That didn’t save Don Ignacio Iberri of Santa Cruz who was ridden down a few days later by a half-dozen Apaches and killed within sight of Tubac’s wall. But at least there was a garrison and the German partners continued to manage their sheep and goat ranch at Calabazas. The people of Rancho del Socorro no longer felt so isolated.
It was a long summer for Talitha, 1853, though it must have seemed even longer to Socorro who expected her baby in September. The twins wanted a sister like Paulita, the baby girl Anita was fondly suckling, and Socorro, earnestly admonished by them, promised to do her best. Her feet were swollen, she moved awkwardly, and Talitha worried about her, remembering the twins’ birth, though she kept assuring Shea, who was also troubled, that this time it would be very different. Carmencita, who had delivered Anita so competently and often served as a midwife, would come to stay at the house several weeks before the probable time. There should be no difficulty.
Yet Socorro’s condition weighed on Talitha for her own body was undergoing changes that both bewildered and pleased her. Anita had placidly explained the spots of blood that had so frightened Talitha.
“You’re a woman now, chiquita! Every month, until you’re my mother’s age, this will come. Unless you have conceived.” She cast a sympathetic look at the girl, lowered her voice. “Has Doña Socorro explained about that? None of our men would molest you, of course, but strangers …”
Talitha wasn’t sure exactly how it was with men and women, but she’d seen bulls mount cows and stallions breed mares. She knew the tiny appendage on James and the twins would grow with them and someday be capable of entering a female. But when a flickering half-picture of Shea with Socorro edged into her mind before, shamed and terrified, she could banish it. She knew she couldn’t bear to be like that with anyone, not unless he was just like Shea. And there was no one like him.
So she mumbled something to Anita and made her escape. There was no escaping the inexorable shaping of her body, though, the strange conflicting moods that stormed through her. She needed to be alone. Often that summer she went to the hot spring. She scarcely ever thought of the Place of Skulls.
One day in August she’d been gathering acorns and stopped by the spring to bathe and wash her hair with the orris root she kept in a crevice near the stone basin. Her dress smelled of sweat—only in these past few months had it had an odor—and she stripped it off and washed it, rinsing it well before she hung it to dry on a manzanita. Then she climbed up the rocks and slid into the basin, holding her breath as she settled in water up to her shoulders.
It felt so good! Weariness flowed out of her. After lying there a few minutes, reveling in the gentle push of the water against her naked flesh, she sat up and made lather with the root, sudsing her hair, rinsing it where the water flowed over and down. She washed her body next, scrubbing her elbows and feet with special diligence, then cleaning her fingernails.
Splashing out the used water with her feet, she sank down, leaned against the polished stone, and luxuriated as the spring filled up the basin.
When she reckoned her dress must be almost dry, she stretched and got to her feet, throwing back her head, fluffing her hair. She froze as a man’s voice—not Shea’s, but a stranger’s—said in English, “A nymph in the wilderness!”
She couldn’t reach her dress. In her startled anger, it seemed better to stand calmly, pretend there was nothing to cover, than clutch at herself with inadequate hands.
How had he approached so quietly? Even the sound of the spring shouldn’t have covered all warning of his approach. She was as furious with herself as she was with him. What if he’d been a hostile?
Fear gripped her then as she stared down into eyes like frozen water barely reflecting the sky. He might be as dangerous as any Apache. He had dark eyebrows and lashes and as he moved closer, resting a hand on the edge of the basin, she saw that the shafts on his clean-shaven face were black though his hair was vibrant silver. His hat and vest were trimmed with silver conchos and he had a revolver holstered at his belt.
He laughed softly. “A mute nymph? One who couldn’t chatter? Or scream?” He seemed closer though it must have been a trick of her dilating eyes. “That would be too good to be true! Come, pretty, what’s your name?”
She ignored that. Memory, leaping back, produced that face, those eyes. In Mangus’s camp, long ago. Unable to check a sharp intake of breath, she saw in the same moment that he’d recognized her.
“That child the Apaches had!” His eyes went over her so that in spite of her resolve, she instinctively brought one arm over her breasts, shielded with the other hand that triangular patch of bright gold hair. “You’ve grown,” he said, laughing again. “Oh, beautifully you’ve grown! But I remember those big serious eyes and yellow, yellow hair.”
“And I remember you.” She spoke through stiff dry lips.
“Then that makes us old friends,” he said easily. “I’m Judah Frost.” Freeing her dress from the manzanita, he handed it to her. “Come out of the water, my dear, and tell me your name and how you come to be here.”
“You aren’t my friend.” There was a cold passionless evil in him that she discerned along with his beauty. “You tried to buy me.” But she was glad of the dress and pulled it quickly over her head, retreated to the ledge above, well out of his reach.
“Of course. I intended to try to locate your family, restore you to them. Did they find you, then?”
“My mother died. She was an Apache captive.”
“And your father?”
She shook her head. “He went to California with the Mormon Battalion. That’s all I know.”
“I’m lately returned from California. Perhaps I met him.” He frowned as if trying to recapture something. “By jingo, there was a Mormon I met in ’Frisco! Said his wife and family had been left in Santa Fe, and when he went back for them, they’d vanished. He looked in Salt Lake, too, and there someone told him the wife and some male kin had left Santa Fe by wagon, trying to follow him.”
“We did.” She thought of her mother, subjected to Juh, the drudge of his wives.
“But you didn’t get far,” finished the stranger, not unkindly. “Wouldn’t you like to be with your father now?”
Jared Scott, tall and red-haired, who’d whirled his wife in the light of the campfires. Jared Scott, who’d gone off with his Battalion.
“No,” said Talitha.
Dark brows met above a straight, finely shaped nose. “No? Just like that?”
She didn’t want to explain, but he evidently had no intention of going away. “My brother’s part Apache,” she said baldly. “I doubt my father would want him. We’re doing very well at our foster parents’.”
“And who are they?”
Something deep rooted beneath her conscious mind made her hate to give this man any knowledge, any power, but since he was in the region, he was almost sure to find the ranch. Besides, though he hadn’t tried to come closer, it wouldn’t hurt for him to know that she lived close by, had protectors.
“The O’Sheas of Rancho del Socorro got my brother and me away from the Apaches.” Nor did she think it a poor idea to add: “Mangus protects them.”
For an instant, those chill light eyes turned almost black. “Why does he do that?”
“Doña Socorro and a Papago woman killed scalp hunters who were attacking some of Mangus’s women.”
“Did they indeed?” He looked incredulous.
“If you don’t believe me, go on up the cañon. You can see the skulls.” Talitha reached for her sandals. “I must be getting home. They’ll wonder why I’ve been gone so long.”
“Then let me escort you,” he said. “I’d like to meet these remarkable O’Sheas.”
He picked up her basket of acorns, held out a tanned, slender, strongly muscled hand to help her down. Avoiding it, Talitha came down in another place. She didn’t see how she could refuse to walk with him, but she’d have felt just as comfortable if her companion had been a handsome
, intricately marked and quite deadly rattler.
“Don’t you have a horse?” she asked.
“I left him at the mouth of the cañon, hobbled so he could browse while I explored.”
“What are you exploring?”
“A multitude of things.” His eyes didn’t warm though he smiled at her. “I’m a very curious man. And you still haven’t told me your name.”
“Talitha. Talitha Scott. Are you looking for a railroad route? Or do you want a mine?”
“You’re curious, too,” he chuckled. “Well, Talitha Scott, I want a railroad and a mine. A ranch, of course. And a freighting company wouldn’t be a bad notion.”
“Did you find that much gold in California?”
He laughed briefly. “Enough. Now, Talitha, what do you want?”
Taken by surprise, for she wasn’t used to thinking about it, Talitha started to say she didn’t want anything, then realized that wasn’t true. She wanted James to stay at the ranch, not go to the Apaches; she wanted Socorro to be safely delivered of her baby; she wanted all things to go well for Shea.
“Well?” the stranger prodded. “I told you what I’d like. Aren’t you going to swap?”
“No.”
She couldn’t see his face. The way was too rough and narrow for them to walk together. He didn’t speak for so long that she grew nervous, slightly ashamed of being rude. She was relieved when he broke the silence, pleasantly, as if he hadn’t been rebuffed.
“How old are you, Talitha?”
That he could know. “Thirteen.”
“Ah. Young. But old enough to want a good many things, I’ll be bound!” She didn’t answer. There was a laugh in his voice as he persisted. “Don’t you want rings on your fingers and bells on your toes? Maybe you’re dreaming already of a husband, a house of your very own where you could do exactly as you pleased—”
“I do as I please!”
“Really? You please to get hot and scratched gathering acorns then, and wearing a raggedy dress that was once too big on you and now’s too small?”
She stopped abruptly. “Give me my acorns! And you—you go on ahead! I don’t want to walk with you!”
“But I want to walk with you.” Unruffled, he put the basket out of her reach behind him. “Believe this, Talitha: when I want something, I get it.”
She made a frantic lunge for the basket, heard him laugh. His hand clamped on her forearm. “Shall we walk, Talitha?”
Fighting tears of rage, she met his mocking smile. It maddened her past endurance. She sank her teeth into his arm, brought her knee up at what she knew from vaquero talk was the most vulnerable part of a male.
He dodged. She heard the basket drop, the acorns hit rocks, clamped her teeth tighter. Suddenly there was inexorable hurting pressure on her jaws, digging at the hinge, forcing her teeth apart. She felt his blood on her lips, fought him savagely, but with both arms and hands he held her, and then with his body as he pressed her against a great rock.
Panting, she couldn’t move.
“So little, fierce and lovely,” he sighed. “Let’s see what else you are!”
His mouth took hers as he held the back of her head in his hand. She could not escape. But she kept her lips tight closed against his though she was trembling, near panic in her fear of what he might do.
After what couldn’t have been a long time, though it seemed so, he lifted his head. “You’ll give me nothing but the taste of my own blood? But your prim-tucked mouth told me what I most wanted to know. You haven’t been tumbled by some vaquero or soldier. No man has kissed you.”
“Shea has!”
“Your foster father. Scarcely what I meant.”
Releasing her, he studied his wrist, marked in a bloody crescent by her teeth, neither helping nor hindering as she knelt and began to salvage acorns. When she had all she could find, she started down the cañon again.
He followed. Unable to believe his presumption, she threw back over her shoulder, “Go on ahead and get your horse! Ride to Tubac or whenever you’re headed! You can’t go home with me now!”
“But of course I will.” His resonant voice was smooth with irony. “I must meet this foster father you prefer to a husband, see this fabulous rancho where you do exactly as you please!”
“Shea will kill you!” she choked, whirling. “And Belen and Santiago, too!”
“Please!” he begged. “You wouldn’t have me killed three times!” His caressing tone angered her more than abuse would have.
“I would if I could!”
“No doubt. But alas, small Talitha, we’re all limited by the possible. Much as you’d like to see me shot or horse-whipped, you won’t tell anyone that instead of giving you the spanking you deserved, I chose to kiss you.” He unrolled his sleeve till it hid the marks of her teeth.
“I will tell! Unless you leave us alone!”
He shook his head as if grieved by her stubbornness, then asked briskly, “Is your Shea an expert with firearms? Or those others you mentioned?”
“They can shoot! They hunt. And just a few months ago they helped beat the Apaches who were attacking Calabazas.”
“I see. Perhaps every week or two they aim at something. That doesn’t put them in my class, Talitha. I have, at times, made my living by killing men. And I practice. Every day.”
Before she could follow the motion of his hand, he had drawn the big gun, cocked it and fired. Sound echoed among the rocks. A squirrel fell from a tree just before them, its head blown away.
“A man’s much bigger than that,” the silver-haired man remarked. “Would your foster mother like it for cooking?”
“No,” whispered Talitha. She was used to branding and castrating, had herself helped clean deer, javelina and other game, but she was sickened at this wanton snuffing out of a bright-eyed, frisking little life.
That was when her real fear of Judah Frost began.
His horse, a big gelding, was the color of fog, with a silvery mane and tail. “Think you could ride him?” Frost asked as he put on the bridle and slipped off the rawhide hobbles.
“I don’t want to.”
He gave her a mild look. “Well, probably you couldn’t. Selim has a mind of his own and still needs a strong dose of quirt and spurs occasionally.” He swung into the silver-mounted saddle which had a rifle scabbarded at one side. “Shall I carry your basket?”
“No.”
“Talitha. I would advise you to practice courtesy with me. Just as I practice the gun.”
“Why?” Her lips curled. “Will you shoot me if you don’t like what I say?”
He threw back his head and laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “What a child you are! No, my dear. Indeed I won’t shoot you. But if you’re surly to me in front of your people, they’re bound to wonder why.” He added silkily, “Questions could prove unfortunate—for them.”
Scanning his face, she realized that this was someone far different from anyone she’d ever encountered, someone completely ruthless with a corruption in his nature that made Apache cruelties she had seen appear crude and of almost childlike simplicity.
If it came to a fight between Frost and the men of the ranch, she believed they could kill him. She also was sure he’d kill one or two of them first.
“Why are you doing this?” she cried desperately. “What do you want?”
“Why, Talitha,” he said, gravely smiling at her. “I want you to be happy.”
That frightened her more than anything else he could have said. Feeling like a captive, she trudged for the ranch while the gray horse, firmly controlled, paced along beside her.
Frost put himself out to be charming. Only Belen took himself off immediately after the evening meal. Talitha, as soon as the dishes were done, offered to put the twins to bed, but they set up a howl, wanting to, see more of the intriguing stranger who’d beguiled them with sleight of hand tricks.
“Here, now!” he chided. “Have a knee apiece, you rascals! I’ll sing you all the v
erses I know of ‘Sweet Besty from Pike’ and then you’re off to sleep without a murmur!”
Talitha shook herself, angrily feeling bewitched, as the deep rich voice finished the adventures of Betsy, Long Ike and their oxen, hog, Shanghai rooster and small yellow dog. How could this man, so helpfully delivering the sleepy-eyed twins to her, be the same person who’d coolly threatened to kill the men if she told what he’d done in the cañon?
His eyes met hers, searing, like fire-ice, to her bones. Hastily, she swept Patrick and Miguel away. Once they were asleep, she’d intended to go to bed herself, but the things Frost was saying were too interesting to miss.
Grudgingly coming back into the kitchen, she settled in a far corner and began picking over the acorns she’d collected that day, cutting out wormy parts. There’d be a delicious acorn stew tomorrow. Chusma came, purring, to curl up by her. That compensated a little for James’s utter enthrallment. At six, he was too big for knees, but he perched on the bench near Frost’s chair, Chacho a gleaming black mass in his lap, and hung on tales of mining and travel.
Laughing, Frost recited “The Miners’ Ten Commandments,” beginning with “Thou shalt have no other claim but one,” and ending with “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s gold nor his claim … nor move his stake … nor wash the tailings from his sluice’s mouth.…”
He told about a Biblically inclined partner he’d had in one “diggins,” who, menaced by claim-jumpers who disputed his tape-measured stakes, put away the tape, brought out his rifle, and told the intruders that if they aimed to set pick in earth, they’d better first make peace with God because he promised them he’d send their souls to meet Him. “And that bunch of hard-cases looked at his rifle a minute and went off like a bunch of shorn lambs,” Frost concluded.
His most important news was that U.S. President Franklin Pierce had sent James Gadsden, a South Carolinian railroad promoter recommended by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, to Mexico that summer to negotiate for a larger cession of land. Northern Sonora was a crucial part of this coveted territory since the best apparent southern route for a transcontinental railroad ran through it, the way searched out by the Mormon Battalion.
The Valiant Women Page 27
