Harvest of Fury (11 page)

The disgust in James's tone made Cat's mouth tremble. It was probably the first time he'd ever refused to indulge her. But her puzzled hurt passed before they reached the house and she held to his arm, chattering on about how handsome K'aak'eh was and how they'd soon have him well.

The young hawk did mend swiftly. After a few days he stopped threatening James, who nonetheless kept a respectful distance from the vicious claws and beak. But soon James began to wrap his arm and hand in folds of rawhide and let the hawk clamber on, taking him out into the sun and air.

The hawk's wonderful plumage, a rich rusty brown on the back, with the red of the tail becoming more marked, breast and underbody white with speckling at belly and flanks, ruffled in the breeze that stirred James's dark hair. Boy and hawk had a savage beauty that sent an ache through Talitha. James
was
Apache. Like the bird, he had to be free. But she prayed he could make peace with his white blood, not have to live like a hunted animal as Americans spread over Apache lands.

It was at the Agave Feast that Güero sang again, his eyes green flames in the firelight. A dozen agave hearts had been put to bake about noon the day before, after the fire had died down on the stones lining the round pit dug about ten feet wide and a yard deep. Covered then with bear grass and a layer of earth, the hearts were done tonight, mushy golden-brown. Carmencita didn't approve of eating such heathen food, so there was barbecue, too, and a big pot of spiced beans.

After the meal, the vaqueros began to play their guitars, but the others stopped when Güero began. Truly he had the best voice, deeply resonant. He sang a nonsense song, imitating birdcalls, that had the children laughing, struck a few chords, and swung into the boisterous “Best Vaquero” in a way that soon had the other men clapping and calling out “Eee-ha!” in time to the song.

When he came to the end of that swaggering canter, his gaze rested full on Talitha. He sang a love song, and though she wrapped her rebozo tighter about her, it was as if his eyes and voice penetrated her garments, lingered on her flesh.

“
Pardon me if my caresses offend you
.

Pardon me if my songs offend you
…”

Their eyes met. A fiery chill shot through Talitha. She took Sewa from Cat and off to bed and didn't return to the fire. But dimly, though the window was shut, she could still hear Güero's voice.

“
They say because of your love some evil will follow me
.

I don't care if it's the devil, I also know how to die
.”

Now that it was spring, maybe he'd go away. She hoped he would, then was angry at herself for that coward's thought. The ranch needed all the men it would get, she reminded herself.

She thought of Shea and Marc, trying to blot out Güero's questing stare with their faces, but they kept going faint and vanishing. Were they still alive? Would she ever hear again of either of them?

It had been a long time since she cried, but that night she did, hard and bitterly, with a kind of despair.

A few days later Miguel, on lookout, reported horsemen. At the signal bell, every adult in hearing except for Carmencita grabbed a rifle and took a position.

“Americans,” called James after a few tense minutes. “Most are in gray. They ride like soldiers.”

“Maybe they're from Tucson. Let's wait till we're sure.” Talitha kept her voice steady, even though her heart raced as she couldn't repress a crazy, flaring hope that Shea might be in the little group of perhaps a dozen men.

Opening the door, rifle in view, Talitha called, “Who are you?”

A young man in the lead swept off his gray hat, exposing long blond hair, and bowed from the saddle, motioning his men to wait as he rode forward. “Lieutenant Todd, ma'am, of Hunter's Rangers. We're foraging.”

“Apaches and bandits have been down the Santa Cruz before you,” Talitha said dryly. “I doubt they left much.”

The officer flushed and straightened his shoulders. “I trust, ma'am, that you're not a Union sympathizer. My orders are to confiscate any cattle and usable goods of such persons.”

“I sympathize with North
and
South since I have friends on both sides. This ranch is owned, sir, by a man who's off fighting for your Confederacy. Perhaps you've met him. Patrick O'Shea.”

“An older man?”

“Shea's not old!”

The lieutenant grinned, looking very boyish. “Well, ma'am, older than I, with red hair and a badly scarred cheek?”

Talitha's heart leaped. She could only nod.

“I saw him at Mesilla,” Todd said. “He went up the Rio with Sibley and would surely have been in the Valverde fight. They moved on to take Albuquerque, and we've just heard they've secured Santa Fe and run up the Confederate flag. Is Captain O'Shea your husband, ma'am?”

“No.” She didn't want to explain with all the listening ears. “But I'd be most grateful if you could learn anything about him, or get a message through.”

“I'll try my best, but don't count on anything, ma'am. Things are in an uproar, what with Union troops moving toward us from California and a bunch of Coloradans coming down on Sibley. To top all that, President Davis just removed Baylor from the governorship of Arizona.”

“You have a lot of news, Lieutenant,” Talitha interrupted. “Won't you and your men come in for dinner and rest yourselves?”

He was happy to accept. The vaqueros took the horses off for grain and water while the rangers lounged on the long front porch. Only the officer came in to eat with the family, but the women served the others with generous baskets of tortillas, stewed meat, and beans.

Hunter and his hundred men were doing all they could to impede the advance of several hundred California volunteers who would soon be crossing into Arizona. Constantly moving, Hunter was burning all the hay stored for Union use at the old Butterfield Overland Mail stations, and early that month he had gone to the Pima Villages northwest of Tucson on the way to Fort Yuma to arrest the miller Ammi White, a federal purchasing agent who'd been buying supplies for the California troops. Hunter destroyed the mill and distributed the fifteen hundred confiscated sacks of wheat to the Indians, since he had no way to get it to Tucson.

“A Union captain with a squad of cavalry rode up to the Pima Villages, expecting to make a building where they could store Ammi White's wheat and flour, scout for more supplies, and then jog down to Tucson to capture or wipe out Hunter's command.” The lieutenant chuckled. “Well, ma'am, I'd like to have seen that Yank captain's face when the man he thought was Ammi White turned out to be Capt. Sherod Hunter, C.S.A.! The captain, his nine men, and Ammi White were all brought prisoners to Tucson.”

“But if there are thousands of Californians and only a hundred of you …”

A somber look crossed the young face, but Todd shrugged jauntily as he reached for another tortilla. “We'll give them a mighty good run for their money. If Sibley wins the showdown in northeastern New Mexico, he can turn on the California column General Carletoh's put together out in Los Angeles.”

He went on to say why Col. Baylor had been relieved of his command. Jefferson Davis had been horrified at an order sent by Baylor to Capt. Thomas Helm, commander of the Arizona Guards in Tucson.

“Governor Baylor said to lure the Apaches in with whiskey and gifts as if to make peace and then kill all the adults.” Talitha gasped sharply and put out a hand to James, whose eyes blazed. The lieutenant, sopping up meat juices, didn't notice. “The children were to be sold to pay for the expense of killing their parents. A nasty business. Helm never acted on it, thank heaven!”

After the lieutenant went his way with a gift of ten steers that Talitha thought Shea would want her to make, she sought out her brother, who was holding K'aak'eh on his swaddled arm and staring at the mountains.

She said gently, “James, Baylor lost his command.”

“You gave those soldiers beef.”

“Yes. Out of my animals.”

“Once you said some of those were mine.”

“As many as you need.”

“Next winter, then, in the hungry time for my people, I want to take them thirty or forty or fifty head. If they can eat; maybe they won't raid so much.”

Talitha certainly didn't love Apaches, but she was sickened by the thought of cold-blooded slaughter of the sort Baylor and a good many others advocated. “The cattle are yours,” she told her brother. “James, if the Apaches would stop raiding, the soldiers wouldn't bother them.”

“Tally, my sister, you know that isn't true. They'd be killed for their reputations, as has already happened with those who tried to keep peace in New Mexico. Besides, if they don't raid, they starve.”

“They've got to learn to grow their food.”

With a harsh laugh, James said to the hawk who watched him with unblinking golden eyes, “You hear that, K'aak'eh? Will you till the soil with your talons, drop seed with your beak?”

In a wave of despairing fear and anger Talitha cried, “James! Men have brains. They can change and choose. Even Apaches …”

“Though they aren't quite human?” James finished smoothly. “They should be grateful for a bit of earth when they've roamed and ruled most of what you-call New Mexico, Arizona, and Sonora?” He offered a squirming mouse to the hawk, settling it on the granary roof to tear and devour its prey. “For nearly three hundred years Apaches have fought Spaniards, Mexicans, Papago, Pima, and sometimes Navajo. You know that while the bluecoat soldiers were here they could do nothing.”

“But when they come again, it'll be different.” Talitha caught her brother's sinewy brown hands. “James, you know it'll be different.”

He looked past her into the mountains. “I know,” he said at last. “But that can't make a difference to me.”

He wouldn't look at her at all. At last she had to leave him with the hawk and the wind.

VI

Talitha woke one April morning to music and listened in drowsy pleasure for a moment till she recognized the song, the voice, the day. She was twenty-two; and Güero was singing “
Las Mañanitas
” for her, “The Beautiful Little Mornings.”

“
I wish I were a sunbeam to enter your window

To wish you good morning, lying in your bed
…”

Talitha got up quickly. Impossible to lie there with his singing on her as light as the air and as inescapable, as enveloping.

Sewa and Cat were still sleeping. Talitha covered them both, smiling at the way Cat lay, like a swimmer collapsed in the middle of a stroke. She sleeps violently, Talitha thought and wondered what life would bring this girl, who loved violently, too. Sewa, in contrast, was curled in a ball, knuckles pressed to her rosy mouth. She'd be two years old in July, the sweetest age for children. If only Santiago could have seen her! Glancing back at Cat, Talitha realized that neither little girl could remember a mother. Of course, she'd done her best to act as one. She was sure she couldn't love her own children more.

For a moment she allowed herself the luxury of imagining what her children and Shea's would be like. Surely there'd be one boy with red-gold hair and eyes the darkest blue of the sky. She smiled at the imaginary child, then sighed. Sometimes she thought she'd never have children of her own. Here she was, twenty-two! And yet, beginning when she was six, with James, she'd been a mother all her life.

Güero was surely gone by now. A glance through the window showed the small courtyard empty. She stepped out into the bright morning and started as Güero stepped from behind the pomegranate tree by the window. He bowed, hair the color of tarnished raw gold tumbling over his forehead.

“Let me be the first,
señorita
, to wish you a happy birthday.”

She was sorry that he was, but there was nothing for it but to thank him perfunctorily. As she moved swiftly toward the kitchen Güero easily matched her stride. “I've been breaking that pretty little chestnut mare the
señorita
remarked on, gentling her for a lady. Perhaps it would please you to try her this afternoon?”

He addressed her with the formal
Usted
, your grace, as was proper, but his tone couldn't have been more familiar had he used the intimate
tu
, thou.

Talitha had already planned her private celebration. She'd go in the warm part of the day to the hot spring below the Place of Skulls, wash her hair, and have a long, luxurious soak in the hollowed stone that formed a deep natural tub, constantly renewed by the sparkling water bubbling out of the cliff. She had liked the dainty chestnut mare, thinking her like Castaña, Socorro's horse, who was her grandmother. But the knowledge that Güero had been taming the filly made her speak almost rudely.

“I'm too busy to ride today. Thousand thanks for your trouble, but I've decided that mare doesn't suit me. When I need to spare Ceniza, I'll use that black gelding, Azufre, that Belen's been working.”

Güero stiffened. “The
señorita
prefers geldings?” he asked in a soft, scornful voice.

Talitha slashed back. “It's not for you, vaquero, to question my preferences.”

His mouth twisted. He stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “But I must,
señorita
. Tell me plainly,
por favor
. Is it that you will not ride with me this day or any day?”

“I will ride with you when we are working cattle.”

“But not alone, for company?”

“No.”

He colored hotly. Sorry for his humiliation, warned by instinct that to flout this man was dangerous, Talitha tried to soften the refusal. “It wouldn't be proper. I am engaged.”

“Engaged?” Clearly, he didn't believe her. “To whom?”

“To Don Patricio.”

“The
patrón?
Your foster father?” The green eyes narrowed, the handsome face turned ugly. “If you must lie to me,
señorita
, do better than that!”