“So when you enter a town, the first person you’ve got to see is the judge, if there is one.” began Heck, “But in this little town there ain’t, so you go see the local lawman. Here it’s the Sheriff. Sometimes in these little towns they like to call themselves ‘Marshal’ just to be confusing, but don’t get it twisted. A real Marshal is a traveller, not the type of person who hangs his hat in a town for long.”

They were now six day west from Gullick and three days' ride past the town of Gateway, where they had crossed the Great River. In the time before the war with the Nations the government of Arkady had imagined the town would become a springboard to settling the West and they had constructed an expensive stone bridge and an archway monument to celebrate that future. When the war ended, the Great River was suddenly the line separating the Republic from native lands and Gateway became a rough and tumble frontier town. Crossing the river had put them within the nebulous ‘one day’s walk’ buffer zone the treaty described, but Heck had decided that if the boy was going to be a Marshal he should really see the Frontier first.

The boy wasn’t sure what he expected but there really wasn’t much to see, just forest and grassland stretching out to the west and south. There were no Western Men there to greet them, nor had he seen many passing through Gateway. He remembered seeing more folks with native blood travelling through his home town of Bethlehem as traders or laborers than he had seen this whole trip. The Frontier just seemed an empty expanse of open space, hardly worth fighting over.

They rode north on the western bank of the Great River until they came to the point where the Big Muddy joined it. From there they skirted the southern shore of the Big Muddy as it snaked west into the plains. While the boy was still not a skilled horseman, the many days of riding were making him more accustomed to handling the animal and a more confident rider. He was more confident about a lot of things these days.

In practical terms his life had not changed that much since he left the ranch. He was still sleeping each night on a bedroll next to a horse he mistrusted, but now he was excited to wake each day. He was learning, REALLY learning, out in the world and not from books. Both Heck and Busch seemed interested in teaching him new things and keeping him safe, and they also trusted him. Heck had even given him a small hunting knife shortly after they set out from Gullick. Since then he had accumulated a sizable assortment of cuts and scratches on his hand, mostly from attempts to learn to flip the knife in the air and then catch it, as he had seen Heck do. The boy tried to compensate the marshal with the gold eagle he had received from his mother.

“Hold on to that kid,” Heck had responded, “and don’t let anyone else take that coin from you either. It’s worth way more than that knife, or at least it will be worth more to you someday.”

Eventually the Big Muddy turned sharply north and the trio followed it until they hit Fort Leavenworth.

“The last bastion of the Republic in the West,” announced Heck as they approached the fort's wooden palisades, “and the stockade where most troublemakers in the territories end up if they escape the noose.”

From Leavenworth, they caught a ferry back across the Big Muddy to the eastern shore where the small port town of Weston lay. It was the boy’s first time on an actual boat, even if it was only a flat-bottomed barge guided by a cable stretched over the river. He tried to hide his excitement, but Heck chided him about the big grin he had on his face. While home to fewer than a thousand people, mostly farmers and tradesmen, it was one of the biggest settlements along the river and did a good business shipping and receiving the goods from smaller towns upstream. If you weren’t a farmer and you didn’t work on the docks, you were likely involved in providing services to the garrison of the fort across the river or trading tobacco for furs with the merchants from the Nations who came across the frontier.

As per his admonition, Heck made certain their first stop was at the sheriff’s office in the center of town. It was nestled cosily between a saloon and the town’s tiny jail, which had its solitary cell facing the street to ensure the shame of whomever should come to reside there. In the office was a portly man with a blonde shoe brush mustache and no hair at all on his head. He went by the name of Bloom. He seemed genuinely relieved to see the two black-suited men enter, though he eyed the boy with suspicion.

“Well the problem Marshal,” began Bloom, “is with Old Man Morris, he just won’t leave Mrs. Morris alone.”

“And Mrs. Morris is upset because Mr. Morris is....” Heck trailed off.

“Been buried in Hilltop Cemetery for almost a year.”

“Well that is a problem. Let’s start by visiting the Widow Morris then.”

Leaving their horses hitched in front of the Sheriff’s office, the trio, now a foursome, walked up the steep hill that marked the eastern edge of town. On top was a tidy white farmhouse with a waist-high fence around it. The fields stretching out behind the house appeared to have gone to seed, but the house itself was well-maintained, with fresh white-wash on both the building and the fence. That made the charcoal scribblings on the corner post stand out all the more. Sheriff Bloom seemed ready to hustle them to the front door, but Marshal Heck paused to point out the marks to Apprentice Busch, who in turn showed them to the boy.

They looked like this:

“Damn vagrants, they put their mark on everything.” said the sheriff, “I just painted it last week.”

Heck raised an eyebrow, “You painted the Widow Morris’ fence?”

“I try to be helpful,” Bloom replied, “it’s not like there’s some big crime wave in this town that takes up my time. Only problem we got is dead folk who don’t stay dead, and that’s your department.”

“We were married thirty-one years, most of them pretty happy.” explained Mrs. Morris, a pleasant, grandmotherly woman, as she served them tea and cookies. “We raised three strong boys together. All of them have gone east now to find their fortunes. I was a bit of an old maid when Wendell married me, already twenty-five, but we had more than three decades together and that’s more than most people get. Too much some might say.”

Despite the heat, all four men accepted the hot tea graciously. For the visitors from out of town it was a welcome slice of domesticity after many days on the road. For his part, the sheriff just seemed to really enjoy the company of Widow Morris. His near continuous smile appeared sincere.

Lowering her somewhat ample behind into a high-backed chair, Widow Morris removed her spectacles and polished the lenses with her apron.

“Wendell used to come by my parents farm all the time,” continued the widow, “until my father started chasing him off. That left Wendell no choice but to marry me. Unfortunately, now dad is ten years dead himself and can’t handle Wendell for me anymore.”

“So how frequent are the visits?” asked Busch, with just the right mix of compassion and professionalism.

“Every night. I haven’t slept in weeks.” answered Mrs. Morris.

“And what does Mr. Morris do when he visits?” continued Busch.

“Just stands there wailing at the front gate. Howling like a hurt dog, and looking like a rotted jack-o-lantern. Then, if I don’t acknowledge him, he picks up rocks and throws them at the house.”

Up until now, Marshal Heck’s attentioned seemed to be focused entirely on making sure he sampled one of each type of cookie offered, but with that last statement he actively rejoined the conversation, looking Widow Morris straight in the eyes. “You say he throws rocks, does he do anything else?” he asked.

“Just stands there moaning until just before dawn, then limps back to Hilltop until the next night, sometimes leaving little pieces of himself behind. If anyone tries to interfere with him he growls and acts like he might bite them.”

“Has anyone tried anything to stop your husband’s visits?” asked the Marshal. Heck was fully engaged now, looking between the widow and the Sheriff.

“Well Ronald pumped some lead into him.” answered the widow, oddly comfortable with the violent turn of phrase, “Wendell didn’t seem to notice.”

“I shot Mr. Morris twice.” the Sheriff interjected, “Once in the chest and once in the head. Both went clean through and didn’t affect him at all.”

“Ronald is also nice enough to keep replacing my windows when Wendell breaks them.” said Morris, smiling at the local lawman.

“Is there anyone who might want to hurt you or your deceased husband? Anyone you can think of who would have caused this intentionally?” Busch asked.

“Well Angie Parker was a little perturbed that I didn’t take her along on my trip to Fort Dearborn last month," said Mrs. Morris, "and I think she resents me going alone.”

Through all this the boy just sat silent, nibbling on a cookie. It was not that he was disinterested, far from it. It was just that everything going on around him was so divorced from his previous life experience (much of which admittedly consisted of reading books) that he had nothing to contribute. It went unnoticed as the adults around him seemed able to keep the conversation lively without his input.

“So the visitations from Mr. Morris began after you got back from your trip.” Busch was pushing this line of questioning hard.

“About a week after, aye,” answered Morris, looking first at the young man and then the old Sheriff. “But I doubt my vacation caused this.”

“Would Ms. Parker have access to any tools of Necromancy?” continued Apprentice Busch.

“Ms. Parker doesn’t have access to a lit stove unless her son says it’s okay,” the rotund sheriff cut in, “she went soft in the head a few years back, and now she lives with her boy and his wife.”

“I think we can eliminate Parker as a suspect ‘Prentice,” said Heck ending the conversation, “I also think it’s time we met with Mr. Morris and get his side of the story.”

The trip to the cemetery required a walk back through town and a hike into a small copse of trees before they reached the steep bluff that overlooked both the town and the river. You could see the graveyard easily from town, but it took some doing to actually get there. Mrs. Morris did not accompany them, but the Sheriff seemed excited by the prospect of watching a marshal at work, and peppered Heck with questions for most of the trip.

“So—and I mean no offense by this but I have to ask—is Heck your first name or last?"

“It’s the only name I have,” replied the carrot-top marshal.

“But is it your given name or your family—”

“Marshals aren’t given a name, first or last. We take one of our choosing.”

Apprentice Busch tried to clarify, “Sheriff, marshals may not marry or start a family, and we cut off most contact with our birth famiies to allow us to remain impartial. So strictly speaking, we don’t have family names. When a new recruit arrives for training he or she is allowed to choose a name they will use the rest of their career. Most opt to use their existing first or last name. So long as no other Marshal currently riding is using that name, it’s yours.”

“Shhh.” hissed Heck, but only in jest, “You’ll ruin the surprise for the boy.”

“So I get it,” said Bloom, “If you are named Othello Radabaugh, you’re probably good to go, but if you’re Joe Smith—”

“Then you best get creative,” said Heck.

The Sheriff laughed, “So is that what happened to you? You had to pick a different name, and the first word out of your mouth was ‘Heck’ and they wrote it down?”

“Actually,” said the marshal, rapidly growing tired of this conversation, “It was ‘Hell’ but they cleaned it up for me...or maybe it was taken.”

“But then still, what is it?” pressed the chubby policeman, “When you sign your name is it your first or last?”

“You know what Sheriff, I misspoke,” said Heck, “I've got a family name. I just put it in front, like a man from the Orient. My first name is Marshal.”