The Valiant Women (27 page)

James would be all right now. Even if something happened to her, he'd be all right. Till Juh claimed him?

Mother
, Talitha prayed, gazing at the doll Shea had given her which sat enthroned in a niche above her bed because it was much too grand and delicate for play,
Mother! Make Juh die or have him forget all about James. Please keep him away from us. Amen
.

The doll looked a lot more like Socorro than blond Judith Scott, but it was comforting to call her by that name and believe that something of her mother could be reached and kept through the doll. Talitha didn't ask God to deal with Juh, partly because she suspected it was wicked to desire another's death, but more because she didn't think it would do much good.

God was too busy to worry about people, or why would He have let the Apaches shoot her grandfather and uncle full of arrows? Or let mother die when James needed her milk? Either God was too busy or He didn't care. Mother, if she was able, would joggle His attention or do whatever she could, so Talitha pinned her hopes on the human love she'd known rather than divine love she'd heard about but never seen.

She was confused about God anyway. She could remember Nauvoo, the holy city of the Mormons, built on the Mississippi in Illinois. This town, where Talitha was born, quickly became the largest in the state, neat well-built houses with abundant gardens spreading out from Temple Square. Talitha remembered that shining white temple rising on the hill above the river like something in a dream.

But it was never completed. When the prophet Joseph Smith, a man who'd seemed to four-year-old Talitha like a smiling blue-eyed giant, had smashed the press of a newspaper that had been criticizing him, he and his brother had been jailed in Carthage and killed there by a masked mob, in 1844.

Since Mormons didn't use tobacco or drink alcohol or even coffee and tea, they already seemed peculiar to their Gentile neighbors. They had their own militia, the Nauvoo Legion, and the Danites or “Avenging Angels” were feared by outsiders. Hard work made Mormons prosperous and a target of envy. When Smith declared it was righteous to have more than one wife, Gentile hostility swelled till Brigham Young, Smith's successor, started a search for a land far from civilization where the Mormons could build their own kingdom.

The winter Talitha turned five saw Nauvoo turned into a huge wagon-making center because it was going to take twelve thousand of them to move the Saints. Each family was to have a wagon, oxen, two cows, three sheep, a tent, rifle and ammunition, a thousand pounds of flour, twenty of sugar, farm tools, utensils and bedding, when they started out that spring.

But the more violent Gentiles wouldn't wait. They destroyed property and threatened till the people of Nauvoo fled for their lives in bitter February weather, crossing the iced-over Mississippi. They camped in the snow that first night, sleeping in the wagons, and Talitha wept bitterly for her kitten which got lost in the confusion.

During that month, camped about nine miles from Nauvoo, the refugees sold their Nauvoo property for giveaway prices and prepared to travel to a better wintering place. Talitha still remembered how a white flag signaled that Brigham wanted to see all the men; a blue one meant only the captains need gather.

Her father, Jared Scott, had been captain of a hundred, which had made her small chest swell with pride since her friend Samantha's father, though much older, was only captain of ten. Dividing the thousands of people into smaller units, each leader answerable to the one above, with final authority in the Council, made what could have been a tragic disaster into a surprisingly orderly exile.

Some families had escaped Nauvoo with nothing and shared the tents and food of others. In spite of the bitter cold and scarce food, the band played each evening, and Talitha watched her parents, young, lithe and merry, whirl and dip to the fiddler in the blaze of the campfires.

“I got a gal in the head of the hollow,

She won't come and I won't follow.…”

That music, laughter brave as the fires against the piercing wind, the swirl of her mother's skirts and her yellow head against Jared Scott's reddish one … this was one of Talitha's most treasured “remembers.” Mother had explained it to her. In order not to forget where you came from and those you loved, you called places and people up to you, closed your eyes and tried to fill in the sounds and smells, brightness of sun, or darkness of night.

“No one can take that from you, Tally,” Judith Scott had said before she died. “Remember your father and me. Remember our God. And tell James—”

I'll have to start doing that
, Talitha told herself as she slipped off her pallet and hurried to get James before he woke Shea and Socorro.
Though I don't know what to tell him about God. I never understood much of that. I'll tell James about the temple, I guess
.

Shea's arm was around Socorro and she lay with her face tucked against his shoulder, looking too small to carry the baby that thrust her belly against the coarsely woven coverlet. Seeing them like that gave Talitha a strange, lonely feeling.

They made each other's world. They didn't need anyone else. Talitha had come to love Socorro, but she idolized Shea. When he took the brand for her brother, he became the center of her life. She longed to be necessary to him, do something to make up for what he'd suffered for her sake. So she guarded Socorro, saved her as much bending and stretching as possible, and prayed, also to her mother, to protect Shea and someday let her repay him.

Socorro had made James some diapers from old clothes and a worn sheet from the Cantú rancho. Talitha carried James to her pallet to change him, tossed the diaper in the soaking kettle outside the kitchen door, put a clean long shirt on him, also made by Socorro, and perched on a stump to feed him his mush and watch the faint rose of the eastern sky change to flaming crimson and gold. She had been careful, while getting the cold mush, not to rouse Tjúni who slept in the kitchen.

Tjúni scared Talitha who was very glad the Papago woman was leaving after the baby came, and it wasn't because she was Indian. Except for Juh's wives, most of the Apache women had been kind enough to Talitha, and Luz had actually helped her. But there was something frightening about Tjúni.

There were sounds of breakfast being made now and Santiago came out of the vaqueros' quarters with that gliding limp that made him distinguishable from a long way off. He dropped to one knee, offering a finger to the baby who clutched it tight and laughed with glee.

“
Hola, ahijado!
” chuckled Santiago. “Godson, you have a grip that will let you rope the wildest bulls and hold them to your dally!” He looked at Talitha's hair with mock horror. “The good God gave you such hair and you don't comb it? Have a care or it'll get so tangled you'll have to be sheared like a sheep!”

“I comb it every day,” she told him with dignity. “But James was hungry and I had to feed him first.”

“Well, let me take him while you unsnarl that pretty hair.” Swept to the vaquero's shoulder, James squealed and drummed his bare heels on Santiago's chest. “You think I'm a horse?” laughed the young man. Holding James securely, he gave some gentle bucks and carried him inside as Talitha ran off to comb her hair and fetch water, her before-breakfast chore.

Late summer was time to plant a second crop of corn, more squash and pumpkins. The small yellow-fleshed melons that ripened faster than they could be eaten were buried in sand which would preserve them for months. After being sun-dried, chunks of squash and pumpkin hung from yucca fibers in the kitchen above the ollas and baskets of corn and beans. Strings of red chilis darkened to maroon as they hung from the
vegas
, the protruding roof logs, and the stock of wild foods grew almost daily. It was too bad they didn't have a cat, though, to get rid of the mice that found their way into the stores.

Reddish-purple prickly pear
tunas
, singed of their spines and dried, were stored in jars. Tjúni had wanted to make an expedition to the northwest to collect saguaro fruit, but had been overruled.

“No use taking a chance of Apaches,” Shea said. “Away from the ranch, you'd seem like any Papago. And we've got enough food.”

Tjúni had sulked. Gathering the dark red fruit was a high point of the year for her people. The seeds were dried, the pulp boiled down to syrup, and at the end of the harvest, each family contributed juice to be made into wine.

“Use
navai't
in three days or no good,” Tjúni explained. “Men very drunk.”

“And the women?” teased Shea.

“Women drink some,” Tjúni told him austerely. “But stay sober. Look after men.”

There were plenty of other foods to be gathered, though.
Jojoba
nuts were roasted and eaten like that or ground to stretch the coffee. Long, curving yucca fruits were roasted in hot ashes, peeled, and the baked pulp spread to dry in the sun. They were sweet-tasting and Talitha never tired of them though they were eaten raw, boiled and baked during their time of ripeness.

Socorro was able to help harvest mesquite beans and hackberries. She insisted they leave some beans for the livestock and wild creatures, but bushels were spread out to dry on the roofs. The men built a small adobe granary where a storehouse was planned, and the cured beans went into this while those that had wormholes or didn't look as if they'd keep were ground into meal for earlier use.

Tjúni and Talitha brought home baskets of small acorns which were stored with layers of ash to prevent worms, and went along the mountainsides to find tiny red squawberries covered with whitish sticky fuzz. These took a long time to gather and Talitha thought they were a lot of work over nothing till she savored the difference they made in joint fir tea, lending a tart tanginess to the rather oily, musty taste. This higher land also yielded currants and chokecherries, while elderberries and grapes could be brought from lower washes and streams.

Talitha had helped Apache women gather many of these wild foods so Tjúni had little chance to scold her. They worked in silence, mostly, companions through necessity, though Talitha already spoke Spanish as well as Tjúni. Talitha was always happy to hurry home and hug James, who was left with Socorro during these excursions.

So autumn came on. Walnuts began to drop. Soon it would be time to go up in the mountains for piñon nuts, but Shea didn't want Tjúni to be gone overnight till after the baby came, and he and Santiago worked close enough now to get home by sundown.

“I'll be glad when we can have a real rodeo,” Santiago grumbled, helping himself to more acorn stew made rich with chilis and beef. “Start from all sides and drive the cattle to that high plain between here and El Charco where they could all be branded and marked at once. A fine sight, Don Patrick, to see the cattle together!”

“Even our little bunches look like a lot of cows to me!” Shea grinned. “We're sure chousing a lot of wild ones out of the brush, and horses, too.”

“We'll break some of those this fall,” Santiago said. He squinted at Belen and Chuey who, since they didn't talk much, had started their third helpings. “You've been giving Don Patrick or me all your
señales?
”

Both vaqueros nodded.
Señales
were the bits of ear taken out when cows were earmarked and branded. From the early days of the Conquest, cattle owners had been required to so identify their animals and register the marks with the nearest official.

Socorro had told Talitha that the first branding in New Spain had been done by Cortez who burned three tall crosses on his slaves as well as livestock. The Cantú C was registered in Ures, the Sonoran capital, but there seemed no point, during the present chaos, to make that long and hazardous trip in order to make the S and ears notched near the bottom legally recognized.

“The old branded cows of these
sitios
are dead,
naturalmente
,” said Chuey. “We must be branding their grandchildren and great-grandchildren!”

“As well as the descendants of our neighbors' cows,” grinned Belen. “But that matters little since the neighbors long ago fled southward or were killed by Apache.”

Shea furrowed his brow, pulling figures from his mind. “We've branded about one hundred fifty calves from the herd we brought from the rancho. Figuring some losses, call that bunch three hundred twenty-five. We have
señales
for over five hundred wild ones, and the Sanchezes will have branded some more since turning in their last tally.” He paused in disbelief. “We have well over a thousand cattle!”

“Don Narciso has twenty thousand,” shrugged Santiago. “But it's a decent start. And there are still lots of wild ones.”

“With calves each year,” added Belen.

“And to make sure those are good ones, we're culling out the unthriftiest cows and bulls and holding them at El Charco,” Santiago said. “When we're through branding, we can sell the scrubs to the mines or Tubac. I hope we don't have to drive them to Tucson!”

Talitha thought of Nauvoo and Temple Square, the comfortable houses with their neat gardens and shady trees. Was Tucson like that? Santa Fe certainly hadn't been. She remembered it as a sprawl of mud buildings around a dusty plaza. Even the Governor's Palace and the cathedral were adobe and Judith Scott had been inexpressibly shocked at the way women bared arms and shoulders and smoked cornshuck cigarettes.

Belen's barrel chest heaved as he laughed. “I wouldn't mind going to Tucson!” he said. “But better I don't. My money would go to cards and drinking.”

“Mine wouldn't,” said Chuey piously.

“
Seguramente!
” teased Santiago. “It's going to take more than flowers to convince Anita Sanchez.”

“It's not Anita!” Chuey defended, squirming.

His pockmarked face gave him a fierce look, but Talitha had learned that he was kind. Once when she fell off the corral and skinned her knee, he dusted her off and gave her a piece of brown sugar. More importantly, instead of telling her girls didn't belong around vaqueros, he, with Belen, was teaching her to rope.