He looks at her for a long time in which she will not meet his eyes. At last, “I beg your pardon. I thought you believed in something.” He stands, lifting his hat carefully from the arm of his chair.
“What is that supposed to mean? You think I don’t want to go home any more than the day before or the week before or the month before?” Her voice shakes—tight and hard, hands stiff in her lap, breaths short.
He looks down at her. When he speaks, it is a carefully controlled whisper.
“Not enough to do something about it. If a person cares enough, they will keep reaching to a dying breath. It is lack of commitment or will to turn back at the first shots. It has little to do with odds of success; rather the nature of the person making the journey. Please forgive me, Ivy, I should not speak to you like this. Only allow me to say you do not know homesick. You do not know ‘impossible’ distance if you believe you are the only one wishing to get somewhere else. Did you know Grip has been trying to go home to Ireland since he was a boy? He had saved the money for train and steamer passage when the rails closed. Did you know I meant to remain in this nation six months, yet I have been here two years? There have been weddings and births and more than one funeral in my family since then for which I have not been present. And that is merely what I know of. I am sorry—you do not know how sorry, how strongly I sympathize with your predicament—but I can do nothing for you if you cannot even motivate yourself. Right now, your best chance of getting what you claim to desire is raising funds for it. To do that, you must work. If the work is dangerous and difficult and uncomfortable and places yourself and others in peril along the way, that is beyond your control.”
Sam takes a breath, his voice hardly a murmur as he finishes, “I beg your pardon.” Then he pulls down his hat with a trembling hand and walks out.
Thirty-First
Faces in the Dark
“Tell me, Miss Jerinson, how did you first come to New Mexico Territory?” From his seat on a trunk, Meriwether Kiedrid leans back against a coach wheel.
Ivy stares into the fire, though her eyes sting, face burning with close heat. It will be another cold desert night and she needs this before sunset. Like traveling with the freighters from Raton Pass, Ivy and her companions sleep as far from the coach and Kiedrid as they can while still being considered on guard, yet the man insists on them commingling each evening while the dinner fire burns.
It is a moment before she answers, her back tense, right arm sore, breath shallow in her lungs. The fire leaps and jeers. Despite company of Sam, Melchior, Grip, Kiedrid, and his driver, a man called Cricks, Ivy feels painfully aware of how alone she is sitting here.
She has already answered questions for three nights about Daray’s disease. Already been polite and friendly and agreeable in spite of her loathing everything about him from his oily voice to his slicked back hair and crimson suits. The false manners and slow accent churning through genteel respectability—all pushed before a leer or bared teeth with no true warmth about the smile—makes her better appreciate even her cousin’s rude indifference. Kiedrid’s apparent interest turns her stomach far worse than anything Melchior has ever said to her.
At last, she says, “I came by one of the last trains into the Territory. Of course, the East had been in semi-quarantine for some time. When final closing was announced, there was a scramble for passage north and west.” She glances at the sky as she speaks, hurrying on before he opens his silky mouth. “Time to remove the light.” She stands, brushing her skirts. “Good evening, Mr. Kiedrid.”
Sam and Melchior jump to their feet, putting out the fire. Grip is kneeling, clicking his revolvers back together after their nightly cleaning and inspection.
“You are of course welcome to stay at the coach, young lady,” Kiedrid smiles lazily up at her. “Please don’t feel you must camp with your horses.”
“You are too kind.” Ivy shakes out her green cloak, then wraps it about her shoulders, drawing in the fire’s heat. “I am quite happy with the arrangements.”
“How is our time by your map?” Sam asks. “On track?”
“Sure to Sunday,” Cricks says, leaned on a sack as he picks his teeth with a matchstick. “We’ll have, oh ... three more days with stopping so early of an evening. Could be four.”
The fire is soon obliterated as good nights are exchanged. Ivy moves with her three companions to the open shortgrass prairie well off the road, where their horses are hobbled, trying to graze the mostly dry grass.
No one says a word as they build beds with their few blankets, Sam and Melchior near Ivy, Grip apart. Sitting up as darkness falls, he rolls a cigarette, gazing at the horizon. Ivy feels some of the tension leave them as it leaves her.
Sam finally smiles as Melchior snatches both their bedrolls from the ground for the second time in an attempt to correct a rock difficulty. As he sits back beside Ivy, watching Melchior comb through dirt with his hands, she says, “Thanks.”
Sam nods, does not ask what for. Using a handkerchief around his fingers, black with dirt and ash, he pulls a peppermint from his breast pocket. He gives one to her before popping another in his mouth.
Not the first time he interrupted Kiedrid to aid her. Her only comfort about their employer is knowing all three of them seem to despise the man almost as much as she does. Hard to tell with Grip, who behaves with equal disdain toward almost everyone. But Melchior—who often told ghost stories or colorful anecdotes of infamous horses and outlaws of an evening—will hardly speak by the fire since they have ridden with Kiedrid and Sam seems as on edge as Ivy feels.
“Mel....” Sam turns his head away, closing his eyes.
Melchior lifts dust clouds as he unearths another culprit. Where Ivy shifts and tries to find a patch she can lie herself without anything gouging too horribly, Melchior finds a place he wants to build his bed, then alters the ground itself until it suits him.
“Sorry,” he mutters, still digging. He has never apologized to her for anything. Ever.
Ivy pulls the hood of her wool cloak low, pushing the pink mint into her cheek so it will dissolve as slowly as possible.
Sam unbuckles his chaps as he sits by her pale skirt. In purple twilight, she watches the muscles shift across his arms and shoulders, the stubble down his jaw, making him look older. He shaves nearly every day, even on the trail, but they had a rushed start this morning and no one had time besides Kiedrid—who seems never to sleep and always to be impeccable. Sam’s hair is longer than when she met him as well, sticking out below his black hat. Grip has said they should not wear black or white in this country anymore than they should ride a white, gray, or black horse. It makes one too visible. Too easy to target. He always wears his old, dark buckskins on the trail. Even his eyepatch is not pirate’s black, but a brown leather and linen construction not much darker than his dusty, sun-tanned skin. Brown hat and trousers blend with his dog and horse and the mountain or desert or prairie worlds around them. But Sam cannot let go of his blacks and whites. Like the exquisite rosewood pipe he occasionally smokes—disregarding hand-rolled cigarettes—or the French officer’s revolver he carries, Ivy suspects this is his way of holding on. The same way she clings to her old teal dress and hairpins and sidesaddle, despite Rosalía telling her she must learn to ride astride if she means to keep this up.
She was not going to keep this up. Yet here she is. Camping on a blanket and cloak with three men and four horses on the prairie. Again. At least they are out of the mountains now, south of Albuquerque, which was practically deserted after numerous riser sightings sent people north and west for their lives—fortunately leaving no one in town to recall Sam breaking bail. Not too far, in fact, from her aunt and uncle’s ranch.
Added to this, Kiedrid staring at her while she rides, asking her questions in the evenings after he insisted they all must take suppers together. Melchior stiff, Grip silent, Sam trying to deflect the man with questions and interruptions, though so politely he is not always successful.
/> But none of them punch the crimson-suited bastard on the nose for her.
“I’ll pay you five hundred dollars in gold dust and nuggets to Silver City,” Kiedrid had said in Santa Fé. Reasonable, Ivy felt, for such a long trip. “I don’t want a scratch on this coach. I don’t want a dead horse or dead driver. I want complete protection from this ... dilemma. Do you understand? Upon a safe and sound arrival in Silver City, I shall pay you five hundred dollars each and let you know the status of a return trip at the time.”
Ivy almost jumped. Melchior and Sam glanced at one another. Five hundred each? And one-way?
Ivy had never truly understood the expression “money talks” before. Now it talks with its silences. With its soft tongue. With a smile. Melchior has not said one uncivil thing to the man’s face. Grip has not said an uncivil thing about him. They always walk away from coach to camp in silence, always refrain from bringing up the subject of the man during the day.
Melchior throws down their blankets with another puff of dust. Sam holds up his removed chaps for protection while Ivy watches his arms and shoulders under the cotton shirt, closed eyes, wry smile as he protects his face.
Grip lifts the cigarette from his lips to flick away ash. Though she sees this only from the corner of her eye, Ivy feels the gesture is meant for her. She glances up. Grip stares at her with his one eye. Heat floods her face. Has he been watching her?
But Grip jerks the cigarette half an inch more, shifting his gaze north. Ivy follows his line of sight to a silhouette on the flat prairie. A small animal stands at some distance, visible as a shadow against the lavender sky.
Ivy catches her breath. She asked Grip if he could keep Yap-Rat away from their camps at night and for two nights Grip has told the dog off in Spanish, whereupon Yap-Rat shuffles north, as if heading back to Santa Fé, though he returns by morning. Even so, these efforts have thus far been in vain.
Now Ivy gives a soft whistle, holding out her hand, adding a little chirruping sound at the end which her fox made as a kit.
Large ears flick. The shadow vanishes as the creature drops low in grass. A moment later, with all now watching, Es Feroz appears at the edge of camp. Ignoring Melchior, to whom she is accustomed, the vixen sniffs her way cautiously past Grip and Sam before gliding up to Ivy.
Ivy reaches breathlessly to scratch her neck, feeling dirt and dust crack on her face with the unfamiliar movement of a smile as she whispers a welcome to her friend.
Grip goes back to gazing at the horizon, the end of his cigarette glowing orange. Sam is finally allowed to move to his own blankets as Melchior stops tossing up dirt and unbuckles chaps. The three of them do not discuss watch shifts—Grip is always first. Melchior and Sam sort out the rest of the night between themselves. They have not asked Ivy to keep watch since they started from Santa Fé. And she has not offered.
Ivy hugs her fox, dragging the furry heap into her lap, trying to bundle the cloak around her. Es Feroz generally likes to den in Ivy’s blankets when their paths cross on the trail. Now she seems tense, ears staying up and eyes distant, flicking her tail, only rubbing across Ivy’s chest and chewing a fold of cloak in an absent fashion. She jumps as Elsewhere steps on a crackling tumbleweed twenty feet away, then sniffs before giving Ivy another rub of her head like a cat.
She must be watching for the dog. Though Yap-Rat has been keeping his distance. He hunts for himself and finds his own place to sleep anyway.
She inches down in blanket and cloak, struggling to keep her skirt from bunching, having to leave the tense fox on her stomach instead of under cover. She rests her head on her saddlebags—full of dry goods and relatively soft—as she strokes the vixen’s back.
The temperature is already plunging, steady chewing of the horses reassuring, as there is still edible grass. Es Feroz offers only a small warm patch on Ivy’s abdomen, yet she feels grateful just for her presence. Ivy longs to confide in the fox as she used to on the ranch: as therapeutic as penning fake letters in her mind to Father, Mother, Kitty.
The fox lies stiff, head up, ears pricked, staring west with a fixity in her posture more as if she is ready to spring than going to bed. Ivy tries rubbing her chin. Es Feroz does not respond. She scratches an ear but it flicks away.
Hoping Yap-Rat will not charge in on them, Ivy closes her eyes. She slithers lower on her steel bed, pulling her hood to her eyes, listening to Melchior’s whisper as he tries to convince Sam they should invest in a shotgun despite obscene prices. Sam gives monosyllabic or silent replies. His innate politeness seems to prevent his stating a firm goodnight or even ignoring the lecture on the qualities of shotguns, though Ivy suspects Sam already knows them. He has told her he learned to shoot by pheasant hunting with his father.
Es Feroz twitches. Ivy cracks her lids to peer at her over insufficient blankets. Motionless, alert, watchful.
The sky grows navy. Stars seem bright as candles across a ceiling. Ivy shivers as she reaches to stroke the fox. Es Feroz does not respond, shift, or look at her.
The last bit of peppermint has faded to a sliver. Ivy chews the speck, tucking herself back down. Her father would say she needs to clean her teeth after a sweet. One more rare luxury.
Something moves nearby. Elsewhere swishing his tail, lifting his head perhaps, as the chewing stops. Near silence for a moment as humans, horses, and fox are still. Ivy takes a deep, quiet breath. Amazing, how she can fall asleep out here without much trouble. Better with Rosalía along, but still not bad. It seems days of exhaustion will put one to sleep on a bed of nails.
Elsewhere snorts. She cannot hear the other horses chewing anymore. Perhaps all watching something like Es Feroz. She becomes so focused. So fixated. Isn’t she too tired? So, so tired.... And she must fall asleep before she grows too cold. Sleep. Not focus. And Grip is on watch. Nothing to worry about.
Watch. On watch and focused. Es Feroz.
Ivy leaps upright in her blankets, sending the vixen starting back in alarm. Not ten feet from her, Elsewhere tosses his head and snorts. Ivy looks west, heart pounding, blood hammering in her ears. Not cold anymore: frigid.
“Ivy?” Sam’s voice.
She looks to the fox, now on her paws beside Ivy’s bed, again looking west with her ears up. Does she look a bit ... large in darkness? Yes, the fur stands up on her back. Her fixed gaze has returned. Ivy shifts to look at Elsewhere. The bay gelding is only a dark shape against a black and silver sky. His ears twitch, nostrils quivering as he huffs.
She takes a deep, deep breath. Peppermint, leather, horses, tobacco smoke, the sweat of herself and her companions, the fox’s earthy, musky aroma, grass. Nothing.
She stands anyway, pulling her cloak tight, waiting beside Es Feroz, staring in the same direction. Nothing moves in darkness. Only flat prairie.
Sam sits up, watching her. Grip looks from her to follow her eyes, then back.
As Ivy glances once more to Es Feroz, the vixen tears her gaze from the west and, without a backward glance or sound, turns and flees in a fast, fluid motion, lost to sight almost at once. A shiver flies down Ivy’s spine.
“We must go.” She speaks quietly. An order.
“What happened?” Melchior asks, sitting up beside Sam.
Grip stands, drops his bedroll across his saddle on the grass, then grabs the whole outfit in his left hand and walks away to fetch his horse without a word.
Sam reaches for chaps in the dark. They often keep their boots on at night on the prairie. Taking them off is invitation to scorpions and tarantulas, not to mention slowing any hastily needed action.
Ivy keeps watching, listening—deep, deep breaths. Nothing. Is she wrong? But she looks again in the direction Es Feroz fled and grabs up her own saddle and bedroll.
By the time Sam is saddling Elsewhere and Melchior has caught both Chucklehead and Luck in the dark, Grip rides past on El Cohete to the coach and carriage horses.
His voice carries to them on the still night as he speaks in his soft, irritated way, as i
f the slow-witted person he addresses just insulted him but he is trying to restrain his anger.
“Mr. Kiedrid, harness your horses. We are moving on sooner than expected.”
A moment later, as she tightens Luck’s cinch left-handed, she hears him telling Kiedrid the expert decided they must all move out. Kiedrid requires more explanation.
Finally Grip says, “Sir, we are doing our job. Allow us to.” Then he turns his stallion as Cricks emerges from his bedroll by the coach, grabbing harnesses for the picketed bays.
Their own horses are restless now. Luck jumpy and fidgeting. Chucklehead throwing his head and snorting. Elsewhere puffs nervously through his nose. Sam has him ready, but steps to Ivy to help her mount. Ivy gathers her reins. And smells it. Something old. Something dark, sinking, rotting away into the earth, into nightmares. A draft, a whiff, a sigh, like distant notes of music through a storm. Almost not there at all.
Hands shaking on reins. Heart in her throat, she dare not speak, trying to listen.
Sam swings up, but Melchior is still fighting with his bedroll and Chucklehead’s cinches as the stallion paces a tight circle around him at the end of his rein.
“Melchior,” Ivy hisses, her throat a sliver with panic. “Now.”
He glances to her in darkness. Perhaps the fear reaches him as it did at the black buildings of Raton Pass. He jerks Chucklehead to a standstill, tightens the cinch, throws blankets across the saddle, then swings up.
The horses are nearly harnessed at the coach as they arrive, Sam and Melchior with revolvers in their hands. Ivy too anxious to hold in Luck with only one hand to try for hers. Anyway, she has no reason to suspect she can shoot any better now than she could two weeks ago. Sam offered to assist her, but she cannot stand the horrible sound and hands smelling of gunpowder and even carrying the thing at all.
When Kiedrid starts toward them, asking what this is all about, Ivy silences the man with a hiss.
Lightfall Two: Fox, Flight, Fire (Lightfall, Book 2) Page 12
