Chapter 4 - The Circuit Rider’s Ledger
The morning frost crusted the windowpanes of Cormack’s kitchen white, but inside, the smell of roasted chicory and salt pork filled the room. Garrett was resting easier, his breathing less labored thanks to the dry stone walls and the tea Nava had brewed from wild sage and dried willow bark.
Cormack was at the washbasin by the back door, splashing cold water over his face, when a sharp knock echoed against the front timber.
It wasn't a friendly rap. It was the heavy, three-beat strike of an official summons.
Nava stood up from the table, her hand dropping instinctively toward the handle of the skinning knife she kept tucked in her belt. Cormack dried his face quickly on a rough towel and walked toward the front door, his boots heavy on the planking.
He pulled the heavy oak door open.
Standing on the porch was not Sheriff Gannon, but a man in a black wool coat that smelled faintly of train smoke and stale ink. He wore round spectacles balanced precariously on a thin nose, and under his arm he carried a leather dispatch case stamped with the territorial seal.
“Cormack Hester?” the man asked, his voice sharp and nasal.
“I am.”
“I’m Judge Miller’s circuit clerk out of Silver City. Name’s Arthur Pendelton.” The man looked past Cormack into the warm interior of the kitchen, his eyes landing immediately on Nava standing beside the table with the ledger open before her. “And you must be Miss Stonehorse. We received a rather urgent inquiry regarding a land title dispute in the Southern District.”
Cormack exchanged a quick look with Nava. “You came all the way from Silver City on an inquiry?”
“Not just an inquiry, Mr. Hester,” Pendelton said, stepping uninvited into the hallway and shaking the melting frost from his hat. “Vernon Shade filed an emergency injunction at midnight, claiming you were operating an illegal squatters’ camp on disputed property and threatening county records.”
Nava stepped forward, her posture rigid, her eyes locked on the clerk’s face. “Shade filed an injunction for records he claims don't exist?”
Pendelton blinked behind his round spectacles, momentarily caught off guard. “He claims the public records were legally amended in eighteen-eighty-four under territorial provisions for abandoned claims.”
“They weren't abandoned,” Nava said, her voice cutting through the cold air of the hall like a knife. She picked up Dela Hester’s ledger and Hostin Stonehorse’s original deed from the table and laid them side by side on the surface before the clerk. “My father died in eighty-two. The ink on his grant was dry twelve years before Shade registered a single forged signature through a coerced clerk.”
Pendelton looked down at the documents. As a circuit clerk, he had spent twenty years handling land disputes across three territories; he knew the feel of real vellum from cheap pulp, and he knew the unmistakable style of Hostin Stonehorse’s professional drafting.
“Where did you get this?” Pendelton whispered, leaning over the table.
“From the back of the wardrobe where Shade’s victim hid it to keep her conscience clean,” Cormack said from the doorway.
Pendelton reached into his dispatch case, pulled out a pair of white cotton gloves, and slipped them on with slow, deliberate care before touching the corner of the deed. He turned it over, examining the cracked red wax seal and the territorial watermark.
“If this deed is authentic,” Pendelton murmured, “and if Mr. Shade’s office cannot produce the primary chain of conveyance from the estate... then half the land transactions in Dry Mesa over the last decade are legally void.”
“Including Shade’s own cattle holdings on the lower river,” Nava added.
May you like
Pendelton looked up at her, a faint flicker of professional excitement breaking through his bureaucratic reserve. “Miss Stonehorse, if you present this before Judge Miller when he opens the circuit court in Dry Mesa next Tuesday, Mr. Shade won't be sitting in his commissioner’s chair by noon. He’ll be sitting at the defense table.”
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