The Valiant Women (19 page)

As they passed through a narrow gorge, Apaches attacked. The ones who escaped that onslaught were wiped out in the next defile except for five or six who managed to escape with their terrible news. The mines had been deserted since then.

“And so have been Don Narciso's, forty miles west of here,” concluded Santiago.

Small wonder
, thought Socorro, and in spite of Mangus's promise, she felt cold.

Now that the house was livable, the men began cutting wood, taking dead limbs off mesquite and thinning the
bosques
, thick groves of the trees, which gave shade for the cattle in hot weather. Socorro and Tjúni collected walnuts, dumping them in a corner of the
sala
till the darkening hulls dried enough to be taken off more easily.

All of them went on the piñon expedition, taking Viejo to carry their supplies for they'd spend three or four days in the mountains. They found several thick stands of the short-trunked pines and there, in spite of foraging squirrels and chipmunks, they collected quantities of the small fallen nuts.

Where piñons grew mixed with juniper, their harvest slowed, but the clear cold air, the smell of pine, and sudden vistas that stretched away across mountains and valleys to more mountains, purple, pink or dark or soft blue, according to distance and vegetation, were a tonic change from the lower country, pleasant though it was.

They all felt on holiday and one time when the afternoon sun had warmed pine needles to give off an even heavier aroma, Shea's eyes met Socorro's in a way that sent her pulse leaping. In a few minutes they wandered off together, found a sheltered sunny place and made love.

“It's our wedding trip,” Socorro laughed, idling her fingers on his collarbone.

He kissed her slowly, sweetly and with appreciation. It was one of the special things that made her love Shea so much more all the time that she could scarcely believe she'd dared call love that vague, timid, contradictory feeling she'd had before marriage.

Shea never just turned his back and went to sleep. The hunger and fierceness with which he took her melted in their passion but his loving didn't. He held her close while they rested. Then he always kissed and caressed her again, making her feel not only desired but tenderly loved. Cuddling her against him now as he sat up, he gazed across the vast country.

“It's a grand place,
chiquita
, magnificent past words.”

She tightened her arms around him at the sad note in his voice. “Do you miss your green island, my husband?”

“Yes. But my mother is buried beside my father under its sod, my brother's bones are in the desert, and there is no going back.” He cupped her face in his hands. “My life is here with you. My life
is
you.”

Their lips met, the fire kindled.

They gathered piñons steadily the rest of that day to make up for their truancy. Socorro was sorry to start down from the high country next day, but it was well they did, for snow began in flurries, diminishing as they descended and stopping entirely before they reached the valley.

To keep the piñon nuts from decaying or getting wormy, Tjúni showed Socorro how to roast them in baskets with live coals. The trick was to shake the basket so that it didn't scorch while the nuts were roasting. Stored in baskets and jars, the parched nuts made a rich and tasty addition to their food stores.

The husks of the walnuts had turned black. Now they could be trampled till the pithy covering flaked away, leaving the tough shell. These were hard to break. Santiago or Shea cracked some outside between two stones each evening. These were placed in the center of the mats by the fire and, after supper, the four used yucca spikes to pick out the meats. The shells were so thick that the meats were small, but they were excellent food, good alone or added to bread and soups.

Santiago saved the husks. “Soaked with a little water, these make a good medicine for cleaning wounds or getting rid of lice on cattle and mules,” he explained. He grinned at Shea. “And should you want to disguise that fiery mane of yours, Don Patrick, the juice would give you nice brown hair.”

Shea lifted an eyebrow at Socorro. “Would you fancy that?”

“No!” she said vehemently. “But I may use it when I start going gray.”

“Wouldn't worry about that yet,” Shea said.

They told stories on these nights by the fire. One of Tjúni's was of Earth Magician, born during chaos, who separated earth and sky, thus causing the birth of Iitoi, Elder Brother. This son of earth and sky helped Earth Magician make the sun, moon and stars and by the light of these, they continued to create.

From two drops of sweat Earth Magician made two spiders who crawled four times around the world, laboriously webbing earth and sky together at the edges. Next the creators made people, but these fought each other and were so bad that the makers destroyed them. The next lot were just as evil. Four times man was shaped and done away with. Earth Magician's last crop of people were so misshapen that he went off to the underworld and stayed there, and Iitoi at last made some humans in his own image that he was satisfied with, but on some he dropped blood and these became Apaches.

His people killed Iitoi, though, four times they killed him, but he was always alive the next day. He was a fine singer and made the deer, birds and other animals as well as trees bearing fruit. Coyote helped with this, when he wasn't playing tricks.

“And Iitoi lives on Pinacate?” Socorro asked.

“Yes, and at Baboquivari, maybe three days' journey northwest of here.” Tjúni looked at Socorro in the flickering light. “Now it's your turn, lady.”

Socorro told of La Llorona, the horse-headed night spectre with an enticing woman's body. Men who followed her died of fright when she revealed her countenance. Once she'd been a lovely woman whose nobleman lover deserted her and their children. She killed her children and herself and since then was doomed to wander the earth, wailing for her slaughtered babies.

“That's a sad tale, lass,” muttered Shea, but his were just as sad though lit with the glow of myth and heroism.

Deirdre of the sorrows, Cerridwen's cauldron which restored dead men to a sort of terrible life without soul or mind, Cuchulain betrayed and dying bravely. There was the bright proud victory of Brian Boru over the Danes, but the later history of Ireland was far sadder than its days of warring tribal kings.

What could touch the horror of Drogheda when Cromwell's soldiers killed thirty-five hundred men, women and children, then sent thousands more to slavery in the West Indies and Virginia? And there was Wolfe Tone's revolt, put down by that same Lord Cornwallis who'd been defeated at Yorktown by George Washington. Wolfe killed himself in his cell rather than meet the dishonorable fate of hanging.

Santiago sang
corridos
or ballads, and songs of love. His stories were short, usually fables with a commonsense moral, but he told one haunting story of Godmother Death.

A peon besought Death to be godmother to his son. She consented and taught the boy many secrets of healing so that often, as he grew into manhood, he was able to save those his godmother would have otherwise taken. She had told him it was all right for him to treat people so long as she hadn't entered the room, but if she appeared, he must leave the patient to her.

He fell in love with a beautiful girl. They were very happy, till she fell sick. The young man did everything he could for her but she grew worse and at last he looked up to see his godmother at the foot of the bed.

He refused to yield his girl to her. Forgetting all Death's kindnesses to him, he called her fearful names and defied her. She looked on him silently, then left without a word.

His wife lived but his healing power left him. From then on, he was as any peon.

“I think he did right,” Socorro breathed, glancing at Shea. “What good is power without the one you love?”

Santiago's tawny eyes held hers. “You are fortunate, lady.”

She bowed her head and dug intently at a nut. It wasn't comfortable, being so happy with Shea, sleeping every night in his arms, when Santiago and Tjúni had no one. But at least more vaqueros must be found by summer and that should change things. There'd be more people around, at any rate, so the four wouldn't be so totally dependent on each other for company.

Still, even with the undercurrents, there was a sharing and companionship about that winter that Socorro knew wouldn't have happened with other people around. It was a special bond, even with Tjúni, who kept herself aloof from friendship with Socorro, though she'd been neither spiteful nor insulting since the day they encountered Mangus.

Along with their mingling of songs, stories and talk, Shea suggested that he teach them English. “If the Americans make a road through Sonora—and you can just bet they will—next, there'll be soldiers and towns.” The brand on his cheek contracted as he set his lean jaw. “I don't like the idea of trading with them but we'll damned well have to! If you don't understand what a man's saying, it's easy for him to cheat you.”

So they made it a habit to spend an hour or so in. English practice each night. Tjúni learned more quickly than the others. Either she had a better ear or she wanted to outdo Socorro and bask in Shea's praise. Which she did.

After enough wood was stacked outside the house for winter, the men repaired corrals and
ramadas
and the women helped at making adobe bricks. When enough of these were cured, another building was started at a right angle to the house. This would house the vaqueros they still hoped would present themselves before spring.

The women also learned how to use the rifles, though again Tjúni proved a much superior shot. Santiago also engineered the mill located a discreet distance from the creek. An elevated floor standing on four legs had been made of roughly hewn pine and a small house about six feet high was built on this eight-foot foundation. It had taken a lot of hunting to find just the right millstones, broad and smooth and round.

It took so many hours to chip, bore and drill holes in them that Socorro shook her head. “Really, Tjúni and I don't mind grinding the corn.”

“No use spending half your day at it,” Shea grunted.

One millstone was fastened to the floor. A wooden shaft was set in a socket in a rock beneath the floor and protruded through the first stone. The lower end of the shaft, beneath the floor, was equipped with three-foot-long horizontal paddles. These paddles were turned by the force of water guided against them by a small trough formed in the end of several hollowed-out half-trunks of big cottonwoods that fed water from the creek.

When, after immense labor, all was ready, the women were invited to bring as much corn for the grinding as would keep for several weeks.

With a flourish, Santiago poured kernels through a hole in the upper stone, and Shea opened the sluice. With tremendous groaning, the stones turned. Gradually meal began to spill out from between stones, falling to the platform.

Within minutes the mill had ground as much as the women, working steadily, could have done in several days. When, at a shout from Santiago, Shea closed the sluice, Tjúni and Socorro began scraping the meal into baskets. Tjúni had such a frown that Socorro asked what was wrong.

“Not right way to grind corn!
Metate
better.”

“Why, the meal looks the same!”

“Won't be,” said Tjúni dourly. She glanced with loathing at the millstones. “How
that
do anything but smash corn?”

“I'm glad it can,” retorted Socorro. “I can certainly find things I'd rather do than kneel slaving at a
metate
for hours a day!”

“Papago girl who grinds good much wanted for wife. If all get meal from such thing, how tell good wife from bad?”

“There must be other ways.” Socorro laughed.

It was clear that the mill struck at deep roots in Tjúni's tribal heritage. Though the tortillas from its grinding tasted as good to the others, Tjúni grimly maintained that she could tell a lot of difference and was sure the mill-ground meal was neither as tasty nor as healthy.

Since they were close to the marsh, cattail roots and stalks continued to be an important addition to their cooking, a blessing since, as Tjúni pointed out, they'd been too late to collect stores of mesquite, cholla buds, or acorns.

“But we can roast agave in winter,” she said, and gave one of her rare smiles. “No need make bake pit, already one not far from corral.”

“You mean that big rock-lined hole?” Socorro had noticed it, but all Tjúni had said at the time was that it looked like something Apache had used.

Tjúni nodded. “Pit much larger than what we need. Made to bake dozen, two dozen agave hearts. We bake maybe two, use one side only.”

On the morning of their expedition Tjúni left Socorro to make the breakfast tortillas, a chore she delegated more and more out of disgust for the mill-ground meal, while she went off to start a fire in the baking pit.

She borrowed Santiago's machetelike knife. Socorro had her own, and right after breakfast, equipped with a long woven mat for carrying the agave hearts, the women started out, passing the pit which was about ten feet wide and three deep. The fire blazed against one wall, sending out a pungent scent of juniper and mesquite, a curl of blue-gray smoke that reminded Socorro of Shea's eyes.

They were so happy. A woman, according to Great Aunt Teresa Catalina, had to endure her husband's appetites; she wasn't supposed to enjoy them, but of late Shea had begun to stare at her with teasing incredulity.

“God's whiskers,
chiquita
, you're wearing me out!” he'd whispered last night when her fleeting delicate touches had waked him while rousing another very independent part of him. “I'll have my revenge, though!”

Gathering her in his arms, he tantalized and teased till she was quivering, arching against him. There came that wonderful moment, that always new, heart-stopping instant when he entered her, sometimes in one joyous thrust, other times with a deliberation that made her intensely aware of the sensation flowing through her blood and nerves at his sinking deeply, sweetly, ever more completely, into her.