The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  Standing near the stone heaps, Socorro prayed for the slain. Shea and Santiago joined her. But Tjúni, face stony as the dark mountain, only stared eastward after the murderers.

  The “river” forked here and next day they took the southern branch which ended at a deserted ranchería at the foot of the Sierra de Cobota. From there it was four days to the Santa Cruz.

  Twining a way through the rugged maze of the Sierra del Pajarito was the worst part of the whole journey and it was fortunate Tjúni was along for she knew the passes which time had dimmed in Santiago’s memory.

  When they came out of this range onto level land where mountains marched on all sides of them, Santiago took off his sombrero, gave it a wild flourish that sent Noche dancing.

  “The Santa Cruz tonight,” he shouted. “Socorro tomorrow.”

  That night they crossed the shallow waters of the Santa Cruz and camped beneath the ruins of what had been Calabazas. According to Santiago it had been first a Pima village, then a visita of Mission Guevavi where Jesuits held services. When the Pimas died in an epidemic, Papagos setttled there, and when the Jesuits were expelled from all Mexico, gray-robed Franciscans took over and Tumacácori became the mission headquarters for visitas in the area.

  During those years of the late 1700s, Apache raids depopulated Guevavi and much of the region. After Mexico got its independence in 1821 Spanish troops were withdrawn and most of the Spanish-born Frandemic, Papagos settled there, and when the Jesuits predecessors had been fifty-four years earlier.

  The Apache renewed their raids. Thousands of settlers fled and thousands more were killed. Calabazas was abandoned like nearly every ranch or settlement that wasn’t very close to either Tubac or Tucson, the last presidios in all that wild country.

  Gazing up at the ruins on the east bank of the river, Socorro shivered. If this place, with its long history of Indian and mission occupation, hadn’t survived the fury of the Apache, how could they hope to withstand it at the old ranch?

  She straightened her shoulders. Better risk this savage land with Shea than return to the captive life of Los Alamos or ask her unknown hidalgo cousin to take a violated woman for his bride. The truth was that she couldn’t imagine life without Shea though she very well knew such a man couldn’t forever sleep chastely beside her.

  Sighing, she got out food for the evening meal. It was too dark now to start a fire for fear of Apaches, so dry jerky and corn must feed them, though they could each have a sweet taste of honey.

  What a difference being able to cook these staples made! The jerky, well stewed with chilis, was quite good. Added to corn, it made stew. And the com could make soup, mush and tortillas.

  When they got to the ranch, within the shelter of walls, they’d risk fires, of course. It was where they were going to stay and they had to take certain chances if life were to be worth living. It came to her suddenly that home, in this region, wasn’t a place of safety so much as a place where people decided to take the chances of being permanent, the pleasures and the perils.

  Taking a handful of corn down to Viejo, whose lacerations were starting to slowly heal, Socorro patted him along the black cross marked on spine and shoulders. It was supposed to be Christ’s cross, bestowed on the ass because it had carried Jesus on the flight into Egypt and again into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

  “Why, burrito!” she said, laughing. “Your lineage is more ancient and honorable than that of any grandee! Yet you bear our burdens.”

  She imagined that Carlos would be most upset at such a notion and in that moment ceased to be troubled by his presumed standards or those of Alamos society. The gente de razón, from her experience, had more pride than reason, pride in things she could no longer consider important after her struggles in the desert.

  The breeze lifted her hair as she walked back to camp. If, to have a home, she must dare light a flame that might call down Apaches, couldn’t she risk the fire of her love for Shea? Must she huddle in dark fearful cold because he had a man’s hands and a man’s body?

  In the moonlight she could see Tjúni watching Shea and a tide of jealousy rose in her. The girl was beautiful in her wild way and, set as she was on avenging her family, she still hadn’t endured that shameful agony which had branded Socorro as viciously as the iron searing Shea’s cheek.

  I’ll always have the scar, Socorro thought, but it needn’t be a wound.

  As if called by her resolve, Shea came to stand by her, his bright head a glory that she yearned to touch. His eyes were shadowed but his voice was deep, husky with controlled violence.

  “Tomorrow, lass! Tomorrow we’ll reach home. You’ll have a hearth again, a bed.…”

  She heard his breath catch. Her own blood raced painfully. Caught between dread and desire, she forced a laugh.

  “And a metate! Back to grinding corn!”

  “We’ll make a mill for you,” Santiago promised. “But we haven’t lost a cow, a horse, or, thanks to you, lady, even that old burro! And more than likely we can increase our herds with cattle and horses that have run wild since the ranches were abandoned.”

  Tjúni’s voice slashed like a knife through these dreams and plannings. “You have sworn to find the scalp hunters.”

  “True,” said Santiago. “First we do that.”

  Shea nodded. And though Socorro slept between them that night, she felt as if they had already gone away.

  VIII

  Agua Linda, or Socorro, as Santiago insisted they call it from the start, came in sight late the next afternoon after a journey down the valley through which Sonoita Creek flowed. Towering red cliffs and mountains on either side were softened by huge trees, some of which were black walnuts that had dropped their nuts which lay darkening on the ground.

  White-trunked sycamore and silvery gray cottonwoods were losing their yellow or browning leaves among red-leafed maples and elms, while farther from the stream on the flatter, dried land were large oaks and the smaller, more densely growing ones.

  On the mountainsides changing leaves were brilliant against the deep green of pine, fir, spruce and cedar.

  Squirrels were busy, an antelope bounded away, and they glimpsed a bandit-masked raccoon washing its food as a woodpecker thumped resoundingly.

  The grass grew thick and high, a feast to all the desert-reared animals. There was no cholla and little prickly pear though agave and yucca still jutted from the hillsides and impossible-seeming niches along the rugged cliffs. It was an altogether greener, softer, more luxuriant region than Socorro had ever seen, for though Alamos was rich in shady trees and flowers, it was still part of the desert.

  The valley widened into a broad plateau that stretched to rolling hills with sharp-toothed mountains beyond. Sun turned crumbling adobe to warm gold, touched bleached, gray-white corrals, the remains of several ramadas and sheds, sunflowers growing thick around them.

  “Rancho del Socorro!” called Santiago, reining back so that Noche pranced beside Castaña. “Is it not a beautiful place?”

  It was, in spite of the desolation. Gazing at the house located safely above any floodings of the clear sparkling stream, Socorro said, “The people must have hated to leave it.”

  “They feared Apaches more,” Santago brooded, hawk’s eyes smoldering. “Some fled to Don Antonio’s and lived another twenty-five years only to die at the hands of those scalpers!”

  “But they had twenty-five years first,” Socorro reminded him.

  He shrugged. “I think no mortal can escape his fate.”

  “Yes,” agreed Socorro ironically. “No doubt hard-headed daredevils are fated to die sooner than other people, and in more interesting fashions!”

  He only laughed at her and rode off to push along some stragglers who were trying to eat all this marvelous grass before it vanished into desert and cholla.

  It was spine-tingling to watch the cattle stop when Santiago rode up front and signaled to Cristiano that his duty was done, that now the herd could spread out up and down the val
ley, water when they would in the flowing creek.

  The burros were driven up to the buildings to be unloaded. When this was done, they joined the unsaddled horses in rolling sweat off their backs and stiffness from their bodies. Only Viejo lingered near the people who entered the old ranch house to survey its disasters and possibilities.

  The roof had fallen in but the walls, though eroded by wind and rain, were five feet thick and basically sound. Leveling off the uneven top and adding new adobe shouldn’t be too difficult, and most of the roof poles seemed sturdy and unrotted.

  There were three rooms, as wide as the roof poles had been long, about twelve feet. The longest room was in the middle, perhaps twenty feet long, with adobe benches built along the walls. It shared a fireplace with what had probably been a bedroom, the fireplace built facing where the inner wall left off to form a passage.

  The kitchen had a fireplace, too, and more adobe benches on either side of it as well as niches conveniently made in the wall to hold cooking needs. A metate and mano and the heavy stone griddle for baking tortillas had been left, doubtless because of their heaviness.

  What woman had used them last? Socorro wondered. Where was she now? But there was little time for fancies. She said to the men, “If one of you will make a fire, I’ll get a stew going.”

  Santiago accepted that chore and went off to collect wood. Shea brought up fresh water and started taking things from the packs, leaving the food, jars and baskets for Socorro to put away. When Tjúni saw the baskets of corn, she put some in the metate and started grinding with graceful, practiced skill that made Socorro extremely rueful about the progress she had, till now, been proud of.

  Socorro put jerky, chilis, corn and water into the big kettle. The meat and corn could be softening even though the fire wasn’t ready. She tried talking to Tjúni but the Papago girl answered in monosyllables so that Socorro was glad to leave the kitchen and was clearing out rubble and parts of fallen roof, wary of snakes and rodents, when Shea’s hands closed over her eyes.

  “Come here,” he ordered. He brought her forward, then let her look. In a niche above the door stood the blue- and gold-robed dark madonna, standing on the crescent moon, her lips parted in a gentle smile.

  Socorro’s throat choked with tears. She was happy and sad, hopeful and fearing all at once. Shea’s hands dropped to her shoulders. She tried to meet his gaze but the depths of his blue-gray eyes made her feel she was sinking into them, drowning.

  He tilted up her face. “Welcome to your home, my love, my lass!” His lips were cool and hard and very sweet. Socorro had no strength; she lay in his arms while his kiss possessed her.

  His breath caught in. He crushed her against him, mouth pressing fiercely on hers, burning to her throat. “My God!” he groaned. “My God, I need you!”

  She scarcely heard; that wild melting in her changed to terror. She fought him, striking out, writhing, weeping. He pinioned her, holding her close. He must have done this for some moments before her mind cleared and she understood what he was saying, knew him again.

  “Is it that bad, chiquita? Don’t tremble so! I’d rather die than hurt you, don’t you know that?”

  “Oh, Shea!” She clung to him, sobbing. “I—I love you! But something happens—something awful!”

  He stroked her shoulders, her back, soothing her till her tears stopped. “I love you,” he said simply.

  “And I love you! But—”

  He hushed her with fingers on her lips. “We love each other. We’re home. Think how lucky we are, my girl, and don’t worry about the ‘buts’!”

  Somewhat comforted, Socorro dashed the tears away, caught up his hand and kissed it, pressed it to her face. “You are too good to me! I—I’ll try—”

  “Not right now,” he teased. “Aren’t you going to put something on that fire Santiago’s built?”

  Making a face at him, she hurried into the kitchen and put the stew on to cook. Tjúni was still grinding, the coarse cotton of her shiftlike dress pulling back against her breasts in rhythm with her motions. Her eyes followed Shea. She smiled very slowly. If Shea kissed her …

  Socorro closed her mind against the tormenting vision, energetically continued putting things away, placing them on the earthen benches or hanging them from pegs, while Shea and Santiago took over the clearing out of debris and remnants of roof. Santiago made a broom of strong sacaton grass tied to a paloverde branch and swept out everywhere but the kitchen where the dust would have gotten in the food.

  By the time Tjúni had a basket of tortillas ready, perfectly thin and round to Socorro’s great envy, the stew was bubbling, giving off a tempting odor. Shea brought the sleeping mats for them to sit on and they attacked their food with hungry relish, grateful for the warmth and light of the fire as night deepened. They were at a higher altitude now. It must have been nearing the end of November, and the air cooled instantly when the sun dropped behind the mountains.

  When the meal was finished, Tjúni’s dark eyes traveled from one man to the other. “When do we hunt the scalpers?”

  Santiago’s gaze joined hers, fixing on Shea. “We’ve got to get some men and at least one woman to stay here with Socorro while we’re gone,” he said. “We should put the roof on and bring in some game or kill another steer.”

  What he planned, Socorro knew, was to leave her situated with the ranch in working order so that, if he didn’t return, she could try, if she were so minded, to hold the land and herd, make this place her home.

  “You don’t need to bother with the roof,” she said. “If you find some vaqueros for me, they can fix it, or you can when you come back.”

  Shea’s eyes probed her. “You’re sure?”

  She didn’t tell him that if he didn’t return, she’d need no roof, that without him, she would not live. “I’m sure.”

  He raised his broad shoulders in a half-shrug. “Well, then, tomorrow Santiago can ride to Tubac and try to bribe some trustworthy vaqueros into throwing in with us. I’ll go hunting.”

  “Just in case you get nothing”—Santiago grinned—“I’ll try to bag something on my way home.”

  Tjúni gave Socorro a patronizing look. “Plants are different here from those of the low desert, but I know some of them from food-gathering trips to the mountains. Shall we hunt that sort of food, lady, while El Señor hunts meat?”

  Socorro knew the other young woman would not call her by name; it was her way of maintaining distance. Socorro regretted this. It would have helped to be able to pour out her confused despair to another woman, talk about and try to conquer the irrational panic that flooded her at a man’s touch, but she was too proud to persist in breaking down Tjúni’s reserve.

  “I’d be glad to learn about wild foods,” she told the girl.

  Santiago frowned. “If you’re going to be roaming about, I’ll leave my bow with you, Tjúni. You can shoot?”

  “Better than my brothers,” she boasted, before she remembered what had become of them and her pretty mouth twisted. “Let me show you in the morning.”

  Santiago got to his feet, wincing the slightest bit. These long days in the saddle must have pained his mutilated thigh, but though he sometimes cursed, he never complained.

  “Well, let us hope I can find some foolhardy vaqueros at Tubac and not have to ride on toward Tucson! I can reach Tubac tomorrow, but Tucson must be fifty miles farther north.”

  “Setting up excuses already in case you meet a pretty woman!” Shea growled.

  “Pretty and willing,” Santiago retorted. “At least I can promise the vaqueros that changing the brands on our herd won’t be onerous. The C needs only another curve to form an S!”

  He picked up one of the mats and drifted into the next room. In a moment the others followed, except for Tjúni who said she preferred to sleep in the kitchen. Socorro paused before Guadalupana and asked her blessing on them and their new home. When she turned, Santiago and Shea stood beside her, heads bowed.

  She put a han
d in each of theirs and they stood like that, joined by her body, their closeness saying what none of them could put in words.

  They had each survived a kind of death, had saved each other’s lives and sanity. Closer and deeper than lovers, they were bound together.

  “Do not fear, lady.” Santiago’s voice was earnest. “This will be our home for many years. I know this.”

  “May you be right, my friend!” She gave him an impulsive kiss on his smooth boy’s cheek, then, too late, remembered Shea.

  To him, wanting her as he did, a kiss like that would be an insult. She touched his cheek and said good night, miserably aware that it took iron control for him to keep his hands from her.

  She must, must, get over her terror. Before he found solace in Tjúni or visited Tubac for the women used by the soldiers.

  As she made her pallet in the roofless moonlit room, she wished she could carry it in, sleep close to Shea, even as close as they’d been on the journey. But walls were between them now, would be till she found a way to escape that stronger, cruler wall within herself.

  Help me, she prayed. Blessed Mother, let me show my love when Shea comes back. But most of all, bring him back, and Santiago and Tjúni, though I cannot like her. Let my love be safe. Then, if I cannot give him what he, as a man, must have, help me accept his turning to another.

  She managed to mean the prayer while she breathed it, but seconds later she imagined Shea holding Tjúni as he had held her, uncovering that lithely curved warm body.

  I can’t bear it! she thought as sharp blades seemed to twist through her body. I’d want to kill them both!

  Somehow she must teach that wailing mindless dread within her that Shea was her love, kind, tender. But when she tried to school herself through how it would be with him, how he would kiss and caress and hold her, when his hands touched her secret body they became the brutal gripping fingers of those laughing men who’d held her for each other’s rutting.