Listen to the Mockingbird (11 page)

The sun began to drop toward Arizona. And the fire glowed brighter.

Then the wind stopped. It didn’t slow and simmer to a breeze. It stopped. Dead. Like I hear it is in the eye of a hurricane. The fire fell back, still crackling and crunching and chewing its meal, but its appetite waned as the wind lost its driving fury.

Still I stood with the shreds of a soaked blanket poised above my head, not trusting the lull, waiting for another gust. Chunks of red glowered like a huge triangle of fiery teeth as the smoke ebbed.

We had somehow confined the fire. And without the wind, it whined and crawled to a halt. Finally, we beat and stamped out the last of it.

By the time I got back to the wagon, my head seemed four times its normal size and weight. Only Nacho seemed to notice that I stood there in soot-encrusted bloomers. He averted his eyes and posted Ruben nearby with a half-dozen jars of water, a rifle and a whistle, in case the fire rekindled its craving for dry brush.

At the house, Winona met us at the door, looking even more exhausted than I felt. “It be a deal harder to wait than to do the work,” she said gruffly.

I nodded. “Go to bed. Tomorrow will be better.”

She frowned at my legs, disappeared and returned with a skirt, which she pressed into my hands. I put it on, fumbling at the bone buttons with thick fingers, and went back outside.

The stench of ashes and water made me swallow hard. Herlinda was spreading the few blankets we had left over the rail that linked the hitching posts. Her squarish body looked twisted and hunched and ready to drop. I recanted every mean thought I’d had about her and touched her arm.

“Thanks. I’ll finish that. Go to bed. Rest.”

For me, I knew, sleep would not come easily.

I washed off as much soot as I could in a pan of water and went out to sit on the steps. I could detect no red coals glowing anywhere. Elbows propped on knees, chin in hand, I stared into the dusk toward the horror that had almost stripped me of everything.

“Señora?” Nacho approached from the barn with his stiff-legged gait.

“We’re hanging by a thread, Nacho,” I said, my eyes still combing the shapes on the darkening desert for some telltale tinge of red.

“Si, señora,” he agreed, seeming as unruffled as ever. But he wasn’t. “I wish to show you this.” He thrust something into my hands—a battered and burned can about the size of a large book. “I find this out there.” Nacho tilted his wizened face toward where the fire had very nearly defeated us. “Inside, I think, was oil.”

Chapter Twelve

Unable to think about anything, I had barely managed to remove my filthy clothes before falling into bed. I woke to the smells of coffee brewing and bacon frying. Lazily, I rolled over, hoping Winona was baking biscuits. Herlinda’s chorizos and tortillas were good, but biscuits were like being home.

Tossing back the covers, I found that my arms ached from shoulder to wrist; and reality smacked me in the face like a bucket of dirty water. But for the grace of God there would have been no house to cook breakfast in. Was Nacho right? Was the fire set deliberately?

Nanny used to say that what looks like wickedness is often just stupidity, and I knew that in this dry landscape, fires sometimes just happen. Drifters might pitch camp and build a fire even though we forbade it. No doubt they were loth to use what little water they carried to damp a fire. It was all too easy for a live ember to linger, even for days, and easier still for the wind to bring it new life. This wasn’t our first fire, but it was the first to get such a start on us. One of the men might have dropped that oilcan by chance, though I couldn’t fathom what he was doing with it out there.

Something sharp twisted in my middle like a splinter of broken glass. Did Lieutenant Morris want my horses badly enough to try to burn me out? Who else would want to force me off the land?

Donning my calico wrapper over my nightclothes, I made my way to the kitchen. Winona was, indeed, baking biscuits and frying slabs of freshly smoked bacon as if nothing had happened. I made my way outside to the privy. The breeze was crisp with autumn. From the privy I could see the huge patch of scorched brush lying like a fallen dragon amid the creosote and mesquite. Yesterday it had been gnashing its teeth, ready to swallow our house; but now even the acrid odor of water mixed with ashes had been scoured from the air.

I was back in my room, searching the bureau for a clean shirt, when it occurred to me that something was amiss. A remnant of my earlier life, a white silk petticoat, had lain for years at the bottom of the drawer. Now it was sitting atop the cruder underthings I wore these days—still neatly folded, but on top. Other fingers had picked through my belongings. Why, for mercy’s sake, would anyone be interested in my meager stock of linen? I sorted through the items again, but nothing else seemed disturbed.

As I dressed, a sharp sudden thought bit into my mind: the map. How could I be so feeble-witted!

That Mexican boy had thought the map so valuable that he kept it where most folk on the move keep gold. Might not someone else think it valuable, too? Rifle through a drawer in search of it? Even set a fire to be sure no one was in the house to catch the culprit out?

Some less-dim part of me had known that map held import because I had concealed the foolscap in my one remaining corselet. I slid my hand into the drawer. Between the stays, my fingers struck the leather pouch. The map was still inside. I drew in a breath of relief and slipped the thong around my foolish neck.

From the pitcher on the table next to the bureau, I sloshed water into the washing bowl. Scrubbing my face and arms and neck until they were red, I recited to myself the events that seemed to be popping up like malignant corn at every turn in my life. The list seemed to go on and on, from the murdered boy, the map, the man who accosted me in my own barn to the fire, and now that bureau drawer. Even Tonio Bernini. I had trusted him on instinct, but what really had brought him here the very day after that boy was killed?

Bending my head, I pushed my hair forward till it nearly touched the floor and brushed until it felt almost clean again. Any army could take my horses with or without my leave, so why was Lieutenant Morris insisting that I decamp to Mexico? I brushed and brooded and brushed some more.

I had to allow there was little that couldn’t be explained by some peculiar but blameless reason. But I kept coming back to the map—that devilish, queer map. Had my assailant in the barn merely been a drifter spooked by my return? Or had he been after that sheet of foolscap?

After breakfast I drew Herlinda aside. “Thank you for all your help yesterday.”

She nodded stiffly; her usual sullenness had returned.

“Today, you should rest.”

She looked at me as though she didn’t understand.

“You worked very hard yesterday. Today, rest. Do nothing.”

“Someone must take the ollas to the spring,” she said, as if explaining to a child. “We are without water.”

“Send Julio to fetch the water.”

“He must hunt the caballos.”

I sighed. The horses had scattered when they were set loose, but they would most likely wander home this morning for their feed.

“Okay,” I agreed, wondering why, no matter whether I was gruff or kind, Herlinda always got the upper hand. “But no housework. I’ll do it myself,” I told her, still determined to be considerate. “When we’re full up on water, go back to bed. Rest.”

Eying me as if my solicitations were somehow a threat, she backed through the kitchen door.

I helped Winona tidy up the breakfast dishes then took the broom from her. “Sit,” I said. “I’ll make us some tea. I need your advice.”

The tea was the color of mesquite honey and mellow. I took a sip, then raised my eyes to meet Winona’s questioning gaze. “Nacho found an empty oilcan out there on the range. He thinks someone set that fire. Someone may be trying to run me off my land.”

Winona nodded, rocking back and forth a little in her chair. “You ain’t telling me a shred of nothin’ new, Miss Matty. I didn’t need no oilcan to start wonderin’ about that. Who you think it be?”

“I wish I knew…” I pondered it all again, this time aloud. When I finished, I brought the flat of my hand down hard on the table. “What chafes me most is that damn map.”

Winona gave me the steely-eyed look she reserved for when I cussed. I ignored it and drew the pouch from the neck of my shirt. She studied the markings on the foolscap. “That be a map of this land, all right.”

I stowed the paper again. The little leather sack felt rough against the flesh between my breasts. “Why did that Mexican boy have it? Did he draw it himself? I’m coming to think he didn’t just happen to have that map hidden away on him when he was shot. I think he was killed because of that map.”

“Mercy.” Winona’s deep brown eyes darkened.

“And there’s something else. A few weeks back, someone tried to buy the ranch. I turned him down. Maybe he’s aiming to get the land even cheaper.”

“He be barking up the wrong tree if he thinks we just slink away easy-like.” Winona stuck out her jaw and rocked back and forth. “What he look like, this man who wants to buy this land?”

“I don’t know. Jamie brought the offer. Why?”

“Mayhap everything you’re going on about is true. Hard thing is, you got nothing but your own cogitations to prove it. Now that buyer person, he got to be real, got to have a name, a face and warm blood runnin’ in his veins. Seems to me that buyer person is the only real thing we got to go on.”

999

When things got back to their more customary disorder, I saddled up Fanny and rode into town, hoping to catch Jamie before he left. Surely he knew more than he had told me about that offer to buy my land. I was certain he wasn’t hiding anything, but maybe he had left something out.

The office of The Times, when I reached it, had boards nailed across the window and a big padlock hung on the door.

Old Ben Smithers, part-time barber, part-time sawbones, part-time postmaster, poked his head out the door of the barbershop down the street and called, “Jamie’s done packed up his press and gone to Mexico. Yesterday.”

All the steam went out of me.

Smithers came down the street and peered at me over his spectacles. White wisps of hair stuck out where the stems went round his ears. “You’d be well advised to do the same, Miss Summerhayes,” he said earnestly and loudly. Ben Smithers was hard of hearing. “Things ain’t likely to be real safe here for a time. Most all the women and children are going. And like as not, a third of the men. We just don’t know what might happen.”

“Thanks for the news about Jamie,” I shouted and turned to leave.

“Hold up a minute,” Smithers said. “I nigh forgot. There’s a letter for you.”

“You must be mistaken,” I said. “There can’t be a letter for me.”

“Yes, yes,” Smithers said. “The express riders pay no mind to the soldiers and the soldiers do likewise, so mostly, the mail gets through. Come along.”

I followed him through the barbershop to the desk and row of boxes that did duty for the mail. I hadn’t meant that I doubted the mail was getting through. No one outside the valley knew where I was.

He fanned a stack of envelopes and handed me one. My name was printed across the front: Matilda Summerhayes, Mesilla, Arizona Territory. The Confederates had claimed half New Mexico Territory and named their half Arizona.

I tore the envelope open. Inside was a sheet of paper. At the top, black letters spelled out V. B. Peticolas, Attorney-at-Law, and gave a Franklin address.

Dear Miss Summerhayes, he began.

I am pleased to inform you that I have a client interested in purchasing your land. I don’t need to tell you that what with the uncertainty that has befallen the Mesilla Valley, this is a most fortuitus offer for you.

I noted that fortuitous was misspelled. And that the amount V. B. Peticolas’ client offered was less than half the figure Jamie had ridden to the ranch a few short months ago to discuss. Jamie’s “client” didn’t offer enough, but he was far more generous. I expect that was because of the war. Or were both clients the same person?

“Where did this letter come from?” I asked Smithers.

“From?” he said. “Why I suppose it come up with the rider from Franklin.”

“You suppose…?” He didn’t answer. I shouted the question again.

“Well…” He cleared his throat. “It all gets tossed together, you know.”

“When did it arrive?” I shouted.

“Don’t rightly know,” Smithers said, dipping his chin toward the letter in my hands. “That one got mixed up with the outgoing mail. Found it this morning when I was sorting. It all gets sorted out in the end, you know,” he assured me.

“You mean it could have been brought to the post office here? Could have been mailed from here?”

He scratched with a pencil at the wisps of hair. “Well, I guess it could. But that ain’t very likely, is it?”

“Why not?”

“People in the valley don’t mail letters to each other,” he said slowly, as though to a halfwit. “They hand ’em to each other. Or more likely, they ride out and sit a spell and say whatever’s on their minds.”

“Thanks,” I said, putting the envelope in the pocket of my jacket. I could feel the frown still etched into my face when I closed the door of the barbershop behind me.

The plaza wasn’t as crowded as usual; but a few horses were tied at the posts, a wagon sat at one corner, and a few people moved in and out of the doors that opened onto the wooden walks.

I took the diagonal footpath across the plaza and was mounting the boardwalk just as Isabel emerged from the bank. I felt a rush of guilt. I hadn’t seen her since Joel’s funeral. Behind her was Lieutenant Morris. Isabel’s eyes narrowed.

“Why, Matty, are you still here?”

“I don’t plan to leave.”

“But Jamie O’Rourke says Colonel Baylor is going to abandon us. That he was pleased as punch to sashay in here and set himself up as governor of half the southwestern corner of the continent, but now he’s turned tail and plans to run.”

I wondered at the wisdom of saying that in front of Baylor’s officer, but Morris only said, “Colonel Baylor is doing everything he can.” He looked at me and shook his head. “O’Rourke was ill-advised to print those accusations. The colonel is not likely to pull out.”