“Then the county should know where its own records are.”

Bixby’s face reddened. “I cannot help you.”

Eleanor left the courthouse with her hands shaking. On the steps, she found Nathan waiting beneath the narrow shadow of the roof.

“I told you I had no use for you,” she said.

“And I heard you.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“Because Bixby has just sent a boy out the back door. The boy rode toward Caldwell’s office.”

Eleanor looked down the street. A child in a too-large cap was already vanishing around the corner.

“You could be lying.”

“I could.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t. Not yet.”

He spoke without offense, and that unsettled her more than persuasion would have. Nathan reached into his coat and removed a folded card. It bore the name of a lawyer in Santa Fe, along with a short note written in a neat hand.

“Samuel Ortega is honest, stubborn, and expensive,” Nathan said. “I can pay his first consultation fee. After that, you decide what you want from me.”

“I don’t accept charity.”

“Neither do I. Consider it a debt I am trying to repay.”

“What debt?”

Nathan’s gaze moved to the ridge beyond town. “One I should have paid before your husband died.”

Eleanor took the card, not because she trusted him, but because the courthouse had offered her nothing and Caldwell had offered her a rope disguised as law. She slipped the card into Thomas’s coat pocket.

“Do not mistake this for forgiveness,” she said.

“I won’t.”

He watched her walk away. Only after she had turned the corner did he allow himself to open the small leather case he carried. Inside lay a photograph of Thomas Morgan standing beside a younger Nathan, both of them squinting into the sun. On the back, in Thomas’s hand, were six words: If anything happens, find Eleanor.

Nathan closed the case. He had come to Red Creek to tell her the truth. He had not expected to find the truth already wearing the shape of a noose.

The Clerk Who Would Not Look Up

Jonah Pike lived above the harness shop, in two rooms that smelled of leather oil and old paper. His limp was worse in cold weather, Martha had told Eleanor, and he rarely came downstairs before noon. Eleanor climbed the narrow stairs with the forged note tucked beneath her shawl and Nathan’s card in her pocket.

A bell rang when she opened the door. Jonah sat at a desk crowded with ledgers. He was a thin man with silver hair and a face that seemed permanently braced for disappointment. He looked at the note and immediately shut the ledger in front of him.

“I can’t help you,” he said.

“You haven’t heard what I need.”

“I know what you need. You need the record of your husband’s death and the deed history for your ranch. I can’t help you.”

“Because Caldwell told you not to?”

Jonah’s eyes flicked toward the window. “Because I have a daughter in school and a wife who depends on my wages. Men like Caldwell can make a family disappear without laying a hand on anyone.”

Eleanor set the forged note on his desk. “Then he already has you. The only question is whether he gets to keep you.”

The words surprised her as much as him. She had not come intending to threaten a frightened clerk. She had come because Martha had said the date was wrong, and because there was no other door left to knock on.

Jonah rubbed his forehead. “Thomas came to see me three days before he died. He wanted certified copies of the spring-pasture survey and the old water easement. He believed someone had altered the county map.”

“Who?”

“He wouldn’t say. He asked me to make two copies. One went with him. The other he told me to keep in a place no one would think to look.”

“Where is it?”

Jonah stared at her for a long time. “I don’t know. The copy disappeared the night he died.”

“Then what changed on the death certificate?”

Jonah opened a drawer and removed a thin sheet of paper, its edges worn from handling. It was a carbon copy of the physician’s original statement. The recorded certificate listed Thomas’s death at six in the evening. The carbon copy listed four thirty. The first named a fall from a horse as the cause. The second read: severe blunt-force injury, circumstances undetermined.

Eleanor’s breath caught. “Why was it changed?”

“Sheriff Harlan brought the final form himself. He said the doctor had made an error. The doctor left town two weeks later.”

“Did you sign the change?”

“No. I recorded it because the sheriff said the county would be held responsible if I delayed. I was a coward, Mrs. Morgan. I told myself I was protecting my family. I have told myself that every morning since.”