Now, let's get back to the story.
Friday was two days off, and Butch had spent one of his remaining four learning that this was no longer only about a widow's kitchen table. It was about four homesteads, a notary who had no business notarizing anything, and a man in a gray coat who might yet be convinced to see the deed he carried for what it was.
"We could just take the writ off Wren and burn it," Curry offered, not entirely joking. "Man's got no fence to stand on if there's no paper to stand on it."
"Burn one copy and there's another in a deed book in Buffalo," Butch said. "We don't need to destroy the lie. We need to show it standing next to the truth where the whole county can look at both."
"Sounds like a job for a courtroom," Sundance said.
"It's a job for a town square," Butch said. "Courtrooms are slow and this one's already ruled on the paper it was shown. We need to show it a paper it wasn't."
Carver had spent the day doing what he did best, talking. He'd gone back to the county clerk's office and over two beers with the same nervous Halloran, learned something that mattered more than gossip. The deed book itself showed the Hargrove entry recorded out of its proper sequence, squeezed between two July transactions though dated in February. The kind of thing that happened when a page was added later rather than filed in its turn.
"Deeds out of order in its own book," Carver said. "Whoever slipped it in didn't think anybody'd ever check the sequence."
"Questions whether it'll matter to Sheriff Purdy."