Elias narrowed his eyes. “What change? The note isn't due for full principal for another three years. The contract gives me the right to pay the annual interest every October.”
“The original contract did,” Bellamy murmured smoothly. “However, under the Territorial Banking Act passed by the legislature in Cheyenne last spring, banks are permitted to call in personal land mortgages if the underlying property value is deemed at risk due to lack of capital investment or insufficient stock.”
“At risk?” Elias’s voice dropped into a dangerous register. “My father cleared that land. I’ve paid every dime of interest on time for twenty years. There’s three hundred head of cattle grazing the upper pasture right now.”
“Cattle that belong, in large part, to the mortgage,” Bellamy corrected gently. “And the water rights along Sorrow Creek are... shall we say, crucial to the upcoming expansion of the railroad line coming through from Laramie.” He smiled again, a cold, predatory flick of his lips. “The bank requires full payment of the principal balance—six hundred and fifty dollars in gold coin—by the fifteenth of November. Otherwise, we shall be forced to initiate foreclosure proceedings.”
Six hundred and fifty dollars in gold.
It might as well have been six million. Elias possessed eighty dollars in silver and his winter cattle herd, which could not be driven to the railhead at Laramie until spring without losing half the calves to the winter snows.
“You’re stealing my land, Horace,” Elias said, his fists clenching at his sides, his broad chest rising rapidly. “You sold those water rights to the railroad before you ever walked into this room today.”
“It is simple business, Elias,” Bellamy said, picking up his paper knife again. “A lone man on a rough piece of land cannot hold back progress. You don't have the capital to fight this in court, and you certainly don't have six hundred dollars in gold.”
Before Elias could step forward across the desk, Miriam laid her hand firmly on his forearm. Her touch was cold, steady, and unyielding.
“May I see the original deed and the assignment of mortgage, Mr. Bellamy?” she asked, her voice calm and polite.
Bellamy smirked, looking at her as if a draft horse had suddenly asked to read a newspaper. “Madam, legal documents are complex instruments of territorial law. They are hardly suitable for—"
“I did not ask for a lecture on your opinion of my intellect,” Miriam cut him off smoothly, her gray eyes fixing him with a stare so hard and cold that the banker’s smile faltered. “I asked to see the assignment of mortgage. Under Section Four of the Territorial Property Act, any debtor whose note is subject to an accelerated call has the absolute legal right to inspect the primary ledger and the original deed of trust in the presence of the clerk.”
Bellamy blinked, his smooth hands tightening on the ivory knife. “You... you are familiar with Territorial law?”
“My father was Judge Arthur Dale of the Third Circuit Court of Kansas,” she stated flatly. “I kept his legal ledgers, prepared his court dockets, and read his law library for twelve years before his death.”
She stepped past Elias, resting both broad hands flat on the smooth surface of Bellamy’s walnut desk, leaning down until her face was inches from his.
“And if I am not mistaken, Mr. Bellamy, an accelerated call on an agricultural mortgage during the off-season requires a verified notice served ninety days prior to the date of execution, signed by a circuit judge, not a simple notice from a local town banker who fancies himself a land baron.”
The silence in the plush office was sudden and absolute.
Horace Bellamy’s pale face lost every drop of its color. The ivory paper knife slipped from his fingers and clattered against the glass inkwell. He looked at Miriam as if she had suddenly transformed from a plain country woman into a timber wolf standing inside his office.
“The... the legal notice was filed in Cheyenne,” Bellamy stammered, his smooth composure shattering.
“Then produce the certified copy bearing the seal of the Third District Clerk,” Miriam demanded, her voice ringing out like an iron hammer on an anvil. “Produce it right now, or my husband and I will file an injunction for fraudulent foreclosure with the Territorial Governor’s office before the sun sets today.”
Elias stood behind her, his mouth slightly open, staring at his wife’s rigid back.
Bellamy swallowed hard, his throat working above his stiff white collar. “The... the paperwork is currently in transit from the capital. It may take... a few weeks to arrive.”
“Then until it arrives with a certified seal,” Miriam said, pulling the leather pouch of forty-two silver coins from Elias’s hand and slamming it firmly onto the leather desk ledger, “you will accept this legal interest payment, you will issue a signed receipt, and you will keep your feet off our land.”
Bellamy looked down at the silver coins, then up at Miriam’s unflinching gray eyes. With a trembling hand, he reached for his steel pen, dipped it in black ink, and signed a formal receipt.
The ride home from Mercy Falls was quiet, but it was not the cold, uncomfortable silence that had lived between them during her first week at Sorrow Creek Ranch.
The autumn sun was setting red and brilliant over the snow-capped wind River peaks, turning the vast expanses of wild sagebrush into a sea of gold and purple shadow. The wind coming down off the mountains was freezing, but Elias felt a strange, unaccustomed warmth blooming beneath his heavy wool coat.
He held the leather reins in his broad hands, staring out at the road ahead, before finally turning his head to look at the woman sitting beside him on the wagon bench.