Chapter 28
Mercer handed Henrietta the notice. “If Vane meant to foreclose whether the five thousand was paid or not, then cattle prices were never the important question.”
Henrietta looked toward the small desk where she kept the ranch papers.
“Land,” she said.
Calvin frowned. “What?”
“If the cattle were the point, Silas would have accepted the payment and continued collecting interest. Foreclosure destroys the borrower but gives the lender the property.”
Mercer nodded slowly.
Henrietta moved to the desk.
Calvin watched her. “What are you looking for?”
“The deed.”
“You need rest.”
“So do you.”
“I am in bed.”
“At last you grasp the principle.”
Mercer made a sound suspiciously like a cough hiding amusement.
Henrietta opened the bottom drawer and pulled out the leather packet containing the deed, tax receipts, survey descriptions, and older correspondence. She had handled these papers before, but only to understand boundaries and taxes. Now she spread them across the table with a different question.
Why would Silas Vane want Broken Spur itself?
Calvin could not remain passive. “Read it aloud.”
Henrietta ignored him while scanning the legal description.
“Henrietta.”
“You are injured, not blind.”
“I cannot see from here.”
“That sounds like a problem caused by your refusal to remain where Dr. Mercer put you.”
Mercer dragged the chair closer to the bed and sat. “Read the relevant portions before he attempts to crawl across the floor. I have repaired him once today.”
Henrietta began. The deed described acreage, water access, grazing boundaries, mineral reservations, and a series of surveyed points whose meaning blurred into chains, rods, and directional bearings. She slowed at a notation added years after the original filing.
“Here.”
Calvin’s gaze sharpened.
Henrietta read it twice. “Reference to Territorial Survey Marker Seventeen-B, western transit corridor.”
Mercer straightened.
Calvin frowned. “That marker is near the old cottonwoods.”
“You know it?”
“I have ridden past a marker there since I was a boy. Brass cap in stone.”
Henrietta searched the packet. “What is a western transit corridor?”
“No idea.”
Mercer stood.
Something in his urgency made Henrietta’s pulse jump. “You do.”
“I have heard the term.”
“Where?”
“Rail surveys.”
Calvin went still.
Henrietta turned toward him. “Railroad?”
Mercer came to the table and bent over the deed. “In the seventies, survey crews crossed half the territory making proposed routes that never became anything. Some were abandoned. Some were rerouted. Some sat on paper for years until money appeared.”