Harvest of Fury (15 page)

The juice of black walnut hulls was a good treatment, but more often, when the animal was roped and tied, Talitha or a vaquero pulverized part of a dry cow chip and packed the wound tightly with it. If no air reached the worms, they'd suffocate, and the packing kept the sore protected until it scabbed over.

Talitha could rope and tie a calf, hold it down, or brand, but she left castrating and earmarking to the deft, experienced hands of the vaqueros. Every spring a few cows died in calving, and the orphans had to be brought back to the ranch and fed by hand unless the calf could be matched up with a cow who'd lost her own. Usually it worked to skin the dead calf and tie his hide over the motherless one. If the smell of her own baby convinced the cow that the hungry imposter was indeed hers, she'd let him suck and the problem was solved for both.

Talitha had helped with cattle work for about ten years, and slipping back into its rhythm after Frost's departure increased the feeling of unreality about his return. What was real was that during the summer if the tanks at El Charco went dry they had to be filled from the well, screwworms must be treated, orphaned calves looked after, and the bulls put on the ranges where they were needed.

Fall meant branding late-dropped calves and culling out the cattle that would be driven to market. By then, thank goodness, blowflies were gone.

In the winter, corrals were built or fixed, equipment made or mended, and horses broken, using the slower, gentler techniques that Shea had introduced from what he remembered of his father's rare way with horses. The range had to be ridden over to keep track of the cattle, of course, and then it was spring again, with the new little calves staggering up on their spindly' legs and eagerly finding their mothers' warm milk.

Frost came back at the end of May. The familiar pattern snapped when Talitha saw the sheen of his pale golden horse coming along the creek one evening, accompanied by another horseman. He was alive, he was here. Reality was a nightmare again.

In that nightmare, they were married by the Reverend Esau Tranton, who was on his way to California and looked more like a brigand than a minister. He raised his heavy eyebrows when Talitha insisted that she didn't want anyone to witness the marriage, then shrugged and took another pull on his bottle.

“For the handsome consideration Mr. Frost has given me, ma'am, I'd splice you underground or on a mountain, wherever your heart desires.” When Frost started for the
sala
, Talitha shook her head. Not in there, where Shea and Socorro had married, not where Guadalupana would look down at the mockery.

“Let's go outside,” she said. “I—I'd like to be able to see the mountains.”

“Most poetic,” Tranton approved.

Frost's down-curved mouth hinted that he guessed her reason, but he gave her his arm with exquisite courtesy. The last of the sunset blazed crimson on them when the final words were said and Frost put on her finger a broad gold band studded with diamonds.

“Beautiful ring, that,” said Tranton covetously.

To Talitha, it seemed to sear her flesh. This man, her husband? Truly, according to law? When, after he'd kissed her, he touched her cheek, it was like being caressed by a lion's claw that might at any second rip her bloody.

Tranton went his way next morning, and in a week Frost returned to Tucson, for he estimated his friend Colonel Carleton should arrive about then. Tucson was already in Union hands.

Sam Hughes, the merchant dispossessed by Captain Hunter for his Union sympathies, had returned with the Californians. Hunter, with his rangers and a few Southern sympathizers had left Tucson May 4. Don Esteban Ochoa, also a Union exile, was busily getting ready to freight for the army. Anyone with close ties to the Confederacy had either left with Hunter or refuged in Sonora, just as their Union counterparts had been forced to do that February.

“I've got my freighting company pretty well organized,” Frost boasted. “Made a deal with Governor Pesqueira to haul from Guaymas duty free, so I can do it for five cents a pound to Tucson compared to 12½ cents from Yuma plus 3½ for the river steamer and $4 to ferry each wagon at Yuma. Fort Breckinridge has to be supplied, and there's bound to be another post established somewhere along the old Butterfield route toward New Mexico.”

“I should think you'd be more inclined to waylay freight than haul it,” Talitha said. They were alone and she didn't have to watch her tongue.

He laughed, unruffled. “Freight may not be glamorous, but there's a fortune in supplying troops in this godforsaken, Apache-bedeviled wilderness. After the war, there'll be lots of troops out here trying to tame the Indians, and once the heathens are settled on reservations, they'll have to be fed. More government contracts.”

“That's all any of it is to you, isn't it? A chance to make money?”

“What does any man try to do? I'm simply more astute than most. For instance, I've heavily invested in railroads, so I won't be hurt when they supersede mule and ox freight.” He smiled lazily. “Would you care to invest some of Shea's money in my freighting company, sweetheart? For old times' sake, I'd give him shares at advantageous terms.”

“Shea wouldn't want to be mixed up with you. Besides, what happened to his interest in the freighting company in which he was partners with you?”

Frost shrugged. “The California assets of the Santa Cruz freighting company helped start my new venture, but since Shea, at my presumed death, got the income from the Tecolote mine where we were also partners, I figure we're even. Of course, now that I'm back, I'm reassuming my shares in the mine. I've already hired a superintendent to get it working again. It seems Revier, staunch freedom fighter that he is all these years after he and his idealistic friends defied the Prussian king and fought for general suffrage and liberty, had to throw himself into the battle against slavery.”

How strange. Marc had construed the war like that, but to Shea the oppression had been on the part of the North. Shea hated slavery, too, having been close to it in Ireland, but to him the United States was a government that had first invaded Catholic Mexico to wrest away much of its land, and was now trying to bully the Southern states and hold them against their will. The war was many things to many people. For some, like Frost, it was a golden opportunity for fast profits, but men of substantial property on both sides had lost all that they had rather than swear allegiance to the enemy. Southern-born officers of equal conscience and integrity had chosen opposite sides when they'd finally been forced to it. It was an awful war.

“Didn't Revier stop to bid you farewell?” Frost questioned. “He always seemed to have a weakness for you, since the days when he rode over with books to teach you how to read and write.”

Weakness? No, Marc had a strength for her. If Shea hadn't been first in her heart, she could have happily loved the young engineer; as it was, she loved him not so happily, knowing she hurt him and hating it.

Turning from Frost, she spoke without expression. “Yes, Mr. Revier stopped to say good-bye on his way to join the Union.”

With mock sympathy, Frost probed one of her deepest fears. “What a pity if he and Shea had to fight each other. Much easier to kill men one doesn't know.”

“I shouldn't think you'd find anything in that line difficult.”

He grasped her hand and noticed for the first time that she wasn't wearing his ring. “Where's your wedding band, my love?”

“It's so broad it makes my finger break out beneath it. Besides, it's not practical to wear when I'm working.”

“I judge it highly practical to have you wear a tangible sign that you belong to me.”

“But the diamonds will fall out—”

“I'll have them replaced.”

“Perhaps you'd like to brand me!”

“I have, where it matters.” His eyes went dark. “I had your maidenhead, Talitha. You may have broken down Shea's scruples and dallied with some officer, but that's in the past. I took you first. Now I intend that no one else will ever have you. And you will wear my ring.”

As she stared at him he murmured silkily, “Fetch it, darling.” There was nothing for it but to get the heavy, glittering ring from a dish on the window ledge.

Taking her to the bed, though it was daylight, he stripped her and had her with brutal swiftness. She set her jaws against the pain, hoping he would finish quickly and leave her.

Instead, he began almost at once to caress and stroke her, fondling her breasts, gently touching the aching place he'd just ravished. “Tender, my sweet?” he murmured. “I'll help you forget that.”

In a moment, shocked past belief, she felt his warm, skillful tongue. Stiffening, gripped with shame at what seemed to her unnatural, she tried to push him away, but he brought her to the edge of the bed, and flame quivered through her as he seemed to feast on the hot, rich honey she felt melting her. Her body arched and she shuddered, then couldn't repress a cry as the flood throbbed through her.

Even as the warm glow ebbed she hated Frost, despised herself. Till now she had managed not to cry in front of him, but he'd smashed her pride. Turning her face into the pillow, she sobbed in guilty humiliation. He took her hand. She felt him slipping the ring on her finger.

“I gave you pleasure today,” he said softly, drawing her into his arms and tasting her tears as he kissed her. “But that's not what you'll get if I find you without my ring again. You'll wear it, love, feel it every moment as a mark that you're mine.”

He closed his hand around hers, and the diamonds dug into her flesh.

Sewa was two in June, clambering on top of the corrals, tagging after whichever elders took her fancy, though most often at the twins' heels or James's. She was beginning to sort out her languages, though her remarks were frequently a hodgepodge of Yaqui, Apache, English, and Spanish. She shrieked each morning when Cat held her between her knees and combed her straight black hair free of tangles before braiding it into one long plait to be secured with a bit of ribbon. Apart from that ritual protest she seldom cried, and in the bright little dresses Anita and Carmencita made for her she was like a hummingbird, hovering here and there, in constant palpitation. She regarded the laps of all adults as her rightful perches.

One evening she clambered up on Judah Frost's knee and then looked up at his face. He smiled at her. She stared, dark eyes widening, then slipped down and ran to Talitha, who was her favorite refuge in time of trouble. Frost's smile deepened. Everyone watched him in startled silence. Afterward, Sewa kept her distance from him.

As for Frost, it seemed to bother him not a whit that he'd killed the child's father. Why should it? In his days as a scalp hunter he'd probably cut the hair off children her age and blithely pocketed the twenty-five pesos paid by the Sonoran government for scalps of Apaches under fourteen.

James was fifteen in July. He enjoyed the barbecue in his honor, especially since Frost was away on one of his extended Sonoran business trips, and was delighted with his array of gifts: fringed buskins, gauntlets, a new quiver, a wrist protector Cat had painstakingly embroidered. Still, next morning Talitha found him gazing at the mountains with a longing on his face that stabbed her.

“Oh, James,” she said, touching his hand. “Can't you be happy here?”

“Happy?” He tilted his head and watched her in some surprise. “I never thought about that, with the People. It was just where I belonged.”

The quiet words struck Talitha harder than any excited praises of the Apache way of life could have. She clenched her hands behind her to keep from crying out at him:
Was it for this that I kept you alive, that Shea was branded, that you lived here from before the time you could remember until you were seven? Do you really belong to the Apaches?

Her brother must have read some of this in her face. “I will stay till Shea comes back or there are so many bluecoats that my people will need protection more than yours,” he said. “It's just that I should be going on raids, learning how to do things right. Probably, had I stayed with Mangus, I would have been on four raids by now and could count as a warrior.”

“Here you do the full work of a vaquero. Belen says he never saw anyone take to it so quickly.”

James moved his broadening shoulders. Already close to six feet tall, he was packing hard muscle onto his bones. Impossible to believe she'd once carried him around in a cradleboard.

“Belen and Santiago taught me much when I was small. I like vaquero work, though it's funny to doctor screwworms and nurse calves instead of running them off.” His smile faded. “Remember what you promised, Talitha? That in the hungry time I may take some of the cattle you say are mine to the Apaches?”

“I remember.” She searched his eyes. In their dark blue depths she could read nothing of whether he intended to return. She dared not ask.

Three young hawks fledged by the pair nesting along the creek had left the nest. For the month or so they were learning to feed themselves they pursued their parents, screeching and screaming, catching in midair the snakes, mice, and other food sometimes dropped to them.

When able to fend for themselves, the young vanished, gone to seek ranges of their own, but K'aak'eh still lingered, feeding from what James or the twins put out for him. He could fly, but though he spent the day circling and dropping to earth, it was rarely that he was seen gripping anything in his talons.

His injury must have thrown him off by the split second that made all the difference. He would have perished in the wild, but it scarcely mattered here. He was a beautiful bird, molting into his adult plumage, with his tail now a deep rich rust, his underbody pure white to where the speckling blended into the brown of the shoulders and upper wings.

“I suppose he'll start hunting a mate next spring,” Talitha said one day to James as he held the hawk on his padded arm.