The Kiowa Verdict by Cynthia Haseloff

Author:Cynthia Haseloff [Haseloff, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Published: 2000-08-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Saturday, July 1, 1871

Jacksboro, Texas

Joe Woolfolk returned alone to Jacksboro. Wooten was with his herd, and Isaac Lynn remained somewhere on the prairie. The term of the circuit court usually brought a crowd to the little Texas town. Unneighborly disputes normally occupied the court’s attention as they did the first few days of this term. But everyone knew what lay ahead. Even as the insignificant personal cases were quickly handled, the town began to fill with those whose curiosity could not be satisfied with less than first-hand knowledge, with those who wanted a fair vengeance for the murder of family and friends and close-held dreams, and with those who came to see that moment in history where they perceived change.

Joe left his horse at the livery. He took his usual room and parked his gear, including his clean white shirts, at the Wichita Hotel. Passing the busy, commodious bar, he made his way along the crowded walk and across the teeming street to the courthouse in the center of the square. The newly completed court building was made of yellow limestone quarried from the surrounding land. It was a square, angular building with no pretense at architecture or ornamentation. Its chief attributes were the large windows that opened to let in the wind and cool the courtroom. The first floor consisted of business offices for the judge and county clerk and important records. A wide hallway ran through the building and could be opened on each end to create a kind of dog-trot similar to those of the frontiersmen’s cabins. A staircase large enough for horse-drawn vehicles, it seemed to Joe, ran up to the second-floor courtroom.

“Hey, Joe,” a man in the hallway called out to the lawyer as he entered the shaded comfort of the building. “When are we going home to Belknap?”

“Beats me, Ira,” Joe responded. “Maybe it won’t be too long now.”

The man laughed. “That’s what I thought. Soon as you see these damned Kiowas get their fair trial, we’ll get our homes back.” He joked with the men around him as Joe went toward the small office of Judge Soward. “That’s Joe Woolfolk. I rode with him many the time in the Frontier Regiment. He knows how to treat an Injun.” The man made a gun with his thumb and index finger and squeezed off a shot. “Boom!”

Joe heard the words and knew the sentiment. He stepped inside the office and closed the door. He stood a moment, looking at the floor, thinking about the man’s words, about their common past. During the War Between The States, Kiowa and Comanche raiders had managed nearly to depopulate Young County. Things became so bad that many frontier folks retreated to safety farther east. Those that stayed formed central fortified places, like Fort Murrah and Fort Bragg, where all the near neighbors could run in the event of attacks. Belknap, in spite of becoming headquarters for the Frontier Regiment, could not maintain its function as the county seat.

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