Mae shut the window. So be it. She aimed to see Jeb’s murderer dead and buried. No matter how shadowed the path that would lead her down. She’d walk through death and more to make the killer pay.
She pulled her shawl off the hook, and tied her bonnet beneath her chin. Wooden clicks and clatter from wings and windmills and chimes hung about the house, stirred in the still air. If Jeb had carved words into those trinkets, they’d be whispering warnings to her.
“I mean to find his killer,” she said quietly to the small bits of wood and metal, to the memory of Jeb within them. “And there is nothing that will stand in my way.”
But all her anger wouldn’t kill a man. She’d need a weapon. The omen warned it might be more than a man she hunted. It might be the Strange.
Mae paused at the door, then turned back to her sewing basket. She took up the delicate double-moon tatting shuttle Jeb had given her on a chain as a courting gift. It was a good-luck token, carved by his hand and inlaid with thin silver vines and gold leaves. It was the most valuable thing she owned. She didn’t want to offer it up in trade to the Madders, but she would if she had to.
The knot of grief in her chest spread out and dug hard into her ribs. She took a deep breath and refused to cry a single tear more. Jeb was gone. His love, his warmth, ended. Now she had rage to keep her warm.
She folded the shuttle carefully within a bit of silk stitched at each corner with thread she’d spun in starlight, then soaked in rosemary. It wasn’t much, certainly not a weapon that could be used against the killer. But it was valuable. She hoped, if necessary, it would be a good item to trade for the Madder brothers’ help. If not, then she had coin in her bank safety box they might find fitting barter for a device that could kill a man or monster.
Her home was silent, not a click or whir from any corner. No longer filled with the sound of her spinning wheel and Jeb’s singing set to the tick of his carving knife over wood, or the hot iron and crimps as he bent metal. It was silent as the grave. Dead as her heart.
She pulled the anger and rage closer. If death was her only life now, she would embrace it. She strode out into the morning light, pulling the door hard behind her.
CHAPTER NINE
Cedar made good time over the flats past town, then around Powder Keg Bluff. The wind was at his back, and what clouds came up with dawn burned away as the day went on. He’d been by the brothers’ mine before, but not too close. The Madders made no secret of the trips and alarms they’d put in place to remind anyone who wandered their way of just how valuable they held their privacy. Rumors said they had gun-wielding matics that could take a man down at a hundred yards without a single finger touching a trigger.
Cedar didn’t know whether that was true, and hadn’t found a need strong enough to test the fate of a person arriving unannounced at the Madders’ mine.
Until now.
He pulled up a good half mile from the mine, swung down out of the saddle, and swigged a mouthful of water from his canteen before pulling his crystal-sighted Walker out of his saddle holster. He drew his goggles up from around his neck. The enhanced-distance lens might do him some good. He stayed on the ground, less of a target out here with scant tree cover, and pulled his goggles over his eyes, tipping the brim of his hat to angle a bit of shade over his vision. With a roll of his finger over the brass gear at the side of the goggles, he adjusted his vision to high magnification. He could also slip down a thin slice of ruby, which gave a man an edge on seeing in the night, or shutter the goggles with slit brass, which made sight in the glare of sun on snow more bearable.
He’d purchased these from a watch deviser outside Chicago—the same man he’d bought his brother’s watch from.
Animal trails led up the mountain, but the mine entrance and the area around it was covered by scrub. He paid particular attention to the stones stacked up in a tumble from where the mountain had shaken them loose. Looked for the telltale glint of metal among the rocks, searching for guns or tickers.
Not a flash of brass, not a copper glow. If the Madder brothers had guns or matics guarding the mine, they weren’t visible from this angle.
Course, if he was wanting to keep an entryway undisturbed, he’d keep his guns hidden too.
Cedar swung back up into the saddle and headed toward the mine. He pushed the goggles up on his forehead, the cut beneath his kerchief healed to an itchy ache. If the brothers were so set to keep folk out, they’d likely known he was there a mile ago, and closing in.
The raw call of a red-tailed hawk filled the air and beetles chirred like cogs rattling against a tin cup. The only other sounds were the steady clomp of hooves beneath him and the creak of the saddle.
The terrain started into an upward slope, loose shale deep enough that Flint was buried fetlock-deep into the rocks, each step akin to a slog through water. The shale tumbled and chattered like broken pottery down the slope, kicking up enough dust that Cedar could taste it at the back of his throat.
Nothing strange about dust at the end of summer. But the shale loosened a whirlwind, two small dust devils one-toeing ahead of him, picking up bits of leaves, twigs, and carrying them along.
Nothing strange about whirlwinds either. Except these whirlwinds didn’t die out as they should. The wind went flat, but the whirlwinds danced on ahead of him, toe-to-toe and out again, a waltz of dirt and air. With no wind to drive them, they sailed against the natural world, and tottered up the road, right up the slope, right up, he reckoned, to the door of the Madder brothers themselves.
The dust devils folded in half, a bow; then the spinning wind and bits of leaves stretched out to point off toward the mountainside ahead, looking so much like two gentlemen lifting a welcoming palm toward an entrance to some kind of fancy hotel. They held like that a tick, then busted apart, leaves and dust flying off in every direction, whatever force that had kept the devils together gone now.
If there was a natural explanation for dust devils spinning when there was no wind, Cedar didn’t know it.
He didn’t cock his gun. Shooting at the wind would do him no good. He did rest the barrel across the saddle horn, ready if he needed it.
He clicked his tongue and urged Flint up the rise in the path, steeper than it looked, and lined with mountain mahogany and brush with thorns as long as his thumb.
At the top of the rise, the air grew damp and cool. The green scent of a stream running nearby mixed with the taste of stone and dust in his throat.
Huh. He didn’t recall a year-round stream out this way. Didn’t recall the Madders sluicing for gold. He wondered if they’d diverted a creek, wondered how they’d gotten it to run against its way, if that was so.
No other sign of the Strange here—no dust devils waiting to escort him on. No matics, small or large, at least none that he could see. The trail died off, leaving him surrounded on two sides by brush. To his right stood gunmetal gray stones that looked as if they’d plunged from the top of the mountain and buried themselves into the ground. Behind him was the shale and dust path.
He scanned the ground. No boot prints, no broken branches, no sign of anyone moving this way. Looked like no one traveled past this point, even though this was the only path that he’d known the Madders to take up to their mine. He’d seen them bring their wagon this way, loaded down with supplies. Not that he’d seen them bring out rail carts of stone. The brothers just brought out pockets full of silver.
It was looking like he’d followed a false trail.
Cedar cursed under his breath and checked the sky. Nearly noon now. He’d wasted half the day heading to a hole full of devisers that wasn’t even where it was supposed to be.
And all that time, there was a boy out in the elements, caught up by such Strange as walked the land.
“Afternoon,” he called out. “If the Madder brothers are here, I’d be obliged to a little of your time.” He dug in his saddlebag and threw a purse full of coins onto the ground. It fell with a fat clink.
Funny how the sound of coins falling caught the ear louder than a man could yell.
The eldest brother, Alun Madder, pushed through the brush, looking to all the world as if he were out on a stroll, a long-stemmed corn pipe caught between his teeth, his overalls dirty and grease stained beneath a duster too heavy for the heat in the day. He had a red kerchief tied tight over his head, and sweat darkened it over his brow.
