Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang

By Charles de Lint

Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang is set near de Lint's fictional desert town of Santo del Vado Viejo, where his novels The Mystery of Grace and The Painted Boy take place, and where some of his recent short fiction has been set. It is available here for the first time in any format.

Dan Cutler lives with his wife Mason in the foothills of the Hierro Madera Mountains near the ruins of Showdown Ranch, his father's old amusement park. Although the ranch is now owned by developers, nothing has been done with it since the day Dan's father died there in a mysterious explosion.

Four generations of Cutler men have worked with carnival machines called animatrons—large metal figures whose clockwork workings delight and captivate audiences.

Ever since the explosion Dan has been salvaging parts of these mechanical men from the ruins and bringing them home to try to put them back in working order. But there is a greater reason to make these machine men operational once more—something that threatens the Cutlers' very existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles de Lint
• Release date: May 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9780920623190

Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, and The Onion Girl, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende.

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Sheriff Poole & The Mech Gang

A short story by

Charles de Lint

Copyright 2013 by Charles de Lint

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for John Joseph Adams

who got me to write this story

I know what Tommy Mansfield’s looking at the moment I usher him into the barn. It’s the first thing everybody sees: that old poster from the Showdown Ranch with a painting of the whole Mech Gang facing down a lone lawman on a dusty street. You can see variations on that theme in any of the western art galleries in town, except the bad guys wouldn’t be clunky robot outlaws that look like they should be on the cover of some old sci-fi pulp magazine. But back in the day robots and animatronics were the whole theme of the Showdown Ranch.

I remember that place, Tommy says moving closer to the image. My uncle took me and my brother one weekend—God, years ago. That poster’s still in nice shape.

Everybody in town knows about the folly of Showdown Ranch, but only the old folks remember that it was my dad’s folly. It’s mine, too, even though we lost the land, lost all the workshops, lost everything except for what I’ve managed to salvage and stash away here in the barn. I’ve got the complete set of the Mech Gang now—all five of them—though they’re missing a bits and pieces. I’ve got Sheriff Poole, too. The only thing wrong with him is some scorching on the left side of his face, which