Lightfall Two: Fox, Flight, Fire (Lightfall, Book 2)

by Jordan Taylor

  Her velocity throws her across baggage like rolling down a cliff. Knowing she is about to pitch right off the other side in a tangle of skirts and flailing arms and surely be either crushed by the wheels or run over by her fellow riders, she grabs for anything she can feel. A rough rope tears across her hand. A burlap bag scrapes her face. Her foot catches something for a moment, then rips free. Another grab and another rope, this one also yanked away by her own speed, then open air: falling, legs flying down first. A final, wild grab, both hands reaching. She catches a rope, swinging out, knees banging into the side of the wagon, then flailing through air between the bottom and the road, her face pressed into a sack as hard as bricks, goggles smashed against her face, lungs flat, body bruised.

  Her feet touch ground. Unmoving ground. Ivy opens her eyes, pulling her face from burlap.

  She stands on the dirt road, upright, clutching a rope as if dangling over a canyon. She lets go with shaking arms, breathing hard, then coughing in dust and flour. Her hands are red raw, yet she did not scrape all the skin off. She does not even seem to have broken any bones. And she is alive.

  She stands in shock a full two seconds, then turns, stepping shakily back from the mound. Guns have fallen silent, though she suspects that is only because neither side can see. And the wagons have halted. Another is beside her and she stands in a wide alley.

  “Keep them there! Hold them!” It’s Rosalía and Ivy understands now. She has created a barricade to face the danger behind, drivers and animals protected by being on the far side of their mountainous loads.

  Ivy takes a step back, trying to look around for Luck in the dust.

  Wham!

  “The hell!”

  Something huge and dark crashes past her, smashing across her arm by her elbow like a bullet. Ivy is thrown against the wagon, shouting incoherently with the pain of it, almost screaming, sure the arm is broken. Melchior who yelled—huge shape of horse and rider. She understands what happened as she crumples, clutching her right arm, against a massive wheel. Melchior and Chucklehead just came ripping into that protective passage between two freighters. It was the toe of Melchior’s right boot in his stirrup which caught her arm as they passed. He probably had not even seen what they struck and, had he, could have done nothing about it.

  Tears in her eyes, held by goggles, choking and gasping on dust and her own pain, Ivy crouches on her knees, rocking back and forth as she shakes. Don’t let it be broken, please. The left arm is just healed. Not the right ruined now.

  Crack.

  Men are shouting, drivers and Mr. Sender and her own company. A second horse, this one yellow with black legs, slides to a halt in her wagon alley and a buckskin-clad rider leaps down, throwing himself against the side of the wagon for cover as he aims a revolver over the top of the load.

  El Cohete bursts away on his own, racing down the road. Rosalía is on top of the mound, shouting something to Grip in Spanish. Melchior calls at Sam to get his horse out of here. More gunshots, bullets smacking into bags or crates. Grip’s hat is knocked off his head.

  He crouches lower, shouting back at Rosalía, “¡Bájate de allí!”

  “¡Puedo ver nomás desde aquí!” she yells and fires.

  Ivy should be with them, shooting with them.

  “Don’t let them bolt!” Melchior shouts at the drivers: on the second load now. Ivy can see him flanking Rosalía’s perch above Grip and Ivy. He throws himself flat on the mound, Colt extended in both hands, hat low over sungoggles. He must be able to see from up there as the cloud disperses. He also opens fire.

  A horse screams. Sam’s rifle blasts. Men shout down the road. Not her people.

  Ivy is nearly in a ball on dirt, holding her arm, trying to pull in short, fast breaths with her sleeve over her mouth. Pain radiates up her arm to her shoulder, across her back, filling her as if on fire. She moves the elbow, grabbing her gun belt, shaking as she bites hard on her sleeve—not broken.

  Grip is still yelling in Spanish, trying to get Rosalía down from the load. More incoming fire tearing into crates and wagon planks. A volley from her own side, another shriek from a horse, cursing shouts from men beyond sight.

  She struggles to her feet, Colt Lightning in her left hand, darting to lean against an opposite wagon wheel, still crouched.

  She sees only a few riders in dust beyond. One horse down, thrashing and kicking. Another rider hangs from the saddle of his own horse by a foot stuck in the stirrup, apparently dead, upper body dragging across earth as the horse turns and struggles against a second man trying to pull him in. Only one remains mounted, shooting two revolvers at them, his horse rearing and backing.

  Rosalía’s carbine is silent, Melchior tries to reload, only Sam and Grip still shooting. Ivy lifts her revolver in the shaking left hand, but cannot fire. Not even at the horse. These are not soulless risers. These are just a few cursing men and terrified animals.

  In the next moment, the lifeless figure is left on the ground. The standing man springs onto the horse’s back. The dual-gunned rider wheeling, then the two men and horses vanish in a few galloping strides into dust. Another shot from Grip, hooves pounding away. Then silence besides the groaning horse in the road and fast breathing of men around her.

  Ivy struggles to her feet, pulling herself up the wagon wheel while she keeps her right arm cradled against her chest. Grip reaches for Rosalía on the first wagon, talking in an angry undertone in Spanish, then shouting for the drivers to bring water and a clean cloth. Rosalía slides down with his help, falling against him, panting, clutching the top of her own right shoulder, blood trickling between her fingers.

  “Stop it,” she mutters to Grip. “I know.”

  Melchior jumps down with his reloaded Colt in his hand, approaching fallen horse and rider some distance off. Sam emerges around the far side of the second wagon, holding his rifle, blood matting his sleeve to his wrist. Two men struggling to keep the balky oxen in place come running in answer to Grip’s summons.

  Ivy stands, bewildered, as dust settles upon her like fine snow. Her first impulse is to go to Rosalía, try to help. But there is already a crowd starting around her. Then there’s the blood all over Sam’s sleeve, cries of the distraught horse in the road, discovering if the man in the road might be helped, her own throbbing arm, and their own vanished horses.

  Breathing hard, shaking violently from head to heel, she pushes her gun back in the holster, having to try twice, then turns. Rosalía sinks to a sitting position in dust, boots out before her, eyes closed and head back as she leans against a tall wheel. She holds her cotton neckerchief against the blood, telling Grip he should be fetching their horses—they can’t stay here.

  Ivy shifts the other way, running into Sam.

  “Are you all right, Ivy?” He looks at her arm, still drawn up against her body.

  “I ... yes....” She stares at his bloody hand. Never thought ... they might really be shot. That they might come away from robbers worse than from risers. That someone could get hurt. Someone could get killed.

  “Sam—”

  “You should sit down.”

  “Who is that man?”

  “I have no idea.” He takes her left elbow and she leans on his hand, though she will not go with him or sit.

  She starts after Melchior instead, pulling Sam with her. One thing at a time. Someone needs to help that poor animal or put it out of its misery, see if anything is to be done about the man, make sure Rosalía has stopped bleeding, and Sam, then get their horses and get all of them back to Santa Fé as fast as possible—freighters be damned.

  Melchior stops at the man in the dirt. He looks down a long time, then kneels and says something while they walk up to him.

  Ivy is horrified to see the man’s rising and falling chest, bright, sparkling blood spraying delicately from a grazed artery at his neck, spurting out in fits and starts with each pump of the heart. The second wound has soaked his lower abdomen in blood, absorbed by shirt and waistcoat and t
rousers until he has dark stains seeming to cover half his person.

  “Sorry ’bout that, friend,” Melchior says. “Reckon you hadn’t a call to shoot us.”

  The mouth moves, blood running out and down the smooth face. A young man. No years beyond Melchior, his head beginning to jerk as he loses his battle for air, almost unconscious.

  “You and your pals raid Raton Pass a piece back?” Melchior asks.

  The young man shakes his head, mouthing like a fish.

  “No? Sure?”

  “La Manada de Lobos,” he says in a strangled breath.

  Melchior rocks back on his good heel. “True? Thought they was up in Colorado?And who you riding—?” Melchior stops, leaning forward. He reaches out, heedless of bright blood spattering his hand, seizes a copper medallion around the young man’s neck, and yanks it off, snapping the chain.

  Sam starts, recoiling. He opens his mouth.

  Melchior goes on, “Sard. You’re an ABC.” He holds the bloody necklace up to his face. Ivy can see an inlayed C in the middle of the copper circle. “You Clay Gordon?”

  The young man nods, but his eyes are white slits below lashes, breaths falling away.

  “Snails, boy,” Melchior says under his breath. “Wish you lot hadn’t shot at us. Hell’d you think you’d get? Couldn’t tell we was heeled? Or playing mighty desperate? Real sorry we went and shot you. Hope your brothers don’t hold it hard on us.”

  The body is twitching its last, blood slowing as the heart stops beating.

  Sam steps away, leaving Melchior with the boy and the necklace, to see about the brown horse trying to stand as blood streams down its chest from bullet wounds. A hind leg has also been hit and the animal tries repeatedly to rise without success.

  Sam releases Ivy to grab the horse’s head, rubbing a cheek, talking to him. The horse sags into dust, eyes rolling white, flies settling on the quivering, bleeding hide.

  Ivy steps back, trembling worse than ever, almost walking into Melchior, who moves around her, drawing his Colt as Sam cradles the dark head, murmuring into the animal’s ear.

  She starts toward the wagons, walking stiffly, as fast as she can, breath short. Two things they don’t have to worry about now. Only Rosalía and Sam’s arm and getting their own horses back. They can manage those. And return to the city. Four things. Not supposed to be like this. But only four things. All can be taken care off. Only a matter of checking off the list.

  The Single Action Army cracks behind her. She walks on. Her arm, God, why does her arm hurt so much? Perhaps not broken, yet, like Melchior’s ankle, the soft tissue damage must be horrific. Just as everything else, Rosalía, the horses, it can be managed.

  With her good left hand, she rips sungoggles from her face and tangled hair, and bows her head as she walks, tears finally running down her filthy cheeks.

  Twenty-Ninth

  Like Home

  Ivy never thought she could be riding to a boarding house and think, I can’t wait to get home. It stopped her, made her look around at the four riders and three freighters and wonder at fate. She never thought an ancient, adobe city could be like home.

  After they caught their puffing, tired horses, Grip tried to get Rosalía to ride on a wagon. Ivy knew too well the hell of that bumpy road. Rosalía insisted being back on her horse was better for her health. They had been able to clean the wound, and Sam’s, with iodine from the freighter’s medical supplies, then kept them as wrapped and clean as possible. Sam’s was a flesh wound, the bullet having ripped away skin at the back of his wrist and torn his sleeve across six inches. Rosalía was struck with a revolver blast entering the trapezius and, Ivy guessed based on angle, now being lodged against the rhomboideus major. She needed immediate surgery and bed rest. Ivy and Grip were both of a mind to abandon the cargo to its fate and ride on.

  With their own horses played out, as Melchior said, and Rosalía unable to tolerate a fast gait, it transpired they could not move much faster than the oxen now trundling along over the flat. They remained, though it took them the rest of that day and three more back to Santa Fé.

  There was another stage stop, but the town was deserted, not enough left for a chipmunk to live on. Then Fort Union, where all expected medical aid, or a meal at least. Not a soldier greeted them. Not a horse loafed in the cavalry corrals. No flag flew. A dust devil whipped around a silent parade ground. Nothing more.

  The lack of her own surprise made Ivy realize she had known all along the soldiers of Fort Marcy, the officials of Santa Fé, had never been evacuated to Fort Union. Known what she had never really needed to be told: that they were alone in New Mexico Territory, the nearest military protection being in Texas or Kansas or Colorado at the closest.

  No one said a word as they rode on through the empty fort without stopping.

  They finally saw all cargo to the city late in June, below a blazing sun.

  Ivy is unsure where Mr. Sender and his men are now. She has not heard yet how Rosalía is doing from the doctor or Grip. She has not seen Sam, whose arm is already healing, or Melchior, who is walking without a limp, all day.

  She sits on a fallen tree, far up a slope just northeast of the city, looking to adobe buildings, rows of houses, church steeples, and the Palace Hotel, with her fox in her lap. Back in the yellow dress, which Señorita somehow managed to clean and restore, stitches out of her left arm, right so deeply bruised and painful she can hardly bend the elbow.

  Melchior never apologized for almost breaking her arm. When he realized what all had happened, he told her she was lucky they hadn’t knocked her down and trampled her. What was her problem letting her horse run into a wagon, then not bothering to get out of the way when she knew the rest were behind?

  She has not spoken to him since, on the trail or after.

  Now another mountain sunset soaks her while she rubs the swift fox, who drags her little body across Ivy’s chest, rolling, falling off, hopping back up. Ivy smiles as she watches the vixen, tears in her eyes, stroking pointed ears.

  Es Feroz is not a useless thing—always getting in the way, causing other people trouble. She takes care of herself, feeds herself, yet watches out for her friend.

  Ivy is no longer worried by asking Grip to do something about getting Yap-Rat out of the way when they venture out together. Not worried about leading anyone into danger anymore. Not worried about the money and the maker and the town. They can all do whatever they want. Mr. Thorp’s words ring in her ears: No one’s leaving the region anytime soon. Melchior’s words after the fight with the gang he and Grip and Rosalía all knew—outlaw brothers known as the ABCs: Hell’s wrong with you? If you can’t lend yourself, at least get out of the way.

  She could set out on foot and never make it. She could set out on horseback and never make it. She could try to get as far as Denver or similar and wait for a train or bribe or sneak her way onto a non-passenger train. She could keep waiting and working for the steamcoach which, though it may rip along the ground and get her to Boston in a week, would surely be stopped by government closures anyway.

  Or she can remain here. In Santa Fé. With these people, until they are all eaten or sick, and never see her father again. Never see her real home again, wait to die in airless mountains.

  She sees them all on a pie chart, the kind her father showed her as a child to explain percentages and likelihood. The slices with all the former options are narrow to the point of being slivers. The slice with the latter option fills nearly the entire pie—so much, one would scarcely notice if all the rest were removed.

  Life to essentials. She does not need to keep fighting for thousands of dollars in a cash-poor society. Perhaps Melchior will keep sharing his faro winnings with her, or the profits from selling his horse. Sam approves of neither, which concerns Ivy because Sam is the only person she has met whose opinion seems to have some effect on Melchior. Sam might not mind the gambling if Melchior did not cheat at everything he played, and the horse selling strikes Sam as no more h
onest. But Sam, as Melchior gruesomely put it, would rather cut out his own tongue than tell a lie—a trait which caused them problems when, under direct questioning, Sam divulged his friend’s gaming habits in a saloon in Kansas.

  If she cannot rely on Melchior for income, Mrs. Acker might be a possibility. If she works for her lodging, she would not need much else. And, if she is not going anywhere anytime soon, she can sell her own horse. That will pay for food and incidentals for a long time. She feels a sharp pang in her throat and chest with the idea of Luck leaving her. She tells herself not to be ridiculous, that mare has been nothing but trouble. Like herself. She is being sentimental, a luxury in the West.

  She bows her head, blinking as tears drop onto the vixen’s golden coat. She must get out of the way. Before anyone gets killed following her. Maybe she can help Oliver and Isaiah with ideas for defending the city. Or maybe she can curl up in bed and never go out in public again. Safest for everyone.

  Es Feroz discovers a loose thread on her sleeve, bites it, rolls over, and falls off Ivy’s knees. When Ivy shifts, the fox spots the movement of her toe below the edge of her skirt. She wriggles, crouches, then leaps straight up and down on the boot. She bites, claws, springs away and stands stiffly, gazing down the hill, nose twitching, ears up, eyes intense. The next moment she whips away, leaps onto the tree trunk beside Ivy, and begins chewing vigorously on her own flank with her incisors.

  Ivy smiles, something tight in her throat like a hiccup. When she opens her lips, she discovers a laugh.

  “I missed you,” she whispers, reaching to stroke thick fur.

  She wipes her face with her handkerchief, then looks out again. The new wall is visible in spots from here, stretching across the western side of the city in skeleton form. There are a few patches where it looks nearly finished. A timber, adobe, and stone affair, mortared and nailed together with whatever can be found. Scarcely ten feet high, but the outside is being made as smooth and unclimbable as possible. Four feet below the top on the inside, a platform is being built to hold men standing guard. The combination of the wall and firepower at the top should be enough against risers. But how long will it take?