Elias's gaze went to the mud on her coat and the torn cuff of her sleeve. “Did someone follow you?”
“I don't think so. But someone followed me in town.” She laid the oilcloth packet on the fence rail. “My father sent a warning before he died. Pike stopped it. Crowe had the dam materials before anyone voted on a diversion.”
Jonah reached for the book, but Mara kept a hand on it. “There is more. Father left a note about the north spillway and a third stone. Does that mean anything to either of you?”
Elias stared across the fields. Beyond the last fence, the creek traced a silver line through the dusk. “The old spillway was built before the county existed,” he said. “Most people think the first flood destroyed it.”
“Most people?” Mara asked.
“My father helped rebuild it. He told me the original water markers were set in stone so no owner could move the boundary with a pen.”
For the first time that day, Mara felt something other than fear. A forged map could be challenged. A buried marker could be uncovered. The land itself might still remember the truth.
Then Jonah pointed toward the northern ridge. Three lanterns moved in a straight line where no public road ran. Men were crossing the upper pasture, heading for the abandoned spillway.
“They're ahead of us,” he whispered.
Mara folded Samuel's note and placed it inside her coat. “Then we had better stop them before they find what he hid.”
The three lanterns on the ridge disappeared one after another, as though the darkness had swallowed them deliberately. Mara counted to ten before speaking. She had learned that fear could make a person confuse haste with courage, and tonight they could afford neither mistake.
“Jonah, fetch the lantern with the shutter,” she said. “Elias, show me where the old spillway begins.”
Jonah opened his mouth to object, then caught the expression on her face. He went to the barn without another word. Elias examined the ridge and led the roan mare into the shadows beside the fence. The animal lowered her head, untroubled by the urgency of the humans around her.
“The spillway isn't where the county map puts it,” Elias said. “It curves under the limestone shelf. My father said the first settlers cut it with hand tools because they couldn't afford a proper gate.”
“Would Crowe know that?”
“He knows everything somebody can sell him. The question is whether he knows what he's buying.”
They traveled without a light until the moon rose. Mara's boots slipped on the steep bank, and Jonah caught her elbow. Below them the creek moved thinly over exposed stones. A few months earlier she would have heard it from the porch after supper. Now she had to listen carefully to distinguish water from wind.
Near the limestone shelf they found boot prints, three sets, and the impression of a shovel blade. Elias crouched beside the marks. The soil had been turned recently but not deeply. Whoever had come before them had searched along the wrong wall.
“My father's note said third stone,” Mara whispered. “Not third stone from which end.”
Jonah studied the masonry. “He always counted from the water. Even when he taught me to measure fence posts, he said the river was the beginning of everything here.”
They moved downstream. Three stones from the bend, Mara noticed a wedge of darker mortar beneath a tangle of roots. She pulled the roots away while Elias kept watch. The stone shifted under Jonah's pry bar and exposed a shallow cavity lined with pitch-blackened tin.
Inside lay a folded survey sheet and a small brass disc stamped with a date. The sheet had suffered from damp, but the ink remained legible. It showed a channel feeding six neighboring properties from the same public diversion. At the bottom were signatures of settlers Mara recognized from her father's stories, including Elias's father and the grandfather of the schoolteacher, Ruth Bell.
“This is older than Crowe's claim,” Jonah said.
“Older isn't always stronger in court,” Elias warned. “But it means his map is not the only map.”
A rifle cracked from the ridge. Stone splintered above Mara's head. Elias pushed her behind the bank, and Jonah extinguished the lantern. Another shot struck the water. They stayed low while footsteps sounded on the shelf overhead.
“Leave the paper,” a voice called. “Nobody has to get hurt.”
Mara pressed the folded survey inside her blouse. She had heard that promise before, in the careful language of men who meant to ruin a family without dirtying their own hands. She remained silent.
Elias threw a rock into the brush farther upstream. The men fired at the noise, and he pulled Mara and Jonah through the shallow channel beneath the shelf. They emerged soaked to the knees in a patch of willow growth. Behind them, angry voices argued about which way they had gone.
They did not stop until they reached the horses. Only then did Mara discover that Jonah's sleeve was torn and his arm bleeding. The bullet had grazed him. He insisted it was nothing, which frightened her more than a cry would have done.