The evidence argued back.
No urgent purpose.
No need to disturb it.
No reason to turn a question into a cost merely because the answer existed underground.
"Fine," she said.
Eli smiled.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You look pleased."
"You just chose not knowing."
"Temporarily."
"Still counts."
They reburied the exposed edge enough to protect it from rapid drying, marked the location carefully, and recorded the decision.
Norah hated it less the next day.
By the time school resumed, the story had changed her reputation more than she wanted. Teachers knew. Students knew. Somebody called her "Timber Girl" for two weeks until another student drove a truck into the football-field fence and provided the school with a better topic.
Her science teacher asked her to give a short presentation about the discovery.
Norah nearly refused.
Eli told her she should do it.
"Why?"
"Because if you can't explain what you know and what you don't know, you don't understand either well enough."
So she stood in front of her class with photocopied maps and photographs.
She did not begin with the expensive wood.
She began with the flood.
Then the mark.
Then Marcus's first offer.
Then the question that bothered her: why would a timber buyer drive twelve miles for worthless logs?
She showed the 1887 channel map and 1891 newspaper article. She showed the registered Bellamy & Cross mark but emphasized that the evidence connected only some logs plausibly to that company and event.
A boy in the back asked, "How much are they worth?"
Norah answered, "Which log?"
He laughed. "All of them."
"That's the wrong question."
The teacher smiled.
Norah continued. "Some were worthless. Some were ordinary reclaimed timber. Some had good cypress. Three are unusual. Value depends on usable yield, defects, dimensions, drying, buyer, and documentation."
Another student asked whether Sterling tried to steal them.
"No."
"But he lied."
Norah paused. "He tried to buy them cheap while making us think they had less value than he suspected. That's not the same as stealing."
"Would you sell to him now?"
She thought of Marcus's twelve-thousand-dollar offer.
"If his price and our reasons matched someday."
That answer surprised her.
She no longer needed Marcus to be wrong for her to be right.
The distinction felt like growing up, which was irritating.
Autumn arrived slowly that year. Heat held through September, then broke almost overnight after a line of thunderstorms moved across the Delta without causing enough rain to frighten anybody. Mornings turned cooler. The pasture grass deepened in color. Dust settled on the farm lane instead of rising behind every truck, and the Bell farm began to resemble itself again.
The recovered lumber changed more gradually.
Some boards from Log 11 dried well and stayed straight. Others developed end checks severe enough that Raymond trimmed away several inches. A wide slab Norah had privately considered perfect warped slightly during drying, teaching her another lesson about the difference between what material looked like in one moment and what it would become over time.
Raymond made her measure moisture at different depths when practical and showed her why rushing thick recovered stock into a heated shop could create stresses that did not appear until weeks later. "Old wood spent a long time getting wet," he said. "You don't fix that by getting impatient about dry."