Brigg nodded.
“You’ll have it.”
“You believe them?”
Silas demanded.
“No.”
Brigg looked at him.
“I believe a large rock doesn't run fast.”
Several people laughed.
Even Anna.
The sound broke some of the tension.
The stone was moved into the mission courtyard.
Two deputies remained beside it.
Mara kept the map.
Anna insisted on making a supervised copy.
Mara agreed only if Reverend Locke and Marshal Brigg both witnessed it.
Fair.
By sunset, San Aurelio had produced twelve different versions of what happened.
Silas forged everything.
The Apache forged everything.
Reverend Locke was part of it.
Anna had invented the dead-signature problem because her family hated Silas.
Bluewater belonged to Mexico anyway.
The federal government secretly intended to remove every rancher east of town.
Somebody claimed the stone contained gold.
Human beings could turn one afternoon into nonsense faster than telegraph wire carried facts.
Anna went home with Margaret after dark.
Neither ate.
They climbed into the attic.
Dust.
Heat.
Boxes.
Elias Mercer had left behind enough paper to make a second man from it.
Tax receipts.
Survey calculations.
Church programs.
Letters.
Old territorial newspapers.
A notebook containing nothing but rainfall totals from 1874 to 1879.
Anna searched until midnight.
No brown book.
At 1:20, Margaret found a leather strap.
Broken brass buckle.
From the trunk.
She sat on the floor.
“I sold it.”
Anna looked over.
“You didn't know.”
“I should have.”
“No.”
“Elias told me never to throw away field notes.”
“You were trying to pay burial bills.”
Margaret laughed bitterly.
“Still defending everyone.”
Anna looked toward the piles.
“I’m tired of blame that doesn't find paper.”
Her mother stared.
“That sounds like your father.”
“Apparently hereditary.”
They continued.
At two in the morning, Anna found a letter.
Not the notebook.
Better than nothing.
Dated July 29, 1881.
Addressed to Samuel Creel.
Sam,
I measured Bluewater again. The 187 line marker is no longer where the 1877 field sheet places it. Current stone alignment would shift the spring nearly fourteen chains west, which is impossible under the original bearings unless every other point in the series moved too.
Do not enter any supplemental claim touching the spring until I compare the federal book.
E.M.
Anna read it twice.
Then handed it to Margaret.
Her mother covered her mouth.
Fourteen chains.
More than nine hundred feet.
Enough to move Bluewater from protected communal access into the parcel Silas later claimed.
Anna continued reading.
At the bottom:
Thomas Kase remembers the original marker above the east shelf. His account matches the old bearing.
Anna closed her eyes.
Thomas.
Mara’s brother.
A witness.
Six years too late?
Maybe.
She looked toward the attic window.
“Thomas alive?”
Margaret asked.
“I don't know.”
At eight the next morning, Anna went to the mission.
Mara and Jacob were already there.
They had slept in a small camp east of town with the riders.
Anna showed Mara the letter.