The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  Sitting up, she stared at the high white moon till the horror faded, then wept convulsively.

  Next morning early, Santiago was off for Tubac, Shea went hunting, and the women started on their food gathering, armed with rawhide and woven straw bags as well as bows and arrows slung in rawhide cases over their shoulders, and knives sheathed at their waists.

  “We’re too late for acorns,” Tjúni regretted as they crossed the creek and started for the mountains. “But when there’s more time, the piñon nuts should be ready higher up.” She pointed at cattails growing in a marshy place. “We can get those later. Be sure to slide your hand down in the mud beneath the root because that, and some of the stalk, is all that’s good to eat this late in the year.”

  Next she touched a low thick bush with jointed, slender stems. “That makes good tea and helps when one cannot pass water or when that hurts. The Pima powder it to put on all kinds of sores and it’s supposed to be a cure for syphilis, though I think the best cure for that is not to get it in the first place!”

  They passed several large black walnut trees since they were near the house and the nuts would keep. The wild grapes had been devoured by birds and animals; Tjúni muttered that the squawberries seemed to all be gone, and Socorro began to wonder if they were going to find anything for their bags. Well, at least there were cattails, tea, walnuts and sunflower seeds!

  “Ah!” gloated Tjúni, stopping abruptly beside a vine-like plant that had numerous small straw-colored lanternlike fruits. “Tomatillo! If we find enough, these will make a very good preserve!”

  Socorro found another bush and a little farther on, they found more. Tjúni was delighted that a shrub with thick, leathery leaves still had a few nuts on it. “Roasted and ground, jojoba makes a good coffee,” she said, going over the bush with great care. “El Señor must like coffee. All the blue-eyes do.”

  “I like it myself,” said Socorro, though she much preferred chocolate.

  Their next discovery kept them busy for over an hour, a dense mass of hackberry bushes. The birds had taken most of the easily reachable fruit but there were many of the small orange globes tucked deep down among the thorny branches.

  Socorro popped a few in her mouth and enjoyed the sweet taste though the seed was so large there wasn’t much flesh. Some berries were shriveling but Tjúni said to pick them anyway since, dried, they could be ground for a meal that added flavor to corn or gruels.

  By now it was afternoon and they had traversed the sides of several small mountains, twining deeper into the wilderness. The berries had kept them from getting too thirsty but they were glad to find a spring breaking from a hollow in the side of a cliff. The spring trickled along the rocks, then plunged downward with a miniature roaring as if it fancied itself an awesome waterfall indeed.

  But there seemed to be some other sound.

  Straightening from her drink, Socorro listened. Tjúni was already peering over the ledge, keeping herself hidden by rocks and bushes. This time there was no mistaking the scream.

  Or man laughter.

  The sounds brought back to Socorro how it had been with the Areneños. Fighting back the sickness that twisted through her, she looked downward.

  The spring ran through a small green basin protected on three sides by cliffs. It must have seemed a safe place to the Indian women, five of them, till the men appeared.

  Two old women were already dead, throats sliced, kicked aside like refuse to make room for sport by the dead fire. Six men were busy with the three women they’d kept alive, holding them down for each other’s convenience or taking their turn.

  One woman lay as if unconscious or dead, one screamed and fought, and the other endured without a sound though the blond on her was huge, thrusting as if he were trying to split her open.

  Socorro gripped Tjúni’s arm, but Tjúni already had her bow strung. “Have arrows ready!” she hissed at Socorro. “Which you think you able to hit? Big yellow-hair? Maybe also one just getting up? You shoot them till you hit, then try for silver hair if I not got him!”

  “But—what if we hit the women?”

  “No matter.” Tjúni spat. “Apache! Hurry!”

  Socorro’s hands trembled as she readied the bow and nocked an arrow, sighting on the hulk of the blond, but then she steadied. If only someone had killed the Areneños when they were raping her, she would have gladly died at the same time. Besides, the scalp hunters would certainly murder their victims once they had their pleasure.

  Help me, Mother! It didn’t seem sacrilegious to ask the Virgin’s aid.

  Two arrows hummed almost as one. Both struck. Tjúni’s arrow took her man in the throat. He clawed, staggered backward, fell to his knees. By the time he was on his face, Tjúni’s next arrow had toppled another of the standing men.

  She aimed next for the bearded rangy one who had been holding the blond man’s prey and now was springing up, running for the rifles stacked against a boulder. It took two arrows to bring him down and still he kept crawling.

  “Finish him later,” Tjúni ordered. “Good, you finally stretch out the yellow-hair! Try not to use three arrows on the redhead!”

  This man and another were running for the trees, not even trying to pick up rifles. They must have thought the women’s men had returned, that they were surrounded by warriors.

  The first silver-haired man ran in a zigzag. Tjúni was calling fervently on Iitoi, Elder Brother, but it took her fourth and last arrow to pierce him between the shoulders. He pitched forward and was still. Socorro hadn’t been able to hit the redhead.

  “Stop wasting arrows!” Tjúni panted, taking one from Socorro’s sling.

  She dropped the man before he reached the trees. And there was one arrow left for the man still wriggling on his belly toward the rifles.

  “Too bad you throw away so many arrows!” Tjúni grunted. “Now we go down, cut Apache throats. But,” she added, gazing down at where one woman still lay as if dead, one lamented, and the other was slowly dragging herself to her feet, “they not give much trouble. And we kill little vermin in cradleboards so they no grow up to plague us!”

  Leaving her bow by the food bags, Tjúni started carefully picking her way down crumbling rock overgrown with shrubs and small trees. Socorro, recovering from paralyzed shock at the other’s intention, chose a more precipitous route and blocked her way.

  “We aren’t going to kill them!”

  “What?” Now it was Tjúni’s turn for shock. “Not kill Apache?” She shook her head in contemptuous wonder. “You crazy! Really crazy!”

  As if brushing off a persistent fly, the Papago girl started on. “We will not do it!” Socorro sobbed, horror at the way they had just killed the men weakening her knees till she thought she was going to faint. “We’re going to help them!”

  Tjúni only laughed.

  They were at the bottom of the cliff now. She was slipping the knife from its sheath. Socorro did the same. Planting herself in front of Tjúni, she said desperately, “You’ll have to kill me before you kill them!”

  Tjúni’s pupils contracted. She stared at Socorro a long tense moment. “You crazy,” she shrugged at last. “Not much use. But I not like try tell El Señor why I alive when you dead!” She added venomously, “You be sorry when little babies now make warriors, come raiding!”

  Ignoring the Apache women, Tjúni, back stiff with outrage, set about salvaging arrows and stripping the men of knives, valuables and usable clothing.

  The woman who hadn’t screamed was young and comely, dressed in finest buckskin though it was now bloody and soiled. “You kill bad men?” she asked in Spanish that was at least as good as Tjúni’s.

  Socorro nodded and motioned toward Tjúni. “The same men killed her family.”

  The Apache woman said in scorn, “Cheap trick, sell Papago scalps for Apache!”

  Dangling a gold watch from its chain, Tjúni glanced up. Her eyes glinted dangerously. “Except for this Papago, you be dead!”

&nbs
p; “You have right.” Apache faced Papago and Socorro understood, chilling, that they embodied implacable hostilities going back hundreds of years, existing long before her own Spanish ancestors set foot in this country. “We owe you life, Desert People woman,” continued the Apache. “I, Luz, swear men of our band never harm you.”

  “That,” retorted Tjúni, “like saying one wolf out of many leave you alone!”

  The other looked as if she’d say something, checked it, and came to kneel by the victim who had screamed. Socorro was already holding the girl gently, coaxing her to drink from a gourd that had been nearby. It was easy to see why she’d lacked the stoic control of the older woman. She was scarcely more than a child.

  Luz spoke to her harshly. The girl’s weeping dulled into wrenching gasps as she struggled for control.

  “Be grateful you too young to conceive by those devils!” Luz admonished in Spanish.

  Accepting the cloth Socorro ripped from her skirt, Luz wet it from the gourd and began to wash the child’s scratched and bloody legs, speaking softly now in Apache, hands deft and careful in spite of the pain she herself must be feeling.

  Socorro moved to the unstirring body just beyond, tried to lift the woman. Her neck was broken. Socorro pulled down her skirt, turned at a squeal from a cradleboard.

  Thank heaven the babies, three of them, were unharmed! Then she sucked in her breath. On the other side of the boulder where the rifles were, two small bodies lay like broken toys.

  Running to them, Socorro groaned, leaned on the rock to vomit. The two naked boys, three or four years old from the size of them, had been dashed against the boulder. Their thin skulls were cracked. Brains oozed over them and the ground.

  Tjúni, returned from recouping arrows from the men who’d almost reached the trees, stared down at the children without expression.

  “The man who run fast, he gone. Smart. Stay on rock, leave no trail.” She shrugged. “No matter. He die with that arrow through him.” She surveyed the rifles with gratified approval, nodded toward the trees. “Horses and pack mules back there. We load on rifles, good things, go home!” She laughed exultantly, gave the stripped body near her a kick that sent it flopping. “Now my people rest quiet! My little sister have peace!”

  “Yes.”

  Socorro’s numb horror must have shown in her face for Tjúni scowled. “You not glad? If not for revenge, so men now not need go hunt these?” She gestured at the grotesque sprawls.

  True. Now Shea and Santiago wouldn’t have to go after the scalpers. Relief lifted some of the weight from Socorro’s heart. She felt as if she breathed again.

  Moving back to Luz and the girl, Socorro said, “Do you want to come to our house?”

  “Why?” returned Luz. She had washed and held herself proudly. Her broad forehead and high, pronounced cheekbones gave her face wild, hawklike beauty. “Our men will come here.”

  It didn’t seem right to leave her and the girl like this. “Let me at least help you with the bodies,” Socorro said. “There are the children—”

  “Yes. They belong Suni, she of broken neck. It her husband’s right decide where to bury them.” She prodded with her toe the huge blond man Socorro had killed. “It be good for warriors whose wives or mothers dead to have these carcasses to carve on.”

  That thought sickened Socorro. “We’ll go then,” she said.

  Luz stepped after her. “Where you live, that I tell our men to spare it?”

  “It is the ranch once called Agua Linda, in a broad valley above the creek.”

  Luz nodded. “I know it. You safe at least from Mimbres who follow Mangus Coloradas. He my uncle.”

  “Mangus! Your uncle?” Tjúni, who’d come over to collect some of her piles of booty, stared transfixed.

  Even Socorro, in Los Alamos, had heard of the giant Apache who was the terror of his enemies from the northern mountains and New Mexican settlements to deep into the Sierra Madre, from Durango to Sonora.

  “My uncle,” said Luz pridefully. Unable to resist a jab at the Papago girl, she added, “He not one wolf of many! None like him, not even Cochise of Chiricahuas who is married to one of his daughters. Even where he not chief, he important, for gave another daughter to big Coyotero chief, Cosito, another daughter to Navajo headman.”

  Tjúni had nothing to say to that. She only gazed at Luz with a mixture of awe and loathing, then turned brusquely to Socorro.

  “You bring food down? Then we go, get home by dark.”

  “Wait!” cried Luz. “Our men come!”

  IX

  Laughing and jesting, a dozen Apache came out of the trees. Each wore a breechclout with buckskin leggings tucked into boots that reached variously from hip to thigh and most had buckskin shirts though a few wore cotton ones. The long black hair of some of them fell below their knees and all wore headcloths. Four of them carried a deer, tied by its legs to a pole.

  Dragged and shoved among the last was a prisoner. He tried stubbornly to keep his feet and made no answer to taunting howls and plans of how they would amuse themselves with him.

  “Shea!” Socorro cried and ran forward in the same moment that Tjúni gasped, “El Señor!” and the warriors saw the dead scattered about.

  One gave a stricken cry, ran to the crumpled small bodies beside the boulder. Another made a sound of smothered outrage, whirling on Shea, knife upraised.

  Luz shouted. The warrior with the knife froze.

  “He’s ours!” Socorro cried. “If you’re grateful for this day, save him, Luz!”

  There was confusion, some men dropping beside wives or mothers, others already hacking the scalp hunters’ heads off, cutting away their privates.

  Luz stood shieldingly in front of Shea and told her husband, a tall young eagle, what had happened. Tjúni’s fear of the Apache men drove her to join Socorro and Luz.

  Then amid the mourning and sounds of vengeance, silence fell. An Apache who towered over Shea by several inches came into the clearing. Luz left her husband and hurried up to him, speaking urgently.

  His glance swept the basin, seeming to note each body. A muscle jerked in his dark cheek when he saw the broken children, seemed to relax a trifle when he saw the undisturbed babies in their cradleboards. His dark eyes came back to Socorro and Tjúni.

  “You saved my niece, the girl, the babies,” he said in Spanish. “I give you your man and protection for your rancho and anything you own. I cannot, you understand, speak for all Apache, but I will make it known to all, Pinal, Mogollon, Tonto, Mescalero, Gila and Coyotero, that Mangus will look at a raid on you as one on himself.”

  In that ravaged country, his promise offered more safety than any presidio. With his own hands, he untied the rawhide cutting into Shea’s wrists, said with a half-smile, “As well as your life, Hair of Flame, you also get to keep your deer!”

  “You have it,” Shea said. “I’m glad to leave its carcass instead of my own.”

  Mangus’s lips didn’t flicker at the absurdity of anyone making a gift of game to his peerless marksmen. He thanked Shea gravely, turned as a warrior led up two of the pack mules, speaking to Mangus in Apache.

  Turning, Mangus said to Shea, “It is right that you have the animals and belongings of these dogs, but we would keep some of the rifles and any scalps they may have taken.”

  “You’re welcome to the horses and mules, great Mangus, and everything else except the scalps and rifles.” Shea spoke in a firm, pleasant way, though he was bruised and marked by his recent handling.

  Mangus didn’t remind Shea that he was in no position to deny his recent captors anything. “Why do you say this?”

  “You would use the rifles for raiding.”

  “Ah,” laughed Mangus. “What if we promised to use these guns only for hunting or to defend ourselves, for instance when we are asked to parley with the whites? White hospitality to Apache has often been like that given Juan José, who came before me as chief of the Mimbres. A supposed friendly trader invited him and his
people to come for gifts. The gift was a loaded howitzer. Johnson, the trader, collected the bounty on twenty-five scalps.”

  “We need three rifles,” Shea said. “You are welcome to the others if I have your word they will be used only for hunting—and when you accept invitations from the whites.”

  “I will give that word,” said Mangus. He looked bemused by Shea’s incredible boldness, rather like a mountain lion defied by its prey. “And the other rifles shall go only to men who will swear the same.” His eyes glinted. “We have not done badly, after all, at keeping out the whites with lances, arrows and a few old flintlocks. Besides, Hair of Flame, there will be other whites with other good rifles!”

  Shrugging, the Irishman said, “That’s as may be.”

  Mangus’s face hardened. “Why do you want the scalps? To collect the bounty? In my own camp, you’ve told me what I cannot do, and now I say to you surely that these scalps, which must be of my people, shall not be sold for money!”

  “If they were of your people, you should have them,” Shea agreed. “But unless these men made a fast trip to Hermosillo, most of the scalps came from a Mexican rancho and a Papago ranchería.” He indicated Tjúni. “Her family was killed. So were the family and friends of my partner. We may not be able to tell which scalps are whose, but all of them will be buried with respect.”

  “We will have a look,” said Mangus, striding toward a mule and starting to undo the pack. “If the hair looks Papago or Mexican, we don’t want it.”

  Tjúni’s eyes flashed but Socorro laid a warning hand on her arm. “Apache hair is much longer than most Mexican or Papago,” Mangus went on.

  “He should know!” hissed Tjúni under her breath.

  “I do know, little Desert Woman,” returned Mangus equably.

  Her breast heaved a moment and then she muttered to Socorro that she couldn’t bear to watch an Apache handle her family’s scalps, so she would go after their food bags and bows.