Peacemaker (The Flash Gold Chronicles, #3) (10 page)

Cedar fell silent. Kali didn’t know what to
say. He sounded like he needed…comfort. She knew how to be tough
and sarcastic, but nurturing or comforting? Her tongue tangled at
the idea of even trying to say something along those lines. Women
were supposed to be good at comforting people, but maybe she’d been
born with some sort of deficiency.

“
I suppose,” Kali said,
“that you wouldn’t appreciate it if I told you the perfect thing to
get your mind off of your problems would be planning to take over
an airship.”

At least he chuckled, and his muscles
loosened a little. “Come back to town with me tonight, and help me
with this murderer. We’ll talk to the Mounties right away—maybe
they can get back out here and take care of these pirates before
dawn. I’ll remind them of favors they owe me when they’re deciding
what to do with the airship. I doubt they’ll have a use for it, so
getting it for you shouldn’t be that tough, especially if it’s
damaged.”

Kali worried that the pirates would have the
ship fixed and be back in the air before the Mounties came, but she
nodded and stepped back from Cedar. “Agreed.” As he said, it would
be selfish of her to choose her own interests over those of women
who were being tortured and killed. She didn’t want to choose her
interests above Cedar’s either, not in this case. He needed this
redemption. “I don’t know all the Hän girls in town, but I heard
there’s a show at the Aurora Saloon. Dancing girls, all tribal.” He
wasn’t going to like it when she admitted who had mentioned that
show.

“
Oh, I’d forgotten about
that,” Cedar said. “One of the Mounties mentioned it. Some fellow
got a bunch of unmarried girls from tribes from all around the
Yukon, and they travel about, going from town to town performing to
entertain the menfolk.” He tilted his head. “I’m surprised you’d
heard of it.”

“
Your Pinkerton detective
told me about it. Said he’s working at the Aurora Saloon and that I
could find him there in the evenings if I changed my mind about
talking to him.”

“
I see.” Cedar clenched
his jaw. “We’ll do our best to avoid him.”

“
Hm.” As Kali shoveled
coal into the SAB to fire its engine up anew, she asked, “Did they
ever find out who was responsible for the other murders in San
Francisco?”

“
Not that I know of. As
soon as they indicted me, they stopped looking for the real killer.
I had to flee town to avoid the firing squad, so I don’t know if
the murders stopped after that or not.”

If the murders
hadn’t
stopped after
Cedar left, that ought to show the law down there—and maybe this
Agent Lockhart—that Cedar wasn’t responsible for them. If Kali
could talk to the detective alone, maybe she could convince him to
double-check his facts.

A breeze scuttled down Main Street, swatting
at a newspaper page too mired in the mud to escape, though it
rattled and whipped in a valiant effort to do so. Kali leaned
against a support post on the covered boardwalk outside of the RCMP
station. A single whale-oil lantern burned on a desk inside, and
the voices of Cedar and a Mountie he had roused from sleep floated
through the open door. Cedar was relaying the pirates’ location, a
description of Sparwood, and trying to get a list of tribal women
living in the city, something the Mounties apparently didn’t track.
With so many new people flooding into Dawson each week, it must be
impossible to keep an eye on everybody.

Though midnight approached, raucous voices
and music filled the street. Candelabras and lanterns burned behind
the windows of many hotels, bit houses, and the popular Main Street
Dancing Hall. Nearby, a man lay on his back, snoring, in the spot
where he’d been thrown out for not being able to pay.

Kali leaned away from the post and peered up
the shadowy street. Electricity had not yet come to Dawson—indeed,
electric lights were something she had only read about—and there
were no gas lamps at the intersections; but the northern sky was
not entirely dark, and she could make out people stumbling out of
bit houses. She could also make out the Aurora Saloon sign, only a
few buildings up the street.

Kali glanced back through
the RCMP window, decided Cedar would be another fifteen minutes at
least, and left the post to stroll up the boardwalk. Given
everything that was going on, wandering the streets alone at night
was probably not a good idea, but she couldn’t very well go see
Agent Lockhart with the man he wanted to shoot at her side. It was
worth taking a risk if there was a chance she could convince him of
the truth and get him off Cedar’s back. Besides, nobody was likely
to attack her, or try to kidnap her, in the middle of a crowded
saloon. If someone
did
, she had two smoke nuts stuffed into her pocket, and an ugly
little pistol Cedar called a “man stopper” jammed into the front of
her overalls. He’d insisted she carry it around town. She wasn’t
much for shooting people, but she could do it in
self-defense.

“
Sure, tell yourself
things like that,” Kali muttered to herself. “Maybe it’ll make them
true.”

Kali paused to adjust the cuff of her
overalls, making sure they hid the bulge in her sock—she still had
the vial of flash gold tucked in there—then stepped over the
snoring man to push open the Aurora’s front door. She crinkled her
nose at the stench of sweat and tobacco smoke, and she had to blink
a few times to get her eyes used to the smoky haze that filled the
air. One would never know how late it was, going by the amount of
activity in the large main room.

Lively fiddle music bounced off of the dark
timber walls. Stuffed elk, caribou, and moose heads were mounted
everywhere, and more than one set of antlers was being used for a
coat rack. Men filled tables, most with chairs turned to watch a
wooden stage where bronze-skinned women danced in costumes that
were about as close to traditional garb as root beer was to beer.
The girls’ bellies showed as they wriggled about, flinging bare
feet into the air. Men clapped and roared their appreciation with
each glimpse of flesh.

A sign propped up near the stage promised
this was an “Authentic Injun Dance.” Kali snorted. The only time
she’d seen people twist and gyrate that much had been when they
were flailing about on ice, trying to ward off an inevitable
fall.

A drunken man staggering toward the doorway
spat at a copper spittoon. The black tobacco spittle missed Kali by
inches and spattered onto the wall a good three feet above the
receptacle. It joined copious other stains darkening the pine
boards.

Kali decided standing so close to the door
wasn’t wise and eased aside for the sot to pass. Here and there,
gamblers worked tables, and she spotted Agent Lockhart without
trouble. Three men sat with him in a back corner, each taking turns
rolling dice. Lockhart’s box of gambling goodies lay open on the
table. Kali wondered what kind of idiots would trust a man who had
his own kit not to have loaded dice.

She weaved through the crowd, dodging
wayward elbows from men too busy to notice her and gropes from the
ones who did notice her. Some girls might be flattered at the
attention, but she was wearing her coveralls and knew there wasn’t
anything alluring about her. It was just that men outnumbered women
twenty to one, if not more, up here, so a lady need ever go to bed
lonely if she preferred company.

Though Lockhart wore his bowler hat pulled
low on his brow while he swapped wagers with the men at the table,
Kali felt his eyes upon her as she approached. He had probably been
watching her since she walked through the door.

Kali stopped between two of the men at his
table. “Mind if I play a round?”

She had no idea how to play dice games or
even if “a round” was the right term, but she figured she’d go
along with his gambler façade. If he was up in Dawson after more
than Cedar, he might not appreciate her breaking his cover in front
of these men.

“
Women can’t gamble,” one
fellow groused. “Go join the girls on stage, or keep somebody’s
blankets warm at the hotel next door.”

“
Are you sure you want to
be that insulting,” Kali asked, fishing in a pocket, “considering
I’m standing right behind you with—” she grabbed the first tool
that she felt and pulled it out, “—pliers in my hand?”

It wasn’t the most menacing tool in her
collection, but she held it up with what she hoped was an ominous
expression on her face.

“
Pliers?” the man asked.
“What’re you going to do with those? Now a Colt would be
threatening, but—”

Kali whipped her hand to the side and
fastened the pliers about his ear. With the practiced ease of one
who has turned thousands of bolts, she issued a quick, efficient
twist. He cried out, fell out of his chair, and landed on his hands
and knees. When he threw an arm up, trying to grab her, Kali simply
twisted harder. This drew another louder cry, one filled with
curses for her and all of her ancestors.

She released him, stepped back, out of his
reach, and raised the pliers as a warning to anyone else who might
be thinking of giving her trouble. In particular, she eyed the
other men at the table.

One smirked, turned the vacated chair
outward, and said, “This seat’s open, miss.”

Laughter from nearby tables drowned out the
fiddle. Kali kept an eye on the man on the floor, figuring he might
have retaliation in mind, but more than his ear was red, and he
slunk off with his tail clenched between his legs.

Still holding the pliers aloft, Kali pinned
Lockhart with a stare, wondering if he would give her a hard time
too, but he merely extended a hand toward the empty seat. Though
the hat and the room’s dimness shadowed his eyes, they did not
quite hide the glint of amusement there.

Kali slid into the warm seat. “How about
some poker?” she asked. She knew the rules to most versions of
that.

“
I was actually fixing to
take a break,” Lockhart said.

The gambler to Kali’s right, a man who had
yet to say anything, stirred at this. He rapped his knuckles on the
table. “You need to sit right there a spell and give me a chance to
win back my losses.”

Though people were still talking and music
was still playing, Kali had no trouble hearing the soft click of a
hammer being cocked beneath the table. It was Lockhart’s Colt, she
assumed; both of the other man’s hands were in sight.

Lockhart leveled a cold stare at the
dissenter. “We’re done here, friend.”

The gambler’s eyes narrowed to slits, but he
must have heard the gun being readied, too, for he grumbled
something and pushed away from the table. Back rigid, he stalked
out of the saloon.

The remaining man, the one who had offered
Kali a seat, shrugged amiably and left as well.

When Kali and Lockhart were alone, she waved
at the kit full of dice, cards, and chips, and said, “If this ruse
was for Cedar’s sake, or mine, you can stop now. I know who you
are, and he knows that you’re here.”

Lockhart’s face grew
closed. “You told
Cedar
—” he said the pseudonym with a curl of the lip, “—about me,
did you?”

“
You played your hand too
soon.” Kali thought that sounded like a gambling-appropriate thing
to say. “Showing me the newspaper and pointing him out.”

“
Yes, I feared that might
be the case. I was hoping you’d be concerned when you learned what
a monster he is. You seemed smart, so I was hoping you’d know
better than to go right to that murderer.”

“
He’s not a—” Kali started
to say murderer, but she supposed that technically he was, even if
he only aimed for killers with bounties on their heads,
“—criminal,” she said instead. “I know what happened, and you’re
after the wrong man.”

Lockhart sneered. “Of course he’d tell you
that. Do you even know his real name?”

“
Yes. He told me before
you ever came to town. I’ll point out that you never gave me
your
real name, Agent
Lockhart.”

His eyebrows twitched beneath his hat. “I
see.”

“
I wouldn’t spend time
with an evil man, sir. Cedar—Milos—was framed by Cudgel Conrad. I
imagine you’ve heard of him?”

“
I’m aware of the
felon.”

“
Cedar’s been after him
for years, because Cudgel killed his brother. The man would do
anything to get rid of Cedar, but he’s not good enough to kill
Cedar outright.” When Kali said the last, a muscle twitched in
Lockhart’s jaw. Was he irked he wasn’t good enough to kill Cedar
outright either? “Cudgel must have figured that the next best thing
was to get the law after Cedar, so he’d be harried every step of
the way and have less time to spend on collecting Cudgel’s bounty.
And that’s just what you’re doing, harrying him and making trouble
for him, exactly the way that criminal wants.”

Lockhart’s face remained cold and impassive
throughout Kali’s speech, and she feared she wasn’t swaying him at
all. She ought to be sweet-talking him, not stating blunt truths,
but she was no gifted flannel mouth. She preferred to deliver
things straight up, whether people liked hearing them or not. She
doubted it would sound sincere if she tried to do anything
else.

“
This is the story he told
you?” Lockhart asked.

Kali bristled, wanting to
say it was the truth, not a story, but she had only Cedar’s words
to go on. She believed him—he’d been too honest, and too pained
about his choices, to be making things up. And, even though she
always told him that she wasn’t quick to trust people, him
included, she
did
trust him at this point. They’d been through enough together
that she believed she could rely upon him.