That was difficult.
The pond continued rising.
Cattle spread more comfortably along the water.
The trampled mud zone narrowed.
Helen delayed the decision to sell fifteen cows.
She did not cancel it entirely.
She told the livestock buyer:
“Give me one week.”
Toby heard.
One week.
The spring had seven days to become a solution.
Then, on the sixth morning, Walter found the first wet spot downstream.
He was walking the fence below the pond.
The grass there should have been brittle.
Instead, one patch looked darker.
He pushed his fingers into the soil.
Cool.
Wet.
Ten yards farther downhill.
Another.
Not standing water.
Moisture.
Following a line.
Walter walked directly to the house.
“Call Ray.”
Helen took one look at him and did not ask why.
Ray arrived within an hour.
He inspected the wet patches.
Then the dam.
He used a shovel only in shallow surface soil well outside the embankment, checking moisture.
His expression stayed serious.
“This could be the old diversion route.”
“That’s good?”
Toby asked.
“If it is flowing where it was designed to flow, maybe.”
“But it shouldn't be surfacing here.”
Ray pointed.
“If the old pipe is collapsed, spring water may be leaving the chamber but not traveling freely downhill.”
“It finds weaker soil.”
“That can create seepage.”
Helen looked at the dam.
“Are we going to lose the pond?”
“I don't see evidence of failure right now.”
Ray said.
“But nobody touches that rope.”
“And I want the downstream side watched morning and evening.”
He traced the old ledger line.
“We find the original outlet from below.”
“Not by digging into the dam.”
“From the lower pasture.”
Toby looked at the map.
The clay-tile line left the spring area and bent southeast toward a symbol labeled:
BIG SYCAMORE.
No tree remained.
Walter remembered it vaguely.
“Huge thing.”
He said.
“Lightning killed it.”
“When?”
“Fifties.”
“Maybe early sixties.”
“Stump?”
“Gone.”
“Field was regraded later.”
Ray sighed.
“So our landmark has been dead twenty years.”
Toby took the notebook.
He began comparing the old sketch to modern fence lines.
It was not accurate enough for measurement.
But the shape of the land had not changed completely.
A shallow swale ran through the lower pasture.
The old tile likely used gravity.
Water would follow grade.
The next morning, Toby and Walter walked the field.
Drought had turned most grass dull tan.
That helped.
Anything with slightly more moisture stood out.
Toby noticed a narrow strip.
Not green.
Greener.
A line perhaps two feet wide.
It crossed the pasture at an angle.
Walter had driven over it hundreds of times.
Never noticed.
Ray returned that afternoon.
He walked the strip.
Then pushed a soil probe.
Wet soil appeared deeper than expected.
He moved twenty feet.
Again.
Another twenty.
Again.
“This is interesting.”
He said.
The line ended near a shallow depression filled with stones and old brick fragments.
Walter stared.
“I remember rocks here.”
“Why?”
“Drain.”
“Maybe.”
Ray brushed grass aside.
Found a broken piece of fired clay.
Not natural stone.
Tile.
The old outlet.
They had found it.
But finding the route and making it work were different things.
Ray brought a small backhoe the next day.
He started well below the dam, nowhere near the embankment.
Thin lifts.
Slow.