Attestation executed July 31, 1881. Re-entered October 3 following clerical correction.
Anna stopped.
So the October execution language on Silas’s copy might indeed be a transcription error.
Her certainty cracked.
Mara noticed.
“What?”
Anna showed her.
Mara read.
Reverend Locke exhaled.
“Then perhaps his signature could be genuine.”
“Yes.”
Anna hated saying it.
Bell had been partly right.
A filing could be later than execution.
The copy Silas presented was sloppy.
Possibly altered.
Not automatically forged.
Facts moved.
She had to move with them.
Brigg said:
“You look disappointed.”
“I am.”
“That the deed might be real?”
“That being angry felt easier.”
Mara looked at her.
“Good.”
Anna frowned.
“Good?”
“If you only wanted paper when paper helped you, you would be Silas.”
Anna stared.
Then nodded.
They kept searching.
The federal index referenced an attached field sheet number 187-B.
Missing.
Another reference:
AFFIDAVIT OF RELOCATION — STONE DAMAGED BY FLOOD.
Anna stopped.
Flood?
Bluewater had experienced no major flood in 1880 or 1881.
Her father’s rainfall notebook suddenly mattered.
She had nearly ignored it.
From September 1879 through July 1881, rainfall remained below normal.
No flood large enough to move a three-foot sandstone monument almost a thousand feet.
She told Weaver.
He frowned.
“Do you have the notebook?”
“Yes.”
“Bring it.”
They telegraphed Margaret.
Send rainfall book with deputy.
Two days.
More delay.
Silas’s claim remained unresolved.
Creel refused every request to speak.
Then Mara did something Anna would never have considered.
She waited outside the hardware store.
Not hiding.
Not threatening.
Simply sitting across the street.
For six hours.
Creel looked out his upstairs window three times.
At sunset, he came down.
He crossed the road.
“What do you want?”
Mara stood.
“My brother’s name.”
Creel stared.
“What?”
“You wrote Thomas Kase was unreliable.”
Creel looked away.
“In what?”
“The affidavit.”
Anna, standing twenty feet away beside Brigg, froze.
Mara had not told her that.
Creel rubbed his jaw.
“He contradicted the survey correction.”
“Because it was false.”
“You don't know that.”
“My brother knew where the stone stood.”
Creel looked tired.
“Memory is not a survey.”
“No.”
Mara nodded.
“That is why Elias measured.”
Creel flinched.
Mara saw.
“So you remember.”
He turned away.
She called:
“Thomas died thinking no one believed him.”
Creel stopped.