"Anything else?"
She considered.
"It means a piece of paper with a bank logo doesn't automatically erase seventy years of somebody else's life."
Her daughter smiled faintly.
The woman turned toward her pickup.
She wanted to get home before the cattle's evening feeding.
There would be more hearings.
More expenses.
More documents.
But tonight, for the first time since the orange flags appeared, she could drive home knowing nobody was legally permitted to barricade the only practical road to her front door.
The thought almost made her cry.
Instead, she started the truck.
Her daughter climbed into the passenger seat.
"Ready?"
The old woman nodded.
"Let's go home."
Chapter 13: Twenty-Two Feet
Three days after the temporary order, the independent surveyor arrived at the ranch with two assistants, a stack of certified records, and an expression that told the old woman there was more trouble ahead.
He was a veteran land surveyor in his early sixties, patient, meticulous, and well known in the county for refusing to certify anything he could not explain.
The ranch woman met him beside the north cattle guard.
Her foreman stood nearby.
The older surveying technician who had worked for the bank was also present, following an agreement between the attorneys that both sides could observe the measurements without interfering.
The independent surveyor unfolded a large map across the tailgate of his truck.
"We've reconstructed most of the original 1957 easement."
The ranch woman nodded.
"Good."
"And the first section of the existing road falls within the corridor."
"Good."
He paused.
She narrowed her eyes.
"Here comes the bad part."
He looked at her sympathetically.
"There's a curve near the creek crossing."
"I know the curve."
"According to the historical plat, the original road followed a slightly different line."
The woman stared.
"Different how?"
He pointed to two colored lines on the map.
The first represented the protected easement corridor.
The second represented the current traveled road.
For most of the route, they overlapped.
But near the bend, the present road shifted outside the historic corridor.
Not by much.
At its farthest point, approximately twenty-two feet.
For a distance of just over two hundred yards.
The ranch woman felt her stomach tighten.
"That can't be right."
The surveyor looked at her.
"I understand why it's surprising."
"My father built this road."
"He built the original route. The present curve appears to have been relocated later."
The foreman stepped forward.
"The flood."
The surveyor nodded.
"That's what the physical evidence suggests."
The old woman remembered the summer of 1979.
The creek had swollen after three days of heavy rain.
Water had torn through the lower draw, washing out a culvert and part of the roadbed.
Her father, already in his sixties, had organized the repair work.
They had moved the road slightly uphill to avoid the worst of the flooding.
She remembered the machinery.
The gravel trucks.
The long days.