Thirty-one remaining.
She stood over it.
Then remembered something.
“Margaret.”
Emmett turned.
“What?”
“Your sister.”
“What about her?”
“The boxes.”
He stared at Reina.
Then understood.
They called Margaret that night.
She lived roughly thirty miles north of Red Basin.
The ranch records had been moved to a detached storage building after their father died.
Margaret warned them:
“There are a lot of boxes.”
“How many?”
“Enough that I haven’t touched them in years.”
They arrived before nine the next morning.
Margaret was seventy-one.
Practical.
Blunt.
She unlocked the outbuilding.
Dust smelled immediately.
Boxes lined the back wall.
Labels had faded.
RANCH.
TAX.
CATTLE.
EQUIPMENT.
WATER?
Some dates.
Some names.
Some nothing.
Reina stood in the doorway.
Emmett said:
“Still want to do this?”
“Yes.”
For the next seventeen hours, they searched.
Not frantically.
Methodically.
Anything related to Juniper Crown went left.
Water references went to the center table.
Tax records right.
They found receipts for pump repair.
Old grazing maps.
Veterinary bills.
Fence invoices.
Well drilling estimates.
Handwritten cattle inventories.
Survey pins.
One photograph showed Emmett as a child sitting on a tractor.
Margaret laughed for the first time all night.
“You hated that hat.”
Emmett looked.
“I still do.”
Reina smiled.
Then returned to the boxes.
At midnight, they had found nothing decisive.
At one in the morning, Margaret made coffee.
At two, Emmett sat back on the concrete floor.
“We should stop.”
Reina looked at the remaining boxes.
Grant’s deadline would expire later that day.
“One more.”
Emmett groaned.
Margaret pointed.
“That bottom one was Dad’s.”
The cardboard had softened at the edges.
Emmett pulled it out.
Inside were folders from the 1950s and 1960s.
Property correspondence.
Old state documents.
A brown envelope lay flat beneath them.
No modern label.
Only handwriting.
NORTH WATER.
Emmett stopped moving.
Reina crouched beside him.
“Open it.”
Inside was a folded survey.
Then a typewritten inspection report from a state engineer’s office.
A hand-drawn diagram.
Black-and-white photographs.
Reina unfolded the diagram first.
Spring chamber.
Pipe route.
Lower pasture stock tank.
Elevation notations.
Approximate flow.
Date.
1930s.
Her hands began to tremble.
Emmett picked up the photographs.
Cattle stood around a long tank.
Water visible.
Behind them was terrain Reina recognized.
Juniper Crown.
“My grandfather.”