When Kay made her mind up to do something there was no changing it. She had laid in bed for a long time after Roper had walked out of her room thinking of a way to get back at him for the callous way he had treated her last night.
She was sitting at the breakfast table with her aunt, uncle, George and Betty when Roper finally made an appearance.
“Morning everyone, sorry I’m late.”
“Didn’t hear you come in last night Roper,” George was saying to him.
“Last thing I remember was waking up this morning, don’t even remember going to bed. No more parties for a while ok George, my head can’t take it? I got as far as getting my pants off before I passed out I guess. Woke up with my shirt still on and my pants on the floor.”
Everyone was laughing but Kay. So this is how he wanted to play the game. Maybe he was hoping that she would really believe he didn’t remember coming into her room. Let him think that, it would just make her plan go a little easier.
“Why don’t you take Kay for a tour of the ranch Roper, I’ll have Betty pack you two a cold lunch,” and you can drop off the supplies for Jim as well? Check the fence line down by section 30 while you two are out and about. Tom said he thought that old Gus was trying to tunnel under again.”
Kay didn’t give Roper time to answer before she tried to make up an excuse not to go. “Maybe another day George, I’m going to help aunt Kay and Betty with the clean up this morning.”
“There ain’t no cleaning being done except by the ones I hired to do it, your aunt and Betty are going to town on a shopping spree while the cleaners are here. Your uncle and I will see that they get everything done proper while all of you are out.”
Uncle Chuck piped in giving her the go ahead to tour the ranch. “You go on out with Roper and tour the ranch hon, George and I still got some planning to do for the reunion next month so we will be busy with that and keeping an eye on the cleaning crew,”
Roper looked over to her and she could see in his eyes that he was laughing at her, probably thinking she was afraid to be alone with him is the reason she was trying to make an excuse to go out with him. “Ok, sounds like fun, I’ll enjoy seeing your ranch George. When would you like to leave Roper?”
“Give me a half hour to get the supplies loaded into the truck and we can leave.”
“Ok, I’ll meet you out front in a half hour then.” Kay excused herself from the table and went to her room to change into some jeans. When she came downstairs she went right into the kitchen to see if she could help Betty and her Aunt pack the lunch she and Roper were to take with them. They had everything all packed and ready to put into the truck when Roper got there. “Betty do you have a bottle of water I can toss into the cooler?”
“Sure honey, I’ll get you one. There is a big thermos of Ice Tea in there for you two as well dear.” Betty told her fetching the bottle of water from the fridge and putting it in the cooler. “Well your Aunt and I are going to get going before that sun gets any hotter, enjoy your tour of the Ranch Kay.”
She gave them both a kiss on the cheek, waving good-bye to them both. She looked down towards the barn and saw that Roper’s truck was still there so she had enough time to slip the sleeping powders into the thermos.
George had told Kay that the first hour of their trip Roper would be stopping to make sure all the hands were doing ok or if they would need anything. The second hour of their trip would be through some pretty rough dirt road areas, where the men were working on getting the roads ready to be paved. Nasa was paying to have them paved so getting to their dish’s and satellite dish’s was easier, but the men had to plow and grate the roads first then they would send in their crews to do the rest and then lay the asphalt. He told her it would be close to noon before they made it to the bunkhouse.
Kay had put her hair in a pony tail, pulling it through the opening at the back of the ball cap she had put on to keep the hot sun from beating down on her head. It was her favorite fishing hat that her son had given her on mothers day a couple years ago. It had a woman on it holding a fishing rod in one hand and a huge bass in the other.
She was sitting on the front porch with the cooler and thermos when Roper got there. He loaded the things into the back of the truck, helped her inside then they were off. Kay knew in her gut that he would try to pull something on her today and she hoped what she had planned was going to work.
“George owns 2500 hundred acres of land, he raises both horses and cattle, horses being his primary asset. We have wild Peacocks roaming the land, as well as quite a few wild boars, which is what was on the dinner menu at last nights party,” he told her winking at her. “The only real problem we have are the gators.”
Roper had stopped the truck near a long fence line, he came around and helped her out of the truck and led her down towards the fence. He stood looking over the fence for a few seconds then pointed to a marshy area to the right of them. “Look, just under that outcropping of branches and you can see one giving us the eye right now.”
Kay saw it, it looked almost black laying there under the bushes just it’s head and eyes visible. It swam slowly across till it was close to the bank where they were standing. “I take it this is a special kind of fence to help keep them out,” she asked him?
The bottom of the fence was cinder blocks, about waist high it turned into a thick chain link fence. On the other side of the fence were coils of bobbed wire as far as you could see down the fence row. Kay could see some men working on the other side of the fence a few hundreds yards down from where she and Roper were. Two men were working on the barbed wire and one was watching the swamp for gators, a rifle at the ready should he need it.
