Claimed (The Flash Gold Chronicles, #4) (8 page)

Cedar looked up, twenty-five feet up. “Ah, there’ll be a big crack up there now, won’t there?”

“Get to hooking it. That snake is giving you the eye.”

Cedar tied his rope to the end of the hook. “You sure he’s not eyeing you?”

“You’re a much bigger meal.”

He took some time setting up his throw, not wanting to have the hook miss and clunk back down on a snake’s head. Talk about irritating the wildlife...

He tossed the hook, aiming a bit farther behind the edge, figuring the claws could catch on the way back. It clanked as it landed on the stone floor up there. He tugged it carefully... and let out his breath when it caught.

“Easy,” Kali said.

Cedar was glad to know he made it seem so. He opened his mouth to tell her to climb up first, but a noise drifted down into the pit from above. A scrape and then a clunk. It had nothing to do with his grappling hook, which had already settled into the crack.

“Did you hear that?” Kali whispered.

Cedar nodded. “Someone is coming.”

When he had imagined setting a trap, he hadn’t been thinking of having himself in the middle of it. He shouldered his backpack and, hoping his boots still smelled of kerosene, darted over a snake to grab his katana. It had landed point down in one of the skeletal ribcages. He had no more than plucked out the weapon when an angry hiss filled the pit.

“Look out,” Kali whispered.

Though she kept her voice low, urgency flooded the words, and Cedar spun around in time to catch the snake’s head rising. Fangs flashed and the maw darted for his leg. He cut down with the blade, intercepting the attack. The katana sliced through the sinewy body, sending the head flying across the pit. It smashed into the rock wall and landed between two other coiled snakes. More rattles stirred.

Cedar would have cursed, but there was no time. He lunged for the rope.

“Hide the light and follow me up,” he whispered, already climbing.

Worried about the riled rattlers, he would have preferred to send Kali up first, but there was just as much trouble up there. He could hear footsteps now, men walking toward the pit. More than one man. The glow from the flash gold disappeared, and he felt Kali’s weight on the rope below him. By now, all the snakes were rattling, the noise reverberating off the walls.

Climb fast, he urged her mentally, wanting her out of their reach. He didn’t speak, though. Light had come into view above, the flame of lanterns, more than one.

“Someone’s got the rattlers agitated,” a man said.

“Must be excited about their dinner,” another man responded. They sounded like they had already started into the excavated tunnel. They would see Kali’s hook any moment now. He had to take them by surprise first.

Cedar paused a couple of feet below the lip, tightening his grip with his left hand, the harsh twine biting into his calluses, and eased his Winchester out with his right. He almost chose the katana, but if they spotted the hook, they might stop back in the tunnel, out of reach. The rifle was already loaded, six rounds that, thanks to Kali’s tinkering, would reload without needing to be manually chambered, something that would have been next to impossible to manage while hanging on a rope.

“Pete, what is that?”

The shadows at the top of the pit bumped and twisted as someone lifted a lantern for a better look. Cedar chose that moment to pop up with the rifle. He scarcely aimed, knowing he had to take two armed men out before they had time to notice and shoot
him
. No, four men. There were another two in the rear. Two had six-shooters out. Tarnation, how many peons did Cudgel have up here?

His first bullet hammered into the chest of the man with the lantern. The light flew, scattering shadows. Even with the automatic loading mechanism, a half second that seemed an eternity passed before the rifle was ready to fire again. Cedar used the time to lunge out of the pit. He wasn’t surprised to hear the cocking of a hammer, but he was ready to fire again by then. He knelt against the wall, hoping to provide a small target, and shot again.

Someone grunted in pain, but he couldn’t tell if it had been a killing blow. The lantern lay on the ground now. It hadn’t gone out, but it shed little light from its side in the dust. Someone returned fire. Cedar dropped to his belly and fired again. A bullet clanged off the wall above his head. He wished the tunnel offered some cover—maybe he should have stayed on the rope below the pit’s edge, but that was no position to fight from, and he risked kicking Kali off the rope. Another bullet scraped rock off the mountain, this one even closer to his head. Cedar caught movement beyond the fallen lantern and fired again, hoping his eyes were better adjusted to the darkness than those of these newcomers.

He rolled away from the wall and came up with his katana in hand, remembering the low ceiling at the last moment. He ducked and charged, kicking the lantern when he reached it, even as he slashed out with the blade. Darkness swallowed the tunnel at the same time as he connected with flesh. A man cried out. Cedar swung again. He had the advantage in close quarters—he could swing at anyone and meet an enemy, whereas they would have to worry about hitting each other.

Someone with a wild swing clipped his shoulder, but it was only a fist. Cedar responded with a slash at stomach level. The katana bit into clothing and flesh, drawing another cry.

Footsteps pounded in the opposite direction, someone trying to flee. Cedar didn’t want anyone reporting back to Cudgel. He charged after the man, stepping on someone else as he did so. The fallen figure didn’t cry out or respond. Dead or unconscious. That ought to be most of them, though the darkness made it hard to be certain.

The running man made it to the wan light filtering in from the cave opening. He jumped, trying to climb up the wall. The ceiling opened up, and Cedar had the room to hurl his blade. He had light enough to line up his target too. The blade wasn’t meant for throwing, but it spun across the dark cave, regardless, cutting through air and then through flesh. It struck the man in the back of the neck, the force enough that it lodged there. He stiffened, then tumbled back to the ground.

Cedar snatched his katana free and spun back toward the tunnel, sensing the light level rising there. It wasn’t the lantern. Kali was crouching in the passage, her vial of flash gold out again, its fluctuating light revealing three fallen men, none of them moving.

Her expression was hard to read. It wasn’t disapproving, exactly, but grim. She probably wished they hadn’t fallen for this trap, so this wouldn’t have been the result. All she said was, “I’m guessing they didn’t come from town.”

“They must have had a hideout much closer,” Cedar said, extending an arm to her, wanting to take her out into the daylight, away from all this carnage. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Don’t you want to... er, questioning is out, I guess. Search them?”

She was right. One of them might hold some clue as to Cudgel’s whereabouts. Questioning one of them would have been even better, but he hadn’t been in a position where he could do anything other than react. React with a great deal of accuracy, it seemed. Once that might have made him proud, but it was just part of the job now.

“I’ll handle it,” Cedar said. “Why don’t you wait outside.”

“I can—”

“They might have disturbed your bicycle.”

Kali’s eyes widened. “Tarnation, that’s right.” She hustled out of the tunnel so fast it was as if those kerosene-soaked britches had caught fire. She forgot to leave him the flash gold, so he could see. He fished out his flint and relit a lantern.

The search revealed little, a few coins, cards from one of the faro halls on Tiger Alley, a scrap of paper with a hotel room number on it. He might have found that encouraging, but a woman wearing lip paint had kissed the corner. Somehow he doubted he would locate Cudgel there.

Cedar climbed out of the cave. He would leave the rest of the investigating for the Mounties. Kali was lying in the mud by the pool, examining the SAB. To him, it appeared as if it had been ignored by the men, but someone had sabotaged it before, so he wouldn’t fault her for being thorough.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“Not unless I want to visit an available woman with low standards.”

She leaned out from beneath the vehicle and gave him a squinty look, but didn’t comment. He wondered if that meant she would be disturbed if he did seek out such a person. He hoped so.

“Guess this was all a waste,” he said.

“Maybe not. We found out a few things, didn’t we?”

“That Cudgel might be the one behind this claim-grabbing scheme, I suppose,” Cedar said, wishing again that he’d had the opportunity to question one of those men.

“And that your Sergeant Tremblay might be in bed with him.”

“That’s... not a certainty. Just because he sent us out here doesn’t mean he’s Cudgel’s man. He could have legitimately wanted this scheme investigated.”

“By
you
. Like I said before, I find it right suspicious that he was so eager to send me out here with you. I’ll be driving straight back to check on my cave.”

Cedar grimaced. If her work area had been plundered because she had agreed to go off with him, he would be irritated with himself—and Cudgel. “You aren’t... I mean, is your
item
stored in there?”

He doubted there was anyone around to overhear them, but the flash gold was so valuable and so desired by so many that he had grown accustomed to speaking of it in secret. She had long since made the flakes disappear, returning them to whatever pocket or sock the vial had come from.

“It’s not in the cave,” Kali said. “It’ll remain hidden until I’m ready to plug it into the engine.”

“Good.”

She didn’t volunteer to tell him where she had hid it, and he didn’t ask.

“But there’s a powerful lot of things that could be done to my ship to delay the building.” Kali grabbed a shovel and dumped coal into the banked fire of the steam bicycle’s small furnace. “You ready to go?”

Cedar gazed through the trees and toward the river. There was nothing else to find out here. Cudgel and the clues leading back to him, they must be in town. He would talk to Tremblay—especially if they found out someone had searched Kali’s cave—and he would check that address just in case the owner of the lip paint knew anything. He wished he could think of more, some trap of his own to lay.

“Cedar?”

“Just thinking.” He rubbed his head again. “What if... I don’t know how we could manage it since he recognizes both of us, but we just saw that couple leaving their claim. Reckon that means it’ll be for sale soon.”

Kali caught on immediately. “You want to disguise ourselves and pose as buyers?”

“Might be a way in.”

“Even if we came up with clever disguises—and we’re both distinctive enough that it would be hard—we would need money to show to someone. If your sergeant’s words are anything to go by, the price will be exorbitant, and I’ll wager some lowlife would vet the potential buyers before sending them up to see the boss.”

“A reasonable wager.”

“We would either need a pile of coin, or something else of great value.” Kali’s eyes narrowed.

Cedar shook his head. He wouldn’t ask her to risk her flash gold for his trap. She didn’t know how to make more—the secret had died with her father—and it was the fuel for her dream. “Maybe I can get lucky playing a hand of faro tonight.” Though he would have to get lucky at a
lot
of hands to come up with fifty thousand or whatever those claims were going for.

“I might... know someone who can help,” Kali said. “Who can convincingly pose as a rich feller, even if he’s not. And someone new to town, who isn’t known yet to be a friend of ours. It’s dangerous, so he might not be eager to work with us, but the catching of Cudgel would certainly make a good story.”

“He?” Cedar asked, an uneasiness gathering in his gut.

“Travis Andrews. And might be, if I put on a dress and a wig, I could go in with him and Cudgel wouldn’t recognize me, either.”

Kali was finishing bringing the SAB to readiness, so she didn’t see his scowl. Cedar didn’t want to involve that kid. He certainly didn’t want Kali going off with him to meet Cudgel. Even without all the men he surrounded himself with, Cudgel was a dangerous fighter. A dangerous
killer
.

“I
knew it.” Kali stomped around inside the airship hull, her boots thudding on the wooden innards. “Tarnation, what a mess. I knew it!”

Cedar didn’t have to crawl through the hole in the side to understand what she meant—he could see the evidence of intruders in the cave. Boxes of tools and crates of parts had been torn into, the pieces scattered across the earthen floor. The sleeping area in the back had been demolished, with bedding and clothing everywhere.

“Shall I visit Sergeant Tremblay now?” Cedar asked. “Or after you’ve finished stomping about in irritation?”

A few clumps and clanks sounded from within the craft, and Cedar was on the verge of leaving, sensing that Kali might still be cleaning and reorganizing when he returned in a couple of hours, but she appeared in the hole before he turned away. She was clenching a pair of pliers the way someone else might brandish a sword.

“I’m coming. I’ll twist off his favorite body part if he doesn’t answer our questions.”

Cedar might have laughed at this notion, but he had heard about how Kali had brought a man to his knees with those pliers. “I thought you preferred it when I handled interrogations and other necessary but oft unpleasant acts of violence.”

“Oh, you can interrogate him. Just so long as I get to twist something.” She demonstrated in the air with the tool. “Did you see what he did to my engine room?”

“It might not have been him. This looks like it may have been the work of a team. The sergeant may have been blackmailed or otherwise coerced.”

“Something he can tell us all about while I’m twisting things.” Kali stalked out of the ship, past Cedar, and to the mouth of the cave. “You coming, Cedar? Get a wiggle on.”

Though Cedar wanted nothing more than to gather information on Cudgel’s whereabouts, he was not enthused about the idea of interrogating a Mountie, or twisting anything off one. He followed Kali but hoped her anger would settle to a simmer by the time they made the walk to town.