by Devon Monk
“No,” she said. “That he’s well. That he’s sane.”
“Yes. He shows no ill effects of what you did. If you hadn’t used magic, I’m not sure we would have landed in one piece. You made the right choice, Mrs. Lindson.”
Mae took some comfort in that, and even managed a small smile. “Good,” she said. “Good, then. And Rose? Has she shown any signs of waking?”
“Last night, and she’s awake now. Can you tend her?”
Mae nodded. Cedar helped her to her feet. She swayed just a little, her hands clutching his tighter. Then she bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes for a moment, setting herself. “What do I have to work with, Mr. Hunt? My satchel at least?”
Cedar bent and picked it up off the floor for her. “What else do you need?”
“I’m not sure. Let me see to her first.” She brushed the stray locks of hair off her face and squared her shoulders.
Cedar glanced around the ship. The men were all gone, and so was Wil. He’d heard them head out the door. From the clatter and stomping coming from the roof area, he figured they were already working on repairs.
Captain Hink was in a hurry to leave this hidey-hole, for which Cedar was glad. Too easy to be trapped in such a tight squeeze. If the captain of the Saginaw decided to throw dynamite down just to cover his bets, there was every chance he’d bring down the walls and they’d be sealed in here.
And if the snows came, they’d be dead for sure.
Molly Gregor came out of the door at the far end of the ship. She had a teakettle in one hand. “Thought we could all use hot tea this morning. Take the bite out of the cold in this hole.”
She didn’t wait for an answer, but instead poured a cup for Cedar and Mae, and one for Rose too.
Cedar took it gratefully, and swallowed down the fragrant brew. “Mint?” he said.
“Picked some up when we were last out Chicago way.” Molly pulled a cloth-wrapped bundle out of the leather bag at her hip. “I don’t suppose you folks have much on you in the way of food and supplies,” she said, offering a share of jerked meat and dried plums.
Cedar took some of the jerky and was happy to see Mae take both meat and fruit.
“We left all that we had behind,” Cedar said. “Do you know where the captain will be taking the ship for repairs?”
“Probably Old Jack’s,” she said. “He makes a profit keeping his landing field open and his mouth shut. He’ll have food, supplies. Medicines too,” she said with a nod to Rose.
“Sounds like a good choice, then,” Mae said softly.
Molly smiled, and it softened her blunt features. “It is. The captain might be a blowhard, but he’s got a head full of clever.”
“How long have you known him?” Cedar asked.
“Too long, Mr. Hunt,” Molly said with a grin. “Now about Robert Gregor. How was he when you saw him?”
“He was well,” Cedar said. “He and his wife have a son.”
“Oh, that’s good news! Another addition to the Gregor clan. What’s his name?”
“Elbert,” Rose said.
That got them all turning back to the hammock. Rose’s eyes were closed, and her skin still looked an awful shade of gray.
“Elbert’s a fine name,” Molly said, glancing a question at Cedar.
“Miss Small had a fondness for Mr. Gregor,” Cedar said. “He holds her in high esteem also. Showed her the way around his smithy.”
“Did he now?” she asked. “Well, if you’ve been taught the secrets of metal by a Gregor, you’re practically one of the family. Think of going into the smithing trade, Miss Small?”
Rose opened her eyes. Glossy with fever, they still carried a hint of her spunk. “Maybe. Although a boilerman on an airship seems a real fine life too.”
“It is,” Molly said. “Would you like to help me check over the boiler today?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’d love to. Though I’m not sure how much help I can be, with this shoulder.”
“Let me tend to it,” Mae said. “I have some herbs. Black salve that might give you some ease.”
“And while Mrs. Lindson sees to your shoulder, I certainly would like to hear more about little Elbert,” Molly said.
The cabin door opened, letting in a gust of wind. Captain Hink leaned his head in, his hand gripping the top of the jamb. “Mr. Hunt. Do you know your way around a hammer?”
“I can do my share,” he said.
“Good. We could use an extra set of hands. Molly, when will she be up to steam?”
“She’ll be ready to go by the time you get her feathers mended,” she said. “Are we going to have all fans on line?”
“Mr. Seldom’s never let us down before,” Hink said, ducking back out the door. “We’ll be in the air before noon. Mr. Hunt?” he called.
Cedar glanced one last time at Mae. She was unwrapping the compress on Rose’s shoulder, frowning at what she saw there.
“We’ll need more medicines than what I have on me,” Mae said. “It looks like an infection is setting in. Do you have any more hot water, Miss Gregor?”
“Of course.”
“It’s fine,” Rose said. “I’ll be fine.”
But Mae glanced up at Cedar and gave him a slight shake of her head. “As soon as we could be on our way would be best,” she said.
Cedar didn’t wait any longer. He strode out the door and then shut it behind him.
Morning had chalked clouds across the sky and brought out enough light that it was a fair share easier to see inside this pit.
Still, it was cold and wet, some areas still slick with frost. It was like walking across the bottom of a grave.
“Harbor here for too long and this will be nothing more than a death trap,” Captain Hink said. “If those clouds bring rain or snow, we won’t be able to launch. The faster we fix her, the faster we fly.”
“Tell me what you need me to do,” Cedar said.
Hink handed Cedar a hammer. “Take a turn on the rivet work with Guffin,” he said. “And pray we don’t get rain.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Repairs on the Swift were taking longer than Captain Hink Cage had hoped for. Not because the men were slacking. Guffin, Ansell, and Seldom were working as quickly as they could. And quite to Hink’s surprise, so was Mr. Hunt, who proved to be a ready hand at all levels of repair he put his effort toward.
“Ever work a ship, Mr. Hunt?” Captain Hink asked as Cedar crimped the seam to align the rivet hole in the tin skin envelope.
“Not an airship.” Mr. Hunt hammered the bucktail of a rivet into place. “But I worked the yards as a young man.”
“Hup,” Guffin called. He tossed a hot rivet off the small forge and up to Mr. Ansell, who sat the other side of the rip tight as a bug in honey. Ansell caught the rivet in an iron cone, then plucked it free with tongs.
Cedar waited for Ansell to set the rivet before hammering it down tight. Cedar leaned back against the rope rigging that let him latch and crawl about the curve of the ship like a man climbing a mountainside.
“I didn’t need more than a year before I decided the sailing life was not for me,” he said.
The Swift had taken more than one shot to the main envelope, and it had taken a good part of the day to mend those tears. They were on the last rip, placing a patch more than doing any final work. The thin sheet of patch metal should be enough to hold her against the winds just so far as to Old Jack’s.
“What life did you go looking for, Mr. Hunt?”
Cedar was silent as he pounded another rivet down tight. “The university. Teaching.”
“You’re a long way from that sort of living,” Hink said, shouldering the pulley line to force the strut of the fans into place so Mr. Seldom could set the bolts proper again.
Cedar stared up at the wedge of sky above them, then back at the mostly black walls. “Yes, I am.”
“Don’t sound displeased about it,” Hink grunted, setting his heels to hold the line.
Neither o
f them spoke for a bit while Hink held muscle on the propellers for Mr. Seldom, and Mr. Hunt hammered another rivet into the patch.
Finally, Mr. Hunt spoke. “There’s things about this life I’d never had in the university. Not all of them bad.”
“Funny how things work out that way sometimes,” the captain said.
“So it is,” Cedar agreed.
“That’s it, Captain,” Ansell hollered as he hooked the iron cone to his belt rig. “She’s as tight as we can make her.”
“Then tell Molly Gregor to fill the bags. We’ll be dragging sky within the hour.”
“Aye, Captain.” Ansell clambered down the outside of the ship, unlatched his harness from the ropes, then dropped a good six feet to land beside the ship.
Hink just shook his head. Man was unafraid of heights or the falling from them, and seemed most alive anytime he was executing some high-wire stunt. Mr. Ansell was a man born to walk the skies.
“About time,” Mr. Guffin grumbled as he got to work on packing gear and setting the small forge to cool.
Mr. Hunt lowered himself down the side of the ship to the ground, then unlatched gear. He might not be as sure-footed as Ansell, but he still moved like he’d been crawling over airships all his life.
Moved through the rocks and tumble like he was born to them too.
Only other sort of man Hink had ever seen be quite so comfortable in every environment he fell upon was the native people.
He didn’t know if Mr. Hunt carried native blood in his veins, though his coloring leaned toward it far more than Hink’s own yellow and blue.
Cedar glanced off, suddenly still as the stones around him. His hands were held out to the side as if the wind told things to his fingers that ears and eyes couldn’t know.
A slight movement in the distance caught Hink’s attention. The wolf, Wil, coming this way. It had something in its mouth. Looked like a goat.
The wolf stopped. Cedar wasn’t watching the wolf. He was watching the sky.
Hink heard it. The hard chug of propellers pushing over the range. Sounded like she was working against the wind. Maybe against the rain.
It could be raining out there and windy enough that the rain couldn’t fall into this hole.
Captain Hink hoped he was wrong, but they wouldn’t know the flying conditions until they put their nose over the edge of this rock. And they weren’t going anywhere until they were sure that ship out there was gone hunting different ground.
Hink waited. Even Mr. Seldom stopped tinkering with his tools near the fans and leaned back so he could catch a gander at the sky.
The buzz faded off, growing faint, then coming in and out of hearing like she was threading peaks, the echo of her engines soon too quiet to stir the silence.
“Mr. Seldom,” Hink said. “Tell me we have wings.”
“She’ll fly,” Seldom said. What he didn’t say, what he didn’t have to say, was he didn’t know how long or how far she would take them.
A drop of rain hit Hink on the shoulder. Another followed. Captain Hink swore as he looped the pulley ropes and helped Mr. Seldom remove the repair braces and tackle. They were going to have to fly her out wet.
Wet, wounded, out of the bottom of hell’s well. Low on fuel, heavy on passengers, with airships scouting for their smoke.
Some days there wasn’t enough glim in the sky to make this job easy.
“Inside,” Hink yelled to Cedar and the wolf. “We’ll be launching as soon as Molly can give us steam.”
Cedar Hunt took the goat from the wolf and shouldered it as he strode to the ship, the wolf loping at an easy pace by his side. In the shuttered light, Cedar looked taller, inhuman, like a hunter out of legend, or some kind of warrior of old come to put the land right.
It was just a moment, a flicker of a thought. Then Hink shook his head. Those kinds of fool thoughts were the imaginings that had sent him down a life path even his soiled-dove mama hadn’t approved.
With wild thoughts, and wilder blood, Hink had been a terror growing up. Some days he wasn’t even sure there was enough sky and earth together to give him room to shout.
“Stop dreaming,” Seldom said as he slapped Hink on the back. Hard. “You’re all wet.”
“Wasn’t dreaming,” Hink said, following his second into the ship. “Was figuring how much money I’m about to lose getting us out of this knothole.”
“Money?” Guffin called from up near the navigation. “Whose money are you spilling, Captain?”
“There’s only one way she’ll fly,” Hink said. “Steam and gears alone won’t do it down this hellhole. No wind, no launch point. No luck. Nothing but glim.”
“We’re gonna glim-lift,” Guffin grumbled. “There goes a season’s profit.”
“I appreciate your practical concerns, Mr. Guffin, but the only men glim won’t profit are dead men. And I refuse to die in this pit. Mr. Hunt, Mrs. Lindson, and Miss Small, be sure that you’re seated on the floor, back against the wall, and buckled tight. Mr. Seldom, see that our passengers are safely secured and have a breathing mask to share.”
Hink strode to the rear of the ship to check Molly and the boilers. He braced himself for the heat as he spun the lock and stepped through the metal door. The slap of heat against his skin was thick as in a Sunday bathhouse.
It always surprised him how compact the Swift’s boilers were compared to those of other ships. Even so, the engine took up most all of the stern of the ship, making this space a collection of brass and copper, tubes, valves, iron, and rivets. In the right light—hell, in every light—the engine looked like a jewel cut and cast to sit a king’s crown.
“How’s our fuel, Molly?” Hink asked.
Molly closed the fire box door and stepped back to get a better look at a valve near the steam stack. “You taking her to Old Jack’s?”
“Thinking on it.” Hink leaned against the corner of the toolbox, and folded his arms over his chest, watching her work the drafts.
“How fast and how high?” she asked.
“I was thinking low and slow.”
“Fuel lasts longer the higher we go,” she said. “Some reason we need to creep?”
“Think the Saginaw’s out there still looking for us. You have any idea why he’s on our tail?”
She wiped her forearm over her forehead, slicking away sweat. “Last I heard, Captain Smith had gone up north toward the Big Horn Mountains to winter. I have no idea why he’s back this way. You tell Mr. Hunt you’re a U.S. Marshal yet?”
“Who says I’m gonna?”
“Why wouldn’t you? You trust the man, don’t you?”
“Not sure that I do.”
Molly hooked the wrench off her tool belt and turned to give him a full consideration. “You don’t distrust the man. Seldom told me you let him man the cannon.”
“Seldom talks too much,” Hink grumbled.
“If my kinsman thought highly enough of Mr. Hunt to give him his seal, then I say he’s trustworthy.”
“Rings can be stolen, lost in a game of cards, swallowed by a fish.…”
Molly stuck her fist on her hip and waved the wrench close enough to his nose that he had to pull his head back a bit to keep from getting hit with it.
“What is it in that head of yours, Lee?” she asked. “You trust the man, maybe even like him to a degree, but you won’t cotton to it? Don’t you think he’s looking after the best interests of those two women he hauled up out of that…that nightmare town?”
“There’s something about him don’t sit right with me is all,” he said. “The way he treats Miss Small doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Miss Small?” Molly pursed her lips and shook her head. “I didn’t say nothing about Miss Small in particular, now did I? How did Mr. Hunt treat Miss Small? You mean when he gave her the tea to ease her pain after you’d gone over there and made a damn fool of yourself?”
“I was trying to make her rest more comfortable,” he started, his voice rising. “
And don’t put words on my tongue. This doesn’t have anything to do about how he treated Miss Small. I don’t care how he treats her, or how much she likes him.”
“You’re sweet on her!” she said, surprised.
“Take that back, Molly Gregor,” he warned.
Molly hung the wrench back on her belt, laughing. “I haven’t heard that tone out of you since Sally Winkle.”
“What tone?”
“The one that says you don’t know how hard you’ve already fallen for a woman.” Molly pulled her gloves out of the pocket of her overalls and put them on, her expression daring him to tell her she was wrong.
“I think you might have boiled your brains sitting back here so long,” he grumbled. “I have barely spoken to the woman. For Pete’s sake, she’s barely been conscious. For all I know, she can’t tell the difference between me and a fence post.”
“Tell yourself whatever you like, Paisley Cage. But that Miss Small is thrumming in your blood, and you won’t be quit of her in any easy way.”
“I can be quit of any woman I choose. I’ve proved that often enough.”
“Sure you have. The women you’ve caroused with. But not the few you’ve loved. Why, you pined for more than a year when Sally turned you down for that city-slicker lawyer.”
Hink opened his mouth, then closed it on a scowl. “I came back here asking you to give me fire to fly, Molly Gregor,” he said with as much calm as he had in him, “not to waste my time with crazy talk.”
She gauged his mood. Read him as easy as one of her dials needling to red. He didn’t know why he was always so see-through to the woman. It was a curse.
“You’ll have the fire you need,” she said. “Which you can thank two women for. Me, and Miss Small.”
“What’s Miss Small got to do with the fire in my engine?”
Molly’s mouth quirked up. “Fire in your engine, Captain? Thought I just made it clear why she’s got you het up. You like the woman. As for the Swift’s engine, you can thank Miss Small for spotting a leak I’ve been trying to chase down since we were stuck in Texas. She’s a fine hand at tinkering. Wants to be a boilerman someday, and I think she’d be damn fine at it.”
