“Sure, Zeke, , you can trust me too you know. What’s up?”
“Well, back when those wills were made up, the real one and the fake one, Gus, that is, my grandfather, sent for me in secret. He told me about his scheme to keep things straight, and the AAA brand and all. It was kind of sneaky, putting the brand on both wills…”
“I wondered what was up with that!” exclaimed Hank.
"Well, like the judge said, there were differences in the bequests, Gus was wanting to leave Paul as little as he could and not maybe have the thing challenged or whatever. He already had some suspicions, and turns out he was right I guess, 'cause the stolen one got altered even more by Sam and Jim Connell. It was Paul trying to grab more than what Gus was giving him for the sake of family relations. But there’s one other thing.
“What’s that?”
“Well, the one that was stolen was the will that my grandfather meant to be the real one, and I told the judge about what I knew, in that office he set up.”
Hank was dumbfounded. “Now how in hell can that be? Gus gave me that sealed package I put in the mine. We opened it up, everyone saw.”
“Oh shoot, I just don’t know if I did the right thing. What I got left in the will that was set aside was the whole Excelsior mine. I told Gus I didn’t want all that
Didn’t want to just get handed that, wanted to make my own way. That’s part of what Mose Doubletree meant when he talked about my “demons” I figure Gus was trying to make up for not telling everyone about me a lot earlier. The other will, the one the judge accepted, just gave me a couple thousand, with a part interest in the ranch when Paul and Will passed on. Gus did make all those other bequests, but later the rest, includin’ the mine, is going to go to a fund for a library, a new school, and other stuff to help build up the town even more.”
“Zeke, what are you trying to say?”
“While I was with Gus he had to leave for a minute to go out back to the outhouse, I switched the wills around. They looked just alike, the papers, so I changed them in the packets.”
“You did WHAT? You mean to tell me Gus didn’t mean to leave all that to the town?”
“No, no, no! He was leavin’ a chunk to the Gulch, just not the mine too. And the brands, well, there was another page on that note about them, about a second mark you could see. I took that too, and folded the envelope back up.”
Hand walked over to where he had the whiskey bottles stocked, and got out a bottle of his best stuff, and a glass from another crate. “I think I need a drink” and he sat down heavily. “So let me get this straight. You maybe could have been a millionaire some day, and you turned it down?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
The bottle gurgled, and Hank said “Now I think I need another drink. So why tell me now?”
“Heck, just wanted to ask one person that mattered to my grandfather, what they thought. MY conscience has been bothering me about it.”
“Couldn’t you have just sold the mine when you got it, and give the town the money?”
Zeke looked uncomfortable again. “Didn’t want thanks” he muttered gruffly.
“Zeke Clayton, you’re an idiot, but my kind of idiot. I won’t tell anyone, but damn, you could have had a Clayton library, a Clayton park, a Clayton street…”
Zeke gave Hank the evil eye, but then the two men burst out laughing.
