“Yes.”
“What?”
“I want you to stop asking questions when I am trying to watch for men who may kill us.”
Elias laughed quietly.
“Reasonable.”
The territorial order arrived two days later.
Temporary freeze on disputed Harrow transfers.
Review of seventeen parcels.
Subpoena for county records.
Victor Harrow responded publicly.
He called it an attack on lawful ranching.
Claimed “outside agitators” were manipulating Elias.
Claimed Daniel Mercer had been mentally unstable.
Claimed Apache witnesses could not establish title.
Claimed Mexican ranchers had sold willingly.
Some newspapers believed him.
Some did not.
The county divided.
Elias became a traitor to some ranchers almost overnight.
At the Benson saloon, someone painted THIEF across his saddle.
Another man shook his hand and whispered that Harrow had taken his father’s spring too.
Fear broke unevenly.
The crucial hearing was scheduled six weeks later.
Elias returned to his ranch to recover.
Mara returned to her family.
For the first time since the ravine, they separated.
Elias disliked it more than expected.
He told himself that was because she carried Daniel’s notebook.
Then Samuel delivered it three days later.
“Mara kept copy.”
Elias stared.
“She’s not coming?”
“She has work.”
“What work?”
Samuel smiled slightly.
“Questions.”
Elias understood.
Mara was gathering witnesses.
He recovered slowly.
The wound closed.
His temper did not.
Every day brought another story.
A widow whose husband sold land after Harrow blocked access to a creek.
A Mexican family whose deed acreage shrank mysteriously between translation and filing.
A former cavalry scout who remembered moving a boundary marker under orders from a county contractor.
Not every accusation proved true.
That mattered.
Some disputes were ordinary mistakes.
Some ranchers blamed Harrow for bad decisions entirely their own.
Mara rejected weak claims.
Elias admired that.
“Why not include everything?” someone asked her.
“Because one lie makes ten truths easier to dismiss.”
That became their standard.
Verify.
Compare.
Remove what could not be supported.
The case became smaller on paper and stronger in fact.
Eleven parcels.
Three springs.
Two creek diversions.
Twenty-two thousand acres.
Enough.
Harrow came to Elias’s ranch ten days before the hearing.
Alone.
That frightened Elias more than armed men.
Victor Harrow was fifty-six.
Silver hair.
Expensive black coat.
Tall.
Still handsome in the way powerful men sometimes remained handsome because everyone around them had learned to hide disgust.
Elias stood on the porch.
“No Rusk?”
“Haven’t needed him lately.”
“He shot me.”
Harrow looked at Elias’s side.
“You’re alive.”
“That seems to disappoint people.”
Harrow smiled.
“May I sit?”
“No.”
Harrow sat anyway.
Elias did not reach for the rifle.
Mara’s voice lived somewhere inside his head.
Angry men ride straight.
Predictable.
Harrow looked across the ranch.
“You finally bought the place you wanted.”
“My brother bought half.”
“Daniel always did better with money.”
Elias stiffened.
“Careful.”
Harrow nodded.
“There he is.”
“What do you want?”
“To save you.”
Elias laughed.
“From?”
“Yourself.”
“Original.”
Harrow leaned back.
“You think Judge Ward will dismantle twenty years of titles because an Apache woman brought you a grievance and your dead brother scribbled suspicions?”
Elias smiled.
“You know about the notebook.”