999
Quite a sight I must have made tearing up to the fort clinging to Fanny’s mane, face streaked with mud, shredded skirt tied about my middle, legs clad in mud-begrimed white pantalets gripping my horse so tight my knees ached.
“Here, here!” shouted one of the guards as I whizzed past unable to rein Fanny and praying they would not fire.
When the mare finally halted, a dozen men surrounded us, weapons raised. I attempted a haughty shout but managed little better than a croak: “I am Matilda Summerhayes. I was the general’s guest earlier, and I must see him again, posthaste.”
I leapt to the ground and dashed for the door I knew led to Canby’s office. The soldiers grabbed my arms and shoulders. I stopped, shook them loose and said with as much dignity as I could marshal, “I must see the general. He will not take it kindly if you delay me.”
“She’s not armed,” muttered one.
“She’s not even dressed,” murmured another.
In the end, they escorted me to the office.
“Shall I announce you?” someone asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, and pushed open the door.
Canby and Colonel Carson were bent over a table examining something spread upon it. The general scowled. “My word! Miss Summerhayes!”
“I have urgent information for you,” I said. He straightened and started to say something, but I cut him off. “One of your officers, Lieutenant Tyler Morris, is a spy!”
Canby removed the dead cigar from his mouth. The silence stretched and darkened like a thunderhead. “Indeed, he is—I saw to his training myself.”
I exhaled, my words about the murders dead in my throat.
The general gazed at me, displeasure written all over his face. “Perhaps you would like to cover yourself.”
999
“It is utterly hopeless,” I wailed to Winona, rocking back and forth on a chair at my kitchen table and raking my fingers through my hair.
After my unseemly display, Canby had brusquely sent for an escort to see me home.
“You done told the general this Morris kilt those boys?”
“Of course, I told him; but he only surveyed me standing there in my underwear, drenched to the skin and dripping all over his floor, and said he would look into it. Morris won’t waste a moment telling him I am a known thief and an accused killer myself.”
“If that man still be on the loose, you ain’t safe, nohow. Not by a jugful.” Winona rose from her chair and set some water to boil. “If you so much as set foot out of this house, he up and grab you and torment you about that map.”
“And I won’t live ten minutes past the time he learns the map is gone, that Tonio destroyed it.” A thought burst to the surface of my mind. I leapt up and headed for the door.
Winona followed me. “You be more fool than I take you for if you go out there.”
“I have to warn Tonio. What if Morris finds out that Tonio knows every mark on that map? That he’s the one who drew it?”
“Send someone else,” Winona said firmly. “You got to stay inside these here walls, with one of them men to guard you.”
“I will do no such thing.”
But, of course, I had no choice.
I sent Homer to fetch Tonio, who received my news solemnly. I described Morris in detail. “You must arm yourself. And if you see this man you must shoot to kill, or he will surely kill you. You have a gun?”
Tonio nodded gravely and promised to be exceeding wary.
“You must pile together some brush inside a trench. If you see this man, you must set fire to it, and I will arm myself and send someone to you.”
He agreed. “And you must do the same. You must promise to set a fire if there is danger.”
“I promise.”
999
For nearly a week I remained a prisoner in my own home with the guard on my own payroll while the ranch work fell further and further behind. I tried to write Nanny, but could not seem to fashion the right lies. Even music could not cheer me. My flute had moldered many months in my bureau; but with a few days of steady practice, the tones were coming clear. I should have been gladdened. Instead, I quickly became impatient at sitting about the house with naught to do but twiddle my fingers and blow into a silver pipe.
By the seventh morning, I was half-crazed with shut-in fever. I dressed and prepared to go out.
Winona blocked my way.
“I cannot live like this,” I shouted at her.
“You be going out there, you maybe have a very short life.”
The argument was cut short by the sound of a horse arriving. Winona and I peered out the window. A soldier in Yankee uniform was dismounting. I opened the door and stepped outside. “May I help you?”
“Matilda Summerhayes?”
I nodded.
“The general requests that you accompany me to see him.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
The general looked up from the papers he was signing as I was shown into his office. Rising, he removed a pair of small round spectacles and rubbed his nose.
Acutely aware of the sorry state in which he had last seen me, I tried to stand very straight. I had badgered my escort with questions but had got no answers.
“You wished to see me, sir?”
“Do be seated, Miss Summerhayes.”
I perched stiffly on the Hitchcock chair and waited with chill resolve for Canby to say he had learned that I myself stood accused of the very murder I claimed Morris had committed. Why else would he have sent for me?
The general folded his spectacles and began to pace. “I owe you an apology and a measure of deep gratitude.”
“Beg pardon?”
Canby tapped the frame of the spectacles against his teeth then turned to face me directly. “I have confronted Mr. Morris as well as his contact here with us—separately, of course. I also have spoken with their superior, Captain Paddy Graydon. Mr. Morris brought us a good deal of valuable information. But it seems that you were correct. He also betrayed us. As did his contact, who elected to tell me everything in exchange for his life. They are both in the guardhouse.”
It was as though I had put every ounce of strength I possessed into ramming a door and, just as my shoulder touched it, the door opened. I was racing headlong past my target unable to stop. I opened my mouth to speak but could find no words at all.
“What is it?” he asked kindly.
“I wonder,” I said when I found myself. “Would it be possible for me to see Morris?”
“For mercy’s sake, why?”
Still quite giddy with relief, I ventured a small smile. “There have been so many dreadful happenings, I should like to understand.”
The general chewed on the stem of his spectacles; I wondered what had become of his cigar. “I’m sorry, no. Mr. Morris is with a padre, preparing himself.”
“He will be…?”
“Executed, yes. I take a dim view of betrayal. A very dim view, indeed. He was responsible for the deaths of eight of my men. But it would not be seemly to interrupt his prayers.”
I looked at my hands, gripped tightly in my lap. “You said there is another man. Morris’ contact. Could I speak with him?”
The general clearly could not understand this hankering of mine to converse with criminals, but finally he agreed. “That might be arranged.”
General Canby’s aide, a man with a sour face and a drooping mustache, saw me to the guardhouse and showed me to a bleak and rather dirty room. The shaft of sunlight from the small window did little to brighten the gloom. A plank bench was brought for me and I had just settled myself upon it when the door opened and a man was pushed inside.
He took three steps into the room, his leg-irons making a dismal clanking. For a long moment, the only sound was the creak of my escort’s boots as he shifted his weight where he stood against the wall.
I could see little of the prisoner in the dark room save that he was large, his clothes disheveled, his
hair unkempt and his stance as belligerent as his circumstances would allow.
“You were a friend of Lieutenant Tyler Morris?”
The quaver in my voice annoyed me, and I cleared my throat. When he didn’t answer, I repeated my question.
His reply was so low, I had to strain to hear. “I knew him.”
“I would take it as a kindness if you would tell me what you knew of his activities regarding the ranch called Mockingbird Spring.”
He spat on the floor. “I would take it as a kindness if you would piss off.”
Involuntarily, I jerked back, then studied my hands in silence. Was I to be cowed by a prisoner in chains? I bade myself to rise, drew myself to my full height, strode toward him and peered into his face. What I found there surprised me, but I did not draw back.
“I know nothing of Mockingbird Spring.” His eyes were small and hard, like those of a dog biding its time before an attack. “Never heard of it.”
I turned away from him and walked to the window. “But you have. You stood on that ranch not a month ago, on the edge of an arroyo—about noon, it was—and spoke with Tyler Morris about a map of that land.”
The face I had gazed into was broad and square below dirty pale hair. The stubble of a week’s growth of beard did not hide the scar that might have been drawn with white ink on the sun-darkened cheek. This time, I recognized that face. This was the officer whose foot I had trod on in clumsy haste in the plaza the day after Diego had died in my barn. “You are Lieutenant Beauregard Jenks, are you not?”
“No longer lieutenant, as you well know,” he snarled. “They have stripped me of that.”
“That had naught to do with me. It was because of Morris. You were a good officer before he tempted you with talk of gold. It was he who ruined you.”
“He did that, all right.”
“Some time ago, I trod on your foot in clumsy haste in the plaza. Do you remember that? Why were you in the plaza that day?”
“Because the bloody fool had got himself shot. A bullet had grazed his damn face. I couldn’t take him to the fort. No one was to know that he was with us. I had to fetch some salve from the barber.”
“Did you know he took that bullet while killing a boy on my ranch?”
“A Mex kid.”
“The boy had a map.”
Jenks’ eyes narrowed to slits. He said nothing.
“I gave that map to someone,” I said quickly. “Someone who is now dead.” Jenks might be in prison now, but there was no guarantee he would stay there. “I do not know what became of the map.”
“James O’Rourke.”
I blinked away the tears that rose at the name of my lost friend.
“Morris blundered there. He was to rile O’Rourke to kill Baylor, but it turned the other way.” Jenks paused. “He didn’t know that dolt of an editor had the map. He reckoned you had it. He knew it wasn’t on the kid’s body. He dug up the coffin.”
I sighed silent relief that Jenks had accepted my story. “Why did Morris try to buy my land?”
Jenks gave a dry laugh. “That wasn’t Morris. That was me. I had a little put aside. I thought it would be so much cleaner, easier, if we just bought it.”
“Cleaner and easier than what?”
“Than burning you off it. Running you off it. He even ruffled up that preacher’s woman about that nigra of yours. He was a good riler, was Morris. I tried to tell him we could find that gold without the map, but Morris wanted things the easy way. He wanted that map.”
“How did he know Diego Ramirez?
Jenks snorted. “Morris had just linked up with us. We sent him to San Antone to join the Texans. He just happened to sit down next to that Mex kid in a saloon. The kid had a story of a mine. Sure enough, he had a nugget and a map to prove it, but he’d run out of money. He couldn’t even get himself out of Texas without cashing in that bit of gold, and he was almighty fond of that nugget.”
“Why did Lieutenant Morris tell you about the map, about the boy?”
“Morris didn’t have any money. He lost just about every three-cent piece he laid hands on before it got to his pocket. Poker. Three times I had to give him the money to get himself elected lieutenant.”
“Was he a good spy?”
“Oh, he was that. He gave us the territory. He told us exactly where that Reb wagon train would be after Glorieta. But he was also feeding the graybacks and using our spoon to do it.”
“Why?”
“Money, of course. He was into that blackguard of a gambler in Mesilla for hundreds.”
“You knew that?”
“Of course, I didn’t know it. I would have been tickled pretty to turn him in. You would have sold that land eventually, and I would have me a gold mine all to myself.” Jenks spit on the floor again in contempt.
“But General Canby thinks you did know.”
“I should have known. When I put all the bits and pieces together, it was obvious. But Canby’s a hard man. He said it mattered not whether I was a knowing party to it; it was my responsibility to put those pieces together sooner.”
“You told the general everything?”
“If I hadn’t I would be standing out there next to Morris, looking into the next world from behind a blindfold.”
I was about to ask if he had told Canby about their interest in my land when a soldier stepped through the still-open door. “The general requests your presence, ma’am.”
999
Canby was leaning against his desk, arms folded across his chest.
“Did you learn what you wanted to know?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I shall arrange for the charges against you to be dropped, although that may take a little time because I cannot divulge my full knowledge to the civil authorities.”
I had not expected so much luck on a single day. “Thank you.” Giddy with relief, I thanked him twice more.
“Also, I have a proposal for you.”
“Yes?”
“I understand you own the horse ranch called Mockingbird Spring. I should like to purchase it. I will give you a very good price.”
And he named a figure more than twice what I had paid for it.
My mouth dropped open, and I fear I may have drooled like an idiot.
“Come, come,” he said to my wordless stare. “The price is not fair?”
“It is very fair, sir.”
“I am a horseman, you know. In my native Kentucky there is no higher calling than breeding horses. I find this valley quite to my liking, and your horses are said to be very fine.”
My head was still whirling.
“I am told you work the ranch only from necessity,” he said gruffly, “not from any liking of it. After all, it is hardly a fit occupation for a woman.”
An odd sense of impending loss stirred within me. Almost everyone believed I did not belong on a horse ranch, not least of all myself. But suddenly I was loath to sever myself from this “unseemly” occupation.
“Well?” the general rumbled.
A series of distant cracking sounds interrupted my spinning thoughts. “Forgive me. I fear I’m too stunned to answer just now. I’m sure you will allow me to think it over?”
Just then the door opened. A tall, lean captain marched in, saluted, gave a sharp nod and departed. Morris would no longer trouble me.
I turned to leave but at the door turned back. “Beg pardon, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Did Lieutenant Jenks tell you anything about my ranch?”
“Jenks? What would he know to tell me?”
“Nothing, sir.”
999
At home, I danced through the parlor toward Winona, unable to contain myself. Frowning, she listened silently while I related the events of my journey to Fort Fillmore.
“Even my fondest hopes,” I finished, “were that I might—might, mind you—get that much money for the ranch after three or four more years, and then only if the breeding business prospered. But now
we might as well start packing for Philadelphia.”
“That is mighty good news, Miss Matty.” I hardly noticed that she didn’t smile.
The next day and the one after I did not go out to do the chores. Instead, I set about mending my dresses and babbling about bonnets and bustles.
Winona muttered at me, “You done told the general you take his offer?”
“Not yet. I’ll take the carriage in tomorrow. But this time I want to look right. I want him to know I’m a proper lady. I have to get this awful dress sewn up first.”
“That be a right fine buckboard, but it ain’t no carriage.”
“I’ll buy all the silk Mr. Garza has in stock. I don’t suppose he has any pongee or linen or Swiss muslin. I wonder if there’s a good seamstress in town. You and I and Zia will have twenty new gowns.”
“Zia needs diapers, not gowns. And a muslin frock be plenty good enough for me.”
Her straight face and set jaw baffled me. “Whatever has annoyed you, Winona?”
“Nothing,” she said sulkily and stomped out of the room.
I went back to my sewing. Whatever it was would right itself as soon as we were on our way to Philadelphia. I was sure of that. I made a mental note to buy a bolt of cloth for petticoats as well.
The following morning, being Saturday, Ruben and the other hands took off for town. Since I no longer needed a bodyguard, I let them go early. Nacho and Herlinda had gone to Doña Ana for a few days to visit his sister, who was ill. Herlinda had been strongly affected by the exorcism I had so brazenly staged. The air had finally stopped squirming with sullen looks, and she and Winona had become almost cordial.
I was so intent on what I would say to Canby that I heard no horse approaching. The thumping on the door startled me. I hadn’t finished dressing, so I stuck my head into the hall. “Winona?”
She didn’t answer.
I hastily donned the waist I had laid out and was still fastening the long line of buttons as I made my way to the parlor.
Winona was at the door, her shoulders stiff the way they get when her mind is boggled.
“Who is it?” I asked.
She didn’t turn. “I ain’t sure.”
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