Ivy is still trying to puzzle out what he said. Someone, Melchior, was busy? But on his knees? She got something wrong.
Grip shrugs. “¿Por qué se siente ofendida? She would never understand.” But he is almost smirking. Whatever he said, it must have been meant to get a rise out of his sister. Her anger certainly seems to have improved his mood.
“Sorry,” Rosalía mumbles to Ivy, looking at the table.
Ivy prefers not to admit she could not understand what he said. Nor, clearly, can she ask, it being so offensive.
“Who did you see?” she asks Grip instead, looking into her empty mug in case she left any milky coffee.
Grip’s frown returns. “I am not certain. Yesterday, by the brass lions....”
“You saw someone you recognized?” Rosalía glances up. Her shoulders are tense, though she tries to keep her voice relaxed.
Again, he shrugs, watching the doorway as Melchior, then Sam, walk in.
As they reach the table, a harassed waiter approaches. “I do apologize, sirs, but—”
“Coffee only,” Melchior says.
“Yes, of course.” The man bows and vanishes.
“What happened?” Ivy asks as they sit. “What did they say to you?”
Perhaps Rosalía was correct because neither appear to have slept, though both are clean and shaved: hair wet from bathing, hats in their hands and dressed as usual, including gun belts. Sam’s waistcoat, which Melchior calls a vest, is not fully buttoned, and Melchior’s flaps open entirely.
Melchior rubs the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger, eyes closed, elbows on the table. “All bug. Don’t know ... don’t recall half the flaptrap.”
“Claptrap,” Ivy says.
“What?”
“Did they buy you dinner?”
“Oh, yes. And tried to get me in on their wine, the scheming bastards. If wine out here’s anything like home brews east, I wouldn’t touch the bosh with a twenty-foot lariat. Take your senses faster than whiskey and turn your head faster than a charging bull.” He sits back, rocking his chair onto two legs. “Don’t know. Never seen such bunko artists. Telling me about their horses they bought off us. About these new smokes in town what are made up. About ... don’t know.”
Melchior lets his chair thump back to all fours as the waiter brings him and Sam mugs. “Wouldn’t mind passing time with a couple fellows looking like that if a guy didn’t think they were waiting for him to stand so’s to beef him. Here—” He pulls something from his breast pocket. “One of those smokes. No quirley.” He eyes the cigarette suspiciously. “What’s that on the end?”
“A filter,” Ivy says. “They are supposed to be less dangerous for your lungs.”
Melchior scowls. “Like a screen? Hell’s use in that?” He pulls the slender knife from his boot top, cuts the filter off against the tablecloth, leaving behind flecks of dark tobacco, and lights a match across the butter dish.
He inhales contemplatively, gazing at carved window trim to the left of the table. After two drags, he leans across to hand the cigarette to Grip.
Grip does one and passes it back. “That is repulsive, Mr. L’Heureux.”
Melchior takes another pull, letting the smoke roll around his mouth. “Tastes like cat piss, don’t it?”
“Inside an aged swill trough,” Grip says.
“Through with that?” Melchior looks at Rosalía.
She passes him her mug and he drops the smoking object inside, then takes a long gulp of his own hot coffee and shudders.
“Anyhow ... finally offered to meet me tomorrow—today—at noon out on Jackson Road.” Melchior leans his chair back once more. “So knew they didn’t mean anything by it last night. Left them to their ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” Ivy asks.
He nods, pushing a hand through his hair. “Got it at that French place. Couldn’t stomach a try myself. Reckon they’ll still have it after supper tonight if you’d care to see.”
“So, I take it you are planning to meet them....” Ivy looks toward the grandfather clock in the corner.
“’Spect I’ve got a chance.” He takes another drink. “Adair’s the worst and Grip already settled with him.”
“So it’s worth the risk? We could still get out.”
Melchior shrugs, setting down his mug. “All’s a risk.”
“One may still work to avoid obvious vipers,” Ivy says.
Face downturned, he looks at her sideways. “We’ve been lucky before.”
“And you’re a gambling man?”
He drains his mug and stands up. “Ain’t shot yet, though mighty touched by all your concern—like stuffed buzzards—and if that’s the way I’m going, like to see the rest of Monument first. Always wanted to visit.”
They push back their chairs, even Grip.
As Sam silently holds the front door for her and Rosalía, Ivy wonders what it is they are supposed to do. Walk around the city with Melchior, Grip pointing out the sights, Ivy and Sam explaining makers’ gadgets? Share a good laugh? Find a nice place for an early lunch? Visit the horses? Ask him what he would like done with Chucklehead and the rest of his effects? Or could they get in an hour of draw practice? Grip is faster than Melchior. Every eighth of a second counts.
As they step to the porch, Ivy removes her sungoggles from her hatband and puts both on. Sam and Melchior drop their hats over drying hair.
The streets are still wet, gleaming in places with reflective puddles, though the sky is clear of all but a few cottony clouds. Smells of wet earth and rust fill the air.
Grip steps outside with them, pulling his hat low as he squints in all directions. Ivy wonders if he is looking for a familiar face. Or his dog.
She is about to ask if he could spare Melchior a few tips, at the risk of both being offended, when an explosive crack reaches her ears. In the same instant a bullet smashes into the wall just behind Grip and Sam, making all of them jump—besides Grip, who has already drawn.
Sixty-Ninth
Smoke and Mirrors
Sam’s arm is across her, knocking her off the porch, around the corner of The Copper Key’s imposing front as Ivy struggles to grab her derringer from inside her duster. Not until he releases her can she flatten her back against the timber wall and draw the weapon. In those few seconds, her ears are ringing with explosive blasts of at least three shots within feet of her, and several more across the street in both directions.
People and horses are screaming, dogs barking and bolting, bullets and explosive maker’s shot tearing into wood and metal. Hot reek of gunpowder fills the air.
Grip leaps from the porch. He crouches on one knee behind it to shoot across the street, aiming upward.
Melchior is behind him, in front of Ivy and Sam, on his feet, peering around the corner. He does not fire, apparently unable to see anything to shoot.
“Run down to the stable!” Sam shouts at her.
He wants horses involved in this?
A burning lump of tar and oil and lead pellets flashes past Ivy and Sam from behind, down the side street they are using as cover, missing Grip’s shoulder by half an inch as it sails into the main street to strike a puddle. It explodes in a shower of pellets, water, and acrid blue smoke.
Melchior leaps away, back flat against the wall alongside Sam and Ivy. “Christ. How many directions are they shooting from?”
“Roofs!” Grip has whirled, his eye following the path the flaming shot just took.
“Who?” Ivy shouts.
“What difference does it make?” Grip ducks, which must be instinctive because a bullet narrowly misses his head. Aimed from across Canyon Street and at a high angle, the lead smashes into pine trim beside Melchior’s knees.
“Get out of here! Up or inside!” Grip jumps back onto the porch and vanishes.
“Where is Rose?”
“Ivy, get into the stable! We will—”
“Don’t send her that way! Where the goddamn flamer came from!” Melchior is looking
across the side street to the single-story, false-fronted barber’s shop. An empty hitching post stands out front, while an enormous water trough at the side faces them.
Explosive gunshots sound all around them. Bullets and shot and splinters fly. Steel glints from a three-story roof across Canyon Street. Melchior catches it and lifts his Colt, yet the flash is gone as quickly as it appeared.
“Sam, can you cover us?” Melchior seizes Ivy’s arm, ramming his revolver back in its holster. “How high can you jump?”
“Not onto a roof!”
Melchior races across the street, pulling her, then letting go as he nears the barber’s shop. He jumps onto the narrow rim of the water trough, nearly three feet up, then catches the lip of the roof and throws himself with momentum upward, hurling his feet up across the edge.
Ivy would have been more stunned if not used to her cousin jumping into a saddle as if onto a rocking horse. Still, she has no reason to believe she can imitate him.
With the ease of free-moving limbs, rubber grip of the derringer in her teeth, she heaves herself onto the edge of the trough. As she reaches upward, Melchior has already turned enough to catch her. He pulls, she jumps, and—be it adrenaline, or low-roofed buildings, his strength, or only her fear that her life depends on it—she springs onto the damp, sun-hot structure.
“Sam!” Melchior waves for him, though he remains against the far wall, having been shooting behind them.
“There is one across the street from you! Top of the clothing supply!”
Ivy has her gun out of her mouth, clinging to the hot roof, which, though only slightly sloped in an A-frame, feels as treacherous as a canyon wall.
“This is asinine,” she says. “Sam, go back in the hotel. Get to an inside top floor!”
“No!” Melchior shouts. “That porch’s a hornet’s nest. They’re counting on it. Get up here!”
As Sam moves, a chunk of the wall at his back explodes with the force of another flaming ball of shot. He runs across the street to them, revolver back in its holster.
Ivy recoils sideways on hands and knees, as timber ignites at the side of The Copper Key. At the peak of the roof, she looks in all directions, assuring herself she can see no one aiming her way from behind or beside out of any surrounding windows or rooftops, most of which are well above the squat barbershop. Clutching her derringer, she inches against the false front wall.
Only by standing on the tip of the roof arch is she tall enough to see over the top and look across Canyon Street. She does not have the height to see as far down as the street, but scans buildings.
Melchior scrambles up as well. Ivy waves her derringer at him and he presses his back to the false front, crouched beside her.
“He was right,” Ivy says, breathing hard, heart hammering in her ears. “There’s a man with a revolver on the roof just across. Another on the corner of Red Wing.... Looks like a maker’s gun.”
“Bastards—waiting for us to leave the hotel,” he pants.
“But why? Who are they?”
“ABCs don’t operate like this. Some organized gang. Damn well-heeled one.”
Sam inches up beside him, taking Melchior’s offered hand. “Sidlow’s grudge cannot run this deep and I did not think we offended anyone else in town.”
Melchior looks at Ivy, frowning. “Don’t swagger they’re aiming to plug you, do you?”
“What?”
“Bit known in New Mexico. Could be....”
A round of shots drowns him. Ivy flattens herself against the false front.
“Got to knock those curly wolves off the heights. They twig we’re up here?”
Ivy shakes her head. “I don’t think so. The one on Red Wing’s roof may have seen us climb up to start from his angle.”
“’Less he’s been distracted by lead. Reckon Grip’s still shooting at them.” Melchior stands up.
His hat is shot off his head, flies down the roof, and tumbles from the building.
He crouches down beside Ivy and Sam. “Who’s the next idea?”
“Periscope? Mirrors?” Ivy is looking wildly around.
“Cover fire?” Sam says.
“Ivy, can you plug the one across the street?”
“You want me to shoot a man?” Ivy stares at Melchior.
“Got the gun in your hand. What were you pegging to aim for?”
“We can draw fire if you can—” Sam starts.
“You think this is a good idea?” She looks past Melchior to him.
“I believe survival is a good idea under nearly all circumstances, Ivy.”
“Then why in hell’d you tell those mudsills to hang us in Silver City?” Melchior snaps. “Threw them the rope and—”
“I was not going to lie to the sheriff.”
“Find it less objectionable to shoot a fellow than lie to him?”
Sam appears to be considering the question.
“Melchior!” Ivy drops flat on the peak of the roof as a man two buildings away, behind The Copper Key’s livery, climbs into sight around the edge of a massive chimney pipe.
A second later, Melchior has fired, dropping between her and Sam, grabbing for the point of the roof as he slides. Another round of flaming, oily tar shot streaks over their heads. It slams into the back of the false front wall between them and Canyon Street, igniting several inches of timber as the oil sprays with shot pellets.
Shouting blasphemy, Melchior whirls to the fire.
“We’ll get this!” Ivy starts to pull off her duster but Sam already has his waistcoat in his hands.
He fights to smother the tiny but vociferous blaze while Melchior gets another shot off toward the distant gunman. In so doing, he reveals himself to the man across the street who got his hat. Another shot blazes past his ear.
Melchior drops to his hands and knees. “Where in hell’s the sheriff and marshal? Someone get that bastard off the roof!”
It does seem they are taking a lot of fire, but Ivy hears even more shots she knows are not directed at them.
Sam falls back against the wall, panting, grabbing again for his gun with smoke-darkened hands. “Ivy, can you hit him if I cover for you?”
“I—”
“Nearly any wound should stop him.”
“I only have two rounds.”
“You’ve six!” Melchior shouts, squinting without hat or goggles, revolver aimed, waiting for the man to show himself around the chimney pipe. “Two guns!”
“I’m not shooting the four-round at humans.”
“You’d rather us die, including yourself?”
“This is not what it’s for. And the derringer doesn’t have that kind of range.”
“Does! One of those Tinestel Enhanced, ain’t it? Shoot the rips or give it to me! One shot left before needing to reload.”
“Ivy, please—” Sam checks to make sure the fire is dead, blue smoke still trickling from the burnt spot on wood and waistcoat, as he carefully stands up against the wall.
“Why don’t I distract and you—?”
“No.” Sam steps to the far side of the roof, grabs the top of the wall, and pulls himself up.
Ivy moves in a second, faster than she thought she could, already halfway there as she sees what Sam plans to do. She looks over the top edge of the wall, standing on the extreme peak of the roof, arm out, hand and derringer at eye level. The man across the street has already stepped up, already firing at Sam from the building above them, not even noticing Ivy as she pulls the trigger.
Sam springs back, a bullet ripping past. At the same time, the man across the street jumps, shouting above noise from rooftops and streets alike, and falls out of sight, backward onto shingles.
Ivy drops with her back beside the burned spot in the wall, shaking, holding her hand out to Sam as he climbs toward her once more.
“I just shot a man.”
“Happens! Here—” Melchior holds his hand out to her, his Colt back in his holster. He must have used the last shot without success in
those explosive few seconds. “Aiming that maker’s gun or not?”
“No! It’s not for—”
“Noticed what they’re belting against us?”
Sam shoves his French revolver into Melchior’s hand. “Ivy, did you say the other is on the Red Wing hotel’s roof?”
“He has a shotgun, or maker’s gun. No, Sam, don’t climb up there again.” She struggles to her feet after him as Sam grabs the top of the wall above her.
“He will be a good deal higher up. You must aim high.”
“Can you see him? You shoot.” She pushes her derringer at him.
Sam recoils. “I cannot, Ivy. I have never even handled one of those. I could not hit anything with it.” He looks again over the false front wall. “He is not facing us ... aiming down the street.”
“I have only one more shot. I cannot—”
“Ivy—” Sam looks into her dark goggles. “I have no reason to suspect you need more than one. I will be your periscope; wait.” He watches, tense against the wall as she stands by him, breathing hard, shots and shouting and commotion in the street still beating around her. Strong smell of acrid smoke as well. Has anyone done something about flaming pellets striking The Copper Key? Is that what all the shouting is about?
“He has knelt. Waiting for a shot,” Sam says softly. “He must be expecting Grip to come out of cover.”
Melchior shoots behind her. Smoke smell grows stronger. Shouts almost drown Sam’s soft voice as he acts as her mirror.
“He stands at the corner of the hotel, nearest the brass lion maker.”
Ivy nods, her mouth dry, heart pounding in her ears. But she is not worried about missing. Which is what worries her.
“He is up,” Sam’s voice is suddenly sharp.
Ivy lifts her pocket gun over the wall, looking down her own arm only long enough to see the frock-coated man half a block away on the rooftop. He stands in plain sight as he takes aim in a leisurely fashion, his side to her. Ivy shoots before he has even started squeezing off.
She hoped the first may have been caught in the arm and fallen back on the roof to tend his own wound. But there can be no uncertainty as to the fate of the man with the shotgun.
Lightfall Four: Risk, Rise, Rebel (Lightfall, Book 4) Page 13