“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?”