He takes the cherry and returns to gazing at the poster. “We know nothing about these men. We would not know which way to start—even had we skills to pursue outlaws. I beg your pardon, Melchior. It is a good deal of money, but I cannot see how—”
“Could be right on finding doubles, Sam.” Melchior drinks, then meditatively rubs his sharp chin with a knuckle. “Any number of men around here might be savvy on a cut. Trouble is that, ain’t it? The cut.”
“That is the only trouble you see?” But Ivy once more bites her tongue. Why are they discussing the matter? She drinks, savors the sweet, warm, fizzing liquid a moment. “We will think of something else.”
The saloon girl bounces past with an armful of empty dishes, batting her eyes and tossing her feather at Melchior. He swirls a tortilla around pepper and onion brine, frowning at the bowl.
With thumb and forefinger, Samuelson flips a bottle cap face up, then face down, over and over on the table.
“Such as?” Melchior looks at Ivy.
“That remains to be seen. But risers and miles hamper enough without adding outlaw gangs to our troubles.” She stares again at the candle.
“Reckon we could take a shot at a hunt.” With a glance to Samuelson, who does not meet his eyes. “The hell we aim to do without other prospects?”
A shadow falls across their table as a tall man appears beside them, steps soundless in the babble, blocking the nearest oil lamp from sight.
All three look up, Ivy and Samuelson having to turn in their chairs.
He wears a shabby morning coat with gun belt below: revolver on the left, decorated by a horsehair tassel on the holster. Left-handed, he touches his battered and stained broad-brimmed hat to Ivy, holding a full shot in the same hand, while his gaze seems fixed on the poster at their table. With his face silhouetted, she can scarcely see the patch over one eye and two days’ stubble across the jaw, yet has no trouble reading both expression and stance as forbidding.
“What is the nature of your interest in La Manada de Lobos?” He addresses Melchior, voice surly as a hostile dog, gaze on the poster between them.
Melchior blinks. “Makes a difference to you?”
Ivy feels a twinge of satisfaction to imagine even her cousin can find some people rude. Her gaze goes from the shot in the stranger’s hand to the brown patch—of linen or leather?—over his right eye as he looks from Melchior to the poster.
“It makes a difference to me to ascertain if you are stupid or desperate, cowboy.” Tone even lower, threatening.
Melchior’s back stiffens. A teasing saloon girl may call him cowboy—rather than cowhand or puncher—but certainly not a man. “Got nowhere else to be, blue? Can book you at the bone—”
“We find ourselves short on cash,” Samuelson says quietly, though still silencing Melchior, who has pushed back his chair. “Nothing more. It is a matter which concerns you, sir?”
“Desperate and stupid then. I shall make the situation plain so you may both follow.” Staring at Melchior. “You will find a blind trail on your own, while I am already acquainted with their course. Fifty-fifty is an ace-high offer you will not hear repeated.”
Melchior, who seemed about to interrupt, closes his mouth, then rallies: “Only one of you, bounty hunter. Seventy-thirty—if you really know something of the band.”
He smiles, yet it is not a friendly expression, revealing the shadow thrown by a scar running down his jawbone below the missing or damaged eye. “Did I say I was here to negotiate? I do not recall saying that.”
Melchior leans back. “Call fifty-fifty just terms when there’s more of us than you?”
“When the side holding two are incompetents.”
“Three,” Ivy cuts in, ears ringing. “There are three of us, sir.”
Samuelson looks at her with alarm as Melchior snaps, “Two of us.”
The one-eyed man stares at her, then returns his attention to Melchior as if Ivy is a talking parrot. “I don’t take infants on bounty hunts. However, if you two cannot be parted, I will make it seventy-thirty for myself having to stand the crying.”
“Miss Jerinson—” Samuelson starts.
Ivy’s blood feels flaming. A minute before, she could not consider such a thing. Fading cries of her aunt beat in her ears with this man’s words: ranch on fire, snapping teeth, ripping fingers setting into Gambit, Santa Fé unprepared, unworried. Then they have the nerve to suppose “out there” is dangerous while “here” is not. And expect her to follow along.
She cuts Samuelson off: “Do you have any idea what’s out there?” She turns to Melchior. “You know how close we came to death. You—” She looks up. “Have you ever even seen a riser, let alone faced a horde? You do know they are here, don’t you?”
He says nothing.
“I have.” She pushes back her chair and stands slowly, staring into his eye. “I was there when it started. My father is a leading expert in the field of Daray’s disease. I know everything that is known about them and I will be the only one standing between you and a gruesome, disgusting, horrifically painful death when they find you. And they will find you. They are here already. They will know where you are and how to catch you because you have no idea how to keep them from you. And they never wait until you are dead to begin eating. They comprehend no pleas or entreaties, no threats or bribes.
“You don’t know what it is to look into the eyes of something which has lost its soul, its heartbeat, coming to consume you because that is how it exists. You don’t know the smell, sight, sound, feel of them in the air. You don’t know how to run from them, hide from them, end them. You don’t even know what attracts them, do you? I bet you didn’t know they can think. They learn and adapt to changes. They will learn to hunt you better if you give them half a chance. And you will—unless you are gone too fast.
“Go on after those outlaws alone, sir. Go. Your bones might as well already be fertilizer. But at least you can feel secure in your own independence. So good luck out there.”
Silence beside blood beating in her ears and noise, now a distant murmur, of the enclosing saloon.
Melchior stares at her. Samuelson’s gaze is averted as if she shouted at him. The stranger stands still, looking into her eyes with his one.
He throws back his shot, drops the glass on their table with a clatter, then turns. “The girl can come. Still fifty-fifty.”
“When do we leave?” Ivy asks.
“Sunrise.” He walks away, slipping through the crowd, pushing between saloon doors and out, into the night.
Seventh
Bounty Huntress
With stores closed for the evening, a dash to the boarding house after dinner to find Señorita still up and working secures them beans, rice, lard, canned peaches, salt pork, coffee, and a tiny Dutch oven.
At first light, Ivy runs to the strange workshop while Samuelson packs their bags and Melchior tacks the animals.
Isaiah greets her, telling her Oliver has only just gone to bed, then smilingly insisting she keep the twenty dollars she brought from Melchior’s gambling.
“I’ll tell him you called and you’re prepared to pay, miss. Don’t you worry about that. He’ll be delighted to get your steamcoach in the works and, while you’re away, we’ll see if we can secure freighter news. We’ve a good amount of steel and materials for now.”
Breathless, Ivy thanks him before racing back to the nearby livery through cold morning fog. Cloak tight about her, shivering, she clings to reins and Luck’s warm mane as Melchior lifts her to the saddle. Luck’s ears lie flat and her tail swishes, but she does not dance away or bite.
“Could’ve waited till after breakfast,” Melchior says as she mounts.
Ivy bites her cheek to keep her teeth from chattering. Luck follows Chucklehead into the foggy, gray street. Ivy tries folding the sides of her hat to pull up her hood, but Luck spooks at the sound of Elsewhere’s saddle creaking, nearly unseating her and forcing both hands back to the reins.
Me
lchior looks around at them. “If you’d worked—”
“We’re fine,” Ivy says.
She feels glad of no breakfast, though hot tea or coffee might be welcome. Her stomach seems bunched in a fist.
Luck balks, turns in a circle, twists to nip Ivy’s skirt, and ends by refusing to budge much past the stable alley. She snorts, tosses her head, peering anxiously into fog, skittering about in place.
Melchior rides back on Chucklehead, muttering as Ivy struggles to move the mare out. “Use this.” He thrusts a leather quirt toward her, the soft end waving past Luck’s head as he leans over.
At the same time Ivy lifts a hand to grab the object, Luck springs away from flapping suede, all four feet leaving the ground at once. Ivy feels her left foot jarred from the stirrup as she lunges forward, desperate to clutch anything in reach. Luck pivots, rears, then throws herself backward through the stable doorway.
Melchior shouts. Luck stumbles. The massive timber frame narrowly misses Ivy’s head, instead catching her knee with a sickening wham.
Force of the blow spins her backward and left, wrenching her right leg from the brace. Still holding reins as if a rope on a cliff, she feels open air below and behind, a vast nothing as she flies from the saddle, down and snap. Ivy’s hands and Luck’s bit connect in a joint-wrenching pop which takes slack from the reins so forcefully, Ivy is thrown forward several feet to the stable floor while Luck is jerked around to face her. The terrified mare neighs as she rears, forehooves lashing above Ivy, whose breath is driven from her body by impact of packed earth, leather finally torn from her fingers.
Melchior is still yelling. Something flashes over her head besides flying hooves. Luck spins away, this time free to gallop along the stable between stalls, reins flapping behind.
Ivy cannot breathe, can hardly see, black spots crowding her vision among popping white stars. She makes no effort to rise, even when she feels hands through her cloak on shoulder and arm.
Lie still. Bed rest and a quiet room. Not these rushed voices talking over her.
She tastes blood, grows aware of hammering pain in her left leg, still can hardly draw breath. Not bed rest either. First she must inflate her lungs. And murder Melchior.
By the time she is able to sit up, Melchior still lectures about letting go of her reins in a fall, pitching herself clear instead of risking her life just to hold a flighty horse. Samuelson kneels beside her, water bottle and handkerchiefs to hand, encouraging her to drink, wetting cloths for her to clean her hands and face.
Besides biting her own tongue, and that not badly, she does not seem to have lost any skin or to bleed anywhere. Her dress appears scraped and dirty, but it was dirty before. She will live. Only her left knee feels badly hurt. She can ride.
As she goes on sitting, then gingerly stands, leaning on the wall and Samuelson’s offered arm in a moment of peace while Melchior fetches and calms Luck, she imagines all she would like to do to her cousin. What she will say, how she will say it, the points she will make. Finally, she will tell him just what she thinks of his treatment, his attitude. No more allowances. No more concessions for what he has been through in the past week. The loss of his parents did not turn him into a self-centered, condescending, reckless, pig-headed jackass. Her mind seethes with every detail, every inflection, every word and phrase in her vocabulary to employ.
Yellow sunlight streams through silver mist on the road. Luck and the other two horses stand quietly. If they are too late, will the one-eyed man leave without them? It seems almost certain.
Samuelson started ten minutes ago about her needing to remain here, that she should see a doctor and rest. But Ivy knows perfectly well what is wrong and what is indicated.
Protesting anxiously as he does so, Samuelson holds the mare’s head while Ivy makes her aching, trembling way to the saddle.
“Ready?” Melchior turns to help her up.
She looks him in the eye. Vivid blue eyes, just the shade of Aunt Abigail’s and her own mother’s. Her own mother, who also could not escape a horde in the end. Who would be ashamed to know half of what Ivy means to say. Who was so correct, so proud of her little lady. Who valued manners over comfort, over health, over any form of reprisal or self-satisfaction, over nearly anything.
“Thank you,” Ivy says.
Melchior lifts her to the saddle and sets her foot in the stirrup.
None say another word as the others mount.
They start up the silent, foggy road, now bathed in golden light. Sunlight through mist illuminates outlines of buildings, trees, hitching posts. A rooster crows. Luck starts and looks around, then walks on.
Melchior lights a cigarette, breath already forming clouds in chill air. He glances along the street. Samuelson points ahead. Ivy sees a large shape move through glowing mist up the road, heading north, out of town.
They push their cold horses to a jog and catch the rider in warm light spilling through broken fog.
Ivy’s left leg throbs. Her arms ache to the shoulders. Her tongue hurts. Her eyes burn and her breaths remain short, intensely aware of Melchior’s lack of apology, even acknowledgment. He did something which made Luck turn, possibly saving Ivy’s life before a hoof landed on her skull, yet she would not have needed saving without....
She swallows, staring ahead, thinking of her mother, ignoring worried glances from Samuelson.
Their companion does not look around as they ride up, though his buckskin horse flattens his ears. Dressed now in what Ivy first takes to be a cotton overshirt, but is truly a buckskin garment with rainwater fringe and several pockets, the whole thing so old and worn and stained it looks more like brown cloth than tawny hide. He wears no chaps, nor carries rifle, shotgun, or lariat. Only the gun belt with the silver revolver. Water bottles are tucked in pommel bags. Saddlebags and small packs rest below a bedroll on the back. At his horse’s heels, though drifting away as the three new horses approach, trots a mangy yellow cur.
“Good morning,” Samuelson says when no one else speaks. “I am afraid we were never properly introduced. Conrad Samuelson.” He rides beside the stranger, offering his hand. The buckskin horse again lies back his ears while Elsewhere ambles on as if lost in thought.
The man turns his head for the first time, staring at the offered hand, then gazing to the trail ahead.
Samuelson glances around at the other two, going on as if the man’s behavior is perfectly normal: “The lady is Ivy Jerinson. Her cousin, Melchior L’Heureux.”
A long pause greets these words. They are almost out of town when the man says, “Grip. You can call me Grip.”
“How ... do you do. We look forward to better making your acquaintance, I am sure.”
Grip shifts in his saddle to stare at Samuelson. “Not one of the Samuelson family of Bristol owning shipyards from Southampton to Wales?”
Samuelson blinks, his already uncertain smile faltering. “Small world....”
“Your family are among the murdering sons of English bitches responsible for a genocide, Mr. Samuelson. I shall appreciate you keeping your distance lest I allow my feelings on the matter to show.”
Easing Elsewhere away from the buckskin with a neck rein, Samuelson says, “I beg pardon if I have caused offense. If you are referring to the Irish Famine, I was not even born when it occurred.”
“Nor I.” Grip again looks ahead. “That does not make the event less one of the greatest unjustifiable, unpunished crimes against humanity ever to take place.”
Samuelson says nothing, his face flushed in the misty dawn, his horse slowing more to expand the distance between them.
“L’Heureux....” The stranger says. “Son of the French amansador L’Heureux?”
“Maybe.” Riding beside Ivy and Luck, Melchior goes stiff, watching the man’s back. “He’s dead.”
“Unfortunate. I saw him in Albuquerque working colts. A savvy man with a horse.”
“I suppose....” Melchior relaxes somewhat, glancing toward Samuelson.
Ivy jumps. Luck throws back her head.
“¡Ven aquí!”
As Ivy looks around, Melchior and Samuelson reining in beside her, they see the ugly dog trot from an alleyway between the last two structures on their way out of town: a farmhouse and chicken coop.
Head low, the cur catches the rider, then trots on as if nothing happened.
Scarcely another minute has passed beyond town, Ivy’s thoughts with her horribly bruised knee, when their dour companion says something else not nice and not under his breath. Ivy recoils as his horse bursts away into a canter, the man shouting in Spanish.
Ivy tries to look along the misty road while fighting Luck’s head. The little mare dances backward, jarring Ivy in the sidesaddle, nose toward the sky.
A lone, dark rider on a dark horse stands in the center of the road, facing Grip as his buckskin canters to them.
Surely they have not ridden straight from Santa Fé into outlaws. There must be searching, tracking, riding about this mountainous countryside....
Melchior and Samuelson glance at one another. Melchior draws his Colt Single Action Army revolver and pushes Chucklehead to follow. Samuelson, who hauls both a French MAS 1874 revolver and a Henry repeating rifle, does not draw, remaining beside Ivy.
“—and return home before you are dragged there!” Grip switches mid-sentence to English.
“Usted va—”
“¡Manténgase alejado de él! ¡De todo esto!”
“Take your own advice!”
Ivy shortens Luck’s reins to keep her seat, staring around at Samuelson to find his shocked expression likely mirroring her own: the voice shouting back at Grip, sounding just as angry, is female.
Melchior reins up behind Grip and the buckskin as the pair stop before her. Grip throws out his left arm, indicating Santa Fé, though his voice has dropped too low for Ivy to hear more than the angry tone.
“What are you doing with them?”
Ivy catches the woman’s words when she and Samuelson reach Melchior, Luck settling as she sidles against Chucklehead. Melchior’s revolver is loose in his fingers, his mouth open.
Lightfall One: Clock, Cloak, Candle (Lightfall, Book 1) Page 8
