“You don’t know what human beings are capable of, or you would see one crime relative to another. I should rather save the rope for a man draped in trappings of virulent evil. In a world of risers and shootists and the kind of men who bar doors to trap the former among innocents....”
Grip stubs out his cigarette. “Your ideas on the matter perhaps differ, Miss Jerinson.” He pushes back the brim of his hat with his thumb, looking up from glowing coals to her face. “Each man, each woman, must decide for him or herself with whom to ride the river.”
He rolls another cigarette before the fire’s light has died to ashy specks. This he smokes in silence, then drops the butt in coals and lies back on his blanket, head on saddle skirts.
Ivy pushes dirt over ash with her boots, a slow scraping at dry earth. She sits in the dark, shivering, tears in her eyes, for many hours, thinking often, not of Grip’s suddenly profuse words, but those of her father.
Silver City is deathly silent in the distance, sky still inky, when Ivy eases stiffly up from her place on the ground. She steps around the fire to Grip.
Cautiously, she touches his shoulder. “Grip?”
He sits up in an instant, pocket revolver in his hand.
“Nothing wrong. We only ... must get to town. We haven’t much time.”
Thirty-Fourth
Keys to the City
Ivy’s heart pounds in her throat as she leads Luck and Chucklehead through town. Below moon and starlight, with few flickering oil lights from windows, she sees a mass of revelry debris as if a battle was fought over this ground: streamers and smashed piñatas, corn husks, wood shavings, tin cups and plates, broken glass shining like silver. A horse shoe lies in the center of the road. A gleaming stain on a shop porch looks like blood. Many cats and a few dogs glide silently out of their path as they move with measured steps, eyes and ears alert to every disturbance.
El Cohete and Chucklehead are kept to the outside. On the inside, with Grip, Elsewhere plods along as if he is frequently led from his warm stall in the small hours of morning to wander strange towns. Luck, with Ivy, starts and throws her head up at every scampering cat, every bit of paper shifting in the faint breeze.
“Do you know where it is?” Ivy whispers.
Grip jerks his chin forward and she moves beside him in silence with the four horses to the corner of an unknown intersection. Wondering how he knows his way around Silver City in the dark, Ivy pauses before reaching the patch of yellow light cast from the small, square window of the sheriff’s office. Attached, in the back, must be the jail.
“Someone is awake in there,” Ivy says in scarcely a breath. “It’s guarded.”
“You supposed they would tie them up like dogs and turn in for the night?”
Speaking of dogs ... where is Yap-Rat? Ivy has not seen Grip’s dog since they reached Silver City.
“We could fix a chain to the bars. Between all four of the horses, do you think they could pull them from the wall?”
Grip, who has slung El Cohete’s rope and Elsewhere’s reins once around a hitching post, turns to her in the dark just beyond that alarming patch of oil light.
“What?”
“How are we going to ... break into the jail...?”
“Why would anyone build windows in a jail?” He snatches reins from her bandaged hands and slings Luck’s and Chucklehead’s across the second post. “Stay behind me. Find the keys.”
“Find keys? We’re going to use the keys?”
“Unless you have a better notion on how to open an iron door.” He walks between the hitching posts, through the pool of light, up porch steps, and, with Ivy rushing after, opens the door.
They step into a small office of adobe. A white pine desk rests immediately to their left. To the right, a locked iron case—perhaps confiscated weapons or evidence, or the lawmen’s own gun locker. Beyond and ahead, a door and wall of iron bars from floor to ceiling. Ivy has half a second to take it in by the light of an oil lamp on a shelf behind the guard, seated at a desk.
Then Grip has stepped across the room. As the man jumps—“What the blazes!”—grabbing for a Colt revolver lying across the desk, his magazine serial falls from scrambling hands. He has scarcely started, fingers just reaching the gun, when Grip strikes him in the throat with his left hand, slamming the deputy sideways from his toppling chair. Grip moves so fast, the Colt has not even struck the ground as he pounds a knee into deputy’s bent-over diaphragm. With a gasping expulsion of air, the man is knocked to the ground, Grip following, catching the throat. This firmly in hand, he drags the thrashing man, fighting to breathe, pummeling Grip’s wrist and arm, across the stone floor to the iron door. Inside, Sam stands at the bars, eyes wide.
“Keys,” Grip says, bashing the man’s head into iron.
Ivy can only stand, watching in horror from the middle of the room, before she realizes Grip is speaking to her. She springs to the desk and starts throwing open draws, searching across the surface, then scanning walls for a hook.
“Nowhere,” Ivy says, fresh panic surging through her, hands shaking as she searches.
“Check underneath.” Grip looks around to her, pinning the thrashing deputy to bars. The young man is turning blue, his fingers digging into Grip’s around his throat, and Ivy resists shouting at Grip to let him go.
Her painful hands fly along the bottom of the desk to feel a brass hook and iron keyring. With a grab, she runs to the cell, scrambling from key to key to find a fit. To her right, a short hall runs down to two more tiny cells. She yanks the door wide, then, keyring in hand, darts to the next doors: one empty, then Melchior standing at the bars of the last.
“Was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” he says, hands on the bars as she struggles with the lock. Blood mats his hair, a dry streak of it running down his face where a livid bruise shows from the impact of the chair.
“As was I.” Ivy avoids looking at him as she hears the lock click.
“His bandana—” from Grip to Sam. He’s dragged the deputy into the cell.
Ivy locks the door back after Melchior has slipped out. She is not sure why. It just seems polite.
Back at the first cell, Grip stuffs a wad of black neckerchief into the deputy’s mouth and orders a very reluctant Sam to tie it behind his head.
Melchior runs past Ivy to snatch a pair of iron cuffs off the wall behind the desk. He and Grip slap these on the man’s wrists while Sam steps back, watching in alarm.
“You didn’t strangle him?” Ivy asks, unable to see any breathing from the now apparently senseless man.
“Dazed,” Grip says. “He’ll get his wind back.”
Handcuffed and gagged, they leave the man on the floor in the middle of the cell. Grip snatches keys from Ivy’s hand, locks the door, then whirls away.
He pauses, looking at them. “What the hell are you all waiting for?”
They run, Melchior grabbing the door, the rest dashing through to hitching posts. Grip throws the iron keyring up over his shoulder onto the roof as he walks out.
Ivy hasn’t a moment to criticize this as she grabs her horse’s reins and unslings them from the post. Sam helps her up. Melchior leaps into the saddle like a spring-loaded toy, Chucklehead so startled he rears, pivoting on his hind legs as the rest of the horses spin away from the post at command of their riders. Then all four are off, tearing back through town as if on a starting pistol.
Through debris, back up the road they followed here with the coach scarcely more than twelve hours before, the four riders streak northward, soon leaving Silver City far behind.
Thirty-Fifth
Rain
The strange thing about that jailbreak, the frustrating thing, Ivy reflects as miles slide away below Luck’s hooves, is how simple it was.
In the past several weeks she has been attacked, bitten, thrown, kicked, shot at, chased. She escorted two teams of valuable supplies, warned cities of danger, hunted outlaws, and attended a wedding and an Independence Day celeb
ration—both of which she was lucky to escape with her life.
The jailbreak was not only simple. It was “plumb” easy. Nothing at all. Why did any man hang out here? Unless he had no friends to turn him loose.
So it was not the jail experience which troubled her as they rode swiftly north. Instead, she told herself it was Meriwether Kiedrid. That first night, several miles from Silver City, as they rested their horses at a walk, Melchior asked what happened with Kiedrid. She had completely forgotten the man. Now she had ample time on the silent trail to kick herself over this, which she did with great mental fervor. Not only was two thousand dollars lost to them, but the hundred-odd he had given Sam was confiscated by the sheriff before Melchior could gamble a nugget of it. Whether Grip had also forgotten or ignored the matter, she never asked.
That should have been enough: twelve days’ ride, more than half with that oily beast Kiedrid, pain and suffering of a trail she had refused to travel in the first place, all for nothing. Yet, as she gazes from distant horizon, to Luck’s shifting red mane, to buffalo grass slipping away behind them, she must encourage her mind back to this calamity so unbearable it makes her sick to her stomach. If she does not watch herself, does not pull her thoughts away, they will rest on her companions. Her own ignorance, more proof of her failings.
The undiscussed void looms between her and them—even Grip, for Ivy finds it irritating that his behavior toward the lot of them has changed not in the slightest. Why should it when he knew? When everyone knew but blind Ivy? And what had they expected from her? She knew no such men in Boston—in civilization. Of course not. Although ... more agonizing ... perhaps she did know such people.... She could not spot two right under her nose, after all.
Mind back to Kiedrid. Think of Kiedrid. But don’t vomit.
It should not matter about Melchior—would not if not a blood relative; the shame of it. She knew there was something unpleasant about him from the first time he refrained from tipping his hat to her. But Sam. Sam should have ... something. Said something? Done something? Should have removed himself from polite company. So she did not know him, did not see him, did not feel—
But he had removed himself from polite company. All this time and she never asked why he came west to see more of America than the East Coast after his steamer from Southampton docked over two years before. It made sense that such a man would wish to escape. West to open spaces. West to privacy. West to trails and ranches and a ninety percent male population.
Kiedrid. Bastard. Though not his fault, was it? Her own asinine fault.
Ivy bites her tongue, face downcast. Without her hat, she has fashioned a protective screen with fabric cut from her chemise. With the sungoggles she found in her saddlebags, she has been faring well enough below the endless sun. Grip has twice more poured alcohol on her raw hands and she keeps them bandaged. With only their water bottles, water is growing frighteningly scarce for both riders and horses. She thought spring was bad enough for riding about this country. Now summer lends a fresh element of danger—as if risers, humans, horses, snakes, wild animals, food, and accidents are not enough.
The third night, Ivy unrolls her blanket—far from the men, as she has done since they left Silver City—and discovers her lips are so dry and split, she tastes as much blood as water as she tries for a tiny sip at her water bottle.
Rosalía never looked such a mess on the trail. Ivy must ask for recommendations. But Rosalía is not here. Rosalía knew. Everyone else knew. Except for Marian, the saloon girl. Poor thing. And Xochitl, the girl of all work at the boarding house. At least she, Ivy, did not make such a fool of herself. Or ... had she?
Ivy shudders, leaning back against a dry rock bank, looking up to see Es Feroz slink toward her through twilight gloom. Ivy holds out her arms to the fox and settles back with Es Feroz burrowing her sharp muzzle through Ivy’s hair, sniffing in her ear, then nibbling her collar. The fox visited last night as well. Now Ivy has seen her off and on all day.
Yap-Rat returned after they left Silver City, but Grip must be doing something to keep him at a distance.
She hears the men whisper without catching meaning. Sam has not said a word to her since Silver City besides an apology when he helped her mount and Luck managed to swing away from him. Ivy has returned the favor, only exchanging a few words with Melchior as well, mostly about Kiedrid and their finances. Grip rarely says anything to any of them, no more or less than before. Besides this, Melchior and Sam only infrequently speak to each other. All in all, the return trip is proving the most silent days and miles Ivy has ever known. For six, eight, ten hours, they traveled without a word between them, not even to their horses.
Now they have ridden all day through a gorge impassable on the way south with the coach, but more direct and, Ivy hopes, not as dangerous. Back to the central part of the Territory which has so far proved home to hordes. Two days out from Silver City, they caught glimpses of risers standing in groups in the open desert: sunbathing. No one mentioned pursuing a bounty and they found their way into this shaded gorge soon after.
Ivy slides her fingers into her fox’s warm fur, watching stars until they blur to silver streaks. When she closes her eyes, two tears run down her temples into her hair.
“Miss Jerinson.”
Ivy’s lids snap open to near blackness. The warm pressure of Es Feroz on her chest has vanished. A dark shape looms over her. This does not trouble her, for she can tell at once by the outline of the hat and width of the shoulders it is Grip waking her. What startles her enough to sit straight up, blinking heavenward, is the feel of raindrops on her face.
“Time to move,” Grip says.
Ivy gazes dazedly up, feeling fat drops splash her cheeks, brow, parched lips. No stars at all above now. Only smooth black cloud making the night’s darkness seem far deeper than every other she has spent in the desert.
“What...?” Ivy says as Grip straightens. “I didn’t know it rained here.”
He looks down at her, though she cannot see his face, only the outline of the movement. “That would make this land a miracle, Miss Jerinson. Get up.”
“Why?” But Ivy scrambles after him, wrapping her cloak about herself, then snatching for her bedroll. “Can’t we shelter against the wall? There have been overhangs all along the way down here.”
“Too low,” Grip says, walking away, though Ivy cannot imagine how he sees where to go.
A horse stamps nearby. Ivy looks around to see shapes. Sam and Melchior with their horses. Faintly, she makes out one or the other slinging a saddle onto a horse’s back. The second, what must be Melchior with the tallest horse, tightens a cinch.
Too low? Is it not better to be low, in shelter? But he did not question her when she said they must leave in the night with the coach. She says nothing while she rolls her blanket, often pausing as she gropes in darkness, looking up with a smile, feeling more and more drops turn dust to mud on her skin.
“Got the mare’s outfit?” Melchior’s voice.
“Here,” Ivy says, feeling she should whisper. She finds a strap to attach her bedroll, cannot find the other, but gives up and, struggling with the weight, lifts the saddle in her arms. The bridle hangs from the leg brace.
Melchior takes the whole kit from her, feeling carefully for the pommel, then Luck’s withers while Sam holds her halter.
Ivy reaches to a vague, black bulk. She feels Elsewhere rub his forehead down the length of her arm. She scratches his crest. He presses his velvet nose up to her chin and she blows gently in his nose as he huffs.
Again she turns her face up, opening her mouth to feel drops on her tongue. It’s really starting to pound down now, warm and forceful, soaking her exposed hair, her sleeves, the bandages on her hands. She tries to let her mouth fill. Amazing. Elsewhere butts her elbow with his muzzle and she continues scratching him.
“Ivy?” Sam’s voice near her in the dark, tentative.
She can just tell by outline he holds something out to her. Sliding
her boots through gravel to avoid tripping, she reaches to feel his hand slip into hers—not giving her anything, only guiding her to her saddle. Sam’s hand feels icy, fingers tense.
Ordering herself to think of something else—finding her way, the beautiful rain, rattlesnakes, horses, toadstools—she releases his hand as he lifts her to the saddle. She cannot speak to him. Now, she cannot ignore him.
She settles in her wet saddle and accepts reins from his cold hand, finally saying, “Thank you.”
Sam stands still at Luck’s shoulder, looking up at her. “I—” he stops and she cannot tell if he was about to say her name or, “I” something. He pauses, swallows. “You are of course welcome,” he says, stepping around Luck’s head to Elsewhere.
Hooves crunch thunderously into rock and sand as if tramping through a riverbed as they start out. El Cohete leads with sure steps, Grip giving him his head, Luck stepping off at his flank, stiff and tossing her head into rain. Elsewhere follows Luck and Chucklehead trails, snorting, seeming alarmed by the downpour.
Ivy pulls the hood of her cloak about her head, but the wool is already soaked and heavy. Her fingers slip on wet reins, her skirts slip on the saddle, her boot slides out of the stirrup and she must poke her toe into Luck’s ribs to find it again. Rain falls so thick and fast into her eyes she can scarcely keep them open, not that it makes much difference in the dark.
Ahead, she hears Grip cursing in Spanish under his breath, sound from the rain now pounding about her like dozens of tiny drums.
“Grip?” Melchior calling from behind. “Got to find a—”
“I know,” Grip snaps, cutting him off. “We’re looking. Banks are too sharp.”
With their words, Ivy realizes for the first time that they’re looking for a trail up from the gorge. Yet this is not what sends an icy wave skating down her spine. What makes her shudder, catching her breath, is that both voices sound scared.
“What is it?” Ivy asks. “What’s wrong with the rain?” Her words are snatched away to nothing by beating drops.
Lightfall Two: Fox, Flight, Fire (Lightfall, Book 2) Page 16