Chapter 4
Sometimes Robert found himself standing on the wall and wishing things were different. When it came to El Aguila, he had few avenues of information gathering, and most of the time, all Robert could do was react to whatever the man and his seemingly endless supply of bandits did.
The lookout in the nearest watch tower leaned out of the doorway and signaled him to come over.
In his late thirties, George was a stocky, stolid man who had the eyes of a hawk and the patience of a saint. He could sit in that tower and watch the landscape for hours without getting bored.
“There’s a raiding party heading to the bottom gate,” George said matter-of-factly. “Should we send out a welcoming party?”
Of late, the raiding parties hadn’t been terribly big, and it was easy enough for Robert to dispatch a couple of gunmen to either sit on the wall and shoot at them until they went away or to send a few riders out to intercept them.
“Let me take a look,” Robert said.
Taking the spyglass, he held it to his eye and took in the sight. There were about six men on horseback riding toward the gate. They weren’t close enough yet to pose a threat and seemed not to be interested in coming closer as they turned to their right, suddenly heading up toward the top gate.
“What are they doing?” Robert asked.
George shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
Something nagged at Robert’s gut. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He could see the same certainty dawn in George’s eyes too.
“It’s a diversion!” Robert and George said at the same time.
“Okay, so what do we do? Sound the alarm?” George asked.
Robert considered this for a moment. Sounding the alarm would bring everyone from their work to the wall, and that might be exactly what the bandits were hoping for.
“No, get a small team together. If they’re drawing our gaze out there on the plain, then the danger must be closer to us than that,” Robert reasoned. “We need to find it.”
His mind replayed all the times El Aguila’s men had snuck in under their noses and caused trouble, the most notable of which was when they blew up the bridge.
Robert headed to the ladder and climbed down quickly. They had to be targeting one of the weak spots in the wall. That was all that made sense. To target the gates that were reinforced and protected by gunmen would be foolish.
If he was El Aguila, where would he target? Not the most obvious weakness, like the grates where the creek flowed through the wall. Those, Robert had boobytrapped with a wonderful little invention of Troy’s that would leave any malicious intruder headless.
That left the ridge up by the mine.
The wall itself, he realized. It would be tricky to scale, but it could be done by a small team of good climbers. That was the target.
“Robert! Michael and Andrew are looking for y—” Jeff began as he walked up, but Robert grabbed his arm, silencing him.
“Come with me.”
“What? Where?” Jeff asked, perplexed.
“We’re being attacked,” Robert said and explained quickly as they hurried through the mine yard, past the refinery, over the dump heaps where all the rubble was piled high.
“Are you sure?” Jeff asked.
“No,” Robert said. “But I’m working on a hunch.”
They rushed over to the ridge. It was shale and full of loose, slippery stones. It was hard enough to scale on this side, where the slope was gentler. On the other hand there would be no getting up without grappling hooks or some other aid to climbing.
Robert was out of breath, panting, and his hands were scraped when he finally neared the top of the ridge. Jeff was about to crest it, making himself an excellent target, when Robert pulled him down.
A bang sounded from the other side of the ridge.
“Someone just shot at me!” Jeff exclaimed, outraged. “What are we going to do?”
“Crawl up there and shoot them,” Robert said. “Preferably without getting shot ourselves.”
They crawled to the crest of the ridge carefully and peered over.
As Robert had suspected, bandits were trying to climb the sheer rock face.
It was a ninety-degree drop of about a hundred feet.
Not something to be taken lightly, but there were hand and footholds in the rock’s imperfections.
The men climbing industriously were using them to great advantage.
There were three of them and another two on the ground below with guns.
“Here we go,” Jeff said and leaned over the side, taking a wild shot at one of the men.
Robert gritted his teeth and leaned out over the rockface too. He took quick aim at one of the gunmen on the ground and knew he’d missed the moment he pulled the trigger.
He and Jeff alternated, ducking behind the rock to shield themselves from the shots fired up at them.
There was a scream and then a sickening thud and Jeff peered over the edge. He sat back down, holding his gun in both hands, his eyes wide.
“What is it?” Robert asked.
“They shot their own man,” he said, amazed. “Shot him right off the rocks. No idea why!”
“One less for us to shoot,” Robert said, making a mental note to say a prayer for forgiveness later. “Come on. Let’s show them there isn’t any way into our town except by invitation.”
Jeff nodded.
Robert leaned over the ridge and took aim, but there was no one there. Then he looked up into the grinning, angry face of a man he didn’t know. The shock itself rendered him momentarily frozen, staring down the barrel of the man’s gun at a terrible smile.
Bang!
Robert closed his eyes, waiting for the pain … but it didn’t come.
He opened his eyes. The bandit lay dead at his feet, the smile permanently wiped from his lips.
“That’s the last of them,” Jeff said, his gun smoking.
Robert exhaled heavily and whispered that prayer for forgiveness, as well as thanksgiving for his life being spared. He wouldn’t want to die when Lucy had only just arrived in town!
As they made their way back down, he said, “Think Troy could invent something up here? Some kind of trap?”
Jeff nodded. “I think we’re going to need it. Now, you really have to go and see Michael and Andrew. They’re waiting for you.”
“Right,” Robert said and hurried off to what was likely going to be another long and dull meeting.
“Hey, at least they’ve promised to feed you,” Jeff called, reading his mind.
That’s a small mercy.
“Are you sure you’re not a little distracted? You were late for this meeting, after all,” Andrew asked Robert with a wry smile on his face. His expression said it all. Isn’t your mind on the pretty lady who traveled across the country to meet you?
They were meeting in Andrew’s dining room and had shared a delicious meal, which his wife, Julie, had made. She had eaten with them and then gone upstairs to see to the baby.
“Distracted?” Robert asked, frowning, pretending not to understand what they were hinting at. “We were trying to stop a couple of bandits coming over the ridge.”
“But they can’t come that way,” Michael said.
“Seems they found some climbers who disagreed,” Robert said.
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “We had our hands full.”
“You took care of it?” Andrew asked soberly.
“We did,” Robert said. “Troy, we need to ask you to set up something so we know if anyone tries coming in that way again.”
“First thing in the morning,” Troy promised.
Robert nodded. “Good.”
“Ah, so you weren’t out with Lucy?” Warren asked, sounding almost upset. “I thought you two were getting along.”
“We are,” Robert said. It came out stiffly. He hated discussing his personal life, even with his closest friends.
The others shared glances that seemed to say he was being difficult.
“You have to admit, Lucy is quite the firecracker,” Michael said. “She was very handy with her gun when we were in the cart. Are you planning to deputize her?”
“No,” Robert said, shaking his head. “She can be a volunteer if she wants to, like anyone else in town.”
Lucy was a good shot, and she could definitely help should El Aguila send his forces against the wall again, but other than that, she should be safe in town, not sticking her neck out where it might lose her head.
“So, we still have nothing new on the bandits?” Andrew asked. “We’re still just as vulnerable.” The levity had left the meeting, and they were down to brass tacks now.
“We’re still vulnerable, yes, but only until we get ourselves hooked up to the railway system,” Ethan said. “I’ve got a meeting with their representative next week. He’s coming in from San Antonio, and with luck, he will find us to be a favorable town.”
“That is good news,” Michael said. “Mac will be thrilled to read about that.”
“Dorothy has a whole report ready to go to him,” Warren said, cleaning his glasses on a napkin.
“Do we get to see this report before it’s sent?” Andrew asked.
Somewhere off in the house, the sound of a baby crying filtered through the closed door.
There were muffled sounds of Julie speaking in a soothing tone, and then the cry halted. Andrew relaxed. “Christopher is cutting his first tooth.”
“I’ve heard that’s a difficult time,” Warren offered.
“It is … We don’t get a lot of sleep between the fevers and the almost constant crying,” Andrew said wearily.
Robert couldn’t help but think that it would be easier for them if there wasn’t the constant threat of attack hanging over their heads.
As the town apothecary, Julie had been forced to work the whole time she was pregnant and after she had the baby too.
There had been no time for her to just enjoy being a mother.
It wasn’t that Robert knew anything about children, but he was certain they needed their parents to be rested and focused on them for a while. All this did was strengthen his resolve to find out all he could about the man who was making their lives so difficult.
“… about that report,” Andrew repeated, drawing them back to order.