The Valiant Women (47 page)

“What did happen?” Talitha prompted. If she was going to be an American again, the doings of the government concerned her a lot more than they had when they'd seemed as distant as Santa Anna's machinations in Mexico City.

Frost pursed his handsome, if thin, lips. She tried not to think of how they'd felt on hers but a memory of that icy fire ran through her. A wail from Caterina gave her an excuse to leave the table, but the amused glint in his eyes told her that he knew what she'd remembered.

“California was admitted as a free state,” he enumerated. “New Mexico was organized as a territory and Texas was given ten million dollars to abandon its claims to any New Mexican lands. The Territory of Utah was established with the provision of ‘popular sovereignty' which was also applied to New Mexico. That means when the territories apply for statehood, they'll be admitted as free or slave, depending on what their constitutions say. The Southerners got the Fugitive Slave Act. Northerners got the slave trade abolished in the District of Columbia. Something for everybody. But the Kansas-Nebraska debate opened the whole fuss again. With the Missouri Compromise repealed, there
can
be slave states north of 36°30´, provided that a territory's constitution allows it.”

“What a wrangle!” muttered Shea. “You think there could be war?”

“It's possible. Hot-headed Southerners have been wanting to secede for years. Because the House is elected in proportion to population, the North has an ever-increasing advantage there. If the South loses a balance in the Senate, too, it's almost sure to leave the Union.”

“And the North would fight that?”

Frost smiled. “What do you think? If they'll fight a war to gain land from Mexico, will they wink at losing a great part of the original nation?”

Giving his head a hopeful scratch, Shea said, “Sounds like the Americans may be too busy to worry about us for a while.”

“The officials, maybe, but you can bet fortune hunters will be pouring in. As I passed through Fort Yuma, Major Heintzelman was entertaining a young Kentuckian, Charles Poston, whose party had been exploring in Sonora and up along the Santa Cruz. They found some rich copper ore at the Ajo mine some distance west of here and he's on his way back to California to organize a mining company.”

After a moment, sighing, Shea made a resigned grimace. “It's a big country. Guess we can't have it to ourselves forever.”

“Poston's going to make it one way or the other,” Frost chuckled. “Damned if
he
hadn't been hunting for a port. Why, while he was resting up at Yuma, he and his German friend Ehrenberg laid out a town on the land opposite the fort and called it Colorado City! In fact, my freighting partner, Jaeger, took some shares in the townsite. And, Shea, speaking of freighting, are you still interested in being my partner?”

“It sounds like a good proposition. Don't think I'd ever buy into a railroad, though. Hate those great thundering, smoke-belching monsters!”

“They could take your cattle cheap and fast to better markets.”

“I'd rather sell for less and be spared the racket and ugliness.”

“The railroad's going to come, Shea. But let's talk about freight.”

Shea became a partner in the Santa Cruz Valley Freight Company, another link with Frost which Talitha regretted but felt powerless to prevent. She was somewhat relieved by his treatment of her. He made no effort to see her alone and when he left next morning, he said he had a lot of business to attend to in widely scattered places and didn't know when he'd be back.

The letter he brought from Jared Scott was also a relief. In large, clear writing, the father Talitha scarcely remembered said that he rejoiced to hear she was alive since he had sadly given up all his family as dead. “A mining camp is no place for the young lady you must be,” he wrote. “But when I can, I'll come to see you. Mr. Frost assures me the family caring for you has no financial problems and regards you as a daughter so I shall let my great debt to them stand for now and repay them at a later time.” He ended with love and prayers that she remained steadfast in the Mormon faith.

Talitha snorted at that. He expected a six-year-old to remember what she'd never understood? She'd been far too busy trying to keep James alive. James, who hadn't come back for his birthday.

The ache of that faded slowly as summer wore on. Marc was busy with his ranch, as well as the mine, and came less often, but Caterina was walking now and investigating everything she could climb through, upon or under, so she took most of Talitha's time and energy.

Small and wiry, she was still light enough to be carried in the cradleboard and, oddly enough in view of her general restlessness, she was perfectly content to stay laced to the board, hung from a tree or wedged securely in some rocks, while Talitha gathered the late summer bounty: acorns, mesquite beans, berries, wild grapes and currants.

Caterina's first birthday passed without celebration. She didn't know the difference and the anniversary of her mother's death renewed the pain of that loss. For several days Shea stayed drunk on mescal.

Talitha was glad when he sobered up and went again to Tjúni; glad, too, when she ceased being so aware of those night visits because she had moved with Caterina into their fine new room.

For the first time since Nauvoo, Talitha had a real bed, woven rawhide fastened to posts. For Caterina, there was a high-sided box bed made of bent willow branches covered with rawhide. The Judith doll occupied a deep niche by Talitha's bed and a chest and bench completed the furnishings. Talitha's heart swelled with pride as she put Caterina down on a Saltillo serape spread in front of their very own fireplace.

“Shea, it's beautiful!” she whispered. “Ever so lovely!”

Forgetting the strangeness that had come between them, she threw her arms around him in a tempestuous hug. He kissed her on the forehead and stepped quickly away.

Patrick and Miguel were six in October, and though no presents they could get would ever be as cherished as Thunder and Lightning, they were delighted with new sombreros trimmed with silver conchos and beautiful knives of the sort called Bowies but on a smaller scale, the blades designed with a pattern of gold tracery.

These, Shea told them sternly, were for work, not playing, though when they were a few years older, Belen would show them how to handle the blades in a fight should it come to that.

Enchanted, Caterina laughed and reached for the bright steel her brothers let flicker before her, blinked in astonishment when the knives disappeared into leather scabbards.

This year it didn't matter
, Talitha thought.
But next
year, she's having her birthday! A nice one
. The day Caterina was born shouldn't remain one of gloom because it was also the anniversary of Socorro's death. Socorro would have hated that.

Marc Revier came for the Feast of the Roof, bringing Christmas gifts since he didn't think he could come back till well into the new year. For the twins he brought Dickens's
Christmas Carol
and Lear's
Book of Nonsense
. There was a bright animal alphabet book for Caterina and to Talitha he gave books by two English sisters,
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë and
Wuthering Heights
by Emily.

“And so you'll understand more what's going on in what's now your country,” he said, “here's
Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It's one of the most important books ever written because, though few Southerners are like Simon Legree, it shows the iniquities of owning humans as if they were cattle.”

He spoke so fervently that Shea looked at him hard. “You're with the North, then, in this business?”

Marc's blue eyes met his host's steadily. “I am, sir, so much that if war comes, I intend to serve on the Union side.”

“Still rushing the barricades?” Shea bantered.

Grinning at that so the scar across his left cheek and brow seamed whitely, Marc's tone was serious. “Many of my homeland's ills come from being so fragmented, so class-ridden. I left because I was stifling beneath an old, decaying order, and became a citizen of this country. I would fight here with a sense of hope. That things could change, that the dream of freedom can be reality.”

“If I fought,” said Shea, with equal deliberation, “it would be against the Union.”

“Oh, Shea! Why?” cried Talitha. “You can't believe in slavery!”

“No more do I! But I don't think the United States had any business pushing into Mexico, I don't think it's got any right to hold on to States that want to un-unite and …” He paused, smiling sheepishly as he met Talitha's gaze. “All right, lass! To hell with that, what's it to me? I'd fight the government that put this brand on me and my brother.”

Marc nodded. “I can sympathize with that. I hope, Shea, we never have to fight each other.”

Shea looked somber. “Aye, that's the hell of it, to know the man you kill! Much of that and there wouldn't be any wars.”

If you had to fight men you liked; but what of men you hated? Looking at these two, one loved with her whole being, the other very dear, Talitha prayed that distant threatening war would never come.

XXV

As spring ripened, so did Tjúni. She continued her work to the last and had her baby alone, down by the creek, washing both herself and the boy child before bringing him to the house.

Pain twisted slowly through Talitha as she looked at the infant. What wouldn't she give for him to be hers? Thank goodness, there was nothing of Shea in the dark eyes and black hair.

“He's a fine baby,” Talitha forced herself to say to Tjúni. “Would you like the cradleboard for him?”

Tjúni clasped the child jealously to her full breast, smiled proudly as he pushed with strong little hands, found the nipple and sucked. “My son no need Apache cradleboard!” she scorned. “I have one ready. For him, all ready.”

Her joy in the child was so blazing that Talitha couldn't cling to her resentful envy. After all, the Papago woman had worshiped Shea for years, held herself aloof from other men though she could have had no hope that Shea would ever turn to her. And the boy was Shea's. So Talitha vowed to care for him and help as much as Tjúni would permit.

She wasn't to have the chance.

That evening when Shea came in and saw the baby, he stopped dead in his tracks for a moment. Something flashed in his eyes. Self-hatred? Grief? Then his face masked as he knelt beside Tjúni and smiled at his son.

“Born the fifth day of the fifth month in 1855! Guess we'll have to call him Cinco!”

Tjúni's face glowed. “You like?”

“He's a fine boy.” Shea touched the fine black hair, then the woman's cheek. “You're all right? No troubles?”

She laughed. “No trouble, having baby! I want. Want much!”

Shea's jaw hardened for an instant. “Well, you have him,” he said abruptly, rising. “Take it easy till your strength comes back.”

Talitha and Anita tried to do her chores, but Tjúni refused. Though Cinco thrived, as the days passed a sort of shadow seemed to veil the young woman's first delight. Early in June, when the child was a month old, Talitha heard voices one night, coming from the window of Shea's bedroom, audible through the open door and windows of her own room.

“You no come to me,”

Tjúni said. “It's too soon since the child.”

“Indian might think that. Indian want wife feed baby long time so it grow strong. But you not Indian.”

Shea said nothing. After a time, the woman spoke again. “I give you fine boy. You make me wife?”

There was a strangled breath. “No, Tjúni.”

“No priest. Just before madonna the way you—”

He cut in harshly. “I told you how it was. That I didn't, couldn't love you but I needed a woman. You said that was all right. You said you knew herbs—that there'd be no baby.”

“You no want him?”

“I didn't say that! He's mine and I'll take care of him, give him a share of what I have. But you cannot be my wife, Tjúni, now or ever.”

“Papago not good enough?”

“That's not it and you damn well know it!” After a time he added more gently though with great weariness, “My wife, my one wife, is dead. I can't put someone in her place.”

Tjúni's voice thrust like a dagger. “Sleep with dead wife, then! I go to own place! My son all mine! San Manuel his, he need nothing of you!”

“Tjúni, listen!”

“I listen enough! My boy not have your name, then he be Papago! I find him Papago father!”

In a moment Talitha heard angry footsteps padding across the courtyard. Next morning, Tjúni and the child were gone, and though Talitha had never been able to like her and had, through this past year, been smolderingly jealous, she still felt sorry for her, sorry that a love cleaved to for so long had produced at the end only bitterness. But Tjúni had her son now, and, for his sake, had found the strength to break away from Shea. Talitha sighed and hoped it would go well with them.

The boundary survey was run across the Santa Cruz Valley that June about a dozen miles south of Calabazas and skimming the edge of the
sitios
making up Rancho del Socorro. Though the garrison lingered at Tucson, the little force at Tubac left what was now foreign soil and journeyed southward.

Once again, the region was left without protection, though the Germans struggled to hold on at the Calabazas sheep and goat ranch, a few Mexicans remained at Tubac, farming beside the Apaches
de paz
, and a hardy Kentucky settler called Pete Kitchen had located in the valley, making his house a citadel.

The Pajarito Mine continued to operate but as Apaches raided and menaced up and down the broad valley, Marc Revier was never out of reach of his rifle and it was September before he came again to Rancho del Socorro, having asked a well-armed group of Americans who were scouting for mine sites if they'd guard the Pajarito while he was gone for a few days.