The Letter Worth Dying For

Story So Far

Mrs. Odum gave a sworn statement on a table, covering the season, the year, two visits, the creek question, the post maul, blistered hands, and her husband at the south fence rail. The listener carried it back toward Mesquite Crossing with the deed and receipt, then returned west through Tucson, delivered the folded statement to Pruett, and left with Pruett saying it answered the motion.

Pruett reviewed the statement, receipt, and Crale’s account in the succession fight against Edmund Aldridge, and said federal acceptance would end the legal battle and stop Edmund from refiling. Pruett warned Edmund used lawyers first and might turn to other means, told the others to get Crale off the street before dark, keep Holt’s lamp low and the door latched, and win the legal fight first.

Pruett said Crale was at the feed store and the roan was still tied at the rail in Mesquite Crossing. The narrator found Crale inside, bought feed, and rode east with Crale from Mesquite Crossing to Tucson, then on to the Odum farm road gate by the dark farmhouse, with Holt inside and Pruett filing the answer to the motion.

Crale led the roan into the corral, and a watcher stayed on the porch with the lantern out while the documents stayed with Pruett and the motion with the examiner. Through the night the watcher heard the roan shift twice and kept a revolver ready, Holt brought cold coffee, and no riders or stray lanterns came on the road.

At first light Crale stood in the doorway with his hat on, Mrs. Odum lit the cook fire, and the farm woke. Over the next nine days Dunbar’s lease money came in, courier runs added pay, Holt repaired the south fence, Crale worked nearby, and Mrs. Odum fed the house.

On the ninth day a boy brought Pruett’s sealed letter, which said the succession was confirmed, Aldridge’s motion was denied with prejudice, Farris was in the federal record, Edmund’s attorney had withdrawn, and it was done. Pruett told the recipient to buy the horses.

The folded note went into the coat, and before the trip the man rode to Caldwell, watered his horse, inspected three mares, and paid eighty dollars for a dark bay with a white sock and a compact grulla. He led them east to Section 14 and turned them into the draw by the running creek, where the mares dropped their heads, his father’s stakes were gone, the adobe walls and north fence needed work, and he sat against the warm wall on land that was his.

At the draw on Reyes County Section 14, he walked down to the mares, laid a hand on the bay, named her Rosie, named the grulla Dust, and read his pocket watch marked “R. Voss. Reyes Co. Sec. 14.” He put the watch back against his ribs, stayed in the draw until the last light, and Rosie bumped his shoulder while Dust kept grazing.

At first light a worker labored under Rosie’s watch, kept one eye on the road, and ignored Dust. The worker drove in the north fence post, stretched the wire, pried up and renailed the loose roof seam, packed the east-wall gap with creek clay, and watched a slow dust line become a mule-drawn supply cart that passed the Section 14 road and continued north toward Tucson.

The next morning a boy left a note at the gate saying Graves was back, and Miss Voss rode Dust into Tucson. Outside the Recorder’s Office, Graves shook Miss Voss’s hand, congratulated her, said he had been in Santa Fe answering Aldridge’s secondary creek-boundary complaint until it was dismissed after three weeks, and warned that Edmund Aldridge was not finished.

At a cantina two doors from the Recorder’s Office, the speaker and Graves drank whiskeys and discussed Edmund Aldridge’s dispute. Graves said Aldridge spent nearly four hundred dollars on a weak claim because the creek parcels were a family pride issue and the lawsuit was the respectable version of what he wanted to do, and Graves told the speaker to keep Crale and Holt close and not ride Section 14 alone after dark.

The speaker asked Graves to serve as an unofficial consultant on Section 14 land filings. Graves agreed to help, said he could not take a retainer while his federal contract ran through the end of the quarter, would send same-day word on Section 14 matters, and required full disclosure before any deposition or sworn statement.

In a quiet cantina, Graves explained that Farris filed a competing affidavit with the territorial land office in Santa Fe, claimed the pulled creek-boundary stakes were his own markers, and gave Aldridge’s attorney the language for the survey-irregularity complaint. Graves said they needed to know where Farris was because a man who filed that affidavit did not stay idle.

The narrator said he wanted to find Farris, and Graves said Farris had been working a private survey contract north of town. Graves took him to the Recorder’s Office, got the filed notice, showed Farris’s address at Bauer’s boarding house on Convent Street, and said Farris had filed the affidavit to protect himself, not Aldridge.

At Bauer’s boarding house on Convent Street, Voss met Farris in the front room with a surveyor’s rule beside cold coffee. Voss said she knew about the Santa Fe affidavit and Aldridge’s attorney using it, told Graves she would offer a legitimate price for Farris’s stake, and told Farris to name what it was worth if he wanted out cleanly.

Farris began a careful account of a March contact from Aldridge’s man, saying the man asked him to claim the creek markers he pulled were his, then used the affidavit against Miss Voss’s title before the examiner. Farris said fixing it would require a retraction in Santa Fe admitting misrepresentation, and he asked what that was worth to Miss Voss.

In a Tucson boarding house, the speaker faced Farris over price and a possible retraction, paid a boy two bits to summon Pruett from Mesquite Crossing, and warned Farris that Pruett had to be part of any agreement. The speaker also warned that if Aldridge learned Farris was talking before Pruett arrived, it would get ugly for Farris.

A worn deck from the Caldwell run was put on the table, and Farris and the unnamed man played five-card draw for small coins. Farris won the first hand, the other man won the second with three sixes and thirty cents, Farris talked about surveys, the Gila, and a water easement contract, and then boots stopped outside and three measured knocks came at the door.

Pruett arrived dusty from a hard ride with a leather case, identified Farris as the surveyor, set down his case, and pulled out a drafted retraction sheaf. Pruett told Farris to sit, asked whether he would sign the retraction, warned that refusing might bring Aldridge against him, and ended seated at the table with the papers smoothed flat beside the cold coffee and cards.