St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

just kept on with the microfilming and I’d do the ‘translation’ when I visited.”
    She looked at the power implicit in Dan’s shoulders and shook her head.
    “What?” he said.
    “I’m trying to picture you as a pencil-necked geek teenager. Ain’t happening.”
    “Muscles don’t reduce your IQ.”
    “Maybe in your case.” Carly shrugged.
    “You have something against men who aren’t nerds?”
    “As long as they don’t mistake brawn for the Second Coming of Christ, no.”
    “Somebody burned you good.”
    “No. Somebody bored me. Big difference. Then he couldn’t believe I didn’t want him. Finally had to serve the jerk with a court order not to be where I was, ever, under any circumstances.”
    “How long ago was that?” Dan asked.
    A quality in his voice made her look at him again. Though he hadn’t moved, there was a difference in him, more intense, more alert, all relaxation gone.
    “Eight, nine years,” she said. “A long time.”
    Whatever had tightened his body left as silently as it had come. He leaned back into his chair and said, “Not long enough, apparently.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’re still afraid of men.”
    Carly didn’t like that description. Being careful wasn’t the same as being afraid. “I don’t like men who won’t take no for an answer,” she said. “The big boneheads are more intimidating than the smaller sizes of stupid. Must be something genetic in me that makes me avoid the big ones.”
    “Common sense?” he suggested dryly.
    “Bingo. So what interested you about the past enough that you spent a lot of time down here scanning old newspapers and making high-tech computer files out of microfilmed data?”
    For a while she thought he wasn’t going to answer. So did he. Then he surprised both of them.
    “I believed that the past explained the present,” Dan said.
    “It does.”
    He lifted one shoulder. “The recorded past? Not really. It’s written by winners. That leaves at least one whole side unrecorded. Playing cards with half a deck is a sure way to lose the game.”
    While Carly thought about his words, she wound a curl around her index finger, a childhood habit she’d never been able to break. “That’s an unusual insight,” she said finally.
    “If you’re thirteen, maybe. After that you outgrow it.” He went back to scanning in old papers.
    She tried to decide if she’d just been personally insulted or if he was rude to everyone.
    Not my problem. I’m here on Winifred’s nickel and his last name isn’t Quintrell or Castillo.
    Having decided that, she heard herself asking, “Do you understand the old Spanish?”
    “Yes.” He brought down the scanner lid and hit a button.
    “Good. The more I read about the original Oñate land grant, the less sense it makes. Since you have to be here anyway, would you help me with the translation?”
    “There’s a lot about the old land grants that no one understands, no matter what the language.”
    “Is that a yes or a no on the translation?”
    He looked up. “It’s a possible maybe. What’s giving you the most trouble?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Maybe it’s more a cultural question than a translation issue. The original Oñate grant was passed along under the Spanish rules of inheritance, right?”
    “Every son inherited equally, and under some circumstances, so did the daughters. Is that the sort of thing you mean?”
    “Yes. It’s confusing to me because the only family histories I’ve researched this far back have been under the British system where the oldest son inherits and the rest of the sons go into the military or priesthood or whatever, because in terms of any inheritance, they don’t get much more than a few hundred dollars and a pat on the head.”
    “The British way is very effective for concentrating family wealth and power from generation to generation,” Dan said as he removed the paper, turned it, and placed it on the scanner again. “The Spanish method was different. The grazing and woodcutting lands were held in common by all family members. Rights to the river and irrigated lands were divided so that each inheriting member of the family had a water source and fields for crops.”
    Carly hesitated. “Common lands? Like the Indians had?”
    “Not quite.” Dan hit the button on the scanner. “The Indians, whether they lived in pueblos or followed the old hunting, gathering, and raiding way of life, held all land in common—if they held any