“The sub-agent at San Carlos is an appointee of the Indian Ring,” Jonah said, his voice dropping into that deep, dangerous register that made men listen despite themselves. “He was suspended by the Department of the Interior two weeks ago for selling quartermaster beef to the mining camps. His signature isn't worth the ink it took to write it.”
Henderson blinked, his small mouth twitching behind his sandy mustache. “That may be so, Jonah, but an amended petition requires a formal hearing. The judge won't open an administrative docket during the regular session unless there is a personal appearance by all parties named in the original writ.”
Jonah reached into the black box, withdrew the heavy manila envelope that had been sealed with his red wax signet in November, and laid it directly atop Henderson’s blue forms.
“The parties are here,” Jonah said.
He turned slightly and indicated Tala with an open palm.
“This is Tala, daughter of Sika,” Jonah said, speaking each word so that it echoed down the tiled corridor toward the open courtroom door. “She is the person named in Hutchins’s ledger. She is not an unexpired indenture, she is not an absconded ward, and she is not a runaway. She has traveled eighty miles across the territory to place her deposition before the bench, and she is here to demand that the court void the sale that was attempted in the square at Black Mesa.”
Henderson stared at Tala.
The clerk had spent two decades looking at Indian people through the wire grilles of government offices. He was accustomed to seeing them stand with their hats in their hands, their eyes fixed on the floorboards, waiting for a translator to tell them whether they were permitted to buy flour or whether they were to be moved to another agency across the mountains.
Tala did not look at the floor. She stepped directly up to the walnut rail, resting her right hand on the polished wood. Her indigo coat was unbuttoned at the throat now, showing the high collar of her calico shirt and the small silver thimble she wore on a thong around her neck—the thimble that had belonged to Mary Reed.
“You have my name in your book, Mr. Henderson?” she asked.
Her English was cold, clear, and perfectly articulated, without a trace of hesitation.
The clerk swallowed hard, his paper collar cutting into his sallow throat. “Yes... yes, miss. The name on the Prescott petition is ‘Tala, Apache female, minor ward of the district.’”
“Then you will strike out the words ‘minor ward’ from your book,” Tala said, her dark eyes pinning him to his high stool like an insect on an iron pin. “I am eighteen years of age. I was born free upon the Gila river under the treaty of eighteen sixty-eight. I am not property, I am not a ward, and I do not belong to the commissioner’s office in Prescott or to the storekeeper in Black Mesa.”
She pointed a long, brown finger at the sealed envelope on the counter.
“In that paper is the truth of what was done to my mother’s sheep, what was done to my body in the shed at Black Mesa, and what was paid by Jonah Reed to break the lie. I have signed my name to it with my own hand, and I have put my mother’s mark upon the line. I want that paper read before the judge this afternoon.”
Henderson sat entirely motionless for three seconds. He looked at Tala’s face; he looked at Jonah’s massive, unyielding shoulders; and he looked at the red wax seal bearing the wheat sheaf and the anchor that had been pressed into the heavy paper.
A young deputy clerk with ink-stained fingers who had been eavesdropping from behind the recording cabinet stepped out, his mouth open, holding a copy of the morning’s Tucson Daily Citizen.
“Mr. Henderson,” the young man whispered, his eyes wide. “Judge Miller just came through the side portico. He’s going into chambers now.”
Henderson exhaled a long, shaky breath through his nostrils. He took off his paper collar, tossed it into the wastebasket beside his desk, and picked up the heavy manila envelope.
“Very well, Mr. Reed,” the clerk said, his bureaucratic insolence entirely burned away by the cold reality of the two people standing before him. “Take your seats on the benches inside the bar. The judge will hear the motion in chambers before he opens the afternoon docket for the land disputes.”
He lifted the counter gate and led them through the walnut railing into the great, shadowed chamber of the territorial court.