The Valiant Women (23 page)

He had a deer over his shoulder. When he reached the camp, he let it drop. Several women came up to take charge of it while Mangus looked carefully at his guests.

“Why have you left your valley, Hair of Flame?”

Shea's eyebrow shot up. “I had never understood that we could not leave it, Great Chief.”

Something glimmered in Mangus's eyes. “No. But you are safer in the place known to be under my protection.” His massive shoulders made a dismissing gesture. “Now you are in my camp, you are safe as if at your ranch. Come, rest, have food and drink. Your woman will sit with us. She is valiant and to be honored.”

They sat on fiber mats beneath the largest mesquite. Luz, Mangus's niece, her face even handsomer now that it was no longer bruised and bleeding, murmured a greeting as she brought
atole
, corn gruel, and gourd bowls of a fermented drink so fiery that Socorro took one swallow and choked.

“
Tiswino
,” Mangus explained, looking somewhat hurt at Socorro's involuntary reaction. “Good brew, this, with much brown sugar from Chihuahua.”

Socorro didn't want to think of how he'd got it and was glad when he appropriated her portion and Luz came back with joint fir tea.

“Now, Hair of Flame,” said Mangus. “Why have you come?”

He listened quietly. When Shea finished, he said, “If only miners came and took the ore, it would not matter. But they would bring families. Soon there would be a fort, bad white men selling poison liquor, maybe even a refuge for scalp hunters as the Santa Rita mining village was.”

“If you allow the mining,” Shea countered, “I will undertake that no families are brought in, no whiskey-selling riffraff. And you may have gifts from the supplies. Cloth, brown sugar, wheat, serapes.”

“Guns? Powder and ball?”

“Can you promise they would be used only to hunt or to defend?”

Mangus made an exasperated sound between his teeth. “Can I promise the sun will shine just enough to bring the crops but not burn them?”

“You may have any other goods of the
conductas
. And the miners will have only a few guns for hunting. They will know they are in the country only by your favor.”

“You admit that?”

Shea laughed. “How can it be otherwise?”

“I will talk to my people,” Mangus said. “Tonight you will have your answer. Tomorrow you may go.” He rose, considered for a moment. “Come with me, Hair of Flame, to answer questions. My niece and wives will see to your woman.”

“Thank you,” said Socorro. “But I would just like to watch what's done with the cholla buds so that Tjúni won't find me so useless when we gather ours.”

“That woman of the Desert People?” Mangus asked, benignly looking down at Socorro from his great height. “Her name means ‘saguaro fruit' but she is more like the spines!”

Smiling at his own joke, he went off with Shea toward a knot of men.

Socorro watched the work at the baking pit awhile. Now and then a woman glanced curiously at her. Socorro would smile. Usually they smiled back. Not always.

One unsmiling woman had a mutilated nose. Socorro had heard that, or death, was the punishment for an adulterous woman. Unnerved, Socorro moved next to where the buds were being dethorned in the baskets where they were rolled about with sandstone.

Just watching the tedious labor made her sigh. She secretly hoped Tjúni wouldn't insist that they prepare vast quantities of buds.

Surely their crops would produce enough to lessen dependence on wild foods. It was priceless to know what these were, where to find and prepare them, but when they made up most of the diet, a woman's life was filled with simply locating and preparing them. In the desert so much time and effort went into the struggle to get enough food that there wasn't much energy left for other things.

Ruefully turning away, Socorro stared with shock into gray-blue eyes that watched her from the brown face of a small girl with yellow, yellow hair. Dirty as it was, the color shone through. On her back she carried a cradleboard which barely cleared the ground and into this was laced a big dark-skinned baby with the same startling eyes.

They couldn't be Apache. Well, the baby might be mixed, but the girl—she was certainly American or of Europe. Socorro was no good judge of children's ages, having not been much around them, but she guessed this one at six or seven.

Scrawny, dirty, dressed in a cotton rag so filthy that it had no discernible color, the child had something arresting about her, a toughness, a defiant sadness, that touched Socorro.

Testing the English Shea had taught her, Socorro asked softly, “Who are you?”

The girl's eyes dilated, then narrowed to pinpoints. She whirled away but she couldn't move fast because of the cradleboard and Socorro was beside her quickly.

“Do not be afraid.” Socorro tried desperately to think of the right words. “I want to be your friend.”

“Why?”

“You don't look happy.”

No response. “Brother?” Socorro asked, pointing at the baby who watched her out of those strange pale eyes. His hair was black and straight, his skin coppery.

“Yes, brother,” said the girl, adding in a burst of pride, “He's very good when I take care of him.” Her words were hesitant as if it were hard to remember them.

“That is a big help to your mother.”

The thin shoulders jerked. In a choked voice the girl muttered, “She's dead. It was in the mountains.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I'm not. Juh's wives can't hurt her now.”

This was not a child to cuddle and croon over, though her very prickliness and unseasonable maturity made. Socorro long to do that. “Do you know who you are?”

The girl shot her a scornful blue glance. “Of course. Mama told me to say my name every day, my brother's, too, and practice talking so I wouldn't forget.” She sighed a little. “Sometimes I don't but most days I remember.”

“Will you tell me your name?”

“Talitha. Talitha Scott. I was born in 1840.” As if saying it warmed her and caused pain at the same time, Talitha's voice softened. “My brother is James.” She looked at Socorro. “Mama always hoped some white people would come help us get away. Will you?”

“I will do all I can.” Socorro vowed silently to take the children even at the risk of life. The little girl wrenched her heart. “I'm sure my husband will, too.”

“He's that lovely red-haired man with Mangus?”

Socorro laughed and for the first time dared to lightly touch the girl's hair. “He
is
lovely, isn't he? And kind.” She sobered. “What if Juh will let you go but wants to keep your brother, his son? Would you come?”

The child shook her head, moved quickly away. “No! I won't leave James!”

A sullen-looking woman called something at the girl who broke step with Socorro but gazed wistfully at Shea. “I
think
my daddy looked like that.” At a shriller order from the woman, Talitha moved away, but her eyes clung to Socorro's.

“We'll find you,” Socorro promised. “Take good care of James.”

The woman who'd called the girl took the cradleboard and propped it against a tree, sent the baby's sister running off on some errand. One of Juh's wives who'd been unkind to Talitha's dead mother?

It seemed wise to learn as much as she could before taking her request to Mangus, so Socorro looked around for Luz who was out gathering buds.

At Socorro's questions, Luz frowned and concentrated on knocking a formidably thorn-guarded bud into her basket. “Juh's wives would be glad enough to be rid of the children, even the boy who is his son. But I do not think Juh will let the boy go. He was very fond of the mother and her blue eyes, perhaps because his grandmother was a blond Spanish captive.”

“The little girl loves her brother. I think she wouldn't leave without him!”

Luz's glance said eloquently that was none of her concern and should be none of Socorro's. “What do you know about the mother?” Socorro persisted.

The white woman, whose hair had been fair as her daughter's, had been captured a year ago last fall, shortly after many soldiers with wagons marched from Santa Fe, the same ones that had stopped at Tucson and passed on through the land of the Yumas even further west, who could know where?

It was thought the woman's husband was with the soldiers but no one really cared. The two older men with her were killed and Juh claimed the woman. He valued her though she cried a great deal, even after her fine baby was born, and even though she was impossibly clumsy at cooking and other chores. Juh's wives were sorely tried with her and treated her as viciously as they dared without attracting Juh's attention.

“I will talk to Juh's wives for you,” Luz offered. “Perhaps they can persuade him that the little boy, who is not a year old yet, is likely to inherit his mother's poor health and be a problem, especially if something happened to his sister who spends her time caring for him. Juh almost sold the girl last winter to a white slave trader who liked her hair.”

“
Sold
her?”

“Why, you must know that children—and others—are sold,” shrugged Luz. “Apache children, women stolen to sell to Mexicans, the same with Navajo. And Apache, Navajo, Ute, Comanche—all sell Mexican captives.”

“Then perhaps Juh will sell the girl and let her brother stay with her.”

“Perhaps,” said Luz, and went back to her work.

Socorro waited nervously by the huge mesquite till the council broke up and Shea came to her. The taut lines of his face relaxed and he gave her hand a squeeze.

“I think they're going to agree,
chiquita!
They'll talk it over and give an answer tonight. Looks like we're going to be part owners of a copper mine!”

“There's something more important,” she said, and told him about the little blond girl and her half-brother.

“God's whiskers!” Shea breathed. “Juh was in that bunch I talked with. A real hawk. I can't see him giving his flesh for a white man's rearing.”

“Talitha won't come without him.”

Slowly, Shea asked, “Are you sure she's unhappy, lass? I've heard that often captives come to like the wild life and refuse to leave it when they have the chance.”

“Not this one. She remembers her mother's pain. And she's not wanted by Juh's women.”

“Sure, then,” he said, flashing the smile she loved that deepened the cleft in his chin, “we must take her with us. Somehow. Guess I'd better go talk to Juh. That's him, with Mangus.”

“I'll come with you.”

He shook his head. “If Juh gets mad, I don't want you mixed up in it.”

“But, Shea, we must convince him we'd take good care of his son. He needs to know what I'm like.”

Shea frowned. “Maybe you're right. But if he gets ugly, stay out of it.”

“We have to get those children.”

“My love, we'll do our best, but we can't
take
them in the teeth of this whole boiling of Apaches!” Reading her thought, he said grimly, “Can't steal them, either. The women saw the girl with you. She disappears with the baby, they'd figure that out. Mangus couldn't save us after such a trick, and, as far as Juh's boy's concerned, I couldn't blame him!”

Juh, a stocky man of middle years with an imperious manner even around Mangus, didn't speak much Spanish, which may have been fortunate. Mangus's eyes narrowed as Shea asked for the children.

Before the chief could refuse, Socorro stepped forward. “Great Mangus,” she pleaded, “the girl was almost sold to a slave trader. Why can she not be sold to us?”

“The girl is not the trouble. How can you ask an Apache to give up his son?”

Socorro swallowed hard. Mangus loomed above her, Juh's eyes glittered, and she was cold with terror. “The girl loves her brother.” It was hard to move her stiff lips. “He's still very small. Juh's wives cannot love him equally with their own children, look after him as well. He might die without his sister.”

“Then she must stay.”

It took all Socorro's strength and will to persist. “Great Chief, I beg you for this.”

Their gazes locked, wrestled. At last, unwillingly, Mangus said, “Your heart is too soft. But it was soft for my people. You would have fought for their lives against the woman of the Desert People. You mean this thing. But it is Very difficult.”

“Juh could see the boy whenever he wanted to,” Socorro offered desperately.

“We would give Juh our own share of the mine profits till he was satisfied with the price,” Shea offered.

“
If
there is a mine,” reminded the chief.

“If. But we'll be selling some cattle this fall. Juh can have the share of my wife and myself.”

“A man does not sell his son.” Mangus considered. “The only way would be if he thought you would give the boy more chance of living.” The chief's eyes came again to Socorro. “Would you promise to let the boy come live with his father when he's old enough, learn the Apache way?”

“I think we must consent to this,” Shea told her softly.

“What is old enough?” Socorro asked.

“Will you bargain on the rim of hell?” Mangus laughed harshly. “When the boy is seven—eight, old enough not to need a woman.”

“Supposing he doesn't want to grow up Apache?” Socorro dared. “He is, after all, born of a white woman.”

“I will not even say that to Juh,” remarked Mangus dryly.

It seemed the most they could hope for. Socorro flinched inwardly to think of explaining to Talitha that she couldn't keep her brother always. But by then the girl would be thirteen or fourteen, changing to woman, ready in a few years to marry. James might have become more aggravation than joy.

Anyway, there was no better hope.

“You will give up the boy when he is asked for?” insisted Mangus. “Without this word, I would not ask Juh such a thing.”