Chapter 14
Tall and dapper, wearing a good suit, the man peered down at Jeff and sniffed. “They’re not much, but I guess they will have to do.”
Miguel nodded.
Jeff stared up at them. Was there some family resemblance there? It was something in the face shape and the set of the brown eyes, so dark and featureless. Perhaps he was imagining it. He couldn’t think how working out if Miguel was related to this person would make any difference.
“Who are you?” Robert asked in a cracked and hoarse voice. From the look of the bruising around his neck, he also had been choked. In fact, it seemed they all had.
Jeff had never seen his fellow Unity men looking quite so dejected and broken. And it hadn’t taken long. Only a few days of endless walking through the wilderness in the heat with little water and less food. They were too tired to even try to rush this man and attack him.
Jeff considered it briefly, as he was sure everyone had, but dismissed it. With thirty men out there with guns, all too happy to use them on Jeff and his friends, it was likely best not to try anything stupid.
They were in an old rundown building that seemed to stand alone on a little rise.
Tied once again to each other with their leashes tight around their necks but not so tight that they couldn’t breathe, they were powerless to do anything.
Also, four men with guns held their leashes and watched them with unfriendly eyes.
The man in the gray suit had only just arrived, although they had been sitting on the dirty floor for a long time. Long enough for the sun’s rays to change direction as they slanted through gaps in the wooden walls and roof.
“I said, who are you?” Robert said more forcefully.
Miguel stepped closer and backhanded him. Robert’s cheek was red when Miguel stepped back. “You will show respect.”
“Really?” Hunter asked. “Why?”
Miguel was about to hit him too, when the man in gray stopped him with a look.
“No, Miguel,” he said, shaking his head and making his black curls bob. “Don’t do that. We are not savages, no matter what these men think. We simply do business a certain way that is not compatible with theirs.”
Jeff couldn’t help but snort. “You do realize that business requires both parties to get something positive out of the deal? What you do isn’t business, it’s pillaging.”
The man shrugged. “That’s one opinion.” He smiled, showing very white teeth. “To answer your question, Sheriff Robert Hayes, my name is Roberto Manuel Ignacio Perez, and I speak for El Aguila.”
Jeff paused and stared. What did he mean?
“You speak for him?” Hunter asked. “Why does he need someone like you to speak for him?”
“Because in this line of business, there are many people who don’t appreciate what El Aguila can do for them,” Mr. Perez said.
“They are shortsighted. Tell me, Mr. Hayes, Mr. Carter, Mr. Watson, and Mr. Marks, are you and your friends shortsighted? Do you need to be educated a little more? We are happy to provide such an education, but it will leave some of those lovely young women in your town as widows.” His expression changed to one of great regret.
“It will be a pity. Or you can do the right thing right now and listen to what I have to say.”
Jeff looked over at the others. He shrugged. “I guess we don’t have anything pressing to do.”
“We could spare you a few minutes,” Hunter said with one of his cheeky grins.
“Hey! I’m not with them,” Joel blurted out.
“Please, you have to let me go. I’ve got nothing to do with this.
They hired me and my cart. Just let me go, and I won’t tell a soul where you are or what you’re doing.
I promise. I just want to go.” He was crying.
Tears ran down his dirty face, leaving clean streaks behind them.
Mr. Perez regarded Joel as though he was something horrible on the bottom of his shoe.
“All right,” he said, now only looking at Jeff, Hunter and Robert and completely ignoring Joel.
“This is the situation. We do something to you, you do something to us, and on and on we go. We lose some men, and you lose infrastructure. It’s a situation that is both tiresome for us all and difficult to win.
But there is still a small window in which we can negotiate.
We can find a way forward that will end all of this.
” He gestured to the rotten building around them, but Jeff understood what he meant.
He meant all the tit-for-tat. The eye-for-an-eye approach they had been using where for each affront and each injury, the other party was made to pay.
“You’ve made your point,” Robert said.
“What are you proposing?” Jeff asked.
“I am proposing a ceasefire,” Mr. Perez said, treating Jeff to that dazzling smile again.
“I am proposing a partnership. You see, when you interfered with our conquest of a certain small town to the south, you botched El Aguila’s plans, and he was forced to enter you into his thinking.
And then he found out about your copper mine and your little blossoming town.
It is a chance to build something lasting. He wants to be part of it.”
“Part of it?” Jeff asked. “How? Does he know anything about mining?”
“No, but you do,” Mr. Perez said. “El Aguila knows about running vast operations. His reach is quite phenomenal. He has fingers in many, many pies. He can bring stability, prosperity, and safety to your little town of Unity. You can live there for generations without fear. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“And what will this cost us?” Hunter asked, scowling at the man. “This peace and safety you’re peddling. What will we have to pay to make it happen?”
Mr. Perez nodded. “Of course, there is a price. Everything comes with one, as you well know.”
“So, what is it?” Robert asked. He had been quiet during the discussion, but Jeff knew he had been absorbing everything said. “What do we have to give up?”
Mr. Perez shrugged. “Nothing difficult. You pay a tithe to El Aguila, and we will keep you and your town as safe as a baby in his mother’s arms. You will want for nothing. We will make sure that you are prosperous because the more prosperous you are, the more prosperous we are. Do you understand?”
Jeff understood. On the surface this was a wonderful deal, and a desperate man might make it without considering what lay beneath the fine words.
It was a classic shakedown. Protection offered for a price.
At first it would all be fine. The price wouldn’t be high, and it would be easy to pay it.
But there would be increases. There would be extra costs, and soon more would be going out than coming in, and the people who had worked so hard to make Unity great would starve.
“You have to be out of your mind if you think that—” Hunter began.
But Jeff and Robert had reached the same conclusion, it seemed, as they both spoke over him.
“We need time to think!”
“We have to talk to the others in Unity!”
Mr. Perez frowned. He looked from Hunter, who was seething with anger, to Robert and Jeff. Then he grinned and stepped closer to Hunter.
“You might want to think it through a little before you jump to conclusions,” he said, bending down to look Hunter in the eye.
“Clearly, your friends are thinking hard about the benefits of this arrangement.” He stood up straight.
“With El Aguila on your side, you will without a doubt be able to grow the town until it is a great city. It will be a center of trade and people will flock to live there. There will be schools, churches, a fancy town hall, all of the things that make a place great. You can have a theater and entertainment. Whatever you want. And all it will cost is a little old tithe. A nothing.”
“The fact still stands,” Robert said. “We don’t make the decisions in Unity without discussing them. You’ll have to let us go so that we can take this message to our people.”
Mr. Perez nodded. “I understand. I had hoped to catch the bigger fish with the lure of the camp. I thought perhaps Andrew would come for his younger brother, but you don’t seem that close. Well, no matter.”
He turned away.
“We need to go,” Robert said. “We can’t deliver a message like this.”
Mr. Perez stopped and turned back. “Oh, no, you misunderstand. Only one of you will be delivering the message.”
He turned and left the building.
A moment later, one of the four guards brought a box and put it in the middle of the floor. Then Jeff and his friends were made to stand. The guards yanked on their leashes, and Jeff felt his throat constrict as it grew tighter. He tried to loosen it, but his hands were tied behind his back.
“Kneel!” the guard said, jabbing the barrel of his pistol into the back of Jeff’s head. He did as he was told. Oh, how he wanted to punch the man in the nose, but there was no escaping a bullet fired three inches from his head.
On his knees, he watched in horror as the leash rope was fed into the box through a hole in the side. Something clicked inside the box and Jeff couldn’t move. If he pulled back, the leash pulled tighter. He crouched still with his hands behind his back, useless to him.
Once again there was no escape.
He could see that his friends were suffering the same treatment, each with their leash’s rope being fed into the box. How were they going to get out of this? Would the thing explode if they moved? How were they supposed to give anyone a message if they were dead? None of this made any sense.
“Three of the ropes are attached to the mechanism inside. It will shoot a bolt into each of your brains,” Miguel said. “Enjoy working out who lives and who dies.”
And just like that, he and the guards left.
Jeff’s heart was beating like a raging bull in his chest. He couldn’t think; he couldn’t swallow. Who was destined to die, and who was going to live with the guilt of being the one chosen to deliver the message to the town? This was terrible.
“Okay,” Robert said, his voice slightly muffled from how he was crouched. “This is bad.”