“Here comes a man,” called Santiago, who had positioned himself in the bedroom.
Anita huddled by Chuey, Belen was with Santiago, the twins were suspended from a roof support pole in their fine cradleboard, and James squirmed among the adults like a puppy, vainly trying to see what was happening outside.
“If he’s Apache, he’s got on white man clothes,” grunted Shea, disengaging himself from Socorro’s anxious hands. “I’ll step out and see what he wants.”
“Take your rifle,” warned Santiago. “I’ll come with you so he’ll know you’re not alone.”
“Both of you stay close to the house,” Socorro insisted. “You can get back in quickly if there’s trouble.”
Talitha stood at the edge of the window with Socorro and watched as the stranger jogged slowly up. There was a rifle in his saddle scabbard, guns at each hip, a great sheathed knife, and his hair and eyes were the color of sand, lighter than his sun-burned skin.
“Howdy!” he called in English. “Damned if it ain’t good to see someone ’cept them thievin’, murderin’ Apache devils!”
Shea laughed. “If all you did was see them, you were lucky!”
The sandy-haired man spat tobacco expertly to one side. “Not all that lucky! They picked off three of my men, ran off cattle four different times. We’ve been pushin’ hard.” His eyes wandered to the creek, strayed along the broad grassy valley. “Sure would be obliged if we could rest here a few days, let the cattle graze and water good. I’ve heard the way to California’s even worse than what we’ve come through.”
“California!”
The stranger offered his plug of tobacco, cut himself a hunk when it was refused. “Why, sure, California! Big prices out there for beef!” He grinned. “Them as want to pan for gold are welcome to it! I’ll make mine out of sellin’ these old longhorns that you cain’t hardly give away back home!”
Shea and Santiago exchanged glances. They’d been planning to sell their culls to Tucson that fall. Shifting in his saddle, the Texan said, “If we can stop here, I’ll pay you in cattle. We sure need a rest.”
“You’re welcome,” Shea decided. “Spread your herd west. Even if they mix some with our cows, they’re different enough to sort out! Then you and your men come along and eat with us.”
“Say, that’s mighty kind of you.” Climbing down from his patient roan, the lanky man shook hands with Shea, and, after a moment’s hesitation, clasped Santiago’s hand, too. “We’ll manage our own grub after this, but it would sure be fine to have a meal that’s not scorched where it ain’t raw!” He grinned. “I’m Will Thomas, late of the Texas Rangers.”
Santiago looked incredulous and Shea chuckled. “I just thought you might be. A Ranger, I mean. I’m Patrick O’Shea and this is my partner, Santiago Cantú. When you’re ready to eat, you can meet the rest of the family.”
Talitha ran down to the marsh for more cattail roots to put in the stew while Socorro made more posole and Anita patted out her thin, perfect tortillas.
“I think it’d be good to send our cattle with him, if he’s willing,” Shea told Santiago. “Even giving him a third of the profit, we’d still more than triple the money we’d get in Tucson.”
“And quadruple the chances of getting no money at all,” Santiago argued. “It’s far to the gold fields. Even if this Señor Thomas makes the drive, what will ensure his remembering to stop at Rancho del Socorro when he’s traveling with a heavy purse but no herd that needs graze and water?”
“Hell, Santiago, everything’s a risk!”
“To be sure. But let us see a little more of these Texans before offering a deal.”
Shea gave his younger partner a blue-eyed look of disgust. “I never meant to propose it till we got his measure. Just wanted to know what you thought.”
“So now you do,” grinned Santiago. Shea gave him a grumpy look as the Texans paused outside the door, taking off their dusty, wide-brimmed hats.
Socorro invited them in. They looked at her as if she were a dream, trying not to stare, and bowed deeply as Shea introduced her. She blushed, slim as ever though her body was more gracefully rounded and accented by motherhood.
“You are welcome,” she told the men in her careful, pretty English.
Shea named Anita, Chuey and Belen, then dropped his hand to Talitha’s shoulder. “This is our daughter, Talitha. Our son James is peeking at you from around the wall, and that pair in the cradleboard are our twins.”
“Quite a family!” Will Thomas complimented. His pale brown eyes warmed as he smiled at Socorro. “You seem much too young, ma’am!”
“James and I aren’t really hers,” Talitha forced herself to blurt, though her heart had swelled with pride at being called the O’Sheas’ daughter. “We—we were Apache captives, but Shea and Socorro talked Mangus into letting us go.” And that’s why, Texan, even if you cared, you couldn’t make out the D beneath the crescent of that old horseshoe.
“Mangus!” Thomas regarded Shea with fresh respect. “If you talked that heathen out of anything, mister, you’ve got more blarney than the rest of the Irish together! Wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t his bunch that killed my hands.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Say, you keep him in guns and ammunition? That why you’re settin’ here on this good land when everybody else seems to have been run right out of the country?” Shea stiffened. “I don’t arm Mangus. But we are friends. And if that bothers you, Mr. Thomas, you better move on.”
After a clash of gazes, Thomas ground his heel sheepishly in the hard-packed dirt floor. “Reckon I was out of turn. No offense.”
“Then none taken.” Shea gestured toward the table. “Find a place and help yourselves!”
The Texans eagerly obeyed, each pausing long enough to nod as Will Thomas gave their names. “That butterball with the towhead is Lefty Wright. The bandylegged little rooster is Dallas Payson, and the one just as ugly as me is my kid brother, Joe.”
There wasn’t room for everyone at the table so the vaqueros and Talitha and James filled their plates and sat on the adobe bench built as part of the wall.
“But surely there are cows in California!” Socorro was protesting. “My cousin’s family had thousands! And there are many ranchers!”
Will Thomas shrugged. “Somebody says when the missions were taken over by the Mexican government, most of the mission herds were slaughtered just for hides and tallow. The remaining stock hasn’t multiplied fast enough to take care of the Gold Rushers. After last December, when President Polk said in his annualmessage that there was sure enough gold in California, seemed like everyone who could crawl, walk or ride started west. Some say there’ll be one hundred thousand new people there by the end of this year. And they’ll need food.” He filled a tortilla with spicy stew, devoured it and sighed happily before he squinted at Shea. “Like I said, we’ve lost three men. If you can spare a couple, I’ll pay ’em good wages to come along.”
Shea rubbed his chin. “Might be we could work something out. What do you think, Santiago?”
“That it would be fine to get Gold Rush prices for some of our beef.” Santiago turned to the Texan, speaking slowly in English, hesitating over some words. “Maybe two of us could help you, Señor Thomas. If you wait for us to round up some cattle and throw them in with yours.”
“How long?”
“Perhaps a week.”
“It’s a deal,” said Thomas heartily, giving his hand first to Shea and then Santiago. “You get full price on your own cattle, and I’ll still pay top wages to whoever comes along.”
“I’ll go,” decided Santiago, gold eyes lighting. “Chuey? Belen?”
Anita put a protective arm through Chuey’s, for even though most of the conversation had been in English, the gist of it was fairly evident. Chuey grinned and shook his head.
“With permission, Don Santiago …”
“I’ll go,” Belen growled, “if none of the Sanchezes want to. Is it that we gather cattle and go with these Te
janos to California?”
Santiago nodded. “We’ll start to brand and cull this very afternoon. And get the Sanchezes started.”
“We’ll help,” said Thomas, who seemed to understand a good deal of Spanish though he didn’t attempt to speak it. He smiled gallantly at the women. “I’d chase cows all day for a meal like this!”
“Then you must eat with us all the time you’re here,” Socorro urged.
With the four Texans helping, as well as the Sanchezes, there was no question as to where a certain nine-year-old was most needed. Sighing, Talitha got down the twins who were starting to fret, changed their diapers and persuaded Socorro to lie down and rest while she fed them.
The next days passed in a rush. It seemed to Talitha that the Texans would surely consume all the food in the storeroom. No sooner were the breakfast dishes washed than it was time to start a noon meal to be carried wherever the men were working, and Talitha scarcely returned with those dirty dishes when supper had to be put on to cook. After six days, during which the Texas herd browsed happily and enjoyed the water, a hundred head of S cattle were ready to go. There would have been more but some of the late yearlings looked too puny for the long drive. Güero Sanchez had volunteered to go, so it was he and Santiago who rode off with the Texans, though Shea, Chuey and Belen helped gather the herd and start them out of the valley.
Cristiano bellowed, puzzled and angry that a herd was moving without his leadership, but finally seemed to notice that most of his companions remained. Over these, he exerted mild tyrannies till his self-esteem was restored.
Will Thomas left twenty head of Chinos to breed with the ranch stock and produce larger, beefier animals. They had shed their long curly winter coats and their brown underparts looked sleek and bluish.
“You’ll have one of their first calves, doncellita,” promised Belen, squinting at a young cow. “By using them and culling out the unthrifty, Don Patricio will have the best cattle between Texas and California!”
Talitha laughed. “When the Indians have run off most of the herds in between, that’s not much praise!”
Belen shrugged. “I haven’t seen the beasts of the Tejanos, except for this herd, or those of the Californios. But I can tell you this rancho’s cattle are already better than those of Don Narciso.”
“Why is that?” frowned Talitha. “Santiago says the Cantús have been raising cattle for over a hundred years.”
“Which doesn’t mean Don Narciso has learned anything,” grunted Belen. “He wants to hear he has thousands of horned cattle and if their bones clank together, he never listens.”
Shea came to stand beside them, his hair blazing in the sundown. The unscarred side of his face was toward Talitha. He was beautiful in a harsh male way, but it was the sight of his scars that stirred her to a passion of worship. It was as if her heart had been branded along with his cheek. Her life belonged to him. James ran up now and grasped his foster father’s leg.
Swinging him to a shoulder, Shea gave his head a shake of wonderment. “Still doesn’t seem real, lass. Four years ago, I was in Ireland, watching potatoes rot in the field while my mother starved. Three years ago I was in the United States Army camped down on the Rio Grande. With Michael, God rest him—”
His voice trailed off. Talitha took his long brown fingers, pressed them to her cheek. “You have Miguel now,” she reminded him. “And Patrick.”
He bent to sweep her close in a hug that embraced James. “And I’ve got you two and Socorro. Life’s dealt me fairer than I deserve, Tally. That’s why it hurts to think of Michael and my mother who neither one had much.”
“They had you!”
“Like I said,” retorted Shea. “They didn’t have much!” He chuckled at Talitha’s indignant outcry, but she didn’t stay to chide him. It was past time to be helping with supper and the twins.
Talitha wasn’t strong enough to wrestle down a cow, but she learned to press the red-hot iron firmly against the hide, long enough to mark but not sear the flesh beneath. And, setting her jaw, she could do the earmarks now, and hand the señales to Shea.
Ladorada was a good roping horse, and, using the skills Belen and Chuey had taught her, by summer’s end Talitha could make the underhand mangana that caught a horse’s front feet, or the peal which caught an animal’s hind feet in a double loop like a figure eight. She could bring the rope swiftly around the saddle horn, letting the calf throw itself by its own weight braced against that of Ladorada, but she could handle only the smaller, scrawnier ones.
“Don’t rope more than you can hold, doncellita!” Belen scolded, scooping her up after she’d been yanked from the saddle, hauled over Ladorada’s laid-back ears, her palms skinned from the burn of the reata as the yearling she’d failed to throw kicked himself free of the double noose and vanished into a mesquite thicket. “Por Dios! Another foot and you’d have landed in the cactus!” He gave her an admonishing but careful shake. “You’re sound? Nothing broken?”
The breath was knocked out of her, her palms stung ferociously, and she’d skinned her elbows but Talitha blinked back tears and scrambled up. “I’m all right, Belen! I—I just wish I’d hurry and grow till I could really do my share.”
“You do enough,” he said. “Besides, as you grow, you become a woman, not a vaquero. So do not put too much of your heart into this thing, doncellita.”
Disregarding his proffered help, she gripped the saddle horn with her grazed hand and climbed into the saddle, grateful that Shea was out of sight down the arroyo and hadn’t seen her tumble. She helped Belen chase the yearling out of the thicket and when he roped and threw it, leaped down to hold it near the branding fire, she put the S on it and deftly slit the ears.
One more for Shea and Rancho del Socorro.
It was that July, while she was gathering currants and chokecherries, that she followed a cañon into the mountains and found the hot springs. Bubbling from the rocks into a shallow natural basin, the water overflowed to lose itself in the stream that sparkled its tortuous way down the gorge.
Talitha was hot, and this seemed a wonderful place to bathe. Tugging off her dress, she bent to wash her face, made a surprised sound.
Warm water! Cool water would have done as well or better that afternoon, but except in full summer, unlimited hot water would be worth the walk.
Socorro would love it! They’d bring James and the twins and wash their hair, let them splash in the big rock hollow! Delighted with her find, Talitha clambered into the smooth giant bowl and luxuriated in cupping water in her hands and letting it trickle down from her shoulders.
She wore her dresses short, so from midcalf her legs were brown as her face and hands, but the rest of her was creamy pale. She made a face, wishing she was dark all over, scowled at the small pink points on her chest.
Some day they would be breasts that would hold milk for babies. She hoped hers would be more like Socorro’s than Anita’s which were so big that they were the first thing one noticed about her. Talitha wanted babies some day, but that took a husband and she didn’t want to marry anyone, ever, and go away from Shea.
She might have to, though, when she grew up.
She didn’t want to think about that. It was a muddle. She wanted to get bigger and stronger, able to do the full work of man or woman. But she didn’t want to leave the ranch. Or for Juh to claim James, which he could do in five more years.
Sighing, she stood up and stepped on dry rock, shaking herself, standing in the sun till she was dry. Then she pulled on the faded blue cotton dress, cut down from one of Socorro’s, slipped into the sandals Belen had made of cowhide. Picking up her half-filled basket, she followed the cañon till it broadened into a high basin with piñon- and juniper-studded cliffs rising stark on all sides. Grass carpeted the clearing and water gushed in a small waterfall from a crevice in the rocks above.
A lovely place. And there were lots of currants scattered along the stream that trickled through the basin till it vanished in a vast roc
kslide above a side cañon. Strange that Socorro and Tjúni hadn’t found it.
Bending to pluck the small red fruits, Talitha’s foot stirred, something almost buried among the leaves. Something white and hard. A nudge sent it rolling down the incline, fetching up with a splash in the water.
Hollows stared at her from what had to be a human skull. As if it conveyed to her some horrible knowledge, she suddenly recognized, here and there in the grass and bushes, what she had dismissed as stones.
Slowly, she confirmed her suspicion. Five skulls, two of them still impaled on sticks hidden in the grass, arrows jutting from the eye sockets. But she found no other trace of the dead except a few bones wedged among the rocks. Animals and birds must have dragged off the rest.
A memory of Luz echoed, Mangus’s niece saying how she, her sister and three babies had been rescued from scalpers by a white woman and a Papago, and how the Papago had wanted to finish what the scalpers had begun.
Staring at the skulls, Talitha felt a thrill of awe. So this was why Mangus protected Rancho del Socorro. And why Socorro chose not to come here, even for the fine currants.
Talitha wanted to run. She’d lived long enough among Apaches to absorb some of their fear of the dead, of hovering spirits, and these men must have been mutilated in a way that would give them no peace in the afterlife. But that was heathenish, thinking that way! And if Tjúni and Socorro had been brave against the living marauders, she mustn’t run from them dead.
Her lips were stiff; her mouth and throat very dry. Swallowing, she worked her way among the bushes, including those close to the skulls.
Only when she’d gathered every ripe currant she could find did she leave the basin she would ever afterward think of as the Place of Skulls.
She told Socorro and the others about the hot spring but she said nothing about the clearing and what waited there. Several times that summer Talitha visited the hot spring with Socorro, Anita, the twins and James. They used orris root to wash from hair to feet, and went home much refreshed. If Socorro realized how close they were to the fateful basin, she never betrayed it.
The Valiant Women Page 24
