“There’s something about him don’t sit right with me is all,” he said. “The way he treats Miss Small doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Miss Small?” Molly pursed her lips and shook her head. “I didn’t say nothing about Miss Small in particular, now did I? How did Mr. Hunt treat Miss Small? You mean when he gave her the tea to ease her pain after you’d gone over there and made a damn fool of yourself?”
“I was trying to make her rest more comfortable,” he started, his voice rising. “And don’t put words on my tongue. This doesn’t have anything to do about how he treated Miss Small. I don’t care how he treats her, or how much she likes him.”
“You’re sweet on her!” she said, surprised.
“Take that back, Molly Gregor,” he warned.
Molly hung the wrench back on her belt, laughing. “I haven’t heard that tone out of you since Sally Winkle.”
“What tone?”
“The one that says you don’t know how hard you’ve already fallen for a woman.” Molly pulled her gloves out of the pocket of her overalls and put them on, her expression daring him to tell her she was wrong.
“I think you might have boiled your brains sitting back here so long,” he grumbled. “I have barely spoken to the woman. For Pete’s sake, she’s barely been conscious. For all I know, she can’t tell the difference between me and a fence post.”
“Tell yourself whatever you like, Paisley Cage. But that Miss Small is thrumming in your blood, and you won’t be quit of her in any easy way.”
“I can be quit of any woman I choose. I’ve proved that often enough.”
“Sure you have. The women you’ve caroused with. But not the few you’ve loved. Why, you pined for more than a year when Sally turned you down for that city-slicker lawyer.”
Hink opened his mouth, then closed it on a scowl. “I came back here asking you to give me fire to fly, Molly Gregor,” he said with as much calm as he had in him, “not to waste my time with crazy talk.”
She gauged his mood. Read him as easy as one of her dials needling to red. He didn’t know why he was always so see-through to the woman. It was a curse.
“You’ll have the fire you need,” she said. “Which you can thank two women for. Me, and Miss Small.”
“What’s Miss Small got to do with the fire in my engine?”
Molly’s mouth quirked up. “Fire in your engine, Captain? Thought I just made it clear why she’s got you het up. You like the woman. As for the Swift’s engine, you can thank Miss Small for spotting a leak I’ve been trying to chase down since we were stuck in Texas. She’s a fine hand at tinkering. Wants to be a boilerman someday, and I think she’d be damn fine at it.”
“Because you put nonsense in her head,” he groused.
“No. Because she loves steam and loves the sky, glim help her. I want you to promise me you’ll tell Mr. Hunt and Miss Small you’re a marshal once we hit Old Jack’s. I don’t like lying to good folk. It’s not the Gregor way.”
“This ship flies my way, not the Gregor way.” Hink tugged a pouch out of the inside of his shirt. He slipped free a small glass vial with the cork tamped tight and waxed. The eerie, beautiful green mist light of glim shone out from the glass. “We’ve got less than an eighth of the vial,” he said. “Make it count.” Then he pushed off the toolbox and headed for the door, ducking one of the lower steam pipes.
“Tell them,” she said. “Or I will.”
“Just give me an engine,” Hink said. “And if you can spare some heat to the cabin, I’m sure our passengers—all of them—would appreciate it.”
Hink shut the door behind him. Seldom leaned just a ways from the door on the other side, a rope in one hand, tied to nothing.
He was staring at their guests. Well, he was staring at the wolf, who had his ears back and his teeth bared at Seldom.
“Problem?” Hink asked Mr. Hunt, who was standing between Mr. Seldom and the wolf.
“He doesn’t like being tied up,” Mr. Hunt said. “I think you should hand me that rope, Mr. Seldom.” Cedar extended his hand back for the twine, but didn’t take his eyes off the wolf.
Seldom didn’t look worried. Course Seldom never looked worried. Hink figured the day Death came knocking on his door, Mr. Seldom would just roll his eyes and tell him to wipe his feet.
Seldom placed the rope in Cedar’s hand and waited, watching the wolf. Guffin and Ansell up front rested their hands on their guns, but had enough brains between the two of them not to pull their weapons. For one thing, the last thing the Swift needed was more holes in her side; for another, it’d be too easy to hurt someone else in this small space aiming for the wolf.