Chapter 6
Jason’s Farm, Louisiana
“Chrissie!” Alice cried, panic rising in her chest like an undeniable tide. “No!”
Her voice seemed to ripple out like the rings a stone made when it was dropped into a still pond.
A hand clamped on her arm, and Kyle gave a warning shake of his head. Just as swiftly as he had grabbed hold of her, he let her go and pointed down the hill.
“Sound carries,” he said softly. “We have to be careful.”
She nodded. She hadn’t meant to cry out; her sister’s name had just flown from her lips without permission. “I’m sorry.”
Kyle nodded. “Now, let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
They turned back to the scene below them. Thankfully, it didn’t seem that she had cried out loudly enough for her voice to reach the man with the gun.
Also oblivious to her audience, Chrissie carried her laundry basket to the washing line and began to hang it.
The man watched her every move, his gun always pointed at her.
After a while, another man emerged from the farmhouse, and he called something to the man with the gun.
The man answered and then another man appeared out of the barn.
Weighed down under a load of hay, he went to the trough outside and dumped the hay in it.
There were a couple of cows and a handful of horses that sauntered up to the trough to nibble.
The hay man, who looked ragged and thin, also had an armed escort. Was that Jason? Alice was inclined to think it had to be. Who else would be under guard like Chrissie if not her husband?
And all this time, she’d thought that Jason was the one keeping Chrissie from contacting her. The things that Alice had dreamed up that were happening to her sister had all been at her husband’s hands. She didn’t even know what to think now.
“I think it’s safe to say that there is a very good reason why your sister hasn’t contacted you,” Michael said quietly. “It looks like her home has been overrun by bandits.”
“They do seem to have made themselves quite at home,” Warren said.
“We have to save her,” Alice whispered. The casual way these men were discussing her sister’s predicament irked her.
How could they be so calm and clinical about bandits kidnapping her sister?
“We have to get the sheriff and ride down there and arrest all of those men right now!” Her voice was rising again.
“Alice, please,” Kyle said, holding up his hands. “Your voice will carry, and they’ll come looking for us. Then we won’t be able to help Chrissie at all.”
“Well, we have to do something!” she insisted, trying to keep her voice down and failing.
“Yes,” Michael said, nodding thoughtfully.
“And we will.” He looked at Warren and Kyle.
“I think we should do surveillance first. That will be our best bet so we don’t blunder in and make the situation worse.
We need to know how many bandits there are and what they’re armed with.
It won’t do us any good to go charging in there only to find out that we misjudged something. ”
Kyle nodded. “We should set up a hide here and change out as we need to.”
“That’s a good idea,” Michael said, nodding his agreement. “We might be able to get closer for short spells.”
“Maybe we can go and knock on the door,” Warren suggested.
“They don’t know any of us. They’ve never seen us before, so we could pretend to be salesmen or something.
You know. We could try a ruse to get extra information.
Perhaps then we can speak to Chrissie or her husband. Who knows what we may find out.”
“That’s also a good idea,” Michael said. “But I think until we know more, it might be too risky. There’s nothing stopping these men from simply shooting us then.”
“That’s true,” Warren conceded.
“Or we could just go down there and grab Chrissie and Jason and leave,” Alice said vehemently.
All this talk of plans to go in surreptitiously was ridiculous.
Her sister was being held hostage! This couldn’t be allowed to continue for another hour, let alone a day, or however long these men were planning to let it go on for.
For heaven’s sake, they sounded like they were enjoying themselves, like this was a fun little outing, an activity that could pass the days while they waited for a new train!
Kyle shook his head. “Alice, it’s too dangerous for us, not to mention for Chrissie and her husband.”
“No, leaving her there is too dangerous,” Alice insisted, jabbing a finger in the farm’s direction. “Chrissie is a kind, gentle person. You have to understand—she’s fragile. Delicate. I knew her coming out here alone was a bad idea.”
She could see that none of them believed her.
The looks on their faces told her everything.
She was just a silly woman. What could she possibly know about something like this?
Well, she knew Chrissie, and her sister wasn’t made of stern stuff.
She was made of sunshine and rainbows. She was made to be protected and loved, not held at gunpoint, doing some filthy men’s laundry.
“Kyle …” Michael said in a tone that Alice hadn’t heard him use before.
Kyle nodded. “Yes, I know. Alice, let’s take a little walk this way.”
He took her by the hand. She wanted to pull free at first, but for some reason, she couldn’t quite fathom, she didn’t.
They walked away from the others, up a little path to where a rocky outcropping looked out over to the west. The sun was heading that way but hadn’t reached it yet. Kyle sat on a rock, and Alice reluctantly sat as well at his insistence.
“It’s difficult,” Kyle said kindly, “to see someone you care about in trouble. I know that your first instinct is to rush to them and try to do your best to save them. It’s a great idea, but it’s not the right move now.
Please, you have to believe us. We have some experience with this kind of thing.
Remember I said that our town has had a bandit problem?
Well, they kidnapped some of our people not long ago and we had to mount a rescue.
It took us a few days to get everything set up, but we got almost everyone back. ”
“Almost everyone?” she asked, fear raising its ugly head again.
“Yes, two people died, but that was before the rescue attempt,” Kyle said. “Our bandits are brutal. They kept our people in cages out in the sun. It took its toll.”
“That sounds inhumane,” Alice said, appalled.
Kyle inclined his head as though to say, Well, there you go.
“And you think these men are better somehow and won’t subject Chrissie to similar cruelty?” Alice asked.
Now Kyle shook his head. “We don’t know. That’s the point. So, we have to be patient and find out what’s going on down there.”
“Kyle, that’s my little sister suffering. What else do we really need to know?”
“A lot,” Kyle said.
Alice shook her head. “I can’t sit around and just wait.”
He took her shoulders and turned her to face him, his green eyes soft and intent as they gazed into her.
“And we won’t. I promise you … Look, let us at least try to find out more, like what the bandits are actually after,” Kyle pleaded.
“Please, we have to be careful. We’re not in our home territory, so we don’t know who can be trusted and who can’t.
That means we have to tread carefully until we know what we’re dealing with.
Think about it. If we rush off to town and get the sheriff out here only to find out that he’s been bribed by the bandits, then we have a whole new set of problems.”
The thought would never have occurred to Alice in a million years. Just what kind of place was this that such things were a consideration?
“Do you think that’s likely?” she asked.
Kyle nodded. “Our bandits have bribed, bullied, and blackmailed their way through town after town. Trust me, I expect the worst now. And I always tread with caution.” He sighed. “We would all like to get to the other side of this alive, right?”
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“So, we need to take a breath and formulate a plan, go about this with our heads on straight, and not let our hearts make decisions,” he said. He spoke so kindly that Alice found her determination to run down the hill to Chrissie faltering.
Perhaps Kyle was talking sense after all. What would she accomplish by racing down there and grabbing her sister? She’d undoubtedly get them both shot, probably along with Jason, who, she assumed, would rush to his new wife’s rescue.
Now that she was thinking, Alice could see that Kyle and his friends were right. This needed careful planning.
“All right. So, now what?” she asked, whispering a prayer for strength and patience.
Kyle looked relieved.
“Now, we tread carefully,” he said. “Let’s go and see if Michael and Warren have learned anything new.”
They walked back the way they had come and found Warren and Michael sitting in silence, watching the farmyard.
“Is everything okay?” Michael asked.
“Yes and no,” Alice said. “My sister is still a captive, but I understand why we can’t just rush down there and get her.”
“Good,” Michael said, nodding. “Then we need to come up with a plan.”
“I thought it might be a good idea to head into town and find out more,” Kyle said. “It would be good to know where the sheriff stands on all of this.”
“Yes, we had the same idea,” Warren said. “It would also be good to have more guns on our side. So far I’ve counted eight gunmen wandering around the farmyard. And judging by the volume of laundry Alice’s sister is doing, there have to be at least another five men on the premises.”
“You got all of that from laundry?” Alice asked, amazed.
Warren nodded. “It’s a simple extrapolation of the data given.”
“Right, of course it is,” she said with a weak smile.
“Don’t let his logic bother you too much,” Michael said. “A kind heart beats inside that accountant’s chest.” He patted Warren on the shoulder.
Warren seemed oblivious and looked as though he was calculating something.
Michael pressed the tips of his fingers together. “What is the most efficient use of our time and resources?”