Chapter 4
Thomas spent a couple of hours showing Clary and Evelyn around Unity. He showed them to the stables first so that they could be assured that their horses and coaches would be well looked after.
Kyle was delighted to have more horses to care for.
Along with the six horses from the bandits, he had quite the herd.
“We’re going to have to extend the wall some,” he told Thomas.
“We’re running out of space with all the animals now.
The cows have calved, and we have a much bigger herd of them too. ”
“He really loves animals, doesn’t he?” Clary asked as they walked back to the main part of town, carrying their luggage.
“He does,” Thomas said. “And I really should have shown you to Mrs. Odenkirk’s boarding house before we took the coaches to the farm. We wouldn’t be carrying the bags then.”
“It’s okay,” Clary said kindly.
Evelyn shot her dark looks. “Speak for yourself. I’ve been trying to stop a man from bleeding to death for hours. My arms are like cooked spaghetti.”
Luckily, Mrs. Odenkirk’s boarding house wasn’t far, and soon Evelyn and Clary were being shown to their rooms. Thomas helped them get their bags upstairs and then went downstairs to wait for them.
He decided to wait on the porch outside.
Choosing a reasonably comfortable chair, he looked out across the little yard to the street beyond.
It was such a lovely day, with the afternoon heading to evening.
That was the best part of a day in his mind, when the sun was setting and evening was creeping over the land.
Somehow it seemed to temper the scorching heat of the day.
He couldn’t wait for more of the trees that folks had been planting to grow. With the creek flowing so well, maybe they could even siphon some of that off into a lake that would then provide the town with a place to go swimming and fishing.
The floorboards creaked, and the door closed beside him with a soft click. He hadn’t heard it open.
“Eve wants to lie down,” Clary said. “She says she’s feeling a little too emotional to continue the tour.” From the way she spoke, Thomas guessed that Clary didn’t believe her sister.
“Is she okay?” he asked, standing up and walking over to her.
Clary shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Emotional isn’t the norm for Evelyn in any way. Should we walk and talk?”
“Sure,” Thomas said. He led her down the steps and onto the street. They turned right and headed toward the bridge, passing the stores and the church as well as the land where Anders was building the hotel.
“Evelyn seems to be a handful,” Thomas commented after a while of walking in silence.
“She is,” Clary said. “Our mother died when I was eleven and Evelyn was eight. She became a wild hooligan after that. My father and I couldn’t control her at all.
In the end he had to start taking us along on his route with him.
We couldn’t be left with Aunt Maud, his sister, because she couldn’t manage Evelyn.
No one could but me. So, it fell to me to somehow raise myself and my sister while my father worked day and night to provide for us. It was a tough time.”
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said.
Clary shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Since Pa is also gone now, it’s just me and Eve. Which is why I couldn’t leave her behind. Can you imagine what she would get up to with no one watching out for her?”
“It sounds like she got herself into trouble on the train too,” Thomas said. “Even though you were watching her.”
Clary laughed. “She sure did. That poor baggage handler. John something or another. Anyway, after that little stunt we pulled, fixing the ties on the coach. We get back inside the carriage, and first thing Evelyn does is throw her arms around John’s neck and kiss him like he’s the love of her life. ”
Thomas raised his brows, but he was smiling.
He could picture it. Soaked and having just defied death, Evelyn must have been flying high on adrenaline.
It wasn’t an appropriate action for an unmarried woman, of course, especially one who wasn’t even in a relationship with the man she had kissed, but he knew from Clary’s letters that Evelyn was … unconventional.
“Next thing we knew, he professed his love for her and asked her to marry him—right before we arrived in San Antonio, mind you,” Clary continued.
“Then, of course, in Evelyn’s typical style, she told John she couldn’t because she needed to come here with me.
So, he was ready to resign from his job and follow her.
I had to have a nice chat with the poor man and set him straight.
He wasn’t impressed, but he stopped dogging her. ”
They reached the spot where men were setting the foundations for Anders’s new hotel. The big man himself was there supervising. When he saw Thomas, he came over.
“Well, hello there,” he said brightly. “And this must be the infamous Miss Clary Wilson.”
“Infamous?” she asked, looking at Thomas with an amused expression on her face.
“I might have told one or two folks about you coming here,” Thomas admitted, feeling his cheeks growing red again.
“That’s so sweet,” she said with a laugh. “Yes, I’m Clary, but I’m not sure about my fame.”
“Wonderful!” Anders said. “Anders Cartwright at your service. You two should join me and Mildred for dinner tomorrow night at Anita and Kevin’s restaurant. Mildred will be so happy to meet you.”
Thomas looked over at Clary. “Would you like to?”
“Sure, why not? But I’ll have to bring my sister,” she said.
Thomas got the impression that separating Clary from Evelyn was going to be a difficult task. There would be precious little time for the two of them to get to know each other if Evelyn was going to be acting up and hanging around all the time.
But that was a problem for another day.
They thanked Anders and said they would be there. Then Thomas took her to see where the smelter accident had happened.
“My goodness!” Clary said, looking into the deep hole that had been the smelter. “You were down there?”
“Yup. And my manager, Ethan, saved my life.”
“I’d love to meet him,” Clary said.
Thomas took her to the new smelter then. It was still unfamiliar, but when he opened the door and saw all the new equipment set up and ready to go, Thomas felt a surge of joy rush through him.
“Wow! Look at all of that,” Clary said in amazement. “What do all of those things do?”
“Mostly heat substances to get things like phosphorus or other elements separated from the copper. It’s a process to get the metal into a bar.” Although he could speak for hours on the subject, he suspected that Clary was only asking to be polite, so he kept it short.
Just then Ethan came out of his new office. He looked tired but happy.
“This must be Clary,” he said.
Thomas introduced them, and they shook hands. Clary smiled warmly at Ethan. “Thomas says you saved him.”
“It was a town effort to save us all,” Ethan said modestly. “So, you’re giving Clary the tour? Don’t forget to show her the sunset from the wall. It’s quite something.”
That was how they found themselves up on the barricade about ten minutes later, watching the sun head westward.
Ethan was right; it was something else. On a clear day such as this one, Thomas felt he could see all the way to the ends of the earth.
Sinking in a golden-orange sky, the sunset was magnificent.
The wind had come up, and that was a blessing as it blew cool air into their faces and made strands of Clary’s beautiful blonde hair turn copper in the light as they streamed back from her face. She was so beautiful that Thomas could hardly believe she was real and standing on the wall beside him.
“Thomas, you’re staring at me,” she said.
Was he?
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. It’s just I spent hours imagining what you would look like, and the reality is so much better than what I came up with,” he said honestly.
Clary looked down at her boots, her cheeks turning pink. “You know, it’s not every man who can make me blush.”
Not knowing if that was a good thing or not, Thomas didn’t say anything.
“You are as sweet and honest as your letters are, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
Thomas sighed. “I’m a terrible liar. It’s much easier for me to stick to the truth.” He smiled. “But that’s a good thing, right?”
She smiled in return. “It’s a very good thing, Thomas.
” She pressed her lips together as though thinking heavily.
“You know, today, when we were separated and those bandits were shooting at us, I was so afraid that you would get shot and I would never get to know you properly. I am so very relieved that you’re okay. ”
As she spoke, she reached out and took his hand in hers. “Let’s not go through that again.”
He shifted awkwardly as he turned her small hand over and traced the hard calluses that spoke of a life that required more than just mental strength. “I would love nothing more than to promise that, but I can’t,” he admitted. “You know from my letters that we have a slight bandit problem.”
Clary nodded. “I must admit I thought you were exaggerating. Is it like that all the time? Do they come in such force?”
“Sometimes. Other times they leave us alone entirely,” Thomas said. He gave a mirthless bark of a laugh. “They certainly keep us on our toes. But there’s hope. I’m working with some folks here who are trying very hard to stop the bandit attacks. It will take some time though.”
She nodded.
They watched the sun set in a fiery blaze and then headed down to dinner.
The next morning, the smelter was back in action, and Thomas had to go to work. Despite wanting desperately to spend more time with Clary, he couldn’t shirk his duty, especially not when the mine was behind on delivery again.
“It seems we’re always behind,” Trevor moaned. He was a sullen man who had come to Unity as one of the refugees from the little town El Aguila had overrun.