"So the water stays in his pond?" Mara asked.
Bell looked troubled. "For a few hours. I need the proper authority before I order a crew to pull up another man's construction."
"People have already lost weeks," she said.
Corvin glanced at the trickle leaking beneath the timbers. There was enough water stored above the barrier to refill the wash for a while if the channel reopened, but he understood Bell's position. A sheriff who ignored the law whenever he felt certain of a wrong could become a danger of his own.
"Then we'll get the papers," Corvin said. "And we won't waste another day."
They reached Red Wash by midafternoon. The town was already full of versions of the morning's events, each less accurate than the last. One man claimed Corvin had been taken prisoner. Another swore hundreds of riders had demanded his cattle. A merchant was telling customers that the Apache visitors had stolen every bucket on the ranch. Corvin walked into the general store, bought a drink of water, and told the merchant that the only bucket anyone had touched was his own.
Mara stood beside him while the man struggled to find an apology.
"You could have asked," she said. "We were close enough to answer."
At the county records office, a gray-haired clerk named Ada Finch opened a cabinet that smelled of old paper and leather. She had known Corvin's father and remembered the spring when it still fed the town's first wagon route. For almost an hour she searched through dusty books. At last she drew out a survey dated twenty-nine years earlier, along with a county order protecting access to the spring from the old public trail. The documents did not settle every question about land or water in the valley. They did establish that Voss had no right to block the county channel without permission, and no such permission had been issued.
Sheriff Bell sent for the magistrate. Peter gave a statement, this time without Voss standing over him. By evening, the magistrate had ordered the unapproved barrier opened and the public route restored while the larger dispute was examined. Voss protested, threatened lawsuits, and reminded half the people present that they owed him money. None of it changed the signature on the order.
Corvin rode back to the spring with the sheriff, Peter, and two workers from town. Mara and several Apache men and women joined them, offering practical help but letting the county crew handle the order. Under Bell's supervision, the workers eased loose the barrier boards and cleared the blocked channel. At first the water came through in a narrow silver ribbon. Then the ribbon widened. It rolled over stones that had been dry for weeks, caught the last sunlight, and moved slowly toward the valley below.