Bradley’s mouth snapped shut. He sat down stiffly on the oak bench opposite Jonah, placing his leather brief beside him and folding his hands with tight, pale knuckles. Hutchins remained standing against the rail, his breathing audible in the stillness.
Miller broke the red wax seal on Jonah’s envelope with an ivory-handled letter opener. He unfolded the heavy cream foolscap sheets covered in Jonah’s bold, angular script and Tala’s dark signature. For ten minutes, the only sound in the high room was the dry rustle of paper and the occasional scratching of Evans’s pencil as he made docket notations in the minute book.
Miller read with meticulous slowness. His gaze paused at the second sheet, where Tala’s account described the burning of the storage wickiups on the Gila; it lingered on the paragraph detailing the fourteen months of unpaid labor in the wool-scouring vats at Black Mesa; and it rested for a long time on the firm, unembellished letters of her signature and the small, distinct mark of the mountain quail track.
Finally, the judge laid the sheets down, removed his spectacles, and looked across the table at Tala.
“You are Tala?” he asked.
“I am,” she answered. Her voice was level, without tremors or theatrical volume, perfectly filling the quiet space between the mahogany panels.
Evans, seated at the end of the table with his nib hovering over the ledger, leaned forward. “The record will reflect the appearance of ‘Jane Doe, Apache ward, commonly known as—’”
“No,” Tala interrupted.
The courtroom seemed to stop breathing. Bradley raised his chin in indignation; Hutchins took half a step forward at the rail; even Henderson paused with his hand inside a file drawer.
Tala looked directly at the young clerk. “Do not write ‘Jane Doe.’ That is a name white men put upon dead cattle and unknown bodies pulled from the river. My name is Tala. My mother gave it to me on the Gila river when the water was high. It is written on that paper with my own hand, and that is the only name that will go into your book.”
Evans looked up, flustered, glancing toward the judge for direction.
Judge Donald Miller looked at Tala for four heartbeats. A faint, almost imperceptible softening touched the corners of his tired eyes, though his mouth remained grave.
“Strike the alias, Mr. Evans,” Miller instructed quietly. “Enter the name Tala, daughter of Sika, free civilian of the territory. Proceed with the record.”
The clerk’s pen scratched across the parchment: T-a-l-a.
Miller turned his gaze upon Hutchins. “Mr. Hutchins. Step to the table.”
Hutchins approached, his hat still clutched before his stomach like a shield. “Your Honor. This girl was turned over to me under regular voucher by Corporal Jenkins of the Fifth Cavalry, pursuant to—”
“I have Corporal Jenkins’s deposition here, taken by the territorial marshal three weeks ago in Fort Grant,” Judge Miller cut in, lifting a single yellow sheet from beneath the file. “Would you like me to read it into the record, Mr. Hutchins? Or would you prefer that I summarize his statement regarding the forty-two head of treaty sheep that were driven to your brother-in-law’s holding pens on the San Pedro before any voucher was drawn?”
Hutchins’s throat bobbed. The sallow flush on his face drained away, leaving his skin grey as alkali dust. He looked desperately at Bradley.
Bradley rose halfway from his seat. “Your Honor, any irregularities in the initial caption of the property do not impair my client’s equity in the two hundred dollars disbursed for her subsistence and transportation. Mr. Reed himself recognized that debt when he paid two hundred dollars in gold coin at the Black Mesa square. We hold the receipt. That payment constitutes an acknowledgment of contract.”
“It constitutes nothing of the sort,” Jonah spoke. He did not rise; he leaned forward, his large, scarred hands resting quiet upon the green baize. “The receipt was taken to establish the fact of extortion. It was paid under protest, witnessed by forty men, to prevent an unlawful battery and kidnapping on the public square. Here is the receipt.”
Jonah took a slip of blue-lined paper from his coat pocket and laid it beside the affidavits.
Across the bottom, in Hutchins’s hasty, uneven hand, was written: Received of Jonah Reed, two hundred dollars for release of papers regarding Apache female.
And beneath it, in Jonah’s clear hand, was endorsed: Paid under duress to recover forged documents of indenture.
Miller looked at the slip of paper, then pushed his chair back six inches and stood up. Though his shoulders were bowed, he possessed that commanding physical presence that territorial judges acquired from facing armed juries in frontier settlements.