The Valiant Women (50 page)

And Cinco? Talitha wondered, a shadow creeping over some of her eager anticipation. Did he get presents? Was he a happy little boy? He must be starting to walk now at a year-and-a-half. Last Christmas Shea had given Pedro Sanchez a large bundle and asked him to get it to Tjúni, but she'd refused to even open it. There was a man in her dwelling, Pedro had said when he returned the parcel. A Papago.

Shea had told Pedro to give the things to little Juan and as far as Talitha knew, he hadn't tried further to stay in touch with his son. Tjúni had clearly decided to break her ties with him. Maybe it was best but Talitha felt a sad little pang when she thought of small Cinco, and always this reopened the hurt of remembering another little black-haired boy, her brother, James.

Not a word had come from him and it was more than three years. Was he all right? Had he forgotten them at the ranch? He'd be ten in July, he must be growing tall. Talitha clung to the belief that he was well, somehow assured that Mangus would let her know if anything happened. Though Mangus, at Socorro's death, had seemed to forget Rancho del Socorro.

There was so much sadness, when she let it come. Usually Talitha kept very busy, refused to linger on griefs that had no remedy, but this day her longing for James swept over her with such force that she knelt by Caterina and hugged her close, drawing comfort from the warm sweet little body and its innocence of what could happen in the world.

Marc brought Scott's
Ivanhoe
and Irving's
Sketch Book
with droll Rip van Winkle for the twins. Caterina giggled over Lear's
Book of Nonsense
, and for Talitha there was a slim
Sonnets from the Portuguese
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. There was also a beautiful fan, black lacquer and parchment, ornamented by a dragon of flame and gold.

“I don't think you'll need it for the party,” he smiled, “but it should look pretty on your wall.”

“Dragons,” mused Talitha, spreading the fan so Caterina could admire it. “I wonder where people got the idea.”

“Lightning, perhaps. But they were, till Christian times, signs of good fortune and happiness. I like to think the ancients imagined a beast that could, by its wings, lift itself off the earth, soar high above, as they hoped man might one day.”

Talitha shook her head. “
I
like the earth. But the dragon's glorious. You shouldn't bring me presents anymore, though, Marc. I'm not a child.”

“But you're my hostess,” he countered. He patted the fringed leather pouch beside his plate. “Besides, didn't you make this for me?”

“But it didn't cost anything!” she protested.

He ran a finger along the lacings. “You made it which is much better. Alas, I can't write poetry or paint fans!”

“He's got you, lass.” Shea laughed from the head of the table. “Now you'd better make sure you have all your things together so you can leave right after services. It gets dark early.”

To wear three new dresses in one day! The very thought was dizzyingly extravagant. But, looked at another way, she'd never had a really new dress before, and these were going to last a long time.

She wore the silver-green poplin for the feast with the Sanchezes and then changed into the dashing riding habit for the little ceremony in the
sala
.

Shea led in prayers while the madonna smiled down at them, and then Talitha read the story of Jesus's birth from Luke.

Caterina kept stroking the facings of her cuff slashes. “I like velvet,” she said afterward. “It's soft as a kitty! When I'm big like you, Tally, I'm going to have a whole dress of it!”

“I'll bet you do!” Talitha gave her a hug and returned several ardent kisses, also kissed Miguel's smooth cheeks though Patrick evaded her.

“I'm too old for that stuff, Tally! Save it for the dragoons and miners.”

She made a face at him. Since she didn't have a side-saddle, Shea helped her mount. “All these skirts!” he whistled, helping her arrange them as modestly as possible though the soft gray leather boots showed. “May you never have to ride for your life rigged like that!”

“I'd shed the skirts and maybe whoever was chasing me would pick them up and let me go!” she laughed. “Now, Shea, you
will
come?”

“Soon as you're back, lass. Now don't you worry about us, just have a grand time!” He swung Caterina to his shoulder, and with the twins, Sanchezes and Vasquezes, waved them on their way down the valley.

Talitha kept turning to wave back. When Caterina's vigorous farewells were hidden by a slope, she felt a wild impulse to whirl and ride back. Since Caterina's birth, she'd never been away from her for more than a few hours. A lump swelled in Talitha's throat. She blinked fiercely, but her eyes kept misting.

“Tears?” Marc reined close to her, brushed at the dampness on her cheek. There were people with hard blue eyes and bright blue eyes, but Marc's were receptives and deep and very warm. “What can be wrong for one so pretty as you on her way to a fine party?”

She bit her lip but Marc had never made fun of her and so she blurted, “I—I've never left them before!”

“And you fear they can't manage a few days without you?” he teased. “Or are you afraid they can?”

“Marc!”

Hurt and surprised by his unexpected query, she urged Ladorada ahead, but he soon caught up, and for the first time, he didn't preface her name with “Miss.”

“Talitha, I never knew your little James, but starting with him, you've been looking after babies since you were only a child yourself. You act as a mother to Caterina and the twins. But you're not! You have to start thinking of your own life.”

She stared at him in shock. Taking a deep breath, seeming as vexed at himself as he was with her, he added more temperately, “For all your sakes, Caterina needs to understand that you're not her mother, that in a few years you'll marry and have your own home.”

“But I—don't want that,” she faltered.

He frowned. Suddenly, his eyes
were
hard. “You don't want what?”

“To marry.” She couldn't meet his probing gaze and looked backward as if for reassurance but the ranch was out of view. “I—I don't ever want any home but the Socorro!”

She saw his knuckles go white on the reins. He didn't speak for a while and when he did, it was in a carefully controlled voice. “It's natural for you to feel that now. The O'Sheas have been your family.”

“They always will be.”

He said with forced patience. “You're growing up, Talitha. You'll love a man. When that happens, you'll want to go with him.”

Maddened at his reasonable tone, the way he seemed to think his age gave him the right to predict what she'd do, Talitha flung at him, “I
do
love a man. I always will. I never want to leave him!”

Marc flinched as if receiving a blow he hadn't seen coming. He drew himself up rigidly, speaking under his breath. “Shea!”

“Yes, Shea! He's not my father! And—and he's not old, either!”

“No,” agreed Marc in a dazed way. “I suppose he's not. But he's much older than you, Talitha.”

“He's only thirty-eight.”

With a wry chuckle, Marc said softly, “And I've feared my thirty was too much difference!”

“Your thirty?” Talitha stared. Slowly, reluctantly, she had to understand. “Marc! Please! You—you can't!”

His eyes again were deep, soft blue, watching her steadily. “But I do.” His pleasant mouth quirked. “I have—I don't know for how long. I don't know when the love I felt for a beautiful brave girl-child changed into love for girl-almost-woman. It changed as a body changes.” He added gently, sadly, “As you have changed yourself.”

She looked away, devastated.

“I—I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. I tell you only to rouse you to the fact that there are other men in the world than Shea, only so that if you ever wish to leave Socorro, you'll know I'm more than a family friend.”

Glancing at his profile, the strong but good-natured jaw, she wondered why she'd thought of him as so much older when he was younger than Shea. Not that age had anything to do with it. She had loved Shea, worshiped him, from the hour he took Juh's brand. She would love him till they both were dead and maybe afterward. He was her eternity.

But she loved Marc, too, as a friend and teacher. Wretched at wounding him, she said in a rush, “You don't have to take me to the party, Marc. Let's go back and Shea can ride with you instead. I—I'll say I don't feel good.”

Which was certainly true.

“No. I want to take you to this party.” He smiled at her, challenging gaily. “For this little time, I'll pretend you're my lady. I'm going away soon, to look for locations out south of Yuma Crossing. So I won't be a trouble to you.”

She didn't know what to say. Infrequent as his visits had become, she would still miss him. He'd filled some of the void left by Santiago; Santiago, who, according to Frost, had also chosen to stay away because he loved her.

Why can't they love me the way I love them? she thought desperately. But that was as futile as asking why Shea didn't love her as she did him.

Tents were spread along the fork at Calabazas, housing the soldiers till the log barracks could be finished, and what seemed to Talitha like swarms of people came and went among makeshift hovels of brush and canvas.

Fording the river, Talitha was glad to get away from her first glimpse of American civilization since her capture by Apaches. It had been like a vast noisy anthill.

Settlers who'd fled the Apaches, both Mexican and Indian, had taken up farms again. There were a number of families, at Tumacácori and along the three miles between the old mission and Tubac.

As they approached the walls, the lookout in the three-storied tower flourished a greeting and Marc waved back. Their horses were taken in hand by a boy who flashed a grin and said “
Mil gracias!
” for the coin Marc gave him.

Adobe houses, most with garden plots, spread around the towered headquarters, and the flag of the mining company, a pick and hammer, now flew above it. Laughter and a roar of voices floated from the main hall. Talitha involuntarily moved close to Marc.

“They won't eat you,” he teased, “though I'm sure they'd like to! Come, let's find out where you're to stay so you can change before the party.”

Stowing her bundle and his own saddlebags by the door, he brought her into a long room jammed with people. Army officers, resplendent in dress uniform and swords, proud
hidalgos
and
hidalgas
with the look of Spain, men who bowed over Talitha's hand in courtly fashion as Marc introduced them as officers of various mining companies.

There were merchants from Tucson and ranchers from the whole length and breadth of the Santa Cruz Valley. There were several ladies, too, from Camp Moore; one German metallurgist's wife spoke a delightful hesitating English, and two Frenchwomen were accompanying their husbands who had colonization schemes in Sonora.

Talitha's head was spinning. She smiled distractedly at a captain and lieutenant who were both trying to supply her with a cup of punch. “Mescal, ma'am, but it's really quite good!” while Marc, with perfect good humor, told them they'd have to wait till after she was rested to press their acquaintance.

“Here you are!” Judah Frost's head was inches higher than those of most of the men as he made his way through the crowd. “Where's Shea?”

“He's coming day after tomorrow,” Talitha explained. “Marc brought me.”

The pupils of Frost's winter twilight eyes contracted to tiny points. “Oh, did he? Well, come meet your host and my wife. She'll show you where you'll be staying.” Over his shoulder, he said perfunctorily, “Thanks for bringing her, Revier.”

“The pleasure was mine.” Marc stayed beside them. “I must greet Poston, too. Then I'll take your things to your quarters, Miss Talitha.”

“No need,” said Frost tersely. “A boy can do that.”

“Of course. Nevertheless, Judah, as Miss Talitha's escort, I'll see that she's comfortably settled.”

By then they had reached a group before the fireplace where a dark-bearded, wavy-haired young man was bantering with a black-haired young woman, who, though small, held herself with sweet regality. She turned at Judah's touch on her arm.

“Talitha! You must be!” Catching Talitha's hands, the woman kissed her while Talitha could only stare. With a slight frown, Judah Frost's wife said, “Something's wrong? The ride has made you ill?”

Frost said briskly, “Talitha can outride most men, Leonore, but perhaps you'll show her your room so she can change. Talitha, as you'll have gathered, this is my wife. I seldom get to introduce her formally. Now let me acquaint you with our host, Colonel Charles Poston. Charles, this is Miss Talitha Scott. Her guardian is my partner in several enterprises and owns Rancho del Socorro of which you must have heard.”

“Indeed I have.” Poston bowed low, regarded her with a shrewd twinkle. “The only ranch not to be abandoned between Tucson and Magdalena! I look forward to meeting your guardian, Miss Scott.”

They talked a few minutes till he was called to superintend the making of eggnog and Talitha found herself relaxing. Poston, like most of the men here, was young, perhaps thirty, boyishly full of enthusiasm for the prospects of Arizona.

These were
her
people, Talitha realized.
Americans
. And though her family had been forced west for safety to live according to their religion, she couldn't repress a glow of pride and liking for these spirited, rollicking, daring ones.

Slipping her arm through Talitha's, Leonore said, “Come, dear, and change! The habit becomes you wonderfully with that sort of cavalier dash. I can hardly wait to see the evening dress.” She said to Marc who had waited purposefully, “It's the first house across the plaza.”