Devon Monk - Tin Swift

“You might say the leg’s fine.” Miss Dupuis motioned to Theobald to come closer with the lantern. She knelt down in her skirts so she could get a better look at Hink’s thigh. “But your leg says otherwise.”

Hink was going to argue, but her man had placed the lantern on the floor and put his arm around Hink so he wouldn’t fall while Miss Dupuis probed at the wound with no remorse.

“She has quite the hand with battle injuries,” Theobald was saying, his voice carrying that smooth rhythm to it that drew attention away from everything else. “It’s how we met, as a matter of fact. I’d taken a terrible shot to the chest. She nursed me to recovery.”

“Did she make you hurt like the blazes too?” Hink ground out.

“She did. But you can endure,” Theobald said, and it annoyed Hink to no end that he found himself wanting to believe that every word the man said was true.

Miss Dupuis checked the front and the back of his thigh. “I think it went clear through. You are a very lucky man, Captain Hink. Any lower and that would have taken your kneecap right off.”

“If this is what lucky feels like, it ain’t all it’s talked up to be.”

Cedar was standing watch at the door. “Men. Headed this way. Guns. We need to move. Quietly. Wil, choose a tunnel.”

“Do you think it’s wise to follow an animal into this hill?” Theobald asked.

“He’s more than an animal, Otto,” Miss Dupuis said. “He carries the same gift as Mr. Hunt.”

“You,” Cedar said over the top of their conversation, “can do anything you want. Surrender to the men on their way in here and beg for mercy if you like. Maybe they’re not interested in killing you.”

“No need to worry,” Miss Dupuis said. “We follow you, Mr. Hunt. Do you have bandages, Theobald?”

“I have something that might work.” Theobald pulled out a clean neckerchief. “Will this do?”

“Very nicely, thank you,” Miss Dupuis said with a smile. A sort of intimate smile, from Hink’s perspective.

Huh. Maybe these two were quite a lot more than traveling companions.

He grunted, and exhaled on a curse as Miss Dupuis bound his leg tight. Woman had some muscle behind her.

“Now,” Miss Dupuis said, standing and drawing a derringer out of a pocket cleverly hidden in her dress. “What is our plan, gentlemen?”

“Can that…,” Hink started. “Can Wil find a way out of here?”

Wil stood in the far right tunnel entrance, sniffing the air.

“I don’t know,” Cedar said as the sound of gunfire rang out behind them. “But what’s left of Mullins’s crew isn’t going to give us much of a choice.”

“I hate tunnels,” Miss Wright said as she swiftly unwrapped the coils from her arm, and handed those and the shield device to Theobald to pack in his carpetbag along with the harness that had attached to Miss Dupuis’s shotgun.

“Too dark, and too many echoes,” she said with that soft Southern accent. “I can’t hear a blasted thing.” She tossed Miss Dupuis her denuded shotgun.

“Now, I’m not arguing it’s a certain kind of risk navigating these tunnels, Joonie,” Theobald said. “But I trust Mr. Hunt and Wil will see us through.”

Joonie shook her head. “You say those pretty things, but then we still get shot at, Otto.”

He grinned at her. “And yet we always win, don’t we?”

“So far,” she agreed.

While they’d been talking, Cedar Hunt had been staring out the door.

“Dynamite,” Cedar yelled. “Get back!”

They ran for the tunnel Wil had chosen. Theobald, who had the sense to snatch up the lantern, was somewhere in the middle of the group, Miss Wright and Miss Dupuis at the front behind Wil. Captain Hink and Cedar brought up the rear.

Theobald lifted the lamp, and wild light dragged the rock walls.

They couldn’t run, because they couldn’t see that far, but Hink sure as hell wished they would get moving a bit faster.

The blast sounded like the world cracked itself in half. Rocks rattled down from the ceiling and a huge push of warm air and dust rushed into the tunnel, turning the lantern light muddy.

Hink covered his head and pushed his back up close to one wall.

It took a while, but the crackle of stones rolling to the ground eventually quieted.

“Everyone okay?” Hink asked.

“I think so,” Miss Dupuis said, coughing. “Otto?”

“Right here, Sophie. And apparently still in one piece,” he said.

“Joonie?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Miss Wright said. “And the wolf, Wil, is it? He’s next to me and seems uninjured.”

“Can’t go back,” Cedar said, peering through the dust the way they’d come in. “Sealed off.”

“What do we do, Mr. Hunt?” Miss Dupuis asked.

Cedar walked past Hink, past Theobald and Miss Dupuis. “We go forward.”

“To where?” Joonie asked. “The bottom of this mountain? Shouldn’t we just wait until dark and dig our way out the way we came in?”

“Don’t think so,” Captain Hink said. “Men with guns are gonna camp right on the other side of that rock pile waiting to shoot anyone who sticks their nose out. Old Jack ain’t gonna ask if you’re friend of foe, he’s just gonna kill you.”

Hink pushed off the wall where he’d been leaning to take some of the weight off his bad leg and started after Cedar Hunt. “We got any other light besides the one?” he asked.

“Might be something up here,” Cedar said from a ways down the tunnel. “A couple crates here on the wall.”

“Still got that ax on you, Mr. Hunt?” Captain Hink asked.

A crack of steel breaking wood was answer enough. “Could use the light, if I may,” Cedar said.

Theobald handed the lantern to Miss Dupuis, and she handed it up until Hink took it and stood next to Cedar, peering down into the crate.

“Canteens, buckets, blankets,” Hink said. “No food. Pans, though. Bust open the other one.”

Cedar took a few steps down the tunnel and broke the next crate.

Hink looked over the contents. “Lanterns.” He picked one up, gave it a shake. “It’s got oil. Looks like there’s three of them. Light them all just to make sure they’re wicked proper, then take what supplies we can carry. Mr. Hunt, do you think Wil can do some scouting for us?”

“He already is.”

Hink glanced off where he had seen the wolf just a second ago, but he was gone, silent as the night. “He have a good nose for fresh air?” Hink asked quietly.

Joonie might be worried about being trapped, but Hink was more worried that the air would run foul.

“Yes. And he’ll find daylight, but it could take time,” Cedar said. Then, to the others, “If anyone else has a way, or device we might use to track out of the tunnels, now would be a good time to suggest it.”

“I have a compass,” Theobald said.

“You have paper and ink to record our headings in case we need to backtrack?” Hink asked.

“A man in my line of work always keeps paper and ink,” Theobald said cheerily.

“What line of work is that exactly?” Hink asked.

“Oh, I’m a man of many trades, but mostly I am a speaker and man of politics.”

He got busy digging in that bag of his, and produced a journal, a fountain pen, and a compass, which he strapped to his wrist like a watch.

“Everyone have a light?” Hink asked.

“Yes, Captain,” Miss Dupuis said. “I believe we are all ready.”

Cedar started off down the tunnel, moving easily over the sandy floor littered with stones, at a pace Hink could match. Except for Theobald calling out change of headings through the twists and turns, they didn’t talk for a long while, each of them busy minding feet and head.

Wil showed up after a bit.