The Valiant Women (35 page)

Relaxing with coffee and food, minor wounds anointed and dressed, Shea and his companions told what had happened. “By the time we got there, the fight was on,” said Shea. “We really weren't needed. Seems a captive of the raiders had managed to escape and get to Tucson. Captain Hilarión García and Antonio Comaduran had brought sixty lancers and forty Apaches
de paz
and were waiting for the attack. Must have been at least two hundred on the raid, Pinal and Coyotero most likely.”

“García's men charged while the raiders were still a mile from Calabazas,” put in Santiago. “The lancers brought down scores of them and the tame Apaches finished them off. Don Federico Hulsemann and his partner were
muy valiente
, coming outside the walls to fight.”

“And the ears!” Belen exulted. “A string almost three feet long to go to the capital at Ures!”

Santiago chuckled. “One of Señor Gray's men thought they were dried apples till he noticed the copper and shell earrings that were still fastened to some of them!”

Socorro stifled a sound of protest. Shea drew her to him, leaning his head against her breast. “I think my wife has heard enough. We'd better all get to sleep.” He said to the Sanchezes, “I appreciate your coming.”

“It was for our safety also,” demurred Pedro.

Shea glanced at Talitha. “You warned Tjúni?”

“Yes. She sent a boy to stand guard. They have a cave in the mountain. She thinks they can stand off any raiders that come that way.”

Shea looked startled, but his mouth firmed and he said no more, leading Socorro off to their room. The others lingered for a few minutes, Belen whispering how the head of Romero, the interpreter who'd talked with Gray's party, was fastened to a spike near the door of a room used as a mess hall.

Seeing Talitha's face, Santiago gave her cheek a comforting touch. “And Señor Hulsemann gave us some excellent mescal! But it's over, God be praised, the Apaches have had a stiff lesson—and now let's all sleep for what's left of the night!”

The Apaches left Calabazas alone for the rest of that summer, but in June they attacked La Canoa, a ranch ten miles north of Tubac, killed four post-riders and another man, took captives and slaughtered oxen.

Tubac's new commanding officer, Andrés Zenteno, managed to wangle thirty-eight muskets and ammunition for the thirty-six peaceful Apaches who, with eighty-two of their women and children, volunteered to settle down at Tubac in mid-July. Because four yoke of Tubac's oxen had been killed the month before, leaving only two yoke for all the colonists, and because there were no extra plows and it was getting late to plant, Zenteno had to supply his Apaches
de paz
with wheat while his distant superiors exhorted him to see that no supplies were wasted and to make his allies self-supporting as soon as possible.

“Commander Zenteno wants to lead an expedition against the hostiles,” reported Santiago who seemed to have found something at Tubac to engage his attention, for he visited the presidio every week or two, sometimes accompanied by Belen. Talitha wrinkled her nose at the way they smelled when they returned, of tobacco and some heavier, muskier scent. “He asked the Tucson garrison for men but was told no one could be spared because everyone was busy in the fields and provisions were short.” Santiago chuckled. “You could hear Zenteno all over the presidio! He wrote at once to the governor. You can be sure the very paper smoked!”

That didn't save Don Ignacio Iberri of Santa Cruz who was ridden down a few days later by a half-dozen Apaches and killed within sight of Tubac's wall. But at least there was a garrison and the German partners continued to manage their sheep and goat ranch at Calabazas. The people of Rancho del Socorro no longer felt so isolated.

It was a long summer for Talitha, 1853, though it must have seemed even longer to Socorro who expected her baby in September. The twins wanted a sister like Paulita, the baby girl Anita was fondly suckling, and Socorro, earnestly admonished by them, promised to do her best. Her feet were swollen, she moved awkwardly, and Talitha worried about her, remembering the twins' birth, though she kept assuring Shea, who was also troubled, that this time it would be very different. Carmencita, who had delivered Anita so competently and often served as a midwife, would come to stay at the house several weeks before the probable time. There should be no difficulty.

Yet Socorro's condition weighed on Talitha for her own body was undergoing changes that both bewildered and pleased her. Anita had placidly explained the spots of blood that had so frightened Talitha.

“You're a woman now,
chiquita!
Every month, until you're my mother's age, this will come. Unless you have conceived.” She cast a sympathetic look at the girl, lowered her voice. “Has Doña Socorro explained about that? None of our men would molest you, of course, but strangers …”

Talitha wasn't sure exactly how it was with men and women, but she'd seen bulls mount cows and stallions breed mares. She knew the tiny appendage on James and the twins would grow with them and someday be capable of entering a female. But when a flickering half-picture of Shea with Socorro edged into her mind before, shamed and terrified, she could banish it. She knew she couldn't bear to be like that with anyone, not unless he was just like Shea. And there was no one like him.

So she mumbled something to Anita and made her escape. There was no escaping the inexorable shaping of her body, though, the strange conflicting moods that stormed through her. She needed to be alone. Often that summer she went to the hot spring. She scarcely ever thought of the Place of Skulls.

One day in August she'd been gathering acorns and stopped by the spring to bathe and wash her hair with the orris root she kept in a crevice near the stone basin. Her dress smelled of sweat—only in these past few months had it had an odor—and she stripped it off and washed it, rinsing it well before she hung it to dry on a manzanita. Then she climbed up the rocks and slid into the basin, holding her breath as she settled in water up to her shoulders.

It felt so good! Weariness flowed out of her. After lying there a few minutes, reveling in the gentle push of the water against her naked flesh, she sat up and made lather with the root, sudsing her hair, rinsing it where the water flowed over and down. She washed her body next, scrubbing her elbows and feet with special diligence, then cleaning her fingernails.

Splashing out the used water with her feet, she sank down, leaned against the polished stone, and luxuriated as the spring filled up the basin.

When she reckoned her dress must be almost dry, she stretched and got to her feet, throwing back her head, fluffing her hair. She froze as a man's voice—not Shea's, but a stranger's—said in English, “A nymph in the wilderness!”

She couldn't reach her dress. In her startled anger, it seemed better to stand calmly, pretend there was nothing to cover, than clutch at herself with inadequate hands.

How had he approached so quietly? Even the sound of the spring shouldn't have covered all warning of his approach. She was as furious with herself as she was with him. What if he'd been a hostile?

Fear gripped her then as she stared down into eyes like frozen water barely reflecting the sky. He might be as dangerous as any Apache. He had dark eyebrows and lashes and as he moved closer, resting a hand on the edge of the basin, she saw that the shafts on his clean-shaven face were black though his hair was vibrant silver. His hat and vest were trimmed with silver conchos and he had a revolver holstered at his belt.

He laughed softly. “A mute nymph? One who couldn't chatter? Or scream?” He seemed closer though it must have been a trick of her dilating eyes. “That would be too good to be true! Come, pretty, what's your name?”

She ignored that. Memory, leaping back, produced that face, those eyes. In Mangus's camp, long ago. Unable to check a sharp intake of breath, she saw in the same moment that he'd recognized her.

“That child the Apaches had!” His eyes went over her so that in spite of her resolve, she instinctively brought one arm over her breasts, shielded with the other hand that triangular patch of bright gold hair. “You've grown,” he said, laughing again. “Oh, beautifully you've grown! But I remember those big serious eyes and yellow, yellow hair.”

“And I remember you.” She spoke through stiff dry lips.

“Then that makes us old friends,” he said easily. “I'm Judah Frost.” Freeing her dress from the manzanita, he handed it to her. “Come out of the water, my dear, and tell me your name and how you come to be here.”

“You aren't my friend.” There was a cold passionless evil in him that she discerned along with his beauty. “You tried to buy me.” But she was glad of the dress and pulled it quickly over her head, retreated to the ledge above, well out of his reach.

“Of course. I intended to try to locate your family, restore you to them. Did they find you, then?”

“My mother died. She was an Apache captive.”

“And your father?”

She shook her head. “He went to California with the Mormon Battalion. That's all I know.”

“I'm lately returned from California. Perhaps I met him.” He frowned as if trying to recapture something. “By jingo, there was a Mormon I met in 'Frisco! Said his wife and family had been left in Santa Fe, and when he went back for them, they'd vanished. He looked in Salt Lake, too, and there someone told him the wife and some male kin had left Santa Fe by wagon, trying to follow him.”

“We did.” She thought of her mother, subjected to Juh, the drudge of his wives.

“But you didn't get far,” finished the stranger, not unkindly. “Wouldn't you like to be with your father now?”

Jared Scott, tall and red-haired, who'd whirled his wife in the light of the campfires. Jared Scott, who'd gone off with his Battalion.

“No,” said Talitha.

Dark brows met above a straight, finely shaped nose. “No? Just like that?”

She didn't want to explain, but he evidently had no intention of going away. “My brother's part Apache,” she said baldly. “I doubt my father would want him. We're doing very well at our foster parents'.”

“And who are they?”

Something deep rooted beneath her conscious mind made her hate to give this man any knowledge, any power, but since he was in the region, he was almost sure to find the ranch. Besides, though he hadn't tried to come closer, it wouldn't hurt for him to know that she lived close by, had protectors.

“The O'Sheas of Rancho del Socorro got my brother and me away from the Apaches.” Nor did she think it a poor idea to add: “Mangus protects them.”

For an instant, those chill light eyes turned almost black. “Why does he do that?”

“Doña Socorro and a Papago woman killed scalp hunters who were attacking some of Mangus's women.”

“Did they indeed?” He looked incredulous.

“If you don't believe me, go on up the cañon. You can see the skulls.” Talitha reached for her sandals. “I must be getting home. They'll wonder why I've been gone so long.”

“Then let me escort you,” he said. “I'd like to meet these remarkable O'Sheas.”

He picked up her basket of acorns, held out a tanned, slender, strongly muscled hand to help her down. Avoiding it, Talitha came down in another place. She didn't see how she could refuse to walk with him, but she'd have felt just as comfortable if her companion had been a handsome, intricately marked and quite deadly rattler.

“Don't you have a horse?” she asked.

“I left him at the mouth of the cañon, hobbled so he could browse while I explored.”

“What are you exploring?”

“A multitude of things.” His eyes didn't warm though he smiled at her. “I'm a very curious man. And you still haven't told me your name.”

“Talitha. Talitha Scott. Are you looking for a railroad route? Or do you want a mine?”

“You're curious, too,” he chuckled. “Well, Talitha Scott, I want a railroad and a mine. A ranch, of course. And a freighting company wouldn't be a bad notion.”

“Did you find
that
much gold in California?”

He laughed briefly. “Enough. Now, Talitha, what do
you
want?”

Taken by surprise, for she wasn't used to thinking about it, Talitha started to say she didn't want anything, then realized that wasn't true. She wanted James to stay at the ranch, not go to the Apaches; she wanted Socorro to be safely delivered of her baby; she wanted all things to go well for Shea.

“Well?” the stranger prodded. “I told you what I'd like. Aren't you going to swap?”

“No.”

She couldn't see his face. The way was too rough and narrow for them to walk together. He didn't speak for so long that she grew nervous, slightly ashamed of being rude. She was relieved when he broke the silence, pleasantly, as if he hadn't been rebuffed.

“How old are you, Talitha?”

That
he could know. “Thirteen.”

“Ah. Young. But old enough to want a good many things, I'll be bound!” She didn't answer. There was a laugh in his voice as he persisted. “Don't you want rings on your fingers and bells on your toes? Maybe you're dreaming already of a husband, a house of your very own where you could do exactly as you pleased—”

“I do as I please!”

“Really? You please to get hot and scratched gathering acorns then, and wearing a raggedy dress that was once too big on you and now's too small?”

She stopped abruptly. “Give me my acorns! And you—you go on ahead! I don't want to walk with you!”

“But I want to walk with you.” Unruffled, he put the basket out of her reach behind him. “Believe this, Talitha: when I want something, I get it.”

She made a frantic lunge for the basket, heard him laugh. His hand clamped on her forearm. “Shall we walk, Talitha?”