#337
"Youza!! I never considered expanding into land outside of the fence," Milo exclaimed. "Do we still have the deed, shouldn't it give us the dimensions of what we own? And, to answer your question Wyatt, I don't believe we've ever seen another person on the ground past the fence. Well, we have," he added facetiously," but they were gunning for us as in a raid., not a friendly neighbor type of afternoon social visit."
"I'll go get the deed, now I'm real curious about what we may or may not own," Mark turned around and headed for the house.
They owned many, many acres more than they first believed. "That one pasture might go all the way to the river," Milo was trying to turn the figures on the paper, into actual dimensions on the ground.
Mark was staring at the papers associated with the deed, and the signatures looked mostly correct, and yet they didn't.
"I bet," he said slowly, "that I see the fine hand of the prince in all of this. I haven't any proof, but I would bet he transferred the incredible acreages we left in Henderson to here. It would be just like him to pull a stunt like this and then sit back and laugh at us."
"Do you mean the prince that just died?" Milo was puzzled.
"No the original prince," Mark laughed. "In fact, Ma asked me a while ago , what happened to the bank accounts the prince funded for all our female children."
"All?" Milo asked, "how many would that be?"
"Well," Mark started naming girls; "Tess, Mandy, Liz, Claire, Lyric, Mary, Adoree, and probably a couple I've forgotten." He laughed as he watched Milo try to count out the girls that had been in the family.
"Too many," Milo gave up.
"Prince, what prince?" Wyatt asked. That opened up Mark's tale of the Rhodium, the urns and all the trouble that had happened and been caused by the association with the royal family.
"Absolutely freaking incredible," Wyatt shook his head in amazement. "It really is, and you guys say you just had a battle with another prince and he was killed?"
"Yes, and this paper may give us a clue as to why. I'm guessing that who ever brought the urns over to the States, buried them on this property when they couldn't locate us as we were moving to Iowa. Some how, they did find us, because we had three urns delivered during the blackout." Mark stood lost in thought as he watched the last of the horses straggle in, helped along by Ivory.
"OK, so that's what those things were; they gave me a huge case of curiosity." Wyatt laughed, remembering the slick trick maneuvering Mark had tried to pull to keep Wyatt away from the intriguing looking urns.
"You got it," Mark said in good humor, "so why don't you come up with a way to translate the land description into actual feet or perhaps miles. That and you need to spend your nights in the big house, no shenanigan's in the barn, especially now that Dory is not there to act as a chaperone." By the time he was finished, Mark wasn't smiling and the depth of his seriousness came across loud and clear to Wyatt.
"Yes sir," Wyatt snapped out, practically saluting.
"Good boy," Milo said under his breath, barely cracking a smile, but then ruining the moment by laughing aloud. "He means it," Milo advised, "there was this time, before Honey and I got married, that I was hanging around her bedroom door, and Dad got really hot over the impropriety of it all."
Mark gave Milo one of his best 'head lion' looks and it made Milo laugh harder. "Ya know Dad, that look really works, I've tried it, and it's effective."
Wyatt kept looking from one Linderman to the other, "I'm out gunned," he tried for a pitiful voice, and shook his head.