<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=107518.msg5250326#msg5250326">Quote from: derek on 24-09-2011, 05:07:05</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote"><br/>“Do you know that man?  Did he ever talk to you or give you any papers?  I always thought these foreclosure orders had to be from the court . . . I suppose I could telegraph the Judge and ask him.  Of course this is probably before the Marshal’s time here, and certainly before Mr. Hardy as there’s another signature with the clerk’s stamp beside it.  Do you see that?  I couldn’t really make it out darlin’ . . . can you?  I hate to ask you this so bluntly honey . . . but how was it that you left the ranch?”<br/><br/>He held her hand and gently squeezed it, hoping she’d take some comfort from the gesture.<br/><br/>“Back east . . . it’s usually the county sheriff who serves the papers . . . we’re still a little young out here maybe to have that setup but there should have been some legal papers in order to take Tim’s estate’s likely only asset from you as his widow.  It seems like a very low thing to do without giving you the chance to pay the back taxes and any penalties.”<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>Irene looked at the book.  "First letter's a F.  Finch?  Fincher?  Flint, maybe," she offered.  Rising, she took the book nearer the window and looked at it in full light.  "Flint.  Lots of swirls...rather feminine writing," she offered.<br/><br/>Movement on the street and she saw Marshall Wrynn heading towards the saloon.  She watched him for a moment, then returned to the table.<br/><br/>"The marshall doesn't strike me as the type who involves himself in other people's business if it isn't warranted," she said.  "But, maybe he knows of these people.  He might have had dealings with them.  I know few residents," Irene admitted.<br/><br/>Settling back down she wrote FLINT on the paper below JASON SULLIVAN.  "Sullivan, is a familiar name.  He visited me a few times; wanted to look at the property.  He came before Tim died, too.  Tim hated him.  He saw him as the devil incarnate.  Tim was late on the taxes and he came out one time.  I almost forgot about this.  Sullivan came out and he said it was just a 'friendly reminder' to get the money to him.  Tim swears it was from that point on that things went bad.  The cattle took sick.  Anthrax.  One by one they dropped and we had to burn them.  Then, the hay field we'd planted was eaten by swarms of bugs...locusts, he called them.  We couldn't pay the mortgage for a year.  He put the money we had into a new herd of just ten cows and a bull.  The bull...disappeared.  We sold the cows one by one and it never got better.  He was gone more.  He drank more.  Sullivan visited once, insinuated he'd like me to invite him in.  I was alone, but Tim rode up right then.  He was drunk, but not too drunk.  He was itching for a fight and Sullivan was smart enough to leave.  When Tim died, we were already so far in debt..."  She squeezed Sam's hand.  "The notice to evacuate came in the hand of a pimply faced teen.  He got a dollar to ride out and serve the notice to me."<br/><br/>Irene hadn't realized how much she hated that part of her life.  She was embarrassed, ashamed even, to admit that her husband was so bad at what he did that they didn't even have money enough to bury him.<br/><br/>"The boy, when he saw me, started to crumple the notice.  I saw it.  I'd been watching for anyone coming down the trail.  He was all of sixteen and offered to marry me."  Irene laughed now, but it was a teary laugh.  "Sullivan came after.  He said he'd take care of the taxes for me, if we could make an agreeable arrangement."  She snorted.  "I'd rather pull beers and--well, on my own terms than become Sullivan's kept woman.  If I was going to be a whore, I didn't want people talking behind their hands about it.  Besides, the taxes the least of it.  We were in arrears on the mortgage so far that I'd never have been able to make it good."<br/><br/>She sighed.  She looked at Sam again.  "Ours was the only herd that got Antrhax," she murmured.   The highly contagious disease had been confined to the O'Rourke ranch.  Irene had thought it odd and Tim had yelled at her not to be stupid.  She hadn't said anything more about it.   "I don't think they have cattle there now.  The disease can live in the ground for years...one book said up to a hundred years.  Figures that Tim would pick that ground to settle."