the icicle problem.”
Alice did not want to know about the icicle problem. Foreign capital or not, San Francisco was beginning to look mighty good.
“Believe me, a couple of days at the mines and I’ll be heading south for warmer winds.” She knocked back the last of the cordial, laid down a coin, and pushed away from the bar. “Thanks, Mike. I’ll write to my ma before I leave, I promise.”
“We’re square, then,” he said, nodding. “Good hunting.”
She worked her way slowly to the back, as though she were looking for someone, keeping her ears wide open to the conversations going on all about her. Most of them were about the cards—the weather—Sherwood Leduc—the latest accident in the mines.
She slowed and bent to adjust a loose bootlace.
“—couldn’t save him,” a grizzled engineer said into his beer, pushing his goggles further up on his battered hat. “He was a good friend, as miners go. Not a waste of oxygen like some.”
“Something’s gotta be done,” said the man next to him. “Dunsmuir mine’s had a good record a long time. Somebody’s behind this, you mark my words.”
“All we’ll be marking is a target on your back, you don’t keep your voice down,” another man muttered. “I say it’s Sherwood Leduc.”
The engineer snorted. “He’s small fry. A thug. You think he’s got the muscle to blow up them big engines? We’re talking serious money—and serious engineering skill.” He noticed Alice kneeling on the floor between the tables. “You lost something, missy?”
She tugged her bootlaces and stood. “Nope. Just trying to keep from falling on my face. You fellows from the Dunsmuir mine?” No answer, just a lot of black suspicion. “I’m looking for a man with one blind eye, said to work the cargo ships up that direction. Ever seen him?”
“What, did he leave you with a pup?” the man next to him said, laughing.
“Naw, I am his pup.” She grinned, as if he’d told a good joke. “Got his talent for mechanics and figured I’d try and partner up, make a living maybe.”
The engineer snorted. “You’d do better here. Mine’s no safe place for a woman.”
“A man neither,” somebody muttered. “Not lately, anyhow.”
“Oh?”
But the conversational stream, such as it was, dried up to nothing, and Alice was forced to take herself off.
Andrew waited outside. “All right, then?”
“I guess. Seems the Dunsmuirs have trouble up at their mine.”
“I got that impression as well. Something about an explosion.”
“One of the big engines—whatever that means. General feeling is it would take a lot of money and skill to pull off such a thing.”
Andrew walked beside her, his back straight, his gaze moving constantly from fuselage to wheels to gangways as they passed them. “I wonder if sabotage is a normal part of mining operations?”
“Doesn’t sound like it. They said the Dunsmuirs have a good record.”
“Until now. When they happen to be in the country, and Isobel Churchill is agitating the Esquimaux nation for indigenous rights.”
“You think them Esquimaux got that kind of money?” In her experience, the Injuns kept themselves to themselves and didn’t care much what the Territorial folks did, as long as they left them alone.
“I know nothing about them, Alice. But it might be worth a word in the earl’s ear.”
“For which he’ll tell us to mind our own business. I don’t know about you, but I ain’t getting mixed up in his affairs. All I want is to find my pa.”
“And all I want is to find the miscreants who shot at us. But the tables were silent as the grave on that subject.”
“Maybe they’re still out on the prairie, hiding.”
“Or maybe they’re professional marksmen who know how to keep their mouths shut.”
“Or maybe they were just hunters after that an caftto telope, we got in the way, and they’re afraid to come forward and admit it.”
“I think it unlikely, Alice.”
“I know,” she sighed. “What is Claire thinking, coming to this place, anyway? Seems awful dangerous, for all its balls and fancy dress and money. At least in Resolution, I knew what was what.”
“Did you?” Now it was his turn to sigh. “I wish I knew what was what.”
“Meaning?”
Silence, during which she did not dare to look at him. It was too dark to see his face, anyway, as they passed into the massive shadow of the Landgrafin Margrethe. Fifty yards off, a pair of sentries paced back and forth before the gangway, and another patrolled the bow and mooring mast. The crew was taking no chances with the count’s safe recovery,