Listen to the Mockingbird (32 page)

“Perhaps you might try. It’s very damp here.”

I bent my legs and pushed myself into a sitting position. It seemed to take a very long time.

“That’s better.”

Flopped on its side next to me was the wagon. Rain sluiced from the two upturned wheels. There was no sign of Fanny.

“I cut her loose and tipped that off you.” He pointed at the wagon. “You were lucky, you know. Could have broken your neck.”

I gazed at him, silent. Even if I could somehow escape, where could I go?

“Come now, you might be a bit grateful.” He scrunched himself under the side of the wagon. “Move over here. Get out of the rain.”

I tried to gather my wits. He had killed Diego and Julio. Why hadn’t he simply killed me?

“Haven’t you the sense to get out of the weather, woman? Do as I say.” He motioned to a sheltered space under the edge of the wagon.

I scrambled toward it, knees slipping on the wet mud, and settled myself warily.

“I don’t suppose you have it with you.”

“Beg pardon?”

“The map.”

The realization came like white light. That’s why he hadn’t killed me. Morris had stood that day on the edge of the arroyo with another man, speaking of the map. He had killed others and he might aim to buy the land from me cheap, or run me off it, but he needed that map. And he believed I had it.

I gave my head the barest shake. “What are you talking about?”

Morris leaned back against the wagon, brought the rifle to rest across his legs and crossed his arms. “Going to play coy, are we?”

My arms and hands were rimed with mud. I wiped them on my sodden skirt, which was torn straight up the front, nearly to the waist. My elbow brushed something just beneath the wagon. I made to look at my hands and slid my eyes toward it. The knitting bag, the color gone black with the wet. Inside it was my pistol. But it was between us. I lifted the torn skirt to cover it and inched my fingers toward it.

“I told the general, you know,” I lied. “I told him you killed those two boys.” I wished with all my heart I had done just that.

Morris gave an ugly chuckle. “If he has not already learned that you’re a convicted thief yourself, awaiting trial for one of those murders, I will have the satisfaction of telling him that myself.” Morris spit into a puddle next to him. “The Mex kid had a map on him. Where is it?”

“Why did you kill him?” My hand closed on the brocade bag. Beyond the lieutenant, I saw Fanny. She had found some shelter beneath an old mesquite. The palomino stood next to the wagon in the still-cascading rain.

Morris’ eyes held mine, and he fingered the butt of the rifle. Then he slapped his leg. “Why not? A real gentleman, that kid. When we found out you had bought the land, he thought we had to cut you in. I told him there was no woman in the world we couldn’t run off that land, but he wouldn’t listen. Next he would’ve been cutting in the tinker, the tailor, the candlestick maker.”

“And Julio?”

Morris frowned. “Who is Julio?”

I tried to hold his eyes. “The boy who worked for me.” The bag was too tight under the side of the wagon. I couldn’t open it. I tried to wrest it from its trap, but if I pulled too hard Morris would see. My knuckles scraped on a chunk of rock and I winced.

But he was looking elsewhere. When he looked back, his smile was lopsided and ugly. “The kid who fancied himself an artist? Surely you can guess.” He moved his hand toward his jacket pocket, and I realized he was not in uniform. He withdrew a length of rope from the pocket and my throat seemed to fill with broken glass as I recalled Julio dangling from the víga in the barn. Why was Morris not in uniform? But of course—he was not a Union officer; he was a Confederate.

The bag would not come free. I forced down my panic and pulled again. It was wedged tight. My hand brushed again across the rock. I could throw that, but the odds for injuring Morris with it were practically nil.

“I give you my word, I won’t harm you. I regret, however, that it is necessary to bind you,” Morris was saying. “I can’t have you flitting off, can I? As soon as I have the map I’ll set you free.”

I knew there wasn’t a whit of truth in that. He must think me a great fool and easy to hoodwink. Then I remembered something. In as normal a voice as I could muster, I said, “I gave it to someone.”

“Who?”

“Jamie O’Rourke.” I pried at the rock.

“Bullshit! He’s dead.”

“I gave it to him as soon as I found it, before…” The rock came loose. My fingers closed around it.

Morris’ eyes fell to where my wrist disappeared beneath my skirt. “What are you doing?” He grabbed for the rifle.

Whisking my hand from its cover, I hurled the rock, hitting the palomino on the chest. Instantly, she reared. I threw myself away from the wagon just as her hooves toppled it, throwing Morris face first into the mud.

Skirts hiked to the thigh, I ran, my shoes skidding on the mud. Fanny raised her head and watched me come. Twice I tried to mount her; but with no saddle, no stirrups, I slid helplessly to the ground.

I darted a look back at the wagon. The palomino was still rearing and kicking, but nothing else moved. I tore off my petticoat, tied the torn pieces of my skirt about my waist to free my legs and tried again. This time I succeeded. With only my knees and hands to guide her, I steered Fanny back toward the fort.

The rain had halted suddenly, as if its wide ribbons had been severed by some cleaver. The mist began to lift.

I would go straight to Canby. He would have the lieutenant apprehended. Whether he believed me about the murders mattered little because I would tell him something of great consequence to Canby himself.

Tyler Morris wore the faded shirt and trousers of a ranch hand. But after eavesdropping on him and his companion that day on the mesa, I knew that he was a Confederate officer. Fillmore was now a Union fort, Canby a Union General. Lieutenant Morris was not only a murderer, he was a traitor, a spy.

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.”