Listen to the Mockingbird (28 page)

Tonio stepped back. His shoulders sagged, and he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“We did exactly as you said. I made sure no one left Nacho’s room without washing. We burned his clothes; we’ll burn his sheets and nightshirt. We’ve eaten so much of garlic, I’m sure they can smell us in town. But is that enough? I know so little about plague.”

“I’ve seen a few cases. Doctors who have treated it say people who are meticulous about those things won’t catch it from each other. They believe it’s spread by insects. Fleas.”

I looked at him in dismay. “We haven’t had a flea problem recently, but we have so many animals…”

“That’s why we are eating so much garlic. No one is certain, of course, but those who consume a goodly measure of the stuff don’t seem to sicken with plague.”

“Garlic cures the plague?”

“It doesn’t cure. But it does seem to prevent. Perhaps fleas don’t like the taste of garlic eaters.”

I was about to say that couldn’t be true because the Mexicans use a lot of garlic when I remembered Herlinda preparing Nacho’s meals separately the past few weeks because spicy food was troubling his stomach.

Tonio moved toward the door. “You can go back to sleep if you like. Nothing needs doing. We could use more water, but I’ll take the wagon and fetch some. I rested a bit earlier.”

I didn’t want to sleep. Nacho was going to live. Death was no longer camped on my doorstep. I wanted to celebrate. “Let’s both go.”

999

By the time we reached the spring the sun had sunk into the ground, but the moon was putting out so much light it seemed to have gone quite lopsided with the effort. A fair rivulet was sloshing down the rock. I maneuvered the wagon as close to the spring as I could, as the jars weigh a good deal when full.

“How do you haul your own water?” I asked Tonio, thinking the cuevas was a ways to walk from here if one was carrying anything heavy.

“I have a flat jug that fits in a sort of harness on my back.” He handed me two of the empty jars. “I learned that from an Indian woman. Never did learn to carry anything on my head, though. Haven’t the neck for it, I suppose. The harness works well. I can carry enough for two or three days.”

“I haven’t been here in a long time,” I said. “Last year, the arroyo over there flooded, and I was trapped. I was certain I was going to drown.”

“Mmmm,” he nodded. “Soon after I got here.”

“You must have been at the spring just before the flood. I saw a man’s boot prints.”

“I don’t remember.” He handed me another jar.

Glancing at his feet, I saw his boots had almost no heel at all—the sort worn by those who don’t spend much time in a saddle. Certainly, someone had been at the spring; and I’d been convinced that someone was nearby, close enough to hear me shouting. But none of that seemed to matter now. The deepening night was filled with the sound of splashing and the wonderful smell of damp earth.

The clay jars filled quickly. When the last was done, I scooped up a handful of water and lifted it to my face, letting it run down my neck till it made me shiver. Tonio had turned to watch. The past days had written deep lines into his face. I scooped up more water and tossed it at him.

A smile fluttered at one corner of his mouth. He stood stock still for a moment, his face damp in the moonlight, then nudged me aside and flung a handful of water on me. I giggled and pushed him away to fill my own hands again. Laughing, he dodged and ran, with me after him hell-bent for mud.

Tonio, much faster than I, disappeared into the shadows of an old oak so bent it almost touched the ground. By the time I reached the tree there was no sign of him at all. I drew up and stooped to peer beneath the lowest limbs and found myself looking straight into his face. He’d stuck out his tongue, put his thumbs in his ears and was waggling his fingers. When I folded up with laughter, he sprang up and wrestled me to the ground, his baritone laugh booming while I yelped with fury.

I dug my fingers into his ribs, and we rolled beneath the tree. He circled my ankle with one hand, made short work of my shoe and tickled my feet until tears trickled down my cheeks.

“Enough?” he yelled.

“Yes,” I squealed, still writhing but quite helpless. He released my ankle, caught my face between his hands and looked into my eyes until I was certain he could see my soul. I realized I had never heard him laugh before. Chuckle, yes, but not really laugh. And lately, I’d done precious little laughing myself.

Without releasing my eyes from his, he dropped his fingers to my collar and began to undo my blouse.

Never before or since has it been quite like that for me, like a celebration of all that’s right in the world. When he raised himself above me in the final thrust, exquisite waves of joy thrummed over me.

We lay lazy and spent, arms and legs woven together like the reeds of a half-finished basket. When he finally rolled away, an acute emptiness swept over me, a sense of profound loss.

He tossed my blouse over my face; and when I pulled it down to my chin, his eyes moved slowly from mine to my nose then my mouth. His smile was like an ember from some somber hearth deep within him. Suddenly self-conscious, I turned my back to dress.

Chapter Thirty-three

The afternoon was unseasonably warm. The land was dry, and dust devils were twisting here and there. It wasn’t likely to rain again till midsummer. Fanny shifted her weight and snorted as I mopped my brow with a kerchief that still smelled of vanilla and gave chase yet again to a stubborn horse.

The week before, I had made my first purchases at the stock auction without Nacho at my elbow. He had wanted to come along, but he still looked gaunt and was a little unsteady on his feet; so I bit the bullet alone and bought a couple dozen head of new horses. Nacho looked them over when they arrived, and his approving nod meant more to me than the money I’d spent.

But one of the new arrivals, a black gelding with a white blaze, had run off. The colts would need another dozen months of feeding before they had much value and I wouldn’t begin to clear my expenses for at least another year, so I wasn’t about to lose that ornery black.

Neck outstretched and running like the wind, he seemed determined to leave the territory. Already, I had chased him for miles. Along the way I had picked up a stray mule.

The gelding was quick and clever, and I had lost my last bit of patience an hour before. I was getting better with a riata, having practiced on the calves; but cattle tend to run in a straighter line while horses dart from side to side as quick as squirrels. Four times I had swung my rope and missed. Mules are even cleverer than horses, and this one seemed to be enjoying a game of his own devising in which he nipped the horse on the rump to goad it on. I’d had about enough of it.

The black flounced into an arroyo, and the thick brush swallowed him. No, you don’t, I thought, urging Fanny down the slope after him. But there was no movement at the bottom at all. The rogue was smart enough to keep still. I rode into the brush and scanned every bit of scrub big enough to hide him. Nothing. But at least it was cool enough here for lunch. The black couldn’t get far without my hearing him.

Not bothering to dismount, in case that consarned gelding took off again, I fumbled at the saddlebag and took out a chunk of cheese and some dry bread. Intent on detecting sounds from the horse inside the arroyo, I heard no sounds from above; and when I glanced up to the rim, the two men, clear and sharp against the sky, startled me.

They both were mounted; both wore hats with broad brims. With the sun behind them, they looked like black cutouts on horseback.

Both men seemed jittery. The smaller of the two was jabbing a finger at a paper he held. Every few seconds one of them would nervously twist his head around to scan the landscape. I sat there in plain sight, but neither saw me. The wind was carrying their voices away, and for a time I could make no sense of what they were saying; but some primal wariness stilled my urge to call out to them.

Then the wind changed, and their words became quite clear.

“…know damn well that woman has the map,” one of them was saying.

I froze. Somewhere, I had heard that voice before. Where? Who was it? Both men had turned their backs to the arroyo, so I couldn’t even tell which was speaking. Hunching down in the saddle, I pressed a trembling hand against Fanny’s shoulder and, terrified she would choose that moment to snort or paw the ground, slowly backed her into the thick shadows.

“How could you be such a goddamn fool as to lose it?”

“That jo-fired, lickspittle idiot shot at me. Grazed my head. When she come running out, toting a pistol, I had to hide, didn’t I? When I went to check the body it was gone.”

“She don’t know what the map means, does she?”

“No. But the bitch isn’t stupid. She knows it means something.”

“If she doesn’t understand that map, why wouldn’t she sell?”

Still poking at it with his forefinger, the shorter man handed over the paper. Both men nodded in quick little jerks.

The high-pitched neigh of a startled horse came from behind me, and the stray black gelding burst from the scrub with the mule close behind. I stopped breathing, prepared to bolt. Fanny shifted her weight, but the sound was lost in the gelding’s commotion. A bead of perspiration ran down my forehead and burned my eye with its salt.

The larger man peered into the arroyo. I glimpsed sun-whitened hair, a broad, squarish face of sun-darkened skin. He spotted the gelding, and a thin white scar running from jaw to ear flashed white in the dark face.

He turned back to his companion, gestured at something; and they turned their horses. The movement shifted the one nearest me out of its own shadow. I didn’t recognize the men, but I recognized that horse: a palomino mare with three white stockings. She had been among the group I had handed over to the Confederacy.

Both riders disappeared from view. I waited a good long time in the arroyo before digging my heels gently into Fanny’s side and urging her to take me home.

When I reached the corral, I was still deep in thought. Fanny stopped and patiently waited. I squeezed my eyes shut and chewed my lower lip, still trying to place the voice and the face. Two things were dead certain: at least one of those men was a murderer, and somewhere, some time, I had heard the voice of, had probably met, one of them.

“You going to stand there till the devil comes walking up and taps you on the shoulder?” Winona shouted from the house. “You looks like a statute.”

999

“You should be in town this very minute telling that sheriff.” Winona was sitting at the kitchen table, arms crossed stubbornly across her chest, staring at me while I dried my hair.

I had sweat so much and was so covered with dust that I’d filled a basin, dunked my head in the cool water and given it a good scrubbing. “I knew the voice of one of them, but for the life of me I can’t think who it was. I only saw the face of one, and I don’t know if he was the one with the voice.”

Pressing the towel into my eyes, I tried to see him again; but the image in my head was blurry and wouldn’t come clear. “I have to think.”

Winona set her chin. “Think! A body what’s got a snake in her bedroll don’t sit there and think. You going to worry that question back and forth till it’s limp. You wait long enough, that dad-blasted bastard will come gunning for you sure as a jackrabbit’s got ears. You get yourself into town and tell someone.”

The following day, I took her advice and rode in to see Zeke. I needed to see him about Julio, anyway. The six wagons I met heading out of town as I was heading in told me something was up.

In the plaza, men and women with young ones in tow were dashing back and forth across the square. I hitched Fanny to a post and strode straightaway toward the jail. A little boy with tears sliding down apple cheeks careened into me in his haste. I grabbed his chubby arm, bent over and peered into his face.

“What’s your name?” I asked the overflowing blue eyes.

“’Nezer,” he said between sobs.

“Where are you going? Have you lost your mama?”

He nodded to the last question and didn’t seem to know the answer to the first. But he did know why. “Yankees are coming an’ they’ll git me,” he bawled.

“Yankees? What Yankees? The Yankees are gone.”

“No.” He shook his head vigorously. “They coming back.”

“Ebenezer!” A woman had stopped in front of the bank. “Get over here, or you’ll be left behind!” The child ran to her side.

Yankees? I wheeled and ran to Zeke’s office. Inside, it was block and block with a dozen men or more jabbering at each other. I elbowed my way among them.

“Matty,” someone called. “You best make tracks yourself. You gave the Rebs horses. That amounts to succorin’ the enemy.”

“I could say with a straight face that they stole those horses,” I retorted hotly. “It was pretty clear I didn’t have a lot of choice in the deal.” But no one was listening. The chair behind Zeke’s desk was empty.

A beefy man with a thick neck and a red face folded his arms across his considerable belly and said with disgust, “Sibley’s got himself beat by the Abs. Canby’s on his way here.”

Buck McCurry, who owned a ranch to the north, threw his big-knuckled hands up in frustration. “What are we gonna do now?”

“But we won at Glorieta,” someone piped.

“They damn well pumped that battle up to bigger’n it was, and then they damn well frittered it away.” This from Jonathon Mapes, the rude sheepman from Doña Ana. He shoved a finger in the direction of the fellow with the thick neck. “Ask Sam. He was sutlerin’, following the army with whiskey and such afore they turnt tail and run.”

Sam nodded and thumbed his hat. “It was supplies done them in, too. After the hardest fighting it’s ever been my lot to witness, those Abs done sent a detachment of cavalry ’round the mountains and took an’ burnt our train. The whole eighty wagons. Then Sibley give the order to bury cannon and howitzers and run. I left my wagon there—it was plumb empty anyhow—an’ rode on down ahead of them.”

Mapes gave a disgusted guffaw. “Sibley don’t give a fart what them Abs might do to us. All he cares about now is saving his own skin.”