Lightfall Four: Risk, Rise, Rebel (Lightfall, Book 4)

by Taylor, Jordan

  Ivy nodded slowly. It seemed Sam was hung up on details. Yes, she desperately needed a horse. But the rest? They were not completely starved yet in Santa Fé. They could sort out the rest.

  She turned to Grip. “Would you go? If we went? Do you know the way?”

  He slid the next cigarette in his pocket.

  She thought Rosalía might encourage him, but Rosalía seemed tense and remained silent.

  “You claim to desire escape from the city,” Ivy said.

  “To avoid humanity, Miss Jerinson.”

  “Of course. We won’t speak to you unless necessary on the trail. How does that sound?”

  “Only if you return the favor,” Melchior said, mouth full.

  Grip curled his lip at Melchior and started another roll.

  “We will look into the horse difficulty,” Ivy said. “Do you know of any who might be for sale around the farrier’s?”

  Grip shook his head.

  She looked at Rosalía. “Would Íñigo sell me Corra?”

  Rosalía’s eyebrows jumped. She exchanged a glance with Grip. “He’s been waiting for that mare to mature for years. She’s his foundation.”

  “I could give her back. I won’t be out here forever. It could be an ... extended loan?”

  “You can try, Ivy, but you would need more than a promise of a dance for that. What do you think?” To Grip.

  He shrugged. “Could marry him.”

  “Not what could she do.” Rosalía rolled her eyes. “I mean, what do you think her chances are?”

  “Don’t want a mare on the trail anyway,” Melchior interrupted after an enormous swallow. “Trouble—”

  “Unlike your beastly horse?” Ivy cut him off.

  “Get you a horse in faro,” he said around another bite. “Good gelding.”

  “Forget it.” Ivy stabbed down on a piece of meat and onion with her knife. “I will ask Íñigo.”

  That same night, surely to prove he could, Melchior acquired a horse in a card game. Not faro though: he won with a pair of Jacks and a pair of threes at poker.

  The next morning, he smugly waved Ivy after him and Sam to the livery stable.

  “Ivy,” he said, holding out his arms to the first corral, “Meet Two Pair.”

  A little mustang looked over at them as he chewed, hay falling from his jaws. He appeared bay over the fence, with a blaze so wide it dropped almost to his jaw and around his pink nose. He was, in fact, a pinto: four mottled white and black legs and patches of white across his ribs like a map.

  “Sound, friendly horse,” Melchior said, smirking as he rested his arms across the top rail. “Make you a good riding horse if you want him.”

  “I am sure he will do fine as a pack animal.” Ivy walked away.

  She had scarcely started getting to know Two Pair—an unselfconscious and apparently dull-witted equine who blundered up to any human or animal, assuming returned benevolence—when she met Little Bird.

  She and Melchior had just returned Elsewhere and Chucklehead to the livery after hours riding—during which he said her seat had not improved but at least she kept her heels down. They were walking to El Rio, Ivy stiff and silent, Melchior lighting a cigarette, when a palomino waiting at a hitching post outside the barber’s caught his eye.

  Melchior glanced up, started past, then turned back to the horse as the shop door swung open. A haggard woman stepped out in simple homespun of a farmer’s wife. Her hair straggled down in sweaty curls below a limp hat, skirts brown with dust, eyes sunken in a gaunt face.

  “Acquainted with this horse, ma’am?” Melchior asked, tipping his hat.

  Ivy scowled. Odd how he could dredge up manners before a woman if he wanted something.

  She looked up from a tiny hemp handbag she must have made herself. “Yes...? My son’s horse.”

  “Any chance you’d want to sell him?” Melchior rested a hand on the palomino’s shoulder.

  The horse turned his head as far as his rein would allow to regard Melchior with interest. Melchior stroked his cheek and blew gently into his nose.

  The woman seemed taken aback. “Oh. I’m....”

  Ivy felt her shoulders growing even more tense as she waited ten feet up the road, heartbeat racing, recalling the last time they stopped over a horse at a hitching post.

  The door opened and a boy of twelve or thirteen stepped out, looking as dejected as the woman. “Says he can’t take help on no account, Ma. No one in town’s needing—” he stopped when he saw Melchior with the horse.

  “Afternoon,” Melchior said, smiling. He ground out the cigarette with his boot toe, right hand still on the horse’s face. “Your horse?”

  The boy glared. “What do you want with him?”

  “Thomas,” the woman interrupted.

  “Yes, sir.” A mumble.

  “Just asking your ma if you’d want to sell him. Swagger the matter could be addressed to you. What’d you take for him?”

  “He’s not for sale—”

  But the woman cut him off, “He’s a valuable animal, young man. That horse is L’Heureux stock. My husband bought him from Charles L’Heureux two years ago as a three-year-old colt and Thomas trained him himself. You won’t find a gentler, more intelligent animal around. And strong.”

  “Ma—” The boy turned to her, face imploring. “Sunny’s mine.”

  “Is he?” Melchior smiled at the woman, bringing out all the perfect lines of his face which became easy to overlook when he was cursing over the stupidity of his student or stuffing his mouth like a wolverine. “Mighty fine strain of horseflesh.” To the boy: “Twig you’ve done a deservingly fine job bringing him along.”

  The boy only frowned.

  “Tell you what: good horses for sale in Santa Fé are scarce as hen’s teeth. All agree on that. I’m in need of a solid young horse and maybe your ma and pa could use the cash he’d fetch more than the horse as long as you’re all holed up here in the city?”

  The boy remained mute, though the woman nudged him with an elbow in an effort to extract a polite affirmative.

  “Take it you’re after a job also?” Melchior asked. “Another scarce commodity. Can’t beat cash for gravy, even now. What did your old man pay for him as a colt?”

  “Thirty dollars,” the boy said, his chin lifting. “And that was unbroke and before the shortage and all.”

  “Give you seventy for him.”

  The boy’s jaw slammed shut as the woman’s mouth fell open.

  “Trouble is, I’m already looking after three horses at the livery.” Melchior jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “May not be staying in these parts, but, long as the horse is boarded here, wonder if you’d consider taking on his care. I’ll buy him from you and pay you fifteen cents a day if you’ll see he’s looked to and taken out each day for exercise. Can’t leave a five-year-old in a stall all day. He’d go to pieces.”

  The boy threw his mother an imploring look, his face anguished.

  Her expression grew stern again, pushing him forward, a plea in her own tired eyes.

  The horse turned his head to rest his nose against the boy’s chest. Thomas stroked the golden face and creamy forelock.

  Looking at the horse, he said, “Eighty.”

  “Got seventy,” Melchior said. “But I’ll make it twenty cents a day.”

  The boy’s jaw was tight, his lips pressed together. At last, he hugged the horse’s head, then turned abruptly to Melchior and held out his hand, blinking several times.

  Melchior shook his hand. “You take good care of him here. I’ll take good care of him on the trail. Right?”

  The boy nodded as they shook.

  Melchior pulled a suede pouch from his trouser pocket and handed it to the boy. “Seventy in dust. See you at livery in the morning?”

  The boy took the bag and nodded again. He cast one more look at the horse, then hurried away, his mother rushing after.

  Melchior pulled the slipknot on the palomino’s reins and rubbed his brow
as the horse sniffed up and down his cotton sleeves.

  “Little Bird, Little Bird, grown up and strong,” Melchior murmured, resting his forehead against the horse’s. “Been on a good pasture?”

  The horse pricked his ears to the voice, standing quietly.

  “Our Pajarito’s Sunny now?” Melchior stroked the cream mane back from the glossy neck to reveal a small brand like an elongated L-H, which he ran his fingers over. “Golden colt’s no colt anymore? He’d be proud of you. Proud of that boy.” He stroked the horse’s ears, down his throat to his jaw, his chin.

  Ivy watched, motionless on the sidewalk. Her heart no longer pounding, her breath no longer held. Since May, when they rode away from the ranch together, Ivy had hardly ever heard Melchior mention his father.

  He started back toward the stable with the golden horse, talking to Little Bird. “Ever worn a pack? Still sensible, right? You’ll teach that half-baked pinto a thing or two.”

  Ivy remained still for a long time before she continued to El Rio.

  Sam awaited her on the step. “Care for lunch?”

  “Thank you.” Ivy took his arm.

  “Did I just see Mel walking away with a palomino?”

  “You did. We have another new horse.”

  “A small miracle.”

  “Yes.” Ivy stood as Sam pushed open the batwing door for her, staring back toward the barber’s and livery. “Sam ... he makes me feel I am going insane.”

  “Melchior?”

  “Do you ever suspect he is two people?”

  “At least two.”

  She looked at him, smiling while he waited for her to step through the doorway. She smiled as well, shaking her head before moving into the dim saloon.

  Ivy hated to admit how much she took to Little Bird—also known as Pajarito, which meant roughly the same thing—over the next week. Melchior informed her Little Bird was half brother to Gambit and she rode the gentle palomino instead of Elsewhere if Sam came out with them on lessons. Besides an agreeable disposition, he was a beautiful animal, not over-large and not too small, powerfully built, healthy. And, as Melchior pointed out many times, a shame to waste all that potential on a pack horse.

  But they did need pack horses if they were going anywhere. Preferably as many as they had riding horses to make sure none starved on the trip. Melchior continued searching, yet his luck seemed to have run dry.

  Dealing faro one night, a stone-sober rancher called him on a rigged deck and a brawl ensued which left a good deal of bloody cleanup for the saloon girls, a shattered molar and doctor’s call for Melchior, and Cody Shannon hiring a replacement dealer.

  Though he had difficulty eating for some time after, Melchior was inclined to shrug the whole event off. Ivy had no strong feelings on the matter besides regretting the loss of income, certain Melchior had been fortunate not to lose several teeth—or his life, since infection was so common out here. Sam, on the other hand, seemed distressed and asked Melchior, not for the first time, to quit the games or play straight to avoid being shot over a card hand.

  So they had dwindling funds, no new income, and no more pack prospects. A perfect time to start a grueling journey. Also the perfect time to approach Rosalía’s little brother about selling her a horse.

  Íñigo and Mateo both now participated in occasional watch shifts at the wall, but Ivy preferred yammering children to sneering watchmen and called on Íñigo at home. Amaya, Mateo’s wife, heavily pregnant, spoke little English and was perpetually cooking and looking after several children. No matter how busy or harassed she might be, Amaya complicated any visit of Ivy’s by answering the door and asking her in.

  It had taken Ivy weeks just to sort out that Mateo and Amaya did not have seven or eight children. They had three. Five-year-old Sofía, four-year-old Buen, and a baby of about eighteen months whose name Ivy never could catch since everyone in the family called her Chiquitina. Where all the rest came from, Ivy had no idea, but she had never set foot in this side of the house—the other side being inhabited only by Rosalía and her parents—without at least five or six dashing around, in or out.

  The second day in a row she called in an effort to see Íñigo about the horse, Amaya asked her in and sent Buen to fetch Tío Íñigo.

  Buen told Sofía to get him while Buen showed Ivy the real glass marbles he won off his big cousin Andrés. A little girl in braids asked if Ivy was the woman who doctored Plague-sick because that was what her great uncle Zamorano told her. A pair of boys Sofía’s age raced inside waving stick-guns and yelling like they were being flogged. All this while Amaya offered her something to drink, asked her to sit down, and would she stay for cena?

  Ivy may have been better able to follow if at least some of this was in English, though perhaps it would not have helped. All the children, and Amaya, seemed convinced of Ivy’s linguistic skills based solely on her mastery of simple, polite phrases and a vocabulary including words like bebida and juguetes. Even when the company was more diverse, particularly at the family’s Sunday potlucks, Spanish remained the common tongue whether your playmate had black or blonde hair.

  Ivy’s head was spinning by the time Íñigo joined her. He snatched a blue marble out of Buen’s hand and pretended to eat it as he walked past.

  Buen screamed.

  Ivy longed to cover her ears. She smiled at Íñigo, having to raise her voice to ask if she could have a moment of his time. He threw the marble down the street when he stepped out with her. Ivy was horrified, imagining how she would feel if someone did such a thing to one of her own possessions, either now or in childhood. Buen only went tearing after it on his bare feet, apparently finding the whole incident humorous.

  “I wondered if I might have a word,” Ivy said, watching Buen dash away. “About your horse.”

  “About the ants in the ground, the hawks in the sky.” Íñigo waved his arm expansively. “Any and all—”

  “Yes, thank you. It won’t take a moment.” But Ivy flushed as she spoke. When had she started interrupting people so often? She was brought up better. No—not supposed to think like that anymore. She was surviving. Of course, her mother would say one did not have to be rude to live. But her mother never lived in the West.

  Ivy cleared her dry throat. “About Corra. Thank you for letting me borrow her, Íñigo.”

  “Of course. Anything to the most lovely lady in—”

  “What would you take for her?”

  “—whose eyes put the brightest stars in Heaven to shame—”

  “—haven’t much now—”

  “Grace of a cat and voice of an angel—”

  “Íñigo, please.” Ivy faced him. “I need a horse. But I would not have to keep her forever. You know I will be returning East ... in the future. Then I will give her back. I won’t need her. I can buy her with the understanding that she is to return to you.”

  Buen ran into the house, yelling about marbles. Or food.

  For a full five seconds Íñigo went on beaming at her. Slowly, his smile melted.

  “Excuse me?” he said at last.

  “I would like to buy Correcaminos.”

  Íñigo rubbed the back of his neck. “Señorita, Íñigo would do anything for a lady as cautivador as yourself—”

  “I will return her. You can still have your broodmare.”

  He looked at her, slowly shaking his head.

  Ivy’s heart beat faster. She grabbed one of is hands in hers. “Please, Íñigo. I realize she is important to you. I know you cannot replace her. But I desperately need her. Only for a time. Please.”

  He stared down at her fingers on his. She had never seen the young man at a loss for words.

  “I will give you one hundred dollars for her,” Ivy said, squeezing his hand.

  This seemed to break the spell because Íñigo laughed. “Does she rob banks now besides battling outlaws and Plague-sick?”

  “I mean it. One hundred. And will give her back as soon as I can. You keep the money. One hundred fo
r a loan.”

  He looked again into her eyes, then turned toward his goat pens and corral far behind the house, running into the edges of joint bean, squash, and corn crops and the barricading wall. The jet black mare was visible dozing on her feet beside Volar.

  Íñigo swallowed.

  “Please.” Ivy spoke in little more than a whisper. “It would mean so much to me.”

  He looked at her hand, into her eyes, and nodded.

  Ivy hugged him. “Thank you. You don’t know—thank you so much, Íñigo.” She released him, breathless. “I’ll get you the money as soon as I can.”

  Íñigo blinked, dazed from the embrace or the sum or his own realization he had just given up his most prized possession. “You ... do not have it, señorita?”

  “Of course not. Not right now. But I can get it. Don’t worry.” She pressed his hand in both of hers, then called a final thanks as she hurried away.

  She was almost to the boarding house to tell Sam—giddy, her ragged, patched skirt flapping—when an iron bell rang from the wall. The next moment, men were shouting, running past, climbing ladders, rushing to the northeast corner.

  Ivy started to follow, cringing, wondering what imbecile thought a bell as loud as a shot was a good idea for alarm. Then she remembered her guns and ran to the boarding house first.

  Fifty-Ninth

  Surprises

  Men were already shooting down the side of the wall from vantages on lookout platforms as Ivy ran back, panting, with her new gun belt on over the old dress. Ladders might still be a problem. Another reason to hurry up her sewing.

  Men at the top laughed, making faces and calling insults in English and Spanish to the attacking pack, ribbing one another with comparisons to each other’s faces, or the faces of their wives.

  No sign of the imposing Eugene Brownlow yet, though Sheriff Thurman and marksman José Antonio Zamorano, universally known as Zamorano, both reached the noisy wall just before Ivy.

  At sight of the two, the tone sobered slightly. One man called down in Spanish that they had all under control—or did he say everything was low to the ground? No one bothered addressing Thurman. Since Brownlow had grown in esteem and Zamorano already had respect, it seemed no one ever did bother addressing Thurman.