Tin Swift(36)

“We didn’t kill them.” Cedar looked out the window again. “We rode through for supplies. Found them dead. Miss Small insisted we stay to bury them.”

“And you listened to her?” Captain Hink glanced at the hammock where Rose tossed restlessly.

“She can be convincing,” Cedar said. “There!”

Captain Hink looked out the window again. They were over the outskirts of town near the mill that squatted over the wider end of the creek. Trees, scrub, more scrub.

“I don’t see anything,” Captain Hink said.

“By the barn. On the edge. It’s Wil.”

Captain Hink pulled his telescope out of his pocket and put it to use. He finally caught sight of something moving. “Big enough to be a wolf. You sure it’s the one you’re looking for?”

“That’s him. Land the ship.”

“That’s not going to happen, Mr. Hunt.”

“I won’t leave him behind.”

“And I won’t bring a wild animal onto my ship.” At the killing glare Cedar gave him, he had to work on not grinning. Meant a lot to him, that wolf. Enough he appeared willing to shoot Hink out of the sky for it.

“Then we are at a very dangerous impasse,” Cedar said. “I won’t leave him behind.”

“Heard you the first dozen times, Mr. Hunt. But the last thing I want on my ship is a beast that could kill us all. So you need to give me a damn good reason to make me change my mind. ’Cause where I stand it’d be just as easy to let you all off, down there into that town, and let fate have at you.”

A blast clapped across the heavens, cracking hard as thunder.

“Cannons, Captain!” Guffin yelled.

Hink glanced at his crewman, and then found himself getting grabbed and grappled by Cedar Hunt, who moved faster than a man should. Hink hit the floor with an oof, all the wind slammed out of him as an elbow bent around his throat.

The spine-chilling click of a hammer thumbing back filled his ears. As rightly it should, since the barrel of the gun was pressing a cold circle against his temple.

“You already have a wild animal on your ship, Captain Hink,” Cedar said. “And I’ll blow your head off unless you bring my brother aboard.”





CHAPTER SEVEN


It never took Captain Hink long to make up his mind. And whenever a man put a gun to his head, he right off decided that one, the man might not be the friendly sort, and two, he was not going to let anyone blow his brains out.

But before he could so much as make a move to ungun the man, the roar of another cannon splashed a wash of orange over the sky just north of them.

“It’s a ship, Captain,” Guffin said, not moving from his station.

“Damn it to glim, man,” Captain Hink said. “Of all the times to put a gun to my head it’s when my ship’s under fire?” Another blast thundered off, close enough it rocked the Swift. “Let’s you and I pick this up after I make sure we don’t go tumbling to our deaths.”

“Pull my brother up and I’ll put my gun down.”

Mr. Seldom was already halfway across the ship, a grappling hook hanging casually from one hand. Hink didn’t think there was an object, tool, or knickknack Mr. Seldom couldn’t make into a deadly weapon. He’d once seen him use a doily to strangle a man.

At a nod from Hink, Seldom would let that grapple fly. High chance he’d knock Mr. Hunt out before his finger squeezed the trigger. High chance Mr. Hunt might be faster with the gun than he looked, just like he was faster in a fight than he looked.

“Days like this I wish I’d listened to my mama and gone into robbing trains,” Hink said. “Let’s do as he says, Mr. Seldom.”

Seldom stopped in his tracks and tilted his head. It gave him a sort of startled-chicken look, but it was clear he thought Hink had gone straight out of his mind.

“I’m of a fine curiosity,” Captain Hink explained to his second. “You know how I hate leaving a puzzle unpieced.”

Another blast rocked the night, and Guffin started up on his swearing. Looked like he was going to go through it by the ABC’s, starting in Spanish.

“Just lower the catch arm, Mr. Seldom,” Hink said. “We should be able to scoop the wolf up. If he wants to be scooped.”

Seldom rubbed at his face, as if trying to scrub away the stupid of that order. “Aye, Captain.”

Man might not say much, but he got his opinion understood.

“You’d be better off taking your gun away from my head, Mr. Hunt,” Captain Hink said. “I don’t think your brother’s going to willingly jump into our net, but it’s the best you’ll get. There isn’t a clearing large enough to land in these hills, except for across and south of town. If you want your brother aboard, you need to come up with something that will lure him in.”