Chapter 15
It was a pleasant drive home and didn’t take particularly long. They rode into the camp from the main road. Heads turned as they rode in. They had to be quite the sight.
“We should speak to Andrew,” Troy said. “Stop outside his tent and let’s see if he’s available.”
They did, and Kevin and Troy went into the tent. Lizzy climbed up into the passenger seat beside Anita. Anita would drop Lizzy off at her and Troy’s house on the way to the farm.
Kevin smiled at Anita, covered in mud and muck as she was. “I love you, you know,” he said.
“I love you too,” she said with a warm smile. “I’m so grateful we found each other, Kevin. See you at home.”
Kevin and Troy entered the tent and found Andrew sitting behind his desk.
“Good heavens! What happened to you?” he exclaimed as he looked up from his paperwork and saw what they looked like. “You smell like the bottom of a pond.”
“Funny you should say that,” Troy said. “We’ve been in the creek. Which has a whole lot more water in it now, by the way. Or I would guess it does, anyway.”
“What? Why?” Andrew asked.
“Because it was dammed up,” Troy said. “And we—Kevin, I, Lizzy, and Anita—just blew up the dam that was holding the water back.”
“Was that what those noises were?” Andrew asked, looking startled. “Everyone wanted to send a party up the creek to see what was going on.”
Between them, Kevin and Troy told Andrew everything that had happened since they left the town and went to San Antonio. Kevin had expected Andrew to look impressed, or at least happy, but his expression grew darker and darker as they spoke. When they were done, he shook his head sadly.
“You’ve gone and done it now,” he said with a sigh. “Why didn’t you just do what we agreed?”
“How would kidnapping the man have been better?” Troy asked.
“Because we would have had a bargaining chip,” Andrew said.
“We could have found out a lot more than you managed to get from his room. You got very little information for a lot of risk and time. And now we have to expect El Aguila to do something in retaliation. After all, you just blew up his dam. I’m sure he’s not going to be very happy with us. ”
Kevin hadn’t thought of it like that. Everything had seemed so immediate.
The town and mine didn’t have water. The dam was already being built and would soon be unbreachable.
That had to be fixed right away. At least it had seemed like the most urgent problem, and they had been in a position to fix it.
And yet, perhaps, instead of rushing in and doing things Troy’s way, they should have taken the time to think it through.
With a sinking feeling in his gut, Kevin realized that he had been so swept up in everything that he hadn’t been able to see the forest for the trees.
There was a lot of noise outside the tent. Kevin turned to look through the flap, but he saw nothing.
Troy was sulking with his arms folded across his chest. “Well, the water’s back. You’re welcome. You’re the one who pointed out how we could barely survive a few days without it.”
“Yes, thanks for that,” Andrew said dryly. “We could probably survive that better than an enraged El Aguila though.”
“Like his followers wouldn’t have retaliated if we kidnapped him!” Troy shot back angrily. “No matter what we did, there were going to be repercussions, Andrew. These are bandits we’re dealing with.”
Andrew sighed. “Let’s just hope that?—”
He was cut off as Hunter came charging into the tent.
“Andrew! We got trouble!” he cried.
Andrew, Kevin, and Troy jumped up as one man.
“What trouble?” Andrew demanded.
“Raiders have come to town. They came from upstream, and they’re setting fire to buildings and shooting folks indiscriminately,” Hunter said.
Andrew took a second to glare at Kevin and Troy, and then, picking up his pistol and holster, he strode from the tent.
“Was that our fault?” Kevin asked.
“Probably,” Troy said. He sighed. “Come on, I know where he keeps the other pistols.”
They were in a bureau drawer and were already loaded. Kevin and Troy each took one, and they set off toward where shouts and cries rang in the air.
Kevin stepped out into a disaster and was immediately horrified. Already, buildings were burning and people were screaming. He sent up a grateful prayer that Anita was at their farm and clear of this mess.
Troy’s expression had changed from that of a petulant child to a man facing his worst nightmare. All of their friends, their wives, and their homes were on the side of the creek that was most in danger.
“We have to protect the bridge!” Kevin shouted to Troy over the noise. “The miners will come and help, but if we lose the bridge, we won’t be able to get to the town before it burns to the ground!”
“But Lizzy is there!” Troy cried.
“Yes, and she definitely won’t make it if the miners don’t come and help,” Kevin said. “She can take care of herself.” He wondered if Anita could, given her slim experience with bandit incursions, and prayed that she wouldn’t need to learn tonight.
“Troy, we made this mess,” he insisted. “We have to fix it. We can’t just think about ourselves and our loved ones. This is for everyone!”
His words seemed to reach Troy and he nodded. “Okay. Let’s go!”
They rushed to the bridge and reached the far side just as two men with flaming torches reached it. It was clear that they planned to burn it along with everything else. The air was starting to fill with gray, billowing smoke as buildings burned.
Kevin aimed and fired. The bullet hit one man in the arm, and he dropped the torch. It rolled onto the bridge and began to smoke and smolder. The man screamed and toppled backward.
Moving quickly, they put out the fire by throwing the torches into the raging creek. The water was all frothy and foamy and filled with debris. The bridge planks had begun to smolder, but the flames hadn’t managed to catch yet.
Kevin looked back up the rise to the mine.
He could hear the bell ringing at the entrance, which told of trouble outside.
The miners were rising out of the ground in groups, but it would still be a while before they knew what was going on.
Still, those who were out of the mine came running with pickaxes and shovels in hand.
They didn’t know what was happening, but they’d seen enough bandit incursions to be ready to spring into action immediately.
Tools could be amazing weapons in the hands of those skilled in their use, Kevin mused as he shot another man trying to set the bridge ablaze. They were determined, but he and Troy could manage.
“Kevin!” someone yelled.
He looked back at the running miners and saw Ethan pointing to something on the bridge. Kevin looked down at the slats and frowned.
“They’ve gone underneath!” Kevin yelled to Troy, who took aim and shot a man approaching the bridge.
“Go deal with it. I’ll hold them off up here,” he said.
Kevin ran to the side of the bridge where the maintenance ladder was.
It led to a little ledge under the bridge that allowed someone needing to do repairs to get to the middle of the structure without getting wet.
It was a small platform that one could crawl on.
He reached it and saw two men were on it.
They had what looked like sticks of dynamite in their pockets.
They planned to blow the bridge to kingdom come.
Well, it was fair retaliation for the dam, Kevin figured, but he still couldn’t let that happen.
The support poles and beams made it impossible to get a clear shot from where he stood. Going after them on the crawl platform was the only way to reach them. Kevin climbed onto the three-foot-wide platform and took aim.
One of the men must have seen him because he turned, took aim, and fired at Kevin.
He ducked at the last moment. Pain shot through the top of his shoulder.
He cried out and fired wildly at his assailant, hitting him with an unexpectedly lucky shot, and the man went tumbling onto the banks of the now swiftly flowing creek.
The bandit’s friend turned, and Kevin lay flat on the platform as the other man squeezed off a couple of rounds from his own pistol that thunked into the wood close to Kevin’s head.
Then Kevin aimed and shot at him. He hit this man in the arm and the man dropped his gun. It went tumbling into the creek.
“If you surrender, I won’t kill you!” Kevin yelled at the man. “I promise.”
“You attacked us first!” the man yelled back.
“You dammed up the creek!” Kevin yelled. “We rely on this water for our town. You know that. El Aguila knows that.”
“What?” the man asked. “Who are you talking about? We’re contract workers. We work for some corporation. I don’t know any El Aguila.”
Kevin paused in shock. “What? Then why are you attacking our town?”
“Because the men in charge told us we have to,” the man said. He turned to face Kevin, and he could see the fear in the man’s eyes. “I’m telling you the truth. Most of us don’t even want to be here. We were hired to build a dam. That’s all.”
“Will you come quietly?” Kevin asked, head spinning with shock. Dear God. What have we done? “I’ll get you to our doctor.”
The man nodded.
“I’m Kevin,” Kevin said. “What’s your name?”
“It’s Joe,” the man said.
Now that Kevin got a good look at him, he saw that this man was younger than he was, and he was terrified.
“Okay,” Kevin said when they had crawled back to the ladder. “Let’s just wait here for the fighting to die down. Last thing we need is to be shot.”
Joe nodded.
For a while, he and Kevin sat in silence. It didn’t take long for the sounds of fighting to go quiet. There were a lot more miners than attackers, and soon there were only the sounds of folks putting out fires to be heard.
Kevin and Joe climbed back up the ladder and emerged onto the bridge.