Should they arm Socorro? Shea thought of Indians, white scalp hunters and varicolored no-goods, and grimly decided she’d better have all the protection they could scrape up.
Selecting the three boughs he deemed most likely, Shea axed them off, cleaned them of smaller limbs and leaves and took them to Santiago, who was lying on his side watching Socorro as she knelt at the metate, bringing her weight down on the pestle as she ground.
Hard work, but it was also a sensuous moving of the upper body though she chatted away with no awareness of that.
Standing where he blocked Santiago’s view, Shea offered the boughs. “Think they’ll do?”
“Alamos—cottonwood,” approved Santiago. “Probably the best thing we can get here.” He hitched himself into a sitting position, thanked Shea who put a serape behind him for support. “There should be some good strips of rawhide in the storeroom. Please, if you’ll bring them and the knife, I’ll see what I can do. We need three bows?”
Shea nodded toward Socorro. “She’d better learn to use one, too.”
He brought the lengths of rawhide to Santiago. “Have any ideas on what would make the best arrows?”
“Apaches use cane. There’s a stand of it below where you found the cottonwoods.”
“Cane? That wouldn’t be strong enough!”
“Tell that to the men who’ve been pierced with cane arrows from three hundred feet away!” suggested the vaquero.
“I suppose we can try them,” Shea grudged. “But if they snap when we try them on targets, we’ll use something stronger.”
“By all means,” returned Santiago placidly.
As Shea went out, he heard Socorro say in a defensive tone, “You must remember, Santiago, that el señor is from another land.” That smarted more than Santiago’s veiled amusement.
God’s whiskers! vowed Shea. Cane arrows or ironwood, I’ll learn to outshoot that little monkey!
Through the afternoon the two men worked on weapons. Socorro brought Santiago frequent drinks of tea she’d made from an herb drying in the storeroom which she confidently said was manzanilla, a good tonic.
She offered some to Shea who took a sniff and shook his head though he longed for real tea or coffee. That was human nature for you! Here they were in comparative luxury and he craved more. Which reminded him.
“We’ve used up the jerky,” he remarked to Santiago. “Mind if I butcher one of the scraggiest old steers?”
“Take your pick, except for an old roan stag who has the Cantú brand on his shoulder and a cross on his flank.” Santiago glanced at his poulticed hip. “I think I can travel in another week or ten days. We’ll need jerky for the trip. Those steers are skinny. Better kill two.”
Shea took the knife and ax down to the well, kept an eye on the cattle who came to the trough. There were quite a few, to his eye, who qualified for slaughter. He waited for one particularly gaunt old warrior to drink his fill. As he moved back, thirst quenched, Shea waited till he was out of the way of the other cattle, then brought the ax down as hard as he could at the back of the neck, cleaved through the vertebral column deep into the flesh.
The steer fell, wound pumping blood, head lolling, dead almost immediately. Shea skinned him, then with the ax and knife carved him into quarters. He took a generous chunk of loin up to the house for supper.
“Save the head,” admonished Santiago.
“What for?”
“Tatema.” Santiago kissed his fingers. “Delicious!”
It didn’t sound that way, but if this kid was running a bluff, Shea meant to call it. “I’ll save it,” he promised and went back to work.
By the time all the meat was in the house where it’d be safe from hungry birds and animals, Shea was more than ready to rest and eat. They heard snarling outside, a sharp yip. Santiago laughed.
“Someone disputes with Don Coyote. You did save the head?”
“Yes. Now you’ll have to tell me what to do with it.”
“Simple. Make a hole and line it with rocks. Build a fire and keep it going till the rocks are very, very hot. Meanwhile, you’ve shaped clay all around the head. This goes in the hole, you cover it with more hot rocks, then earth on top of that. Do it in the morning and we’ll have a rare treat by evening.”
Socorro said decidedly, “I won’t!”
“Lady! Tatema melts in the mouth.”
“Not in mine.”
Santiago tilted his head at Shea, who choked a bit on a tough but good-flavored hunk of beef. “I’ll try anything once. What do you think of the bows and arrows?”
Thoughtfully considering the weapons piled beside him, Santiago hefted an arrow. It was three feet long and a thin wedge was cut out of the cane into which was set a piece of whittled hardwood with a bone point.
“No feathers and an Apache would probably die laughing at the balance, but I shot a few out the door and I think they’ll serve. The piece of hardwood will come loose if the arrow’s jerked at and leave the point in the quarry.”
“Hey! What if I’d been fixing to come in when you shot?”
“Oh, our lady watched to be sure that didn’t happen and then fetched in the arrows,” explained Santiago airily.
Shea grunted. “We’d all better start practicing soon.”
Socorro’s smooth brow had been furrowing. Now she burst out impatiently. “Don’t you notice something, Shea?”
He looked about, saw nothing different, studied the food which he’d been too busy eating to pay much mind to. “The beans! They’re almighty flavorsome tonight, Socorro.”
Ominously, she said, “They’re exactly as they have been, neither worse nor better.”
“Uh …” Trapped, he said desperately, “Your dress looks nice.”
“Ay, ay! Burro!”
Dashing back glittering tears, she sprang to her feet, fled into the next room. Stifled sobs. Shea turned helplessly to Santiago. “What—?”
Santiago pointed to the basket of tortillas. “No lumps, no holes, none burned!” he whispered. “So proud she was, Don Patricio!” Jealously, he added, “She could scarcely wait for you to pick one up and notice.”
Tortillas!
Shea blinked, shook his head. This girl who’d survived a massacre, snatched two men from death, found water where most people, including him, would have died—this girl who’d walked uncomplainingly through the closest thing earth had to hell was crying because he hadn’t complimented her improved tortillas!
God’s whiskers!
But when you thought of the hours she put in at that metate, the way she’d persisted in trying to flatten the small balls of dough into perfect, even rounds, the way she’d burned her fingers on the griddle—yes, Shea could understand.
Tentatively picking up one of the flat cakes, he saw that indeed it was vastly superior to the first ones she’d made. He got up and headed for the bedroom, casting Santiago a look.
Huddled on the big bed, Socorro looked very small and vulnerable. “Go away!” Her shoulders heaved. She burrowed deeper into the serapes:
Shea dropped to his knees. “Socorro, the tortillas are—why, they’re handsome! I should have noticed right away but I was too busy stuffing myself with them like a mule eating hay!”
Another snuffle.
“Socorro! Damn it, I’m sorry!”
She hitched herself up on one elbow. Slowly, her face emerged. She dashed her tears away before she gave a soft, shaky laugh. “A big redhead mule devouring my poor tortillas! Yes, that’s what you are!”
He’d be any kind of mule if she’d forgive him. “Come watch me flap my ears while I eat some more?” he invited.
Her smile broke like the sun from behind clouds. “Come, then, burro pelirrojo!”
Though he wasn’t hungry, Shea finished off the tortillas. Beneath Santiago’s sardonic stare, he couldn’t say much beyond “Mighty good!” but he looked at each tortilla admiringly as he lifted it, rolled it with respect and took small appreciative bites while Socorro beamed.
Somehow it all made him remember his mother, how she’d tried to give a bit of flavor and grace to their scanty meals, flowers in a broken mug, scallions and herbs from the garden, wild mushrooms, salvaged windfall apples that better-off people left for their pigs.
He understood suddenly that feeding people was a way of loving them. One of the most important ways; without food they died. And he undertook to never again have a meal without thanking in some fashion the person who’d fixed it.
Even, he thought dourly, if it was Santiago!
The tatema was exhumed from its pit next evening, the mud peeled off along with the hide, and the result placed hurriedly by Shea in front of Santiago.
Blissfully spooning out one of what had been the eyes, Santiago said, “Muy sabrosa! Try it, Don Patricio!”
Swallowing hard, Shea gingerly poked around with a tortilla and the knife they all shared at meals. If you could forget what it was, the tatema was tasty. Santiago hadn’t been playing a nasty joke.
But the vaquero got to enjoy most of that special delicacy.
They prepared now for the journey north. Santiago made more arrows and they all practiced shooting for about an hour each day. Even sitting, as he was obliged to, Santiago quickly became a good marksman.
“It must be carried over from using the reata,” he said when Shea swore disgustedly after his fifth miss at a gourd Santiago had hit on his first try. “Without boasting, Don Patricio, I was the best roper among many good ones. Using the eye and hand together takes training.” He grinned. “Or maybe it’s my Apache blood!”
It had turned out that Santiago’s blood was considerably mixed. His grandfather had been an Opata captive who was raised by the Apache and had married one of their women. The daughter of this union had been captured by slave traders and sold to Don Antonio—who, back in his blue-blooded ancestry, had a Tarahumare woman whose conquistador master had legitimized his sons by her.
Whatever the blend, it had produced a splendid result, Shea thought, as he brooded on the fact that he had never thrown a rope in his life. One more thing to learn! He thought of Socorro’s improved tortillas and doggedly notched another arrow.
Socorro’s bow was smaller than those of the men and her arrows were scaled to it. It took her a while to learn how to hold the arrow while pulling back the bowstring, but once she got the feel of it, she shot with a kind of joy.
“I never got to do anything like this before!” she exclaimed one day as Shea brought back her arrows. Windblown and flushed, she had never looked more beautiful. “It’s a lot more fun than grinding corn!”
At first it had seemed the scalp hunters had stolen the horses and mules. They must have taken the main remuda, but gradually ones they’d missed turned up for water and Shea got them into the corrals where he fed them with grass cut from the region where the cane grew, with cottonwood boughs, and singed prickly pear.
Remembering that his father had died because of a horse, Shea had a special feeling for them though he’d only been mounted a few times in his life, and that uncomfortably. He counted with considerable pride as three horses and two mules increased to five and six, respectively. There were packsaddles and the big box-like leather aparejos, or square bags, which could carry useful things, serapes, kettles, the ax, tools, provisions. And plenty of water!
“Just how do you figure we can drive that herd one hundred and fifty miles?” he asked Santiago one night.
“We won’t. Cristiano will take them for us.”
“Cristiano? Who’s he?”
“The old roan stag I told you not to slaughter. The one with the cross on his hip.”
“Now, look, youngling, I’m new to this country, but—”
“Cristiano is the leader. Before, when we’ve taken herds to Tubac or Tucson or the mines, he’s led the way.”
Santiago looked so serious that Shea believed him though he scratched his head. “How was he trained?”
“Lead steers do it naturally. Of course, Cristiano was a bull till he was five years old. As you may know, in Mexico we seldom geld cattle or horses, but Cristiano grew so fearsome, goring several other good bulls, that Don Antonio had to choose between virility for him or all the rest of the males. Gelding took away Cristiano’s rages but he’s still the boss.”
Santiago had begun to get about a little with the aid of a stick. Several times Shea had seen him out by the crosses of the burial arroyo, but instead of being bowed, his head was thrown back as he gazed at the distant mountains. If he were praying, his prayers were mighty different from those of Socorro.
“I should tell you one thing,” he said one morning as they breakfasted on corn gruel and a rabbit he’d brought down with an arrow. “Once we’re settled at the Socorro, I must leave you for a time, but I’ll find you some Papagos for help.”
“May I inquire what’s your pressing business?” Shea asked.
“I must find those scalp hunters.”
“But there’s no telling where they are by now!”
Santiago’s lips pulled back from his white teeth. “I shall hunt for scalpers and kill any I track down till I finally get the right bunch. It won’t be a waste of time. To kill any bounty hunter is a good thing.”
“What if one kills you?”
The yellow eyes lighted. “So long as he’s the last of them, I’ll die blessed!”
Socorro put a pleading hand on his arm. “Santiago, por favor—”
“Do not, lady,” he told her. “Do not ask me what I cannot do, for in all things but this I will serve you.”
Shea remembered his father and killing the farmer so long ago. He understood the young man’s bitter resolve, but it was one thing to kill a single murderer, another to tackle a half-dozen heavily armed and savage men.
“I’d go with you,” he said slowly, “if it weren’t for Socorro. Don’t try it alone, lad. There must be other men who’d like a crack at them.”
“I will not wait!” Santiago screamed as if something had snapped deep inside him.
They stared, shocked. Recovering himself though he still breathed heavily and kept his hands clenched, Santiago whispered, “The vaqueros were my friends. For Don Antonio I had respect. Doña Ana, his wife, ignored me as much as possible, but their son Carlos—he followed me everywhere. Seven years old and already good with the rope, not afraid of any bull or horse. What a man he’d have been! And there was his sister, Elena, only five, who tried to do everything he did—all of my friends, their wives and babies—”
Blindly reaching for his stick, Santiago rose and hobbled outside. Socorro followed. For once, Shea wasn’t jealous.
The boy was right. He had to avenge his people. And he, Shea, would go with him in a second if there were some way of leaving Socorro in safety.
Maybe she could stay at one of those presidios, Tubac or Tucson. We’ll see, Shea thought, and sighed.
He was sick of killing and of death. All he wanted was to settle down and make a life with Socorro. Here in the Province of Sonora in the autumn of 1847, that might be an unattainable dream. But at least they had water and food and an ally who knew the country.
Knew it? Opata, Apache, Tarahumare, Spaniard—hell, he was the country!
Shea heard him talking to Socorro now, unleashing pent-up grief, desolation and fury. That would help. Sighing, Shea took his bow and cowskin quiver and went out to hunt.
PART II
SOCORRO
VI
A week later they left the ranch. According to Santiago, who kept a calendar by knotting a strip of rawhide, it was, mas o menos, the middle of November. They needed serapes at night but the sun still heated the day, though not in the parching manner of summer or early autumn.
Cristiano, a gaunt wary old warrior of many scars, led the mixed herd of two hundred. There were a few bulls, some steers for beef, but mostly there were young cows Santiago had selected for breeding good cattle.
Looking at the pack mules was, for Socorro, like seeing a moving
storehouse. Each of the six carried two aparejos which held up to seventy-five pounds apiece of corn, whole or ground, beans, dried squash, chilis, jerky and wheat. These hung from two loops of rawhide fastened to the packsaddle.
On top of these and the saddle frame were piled the movable things that would be of inestimable value: the iron kettles, utensils, baskets and earthenware, tools, rawhide and tanned leather, usable clothing, the luxurious down pillows from the big bed, and serapes covering each load and lashed down securely to the saddle. One mule carried things they’d need on the way: food, the ax, hammer, shoes for the mules and horses and nails to fasten them.
In the leather pouch at her waist, Socorro carried a great treasure. Two needles, carefully stuck through a bit of cotton, a pair of scissors and real thread! Her father’s most elegant gifts had never delighted her so.
It was astounding what less than two months in the wilderness could do to a person. Before she left Alamos Socorro would have indignantly rejected the notion that she’d be glad to have the shoes and garments of a dead woman, but she’d felt no compunction at appropriating anything that could be worn or used for patching.
She did, though, take Doña Ana’s few treasures and bury them near the cross: a small carved chest of jewelry, tucked away where the scalpers had missed it, combs for the hair, a cobweb mantilla, a fragile blown-glass vase, as well as a wooden doll and several small carved animals that must have been the children’s. She’d tried to do this secretly, but Shea had seen her and strolled up, red-gold eyebrows meeting in a puzzled frown above his straight long nose.
The brand on his cheek had faded to dull red and no longer puckered, but he’d wear it to the grave. In spite of that, with his gold-flamed hair and eyes the color of storm, he had an imperious male beauty that weakened Socorro each time she looked at him, made the deepest parts of her go soft with longing.
Yet when he looked at her in that certain, heart-stopping way, she was terrified. She had wept in his arms. He had held her kindly. But she knew instinctively, in spite of all his assurances, that she must not always expect him to play the comforting brother.
The Valiant Women Page 7