That work brought them to Wyoming.
And eventually, to Gideon Voss.
At first, Voss appeared to be exactly the sort of man a struggling territory needed.
He was forty-eight, polished, charismatic, and educated in eastern business circles.
His company financed warehouses, roads, timber operations, and land improvements.
He spoke constantly about bringing prosperity to isolated communities.
He promised better transportation.
New jobs.
Reliable investment.
And modern infrastructure capable of connecting remote ranches to expanding markets.
Some of those promises were genuine.
His company had constructed useful bridges and improved freight routes.
But Samuel Whitmore began noticing troubling patterns in the company's land acquisitions.
Families received offers to sell their farms shortly before survey records were amended.
Water access rights appeared in private agreements without clear supporting records.
Old boundaries shifted on newer maps.
And several small ranchers were informed that the springs they'd depended on for years no longer lay within the land they believed they owned.
Samuel was hired to review a section of the Granite Valley corridor.
The project concerned a proposed railway spur, a service road, and access to water needed for construction.
He expected ordinary surveying work.
Instead, he found discrepancies.
At first, he assumed errors.
Then he began comparing the documents.
Old field books.
Private acquisition agreements.
County records.
Survey plats.
And handwritten descriptions from families who had occupied the valley for decades.
The differences formed a pattern.
A series of boundary adjustments would eventually place control of an important spring and its downstream access corridor within land controlled by Voss's associates.
That mattered because the spring fed the creek used by several ranches near Willow Creek.
If the company gained exclusive control over the source and the narrow access route, it could demand expensive agreements from families whose livestock and irrigation depended on the water.
It could also make it difficult for those families to challenge the arrangements without costly legal action.
Samuel became concerned.
He wrote formal questions.
Requested copies of original approvals.
And began documenting every inconsistency.
Clara helped.
For weeks, they worked late.
They traced older survey descriptions.
Compared measurements.
And discovered that one supposedly original plat contained figures copied from a later engineering report.
The chronology was impossible.
Samuel stared at the page.
Then looked toward Clara.
"Somebody's been rewriting history."
She frowned.
"What do you mean?"
He tapped the figures.
"This measurement wasn't available when the original survey was supposedly made."
Clara leaned closer.
She recognized the notation.
It referred to an elevation calculation completed years after the date written on the document.
For a moment, her stomach tightened.
"Could it be a transcription mistake?"
Samuel nodded.
"Perhaps."
He looked toward the remaining papers.
"That's why we check."
They checked.
And checked again.
By the end of the month, Samuel believed the discrepancies were too numerous and too convenient to be accidental.
He prepared a report.
Then requested a meeting with Voss.
Clara remembered the day her father left.
It was cold.
The sky was clear.
Samuel wore his gray coat and carried a leather satchel containing copies of his findings.
Before leaving, he stopped beside the doorway.
"Clara."
She looked up from the table.
"Yes?"
He hesitated.
Then smiled.