Neighbors would be arguing over wells, pumping restrictions, and the value of land that no longer produced enough to pay its bills.
And Eli would discover that his grandfather hadn't left him a pile of worthless rocks.
He'd left him instructions.
Instructions that might save the farm.
And something else.
Something hidden beneath the oldest row of stones.
Something powerful enough to explain why Hank Barlow had been trying to convince Eli's mother to sell the property since the day after his grandfather's funeral.
The Mercer farm had never been rich.
Even in its best years, it was a place where every dollar was counted twice before it was spent.
The farmhouse stood beside a red barn built by Eli's great-grandfather in the 1930s. Its white paint had faded, its porch steps creaked, and the kitchen windows needed replacing. A narrow gravel drive led from the county road past an old machine shed, a small vegetable garden, and a windmill that hadn't pumped water in years.
But the property had character.
Cottonwoods grew along the creek.
Wild sunflowers appeared after summer rain.
And in spring, when the grass was healthy, the land rolled green toward the distant horizon.
Eli's grandfather, Daniel Mercer, spent most of his seventy-eight years working that ground.
He was a patient man.
Not especially talkative.
But capable of sitting beside a field for half an hour, watching the wind move through the grass as though the land were telling him something.
When Eli was little, he used to ask why Grandpa stared at dirt so much.
Daniel would grin.
“Because dirt doesn't answer questions just because you ask loudly.”
Eli never understood that.
Not at first.
His grandfather taught him practical things.
How to recognize soil that had dried only on the surface.
How to check a fence without cutting his hands.
How to keep tools clean.
And how to tell whether a crop was struggling because of insects, heat, poor soil conditions, or lack of moisture.
But Daniel was most interested in water.
He kept rainfall records in small notebooks.