The Valiant Women (14 page)

What he planned, Socorro knew, was to leave her situated with the ranch in working order so that, if he didn't return, she could try, if she were so minded, to hold the land and herd, make this place her home.

“You don't need to bother with the roof,” she said. “If you find some vaqueros for me, they can fix it, or you can when you come back.”

Shea's eyes probed her. “You're sure?”

She didn't tell him that if he didn't return, she'd need no roof, that without him, she would not live. “I'm sure.”

He raised his broad shoulders in a half-shrug. “Well, then, tomorrow Santiago can ride to Tubac and try to bribe some trustworthy vaqueros into throwing in with us. I'll go hunting.”

“Just in case you get nothing”—Santiago grinned—“I'll try to bag something on my way home.”

Tjúni gave Socorro a patronizing look. “Plants are different here from those of the low desert, but I know some of them from food-gathering trips to the mountains. Shall we hunt that sort of food, lady, while
El Señor
hunts meat?”

Socorro knew the other young woman would not call her by name; it was her way of maintaining distance. Socorro regretted this. It would have helped to be able to pour out her confused despair to another woman, talk about and try to conquer the irrational panic that flooded her at a man's touch, but she was too proud to persist in breaking down Tjúni's reserve.

“I'd be glad to learn about wild foods,” she told the girl.

Santiago frowned. “If you're going to be roaming about, I'll leave my bow with you, Tjúni. You can shoot?”

“Better than my brothers,” she boasted, before she remembered what had become of them and her pretty mouth twisted. “Let me show you in the morning.”

Santiago got to his feet, wincing the slightest bit. These long days in the saddle must have pained his mutilated thigh, but though he sometimes cursed, he never complained.

“Well, let us hope I can find some foolhardy vaqueros at Tubac and not have to ride on toward Tucson! I can reach Tubac tomorrow, but Tucson must be fifty miles farther north.”

“Setting up excuses already in case you meet a pretty woman!” Shea growled.

“Pretty
and
willing,” Santiago retorted. “At least I can promise the vaqueros that changing the brands on our herd won't be onerous. The C needs only another curve to form an S!”

He picked up one of the mats and drifted into the next room. In a moment the others followed, except for Tjúni who said she preferred to sleep in the kitchen. Socorro paused before Guadalupana and asked her blessing on them and their new home. When she turned, Santiago and Shea stood beside her, heads bowed.

She put a hand in each of theirs and they stood like that, joined by her body, their closeness saying what none of them could put in words.

They had each survived a kind of death, had saved each other's lives and sanity. Closer and deeper than lovers, they were bound together.

“Do not fear, lady.” Santiago's voice was earnest. “This will be our home for many years. I
know
this.”

“May you be right, my friend!” She gave him an impulsive kiss on his smooth boy's cheek, then, too late, remembered Shea.

To him, wanting her as he did, a kiss like that would be an insult. She touched his cheek and said good night, miserably aware that it took iron control for him to keep his hands from her.

She must,
must
, get over her terror. Before he found solace in Tjúni or visited Tubac for the women used by the soldiers.

As she made her pallet in the roofless moonlit room, she wished she could carry it in, sleep close to Shea, even as close as they'd been on the journey. But walls were between them now, would be till she found a way to escape that stronger, cruler wall within herself.

Help me
, she prayed.
Blessed Mother, let me show my love when Shea comes back. But most of all, bring him back, and Santiago and Tjúni, though I cannot like her. Let my love be safe. Then, if I cannot give him what he, as a man, must have, help me accept his turning to another
.

She managed to mean the prayer while she breathed it, but seconds later she imagined Shea holding Tjúni as he had held her, uncovering that lithely curved warm body.

I can't bear it!
she thought as sharp blades seemed to twist through her body.
I'd want to kill them both!

Somehow she must teach that wailing mindless dread within her that Shea was her love, kind, tender. But when she tried to school herself through how it would be with him, how he would kiss and caress and hold her, when his hands touched her secret body they became the brutal gripping fingers of those laughing men who'd held her for each other's rutting.

Sitting up, she stared at the high white moon till the horror faded, then wept convulsively.

Next morning early, Santiago was off for Tubac, Shea went hunting, and the women started on their food gathering, armed with rawhide and woven straw bags as well as bows and arrows slung in rawhide cases over their shoulders, and knives sheathed at their waists.

“We're too late for acorns,” Tjúni regretted as they crossed the creek and started for the mountains. “But when there's more time, the piñon nuts should be ready higher up.” She pointed at cattails growing in a marshy place. “We can get those later. Be sure to slide your hand down in the mud beneath the root because that, and some of the stalk, is all that's good to eat this late in the year.”

Next she touched a low thick bush with jointed, slender stems. “That makes good tea and helps when one cannot pass water or when that hurts. The Pima powder it to put on all kinds of sores and it's supposed to be a cure for syphilis, though I think the best cure for that is not to get it in the first place!”

They passed several large black walnut trees since they were near the house and the nuts would keep. The wild grapes had been devoured by birds and animals; Tjúni muttered that the squawberries seemed to all be gone, and Socorro began to wonder if they were going to find anything for their bags. Well, at least there were cattails, tea, walnuts and sunflower seeds!

“Ah!” gloated Tjúni, stopping abruptly beside a vine-like plant that had numerous small straw-colored lanternlike fruits. “
Tomatillo!
If we find enough, these will make a very good preserve!”

Socorro found another bush and a little farther on, they found more. Tjúni was delighted that a shrub with thick, leathery leaves still had a few nuts on it. “Roasted and ground,
jojoba
makes a good coffee,” she said, going over the bush with great care. “
El Señor
must like coffee. All the blue-eyes do.”

“I like it myself,” said Socorro, though she much preferred chocolate.

Their next discovery kept them busy for over an hour, a dense mass of hackberry bushes. The birds had taken most of the easily reachable fruit but there were many of the small orange globes tucked deep down among the thorny branches.

Socorro popped a few in her mouth and enjoyed the sweet taste though the seed was so large there wasn't much flesh. Some berries were shriveling but Tjúni said to pick them anyway since, dried, they could be ground for a meal that added flavor to corn or gruels.

By now it was afternoon and they had traversed the sides of several small mountains, twining deeper into the wilderness. The berries had kept them from getting too thirsty but they were glad to find a spring breaking from a hollow in the side of a cliff. The spring trickled along the rocks, then plunged downward with a miniature roaring as if it fancied itself an awesome waterfall indeed.

But there seemed to be some other sound.

Straightening from her drink, Socorro listened. Tjúni was already peering over the ledge, keeping herself hidden by rocks and bushes. This time there was no mistaking the scream.

Or man laughter.

The sounds brought back to Socorro how it had been with the
Areneños
. Fighting back the sickness that twisted through her, she looked downward.

The spring ran through a small green basin protected on three sides by cliffs. It must have seemed a safe place to the Indian women, five of them, till the men appeared.

Two old women were already dead, throats sliced, kicked aside like refuse to make room for sport by the dead fire. Six men were busy with the three women they'd kept alive, holding them down for each other's convenience or taking their turn.

One woman lay as if unconscious or dead, one screamed and fought, and the other endured without a sound though the blond on her was huge, thrusting as if he were trying to split her open.

Socorro gripped Tjúni's arm, but Tjúni already had her bow strung. “Have arrows ready!” she hissed at Socorro. “Which you think you able to hit? Big yellow-hair? Maybe also one just getting up? You shoot them till you hit, then try for silver hair if I not got him!”

“But—what if we hit the women?”

“No matter.” Tjúni spat. “Apache! Hurry!”

Socorro's hands trembled as she readied the bow and nocked an arrow, sighting on the hulk of the blond, but then she steadied. If only someone had killed the
Areneños
when they were raping her, she would have gladly died at the same time. Besides, the scalp hunters would certainly murder their victims once they had their pleasure.

Help me, Mother!
It didn't seem sacrilegious to ask the Virgin's aid.

Two arrows hummed almost as one. Both struck. Tjúni's arrow took her man in the throat. He clawed, staggered backward, fell to his knees. By the time he was on his face, Tjúni's next arrow had toppled another of the standing men.

She aimed next for the bearded rangy one who had been holding the blond man's prey and now was springing up, running for the rifles stacked against a boulder. It took two arrows to bring him down and still he kept crawling.

“Finish him later,” Tjúni ordered. “Good, you finally stretch out the yellow-hair! Try not to use three arrows on the redhead!”

This man and another were running for the trees, not even trying to pick up rifles. They must have thought the women's men had returned, that they were surrounded by warriors.

The first silver-haired man ran in a zigzag. Tjúni was calling fervently on Iitoi, Elder Brother, but it took her fourth and last arrow to pierce him between the shoulders. He pitched forward and was still. Socorro hadn't been able to hit the redhead.

“Stop wasting arrows!” Tjúni panted, taking one from Socorro's sling.

She dropped the man before he reached the trees. And there was one arrow left for the man still wriggling on his belly toward the rifles.

“Too bad you throw away so many arrows!” Tjúni grunted. “Now we go down, cut Apache throats. But,” she added, gazing down at where one woman still lay as if dead, one lamented, and the other was slowly dragging herself to her feet, “they not give much trouble. And we kill little vermin in cradleboards so they no grow up to plague us!”

Leaving her bow by the food bags, Tjúni started carefully picking her way down crumbling rock overgrown with shrubs and small trees. Socorro, recovering from paralyzed shock at the other's intention, chose a more precipitous route and blocked her way.

“We aren't going to kill them!”

“What?” Now it was Tjúni's turn for shock. “Not kill Apache?” She shook her head in contemptuous wonder. “You crazy! Really crazy!”

As if brushing off a persistent fly, the Papago girl started on. “We will not do it!” Socorro sobbed, horror at the way they had just killed the men weakening her knees till she thought she was going to faint. “We're going to help them!”

Tjúni only laughed.

They were at the bottom of the cliff now. She was slipping the knife from its sheath. Socorro did the same. Planting herself in front of Tjúni, she said desperately, “You'll have to kill me before you kill them!”

Tjúni's pupils contracted. She stared at Socorro a long tense moment. “You crazy,” she shrugged at last. “Not much use. But I not like try tell
El Señor
why I alive when you dead!” She added venomously, “You be sorry when little babies now make warriors, come raiding!”

Ignoring the Apache women, Tjúni, back stiff with outrage, set about salvaging arrows and stripping the men of knives, valuables and usable clothing.

The woman who hadn't screamed was young and comely, dressed in finest buckskin though it was now bloody and soiled. “You kill bad men?” she asked in Spanish that was at least as good as Tjúni's.

Socorro nodded and motioned toward Tjúni. “The same men killed her family.”

The Apache woman said in scorn, “Cheap trick, sell Papago scalps for Apache!”

Dangling a gold watch from its chain, Tjúni glanced up. Her eyes glinted dangerously. “Except for this Papago, you be dead!”

“You have right.” Apache faced Papago and Socorro understood, chilling, that they embodied implacable hostilities going back hundreds of years, existing long before her own Spanish ancestors set foot in this country. “We owe you life, Desert People woman,” continued the Apache. “I, Luz, swear men of our band never harm you.”

“That,” retorted Tjúni, “like saying one wolf out of many leave you alone!”

The other looked as if she'd say something, checked it, and came to kneel by the victim who had screamed. Socorro was already holding the girl gently, coaxing her to drink from a gourd that had been nearby. It was easy to see why she'd lacked the stoic control of the older woman. She was scarcely more than a child.

Luz spoke to her harshly. The girl's weeping dulled into wrenching gasps as she struggled for control.

“Be grateful you too young to conceive by those devils!” Luz admonished in Spanish.

Accepting the cloth Socorro ripped from her skirt, Luz wet it from the gourd and began to wash the child's scratched and bloody legs, speaking softly now in Apache, hands deft and careful in spite of the pain she herself must be feeling.