The Valiant Women (2 page)

The farming Indians with settled villages had usually accepted the padres and baptism, though the Yaqui of her own region had adopted the faith of the Spaniards without their government, ferociously resisting Mexico City's occasional attempts to colonize the rich delta.

In this northern area, even though they'd rebelled in 1751, Pima and Papago had generally been glad of any protection Spanish, and now Mexican, troops could give them. They were frequently raided by various Apache bands who roamed the vast mountain ranges of northern Sonora and Chihuahua and spilled over into the plains of Texas, which had successfully revolted against Mexico in 1836 and been annexed to the United States in 1845.

There was no end to the problems caused by Texas. Instead of its proper boundary of the Nueces River, it had claimed all the land to the Rio Grande, which would have included that far northern outpost of the Spanish, Santa Fe, as well as southeast to the Gulf.

Father had said the Yanquis only wanted any excuse to seize California and as much land as possible. The United States had, in the spring of 1846, occupied the disputed miles of brush and desert between the Nueces and Rio Grande; Mexican troops crossed the river, and since then battles had raged through central Mexico as the Yanquis fought their way south. Buena Vista, Saltillo, Monterrey … At the latest news they were advancing on Mexico City itself. That was when her father had decided to take her without delay to California.

“If the Yanquis take California, it may be impossible to have the wedding for years,” he'd worried. “Your cousin is twenty-seven. He can't be expected to wait forever.”

“He could come to Alamos, Papa, and marry me in our cathedral.”

“He can't leave his ranch,” returned her father. “And it was agreed that you should travel to him. No, we shall leave as soon as I can get an escort.”

Her poor harassed father. He'd gone to death, not a wedding.

Socorro drank again, from the higher water hole, wiped a wispy feather from her lip. The cañon wound like a great serpent, curving out of sight. She filled her water jug, hesitated before she climbed slowly up the steep rocky wall. Once there, where the trails met, she stared at the mountain, her goal for days. It seemed no nearer than when she'd started. Certainly it was farther than this jug could take her. And she had no food.

She shrank from the idea of killing any of the birds or animals coming for water, but she might learn from them what could be eaten. She'd have a better chance of reaching that ranch behind the mountain if she rested a few days near this water, collected such food as she could.

The sun was sinking beyond the scattered peaks and worn-away rims of what had been volcanoes. Light turned the distant sand dunes a luminous rose and the mountains half-buried by them glowed blue as the madonna's robe. Socorro knew the softness was a cruel deceit, a trick of sun and desert air. The dunes were said to run all the way to the muddy salt flats of the bay and those enchanted mountains were really barren gray stone like those west and north.

As she had done the other nights of her ordeal, she found a stretch of fine sand amid a spill of rocks and left her jug there while she searched for food before darkness fell.

It was early October, not the time for bird eggs, and such cactus fruits as hadn't been devoured were starting to dry up, but she picked these into a fold of her rebozo, as well as any small tender prickly pear pads she found.

Some animal with either sharp hoofs or horns had broken open and eaten part of a great mass of hundred-headed cactus. With her knife, she cut out a chunk of the greenish-white pulp, chewed it cautiously.

Almost tasteless, but at least it was filling and contained considerable moisture. She ate several more pieces, then, with her knife, rearranged the broken part to shelter the cavity. Tomorrow she'd eat from it again. Now it was twilight, time to retreat to her chosen place of rest.

With great care, she peeled some of the cactus fruits, being sure to get off the tiny tufts of spines. They had a tangy taste like wild berries.

Tomorrow she must look for something with more strength in it. She had no flint and steel for making fire so she couldn't cook anything, but perhaps she could find seeds. And it might be that the pods of acacia, ironwood and paloverde could be eaten like mesquite beans. She wrapped the extra rebozo closer against the cooling desert night, sighed and curled up next to the sun-warmed rocks.

There were paddings and sounds but these didn't frighten her as much as before. Apart from snakes and man she had little to fear. This wasn't bear territory. Coyotes didn't attack people and mountain lions seldom did.

Several times in the night she woke shivering, turned on her other side and burrowed deeper in the sand. An impossible country! One burned by day and froze by night! But the knowledge that she was near water, didn't have to press on tomorrow in a desperate search for it, let her drift back to sleep till her final waking with the sun dazzling in her eyes as it climbed above reddish craters and black cones.

After a breakfast of cactus fruit and water, she started on another food hunt, first leaning several dead yucca stalks together to mark the descent to the water hole and orienting herself, the long crater east, that elusive purple mountain north, shimmering dunes south and west.

Within a few hours she filled her rebozo with acacia and ironwood pods and more cactus fruit, or
tunas
. The beans in the pods were much too hard for chewing, but by the water hole she'd seen several hollows in the rocks that would serve for
metates
.

Returning, she selected a depression shaded by a large ironwood and soon found a smooth black elongated stone that fitted the inside of the hollow.

As she husked beans into the grinding hole, Socorro's spine chilled. Wasn't it likely that these natural
metates
were used by
Areneño
women? Certainly the Indians living in this arid wasteland knew every water hole. Sooner or later they were bound to turn up here.

Holding her breath, she looked slowly up and down both rims of the cañon, relaxed a trifle when she saw no one, but her sense of refuge was shattered. She would risk spending tomorrow near the water but the next morning she'd move on.

She ground beans till her arms ached. Since there was no way to bake or cook gruel, she mixed enough water with the meal to make small flat cakes which she spread to sun-dry on the rocks.

That afternoon when she was gathering more pods and cactus fruit, she saw an eagle swoop, the gold of his plumage shining. His talons closed on a large rabbit, which after one frantic convulsion was limp.

Socorro didn't pause to argue the rights of robbing the eagle of meat she wouldn't have killed herself. Snatching up a dead branch, she shouted, running forward. For a moment it seemed that the giant bird, whose wingspan was more than her height, might battle, but when she struck at it the eagle gave an angry shriek and winged upward, abandoning its prey.

Socorro couldn't eat the raw flesh and she felt sick by the time she'd unskillfully cut and peeled off the hide. She cut the meat in thin strips and thrust them on an all-thorn bush to dry. She simply couldn't do anything with the intestines and heart, so she left these far from camp to make some other creature's dinner. She did save the bigger bits of furry skin. Her soft leather shoes were wearing out and she could pad the soles with the luckless rabbit's coat.

Late that afternoon she bathed in the lower water hole, and then luxuriated in what, even without salt, seemed a magnificent feast of meal cakes, partially dried meat,
tunas
and wedges cut from the hundred-headed cactus.

It was strange. During the day, heartened by the acquisition of meat and growing stack of cakes, she'd begun to have a real hope of getting out of the desert alive. But when darkness fell, she huddled in her rebozo and felt as if she were the only human in all the world. Her father seemed to watch from the shadows. She tried to talk to him but he couldn't answer. At last she slept.

It was gray dawn when she woke to an unearthly cry. Terrified, she waited for a moment. The agony of that call echoed in her mind. She couldn't ignore it. Springing up, she hurried up the bank in the direction of the sound.

A dark heap lay sprawled among the rocks. Whatever it was couldn't hurt her; but could she help it?

Approaching, she bent over a shriveled leathery skeleton. It was still breathing.

He was dying and his friends were dead. Not only the Patricios hanged as deserters because they'd thrown in with their fellow Catholics, the Mexicans, to fight the damned blue-bellies, but Michael, his twin brother, who'd escaped with him the night they were branded and flogged. The guard had been lax, jubilating over the fall of Mexico City and not expecting prisoners who'd been bloodily whipped to feel like moving.

But the O'Sheas had, before they could be fitted with those fine iron collars ornamented with six-inch spikes. No lady would be hugging a man decked out in one of those!

In spite of being overrun by Yanquis, the common Mexicans had been kind to the fugitives, feeding them, helping them evade the victorious United States troops. The brothers might have hidden till Old Rough-and-Ready Taylor and “Fuss and Feathers” Scott were back across the Rio, but Michael had a wish to go to California and so they'd struck out on the dim tracks that would lead through old volcanic mountains to the Gran Desierto and beyond into California.

In spite of warnings from the last peons who had given them food, the O'Sheas hadn't realized what they were getting into. Nothing they'd seen in Mexico, from the brush thickets of the Rio Grande to the high barren mountains, had prepared them for this. The
tinaja
they'd been told about was dry, and they'd been out of water for half a day when they reached it.

Michael's blue eyes had widened with shock, and the crusted, puckering brand on his cheek had twisted. “How far did that old man say it was to the next water?”

“Seventy miles.”

“Shea, lad, we'll never make it.” Perhaps because their father's name had been Patrick, his widow had called his namesake “Shea” and so, of course, had everyone else. Michael looked despairingly back the way they'd come. “And we'll never last that!”

Shea nodded. “But the old man said there were a few tanks off the road.”

“And only
Areneños
know where they are!”

They'd agreed to gamble on finding the secret
tinajas
, watching for animal trails or the flight of dove and quail. The few trails they found vanished in stretches of black lava or jumbled rocks and the only birds they saw were a pair of ravens, high-circling eagles, and a few hawks.

They lost track of time. There were only blazing suns that stupefied them till the cooling night revived them enough to crawl onward. Michael had died in the last sun, baked to leather, lips peeled back from his teeth, the inside of his nostrils blackened, his blood so thick it no longer oozed from cuts and scratches.

Shea had refused to believe his twin was dead. To escape the Famine, fight through the wildest battles of the Mexican War, survive floggings that had wrecked some men for life, and then to die for lack of water! Shea had pleaded and cursed and wept, but Michael only grimaced horribly at the sun, eyelids so dried and shriveled that most of the eyeballs showed.

Too weak to dig a proper grave, Shea scratched enough sand from the creek bed to give his brother a thin shelter, put a cross of paloverde twigs in his hands, and prayed. Michael had been a good lad, rough and liking his whiskey, but merry, generous and warmhearted. Even if his fleshly sins landed him in purgatory, their mother would soon have him out, for Rosaleen O'Shea had been a saintly woman, not even hating the English as she starved to death when the potatoes rotted in the fields the summer of '45. She'd urged her sons to go to America. Had she known—

Wouldn't it be best just to stay here with Michael, at least die close to the body of a loved one? Shea was mightily tempted. But something made him drag on, ridden with fever and delirium so that he tore off his ragged clothes except for his shoes, which were too hard to get off, and then shivered by night, drinking the trickle of urine he voided with great pain though part of his brain remembered that made thirst deadlier.

There seemed to be thundering in his ears, blinding light in his eyes. His throat felt sealed. Before him there seemed to be a shining glitter of a crystal water pitcher surrounded by goblets. He seized one, pressed it to his face. Only then did his mind clear enough to see that he gripped a segment of multi-spined cholla. Clawing it off, he crept on, his tongue and mouth so numbed that they scarcely felt the needles.

He thought he saw a pool, dug at it frantically till a nail ripped and he saw it was only the shadow of a rock. After these phantasms, it was a blessing when his mind, escaping his tortured body, played tricks. He and Michael, new troopers, joining the Army because it seemed the only way to earn their keep while getting used to this big new country, were back across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, building Fort Brown. Mexicans waved at them in friendly fashion from the adobe town.

In the evening, women came to bathe, the curving of the young ones beautiful beneath falls of long black hair that didn't hide much. While they sent a man's blood pounding with their laughter and pretty games, you could look beyond them to the church.

The Mexicans must have been grand Catholics because they had more Saint's Day processions than there were saints, at least that the O'Sheas had heard of. A fine sight to see banners proudly borne with music and people following.

A stirring sight to the O'Sheas whose earliest memory of the Mass was its being said by stealth in the fields, a watch out for safety, since the only priests who could lawfully hold services were pitiful ones who'd foresworn their loyalty to the Stuarts, the rightful Catholic rulers. The O'Sheas and most like them counted for naught the prayers of a traitor. It was a revelation that Catholicism
was
the religion of Mexico, openly revered as the true faith, a wonder almost past believing, though after Emancipation in 1829, the worst weight of the Penal Laws had been lifted.