Hunted by Lindsay Buroker Page A

to have Cedar at her side.

    She tapped a pocket where she carried two
smoke nuts. Her Winchester, fastened to her packsack, was within
easy reach as well. She trusted Cedar still had her two vials of
flash gold flakes; they were not weapons but, given time, they
could be made into useful tools.
    Kali picked out a familiar voice, fortunately
not singing.
    “That’s him,” she murmured to Cedar, who
walked quietly, even with no light to brighten the trail. She
reached out to brush his arm now and then to make sure he was still
there.
    Sebastian sat with five other men around a
fire pit. All had the bearded, grizzled appearance of veterans, and
more than one sported a scar on his face. A fellow with a greasy
beard dangling halfway down his chest scratched beneath an eye
patch with the stumpy nub of a half-missing finger. Rifles and
shotguns leaned against logs or rocks, no more than an arm’s length
from their owners.
    Rectangular shadows behind the men delineated
tents. The claim farther up the bank from Sebastian’s lay dark, its
prospectors either gone to sleep or perhaps into town, but a fire
burned at the one diagonally across the river, the one that
supposedly belonged to Cudgel’s crony. Nobody sat around it, though
a tent and the beginnings of a log cabin rose near the flames.
    “Doesn’t look very active,” Kali said.
    “Your old beau?” Cedar asked. “Well, he has a
flask of whiskey in his hand. That slows a man down.”
    “I meant the camp we’re here to spy on.”
    “Ah. I’ll sneak over tonight if I can find a
way across the river. Let’s get settled in here first. Those men
look rougher than I expected based on my initial encounter with
your Sebastian.”
    “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop calling him my this-or-that,” Kali said. “And just because he’s a dandy
doesn’t mean he’s not a fine flannel-mouth. I’m sure he talked
these fellows into helping with promises of riches, and they
believed him. As for their roughness, Sebastian probably picked
them for that. It’s dangerous up here, and you’re like to have your
claim jumped if anything shiny comes out of it.”
    “Understood.”
    When they were within a dozen meters of the
fire, Kali called out, not wanting to surprise anyone with twitchy
reflexes. “Sebastian?”
    Sebastian bolted to his feet, eyes larger
than Francis Barton’s prize nuggets. “Kali?”
    “Yes.”
    Despite Sebastian’s acknowledgement, the man
beside him grabbed his shotgun. He raised it to his shoulder and
Kali tensed, ready to throw herself to the ground. A rifle
thundered a foot away from her ear. The shotgun flew from its
owner’s hands. Cursing, the man flung himself behind a log even as
the rest of Sebastian’s cronies lunged for their weapons.
    Cedar fired two more times.
    “Sebastian!” Kali ducked and scrambled behind
a stump. She found her own rifle, but she did not want to fire, not
if this was a misunderstanding. “What’re you—”
    “Stop!” Sebastian called. “Everyone stop
grabbing for your firearms.”
    None of his men had managed to fire a shot,
not with Cedar preempting them, but they had all found cover, and
irritated snarls came from behind the rocks and logs.
    “I invited her up here,” Sebastian
went on. “She’s the one I told you about. Albeit, I wasn’t
expecting her so soon.”
    A twinge of irritation ran through Kali. Why
had he expected her at all? Did he truly think his offer that
irresistible? If not for Cedar, she would not have taken a single
step in Sebastian’s direction.
    A shadow moved at her elbow, Cedar joining
her behind the stump.
    “Have I mentioned how much I’m enjoying the
enhanced chambering speed your modifications have granted my
Winchester?” he asked while Sebastian calmed down his men.
    “Not since Thursday. Do you think that one
was going to shoot me?” Kali asked, already unimpressed with
Sebastian’s comrades.
    “If I thought that, I would have shot his
chest, not his