"Remember the old steel feed cabinet?"
"The one behind the workshop?"
"He used to hide land papers under the bottom drawer."
She stared.
"You're telling me my father kept property records in a feed cabinet?"
"He said a man could lose an office in a fire, but nobody ever wanted to steal an ugly old feed cabinet."
Despite everything, she smiled.
"That sounds like him."
They walked toward the workshop.
The old cabinet stood beneath a dusty window.
Its drawers were filled with nails, washers, broken fittings, and pieces of machinery whose original purpose had been forgotten.
The foreman pulled out the bottom drawer.
A thick layer of dust covered the floor beneath it.
He reached inside and felt along the rear edge.
Then he frowned.
"Well."
"What?"
"Something's here."
He pulled out a long, flat metal box.
It was rusty around the hinges.
The woman stared at it.
She had never seen it before.
The foreman placed it on the workbench.
She opened it carefully.
Inside were brittle envelopes, folded maps, an old black-and-white photograph, and a small handwritten ledger.
Her father's name appeared on the ledger's first page.
Below it was a date.
1957.
The woman felt her throat tighten.
She opened the book.
The first entries recorded fuel costs, road-grading work, posts, gravel, culvert pipe, and labor.
Then she found a line written in her father's unmistakable handwriting.
North access road completed. Thirty-foot right-of-way recorded. Original survey monuments preserved.
She read it twice.
Then looked at the foreman.
"Recorded?"
He nodded slowly.
"That's what he always said."
She turned the page.
Another entry appeared.
Copies with county clerk and land attorney. Permanent access not dependent on neighboring ownership.
The woman sat down.
Her heart was beating faster.
She had expected proof that her father maintained the road.
Instead, she had found something potentially more important.
He believed the family possessed a permanent legal right to use it.
She continued reading.
The ledger mentioned a survey completed in 1957, a deed recording reference, and three original boundary monuments.
One was described as the north cedar marker.
The marker the banker had kicked down.
The foreman leaned over her shoulder.
"Well, I'll be."
She ran her finger along the handwriting.
Her father's words were nearly seventy years old.
But they seemed to speak directly to her.
She looked toward the north road.
Somewhere beyond the hills, a stranger was preparing to barricade the only road to her home.
She closed the ledger.
"Get the truck ready."
The foreman frowned.
"Where are we going?"
"The courthouse."
Chapter 3: What a Family Keeps
The county records office stood inside a weathered brick courthouse in a small southwestern Kansas town where the grain elevator was taller than anything else for thirty miles.