The clerk waved this away. “Real property. Land, a house, a building for business? Expectations of inheritance?”

“No. Not yet,” Whit amended, with a distant look. “I have a family due-share from the farm in West Blue, but I don’t rightly know when I’ll get back to collect it. It’s not much, anyhow.”

The clerk frowned judiciously.

“You should have your papa’s house and the hill in Clearcreek, Berry,” Bo put in. “You and Hawthorn.”

The clerk came suddenly alert. “Do you know how it was left? What terms?”

“I can’t rightly say. Don’t think no one in Clearcreek even knows Berry’s papa is dead, yet. He disappeared on the river last fall, see, along with her older brother, so that’s what this trip was for, mainly, to find out what had happened to ’em. Which we did do.”

A sudden spate of questions from the clerk drew out the information that the house was substantial, or at least large and rambling, and the hill, too steep for farming but where Berry’s family harvested the timber to build their yearly flatboat, was a good square mile in extent.

And no one knew for sure if Berry’s papa might have left Hawthorn’s guardianship to some other relative than Berry in the event of his death, a notion that clearly alarmed Hawthorn very much. Any records were back in Clearcreek, fifteen hundred river miles away.

“This is all very confused,” said the clerk at last, rubbing his nose and leaving a faint smear of ink on his upper lip. “I don’t think I can register this marriage.”

“What?” cried Whit in alarm, in chorus with Berry’s dismayed “Why not?”

“It’s the rules, miss. To prevent theft by runaway or fraudulent marriages. Which has been tried, which is why the rules.”

“I’m not a runaway,” said Berry indignantly. “I’m a boat boss! And I got my mother’s own brother with me!”

“Yes, but your marriage would give Whitesmith, here, some claims on your property that your other kin might not want to allow. Or if that house and hill is all left to the tad, here, as your papa’s only surviving son, he presumably owes you some due-share, but he’s too young to administer it. I’ve seen this sort of tangle lead to all sorts of fights and disputes and even killings, and over a good deal less property than your Oleana hill!”