Silas’s expression changed.
Margaret continued:
“You bought that trunk yourself.”
“I purchased tools.”
“You came before the sale started.”
Silas looked toward Bell.
The lawyer’s face tightened.
Margaret’s memory sharpened as she spoke.
“You said Elias owed you for feed.”
“He did.”
“You took the brass level.”
“Two chains.”
“And the brown trunk.”
Silas laughed.
“You expect anyone to remember an old trunk six years later?”
Margaret stared.
“I remember because Anna cried.”
Anna looked at her mother.
Memory returned.
She had been eighteen.
Angry at everything after her father died.
She remembered a trunk disappearing.
She accused Margaret of selling his life by the pound.
Then apologized two days later.
The trunk had been brown.
Leather straps.
One broken brass corner.
Anna turned toward Silas.
“What was in it?”
“Junk.”
“Where is it?”
“I don't know.”
“Where?”
“Miss Mercer.”
“Where is my father’s trunk?”
Silas’s composure finally cracked.
“I am not required to maintain an inventory of rubbish purchased six years ago.”
Mara spoke quietly.
“Maybe Creel did.”
Anna turned.
“Samuel Creel?”
Mara nodded.
“He came to Bluewater with Elias.”
The former deputy clerk.
The man who last signed out the missing 1877 survey map.
Anna felt the story shifting beneath her.
Not solved.
Worse.
Complicated.
Reverend Locke folded the map carefully.
“We cannot proceed with the claim today.”
Silas turned toward him.
“You have no authority to suspend a recorded patent.”
Locke looked at the forged date.
“I have enough authority not to stand here and bless it.”
Silas’s face reddened.
“This is not a blessing.”
“No.”
Locke handed the deed to Marshal Brigg.
“It is beginning to feel like one.”
Bell stepped forward.
“You cannot seize my client’s document.”
Brigg looked toward Anna.
“Is this filed?”
“Yes.”
“Then county record?”
“The original filing copy is.”
“Good.”
He handed it back to Locke.
“Keep this one where everybody can see it until we figure out what the hell it is.”
Reverend Locke frowned at his language.
Brigg shrugged.
“Sorry, Reverend.”
The crowd did not disperse.
That was Silas’s problem.
He had intended a public display to make ownership feel final.
Now the same public had watched it unravel.
Ben Polk shouted:
“So no water fees?”
Silas turned.
“My legal claim remains.”
“Then charge me.”
Polk spread his arms.
“See how that goes.”
Brigg stepped between them.
“No one is settling land law in the street.”
Mara looked toward Jacob.
They spoke quietly.
Then she addressed the marshal.
“We need protection for the stone.”
Silas scoffed.