They were not moving at a gallop. They came with that slow, deliberate insolence that territorial officials used when they wanted people to understand that the law was coming and that there was no need to hurry because the land belonged to them anyway.
Jonah was in the corral, greasing the spindles of the heavy farm wagon with pine tar and lard. He did not drop the wooden paddle he was holding. He wiped his hands slowly on a piece of greasy burlap, stepped through the corral gate, and latched it behind him. He walked to the front of the house and stood on the packed gravel ten feet from the veranda steps, his arms hanging loose at his sides.
The buggy pulled up twenty feet away, the sorrel horses blowing hard and shaking their foam-flecked heads against the curb bits.
Deputy Vance wrapped the reins around the iron whip-socket and spat a stream of brown tobacco juice into the dust near Jonah’s boots. His small, heavy-lidded eyes traveled over the front of the house, lingered for a moment on the full water buckets by the wash bench, and then settled on Jonah’s face.
“Afternoon, Jonah,” Vance said. His voice was thick, raspy from alkaline dust and whiskey.
“Vance,” Jonah replied. He did not look at the man in the linen duster. “It’s seven miles out of your district to the ditch crossing. If you’re looking for stray steers from the Diamond A, they drifted south toward the border two days ago.”
“I ain’t looking for steers,” Vance said. He climbed down from the buggy, the iron step groaning under his sixteen stone, and hitched the team to the juniper post that supported the clothesline. “This here is Mr. Calloway. He’s clerk for the territorial probate court out of Tucson, attached to Commissioner Hutchins’s office for administrative adjustment.”
The man in the bowler hat stepped down with greater care, lifting his grey trousers to avoid the dust. He had pale, watery eyes behind round wire-rimmed spectacles and thin, dry lips that seemed perpetually pinched by vinegar.
“Mr. Reed,” Calloway said, speaking with a fast, clipped cadence that belonged to courtroom corridors and telegraph offices. “We have an irregularity in the documentation filed in Black Mesa on Tuesday last. We are here to serve notice of administrative review.”
Jonah’s face did not move a muscle. “The money was paid. The affidavit was witnessed by the notary at the dry goods store, and the receipt was signed by Elias Hutchins before forty men in the square.”
“The receipt is not in dispute, sir,” Calloway said, opening the black leather valise and drawing out a blue-jacketed legal document tied with red cotton tape. “What is in dispute is the jurisdiction of the Tucson probate authority to supersede an unfulfilled indenture issued by the military district. Under the Act of March sixty-seven, all captured persons held under military warrant remain wards of the territorial administration until formal discharge by an article of session. Hutchins was the appointed conservator. His transfer of paper was conditional upon ministerial approval.”
“In plain English, Jonah,” Vance interrupted, stepping up beside the clerk and resting his thick palm on the butt of his Colt revolver, “Elias wants his paper back, or he wants the other three hundred dollars that the girl was appraised for by the Indian agent at Bowie. He says you used an invalid affidavit to force a sale under duress.”
Tala, watching from the corner of the wall twenty yards away, felt the cold prickle of fear run down the back of her legs. She knew that word: duress. She had heard the commissioners use it when they broke the grazing treaties along the river. They took the paper you had, said the man who signed it had no authority, and produced another paper with a red ribbon that said you had to move your horses across the dry divide before the next new moon.
Jonah did not look at Vance’s gun. He did not look at Calloway’s blue document. He reached into his shirt pocket, withdrew a small tin case, and took out a folded sheet of yellow paper that had been copied in purple indelible pencil.
“This is a certified copy of the ruling by Judge Miller,” Jonah said. His voice remained entirely flat, devoid of anger, as cold and steady as the deep water in the windmill pipe. “It was filed in Tucson on the twelfth of April. It states that Tala is not a ward of the military administration, because she was never taken in arms. She was seized from an agricultural settlement on deeded treaty ground six miles outside the reservation perimeter. The military warrant was void from the hour it was written.”