The Valiant Women (26 page)

Cactus was in bloom now, and Tjúni said that in the lower desert saguaro would be wearing the white flowers that looked so ridiculously small perched on their great tubular growths. When the flowers ripened to red sweet fruit late in June, it would be worth a trip to gather them.

The crops were growing well and sometimes they had green shoots of corn stewed with tiny squash and
nopales
, the tender young pads of the prickly pear. The green bloom spikes of cattails could be boiled now and Tjúni said that before long they'd be covered with the thick rich golden pollen that could be cooked by itself with water or mixed into mush, soup or bread. “Strong food,” she called it. “Very sweet.”

In June, when the
conducta
reached the mines, the manager, Don Elizario Carvajal, rode to Rancho del Socorro to invite the proprietors to come and select what they wanted.

“Mangus Coloradas was waiting on us,” Don Elizario admitted with a flash of teeth beneath his neat mustache. He was such a mountainous man that one felt sorry for the horse that carried him, but his bulk was hard, not flabby. “As agreed, we gave him a tithe of everything but powder and ball.” He chuckled. “The savages seemed pleased, though I think they missed the zest of ambushing us and winning their luxuries by force.”

Shea grinned. His second branding was a darker crescent over the white seam of the D. “We'll be mightily glad to get our sugar and wheat without a fight!” he assured the manager.

He and Santiago accompanied Don Elizario back to the mines and returned several days later with two pack mules laden with what amounted to treasure: salt, cones of hard brown sugar, wheat, needles, thread, bolts of heavy material for making trousers, bolts of blue and red cotton for dresses, iron pots, two saws, two hammers and nails.

There were also things that Shea had especially requested: the chocolate that Socorro missed so much with cinnamon to stir into it and a grooved wooden whirler to make it froth; coffee, the only thing he'd liked about the U.S. Army; hand-crafted boots for Santiago, and the softest of fine wool rebozos for Socorro and Tjúni, Tjúni's a rich golden-yellow, Socorro's heaven blue to replace the one used so rigorously during their ordeal in the desert.

That seemed so long ago and yet it was less than a year. Socorro realized with shock, as she reveled in what came out of the packs, that a year ago, sheltered in her father's comfortable home in Alamos, she would've taken all these now-luxuries for granted. It also seemed to her that she hadn't been alive.

Part of that was because she hadn't met Shea but more of it was because, surviving first in the desert and now in this high valley, she'd learned to live on what was available, had confidence that she could meet challenges that would have terrified the pampered merchant's daughter.

She smiled at Shea as he wrapped the blue shawl about her. “We're so lucky,” she murmured. “So lucky!”

He thought she was speaking of goods from the
conducta
, tightened his embrace. “Just wait, Mrs. O'Shea!” he promised. “One of these days, you're going to have rings on your fingers, jewels at your throat, satins and silks—”

“Burro redhead!” she broke in laughing, then clung to him as suddenly, within her, she felt the baby move, like the stirring of a hand.

It wasn't the way she'd planned to tell him, in the middle of day, in front of the others, but the quickening of the child made real what had been only her secret. She wanted him to know. Bringing his head down, she whispered in his ear. He put her away from him, staring.

“Our baby moved? What baby?”

“The one that will be born in October. Oh, Shea, let's have a boy with your eyes and gorgeous hair!”

“You're bringing me in on this a little late, madam, to be so fussy,” he growled before he yelped with consternation. “God's whiskers! Here you've been riding horseback, lugging James around, bending over those marshes, working in the crops! Maybe”—his eyes widened in horror—“maybe what you thought was the baby quickening was the start of a miscarriage!”

“You
are
a redhead burro!” she flung at him. “I never felt better in all my life! I
have
been careful! Did I ask to go along to pick out things from the
conducta?
”

Tjúni said decisively, “Women of Desert People work till baby come, work again next day. Woman making baby not invalid!”

“My mother worked, too, but it sure didn't help her!” Shea bent a stern look on Socorro. “Promise me clear that you'll stop lifting heavy stuff, bending over, stretching up—”

He paused for breath and she glared at him. “Anything else?” she inquired dangerously.

“That you'll rest when you're tired!” he finished. He appealed to Santiago since Tjúni was watching him with wonderment and scorn, “Can you think of anything else she shouldn't do?”

“I can think of several things you'd better stop!” Santiago chuckled. But his golden eyes softened as he said gently to Socorro, “I would agree that your husband, señora,
is
a burro and indisputedly a redhead! But should you not humor him? It is, after all, his first child. So far as we know.”

Socorro had to smile reluctantly and Santiago went on coaxingly, “The first child born at Rancho del Socorro is special to all of us.
Por favor
, lady, guard it well for your friends.” He added piously, “In return, we'll pray that the merciful God will bless the baby with your looks, not those of your ugly husband!”

She gasped with indignation, saw from the gleam in Santiago's eyes that he was deliberately arousing her in behalf of Shea, and subsided in a helpless sputter. But Talitha confronted Santiago like a small yellow wildcat.

“Don't you call Shea ugly! He—he's beautiful!” Whirling to Shea, she caught his arm. “I'll watch Socorro for you, be sure she doesn't hurt herself! Don't worry, Shea. The baby will be fine!”

The grown-ups blinked. Then Shea said gravely, “Thank you, Talitha. I'll depend on you. And that reminds me.…”

Shaking out one of the lengths of cloth, he produced a doll dressed elegantly in dark blue silk, wearing a lace mantilla and holding a fan. There was a tiny gold chain about her neck and the head was china, carefully painted in lifelike tones, rooted with real black hair.

Talitha gazed at it in disbelief, didn't move to take it even after Shea held it out to her. “It's yours,” he said, puzzled. “Don't you like her?”

“My—my hands are dirty,” she stammered and then ran to wash. Only then would she take the doll. She held her with reverence while Shea unearthed one last indulgence, a jug of mescal, and proposed they all drink to the coming child.

“To the heir of Rancho del Socorro!” toasted San tiago.

Shea shook his head. “No. That will be your son.”

“What son?” shrugged Santiago and his gaze veered, as if involuntarily, to Socorro, before he grinned at Shea. “We've shared the dangers and work. We own the land equally, the share from the mines. No need to divide yet, so long as all are content. But Mangus's debt to Socorro is the only reason we're still alive, that we hold this ranch. Her child has claim to the home place.”

“No!” she protested. “That's not right, Santiago!”

“It
is
right. My children, if I have some, can have El Charco.”

“And mine?” asked Tjúni.

Both men looked blank. “Why, you'll be staying with us, won't you?” fumbled Shea.

“No.” Tjúni's face was expressionless as she glanced at Socorro. “I stay till you have baby, till you strong again. Then I move to western side. Maybe a few Papago families settle near.” Her slim brown hand, flattened, moved in rejection. “Furniture, Apache brat, mines, lots of people—no place for me now!”

“But Tjúni!” Socorro objected. “You can't just go off by yourself!”

“Can.”

“If you won't stay with us, at least let us get you settled with your own people,” Shea argued.

The Papago girl smiled suddenly. “Yes. You do that! Find two, three, four Papago families to live on my land.” She nodded. “I like that.”

Santiago said feelingly, “It would save much trouble if you married one of the Sanchez brothers.”

“Not marry to save you trouble,” she told him coolly. To Socorro, she said, “True my people no own land. Move on it with seasons. Belong everybody like sunlight, like air.”

Her face tightened and her dark eyes included Shea and Santiago, flicked to Talitha and little James who stared back at her from his cradleboard which was hung on a stout peg. “New time. New people come. I want place not to
own
but for not be driven away from.”

“You'll have it,” Shea promised. He offered more mescal but the others refused. The celebration was tainted now with the knowledge that their lives were separating, that they had lost the unity of that first isolated season when they depended completely upon each other and were each other's world.

Socorro, Talitha helping, was gathering ears of corn that afternoon for making green corn tamales when she noticed something yellow-gold on the hillside by the burial of the scalps. Tjúni.

Since the other woman's announcement that she meant to live apart, Socorro had felt oppressed and troubled. It wasn't that she was truly fond of Tjúni. She was perfectly aware that the Papago worshiped Shea and saw his wife as a useless encumbrance. But Tjúni was so much a part of their life that it was hard to imagine the ranch without her, a sort of dour, often disapproving teacher-guardian of the wild country, the ageless ways.

It was true that Tjúni had been irritated by developments that outraged her sense of what was right: the mill, furniture, partnering the mines, bringing in more vaqueros, adopting half-Apache James. But Socorro still felt Tjúni's decision was triggered by the fact that Socorro was to have Shea's child.

“You stay with James,” she told Talitha, who, faithful to her word, dogged Socorro in a way that would have been maddening if it hadn't been so devotedly earnest and amusing. “I want to talk with Tjúni.”

Approaching the slope from the side, she climbed gradually around to the burial grotto. She hadn't been there since the interment though she remembered the rancho and Papago victims in her prayers.

Clearly, Tjúni had been, for the blue necklace she'd claimed from the scalpers' packs lay in one crevice—for the young sister who had not yet become a woman when she was violated and killed?—and there were several bowls and gourds and an offering of bright wild-flowers placed in the shallow cave.

Tjúni was staring westward, sun lighting her face in its sullen beauty. She didn't hear Socorro till a rock grated underfoot. Whirling, the Papago girl's eyes glinted briefly with tears before her features were composed again, closed and impenetrable.

“Why you come here? These not your dead.”

“I came to see you.” Taking a deep breath, Socorro tried to pierce the invisible barriers between them of race, beliefs, rearing, but mostly the deep-rooted hostility of a woman who craves the man of the other. “Tjúni, I hate to think of your leaving. Is—is it because of the baby?”

“Baby?” Tjúni's slim eyebrows raised. “For long time now I know that! Remember, I told you when we bake agave!”

“Then why?”

Tjúni stared at Socorro. It seemed she wasn't going to answer when at last she said harshly, “I think when you big with baby and after it come till you strong, Shea need woman, take me.” She swallowed, disappointment and hurt pride making her voice even jerkier. “He worse now! Think on nothing but you! Most men need more than one woman!” She ended fatalistically. “He different. For him, you only.”

So it was said, out between them at last. “I'm sorry for how you feel,” Socorro said carefully. “But I'm glad my husband loves me. Wouldn't you have more chance of meeting a man you could care for, Tjúni, if you went to live in one of the Papago settlements?”

“I care for man. No want other.”

There was nothing more to say. But as Socorro turned to go, Tjúni's words came after her. “After baby safe come, you no need me. One year, all seasons, I teach you plants, getting food. You know now.”

Socorro looked at her, accepting that because of Shea they could never be friends, yet feeling a deep bond with Tjúni, as strong in its way as love or hate.

“Yes. You have taught me.” She tried to lighten the moment. “But you still make the best tortillas.”

Going down the hill, Socorro faced the westering sun, the Santa Ritas towering above the valley, the blue, distant mountains. It was the blooming time.

Yellow, white, blue and crimson wild flowers were everywhere and prickly pear and barrel cactus drew bees with yellow, rose and orange blossoms. Along the creek, the reddish willow bark had vanished behind new green and the white trunks of sycamores only showed in spots through new leaves of maple, elm, ash and walnut. Quail were thick in the high grass and a flutter of doves winged up before her.

They reminded her of the birds that had led her to water in the dead volcanoes and lava flows, water that had helped her save a stranger whose flaming hair had seemed the only living thing about him.

He strode forward now to meet her, that hair still a glory, eyes eager and loving. Socorro smiled at him and the child within her stirred as if to greet its father.

PART III

TALITHA

XV

Talitha slowly came awake on her pallet in a corner of the
sala
, luxuriating in the awareness of Shea and Socorro in the next room. James, who slept at the end of their room near the door, was stirring.

If Talitha hadn't roused, one of the grown-ups would have gone to James, seen to his needs. Instead of being hated and neglected as he'd been in Juh's lodging, here he was loved and cared for. Knowing this made Talitha feel as if a weight much heavier than the cradleboard had been eased from her shoulders.