The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  It was gray dawn when she woke to an unearthly cry. Terrified, she waited for a moment. The agony of that call echoed in her mind. She couldn’t ignore it. Springing up, she hurried up the bank in the direction of the sound.

  A dark heap lay sprawled among the rocks. Whatever it was couldn’t hurt her; but could she help it?

  Approaching, she bent over a shriveled leathery skeleton. It was still breathing.

  He was dying and his friends were dead. Not only the Patricios hanged as deserters because they’d thrown in with their fellow Catholics, the Mexicans, to fight the damned blue-bellies, but Michael, his twin brother, who’d escaped with him the night they were branded and flogged. The guard had been lax, jubilating over the fall of Mexico City and not expecting prisoners who’d been bloodily whipped to feel like moving.

  But the O’Sheas had, before they could be fitted with those fine iron collars ornamented with six-inch spikes. No lady would be hugging a man decked out in one of those!

  In spite of being overrun by Yanquis, the common Mexicans had been kind to the fugitives, feeding them, helping them evade the victorious United States troops. The brothers might have hidden till Old Rough-and-Ready Taylor and “Fuss and Feathers” Scott were back across the Rio, but Michael had a wish to go to California and so they’d struck out on the dim tracks that would lead through old volcanic mountains to the Gran Desierto and beyond into California.

  In spite of warnings from the last peons who had given them food, the O’Sheas hadn’t realized what they were getting into. Nothing they’d seen in Mexico, from the brush thickets of the Rio Grande to the high barren mountains, had prepared them for this. The tinaja they’d been told about was dry, and they’d been out of water for half a day when they reached it.

  Michael’s blue eyes had widened with shock, and the crusted, puckering brand on his cheek had twisted. “How far did that old man say it was to the next water?”

  “Seventy miles.”

  “Shea, lad, we’ll never make it.” Perhaps because their father’s name had been Patrick, his widow had called his namesake “Shea” and so, of course, had everyone else. Michael looked despairingly back the way they’d come. “And we’ll never last that!”

  Shea nodded. “But the old man said there were a few tanks off the road.”

  “And only Areneños know where they are!”

  They’d agreed to gamble on finding the secret tinajas, watching for animal trails or the flight of dove and quail. The few trails they found vanished in stretches of black lava or jumbled rocks and the only birds they saw were a pair of ravens, high-circling eagles, and a few hawks.

  They lost track of time. There were only blazing suns that stupefied them till the cooling night revived them enough to crawl onward. Michael had died in the last sun, baked to leather, lips peeled back from his teeth, the inside of his nostrils blackened, his blood so thick it no longer oozed from cuts and scratches.

  Shea had refused to believe his twin was dead. To escape the Famine, fight through the wildest battles of the Mexican War, survive floggings that had wrecked some men for life, and then to die for lack of water! Shea had pleaded and cursed and wept, but Michael only grimaced horribly at the sun, eyelids so dried and shriveled that most of the eyeballs showed.

  Too weak to dig a proper grave, Shea scratched enough sand from the creek bed to give his brother a thin shelter, put a cross of paloverde twigs in his hands, and prayed. Michael had been a good lad, rough and liking his whiskey, but merry, generous and warmhearted. Even if his fleshly sins landed him in purgatory, their mother would soon have him out, for Rosaleen O’Shea had been a saintly woman, not even hating the English as she starved to death when the potatoes rotted in the fields the summer of ’45. She’d urged her sons to go to America. Had she known—

  Wouldn’t it be best just to stay here with Michael, at least die close to the body of a loved one? Shea was mightily tempted. But something made him drag on, ridden with fever and delirium so that he tore off his ragged clothes except for his shoes, which were too hard to get off, and then shivered by night, drinking the trickle of urine he voided with great pain though part of his brain remembered that made thirst deadlier.

  There seemed to be thundering in his ears, blinding light in his eyes. His throat felt sealed. Before him there seemed to be a shining glitter of a crystal water pitcher surrounded by goblets. He seized one, pressed it to his face. Only then did his mind clear enough to see that he gripped a segment of multi-spined cholla. Clawing it off, he crept on, his tongue and mouth so numbed that they scarcely felt the needles.

  He thought he saw a pool, dug at it frantically till a nail ripped and he saw it was only the shadow of a rock. After these phantasms, it was a blessing when his mind, escaping his tortured body, played tricks. He and Michael, new troopers, joining the Army because it seemed the only way to earn their keep while getting used to this big new country, were back across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, building Fort Brown. Mexicans waved at them in friendly fashion from the adobe town.

  In the evening, women came to bathe, the curving of the young ones beautiful beneath falls of long black hair that didn’t hide much. While they sent a man’s blood pounding with their laughter and pretty games, you could look beyond them to the church.

  The Mexicans must have been grand Catholics because they had more Saint’s Day processions than there were saints, at least that the O’Sheas had heard of. A fine sight to see banners proudly borne with music and people following.

  A stirring sight to the O’Sheas whose earliest memory of the Mass was its being said by stealth in the fields, a watch out for safety, since the only priests who could lawfully hold services were pitiful ones who’d foresworn their loyalty to the Stuarts, the rightful Catholic rulers. The O’Sheas and most like them counted for naught the prayers of a traitor. It was a revelation that Catholicism was the religion of Mexico, openly revered as the true faith, a wonder almost past believing, though after Emancipation in 1829, the worst weight of the Penal Laws had been lifted.

  This code, punishing the Irish for supporting James II, a Catholic Stuart, against the usurping William III of Orange back in 1690, had barred Catholics from voting, holding office, military and civil service, law and teaching. There were no Catholic schools, nor could a Catholic leave all his land to one son. He was compelled to divide it equally among all male heirs so that none could make a living and their holdings would pass into the hands of Protestants.

  Patrick O’Shea, the twins’ father, had died before they were weaned because he’d rebelled at a particularly spiteful part of the Laws. A Catholic couldn’t own a horse worth more than five pounds. O’Shea did, a once weakling colt he’d taken as pay from a Protestant farmer.

  He’d nurtured and tended the colt till it grew into a splendid beast the farmer coveted. The law was that a Protestant could take such a horse and force the owner to accept five pounds as payment. O’Shea had thrown the farmer’s five pounds back in his face, followed with a brawny fist.

  The farmer’s help joined in and then there were soldiers. O’Shea died of his beating while the horse was led away, though the farmer, a church-goer, had left the five pounds for Rosaleen who’d been held back by three men while the others killed her proud young husband.

  The twins grew up considering the farmer their father’s murderer. When they were fourteen, Patrick slipped off from Michael one night and found the farmer eating alone in his kitchen. A strapping man in his prime, he was three times the size of the underfed boy, but Patrick scorned to attack him unwarned. Besides, he wanted the farmer to know why he was carrying a freshly whetted scythe.

  As the farmer gawped at him, jowls reddening, Patrick gasped, “I’ve come to do ye for Patrick O’Shea, him ye killed and stole his horse!”

  “Ye young whelp!” cried the farmer, starting up.

  If his huge hands had closed on Patrick, that would have been all of it, but the boy swerved and swept the scythe with all his might. />
  It caught the farmer under the ribs and curved up. Patrick gave it a final tug before it was wrested from his grip. He retreated. The farmer took a few ponderous steps forward, grappling with the scythe, and then collapsed, driving the blade completely through him. He gave a choking, wheezing groan, his feet and hands groped, and he was still.

  Patrick fought an urge to retch while sudden bright hope dawned. He’d been resigned to being taken for a killer and hanged, the main reason he hadn’t let Michael in on his plan. But the way the corpse lay now—

  It took only minutes to find the whetstone and put it where it looked as if the farmer had been sharpening his scythe and met with an accident.

  That was what it was called. It was the one secret Patrick never told his twin.

  He kept the mortal sin on his soul, even after leaving Ireland, because he was not sorry. And he would never be.

  At Ft. Brown there’d been a sergeant who hated the O’Sheas’ guts, who called them “micks,” “damn mackerel snappers” and more profane things. He had them at hard labor most of the time and there was no appeal from his edicts. To the young Irishmen and other Catholic volunteers, including Poles and Frenchmen, the sergeant became the army, became the voice and face of the country they’d hoped would welcome them, though indeed it was said that almost half of Zachary Taylor’s men, encamped there on the Rio Grande that spring of 1846, were foreigners.

  Of course there were things Shea liked. Major Ringgold’s light artillery—now there was something to see! No monstrous long iron cannon on bulky carriages, but bronze barrels four feet long that could hurl a six-pound iron ball up to fifteen hundred yards. The two-wheeled caissons that carried them were attached to a two-wheeled limber that carried the ammunition. Six good horses pulled each gun and part of the crew hung on to the caisson while the others rode.

  It was a joy to watch them drill and if Shea could have been with the guns, he might never have taken that fateful swim across the Rio. A battery of four guns would wheel at the order and the men dropped off, unlimbered the gun, and got out the things they were going to need.

  While an officer arranged the gun, the men rammed in powder sewed up in oiled flannel bags, then the ball, shell or canister, a bagful of lead bullets. A slow-burning torch lit the quick match which set off the powder. The gun leaped, but the men swabbed it out and in ten seconds were ready to fire again.

  But Shea couldn’t even watch the drill in peace. The sergeant was after him like a great stinging horse fly.

  Then one afternoon Sgt. John Riley of the Fifth Infantry, an Irishman said to have deserted the British Army in Canada and to have been a drillmaster at West Point, swam the river to Mass and never came back. That set the O’Sheas—and others—thinking.

  Across the Rio were pretty girls, music and the Mass. Mexico was offering Catholics who would come over to its army special privileges and 320 acres of land, in contrast to the United States which had given the O’Sheas a cold welcome and considerable pain. One night the brothers swam across.

  They weren’t the only ones. Gradually, enough men, many Irish, deserted from the United States Army to form Mexico’s fiercest fighting group, the Battalion of San Patricio. The nuns of San Luis Potosí made them a fine brave flag, green, with Saint Patrick himself on it, a harp and shamrock. Ah, that flag had seen glorious fighting! No wonder. The San Patricios knew that if they were captured, they would surely hang.

  The end came last month at Churubusco on August 20, 1847. General Scott’s grape, canister and muskets had raked the church and convent. The Patricios fought on long after the Mexicans tried to surrender, in fact they shot down men trying to run up white flags, but at last it was over. The lucky San Patricios were those who died fighting.

  Though you had to admire the way the others had gone to even a dog’s death like hanging. Out of the eighty tried for desertion, the fifty-four who’d deserted after war was declared were hanged on three different days, the last bunch put on wagons beneath the gallows, not to be hanged till the U.S. flag could be seen flying in victory from the Castle of Chapultepec.

  “Oh, Colonel darlin,’” one condemned man had called out to redheaded Colonel Harney, the hangman who took such pleasure in his work. “Would ye be givin’ me pipe a light from your fine whiskers?”

  Harney struck the man across the face with his saber hilt, knocking out several teeth, but the Irishman cried through his blood, “Bad luck to ye, for I’ll never hold my pipe again as long as I live!”

  Another of those seated on the wagon shouted to Harney that if they waited to hang till the U.S. flag flew from the castle, they’d live to eat the goose that would fatten on Harney’s own grave. Several complimented Harney on his skill at hanging. “For didn’t you rape Seminole girls in Florida and hang them next morning, Colonel dear?”

  For sure he’d hung the Patricios, even the one who’d lost both legs at Contreras and was dying.

  And then … Shea’s mind veered from the flogging, the red-hot iron biting into his flesh.

  At least he hadn’t hanged. Nor had Michael, though that would have been easier than this.…

  With his last strength, Shea commended his soul to the Blessed Mother and began to ask forgiveness for his sins, but even with death upon him he couldn’t repent of the farmer’s death. Not with hell before him.

  The Virgin had a smile like his mother’s. He watched that, not the flickering fires of brimstone.

  Then suddenly he was floating above his scarred body, purple-gray, gashed, still marked with the flogging. Like Michael, he could not bleed; his lips were scorched away from his teeth in a wolf grin. Skin baked to bone, except for red-gold hair, he could have been some poor devil of an Indian or Mexican.

  Nothing to admire or linger around, that corpse, yet though it was dead, his spirit couldn’t quite desert it. Though several times he tried to leave, something held his consciousness all that day near the wrecked body.

  It never moved. Buzzards circled but didn’t light. A gaunt coyote sniffed, gave the face a tentative lick, then trotted on. Not good enough for varmints! he chuckled at himself. Still his essence hovered as if it feared being lost in the distance between this hell and the next.

  The sun plunged down. A cooling breeze waked, stirred the bright hair. Poor lad, thought his spirit with detached pity. Then, to the spirit’s great surprise, the corpse began to move, set one scratched hand forward, clawing the lava, raised a bit on raw knees, inched onward, collapsed, then hitched jerkily, clumsily ahead.

  The spirit hovered, disbelieving.

  Craziness! Can a dead man move?

  This one did, falling prostrate often, sometimes for so long that the spirit began to slip away when it was called back, disgusted, disbelieving, but unable to leave while the corpse struggled. All night, Shea’s body crawled through lava and thorns. The sun rose in a flood of liquid fire, striking the shriveled form so that it curled into itself like a scorched spider.

  Scornfully regretful, the spirit drifted, at last knowing the foolish battle was ended. Poor bones and flesh, to cling to torment! But that ruin had one more surprise in it.

  Bruised fingers dug deep, the head raised. From the inner core of what had been a man, a great cry forced through charred throat and mouth, echoed on the rocks. Then Patrick O’Shea was still. At last his spirit was done with his body.

  II

  Sand was being forced down his throat. Wet sand, scratching, choking. His eyes fell open. Without comprehension, he saw a tender line of cheek and throat, dark eyes full of tears.

  He tried to say, “Why do you give me sand?” but his lips rasped like old snakeskin and the inside of his windpipe felt as if that last shout had burned it with a white-hot poker.

  “Drink,” the girl told him in Spanish.

  The damp sand again.

  She looked so kind! Why didn’t she give him real water? Maybe if he sucked enough moisture from the grains he could wet his tongue enough to tell her what she was doing. But th
e stuff gagged him.

  He retched weakly, spewing up what he’d swallowed.

  “Perhaps it goes better if you only hold it in your mouth and let it slide down very slowly,” she murmured, wiping his face, urging on him more of the watery graininess.

  If she could just understand! But he obeyed, didn’t try to swallow the mass but let it seep gradually down his throat. In between doses, the girl applied deliciously soothing wet cloths to his skin, carefully trickled fluid from the jug over them.

  It looked like water, brackish, but not the mud it tasted like. For the first time in his life as a male, he lay on a firmly soft and lovely breast without lustful thoughts, as if he’d been a babe.

  He floated in and out of awareness, rousing at her coaxing, at last finding the contents of the jug tasting more like water and less like sand. After what must have been a long time, she placed a finely mashed tangy sweetness in his mouth.

  “A cactus fruit. Can you chew it?”

  He could, weakly, savoring the taste, but when he tried to swallow, he gagged and seemed to lose all the water she’d so painstakingly got down him.

  “Pardon me,” he tried to say, but she soothed him, washing his face, and began once more to urge fluid into the rawhide skeleton he’d become.

  The next food she tried was a very thin gruel. He kept a few cautious swallows of it down. Only when she smiled, eyes shining like stars, did he realize how fearful she had been; how beautiful she was.

  After a judicious wait she fed him more gruel. This, too, stayed inside him. She kneaded water into his dry, leatherlike skin and kept giving him small sips. As it grew hotter, she kept wetting the cloths covering him.

  He drowsed, still feverish, felt a hand touch his hair, glanced up to see her move shyly away. “When you can walk with my help,” she said, “we’ll go down to the water hole where there is shade.”