Listen to the Mockingbird by Penny Rudolph

do get down to the heart of things real fast.”
    He chuckled warmly and changed the subject. When we finished eating the biggest cuts of beef I’d ever seen on a plate, I asked again.
    “Are your men pulling out?”
    He turned a steady gaze on me, taking my measure. I took a cautious sip of tea so smooth it tasted like satin. Morris was having whiskey. He’d mixed it with water, but the color was still dark. I didn’t much like whiskey. Ladies did not drink alcohol, which is not to say I had not tried some.
    He leaned back in his chair and pressed a napkin to his lips. “I’m afraid there is that possibility.” He folded the napkin and put it on the table. “I would like to offer my services.”
    “Excuse me?” He was an officer. He couldn’t be asking for a job.
    “You’ll need help packing up.”
    “Thank you, but no. We won’t be leaving.”
    “You must!” he said sharply.
    I stared at him.
    He dropped his eyes like a bashful schoolboy. “Sorry. It’s just that I’d hate to think what might happen.” He peered at me earnestly. “I hear you have a slave woman out there. You won’t be able to trust her once the Yanks get here.”
    “Winona is not a slave. She wouldn’t dream of causing me any trouble.”
    “Well,” he cajoled smoothly, “you haven’t had time to think about it properly. At least say you’ll hold your decision till you’ve had time to give it your full consideration.”
    I ran my fingers around the rim of my saucer and agreed to think about it.
    999
    By the time I got home, I had just about made up my mind to take Jamie’s and the lieutenant’s advice. But no way would I send Winona north. She would come with me to Mexico.
    We couldn’t bury the horses with our silverware; we would have to take them with us or lose them to Canby. A horde of rather proficient rustlers always hovered about the border, but Nacho and his sons were good hands with guns and they knew the language. We would have to risk it.
    Winona met me at the door, her dark face puffed with impending motherhood. “Well, Miss Matty,” she said when I had explained, “are we to turn cottontail and hip-hop off to Mexico?” Her words were flippant, but her face looked drawn.
    We sat in the parlor, me in the rocking chair, Winona on a straight-back chair because her back was bothering her. It shocked me to see her looking so frail.
    “You can’t travel,” I said flatly. “The baby’s due too soon.”
    “I can ride in a wagon,” she said. “What’s there to riding in a wagon? I ain’t sick. I ain’t crippled. I’m just ’specting a baby.”
    “You want to have it on the road where we’ll have to boil water over a campfire? You could die. The baby could die. No, we can’t go just now. We’ll stay here.”
    “I have read me the signs,” she said, “and I truly do believe it would make no never mind where I have this baby.”
    I put my hand on her knee. Her dress was nearly worn through with too many washings. “If the Texans bolt and run, the Yankee army will be too busy to hunt up everyone who did business with the Confederates. If they do, we’ve got guns, and we know these parts better than they do. We can run them off if we have to.” I wasn’t at all sure that was true, but it was a chance we would have to take.
    How quickly I had learned to call them Yankees and think of them as enemies—soldiers who a few short months ago I’d thought of as “ours.”
    999
    A couple of mornings later I was training one of the geldings on a lead in the corral when a voice called from behind me. When I turned, Lieutenant Morris grinned and saluted from atop a chestnut mare.
    “Sorry. I’m rather busy,” I said stiffly, but instead of turning back to my work, I tugged the gelding toward me, unfastened the lead and slapped him on the rump. Parading a fine piece of horseflesh in front of this man would be tempting fate.
    Morris had tied the chestnut to a post and was strolling toward me. “Just wanted