The Valiant Women (15 page)

Socorro moved to the unstirring body just beyond, tried to lift the woman. Her neck was broken. Socorro pulled down her skirt, turned at a squeal from a cradleboard.

Thank heaven the babies, three of them, were unharmed! Then she sucked in her breath. On the other side of the boulder where the rifles were, two small bodies lay like broken toys.

Running to them, Socorro groaned, leaned on the rock to vomit. The two naked boys, three or four years old from the size of them, had been dashed against the boulder. Their thin skulls were cracked. Brains oozed over them and the ground.

Tjúni, returned from recouping arrows from the men who'd almost reached the trees, stared down at the children without expression.

“The man who run fast, he gone. Smart. Stay on rock, leave no trail.” She shrugged. “No matter. He die with that arrow through him.” She surveyed the rifles with gratified approval, nodded toward the trees. “Horses and pack mules back there. We load on rifles, good things, go home!” She laughed exultantly, gave the stripped body near her a kick that sent it flopping. “Now my people rest quiet! My little sister have peace!”

“Yes.”

Socorro's numb horror must have shown in her face for Tjúni scowled. “You not glad? If not for revenge, so men now not need go hunt these?” She gestured at the grotesque sprawls.

True. Now Shea and Santiago wouldn't have to go after the scalpers. Relief lifted some of the weight from Socorro's heart. She felt as if she breathed again.

Moving back to Luz and the girl, Socorro said, “Do you want to come to our house?”

“Why?” returned Luz. She had washed and held herself proudly. Her broad forehead and high, pronounced cheekbones gave her face wild, hawklike beauty. “Our men will come here.”

It didn't seem right to leave her and the girl like this. “Let me at least help you with the bodies,” Socorro said. “There are the children—”

“Yes. They belong Suni, she of broken neck. It her husband's right decide where to bury them.” She prodded with her toe the huge blond man Socorro had killed. “It be good for warriors whose wives or mothers dead to have these carcasses to carve on.”

That thought sickened Socorro. “We'll go then,” she said.

Luz stepped after her. “Where you live, that I tell our men to spare it?”

“It is the ranch once called Agua Linda, in a broad valley above the creek.”

Luz nodded. “I know it. You safe at least from Mimbres who follow Mangus Coloradas. He my uncle.”

“Mangus! Your uncle?” Tjúni, who'd come over to collect some of her piles of booty, stared transfixed.

Even Socorro, in Los Alamos, had heard of the giant Apache who was the terror of his enemies from the northern mountains and New Mexican settlements to deep into the Sierra Madre, from Durango to Sonora.

“My uncle,” said Luz pridefully. Unable to resist a jab at the Papago girl, she added, “He not one wolf of many! None like him, not even Cochise of Chiricahuas who is married to one of his daughters. Even where he not chief, he important, for gave another daughter to big Coyotero chief, Cosito, another daughter to Navajo headman.”

Tjúni had nothing to say to that. She only gazed at Luz with a mixture of awe and loathing, then turned brusquely to Socorro.

“You bring food down? Then we go, get home by dark.”

“Wait!” cried Luz. “Our men come!”

IX

Laughing and jesting, a dozen Apache came out of the trees. Each wore a breechclout with buckskin leggings tucked into boots that reached variously from hip to thigh and most had buckskin shirts though a few wore cotton ones. The long black hair of some of them fell below their knees and all wore headcloths. Four of them carried a deer, tied by its legs to a pole.

Dragged and shoved among the last was a prisoner. He tried stubbornly to keep his feet and made no answer to taunting howls and plans of how they would amuse themselves with him.

“Shea!” Socorro cried and ran forward in the same moment that Tjúni gasped, “
El Señor!
” and the warriors saw the dead scattered about.

One gave a stricken cry, ran to the crumpled small bodies beside the boulder. Another made a sound of smothered outrage, whirling on Shea, knife upraised.

Luz shouted. The warrior with the knife froze.

“He's ours!” Socorro cried. “If you're grateful for this day, save him, Luz!”

There was confusion, some men dropping beside wives or mothers, others already hacking the scalp hunters' heads off, cutting away their privates.

Luz stood shieldingly in front of Shea and told her husband, a tall young eagle, what had happened. Tjúni's fear of the Apache men drove her to join Socorro and Luz.

Then amid the mourning and sounds of vengeance, silence fell. An Apache who towered over Shea by several inches came into the clearing. Luz left her husband and hurried up to him, speaking urgently.

His glance swept the basin, seeming to note each body. A muscle jerked in his dark cheek when he saw the broken children, seemed to relax a trifle when he saw the undisturbed babies in their cradleboards. His dark eyes came back to Socorro and Tjúni.

“You saved my niece, the girl, the babies,” he said in Spanish. “I give you your man and protection for your rancho and anything you own. I cannot, you understand, speak for all Apache, but I will make it known to all, Pinal, Mogollon, Tonto, Mescalero, Gila and Coyotero, that Mangus will look at a raid on you as one on himself.”

In that ravaged country, his promise offered more safety than any presidio. With his own hands, he untied the rawhide cutting into Shea's wrists, said with a half-smile, “As well as your life, Hair of Flame, you also get to keep your deer!”

“You have it,” Shea said. “I'm glad to leave its carcass instead of my own.”

Mangus's lips didn't flicker at the absurdity of anyone making a gift of game to his peerless marksmen. He thanked Shea gravely, turned as a warrior led up two of the pack mules, speaking to Mangus in Apache.

Turning, Mangus said to Shea, “It is right that you have the animals and belongings of these dogs, but we would keep some of the rifles and any scalps they may have taken.”

“You're welcome to the horses and mules, great Mangus, and everything else
except
the scalps and rifles.” Shea spoke in a firm, pleasant way, though he was bruised and marked by his recent handling.

Mangus didn't remind Shea that he was in no position to deny his recent captors anything. “Why do you say this?”

“You would use the rifles for raiding.”

“Ah,” laughed Mangus. “What if we promised to use these guns only for hunting or to defend ourselves, for instance when we are asked to parley with the whites? White hospitality to Apache has often been like that given Juan José, who came before me as chief of the Mimbres. A supposed friendly trader invited him and his people to come for gifts. The gift was a loaded howitzer. Johnson, the trader, collected the bounty on twenty-five scalps.”

“We need three rifles,” Shea said. “You are welcome to the others if I have your word they will be used only for hunting—and when you accept invitations from the whites.”

“I will give that word,” said Mangus. He looked bemused by Shea's incredible boldness, rather like a mountain lion defied by its prey. “And the other rifles shall go only to men who will swear the same.” His eyes glinted. “We have not done badly, after all, at keeping out the whites with lances, arrows and a few old flintlocks. Besides, Hair of Flame, there will be other whites with other good rifles!”

Shrugging, the Irishman said, “That's as may be.”

Mangus's face hardened. “Why do you want the scalps? To collect the bounty? In my own camp, you've told me what I cannot do, and now I say to you surely that these scalps, which must be of my people, shall not be sold for money!”

“If they were of your people, you should have them,” Shea agreed. “But unless these men made a fast trip to Hermosillo, most of the scalps came from a Mexican rancho and a Papago
ranchería
.” He indicated Tjúni. “Her family was killed. So were the family and friends of my partner. We may not be able to tell which scalps are whose, but all of them will be buried with respect.”

“We will have a look,” said Mangus, striding toward a mule and starting to undo the pack. “If the hair looks Papago or Mexican, we don't want it.”

Tjúni's eyes flashed but Socorro laid a warning hand on her arm. “Apache hair is much longer than most Mexican or Papago,” Mangus went on.

“He should know!” hissed Tjúni under her breath.

“I do know, little Desert Woman,” returned Mangus equably.

Her breast heaved a moment and then she muttered to Socorro that she couldn't bear to watch an Apache handle her family's scalps, so she would go after their food bags and bows.

The pack and
aparejos
of the first mule held food and equipment, but in a bag in the pack of the second mule were many scalps. Mangus pulled them out, laying them carefully on the grass, assessing each with a practiced eye.

“Strange,” he said at last, staring down at the grisly pile. “I had thought I could tell at once an Apache scalp from Papago or Mexican, but while it is true that some of these could not be Apache, many of them might be! No wonder the Mexican officials are so often cheated into paying bounty on their own kind!”

“How many are there?” Shea asked. “At the rancho, there were twenty-five, and from the
ranchería
, thirty-one. Fifty-six in all.”

A musty smell came from the scalps as Shea and Mangus counted. “Sixty.” Shaking his head, Shea got to his feet and his hands clenched. “My God! On just one excursion!”

Mangus said harshly, “Do not forget, without your women, there would be eleven more scalps in that bag. You may keep them. It would seem only four scalps were added to those of the Mexicans and Papago. Maybe Apache, maybe not, but you have said they will have respect.”

Mangus kept the horses, three rifles and some of the provisions, but he told his women's rescuers to take the mules and the clothing and supplies the Apache didn't need.

“Also,” he said, with a slight twinkle, “you need some decent arrows, some with quills. If you have to protect a camp of mine again, I prefer you be equipped to do it properly!”

Several dozen arrows were collected and added to the bloody ones in the women's slings. Warriors rearranged the packs, including the food bags Tjúni had fetched from the cliff, and fastened the deer to the more lightly loaded mule.

Socorro wanted to tell Luz goodbye, but when she looked around for her, trying not to see what was happening to the scalpers' bodies, Luz, with great enjoyment, was cutting off the genitals of the blond who had raped her.

The camp resembled a butcher's, a
carnicería
, quarters of men scattered about, heads impaled, the hats placed on them. Already some of these were being used for targets.

Shuddering, Socorro turned away, plunged into the trees, knowing only that she had to get out of this place. With a long stride, Mangus was beside her.

“You hate this, my sister, yet your heart was strong to save. I know the Desert People woman would have gladly killed my niece and the others. That is fair enough. I have killed her kind often, and will again. You do not belong to this country. Get Hair of Flame to take you to some gentler place, some country far from raiders and blood.”

“You are kind, great Mangus.” She lifted her head and looked him in the face, finding him savagely beautiful, all virile male, one she could have acknowledged as her master, though till now she had pitied the beautiful Mexican captive he had taken for a wife and by whom he had the daughters he had so strategically married off. “But all of us have met disasters in our own places. With the help of God, we will make a home here.”

“You will find my protection greater than your God's in this land, sister. Go in peace, then. May you live long and well.”

As he faded back, Shea said, “You are always welcome at Rancho del Socorro, Mangus.” At the other's amused glance, he grinned and corrected himself. “So long as you're not raiding our neighbors!”

“I will remember,” Mangus said. Then he was gone from sight.

They were beginning to worry about Santiago when he rode in on the fourth day after his departure, dejectedly saying even as he got out of the saddle that no vaqueros from around Tubac or Tucson would join him for any consideration. More, the commanders at the presidios had told him roundly that if he and his friends were crazy enough to settle in that abandoned region, they needn't expect help from the military who already had more than they could do to defend settlers located near them.

“Cowards!” jeered Tjúni. “Wait till they learn we have the protection of Mangus Coloradas! The presidios will want to move here to share
our
safety!”

“What is this?” Santiago frowned.

Even after they had explained, he was still dumbfounded. “
You
killed the scalp hunters?” he demanded, looking dazedly from Tjúni to Socorro. “The ones who murdered my people?”

“Tjúni killed all but one,” said Socorro.

Shea's mouth quirked down, pulling his scarred cheek. “
Chiquita
,” he said whimsically, “I do not think that even here you must apologize because you're not good at killing!”

“I have a thing to say.” Tjúni drew herself up proudly. “I wait so Santiago hear, too. I want kill Apache women, babies.
She
say no.” The confession was difficult. Tjúni gulped before she went on. “Do as I want, when Mangus come with
El Señor
, we all die.” The girl turned to Socorro. “You no good at many things but I not call crazy again!”

Shea cast Socorro an astonished look. She hadn't told him, seeing no reason to make herself sound falsely heroic. She hadn't for a moment really thought Tjúni would kill her and how could she possibly have let the girl kill the maltreated Apache women?