Harvest of Fury

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Harvest of Fury

Jeanne Williams

For George Papcun
,

who lived for his dream

of a better, brighter world

Arizona 1861–1917

“… Mines without miners and forts without soldiers are common. Politicians without policy, traders without trade, store-keepers without stores, teamsters without teams, and all without means, form the mass of the white population.”

—J. Ross Browne
Adventures in the Apache Country
(Harper and Brothers, 1969).

“All Indian men of that [Apache] tribe are to be killed whenever and wherever you can find them …”

—General Carleton to Colonel Kit Carson Oct. 12, 1862

“Hostilities in Arizona are kept up with a view of protecting the inhabitants, most of whom are supported by the hostilities.”

—General E. O. C. Ord, Jan. 22, 1870

“I believe that it is of far greater importance to prevent outbreaks than to attempt the difficult and sometimes hopeless task of quelling them after they do occur.… Bad as Indians often are, I have never yet seen one so demoralized that he was not an example in honor and nobility to the wretches who enrich themselves by plundering him of the little our Government appropriates for him.”

—General Crook, quoted in
On the Border with Crook
by John Bourke (Scribner's, 1891)

“… But the meat of the cocoanut, and the bone of contention, was contained in the remark of a Mexican laborer to another, who said, ‘Yes, that is all true, but why don't the company pay the Mexicans the same wages they pay the Americans?'”

—W. B. Kelly,
Bisbee Review
, June 2, 1906 as quoted in
Colonel Green and the Copper Skyrocket
by C. L. Sonnichsen (University of Arizona Press, 1974)

“Of all the crimes of the Porfirio Díaz regime the most monstrous was against the village in the sierras of western Chihuahua, Tomochic.… Apart from the heroism of the men of Tomochic … there was a singular and extraordinary factor. This was the inspiration of a nineteen-year-old girl, Teresa Urrea, whom they called La Santa de Cabora. Her name was their battle cry, and was on the lips of the Tomochitecos unto the death of the last man.”

—Mario Gill,
Episodios Mexicanos
(Mexico, 1960)

“The IWW appealed to rootless, voteless, womanless, alienated men. It embodied and made dramatically tangible the beliefs, dreams, hopes and visions that promised to the victims of industrial capitalism an escape from the futility of their lives.”

—The IWW In Wartime Arizona by James W. Byrkit, in
Journal of Arizona History
, Summer 1977

“How it could have happened in a civilized country I'll never know. This is the only country it could have happened in. As far as we're concerned we're still on strike! … I'll forget it when I die! I'll forget it when I die!”

—Peter Watson, one of the Bisbee deportees, on tape to Dr. Robert Houston, Feb. 12, 1977,
Journal of Arizona History
, Summer 1977

Who's Real

As in
The Valiant Women
, the historical background is as accurate as I could make it. Though my main characters are fictional, many others are drawn from life. Among actual military men were Captain John Irwin, Lieutenant Colonel Baylor, Captain Sherod Hunter, and (Generals Sibley, Carleton, and Crook.

Prominent Arizonans were Granville and William Oury, Sylvester Mowry, Solomon Warner, Sam Hughes, Peter Brady, the Penningtons, Tom Gardner, Esteban Ochoa, and Governor A. P. K. Safford. Pete Kitchen was very real. For fictional purposes, I have him and Doña Rosa remain at their Santa Cruz Valley stronghold though Apache ravages forced even this doughty pioneer to move to Magdalena, Sonora, during the Civil War.

Eskiminzin, Mangus Coloradas, Cochise, and other Apache leaders lived, of course. The Camp Grant Massacre happened as detailed. However, the Papago youths who'd killed for the first time were not killed during their purification vigil as are the ones in this book.

In the third part of the novel, Santa Teresa lived and worked her healings, and Cruz Chavez and his valiant men died at Tomochic. Colonel Greene played his part at Cananea, and Sheriff Harry Wheeler supervised the deportation in Bisbee.

While weaving the lives of my fictional people into the fabric of history, I've tried to give a fair and valid presentation of actual people and events.

PART I

La Madama

1861–1862

I

Talitha cleared the supper dishes from the oak table before she turned to confront the young, redheaded Irish doctor from Fort Buchanan.

“John, it's kind of you to take this trouble, but I can't leave. The cattle, the horses, the land, everything Shea and the others worked for—it's up to me now to hold it together.”

“Shea's gone to fight the very army he expected to protect his family and ranch,” John Irwin said grimly. “He'd never dream of wanting you to stay now that all the troops in Arizona—not that there were ever that many—are pulling out.” He glanced from the twelve-year-old twins, dark, lithe Miguel and tall, wiry, flame-haired Patrick, to seven-year-old Caterina, who was rocking little Tosalisewa, just past her first birthday. “He'd value these children—and you—above the ranch and the whole damn boiling!”

Shea's last words when he rode away had been to tell Talitha to take care of the children for him—and to take care of herself. Not a word about the ranch. He couldn't have guessed that within a few months the federal government would abandon this region that already called itself Arizona, though it was legally part of Doña Ana County of the Territory of New Mexico. The Overland Mail had stopped running in April; and now, in July 1861, the troops were pulling out of Fort Buchanan, only about four miles from the ranch, and Fort Breckinridge, about fifty miles northwest of Tucson. Laughably small forces to oppose the swift-raiding Apaches; but now even they would be gone.

Looking at the children, Talitha saw in them their parents who'd braved scalp hunters, Apaches, and the fierce country to reclaim this old Spanish land grant in 1847 after it had been deserted for over twenty years because Mexico had been unable to defend its northwest frontier against Apaches.

Caterina flashed a smile from those startling gray-blue eyes, otherwise looking so much like her mother, Socorro, that even after nearly eight years Talitha felt a rush of grief and need for the kind and lovely woman who'd been her foster mother. Socorro's looks were echoed, too, in Miguel, but Patrick was the image of what Shea must have been as a boy, blazing red-gold hair and eyes the dark gray of a thundercloud. Though he liked John Irwin, the boy glared at him now.

“We can't let the ranch go to pieces! And Mangus is our friend. Isn't he, James?”

Talitha's half brother, born of a blond Mormon and her Apache captor, Juh, frowned, his dark blue eyes shocking in his lean brown face. At fourteen, he was a head taller than his sister, his sinewy body hard and spare from his years among the Apaches. From the time he was seven until his return a few months before, he had lived in the camp of Mangus Coloradas, great chief of the Mimbreños.

“Mangus will do what he can. But the soldiers have hunted the Apaches since they came to these parts five years ago. Miners and other whites have swarmed in. The Apaches are angry. When the soldiers go, the Apaches will want to drive out the rest of the whites. That's why Mangus sent me to you. To try to protect you if there was a raid. I will do that.”

“See?” cried Patrick triumphantly. “Miguel and I can shoot as well as Belen and Chuey. And so can you, Tally,” he added kindly. “If Apaches or bandits hit Socorro, we'll make them wish they hadn't!”

“Apaches aren't too likely to ride up to the house while we're all together and behind walls,” Talitha reminded him. “We'd probably be scattered around and be picked off one or two at a time.”

She thought briefly of alternatives. Her father, Jared Scott, who, with Cooke's Mormon Battalion, had marked a southern route to California in the winter of 1846–47, had stayed in California to pan gold until, three years ago, he had come to see Talitha. Wistfully, for Talitha had been only six when he rode off with his battalion, Jared had offered her a home and any help she might ever need. Though he was resettling deep in Apache country, two hundred miles north on the Verde River, he'd thought he would have the usual Mormon friendship with Indians.

No word had since come from him. He might be dead, or gone to join the United States Army as he'd done before. Besides, if the Apaches decided to drive out all the whites, Jared's place would probably be no safer than Socorro. Talitha wouldn't have gone there herself in any case. She meant to stay at the ranch. But she wished there were some safe place to send at least Cat and Tosalisewa.