Chương 12
By one, every bench was full.
Voss sat at a table beside Justice Shaw and an attorney from Pueblo. Nora sat opposite them with Silas, Dugan, and a young lawyer named Samuel Reed, who had agreed to represent them after Mrs. Pike cornered him outside the hotel and threatened to tell his mother he refused sick widows.
Mae and Jonah sat behind Nora. Mrs. Pike guarded them.
Judge Cross limped to the teacher’s desk and looked over the room.
“I was told this concerned theft,” he said. “Then murder. Then land fraud. If anyone adds treason, I am leaving.”
No one smiled except Dugan.
The judge began with Cole’s death.
Dugan testified that Cole approached the rear of the sheriff’s office during the livery fire, refused an order to stop, and raised a revolver. Dugan fired once. Two witnesses confirmed seeing Cole armed, though neither had seen the shot itself. Doctor Vale stated the bullet entered Cole’s side rather than directly through the back, consistent with a man turning as he was struck.
Voss’s attorney suggested Dugan had invented the threat to protect Silas.
Dugan admitted his history of accepting favors from Voss.
The schoolhouse stirred.
“Favors?” Judge Cross asked.
“Coal for the jail,” Dugan said. “Payment for my wife’s treatment. Loans. Whiskey. I ignored complaints I should have investigated.”
“Did Mr. Voss instruct you to do so?”
“Not in plain words.”
“Then why did you?”
Dugan looked at the floorboards.
“Because I liked being grateful more than I liked being honest.”
The answer quieted the room.
Judge Cross dismissed the murder accusation against Silas for lack of evidence and deferred judgment on Dugan’s conduct.
Then Voss presented the theft charge.
Nora admitted taking thirty-eight dollars. She did not excuse it. Samuel Reed tried to explain the circumstances, but she interrupted him.
“I stole it,” she said. “I meant to use it to flee with my children.”
Voss’s attorney stood. “And the business records?”
“I took six pages.”
“Why?”
“Because they showed crimes.”
“They showed your handwriting.”
“Yes.”
“Your alterations.”
“Yes.”
“Your forged names.”
Nora’s voice dropped. “Yes.”
A murmur spread through the room. Mae stared at her mother.
Silas felt Nora’s hand searching beneath the table. He placed his palm near hers but did not touch. After a moment, her smallest finger hooked around his.
The attorney smiled as though the case had finished itself.
“So you confess to theft, falsification, and forgery.”
“I confess to writing what Mr. Voss ordered and to continuing after I understood it was wrong.”
“Because he threatened you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Other times because he paid me.”
The attorney glanced at Voss. He had not expected that answer.
Nora continued, “My son was sick. I owed money. I was frightened. I also liked having enough flour. I liked not begging. I told myself the men losing land were careless. That they should have read what they signed. Some could not read.”
Judge Cross studied her.
Samuel Reed whispered for her to stop.
She did not.
“I helped Mr. Voss,” she said. “Then my husband found discrepancies in the west ledger. He began asking questions. After he died, I found the book hidden in the grain shed. I removed pages. The shed burned two nights later.”
Voss’s attorney objected. “She implies murder without evidence.”
“Sustained,” Judge Cross said. “Mrs. Kincaid, speak only to what you know.”
Nora nodded. “I know Caleb’s fall was called an accident. I know the rope securing his ladder was cut. I know Albert Sweet was told to lie about witnessing the fall.”
All eyes turned toward Sweet.
He sat in the last row beside his daughter.
Judge Cross called him forward.
Sweet moved slowly, one hand bandaged from the previous night. He testified about the cut rope, Caleb’s last words, and Rance Cole’s instruction that he claim to have seen the fall. He admitted he remained silent to protect his daughter’s lease.
Voss’s attorney asked whether Gideon Voss personally ordered the lie.
“No.”
“Whether he saw Mr. Voss near the ladder.”
“No.”
“Whether Caleb named Mr. Voss.”
“No.”
“Then you have brought us fear, guilt, and guesswork.”
Sweet looked toward Voss.
“I brought what I have.”
The six ledger pages were introduced. Nora identified the entries she had written. Freight agent Harlan Price confirmed cattle numbers had been altered. Two homesteaders testified that they had never signed the surrender papers found in Dugan’s safe.
Justice Shaw interrupted from Voss’s table.
“They made marks in my presence.”
One homesteader, a German immigrant named Otto Klein, raised his right hand. Two fingers were missing from a threshing accident.
“The paper shows a full handprint,” he said.
Laughter broke across the room, then stopped when Judge Cross struck the desk.
Justice Shaw’s face turned purple.
The second homesteader was a widow, Lila Hammond. Her supposed mark was an X.
“I sign my own name,” she said. “My husband taught me before he died.”
“Can you prove it?” Voss’s attorney asked.
She took the attorney’s pencil and wrote LILA HAMMOND across his notes.
The crowd moved again, this time not with laughter but with the subtle adjustment of people reconsidering where safety lay.
Voss noticed.
He rose without waiting to be called.
“These documents passed through Nora Kincaid’s hands,” he said. “She admits forging names. She admits stealing money. Yet you treat her as a victim because she is pale and has children.”
Judge Cross said, “Sit down.”
“I built the schoolhouse in which you judge me.”
“And yet you do not own the chair.”
Voss remained standing.
His control had always been quiet, Nora had said. He never needed to shout. Now a vein showed at his temple.
“I gave these people credit when no bank would,” he said. “I carried them through drought and winter. Some debts were corrected. Some records were copied improperly. That is not theft. It is business conducted under difficult conditions.”
Lila Hammond stood from the bench. “You took my east field.”
May you like
“You owed me.”
“My husband paid you.”
