Tin Swift(9)

“Don’t matter if you’re alive or dead,” Mullins said. “Just so long as I bring you in.”

Mr. Seldom seemed to appear out of the walls themselves. And, just like that, was standing above Mr. Mullins. Then, just like that, Seldom swung the oversized iron marlin spike, slamming the gun out of Mullins’s hand. Likely broke up a few of the man’s fingers in the process, seeing as how loud he screamed.

“Thought you’d know better than to upset my second, Mullins. You know how he doesn’t take well to people trying to plug me.” Hink rolled back on his heels and stood, staring down at the bleeding man.

Seldom retrieved the gun from where it had landed, wiped the blood off with one of the scarves hanging to his waist, and tossed the gun to Hink.

Captain Hink caught the weapon, gave it a glance, then tossed it back to Seldom, who pocketed it.

“Won’t matter if you kill me,” Mullins gasped. “Word’s already out. This whole town’s coming for your neck, Hink Cage.”

Seldom lifted the marlin spike again.

“Name’s Hink,” Captain Hink said. “Captain, if you can’t remember that much. Don’t go on and kill him yet, Mr. Seldom. I’ve still a question or two I want answered.”

Hink rolled the tin star between his fingers like a poker chip, then held it with the tips of his index and middle fingers.

“What’s this matter to you, Mullins?” he asked as the star caught a shine of light. “Some lander giving you guff about me being a marshal don’t exactly stand that it’s true. And if so, what do you have to hide you wouldn’t want a marshal to know?”

Mullins closed his mouth and didn’t do much more than glare and bleed.

“I think this isn’t just your business you’ve got yourself hitched up to, Mr. Mullins,” Captain Hink said. “I think you’re working for someone. Someone who doesn’t cozen to the law. Makes a certain sense, seeing as how we straddle the border of legality, shooting the sky for glim. But more than all that, I think there’s a spy in this house who ain’t me.”

Hink glanced over at Mr. Seldom. “You don’t suppose Mr. Mullins knows old Alabaster Saint himself, do you?”

Mullins caught his breath. Not a dead giveaway, but a giveaway nonetheless.

Hink rubbed at his chin. “Let me take a shot and tell you a story, Mr. Mullins. I say there was once a man named Les Mullins. Came from out Kentucky way. Signed up to serve beneath the hardest, bloodthirstiest monster that ever put on a uniform. Followed that monster, oh, let’s give him a name—say, General Alabaster Saint—through hell and worse. Les Mullins saw nine out of ten of his fellow soldiers die obeying the general’s bloody orders, until the general was tried and removed from command.

“I’d say Les Mullins thought himself damn lucky to have survived. Maybe even thought himself blessed and appointed to continue following General Alabaster Saint’s orders long after the battles this United States were engaged in were done and gone. Long after the Saint had moved on to raising his own militia of mercenaries.

“So Les Mullins wants to make himself useful to the general he worships. And he knows what the general wants: glim. Knows the general has plans to bribe, bully, and kill his way into every peak and mountain of this country until he controls every ship and glim field. The man who rules glim and gold rules the world.”

Hink paused and nodded toward Seldom. “It’s a good story so far, don’t you think?”

Mr. Seldom shrugged, focused on flipping the marlin spike: slap, slap, slap, as if his palms were restless determined to use it again.

“Let’s see,” Hink said. “How does this story end? I’d say it ends with General Saint’s spy, Les Mullins, getting killed on the floor of a shack in the Bitterroots unless he tells a man named Captain Hink just who, exactly, he’s working for and what, exactly, that man wants.”

Mullins had gone from bleeding to wheezing. His good hand was pressed over the chest wound as if he could hold the blood inside. Looked like he thought he could hold the words inside too. But Hink would get them out of him. He’d done worse to better men.

“I’ll give you a moment to consider my request, Mr. Mullins. Because this is the last time I’m asking you to give me answers. From here on out, I’ll just be doing an awful lot of painful taking them from you.”

Hink turned back to his desk and took a drink of coffee. His hands shook from a hard anger.

George Rucker had been a friend. The younger brother of William Rucker, a man Hink served with, and had been unable to save from Alabaster Saint’s bloodthirsty loyalists.