White Fangs Read Online Free PDF

put their blood, sweat, and tears into a hunt for gold, but to build and tend the businesses that would serve the prospectors. Why dig or pan for gold when, by building a hotel or a bar or a mercantile, these men could simply wait for the newly-discovered gold to come to them? There were a few women accompanying the men, and a trio of women at the front of the train car were clearly a madam and a pair of prostitutes in her employ. Jack knew this not only by their dress, but also how the other women on the train seemed to scorn their presence.
    Jack wondered what the rest of the people in the car thought about him and his companions. Sabine wore a lovely dress of deep green that brought out the color in her eyes, but Jack and the four werewolves were dressed shabbily in comparison. Several people had openly surveyed them, clearly wondering how they had the means to afford passage on the train. Jack had given all the gold he'd managed to bring back from that first trip to the Yukon to his mother, but the others — the pack — had sailed the Pacific as pirates, with Ghost as their captain. They'd gathered plenty of plunder, and though they spent lavishly each time they returned to port, both Louis and Maurilio had been wise enough not to squander all of their money.
    Jack did not relish the idea of benefiting from riches the crew of the Larsen had stolen from their victims on the high seas. But the men had insisted, and Jack had acquiesced because he had no wish to put Sabine through the hell of making the inland trek on foot. She already seemed . . . changed, weaker. It was a growing concern.
    The train groaned and clanked and began to slow. Jack frowned and looked out the window, worried there might be some malfunction, but then he realized that the car was leveling out. They had reached the highest point of their journey — the top of White Pass — and the train seemed to take pause, its smokestack sighing with relief, before beginning its long descent.
    Beside him, Sabine shivered. Jack glanced at her and saw that her eyes were closed. She had slipped into a light doze, her arms wrapped around herself, steeled against the cold. Yet the pale hue of her coffee skin suggested that something more than temperature was affecting her. Sabine looked unwell, and Jack was worried that she might be falling ill.
    "She'll be all right," Louis said quietly.
    Jack glanced at him. Louis and the Reverend were seating opposite him and Sabine, the two benches facing one another. Vukovich and Maurilio were across the aisle, facing toward the front of the train.
    "You know what's wrong with her?" Jack asked.
    Louis narrowed his eyes. "You know as well as I do, mon ami ."
    Jack supposed he did, though it was a troubling thought — Sabine was not entirely human. Somehow, her spirit was tied to the sea, and they were moving further from the Pacific with every moment. He wondered if Sabine had been this far from the open water.
    "Do you think she'll feel better when we're on the river?" Jack asked.
    "If I must guess, I would think yes," Louis replied. "But who can say?"
    Jack glanced at the Reverend, but the tall, lanky man continued to gaze out the window at the panorama of the wilderness. Louis grunted and shifted on his seat, drawing Jack's attention, and he saw that the wiry little man had caught sight of something that troubled him. Jack turned to glance back along the aisle of the carriage, his skin prickling with alarm.
    Ghost had entered their car.
    The big man stood just inside the car, the door propped open behind him. He swayed with the rocking of the train, but Jack knew he had spent years on the sea and would not be thrown off balance. Ghost lifted his chin and inhaled deeply, his sense of smell telling him more about the people in that car than his eyes ever would. Unshaven, his hair unruly, he ought to have looked like one of the hobos Jack had ridden the rails with in his early teens. Instead, Ghost cut the perfect figure of the