When Love's Gone Country

Chapter Twenty-Three



“I hate to tell you, but you’re not man enough for me,” Pure said, stepping to the side as he tried to ram her through with the blade.

As he whizzed past her, she headed up the gazebo steps, then shimmied up the lattice until she was on the roof of the gazebo, lying flat.

The man had fallen to the ground. When he was upright again, he looked around. “Where are you? I know you’re here.”

Pure thought her furious heartbeat would give away her whereabouts.

The other man came running back. “Lost her.”

“Dammit, Jay, can’t you even keep track of one woman?”

“Where’s yours?”

“She’s right here somewhere.”

“Looks like you can’t keep track, either.”

“Shut up and start lookin’. We got to find ‘em quick. Red ain’t gonna be happy if he hears we failed, too. C’mon.”

Purity wasn’t sure she heard the man correctly. Had he said Red? She thought he was a trusted ranch hand. Why in the world would he be searching for the healing well? He should already know where it is. He’d worked the ranch long enough. Surely he’d have found it by now.

The sound of running feet caught Pure’s attention, along with lanterns swinging light into the darkness.

“Purity!” Alex yelled.

“Over here! I’m okay. On top of the gazebo.”

It seemed like half the people who had been in the barn were now in the orchard.

“Who was it?” Frank asked as Bobby and Alex helped Purity get down.

“I don’t know. Some tall guy and two other tall guys. I took one of them down with a kick to the knee.”

“What’d they want?” Bobby asked.

“To know where the healing well was.”

Frank rubbed his chin. “This is becoming quite a problem.”

“It gets worse. Frank, I need to talk with you alone,” Purity said.

“Let’s go back to the main house.”

Purity looked around for Red, but saw he was nowhere in the vicinity. Funny how he hadn’t come rushing to help. He’d been at the big, red barn for the hoedown all night.

When they were all settled in the living room of Frank and Emma’s sprawling ranch home, Purity told Frank about Red.

“Are you sure you didn’t hear him wrong?”

“I didn’t hear him wrong. He mentioned Red specifically. Doesn’t Red know where the hot springs are?”

Frank sighed, “Actually, no. We don’t really talk about it amongst our staff. If anyone ever brings it up, we deny its existence.”

“But people know about it,” Meg said.

“Some do. Some don’t.”

“Some don’t believe,” Emma said. “Red’s been around the ranch a long time, but he ain’t one to take any kind of gossip seriously. If he can’t see or feel it himself, he don’t believe it.”

“That’s a good thing, for the most part,” Frank said. “But sometimes he takes things a bit too far. Everything is black and white, right or wrong, good or bad.”

“And there’s a lot of gray in the world,” Meg said.

“Exactly.”

“If what you’re saying is accurate, then why would Red care if the healing well existed or not?” Bobby asked.

“Money is a powerful elixir. Red has seen a lot of hard times. He’s always wanted to have his own ranch, but he could never get the money together. Maybe he sees this as a way to finally get what he wanted,” Frank said.

“Couldn’t he have simply asked you?” Courtney said.

“I’ve always denied it. If he asked me, I’d deny it again. It wouldn’t do ‘em any good to ask me.”

“What about other ranch hands?” Alex asked.

“Red keeps to himself a lot. Well, except for Bart. Those two are like peas in a pod. You don’t think they’re in this together, do you?”

“Four eyes are better than two,” Court said.

“There’s one way to find out for sure,” Purity said. “Meg made up a story about an underground cave in the river. If we can somehow tell that same story to Red, he might go there. We could catch him looking for it.”

“Frank can’t just bring it up in conversation now after he’s denied it for so long,” Brad said. “It would need to be someone else, someone Red or Bart would never expect to have any information about the hot springs.”

They all looked around the room. One by one their eyes fell on Jeremy.

“Why ya’ll lookin’ at me?” Jeremy asked.

“How’d you like to be in on a secret mission?” Bobby asked.

“Sign me up!”

Everyone laughed.

“We have to make sure there’s no danger. I’m not letting Jeremy do anything that might put him in harm’s way,” Meg said.

“That’s a given,” Bobby said. “We can have Jeremy leak the information while we’re all in a public setting with lots of people around. He only has to give enough information for Red to be able to find the fake location.”

“We should have a trap waiting for him,” Jeremy said. “Like one of those nets that swoops you up into the air and hangs you upside down.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Brad said. “It’d be damn hard to explain you were just passin’ by if you got caught in a trap.”

“I think it’ll be enough to catch him searchin’ the property. It’ll be enough for me anyway,” Frank said.

“How do the ranch hands pick which one of us they’re going to work with?” Meg asked.

“I tell ‘em,” Frank said.

“So you could tell Red he’ll be working with Jeremy and Bobby?”

“Yeah.”

“What chore would lend itself best to the two of them having a conversation?”

“Well,” Frank thought for a moment. “We want a lot of people around, but they also need to be able to talk while they’re workin’. Feedin’ chickens would work. Jeremy would just need to say he wanted to team up with Red.”

“I could say it’s ‘cuz he knows so much about the ranch,” Jeremy said.

“I think that’d do it.”

“So, Jeremy tells him that the healing well is located where the river makes the double y and that there’s a secret cave underwater.” Purity said.

“To find out, Red would have to dive underwater and find the cave.” Frank said.

Pure nodded.

“That sounds like some pretty good evidence to me. No other reason to go divin’ in that part of the river as the current is too swift. It’s great for white water rafting, but not for swimmin’. I think we got ourselves a plan.”

Emma and Frank thanked the group for meeting with them and apologized for all the inconvenience.

When they were back at the ranch hand quarters, Bobby and Meg helped Jeremy practice what he would say.

“It has to sound casual, like you didn’t plan it,” Bob said.

“What if he don’t bring it up?”

“He won’t bring it up, you’ll have to,” Meg said. “You could say something about how sore everybody was, until they went swimming in the river.”

“Then ya’ll got better, fast.”

“Exactly.”

“I could say it was some kind of miracle or something.”

“That would be excellent. Just remember not to talk about it too much. Let him ask you questions,” Bob said.

“And remember to keep talking about the ranch and the animals, so he doesn’t get suspicious,” Meg added.

“That’s a lot to remember.”

“It sure is. Honey, if it’s too much, just forget about it and have fun, okay. We don’t want this to become some kind of burden for you,” Meg said.

“I can do it, Mom. It’s always fun to outsmart grown-ups!”