He thought about that about the survey stake in his saddle bag about the document his father had filed in good faith witnessed stamped and then undone. He was right, he said. I know. A pause. Sometimes knowing something is right is not enough to make it feel that way.
That was the most honest thing he had heard anyone say in three years. He told her. She looked at her hands for a moment. He would have liked you. The words came with a quality he recognized.
The cost of saying something true that brings back what's no longer there. He didn't respond. He had learned in those weeks that some statements do not want to reply. They want a witness. He was that.
At least he was learning to be that in a way he hadn't been before. The reply from Santa Fe came on the 41st day. But before that, there were other things to account for. Traitor Plank had gotten out, as word does, in a territory where everyone's movements are noted by someone. Beckwith had made cautious inquiries in the days after the two riders appeared at the line camp.
And what those inquiries returned was a picture that was not surprising but was clarifying. The men in Cimarron who wanted the document and behind them the mining consortium that had purchased the eastern quarter section from the land association in a transaction that would be entirely null and void of Shenoa's document was authenticated had begun to work the situation from a different angle. They were not for the moment sending more riders. Instead, they were putting pressure on the structures around her. Beckwith heard from a contact in Raton that a quiet message had been passed through the county.