The ground fog rolling off the bitter salt flats at two in the morning was thick as curds, muffling the distant bark of watchdogs and the slow dripping of rime from the roof edges. Inside the claims encampment, thirty animal fat lanterns burned low beneath tin hoods. He cast dim yellow circles on the frozen mud.
Beside Baggage Wagon Number One. There, the nine hundred pounds of naval lead lay cradled in rye straw, the darkness was total. But Sile Rook was not asleep.
The massive veteran sat beneath the wagon bed on a folded horse-blanket, his back propped against the rear axle tree, his iron heavy club resting across his knees. Beside him in the shadow of a hay-cart crouched Sergeant Karr, his wooden peg wrapped in burlap rags so it made no sound against the gravel.
A faint, rhythmic scraping drifted through the fog—the whisper of oiled leather boots sliding over frozen mud. Then came the metal rasp of a narrow steel tension saw being drawn from a canvas sheath.
Two shadows slipped beneath the front axle of the wagon. One man knelt by the near wheel, positioning the saw blade against the seasoned ash felloe. The second man uncorked a heavy clay flask of white arsenic powder, preparing to dump it into the camp’s communal water butt.
