Tin Swift (2 page)

“I’d ask his name,” Rose said, “but don’t think he’ll say. He broke into our camp and tried to kill a few of us, Mae included. You…” Her voice faded off. Then she sort of huffed a chuckle. “Never saw a thing like it. And I’ve seen things. Strange things.”

Mae. Of course. He’d never stand idle if she was in danger. But to lose his mind to this kind of rage was not at all like him.

“Did I change?” Cedar couldn’t remember the wolf coming upon him. Couldn’t remember sliding down that slick, hot stroke of pleasure to stretch into the fur and claws of the beast that the Pawnee gods had cursed him to wear on the three days of full moon.

Reason left him when the beast was in control and his thoughts reduced to hunger, hunt, and killing the Strange. He searched his memory for how the dead man had come to be broken, his blood pouring down Cedar’s throat.

Nothing came clear.

“You didn’t change,” Rose said. “Not in skin anyway. But I’m not sure how much of a man’s mind you were in possession of. Didn’t use a gun to kill him, Mr. Hunt. You used your bare hands. Broke him once and just kept right on breaking him.”

She paused to let that soak in good.

“So,” she said brightly, “now you need to be moving on. We want you locked up in the wagon for safekeeping. Yours and ours.”

Cedar took one last look at the man. “Someone should search his body. See if he carried a reason to be following us. He was following us, wasn’t he?”

“The Madders said maybe for a week or so. They’re off seeing if he had company.” Rose started walking, her boots crunching through the dry autumn underbrush.

Cedar started walking too, staying well ahead of her trigger finger.

“Don’t know as to why he thought killing us was worth the effort,” she said. “We don’t have much to steal. We aren’t causing any trouble.”

Then she grinned. “You don’t suppose we’ve gotten famous, do you? Maybe someone heard how we took apart Shard LeFel and his matics? Wrote us up in a newspaper somewhere?”

“Folk are rarely hunted for their good deeds,” Cedar said. “I don’t think we’re famous.”

Sure, he had mistakes in his past that might put a price on his head. But Rose had never been outside of the little town of Hallelujah, Oregon, until now. Mae Lindson might be a witch, but she wasn’t the sort of person to go about causing harm.

The Madder brothers were a mystery when it came to their moral standings and past deeds. They liked to spin tales fantastical of things they’d done, places they’d been, but none of those yarns pointed clearly to shady doings.

“Could be nothing to do with us,” he finally said. He rubbed his
thumb over his lips, wiping away the blood there, and resisted the urge to lick it off his fingers.

Core-deep inside him, the beast shifted, letting him know it was still hungry. If there was no Strange blood to spill, it seemed just as happy with the blood of a man.

He straightened his shoulders against the chill of dread that slipped down his spine.

The beast was growing stronger. Hungrier.

“So he was just desperate?”

“Could be,” Cedar said. “Saw an opportunity to plunder his way westward. Plenty of folk do it.”

“Land pirates?” Rose sounded excited about the prospect.

She’d seen violence. Killed without a flinch men and Strange creatures that crawled up out of nightmares. But even death and much darker happenstances hadn’t been able to shake Rose Small’s sense of wonder in the world.

Cedar hadn’t yet seen a thing that could dim her spirit.

“Just a rustler, more like.” He paused. Turned to her. “We should search him.”

Rose hesitated. Cedar gave her time to look him straight in the eyes. She held his wild gaze and measured his sanity.

Looking at him like that, when the beast was so near the surface of his reasoning, was something most people couldn’t do.

But then, Rose had a bit of the wild in her too. Wasn’t a metal she couldn’t shape or a device she couldn’t jigger with her fast-thinking mind and clever fingers.

“Not that I don’t trust you, Mr. Hunt,” she said. “It’s just…” Her mouth tugged a crooked frown. “You tore him apart. With your hands.”

“Rose,” he said softly, resisting the urge to put his hands behind his back, where she wouldn’t see the blood. As if that could hide his sins from her. “Whatever happened, it’s done.”

She bit her bottom lip and those springtime eyes searched him like
she was peering through the shutter of his soul. “I’ll keep the gun where it is, just the same.”

Cedar walked back to the body. He glanced at the surrounding forest. Didn’t see anything out of place. Well, except for the dead man. Not many bugs had found him yet, so it’d been just a few minutes at most since he’d killed him.

Snapped his neck, to be precise.

Cedar knelt and turned the man so he could study his face. A heavy black beard spread chin to temple. All his unwhiskered skin seemed to be covered in grime. His eyes were rolled back in his head and blood dripped a line out the corner of his mouth. Cedar picked up each of his hands. All the fingers were still attached, calluses and scars where you’d expect them to be on a man who rode the range.

He’d carried two guns, one thrown off in the brush about ten feet east, the other still in the holster. The weapons weren’t nothing fancy, but they were well tended. He’d been good with his guns.

Not good enough to draw more than one before Cedar had killed him.

With his bare hands.

Cedar searched pockets, coat, and shirt. Handkerchief, tobacco pouch, rolling paper, and a knife. Not a lot else. Not a single coin on him, not a scrap of a letter, not a photo of a loved one.

“You done pawing that fellow to death?” The voice was so near him, Cedar started.

Alun Madder, the oldest of the brothers, crouched down on his heels near Cedar. Cedar was not a small man, but Alun took him on width.

Built like bull buffalos, the Madder brothers were all heavily bearded, wide-jawed, and accustomed to a life of mining, drinking, and brawling. When they weren’t fighting, they had an uncanny knack with metal, matics, and odd devices.

Cedar owed them a favor for helping him find his brother, who he
had thought was long dead. They’d been true to their part of the bargain, and so he was holding true to his.

Riding east to return Mae to her witch sisterhood before her ties to them and the magic of the coven sent her clean insane. Riding east so maybe those same witches could break the Pawnee curse Cedar and his brother carried. Rose, he supposed, was just looking to see the world wide, though he knew she cared for Mae and wanted to see her set to rights.

And on the way he would uphold his promise to hunt for the Holder, a device made of seven ancient metals cobbled together into a weapon of great power.

The Madders said even uncobbled, the Holder could cause ruin, rot, destruction.

If that was true, then the brothers’ priority of gathering it up—wherever it was the pieces had landed—and getting it out of the hands of the innocent was a worthwhile cause.

“You’re of a quiet mood, all of a sudden,” Alun Madder said. “This man someone you know?”

Cedar pulled a cloth out of his back pocket and wiped his bloody palms and arms until they were mostly clean. He shook his head. “You?”

The miner had a blue kerchief tied tight over his head, but wore no hat. His gaze was on the dead man. “No soul I’ve ever known. Looks to be a drifter. Found his horse back a ways in the forest.”

“Bring it. We can use a fresh mount.”

“Already done, Mr. Hunt. I’m not the sort to leave a useful thing”—he gave Cedar a pointed look—“or creature behind. No matter how it falls into my hands.” He pushed on his knees to stand and peered down over his thick dark beard.

“As Miss Small was saying, we’d like you locked in the wagon now. Night’s coming. We’d rather you weren’t out roaming. And besides”—he walked off toward camp—“the witch says she has an idea for easing that curse of yours.”

A pang of hope snarled Cedar’s gut. “She said she couldn’t break the curse unless she had the sisterhood, and days to do it.”

“Said otherwise just before you wandered off,” Rose said.

“So she’s talking?” Cedar stood.

“Oh, she’s been talking nonstop since we set camp. Just don’t know who she’s been talking to.”

Cedar followed Alun through the trees to the clearing. There was a little more light here beyond the reach of branch and shadow. The grass was tall and silk-yellow around the stones, bent to the wind, and hushing away at every stray breeze. They’d had the luck of clear weather, but any day now the skies would change.

Storms were coming down from the north Cascade Mountains and Bitterroot Range. Strong enough to bury them in snow. Strong enough to swell little creeks into hungry rivers and trails into muddy bogs. They’d a plan to skirt the bottom of the mountain range and reach Fort Boise, Idaho, by the next week. Now he was just hoping they’d make it far enough into the Idaho Territory by nightfall to reach Vicinity. If the rains hit hard, they’d be locked flat in their tracks for the whole of winter.

Alun strolled over to the hulking wagon he and his brothers drove. The drafts that pulled for them were off a ways grazing. So too the other horses, with a new little roan among them. The dead man’s mount. Theirs now.

“Keep going, Mr. Hunt,” Rose said from behind, the gun still at her hip. He’d like to tell her she was being overly cautious, but that wasn’t true.

More than once he’d pulled up out of a dream of hunt and kill and blood, only to find himself sitting in his saddle, his horse spooking and the other folk in the group asking him what he was stopped and listening for.

He’d told them nothing. But that wasn’t true. The beast inside him wanted out. It was making sure it could be heard.

He knew what the Pawnee had planted in his soul and knew how to keep it caged.

Until today.

Mae paced near the fire they’d set between the Madders’ wagon and the women’s tent. She had a handful of plucked grasses and was braiding them together as she walked and muttered.

Less sane every day that went by. The coven of witches she’d once belonged to was calling her home, and taking away bits of her mind the longer it took her to get to them. He didn’t understand witches. Didn’t understand why her vows to the coven meant now that her husband was dead, they could drag her to madness unless she returned to them.

But he knew cruelty when he saw it.

“Look who I found just out in the trees, Mrs. Lindson,” Rose called out.

Mae turned and studied him across the fire. She seemed to be made of sunset there against the sky. The red firelight burnished her pale skin and yellow hair, catching sparks in her inscrutable eyes, and drawing dusty shadows across her soft lips.

Cedar’s pulse kicked up a beat. Since his wife’s death, he’d thought he’d never be shed of the pain of grief. Never have reason to feel again.

Until he’d met the widow Mae Lindson.

“I’m gonna take him to the wagon now,” Rose said. “And when you’re of a mind—”

“No.” Mae drew her hand up to smooth her dress, discovered the grasses, and frowned. She let the grasses drop from her fingers. When she looked back up at him, it was with an ounce more clarity.

“Leave your guns and knife here, Mr. Hunt,” she said.

Cedar unhitched his gun belt, then his knife. Set them all down easy on the ground. When he straightened, Mae walked round the fire and stopped right in front of him.

He couldn’t help but inhale the scent of her, always the sweet honey of flowers. They’d been on the road for days now without much more
than a splash in a creek or two to sluice the trail dust. But Mae was beautiful, serene. Looking upon her made his breath catch in his chest.

She took his hand and turned it over like she was looking for a wound.

“This blood,” she said. “It’s not yours, is it?”

When she spoke, it was as if a rope had been cut free from around his heart. It was a puzzling thing being near her. A thing that felt so much like love, it might even share its name.

Not that he’d said as much to her. He didn’t know if there would ever be room in her grief to love another.

“Mr. Hunt?” Mae said. Then, “Are you hurt?”

“No.” The beast inside him twisted and dug deep, wanting out. Wanting Mae.

She caught his gaze and held his own hand up so that he would look at it.

“Where did this blood come from?”

He drew his hand gently away from hers. “Man needs burying back a ways.”

Rose stepped up a little closer to rub out a stray ember that popped free from the fire. “We can take care of the dead,” she said, “after the living are tended and resting in the wagon.”

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Mae asked with a sort of worry he hadn’t heard out of her in days.

He pulled a smile into place, hoping it softened his eyes, eased the hard line of his jaw. Hoping it made him look more like a man who still had his reason in place.

“As well as can be, thank you.”

“See?” Rose said kindly. “We’re all doing fine.”

Cedar tipped his fingers to his hat, then strode off toward the wagon, Rose right behind him.

If he stayed near Mae any longer, he’d take her in his arms. Hold her. Hell, kiss her and do the things a man can do to a woman.

Things she would not welcome. Not with her husband’s death so fresh in her eyes. Not with the tracks of tears on her cheeks. And the nights, every night, her whispering his name like a prayer.

The clatter of metal on metal rose up from the other side of the wagon, louder the closer he came.

The other two Madder brothers, Bryn and Cadoc, were off just a ways from the wagon, cussing over a chunk of brass and tangle of wood equipped with at least three valves that were sending off thin puffs of steam.

Bryn, the middle born, was taller by a finger or two than Alun, but not so tall as Cadoc. His beard was clipped tight, and he wore a brass monocle strapped over his ruined eye. The lens flashed an unnatural turquoise from under his floppy hat as his wide, nimble fingers used a half dozen tools to tinker with the steam device.

Cadoc Madder didn’t much involve himself in conversation unless it was to say something vaguely prophetic. He had on the same denim overalls and heavy overcoat all the Madders wore, the pockets of which bulged with gadgets. Tonight a knit cap sat over the bush of black hair on his head.