"Elias Roark," he said quietly. "The company's land agent in Cheyenne recommended him for the notarization personally, kin to the widow's late husband and eager for the work."
"Kin with a grudge and a debt and a company willing to pay for a signature that saved it the trouble of a fair purchase," Butch said. "You didn't forge this deed, Mr. Wren, but you've been carrying it into yards like it was gospel. And there's four families in this county who've paid for that trust."
Sheriff Purdy stepped forward, less certain now, aware of the crowd's shifting mood. "The court has already ruled on this matter."
"A court ruled on the paper it was shown," Ben said, and it was the most anyone in the crowd had heard him say all week. "Wasn't shown the page it was hiding behind."
For a long moment, nothing moved. Then Wren folded Halloran's account and Ruth's letter together, tucked them inside his coat, and turned to Purdy.
"I'll be asking Judge Whitfield to stay the writ until the notary commission and the deed book entry can be examined independently," he said. "If I'm wrong, Sheriff, I'll answer for it myself. But I'll not be made a fool a second time by my own company's paperwork."
It wasn't victory. It wasn't even certainty, but it was a door left open where, an hour before, there had been none.
Judge Whitfield's independent examination confirmed the fraud within two weeks, though by then the Wild Bunch was three counties away. The payroll job in Cottonwood Flats abandoned, along with the town that now knew their faces too well to risk lingering in it. Elias Roark was never found. Some said he'd taken a train east before the scandal broke, richer by whatever the company had paid him and poorer by whatever conscience he'd once possessed.
The Anglo-Wyoming Cattle Company did not apologize publicly. It quietly withdrew its claim to the four homesteads it had pursued the same way, including the Hargrove Ranch, and just as quietly transferred Cyrus Wren to an office in Denver, where his usefulness to the company's reputation outweighed any punishment they were willing to admit owing him.