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

by Jordan Taylor

  “If you believe in honest living, sheriff, you shouldn’t be running a town and celebration with varmints like these walking your streets. It disgusts me to tell you, sir, that I know them from a time together trail driving in Texas. I ain’t a man to kick up a row for no good, but it makes an honest fellow sick to know sodomites are allowed thick with the fine folks of Silver City.”

  Murmurs ripple through the crowd. Men step away from Melchior and Sam, leaving a space around them as if they are on stage.

  “Aim to add everything else you’ve framed us for, Sidlow?” Melchior practically spits the words. “You and your bastard pals? Liars and horse thieves?”

  The sheriff unhurriedly steps back through swing door, expression unchanged. He lifts the cigarette from his lips, eyes shifting between Melchior and Sam. “Mr. Sidlow, this is a mighty serious charge. Will you swear your certainty of this crime against nature with your hand on a Bible?”

  “I’ll swear on my mother’s grave, sheriff.”

  “Then ... we must hold a trial.” His gaze shifts from Melchior to find a familiar face in the crowd. “Mr. Tyler, run to Mr. Lawrence’s office. I suspect it is closed, but see if you can bring anyone back.”

  Mr. Tyler runs out, looking highly relieved to go.

  Back to Melchior and Sam: “Do you ... gentlemen”—almost with a sneer—“wish to present council? No, I suppose not. There should be none available today. Very well.” He looks around. “Clear the building of women and children and set the chairs.”

  The sheriff rests his shotgun on a table, surveying the scene as men scramble to clear up. Melchior and Sam are shoved into two chairs, their backs to the bar, men standing about them in place of shackles. The saloon girls slip out past Ivy. Another young lady is led out on the arm of a young man from the faro table. A hulking figure appears before Ivy. She blinks up at him. The same brute who unknowingly knocked her to the floor.

  “Miss—” He holds out his hand to the door, blocking her view of the saloon with his bulk.

  Cannot think. Cannot breathe. Not real. Cannot move. Until the big man grabs her elbow and leads her out of doors.

  She stumbles below crushing afternoon sun. Evening must be near, the party on the streets in full swing. Hat gone. Where are her sungoggles? Handbag still across her arm. She blinks, steps off the porch on shaking legs. Did they find a place for the night? Where is it she thinks she is going?

  She sits on the edge of the boards, able to hear nothing from inside as the noise outside remains so vivid. Silly. Just ridiculous. She will wait, then Melchior and Sam will come outside, Melchior angry, Sam embarrassed by the misunderstanding. She too will be embarrassed. But they’ll get over it. Find their rooms, secure their gold, get out of town tomorrow. And Grip ... she will not say anything to Grip, of course. None of them will.

  Face burning, she turns her bloody hands over in her lap, leaving rusty streaks across her dress. One knee also shows a spot of blood through the skirts.

  She must get a bath. The idea of infection in her hands sends a shudder down her spine. There will be a doctor in town. Busy with all the injuries from the sporting events? Or not even working today?

  She sits still, blinking against dust, shivering as sweat trickles down the back of her neck into her dress collar.

  Mr. Tyler and a few others climb the hotel steps to join the trial inside.

  All so ridiculous. Sam never stole any horse. Certainly no abomination. Why does Frank hate them? A grudge? Did Melchior cheat him in cards? Yet ... an accusation so serious ... surely going too far, regardless of what might have been done or said between the two parties.

  Blood and dust dry on her motionless hands. Only small, unremarkable scrapes, if properly cleaned. Now they look a mess. Like her. She would be only a small, unremarkable person if cleaned. Instead ... she’s a mess.

  A mess who cannot think. Why can she not think? She needs ... Rosalía. Rosalía would know what to do. Even Grip would be someone. No. She closes her eyes. She needs her father. She needs home.

  Saloon doors bang. Men stream out, shaking their heads, talking in undertones. A man starting up the steps is intercepted by those emerging.

  “Just held a trial, Barry.”

  “Sure enough? Independence Day even?” Barry shakes his head, pausing with his friend rather than continuing up steps. “All set?”

  “Sure. No trouble.”

  “Kill a man?”

  “Sodomy.”

  Barry steps back. “No.”

  The friend nods gravely. “Simon pure.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “No trouble—how I say. Englishman and cowhand from up near Albuquerque. Sheriff Whitley has scarcely started proceedings when he asks their pleas. Asks the Englishman is he that kind of feller. You know what he says?”

  “What’s he say?”

  “Says yes, he is.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what he says, Barry.”

  Both men are shaking their heads.

  “Goners then,” Barry says.

  “Sure enough. Decorating cottonwoods in the morning.”

  “That’s an extra day for all these folks come into town for the Fourth. The peddlers will be mighty glad.”

  “Bully good for the lot, I’d say. Gives us a break before work.”

  “Let’s tell Tilly to kill a few more frying hens. Never had a holiday and a hanging rolled together before.”

  The two men start off, talking about Tilly’s sumptuous fried chicken, asking each other if another pie-eating contest can be arranged for tomorrow with the fresh excitement of the hanging.

  Ivy sits and stares at their retreating backs. And stares.

  Not right ... what that man said. Not ... accurate. Sam would never say such a thing. He cannot.

  Because Sam does not lie.

  Thirty-Third

  An Honest Man

  Ivy washes her hands without soap or antiseptic at the stable, ties them in clumsy bandages of handkerchiefs from her saddlebags, then grooms Luck with the stiff brush in her fingertips. The horses remain as unclean as their riders on the trail and Luck fusses about the grooming, trying to snap at Ivy though her head is still tied to the manger of her stall.

  With far more difficulty than wrapping her hands or brushing Luck, Ivy saddles her, then takes up the bridle. Melchior and Sam’s handling has talked Luck out of her wild head-shy attitude in the past weeks, so it takes Ivy only ten minutes to get the headstall over her ears and the bit in her mouth. Finally, Ivy removes the tie rope and backs Luck from her stall.

  She stands a long time, staring a few stalls down to the familiar bay and blue roan, both chewing hay—Chucklehead yanking great chunks from his manger with jerks of his head, Elsewhere dropping mouthfuls in his water bucket, then eating from the bucket.

  Hands and knees stinging, eyes burning, wondering where her hat went and if her sungoggles are in her saddlebags, Ivy finds the tallest mounting block she can, then a stableboy to hold the mare so she can mount backward from the block. With the boy departed, Luck swings about to face Chucklehead, Elsewhere, and, down the row, the buckskin El Cohete.

  Ivy forces her head around. “There’s nothing we can do for them—” but her voice breaks and her hands shake as she drags Luck’s head and knees her out the alley into sunlight.

  Ivy discovers the sun low, blazing across the left side of her hatless face as she starts north. She cannot ride all the way back to Santa Fé on her own. But she must get out of town, must leave celebrations behind, must somehow break free of a nightmare.

  Noise fades as she rides into rolling, golden foothills about Silver City. Here, with town still visible a few miles away, she stops Luck and slithers from the saddle. Clutching one split rein, Luck standing beside her forlornly with the grass too dry to eat, head and ears drooping, Ivy sits on a rise, knees drawn up below skirts, arms around them.

  Why did they ever come to Silver City? Ever take this awful job? She was right afte
r all, not wanting to come. She should have stopped all of them. Too late for a great many things she should have done.

  There is perhaps an hour of daylight left when Luck lifts her head. Ivy looks up to see a lone rider moving at a jog up the path toward them. She feels no particular surprise, yet asks, as the horse slows to a walk and the dusty rider takes clear shape, “How did you find us?”

  “Saw you leave alone,” Grip says. “What happened?”

  Ivy squints at him reining in El Cohete beside them. He leans forward, arms crossed on his horse’s mane.

  “I had to get out. Silver City—” She fights to keep herself steady, looking away, taking a deep breath. “It was horrible ... a horrible place. There’s no lodging anywhere. I must return to Santa Fé.”

  “Even Santa Fé agreeable now?”

  She looks up at him. His expression has not changed. Nor his tone. She cannot tell if he is making fun of her or genuinely wondering if it is. At last she looks away in silence.

  Grip dismounts and drops his rope hackamore reins in dirt before the buckskin’s hooves. El Cohete, like Elsewhere and Chucklehead, is trained to remain still at this signal. Only Luck wanders away when her reins hang at her forefeet.

  “I meant, what happened to your companions?” Grip asks. “Why are you out here alone?”

  “They’re in jail.”

  When Grip says nothing, Ivy glances up to see him gazing toward Silver City. He lowers his chin and pulls his stained, battered hat from his black hair, then knocks it against his thigh, sending puffs of dust from hat and trousers. With a sigh, he pushes the hat back onto his head.

  “Damnation,” he murmurs. “Inconvenient.... What’s the sentence?” He looks at Ivy.

  She stares back, frowning. “Don’t you want to know what they did?”

  He lifts the eyebrow of his good left eye. “They do something else?”

  “Else?” Ivy shakes her head, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

  The brows draw together. “They are hardly the first to be caught out—”

  “You knew?” Ivy scrambles to her feet. “You already knew about this?”

  Grip leans back as if she might rush him. “You did not know?”

  “How could—? I don’t—what? You—?” Ivy grabs a handful of her own greasy, dusty, tangled hair with a bandaged hand.

  Grip scowls. “They are your cousin and your friend. I presumed you knew.”

  She turns, as if to walk away, but finishes a complete circle instead, facing him once more. Where would she go?

  “I ... how—?” Does she want to know? A deep breath before she goes on. “How did you know?”

  “I do have one good eye, Miss Jerinson.”

  She gazes north, feeling the world spin away. “Even Rosalía knows,” she says at last.

  “Yes.”

  “Even their old trail partners know. Everyone knows besides Ivy.”

  “Apparently. What of their sentence?”

  Sentence? She shakes her head. “They are to be hanged in the morning.”

  He lets out a slow breath, staring back to Silver City. “With the ... enthusiasm in town tonight, we must wait until the early hours of morning to do anything. Their horses are paid on board—”

  “Wait—what?”

  “Too much carry on tonight. We’ll have to wait.”

  “I heard that. Wait for what?”

  Grip looks at her. After a moment, tone thick with annoyance and condescension, he says, “To remove them from their new address on Hoosegow Street.”

  “Break them out of jail? Are you out of your senses? We are not committing another crime on top of theirs. What would the point be in getting all four of us hanged at sunrise?”

  He watches her a long moment in silence, his expression unreadable, until Ivy cannot meet his eye, but looks to the north.

  After half a minute, Grip says softly, “You intend to leave them?”

  “That’s the law.”

  “I see.” Another painfully long moment slides away as both stand motionless beside their horses. “We’ll want a fire before sunset. Aim to gather or undress the horses?”

  “Horses.” She cannot see herself ripping up sagebrush and digging a fire pit with her wrapped hands.

  Half an hour later, with little light remaining, Ivy has the two horses stripped besides hobbles and, for Luck, the rope halter.

  She sits back on her blanket, the cloak now about her shoulders, though heat from the sun still bakes her. She blinks away tears as she gazes into the fire Grip already has blazing with a pot of Arbuckles’ and skillet of bacon. She is not getting a bath after all. Not even a lemon.

  He wordlessly hands her a rice cake across the fire, then watches her eat in equal silence. By the time she has finished the rice, he is on his feet, rummaging in his saddlebags. He withdraws a flask and steps around the fire to her.

  “What happened?” Looking at her hands as he kneels beside her.

  “Only some skin off. Knocked down in a saloon brawl.”

  “Were you?”

  When she glances up, Ivy is startled to see him smiling. She unwraps the now dirty rags which once were quality handkerchiefs.

  “Bite onto something?”

  “I’m fine.” She looks away, gritting her teeth as she holds out her palms.

  After he trickles what feels like acid over her hands, he brings a roll of linen gauze from his bags. He flips the bacon and, with her hands already dry with desert air and evaporating alcohol, returns to wrap them for her.

  Watching him wrap and tie with remarkable dexterity one-handed, Ivy asks, “What happened to your right arm?”

  “Old injury.”

  “I could have guessed that much.”

  Soon, she accepts a tin plate of bacon and a second rice cake, followed by a cup of hot coffee.

  The sun is setting, though neither move to kill the fire. How is it that the only times it starts to get cold out here they must remove their fire?

  “I ... don’t believe they are here,” Ivy says at last. “Not a whisper of trouble in Silver City.”

  Grip shakes his head, also watching the fire between them, leaned back against his saddle, sipping the coffee.

  “We’d probably be all right. In hills where the light is blocked from traveling any distance.”

  He nods.

  They leave the fire crackling down through sagebrush trunks, distant sounds of jubilation still reaching them from town, as the sky turns violet, then navy.

  Stars fill darkness, neither of the campers having moved, before Ivy says, “It’s just the way things are. Two wrongs do not make a right.”

  “Is a hanging or a jailbreak more of a wrong, Miss Jerinson?” He glances at her across flames and ashes.

  Ivy wipes her face quickly with the gauze at the back of her hand, blinking fast as she looks into the fire. “That’s the way the law works out here—hanging men. It’s not up to us to decide.”

  “There’s no death penalty in New Mexico Territory for their offense. The sentence was assigned arbitrarily by the justice or sheriff or whoever tried them.”

  “They deserve it.” But she must wipe her eyes once more, lips pressed together, clutching her cloak about her knees.

  Grip watches her, silent and motionless for many minutes.

  Finally he shifts, rests his empty cup beside the coals, then begins the delicate process of rolling a cigarette. And talks.

  “I rode in company many years, saw curious places, encountered many kinds of men. You don’t know what goes on, Miss Jerinson. Though I shall not say that is a regrettable circumstance. I gave up company in part because the world is short on honest, quiet men. Not from turning my back on sinners, or I should not have known fellowship to start. A sinful man may yet boast strength of character, honesty—”

  Ivy looks up. “There is no honesty in a man who hides his intentions, conceals his actions—”

  “You misunderstand, Miss Jerinson. An honest man is a man
to rely upon in the saddle, do his fair work, look out for the one he rides beside—not because he likes him or follows him, but because they ride together and hold true to their obligations as trail partners. He is, as they say, a good man to ride the river with.

  “Were I myself without trespass, perhaps I could look another in the eye and say I cannot overlook his wrongs. If they called it a crime against humanity, such as war, rather than a crime against nature, as it is, perhaps I could agree with the argument wherein man punishes fellow man for his sins. A crime against nature is a crime against God. How He sees fit to address the matter remains agreeable to me. Until then, unless a man makes his sin my concern, I am prepared to ride the river with him—be he sinner or saint, black or white, speaking my language or not—as long as he is an honest man on any trail.”

  When he falls silent, both of them looking into the fire, Ivy says, “Being aware of the crime is enough to make it another’s concern.”

  He holds in a breath of smoke for several seconds before slowly exhaling. “Years back, when Abilene was still a cowtown, a puncher—full as a tick—in a saloon in that dismal city made an indecent proposition to a friend of mine. Following further difficulty, I shot the puncher between the eyes and explained to the sheriff why, with agreement of witnesses. Some patrons spat upon the body as they dragged it out. No more remarks were passed.

  “If a man feels need to air vice in public, I do not begrudge another who takes action against him. But these are the exception. Sins of others were never meant to be cast at the feet of those living in equal or worse evildoing to judge—like a fox executed by tribunal of coyotes for stealing chickens. Nothing well has ever come of man attempting to play God.

  “I never saw the cowpuncher in from the trail who did not engage in obscene gluttony. Never saw a man win a bet and not take on prideful, even without open boast. Every man in this Territory knows where to find the whorehouse in his and neighboring towns. And where is one who has not, as youth or grown man or old-timer, ever practiced his acedia? Not on any matter, nor for any reason?

  “If you round up these men, and thousands more for thousands more or less sinful deeds, and preach to save them, strive to jail them, or seize the hangman’s noose, where lies an end?