"Then please do."
He glanced toward the courthouse door.
"I will."
But his tone lacked conviction.
Clara rolled up the survey.
"Mr. Bell, has anyone else asked to see this document recently?"
The clerk looked uncomfortable.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because a man connected with the water company asked me about the original deed yesterday."
Bell took off his spectacles and polished them.
"Mr. Rourke has made several inquiries."
"About the survey?"
"About the river boundary. About the original land grant. About the company's proposed rights of access."
"Has he seen the records?"
"I cannot discuss other people's business."
Clara studied him.
"You can discuss public records."
"Of course."
"Then I will return tomorrow."
She left the courthouse with the survey tucked beneath her arm.
Across the street, a man stood outside the telegraph office.
Nathaniel Cole.
He was speaking to the operator, but when he saw Clara, he ended the conversation and crossed the street.
"You found the survey," he said.
Clara stopped.
"Have you been following me?"
"No."
"Then you have an unusual habit of appearing wherever I go."
"I was sending a message to Denver."
"To Mr. Rourke?"
"No."
His answer came too quickly.
Clara narrowed her eyes.
"Who do you work for, Mr. Cole?"
"At present, the company."
"And before that?"
He glanced down the street.
"Before that, I worked for the government survey office."
"Why did you leave?"
"Because I discovered that a man can spend ten years measuring land and still be unable to stop someone from stealing it."
Clara waited for him to explain.
He did not.
Instead, he looked at the rolled map beneath her arm.
"Did you notice the red line?"
"Yes."
"Then you understand why Rourke wants the original survey."
"I understand that he wants my land."
"That is only part of it."
Clara felt the familiar tightening in her chest.
"What else?"
Cole lowered his voice.
"The company has been purchasing water rights across the valley. But some of those rights were granted under conditions that no longer exist. Rourke believes he can use the old river boundary to claim land that was never legally transferred."
"Can he?"
"I don't know. That is what he is trying to establish."
"And you are helping him?"
Cole looked at her.
"I was hired to examine the survey records. I did not know what I would find."
"That is not an answer."
"No," he admitted. "It isn't."
A wagon rattled past them, forcing them to step aside.
Cole waited until the noise faded.
"Miss Whitmore, there is something you should know. Three weeks ago, a surveyor working for the company disappeared."
Clara stared at him.
"Disappeared?"
"He left town after sending a letter to the county recorder. He never arrived at his next destination."
"Was he murdered?"
"I have no proof of that."
"Then why tell me?"
"Because he was investigating the same boundary."
Clara looked toward the courthouse.
The building stood in the afternoon sun, its windows dark.
"What was his name?"
"Thomas Avery."
"Where can I find his letter?"
Cole hesitated.
"I believe Mr. Bell has it."
"Then I will ask him."
"Do not ask him in front of Rourke."
Clara felt anger rising.
"Why should I trust you?"
"You shouldn't."
The answer surprised her.
Cole continued.
"Not yet. But you should trust the documents. And you should keep the original deed somewhere safe."
He turned to leave.
"Mr. Cole."
He stopped.
"Why are you helping me?"
For a moment, he seemed uncertain.
Then he said, "Because I have seen what happens when men decide that the law belongs to whoever can afford to bend it."
He walked away before she could respond.
Clara remained on the street, holding the survey against her side.
The heat pressed down upon the town.
Somewhere behind the buildings, a church bell began to ring.
She had come to Red Hollow looking for an answer about her land.
Instead, she had found a missing surveyor, a suspicious county clerk, and a man whose loyalties she could not understand.
By the time she mounted her horse, she knew one thing.
Silas Rourke was not going to stop at making an offer.
And the truth about the Whitmore ranch had become dangerous.
The Debt
Clara returned to the ranch shortly before sunset.
The western sky had turned the color of copper, and the cattle were gathering near the remaining water troughs. She dismounted beside the barn and found Samuel Price waiting near the corral.
Samuel had worked for the Whitmore family for nearly twenty years. He was fifty-eight, tall and weather-beaten, with a white beard and a limp left over from a horse accident. He had taught Clara to ride, helped her father build the irrigation channel, and stayed on the ranch after everyone else had begun to leave.
He was also the only person Clara trusted without reservation.
"You're late," he said.
"I went to the courthouse."
"Did you find anything?"
"Perhaps."
She told him about the survey, the red boundary line, and Nathaniel Cole's warning.
Samuel listened without interrupting.
When she finished, he looked toward the eastern hills.
"I always wondered when Rourke would come after that strip of land."
"You knew about the boundary?"
"I knew your father believed the company had no right to it."
"Why didn't he tell me?"
"Because he thought the matter was settled."
Samuel removed his hat and wiped his forehead.
"Your father and Rourke argued about the river three years ago. Rourke wanted permission to build a diversion channel across the eastern pasture. Your father refused. After that, Rourke began buying the neighboring properties."
"Why didn't Father take him to court?"
"He intended to. But the lawyers cost money, and the ranch was already struggling. Then your mother became ill."
Clara looked away.
Her mother's illness had lasted nearly a year. During that time, her father had spent most of his savings on doctors and medicine. When she died, the ranch was left with a mortgage, unpaid supply bills, and too little money to repair the machinery.
Her father had worked himself into exhaustion trying to keep everything running.
Eleven months later, Clara was still trying to finish what he had started.
"How much do we owe the bank?" she asked.
Samuel hesitated.
"With interest?"
"Yes."
"Nearly eighteen hundred dollars."
Clara closed her eyes.
The figure was worse than she had expected.
She had sold two horses, reduced the number of hired hands, and used the money from the spring cattle sale to pay the most urgent bills. Even so, the bank had begun sending letters every month.
The ranch might survive another season.
It could not survive a foreclosure.
"How long do we have?"
"Mr. Harlan says the bank will review the account in September."
"That gives us three months."
"Three months to find eighteen hundred dollars."
Clara looked toward the house.
"And water."
Samuel nodded.
"And water."
The two problems were connected. If she could restore the irrigation channel, she might save the lower pasture and sell enough cattle in the autumn to pay the debt. But repairing the channel would require lumber, labor, and equipment.
Without money, she could not repair the channel.
Without the channel, she could not save the ranch.
It was a circle with no obvious way out.
That evening, Clara opened her father's account books.
She spent hours examining the figures, checking invoices, and calculating what could be sold without damaging the ranch beyond recovery.
At midnight, she found a letter tucked between two pages of the ledger.
It was dated March 1881.
The handwriting was her father's.
Silas Rourke has made another offer for the eastern land. I have refused him. He claims the old survey is unclear, but I believe he knows exactly what it means. If anything should happen to me, Clara must be told that the original deed is more important than the county copy.
Clara read the letter twice.
A second sheet had been folded inside it.
The old boundary stone stands beneath the northern cottonwood. The river has moved, but the stone has not. If the survey is ever challenged, begin there.
She carried the letter to the kitchen, where Samuel was preparing coffee.
He read it slowly.
"The northern cottonwood," he said.
"Do you know the stone?"
"I helped your father find it."
"Then we will look tomorrow."
Samuel returned the letter.
"Clara, there is something else."
She waited.
"Two nights ago, someone was in the study."
Her stomach tightened.
"What?"
"I heard a noise after midnight. By the time I reached the house, whoever it was had gone."
"Did anything disappear?"
"I don't think so."
Clara hurried to her father's study.
The tin box was still in the drawer.
The deed was inside.
But the desk had been moved slightly away from the wall.
She knelt and examined the floorboards.
A thin line of dust had been disturbed beneath the desk.
Someone had searched the room.
And whoever it was had known where to look.
Clara returned to the kitchen.
"From now on," she said, "the deed stays with me."
Samuel nodded.
"Good."
She placed the document inside a leather case and fastened it beneath her saddlebag.
Then she looked toward the dark windows.
For months, she had believed that the greatest danger to the ranch was the bank.
Now she understood that the debt was only one part of the problem.
Someone wanted the land badly enough to enter her home in the middle of the night.
And the reason was written on a piece of paper that had belonged to her father.
The Stone Beneath the Cottonwood
They rode east at dawn.
The heat had not yet settled over the valley, and the morning air carried the faint smell of damp earth. Clara followed Samuel along the old cattle trail toward the river.
The northern cottonwood stood on a low rise overlooking the water. Its trunk was broad and twisted, its branches reaching over the bank like the arms of an old man.
Clara remembered playing beneath the tree as a child.
Her father had often brought her there to fish. He had shown her how to read the current, where to look for tracks, and how to recognize the places where the river had changed its course.
She had never known that he had also hidden a secret beneath its roots.
Samuel dismounted.
"The stone should be on the northern side."
They searched through the dry grass.
At first, Clara saw nothing.
Then Samuel knelt beside a patch of earth where the roots had pushed through the soil. He brushed away the dirt with his gloved hand.
A flat stone emerged.
Its surface was marked with a narrow groove and a series of numbers.
Clara crouched beside him.
"Is this the boundary marker?"
"It is."
She traced the carved numbers.
"Can you read them?"
"Some of them. The last two are difficult."
Samuel fetched a small brush from his saddlebag and cleared away the remaining dirt.
The markings became visible.
A date.
A survey number.
And the initials of a man named Elias Mercer.
"Who was Mercer?" Clara asked.
"Surveyor. Worked in this valley before your father bought the ranch."
"Is he still alive?"
Samuel shook his head.
"Died twenty years ago."
Clara examined the ground around the stone.
The marker had been deliberately placed. Its base was set in a shallow bed of smaller rocks, and a narrow line of stones extended toward the river.
They followed the line until it disappeared beneath a patch of dry grass.
Samuel took a length of rope from his saddle.
"If Mercer marked the boundary properly, there should be another stone near the old river bend."
They spent the next hour searching.
At last, Clara found it.
The second marker lay partly buried near a cluster of willows. Unlike the first, it had been disturbed. One side was chipped, and the soil around its base had been recently turned.
Someone had tried to remove it.
Clara knelt.
"Why would anyone move a boundary stone?"