The Spring Belonged to No Man: A Young Cowboy, an Apache Chief, and the Map That Saved Their Valley

"The company," Whitcomb said, "will kindly remember it has no orders to give in my court or out of it." His voice had found its courtroom weight. He rolled the map with great care, as men handle things they expect to see again under oath. "Nothing is decided here until I have examined this survey against the territorial records. No barrier comes down today. No camp is moved today. Is that understood by every man holding a rifle on this ground?"

But Caleb saw no defeat in Voss's face — only the patience of a man recalculating how much a thing he wanted would now cost, and in what coin he meant to pay.

Chapter 9

: The Judge Asks for Time

The judge asked for his camp chair and his spectacles, and the whole armed morning rearranged itself around one old man reading. Whitcomb sat in the shade of it with Samuel Wren's map across his knees and Voss's lease — produced from Voss's leather folio — open on top of it, and for half an hour the only sounds were pages, wind, and horses stamping at flies. Twenty gunmen stood down off their saddles by degrees, rifles cradled, hats pushed back, watching their errand dissolve into paperwork.

Caleb stood with Tasin and did not speak. The chief watched the judge the way he watched weather — without hope or fear, reading signs. "Your father sat so, with papers," Tasin said at last. "The paper men always take long. It is because the paper must be made to say slowly what the land says at once."

At length Whitcomb took off his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Gentlemen, attend me." "I have compared these instruments as well as a man can in the field, and I will state my position. The company's lease is drawn in proper form and bears what appears to be a territorial seal. The survey map offered by Mr. Wren is older by seventeen years, bears the seal and signature of a territorial surveyor, and describes this valley in terms no private lease survives." He paused. "Both cannot be true. One of these papers is false. That is a genuine question of title, gentlemen — genuine, and far beyond anything I will settle from a camp chair."

"Your Honor—" Voss began.

"I have not finished." The judge held up one spotted hand. "What I require is time. Time to send to the capital for the surveyor-general's archive copy. Time to examine the ledger and the lease's chain. Time — days, gentlemen, not hours. Until that examination is done, this court will recognize no eviction, no enclosure, and no transfer of the water of Ojo Azul."

Voss came down off his horse then — a thing he had not believed he would need to do. He crossed the open ground with his hat in his hand and his mildness on like armor. "Your Honor, I must press you. The camp's presence here is, under our lease, a trespass in progress — every hour it continues, damages accrue. I ask for an immediate ruling on the lease's face. Surely the court can enforce the paper that is filed and sealed, and let the boy's keepsake be argued afterward, when the valley is clear."

"Orderly," Whitcomb repeated, tasting the word. "You have a gift for naming things after what they are not, Mr. Voss."

"I have twenty men here at the company's expense—"

"You have twenty men here at your own choosing, sir, and if their expense troubles you, you may dismiss them. I am not the company's paymaster. An immediate ruling on a clouded title is not justice hurried; it is justice buried. You will have my ruling when the records speak, and not one sunrise before."

Caleb felt Tasin's breath go out beside him. But Voss did not step back. He stood in the open ground, and his voice dropped so that only those near heard it.

"Then hear me, Your Honor. Men on that hillside did not ride twelve miles to be lectured about archives. Feelings have been raised. If the court leaves this ground unresolved — if that camp stays and my riders ride home empty — I cannot answer for what hot heads may do tonight. A shot in the dark. A fire. These things happen in disputed country. An immediate ruling may be the only thing standing between this valley and blood."

It was a threat wearing a warning's coat. Whitcomb's face went still. Odell smiled down at his shotgun. Among the gunmen a murmur moved like wind in dry grass, and two or three of them drifted toward the flanks of the basin — toward the rocks that overlooked the spring. Tasin noticed it too; Caleb felt the morning change under his feet. The chief's hand, hanging open at his side, closed once, slowly — the only sign he gave.

"Are you threatening this court, Mr. Voss?" Whitcomb asked quietly.

"I am forecasting the weather, Your Honor. As I do."

The judge rose from his chair with the map in his hands, an old man stiff with rage and dignity, and faced the twenty rifles without counting them. "Then let the weather hear this. The law's delay is not the law's absence. Any man who raises a hand on this ground before my ruling answers to me — and after me, to the United States Marshal, whom I will summon by wire this afternoon. I will take two more hours with these papers, and I suggest every armed man use them to remember what he is paid for and what he is not."