EUREKA

The Trial

"State your name for the record please."

"Eureka Rivers."

"Pardon me?" the judge glanced at me, his brows up. I smiled, used to this reaction.

"It's E U R E K-"

"Yes yes, I know how to spell it." He seemed impatient with me but it was his time, not mine, so I kept still. "That is your legal name Miss?"

"Yessir. My folks have a tradition of namin' their girl children, an' I'm for the spring where my ma gave birth to me, Eureka Springs in the Ozarks. My Pa says that place saved her life, an' mine. Somethin' 'bout the healin' waters an' such, what with ma havin' such a hard time an' all. I'm the last of six."

"Very well." I didn't think he cared a wit about how I got my name, only that he recorded it right. "Raise your right hand. You swear to tell the truth in answer to whatever questions the court asks you?"

"Yessir."

"Your witness Mister Graham." The judge spoke to the lawyer and the man got up and approached where I was sitting. He was an older man with a thin face, narrow, deep set eyes and a taciturn look about him.

"Miss Rivers, do you know why you're here today?"

"Yessir." I waited but he only stared at me, then seeing I was finished, glowered a little.

"Tell the court why you are here today Miss Rivers."

"Oh," I glanced around, seeing nothing but unfriendly and irritable faces. "Beggin' pardon sir. A letter was sent out to my kinfolk, the same letter to five or six families all through the Ozarks. It was requestin' for a member of the Rivers family to be sent out here for the hangin' trial of one of our kin, so I volunteered to come."

"Do you know the accused, Hiram Rivers?" the man called Graham asked me.

"Hi? Sure I do. I knowed him since I was knee high to a blade of grass. He was a good boy, but wild, an' he's only grown rougher but he's a good man."

"Strike that last remark from the record!" the judge barked suddenly and I jumped, startled. He glared at me. "Restrict your comments to the questions asked, Miss Rivers."

"Yessir, beggin' pardon." I hated being surrounded by flatlanders, outsiders. I was so accustomed to wild country and open spaces that I felt faint. Clenching my fists tight, I felt my nails bite into my palms and it relieved my anxiety a bit. My eyes kept straying to the man seated at a table facing me, and he met my gaze with a faintly amused look.

"Hiram Rivers is accused of murder, and there are eye witnesses to testify to his difficulties with the deceased. Miss Rivers, isn't it true that Hiram Rivers has a history of violence, even as a child?"

"Those are some mighty fancy words sir, but I reckon the answer is no." A murmur went through the courtroom and I looked around at them. "I figure you mean to ask if Hi was the kinda boy who went out of his way huntin' trouble. He wasn't. That don't mean it didn't find him, an' he never sidestepped it, but huntin'? No, never."

"What about Javalin Pollock?" asked the lawyer, and I just looked at him, wondering who had told him of the feud.

"Them Pollocks are a bunch of dirty, back shootin' skunks, an' you can tell 'em it was me that said it! Jav was on the prod, an' we'd been feudin' with the Pollocks for nigh on forty years or more. Jav had no call to start trouble but he did, an' Hiram put him down. When Hi puts a man down, he stays put." I couldn't help but sound proud, because I was. Hiram was defending my honor that time, and Jav was always mean and ornery."