The Valiant Women (18 page)

“You are fortunate above all men, Don Patrick! You scarcely need my felicitations. With such a bride, how can you not be joyous?”

Turning to Socorro, he bowed over her hand. His lips touched her skin lightly, briefly, yet they seemed to burn, and as he straightened, the torment in his eyes made her flinch. It was gone so quickly that she told herself it was only a trick of the light on those golden
tigre
eyes.

“My lady, if you have even half the happiness you deserve, you will be blissful beyond words. Like Don Patrick, I owe you my life. If you permit, I will serve you all my years.”

Gravely, she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Santiago.” She wanted to add that she thought of him as the brother she'd always longed for, but suspected that was about the last thing he'd care to hear.

The sunlight was gone when Tjúni stepped forward. “I no have pretty words like Santiago. But I serve wedding feast.” She gestured about the long empty room. “Eat here, not in kitchen.
El Señor
light fire, Santiago fetch mats.”

By the time Shea had the laid fire going, Santiago had arranged the mats and Tjúni had spread the food on one of them, refusing Socofro's help.

“This one night, you sit, watch others work.” She almost smiled. “Bride only one time.”

And it's clear that though you accept it, you don't like it a bit
. Ironic that their witnesses must be the two who felt deprived by the union. Socorro smothered a sigh. Santiago was of the age and temperament to fancy himself in love with any pretty woman he met. It was the group's total isolation that kept him focused on Socorro, that and the fact that Tjúni had given him no encouragement.

Tjúni. This time the sigh escaped. How tangled their relationship was! Tjúni worshiped Shea. Her unspoken conviction that Socorro was too incompetent and soft for being his mate, living beside him in the wilderness, was one that Socorro often came despairingly near to sharing.

But again, if there were other men around, enough of them, surely the beautiful girl would attract one determined enough to lay siege till he won her. Just as Santiago was bound to find a woman to capture him if he met enough of them.

The ranch would need vaqueros. If some were young and unmarried, if others had daughters … Smiling at the play of flame on flame as the fire gleamed on her new husband's hair, Socorro was so happy that she wanted everyone else to be too.

Tjúni had prepared a feast. Besides succulent baked quail with flavorsome stuffing, venison and tortillas, there was
pipián
, toasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds, corn soup and frijoles mashed and fried with chilis. Socorro didn't care much for the strong coffee, nor did Tjúni, but Shea and Santiago, when they saw the women didn't want more, zestfully tippled away the whole pot.

“At least no one will be
crudo
, hung-over, tomorrow,” Santiago laughed. “But it's a shame we have no wine, or at least mescal or
tiswino!
”

Tjúni nodded agreement to that and went to bring the special treat she had concocted with the
piloncillo
. It was candy, small squares of dried pumpkin boiled repeatedly with sugar in the pumpkin's soaking fluid and at last rolled in finely grated bits cut from the cone.

“I'd forgotten how such things taste!” murmured Santiago, eyes closed to better savor the confection. “Don Patrick, my lady, may much of your marriage be sweet as this, and the rest as good and strong as the other food we've eaten.”

When it came time to clear away, Tjúni again refused Socorro's help. “Only one night you bride.”

“Thank you, Tjúni. It was a wonderful feast!” Socorro hesitated, wishing there were some way to reach the other young woman. “When you marry, I'll serve your feast.”

Tjúni's face was stone. “I think no,” she said. “I think if I marry, you no be there.” Head high, heavily laden, she departed for the kitchen.

The remaining three looked at each other in surprise. “She must be thinking of going back to her people,” Shea decided finally. But from the glance Santiago gave Socorro, she knew he'd interpreted the words as she had—that the man Tjúni wanted would only be available at Socorro's death or departure.

It was a wretched notion but after the first shock, Socorro reacted by resolving that Tjúni was going to have an extremely long wait.

She smiled with sudden brilliance at Shea, slipped her hand in his. His face paled beneath its tan. With an intake of breath, he lifted her in his arms, and carried her through the door into their bedroom.

He didn't undress her or himself, but held her against him, head on his shoulder. Stroking her hair, her neck, her back, he murmured love words, soft words, till she relaxed against him, made a soft sound and snuggled closer.

“Shea, my husband, my life, I love you!”

“And I love you,
chiquita
.” His voice was husky against her ear. “But this is only our beginning. We'll love more and better as we learn how.” Light from the small window gave his head a shape but she seemed to feel the intensity of his gaze as his long lean fingers followed the contours of her face, lingered on her throat.

“Lass, tonight, any night, I want no more than you can give; but I want every bit of that! Perhaps you won't have to tell me, maybe I can tell from your body, but don't let me blunder on when you want me to stop.”

“But, Shea—” How to tell him that she doubted there'd ever come a time when the core of her didn't turn to dark freezing at the moment he tried to enter her?

“Promise, wench,” he whispered with mock ferocity. “Or I'll stop this minute and you'll miss some things that are nicer than pumpkin candy!”

“Can that be?” she teased, trying to steady the rising beat of her heart. “Did a woman tell you so?”

“Dozens of them, Mrs. O'Shea! Lucky you are, getting the benefit of my education.” He sucked in his breath as if someone had hit him in the stomach. “What a fool I am! That's the way!”

“What?” she demanded.

“Why, I can pleasure you without using that part of me which I'm so attached to and that you, poor child, wish I didn't have!”

“But that wouldn't be fair!”

“It would,” he corrected sternly. “The sooner you learn to enjoy being a woman, the sooner I can enjoy you. I'm being very selfish, my girl, so you stop arguing and just feel my hands and lips. I promise there won't be anything else. It would be a help, though, if we could take off that dress.” When she hesitated, he coaxed tenderly, “Please, my love. It would pleasure me so to touch you without getting tangled up in skirts and bodices!”

Ashamed to deny him that, she sat up and he helped her slip out of her things though he stayed fully clothed. His hands were trembling when he began to caress her, moving from face to throat, then slowly, fleetingly, to her breasts.

She gasped as mixed signals of alarm and anticipation spread through her. This was Shea; Shea, her husband; Shea, her love! He kissed her mouth lightly, the pulse in her throat, stroked her lightly, exquisitely, till she moaned, pressed closer to him.

At last, his warm hand found the place that had been all these months to her like an unhealed wound. But he touched it as if it had been a rose, a delicate flower he wanted to bring to bloom without damage. When she tensed involuntarily, he kept his fingers still, spread comfortingly upon that old mutilation.

Warmth curled through her lazily from that quietness. She seemed to feel another heart in her very depths, throbbing softly to begin, then increasing in beat till she arched against him, wanted the hand to move, wanted—needed, oh, must have—some end to the crescendo.

Something fiercely primitive also wanted this first time to be with him, too, not something done for her with him holding back.

She reached to stroke the hardness straining against his trousers. He groaned. “Oh, lass, don't!”

“But I want you!” she whispered. “All of you! Oh, love, fill me!”

He took her in a way that lanced the remains of the abscess, cleansing her with the vigor and beauty and fire of his loving. Then, exhausted from their ecstasy, he who had been her man lay on her breast, suddenly her child.

“Our marriage was blessed,” she told him, nestling her face against the curling hair that was damp near the roots.

He said sleepily, chuckling as he patted her rump, “If it wasn't before, it sure is now! I hope I won't go to hell, lass, for saying I prefer this ceremony!”

“If you do, I'll go with you,” she whispered, holding him close, marveling.

The splendor they'd made with their bodies! A dazzling of lightning and fireworks, spinning away into vastness where one rested in a sort of ocean, buoyed by it, feeling its rhythm that beat for eternity whatever happened to the separate waves.

“Can it ever be that way again?” she asked. “Ever be so wonderful?”

“Mrs. O'Shea!” he told her, and now he was her man again, gathered her in his arms, resting her head on his chest. “You'd better sleep while you can! That wasn't anything compared to what we're going to do!”

There was a sound of hoofbeats. Shea tensed, relaxed as they faded. “Poor Santiago's trying to ride off his devils, I guess. Needs a woman of his own. Do you reckon Tjúni—?”

“No.” How blind men were. “We'll need vaqueros in time. You must find one Tjúni would like and one with a daughter who'd be right for Santiago.”

“How about a wife?”

“You're terrible! Shea, honestly, if you don't—Oh, Shea! Yes,
querido
, yes!”

This time she couldn't believe she had ever feared his body.

XI

Breakfast was a little awkward next morning. Socorro couldn't help but wish she and Shea could go on touching, laughing, kissing, felt inhibited from even smiling at him very long.

Both Tjúni and Santiago must be having enough trouble concealing their feelings without open displays between the newlyweds. But Socorro was tremulously conscious of Shea, so filled with grateful happiness that she wanted to sing and dance and, most of all, lose herself in her husband's arms.

Munching a tortilla and leftover venison, Shea asked Santiago what he thought about hiring some vaqueros. “When they know what Mangus has promised, they shouldn't be afraid to come.”

Santiago considered for a while. Though he was no older than Socorro, he'd known frontier ranch life from babyhood, and Shea, his senior by ten years, was always ready to defer to his judgment on matters concerning the operation of the ranch.

“I think,” he said at last, “that instead of asking those who were afraid, we should wait till spring, hoping that bolder men will hear of us and seek us out. They will work better if they choose us.”

That made sense but did nothing about producing a suitor for Tjúni or a girl for Santiago. “Can we manage till spring?” Shea frowned.

Santiago shrugged. “
Pues
, you and I can't do as much as if we had help. But unless it's an unusually hard winter, we won't have much cattle work till spring when we may have to midwife for the few cows that have problems, and keep coyotes and lions off the new calves. From then on, we'll need help. If we get a hundred and fifty calves next year, and we should, because for our herd I picked mostly heifers and young cows, we'll almost double what we have. And of course all winter and spring, Don Patrick, you and I will be on the watch for wild cattle descended from those left here when the ranch was abandoned.”

Shea shook his head in bewilderment. “Hundreds of cattle, thousands of acres! Seems like a dream to a poor man from Ireland!”

Santiago grinned. “And to me it sounds like a dream when you talk about grass so thick and rich and fast-growing that a cow can stay fat on an acre or two! The grass here is much better than at the Cantú home ranch where we figured a cow needed sixty acres for browse. But we can think it excellent if twenty-five to thirty acres carries a cow.”

“Think your uncle might try to take over when he learns that your father's dead and you've reestablished this ranch?”

“Without doubt—provided he could inherit the protection of Mangus. He hasn't even kept his mines running since Mangus wiped out the Santa Rita miners to the west.”

“When did he do that?” asked Shea.

Santiago's brow furrowed. “It must be about seven years ago, in 1840, but the story begins before that.” And he told how, in the '20s, the Santa Rita copper mines, which must be nearly two hundred miles east, were under constant pressure from Apaches. The first American fur trappers to travel along the Gila, a father and son named Pattie, stopped at the mine, after earlier talking with Apaches who said they had no quarrel with the Americans, only with the Mexicans. The mine operator, Juan Unis, asked the Americans to stay on as guards and when they weren't interested in that, he suggested that they rent the mines for $1000 a year.

The Patties agreed and the elder stayed on for a time, parleying with the Apaches and getting them to promise not to raid the mines. In return, the miners were not to establish a permanent settlement or bring in families. Even after Sylvester Pattie left, the agreement was fairly well observed by the Apaches though miners had brought in their women and the village had four hundred people and a plaza.

When it became a hangout for scalp hunters, Mangus Coloradas accused the miners of violating their promises and in 1840 the truce broke.

The mines depended on supplies from Chihuahua which were brought in by the long mule trains,
conductas
, that also took out the copper. Mangus ambushed two of these supply trains. There was no stored food in the village since the regular plying back and forth of the
conductas
had furnished a steady supply.

Within a few weeks, even though miners went hunting, the people were on the edge of starvation. They didn't know what had happened to the
conductas
, but it was plain they weren't coming. So, loading pack mules and wheelbarrows with their belongings, carrying all they could on their own backs, four hundred men, women and children started the long trek to Chihuahua.