Socorro had made James some diapers from old clothes and a worn sheet from the Cantú rancho. Talitha carried James to her pallet to change him, tossed the diaper in the soaking kettle outside the kitchen door, put a clean long shirt on him, also made by Socorro, and perched on a stump to feed him his mush and watch the faint rose of the eastern sky change to flaming crimson and gold. She had been careful, while getting the cold mush, not to rouse Tjúni who slept in the kitchen.
Tjúni scared Talitha who was very glad the Papago woman was leaving after the baby came, and it wasn’t because she was Indian. Except for Juh’s wives, most of the Apache women had been kind enough to Talitha, and Luz had actually helped her. But there was something frightening about Tjúni.
There were sounds of breakfast being made now and Santiago came out of the vaqueros’ quarters with that gliding limp that made him distinguishable from a long way off. He dropped to one knee, offering a finger to the baby who clutched it tight and laughed with glee.
“Hola, ahijado!” chuckled Santiago. “Godson, you have a grip that will let you rope the wildest bulls and hold them to your dally!” He looked at Talitha’s hair with mock horror. “The good God gave you such hair and you don’t comb it? Have a care or it’ll get so tangled you’ll have to be sheared like a sheep!”
“I comb it every day,” she told him with dignity. “But James was hungry and I had to feed him first.”
“Well, let me take him while you unsnarl that pretty hair.” Swept to the vaquero’s shoulder, James squealed and drummed his bare heels on Santiago’s chest. “You think I’m a horse?” laughed the young man. Holding James securely, he gave some gentle bucks and carried him inside as Talitha ran off to comb her hair and fetch water, her before-breakfast chore.
Late summer was time to plant a second crop of corn, more squash and pumpkins. The small yellow-fleshed melons that ripened faster than they could be eaten were buried in sand which would preserve them for months. After being sun-dried, chunks of squash and pumpkin hung from yucca fibers in the kitchen above the ollas and baskets of corn and beans. Strings of red chilis darkened to maroon as they hung from the vegas, the protruding roof logs, and the stock of wild foods grew almost daily. It was too bad they didn’t have a cat, though, to get rid of the mice that found their way into the stores.
Reddish-purple prickly pear tunas, singed of their spines and dried, were stored in jars. Tjúni had wanted to make an expedition to the northwest to collect saguaro fruit, but had been overruled.
“No use taking a chance of Apaches,” Shea said. “Away from the ranch, you’d seem like any Papago. And we’ve got enough food.”
Tjúni had sulked. Gathering the dark red fruit was a high point of the year for her people. The seeds were dried, the pulp boiled down to syrup, and at the end of the harvest, each family contributed juice to be made into wine.
“Use navai’t in three days or no good,” Tjúni explained. “Men very drunk.”
“And the women?” teased Shea.
“Women drink some,” Tjúni told him austerely. “But stay sober. Look after men.”
There were plenty of other foods to be gathered, though. Jojoba nuts were roasted and eaten like that or ground to stretch the coffee. Long, curving yucca fruits were roasted in hot ashes, peeled, and the baked pulp spread to dry in the sun. They were sweet-tasting and Talitha never tired of them though they were eaten raw, boiled and baked during their time of ripeness.
Socorro was able to help harvest mesquite beans and hackberries. She insisted they leave some beans for the livestock and wild creatures, but bushels were spread out to dry on the roofs. The men built a small adobe granary where a storehouse was planned, and the cured beans went into this while those that had wormholes or didn’t look as if they’d keep were ground into meal for earlier use.
Tjúni and Talitha brought home baskets of small acorns which were stored with layers of ash to prevent worms, and went along the mountainsides to find tiny red squawberries covered with whitish sticky fuzz. These took a long time to gather and Talitha thought they were a lot of work over nothing till she savored the difference they made in joint fir tea, lending a tart tanginess to the rather oily, musty taste. This higher land also yielded currants and chokecherries, while elderberries and grapes could be brought from lower washes and streams.
Talitha had helped Apache women gather many of these wild foods so Tjúni had little chance to scold her. They worked in silence, mostly, companions through necessity, though Talitha already spoke Spanish as well as Tjúni. Talitha was always happy to hurry home and hug James, who was left with Socorro during these excursions.
So autumn came on. Walnuts began to drop. Soon it would be time to go up in the mountains for piñon nuts, but Shea didn’t want Tjúni to be gone overnight till after the baby came, and he and Santiago worked close enough now to get home by sundown.
“I’ll be glad when we can have a real rodeo,” Santiago grumbled, helping himself to more acorn stew made rich with chilis and beef. “Start from all sides and drive the cattle to that high plain between here and El Charco where they could all be branded and marked at once. A fine sight, Don Patrick, to see the cattle together!”
“Even our little bunches look like a lot of cows to me!” Shea grinned. “We’re sure chousing a lot of wild ones out of the brush, and horses, too.”
“We’ll break some of those this fall,” Santiago said. He squinted at Belen and Chuey who, since they didn’t talk much, had started their third helpings. “You’ve been giving Don Patrick or me all your señales?”
Both vaqueros nodded. Señales were the bits of ear taken out when cows were earmarked and branded. From the early days of the Conquest, cattle owners had been required to so identify their animals and register the marks with the nearest official.
Socorro had told Talitha that the first branding in New Spain had been done by Cortez who burned three tall crosses on his slaves as well as livestock. The Cantú C was registered in Ures, the Sonoran capital, but there seemed no point, during the present chaos, to make that long and hazardous trip in order to make the S and ears notched near the bottom legally recognized.
“The old branded cows of these sitios are dead, naturalmente,” said Chuey. “We must be branding their grandchildren and great-grandchildren!”
“As well as the descendants of our neighbors’ cows,” grinned Belen. “But that matters little since the neighbors long ago fled southward or were killed by Apache.”
Shea furrowed his brow, pulling figures from his mind. “We’ve branded about one hundred fifty calves from the herd we brought from the rancho. Figuring some losses, call that bunch three hundred twenty-five. We have señales for over five hundred wild ones, and the Sanchezes will have branded some more since turning in their last tally.” He paused in disbelief. “We have well over a thousand cattle!”
“Don Narciso has twenty thousand,” shrugged Santiago. “But it’s a decent start. And there are still lots of wild ones.”
“With calves each year,” added Belen.
“And to make sure those are good ones, we’re culling out the unthriftiest cows and bulls and holding them at El Charco,” Santiago said. “When we’re through branding, we can sell the scrubs to the mines or Tubac. I hope we don’t have to drive them to Tucson!”
Talitha thought of Nauvoo and Temple Square, the comfortable houses with their neat gardens and shady trees. Was Tucson like that? Santa Fe certainly hadn’t been. She remembered it as a sprawl of mud buildings around a dusty plaza. Even the Governor’s Palace and the cathedral were adobe and Judith Scott had been inexpressibly shocked at the way women bared arms and shoulders and smoked cornshuck cigarettes.
Belen’s barrel chest heaved as he laughed. “I wouldn’t mind going to Tucson!” he said. “But better I don’t. My money would go to cards and drinking.”
“Mine wouldn’t,” said Chuey piously.
“Seguramente!” teased Santiago. “It’s going to take more than flowers
to convince Anita Sanchez.”
“It’s not Anita!” Chuey defended, squirming.
His pockmarked face gave him a fierce look, but Talitha had learned that he was kind. Once when she fell off the corral and skinned her knee, he dusted her off and gave her a piece of brown sugar. More importantly, instead of telling her girls didn’t belong around vaqueros, he, with Belen, was teaching her to rope.
“Now that Pedro Sanchez is in charge at El Charco, he thinks his daughters should marry better than plain vaqueros,” Belen explained. He shook his big head sympathetically. “So my poor friend Chuey will save all his wages and perhaps, when he’s seventy, he can marry that pretty little quail.”
Glancing at Santiago, who nodded, Shea said, “We think it’s fair for you men, who’re waiting for your pay till we get some money, to have a bonus. From now on, you can put your own brand on every twentieth one you find. Of course, when they calve, you can brand the yearlings.”
Chuey’s dark eyes widened. “I can have cows?”
Though Shea laughed, there was an undertone of old bitterness in his voice and Talitha remembered that he’d been very poor in that green distant island where he came from. Though how could people be poor in a place where there was water and crops would grow?
“If I can have cows,” he told the vaquero, “why not you? It’s all by the grace of God and the wrath of the Apache.”
“Have you thought on this?” Belen asked gravely. “With three Sanchez men branding, they’ll get a lot of cattle. And, patrón, it would be only human to take a few more or at least to pick the best cattle.”
“That’s up to you men,” Shea said. “Santiago and I think you’ll be fair with us, as we are trying to be with you.”
Dazzled by the prospect, Chuey dreamed aloud. “Why, I may be a ranchero myself! Anita’s father couldn’t look down his nose at me then!”
“You’d better stay right where you are,” cautioned Belen dryly. “Under Rancho del Socorro’s protection, till the Apache are tamed, which may be never!”
“If you marry, we’ll build you a house far enough from Belen so his snoring won’t bother your bride,” offered Santiago. He grinned. “It may be that by the time you’re ready to start your own ranch you’ll have enough fine sons to spare a couple to work at Socorro.”
Shea turned to Belen. “Don’t you have a woman you’d like to bring up here?”
Belen’s swarthy face creased as he seemed to ponder. “There is no woman—now,” he said. “With permission, until there is a change, I’ll brand my cows for the doncellita.” This was his special name for Talitha. It meant “little maiden.”
“No need for that,” frowned Shea. “Talitha will have equal shares with our blood children. James, too, if he doesn’t stay with the Apache.”
Talitha had never thought about such things, or about what would happen to her when she grew up. She didn’t want things to change. It was wonderful to live with Shea and Socorro and have James so young that nasty old Juh wouldn’t try to take him away.
“I don’t need any cows,” she said almost desperately. “I just want to stay at the ranch forever and ever!”
Shea laid his big hand soothingly against her cheek, gave a surprised chuckle. “Why, for sure you’ll stay, Tally, as long as you want though it won’t be many years till you’ll draw men like a lode of gold.”
She shook her head. There’d never be a young man she’d love as she did him, no face that could have for her the beauty of his branded one. Life without him would be like never seeing or feeling the sun again. She would die in darkness.
He laughed with perplexity, raised a shoulder and let it drop. “All the same, till Belen wants to brand for himself, take what he offers. It won’t hurt to have your own herd building.”
The next evening Belen, as he came in for supper, produced two narrow inch-long bits of what looked like short-haired leather. “Your first señales, doncellita.” He bowed, presenting them to her. “I didn’t brand forty cows, but Don Patrick added one so you’d start with a pair.”
Talitha stared at the pieces of ear which each represented a cow. It gave her a strange feeling, gratifying, yet with a kind of heaviness, to own something, especially something alive. Shea grinned down at her.
“You’re on your way to being a patrona, Tally. Your Cross T went on the two best heifers we roped today.”
With a bit of charcoal he showed her how the brand looked, a T with the cross bar lowered slightly. “Like one of Cortez’ crosses,” remarked Socorro.
“The notch is cut out of the very tip of the ear,” added Belen. “When you see one like that from the unbranded side, you’ll still be able to tell it’s yours.”
Tally looked at the señales. “If I’m going to have cattle, I should learn to work them. I need to help Socorro till the baby comes, but next fall I want to help with the branding.”
“Doncellita!” Belen choked with laughter. “Will you wrestle a steer down then, hold him to the ground?”
“I’m not big enough for that yet,” she said gravely. “But I can cut señales and learn to brand.”
She swallowed at the last words, remembering again how the iron had seared Shea’s face. But it didn’t hurt animals much when properly done, Santiago had assured her, singeing off the hair and burning the thick hide just enough to leave a mark. She straightened her shoulders and gazed up at the three men. “I should learn to do everything. James will be too little to help for a long time and the new baby will be even younger.”
“There’s going to be plenty for you to do in the house,” began Shea, but Santiago cut him off.
“Bueno! But such a vaquerita must have her own horse.” He considered her, challenge mixed with admiration in his golden eyes. “And will you learn also the taming of horses?”
She found the mustangs frightening, But, having decided that if she were going to be treated as a true child of the O’Sheas she must deserve it, Talitha gulped and said, “I’ll learn the best I can.”
“No one can do more,” the vaquero assured her. “Well, then, when we’re through with branding, you and your horse can learn together.”
“Thank you,” said Talitha.
Going into the sala, she stood on tiptoe and put the señales in the niche beside her doll. Her first cattle!
All through the winter the men would make sorties into the cañons and mountain valleys to look for more offspring of long-strayed cattle, but by October they’d finished the principal branding. There were thirteen hundred head wearing the S and Tally’s pile of señales now numbered eight.
The mines wanted a hundred head, and the Sanchezes, with Shea along so his fiery hair would identify them as Mangus’s protected whites, drove the other hundred culls to Tubac where they were eagerly purchased. At three pesos a head, there were six hundred silver pesos, and even after the vaqueros were given their back pay, there was a rich clinking in the leather bags stored beneath Shea’s and Socorro’s bed.
Shea was far from happy, though, with what he’d found at Tubac. “Yanquis!” he growled, as if he didn’t look like one himself. “A whole column of U.S. Army dragoons! They say they’re just passing through on the way to California, but you can bet they’ll be back, or more like them!”
Socorro paled, hand flying to her throat. “Soldiers! Did they—”
He shook his head. “The commander was drunk and trying to seduce a couple of girls. Besides, one thing about Juh’s little present, it’s blotched the first brand till no one could guess what it was. Guess I can thank him for that since it looks like we’re going to have the U.S. Army on the prowl.”
“So the presidio was garrisoned?” asked Santiago.
“Mostly with Pimas and Apaches de paz, in fact out of the two hundred forty-nine people living around Tubac, I’d guess there to be two or more Indians to every Mexican. While the dragoons were there, this Apache chief from around Tucson gave all the Indians quite a speech about how they must not steal from the Americans or gi
ve them any trouble.”
“You sound annoyed that the chief didn’t urge a massacre,” teased Santiago. “Were there any Mexicans or soldiers at Tumacácori?”
“Not a one, but the Pimas are taking care of the church. Poor devils! They must wonder why the Faith was sent to them if they’re to have no help in keeping it.”
“I wish we could see a priest, too,” Socorro said in a way that caused Shea to put his arm protectively around her.
“I wish so, lass, but for the past four years or so the priest from San Ignacio, far to the south, has ridden up when he could get an escort and once or twice a year baptizes and marries people at Tumacácori, Tubac and Tucson. I gave a cow to an honest-looking Pima at Tumacácori and asked him to bring us word next time the priest comes.”
Her eyes lit like candles. “Thank you, querido. It is true we’re married before God and in our hearts, but I wish it could be done by a priest and written in the parish archives. Especially when we will have a baby.”
Unnoticed, Talitha blinked at these puzzling words. People couldn’t have babies, surely, unless they were married? But she didn’t understand the religion of her new family. Catholics, apparently, didn’t have enough priests, but among the Mormons, every man in good standing was a priest.
Talitha felt sad and vaguely angry that her adoptive parents seemed to need something from their church which it demanded yet didn’t furnish the means of getting. She suddenly decided that she wouldn’t tell James very much about the Scotts’ religion. Religion just seemed to make life harder. Mormons had been killed and hounded out of different places because of their faith, persecuted by people who had a different one.
But Shea was telling how the presidio feared attacks and how fifteen Tucson soldiers had been killed last summer at a watering hole. It had been two months before their bodies were brought in for burial.
The Valiant Women Page 21
