The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  But he was kind. He had suffered much. It was a fresh shock each time she saw him to think of the leathery skeleton he had been, peeled-back lips baked in a snarl, the horrid bloodless wounds.

  This strong handsome man, who was learning the ways of the country so swiftly that even scapegrace Santiago respected him, was very much her creation, almost as much as if he’d been her child. She’d given him life. Her love for him was mixed with tenderness, pride and awe.

  If only—in imagination, his touch changed to the grasping cruel fingers that had held her by legs and arms while each Areneño—

  No! No! She could never endure that again, the tearing invasion of her body. Fear blotted out the sweetness of the fantasy’s beginning. There, by the edge of the mass grave, she closed her eyes a moment, stilled her panic till she could look at Shea and see him, his beloved face, banish the nightmare.

  He was still frowning at the things she was placing in the small hole by the cross. “Why are you doing that, lass? You might as well have them. They can’t do Doña Ana any good.”

  “Perhaps she’ll know. It’s so terrible, Shea, the way she died, her children—”

  He hadn’t argued, then, but had helped her fill in the hole and knelt beside her for a while. She knew he prayed for his brother though he must have the intercession of a mother long since in heaven.

  Socorro prayed for her father, Enrique, Michael O’Shea and the folk of the rancho. And she prayed for herself, for Shea and Santiago, that they might survive without becoming as hard as this country and as cruel.

  In spite of the horror of the massacre, leaving the house and fireplace filled Socorro with desolation. She couldn’t see that leaving a place recently decimated by scalp hunters for one abandoned over twenty years ago because of Apache attacks was much of an improvement, and she had grown used to it here.

  Still, she had felt almost the same way when she and Shea left the tinaja where she’d found water in her extremity and had nursed him back to life.

  In gathering the few last things that morning, she’d hesitated at the little shrine. Guadalupe would be such a comfort. Yet it seemed sacrilege to take her from this house. After a last prayer, Socorro continued with her packing, was tucking necessaries into an aparejo when Santiago brought her the gilt and blue wooden image.

  “It’s mine more than anybody’s now,” he said. “We must have her in our new home.” He smiled, the young sweetness of his boyish mouth contrasting with those tigre eyes that sometimes were frightening, though to her he was unfailingly gentle and courteous. “She’ll be Our Lady of Socorro.”

  It would be carping to point out that the madonna had recently smiled calmly, blindly down on rape and murder. Socorro suspected that Santiago gave not a gypsy’s damn for shrines. But she herself wanted the Guadalupe very much so she didn’t protest as he wrapped the figure carefully in an old shirt and tucked her carefully between two serapes.

  Now, as they rode away, past the corrals and along the dry riverbed toward the northeast, Socorro looked back once at the house, hoped that people would live in it again, safely, that corn would be ground in the metate by more skillful hands than hers, laughter would sound by the fireplace and children be made in the great canopied bed.

  Her bow, like those of the men, was fastened from the saddle horn in a rawhide sling that also held the quiver of arrows, which now had feathers, for they’d collected every feather they found in what was left from hawk and eagle kills. She could hit targets most of the time now but shrank from hunting so she’d never sighted at a moving object, except the inflated cow stomach Shea had insisted that she aim at while he moved it along a branch with a rope.

  She hoped she’d never have to kill anything, but it was excellent to know that she probably could. Santiago was a peerless marksman, but Shea grew more accurate daily and had brought in a number of rabbits and another ancient buck which had made a welcome change from jerky.

  Also, each had a knife sheathed at the waist. Besides Socorro’s, Santiago had found one overlooked by the scalpers. Then, from a broken saw found in the storeroom, he’d whetted an effective, vicious-looking blade and given it a bone handle.

  “Damn near a Bowie!” Shea whistled. “Better not try to eat with that or you’ll slit your gullet!”

  Santiago regarded it admiringly. “Large, perhaps, but in a fight it will be a veritable sword.”

  Socorro hoped there’d be no fights. She also hoped to dissuade Santiago from trying to find the scalp hunters. They’d surely kill him. Perhaps, at the least, she could get him to ask the presidio soldiers to mount an expedition he could accompany.

  But first they had ten days’ journey, trying to get these cattle through country where Apache might swoop down at any time, not to mention scalp hunters. Her spine chilled at the thought. She sat up stiffer in the saddle, shifting her weight, glad now that she’d let Shea bully her into wearing the trousers he’d thrust at her last week.

  “Time you and your horse got used to each other,” he’d growled. “And don’t make a fuss about these pants, my girl! We’re not on a Sunday’s decorous circling of the plaza. You’re going to need good balance and control of your horse.”

  She stared at the garment. “But it’s a sin! An abomination!”

  “It’ll be a lot worse sin if you fall into the cactus or catch your skirts on a branch and get dragged!”

  She eyed him rebelliously. His jaw hardened. “God’s whiskers! I’ll put them on you!” he began, then swallowed and attained calm with great effort. “Socorro, if we were being chased and those damned skirts caused Santiago and me to have to ride back for you so that we all got killed, would it be worth it? If you think so, wear your dresses.”

  She gave him a shattered glance, ducked her head and went inside to change. Every day one of the men saddled Castaña, the pretty chestnut mare Santiago had chosen as the finest of the gentler horses, and accompanied Socorro on a ride. From the way her unused muscles ached after only a few hours, she knew that without this toughening she’d have been a very sorry case during the days of riding ahead of them.

  Castaña might have been the gentlest of the horses, but that wasn’t saying much. She, like all the others, had to be roped before she could be bridled and saddled and Socorro rode with vigilance, reins firmly held. Castaña skittered at any sound in the brush, and though Santiago explained this came from having been bitten by a rattlesnake, Socorro came to think it was an excuse for flightiness.

  Santiago had a fiery black mustang he’d trained himself, and Shea rode a big roan. The other two horses followed along voluntarily. The men had decided they had all they could handle with the cattle and pack mules. If the horses came, fine; if they didn’t, too bad. They had brought a couple of extra saddles and bridles on the pack mules, though, because if the ranch thrived more horses and vaqueros were going to be needed.

  Flexing her toes in the stirrups Socorro threw back her head and breathed in air so clear that it seemed to sparkle.

  Mountains marched all around them, barren and savage up close, like brooding Pinacate, but glowing in the distance, some purple, some misty heaven blue, some pinkish golden.

  She laughed with sheer well-being, casting off her sadness at leaving the sheltering walls, turning her face toward the majestic vistas before them.

  Shea, slightly behind her, urged the roan, Azul, forward. “I don’t know why you’re laughing, but I’m glad you are!” he called.

  She dared take one hand from the reins for a second to make a wide sweeping motion. “It’s just so grand and beautiful. Yes, I know it can kill! It almost killed us. But nowhere else can there be such sun, such air, such mountains.…”

  “Such cholla, desert and rattlesnakes!” he teased.

  She pulled a face at him, refused to be sobered. In her trousers, free of cumbersome skirts, riding a spirited horse into a new venture, she felt roused from a half-life limited by tradition and being a woman. She was proud that she could make decent tortillas
now, but oh, this!

  “They may be called, as Santiago names them, La Sierra del Agua Dulce, La Sierra Pintada, La Sierra de Sonoita, and I don’t know what else! But they are all of them Las Sierras Encantadas. Enchanted Mountains.”

  He grinned, shielding his eyes against the glare as he gazed about. “You’re right, lass! It is enchantment for them to look so soft and dreamy when up close they’re rock and earth, so scrubbed by wind and rain that it’s a brave cactus or creosote that gets a toehold and hangs on!”

  He fell back to help Santiago urge on the mules. Perhaps he’d inherited his father’s gift with horses. Certainly he’d taken quickly to riding, handled the big grayish red horse with firmness and understanding. With sombrero quieting that flaming hair, he looked a man of the country. Santiago, of course, had ridden as soon as he could walk. He seemed part of Noche, his black, and could direct him with his knees or pressure of his weight.

  Cristiano, the pride of leadership upon him, led the cattle, and no young bull cared to challenge him. These were the small “black” Spanish cattle, by no means all black for they moved in a dust-haloed somber rainbow of duns, brindles and roans mixed with the predominant black.

  These, like all cattle in the New World until the late-coming English and French brought animals, were descended from the Andalusian stock brought over in 1521 by Don Gregorio de Villalobos, blood of the proud black toros of the bull ring.

  Their wicked-looking horns spiked forward and they were wild as deer, but they could live off browse and cactus. They’d all been driven near the troughs that morning and most had drunk. Santiago said they should reach Sonoita next day and water at the river of that name, which they’d follow through the Sierra de la Nariz, then take the southern branch till it ended at the Sierra de Cobata, a journey of about three days.

  Santiago said they’d depend then on wells at Papago rancherías, though they might find a little water at the far end of the Altar River, during the four or more days it would take to cross more desert and rugged mountains to the Santa Cruz River. This important river ran north past a few abandoned mines, missions and the presidios of Tubac and Tucson, Mexico’s only defense against Apache in that immense region.

  They’d find the Santa Cruz only to leave it at Calabazas, following Sonoita Creek westward between more mountains for the final day which should bring them to Agua Linda, or Socorro, as the men insisted it must be called.

  Ten days. By then she might not think those mountains so enchanted unless by evil witchcraft. A cow was lagging, stopping to munch cholla. Socorro shooed her back with the herd.

  Santiago had explained that ordinarily there’d be vaqueros at both sides and a couple at the end to urge along the “‘drags.”

  “It is strange,” he’d laughed, “but cattle are much like humans! The leader leads because of something inside him and the others follow. Why? Cristiano has led thousands of his kind up to slaughter at the presidios. Has he never wondered why they didn’t follow him back to the ranch? Did none of these at his tail now never miss companions who’d gone with him? And cattle always keep a position, unless they’re hurt or sick. Some stay in front, some the middle, and others are forever at the end, dropping out, loafing.”

  “It’s the same in armies,” Shea grunted. “I was in both United States’ and Mexican and can vow there are a hell of a lot more drags than leaders!”

  “God’s wisdom,” returned Santiago. “If there were more leaders, we’d have more wars than we do!”

  They had a long nooning in a shaded dry wash, giving the cattle time to graze on thin clumps of scattered grass and bite off joints of cholla which dangled thornily from their mouths as they chewed.

  The three people drank thirstily of tepid water from the leather jugs of which each horse carried two tied to the back of the saddle next to the rolled serape. Socorro sparingly wet the edge of the rebozo she wore beneath a sombrero and wiped her face of dust, much refreshed by this small thing.

  “The poor burros!” she said.

  The cattle were free to browse and the horses had been unsaddled and hobbled so they, too, could make the most of this rest. But the mules still carried perhaps three hundred pounds apiece.

  Santiago shook his head. “I regret it much, lady, but you saw how long it takes to do the loading. Tonight, when the packs go off, they’ll be the more grateful.”

  Was that what God thought about lightening people’s burdens? Socorro’s thought was so irreligious that she tried to push it away, but it persisted and she decided that God shouldn’t have given her a mind capable of such ideas if He didn’t want her to have them. At least the mules were browsing, making the most of their burdened leisure, while the humans exercised their teeth on jerky and coarse ground corn mixed with a little water.

  After about three hours, they saddled and pushed on. Socorro had insisted on saddling Castaña during the journey. She planned, though she hadn’t told the men about it, to learn to do everything they did except hunt and butcher. So long as they were around, she had no necessity to do either, and if they were gone, she’d live without meat. The only way she could eat it now was by refusing to think of the living creature it had come from.

  Castaña, as Santiago had warned was her habit, puffed up when, after putting on the tiruta, a white and black woven blanket, Socorro hefted the saddle, near stirrup raised to keep it from flopping, onto the mare’s back.

  Following his demonstration of that morning, Socorro pulled the cinch as tight as she could, waited till the mare relaxed and yanked again, hard. This brought the cinch several inches tighter, doing away with the danger of the saddle turning later. Socorro hung the bow and arrow sling over the saddle horn, tied on the water jugs.

  “We have to understand each other,” she told the mare who turned her head to give an affronted look. Socorro, clucking softly, gave the mare a scant handful of corn, rubbed the whorled spot on her forehead. “I’ll be much nicer to you than the vaqueros were, but don’t try to play me for a fool.”

  Santiago gave a shout and Cristiano led off. The cattle sorted themselves out, dropping into their preferred places, and the mules plodded stoically at the rear.

  They were another animal brought in by Spaniards, Socorro realized. In fact, all the important domesticated creatures of Mexico and the Southwest had come from Spain. Strange, for they had become so much a part of the country. Goats, sheep, cattle, mules and horses.

  Her father, in his youth, had gone with a merchant of Chihuahua on a trading journey to San Antonio in Texas, which at that time, of course, was still owned by Spain. Settlers from the United States had been coming in, though, bringing stock descended from English and, occasionally, French cattle.

  Their crossing with Spanish horses and cattle had produced larger, different animals than those in Sonora. Her father had laughed about the mixed-breed cattle, all imaginable hues, with great long horns that grew in fantastical ways, some almost straight up, others angling back, most forking from the sides with a few arching curves before tapering to vicious tips.

  Longhorns, the Texans called these weird creatures, and rightly so. Don Esteban said the spread from tip to tip was usually four to five feet, but six or seven feet was common, and he vowed he’d seen one beast encumbered with horns spreading fully ten feet, though Socorro suspected aguardiente had something to do with that figure.

  As Socorro mounted, blessing the freedom of trousers, she noticed Santiago didn’t vault into the saddle as he had that morning. His leg must be paining, she thought. He still limped, perhaps always would, for though the bone was intact, he’d lost a mass of nerves and muscles. He was so graceful and lithe, however, that even his limp had a glide to it.

  The afternoon grew hot. A good thing it was mostly at their backs. Hundreds of hooves churned up white dust, powdering burros and packs, sticking to Socorro’s face and lips.

  Her body ached. She shifted her weight frequently and was almost glad when a cow strayed, for the diversion of chasing i
t back. She wouldn’t ask for a halt, though. If Santiago, with his barely healed wound, could manage, so would she.

  When they finally stopped at twilight in a broad dry wash, her spine felt like bruised agony and she was numb from the hips down.

  Dragging the saddle off, and the blanket, she rubbed the mare down with a scrap of fleeced sheepskin Santiago had given her for that purpose, removed the bridle with stroking and praise. Castaña gazed at her a moment, then joined the other horses who were rolling in the sand, powdering their sweated backs with great enjoyment.

  At last the burros were unloaded and ambled off to luxuriate in sand-bathing and browsing. Socorro liked the furry little beasts with their long ears and sleepy manner.

  No fire was kindled for fear of bringing down Apaches or other raiders. “One thing about jerky”—Shea grinned, leaning back against his saddle—“it makes your jaws tired enough to match the rest of you!”

  “Tomorrow we can have a fire at Sonoyta,” Santiago assured them. “And it’ll be all right when we camp at inhabited Papago rancherías.”

  “Can we trust the Papagos?” Socorro frowned. “The Areneños, the Sand Papagos, certainly rob and kill when they have a chance!”

  Santiago knew about her father’s death. He didn’t know what the Areneños had done to her, though possibly he guessed. “Oh, far back they were related, but living in those dunes and craters, always hunting food, has made them very different from other Papago who are peaceful farmers and herdsmen. You need have no fear, lady, of most Papago or Pima.”

  “Pima?” asked Shea.

  “Farmers and friends of the Papago, but they tend to live near water and among trees whereas the Papago have always kept to the desert.”

  Darkness had fallen though there was a new moon. An owl called. Some thought this an evil omen, but surely they hooted every night. Socorro liked the cry, so long as she wasn’t alone, and the distant singing of coyotes which sounded as if they were serenading each other from various directions.