The Valiant Women (16 page)

“It's over,” Socorro said quickly. “Let's forget the whole awful thing—except that Mangus is our friend.”

“We wait for you to bury scalps,” Tjúni told Santiago. “Maybe you want to see if you know some?”

The happy surprise washed from his face. “No. Let us do it quickly.”

Socorro made him eat first. Then they all went out to find a proper place for burial. It troubled Socorro, the sad remnants of so many human beings being interred at the ranch. She hoped it was no portent of things to come. But she was glad that Santiago and Tjúni would know their people's scalps weren't decorating some official's office or exhibited as curiosities.

Tjúni chose the eastern side of the long hill behind the house. Since there was no way to tell what scalps were whose, except for some curly ones that Santiago recognized, Tjúni and Socorro had wrapped all of them in a soft rebozo.

The men were looking for a place where the rocky soil looked possible to dig when Tjúni cried, “Here's a little cave! Let's use it.”

Santiago placed the bundle in the shallow grotto. Tjúni put in some late sunflowers and Socorro added sweet grasses. The men rolled a boulder in front and they all added rocks till nothing could penetrate the barrier.

Santiago dropped to his knees. Shea and Socorro knelt beside him. “Will you say something? Out loud?” asked the young vaquero.

It was important to him, so Shea, though embarrassed, spoke clearly, “O God, you have all these Your children in Your keeping. We pray the Holy Mother will play with the small ones and hold them in her arms, for they were very young. And we pray You comfort those who mourn and do not let us become stony of heart because of how and where we live.”

He led a Hail, Mary!, Santiago and Socorro joining. But Tjúni didn't kneel. She gazed instead toward where the scalp hunters' heads must be rotting on their posts.

There had been coffee beans in the scalpers' packs, hard brown sugar
piloncillos
and very salty fat bacon as well as beans and corn meal. The bacon had to be used and provided much needed grease, but the coffee and sugar cones were hoarded against some future feast.

Another treasure, disdained by the Apache who'd culled the packs before they were turned over to Shea and the women, was the woolen socks and there were some pretty blue beads which the men must have used to entice women when it was inexpedient to rape, kill and scalp them.

Tjúni asked for these and Socorro was glad for her to have them though strangely she never wore them. Maybe they, too, were being saved for a fiesta. The cooking things would be useful as would the serapes, clothing and extra horseshoes and nails.

But the great windfall was, of course, the rifles. All were 1841 percussion and Shea, handling one in amazed delight, explained its superiority.

“First place, it has a grooved bore which spins the bullet. That makes its flight straighter and longer. But the real joy is getting away from those damned flintlocks! When it's raining, or the powder's wet, you're out of luck.”

“Of course.” Santiago frowned. “How else can it be?”

Shea held out one of a number of linen-wrapped objects packed into a metal box. “These percussion caps are the secret. They're waterproof, full of powder that kicks off at the impact of the trigger. A whole new world in shooting, lad!”

Santiago's eyes lit eagerly and he picked up one of the rifles, handled it as if it were a mysterious, exquisitely desirable woman. “You will show me this?”

“Yes, first time we hunt.” Shea viewed the stack of percussion cap boxes with satisfaction. “We have a good supply but eventually we'll have to get more. Better use our bows as much as we can. But, God's whiskers! What a difference these would make in a fight!” At the looks on Tjúni's and Santiago's faces, Shea flushed and sucked in his breath. “Sorry! I forgot—”

“
De nada
.” Santiago shrugged. “One cannot always look over one's shoulder at the past. We have fine rifles now and they will serve us well.” He went on meditatively, “I wonder if the Yanqui soldiers who passed through Tucson last December had such weapons.”

“If they were like Taylor's army, some did and some didn't,” grunted Shea. “I'm glad those damned Yanquis went on to California and it's hoping I am they'll never come back!”

The war was over. He'd the same as seen it end with his own eyes when the flag was run up at Chapultepec and the last San Patricios were left dangling. But what the terms were, how much land the United States would exact from its beaten adversary, probably hadn't been settled yet and might not be for some time. It was a long border between the two countries, much of it Apache-dominated wilderness.

“Surely the Yanquis will never claim Sonora below the Gila!”

“They will if they want it!” Shea said gloomily.

“The talk in Tucson was that this Captain St. George Cooke had orders to find a wagon road route to California,” was Santiago's uncomforting remark. “His men were ragged and very tired; they came from some fort far east of Santa Fe, near the other end of the merchant caravans' Santa Fe Trail. And they were called Saints! Did you know such men in the army?”

“Sure never knew any saints! Did these live up to their name?”

“They behaved very well. The commander of the presidio took his command and left till this Cooke and his Saints, nearly four hundred of them, moved on after a few days.” He shook his head reflectively. “The men were not supposed to drink or use tobacco. They were not even permitted, by their religion, to take tea or coffee. Further, they may have as many wives as they can provide for! Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

“Most men can't handle one female. Listen, youngling, I think the folks at the presidio took in earnest what the soldiers told them for jokes!”

“You mean the force you were with wasn't like that?”

Shea thought of his sergeant who never went to bed sober if he could possibly avoid it, chewed tobacco constantly, and raised hell with the cook if plenty of strong black coffee wasn't always ready. “Laddie, I was in both armies and I haven't yet met a soldier who didn't drink!”

“The Saints didn't play cards or swear, either.”

That was too much. “Didn't swear?” roared Shea. “Now I know you're making it up or those Tucson people lie like tinkers! No one can be a soldier and
not
swear!” He had to swallow hard to force back a demonstration.

Santiago grinned wickedly. “I'm sure you swear magnificently,” he soothed. “I look forward, when we're working the cattle, to learning many new words!” He sobered. “It was also said that Mangus Coloradas parleyed with Cooke's commander, a General Kearney, near the Santa Rita mines a few months before Cooke brought his men through Tucson.”

“What happened?” Socorro pressed. The huge Indian had captured her imagination and in spite of his fearful deeds, she had an unwilling sympathy for him.

“Mangus is supposed to have suggested that he form an alliance with the Americans to fight the Mexicans.”

“What?” gasped Shea.

With a lift of one shoulder, Santiago said, “It must have seemed reasonable enough to Mangus. He knew the United States was fighting Mexico. What he couldn't understand was that the war would end, it wouldn't go on for hundreds of years like the one between Mexicans and Apache.”

Shea's eyebrow climbed. “And what did this General Kearney say to that?”

“He told Mangus he wanted peace with the Apache but that Apaches couldn't raid New Mexicans anymore without getting American soldiers after them. He tried to tell Mangus that New Mexico had been conquered by the United States and was now part of it.”

“God's whiskers! What Mangus must have thought about that!”

“Yes. He told the general that the land belonged to
his
people, that they were willing to be friendly with the Americans so long as they themselves were unmolested, but that they would never make peace with the Mexicans.”

Shea said grimly, “Never's a long time.”

There was much to do before winter, the most important thing being to get the roof on the house. Since it would take adobe weeks to dry properly, the men salvaged serviceable mud bricks from several sheds and mortared them to build up the house walls to their former height. While they did this, the women gathered ocotillo to use on top of the roof poles before long coarse sacaton grass and a final covering of liquid adobe were added.

Tjúni and Socorro were also busy gathering food, both to eat and store. The deer Shea had killed had been sliced for jerky except for what would keep fresh. For a few days they feasted on venison and then were quite ready to live on corn and beans varied with wild foods.

The men, in fact, took to eagerly saying, “What's new today?” though the
tomatillo
preserves, made with honey and the hulled fruit, were much more popular than a mush of grass seeds.

Roasted and ground
jojoba
nuts extended with browned corn meal made a pleasant morning drink and though the joint fir tea had a sort of smoky flavor that took getting used to, it was quite good with honey.

Out among the sunflowers they'd found a few volunteer pumpkin and squash, starting to shrivel a bit but still all right for cooking and drying. They saved some seeds for spring planting but dried the rest, roasting the pumpkin seeds along with those of the sunflower, some of which were ground into meal.

“Let's have some
pipián
,” Santiago suggested when he saw the drying squash seeds.

The only lard they had was rendered from fat bacon. Putting some of this in a fry pan acquired from the scalpers' packs, he added chilis, seeded and torn into bits, chopped garlic and the seeds, frying them till the seeds were toasted. He mashed this mixture, then added honey, water and sunflower seed meal.

“If you'll stir this till it's thick,” he told the women, “it'll make that old javelina I shot yesterday taste nice as young suckling.”

It almost did.

Socorro was astounded at the different ways to eat the cattails they collected, groping deep in the mud to secure all the root. These had to be kept damp for peeling so each woman carried her harvest in a rawhide bag of water.

“Where'd you get potatoes?” Shea demanded that evening, sampling the crisply browned fried chips and then eating them with relish. He could scarcely believe the tasty dish came from cattails. “And they're even salty!” he exclaimed. “I don't like fat bacon much, but it sure helps as flavoring.” He sighed. “I'll bet those scalpers had salt in their provisions, but I guess Mangus just couldn't part with it.”

“He did leave the coffee,” Socorro pointed out.

“I'm not complaining,” laughed Shea, and reached for more fried root.

The women also made flour from the peeled, dried roots, chopped and ground fine with the stringy fibers removed. “In the spring, new leaf tips good,” explained Tjúni. “Then green bloom spike. Later, pollen.” She smacked her lips. “Pollen sweet, rich. Good in cakes or mush or soup.”

Socorro shook her head in wonder. “It's lucky you know all this!” she said. “It helps us save our beans and corn and tastes different and good.”

“How I not know?” demanded Tjúni. “My people in this country since Elder Brother make and put us here.”

She had said nothing about leaving. Though she and Socorro were almost constantly together, the Papago girl treated Socorro with polite distance. She made no more belittling remarks but continued to call her “lady” or nothing at all. Though she seemed to be trying to school her eyes not to follow Shea, rest on him when he couldn't notice, Socorro still caught flashes of longing in Tjúni's expression and there was no mistaking the way her voice, matter-of-fact if not aggressive to Socorro and Santiago, warmed and softened when she spoke to the tall Irishman.

He treated her like a child, which, Socorro thought with unwilling sympathy, must be absolutely maddening.

After the heavy roof poles were mortared in place, the women handed up ocotillo stalks to the men who stood on crude ladders. The closer these were placed, the better, and it took several days. Next the women handed up bunches of sacaton grass, and after that was evenly spread, adobe soft enough to be molded was spread over the top and pressed down hard with hands and pole ends.

“I think we've earned coffee!” Shea announced, stretching as he got down from the ladder after the adobe was on.

Later, after it had dried, a thinner mixture would go on to fill the cracks and even the level so that there'd be no hollows to collect water and turn the adobe back to mud. The main chore was done, though. They had a roof.

X

And their first celebration. It was as if they'd been running hard and could ease up a little.

The men went hunting and brought back a deer and several quail. Tjúni plucked the birds, cleaned them, stuffed them with seeds and herbs and baked them in a layer of clay. The men laid aside the tenderer cuts of venison and jerked the rest, saving the brains for tanning and stretching the hide to dry beside that of the one Shea had almost lost to the Apaches.

Socorro roasted a handful of coffee beans, ground them fine and carefully scraped every grain to go into the coffee pot, also from the scalpers' trove of exotic goods. Though coffee had not been habitually used in her father's home, it was kept for entertaining visiting merchants who'd acquired a taste for it among the Yanquis.

How good some chocolate would be, whipped to froth and spiced with cinnamon! Would she ever taste it again? Socorro laughed in surprise at the sudden intensity of desire for such a fleshly, trifling indulgence.

“What's funny?” Shea asked.

His deep blue eyes danced and she guiltily realized there was little merriment in the house except for what Santiago created. Laughter was good medicine. She must try to bring more of it into their lives. But it was hard to joke or act foolish with Tjúni watching.