Noble Metals

by L. A. Witt

  Muffling the sound as much as I could, I tore a few strips off the flour sack and tucked them into my pocket. Then I poured most of the gunpowder into the sack. Moving stealthily, I picked everything up and tiptoed back into the campsite. I laid the torn strips on top of various provisions—whatever was most likely to burn—and sprinkled a thin layer of gunpowder all over everything. Then I put the entire sack on one end of the mech, beside the boiler and steam engine.

  Then I dug some wire out of the bag of tools and wound it tightly around each of the mech’s three relief valves. Using embers from the fire, I lit the boiler. The engine was still switched off, but soon the boiler would slowly—and more or less quietly—build up pressure.

  With everything in place and the water slowly beginning to boil, I took a few deep breaths. I mentally mapped out the distance from here to the tent a few times, making sure I had plenty of time.

  I only had one chance, and it was too late to turn back now.

  One more deep breath. One struck match. One, two, three burning strips of flour sack. As the flames inched toward the first deposits of gunpowder, I dropped the matches into the mech and ran to the opposite side of the tent, slipping and sliding on the icy ground. It didn’t matter if anyone heard me now; they were about to be occupied with much more pressing matters.

  I stopped beside the tent and waited.

  Just as I’d hoped, the fire met the gunpowder. It started out as a few quiet pops, but as the fire spread, the gunpowder exploded with more force, and in seconds, both tents were alive with voices and activity.

  The three men scrambled to put out the fire, and I darted into the tent Michael and Logan had occupied. I felt around, squinted in the darkness, heart thundering in my chest as I searched for the box.

  “Come on, come on, where is it?” I murmured under my breath. I shoved aside bedrolls, bags, furs, everything. Damn it, where was it?

  Then everything went wrong.

  The boiler exploded with more force than I’d expected. The tent listed with the blast, but then something landed on top of it. My heart jumped into my throat. Whatever it was—a box or a crate, I supposed—was on fire. I had only seconds before it would burn through the top of the tent.

  “Shit,” I muttered. I frantically felt around. No way was I leaving without this thing. No way, I’d come too far, I’d—

  There.

  I snatched the box out from under the bags of coal.

  Fabric ripped. I barely had time to shield my face as a flaming crate fell through the top of the tent, knocking me off-balance. I went to my knees, dropping the box. As I hurried back to my feet and reached for the box again, another explosion sent more debris into the air, and it rained down through the gaping, flaming hole in the tent. Something landed on my collar, and in an instant, my neck and jaw were ablaze with pure, white hot agony.

  I batted at the flames and, a second too late, realized I’d cried out.

  “Hey! He’s in the tent!” Logan’s voice echoed over the raging fire. Someone lunged in and grabbed for me, but I kicked his hands away. I seized the device’s box and darted past him. He tried to snatch my arm, and this time I swung the box into the side of his head, knocking him flat. He didn’t get up, but the other two men were still on their feet.

  “Shoot him!” William’s voice boomed through the night. “He’s got the detector! Shoot him!”

  I ran. I ran like hell. I ran like the frigid air didn’t make my lungs ache, and my bones weren’t ready to splinter from the cold, and my face didn’t burn like fire. I veered off the road into the thick forest. Running blind, I wove between trees, staying low when I could, and every time I was sure I couldn’t take another step, a bullet ricocheted off a tree or whistled past, and I kept running.

  I snagged my foot on an upraised root, and both the box and I went flying. I landed hard, biting back another cry as my ankle twisted and my burned flesh smacked the frozen ground.

  More gunshots. Shouts. Footsteps.

  Twigs snapped beneath feet. The moonlight illuminated William’s face and glittered across the rifle in his hands. Far too close for comfort, he turned his head left, right, left, and I prayed he didn’t look down. Some underbrush obscured me, but the moon could still pick me out like it had him.

  I held my breath and held still, willing myself to stay silent in spite of the relentless pain. I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering, but I shivered so badly from cold, fear, and pain, I was sure the rustling of my jacket would give me away.

  Then he stopped and shook his head. Cursing, he turned and left. I released my breath but waited to move until his footsteps had faded into the night. Then I gave it a few more minutes just to be sure he hadn’t come back, or that Michael hadn’t come after me himself.

  Finally, when I was certain I was alone, I dragged myself over to the box and just held it to my chest. There was no guarantee I’d survive this, especially not out here alone in the damned Yukon, but at least I had John’s device away from his murderers.

  Cold comfort if there ever was.

  Walking. Walking. Endless fucking walking.

  With the daylight came other teams, thank God. One stopped me and insisted on letting me warm myself by their fire. Bland barely cooked beans had never tasted so good.

  One member of the team also offered bandages for the burn on my face, and in the semi-reflective surface of a gold pan, I got to see how badly I’d been burned. My stomach twisted and turned as I examined the angry red spanning one side of my throat from my collarbone all the way up and over my jaw.

  So much for my former profession.

  But I was alive. Alive, and with John’s device in my possession, so I had to go on.

  Fed and warmed, I continued south while the others all went north. Each night, I managed to find a team who’d let me bed down, and each morning, I’d keep going.

  All along the trail were the remains of campsites. Smoldering fire pits, dots of tobacco spit, the flattened spot where a tent had been.

  One abandoned campsite was different from all the others, though. I came across it after three days, and halted. An abandoned mech stood, stripped bare of both provisions and parts, beside a black circle that had once been a campfire. It didn’t seem much different from the others aside from the mech, but a sick feeling in my heart told me it was.

  It was our campsite. Well, what was left of it.

  Nothing remained except the skeletal mech. The tent, the rifle, the bedrolls, all of it had been taken. Even John’s books and his beloved journal were gone.

  And so was John. All that remained of him was a pool of blood. Crimson, frozen blood, and far, far too much of it spread across the snow. I was torn between turning away before I got sick, and kneeling to touch it, if only for one last macabre connection to him.

  I dropped to my knees. Exhaustion and grief took over, and I . . . I couldn’t take another step. I tried not to imagine what had happened to him, if some wild animal had gotten to him or if a passing team stopped to bury him. If they had, I was grateful, because I couldn’t have buried him out here. Even if the ground weren’t frozen solid, I had no shovels or pickaxes left, and there was neither fuel nor matches to burn him.

  But it didn’t matter, because his body was gone.

  I hugged the wooden box to my chest and tried to stop crying, if only because the tears seeped under the bandages and stung the burn on my face.

  You can do this, Robert. There’s no one else on this earth who can get this device back to Chicago. Get up and walk, damn you.

  I gave the abandoned campsite a long look. Although our last moments together in this place had been hellish, leaving wasn’t easy. The camp hadn’t yielded a single keepsake, not even his journal, and so I had nothing left of John. Nothing except my memories and the device. Once I moved on, there’d be nothing more. He was gone. Forever.

  But if I stayed here, I’d freeze to death, and John’s device would never make it home.

  Swallowi
ng hard, I carefully wiped away my tears, then pushed myself to my feet, wavering slightly on exhausted legs. I turned south. The road seemed to stretch on for thousands and thousands of miles, and Chilkoot Pass was so far in the distance. How I’d get back over it, I didn’t know, but I had no choice.

  I took a step.

  Then another.

  And I kept walking.

  The bandages were soaked through with sweat by the end of the second day, stinging the burn and freezing solid around the edges. I pulled them off and threw them aside, cringing as the burning worsened now that the wound was exposed to the air. The cold wind stung my face, but covering the burn meant my jacket stuck to the wounded flesh. I spent half the time trying to keep one side of my face warm, and the other half stopping to put snow against the burned skin.

  My ankle still ached a little from twisting it in my escape, but I wasn’t completely lame, and for that I was thankful. There were enough miles ahead without limping every step.

  As I walked, I tried to keep my mind on anything but John’s death or the cold or the pain in my neck and face. The future seemed as good a thing as any to focus on because the present left me angry and devastated.

  Once I made it back to Skagway or Juneau, I could find transportation to Ketchikan, and from there, a steamboat back to Seattle. Paying for such a thing wouldn’t be easy. The thin wad of dollars left in my pocket wouldn’t get me far, and I tried not to think of how I’d earn more money to make the journey or how I’d survive at all after I reached Seattle. My previous profession had likely gone up in flames; my only hope there would be men who were desperate enough for another man to overlook a badly scarred face.

  Injury or not, though, I had to find some other means of making money. Now that I had known John’s touch, I couldn’t bring myself to sell my own.

  John. Oh God, John. It was just as well I couldn’t stop to sleep, because every time I closed my eyes, I relived that moment when John, backlit by our glowing campfire, crumpled into the snow.

  Flinching at the memory, I shook my head, and immediately regretted it when the movement stretched my burned skin. The resulting pain brought back everything that had happened when I’d escaped. And my imprisonment. And my kidnapping. And John’s death.

  Again and again, time after time, my mind went back to that moment when he was gone from me, and though my grief threatened to drive me to the ground, my anger kept me going. One way or another, I was getting to that encampment with John’s device.

  A steady stream of stampeders passed me on their way north. Some offered me warmth, food, and bandages, others just eyed me and kept moving. At least a dozen teams had pack horses and mules, but no amount of begging and offering every penny I had would persuade them to sell me one of their animals. Even those who had mechs refused to spare a horse. I understood; with as much as every man had to carry, any beast or machine of burden was worth keeping.

  Shortly before daylight faded into night, I came across a team setting up camp.

  One of the stampeders looked at me and did a double take. “Lord, what happened to your face, son?”

  I tucked my chin self-consciously, though it wouldn’t hide the majority of the burn. “Long story. I don’t suppose I can beg a night by your fire?”

  “Of course, of course.” He gestured toward their campfire. Then he extended his hand. “I’m Edgar.”

  “Robert,” I whispered, and shook his hand.

  He looked me up and down, eyes pausing on the box I held in my numb hand. “You out here by yourself? No provisions at all? Were you robbed or something?”

  I pursed my lips. “You could say that.”

  The other stampeder stepped out of the tent, and Edgar gestured at me. “Robert, this is Jimmy.”

  Jimmy looked at me, and his eyebrows jumped. “My Lord, what’s happened to you?”

  They showed me to the campfire, and as I thawed my frozen hands and feet, Jimmy passed me a whiskey flask. Then they waited for me to explain my wounds and my lack of provisions. I moistened my lips, drew a breath, and told them what had happened.

  When I’d finished, I took a long drink. Then I swept the back of my sleeve across my lips, and before they could ask questions I didn’t have the energy to answer, I nodded toward their two pack horses. “How much for one of your horses?”

  They glanced at each other, then at me.

  “Pardon me, son?” Jimmy asked.

  I moistened my lips. “I’ll never make it back to Chilkoot Pass on foot. If I can ride, maybe I can make it.”

  They exchanged another look. Edgar nodded.

  Jimmy turned to me. “Fifty dollars.”

  I blinked. “Fifty dollars? I could buy three good pack horses for half that.”

  “And there’s no one selling horses up this way,” Edgar said.

  “You have a mech,” I said through my teeth. “I’ll give you thirty-five for the horse.”

  Another look passed between them, and this time Jimmy nodded.

  Edgar leaned his hands on his knees. “Forty-five.”

  “Forty.”

  “Deal.”

  I exhaled. That was almost my last dollar. If I needed more than that, I’d have to earn it. Somehow. But that could be dealt with when I made it to Ketchikan. For now, expensive or not, this horse was the only thing that could get me to the encampment by the Chilkoot before I collapsed from sheer exhaustion. If I had to let a man fuck me for a few dollars to get anywhere after that, so be it. I just didn’t want to think about what kind of man would be desperate enough to bed me now.

  I tried not to glare at Edgar and Jimmy. They’d been kind enough to give me food, rest, whiskey, and warmth. Wasn’t every man on this journey greedy in his own way? There was no sense begrudging them trying to get every last dollar I had in exchange for their horse—at least they’d been willing to sell me the damn thing. They could have just sent me on my way on foot.

  They also offered to let me bed down in their camp for the night. For that alone, I could forgive them for lightening my pockets by more dollars than I could spare.

  The horse was worth the money and then some. When I could barely hold myself upright, the horse kept walking, and even when I slumped over her neck and struggled to stay awake, we gained ground. I kept one arm around the box, and it bit into my stomach whenever I leaned over it, but hell if I was going to drop it. Not after I’d made it this far.

  Hours and miles both crawled past. No new snow fell, but the temperature dropped. The snow beneath her hooves was frozen solid and treacherously slick, and I shivered inside my thick—but not nearly thick enough—jacket. It was all I could do to stay on the mare’s back. Just holding the reins in one hand and the wooden box in the other took every bit of concentration and energy I had, and between pain, exhaustion, and cold, I was close to delirious.

  So close, in fact, I refused to believe my eyes when they told me the Chilkoot Pass was as close as it looked. Or that there was a flag up ahead. A red flag whipping in the wind. A red flag with the Union Jack in its upper corner and a yellow coat of arms off to the side. On a tall wooden pole. Above a ramshackle log cabin that looked an awful lot like the North-West Mounted Police outposts on either side of the pass.

  But the hallucination didn’t fade. With every step, the colors became brighter. More vivid. More . . . real.

  I blinked. Squinted. Stared.

  It was real. And so was the building below it, and the tents behind it, and . . .

  I’d made it. Relieved tears stung my eyes. I’d finally made it.

  Clutching the box closer to me, I steered the horse toward the encampment.

  Dozens of teams were crowded outside with their mechs and animals, and a trio of Mounties checked over their papers to make sure everything was still in order from their pre-pass inspection. A couple of heads turned my way. Then a few more. One of the Mounties looked up, furrowing his brow at me. He handed some papers back to a stampeder and started across the frozen ground toward me.r />
  “You all right, son?” he asked.

  I was tired of that question, but coming from a Mountie, it was more than welcome. It meant I was here.

  “Son?” He cocked his head and came closer. When I halted the mare, he put a hand on her neck. “What are you doing out here alone without any provisions? Are you—” He squinted. “Your face is—”

  “Burned. Yes, I know.”

  He didn’t ask if I needed help. He took the mare’s reins and led her toward the outpost, and I just closed my eyes and buried the unwounded side of my face against her warm neck while I clung to the wooden box. Voices murmured all around me, and the Mountie leading my horse barked an order to someone else.

  The mare halted. I sat up, pushing myself off her neck with one shaking arm as the other kept the box close to me.

  The Mountie tied my horse, then reached for the box. “Why don’t you let me take that so you can dismount?”

  I hesitated.

  He beckoned with both hands. “Just until you’re off the horse, son. I don’t want you falling and hurting yourself.”

  He had a point. After another moment’s hesitation, I carefully lowered the device to him, and he handed it off to another Mountie.

  I dismounted, and as soon as my feet hit the ground, my knees collapsed under me. I nearly tumbled to the ground beside the mare, but a Mountie grabbed my arm to steady me. Once I was more or less on my feet, he pulled my arm around his shoulders and helped me into the outpost.

  The Mountie eased me into a chair beside the hearth, and I closed my eyes, savoring the warmth and the relief of not being out on that damned trail for a moment longer. Plenty of miles remained ahead of me before I made it back to Seattle, but this part was over.

  Something wooden scraped on the hard floor, and when I opened my eyes, more relief swept over me: the box. How many times I almost dropped that thing, I couldn’t count, but it was here with me. Out of the hands of John’s murderers. One step closer to his university, where it would hopefully be put to use in his good name.