... call them cattle, yes, sir."

"Close enough, then."

"Yes, sir."

"Did they herd worth a damn?"

"Not really, sir, at least until they caught wind of Lightning. They don't have Fanghorn on that world, sir, but they must've recognized her as a meat eater. Once Thunder and Cyclone come up a-flank on either side, why, they were just all kind of happy to form up and crowd back across that broke down fence.

"We didn't have to do much after that.

"The rancher come a-rollin' up with several hands and they bucked up that tree for stovewood, they set that fence back to rights, and we just set there where them grazers could see us and they did not want anythin' to do with our side of the fence from then on."

Linn nodded thoughtfully.

"When Jacob was in college, he told me he'd like to've had a good horse when they had those twice yearly riots."

"Was Jacob commissioned back East, sir?" Michael asked, and Victoria turned and looked at her Daddy with honest interest.

"Daaddeeeee," Victoria said softly, "is there something you're not telling us?"

Linn lifted his arms, laid one around his son's shoulders, one around his daughter's, and laughed.

"Jacob," he said quietly, "can tell you about his goings-on back in college."

"He didn't hang any horse thieves like Old Jacob did?" Victoria asked suspiciously.

"No," Linn admitted.  "He raised his hell in ... other ways."

"I see, sir," Michael said, soft-voiced, then rose: he crossed behind this New Model Deacon's Bench and offered his arm to his seated sister, who claimed his arm and rose gracefully.

"I believe you have a customer, sir," Michael said: "we will take your leave."

Linn scooted to the side, then rose and extended his hand as a familiar local character came up to him, shook hands a little uncertainly, then as the two men sat and conversation began, a Western Sheriff sitting on his Deacon's Bench did what Western Sheriffs have done since before the area was a Territory.

He sat and talked, he laughed, lied outrageously, and listened closely, and this fixture of the local landscape -- just like its architectural predecessor -- allowed a pale eyed lawman to sift and winnow and pan for gold in the stream of conversation the Deacon's Bench encouraged.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GHOST RIDERS

Sheriff Linn Keller came to his feet.

Fast.

The Sheriff's hands closed into fists and he felt the Rage uncoil in his belly like a waking dragon -- powerful, angry, murderous.

Victoria stood in his doorway, dripping water, shivering, soaked to the skin and looking less like a drowned rat than a nearly drowned, terrified little girl.

Linn came around his desk like water -- no, not like water, like a mountain flood roaring downhill with full intent to strip the mountainside down to its bedrock.

Victora's face screwed up and she reached blindly for her Daddy and gave a little squeak, and Linn dipped his knees a little and seized his little girl -- his little girl! -- in a crushing embrace, he straightened, lifting her from the puddle she'd dripped on his floor, held her tight, tight! -- as she let go of everything she'd contained, everything she'd held, everything she'd hidden from the world until she could get to her Daddy, until she could get to where she was safe!

 

Thunder muttered and danced under her.

Victoria lacked Michael's intimate connection with Lightning, but she was no stranger to the several moods of a saddlemount, and she was Daddy's Little Girl, which means she listened when her Daddy spoke, and he told her more times than one her horse's hearing was better, her horse's sense of smell was better, and if her horse didn't like a situation, chances are she wouldn't either.

When Thunder started to bunch up, when his gait changed, when she got the general feeling he was muscling up for war, Victoria thought of the rifle under her thigh, she realized she'd been woolgathering, she realized a weather front came in much faster than she'd realized, and she turned Thunder so she could see behind them.

Her Fanghorn's eyes and her own eyes saw it at the same moment.

In that bright moment of empathic unity, both Fanghorn and rider decided it was distinctly healthier to be somewhere else: Thunder drove his stubby, muscled neck out straight and leaned into a full-on gallop -- something he'd never, ever done with Victoria aboard -- Victoria, son of a mountain Sheriff, daughter of the Shining Mountains and at home in the saddle before she could walk, leaned over Thunder's hard-muscled neck and screamed encouragement as a broad, dirty, twisting column of hell and death followed.

The twister was a mile wide and moving fast.

Victoria's shapely legs gripped Thunder's barrel, spurless boots tight against blond-furred ribs, she was laid down over her saddlehorn, too terrified to damn the horn digging into her youthful belly: her pink Stetson pressed itself down on her head, held by the back strap run under her snooded hair: rain hit hard and fast, as if to slow them down, to soften them up for the spinning, sucking, rumbling monster coming behind.

Hail, then: hail, pea sized, thumbnail sized, rain, cold, torrential: Thunder grunted, then bawled defiantly, as if to summon the Herd to him, to unite and form a boss-headed fighting front -- but they were alone, running, desperate to escape this mile wide monster vacuuming up dirt, grass, twisted off trees.

At least they were alone until Victoria saw movement on her left.

Her head was down, she felt rain and hail beating on her Stetson as they drove through the pre-twister tempest: beside her, grinning, a soldier from an earlier age, Montana-peaked campaign hat lowered like her, but beneath, a familiar, grinning face -- 

World War One? Victoria thought, astonished, as the bloody-faced young soldier with holes in his uniform and gore leaking from the holes gripped a 97 Winchester and screamed defiance, his US-branded chestnut surging under him, keeping pace with the hard-muscled Fanghorn.

Victoria looked to her right, at a woman in a riding skirt, leaned out over the back of a shining-black, truly huge mare -- a woman with a very familiar face -- a wet, gleaming mare with huge white wings, spread out, adding their velocity to Frisian legs --

Victoria felt Thunder surge forward, faster, more powerfully: she squinted, lifted her head a little, not wanting to be hit in the face with cold rain and fine hail, but needing to see what Thunder saw --

They drove into blackness.

Utter, consuming, total, blackness.

Thunder never slowed.

They came out in a sunny plain, flat to the horizon -- warm, dry, bright, with no sign of storm or tornado.

Thunder slowed gradually, his head and tail coming up, going from a flat-out, go-to-war charge, to a strutting, juvenile, I-showed-him! gait.

Victoria straightened, turned in her saddle, looked for the winged warrior-goddess, looked for the World War 1 soldier with a big grin and a trench shotgun --

Thunder came around, rode a big circle, finally reared a little, screaming victory and triumph over whatever it was tried to kill him.

Victoria Keller, soaked to the skin, started to shiver, turned Thunder again, looking for the wall of living hell that wanted to twist around them and rip them apart, to sunder them and scatter them and lift them up and dash them bloodied to the earth --

 

Victoria sat in the conference room, trembling, a surplus US Army blanket around her, under her. She gripped a heavy, white-ceramic mug of hot cocoa, trying hard not to spill it as shivers came in waves, as terror dissipated.

Outside, a Fanghorn stallion was quietly collected by a pale-eyed horseman, taken out to the Sheriff's ranch, pastured with the other saddle stock -- in other words, an Offworld saddlemount was discreetly, and quickly, removed from the public eye.

Victoria was becoming a young woman, but when her big strong Daddy picked her up, blanket wrapped like she was a little girl again, she offered no protest, and when he carried her out and quietly told Dispatch he'd be on radio if he was needed, Victoria  closed her eyes as salt water gratitude ran silently down her cheeks.

Sometimes a girl just needs her Daddy.

 

Michael sat at the kitchen table with his twin sister.

Her hair was in a tall towel turban, she was wrapped in a fluffy, warm robe and wearing big oversized furry looking, bright-pink house slippers, and she was eating a truly huge, bare-naked waffle as finger food.

"I didn't open the Iris," she said quietly.

Michael chewed on his own thick, peanut-butter-spread waffle, took a noisy slurp of steaming-hot coffee.

Victoria took a dainty sip of tea, set her teacup down, looked uncertainly at her twin brother.

"There'd been a solar mass ejection and it reacted with ... oh, I don't know what it is," Victoria groaned. "It was supposed to be causing so much interference --"

Michael nodded, raised his hand, muttered "Testify!" through a mouthful. "That happened to me, Sis!"

"I remember," she muttered, frowning at her waffle as if debating whether to take another bite, then set it down too.

"I ... don't ... know ..."

Victoria chewed on her bottom lip.

"Maybe it was Marnie."

"Marnie?"

"She ..."

Victoria's voice trailed off and Michael saw her blink at a memory.

She looked speculatively at her twin brother.

"Michael, do you have a First World War uniform?"

Michael was quiet for several long moments, then he blinked twice and said, "No."

"Michael, I don't have my wrist-comm. Pull up Marnie.  Now."

Michael raised an eyebrow, then bent his arm, manipulated his black wrist-unit.

Marnie's hologram appeared, unbothered by apparently standing through the kitchen table.

"Marnie," Victoria asked, her eyes as serious as her voice, "do you have a big black horse?"

"You mean like Gammaw's Snowflake-mare?"

Victoria nodded, her eyes big, her face pale.

"No."

Victoria blinked, looked at Michael, looked back.

"Do ... what can you tell me about horses with wings?"

Marnie was suddenly silent, her expression as serious as her younger sister's.

"What happened?"

"Marnie," Victoria said uncomfortably, "we need to talk."

 

Two pale eyed sisters and their pale eyed brother stood before the tall glass display case in the Firelands Museum.

The inside of the case was fogged with moisture, and the uniform was still wet in seams and creases.

Airflow was adjusted, inside the glass case that held Private Joseph Keller's World War 1 uniform and revolvers.

He hadn't taken a 97 to war, so no trench gun was included in the display, just the uniform and the twin, engraved, copper plated Colt's revolvers he'd worn and used and died with both pistols empty, holstered, an enemy weapon picked up and its bayonet bloodied as he fought to his last breath.

Three sets of pale eyes regarded the fogging inside the display case, watched it slowly disappear as the Museum's dehumidifiers did their work.

Two sisters and a brother turned quickly, stood back-to-back at the unexpected electronic *pop!* and hum, just before "Ghost Riders In the Sky," played on a deep-throated bass guitar, came over the speakers.

In another room, a pale eyed young man in a World War 1 uniform lifted his fingers from the museum's sound system, looked at a pale eyed young woman in a McKenna gown who crossed her arms, looked over her spectacles at him and patted her foot like a schoolteacher.

A grin, a quiet chuckle.

"What's the use of being a ghost," he grinned, "if you can't have a little fun with it?"