Page 74 of The Lonely Road

“It’s manageable.” It’s the truth. “It’s the change-of-use argument I’ve been preparing for. This document actually helps us—because Jeb documented it himself in real time and noted no share transfer. The water stayed on the ranch. The use was agricultural. We can defend this.” I tap the page. “What I need to know is whether opposing counsel has seen it.”

“Young Jeb didn’t think so. His father doesn’t know the database exists. He’s been doin’ it on the side, you know.”

“Good.” I slide the document into my case file. “Then we get ahead of it.”

On my way back to town, I call Mac, and when he suggests I come by for an early dinner and bourbon, I tell him I’ll have the bourbon, thank you very much, but will pass on the dinner.

Mac can’t cook!

“I made shepherd’s pie,” he announces when I come into his place.

“It smells like….” I close my eyes and then give him a half-smile. “It doesn’t smell good, Mac.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “Everyone is a restaurant critic these days.”

We settle in his living room with some good Michter’s, and I tell him about Clara’s visitor, particularly, and the case in general.

He listens without interrupting, because that’s who Mac is. He absorbs, processes, and then gives his verdict.

“Intimidation of a litigant,” he clips.

“Potentially. Depends on how a judge reads it.”

“I’d like to see the judge who doesn’t read ”especially children” as a threat.” He pours himself more bourbon. “What else?”

I pick up my drink. “What else what?”

“You’ve got the face you get when there’s more.”

I have been mentored by this man for six months, and somehow even in that short time, he’s begun to read me as fluently as I read a deposition.

“Any news from the grapevine?” I ask, ignoring whatever read he’s getting from me. “About High Mesa’s legal team.”

He’s quiet for a moment, as if accessing the memory files he needs to give me good information.

“They’re throwing serious money at this.” He makes a what else can we expect face. “The kind of money you don’t throw at a contained water rights dispute over a mid-size ranch.”

“So it’s not contained.”

“It’s not.” He turns his glass on the table. “Someone with significant resources wants that water in a way that suggests it’s load-bearing for something much larger.” He looks at me over the glass. “And they’re moving faster than they should be, which means something is pressuring the timeline.”

I think about the water board meeting in Ignacio—the upstream allocation discussion—where the council members are going through High Mesa’s latest filings, with a focus on people who have been watching this pattern develop longer than I have. About one of the elders saying that the pressure in this valley wasn’t local—that it had the shape of something with a larger anchor point and a hard deadline.

And then I think about something I read on my phone on the drive back up 133, while parked at the pull-off outside Durango.

What was it?

A planning commission notice, buried in the county public records feed I’d set up months ago.

A permit application.

A site plan.

I pull out my phone. Open the planning commission document. Then the map.

There it is—the Silverbell Ranch water corridor, the upstream diversion point High Mesa has been contesting, and three miles north of it, on the flat bench land above the creek, the footprint of a proposed resort development.

Hotel, spa, golf course.