White Fangs by Tim Lebbon, Christopher Golden

frayed around her heavy boots, a rough shirt, a leather waistcoat cracked and faded from exposure to the elements — and two pistols slung on her hips. Jack could see that the coach gun in her right hand had a stock smoothed by use, and she carried the weapon with a natural ease.
    "Did you hit anything?" Jack asked as she closed on him, hand raised and finger pointed.
    "Anything?" she asked. "'Course I hit somethin'. Water, darkness. Lump of rock, maybe. But I didn't see nothin' to hit nothin'. You, though. You all." She moved her hand slowly, pointing at Jack, Sabine and their companions. "I seen you fighting by the railin' last night. Just afore it happened. And there was somethin' wrong."
    The captain chuckled, mumbled something none of them could understand, and took another swig of whiskey.
    "We don't know any more than you," Jack said.
    "Just that the crew were nervous," Maurilio volunteered. "Stories about people disappearing from around Dawson. They didn't like making this journey."
    "What I hear, people have always disappeared around Dawson," she said, dismissing him. "It's that sorta place." She looked at the drunken captain, and for an awful moment Jack thought she was going to blast him with the coach gun. But she only snorted, dismissing him, and turned back to them.
    "So, I was just tellin' the others here that we need off. Can't stay here scratchin' our asses when the boat's goin' nowhere."
    "That's exactly what we're doing," Jack said. "Nothing to stay for, now. By my reckoning, we're maybe thirty miles from Dawson, hiking distance."
    "I'd say thirty-five," the woman said.
    "We don't need company," Louis said.
    The woman looked at him, eyeing him up and down and frowning. What does she see? Jack wondered. He was used to these men, but when confronted with strangers he was always afraid that they would perceive something wrong about the ex-pirates. Something different.
    "Neither do I, but I'm goin' the same way," she said. She nursed the coach gun across her folded arms, a silent threat.
    "Jack." Sabine touched his arm and pulled him aside, nodding slightly at the others. "Safety in numbers?"
    "Or perhaps the more of us there are, the greater the target," Louis said.
    "Either way, we can't stop anyone else doing the same," Jack said. "Once these people see us leaving, more of them will be inclined to follow. They're a crowd right now. The one person who should be helping them is drunk."
    "Cattle follow the herd," Vukovich said. Jack felt a momentary chill at his use of the word "cattle." It implied meat.
    Jack nodded at the woman. "What's your name?"
    "Callie King."
    Jack looked around at the other passengers. Some were watching the exchange with interest, and some seemed too traumatized to do anything other than sit, or stand, or wait for night to fall again.
    "So how do we get off this wreck, Callie King?"
     
     
    Maurilio and Vukovich insisted on going first. The Reverend went with them, quieter than ever now, and Jack was not sure whether it was because he had almost lost himself, or because Ghost had beaten him down so easily. Ghost, in his human form, had beaten a werewolf on the change.
    Jack had fought werewolves, but he had defeated them with guile and intelligence, never brute force.
    Vukovich and Maurilio rowed, while the Reverend played out the coiled rope behind them. The river's current quickly caught the little rowboat — the only other boat left on the steamer — and dragged it downstream, but the two men pulled hard against the oars, gritting their teeth and allowing their unnatural strength to drag them across to the bank before the rope ended. With each splash of the oars Jack expected something to reach up out of the water and take them down, smashing the boat to matchwood and ripping the men apart, fooling everyone who had begun to believe that it was only darkness that would welcome attack. But they landed safely, hauled the rowboat ashore, then walked back along the bank, pulling the