“Jonah Reed,” muttered someone in the back of the crowd.
Hutchins straightened his back. The grease on his collar caught the light. “The bidding is open, Jonah. If you’re here to buy, you wait your turn like any Christian.”
Jonah stopped two paces short of the bottom step. His face was weathered into deep lines around the mouth and eyes, the skin cured by alkali and wind to the shade of an old saddle skirt. His eyes were grey, flat as slate, and entirely devoid of the excitement that flickered in the other men.
“I am not here to buy a person, Elias,” Jonah said. His voice was low, steady, and devoid of theatrical emphasis. It had the dry, carrying quality of wood being sawed in the distance. “The girl is not yours to sell. Her name is Tala, daughter of Sika. Her mother was registered free at the San Carlos sub-agency under the treaty provisions of sixty-eight, and the territorial court in Tucson confirmed that registration six months ago.”
Hutchins let out a short, nasal laugh. “San Carlos don’t hold jurisdiction in Black Mesa, Reed. You know that as well as any magistrate. I hold an indenture from the district commissioner for unpaid subsistence and damages.”
“The commissioner was removed from office in May,” Jonah replied. He climbed the two wooden steps without haste, his heavy work boots creaking against the pine. He held out the paper. “This is an affidavit sworn before Judge Miller in Tucson, bearing the territorial seal. It invalidates every paper issued under that office’s signature for the last three terms. It names this girl specifically.”
The crowd shifted. Deputy Vance took a half-step forward, his brow furrowed, but he did not lay a hand on his gun. A paper bearing a territorial seal carried weight that ordinary men were reluctant to question, even if they could not read the Latin motto beneath the eagle.
Hutchins’s mouth tightened until his lips were thin white lines. “You think you can ride in here with an old piece of court waste and rob a man of his investment? I fed her. I brought her across the basin under contract. I have two hundred dollars invested in this paperwork, dollar for dollar.”
Jonah did not argue. He reached inside his waistcoat and drew out a small leather pouch. He untied the drawstring with one hand and tipped four fifty-dollar gold pieces onto the open ledger atop Hutchins’s records. The heavy gold coins clinked against each other and settled directly over the column of figures.
“There is your two hundred dollars,” Jonah said. “It is not for her. A human being cannot be bought for two hundred dollars, nor for two thousand. It is for the papers. Hand over the indenture, the transport manifest, and the receipt book.”
Hutchins stared at the gold. His fingers twitched toward the coins, then hesitated as he looked at the crowd. To take the money was to acknowledge that he was selling the legal claim rather than the person; to refuse it was to risk Jonah taking the matter before the circuit judge who was due in three weeks. Greed, as Tala had often seen, usually disguised itself as practicality when given a graceful exit.
“You’re an interfering fool, Reed,” Hutchins muttered, but his left hand slid the gold coins toward his palm while his right hand tore the three blue-lined sheets from the brass clasp of the ledger. “Take the damn trash. She’ll run before the month is out. You won’t get a day’s work out of her that you don’t beat out of her.”
“That is between me and the work,” Jonah said quietly.
He took the papers, folded them once across the center, and slipped them into his inner pocket alongside the affidavit. Then he drew a short-bladed folding knife from his trouser pocket, pressed the spring to release the blade, and stepped toward Tala.
Tala did not flinch, but her whole frame went taut as iron. Her breath caught in her throat. She had seen men draw blades on the reservations, in the agency stockades, and along the freight roads; a blade always meant one of two things: pain or death. Her eyes locked onto the thumb holding the horn handle.
Jonah saw her rigidity. He stopped eighteen inches away, outside her immediate reach. He did not lift the knife toward her chest. Instead, he dropped to one knee on the pine planks, bringing his eyes below hers, and turned the blade edge upward away from her skin.
“Steady,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I am cutting the hemp. Hold your wrists apart against the cord.”
Tala felt the roughness of the hemp pull tight as she braced her forearms. With a single upward stroke, Jonah drew the honed steel through the fibers. The strands parted with a sharp snip.