Chapter 13
Anita couldn’t wait to be on their way home, but they couldn’t just pack up and leave. It would be suspicious.
They went to the pub for dinner and smiled and tried to make light of the whole affair, but it was very difficult. Anita couldn’t help but see the strain on her companions’ faces. By the end of dinner, she had a headache and was dying to go to bed.
They were finishing up when Gomez approached their table from seemingly out of nowhere and looked down on them with dark eyes.
“I understand that you’re from the new mine that opened up near here,” the scarred man said. “A little far from home, aren’t you?”
Troy was the first to recover from the bandit’s shock appearance. He swallowed and then nodded.
“Ah, yes, we are,” Kevin said. “Can we help you? Have you been to the mine?”
“I have ridden past it,” Gomez said. “It’s turning into quite the operation.”
“That it is,” Kevin said.
Anita pressed his hand beneath the table, seeking to reassure him and be reassured in turn. His fingers curled around hers hard.
“Perhaps we can meet some time and discuss some business plans that an associate of mine has,” Gomez said with a smile that displayed a mouth with several teeth missing.
Between the scar and that mouth, there was no doubt this man trafficked in violence.
“I’m sure that we will be able to come to some agreement.
After all, we are in the same business.”
“And what business is that?” Troy asked.
“The business of changing this area to suit ourselves,” Gomez said. “We know what it takes to build a community, don’t we?”
“We do,” Kevin said snidely. “But we don’t know you. We have no idea what you do.”
“Yes, speak plainly,” Troy said.
Gomez’s grin became fixed. “I’ve taken too much of your time. Why don’t you have another drink? Perhaps some water. This poor young lady looks parched.” He smiled at Anita, and it made her skin crawl.
Then he turned and left the pub as abruptly as he’d entered it.
For a long time, none of them moved or spoke. Anita felt as though she had been turned to stone.
He knows, she thought. He knows that we know they’re planning to divert the creek’s water.
That’s why the level is dropping. She swallowed and managed to speak.
“They’ve done it,” she said, her voice sounding hollow and hoarse.
“They’ve built that thing we saw in the plans already, and that’s why the water in the creek is getting lower and lower. ”
“You mean that we’re too late,” Lizzy said, her face pale. “But there must be something we can do about it!”
“There is,” Kevin said. “We can leave tonight. We can head out to the creek and ride up it until we find where they’re diverting the water.
It’s really simple if you think about it.
At some point in the creek’s journey to the town and the mine, they must have built a dam to slowly block off the water. ”
“But why?” Lizzy asked.
“To make us leave the town and the mine,” Troy said.
“We can’t stay there without water, and the creek is the only source we have.
It was a sore point when we first chose the town’s location.
We almost moved to another promising spot to set up the mine, but the natural caves convinced us to stay where we were. ”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Kevin asked. “Let’s get our things and go. The town and mine won’t survive long without a reliable water source. We talked about that plenty at the meeting the other day.”
It was settled. None of them wanted to stay now. Lizzy was the only one who expressed her disappointment. “I was looking forward to that spectacular view from the suite.”
“Next time,” Troy promised her.
The others left it to Anita to explain their early departure to the hotel staff.
She told George, who was still at the desk, that it wasn’t because of anything that had happened at the inn.
She made up a story about receiving a telegram that there was trouble at home, so they needed to go immediately.
Goerge didn’t really seem to care so long as she paid for each room. Once that was done, he was happy to get their horse hitched to their cart, and off they went.
The night was cool, and there were wispy clouds flitting across the sickle moon. It wasn’t a bright moon to travel by, but Kevin and Troy didn’t seem worried. They turned the horse on the track home, and the beast seemed to know exactly where to go.
Anita lay in the back of the cart, looking up at the stars. Lizzy lay beside her.
“Have you ever fired a gun?” she asked.
Anita shook her head. “No, I lived on a dairy farm all of my life. There was never any need to shoot anyone.”
“Well, then maybe you’ll want to stay in the cart,” Lizzy said.
“What are you talking about?” Anita asked, sitting up.
“The plan changed while you were getting your things packed up to leave,” Lizzy said.
“It turns out that my crazy husband brought some of the mine’s dynamite with him for this mission.
Don’t ask me why. He said something about possibly having to blow up a door or a safe.
” She shook her head. “Anyway, it turns out that from the plans we found, we think we have enough dynamite to blow any dam sky-high.”
“But what happens when El Aguila’s men start firing?” Anita asked, shocked that they would just go ahead and decide something like this without talking to her.
“If we’re quiet and quick, they won’t know we’re there. At least not until the dynamite goes off, and then it’ll be too late.”
“We should be on our way home by that time,” Kevin said, a nervous little hitch in his voice. “Sorry, I was going to tell you.”
Anita snorted. “When? When we arrived at the dam?”
“No, before that,” Kevin said. “There wasn’t really time. Anita, if we let them build that dam too high and strong, it’ll be too late to do anything about it. We need to act now.”
She could tell her husband felt guilty by the set of his shoulders and his tone. Still, it made her angry. Was he still trying to protect her from the truth, or had this been a simple case of there not being time? Although they had been on the road now with nothing to do but talk for a while.
She set her jaw, deciding being angry wouldn’t help matters.
They rode on for hours. There was nothing to do during that time, so they took turns sleeping.
It was a dark night and they had to go slowly.
If the horse twisted an ankle, they were all done for.
So, they opted for slow and steady. Anita also reasoned that if they went too quickly, they could blunder into the camp near the dam.
There had to be a place where the people building it were staying.
Anita sighed and tried to stop her mind from going around and around in endless circles, worrying and second-guessing every decision they had made.
“Are you okay?” Kevin asked. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said, scooting closer to him on the seat. “I got all upset for nothing. I know you didn’t mean to forget to tell me. It’s been a little crazy lately. I don’t think either of us is used to all of this.”
Kevin shook his head. “I don’t think you ever get used to worrying about bandits coming to hurt the people you love.
You understand why we have to try and do this before the dam is built any bigger than it probably already is?
The town and mine really won’t survive long without water.
Especially not the mine. If we go a week without producing ore, our sponsors will pull their support. ”
“I understand,” Anita said. “I just hope we manage to blow that dam right up to the stars.”
With that, she snuggled up to him, and he put his arm around her.
They rode like that for a while. Soon they came to the creek bank and turned to head upstream. The water was dark, but it seemed lower to Anita.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“We’re about a mile up from the mine,” Kevin said. “Now we have to keep our eyes peeled. If you see a light or a few of them, let me know. That’ll be the people working on the dam.”
“Of course, they’ll have their campfires lit and possibly lanterns, right?” she asked.
“Right. They won’t be expecting us, so I think they’ll be off guard,” Kevin said.
They rode on for a little while longer, and then Kevin stopped the cart. He and Anita woke the other two, and they went on foot from there, leaving the horse and cart in an abandoned barn. It was ramshackle and falling to pieces with giant holes in the roof, but it hid the cart well.
They unhitched the horse and tied him to a post so that he wouldn’t wander off, but he could graze on the grass growing in the barn through the holes in the floor.
Soon they saw the lights. It was just as Kevin had said. No guards were in sight, as intruders weren’t expected. Very likely, the last thing these people thought would happen was an incursion by the very townsfolk whose lives and homes they were trying to destroy.
They found a place to hide where they could watch the dam builders’ camp and see if there were any men on guard closer to the actual structure. It turned out that there were, and they were walking around with lanterns.
Anita’s heart was hammering in her chest; she was so scared that one of those guards would turn around and spot them.
Although, crouching down in the dark behind some bushes, she didn’t see how that would be possible, her mind kept handing her the image of her friends and husband being shot and killed.
“If I just had a rifle,” Troy said longingly.
“Then what?” Lizzy asked in a harsh whisper.
“You know everyone would hear the crack of the shot. What would you do? Kill everyone in sight until you ran out of ammunition and then got killed yourself? No, the plan to sneak in is better. With their lanterns telling us where they are, we can avoid five men.”
“As always, you’re right, my dear,” Troy said in a voice that made Anita think he was trying to curry favor with his wife.
She smiled and kissed him. “And everyone said you couldn’t be taught.”
“That’s a lie,” Troy said.
“Shhh,” Kevin said, whispering softly but urgently. “Sound carries at this time of night. It’s too quiet. They’ll hear anything above a whisper.”
“We know,” Troy said. “Let’s see if we can find a way through the camp to the dam.”
The camp was in a strange shape and covered a lot of area, with tents and campfires spread out at the foot of two hills that rose up out of nowhere.
The dam wall was strung between the two hills but wasn’t terribly large.
It was about fifty feet high and was impressive, but somehow, Anita had been expecting something bigger.
Probably Lizzy had been right that before long, it would be much taller and sturdier, which would make it impossible to take down at that point.
Still, the hills had lights on them, and there were tents leading all the way up to them. They shone white in the starlight.
“Maybe we could come at it from the other side?” Anita suggested. “That side has fewer lights.”
“How are we going to cross?” Lizzy asked. “Is there still water in the creek?”
“I think the water level is quite low now,” Kevin said. “It looks like the wall is almost complete. There’s just that little space in the middle.”
“Not a bad idea,” Troy agreed.
Staying well back from the camp, they climbed down into the muddy creek bed.
“What a crazy idea it is to dam up a creek,” Troy said with a shake of his head. “What a waste of time and energy.”
“It will be when we blow it to bits,” Lizzy muttered.
They squelched along in the dark. The creek bed was rocky and full of slime-covered stones and pebbles. It was tricky to walk along quietly, but so long as they kept to the deeper sides and walked in single file, no one on patrol seemed likely to be able to spot them in the dark.
“We’ve got about an hour before dawn,” Kevin whispered to everyone. “Let’s get a move on.”
They moved faster, trying not to slip or twist an ankle. Then Anita’s foot skidded on a rock, and she watched the world turn on its side. Her foot slipped up, her head went back and down, and then she was on her back in the mud, winded and unable to draw a full breath for a terrifying moment.
She had made a splash, she knew. And now, all the lanterns were coming to see what had landed in the water.
“Hey, you see anything?” a gruff voice asked on the left-hand side of the creek bed.
“Nah,” another voice, higher and younger, said on the other side. “It’s dark as pitch down there.”
“You’d better go and see,” Gruff said.
“No way,” the younger one said. “I’m not doing it again. I lost a boot in that sucking mess of mud the other day. Had to go barefoot for a week until I got into town again!”
“You’d better go,” Gruff said.
“No, you go,” Young said.
They bickered, and as they were fighting about who would go and see what had made the noise, Kevin moved quietly over to Anita.
He helped her up, wet and muddy, and she moved to the bank, pressing her back to it.
She hardly cared about the mud now. Her heart was hammering in her chest. It was only a mercy that she hit the ground before she had been able to scream.
There was another splash farther down the creek, and Gruff and Young stopped their disagreement for a moment.
“That sounded like it was on your side,” Gruff said.
“Nuh-uh,” Young said. “It was on yours. I’ll bet you breakfast it was one of those huge toads. Those things are horrible. They scare the bej?—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gruff snapped.
They moved off, their lanterns swinging.
Troy appeared out of the shadows. He smiled, his teeth gleaming dully in the moonlight. “I made that second splash. They’re going to kick themselves when this place goes boom.”
“Let’s hope so,” Anita whispered.
They approached the dam wall. From the bottom of the creek bed, it was more impressive.
It reached up high but was only about forty feet wide, and as they reached it, Anita was surprised to find that it was mostly made of wood.
It seemed that some sort of clay-like mud had been used to cover it, but it was essentially a wooden dam.
“Were they expecting this thing to last?” Lizzy asked, the disgust evident in her voice. “Even if they build it higher and stronger later, this is a terrible foundation.”
“No,” Kevin said. “No, clearly they aren’t engineers who know what they’re doing. What is going on here?”
“Who knows. We’re blowing it up, regardless,” Troy said. “Now, take a stick of dynamite and shove it in any space you find it will fit in. Hurry. We need to be out of this creek bed before the fuses go off.”
It was quick work with four of them. The dam wall was built in such a way that it offered plenty of holes and spaces for the dynamite to nestle into. After ten minutes or so of that, Lizzy and Troy lit each fuse, which had been cut long.
Troy turned to them, his eyes bright with excitement that Anita couldn’t understand, and said, “Run!”