"But mine isn't."
"No."
"Why?"
Dosela walked toward the stones surrounding the well.
He touched the symbol.
"Because this is not ordinary well."
Elias had heard enough strange things in one morning.
"It's forty feet deep and tastes like iron."
Mara looked at him.
"I told you."
Elias ignored her.
Dosela continued.
"The shaft is forty feet."
He pointed beneath them.
"The water is much deeper."
Elias stared.
"What are you talking about?"
"Your father knew."
The words irritated him instantly.
"My father dug that well."
"No."
Dosela shook his head.
"Your father rebuilt it."
Before Elias Ward had been born, water had emerged naturally from limestone beneath the ranch.
Not a river.
Not a large spring.
But a reliable seep.
Apache families crossing the dry country knew it.
So did Mexican shepherds.
So did older settlers.
When Elias's father, Nathaniel Ward, purchased the property in 1856, the seep was already there.
Nathaniel widened it.
Dug down.
Added stone.
Built a windlass.
Later installed a pump.
But he had not created the water.
"He never told me any of this."
Dosela studied him.
"Did you ask?"
Elias had no answer.
Mara held out the copper disk.
Elias finally took it.
On the reverse side were two letters.
N.W.
Nathaniel Ward.
Elias's throat tightened.
"Where did you find this?"
"Near drilling camp."
"Why would my father's marker be there?"
Dosela looked toward the house.
"Because someone is searching for what your father hid."
Elias laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the alternative was believing the morning had become even stranger.
"My father was a rancher."
"Yes."
"He raised cattle."
"Yes."
"He wasn't hiding treasure."
Mara spoke.
"Water is treasure."
That silenced him.
Dosela asked to see Nathaniel Ward's papers.
Elias almost refused.
Then he looked at the riders surrounding his ranch.
They remained beyond the fence.
Nobody had entered his pasture.
Nobody touched his cattle.
Nobody raised a weapon.
Hundreds of armed people had come to his land and were showing more restraint than some neighbors Elias had known for twenty years.
"Come inside."
Elias kept most ranch records in an oak chest.
Tax documents.
Cattle receipts.
The deed.
His father's notebook.