“Mercer.”
“Voss.”
“I hope I’m not intruding.”
“You are.”
Voss smiled.
“I’ve always appreciated your hospitality.”
Two men remained beside the carriage.
The third sat a bay horse twenty yards away.
Eli recognized him.
Deputy Carl Hatcher.
That bothered him more than the hired men.
Voss looked past Eli through the doorway.
His expression changed when he saw the women.
Only for a fraction of a second.
But Eli saw it.
Fear.
Then the smile returned.
“Well,” Voss said. “You have guests.”
Chaska stepped into view.
Voss’s smile disappeared.
“You.”
Chaska answered in perfect English.
“Yes.”
Eli looked from one to the other.
“You’ve met?”
Voss slipped his hat beneath one arm.
“Not formally.”
Chaska walked onto the porch.
“We met in Santa Fe three months ago.”
Voss’s jaw tightened.
“She was interfering in business that didn’t concern her.”
“It concerned families whose wells stopped producing three weeks after they refused your purchase offers.”
“That is an accusation.”
“It is.”
Deputy Hatcher shifted uneasily in his saddle.
Voss turned toward Eli.
“I came because your deadline is noon.”
Eli glanced at the sun.
Still an hour away.
“You sent four offers. I didn’t know the last came with a deadline.”
“Everything does eventually.”
“And if I don’t sign?”
Voss sighed as if genuinely disappointed.
“Then another matter becomes necessary.”
He reached into his coat.
Waya’s hand moved toward her bow.
Voss froze.
Slowly, he withdrew an envelope.
“Legal papers.”
Eli took them.
He read the first paragraph.
Then the second.
By the third, his hands had gone cold.
Voss watched him.
“There appears to be a problem with your title.”
Eli looked up.
“What problem?”
“The original transfer under which this parcel entered private ownership may have been fraudulent.”
“That land has changed hands four times.”
“Fraud travels.”
“I bought it legally.”
“I’m sure you believed you did.”
Voss smiled again.
“If the title is challenged successfully, you could lose everything.”
Eli stared at the paper.
Ten years.
Ten years building fences.
Digging postholes.
Breaking horses.
Hauling stone.
Planting trees that took three summers before they stopped looking like sticks shoved into dirt.
Ten years building something he believed no one could take from him because he had purchased every inch with money earned by his own hands.
Voss spoke almost gently.
“Sign the sale today, and my company assumes the legal risk.”
Chaska stepped closer.
“He means you surrender your claim.”
Voss glanced toward her.
“That does tend to be what selling means.”
“No,” she said. “There is more in the document.”
Eli looked at her.
Chaska pointed toward the deed inside the house.
“Read the final page.”
He had not.
Eli hated himself for that.
He went to the table and turned through the pages.
Near the bottom, buried inside dense legal language, was a clause releasing not only the parcel—
—but any present or future claim Eli Mercer might possess through prior ownership, inheritance, ancestry, derivative title, or associated land grant.
Eli read it twice.
“What the hell is this?”
Voss stayed outside.
“A standard provision.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Chaska spoke behind Eli.
“He does not need only your ranch.”
Eli turned.
“What does he need?”
She met his eyes.
“Your name.”
Gideon Pratt arrived twenty minutes later.
He came riding an old sorrel mule because, according to Gideon, horses were proud, expensive idiots while mules possessed “the humility necessary for responsible transportation.”
