The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  “Talitha! You must be!” Catching Talitha’s hands, the woman kissed her while Talitha could only stare. With a slight frown, Judah Frost’s wife said, “Something’s wrong? The ride has made you ill?”

  Frost said briskly, “Talitha can outride most men, Leonore, but perhaps you’ll show her your room so she can change. Talitha, as you’ll have gathered, this is my wife. I seldom get to introduce her formally. Now let me acquaint you with our host, Colonel Charles Poston. Charles, this is Miss Talitha Scott. Her guardian is my partner in several enterprises and owns Rancho del Socorro of which you must have heard.”

  “Indeed I have.” Poston bowed low, regarded her with a shrewd twinkle. “The only ranch not to be abandoned between Tucson and Magdalena! I look forward to meeting your guardian, Miss Scott.”

  They talked a few minutes till he was called to superintend the making of eggnog and Talitha found herself relaxing. Poston, like most of the men here, was young, perhaps thirty, boyishly full of enthusiasm for the prospects of Arizona.

  These were her people, Talitha realized. Americans. And though her family had been forced west for safety to live according to their religion, she couldn’t repress a glow of pride and liking for these spirited, rollicking, daring ones.

  Slipping her arm through Talitha’s, Leonore said, “Come, dear, and change! The habit becomes you wonderfully with that sort of cavalier dash. I can hardly wait to see the evening dress.” She said to Marc who had waited purposefully, “It’s the first house across the plaza.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he nodded, and slipped through the throng.

  Frost separated the women, a hand on the elbow of each, steering them through the crush. Talitha ignored the amused way he watched her, schooled herself to look more closely at Leonore, something which, after the first startled glance, she hadn’t trusted herself to do.

  There were differences. Leonore’s face was softer, her mouth wider, eyes not so deeply set. She must be about the age Socorro had been when she died, but she looked much younger, as if she’d never worried, been hungry or thirsty or faced death.

  Probably she hadn’t.

  Frost’s voice sliced through her happy chatter. “You’re thinking, Talitha, that my wife resembles some hidalga you’ve known. No mystery in that. She’s from one of New Orleans’ Creole families, and more Spanish than French.”

  “Deplorable to look like so many other women!” Leonore bubbled. “But in Washington, where I acted as Papa’s hostess after, maman died, I was considered exotic. That, after years of being confused with my innumerable cousins, was absolutely delicious!”

  Dropping a kiss on the tip of her ear, Frost admonished her not to be late to table and left with Marc who’d placed Talitha’s bundle on a bunk in the small room, lit by the fragrant piñon logs in the fireplace.

  Leonore wasn’t as addle-pated as she let on, but efficiently undid the pack and shook out the gleaming brocade. “I didn’t procure a crinoline for you, dear, because even though they may look très chic on Empress Eugénie who started the new rage for them, they’re unbelievably cumbersome! When Papa roared about my coming to live where I might be massacred by Indians, I soothed him with the reminder that in a place where I could set the fashion, I would at least not catch fire from sweeping too near a hearth!” She shook her head decidedly. “Let me hang up the habit while you put on this other starched petticoat. No corsets, either! Oh, my dear, what heaven it is to be free of such tortures!”

  Talitha had to laugh. Leonore, temperamentally, was so different from Socorro that she looked less like her with every impudent wrinkling of the nose, each lilting sweep of the hands.

  Even what Leonore would consider necessities were an unwelcome hindrance on Talitha’s free movement.

  Garters, holding up the black silk stockings that felt so sleek and elegant, cut into her flesh, and the drawers, fastened at the waist with a drawstring, chafed her legs. But for this occasion, Talitha was prepared to suffer.

  “Ravishing!” Leonore cried, when the last tiny button was fastened, the last seam smoothed, and shimmering brocade molded Talitha from slim waist to the tender lift of her breasts. “It was fitted on me, you know. Judah thought we were of a size except that—you won’t be angry—you still ran to boniness!” Her laughter tinkled. “Bony! My usually observant husband hasn’t looked at you closely of late! You’re slim as a willow but all the curves are there! There’s a candle, let me light it so you can do your hair.”

  Talitha tried to do something with her thick unruly mane, gave up in exasperation and started to braid it. It would just have to coil around her head the way she wore it in summer for coolness.

  “Ah, no!” Giving the mirror to Talitha, Leonore took the comb. “Let it shine! See, it sweeps back and up, so, then some pins to hold it at the crown and from there, it falls free!”

  Talitha stared in wonder at the face watching her from the mirror. Smooth honey-tanned skin made eyes, beneath strong-arched ash-colored eyebrows, as luminously blue as the brocade, and the hair style narrowed her face till the squareness of jaw was drawn into the shadow of high cheekbones. If Shea could see her, he’d have to know she was no child!

  That he wouldn’t dampened her glow a bit, but she put down the mirror and gave Leonore an impulsive hug. “You’ve made me look beautiful! And all the bother with the dresses—how can I thank you?”

  “It was fun for me,” Leonore assured her. She frowned at the black kid slippers Talitha was putting on. “I’m sorry I could find nothing to go better with the dress, but bootmakers out here aren’t prepared yet to cater to ladies.” She carefully smoothed the ruching at the square neck of her dark rose silk, perfected one of the long soft curls escaping artfully from a carved ivory comb. “Isn’t it nice our colors don’t clash?”

  When Talitha stared in confusion, Leonore laughed and kissed her cheek. “Talitha, how funny-sweet and solemn you are! I believe I’d like you even if you were dark like me! But as it is, you’ll be queen of the fair and I’ll hold court for gentlemen who prefer brunettes! Put on your cloak! It’s just a short way but the wind’s chill.”

  Besides several big tables that looked permanent, planks had been laid across sawhorses and set with what looked like every eating utensil and dish in Tubac. A dozen dressed turkeys hung from the ceiling beams as if to assure the guests there was plenty to eat. Marc had been waiting by the door. As they came inside and he took Talitha’s cloak, hanging it on a peg, he drew in his breath audibly.

  “You could break my heart before,” he said in her ear. “What you’ll do now—oh, Talitha!”

  Eluding several officers who jumped up to proffer stools or parts of benches, Marc escorted her to where Frost and Leonore were finding seats.

  Frost inclined his silvery head and his eyes, too, showed silver. “My wife’s taste is equaled only by your loveliness, Talitha.” He tilted his head, smiling. “What a difference four years make! By the time two more pass, you’ll doubtless have succumbed to prayers and entreaties and become somebody’s wife.”

  Did he want her to remember that was when he’d vowed to have her? Talitha felt cold. “I doubt I shall marry, Mr. Frost,” she said, accepting the stool Marc pulled out for her.

  “Don’t plague the child, Judah,” chided Leonore. “My heavens, look at the kinds of meat! What are they?”

  Poston chuckled at her from the head of the table. “We already had beef and mutton, but we’ve been hunting, too. Behold, madam, you may choose quail, turkey, duck, antelope, deer or bear! We haven’t much variety in vegetables, but we have plenty in meat!”

  While pretty girls and women moved about serving food, Poston introduced the others at his table. Besides his German partner, Hans Ehrenberg, there was Fred Hulsemann who now kept the company store while he looked for a way to recoup the $50,000 he’d lost in the Calabazas venture; Charles Schuchard, in charge of mining operations down at Aribac who frowned in puzzlement at Talitha till she reminded him of the spring when, accom
panying Gray’s railroad survey, he’d sketched the ranch house for Socorro.

  “Of course I remember! How is Señora O’Shea? A very gracious lady!”

  Talitha froze, blessed Marc when he said quickly, “She must have been. Unfortunately, I never met her. She died some three years ago.”

  Schuchard murmured condolences while Poston presented Colonel Douglas from Sopori, a flamboyant older man got up in Spanish holiday garb. Beside him were a soft-eyed lady, Doña Rosa, and her husband, Pete Kitchen.

  Pete Kitchen? Whose house was a fortress, who had started a graveyard below it, peopled with raiders for whom his gentle wife burned candles and prayed? Meeting his quizzical blue-gray eyes, Talitha realized she’d been staring.

  “Oh, Mr. Kitchen,” she babbled. “We’ve really been enjoying one of your hams.”

  He grinned, his florid face losing some of its grim lines. “Well, I hope you don’t find any arrowheads in it! Them pesky Apaches have shot some of my pigs so full of arrows that they looked like walking pincushions!” He turned to the two officers seated across from Talitha. “Thought your dragoons would put an end to that, but oh, no! Every full moon here the varmints come again!”

  “I’m just a surgeon,” grinned the red-headed handsome young man who reminded Talitha of Shea. There was even the slightest hint of Irish in his accent.

  He proved to be Dr. Bernard J. D. Irwin and the balding fortyish officer beside him was Captain Richard Ewell. His beaked nose and eyes that seemed to pop from their sockets gave Ewell a birdlike look as he set his gleaming head to one side and began to reminisce about his experiences with the Mescaleros in New Mexico.

  “It’ll either have to be reservations or complete extermination,” he said in a shrill, rather squeaky voice. “Until they learn to farm and raise livestock instead of stealing it, they’ll have to raid to live, and they sure won’t farm till they have to!”

  Talitha thought of James. It would be a few years yet before Mangus took him on any raids but he could be killed in camp by soldiers like Ewell at almost any time. The thought took away her appetite.

  “It would help if the Mexican government would do anything,” growled Kitchen. “But here’s Pesqueira and Gándara wrangling over Sonora, and the Liberals and Conservatives at each other’s throats down in Mexico City. Nobody seems strong enough to take hold and give the country any leadership.”

  The talk turned to filibusters. “It would be an act of mercy to Sonora to annex it and give it decent government and protection,” Frost said. “We need a port as much as we need a railroad. We’re as close to Lobos, the harbor I found, as we are to Fort Yuma, and at Lobos goods wouldn’t have to be shifted from ocean-going vessels to river craft.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Irwin pleasantly, “don’t you realize that our government is almost in as desperate a case as that of Mexico? All this gobbling up of western land on top of the quarrels between North and South has brought on a monstrous fit of indigestion. It’s going to be a while before the older part of the nation can give even a feeble chew at what it’s bitten off.”

  Poston frowned. “It’s true the House of Representatives wouldn’t seat our delegate when it met this month, but a bill was passed to build a wagon road from El Paso to Fort Yuma. Congress is doing something.”

  “And Arizona’s not without influential friends,” pointed out Frost. “Railroad men and financiers and speculators from both coasts and Ohio have a stake in what happens here.”

  “To hell with financiers!” rumbled Kitchen. “I just want them Indians to stop shooting my pigs!”

  Fiddlers were tuning up and, while eggnog was served around in cups, gourds and glasses, the music started. It reminded Talitha of those nights by the Mormon campfires, of her parents dancing, and a great wave of longing swept through her, to be loved and protected as she had been then, not to have to decide what to do and worry about whether or not it was right.

  Marc’s touch roused her. “Shall we dance?”

  “There’s not room,” she demurred, but he nodded to where one makeshift table had been cleared away and people were forming two lines facing each other.

  “The Virginia reel,” he smiled. “It’s more game than dance. You can’t go wrong if you watch the others.”

  Leonore was already on her feet, urging up her husband. In a moment, they were in the lines as the dancers at each end came forward to meet and circle in the center.

  Then the fiddlers moved into a sort of gliding music that swooped and then paused. “A waltz!” Marc laughed down at Talitha, drawing her into the open space. “What an excuse to have my arm around you! Don’t stiffen, my sweetheart. Just follow what my hands say.”

  She liked the waltz after the first difficulty of being so close to a man, his lips only inches from her ear, his arm hard and warm and strong against her back, dipping her low, whirling her expertly in the little area they shared with Ewell and Doña Rosa, Frost and Leonore.

  As the dance ended, Dr. Erwin bowed and asked for the next.

  “I really can’t dance.” Talitha blushed. “Mr. Revier’s been teaching me.”

  “Then you’ve been a most apt pupil.” His voice had a lilt so like Shea’s that she had a stab of loneliness for him. “My feet are much bigger than yours, Miss Scott, so you’re risking more than I am!”

  She smiled. Taking that for assent, he swept her into another waltz. He was from Ireland, had left in boyhood and had graduated from New York Medical College.

  Testing him, she told him of Nōnó’s curing Shea. Irwin’s glance was thoughtful, not incredulous. “For sure, the natives must know things we don’t. That jículi sounds as if it could be a very useful anesthetic or painkiller.”

  He was so interested in what she could tell him about medicinal plants that they went on talking after the waltz, standing near the fireplace.

  “Here comes your escort,” Irwin said resignedly as Marc came toward them. “Forgive my boldness but I’m on duty tomorrow and can’t waste time. Are you engaged?”

  “No,” said Talitha.

  Her heart misgave her as his face lit up but there was no time to say more before Marc claimed her.

  To her relief, Judah Frost didn’t attempt to dance with her that evening, though necessarily, in the reels and country dances, he partnered her fleetingly, his hands cool on her, steel in his lightest touch. Her mind churned with questions which chased each other around and around, finding no answers.

  Why had he married someone who looked so much like Socorro? What would Shea feel when he saw her? In baffled anger, Talitha felt as if Frost were crouched above them all like a giant cat, watching amusedly till time to spring.

  So she danced her turns with Colonel Poston, Captain Ewell who paid extravagant compliments when he wasn’t teasing in a half-paternal manner, several other officers and Charles Schuchard who said he’d love to sketch her some day.

  When at last the fiddlers stopped and the guests who lived nearby went home, Talitha was so sleepy she could barely struggle out of her lovely, lovely dress, though as she hung it up, she caressed it with a smile. In it she had first felt the heady power of being a woman.

  Leonore smiled, smoothing creams into her skin. “Yes, my dear, you were a great success! Isn’t it fun?”

  Talitha nodded and snuggled under the covers. She wouldn’t want to do this very often, but the admiration of vital, energetic men was just as intoxicating as the mescal in Colonel Poston’s punch and eggnog! Sighing blissfully, she was asleep before Leonore blew out the candle.

  XXVII

  Talitha and Leonore, still in bed, sipped the chocolate brought them by the Indian girl who built up the fire so the chill would be off the air before they were ready to dress.

  Talitha felt lazy to the point of wickedness, but her head throbbed slightly from unaccustomed potations and she wiggled her toes luxuriously and determined to enjoy this opportunity for decadence since she might never have another.

  Leonore was exclaiming on the
problems of American ambassadors abroad where a plain citizen’s garb, recently ordained by the Secretary of State, might be considered an insult at court functions, and an inflammatory reminder of the United States’ origins.

  “Poor Mr. Buchanan—he’ll be our new president, you know—Pierce lost the renomination because Northern Democrats couldn’t stomach his proslavery stand on Kansas—well, Mr. Buchanan didn’t know what to wear to the Court of St. James, so he missed the opening of Parliament and the way the newspapers, court and even the House of Commons carried on, one would never have guessed England on the brink of war with Russia!” Her laughter chimed like small bells. “Papa says the minister thought of arraying himself like George Washington! Fortunately, he had the wit to know he’d look ridiculous and appeared at Queen Victoria’s levee in plain garb. She received him graciously, which settled the matter, at least in England, but after all, Victoria’s so dowdy she can scarcely cavil at anyone! Empress Eugénie sets style for all civilized society.”

  “But you don’t like her hoops,” Talitha objected.

  “No, and I pray they are out of fashion before ever I return east! But,” sighed Leonore, “how I’d love to see her dressing room at the Tuileries! Revolving mirrors! Separate rooms for hats and bonnets, footwear, parasols and cloaks. Each morning a doll of the Empress’s size is dressed to the last detail and sent down in the lift for her approval. It’s very seldom that she accepts the costume without much altering and trying of various accessories.”

  If that was what sipping chocolate in bed could lead to, Talitha wanted none of it! Jumping up, she turned her back to Leonore and dressed quickly in the gaberdine.

  “The French have rulers like that again, after the Revolution?”

  Leonore shrugged her slim shoulders. “After the Terror and a strong dose of Bonaparte, I think they welcomed the Bourbons.” She patted back a yawn. “Would I rather sleep or have breakfast? Breakfast, I think!”

  Since it was decided, after a leisurely breakfast, to ride over to Tumacácori and see the ruins, Talitha suggested to Marc that they might as well continue from there on to the ranch.