Chapter 8
Thomas hesitated for a moment before deciding what he wanted to say in the telegram. Paying by the word made sending a message difficult. Luckily, he and Luke had always been close growing up, and he was relatively certain that his brother would understand what he meant.
He paid extra for the message to be sent and delivered that day.
“Please, I need a response today if possible, even if it’s just to say that no one was home and the message couldn’t be delivered,” Thomas said.
The post office clerk nodded. “Okay. We’ll do what we can.”
“Thank you,” Thomas said, and he left.
It felt better to have sent the message. Now he might be able to work out if the note he’d received in his locker was genuine or just one of the fellows playing a joke. A horrible joke, but one nonetheless.
“Did you send it?” Clary asked. She was watching the bucket chain throwing water on the fire.
“I did,” Thomas said with a nod. “I feel much better now.”
“Good,” she said. “So, can you tell me what’s going on?” She looked quite fed up with him, which made sense. It was never nice to be the one who didn’t know what was going on.
He considered her for a moment. What harm could it do? Clary was honest and had nothing to do with El Aguila.
“Let’s walk,” he said.
She accepted his arm again, and he set a slow pace and spoke in a soft voice. They were far from alone on the street, but no one was paying them any attention. Everyone was focused on the fire, which finally seemed to be coming under some sort of control.
“It started shortly after Andrew and Michael set up the mine here,” Thomas said. “I saw an advertisement they put in the local paper and came to join them and work as a miner about four months into their mining operation.”
He went on to tell her about the refugees whom the Unity folks saved from El Aguila’s bandits.
He told her how, from that moment on, the town and the mine had been under fire.
El Aguila had sent so many men against them.
He had tried to blow them up, to shoot them, to overwhelm them with force, but all to no avail.
The men and women of Unity always fought back.
“But we can’t seem to get rid of him,” Thomas admitted. “We’re struggling because he has such great numbers, and he’s never among them. He has leaders who run his troops of bandits, and they report to him, but he’s never in the field, never under fire. We don’t even know what he looks like.”
“This sounds like more than bandits,” Clary said thoughtfully. “This sounds like something much bigger.”
Thomas nodded. “It is, and we’re working to uncover what and who and how.”
“All right,” Clary said. “So, who is this Mr. Douglas?”
“He’s actually Douglas MacGregor, and he owns the investment firm that made it possible for Andrew and Michael to set up the mine and the town,” Thomas said, speaking even softer so that Clary had to lean toward him to hear.
“And he’s here?” she asked.
“Yes, there was a coup in the company, and his partners managed to oust him,” Thomas said. “They’re all in El Aguila’s pocket.”
“Really?” Clary asked, her lovely eyes wide in surprise. “That’s interesting. Then he must be someone who could get to those people. I guess you’re right, and he’s not out here in Texas. Where is the firm based?”
“New York.”
“I suppose you took a look at Mr. MacGregor’s rivals and his friends and supporters?” Clary asked so matter-of-factly that it surprised Thomas.
“What?” Thomas asked. They hadn’t thought of that. “Why would we look into his friends and supporters? They’re on his side.”
“Are they?” she asked, giving him a quizzical look.
Clary used her free hand to rub her chin.
“A couple of years ago, my father almost lost the coaching company. We hit a rough patch, and he borrowed money from a friend. The friend was really supportive at first. He said my father could have very relaxed repayment terms for the loan, and everything was very friendly. Then, when my father somehow managed to pay the loan back in record time, something he thought would be a good thing, his friend began to do strange things. He began to insist that he now had shares in the company and was going to buy my father out. Anyway, it turned out my father’s friend wasn’t much of a friend, if you follow my meaning. ”
“What did your father do?” Thomas asked.
“He told his friend that if he wanted to have shares, then all he had to do was tell my father and they could work something out,” Clary said. “But after all the nasty business, the friendship died. I think he never really was my father’s friend.”
“You’re probably right,” Thomas said. “We should mention that to the others when we get back to the inn.”
Clary nodded. “Yes. Sometimes the snake you’re looking for is right under your foot, but you can’t see him until he bites you.”
Thomas couldn’t have put it better.
Soon they reached the Lucky Bull and went straight into the dining room. The whole place was packed with people who had been fighting the fire for hours and needed a break.
Mr. Sparks was telling jokes and pouring drinks with a huge smile on his fleshy, red-nosed face.
Thomas got Clary a cider and himself a pint of a local beer, and they made their way to the table the others were sitting at. Mac was with them, although he looked very different from the last time Thomas had seen him.
He had cleaned up and had his hair cut and his beard shaved off. He was dressed in a good suit and looked as though he had lost a pound or two. When Thomas and Clary reached the table, Thomas introduced Clary, and Mac shook her hand with a smile.
“I’ve brought her up to speed on everything,” Thomas said.
“Thomas,” Lucy said, visibly surprised. “Not that we mind Clary being part of this, but could you at least let us know before you spill all our secrets to someone new?”
“I didn’t think we could keep things from her,” Thomas said, feeling a little defensive. “She’s honest and trustworthy and has some good ideas.”
“Really?” Mac asked. “Because we’ve just about run out. I haven’t made any significant progress and neither has Sadie back in New York. It’s terribly frustrating.”
Thomas let Clary tell them the story of her father almost losing the company to a friend.
“I know it’s on a much smaller scale,” Clary said. “But it is similar, I think.”
“You never suspect your friends,” Robert said, shaking his head. “We should have thought of that.”
“Yes, we should have, but we were so focused on the traitors in New York we didn’t think that El Aguila might be hiding among those Mac counts as friends.”
“It would explain how El Aguila always seems to know what we’re doing,” Warren said, rubbing his temples as though he had a headache.
“We know how he knows,” Dorothy said. “He has a spy in town.”
“A spy?” Clary asked. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” the others said.
“There have been too many coincidences,” Lucy said.
“Too many times we’ve tried to fool him only for him not to be fooled,” Warren said.
“Far too many,” Robert agreed.
“But what kind of coincidences?” Clary asked.
“The kind where only Unity folks knew about something, yet El Aguila managed to capitalize on it,” Robert replied. “Sometimes it’s like he’s got ears and eyes all over the town.”
“Can’t you test that theory?” Clary asked. “Just let someone you suspect of being the spy know something and see who shows up. You know, set a trap to catch them?”
“Sure,” Lucy said. “But every time we try, dear Mr. Rossi keeps poking his nose into things. That man takes his job way too seriously.”
“Oh, he’s harmless,” Mac said, dismissively waving a hand in the air. “He’s been working for my friend Alessandro Bernini for years.”
“Isn’t there a way to send him home to his wife?
” Thomas asked, exasperated. He’d had his fill of Mr. Rossi and his clipboards and checklists.
He behaved as though all they needed to do was work a little harder to make things run smoothly at Unity.
Never mind the bandit attacks that made it almost impossible to get the shipments to San Antonio.
“Wife?” Mac asked, looking surprised. “I had no idea he was married. The last I heard, his mother was the only woman in his life. But then that was a while ago.”
Thomas nodded. “Well then, perhaps she needs him to go home. That would make things a lot easier for the rest of us.”
There was a murmur of agreement from the other men. Clary, however, looked thoughtful. She frowned and seemed to be puzzling something out.
“Perhaps we could engineer that somehow,” Mac agreed. “If it really would make things easier back in town. But if his nose is in everything, surely he would have ideas of who the spy might be. Have you thought to talk to him?”
Thomas was shocked. Talk to Rossi about that? It was a terrible idea.
“He’s a bit loose-lipped, Mac,” Warren said frankly.
“He tends to tell everyone everything he’s heard or seen,” Dorothy agreed. “It’s like he’s a walking newspaper.”
Mac had a good chuckle at that. “All right, I see your point. We don’t want him blabbing to the spy that we’re looking for him.
Tell you what—I’ll find out how his old mother is and see if anything can be done there.
Maybe he did get married and there’s a wife also eager for him to go home.
Some pressure there might do the trick.”
“It would take a load off our shoulders and make this all much easier,” Warren agreed.
“Yes, I seem to spend half my time digging through his reports on everything,” Dorothy said. “Most of what he says is utterly unnecessary.”
There was a long silence during which everyone seemed to drift off into their thoughts.
Thomas looked over at Clary and, taking her hand in his, he squeezed her hand.
She squeezed it back. She was such a comforting presence in his life.
His thoughts kept drifting to Luke though. Had his message reached him yet?