One moment, everything silent, unearthly. A quarter of a second in which Ivy saw all options like a string of tintypes—two dying, three dying, all dying; end of possibilities.
She wheeled Gambit, all too eager to turn. They sped like falcons over the rough road, tearing north so fast Ivy could not get her breath in the rush of wind. For all their speed, Chucklehead outstripped Gambit as if the cart horse went at a canter. They were level when Melchior called at her to turn west.
Turn at such speed? She could hardly hold on. The idea of taking control of the ride enough to choose direction felt ludicrous.
Leaning forward, feeling even more she would be thrown, tears flowing through stinging wind and dust and the horse’s thick mane slapping into them, she pulled the left rein. Gambit veered from the grooved road, following the blue-black stallion. And tripped.
The next instant Ivy was falling, flying with nothing below, nothing above, only free air. Earth caught her. She smashed on knees, elbow, hip, ribs: rolling, blind with dust and grit, hair tumbling around her face, wind knocked out of her.
“Gambit!” Through the cloud of dust both their bodies made, she saw him fight to his feet as she did.
And them. Dozens, all silent, the front runners. How did they come so fast? Someone was screaming—perhaps her, perhaps the horse. She ran for him, toward silent, gray figures, powerful reek of decaying flesh, snatching for his reins.
Thump. Something struck him from the far side. Gambit reared, shrieking as teeth sank into his flank.
“No!” Ivy was jerked off her feet, grabbing his neck and saddle. Yet she could never, on her own, get into a saddle in which one must turn one’s back to the horse.
Gambit pivoted, kicking behind, catching two with sickening thuds. Dark, thick, nearly black blood splattered. One’s head caved in, another struck in the chest and thrown a dozen feet, knocking down several more.
Ivy tried to throw herself up, onto his back, finding the hight impossible. Gambit kept spinning, fighting. Every nerve on fire, vision and breath choked by dust, Ivy caught that single stirrup and forced her left boot into it. Claw-like fingers ripped at the horse’s flanks, more coming for her, rotting teeth set in her skirts.
Crack. Melchior’s stallion reared beside them, lashing out with front hooves, ears pinned, eyes rolling white. Melchior fired his revolver again, blasting another to the ground.
Jumping with her foot in the stirrup, Ivy threw herself at last onto the panicked bay’s back, half sitting, half lying against his neck and the saddle as both animals burst away. Melchior was still shooting, Chucklehead wheeling, Gambit kicking out as he ripped free of snapping teeth and shredding fingers. West and north, through brush, into the foothills of the San Mateo mountains.
Pain started as they fled. Knee, elbow, ribs. Her lungs burned as much as her streaming eyes. And what of Gambit?
For five hundred yards, the cart horse kept nearly abreast of the stallion. By the time they started up a steep gradient, leaving the ranch and those dead-eyed hundreds far behind, Gambit trailed, dropping to a shuffling jog, head hanging, then stumbling until he stopped in his tracks, buckling forward onto his knees.
Ivy, so weak and trembling she felt boneless, fell over his neck like a sack and rolled to the dirt beside him. Gambit crouched with his nose on earth, lathered in sweat, gasping against cinch and bit and dust.
She scrambled to her knees at his head, unbuckling the throat latch, then pulling the headstall over his ears, letting the bit drop from his mouth.
“I’m sorry, Gambit.” She choked, stroking his forelock away from terrified eyes. “Melchior—”
When she looked up, Melchior and his horse were beside them. His expressionless gaze roamed over the bowed horse. Carefully, like an old man, he slid from his saddle.
Gambit struggled to extend his forelegs as Ivy pulled the cinch loose, then dropped to his side in a slow, agonizing motion. His hind legs were soaked in blood, coated in dust and filth from gaping wounds in his stomach. Glistening coils of intestines dangled through open holes torn in flesh like grain bursting from slashed sacks. Blood pulsed from ripped organs.
A metallic click sounded sharp in Ivy’s ears. Melchior’s boots crunched loose rock on the false trail they had followed. She looked beyond the horse to the prairie below: settling dust, invisible house and outbuildings, black smoke billowing into a blue sky.
She bent forward, tears dropping onto Gambit’s dark coat, to kiss his muzzle. “Thank you.”
Choking, almost retching as she struggled to her feet, she staggered past Melchior to clutch Chucklehead’s neck and cry into the black mane. The usually balky stallion, lathered in sweat, breathing hard, stood motionless, watching his rider while Ivy leaned on him. She pressed both scraped hands over her ears, yet it did nothing to shut out the explosion of Melchior’s revolver.
Third
Waking
Ivy wakes with a gasp, icy tears on her face, trembling, body aching, fingers numb. Only a dream, a nightmare....
She sits up in darkness from rocky earth and sharp buffalo grass, breaths shallow against uneven pressure of her corset, face sore where tooled leather of the saddle skirt dug into her cheek. The saddle blanket slips off her shoulders while her cloak remains tucked about her. Her tiny bag is clutched in one hand, along with the handkerchief she had pressed to her face for long hours before drifting off. Dark surrounds her, broken by stars and a nearly full moon illuminating silver outlines: distant mountains, her cousin sitting beside her, the grazing stallion nearby.
Not a dream.
She lifts damp, freezing silk to her face against fresh tears, stomach in knots, shivering worse without the stiff blanket. She sniffs, trying to clear her blocked nose, inhaling sharp reek of tobacco smoke in the same moment hot liquid rushes over her upper lip.
Not now, please. Fresh tears spring to her eyes with the maddening absurdity of another nosebleed on top of....
Then a hint of orange glow, Melchior cupping his hand around the cigarette in his mouth in an effort to hide light. Too much.
“I told you no fire,” Ivy whispers, words coming in a gasp through compressed lungs, choked throat, fingers and handkerchief pressed over her nose.
“Covered.” He sits cross-legged, hunched forward in a thin overcoat meant more for keeping off sun than cold.
“Not enough—you struck a match—” But her voice breaks, while pinching her nose makes it even harder to inhale. Mouth wide, struggling to correct her posture and remove pressure points, she fights for breath, shaking harder than ever.
Melchior draws in a long pull of smoke, hands cupped about the glowing end so light cannot be seen, then stands with his back to her. When he lifts the tiny end from his lips to drop on dirt and crush out with his toe, it leaves a streak of light across Ivy’s vision. This after she insisted there must be absolutely no fire past sunset at any cost. That they could die. For a cigarette.
She longs to shout at him, shake him, curl into a ball, sob, scream, hug him, apologize for what happened only several hours earlier—the magnitude of which she still cannot take in, cannot fully process, knowing clearly only that she will never see her aunt and uncle again, that he will never see his parents, even his home, again.
And he is heedless enough to light a cigarette which could lead to their deaths. While she is small and callous enough to admonish him when he is all she has left.
Melchior employed a split rein to hobble the blue roan. Now he catches the trailing headstall in the dark and cleans and warms the bit on his sleeve before pressing it into Chucklehead’s mouth.
As Ivy fights tears and nausea, keeping a firm hold on her nose, Melchior rests his forehead against the horse’s neck in the dark. Chucklehead remains still, silent as his rider, silver steam just visible puffing from his nostrils by moonlight. Melchior runs a hand over his poll, between his eyes, down the muzzle to the velvet nose. Both remain still through many heartbeats.
At length, he turns away, lea
ding Chucklehead back to Ivy, who wordlessly holds out the saddle blanket with her free hand from her place on the ground.
As her cousin saddles the horse in the dark, Ivy struggles painfully to her feet. They stopped only for the animal’s sake, having no camp gear. But daybreak must be near and Chucklehead seems to be holding up better than his human companions anyway.
As the bleeding stops, Ivy faces the urgent dilemma of blood and bile clogging her throat. She must swallow the horrible burning mass, of course; this is no private indoor sink. Even in the middle of the night, alone besides her cousin and his mount, she can hardly bring herself to turn from them and bend to silently spit on grass, face burning with shame, warming her numb cheeks.
Melchior drops the stirrup in place, stroking Chucklehead’s mane. Never speaking to her, he lifts Ivy to the roping saddle with her back to it. She cannot reach his stirrup or place her leg in a brace, but clutches the thick horn in cold, bloody fingers, cloak wrapped tight about her.
He walks, leading the horse, leaving her nothing to do but clutch on with grazed hands through the endless remainder of those dark hours.
At last, just past dawn, he joins her—Melchior in the saddle, Ivy behind. She holds onto his coat, wishing to wrap her arms around him, lean against something warm and solid, still her ceaseless shivering, rest her head on his shoulder at the very least as her eyes close for longer and longer stretches. She keeps herself upright by aid of the corset, only holding his light overcoat to keep from slipping.
After opening her mouth many times to discover no words will come, Ivy gives up and remains as silent as her two companions on the long ride.
Though water remains no trouble on the trail, and there is plenty of spring grass for Chucklehead, they haven’t even a biscuit for themselves. By the time Ivy looks up to see the first signs of settlement and ranches leading into Albuquerque, her stomach feels sharp with pain and her head spins.
Past mid-afternoon, damp all over with sweat, eyes closed against blistering sun without her hat, again riding while Melchior walks, they reach the center of Albuquerque. Ivy dreads having to face a sheriff or marshal, even concerned townspeople in her current state. The town must know what happened to them, must flee the area, yet, through the dirt street, past only a few small rows of timber and adobe structures, no one rushes to greet them. No one seems alarmed or concerned by the sight of them. Hardly anyone can even be seen below afternoon sun.
Melchior finds a tiny, unkept hotel on the east side of town with an equally small, even shabbier boarding stable attached. As he makes arrangements with the squinting, tobacco-chewing proprietor on the porch. Ivy watches the dust-colored dog under shade of the man’s chair scratch its ear, then the brown trail as the man spits in the general direction of a black tomato can beside the chair. He nods, telling Melchior a price.
Should they warn him about the sickness? Everyone they see? Isn’t that more important than anything else? Especially since they will not stay: they must reach Santa Fé, get the same stagecoach out she took in and return on the same train from Raton Pass, Kansas, then Chicago. Even with the Transcontinental Railroad closed for a year past, something must run. With risers here, she cannot sit in this wasteland another minute while her father works for answers thousands of miles away.
Melchior throws Chucklehead’s reins around a hitching post and steps up to the porch to hand the man a tarnished coin. How much money does he have?
Ivy stares at the disproportionately large sign stretching across the whole front of the upper floor. Whisk is written in giant letters across the top, then Inn slightly smaller below. Whisk Inn? As in a kitchen whisk?
They really must say something about....
“Come on.” Melchior grabs her elbow.
Ivy wrenches her arm away. He may help her onto a horse, but a man does not just grab a lady like a sack, cousin or no.
“Coming inside or sleeping out?” he snaps.
The old man on the porch watches them with hooded eyes.
Ivy looks again to the sign. Below the dark Whisk is a lighter painted shadow of a key. Ah.... She lets out her breath. How ... witty.
Dropping her gaze, not saying a word to the old man, who tips his hat with a sarcastic leer as she passes, Ivy follows Melchior inside.
He helps himself to room keys which the spitter must have described, then leads her up creaking stairs with spider webs between every banister rail to a bedroom the size of a dressing room. This consists of a square window the size of a porthole and single bed, looking like that of a child, pressed against the back. No wardrobe. No chest of drawers. Certainly no looking glass or wash basin.
Ivy coughs as she sits on the edge of the bed.
“Said his wife would get us supper,” Melchior says, dropping her key beside her on the quilt. “Got to put up the horse, get some cash, meet that fellow I was telling all you about.”
Yes, his cowpuncher friend in Albuquerque. Ivy nods, blinking stupidly as dust and mold make her eyes sting.
He looks at her, then departs, closing the door behind him.
Ivy’s movements are so blunted, she has hardly unlaced her boots and laid down, fully dressed, feet drawn up, when she hears his steps, jingling spurs, then Melchior pushes open the door she did not bother locking.
Startled that he would walk in on her, mouth too try and throat too tight to say anything, Ivy sits up, blinking. He hands her a clay mug of tortilla soup, leaves a small basin of water with a rag in it on the floor, then walks out, saying he will see her in the morning.
Ivy eats, sore hands trembling, tears in her eyes, shocked he would think to bring her a wash basin. Upon using the rag, however, she discovers chips of dry blood flake off her face to cover the cloth and dissolve in warm water. She must look even worse than she feels.
She scrubs face, hands, neck, bruised knee, then falls asleep having hardly loosened her lacing and almost forgetting once more to lock the door.
Ivy wakes from another vivid reliving of the escape from the ranch—her father’s face and a packed train platform intertwined through the images—to sunlight streaming into the room, head throbbing, nose burning. She coughs, holding her ribs. Not an outfit meant to leave on for days and nights on end. Perhaps now a true dinner. A fresh basin if no real bath, a privy if no real water closet. But she blinks, squinting out the window to the change of colors, misty look of the town, white clouds along the horizon which were not there before, and realizes it is morning.
Someone tries her door, then knocks. Impatiently. “You put down roots? Heading to meet Samuelson and get out of here whether you’re fixing to come or not.”
Her affectionate feelings conjured by the basin vanish as Melchior’s boots thump away down the hall, spurs jingling.
By the time she is able to meet him out of doors, Melchior already has Chucklehead tacked, just starting from the decrepit stable. He has an extra water bottle, two bedrolls, and full saddlebags strapped on his saddle.
Ivy pants, still trying to press her hair into place, the lack of a brush adding to the complication of few pins and no hat. “Where did you get all this?”
Melchior rolls his eyes as he leads Chucklehead past her. “New York City.”
Eyes stinging, Ivy follows them down the dirt street, watching several chickens strut in the opposite direction as if with a purpose. She wonders what happened to her fox, even Lucy the cow and the horses, but this makes her think of Gambit, which makes her think of her aunt and uncle, which again makes her angry with herself for being angry with her cousin.
Ivy coughs on dust all the way down the street, wet handkerchief, rinsed in the basin but still crimson, over her mouth. She tries to ask about passing warnings to the townspeople, though she can get few words out clearly.
“Told them in the saloon last night,” Melchior answers, not looking around.
“What saloon—?” But what does it matter? He went to a saloon. “So people know? What about the sheriff?”
“�
��Bout to see him.”
Ivy nods. Yes, there is the sheriff’s office and jail just ahead.
Melchior ties the stallion at the hitching post, then knocks his brown hat against his chaps as he pushes open the door and steps in. He drops the door in Ivy’s face as she dashes after. She catches it to avoid a blow to her already fragile nose.
The sheriff, a middle-aged man with a neat mustache and freshly polished badge on a pressed waistcoat, looks up from a desk where he was frowning over a newspaper. He lifts his eyebrows below a stiff hat, shifting his cigar into one corner of his mouth.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you again, young man.” He sits back, unsmiling, gaze fixed on Melchior’s face.
“Said I’d be in,” Melchior snaps, but catches himself, perhaps remembering he is not speaking to his cousin as the man’s eyebrows vanish behind his hat brim. “Sir.”
“Still here to make trouble?”
“Wasn’t here to make trouble at start, sir. Here to tell the truth. Don’t cotton with a town what makes a habit of hanging folks over a deck rigged against them.”
“Mr. L’Heureux, do you know how many guilty men come through here claiming they have been framed? In on legitimate business or not?”
Melchior throws a suede pouch on the desk before the man with a loud clatter. The sheriff glances at it, back to Melchior.
“Two-fifty,” Melchior says. “What you asked.”
The sheriff rolls the cigar back to the other side of his mouth. He opens the bag to dump a pile of coins and a few tiny gold nuggets across his desk. Melchior walks away, down a hall and out of sight as the older man counts. At length, he lifts a pair of scales from below the desk.
Ivy hears murmuring voices at the back of the jail, pulse racing, forgetting all about warning this man, who never looks at her. She slips out, breathing hard.
Her cousin expects her to ride the rest of the way, perhaps two days, to Santa Fé with a convict who, presumably, will be breaking bail by leaving Albuquerque? Or is that how bail works out here? One pays and goes free without terms? Perhaps Melchior only means to free the man. In his debt? Which raises another question: how did he get all that cash? She would have seen if he had it when he left home. Where was he all last night? The saloon? Did he steal it?
Lightfall One: Clock, Cloak, Candle (Lightfall, Book 1) Page 3