The Valiant Women (25 page)

Astounded and dismayed at the tempest that had been building up in the girl, Socorro let her cry, casting about for a way to ease her burden. When Talitha's weeping gradually subsided into hiccoughs, Socorro said softly, “Would you like to know a secret?”

Talitha peered up. “A—a secret?”

“Something even my husband doesn't know,” Socorro assured her.

Talitha scrubbed an arm across her face and sat up, beguiled. “What?”

“I'm going to have a baby. Next fall. I hope you can love it half as much as you do James, and help me take care of it. Will you?”

“A baby?” Talitha echoed, shrinking away. “Then you won't need us at all!”

“Didn't your mother need you more than ever when she had James?”

“Well …” Talitha considered.

Socorro pressed her advantage. “My baby's lucky to have both a big sister and brother. Wouldn't you have liked that?”

“I don't know. I think I like being oldest.”

“A good thing, since you are!” Getting to her feet, Socorro said briskly, “It's time we went to sleep. You and James had better sleep between us so you won't roll off into some cactus!”

Remembering that lice were supposed to be decimated by ants, she found an anthole and put the cowskin over it. Shea was already asleep when she spread out a blanket and put James closest to his broad back. Talitha lay between Socorro and her brother.

“Mother used to kiss us good night,” the girl said.

“And I'd like to. May I?”

Talitha held up her arms, but only allowed herself an instant's cuddle before presenting James who wriggled sleepily. “He needs the most loving. He's little.”

And half-Apache, promised to go back to Juh in six or seven years
. As well love a wolf cub destined to return to the wilds. But he
was
little and the only mother he had was Talitha who needed one herself.

Socorro held the baby in her arms till Talitha sighed with contentment and nestled against her, too. Soon they were all asleep. And if Shea dreamed of extrabreasted women that night, he didn't moan voluptuously enough to wake anybody up.

They reached Rancho del Socorro at noon the third day. Chuey, Belen and Santiago were just riding in and Santiago raced forward, pulling Noche up soon enough to keep from scaring Castaña and Azul.

“You come safe!” he cried joyously. “But, Name of a Name! What has happened to your face, Don Patrick? And what is that you have?” He sprang down, with his gliding limp, to hold their bridles.

Belen, unbidden, came to help Socorro, taking the cradleboard so she could dismount. “What is this?” He echoed Santiago's last question, broad face hardening as he stared disbelievingly at the baby in the Apache cradleboard.

Talitha, set on the ground by Shea, ran up to claim her brother. She probably hadn't understood the Spanish, but there was no mistaking what the bandy-legged Yaqui thought. He yielded James to the fierce little yellow-haired girl and turned to Shea in bemusement.

“It has blue eyes but that is an Apache cub. What will you do with him?”

“He will be our son.” Shea's long hand curved around Talitha's shoulder. “And this is our new daughter, Talitha.”

Briefly, he explained. Tjúni had come out in time to hear and looked even more disapproving, if possible, than Belen. “Girl of your blood,” she said. “That Apache—he never anything else!”

Santiago laughed challengingly, dropped to one knee beside Talitha and offered the baby his finger. James laughed and gripped it, smiling sunnily up, those pale eyes so strange in his coppery face beneath the black shock of hair.

“I'm almost as much Apache as this child,” said the vaquero, tawny eyes sweeping from Tjúni to Belen and Chuey. “He will be my godson. A good vaquero.”

Shea slowly shook his head. “Don't count too much on that, my friend. The father let us take him only if we would give him back when he's old enough to manage without a mother.”

Santiago still kept one arm around Talitha but he slowly withdrew his finger from the baby's clutch. “Better you had left him.”

“The girl wouldn't come without him.”

Looking at her puzzled, frightened face, Santiago asked, “Does she know? That her brother must go back?”

Socorro gave a cry of shock, realizing that probably Talitha did not since she seemed not to understand Spanish, and that had been the parleying tongue. Unthinkable to let her believe she'd have James always. She must be told, soon.

Tjúni's eyes had never left Shea's brand. “Your face?” she demanded. “Why?”

Shea flushed. “I—Mangus—” He couldn't bring himself to tell of Juh's price, so, defiantly facing Tjúni, Socorro did.

The Papago girl trembled with outrage. “You—you let your man take hot iron for that?” she hissed, spitting toward James.

Shea said sternly, eyes like blue flame, “There was no
letting
, Tjúni. It was the price. We'll talk no more about it! The children are ours now and though James may not stay that way, we'll treat him so.” His glance flicked-from her to Belen and Chuey. “Anyone who cannot accept this had better leave the ranch.”

Santiago, still kneeling, again proffered his finger, chuckled as James seized it. “Ay, godson, from now on I shall call you Jaime which is easier to say! Hurry and grow big enough to swing a rope!”

Only then did Shea say that their journey had been successful, that Mangus would allow the mines. When Alejandro returned with Don Narciso's almost certain agreement, that message could be taken back and the mines could reopen. It was exciting but Socorro felt somewhat dazed as she carried James into the house while Talitha kept close to Shea.

For so long, there'd been only herself and Shea, Tjúni and Santiago. Now, suddenly, there were vaqueros, a mining operation, two children, and next fall she'd have her own baby! She hoped she could keep up with it all.

As they entered, Shea stopped her, turning her to meet his kiss. “Welcome home, my love,” he said. The look in his eyes brought a rush of warm honey through her. He added under his breath, “God's whiskers! It's more than time we got back to our own bed!”

She blushed but her blood sang. He was her love, her husband, the very heart of her existence. Starting from that, all other things fell into place, so it was really very simple. She bent to kiss Talitha and welcome her to her new home.

Talitha, with her bright hair now washed and brushed and her swift little birdlike body, soon became a favorite of all the men though it was Shea she clung to like a shadow when she wasn't helping the women. Even Tjúni had to grudgingly admit that she never shirked as they collected, dethorned and roasted cholla buds, then dried them further for storing.

She still carried James around, and the cradleboard banged her thin shanks, but as she gradually came to trust Socorro and saw that Tjúni, though dourly unaccepting of the baby, wouldn't hurt him, she was usually content to leave him in their care when her duties were finished and she could run off to find Shea. She was learning Spanish now and Belen, who plainly adored her, was teaching her some Yaqui. No one suggested that she practice Apache though it might well have been useful.

“We have to tell her that Juh's going to take James,” Socorro worried to Shea as they lay one night in the tender exhaustion that follows lovemaking.

“It's six or seven years off,
chiquita
. Maybe the ugly bastard'll get killed before then. Or have enough full Apache sons to forget about this one.”

She touched the puckered scar ridged across the earlier one. “We can hope that,” she sighed. “But she ought to know.”

“Borrowing trouble,” Shea grunted, fitting Socorro into the curve of his shoulder. “Never mind, then! I'll try to find a way to tell her.”

It was next day while Tjúni and Socorro were gathering the inner leaves of cattails to use the tender white lower part, when Talitha came running, splashing heedlessly in the marsh.

“Is it true?” she panted, catching at Socorro's skirt. “Is it really true?”

Socorro dropped her leaves in the basket and led the child to solid ground. “It's true that the only way we could get James at all was to promise Juh might have him later.”

“You—you had no right!”

“We had to do something. Would you rather have stayed with the Apaches?”

“No, but—it's not fair! Juh hasn't got any right to my brother!”

“According to Apache ways, he did.”

Talitha huddled into herself for a moment. Her mouth twisted and when she looked up at Socorro, her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. “Then Shea—” (for some reason she refused to call him Father) “was branded like that for
nothing?
”

“It isn't nothing that you're here,” Socorro said firmly. “And you must know that James has a better chance of growing up.”

Talitha was quiet for several minutes. Then she said savagely, “I hope Juh dies before James is big enough to go to him! Every day I'll ask our mother to make that happen!”

“Talitha!” Shocked at such implacability in a child, Socorro tried to put an arm around her but she resisted, tiny face severe.

“I—I don't blame you or Shea,” she said at last, rubbing splattered mud off her arms. “You did the best you could.”

“We did,” agreed Socorro, indignant when she remembered Shea's ordeal, though she also felt for this strange little girl, forced to grow up much too fast. “It's a long time till James is seven. Juh might keep him a short time and decide he isn't a very good Apache, let him come back to us. Anyway, let's take good care of him now.”

Talitha nodded. As she trudged away, her thin shoulder blades thrust against the dress Socorro had made for her from one brought from the Cantú rancho. The bruises from the kicks and pinches of her foster mothers had faded and applications of diluted juice from black walnut hulls had rid both her and James of lice, but there was no way to give her back her childhood.

That evening Socorro was surprised to hear her talking to James in what was neither Spanish nor English. “What are you telling him?” Socorro asked.

“I'm teaching him Apache.”

“Surely it's a bit early to worry about that!”

“I'd forget if I waited.” Talitha gave Socorro a straight blue look. “I don't want him to be like I was, not knowing what's being said, getting cuffed around when he blunders.” She added grimly, “But I'm asking Mother to get rid of that nasty old Juh!”

When Socorro told Shea, he laughed admiringly. “She'll manage, that one! The Apaches don't have a chance!”

Socorro frowned and sighed. “It's not right for a seven-year-old to be so hard, so
tough
.”

“She didn't have much choice if she wanted to live and look out for her brother.”

“I know, but—”

“She'll be all right. Laughs and skylarks with the men, loves horses. Belen's even teaching her to rope.” Shea kissed Socorro's throat and eyes, nuzzled her ear. “Stop fretting about her,
chiquita
, and pay some attention to me.”

Alejandro had brought back Don Narcisco's agreement on the mines and executed documents conveying the northern
sitios
to Shea. Returning, he carried back news of Mangus's terms so before long the mines, abandoned for two decades, should be back in operation about forty miles southeast.

Following Alejandro by a few days had been Pedro Sanchez, the vaquero formerly so attached to this region. A small wrinkled monkey, he and his billowingly endowed wife, Carmencita, had somehow produced two exceedingly pretty daughters. Anita, small and delectably rounded, whom Chuey immediately began to court with wild flowers and languishing; and Juana, tall and slender, with a face as tenderly sweet as the madonna's in the shrine above the door.

The youngest of the two sons was Natividad, called Tivi, gangling and not yet at his full growth though he was a good vaquero. Tivi had very white teeth, a broad face and broad smile, and exuded an air of good-natured innocence in contrast to his slightly older brother, Güero.

Güero had to be the result of some passing foreigner's seeking comfort with Carmencita, though all the Sanchezes treated him as fully one of them. His red-gold waving hair and green eyes were arresting against his brown skin and he moved with arrogance. When his family presented itself to their employers, he swept off his sombrero before Socorro but his eyes were speculative and his mouth curved as if with a secret derision.

She was glad he wouldn't be living at the main ranch. In order to better keep track of the cattle and gradually claim the many wild ones foraging within the far-flung boundaries of the ranch, they had decided to establish another center at El Charco on the south. The Sanchezes would live there, Pedro as foreman or
caporal
for the area, though the vaqueros would, of course, shift around as needed.

“It's good to know there are other people, especially some women, not terribly far away,” Socorro remarked to Tjúni after the Sanchezes had departed for their new location. “We won't see them much but just knowing they're there makes a difference.”

Tjúni looked dour. “That Güero has bad eyes, Natividad is stupid, and those women—” She snorted. “Glad they gone!”

That didn't sound very promising for the hope that the Papago girl might find a husband among the vaqueros. Belen was old for her and Chuey enamored of Anita. As for what Santiago had thought of Juana, it was impossible to tell.

Whether matchmaking prospered or not, there were enough men to at least start to pull in the wild horses and cattle. This fall as much of the stock as possible would be branded and the scraggier specimens culled for the drive to market.

And this fall Socorro's baby would be born. She had still not told Shea. There was much work to do and she suspected that he'd try to pamper her.