Ahead, a group of men bunch around the side of a partial wall, a few more at a gap. Half a dozen in various places seem to have firearms and one man, a broad-shouldered Anglo with a walrus mustache and rattlesnake boots, carries an enormous ten-gauge shotgun.
Men draw back, speaking to one another in bewilderment.
“What the hell?”
“They’re still coming!”
Have they learned nothing since Independence Day? Or are these new arrivals?
Grip, Mateo, Íñigo, and others Ivy recognizes from the lunch reach the wall. Grip seizes a ladder and climbs to the platform of an unfinished watch station. Rosalía dashes forward to follow, but Mateo catches her. Without hesitation, she tries to stomp his foot, but her brother must have expected as much because he dodges easily as he drags her back from the wall. While Rosalía yells at him in Spanish, Mateo does not even bother opening his mouth.
“Got the bastard right in the chest and he’s still—Christ!” A man who started around the wall staggers back, still shooting.
At the lookout, Grip has drawn his revolver, systematically aiming, firing, then shifting to another aim.
“Only shoot their heads!” Rosalía calls to them, but she is far and they pay no attention.
“Don’t let them get you! Remember Cillio!”
“What do we do, Brownlow?”
The shotgun man, apparently Eugene Brownlow, aims around an edge of wall, fires with an explosive report. “Aim high, gentlemen; it’s the skulls we’re after.”
Either they cannot hear and remember, or they are poor shots. An emaciated, gray figure stumbles around the corner, its chest and arms riddled with black bullet holes, oozing as if with warm pitch, sliding down naked skin to dust.
Crack, crack, crack! Shots enter the shoulder, stomach, jaw, finally the head and it flops backward to the ground.
Ivy catches the smell of rancid flesh and city sewers as Zamorano, the man trying to instruct Íñigo a couple days ago, runs up with more reinforcements. This middle-aged man in blue serape, a revolver at each hip, does not shout or mix with Brownlow’s group. He waves to those accompanying him and they hurry to vantages through wall panels. They draw handguns or heft rifles, shotguns, or, in only a couple of cases, makers’ guns with many barrels or precision sights. Sam moves among them, French revolver in his good hand.
Ivy hears Brownlow telling those around him to aim for heads, yet they are all shouting at one another in confusion, those closest to the dropped riser staggering away, some retching.
Brownlow steps around it for another shot. She cannot see what he strikes around adobe, but he smiles below the vast mustache.
No one seems to have noticed the spindly ladder besides Grip. Though there is little room for anyone else up there.
Ivy darts forward to tell Sam to make use of the platform and safety—it would take an exceptional riser to figure out a ladder—but is blocked by the growing crowd all trying to get a shot in. Someone backs into her. The stock of a rifle narrowly misses her chin. Ivy dodges, grabs the ladder herself, and, fighting folds of her skirts, manages to climb with reasonable alacrity.
She steps onto the trembling, unfinished platform to Grip’s right. He has to turn his head to see her. She expects he will either ignore her or have a derogatory comment ready. Instead, as he catches sight of her, he jerks his head in the direction he aims.
“Someone here to see you.”
Ivy follows his gaze. And catches her breath.
A dozen risers still approach their wall, having emerged from the southwest timberline, running for the city’s defenders. Bullets strike them in chests of necks or catch grazing blows across brows before a hit to the brain is achieved. Her own companions are better shots than she realized. She cannot imagine it taking any of them five shots to drop one riser. What makes her stare, however, is the form of a gray male in dusty, torn, bright red suit. It runs in a small flow of others, black eyes wide, mouth open, ready to devour the first living flesh to meet those snatching hands.
Grip pulls his trigger. The figure reels and falls with a black hole of blood in the forehead.
Ivy’s heart pounds. A pulse beats in her aching head, though she no longer feels the pain, body alive with the tingling, weightless buzz of adrenaline.
More volleys drive home. The pack slowing, the shooters emboldened, stepping out from the wall. One man snaps the lever of his rifle back in place to find his trigger clicking. He runs forward to meet a female figure in sweeping pink nightgown, hair a wild mess, streaming behind, dry blood crusted thick about the lips.
He wheels back his rifle to strike the figure’s face. Ivy has less than a second to take in the rifle, the charging man, Sam’s voice calling, “The heads only!” and think, All so ignorant. They don’t even know how fast they are. Then the night-gowned riser leaps forward like a charging mountain lion, striking the rifleman with as much force. He is thrown toward the wall, even Grip’s shot missing the figure’s skull with the extraordinary speed of attack. It bites onto the man’s face, teeth sinking into one cheek, ripping to expose a strip of molars and tongue above a screaming throat.
Ivy ducks against the wood slats by Grip’s knees so she cannot see over, sucking in deep breaths despite the sickening aroma of putrefaction.
Screaming and screaming—louder than the shots, the pounding feet, the yelling men. Screaming like he is being ripped apart, chunk by chunk.
More shots from Grip and others, a dozen rounds, then shooting stops while screaming goes on, hammering in her ears like clubs.
“Hal!”
“Get him out of here!”
“Someone run for the doctor!”
“Stay with us, Hal.”
Like they can help him. Like there is a cure now. A bite in the face is no better than a bite in the heart.
“No! He could have the sickness,” Brownlow calls. “Don’t touch him. Jeso, get back from him. Let him go, Preston.”
Shaking, Ivy pulls herself to her feet beside Grip, still trying not to look at Hal, lying in blood and dust next to the riser in the pink nightgown, screaming, thrashing back and forth, clutching at his face while blood sprays through his fingers.
“Someone’s got to help him, Brownlow. He’ll die.” A young man steps back from Hal, his own hands and shirt spattered in fresh blood.
“Can’t have him taking any of us with him, can we?” Brownlow catches another by the shoulder, pulling him away.
“Give him a chance. Don’t know he’s caught anything.”
“And we don’t know he hasn’t.”
Grip turns again to look at Ivy, left eyebrow slightly raised.
Ivy nods, trying to swallow against bile in her throat.
“Hide unless you desire notice,” Grip says.
Ivy blinks at him a second before figuring out what that means. She crouches on the wobbling platform so the men, now mostly on the outside, cannot see her if they look up.
Only then does Grip call to them, “You are correct, Mr. Brownlow. Mr. Tucker will have the sickness.”
Arguments pause. Men must be looking up to see him. Only the screaming Hal keeps up protest unabated.
“I had not seen you up there, Grip,” Mr. Brownlow says, his voice harsher than a moment before, more tense. “How do you know?”
“I have been traveling in company of the visiting expert, Mr. Brownlow. You can be certain Mr. Tucker is infected.”
“In that case ... we must set up some sort of quarantine. A means of containment to—” He stops.
Arguing conversations of men below hush.
Screaming has silenced.
Ivy scrambles to see over the side.
Hal Tucker, hands still against his face, lies silent, his body shuddering, quivering as if with approaching spasms. Men still around him step back, some slowly, others rapidly, eyes wide.
Blood no longer sprays from the mutilated face. It clumps and congeals, sliding down neck, head, fingers in lumps like poorly mixed gra
vy.
Then nothing. Silence. The hands drop away from the face, the eyes stare. Men freeze in a wide circle around Hal, holding their breaths. No one moves. No bird calls or breeze turns a blade of grass.
Several men lean forward, squinting at the body.
Hal sits up.
Crack. Grip’s revolver bursts beside Ivy and she jumps.
Hal falls.
Ivy ducks.
“There, Mr. Brownlow,” Grip says, sliding his revolver back into the holster. “Consider the matter contained.”
He turns as Ivy scrambles for the ladder, still out of sight of the gathering.
Near the bottom, Íñigo catches her hand and helps her down. Shaking, dusting her dress down, Ivy thanks him breathlessly and hurries away, ignoring him as he directs rapid Spanish after her, then Grip.
She slips past the group of shuddering, muttering men, keeping clear of bodies, to reach the gray figure in the red suit, lying on its back, mouth and eyes wide. And there, yes, that one by the fence: Cricks.
Someone steps up beside her. Ivy looks around to see Sam. His face is chalky, his brows furrowed.
“Ivy, please.” Gun in its holster, he holds his right hand out to her, keeping a greater distance from the body than she does.
She smiles, still breathless. “Did you see?”
His gaze remains on her, his eyes beseeching.
“Don’t you see what this means?”
He glances about. “The wall must be completed as quickly as possible and the men of Santa Fé need education if they are to have a chance of survival?”
“What? No, about him—forget it.” She takes Sam’s hand and allows him to lead her past the nervous group, many still clutching firearms, all looking often toward distant pines.
Forty-Sixth
A Kingdom for a Horse
“Someone must do something—teach them—” Rosalía says.
“We’ve got to find it—” Ivy says.
“There’s a committee trying to work out how to defend—”
“Yes, Oliver told me. But, Rose, imagine—”
“Not that it will do any good. Brownlow wants a meeting with you—”
“Full of goods to a mining town rich in minerals and precious metals—”
“There’s a meeting Wednesday, I believe. Or—”
“Must be so close—”
“Serve them right if you wouldn’t attend.”
Ivy takes a bite of fresh flour tortilla she wrapped around the last of Winter’s cabbage. Rosalía chews a mouthful of taco, glaring toward tables now being cleared as the afternoon wears on. They sit side by side on the bench Grip, Ivy, and the little boy occupied two hours ago. Now scarcely anyone is about and they grabbed what they could of leftovers. Several men talk together in a mix of Spanish and English about what just happened, Mateo, Íñigo, and Zamorano among them, though Grip has vanished. The women speak in undertones as they clear up, shaking their heads, eyes anxious.
Rosalía will not look at her brothers, already having vented her feelings to Ivy on the matter of Mateo’s patronizing attitude and Íñigo’s inability to take anything seriously and treat all as a joke. Ivy had to take her word for it since she could not understand what the brothers said during or after the attack.
Now she cannot think of them, Rosalía’s words, or her snack as she eats almost blindly. She knows she needs additional nourishment before venturing out, however, and knows she cannot go alone.
“Rose, I’m sure it’s close. It has to be close. Anyone could come across it at any time with settlers moving to the city every day. Please, will you come with me?”
Rosalía looks at her, eyes shifting slowly into focus. “Excuse me?”
“The coach—Kiedrid’s coach. We’ll reach it in a day’s ride. Less, I bet. Volar is fresh and Luck can manage. She’s had a couple days’ rest and she was never hurt like Elsewhere and Chucklehead.”
Rosalía sits back, frowning. “Ivy....”
“I know we can find it. Please come with me.”
Rosalía glares toward the group of men.
Ivy smiles, heart leaping.
But Rosalía shakes her head and looks down at her plate. “We can’t, Ivy.”
“What do you mean ‘can’t?’ Why?”
Rosalía chews, swallows. “I’m no match for an attack. You might be able to keep us from being attacked, but if we are ... do you even know how to use that Lightning? I don’t mean offense, Ivy, but—”
“The Lightning is gone. I don’t have a gun anymore.”
“Yes.... And I have one carbine and ammunition is as high as anything else right now. I don’t make my own the way Grip and most do. Besides, we would have to sneak out of the city. Do you know how my brothers and your friends would respond if they realized what we planned?”
“I cannot ask Sam. His arm needs a chance to heal now or it never will. Melchior shouldn’t be riding. What about Grip?”
“No.” Tone cold, hostile. “I’m not going anywhere with Grip.”
“Maybe he’ll apologize.”
“Maybe the sun will rise in the south and set in the north.”
“You could apologize so he may—”
“For what? For saving his life?”
“I ... guess so. If that’s what he is upset about.”
“But I’m not sorry I saved his life. I’m only sorry he hates me for it. He gets his feelings hurt so easily—do you have any idea how many times I’ve apologized to him over the years?”
“Then ... it should be easy by now. Maybe you’ll rub off on him.”
“I’m sick to death of caretaking every male ego in—”
“Please, Rose. He won’t go with me. I irritate him too much.”
“Everyone irritates Grip. He likes you and your party.”
“He has a strange way of showing it.”
“He rides with you. And speaks to you....” She shrugs as if to say these points should be indicative of Grip’s affection.
“Always either too little or too much. Not a word for days. Then he lectured me outside Silver City.” She hadn’t mentioned that matter when she told Rosalía and Winter the story of their trip.
“Did he?” She chews thoughtfully. “I thought he saved preaching for family.”
“You apologize and I’ll ask him to go, since I am apparently so delightful, and he will come along because he won’t want us to—”
“No.”
“Rose—”
“No.”
Ivy works to impress upon her face the look Sam just gave her when trying to convince her to leave the attack site.
“Stop it,” Rosalía says. “Try it on him.”
“You don’t know what this would mean, finding that coach. He must have thousands of dollars. We have more of a claim to it than anyone and it is sitting out there on the trail.”
Rosalía looks sideways at her.
“Plus the goods,” Ivy goes on. “He may have returned with anything from Silver City—”
“You’re speculating. As you are on the nearness of the vehicle.”
“He was with the pack, right? We only returned two days ago. Our pace slowed, but still, the coach moves slowly. Why, as a riser, would he move swiftly north? He would not. They follow meat or light. They move east and west or to attack anything living. The coach cannot be far and that man would not have left Silver City without enormous gain.”
Rosalía looks at her, away, back again. She presses her lips together but cannot conceal her smile. “Don’t look at me like that.” Now grinning. “I’ll come with you. If Grip will apologize and come along. We can’t go on our own. Everyone around here—including us—has been doing enough idiotic deeds lately.”
“Is he helping cleanup at the wall?”
“He left before we did. Farrier’s? Or ... I expect Winter cornered him by the time the shooting started if they were both at lunch. He’ll have gone back to see her so she doesn’t work herself into a state thinking he’s been eaten
. He apologizes to her.”
“Right.” Ivy scans the gathering yet sees no sign of either. “We’ll find him first, then saddle our horses. Do you think we should hire a pack horse from the livery?”
“It’s mid-afternoon. It’s Sunday.”
“Yes?”
“We’ll start in the morning. At the earliest.”
Ivy opens her mouth, but Rosalía frowns and she closes it. “Of course. Can I meet you both at the stable just past sunrise and we’ll sort out hiring a horse or not?”
“Hmm....” Rosalía folds the last bit of her soft corn shell in squares.
“You will talk to him?”
Rosalía folds and folds.
Ivy stands. “I’ll go with you.”
“That’s—”
“Let’s find him now. You’ll feel better.”
“I doubt that very, very much.”
“Worth a try.”
Ivy holds out her hand, finally taking Rosalía’s elbow and pulling her along. Rosalía follows, glaring as they pass the group of men. Only Íñigo seems to notice them, turning, whisking off his sombrero, and bowing.
Rosalía scowls even harder.
At Winter’s, there is no need to knock. The door and two front windows stand open. Ivy is startled to find that not only was Rosalía correct in her guess regarding Grip’s disappearance, but he is inside the house with Winter. Scarcely imaginable in Boston with a young lady unchaperoned—though Winter’s mother is technically at home in bed, Ivy has never seen the woman—and even in Santa Fé she feels certain this is irregular.
Winter stands in the kitchen, scrubbing her way through a basket full of earthenware dishes she must have brought from lunch, steam from the wash basin wafting into her face in the already sweltering room, open door doing nothing to coax in a breeze.
Grip sits in the old armchair, feet out and ankles crossed, his boots facing Winter, though his upper body is turned to the door. His elbow rests on the arm of the chair, head in his hand, rubbing his temples.
Winter is talking fast. “Not as if circumstances would improve, everything so dry now, but she is set on building anything to catch rain. Gratia is helping and Mr. Martinez says he will build a frame. Are you certain you do not want coffee? It’s cool.”
Lightfall Three: Luck, Lost, Lady (Lightfall, Book 3) Page 12
