Which was all that was saving her tin hide at the moment.
The Swift hovered above the heads of two dozen men and women who were unloading shotguns at her belly.
“Get her up, get her up!” Hink yelled. “Who’s at the helm?” He ran up alongside Molly Gregor, his boilerman, who had just a moment before hollered him out of the shack.
Molly was a solid-built woman with curves in all the right places and a crop of straight black hair that she shaved short at the temples so as not to queer her breathing gear. He’d never seen her wear a dress a single day in the three years they’d been running glim together.
But even though she had boots, breeches, and a hell of a hand at steam tinkering, there wasn’t a man who’d disrespect her. Not if he wanted to wake up breathing the next day.
“It’s Guffin,” she said, pounding across the rocks beside him. “He was on watch. Checking on that squall headed in from the north.”
They were almost upon the mob beneath the ship now.
Molly pulled the nozzle of the flamethrower she had strapped across her back around to the front and struck a match. The slow-burning wick spring-hinged below the tip of the nozzle caught fire. Molly twisted the valve at her belt, readying the mix of oils she’d rigged up to throw a burn a hundred feet.
“Don’t set her aflame,” Captain Hink said. “And don’t burn me neither.”
Molly didn’t waste her breath on an answer. She rushed past him, clearing a path to the rear of the Swift with another blast of fire.
Hink pulled his gun and rushed into the crowd, headed for Jonas Hamilton, the bootlicker who was yelling orders to take the Swift down.
“Hamilton, you horse’s ass!” Hink yelled. “Get away from my ship.”
Hamilton turned. He had a goosed-up Sharps Carbine tucked at his shoulder and took aim straight at Hink’s chest.
“Damn it all.” Hink raised his pistol and shot Hamilton in the shoulder, just above the butt of the carbine.
Hamilton reeled back, his shot clipping high, but still close enough that Hink heard the buzz of it as it passed his ear.
An explosion pounded rock walls and eardrums alike, and damn near threw Hink to the ground. He stumbled, kept hold of the pistol, trying to see his way through the thick black smoke that filled the air. That smoke better not be from the Swift going down, or he’d be skinning these rock rats until doomsday.
A hand reached down out of the smoke and caught hold of his arm and yanked him up hard.
“Rope!” Seldom hollered. The Irish was dangling from the Swift’s ladder by one foot and two fingers, looking like a squirrel ready to jump a limb. Since his other hand was helping drag Hink up to catch hold of the ladder, Hink was more than happy to see him.
The smoke was still thick enough it burned his eyes, but the Swift was already climbing again. Hink could just make out ragged shadows of those below him picking themselves up from that blast. It wouldn’t be long before those guns in their hands were aimed at his head.
“Where’s Molly?” Hink yelled over the roar of the ship’s fans.
“Boiler,” Seldom said as he scurried uncommonly quick up the last of the rope.
Captain Hink put one hand over the other and hauled up the ladder as fast as he could. His crewmen heaved the ladder up while he climbed. Just as he breached the hold and pulled himself into the solid interior of the Swift, he heard Molly call out. “Get her up, Mr. Guffin! Get her up fast and hard!”
“He don’t know any other way,” Seldom muttered.
Hink laughed as the floor tipped alarmingly to one side. He pushed up off his hands and knees and staggered toward the helm.
The Swift’s engines popped three hard thumps of steam and power, the awe-inspiring noise of that beautiful steam engine drowning out the crowd and gunfire below, as she took aim for the clouds and let fly.
CHAPTER THREE
Cedar Hunt shifted in the saddle, one hand on Flint’s neck to calm him as he scanned the horizon. The Bitterroot Mountains rose up to the north, and the wind that combed the top of those peaks was restless with winter’s chill. The rains were coming. From the look of the sky, it was about to break open.
If they were going to get around the mountains here in Idaho and well on to Mae Lindson’s sisterhood in Kansas, they’d need more than haste. They’d need supplies.
“Think we’ll make Fort Boise soon?” Rose asked, riding up beside him.
Cedar had spent an uncomfortable night shackled up, but the beast had not transformed him in body or mind. Rose had been chatty and happy since finding him still a man, and still a reasonable one at that, when she unlocked him just before dawn.
“Maybe tomorrow, or day after,” Cedar said. “Longer if it rains.”
A drop plinked down on the brim of his hat.
“Oh, now you’ve gone and jinxed us, Mr. Hunt.” Rose laughed and turned up the collar on her wool coat before tightening her hat’s chin strap.
“Vicinity’s not too far out of the way,” Cedar said. “We can take the night there and let the worst of the storm pass over.”
“I’ll tell the Madders we’ll be in town today. I’m sure they’ll be pleased as pigs in a potato patch.” She turned her horse and headed back to the big, slow-moving wagon a ways behind them.
Cedar urged Flint ahead of the party. An hour later, he’d made his way through the constant rain, down a deer trail and up a ridge, bringing him to a flat, short valley between hills. Across that flat valley spread a ramshackle collection of maybe thirty or so houses and shacks made of adobe and wood.
Vicinity.
Both a mining town and a trading post, Vicinity was an easy stop for folk taking the trail to Oregon or California.
Peppered with sagebrush and scrub, built without much thought to roads or the whyfors of coming and going, for that matter, the town washed up the hillsides and out to where the valley closed into a V.
There should be a barn they could stay the night, if the townfolk were hospitable, or agreeable to payment or barter. It was as good a rest as they’d have for miles. A lucky port in the storm.
Still, he paused, staring out across the place, listening for the sounds that usually filled a town. There was nothing but the rattle of rain on his hat, coat, and land around him, and the clack of the bit Flint rolled in his mouth.
No other sounds of life.
But there was a scent on the wind. A scent he knew well. It was the smell of the Strange, and it was more. It was the scent of the Holder, some part of it, here, nearly a state away from where it’d gone flying. He’d promised the Madders he would help them gather up the bits of it. Maybe his chance to do so was coming sooner than he’d thought.
The beast within him slammed hard against his will, raging. The beast, the curse he carried, hungered to hunt the Strange, kill them, destroy them. Cedar had no fondness for the nightmare creatures who slipped across this land either. But he held tight to his reasoning.
He wiped some of the damp off his face and peered through the failing light for a glint of lantern, a puff of chimney smoke. The town was as still as a broken watch. It was as if all the people were off to church, leaving not a child, dog, or chicken behind to stir.
That wasn’t right. Wasn’t the natural way of a town.
They should ride on, ride around this puzzlement. There was death and dying here. And the Strange lurked nearby, maybe the Holder too.
But with night coming on and rain drenching them through, they needed a place to rest. If Vicinity had suffered some kind of sickness or disaster and cleared out months ago, there would still be supplies they could scavenge and a roof and walls against the cold and rain.
Instinct might tell him to run. But reason told him they should check the town first, and ride on by only if there were actual signs of danger.