Introduction

It's 1861 in New Mexico Territory and the Civil War is about to have a startling impact on Matty Summerhayes. Matty hopes her horse ranch will earn enough money so she may return to the East. Then a stranger dies on her land. This somewhat feminist, historical mystery/suspense novel takes place in 1861 in New Mexico Territory, where the Civil War is about to have a startling impace on a woman who calls herself Matty Summerhayes. Matty is struggling to develop a horse ranch to make enough money to return to the East. A stranger dies in her barn, a rumor of a lost gold mine on her land emerges, and soon someone is trying to run her off her ranch. When her closest friend, a one-time slave, is about to be stoned for practicing voodoo, Matty saves her by staging a dramatic public exorcism. But Matty herself is arrested for murder and with her land up for bail, she must find the real killer or lose everything. She unmasks a spy and murderer, but the celebration is cut short when an officer comes calling, intending to claim his rights to not only her land but Matty herself.

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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 that 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.

Like the mule, no sound, no motion came from it. My knee

cracked as I dropped to the ground. 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 of 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.

Choking on the bile in my throat, I bolted for the barn door. The moon had climbed high above the mountains. The baked-dirt trail that led all the way to the river showed pale and empty. A jackrabbit scuttled across the patio. Nothing else seemed to stir.

Poor lad. What had brought him to where there was nothing

left but to crawl into my barn and die?

“Nacho!” My voice sounded dry and quavery. I moved toward

the house and threw open the door.

Herlinda was plodding into the parlor, a disapproving scowl on her sleep-swollen face. She and Nacho shared a room in the back of the house; their two sons slept in the bunkhouse with the other hands.

I touched the wall to steady myself. “Ask Nacho to come to

the barn.”

When she had dished up another sullen look and gone to fetch him, I grabbed a blanket from the deacon’s bench, wrapped it about my shoulders and went back outside. No matter how hot the days, the night air almost always carried a bite.

At the barn door, I turned back. The poor lad was a lonesome

sight. I would wait for Nacho.

My eyes swept over the house. I hadn’t much liked the place

the first time I saw it and wasn’t over-fond of it now. But that

mattered little. I was just a temporary resident. Foot-thick adobe

walls gave it a heavy, defensive look. The round ovens where

Herlinda baked bread squatted near the patio like a pair of bears

ready to spring. The ovens, like the walls, were made of mud. That’s one thing we had plenty of—mud.

The living quarters had proved comfortable enough. And with some tile made by a Tortugas woman, I had fixed myself two panels, one for each side of the mud fireplace in the parlor. It was a simple thing to chip out a few adobes to make room for a small cherry-wood chest. And the revolver. When the tiled panels with their painted mockingbirds were in place they seemed a natural part of the room.

The door to the house was still closed. Nacho would come in good time. To this day he is one of the best men I ever knew, but he was never hasty. The meager glow from the lard lamp on my desk was the only light inside. Oil was dear. Herlinda would likely frown at my having lit the lantern.

I brushed the heel of my hand against my cheek. Sometimes I was hard put to believe I lived here, much less that I owned nigh onto six square miles of this rude land. In all my born days I had never wanted to own a ranch. I reckon I put on a good show of it, but the more I learned, the more I met my own ignorance. There was little use for my studies at Bartholomew’s Ladies Academy now.

What use were literature and sums and writing a fine hand?

What good the finest head of hair in all of St. Louis, as Mama was fond of saying? Almost every day I thanked God she would never know the sordid state I had come to. She had taken such pains to show me how to part my acorn-colored hair in the middle, braid it and wind it just so. My wide-set grey eyes had come from her, but the high cheekbones and what Papa called my “noble chin” were his, as was the broad streak of willfulness that had bedeviled my poor mama no end.

Of course, the overlarge mouth had come along with the rest, and the nose that was a mite too short, and the freckles that would not go away no matter how many times I scrubbed my cheeks with soured milk. So much for that. Freckles mattered little here.

At last the door to the house swung open. Nacho Lujan ambled toward me, his gait slow and uneven from some mishap in his youth. A short, stringy man with muscles like ropes, he had a great mountain-ridge of a nose, a face like badly tanned leather and hair like coiled grey wire. His real name was Ignacio. No better man with horses was ever born.

“Que pasa, Señora?” Longjohns stuck out at the wrists of his

hastily donned homespun shirt. He stopped as his gaze fell on the dead mule.

I nodded and swung the lantern toward the barn’s interior.

Nacho followed me inside and across the hay-strewn floor.

“Madre de Dios.” His face didn’t change as he peered at the

body. He only fastened a button on his shirt with great care. “I

go to Señor Zeke?”

I blew a stream of air between my lips. Zeke was the sheriff.

The village of Mesilla was nearly an hour’s ride. “I reckon it can

wait till morning.”

He gave me a sober nod and started back to the house.

“Check that all the hands are in the bunkhouse,” I called after him. “Could be the rascal who did this is a drifter or one of ours on a drunk. Either way, maybe we should post a guard.”

“Sí.” And he ambled toward the bunkhouse as if this sort of

thing happened every night.

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. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the Author:

If you’re in a book club or just looking for some things to ponder, I’ve put together a few questions about Listen to the Mockingbird to consider:

1. What attracted you to this book? The historical period? The mystery aspect? The portrayal of Matty as a strong woman? Did any or all of these aspects live up to your expectations? Why or why not?

2. How should this book be classified? As a Western, a Civil War novel, a mystery, a thriller, or as feminist literature? Why?

3. Is there any one scene that you remember particularly vividly? Why? How does it relate to the story as a whole? What does it reveal about the characters?

4. Given the historical setting, is there enough background information to understand the events in the story? Does including a few real people and events help?

5. On a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate the following, and why?
Character development
Action
Dialog
Setting
Mystery
Suspense

6. Does the author use any narrative devices like flashbacks or multiple voices in telling the story? Do you generally like or dislike these methods?

7. Did the story compelling enough to keep you interested? Were you able to predict things before they happened or did the author keep you guessing?

8. Does the romantic subplot add or detracted from this tale? Why?

9. How much does “place” or locale or landscape contribute to this book?

10. Although this novel was written as a “stand alone,” would you like to see a sequel? Why or why not?

Weblinks

»	Author Penny Rudholph's web site
»	Author Bio
»	Reviews Betty Parker, Southwest Book Reviews Occasionally one of the thousands of books published each year just grabs the reader and won’t let go. This is one of those rare finds...this novel set in southern New Mexico during the Civil War is entertaining, informative, and beautifully written. It could be placed on the mystery shelves as well... Matty Summerhayes narrates, coaxes, amazes and thoroughly captures her audience... The author could easily have turned this book into propaganda for women’s rights, but she has carefully avoided that... Be prepared to forget meals and stay up all night when you start reading this book. Matty’s word-pictures and unorthodox civil disobedience will hold your attention until the last page.”

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