Peacemaker (The Flash Gold Chronicles, #3) by Lindsay Buroker Read Free Book Online Page A

murders?”
    “ It didn’t come up when we
were slinging bullets and curses back and forth at each
other.”
    Kali shook her head and tsked. “Men are such
poor conversationalists.”
    “ There were a couple of
women shooting at me too.”
    They crested a rise and came to the crater
the airship had blown into the trail. Kali slowed down. Her bicycle
waited on the other side, but so did two people. One was the old
man from the boat, and the other was a boy of ten or eleven years.
He had raven-colored hair and bronze skin with a face still chubby
with baby fat. He stared at them—no, at Cedar—with opened-mouthed
astonishment.
    “ That’s mine!” The old man
stabbed a finger at the sack.
    “ Figured it might be.”
Cedar laid it at his feet.
    The old fellow grabbed it, dragged it
several feet, sent slit-eyed glares at Kali and Cedar, then whipped
out a small black revolver and aimed it between them. “You two stay
right there. And you too boy.” He backed away, holding the gun with
one hand and lugging the sack of gold with the other.
    Cedar watched blandly. Kali shook her head.
The old man caught his heel on something, tripped, fell onto his
backside, and cursed mightily. He stuffed the revolver back into
his belt, hefted the sack with both hands, and jogged—if one could
call such lopsided, wobbly staggers a jog—back to his boat.
    “ Grateful fellow,” Cedar
observed.
    “ Less good than you’d
think comes out of helping people in these parts,” Kali
said.
    The boy was still staring at Cedar, eyes
wide, jaw slack. When he noticed Kali looking at him, he clamped it
shut and swallowed.
    She was about to try talking to him in Hän
when he tilted his head back to look Cedar in the eyes and said,
“That was amazing.” He pointed toward the sky half a mile across
the river, where the airship was descending into the woods. “I saw
you fighting. All of them at once! Up on the deck. I could see it
all from here!”
    “ Just making the best out
of a tricky situation,” Cedar said. Though he spoke as if his
heroics had been inconsequential, he did give Kali a pointed look,
as if to say, “See? This is how you’re supposed to respond to my
heroics.”
    Kali propped her hands on her hips and told
the boy, “I was up there doing stuff too.”
    He blinked at her, a blank expression on his
face, then focused on Cedar again. “Where’d you get that sword?
That’s the beatingest pig sticker I’ve seen.”
    Kali gave the boy a closer look. He wore a
hooded caribou jacket, and she assumed he was Hän, but his command
of English was excellent, if one could call the local miners’ slang
English.
    “ It’s from the Orient,
though I got it down in the swamps of Florida.” Cedar drew the
blade. “Do you want to see it? I could show you a few
moves.”
    Kali lifted a hand, afraid the “boys” could
play at swordfighting all day if she let them, but the youth’s
shoulders slumped and he did not accept the sword.
    “ I’m no good at fighting,”
he said, “on account of my leg.”
    For the first time, he took a couple of
steps, and Kali noticed a pronounced limp.
    “ What happened?” she
asked.
    “ Couple of summers back, I
climbed up with a smoker to get some honey from a bee hive. The
branch broke, and I fell a long ways and broke my hip. Medicine man
fixed me up the best he could, but…” He shrugged, eyes still cast
downward.
    Cedar took the boy’s hand and put the hilt
of his sword in it.
    “ What’s your name?” Kali
asked, heading over to check the bicycle for damage—and to see how
she might get it around the crater that had destroyed an eight-foot
swath of the trail.
    “ Tadzi,” the boy said, his
gaze riveted to the blade. He took a few experimental swings and
grinned.
    “ Tadzi, have you ever seen
anything like these?” Cedar held up the beadwork
patches.
    The boy lowered the sword and scrutinized
them. “No, sir. Not very good work.” His face brightened. “Want to
see something I