The vegetation, soil, moisture, and grade all support that. The posts were driven deep enough to compress the clay over decades. We didn't move water onto a new path. We removed what was keeping it from following its original one. Owen wrote in his notebook.
I'll need a formal inspection. You'll have one before the end of the month. Nia said. The room went silent. They had had no inspector.
They had not set aside money for one. Owen did not know either of those things. Then I'll wait for the report, he said. Until the complaint remains open. When the grey horse finally disappeared down the road, Rhett shut the kitchen door.
You just promised him a report that doesn't exist. Not yet. And how exactly do you plan to get one? By finding someone who knows how to measure what we already saw. Rhett planted both hands on the table.
You could have put us in worse trouble. Rafe expected you to be angry or speechless. If you shouted, Owen would write down that you were hostile. If you said nothing, he'd write down that you had no answer. Nia held his gaze.
I gave him a third choice. Clay Boon hid the beginning of a smile behind his coffee cup. Rhett stared at Nia for a long moment. You're dangerous when you start thinking. Only when someone's counting on me not to.
Rhett opened his mouth to answer. But before he could, Dusty burst through the back door. Two cows are down in the south corral. They ran after him. Both animals were still alive, but their breathing was labored.
Nia knelt beside the first cow and laid a hand against its side. "This started days ago. "The same poison? Red asked. "Something similar, but it didn't come from the trough.
If they had taken a heavy dose recently, they would have gone down closer together. "Nia looked towards the eastern boundary. "The creek line. Rhett turned to him. Clay pointed.
The pipe runs nearly a quarter mile along the property line before it reaches the holding tank. They found the contaminated section in less than 15 minutes. The wooden cover had been torn away. At one of the pipe joints, a thick, dark, oily substance had been smeared into the opening. It looked like what they had found in the watering troughs, only stronger, more concentrated.
Rhett stared at it with a stillness more frightening than anger. He isn't trying to hide it anymore, Nia said. He's getting desperate. "Because the water came back," Clay Boon added. "And because Owen didn't shut the ranch down.