Lightfall One: Clock, Cloak, Candle (Lightfall, Book 1)

by Jordan Taylor

  “Light?”

  “In my bags. Under your head. Get your chaps on, old man. He is tightening his cinch.”

  “Doesn’t that rip drink coffee? Never trusted a man who—”

  “His dog has started down the trail.”

  “Snails.”

  Ivy has as much breath caught as she ever will. Time to try standing. She has at least to splash water on her face and go off for a pee before—yet the thought makes her want to scream—getting back in the saddle. Left foot in the stirrup, right leg arched and braced, never moving, never stretching out, hour after hour. She cannot let Sam place the sidesaddle on his own gentle mount again. She must take responsibility for her horse.

  It takes her a full minute to stand while the two young men pack their kit and buckle on chaps.

  Grip rides slowly away, his left hand on his bosal rope, right at his side, not a word to any of them.

  Melchior is swearing freely under his breath now, around his cigarette, as Sam catches their horses. Hoping none have noticed her tears—and they certainly seem too busy—Ivy limps and staggers up a wooded slope for a very rushed moment of privacy.

  “No, Sam, please don’t,” she pants as she hobbles back to find Sam already has his own saddle on Luck and the sidesaddle on Elsewhere. “I will take her back today. It was kind of you—”

  “Quite all right.” He glances over his shoulder as he drops the stirrup off the saddle horn. “We must move along. I shall trade with you later. Mel, can you get a bridle on this animal?”

  Sam has only the rope halter on the mare which she wore overnight. Melchior is having difficulties with his own horse, however. Chucklehead, still cross-hobbled, walks sideways, bending his neck around to Melchior’s rope, flirting his tail, trying to return to Luck. Melchior follows with the saddle, calling him names Ivy has never heard.

  Sam shakes his head. “Let me give you a hand.” He steps forward to help her mount, looking right at her for the first time all morning. “Ivy? How is your knee? Are you all right?”

  “Only ... sore. And tired. I’m sorry,” she adds, pressing her hands together to keep from trembling. She has not come along to complain.

  “It takes some getting used to.” He glances at her saddle on Elsewhere. “More so for you than us. We shall make a proper stop for lunch to take a hot meal.”

  She looks at him, worried eyes, brows creased, and wishes she had said nothing. His concern makes it that much harder not to sob.

  “I will be fine, truly. Thank you.” She can say no more without her voice breaking, but steps as briskly as she can to Elsewhere’s nearside to mount with Sam’s aid.

  Behind them, Melchior is still wrestling with Chucklehead: “—goddamned, pig-nosed, bentneck, nailed up, mudsill son of a bitch—”

  Sam throws the lead rope over Luck’s neck, hangs her bridle across the saddle horn, then swings into the saddle.

  The exquisite pain of following Sam and Luck at a jog nearly jars a cry from Ivy. She sets her teeth, blinking, remaining at the mare’s flank so Sam cannot see her. She needs a peppermint, yet they are trapped somewhere in her saddlebags and the idea of shifting to rummage while riding is even more agony.

  When they catch sight of Grip winding down a low, open trail into a broad valley, they slow the horses to a walk to allow them the chance of warming up. Watching his yellow dog far below, Ivy wonders what has become of Es Feroz. Has she followed? With that dog around, will she ever show herself?

  Melchior canters up behind, Chucklehead bouncing around, nearly bashing into Luck.

  “This fishtail’ll be tied if he can’t take a saddle in the mornings.” Melchior drags the stallion’s face away from Luck as he slows to a walk beside her. “Sweet on that mare and aims to give me hell about it. Why we don’t run mares in the remuda.”

  “She was all they had.” Sam’s voice is soft.

  “Know that. Ain’t blaming you.”

  Ivy reins Elsewhere down, eyes stinging, wishing for her horse back, or Es Feroz in her arms—since wishing for anyone more understanding, any greater comfort, feels too ludicrous even to imagine.

  Something hot, thick, trickles over her lips, into her mouth, a crimson drop splashing onto her skirt before she can discover she has no handkerchief in reach to combat the flow. Aunt Abigail told her it was dry air, the elevation; nosebleeds would stop with time. They nearly had. On the ranch. Now it seems a major artery has been rerouted through her nasal passages.

  She tries tipping her head back, pinching the bridge of her nose. Blood runs down her throat while still pouring over her lips. Finally, with breathtaking pain throughout ribs and back, she leans to the right, over the empty side of the saddle, allowing blood to run freely off her nose, splashing to the mountain trail below.

  Hours later, by the time they find Grip paused at a brisk creek, sun blazes from a sky dotted in whipped cream clouds, air sparse and dry, not overly hot. As Elsewhere ambles up behind Luck and Chucklehead beside the rapid creek, Ivy sits still and dumb, reins dangling from dirty fingers, wisps of greasy hair falling across her face. Not another dismount. If she gets down it means she must soon get back up.

  All three men are on their feet, Melchior having a one-sided argument with Grip—couldn’t he announce his intentions? Was it his aim to leave them up here? Didn’t he eat breakfast?—while Grip acts as if he does not exist and Sam opens his own packs on Luck.

  Lunch would be nice. She could even take that detestable Arbuckles’—which her cousin regards as the coffee gold standard—just for a drink of something hot. But moving to get it?

  “Since we cannot build a fire during darkness, perhaps now is the time?” Sam suggests, making it sound like a question.

  There is so much no one tells you about ... life. She knew people living out in the wilds like this slept on the ground. It would be hot or cold. Maybe it would rain. Maybe it would snow. Maybe a bear or a rattlesnake would attack.

  “Can’t shin out like that, not a word, and think an outfit will shift without breakfast or smoke,” Melchior says. “Got to get something hot today.”

  “So I have discerned from your previous noise,” Grip finally answers, rinsing a water bottle while his horse drinks.

  “Then give sign, you rip.”

  “If I gave sign I heard every word to pass your lips, Mr. L’Heureux, I should look like a man taken with Saint Vitus’ dance.” Grip gives a flick of his stained buckskin sleeve to knock away water.

  But no one tells you about the soreness. About the flies and dust. The pain, stiffness, and the kind of dirt and filth that reaches under your nails, into your eyes and ears, ruining your hair, coating your nose, working its way into your undergarments, your socks, even grit on your teeth.

  “We can all find an agreeable schedule.” Sam has his hand on Melchior’s arm, standing between him and Grip, the latter on the far side of the creek with his horse and dog. “Even if we wished to travel all day, the horses need a chance to graze. We can build a fire, combine breakfast and lunch, and give them a rest now.”

  “Too joined a plan to interest our bounty hunter,” Melchior says.

  “Enough, please. Grip, I should hope we can work together that we might—”

  “So I have also discerned.”

  No one warns you of having a crazy horse. That your friends may be little better than your enemies. That you listen to more arguing than crickets or coyotes on the trail. That there is no getting out of it once you’re here. No changing your mind. No finding someone else to ride beside. No one says you won’t know the way back to town, even if you wished to flee.

  Melchior throws together a fire while Sam pulls coffee, pork, and rice from saddlebags.

  No one tells you about the pain.

  Sam walks up to her and Elsewhere, looking alarmed. “Ivy? What happened?”

  She stares at him. “Excuse me?”

  “You have blood all over your face. Did he walk you into a branch?” He glances at his own horse, reaching u
p to help her.

  Melchior looks over, saving her the need to answer: “Nosebleeds.”

  “I ... could not reach my handkerchief when it started,” Ivy manages as she allows Sam to help her dismount. “I’m sorry—I must look a mess.”

  Sam gets a clean one from his bags to wet at the creek and bring to her. He smells of peppermint and horse and pipe smoke. She longs to lean her head on his shoulder as he guides her to a rocky slope up the near side of the creek. Here, she sits carefully, trying to wash face and hands with the wet cloth while he takes care of the horses and Melchior gets their little pot on the fire.

  Ivy extends one knee, then the other. Aching ribs, searing back, left leg especially stiff. She wants to look after Sam, but feels Grip just across the water, rolling a cigarette, and keeps her face neutral, her eyes on her own hands.

  On the third day, Ivy adds hunger to filth and aching.

  On the fourth, it becomes clear why they must eat so little, being nearly out of food with a minimum of a four-day ride back to Santa Fé.

  Though Melchior is all for hunting, Grip says more to them than he has in days when he asserts they must not shoot due to noise alerting those they track. Ivy has her doubts about this tracking, not having spotted so much as an old hoof print, even along a riverbank, much less catching sight of anyone ahead on their trail.

  It’s late afternoon on the fourth day when she leaves the men at a break along a creek and limps upstream with Luck following on her reins. The company has been descending toward a treeless, dry valley all day. Now Ivy can see the drop of a canyon and jagged rimrock far across which makes her uneasy, as if she already faces the edge.

  Out of sight of the men, she kneels with difficulty along the water to wash face, hands, and neck as best she can by means of handkerchiefs and clear mountain water.

  Ivy sits back on her heels, legs trembling, back and knee aching so much she must use the dangling left stirrup on Luck’s saddle to drag herself upright. Luck backs, snorts, but allows the indignity without an explosion. Ivy leans against the mare, panting, stroking her neck as Luck regards her, muzzle dripping, ears back. Then the ears spring forward, her nostrils flair, eyes widen. Ivy turns uneasily.

  Thirty feet away, a mule deer buck stands at the edge of the timberline, just making his way out for water, now frozen, gazing at them with his head up, ears lifted.

  “Melchior,” Ivy whispers, eyes fixed on the deer. But she has moved far upstream.

  Easing her body against the mare so they can move together, she starts slowly back down the path to the men. The buck watches, unmoving.

  Limping, almost jogging now, she descends the slope. No one looks up as she approaches. Grip is already mounting the buckskin, El Cohete. His ugly cur, Yap-Rat, crosses the stream toward the canyon farther down their trail.

  Sam fills water bottles while Melchior scowls and grumbles after Grip.

  “Melchior,” Ivy calls in as loud a voice as she dares. “Deer.”

  Melchior lifts his eyebrows and glances at Sam, who shakes his head, then Grip, who has his back to them, starting away after his dog.

  Melchior pulls the Henry rifle from Elsewhere’s saddle.

  Sam stands, looking alarmed. “He seemed more than a little concerned by us firing anything.”

  But Melchior and Ivy exchange a look of uncommon understanding—the peaches, rice, and pork are gone, beans almost gone. They will never get back to Santa Fé on what they have.

  He opens the chamber to check the Henry is loaded, pushes Chucklehead’s reins into Sam’s wet hands, then starts cautiously up the path, past Ivy and Luck.

  Crack. Ivy jumps. Luck rears, jerking Ivy almost off her feet by the death grip she has on the unreliable animal’s reins. Chucklehead and Elsewhere throw up their heads. Sam and Melchior spin around, looking toward the canyon. Luck plunges backward, shaking her head against her bit, dragging Ivy with her.

  Melchior runs to them, catches the other side of the mare’s head, and pulls her down the trail to Sam, Ivy hardly hanging on. Mind reeling, she is just now catching up to the fact that they heard a gunshot. And it did not come from her cousin.

  Ninth

  Pursuit

  The forward momentum of Melchior dragging her seems to settle Luck, who stands while he lifts Ivy to her saddle. He throws the Henry back into the sheath on Sam’s saddle, leaps onto Chucklehead, then turns the stallion toward the canyon. After pulling his sungoggles over his eyes, he draws his Colt. Sam swings into his own saddle and all three canter to the trailhead which swallowed Grip.

  By the time they reach it, they find no sign of him besides settling dust. Ahead and below, a sheer wall looms outward which they cannot see beyond. Reins in his left hand, revolver in his right, Melchior starts Chucklehead down the narrow trail, followed by Sam and Ivy. Luck balks as she feels her hooves slide on gravel, sending Ivy’s heart into her throat as she sees over a drop of seventy or eighty feet into bedrock.

  Hands shaking, holding her breath as she leans back, fixing her eyes on Sam’s waistcoat, Ivy draws up her reins still tighter. Luck inches downward behind Elsewhere.

  Ivy’s head is spinning by the time Luck steps into the canyon floor, gasping for air through the corset. Soaked in sweat, still shaking so violently she feels she will fall, she allows Luck to pull up beside Elsewhere.

  Chucklehead stops at the jutting edge of the canyon wall, Melchior leaning forward to look across the length of the now eerily still canyon. He flicks two fingers, beckoning Sam and Ivy up to look.

  Far down the length of the gully, a single rider gallops away on a buckskin horse. But the amount of dust is disproportionate.

  “After someone,” Melchior says.

  “The group we follow?” Ivy asks.

  Melchior looks at her. “Plague-sick run if you chase them?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Can’t figure anyone else handy. Could be over three thousand dollars riding down that stretch.” He pushes Chucklehead forward.

  “If that is the whole La Manada de Lobos company, why are they running from a single rider?” Sam asks, but Melchior starts at a canter.

  Sam follows, telling Ivy to wait at the base of the trail for them. She holds Luck, but the mare pitches a fit when she sees her equine companions leaving her behind and Ivy cannot blame her. When she gives Luck her head, they are off on Elsewhere’s heels, lengthening stride into a gallop. Ivy’s eyes burn with dust, following almost blindly in the wake of the two men.

  Two hundred yards flash by in seconds before more gunshots ring out, accompanied by men’s shouts echoing around canyon walls. Blood hammering in her ears, Ivy can just make out the shouting is in Spanish as they run. More shots. Chucklehead veers and slows, dashing almost headlong into a jutting outcrop of red rock and scrub brush as Melchior jumps from the saddle in motion. Sam pulls up behind, dismounting with his rifle and running with Melchior up the rocks, both to drop on their stomachs in concealment at the top, weapons aimed.

  Luck blunders up to Chucklehead as she stops, flanks heaving, sweat and dust coating her, Ivy clinging on, now able to see little but red earth walls and dust. Chucklehead ignores them, ears pricked as he listens to gunshots and voices.

  Ivy can make nothing of the Spanish, then Grip’s voice changes and she hears, “What are you afraid of, Hoyt? I’m not here for you.”

  Crack. A bursting explosion of rock and earth struck by a bullet not far ahead. Luck rears, backing blindly while Ivy clutches her mane, trying to force her against the canyon wall.

  More Spanish, some angry, sounding like oaths, some conversational.

  Crack. Melchior’s Colt, just when Ivy had Luck turned for the wall and crash. Her aching body cannot hold her any longer and Ivy finds rocky ground rushing to meet her with startling speed. She would not have thought she could hurt much more than she did already, but pain shooting across her arm convinces her it has broken.

  Even in a gunfight, she is killed by her own horse. Something e
lse no one ever warned her about....

  Blood in her mouth, dust and grit covering her, a broken arm turning her world into a million dark shades of pain, gasping. And her ribs: daggers. No, the broken whalebone is what stabs her.

  A dark, velvety nose pushes into her face. Elsewhere. She snatches his cheek strap, fighting to make her lungs expand, cling to anything, press her forehead against his soft muzzle.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Strange. A deeper and harsher voice than Melchior’s. And she’s certain Elsewhere would never speak to her like that.

  Ivy looks up. The one-eyed bounty hunter kneels over her, his hat and dark buckskins covered in dust. He seizes her shoulder with his left hand, pulling her to a sitting position, sending more searing pain through her ribs. This is where one faints. Instead, she rocks and trembles, tears streaking her face.

  “Did you break anything?”

  “My arm.” And all the ribs in her body.

  He grabs her left arm above a long, bloody rip through her sleeve. Blood this time, staining teal fabric down her elbow nearly to her wrist. She jerks away from him.

  “You’re fine.” Grip stands. “Catch your breath and stay out of the way. Do not continue being so stupid.”

  She longs to trip him as he hurries away. Instead, sits gasping, staring at blood on her arm. Something tore across her elbow, running inches down her forearm as she hit, yet ... he could be right: her arm does not seem to be broken. It moves at her command. And she can inhale, so perhaps her lungs have not been pierced by broken ribs. She may be dreadfully bruised and the corset broken, yet not about to die. Even more unfortunate, not about to black out.

  With Grip gone, Elsewhere noses back down to her, ears pricked and eyes wide as if he cannot make out why she would sit in dirt like this. She holds his face, working for each breath.

  Men still shout, though shots cease.

  After a minute, she can catch her breath enough to try standing with Elsewhere’s assistance. Good arm across his lowered neck for support, she staggers onto the rocky outcrop Melchior and Sam previously sheltered behind.