Lightfall Three: Luck, Lost, Lady (Lightfall, Book 3)

by Taylor, Jordan

  “Help them in, any of them.” Trembling, hardly able to catch her breath. “Save some children, for God’s sake. We cannot let this happen.”

  Brownlow dashes past, waving his shotgun over his head. “Fill the gaps! Line the platform! Santa Fé is under attack!”

  Ivy runs for him. “From risers! Not from them! Let them in!” Wham. She crashes into something so large and solid she is thrown on her back in the road, breath knocked from her lungs.

  Grip stands over her, bending to seize her upper arm. The force in his left hand is terrifying—jaws of a wolf crushing her bones.

  “Quickly!” Brownlow shouts from a ladder.

  Gunshots beat at her with screams. Grip drags her backward as she fights to find her feet, finally pulling herself up his sleeve.

  “Let go of me!”

  “Go.” He shoves her toward Melchior, who has not moved.

  “What is the matter with you?” Ivy faces him, clutching her burning arm where he released her. “Why will no one help?”

  His expression is dark, jaw set. “Tell me how—without suicide and no gain to them—and I will do it.”

  “Ropes. Even the children—there’s still time—”

  “Any man carrying a rope to those ladders will be shot. No lives will be saved.”

  “Grip—” But her voice breaks as she grabs her own head, as if covering her ears can drive away screams and shots. “It’s not right. Please, please, someone must be able to do something.” Tears fall on her sleeves, though she cannot feel them on her own face.

  He only stands, facing her, between her and the wall, revolver in its holster.

  “This is not war against a sickness,” she gasps. “It’s genocide.”

  When she looks up, Grip’s eye is closed, his head bowed. She can scarcely hear him above the din as he says, “So I have discerned.”

  Fifty-First

  The Moral Edge

  Ivy wakes trembling, drenched in sweat. Chest heaving, she clutches the worn quilt. Deep breath in; terrified screams. Out; blasts of gunpowder. Gritting her teeth, finally rolling sideways, she snatches the chamber pot from the wood floor and retches over it. Nothing comes up.

  Struggling from the damp bed, she rinses her mouth, splashes water from the basin on her face, then crawls back in. She sits up in the corner between wall and headboard, arms around her knees.

  No door opens. No one comes in.

  Her mother does not lift a cool cloth to her brow and say, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Only a nightmare.”

  Her father does not kiss her head and say, “I’m here now, Ivy. No monster will get between this princess and this old man, all right? I am here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  Hours of darkness drag on as the door remains shut. Ivy sits alone in folds of her chemise which she must use as nightgown. Her new dress and underclothes are still unfinished, though it has been a fortnight since the riser attack which found Indians camped outside the wall around the city. A fortnight without making any new progress on the dress. Or anything else.

  Mid-August ... perhaps? She is no longer sure. Her seventeenth birthday on the eleventh might have come and gone for all she is aware. Hot as ever, no new supplies. She still has no horse. No weapon. One outfit. Besides an occasional conversation with Winter, who does not count since Ivy cannot say anything distressing to her, or Rosalía, who has her own family and troubles to worry about, she also has no friends.

  Her cousin, who, by gambling and working the faro table, won himself a revolver and bought new tack for his horse, his own having been stolen with Chucklehead, will not speak to her. If their paths cross in the boarding house or beyond, he acts as if he cannot see or hear her. Sam did indeed take a room at the hotel. The plaster is off and she often sees him about town. He appears to know everyone: standing in a front portal, nodding as someone speaks to him, helping a small boy unload firewood from a burro, holding a nervous horse for August Chanderton, the farrier, or only pausing in the street to lift his hat and offer a greeting. Not to her. He avoids her now as diligently as Ivy worked to avoid him after their return from Silver City. Despite him still keeping a room at the boarding house, Ivy sees Melchior even less.

  It seems the unnatural relationship between the two is over. Why then, with this chance to turn over a new leaf and perhaps recover from whatever ails them, do they both appear as wretched as she feels?

  Ivy hugs her legs tighter and glances toward the window, waiting for dawn. No good sleeping anymore, no sleep without nightmares. Often, no sleep at all. Not like the trail, where she is so exhausted after days in the saddle she can fall asleep in a few minutes on rocks.

  She must get out of here. Away from these people. But her steamcoach is no further along. And Luck.... Which leaves walking. Even in her sleep-deprived, tormented state, she feels certain she cannot walk to Boston. Alone.

  After sunrise, she stitches until past lunch, her room growing steadily warmer, then makes her way to the saloon for a lemon soda—the price has quadrupled in the past months—and whatever Marian sees fit to bring her. Difficult to get service at all when she visits the place alone.

  As she steps in today, she sees the saloon girl busy at a table hosting Melchior and a grubby, unshaven man in a sun-bleached jacket and canvas trousers. She has begun to recognize the major categories of men out here, and she suspects this one is a prospector. He talks animatedly to Melchior, holding up his thumb and forefinger as if to show the size of stones, frequently gesturing north.

  Melchior watches him without interest, dark circles under the light eyes. He looks almost as bad as Ivy imagines she does herself.

  She wishes she and Sam were there with him instead of the miner telling his rags to riches story. Which is ridiculous. He won’t even look at her. And Sam ... avoiding Melchior is surely the only way Sam will have a chance to recover from.... If only she had a letter from her father with insights into the matter.

  Ivy stands at the nearly empty bar, sore from long nights upright in a ball against her headboard. She can scarcely remember her letter now. As if she wrote him months, perhaps a year ago. But she recalls telling him the difficulties of severing ties with these two. How did it even happen? She needed time away from them, especially distance from Sam. This ... was not what she meant.

  The saloon girl finally leaves Melchior and brings Ivy a bottle. She has scarcely walked away when Ivy becomes aware of someone stepping up beside her.

  “You are Ivy Jerinson, I presume? The girl who knows all about Plague?”

  Ivy looks around to see Melchior’s scruffy companion holding out his hand. To a lady. Some faded part of Ivy still recoils at the crudeness.

  She faces the bar. “Excuse me, sir. I am busy.”

  “Of course.” He chuckles with a dry, rasping voice, as if having spent too many days down dusty mine shafts. “I’ll make matters brief. Just having a word with young Mr. L’Heureux. Tells me you’re his cousin? Had to run off a claim up around Taos a good week back and I’m just itching to return and fetch what’s mine. Trouble is, there’s a goodly amount of wilderness and robbers and sickness between here and there. I rode this way with a fair few others and I regret to say most did not make it.”

  What else is new? Ivy stares at her bottle.

  “You’re the expert and I hear you ride these parts with heeled fellows like your cousin and that bounty hunter—”

  “No longer,” Ivy says.

  From the corner of her eye, the man appears taken aback. “Truly? You might ask them first. Name’s Wriyn, Highless Wriyn. You’d have heard of me if you’d been about Taos much. This is no speculative operation. I’ve a large strike with bags ready to come out. Matter of fact, aim on taking two pack horses besides my riding mount just to bring the bags down. And aim to split each pound fifty-fifty with the outfit what helps me reach the treasure. Worth it to me to bring it in, miss.”

  Ivy glances at him. What kind of name is that? And who cares about him and his mine? Then, t
here is that nibbling, implacable need for funds. Surely another freighter will arrive this summer. The idea of searching for paid work inside Santa Fé makes her stomach flop over against her throat.

  “Perhaps, Mr. Wriyn. I ... will speak with my ... companions on the matter. Where are you staying?”

  “Palace Hotel, near the cathedral. That’s mighty good of you, miss. I should like to leave at once if possible.”

  “Return here for lunch tomorrow. My cousin or I will give you an answer. We can leave the next morning, I suspect. If we are going.”

  “Much obliged, I’m sure.” He tips his grubby hat and winks at her before turning for the door, making her want to call off the whole notion.

  She scowls at her bottle for a solid minute before forcing herself from the bar for Melchior’s table.

  “May I sit down?” Her voice is tight as an old schoolmarm’s. She swallows and takes a steadying breath. “Please?”

  Melchior lights a cigarette from the candle in the middle of the table, not looking at her. He sets the candle back, inhales, gazing toward the bar, then lifts the cigarette from his lips to blow out smoke.

  “Expect you can do anything you like. As you always do,” he says at last, still watching the bar.

  She sits on the edge of a chair with her bottle on the table. “I don’t suppose you need the income. Would you like to participate in the job with the miner?”

  He shrugs, taking another drag.

  “I see you have a new Colt. And there’s a horse I might be able to borrow. How far is Taos?”

  Nothing.

  “I will find Grip and you can ask Sam if he is interested.”

  “Right....” He lifts the cigarette from his lips and stands, finally looking at her. “Would, except Sam don’t speak to me anymore thanks to you. Goes mighty far out of his way to dodge. Find both if you’re all at once partial to someone besides yourself.” He turns away.

  Ivy leaps to her feet. “What is that supposed to mean? I have done nothing to Sam. He can do whatever he wants.”

  Dropping the cigarette on the floor, he faces her, inches apart. “That so? Can do what we want, long as it suits you. Long as it’s passed and approved by the Board of Ivy. I wouldn’t give a damn, you hating us—what’s one more? Except you airing your contempt in his face. For that, if you were male—don’t care if you were stranger or cousin or brother—you would now be dead.

  “That man has been through Hell. Finally thought he had a friend in you. Making three in this whole nation if you count his horse. You’re the ‘civilized’ one. One with the moral edge. But if you aimed to be thought of a certain sarding way you should have tried to act it. Try upholding your own goddamn standards. Can’t tell me your father’d be proud seeing you treat a man who’s decent to you, saved your life, would take a bullet for you, like a sick beast needing to be put down.

  “If you think there ain’t other men like us West, you’ve on blinders. Thought we’d be all right here. And were. Even after Silver City, which is a mighty long piece from Santa Fé, were all right. He was snails lot happier than when I met him. Even missing home, had something here: us. Until you saw fit to remind him how sick and shameful he is, how wrong he is to think he could be happy like this. He’ll shake off mudsills like Frank Sidlow—no respect for a man like that. But he respects opinions of people like you. People like you drove him out here to start; place he hates like Hell, but still had something.

  “Packs were emptied in the riada—not that you give a damn. Only letters from his family in two years. Only photograph of his brothers, pipe from his father, handkerchiefs from his mother, pouch of English tea he’d save for a bit every few weeks. And the only thing he talked about those days trying to get back, according to Grip: you and me. Now left that French revolver and I’m frankly staggered he hasn’t yet put it to use on his own skull.

  “If you can degrade yourself enough to ask him along on security, I pray you will. He’d go. Sure he would. ’Cause he don’t think you’re a backstabbing, two-faced, self-involved, supercilious bitch. Thinks you’re right. And he’s wrong. That”—he draws his revolver, the barrel almost touching her nose—“is why you’d be dead if you were a man.”

  Melchior slams the weapon back in its holster and stomps across the room to batwing doors, spurs jingling.

  Without pretense, every eye in the saloon shifts from following the stalking cowpuncher to Ivy herself, standing rigid beside the small table. Breathing hard through her mouth, Ivy grabs her bottle and walks to the door, staring forward.

  She makes it into blinding sunlight before tears have started down her cheeks.

  Fifty-Second

  A Lonely Trail

  Grip crouches on the sheer edge of the drop-off, holstering his revolver to run his fingers through rocky soil. The edge crumbles at his touch.

  “Never climb it,” he says as if talking to himself.

  “No,” Ivy says slowly, clutching the smooth trunk of a birch for support as she leans out to look. “But we cannot stay on this trail. They’ll follow from below.”

  “Shoot them then. Clear shot.”

  “That will draw others.” Ivy gazes down into unreflective eyes, arms reaching for her, mouths wide, rotten teeth snapping.

  Forty feet down, they are not especially alarming, though the smell remains unpleasant. A few former miners and trappers in heavy boots and canvas trousers, one in thick sheepskin overcoat below blazing mountain sun. The rest used to be Pueblo. Strange; now they all get along perfectly, see eye to eye. All either try to climb the slope with grasping, frustrated fingers, or stand, reaching for her.

  Ivy pulls herself back against the birch. She looks to the men waiting off the trail with their five riding and two pack horses.

  “They will never make it up here,” she tells them. “But we must find another trail.”

  “Another—” Highless Wriyn sits up straight in his saddle, spluttering. “Now you listen here. This is the trail. We’ve already been detoured and sidetracked and I don’t know what. Still only halfway to—”

  “No—” Ivy cuts him off. “You listen: none of us planned to be on a two-day trail for three or four. I had no idea this region became so treacherous in the past months. We came through west of here in May, east of here in June, and never saw one.”

  “Yet you see them now and do nothing about it.” The man is almost shouting, talking over her.

  “Mr. Wriyn, if you cannot lower your voice you will attract—”

  “When a guard finds trouble they dispatch it. They do not run away from it!”

  Grip stands, stepping back from the edge. He fixes the miner with a level, unblinking stare.

  All are motionless a moment, Wriyn opening and closing his mouth.

  At last he grunts, “Is a way west. Down toward canyon country. Take a whole extra day to—”

  “It will not,” Grip says, walking to the waiting men and horses. “Five miles out of the way at most.”

  “You don’t know this country well. Five miles out, then the trail runs west and north—”

  Grip takes his horse’s rope from Sam, who stands ahead of Wriyn and the pack horses with Elsewhere and El Cohete. Melchior stands beside them, watching Wriyn, chewing at his cigarette as he holds the reins of Chucklehead and Correcaminos.

  “Mr. Wriyn?” Grip mounts and looks around at the miner. “Do you prefer we do our job or return to Santa Fé?”

  “I prefer you do the job promised,” Wriyn says. “Provide protection to Taos. Not lead us over six counties because you can’t be bothered to shoot Plague-sick when they cross our path and cannot find a better trail.”

  “I do not recall promising those terms,” Grip says.

  Melchior hands Ivy’s reins back as she walks up, still watching the miner. “Don’t recall terms involving us listening to a whoreson shoot his mouth off for all those extra days,” Melchior says. “Yet here we are. These travels riddled with unforeseen difficulty—”

  �
�Mr. L’Heureux, you are in my employ and I will not be spoken to like that.”

  “Aim to be spoken to as befits your merit? Can be arranged.”

  “Stop it,” Ivy mutters. “Do you think you’re making it easier on the rest of us?”

  Sam steps around them, leading Elsewhere, to help Ivy up, not looking at Melchior or Wriyn.

  “Do not speak to me about merit, cowboy.” Wriyn sneers. “Your industry no longer exists. You haven’t a marketable skill left, based on your performance thus far. Unless a man may take insults to the bank where you come from.”

  “Mr. Wriyn?” Grip frowns at the pack horses. “What is wrong with that animal?”

  They all look around. Indeed, the dun horse is shifting in place, holding up one forefoot, then the other. He drops onto his knees.

  Wriyn jerks the lead rope savagely. “Enough! Stay on your feet, miserable crowbait.”

  “That is the third time the animal has tried to roll in harness,” Grip says. “Has he never been trained to pack or does it not fit?”

  “How the hell should I know how he’s been ‘trained’? I told you the animals are on hire from that dickering livery man in Santa Fé. As are the harnesses.”

  Slowly, looking back at the dun and bay pack horses, Grip turns El Cohete to start west, cutting through forest.

  “Don’t, Sam,” Melchior says, still angry. “I can lift her. Your arm—”

  “Has mended,” Sam says.

  “Sure don’t seem like it’s been enough time. Broke my leg being thrown when I was a boy. Took three months to be running around. And they say smalls heal faster.”

  He assists Ivy into the awful, stiff sidesaddle on the black mare.

  “It feels well enough,” Sam says, flexing the arm.

  “Hasn’t been six weeks, has it? Scarcely over a month.” Melchior throws Chucklehead’s reins across the stallion’s ears and Chucklehead balks. Melchior grabs the saddle horn, jumps into the saddle as if the horse is three feet high, then turns him to follow Grip and the miner.