Excerpt:

Maybe I was a mite too pleased with myself.

By that night in April, 1861, I had spent three of my thirty-four years answering to the name Matilda Summerhayes, or as most folks call me, Matty. I was getting used to it.

The last thing I ever wanted was to run a horse ranch, but I reckoned I was finally getting a grasp on it. I was so full of myself I was pondering how soon I could put that ranch so far behind me it would seem no more than a puff of  forgotten dust like you find under a bed.

All day, the relentless spring wind had seemed intent on sweeping the ranch—if not the whole of New Mexico Territory—straight into the Rio Grande. But the blowing always went still at sundown, which had a way of gladdening the heart. So I was sitting, chin in hand, at the plank table that served me well enough for a desk, gazing at the wall, imagining an orchestra. I could almost hear the trill of a piccolo.

A tremendous loud crack, like a felled tree before it hits the ground, sent me bolt upright.

A bloodied face, mouth like a jagged hole in the dark beard, was staring blindly through the window. He tilted toward me and sagged slowly, his head grazing the pane, leaving a bloody smear. My heart near stopped dead inside me.

Leaping up, I snatched at the pistol on its hook on the wall only to see it clatter to the floor. 

Another crack thundered, then another, and something thudded to the ground so hard it rattled the house. I plucked up the gun and on feet barely touching the ground fled down the hall to the parlor. Only once had the hands got drunk and shot things up. That awful face had been strange to me, but hands came and went. If Nacho had hired him in the past day or two, I might not meet him till payday. If he was still alive.

I swallowed hard and held my breath till my head cleared. Few things terrify me more than a drunk with a gun.

Warily flattening myself against the wall, I eased open the front door. The moon was still low, the stars like chips of ice in a black lake. No sound broke the quiet. Near the barn, a huge shape sprawled in the rabbit grass like some chunk of rock flung down from the mountain. This was nothing human. Had some fool got himself mauled by a bear before he could bring it down with a bullet?

Was the animal dead or only stunned?

For a long moment I fixed my eyes on the dark shape but nary a sound or movement came from it. I grasped the pistol with both hands thinking to shoot the beast in the eye if it rose. Feeling the earth hard and cold beneath my bare feet, I stepped toward it and was well-nigh close enough to touch it by the time I realized it was a horse, splayed out, legs every which way.

My eyes darted toward the window where the man had been, but no crumpled form lay there.

My arms prickled in the chill air. Pulling my calico wrapper more tightly about me, I took a lantern from the patio and made my way back to the horse.

It was not a horse at all, but a mule. The saddle that had slued across the broad back looked trifling small. In the lantern’s yellow halo, the animal was the color of coffee grounds. Except where the blood had pumped from the hole in its neck. Poor beast. I hoped it was beyond pain. 

The hem of my wrapper caught on the saddle horn as I edged past. Where was the man? He hadn’t seemed up to taking himself any great distance.

In the barn, the air smelled of dust and dry grass. And blood. Fanny, my grey mare, poked her head over the corral gate and made a high, nervy sound. Inside, other hooves pawed the ground. George Washington was the only horse that slept with a roof over his head. He had cost an almighty sum.

Holding the lantern higher, I glimpsed something lying like a dark puddle on the straw in the corner. This shape was man-size. My knee cracked as I dropped to the ground. But like the mule, no sound, no motion came from it. The pistol felt cold in my hands as I crept in a half-crouch across the barn.

He was lying face down. A perfectly round hole, the size of a copper, dark and shiny as molasses, stared at me from the back of his head. I swallowed hard and forced myself to stoop over him, struggle to roll him over. He flopped back on the straw like a sack flour. I gulped back a cry and nearly gagged.

The eyes were wide below a gaping big breach in his brow. He looked Mexican and very young, not more than eighteen. The beard must have been a recent achievement. Now it was matted with saliva and blood.

In the lantern light, the boy’s eyes stared at me. Whatever I had endured, he had this night seen far worse. I bent to close the accusing eyes.

His shirt hadn’t been washed in so long it looked the color of  damp earth. The holster tied to his leg was empty. He had either used his pistol and dropped it or someone had taken it. I was about to leave him to his cold, hard bed when I noticed that the dirty rawhide thong around his neck led to something wedged under his left shoulder.

I pried it loose—a small leather sack, dark and stiff with dried sweat. I tugged the loop of rawhide over his head and opened the pouch. Inside was a torn piece of yellowed foolscap, cracked where it had been four times folded. Squatting next to the lantern, I peered at the odd pattern of lines and letters and arrows.

The scattered words were carefully printed in Spanish. I could make out Arroyo, Fuente, Sinsonte, and Cuevas.

Sometime in the distant past, boulders had spewed from the mountains to form, on the southwest corner of my land, the entrance to some caves. Locals called that the cuevas. Holding the paper closer to the lantern, I could see three scrawled lines, their spacing very like the arroyos  carved across my land by rainwater coursing down from the mountains.

I had learned enough Spanish to know that fuente meant fountain and sinsonte was mockingbird. The place where Herlinda filled our clay water jugs had given the ranch its name:  Mockingbird Spring. As I stared at the squiggly black lines, tiny icy feet began to creep up the back of my neck like a long-legged spider.

The cracked, yellowed paper in my hand was a map of my land.