Listen to the Mockingbird by Penny Rudolph Read Free Book Online

out from under my camisole. Its owner clearly thought the content was valuable. Why?
    I drew out the yellowed scrap of foolscap and studied the markings again. It was a map of my ranch, all right. And a little more. There was an odd series of X’s above the spring. Far as I knew, there was nothing up there but rocks. Below the X’s, some dim markings led like a path from where the arroyo bent as it left the mountains a little beyond the cuevas.
    The morning sun was so bright it hurt my eyes. A squirrel followed me to the barn hoping for a handout. I took a pecan from my pocket and tossed it to him. He checked it over like an urchin biting a coin to be sure it’s real, nodded his approval, flicked his tail like a naughty dancer and disappeared.
    “Fanny!” I called to the mare in the corral. When I had saddled and cinched her and eased the bit between her teeth, I went back to the house to fetch my pistol. As an afterthought, I slipped my flute into the brocade bag next to it. After my poor performance at the boy’s funeral, I had resolved to practice more, but there was so little time. I pulled myself into Fanny’s saddle, fumbled at my skirt so it wouldn’t bind my legs and wondered what folks would think if I sewed myself some trousers.
    Along the arroyo, the junipers grew larger, and a few piñon pines wandered down the mountain to join them. Last year’s yucca blooms had turned papery above the barbed spears. Here and there new waxy-white blossoms were opening. Fanny picked her way past a patch of cholla that was all angles and thorns and tall as a man.
    At the cuevas, the land becomes flat, a broad, high shelf; and you can see across the entire valley to Mesilla. Fanny followed the arroyo to where the pines and junipers congregate. The sun was razor-sharp, and I was glad for the shade.
    I slipped down from the mare’s back. If the map was right, this was where the path—if that’s what it was—began.
    Beyond the trees, the sun-mottled brush was thick and matted all the way to where the bare rock rose steep and straight, like the walls of a cathedral. I inspected the area carefully. If there had ever been a path, a jumble of spiny brush had long since covered it.
    On a shady rock flat enough to sit on, I assembled the flute, only to discover when I lifted it to my mouth that I remembered little of the fine music I had once played. My life had grown over it like the brush. My fingers were graceless, my wind sluggish, the tones dull and flat. Doggedly, I played what few bars of Mozart I could remember; and slowly, the sound improved.
    “Very nice.” A man appeared among the piñons and chucked a sack to the ground: my tenant from the cuevas, Tonio Bernini. He smiled. “I wondered if the fairies were having a party.”
    “It’s not nice,” I said. “It’s awful. I’ve forgotten all the music I ever knew. And I don’t believe in fairies. I doubt I ever did.”
    His beard gave him a look of patient wisdom, which for some reason vexed me. I was churlishly thinking that I owned six square miles of land and still couldn’t sit down on a rock without someone spying on me.
    Unabashed, he reached into his patched jacket and brought out a pipe. “Mind?”
    I shrugged, which he took for acquiescence. It didn’t smell like tobacco. It was dusky and sweet, like the juniper.
    “What’s that?” I pointed the flute to the sack at his feet.
    “Leaves, last year’s dried flowers, a few roots, aloe, red pepper, juniper.” He sat, quite unselfconsciously, on the ground. “There’s still a stand of Saint Ann’s-wort up there.” He gestured to a point above the springs. “I was sure it would be gone. Good for aching joints, Saint Ann’s.”
    I leaned forward at that. “Would it cure a sprained wrist?” I told him about Nacho.
    “Wouldn’t cure, but I wager it would help.” He opened the sack, drew out some leaves and handed them to me. “Put them in some hot water and make a poultice. If you stop by the