"Then we will hear his paper," said Gray Elk, speaking for the first time, in his careful English, "after we have heard the truth. It is a good order." He looked at Erik. "Your well has heard both kinds of talk now. It does not mind. Water is patient." He turned his head toward the road. "Let the man with paper come and stand where this man stood. We will listen."
Chapter 22 — Flint's Paper
They sent for Flint, because that is what he himself would have demanded — a hearing, a record, a chance to answer — and he came as he had always come to everything in Prairie Center: in his good coat, in his buggy, with his leather document case on the seat beside him and his dignity arranged like merchandise in a window.
He made them wait while he tied his horse — a small, deliberate thing. Nils, at Erik's shoulder, muttered, "He ties a knot like a man signing his name," and Erik hushed him, though he did not disagree. When Flint came forward he took in the benches, the stool, the chief standing beside the captain of militia, and smiled the land-office smile of a man who believes every room, rightly understood, is a room he owns.
He did not look at Kramer on the stool. He looked at the yard, at the band's men along the fence, at the town's men in their coats, and something in his face performed the small calculation of a man counting a room and finding the numbers changed.
"Captain Alcott," he said. "I am told a hired rustler has bought his neck with my name. I am here to answer with documents, which is more than can be said for the evidence against me." He opened the case on the buggy seat and took out his papers with the unhurried care of a man laying a table. "The deed to my townsite lands, properly filed. The survey, properly recorded. The plats of Flint City — lots, a depot ground, a church ground, which I set aside myself — drawn and witnessed. I have bought and paid for every acre I claim, gentlemen, in the offices of this territory, with the seal of this territory on the paper. If the band disputes my title, there are courts. There was no need of stolen horses and armed camps to settle what a judge settles every week."
"It is a fine speech," Erik said. "I have heard it in the store. But there is a paper you have not read to us, Mr. Flint, because it is not yours. It came to me this morning by the agency rider — Mr. Hollis wrote it in answer to the pastor's letter, and he wrote it to be read aloud wherever it was needed. I think it is needed here." He took the folded letter from inside his coat. "With the captain's leave, I will read it. My English is slow but it is honest, and the words are plain."
Alcott nodded. Erik unfolded the letter, and the yard quieted the way a church quiets.
"'To the settlers of Prairie Center and the council of the Red Willow band, greetings,'" he read. "'In answer to inquiries concerning the lands known as the Red Willow bottom: these lands are reserved to the Red Willow band by treaty, ratified and in force, and remain theirs until the Congress of the United States shall provide otherwise, which it has not done. No entry, sale, survey, or townsite upon these lands by any person is lawful, and any instrument purporting to convey them is void from its first stake. The band's removal to the agency this autumn is by agreement for rations and protection through the winter, and surrenders nothing. — Hollis, Agent.'"
Erik folded the letter along its crease, carefully, and put it back inside his coat.
Flint stood with his deeds in his hands. Erik watched the paper do what paper does — watched a man discover that the ground under an argument has been somebody else's ground all along. The plats went on showing their neat streets. There was a church ground, as promised. There was a depot ground where the survey stakes stood in the band's bottom, in the band's grass, waiting for a railroad that had never promised to come.
"Those lands were listed as open," Flint said at last, and his voice had lost its window-dressing. "I was assured — the men in the land office assured me—"
"Then sue the land office," said Alcott, not unkindly. "It is a remedy you recommended to the chief not ten minutes gone. But the bottom is theirs, Mr. Flint. It always was. Your stakes are in another people's grass, and your town is on paper that says nothing." He let that stand a moment. "And we have still the matter of the horses."
"The band agreed to remove," Flint said, turning on that, quick as a man finding a stair in the dark. "To the agency. This autumn. It is in the same agent's correspondence, I have no doubt. A people that agrees to leave a place has left it, Captain, whatever the lawyers polish afterward. My surveyors walked that bottom in daylight, with instruments, for a week. No man stopped them. Does a owner who says nothing own anything, in the end, but his silence?"
"The band agreed to winter at the agency," Gray Elk said, "for rations, and because the snow was coming and our horses—" he paused, and the pause did more work than a speech, "—our horses had been stolen. We did not agree to give the land. A man who lends his coat for a night has not given his coat." He looked at Flint directly for the first time. "Your stakes are still in my grass, speculator. I have been patient with them because iron posts do not eat. But do not mistake a people's patience for a people's paper. We have kept every treaty we have signed. It is written in your agent's letter. Read it again, if the first reading went too fast for you."