Page 18 of Follow the Lonesome Trail
“Problem was, about the time all that happened, something went on at the bank that they still won’t explain to us and they sold our loan off to somebody else.”
“Is that legal?” Constance asked, frowning.
“I wouldn’t know. I’m still trying to figure that out.” He waved a hand, as if to redirect her attention back to his story. “Here’s the thing though, they sold it to the owners of a nearby cattle ranch. A big one by the name of the Bar Jessup.”
Here Constance frowned, because that was…
“The ranch in which your father is a fifty-fifty owner,” Gideon spoke her thought aloud. “Now Tom Jessup, the other owner, lives out here for the most part and manages the ranch. He’s been trying for years to buy me and the boys out. We’ve turned him down flat every time. So now he’s bought our loan and raised our interest then says the payment we’re making don’t cover what it should. So now he’s threatening to take the land.”
“There is no possible way that is legal!” said Constance, outraged.
“I wouldn’t know. We’ve tried hiring lawyers. The few we could afford got bought off by Jessup,” Gideon shrugged.
“But what does all this have to do with me? My father hasn’t threatened you or anything.”
“Yes, but your father does own fifty percent of the Bar Jessup. Andthat’sthe party that took over our loan. Tom Jessup didn’t do it under his own name. Which means if your father wanted to call this whole thing off he could.”
Constance frowned. “He likely doesn’t even know about any of this!”
Gideon looked back up at her and said, “I’d wager he does now that his daughter got kidnapped off her train.”
Constance swallowed and bit her lip. “You and your brothers have miscalculated a bit I’m afraid.”
Gideon sat up a little straighter.
“My father didn’t even know I was on that train. Much less that I got off of it.”
It didn’t take long for Constance to explain that she had come all the way out here without her father’s permission or foreknowledge.
A year ago, her father had betrothed her to a man by the name of Jeremiah Blackstone. Now, Jeremiah Blackstone was a handsome man with quite a lot of cash money behind his name, but faithful he was not. Her cousin Edith had seen him swapping more than tales with a certain debutante behind a potted palm at a party hosted by the Vanderbilts. Constance had never loved Jeremiah, so that wasn’t particularly the issue, but she did have her own pride to consider and being married to someone who was going to go around behind her back with the likes of empty-headed Araminta Goldwater was not Constance’s idea of a good match.
Her father had, unfortunately, disagreed.
So, with Edith still graciously fuming about her own loss in the romantic department, she had been all too willing to help Constance go on an adventure that would hopefully aggravate Jeremiah to the point of calling off the betrothal or at the very least buy her some time to think of someone else she could possibly get married to who would at least keep his lips to himself. The long and short of it was, Constance had answered the advertisement for a teacher near the ranch her father co-owned. (It wouldn’t do to gotoofar from the nest. She did want to be found eventually, after all.)
“You’ve got to be joking.” Tate rubbed a hand through his hair. “You’re telling me that we robbed a train, could go to prison for life, and it won’t even matter because your father might not even want you back?”
Constance frowned, “Well, I’m sure he will…once he finds out about it all.”
Tate groaned and buried his head in his arms on the low rail of the porch.
Lightning flashed in the distance but none of them called out a number.
Finally, Gideon spoke, “Ma’am, we truly are sorry for all of this. But I’ve got to be honest. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do next. You need to go back home, and they’re going to ask you all sorts of questions. Even if we did drop you off somewhere far away from here and you refuse to tell them who did it, my money’d be on them still finding out it was the boys. Somebody bone-headed enough to rob a train and kidnap a body without planning what to do afterwards would be bound to leave evidence somewhere.”
Tate threw his biscuit at Gideon and it bounced off his knee. Marsh just looked irritated.
They all went quiet for long minutes. Constance could tell that underneath all the aggravation, Gideon was worried. Train robbery was no laughing matter, much less the kidnapping of a cattle baron’s daughter. A couple of foolish boys making a stupid, albeit large, mistake shouldn’t be shuffled off to prison, should they?
Constance couldn’t get the idea of Tate and Marsh going to prison for sheer stupidity out of her mind. Birds chirped outside and the world smelled fresh and new after the thunderstorm the night before. She sighed as she finished making the bed. It wasn’t thespiritof the law. Besides, she felt a bit upset at her father for unintentionally causing part of this ruckus. If he would just read the letters coming into his office, he would have seen what his partner was up to under the ranch’s name. Her father might be absent-minded at times and a poor listener when it came to understanding why his daughter didn’t want to marry a scoundrel, but he would never be caught up in something so immoral and, she was sure, illegal.
Constance finished pinning her hair up and walked toward the kitchen. Gideon was there already cooking bacon in the fireplace. She watched him for a moment, but being unable to turn her thoughts to anything else, she struck right at the heart of the matter.
“I don’t suppose you’ve had any brilliant notions during the night of how to get me home?” The ‘without your brothers going to prison’ part was left unsaid, but hung heavy in the air.
“Best idea I’ve had is to turn myself in and tell them it was me and somebody I hired,” Gideon said quietly, pulling the bacon from the fire.
Constance frowned. “That’s no good. You’ll go to prison yourself. Or maybe even be hung!”
