No corset.
Elias did not comment.
He helped her down from the wagon.
They entered the bank.
Mercer looked surprised.
Then pleased.
“Mr. Graves.”
“Mrs. Graves.”
His smile toward Mabel was too satisfied.
“How is married life?”
Mabel placed the payment notice on his desk.
“Expensive.”
The smile faded slightly.
“What’s this?”
“My father paid three hundred dollars six days before your final accounting.”
Mercer glanced.
“Perhaps.”
“Why wasn’t it deducted?”
He leaned back.
“Estate calculations are complicated.”
“Arithmetic isn’t.”
Elias remained beside her.
Silent.
Mercer looked toward him.
“Control your wife.”
The room changed.
Elias’s scarred face went still.
Mabel felt fear—not of Elias.
For Mercer.
Elias spoke quietly.
“She asked you a question.”
Mercer swallowed.
“I will review it.”
“Today.”
“I have business.”
Mabel sat.
“So do we.”
Mercer stared.
She folded her hands.
“We’ll wait.”
Two hours later, they left with copies of the estate records.
Not all.
Enough.
Mabel read them throughout the ride home.
By sunset, she found three more problems.
Payments recorded late.
Fees repeated.
A cattle-sale credit missing.
The debt that supposedly totaled seventeen hundred dollars might have been less than nine hundred.
Possibly far less.
Elias’s expression darkened.
“They took my gold.”
Mabel looked at him.
“They used both of us.”
That mattered.
Until then, she had been tempted to see herself as the only victim of the arrangement.
But Elias had paid nearly double the apparent debt.
Why?
The next question became obvious.
Why did Mercer want Elias and Mabel married?
If the bank wanted money, Elias could simply have purchased the debt.
Marriage was unnecessary.
Mabel said this aloud.
Elias nodded slowly.
“Unless the marriage changed something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer arrived from the land itself.
A week later, a surveyor appeared at their canyon property.
Elias found him near the southern creek.
The man claimed he was checking county boundaries.
Elias asked for authorization.
The surveyor produced none.
He left.
That night, Elias opened an iron box in his bedroom.
Mabel had never seen it.
Inside were deeds.
Old letters.
Maps.
One document belonged to Elias’s mother.
Mabel read the legal description.
Then stopped.
“This boundary.”
“What?”
“It touches Prescott land.”
“My father’s?”
“Yes.”
Her father’s failed mining claim sat east of Black Ridge.
The Graves homestead lay west.
Between them ran a narrow timbered ridge with water access.
Mabel spread both deeds across the table.
Marriage united two parcels under one household.
But why would Mercer care?
Elias brought an older topographic map.
Mabel compared.
There.
A creek.
Not just any creek.
The only reliable winter flow between two dry mining districts.
Her father had owned the eastern water approach.
Elias controlled the western spring.
Together, the parcels could feed a planned hydraulic operation farther south.
Mabel stared.
“Mercer didn’t arrange a marriage.”
Elias understood.
“He consolidated land.”
“But we own it.”
“For now.”