The Valiant Women (64 page)

Straightening in the saddle, Talitha threw back her head. She was not, could never be, Socorro. But she'd work to be the best Talitha possible and pray that would be enough.

II

John Irwin said his good-byes the night of July 20. Talitha clung to him involuntarily when he kissed her. Accepting that her love lay elsewhere, he'd been her good friend these past five years, filled some of the void left by Marc Revier's refusal to play the part of family friend. Grinning down at her, Irwin lowered his red head and kissed her again.

“Can it be?” he teased half seriously. “Now that I'm leaving, you realize what a treasure I am? Suddenly see that I'm really the man you love?” He shook his head and sighed comically. “Better late than never.”

“John, you shocking flirt!” Talitha had to laugh and felt better, though tears made her blink. “I'll miss you terribly. We all will.”

“Yes,” assented Cat. “Even if you are a Yanqui. Captain John, you won't fight my daddy?”

“I'll certainly pray not to,” he said gravely, looking at Talitha.

He told her then that Confederate Lt. Col. John Baylor was gathering men at Fort Bliss, Texas, evidently intending to march into New Mexico and seize it for the South. It was altogether likely that Shea was in this group, and though it was something over three hundred miles away, it was near Mesilla, where the closest federal law officer and courts had been, and seemed much more real than if he were joining some command back in the States. Talitha's heart felt as if it were shriveling into a tight, dry ball.

“Be sure if there's any way I can ever help Shea, I will, short of treason,” Irwin said softly.

He bent to meet Cat's hug, took a third kiss, long this time, from Talitha, shook hands with the boys, and strode away for the last time. When the hoofbeats had faded, Talitha stepped outside, full of desolation, and wept.

Next day the boys rode over to watch the dragoons leave Fort Buchanan. Even Patrick returned sobered. The Stars and Stripes, so briefly flown over that region, were hauled down, and the troops moved out to solemn drumming while all the supplies and equipment they couldn't carry smoldered in the fired buildings.

“The troopers weren't even out of sight when Papagos swarmed in to pick up whatever they could use,” Miguel said. His brow furrowed. “Isn't it strange? Soldiers were here so long. Now, just in a day, they're gone.”

“White men are like that,” said James.

Belen took a wagon over next day and salvaged a few wheels, iron, and other useful things. The rest of them worked on three new houses for the El Charco families. Till the homes could be finished, the boys yielded their little house, once Tjúni's, to Juana and Cheno. Pedro and Carmencita had Shea's old room, and Natividad and Mársat used the
sala
, or living room. Carmencita assumed control of the kitchen, helped in turn by Juana, Anita, or Mársat. When Talitha offered, she was shooed out.

“You must manage the ranch now, see to all for Don Patricio,” Carmencita admonished. “Leave the house to me!”

The responsibility weighed on Talitha, especially when she looked around the kitchen at mealtimes and counted ten other adults and thirteen children, if James could be called one. It lightened her mood to reflect that to Belen, Chuey, and Rodolfo, who'd taught her to ride and work cattle, she must seem almost a child, too. But she wasn't. In addition to running the ranch, she must serve as a parent for the twins, Cat, and Sewa. James seemed past needing anyone.

She also assessed their numbers according to who could shoot. Shea had insisted that Anita learn, but she was a poor markswoman. Carmencita and Juana couldn't shoot at all. But Patrick, Miguel, and James were all good, better than any of the vaqueros except Belen.

Twelve rifles against not only Apaches but roving bands of marauders from either side of the border as well! At least they had the rifles, Sharps breech-loading carbines; and there were enough Dragoon Colt revolvers to go around. Besides the supply of ammunition Shea believed in keeping, John Irwin had brought over boxes of cartridges.

“The commander's orders said he could leave the fort's ‘improvements' with loyal Unionists,” he'd said with a laugh. “For today, Tally, I'm assuming that's what you are.”

The arguments between North and South meant little to Talitha. She remembered being hustled across the icy Missouri River in the middle of a February night to escape Illinois mobs that were destroying Mormon property and threatening to serve all the men as they had Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum, done to death in prison by masked men. It was on the way west to settle in Utah out of reach of Gentile persecution that Jared Scott, Talitha's father, had been assigned as one of the five hundred men of the Mormon Battalion that marked a wagon route to California. It was while Jared went with Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cook through deserts and mountains, even passing through Tucson, that Judith Scott, trying to follow with her children and kinsmen, had been captured by Apaches. Talitha had no fond memories of the United States, and the issues that rent it seemed confusing and far away. What was real to her was the Santa Cruz Valley and the lands along Sonoita Creek, Rancho del Socorro. To defend these, she'd been grateful for the U.S. Army's cartridges.

The day that she'd ridden to El Charco and San Manuel with news of the soldiers' withdrawal, she'd sent Belen to the San Patricio mine forty miles east with the same message. Somewhat to her surprise, the miners, all from Sonora, had chosen to stay. When Irwin surprised her with his bounty of ammunition, Talitha decided to share it with the miners, and a few days after the abandonment of Fort Buchanan she set off with two loaded pack mules and Belen. She'd turned a deaf ear to Pedro's urging that she take a larger escort and to the twins' eager wish to ride along.

“We need to keep enough people at the ranch to stand off a raid. Remember, all the daylight hours we need a watch. Paulita and Cat are old enough to help with that.” Talitha wrinkled her nose at the twins. “It's a good job to take while you rest from laying adobes. See how much you can get done while we're away.”

They groaned and would have argued, but Belen said firmly, “Listen, boys. I no longer call Talitha
doncellita
, little maiden. Now she is
la madama
, the mistress. We do not dispute with her.”

Both boys gaped for a moment. James looked grimly amused, and Cat blinked. Then Patrick sank to one knee and kissed Talitha's work-toughened hand.

“
Madama, a sus ordenes!
” His blue-gray eyes laughed up at her.

She gave his thickly curling hair a tug. “My orders, you rascal, are to get Carmencita's house built.”

However they might joke about it, she was in command. Her decisions could mean life or death for two dozen people, including all those she loved except for Shea and Revier. Her father, Jared, ranching up on the Verde? She had loved him as a child, when he carried her on his shoulders or danced by the campfires with her mother on the trek from Iowa, but now she did not know him.

As she and Belen rode southeastward toward a gap in the sharp-toothed mountains, Talitha remembered that the mine had been the reason for Socorro's and Shea's coming to Mangus's camp. When the captive Talitha had asked Socorro to take her and her infant brother away from the Apaches, Juh had at last consented to let his son go with the whites till he was seven or eight, provided Shea proved his courage by taking the second brand.

Along with the children, the O'Sheas got Mangus's promise not to raid the mine which Santiago's uncle, Don Narciso, wished to reopen in partnership with the O'Sheas provided such a guarantee could be won. Shea bought Don Narciso out after the 1854 Gadsden Purchase and continued to give the Apaches ten percent of the goods brought up from Mexico in pack trains which supplied the mine. Don Elizario Carvajal still managed the San Patricio, apparently with as much honesty as could be expected from someone operating at a distance from the owner. Talitha was surprised that the miners had chosen to stay, but pleased. The freighting business had collapsed after Frost's death, and Shea, detesting railroads, had refused to buy stock in them; but even if the cattle were run off, income from the mine would buy new herds, keep the ranch going.

They spent that night on the San Pedro River, then threaded their way through narrow, steep mountain passes. Early in the afternoon white thunderheads began to boil up from the horizon, and as they descended a stomach-tightening narrow trail winding down from a butte into the great basin where the camp lay, the storm burst, torrents of slicing bladelike rain, scudding gravel from under their feet, making the treacherous rocks even more slippery. The mules stopped, hunching against the downpour, but when Belen located an overhang, they trusted him and moved into it, as did the led horses.

“Too violent to last long,” Belen said cheerfully.

They drank from canteens, John Irwin's gift, and chewed a few mouthfuls of jerky. After about twenty minutes the deluge dwindled to a steady rain. Belen studied the completely darkened sky.

“It's not good to go down the cañon in this,
madama
.” That name that meant she was his mistress, no longer a girl to be shielded. “But this looks like going on for hours. Shall we put our trust in God and make our way to the bottom while it's still light?”

Talitha tried to laugh, though her mouth felt stiff. Heights were her one really irrational fear, and she had ridden much of this day with her face turned toward the inside of the trail, not daring to glance down at the dizzying gorges below.

“I don't see what else we can do.” She shrugged, setting her hat more firmly on her head, “We'll lead the horses?”

“Yes. And the mules will lead us.”

It was a harrowing descent. Even the surefooted little mules, cumbered by their nearly three-hundred-pound loads, slipped now and then, sending rocks scuttling downward. Talitha kept as close to the cañon wall as she could, looking straight ahead, never into the jagged chasms. Twice she slid to one knee, and the second time Ceniza almost crowded her off the ledge, but Belen reached back and checked the well-trained mare till Talitha could clamber to her feet.

All the way down, for several hours that seemed eternities, the rain plastered their clothes to them, but it perversely began to ease when they reached the gentler slope winding into the basin.

“Coffee will be good,” Belen encouraged. “And I hope there's a rich meat stew and plenty of fresh tortillas!”

But though it was time for supper as they came in sight of the clustered adobes and ramadas, no smoke rose from any of the houses. There was no barking of dogs, no children playing, no laughing or calling of women, no miners coming home from their work in the flank of the long humped mountain to the north.

Belen checked. His broad swarthy face lost its gleam of anticipation. His gaze swept the basin, scanned the surrounding mountains, the pass to the south through which pack trains carried silver ore to Mexico and brought back supplies.

In the soft, nagging, persistent rain, nothing moved. A tight knot formed in Talitha's chest. “Maybe they decided to go into Mexico after all,” she said in a voice that husked out little more than a whisper.

“Wait here,
madama
.”

Talitha didn't answer but nudged Ceniza alongside Belen's rangy sorrel. The vaquero gave her a grim, weighing look, then got down to hobble the mules. So he didn't think there'd be anyone at the mine to need the cartridges.

By the time they contoured around the slope and started into the basin, the rain had pattered to a stop. Sun blazed on creosote and cholla, striking diamonds everywhere, and the air seemed washed with liquid gold, pungent and clean with the gratitude of the recently parched earth. These things reached Talitha's senses, though dread was building in her at every inch they traveled.

During the close to two years she'd lived among Apaches, she'd seen a small
ranchería
wiped out in Mexico, several luckless wayfarers brain-roasted or filled with arrows as her uncles and grandfather had been. That was a long time ago, almost as long ago as the Mormon temple gleaming whitely at Nauvoo, or Winter Quarters in Iowa, or the foreign-seeming little city of Santa Fe. Talitha had helplessly tried to keep Socorro from bleeding to death and hadn't been able to help Santiago at all when he crashed sideways, felled by Judah Frost's concealed derringer. She had seen death, but always she had prayed never to look on it again. As they neared the silent houses, she hoped most desperately that the people had decided to abandon the place till more peaceful times.

Her heart lifted as she saw mules and horses grazing along the stream that spilled down from the mountain to water the broad bowl. Apaches would never have left them. And then Belen reined in, waving her back.

“No farther,
madama
. You cannot help. It isn't good to see—”

But she had seen enough. A human rubbish heap, bones gnawed and scattered by beasts and vultures. In that sickened glance before she gripped the saddle horn and turned away, she saw that a number of the tumbled skulls were small, those of children and babies. Tufts of hair and patches of weather-baked skin adhered to a few, and scraps of clothing stuck to arm and leg bones.

Rain had scoured the skeletons on top, splashed mud on those sprawled on the ground. It must have happened several weeks ago, shortly after the message of warning.

Ceniza shied at a little skull that had lodged in a tangle of rotting cholla joints. Without her warm brown skin, soft hair, and big eyes, Sewa's head might look like that. Talitha began to shake.

“Why did they kill the children?” She meant: How could they? Though she knew bitterly well that all the warring peoples of that region, Pima, Papago, Apache, Mexican, and Anglo, had killed each others' babies, murdered the defenseless.