Tin Swift(3)

“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.