Chapter 29
Calvin shook his head. “No rail line comes through here.”
“Not now.”
Henrietta looked back at the notation. “But someone thought one might.”
Mercer’s finger traced the old survey reference. “If a company revived a route through this valley, the easiest grade would follow the lower creek and cut across your western quarter.”
Calvin’s eyes narrowed. “Silas knows land speculation.”
“He knows every rumor that passes through a bank before the rest of us hear it,” Mercer said.
Henrietta’s mind began arranging facts as cleanly as figures in a column. The duplicated charges. The altered totals. Silas refusing to be satisfied by five thousand dollars. The foreclosure notice prepared early. His peculiar confidence when he insulted Calvin’s marriage, as though the sacrifice amused him because he knew it would accomplish nothing.
She searched deeper into the packet and found an old map folded almost to softness.
Calvin said, “That was Father’s.”
Henrietta spread it.
A faded line crossed the western edge of Broken Spur.
Not a fence.
Not a stream.
A proposed rail alignment.
She placed one finger on it.
“If this became active,” she said, “what would happen to the land value?”
Mercer answered. “It would rise.”
“How much?”
“Depends on whether they need right-of-way, a water stop, stock loading, access roads.”
Calvin’s attention fixed on the map. “The creek runs year-round.”
“Yes.”
“And the flat near the western boundary is the only open grade before the ridge.”
“Yes.”
Henrietta looked between them. “Then Silas did not loan against a failing cattle ranch.”
Mercer’s expression hardened. “He may have loaned against land he expected to become valuable.”
Calvin sank back against the pillows.
For several moments, no one spoke.
Henrietta saw the blow land differently from the ravine, differently even from the foreclosure notice. Calvin had spent months believing Broken Spur’s peril was the result of his own failure. Every insult he had swallowed, every humiliation he had inflicted upon her in return, every bargain he had justified to himself had rested on that belief.
Now another possibility sat on the table.
Someone might have built the trap beneath him.
Calvin’s voice came rough. “If Vane knew about the rail survey—”
“We do not know that he did,” Mercer cautioned.
“He knew enough to want the ranch.”
“We know your father suspected that.”
“And now he means to take it even after I paid him.”
Henrietta folded her arms. “Suspecting his purpose is not proving fraud.”