Tin Swift

CHAPTER FOUR

Captain Hink leaned out the port door, holding the dead man’s grip just inside the Swift. Here amid the clouds and freeze, the wind slapped across the tip of Beggar’s Peak and chuffed against the Swift, making her bob like a cork in a tub.

Not many ships were small enough or fast enough to hide here. It took some tight maneuvering to slip into this notch of rock and snow. But for the ship that could sling it, the tight wedge of stone just north, and the outcropping here, were enough to shelter from the worst of winter’s howl.

For a short time, at least.

He’d ordered them to throw anchor and bank the boiler. He wanted quiet and he wanted still. There wasn’t a wisp of steam to give them away, not a click of gear or pump of propeller.

Molly had seen to it that even Guffin was sitting still and keeping his mouth shut—no mean feat.

The Swift was as invisible as a frog’s eyelash.

Captain Hink pressed the brass telescope to the darkened lens of his goggles and closed his left eye to better see the edge of the rocks and cliffs around them. Stump Station was just east a ways. If there was a ship taking to the skies, if there was pursuit, it’d be coming from there.

The rocks were clear, no glimmer, no smoke, no shadow. Hink lowered the telescope and readjusted his breathing gear over his mouth, and his goggles, making sure the leather buckling both together was secure. The rubber hose that ran from his mouthpiece over his left shoulder and on off into the lines of the ship had plenty of slack, but not so much that it would tangle him up.

They weren’t up high enough for the air to kill a man quickly, but blacking out or tripping over a line and taking a tumble from the running board of the ship wasn’t going to keep a man’s tranklements in one piece either.

A glint off starboard caught his eye. He swung the telescope in that direction, and worked to keep the eyepiece steady in the roiling winds.

The Black Sledge, a big steamer, dark-skinned and peaked at the top, bulgy with exterior belly lifts and eight sets of blades driving her on, lumbered up along the ragged edge of the mountain. She was a fully enclosed gondola like the Swift and didn’t have the ocean-faring open-desk style of vessel dangling beneath her envelope.

She wasn’t shooting the glim, didn’t even have her nose pointed up, or her trawling arms and nets at the ready. No, she was low and slow. Looking for something. Looking for them.

Hink swung into the Swift and shut the door, then spun the latch to keep her tight. He one-fingered the buckle on his breathing gear and let it hang at his chest.

Molly stood at the helm, breathing gear unsecured at her neck. Guffin leaned near the vertical and horizontal rudder controls, scowling like he’d gotten his knuckles rapped by the teacher. He was a slow-eyed and sad-looking fellow with dark brows set too wide and light hair shaved up high off the back of his neck, but left to grow at the top so that his whole head took on a sort of sorry mushroom look.

Mr. Seldom was back among the glim gear, using his pocketknife to clean up a net spread at his feet.

The other member of the crew, Mr. Lum Ansell, a squat, short-necked man of unknown heritage, was sleeping up against the starboard wall, his hat pulled over his round leather brown face, the brim stopped by the breathing gear latched across his chin. Out of all of them, Lum never seemed to find much use for the breathing gear, no matter how high they flew.

“Listen up,” Captain Hink said.

All eyes turned to him. Even Lum shoved his hat back, awake and sharp, his hand drifting to the knife at his hip, as it always did before he was fully awake and taking a straighter sit.

“Looks like we have a cat come prowling,” Captain Hink said. “Or more like a bear. Captain Barlow’s on the sniff.”

“Barlow?” Molly frowned. “What’d we do to stuff his flue?”

“Figure it has something to do with Les Mullins and his idea that I’m Marshal Hink Cage.”

Guffin sucked on the tobacco tucked in his lip. “And?”

“And near as I can tell, Les Mullins is doing General Alabaster Saint’s business. Since that includes seeing that I’m hung and strung, I’d say that puffer out there is looking to kill me.”

“Could be they want our glim stake,” Lum Ansell rumbled in his deep baritone.

“Could,” Hink agreed. “Except for this.” He pulled the tin star out of his pocket.

Molly took in a breath and let it out on a soft curse. She’d met George Rucker, the boy he’d given the star. Hell, all of them had met George.

“So Les Mullins knows you’re Marshal Cage,” Guffin said. “Think he’s gonna hire out Barlow and his big tug out there to take you in?”

“Black Sledge has the boilers and the guns for it,” Hink said.

Guffin shook his head, that hair of his stirring like a tassel in the wind. “Still don’t make no sense to me. Takes money to put a ship up. Your head ain’t worth it. No offense, Marshal.”

“Well, if it ain’t me,” Hink said, “I’m still plentiful curious as to why they’re flying. No glim in the heavens today, and last I heard, Barlow was pulling lines and headed to Texas to weather out the cold.”

“It is strange to find him prowling the west side of the range,” Molly said, “at the same time Stump Station happened to empty out to see us off with their guns this morning.”

“I say it’s time to shut up and hunt bear,” Hink said with a grin. “Molly, bring the boiler on line. Guffin, man the rudders. Seldom, strap up the hooks and ready the ropes. And Lum, see that the cannon’s set to burn.”

He probably didn’t need to tell his crew what to do, they fell to it so fast. Ride the windy trail together long enough and people knew what was what and how to see to getting it done.

After all, there was nothing but their skill, hands, and trust in each other between touching the heavens and being crushed by the earth.

Hink readjusted his gear and knew his crew was doing the same. Then he set his feet in the straps bolted to the floor in front of the helm. He didn’t intend to take her out hot. No, he’d rather the Swift slip up behind the old steamer, and follow in the Black Sledge’s wake.

Caution was half of what kept a glimman alive.

The other half was plain foolhardy luck.

The crew of the Swift had both, ace-high.

Molly Gregor pushed her goggles over her eyes and strode off to the boilers, shutting the blast door behind her.

Hink waited for the bell to ring, indicating that the Swift was steamed and ready to burn sky.

The cord tugged and the bell in the ceiling frame rattled once. The Swift was powered to go.

Guffin, Seldom, and Lum all pushed their feet into floor braces. Hink studied the eastern sky, getting a visual on the Black Sledge.

There she was, a bulk against the intermittent clouds, coming in and out of sight like a barge slipping through fog down a white river.

“All right, then,” Hink said, his words muddled by his breathing gear. “Let’s go see what plunder the sky has for us today.”

He signaled Seldom to pull anchor, and the Irishman set to releasing the catch and cranking up the line.

Captain Hink let out the throttle. Like a living thing, the Swift came awake beneath his feet. He could feel her shudder, feel her lift to the wind, feel her strain to go higher, faster. Built to take the air, the Swift pumped up quick.

“Above her,” Hink said.

Guffin adjusted the trim and Hink steered her, up and up through the white and gray wall of clouds, until he was well behind the Black Sledge, the shadow of his ship pushed behind him by the western setting sun.

The winds were picking up, that squall on the northern horizon headed their way, but not before cooling off between the teeth of the range. If it brought rain or freeze, it’d take as much fuel as they had on hand to fight their way down to a survivable landing.

They were running out of time to get answers.

“Bring her up close,” Hink said. He hit the toggle for the bell back in the boiler room, giving Molly the go-ahead to bail it in. “We’ll swing by and have a look at where she’s lashing for the night.”

They maneuvered the Swift up close and tight to the Black Sledge, bucking riptide winds.

It was hard to get a bead on her with the roil of clouds, but when she veered to the southeast, Hink was right on her trail.

“She’s hopping the peaks,” Hink said as the big blower chugged along the ridge but didn’t fly over. Didn’t make sense. If she was trying to move out of the way of the storm, all she needed was a place to hold up—a difficult proposition with a ship her size—or land. And either of those options would be found at lower elevations.

Why would she ride the ridge?

A flash of yellow bloomed out the side of the Black Sledge and swept across the peaks below them. Then another flash, and another, like beams of sunlight bursting through the clouds.

Mirrors. Goddamn it all, she had mirrors.

She wasn’t hopping the peaks, she was scraping the sky and hills with light. Looking for a flash, looking for a reflection off something metal.

Like, say, a tin ship.

“Back and up!” Hink ordered.

Guffin and Seldom scrambled to work the controls, and the Swift jumped to obey. But it was too late. A wide swath of light, bright and hot as summer off a river, swept across the clouds they’d been holding to, and near as much blinded Hink, even through his goggles.

“Son of a mule!” he swore.

Run or fight? The world seemed to pause for a second, to slip away and slow as he thought through the possibilities, spinning through his mind.

The Sledge outgunned them, outpowered them. It would be a dead man’s gamble to take her on. The Swift could outrun her, but running wouldn’t answer his questions. Why was Alabaster Saint suddenly going so out of his way to kill him? Who was working for the general, and how deep into the western glim trade had Alabaster entrenched himself?

Answers to all of that might be a thing of national security. There’d been talks of uprisings since the war. There’d been talks of the west, with her mountains and glim defecting from the east with her money and matics. Talks the president was keenly interested in getting to the bottom of.

And on most all of those rumors, Hink had heard General Alabaster Saint’s name traded, hand to hand, like coin of the realm. Whatever plans were being made out here in the west, he was fair certain the Saint was a part of them.

“Hellfire,” Hink swore, having made up his mind before the mirror’s light had reached the tail fin. “Take her on!”

They dove for the Black Sledge, pounding sky to beat the devil.

The Black Sledge angled up, catching a hard tailwind. Not so much making a run for it as getting up and into more maneuverable sky to avoid being rammed into the ragged cliffs.

“Watch her guns,” Hink said. “Seldom, ready the hook and torch.”

Guffin pulled his breathing gear off his mouth. “We’re boarding her?” He didn’t sound so much worried as maybe a little too excited about the prospect of dangling feet in thin air.

“We’re taking her down,” Hink said.

The racket of the fans pushing the Swift drowned out anything else. Hink fought the controls, pushed by crosswinds and updrafts as he gave her full throttle to ram that black bag of air.

Their only chance was speed.

Good thing speed was what the Swift had by the bucketloads.

The ship’s frame screeched under the strain of the dive, her tin bones singing out like a hundred wet fingers over fine crystal.

The ship vibrated with the sound of it, the song of it. A rise of pride, of power, of fearless joy swelled Hink’s chest. He ripped off his breathing gear and let out a whoop and holler. Mr. Lum’s deep laughter rolled through the cabin.

The Black Sledge yawed to the side, slinging around hard to show the guns that prickled a line down the length of her.

“Ready, Mr. Seldom?” Hink yelled.

“Aye, Captain!” The Irishman set a hook from his belt to the mid-bar above his head, stomped his feet into the floor belts, then opened the starboard rear door.

The gust of wind that rattled the inside of the ship set her to shaking and would have stirred up anything not tied down, but Hink, Guffin, and Lum were hooked tight to the framework by belts at their waist and braces over their boots.

The blast of a cannon pounded the air like a giant clapping the Swift between his hands. The port rear fan sputtered before picking up to plumb again.

Hink kept the throttle full open. The window filled with the Black Sledge. He could see every stitch and rivet on the big old barge.

The Swift screamed out her killing song as the engine pumped thunder and power into her bones. The repercussions of another cannon shot—this one wide—cracked through the air.

Closer. So close, Hink could jump the door and land on the Black Sledge’s wing, if he wanted.

“Now!” he yelled to Mr. Seldom. But even as the word left his lips, Mr. Seldom had already let loose the flaming hook.

Guffin got himself settled in to see how many swear words he could fit in a breath as he, Hink, and Lum fought the controls to pull the Swift up out of her suicide dive.

The wind gave them hell, but just as Hink was thinking it was time to tell the crew to kiss their boots good-bye, the breeze shifted and nudged the Swift’s tail, giving her the air she needed. The Swift scraped over the top of the Black Sledge, leaving more than a little dust behind.

“Seldom?” Hink called out.

“Dead on, Captain,” Seldom yelled.

And then as if in response, the Black Sledge shuddered and rocked as she fell away beneath them. A gout of flame took up the port side of her—Seldom’s torch hitting dry tinder. They’d go up in a flame if they didn’t dump water to put out the fire. Of course, without enough water, there’d be no steam to keep her up or put her down soft. Especially not with a storm looming.

The way Hink reckoned it, Captain Barlow had himself a handful of hard decisions to make right about now.

And otherwise occupied was just how Hink liked the crew of the ships he was about to board.

“Guffin. The wheel,” Hink said.

Guffin jammed a staypin in the controls, unlatched his belt line, and with one hand on the overhead bars made his way across the ship to the helm.

Once there, Hink unlatched and left the wheel in Guffin’s hands, not waiting to see if he had latched the harness to the interior framework of the ship or kicked boots into the straps.

Hink caught at the framework as he ran to the door Seldom was manning.

“Give me as long as you can,” Hink said.

Seldom nodded. “Always do.”

Hink unlatched his breathing gear, dragging the scarf at his neck up over his nose, and buttoned it to the leather lining at the edge of his goggles. This high, the cold could freeze a man’s face right off.

Seldom unplugged Hink’s hose, then latched around Hink’s torso the harness that would haul him home. He handed Hink the three-hooks, two rakelike handles with metal barbs at one end and leather cuffs at the other. Hink buckled the cuffs around his wrists and gripped the handles.

“Keep her up, boys!” he yelled. Then Captain Hink stepped out the door and into the brace of wind.

The fall was fast, hard, and at the same time seemed to take forever. Wind blasted his eyes, face, and near tore off his clothes. The Black Sledge was just a few stories below him, and if he hit it right, the netting that covered her canvas would be plenty enough for him to catch on to.

Captain Hink hit the ship and swung the hooks in both his hands, which did a hell of a job of tangling up with the ropes.

He grunted in pain as his shoulders bore the weight of his landing and his arms nearly ripped from their sockets. It took him a second to breathe air back into his lungs and shake the dizzy out of his head. Then he was scrambling down the netting, toward the windows.

He hung down off the netting, his harness line still attached to the Swift. If this was gonna get done, it’d have to be fast, before the lines fouled and he’d have to cut free.

That is, if he lived long enough to cut free.

He pulled his gun, shot the window, and then smashed the glass out of it with the heavy barbed end of the hook. No return fire, which meant he’d caught them away from the glass, maybe busy, say, trying to douse the flame crawling up the side of their ship.

He pushed in through the broken window. Not much slack on his line left, and he’d be damned if he was going to cut free to go any farther.

The smoke that rolled through the old tub was choking and hot. Captain Barlow was somewhere in that mess, shouting orders. The dim shape of men scurrying to do as their captain told them impressed Hink. Even though Barlow was a snake-bellied traitor, he knew how to run a tight ship.

If the Sledge had any luck still on her ledger, she might make it through this little debacle.

They say luck favors the brave and fortune favors fools. Hink decided that he must be just enough of both today. One of Barlow’s crewmen was shock-still and strapped to the side bar, likely watching his life march before his eyes. Hink didn’t have to take but a step or two before he was in front of the man.

“I’m commandeering your services, sailor.” Hink hit him across the back of the head with the blunt end of the hook. The man sagged and Hink took up some swearing as he pulled the extra hauling harness off of his belt and strapped it around the man. He attached a second line onto the rope that was latched to his own harness so they both had a chance to be pulled back up to the Swift.

“You better be worth the trouble,” Hink muttered as he lifted the man up across his shoulder and stomped back to the window.

Once he’d muscled the both of them out the hole and up the ropes on the outside of the ship, a yell from behind him clued him in that the crew had been stirred up. Then gunshots rang out, louder than the flames, louder than the fire, louder than old Barlow himself. Hink knew he’d better get off this puffer fast if he wanted to keep on living.

He pulled on the rope, three hard tugs in a row, and pushed away from the ship like a kid swinging for a water hole.

The added weight of the unconscious man on his harness near took the breath back out of him as they slammed into the side of the ship. But Mr. Seldom had caught his signal. Hink felt the jerk and pull of the rope winching upward.

The Swift’s engines changed tone as Guffin maneuvered her up and away from the foundering Black Sledge.

Hink glanced up at his ship. She was a shiny beauty, ghostlike and luminescent against the smoke and clouds. Even swinging the waltz on a string beneath her, he couldn’t help but smile.

The ground far, far below him twirled as he was hauled upward. The Black Sledge seemed to have done some fair good in putting out the fire, and was smoking downward at a relatively safe speed toward a green bowl of a valley cradled between two peaks. They might make it down just fine.

Or they might be stuck in the middle of a range, with little in the way of supplies and a winter storm bearing down.

As if reflecting on his thoughts, the sky flashed with a rattle of lightning, thunder rolling way up above the glim fields. Rain started off in spits that turned into a good hard-driven drizzle. Even at this height, it was still just rain and not ice or snow.

By the time Hink was reaching up for Mr. Seldom’s and Molly Gregor’s hands to haul him into the Swift, he was soaked down to his long underwear and shaking from the cold.

“Who’s this?” Molly asked of the man he deposited on the floor.

“Didn’t catch his name,” Hink said, shivering under the blanket she tossed over his shoulders.

“If you’re cold, Captain,” she said, “you can work the boilers on the way home.” Molly’s sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and sweat trickled down the side of her neck and glossed her cheeks. Every inch of her exposed skin was tanned and dusted with soot from the big engine.

Hink grinned. “Wouldn’t want to put you out of a job, Molly.”

“The way you handle a boiler?” She scoffed. “We’d be dead before sunrise. Captain,” she added.

Seldom finished unlatching the harnesses and ropes between Hink and their guest, and then dragged the man by the armpits off to one side where he could latch him into the straps and framework there and keep him from getting stepped on by the crew.

Hink shoved up to his feet and, holding the blanket around him, walked over to Guffin, at the wheel.

“Heading?”

“Due west. Thought we could bed down in one of the hollows there.”

“We got the guts for that, Molly?” Hink asked.

“We’ll need to take it slow, but she’ll get us there,” Molly said. “So long as the storm doesn’t kick up too strong.”

“Aim us over the ridge, Mr. Guffin,” Hink said. “Easy as you can.”

“Aye, Captain,” Guffin said.

Seldom stepped over to navigation and Lum Ansell kept steady where he was, humming a low song, as was his habit in the air.

Hink walked the planking, trying to pace the warm back into his bones and taking the time to think things through. Who he should have gone for was Barlow, not this ship plugger. For all he knew the man was new to the hills and didn’t have a darn idea of why Barlow was looking for him.

“He’s coming to,” Molly announced. “Want I should put the snore back in him?”

“No, he needs talking to, and I need to do the talking.” Captain Hink stopped pacing and stood in front of the man, who had a blanket thrown on him. Likely that was Molly’s doing. Sure, the man was a captive and they’d just as soon throw him out to kick the breeze if he so much as spit, but if he froze, they wouldn’t be able to chisel any words out of him.

Hink waited for the man to rouse himself enough to pull the blanket up around his chin and tuck his knees to his chest.

“Have a few questions for you, sailor,” Hink said. “And if you answer them nice and clear, and nice and true, I won’t have my second kick you out of this boat.”

He had to raise his voice enough to be heard over the engines and the wind and rain squalling around out there. From the rock and yaw of the Swift, it was darned clear they were airborne.

Hink watched as the man scratched the tally of each of those things in his brain.

“I don’t want no trouble,” he finally said. Well, croaked was more like it. The smoke and the cold had run roughshod over his vocals.

“Then we’re of an agreement,” Hink said. “No trouble. You give me answers, and I’ll see that your boots are planted on solid ground. Here’s question number one: who is Captain Barlow answering to?”

“Said his name was the Saint,” the man said.

Hink tried not to let his surprise show. The man jumped so quick into telling him the truth, it caught him quiet for a second. Which worked out just fine. The man must have interpreted Hink’s surprised silence as an invitation to keep on babbling.

“I don’t know anything else, mister. Captain,” the man said. “All I know is the cap said there’s a general who had a need for us to do our job and do it quickly.”

“What was your job?” Hink asked.

“Find Marshal Paisley Cadwaller Hink Cage and bring him in.”

“Paisley?” Molly said, smiling. “What kind of pansy-pants name is Paisley?”

Hink did not answer her, though he sent a glare in her direction that would have burned through steel. His mama had her reasons for giving him so many names.

“So once you found this marshal, what was it you were going to do to him?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” the man said. “Take him to the Saint for the thing he was holding out Vicinity’s way.”

“Holding?” Hink said, bending down over the man. “What thing? What thing is the marshal holding?”

“Don’t know,” the man said, cowering back from Hink’s questions as if each word was a rock thrown at his head. “Just heard Barlow say something about a holder and Vicinity and Marshal Hink Cage. I don’t know nothing more. I swear by it. I don’t know nothing more.”

Man was half scared out of his mind, that was sure.

“Captain,” Molly said. “You might want to step back a bit.”

Hink frowned and looked at Molly. She nodded toward his hand.

In that hand was the man’s shirt, and in that shirt was the man. Hink had reached out and grabbed him and hauled him onto his feet so he could yell in his face proper. Had done it without thinking, that temper catching hold of his hands and using them before his brain could send in suggestions.

No wonder the man was quaking.

“Sure thing,” Hink said. “Sure.” He let go of the man and took a step or two back. “Molly, we got anything hot to drink on this boat?”

“Might,” she said.

“See to it the sailor here gets something to knock the freeze off.”

Molly nodded and headed back to the keg stove at the rear of the ship to rustle up some tea.

Hink took off in the opposite way and came up behind Guffin. “Give over the wheel,” he said.

Guffin untethered and stepped back.

“We putting down in a pocket, Captain?”

Hink latched line to the frame and stomped his boots into the floor bracers. “We’re cutting over the range.”

“Over? Where to?”

“Vicinity,” he said. “Before the Saint’s devils get there first.”