"Nobody's arguing the patent," Wren said, an edge of impatience creeping into his voice now. "I'm telling you the land changed hands after that. By deed. Six months before this man died."
Butch looked at the writ again. At the date on the deed it described. At the notary's name scrolled beneath the witness line. Something about it didn't sit right with him, though he couldn't yet say what.
"We'll be finishing this business today," Wren said. "The court has ruled. I'd advise you gentlemen not to make yourselves part of a matter that isn't yours."
"Just passing through," Butch said, and didn't finish the sentence. Though everyone in the yard understood it anyway.
That night, camped a mile off the road in a stand of cottonwoods, the argument came the way it always did. Not shouted. But plain.
"We got a payroll to look at, and a train schedule to keep," Curry said, working a whetstone along his knife with more force than the knife required. "We didn't ride into this county to play lawyer for a woman we never met."
"Nobody's playing lawyer," Butch said.
"Then what are we playing?"
Butch didn't answer right away. He was turning the memory of that notary's signature over in his mind, the way he turned over a bank's floor plan or a train schedule, looking for the flaw in it.
"A man selling his own land while he's alive and well is one thing," he said finally. "A dead man's signature turning up on a deed nobody in his own family ever heard him mention. That's worth a second look before I write off satisfied."