Samuel had drawn a small hawk beside a mountain on the inside cover of a notebook.
Beneath it, he'd written:
The original was sealed by Hawthorne himself. Without that seal, they will deny its existence.
Clara began looking for more information.
She wrote letters to former associates.
Contacted county offices.
And examined old newspaper notices.
Some replies were helpful.
Others were not.
A few records were said to have been lost when administrative boundaries changed.
Others referred to indexes that no longer matched the surviving documents.
Clara spent nearly three years assembling fragments.
Then, in August 1887, she opened a newspaper and saw Nathaniel Carter's matrimonial advertisement.
The name made her stop breathing.
Carter Ranch.
Red Hollow.
Arizona Territory.
She stared at it.
For several minutes, she couldn't move.
Then she opened her father's notebook.
The name appeared on the third page.
Carter, eastern meadow claim. Stream crossing. Family title from 1863.
For a moment, Clara felt a strange pressure in her chest.
She had been looking for a connection to that property for years.
And now a man living there was advertising for a wife.
She should have ignored it.
The advertisement was not an invitation to investigate old land records.
It was a request from a lonely rancher seeking companionship.
Yet the more she read it, the more she wondered whether the two needs might somehow meet.
She wanted a home of her own.
A life where she could contribute meaningfully.
And a chance to understand the injustice her father had spent decades regretting.
Nathaniel wanted a practical wife.
He specifically said he could not promise romance.
Clara almost laughed at the directness.
Then she began writing.
She told him about her abilities.
Her appearance.
Her expectations.
But she didn't mention Samuel's Arizona papers.
Not yet.
She told herself she needed to establish whether Nathaniel was trustworthy before burdening him with an old dispute he might not understand.
It was a reasonable explanation.
At least, that was what she wanted to believe.
But part of her knew she was also afraid.
Afraid that if Nathaniel learned she'd recognized his ranch before writing, he would assume she wanted only the information connected to his property.
Afraid he might dismiss her as a schemer.
And afraid that her first promising correspondence in years would end before she had the opportunity to discover whether the man behind the advertisement was as honest as his words.