She should be getting something done. Information. Cash. Instead they are spending money and learning nothing. Except that monkeys like shiny objects and tigers dislike being kept in cages hardly longer than their bodies.
What else can they do? Sit in their rooms? Hide, as Melchior said? Or leave. Forget information in Monument. Grip finds the place so disreputable anyway, what of going on to San Francisco?
But the horses. And the means to obtain fresh supplies for a trip. And what of a freighter to Santa Fé? Wasn’t that what this was about? Reaching to the outside to aid those at home? And what if her friends do not want to go to San Francisco?
Three outside tents greet them at the end of the exhibit hall. Here, a man holds court in a booming bass: “Ten cents apiece or twenty for all three! A steal, ladies and gentleman! See the Viper Man, the Desert Giant, and the Living Dead all for the price of two!”
The jolly crowd does not seem surprised by extra charges, but fishes in pockets and handbags for silver dimes.
“I am unsure,” Grip says as he and Sam approach Ivy. “Tone has changed since last I visited.”
Rosalía also joins them, smiling now. “Ivy, do they have things like this in Boston?”
“Sideshows?”
“Where is Melchior?” Sam asks Grip anxiously.
“Looking for a way to let the tiger out of its cage.”
Sam rushes away.
Rosalía waves back to the makers’ exhibit. “They have a kettle in there that boils water in thirty seconds. I saw it. Cold water. You could put your hand in and feel it. Then they poured it in the kettle and it boiled in thirty seconds. Can you believe that? You could see it work. They served coffee.”
“I could use some,” Ivy tells Rosalía, unable to clear her thoughts. “Do you want to see others?”
Rosalía turns to her brother.
Grip frowns as he produces more coins, but not as if put out with her. He looks preoccupied. “Rose, have you noticed—?”
She and Ivy are already turning away to pay as Sam pulls Melchior back to them.
Ivy thought Melchior would be all for the Desert Giant after his long-remembered wish to see Angus Muckaskill, but Melchior does not even try to push ahead in the crowd. Staying at the back, he looks repeatedly around to the tent they just came from.
“You criticized me for keeping a fox,” Ivy says as they move on to the Living Dead. “What would you do with a tiger if you had one?”
“Shouldn’t be in there,” Melchior says, still looking back. “Could turn it loose. Live on mule deer.”
“It has probably been in a cage all its life. It wouldn’t know how to live on mule deer and would attack people if it was loose.”
“Reckon it should attack the bastards locking it up.” He glances at her. “See the look in its eyes?”
Ivy looks away.
This tent is not bright and loud with gasps and applause. This one is dim with murmurs and children being hushed and pulled away.
Beside her, Sam starts. Rosalía stands on her toes, then slips around to the side. Ivy follows. The smell hits her before the sight: dead, rotting putrefaction.
A cold chill flies along her spine and her hand drops to the four-round on her belt. Rosalía takes a step back and Ivy sees around the few daring to be out front, facing an iron cage, not unlike that of the tiger.
Inside, a silent, gray figure, emaciated, filthy, bloody rags falling off in tatters, reaches through bars to grab at those kept from reach by a roped-off space around the cage.
Ivy draws her four-round, shock and rage and disgust mingling as she faces the snapping horror.
The gray figure looks around. Dark eyes gleam with the tent’s single electric bulb reflecting off a moist surface. When their eyes meet, Ivy sees pink rims to the lids and clear whites. Then Rosalía shoves her away.
Ivy’s hands tremble as she jams the four-round back in its holster, stepping with Rosalía out below the tent’s overhanging canopy.
“Why would they do something like that?”
A lady inside screams and is dragged out by her male companion.
Hawkers wave more inside or shout for attention at the Viper Man’s tent.
“How’d they get the smell?” Melchior appears at Ivy’s shoulder.
“Did you not see the trapdoor?” Grip steps up beside them, lighting a cigarette. “A dead goat or dog will be lying below the cage.”
“This is a sickness which has killed millions. A spectacle to paint a man’s face and charge to—” But her throat is tight and her words feel as disjointed as her thoughts. She stops.
“We should not have come.” Sam’s voice. “If it was this or remaining in our rooms, I should rather be trapped.”
Melchior looks again toward the tiger tent.
“Let’s see the magic lanterns,” Ivy says with a deep breath. “And find lunch, clear our heads.”
Having already paid, they make their way first to the snake tent, where a man in yellow calls that the show is about to begin. Grip watches the sky around colorful tent peaks. Ivy looks around to see charcoal storm clouds building like smoke out of the north, though the sun still shines off canvas and red earth.
Inside, a pit has been dug in the center of the floor, extended by smooth wood panels curving around the top for an extra three feet. Spectators array themselves around the outside of these panels, looking down into the pit where dozens of snakes try to slither up the sides for freedom, or twist together in piles, or glide across the limbs and body of a man sitting among them. He moves in a fluid manner with the serpents around him, talking in a chanting whisper, though Ivy cannot understand his words. The man seems unaware of the muttering crowd as he caresses and kisses and holds the snakes. They twine about his hands, his neck, slip inside his silk shirt, circle his arms.
With the same supple motions, he lifts one writhing serpent to his face. And bites off its head.
Ivy turns quickly as the crowd shrieks and gasps. She pushes through the tent flap, around the side, into shade at the outside wall.
More gasps and applause from within as she breathes hard, wiping sweaty palms against her duster. Beer fumes and laughter waft past.
When she next opens her eyes, Grip is almost beside her, sharing her edge of shade, taking the cigarette from his mouth.
He glances at her. “You remain easily shocked, Miss Jerinson.”
“I am glad.” Ivy watches his hand and trail of smoke. “It is right to be shocked by shocking matters. What will happen to us, our communities, our world when no one is shocked by brutality and cruelty?”
“Are you referring to the snake?”
She meets his eye. “I am referring to a living, breathing creature—biting the head off a living creature for spectacle and profit. If that does not shock you, I am sorry.”
Ivy walks past him, back through the entrance tent of tigers and electric kettles and tattooed women. Grip turns to watch her go, but says nothing as she does.
Sam soon joins her to await the others at the side of the magic lantern tent, apologizing, proposing they return to the hotel. She can barely hear him, breathing hard as she watches storm clouds.
Sam falls silent, making her feel guilty, and she mumbles something about being all right.
As she looks at Sam, a group of men behind him, along the outside of the magic lantern tent, catch her eye. Cowhands with wide hats, bandanas, and chaps, some with their spurs on. A tall stick of a man from this group keeps looking toward her. Ivy knows she has seen him before, but cannot place him from Santa Fé. A companion of his lights a cigarette for him and they start off. The tall man remains still, glancing again toward Ivy and Sam. Dusty angora chaps.
“Smells like grub in there,” Melchior says, stepping up to them.
“Yes.” Ivy can scarcely speak, pulse fast as she realizes who that man is. “We can get lunch at the same time.” She takes Sam’s elbow and pulls him toward the tent flap.
“What in thunderation’s this?
” Terribly familiar voice as well.
No, no, no. How are all these people in Monument?
Of course, Melchior turns. Sam also stops and looks around.
Frank Sidlow shakes his head as he watches them.
Sixty-Seventh
Breaking the Tie
“You two got some gall. Sure as shooting choked Silver City,” Sidlow says, lifting his cigarette from his mouth.
Sam’s face drains of color.
“Sard are you doing here?” Melchior steps toward Sidlow.
“Hankering after a fine spectacle.” Eyes narrowed, he grins at Melchior. “Don’t mess about with cottonwoods in Monument, do they? Got their own gallows.”
“You’ve a problem with us you can’t shake, Sidlow? Meet you yonder to settle up.”
Grip emerges from the main tent to approach them. Ivy catches his eye, breath short, fingers digging into Sam’s arm.
“Reckon folks here liable to be as interested in a show as Sheriff Whitley was,” Sidlow goes on.
“Be the main event if you don’t skin out. Aim to cry grief without settling your own account again?”
“I’ve no aim to ‘settle’ with you and your womenfolk, Melchior. Doing my civic duty.”
“Who are you?” From Grip, now beside Ivy and Sam.
Sidlow glares. “Dealer calls.”
While Ivy whispers, “Silver City informant.”
Grip lets out his breath and walks past Melchior to Frank Sidlow. “Over here.”
After hesitating, they follow him around the back of the tent.
“Ivy, go on to the—”
Ivy ignores Sam and pulls him to the corner of canvas and ropes. In deserted shade here, Grip faces Sidlow, Melchior to his left.
“Propose stirring difficulties in Monument as well?” Grip asks.
“Who the hell wants to know?”
“‘Yes,’” Grip says. “Desist.”
“You’ve any idea who you’re mixing with, mister? Those two men—”
“Have any family?”
“What?”
“Children?” Grip asks. “A wife? Anyone waiting for you back home?”
“Ah, hell no. Lonely puncher on a lonely trail is all. Plumb out of work; can’t find two cents to rub together these days. But ain’t here nor there. Those two men—”
“Destined to keep it up?” Grip asks.
“Mister, it’s the moral responsibility of any law-abiding, God-fearing—”
“Jesus Christ.” Grip’s hand moves.
Melchior, who must have seen what was coming, reacts so fast he catches Grip’s revolver in his own hands as Grip draws.
Sidlow leaps back, trips over a tent rope, and falls to red dirt. “What the devil—?”
Sam also starts forward, Ivy remaining at the corner.
“Can’t go and—offered him a duel—snails—” Melchior stammers while he tries to pull the gun away from Grip.
Grip leaves it with him as Sam misses catching his arm. He steps over Sidlow on the ground and Sidlow blinks to find Grip’s pocket revolver aimed between his eyes.
“‘Those two men,’” Grip says softy, “seem to favor your continued existence, cowboy. Do us the courtesy of breaking the tie.”
Sidlow swallows. He wears a gun on his own belt, but his attempt to draw was cut short by the appearance of the pocket revolver.
“Ain’t here to cause no trouble,” Sidlow pants at last.
“Your tone lacks fervor,” Grip says.
“Not going to cause trouble,” Sidlow repeats in a raised voice.
“Then don’t let us hold you up.”
The man scrambles away, coating the furry chaps in even more red dust, then hurries around the side of the tent, past Ivy, his jaw set, breathing hard.
Grip conceals the pocket revolver, takes the first one from Melchior’s unresisting hold, then glances to the sky. “I should be off. You are remaining for the lantern show?”
No one says anything.
“What is the matter, Mr. Samuelson?”
“One cannot go around threatening any man with whom one has a quarrel—”
“Is a murder better than a threat?”
“Of course not.”
“Then consider all in agreement. I cannot abide a man wreaking public aspersions and mayhem for the sake of it. Particularly those who refuse to acknowledge hints.”
Looking at the ground, Melchior says, “Much obliged.”
Grip narrows his eye. “You are welcome, Mr. L’Heureux. Excuse me.” He steps past them and away around the front.
With no more sign of Frank Sidlow, or anyone else who looks like a cowpuncher, all three wait at the magic lantern tent in silence for Rosalía to join them.
Ivy’s heart rate has almost returned to normal and she has begun to remember how hungry she feels by the time they sit down. While the show is comic, even ingenious in its design, she still remains shy of a laugh.
All keep unusually quiet, even through frequent pauses, although Melchior and Rosalía shift some of their worries as they seem overawed by moving pictures. Then, in Melchior’s case, by endless food being peddled and passed around. By the time Melchior gets his hands on skewers of hard cheese cubes coated in caramelized sugar under a maker’s torch and served hot, his whole posture has relaxed.
All are expected to eat with their hands, any utensils or napkins being the responsibility of the diner, and Ivy thinks nothing of it as Sam passes her tiny roast sausages and vegetables on skewers. Besides popped corn and wide array of savory bocaditos, everything seems to be on a stick: cheese and apples, meat and roast new potatoes, even mini doughnuts. Some of these are soaked in a coffee glaze and, to avoid a spectacle, Sam parts with thirty cents to buy the entire remaining supply when Melchior discovers them. Looking as if he is holding a large porcupine with tiny doughnuts dropped all over its spines, Melchior’s enraptured expression as he eats sends Rosalía into a fit of giggles.
Ivy cannot get behind the fried, coffee-flavored dough, but does agree with her cousin regarding the salty, sweet, warm, gooey, amazing caramelized cheese cubes. Definitely the highlight of the sideshow. And probably the whole West.
When Rosalía finds discarded newspapers among benches, Ivy and Sam step out to read. Town news, advertisements for the sideshow, weddings and funerals, latest of San Francisco’s fight against Plague. Well over a month old and Ivy finds little joy in the crumpled pages. The only real piece of note she discovers is an inside page headed, THEIR OWN EYES. Here she learns Monument is not as unsheltered as it appears: makers set vast networks of concealed watch leading into the city in every direction and extending as far as four miles from the heart of town.
Though they rode in at night and unchallenged, Ivy gets the uneasy feeling daylight would not have made obvious any maker watch. She trades papers with Sam, but cannot shake chills even as she reads a piece about a runaway pony cart and the hundred dollars in damage it wrought.
It is evening when they return to The Copper Key. No sign of Frank Sidlow, ABCs, or anyone else more alarming than a man with an armload of bagpipes. Rain falls in feeble plops on dusty roads while lightning flickers from dark clouds in the distance.
They enter through the back door. Rosalía scouts the dining room. Sam heads for the stable to check their horses—all being rustler-shy these days. Melchior starts for the stairs with Ivy to return hats and goggles to rooms and, for Ivy, to wash up before supper. Not that she feels hungry.
They turn from the hall to the first landing, Ivy dragging off her wet hat, and walk into Boyd Gordon coming down the stairs.
“Your pardon, miss,” Boyd says without conviction. His eyes narrow as he glances from Ivy to Melchior, whom Ivy is steering past Boyd with a firm hold on his elbow. “Do I know you?”
Ivy was not expecting this.
Melchior touches his hat. “Mr. Gordon. We met a few years back in Albuquerque. My father and I sold you and your brothers a couple of horses.”
Boyd smiles,
revealing white teeth and dimples below his high cheekbones. “You are Charles L’Heureux’s son?” He shifts his hat to his left hand and offers his right. “A pleasure. I still have that bay, Mr. L’Heureux. Best horse I ever rode.”
Melchior shakes his hand.
Holding her breath, Ivy hopes beads of blood are not visible on her brow.
“Obliged, Mr. Gordon. L’Heureux horses are the best this side of the world.”
“Cannot contradict you. My brother and I were sorry to learn your father is no longer with us.” Boyd nods gravely. “And you rode among the party who killed Clay, Mr. L’Heureux.” This one is not a question. “I see you’re a heeled man.” He looks to Ivy, who stands rigid. “The cousin you told us about, Miss Jerinson?”
How do they remember that? Months ago.
“Yes, Mr. Gordon.” Hopefully her words do not sound as strangled as they feel.
“‘My cousin ... and a fair marksman,’” Boyd says meditatively. “He has replaced his weapon? And, Mr. L’Heureux, Grip told us someone else in his company picked up Clay’s copper pendant but no longer possessed it. Would that be you?”
“I did. Regret to tell you, Mr. Gordon, it’s been lost. Had it on me in a flood north of Silver City.”
Boyd purses his lips, his eyes taking on a sorrowful expression as his brows draw together. “I am sorry to hear that, Mr. L’Heureux.” He glances around. “Shall we explore the matter further? I’m just on my way to meet my brother at Les Canyons. Won’t you join us?”
Ivy’s heart pounds in her throat, her muscles tense, fingers digging into Melchior’s arm. “He is spoken for this evening, Mr. Gordon.”
“Presently,” Melchior tells Boyd. “Have to make excuses.”
“Of course.” Boyd tips his chin. “We would never wish you to be discourteous to your friends. We look forward to your company. Mind the rain. Sounds as if it’s becoming quite a downpour.” He walks on to the lobby.
Lightfall Four: Risk, Rise, Rebel (Lightfall, Book 4) Page 11