The Valiant Women (7 page)

“Damn it, I told you to wait! What if this man had been a scalper?”

“Well, he wasn't! And—and if anything happened to you, I'd want it to happen to me!”

Her eyes sparkled with held-back tears. Shea's anger dissolved along with the irrational jealousy he felt at seeing her fuss over the vaquero. Besides, there was too much to do.

“Let's get him under a
ramada
. Maybe you can get his fever down, dress that wound with mashed agave. Can you fetch our other gear?”

She nodded and started up the ridge. Shea hefted the youngster as gently as he could and packed him down to the
ramada
farthest from the house of death. He'd hoped to get the dead men away from the corrals before Socorro returned, but she reached them before he did, put down her burdens.

Kneeling by the raddled, stinking corpses, she made the sign of the cross over each and bowed her head for a moment. Then she picked up the food and water, hurrying to the
ramada
, at once making the man a pillow of the rebozo-wrapped food. She didn't look up as Shea passed her with the first body, but began to bathe the vaquero's face and throat with the edge of her rebozo.

On his reconnaissance of the space behind the big house, Shea had glimpsed an arroyo. Digging separate graves for all these people was pointless; the thing was to get them decently covered with the kind earth, and that quickly!

More cattle had come up and were bawling their heads off, so as soon as he'd got the remains of the second man to the shallowest part of the arroyo, Shea hauled up more water, pausing as he struggled with the bucket to see that there were dozens of the animals now. Surely Apaches would've run them off to slaughter or sell?

Cows with satisfied thirst gave way to newcomers who crowded in as fast as they could at the long broad trough and seemed to fairly soak up the water. Shea's back and arms were aching by the time the last of them were drinking. He lowered a much smaller bucket and took it over to Socorro.

“Try this,” he said, filling one of their gourds. “It should taste sweeter than that
tinaja
juice!”

She thanked him but lifted the young vaquero and held the gourd to his mouth. He drank and seemed quieter. Compressing his lips, Shea handed her another gourd.

“You drink, too,” she insisted.

Shea tilted the bucket and took a long delicious draught. Pure and cool, it tasted better than the finest whiskey or wine. “Stay here till I come back,” he commanded.

“Eat a little first,” she suggested.

He wouldn't be able to keep it down. Not with what he had to do. “Later. Use the
tinaja
water to bathe the kid.”

Several coyotes faded out the back door as he' entered the house. Ravens flapped out doors and the several small windows. Shea looked at the bodies and choked back vomit. Arms dragged off, feet, legs. And what was left—

Hadn't he seen a wheelbarrow out back?

Into it, breathing as thinly as possible of the tainted air, he loaded the human debris, jolted the grisly burden to the arroyo, having to stop to retrieve an arm that fell off, a head that separated from gnawed shoulders.

Nineteen people, eight of them children, and the six men by the corrals. Twenty-five human beings wiped out.

Why?

The way everyone was scalped made him think of bounty hunters. But these folks weren't Apaches.

As he placed the mother and baby on top of other corpses, Shea gritted his teeth and wished he could get hold of whatever devils, red, white or brown, who'd done it. Might they have cruel deaths and a long hell!

It took several trips. When the last bodies were dropped into the gulch, he found a shovel and ax in one of the sheds and chopped a covering of limbs and brush for the burial before he caved in the arroyo sides to add a layer of crumbled white earth.

Panting, he rested in the shade a few minutes before he tossed and rolled rocks on top to discourage animals. Not enough, but he'd add more later.

He carried ax and shovel to the house. Iron was rare in this region. That the raiders hadn't taken such things pointed more than ever at men who'd only wanted scalps.

Sweet Jesus, give me a crack at them and I promise to cleanse your earth of as many as you give me aid to put away!

You could say the Sonoran government asked for it by granting bounty on Apache scalps. But it wasn't some high muck-amuck paying the consequences. It was people like this, working hard to scratch their living from a bleakness he couldn't have imagined from Ireland. Those women, the kids, that baby!

The long room with a fireplace at one end served all the needs of living. Chilis dangled from the beams, strings of garlic and many-colored corn. A black iron kettle on the hearth held dried remnants of beans. Either the raiders had eaten their victims' food or some animal had.

There was a trestle table with carved chairs, benches of rawhide pulled taut over wooden frames. Bridles, saddles, and other gear dangled from pegs or lay on the floor. There were several chests, opened and plundered, and in one corner a niche with Guadalupe, the brown madonna of Mexico.

In the storeroom off the kitchen baskets and clay jars had been wantonly broken, kicked over or spilled. Birds and small wild things had foraged the trove, leaving their tracks and droppings. But there was still a lot of usable food.

The other room held a big canopied bed, posts handsomely carved though the mattress was of shucks and it was covered with serapes. There were a number of straw mats and more serapes stacked in the corner. Evidently the owner of the ranch and his wife had kept a certain rough state though now they lay jumbled with their vaqueros and servants.

The odor of decay was thick. They'd have to stay here till the vaquero died or got better. Shea found steel and flint and started a fire from the waiting tinder and mesquite, carried good-sized branches to burn where the bodies had lain. In several places, blood had soaked the hard-packed dirt floor. He carried in shovelsful of earth and scattered it over the stains.

The mesquite was exuding its fragrant smoke, purifying the foulness. It was all Shea could do to ready the place for Socorro.

Near sundown now and he hadn't eaten since morning. Before they entered the Promised Land! Now he was ravenous.

Shea glanced quickly inside the other small houses, probably the homes of married vaqueros. Fireplaces, grinders, tortilla grills, a bean pot. No furniture. A few garments hung on pegs and mats and serapes were rolled in a corner.

Again he had to stifle unreasoning jealousy as he approached the
ramada
. Socorro had held him, a stranger, the same way a few short weeks ago, saved his life.

Was he blithering ingrate enough to grudge this poor lad the same mercy?

Shea reined himself in sharply, but a niggling part of him
would
grumble that she didn't need to pillow that dark, probably verminous head against her breast; she didn't need to be smiling quite that sympathetically as she coaxed bits of moistened meal cake down him!

“So you're back amongst us?” Shea said, stooping down.

That smooth brown cheek had never been shaved. It was a fine lot of curly black hair that had escaped the knife. Broad, high cheekbones, a full handsome mouth if it hadn't been dry and cracked. But it was the eyes that rocked Shea.

In a small town in the Sierra Madre, villagers had asked several off-duty San Patricios if they would kill a
tigre
that was killing their stock. This
tigre
had killed off all the local dogs who'd been used to trail him. Besides, the soldiers had rifles, not worn-out old muskets! There would be a big barbecue and
baile
for them if they succeeded, floods of good mescal and lots of pretty girls!

What soldiers ever turned down such an offer?

Michael, Shea and two experienced hunters, with the U.S. Army Model 1841 percussion rifles they'd brought across the Rio Grande, set off with a rancher who took them that night to the depredating
tigre
's home territory.

One of the hunters threw back his head and gave out a blood-curdling roar, imitating a trespassing rival male. In seconds there was an answering yowl, followed by the giant cat himself.

The
tigre
got the full load of four rifles, but still crashed after his foes till they had to run. Villagers brought torches after the beast collapsed. Hauled up by one sinewy spotted leg, hitched over a pole set between uprights, his tawny body, marked with black rosettes and spots, looked immense. He must have weighed as much as Shea and from nose to tail measured eight feet.

But Shea, in the flare of torches, had looked into fierce golden eyes that had in them all the wonder, ferocity and beauty of the wilds. He felt no pride as they glazed and he suddenly despised the exulting villagers who pelted the limp body with rocks and mud.

“What's the matter?” Michael had asked, and then, peering at his twin, shook his head disgustedly. “Come out of it, Shea! Sure, you can't blame the poor folk for wanting to keep their livestock!”

“I don't,” said Shea. But those eyes had burned into him. He hadn't stayed for the barbecue and dance.

Now he looked into those same
tigre
eyes.

Lashes long and soft as a girl's closed over them. “Thousand thanks,” the vaquero said weakly. “Are—are they all—?”

“Twenty-five dead. Fourteen men, three women, eight children.”

The young man made an obvious effort to fit the people he'd known, perhaps loved, to that numbering. “
Todos
,” he said after a moment. “All.” His hands clenched convulsively. “There must be a reason that I live! It must be to avenge this rancho.”

“You—had family here?” Shea asked.

The youngster said dully, “Don Antonio Cantú, the ranchero, was my father, though I am called only Santiago. My mother died a long time ago.”

“Then you own the ranch.”

“No.” The cat eyes were surprised. “Don Antonio never married my mother. She was a slave.”

“Slavery is forbidden in Mexico,” Socorro remonstrated.

The boy grinned feebly. “She was Apache,
madama
, stolen from her people and sold to Don Antonio when she was ten years old. She belonged to him like his horse or cow.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“Yanquis!” He spat the word. “Scalp hunters. There must have been a dozen of them. They rode up from the old riverbed yesterday morning, dropping those of us who were outside and riding up to the house. I crawled into the brush beyond the corral, covering my blood.”

He stopped. Tears formed and ran slowly down his cheeks. “I had no weapon. There was nothing, wounded like this, that I could do. I—I heard the women scream. I kept fainting as I bled, it was like a faraway bad dream. Some of the Yanquis came back to scalp my friends. One said he thought there'd been another body but the others hooted at him, said he was so greedy he was seeing things.” The young face contorted. “They counted the money they would get, grumbling that there were so many children who were worth only twenty-five pesos. Then one said they had a fine bargain anyway, for these scalps were much easier to take than those of Apaches for which they'd be paid.”

“Would you know them again?”

The yellow eyes gleamed.

“I got glimpses of the ones who came back for the scalping. The tallest was clean-shaven. Elegant he was for a butcher's work. The other two were bearded, blond, filthy. One wore eyeglasses and was called Doc.”

“That should help.” The sun was setting. Almost immediate chill sharpened the air. “Let's get into the house.”

Shea started to scoop up Santiago who warded him off. “I—I can walk,
señor
, with help.”

“And start yourself bleeding? To hell with that!”

But the youngster would have resisted had Socorro not said with gentle firmness, “Let him do it, Santiago. Sometime he'll need you.”

A prophecy? Shea's scalp prickled. What did fate have in store for the three of them met on the edge of the world at the rim of death? And what did they do once Santiago was strong enough to go with them or strike off on his own?

It was like carrying a steel-muscled but badly wounded young lion. Socorro, with their supplies and the bucket of well water, hurried on. By the time Shea reached the house, she'd piled up several of the woven straw mats in the central room and spread them with a serape.

Thank goodness, the pungency of mesquite smoke had driven off most of that other smell, and the fire in the hearth flickered welcomingly in the gloom. Strange to get such a sense of shelter, almost of homecoming, from a place so recently a charnel house. But after weeks in the desert, it
was
walls and roof, a fireplace, made and used by people.

It must seem far otherwise to Santiago. His jaws were ridged taut and tears squeezed from his eyes as Shea lowered him to the pallet. Pretending not to notice, Shea said, “Let's have a look at that hip.”

He took off the pulped, peeled agave and frowned in concentration. Socorro had got rid of the maggots. Though there were pus-swelled crustings here and there, it looked like an amazingly clean wound. Perhaps they could concoct some sort of salve for the discomfort and itching that would come as the ragged hole started to close.

Straightening, Shea said, “I'll get you a new bandage, youngling.” Collecting the knife from near Socorro who was, with considerable trouble, shaping tortillas from meal cakes extended with more water, Shea went out, spied the outline of an agave in the twilight, and took off a leaf. Throwing away the narrow pointed end, he peeled and pounded the rest of it.

Santiago appeared to have drowsed off in exhaustion. Carefully as he could, Shea pressed down the agave. Socorro had already trimmed away the pants leg. Later, when he woke again, they'd get off his boots.

Rising, Shea studied the proud fierce features. Out of an Apache, was he? A young eagle, whatever! Don Antonio Cantú might have had more legitimate sons, but he couldn't have got one of whom to feel more proud. And however that was, unless someone living had claim to the ranch, it just
had
to be Santiago's.