The Valiant Women (32 page)

Cristiano bellowed, puzzled and angry that a herd was moving without his leadership, but finally seemed to notice that most of his companions remained. Over these, he exerted mild tyrannies till his self-esteem was restored.

Will Thomas left twenty head of
Chinos
to breed with the ranch stock and produce larger, beefier animals. They had shed their long curly winter coats and their brown underparts looked sleek and bluish.

“You'll have one of their first calves,
doncellita
,” promised Belen, squinting at a young cow. “By using them and culling out the unthrifty, Don Patricio will have the best cattle between Texas and California!”

Talitha laughed. “When the Indians have run off most of the herds in between, that's not much praise!”

Belen shrugged. “I haven't seen the beasts of the
Tejanos
, except for this herd, or those of the
Californios
. But I can tell you this rancho's cattle are already better than those of Don Narciso.”

“Why is that?” frowned Talitha. “Santiago says the Cantús have been raising cattle for over a hundred years.”

“Which doesn't mean Don Narciso has learned anything,” grunted Belen. “He wants to hear he has thousands of horned cattle and if their bones clank together, he never listens.”

Shea came to stand beside them, his hair blazing in the sundown. The unscarred side of his face was toward Talitha. He was beautiful in a harsh male way, but it was the sight of his scars that stirred her to a passion of worship. It was as if her heart had been branded along with his cheek. Her life belonged to him. James ran up now and grasped his foster father's leg.

Swinging him to a shoulder, Shea gave his head a shake of wonderment. “Still doesn't seem real, lass. Four years ago, I was in Ireland, watching potatoes rot in the field while my mother starved. Three years ago I was in the United States Army camped down on the Rio Grande. With Michael, God rest him—”

His voice trailed off. Talitha took his long brown fingers, pressed them to her cheek. “You have Miguel now,” she reminded him. “And Patrick.”

He bent to sweep her close in a hug that embraced James. “And I've got you two and Socorro. Life's dealt me fairer than I deserve, Tally. That's why it hurts to think of Michael and my mother who neither one had much.”

“They had you!”

“Like I said,” retorted Shea. “They didn't have much!” He chuckled at Talitha's indignant outcry, but she didn't stay to chide him. It was past time to be helping with supper and the twins.

Talitha wasn't strong enough to wrestle down a cow, but she learned to press the red-hot iron firmly against the hide, long enough to mark but not sear the flesh beneath. And, setting her jaw, she could do the earmarks now, and hand the
señales
to Shea.

Ladorada was a good roping horse, and, using the skills Belen and Chuey had taught her, by summer's end Talitha could make the underhand
mangana
that caught a horse's front feet, or the
peal
which caught an animal's hind feet in a double loop like a figure eight. She could bring the rope swiftly around the saddle horn, letting the calf throw itself by its own weight braced against that of Ladorada, but she could handle only the smaller, scrawnier ones.

“Don't rope more than you can hold,
doncellita!
” Belen scolded, scooping her up after she'd been yanked from the saddle, hauled over Ladorada's laid-back ears, her palms skinned from the burn of the
reata
as the yearling she'd failed to throw kicked himself free of the double noose and vanished into a mesquite thicket. “
Por Dios!
Another foot and you'd have landed in the cactus!” He gave her an admonishing but careful shake. “You're sound? Nothing broken?”

The breath was knocked out of her, her palms stung ferociously, and she'd skinned her elbows but Talitha blinked back tears and scrambled up. “I'm all right, Belen! I—I just wish I'd hurry and grow till I could really do my share.”

“You do enough,” he said. “Besides, as you grow, you become a woman, not a vaquero. So do not put too much of your heart into this thing,
doncellita
.”

Disregarding his proffered help, she gripped the saddle horn with her grazed hand and climbed into the saddle, grateful that Shea was out of sight down the arroyo and hadn't seen her tumble. She helped Belen chase the yearling out of the thicket and when he roped and threw it, leaped down to hold it near the branding fire, she put the S on it and deftly slit the ears.

One more for Shea and Rancho del Socorro.

It was that July, while she was gathering currants and chokecherries, that she followed a cañon into the mountains and found the hot springs. Bubbling from the rocks into a shallow natural basin, the water overflowed to lose itself in the stream that sparkled its tortuous way down the gorge.

Talitha was hot, and this seemed a wonderful place to bathe. Tugging off her dress, she bent to wash her face, made a surprised sound.

Warm water! Cool water would have done as well or better that afternoon, but except in full summer, unlimited hot water would be worth the walk.

Socorro would love it! They'd bring James and the twins and wash their hair, let them splash in the big rock hollow! Delighted with her find, Talitha clambered into the smooth giant bowl and luxuriated in cupping water in her hands and letting it trickle down from her shoulders.

She wore her dresses short, so from midcalf her legs were brown as her face and hands, but the rest of her was creamy pale. She made a face, wishing she was dark all over, scowled at the small pink points on her chest.

Some day they would be breasts that would hold milk for babies. She hoped hers would be more like Socorro's than Anita's which were so big that they were the first thing one noticed about her. Talitha wanted babies some day, but that took a husband and she didn't want to marry anyone, ever, and go away from Shea.

She might have to, though, when she grew up.

She didn't want to think about that. It was a muddle. She wanted to get bigger and stronger, able to do the full work of man or woman. But she didn't want to leave the ranch. Or for Juh to claim James, which he could do in five more years.

Sighing, she stood up and stepped on dry rock, shaking herself, standing in the sun till she was dry. Then she pulled on the faded blue cotton dress, cut down from one of Socorro's, slipped into the sandals Belen had made of cowhide. Picking up her half-filled basket, she followed the cañon till it broadened into a high basin with piñon- and juniper-studded cliffs rising stark on all sides. Grass carpeted the clearing and water gushed in a small waterfall from a crevice in the rocks above.

A lovely place. And there were lots of currants scattered along the stream that trickled through the basin till it vanished in a vast rockslide above a side cañon. Strange that Socorro and Tjúni hadn't found it.

Bending to pluck the small red fruits, Talitha's foot stirred, something almost buried among the leaves. Something white and hard. A nudge sent it rolling down the incline, fetching up with a splash in the water.

Hollows stared at her from what had to be a human skull. As if it conveyed to her some horrible knowledge, she suddenly recognized, here and there in the grass and bushes, what she had dismissed as stones.

Slowly, she confirmed her suspicion. Five skulls, two of them still impaled on sticks hidden in the grass, arrows jutting from the eye sockets. But she found no other trace of the dead except a few bones wedged among the rocks. Animals and birds must have dragged off the rest.

A memory of Luz echoed, Mangus's niece saying how she, her sister and three babies had been rescued from scalpers by a white woman and a Papago, and how the Papago had wanted to finish what the scalpers had begun.

Staring at the skulls, Talitha felt a thrill of awe. So this was why Mangus protected Rancho del Socorro. And why Socorro chose not to come here, even for the fine currants.

Talitha wanted to run. She'd lived long enough among Apaches to absorb some of their fear of the dead, of hovering spirits, and these men must have been mutilated in a way that would give them no peace in the afterlife. But that was heathenish, thinking that way! And if Tjúni and Socorro had been brave against the living marauders, she mustn't run from them dead.

Her lips were stiff; her mouth and throat very dry. Swallowing, she worked her way among the bushes, including those close to the skulls.

Only when she'd gathered every ripe currant she could find did she leave the basin she would ever afterward think of as the Place of Skulls.

She told Socorro and the others about the hot spring but she said nothing about the clearing and what waited there. Several times that summer Talitha visited the hot spring with Socorro, Anita, the twins and James. They used orris root to wash from hair to feet, and went home much refreshed. If Socorro realized how close they were to the fateful basin, she never betrayed it.

Tivi Sanchez, bringing supplies from the mine's
conducta
, had more bad news about Tubac. Some Missourians heading for the gold fields had stopped at El Charco and he'd accompanied them up the Santa Cruz Valley, hoping to find Tubac repopulated and a market for beef. Some of December's refugees must have come back, for Indians had raided only hours before the Missourians rode into the smoking ruins. Tivi had helped them bury the dead.

“And this time I think no one will come back,” he concluded, his broad, boyish face somber.

Socorro crossed herself and turned to Shea. “Sometimes I almost wish Mangus didn't shield us! I feel guilty, that we're alive, while others—”

“Hush!” he said roughly, putting his arm around her, bowing his bright head protectively against her dark one. “We came here at the same risk anyone does. Few but you, my darling, would have pitied Apache women.”

“My pity would have been useless except for Tjúni's arrows.”

His broad shoulders moved resignedly. “Tjúni has her reward.”

“Not the one she wanted,” retorted Socorro. She glanced anxiously at Tivi. “The Papago at San Manuel, how are they?”

“Gathering saguaro fruit when I rode by. By now they're all drinking
navai't
.” He grimaced. “Though why they claim it must be used up in a day is beyond me. It tastes awful any time. Makes even Güero vomit.”

“You're managing without him?” Shea asked.

“Better without than with,” Tivi said with surprising grimness. “
Mamacita
misses her blond one, of course, but father, Juana and I would as lief he stayed in California.” When Anita shook her head reprovingly at this younger brother, he said hotly, “Don't be a hypocrite! No doubt you love your Chuey, but you wouldn't have been quite so ready to leave home if it hadn't been for Güero's fits and tempers!”

Brushing a kiss on her plump cheek, he said he couldn't stay for supper since his mother worried every hour he was away, but he did accept a couple of tortillas wrapped around plentiful helpings of beans and meat. As he rode away, Talitha watched the O'Sheas look toward the west and north, in the direction of Tubac, caught a chilling intuition of how alone they must feel. Mangus, because of his towering personality and shrewd acquisition of sons-in-law, had some influence with bands other than his own
Mimbreños
, but there was no telling when some party might decide to loot the ranch and let Mangus avenge it if he could discover the guilty. And he might die at any time.

Shea said, “We'd better keep plenty of water, and food sealed as tight as possible against rats and mice, in the
sala
at all times—be ready to fort up if we have to. Anita, can you shoot?”

Shrinking back like a frightened soft brown quail, she shook her head. “Then we'll teach you.” He studied Talitha and sighed. “You'd better learn, too. In a siege it doesn't matter who's holding a rifle as long as they can shoot.”

Belen nodded. “True, Don Patricio. Apaches don't like to lose men. If we were ready for them, they'd probably forget about us and run off all the cattle and horses they could handle. They don't want the land, except as something to range over, as wild things do. In this, they are not like white men.”

“Where white men are, the land is well soaked in blood,” Shea agreed wryly. “That's because each one wants as much as he can get to fence and use as his own.”

“So the white man is tied to his land. It winds up owning him.”

“Like marriage,” Shea grinned, shrugging, “it goes both ways!”

XVIII

So Talitha learned to load and fire one of the percussion rifles inherited from the scalp hunters, leaning it on a window ledge or one of the firing niches. She staggered when it kicked back against her shoulder, but was soon aiming much better than Anita, who squeezed her eyes shut when she pulled the trigger, letting the barrel flop down.

“We just have to hope you'll do better than that when your life depends on it!” Shea told the young woman after a week of daily practice. “Can't keep on wasting ammunition.” More cheeringly, he added, “Anyhow, you should be able to hit a horse if it came in close, you don't have to pick off the rider!”

Socorro shuddered. “I hope it never happens!”

“My dear love, so do I! But we need to be ready.”

Sycamore and cottonwood outlined the creek with yellow, glorious against the mountains and evergreens. Santiago and Güero hadn't returned and Socorro began to fret, saying they should be back by now. Maybe they had died of thirst. Been killed by Indians. Murdered by lawless Gold Rushers.

“Maybe they met pretty girls and stayed awhile,” countered Shea. “Or decided to try for the gold themselves. Who knows what a young single man may do?”

But Santiago rode in a few days before the twins' first birthday, and something he carried in a basket in front of him was received with almost as much delight and wonder as the gold he carried—between three and five hundred dollars for each of the ninety head that had survived the trek.