The Valiant Women (67 page)

“No,” agreed Talitha gravely. The vaqueros must have made the flattering gesture to make up for Shea's absence, for the lack of presents obtained from the San Patricio pack trains or at Tubac. “You're not a
young
child. Will you bring Sewa in? I want to start the panocha for your feast tonight.”

“Panocha!” sang Cat, still whirling. “My favorite!”

“That's why!” Talitha laughed. “And there's nut candy, Anita's special tamales, and all your favorites. I hope, ancient one, that you're not too dignified to enjoy them!”

Cat trilled with pure glee, hugged Talitha in a last caracol before she began to dress, and started to sing to the baby. May she always have a bright spirit, Talitha thought. Dressing quickly, she hurried to the kitchen and began grinding the dried, sprouted wheat.

There was wild turkey, and beef barbecued outside by the vaqueros, who would later savor by themselves the pit-roasted head, or
tatema
. Steaming tamales stuffed, as only Anita could do it, with spiced shredded meat, and chilis, tortillas, beans, corn soup, acorn bread, roast corn on the cob, currant and grape preserves, nut and pumpkin candies, and the panocha, a sort of pudding, made extra rich for the occasion by doubling the number of raw sugar cones. Sewa, who at fifteen months couldn't chew most of the food, loved the panocha, and it was a mark of Cat's love that she didn't grudge the astonishing amount of pudding that the tiny girl devoured.

After supper came the gifts. Miguel gave her his best sombrero trimmed with silver coins. Patrick had cut down a silver-buckled belt she'd long coveted. From the vaqueros and their families came a fringed jacket of softest buckskin and a new
reata
. Talitha, with Anita's help, had fashioned a gay red dress out of material in the storeroom.

Cat rejoiced, putting on all her presents, not sure whether to mince to match the dress or swagger for the hat, belt, and jacket. Then, without a word, James gave her his gifts.

There was a quiver of mountain-lion skin lined with red flannel and filled with arrows winged with turkey feathers, and an arced bow, a leather wrist guard, and a hawk carved from polished mesquite. It perched on a knotty crag, talons painstakingly carved, beak realistically hooked. In spite of its crudities, it captured amazingly the proud, free essence of the bird.

“Why, James!” cried Talitha. “I didn't know you could carve like that.”

He didn't answer but said to Cat, “This is a red-tailed hawk. His feathers are very good for arrows, but I didn't want to kill him so I used some from a turkey. The bow's of wild mulberry.”

“Oh, James!” Throwing her arms about him, Cat gave him a resounding kiss. “The hawk's wonderful! But I won't let him catch my little blue bird. Will you teach me how to shoot?”

“And us, too!” clamored Patrick and Miguel.

“I'll teach anyone who wants to learn,” James promised expansively.

Talitha watched her brother in surprise. Happiness softened the proud set of his mouth, and there was a glow about him. It came to her that he wasn't as haughty and scornful as she'd thought.

“It was with bows that Tjúni and Socorro killed the scalp hunters and won Mangus's friendship,” Talitha said slowly. “I'd like to learn to shoot, James.”

He nodded approval. “An Apache may have two good revolvers and a rifle, but he always has his bow. It makes no sound to alarm enemies when a sentry is killed, and half a dozen antelope can be killed in a herd before the rest notice and run. It's easy to carry and can be relied on when a weapon jams or there's no ammunition. Guns are good, but if I had to choose, I'd have a good bow and arrows feathered from the red-tailed hawk.”

And so it was that when the twins' thirteenth birthdays came the fifteenth of October, work stopped early to give time for target shooting before the festive meal.

Of the vaqueros, only Belen had chosen to make a bow, and Talitha overheard Chuey reminding Rodolfo that their older companion was, after all, a Yaqui and thus had an affinity for uncivilized weapons.

“What about me, Chuey?” she had teased, stepping out from behind the door.

“I—uh—” Chuey strangled a moment, gulped, and then said forthrightly, “
Madama
, with your pardon, who can explain gringos?”

It had been fun to make the equipment, hunting for branches of wild mulberry that were straight and without knots, then stripping them of bark and working the green wood into shape with the arched center to be hung for drying.

Arrows were more tedious. Fortunately, there was plenty of the proper sort of cane growing along the creek. After these were cut, they had to be smoothed and the joints leveled out by running them back and forth across the bottom of a heated skillet. Much easier, James explained, than heating and using a grooved stone arrow-smoother.

Belen, who did the ranch's blacksmithing, forged tips from steel salvaged at the fort. These were fitted into notches cut in the hardwood foreshafts which were then tied on with sinew. The next step was to settle down amid the canes with supplies of quail and turkey feathers, wet, softened sinews, and charcoal and an earthy reddish mineral that Talitha remembered from Marc's geology lessons as hematite.

The part of the shaft where the feathers would go was colored red and black and covered with piñon pitch so the charcoal and hematite patterns, varied so one person's arrows could be told from another's, wouldn't rub off. This was polished by rolling the shaft in a doubled-over yucca leaf. James scraped the split feathers carefully so that they'd fit close to the shaft.

“You must take parts from three different feathers so they'll point the same way,” he explained. “If you tried to get two parts from the same feather, they'd face each other and the arrow wouldn't travel so true and fast.”

After cutting the nocks, he showed how to bind the feathers, starting the nock end with one or two held in place with the fingers. After a turn or two of the wet sinew, he clamped the end in his teeth and wound the rest of the sinew by rolling the arrow. Then the third piece of feather went on the same way. The three lower ends could be tied on all at once before they were trimmed to the right size.

“I'd sure hate to lose one of these after all this work,” Patrick grunted, frowning with concentration as he tried to get the sinew started while holding the feathers.

“Oh, well”—James grinned—“it's a good way to pass winter evenings.” To Cat, who was struggling determinedly, teeth tucked over her lower lip, he said indulgently, “You hold the feathers and let me wrap.”

The men and boys were hunting now, cutting most of the meat into strips for drying into jerky. At James's instruction, they took the sinew from the deers' backs and the back of the hind legs. For each bowstring, strips of this were dried. James then showed how to wet the ends and join them into one long string, which was looped around a stick and twisted. James chewed down the bumpy places while Miguel held the stick.

The damp string was fastened to the bow, barely tightened, and left to dry. Then it was tightened two more times before it was ready to try.

Talitha had been too young to pay much attention to Apache weapons when she'd lived among them. Now, appreciating the work and accumulated experience that went into making an outfit, she used her bow with respect and tried to practice daily, learning to reach easily over her right shoulder for an arrow in the javelina-hide quiver Belen had made for her, and then nock the arrow with the first finger above the nock, the second and third below, while the shaft rested on the side of her thumb, which was braced up against the arc of the bow. Drawing back the string, she sighted along the arrow and let it go, with varying degrees of success.

Belen had used a bow in his youth and was soon as good as James. Patrick and Miguel quickly became proficient, Patrick doing better when aiming quickly, Miguel best when deliberate. Cat, bound to make James proud of her, practiced till Carmencita said despairingly, “Ay,
niñita
, what kind of wild Indian are you set on becoming? If your mother—”

“My mother used a bow,” Cat reminded her pertly, but she hugged and kissed the grandmotherly woman. “Don't scold. I'll defend you if bad people ever come!”

She did very well at the twins' birthday celebration, several times hitting the ball of cedar bark placed varying distances away, while Talitha hit it only once. The twins made equal scores but couldn't hit the ball when tossed in the air, though James and Belen could.

Next there was a roping contest. Talitha wouldn't let animals be used for sport, so the vaqueros and boys spun their
reatas
at rawhide bags yanked by on a pulley or at pieces of wood waved tauntingly at them.

James, taught long ago by his godfather, Santiago, was still good but no match for the vaqueros, who used their ropes almost every day of their lives. Talitha, a competent roper, was happy to watch the others and applaud when Chuey was judged the most expert.

For weeks the twins had been loudly declaring that they were grown up, nearly, and didn't expect presents. Nevertheless, after a feast similar to Cat's, they had begun to look the slightest bit disappointed until presents appeared from all sides.

Quivers from Belen, Patrick's of gray fox skin, Miguel's of mountain lion; embroidered leather vests and trousers from the ranch families; fringed leather gauntlets from Talitha; handkerchiefs painfully embroidered with their names from Cat; and from James, leather war clubs.

Carmencita and her daughters regarded the last with distaste. James explained that a long stick was stuck through a peeled cow's tail and a rock sewed up in hide was fastened to the end. The cow's tail was left to dangle from the handle.

“Good for close quarters,” Belen decided, hefting one. “A hard blow to the head should kill.”

James nodded. “They can be used against bears and lions, too.”

“I would prefer,” said Belen dryly, “not to be that close.”

The branding began, Talitha and the boys helping. Since they had to comb the hills, arroyos, and mesquite and oak thickets of the thousands of acres of the ranch, they took turns working the most distant stretches, going out in a group of four and camping till all the unmarked yearlings were earmarked and branded, and most of them gelded. This last went against Mexican custom, but Shea had said it was the best way to improve the stock.

While the small group was branding, the other vaqueros worked in signaling distance of the house, branding and starting to cull out the cattle destined for market. Pete Kitchen had sent a messenger to say he was driving a herd to Tucson and would be glad to take some from the Socorro if a couple of vaqueros would help his men. Talitha had accepted gratefully.

Belen, as was his long custom, brought Talitha the
senales
from each twentieth calf to which he, as one of the ranch's first vaqueros, was entitled to as part wages. As she added the hairy bits of hide to those already in a chest, James looked at them thoughtfully.

“Talitha, my sister, you have many cattle.”

Surprised, for she never thought of them as hers, separate from Shea's, she nodded after a moment. “But half of mine are yours, James. And Santiago would have wanted his godson to have at least some of his share.” When she married Shea, James could have all her cattle, but no one at the ranch knew how things had changed the night before Shea left. She was almost afraid to talk about their intended marriage, as if the hope of such happiness might tempt fate.

James glanced at Sewa, who was edging about the room, moving from object to object till her precarious balance would lapse and she'd plunk down on the floor.

“I wouldn't rob her,” he said, then chuckled. “It sounds funny, to
own
cattle. Apaches steal and save the trouble of raising them.”

They hadn't talked of what James was ultimately going to do, make a life with the whites or go back to the Apaches. Mangus had sent him that spring to parley in case of Apache attack on the Socorro, to remind raiders that these people were friends of the greatest of all Apache chiefs. But no chief, even Mangus, could compel other Apaches to obey him. When they did, it was from free will and the force of the huge Mimbreño's personality.

Thinking of the giant who had called her Shining Girl, Talitha realized he must be well into his sixties. He couldn't live forever. It was not to be hoped that his protection could last from the grave; in fact, it would be a miracle if it held now, what with the Apaches seeing in the troops' withdrawal a chance to drive out the intruders whose towns, mines, and roads had begun to spread in the past few years.

Looking up at her brother, for he was taller now than anyone at the ranch except cadaverous Francisco Vasquez, Talitha said carefully, “The Apaches can't go on raiding forever. This war will end. When it does, no matter which side wins, there'll be troops, miners, merchants, probably a railroad.”

“You'll be glad of that!”

“Not really. Though I'd be glad not to live under constant fear of bandits or Apaches. The thing is, James, it will happen; it's the world you'll have to live in.”

His young mouth twisted and his blue-green eyes were brilliant in his dark face. “And what will happen to my people?”

Stabbed at the
my
, Talitha couldn't keep a harsh note from her voice. “Your father's people will have to learn to own cattle instead of stealing them, and how to raise more food.”

“Your words rattle like dried chick-peas on an old rawhide,” James said rudely. “What's happened to the Gileños and Mescaleros who've tried to farm and live peacefully as their agent advises? Often there's no food issued, or not enough. Settlers and troops in that part of New Mexico have crowded out or killed the game, stolen the Apaches' horses, sold them bad whiskey, and killed them even when they were camping near the forts.”