Listen to the Mockingbird (29 page)

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 began 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.

“The 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.

“The woman Winona—”

“No!” The voice that cut Tonio off came from behind me.

Dozens of hands pointed. I swung around. Winona, clutching Zia to her chest, was moving slowly out of the house. Her face was the color of mud. Behind her was Herlinda, prodding her with the barrel of a rifle.

“Brúja!” Herlinda howled. “She kill my son!” Herlinda jabbed the rifle barrel toward Tonio. “No padre. Maybe one time. No mas. He take mujér. This woman.” She pointed to me. “Durmiendos. Júntos. I see it. They bed together.”

A rumbling roar rose from the mob. Whether at me or at Tonio or Winona, I did not know; but in that moment I believed we were doomed.

“Herlinda!” A voice to my right penetrated the din. Nacho rounded the corner of the house. He had lost much weight and had not yet gained it back. He looked spindly and weak, but the crowd paused to stare at him.

Nacho was shaking his head; and in the last light of the sun, his eyes looked old as God’s. “Es no verdád, mujér. This is not truth.” His voice was very low, and I was afraid no one would hear him; but tongues seemed to hush for that very reason.

He went over to Herlinda, said something to her that I could not hear and put his arm about her. She seemed to collapse onto his shoulder.

“We are wasting time!” Isabel’s voice leapt into the void that followed as Nacho led the sobbing Herlinda into the house. “The witch stands before you! Gather the stones!”

The crowd flowed forward again, and a pebble thrown from somewhere thunked into the wall of the house, spraying little chunks of mud.