The Valiant Women (48 page)

He looked fatigued and his face was thinner. “Judah's in Washington lobbying for that railroad,” he said, taking Caterina on his knee and letting her play with his watch. “While he's at it, he'd better get the bigwigs to send some troops down to this part of the country they were so anxious to take over. It must be just about as bad as it was when you first came.”

“Few more settlers,” Shea observed. “And Tubac always has been an on-again, off-again kind of garrison. Anyhow, from the way it sounds, the mountains are going to be chock-a-block with miners.” He grinned. “Maybe you could form your own army if the Americans don't send one pretty quick.”

Talitha tried to coax Marc into staying for Caterina's birthday which was only a few days off but he said it wouldn't be fair to the exploring miners to delay them that much longer.

“Anyhow, if I'm too slow in coming, they may decide I'm dead and just take over,” he said whimsically. “If I turned up after that, they might be tempted to make their conclusion a true one.”

He rode off next morning, looking refreshed, promising to come oftener as soon as the Apache danger lessened. Shea had listened assentingly to Talitha's purposefully excited plans for Caterina's second birthday. With Anita's help, the table was loaded with special food, and after the feasting, Chuey played his guitar while the vaqueros sang “
Las Mananitas
”:

“On the morning you were born

Were born the flowers …”

Caterina, on Shea's lap, listened gravely, her blue-gray eyes dreaming. “More sing?” she asked when Chuey ended with a-final strum and a courtly bow.

“Later, darling,” said Talitha. “Now it's time for your presents.”

The twins, with Belen's help, had made her a
reata
of horsehair. Very special horsehair, black and cream, garnered from the manes and tails of Thunder and Lightning.

“Just as soon as you're big enough, Katie-Cat, we'll teach you how to use it!” promised Miguel, rubbing her back as if she were one of the kittens that continued to be born of Chusma's descendants and all too rapidly grew from cuddly palmfuls to stalking, independent miniature panthers.

Grasping Miguel, Caterina gave him a tremendous hug and planted a noisy kiss on his cheek as Patrick neatly looped the rope beneath his twin's leg and gave a tug that sent him scrambling.

“That's how it works, Katie-Cat!” Patrick shouted gleefully as he braced for Miguel's lunge. They wrestled on the floor a minute.

“Bad boys!” Caterina shrieked. She never liked to see them fight. At a word from Shea, they rolled over, panting, and watched as the vaqueros brought their gift.

It was a hobbyhorse made from walnut rubbed by hand to a sheen, but instead of straight pieces of wood, the legs and body were shaped and the head was a truly beautiful piece of carving. A small rawhide saddle with
tapaderos
strapped around the middle and a horsehair hackamore fitted over the muzzle, reins looping about the saddle horn. Mane and tail were golden, contributed from Ladorada's groomings.

“
Con permiso
, Don Patricio,” said Belen, and at a nod from Shea, the bandy-legged, broad-chested vaquero lifted Caterina from her father's lap and put her in the saddle, showing her how to thrust her small feet in the covered stirrups. “Ride this steed joyously,
chiquita
, until you get a real one!”

He got a kiss on his weathered cheek, and thanks in Spanish, before Caterina climbed down to go and similarly thank Chuey and Rodolfo.

“Come on, Paulita!” she commanded her playmate who, though four months older, was content to follow cautiously in Caterina's usually violent wake. “We can both ride!”

They did, Caterina rocking with such vigor it was lucky Belen had tested the rockers to make sure they wouldn't go past a certain angle and somersault the riders.

When Paulita had had enough and Caterina could be coaxed off, Shea produced a small rocking chair and a doll that would most certainly have to be put up till Caterina could play with it and not crack the china head, hands and feet. Fortunately, she could play with the soft, floppy rag doll Talitha had made her.

Cuddling both dolls, she rocked for a while in the chair. Then, carefully, she made Paulita sit down with them, grasped her
reata
and hauled herself into the saddle.

Everybody exchanged glances. Patrick put it into words. “What you going to be, Katie-Cat? A mama or a vaquero?”

“Mama
and
vaquero!” she assured him, not missing a lusty pitch forward or back. As they all laughed, she rocked harder and sang in a kind of rhythmic croon: “I be everything! I be everything!”

Later, after everyone had gone to bed, Talitha noticed a soft glow of light cast through the door on the wall. With a sinking heart, she realized a candle had been lit in the kitchen. Through the evening, more than once, she'd seen Shea's eyes flick toward the niche where the mescal was kept. Was he going to do as he had last year, get drunk to drown the loss of his wife and stay that way for days?

I won't have it!
Talitha thought.
If he has to get drunk sometimes, all right, but he's not going to do it on Caterina's birthday!

Jumping out of bed, she pulled on her dress, ran barefoot across the hard earth of the patio. Bursting into the kitchen, she found him sitting by the dead fire, the bottle in his hand. His head turned toward her, eyes unfocused in a dulled stupidity that made her ache, want to comfort him at the same time it sent her furious.

After a morose stare, he looked back at the ashes. “Go to bed, Tally.” The words blurred as if a clumsy tongue couldn't shape them.

“Not till you do!”

He seemed to forget her. Unsure of what to do, Talitha stood with hands clenched, body rigid, while she inwardly prayed.
Socorro! Socorro!
How strange that her foster mother's name should be the word for aid or help, for succor.

No flash of enlightenment or inspiration came, but when Shea lifted the bottle again, outrage sent Talitha diving forward. Snatching the mescal, she deliberately poured it into the ashes in the fireplace.

“Patrick O'Shea!” she shouted into his angry, astounded face. “Sober up and listen to me! This can either be the day your wife died or the day your daughter was born! Which way do you want it?”

“Oh God, Tally! I—”

She cut in mercilessly, willing her words to cut like a whip through his drunkenness. “Socorro's gone, Shea, but would she want this? Caterina's got her whole life ahead. How's she going to feel in a few years when she notices that her father goes into a drunken binge of mourning on her birthday?”

Shaking his head, he buried it in his hands. Resisting the overwhelming sympathy that made her want to cosset him, Talitha ended with harsh challenge.

“Which are you going to turn your mind to? Your wife's dying or your daughter's life?”

He looked up at her. Tears streaked his cheeks and she longed to caress the branded one, take all his hurts into herself to suffer in his place. But that couldn't be, each person had to bear his own grief. He stood up, a trifle uncertainly. His jaw hardened and for a moment she wondered if he were going to hit her, at the least give her a shaking and tell her to mind her own business.

Instead he laughed. “God's whiskers! That's just what Socorro would've said. Only she might have kicked my shins and called me ‘redhead burro'!”

His gaze went to the hobbyhorse, the
reata
over the saddle, the dolls embraced in the rocker, for Caterina had fallen asleep in his arms and been carried to bed without them. “It was a good birthday, wasn't it? Don't you suppose the madonna—well, she was a mother, too—”

Talitha nodded. This time she could let her tears fall. “I'm sure that somehow Socorro was with us tonight, and that she was happy.”
That she helped me with you
.

Shea grinned. “Wouldn't do for her to be with me all the time, especially when I go in to Tubac the way I'll have to once in a while now that Tjúni's packed herself off!” He yawned and stretched. “Get to bed with you, Tally! I'm about to fall asleep on my feet.”

Back in her own room, Talitha stood beside Caterina's high bed. “Happy birthday, Katie-Cat Caterina,” she whispered. And then to her mother, Socorro, God or Tata Dios, she added as she climbed into bed,
Thank you. Thank you
.

It was March of 1856 when Judah returned from Washington with the news that he'd taken a wife, the daughter of a powerful senator. “Leonore won't come out, of course, till I can have a suitable home built for her in Tucson,” he explained. At Shea's congratulations, he smiled broadly.

“She's a beautiful creature. If I run for political office, as I may do, she'll be a most elegant asset.”

Shea gave him a questioning look but Frost was saying that the last Mexican troops had left Tucson early that month under command of Captain Hilarión García, the same soldier who'd come to the aid of Calabazas during the big Apache raid almost three years ago. “Didn't see anyone at Calabazas when I rode through,” added Frost. “Know what happened?”

“Hulsemann came over sometime before Christmas. Said the Apaches were too much. He'd decided to drive the stock to Imuris and asked if a couple of my vaqueros would help since he wanted to leave his partners to hold down the hacienda. The Vasquez brothers and Rodolfo went.” Shea shook his head regretfully. “Looks like Gándara double-crossed Hulsemann, who was, as you'll recall, his partner. One of Gándara's men, the prefect of San Ignacio, confiscated all the stock, so for all his work and danger, Hulsemann got nothing.”

“He's still alive,” Frost said carelessly. “And speaking of partnerships, partner, it's about time I got back and tended to our freighting enterprise! Solomon Warner's opened a store in Tucson and a fourteen-mule pack train brought in his supplies from Fort Yuma the last of February. The Santa Cruz Freighting Company should have had that job!”

“Have you been to the mine yet?” Talitha asked, for though she hated speaking to Frost, she hadn't seen Marc since Christmas and with nothing left to plunder at Calabazas the Apaches might give more attention to the miners.

Frost held her eyes a moment before he yielded an answer. “Everything at the Pajarito's fine. Marc besought me to take over so he could junket about a bit, but I put it to him that I had to get a home for my wife and line up some freighting contracts. He saw the reason in that though he was mightily disappointed.”

“How's your lady going to take to Tucson?” Shea wondered. “Don't suppose she's ever seen anything like it.”

“You can bet our last cow she hasn't!” Frost laughed. “I'd guess the town has a couple of hundred people, not more than a dozen being Anglo-Saxon. But that'll change.” He turned his glass in his hand, took a slow sip. “She vows she'd live with me in a cave or tent, and though I think she'd quickly change her mind about that, she's romantical enough to think things are picturesque instead of heathenish and dirty.” He added in a tone of near-contempt, “She'll adore fiestas and
bailes
.”

Talitha pitied his bride. But she also drew a deep breath of relief as if an invisible weight had been lifted. He was
married
. He couldn't bother her anymore. Not now. Not when she was eighteen. Not ever!

That September of 1856, Tubac came alive as it had never been before. Charles Poston, the young Kentuckian Frost had met in Fort Yuma the previous year, hadn't raised his mining money in San Francisco but in Cincinnati. With the patronage of the Texas Pacific Railroad Company, he'd organized the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company with Major Samuel Heintzelman, the former Fort Yuma commander, as president. In San Antonio he outfitted his party of frontiersmen and miners with Sharps rifles and Colt revolvers and started his long trek.

At Mesilla, the governmental center for what was now Southern New Mexico all the way to the California border, the enterprising Poston had been appointed deputy clerk for the western part of the Gadsden Purchase by the clerk of Doña Ana County which made him the closest thing to a government official for hundreds of miles.

He also met with Dr. Steck, the Indian agent, who was still trying desperately to wangle land, seed and farming implements for the Indians in his charge, as well as enough rations to carry them till crop time. Steck helped Poston make a treaty with Apaches living near the Santa Rita mines east of Tubac wherein they agreed not to molest any operations he might open in the region so long as the miners didn't bother them.

Poston was busy, also, in Tucson, now occupied by United States troops, for though he gave his men two weeks to enjoy the fiesta of St. Augustine and rest from their journey, he helped organize a convention that met late in August. Mark Aldrich, a merchant, the mayor or alcalde, chaired the meetings which passed resolutions urging Congress to make a separate territory of “Arizona.” Nathan Cook, a mining official, was selected as delegate and sent to the House of Representatives with a certificate duly signed by deputy clerk Poston.

This accomplished, Poston proceeded to Tubac and set up headquarters. A sentinel was posted in the tower to keep constant watch for Apaches and bandits. Animals were loosed in the corrals and company property stored in the guardhouse. The doors and windows that had been hauled away were replaced by pine whip-sawed from the Santa Rita mountains, and Shea, who reported all this after driving cattle over for sale that fall, added that a big dining hall and lounge had been furnished very comfortably with homemade bunks, tables and benches.

“It's an interesting lot there and no mistake,” Shea chuckled to Talitha. “Herman Ehrenberg, a German engineer, fought against Mexico twice, once for Texas and once for the United States. The geologists and such graduated from American and European universities; they sound just like Marc! Now that there's some protection, peaceful Indians and Mexicans are starting to come back and Poston's hired miners at fifteen to twenty-five dollars a month and rations. The whole valley's booming!”