"She'll say she just asked the obvious question," Silas said. And she'll be right about that, too. Bram handed Silas the reins. I can take him. I've got him, Silas said, and led the horse to the trough with the ease of someone who'd been doing it long enough that it wasn't a task anymore, just a thing that got done.
Wesley Fairburn withdrew the counter filing at 9:15 the next morning. Bram was there. He watched it happen and said, "Thank you. " and meant it. And on his way out of the county office, he passed Orson Ketter's land agent coming in the other direction on the boardwalker. A man named Dillard, who wore his hat at an angle that suggested he thought well of himself.
Dillard stopped when he saw Bram. He looked like a man who' just understood he'd gotten somewhere too late. Bram nodded pleasantly and kept walking. He allowed himself one moment of satisfaction about that, which lasted approximately until he got back to his horse and started thinking about the next problem, which was always the way of it. The next problem arrived 4 days later in the form of a letter, not to Bram, to Elo.
It was delivered to the ranch by a writer from Greybend, who said he'd been asked to bring it out specifically, and he handed it to Eloin and waited, and Eloin thanked him and waited until he left to open it. Standing at the kitchen table with the careful stillness she used when she was managing something difficult. Bram was at the workbench and saw her face while she read it. He came inside. What is it?
She set it on the table. He picked it up. It was from a lawyer in Greybend. It informed Eloin that her husband, Thomas Harrow, had filed a legal notice of abandonment and was seeking dissolution of the marriage and a legal declaration that any property or assets held in her name were subject to prior claim by outstanding debts in his name specifically. Debts owed to a trading concern in Kansas that he had apparently been running from for some time.
Bram read it twice. His hands were very still while he read. Thomas has debts, Ellen said. Her voice was flat and precise, the way it got when she was keeping a lid on something. I knew there were debts.
I didn't know how bad. This says prior claim on assets in your name, Bram said. The partnership is registered in your name. I know what it says. He looked at her.
Did you know he'd do this? I knew he was gone. She sat down at the table. I didn't know he'd come back sideways through a lawyer. She pressed her hands flat on the table again, that steadying gesture.
He's trying to claim anything I have before I can build enough that he can't touch it. The partnership registration is less than a month old. Bram said, "If a debt claim predates it, Eloan, I know, Bram. " She looked up at him and there was something in her face that wasn't fear and wasn't anger. Exactly. It was the look of someone who's been running hard and just found out the finish line moved.
I need to think. He put the letter back on the table and went outside and stood in the yard for a moment doing the same kind of thinking he'd done when Mertton told him about the water claim. The kind that doesn't produce answers fast but has to happen anyway before the answers can come. Then he went back inside. I need to go back to Greybend.
He said to the land registry and to a lawyer, not the one who sent that letter. There's only one lawyer in Greybend. Elo said, "Then I need to find out which client he's representing and whether he can represent both. " He paused. The water rights filing took 23 days to sort out, and we had 3 weeks to do it. This gives us how long.
Elo looked at the letter. 30 days to respond. Then we have 30 days. He picked up his hat. Get me the partnership paper.
I want to take it with me. She got the paper from the shelf. She handed it to him and then held on to it for a second longer than necessary before she let go. Not because she was reluctant, but because she was making sure he understood it mattered. He understood.
The lawyer in Greybend was a man named Aldis Pierce, who operated out of a room above the dry goods store and had the look of someone who had been a lawyer in a small territory town long enough to have seen most of the ways people could make legal problems for each other. He read the letter, read the partnership registration, and asked Bram three questions in a precise, unhurrieded way. Then he said, "The debt claim is in Kansas. This is Colorado territory. " Cross territory debt claims on newly registered property face a higher threshold here, particularly if the property was legally transferred before the claim was formalized. "The registration was 4 weeks ago," Graham said.
"And the Kansas claim, when was it filed? " The letter doesn't say I'll find out. Pierce made a note. The dissolution filing is real and that will proceed regardless. But the property claim is a separate matter and it has to go through territorial courts here, not Kansas procedure. He looked at Bram over his glasses.
What's the woman's situation? Is she represented? She is now, Bram said. By me, if that's how this works. PICE looked at him for a moment.
You'd be better served having her here in person. Can we come Thursday? Thursday at 10:00. Bram thanked him, paid the initial consultation fee for money he'd planned to spend on fence wire. The fence wire was always the thing that gave and rode back to the ranch.
He told Eloan that evening after dinner when the children were doing the things children do in the hour before sleep, Nell reading, Maisie drawing something on the back of a flower sack. Tobin building an elaborate structure from sticks that kept falling over in ways that offended him personally. Finn asleep already because four-year-olds have the ability to go from fully operational to completely unconscious with no intermediate steps. Silas was on the porch. Bram told Eloin what Pierce had said.
She listened without interrupting, which was one of her qualities. She let you finish before she responded, which meant she'd actually thought about it instead of just waiting for a gap to talk. He thinks the property claim can be challenged. She said he thinks the threshold's higher here and the Kansas filing is complicated by territory law. Bram paused.
He didn't say it was easy. He said it was possible. What does it cost to make it possible? I don't know yet. Thursday will give us a better idea.
She looked at her hands. If it's more than we have, then we figure that out. Thursday, he said it plainly, not to cut off the concern, but because going over bad scenarios they hadn't reached yet was a kind of energy expenditure they couldn't afford. One thing at a time. She nodded slowly.
Elo, he said. She looked at him. Whatever Thomas owes, that's his debt. Not yours. He said it because he thought she needed to hear it said directly, not wrapped in anything.
Just stated, "You didn't run up those debts. You didn't sell a farm and take your family on the road to nowhere and right away when things got hard. " That was him. The law may not always see it that way, but that's the fact. She looked at him for a long moment. Something in her face moved, not breaking, not even close, but shifting slightly.
The way something shifts when it's been held too rigid and finally get some permission to ease a little. I know, she said quietly. I know it was him. She picked up her sewing. I just need to make sure the law knows it too.
Thursday came. Aldis Pierce met with both of them and went through the situation methodically, asking Eloin questions about the dates when they'd left Kansas, when Thomas had last contributed financially to the family. When he'd left, and writing down her answers in a small leather notebook with a pen, he refilled twice during the meeting. At the end of it, he said, the dissolution will proceed. I can't stop that, and frankly, there's no reason to try.