The Valiant Women (66 page)

Belen made a cross and fixed it among the rocks. “God pity them,” he said and bowed his head.

Marc and Talitha did likewise, though she had her old angry feelings that if God was all-powerful and good, He wouldn't allow such things to happen; if He wasn't all-powerful and good, there was little use in praying. And still she prayed. At the limits, a mortal must cry for help.

Marc insisted on going with them to the ranch. “It'll ease my mind to know you got home safe from this journey,” he said. “Besides, if I cut northeast and hurry, maybe I can catch up with the troopers. It's not healthy to ride alone through Cochise's and Mangus's prime territory.”

Talitha fought down a longing to beg him to stay. One man wouldn't make that much difference to the cause of either North or South. It made a difference to him, though, and so she couldn't plead.

They reached the Socorro late one afternoon. Next morning before sunup, he was on his way. After he'd said his good-byes to the rest of the household, Talitha walked with him to the corral.

She was sick of this. Sick of seeing the men she cared about go off to kill or be killed, and for reasons that had nothing to do with the dangers here. Pressing his hands to her face, she murmured huskily, “Take care of yourself. Come back safe!”

He brought up her face to kiss, her mouth. For a long, tremulous moment he held her matched to his body, and she knew that he'd slept last night as poorly as she. If he'd come to her, she might not have been able to remember she belonged to Shea, for she loved this man, too, and in this time of parting her anguished flesh cleaved to his.

“Marc!”

He bowed his face to her hands, then quickly took the reins Belen offered. His eyes went over her as if to fix her image forever in his mind. “God keep you, love.”

“Come back,” she said. “Please. Come back.”

He bent to brush her cheek with his fingers. “I'll have to. You're my woman.”

She watched through tear-blinded eyes as he rode into the rising sun. Like Shea. Like John Irwin.

Now all her men were gone.

III

It was early in August when Cat, who was standing watch from a perch on the corral, called that there was a horseman coming. “He's wearing a serape and sombrero and seems to be alone,” she reported.

“Ring the bell twice,” Talitha said.

That was the signal for all in hearing to make for the houses and arm themselves, just in case the announced visitor wasn't friendly. Three rings meant raiders, positive danger. So, when the bell sounded, there was always a heart-stopped tension while waiting for that dreaded third peal.

Taking up a rifle, Talitha peered out the window, sighed with relief as she thought she recognized the rider, but waited a few more minutes till she was sure.

“It's Pete Kitchen,” she told the twins, who'd dashed inside and grabbed weapons from the rack by the door. “Tell Cat to ring once.”

An isolated sound of the bell after an alarm meant there was nothing to fear and work could be resumed. The twins lingered, though, eager to see the man whose prowess as a fighter and determination to hold his ranch against raiders of any color had made him almost a legend.

With a smile of thanks, Kitchen turned over his reins to Miguel, who led the horse off for watering. Lean and erect, of medium height, Kitchen took off his sombrero and bowed with Southern courtliness.

“I'm sure glad to find you all right, Miss Talitha.” His blue-gray eyes twinkled in his ruddy face as he noticed the rifle she'd leaned against the wall. “Glad you keep a sentry posted.” He tweaked one of Cat's black ringlets. “Is this your bell ringer?”

“One of them.” Talitha was fond of this rough, kindly, indomitable man. It was to his house she'd stumbled after Judah Frost's assault, and it was his gentle wife, Doña Rosa, who had helped her bathe and made her rest. Doña Rosa lit candles on the graves of the marauders, red and white, who were buried in front of the ranch they'd tried to despoil. “Come in, Mr. Kitchen, and stay for dinner. How are Doña Rosa and all those pretty nieces?”

“Fine. Or were when I left for Tucson last week.” He grinned. “Sixty-eight of us voted an ordinance of secession. Elected Granville Oury to be territorial delegate to the Confederate Congress and petitioned Jeff Davis for troops. Colonel Baylor's taken Mesilla and proclaimed the Confederate Territory of Arizona! He's the governor, of course. Some doings!” Kitchen sobered. “But Tubac's finished, Miss Talitha. That's why I rode over here, to see if you were still at the ranch.”

“What's this of Tubac?” Belen asked.

Since everyone had come in, Carmencita and Juana began to set out the meal, and it was while eating heartily that Kitchen told how Apaches were ranging up and down the Santa Cruz, plundering and killing. Among their victims were the superintendent of the Sopori ranch and the innkeepers at Canoa. The few men left at Tubac had defended themselves stoutly, however, and got a message for help through to Tucson, where Granville Oury hurriedly collected twenty-five volunteers.

Kitchen winked. “Since I was going that way anyhow, I figured I might as well have the benefit of an armed escort. We sure surprised those heathens! They lit out, and so did a gang of about seventy-five Mexicans who'd come up from Sonora to rob and loot. That bunch stopped at Tumacácori, though, and stole everything they could carry off. Killed a harmless old man even the Apaches hadn't bothered.”

“Everyone's left Tubac? Colonel Poston?”

“Oh, he's been supervising the Heintzelman mine down south, but while he was off looking for new sites in the Papago country some mean Sonorans talked the laborers into killing Poston's younger brother and two Germans who worked at the Heintzelman. Poston buried them and took off for California.”

So debonair Charles Poston, who'd offered open-handed hospitality to all who passed through Tubac, who'd married couples free and thrown in a festive wedding feast, whose Christmas parties had been attended by officers from the fort and ranchers from as far away as Magdalena and Sopori, the one touch of glamor in Talitha's life—Poston was gone.

“Now it's really going to be Tucson, Tubac, Tumacácori, and to hell!” Kitchen went on. “Though we can hope the Confederacy will send us some troops. I have to tell you, Miss Talitha, that I reckon you sure ought to get out of here while you can. Be glad to send over a few dozen of my men to help you move.”

The abandonment of Tubac was even more shattering to Talitha than that of Fort Buchanan. It had been where she'd learned to dance, had thrilled to the knowledge that men admired her in the lovely gowns Judah's sweetly beautiful wife, Lenore, had had made up for her. But she could remember earlier years when the presidio had been deserted, when Apache raids had emptied the Santa Cruz Valley.

Straightening her shoulders, she smiled at Pete Kitchen. “It seems strange, Mr. Kitchen, but I lived here before you did, before the mining companies came, and the soldiers. If the O'Sheas could start the ranch when they did, we should be able to hold it now.” The grizzle-mustached man looked so worried that she ventured a tease. “At least there aren't any scalp hunters these days.”

“Only because no one's paying for hair,” growled Kitchen. He glanced at the children, who were eating at a second table. “I hate to think of you over here without O'Shea, but your men are trusty and you have good thick walls and a well inside them. Mostly Apaches choose the most gain for the least risk. If it looks like they're going to lose a lot of men, they'll hunt easier pickings.” Slowly, he got to his feet. “You got plenty of ammunition?”

“Enough for a small war,” Talitha assured him, then inquired with wicked innocence, “By the way, when are you moving to Tucson?”

“Me?” His mustache fairly quivered. “Doggone it, girl, I—” At the vaqueros' chuckle, he broke off and scowled a moment before he laughed, gripped her hand, and shook it as he would have a man's. “Good luck, Miss Talitha. I'll get over once in a while to see how you are. If I can do anything, send for me.”

“You're very kind.” They both knew the chances of getting a message to him in case of a raid were pitifully slight. “Give Doña Rosa and her nieces my love.”

“I'll do that.” He sighed gustily. “They'd enjoy a visit from you, but I reckon we're still years away from when folks can go see each other for the plain fun of it.”

Patrick had fetched his ewe-necked but serviceable horse. Donning his serape in spite of the heat, Kitchen snugged down his sombrero, waved, and jogged off westward, toward abandoned Tubac and often-despoiled Tumacácori, though he'd swing south at Calabazas, also deserted, heading for his ranch on Potrero Creek.

“He doesn't look all that wild and deadly,” grumbled Patrick.

“We aren't bandits,” Talitha reminded him. “Come on, now, let's see if we can't finish Carmencita's walls today.”

As she helped lift and stack the heavy bricks she wondered if Shea was with Baylor, if there was any chance of his being sent nearer home with some detachment. He'd been gone over two months. She couldn't even be sure that he was alive, that he'd ever reached a Confederate post to volunteer. The only way he could get a letter to her was through a traveler, and travelers along the Sonoita were going to be mighty few.

I won't even think he might be dead
, Talitha told herself.
He has to be alive. Has to come back to me
—
to all of us
. She recoiled from the very thought of a world without Shea, and her desolation at it made her really understand for the first time Shea's agony at losing Socorro, and why he had tried to blunt it with drink and Tjúni.

Come back, love, and I'll make you happy
. Talitha vowed it across the miles, willing him to hear, to believe. But she felt no response.

Tubac abandoned, and Fort Buchanan. San Patricio destroyed. Shea gone, then John Irwin, then Marc Revier. In all that region south of Tucson, which was seventy miles away, only, besides the Socorro, Pete Kitchen's ranch and Sylvester Mowry's Patagonia mine were left.

In spite of her brave words to Kitchen, this isolation was altogether different from that of her childhood. Then, like Cat now, she'd trusted the grown-ups. Shea, Socorro, and Santiago had borne the weight of decisions, of risking other people's lives. It was that responsibility more than physical labor that exhausted Talitha. Of course, after what she and Belen had found at the San Patricio, she'd given the vaqueros another chance to leave. They'd all stubbornly chosen to hold on.

“We weren't harassed during the siege of Tubac,” Chuey pointed out, riding squealing little Tomás on his foot while braiding a new rawhide rope for six-year-old Ramón. “It must be that Mangus's protection still carries authority. Besides,
madama,
” he added fatalistically, “there's no safe place in all this region to ranch. But we are vaqueros; what would become of us, huddling in town?”

So August turned to September. The new adobes, roofed by mesquite rafters covered with bear grass, wheat straw, and adobe, replaced the old ramadas, making a solid enclosure around the small courtyard with the well and granaries, the pomegranate and peach trees.

Red-streaked mesquite beans dried on the roofs to be stored in the round adobe granaries. Talitha, the twins, James, Paulita, and Cat made forays along the mountain slopes and draws, returning with squaw-berries, hackberries, chokecherries, wild currants, grapes, and acorns which, ground, made a tasty flour. The ranch had irrigated fields of melons, beans, corn, and wheat, but Talitha had been taught by Socorro and Tjúni to garner wild foods in their seasons.

Because of rushed work on the houses they'd missed jojoba nuts that summer, but November's harvest of the planted fields would signal time to gather black walnuts along the creek and go into the mountains for the small but very rich and nutritious piñon nuts.

In mid-February, the first timid greens had appeared. March had offered cholla buds, the plump curving fruit of yucca palmillo, and agave hearts roasted to a sweet syrupy brown mass. May had been tender young cattail shoots, and June had brought their rich golden pollen, so good in soups and breads.

Late summer rains had also produced large round puffballs, some white, some brownish, and these succulent treasures were carried home to be sizzled in bacon grease or sliced into stews. The smaller ones could be confused with a kind of deadly mushroom, but Talitha had learned from Tjúni to cut the ball across. The mushroom showed its developing gills and shape, like a bird growing in an egg, but if the inside was smooth, creamy white, the ball could be eaten with gusto.

They celebrated Cat's eighth birthday the twentieth of September. Chuey and Rodolfo woke her by playing their guitars and singing “
Las Mañanitas
” outside the window.

“
On the morning you were born
,

Were born the flowers
…”

Oh, God, thought Talitha, rousing. Had they forgotten? Of course they hadn't. No one who'd known and loved Socorro could forget that she'd died in a rush of blood in the dawning Cat was born.

Socorro, valiant and tender, Shea's miracle, adored by both him and Santiago, to all of them the human, sometimes hot-tempered embodiment of the dark madonna blessing the
sala
. A madonna from the ranch where everyone but Santiago had been slaughtered by scalp hunters.

Blessing and tragedy, kindness and courage, horror and treachery. Cat living out of her mother's death; James begotten by the hated Juh. Wondering at the tangled, inexplicable threads of fate, Talitha dismissed fruitless musings and crossed the room past Sewa, who lay drowsily smiling at a sun mote, to kiss and embrace Cat, who was just springing out of bed.

“Happy birthday, Caterina Katie-Cat!”

“Oh, Tally! Don't call me that baby name!” Running to the window, she leaned out, laughing, honey-golden cheeks flushed, and thanked the vaqueros, gracious as a queen. They departed, happy at her pleasure, and she spun dancingly across the floor. “See, they know I'm growing up! They never sang for me before. I'm not a
young
child anymore.”