It was shortly after his eventful birthday that they came for him. He heard them before he saw them. Two riders on three horses, clopping their way up the dusty road from town. They were both in black. Black square-toed boots, black trousers, black vests, black string ties and black frock coats all below wide, black round-brimmed hats. The effect of the outfit was rugged yet refined, impressive yet humble, like someone had taken the average of a parish priest and a cavalry officer. The older one, with an orange goatee and red curls escaping from under his hat, had the six-pointed star of a Republic of Arkady Marshal on his chest. The other, younger, clean-shaven man, did not.

The ashes of the bunkhouse were still smoldering slightly, and all but one of the ranch hands had wandered off in the days after the fire. The remaining young man shared the barn with the boy and the animals. Together they made sure the horses were fed, watered and brushed as required. The boy’s father had not reappeared since one of the other ranch hands had carried him, unconscious, on the back of a horse to the doctor in town. The boy didn’t know if his father was still recovering, or just couldn’t stand to face him.

The boy had no understanding of what was about to happen, but he had known it was coming. “MAR-shals gonna take you A-way!” was a regular taunt at school. When he saw them approach down the dusty road from town he threw on the outfit his mother had given him and ran to the edge of the property so he could meet them outside of bunkmate’s earshot.

“What is your name, son?” asked the Marshal, not dismounting. He had what the boy guessed from book descriptions was a southern drawl. He had not actually heard anyone speak that way around him. It was alien but somehow comforting.

The boy responded.

“Well then, hop up.” said the marshal, indicating the riderless horse, “You’re the one we’ve been looking for and we should be moving.”

“Do you need to get anything before we leave?” asked the younger man, ignoring the marshal’s hurry.

The boy took a last look at the ranch and saw John the Mule standing just outside the stables. He shook his head. Sadly, the animal wandered off behind the barn and out of the boy’s sightline.

“Well C’mon then,” said the Marshal. Again nodding to the empty saddle of the third horse.

The boy approached the mount with caution that the Marshal noted. The Marshal nodded to the younger man who held the reins as the boy got into the saddle and then handed them to the child.

“Took a bit of doing to find you out here.” said the Marshal, “We have to pass back through your town on our way east, if you have any goodbyes you can say them then.”

They were just approaching the outskirts of Bethlehem when the Marshal spoke again. “I’m Marshal Heck, this here is Apprentice Busch. He’s following me so he can learn to be a real bush someday.”

The boy was silent.

“So he’s not much for jokes,” said Heck to no one in particular.

“I think people just don’t expect jokes from a marshal,”said Busch, “You catch them off guard.” The young man had an eastern accent and sounded educated. He spoke quickly but still seemed to select his words carefully.

“Is that the problem, huh?” asked Heck, now directing his comments toward the boy,“You expect Marshals to be all dour and laconic and a bunch of other words I should really look up in a dictionary. Tell me, do you know where we are taking you? Do you know why?”

“No.” the boy admitted. He had read a lot but the history books he had found in his father’s library were old, far too old to have information on the marshals, or so he thought.

“Your father and mother never talked to you about this?”

“We didn’t talk much.”

“And the kids at school didn’t talk to you about it.”

“They just said you would come take me away someday.”

The Marshal brought his horse to a halt and turned to face the boy. “And you still, knowing nothing, just got on the horse and rode off with two strangers anyway?”

The boy thought for a second. “It has to be better than here.” he said, and then paused for several seconds. “And you are the good guys.” he added hesitantly.

“Not everyone sees it that way,” Heck laughed and got his mount moving again, “well that’s a good start then. You kid, are to be afforded the opportunity to join our number and become a Marshal of the Territories. Helluva opportunity. Helluva thing. The young apprentice has completed his training and has a year of riding with me. Someday soon he’ll be a Marshal.”

“He’s not a Marshal yet?” the boy asked, “But he has a gun.”

“The gun doesn’t make the marshal,” answered Heck, stern for a moment before returning to jocularity. “Besides, he built that pistol, he gets to show it off.”

Returning to his line of thought, Heck continued. “Most do not complete the training, but those who do earn the six-pointed star of a Federal Marshal, not the five-pointed star of local lawmen. Even if you do not complete the entire training, it can be the gateway to many other opportunities to learn and serve. A lot of scholars, government workers, merchants and tradesmen started out trying to be a marshal. The Keepers may teach you to do just about anything.”

“Like become a sea captain?” The boy asked hopefully.

“Well not that,” Heck said, scratching his chin. “but damn near everything else.”

They soon reached the crossroads at the center of town and paused to let a brightly painted purple wagon clear the intersection. The boy took the chance to steal a glance at his family’s home. His mother was there, he could see her through the picture window. He could not tell if she saw him.

“Anyone you want to say goodbye to?” asked Busch.

“No, sir.” answered the boy.

“Now don’t start calling him sir,” said Heck, “he’ll get a big head.” The marshal scratched his chin thoughtfully, “You know what? You should really know more about what you are getting yourself into. ‘Prentice, how many days’ ride is it to Eagle Haven?”

“A week, sir,” he answered.

“And when do we need to be there”

“Before May twenty-fifth, sir.”

“And what day is today?”

“It’s the first, sir.”

“Well then you know what, I think I need to get a haircut. Maybe all of them,” said Heck with a twinkle in his eye, “and I know a good place for that about two days' ride.”

He turned his mount toward the south and prodded his horse on. The boy and the apprentice followed.

Marshal Heck was still in the chair, a barber scraping his neck with a straight razor, when a young woman in a barmaid’s apron came running through the bat-wing doors of the shop.

“L.P. tried to rob the bank!” she announced, with more frustration than fear in her voice.

The boy and Apprentice Busch were sitting in a row of wooden chairs behind the marshal waiting for his shave and haircut to finish.

“Who’s L.P.” The boy asked Busch in a whisper.

“Stands for Lost Puppy, he’s the local village idiot,” replied Busch quietly.

“Now ‘Prentice,” Heck began as the Barber switched to his right cheek, “It’s not nice to call people idiots —though that moron is pretty stupid.”

“He barged in,” the pretty barmaid continued, obviously impatient with their chatter, “while I was dropping off the cash box. He had a gun and everything.”

“Ma’am, did he get away with anything?” asked Busch.

“Well no. He had this bag thing over his head, but he had on the same clothes as he was wearing this morning when he came through town saying ‘hi’ to everyone. So Mr. Harvey, the bank manager, says ‘L.P., you know we don’t have time for this right now.’ L.P., well, he got all flustered and ran away.”

“Ma’am, did anyone see which way he was headed?” asked Busch.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s just back up in his holler.” she answered with a tilt of her head to indicate the direction

“Well we aren’t going to stand for this.” Said Heck, rising from the chair and wiping the remaining shaving soap off. One side of his face was still covered with orange stubble, “Bag-headed men will not threaten talented waitresses on my watch. C’mon boys!”

Heck made an exaggerated show of retrieving his black frock coat from the rack, donning it, and carefully straightening his badge in the mirror. With a wink to the barmaid he exited the shop by dramatically flinging both of the batwing doors open and then stepping through. The boys quickly followed.

Gullick was a small farming town of a few hundred souls, nestled in rolling hills at the southern tip of Indiana. Busch helpfully informed the boy that despite being inside a state, the town fell less than three days' ride from the Illinois territory and therefore within Marshal jurisdiction. A few minutes walk later and they were in front of Lost Puppy’s rather dilapidated shack, located in a narrow draw in the ridge line that overlooked Main Street. L.P. himself was a rather skinny, sickly-looking young man with more raggedy beard below his chin than above. He was just sitting out front on a stump next to a pile of split wood.

Heck approached him with his gun still holstered, “‘Morning L.P.”

L.P. nodded, rather dimly.

“Lucy says you tried to rob the bank, L.P.” continued the Marshal.

“Wasn’t me,” said L.P.

“She says you had a gun,” said Heck.

“Twern’t a real one.” said L.P.

The boy and Busch were both on the verge of laughing but controlled it. Heck kept stone-like composure.

“Can I see it?” he asked.

The sallow-looking local boy reached inside his overalls, he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and brought out a roughly pistol shaped object. It was whittled from wood, apparently by L.P. himself. Like the young man’s face, it had a vaguely asymmetrical aspect to it, and like the boy’s lips, it appeared to have been dyed dark brown with tobacco juice.

Heck sighed, “Oh, L.P. I think you better come with me.” Dutifully the young man rose and Heck put an arm around him and guided him out of the hollow.

Within an hour L.P. was safely locked up in the town’s jail, watched over by the town’s portly sheriff, who was also his uncle. Lucy expressed her gratitude by allowing Heck to engage in some rather embarrassing flirtation, and with that complete, the trio headed for the post office. As they walked the boy had questions.

“So is that what you, I mean marshals, do?” asked the boy “Just ride around looking for crimes?”

“Well no,” said Heck “Helluva thing, that boy. Our job is to enforce law in the territories, usually at the request of a judge or local law man. But this town doesn’t have a judge and you met the local law, so sometimes when something is wrong we help out without an official request.”

Heck shot a glance toward Busch, “Particularly when attractive young ladies are involved.”

Busch rolled his eyes slightly and they stopped in front of the post office, a humble wooden building with telegraph lines running inside.

“Now,” continued Heck, turning to face the boy, “there are some things which are Marshal responsibilities, no questions asked: any violations of the treaty with The Nations —by either side. Any threat against a judge or federal official and any threat to the public which has an...unusual aspect to it.” Before the boy could ask for clarification on the word unusual, Heck had stepped into the post office.

As they entered, the door rang a small bell mounted on the frame and an older man in a blue vest and visor turned to greet them. Heck smiled at the Postmaster. “Hail Jacob, are there any marshal telegrams ready?”

“Yes, Marshal. Just one.” The gray-haired man handed a slim yellow sheet to the lawman. “I still can’t read those things.”

Heck handed the slip to Busch, “Can you decode ‘Prentice?”

“Not in my head yet, I still need the pencil,” he replied.

“Work on that. You know every other damn thing.”

Busch pulled out a slim leather notebook and began to transcribe the message onto the paper while the young boy looked on curiously. When he finished he handed the slip to the boy. It read:

ZFXW8XXWDXDFXXZZ53X15X44X45X35X34ZZXXOGXW5XXS6XXZFXW8XX

“Got it” said Busch “Six words. Wandering dead. Weston. Old woman. Sheriff. Six words”

Heck noticed the boy’s confusion. “It’s Marshal Cipher. It was designed to send messages faster and clearer, but it has the incidental advantage that pretty much only marshals and their associates can read it.” He turned to Busch. “Take this down and have the postman wire it through to the Western Redoubt: ‘Seven words. Responding Weston wandering dead. Heck. Apprentice. Recruit. Seven Words.’”

Busch retrieved the telegram slip from the boy and scribbled the long series of letters and numbers on the back. Finished, he handed it to the postmaster who dutifully turned and began tapping out the code on the telegraph.

“That’s right boys,” smiled Heck “we’re headed west.”

“I’ve got a question.” announced the boy a few hours later as they trotted their horses down the dusty turnpike, “If you only decided to come get a haircut after you met me, how did Marshal headquarters or whatever know you were going to be in that town to get the telegram?”

“They didn’t.” responded Heck, “In the territories we’ve got these three...outposts I guess you could say, we call them ‘redoubts’ —North, South, and West. Eagle Haven, where you’re going, is another name for the Northern Redoubt. When one of the redoubts gets word from a judge or sheriff or one of our network of eyes that there’s an issue that needs Marshal attention...you know fugitives, cross-frontier disputes, dark magic and the like...well then they’ll send the message out to all the postmasters in a few days ride from the problem. The first Marshal who gets the message responds.”

“What if someone else got the message first?” Asked the boy.

“Then we would've gotten two messages: the one we got, and another one telling us to ignore the first one. Sometimes you’ll walk in to find a dozen messages stacked up all cancelling each other out. But as you get closer to the frontier almost all the town postmasters have at least some Marshal training. They can read the Cipher and will clean up the message traffic without you asking. Helluva thing. Old Jacob there is more like the postmen you find back east, just a regular guy doing a job.”

“So the ones who don’t make it through the training, were they picked by the ritual too.” His mother, in her less sober moments often described the career divining ritual, “did they grab the feather like me?”

“Did they what now?” was Heck’s answer.

Had he not been firmly ensconced in the saddle of his moving horse, the boy would have stopped dead in his tracks. His whole life had been shaped by the events of that day, how did a marshal not know about the ritual? The boy did his best to explain the tradition and his particular session of it as his mother had relayed it.

Marshall Heck’s face grew grave, which was especially concerning given his normal jovial demeanor. He brought his mount to a halt and assisted the boy in having his horse do the same. He indicated to Busch that he should continue ahead.

“So you don’t really understand who becomes a Marshal, do you?” said Heck, looking the boy straight in the eye.

The boy shook his head.

“So we recruit pretty young for a couple of reasons. First, young folks usually have an easier time with the training. They don’t bring their own beliefs and prejudices to the School House quite so much. But the other reason we take children is because almost all of the ones we take are kids with nowhere to go:.orphans, runaways, folks with unfit homes.”

That last comment struck home and the boy felt a knot growing in his stomach. He had long known that his life did not seem as easy or as fun as those of the other children, but he had never really entertained the idea it could be anyone else’s fault but his own.

“Now we have eyes and ears in many if not most towns. West of the mountains, most village witches are in our employ. Their rituals and ghost-stories are tools they use to get children who need to get away from their parents and to us. ‘Your child has the mark of the Marshal!’ or ‘The stars have aligned and told me your daughter is the chosen one!’ or some nonsense like that. Often it’s not necessary, more folks than I’d like to admit just sell us their children. Little Bobby-Jo is less important to them than a ticket out west or back east or to some other place that’s going to turn them into better people. I’ll admit I had some questions when we rode up and saw the size of your parents house, but when we learned they were keeping you out on a half burned-down farm —well that made it make a little more sense to me. Still, the fact she picked you so young, that is HIGHLY usual. Mayhap she knows something about your folks that you and I do not.

“Now the important thing is there is no predestined fate awaiting you. Just some smart lady in a little town who thought you’d be better with us than your folks. So you can quit right now, Busch and I will take you back home. Or you can quit any time after the first year of training, hit the road with a little education and a little experience. But once you enter the gates of Eagle Haven, you will stay there for at least one year.”

The marshal moved his horse closer to the boy’s and put his hand awkwardly on the boy's shoulder while remaining in his own saddle. The boy was overcome with emotions, most of them contradictory. He had never questioned the nature of his home or the reason for it. There was the vindication of knowing he didn’t have exactly the privileged home life he thought. At the same time he was learning that much of the hardship he had faced was based on a foundation of complete bullshit. He never had to leave. And even if his parents really believed his departure was inevitable, why didn’t they at least make a show of trying to keep him there? His mother had been right there in the window. If she had just come to the porch and called his name, he never would have gone with the two men in black. His father had not even made it to the window.

“There’s nothing for me there,” the boy said wiping tears from, “I’m coming with you.”

Heck’s normal grin returned to the marshal’s face. “Well then we should get a move on then,” he said and prodded his horse forward. They boy soon joined them as they followed the distant figure of Busch. Heck continued to talk while they rode.

“Now it’s not all folks with sob stories that join. In some old, respected families, those descended from the third Earl of East Who-gives-a-shit or whatever, there is a tradition that one of the latter-born sons or daughters join a life of service. Some of those folks think Marshal sounds a lot better than priest or druid and they come to Eagle Haven. Some kids just read a book, decide that’s what they want to be and harass their parents until they turn the little dears over to us. But for the most part...well let's be honest, happy, well-adjusted people don’t sign on for the life of an itinerant gunslinger, forgoing home, family and comfort for what’s likely to be a premature death on the frontier. In terms of background, most marshals have more in common with the fugitives they chase than the judges they serve and protect.”

“I understand,'' said the boy.

“Well, probably not yet,” smiled Heck, “but you will.”