Flash Gold (a steampunk adventure set in the Yukon)

Flash Gold: Pt 3

Daylight brought little reprieve from the cold. The sun occasionally peeped through a cloud, but it provided only light, not warmth. The wind continued, whistling down the river valley between snow-smothered hills dotted with spruce trees. Kali’s sled chugged along at the rear of the pack. The next slowest sled disappeared around a bend ahead.

“Should we be concerned?” Cedar asked.

He jogged beside Kali, frosty breaths puffing before him. Though he wore a heavy pack, the pace did not appear to bother him, and his sure feet never slipped on the ice. She steered from the rear of her contraption, riding footboards as a real musher would. She would have preferred to create a seat up front so she did not have to peer past the gray plumes of smoke rising from the stack, but Francis had insisted she build something that looked and drove like a real dog sled.

“No,” she said. “The dogs will get tired. My girl won’t. We’ll make up lots of ground after we get off the river at Forty Mile. The return route goes through the hills.” Kali patted the side of the smokestack with a gloved hand. “We love hills.”

He eyed her sidelong, probably thinking her odd. He wasn’t the first.

Something glinted on the hillside ahead, like sunlight bouncing off a watch or a spyglass. Kali frowned. Trails did run through the forest up and down the river, but few traversed them in the winter. And she and Cedar were more than ten miles outside of town.

His face had turned toward the hill too.

“Did you see it?” she asked.

“Perhaps nothing,” he said.

“And perhaps something.”

“Yes.”

Cedar removed his rifle from his back and flipped the safety off. For the first time, Kali got a good look at it. Meticulously cared for, the Winchester 1890 had a fancy checkered walnut stock and engraved inlays.

“Nice rifle.” Kali arched her eyebrows. “Though not the kind of weapon you expect from someone desperate enough to sign on for work with a gal who can only pay him if she wins a race.”

“Bad economy of late.”

“Uh huh.” Kali checked to ensure her father’s old Winchester 1873 was within reach. Nobody would call her an expert marksman, but she had taught herself enough to be deadly—occasionally to animals instead of herself. Thanks to a few modifications, it fired more rapidly than normal as well.

“Will the other teams stop and come back to help if there’s trouble?” Cedar asked.

She snorted. “It’s a race for one thousand dollars. What do you think?”

He turned a steady, considering gaze toward her.

“Probably not,” she said. “Even if they put human life above money—which isn’t all that common out here—I’m not the best-liked girl in town.”

“Because you’re a witch?”

“I’m not a witch,” Kali snapped.

His eyebrow twitched.

“It’s none of your business.” She studied the hill, but no movement or further glints came from that direction. That did not reassure her. There were not as many hiding places as during spring and summer, when dense green undergrowth cloaked the hills, but the evergreen trees offered plenty of cover.

“Down!” Cedar shouted.

Even as Kali ducked, a rifle cracked. The bullet clanged against the metal frame of the sled and ricocheted off. She heaved on the brake lever and stopped the machine a heartbeat before Cedar grabbed her and dragged her to the side of it.