“Medicinal.” Grip frowns. “What did you anticipate?”
“Whiskey, I suppose? I anticipated keeping the skin on my tongue, the enamel on my teeth—”
“Excuse us not having a cup of tea for you.”
“Hold his elbow,” Ivy says.
Grip settles himself on his knees beside Sam while Sam bites the square of leather and half turns away.
“We suspect a crowd inhabited those low hills at the head of the barranca,” Grip says. “Washed to prairie country, only stopping with the current. How they conspired to all climb the east side—” He shrugs, glaring at the arm.
“They move toward the sun if they are without other motivation. We believe that is why they often move east during early hours, even before the sun has risen.” With thumb and middle finger, Ivy runs her hand along Sam’s forearm, holding her breath. What can she do if there is a segmental or comminuted break?
“What’d you do?” Melchior asks while Ivy is silent, feeling her tense way across the limb.
“Took them off.”
“Off?” Ivy glances at Grip.
“What would be the purpose in discovering you if we packed a dozen Plague-sick in our back pockets?”
Sam flinches. Grip takes a better hold. Ivy pulls Sam’s hand toward her to feel at a different angle.
“All morning either running or encouraging them to follow,” Grip says. “Him on that loco mare, bad arm, in a saddle with one stirrup. Still dark and raining like hell.”
“Perhaps being caught in the flood was not so bad,” Ivy says.
“I imagine Mr. Samuelson would have been proud to trade.”
“Needed the fire-shooter,” Melchior says. “Found it and the Henry walking up the gorge all day.”
“We needed a good many conveniences none of us possessed,” Grip says, then, “You appear pleased.”
Ivy looks up. “Yes. Only the ulna is broken—transverse and partly displaced. I can feel where it needs to be. No comminuted break or fragmentation and I cannot feel a split on the radius. At most a crack—probably nothing.”
Grip only looks at her.
“Just ... hold his arm back while I pull.”
Ivy sets her teeth, feeling carefully before attempting any pulling or twisting. If there is any slight crack to the radius she cannot risk making it worse by tugging on the bone. No, it should be straightforward. The ulna is only fifty percent off.
The first try does not go well. She cannot even shift it. And he made this look so easy. On the second try she feels movement, but not what she is after: grating without lifting.
What if she is not strong enough to do it? Could she direct Grip with his one hand? Melchior is hardly in any shape to sit up, much less fight with a broken arm.
She takes a deep breath, reminded of her own searing injuries, the weakness of days with little food and water, sun, blood loss, innumerable bruises covering much of her body.
Bleeding has stopped. She had food, water, rest. Professional.
She closes her eyes, feeling the bone with fingertips. Just there: spot A to spot B. Doctors and nurses and laymen do it every day. She sets her jaw once more and pulls, lifting first, Grip supplying resistance, then turns ever so slightly, easing the pressure off, feeling with thumb and forefinger together along the ulna.
Ivy glances up, smiling and flushed. “Hold still.”
She rolls his sleeves down, drapes two loops across the arm by wrist and elbow, then lays the spoon handle along the inside and tightens fragile straps. She slides the rifle rod along the outside of the arm to the wrist, leaving the end of it protruding behind the elbow. Quickly, she ties on another strip and begins wrapping the arm.
After several minutes of binding, she leans back, sweating, taking a deep breath. A sorry splint if she ever saw one, but hopefully better than nothing.
“We will put the sling back on and he can keep it as still as possible until we reach Santa Fé for a solid brace.”
Ivy glances to Sam as she unties the sling to readjust for the bound arm. He has not made a sound and she nearly forgot him, so caught up in the procedure. His eyes are closed and his face looks like chalk as he pulls the leather from his mouth with his shaking right hand.
“So you led them away?” She asks Grip as she passes him an end of the gauze sling.
“Meaning to circle and find you.” He shakes his head. “But we ended miles out. I knew Smoke Junction was in the territory, east and north. We needed assistance so left the sick a good way from the gorge and started. If we had no horses, we may not have escaped. They tired from nothing.”
“There is nothing to tire. They don’t even breathe. Though cold and darkness makes them increasingly lethargic.”
He pulls the sling across Sam’s shoulder and Ivy ties it in front.
“Met Smoke Junction by that afternoon.” Grip presses a plate of cooled rattlesnake at Sam, who looks too sick to eat. “But never met any settlers.”
“Smoke Junction’s only a day’s ride south of the old ranch,” Melchior says. “Central part of the territory where they first hit.”
“Why have they yet to reach Silver City?” Grip asks. “More than thick enough here.... Not heard a coyote or monkat or seen a jackalope herd or deer since we entered this stretch.”
“They do not hunt humans exclusively,” Ivy says. “They are only working their way to Silver City. As they are working their way to Santa Fé.”
Grip watches the lifeless horizon. “Nowhere anyone should linger.”
Ivy stares at her tangled skirts and blanket. “I am unsure how we are to move Melchior. He should be still.”
“Can ride,” Melchior says, sounding surly, though his hand still covers his eyes as he lies on his back.
“You can,” she says, irritated. “That is not the problem. After the way you’ve been up moving and out in the sun without water with your head like that, you could end with permanent injury to your brain.”
Grip shrugs. “No one could savvy a difference.”
“Uncalled for,” Melchior mumbles. “Say that to my face when I’m—”
“Did you hear yourself last night?” Grip asks.
A pause. “What’d I say?”
Ivy, moving on her painful knees, edges around the fire. “Let me see your eyes.”
“’Cause they launch a thousand ships?”
“Fine. Do whatever you like.” She brushes down her skirts. Why is she playing doctor anyway?
He smiles, dry blood and dirt cracking around his lips. “Sam’s arm all right?”
“I suppose.”
“Don’t be sore.” He catches her hand before she can stand. “Light hurts powerful, can’t focus on anything.”
She pulls her hand away, but leans forward to study his eyes. The pupils remain dilated, though not as mismatched as the day before. He needs bed rest even more urgently than herself.
They experiment briefly with ideas to construct a litter for Melchior to travel flat. Without long poles, they can devise nothing beyond ropes and blankets. Even a stretcher between two horses will not work, having nothing but saddles upon which to fix the ropes to the animals, while Elsewhere is their only mount steady enough to bear one side of a hammock.
At last, Sam and Grip help him back into his own saddle before they set out, Melchior telling them he has never been too sick to ride in his life and not about to start.
They have traveled less than a quarter of a mile before Sam slides off Elsewhere to walk beside the limping bay, Elsewhere’s muzzle pressed against his right shoulder.
Grip watches and finally dismounts, telling Sam irritably, “Take this one,” leading El Cohete to him.
“Thank you,” Sam says. “I am managing. And your horse does not like me.”
“Doesn’t like anyone. He won’t throw you, Mr. Samuelson.”
El Cohete lays back his ears and rolls his dark eyes without Sam even approaching.
“That is really quite all right.”
Th
ey walk on, both Sam and Grip on foot, Melchior slumped over his horse’s neck with his eyes closed, flies buzzing about his bloody head.
Grip remounts. Luck, hungry, thirsty, and tired, gives no trouble as she plods at El Cohete’s flank. Leaving his horse’s rope reins across the black mane, Grip pulls an already rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket along with a matchstick. He strikes the match across the tarnished plate of his saddle horn, inhales smoke, then looks over his shoulder to Sam and Melchior trailing.
Again facing forward, he lifts the cigarette from his lips to exhale. “He was mighty distressed thinking you’d been drowned. As bothered by you as by his cowboy pal.”
Ivy waits for many strides of the slow horses, but he says no more. Finally, keeping her voice chilly, she asks, “What did he say?”
“Said you being dead was his fault. Bullied you into this venture. I had not figured him a dragooning type.” He takes another long pull.
“He was correct.”
Grip glances at her while Ivy looks ahead. “You regret returning to Silver City?”
“No. I regret the reasons behind it. I regret the situation. Being lied to. Being betrayed—” Ivy stops and swallows. Never meant to come out.
Grip shifts forward, squinting to the northern horizon. “Yes.” He breathes out smoke. “So I have discerned.”
Thirty-Ninth
The Human Element
By the time the four riders are moving up the road to Santa Fé, days later, Ivy has replayed the vision of what will take place upon reaching the town so many times, it feels more like memory than prediction: drop off Luck with the smiling stableboy at the livery, long bath, then doctor.
Four days ago, she would have said she needed the doctor most urgently. Now, most of her wounds are scabbed over, healing strangely well. Her hands are much improved. Her temperature seems elevated, but she hopes to put that down to blazing weather and endless days in the saddle with no real hat or shade. After that contaminated flood water, combined with myriad flesh wounds—from grazes to the hole in her side that she has still not dared to unwrap since the Indians bound it—she cannot see how it is possible she does not have a raging infection. Yet, if she does, it keeps awfully quiet.
Sam also has held up, only Melchior in very obvious need of a doctor and bed rest. He is still falling asleep in his saddle, still having trouble with his eyes, suffering from ceaseless pounding headaches. His conversation ranges from normal to unintelligible depending on the hour.
As bad and worse off than them, their four horses are nearly starving. The brush and plains grasses dried to inedible husks and no grain or hay was to be had along the way. Hunting went little better for the riders. They might have managed a stop in Albuquerque, but passed miles from the city when they spotted billowing clouds of black smoke lifting from distant roofs.
Had many variables been altered, they may have investigated. Yet Sam had one arm and a lame horse. Ivy had a dozen wounds to manage and zero ambition. Melchior was unconscious in his saddle, Sam walking beside. And Grip pushed them as fast as possible, lest they all starve.
Now Ivy sees a far-off blockade around Santa Fé and smiles, feeling pain in her sunburnt face. A real fence, ten feet high, made of pine, adobe, iron, takes vast shape around the city.
She is just reaching to stroke Luck’s thin neck and tell her it will not be long now, when a blast from a gun makes both Ivy and her mare jump.
Grip and Sam draw their revolvers as their horses toss their heads. Someone ahead at the incomplete gate shouts—though not calling out to approaching riders.
“¡No disparen! ¿Qué te pasa?”
“¡Lo siento! ¡Fue un accidente!”
“¡Imbéciles!” Grip shouts. “Do we look like risers?”
“Grip!” A young man bursts from behind the wall, leaving a six-shooter with an older man who steps after him. “¡Estás en casa! Rosalía searched for you! She rode out a couple—”
“What happened?” Grip swings from his saddle as the other races to him.
It takes Ivy a moment to realize she recognizes the young man. Few years older than herself, slight and wiry, in sombrero and red and yellow serape, which he wears nontraditionally thrown back over both shoulders like a cloak, over a muslin shirt. He bears a resemblance to Rosalía both in fine features and light movements, this last clue reminding Ivy he is the man from the fandango dance.
He speaks rapidly to Grip in Spanish, but must be off topic because Grip grabs his shoulder, glaring down into his eyes, asking in a snarl, “Where is she, Íñigo? Does she have news of the band?”
Apparently untroubled, the young man’s gaze sweeps the company behind Grip, his eyebrows lifting as he takes in sling, bandages, torn clothes, and copious amounts of dried blood staining garments and saddle leather.
He crosses himself, though his tone is cheerful as he asks something in Spanish, Ivy catching “Silver City” and perhaps Kiedrid’s name.
But Grip also asks questions in Spanish, apparently ignoring Íñigo’s. Ivy cannot tell what has piqued his interest, though he seems to mention the name of the outlaw group he remains intent upon pursuing.
“Do you want cena?” Íñigo asks, smiling at Grip.
“Are you going to tell me what has happened or must I find her?” Grip asks, still clutching his shoulder.
The older man has stopped some way off, gun limp in his hand, not seeming to relish the idea of approaching Grip. Behind him, Ivy sees men running from the city to the unfinished gate.
Íñigo’s expression sobers. He squints one eye, apparently considering the question. “Ahhh ... you ... might not—”
Grip shoves him out of the way and starts toward the gate, leading his horse.
“¡Espera!” Íñigo jumps to block him. “She thought she could find you coming in. Now she says there is nothing you—”
Again, Grip seizes Íñigo’s shoulder. “He did not come through town?”
“Not ... ah, a bit....”
Grip whips around to swing back into his saddle.
“No!” Tackling both knees, Íñigo throws Grip to dirt at his horse’s hooves. “A week past! You are not to go after him!”
Grip twists and tries to grab the young man by the hair, but Íñigo springs away.
Sam leaps from Elsewhere as the older man hurries forward.
“She said you’d be like this,” Íñigo says. “¡Escúchame! She spoke to him—”
“She what?”
Sam catches Grip’s arm, holding him back as he scrambles to his feet. “It sounds as if you must talk with her about—”
“She knows where he is?” Grip asks Íñigo, ignoring Sam.
“No.” A new voice. “But it doesn’t matter.”
Ivy looks up to see a small crowd around the gate in progress. Several citizens, including a sheriff’s deputy called Jakes and Rosalía herself, are stepping outside.
Rosalía runs forward. “Eres un tonto, Íñigo.” To Grip: “There’s nothing you can do about him now. We have more pressing troubles.” Her eyes go past him to Sam’s arm, Ivy’s dress, Melchior’s head, finally taking in the horses’ harsh coats and visible ribs. “Perhaps as great as you have already encountered. The ABCs are here. They await you at El Rio.”
Grip gives an impatient jerk of his head. “Niños pequeños—”
“Stop it,” Rosalía cuts him off. “You’re the one behaving like a child. The Gordons have been waiting in Santa Fé for days. Everyone knows why they’re here. You better take them seriously and not go tearing off after Everette when you’re in no condition. Clear your head. Meet with them after. Then we’ll discuss Everette, de acuerdo?”
Grip’s shoulders rise and fall as he breathes hard, glaring between Rosalía and Íñigo.
Seeing the two side by side, Ivy feels sure they must be brother and sister. A strange dance partner, though perhaps agreeable in this society when one remains unmarried?
“What do they want?” Grip asks Rosalía at last, voice stif
f with forced calm.
“They want to kill us.” Rosalía frowns. “What did you think? Adair asked for a duel.” She glances about at them. “And they want Clay’s necklace.”
Ivy closes her eyes. Melchior took that copper necklace with the inlayed C the day the youngest ABC outlaw died. And everything in Melchior’s saddlebags was washed away.
“Why did they not call you out?” Grip asks. “You must have told them you were riding that outfit if you know this.”
“No seas un pendejo.” Rosalía crosses her arms as Íñigo grins behind her. Ivy can still see a bandage across her shoulder and collarbone below her rebozo. “I offered. Adair and Boyd are gentlemen in town. They wish to avenge their brother in a gentlemanly fashion.”
Like they were gentlemanly about shooting at Ivy’s back—a lady clearly visible in a sidesaddle?
Grip seems to be chewing his tongue. Sam has released his arm and stands uncomfortably at his side.
Ivy wonders if this will delay her bath. Hopefully not. Rosalía told Grip to clear his head before facing the ABC outlaws. That could take a long, long time.
“Íñigo....” After looking around at Sam, then Ivy, Grip turns to his adopted brother. “Go with them to the doctor, then take their mounts to Quiles at the livery.”
“Could be full,” Íñigo says. “Ranchers, settlers, all manner drifting into Santa Fé these days. Everyone saying we’re the only safe place now.”
Grip snorts. “Dreadful safe. Everette riding through, ABCs stopping over. Clearly never bothers Thurman.”
“ABCs paid Thurman off,” Íñigo says, not troubling to keep his voice down. “Slickest bank robbers in ten counties bunking in while he and his men look the other way? Had to pay him off just to come into town. Thurman doesn’t like you and your new amigos or he wouldn’t have taken an acuerdo. Maybe called on someone like you to do something about them instead. But he thinks you make him look bad.”
“Babes in arms make that bastard look bad.” Grip glances at Rosalía. “Does Winter know about them?”
“I’m afraid the whole city knows about them. She’s all right. I told her you’ll talk Adair down and won’t fight. It wouldn’t bring Clay back.”
Lightfall Three: Luck, Lost, Lady (Lightfall, Book 3) Page 4
