Lessie: Bride of Utah (American Mail-Order Bride 45) (3 page)

By the tone of their mingled conversation, something dreadful had happened.

“When did these arrive?” Adam’s voice rose in pitch.
Most
abnormal.

In more than twenty years, Richard had never, not once, heard Adam frantic.

Until now.

Richard strode through the vestibule to meet Adam and the familiar courier in the shade of the front porch.

“Within ten minutes of one another, sir.” The messenger, a young man of perhaps twenty, darted a glance between Adam and Richard. “The operator told me to hold, as your second telegram—”

Richard took the missives from Adam, even as his heart sank.

“—was coming through, sir.” The kid murmured something too low to understand.

Cannon Mining could withstand setbacks, business losses, the occasional senseless waste of capital. But
two
significant tragedies at the company’s
two
potentially
richest sites, within an hour of one another?

Lightning did
not
strike twice.

Dimly aware Adam had pulled a coin from his pocket and tipped the courier, Richard headed for his office on the main floor of the newly constructed residence, clutching the two telegrams, one in each hand.

Destruction of this magnitude
could not
have happened.

Big Ezra, 7 AM,
he read,
ten men lost. Mucking crew crushed beneath falling rubble.

A terrible disaster for the nearby Utah coal mine. The loss of life alone… Anger roiled in his gut.

But coupled with the gram in his right hand,
7:45 AM, twenty-five men killed at
Silver Queen. Explosion. Unknown cause.

Tragic. Crippling.
Terrifying
.

Richard Cannon did
not
believe in coincidence.

He whirled, found Adam taking his seat on the opposite side of their enormous, two-man desk. The only remaining sign of Adam’s reaction to the distressing news was the momentary pressing of the heels of his hands to his eyes.

Confident they were alone, that no one would overhear, Richard allowed himself to speak freely.
“These two so-called
accidents
were intentional, malicious...” He paced forth and back, unable to find a proper third word to label the vandalism. “They’re getting braver, the
cowards
. Men
died
.”

Adam leaned back in his chair. “I know.”

“We have to put a stop to this.
Now
.”

“I agree. Pranks, petty damages… the vandals escalated well beyond the harmless.”

“I want to storm in with hired guns, fire every last employee, and start fresh.” Sounded mighty satisfying.

“I’ll wager a full nine out of ten current employees are loyal to Cannon Mining. We don’t need a scatter gun to oust these varmints.”

Richard considered the possibility, found it probable.

He flung the telegrams onto his desk and rubbed at the pounding headache behind his forehead.

Who were these men, and what did they want? Had they been hired by a rival company? Or did they destroy for reasons he couldn’t comprehend?

The callousness of the crimes, the lack of concern over the dead men and their families suggested outsiders That remained to be seen.

“
Who
is to blame? One of our own, obviously. But who among them is foolish enough, cold-hearted enough to risk their own men?”

“I expect we’ll find more than one culprit.” Adam took a pencil from his desk and drew a T on a legal pad. There he went, list-making again.

But Adam found answers by problem-solving on paper. Let him make his lists.

Richard wanted to break something. “Who can we trust? That’s what I want to know.”

“The thousand-dollar question.” Adam had already scribbled in several lines of detail in both columns.

Minutes passed. Adam wrote and Richard fumed, but he’d learned long ago to let his cousin do his best thinking without interruption.

Finally, Adam dropped his pencil. “I find it impossible to believe we have a single culprit. We have seen incidents at all of our fourteen mines during the past nine months—”
since Grandfather’s death
“—and the increasing frequency, culminating today.”

The answer seemed obvious. “A minimum of fourteen traitors.”

“Yeah. Fourteen active mines. Fourteen men. Probably more.”

They’d be foolish to assume one at each site. “Agreed.”

Adam’s expression darkened. “We need to prepare for the worst. I fear the miners will get the idea that we are somehow responsible.”

Richard had been with Grandfather in Arizona back in seventy-six when violence erupted over far less.

If Richard hadn’t been mature for thirteen years, Grandfather’s inability to shield him might have been a problem— certainly would have been for Adam who’d turned ten that summer.

As it was, Richard had walked away from the warlike conditions a man.

He quickly ran through the list of standard protective measures: strike breakers, hired guns, costly improvements in machinery… or close Big Ezra and Silver Queen before the workers rioted and caused further irreversible damage.

But none of it felt right.

If the standard, tried-and-true business practices couldn’t handle this, then it stood to reason their months-old plan of working class wives might be a colossal mistake.

Adam looked up. “How do you want to handle this?”

“First, I want your honest opinion regarding the women. In light of the newest developments.” Richard’s stabbing headache flared again. “Mining camps are no place for women, especially when violence erupts.”

One of the best parts about controlling the family business with his younger cousin as his second, was knowing Adam always had his back. If he could trust anyone implicitly, he trusted Adam.

Did he dare hope his bride would engender half as much loyalty? He knew Adam had carefully written the advertisement to ensure loyalty in their working class brides. No silver-spoon, spoiled maidens for them.

How a precisely worded advertisement could find the
right
pair of brides was beyond Richard. He’d wanted to interview all candidates but that would have taken weeks if not months— time they did not have.

Adam had read the wire from the twin sisters and pronounced them the future Mrs. Cannon and Mrs. Taylor. Though he did allow Richard the final say.

A brother in the truest sense, Adam consistently offered wisdom but allowed Richard to make the final decision. About business, about a pair of brides, about this terrible news.

What if he made the wrong choice?

Just once, he’d like to share the burden of decision-making. “Your thoughts?”

“We’re facing a different set of challenges than in June when we finally placed the advertisement.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s possible the women, our wives, will be in danger in the camps. But it’s also possible they’re
still
precisely what we need.”

When his cousin said nothing further, Richard asked, “What, exactly, are we going to do with the brides once they arrive? Our former plan seems obsolete.” They’d thought they had time for tutelage. Conversation and instruction. All from the safety of their homes.

And when things settled down in the mines and the threat decreased, they’d take their wives for a visit, let the workers see the owners of Cannon Mining valued the working class, understood their employees— because they’d chosen women just like them.

As if Adam’s next-door house were visible, he gestured in the general direction. Their communication was so easy, so clear, he couldn’t misunderstand his reference to both homes, built with their wives in mind. “We don’t have the luxury of time. Not anymore.”

Like a wildfire, the problem had gained momentum, shifted directions, surged well beyond their control. Richard hated feeling helpless.

“We’ll learn on the move.” Adam reclaimed his pencil and added notes to his chart. “As quickly as feasible after the weddings, we take our wives with us, visit the camps, and do whatever it takes to salvage operations.”

Richard tried to picture taking a woman with him to any one of the fourteen mining camps, company towns in the desert mountains surrounding their home-base in Ogden City. The idea wouldn’t gel. “But what, exactly, do we do?”

“With our working-class brides at our sides we’ll mourn. Talk to the men. Play ignorant to the willful malicious intent behind these ‘accidents’. And our wives will help us get through to the men.”

Richard recalled Adam’s argument for sending for mail order brides in the first place. The women would be able to teach them everything they’d failed to learn in their privileged upbringing. And their presence, beside the mine owners, would speak loudly to the workers.

Adam searched Richard’s face. “The ladies, by nature of their similarities to the miners,
will
make all the difference. They’ll know what to do.”

“I pray you’re right.”

Though he’d been raised to keep business and home life separate, he’d had months to adjust to the idea of letting his new wife in on the workings of Cannon Mining… but from the comfort and safety of this residence.

Now he had to shift, and quickly, to acclimate to the idea of taking her along into the rough and often lawless mining camps.

“It sounds mighty risky.” Nothing Adam didn’t already know, but someone had to say it.

“Yeah, but I don’t see where we have another option.”

“I don’t think the men responsible for our troubles want to talk. If they did, we wouldn’t have received telegrams with notices of deaths. Our weekly communication with the foremen would suggest we pay a visit and consider situations at the mines.”

Adam nodded, obviously resigned to the same conclusion.

Richard leaned against the window sill. His headache ebbed and his fury had dulled to a mere simmer. He could actually be still without the desperation to run, hard and fast and smash something. “
What
do they want?”

If he’d known what to do, how to reach the men who insisted on underhanded ‘communication’ through destruction of company property, he’d have put a stop to it months ago.
“What is their objective?”

“If we knew that, we wouldn’t have need for trustworthy, loyal women to help us figure it out.”

“One thing we have to remember…” Intensity turned to desperation on Adam’s face. “If the wrong men in any of the mining camps realizes our wives are there to act as emissaries, to bridge the gap between us as owners and them as employees— and it’s against their vision of whatever it is they’re trying to accomplish by the vandalism and terror…”

Richard closed his eyes against the stark realization. The women… his soon-to-be-wife and her sister, the faceless Hadley twins who were at this very moment on the
Overland Flyer
between Council Bluffs and Ogden City— would be in significant danger. Was he willing to take a woman, especially his
wife
, into battle?

Like Adam, he understood the ramifications. “We have to make it completely clear to the men that our purpose in visiting is to care for the widows and see what might be done to increase safety measures.”

“We’ll have to watch our every step, our every word. If they suspect we’re trying to figure out who’s behind the
‘accidents’—
”

“I agree.” He saw the importance, was fully prepared to exercise extreme caution.

“You do realize this means our plan to withhold information from the brides won’t work any longer. If they’re unaware of the circumstances, they’ll stay something they shouldn’t or somehow give themselves away. We have no idea who to trust at each mine and who we cannot. The only way to protect the women is to tell them everything.”

“You’re right.” Richard fought the urge to curse. “And somehow convince them to stay, work with us, cooperate, once they understand the challenges?”

Adam had honed his charm to a highly effective tool. He had no difficulty winning over anyone he chose to. But Richard wasn’t nearly so suave.

“It’s more than convincing them to cooperate. We must persuade them to tell no one. Our awareness, our plan to locate the traitors must go no further than the two of us and the two of them.”

“I’m sure they’ll comprehend the need for secrecy.” Fear of being found out generally helped that cause along. “We’ll explain the situation.”

“Before or after the ceremonies?”

Richard weighed the question, the consequences of both. Obviously Richard’s cogs were turning, too.

Marriage was permanent, and once they were wed, the ladies would be more invested, have greater reasons to keep the company secrets. If Cannon Mining shared all secrets only to have the twins change their minds… “After.”