“Looking.”
“At?”
“Water.”
That got his attention.
“There isn’t any.”
“There is moisture.”
“That hill’s been dry since I was a boy.”
“Maybe on top.”
He stared.
Magdalena explained.
Different vegetation.
Colder soil.
An old depression in the grade that resembled a collapsed ditch.
Possible buried channel.
“My father built irrigation systems.”
Ethan folded his arms.
“You?”
“I watched.”
“Enough?”
“Enough to know checking is cheaper than surrender.”
That sentence changed something between them.
He brought maps to the kitchen.
Magdalena studied them.
An old blue line crossed North Hill.
No label.
Then disappeared near a well marked abandoned.
She tapped it.
“This.”
Ethan looked.
“Old stock line.”
“Underground?”
“Partly.”
“Why abandoned?”
“Grandfather said flow stopped.”
“When?”
“Before I was born.”
“Suddenly?”
He thought.
“I think.”
“Then we dig.”
Jacob laughed when told.
Not cruelly.
Still a laugh.
“A cook found water?”
Magdalena wiped flour from her hands.
“A cook found green grass.”
“If I'm wrong, you lose two days.”
“And if you’re right?”
“You get your water.”
Ethan looked at Jacob.
“Get shovels.”
They excavated for six hours before finding stone.
Not natural.
Cut blocks forming the top of a narrow covered channel.
The line had once carried water from somewhere higher on the ridge.
They followed it.
Fifty yards.
One hundred.
Then a collapsed section.
Beneath rock and dirt lay timber.
Newer than everything around it.
Ethan held a piece.
“This wasn't here twenty years.”
Jacob’s face changed.
Someone had blocked the channel intentionally.
They cleared enough to release a trickle.
Then more.
Cold water flowed through stone.
By sunset, it reached the lower trough.
Not enough yet to save Castle Ridge.
Enough to prove the ranch was not as dry as everyone believed.
That night Ethan entered the kitchen while Magdalena was washing dishes.
Placed thirty dollars on the table.
She looked.
“My wages aren’t due.”
“Bonus.”
“For?”
“Water.”
“You paid me to cook.”
“I’m paying you for not limiting yourself.”
She looked at him.
No man had ever said anything quite like that.
Magdalena took twenty.
Left ten.
Ethan frowned.
“Why?”
“I gave you an idea.”
“Your men did the digging.”
He almost argued.
Then nodded.
“Fine.”
She respected that too.
Two days later, the first cow died.
Magdalena crouched beside it.
No obvious injury.
Thin foam at the mouth.
Eyes wrong.
She opened the feed sack.
Smelled.
Bitter.
Not normal.
She found powder beneath the pen boards.
Gray-white.
Jacob said mineral supplement.
Magdalena disagreed.
Then unfamiliar horse tracks appeared near the fence.
Ethan rode the perimeter.
Found nothing.
Arthur Vale made another purchase offer the next morning.