“What are you measuring?”
Everett hesitated.
Then answered.
“The old line.”
One ranch hand stopped smiling.
Harold leaned slightly forward in the saddle.
“What old line?”
Everett picked up another willow cutting.
“My grandfather wrote measurements.”
Harold stared.
“Measurements for what?”
Everett drove the cutting into the mud.
“The boundary.”
For several seconds, Mill Creek made the only sound.
Then Harold laughed again.
Shorter this time.
Harder.
“Boy, the creek is the boundary.”
Everett looked up.
“My grandfather didn’t think so.”
That sentence traveled through Harmon Valley before Everett finished the next row.
By supper, Everett’s mother had heard about it.
She stood at the kitchen sink washing potatoes when Everett came through the back door.
Rachel Cole was thirty-seven, with tired blue eyes and hair that had once been blond but had darkened over years of sun, dust, and grief.
She looked over her shoulder.
“Harold Briggs says you accused him of stealing land.”
Everett stopped.
“I didn’t say stealing.”
“Apparently that distinction got lost.”
He removed his cap.
“I said Grandpa’s notebook shows a different boundary.”
Rachel set down the potato.
“Everett.”
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
He walked toward the table.
The leather notebook was inside his jacket.
He placed it down carefully.
The cover had cracked at the corners. Water stains marked the lower edge. The initials C.C. had nearly disappeared.
Caleb Cole.
Everett’s grandfather.
Rachel stared at it.
“You found that in the loft?”
“Yes.”
“I thought everything up there was tax papers.”
“Mostly.”
She dried her hands.
“Show me.”
Everett opened near the back.
Most pages contained ordinary farm notes.
Rainfall.
Fence repairs.
Seed orders.
Calving dates.