“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.”
Mac MacPherson was pushing his way into the room. He reached through the men and handed me a folded piece of paper. “My brother sent a letter with the Express. Read it for them, Miss Matty.”
The men opened a path so I could get to a window to see better. Much of Brian MacPherson’s letter confirmed what Sam had said. “Sibley is much despised by every man in the brigade. He don’t care about the wounded, he don’t know nothing about being a general and he’s a yellow-bellied coward. He has got room in his wagons for plenty of Mexican whores to ride, but the private soldier who done the fighting is thrown out to die on the way.”
The crowd erupted in angry epithets.
Zeke was elbowing his way from the door to his desk. “Okay, okay, you boys know as much as I do. It ain’t gonna do you much good to stand around here and jaw.” He nodded at me. “You stay here a minute, Matty. The rest of you, git.”
The men milled about, glowering and muttering for a few moments, then filed out of Zeke’s office. So, the Union troops would be returning. Would they be vindictive, as the town feared? If it came down to that, Mesilla had done more than help the Union’s enemy: Jamie and some of the others had sent to Atlanta asking to join the Confederacy.
Zeke took off his hat and rubbed his head. “I hear another Mexican kid got hisself killed out to your place.”
“I’m afraid that’s right. Julio Lujan, my foreman’s son. I would have come in sooner, but we’ve had some serious illness.”
“Sorry to hear that. Now tell me what happened.”
I described the scene in the barn. I hadn’t let myself think about it since and my voice trembled as I recollected. “I wasn’t even there when it happened,” I finished.
“Well, it don’t look so good. Two of ’em. Even if they was only Mexes.”
“That’s what I came to see you about, Zeke. The man who probably killed both of them was out there yesterday.”
999
I leaned against a rock near the cuevas and told Tonio, “Zeke made no more sense of it all than I did.”
For the second time that day, I recounted every detail I could remember seeing or hearing from the arroyo the afternoon before. Something still gnawed at me. I knotted my hands in my skirt, which now seemed infernally hot and heavy. I hadn’t the boldness to wear breeches into town.
My hair had come down, and now it was blowing across my face. I combed it back with my fingers and bega
n to braid it. “Have you got something to tie this with?”
He disappeared into the cave and returned with a strip of cloth.
“They were talking about that map. They killed those two boys.” I pulled the braid so tight it hurt.
Sadness darted about Tonio’s eyes. “You must promise me not to go anywhere alone.”
“They won’t kill me. They want that map. They think I have it. And killing a white woman might get a posse out hunting them.”
“Granted. Presumably, that is why they tried to buy you out.”
Something flickered in my memory like a guttering candle. One of those men. The head was in silhouette against the sun, but I had seen that jawline somewhere before. In the plaza? Here on the ranch? Like the merest wisp of mist, the image was gone. I let go of the braid and it unwound. Jamming my knuckles into my eyes, I almost wept with frustrated fury.
Tonio put his arms around me. “No sense tormenting yourself.”
“The voice of one. I reckon I’ve heard it more times than one…” I peered again into my mind. Again I found nothing to help me remember.
“If that lawyer gentleman in Franklin was right…”
I felt my eyes growing round as double eagles. “How would they know I’d refused to sell the ranch unless one of them had tried to buy it? If it’s the same man who went to Peticolas, he’s a Union officer. Or said he was.”
“But the Union Army has not yet arrived.” Tonio rose, walked around my rock and began braiding my stubborn hair.
“What does that mean?”
His fingers on my hair had stilled. He didn’t answer. I twisted my head around to look at him. He was gazing toward the setting sun. A long cloud of dust was moving like a fat, fluffy worm along the trail from town toward my ranch. I stood up and stared. There were perhaps a dozen wagons and many more people on horseback.
I bolted for my own wagon. Tonio clambered onto the seat next to me. “Who is it?” he asked sharply.
“I don’t know.” I turned the horses and prodded them toward the house.
999
We got home in time for me to station myself in front of the house, a Sharp’s rifle against the wall behind me, the stock hidden behind my skirts. Nacho and the hands were far out on the range. I’d have to handle this myself. The Sharp’s was powerful enough to stop a charging bull.
To Herlinda and Winona I had snapped orders to stay inside. The other women, Herlinda said, looking nervy as a cat, were at the spring. I asked Tonio to bring three more rifles from the wall of the barn and bade him stand just inside the parlor door.
“I suspicion that what’s coming is like to wake snakes,” Winona opined.
There were eleven wagons in all. I was hard-pressed to stand still and watch them arrive. They held about as many women as men. Most of the faces were strange to me, though I did recognize Josephine Dent, the wheelwright’s wife, and Amanda Coolidge, the cooper’s daughter. I had met them at a tea during my first few months in the valley. It struck me as odd that one of the wagons was full of Indians, all of them young.
The only face I recognized among the men was Jonathan Mapes, the rancher from Doña Ana, who rode with three other men apart from the others. There may have been others that I knew, but I was facing directly into the sinking sun and couldn’t discern them.
Almost all the faces bore a surly look. I swallowed and tried to will my pulse to slow. Had they come to lynch me for the death of that poor Mexican kid? Or was it because of Julio’s murder? Had Ruben done something awful the last time he’d been to town? Were they after him?
I had never seen a lynching party. I didn’t think women participated in something like that.
Mexican faces peered from two of the wagons. What could have brought all these people together? Indians, Mexicans and Anglos with one intense purpose? Even if the Anglos truly believed I had killed one or both of those boys, it seemed unlikely that this many would be determined to avenge a Mexican.
Behind me I could hear a long wail from Zia followed by Winona’s shushings. My heart drumming in my ears, I stood very still, ramrod straight and silent while the last wagon pulled up behind the others.
When its wheels had stopped, I folded my hands in front of me to keep them from trembling and counted out the seconds of a full minute. Then I stepped forward.
The air fairly hissed with angry murmurs, but I caught no clear words. Only a few people had got out of their wagons; and I noticed that the men on horseback stayed back, out of the range of the rifle hidden behind me.
“Good evening,” I called, with as much calm as I could muster. “What can I do for you?”
The air erupted with more angry sounds. I began to feel lightheaded and feared I might faint. “Please state your business,” I shouted.
The mob turned almost as one toward the last wagon that had arrived. There, a woman had risen to her feet. The crowd went suddenly silent. She was blackened by the sun behind her. I couldn’t see who it was.
The woman raised her hand and stabbed the air with it like a gospel preacher. “We have come for the witch!”
The voice was that of Isabel Tolhurst.
Chapter Thirty-four
The increased scuffling behind me was followed by a thud inside the house and another wail from Zia. “Deliver her to us,” Isabel was saying, “or we will be forced to burn this house that shelters this hex.” The mob nodded and shuffled about angrily.
“See here!” someone shouted. “In the past week, four families have come down with typhus, two with pox!”
Another voice called, “The widow Norton spoke with the witch one day in town, and the next mornin’ her hands was covered with warts.”
“My sweet baby was hale and happy one night,” whined a woman’s voice. “The next morning she was dead!”
“Deliver her to us, Matilda,” Isabel shouted.
I began to understand the presence of the Indians. They must be the former students at the school set up by Isabel and her husband. Perhaps she had called in a debt or somehow riled or coerced them.
I called Isabel’s name, making my voice as strong and sharp as I could. “Surely to God you cannot possibly believe this…this ridiculous rumor that Winona is a witch.”
“It is no rumor,” Isabel cried. “She bears the devil’s hoof-mark. It may not be visible to all, but I can see it plain. I can see it,” she repeated, hitting each word. The mob began to move forward.
One of them stopped, pointing at something on the ground behind me. “Look there!”
I ventured a glance over my shoulder and almost wept with consternation. A tarantula was marching slowly toward the door.
“Evelina, scat!”
The tarantula stopped and seemed to look at me.
“It is the witch woman’s beast!” someone yelled.
“It’s only a damn spider, and it’s mine, not hers,” I said loudly.
The mob drew back, whether at my brazen use of the word damn or my claiming ownership of the tarantula or something else, I didn’t know. You may get yourself burned at the stake this night or hanged alongside Winona, I told myself.
The crowd began to churn forward again, like the waves of an angry sea.
“Wait!” I shouted, striding a couple of steps forward. The crowd eddied and swirled, but came no further. “Isabel! You are a religious woman. Your husband was a Baptist preacher. You are yourself a Baptist missionary. For God’s sake and your own, you cannot do this thing!”
“God tells us we must cast down Satan’s spawn.”
The blood beat in my ears so that I could hardly hear. “The woman Winona has a child, a little girl not yet six months on this earth. You cannot take her mother from—”
The crowd roared, cutting me off, and the blood near froze in my veins. I should not have mentioned Zia. They would kill her, too. Isabel said nothing. I prayed that this had given her pause and that she would somehow be able to still this mob she had incited to such wrongful acts.
“Th
e devil’s spawn is in our midst,” some woman in the crowd screamed. “She must be cast down to hell, where the fire will purge her of her hideous deeds.”
“Stone her, stone her!” someone cried. “She has brought the pox upon us.” There was a scent of wild animal on the air.
Another yelled, “Mary Lukins bore a child with six fingers after talking with the witch.”
Isabel’s voice rose above the others. “The nigra child may not yet be tainted with her mother’s evil. I will take the baby and raise her to heed God’s word. If she does not give evidence of the devil’s work she may live.” The crowd roared its approval. Isabel raised both arms and the crowd stilled. “But you must deliver the witch to the Hand of God. Now!”
“Deliver her, deliver her,” the mob chanted and began to press toward me. Involuntarily, I backed away. A terrible weariness surged over me, and the earth seemed to sway beneath my feet. Tonio was immediately beside me, his hand at my elbow steadying me. A rifle hung over his other arm, the barrel open, at right angle to the stock, but ready enough to close and shoot if need be.
The mob stopped like a dull-witted animal trying to assess the situation.
Tonio plunged into the interval. Handing me the rifle, he stepped forward. The mob buzzed louder, then quieted. Some were sure to have heard tales of his healing powers. And the rumor that he was a priest was still widespread.
“You are all the children of God,” he said; and the crowd quieted even more, seemingly reassured that he would not berate them.
“The woman Winona is also a child of God.”
“Never!” a woman shrilled.
“She has put her hand upon you,” Isabel said. “She has blinded you!”
Tonio didn’t pause. “A man here fell ill, and the woman Winona ministered to him day and night. She did not rest. She barely ate. I was here. I know.”
The Mexicans and Indians had been still as stones, watching. But now they were nodding. “My little boy, mal, very ailing. The padre, he make mi niño healthy again,” a voice called.
“Sí. Curandéro,” another said. Medicine man.
I began to breathe more easily. Tonio seemed to have the mob in hand. It would soon be over. I watched his tall frame, bent a little at the shoulders, as he raised his arms to them again and the darker faces were looking up to him with reverence. Many Anglo chins were against their chests, so I could not see their reaction; but at least they were only shuffling their feet.
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