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Many’s the time I’ve ladled up a plate of beans for a drifter, no questions asked. Might be I could feel my own heels in their worn-out boots. But I most certainly never allowed a drifter into the parlor. Once their bellies are full they like as not get rowdy. So I was shocked and even a bit annoyed to hear myself inviting him in.

  A search of the kitchen produced a chunk of yellow cheese, and I boiled up a fresh pot of coffee. Our cheese making was not yet perfected—the pale slabs I set out were crumbly. “Won’t win any prizes,” I told him, “but it’s quite edible.”

  “I’m sure it is,” he nodded. “I’m right grateful for your hospitality.”

  Perching stiffly across from him at the table, I watched his hands move with a peculiar sort of grace as he ate. The fingers were narrow, not tapered; the knuckles larger than the rest. On his right hand was a ring, its edges blunted by wear but almost certainly gold. His glance at my own hands made me drop them to my lap. The nails were cracked, the skin rough and ugly.

  Raising my eyes, I looked straight into his. “You spoke of a favor?”

  “There’s a cave near here. I hear you own the land.”

  That brought me up short, recalling the boy’s map. “The cuevas?” I asked sharply.

  The stranger nodded and said easily, “I’d like to put up there for a time.”

  “How did you hear of the caves?”

  Two straight lines puckered over his nose as he frowned. “Can’t rightly say I recall. Someone mentioned them.”

  “You packing a weapon?” The way I snapped the words out sounded a mite bolder than I felt.

  “No, ma’am.” Lifting his hands palm up, he rose slowly, as if expecting me to search his person. “You’re welcome to look through my bag. It’s just yonder.” He started toward the door.

  “Sit down,” I ordered and fetched it myself, a sort of made-over saddlebag, the leather as worn and cracked as soil too long without rain. Wondering what had possessed me to accuse him but unwilling to back down before that level brown gaze, I carefully shook the contents onto the kitchen’s plank floor. I could not make out all that was rolled up in bits of cloth, but nothing had near the weight of a gun.

  “Beg pardon if I seem over mindful,” I said gruffly, handing him the bag and sitting again at the table. “We had a shooting, just last night.”

  “Can’t be too cautious these days,” he agreed, gazing plumb straight through my eyes into my head. Then he began putting things more to his liking inside the bag. “Does that mean I cannot bide a spell at the cave?”

  I sighed. There seemed nothing objectionable about him. Another day he might have found me quite hospitable. “Why are you bent on staying there?”

  He seemed to think about that a moment. “Looks to be out of the wind and dry. Why not?”

  “Coyotes, for one. Rattlers for another. Indians for a third. Bobcats and scorpions, I shouldn’t wonder. Might even be the odd bear or two. There’s only a sort of two-room cave, you know, no house, not even a lean-to. And it’s a good sixteen miles from Mesilla, thirty or more from Franklin.”

  A smile began at one corner of Tonio Bernini’s mouth and moved like a slow sunrise across the canyons. “Be that as it may, I’ve put up in worse places.” He sat down again across from me and picked up the bit of dry tortilla left on his plate.

  Suddenly curious, I asked, “How do you eat if you don’t even pack a hunting rifle?”

  “A goodly number of edibles grow most anywhere. Small game is easy enough with a trap, and I’ve a fair aim with a slingshot. That was mighty good cheese, by the way. A real treat.”

  I found him another chunk of it then studied his face as he ate it. His manners were a good sight neater than most. I reckoned his years might be nearing fifty. His shirt was fresh clean, faded by many washings. I wondered how he managed to stay clean if he was putting up in worse places than a cave. A rumpled bandana hung below the open collar. A hint of curl lent the thick hair a slightly unruly look. But I kept going back to the eyes. They at once beckoned one forward and bade one keep a proper distance. They seemed to conceal something, but also to warrant that the man who lived inside was no danger.

  A bit of the eggshell I’d used to settle the coffee grounds floated in my cup, and I fished it out with a spoon. “In truth, I am not eager to see any stranger set up camp nearby.”

  He folded his hands on the table in front of his empty plate. “I give you my word I will bring no trouble. Might be I could do some service.”

  I couldn’t halt a smile and passed my hand over my mouth as if to cover it. “You don’t much have the look of a hand,” I said more sharply than I intended.

  Those eyes held mine longer than I liked before he gave a short nod. “I do know plants—the root that calms colic, the leaves that relieve indigestion…”

  The stiffness left my limbs. “Ah, you’re a healer, then.”

  “Of sorts.” The eyes steady on mine were dark and shiny and ever so gently amused, which annoyed me again.

  But Doc Adams had up and died a year before. The barber in town could patch up cuts, if they weren’t too deep, and set some bones; but the closest real doctor was in Franklin, nigh a day’s journey.

  “How long a time are we talking here?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “Like as not, I’ll move on by winter.”

  The caves were little use to me. I tried again to read what was written behind his eyes but found that territory still well guarded. “All right,” I pronounced slowly.

  He got to his feet. “I do appreciate it, ma’am.”

  Struggling with second thoughts, I rose, too, hastening to add, “You’re to remember I’m the owner here. If ever I ask it, you must move on right quickly. Before winter or no.”

  “Understood,” he agreed solemnly. “I’ll get on down there, then. Thank you kindly for the breakfast.”

  “You’d best feed your horse, too. There’s plenty of hay and a bag of oats in the barn.”

  He shook his head, his eyes seeming to hint at a private jest. “I have no horse.”

  “You can’t be on foot!” There was the odd settlement here and there, but none I would have wanted to walk to. The cuevas were a mile or so south of the house. “Where—?”

  But I stopped myself. It was not my habit to ask folk where they came from. I wanted no gate open for the same to be asked of me.

  Tonio Bernini nodded at his boots. They were round-toed, wide-heeled and the color of dust. “They get me where I want to go.” He hoisted a pack strap over his shoulder, opened the door and stepped out, then turned back. “Reckon you don’t see many strangers out this way.”

  “Used to be true enough, but we had two others just yesterday. One did some shooting, the other did some dying.”

  He cast me a glance that seemed as mournful as questioning.

  “Mexican kid. Someone killed him, and his mule. We’ve no idea who he was.”

  “Sorry to hear it.” My new tenant ducked his head gravely. As he turned again to leave, it occurred to me that strangers sometimes meet in saloons and such. Might be one could identify another. “Maybe you’d recognize him.”

  This latest stranger shook his head. “Not likely. I don’t know many folk.”

  “You must see a few from time to time. Mind taking a look?”

  He paused for a long moment as though thinking it over then nodded reluctantly and followed me to the barn.

  The blade of ice pricked up again in my chest. The boy looked no better in the sunlight now slanting through the door than he had in the lantern light the night before. He seemed to take up so little space. He was, or had been, little more than a child, thin and wiry, and rather short. Catching a tense look in Tonio Bernini’s eyes I saw he was even less fond of death than I.

  He squatted down beside the body. With the back of his hand he touched the cheek of the narrow, hungry face below the hideous void where the forehead had been. When he stood, a look of infinite sadness seemed to hover about his eyes; then his brow wen
t smooth. “Sorry. He’s a stranger to me.”

  Chapter Three

  The next morning Miss Feather, our roan mare, went into labor. The mare’s face had put me in mind of my English mistress at Bartholomew’s. Naming the horse after her had been sheer meanness, of course, but the woman wasn’t apt to learn of it.

  This would be the first colt from George Washington, the handsome stud Nacho had chosen at the auction. His purchase was the first time I pronounced the word stud aloud.

  We had high hopes for old George. He had cost the princely sum of five hundred dollars. We pampered him with oats, and George was happy to do what was expected of him. Miss Feather was less pleased, but she had obliged.

  Again, I put off going to Mesilla, this time to learn how to be midwife to a horse. That was the first birthing I tended, a quick and normal one. There was little for Nacho or me to do but stand by, watch and marvel. When Miss Feather licked away the mucus and the fine little filly wobbled her way to the mare’s teats, I was purely thrilled.

  With the colt suckling heartily, I saddled Fanny and got ready to ride into town to tell Zeke that an unknown Mexican boy had breathed his last in my barn.

  999

  Fanny lowered her head and stretched her legs into an easy gallop. I watched the grey mane flare across the back of her neck and listened to the power of her hooves pummeling the earth like an exuberant drummer.

  Mesquite stood like placid, graceful deer amid the scraggly, defiant creosote and rabbit grass. Long, thin shadows were sharp black, like iron swords stabbing the land. My first thought on seeing that land was that for vast stretches there seemed so little to hide behind. But I was growing accustomed to the emptiness.

  Fanny is an Appaloosa, bred from mustangs, a handsome mottled grey with white stockings, black mane and tail. She was also a mindreader. When we slowed to a trot, she turned her ears to listen to my thoughts.

  A wide brocade bag bumped at my knee. In that was my pistol. Indians hadn’t given me much bother since I’d come to the Valley, but there had been a raid or two further south. And rascals were always about, sometimes local men drunk and mean as goats, sometimes drifters. No telling who might be full of himself and thinking up mischief, so it was out of the question to go about unarmed. Nonetheless, I couldn’t quite bring myself to strap one on my hip. I still had my limits.

  I began to wonder what had possessed me to allow a drifter to set up camp on my land and resolved to look in on him soon to be sure he wasn’t brewing up some sort of devilment.

  999

  Most of the buildings in Mesilla were mud, a few were wood weathered to stone grey, one or two were dusty brick. They clustered around the plaza like old women at a fountain. I looped Fanny’s reins over a post. Subduing my vague uneasiness about visiting the sheriff, I strode briskly across the duckboards in front of the hotel and headed for the brick building behind the bank. I failed to notice the door of the barbershop swinging open, a man in uniform stepping out. I trod smack on his foot.

  “Beg pardon.” I felt the flush creep up my neck as I looked into a broad face the color of honey. A thin white scar ran along the jaw all the way to his ear.

  He made a small, annoyed smile then looked me up and down, clearly trying to decide whether he should doff his hat. Desperately hoping that some tattered evidence of good breeding still remained to me, I was greatly relieved when he lifted the hat a few inches. His hair was yellow and tidy, his eyes like bright blue pebbles. “Lieutenant Beau Jenks, U.S. Army.”

  I apologized again, trying for the dulcet tones my voice had once learned but had now nigh forgot.

  “No harm done, no harm.” He marched off stiff-legged and, by the look of his back, still annoyed.

  But at least he had not treated me like some strumpet out for a stroll and blinded by the daytime sun. I smoothed my hair, slowed my pace and watched where I was going.

  Zeke Fountain swung his huge feet off his scarred and blackened desk when I opened the door. He was a big man with tufts of carroty hair and a neck like an ox. A dent circled his head where his hat perched. His eyes were small and set wide in the broad, fleshy face. This morning, the eyes looked vexed.

  Zeke’s wife had run off with a drummer the summer before, and I can’t say I blamed her. He was ham-fisted and block-headed, the sort no woman would want to be seen with.

  He was more interested in the newspaper spread out on his desk than he was in my story.

  “It wasn’t one of my hands did it. Nacho says they were all in their bunks. Must have been some vile drifter. He even killed a mule,” I finished.

  Zeke grunted. “There’s always some such varmint about. Like as not drunked up on tarantula juice.” He brought one ham of a fist down on the newspaper. “I knew there’d be trouble. Horse breeding’s no fit work for a woman on her own hook.”

  “It hardly has to do with me,” I sputtered.

  Zeke leveled his mean gaze on me. “If you was after knocking off a Mex kid, would you do it out to your place where there’s nothing but a spindly Mex foreman or out to Jess Parker’s?” Parker viewed everyone as a potential cattle thief and ran off anyone who so much as set the toe of a boot on his land.

  “That’s nonsense.” I gulped back the rest of my retort and lowered my voice. “I have plenty of men about, Zeke, and they’re all armed.”

  “Knew I shoulda kept an eye on the place.” He moved his head slowly back and forth. “I knew there’d be trouble. It just weren’t meant to be. Woman jefes,” he snorted.

  If there was anything I didn’t want, it was more of Zeke’s—or anyone else’s—eye on me. I stared at him, and he must have taken the look for strength because he nodded stiffly and muttered, “No Mex missing I know of. Guess you just got to dig him under.” He shrugged and went back to his newspaper.

  Jamie O’Rourke’s office was just around the corner. Jamie was the government surveyor. It was he who had told me about the ranch and sweet-talked me into buying it. I’d been a stranger to the valley with no mind to stay. I was headed for San Antonio; but truth be told, I had no idea what I would do there, either. I had thought that after everything else the rest would be easy. But I’d no more than found myself and the cherrywood chest a room at the boardinghouse for the night when I suffered a terrible attack of panic. Perhaps it had to do with calling myself Matilda Summerhayes. That was the first time. And the name did not set easy on my tongue.

  My heart began to beat like that of a dying bird, my breath went from me, and my thoughts rammed into each other. I slept not a wink that night and the next morning it was fair more than I could do to get out of bed. I missed the stage for San Antonio; and when I did venture out, I learned there wouldn’t be another headed in that direction for a fortnight.

  As it happened, Jamie’s sister-in-law was staying at the boardinghouse. A bulldog sort of woman, short and solid, with bright brown eyes that snapped sparks, Eliza O’Rourke struck up a conversation with me over supper. She had married four times and outlived them all. Her sister, Jamie’s wife, had died some years before; but she had a liking for Jamie, so she’d stopped for a visit on her way to San Francisco.

  Eliza insisted on introducing me to him, and it was that very day he had learned that Byron Cox had succumbed to a fever. Cox was a horse breeder, Jamie explained, with a ranch called Mockingbird Spring. Near the cuevas, he said, as if I knew where that was.

  I was still not myself and didn’t say much, except that I was a widow with a small estate and on my way to San Antonio. Jamie, quick as he always was, discerned that nothing much awaited me in Texas. He had a silver tongue, Jamie did; and he loved the valley with a passion contagious as the pox. He could have stood on a street corner in St. Louis and sweet-talked six folk out of ten into packing up, crossing the country and settling here. He cajoled, coaxed and coerced until I thought buying the Cox ranch a brilliant thing to do.

  It would have to be done quickly, he said, before the hands up and left. The foreman, he assured me, was one o
f the best. Perhaps Jamie turned my head when he said the valley had too few handsome, clever women. No one had paid me a compliment in nigh onto four years. When he mentioned that in a half-dozen years I could sell the ranch for twice what I paid I realized that kind of money would be enough to see me settled back East. And I confess the name Mockingbird Spring struck a wry chord; I felt a kinship with the bird that imitates others and pretends to be something it is not.

  999

  Jamie fixed me with his bright blue eyes as I slid into the chair next to his desk. The aroma of ink was thick and pungent. I pulled my skirt close about my legs, sitting primly, mindful of the smudges that lurked everywhere and wondering how Jamie always stayed so tidy.

  “If you don’t have the prettiest eyes I ever did see. Not blue, are they?”

  “Grey,” I said. Jamie’s head was ear-to-ear with blarney, but he had something about him that made you believe he had your best interests at heart. In addition to his string tie and what was likely the only set of clean male fingernails in the valley, he also sported a black-and-white sense of right and wrong.

  Jamie was determined to put the Mesilla Valley on the map. He had come here as land agent five or six years before, soon after the Gadsden Purchase had transferred thousands of miles of land west of the Rio Grande to the United States.

  The way he told it, people weren’t real pleased about the Purchase or about a land agent. Right after the war with Mexico, a lot of folks had up and moved from nearby communities to Mesilla. In the war, their hometowns had been lost to the U.S., but Mesilla still belonged to Mexico, which meant it was eligible for land grant. They had just secured one when Gadsden cut their new home away from Mexico and patched it neatly into New Mexico Territory. Now it was necessary to buy the land, which was where Jamie came in.

  He was a charmer, all right. He managed to reshuffle so many papers that no one paid much. After that, there was hardly a soul within thirty miles who didn’t dote on Jamie. Late last year he had decided that a thriving village needed a newspaper and launched the Mesilla Times.

  “Confederate or Yank?” he growled at me, then grinned. His face was pink and smooth and shiny as a baby’s, except for the bushy eyebrows. Greyish-brown wisps of hair clustered around his ears but had long ago deserted the top of his head. There was nothing Jamie loved so much as a good argument. Since he had printed the paper’s first issue last fall, he had warmed to the task of making his opinions known. His tirades were good as any preacher’s, and I’d never known him to hold a grudge against those who disagreed. He just marked them as needing a bit more instruction.