SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SAWMILL CUT PLANK

Old Pale Eyes subscribed to a personal, military, neatness.

His black suit was brushed, his necktie carefully knotted, boots polished, his curled handlebar carefully waxed: he long maintained that careful grooming reflected a careful mind, and whether because of his appearance, or in spite of it, his work, his courtroom presentations, his careful persuasions when he arbitrated a dispute between rivals, neighbors or competitors, reflected the orderly and logical operation of a disciplined mind.

Old Pale Eyes was a man who planned ahead.

He'd planned for today.

He'd originally intended to go up-mountain and across the saddle, down the other side and through a natural, long archway -- very nearly a tunnel -- and emerge near the narrow goat path that led up to High Lonesome.

He'd intended to go there, where he could sit, alone, on a natural stone bench, and let the sun soak into his old bones.

He'd intended to take something he could to ss to curious cubs, if any were nested in the low, deep cave that opened beside the natural stone sittin' bench.

He didn't go.

Old Pale Eyes sat down on a sawmill cut plank he'd fashioned into a rude bench, attached to the barn: he sat on the sunward side, in the lee, where sun's warmth could soak through his black suit, and into his aging carcass, and hopefully chase out the aches and pains he'd accumulated over the years.

Old Pale Eyes knew why he sat here, rather than high on the mountain.

If he sat here, he was near the house -- he was near to where Esther might step out onto the porch and flutter a dishtowel at him, and for a moment he smiled, just a little.

Esther.

Esther of the shining, red-auburn hair and the ready laugh.

Esther, all green eyes and womanly curves and that knowing look that could see through him like a glass window.

Linn closed his eyes and leaned his head back against weathered boards, remembering the sound of her step as she approached, the whisper of petticoat material as she swept her skirt and sat beside him, graceful as a dancer with that simple act of just sitting.

His right hand opened a little, as if asking her to slip her hand in his, the way she used to, when he'd sit on this self same bench and she'd come out of the house and sit with him.

Linn felt The Bear Killer shift and sigh dramatically and roll over, pressing lightly against the side of Linn's high Cavalry boot top.

Esther was long dead, but other eyes watched the old retired lawman, taking his well earned ease in the sun -- younger eyes, pale eyes, unobtrusive and watchful guardians of a man they'd respected for years and saw no reason to change now.

They knew the Grand Old Man was near to stone blind now, his hearing was much less than it had been: his laugh was still as quick, his mind as sharp, as it had been, but he was slowing noticeably now.

He'd not asked for the help, he'd not asked for overwatch, but this was family, and family took care of their own.

Especially when they were taking care of an old retired Sheriff who'd given very bad men serious reason and cause to wish him harm.

 

Reverend Linn Keller, cousin to the pale eyed lawman with whom he shared a name, sat in the lee of a shed with a sleeping, blanket wrapped child in his arms.

He leaned his head back against weathered timber and closed his eyes.

The child he held was sleeping, finally: the good Reverend sat up all night, bathing the child in tepid water to bring down the roaring fever: Parson and patient were about worn out from spending the night fighting the disease-fires that tried to incinerate a young body from the inside, and now, now they sat in the sun, in the warmth, sheltered from the prevailing wind by a well built shed behind the Parson's back.

When Mrs. Parson came out, she stopped, smiled at the sight of her exhausted husband, finally getting some rest: given her druthers, she'd druther have him in bed, she'd druther have pulled the quilts over him and tucked him in like a child, she'd druther have given the poor man some good rest.

She was, herself, worn out, but she was used to it -- women were then, and are still today, made of stern stuff, and she considered there was room enough on the plank bench for her to sit as well.

The older children, there at the orphanage, saw the Parson and his wife sound asleep on the bench, and shushed the other children as needed, and the older children took over fixing the evening meal, and when something tickled the good Reverend Keller's nose, he wiggled his mustache, opened one eye, saw a grinning little boy teasing his beak with a fuzzy headed weed stem: husband and wife woke slowly, then rose, carefully not commenting on the numb state of their backsides, and the moment they stood, they ran face first into a fragrant cloud of supper's invitation from within the Orphanage.

They rose from the sawmill cut plank bench, warmed by the sun and by each other, and the Reverend Linn Keller, cousin to that pale eyed lawman of the same name, carried the still-sleeping, blanket-wrapped child inside, into the inviting cloud rising from what the children finished preparing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CELEBRATE

Will Keller added a cube of paraffin to his lead pot and stirred gently.

He picked up a long nose lighter and ignited the thick smoke boiling off the hot lead, and kept stirring.

He had a stack of ingots cast in the bottoms of inverted aluminum cans -- he had enough to run him a good long time -- and he commenced to cast a few fast discards after dipping the aluminum mold, corner first, into the hot lead.

Will worked slowly, methodically.

He remembered casting lead with his nephews, with his nieces.

He taught them the art of pouring lead, of filling out a mold, of reading the bullets -- wrinkles, frosting, fracturing when the mold opened, all told a tale the caster needed to know.

Will did not teach by talking, and he did not teach by showing.

Tell me and I'll forget, he'd heard years before, show me and I won't remember, but involve me -- 

He felt his eyes tighten at the corners, a smile he didn't allow to the rest of his face.

Involve me and I've got it forever!

It was windy enough he had a constant air flow through his intentionally drafty shed.

The gasoline pressure furnace was hot in front of him; he had a silvered survival blanket hung up above him and draped down behind him, a propane heater to keep his back side warm, but not enough blanket to trap lead fumes.

Will was an old man now, and lead poisoning from inhaling casting fumes was likely not what would kill him, but he saw no sense in taking chances.

Just like the grinding visor he wore, and the welder's cap.

His hair was getting quite thin these days, and he preserved his balding scalp from any pops or splatters with the welder's beanie.

He'd come back from the eye doc that morning with a grin hidden inside his face it would take a hammer and chisel to remove, for he'd gotten good news.

There'd been some indications he was experiencing damage to the macula, those sensitive retinal structures he didn't want damaged: pressures were too high inside his eyeballs, the doc explained, use this eyedrop twice a day and when you use the nighttime drop, wait five minutes more and then apply this second eyedrop.

Will did this faithfully.

He'd gone back for a revisit that morning.

The eye doc discussed his findings upon finding Will's intraocular pressures at a concerning level, and he pulled no punches, knowing Will the way he did: he said in so many words, "Will, I really hate to tell you this, but you have glaucoma."

Will remembered the man was almost reluctant to say this.

Will considered that maybe the doc experienced people weeping or collapsing or growing enraged at being told they would go blind if they were not treated.

Will did none of these things.

"Now the Devil has a name," he'd replied, "and we know how to fight it."

He remembered how the eye doc looked like someone dumped a big can of relief right over his head.

He'd come back from being told his pressures were well within normal range, the drops were working, keep it up, and the very first thing Will did was go into the Silver Jewel and order up a shrimp basket.

When Will celebrated, he had shrimp.

Will loved shrimp, his late wife Crystal was allergic to seafood protein -- not iodine, the protein itself -- but now, now that he was a man alone, he could fix fish at home, and when he ate at the Silver Jewel -- when he ate in celebration -- he had shrimp.

Will began casting.

He appreciated the precision with which a man could cast bullets.

He delighted in filled-out driving bands, smooth sides to the semi-wadcutter noses: any that did not meet his approval went back in the pot, at least until he got his mold up to working temperature, which with the aluminum mold blocks, was fast -- once he hit his stride, he'd drop the freshly cast bullets out of the mold and into a five gallon water bucket beside him, on the theory that it would case-temper the lead.

He was, however, scrupulously careful to not splash.

He had no fear of water inside the mold: any water that would end up in the mold's cavity would flash evaporate and would no longer be a factor, and Will counted this a good thing: once, and once only, had he experienced a steam explosion while melting lead, when he was slipping chunks of lead pipe into his pot and there was a trace of water in what he'd added.

That's when he started wearing the full face visor instead of just safety glasses.

 

Betsy looked at Angela in honest puzzlement.

Angela unpinned her nurse's cap, set it on her desk, then picked up the grinding visor and dunked it on her fair hair.

"Why do you need that?" Betsy asked in honest bewilderment -- Angela wore a Confederate field generator that could stop anything short of a thermonuclear detonation, and with recent enhancements, it probably could withstand that too -- Angela stopped and looked at Betsy, then smiled as she lowered the visor over her face, then opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of leather welder's gloves.

"When in Rome," she said, "wear what the Romans wear!"

Betsy shook her head as Angela disappeared into the Iris.

 

Will looked to his left to see a set of white stockinged legs being discreetly covered by his rubber gunsmith's bluing apron.

"Well, hell," he growled, "pull up a five gallon bucket and have a set."

Angela eased her skirted backside down on the inverted, white-plastic, five-gallon bucket, tilted her head and watched her Uncle cast for several more minutes before speaking.

"I got this sudden hunger for shrimp," she said, "and I brought pie."

Will stopped casting for several moments, resting the mold blocks on the rim of the cast iron lead pot, then he nodded, dippered another pour into the bullet mold.

"Pie?"

"Blueberry. And there is ice cream."

Will grunted.

"And I suppose you want me to help you keep it from spoilin' or some such."

"Something like that."

Will turned and looked into the depths of his quench bucket, considered the considerable hoard he'd cast already.

Angela watched as he turned the fire out under the lead pot, then dippered lead into inverted aluminum cans to ingot the liquid lead.

"I suppose," he said, "I'll be able to gag it down."

Angela smiled quietly.

"I didn't want you having to celebrate alone."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PAYIN' THE PREACHER

Mrs. Parson opened the side door of her kitchen, the one that opened out onto the mostly enclosed back porch.

"Sheriff?" she said, concern on her face and in her voice. "Is everything all right?"

Sheriff Linn Keller removed his Stetson and chewed on his bottom lip.

"Ma'am," he said gently, "would the Parson be in?"

"He's in back. Please come in, it's cold out!"

Linn wiped his feet on the coarse mat laid out for that purpose and stepped into her warm, tidy kitchen, extended his hand, and with it a familiar looking package: a cloth-wrapped bundle that smelled delightfully of freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee.

Mrs. Parson smiled, looked up and her words of thanks dropped back down her throat as she saw the Sheriff's eyes drive past her, as she heard her husband's step in the hallway.

The Parson could not see Linn's face for the glare washing around his silhouette -- he was in front of the door's window -- but his wife turned and stepped over to the counter with a ribbon-tied bundle, and he could see the look of concern on her face.

"Sheriff?" the Parson said, coming over with his hand out. "What's wrong?"

Linn gripped the man's hand as Mrs. Parson took his Stetson and hung it on the hall tree by the back door.

Linn reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a thick envelope, handed it to the Parson.

"We need to talk."

Mrs. Parson was already adding coffee from the Sheriff's special delivery, to their coffee maker.

The Sheriff and the Parson sat opposite one another at the little table, the scent of the fresh ground coffee filling the kitchen as Mrs. Parson carefully poured it from its cloth poke into the ceramic jar where she kept her fresh coffee.

The Parson waited.

He watched the Sheriff shift uncomfortably -- he knew the man broke his tail bone years before, and sometimes he had to shift a little when he sat down -- but the Parson also read the man's face and his general body language, and he knew there was more to this than an arthritic backside.

The Parson's fingers rested on the envelope and the man frowned.

He'd examine the contents later.

"Parson," the Sheriff said slowly, "I sharpened my pencil and figured up the price of a hekatomb."

"O-kaaay," the Parson said slowly. "If I remember my ancient Greek correctly, that could be anywhere from a dozen to a hundred bulls."

"Twenty, to be exact."

"I ... see."  A pause.  "And the occasion?"

The Sheriff leaned back, grinned crookedly, then shook his head and laughed.

"According to legend, when Pythagoras was conceived of his famous Pythagorean Theorem, he leaped naked from the bath and ran through the streets shouting 'Eureka!' -- and he sacrificed a hekatomb out of gratitude for what he considered a Divine Revelation."

"Isn't it a little cold to be running wet and naked?" Mrs. Parson said gently, and the Sheriff's face turned a truly incredible shade of red: his eyes crinkled shut as he turned his head a little to the side, the way he did when he laughed silently.

"Yes, ma'am," he finally hazarded, with a gasp and a chuckle, "it surely is!" -- and stopped himself before he started talking about having fallen through the ice, or having helped get people out of cold water where they'd fallen through ice in the past.

Coffee gurgled into glazed, white-ceramic mugs, fragrant steam a welcome greeting as a mug was set in front of each man: each solemnly trickled a little milk into their coffee, each took a noisy, ceremonial slurp

The Sheriff dashed tan drops from the bottom curve of his sculpted handlebar.

"A hekatomb?" the Parson asked, his voice quiet, and he placed curved fingertips on the still sealed envelope. "Isn't that a bit extravagant?"

The Sheriff's eyes went from merry to solemn, and he leaned forward a little, placed his forearms on the tablecloth.

"Parson," he said, his voice serious, "I just spent arm, leg and eye teeth on furnace repair."

"Oh?"

"Firebox was burnt through and we were getting CO into the living space."

The Parson leaned back a little, his eyes widening as the Sheriff's words hit bottom.

"Oh I see oh," he replied.

The Sheriff nodded toward the envelope.

"Mama talked about payin' the preacher one time when she dodged a head on collision. I was with her at the time, couldn't have been more'n nine or ten. She whipped her Jeep onto the shoulder and fishtailed it back and didn't flip, somehow ... she mashed the go pedal and we clawed our way back up onto pavement and didn't hit anyone gettin' back up onto the roadway."

Linn's eyes were staring a hole through the faceted milk glass sugarbowl, then he looked up at the Parson.

"I never said a word and neither did she, least until she looked over at me and said after this we had to pay the preacher."

Mrs. Parson glided back over to the table with two big slabs of pie.

She set one in front of her husband and the other in front of the Sheriff and laid a motherly hand on his back.

"You'll have to help me out here," she said quietly. "I don't want that pie to go to waste, for waste is a sin, and the minister's wife should not be allowing sinful activity in her kitchen."

The Sheriff looked at her, just as solemn as the old Judge, and said gravely, "In the interest of our souls' sakes, Mrs. Parson, I shall endeavor to stave off such sinful activity!"

 

 

 

Edited February 24 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

¿CON SU PERMISO?

Snowflake's head lowered slightly as her forelegs went into a predatory crouch.

Curly fur stood up down her spine and across her shoulders and a low, menacing rumble started somewhere a mile and a half south of her chest, deep and powerful and fit to pour cold water down a man's spine was he close enough to hear it.

Feral-yellow eyes had a radar lock as her ears flattened.

Adult eyes widened, adult arms spread out protectively, children froze, startled, not entirely sure what to make of this white-furred Mountain Mastiff's sudden change.

Two truly huge creatures launched, all fangs and fury, stopping just before collision, each yammering, snarling, slashing at the other, filling the air with rage and with fury and with shining ivory death: jaws snapped, claws danced on the polished floor, and two littermates that hadn't seen each other in far too long drew back and rushed again, collided, spun away from one another and rushed again, each knocking the other over and happily tangling in absolutely joyful, massively powerful, utterly noisy and most vigorous, reunion.

Jacob stood to one side, laughing: Marnie smiled behind her gloved knuckles, delicately raised to her lips: Angela watched with the patient tolerance of a mother herding a clutch of noisy, active, five-year-old boys, Betsy went to her armor-padded knees and laughed with delight, spreading her plastic-armored arms as if hoping this hard-muscled pair would come share their joy with her as well.

They did.

The Bear Killer and Snowflake both froze, looked at Betsy, then charged: the collision drove her over on her back, her white-with-red-trim-armored legs flew into the air, and two mountain Mastiffs punished the air with their tails as they gave the diminutive Confederate nurse a happy face laundering, as Betsy's sounds of giggling delight filled the Martian classroom.

There is a curious affinity between the very young human, and the canine of any age: the entire class of happy, giggling schoolchildren converged on the pair, and the sound of a happy, muted yow-wow-wow from one or the other mixed like a simmering stew in the childish laughter of a spontaneous moment.

The day's planned lessons got kind of wrecked, as you can imagine, but absolutely nobody objected.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller turned when he felt the air shift.

There hadn't been a sound until he turned.

His good left hand knotted up into a work-hardened fist and he crouched slightly, lowering his center of gravity, lifting his heels just a little, his pale eyes target locked on this new presence in his Sheriff's office.

He set his coffee down and lowered his head.

A sinner's-heart-black mountain Mastiff that hadn't been seen here for just shy of a year growled -- low, powerful, menacing.

Sharon turned, startled, her eyes wide with alarm.

The Sheriff raised a fist, shook it a little, not much.

"You think you can take me?" he said, his voice coarse.

The Bear Killer's teeth gleamed as black lips pulled back, allowing more of his dee-chested snarl to fill the stone-walled lobby.

Man and Beast launched in the same moment.

The collision was not as loud as Sharon expected.

Its nature was very definitely not what Sharon expected.

Linn grunted at the collision of a hundredweight and more of lean muscle and self-propelled death and destruction: his arms locked around The Bear Killer's ribs and they spun, fell: the Sheriff's pained grunt told of the unexpected nature of his landing as he hit the floor, flat on his back, with The Bear Killer atop him.

Sharon blinked, hesitated, uncertain whether to call for backup, to call the squad, to call the National Guard -- at least until the Sheriff's laughter filled the room, until the eyes-squinted-shut man sputtered as The Bear Killer gave him a very happy face-washing, as he came up and hugged the big mountain Mastiff, completely ignoring the possibility (and the subsequent reality) of dog hair on his black suit.

The Sheriff was a man of dignity and a man of composure and a man of patience and longsuffering, but sometimes you just have to sit on the floor with a delighted hound dog and laugh as you rub his neck and back and rolled-over belly.

When the Sheriff stopped in at the All-Night on his way home, Marsha was behind the register, leaning over the counter, staring as The Bear Killer galloped into the store, nose up, scenting, and then running up to her and planting big black paws on the counter to give the staring, startled, and utter delighted clerk several Mastiff-sized doggy kisses.

Marsha leaned as far over the counter as she could, her hands busy, and The Bear Killer -- by the Sheriff's later description -- "was just eatin' that up" the way a happy hound dog will when greeting old friends.

Marsha skipped from behind the counter with a colorful cardboard bucket and thrust it at the Sheriff.

"Over fry," she said, "I made too much and I don't want to throw it out. Boneless chicken" -- she looked at The Bear Killer, looked at the Sheriff with the pleading expression of a little girl who wished very much to spoil a boon companion.

"¿Con su permiso?" she asked, and the Sheriff laughed and nodded.

"Si, Marcita," he said, his voice soft, the way a father's voice is when he grants a favorite daughter her wish: Marsha was not his daughter, but he'd watched her grow up, and he'd always called her Marcita -- Little Marsha -- it was an endearment, and she knew it, and she would hear that term until the day he walked her down the aisle, the day he kissed her cheek and whispered, "You may be a married woman, but you will always be my little Marcita," but that would not be for some time yet.

In the meantime, there was fried boneless chicken to share with The Bear Killer.

 

 

Edited February 25 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WARN'T GOOD

Esther Keller was the green-eyed, red-headed, Carolina Irish wife of that pale eyed old lawman with the short temper and two shirt sleeves plumb full of arm.

Esther Keller would likely have been hanged as a witch had she been born very many years earlier.

Esther Keller ruthlessly angled and maneuvered to snatch Old Pale Eyes out from under her friend Bonnie McKenna, who had designs on the man, and she did so with an efficiency that put seasoned business moguls to shame.

Esther and her pale eyed husband had a very open communication.

Either could talk to the other about anything comin' or goin', with frankness and with candor, and frequently did, though they took pains to hold their more private conversations out of earshot of anyone else.

Esther was also a woman of remarkable perception -- not at all unusual for what the mountain folk called a Wise Woman -- and so when she found her husband communing with his horses instead of his wife, when she observed he'd stopped brushing his stallion's mane and was just standing with his forehead leaned against the Appaloosa's neck, she knew something wasn't quite right.

She also knew she should not interrupt.

Esther Keller well knew the healing qualities horses have.

She did not pretend in the least little bit to understand quite how it worked, only that it worked: she remembered her husband's quiet observation that he thought better in the saddle, and she'd ridden with him when they had no particular destination, but he had need to ride and think, and so she rode in silence, watching her husband closely, womanly intuition, personal knowledge, all gleaning information from the man's posture, his movements, the way he turned his head, the way he guided his mount without visible movement.

Esther was still not entirely comfortable with riding her paint mare, bitless: her first paint, Edi, had been a truly superb mount, and this was her only colt: Edi was gone now, and Linn held his wife as she wept over what most of the era considered just another working tool.

Esther may not have been entirely comfortable riding her bitless horse, but she'd learned the horse knew her rider better than her rider realized: reins were more a formality, until she realized that by laying the reins against this Edi's neck, plus her shift in weight and knee-pressure, Edi responded as well or better than a bitted horse.

On this one particular day, Esther knew her husband was returned home, but he'd not yet come into the house, and this was unusual.

He might unsaddle his own horse, yes, he might look the barn over and talk to the hired man, yes, he might be tending any of a dozen things, but it was unusual for him to be gone overlong, and so Esther gathered her worries and her skirts and went out to the back pasture to see if all was well.

She stopped when she realized ... it wasn't.

Esther heard of something in the county, a tragedy, she had no particulars -- which irritated her, Esther was the kind of woman who found things out, and all she found out was it was something bad -- and now, with her husband leaning against his stallion, one arm hooked over Apple-horse's neck and the curry brush dangling at the end of his free arm, Esther's spousal instincts told her all was not well.

She glided toward her husband, carefully avoiding piles of second hand horse feed: she came around the stallion, approached from the opposite side, approached from directly in front of her husband.

Apple-horse turned his head in quiet greeting, and Linn looked up.

Esther blinked in honest surprise.

Her husband was a strong man, and no one disputed the fact: he'd survived things that would have killed ten men, he'd faced up to and faced down a variety of large and angry people bearing a variety of weapons, and if one were to believe stories she'd heard, the man shook hands with St Peter himself before being turned away from the Pearly Gates because his work was not yet done -- as a matter of fact, Esther took some credit for that last, as she stopped his bleeding out, there on the floor of the Sheriff's Office, by speaking the Word, and by dragging his essence back to his long tall skinny carcass by the sheer determined force of her feminine will.

Or so she preferred to believe.

He was a strong man, but every fiber of his being spoke of fatigue, of ... not defeat ... discouragement, perhaps, or ...

...sorrow?

Linn's arm was still over Apple's neck.

He raised his hand as she raised hers, and he took her hand in his, his grip careful, gentle.

"I heard ... something of today," Esther murmured hesitantly.

Linn's expression was haunted as he looked past her at the day's memories lingering like a miasma.

He looked at Esther, nodded, once, and said quietly, "Warn't good."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

KNOCKDOWN!

The bottlenecked cartridge brass spun from the rifle as blued steel shucked a fresh round into the chamber.

Jacob Keller's pale eye was steady behind the ghost ring peep as steel plates either swung, spun or dropped: he dropped low behind cover, thumbed fresh rounds into the loading gate with the ease of long practice.

He pulled a slim grenade from under his coat, pulled the pin, slung it away from him -- behind his back, throwing it where he'd been -- it detonated and he scampered forward, passed the first cover and dropped behind the second, drove four more rounds into the simulated opponents, he shot the red, tea-saucer-sized bonus plate and sent it spinning off its fence post, then shot the stop plate.

The stop light blazed, the stop howler buzzed and Jacob stood and ceremonially jacked the last empty from his Marlin, held it so the timekeeper could see into the open bolt:  "Confirm empty?"

"Confirmed empty, close and drop."

Jacob closed the action, pointed the rifle downrange and dropped the hammer, slung the old familiar rifle muzzle down from his off shoulder, as was his preference.

Sheriff Jacob Keller closed his eyes, took a long, sighing breath, then murmured, "End."

He opened his eyes and looked out at the barren Martian landscape, at the holographic projectors that fabricated the familiar Sheriff's range from back home.

Every bullet he fired was gathered, funneled into a coffee can slightly older than Jacob: it was being dollied back on a looped cable, it dumped automatically into the Recyclo, brass hulls were gathered and tossed into the hopper as well: this, and a minor handful of just plain dirt, would be torn down at the subatomic level and reassembled into loaded .30-30 rifle ammunition.

Even the fragments of the flash-bang he'd tossed behind him as a distraction to his movement would be gathered and recycled.

When the automatic cleanup was finished, the coarse, red-sandy soil would be as unblemished as it had been before Firelands colony was established.

 

Victoria Keller smiled as she ran delicate fingertips across the buckle of her floral-carved gunbelt, cinched snugly around her maidenly, corseted waist.

She looked at the deputy beside her and said quietly, "You're good at what you do. You've done this before," and the tall, uncertain-looking lawman glanced at her and muttered, "Thanks, I think."

"Shooters ready!" came the call, and Victoria saw the deputy draw into himself the way he always did in a match.

"Stand byyyyy ...."

Beeep!

Victoria took one step to the right, drew: her pistol came up by itself, she had no sensation of grip, of draw, of raise or punch-out: she marveled as the red dot swung smoothly past the plate, she felt the pistol fire itself, she felt more than heard the deputy beside her firing, his cadence regular, planned.

Ahead of them, a long rack, six plates on either side.

Victoria's shots cadenced with the deputy's -- plates fell in symmetrical sequence -- until the last plate.

The deputy's sixth plate slammed down -- rack cleared -- Victoria's last plate remained standing.

They both dropped magazines, racked slides, they both caught the round in midair, then the deputy blinked, his mouth opened, he looked at the plate rack and the looked at Victoria.

The Sheriff's daughters routinely outshot everyone.

This time he outshot her.

Victoria showed her pistol to the timer, lowered the slide, thrust the muzzle downrange and dropped the striker, holstered -- she turned to the grinning young deputy, swatted him on the arm.

"Told ya you could do it!"

Angela, back behind the line, had field glasses to her eyes, hid a knowing smile behind her face.

She saw the lead smear at the edge of the plate, down low, where impact leverage would be the least.

She'd watched Victoria's rounds drive the plates not far from the bottom -- square hits, hard enough to knock them down, but this grazing hit was not enough to wobble torch-cut steel.

She asked Victoria about it later, and Victoria surreptitiously looked around before murmuring, "You have no idea how hard it is to shoot the gap between two plates!"

"You almost didn't," Angela replied quietly as Victoria drove the loader down into the magazine and fed it another loaded round.

"He needed a win," Victoria murmured. "Look how many times we've taken the trophy. Now he's got braggin' rights."

"I know him," Angela sighed. "He won't brag."

"You know what I mean."  Victoria thumbed the reloaded magazine into its carrier, straightened, dropped the black-plastic loader back into her range bag.

"Yeah," Angela smiled, watching the young man in question grinning red-faced and self-conscious as his fellows shook his hand, pounded him happily on the back at his win.  "I know."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

LA MANCHA

Fourteen-year-old Marnie Keller crossed her stockinged ankles and tucked horse-toned legs a little to the side as she sat at her Gammaw's desk there in the Firelands museum, in the back room where Willamina found respite in "Looking At Dead People" -- plunging into, swimming in, her only genuine obsession.

Ancestry Research.

Marnie was wearing a suit dress -- her Gammaw helped tailor it to Marnie's changing form -- her hair was carefully styled, she was the image of blooming beauty, and her flawless face -- completely free of makeup, like her Gammaw -- frowned a little as she studied the entry in the handwritten account open before her.

"I know that look," Retired Sheriff Willamina Keller said as she sat, and Marnie looked up from the book, concerned.

"Gammaw," she said quietly, "are you all right?"

Willamina hesitated a moment too long before nodding.

"Barometer just dropped," she replied, looking away.

"Liar."

Willamina's eyes snapped to her granddaughter, hard, authoritative, then almost immediately softened.

"You're short of breath more often," Marnie said, "you're wearing boots instead of shoes so nobody can see your ankles swelling."

Willamina slipped her readers on her face, then lowered her head to peer over the frameless lenses at her granddaughter.

"You," she said quietly, "are your Grandmother's Granddaughter!"

Marnie gave Willamina a long, unblinking look.

"Gammaw," she said quietly, "what can be done about it?"

Willamina took a long breath, blinked, nodded.

"Nothing," she admitted. "Story at eleven" -- she looked at the open account in front of her pale eyed granddaughter -- "I see you're reading some of my works."

"You signed it 'La Mancha,' Marnie said, her fingertips just touching the page in question. "Why The Stain?"

Willamina took another long breath, then stood, rolled her wheeled office chair over close to Marnie.

"You know I'm a Marine."

Marnie nodded.

"You don't know why I enlisted."

Marnie shook her head.

 

Willamina's eyes were pale, hard, her face the color of putty, stark-red lips pulled back from even white teeth, and the color stood out in her cheeks like dots of paint over her cheekbones.

She moved quickly, silently: her first strike knocked the football jock on his face -- she'd laid the club across the back of his head, just under the point of the skull, laid him out -- then she thrust a pillowcase over his head and swung the sawed-off, recycled-table-leg war club and mashed his right hand.

She pulled back, then bent, seized his belt, rolled him over on his back.

Two more swings and she broke his collarbones -- left, then right -- she pulled his legs up so his knees were bent, she swung the club fast, hard, viciously, swinging with rage and with all the unbridled, uncontrolled rage she'd never dealt with, not in all the years since she was abducted, tortured, since she watched her boyfriend tortured to death, since her Mama called her a troublemaking liar, ever since she left her drunken sot of a mother and ran off at age sixteen to live with relatives she'd only visited once.

Willamina stopped, took several long breaths, considered, then smiled, and her smile was far less than kind.

She swung the club in short, swift arcs.

She broke both her victim's feet -- broke the arches -- then she belted his kneecaps, hard, intending to shatter them as well.

Her first blow was enough to stun her victim.

All that followed caused so much pain he was not able to cry out.

Willamina walked up to his head, squatted, gripped the pillowcase, pulled it free, then walked away, calmly, slipping the engine-turned shaman into the stained pillowcase.

She did not look back.

 

Marnie listened quietly to Willamina's account.

"I was never accused," Willamina said quietly. 

"What was your reason?" Marnie asked bluntly.

Willamina smiled with half her mouth and Marnie saw her eyes change, as if the woman was satisfied with what she'd done, and not at all regretful.

"He was a sports jock. Big Man On Campus. Football was his Golden Ticket and I took that away from him."

"Did he ever know ... did you ever tell him it was you?"

Willamina shook her head.

"No, but I knew I had to do something to contain that rage."

"What did he do that enraged you?"

Willamina looked very directly at Marnie.

"You'll make a good interrogator," she said frankly, "so here it is. I was on the school bus. Sophomore year. He leaned across the aisle and belted a science nerd in the jaw just because he could. The man was a bully and a coward, his only claim to fame was sports, so I took that away from him."

"Did you ever regret it?"

"No," Willamina said firmly. "Not once, not ever, but I did realize forensics might somehow tie me to him.

"I burned the club I used, I burned the clothes I wore -- everything -- I went there on foot and even burned the boots I wore, burned 'em in a high temperature industrial incinerator in another county, without witnesses."

"How'd you manage that?"

Willamina smiled gently. "I knew someone who ran a sewer plant that burned their waste sludge. I knew the local police took their seized pot there to be burned in the sewer incinerator" -- she looked at Marnie with amusement -- "the operator was a ... connoisseur ... of the wildwood weed, and the local detectives knew it, and they liked to torment the man by requesting he personally incinerate what they'd confiscated."

"And that's where you burned your clothes."

"And the cut and split table leg, yes."

"Thorough," Marnie said quietly, nodding her approval.

"I got to thinking ... no matter how thorough my ... efforts ... I might miss something and be accused, so I kind of got cold feet and decided I'd apply for early graduation and go into the Corps, and I did both."

"Did they ever suspect?"

"No. No, the ... I understand they spoke with anyone in school that would talk to them, and they ended up with a list long as your arm of people this Jack Doe bullied and beat up, and my name wasn't on the list."

"So your enlistment was a waste."

"Oh, no," Willamina laughed, pausing to take a few breaths -- "you didn't see that," she said meaningfully -- "no, I needed that discipline to control the blood we share. That's why I got your Daddy into the martial arts early, that's why I sponsored your starting the Arts early."

Marnie realized her fingers were still touching the handwritten account her Gammaw penned years before.

"La Mancha?"

"The stain," Willamina nodded.  "I was so afraid I would stain Uncle Pete and Aunt Mary with what I'd done, I figured if I went into the Corps, it would either dry up and blow away, or I'd be away from here if anyone came after me and it wouldn't stain them as bad."

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A GOOD NIGHT'S REST

"Jacob?"

Sarah's voice was quiet, there in the back stairway in the Silver Jewel.

She felt him turn his head a little, toward her, as they sat side by side on a step, hidden from the rest of the world.

"Did you ever ... kill someone ... and then just leave them?"

Jacob considered for several moments before he said quietly, "You know I have."

"Besides him."

"Besides him?"  His voice was almost amused. "Twice now. You?"

He felt Sarah's silent laughter: she slipped a hand under his, laid her other hand over it -- gently, not confining, just ... just there, warm and alive and either reassuring, or getting reassurance from him, he wasn't sure which, only that her hands felt warm and gentle and kind.

He blinked, surprised: he knew she was a life taker, even this young, and yet her touch was gentle, her words soft, her very mien was nothing but kind, and he realized -- yet again -- that he had absolutely no idea how to figure out these puzzling creatures called "The Female."

"Yes, Jacob," she whispered into the quiet. "I have."

Jacob's head tilted back and his eyes traced the corner, where the stairway's outer wall met the ceiling, and momentarily wondered whether the builders used a ladder, or built a scaffold -- likely a scaffold, as this part of the Silver Jewel had been rebuilt by the Daine Boys, those blue-eyed Kentucky carpenters who were absolute wizards with anything wood.

"You men have it easier," Sarah murmured, leaning into her brother and tilting her head over until it touched his: he felt her hair, a thick cushion against his ear and his scalp, and he smiled a little as he realized this caused him to feel protective toward her.

Sarah smiled a little, too, feeling his hand tighten ever so slightly, and she knew she'd just manipulated the response she wanted -- something that gave her a feeling of satisfaction.

"Easier?" Jacob echoed, and he felt her nod, ever so slightly.

"You men can roll a carcass into the ditch and cover it with rocks, but we poor helpless girls have to have someone come and take care of the body for us!"

He felt her lift her head and he turned a little, looked at her as she batted long eyelashes and affected an absolutely innocent expression -- so flawlessly innocent, that he lowered his head and glared at her from under his eyebrows and murmured, "Poor helpless girls? Little Sis, you are the least helpless girl I know!" -- and his hands shot to her ribs, tickling her: Sarah's face reddened, he heard her teeth click as she snapped her mouth shut to contain her laughter.

Jacob stopped tickling her almost as quickly as he'd started: Sarah retaliated by raising both clawed hands toward him, moving her fingers as if she were tickling him: Jacob turned red instantly, snorted, twisted, upper arms clamped tight against his ribs as Sarah practiced the Deadly Dreaded Sisterly Remote Tickle -- she was not touching him, but he writhed and hissed between clenched teeth as if her fingers were dancing on his ribs, a particular torture she discovered as a child, and used to torment him ever since.

She stopped, she sagged a little, interlaced her fingers, bent forward and leaned her forehead on her entwined hands with a quiet groan.

Jacob was instantly serious, all thoughts of the Dreaded Remote Tickle, gone.

"Sis," he said quietly, reaching across her back and gripping both her shoulders -- "sis, who do I need to kill?"

Sarah leaned into him again and shook her head slightly.

"You know the Judge uses me to find things out."

"I know you tend to bring men back in irons, or have the local constabulary do it for you."

"You like using that word, don't you?"

"What, constabulary?"

Marnie glared at him, one eyebrow raised: "You know what Jackson Cooper told Council!"

"Oh, yeah," Jacob said thoughtfully, smiling with half his mouth. "He said he'll be Town Marshal, but damned if he'd be called Constable!"

"And you've used the word ever since."

"Sounds good when you say it fast," Jacob replied innocently.

"Details," Sarah dismissed his comment with a wave of her hand.

"Sis, I'm serious. Is there someone after you?"

Sarah was quiet for several moments longer than was necessary, and Jacob felt his gut tighten.

"There will always be people after the Black Agent," she said softly. "I've stained that name ... permanently, I'm afraid, but I've been careful not to link it with ... me."

"You're sure you're safe."

Sarah turned quickly, her knee pressing firmly into his, and she lifted her hands, took his face between careful fingers.

"Jacob," she said seriously, "as long as I am either with you or with Papa, I am never safer!"

Jacob gave Sarah a long, serious look, then nodded, once, just a little.

"You worried me, talking about leaving bodies lay."

"That was the Black Agent."

"What was it this time?"

Sarah smiled -- no, she did not smile, it was more a twist of her mouth.

"The Black Agent picked a man's trouser pockets while he enjoyed the attentions of a willing doxy -- and it wasn't me!" she added sternly as she saw the corners of her brother's eyes tighten mischeviously -- "we were in a bordello, and I arranged for a certain ... individual ... to receive certain ... entertainment, which guaranteed he was most distracted, and while he was... while his attentions were elsewhere, I pickpocketed his vest and his trousers and wax impressed every last key in his possession."

"Go on."

"It took me a day to fabricate that many keys, and it took me some little time to sort through them to get into the places I needed to go, including the bedroom where he kept a girl chained to his bed."

Jacob's eyebrow raised and his eyes turned a little more pale than usual.

"I unlocked the heavy steel collar from around her neck and whispered that she had just under a half hour to gather all she could and leave. I hoarsened my voice and she thought me a man -- I was all in black, and in trousers and boots -- I opened his strongbox and his safe, I plundered his ill-gotten gains and stuffed them into a grip and handed them to the woman he was keeping.

"She and I slipped down the back stairway and out to the street, we left the building just as he was going in the front.

"I took her arm and we ran like two criminals -- which I suppose we were -- I ran her two streets over and whistled up a cab, I gave her instructions as to which train to board, and she had more than enough funding to start a young business and then some, so she had train fare.

"I ran back and stopped just short of the rear of his hotel and waited in shadow.

"I'd barely glanced at the papers I'd stuffed in my own black bag, I secreted this under my black cloak, I waited in that shadowed corner as he looked around, as he swore, as ... Jacob, he looked to be almost in panic!"

"What happened then?"

Sarah's smile was predatory, the kind of almost lustful expression one would never, ever expect on such a young and beautiful face.

"I called in my own voice and I asked if he was looking for the papers I'd taken.

"I did not move.

"I had my dirk in hand, and when he ran toward me, I thrust out my leg and tripped him, and then I was on top of him, and I drove my dagger through his tenderloins hard enough I pinned him to the ground!"

Sarah's face was changed now, from the dark joy of a righteous warrior, to something darker, something murderous, something that knew bloodlust and reveled in the sensation.

"I didn't pin him down with my blade, not really, but a knife thrust into the kidneys hurts so very badly the victim cannot cry out.

"He writhed like a worm on a fish-hook.

"I drove my boot sole down beside the blade and I seized the wire-wrapped handle and Jacob, I honestly could not pull it out, so I took my other blade and thrust it into his neck -- I thrust and twisted and drew it out a-twist, and his life's blood spilled in that moonlit alley.

"I washed that blade in a rain-barrel and wiped it dry, I sheathed it and slipped through shadows to a place I'd prepared, where I changed, and emerged from the front of a business, as if I had every right to do so, myself and my carpetbag and my appearance of a decent woman on the street at night.

"I examined the papers on the train home, and the portion of monies I'd kept for my own use."

Sarah smiled, and it was that gentle Sarah-smile he knew so well, the smile he'd seen melt men's hearts. "After all, a girl has to provide for her own upkeep.

"The papers were of immense value to His Honor the Judge, which is why he sent me to secure them in the first place. I've never told him just how I obtained them, nor of my little adventures involved in securing them, but Jacob" -- she laid a hand on his arm and looked very seriously at him -- "I left that man dead in a back alley, and I slept well that night following."

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A PLACE OF SAFETY

Sheriff Linn Keller slouched against a post in his cement-floored barn.

The barn was big enough to house his Mama's six-by -- the one with WILLAMINA stenciled along the hood instead of a serial number -- big enough to contain tractors, stalls, hay, a workbench and projects in various states of disassembly.

Right now his project slipped easily between his fingers -- good hemp rope, twisted, stretched, with a noose of thirteen turns in one end.

He'd tied it not an hour before, he'd tied one and untied it, stretched the rope out, tied another in the opposite end: this one was to his satisfaction, and he gripped the thirteen turns, slid it an inch, nodded.

He looked over at his workbench, not really seeing it, just thinking, and finally he coiled the length of rope, left the noose a-dangle, tied it with hay string to keep it neatly coiled, and sat down on a saddle blanket covered hay bale to wait.

The Bear Killer sat beside him, then finally laid his square, strong chin on the man's leg, closed his eyes in genuine pleasure at the gentle caress of a scar-streaked, weather-tanned, work-callused, hand.

He opened one eye as The Bear Killer shifted, the pulled from his leg, as the big plumed tail smacked him in the side of the thigh, as he heard happy toenails dancing across the smooth cement floor and smelled his daughter's lavender-water scent.

Angela was on her knees, happily wooling The Bear Killer with both hands, while the big blocky canine wiggled like a happy pup: she looked up at her Daddy, her lovely face absolutely shining with happiness:  "I didn't want to wake you!"

"I wasn't asleep," Linn mumbled, opening the other eye and leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

"How'd it go?"

Angela rose, skipped over to her Daddy, whirled, dropped onto the blanket covered bale beside him with all the catastrophic collapse of a schoolgirl: she leaned against her Daddy's shoulder and leaned her cheek over into the tan canvas and gave a long, near-silent sigh as The Bear Killer came over and dunked his jaw on her knee and looked at her with what had to be described as an absolutely adoring expression.

"It went," she finally said.

"I tied a noose of thirteen turns."

"I saw that."

"I have a backhoe and forty acres," he added, and she heard the quiet mischief in his voice, and she knew without looking the corners of his eyes would be crinkling up a little, the way they did when he was trying hard not to smile.

Angela hugged her Papa, quickly, tightly, burying her face against his neck the way she used to as a little girl, when she would sigh "Oh, Daddy," and she felt his silent laughter as she did it again.

"Now darlin'," Linn finally said in that quiet, deep, reassuring Daddy-voice, "tell your old Pa what happened."

Angela leaned across his lap and looked pointedly at the noose, then pulled back and gave her pale eyed Daddy her Very Best Innocent Expression.

"I won't ask how you found out," she said, batting her eyes, reminding Linn yet again of when she was a little girl trying to get away with something.

Linn turned and hugged her into him and this time he made no effort to contain his laughter: father and daughter hugged and laughed, and The Bear Killer danced back a little, tail whipping with delight.

Linn let go, then took her hand carefully between his, and Angela was shocked -- again -- by how absolutely hot his hands were: they'd always been that way, her Mama complained sleeping with Long Tall and Handsome was like sleeping with a furnace, and Angela giggled as the stray memory streaked across her thoughts, her Mama's description of putting her cold feet against the small of his back and eliciting a spontaneous, startled and surprisingly shrill yelp.

"Daddy," Angela said almost hesitantly, "somebody grabbed me."

Angela had the sudden feeling she'd just lit the fuse on a bundle of Du Pont Sixty Per Cent Nitroglycerin Dynamite (which hasn't been made in better than a century), for her father's eyes went cold and white and she could feel silence cascade off him like a cold downdraft off a winter mountain slope.

"What," he said quietly, "happened?"

 

Nurse Angela Keller was briefing the oncoming shift at the nurse's station when a hand gripped her backside and squeezed.

Angela's response was instantaneous.

Her elbow came around and caught the grabber across the ear, she continued her power twist and drove her other fist into his low ribs: Angela worked with her changing balance instead of against it, she drew her knee back to her breastbone and drove the heel of her white uniform shoe into the geographical center of whoever it was seized her posterior in an unwelcome and overly aggressive grip.

Whitecoats fell back away from this sudden explosion of violence.

It would not have mattered if they hadn't.

Angela's fuse was lit and she was responding as she'd trained, and trained, and trained again.

Her horse-strengthened hands seized the shoulders of a surgeon's whitecoat, her knee came up, drove into his descending face at a respectable velocity, then she released her grip, rocked back a little and drove him in the wind with her foot -- again -- this was not the pleasant, smiling, soft-voiced Angel of Mercy the medical world knew and respected: no, this was something with fangs and iced-granite eyes and a snarl that belonged in the throat of a feral feline with tawny fur, not from the flawless-complexioned, beautifully-feminine Daughter of the Shining Mountains.

The surgeon fell back several feet, collapsed, Angela advancing -- fast -- as he fell, hit the floor, rolled up on his side, curling up, eyes squeezed shut against the pain.

Angela seized his wrist, pulled hard, drove her fist three times into his exposed armpit, then she drew back, hands open and bladed, crouched a little, and snarled, glaring at the shrinking sycophants.

She actually ... snarled.

Her fellow nurses drew back, wide-eyed, getting the nurse's station counter between them and the violence; the cloud of white-coated watchers -- medical students, interns, the usual hangers-on that surround a renowned surgeon -- pulled back until they were pressed against the wall.

Angela glared down at the groaning, retching surgeon, watched as he curled into a fetal ball, in more pain than he'd known in his lifetime.

Angela surged forward, went to one knee, seized his necktie, twisted: she intentionally strangled him for a few moments as she brought his face up from the polished tile floor.

"Next time," she hissed, "I will not hold back!"

She released his necktie, stood, lifted her skirt a little and examined her leg, then looked coldly at the surgeon and said, "You owe me a pair of stockings, damn you!" -- then she turned to the clutch of frightened colleagues, regarding her as if she'd just grown fangs, horns and claws.

"Do not ever," she said quietly, coldly, "tolerate anyone grabbing your fanny!" 

Angela Keller closed her eyes, raised her arms, then lowered them -- slowly, ceremonially, crossing fisted forearms as she exhaled: when she opened her eyes, they were her normal very-pale-blue, and she was once again her pleasant, gentle, smiling self.

 

"I can testify on your behalf," Linn said quietly. "You are still a commissioned Sheriff's deputy and I can present your training file."

Angela nodded, caressed The Bear Killer's shoulder.

"You look troubled, darlin'."

"I fought cold," she said softly, then looked at her Daddy.

"Daddy, you remember reading to us about Sarah McKenna and the Rage she felt, how Old Pale Eyes fought that same Rage, and you've felt it --"

Angela's jaw snapped shut and she looked away, she swallowed, she looked back.

"Daddy, I did not feel any of that. I didn't ... I didn't go all Berserkergang. With what they did to me back East ..."

Angela shivered, leaned against her Daddy again, and this time it was with a hurt little girl's vulnerability, not with the strength of a warrior, not with the laughter of a happy child.

Linn hugged his little girl into him again and she shivered and made a little squeaking noise, and Linn held his little girl as she allowed everything she'd contained, finally let go, in the only place where she felt safe.

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SUNRISE OVER SAIGON

Sheriff Willamina Keller thrust a hip at the diner, one hand on her belt and the other holding the serving tray at shoulder height as if she'd done it all her life.

"I changed my hair, do you like it?" she simpered, patting her Marine-short bob and batting her eyes, then she spun, skirt flaring, and skipped, giggling, back down the hallway toward the kitchen.

The entire interior of the Silver Jewel Saloon went dead silent.

Mr. Baxter polished a glass and smiled quietly, watching the various patrons lean over to look down the hall, as if not entirely sure they'd seen what they'd just seen.

Willamina had come out of the kitchen in a waitress's frilly-edged apron, packing a tray full of breakfast for a table full of regulars: she'd spun the orders in front of them with the ease and expertise of a card sharper dealing poker hands, she'd struck a saucy, leggy pose, looked around and said "Anything else, boys, and I'm not on the menu!" 

One of the fellows said later, "I opened my mouth and something stupid fell out," then he reddened and added, "You ain't the regular waitress!" and that's when Willamina went all pin-up doll on them.

Conversation picked up as they heard feminine laughter from what was still called Daisy's Kitchen, even after all these years, and Willamina came steaming down the hallway with another tray piled full of steaming breakfast: she stopped at another table -- "You fellas decided yet? I can recommend the Diced Road Kill with Floor Sweepin's Special!" -- her laugh was contagious, her eyes shone with honest mischief, she took their order and powered back toward the hallway that opened at the end of the bar, and not a few men appreciated the sight of those gorgeous, sculpted, stocking-shining horse-toned gams as she retreated on another mission, neither slowed nor inconvenienced by the fact she wore her trademark electric-blue suit dress and heels.

The Silver Jewel's wait staff that morning, quite honestly, resembled a petite tornado in a suitdress: she was everywhere at once, she kept coffee refilled, when a mother came in with a restless little boy, she reached across and placed a brand-new toy car beside his plate, which kept him occupied and happy; when three tables finished at the same time and came up to Mr. Baxter to pay their bill, Willamina came skipping down the hallyway with a loud "OH NO YOU DON'T!" -- she snatched their meal checks, slapped them on the bar, put two fingers to her lips and whistled -- loud, shrill, commanding.

"ALL HANDS NOW HEAR THIS!" she declared, her voice strong, her expression delighted: "YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED WAITRESS WILL BE WITH YOU IN TEN MINUTES. SHE HAD TO GO HAVE A CRY BECAUSE A YOUNG SOLDIER CAME IN FOR BREAKFAST BECAUSE HE SAID HE HAD UNEXPECTED LEAVE AND HADN'T HAD THE CHANCE TO TELL HIS PARENTS YET AND HE DIDN'T WANT TO WAKE THEM EARLY!"

Willamina looked around, delight in her expression, and she continued.

"AN OLD MAN ASKED ABOUT THAT YOUNG SOLDIER AND WHEN THE WAITRESS TOLD HIM, HE HANDED HER A TWENTY AND SAID HIS MONEY'S NO GOOD HERE AND IF HE ASKS, TELL HIM AN OLD MAN REMEMBERS SUNRISE OVER SAIGON!"

Willamina stopped and blinked a few times, then she bit her bottom lip and swallowed and continued, with a little less authority.

"THE WAITRESS'S GRANDDAD SERVED IN D'NAM AND SHE TOLD ME HE NEVER SAID A WORD ABOUT HIS SERVICE UNTIL HIS DEATHBED WHEN HE TOLD HER HE'D BEEN SPIT ON AND CALLED A BABY KILLER WHEN HE CAME OFF THE FREEDOM BIRD, AND WHEN THIS OLD MAN SAID HE REMEMBERED SUNRISE OVER SAIGON, SHE ENDED UP IN THE LADIES' ROOM CRYIN' SNOT BUBBLES HARD, SO I TOOK OVER FOR THE MORNING!"

Willamina turned, snatched the cap off the man beside her -- he looked like a just-passing-through trucker -- she seized his ears and pulled his head down: she kissed him in the middle of his bald head, carefully set his cap into place and said, "ALL HANDS, EVERY ONE OF YOU, BREAKFAST IS ON ME TODAY!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DISCUSSION

The Sheriff's hand was strong and callused, with scars tracing thin lines across the backs and sides of his fingers, and irregularly over his knuckles: his were hands that hoisted criminals off the ground, or wiped little dribbling preschool noses, his were hands that grabbed a grenade, tossed it into a water barrel, seized two schoolboys by their shirt fronts and whipped them around the corner of the building, shoving them down and waiting with squinched-shut eyes for the kaboom.

His were the hands that changed a baby's diaper on the borrowed tailgate of a grinning rancher's truck, his were the hands that steered an over-wrought young mother into a chair in their gleaming, mirrors-and-chrome, 1950s-era drugstore for a meal and a moment's relaxation, while he took her screaming, red-faced infant for a walk (he never told her that he'd dipped his little finger in whiskey and used it to paint the teething child's gums, a trick his Mama used on him at such an age, a trick he'd taught his own children, a trick that worked!)

His were the hands that massaged and kneaded his wife's shoulders, and the back of her neck, and scratched her back in long, slow, careful sweeps, until she finally relaxed and almost collapsed and groaned something into her pillow to the effect that she was willing to give him a week to stop that.

And at the moment, his were the hands that were finger-curled into warm, curly-black belly fur, while a tongue-lolling, paw-waving Bear Killer lay a-sprawl in the middle of the Sheriff's Office lobby while Linn happily belly rubbed the big black mountain Mastiff like he was a grinning schoolboy and he had nothing better in the entire world to do.

Truth be told, at the moment, this was honestly the best investment of the Sheriff's time.

Conversation in the Sheriff's Office ranged widely, as is often the case, and frequently had little to do with law enforcement or fighting crime: when it was appropriate, yes, when it was necessary and useful, most definitely, but like the Sheriff and The Bear Killer, when the moment did not demand that professional focus, it was entirely appropriate to talk about tire wear on the wife's car, or the flex on a new fly rod a deputy just traded for, or to complain about a change in the barometer bringing out longstanding aches and pains.

For his part, The Bear Killer lay on his back, happily kicking with one hind leg and paddling his forepaws in the air, and finally gave a happy, quiet, woo-woo-woo of utter canine happiness, which netted him a flying dog biscuit courtesy Sharon's bottom left desk drawer and an underhand toss.

Linn picked it up where it skidded across the buffed stone floor, held it in front of the moist, shining, black nose: The Bear Killer rolled over, came up on his feet, took the treat with a quick, indelicate snap, which got him neck-and-ear rubs and a quiet laugh as the Sheriff took a quick look to make sure he still had five fingers on his right hand.

The front door opened, a deputy called cheerfully, "Hey, Sheriff, we got that grenade out of the rain barrel."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, it was a dummy."

"Cheap cast fake?"

"Yeah. Nothing altered."

The Sheriff rolled off his knees and onto his backside, crossed his legs and ran an arm over The Bear Killer's neck: the big black canine decided the Sheriff hadn't washed behind his ears well enough and proceeded to tend that detail, while the chief law enforcement officer of the county gave up all pretense at dignity and laughed.

"Release the boom squad with my thanks, tell 'em their meal is on me over at the Silver Jewel, I'll be over to talk to 'em and then I'll talk to the boys and their folks."

 

The Firelands Gazette was their local weekly.

Like most small town news papers, it was snarked that people read it to see who got caught doing what.

Today it was read with apprehension by two families, two anxious schoolboys and one quiet-eyed Sheriff.

The Bear Killer sat beside the Sheriff as his strong, callused, scar-traced hands snapped the paper open, as he read, as the corners of his eyes tightened a little, as he nodded.

The article said something about a readiness exercise, conducted spontaneously and unannounced, with the assistance of two local youth, that response by the appropriate agencies was swift and focused, and that had this been an actual incident, damage would have been minimized, limited to one water barrel.

The Sheriff snorted when he read that last.

The Bear Killer looked up at him with dark and adoring eyes.

"Bear Killer," the Sheriff said, "that barrel was empty over winter so it wouldn't freeze and bust."

The Bear Killer's tail wagged, thumping loudly against the side of the Sheriff's desk.

"There was a foot of snow in that barrel and damn little else."

The Bear Killer's expression was little short of utter worship.

"Had that been a real grenade, we'd be sweeping up toothpicks and probably replacing some windows."

The Bear Killer shifted his chin on the man's knee.

The Sheriff folded the paper, leaned down, rubbed both The Bear Killer's shoulders.

"Those two boys were scared enough they'd learned what they needed to. There would be no sense in any formal prosecution."

The Bear Killer lifted his head as the Sheriff bent down a little: a pink tongue flicked out, taste tested the man's chin, which brought a quiet chuckle to the inner office.

"I'm more than satisfied both those boys got a good talkin'-to from their folks!"

The Bear Killer's tail banged happily against the side of the Sheriff's desk in vigorous agreement.

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

LONG FACE

Towns have unwritten rules.

Some rules come about through interaction and some because ... well, things just happen.

When the Sheriff saw a solitary figure sitting on a bench in the town park, kind of hunched over and generally looking like he'd lost the last friend he had in this world, the Sheriff drifted over that-a-way and set down beside him.

He didn't shake him down, didn't demand any ID, he just sat, slouched forward, forearms on his thighs, not quite mirroring the other fellow's posture, but close.

Silence, for several minutes: silence is a lawman's friend -- people get nervous in the company of the Law, and generally talk to fill a void.

Linn finally spoke up, his voice quiet.

"You look like the world just walked off and took your dog with 'em," he said.

The other fellow sandpapered his palms together, slowly, and Linn heard honest calluses whispering against one another as he did.

"Yeah," came the husky voiced reply. "You could say that."

Linn's pale eyes were forward, looking at the restored schoolhouse, remembering how Marnie used to put on a mousy-grey dress and punish her hair up into a severe walnut atop her head and ride herd on a bunch of giggling children, portraying the one room schoolhouse for tourists riding the steam train.

His eyes were forward, but his peripheral saw this fellow's head come up a little, and he felt more than saw a widening of his mouth -- less a smile, more a wry grimace.

"It's been one of those days."

"Kind of figured."

Two men, quiet voiced, soaking up sunshine in the lee of the municipal building: the Sheriff nodded, slowly, waited.

"Nice day today," he started, "I was all happy that I was going to get some stuff done -- for me, for a change -- then I got the call from the visiting insurance nurse she'd be at my place in forty-five minutes, so I scrapped my plans for the morning.

"Once she was done I figured I might hit 'er a lick come afternoon and the dentist called and said they had an opening, can I be there at one-fifteen, so I said yeah and there went any plans for eatin' before I had work done.

"She numbed up the right half of my face and went in and scaled and root planed six years' worth of accumulation. My wife took sick after she got the shot and damn neart died so I cancelled my dental work so I could stay home and take care of her and then I got sick and one thing and another and finally I went back and it's been six years so they allowed as they'd have to numb me up to do that deep cleanin' and that aspirin I took ain't taken hold yet."

Linn nodded, said nothing, just listened.

"Got home and the phone rang, 'twas my tax preparer and she said come and get it and bring your wife, so we both signed her form and I paid her and turns out I owe Uncle Sam half a thousand dollars, so we went home and I got the check wrote and sealed up in an envelope and my preparer called and said don't send that check, her partner mistakenly sent the tax information with the take-it-out-of-checking box checked, so now I have to budget in enough cash money to cover five hundred bucks."

Linn laid a hand on the man's shoulder -- light, just enough to be there -- "Friend, that's definitely one of those days."

Silence, again, then finally: "Had supper yet?"

"Yeah," came the rueful reply. "Made one of those burrito roll up things and managed to dribble meat juice and sour cream all down my shirt front, so it's soaking in dish soap."  

A snort, then, "At least the burrito was good."

"You have had a day of it," Linn sighed.

"Well," came the slow reply, "had I nothin' to complain about, I'd not be happy."

Linn chuckled.  "I'll have to remember that one."

They rose, shook hands.

"Friend," the man said, "I appreciate the kindness of your listenin' ear."

"I was listened to when my face was about three feet long. Figured 'twas time to return the favor."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JOHNNY ONE PEOPLE

Brad Williams lay in a cabin he'd built with his own hands.

He'd cut timber, he'd notched timber, he'd labored steadily: rock cribbing and barked logs, rock and moss chinking where 'twas necessary -- Brad had tools, he surely did, he used a foot adge to smooth a long face on timbers where they'd lay together so he'd have the least area to chink up.

It was not terribly big but it was enough.

He'd known an old hunky back East, a man who built just such a little bitty place, and folks asked him why 'twas so small, and he'd grinned at them and declared, "Good nuf for one people!" -- which tagged him the nickname Johnny One People.

Brad built what little furniture there was, which wasn't much -- he figured in winter he'd want room enough inside to stack wood aplenty, he'd have a goodly supply outside, but he'd want plenty inside as well to feed the tin stove he'd packed in and piped up.

Now Brad lay on his bunk and stared at the under side of the roof overhead.

It was a good tight room, it didn't leak.

Not much, anyway.

Brad did not hurt if he did not move.

He needed to feed the stove and he needed to feed himself but for the moment he was almost warm so he laid a few moments longer, least until his door drew open.

A silhouette: he thought of the Hawken rifle laid beside his bed, he damned his carelessness for seating a ball with no powder, he'd hurt bad enough his fingers shook too bad to work powder down through the nipple, through the touch hole to blow the ball out, so he'd laid down to gather his strength, and now a stranger was come into his little cabin and he didn't think he could get up to keep them from killing him.

Sarah McKenna looked down into fever-bright eyes: she laid the backs of her fingers against his cheek, his forehead: she frowned, turned, opened the stove and stirred through dying coals until she uncovered the brightest ones, then coaxed the little tin stove into life.

Brad slid in and out of the here and now, memory capturing only snatches: cool hands under his head, supporting him, something warm, fragrant at his lips: he remembered swallowing something salty -- broth, lumps in it, he chewed -- meat, his Mama's vegetables, he recognized the taste --

Bright, too bright, then those hands again, he felt the blanket tight around him, felt movement, felt more than heard scraping, heard hooves, slow and patient --

Brad remembered laying still, with something big and warm and heavy laid down with him, he remembered a deep, rumbling purr, like his Mama's cat that slept in the window sill, only this thing was long as he was and it rumbled like a locomotive when it purred and he smelt clean wind and wild creature and he opened his eyes and looked around at the inside of what must have been a doctor's office, one of them fancy ones like you see in the big city.

A young woman sat beside him, a slim, severe figure, spectacles halfway down her nose, hair pulled up into a walnut atop her head: her dress was as severe, as plain, as her hairdo, and she was reading.

Somehow the sight of what looked like a schoolmarm, sitting by his bed reading, neither surprised him, nor distressed him in the least little bit.

The woman looked over her spectacles at him, closed the book and placed it on a side table.

"You're awake," she said. "How do you feel?"

He swallowed, or tried to: she helped him sit up, those same hands, that same scent he remembered.

She held a tin cup of water to his lips, helped him drink.

He downed the entire half-cup, nodded his thanks.

A calico cat -- mostly white, with a calico mask and hind quarters and a colorful, gracefully-switching tail -- leaped up onto the bed, cuddled up beside him, purring loudly.

Sarah lowered his head back onto the pillow, smiled just a little as she tugged his blanket back up around his chin.

"Cat," he managed to whisper.

Sarah's smile was gentle as she brushed hair from his forehead.

"Cats can heal," she said softly. "An old mountain witch told me their purr helps knit bones."

He blinked, sorting through his confused thoughts.

"Cat," he said again, his eyes widening: he gasped, twisted a little, grimaced as his ribs reminded him of their rather painful insult.

Sarah's eyebrows raised a little, her smile soft and patient.

"Big cat," Brad managed to say. "Painter."

Sarah reached across and caressed the calico: eyes closed, the soft-furred feline head inclined into Sarah's touch, the purr a little louder now.

"This is Julius Caesar," Sarah smiled, "and she is firmly of the opinion that she can heal anything with that purr."

Julius Caesar rose, arched her back, jumped to the floor.

Brad saw her jump into the windowsill and begin washing her paw, her ears.

He looked back at Sarah.

"Where?" he managed.

"You're in Firelands. We brought you to the hospital."

She saw his lips frame the word, puzzled.

"Oh, we're modern," Sarah laughed. "Why, we even have gas lights now!"  She patted her hand.  "You rest. You've some healing to do.  Julius Caesar will be happy to help."

Brad watched her glide toward the door: she turned, smiled, slipped out, closed the door gently behind her.

Brad felt the calico's weight as she jumped back up onto the bed.

Before he slipped back into unconsciousness, he remembered thinking how nice it was he had that warm weight against his unhappy ribs.

He was too tired to care that the weight along his chest and his side was far greater than a calico cat that sunned itself in a window, and his relaxing brain took comfort in that big, powerful, rumbling purr that was far too large for something the size of his Mama's kitty cat.

He would not recall for a few days that he opened his eyes and saw the massive, tawny head of a mountain panther, laid with him there in the bed.

All he knew was, when he woke, and that schoolmarm smiled at him again, that calico cat was in her arms, sleepy-blinking: she winked at him as if sharing a secret, then schoolteacher and kitty cat turned and slipped out of the hospital room, and were gone.

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SKIPPING ROCKS

Gracie Daine wound up and slung a flat rock across the mountain pool.

It skipped four times and flew up on the opposite bank.

Gracie looked around, found another likely looking skippin' rock, adjusted her aim and threw again.

This time she hit the icicle on the other side that caught her attention earlier.

Her brothers used to come up with .22 rifles and skip bullets off exposed water and try to hit the icicles: they were not terribly good at it, but they did manage to keep the local rimfire ammunition suppliers in business.

Gracie preferred rocks.

Gracie dealt professionally in skipping rocks ... just on a much bigger scale.

 

A curious little boy looked up at Gracie as she stepped out of Gunfighter's lower jaw.

Gracie tilted her head and regarded the solemn young face looking up at her.

"There is a question in your eyes," she said, "and I want ice cream."

A little Martian boy in knee pants could maintain a solemn expression no longer.

Gracie and the little boy walked to the mess hall, which doubled as general meeting hall, concert hall, concert venue, wedding chapel and party center, not necessarily in that order: Gracie followed her usual custom, when coming back from a flight, of indulging in a hot-fudge sundae, and if that meant she had a fellow Connoisseur of Delectables, why, that made it that much better.

They sat down at a table away from the others and drove locally-refined-silver spoons into cold confection, sampled the locally made product, found it to their liking: Gracie's eyes narrowed, both with pleasure at her usual indulgence, and at the happy inquisitiveness of a little boy who just plainly adored the Valkyries.

Gracie interpreted a particular youthful mumble as "Whadja do today?" and she smiled.

"I threw rocks," she laughed.

"Huh?"

 

Gracie Daine, daughter of blue-eyed Kentucky mountaineers, moonshiners, gunsmiths, woodworkers and timber cutters, reached out and wrapped the bulb of a magnetic field around the meteor.

To human senses, she and the meteor were stationary, unmoving in the great and empty universe, save for the meteor's tumbling in three directions at once, probably the result of a collision, or multiple collisions, somewhere along its back trail.

Gracie wrapped a magnetic bubble around the spinning space rock, then she laid her ship hard against the sub-fabric of reality, hauling tumbling death out of its collision course with one of the Confederate worlds: she moved Gunfighter ahead, then slung the rock, hard, released: it was now out of any intersecting plane with any orbiting body, and on a death dive toward the system's sun.

Gracie smiled inside her helmet's opaque visor.

She much preferred having enough notice to sling a rock into the system's sun.

Much greater margin of error -- or rather, margin of safety.

When she'd gotten the call that a continent killer was headed for Planet Texas, she looked at the figures and swore -- silently, sincerely, and powerfully.

She didn't have time to pull her usual sling-it-into-the-sun, it was too close: she was mind-linked into the quantum consciousness that used to be a computer and calculated how much course change it would take to just miss the planet, she seized the rock in a magnetic bubble like she would reach out and wrap her fingers around a gently-tossed rock, then she mentally set her feet against the underlying reality of the universe, braced herself, and released the rock.

It hit the atmosphere at a long, shallow angle, it skipped off the atmosphere -- not as cleanly as skipping a flat rock across a mountain pool, but enough to keep it from coming deeply enough to hit the ground -- Gracie did not realize how much she'd stressed herself with keeping the planet safe, with cheating the physics of one universe by anchoring into another, until the rock was safely past, until she seized it again and punished it for working her so hard by slinging it safely into their sun once the critical, move-in-a-hurry moment was past.

Gracie settled into orbit around Planet Texas, took a long breath: her sister Valkyries' voices were gentle caresses in her mind, for they'd felt her hard work, they'd felt her determination, they'd felt her stubborn streak and they'd followed her calculations without comment, as they all knew she did not need the distraction.

 

A little boy listened as Gracie explained moving the space rock just enough to miss the planet, but skip successfully off the atmosphere, then she tilted her head a little and considered his build.

There'd be just enough room.

"Have you ever skipped rocks?" she asked, and he blinked, surprised, finished the last of his sundae, then tilted the fluted heavy-glass dish up to drink the melted ice cream gathered in the bottom.

A half hour later, a Starfighter rested beside a mountain pool, a Valkyrie stood at the water's edge, and a little boy watched her skip a rock off the water and hit a thick icicle.

"Think you can do that?" she said, and a grinning little boy in knee pants picked up a rock and had his first lesson in rock skipping from a fiddle playing daughter of the mountains who only incidentally also flew an interstellar Starfighter.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SAME

Lieutenant Will Keller was still a deputy marshal with the village of Chauncey.

It was a few years after his sister decked the town Marshal during a Council meeting, shoved a badge in his face and dared him to do his worst.

The town marshal was replaced the next day, but not until word spread and he could not buy a police commission in the county for several years.

Will was a quiet sort who lived in the adjacent community of Wolf Plains, named after an original settler, not the native predator; he'd sold his house trailer in Sedalia, and now the buyer's father was accosting him over the purchase.

The buyer's father thought it was a fourteen foot wide trailer, which would require a wide-load road tractor; it was only a twelve foot wide, which can be handled by a standard road tractor, and the father made a mistake.

Will looked the man in the eye and said "When I sold it to your son, I had a tape in my pocket and offered to measure it for him. He was satisfied with the trailer as-is."

The father plucked a weed, pulled out his knife and began whittling on the weed.

Will squatted quickly, pulled a small frame .38 out of his boot top and came smoothly to his feet, aiming for the man's nose.

"You like knives?" he said quietly.  "I like guns. Drop the weapon or I drop you."

The buyer's father brought a friend, who spoke up in protest, until Will said "Shut up and keep your hands in plain sight. If either of you do anything but what I say, I will shoot you both. Drop the knife."

Will closed his eyes, took a long breath, sighed it out, opened his eyes again.

He was in his own kitchen, he was at his own kitchen table, he had coffee and he had eggs and he remembered what it was to be a young man, back East, before he followed his sister West.

She'd gone West as sixteen, she'd come back briefly and had a horn lockin' with the town Marshal -- Will snorted as he considered the number of town Marshals that particular ex-coal-mining community ran through -- he remembered the responding deputy's telling the incensed offender that Will would have been well within his rights to shoot him on the moment, with no warning, that Will was known for his patience, that Will's choice meant the fellow was being arrested for assault on a law enforcement officer with weapon specification.

Will picked up a fork and shook his head.

Eat your eggs before they get cold, he thought, dismissing the memory, but the memory persisted.

I was a young man then.

If someone pulled a knife on me now?

Will hesitated, frowned, ate another bite of fried egg.

Hell, at my age, I'd better shoot -- given the same circumstances, someone pulls a knife ... he was two arm's lengths away.

Inside the Tueller distance.

He twisted his right foot a little, felt the same airweight Chief's in his right boot top, thickly padded with a folded-over bandanna, the way he'd carried it since the first day he raised his hand and got sworn at.

Same old revolver, he thought, keeping the same old man safe.

He'd never had to resort to his backup in all his years behind the badge.

Not for himself, anyway.

A partner's revolver malfunctioned right at the wrong moment.

Will whistled, tossed him the backup Smith, and his partner was able to put effective fire on the hostile opposition, which ended the battle; his partner tried to buy that fine little revolver off him, once he got it back from the County, but Will wouldn't sell.

Breakfast and memories, the smell of coffee and bacon grease in the still air of what Will cynically called "Crystal's Mausoleum" -- his late wife was not sane when she died, Will was satisfied it was because of the brain tumor that killed her, and maybe he was right, but that didn't make her any less dead.

Will rose, carried his dishes to the sink, washed them and stacked them in the drying rack.

He looked at the red-plastic kitchen clock, considered for a moment.

Crystal's dead.

Willa and her husband are dead.

Pete and Mary are long dead.

I know an awful lot of dead people anymore!

Will pressed his lips together, frowned, then muttered, "Now by God I ain't dead!"

He strode for the front door, and his pace was not that of a feeble old man: he moved with vigor, he moved with ease: he picked up his hat, looked through the door's high windows, swung around to clear a wide arc, pressed his forearm against the handle of his belt-holstered revolver, spun the jacket around his shoulders and shrugged into fleece lined denim.

Retired Chief of Police Will Keller stepped across his threshold, drew the door shut behind him, took a long, appreciative breath, and smiled.

 

Two sets of eyes followed Will as he strode down the sidewalk with the swinging gait of a man used to walking.

"I'd not want to try him," one voice said, and the other hesitated before asking, "You ever see him with his temper up?"

"Nah ... I heard he's hell in a fight."

A shiver, a quick intake of breath.

"You got that right, Buddy Joe!"

"You seen him?"

"I seen him bust right up ag'in a man and beat the hell out of him with his elbows. He fights fast and he don't fight fair and I don't never want that cannon pointed at me!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NEVER DID TELL

Sarah learned at too early an age that even if she did tell someone, it would not do any good.

Sarah got good at not telling people.

Sarah's soul was wounded at far too young an age, and a wounded soul is like an injured body: predators can smell the injury, and predators choose the injured.

Sarah knew this -- whether by observation, whether from seeing what happened to the girls upstairs in the Silver Jewel before that pale eyed Sheriff her Mommy adored straightened things out, whether from observation in general -- Sarah decided that Mommy had good taste in Sheriffs 'cause that big pale eyed hell raiser decked that mean man Slade and laid him out cold with one punch, but the Sheriff was only one man and he couldn't be everywhere at once and when he wasn't in arm's reach there was nobody else Sarah really trusted to keep her safe, at least until the night when the Reavers came rip roarin' through town and her Mommy pushed her between two pianos and pushed the pianos together like a woody fortress to keep her and Twain Dog safe an' her Mommy screamed something about you're not getting my little girl and Sarah remembered the look on her Mommy's face and how long that red finger was when it reached out the barrel of the pistol the Sheriff gave her and hit that mean man that came in the back way and that was the day Sarah realized her Mama would actually try to keep her safe.

Sarah's psychic wounds healed.

Mostly.

Sarah was observant and Sarah was quiet and Sarah tended to keep her back into a corner or against a wall if at all possible, and Sarah was polite but not entirely trusting of all strangers and a surprising number of folk that she knew.

Sarah did, however, repose full faith and confidence in the sinner's-heart-black, fast-growing Twain Dog Uncle Charlie gave her.

Sarah was heartbroken when Uncle Charlie and Aunt Fannie left ... she didn't want to see them go, but she really, really didn't want to see Dawg go.

Charlie Macneil knew this, somehow, and when they were getting ready to load onto the steam train to leave, Uncle Charlie ran a hand into the voluminous pocket of his coat and came out with a ball of black fur with button-bright eyes and a shining-wet nose, a happy ball of wiggle and grunt that greeted Sarah with a companionable lick to the end of her nose.

Twain Dog was a Sweet Little Doggie, Sarah would say, emphasizing each word with an emphatic nod, the way a child will: she set her curls a-bounce when she did, and Twain Dog would look up at her with absolute, unmistakable adoration.

The West, of that era, was known for the chivalry of its trademark, the American cowboy: nobility and honor were routine values.

Unfortunately, human nature is human nature, and as sterling a character as most aspired to, there were the inevitable failures of spirit, the sad exceptions-to-the-rule that taught Sarah that her general mistrust was more than justified.

When one such sinful soul tried to seize a pretty little girl, neither Sarah nor her growing canine bothered to inquire as to this scoundrel's intentions.

Sarah saw what happened when the girls upstairs of the Silver Jewel endured when they were grabbed.

Something black, fast and sharp-toothed launched, silent, swift, shining-ivory teeth clamping down on a wrist: a yell of pain, of surprise, a hand raised to smack or grab or punch this dangling engine of pain, and Sarah pulled a knife her Mama very definitely did not know she routinely carried and drove it like an icepick into the wrist of the hand that held her arm.

Sarah did not stop.

Neither did Twain Dawg.

Sarah twisted and drove the knife into the side of the man's thigh and brought a pained scream from him: he released her arm, pulled back, tried to grab at her and inherited the blade through the palm of his hand -- in, out, a shining steel tooth driven clear through his hand -- Sarah swung the knife again, hard, stabbed blindly: in later years, she would admit it was more chance than design that she drove the blade into the junction where the man's leg met his torso, and somehow managed to cut the great artery, which-- with his convulsive attempt at escape, with her twist, managed to open a sizable passage to the outside world, through which his life pumped with a remarkable velocity.

Sarah spun back to keep from being baptized.

Sarah waited, knife ready, her nostrils flared, but her throat silent: her eyes were wide, pale -- ice-pale, like polished granite, bright mirrors that shone in the afternoon sunlight.

Sarah waited until the man collapsed, then called "Twain Dog, off," and the growing black mountain Mastiff bristled and snarled and reluctantly released what had rapidly become a rather shredded forearm: fur rippled the length of his young spine and across his shoulders, and after the mean old man fell face-down into the dirt, Twain Dog hiked his leg and cast his ballot on the situation, and then turned and kicked dirt on the carcass like a cat covering up something unclean.

Sarah washed her knife off in a horse trough, then she dried it on her petticoat, slid it back into the hidden sheath:  she squatted and rubbed Twain Dog and whispered to him, and it would have made for a charming picture -- a sweet little girl, in an intimate moment with a fuzzy doggie with a ribbon around his neck, tied in a decorative bow -- if there hadn't been a bloodied carcass, face down, behind her.

Sarah scampered around the back of the building and then set off cross country for home.

Her Mama was busy at the dress-works, supervising its construction with brand-new bricks, locally fired at her Aunt Esther's brand new brick-works: Sarah slipped into the house, scampered to the kitchen, stripped off her dress and examined it critically.

She set her dress to soak in salt water.

Blood, she knew, had to be salt soaked to get it out, and she didn't want her Mommy to worry about blood on her dress, and so Sarah carefully balanced the extra washpan they kept under the cupboard, with her dress stuffed down in it and a sack of salt atop -- Sarah, in her petticoat and a serious expression, slipped out the back door, Twain Dog at her heels, and she tossed the dress to the grass, added a good handful of salt to the dishpan, pumped water into it, added her dress and realized it was too shallow to soak it all.

Sarah ended up using a metal pail, and she hid the pail under the back porch, then she slipped back into the hose, skipped through the long hallway on the balls of her feet and looked out the door.

No Mama in sight.

Good.

Sarah and Twain Dog scampered upstairs, more swift than stealthy, and Sarah pulled out another dress -- twin to the one she'd been wearing -- she made herself presentable, then she sat at her desk and laid her knife on her desk top and opened the bottom left hand drawer.

Sarah pulled out a cloth poke.

She dipped two fingers into powdered limestone -- face powder fine -- she rubbed the blade down, working with serious-faced concentration, and when she was satisfied, she wiped the blade with a lightly oiled cloth and slid it back into its hidden sheath.

When her Mama walked the short distance from the new construction to her house, she smiled as she saw Sarah on the front porch, Twain Dog beside her: a pretty little girl, frilly and ladylike and reading a book, a happy, tail-thumping, ribbon-wearing dog beside her.

Bonnie McKenna didn't hear until the next day about a man found knifed to death in an alley, a stranger who apparently had been up to no good, or who'd run into someone up to no good.

Sarah never did tell her Mama.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DO YOU TAKE CASH?

Dana Keller gathered her aches and pains around her like a cloak.

She had to use a hoist to get the saddle on Powder Keg.

The patient old mule stood there and contemplated eternity like a wise old soul while Dana got the saddle pad and the saddle to her liking, until she got it cinched up properly, until she got the hoist out of the way and led Powder Keg over to a convenient bale of hay, which she immediately used as a mounting block.

Firelands was no stranger to seeing the Sheriff mounted up, nor to seeing his deputies mounted, nor to seeing his children mounted: Jacob and Marnie routinely rode to school, various other of the Sheriff's young rode to school as well, and the only time anyone tried prad-prigging, not only did the prad they attempted to prig, put hoof prints prominently on their carcasses, they were swiftly and vigorously prosecuted by the County's legal system, and it was mentioned in court that horse theft was on the books as a hanging offense.

His Honor the Judge did so declare with a stern expression and a warning glare before he was obliged to admit that, although the law was yet on the books, it could no longer be enforced, but he did throw the proverbial book at those who attempted to steal the Sheriff's horse, ridden by the Sheriff's offspring.

It did not strike anyone as terribly remarkable when Dana, the pretty little daughter of that pale eyed Sheriff, rode that terribly misnamed, patient old mule, to the local grocery store.

It wasn't far from dark and Dana figured she could get what little she needed, and then head for home cross country rather than on any roadway.

Superstition, you might call it.

The Sheriff's youngest daughter thought it terribly bad luck to get hit by a motor vehicle.

Dana frowned as she saw what looked like a young mother raise the hood on her car and look at the shadowed engine with what seemed to be part exasperation and part desperation.

Now Dana was as perceptive as her Mama, as good a listener as her big brother, as curious as any of her forbears, and she just happened to have a crescent wrench in one saddlebag, a Barlow knife in her pocket, and an idea as to something that might work.

As a matter of fact, after a few minutes' work, the car's hood was closed, the young mother was on her way, and Dana went on inside to get what few things she needed.

When she came out, though, she realized things weren't quite as cut and dried as she'd imagined.

Dana saw a local fellow driving a local truck and she quickly divined that this young mother made a call, and this fellow came to get a broken down motorist back on the road.

Dana was in the saddle and Dana flagged him from her saddle, and Dana addressed him frankly from the saddle when she drew up beside his rolled-down window.

"I think I might owe you for a service call," she said frankly, and this man she knew -- this man who'd known her since she was packed into the house with the hospital's brand-new warranty sticker still pasted on her cute little bottom -- laughed and said "Now how's that?"

Dana said, "My Daddy told me" -- her voice was the high, innocent voice of a child, for all that she could stand flat footed and set her backside on a hay wagon -- "my Daddy told me he'd been drivin' his Lemon Dog and it just up and quit."

The fellow driving the local wrecker nodded solemnly; he knew the Lemon Dog, the Sheriff's faded-orange Dodge four-by that was older than he was, and frankly, in better shape.

"Daddy said it just shut off like a switch so he pulled off the battery clamps and he said they were kind of corrody" -- he smiled a little at the word, for he'd heard the Sheriff described something, not as corroded, but "kind of corrody," and his daughter used the word as easily as if it were proper grammar -- "he pulled off the battery clamps and he scraped the posts bright" -- her hands followed her words -- "and he shaved inside the clamps" -- her hands gripped an invisible pocket knife and turned a controlled circle, as if she was doing the work as the words emerged -- "and he put it back on and started right up!"

"I see," he said, half-amused, but nodding his understanding, for he'd done as much himself, and under similar circumstances.

"So I did like Daddy said and pulled her dipstick and touched it to the battery clamp and the oil will soak in between the clamp and the post and she won't corrode again and it started right up and she's gone but if she called you for help I owe you a service call 'cause I just ate your lunch."

Dana's solemn declaration, declared with all the sincerity of a child -- a pale-eyed girl-child on muleback -- made leaving his easy chair for a service call, suddenly not as objectionable as it had been earlier.

Dana reached into her vest pocket, just as serious as the old Judge, pulled out a couple twenties and said "Do you take cash?"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TO STOP THE SHARKS

Michael took a long step toward his little sis.

He took her hand, raised it above her head.

Dana twirled on the balls of her feet, skirt flaring: she snapped her head around as she spun, using the department store's three-mirror set to observe herself as she tried on a new dress.

Angela and Victoria shared a knowing look.

Dana was not yet healed enough to have twirled on her own: Michael, stepping in, taking her hand, letting her use that overhead tactile reference, standing ready to catch her if she lost balance, allowed her to pirouette before the mirror like she had as a little girl.

Dana looked at her sisters, her eyes big as she realized --

-- this was the first time she'd been able to spin like that since her accident --

Victoria rose, tilted her head and smiled.

"She'll take it."

 

Michael stayed back and out of the road as the ladies laughed and talked the way girls will.

His Mama took the girls to the City shopping, and he'd gone along: he'd done his best to remain invisible, though how invisible a lean young man in a black suit and Stetson, with polished boots and an emerald-green necktie can be, is a little less than debatable.

Michael knew his Mama had a pretty bad horn lockin' when she wanted to take Marnie to the City, shopping, and Marnie said no, and her Mama backhanded Marnie -- Michael was satisfied there was more to the story, but he was wise enough not to stir up with questions -- but he was his father's son, and his gut told him this was deeper than one disagreement about going shopping.

He stayed back and out of the road when the ladies, flushed with gourmet coffees and purchases, returned home: his sisters clustered in their Daddy's study, regarding his selection of pistols with what Michael considered entirely too much talk -- but, he realized, girls are like that -- Michael considered the situation carefully, then pulled back to the kitchen, hung up his coat, rolled up his sleeves and proceeded to help his Mama fix supper.

The troops will need fed, he thought, face impassive but eyes amused as he brought up home-canned tomatoes from downstairs: his sisters might be all girl when it came to picking out pretty girly clothes, but they were also helping Dana come back from her injuries, and Michael knew too well what that was like.

He did not address the subject, and likely wouldn't, but inwardly, he was pleased that his sisters were clustering around their clutchmate, safeguarding her like hens guarding a chick.

They were not back by suppertime -- apparently nothing was wrong, elsewise Michael's wrist-unit would have alarmed, as would the communicator on his Pa's desk -- spaghetti and meat sauce, garlic bread and coffee, cheese Michael happily shredded on his Mama's hand grater (without leaving any knuckle meat behind, he'd joked!) -- they were just finished with supper, and Michael turned to take a look at the apple pie on its cooling rack, when his sisters returned, laughing and chattering and filling the atmosphere with femininity and triumph.

Michael and his father both rose: Linn was swarmed by his daughters, who kissed his clean-shaven cheek, hugged him with giggles and smiles and giving him the general impression he'd just been mobbed by a pastel cloud of perfumed femininity: they sat and supper started all over, though Michael and his father contented themselves with another slice of garlic bread (genuine sourdough!) and coffee.

Linn waited until the second pre-dessert lull before asking, "Might I ask what you ladies have been up to?"

Multiple sets of big, innocent eyes fluttered long, sweeping lashes at him: "Up to?" Angela echoed, placing delicate fingertips on her bodice. "What, us?"

Dana looked from one sister to another, and then at their mother, and then at her Daddy, and said quietly, "Shark repellent."

Linn raised an eyebrow.

"Shark repellent," he echoed skeptically.

"Of course," Angela said firmly. "You're familiar with the Kirlian field."

Linn frowned.

"That's Old John Kirlian's field over by Carbon Hill."

"Oh, Daddy," Angela groaned, then raised her hands, flared her fingers as if uncertain quite how to illustrate it.

"Daddy, sharks can smell blood for a fantastic distance, but they can sense the magnetic field that surrounds any living creature. That's why they bite underwater cables."

"Shark repellent," Linn said quietly, giving his daughter a skeptical look.

"Any living creature that's injured, has an injured magnetic field," Angela continued, taking on the pedantic tone she used when teaching a class. "Dana is injured, and there are predators that can sense her injured magnetic field."

Linn nodded once, slowly.

"Until her back is fully healed, she won't be throwing anyone with a Flying Mare. We were out exploring other possibilities."

Linn nodded slowly.

"So far her best results are with your 3-inch airweight J-frame."

"I see."

"With full wadcutters," Dana added, nodding a little, he expression much as it was when she was still a little girl.

"We're fixing her up with a matched pair, consecutive serial numbers, engraved with roses and the Thunder Bird."

"With the same grips as yours," Dana prompted. "I like those ones, they fit my hand!"

Linn planted his elbows on the tablecloth, steepled his fingers, considered his daughters.

"Ladies," he said slowly, "women learn better from other women. Am I to understand that you are taking care of the training here?"

"Yes, Daddy," several feminine voices replied in chorus.

"Have you figured out carry leather?"

"Yes, Daddy," came the chorus again.

Linn nodded again, then a smile broadened across his face.

"I have most of a case of shark repellent on hand. Let me know when you need more."

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NEVER ASK!

Victoria Keller held her sister's lace-gloved hand, looked over at Dana, smiled encouragingly.

Dana sat on a thick cushion and back rest -- a must to keep her healing bones from crying with pain.

The pews were hardwood, basic, only slightly contoured: Victoria believed she could endure the hard bench pew, as long as her uncomfortable looking brother was not terribly long winded.

Michael looked down at the pair, grinned that contagious, almost a little-boy grin, for all that he was long since grown into man sized trousers: he took a long breath and turned a little red as he looked out over the congregation.

"Never ask either a politician or a preacher if they have anything to say," Michael declared, his voice pitched to carry to the rearmost row of the simple little clapboard church: "even if they don't ... they will!"

He turned his head and grinned at the laughing Parson, who nodded agreement: Michael looked back at the congregation, thrust a bladed hand toward a blocky delivery inside the back door.

"I came to deliver a pallet of books. You've got Bibles, you've got schoolbooks, you've got hymnals. Yes I sold you the piano and yes it's freshly tuned, but those books are on me, and I reckon that's why your Parson asked me to stand up here on my hind legs and see if I could talk while standing on one foot with the other one between my pearly whites."

The concept of Hoof In Mouth Disease might not have been known on this particular Confederate world, but the context was plain enough: Michael saw quiet smiled, a few chuckles.

"Now I could tell you about --"

"Michaaeelllll," Victoria warned, arms crossed and one eyebrow raised: the warning note in her voice brought her twin brother to a screechin' halt, so to speak, and he frowned and considered.

"I better not tell you about that one," he said, then raised a teaching finger and tried again:

"Now how about when --"

"MICHAEL!" Dana snapped, and Michael blinked, looked at his little sis with wide and startled eyes, exaggerating the moment for effect: a great sigh, a shake of his head -- "I better not tell you about that one either."

He looked up, raised an eyebrow, nodded.

"But I can tell you about the time I got selfish and it worked out!

"Y'see, a friend of mine -- her name was Nancy, you don't know her -- it was Thanksgiving and she was having Thanksgiving dinner at her place and we all knew she was dying and it was the last time we'd all get together with her.

"I lived quite a ways away and I wondered what to bring that wouldn't get spoiled by the time we arrived, so I stopped in the Firelands bakery and got a big box" -- his hands were animated, he sketched a flat cardboard box's width, depth and length -- "two dozen, white cream filled, chocolate iced, stick doughnuts, 'cause that's the kind I like."  

He gave the congregation a sincerely innocent look as he admitted "Yes, I was bein' selfish.

"Once we got there, Nancy took one look at those stick doughnuts and she near to cried.

"Turns out what she was dyin' of just messed up her taster terribly and nothing tasted good -- not the turkey, not the dressing, not the cranberry sauce nor the pie nor nothin', but those stick doughnuts did.

"Turns out those were honestly the only things she could eat, and to the day she died, she allowed as I'd saved her Thanksgiving!"

Michael was quiet for another long moment: he gripped the sides of the pulpit and dropped his head, and then he raised it slowly, his voice quieter, more serious.

"I reckon if I'm to give your sermon today, let it be this.

"Be kind.

"Nancy's dead now and I'll never be able to bring her anything ever again, but I can remember the time I did."

He pushed back from the pulpit, turned: their Parson rose and the two men shook hands, and Dana raised a kerchief and pressed it to one eye, then the other.

Victoria felt her shiver, turned to her as Dana whispered hoarsely, "I never knew!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A GENERAL IMPROVEMENT

"So what is your overall goal?"

Dr. John Greenlees' voice was quiet, reassuring, a fatherly voice: his expression was gentle, his attitude, patient.

Dana Keller snorted and smiled with half her mouth, then she looked at the physician -- she challenged him with those pale eyes and that attitude of hers -- she said, "I want to go shopping without having to use the buggy as a walker!"

Doc Greenlees nodded thoughtfully, his forehead wrinkling a little as he considered.

"I'd say," he murmured, "that is ... worthwhile."

Dana fisted her hands, dropped her forehead against blanched knuckles: she did not groan so much as snarl.

Doctor John waited.

He'd been young, once, and he'd married a woman with a temper, a woman with hot blood and cold eyes: he knew that sometimes, ladies of this line had to be given the freedom to snarl, perhaps to rage.

Dana contented herself with a heartfelt snarl.

"I'm getting better," she mumbled, as if talking to her knees: "really, I am better, everyone says so, I just --"

Dana threw her fisted hands wide, threw her head back, drew in breath between clenched teeth, then thrust splayed fingers at the ceiling as if in supplication to the stamped-tin squares overhead.

"I told God I want patience, and I want it five minutes ago!"

Doctor John Greenlees, physician, surgeon, husband to that pale eyed diplomat, uncle to this blue eyed daughter of the Colorado mountains, laughed, quietly, a rich, gentle, genuinely amused, laugh.

He could not help himself.

His wife Marnie had said those identical words, while making the same fingers-spread, hands-shaken-at-the-heavens gesture herself.

"How is Powder Keg?" Dr. John asked, and Dana tilted her head, looked at her uncle, gave him a sad little smile.

Behind her, Snowdrift was cuddled up against her back, as if knowing Dana's lower back, on the left side especially, was not just sore, it was sore as hell.

Dana looked a little uncomfortable and Doctor John fancied he could see her coloring delicately as she admitted, "Daddy likes his Appaloosas and he likes his stallion, but Powder Keg is still my favorite!"

"You've found something good," Dr. Greenlees said with an encouraging nod.  "Stick with it."

"I intend to," Dana smiled, then she grew serious.

"Riding strengthens my core and my legs."

Dr. Greenlees nodded gravely, his attention entirely on his patient, his niece.

"I'm up to three miles a day now."

"On Powder Keg?"

"Walking."

Dr. Greenlees raised an eyebrow.

"Impressive."

"Amateurish," Dana muttered, looking off to the side, her expression almost disappointed.

"Walking -- especially the trails -- strengthens my hips, and I read somewhere that back pain is caused by weak hips."

"You have back pain."

Dana glared at the man: back pain had been a near-constant companion for far too long.

"I'm not up to running yet," she admitted. "Gammaw used to run with the football team. She'd sing running cadences -- she had wind enough to sing while running!"

"I remember," Dr. John smiled. "I used to run with them."  He leaned forward, regarded her hands -- clasped now, around her knees.

"Do you want to run with them?" he asked quietly.

Dana's eyes were much older than her few years as she replied, "People in Hell want ice water, Doctor. That doesn't work out either."

Dr. John Greenlees debated whether to ask her to call him "Uncle John" like she used to when she was still a little girl, then decided against it: her addressing him as "Doctor" indicated she wished to maintain a more formal distance -- whether because they were discussing her recovery, or because she was coming into young womanhood, did not matter: he was sensitive enough to recognize her wish, and wise enough to abide by it.

Snowdrift, on the other hand, snored.

Dana blinked, her head came up: "You were in football?" she asked, surprised, and Dr. Greenlees laughed quietly.

"No, no," he shook his head and chuckled again.  "No, I was in Marching Band. Mellophonium. I could never make the mental switch to read bass clef so I didn't go baritone. Besides" -- he chuckled again -- "I was as big around as a broom handle, and the mellophonium is skinny. Big Paul was on baritone, and he had the linebacker's build to pack it around!"

"I remember Paul," Dana said, her voice distant. "He had a crush on Angela."

"Life in a small town, eh? -- whether it's Firelands or whether it's the Martian colonies, everyone knows everyone else, everyone knows who got caught doing what."

"Don't I know it!" Dana muttered. "I just found out some of the fellows were asking how old I was. They thought I was marriageable and wanted to throw their hats at me."

"Throw their ... hats ... at you?" Dr. John asked, honestly puzzled.

Dana fluttered a hand, shook her head, frowned. 

"I mean --" she shook her hand again -- "throw their hat in the ring!"

"If they'd kind of Frisbee the hat I suppose they could get some distance," Dr. Greenlees murmured thoughtfully. "Even a soft cap --"

"Don't give them ideas," Dana muttered. "I don't need someone to smack me with a hat and then claim their buddy grabbed it and threw it at me to get him in trouble!"

"I can see that happening."

 

Michael held the revolver in one hand, the tin can in the other.

He raised both at the same time -- the can flew into the air, wobbling a little, the revolver came up at the same velocity, settled into his support hand: his finger rolled back on the trigger and a .38 wadcutter round punched a hole through the can.

Michael Keller, older brother to Dana and twin to Victoria, holstered, grinning like a happy kid.

He strode out into the grass, brought the can back, handed it to his twin sister.

Victoria followed her pale-eyed brother's example: hands swung up, the can flew up and inherited another hole, and Victoria barked a laugh: "Got ya!"

They'd shot bottles like this not many years before, at the illegal Putney Ridge dump, until the county closed it, salted it with warfarin, bulldozed it over and sent a flood of rats into the adjacent ranches, which meant two County Commissioners were not re-elected.

The twins refused to shoot bottles except at a bona fide dump, of which there were none on this world, and so they were industriously introducing ventilation to what used to be a number ten peach can.

Dana stepped out of an Iris, blinked as Victoria's .38 cracked, as the can clanked and jumped and assumed a precessional wobble it hadn't had a moment before.

Dana bulled her bottom jaw out, stomped up beside her older sister, planted her knuckles on her belt and glared at her, then at her brother.

"Well?" Michael asked innocently.

Dana shook her Mommy-finger at him, leaned forward a little, looking like Storm Cloud Number Nine:

"You better have left me some shark repellent!"

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THAT'S MY GIRL

Jacob admitted later, in private, that he honestly did not know if he was thinking, or just reacting, or maybe his body decided to go without him.

Whichever it was, it worked.

He spun, stepped into the attack, thrust his arm out: the club that was supposed to cave in his skull slid down his arm -- the arm that clamped the attacker's arm against his ribs as he turned, fast.

The elbow did not break but it strained badly and its owner twisted with a hissed oath, trying to pull away from this unexpected retaliation.

That didn't work either, something to do with a knee coming up into the man's wind and then an elbow descending at a truly remarkable velocity into the back of his head.

Jacob took a half-step to his right, more to regain his balance than anything else: a second attacker raised a knife and took one step toward him, until Jacob's Colt chuckled into full cock and a shotgun barrel drove into his tenderloins and a quiet but rather angry female voice said "Don't move."

Jacob's attacker lifted his face off the dirt floor, blood dripping from his nose where he'd unsuccessfully tried to use his eagle beak as a post hole digger: something rumbled, deep and angry, an inch from his ear, and he felt hot breath on the side of his face.

He fell over onto his back, staring up at a fine display of canine dentistry, shown exclusively for his personal benefit.

"He hasn't eaten today," Jacob said conversationally as Sarah proned the second guy out on the packed dirt floor: she parked her stubby double gun back out of reach and got her prisoner in irons with the speed and ease of long practice before picking up the shotgun and planting her boot between the captive's shoulder blades with a quiet "Stay there."

The Bear Killer, for his part, was silent now, black lips pulled back from fighting ivories, saliva-dripping lips quivering a little.

The prisoner would later recount in a quiet and less-than-steady voice that the big black beast's eyes burned like the coals of Hell.

This wasn't the case, of course, but nobody saw fit to correct this misconception.

Jacob dropped his weight through his knees into his prisoner's kidneys -- unnecessary, but effective -- it knocked any remaining fight out of a felon who broke into a hard working old man's shed and then tried to cave a deputy Sheriff's skull to keep from getting caught.

Jacob secured the prisoner's wrists with piggin string -- quick, tight, effective, then seized his prisoner's arms and picked him up off the floor with a jerk and little apparent effort.

He brought him up high enough his feet swung in the air, and he held him there for several moments before setting him back down, and Sarah couldn't help but admire the move: when you bring a man's feet off the floor, it generally takes any remaining fight out of them.

The Bear Killer came over, fur a-bristle and lips quivering with murderous menace as he glared down at Sarah's prisoner, who was industriously practicing what might be called a form of Zen: he was doing his best to become one with the dirt.

Jacob brought him off the ground as well.

Sarah picked up her stubby twelve-bore and shoved the muzzle up under her prisoner's chin.

"I don't like thieves," she whispered, her eyes hard, cold, absolutely unforgiving -- shocking to see in such a pretty girl's face -- Jacob took each by their upper arm and half-marched, half-dragged them to the lockup.

 

Deputy Sheriff Jacob Keller leaned back from the desk, leaned back from reading an account of Old Firelands, back in the days of Old Pale Eyes.

His father looked over at him.

"Something good?" he asked, pouring another coffee from the company coffeemaker.

"Reading about the good old days, sir," Jacob admitted. "Jacob's sister carried a twelve-gauge cut down at wrist and fore-end, their Bear Killer had no formal certification, nobody flagged you for excessive roughness when the bad guy tried to club you from ambush and you taught him it was a bad idea."

Linn nodded, added a drizzle of milk.

"Times change," he admitted. 

The Bear Killer dropped his jaw onto Jacob's thigh, closed his eyes and gave a great, exaggerated, over-dramatic sigh as Jacob's curled fingers worked the big, curly-black-furred canine's spine, near the tail.

"He'll give you all week to stop that," Linn said softly, and Jacob nodded.

"By the way, you handled that B&E in fine shape."  Linn sampled his coffee, found it to his liking, sipped again. "Your after action report is concise and clear and it looks really defensible in court."

"I had a good teacher," Jacob shrugged, then grinned, and Linn chuckled with him, raised his coffee in salute.

"Angela doesn't have a cut-down twelve," Jacob said, his face suddenly solemn, "but when she came in on backup with that Ithaca, I'd be ready to swear she was wearing shining silver armor and had a big set of wide white wings stickin' out of her shoulder blades!"

"That's my girl," Linn murmured. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PIRATE!

Sheriff Linn Keller was not the only man in his lovely daughter's life.

Angela was a little girl, not yet in grade school: she was busy, noisy, fast moving, curious, she had her Daddy wrapped tight around her little pink pinky, and there was nowhere she liked better than to be horsieback with her big strong Daddy.

There was another man that little Angela just plainly adored, and that was Peepaw.

Her maternal grandfather, Captain Crane, Shelly's father.

Angela stood still, bright eyes watching her reflection as her Mommy brushed her hair and tied it in twin ponytails, and Angela asked -- very carefully not moving her head, for her Mommy was still working with her hair -- "Mommy, Peepaw gets his Cadillacs?"

It took Shelly a few moments to translate the unique dialect known as Juvenile Angela into standard English: when she did, Angela saw her Mommy's patient, tolerant smile as she tied the starboard hair ribbon in place.

"Your Peepaw is having a cataract removed," Shelly corrected gently.

"Cadillac," Angela agreed firmly.

"When Peepaw home?"

"Soon, sweetheart" -- Shelly paused, listened, smiled.

"I think your Daddy's home now."

 

Captain Crane waited a full month before returning to the firehouse.

Fitz most sternly enjoined the man he'd be on light duty for another month and after that they'd consult medical advice, but Chief Fitzgerald was taking no chances on damaging his medic captain's healing process.

This did not prevent the man from sitting down with the Irish Brigade and trading obscene jokes.

At some point, Chief Fitzgerald gave the man a knowing look and said, "How did your grandkids react to your having surgery?"

The Captain reddened and his grin widened and he laughed and looked over at his daughter, who gave him an absolutely innocent look in return: Crane sighed and shook his head and laughed again.

He handed his empty coffee mug to the nearest Irishman and asked "Could you do me the favor?" and the mug was returned filled, and Crane took an appreciative drink and grimaced -- "God, that's awful stuff! You have no idea how badly I've missed this!" -- and took another noisy slurp.

"M'grandkids," Crane said, looking at Shelly again, who rolled her eyes, clasped her hands, twiddled her thumbs and whistled innocently, which was her way of telling the Irish Brigade that she was anything but innocent in this matter.

"Well, y'see, it doesn't matter what a little girl says" -- his ears started to color -- visibly -- "it's cute.

"When I come through the door, why, little Angela come just a-thunder down the stairs yelling "Peepaw!" like she always did, and once she hit bottom she stopped and she took a look at me --"

 

Little Angela Keller, four years old, a beautiful child in ponytails and petticoats and a pinafore dress, a pink-cheeked daughter of the Shining Mountains, scampered downstairs with all the stealth of a wheelbarrow load of bricks dumped down the stairs: she stopped at the bottom and looked at her Peepaw, and her eyes went wide, her mouth opened in a juvenile O of delight --

"Peepaw!" she exclaimed, looking at his bandaged-shut eye.

"Pirate!"

 

 

Edited March 21 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JUST HELPIN' OUT

A tall man in a black suit -- a tall man with pale eyes and a sculpted, symmetrically-curled handlebar mustache -- sat an Appaloosa stallion, and waited.

He'd practiced with the Western lariat; in his hands, la reata was a living creature, less plaited leather and more hungry python.

The plaited python was in his hands now.

Sheriff Jacob Keller waited.

The raid team hit the front door, loud, fast, brutal: "SHERIFF'S OFFICE SEARCH WARRANT!" -- then the concrete filled ram hit the door, once, twice: Jacob heard voices, muffled, angry, shouting.

His stallion's ears turned a little and his head came up an inch, no more: Apple-horse felt Jacob's weight shift ever so slightly, and Jacob felt his horse come alive under him: there was no dance, no nervously-mincing hooves: just a slight tensing, subtle, but something a well matched horse and rider shared.

Apple-horse was well-matched to Jacob, and he to Apple.

Pale eyes tightened a little at the corners as he heard The Bear Killer roar a challenge -- cut off, a man's scream -- he heard the confusion at the rear of the building that told him the deputies behind the house just nailed a runner, then the shout that told him one got through them.

Apple-horse blew.

Jacob did not appear to move, but Apple felt it -- the command to move -- Apple-horse didn't need to be told twice.

He was trained for this, he was good at this, and Apple-horse drove forward.

Jacob's arm moved of its own accord: pale eyes saw where he wanted the lariat to go, and it did, and he spun two turns around his saddlehorn, leaned back, stirrups thrusting forward: Apple-horse skidded a little, forelegs stiff as his hind quarters dropped, as the line snapped taut, as a runner came to a fast stop.

Jacob snubbed the line, dismounted -- he never remembered quite how he dismounted, though witnesses later swore he floated off that saddle and hit the ground at a dead run.

And there were witnesses.

A hover-cam floated, cloaked, invisible, recording this facet of the raid: there were other cameras, none of which were known to the Firelands County Sheriff's Office: no, these were entirely Inter-System News drones, skulking after their very own Sheriff Jacob Keller, on the possibility that he might be getting into something interesting back home on Earth.

They were right.

Jacob took three long steps -- his quarry was fighting to get out of the loop, fighting like a fish on a line -- Apple-horse backed steadily, keeping his quarry from gaining his feet.

Jacob saw the runner twist, grab a pistol in his waistband.

Jacob kicked the runner's arm, swung his .44 revolver up into view and eared the hammer back, letting the subject of his attention take a good look at the business end of a blued-steel street equalizer.

A gunshot from within, another: Jacob reached in, seized the plastic pistol from the waist band and tossed it to the side, then grabbed the runner by the back of the neck and introduced his face to the packed dirt, hard.

Another moment and his prisoner was in irons: Jacob did a fast patdown, crushing cloth over pockets, extracting contraband, tossing a variety of items this fellow really shouldn't have, in a ragged pile a few feet away.

We could continue to discuss this terrestrial raid, and its aftermath, but that is distressingly familiar to us already.

Let us instead take a look at its effect throughout the Thirteen Systems.

The image of their very own Sheriff Jacob Keller of Firelands, was seen by young and old alike: the image of a silent, watchful lawman on a spotted horse, suddenly became an ideal, a totem, a goal: young boys started stealing their Mamas' clotheslines and fashioning crude loops, leatherworkers were approached about making genuine leather reatas -- a skill completely lost throughout the thirteen-star-system Confederacy.

Michael Keller, ever the obliging sort, managed to find certain Mexican leatherworkers, masters of their craft, who were willing to travel, to set up shop elsewhere -- they were never sure quite where-- but they were paid well, and when a man's pockets are heavy with gold, perhaps a man should not ask too many questions, eh?

Sheriff Jacob Keller found himself the recipient of multiple inquiries, once he returned home, inquiries as to how to properly conduct oneself as a lawman, from the saddle.

Only then did he realize he'd been followed, and he'd been seen, and seen by a much larger audience than he would really like.

Nevertheless, the deed was done.

Michael Keller began a most profitable business in selling plaited reatas, and in saddlemaking -- Amish leatherworkers had an appreciation for cash money, and hard coin was welcomed as pay -- Western roping saddles were in sudden heavy demand, those men who'd become horse trainers had more business than they could handle, and no self respecting city, village or settlement, was complete, unless it could boast mounted officers.

Sheriff Jacob Keller spent more time offworld than he really liked.

Littlejohn, of course, was more than happy to accompany his pale eyed Pa, especially when he got to ride one of the smaller mares from his Gamp-paw's herd: most adults saw Littlejohn's line back dun and thought it cute that the Sheriff's son had a boy sized horse to ride: they had no idea just how tough the dun was, nor could they know the frontier antecedents of that particular mountain bred mare.

Littlejohn took to the lariat like a thirsty man takes to beer.

Whether ancestry, or determination, Littlejohn showed not just an aptitude, but an absolute gift, in handling the loop: Victoria was just as good, but she was not open in her expertise.

She realized this was something being taught System-wide, and she wanted this to remain the purview of those guardians of the peace, and not something that pretty girls were seen doing.

This, of course, did not work out, either.

The art of La Reata spread as a popular recreation -- the latest fad, as it were -- and all of Jacob's protestations and remonstrations were for naught, as he did his level best to persuade the constabularies at large that using a rope to apprehend criminals was not a good idea.

They'd seen him do it.

Someone did some editing and put his roping apprehension to a musical score never before heard in the Thirteen Star Systems: something played on a deep-voiced, powerfully-played electric guitar, a tune that immediately seized the popular imagination, a tune picked up by orchestra, instrumentalists, vocalists alike.

The pale-eyed Sheriff Jacob Keller and his stallion, the loop making one spin overhead before the release, the running criminal -- the introduction of a cocked .44 to the miscreant's face -- the hard expression of a pale-eyed lawman -- all played with the tune of Ghost Riders In the Sky as its theme music.

It's been said that such things as the stacked-leather heel on cowboy boots, or wearing a Lightning pistol inside one's waistband with the loading gate open to keep it from sliding down one's drawers, or particular styles of hat or wild rag or boot stitching, was influenced and promulgated more by the Penny Dreadfuls of the era, than by actual utility.

This is as may be.

Thanks to the Inter-System broadcasts, Michael Keller and his twin sister suddenly found themselves suppliers of tall, elaborately stitched cowboy boots, Stetsons with decorative hatbands, pocket watches and fobs, not to mention the sudden demand of certain black suits, gunbelts, holsters and a particular style of single-action, .44-caliber revolver.

Demand for lever action rifles and double guns came later, spurred by replaying news videos of Michael and Victoria, as yet children, riding out of the vapor cloud of a shot-up steam brougham, each with a rifle and a determined expression, charging horseback into an active shooting scene at a botched robbery.

Sheriff Jacob Keller discussed these things with Ruth, his wife, as she asked him about his sudden fame, his unexpected notoriety: Jacob considered how much had changed, and how fast, and he shook his head and ruefully admitted -- speaking of the no-knock-warrant, and how he rode outer guard behind the drug house --

"Ruth," he admitted, "this all has gotten away from me.  Pa said they were staging a raid and I was just helping out!"

 

Edited March 22 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

AND THE LITTLE BOY JUMPED

Littlejohn wanted to see the steam engine.

Sheriff Linn Keller wanted his back to stop hurting.

Every last one of Angela's combat medics wanted to see The Lady Esther.

The entire Confederacy wanted to read about the Old West.

The Confederacy started to visit Firelands, a trial effort to see if this would be possible without causing some sociological disaster.

The Z&W Railroad, headquartered in Firelands, opened its tourist season early, and The Silver Jewel found demand for meals and for drink just short of doubled.

Mr. Baxter -- whoever was tending bar, was Mr. Baxter, even if it was a pretty girl in a ruffle-hemmed, knee-length skirt -- wasn't just kept busy -- it was more like the white-aproned barkeep became a perpetual motion machine.

Daisy's Kitchen experienced a similar boom in business: the waitresses, instead of their usual knee length skirts, found themselves uniformed almost as Gibson Girls.

Even the roundhouse found itself suddenly popular, with tour groups brought through, and local members of the Z&W found themselves the subject of delighted attention: hickory stripe engineer's caps were a popular item in the gift shop, railroad watches became very much in vogue, little boys were hoisted into the cab of the second and third locomotives, shown the firebox, the Johnson bar, the whistle-pull -- neither engine had her steam up, so nobody within was deafened -- the inspection car was brought to life from its winter's hibernation, and a spur line was a popular, private, inspection-car excursion, especially when they switched the inspection car off the main line into Robber's Tunnel, the once-caved-in mine opening where a carload of skeletons had been found.

Of course this resulted in Storytelling as a Fine Art, and Sheriff Linn Keller found himself drafted, at least at first, in telling the story.

Back at the depot, The Lady Esther was coming into station, to the fanfare of the Firelands High School Marching Band, lusty cheers, men waving brand-new Stetsons, ladies fluttering embroidered, lace-trimmed kerchiefs, and somewhere in this crowd, a little boy backed up, big-eyed and scared, overwhelmed by the sudden noise, the movement, the confusion.

Another little boy -- pale-eyed, in a black Western suit -- grabbed the distressed child's wrist and pulled: he seized him, picked him up, ran to two horses tethered nearby.

The distressed child's mother didn't realize her little boy was missing for several moments.

She looked around, looked down, opened her mouth to shout his name, then froze.

There -- over by those horses -- another boy, a little older, was fitting a set of grey plastic earmuffs on his younger counterpart: the two boys hugged, and the mother worked her way toward them, then stopped.

Her child was on the spectrum.

I should have realized, she accused herself, I should not have --

She looked at this little island of calm, two boys beside a spotted, saddled horse, and a truly huge, almost bearlike, black-curly-furred dog nosed in between the two, and her son buried his face in fur and held onto muscled shoulders and a thick neck, and the mother froze because she realized, suddenly, his world was safe again.

On the other end of the depot, another little boy, joyfully watching drivers and wheels and steam shooting out to the side.

John Greenlees Jr., son of the Ambassador and of a noted physician and surgeon, did what celebratory little boys do at the approach of a genuine living, breathing, legendary wonder:

He yelled with delight and jumped up and down just as high and as fast as he possibly could!

 

Edited March 23 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HE'S DOING WHAT?

Ambassador-at-Large Marnie Keller was formally in conference with Chief of Emergency Medicine Angela Keller.

Each dignitary, expert in her respective field, listened carefully to what the other had to say, at least until those without their intimate meeting-chamber heard a startled, loud, distinctly undignified, "He's doing WHAT!?"

Within this staid, polished conference chamber, sterile and gleaming with burnished floors, hand-rubbed tabletops, delicate bone-china teacups and steaming, fragrant, citrus-accented tea and little finger-sandwiches, one sister looked quietly amused; the other, openly dismayed.

Marnie raised both palms toward her sister, shook her head: "Wait wait wait," she muttered, squinting her eyes as she looked like she was pushing her sister's report from her: this was followed by her quiet "No no no nonono, NO!" -- Marnie opened her eyes -- "What does he think he's doing?"

Angela spun a now-familiar coin across the table to her older sister.

It was gold, milled around its periphery; on one side, the saltere -- the crossed stars-and-bars of the Confederacy -- on the other side, a large X, with the smaller letters DIX across its equator.

It was the legendary Dixie, the ten-dollar gold coin seen in the American South before the internecine war from which these starfaring Confederates' ancestors were abducted.

Marnie looked at the coin, looked at Angela, raised a feminine eyebrow.

"That was in the Silver Jewel's till," Angela said quietly. "Daddy bought it from the till for its weight in gold. There were more recovered from the Mercantile, and from the Z&W's gift shop."

Marnie lowered her head into her hands and groaned.

"What is the man doing?" she whispered fiercely. 

"Well, so far, he's more than doubled the ridership on the Z&W," Angela said frankly. "He started up the tourist runs early -- too early, if he was relying on Earth tourists -- he's packed the cars full, he's run private tours in the inspection car, get this" -- Angela leaned forward -- "you remember those stories about the carload of professional killers that our pale eyed forbears interdicted and shot all to hell, the rail car was backed into a mine opening that was mistakenly connected with the Z&W's main line and the shaft sealed? -- the one you remember was excavated and the car was investigated as a crime scene?"

"I remember," Marnie said faintly.

"You'll remember the car is still haunted."

"I remember that too."

"Daddy went through it on a full moon with a shotgun loaded with rock salt and silver dust and he un-haunted it."

Marnie's jaw dropped open and she stared at her younger sister.

Angela took a sip of tea, cool and aloof, then she placed her delicate teacup on its equally fragile saucer and leaned forward, lacing her fingers together.

"He's risking discovery and contamination both," Angela said frankly, "and I didn't know any of this until he started shipping in bricks."

"Bricks," Marnie echoed, then looked away, looked back. "Why ... bricks?"

Angela keyed a sequence into her wrist-unit: a hologram rose above her and Marnie's wrist-units -- a brick, turning slowly.

Angela gripped her holographic brick and rotated it to show the maker's impress.

"Irish Rose," Marnie whispered, eyes widening: "Esther's brick!"

"He found some of the original bricks the McKenna Dress Works was laid up with," Angela nodded grimly. "It seems there were a few Earthers in the tourist runs and when they found themselves surrounded by men in black suits and women in McKenna gowns, they felt out of place and asked where they might buy suits or dresses, and Daddy ..."

Her voice trailed off.

"He never said a word to me," Marnie whispered. "I'm the ambassador! Why --"

" 'A prophet is not without honor save in his own country,' " Angela quoted. "For the same reason he'll listen to your husband but not to me for health matters. He looks at me and he sees that little baby girl whose cute little bottom he used to powder, he sees a little girl Mama used to dress in ribbons and ruffles."

Marnie's eyes grew as pale as she was growing quiet.

"I'll --"

"You will do no such thing," Angela snapped.

"We can't let him do this!"

"He's already doing it," Angela said bleakly. "Look at what we've done. Michael and Victoria rode into a robbery gone wrong, they shot one bad guy and trampled another, they've stopped situations, they've done horseback often enough and spectacularly enough that horses are big business. Michael is a fixture, he's been selling pianos and hymnals, he's been delivering Bibles and providing notebooks and schoolbooks and now it's westerns and Stetsons and my God, Marnie, Victoria -- and you!" -- Angela thrust her chin at her sister -- "you've set the standard for ladylike attire!"

"So we're turning thirteen star systems into the Old West."

"Not quite, but close."

"I need a drink," Marnie muttered, shaking her head again.

"That'll be the day," Angela huffed in reply.

"Look, maybe it's not all that bad,"  Angela offered after a moment. "We've an entire generation of boys growing up to want to be the Irish Brigade. We've got fire fighters and medics and that's good, right? We've got more that want to be town Marshal or County Sheriff. That's standardized governments -- we have townships and counties in all thirteen star systems, we have herds of horses established -- we've already contaminated the entire Confederacy.  All of us have. I have more students enrolled in nursing and combat medic classes --"

Marnie held up a hand, and Angela stopped talking.

"Maybe it's not that bad," Marnie said quietly.

"Maybe you should have a talk with him.  As Ambassador."

"Will he listen to me?  Or will he see that little waif of an orphan I was when he took me in?"

"Take the Chief Ambassador with you, then. They're old friends. Have him tell Daddy the Ambassador-at-Large wishes a conference, let him send an engraved invitation, let him make it formal, and you present yourself as formal as an ice queen. He'll have no choice but to take you seriously."

Marnie was quiet for several long moments.

"You know he won't take it well."

"I know."

"You know the one thing that makes him mad, instantly if not sooner, is to be corrected."

"I know."

"You know he won't take well to being corrected by his own child."

"That," Angela sighed, "is why you're Diplomat-at-Large. You're good at what you do."

"You mean I can swindle a used car salesman and sell ashes to the Devil," Marnie said quietly, her eyes half-veiled as Angela spread her hands and laughed, "Hey, when you're good, you're good!"

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TENDER

Old Pale Eyes leaned down a little.

Two cousins that looked enough like twins looked up at that long tall lawman with pale eyes and an iron grey mustache.

Faces young were turned up toward a solemn, older visage, until neither of the three could hold their solemn expression: that pale eyed old Sheriff winked, the boys grinned, and mischief was afoot!

The Blaze Boys were perpetually into something, they were forever causing some orneriment or another -- never anything harmful, you understand, it's more like they were just being boys, they just got into a better grade of ornery than most.

There is a curious phenomenon when it comes to boys getting in trouble.

They'll put a man's honest work into something if it'll give them a laugh and the knowledge that they'd just pulled off a good one.

Grown men tend to share that, and that pale eyed old lawman, for whatever reason, was in on their Skullduggery of the Day: he'd provided the team and wagon, he'd arranged for two barrels of spent mash, he'd recruited the Blaze Boys for the project, and now ... now they were quietly going around to where they could spread some second hand cheer.

It is not easy to convey buckets of mash into another man's hog trough, but they managed: hogs and chickens were often found in the same location, and hogs quickly develop a liking for the taste of used mash.

It was the day before slaughter and the Sheriff's official if-I-have-to-use-it story was that he was getting the slaughter hogs nice and relaxed so their meat would be tender.

Chickens, well, chickens got turned into Sunday dinner, and he'd had too many tough old chickens not to want to improve that situation as well.

By the time they were done, by his reckoning, there were very few swine in range that weren't feeling really good, and they finished by pouring out the last of the mash from the wagonbed barrel at the Sheriff's house, where the chickens were scratching and gossiping.

The Blaze Boys worked shoulder to shoulder with the Sheriff: he drew water, they bucketed the water into the barrel and then wallowed the barrel around and dumped it out, they set the barrel back over near the Sheriff's barn, and the Sheriff smiled quietly as the boys worked: one had a white blaze on the left of his head, the other had a matching blaze on the right side, these the souvenir of a lightning strike triggered by their launching a stolen skyrocket into a low, rumbling cloud and triggering the lightning strike that marked them both in the same moment.

The three had worked with swiftness and with stealth, and that Sunday at church, more than one householder was expressing a shared puzzlement: hogs had been slaughtered the day before, as were chickens, and the Sheriff gave his wife his very best Innocent Expression as she looked at him, as she too shared with other Ladies of Firelands that her chickens were behaving quite oddly the day before, and someone finally realized the reason their rooster kind of gurgled instead of crowed was because their rooster was so drunk he could not perch on a fence post and ended up on the ground, wings spread, looking somewhere between confused and delighted.

The Parson, as was usual, dined with a parishioner and they had fried chicken, as was traditional, and discussion reflected most favorably on the excellence of the meal, the superb taste of the chicken, and the next day, when the Parson had conversation with the Sheriff, folks had pretty well figured out what happened -- just the what, not quite the how or the who -- and the Sheriff solemnly suggested that they'd done their fowl a favor, having them for Sunday dinner, and the two men looked at an adjacent landholding, where multiple of the fowl were looking considerably less pleased than they had been the day before.

Successive generations of the pale eyed blood would read these accounts; successive generations, in perusing the handwritten Journals, would travel in their imagination to the high mountain home of those Kentucky moonshiners with whom the Sheriff was fast friends -- they imagined the loading of a barrel of mash -- the stealthy introduction of this alcoholic feed -- and the resultant improvement of fresh pork and chicken.

This exercise was not, however, duplicated by these successive generations.

They had the wherewithal to duplicate the deed, yes; they had equipment, manpower, destinations, yes, but all agreed that none, in later years, possessed the ability to do so with the solemn, straight-faced expression of a certain pale eyed lawman, a lawman with an iron grey mustache and a streak of the ornery inside him!

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IS HE DEAD?

Jacob Keller sighed out his breath and settled the front sight in the rear sight.

He'd bought this pistol after much research, some detective work and -- quite honestly -- paying too much money, but he'd finally gotten it.

His Gammaw Willamina knew a lawman back East, a man who consistently outshot her, and he outshot her with this very same Hi-Standard target pistol.

Jacob stood in what he called his Tea Drinking Stance and set the front sight right where he wanted the standard velocity .22 bullet to go.

The trigger let go of its own accord, the way it always did when the sights were right.

A bullet skimmed the top of a kitchen match wedged in the weathered, cracked top of a fence post, flared into life.

Jacob lowered the pistol until his fist just touched the table in front of him: he closed his eyes, took a deep, cleansing breath, raised his hand again.

Six shots, six matches scratched into life.

Jacob's pale eyes tightened a little at the corners.

He was marrying a plantation owner's daughter, and part of the planned festivities was a pistol shoot, with a prize rooster as first prize.

Jacob didn't have any particular need for a rooster.

He'd likely donate it back.

He would be a newlywed, after all, and he'd have other matters to claim his attention.

 

Ruth's brothers were as active and impatient as boys always are: their father settled them with a look -- which was good -- they'd been close to running outside in their good clothes, their tailored suits, with a stated intent to head for the barn and jump out of the hayloft into a big pile of loose straw they'd forked into place the day before.

A fatherly admonition prevented their attending their big sister's wedding with golden straw-shafts decorating their somber suits, but it did not prevent their finding other means of entertaining themselves.

The rooster was available, and so was their imagination.

One of the boys managed to pinch a heavy glass bottle and smuggle it back, where the bail was lifted, the contents dispensed into a pannikin: the rooster, caged in the shade where cooling breeze could keep him comfortable, had a pan of water.

Water was traded for beer.

The rooster, curious, sampled this substance.

Boys ran back to the house at the summons, leaving the prize rooster with his unplanned refreshment.

 

The wedding was as all weddings are: tedious to some, scary as hell to a very few, boring or inspiring or beautiful, depending on the individual viewing the proceedings.

The rooster was not invited to the wedding: his station was without, in the shade, in the breeze, and drunk enough that, when he felt moved to crow, what came out ... wasn't ... which of course called for another drink.

 

Men and boys lined up, leveled their pistols, fired: those whose steel plate did not fall, stepped away from the line, disqualified.

Saucer sized plates were replaced by plates as big across as a man's palm.

The number of shooters remaining on the line diminished steadily, until finally Jacob, his new father in law, his own father and his pale eyed sister stood side by side, waiting.

A single Lucifer match was stuck in a lump of clay, one for each of the shooters.

Marnie smiled, laid the barrel of her pistol out level: the bull barrel neither wobbled, wavered nor moved -- she fired -- her matchstick flew in the air, cut in two at its midpoint.

She looked over at Jacob and said "Beat that, little brother!'

Jacob nodded to his new father-in-law.

"Your turn," he said quietly.

His father-in-law lifted his head, sighted through the bottom of his bifocals to bring his sights into sharp focus, tightened his finger on the broad, grooved trigger.

His matchstick flew off to parts unknown.

A set of young eyes widened as the little boy rose up on the balls of his feet to peer into the prize winning rooster's cage.

A young voice whispered "Uh-oh," just as Jacob's pistol cracked, just as the match flared into sizzling life, as Marnie jumped up and down and pattered her gloved palms together, the very image of a happy sister celebrating her brother's achievement.

 

Sheriff Jacob Keller sat on his big, comfortable, oversized couch, with his young son on one side and his big-eyed little girl on his other side.

Jacob's mustache was starting to grey out, just a little, but it curved up from the grin on his face as he explained what his young saw in this genuine photo album with honest to God printed out pictures of a day years ago, when he outshot the finest pistol shots around, and was formally presented with one very drunk, very confused rooster whose triumphant crow resembled an asthmatic gate hinge.

 

==  Author's note ==

Long years ago, mine was the wedding at which a prize winning rooster was to be first prize for the subsequent pistol shoot.

Unfortunately, said rooster was guest of honor at the bachelor party the night before, and we found the rooster had a taste for beer.

Next morning, we thought that poor old rooster was dead.

He wasn't.

He was, however, utterly, completely, and most miserably, hung over.

A fellow paramedic took him home and added him to her coop full of hens, where -- after he overcame the collective death of who knows how many brain cells -- proceeded to strut proudly, perform his roosterly duties with the hens, and by all accounts, lived a long, happy and productive life.

Edited March 25 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE HELMET AND THE PULPIT

Reverend John Burnett gripped the edges of his pulpit.

The man looked exactly the way he felt.

He was tired, bone tired, he had all of an hour and a half of sleep the night before.

He'd taken a shift with the fire department.

One of the Irish Brigade was not well and called off.

Reverend John was not just their Chaplain, he'd been a firefighter for years, so he filled in.

Now he stood behind the pulpit feeling sore, tired, smelling of smoke, sweat and discomfort.

The congregation looked expectantly at the man: he returned thanks after the plate was passed, they sang the offertory hymn, and their Parson cleared his throat.

He picked up his fire helmet -- he'd not bothered to clean it -- it was streaked, filthied, discolored from heat.

"We had a fire last night," he said quietly, as he turned the helmet in his hands.

"A family could use some help. The particulars are on the bulletin board in back.

"I'm tired and I need a shower and there was no time so I just came as I am. Please forgive me if I smell like a house fire.

"I'd intended a fine sermon that timed out to get us out of here at noon on the dot and that's ... out the window."

He shifted his weight, grimaced a little as he did: he wasn't the hale and hearty young man he'd been when he entered the fire service long years before, and the night's aches were starting to catch up with him.

"Today's sermon will be short.

"It has two main points.

"First, a friend of the Sheriff's was undergoing cancer treatment. She ran a shop not far from here. While she was undergoing chemo and radiation, her family ran the shop.

"Everyone that came in asked about her, how she was doing, and that's fine. Everyone but the Sheriff asked how she was doing.

"He'd take a box of apple fritters and he'd hand them to this woman's husband and he'd look the man in the eye and ask how HE was doing."

He raised a teaching finger.

"Since then, the husband told a number of people that our Sheriff is the only one to ask how HE was holding up. That mattered to him. Just like when a child is suddenly stricken, please, folks, remember the rest of the family.

"Last point."  

He raised his hand, lifted two fingers.

"At my old fire department, we had a line of duty death. That's what pulled me into the Chaplaincy. I performed one of my best friends' funerals and it was the hardest thing I'd ever done, but what sticks with me is what my friend's widow told me afterward.

"She said for the first week, the first month, people wore a groove in her sidewalk bringing casseroles, fresh baked bread, offers to pick up her groceries, run her sweeper, cut her grass.

"She said by the second month these dropped waaaay off.

"Six months later when someone said 'The Widow Smith' the general response was 'Who?'

"So here's the message, and the end of the sermon:

"If a child is sick, remember the entire family,.

"If a spouse is hurt, remember the surviving spouse, and remember that spouse for a long time to come."

Reverend John Burnett, Parson of the Firelands Church, Chaplain for police, fire, emergency medical and for their friendly local hospital, put a hand to his back, bent a little, grimaced.

"Let us now turn to the closing hymn."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

TILT

Thunder's saddle hung over the back of a park bench.

The saddle blanket was draped over the other half of the park bench.

Thunder -- a semi-carnivorous Fanghorn, a creature that ran in herds, ran down and devoured grazers, and guarded their herd with ferocity and violence -- was rolled over on his back, mineral-hard hooves imitating an inverted, four-wheel-drive bicycle, as a half-dozen laughing children rubbed his ribs and his belly and cuddled up against his silk-furred warmth.

Michael Keller swung children high in the air -- he was faster, almost rougher with the boys, he was visibly more careful with little girls -- and with the mothers present, Michael was positively gentlemanly.

Victoria was seated on a blanket, spread out on sun-warmed grass, her legs modestly tucked under her long skirt: she laughed a little as Michael swung a happily-screaming little boy high enough the lad's feet thrust toward the zenith, then swung him down, a fast arc, perfectly safe, until the lad was inverted again, and Michael dropped the breathless little boy down into his arms.

Michael was getting some growth to him: he was lean, he wore his usual tailored black suit and an emerald-silk tie with a small square ruby stickpin, his Stetson he'd scaled over to his sister, and the picture that made the Inter-System that cycle was of Michael, laughing, boots set apart and planted in the grass, his head back and laughing -- an excited little boy, secure in manly arms, laughing with delight -- a young woman behind, her hands clasped, looking a little anxious but mostly pleased, probably the child's mother, the Inter-System didn't address the matter.

When Michael was approached, Victoria kissed at him -- a sound Michael could hear, a sound that snapped a Fanghorn eye open, then closed again -- a sound that brought Michael's head up, just as his Stetson spun through the air: he caught it, turned, tucked his cover correctly under his off arm and accepted the feminine hand extended to him.

Michael Keller was very much his father's son.

Many's the time he'd seen his pale eyed Pa kiss a woman's knuckles -- this allowed him to retain a little more distance between himself and the approaching woman, which gave him another moment or two to gauge intentions of this feminine approach.

Michael did this very thing, taking a half-step back as he raised the backs of her fingers to his lips.

Victoria watched with assessing eyes, watching as two mothers introduced themselves: her eyes narrowed as one introduced her furiously-blushing daughter, who was half-twisting with embarrassment at being brought to the attention of someone she'd seen only as a notable figure on the Inter-System.

Michael took the girl's hand, placed it on his arm, turned quickly to stand beside her: he dropped the Stetson from under his off arm, caught it and expertly settled it on his head.

"Walk with me," he murmured as Thunder stood, shedding giggling children and carefully worked through the several young who apparently considered this semi-carnivorous, stone-hoofed, fanged herd protector, as their personal cuddle buddy: Thunder paced easily beside the lass on Michael's arm, snuffed at her ear as Michael laughed quietly and said, "Thunder's my buddy," then he leaned his head closer and murmured, "He doesn't carry tales, so we're safe!"

Michael looked around, took the girl's hands -- they were cool, her fingers were trembling, ever so slightly.

Michael walked backwards, Thunder turning with them, until he got the Fanghorn's bulk between the two of them and the onlookers.

"I always hated it when I was brought into the public eye," he admitted, his hands open, her fingers resting on his. "I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, but please don't think this means we have to run off and get married or something!"

This brought a giggle, a turn of the head, a rush of red-faced embarrassment, but she gave him a shy look and nodded, biting her lip and not at all what to say in reply.

"When I'd be formally introduced to someone out in public," Michael admitted, "I would not know what to say, and I felt so dumb because of it and I'd either not say anything and feel like a clod, or I'd open my mouth and something stupid fell out and I'd feel worse" -- the girl looked up, surprised, and saw a surprising sadness in Michael's expression.

"So now I'm running off at the head with a good looking girl and making a fool of myself again, and all everyone can see is our legs and my hat and God knows what they think we're doing over here!"

The smile in Michael's eyes spread over the rest of his face as she covered her mouth with one hand to stifle her giggle.

Michael stepped closer, cupped her elbows, gently, carefully, and bent his head a little, voice gentle.

"Want to know why I'm saying all this?"

She looked up at him, surprised, and Michael grinned and shook his head and said, "You'll think I'm terrible, please forgive me, but your mother introduced us and damned if I can remember your name!"

His expression was so rueful, his admission so honestly vulnerable, that they ended up in kind of an awkward hug: her cheek was warm against his as she whispered, "My name is Karla," and on the other side of the interceding Fanghorn, witnesses saw Karla come up on her toes and saw Michael's hat tilt forward and then a little to the side. 

 

 

 

Edited March 27 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GRAVEL

"You up for this, darlin'?" Linn asked quietly as he looked up at his youngest daughter.

Dana nodded solemnly, the way she did as a little girl.

"I'm more comfortable in a saddle," she said quietly, then leaned forward a little to pat Powder Keg's neck.

"Besides, Powder Keg's my bud."

The mule swung one ear in acknowledgement, while the rest of his long furry face maintained the expression of someone about to fall asleep.

Shelly was astride a steady old mare she favored; Michael and Victoria each forked a Fanghorn -- Michael was on Lightning, and the Sheriff considered that maybe he should have saddled a Frisian instead of his stallion, simply because Michael's Fanghorn mare made the other saddlestock look ...

... puny ...

Victoria looked over at Littlejohn, atop Cyclone, who wore the expression all boys wear when they are absolutely delighted to be involved in something they'd wanted to do for a very long time.

Linn checked the cinches -- he always made one final check before they rode out as a family -- then he checked his watch, looked up at the sky, slipped the railroad watch into his vest pocket and mounted.

An entire family rode away from the Keller ranch and up the familiar mountain trail.

Linn went over the timetable with Marnie, he double checked dates and times, he'd studied the weather forecast: by his calculation, they had time enough to make the high meadow, where they'd have the best view, with maybe a half hour before the show started.

A pale eyed Sheriff rode point, and a living snake of horse flesh and family followed.

 

Gracie matched speed with the tumbling rock.

The meteor was the as long as a school bus, with an almost flat end, casualty of a collision who knows how long ago: the rock tumbled in three dimensions, which should make Gracie's job either much easier, or way the hell more difficult, depending on how the rock behaved when she shot it.

Gunfighter almost smiled -- if it's possible for a quantum computer to smile -- she and Gracie were mind-linked, each one completing the other in that odd synergy that combined human intuition with computer precision: the Starfighter flew alongside the space rock, ship's shields enveloping it like a bubble umbrella.

A beam of incredible brightness lanced out of Gunfighter's ventral projector.

It did not melt the rock.

Where the beam punched through, spinning iron-based rock simply ... disappeared.

The cut through the meteor was convoluted, twisted, thanks to the rock tumbling on all three axes simultaneously: Gracie projected the cutter, moved it slowly, slowly, the length of the rock, switched off the beam.

The rock was loose now, cut in an irregular, zigzag spiral.

Gracie primed one of the small cannon -- she felt more than heard the tempered iron lance drop into the small Gauss channel -- her hand lifted, moved forward, closed around the checkered surface of a black-plastic pistol grip, her finger straight, above the trigger guard.

Gracie projected a set of cross hairs, tracked them from the stern of the spinning, tumbling rock, paused at its midpoint.

Gracie's finger tightened on the red-plastic trigger.

Capacitors discharged; a hundred yards' worth of magnetic-coil-lined accelerator tube spat silently, and a forged-meteor-iron, square-ended lance drove forward and shattered the spiral-cut meteor into a fast-spreading cloud of iron gravel.

Gunfighter projected the spreading cloud's trajectory.

It's going to spread over most of Earth, Gunfighter reported.

Better than hitting it like a fist, Gracie thought in reply.

How visible will the meteors be as they burn into the atmosphere?

Sparse, very sparse.

Can we gather and direct them?

Gracie felt Gunfighter gather herself, felt her cast a force-net and begin sieving the spreading, shattered rocks from black vacuum, pulling them back into a cloud.

Can we drop them over Firelands, back home, at night?

At this distance, Gunfighter replied, it would be almost exactly one year.

Give me a date. I've got some people who'd like to see a good light show.

 

Most of the family Daine was waiting when the Sheriff led his family string into the high meadow.

Marnie was there, with Dr. John.

So was Angela, with a squad of her combat medics, their white-plastic armor almost glowing in the starlight.

A Starfighter with a cowgirl painted on the nose, a cowgirl in colorfully floral-stitched boots and a fringed skirt, with a blazing revolver in each hand, and beneath, neatly lettered, Gunfighter, rested like a yawning bird, landing gear down and bottom jaw open: Gracie removed her helmet, tucked it under one arm, walked toward her waiting family.

There were tables, plates of sandwiches, cold tea, hot coffee: young Albert Daine walked up to Michael and Lightning and openly stared at the fanged, blunt-headed beast, and finally looked at Michael.

"That," he said, "is the one ugliest horse I ever did see!"

Lightning draped her head over his shoulder and chirped, and Michael laughed.

Marnie passed out sandwiches and drinks, while the Sheriff carefully lifted a blanket-wrapped little baby granddaughter out of her carrier and held her in against his chest, and looked down at the tiny little pink-cheeked face with the expression a man has when he is looking at a genuine Miracle of Creation.

Linn looked at the grinning Dr. John and shook his head almost sadly.

"Doesn't look a thing like you, John," he intoned dolefully:  "no mustache!"

Marnie looked at her wrist-unit, smiled whistled to get everyone's attention.

"Package is incoming now," she announced, thrusting a dramatic arm skyward. 

Overhead, an automated field generator in the center of a cloud of iron rocks switched off its force-net, fired thrusters, peeled away from the gravel it had shepherded for the past year, squirted into parking orbit for later pickup.

Blankets were unfolded, snapped out, draped over hard ground: children lay down, looked up into the heavens, felt the dizzying sensation of imagination as they felt like they were falling up, the way children will do when beholding the infinite spread of the starry-decked firmament.

Fire burned across the heavens -- one moment, nothing but stars, bright against the almost-black sky, and the next moment, streaks, lines, bright silver traces of friction-heat: some were gone almost instantly, others lasted longer: two blazed across at least a third of the heavens before flashing bright and disappearing, followed by one, last, bright, long-lived fireball.

Children, and used-to-be-children, gazed upward at the sight, the marvel, the wonder: the skies were set afire for them, for these lean Kentucky carpenters and moonshiners, for their Gracie, who stood among them, her black, spherical flight helmet under one arm, her other arm around her bewhiskered brother's shoulders; for a pale eyed Sheriff, his youngest granddaughter in one arm, his other arm around his wife's shoulders: Littlejohn, Dana and two of the youngest family Daine lay on the blankets, and overhead, something that used to be a meteor, on a trajectory to penetrate atmosphere and hit the ground with destruction and ruin, blazed brightly across the heavens, a thing of beauty instead of an instrument of death.

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FENCE SITTER

A rented Jeep pulled in the little gravel area between the front door of the brick Village Hall, and the blacktop State Route 13.

The rental turned and backed in beside the elderly brick cube.

It was Saturday, the Village Hall was closed up, locked up, nobody home inside, which was just fine: even better, the white-painted, cement-block firehouse next door, was equally unoccupied.

A tall man in a black suit stepped out, opened the back of the Jeep.

A few locals regarded this development with interest.

When a man in a tailored suit and a matching Stetson backs in beside the Village Hall and unloads a couple five gallon buckets, then takes off his suit coat and lays it in the front seat before washing down the red-painted pipe railing between the Fire Department lot and the Village Hall, it gained some attention.

This was unusual ... not dangerous, not threatening, probably not unlawful, just ... out of the ordinary.

The locals watched as the red-enamel-painted, inch-and-a-quarter pipe railing was carefully scrubbed off, wiped down: water was slung out of one bucket, wiping rags draped over the fence's far end.

A man with pale eyes considered the fence carefully, walking its length, then came back to the Jeep and pulled out a few more items, working steadily in the full sun, finally using the cleanest of the rags he'd hung to dry, to finish the job.

That evening, the Fire Chief had need of information on file in his office: it was Saturday, he let himself in, checked the file and frowned at the contents, nodding as he did so: he'd remembered correctly, and he'd follow up on this on Monday.

When he came out, he stopped, looked at the shining-red pipe fence between the Fire Department lot, and the Village Hall, and frowned again.

He'd stopped at the corner station for gas and one of the locals told him about a stranger that stopped and was doing something with the pipe railing between the two properties.

The Chief pulled the door to, locked it, then strolled over to the red-enamel-painted, pipe-railing fence.

He reached a tentative hand for the pipe, then ran careful fingers over it, puzzled.

 

Sheriff Willamina Keller sat on a red-velvet cushion with gold piped edges and gold tassels at the corners.

She'd glared at Barrents when he saw her going through the door, pillow under her arm.

"That looks like --" he began with a grin, and Sheriff Willamina Keller's glare cut him off as effectively as if she'd stabbed a finger at him.

"Don't say it," she warned, and he wisely didn't.

Sheriff Willamina Keller sat on the Deacon's Bench outside the Sheriff's office, a pale eyed woman in a tailored blue suit dress and heels, and when she sat outside like this, she generally had visitors.

Ranchers saw her sitting out, and stopped to talk, to laugh, to share their dislike of government, to mutually con-damn stock prices or taxes or interference with an honest man's work.

She sat beside restless little boys coming home from school who breathlessly told her about things they'd been told, either in the classroom or on the playground, and on one fine afternoon, a little boy came running toward her just as hard as his grade-school legs would go, paper in hand -- he'd stumbled, he'd caught himself on the back of the bench to keep from falling, he stood, panting, red-cheeked, triumphant: Willamina turned, gave him a wide-eyed, grandmotherly look, and when he'd gotten some wind back into his young chest, he came around the front of the Deacon's Bench and dropped into it with all the ceremony of a grand piano dropping from the fourth floor.

He thrust the paper at Willamina.

Willamina slipped a pair of readers on her face, slid them a third of the way down her nose, studied the paper while a deep-breathing, shaking-with-anticipation little boy watched her face.

Willamina laid the paper on her lap, took off the readers and folded them with the precision for which she was known: she gave the little boy a warm look and opened her arms, and he shoved himself into her embrace, and the two of them laughed.

"I told you," Willamina whispered, rocking him a little.  "You did it" -- she slacked her embrace, looked at him with approval and added firmly, "I am PROUD of you!"

Deputy Linn Keller watched from several feet away as a little boy -- whose natural state was either at full gallop, or dead stop -- ran down the sidewalk toward home, the previous, marked-with-an-A test paper in hand.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked, and his mother smiled up at him.

Willamina patted the Deacon's Bench beside her, still warm from a restless little boy's blue-jeaned backside.

Linn sat, slowly, deliberately.

"Good news?" he asked, looking over at Willamina, who nodded.

"He was so afraid of not doing well on a math test," Willamina said softly. "I worked with him ... he had the principles down, all I did was help him see that he already understood the work!"

They sat together, quiet, listening with more than their ears, the way badge packers habitually listen.

"I wish we'd had a bench like this back in Chauncey," Willamina said.

Linn looked at her again and saw that soft smile of memory start to flow across her face.

"We had a pipe fence between the Fire Department and the Village Hall."

"Sounds hard on the backside," Linn murmured.

"It was," Willamina admitted, "but it ... that was kind of the local ... if I was fence sitting on that red painted railing, why, people would come and sit with me and we'd talk.

"Learned quite a bit that way."

"You've learned quite a bit here."

"That's why I had it installed."

Linn nodded; Willamina waited.

"This proves once again you are smarter and better lookin' than me," Linn finally said.

"I had to use it as a clothesline ... the mighty Hockhocking River backed up and Sunday Creek flooded down, and I stepped off pavement into a hole I couldn't see ..."

Linn grimaced.

"Filthy floodwater," Willamina sighed. "I ended up washing out my uniform in the village hall sink and hanging it on that red enamel pipe fence."

Linn nodded.

"We had ... ohhh," she snarled, irritation in her voice -- "I forget his name -- he was a retired boxer, and one of the officers had it out for him.

"He came and sat with me and talked about it, and I listened.

"That's mostly what he needed ... he needed to know he was being heard."

"What happened?"

"The individual i question would radio ahead if he saw this retired boxer driving, let the next jurisdiction know he was headed that way.

"Everyone and their uncle had a scanner, and everyone told him he was being reported over the scanner, and he came to me and said he hadn't done anything, and that fellow was making his life ... well, unkind."

Linn nodded, leaned forward, forearms on his knees, listening.

"I told the boxer it wouldn't happen much longer, and I didn't tell him the Mayor was relieving the party under discussion that day.

"I know why he was being such a ... hardcase."

Linn heard the less than delicate term his mother almost said, hidden in her hesitation.

"The Mayor told him to go home and take life easy, and that night the officer's cancer was metastasized to his brainstem and he died in his easy chair at home."

Linn nodded again, slowly, sandpapering his calluses together meditatively.

"Ssooo ... he was being such a ... hardcase ... trying to regain control of what he couldn't control."

"Something like that."

"Mmm."  Linn nodded again, leaned back.

"I used to wash the pipe rail down so I could sit on it and not get dried birdlime on my backside. The fire chief saw me wipe it down regularly, so he'd wax it when they had the trucks out to wipe 'em down at their weekly meeting."

 

Sheriff Linn Keller dismounted in the family section of the Firelands cemetery, squatted before a familiar gravestone, a stone that bore the six point star and his Mama's portrait.

He was quiet for a long time, remembering, then he smiled, rose, turned back to Apple-horse.

Linn swung up into saddle leather and looked back at the tomb stone.

"I cleaned off your rail, Mama," he said, "but you're right."

He rose in the stirrups, settled back into his seat, worked his back a little, the way a man will when something is not entirely comfortable until he makes it so.

"That bench is more comfortable than your Chauncey rail would be."

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HIS CHOICE

Sheriff Jacob Keller barely remembered his pale eyed Gammaw.

Sheriff Jacob Keller well knew the legendary characteristics of the pale-eyed Women of their Line -- he grew up with several -- he'd listened to Marnie describe, in a quiet, emotionless voice, when it was just the two of them -- he heard her describe how her Gammaw appeared, there on the sandy, near-vacuum of Mars' surface, how her Gammaw drove both barrels into a miner who had Marnie dead to rights and was ready to drive her in the chest with a shaped charge on a standoff lance.

Sheriff Jacob Keller knew both his sister's mercurial temper and her immense reservoir of patience.

Sheriff Jacob Keller had witnessed both Marnie's devastating violence, and the care with which she wiped a sorrowing child's tear, and soothed a grieving heart.

In his mind, his Gammaw was a semi-angelic creature, gifted with more than mortal skills, a creature of beauty, of Women's Magick, with skills and abilities and talents unbounded.

In short, he had her memory so far up on a pedestal it's a wonder the woman's memory didn't get nosebleed.

Jacob knew the entire Confederacy had a vast and boundless thirst for the romance and legend of the American West in general, and of Firelands in particular.

The hottest destinations for travel and for vacation, as a matter of fact, involved a certain rail line in the Colorado mountains, a line that used steam locomotives and gifted story tellers, where people could walk up to, and shake hands with, an honest-to-God Almighty, he's wearing a Stetson and a sixgun, Western Sheriff: men stood in awe, little boys in adoration, and Apple-horse generally ended up standing in a sea of staring admirers, with the youngest ones shyly, then happily, caressing whatever part of his patient, spotty anatomy they could reach.

Worn horse shoes were sold, then resold -- "genuine Appaloosa horseshoes from the Sheriff's personal mount!" -- prices gained stratospheric levels as hustlers and hawkers resold these back in the Systems; Bruce Jones found himself pressed into service for photographing children, grinning or solemn and generally clutching the saddlehorn, after being picked up by a laughing, pale-eyed Sheriff, and dunked in a genuine Sheriff's saddle on the Sheriff's own horse: he employed a quick-print system that laminated the photograph to keep it from being damaged when handled, the photos had the child's name, and beneath it, "And the Sheriff's Apple-horse."

These generally ended up framed in the best room of the house.

There were, unfortunately, down sides to all this, there always are.

A rowdy challenged Michael at a public presentation, tried to backhand him: Michael was on stage, the rowdy burst through dignitaries and the two police officers who were more ceremonial than not -- no one ever caused trouble at something like this! -- Michael caught him coming in, drove him headfirst into the podium; the two fell to the ground, where Michael just honestly beat the dog stuffing out of the man.

It is not a wise thing to surprise one of the Pale Eyed Blood with violence, especially by surprise: Michael's soul detonated into full Blood Dragon Mode in a tenth of a second or less, he had three fisted blows into his attacker's ribs while they were falling from stage to pavement: Michael rolled over, hands locked in the attacker's coat, he picked him up off the ground, eyes dead pale, face like stretched parchment, teeth bared: he hauled his attacker up one-handed, dropped him while driving his other fist into his wind.

Victoria was on her feet, a pistol in each hand, eyes hard and moving: where Michael was a fisted buzz saw in a tailored black suit, Victoria was icy death in a fitted gown, and none there dared either Michael's effectiveness in a fight, nor Victoria's obvious willingness to take the collective violence just as far as anyone wanted to try.

Sheriff Jacob Keller consulted off-world, just as his mother consulted, as did his sisters: where Angela taught nursing and emergency medicine, where his mother taught Paramedic, where the Irish Brigade taught firefighting, Jacob taught law enforcement -- not alone, he carefully selected his fellow instructors from those he knew personally and trusted completely -- but he himself was in demand as an instructor, as a speaker, because he was Sheriff of Firelands.

Sheriff Linn Keller consulted as well, though not nearly as much as his pale eyed son.

Sheriff Linn Keller was not a showman by any means, but he did know the value of appearances, and the popular image of the County Sheriff was that of a Western Sheriff, and so on this particular day, the Sheriff rode into town on his Appaloosa stallion, a tall man with a precisely-curled, iron-grey mustache, a black suit and polished boots, with a black Stetson with turquoise-and-silver hatband.

A hitch rail was newly installed, knowing the Sheriff himself would hitch off in front of this one particular building: steelshod hooves trotted slowly down the pavement, with little boys running alongside and behind the Sheriff, yelling and waving, the way happy little boys will.

The Sheriff was himself, which is to say, not entirely trusting, and perpetually watchful: where he grinned and waved at little boys, he still watched rooflines, ambush points, he still read body language: though he held Apple's reins loosely in his off hand, they were not connected to any bit, and so when Apple-horse felt his rider's weight shift back a little, he slowed, walked up to the only hitch rail anywhere to be seen.

The Sheriff saw trouble, and he knew trouble when he saw it, and so he turned Apple-horse, end-for-end, before his dismount.

"I CAN OUT-DRAW YOU, SHERIFF!" came the shouted challenge, "AND I'M A-GONNA KILL YOU!"

The Sheriff sized the man up, saw people drawing away from him on either side.

The Sheriff's eyes tightened a little at the corners.

The Sheriff nodded, once.

"You figure to out-draw me right here in the middle of the street."

"YOU'RE DAMNED RIGHT I WILL!"

The Sheriff smiled -- just a little -- a quiet, knowing smile.

"Know any good undertakers?" he asked mildly. "One of us is goin' to need one."

People drew back from the Sheriff.

"Now I don't want any of these folks hurt," the Sheriff said, reaching up and adjusting his Stetson: "so what say we hold action until we get out in the street together."

The Sheriff didn't wait for a reply.

The Sheriff dismounted.

Men's eyes widened -- little boys' breath caught in their throats -- a woman clapped a gloved hand over her mouth --

The Sheriff spun out from behind Apple-horse's hind quarters, raised an Ithaca shotgun and drove a round of 00 buck into his challenger.

The shuck-shuck sound of his reload was lost in the echoing concussion: the Sheriff lowered his gun muzzle, turned a little, left, then right.

"ANYBODY ELSE?"

His voice was sharp, harsh, loud, echoing off the shocked-silent buildings.

A tall, pale-eyed man with a double handful of street howitzer looked around, hands tight on pressed checkering.

He straightened, eyes still busy: he walked up to the figure laying on his face, grabbed his shoulder, rolled him over.

Experience told the Sheriff this man was dead; training and habit extended two fingers and pressed into the carotid groove of the attacker's neck.

Later that morning, in the classroom where he'd been scheduled, he addressed the assembled lawmen in training and spoke in plain language.

"If someone tells you they're going to kill you, believe them, and act accordingly."

He looked around, eyes and voice equally calm.

"Believe them, but do not give them any kind of a chance.

"There is no such thing as a fair fight. Remember that. Take every advantage, every time. Don't abuse it and don't use it as an excuse, but if someone states an intent to kill you, they are bought and paid for."

"Isn't that ... extreme, Sheriff?" a Judge asked from the front row. "It would seem that a man might simply be blowing off steam, or ... or making himself look big."

The Sheriff looked very directly at the man, but his look contained neither challenge nor resentment.

"Your Honor," he said quietly, "we must draw a clear line and we must enforce it, because it will be tested."

He paused, then repeated, 

"It will be tested. 

"If the line we draw is inflexible and consistent, the community will get used to the idea that such language will mean a long box and a long nap, every time."

The Sheriff looked from the Judge to the green lawmen, taking time to meet every last eye in the room.
"Consistent results are what we're after, gentlemen. The community saw what happens when you tell a lawman you're going to kill him. In this case, I didn't kill him, he chose to kill himself, and that's not on me."

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SAVED

Bad luck rode a baseball.

Michael had no idea why anyone would throw a baseball in church, on Sunday morning, right as everyone was standing up to leave.

All he knew was, he saw something white whistle past ahead of him.

He head it hit.

Michael looked to his left, saw a grade-school boy of his acquaintance with a surprised look wobble back a little as a baseball bounced off his breastbone.

From the sound of the hit, it hit hard, and from the boy's reaction, it hit right at the worst possible time, and Michael was powered into a flat-out sprint when he was one step away from the pew he'd just exited.

Part of him saw the thrower at the back of the church, part of him realized whoever threw it was leaving in a hurry, but Michael shoved that thought away from him as he shoved people aside, dropped to his knees, tilted the boy's head and pressed two fingers into the carotid groove.

People stopped, stared, frowned; two he'd shoved out of his way started to glare, until Victoria elbowed them -- hard -- and came up beside her twin brother.

Michael got four fast breaths into the boy, landmarked, folded his hands over the breastbone and started to compress the way his sister Angela taught him -- deep, fast, merciless.

Victoria straightened, thrust a commanding arm toward the Parson, and for the first time in her young life, shouted in church.

"PARSON! GET ME THE I.E.D, NOW!!"

She turned to a member who was starting to raise a cell phone toward the sight.

She swung in front of the phone, drove a bladed hand toward him:  "YOU! IN THE YELLOW SHIRT! CALL 911, DO IT NOW!"

Victoria twisted as she knelt, seized the red-nylon-cased defibrillator from the Parson's hand, unzipped it fast and viciously as Michael chanted his compressions count.

The general exodus from the church was forgotten; people drew back a little, a very little, allowing Michael and Victoria room to work.

Strong young hands seized a buttoned shirt, tore it open: a knife snapped open from somewhere, Victoria laid the T-shirt open from collar to belt buckle, set it down, still open.

Michael's commands were almost grunted, coming in time to his chanted compressions: Victoria peeled the backing off one pad, pressed it firmly in place, then the upper.

Michael drew off the chest, gave two more fast breaths, rocked back.

Two sets of pale eyes regarded the IED: in the shocked silence, its electronic voice said "SHOCK RECOMMENDED."

Victoria yelled "CLEAR! FIRE ONE!"

There was no great, dramatic, loose-limbed body-flop like you see on TV, just a twitch, and barely that: young eyes were just short of closed, Michael glared at the IED.

Michael landmarked and resumed CPR.

Victoria turned to the yellow shirted teen-ager who'd resumed the phone-forward stance:  "DID YOU CALL 911?" she demanded, and her voice was neither soft, gentle, nor in the least bit kind: she surged off the floor like a panther, snarled as she seized the phone: a shouted protest as she manipulated the screen, as she spoke: "SHARON, THIS IS VICTORIA, CODE BLUE FIRELANDS CHURCH MAIN STREET, CPR IN PROGRESS, COUNTERSHOCK TIMES ONE," then tossed the phone back to its owner.

Michael's compressions were utterly merciless.

He'd seen the mechanical CPR machines the squad used, the ones, the ER used, and he was just as brutal as the mechanical devices.

The patient was no more than twelve years old, the patient's ribs would be flexible enough to bend, maybe crack: on an adult, especially an elder, they would snap.

Michael went down, mouth-to-mouth again, came up, pressed two fingers into the carotid groove, looked at Victoria.

Victoria looked at the AED.

"Shock indicated."

"CLEAR, FIRE TWO!"

Victoria's lace-gloved finger pressed hard on the red button.

The machine's discharge was almost inaudible.

 

Shelly didn't usually work Sundays.

She was filling in.

When Sharon toned them out and added that Victoria called it in, Shelly set her jaw and looked at her father, who looked at his daughter with rather a grim expression.

Neither spoke their fear: that one of their own was down, that CPR was in progress.

Both knew the truly dismal statistics on a field CPR save.

 

"Need me to relieve you?" Victoria asked quietly.

Michael's glare was answer enough: his five-count compressions were the only sound in the little white washed church, until the liquid whistle of the ambulance flowed through the open back doors.

From the firehouse to the Church was less than a hundred yards, but the Captain correctly surmised they would need to know the cavalry was coming, if only to start making a hole.

 

Michael leaned back as Victoria shouted "CLEAR, FIRE THREE!" -- as the ambulance cot banged down onto the aisle -- as parishioners drew back -- as two medics ran down the aisle that had seen coffins brought solemnly in, that had seen newly weds dancing out to joyful fiddle music.

Michael was more than happy to let the medics take over: he rose, dropped into a pew, watched, Victoria behind him, her hands on his shoulders.

Michael's grandfather turned: "Can you continue CPR?" 

Michael was on his feet:  "CAN DO, SIR!"
"Ride the cot."

Michael did not have to be told twice.

He'd practiced this often enough -- his well polished boots planted themselves on the bottom rail -- he positioned, he pumped, he compressed a child's chest, willing the heart within to move blood, actively, passively, peacefully, or otherwise.

Many hands helped get the heavy cot down the steps; Michael came off the bottom rail, stood on gravel as the cot was lowered, bending with it, continuing the compressions until the mechanical thumper was brought into position, locked down, activated.

Michael stood back, rolled his shoulders, his jaw set: the cot was locked into the hoist, landing gear raised, the cot was brought into the rig under power.

Victoria stepped in front of him, took his hands in hers, looked at her twin brother with pale, serious eyes.

"You okay?" she whispered, and Michael nodded, looked away.

"Michael."

Victoria's thumb-and-forefinger gripped his chin, lightly, carefully, turned his face to look at her.

"Michael, I am very proud of you."

Michael nodded.

 

Old Pale Eyes heard the scream from the little whitewashed schoolhouse.

He came off the Deacon's bench, sprinted across the packed dirt street.

Emma Cooper was just coming to the door, hand to her bodice, eyes wide with alarm.

Linn went to his knees beside the schoolboy, laid a hand against the boy's cheek, then gripped his shoulder, shook him, shook again.

The Sheriff laid a hand over the boy's chest, pale eyes wide, tracking back and forth, listening through his hand for the vibration of a vital young heart.

There was nothing.

He looked up, looked around, then seized the schoolboy, did the only thing he could think of.

He threw the limp, face-darkening figure over his shoulder and started to run.

 

Shelly Keller stood in front of the offworld class, traced the P-wave on the projected EKG strip, then the QRS complex, and finally the T-wave.

"It is possible," she said, "to strike the chest during the T-wave. This is the cellular recharge, where particular ions are crossing the cell membranes. If a blow is delivered -- here --" 

Her rubber-tipped, wood pointer tapped the projected T-wave, causing the silver screen to ripple a little -- "Hit the T and the heart goes into fibrillation."

 

Dr. Greenlees drew the sheet over the dead boy's face.

The Sheriff was not long in returning.

"Two boys got into it," the Sheriff said. "One punched the other in the middle of the chest."

"That's what killed him," Dr. Greenlees said bluntly, "That's why a man in a fist fight will hit his opponent in the breast bone. Catch him just right, it stops the heart."

The Sheriff looked away, closed his eyes for several long moments, then shook his head.

"I better talk to the Judge," he said, "before I arrest the boy that hit him."

He looked at the still figure under the sheet, at the boy sized feet sticking out from under, turned out in the limpness of death.

"I should have run faster," he growled, his voice husky.

"Wouldn't have helped," Doc contradicted. "He was dead before he hit the ground."

 

The Parson hooked the baseball out from under a pew with a broomhandle.

The Sheriff picked it up, dropped it in an evidence bag.

"Murder by baseball," Linn muttered. 

"You found the ... perpetrator?" Reverend Burnett hazarded.

The Sheriff nodded.  "He said he was throwing at someone else, some kind of a beef. Something to do with --"

Linn clamped his jaw shut, looked away, exhaled hard, looked back.

"Two kids mad because of something one did at a ball game, the other tried to bean him with a fastball and an innocent kid gets killed!"

"Do we know he's dead?" the Parson asked reasonably.

Linn closed his eyes again, shook his head.

"No," he admitted. "No.  I'd best go find out."

 

Shelly was on her knees beside the realistic-looking CPR mannikin.

She preferred the lifelike mannikins.

Angela knelt beside another.

They'd taught the theory.

Now two ladies of Firelands were going to show their students, then coach their students, then make their students perform, this Laying On of Hands.

Shelly warned them ahead of time, "If you do nothing, they are DEAD.

"If you try and you do your best, you will be giving them the only chance they will ever have.

"I don't know about you" -- every student there heard her voice change, saw that subtle shift of expression that told them she was speaking with the Voice of Experience -- "but I could not look at my reflection in the mirror knowing I hadn't at least given them that chance!"

 

Just over one day later, a very sore twelve year old boy was released from the hospital.

His chest ached abominably, he had bruising where IV lines had gone in, but -- like one of the doctors told him -- "at least you're alive to complain about it!"

Michael and Victoria watched from their saddles as the boy was wheeled out to the family sedan, as he moved carefully, the way a twelve year old will when he feels like he's been hit by the noon freight.

Neither twin moved, neither twin spoke: they were drawn back against the bordering bushes, their positions chosen to break their visual signature: they waited until the car pulled out of the ER parking lot, up onto the street, and was gone, before they moved.

They cut cross country, back toward the house.

"Victoria?" Michael said formally -- he normally called her "Victoria," but he said it as if he were pronouncing a royal title, rather than the name he'd always called her.

Victoria looked over at him.

"I'm glad you were there."

Victoria's eyes widened:  "Me? Michael, you're the one who saved him!"

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

YOU DID THIS FOR ME?

Michael Keller rolled his eyes.

He tried to hold otherwise still.

His twin sister Victoria was not fooled.

She laid her gloved palm over her twin brother's knuckles.

On Michael's right, Ambassador Marnie Keller laid her lace-gloved palm on the knuckles of his other hand.

Both ladies felt Michael's slow, deep, silent inhalation, then the exhale.

He'd hoped to escape this.

He'd deliberately chosen to attend church offworld instead of attending at home.

He'd pulled off something his Mama had once -- once! -- in a quarter of a century as a working medic, and that was a field CPR save.

He knew if he showed up at his home church, he'd be mentioned in the sermon, he'd be glad handed and back slapped, there would probably be a teary moment with the patient's family, and Michael really, really wanted to avoid that.

He'd done like his Pa told him.

If it needs done, do it -- a woodbox needs filled, a water bucket is empty, a deadly threat presents itself, someone is hurt, and you're able, you make it right as best you can.

In Michael's eyes, that's all it was: something was wrong, he did his best to make it right, and now here -- offworld, with a pale eyed sister on either side, this Parson was making mention of Michael having saved a life, in church, that the young man involved is alive today because a good man stepped in and did what needed done, then he wove this into the story of the Resurrection, connecting the ability to accept salvation with living long enough to make that acceptance, and that Michael kept a boy alive long enough to make a man's decision on that count.

Michael kept his face carefully neutral.

He'd honestly hoped to avoid this -- he felt his ears warming, then burning, but he neither moved, nor did he nod, shift, fidget nor speak.

The Easter service progressed: hymnals (which Michael provided just under a year ago) were opened, Bibles opened to follow the Parson's message when chapter and verse were cited (Bibles that Michael provided with the hymnals), Dana sat in a slightly odd-looking piano seat -- you couldn't call it a stool, it had a high back, but it was narrow, and supported her through a clever application of orthopedic padding to keep her back from calling her too many names -- the hymns were led by this piano, which was of the same vintage as the hymnals, and yes, also provided through Michael's efforts.

Michael braced himself as the congregation filed out; the Parson greeted him warmly, pumped his hand with evident delight, and Michael nodded with a quiet smile and a courteous "Thank you, sir," and he found himself in a minor sea of pastels and hairstyles, of fashionable little hats and happy feminine chatter, all pressing close, all seeking audience, if only briefly -- but not with him.

Michael and Victoria did not draw a little to the side, as would have been Michael's preference -- truth be told, he'd like to have forked a good horse and gotten some distance -- no, he found himself pressed round about by delighted femininity, but all these lovely young ladies were not focused on him.

They were addressing Marnie.

Michael frowned a little, puzzled, looked at Victoria -- they were of a like height -- she leaned closer and murmured "Story at eleven," and Michael nodded as Marnie touched hands, touched faces, touched shoulders, tilted her head, inclined her head, listened -- all with that quiet smile, all with an expression of shared delight, and then Michael realized what was happening.

It was Easter.

Girls like to wear their best on Easter.

From what he was hearing, Marnie single-handedly arranged for the ladies of the territory to have a fine Easter gown and a matching hat to wear, and these happy young ladies, maidens and matrons alike, were crowding in close and expressing their absolute delight.

Somehow the Parson made his escape as well, and ended up close enough to grip Michael's shoulder approvingly: the two men stood, a tall island of solemn black, in the eddying sea of pretty pastels, and their Parson felt Michael's slient laughter.

Michael turned to the older man and spoke quietly.

"I reckon there's a sermon here," he murmured, and the Parson nodded, patted Michael's shoulder in a fatherly manner.

"Indeed there is," he said, and Michael could hear the smile in his voice. "Now I need to write down a few things before I forget them."

Michael ran a hand into his coat pocket, came out with a black notebook with a matching fountain pen in an elastic loop, thrust this into the sky pilot's grip: " 'The weakest ink is stronger than the strongest memory,' " he quoted. "You'd best write that down."

 

Shelly's kitchen was crowded with kinfolk that Easter Sunday.

Many hands made light work and very careful maneuvering, as nobody wished to bump whoever was carrying gravy or green beans: Linn stood behind his chair, looked around as everyone was seated, then bowed his head and for a rarity, actually said a civilized blessing.

This was to the apparent disappointment of two grandsons and a daughter, all of whom had sweet rolls purloined and secreted for the occasion.

At Linn's solemn "AAA-men!" the meal commenced, as did happy conversation: Linn looked the length of the table and, with the expression of a grandfather wise in the ways of mischevious grandsons, called "Littlejohn! Pass me a sweet roll!"

Littlejohn grinned, wound up, tossed his sweet roll in a high arc to clear table, hands and utensils: Linn caught it, winked, tore it open and looked around, spoke quietly: "I need the gut grease," he said, and the butter dish was slid closer.

His words were carefully chosen.

He was satisfied nobody would pick up the genuine antique cut glass butterdish (98 cents at Kresge's in Zanesville, some years back), but he was taking no chances.

He looked over at Marnie, whose face was flushed a little, the way it did when she was talking a good memory.

"I watched her try it on," Marnie said, glancing over at her Daddy, who quirked an eyebrow in interrogation.

"The girls I had gowns made for," Marnie explained. "I think she was about nine years old and she'd never had an Easter gown before. She tried it on and twirled in front of the mirror" -- Linn had the instant memory of his own daughters, as little girls, in that bright and magic moment when a little girl looks at her reflection in the mirror and twirls, delighted, face shining -- "she looked at her reflection and I'll never forget her voice!"

The table was silent, for Marnie's voice had that quality that comes only with a very special memory.

"She looked at herself in the mirror, and she turned and looked at me and she looked down at her gown and she looked up at me and she said, "You did this for me?"

Linn blinked a few times, nodded his understanding as Marnie continued in a quiet, humbled voice, "That absolutely made all that work, worth it!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NOTHING FURTHER

Marnie Keller rode the school bus, at her Mama's insistence.
Marnie Keller surrounded herself with distance and with silence, both on the bus, and subsequently, in school.

Marnie Keller came home on the bus, not having uttered more than eight words all day.

Three were spoken to a classmate, right before she threw him into a wall, then jerked him to the floor, her pale eyes hard and polished as her Gammaw's with her dandruff up.

Three words.

"Don't cross me."

Marnie came home from school, let herself in, hooked off her trademark red cowboy boots and stalked up the stairs with all the thundering racket of a passing ghost.

Jacob was leaned toward one of several speakers on his desk, listening: Marnie knew the expression, and as she paused in his doorway, her face expressionless and her pretty young heart yearning to rip a fence post out of the ground and beat somebody with it, she heard what had Jacob's undivided.

Marnie turned, slipped back downstairs, thrust into her red cowboy boots, slipped out the front door and ran to the barn.

Marnie Keller was running on a belly full of fire.

She'd like nothing better than to rip someone's head off and punt it over the roofline, and then proceed to get right mean with whoever it was had offended her -- never mind she already introduced him to a wall and then the polished tile floor -- she seized a saddle blanket, grunted as she wallowed a saddle up onto her shoulder, a saddle that would normally have been bordering on too much for her.

Marnie looked at her Daddy's herd, curled her lip, whistled that particular three-note her Daddy used.

His stallion came pacing over, grunting, nosed her, hard.

Marnie slapped him across the nose:  "STAND!" she snapped -- whether because of the slap or in spite of it, the stallion stood.

Marnie had to knuckle him to get the cinch tight, but she did and it was, and when she walked over to the mounting block, he followed her, probably with the attitude of "This looks interesting."

Jacob was just coming out of the house and headed for the barn when something spotty white streaked across the pasture, turned, then ran for the end of the fence.

Marnie was half standing in the stirrups, laid over the horse's neck, her hands flat on the stallion's mane: Jacob's heart soared until it hit his Adam's apple as Marnie and his Pa's Apple-horse soared over the fence.

Jacob took out for the pasture on a dead run.

It took him ninety long seconds -- which felt like two and a half weeks -- to get his own mount saddled, to get into saddle leather, to follow Marnie over the whitewashed board fence.

 

Marnie's Daddy told her not to ride his stallion.

The stallion was a fiery mount that liked to buck out when he was first saddled.

Marnie rode him aggressively -- just what the stallion wanted -- she drove him across ditch and field, up over the grassy bank: Apple caught air and soared, and Marnie's stomach soared with him, and then they were laying over in a hard turn -- steelshod hooves kicked up sod and clods and Marnie's pretty backside was welded to the saddle -- Apple drove forward, lunging, coming off grass and onto blacktop and Marnie pointed Apple's nose like she'd point a gunbarrel and they saw it.

They saw it.

Horse and rider streaked down the painted center line of beautiful downtown Firelands, a spotted stallion with mane and tail floating, a little girl with a bared-teeth grimace of a grin, pigtails streaming, her knees locked into the saddle skirting.

Ahead of them, a beef, intent on further mischef: behind the beef, two men on the ground, one hurt, the other hurt worse.

Marnie didn't know they were hurt.

She never even saw them.

She had a tunnel vision target lock on the beef and she turned the Dragon loose inside her belly and she felt the Rage sear through her living soul and set her blood afire and she jumped straight up out of the stirrups, her palms crossed over the saddlehorn, she crouched in the saddle and just as Jacob came over the rise at the uphill end of the main street, he saw Marnie launch like a fire-and-forget missile -- a missile in red cowboy boots --

Marnie seized horns and swung under the neck, she didn't so much snarl as ... well, it was the deep-chested, snarling yowl of a mountain cat: her weight wasn't all that much, but it twisted around fast, sharp, she used leverage and surprise and dragon's blood to twist that beef off its cloven hooves: the bovine crumpled, hit the ground on its side, Marnie rolled over on top of it, straddled the thick neck, laid down and seized the beef's ears, and Jacob heard her yell:

"TRY THAT AGAIN, DAMN YOU!"

Jacob watched as lariats, a stock trailer, gloved men's hands descended: Marnie rode the beef into the stock trailer, emerged a minute or so later.

Jacob had his Pa's stallion by the reins: he dismounted, led both horses over to Marnie.

He looked at the stock trailer, at the bovine backside just visible over the double doors.

He looked at Marnie, at her scraped, dirty knees, her dirt-scuffed shoulder, at her tired expression.

Jacob asked with the frankness of family.

"Marnie ... what ever got into you to make you do that?"

Marnie looked at him, all trace of her inner fire spent, and she answered with a tired schoolgirl's honesty.

"Billy Johnson made me mad."

"Billy Johnson," Jacob echoed.

"Two days ago. In school. I had to deck him today."

Jacob blinked, considered.

"Did anyone see you?"

Marnie shook her head, reached up, flipped her braids forward of her shoulders.

That probably means something, Jacob thought.

Damned if I know what.

He gave up on his brief analysis of body language, looked at her closely and asked in a soft voice, "Are you hurt, Little Sis?"

Marnie raised a fist, waved it menacingly.

"Don't," she said, her voice flat, "call me Little Sis, little brother!"

 

Next day, at school, the weekly newspaper dropped on her desk, over the lesson she was reading.

It showed a black beef in mid-fall, it showed a set of up-thrust cowboy boots attached to a pair of legs sticking out of a denim skirt.

It showed the horse so recently vacated, hind quarters dropping as it very obviously slowed.

Marnie looked up as Billy Johnson walked back to his own desk, then she looked back down at the picture she had no idea Bruce Jones took.

She had no further trouble from Billy Johnson.

Ever.

 

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