The Valiant Women (46 page)

Did everyone guess? Think her bad or forgetful of Socorro, or pity her because of Tjúni? A hot tide of blood washed through Talitha, she felt it staining her face, scalding her body.

Blindly shoving the letter toward Frost, she made for the door but he caught her arm. “Another moment, love!”

“I'm not your love! And Tjúni will be back any second!”

“Tjúni won't start back till she sees me step outside.”

“You—you asked her to leave?”

“Heavens, no!” he laughed. “Good God, you may have to be told about people's feelings, but most women don't. She'd be delighted if you rode off to California with me, let me escort you to your father.”

“Well, I won't!”

He sighed. “I thought not. So I think I should tell you what's in my mind. But first—” He drew her to him, bent his silvery head.

Talitha didn't struggle; in her dread, a part of her knew it would be useless, might further enflame him.

His lips were so cold on hers that they seemed to sear, then warmed as if he drew life from her. A tremor ran through him. He tightened his hold till she felt she was suffocating and still she feared to resist, ignite the passion she could sense beneath his control.

When at last he raised his head, she almost fell. He steadied her with a smile that was possessively intimate. “I don't ordinarily kiss little girls, Talitha. But you're at a dreamy age. Now you have a starting point for your reveries.”

“If I dreamed of you, it would be a nightmare!” Backing toward the door, she rubbed her mouth vigorously with her hand.

“You'll dream. And after a while you'll start to try to imagine what comes after the kiss.”

“I won't!”

“You will.” His long fingers touched her cheek, caressed the side of her throat. “You'll be ripening for me, Talitha, and I can be patient, for I've many worlds to conquer. But in four years, when you're eighteen, then you'll marry me. If I still want you. I think I will.”

She stared at him disbelievingly. “You must be out of your mind! I'd sooner marry a rattlesnake!”

“An interesting alternative and most symbolic.” His eyes were like starshine reflected from a deep, frozen well. “Bear this in mind, sweet Talitha. I'll wait. But only so long as you encourage no one else. As Shea's partner, I'll stop by often enough to know if I have a rival. I have no intention of leaving your maidenhead for someone else to garner.”

“I—I wish Shea knew what you're really like!”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you, love? What a shame it would be if I had to kill a man of whom I've become quite fond.”

“He might kill you instead.”

“Not unless he shot from ambush and you know he'd never do that.”

“If you ever hurt him, I'll kill you any way I can!”

Scanning her, he nodded approval. “I dare say. That's what attracted me to you from the start, Talitha, your spirit. But you can't shoot me till I do something, can you?”

He offered his revolver.

If only she could! Take it and blow that smile through his face! But she couldn't, not like this, and he knew it, though it made her furious that he could go around bullying and threatening simply because he had no conscience and other people did.

As she spun away, his laughter followed her, and for a long time after she'd joined the men at the branding, that soulless crystal sound echoed in her ears.

That evening the men choused two cows with fairly full udders into the smallest corral, keeping their calves outside. Belen held one cow's head by the horns while Chuey kept a rope on her hind legs and Shea endeavored to milk.

She bawled wildly, her offspring answering from the other side of the corral, while Shea squatted, a gourd between his knees, and managed to coax out alternating streams of milk before they dribbled to nothing.

Shea swore at her but his labors produced only a few drops. “The old beast won't let down her milk,” he grunted. “Chuey, Belen, could you do better? I haven't milked since I was a lad.”

“I've
never
milked.” Chuey sounded insulted. “And neither has any vaquero I ever heard of.”

Belen shook his head. “I am not capable, Don Patricio.”

Shea stood up, disgustedly eyeing the scant results. “Let her loose and turn her calf in. We'll keep them in the corral a few days and see if they don't tame down.”

As soon as the first cow was placated by reunion with her big splotch-faced calf, the men advanced on the second cow. “Wait a minute!” called Talitha.

Early spring grass grew thick and green on the outside of the corral. Climbing over, she gathered an armful, and, clutching it to her, clambered back into the corral.

“A good idea,
doncellita
,” said Belen. “Let's see if it works.”

This cow was either more placid or more used to men. Chuey got her hind legs in a loose cuffing that he could yank tight if necessary and Belen stood where he could grab her horns if she started to turn on Shea, but during the time that Shea milked, she luxuriated in the grass Talitha held while talking gently to her.

The gourd soon filled. Shea rose with a heartfelt sigh. “Hell, turn the other old fury out and let's use this one!” He gave her a grateful slap on her bony rump. “Being as how you're a civil creature, I'll call you Mollie after a most obliging wench I knew once. Let her have her calf now.”

So Caterina got her first cow's milk that night, watered down and sweetened with a bit of honey. Patrick and Shea drank the rest for Anita said frankly, “I don't think, Don Patricio, that cow milk is intended for human children. However, if it proves to agree with Caterina, I will let Paulita have some.”

It agreed with Caterina very well. The twins loved it. After a few weeks Paulita had her share, too. Talitha took on the chore of supplying enough grass or succulent plants to keep Mollie complacent at milking time, and learned to milk, though the vaqueros continued to scorn that occupation.

Talitha refused to drink milk herself. She wanted no links with her far-off childhood other than memories of her mother, but it was possible there would be other babies to feed sometime and no human milk for them.

The act of insuring that his daughter had plenty of nourishment was a turning point for Shea. His appetite returned, he laughed more, and instead of staring moodily at the twins in the evening, he told them stories of his boyhood in Ireland, carefully selected, Talitha was sure, and of his adventures since. Their favorite story was of how he had died and Socorro had saved him. Next to that, they thrilled to how Socorro and Tjúni had earned Mangus's gratitude by rescuing his women from the scalp hunters.

Talitha wanted the boys to know their father could also be heroic. One day she told them of how Shea had endured a second branding for her brother's sake, a child who was nothing to him. She wept at the end of it. The twins, abashed, tugged at her and patted her consolingly.

“Don't cry, Tally!” Patrick begged. “James'll come back!”

“If he doesn't, we'll go find him when we're old enough,” Miguel promised.

Alarmed, Talitha swept them close and gave them an admonishing shake. “You mustn't do that! Just because Mangus is our friend, don't think most Apaches are!”

Patrick squirmed out of her grasp and looked proudly up at the twin cradleboard hanging on the wall of the
sala
, still ornamented with feathers, turquoise and little bags of pollen. “Mangus brought that for us! Almost like we were Apaches!”

“Well, you're not! And don't you dare go wandering off unless you want me to really cry!”

Miguel kissed her, hazel eyes solemn. “We won't worry you, Tally! Daddy says we mustn't ever do that 'cause you—you've—” He struggled to remember, finished triumphantly. “'Cause you've already got too much on your shoulders!”

She did, though Shea's renewed interest in life and his children was a tremendous relief. She was resigned to his visiting Tjúni but it left a bitterness. When she thought of Santiago, guilt warred with a sense of abandonment.

What good was it for someone to love you if it made them go away? Frost's avowed intentions hung over her like a boulder balanced on a high cliff, potentially deadly but not an immediate threat. A lot could happen in four years. As freakishly as his desire had fixed on her, it could swing away.

All these things weighed on her much more than work. Except for Marc Revier, she had no one to confide in. There was much she couldn't say, of course, but with him she felt some of the same ease and comfort there had been with Shea before that awful night she'd tried to keep him from going to Tjúni.

She didn't dream of Judah Frost, but now and then a memory of his icy, searing kiss constricted her heart. With all the travelers who got killed on the way to California, she couldn't see why he shouldn't be one of them, but had an unhappy certainty that he'd always manage to survive. There was something uncanny about him, something not quite human.

A cousin of Chuey's, Rodolfo Sanchez, had left Don Narciso's employ and turned up in time to help drive the cattle to Tubac in early summer. Rodolfo was of indeterminate youth with a huge mustache that almost hid his lower face. Tjúni's little house was finished now, built with a common wall joining it to Anita and Chuey's, and Shea launched the building of a large room for Talitha and Caterina.

It would join the bedroom of the main house with the vaqueros' quarters, now shared by Rodolfo and Belen. Except for a gap between Tjúni's place and the
ramada
Belen had taken over for blacksmithing, the courtyard was now enclosed. With its peach and pomegranate trees around the well, it was a pleasant spot.

James's seventh birthday came and went that July and Talitha grieved silently. Even though she knew he'd have no way of telling the date, she'd hoped he might somehow come back by then.

Frost came instead, with considerable news. In June, after making so many changes in it that Gadsden himself lobbied against its passage, Congress approved the Gadsden Treaty. For ten million dollars the United States purchased what would now be the southern part of New Mexico and the Sonoran lands south of the Gila to the agreed boundary.

“The United States has the land for its southern railroad now,” said Frost. “When it finally decides to build it, or even before, if settlers start coming, the Apaches had better stick to their mountains.”

Talitha thought of Mangus. Then she remembered her uncle's and grandfather's slaughtered bodies, the misery of her own mother. Could there ever be peace between whites and Apaches?

Belen said doubtfully, “For two hundred years Spaniards and Mexicans have tried to tame the Apaches. Why should the Americans succeed?”

“Because they're rolling west like a great wave and what doesn't bend before them will be swept away.” Frost smiled at Belen. “Do you realize that you have a choice now? You can remain a citizen of Mexico or become a citizen of the United States.”

Chuey spluttered. “Me, a Yanqui?”

Belen's seamed face showed disdain. “I never was Mexican, but Yaqui, born on the Rio Yaqui in Potam, one of the Eight Sacred Pueblos located by angels who marched with Yaqui prophets to sing the boundaries. That is my true home and what I am. As to what government claims
this
region, I care not at all except I hope it will control the Apaches.”

The scars stood out on Shea's cheek. “So I didn't get away from them after all!” he said with a bitter laugh.

“What?” Frost's eyebrow tilted in polite interest.

“An old story.” Shea reached for the bottle of mescal though he'd had the one drink he usually took with company. “Well, I suppose I can stand it if the bastards don't come poking around giving a lot of orders. And maybe they will bring peace to the—” He glanced at Frost. “What
are
we now?”

Frost raised his glass in a toast. “The western part of Doña Ana County, Territory of New Mexico, United States of America. Of course it won't be official till the boundary's run.”

“New Mexico!” Shea echoed. “You mean we'll be governed out of Santa Fe? Hell, man, that's five hundred miles away!”

“If you don't want to be interfered with, that should suit you fine,” grinned Frost. “However, as soon as enough Americans move into the region, they'll start agitating for a separate territory that they can run, and then they'll push for statehood.” His grin broadened at Shea's dazed look. “Things are going to change fast and furious so we might as well enjoy the proceedings and profit by them. Unless, of course, the North and South separate.”

“There's talk of that?” Shea asked eagerly.

“There's certainly a race on for keeping at least a balance of power in Congress. The Kansas-Nebraska Act that was passed the end of May repealed the Missouri Compromise, which was passed back in 1820 when Maine was admitted free and Missouri slave. Till then the balance between North and South was kept by alternately admitting a free state, then a slave one. The compromise excluded slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of the line 36°30´.”

Talitha remembered something Marc had said, for he was appalled at slavery's existence in a country founded on the ideals of freedom and equality. Talitha had never seen a slave, except those in Apache camps where her mother had been one, but she hated the thought of one man
owning
another.

“When California was admitted as a free state,” she asked, furrowing her brow, “wasn't there another compromise? About what to do with the lands taken from Mexico in the war?”

With a groan, Frost spread his hands. “Don't expect me to give you all the details of
that
mess! It was poor Henry Clay's dying attempt to settle differences between the North and South and the Senate debate ran from the end of January till past mid-September, months after Clay died.”