"One of them clearly enough. Big man, dark coat, rode a pinto with a distinctive blaze marking."
She looked at him. He looked at her. The same thought arrived in both of them at the same moment.
"That's evidence of property interference during an active legal dispute," she said.
"Which is a criminal matter, not a civil one," Nathan said.
"Which means it goes to the sheriff, not just the judge."
"Get Hart," she said. He was already moving.
The next three days were the kind that compress themselves in memory, that so much happens inside them that time can't hold its shape.
Hart filed the criminal complaint with the sheriff before noon on the day after the fence incident. The sheriff, a man named Aldis Reed who had by every account been performing a careful balancing act between the law and Mercer's influence for three years, had no choice but to respond to a formal complaint supported by an eyewitness, two pieces of cut wire, and a set of boot tracks in the mud that matched the impressions around Mercer's livery.
He brought Roy Cutter in for questioning that afternoon. Cutter said nothing. He had the look of a man who understood exactly what he was inside of and was trying to figure out which way was least bad. He didn't implicate Mercer; he didn't implicate himself. He sat in the sheriff's office and looked at the wall and said he'd been home all night.
Reed let him go and came to find Hart. "I can't hold him without more," Reed said. He was a square-faced man who moved carefully, like someone who has spent years being cautious and was not sure anymore if caution was a virtue or a strategy. "But I'm telling you, Hart, that this complaint is on record, and any judge reviewing the civil case is going to see it alongside your filing."
"That's all I'm asking," Hart said.