SHORT STORIES!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

JUST ENOUGH TO SCARE ME

Dana Keller was not far from her wedding -- it was but two weeks hence -- she lay awake, staring into the shadowed mystery of her bedroom ceiling, thinking of preparations, of arrangements, of Bonnie's elderly fingers, wrinkled but swift, aged but incredibly talented, tucking here and pinning there as Dana's wedding gown was fashioned from shining, emerald-green material.

Her Mama, rest her soul, was married in emerald green, and a swatch from that original gown was cleverly worked into her own gown, the slight color mismatch used as an accent, the way a clever seamstress will.

Dana lay still, listening to the night, and then frowned: she felt her right ear pull back a little, the way it did when she heard something she couldn't quite identify, and then she threw her bedcovers back, thrust her feet into fur lined moccasins and seized the Colt Navy revolver her Aunt Bonnie gave her not long ago, a revolver that fit Dana's hand perfectly, a revolver her brother Jacob pronounced sound and accurate.

Dana's moccasins whispered against the floor, the stairs, and she slipped downstairs, flowing like a flannel ghost, revolving-pistol in hand: she heard the swift approach of a horse, and that never, ever boded well at this hour!

Dana unlocked the front door, opened it two fingers' worth, looked, turned, swung her visual arc as far as she could: she had her thumb over that stand-up percussion hammer, held back against her side to prevent a grab, she saw a familiar horse and its familiar rider and she threw the door wide, stepped out, turned to swing both gaze and gunmuzzle from hard-right to hard-left.

Jacob drew up quickly, his stallion hunching a little as he came to a swift stop: he saw moonlight reflect briefly off Dana's octagon barrel and felt a moment's satisfaction, then he came out of the saddle, cleared three steps in one long stride, cupped Dana's off elbow in his hand, inclined his head close to her ear.

"I dreamed of Pa," he whispered urgently: "is all well?"

 

When Jacob woke that night, he woke like someone clap boarded his backside with a smooth-shaved board.

He was out of bed like water poured; he was into his duds and out the door with the swiftness of long practice and the urgency of a cavalryman who'd been wakened by a bugled "Boots and Saddles."

He came out of the house still buckling his gunbelt, he sprinted for the barn, long legs eating the distance easily: his stallion heard him, heard his footfalls, but felt his upset: the stallion charged the barn, came inside as Jacob turned: the stallion whipped side-on to him as nice as if the pair practiced this very move time and time and time again.

It's been said that a well-matched horse and rider becomes one living soul, and perhaps that's true, because Jacob did not have to guide his bitless Appaloosa saddle partner.

He leaned forward, standing in the stirrups, hands pressed on Apple-horse's neck close up against the mane, and a living arrow streaked through the drowsy herd and soared over the fence, and disappeared into the night.

 

"Mama had the Second Sight," Jacob murmured in the nighttime's hush.

He and Dana sat side by side on the porch swing, Dana's revolving-pistol in her lap, her hand laid over it.

"I know," Dana whispered back, and Jacob heard a quiet smile in his sister's sibilants.

"So does -- did -- Sarah."

He felt Dana's nod.

Jacob took a long, sighing breath, dropped his head.

"I've got just enough of it to scare me."

Dana reached over, laid her hand carefully on her older brother's hand, squeezed gently, released, marveling yet again at how warm his hands were.

He has hot hands, she thought

Just like Papa.

Angela smiled at a sudden memory.

Mama said sleeping with Papa was like sleeping with a warm brick ... that snored!

Dana stifled a giggle, or tried to, and Jacob turned his head toward her a little, and she felt his smile.

"Am I causin' trouble again?" he asked softly, and Dana hugged him, quickly, tightly, then released her embraced and rubbed her flat hand across his tense shoulders.

"You sound just like Papa when you say that," she whispered.

She felt that grin again:  "Trust me to cause trouble!"

Jacob leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

"I woke from a dream," he said abruptly. "We were called in, that Pa was a-dyin'."

He felt Dana's hand stop suddenly -- still warm on his back, but stopped, like he'd just given her confirmation of something she suspected.

Jacob's stallion stamped, looked into the distance, ears busy, then proceeded to investigate the grass underfoot.

Dana's hesitation was almost painful.

"Doc ... was out ... yesterday," she said slowly.

Jacob waited.

Dana took a long breath, gripped her brother's hand.

"Jacob, I don't think it's good."

Jacob ran his arm around his little sister's shoulders, pulled her close.

"You know Pa," he murmured. "He'd not be so impolite as to die before he walks you down the aisle!"

Dana nodded and then gave an uncertain little hiccup, the way she used to when she was still a little girl.

"He'll be all cleaned up and shinin'," Jacob continued in a quiet, bantering tone, "he'll have them boots of his lookin' like mirrors, he'll wear that emerald stickpin Mama gave him and he'll have that necktie knotted up proper and puffed out just so, and he'll have a grin on his face when he walks you down the aisle you couldn't cut off with a hammer and chisel!"

Dana nodded again and swallowed, then leaned her head against her big brother's shoulder.

"Wedding jitters," she whispered.

Jacob held his little sis and she felt him breathe, felt him lean his cheek over against her night-braided hair.

"Might be 'twas your jitters I was pickin' up on," he murmured: he lifted his head, pressed gentle fingertips under her chin and turned her face toward him, his voice serious.

"Pa's Mama had the Second Sight. Pa can stop blood with the Word and he can blow fire and that's somethin' an old mountain witch told me only women can do. Said men carry it but can't do it and I never did tell her otherwise."

Jacob's eyes were glimmers in the shadowed dark.

"If you don't have the Sight, Dana, you carry it. Your blood will pass it to your children."

"And the Rage?" she asked, her whispered words quiet and fearful.

"I've never felt it in you. Likely you'll pass it on to your sons or maybe it'll float up in a couple generations. Kind of like red hair. It might skip a generation but it'll show up."

Dana lifted her head and Jacob saw his stallion's ears turn toward the house, then the Appaloosa raised his head like he was listening.

Jacob heard the back door close and he smiled, and he felt his sister giggle silently.

"Pa's bladder," Jacob chuckled quietly. "He hates usin' the chamber pot."

"He never used to ... the door ... he was always silent before."

"He's lost most of his hearin'. Bonnie complained he listened as well as a fence post. I don't think she knows how deaf he's gotten."

Jacob rose, as did his sister.

"I'll slip on out so he don't know I'm here. Don't want him to think anythin's gone wrong."

He hesitated, Dana's hands in his.

"Annette asked if you needed anythin' else for your weddin'."

Dana shook her head, then she came up on her toes and kissed her brother quickly on the cheek.

"I'm glad you came," she whispered.

Jacob reached down, knocked on the Navy Colt's octagon barrel with the back of a bent finger.

"Mama was a woolly bear when it came to keepin' us safe," he whispered. "Don't change, Little Sis!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WEATHER COMIN'

Esther Keller stepped out on their front porch and scanned the terrain.

She did not have the infantryman's sweep of her husband, but she had the intuition of the female, and her intuition tightened her stomach a little.

Esther frowned and walked out into the roadway, turned slowly, then lifted her chin and contemplated the heavens, slowly, thoughtfully, stopped her rotation and compared the clouds' travel with moutain peaks' stillness.

A red-headed Carolina woman with green eyes and Irish blood blinked a few times, then turned and walked back to her front porch.

Inside, her pale eyed husband was standing at the kitchen window, a steaming ceramic mug of coffee in hand: the maid shot a sidelong look at him and smiled, thinking to herself it's no wonder the Mrs. chose this man: there in the morning light, he struck a fine figure indeed, tidy about his person, strong in body and resolute in his jawline: she looked away as he turned and smiled at her.

"Mary," he said, his voice gentle, "thank you for this coffee."

Mary blushed like a maiden.

She'd been the hired girl for some years now and he still managed to put a flutter in her belly.

The Sheriff took a thoughtful sip, regarded the sky: he apparently had something on his mind, and Mary pretended to some trivial duties, delaying until he decided to talk, or to not talk.

"We've weather comin'," he said quietly, then looked down into his coffee and smiled, just a little -- a rare thing, that smile, then he looked at Mary, lifted his mug.

"I can not make decent coffee to save my sorry backside," he admitted ruefully. "Please believe me when I thank you for your coffee. You likely keep me from a-pizen myself."

Mary lowered her head to hide her smile: she turned as Esther glided into the kitchen, startled a little, and as Esther always did when Mary startled, she lay gentle fingertips on Mary's arm and whispered it was all right, and gave her a warm, motherly look.

Esther continued around the table, came up behind her husband, took his elbow and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"Noontime, thereabouts?" Linn said quietly in that deep, reassuring voice of his, and Esther nodded, her hand tightening a little around her husband's arm.

Linn turned away from the window, set his coffee down, ran big, work-callused hands around her ribs, gave her a tender look that sent the maid from the room -- this was a moment between the two of them, and she did not wish to intrude.

"Your back?" Esther asked, sympathy in her voice and understanding in her eyes.

Linn nodded. "Yep."

Esther translated Husband's Shorthand -- that single syllable actually meant "My back and about a dozen other aches and pains gathered from years of men, machine and horses that wanted to do something they oughtn't and I had to persuade them otherwise and sometimes I came out in second place and I feel every damned one of them when the weather changes."

It was more efficient to distill this down into his monosyllabic "Yep." 

 

Sharon re-read the printed-out weather report, studied it for several long moments before frowning and rising from her desk.

She turned and froze -- she didn't quite startle, but it was close -- Linn had that knowing look and his eyes went from smiling to sad: "I'm sorry," he said gently. "I'm too quiet again."

Sharon shook her head and huffed at him, then handed him the printout.

"You're up," she said. "You nail it up."

Linn took the printed sheet, winked, turned toward the bulletin board: he pulled two pins loose, held the several sheets against the corkboard as he placed the new one over the several old ones: he pinned this in place, the red push pin on the left, green push pin on the right, all because a little girl who came in on a grade-school tour had a red ribbon tying her left braid and a green ribbon tying her right and she said her Daddy is in the Navy and that's what he told her, and the Sheriff -- these many years after -- still put the red thumbtack on the left, and the green thumbtack on the right.

He stepped back, read the printed-out weather report, nodded.

"Sharon," he called, "do your aches and pains agree with the National Weather Service?"

"Agree?" Sharon huffed again. "I knew that storm was coming before the teletype did!"

Linn chuckled and nodded: he himself had a fine collection of "Old War Wounds" that informed him of similar data.

"Says here possible hail," he said thoughtfully. "I'll watch for rotation."

"You do that" -- Sharon turned in her swivel chair -- "Sheriff, did you ride in today, or drive?"

"I drove, why?"

"Your mother" -- Sharon waved her yellow #2 lead pencil in his general direction -- "brought her horse into the cellblock one time when we had tornado on the ground. She had a hell raising prisoner that wasn't afraid of Old Nick himself, so she put her horse in with him and told him not to hurt her horse."

Linn smiled a little:  he'd heard about this, years ago.

"That big-city gangsta boy was nasty from the word go but he was terrified of horses. When she came back after -- that was when she got a confession from a dying murderer, the one that was killed when the pole fell on her, you remember hearing about that."

Linn nodded: he'd studied the event, he'd read the official reports, his Mama's depositions, though she herself never spoke of it afterward save only in her official capacity during the investigation.

"That big mean hell raiser plastered himself against the back wall and stood there, just frozen. I think he believed your Mama's mare was going to eat him."

"I'll remember that," Linn said thoughtfully, smiling a little as he recalled his Mama telling him that sometimes the biggest meanest men were terrified of surprisingly small things -- like the tatted hardcase biker that passed out cold when she pulled out an IV needle, after the biker wiped out back East, while his Mama was still a paramedic -- "back when dirt was young, and so was I," she'd laughed.

 

Jacob Keller squinted up at the clouds, frowned.

His younger sister Angela came up beside him, laid a hand on his shoulder.

"How long, do you reckon?" he asked quietly.

"It'll hit before noon," she murmured.

"About what I figured."

Jacob looked around, frowned, thrust his bottom jaw out the way he did when he was thinking.

Angela turned and looked at Jacob, and laughed: he raised an eyebrow and murmured, "Zum tink vunny?"

Angela laughed again: "You look just like Daddy when you do that!"

Jacob struck an exaggerated pose, one fist in the air, leaned back with dramatic fingertips to his breast bone:  "Flattery," he declared firmly, "will get you everywhere!"

Angela looked around, looked back at Jacob.

"The secret to successful administration is delegation," she said. "What are your thoughts?"

"I think you sound like Mama, and I think you're right. I'll grab the string trimmer and you hit the excess. Can you handle the mower on the Cub?"

"Watch me," Angela smiled, and leaned into a jog toward the barn.

"We'd best move quick," Jacob muttered, "that sky don't look too kindly!"

 

Gracie Maxwell rocked gently on her front porch, high up on the mountain, Scripture open in her lap and sharp, piercing eyes studying the fast-moving clouds.

She knew the boys were out plowing, others were working timber, and she knew "Her Boys" -- the men folk, her own father included, down to the youngest step-and-fetch-it lads -- would have a careful eye to the wind, especially if they were felling trees today.

They'd lost people to trees that didn't fall where they should have.

Gracie felt the wind change and she rose, closed her Scripture carefully, placed it in her rocking chair with the spine toward the wind, then she did something she almost never did.

Gracie walked over to the post mounted bell, she seized the smooth, shaped wooden handle, she pulled on the rope, hard, and sent a clanging summons through the mountains.

The ringing impact stung her ears and her eyes winced a little at the pain, but she kept at it, hauling down on the pull rope, spreading alarm among granite peaks.

Mules were unharnessed from plows, boys swarmed aboard or ran alongside: men snatched up tools, abandoned their labors, ran for the house.

The Bell was never rung unless there was trouble, and trouble in the mountains never came in small amounts.

 

Old Pale Eyes and Jacob rode through the pasture, whistling, swinging long, loose coils of lariat, yelling at the herd, chivvying them down into the sheltered section where about half of them were already.

Esther and the hired girl went through the house, closing windows, securing doors, banking the kitchen stove and closing the draft.

Jacob looked to his Pa, reached behind his saddle, pulled his slicker loose and unrolled it.

His stallion shied, danced away from whatever just appeared behind it.

Jacob pulled off his Stetson, got into his storm coat, clapped the shaped felt skypiece back on his youthful thatch just as the first fat, cold drops hit.

Father, son, horse herd, all bunched under the rocky overhang: foals and colts were deepest in the eroded shelter, the herd automatically facing out, facing whatever threat might manifest, and the Sheriff and his son stood with them, mounted, soothing with voice and with spirit, for both horsemen knew horses pick up on their riders, and if the rider was calm, it was easier for the horse to remain so.

The wind hit hard: sudden, powerful, cold gusts, then a rattling through the trees as if buckshot were sieving through the branches: hail, sweet pea sized, winds swirling and whipping spindrift into the overhang.

Esther stepped out onto her front porch and smelled the rain before it hit.

She'd always been able to smell rain, ever since she was a little girl, back on her Papa's plantation.

Esther remembered storms, and she watched those first cold, fat, fast drops drive into the ground, those precursor drops that meant a toad strangler was following.

Esther was not alarmed at the sheets and curtains of deluging rain that waved across the landscape like ghostly draperies.

She shivered when the hail started.

Mary came out and draped a shawl around Esther's shoulders: "Come inside now," she soothed in that gentle Irish accent, "you'll catch your death of the live-forevers out here!"

"My husband is out there," Esther murmured, "and our son!"

"They've sense enough to come inside somewhere. They'll be in a shed or a barn drinkin' an' playin' cards and laughin', you mark my word!"

Esther drew the shawl tighter around her and nodded, and two women went inside and shut the door against the tempest without.

 

Angela disengaged the blades, hoisted the mower deck and brought the little shining-red Farmall Cub around, pointed its nose at the barn, hooked the left handed shifter into top gear and palmed the throttle.

"Yaa, Mule!" she yelled, beating a wet palm happily on the rain-wet fender:  "Yaa now, giddup!"

Jacob saw her coming, shouldered into the sliding door -- with the wind against it, the door didn't want to move peacefully, but Jacob was not interested in the door's preferences: Angela would usually turn and back in, very precisely, very exactly.

With hail bouncing off the tractor's hood (and her shoulders), with a shocking COLD!! rain saturating her hair and her back, Angela pointed the shining-red hood like she'd point a shotgun barrel, and she drove that little red Farmall Cub into the barn and between a trailer and the six-by with not a hell of a lot of leeway on either side.

She stomped clutch and brakes, throttled down, lowered the deck fully before shutting off the ignition.

Jacob leaned into the sliding door and managed to get it shut, despite wind that drove rain into the barn, reaching with wet and stormy fingers for the feminine figure that fled its meteorological pique.

Jacob came around, looked over the short little tractor's tire at her, handed her a clean, dry bath towel.

Angela wiped her face briskly, vigorously, threw the towel around her shoulders, looked at Jacob, and laughed.

"At least you had sense enough to wear muck boots!" she declared, and Jacob grinned, nodded.

"I have to, otherwise I'm green cuttin's to my knees!"

Angela stepped off, lifted one foot and regarded her feet almost sadly.

"I don't think I should put saddle shoes in the dryer," she sighed.

"Nor rest of self," Jacob offered innocently, then turned and drew a tarpaulin curtain out.

"I'll fire up the heater. You're soaked and this rain doesn't show much sign of slowin' down."

 

"I see them," the maid said, bouncing her voice off the wavy window pane so Esther could hear.

She drew back to allow the Matriarch herself to take a look.

"Slickers, good," she whispered.

"Shall I draw bathwater, ma'am?"

"No, Mary, not yet, but the wind is down now."

"Yes, ma'am."

Esther listened to the maid loading wood into the cast iron stove's firebox, heard the draft klunk open, watched her breath fog the kitchen window as father and son trotted toward the barn, their horses' hooves throwing up water with each step.

Up on Daine Mountain, Gracie Maxwell was gathering her men folk into the house, clucking over them like a mother hen, toweling a head dry here, unbuttoning a shirt and pulling it free there, sending men and boys to change into something dry before they caught pneumonia: they returned to the kitchen and they all sat around the big table, and Gracie and the women had coffee, hot, they had a meal, hot, and they stopped before they ate and gave thanks to the Almighty that the storm was like a child's tantrum -- spectacular, noisy, destructive, and then gone.

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

DRAGONMISTRESS

Esther Keller walked fearlessly among the Chinese laborers.

She well knew the power of confidence.

She also knew the power of stupidity.

Any of the unhappy, near-riot laborers could sling a rock and hit her and destroy the aura of authority she wore like a cloak -- a stone to the head, the face, would shatter her invincible facade and guarantee her death under twice a dozen knives.

Linn watched, rifle in hand: his crushing grip blanched out his knuckles -- the only outward sign of his unhappiness.

Esther stopped, turned, slowly, making no attempt at hiding her green eyes.

One of the laborers began shouting at her, backing away, making some kind of elaborate gesture neither Esther nor the Sheriff recognized, but they both knew what it meant.

Esther's green eyes marked her a demon, in their culture, and her life was as near to ending as the first knife thrust.

Esther turned side-on to the one making the mystic passes: her move was swift, sudden, and caused men to draw back a step.

She lifted her gloved left hand.

She wore a heavy leather glove -- a man's glove, the kind a man will wear for labor, for handling hot objects -- a silk kerchief covered an object the size of a child's head that hadn't been there a half dozen heartbeats before.

Esther turned again, slowly, raising her free hand, fingers spread, then curling slowly, wrist bent, her hand just above head height -- for all the world like her arm was a cobra, readying a strike.

"Monsieur Dumas," Esther called, "if you please, sir."

An Englishman of her acquaintance appeared beside her -- he'd approached while everyone's attention was on this she-demon -- the Englishman was a tea merchant, and spoke this particular Chinese language.

Linn's thumb was heavy on his Marlin's hammer, his eyes busy: he was not far away, he had a good, defensible position.

He knew the Chinese workers got the notion -- somewhere -- that there were dragons, monsters, there in the mountains, and work came to a standstill as a result.

Esther hadn't realized she'd been the cause of part of all this until the Englishman explained what he'd learned from these black-pajama coolies: that Esther's green eyes marked her a demon, that she wished to cut into the dragon's treasure, hidden in the mountain, that the dragon would emerge, enraged, and lay about with claws and tail and fangs, and the Chinese workers would be eaten.

Esther's hand snapped down, snatched the silk scarf, recoiled as if from something dangerous.

Esther held something that looked like a crystal ball, but made of milky marble -- spherical, polished, shining, almost glowing in the last long rays of the setting sun.

Esther raised it a little, lifted her chin.

"Monsieur Dumas," she said firmly, "translate my words, sir, if you please!"

Linn saw the Englishman turn, raise his arms for attention: he said something in Chinese -- he could have been saying anything, Linn had no idea what the man uttered -- Esther gestured with her free hand to the marble sphere she held.

"WHOEVER HOLDS THE DRAGON'S LIFE-PEARL, CONTROLS THE DRAGON!" Esther declared, her words clear, powerful, confident: the Englishman repeated her message, matching the power, the confidence in her words.

"THE TREASURE IS TOO DEEP TO FIND,"  Esther declared, waited for her words to be converted: "THE DRAGON SLEEPS ON HIS GOLD AND IS NOT DISTURBED!"
Esther draped the marble sphere, made a quick double-pass of her free hand, dropped the support hand and snatched the scarf back.

The sphere was gone.

"MY BUSINESS HERE IS FINISHED."

She looked around, fire in her eyes and challenge in her posture.

"SEE TO IT THAT I NEED NOT RETURN!"

Esther let the scarf dangle from between two fingers: she lifted her chin, hoisted her nose in the air, plucked up her skirts and walked through the assemblage.

Men drew back from her, allowing her unimpeded passage:  she walked back to the inspection car, boarded: moments later, the integral engine whistled, a quick double-tweet, and the steam car reversed away from the unfinished tunnel.

 

Sheriff Jacob Keller took a bite of cornbread, still warm from the oven: he'd split it, troweled on a thick layer of fresh churned butter.

He looked at his pale eyed sister, chewed thoughtfully.

"I remember reading about that," he said quietly, his voice deep, confident, a lawman's voice if ever Marnie heard one.

"Madam Ambassador," Jacob continued, "you do nothing without purpose."

The Chief Ambassador said nothing; he, too, partook of warm, fresh cornbread, took a thoughtful sip of coffee.

Angela regarded her sister thoughtfully, then looked at Jacob.

Marnie appeared to have something on her mind: silence grew long around the conference table.

"Out with it, Sis," Jacob said, his voice firm, edging on impatient. "We read that story back home. You always wanted to believe Esther had a pet dragon hidden somewhere."

Marnie smiled, just a little, the way a woman will when she's recalling a favorite memory from her childhood.

"Marnie," Angela asked, her voice controlled and professional, "did you find a world where the aliens grew dragons?"

Marnie looked at her sister with big and innocent eyes.

"What," she said with mock surprise layering her voice: "scaled lizards with leathery wings, bad breath and a fiery disposition?"

"Oh bloody hell," Jacob groaned, "I'll have to go to a Barrett fifty for my carry rifle!"

"Would you believe," Marnie smiled as she turned her gloved hand over -- somehow it held something rounded, the size of a child's head, covered by a silk kerchief -- "that I've captured a dragon's life-pearl?"

The Ambassador saw Jacob's face lose several degrees of color, saw alarm in Angela's pale eyes.

Marnie's gloved hand came down and snatched the scarf to reveal --

... nothing!

She looked at her several guests and laughed, "Gotcha!"

 

 

 

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

CARISSA

"Him?"

The man's voice was quiet -- the way a man's voice quiets when he's discussing something not entirely comfortable.

"Yon's a hard man. I don't reckon he's smiled more'n once in his life and that was jus' t' see if his face would crack and fall off."

His companion grunted; they hunched their shoulders, turned back to their beers and did their level best to become invisible.

The "him" they were discussing had pale eyes and an iron-grey mustache and an unsmiling face: he'd come in, he'd spoken quietly to two other patrons at the shining mahogany bar, he'd gone back to a poker table and handed one player a small poke -- someone said later he'd winked at the man, for he was paying a bet; someone else said there was a young rattlesnake in the poke and the poker player died the next day -- the truth, of course, was nowhere either of these extremes.

The Sheriff drifted back past the piano and down the hallway and disappeared: Daisy handed him a cloth sack and gave him an appraising look, and he touched his hat-brim and thanked her with his usual grave courtesy, before slipping out the back door and closing it quietly behind him.

 

Old Pale Eyes had a habit of showing up in unexpected places, at unexpected times.

He also had a habit of moving silently, unless he wished his presence known, and today, today he drifted up the center aisle of the passenger car with all the thunderous stampede of a butterfly on a puff of summer wind.

He sat down beside a young woman.

She was alone at the end of the passenger car, no one was within three rows of her; she sat in the center, the image of sorrow and of isolation: her head was down, a crushed, damp kerchief in hand: in an era where women took pains to look feminine and beautiful, she looked like she'd lost her best friend and her dog run over by a passing stagecoach.

Something huge, black and just as silent as the lawman flowed up the aisle and up beside Old Pale Eyes, something that rested a hard-muscled, blunt, strong muzzle on the lawman's knee and just watched.

The young woman realized she wasn't alone: "I'm sorry," she gasped blindly, wiping at closed eyelids and starting to scoot away.

She opened her eyes to see a man's hand open suddenly: Stay, the gesture said, and she froze, for there was authority in the move and command in the posture.

"You look like the world just crushed your soul," the man said, his voice gentle, and she hesitated -- this was a stranger, but there was kindness in his voice.

She swallowed, nodded.

"Headed anywhere particular?"

She shook her head.

"Not much of a plan. Have you eaten today?"

She closed her eyes, slumped a little, defeated.

"No," she admitted.

He rose, offered his hand.

"Are you afraid of horses?"

She blinked, took his hand, rose.

"A little," she admitted.

"You're honest." 

His hand was warm, open: he made no attempt to close it, to hold her.

"Come with me."

 

The two of them stood on the flatcar with a brown-tan-red-and-white horse who blinked sleepily, completely at home on a moving railcar, and a truly huge, bearlike dog the young woman wasn't sure was actually a dog, but at this point she was beyond worrying about it.

"Step up here -- "

The Sheriff took her under the arms, hoist her easily onto a wooden crate: he turned, swung easily into the saddle, sidled the Appaloosa stallion up next to the crate.

He pulled his well polished, knee high, flat heel Cavalry boot out of the plain black doghouse stirrup.

"Put your left foot in there and come up behind me."

She hesitated -- she worried at her skirt -- then she bent a little, pulled up material, thrust her slipper into the stirrup: his grip was strong, she rose easily, fluffed her petticoats as best she could while a-straddle of a horse that felt broad as a dining room table to her inexperienced legs, then ran her arms around the man's lean middle.

"We're slowin' on the up grade," the man said as the horse turned. "You said you were a little afraid of horses."

"A little," she admitted.

"Hang on, 'cause this won't help."

He felt her arms tighten involuntarily as Apple-horse took two fast steps and launched from the flatcar, landing easily -- he was facing mostly rearward, he launched onto a rise he'd jumped onto a hundred times before -- The Bear Killer jumped with them, landed easily, and the three of them trotted down a surprisingly defined path, into the mountain woods.

The air was a little cooler, but it smelled ever so much cleaner now that they were away from the train: she hadn't realized how stuffy the passenger car was, as she had nothing to concentrate on but her misery, but now, now! -- here she was, horseback with a complete stranger, in a part of the world she'd never been, bound for a place she'd never been and whose name she did not know.

They rode for the better part of an hour, finally coming to the foot of the mountain and across a stream, up the other side and across two sets of railroad tracks: they came out past what she recognized, to her surprise, as a firehouse (I didn't know they had those out here!) -- they rode up a fairly broad, dirt street with surprisingly well-maintained buildings on either side (the penny dreadfuls described Western towns as small, dirty, tumbledown affairs ... these were solidly built and brightly painted, for the most part!)

They stopped beside a building -- the horse sidled up against the boardwalk -- "Step off here where it's handy," the man said in a fatherly voice, and the young woman rather awkwardly slid off, hopped a little on one foot and nearly fell into the side of the building, but managed to keep herself upright: she arranged her skirts while the man rode his horse just around the corner, casually draped his reins over the hitch rail, climbed the steps and offered his arm.

A dignified older man, a complete and utter stranger to this young woman on his arm, touched his hat-brim toward Tilly, who was openly staring from her seat behind the hotel counter: the pair ascended the stairs, stopped at the first door on the right.

The lean man in the black suit and an iron-grey mustache knocked, then went in, and The Bear Killer flowed in with them.

Esther turned, folded her spectacles and placed them carefully in a Japanned glasses-case, then rose, the image of matronly propriety, at least until she got a good look at the tired, uncertain young woman on her husband's arm.

Esther's eyes widened, her mouth opened:  "Carissa?"

Linn felt the young woman's hand fall from his arm: "Aunt Esther?"

A pale eyed man raised his eyebrow -- as plain a question as if he'd put it into words -- the red-headed woman nodded, once, raised two fingers, then reached for her astonished visitor and guided her to the comfortably-padded, velvet-upholstered couch.

Linn turned, slipped back out the door, hesitating until The Bear Killer joined him: he went downstairs and back to the kitchen, where he hesitated at the doorway.

Daisy turned, gave him an appraising look.

"I'd no' thought you'd be back yet."

"Haven't got there yet."

Daisy seized a towel, doubled it, doubled it again and then opened the oven door, pulled out a pan of biscuits and instantly filled her demesnes with the belly-growl-in-hunger smell of fresh, hot-from-the-oven bread.

"If you could send two meals up to Esther, please, and I'm headed back out to tend that detail I haven't got to yet."

"Ye'll want t' eat wha' I gave ye," Daisy scolded mildly.

She saw his eyes tighten a little at the corners, the only smile he really showed in public.

"That," he said quietly, "is the plan."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BONELESS

A pale eyed old lawman moved with his usual stealth.

Habit alone bade him tread in silence; experience moved his feet, shifted his weight: he wore his usual black suit and solemn expression, until he saw her.

He'd been looking for her and somehow suspected she'd be here.

Sheriff Linn Keller cat footed toward the still figure in the straw, toward the two day old get of one of his favorite mares, toward the mare who stood watchfully over her and the Sheriff's young both.

Old Pale Eyes rubbed the mare's jaw and bribed her with thick shavings off his tobacco plug, then he bent down and carefully worked his arms under his daughter's warm, relaxed form.

She was cuddled up against life, against warmth: he rolled her into him, uncaring that she was fairly dripping straw and getting the golden shafts on his black suit.

She did not wake: children know when they are safe, and little Dana curled into her Papa's warm, solid, reassurance as naturally, as bonelessly, as little children commonly do.

A father carried his daughter back to the house so she could wake up in her own bed.

 

Another century, another Sheriff, another daughter.

Sheriff Linn Keller watched Dana trot their patient old mule around the painted, 55-gallon drums set up in the pasture.

The mule was slow, smooth, just what a healing horsewoman needed: Dana was not running the barrel race course to run it, she was running it at a slow, easy trot, getting herself used to the turns -- the several turns, left, right, the challenges to her balance, the challenges to her confidence.

Linn watched from his stallion's back.

Dana's expression was controlled.

The mule's expression was ... well, bored.

So was his stallion's expression.

Linn maintained a carefully neutral face, knowing that his little girl would be looking at him.

She came around the nearest barrel, ho'd the mule, leaned down and stroked his neck.

She's gonna do it, Linn thought.

Dana sat unmoving on her equally unmoving mule, then she walked the old philosopher around the barrel and up beside her Daddy.

Dana's bottom jaw was shoved out, the way she did when she was feeling contrary.

"Trade me," she said quietly.

Linn considered his daughter, then dismounted and began shortening his stirrups.

His inseam was a hand short of a full yard, and hers wasn't, and he preferred she ride with properly adjusted gear.

Dana made it to the ground without his helping her down.

Apple-horse turned his head to look as Dana approached, lowered his head to greet her.

She rubbed his velvety nose and his long jaw and said in a girl's soft voice, "I need your help."

Linn pretended not to hear,

He rubbed Apple's hind quarters, keeping a hand on the horse's backside as he went around behind: once he got the second stirrup set, the four of them walked over to the mounting block.

Linn reckoned the mule came over out of curiosity more than anything else.

Dana frowned as she pushed off the smooth faced mounting block, swung into the saddle.

"I remember when you couldn't do that," Linn said approvingly.

"Yeah," Dana gasped. "So do I."

"You okay up there?"

Dana sidled her Daddy's stallion away from the mounting block and gave her Daddy her very best Death Glare.

Apple, on the other hand, danced under her, rocking a little: he wasn't going for a buck-out, but he looked for all the world like he was delighting at a lighter rider and looking forward to a run.

Horse and rider whipped around and galloped toward the far end of the field.

Linn rubbed the mule's jaw and muttered, "God, I hope she doesn't fall!"

The mule contemplated mysteries far removed from mere earthly concerns.

Linn watched as his youngest daughter practiced Zen horsemanship: when Apple heeled over and came back, Dana was welded to the saddle -- she'd become one with her horse -- she and the stallion hauled around at this near end of the pasture, slowed again at the half way mark, stopped.

Apple-horse's tail was slashing, he was half-rearing, shaking his head, muttering.

Dana's grin was absolutely feral.

Linn saw his daughter lean down a little and he recognized the move, the expression.

So did his stallion.

Apple-horse drove steelshod hooves into the ground and launched.

Dana leaned over, her hands pressed against the root of Apple-horse's mane: they ran the barrels, at speed, Dana was silent, moving with her mount: Apple-horse was fast, his turns were vicious, he came around and ran them again and down-pasture, not so much running the barrels as celebrating, with life and with energy and with power and with an outright assault on the laws of physics.

Linn waited, callused hand slowly caressing the steady old mule's shoulder.

Dana and Apple-horse charged up, hopped a little as they stopped fast: Apple shook his head, half-bucked, then danced, finally settling as the Sheriff turned to him and rubbed his under-jaw, his neck.

Linn looked up at his little girl.

Dana threw her head back, thrust both fisted arms in the air, triumph settling like a victor's crown or a royal cloak.

 

Two riders crossed the highway, rode into the All-Night's concrete expanse, steelshod hooves loud on hard pavement.

One was a pale-eyed Sheriff with an iron-grey mustache and a solemn expression.

One was a daughter in an emerald-green Stetson and a grin broad as two Texas townships.

Father and daughter, Appaloosa stallion and an old grey riding mule: two riders dismounted, and two riders went into the All-Night to get a celebratory lunch, something they'd done in the past to celebrate shared personal victories.

Some folk will celebrate with T-bone steak, with filet mignon, with fine and fancy dishes with carefully planned presentations.
Two pale eyed riders got their mutual, personal favorites.

Boneless chicken.

 

 

 

Edited May 20 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HALF A SHOVEL IS BETTER THAN NONE

 

The world went white and he tasted copper, right before the ground slammed up to meet his face.

It felt like he'd been hit by a locomotive.

He hadn't.

The buck sheep ran past the tumbling Sheriff, turned, shook his woolly head, trotted back.

Sheriff Linn Keller blinked, half blind from pain, barely able to move.

No horses in this field, he thought.

I wasn't kicked.

What the hell hit me?

The Sheriff knew what it was to be shot, knew that instant, whole-body sicker'n-hell sensation of being punched deep inside his body -- no, he'd not been shot, he'd been hit by a freight train or something of the sort --

He wobbled up to all fours, looking around, blinking the sting out of his eyes, honestly too rattled for the Rage to ignite.

Whatever hit him, hit him by surprise when he was bent over, hit him harder than he'd ever --

There.

That shed.

Get inside.

His thoughts were not those of the war veteran, of the seasoned lawman.

The impact shocked him so thoroughly his thoughts were those of a wounded animal.

Hide.

He sagged, collapsed, rolled over --

The buck sheep was looking at him, shaking its woolly head, muttering.

The Sheriff's gun hand came up, he felt the hammer under his thumb --

An explosion, fire, smoke --

The buck sheep turned, trotted a few yards to the side, not really concerned.

Missed.

Can't shoot well enough --

Linn had to try three times to get his revolver back in leather.

He managed a few yards toward the shed, lifted his head, looked uphill --

The buck sheep was grazing, unconcerned.

Old Pale Eyes, a man who'd been shot, stabbed cut, run into, run over, a man whose corroded soul a traveling evangelist tried to scour clean over a shared campfire, snarled deep in his chest: he pulled his elbows under him, came up on his knees, glared at the buck sheep, looked at the shed.

He managed to sway upright, staggered a few steps, then a few more --

The buck sheep raised its head, looked --

Get inside, get inside, get inside --

Old Pale Eyes tripped on the threshold-board, he fell, his boot caught the underside of the door completely by accident and started it swinging shut --

The buck sheep rammed the door, cracking half the boards, slamming the Sheriff's foot between splintering boards and the threshold.

He fought to his feet, breathing hard.

He wiped at his wet nose --

Blood --

Ignore it.

He was shaking -- why am I shaking? -- then he saw it.

A shovel.

The handle was dry, the grain split open from the arid climate and neglect, but it was a weapon.

He did not feel confident in running a sixgun but by God! this weapon he could use!

Old Pale Eyes seized the shovel, or what was left of it: half of it was ready to fall off, rusted down its midline like it slept half buried in a manure pile.

He didn't care.

He took the shovel in both hands, his mind retreating to another battle, the shovel became a bayonet mounted rifle, a broad ax.

He fell against the side of the shed, snarling, teeth clenched.

He staggered toward the door, looked out the four finger wide gap.

The buck sheep was waiting on him.

He reached out with the shovel, raised it, brought it down --

Cut him edgewise, he thought, split the skull --

He hit as hard as he could, chopping down with the rusty, half-a-shovel's edge.

The buck sheep ducked his head under the impact, blinked, backed up, startled, then charged.

The impact slammed the door shut, it wobbled open a hand's width, the Sheriff raised his war club and cut down again, hard.

Man and beast battled at the door of the weathered, warped shed, the entire structure shivering with each woolly headed impact: a pale eyed warrior had a double handful of weapon and he wasn't about to let go, he swung hard and hit hard and cut that buck sheep again with the rusty edge of the neglected half-a-shovel.

War raged between them for most of an hour, until finally the bloody-headed buck sheep backed off, shook his head: a curled horn, hidden by unshorn wool, fell loose, hung, then with another shake of the head, fell off and hit the ground.

The buck sheep apparently figured he'd won.

It took until nearly sundown for the Sheriff to recover enough to stagger out of the shed, to look around for that damned buck sheep, to regard the now splintered remnants of what used to be a door, now a sagging collection of kindling and proof against little more than a light breeze.

Jacob met up with his Pa halfway between there and home.

The Sheriff was in the saddle but even at distance, Jacob could tell he was not settin' right.

Jacob fetched up his binoculars and took a good look and saw his Pa was filthy, he was without his hat, his face was bloodied and he rode like a man that had taken a beatin'.

Jacob Keller's Rage was instant, and flowed through him into his stallion: Apple-horse laid his ears back and drove for the Sheriff, ready for a young war, and a pale eyed son orbited his pale eyed Pa, looking for any enemy on which he may avenge this outrage!

Jacob came up alongside his father, assessed the Grand Old Man with hard and experienced eyes.

"Sir," he said, his voice firm and edged with a young man's anger, "who did this to you?"

His father swallowed -- his head hung forward, his mouth open, the way a man will when he can't breathe well through his bloodied nose.

"I got 'ib," he managed to mumble.

 

It took Jacob two days to find that buck sheep.

It took another day-and-a-half to find where it came from.

The buck sheep come from a county and a half away, from a farm where the boys tormented a mean sheep until it got real mean and after it busted two of them up, it busted through a fence and got away before they could shoot it.

Jacob found it by virtue of riding up on a man who was both in pain and madder'n hell, a man holding a bloodied broad ax, leaning on the ax beside the carcass of a headless sheep.

Jacob returned home that night.

His father was in his rocking chair, on the front porch.

He was not rocking.

This told Jacob he was still too sore to move without hurting.

Jacob reported to his stoic, unmoving father that the culprit was found, and would hurt no one ever again.

The old Sheriff turned his head the few degrees he could without hurting, looked toward his serious faced son, waited.

"Sir, that buck sheep that hit you, took a rancher in the backside just exactly like he took you."

The Sheriff blinked, once, waited.

"Sir, after that sheep knocked the rancher galley West, it allowed as it was interested in some graze, so once the old man was able, he got up and taken the ax from the wood pile and just walked up on that mean old buck sheep and clove the head right off its shoulders."

"One stroke?" Linn asked, his voice tight.

"One stroke, sir, and a powerful swing it was."

Linn grunted, one of the few things he could do without hurting.

"It was the one that hit you, sir," Jacob continued. "I told the old rancher what it done to you and what you done to it and we taken a look."

Linn raised an eyebrow.

At least that much didn't hurt.

"Bloody head was healin' but you cut the hell out of its skull with that shovel, sir, and it only had one horn."

Linn closed his eyes, took as deep a breath as he could, sighed it out.

"Good."

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SALTWATER

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller was a woman of dignity, of propriety: she was known for her persuasive skills, for her quiet humor: the face she presented as Diplomat, was a face that wore a McKenna gown and a pleasant expression, unless it was necessary to wear something else.

The Ambassador was a charmer and a gifted speaker and someone who could put a person at ease, in a public setting, or a less public setting, and as a result, she usually conducted herself as if she were on camera or on stage, as if she were being viewed by many eyes ... mostly because, thanks to her office as Ambassador, and thanks to the cloaked hover-drones of the Inter-System, she generally was being seen by many more eyes than she realized.

Negotiations were in recess: Marnie called for the recess before backsides grew tired, before spirits began to wear, and well before tempers began to simmer.

She'd long ago learned that early breaks, informal walkabouts, tended to be more productive, as they shortened negotiations, kept tempers sweetened instead of letting them gradually sour.

Her personal opinion was based on her Daddy's quiet observation that "The mind will absorb only until the backside grows numb," and for that reason, she'd declined upholstered cushions added to her chair at negotiating tables: matter of fact, at the last negotiation, she'd asked for a wooden chair, explaining in a gentle voice that "The longer the speaker's wind, the harder this chair gets, and I wish to belabor neither your backsides nor your sensibilities!"

Conversations during these informal breaks tended to be far less formal and generally more candid than those conducted around the negotiating tables.

Marnie bit into a local fruit that closely resembled the shining-red apples she knew from Earth, if apples had a glowing-gold interior and tasted vaguely of cinnamon: she found the fruit very much to her liking and gave the grinning little boy who'd offered it, not just a coin (which would have been fair price for a bushel of apples) but also a genuine Barlow knife, which from the look on the towhead lad's face, pleased him more than the milled-edge coin.

Somehow the Ambassador was more approachable when she was casually eating an apple and looking out across the distance: one of the delegates approached, removed his short-brimmed hat.

Marnie swallowed, smiled, tilted her head as if greeting an old friend: "Mr. Perry, is it not? -- you have the look of a military man, sir."

"Navy, yes, ma'am," he replied, taking her offered hand, uncertain whether to shake it, or to kiss it: he satisfied himself with a gentle -- a very gentle! -- squeeze-and-release.

"Can you smell the rain?" Marnie smiled, her eyes drifting back to the horizon.

"It ... is very pleasant, ma'am," Delegate Perry agreed carefully.

Marnie took another enthusiastic bite of the apple, dabbed her chin with a lace-edged kerchief, eyes bright with either mischief or delight, it was hard to tell which.

She swallowed the payload, considered the remaining fruit she held.

"I shall have to see if these will grow back home," she murmured. "We must be careful, introducing crops where they are not native, for they can sometimes prove problematic."  

Her smile was charming, disarming, that famous "Marnie smile" the Inter-System knew well: even though no one else was in earshot, Marnie proceeded as if she were on camera, for the hover-drones' cloaks were quite good, and in all likelihood, one was near enough to catch every expression, every word.

"I remember rain, back home in the mountains."

"I've ... not been to the mountains, Madam Ambassador."

"Nor have I been to sea," Marnie admitted. "I have seen videos and I've been in holograms, but there would be no substitute to standing on deck with the sea, alive, around you!"

She tilted her head and regarded the man frankly.

"Tell me, Mr. Perry ... are there great creatures of the deep in your oceans, great Leviathans?"

She saw the change in his eyes, saw his eyes swing to memory, not invention: he looked down, looked beyond her sleeved elbow and over the railing of a ship that sailed in his memory, and nodded.

"There are, ma'am," he said gently, "and they are ... impressive."

"I envy you that," Marnie murmured honestly. "A dear friend back on Earth spoke of serving on one of the largest ships in the Navy, and he said with" -- she hesitated, looked at the delegate -- "he told me they were fringing a hurricane, his words, and he said with all honesty that he understood the seaman's prayer."

She met the delegate's eyes and saw the understanding in them when she continued, "O Lord, how great is Thy ocean, and how small is my boat!"

He nodded, and she saw the memories in his eyes as he whispered, "He's right."

Marnie considered the small remainder she held: she nibbled delicately at the last web of orange-colored apple, tossed the core to what might have been a squirrel, frisking in a nearby tree: she dabbed delicately at the corner of her mouth, then took the delegate's arm with her gloved hand, tilted her head, looking as mischievous as a schoolgirl at recess.

"Shall we rejoin the others?" she asked, and the pair walked back inside.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WELL SALTED

There were but few things Sheriff Jacob Keller genuinely disliked, and one of those things was working inside.

He learned discipline early and well from the example set by his pale eyed Pa, and so Jacob carefully entered the necessary information into the Sheriff's log: he'd referred to this document for court cases, when swearing out a warrant before the Judge, and to refresh what he referred to as his "poor failin' memory" (which was anything but -- his words reflected a deep rooted sense of humor, and a perpetual refusal to take himself too seriously!)

A delicate knock -- a feminine knock, he judged -- he parked his pen in the open journal book and rose, turned to face the door.

A woman entered -- modestly dressed, almost hesitant, as many were when coming into the Sheriff's office for the first time.

Jacob did not recognize her at first.

Not until she smiled.

He remembered a bashful girl he went to school with, a girl whose smile could sweeten soured milk.

"Mary Lou," Jacob said, his voice gentle -- he crossed the room in three long strides, brought his curved fingertips up under her gloved palms -- "how in the world are you?"

"I didn't know if you'd recognize me," Mary Lou admitted, and she bit her bottom lip she used to as a little girl: she looked to the side and down, shyly, and Jacob wanted to bundle her up in his arms and hug her, but this might not be proper.

"Please, come in," he said, his grin broad and easy under his curled, reddish mustache: "have a set, make yourself t' home!"

Mary Lou settled in a chair beside his desk, and Jacob pulled another chair of the same kind -- high backed, wooden, surprisingly comfortable -- "I have not seen you for ... well, some time now."

"I'm ... I was headmistress at a girl's school back East."

"Was?" Jacob asked. "Scratchin' for work?"

Mary Lou shook her head, smiled almost sadly.

"No," she sighed. "My husband passed and I ... am well enough off."

Jacob nodded slowly.  

"Our schoolmarm passed on not long ago, rest her soul."

Mary Lou's face fell about three feet:  "Not Miz Emma!" she asked, distress in her voice, then she frowned a little and nodded as she realized just how old Miz Emma would have to be, were she still alive.

"Died at home in her own bed," Jacob nodded, "one week to the day after her husband, and I miss 'em both!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Mary Lou murmured, genuine grief in her quiet words.

"You and I are probably ..."

Mary Lou saw pain in his eyes and then he looked away, then looked back, and grief was replaced with purpose.

"Have you eaten, have you a place to stay, are you just passing though or staying for a while?" 

Mary Lou blinked, then laughed: "No, no, no, and yes," and Jacob laughed with her.

"Come with me," Jacob said, rising: "Daisy's Kitchen is open for business, and I can guarantee whatever the special is today, it's worthwhile!"

 

Mary Lou marveled at Jacob's quiet efficiency.

He'd had her luggage moved upstairs in the Silver Jewel, into a room in back, away from the saloon sounds: when they passed a particular door, Mary Lou hesitated, looked at the careful, tidy lettering on the wavy, milk glass window:  

Z&W RAILROAD

D. KELLER, OWNER AND GENERAL MANAGER

and beneath, a spray of roses, tied with a ribbon.

Mary Lou looked at the door, looked at Jacob.

"My little sis Dana runs the show now," he said quietly, and he saw another sadness come into Mary Lou's eyes.

His mother Esther had been alive when Mary Lou left with her family.

"Esther and your father?" Mary Lou asked, her voice tight.

Jacob shook his head, closed his eyes for a long moment.

Jacob showed her to her room, but made no effort to either open the door, nor to go in with her: he stayed in the hallway, hat in hand, looking awkward as a teen-ager.

Mary Lou looked inside, then closed and locked the door, turned, her manner suddenly brisk: "Now," she said with a forced cheerfulness, "about that meal?"

 

Daisy's daughters ran the kitchen now, and their daughters were the faces the customers saw: they were either red-headed, or auburn-haired with strong red highlights, every one of them as briskly mannered as their honored ancestress, and none of them at all averse to tormenting the pale-eyed Sheriff -- which amused his former classmate greatly.

They sat back in the Lawman's Corner, Jacob's hat parked on an overhead peg: they laughed over memories, they shared anecdotes, Jacob described construction of the reservoir above Carbon Hill and how he'd seen a figure that seemed to be struggling underwater, he'd leaped from the saddle, ran for the water, he dove in fully dressed --

"And don't you know," Jacob declared, "I rescued me a genuine Union suit with a beaver tryin' to get out of it!"

Mary Lou clapped her hands and laughed at Jacob's rueful expression, at his gesture of holding up an invisible trophy, at how mobile his features were, running from surprise to chagrin to laughter.

Mary Lou told him about his pale eyed father coming over to the schoolyard to play marbles with barefoot lads, how he'd bring a poke bulging with marbles and how he lost nearly every last one of them, how he'd surreptitiously slip a particularly choice shooter marble to the boys, and Jacob nodded, memory softening his expression.

"Do you remember Beulah Craig?" Mary Lou asked suddenly.

Jacob nodded, took a careful sip of coffee: he frowned with pleasure, nodded his approval: the girls added just a little vanilla to his mug, which he particularly liked.

"I think she was hated by everyone she taught."

"I think you're right."

"I remember when she took that paddle to your back."

Jacob's expression was mild.

"Yep."

Mary Lou looked at him, surprised.

"You're ... not ... angry?"

Jacob smiled a little.

"Mary Lou, do you remember about Lot's wife?"

"Lot's ... wife ... the pillar of salt?"

Jacob nodded, leaned back as a plate of beef and beans settled in front of him, a second plate with taters and gravy, and the same in front of his guest.

"I could look backwards," Jacob admitted. "I genuinely could, but that's what Lot's wife did.

"I can't change the past, tomorrow's not here yet so I can't do anything with that. I'm working on right now and believe me" -- he looked up with that contagious grin of his -- "I've got my hands full handling the right now!"

Mary Lou thanked the auburn haired server as a delicate china cup of tea appeared before her.

"I don't much like thinking about Beulah Craig. Yes we all hated her, but she wasn't there long.

"Besides ... Lot's wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt."

He used a small spoon to excavate the salt cellar, to carefully anoint his mashed potatoes.

"I'm salty enough the way it is without turnin' into a rock salt fence post!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

FIRST

Marnie swung easily into the saddle, thrust her fashionable lady's boots into black, unadorned, doghouse stirrups, settled easily into place, marveling yet again at just how BIG a Frisian mare could be.

She was about eighty percent sure this particular mare was of the famous Snowflake's line that her ancestress, the legendary Sarah Lynne McKenna, bought off a rancher for a poke of gold and the persuasive point of an extremely sharp knife that more resembled a small sword.

Marnie closed her eyes for a long moment, took a deep breath, let her spirit flow from her, expand, commingle with that of her saddlemount: she'd trained this particular mare, she'd worked with this mare, she'd played with this mare, and now she was going to ride this mare in the Decoration Day parade.

The idea of Decoration Day -- now crowding two centuries after aliens abducted Confederates, and then families, trying to establish breeding populations of what they saw as disposable mercenary warriors -- the idea of commemorating the memory of those honored ancestors, was mentioned in one of the broadcasts featuring the Diplomatic Corps.

Marnie casually mentioned the upcoming Earth holiday, Memorial Day, and how it was originally Decoration Day, when soldiers' graves were decorated, when the community came together to remember.

The idea took off like wind driven flame in dry grass.

Marnie wore a fashionable riding-dress and her belted, engraved .357: usually her arms were hidden, but today she was carrying openly, with her rifle in the scabbard under her leg.

She was flanked by her sisters, one on either side: where Marnie's mare was a shining, unrelieved black, her sisters rode spotted Appaloosas: Angela, on one side, in her all-white Deputy Sheriff's uniform, with a bright-scarlet Stetson and shocking-red cowboy boots; on Marnie's right, Victoria, in jeans and a blouse-and-vest... both armed, both completely at home in the saddle, three abreast, giving the impression that they were both Ladies of the Blood, and warriors born.

They gave Dana the choice of riding, today, or of participating in a somewhat more sedate service in the Firelands colony on Mars: the colonists made the choice for her, preferring to travel Offworld, and so the parade route was lined with Martians as well as Confederates.

Something that smelled almost like peanuts, roasted in vendors' carts; the latest crop of a new, highly popular offering -- popcorn, can you imagine! -- was land-office popular here on the Martian capital, and people held red-and-white-striped paper bags of buttered, salted popcorn -- which meant those vendors selling beverages were enjoying an increase in business as well.

Marching bands were still quite rare, but here on the central Confederate world, they had not only a marching band, they had the Firelands High School Marching Band -- bused from the high school to a mountain tunnel, through the long dark tunnel and a hidden Iris: this subterfuge obviated the need for secrecy, as this was one of four parades they would march in today, and nobody actually knew they were Offworld.

 

Dana rode in two parades that day.

Dana worked for a year to ride in these parades.

Dana worked with the white fire mares.

One team of matched white mares drew the steam pumper, back on Earth: these three mares, well trained, experienced at parade duty, strutted in shining harness and struck a fine figure indeed as the Memorial Day parade proceeded with dignity and pomp down the main street, as grinning Irishmen in red bib-front shirts hung from apparatus and slung candy towards children lining the parade route.

The other team of mares ran with all the wild joy of horses who loved nothing more than to punch a hole in the wind and gallop faster than their Guardian Angels could fly without afterburners!

The parade was almost at destination at the town's center, where a draped platform was erected, where dignified speakers waited, where the crowds were gathering, where the Marching Band formed up in concert ranks.

On a coordinated and practiced signal, the parade separated in the center, opening a lane from its rear, through the city, to the speaker's platform.

A grinning soldier in Confederate grey handed the standard up to Dana.

Dana Keller, the youngest daughter of Sheriff Linn Keller, sister to Diplomat Marnie Keller and Nurse Angela Keller, stood in her stirrups, gripped the staff in both hands: three restless, muttering mares stood abreast as Dana thrust the standard up with one hand, gripped bitless reins with the other:

"SAINT FLORIAN, SAINT CHRISTOPHER AND THE BLESSED VIRGIN, LADIES, RUN!!!"

Dana was her Daddy's daughter, Dana was Willamina's granddaughter, and Dana was determined to do this right: her mares needed neither guide nor siren to navigate the parted lane in the parade route, for Dana screamed -- she knew she had native blood from the post-Revolutionary War era, she knew it was Cherokee, and so a full-throated, opera-lung-powered Cherokee war scream shivered through the air as three matched white mares laid their ears back, thrust their necks straight out, as their rider held up the Confederate Flag, the blue standard with a single white star and the scarlet 13 in the center.

Dana Keller, standing up in the saddle, made the front page with her Presentation of the Colors.

It was not the only parade the Firelands High School Band would march in that day, nor was it the only Presentation of the Colors Dana made that day, but it was the first time Dana stood in the saddle, screaming like a Cherokee and riding at a flat-out, strip-tears-from-your-eyes gallop, since she'd fallen from a horse and damn neart died.

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

EDELWEISS

"This is Angel One," Angela said, her voice crisp, professional.

The voice on the other end chuckled, a warm, quiet sound: "Sounds like the Keller Sheriff's Office! How many of you are there, anyway?"

Angela hesitated, then smiled.

"I'm trying to think of a good smart answer, and the mind just went blank," she admitted, and the voice on the other end went from quiet chuckles to quiet laughter.

"This is Phillips with Forensics. We got it."

"Ready."

"Edelweiss."

There was a long silence: Angela's face went serious, her hand froze, pen an eighth of an inch from the yellow pad she preferred for note taking.

"I roger your Edelweiss and thank you for that. Send us your written findings at your earliest convenience."

Angela hung up the phone, leaned back, slowly, staring at the words she had yet to write, then she laid down her pen, bent her elbow, keyed her wrist unit.

"Marnie?"

Angela swallowed.

"It's positive for edelweiss."

 

Joseph thanked the clerk, walked the length of the depot platform.
Mail that came in was already sorted; anything for the Sheriff's office was on top, which meant anything with the name "Keller" -- coming or going -- was on top, in plain view.

Jacob was there and waiting, listening to The Lady Esther breathing on the tracks: he accepted the envelope, saw it was addressed to him, and not his father Jacob.

Joseph recognized the handwriting.

He slipped the envelope into an inside coat pocket, sauntered casually for the opposite end of the depot platform, then sat, looking around.

He ran two fingers into a vest pocket and brought out a folding knife with a particularly sharp edge, and carefully slit the heavy paper envelope.

Honed steel whispered almost soundlessly through the tough rag paper's fold.

Joseph Keller extracted the inner envelope, frowned a little as he pinched it gently, felt the yielding bulge inside.

He extracted the folded octavo and he felt his eyes smile at the corners.

He unfolded the note, and began to read.

 

"This was found in Joseph's -- what had been Joseph's bedroom, when Jacob's stone house was gone over for structural after that quake we had last year."

Linn sat at the head of the table.

This was as close to a formal family meeting as it got -- coffee, pecan pie with ice cream, serious faces surrounding the long, put-in-the-extra-leaves table, Linn presiding.

"A stone was carefully crafted but not mortared in place," Angela continued, then placed a rectangular, wrapped block on the table before her: she'd not touched her pecan pie, she'd turned and set it on the counter behind her.

Angela carefully unwrapped the unbleached muslin, laid it open to reveal a worn Bible.

"This," she said, "belonged to Joseph and he set it away before he left for the War.

"He included a note to that effect and he said he did not want his Bible reminding his Pa of his absence, for he knew Jacob was very much against his going overseas to fight what he called 'someone else's damned war.' "

Angela worked her hands into a pair of white cotton gloves.

Linn felt something tighten in his chest.

His Mama used to do that -- exactly the way Angela just did it -- Marnie used to help his Mama with her conservatorship duties, but he didn't recall Angela ever getting involved.

Didn't matter.

He closed his eyes, swallowed, admitted silently that he still missed his Mama, then he opened his eyes and started listening again.

"We have several notes," Angela continued. "The one we're interested in is here" -- she picked up a folder, brought out a sheet carefully pressed between two pages of modern paper -- "this speaks to a letter he received from Aunt Sarah, very shortly before she was killed. It speaks of her enclosing a mountain flower."

Angela leaned back, took a long breath, looked around.

Father, mother, brother, sister and sister all looked at her, waiting.

"Sarah was ... her wastrel of a husband left her. She decided to travel and she headed for the mountains. She alluded to ... apparently she had to establish that she was not to be trifled with."

Michael's eyebrow raised as his young imagination populated the environment with a pale-eyed woman with a Colt Navy in each hand, laying about with smoke and fire in a Tyrolean village: he blinked to clear the image, returned to listening.

"They called her 'Girl of the Mountains' because she headed for the highest elevations, where only natives went, and she brought back what she called a mountain flower."

Angela held up a small, heavy paper envelope.

"This looks like it contained something, and Joseph writes that he took the flower with him.

"I had Forensics examine the envelope for pollen.

"It came back to Edelweiss."

Linn swallowed, his throat dry: he nodded, stared at ice cream melting on his untouched slice of pie.

"Mama," he said, his voice husky, then he cleared his throat and tried again.

"Mama and Gracie both said there were German troops of their acquaintance that wore the Edelweiss. They both agreed the Mountain Division was ..."

He swallowed again.

"Effective," he whispered.

"And good-looking," Victoria said quietly, and Linn saw something pass between she and Angela -- he had the sudden unsettling feeling his girls knew something he didn't -- he looked at Angela.

"You have corroboration for the correspondence," he said -- a statement, not a question.

Angela nodded.

"I also have" -- she reached into the folder, pulled out a second note -- "Sarah's actual letter to him."

 

My dear Joseph,

I know that you are planning on joining the War in spite of your father's opposition.

I've trained you since your earliest childhood with the knowledge you would need what I taught you.

Joseph, you are of good blood and you descend from a long line of warriors.

Never doubt that you are RIGHT, and that you are EFFECTIVE.

My new husband was not the noble gentleman he pretended.

He is a profligate cad and a wastrel, he left me in order to pursue his baser lusts, and I with child.

I have accordingly taken to travel: my dear father-in-law is as much a noble gentleman as his son was not, and has arranged introductions.

My heart yearns for the high country and so I am for German mountains, as high up as I can go: I went there and so impressed the natives they called me "Mountain Girl" and one pinned a small native flower upon my bosom, for their name for this bloom is Mountain Girl.

I wear it proudly.

I have, accordingly, plucked another of its kind and enclose it, pressed and preserved, that you may look upon it and know that this hardy little bloom perseveres despite the harshest of moments.

 

Angela looked up and said, "It's signed with that big ornate S of hers, and in the top loop she's drawn herself looking over her shoulder, wearing a mask and smiling."

She handed the letter across the table to her sisters: it migrated back and forth and up toward Linn, who looked at it and smiled, sadness filling his eyes: he raised a hand, brushed his handlebar thoughtfully, handed it back and nodded toward Angela.

"That," he said softly, "looks so much like Marnie!"

"I don't know ... "

Angela frowned, looked across the table at her sister.

"The uniform in the Firelands museum wasn't actually Joseph's."

"No," Linn said quietly. "He was buried in his."

Angela's lips pressed together, disappointed.

"I wonder if he had the flower with him when ..."

Her voice trailed off and she wet her lips uncomfortably.

She returned the notes to the ancient Bible, closed it carefully.

Linn nodded, slowly, then smiled, looked up at his daughter, who was studying Joseph's Bible's cover like she could extract some great secret from the closed book.

"Darlin'," Linn said quietly, "thank you. I'm proud of you!"

 

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE CLOAK THEY WORE

Esther Keller closed up the Z&W office, as she always did, at the end of her work day.

Esther Keller glided down the stairs, from her second-floor office over the Silver Jewel Saloon, her skirts delicately lifted, as she always did.

Esther smiled, gently as she always smiled when she came down the stairs, and inclined her head in acknowledgement as men touched hat-brims or lifted their covers at her passing.

Esther looked around at Tillie and over at the Saloon proper, as she always did, and Esther Keller drove home in their carriage, their aging dapple harnessed up and brought up by Shorty, as he always did.

Esther Keller was a woman of regular habits, of set routine, unless occasion required her to be otherwise.

At this particular time, she saw no reason to deviate from her usual habits.

Esther Keller rose as her husband entered the dining room, and Esther Keller looked at the silence, the stillness that her husband wore like a cloak.

Esther Keller mentally seized her usual routine and tossed it out the nearest window.

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller drew up, her mare restless, muttering, right before Snowdrift surged ahead of her and began yammering -- that deep, go-to-war, bared-fangs, fur-standing-up CHALLENGE -- Marnie's mare reared, twisted: it took all the Ambassador's skill to stay in the saddle -- she fought the mare for command, backed the mare, keeping her pale eyes on Snowdrift's display.

Marnie's legs were locked around her mare, she welded her backside grimly to the saddle, mindful of the infant in the papoose carrier on her back.

Snowdrift did not charge.

Snowdrift danced across the trail Marnie had been riding.

Marnie was visiting one of her coffee farms, she'd been talking and laughing with people who knew the land, who cultivated the land; she'd ridden higher on the volcanic cone, marveling at the soil's particular color, its texture, how rich and black it looked, how healthy the coffee, planted in curved rows, following the slope's contour.

Then Snowdrift barred her way and threatened to rip her and her mare into bloody gobbets if they advanced further.

The mare reared again -- the pure-white mountain Mastiff was facing away from Marnie now, backing slowly, snarling, a deep, menacing sound that only the War Dogs of her Line managed with such terrifying effect -- Marnie looked behind, continued backing her mare, who was shivering under her.

Then Marnie felt it, more than heard it.

When the earth beneath hooves and paws shivered, their collective response was immediate.

Mare, War Dog, Ambassador and pale-eyed infant, whipped around and committed that classic military maneuver known as GETTING THE HELL OUT OF HERE!

 

 

Esther's ear pulled back a little as she listened to her husband's quiet words, at his carefully voiced blessing over their meal, as he looked up after the shared "Amen" and looked very directly at the hired girl and said softly, "Mary, thank you, this looks wonderful!" -- as he always did -- and Mary colored a little and dipped her knees and murmured something in Gaelic -- as she always did.

It was not until Mary set sliced apples dusted with cinnamon before each at the table, not until this simple but most welcome dessert course, that Esther and Angela looked at one another and then looked at the Sheriff.

Children in this era were seen and not heard, at the dinner table they did not speak unless spoken to.

Unless you were one of the Sheriff's pale-eyed get.

"Papa," Angela asked bluntly, "what happened?"

The Sheriff picked up a slice of apple, considered the brownish dusting as if it were the most interesting thing he'd seen all day.

He took a thoughtful bite, chewed a few times, swallowed, then set the bitten slice down, looked at his ladies -- mother, daughter, maid, all -- who were regarding him with the expression women use when they know something happened, and they are waiting for a statement.

Linn blinked a few times, then reached down, laid his hand on a black-curly-furred canine head and said gently, "The Bear Killer barked at me."

 

Marnie leaned low over her mare's neck, trusting her mount: Snowdrift kept up, silent as death, swift as the Reaper's arrows: they rode downhill, into the clearing where the farmer's tropical hut stood.

Marnie drew up -- no mean feat, her mare wanted to go full blown panic and only a steady hand, firm legs and a voice kept her from bolting blind -- the farmer had the look of a man who knew something was wrong, who didn't know quite what was happening, but was honestly dreading whatever it was.

Snowdrift orbited the mare, snarling, growling, circling, looking uphill, looking to their back trail: Marnie soothed her mare, eyes busy.

She and the farmer saw it simultaneously.

Smoke.

A squirt, a jet, then -- even mounted -- Marnie felt the ground shiver, more powerfully this time: her mare splayed all four hooves, dropped her head as if bracing for something.

Snowdrift ran in under the mare's jaw, facing forward, looking like Destruction on four paws, eyes red, teeth bared: she was positioned to protect the mare's throat, she bayed again, a Hellhound's war-challenge:

Come closer and I will rip you apart!

Marnie's eyes were dead pale and she felt the Rage whip and thrash in her belly: she reached down and pulled her rifle free.

She had her baby on her back and whatever this unseen enemy was, by GOD! it was NOT! going to harm HER CHILD!

Ambassador Marnie Keller rode back up-trail, rifle in hand, Snowdrift silent and a-bristle beside her, until she saw the enemy, then she objected not at all as her mare froze.

Marnie stared, open mouthed, at a ten foot width of smoking ditch across the path where she'd been not five minutes before, at the bright-scarlet creek's worth of lava running downhill in the excavation that would have opened under her, had Snowdrift not stopped her.

Marnie Keller, descended from generations and centuries of war-women, of Valkyries, of sword-swingers and life-takers, decided this was one enemy against which she had no chance at all.

Her mare offered no protest as Marnie heeled her about and they galloped away from this steady stream of liquid hell running like a scarlet river.

 

Linn looked at his wife and at his little girl, he looked down at The Bear Killer, who looked back with that expression of utter and absolute canine adoration that is the peculiar gift of his kind.

"I was riding," he said, his voice quiet, "and The Bear Killer ran ahead of me and started raising Hell."

Angela's hands were very properly in her lap, her eyes very definitely on her Papa's, her expression intent, as if she wished to drag each word to her and look behind it to see what was actually being said.

"Apple horse is used to playin' with The Bear Killer, but this wasn't play."

He harrumphed quietly, chewed on the other half of his apple slice, swallowed.

"Apple-horse was restless and kept wantin' to turn and go and I wouldn't let him, for I wanted to know what the hell was ahead of us that The Bear Killer didn't want me to face up to, so I fetched out my '73 rifle."

Linn leaned forward, both forearms on the table, eyes distant -- he was not seeing his own kitchen table, he was seeing through them, looking at a memory that lived between his ears, but for a moment, felt very real.

"We'd had rain higher up and I set there and watched a good chunk of hillside just kind of" -- his hand raised, described a diagonal descent, and his descending hand floated down to caress The Bear Killer's grinning head again.

"Had The Bear Killer not stopped us, I'd have gone over the mountain with that landslide."

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller was very quiet at supper that night.

Littlejohn, with the intuition of a child, knew that his Mama was troubled.

Littlejohn, with the inherited wisdom of his father, knew not to make mention of it, but rather let his Mama bring it out in her own good time.

Supper was uncharacteristically silent: it was a rare thing for Marnie to wear silence like a cloak, but this evening meal, she did, at least until she blinked and looked at her husband, looked at her son, looked at the infant happily gumming mashed potatoes off little pink fingers in the high chair.

Ambassador Marnie Keller, wife and mother, looked at her little family with wide and innocent eyes and asked, "Why is everyone so quiet tonight?"

Edited May 27 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

I GET THAT A LOT

Sheriff Linn Keller sat uncomfortably in a chair carefully fabricated to duplicate the chairs in his office back in Firelands.

He looked around Jacob's Sheriff's office -- at the shotgun on a deer antler rack above Jacob's chair, at the revolver-cylinder pen holder on Jacob's desk, at framed portraits of horses and riders and people they both knew.

Linn's eye was drawn to one he remembered, one taken at sunset, when the sky was absolutely on fire against the mountains' dark teeth.

Marnie was riding his stallion, his racer: she was standing in the stirrups, leaned well forward, hands pressed against the base of the stallion's mane: her red Stetson was fallen back on its storm strap, she had the look of absolute JOY! -- the stallion's ears were laid back, his nose was punched out, all four hooves off the ground -- Bruce Jones explained the technique, how she was silhouetted by the streaks of red and muted grey of the sunset, how she was illuminated by a series of photoflash strobes, triggered by their passing.

Linn looked at the picture, framed and hung, and he remembered that night, remembered Marnie's delighted laugh, remembered how it smelled ...

Linn shook his head, closed his eyes, dismissed the memory.

He rose as a big grin breezed into the office with an extended hand leading the way and both of them towing his firstborn son: Jacob's expression was one of honest delight as he greeted his father, as they laughed, as each dropped into a chair and each in turn listened closely to the other.

Jacob was a good listener because he'd watched his father being a good listener: he leaned forward, clearly interested in what the Grand Old Man had to say, and just under an hour later, in another part of the underground colony, a cheerful "Gamp-paw!" was followed by an enthusiastic, youthful collision, which set Linn back a step: he hunkered, returned the happy hug: Linn leaned back, held out a hand:  "Gimme Five!"

Joseph wound up, closed one eye as he took aim, then smacked his hand down as genuinely hard as he could on his Gamp-paw's callused palm.

Linn shook his hand with a dismayed grimace:  "That wasn't a five!" he protested loudly. "That was a six and a half!"

Grandson, granddad and father all three laughed, for it was an old game between them, one first seen when Jacob's Uncle Will first threw out his own palm and told a very young Jacob to "Gimme Five!"

Ruth was more than happy to see her father in law again: Linn took her hand and kissed her knuckles, almost bashfully, to which Ruth responded by hugging the man and laughing:  "You make me feel like royalty!" she protested, and Linn saw the look that she shared with her husband, and something told the long tall Sheriff ... that's how Jacob treated his wife, like royalty.

Snowdrift showed up, happily hobby-horsing across the floor and begging the Sheriff's attention, and shortly she was on her back, hind legs kicking in utter canine delight to get belly rubs from several separate hands, but not before the Sheriff was given a good old fashioned face washing, to his grimacing delight.

Supper was animated, the conversation fast-moving and interspersed with laughter: cleanup brought a marveling shake of the head from the lean old lawman with the iron grey mustache, as everything -- including the tablecloth -- went into the Recyclo, Ruth pulled out a freshly fabricated tablecloth from the cupboard, spread it with a practiced snap of feminine wrists, and floated it precisely onto the table.

"I'm so used to washing dishes," Linn admitted, "all this modern convenience ..."

"I had to get used to it, too," Ruth admitted as she gave the tablecloth a tug and a twitch, then smoothed out the fold-crease with a feminine palm.

"Jacob."

Jacob's eyes changed.

He heard the change in his father's voice, and he knew the Grand Old Man was about to address the reason for his visit.

Linn inserted the data chip into the projector.

Joseph sat up suddenly, eyes wide, as they saw the volcanic smoke squirt from the mountainside, as lava eroded a wide, deep ditch down the mountainside, as Marnie's mare reared, as they turned and as they retreated from this fiery phenomenon.

Linn's hand unconsciously, slowly, caressed Snowdrift's thick, curly fur.

"Jacob," Linn said quietly, "you are Sheriff here."

"Yes, sir."

"You have faced ... situations ... that I never have."

"Yes, sir."

Linn frowned: he leaned forward a little, forearms on his knees, and he sandpapered his callused palms slowly together.

"Jacob," he said, "you are my Firstborn."

Jacob raised an eyebrow, looked at Joseph, then at his father.

"Yes, sir."

Linn frowned harder, teeth set together -- not clenched, just ... set ...

"Jacob" -- he swallowed -- "parents make their first mistakes on their firstborn."

Jacob's mask slid into place and Linn could almost feel the cold start to cascade from his son: Jacob was in Interrogation mode now, listening, assessing, not allowing himself to be drawn in, just ... listening.

"Parents make their first, their worst, their most frequent, their most serious, mistakes, on their firstborn."

Jacob waited.

Linn leaned back. "I know parents have the highest hopes for their firstborn. They want their firstborn to out-do, out-earn, they want their firstborn to achieve more and better. Maybe that's why they make those first worst mistakes."

Jacob nodded, slowly, noncommittally:  "Yes, sir," he replied, his face and his voice carefully neutral.

"You saw Marnie there -- you saw Snowflake here warning that something was ahead. She warned Marnie before the lava flow started."

"Yes, sir."

"Jacob, you have achieved more and better than I."

"I wouldn't say that, sir."

Linn raised a cautioning hand. "Trust me on that."

"Yes, sir."

"Marnie has outdone me as well."

Jacob blinked, considered, a slow smile widening his face.

"She's outdone me too, sir."

"In some ways, yes," Linn admitted, "but don't underestimate yourself."

Jacob looked at his son, raised an eyebrow, then winked.

"What are you trying to say, sir?"

"The same thing I'm going to say to Marnie," Linn said bluntly. "If I ever pushed you too hard or made mistakes or corrected you wrongfully, I am sorry."

Jacob frowned a little, considered this carefully: Linn could tell he was framing his reply with great care, and they both knew Joseph was listening, and that boys learn from the examples of their elders.

"Sir," Jacob said finally, "a good friend of mine ... we were discussing ... each of us was discussing our Old Man."

He was hunched over just like his father now, feet flat on the floor, palms slowly, slowly, rubbing together.

"Each of us allowed as the Old Man was the closest thing to Jesus Christ ever to walk the face of the earth."

It was Linn's turn to listen instead of reply, and he did, and Joseph saw the hint of a smile tighten the corners of his Gamp-paw's eyes as Jacob continued, "Our girlfriends were with us. My girlfriend of the time ... you met her once, Janet ... kind of short, blue eyes, city girl."

Linn nodded.

"She complained bitterly that I had you so far up on a pedestal it's a wonder you didn't get nosebleed!"

"Is that where your sister got that saying," Linn murmured softly, and Jacob's grin was quick, wide, sincere.

"Yes sir, I think it is" -- his hands separated, he turned one over, as if displaying his palm to his father -- "point is, sir, you did the best you could."

Jacob looked at Joseph and then at his father.

"I had to learn that one the hard way."

"How's that?"

Jacob laughed quietly and his ears turned a little red as he admitted, "I had to learn we're just making it up as we go. We raise our young the way we were raised, mistakes and all."

"Did I make mistakes with you, Jacob?" Linn asked quietly.

"None that mattered in the long run. Like I said, you did the best you could" -- he looked very directly at his father -- "and you learned from each step."

Linn nodded, slowly.

"Sir, do you remember I screwed up installing a mechanical oil pressure gauge one time -- stripped out the bushing and got mad at myself for having to get another?"

Linn blinked, nodded -- he didn't really recall, but apparently Jacob did, and that would have to suffice.

"You told me, 'Nobody's born knowin' that,' and that was probably the best thing you could have told me."

Jacob frowned, considered, then continued.

"Yes you screwed up sometimes. Welcome to the human race. Do you know what that taught me?"

Joseph could see discomfort in his Gamp-paw's expression, but Linn did not shrink from the question.

"Sir, that taught me it is okay to try it and fail, because you learn from the fail and you do it again and get it right."

 

Linn looked up at the shadow visible through the wavy milk glass of his office window.

The door opened and Marnie slipped in, looking like she'd just come from the mid-1880s with a knowing look and a box in her hand.

"Go to hell and eat a donut," she smiled, opening the box, and Linn dipped a hand in, brought out his favorite -- a white cream filled, chocolate iced, stick doughnut.

Marnie produced a tall paper coffee cup with an All-Night insulating slipover -- a magician's move, she'd come in with one gloved hand empty, the other balancing the box of doughnuts -- she set it on his desk, dropped a handful of napkins on his desk blotter, plucked out a stick doughnut of her own, sat.

Linn savored the first bite of pastry, still warm from the local bakery; he took a long sip of coffee, nodding his appreciation, then he set down the coffee cup and said "Good morning to you too."

"I understand you and Jacob had quite the conversation."

"We talked," Linn admitted.

Marnie's expression was as complex as any woman's: she managed to convey the sense that she knew things, that she wished to know things, and she was smug enough to let him know which was which.

"From what Jacob told me," Marnie said quietly, "you said something meaningful to him."

Linn chewed another bite of the stick doughnut. "At least I did that much right."

Marnie considered her father -- not as a daughter regards her father, but as a woman regards a man.

"Do you know," she said quietly, then nibbled at her pastry, chewed, swallowed -- "do you know what your problem is?"

Linn frowned a little as he considered this.

"I am outrageously sexy, I am ravishingly handsome, and if you believe that, I'm selling ocean front property in Nevada!"

Marnie tried with no success at all to hide her quiet laughter behind a gloved hand and most of a stick doughnut.

She tilted her head and said "I'll go with handsome and sexy," she riposted, "but you" -- she thrust the bitten end of her doughnut at him -- "are consistently, perpetually, consistently judgementally, hardest on the Man in the Mirror!"

Linn took a long breath, sighed it out, took another sip of scalding-hot coffee.

"Yeah," he said quietly, then smiled with half his mouth.

"I get that a lot!"

 

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MAKE IT A BIG ONE

"You see him?"

"I see him."  

Pause.

"What's so special about him?"

"You don't want to mess with that one."

A frown, a look: "Why the hell not?"

"Hell," the first one snorted. "You said the right word.  Hell."

"You," the second one said slowly, "are makin' no sense a'tall."

"That long tall hell raiser" -- a nod -- "there's damn few men I am genuinely not never gonna cross, and he's first on the list!"

A pale eyed lawman turned, leaned casually back against the bar, one polished boot up on the gleaming brass foot rail: he stood relaxed, pale eyes busy, until they stopped on the pair.

They didn't realize they were holding their breath until he nodded, once, shallow: I see you both, the nod said, then the lean waisted lawman with the iron grey mustache, accepted the steaming mug from Mr. Baxter, and the pair breathed again.

It wasn't until the Sheriff left that the first one said, "Look, you're new here so let me save you one hell of a lot of grief."

The second one gave him a hard look -- skeptical, but clearly listening.

"That man's youngest daughter broke her back. Bad. Fell down a cliff and they didn't think she'd survive, let alone walk again."

"So?"

"So she went through some surgery back East and they rebuilt her whole damned spine. Had to relearn how to walk. I heard that little girl refused pain meds. Said her Daddy hunted drug dealers and she wasn't going to be an addict."

He shook his head, studied the bubbles in his beer.

"I was cryin' for morphine when I broke my leg. That little girl didn't let 'em give her anythin'!"

He shook his head.

"That damned old Sheriff waded through burnin' gasoline and he grabbed an overturned car, hauled it back over on its wheels and ripped the door off to get his wife out. He's standin' there and both legs is on fire and he's packin' her out in his arms and he didn't make a sound!"

They each took a long pull on their beer.

"His Pa was FBI. Him and his old man got along like oil and water. His Mama was a Marine and she was just as mean."

"How mean?"

"She got blowed up in a convoy. Shot through both legs and the guts and then they got blowed off the road and she crawled out of that burnin' rig, she grabbed the broke off machine gun and laid it over a dirt bank and shot it dry, then she grabbed two rifles from two dead men and come up on her knees and she couldn't stand so she was wallerin' ahead on her knees, firin' two guns, one under each arm and then she throwed them empties aside and drew out two pistols -- she was Sheriff here and she carried two guns and she did there too -- she got her feet under her and she started to run and there she goes spittin' fire an' death out of each hand, screamin' til she locked back empty and she pulled a knife and waded into 'em cuttin' throats and when they finally pulled her off the dead bodies, she'd scalped three of 'em and was tryin' to scalp a fourth!"

A shadow fell across their table.

Two fresh glasses of beer set down on the table.

It was a man's hands that set the beer down.

They looked up to see a long tall Sheriff with an iron grey mustache and dead pale eyes, standing by their table, looking at them ... just looking, the way a lawman will.

Neither of them spoke.

The Sheriff finally did.

"She actually scalped all four," he said quietly. "She fired a full belt through that broke off machine gun and her hands were burnt from holdin' onto the barrel shroud. She used it for a club until the barrel broke off and that's when she whipped out her scalpin' knife."

His voice was quiet, his eyes level, his face expressionless as he spoke.

"Nobody could decide whether to send her for a court martial or a Silver Star, so they sent her home."

The Sheriff turned, walked out, unhurried, unconcerned: their eyes followed the man until the ornate, heavy, frosted-glass-swirled front door closed behind him.

Barrents was loafing against the front fender of the Sheriff's cruiser: the two men got in, drove off.

"Do I want to know what you did in there?" Barrents finally asked.

Linn was silent for several long moments as he considered.

"Paul," he finally replied, "do you recall me tellin' you about the advice my Pa gave me about a fight?"

Paul Barrents frowned a little, shook his head: "Nnooo," he finally said cautiously.

Linn worked back in the passenger seat a little, trying to find a less uncomfortable position: he'd broken his tailbone years before, and both the repaired distal coccygeal curve, and other miscellaneous injuries long healed, were conspiring to inform of oncoming precipitation.

"He said if you're going to get into it with someone, beat 'em absolutely into the ground, pound 'em into overkill so the next time they see you, they'll cross the street to avoid you. He said the penalty is no worse so you might as well get your money's worth."

Barrents took a quick glance over at his lifelong friend, his boss.

"Your knuckles don't look bad."

"Didn't use 'em."

Barrents raised an eyebrow, waited.

He felt the Sheriff's grin.

"Paul," Linn said, "if you're going to tell a lie, tell the biggest lie you possibly can. The bigger and more outrageous it is, the more likely folks are to believe you!"

 

Edited May 30 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

A STICK IN TIME, OR AN AX

Jacob Keller was the Sheriff's pale eyed son.

Jacob Keller was in school, or had been.

Jacob Keller went outside with the other students, for Miz Emma knew it was necessary for restless schoolchildren to get out and run around and discharge energies that would normally have been applied to chores, had they been at home this time of day.

Miz Emma asked Jacob to bring in another armload of wood for the stove: she had a little fire going, not terribly much, just enough to "knock the edge off the chill," as she'd said with that quiet expression, as if she were sharing some secret with the student.

Miz Emma knew Jacob to be polite, studious, disciplined and as courteous as his pale-eyed father, and so when she stood and smiled through the wavy glass window at her young charges, she was quite surprised to see Jacob drop his armload of stovewood, seize two girls and nearly throw them.

Emma's mouth fell open -- she drew in a quick double-lungful of air, ready to scream a command --

Jacob seized a split stick and Emma's incensed shriek died before it was formed: he gripped it at both ends, but his grip is not what captured Emma's heart and filled it with fear like a man will fill a jug with water.

Jacob's eyes were dead pale, his lips were peeled back, his face was the shade of parchment and his skin was drawn over high cheekbones like mummy-skin stretched over a dead skull.

Jacob lunged, and Emma heard the sudden cascade of sound -- children's exclamations, a girl's shrill screech, the sound of an enraged boy, and something else, something animal, a strangling snarl that did not sound terribly different from what she realized was the sound raging from Jacob's young throat.

Sheriff Linn Keller was beside the checkers barrel, considering Mr. Mac's next move, when he heard the first juvenile distress: when there were two more, and a scream, he turned and powered off the boardwalk, seized the draped reins from where they just lay over the hitch rail: he stomped the earth underfoot and vaulted into the saddle, Apple-horse laid his ears back and whirled on hind hooves.

Stallion and Sheriff aimed themselves like a cannon-shell and shot a long diagonal, toward their little whitewashed schoolhouse, and the schoolyard adjacent and behind.

Sarah Lynne McKenna swung wide around the fight, ran behind the schoolhouse.

Emma Cooper, the Town Marshal's plump, pleasant, soft-spoken wife, would have been shocked to see Sarah's face was as pale-eyed, as colorless, as parchment-taut as her brother's.

She would have been even more shocked to see Sarah snatch up the ax from the woodpile, and turn, and charge her brother's back, holding the weapon as if she'd warred with such for multiple lifetimes.

Jacob had a death grip on the split stick.

The rabid stray was fighting him.

Jacob had the stick shoved as far back in the canine's jaws as he could manage and he'd shoved hard and got the dog over on its back and he was standing over it, ignoring claws tearing through his trouser legs.

A shout -- he looked up -- the Sheriff leaped from the saddle, his stallion still moving --

Jacob saw his sister coming, hauling the ax around for a killing blow.

He did not think.

There was no time.

Jacob thrust hard against the dirt underfoot, kept a grip on his stick -- he flipped over the pinned, rabid stray -- 

The Sheriff ran up, his good left hand welded around the walnut plow handle --

Sarah's swing was precise, swift, and delivered with all the power in her lean young body.

Jacob came up, still holding the stick.

Dead jaws still gripped the stick, insane and reddened eyes glaring at him even as they died, even as the light went out of them.

Jacob tossed stick and blood-running head a little to the side and staggered back a couple of steps.

Sarah lifted the ax, regarded its blood-slimed head, looked at the twitching carcass, walked past the Sheriff and her classmates, bound for who knew where -- she walked with a purpose, neither slowing nor hesitating as Emma came boiling out the door and down the steps, as she came around and froze.

Linn seized Jacob's shoulders, looked his son very directly in the eyes.

He unbuttoned Jacob's coat, peeled it off, tossed it to the side, gripped Jacob's wrist and thrust his shirt-sleeve up just past the elbow.

Jacob felt the tremor in his father's fingers as he traced lightly over Jacob's unbroken skin -- he turned Jacob's forearm over, ran his fingers down the other side -- then he inspected the other arm--

"Jacob, are you bit anywhere?"

Jacob blinked and frowned and ran a fast inventory.

"No, sir," he said, "I do not think so."

Linn was down on one knee now: his face was serious, his jaw was set, there was no trace of color at all in the man's face.

Jacob was pulled into his father's chest, strong arms around him, crushing him into an embrace that Jacob said later felt as if his ribs groaned with the strength of the man's embrace.

In the moment, though, Jacob's voice was quite subdued.

He managed to squeak out, "Sir?"

Linn slacked his embrace, gripped his son's upper arms again, drew back a little, and Jacob was honestly shocked at the distress Linn did not even try to hide.

"Thank you, sir, I can breathe now."

Emma Cooper saw the man's head drop a little, but she could not see his expression, for his back was to her: she saw his shoulders start to work, as if under some strong and terrible emotion, and she feared a strong man was brought to unmanly tears in this bright and shocking moment.

Jacob looked up, a little color coming back into his cheekbones, and he winked, and she saw a quiet, barely-there smile that told her the Sheriff was not feeling grief.

Sarah came back around the corner, holding the washed-clean, water-dripping ax away from her so as not to dampen the flared skirt of her schoolgirl frock.

Sarah stopped and looked at the headless carcass, she turned and watched the Sheriff rise and swat dirt from his soiled knee: she looked at the dead stray dog's head, still gripping the chunk Jacob drove into its open jaws, and she let the ax slip through her fingers until its head rested between her shiny-black slippers, until she crossed her palms over the end of the handle, until she tilted her head and said "Miz Emma, do we have any beeswax? I'd like to warm this ax head on the stove and wax it up again so it doesn't rust!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WOMEN!

Valkyrie Squadron was mind-bonded, not only with one another, but with their Starfighters.

When Gracie played the Old Irish Washerwoman on her mountain fiddle, she could feel smiles from her squadron sisters, and the general consensus among all their linked minds, was that this was one of the better ways to wake up during a long distance deployment.

The added sensations of standing on the side of a mountain, breathing cold, clear, clean, mountain air, seeing absolutely magnificent mountain vistas, the thousands of colors and ten thousand shades of these colors, didn't hurt either: just as there is a terrifying delight to riding a fast horse and experiencing the sensation of utter speed! -- a more powerful sensation than the cerebral realization that the Starfighter was screaming through the void at one-quarter lightspeed -- so was the sight of mountains falling away from underfoot, and snowy granite teeth that raked at the sky itself, seeming mightier than looking at stars they knew were light-centuries distant.

When Gracie landed on Confederate Prime and stepped out of her Starfighter, when she strode boldly for the Embassy, her grown-out hair swinging behind her in a shining, healthy, red-auburn ponytail, strong and confident in her shining-black skinsuit with the spherical helmet under her arm, the entirety of the Valkyries felt her sudden, girlish squeal, felt her power forward in a full-on sprint, felt the impact and the arms and felt her jumping up and down as a pale-eyed Ambassador seized her as well, and jumped up and down with her, both of them sounding like a pair of excited schoolgirls that hadn't seen one another in just forever!

Michael felt Victoria's understanding sigh more than heard it: she looked over at him and said quietly, "It's a girl thing," and Michael mentally added this to his already-lengthy list of Things He Would Never Understand About Girls!

Michael and Lightning turned and paced down the street, unshod Fanghorn hooves loud on smooth pavement: Victoria would join her sister, he knew the girls planned a luncheon, and he would just as soon not have to join them.

 

Sheriff Jacob Keller frowned as he considered the ballistics tables open before him.

He had a legal pad of graph paper, two pages already filled with figures, ballistic coefficients, trajectories, carefully-plotted diagrams: he laid down the mechanical pencil, shoved the short ruler aside, rubbed his face, took a long breath and blew it out.

One of the Earth-grav Martian boys set a steaming, sleeved-paper cup of coffee on the desk, knocked on the desktop like he'd knock on a door: he always did this, ever since he'd set a cup on the desk for Jacob's enjoyment, and Jacob, absorbed in something else, knocked it over as he reached blindly for something else.

Jacob stopped rubbing his face, spread his fingers, looked between them at curled steam rising from the tall paper cup: he lowered his hands, leaned forward, took a long, exaggerated sniff of coffee fumes, leaned back.

A paper plate of cinnamon rolls whispered its way onto the desktop.

"Philip," Jacob said, "you just earned a raise in pay."

Philip tried hard to remain expressionless, but the corners of his eyes betrayed him: Jacob picked up a cinnamon roll, took a bite, closed his eyes as he chewed.

It was still warm from the oven.

A noisy slurp of coffee -- a matter of form, you understand, coffee must be ceremonially slurped after that first bite of cinnamon roll -- Jacob swallowed, sighed, looked at the half-filled sheet he'd been working on.

He reached over, picked up the graph pad, showed his current sheet to his assistant.

"Familiar with this?" he asked, turning a knuckle toward the circular, scaled figure occupying the lower right quadrant of the sheet.

Philip frowned, studied it:  "Dragon?" he guessed.

"Almost," Jacob sighed. "It's called an Ouroboros."

"Marnie found one?"

Jacob's smile was easy, natural, reassuring: "No," he admitted, took another bite of cinnamon roll.

Philip sampled his own coffee, waited.

"The dragon eating his tail," Jacob said softly. "Some mystical significance. I drew that ..."

Jacob frowned, arranged his thoughts before committing them to words.

"Marnie ... I don't know if she was kidding ... or not," Jacob admitted. "It's hard to tell with women."

Philip sat very still and waited -- a gift Jacob very much appreciated -- it irritated him when someone prompted him in such moments, and Philip never had, which is why Philip was understood to be in line as Chief Deputy.

Cinnamon rolls didn't hurt, either.

Jacob worked his way back through the pages he'd filled, looked at the loading books open on his desk, considered.

"Marnie made a Wise Acre comment about finding dragons," Jacob said quietly. "My reply was I'd have to go with a Barrett 50-cal as a carry rifle."

Philip saw his boss's eyes soften a little, the way he did when he looked across the desk at a memory only he could see.

"She's like that," he continued, his voice quieter: "she'll laugh at something like she's pulling your leg and then you find out it's ... real ..."

Philip took a thoughtful bite of cinnamon roll, eased his bony backside down on a tall, three-legged stool Jacob fabricated for some reason or another, and kept because Philip liked it.

"My current carry rifle," Jacob said thoughtfully, "is a .45-70. Good medicine in most cases."

"What about your FN-FAL?"

"If I have to go that route, it's a matter for the military. You'll recall that fracas we helped out with last month."

Philip nodded slowly: they'd been asked to help with an extraplanetary situation that turned out to be an honest rebellion and not a law enforcement matter.

Jacob saw Philip's hand rise unconsciously, thoughtfully rub his chest the way a man will unknowingly massage an old, healed wound.

Philip hadn't been wounded, but he'd been shot -- the first time he realized his Confederate field actually worked.

Jacob and Philip held position until the military could come boiling in like hornets from a kicked nest, then he cornered the locals that asked his help and verbally ripped the ears off their heads for outrightly lying to him, claiming it was a local police action they needed help with on an advisory basis only.

Marnie told him later the situation would take at least a year to settle, that Jacob should never have been called: Philip saw his boss draw silence around him like a cloak.

Jacob blinked, broke the spell, looked at the remainder of his cinnamon roll.

"Ouroboros," Philip prompted.

"Oh, yeah." 

Jacob picked up the cinnamon roll, took a bite.

"I wondered if Marnie actually found a dragon, so I figured I'd better have something that can take one down."

Philip's eyes went to the graph paper, to the columns of figures, the carefully-scribed scales, trajectories, rows of calculations.

"I keep coming back to what I already have," Jacob admitted. 

Philip nodded, once, slowly, the way he'd seen his boss nod in such moments.

"Drive just over 400 grains of hard cast into something and you're gonna get its attention in most cases," Jacob said: another long sip of coffee and he chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, consulted a hand-drawn chart on one of the first pages, nodded.

"Reckon I'll keep what I have," he said, the way a man will when he's just made a decision.

Philip chewed the last of his cinnamon roll, frowned, considered.

"Sheriff," he said quietly, "what are the chances Marnie actually did find a dragon?"

"That doesn't worry me," Jacob admitted. 

"What does?"

Jacob's eyes tightened at the corners, the way he did when someone asked an intelligent question.

"I'm worried she's found an actual race of intelligent dragons."

"And if she hasn't?"

"I have to consider that," Jacob admitted. "She might have been ... storytelling is a fine art and she's good at it. She could have been just storyin' me. She used to do that when we were kids at home, she'd torment me with an allusion to something. Sometimes it was whole cloth and sometimes she was just pullin' my leg."

"And this time?"

Jacob frowned and picked up his coffee.

Philip read this as honest discomfort, especially when Jacob looked very directly at his deputy.

"I honestly don't know," he admitted, "but I'm taking no chances. Michael upgraded our Shielding so it's well beyond fireproof, so it's proof against ... significant impact."

"And claws?"

"And claws."

Jacob and Philip drained their respective coffees, turned, ceremonially tossed their empties into the Recyclo.

"Sheriff, you know the Ambassador much better than I," Philip said formally. "What does your gut say about her pulling your leg on this, or is it whole cloth?"

Jacob looked troubled.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I did order a case of steel core for the FNs, and I loaded a new dragon attack program in the simulator."

He gave Philip a long look.

"I don't honestly know," he admitted. "Women ... I can track men and game with the best of 'em but damned if I can track a woman's thoughts!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HAMMER AND CHISEL

Deputy Sheriff Jacob Keller and Deputy Sheriff Paul Barrents looked at one another.

They repeated the address Dispatch just sent them via radio.

Jacob snatched up the erasable marker, wrote it with quick, sure strokes on the clear shelf paper he'd glued onto the passenger dash for this very purpose.

Paul stomped the gas, spun the wheel: the cruiser squalled into a hard-about turn, Paul eased off enough for the tires to get a good bite, then he came down on the go pedal, not hard enough to break traction again, but hard enough to shove them both back in their seats.

Jacob leaned into the acceleration with an absolutely vicious grin.

"You like that, don't you?" he said.

"YOU'RE DAMNED RIGHT I DO!" Paul roared, laughing, then he reached over and swiped the row of rocker switches with a quick forefinger.

Jacob reached down and twisted the Federal Interceptor into screaming life, and two young men in the green strength of youth headed toward the call, as Uncle Will called it once, "lit up and blowin'!"

 

"FIRELANDS FIRE DEPARTMENT EMERGENCY SQUAD, INFANT NOT BREATHING," Sharon's voice came from every speaker in the brick firehouse interior: brogans hit the floor and uniformed medics sprinted, skidded.

The Captain yanked the electric shoreline free, jerked its reminder loop from the door handle, threw it behind him, hauled open the door and twisted in: Shelly kicked the exhaust scavenger free of their chrome, polished exhaust, swarmed into the passenger side.

Shelly snatched up the erasable marker with one hand, the microphone with the other: "Firelands Squad enroute," she said, then bit the tooth-scarred cap of her own erasable marker and wrote the address as Sharon gave it again.

The door was two-thirds of the way open by the time Sharon finished giving the location: Crane nodded the way he always did, he said "Know right where it is!" the way he always did.

Firelands Squad One lit up, eased to the end of the apron before accelerating uphill, Shelly's polished boot's sole down hard on the International Harvester tractor starter switch that powered the chromed mechanical siren.

Crane reached up, gripped the chain, hauled down on the air horns, swore: they didn't have pressure built yet.

Shelly reached down, twisted the Yodel Dog into life, clearing the traffic that dawdled at the intersection ahead.

 

Barrents drifted around another curve, slowed: Jacob thrust a knife hand and Barrents yelled "Got it!" in acknowledgement.

Jacob's pale eyes took in the driveway, the house and garage, assessing not only the location and the approach, but where to position the cruiser to allow the squad access, assessing the location for potential ambush points.

Barrents was smooth motion, Barrents was all motion: the cruiser slowed fast, he spun the wheel, swatted the throttle: they powered up the gravel drive without throwing a rooster tail of stone and dirt, Barrents pulled up in front of the front door, backed fast, into the yard where someone had been backing in regularly: this would give the squad more than enough room to make their swing, get turned around and get out unimpeded.

Jacob chanted into the heavy, paint-worn mic, marking them on scene.

He and Barrents did not so much dismount as they leaped like a pair of parachutists headed for Omaha Beach: they ran, an honest assault on the front door, Jacob beat on it twice with his fist before yanking it open and entering at the top of his lungs: "SHERIFF'S OFFICE, SQUAD'S A-COMIN'!

Barrents blinked as he crossed the threshold, then he hesitated for a tenth of a second, torn between his Navajo ancestry and the tales of Jacob's ancestral Irish women.

Barrents felt a dipper of cold wellwater trickle right down the middle of his spine.

He was not hearing Jacob's shout, he was not hearing tears or anger or pleas for help.

He was hearing ... keening.

Irish keening.

Jacob described it one midnight shift, in those long, quiet hours when nothing happens, when you feel like there's a situation ticking like a bomb and all you can do is wait, and talk in quiet voice until you are called.

Jacob described that turn-your-bones-to-water, put-ice-in-your gut sound of an Irishwoman, keening.

He said "If you're outside when you hear it, look to the nearest waterway. If you see a woman kneeling beside the water, that's where it's coming from. That would be the Shee."

He'd looked at Paul and his face was solemn, with not the least trace of storytelling in his eyes.

"The Banshee will grieve by the stream before a death. I've heard it, Paul, I heard it in a house where the women were grieving the death of a child, and I never in my life! heard anyting that hit me harder!"

That's what hit Barrents in the face when he came over the threshold.

It was rare for Paul Barrents to feel honest dread.

He felt it now.

 

"There!" Shelly thrust her bladed hand toward the windshield's near corner.

"Have it in sight!" Crane yelled back.

Shelly did not have to look to know her father had a grin on his face.

The Firelands Fire Squad slowed fast, turned in, climbed the gravel drive, fast.

 

Jacob stopped.

A sizable woman was sitting in the recliner, a child in her lap.

The child was facing away from her, she was bent forward, hands around the infant's belly like a seat belt.

She was bent forward, rocking, eyes shut, mouth open ...

...keening ...

Jacob reached in, seized the child, pulled:  " 'Scuse me!" he barked, pulled the child free of its chin-in-the-chest posture: he laid the infant down flat on the floor, tilted its head back, seized his Stetson and slapped it to the linoleum, bent to put his ear over the child's mouth --

Barrents came through the door, filling it side-to-side with blocky, hard-muscled uniformed presence.

Jacob looked up at his partner, his old friend and yelled, "BARRENTS, SHE'S BREATHIN'!"

 

Jacob and Paul stayed long enough to make sure all was well in the household before they followed the squad.

The family followed right on the cruiser's back bumper, which led Paul to a greater caution, led him to pitty-pat the brakes to give the following family due warning that a stop sign was coming up.

When the Sheriff's cruiser pulled into the parking lot, the family thrust into the first parking space they could find and honestly abandoned the running vehicle in their hurry to get inside.

Jacob looked inside and the family log looked at him with the expression of someone who'd just lost his best friend.

Jacob parked the car as Barrents parked the cruiser and went on inside: Jacob found a leash, walked the family's shivering dog over in the grass for its much-needed relief, walked toward the friendly local hospital's automatic doors.

He didn't get there.

Two of the family's children ran out, seized him in enthusiastic, Kindergarten-level hugs: Jacob surrendered the leash to them, and they started arguing about who was going to walk the dog, until Jacob suggested they both walk the dog, which seemed to satisfy the situation.

The squad was released and departed sedately for station.

The Sheriff's cruiser and its two deputies followed, and joined for the debrief -- it was a small town, everyone knew everyone else, and it was standard practice to fill in the Irish Brigade if it was of interest, which -- "Infant Not Breathing" -- it obviously was.

Shelly presented the clinical aspect, the Captain finding nothing he could reasonably add: they turned to Jacob.

"You were first on scene," the Captain said. "Tell them what you told us."

Jacob walked over and picked up the baby mannikin, the one they used for CPR training.

He sat down, set the baby in his lap.

"This is what I saw when I came through the door," he said, wrapping his arms around the simulacrum, bending forward. "Notice the chin is in the chest. The call was infant not breathing, good Lord, ain't no WONDER, holding it like that!"

He stood: "I said " 'Scuse me,' " which is probably not the brightest thing I ever said" -- he laughed quietly, and most of the Irish Brigade laughed with him -- "I laid the child down on the floor -- head tilt, look listen and feel" -- he went down on his Prayer Bones, dropped his ear over the plastic mannikin's open mouth -- "and I heard her take that first good breath.

"Fellas" -- he reared back and stood up on his knees -- "I never heard anything as beautiful in my whole entire LIFE!"

"You should have seen the grin on his face when I came through the door," Barrents added quietly. "You'd needed a hammer and chisel to remove it!"

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

GETAWAY

Gracie closed her eyes, tilted her head back, took a long, appreciative breath.

She smelled chickens and cattle, she smelled mountains and fresh sawed wood, she smelled ...

... home ...

Gracie left her black skinsuit draped over the flight couch with her helmet impaled on the narrow, padded headrest: she wore a flannel shirt and a loose, mid calf skirt, she wore thick socks and work boots and she mashed a decrepit hat down on her head with an utter lack of ceremony and a total disregard for appearance.

She walked around the corner of the shed and saw her Pa ... older now, slower, more wrinkled, still as skinny as any of the Kentucky mountaineers living here in the high country.

She walked toward him, no longer the uncertain girl she'd been.

She walked straight up to him and stopped, stood dead still as he raised an uncertain hand, as he caressed her healthy-pink cheek with the backs of his fingers.

"You've not changed," he murmured, wonder in his voice.

A skinny old Kentucky mountaineer hugged his daughter, and she hugged him back, and for a long moment, all was as it should be.

 

Gracie rubbed flour on the rock maple rolling pin, rolled out another lump of dough.

She hadn't spoken since she got home, six hours before.

She stopped, looked around the kitchen, at the lifetime of memories it held.

It smells like a kitchen ought, she thought, and her Mama gave her a quiet look, not quite a smile, but recognition.

Her Mama had felt the same when she was a new bride, coming home for the first time as a married woman.

Then, as now, her Mama was rolling out dough: then as now, she yielded the rolling pin and the flour covered table -- a silent, formal recognition that her daughter was now a woman grown.

Gracie recognized the gesture.

 

Two curious boys in overalls studied the Starfighter with solemn and suspicious eyes.

It looked like a silver bird of prey, crouching with its beak open, waiting for the unwary to come too close.

They didn't.

They walked around it -- slowly, studying the shining-silver ship -- they considered the size of the sled-runner-nosed, broad, rectangular landing pads; they squatted to examine the articulation of the landing gear, -- one pointed and said "No grease fittin's," and the other nodded his solemn agreement -- they considered the one big hole in the front and the twin holes flanking -- the smaller openings apparently led to something that ran almost the length of the hundred yard long ship -- 

"If those are air intakes," one boy speculated, "where's the exhaust?"

Gracie smiled a little as she rolled the dough thin: she was mind-linked with Gunfighter, and while her eyes were considering the shape, the color, the texture of the pie dough she was feathering out, she saw her young relatives as clearly as if she'd been standing beside her beloved ship.

She could have replied to them, speaking through Gunfighter, but she knew this would prompt questions, and if she recalled her young nephews' tendencies correctly, answering one question would swing open a floodgate and release an absolute torrent of juvenile curiosity.

 

Supper that night was as it always was.

The table was well populated with family, with blue eyed folk, lean of waist and weathered of face.

Gracie’s hat hung on a peg by the door – her only concession to propriety – she bowed her head as her Pa thanked the Almighty for their many blessings, loaded her plate as the several dishes were passed around: the only real difference between the Gracie-that-was and the Gracie-she’d-become, at least the only immediately apparent change, was that she ate slowly, savoring her meal.

There was conversation, there were the usual discussions, older voices spoke of approaching weather, younger voices bragged about fishing, and Gracie smiled quietly, remembering her Pa’s love for fresh caught fish, fried up with a good, well-peppered batter.

 

A Starfighter loitered in geostationary orbit, quietly maintaining the masking field directly above Gracie’s Gunfighter.

A hundred yards of streamlined, shining-silver ship, would stand out to orbiting eyes, and there were orbital platforms that surveilled every exposed square foot of the earth’s surface.

Gracie’s flight-sisters looked out for one another, and one of her fellow Valkyries quietly, discreetly, hid Gracie’s silver bird from detection.

 

Gracie, callsign Gunfighter, returned to the Valkyries a week later, relaxed and well fed, smiling at the memory of two boys in overalls waving as Gunfighter lifted, silent, smooth, predatory, beautiful! -- as the hundred yard long ship with three cannon running her length, retracted her landing pads (which still had no grease fittings), as she rotated, lifted her nose, then shot into the sky like an arrow, a silver finger tracing a shining path to the stars themselves.

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NOPE

"It doesn't matter," Jacob said quietly.

The Chief Constable looked at Jacob like this pale eyed Martian Sheriff had a fish sticking out of his vest pocket.

"You can have all the fancy equipment in the world and it all comes down to the simple stuff."

Jacob stepped out into the open, knowing full well the barricaded fugitive could see him.

Jacob slipped his hand under his unbuttoned coat, brought out his favorite revolver -- a single action .44, with a bone-charcoal case hardened frame, with fire blued screw heads, with hand engraved vines slithering down the barrel and a double band around the muzzle, a Thunder Bird on the frame, and a rose inlaid on the flat top strap, and all the engraving inlaid with gold he'd panned himself.

He flipped open the loading gate and casually clicked the cylinder -- slowly, deliberately, one chamber at a time -- satisfied, with an exaggerated nod, he snapped the loading gate shut, looked at the house, holstered the revolver.

Sheriff Jacob Keller pulled his coat back, buttoned it behind him, exposing the matched pair of consecutively serial numbered revolvers in floral carved holsters.

"I'LL KILL YOU!" came the enraged scream from within the house.

Jacob made no reply to the challenge: he looked to the right, nodded once.

A tan-uniformed deputy bent double, scuttled under window level for the back of the house.

Jacob walked steadily up to the front door, eyes busy.

Above him, movement: a window opened, a scared face poked out, looked down.

Jacob watched a boy pull back, watched a little girl's legs poke out: the boy held her hands and Jacob slipped under them.

The girl fell -- somehow it would have been less terrifying if she'd screamed, but she didn't, she fell in silence and petticoats --

Jacob grunted as she dropped neatly into his arms.

He set her down, turned, lifted his hands toward the window.

The little boy's bare feet came out, gripped the edge of the window sill, the child rolled forward, fell -- he somersaulted, more by accident than anything -- Jacob caught him as well, went to his knees with the impact, turned.

He seized the little girl behind the knees, held both children tight against him, strode for the police broughams waiting nose-to-tail.

"Is anyone else inside?" Jacob asked quietly.

The little girl shook her head, one finger uncertainly at the corner of her mouth: Jacob looked at the little boy, who said "Mama an' two bad mans, that's all."

"Nobody else."

The boy shook his head.

Strong hands relieved him of the children.

Jacob turned, glared at the front door.

"I've had enough," he spat, then shouted, "I HAVE HAD EE-NOUGH!"

He turned and strode for the front door.

A gunshot from behind the house, the deep, powerful BOOOMMM of a shotgun, and the front door yanked open from inside and a man ran out, pistol thrust ahead of him, straight at Jacob.

Jacob ran toward him, jerked his head to the side as the shot broke: he closed, slapped gunmuzzle and wrist and suddenly the Sheriff had a handful of pistol and the criminal had a case of Sudden Realization, which lasted just long enough to turn and try to run back inside.

Jacob tossed the pistol to the side, knowing the Forces of Good and Light behind him would retrieve the pistol.

Two men ran pounding into the house and up the stairs.

The Chief Constable heard a sustained yell in discordant harmony: the fleeing criminal letting out little short of a scream of sheer terror, the angry roar of a Sheriff pursuing at full gallop.

One of his men came up beside him: "Should we go in after him?"

The Chief raised a cautioning hand as the sound of violence and conflict came from within the house: the meaty smack of a fist hitting living meat, the shivering SLAM of someone thrown -- hard! -- into a wall -- a woman stumbled down the stairs, fell, scrambled to her feet, shot out the still-open front door.

The Chief looked up, saw a body thrown out the still-open, second-story window through which the children just escaped.

A man screamed as he fell, voice cut off suddenly as he landed flat on his back in the yard, every bit of wind he ever had, knocked out of him by the impact.

He opened pain-damp eyes to see something black and flapping falling toward him, boot heels first.

Jacob landed a-straddle of the felon, dropped to his knees, very precisely pinning the kidnapper's upper arms: one work-hardened, ranch-callused hand gripped the criminal throat, and polished-ice eyes in an utterly blanched, drawn-taut face glared down at him.

The scene froze, Jacob stiff-arming the neck into the ground, allowing barely enough air to survive: uniformed men in flat caps ran up.

"Boys," Jacob said quietly, "he's all yours. If he tries anything" -- he bent his head a little, burning ice-pale eyes into the criminal's very soul -- "anything at all" -- he smiled, and it was a slow smile, a smile cold, a smile utterly without the least trace of compassion, of kindness-- Jacob let his words dangle, let guilty imagination tie a noose of thirteen turns.

"Take him."

Sheriff Jacob Keller rose easily, turned his head slightly as Angela came up beside him, her favorite Ithaca shotgun propped up on one womanly hip.

"His partner is just outside the back door," Angela said quietly.

"I take it he's not going anywhere."

Angela handed Jacob a fired shotgun hull.

"Nope."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

NOT ENOUGH

I stood and stared at that stone marker like ... 

Jacob told me later he said I glared hard enough at that carved quartz he expected it to explode, or at least crack down the middle and fall in two.

I studied the wording and I read it and re-read it and I didn't have to turn my head to see the stone in my mind's eye, the double stone with Esther's name, with her birth date and her death date, with Beloved wife and mother and a verse she particularly liked.

And a rose.

Esther always did love roses.

I looked at the rose on the stone before me.

She always liked roses, too, and she had a wax seal with a rose on it.

'Twas most of a year after she died, that her last letter to me arrived, with that rose seal she liked to use, pressed into bright-scarlet wax that she liked to use.

I shoved out my bottom jaw and took a long breath and I re-read that stone yet again.

Name, date of birth, death date, Murdered by a mob beneath, in carved, flowing script, and beneath this, in the same flowing script, Died protecting her father-in-law.

I know Jacob was watching me.

He was off to his right, halfway to his Mama's stone: he stood there with his hat in his hand, he pretended to be looking at my youngest child's stone, but I know he was looking at me, and trying hard not to let me know it.

Bless him for that.

He had his own griefs.

His son was killed in that damned European war, and that hit the both of us hard.

We set a stone for Joseph even though we knew he was planted over in France somewhere -- Jacob had the particulars, Esther wrote them in our family Bible in two places and she wrote them in her personal Bible as well, she did her best we'd know where he lay so someday family might go there and talk to his tomb stone.

We'd been told he had a tomb stone.

I took a long breath, set my skypiece back on my greying thatch and settled it in place.

 

Marnie looked up from her Very Great Granddad's handwritten words.

She blinked rapidly and bit her bottom lip and swallowed.

Willamina looked over and Marnie and gave her granddaughter a knowing look, but said nothing.

 

Ambassador Marnie Keller stood before a marker in the Firelands cemetery, back home on Earth.
It was windy -- her skirt flowed with the brisk mountain breeze -- she turned, squinted, shaded her eyes and read the sky: what she called her "Old War Wounds" agreed with what she saw, and she knew it wouldn't be long before the clouds thickened, lowered, and began to leak.

She looked back at a stone that a pale eyed lawman regarded, possibly from this very set of footy-prints.

"For all you achieved," Marnie murmured, "for all that you did ..."

Her voice trailed off and she blinked thoughtfully.

"Old Pale Eyes was right," she said firmly, looking at the carving on what was now a grave marker and no longer a cenotaph.

"What's carved there isn't near enough for all you did."

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

MY DEAR OLD BLOCK

Sheriff Jacob Keller was a hard man to surprise.

Sheriff Jacob Keller was surprised today.

Sheriff Jacob Keller looked up at the frighteningly realistic, holographic simulation of a house he'd recently stormed and saw his son -- wearing a black suit, black boots and a Stetson he forgot had to be cinched down -- leaped out of the second story window toward a figure cowering on the sod below.

Apparently Joseph realized this was not his brightest idea: he yelped "ABORT!" and the simulation froze him in mid-drop.

"End sim," Jacob called, "down slow."

The system dissolved the extremely realistic house-and-yard, returning to featureless, glass-smooth, fused rock walls, ceiling, and floor: Joseph touched down easily, turned, picked up his Stetson and clapped it briskly onto his short haircut.

"Howdy, Pa," he called, and strutted over to his Pa with all the cocky bravado of a seven year old who didn't want the Grand Old Man to know he'd scared himself mid-jump.

Jacob hunkered, rubbed the side of his jaw, considered.

"I saw you do it, Pa," Joseph said, as if that justified everything.

Jacob nodded slowly, considered.

"Quite a jump," he said mildly.

Joseph looked suddenly uncertain: "Yes, sir."

Jacob looked frankly at his son.

"I'm glad you had the good sense to abort!"

"Me too!" Joseph declared, suddenly sounding like a most sincere little boy.

Jacob winked, ran an arm around his son, frowned a little as he gave his firstborn an exaggerated up-and-down lookin' over.

"Joseph?"

"Yes, sir?"

Jacob looked his son right square in the eye and said, "Nice suit!"

 

Marnie felt her stomach drop as she watched the replay.

Angela felt her belly soar as she saw the same thing.

Jacob regarded his sisters on his split screen, hand thoughtfully to his mouth, unconsciously twisting the right half of his handlebar.

Marnie spoke first, as usual.

"Like father, like son," she said with a sibling's brutal frankness.

"Thanks a lot, Sis," Jacob muttered.

"Where is he now?" Angela asked.

"Riding lessons," Jacob grunted. "He wants a Frisian or a Fanghorn and he's not sure which!"

"Have him practice by throwing a saddle on the dining room table," Angela suggested. "I still don't see how Michael tolerates Lightning!"

"Ruth has better sense than to jump out of a second story window," Jacob complained. "Why couldn't he have inherited her good sense instead of my go-to-hell --"

"My dear old block," Marnie said sympathetically, "you should have named him Chip!"

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

PORCH POST

Two lawmen slouched companionably against the ornately turned porch post holding the shed roof up in front of the Carbon Hill Marshal's Office.

Silence grew long between the two, which it often did.

Deputy Sheriff Jacob Keller regarded the other side of Carbon Hill's main street with quiet and assessing eyes, then lifted a little and tightened at the corners to see green leaves on the trees behind, and the deeper green of mountain pines several miles beyond, on the high slopes north of town.

"I give some thought to preachin'," Harry said after a time.

Jacob considered this for several moments.

"Man could," he agreed.

"Ain't nothin' to it," Harry continued thoughtfully. "Stand up an' read from the Book and then just talk."

Jacob considered this as well.

"Yep."

Silence, again, at least between the two: Carbon Hill was anything but silent, as the coal mine was a steady source of labor, income and noise; they heard the brown coal -- wet coal, some called it -- being loaded into rail cars.

"They was a Confederate I heard," Harry said in a thoughtful voice, "that man now ... if he was not a preacher he should have been. I'll swear, he could talk a stump out of the ground and persuade rocks around it to stack up into a nice neat fence!"

Jacob considered this too, remembering the oratorial skill of his father's cousin down in Stone Creek.

Harry sighed, the way a man will when he's run out of material for a particular topic.

Jacob's mind was never still: probably prompted by the sound of coal loading into railroad gondolas, he said "Anyone ever complain about firedamp in these mines?"

Harry blinked, frowned.

"Don't recall," he admitted, "as I ever did hear of any."

"Pa said it's bad in mines back East."

"I heard that too."

"Pa said it caused explosions unless a man used them dreadful expensive Davy lamps."

"I seen 'em use them Davy things here."

Jacob's ear pulled back a little at the quick double-toot on the locomotive's whistle, at the sound of slack banging out of the couplers, at the sound of stack talk barking against the terrain as the freight locomotive shouldered into its load.

"Them miner's lamps they wear on their hats ..."

Law and Order Harry Macfarland waited for Jacob to complete his thought.

"They burn what, butter in them things?"

"Most do."

Jacob waited while Harry shuffled his thoughts like a gambler shuffles a deck of cards.

Harry never did get in a hurry, not really, and he tended to arrange his thoughts before he spoke them out loud.

"The Mercantile sells Miner's Sunshine for them lamps. Doesn't smell near as bad as butter."

"Butter's cheaper?"

"Yep."

A baby's angry, screaming cry pulled Jacob's attention from the conversation: a young woman -- well younger than Jacob -- had a distressed look about her, the infant she held, even more so: the mother's expression was one he'd seen before, and not a few times -- a child that wouldn't stop screaming, a mother who'd tried everything and didn't know what to do, now she was walking her child out in the open so that angry, red-faced, tiny-fist-waving SCREAM wouldn't be echoing off four walls and back at her.

Jacob shoved off the porch post, turned, reached for the child: at the unexpected custodial shift, the child's eyes opened wide with surprise, a tiny clenched fist went into the slobbering mouth: Jacob settled the infant in the bend of his elbow, reached down, pulled the little fist away and took a look, then replaced the fist.

He heard the metallic whisper of a metal pocket flask's cap being unscrewed.

Jacob turned, dipped the pad of his little finger into the clear liquid Harry poured into the flask's cap, rubbed it on hot, inflamed gums: a dip, a rub, another of the same, Jacob used this trick with his own young, and to good effect.

Jacob's expression was almost stern, until he looked at the young woman: her fatigue was evident, her face was lined, she was too young to look this old and tired.

Jacob bounced the infant, just a little, looked at the young mother, who looked like she could use a couple days' sleep.

"Ma'am," Jacob said, "my wife has some baby things ours outgrew. With your permission I'd like to bring 'em over."

Jacob gave inflamed young gums another dosing of something water clear and not over 30 days old, numbing the teething infant's misery: Harry carefully returned the few drops remaining to the flask, tightened the cap, slipped it into his inner pocket.

That afternoon, a knock on a door, a half-dozen ladies of Firelands came over, took over: they came to work and not to socialize, the young woman's house was torn apart and rearranged, quilts were hung outside and aired, floors swept, scrubbed and set to right, rugs hung out and the dirt beat out of them, and while the ladies were piously imitating a collective Pastel Tornado, a spotty Appaloosa stallion walked patiently up a mountain trail, eventually looping back to the tidy little home of a widowed young woman, a just-fed and freshly-changed child held up against the chest of a pale-eyed rider: when he handed the child off to Bonnie, thanks to the sensation of strong and protective arms and the rhythmic pace of a good saddlehorse, the child was as sound asleep as the mother Bonnie just got tucked in.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

BIG ENOUGH AND MEAN ENOUGH

Esther Keller stood at the window of her office overlooking the main street of Firelands.

Her office was above the main entrance of the Silver Jewel Saloon, and diagonally across the street from the Sheriff's Office.

Esther's hand went to her bodice, then to her mouth, as she watched her husband ride slowly up the street with his rifle propped up on his thigh.

Esther knew what his stallion's slow pace meant.

She knew what the rifle, carried in that manner, meant.

The Sheriff was several minutes before he emerged from the tiny stable behind the little log fortress that was the Firelands County Sheriff's office.

He walked slowly down the alley, toward the main street, rifle balanced in one hand, coat unbuttoned.

He walked with the deliberate pace of a slowly advancing locomotive -- powerful beyond measure and just as unforgiving, should anything -- or anyone -- stand in his way.

Esther could not see his eyes for the brim of his Stetson.

Esther did not need to see them.

She knew how pale, how hard his eyes would still be.

Esther took a few quick breaths, then turned to the bell-pull and gave a series of quick tugs -- one, one-two, one-two.

The Sheriff's tread was heavy as he came up the solid, dusty steps onto the board walk.

He turned, pale eyes studying the street, then the rooflines opposite: he turned, gripped the polished brass door handle, hauled the heavy door open, slid in and dropped back so the stairs were to his left and his back was to the wall.

He faintly heard a woman's hurrying tread on an unseen set of stairs.

Daisy's head came up as Esther's bell rang, and she started to smile, for she and Esther had long been friends, but as the bells continued -- one bell, then two, then two again -- Daisy's stomach dropped and she reached for a cupboard door.

She pulled the door open, seized the green-glass Rosary Esther gifted her long years before.

Daisy told the two girls to tend the kitchen.

They saw the Rosary in her hand and nodded, once.

Daisy thrust out of her kitchen, to the concealed door panel opposite -- she slid it open, stepped through, closed it behind, then she seized her skirts and pulled them almost knee-high.

She took the steep, concealed stairway at little short of a run.

 

Two hours before, the Sheriff found a man he'd been looking for.

He found him the way he intended, not the way his quarry intended.

They were alone.

The Sheriff announced his presence in quite voice.

"John Rice," he said, "turn around."

John turned and saw the business end of a '73 rifle looking squarely at him.

"Ain't no call for that, Sheriff," he protested.

"You made your brags you were going to make me take water."

Rice started to protest, stopped as the Sheriff's thumb wiped the rifle's hammer back to full stand.

"You bragged you were gonna brace me on the street," the Sheriff said in what was nearly an amused voice. "You said I'd back down rather'n face someone who was faster."

He was listening, John thought, and damned the idiocy that got him to bragging to his fellows.

"You got no one here to see you, John," the Sheriff said quietly: he eased the rifle to half cock, parked it against a scrubby trunk, whipped out of his coat and threw it over enough brush to keep it off the ground.

He took two steps to his left, coming out to where he could see all of John, and John could see all of him.

"Now that ain't fair," John protested, "you got two guns --"

The Sheriff stood dead still, waited.

John swallowed, squared off to the man.

"Now Sheriff, I got no quarrel with --"

"You set your quarrel when you made your brags, John. You've done that twice before and you back shot the fellow who braced you when they turned away and thought you didn't mean it."

The Sheriff saw John's face change, saw his body shrink a little the way it will when a man's spirit pulls into himself as he realizes he no longer has a choice.

Two gunshots punched blue holes in the air.

The Sheriff's .44 took John Rice two fingers below the bottom of his breast bone.

John's gun arm quit working and his pistol fired into the ground just ahead of his own boot toe.

He was instantly so sick he couldn't stand.

John Rice made his last mistake with a man that did not forgive such mistakes.

The Sheriff walked up on him, stepped on the dying man's pistol.

The Sheriff reloaded his right hand Colt, dropped the fired hull in his outside vest pocket, dunked in a fresh cartridge, clicked the cylinder around and set the hammer nose down on the empty chamber.

"I've not killed anyone shootin' right handed for just under a year now," he said matter-of-factly. "It don't do to get out of practice on these things."

John heard the words as from a great distance.

Part of his mind, what little was still thinking, cussed himself for watching the lawman's left hand Colt... everybody knew he favored his left hand gun for the first shot ...

The Sheriff waited several minutes, then laid a hand on the dead man's breast, felt for a heart beat.

Sheriff Linn Keller looked around, methodically studying his surroundings, then he looked up to the cloudy sky and said, "Well, Lord, he's all yours now."

 

The Sheriff walked into the Silver Jewel with the heavy tread of a man carrying bad news.

He carried his '73 rifle balanced in his hand.

His jaw was set, his eyes were cold, men drew back as he paced deliberately back to the Lawman's Corner.

He did not park his rifle in the corner, as he usually did.

He laid it across the table in front of him.

He did not hang his Stetson on its overhead peg as he usually did.

He sat, silent, unmoving, looking as friendly as a badger who'd just fought with its wife.

Mr. Baxter himself came back with a fat glass considerably larger than the squat, broad liquor glasses he kept for celebratory moments: this was tall as a man's hand is long, it was very nearly full of something amber and probably expensive.

The Sheriff looked up as Mr. Baxter set the glass on the table.

He set it down easy, but in the sudden, rather total hush that flowed through the place like sudden snowfall on a winter wind, it was loud when it touched the table.

The Sheriff handed the man a coin he'd had ready.

Mr. Baxter took one step back ... a second ...

The Sheriff seized the glass, stood -- fast -- he raised this payload of Old Sledgehammer --

Men stared in amazement as their Sheriff drank that tall glass of Two Hit John, all in one long breath.

He SLAMMED the heavy base to the table, picked up his rifle, reared back and roared to the ceiling -- one of the only times the Saloon ever saw the man reveal temper inside these walls -- "I SENT ANOTHER ONE TO HELL TODAY!"

 

Upstairs, two women, on their knees, reached for one another's hands.

The Sheriff's words penetrated Esther's office -- whether it came through the floor, through the walls, up the stairs, didn't matter:  she heard her husband's soul-deep rock-boiling anger.

Daisy's Rosary swung gently from one hand as she held Esther's.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God," she whispered, "pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death!"

 

Marnie Keller sat beside her Gammaw, two well-dressed women behind a big library table, back in the office Willamina made from unused space.

"Do you remember," Willamina said quietly, "when I did that same thing, out at the Spring Inn? -- I came in with a rifle and I sat at the back table, and that's what I did?"

Marnie nodded solemnly: she'd been there a year before, when Willamina was obliged to engage in a line of duty shooting.

"Do you remember I went out and drank my belly full of wellwater and threw up my guts after drinking that tall glass of Two Hit John?"

Marnie nodded again, blinked as her Gammaw smiled and tapped the Journal they were reading together.

"That's what old Pale Eyes did," she said. "He wanted to let the community know he'd done it and he wasn't happy about it, he wanted to show he was big enough to kill an enemy and mean enough to down enough liquor to floor a normal man and go home walking like he was stone sober."

"So you got that from him."

"I got that from him."

Marnie nodded thoughtfully.

"I can't recommend it, of course," Willamina smiled, "but ... it worked for him, and it worked for me!"

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SPRAY

Victoria picked up the woven wicker basket and ran her forearm through the handle, gloved hand bent at the wrist and delicate fingertips resting lightly on the green-painted rim, for all the world a well dressed and very ladylike girl with a picnic basket, bound for a grassy meadow and a cheerfully checkerboarded red-and-white ground cloth.

That her saddled mount had a conical boss thrust forth from its forehead and carnivorous fangs protruding past its bottom lip on either side, did not detract from this appearance.

Victoria looked at her wrist-unit, studied something, then nodded with satisfaction: she turned, laid a gentle hand on Cyclone's neck, gave her wrist-unit another long, thoughtful study.

"Stay, girl," she whispered, then she marched purposefully away from the Fanghorn, set the wicker basket down on a convenient stump.

Cyclone immediately began investigating a patch of thorny briers, nipping thick, spiked, vinelike stems off at their base and chewing them in as if it were a tasty length of pasta and she was consuming it like a naughty little boy at the dinner table.

Victoria reached into the basket and pulled out something roughly spherical, reddish, speckled -- something Cyclone saw and dismissed with a contemptuous, almost horselike, huff -- Victoria turned it, tilted her head as she looked at it, then dipped her knees, brought her hand down at arm's length, slung the round fruit high in the air, and drew.

Victoria was not as thoroughly self-steeped in firearms lore and legend as her brothers, but she was a girl with pale eyes, and that meant she knew what she liked.

She liked her Daddy's stainless Walthers, and she liked her Daddy's three inch Chief's Airweight, and she liked the pair of airweight, three-inch Chief's Specials that she wore as regularly as she wore ruffles and skirts.

Victoria was a practical sort and she'd not swum in seas of ballistic controversy and ammunition variety: no, she decided the hollow base wad cutter was the most practical projectile out of her .38s, and so she drove the flat end of a target-velocity bullet into the hard-skinned, high-pressure fruit, and giggled a little at the spray of dirty-mustard-yellow gel detonating with a mild, squishy *BANG*  from this inedible vegetable product.

The fruit could be pierced in an enclosed vessel, the pressure safely vented, the liquefied contents salvaged, refined, fermented or boiled: releasing the pressure was the trick: a favorite trick of naughty schoolboys was to throw these fruit, hard, onto a gravel roadway near their fellows, in order to anoint them with the dirty-mustard-colored, sweet-smelling spray.

Victoria reached into the basket, brought out another: she lowered her pistol, then brought both it and her throwing hand up, watched the fruit wobble against the white-puffy-clouded sky overhead, rolled the Smith's narrow, grooved trigger back --

*BANG* --

Victoria's (and Cyclone's) protective fields were more than proof against getting a mustard colored baptism (Victoria thought the fruits must be Methodist, as they baptize by sprinkling) -- Victoria laughed again: five fruits thrown, five hits, five sprays of high-pressure, sticky, sweet-smelling, ugly-mustard-colored fruit paste: she reloaded, switched revolvers, shot until her basket of fresh-harvested fruit was depleted.

Victoria knew she was watched.

She knew she was likely to be watched at all times, or most of the time anyway; she knew her exploits with a pair of revolvers most would use as hideout guns, would be noted, and Victoria knew the truth of her Daddy's observation, when as a much younger girl she pointed out that they were being watched while her Daddy was practicing at the police-range: he drew, fired six shots and knocked an equal number of heavy steel plates over with a half-dozen loud, satisfying CLANG!s ... she stood back and watched as her Daddy fired from the windowless, doorless husk that used to be a police-cruiser, as he ran an assault course, fast, merciless, with an impressive and honestly frightening accuracy, knocking down plates and slim steel silhouettes, slamming dinnerplate-sized circles onto their backs.

Victoria watched, half-admiring, half-anticipating as he came back to her, breathing deeply but steadily.

He picked her up and pressed her overhead like she was a giggling, lace-trimmed exercise weight, he brought her down and twiddled his must-tash against her nose and whispered, "I know they're watching, and they'll remember what I just showed them," then he set her down and murmured, "Umbrella."

Victoria dipped her knees, snatched up the furled bumbershoot parked against the bench, whipped it overhead, thrust it suddenly open: she screwed the earplugs quickly into her ears, dropped to a crouch, huddled under charcoal-grey nylon.

Victoria's Daddy snatched up an expired can of corn, whipped it overhead, pulled a single action .44 from his warbag and drove 250 grains of hard cast semi wadcutter through its soldered seam.

Victoria squealed with laughter as corn and corn water rained down on her umbrella for what felt like most of a minute.

When Victoria presented herself at her Daddy's police-range later that day, she stood, bright-eyed and innocent with a green-painted picnic basket on her forearm, gloved fingertips resting daintily on its edge as she tilted her head and asked, "Daddy, did you bring an umbrella today?"

 

 

Edited June 11 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

POLITICS

Sweat dripped from Marnie's nose onto the floor.

She gripped a pair of cast iron dumbbells that used to belong to her Gammaw, and she used them the same way.

Marnie used kettlebells instead of dumbbells for lifting, but the dumbbells were hexagonal on the ends, and made fine handles for doing push-ups, and that's what Marnie was doing.

Deep, vicious, fighting gravity like it was a personal enemy.

Marnie had a liking for Soviet marches, and she timed her thrusts against the deck with the rhythm of "Katyusha" -- recorded from an honest-to-God Soviet brass band! -- she was tired, she'd been working her lean horsewoman's body mercilessly, push-ups were how she finished her regimen.

The counter chimed -- she'd hit her goal -- Marnie clenched her teeth and drove down again.

"One for Gammaw" -- she grunted --

"One for the Sheriff" -- she grunted --

"AND ONE FOR ME!"

Marnie rose, set the dumbbells back on their rack, pivoted the rack into its wall recess: she wiped her face briskly with a damp towel, turned at the communications chime.

She sat and keyed in a sequence.

 

Sheriff Linn Keller studied his daughter as she leaned her head back against his office wall and rubbed her eyes.

"Must have been some goat rope," he said quietly.

Marnie dropped her arms into her lap, looked at her Daddy without moving her head.

"I need a vacation," she said quietly.

"Come on home, darlin'," Linn said without hesitation.

"Can't."

Marnie's smile was sad, tired, but grateful.

"The world thinks I took a one way trip to Mars. If I show up here, it could cause ..."

"Misunderstandings, yeah I know."

Linn looked very directly at his darlin' daughter.

"What happened?"

Marnie took a long breath, sighed it out.

 

Angela looked out of the screen and said, "Saddle up, we have a situation."

Marnie toweled the back of her neck, rubbed behind her ears.

"Who, what, when, where, why and how?"

"Someone backhanded Victoria at a dance, Michael got involved, three down with injuries and the Diplomatic Response Team --"

Marnie swore -- quietly, viciously, indelicately -- "Are they hurt?"

"No."

 

"Daddy, do you remember when Gammaw told us that in the military, captain and above is all politics?"

Linn nodded slowly. "I remember."

"You've got politics out the ears, too."

"Unfortunately."

"Victoria was at a dance."

Marnie saw her Daddy's eyelids drop to half mast.

He neither moved, nor did he speak, but Marnie considered that when her Daddy became this still, he went absolutely, totally, utterly, unmistakably, very noticeably, still.

"Victoria," he prompted.

"A young man was ... improper ... with her."

Marnie felt cold roll across the floor, like a thunderstorm's chilled downdraft hits the ground and spreads, right before the storm itself hits like a meteorological fist.

"He backhanded her."

Marnie saw her Daddy's fingers move, very slightly, as if wishing to close around the steel-banded end of a seasoned, white-oak, singletree.

"She sprained his wrist and broke his elbow and then she addressed two of his fellows who took exception to her refusal.

"Michael came across the floor like a Texas twister and automatic rescue protocols for Diplomatic personnel kicked in and suddenly the dance floor was filled with uniformed soldiers with fixed bayonets and short tempers.

"Victoria and Michael are unhurt, but the politics --"

"Hell with the politics," Linn interrupted, "what about Victoria's attackers?"

"In custody. One with a sprained wrist and a broken elbow, one with a broken and dislocated jaw and a bruised sternum -- that heel strike you taught us works, by the way -- now I have to navigate a situation where the host government is trying to salvage something from this attack on Diplomatic personnel."

"Anyone killed?"

Marnie closed her eyes.  "No," she sighed. "No martyrs today."

Linn considered whether to mutter that you can't kill a martyr, decided against it, asked "Is there any indication some political actor wanted a martyr out of this?"

"Angela ran a mind scan on everyone involved," Marnie said quietly. "Nobody knew anything about any setup, so no."

"Mind scan? You have those?"

"Angela found a setting on the learning injectors, those helmet things I told you about? -- she found a way to scan the mind as well as shove learning in."

Linn considered this, dismissed it.

"So no conspiracy, no governmental involvement."

"Nothing but someone who had more lust than good sense."

"What was it you told me?" -- Marnie heard amusement in her Daddy's voice -- " 'People is people wherever we goes!' "

Marnie nodded tiredly.

"Now I have the politics of assuring a government that one of its more influential members' sons actually did not cause problems for treaties and other negotiations, and I have to go to everyone involved in those treaties and negotiations and persuade them not to make political hay over this."

"How's Victoria?"

Marnie considered the question, then smiled quietly.

"The only thing she said -- other than her sworn testimony at the inquest -- was to thank Michael for coming to her rescue."

Linn raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," Marnie scolded.

"Rescue?" Linn asked quietly.

"She had three down before he got across the room. "Victoria hugged him and told him if there'd been more of them, or if they knew what they were doing, he'd have made the difference!"

Marnie stood.

"I have plenty of worlds to choose from," she said, "and I've learned vacation refreshes mind and spirit both."

Linn rose as Marnie stood: she came around his desk, hugged him fiercely, the way she used to as a little girl and she was standing up on a bale of hay to get closer to eye level for a good and proper hug.

"Send me a postcard," he whispered, then he kissed her forehead, the way he used to when she'd step up on that hay bale for the hug she loved.

Ten minutes later, Sharon tapped on his door, opened it a little, peeked in, coffee in hand.

Linn waved her in, leaned back in his chair, rubbed his face.

"Bless you," he murmured as she set his big steaming mug down on the desk blotter.

"Politics?" Sharon asked sympathetically.

"Yeah."

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

RUINATION!

 

The truck held supplies.

Supplies were needed.

There'd been intel that mortar teams were in the area, and everyone knew that a truck full of supplies was an attractive target.

Nobody looked up as the gunship snarled overhead, blades punishing the air as it passed.

Willamina Keller, USMC, shoved up against the truck, reached in, took the crate from gloved hands: she turned, handed it to the next grunt, turned back: she took this one, set the weight on her shoulder, hustled it across the compound, jogged back for the next one.

One of the guys from Supply handed her another box of rations and blinked in surprise: "Ah'd be day-amned," he almost drawled, "an officer doin' work!"
Willamina grinned up at him like the ranch girl she'd been, settled the weight on her shoulder like a bale of hay: "Don't tell anyone, you'll ruin my reputation!"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller hauled on the starter rope, reached down to turn the choke knob, pulled again: he jazzed the throttle a few times, then squeezed the throttle trigger hard and the bright-orange chain saw screamed as the freshly sharpened chain melted through new-fallen timber, scattering sawdust all over uniform trouser legs, polished boots and roadway: the Sheriff stepped back, considered the situation, raised the muttering saw, crushed the throttle and rear grip in his gloved hand and the saw screamed again.

A tree down on the highway was something the Sheriff wanted taken care of, and when he and his chain saw just happened to head for town after a vicious little storm, when the Sheriff saw an old residenter of a sizable tree surrendered its essence to the Eternal and fell dramatically across both lanes of the two lane roadway, the Sheriff climbed out of his sun-faded '68 Power Wagon, thrust into a set of old, familiar work gloves, hauled the chain saw out of the truckbed and set to work.

In a small town the Fire Department gets called for almost anything, and sure enough the rescue truck came flashing up to the felled tree: Irishmen ran through the stopped traffic with axes and two chain saws of their own, and the tree was quickly (if less than efficiently -- they were firefighters, not timber cutters) disassembled -- at one point, the German Irishman looked over at the Sheriff, who was industriously cutting off a thigh-thick branch.

"Now I'd be damned," he roared over the sound of multiple two-cycle engines, "a rankin' officer actually doin' work!"

Linn grinned at the man and shouted back, "Don't tell anyone, you'll ruin m' reputation!" --and both men laughed.

 

Old Pale Eyes gripped his end of the whipsaw, nodded.

Jacob had the other end.

The saw was freshly filed, the teeth recently set, they'd just greased its length, and now father and son cut through the road blocking tree.

Both lawmen were almost dry now, both were warmed by their labors.

Men showed up from who-knows-where, one was passing through, a man who'd known Old Pale Eyes when he was still a Cavalry officer back during That Damned War.

Linn and Jacob fell into their usual easy rhythm, letting the saw do the work, each one pulling, neither one pushing: the tree was broken down, chunks rolled to the side, branches dragged off and stacked: wagons appeared, firewood was harvested from this unexpected bounty, and the sound of sledge and wedge and splitting-ax punctuated the sounds of general labor.

The old campaigner paused, looked at the Sheriff: "Faith," he declared, "if it isn't an officer actually doin' work! Miracles still happen!"

The Sheriff looked up, hauled back on the saw, laughed.

"Don't tell anyone," he shouted back, "you'll ruin my reputation!"

 

 

 

Edited June 15 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

LONG AND QUIET

Dana urged Powder Keg into an easy, long-legged trot.

Dana rode around 55 gallon drums she'd rolled out into the field by herself.

She didn't ride fast.

She rode steady.

She'd never had Powder Keg at a gallop.

Powder Keg was bit trained when her Daddy bought him.

Dana rode Powder Keg bitless and between not being hurried, and not having a bit, Powder Keg was inclined to cooperate, and so he trotted just as nice as you please around the barrels.

Dana had no illusions that either she, or her patient old mule, would become barrel racers, but that was not the point.

Dana Keller, daughter of that hard headed, contrary, pale eyed Sheriff, was bound and determined to recover fully from having shattered multiple vertebrae and from having spent an extended and very unplanned vacation, courtesy certain Confederate specialty hospitals.

Part of her plan included rolling empty, red-white-and-blue painted, 55 gallon steel drums out into the pasture, then standing them up, then saddling Powder Keg, and then riding around the drums as if she were barrel racing.

By the time she got into the saddle, Dana was pretty well worn out.

Powder Keg waited patiently, as he always did: Dana bent over, hands on the saddle horn, grimaced as she worked her back a little, twisted, twisted the other way -- carefully, slowly -- she straightened, looked at the three barrels set in a big triangle.

Dana lifted her reins: "Yup, now," she said quietly, "yup, boy."

Pale eyes followed her progress.

Fatherhood is not an easy thing.

A father whose conscience whipped his own back time and again for not having a crystal ball, for not having precognition, for not having kept his youngest daughter from harm, watched from a hidden vantage.

His inclination had been to run out and help her set up barrels.

He didn't.

He wanted so much to saddle Powder Keg for her.

He didn't.

He ached as Dana struggled with the saddle, he stifled his wish to rush in and help as she used the winch to hoist the saddle, to place the saddle, to cinch up.

He kept reminding himself She wants to do this herself.

She has to do this herself.

He watched her mount, he watched her ride, he studied what her young body was saying: he almost broke cover when Dana leaned over with a grimace, just before she dropped her head and her Stetson brim blocked his view of her face: he felt his good left hand knot up into a fist as he willed himself to stillness.

Dana straightened, took a breath and blew it out with puffed cheeks and pursed lips.

She made a half-dozen orbits of the steel-drum triangle, not in any kind of a hurry.

Powder Keg moved sedately, smoothly, almost philosophically.

I can't protect her forever.

I failed Angela when I loaned her to that damned Eastern department --

Both his fists clenched and he allowed himself a surge of anger, then shoved it back down into its iron kettle and screwed the lid back down, tight.

Dana has to do this herself.

A pale eyed father turned reluctantly and walked back to the house, decided he wouldn't fix himself lunch after all.

He looked out to the pasture, at his youngest daughter -- God Almighty how is she growing so fast!-- shoved another barrel over and proceeded to roll it back to where she'd gotten it.

He turned and returned to his Sheriff's cruiser, headed back for his office.

A half hour later, a pale eyed Sheriff looked up at the delicate tap-tap, tap, on his office door.

He rose as a pale eyed girl peeked shyly around the barely-opened door.

He came around the desk as his little girl shoved herself into him and hugged him fiercely, then tossed her Stetson onto his desk and turned around, slapped her palms on her collar bones and said in a little girl's voice, "Pick me up, Daddy."

He reached down, cupped her elbows with his hands, bent his knees a little: he rose again, slowly, bringing her weight gradually off her boot heels, then he gave her a little shake -- just a little one, until he felt her spine *pop-pop-pop* and Dana gave kind of a gasping sigh.

She turned and hugged him again, the side of her head flat against his chest, and a father held his daughter for several long, quiet moments.

 

 

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

RIBBLE

Retired Chief of Police Will Keller eased the shifter up into Park and just sat there for a few moments before turning the ignition off, nice and easy.

He'd been easy on the shifter, not because he expected it to break -- no, the local school's automotive technologies class rebuilt the Crown Vic cruiser, rebuilt and restored and did a fine job -- the shifter, once loose from many years of use, was tight again, and Will wanted to keep it that way.

Kind of like when he ran his ancient 16 gauge model 12 he'd bought when he first left that damned drunk of a mother of his: when he ran the action, he ran it easy, unlike the 870s he'd used on duty.

Those ... he had no mercy on his duty shotguns: they HAD to work, peacefully or otherwise, and he'd SLAM them open and SLAM them shut --

Will lowered his head to the back of his wrist, his hand was laid over the top of the steering wheel.

He honestly ached.

The so-called pandemic and other circumstance kept delaying his regular dental visits, until it had been six years since he'd been in the dentist's chair: now they numbed a man up before doing a cleaning, and a good thing, as he remembered a regular cleaning as painful and something he'd rather avoid anyhow.

Unfortunately ... unfortunately, now, not only was he missing half his face -- if he reached up his hand, yes, his lip and the left side of his jaw were there, and to his surprise, neither his exploring fingers nor his rear view mirror revealed a bottom lip swelled to the size of his fist.

Will pulled his keys, locked the Crown Vic, climbed out.

Something dark flickered between himself and his front door and he looked again, to see a pretty young woman in a white nurse's uniform standing there like a catalogue model, head tilted and those bright eyes regarding him with the merry anticipation Angela always had, even as a little girl, when she came to see her Uncle Will.

He saw her eyes change -- mostly her eyes, the rest of her face didn't change much -- but she came toward him with the brisk cadence of a nurse who'd just spotted a problem, and her eyes went from I am so glad to be here with my favorite uncle! to Houston we have a problem, begin diagnostics sequence!

Will stopped, burned, reached into the car and pulled a printed sheet off the dash where he'd shoved it up ahead of the steering wheel.

He held it out to her.

Angela studied his face, blinked as her eyes dropped to shoulders and then the extended paper: she went from assessing facial symmetry to frowning at the printed masthead, then her pale eyes went back up to her Uncle's face and so did her hand -- gentle, stopping before she touched his cheek with the lightest fingertip-brush.

"Dental work," she murmured sympathetically. "Bad?"

Will barely smiled, and that with only half his face.

"Shtill mumm," he mumbled.

"And you kept this on the dash in case you got pulled over."

She saw determination, contrariness and humor all three in her Uncle's eyes.

"Come on inside," she said quietly, as if she were inviting him into her own house, instead of inviting him into his own home: Will raised a finger, stepped closer, then communicated his feelings in the clearest manner possible.

He hugged Angela -- carefully, warmly, strong and reassuring and warm, the way he always was, and she felt him laughing, even if he did maintain an absolute silence.

He's afraid he'll slobber on me, she thought, and kissed his cheek as they slacked their mutual embrace.

They went inside and Will reached into his jacket and pulled out a brown-plastic, pint bottle, handed it to Angela: she read the label, considered a moment, nodded.

"Prescription," she said quietly -- a statement, not a question -- "rinse twice a day on the affected side?"

Will nodded as Angela handed it back.

Angela started to take a step, stopped, looked at her Uncle Will with the same expression of distress she'd worn as a little girl when a red-rubber jacks ball got away from her and was lost.

"I wanted to make coffee," she said sadly, "but until your numb wears off --"

Uncle Will nodded.

"Don' wan'a ribble," he mumbled, and Angela looked so utterly sorrowful Will wasn't sure but what she was going to start to cry, and he didn't want that to happen, he hated it when he made women cry, so he hugged her up again and it was his turn to feel her laughter, then her long, patient sigh.

"You know," she said finally, "you could have let me know. We have some wonderful dentists that wouldn't --"

He drew back, gave her his best Gentle Expression, smiled with half his mouth, then reached up and felt his lip again as if expecting it to be puffed out like he'd been punched.

Will took the bottle of medicated rinse into the bathroom, came back with a little white-plastic bottle, held it up questioningly.

Angela nodded.

"Good idea," she said quietly. "Can you swallow?"

Will extended a flat hand, then wobbled it a little.

Maybe. 

Angela nodded.

"Sit down. I'll make coffee. It'll still be good when your numb wears off."

It took a couple of hours, during which time the pair was mostly quiet -- Will worked his face and his jaw on the theory that movement might recover him more quickly -- Angela was quietly watchful, the way a medical professional is, even when they're trying not to look it.

Will was finally able to take a successful swallow without dribbling down his shirt front -- he shook out two capsules of over the counter pain killer, got those down, worked his face a little more.

 

Angela sat alone in the staff lounge, looked at her wrist-unit, calculated the time before she'd be needed on the med-surg floor again, smiled as she remembered sitting with her Uncle Will, as she recalled quietly recommending he take two more acetaminophen before going to bed, as she remembered his warm hug right before she went out his door.

Angela Keller sat, one hand wrapped around a half-empty mug of still-warm McKenna Coffee Works coffee, then she tilted up the mug, drained the contents, rinsed the mug and hung it back on its peg.

Angela looked at her reflection in the mirror and giggled as the reflection looked back and said, "Ribble!"

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

IT DIDN'T FEEL THAT BIG

Jacob Keller delighted in his Uncle Pete's Garand.

Jacob was a tall skinny kid who liked little better than to lay a folded saddle blanket over a particular fence rail, lay his late Uncle's rifle over the blanket, stand up on his hind legs and hit a chain-suspended steel plate half a thousand yards distant.

The rifle had taken the Camp Perry thousand yard trophy -- twice -- Jacob was not behind it when the rifle did the deed, and Jacob never quite managed to equal his late Uncle's feat, but he was working on it.

John Garand's rifle was impressive -- Jacob imagined he could bring down about anything with it -- so far he'd only put dents in steel plate and holes in paper, but it was the rifle he had in hand when a bull elk came running down his Pa's back pasture.

Jacob had no wish to just drop an elk.

He had no objection to dropping a meat animal -- he'd taken a barren cow elk the year before, and good eatin' it was -- but he'd neither wish nor need to bring down this big bull.

Something told Jacob it would be healthy to go unnoticed, if at all possible, so he squatted, then dropped one knee and waited, Garand in hand.

The elk slowed to a trot, surprisingly smooth for something that genuinely big, and Jacob's hands tightened on wartime walnut as the elk swung and lifted off the ground, and flowed easily over the chin-tall board fence.

Sheriff Linn Keller watched the bull trot off, unconcerned, not in the least little bit troubled before his crossing at the sight of the herd stallion advancing at an aggressive canter, nor at the presence of the crouched two-leg on the other side of the fence.

Linn watched as Jacob turned a little, watching the big bull's departure: the long, tall, dreadfully skinny lad rose to his standing height, Garand at high port.

Jacob stood and looked after the departing Wapiti for several long moments, then he laid the Garand across his elbow like it was a flint lock longrifle and started sauntering up the fence toward his father.

Linn wasn't sure quite when Jacob realized his old man was watching him.

He did note Jacob's stride did not stutter when their eyes met.

Jacob stopped, looked at his father, saw his Pa's pale eyes look out where the elk had been.

"Big one," Linn murmured, his voice deep, quiet, reassuring.

"Yes, sir."

Linn looked pointedly at the Garand, nodded a little.

"Looks like you had good medicine."

Jacob looked at Uncle Will's .30-06 and frowned a little.

"Sir," he admitted, "that's a good rifle, all right, but when he come over that fence, he warn't but twenty foot from me, and Uncle Pete's rifle didn't feel near as big as it did an hour ago!"

Edited June 19 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

HORSIE PUPPY

Jacob Keller was dancing with his Pa's stallion.

Naked to the waist, grinning like a fiend, half bent over, arms a-dangle, Jacob thrust left, then right, and the stallion -- fiery, challenging -- danced with him.

Tall boy and wild-broke Appaloosa, each defying the other, yet each moving with the other, until finally Jacob ran at him, swung a leg, and with a double handful of mane, wrapped long skinny legs around the stallion's barrel and yelled "YAAA!"

No saddle, no bridle, nothing but a pair of blue jeans and well polished boots: a Las Vegas oddsmaker would not have touched that one, and sure enough, Jacob ended up hitting the ground and rolling, coming up on his feet, laughing, as only the young can do.

He ran toward the stallion, who half-reared -- Jacob swatted at slow-slashing hooves -- he danced again and the stallion danced with him, then tried to bite.

Jacob twisted, slapped the stallion's back with the flat of his hand -- hard -- the horse spun and Jacob half-crouched again, breathing through his mouth, his jaw thrust out, determination in his eyes.

The stallion shook his head, muttered: Jacob thrust a hand in his jeans pocket, came up with his favorite knife, thumbed it open.

The stallion's head came up and if ever it's possible for a horse to give someone a suspicious look, this one did.

Jacob pulled out a plug of molasses twist tobacker from his other pocket -- never taking his eyes off the stallion -- he circled, slowly, to his left, shaved off several long, thick slices from the plug -- the knife thumbed shut and was shoved back into a pocket, Jacob dumped the cuttin's into his free hand --

The stallion come forward, snuffing loudly, then bit like a striking rattler.

Jacob's off hand found itself suddenly missing what was left of a now-skinny plug of twisted tobacco.

"Well you scoundrel," Jacob said softly, then laughed and walked up to the stallion and rubbed its ears fearlessly. "You think you got away with somethin', don't you?"

 

Angela was a little girl -- a happy little girl with a contagious laugh, with apple cheeks, with her Daddy cranked tightly around her four-year-old little pink pinky.

Angela's Mama was fussing over Marnie, who was accepting being dressed up with all the ill grace of someone going to the dentist: she stood with her bottom jaw out, her brows crunched together, arms folded, while her Mama tied the cloth belt around her middle and fluffed her skirt out.

Angela spun and giggled, twirling her skirt the way a happy little girl will.

Shelly turned, frowned at Marnie's folded arms: she started to say something when the room brightened, and Shelly knew the door opened.

"Oh, no," she sighed, then turned and dropped her shoulders in defeat as Angela ran, giggling, toward the pasture.

Mother and older sister chased the fast moving four year old.

 

Jacob bent over, hands on his knees, breathing heavier now.

That ground, he thought, gets harder every time I hit it!

He straightened as Angela squirted through the gate, pushed it shut behind her, slammed the wood latch shut, stopped and regarded her Daddy's newest stallion with wide and delighted eyes, and yelled in a little girl's high happy voice, "Puppy!"

Shelly tried to slide the latch open, but she was pushing against the gate with her off hand -- Marnie shouldered her Mama in the ribs and snapped "Move!" -- Shelly, startled, fell back two steps, awkward in the heels she'd intended to wear to the City, shopping, opened her mouth to protest as Marnie shoved the gate open with a most unladylike snarl.

Jacob tried to run forward, to intercept the stallion --

Angela ran, arms arms wide, an expression of pediatric beatification on her shining face -- 

"Horsie puppy!" she yelled, and the stallion threw his head at this most unexpected development, shied away from her, turned fast.

Right into Jacob.

Jacob grabbed a double handful of mane and vaulted off the ground, seized as much horse barrel as he could with his nearly one cloth yard long inseam, and horse and rider, with one accord, ran just hell-a-tearin' away from this noisy little creature and made for the other end of the pasture, just as hard as they could go.

Horses, being herd animals flowed away from their approach and fell in behind, and Jacob and this new fire breathing stallion were suddenly the arrowhead of a living river of hard hooves and fur, of manes and tails floating in the high mountain wind.

Jacob laid down over the stallion's neck, his hands pressed hard against the base of the mane.

He didn't want to jump this wild fire eater, especially bareback, so he leaned a little and pressed with one palm and yelled "HAWWW!"

It was probably in spite of Jacob's effort and not because of it -- very likely it was the whitewashed fence in sight not far ahead -- the stallion laid over, turned fast -- Jacob yelled encouragement and the stallion's steelshod hooves cut into dirt and grass and second hand horse feed, man and beast laid over and fought against physics and ended up running parallel to the fence headed back the way they'd come, only on the far side of the pasture -- safely away from his Mama and his sisters.

Jacob gave the stallion his head.

Not that he had much choice in the matter, but Jacob was young, and young men are full of fire and so was this horse, and Jacob encouraged the stallion with hands and with heels and with voice, and every one of his Pa's herd streamed after him, thunder and dirt clods and dust raising behind.

Marnie snatched Angela up and turned to keep Jacob and the stallion in sight -- Marnie, in a full-skirted dress, in nylons and little heels and her hair done up and tied with a matching ribbon -- Marnie, an absolutely gorgeous daughter of the Shining Mountains, her little sister held protectively against her as she turned, knees bent, snarling, and mother Shelly standing back from her pale-eyed daughter, suddenly realizing just how much those pale eyes and that tight-drawn face looked like her husband, on the rare occasion when she'd seen him ready to bring war itself upon some stupid soul.

The pasture was most of a mile long.

Jacob did not believe in abusing horses.

He eased his posture, pitched his voice softer now, let the stallion slow: the herd was strung well out behind, and Jacob sat up more, and the stallion slowed more, then stopped, and Jacob patted his neck and called him a good boy and the stallion came back to the middle of the pasture where Jacob's handful of thick tobacco shaving went flying, and started snuffing the ground, searching for the fragrant treats.

Angela did not cry: no, Angela's little face was red and screwed up in anger, she reached her little arms toward Jacob and the stallion and squalled "IWANNAPETDAHORSIEPUPPY!" and Shelly realized that, perhaps, this was not the day to go to the City, shopping, after all.

 

 

 

Edited June 19 by Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

THE FALL

Joseph Keller, firstborn son of Jacob and Ruth, looked at the swift-running stream, looked at the log spanning the torrent, smiled.

His Pa told him not to go log-walking, especially if the leaves were off but the bark was on, as the bark often rotted and got slick underfoot, and -- Jacob looked very directly at his son, lowered his head a few degrees, then added quietly, "Don't ask me how I know!"

Joseph Keller listened to his Pa and promptly discarded fatherly advice as soon as he saw the silent, patient dare lying across the streambank.

He'll never know.

Joseph almost ran up to the deadfall, climbed up onto the trunk, twisted his feet and felt bark slip and twist out from underfoot.

He grinned.

Joseph set out across the fallen tree trunk, thrilling with each step -- I'm pulling one over on Pa! -- the deliciousness of the rebellion overrode any good sense: an excellent sense of balance and sheer luck got him to the other side, where he surveyed his newly-won kingdom with all the triumph of an armored conqueror: his return trip was quicker, half out of confidence, half out of fear -- Made it! -- he jumped off the tree trunk and onto the streambank.

His Pa hadn't been there to see him, which made his sense of surreptitious triumph that much greater.

Joseph Keller, son of Jacob Keller, grandson of a dignified older man who owned all this acreage, looked around and turned and shifted his weight and laughed with the innocent victory of an adventurous boy.

Then he felt the world crumble out from underfoot.

Next day, Jacob rode back to the same streambank, the same deadfall log spanning the current.

Jacob read small booted footprints leading up to the log, he saw bark twisted, loosened, slipped in a few places.

Then he studied the streambank and his eyes tightened a little at the corners.

Joseph came back to his Grampa's fine house wet and muddy and considerably downcast about his general attitude.

Jacob saw him coming and Jacob intercepted him and Jacob hunkered down and looked at his adventurous, soggy, muddy son and assessed him for injuries, asked if he was hurt, considered the torn elbow in Joseph's coat and the sorry state of his appearance in general.

Sheriff Jacob Keller smiled a little, just a little, for he recalled what it was to be young and adventurous.

Now as he studied the streambank, he read the story.

Joseph stood on the edge of the stream -- here -- a confusion of overlapping tracks, an irregular impress where he picked up a rock and probably chunked it into the water to see the splash -- the bank was undercut, the bank collapsed.

Jacob looked upstream, down, nodded ...

The bank is shallower down there, he thought.

I see where he climbed out.

Jacob considered the deadfall across the swift-running stream, then looked at the collapsed bank, looked at the point of emergence where a little boy with pale eyes, soaky wet and muddy, climbed out of the creek and started for home.

 

Jacob was in the kitchen when his son came out from his Mama's mandatory bath -- he was both cleaner, and warmer, than he'd been when his Mama marched him in for a good warm bath and a good scrubbing.

Jacob motioned his son over, took the boy's hands, nodded at the light sheen of salve on the scraped palms.

"Pa used to swear by some stuff he got from a Navajo shaman," he said, then frowned, lifted Joseph's palm, sniffed at the locally made unguent, then shook his head.

"Not the same stuff."

Curious, Joseph sniffed at his medicated scrape.

"Had supper yet?" Jacob asked quietly.

Joseph shook his head.

"Me neither. You got clean clothes?"

Joseph nodded solemnly.

"Might want to go get dressed. Wouldn't do to come to the supper table in your bath robe."

Jacob winked and his son grinned, and bare, pink-scrubbed, youthful feet charged up a wide set of hand made stairs in his Grampa's house.

 

 

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

POCKET LINT

Old Pale Eyes was a long, tall sort with a short temper, callused hands and absolutely no patience for foolishness.

This blooded warrior, this just and upright scion of the Law itself, was said to pull fenceposts and make it look easy, kick buffalo out of his path and run his hand down a charging mountain cat's throat, grab its tail, jerk it inside out and send it runnin' buck naked the other direction.

It was said the man was a snake with a sixgun, that he could out-draw a bolt of lightning, he could split a playin' card at two hundred yards shootin' off hand in a stiff crosswind in full dark and make it look easy, he could tie a noose of thirteen turns and hang a half dozen outlaws at a time with it.

For some odd reason, nobody talked about the man settin' in his office with his boots up on the corner of the desk, calmly regarding the slit-eyed, fuzzy-grey kitten happily curled up on his lean belly, accepting gentle caresses as its just due.

The Sheriff stopped in the Silver Jewel as he hadn't et in a while, his belly was growlin' at him and he smelt Daisy's good cookin', and when that cute little hash slinger set his plate down on the table, the Sheriff proceeded to work on pork chops because they smelled best of all.

He laid a well-gnawed bone down on the edge of his plate and he felt something tug at his trouser leg under the table, which was kind of unusual.

Now the Sheriff was a tall man, the Sheriff was a long-legged man, and the Sheriff's regular table had plenty of leg room, and the Sheriff leaned back and taken himself a look under attair table and he saw a little, grey, fuzzy kitten industriously ascending his Shin Bone -- at least he saw it on one side, then the other -- this determined little feline attained the summit of Mount Kneecap, fairly stomped up the man's thigh, then turned and jumped up on the table, waded through his mashed taters and then picked up that well-gnawed pork chop bone, turned and looked at the Sheriff, and growled.

Now the Sheriff sat in his office -- he'd got another plate for himself and managed to keep the furry starveling out of it -- this little full-bellied troublemaker was curled up on the Sheriff's belly, eyes closed, purring far louder than something its size should be able to, when his office door opened and a scared-looking little girl and an uncertain mother came in.

There was no doubt at all in the child once she saw what the Sheriff's hands were caressing.

A long, tall, man-killin' tyer of nooses, apprehender of evil-doers, rider of fractious horses and upholder of the Law, carefully handed a splay-legged, claw-padded little kitten to a delighted little girl who'd managed to track down her wayward companion.

The mother held back as the Sheriff leaned forward and asked gently, "What's your kitten's name?" and the little girl held the mewing fuzzball against her neck as she said, framing her syllables most carefully, "Pocket Lint."

A man who'd faced down large and angry men bearing a variety of weapons, a man who'd shot his musket dry, broken it in battle and laid about the enemy with a broad ax snatched from a nearby woodpile, a man who knew what it was to break horses and to be broken by them, a man who'd walked up to Death itself and backhanded its bony chops and dared it to do its worst, smiled quietly and stroked the fuzzy little kitty with the back of one bent finger, and nodded, and allowed in a gentle, quiet voice that the name fit.

But nobody ever talked about that.

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

WOULD YOU WANT THAT?

It was not really common for Sheriff Jacob Keller to take any time off.

He did, generally at his wife's behest, as he'd learned she was both younger, smarter, and better looking than him, that she knew him better than he knew himself, and she could see through him like he was made of window glass.

Ruth knew Jacob was concerned about his elderly Uncle Will, and she patted her husband's hand and suggested in nearly a whisper that he go see the man and maybe stay overnight, as the poor old soul was lonely, and he still missed his Crystal.

Jacob, by his own admission, was not as dumb as he looked, which a friend suggested proved the Lord is merciful (everyone should have that one friend who brings you back to earth with a solid ker-thump) and so he arranged for coverage, he packed a grip and he had a grin on his face and a loaf of fresh baked, still warm from the oven sourdough bread in hand when his Uncle Will opened the door.

We will dispense with greetings, laughter, lies and bigger lies and more laughter, we will dispense with the length and breadth of the visit, of frying up some dead pig for the noon meal and the retelling of the origin of its term.

Actually we need to expand on the dead pig.

You see, when Will and Crystal were still newly wed, one night Crystal didn't really feel like fixing supper, so she suggested they stop for burgers on the way home.

Will suggested that they not and Crystal pretended to take offense -- she flipped her hair and shook her head and demanded in a haughty tone, "My good man, and just why not?"

Will grinned at her and said "They make those things out of dead cows!" 

She swatted him, they both laughed, and they stopped for burgers, but ever since, reference was made to frying up some dead pig, or eating some dead cow, or stopping at the All-Night for some dead chicken.

In that vein, the two had dead pig -- bacon and eggs -- and it was hard to tell if the pair enjoyed the meal more, or each other's company the more.

Jacob overnighted with his Uncle.

Next day, Uncle Will indicated a particular shotgun parked by the front door.

"Would you want that?" Will asked, and Jacob, by his own admission, "came to a full and complete stop," which of course he'd say that, that's something a lawman would say.

He gave that aged Model 12 Winchester a long look, then he looked at his Uncle Will and said quietly, "Yes, I most certainly would!"

Uncle Will handed the gun to Jacob, then turned and went into his bedroom: Jacob heard the gun cabinet open, then close, and Uncle Will came back with another model 12 Winchester, this one in sixteen gauge.

Will's heart lifted at the look on Jacob's face.

Jacob parked the twelve gauge and accepted the sixteen, looked it over carefully, mounted it and took a couple test swings like he was following a clay bird, then he handed it back and said, "When John M. Browning designed the Model 12, he designed it around the sixteen gauge. A model 12 in sixteen looks better, mounts better and swings better, than a model 12 in any other persuasion!"

Will reached up on a semi-decorative shelf and handed Jacob a five-pack of 00 buck and a single 00 buck round and said quietly, "You have a history with that gun," and Jacob nodded.

"It was my cruiser gun," he said in a soft voice. "I shot this gun in qualification, I hunted grouse back East with this gun, and one dark night Sis drug some fellow out of the All-Night and was outside persuading him to cooperate when the whole place emptied out.

"I stood on the little rise beside the parking lot with this very gun and I never made a move, never said a word, didn't even rack the slide ... but Willa said afterward I was the only thing that kept her from getting her sweet little backside stomped that night!"

Will parked the sixteen gauge beside the door, where its heftier counterpart used to live, then he laughed a little and said "I'll need to get me some shells for this one, I don't think I have any on hand!"

 

Next day, after Jacob hung the model 12 on the gunrack above and behind his office chair, he checked his computer and smiled, then he picked up the phone, punched in a complex series of keystrokes -- necessary, when interfacing between an Earthside phone system and Confederate-based Martian commo -- "Uncle Will, this is Jacob. You ought to be getting a package just any time."

A pause.

Jacob heard his Uncle's front door open, he heard the phone being set down, heard the old man grunt as he picked up something: there was the click of a lock back knife opening, the sound of cardboard tearing, and a chuckling "We-e-ell, hayill," then the scrape of the phone being picked back up.

"I ordered you a couple boxes of sixteen gauge bird shot and three packs each of buck and slug," Jacob grinned -- Will could hear the grin in his nephew's voice -- "didn't want you to have to run out and get some, so I just ordered it for you!"

 

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SOMEONE IS ALWAYS WATCHING

Sharon raised her eyebrows, looked at the Sheriff.

"He's right here," she said, "hold on."

Linn winked at his dispatcher as he settled half his backside on the edge of her desk, accepted the phone, put it to his ear.

"Sheriff Keller."

His grin was slow, wide and genuine.

"Reverend Dennis, how in the hell are you?"

He listened, blinked a few times as he did: Sharon slid a yellow pad and a sharpened pencil over and bumped his leg to make sure he knew they were there, and the Sheriff made eye contact and nodded, once, the grin widening a little as he did.

"Sounds to me," he said in a pleased voice, "like you did the right thing."

He said his goodbyes, handed the receiver back to Sharon, looked thoughtfully at the floor, then slowly stood and sauntered over to the big stainless steel coffee pot.

He picked up one of his several mugs -- he cycled different ones to the office, this one said CAUTION on one side and CAFFEINE DEPRIVED LAWMAN on the other: he stared at it for a full minute, his expression thoughtful.

Sharon waited until he drew it full, trickled in some milk, before allowing her consuming curiosity to run over top of her patience.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Well what?" Linn asked innocently, right before he took a deliberately-noisy slurp of coffee.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" Sharon demanded, then shook her Mommy-finger at the Sheriff:  "I know that look, you long tall drink of water! Either you sired yourself another pale eyed bronc rider or you hit the Lottery, and I don't see you on the phone ordering up a new truck!"

Linn swallowed, strolled back to Sharon's desk, parked half his bony backside on its edge again.

"That was my nephew Dennis, the preacher."

"I heard you call him Reverend Dennis."

"I'm the only one of the family that does. Everyone else just calls him Dennis."

"So ... Dennis's wife had a baby? Or did he hit the lottery?"

"No, no."  Linn made a wave-off motion, his voice gentle, and he took another sip of coffee.

"Nothin', really."

Sharon picked up a flyswatter and smacked her boss's backside, then shook the blue-plastic slapper menacingly, her face an exaggeration of manufactured meanness, and Linn looked right at her and murmured, "You're cute when you're angry."

Sharon tossed the flyswatter behind her, threw her hands in the air:  "I can't even insult him!" she declared, and Linn took another sip of coffee.

"Dennis said their water is turned off for a hydrant replacement."

Sharon frowned a little: any utility work was routinely reported to her, and no one had said hi, yes or go-fly-a-kite about any hydrants lately, then she remembered the Sheriff's nephew didn't live in-county.

"Dennis saves his milk jugs and he's got several already filled and stacked beside his commode for no-water flush."

Sharon raised an eyebrow:  "O-kaaaaay," she said hesitantly.

"He's got half a flat of bottled water but he considered that might not be enough, so he ran out and got two more, just in case."

"O-kaaaay," Sharon repeated, leaning back and crossing her arms.

"He got home and packed one inside and he said a new neighbor moved in beside him, he's never met her but she's apparently a middle aged single woman. He carried over that other flat of bottled water and hit her doorbell and she didn't answer the door, so he just left it in front of the door, on her porch -- no note, just an anonymous 'You're being taken care of.' "

"That," Sharon said slowly, "was nice of him."

"He called to thank me."

"Forrrrrrr ...?"

Linn grinned again, his face reddening to a remarkable degree.

"He said he was following the example he'd seen me set."

Sharon leaned forward and patted his arm in a motherly way.

"What was it you told us at the in-service? 'Someone is always watching,' you said, and you just proved it!"

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

 RIGHT 

Sheriff Linn Keller's hand was tight around the wanted man's throat.

Granite rock cut into the fleeing felon's back and the back of his head.

The Sheriff's eyes were cold, his face was an expressionless mask, and his grip was nothing short of unbreakable.

The outlaw twisted, kicked: at one point he tried to bring a knife into play, until a callused vice closed around his wrist and twisted, and only the fact that the Sheriff's hand was shutting off most of his wind kept him from a scream of utter agony.

The Sheriff eased up on his throttling grip -- he let go of the neck, grabbed a double handful of coat and vest to keep his prisoner from hitting the ground -- then he cocked his good right fist and drove a fast punch into his captive's soft ribs, twisting to get his weight behind the punch.

The outlaw saw white and tasted copper and the Sheriff picked him up by the shirt front and the belt, he stepped back and spun around once and threw the man, just honestly threw him.

Sky and trees and rocky dirt spun around the outlaw until he hit face first and felt them hands hit him again and the dirt fell away from him and something like the front end of the noon freight drove into the middle ribs on the other side.

The outlaw lived just short of a half hour.

A half hour of concentrated, scientific, cold, precise, honest, torture.

A pale eyed lawman had seen too much and what that outlaw did was so far beyond the pale he didn't deserve even a noose.

He did, however, richly deserve due process.

That pale-eyed Sheriff was the due process.

 

"The outlaw was found after a month," Willamina said quietly. "It appeared as if he'd fallen off a cliff and hit a slide and ended up most of a mile downhill."

Marnie waited, solemn-eyed, stockinged legs properly crossed, hands folded demurely in her skirted lap.

"When you've seen so much," Willamina continued quietly, closing the handwritten volume she'd been quoting from, "it becomes too much."

Willamina saw her granddaughter's head tilt slightly, saw her blink, followed her grandchild's thoughts, smiled slightly as Marnie stopped her thoughts before they fell from her mouth.

Willamina leaned closer, laid gentle fingertips on the back of Marnie's hand.

"There are those who deserve such treatment," she whispered. "If you continue to follow your Daddy into law enforcement, you will see those things, and you will understand."

Willamina saw her granddaughter's eyes lighten, then go suddenly pale, and Marnie drew stillness around her like an old, familiar cloak, and something told Willamina that Marnie already survived things that would blast the average mortal's soul.

 

Long years later, years after Marnie marched in mourning black behind her Gammaw's horse drawn hearse as the woman was laid to rest with military honors, Marnie watched with veiled eyes at the spectacle in the middle of the street.

It was a celebration, yes, but on this world, in this town, spectacle turned to slaughter, bravado to bullying, and a noted bully was cheerfully maiming all comers in the ring in the middle of the street.

What was supposed to be straight-up boxing, was an excuse to use honor and fear of being branded a coward, as an opportunity to pound selected opponents, to humiliate them with serious injuries or the mark of a coward if they refused this walking meat grinder's challenge.

The Chief Ambassador touched Marnie's elbow.

"Don't," he said softly.

Marnie pulled her elbow from him, then turned and said quietly, "Hold my beer."

Chief Ambassador Marnie Keller turned, lifted her skirts, marched through the crowd, stomped up the wooden steps and swung over the hand-laid, well-twisted, coarse-fiber rope into the ring.

The crowd shouted approval: they had no idea what was going on, but this would at least be relief from seeing what amounted to executions as public spectacle.

Marnie held up gloved hands; the crowd hushed, slowly.

"What is this!" the big, bare-to-the-waist beast in the middle of the ring demanded.

"Your rules," Marnie called, her voice loud, challenging, "say that anyone can challenge ol' Rock Solid here!  Is that right?"

"I can't fight a woman!" Rock Solid protested, which is probably the only intelligent thing he'd done that day.

"By your own rules," Marnie shouted, her voice loud, pitched to carry, "any who refuse the Challenge is a COWARD!"

The crowd erupted: they smelled blood -- they'd seen plenty of it already, but here was something unusual, and the unusual is exciting, and either Rock Solid was going to be beaten, disgraced by a mere woman, or this famous Ambassador was going to end up beaten and bloody and would be set firmly back into her place!

Either one would meet the public's approval, especially this public, already fired by blood and violence and teeth on the mat.

Marnie spun, her long skirts flaring, and she took three steps away from the ropes, giving herself more room to work.

She thrust out an accusing, gloved finger.

"ROCK SOLID, I CHALLENGE YOU!" she called, her voice loud in the sudden hush.

There was an immediate, urgent murmur as bets were laid, as odds were given, given again.

"I CAN'T FIGHT YOU! YOU'LL HAVE SOLDIERS AFTER ME!"

Marnie reached to her throat, twisted free the faceted, polished, square emerald with rubies set at the corners, drew it free and held it up.

It glowed, green, bright, shining as if from an inner light, catching the sunlight and the spectators' eyes.

She turned, letting everyone see her cupped, upraised hand.

"My insignia of office," she called, then drew her hand down and back and snapped it out, and the Chief Ambassador whipped up his pearl-grey, flat-crowned hat, caught the spinning ruby, trapped it with his free hand.

Marnie spread her arms, circled the arena, almost dancing: "NOW I'M JUST ME!" she shouted with a smile, then turned and thrust a bladed hand at her solid, massive opponent.

"UNLESS YOU ARE A DAMNED COWARD, ROCK SOLID, LAY ON!"

 

Sheriff Linn Keller looked up, surprised, as something white flowed into his field of vision.

Angela reached over and turned the lock on the Sheriff's door.

She came around beside him, bent over, keyed in three quick commands on her Daddy's desk computer.

The Inter-System screen flowed into existence, completely overlaying his usual screen, and Sheriff Linn Keller leaned forward, drawn by the sight of his oldest daughter turning and giving a man in what looked like a middle-of-the-street boxing ring a look that he recognized.

Angela muted the sound, laid a hand on her Daddy's suddenly tense shoulder -- it was like gripping a marble statue, if a statue had living muscle and was warm to the touch -- she realized yet again just how strong a man her Daddy really was -- then she watched the screen with him, and narrated in a quiet voice.

"This guy she's fighting," Angela said, "did some ... very bad things ... to two girls. He murdered one of the witnesses there in the ring before he could file charges and the other one saw the first one beaten to death, so he's not going to talk. Marnie was approached by their government as they wanted the perp apprehended and charged, but no one can give firsthand testimony now."

"What about the victims?" Linn asked, studying Marnie's stance, her graceful, flowing, feminine gestures as she played to the crowd, apparently insulting her marginally-reluctant opponent.

"One is dead and the other is not expected to survive."

"DNA evidence?"

"Corroborating, but not accepted on this planet. We're working on acceptance."

Angela reached down, touched a key, returned the volume.

"WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO THOSE GIRLS," Marnie challenged, circling: her hands, her arms, moved like cobras, feminine, almost mesmerizing: "AFTER I WHIP YOU HERE, YOU COWARD, YOU'LL GET A FAIR TRIAL AND I'LL HANG YOU MYSELF!"

"I AIN'T FIGHTIN' NO WOMAN!"

"YOU HAD NO PROBLEM BEATING TWO LITTLE GIRLS AND DOING THINGS TO THEM I WOULD NOT DESCRIBE IN PUBLIC!" Marnie raged, and father and daughter heard her own pain, her own deep-wounded anger: Marnie had been beaten, and terrible things done her, and her druggie of a mother had done nothing to stop it. "I HAVE THE EVIDENCE AND YOU'LL HAVE TO KILL ME TO KEEP ME FROM --"

She twisted, ducked a little, hit his kidney as he went by: Marnie was fast and Marnie was experienced, Marnie was well versed in street fighting, and after watching this rock fisted monster fight dirty against men he'd challenged and beaten dirty, Marnie had absolutely no qualms about returning the favor, in the self same manner and fashion.

He was speed and she was strength and she was water, flowing around his attacks: her long skirt was not hinderance at all, either to movement, nor to using her dancer's legs to deliver brutal and cumulatively damaging kicks to a variety of targets.

One punch knocked Marnie across the ring: she rolled, fell out from under the bottom rope, hit the ground.

She shook her head to clear the ringing haze, snarled: those nearest said she had fangs and her ears laid back, but of course that was an exaggeration, for all that it was an accurate impression: she seized the bottom rope, jumped, swarmed back into the ring.

He thought he was ready for her, until both her hard little heels hit the side of his knee and he went down like a splintered oak.

Marnie was on him.

She came down on one of his hands like she was riding a pogo stick -- both heels into the back of his punching hand -- she bounced off, skipped just out of reach, spun in, skirt flaring and leg thrusting out, and his bottom jaw broke in two places.

Marnie slapped her cupped hands -- hard -- against his ears, she seized his other wrist, twisted, hard: in the shocked silence, the sound of something twisting apart, or maybe breaking, Marnie wasn't sure which -- she shifted her grip, surged up, screamed as she hauled his shoulder out of joint while he was still numb, shocked, blind and paralyzed with pain.

She dropped onto his back, ran an arm around his throat, got him in a choke and bore down hard.

A choke hold was forbidden, back home, it was strictly against Sheriff's regulations as it was a good way to cause permanent damage.

Marnie did not care.

Marnie Keller, Chief Ambassador of the Confederacy, had just driven her heels into this man's kidneys -- she'd broken his one knee, his one hand, dislocated his wrist and his shoulder, she'd blasted a paralyzing pressure wave of immobilizing pain through his eardrums, and now she had a murderer's strangle lock around his neck.

Marnie knew what this monster'd done to those girls.

Marnie knew what had been done to her when she was the same age as his two victims.

Marnie's lifetime of rage and of hidden pain overrode all of her safeguards, all of her gentility, all of her Ambassadorial discretion.

Marnie Keller ran her legs as far around him as she could, she locked herself into position, she brought all the raging power, all the adrenalized strength she had, she threw her head back.

This world had never known evolution of the great cats.

There were no lions in this world's savanna, no tigers in this world's long grass, no leopards in this world's hidden jungles, no painters in this world's mountains, but there is a deep and visceral recognition to the fighting scream of a mountain cat.

Chief Ambassador Marnie Keller, the pale eyed daughter of a pale eyed Sheriff, threw her head back and screamed, and it was no sound from a human throat.

It was the God's honest scream of rage and of war, straight from the fanged mouth of a Rocky Mountain panther, and it ran a dipper of cold water down the spine of every last man there. 

 

A body was found, a month later, a body identified by DNA, as the head and hands were missing.

The deceased was a convicted felon, which is why his DNA was in CODIS system: it was ruled homicide, though there were levels of certain illicit pharmaceuticals in the system, none were near lethal levels, and there were no signs of allergic reaction to these certain illicit pharmaceuticals.

The Sheriff was on good terms with several rather useful people.

One was the custodian who oversaw incineration of medical waste.

The high-temperature incinerator could handle quite a bit of material, and often did, and so when the Sheriff showed up with a cooler and handed it to his buddy the custodian with a wink, the custodian thanked the man and retired to his small, underground office for a well-deserved break, while the Sheriff added something in an opaque plastic bag to the material being introduced to the high-temperature incinerator.

When this particular load was cycled through, what was left would drop down a gravity funnel into a grinder; the brittle incinerate, as it was called, would then be ground to powder after a magnet pulled out anything metallic that might compromise the grinding blades.

The incinerate, as it turns out, was mixed with concrete as a filler, and this was used to pour a replacement sidewalk there at the hospital.

 

Marnie re-read her Gammaw's personal, confidential Journal, the one that Marnie alone knew about.

She read about Willamina killing the man who stated an intent to kill her son, she read of Willamina's using a borrowed, trailer mounted, veterinary incinerator that could completely and very thoroughly burn up a sizable bull carcass -- how she used this to burn the body of the man who stated an intent, to her face, to find and to murder her son.

Marnie leaned back in her chair and closed the handwritten volume, she carefully locked it away in her desk, she rose and looked out the window at clear blue sky and the far horizon, then she turned and looked at the six point Sheriff's star mounted on the shield shaped walnut plaque on her wall.

"Sometimes," she whispered, "you have to do what's right."

 

 

 

 

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

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

SPECTACLE

Sheriff Linn Keller's thoughts ran faster than he did.

He responded as he'd trained and trained and trained again.

Three fast, long-legged jumps to the right.

His hand registered the feel of the issue sidearm, crushed in his white-knuckle grip.

His hands slammed together at eye level and the red dot stopped right where he wanted it and the shot broke without his thinking about pulling the trigger and he felt bullets sear past him and knew his Confederate field stopped at least one and his eyes were as cold as his thoughts as the one who was shooting at him fell, limp, like his strings had been cut.

He brought the red dot over and set it on the driver's spine and pulled the trigger again.

The car's rear window shattered and the other attacker dove across the front seat while the initial attacker fell, victim of the .357 SIG's thunderbolt described by multiple Western lawmen, decried by keyboard commandos and corroborated by this real world experience.

The Sheriff powered forward -- he tried to power forward -- he was screaming for his legs to MOVE MOVE MOVE! but it felt like he was running through cold clear honey, his thoughts screaming for more speed, more speed, more speed!! -- he registered the driver's body falling out of the shoved-open door, the car squalled into tire-burning life and the Sheriff held fire.

The fleeing car was something he didn't want to shoot at now, not with it moving, not with its new background.

Sheriff Linn Keller glared after the rubber-smoke-trailing getaway vehicle, reached up, keyed the mic clipped to his epaulet, spoke quietly, and set the Forces of Good and Light in motion.

He didn't realize how many of said forces he'd just kicked into gear.

 

The Sheriff was a celebrity among the Thirteen Star Systems, and the Confederacy as a whole was fascinated by this pale eyed lawman back on their homeworld who spoke softly, laughed often and raised Hell with what was widely regarded as a delightfully cheerful vigor, when such vigor was needful.

Hover-drones replayed the shootout -- brief, spectacular, shocking -- showed the Sheriff's taut face and utterly, coldly, ice-polished eyes, replayed the tightly-controlled syllables he chanted into his commo.

The Valkyries not infrequently listened with one facet of their complex minds, listened to the news broadcasts for entertainment, sometimes they actually got information from the Inter-System, and with the breaking-news-flash of the Earthside shootout and the Sheriff's call for a Be-On-The-Lookout, Shots-Fired incident ... well, a fast conference resulted in Nancy's robot ship being closest to the situation, and Nancy was given the go-ahead to assist.

The hover-drones got a good look at the getaway vehicle's retreating backside.

Nancy relaxed in her contoured couch back on Mars, solidly mind-linked with her robot ship: quantum link meant it didn't matter how many light-centuries separated them, they were in solid, instantaneous contact, and since she was only twelve light-minutes from Earth, her ship could be over Firelands County instantly if not sooner.

Configure for atmospheric flight, she thought, but not in words: no, words are too slow, too clumsy: as swift as the Sheriff's thoughts were, Nancy's were leagues and eons faster: the robot ship seared invisibly through atmosphere, curved unseen and undetected over the North American continent, decelerated and begain to hunt.

Stubby, smart-metal wings flowed out, slicing like shining knives through thin mountain air, and when the twin vertical stabilizers flowed up and solidified, they had the battle standard, bright and prominent, on display.

This Valkyrie was going to war, and she flew the correct wartime battle flag.

 

When the first responding patrol cruisers arrived, they found a man on the ground with bruises on cheekbones, forehead and the back of his head: he was lying outside the car, the car was ditched, bleeding oil and antifreeze, and a sizable hole in the radiator explained the automotive hemorrhages.

The suspect was not conscious -- he was alive, but not responsive.

It was not until he came to in ER, secured to the gurney with locked leather four point restraints, not until an ammonia capsule snapped under his nose and held for several seconds, brought him to consciousness.

He began screaming, eyes wide with terror, something about soldiers and airplanes and silver bricks falling from the sky, and a calibrated needle full of something effective, quieted the screaming, thrashing hysterics.

 

The Confederacy watched the robot ship's multicam.

Nancy rolled, dropped, leveled off hat-high above the pavement, screaming toward the approaching, fleeing vehicle with the back window shot out.

She first flew invisibly over it, pulled a roll-off-the-top Immelmann, laughing with delight as she did -- it was rare for any of the Valkyries to maneuver in-atmosphere -- she came in behind, compared the rear of the vehicle to the hovercam images, then shot well in front, came about, dropped her shields.

It looked like a silver, twin-prop fighter was screaming down the highway at him.

Drugs and panic added strength to his leg as he nailed the brakes.

It didn't help.

Something hit his engine and the fighter shot up, burned a hole in the sky, and was gone, as silver drop ships slammed into the ground around him.

The car fish tailed, dropped its back end into a ditch: he mashed the gas and was met with silence, the engine was deader'n a politician's promise, smoking, steaming ...

... useless!

He shoved hard on the door -- once, twice, it came open, he fell out, stumbled, started to run.

He froze.

Men in grey uniforms ran toward him, long bayonets bright in the high mountain sunlight.

He turned, turned again.

He was surrounded by concentric rings of steel, and when they stopped, they were six inches from his living flesh -- shining steel, sharpened, gleaming, thirsting for the taste of blood -- one rank encircled at throat level, another at shirt pocket level, a third at belt level.

The front of his pants darkened and he let out a scream of sheer, utter terror.

Three rifle butts hit him simultaneously and he hit the ground.

 

Marnie was approached by a man in a well-fitted suit, a man who stopped and removed his cover and spoke in respectful, but very sincere, tones.

She heard the man out, then she tilted her head a little, laid lace-gloved fingertips on his forearm and thanked him in a gentle voice.

Marnie spoke with her pale-eyed Daddy that night and told him the projectile Nancy fired from her Starfighter was a common brick, something that would destroy the engine but not penetrate into the passenger compartment.

Her pale eyed Daddy listened to his daughter's report, he watched the Inter-System coverage of Nancy's flight, her firing the single round that ended the felon's escape, he watched as young men in Confederate grey charged silently from boxy-silver drop ships, long bayonets fixed on Enfield muskets, how they surrounded the fleeing felon and then cold cocked him, and were gone before the first cruiser arrived.

"A brick," he said thoughtfully.

"She remembered your presentation on using a shotgun for door breaching," Marnie smiled. "You remember ... you discussed frangible slugs that turned to powder after they busted the door lock or the hinges."

Marnie gave him a warm look, leaned closer to the camera.

"You see, Daddy, we girls really do listen!"

Marnie raised a finger as a thought occurred to her.

"Daddy," she said, smiling, "everything was caught by the Inter-System, and a businessman of my acquaintance made a point of stopping me to say that if you happened to visit, you wouldn't have to buy drinks!"

 

 

 

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