“You cannot block the street.”
Marshal Brigg said:
“They aren't.”
Silas looked at him.
Brigg shrugged.
“Street’s wide.”
Jacob spoke quietly to Mara.
She translated.
“My brother says you should finish reading your paper.”
Silas stared.
Mara continued:
“Then we will show ours.”
Anna looked toward the rolled map.
Her heartbeat quickened.
Silas laughed.
“This is theater.”
Mara’s expression did not change.
“No.”
She looked toward the wagon.
“This is heavy.”
One of the younger Apache men pulled away the canvas.
Beneath it sat a sandstone block nearly three feet high.
Dusty.
Rough.
One side unnaturally flat.
The crowd moved closer.
Silas stopped smiling.
Anna saw it.
Only for a second.
Recognition.
Then gone.
Mara walked to the wagon.
She and another woman lifted the stone enough for the men to slide it carefully onto a reinforced handcart.
The wheels groaned.
Reverend Locke frowned.
“What is it?”
Mara looked toward Jacob.
He answered in Apache.
She translated.
“A thing your government put in our ground.”
Silas said:
“Any rock can be carved.”
Jacob stared at him.
Mara looked toward Silas.
“We did not carve this.”
Silas laughed.
“You expect a public claim to be overturned because you brought a stone out of the desert?”
Mara turned toward Anna.
“Your father knew this stone.”
Anna’s chest tightened.
“What?”
Mara unrolled the paper.
It was not a deed.
A field map.
Old linen-backed paper.
Brown at the folds.
She held it toward Anna.
Anna stepped closer.
The handwriting stopped her.
Not her father’s.
She knew that immediately.
But the symbols were familiar.
Surveyor’s marks.
Chain lengths.
Elevation notes.
Creek bends.
And along one boundary, written carefully:
LINE 187.
Anna looked toward the stone.
Jacob said something.
Mara translated.
“Clean it.”
Reverend Locke frowned.
“What?”
Mara pointed toward a bucket beside the wagon.
A young man lifted it down.
Water.
Precious water.
Silas laughed bitterly.
“You haul water into a drought to wash a rock?”
Jacob looked at him.
Then said in English, accented but clear:
“For truth.”
He poured a small amount over the stone.
Dust darkened.
Mara took a cloth.
She wiped the flat face.
Letters appeared.
FEDERAL.
Then beneath:
ARID LANDS SURVEY.