"It is enough."
Elias almost smiled.
Sheriff Reed took the map.
His expression grew serious.
"We're going to look at the drilling camp."
Barton shrugged.
"You'll find San Aurelio survey work. We own property there."
"Good."
Reed folded the paper.
"Then you won't object."
The investigation lasted six days before the first real break came.
It was not dramatic.
No hidden confession.
No mysterious assassin.
It came from an invoice.
Sheriff Reed found records showing San Aurelio had purchased twelve cases of blasting powder.
The company claimed they were used for road construction.
Only eight were accounted for.
At the abandoned camp north of Ward Ranch, investigators found fragments from three identical powder crates.
Then a surveyor named Peter Hale admitted Barton had ordered test blasts along the limestone ridge.
Barton insisted they were geological tests.
Maybe they were.
Then county engineer Rebecca Sloan inspected the sites.
Two charges had been placed in locations that made no sense for road work.
But they made perfect sense if someone wanted to collapse narrow underground water channels.
The third charge had altered the northern spring.
Elias stood beside the damaged limestone while Rebecca explained.
"It didn't make the water disappear."
"Then where did it go?"
"Some is probably moving west now."
"Toward San Aurelio property."
She nodded.
"Likely."
Mara looked at Elias.
"Land dries."
"Owners sell."
"Barton buys."
Then Dosela found something that changed the case completely.
A stone chamber sat twenty feet below the Ward well.
Elias had never known it existed.
The only entrance was behind several fitted stones in the well wall.
Nathaniel had sealed it before his death.
Inside were survey maps.
Letters.
And a leather ledger.
Elias opened the first letter.
Charles,
You misunderstand me if you think friendship will make me agree to this.
Water in this country does not belong only to the man standing above it.
If your plan requires closing northern routes and forcing families from their wells, I want no part of it.
N. Ward.
Elias lowered the paper.
Barton had known.
Another letter followed.
This one was from Barton.
Nathaniel,
You are confusing sentiment with business.
The railroad will come.
Mining will come.
Cattle will come.
Someone will control the reliable water.
If not us, then someone less reasonable.
Take the offer.
Elias kept reading.
The letters became angrier.
Then stopped eleven days before Nathaniel's death.
The ledger was worse.
Payments.
Survey work.
Land purchases.
Several entries from the present year had been added in a different handwriting.
Someone else had found the chamber.
Recently.
Elias frowned.
"How?"
Mara pointed toward the missing copper marker.
The copper disk was not decoration.