The Valiant Women (43 page)

“Will you go back?”

“To visit, yes. I couldn't live there unless things changed much more than they're likely to in my lifetime. I need a freer air.” Again his gaze reached far away. “On the March days of 1848, when King Frederick saluted the bodies of those who'd died on the barricades, and a few days later when he paraded through the streets in the red, gold and black tricolor of the new Germany, I hoped—we all did! I was a member of the Prussian constituent assembly that started in May to plan a new order where all men would vote, where the power of the nobility would be sharply curbed.”

“But weren't you—” Talitha paused, embarrassed. “Your family must have been pretty well off for you to go to school in England.”

“My father's a wealthy merchant—and a slave.” Revier shrugged but a trace of pain roughened his words. “He disowned me for charging the barricades. Just as well. I have no bent for commerce but my brother-in-law does.”

Talitha tried to picture a place called Berlin, a king saluting corpses and marching in red, gold and black, and some kind of big meeting with Marc Revier there. It was difficult. She'd never even been to Tubac and her memories of Santa Fe were of mud buildings straggling around a
plaza
.

Only Nauvoo, to her, had any echo of the far place he spoke of. She pictured him with his assembly in the shining white temple and suddenly his words took on reality.

“What did the—the whatever-it-was assembly do, Mr. Revier?”

“Oh, all summer, while the Danes and Prussians battled over who was to have the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, the assembly debated points of a new constitution.” He grimaced. “For our ‘radical' acts such as striking ‘by the grace of God' from the king's title, the assembly was exiled to Brandenburg in November and dissolved in early December.”

Caterina had fallen asleep. Carefully, he placed her in the basket. “It's not as forlorn as I make it sound, Miss Talitha. Much of the assembly's work served as a basis for the constitution and though the king's ultimate authority was maintained, the lower house of the parliament is elected by universal suffrage.”

“What's that?” asked Talitha with a furrowed brow.

“A vote by all men. The catch is that voting's based on taxpaying ability so that the wealthier seventeen percent of the voters control two-thirds of the seats.” A fatalistic lift of the shoulder. “Perhaps a realistic improvement but scarcely what most of us in the assembly had hoped for. With my leanings known, it was impossible to find work. So that's why, Miss Talitha, I left the old world for the new.”

“Shea left because of the famine.”

“Did he?” Revier glanced at the men by the fire. “Of course, when you think upon it, the family of everyone who's not Indian did come from somewhere else.”

Judah Frost was watching. It made Talitha uneasy though she'd have liked to talk with Marc Revier a long, long time. He gave her glimpses of a world beyond and though she didn't understand parliaments and constitutions, she'd like to have heard more about kings and barricades, that city called Berlin, his schooling in England. But they couldn't keep standing here, not with Frost's pale eyes on them.

“I'd better get the twins to bed,” she said reluctantly. They were perched on either side of Frost.

Revier said, “Miss Talitha, that message to your father—would you like some help with it?”

“I can't write at all,” she admitted.

Somehow, she didn't mind his knowing, though he must be the best educated person she'd ever met. Shea could sign his name but apart from that, he and everyone at the ranch was unable to read or write.

“Would you like to learn?”

There had been books at Nauvoo. Talitha remembered looking at the pages and wondering how her mother could read such wonderful stories from the little black marks. Mother had promised to teach her to read when they got to California.

Careless of whether Judah Frost noticed, Talitha threw back her head and smiled at Marc Revier. “I'd love to! But how can you teach me when you live so far away?”

“We've got a reliable superintendent now. I can get away every week for a day or so and leave you lessons to do in between. Shall we try it?”

“Oh, yes! The twins can learn, too!”

“Fine. If Mr. O'Shea agrees, I'll come next Saturday, so have your thinking cap on, young lady!”

Full of happy anticipation, Talitha nodded and advanced on the twins, shooing them off with the promise of a story. She was going to learn to read! She'd know how to write letters and keep accounts for Shea. But best of all, every week she was going to see Marc Revier! She'd still miss Santiago, but not anything like the way she would have without that deep gentle voice that seemed to caress away her fears and loneliness.

XXIII

After Marc's first “teaching” visit, the twins incessantly pestered Talitha as to which day was Saturday. Late in the morning they'd go to meet him, riding if Belen or Chuey could accompany them, otherwise going on foot. When this happened, he'd ride in on his durable buckskin with the boys up behind him, hanging tight so as not to jounce off. Arriving in time for the noon meal, he'd talk with Shea and the men till Talitha could leave Anita in charge and join him and the twins at the table.

Though Chuey and Belen both understood considerable English, they had no desire to read or write it so they went out to do some of the winter work, fixing corrals and building new ones, improving water tanks, mending saddles and bridles, all the things that couldn't be done from spring to fall when the cattle demanded their time.

Shea usually stayed. He swore at the pencil, grumbled that it was harder to control than a locoed horse, but he painfully copied the letters Marc wrote on a piece of the paper he'd brought from California.

Paper was expensive and they didn't waste it, but wrote on their pages over and over, crisscrossing till the letters were solid.

Because of his profession, Marc had a good supply of pencils and he left four at the ranch, along with a ledger, for his pupils to practice with. He also left books, and for these the twins endured the tedious alphabet.

“I thought the miners would have children,” Marc explained, smiling as Patrick and Miguel gazed wide-eyed at the elephants and tigers in one brightly colored book. “I hoped to have a small school for them. But our miners have no families and if they did, English wouldn't be that useful for them.”

He had a geography, with maps. This fascinated Shea. He could never get over how small England was in comparison to the countries she governed. “Look at Canada! And Australia down there, and India! God's whiskers! No wonder she's been able to run it all over poor Ireland!” Absently, his fingers went to the old brand on his cheek. “One good thing I'll say for the Americans, they got properly shed of England!”

Talitha loved the engravings in the history book. Pyramids, sphinxes, temples nothing like the one at Nauvoo, Roman soldiers, Attila and Vikings—what a treasure of stories Marc seemed to know. She longed to read for herself and would sit up by the fire at night, spelling and sounding out words. It was slow, tantalizingly difficult, but by the end of January she could read most of a book of fables to the twins.

“I wonder if you hadn't already begun to recognize words when your mother read to you,” Marc speculated. “However it comes, you're a joy to teach. You'll soon be ready for the books I brought for myself.”

Shea was quick with ciphers. Buying and selling had given him a practical command of arithmetic, but to be able to make calculations in advance, subtract, multiply and divide—well, that intrigued Shea.

Marc's company was good for him, too. After an initial stiffening when he learned of Marc's English mother and education, he shrugged and said, “We're all here now, whyever, and the Americans soon will be!”

“I hope so,” said Marc amiably. “With enough troops to keep off Apaches and bandits. We have a man on watch from dawn to dark, and at night, too, if we've seen anything suspicious during the day.”

In December of 1853, Gadsden and Santa Anna finally struck their bargain. Negotiations had been temporarily sabotaged by William Walker's November try to take over Baja California. Though the filibusterer was swiftly defeated and chased into California, Santa Anna and most Mexicans believed the United States government was behind the attempt and considered it the first step in annexing all Mexico.

However, when Santa Anna's efforts to make alliances with European powers convinced him that France, Britain or Spain wouldn't aid him in case of war, he returned to bargaining with the exhausted Gadsden who certainly must have wanted his railroad to put up with all the disappointments and delays.

The treaty would allow the United States to purchase the land it needed for its nation-spanning route, a stretch between El Paso and Yuma, for $15,000,000. In return for assuming claims of Americans against Mexico, the United States would not be responsible for raids of Indians into Mexico as provided for in Article XI of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The never-strong grip of Mexico on its northern frontier almost completely crumbled. Captain Zenteno at Tubac had a hard time keeping the people of his garrisons fed. In January, responding to pleas from starving Santa Cruz, he'd borrowed mules from Tumacácori and pack sacks from Calabazas, got together supplies, and started the slow trek south.

Apaches rode into them in sudden attack, killing two soldiers, driving off all the mules including the ones the men had been riding. Zenteno implored his government to provide some oxen and wagons for hauling supplies, but the harassed officials, with troubles closer at hand, left him to cope as best he could with the defense and provisioning of his sector.

That winter and spring of 1854 were filled with a sense of waiting, of inevitable change, while the United States Congress wrangled over land that the famous mountain man, Kit Carson, called “so desolate, desert and God-forsaken that a wolf could not make a living on it.”

There was waiting in human terms as well, hoping that James would return, at least for a visit, and waiting for Santiago. He had said he'd be back in time for the spring cattle work. Surely he must come soon—if he were alive.

Marc hadn't heard from his partner, either, but he refused to worry and wouldn't permit Talitha to fret when he was around. “Judah's not about to get killed when there's a smart profit to be made,” he said with breezy confidence. “Depend on it, they'll be back soon with the port located and a promise from the authorities to set up a customs office and develop the harbor.”

It was impossible to be despondent when Marc was there. He fitted in as if they'd known him always and yet he was like nobody else they had ever met. He'd walk a cranky, toothing Caterina while discussing politics with Shea or telling the twins about Robin Hood, Dr. Faustus, King Arthur, El Cid, Rustum, Ogier the Dane and, to Shea's pride, of Cuchulain and Brian Boru.

He could sing, too, everything from German drinking songs to Gold Rush tunes, but best of all Talitha loved the old songs he'd learned from his mother, “Green-sleeves” and “Western Wind,” “The Gypsy Laddie” and many others, especially one he said had been made up by the poet Thomas Wyatt for Anne Boleyn, the woman he loved before and after she was Henry VIII's doomed queen.

“Forget not yet the tried intent

Of such a love as I have meant,

My great travail so gladly spent,

Forget not, oh forget not yet.”

Hearing the male voice deepen richly, thrillingly as he sang, Talitha ached with the beauty and sadness of the song. Would she ever have a love like that? She didn't think she wanted to, watching Shea trying to live without Socorro.

He came in one evening while Anita was feeding the two baby girls and Talitha was trying to get supper while arbitrating a quarrel between the twins who were irascible from having bad colds and being kept inside out of the chill rainy spell that had settled in to drive Talitha completely to her wit's end.

After one quick glance, Shea commanded the boys to pick up the things they'd scattered all over the house, get themselves washed and set the table. He then took over the tortilla-making so Talitha could concentrate on the stew.

“I ought to be kicked!” he said angrily. “No wonder you look peaked! Anita's got her hands full with Paulita and Caterina, the twins are into everything, and you've got to cook and wash for all of us! Why haven't you said something?”

Astonished, Talitha said quickly, “It's all right, Shea! The twins wouldn't be like this if they didn't have those wretched colds and—”

“And nothing!” he cut in. “When we get started on the calves, I won't even be able to fetch the water and wood the way I can now. Tomorrow I'm going to get you some help!”

Foreboding shot through Talitha. “Where?” she demanded. “Who?”

“Maybe Juanita and Cheno can move up here.”

“Juanita's going to have a baby,” Talitha countered. “She'll want to be with her mother and even if she didn't, she wouldn't be any help while the baby's little.”

Shea scowled, puckering the double brand. On an impulse, Talitha did what she'd always longed to, put up her hand and caressed the mark he'd taken for her brother's sake.

She felt him tense, wondered at the strange pinpoints of light in his eyes. Abruptly, he swung away, jarring her hand from him. “Then I'll get Tjúni.”

“Tjúni?” There'd been no love between Talitha and the Papago woman but that didn't explain the denial, the heavy sense of warning that sprang from Talitha's depths. “She won't come. She's got her own people at San Manuel.”

“She was here to begin with.” Shea was remembering back, to a time before Talitha had known him. She hated and feared that; it took him far away. “I never understood why she went off that way, but I think she'll come back when she knows we need her.”