Chloe rushed forward, her hand over her heart. “For the love of…” she stopped short of Chancho, wide-eyed. “What happened?”

Standing motionless in the doorway, Angelo’s albino qualities bleached whiter than a sheet. Assaulted by the Italian’s rising fear and grief, Chancho plucked gristle from his shoulder while spot-checking the blood-spattered front of his serape.

“We’re not completely sure.” Starr stepped toward Angelo, breaking the news before the man saw it for himself. “But your brother and Mrs. Marcon are dead, shot to death.” Angelo starred past them at the two covered figures in the back of the room. Wind whipped through the stone house, rippling the sheet and revealing Phebe’s swollen toes.

Chloe gripped Chancho’s arms, searching his watery eyes for explanation.

“Jesus, Joseph and Mary.” Cap in hand, Angelo dropped to his knees and spat.

Starr stepped aside. “I was unconscious most of the time,” and waited for Chancho to take over.

Chancho watched the Italian wearily. The odors of stagnant pond, cornmeal and various bodily fluids created the stink of a slaughter house along with the natural instinct to flee. Yet the proximity of Angelo’s pain shattered Chancho’s bonds of fear, releasing a deeper desire to comfort. But how could he explain what he saw?

“It was terrible, mis amigos.” Chancho moved Chloe gently aside and stepped toward Angelo. On his knees, the Italian seemed smaller than a child, but wound up like a badger protecting its young. “The illness possesses its victims, gives them strength, makes them crazy.”

The haze over Angelo’s eyes dissipated. “You killed them?” He sprang upward, latching his hands around Chancho’s neck. “Son of a bitch! You kill my brother!” With a crunch, Chancho’s throat compacted in Angelo’s grip.

Starr swooped in, using the crook of his arm to lift Angelo from the ground in a headlock. The venom in the Italian’s eyes didn’t fade. Chancho clasped his hands together. Swinging them downward, he dislodged Angelo’s chokehold.

“Not us!” Starr yanked him off, wrenching an arm behind his back.

Angelo spun. Yanking his arm free, he prepared to assault Starr, a man twice his size.

But Chloe gripped his shoulder. “Angel, wait.”

Breathing heavy, teeth showing, Angelo yielded.

Chancho swallowed, rubbing his neck. “It was…” he coughed, his mind hovering over the answer. The black hat. Chancho recognized the black hat—a common Boss of the Plains weathered beyond reason. His lips wouldn’t consent to saying it. Maybe he hadn’t seen right. “It was a man in black.”

Angelo swore and spat as he bent to pick up his cap. “The Angel of Death.”

“Who?”

Angelo tugged his hat in place. “I thought they were rumors. But I have heard people from Mingus and Strawn talk about a black figure. He breaks into homes to kill de sick.” He sneered. “Some have started leaving black tar as a sign of de infected.”

“Like the blood over the mantles of the Israelites.” Starr said.

“Except this ensures de angel drop in rather than to pass over.” Angelo stepped past Chancho to study the rest of the room.

“This was no angel, compadre. I promise you, he was a man.”

Angelo turned to face him, saw the carnage spattered from head to toe. Formal, business-like, he stretched out his hand, “Scuse,” and they shook. “You tried to save him. You have no doubt seen something terrible.”

Releasing Chancho’s grip, Angelo marched toward the bodies. He pulled back the sheet transformed into shroud—a speckled pattern of red emerging on its surface. Silence draped the stone house, slick and slow, like a fall of molasses. He exhaled, dropping the corner of the pale blue sheet back in place.

Throwing his hat to the ground, he clutched his head and wailed. “My brother! My brother! Why have you left me?” He swore in Italian, rattling off a string of slurred words splashed with spittle and tears. When finally he turned to the others, his lips were blue, his eyes pink. “There is nothing left. How can I stay? And how can I go home?”

Chloe took his hand and embraced him. This time, like a child, he wept. “I have failed,” he blubbered into her bosom, repeating the phrase until exhausted.

Chancho’s initial urge to gather Chloe into his arms and flee from Gordon grew more muddled as he watched her embrace the broken man with genuine affection. And he didn’t dare disrupt Angelo’s mourning, knowing what did not fly would roost.

Minutes later the grieving Italian returned his cap to his head and faced them. “He was my younger brother. Phebe was like a sister. I did not think outsiders would care about our plight, but Phebe knew better. I should have a known that only de Motorcycle Mexican would confront the Company.”

Chancho backpedaled, “I—”

Angelo embraced him around the waist. “She trusted you. So do I.”

Chancho gawked. Staring from the top of the Italian’s head across to Chloe, he begged her to intervene. 

“Don’t worry, Angel.” Chloe startled Chancho with her passionate determination, a tear streaking her face as she spoke. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise.”

“Of course.” Chancho processed his words after the fact. But what else could he say? Was he not supposed to be the passionate one, upholder of justice? A betrayal of himself was by nature a betrayal of the ones he loved. One look into Chloe’s eyes indicated as much. Protecting her would mean losing her, a visceral reality he suddenly knew he would not survive.

“Hold on now,” Starr interrupted. “I’m all for a little fact-finding, but don’t you think something like this, at the very least, calls for reinforcements?”

“Like who?” Chloe bristled.

“I don’t know, the Red Cross.”

“The Red Cross investigates murder now?”

Starr held up his hands. “Hey, I’m just saying.”

Chancho placed trembling fingers on Angelo’s shoulder. “You think Texas Pride Energy is responsible for the death of your brother and Señora Marcon?”

Angelo glanced toward the corner and spit. “I swear it on the graves I am about to dig.”

The tension of the golden eagle across Chancho’s back tore at him. Now that Chloe had called him above his selfish fears, the burden of Thurber’s miners attached itself to the wall of his conscience. “It is possible that the sickness weakened the mind of Señora Marcon.” He addressed Starr. “But think, mi amigo. If she was right, if we really were the only people she could trust, who else can we trust.”

Starr ran his fingers over the scar on his cheek, a gesture reserved for his deepest thinking. “This is TPE we’re talking about here.” He spoke calmly. “The most powerful private company in Texas. You understand that, right?”

Chancho nodded, wondering where Starr was headed.

“This goes beyond the state legislature. This ain’t the local rodeo. If TPE wittingly or unwittingly unleashed some sort of apocalyptic plague on the good people of Texas, there’ll be hell to pay all around.”

Everyone was silent for several seconds. “Your point, mi amigo?” Chancho’s mind was purring now, consolidating all the evidence into a clear path of action. Chloe and Angelo had flipped his switch and now the injustice of the matter cranked his motor.

Starr finally continued. “If we find proof. And this is the important part. If we stick our heads in the hive and come away without any honey, we might as well stick ‘em in a noose next.”

Chancho shivered as a cold wind whipped through the shattered doorway. Maybe Chloe’s assessment had been right—Starr always thought of politics first. On the other hand, moments earlier Chancho had wanted to leave out of self-preservation. What does Chloe see in me?

Chancho pinched the bridge of his nose. Starr might not share his burden for protecting the powerless, but that didn’t make him wrong at the moment. After a long silence, he answered. “If we find nothing more than a town suffering from a terrible disease, we will bring to bear every emergency measure our government has to offer. But, if we find evidence of duplicitous behavior,” he shrugged, “then I suppose we’ll have to keep digging until we find honey.”

Angel slapped his fist into the palm of his hand while Chloe squeezed Chancho’s shoulders.

Starr nodded, rubbing his cheek. “If the Company isn’t guilty, we save the day. If the Company is guilty, we nail ‘em and then save the day. I’m in.”

Even Chancho hated to think of things that simply. Old Chancho, maybe. But that Chancho had gotten people killed. He swallowed. The day was yet half-expired and two people were already dead.

Starr was right about another thing. This wasn’t sport. But Mrs. Marcon had put her trust in them. Her last words had been a desperate plea. Find Serge. Find the book. If neither existed, he’d at least look. If both existed… Chancho crossed himself. If the truth was as he feared, the day may already be lost.

Angelo cleared his throat. “You will go to Thurber?”

Chancho knew the man was asking for a role, for something physical to distract him from his grief. He chose his words carefully. “We could use your help. Something Señora Marcon said just before she…” he paused, “the last thing she said was to find a black book.”

Angelo nodded. “She spoke of it, but never in her right mind. I was not sure it existed.”

“She said it had come from the mine the day of the explosion, that she’d taken it, but that Serge had taken it back a week later.”

“Serge?” Angelo spit, crossing himself. “But he is dead. He never…”

Chancho interrupted. “She swore he survived, that he left her a note. I believe her. She also said there was an unmapped mine, a secret shaft.”

“Number 13.” Angelo clutched his fists and stamped with both feet. “Vezzoni. I will kill ‘em. I am gonna pull his tongue out through his big, fat nose and use it to white wash my house.”

Chancho, Starr and Chloe looked at each other, then at the four-foot-tall Italian as he raved and clutched his hair.

“Vezzoni?” Chancho asked.

Gathering himself, Angelo continued, one eye still bulging from rage. “The superintendent of de mines. He runs de town. Everybody knew that de Company had dug another mine, de unlucky #13. Vezzoni denied it to my face, so I popped him one. Dropped him like a tree in de forest. I will kill ‘em this time.”

Chancho stopped him. “I do not wish to impose, compadre, but could you point us toward the road to Thurber?”

“Road?” Angelo laughed. “There is a nothing so much as a road to Thurber.”

“No road?” Chloe asked. “How do people—”

“Thurber is a Company town, signora. Texas Pride Energy controls the only official way in or out, de Black Diamond Short-line. The track runs between Thurber and Mingus, as well as to each of de mines. The whole town has been surrounded by razor wire for over twenty years. Kept de unions out until 1916. But now…”

“So we follow the tracks?” Chloe prodded.

Angelo shook his head, smiling from ear to ear. “No signora. That would be like painting a target on your pretty, goddess forehead.”

Chloe blushed, glancing toward Chancho.

“The tracks are guarded twenty-four hours a day, as is most of de fence.” He breathed deep, curling his nose and scanning the room. “This house is home of no one but de dead—dead family and dead dreams.” He shook his head. “I cannot stay here, and you,” he winked at Chloe, “to get to Thurber you will need de assistance of a backcountry guide. Nobody knows this country like Angel Tucci and his donkeys.”

“Donkeys?” All three responded in chorus.