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

by Taylor, Jordan

  Melchior bashes the fingers with the butt of his revolver, dragged under as he fights. Sam, whether trying to help Melchior, or hearing her, ducks below the surface.

  Ivy shoots as the gray form follows, moving fast, snapping into water, yanking flesh toward its teeth. The head snaps back, eyes widening, hold loosening.

  Sam explodes upward, dragging Melchior with him.

  Ivy leans out on her stomach, arm extended with the empty rifle. His own revolver now held by the grip in his teeth, Sam grabs the stock as he comes into reach, pushing Melchior forward.

  Ivy tries to pull the revolver from Melchior’s hand. When he will not let go, she grabs his wrist instead. She pulls as Melchior scrambles onto rocks, Sam pushing him, his trousers and hair streaming, vomiting water.

  “A gun for both your lives?” Ivy scrambles back, shaking, as she releases him. “We haven’t become more sensible?” Gasping, she pulls herself to her feet on the rock slope at her back, stomach in knots, feeling like throwing up herself.

  She drags on her duster, looking across the surface in all directions. “Sam, are you all right? You must get out of the water.”

  He has tossed his revolver onto rocks beside Melchior, hands now clutching the soaked rock lip, though he remains in the lake, head bowed. He nods, water running down his hair and face, streaming off his chin as he pants, mouth open and eyes closed. Trapezii, deltoids, and biceps stand out sharply in his light frame as he clutches the rocks, dripping skin milky compared to suntanned hands and face.

  As Melchior struggles to his hands and knees, still spitting water, Ivy can see every convexity of spine and ribs. Even rigid muscles across his upper back do little to conceal sharp shoulder blades. He eats more than anyone she ever knew, even with rationing. How is he nearly emaciated?

  She looks again at Sam, shivering as he clutches the ledge. “Return to camp as quickly as you can.” She glances across now still water. “We’re getting out of here.”

  He nods again.

  Ivy hurries up the ridge to the other side. Rosalía meets her coming down, her arms full of water bottles.

  Ivy shakes her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” There is at least one lake out here. They will find more water. “Let’s go.”

  Sixty-Third

  The Copper Key

  The sun has long since set when, another full day later, Grip halts ahead of the silent company and lifts his hand.

  The four others draw rein and wait, looking ahead to distant city lights through windows, reaching two and three stories high. Head pounding, tongue swollen in her sawdust mouth, stomach sharp with hunger, Ivy lets out her breath.

  Grip gives a soft whistle through his teeth and the big cur ambles up the line past them. He tells the dog to search in Spanish, waving his left hand forward.

  Yap-Rat gazes up at him in the dark, then glides ahead at a trot. They follow some distance behind the panting dog. The night air is rapidly growing frigid, but the October day was hot and the horses are still damp with sweat, ribs showing, coats harsh.

  Their scout leads them to the main road running into the city from the northeast, head low, tail down, looking straight ahead.

  By many electric lights, Ivy is soon able to make out a long main street lifting from darkness like a vision. She hears distant singing, shouting, after-dinner merriment in many saloons and hotels. A web of side roads leads off in all directions as they pass the first outlying homes and stables. Not only church steeples raise high into the air from here, but banks, hotels, shops, even houses stretch toward the stars.

  Grip keeps a careful eye on the dog as he trots to the edge of the city. When his steady gait is interrupted by his head snapping up and his pace slowing to a walk, Grip sits back. Rosalía catches her breath beside Ivy. Volar tosses his head.

  Ivy feels her own muscles tense, though she is unsure why. She has seen Grip use the dog as an early warning system, especially if they ride into anywhere new in the dark. But she has never seen Yap-Rat react before.

  El Cohete halts as Grip draws his revolver. Also drawing, Melchior rides up beside him, causing El Cohete to flatten his ears and lash his tail.

  They wait in silence, Ivy holding her breath, her right hand sliding to the four-round at her hip.

  With several deep sniffs, Yap-Rat darts to the left, tail and hackles lifting by the glow of street lamps.

  Grip and El Cohete follow down the side street, Melchior and Chucklehead behind. Volar balks but Rosalía keeps him in place. Corra lifts her head, nostrils flared, ears pricked. Elsewhere, with the string of pack horses in tow, does not move.

  An instant later, a savage snarling and yapping erupts around a dark corner. Chucklehead rears, bolting up the road to them, kicking his heels as he goes.

  But Melchior is laughing. “Nothing,” he says, grinning as he turns Chucklehead in a tight circle.

  Grip curses as he rides El Cohete out and the enormous dogfight subsides to a few growls behind him.

  “Cartload of curs down there,” Melchior explains. “They’ll be following a bitch in heat.” Still chuckling at Grip. “Had us guessing we’re about to be eaten.”

  Rosalía lets out her breath and Ivy feels her shoulders relax. She is too accustomed to Melchior’s vulgarity to mind the obscene commentary.

  “Trouble with using a beast as vanguard.” Melchior allows Chucklehead to start off once more down the road with Grip and El Cohete at their flank.

  “Yet I did not discern your interest in going first, Mr. L’Heureux.” Grip glares between his horse’s ears, the rest following.

  “Soft solder now?” Melchior waves his Colt around as he speaks. “Takes a fool to scout in the dark, don’t it?”

  “Are you permitted to carry that in the city?” Rosalía asks, watching the animated revolver.

  Melchior looks back at her, then around at the road and false-fronted timber buildings they ride past. “Fair question. Didn’t see posting.” He looks at Grip. “Folks permitted being heeled in Monument?”

  “They were not previously. However, I saw no sign either. There was one at every road the last time I visited, over a year past.”

  “Expect times’ve changed since then.” Melchior drops the Colt in its holster. “We’ll assume they are, so we’ll be as well.”

  Who “they”? Why does everyone act as if they ride into ambushes?

  “The hotel proprietor may yet ask for them,” Grip says, now looking left and right as they enter a central part of town. “Miss Jerinson, keep your Tinestel concealed if your weapons are requested. No one else carries a pocket gun?”

  Melchior shakes his head. “Reckon they won’t ask. There’d be posting.” He gazes upward to high building fronts with his mouth open.

  Beside Ivy, Rosalía seems uncomfortable, glancing at each merchant or miner they pass on the board sidewalk. Men pause in conversation or look back at them as they ride past, faces concealed by darkness or half-lit by the harsh electric glow through windows.

  “Snails,” Melchior says.

  Ivy looks around to dazzling shop windows: a row of five across and five up, dancing with winking lights, puffs of steam, spinning copper and brass, clicking, whirring motion. Outside the arching front door, a pair of magnificent brass lions lie on their haunches, forelegs outstretched, heads up like the Sphinx. They are motionless, mouths and eyes closed. Yet Ivy sees dozens of seams and lines and breaks across their life-sized bodies and has no doubt they are guards.

  A shiver runs down her spine, her breath again short, a giddy tingling racing through her system like a shot of spirits.

  “You did not tell me Monument is a maker’s town,” she whispers.

  “There are a good many unfortunate details regarding Monument which remain unsaid, Miss Jerinson.” Grip looks at the lions and window displays, then away. “We must find lodging and get the horses fed and watered.”

  They follow him to a prominent hotel with four stories and a huge stable stretching out to the re
ar, though not the largest in town. Grip jerks his head toward the corner of the porch. Melchior knees Chucklehead over to pull a long bell cord at the right height for a mounted man.

  Loud talk and laughter, clatter of glasses, crack of billiards, shouts from winners or losers all filter outside with yellow light.

  Ivy looks over her shoulder to the vibrant window display.

  The hotel front door opens. A young man in double-breasted, fitted tails with brass bracers on both forearms, knee-high boots, and a sleek, blonde ponytail bows to them.

  “Evening gentleman—” he hesitates, squinting. “And ... ladies. Welcome to The Copper Key. What may I do for you this evening?”

  “Rooms free?” Grip asks.

  “We are here to serve, sir. We have the finest rooms for yourselves and accommodation available for all your animals at the best price. If you stay more than three nights, dinner is on the house.”

  “But the room’s more?” Melchior asks.

  The young man looks at him, gaze darting up and down. “The room is the same if you stay one or ten nights, sir. We do not gouge at The Copper Key. That business lies with Red Wing across the street. If you stay three nights or more, you may expect a sumptuous repast each evening prepared to your liking at no additional charge. It is as simple as that.” He lifts his chin, still staring at Melchior with prolonged eye contact which Ivy has never seen in any manner of servant or attendant.

  “Two rooms,” Grip says. “We must first see to our horses.”

  “Three,” Rosalía snaps. “Where do you think you’re going? You can stay in a real room with us.”

  Grip scowls at his horse’s neck. “I should prefer—”

  Ivy nudges Corra forward. Is that pale young man still staring at Melchior?

  “We’ll take three rooms,” she says. “Two doubles and one single. We would like baths and dinner and will be staying at least three nights. As well as eight stalls in your livery with extra feed for the horses. They’ve had a trying journey.”

  “Of course, miss.” He inclines his head, finally looking at her. “You will find a bath with hot and cold running water and vanity in every room at The Copper Key. Dinner at your convenience. Take your horses around to the back. A man will meet you there and you will not be disappointed in the quality of our stables or feed. When your mounts are settled, return here and I will show you to your rooms.” He glances again at Melchior before bowing as they turn.

  “Sleep on the floor if that’s comfortable to you, but you don’t have to hide from us in the city.” Rosalía goes on chiding the silent Grip as they start around the corner.

  Ivy scarcely took in a word the young man said after “hot and cold running water,” feeling punch-drunk.

  She turns in her saddle to see Sam, but he is still trying to get a spooky Two Pair moving again, as he apparently dislikes electric lights and clicking devices.

  The hostler, middle-aged, in leather jerkin and boots just as tall as those of their host, helps them arrange all the horses in two rows. The man draws water from a pump inside the building by the light of another electric bulb.

  Rosalía looks up at this as she drags the saddle from Volar’s back. Melchior and Grip study the feed at hand.

  A stableboy strides briskly down the alley, apparently summoned by an unheard bell, and commences filling mangers.

  The hostler opens grain sacks and molasses barrels at Melchior’s request, touching his cap and explaining his feeding system.

  “Do they want rugs, sir?”

  Melchior blinks at him.

  “No,” Sam says. “Thank you. They are used to living out and the change in temperature—mostly mustangs.”

  “Very good, sir.” Another touch of the cap.

  They remove bags and bundles and weaponry from their kit, everything they either need or should not leave in the stable overnight, as the stable boy and hostler tend the horses.

  By the time they return to the hotel entrance, many diners have cleared out. Less than a dozen men remain over drinks or billiards visible in a back room.

  Ivy marvels as they step into a real lobby with a front desk, burnished wood floor, thick wool rug over that, carved ceiling and trim work in glowing redwood. The woman behind the counter, black feathers in her hair, wears an emerald velvet and black leather corset-topped dress which exposes the pale expanse of her décolletage.

  “Are you the ones who spoke to Toulouse?” Her tone is bored, her accent unfamiliar to Ivy, perhaps West Coast. She does not bat an eye at the weaponry bristling about the party, from Ivy’s four-round to the carbine on Rosalía’s shoulder.

  Ivy steps forward when Grip stands like a rock and Melchior and Rosalía gaze at the vaulted, carved ceiling and the racily attired hostess in turns, Melchior holding the door for Sam to follow.

  “Yes, probably,” Ivy says. “We would like three rooms.”

  The woman pulls over a brass pipe mounted into the wall. Holding down a button on the wall, she speaks into the gramophone flare at the end of the pipe without raising her voice. “Your guests, Toulouse.”

  She pushes the pipe away and lifts a few sheets of paper to her desk, then produces a pen from a hook on her corset and presses a button at the back of the pen to make a nib pop out the front. She holds the pen out and, as no one else moves, Ivy crosses the remainder of the lobby to the desk.

  “Print name and sign. How many nights?”

  “Four,” Ivy says, writing. “With the possibility of longer. Do you expect to fill up?”

  “Not until Día de Muertos. You should not be double booked.”

  “How long until that?” Ivy glances up.

  “All Hallows’ Eve.”

  “And ... what is today?”

  The hostess looks at her narrowly. “Nine October. Thursday.” Then, snatching the pen back from Ivy, she adds, “1879.”

  “Thank you,” Ivy says stiffly.

  “Jerinson ... I’ve read that name somewhere....”

  “You’ve read it?”

  “Do you have people in town?”

  “No.”

  The woman shakes her head, frowning slightly. “Could be a trick of my mind. Not a common name, is it? Two doubles and a single? Eight horses? Four nights?” She lifts and slides papers. “That’ll be sixty-nine dollars and fifty cents.”

  This gets Ivy’s attention fully for the first time since the running water talk. She was expecting ... thirty, even forty, though, glancing about the lobby, she is not sure why.

  “Oh,” Ivy says after a pause. Can one haggle over prices here? Not judging by the woman’s cold stare.

  Grip steps up beside Ivy. “Scale?”

  The woman produces a tiny brass scale. She deftly adjusts it, then waits while Grip lifts a suede pouch from his pocket and pours out a fine trickle of gold dust.

  Ivy lets out her breath, mentally thanking him for not handing everything he earns over to his sister-in-law.

  The woman whisks the gold onto a smooth leather sheet with a miniature brush as Ivy hears footsteps of Toulouse approaching.

  She sets gold and scales below the counter, out of sight, taps her papers together, and hands Ivy two sheets. “Policies and dinner menu. Enjoy your evening.”

  Policies? Wondering what that means, Ivy glances only fleetingly at the page as she turns to Toulouse.

  “Welcome.” He bows. “You will not regret your choice to stay at The Copper Key, ladies and gentlemen. What is your first pleasure? I can show you to your rooms, give you a tour, seat you for dinner, lead you to the bar?” His gaze shifts back to Melchior as he speaks.

  They eat a brief dinner, even Grip remaining with them, all too exhausted to linger and more interested in the water, beer, and prickly pear cactus juice, all iced, than the braised rabbit with Arizona strawberries in a burgundy sauce over seared pumpkin.

  Ivy is relieved to see eggs on the menu, but bewildered by Rocky Mountain oysters. Surely they do not have oysters out here. She rolls a chunk of ice around
her mouth as it melts, studying the menu, catching herself thinking she is being rude and should not read at the table.

  To her right, Melchior has both elbows on the table. Across from her Grip eats rabbit off his knife rather than fork. To her left, Rosalía has her hands wrapped around a sweating glass, gazing in wonder from the floating ice to the dining room at large. Between Grip and Melchior, Sam looks as if he is about to fall asleep in his plate. The crack of billiards in the other room makes him jump.

  Ivy smiles and goes on with her reading.

  She finishes her second juice and third glass of water, already feeling her headache recede. Denied her bath the previous afternoon, she cannot possibly go to bed without experiencing that hot and cold running water.

  She finishes her rabbit as the waiter brings another cactus juice. Might as well.

  Toulouse returns to the dining room as they leave their table, holding three iron keys. “If you will follow me, ladies and gentlemen.”

  He leads them up the plushly carpeted stairs, then shows them their rooms on the third floor. He explains the attendant cords by the door inside each—as if they have never heard of ringing for service—and demonstrates the workings of the electric light switches and taps for water at a long, porcelain, claw-footed bathtub behind a dressing screen, indicates towels and soap, and shows them the separate water closet at the end of the hall.

  “If you need anything at all, your wish is our command. You need only ring.” He smiles as he faces them, looking past Ivy to her cousin.

  A tip, damn him, he wants a tip. Ivy glances at Sam.

  He has already removed a tarnished quarter from his pocket and hands it to the young man with thanks and goodnight.

  Key in hand, Ivy almost runs to the bath.

  Rosalía studies the room, discussing with interest the wool rather than cornhusk mattresses, the instantaneousness of the electric light, the oil painting on the wall of a red rock basin, the way the glass window opens and closes at a crank.

  Ivy lights a candle since Rosalía keeps flipping off the switch, arranges the dressing screen around the bath, and throws jacket, then tunic over it with puffs of dust.