"There's no more room, friend. The walls won't stretch."
On the left side of the room, near the judge's bench, sat Cornelius Draper, genial as a deacon, his coat brushed, his hands folded on a black portfolio. Beside him stood his company's counsel, a tall man down from Santa Fe with a traveling bag of books at his feet and the easy manner of a person who had never lost an argument he was paid to win.
On the right side, Kaya Little sat between her mother and her daughter.
Nashona wore black and sat very straight, her hands in her lap, her eyes moving over the room the way they moved over the valley from the porch — counting, weighing, missing nothing. Lucy, seven years old and solemn with the importance of the day, sat on the bench's edge with her feet not touching the floor, in the dress she had worn for the pageant. Behind them sat Levi Hartman, his hat in his hands, Diego Fuentes beside him, and Elias Little — down from Kansas, arrived Christmas morning to claim this house for his family — who had taken a seat at the very back and had not spoken to anyone since he came in.
Father Anselmo sat near the front with a great leather-bound register across his knees, wrapped against the weather in oilcloth. Mr. Septimus Crane, the bank cashier, sat with his gloves folded and his eyes on the note's table. At the clerk's desk, Otto Lindqvist arranged his papers for the third time, and then a fourth, and his hands were not quite steady at it.
The door beside the bench opened and Judge Ambrose Tully came in.
He was a big man gone white, with a beard like a winter hedge and eyes that had spent sixty years deciding which parts of a room mattered. He hung his coat on the peg himself, sat, and looked out at the crowd for a long moment before he lifted the gavel.
"This court sits in emergency session on the twenty-sixth day of December, by request of the county and petition of the parties," he said. "The matter is a note, an eviction, and a woman's house. We will take them in that order, and we will take them quietly." The gavel came down once, without force. "If any person in this room cannot be quiet, the sheriff will find him the whole outdoors to be loud in. Counsel for the company — present your paper."
The tall lawyer rose, took a single sheet from Draper's portfolio, and laid it before the judge as carefully as if it were glass.
"May it please the court. A promissory note, dated the twelfth of June, 1883, signed by Samuel Little, now deceased, in favor of the San Tomas Land and Water Company, and filed with the county clerk in October of this year. The note is unpaid. The company asks enforcement, and possession of the mortgaged homestead." He let his hand rest a moment on the paper. "The court will also hear that the woman occupying the place styles herself the deceased's widow. The company disputes that any lawful marriage ever existed under the laws of this Territory — and if there was no lawful widow, there is no widow's homestead. The occupant is a trespasser upon company land, and the eviction notice served upon her on the twenty-third of this month should be allowed to stand."
A sound went through the benches — not words, just breath and wool and boot leather shifting. Beckett, at the door, looked up. Judge Tully did not lift the gavel. He only lifted his eyes, and the sound settled.
"You have stated the paper," the judge said. "Now we will hear the people. Who answers for the Little place?"
There was a pause in which Elias Little, at the back, half rose and sat again, and Levi Hartman's hands tightened once on his hat — and then Kaya Little stood up.
She stood the way she stood at her own gate: not defiant, not pleading, simply present, as if the floor had agreed to hold her. Nashona did not touch her. Lucy watched her mother with her whole face.
"Judge," Kaya said, "I answer for it. It is my house. Before the company's paper is weighed, I ask to be heard in my own name. I have not come to have other people tell this room who I am."
Draper's counsel smiled the smile of a man conceding nothing. "Your Honor, the ordinary order — "
"The ordinary order," said Judge Tully, "is that paper goes first because paper cannot be cross-examined." He looked at Kaya for a moment — at the straight back, the still hands, the seven-year-old watching. "This court has read paper for forty years, counsel. Today it will hear a voice first. The widow will open her own house's case. Madam — you will have the chair when this court calls your name, and you will have as long as the truth takes."
He set the note to one side of his desk, squared it with two fingers, and covered it with his palm like a man setting a stone on something he did not mean to blow away.
"Call Kaya Little."
Chapter 22 — The Widow Speaks
They gave her the witness chair and a Bible worn soft at the edges, and Kaya put her hand on it and swore to tell the truth in a voice the back bench could hear. She did not look at Draper. She looked at the judge, and sometimes at the window, where the snow light stood white and plain.
"State your name," the judge said.
"Kaya Little."
"Your husband's name, and when you married him."
"Samuel Little. We were married at the mission, in the year 1875, by Father Anselmo, who is sitting there with the book." She nodded once toward the priest. "The witnesses' names are written beside ours in his hand. I thought it was for God and the priest. But it is written, Judge. It has been written eight years."