The Council of Tim Daniels
Maria had only been at work a few minutes the next morning when Tim stuck his head in the kitchen door. “Hey,” he said. “Jessie, can you spare Maria for an hour or so this morning? We’ve gotta have a meeting about the ranch.”
He was looking better than he had before. His arm was still in a sling, over a turquoise button shirt, but his color was improved.
Jessie turned from where she was preparing bacon. “As long as it’s after breakfast dishes,” she said. “Now, Tim, don’t make a habit of taking away my kitchen help.”
She spoke severely, but her eyes were twinkling. Maria was glad she was still here to help Jessie and Rob with the ranch cooking. Jessie and Rob were probably glad to hear the family wasn’t going forward with selling the ranch—if they could stop Neil or whoever was doing the sabotage, that is.
§
Tim’s meeting was in the upper level of the barn where the ATVs and other equipment were kept.
The place was air-conditioned—which Grandma Austin said was a completely unnecessary expense, but Uncle Russell said it was the only thing that made the place useful for parties—and the upper level was furnished with tables and chairs.
The Austin family, and a good number of the ranch hands, were already there when Maria arrived.
Tim was near the head of one of the tables, leaning casually against a wooden support beam.
When he saw Maria, he straightened and went over to her.
“Good, you’re here,” he said, taking her hand in his good one. “It’s utter chaos. How are you at taking notes?”
“Actually,” Maria said, “I’m an excellent note-taker. I did it a lot in culinary school.”
“Wonderful!” Tim said. “Would you take notes? I mean, not just take notes. I want you to speak up if you have ideas. But would you also take notes, please?”
“Glad to,” Maria said. “Does anybody have a pen and paper?”
“Steph does,” Tim said. “She’d probably lend them to us.”
Tim went to the head of the central table. Maria parked herself next to him with Aunt Steph’s notebook and purple pen. He was tall above her, and one beam of sunlight from the roof rested on his blond hair like a crown.
He cleared his throat. “I’d like to call this meeting to order,” he said.
“In attendance, we’ve got Pat and the other Austins, including Savannah.
” He nodded at Savannah. “Then among the non-Austins, because she would object if I called her an Austin, we’ve got Maria Gilbert”—Tim nodded down at her— “myself, and most of the worthy employees of the Rocker A.”
“Yeah!” called one of the worthy employees from another table.
Tim raised an eyebrow. “And we’ve also got Danny,” he said. “All right. Well, I called this meeting to figure out a way to trap Neil—if he’s the guy doing the sabotage, which is still what I think. But we need to do it without anybody getting hurt. I’m taking ideas.”
Annabelle, sitting at the far end of Tim’s table, raised her hand. “I’ve got an idea. What if I pretend to make up with Neil, sneakily learn his phone passcode, steal his phone, and go through his messages?”
Tim shook his head. “Sorry, Annabelle,” he said. “I’m not comfortable with that at all.”
Annabelle made a face. “I thought you wouldn’t be.”
“I’m not comfortable with it either,” Uncle Russell said loudly. “You can forget about it, Annabelle.”
“All right.” Annabelle slid down in her chair. “Then who else has an idea?”
Maria wrote in her notebook. “Idea, Annabelle: pretend to make up with Neil to read his phone. Voted down.”
“Why can’t the ranch hands just keep an eye out for Neil or his men?” Aunt Steph asked. “Now you know who you’re looking for, wouldn’t it be easier?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that much easier,” Tim said. “The ranch is a big place. We’ve been trying to patrol it the last few weeks, and we haven’t been successful in preventing more sabotage.”
Closing her eyes, Maria racked her brain for anything that could be useful for catching Neil.
Was there anything from a Western she had read?
She couldn’t remember anything that would work in this situation.
Zorro got together a huge group of men to take down the bad guys.
The ranch didn’t have a huge group of men, and they hadn’t proven Neil’s guilt yet.
There had to be some way to trick Neil. He was smart—he had been smart enough to get other guys to do the sabotage and give himself alibis for the times that the sabotage happened—but maybe there was a way to trick him.
The Montana Rider wasn’t any good because Tim’s arm was in a sling.
Maybe somebody could write him a letter.
A letter. Maria’s mind went to Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, in the scene where the servants leave the letter for Malvolio that he thinks is from Olivia.
The ranch hands were chipping in, replying to Aunt Steph about the impossibility of patrolling the whole ranch.
Aunt Steph sighed. “Well, then, what do you suggest?” she said. “The whole thing seems hopeless to me.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Maria said, into the dull silence that followed Aunt Steph’s last remark. “Why don’t we write a letter to trick Neil?”
“Now that’s an interesting idea,” Tim said. “What are you thinking?”
Maria fumbled for words. She wasn’t used to speaking in front of so many people, certainly not with an idea of her own that wasn’t really fleshed out yet.
“Well, I was thinking,” she said. “You know how somebody—we’re assuming Neil and his guys—left that note saying that it was time for the Austins to sell the ranch?
Well, maybe we can send Neil a note. And depending on his reaction, it will give him away if he’s guilty. ”
Tim was nodding. “I like it,” he said. “Who’s the letter from?”
“I haven’t gotten that far,” Maria said. “Is there anybody he might be trying to meet up with?”
“Hmm,” Tim said. “We’ve got to play on what he wants. What does he want most?”
“The Austins to sell out?” Luke asked.
“Yeah, because he wants to sell his own ranch to that Hollywood guy.” Tim rubbed his chin.
“Pat told everybody not to talk about the sale, so he won’t know about it.
What if we give him a cryptic note that he thinks is from Owen Beck?
Or—actually, I like this one better—what if we give him a note that makes him think one of our own ranch hands wants to work with him to get the Austins to sell? ”
“Do you think it’ll work?” Grandma Austin asked.
Tim pursed his lips. “I think it’s worth a shot,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get him to come to a particular place. We’ll have guys waiting around as witnesses and to make sure he doesn’t get away after that.”
“How are you going to get the note to him?” Uncle Russell asked.
“Mail it, I guess,” Tim said. “Just to his regular ranch address. I guess he reads his own mail. Especially with something sketchy going on like this—he’s probably jumpy and checks every piece of paper that comes into the house.”
“I’d be jumpy too if I was sabotaging somebody’s ranch,” Maria said. “Who’s going to write the note?”
“How about you and I write it?” Tim suggested. “We can get it in the mail today—I’ve gotta go into town this afternoon. Neil should get it by tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me,” Grandma Austin said. “Not too much risk, as long as Neil doesn’t start shooting if he gets cornered.”
“I’ll make sure everyone’s careful,” Tim said.
“Blaise and I can tie him up,” Danny offered. “No shooting needed, except in self-defense.”
“All right, you guys figure out a plan, and we’ll talk about it,” Tim said.
“Okay, perfect,” Danny said. “We’ll figure it out.”
All around the barn loft, heads were nodding. Everyone was going to work together. Neil didn’t stand a chance.
§
Tim suggested that he and Maria could work on the letter at the house. The den was a good place to work during the day, as hardly anybody came in there. Maria got her laptop from her room, and Tim went down to his place near the bunkhouse to get “necessary supplies.”
Maria had just opened a new document on her laptop when Tim arrived with a grocery bag.
“What’s that?” Maria asked.
Tim grinned. “Necessary supplies.” He set the bag on the end table between the two swivel chairs in the den and began pulling things out of it. “Milk. Solo cups for the milk. Hand pies. Popcorn.”
Maria laughed. “Where did you get all that?”
“Some of the boys decided I needed a pick-me-up after getting shot and breaking my arm,” Tim said. “They got me this stuff from town. I can use some help eating it before it goes bad.”
“It’s almost lunchtime,” Maria protested. “We’ll ruin our lunch.”
He grinned. “Who cares? We’ll have this for lunch. Unless you had your heart set on a T-bone steak.”
Maria laughed. “I’ll have a hard-boiled egg or something later,” she said. “All right, all right. We should get started.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Tim poured a cup of milk and put it on Maria’s side of the end table. “You’re a businesslike woman. I understand why nobody can do without you.”
That was sweet—it was nice to be appreciated. Maria smiled at him.
He poured his own cup of milk and pulled a wooden chair from the other side of the den, putting it next to Maria so he could see her computer screen.
He sat backward on the chair, resting his chin on his good arm draped over the back. “Speaking of nobody being able to do without you,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve thanked you yet for saving my life.”
Maria met his gaze, blue and serious. “I didn’t save your life,” she said. “I mean, you were bleeding, but you weren’t bleeding out, were you?”
“Doc said it was a good thing you put pressure on it,” Tim said, raising his eyebrows. “Gunshot wounds are dangerous, you know.”
“Oh, Tim.” Maria reached up and touched his shoulder, lightly. He still had a thick bandage over the gunshot. “I’m just glad you’re OK.”
“Me too,” Tim said. “And I owe you. How about a riding lesson? And then dinner at the nicest restaurant in town?”
Maria smiled. “I’d love that. As soon as we catch Neil.”
“Oh, yeah, that small detail,” Tim groaned. “All right. What are we going to say?”
After half an hour of brainstorming, Maria and Tim had finished the anonymous letter to Neil. It read:
“Hey Neil,
“I’m a hand at the Rocker A. I’ve seen what your guys are doing, and I think they’re wasting their time.
I know a kind of sabotage that would get the Austins to sell the ranch for sure.
If you wanna talk to me and figure out what we’d each get out of it, you can meet me on Thursday at 9 PM at the big Ponderosa pine along the fenceline near the southwest corner of the Rocker A.
“Signed, A Friend.”
“Beautiful,” Tim said. “Every statement is true, and every statement is misleading. Maybe he’ll be suspicious, but I think he’ll be desperate enough to check it out.”
“I hope so,” Maria said, second-guessing her idea now that it was in action. “I don’t know. If I saw a note, and I didn’t know who it was from, I think I’d be cautious.”
Tim raised his eyebrows at her. “Your natural curiosity wouldn’t get the better of you? Not even if it was from a Mysterious Rider in black?”
“Ooh, that’s a hard one,” Maria said. “He sounds pretty interesting. What would the note say?”
“Let me see,” Tim said. Reaching up, he gently brushed a strand of hair back from Maria’s face.
“How about this,” he said. “‘Dear Maria, your shining hair and soulful eyes have so enchanted this poor vigilante that he will never recover. He craves but a moment of your time—two days from hence, in the evenin’, down by the stable. For a ridin’ lesson on the slowest hoss this side o’ Texas. ’”
Maria laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think he’s trustworthy?”
“Personally, I think he’s an idiot,” Tim said. “I wouldn’t trust him. He might be leading a double life.”
“I’m beginning to think those are the best kind,” Maria said.
The corner of Tim’s mouth quirked. “And I agonized about telling you about the Montana Rider. Am I stupid, or what?”
“Or what,” Maria said promptly. “Hadn’t we better get this thing mailed? What time does the mail go?”
“Oh, right.” Tim got up from his chair with a groan. “If you send it to the printer—are you hooked up to the printer? It’s wireless. I’ll find Neil’s address and mail it in town. You coming with me?”
Maria hesitated. It would be a wonderful time, going into town with Tim. But poor Jessie didn’t have enough help in the kitchen.
“I wish,” Maria said, “but I think I’d better go back and help Jessie and Rob.”
“You’re probably right. Okay. I’ll find an envelope, and you send it to the printer. It should be the only one if you go into the printers menu.”
He went off, whistling. With so many cares on his shoulders, how did Tim walk with such a confident and relaxed swing? Maria could only pray that their scheme to trap Neil would work out—safely, without anybody getting hurt again—and that it would put an end to the ranch sabotage.