The Valiant Women (59 page)

“Talitha?” Marc insisted. He took her face between his hands, and kissed her. Gently, cherishingly. “Oh, my love, you don't have to bear it alone. You
are
strong and brave, but use my strength, too; let me help you.”

So she told him. Everything, from the time Frost found her at the spring. “If I had warned Shea and Santiago then, maybe they could have killed him. Maybe none of this would have happened. Leonore might even be alive. But I was so afraid Frost would kill Shea!” A new dread plunged her into deeper self-accusation. “Marc! If Frost hadn't wanted me—”

“Stop that!” He closed her mouth with his and this time there was passion and longing and anger in his kiss, along with the tenderness that never left him. “I've suspected that Judah had strange tastes, but to lust for a thirteen-year-old! Don't blame yourself for his craziness.”

“But—”

“If you'd told your menfolk, the only way they could have killed an expert like Judah would be to shoot first, ambush him. You know they wouldn't do that, just because he'd made threats that might have been exaggerated by the mind of a young girl.”

“I should have done something! It—it was like letting everybody think we had a harmless snake in the house when I knew he was a rattler!”

Marc shrugged. “He was gone most of the time. You naturally hoped he just wouldn't come back. Don't brood over that, Talitha. Your men wouldn't have killed him without warning. With warning, he was sure to get at least one of them, possibly both.” He drew her to her feet. “And now it's time for you to sleep.”

In confessing to him, she felt as if a great load had dropped from her. She felt now an overwhelming need to be cleansed of Frost, to have his piercing of her obliterated. Looking straight up at Marc, touching the scar that crossed his cheek and brow, she said, “Please love me, Marc. Lie down with me and love me!”

He went rigid. His breath caught in. “Are you sure?”

In a way, she wasn't. Her body still ached from Frost's ravishing. She passionately wished to blot out that possession but knew she must be honest with Marc.

“This doesn't mean I love you,” she said painfully, reaching for his hand. “But I need you! Oh, Marc, help me. Make me clean again.”

For a moment, she thought he would refuse, but then he moved with sudden resolution, got his bedroll, spread it in the
sala
. At first it disturbed her that Shea was right behind the wall, and she tried to hurry Marc, but he kissed her into quiescence before he let his trembling hands smooth her, caress her with a reverential joy that made her glow, come alive with charged tension.

When at last he took her, there was only a second of fright, a moment's memory of pain, and then he was marking her with new feelings, laving her secret parts with his loving, dissolving the cruelty and contempt that Frost had marked her with.

In peace, they rested in each other's arms till Shea grew restless. Then Talitha dressed and brought him more of Nōnó's sleeping brew before Marc walked her to her room. She slept well that night for the first time since her drugged sleep at Doña Rosa's.

By the time John Irwin came on Sunday, Shea's fever was down and the shattered flesh was starting to knit. “In a few days, your worst problem will be keeping him quiet,” the doctor grinned. “My opinion is that people heal faster if they do move around once they feel like it, but don't let him out to rope or ride till that hole closes!”

He turned a quizzing eye on the engineer. “How long can that mine manage without you?”

“We'll find out, won't we?” retorted Marc.

After Irwin had gone, he took Talitha's hand and kissed it slowly. They had made love every night, naturally, with no questions or discussion, though he must know now that what had begun as Talitha's desperate need to erase her body's violation had become as ecstatic for her as it was for him.

“Our handsome doctor fancies you himself,” Marc said with a twinkle. “He'll be glad to see the last of me and I must go as soon as Shea can talk business.”

He drew Talitha against him. His head rested against her breasts. She trembled at the warmth of his breath through the cloth. “Will you tell him, Talitha? Or shall I?”

Warning ran through her. She stiffened. “Tell him what?”

“Why, about us.” Marc frowned up at her, puzzled. “That we want to marry.”

She blinked. The thought hadn't entered her mind, but she knew now that it should have. She'd been blindly selfish, healing her hurts with Marc's love, not thinking ahead. Carefully she said now, “Marc, I—I'm sorry. I can't marry you.”

He put her from him, stood up and moved away. As if only then could he trust himself to look at her, he faced about. “Why not? You can't think because Frost—”

She shook her head. “I know you'd have me in spite of that. But I can't leave Shea and the children.”

“Shea, you mean.”

Helplessly, she spread her hands. “I told you that—what we've done—didn't mean I loved you.”

He put clenched fists behind him. She knew he was making a tremendous fight for control, hated herself for his pain, yet there was nothing she could do.

“You love me,” he said wonderingly. “I'm not wrong about that. I know you love me.”

She nodded, swallowing. “But I love Shea, too. I loved him first, all these ways and all these years.”

Marc gave an abrupt nod. “Finally I understand. Shea is god to you. I'm only a man.”

She put out her hands in pleading, but Marc turned away. “I'm getting back to the mine. When Shea's well enough, you and he can decide if you want to make any changes in the mining company. Since Frost has no known survivors, I'd assume his shares would be split equally among the remaining partners, you, Shea, the children and me. So I'll carry on as usual unless he sends me word to the contrary.”

“Marc, I'm sorry.”

He gave her a crooked smile. “So am I, Talitha. Maybe I should do what Frost did, steal you away. But I don't want you if you don't want me.”

He didn't kiss her goodbye. He was gone within the hour.

Talitha cried herself to sleep for several nights. What was wrong with her? She
did
love Marc; when she passed the place in the
sala
where he'd loved her so sweetly and so strongly, she was convulsed with longing and it wasn't only or chiefly for those delights that she missed him.

During the hours they'd watched by Shea, he'd talked with her as he used to about the world outside, books and people and ideas. He'd revived the twins' and Cat's sporadic interest in arithmetic and reading. Less abrasive than John Irwin, his convictions were at least as strong. There was about him a sureness, a steadfastness that made Talitha feel safe.

He might be partly right about her feelings for him and Shea. Certainly, Marc was to her a
man
. Shea had been her childhood god, but mingled with her worship was knowledge of the part of him that made her almost see him as a starved, half-orphaned child.

Socorro's death had orphaned him again as well as taking his beloved mate. It was the lonely child in him Talitha couldn't abandon, but this was nothing she could have explained to Marc Revier even had she found the words.

So she told Shea only that Marc had needed to get back to the Tecolote and added what he'd said about the business. Grimacing as he shifted on the pillows, Shea said, “I suppose I'll have to get the freighting and mining partnerships straightened out. You and James will have Santiago's share since I'm sure he'd have liked that. The railroad venture's probably a bust, though I'll have you help me write to the bank in San Francisco and see if they know anything about it. But I don't want to think about it yet.”

“Then don't.”

During those days of his mending, she was glad for Cat's spritely ways of entertaining her father with songs she'd made up, the kittens' latest tricks and demands for stories about Ireland and what she called “the first days” when Socorro had found him and they had found Santiago and all of them had been sought by Tjúni.

“I can remember Viejo,” Cat said, furrowing her brow. “And Cristiano's still alive. I'm sorry Azul and Castaña are dead but we have lots of their colts. Why did Tjúni move away from us, Daddy?”

“She wanted to live in hex own way.”

“Will I ever meet her?”

“It's likely you will sometime.”

“I want to. I can't remember mother at all and only a little about Santiago.” She hugged her father, careful of his shoulder, and kissed him resoundingly. “Oh, Daddy, I'm glad you're not dead!”

He buried his face in her hair, and Talitha thought how strange it was that this little girl who'd never had a mother had so much motherliness in her, even for her father.

The twins were of real help at that spring's roundup and were quite proud of themselves when they returned from helping drive the cattle to Fort Buchanan, now feeling they were full-fledged vaqueros.

Shea praised them but fretted to be out and at work so it was a good thing John Irwin got by often enough to examine the shoulder and say it was doing well but needed a bit more healing time.

Irwin was delighted that at last his advice was being heeded and the buildings were being moved to a healthier location farther from the marshes.

“We're to be made a six-company post,” he said. “Captain Ewell grumbles about having to button our coats and go by military etiquette, but I think he rather looks forward to some ladies. We should get a lot of young lieutenants whose fresh-married brides will follow them anywhere.”

“Don't you have a bunch of foreigners at the post?” asked Shea.

“Like you and me?” laughed Irwin. “There are thirty Irish, right behind fifty-eight born Americans. Then there's nine each from Germany and England, five from Scotland, two Swiss, three Canadians and one each from Mexico, France and Denmark.”

“God's whiskers!” Talitha knew Shea was remembering that about half of the U.S. Army he'd served in had been foreign. “You wonder what brought them here, though it's easy to know as far as the Irish are concerned.”

“Well, they've had a host of occupations. Harness-maker, tailor, farmer, carpenter, blacksmith, painter, white-smith, sailor, miner, baker, shoemaker, potter, dyer, machinist, hatter, paper-maker, nail-maker, cabinet-maker, tile-cutter, silver-plater, rope-maker, bookbinder, and editor.”

“God's whiskers!” said Shea again.

XXXI

The events of that summer and fall of 1860 were, to Talitha, like shadows dimly moving behind a dark window. Gold was reported near the Santa Rita copper mines in New Mexico and the usual horde of gold-seekers hurried there, creating more problems with the Apaches. Ex-Governor Gándara's forces raised an army in Arizona and entered Sonora to renew their off-and-on battle with Pesqueira. Tubac postmaster Fred Hulsemann gave up that post in disgust since he was never paid and the government had failed to supply a mail route. Sylvester Mowry, who had bought the Patagonia Mine in April, was installing a steam engine, mill and reduction works. In October Colonel Pitcairn Morrison and the 7th Infantry came to Fort Buchanan and except for a second lieutenant of dragoons, John Irwin was the only one of the former officers left.

Talitha was glad of his visits. He was gallant and attentive without making her feel that he wanted more than her company, and he was good for Shea.

Santiago's death and Frost's duplicity had marked Shea. He wasn't even very enthusiastic about the dozen heifers and bull, Illinois stock, that he'd bought, after considerable wheedling, from William Oury of Tucson, heavy stock that should breed more beef into the scrawny Mexican cattle. Shea sat brooding most evenings and though he still didn't drink in front of the children, he emptied more mescal bottles and it began to show on him, in puffiness around his eyes, a slight thickening at the waist that had always been so hard and slender.

He was in a private misery Talitha couldn't lighten. Often, she saw him gazing at the crosses on the hill, Santiago's by Socorro's. He said to Belen once, “Have the Sanchezes seen Tjúni's boy?”

“Pedro did during roundup. Cinco's five now, a fine sturdy lad.” Belen squinted as if wondering whether his further news would be welcomed. “He has two brothers now.”

Shea looked at the twins a little distance off, gentling a young gelding, spoke as if to himself. “And he has two half-brothers here. I wonder if they'll ever know each other.” He added to Belen, “Remind Pedro that if Cinco ever needs a home, he has one with me.”

In November, Irwin brought news that Lincoln had been elected president. “And that means Arizona won't be made a territory since both the Mesilla and Tucson conventions were red-hot Democrat and Southern,” said Irwin. “McGovern, who became our delegate when Mowry resigned, has instructions to ask a Southern congress for territorial status if the Union splits.” He shook his head. “It's crazy to see so many would-be territories clamoring for recognition just when the nation's falling apart. Colorado, Nevada and Dakota have set up provisional governments, too, which they want acknowledged. My guess is North–South problems have to be settled before much attention's paid to the west.”

Shea said bitterly, “The United States had no business taking over this part of the country if it couldn't defend it and give it decent government!”

Irwin looked at him strangely and turned the talk to other things. After the doctor had gone, Shea turned to Talitha. “Sound young man. Irish. You mean to have him, lass?”

She colored. “No.”

He watched her narrowly. “Marc Revier, then? I can't remember much from those days I was mostly out of my head, but a few things did make me think you were mighty fond of the lad.”

“He's no lad! He's thirty-three, almost as old as you!”