Jonah looked from her face down to the old Springfield. The rifle was heavy—nearly ten pounds of forged iron and cured walnut, with a kick that could bruise a man’s shoulder to purple marrow. He reached out, picked up the gun by the balance, and handed it to her along with eight of the heavy copper-cased cartridges from the wooden box.
“The sear is worn,” he said, his voice entirely matter-of-fact. “Keep your thumb on the hammer until you bring the butt to your shoulder. If you have to fire, don't jerk the trigger; squeeze it like you're milking a cow with a sore teat.”
He took his mackinaw coat from the wooden peg, pulled his felt hat low over his forehead, and walked out onto the veranda. Tala followed three paces behind, carrying the Springfield across her forearms, her coat pockets weighted with the heavy cartridges.
The riders had just cleared the mouth of the draw eighty yards away.
They were six men on rough, winter-coated stock, their hat brims pulled down against the rising wind, their collars turned up to their ears. Hutchins rode in the center on a big dun gelding with black points, wearing his heavy town coat over two woolen waistcoats. To his right rode a lean, dark-faced man with a sheepskin vest and a pair of long-barreled revolvers tied down against his thighs with rawhide thongs—a border rider named Jack Crow who had worked cattle for the rustler outfits along the San Pedro. The others were basin hands, men with pinched, cold faces and carbines carried across their pommels in scabbards of grease-stained canvas.
They drew up thirty yards from the veranda steps, their mounts blowing clouds of steam into the grey morning air. The frosted grama grass crunched beneath the horses’ hooves with a brittle, rhythmic sound that sounded like salt being crushed in a mortar.
Hutchins did not wait for Jonah to speak. He pushed the dun forward three paces, his small, rheumy eyes watering from the cold.
“Jonah,” Hutchins called out, his voice loud, carrying an aggressive edge meant to bolster his own men’s nerve. “You had your notice from Calloway. The district commissioner in Prescott has issued an order of attachment. You’re harboring stolen property and an absconded ward of the territory. We’re here to execute the attachment.”
Jonah stood on the top step of the porch, the Winchester held low in his right hand, its barrel pointing toward the gravel path.
“The order of attachment is worthless, Elias,” Jonah said, his voice level and dry as cured hay. “Judge Miller’s injunction was affirmed by the circuit clerk on Friday. You have no more authority on this bench than a coyote digging in a gravel bar.”
Hutchins spat into the frost. “I have five men behind me who say different. A piece of paper in Tucson don't stop forty-four slugs, Reed. You’re an old man living on borrowed grass. Step aside and let Jack take the squaw. You can keep your horse and your hide, and we’ll call the two hundred dollars payment for her keep.”
Jack Crow shifted his weight in the stirrups, his hand dropping casually onto the horn of his saddle, his fingers playing near the grip of his right-hand revolver. His eyes were not on Jonah; they were fixed on Tala, who stood two feet to Jonah’s left, her back straight against the whitewashed mud wall, the heavy Springfield resting across her breast.
Tala stepped forward.
She did not step behind Jonah for cover. She walked down two of the wooden steps until she stood on the lower landing, level with the men on horseback. She lifted the Springfield, set the heavy butt-plate against her right shoulder, drew the hammer back two clicks with a loud, distinct clack-clack, and aimed the round black hole of the muzzle directly at Hutchins’s breastbone.
The five men behind Hutchins stiffened. Jack Crow’s hand halted three inches from his revolver butt.
Tala’s voice came out cold and clear, cutting through the frosty air like a knife drawn across rawhide:
“You did not buy me in the square, Elias Hutchins. You had no right to tie my hands with hemp, and you have no right to stand on this road. If you take one more step toward this house, you will not ride back to Black Mesa to count your ledger.”
Hutchins’s face went the color of dry tallow. He looked at the girl’s eyes—not wild or frantic with fear, but narrowed, cold, and entirely steady. The iron sight of the Springfield was lined up squarely between the greasy lapels of his coat. He knew that at thirty paces, a fifty-caliber slug from a government rifle would pass through a man’s torso and take the horse’s backbone with it.
“She’s an Indian,” Hutchins sputtered, turning his head slightly toward Jack Crow. “Shoot her down, Jack! She’s threatening an officer of the commissioner!”