And she didn't go onto neighboring property to look for the northern gate.
Instead, she worked with Lena, Allison, and the appropriate officials to obtain the information through lawful procedures.
Then something happened that made the dispute much more serious.
The small flow at Junction J-14 stopped.
Completely.
Eliza discovered the change on a Monday morning.
She walked toward the ditch expecting to see the faint ripples that had appeared since the fish experiment.
The surface was still.
The small school of shiners she'd observed in the channel had dispersed toward the deeper water farther down the contained ditch.
The cool upwelling was gone.
Eliza checked the location again.
No visible movement.
She photographed the water.
Recorded the temperature.
Then called Lena.
The engineer arrived that afternoon.
She confirmed that the inflow was no longer measurable under the conditions observed.
The change might have several explanations.
Upstream operation.
Pressure variation.
A blocked connection.
Or a natural decline.
But the timing concerned Eliza.
The water had stopped shortly after Bellwether received the technical report and her attorney rejected the purchase offer.
She wanted to believe it was coincidence.
But she couldn't.
Lena reminded her that timing alone didn't prove someone deliberately changed the system.
They needed records.
And they needed to establish whether the upstream operation had changed.
Eliza nodded.
Then looked toward the ditch.
For a moment, anger overwhelmed her.
She'd finally found evidence of water.
Now it had disappeared again.
She looked toward Lena.
"How are we supposed to prove anything if they can just change what the system does?"
The engineer considered the question.
Then answered.
"By documenting the conditions, obtaining the operating records, and comparing them."
Eliza stared toward the eastern fields.
Then took a slow breath.
"Okay."
She opened her notebook.
And wrote down the time the flow was found to be absent.
The next clue came from a worker who had been repairing equipment on the eastern property.
His name was Marcus Vale.
He was thirty-three, a maintenance technician employed by one of Bellwether's agricultural contractors.
Marcus had grown up in Harrow County.
His father worked alongside Samuel during harvest seasons.
He remembered Eliza as a child riding in the tractor cab while her father checked the fields.
Marcus wasn't part of management.
He didn't negotiate water agreements.
And he didn't know the full legal history of the cooperative.
But he understood pumps and distribution equipment.
During a routine service call, he noticed that operating instructions for the northern division structure had changed.
He couldn't determine whether the change was authorized.
But he remembered hearing the south branch was supposed to remain out of service until the dispute was resolved.
Then he learned the small flow on Eliza's property had stopped.
He became concerned.
At first, he told himself it wasn't his business.
He needed his job.
His wife had recently returned to school.
And their two young children depended on his income.
But Marcus also remembered Samuel helping his family after a tornado damaged their home.