Chapter 11
The alarm rang through Unity.
At first, Clary, who had never heard it before, had no idea what the significance was. It was Thomas jumping to his feet and rushing to the door that got her stiffly from her chair, following him to the front door of the boarding house.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“That’s the attack alarm,” Thomas said, frowning. “The bandits must be coming.”
“But …” Clary began. She had nothing to add. “How dare they?” seemed an utterly foolish thing to say.
“Stay here!” he commanded.
“Not on your life!” she protested. There was no way she was going to let him go without her.
Thomas fixed her with a steely look. “You’re injured.”
“So are you,” she said. “Anyway, I can still shoot, and you might need me.”
He sighed. “You’re infuriating.”
“I’m glad you noticed,” she said.
“It wasn’t a compliment,” he insisted.
She ignored him. “I’ll get my pistols.”
Hurrying up the stairs to her room, Clary made a point of avoiding the part of the stairs where the oil had been.
She hurried up the other side, holding firmly onto the railing.
She raced to her room and, in no time, was downstairs with her guns strapped to her hips in their holsters.
She had a bag with extra ammunition slung across her body and a sturdy knife in a sheath at her belt. Clary wasn’t taking chances.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Out on the street, they met Mark Ellis, who was heading to the wall too.
“What do you think is going on?” Mark asked.
“Not sure,” Thomas said. “I’ve got to stop in at home and get my gun.”
Luckily, Thomas’s house was on the way. They stopped at his house, and Mark stopped with them. He and Clary waited at the gate as other residents hurried by, heading for the wall.
When Thomas came back out, he had his guns strapped on and a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Thomas came down the steps and to the gate. Clary was glad he was back. Waiting outside with Mark, since it had seemed rude to leave him there alone, had been awkward and unpleasant.
Mark looked around as though trying to make sure they were alone when they resumed walking. “I have to talk to you.”
“Now?” Thomas asked.
“It might be important,” Mark said.
“Then tell Andrew or Robert.”
“I can’t talk to Robert, you know that,” Mark said.
“Right, right,” Thomas said. “Sorry, I forgot.”
“It’s just … I need you to listen!” Mark insisted, taking hold of Thomas’s arm.
Others streamed past them.
“What?” Thomas asked. “Just tell me whatever it is so we can get to our posts!”
“It’s just … Earlier today I saw something,” Mark said.
“What?” Thomas asked, clearly frustrated at the stalling.
“I think it was a signal,” Mark said. “See, I think we have a spy inside Unity. I think someone is letting El Aguila’s men know when to come and attack, when a shipment is going out …
All of that. And I thought, well, we don’t have a post office or a telegraph system.
So, how would a spy let them know what to do or what was going on? ”
“And?” Thomas asked.
“I took a walk around the wall,” Mark said. “I’ve been walking sections of it in my spare time for the last couple of weeks. And I noticed a few things.”
“Like what?” Thomas asked. He seemed to have forgotten about their need to get up onto the wall. Clary fidgeted beside Thomas. What did any of this have to do with what was happening?
The horn was still blaring, but as far as Clary could hear, there were no gunshots yet. No sounds of men screaming and dying. Nothing but the horn.
“It was around the back on the ridge; you know, that cliff face no one can safely climb,” Mark said. “You’d never see it from above. It was under the ledge, tied there by some string.”
“What was?” Thomas asked, sounding intrigued.
“A red handkerchief,” Mark said. “I thought that was quite clever. No one patrols that section regularly. The wall and the creek are pretty much under constant guard, but not the ridge.”
“And it was easily visible from below?” Thomas asked.
Mark nodded. “It was. Could it have gotten there any way other than having someone put it there? I can’t think of a way for that to have happened.”
Thomas nodded. “We should tell Robert. But not now. Let’s get up on the wall and see what a red cloth has brought us.”
Mark smiled. “So, you don’t think I’m full of horse manure?”
“No,” Thomas said with a vaguely surprised smile. “I don’t.”
Clary was relieved when they finally ran along the street to the wall and climbed up the ladder. There was a hushed, eerie silence on the barricade. Folks were hunkered down, their gun barrels pointed out into the field in front of the gate.
In the rays of the setting sun, the field was tinted with gold. Everyone held their collective breaths, and even the birds and insects seemed to have gone utterly silent.
Clary, Thomas, and Mark took up stations at an open space on the wall and waited. Not a moment later, something crested the ridge. It was a rider on a horse. Above his head, a flag flew. In the light of the setting sun, it shone bright white.
Frowning, Clary turned to Thomas.
“They want to surrender?” she asked.
Thomas was also frowning. He shook his head. “I think they want to talk.”
“They’ve never wanted to talk before,” Mark said.
“No, they have,” Thomas corrected. “Once they sent one of our own back to us from an intercepted shipment with a message, but that was still early days, long before the barricade.”
“Right,” Mark said. He nodded. “This is a lot like when they came and took over my town. Although they didn’t try talking.
They rode in and handed the mayor an ultimatum.
The mayor told them to get lost, and they attacked us over and over and over after that until we had to run for our lives. ” He had a haunted look on his face.
Thomas patted his shoulder. “We’re not going to run.”
“I know that,” Mark said. “That’s why I stayed here with you. No one here will give up that easily.”
Clary nodded. She had no intention of giving up and letting bandits win.
Her trigger fingers were itchy, and excitement coursed through her with only a touch of fear.
She longed to show these ruffians that they couldn’t come and cause trouble in her new home.
If there was one thing that she couldn’t abide, it was bandits.
They had attacked her father on his last journey driving his coach, the same one she now drove, and she couldn’t forgive and forget that they had killed him.
These bandits were simply an extension of those who had taken her father from her. She longed to make every one of them pay for her loss.
But she couldn’t just shoot a man holding a white flag.
She had some honor. Anyway, it wasn’t her call whether they shot him or not.
Watching him waiting up on the ridge, Clary knew her shot would never reach, but she sighted down the barrel of her gun anyway, so that if the command came to shoot, she’d be more than ready.
The rider on the ridge seemed to feel that he’d given them enough time to see that he was carrying a white flag. He urged his horse into a canter and came down the slope toward the town.
Behind him, more figures began to appear on the ridge. They bristled with weapons.
The whole of Unity waited with bated breath as the rider rode across the field and up to the gate. A host of weapons followed him. Each gun and bow on the wall turned, keeping him in sight.
“Hold your fire,” Robert said softly behind them.
Clary had been so focused on the rider that she jumped in fright. It was lucky that she had been taught to keep her finger off the trigger until she was ready to take her shot, or that man would have had a hole in his chest.
Just then the man with the flag began to speak. He called out in a loud voice.
“I bring a message for your leaders! Who will come out to collect it?”
Silence.
“Are none of you brave enough to come out from behind your wall?” the man taunted.
“It’s probably a trap,” Clary said.
“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “El Aguila is sneaky, but—” He didn’t finish his thought as there was a rumble underneath them.
With the shifting of weights and machinery, the gate began to swing open and a figure stepped out into the field. Then another followed.
“Andrew and Michael?” Thomas asked.
“They probably couldn’t agree on who should go,” Robert said, sounding fed up.
The rider grinned and tossed an envelope on the ground at Andrew’s feet.
Then he whirled his horse around and rode at a fast gallop up the ridge again.
The other riders waited for him to reach them before they disappeared behind the ridge.
The sun continued to set, casting the last of its light onto the scene.
Everyone watched as Andrew picked up the envelope, and he and Michael went back in through the gate.
Thomas frowned. “I wonder what that envelope contains.”
Robert shrugged. “A love letter from El Aguila.” Then, in a loud voice, he called out, “All right, everyone. You can all go home except for those who are on patrol this evening!”
“That’s it?” Clary asked. She’d been so braced for battle that it was almost disappointing to find herself all wound up for nothing.
“It looks that way,” Thomas said. “I should get you back to the boarding house, and then Mark and I should go and talk to Robert.”
Clary bristled. “Excuse me?”
“You’re supposed to be resting,” Thomas reminded her.
“No, the sun’s gone down and the day is over. I can get up and do whatever I want now,” Clary said sternly. “And if you think you’re leaving me out of this, you’re crazy.”
“Was everyone in your family this stubborn, or is it just you and Evelyn?” Thomas asked, but he was smiling.
“We are definitely the worst of them,” Clary said, grinning.
It took time to get back down the ladders as most of the town was trying to return to hastily deserted dinners and time with family and friends. Their group was some of the last to make it down the ladder. Robert followed after them.
“Well, good night,” he said.
“Hold on a moment,” Thomas called to him. “We were wondering if we could have a word.”
Robert frowned. “About what?”
“Mark found something you’re going to want to hear about,” Thomas said.
Robert regarded Mark with open distrust. “Did he now?”
“Yes, he did,” Thomas insisted.
Clary nodded. “We’d love to hear what you think about it.”
That seemed to work. Robert rolled his eyes. “All right. We can talk down at my office.”
Robert’s office smelled as though the windows didn’t get opened much. The air was stuffy and smelled of old coffee, leather, and sweat. They lit the lamps and then sat around the sheriff’s desk on a collection of rickety chairs and stools.
“All right,” Robert said, leaning back in his chair. “This had better be good, because Lucy doesn’t have much patience and I’ll be in trouble for being late for dinner.”
“It might answer a question I’m sure we’ve all been asking ourselves,” Thomas said.
“Is that so?” Robert asked.
Thomas nudged Mark in the ribs. “Go on, tell him.”
Mark recounted his story, beginning with his theories about them having a spy in their midst and how he’d been conducting his own independent investigation. He went on to tell Robert about the red handkerchief hanging on the rock face.
At first Robert looked bored and angry at them wasting his time. Then, as Mark explained about his walks around the wall, Robert’s expression started to change. He began to look interested. When Mark had finished, Robert closed his eyes, threw his head back, and laughed.
“Of course,” he said. “It would be the most infuriating man in Unity who finds something worthwhile.” He shook his head.
“So, you think I might be onto something?” Mark asked.
“I think you might be, yes,” Robert said, smiling.
“I think it’s time to get our little club together, don’t you?” Thomas asked.
Robert nodded. “It’s all coming together. Now if we only had some way to convincingly trap the spy, to make him make a mistake and show himself.”
Silence slid between them as they considered his words.
“Uh, Robert, I might have a way,” Thomas said. To Clary’s surprise, he pulled the telegram and the note from his pocket and placed them on Robert’s desk. “We need to talk about these. I need to tell you what’s been going on.”
Clary took Thomas’s hand in hers and held it tight. It was a good move, telling him now, before Thomas had actually done anything that might cause El Aguila to hurt his family.
After Robert declared Thomas innocent, and possibly the best bait they had ever had for catching the spy, they had to plan a meeting.
It took them three days of passing the word around surreptitiously to get them all together.
The problem was finding a place to meet that wouldn’t tip off the spy.
Finally, Clary came up with the best option of all.
“There are a lot of us, right?” she asked Thomas.
“About fourteen people,” he said, counting them off on his fingers.
“Well, how many tables are there at Anita and Kevin’s restaurant?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe eight or nine?” He frowned, working it out. “Oh, I understand. If we all just happen to go to dinner there one evening …”
“Then we can talk and no one will overhear or threaten you in person,” Clary said with a grin.
Thomas didn’t smile.
“Sorry, too soon?” she asked.
He nodded. “I was really afraid.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “I’m sorry.”
They suggested her idea to Robert, who seemed to love it. They spread the word quietly that they would meet Friday evening.