Read Online Mississippi Raider by J.T. Edson - Free Book Online Page A

know the two Yankee
“unfortunates,” as Auntie Mattie had referred to Alfred Tollinger
and George Barmain. However, even the Negroes could not discover
exactly where the pair had gone once fleeing from the mansion. That
had not lessened Belle’s resolve to find and, if justice could not
be achieved in any other way, kill them herself.
    The girl did not delude herself
by thinking that the task to which she was committed would be
simple or easy to bring to the required conclusion. Therefore,
after having had Reverend Keith perform the funeral rights at the
ruins of her home on the morning after the attack, she had begun to
think over the means by which her purpose might be achieved.
Typical of the way she had been raised to think, her first priority
had been to take care of the welfare of the
family ’s
loyal and devoted workforce.
    Unlike what a later generation
would try to insist was the only way all Negroes thought about
their owners, every one of them had been distressed by what had
happened and eager to see the murders of their master and mistress
avenged. They also asked no more than they be allowed to remain in
their comfortable homes and help with the rebuilding of the manor
by continuing to carry out whatever their work might be. Being
determined to do all she could for them, Belle had given the
instructions to her family ’s attorney that resulted in the meeting now
taking place at his office.
    “ Then
Baton Royale can continue to be run?” Belle inquired.
    “ Of
course,” O’Connel confirmed. “Of course, you will have to take a
man beyond the age for military service to act as your supervisor,
as I don’t doubt war will break out against the Yankees any day
now, if it hasn’t started already.”
    “ I’m
going to ask Uncle Dennis to do so in my absence,” the girl
declared, having always thought of Colonel Thatcher— and his wife,
for that matter—in such a fashion despite there being no actual
family connections between them. “I’ll be staying with him and Aunt
Margaret until I leave.”
    “ Yes,”
the attorney said, nodding in approval. “I feel you’re wise to go
away for a while and try to put what’s happened out of your mind.
When will you go and where, so I can keep in touch with you over
anything that should develop?”
    “ I
don’t know for sure where I’ll be going,” Belle admitted
truthfully. “And I won’t be leaving until I’ve attended to a few
things which I won’t be able to do wherever I have to go. But, when
the time comes, I want Uncle Dennis to have my power of attorney to
act completely in my behalf for as long as I am away.”
    “ That’s very wise of you,” O’Connel praised. “In fact, it is
what I would have advised myself.”
    “ I’ll
also want to have the means to have access to whatever money I
might need while I’m gone.”
    “ That
can easily enough be arranged through the bank.”
    “ Will
you attend to it for me as quickly as possible, please?”
    “ That’s one of the things I’m here for, my dear,” the
attorney declared, looking at the girl in a speculative fashion and
noticing that there was something in addition to an understandably
deep grief over the death of her parents in her demeanor, although
he was unable to decide exactly what it might be for all of his
well-developed judgment of human nature in general and knowledge of
her personality in particular. “And you can’t tell me definitely
where you’re planning to go, or how long it will be before you come
back?”
    “ No,”
Belle admitted quietly, yet her grim sense of purpose and
determination to see it through was just discernible to the man
across the desk from her. Her tone did not change as she continued,
“I’ve no idea where I may have to go, nor how long it will take me
to do what I have to do.”
    ~*~
    Thinking of the way in which
she would soon be dressed, Belle Boyd was pleased that Mattie
Tobias was still not sufficiently recovered to have witnessed