The Valiant Women (28 page)

“Now that Pedro Sanchez is in charge at El Charco, he thinks his daughters should marry better than plain vaqueros,” Belen explained. He shook his big head sympathetically. “So my poor friend Chuey will save all his wages and perhaps, when he's seventy, he can marry that pretty little quail.”

Glancing at Santiago, who nodded, Shea said, “We think it's fair for you men, who're waiting for your pay till we get some money, to have a bonus. From now on, you can put your own brand on every twentieth one you find. Of course, when they calve, you can brand the yearlings.”

Chuey's dark eyes widened. “I can have cows?”

Though Shea laughed, there was an undertone of old bitterness in his voice and Talitha remembered that he'd been very poor in that green distant island where he came from. Though how could people be poor in a place where there was water and crops would grow?

“If
I
can have cows,” he told the vaquero, “why not you? It's all by the grace of God and the wrath of the Apache.”

“Have you thought on this?” Belen asked gravely. “With three Sanchez men branding, they'll get a lot of cattle. And,
patrón
, it would be only human to take a few more or at least to pick the best cattle.”

“That's up to you men,” Shea said. “Santiago and I think you'll be fair with us, as we are trying to be with you.”

Dazzled by the prospect, Chuey dreamed aloud. “Why, I may be a ranchero myself! Anita's father couldn't look down his nose at me then!”

“You'd better stay right where you are,” cautioned Belen dryly. “Under Rancho del Socorro's protection, till the Apache are tamed, which may be never!”

“If you marry, we'll build you a house far enough from Belen so his snoring won't bother your bride,” offered Santiago. He grinned. “It may be that by the time you're ready to start your own ranch you'll have enough fine sons to spare a couple to work at Socorro.”

Shea turned to Belen. “Don't you have a woman you'd like to bring up here?”

Belen's swarthy face creased as he seemed to ponder. “There is no woman—now,” he said. “With permission, until there is a change, I'll brand my cows for the
doncellita
.” This was his special name for Talitha. It meant “little maiden.”

“No need for that,” frowned Shea. “Talitha will have equal shares with our blood children. James, too, if he doesn't stay with the Apache.”

Talitha had never thought about such things, or about what would happen to her when she grew up. She didn't want things to change. It was wonderful to live with Shea and Socorro and have James so young that nasty old Juh wouldn't try to take him away.

“I don't need any cows,” she said almost desperately. “I just want to stay at the ranch forever and ever!”

Shea laid his big hand soothingly against her cheek, gave a surprised chuckle. “Why, for sure you'll stay, Tally, as long as you want though it won't be many years till you'll draw men like a lode of gold.”

She shook her head. There'd never be a young man she'd love as she did him, no face that could have for her the beauty of his branded one. Life without him would be like never seeing or feeling the sun again. She would die in darkness.

He laughed with perplexity, raised a shoulder and let it drop. “All the same, till Belen wants to brand for himself, take what he offers. It won't hurt to have your own herd building.”

The next evening Belen, as he came in for supper, produced two narrow inch-long bits of what looked like short-haired leather. “Your first
señales, doncellita
.” He bowed, presenting them to her. “I didn't brand forty cows, but Don Patrick added one so you'd start with a pair.”

Talitha stared at the pieces of ear which each represented a cow. It gave her a strange feeling, gratifying, yet with a kind of heaviness, to own something, especially something alive. Shea grinned down at her.

“You're on your way to being a
patrona
, Tally. Your Cross T went on the two best heifers we roped today.”

With a bit of charcoal he showed her how the brand looked, a T with the cross bar lowered slightly. “Like one of Cortez' crosses,” remarked Socorro.

“The notch is cut out of the very tip of the ear,” added Belen. “When you see one like that from the unbranded side, you'll still be able to tell it's yours.”

Tally looked at the
señales
. “If I'm going to have cattle, I should learn to work them. I need to help Socorro till the baby comes, but next fall I want to help with the branding.”

“
Doncellita!
” Belen choked with laughter. “Will you wrestle a steer down then, hold him to the ground?”

“I'm not big enough for that yet,” she said gravely. “But I can cut
señales
and learn to brand.”

She swallowed at the last words, remembering again how the iron had seared Shea's face. But it didn't hurt animals much when properly done, Santiago had assured her, singeing off the hair and burning the thick hide just enough to leave a mark. She straightened her shoulders and gazed up at the three men. “I should learn to do everything. James will be too little to help for a long time and the new baby will be even younger.”

“There's going to be plenty for you to do in the house,” began Shea, but Santiago cut him off.

“
Bueno!
But such a
vaquerita
must have her own horse.” He considered her, challenge mixed with admiration in his golden eyes. “And will you learn also the taming of horses?”

She found the mustangs frightening, But, having decided that if she were going to be treated as a true child of the O'Sheas she must deserve it, Talitha gulped and said, “I'll learn the best I can.”

“No one can do more,” the vaquero assured her. “Well, then, when we're through with branding, you and your horse can learn together.”

“Thank you,” said Talitha.

Going into the
sala
, she stood on tiptoe and put the
señales
in the niche beside her doll. Her first cattle!

All through the winter the men would make sorties into the cañons and mountain valleys to look for more offspring of long-strayed cattle, but by October they'd finished the principal branding. There were thirteen hundred head wearing the S and Tally's pile of
señales
now numbered eight.

The mines wanted a hundred head, and the Sanchezes, with Shea along so his fiery hair would identify them as Mangus's protected whites, drove the other hundred culls to Tubac where they were eagerly purchased. At three pesos a head, there were six hundred silver pesos, and even after the vaqueros were given their back pay, there was a rich clinking in the leather bags stored beneath Shea's and Socorro's bed.

Shea was far from happy, though, with what he'd found at Tubac. “Yanquis!” he growled, as if he didn't look like one himself. “A whole column of U.S. Army dragoons! They say they're just passing through on the way to California, but you can bet they'll be back, or more like them!”

Socorro paled, hand flying to her throat. “Soldiers! Did they—”

He shook his head. “The commander was drunk and trying to seduce a couple of girls. Besides, one thing about Juh's little present, it's blotched the first brand till no one could guess what it was. Guess I can thank him for that since it looks like we're going to have the U.S. Army on the prowl.”

“So the presidio was garrisoned?” asked Santiago.

“Mostly with Pimas and Apaches
de paz
, in fact out of the two hundred forty-nine people living around Tubac, I'd guess there to be two or more Indians to every Mexican. While the dragoons were there, this Apache chief from around Tucson gave all the Indians quite a speech about how they must not steal from the Americans or give them any trouble.”

“You sound annoyed that the chief didn't urge a massacre,” teased Santiago. “Were there any Mexicans or soldiers at Tumacácori?”

“Not a one, but the Pimas are taking care of the church. Poor devils! They must wonder why the Faith was sent to them if they're to have no help in keeping it.”

“I wish we could see a priest, too,” Socorro said in a way that caused Shea to put his arm protectively around her.

“I wish so, lass, but for the past four years or so the priest from San Ignacio, far to the south, has ridden up when he could get an escort and once or twice a year baptizes and marries people at Tumacácori, Tubac and Tucson. I gave a cow to an honest-looking Pima at Tumacácori and asked him to bring us word next time the priest comes.”

Her eyes lit like candles. “Thank you,
querido
. It is true we're married before God and in our hearts, but I wish it could be done by a priest and written in the parish archives. Especially when we will have a baby.”

Unnoticed, Talitha blinked at these puzzling words. People couldn't have babies, surely, unless they were married? But she didn't understand the religion of her new family. Catholics, apparently, didn't have enough priests, but among the Mormons, every man in good standing was a priest.

Talitha felt sad and vaguely angry that her adoptive parents seemed to need something from their church which it demanded yet didn't furnish the means of getting. She suddenly decided that she wouldn't tell James very much about the Scotts' religion. Religion just seemed to make life harder. Mormons had been killed and hounded out of different places because of their faith, persecuted by people who had a different one.

But Shea was telling how the presidio feared attacks and how fifteen Tucson soldiers had been killed last summer at a watering hole. It had been two months before their bodies were brought in for burial.

“What you mean is that things are normal,” Santiago shrugged. “I do not love the Yanquis, but if they could stop this raiding, I could wish them here permanently.”

“They'll be here soon enough,” Shea said grimly and his fingers went to the blotched D on his cheek.

Talitha knew she was American and that her father had belonged to the army which had burned Shea on the face. That had been a wicked thing and she was guiltily ashamed.

How mixed it was! She had to tell James about Nauvoo and Winter Quarters, how pretty Mother had looked dancing. But the man she'd danced with wasn't James's father. And if Jared Scott had been in Mexico he might have been one of the soldiers who'd had to hurt Shea. Talitha was glad that at least that hadn't happened!

So later that day she told James how in March of '46, after fleeing Nauvoo, the Mormons moved on in snow, mud and rain, wagons miring down, axletrees breaking.

“Mother had to sell our feather beds,” she said to her dark-skinned blue-eyed brother who lay on a cowhide playing with a cornshuck while she ground mesquite beans for stew. “She traded her big bowls and pretty cups to a farmer's wife for some corn. The people in Iowa were nice, not like the bad ones in Illinois, and they liked to hear our band play. It sounded so pretty, James! Maybe someday you'll get to hear a band.”

She thought about that awhile, sighing as she wondered if she herself ever would again, or hear a fiddler, or dance. How lovely to whirl and dip and laugh as Mother had with Daddy! But more and more, when she tried to recall Jared Scott, she saw Shea instead.

“And then, James, after taking a whole month to wade a hundred miles of mud, we came to Mount Pisgah. The main party went on but some of us stayed there and planted inside a big field Daddy helped split rails to fence. There was a big arbor of brush and poles. And that was where Mother danced the last time with Daddy.” She paused, frowning with the effort of remembering. “You see, an officer came wanting five hundred of our men to join the army and go fight the Mexicans. Brigham thought that was a good idea since the pay could go to the church and help the Saints get to the Promised Land.”

General Kearney had already left Santa Fe when the Mormons got there, but Major Philip St. George Cooke had been sent back to command them and lead them in finding a possible wagon route to California.

“Mother got sick in Santa Fe,” Talitha mourned. “And Major Cooke said lots of the men were too old or puny to soldier. He left over a hundred of them in Santa Fe. My uncle and grandfather stayed and when Mother got well, they said we should go with the other Mormons back to Iowa, but Mother cried and said we could catch up with the Battalion it we hurried.”

Talitha choked off, seeing again the broken burned bodies of her uncle and grandfather. “Mother didn't dream what would happen, James. You mustn't blame her! She just loved Daddy so much and wanted to find him—”

Which made Talitha wonder. Had her father reached California? Where was he now? The war was over. He'd try to find his family but the most anyone could tell him was that they'd left Santa Fe following the tracks of Major Cooke's wagons.

Talitha felt dimly sorry for Jared Scott but didn't want him to look for her. He belonged to that life when he and Mother had danced. Now Mother was dead and how could her husband want the son of Juh?

Blinking, Talitha cracked more hard mesquite beans and ground them savagely. “James,” she said so sharply that he tensed and gave her an inquiring stare. “I'll tell you about our mother and Nauvoo and Mount Pisgah. But not much about Jared Scott. Or that mean old Juh! Shea's your daddy! You don't need anyone else.”

XVI

Santiago and Chuey had lassoed the dun
potro
or gelding, got the horsehair hackamore or
haquima
on him, and forcing his head around to his thigh, Chuey took a rounded club and hit the bent neck repeatedly.

Talitha sucked in her breath and slipped into the corral. “Santiago! That hurts him!”

“Get back!” Santiago told her.

He and Chuey pulled the gelding's head the other way and used the club again. Belen, who was watching, put a hand on Talitha's shoulder, steered her back outside the corral gate.