Chapter 5 - Numbers That Didn't Belong
Dora and Reed left the county office at three in the afternoon.
By four, Cyrus Algate watched them ride west from the courthouse steps.
By six, they were no longer heading toward Callaway Ridge.
Reed circled south through a dry creek bed while Dora followed.
“What exactly are we doing?” he asked.
“Leaving town.”
“We already did that.”
“Now we’re coming back.”
“This was your plan?”
“No.”
“You say that with disturbing confidence.”
“I make better plans after somebody threatens me.”
Reed glanced over.
“You consider what Cyrus said a threat?”
“I consider advice from dishonest men extremely informative.”
They waited until darkness.
Then they returned by a wagon road behind the livery stable and left their horses with Edwin Bell’s cousin, who asked no questions after Reed handed him two dollars.
At eleven, Edwin met them near the courthouse.
He carried a lantern hooded with cloth.
“I could lose my job.”
Dora adjusted her shawl.
“If the records show nothing, we leave.”
“And if they show something?”
Reed answered.
“Then you may eventually have a better employer.”
Edwin did not laugh.
The courthouse basement smelled of dust, mildew, and old paper.
Shelves leaned beneath leather books thick enough to stop a door.
Edwin led them to a row marked territorial copies.
“Assessors submit field records. Clerk duplicates yearly totals.”
“So Cyrus’s office keeps one set,” Dora said.
“And the county stores another?”
“Usually.”
“Usually?”
“There have been fires.”
“Convenient fires?”
Edwin looked uncomfortable.
“Sometimes.”
They began with the year before Silas Callaway’s first suspicious entry.
Dora traced each column.
Owner.
Acreage.
Livestock.
Water access.
Assessment.
Payment.
She found Callaway Ridge.
The official amount was seventy-eight dollars.
Exactly what Silas had originally written.
Not one hundred eighteen.
Dora felt the hairs on her arms rise.
“Reed.”
He leaned over.
She showed him.
His face drained of color.
Page after page confirmed it.
Cyrus’s figures did not match the county copies.
Payments had been inflated after submission.
Debts invented.
Penalties added.
Interest calculated on money never legitimately owed.
But Callaway Ridge was only one ranch.
Dora turned backward.
Another property.
Wilkes Crossing.
The county book showed a modest assessment.
A later notation declared unpaid debt.
Dora remembered Edwin’s comment.
“Did Wilkes Crossing sell?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
Edwin searched a property register.
“Silver Basin Land Company.”
Reed frowned.
“Never heard of them.”
Another failed ranch.
Silver Basin.
A third.
Silver Basin.
A fourth had been purchased by an individual named Hiram Algate.
“Relative?” Dora asked.
“Cyrus’s brother,” Edwin whispered.
The room seemed to grow colder.
Reed gripped the table.
“They drove ranches into debt and bought the land.”
“That appears to be part of it,” Dora said.
“Part?”
She pointed at several ranches still operating.
Their assessment figures had also been altered, but they had not sold.
“Then why keep bleeding properties without buying them?”
Reed understood.
“Cash.”
“Exactly.”
Some owners paid invented fees.
Others failed.
When they failed, associated buyers acquired their land cheaply.
The scheme was elegant because each individual loss looked ordinary.
A harsh year.
A struggling rancher.
Tax debt.
Sale.
Only when the books were placed side by side did the pattern appear.
Dora copied names and numbers.
Reed copied land transfers.
Edwin watched the stairs.
At nearly one in the morning they found something stranger.
Callaway Ridge acreage had been increased on paper by twelve hundred acres.
“That land doesn’t exist,” Reed said.
“It must exist somewhere.”
“Not on my deed.”
Edwin fetched an old survey map.
They spread it across the table.
The additional acreage overlapped government grazing land east of Reed’s boundary.
Why assess him for land he did not own?
Dora stared at the figures.
Then remembered the salt.
The inflated orders.
Inventory disappearing.
“What if they’re doing the same thing with goods?”
Reed looked at her.
“What?”
“Creating paper ownership.”
She explained.
If supply accounts showed Callaway Ridge purchasing more salt, food, seed, tack, and cattle goods than it actually used, those invoices could support claims that the ranch was operating on a larger scale.
Larger operation.
More cattle.
More acreage supposedly utilized.
Higher assessment.
And if somebody resold the excess goods, they profited twice.
Reed swore quietly.
“The ranch pays for supplies that leave the ranch.”
“And then pays taxes based on an operation made to look bigger.”
Edwin shook his head.
“That’s… elaborate.”
“So is stealing land legally,” Dora replied.
They continued searching.
At two-thirty, footsteps sounded upstairs.
Edwin extinguished the lantern.
Everyone froze.
A door opened.
Wood creaked above them.
Reed moved nearer Dora.
Neither spoke.
The footsteps crossed the courthouse floor.
Then stopped near the basement stairwell.
A thin line of light appeared beneath the door.
Dora heard someone breathe.
The handle moved.
Edwin’s face went white.
Reed quietly lifted an iron fire poker from beside the furnace, but Dora caught his wrist and shook her head.
The door opened.
A man stood silhouetted.
“Edwin?”
The clerk nearly collapsed.
“Sheriff.”
Sheriff Nathan Ward descended two steps.
“What are you doing?”
Edwin looked helplessly at Reed.
The sheriff saw them.
His expression hardened.
“Callaway.”
“Ward.”
The two men clearly knew each other.
“Why are you in county records at two in the morning?”
Reed answered without hesitation.
“Because somebody has been falsifying my assessments.”
Ward stared.
Dora stepped toward the table.
“We can show you.”
The sheriff did not move.
That worried her.
An honest official surprised by evidence usually looked at the evidence.
A compromised one looked at the people holding it.
“Close the books,” Ward said.
Reed’s posture changed.
“Why?”
“Because you are accessing records without authorization.”
“Edwin authorized us.”
“He doesn’t have that authority after hours.”
Dora watched the sheriff.
“Do you?”
His gaze turned to her.
“Ma’am?”
“To remove public records?”
“I said close them.”
“Not remove.”
Ward’s mouth hardened.
“You’re Dora Vance.”
She felt Reed look at her.
“How do you know my name?”
The sheriff hesitated half a second too long.
Cyrus had told him.
Dora knew it.
Reed knew it.
Ward knew they knew it.
Then something unexpected happened.
The sheriff sighed.
“Cyrus came to me this afternoon.”
Reed stepped closer.
“What did he say?”
“That you were becoming unstable over old debts.”
Reed’s hands curled.
Ward continued quickly.
“He wanted me to prevent you from accessing records.”
“And you agreed?”
“I came here to see whether Edwin was foolish enough to let you in.”
“That sounds like yes.”
“No.”
Ward descended the remaining steps.
“I came because Cyrus Algate has never personally cared about courthouse procedure in fifteen years.”
Dora studied him.
“So his concern made you suspicious?”
“His concern about a cook made me suspicious.”
Reed looked toward Dora.
Ward approached the table.
“Show me.”
For the next forty minutes, Dora explained the numbers.
Ward asked careful questions.
He did not dismiss discrepancies.
He did not defend Cyrus.
When they finished, he stood silently.
“How many copies did you make?”
“Enough,” Dora said.
“Where are they?”
“Not all in one place.”
A small lie.
But a useful one.
Ward nodded approvingly.
“Good.”
Reed crossed his arms.
“What happens now?”
“Nothing.”
Reed stared.
Ward raised a hand.
“Nothing obvious.”
He looked at the books.
“You accuse a territorial assessor without complete proof, Cyrus destroys whatever remains and calls these clerical discrepancies.”
“He’s already destroying records.”
“Then we need evidence of current fraud.”
Dora thought of Caleb.
The altered salt order.
The midnight exchange.
“We may have it.”
Ward looked at her.
“Where?”
“Callaway Ridge.”
Reed exhaled.
They had ridden two days to find the scheme.
Now the next piece of evidence was waiting at home.
Possibly inside their bunkhouse.
Possibly inside their storeroom.
Possibly inside the pocket of the man Dora had served an extra biscuit that morning.
They returned to Callaway Ridge as quickly as the horses allowed.
But when the ranch buildings finally appeared beneath the red evening sky two days later, Hank was waiting at the gate.
His expression told Dora something had happened.
“What is it?” Reed called.
Hank looked at Dora.
“Your storeroom.”
Her stomach dropped.
“What about it?”
“Somebody broke in.”
She dismounted.
“What did they take?”
Hank’s answer came quietly.
“Nothing.”
Reed frowned.
“Then why break in?”
Hank held up a handful of blackened paper.
Dora recognized it instantly.
Her inventory pages.
“They weren’t stealing this time,” Hank said.
“They were looking for your records.”
Dora stared at the burned edges.
Whoever had entered the storeroom had stopped trying to hide the theft.
Now they were trying to hide the proof.
And Dora’s second copy was still beneath the floorboard in her room.
May you like
For the moment.
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