Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang Read Free Page B

have independent thought.”
    “I can think for myself, yes,” the sheriff
says.
    “So why do you let Dan turn you off?
    “I don’t let him. I ask him to.”
    “I don’t get it,” Tommy says. “So you just go
from battle to battle? What kind of life is that?”
    The sheriff shrugs. “It’s what I do. It’s why
I am. I’ve had too much of the time in between where I don’t fit
in. A warrior’s not made for peacetime—just ask the old Indian
chiefs. Geronimo, Cochise. They understood. But so long as the
enemy keeps coming for me, I can’t go away. At least here we’ve got
a good defense set up.”
    “Earlier,” Tommy says, “you said something
about ‘where you come from.’ Can I ask where that is?”
    The sheriff scratches at his burnt cheek—a
gesture I’ve noticed he does when he’s thinking. It always makes me
feel a little disconcerted since it makes him seem more human, less
the clockwork man.
    “I don’t know that I can tell you,” he says
finally. “It’s not from here and it wasn’t in this clockwork body.
When Nate Cutler—Dan’s great-grandfather—was putting the finishing
touches on this body and turned it on, I found myself inside and
I’ve been here ever since. But I can recall some other place and
something pushing me out of my own body.”
    “Was it something Nate did?”
    The sheriff shakes his head. “No, I think it
was one of the enemy taking me over and so I fled and ended up in
the next available container that would hold whatever it is that
makes us what we are. Nate made this body to protect his family, so
that’s what I do.”
     
    Tommy looks from me back to the sheriff.
    “Seems to me,” Tommy says, “that your being
here is what’s putting the Cutlers in danger.”
    “Now you hold on there!” I tell him. “The
sheriff’s done a lot for my family. He’s fought off Indians, Civil
War deserters, rustlers and outlaws. If you think I’m turning my
back on him now, you’ve got another thing coming. Jack Poole’s
family, and that means something around here.”
    Tommy puts up a hand in a peaceful gesture,
palm out.
    “I’m not suggesting anything,” he says. “I’m
just thinking aloud, is all. You can’t tell me it’s never crossed
your mind.”
    Mason and I have talked about this before and
I tell him the same thing I tell her when she suggests that maybe
the sheriff should hole up somewhere in the Hierro Maderas.
    “I’ll stand by his side for a long as I’m
alive.”
    “And I appreciate it,” the sheriff says.
    “Listen,” Mason says.
    We all turn to her.
    “What is it?” I ask her.
    She touches her ear. “Listen.”
    “I don’t hear anything,” I say.
    But then I get it. The desert night’s always
full of sounds. Rustles and stirrings in the dry brush. An owl
hooting from the top of some distant cactus. Javalinas rooting
around down by the dry wash, looking for prickly pear.
    Right now there’s dead silence except for the
wind banging a shutter up in the barn.
    “Look sharp,” the sheriff says.
    We scan the skies on all sides. I can’t see
anything.
    “Over there,” Tommy says, pointing above the
house.
    I start to tell him there’s nothing there,
except then I realize it’s like the absence of sound in the desert
around us. The sky is always thick with stars—this far away from
pretty much anybody, there’s no light pollution and you can see the
galaxies in all their glories. Except above the house there’s an
empty spot. No stars. Nothing.
    Because the last of the enemy ships is there
and it’s using something new: some kind of stealth tech. Instead of
a glowing oval that’s a little like a dirigible, there’s just the
shape of it blocking out the stars.
    “Sheriff!” I call over.
    The sheriff brings the stock of the buffalo
rifle up to his shoulder. It’s an easy shot, but he doesn’t take
it. He just stands there, staring up at that absence of stars.
    I lift my rifle. The range is iffy but I
think I can make the