Listen to the Mockingbird by Penny Rudolph Read Free Book Online Page B

to stalk any creature foolish enough to venture out.
    An hour before I had been sitting at my pine-table desk, daring to hope that I would soon be turning a profit. Our horses fetched good prices at the auction, and the mares had dropped a beautiful crop of foals. I calculated that if the war didn’t interfere it truly might be only two more years before the ranch would bring enough money to set me up back East. I was adding up the figures when Nacho’s son, Julio, burst into the room.
    “Señora! They have attacked!”
    I looked up from the papers and sniffed the air. It wasn’t yet noon, and already I could smell the whiskey on his breath. “Who has attacked what?”
    “Tejanos! They have attacked the fort.”
    I jumped up, knocking over some books. “How do you know?”
    “Ruben, he was in town last night and he did not…ah, come home…”
    Neither did you, I thought, but said nothing. The brothers always drank their way through Saturday night. As long as they could do a day’s work and didn’t make a nuisance of themselves, I counted it no business of mine.
    “We meet the mama and papa at the church. That is where we hear the guns.” Julio’s voice jabbed at each word. The natives detested Texans, who tended to regard them as local wildlife, a step or two above the coyote.
    I tried to think where Fort Fillmore was in relation to the church. “You’re sure it’s an attack on the fort?”
    “Six, seven hombres come running. They say get back in the church. But Papa say to me if I can cross the river to come here pronto, so you can be warned. On the bridge are many men, so Maria and I go to the north and swim.” He beamed, relishing the feat. Maria was the mare I’d given him as a year’s advance pay.
    I was thinking that Jamie was right about the Confederacy when it came to me that men toting firearms might bode more ill than I had reckoned if the fighting turned toward Mockingbird Spring. The other hands were still in town. Save for Julio, I was quite alone. He was still standing there full of his own daring deed.
    “Thank God you didn’t get yourself killed,” I told him. “Will your parents be able to get back?”
    “Quién sábe?” His shrug was a perfect replica of his father’s.
    I sent him to bring more water from the spring and set about loading every rifle and pistol we possessed. That done, I saddled up and rode out to see if any danger seemed headed our way.
    The heat made the air thick and hard to move through. I didn’t urge Fanny to do more than her easy lope. From the shelf-land, I could see puffs of dust exploding near Fort Fillmore. These were followed a few seconds later by a dim growl of cannon. With the action miles away, the possibility of threat here seemed remote. Despite the stifling heat, I found myself oddly fascinated by it.
    I had been squinting at the scene for some time when the rumble of cannon ceased, and the puffs of dust were replaced by a great bloom of black smoke. The fort was on fire.
    As the Union wasn’t apt to have set its own fort ablaze, it seemed right likely that the valley, and I, had just joined the Confederacy. The fat’s in the fire now, I thought. Jamie and most of the Anglos in town would be pleased. I hoped they were right.
    With nothing to see now but the billows of smoke, I turned Fanny toward home.
    999
    Nacho and Herlinda arrived just before dark.
    “Estupido.” Nacho was raving before he even got down from the wagon. The only other time I’d heard him raise his voice was when a horse broke loose from the training rope and threatened to trample him.
    From his agitated report, I gathered that the fort’s commander had been so incompetent he might as well have been wearing the Texans’ uniform. Led by a Confederate colonel named Baylor, about three hundred men had, by some apparently audacious maneuver, attacked the fort. The garrison had put up a sloppy, halting resistance, then fled. The Texans occupied and burned the fort; and