The Valiant Women (53 page)

“And they could marry.”

Talitha didn't think the pain that streamed through her sounded in her voice, but Frost seemed to sense it as an animal scents blood. His nostrils quivered.

“Yes.” He smiled. “And I don't think, Talitha, that you could bear living with a new Mrs. O'Shea!”

Her heart turned to ice at the thought. Tjúni had been bad enough, but a real wife—a woman Shea would love at least in part as he'd loved Socorro?

“I wouldn't live with them,” she said slowly. “But I wouldn't marry you either.”

He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Time changes many things, my dear. I'm in no hurry. As long as her father's in the Senate, Leonore's valuable to me, so I rather hope Shea's struggle against coveting his partner's wife will be a long one.” He laughed softly. “What, not urging me to stay the night? Never mind, I've business in Camp Moore.”

Talitha went back to the house. Staring down at Shea, she ached with love and pity. She shouldn't want him for herself. If he found someone to love again, she'd make herself glad though it would be beyond her power to share their roof. And she mustn't get frantic notions just because he'd had too much to drink at a celebration. So had most of the men. By tomorrow, he'd be fine again, except for a ringing head.

The next day he was sober and worked with the men on mending a corral but after the children were asleep, he'd gone to his room. Next day, hanging up clothes, Talitha saw the half-empty bottle of mescal behind his bed. The morning after that, it was nearly gone, and the next day, there was a new bottle, drunk a third of the way down.

This was no binge. It was steady, methodical night drinking. After a week, Talitha confronted Shea one night when, bottle in hand, he was going to his room.

“Shea.” Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “Was it bad for you, meeting Leonore?”

“Bad?” His brows knit and she wanted to smooth away the baffled pain. “Yes, it was that, Tally.”

“Do—do you love her?”

If he did, Talitha resolved to tell him Frost would make no barrier. Far rather see him with another woman, though she herself would have to go away, than watch him grapple with this dull silent misery.

Shea laughed out in surprise. “Love that pretty little butterfly? For all she's sweet and winsome, she's like the foam swirling on water. Socorro was the water.”

Talitha's heart beat again; she realized she'd been holding her breath. Along with sorrow for Shea came a flood of relief. He didn't love her, not as she wished him to, but at least he didn't want anyone else, either.

He continued slowly, “Seeing Leonore brought it all back, though, seeing someone so like Socorro in looks, it roused up the yearning for my own dear lass. It made me know that even if I found a face and form like hers, what I really loved is gone, the shining spirit of her.”

“But, Shea—drinking like this—”

He smiled wearily. “Tally, it is how I sleep.”

She would have given anything in the world to comfort that bright head, hold him in her arms against the yearnings and torments of the night. But he didn't want her. He wanted the woman buried on the hill.

For the first time, Talitha almost hated her foster mother. In the dim
sala
, facing the dark madonna, she cried wordlessly,
Can't you make him lift his heart out of your grave? Can't you let him go?

It was still January when Captain Ewell with several dragoons and Dr. Irwin stopped at the ranch. Major Steen had been ordered to find a new location and had sent Ewell, out of earshot referred to as “old Baldy,” to scout for one.

While they ate and rested, the captain and doctor debated the merits of a small plateau abut five miles to the west. “It's surrounded on three sides by a marsh,” argued Irwin. “Bound to breed malaria and fever. Damned poor place if you ask me.”

“I didn't ask!” snapped Ewell. “Didn't even want you along, but you would come, you hot-tempered, redheaded, mule-stubborn Irishman!”

Irwin bowed. “The same to you, Captain, excepting the Irish and red hair which I'm bound you wish you had!” He winked drolly at Shea. “The captain's about to burst a blood vessel since he can't cut loose in front of Miss Talitha. He can swear the hide off a mule and his curses can be parsed!”

The captain's eyes seemed ready to pop out but he choked, coughed and managed a chuckle in the depths of his beard before he said flatly, “That elevation gives a good view of the country and has plenty of wood and good water. I'm going to recommend it to the major.”

“And I'll disrecommend it!” Irwin growled. “But who ever listens to doctors till they need one?”

A short time later, they mounted up and were on their way. “Come anytime, gentlemen,” invited Shea, with a particular grin for Irwin. “We've enjoyed your company.”

Irwin's blue gaze strayed to Talitha. “I can think of one advantage to the captain's marsh,” he laughed. “It would be much closer to the hospitality of this ranch. Miss Talitha, I hope you could spare the time one day to show me that
canaigre
plant for coughs and sore throats. Half of the men are barking their heads off.”

“Wait, I'll send some with you now,” she said.

Running to the storeroom, free of mice thanks to Chusma's horde, she put all the dried roots she had in a piece of cloth and took them to the doctor. “A piece can be chewed and swallowed,” she said. “Or it can be powdered and mixed with something sweet.”

As he took the packet, his big hand closed over hers longer than necessary. He thanked her and said he'd be back.

“A good man,” Shea approved as the party rode off. “And born in Roscommon! Have you a taste for being an officer's wife, Tally?”

Speechless with hurt, she stared at him. How could he say such a thing? As if he were the only one who might hold to one love! His smile faded as he looked at her.

“Tally,” he said. “Oh, Tally, girl, you must be giving the young men a chance!”

Fighting back tears, she cried in fierce pleading, “Shea, even if you can't love me, you need a woman, you need someone. Let me be with you for that!”

“You don't know what you're saying.” His face was taut. The brand stood out white and bloodless. “A man'll come who can give you all his heart and youth and soul. I won't ruin you for him, Talitha.” His voice was hoarse and he clenched his hands behind him. “Don't ask me to damn myself, lass, for that's what it would be if I abused your sweet child's love in such a fashion!”

“Socorro wasn't much older than I when you met!”

There was a flash of his old smile. “But I was ten years younger! Give over, Tally. Teach the doctor plants and let him have a chance to teach you other things.”

She held his gaze steadily, willing him to accept her as an equal, a woman to his man. “It's you I love, Shea.” Then she turned and walked to the house.

She found herself enjoying Irwin's visits, though, and it would have been presumptuous to discourage them since he talked with Shea more than he did with her, and became a favorite of the twins and Caterina. Many plants were dormant, but she showed him the ones she could. Caterina and the twins went with them on these expeditions and Talitha was glad that, lured by the doctor's interest, they were bound to learn a little.

He soon had generous amounts of elderberry bark, its tea good to cause vomiting or cure constipation; joint fir for fever and kidney pain; walnut hulls for cleaning maggots out of wounds; green oak bark to make a cure for diarrhea; root of ocotillo for painful swellings; cholla root for a laxative; agave pulp for wounds. John, as he asked them to call him, was a keen observer and jotted down notes on wildlife, birds, plants and terrain. He didn't come every Sunday but as spring approached, Talitha began to feel disappointed when noon came without him.

One morning he came so early that he must have left camp before sunup. “Why don't we ride to Tubac and enjoy Colonel Poston's entertainment?” he suggested as soon as he had admired Caterina's new kitten and extracted a splinter from Patrick's hand that no one else had been allowed to touch. “The superintendents from other mines come for dinner and neighbors are always welcome.”

Shea laughed. “My head can take Colonel Poston's hospitality only once a year! But, Tally, you could go with the doctor.”

“Oh, I couldn't!” she exclaimed, blushed at her rudeness, and tried to cover it by saying that she was in the middle of making panocha.

The sprouted wheat meal and brown sugar pudding, after mixing, had to set an hour before it baked very slowly for several hours, and did indeed take time and care, but she hadn't even thought of the waiting batter when she first refused.

A glint in John's eyes told her he guessed this but he smiled charmingly. “I'd rather have your panocha any day, Miss Talitha, than the colonel's venison, even though he's now getting champagne and Scotch to go with it.”

Settling by the fire with Shea who was mending a bridle, Irwin gave them the latest news. Just as the Santa Cruz Valley in Arizona was being repopulated, in northern Sonora ranches that had been abandoned for twenty and thirty years were coming back to life. For good prices, Sonorans supplied staples like wheat and sugar to the miners, soldiers and settlers of southern Arizona, and also profited in the trade of luxury goods brought in through Guaymas.

“But the honeymoon's over,” regretted Irwin. “A certain Henry Crabb started recruiting colonists in San Francisco for the Gadsden Purchase this January, only when he got to Yuma, he let them know he planned to join Pesqueira in putting down Gándara's forces, and colonize in Sonora. Probably, back before Pesqueira got fairly well established, he had made some kind of deal with Crabb—Crabb's brother-in-law is an influential Sonoran named Ainsa. But Pesqueira doesn't need Crabb now and he's whipping up the populace against this latest filibuster.”

“Surely when Crabb gets word of that, he'll drop the idea,” scoffed Shea.

The doctor shook his head. “He left Yuma heading for Caborca early in March, a few weeks ago. He's sent two men to see if there aren't some fight-hungry adventurers in Tucson, Tubac and Calabazas who'll join him.”

Shea gave a long, low whistle. “Poston would never fall for such a shenanigan?”

“Not he. He told them he depended on Sonora for supplies and labor and tried to make them see the expedition was bound to fail and could only destroy the present good feeling along the border. But some of his miners went. I would reckon about thirty-three men, most from around Calabazas, have taken off toward Caborca.”

“Then God help them. Pesqueira won't. The fools! Don't they know how Mexicans feel about Americans, first the war taking the spread from New Mexico to California and the Gadsden Purchase whacking off Sonora's northern half? Greedy damn Yanquis!”

“Just like England?” Irwin grinned.

“More than a little, man!” Shea tossed the bridle to the floor, getting up. “Here's the North saying the South can't go its own way. Here they are, dilly-dallying about making Arizona a territory when Santa Fe ignores even Mesilla, which is where our nearest court is!” He let out an exasperated breath, shrugged aside governmental iniquities. “I know you're not a horse doctor, John, but would you have a look at a canker in my old Azul horse's ear?”

“The men say I should stick to horses,” Irwin laughed, and, with Caterina and the twins, followed his host outside.

“The panocha was very good,” Irwin said that evening. He and Talitha were briefly alone in the storeroom where she was getting him dried elderflowers to treat colds and stomachaches. “But I think there was another reason why you didn't want to go to Tubac.”

She said nothing. “Well, Miss Talitha? Will you go with me next Sunday if I can escape emergencies? People seem to wait till Sunday to come to me with ails they've had all week.”

How could she explain that she didn't want to lose him as she'd lost Marc? Slowly, miserably, she said, “That would look as if we were—keeping company, John.”

His eyebrows climbed. “My dear, why shouldn't we?”

She swallowed, involuntarily stepping back. “I—I thought you came here to see all of us!”

“So I do. I like the O'Sheas tremendously, and love wee Cat.” In the dim room, his eyes seemed to catch and hold the light there was. Silence mounted between them, a growing tension. “You told me you weren't engaged.”

“I'm not.” What could she tell him, that he'd accept? “But I—I do love someone.”

The red head, painfully like Shea's, went back sharply. “I can't believe any man you cared for wouldn't have carried you off by now, even if Shea didn't approve,” Irwin said at last. “Nor can I believe there's a man who, given the chance, could fail to love you.”

“This one doesn't.” Talitha couldn't keep the bitterness from her tone.

Irwin sighed. “But you hope he'll change?”

“Even if he doesn't, I won't.”

A smile crept into his tone. “Let's see now, next month you'll be all of seventeen, isn't it?”

She didn't answer that. After a moment, he took her hands, raised them to his face. “Very well, my stubborn lass! But now all's clear between us and you won't be leading me on—” His voice twinkled. “Why not ride out with me sometimes?”

“You still want to?”

“Of course! The señoritas are pretty little things and dozens have poured in from the despoiled parts of Sonora where they've lost their men from Apaches or civil war, but their interests run to romance and
monte
. I'd much rather talk with you. At least sometimes.”

“Well,” she said doubtfully. “If you're sure—”

He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “I'm sure. I can be a good friend to you, Talitha, though I'd hoped to be more.” He chuckled irrepressibly. “And there's the chance you may realize in time what a rare catch I'd be!”