Cedar admired Rose’s outlook, though he didn’t share it. He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. Wil lowered his ears and growled softly at the Madders’ laughter.
It was terribly convenient that their device had exploded just when Mae was so close to breaking his curse. A curse that happened to make him hunger to hunt the Strange. A curse that made him an undeniable benefit in the Madders’ quest to find the strangeworked Holder.
If Cedar were a suspicious man, he might just think the Madders had broken Mae’s spell on purpose.
CHAPTER TWO
Stump Station wasn’t much more than a collection of shacks built precariously into the pockets and wedges on the east side of the Bitterroot Range in the Idaho Territory. So barren and out of the way, even the vultures risked starvation.
It was the perfect sort of place to attract those members of society who preferred to remain unnoticed by others. Hard men and rangy women who spent most of their days waiting for the right wind to carry them up to the glim grounds where they could harvest their fortune.
Glim, more precious than diamonds or gold, used to power ships on air, water, or land. Used to heal the sick, cure the blights, turn the tide in wars, and make anything and everything stronger and longer lasting. Glim was even rumored to extend a man’s life well beyond his years.
Rare and desired, glim. And as hard to locate as Hades’ back door.
Some said glim could be found underground, or out at sea. But the only place glim was known to occur with any regularity was above high mountain ranges, and up higher still. Above the storm clouds, floating like nets of soft lightning, the glim fields were capricious and fleeting. Difficult to find. Deadly to harvest. Most ships couldn’t launch that high, last those storms, or lash and land without killing those who flew them.
So it was no wonder glim fetched a pretty price in the legitimate markets, and a king’s ransom in those markets less savory.
Captain Hink counted himself among his own kind out here in the rocks. Outlaws, prospectors, glim pirates, soldiers of luck, fools, and the foolhardy, brothers all.
Not that he wouldn’t drop a brother at a thousand paces if he jumped his claim, stole his boots, or touched his airship, the Swift.
But then, he supposed any of the rock rats who ported, docked, or launched from Stump Station would do him the same.
“Problem, Mr. Seldom?” Captain Hink asked as his second-in-command ducked through the canvas tarp that hung in place of a door in the tumbledown that Hink called home.
Seldom was a wiry-built, redheaded Irish who looked like he’d snap in half if he sneezed too hard. Most people thought he got his name from how often he spoke. But Captain Hink knew he went by Seldom for how many times he’d lost a fight.
Hink figured he and Seldom didn’t much resemble each other. Hink scraped up a full six foot, three inches, and had shoulders that took the sides off doorways if he wasn’t mindful. Yellow hair, skin prone to tanning, and eyes the gray of a broody sky set in a face that women had never complained about, Hink might have been considered a catch if he’d grown up in the social circles of the old states instead of as the bastard child of a soiled dove.
And whereas Seldom looked old for his thirty years, Hink looked like a man in his twenties, and that was no lie.
Seldom stabbed one thumb over his shoulder, stirring the wool scarves around his neck and jostling his breathing gear, which hung at the wait near his collarbone. “Mullins.”
Captain Hink put the cup of boiled beans that passed for coffee up here in the stones down on the edge of the map spread across the buckboard that served as his desk. He leaned back in his chair, enough so his Colt was in easy reach.
He wasn’t expecting Les Mullins to come in and shoot him dead. But he wouldn’t be surprised if that was exactly what the captain of the big, and recently crashed and burned, Iron Draught hoped to accomplish.
Especially since Mullins had had to patch up that old mule of a steamer the Powderback to get around.
Mr. Seldom stepped to the corner of the room, and faded into the woodwork like a stick in a stack.
The canvas tarp whipped aside and in strode Les Mullins. Big man, high forehead under stringy black hair and a face permanently burned red from flying too long in the cold upper. He looked mad enough to chew coils.
“Just because I don’t have a door,” Captain Hink said, “doesn’t mean a man shouldn’t knock.”
Les Mullins smiled—well, more like sneered—showing tobacco stumps where his teeth ought to have been.
“Here’s the deal, Hink,” he said. “You give me that tin devil of yours, and I won’t tie you up like a hog, throw you off this cliff, and drag your broken bits in to the people who will shower me with gold for my trouble.”
“Deal?” Captain Hink said. “Why, we haven’t even cut the deck yet. How about you get the hell out of my house, Mullins?”
“How about you explain this?” Mullins tossed something onto Hink’s desk that landed and rattled like a tin can.
Hink made a big production of leaning forward and picking up the item, even though he knew exactly what it was. “It’s a tin star,” he said.
“It’s a badge,” Mullins said.
“So it is.”
“Says ‘U.S. Marshal.’”
“I see that, Mullins,” Captain Hink said. “You thinking of wearing this around so folk respect you? ’Cause it’s going to take a damn bit more than a tin star to make people stand up and take notice of the bluster that comes out of your yap.”
“What I think,” Mullins said, advancing toward the desk, “is that you’ve been spying on us since you set up nest last spring. Weaseling out our stakes, claims, and buyers. What I think, Captain, is that you’re the president’s man, or near enough it don’t matter otherwise. You’ve come to shut our operation down and to haul us in to the law.”
“Shut it down?” Hink brought his hand, star and all, back casual-like toward his holster. “Why would I want to shut down an enterprise in which I make so much money?”
“Don’t know the mind of a turncoat dog like you.”
Captain Hink weighed that remark for one second. He had a reputation for a bad temper and a quick trigger. Something his mother had told him would get him killed, God rest her soul. So he always gave every statement a full-up two seconds of consideration before he acted upon it.
Then he pulled the knife from his belt and threw it straight and true into Mullins’s chest.
Mullins stumbled back. He clutched at the knife with one hand and clawed for his gun with the other. Wasn’t much successful with either attempt.
“I sure hope I haven’t damaged your talker,” Captain Hink said as he stood and sauntered over to the big man, who had stumbled to brace his back against the wall. Not that it’d do him any good. Walls couldn’t save men who rode the skies. “Because your story was just getting interesting.
“There’s a thing I have a powerful need to know, Mr. Mullins. Where in the world did you get this from?” He held up the badge. “You been sniffing down around the townies? Catch up some poor land lizard with a knack for a tall tale?”
Mullins leveled him a glare and finally got hold of the knife hilt. He pulled it free with a yell and nearly fell to one knee. Didn’t much matter, Captain Hink thought. There was no chance this traitor to the states was walking out of his house alive.
“Found me a yellowbelly who knew you, Captain Hink Cage,” Mullins rasped. “Said his name was Rucker.”
“Rucker?” Captain Hink said. “Name doesn’t jostle the memory.”
“He knew you,” Mullins said. “Knew what you did in the battle of Flatstand. Knew you took more than half your regiment and turned on General Alabaster Saint. Accused him of disobeying orders, profiteering, and holding correspondence with the enemy. You refused to move your men into position, on orders from the president. You cost the Saint the battle, his career, and his eye, you traitor snake coward.”