Calloway blinked behind his round spectacles. “A district judge cannot override an executive order without a hearing before the territorial commissioner.”
“He did override it,” Jonah said. “And if you want to contest that copy, you can bring the territorial marshal from Prescott to serve the writ. But you won’t bring the marshal, Calloway, because the marshal knows Hutchins took four hundred dollars of agency beef vouchers last October that never showed up in the ration pens at San Carlos. If we go before Judge Miller in Tucson to talk about this indenture, we will talk about those vouchers as well.”
The clerk’s mouth closed with a faint, dry snap. His fingers twitched against the red tape of his document. He glanced sideways at Vance, his small eyes showing a flicker of that sudden calculation that men make when they realize that a small profit is not worth a large exposure.
Vance’s hand remained on his revolver, but his jaw set hard. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Jonah. Elias has friends in the legislature. A man living out here thirty miles from a neighbor can have a lot of trouble with his fences. Haystacks catch fire in the dry season. Cattle get the blackleg or find their way across the Mexican line.”
Jonah stepped forward one pace. It was not a violent motion, but there was an immense, immovable weight behind his boots.
“My fences have stood twelve years, Vance,” he said softly. “The grass is green around the house, and I keep two rifles loaded on the pegs inside the kitchen door. If a man comes onto this bench at night with a coal in an iron pot, he had better make sure he doesn't miss with his first shot. Because I won't.”
The two men stood in the bright glare of the noon sun, their shadows small and black beneath their boots. The only sound was the distant, dry rattle of the windmill and the snort of the sorrel horses as they fought the flies.
Vance looked at Jonah’s grey eyes for five seconds, then spat again into the dust. He turned his back on Jonah, took Calloway by the elbow with enough force to make the clerk wince, and shoved him toward the buggy.
“Let’s go, Calloway,” the deputy growled. “We’re wasting our horses’ wind on this old fool. He can explain his law to the circuit riders when the fall term opens.”
They climbed back onto the box. Vance saw Tala standing by the adobe corner as he gathered the reins. His small eyes narrowed with a look of dull, lingering spite.
“Enjoy your freedom, girl,” he sneered, loud enough to carry across the yard. “It won’t last longer than the first frost. A paper from Tucson don't keep off lead.”
He hauled the horses around with a violent jerk on the reins, the iron-rimmed wheels throwing gravel against the side of the well-tank as the buggy lurched forward, turned in a wide circle, and headed south along the dry wash toward Black Mesa.
Jonah remained standing on the gravel until the dust of their departure had settled back into the scrub grass. He did not watch the buggy go; he looked down at his own boots, then folded the purple-penciled paper and returned it to his tin case.
Tala stepped out from the shadow of the wall. Her hands were no longer in her pockets; they hung at her sides, but her fingers were curved into hard hooks.
“They will come back,” she said. It was the first time she had spoken to him without being asked a direct question since they had left the settlement. Her voice was low, harsh with the gravel of the mountains. “Hutchins is not a man who drops an iron when it is hot. He will bring men with rifles.”
Jonah turned his head toward her. He looked at her calico dress, at her bare feet in the dusty leather slippers, and at the small, square jaw that was set like granite against the southern road.
“Yes,” he said simply. “He will come back. He thinks this is about two hundred dollars and an Indian girl who has no people to stand for her.”
He walked toward the veranda, lifted one of the cedar buckets she had filled that morning, and poured half of it into the wash basin to rinse the trail dust from his mouth.
“He doesn't understand,” Jonah added, drying his neck with the coarse towel, “that when a man decides to stop running from a lie, it doesn't matter how many riders are coming down the road. You simply put the water by the door, grease the wagon, and wait for them to reach the gate.”