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a staunch Abolitionist, but I knew that here Anglo sentiments tilted toward Atlanta.
    “Matty, you got to pay attention,” he said, leaning forward in mock solicitation. “The Convention of the People of Arizona was held right here. The folks of the Mesilla Valley and the mining companies up around Piños Altos decided to send Dan Wilbur to Alabama to ask the Confederate States of America to admit us as a Territory. The line will run right below Socorro all the way to California.” When he said “Confederate States of America” it sounded like the bass notes on a church organ.
    “But what about Fillmore?” That Union fortress was only a few miles away.
    He chuckled. “We’ll give them enough mountain oysters to fry.” Mountain oysters were the private parts removed from bull calves. Jamie reddened a little but didn’t beg my pardon.
    I ignored it, my mind beginning to paw at something. “And the Indians?”
    “Dixie, luv. Dixie will protect us. Dixie will administer law and justice.”
    Slowly it came to me that this could mean many things—that I would be living in another country, for one. But more importantly, if there was war men would die, and no one would question that a lieutenant in the dragoons might well perish in a battle. My eyes flicked distractedly over the boxes of paper along the walls, the cans and trays that held the metal letters.
    Jamie’s forehead furrowed into shiny, quizzical wrinkles. “You look right flummoxed, Matty.”
    “It’s just that you sound like a political broadside.”
    Laughter started deep in his throat and his eyes twinkled. “Look here.” He opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a flat piece of metal. I had watched him set type once, so I knew what it was. He pushed it across the desk toward me.
    There was the image of a banner waving and the words Our Flag backward, like in a mirror. More reversed words below were in short lines, like a poem. I raised my eyes to Jamie’s.
    He peered at me over the spectacles that always rested on the end of his nose. “That, there, is the Stars and Bars of the Confederate States of America. Texas pulled out of the Union. Now the Yankees have gone and fired on us. Our boys were just minding their own business, and the Yanks started shooting off cannons!” His smile was as bright as the light bouncing off his bald head. He drummed his fingers on the desk and broke into a lively whistling of “Dixie.”
    Mind racing, I fidgeted with the handle on my brocade bag. Did this mean that when the fighting was over I could go home? It would only require one more falsehood; and after so many, what was one more? I drew in my breath and let it out slowly. “This may be very good news, indeed.”
    “It is, Matty, it is.”
    I paused to consider it more then remembered what had brought me to his office. “You know anything about a stranger in the area?” Jamie’s eyebrows rose. “A man came by to ask my leave to live in the caves. Not a ruffian. Looks Mexican but doesn’t talk like it. Someone must have told him the cuevas were on my land.”
    Jamie shrugged. “I heard there was some priest or holy man or some such fella.” My eyes must have widened because he patted my arm soothingly. “Sounds harmless enough. Hard on shoe leather, though. Walks everywhere. No horse, not even a burro. Hear tell he’s a healer of some sort.”
    “That must be him,” I said and got to my feet.
    “Before you go, you hear about Joel Tolhurst?”
    “What about him?” Joel was a Baptist preacher, a missionary. A good man, I suppose, but sort of stiff and disapproving; and I can’t say I liked him much. His wife Isabel ran the mission school. The white women in town, their virtue as rigid as the stays in their corsets, were mighty curious about me. No doubt they thought I’d earned my money as a strumpet and planned to turn the ranch into a bordello. Isabel had tried every conceivable gambit to maneuver me into talking about my