The Valiant Women (4 page)

“Do not try to talk if it hurts you. But I should like to know who you are, where you come from.”

He told her the barest facts in between swallows of water, gruel and the wild strawberry-tasting cactus fruits which she softened for him with a stick.

“Now,” he said at last, trying to grin, but finding his face muscles wouldn't work, “reckon—if you'll help—I can make that water hole.”

If he'd been able to stand upright, she'd have fitted under his arm. As it was, she put her arm determinedly about his waist and he sort of folded over her. Good thing he was starved way down from his usual 170 pounds. Even so, they made the trip in stages and when she finally eased him down beneath what was a big tree for that country, he was so done in that he couldn't thank her in words; but he brushed her cheek.

She shrank away, terror flaring in her eyes. He cursed himself. Must remember what she'd gone through. She shouldn't have to wonder if she'd saved a wild beast who'd hurt her when its strength came back.

Then she smiled. To Shea, it was like the lighting of candles in a church.

Next day he could chew on bits of dried rabbit meat that Socorro had soaked and shredded. He hated to lie in the shade like a lummox, eating her small hoard of food, but he had to get strong in order to pull them out of here. His baked skin peeled, leaving more layers to come off, and he wondered if he'd ever have his own proper covering again.

And his beard was growing. He didn't like its itching heat and longed for a razor.

Desert creatures still came to drink at the lower
tinaja
, their thirst more powerful than wariness of the intruders. Deer, gray foxes, rabbits and coyotes were the common visitors, along with doves which flew in mornings and evenings and quail which came late in the afternoon and spent the night in sheltering bushes, watering next morning before they flew away.

Three bighorn sheep filed down one evening, majestic horns curving like the whorls of a massive shell. A solitary badger, gray and squat, dug a ground squirrel out of its burrow, dined and then slapped down to the water on its short legs with mighty curving claws. One twilight a mountain lion sprang on a deer, breaking its neck instantly.

When Shea was strong enough, he'd get them a deer. On the fourth day after his resurrection, he collected a dozen good throwing stones. When Socorro came back from harvesting acacia, paloverde and ironwood beans, his throwing had garnered a big rabbit, a medium rattlesnake and one small lizard.

She looked with sadness at the rabbit, with revulsion at the reptiles, before she recovered and smiled. “Why, you're getting food for us without leaving your bed! I think,
señor
, you must be a shrewd and lazy man!”

Though dampened by this, he laughed and said, “Shrewd, no, but lazy, loafing in the shade while you rustle around in the heat! Let me have the knife and I'll fix the meat for drying.” At her expression, he grinned and said encouragingly, “Snake tastes a lot like chicken and I'll bet the lizard's not bad.”

The truth was, of course, that unsalted meat tasted pretty glum, but at least the sun-drying took out some of the rawness. Taking his kills beyond the water hole, he skinned the rabbit carefully, saved the brains and offal for tanning by digging a hole in the sand, lining it with leaves, sand and a rock too large for animals to paw away. He saved the snakeskin, too.

Long before he'd cut the creatures into strips he was exhausted, but he made himself hang the meat on a thorn bush and toss the bones and refuse as far as he could along the rocky bank. The snake's head, of course, he'd cut off and buried. He'd heard too many stories about dead snakes biting.

“Shea!” Socorro stood by him with the water jug and a gourd of gruel. “Eat, drink and lie down!”

“Yes, lady,” he said with teasing obedience. But he was glad enough to lie down on the grass and vines beneath the tree.

During the next few days he killed two more rabbits and five lizards. Socorro's pile of meal cakes grew. Together they worked all the flesh off the rabbit skins and then Shea spread brains and offal on them.

There wouldn't be time to tan the hides well, but he wanted them as soft as possible to make Socorro's footgear. The soles of her little leather shoes were now completely worn out. Fortunately he still had his shoes, though his garment was Socorro's extra rebozo, kilted about his waist. Almost as much as he wanted a deer for food, he wanted one's hide to cover himself in more manly fashion.

As he grew stronger, they talked more, especially at night while the stars glittered above them, owls hooted and coyotes sang in the distance.

“I don't think I ever thanked you for saving me,” he said, aghast at the realization. “God's whiskers! Well, lady, I'm thanking you now and always will.”

He sensed her smile in the darkness. “I saved you for myself, Shea. It is not good—it's almost impossible—to walk the Gran Desierto alone.”

He knew she spoke of more than a desert journey.

When he told her about Michael, she reached across the space between them on the sand and pressed his hand. “He is with your mother,” she said softly, “and the mother of us all. But to lose your twin! When you came from so far away. A green land, you say?
Big
trees? Tell me about it, Shea.”

And he did, the country he loved, and the English overlordship he hated. He even made a stab at trying to explain to her and himself how the United States and Mexico had come to seem more and more to him like England and Ireland.

“Your cheek is better now,” she told him. “And your back is almost healed.”

But he knew he'd carry the scars to his grave; and with them a hatred of the United States as searing as the iron that had branded him forever.

She was still touching him. Sweet pain ran through his nerves, gorged his veins. He made himself keep his hands off her, breaking into sweat with the effort. She was still afraid of men; he sensed it when they happened to touch and she swiftly moved away, or when he was watching her, guard down, and she happened to glance up to meet his eyes. He was sure she liked him, was proud of him in a fiercely protective way because she'd saved his life; but he also knew fear when he saw it.

Socorro was afraid. He mustn't risk making that dread worse.

“Tell me about Alamos,” he said abruptly, and breathed easier when she took her hand away though he hungered for that light, brushing touch.

She told him of the old colonial silver town nestled among the mountains, of its great cathedral still bearing the Royal Arms of Spain over the entrance, the Plaza de las Armas, her father's house with the long gallery.

“Don't you want to go back?” Shea asked.

“No,” she said so quickly that he knew she'd already thought about it. “My uncle would make me marry his brother-in-law, an awful old man who smells like a goat and has already buried four wives! It was partly to stop his urging the match that my father betrothed me to my cousin in California.”

Shea's heart stopped. But sure, what had he expected? A young woman of her class would naturally marry a Spaniard of good blood and family, someone picked by her folks.

“Well, I'll get you out there,” Shea promised grimly. He owed her that. He owed her anything.

“I—I don't want to go.”

Shea could scarcely believe the whisper. He lay transfixed for a moment. Except as a fleeting dream, he hadn't let himself think she might stay with him.

“What do you want then, lady?”

Silence. Then muffled weeping. Shea sat up, leaned awkwardly above her. “Socorro!
Chiquita!
”

Sobs wrenched her. To hell with whether or not it scared her, she needed badly to be held! Cradling her against him, he rocked her as he might a child till stiffness ebbed from her and she clung to him, weeping in a hopeless way that stirred him to the depths, made him ache to protect her, though there was that other almost overwhelming urge in him, too, to kiss that sweet mouth, know the soft breasts and thighs, lose himself utterly in possessing her.

“What is it?” he soothed, stroking her hair. “What is it, little one? Are you sure you don't want to go to your cousin?”

“Not
now
.”

“But if he loves you—”

She laughed bitterly. “How can he? We've never seen each other. It was a thing arranged.” Straightening, she said in a matter-of-fact way, “Even if I loved him, it would be impossible. To him. I am damaged, ruined.”

“Don't say that!” So it was true. The
Areneños
had raped her.

“Maybe I am ruined—not the way he'd mean but in a worse one. Shea!” She struck at him with her fist, not really at him, but at her devils. “Shea, what can I do?”

“Why, sure,
chiquita
, you'll be doing whatever you want if it's possible or I can make it that way.”

“It's stupid, what I want. And it—it's not fair.”

“Never mind. What is it?”

She buried her face against him. “Shea, I want to stay with you but—” He could scarcely make out the despairing cry. “I have fear! I have much fear!”

Joyful relief weakened him. She cared about him, then! He was no green boy, to rush or hurt or disgust her. He knew the wounds of the spirit healed more slowly than those of the body, but with time and patience …

He laughed exultantly, kissed where the hair swirled back from her forehead. “Now if that's all your worry, you're God's lucky lass! I'd rather have you with me than all the hosts of heaven and may I be damned to the blackest hell before I hurt you!”

“But—you're a man!”

“To be sure.” He wiped her eyes with her rebozo, brought up her face and grinned till, shyly, she smiled back. “Before we're through, it's my hope to make you mightily glad of that! But there's more to a man than desire,
chiquita
. Much more to loving.”

She trusted him, that was the hell of it. Once she had his assurance, she seemed to think it was straight and easy, that he didn't have to battle himself. Instead of shrinking from his touch, she sought it, lay in his arms till he started to tremble with suppressed longing.

How could she press against him like that, only the torn dress between her body and his, if she really didn't want the passion and strength and tenderness he burned to envelop her in till they were utterly joined, completely each other's?

Take her! Take her! Why fool around with what must be? Later she'd be glad
.…

Was that how he'd repay her for saving his life? Force her as those killers of her father had?

Shea put her from him. “It's time we slept, lass. Tomorrow I'll try for a deer, and you get all the beans you can. We need to be moving out. Those
Areneños
are bound to turn up soon or late.”

“Yes, Shea.” She curled up beside him, so close he felt the warmth of her, smelled the musky yucca root with which she washed herself.

She was asleep at once, trustfully, as if all her troubles were over. But Shea had a feeling his were just starting.

He didn't think he could sneak up on a deer and kill it with a knife so he decided to dig a hole in the sand at the bottom of the trail, covering it with twigs and leaves disguised by sand and small rocks.

The trap would bear the weight of small creatures. Anything heavy enough to break through should supply the meat they needed for the walk out of this place that looked like the dregs of God's wrath when He was too sick of what He'd made to finish properly.

During the day Shea worked at Socorro's footgear, double-soled, coming up around the ankles to tie with bits of rawhide. He stitched them by punching holes with the knife and then dragging through yucca fibers still attached to the sharp needlelike point.

He saved several stalks and bound them together with more fiber to make a fire drill, peeled an old leaf so it would act as punk. It might not work but, by God's whiskers, he was going to
try
to make them a fire tonight, the way he'd seen a Mexican do it.

Socorro gigeled when she tried on the “boots,” but she quickly sobered. “
Maravilloso
, Shea! They are very nice.”

“Better than nothing, anyhow.” Quail were coming to water and the sun was almost down. Shea picked up the knife, glanced toward the trap. “Wish me luck.”

She didn't say anything. “We have to eat,” he said roughly, and moved along the cañon, taking his place downwind from the trap. He was glad, though, that it was a buck mule deer, not a doe or fawn, which came finally down the trail. It had spikes instead of antlers, but looked big for a yearling. As it came closer Shea could tell from its corded muscles and places where the hide was loose or wrinkled that this must be an old buck, so far past his mating prime that he no longer developed the full rack of ten points.

The sticks broke under him. Going down, the buck scrambled for footing but Shea was upon him, slit the throat with one deep gashing, jumped back while blood poured and the deer sank slowly in a heap.

“Sorry, old fellow,” Shea told him. “Reckon you're going to be tough and stringy, but you'll help us out of here!”

He'd poached a few deer in his time and hunted a little to get fresh meat while with the San Patricios. Dragging the buck off the trail, he filled in the trap so it would take nothing else and dressed his kill.

Hitching the carcass into the fork of a paloverde to bleed, Shea washed the blood off and set about spindling the yucca drill in the middle of the dry, pithy leaf.

Not only would cooked meat taste good, but a fire would help protect the bulk of the meat from some hungry mountain lion.

A fire
might
catch the eye of
Areneños
, but they wouldn't be roaming after dark and Shea reasoned that none would be close enough to see the glow. If they were, they'd surely come to camp at the water hole.

Twilight deepened into night. Shea swore and twirled and twirled and swore. Socorro made soft, commiserating noises, gave a cry of delight when at last a spark glowed, grew into hesitant flame.