Freight wagons with eight-mule teams moved through the streets with a continuous, grinding thunder, their iron-tired wheels throwing up clouds of fine yellow silt that coated the awnings of the American merchants and the open stalls of the Mexican fruit sellers. On the corners stood groups of men that represented the strange, turbulent mixture of the territory: Papago women with wide baskets of wild grass balanced on their heads; Mexican teamsters in broad sombreros and red sashes; cavalry officers from Fort Lowell in dusty blue flannel; and sharp-eyed mining promoters in linen dusters carrying brass-bound assay kits.
Jonah drove the team past the ancient stone towers of San Agustín church and turned into the broad plaza before the territorial court building.
The courthouse was a massive, two-story structure of red brick and stucco, built with an ostentatious neoclassical portico supported by four white pine pillars that looked entirely out of place among the low, flat-roofed adobes of the old town. Above the central pediment hung an iron flagpole carrying the thirty-eight-star American flag, its red and white bunting snapping stiffly in the hot wind that blew from the southern desert.
Jonah pulled the wagon into the hitching yard behind the hall of records. He set the brake, tied the reins to the ring-bolt on the wagon box, and climbed down.
“Leave your blanket roll in the wagon,” Jonah said, taking the japanned tin box from under the spring seat. “Bring your papers and your mackinaw. The court rooms are cold; they keep the window shutters closed to shut out the street noise, and the stone floors hold the winter damp till July.”
Tala stepped down onto the gravel. She had brushed the trail dust from her indigo wool coat with a dry horsehair brush three miles out from the town; her hair was combed and braided into two thick, glossy plaits tied with strips of red wool; and her boots were clean. She held herself with that absolute, unhurried composure that was her shield against the staring eyes of the white town.
As they walked toward the broad stone steps of the portico, men turned to look.
In Tucson, an Indian woman was a common enough sight, but she was usually seen carrying firewood on her back, scrubbing flagstones behind the hotels, or sitting against the church wall selling clay pots for copper centavos. An Indian woman walking with her head up, wearing a tailored coat of fine indigo wool, walking side by side with a white rancher who carried a legal document box, was an anomaly that arrested every clerk and lounger on the courthouse veranda.
They entered through the heavy oak double doors into a high, dim corridor that smelled of wet lime, stale tobacco spit, and the cold, oily ink of official ledgers.
The hallway was paved with hexagonal grey quarry tiles that clattered loudly beneath Jonah’s hobnailed boots and the firm, measured tread of Tala’s cowhide soles. On either side were rows of dark pine doors with frosted glass panes bearing black-stenciled titles: COUNTY RECORDER; PROBATE COMMISSIONER; DISTRICT ATTORNEY; CLERK OF THE SECOND JUDICIAL DISTRICT.
At the end of the hall, behind a waist-high railing of turned walnut spindles, sat the chief clerk of the court.
He was a middle-aged man with thinning sandy hair, watery grey eyes, and a broad, sallow face that had been preserved from the sun by twenty years behind a ledger desk. He wore a clean paper collar, black sateen sleeve protectors pinned at his elbows, and held a bone-handled ink scraper in his left hand.
A brass nameplate on the walnut rail read: MR. A. J. HENDERSON, CLERK OF SESSION.
He looked up as Jonah’s heavy shadow fell across the mahogany counter.
“Afternoon, Jonah,” Henderson said, his voice flat and professional, carrying the dry, nasal cadence of an Ohio town. “You’re late on the docket. The circuit judge took the noon recess twenty minutes ago. He’s over at the Palace Hotel eating his beefsteak.”
“I’m not here for the general docket, Henderson,” Jonah said. He set the black tin box on the counter with a dull, heavy metallic ring. “I’m here on the matter of the writ of attachment filed by Elias Hutchins on the fourteenth of February.”
Henderson’s eyes shifted from the tin box to Tala. A flicker of recognition passed through his pale eyes, followed immediately by that cautious, bureaucratic reserve that clerks adopt when they know an explosive document is sitting in their pigeonholes.
“The Hutchins matter,” Henderson murmured, laying down his bone scraper and picking up an iron ruler to straighten a pile of blue legal forms. “Yes. Hutchins was here three days ago with a lawyer from Prescott—man named Bradley. They filed an amended petition for the recovery of an unexpired contract of indenture, under the military provisions of sixty-seven. They brought two affidavits from the sub-agent at San Carlos.”