Mara read slowly.
Her English literacy was stronger than Anna remembered.
When she reached Thomas’s name, her face changed.
“He remembered.”
“Is he alive?”
Mara looked toward Jacob.
Then back.
“No.”
Anna’s stomach dropped.
“When?”
“1884.”
“How?”
“Fever.”
Another witness gone.
Mara folded the letter carefully.
“But he made his own copy.”
Anna stared.
“Of what?”
“The first map.”
“The one you brought?”
Mara nodded.
“Thomas copied it in 1877 because the survey chief told him to keep route notes.”
“Why?”
“He knew where water was.”
“He guided them.”
Anna looked toward the map tube.
“So your map is a copy.”
“Yes.”
Silas’s lawyer would attack that immediately.
Mara saw the thought.
“So we need the federal original.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Tucson Land Office.”
“Maybe Prescott.”
“Maybe Washington if everything else vanished.”
Mara smiled without humor.
“Papers.”
Anna nodded.
“Papers.”
Jacob came closer.
He spoke to Mara.
She translated.
“My brother says paper matters now because men with guns say it matters.”
Anna looked at him.
“What does he think matters?”
Mara listened.
Then:
“Water where it comes from.”
Simple.
Legally insufficient.
Morally persuasive.
Anna understood why people became tired of law.
Reverend Locke entered the courtyard carrying the suspect deed.
He looked as though he had not slept.
“I telegraphed Tucson.”
Anna stood.
“To who?”
“Federal land clerk.”
“And?”
“No answer yet.”
He looked toward Mara.
“I owe you an apology.”
She stared.
“For what?”
“I read that paper yesterday as though reading made it true.”
Mara’s expression remained neutral.
“You believed him.”
Locke glanced toward the street where Silas’s ranch could not be seen but somehow felt present.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question was not hostile.
That made it harder.
Locke thought.
“Because he brought seals.”
Mara waited.
“He had an attorney.”
“He offered to finance repairs to the mission roof.”
Anna looked sharply at him.
Locke did not hide.
“Three thousand dollars.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed.
“Before yesterday?”
“Last month.”
“And you did not think that mattered?”
Locke looked ashamed.
“I thought generosity did not invalidate his paperwork.”
“No.”
Mara nodded.
“It does not.”
Reverend Locke looked surprised.