Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang
that holds the leader
of the gang and hit the light switch before I pull off the
tarp.
    “Tommy,” I say. “Meet Johnny Scales, the
leader of the Mech Gang.”
    I’ve seen him a thousand times and I still
find it impressive whenever I take off the canvas covering. Scales
stands six-foot-four with a barrel chest, arms and legs like
enormous metal tentacles, and a head like a bucket with what appear
to be two lights for eyes and a grill where his mouth would be if
he were a man. He’s wearing oversize jeans and a cowboy hat, and
has a six-gun strapped on. He’s not wearing a shirt. His curved
chest door is open, showing an intricate tangle of clockwork
parts.
    I turn to Tommy and his reaction is
everything I hoped it would be: shock and awe.
    “My God,” he says. “It’s a freaking work of
art.”
    It takes him a long moment before he can tear
his gaze away to look at me.
    “Does it still work?”
    “He,” I correct him, “and yes he does—after a
fashion. Would you like to see?”
    “Are you kidding me?”
    I grin and walk over to Scales. Reaching into
his chest, I flick a lever, then close the door. There’s a whirring
sound inside his chest and after a long moment his eyes slowly
begin to glow.
    “Don’t much care for your tone,
stranger.”
    The voice is a recording and comes out of the
mouth grill sounding like a radio just off the station.
    Tommy takes a couple of steps back—I don’t
think he’s even aware he’s doing it. I hold my hand over a
holstered six-gun that I’m not carrying.
    “Are you going to draw or suck eggs?” I
say.
    The right arm moves, the hand draws his gun
and he’s firing before I can even clear my imaginary holster. If
the gun had bullets in it, I’d be dead. As it is, all we hear is
the click of the hammer falling on an empty chamber. Scales blows
on the end of his gun and smoothly returns it to its holster. Then
he’s still once more, his glowing eyes the only sign of “life.”
    “Holy crap!”
    Tommy’s staring wide-eyed with a huge grin on
his face.
    “I didn’t think it was a real machine,” he
says. “I mean, I’ve seen it live when I was a kid, and I’ve looked
at the YouTube videos, but I always thought there was a guy
inside.”
    “Everybody does.”
    He takes a tentative step forward. “Who built
it—I mean, him?”
    “My dad. Back in the day they were all in
perfect working order. I’ve got the whole outlaw gang, but they’ve
all got problems. Scales is in the best shape. The only issue with
him is that I still can’t get his legs to move.”
    “He’s just amazing,” Tommy says.
    I nod in agreement but the truth is, none of
the Mech Gang can hold a candle to Sheriff Poole. Beside him they
look exactly like what they are: clunky clockwork robots. But they
were the best Dad could do. What I don’t tell Tommy—what I’ve never
told anybody—is that they’re just poor echoes of the sheriff.
Everybody thinks they’re the way they are to make them look like
villains. But it’s more that Dad just didn’t have the skills or
parts to make them any better.
    He had the sheriff for a blueprint, but it
wasn’t like he could take him apart to see what made him tick. I
mean, he could have, but there was no guarantee he’d be able to put
him back together again. It’s the same reason I haven’t dismantled
the sheriff. I suppose I could bring him in to some high tech
research company, but they’d be faced with the same challenge, and
these days, what does anybody know about clockwork mechanics?
Everything runs on microchips now.
    But Dad figured a lot of it out—more than I
have so far, that’s for sure. Still, he was never able to make the
parts as small as they are inside the sheriff and still have them
work for more than a couple of days. The sheriff’s cogs and wheels
look like regular steel alloys, but whatever the metal actually is,
it’s stronger than anything Dad could get his hands on. His parts
had to be larger, and without that

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