Lightfall Two: Fox, Flight, Fire (Lightfall, Book 2)

by Jordan Taylor

  My poor, dear, kind aunt and uncle are deceased, saving the lives of my cousin and I in their passing. And I am to blame. When risers came to New Mexico, a horde swept through the central part of the Territory. My uncle’s ranch lay in their path. I did not get them out fast enough, did not stop my aunt from turning back. I did not even tell my cousin that I saw she had lost her horse and was doomed unless he turned. I still have not.

  You recall your mother used to say, “It is a man’s world and you must let him think he is in charge and comes up with all the ideas. Otherwise, nothing shall get done?”

  I wish she was here. Deciding what must be done, making her lists, setting everyone straight, seeing everything is handled just how it should be. If Boston is a man’s world, the West is a man’s heaven.

  The tremendous injustice and prejudice of the place is shocking at times. Weeks have passed since I arrived in the adobe “city” of Santa Fé to inform authorities of imminent danger. In the past three days, someone finally decided to do something about it. Had a few cavalry men ridden in to tell them, action would have been taken in a heartbeat, a wall already completed, local settlements and smaller towns evacuated into the city for protection. But, because a girl brings the warning, she is hysterical and inclined to overreact.

  Then there is being on the trail: as I struggle for resources to pay my way home, I find myself riding on excursions with “cowboys.” (They, in fact, call themselves “cowpunchers,” and the Mexican ones “vaquoros.” There seems to be something vaguely insulting or teasing, dependent on context, to the cowboy title out here, though I remain unsure why.)

  Never have I seen or previously imagined such uncivilized lifestyles as one must lead on the trail. Even the city itself is shockingly primitive—would you believe there is but one maker in the whole of it?—yet being in the mountains and desert remains distressingly worse. The men only shave intermittently and there is no proper washing at all. One must try for a stream if one is able, then must get a respectable distance from one’s companions, being generally all male, even for a chance at washing the neck or feet with nothing but a wet handkerchief. The brushing of hair is laughed at. The “absurd long time” one takes to get ready for the trail in the morning is cursed. That is if one is lucky and they do not simply ride away.

  It is all well and good to laugh and keep a light spirit. Good for some who have years, a lifetime, of experience riding and sleeping and traveling thus, like a hog in dirt, who wear trousers rather than layers of skirts, and keep their hair short. Well and good for them who, upright and with minimal adjustment to clothing and accessories, urinate with little more trouble than a dog lifting its leg.

  Not enough are the distresses of physical hardships and discomforts of life like a wild animal: one must add unnecessary stress of repetitive food consisting nearly all of beans, pork, corn, rice, and hot peppers whether in town or on the trail, but also the endless foul and vulgar language. I have heard more profanity in the past weeks than should be the lot of any woman, of any station, over her entire lifetime.

  At least the Mexicans in Santa Fé are mostly polite, the men always asking before lighting up in one’s presence. But the Anglo men and some of the Mexicans behave in a manner which would appall even the lower classes in Boston with their coarseness—from scratching to cursing in public, often being drunk in public and calling one another out without the decency of a private talk.

  There is one gentleman in my company, an Englishman named Samuelson, who makes traveling more bearable, yet I am constantly reminded how terribly alone one is out here. Regardless of one’s having physical companions.

  Then, just as one is feeling lowest, most sorry, most mistreated and abused and homesick and starving for a green salad and bite of baked fresh fish with lemon and sage, one must stop and recall that one is still alive.

  With each passing day, I grow to better understand this miracle for what it is. Someday, not yet, but perhaps someday, I shall grow strong enough to let it be enough to sustain me through the bad times without the dark thoughts and despair gaining such foothold.

  “Ivy? The rice is ready. Pass me your plate.”

  Until we meet again, your loving friend,

  Ivy

  Ivy sits up, handing Rosalía her tin plate. Rosalía sits cross-legged before the blaze, smiling as she works, as if she actually likes being out here. She wears trousers, sitting upon her long overcoat.

  Grip still lies back, delicately rolling a cigarette across his chest with his left hand. Melchior lies in grass, a cigarette in his fingers, blowing out smoke. Sam sits with his knees drawn up so Melchior can rest his bandaged foot on them for a moment of elevation. He passes his and Melchior’s plates to Rosalía with thanks.

  They eat in silence. But not an uncomfortable silence, Ivy realizes almost with surprise. Just ... silence. A still in the day between riding and bickering and stories and fighting with the more disagreeable of their horses. A stillness with the grass and trees and bitingly thin mountain air and blazing sun.

  And the silence is good. Somehow, just as it should be. Like the silent squirrel watching them from the silent tree. Part of it all. Needing each other. Not having to talk about it to know that much. Perhaps one cannot rush up here any more than one can rush a season along.

  Ivy pulls the goggles from her face, chews, closes her eyes. She rolls up her letter to Kitty and tosses it into the flames.

  Twenty-Sixth

  Raton Pass

  The moon rests at the apex of a navy sky when they reach Raton Pass. No train or freighter is in sight. In fact, there is no one at all. The busy little New Mexico train stop where Ivy started her stage journey a year ago is dark and silent as a crypt.

  Ivy rides down the little street to the railhead and listens. By moonlight it is impossible to guess at recent activity, yet the cold, dead feel of the place sends shivers up her spine. If they came already, as it appears, they are long gone. If the train had not yet arrived, freighters should be waiting.

  With Grip beside her in the dark and the rest staggered back down the road, Ivy whispers, “They have come and gone.”

  Grip shifts with a creak of saddle skirts. “It does not smell like it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ever tailed a team of men and oxen, Miss Jerinson?” Grip shakes his head. “If they already passed, it was a while back.” He looks down, then says, “Buscalos.”

  Yap-Rat jogs away from El Cohete, seemingly at random. He wanders about the road, crosses the tracks, drifts back, turning his head this way and that. He stops, watching Grip.

  “Bueno. No one has passed here today,” Grip says.

  Ivy looks uneasily from him to the pale shape of the big cur surrounded by darkness. “Tomorrow then. We must be just in time.”

  Grip turns El Cohete, Yap-Rat following, and starts toward the few timber structures in a row down what once passed for a main street.

  Darkness feels oppressive, night air stiff, unmoving. Somehow, the sight of dark, silent human buildings is much worse than being out in the wilderness after sunset. One does not expect candlelight in the wild.

  Ivy shivers, nudging Luck around. Luck jumps at the touch before trotting after El Cohete.

  “Down here.” A soft call from Rosalía at the end of the row.

  The black shape of Volar shows up darker than darkness around him beside a stable with double doors standing wide. Grip and Ivy ride up, Melchior and Sam coming behind. Rosalía dismounts to lead Volar inside. The big animal balks and plants his hooves.

  El Cohete and Luck throw up their heads. Ivy smells it too now. Something dark and dank and old. A musty, rotten smell at odds with the apparently recent abandonment of the railhead.

  Rosalía pauses, looking from pitch darkness inside to her horse. She returns to saddlebags for a match.

  “Rose, we should stay out in a normal camp,” Ivy whispers.

  “I expect hay and grain have been abandoned here. There’s little for the h
orses to eat tonight if we don’t find something.” She strikes a match and, holding it over her head, steps into the black stable, pulling Volar.

  “What is wrong?” The soft voice behind Ivy makes both her and Luck start.

  Sam is at their flank, watching Rosalía. Grip, glancing in all directions, pushes the buckskin stallion forward, riding in beside Volar.

  “We should not be here,” Ivy whispers. “The horses don’t like it either. Rosalía wants food for them....”

  “Haul a bale and get out,” Melchior says. “Place ain’t right.”

  Ivy looks around at him in darkness, scarcely able to remember another instance when he agreed with her.

  “Smell it?” He glances around, Chucklehead arching his neck and pawing earth with a forehoof. “Something died. Hadn’t even heard rumor Raton Pass was deserted.”

  Sam looks uneasily at him. Ivy thinks of Rosalía’s light. She shivers more violently, catching her breath. Luck shies sideways, blundering into Elsewhere.

  “Rose? They will manage for the night. We can return by daylight.” Ivy can see them standing in the middle of a wide stable alley by Rosalía’s second match.

  “There we are.” Rosalía points, but Ivy cannot see what she indicates.

  Grip nods and, to Ivy’s alarm, dismounts.

  “Grip—” Ivy’s heart pounds. “Let’s move back and camp for the night.”

  “They left grain,” Grip says.

  “Then chunk it this way and let’s git,” Melchior says as Chucklehead shuffles sideways.

  Luck backs, tossing her head, pushing against Elsewhere and Sam’s leg. Ivy turns her in a tight circle.

  Sam dismounts, pulling a reluctant Elsewhere up to the door. “Hand out a bale. I can give it to Melchior.”

  Why are they all climbing off their horses? Why aren’t they getting out? Does it not seem ominous that these provisions were abandoned in the midst of such shortage? Does it not imply a hasty getaway?

  “Sam, don’t. We must go.”

  “We know. I do not care for the place myself,” Sam says softly. “But we are spending the night without grass if we camp up here.”

  Luck turns again, almost walking into Chucklehead in her tight pivot. The dark stallion paws, chewing his bit. Melchior alone remains far from the stable, showing no sign of wishing to dismount or even push his horse to Sam to collect an armload.

  Ivy looks at him. Their eyes meet briefly through moonlight. Why do the others not feel it? Or do they? Are she and her cousin only cowardly?

  Melchior keeps glancing back toward the little row of buildings.

  “Did you see something?” she asks.

  He shakes his head, yet keeps checking as Grip brings Sam a bound bale of hay.

  “Melchior?” Ivy sees nothing besides the dark timber buildings.

  “Middle one,” he says at last. “Hotel maybe. Windows boarded.” He shifts in the saddle to look at her. “Boarded from the outside.”

  A fresh thrill of horror. “As if ... to trap something inside.”

  Sam walks up to pass his bale to Melchior.

  “Sam, we must get out of here. Get them out.”

  “Yes—”

  “Now.”

  Melchior hangs onto the bale resting across his bedroll and packs with his left hand, still facing forward, with his reins and now his Colt both in his right.

  Heart in her mouth, Ivy draws her own gun more for reassurance than because she can do much with it. Luck skitters close against Chucklehead’s quarters as the stallion turns and starts back down the little road, Ivy breathing hard, both the horses puffing fast through flared nostrils.

  “If they are in there, why would anyone not burn it before fleeing?” Ivy asks.

  “Didn’t know to, did they? I wouldn’t have known till you said to burn the ranch.”

  Longing to reach out and clutch his elbow as proof of a solidly alive and armed person beside her, she tries to take deep breaths, glancing back to see Sam following on his dark horse. El Cohete’s pale body appears in the stable doorway.

  They are fine. All fine. Just here for feed. Back up on the ridge in a moment.

  Melchior reins in Chucklehead, apparently waiting for Sam, though she can hear him breathing as fast as she is. Why is no one else in a hurry? Afraid? And why is the last person she expected to side with her the only one in agreement?

  Luck will not be held, turning and snorting. Sam glances at the guns in their hands as he rides up, but Melchior is looking to the dark, boarded building. Odor of the musty hay and worse fills the air—something almost sweet, putrid with fresh rotting.

  “Should we burn it?” Melchior whispers to Ivy.

  She shakes her head. “Not in the dark.”

  They move on, keeping the horses at a fast walk, back up the trail, well along the ridge they rode in on, until the railhead is only visible as a dark patch without substance.

  Shaking, Ivy longs for a fire and an arm around her shoulders as she strips Luck. The mare relaxes with a few mouthfuls of hay she rips from the bale in Melchior’s hands. After he approves the feed as not moldy, Melchior and Sam scatter a long line across the ground in a thin trail so the horses can eat through it for a long time without fighting in close quarters. The grain is placed on top of this in handfuls as the human camp is made with blankets and saddles.

  Ivy has finally learned how to use her saddle for a pillow in an almost comfortable fashion, bedroll under and wrapped around, cloak over. Rosalía lies beside her, for which she is grateful, both in warmth and security. Melchior and Sam also make their beds side by side, only Grip staying away from the lot of them. Tonight, he sits up a long time smoking, watching the pass. Seeing the glowing end in darkness, Ivy longs to tell him to put it out. She shivers, listening to the horses chew and the big dog scratch his ear. Even without Es Feroz, if anything approaches, the hobbled horses will spook. The dog will bark. Or sneak and run? She has never heard that animal bark.

  For a long time she lies awake, head aching, back and legs sore, new hunger pains in her stomach, before falling asleep watching a spark of red through the dark.

  Bang!

  Ivy jumps straight up from her cloak and blanket, grabbing for her gun, feeling nothing but cloth, stifling a scream, knowing even from sleep that she must not cry out and draw attention.

  “Not bad!” Melchior scrambles to his feet near her own boots, dropping his blanket on Sam, fully dressed from the day before except for hat, chaps, and gun belt.

  Wait, the day before? Yes. Gray, blue, yellow light just starting to fill the sky, scudding, mackerel clouds reflecting the morning glow.

  Gasping, Rosalía sits upright beside Ivy, her Winchester lever-action carbine clutched in both hands. Looking frantically about, Ivy discovers Grip is in exactly the same place he was when last she had her eyes open—sitting up in blankets, still smoking, hat still on. Surely he went to sleep.

  Sam drags wool off his face, rolling onto his elbow to watch Melchior run thirty feet down the ridge. He limps on the bandaged ankle, though managing well today.

  Nothing else. No one shooting at them. No smell of putrefaction. No risers. The horses stand some distance off, heads up, ears pricked. It appears Luck tried to run away at the sound, now hopping on the hobbles as she looks back. Elsewhere and Volar stand no more than twenty feet away, watching with interest.

  “See that?” Melchior calls back. “Dumbest critters in the world next to buffalo—and see what’s happened to them.”

  “Quite ... magnificent,” Sam murmurs, rubbing his eyes.

  Melchior bends to pick something up. Ivy is startled to see what looks like an enormous jackrabbit with sizable antlers. She only ever saw a jackalope on the ranch at a distance, or else already cleaned and skinned to cook.

  The creature must weigh thirty or forty pounds and Melchior has to shift his Colt to his left hand to carry it by giant back feet in his right, on the side of the good leg. He hops and limps back to them, grinning.
/>   “Feast while we wait to see if that train’s pulling.” He drops the thing beside Sam, rather like a cat bringing in a rat to its humans, expecting delight when its present is discovered on the kitchen floor.

  Sam flinches. “I do beg your pardon, old man, but I cannot look a dead animal of any type in the face first thing in the morning.”

  “You might have woken us,” Ivy says, pulling her cloak about her shoulders as she shivers.

  “What’d I’ve told the herd? ‘Hold steady, bucks! Let me roust this sleeping lady so as not to give her a turn. Then I’ll draw bead and we can shove on?’ Hopping right at us—fearsome critters. Wasn’t about to let it invade camp.”

  “Noble of you,” Ivy says, wondering who will be responsible for transforming the fearsome critter into a meal. She would rather eat grass and pine cones than skin and gut it.

  “Remarkable you hit it at all with that block,” Grip says softly from his separate blankets.

  “Ever demonstrated I’m not a fine shot?”

  Grip blows out smoke. “I’ll give you that. An achievement hitting anything smaller than a canyon wall with one of those.”

  Melchior rounds on him. “If you’ve something to say on me or Colonel Colt—”

  “Stop it, Mel,” Sam says, sitting up to look toward the railhead some distance away. “Too early.”

  “He starts something I can’t finish? Thinks he’s like a thoroughbred carrying those expensive Merwin Hulberts. Colt’s a working gun. Best you can get—with no airs attached.”

  “If one does not object to a replacement every forty rounds when it begins to fall apart,” Grip says, taking another drag.

  “Don’t know what—”

  “Mel, please.” Sam looks up at him. “Do you intend to prepare the, uh, critter for us?”

  “Had enough of his scuttle about Colts. If he’s got something to say to me—”

  “I am sure if you did not carry one, we would never hear of his dissatisfaction with them.”

  “And if they were not plain shoddy,” Grip says.