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“Naw, she might have the money for the cattle, but there’s a whole lot more around here somewhere. All we gotta do is out wait her. She’ll turn up dead, or lost. She don’t know how to take care of herself. She’ll be dead within a month. She’s so gullible someone will do her in for us.” Harry laughed arrogantly. “All we gotta do is play it smooth like, and don’t ruffle no feathers. Her old man even mentioned me in the will. So I don’t reckon this is gonna be hard to pull off. They trust me. Why, I could probably have her committed to one of tho
se institutions if I had to.”
“Yeah, but this place don’t belong to any of us either…and besides, I heard tell you gotta be a relative to commit somebody. Just ‘cause ole Joel Hagen had his wife committed, don’t mean you could get away with that. You ain’t her husband.”
“Joe, you are borrowing trouble. The reason I asked her to marry in the first place was so I could have her committed. Look, I know what I’m doin’. After I talk to Yates in Dallas, he can fix this. He can fix anything, legal. Especially if we can declare her missing or dead or crazy even. I might not be able to commit her myself, but I could shore convince someone else to do it. Don’t much matter which way it goes, we win. We don’t have a thing to worry about. I put the fear of God in her, and Yates can fix anything so we can rest easy. I really thought I’d have a bigger battle. We’ll just tell everyone she must have been bereaved more than we all thought and lost her head and ran away. They’ll swallow that. She don’t turn up soon we’ll declare her dead.”
“You talkin’ about that fancy lawyer from Dallas?”
“The same.”
Jarvis rode back into the yard and listened to the conversation before jumping into it.
“But that’s her lawyer,” Jarvis shouted.
“Well, it won’t be if she’s gone, now will it? Besides, we cut him in for a share, he’ll work with us. He’s just crooked enough to go for it.” Harry laughed. “How do you think he got so rich in the first place?”
“Well, that’s the dang truth…” Joe laughed. “He was braggin’ last time he was out here how he foreclosed on that big property down in Houston, that’s a fact.”
“Did you take care of Gordy?” Harry asked.
“Easy as pie, put a rattler in his bed last night, and he’s stiff as a board this morning.” The cook laughed.
Good Lord, a snake! Poor Old Gordy hadn’t stood a chance, the only hand on the ranch she could truly trust.
“Good, this is going so easy it makes me uneasy.” Harry chuckled. “First, we’ll contact the Sheriff; tell him about Gordy and the snake. Then we’ll mention we ain’t seen hide nor hair of her in a while. When they question us, we’ll tell them she acted funny for a while, then poof, we hadn’t seen her.”
“You don’t think she’ll be back with lawyers and such?” Jarvis frowned at Harry, as Riley stared at him through the bushes.
“Naw, I don’t think so. She ain’t got much back-bone. I don’t see her fightin’ for what is hers. And there is money on this property too, we just gotta find it.” Harry glanced at the far horizon. “She put on a good show fer her daddy, but it was all talk. She wasn’t half as tough as she made out. I should know.”
“You don’t think she’ll be askin’ for no tomorrows, huh?”
“Not likely, but to be on the safe side, in a while we’ll ride on over to Dallas and tell Mr. Yates how she just sorta disappeared off the place and must have gone out of her head with sorrow for her pa.”
“Think he’ll believe it?”
“Sure he will. Don’t nobody know her that well, anyhow. We’ll tell him she ran off, no one’s heard from her or seen her. We’ve searched all over for her, must be plum out of her head by now in this heat. Keep your eye out for her though, in case she decides to run to him too. If you see her, you make sure she don’t run into anyone else,” Harry instructed. “And I don’t care how you do it either.”
Jarvis frowned. “I don’t like killin’ women.”
“No different than a man to me,” Harry commented dryly.
Jarvis and Joe glanced at one another with a frown then shrugged. “Guess it’s no never mind as I don’t actually do the killin’ myself.”
“Yeah, you let those creepy crawly critters of yours do the work for you.” Harry laughed.
Jarvis firmed his lips. “Better’n gettin’ blamed fer killin’ somebody.”
“You got a point about that; get lunch ready, I got work to do,” Harry demanded as he mounted his horse and glanced down at the older man. “I’ll scout out, see if I can find her.”
“You a little on edge; her getting away?” Jarvis snorted.
“Naw, just don’t want no lose ends when that lawyer comes. Besides, that girl can be sorta crazy anyway,” Harry said and whipped his horse about. “We’ll have to concoct a story for him. Somethin’ he’d believe.”
Riley slumped against the tree, careful not to shake it.
Crazy or dead, that’s how Mr. Yates would see it; he didn’t like her.
