What kind of something? She glanced toward the main room where Gideon was, then back at Orson. The original deed to my farm, my husband's land. Ror had papers drawn up showing Thomas, my husband, signed it over before he died. Thomas never signed anything.
The paper Ror used had Thomas's signature forged on it. She paused. I have the original filed and witnessed properly with a surveyor's mark that predates Ror's version by 2 years. Orson was quiet. He had my husband's name on a paper, Mara continued, and something in her voice went slightly wrong on that sentence, not breaking, but catching like a wheel on a stone.
She pressed through it. And 3 days after I told Ror I wouldn't sign anything over willingly, Thomas was dead in a mine collapse that the company called an accident. She stopped. I cannot prove that. I know that.
But I have the deed, and the deed proves the fraud. And if I can get it to Theodore Callaway in the next settlement. Callaway, Orson repeated. You know him? I know of him.
He scratched his beard. Not the gesture of a man uncertain, but the gesture of a man thinking faster than he was talking. Clara Whitlock is closer. She's harder, but she's closer and she has territorial authority that Callaway doesn't. I don't know Whitlock.
She's the district attorney. She's been after Ror for 2 years. Can't get anything to stick because nobody's willing to put their name on paper against him. Orson looked at her with something that was not quite hope, but was adjacent to it. You've got paper with his name already on it, or rather with his fraud already in it.
The room was very quiet. From the main cabin. They heard Toby's voice. Small and morning ringing Gideon where his mama was. They heard Gideon's reply short, direct, she's resting, come eat.
And then the sound of Toby's feet on the floor not running to her which meant he'd accepted the answer which meant something about how Gideon had said it. Mara listened to that exchange and felt something she couldn't afford to feel so she set it aside. The question she said to Orson is whether I can walk 60 miles on an ankle I can't stand on yet. No Orson said simply you can't. Then I need to figure out how long I have before Ror's men find this cabin.