The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  Socorro roasted a handful of coffee beans, ground them fine and carefully scraped every grain to go into the coffee pot, also from the scalpers’ trove of exotic goods. Though coffee had not been habitually used in her father’s home, it was kept for entertaining visiting merchants who’d acquired a taste for it among the Yanquis.

  How good some chocolate would be, whipped to froth and spiced with cinnamon! Would she ever taste it again? Socorro laughed in surprise at the sudden intensity of desire for such a fleshly, trifling indulgence.

  “What’s funny?” Shea asked.

  His deep blue eyes danced and she guiltily realized there was little merriment in the house except for what Santiago created. Laughter was good medicine. She must try to bring more of it into their lives. But it was hard to joke or act foolish with Tjúni watching.

  “We have a roof, enough food, plenty of water,” she explained. “When we were in the old volcanoes, any of these would have seemed a wonder. Today is the first time I’ve really craved chocolate which must be because we’re having coffee!” She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “It must be that the more one has, the more one wants!”

  He said nothing. Had she made him angry, did he think she was complaining? She glanced up to be pierced by the hunger in his eyes. As if he couldn’t help himself, he sank to his knees beside her, set his hands on her shoulders, even in that moment compelling himself to keep a distance between their bodies.

  “I want you, chiquita. More of you, all of you—there can never be enough. There could never be more.”

  His mouth took hers, but in his desperation there was no kindness; his lips bruised and, with a hoarse groan, he caught her against him, holding her so close that her breasts ached against his hard chest, his pounding heart.

  That heart seemed to enter her own body, sledging, throbbing. Hammering like that invasion when she’d been spread-eagled, helpless, and men had laughed. And thrust, battered …

  She was back in that nightmare, struggling, trying to scream. Maddened, she no longer knew who held her, only that she was gripped by hands and arms of steel, forced against a male body that would savage her, rend her apart. She couldn’t stand it again, never, never!

  Slowly, she became aware of hands shaking her. “Is it always going to be this way?” She recognized Shea’s strangled voice. “If it is, before God and the devil, I can’t endure it! To feel you turn crazy scared like that, have you fight me! I can’t bear it, my love!”

  He had released her, risen wearily to his feet. Shattered at the implication of his words, she sprang up, laid a pleading hand on his arm, flinched when he moved away as if her touch seared him.

  “But, Shea, it’s only when—” She broke off, confounded by what she’d been about to say.

  “When I hold you?” His eyes, sad, angry, yet cherishing, traced her face, her throat, lingered on the pulse there. “When I treat you like a woman?”

  She hung her head, unable to meet those eyes, confront his baffled pain. His breath escaped in a heavy sigh. “What I told you once, Socorro, that I could be with you without having to take you—it isn’t true. No use deceiving ourselves. I thought that as time passed, as you knew me better, you’d change.”

  “Shea! I love you!”

  He smiled but it didn’t reach his wintry eyes. “How? Like a brother? A father, maybe?” He shook his head. “It won’t do, chiquita. I’m not blaming you, God knows! You’re brave and wonderful, you brought me back from the dead. I owe you my life, it’s yours for the asking.” She would have moved forward, protesting. He stopped her with a strangely gentle, rejecting hand.

  “Will you believe that, no more than you can help your fear, if I stay around you, the time will come when I can’t help myself? I’ll take you!” His voice dropped. “And then I would want to die!”

  A thrill of pity mixed with marvel was in Socorro as she realized the power of this need of his, the amount of will it had taken all this time for him to control it.

  He was right. It couldn’t go on. Even had he been willing to try, she wouldn’t ask it now that she understood. Closing her eyes a moment, she reached to the depths of her love for him, her will to live and forget the past, found the strength to ignore his warding hands, step forward and rise on tiptoe to kiss him.

  He kept his body stiff, his mouth unresponsive. Forcing her away, he said tightly, “What is this? What are you trying to do?”

  “To show I love you.”

  His eyes grew so blue they were almost black. Huskily, he said, “Oh, my sweetheart, but there’s more to it than that!”

  “I—I know.” She took a long breath, feeling she must crumble at his feet if he didn’t take mercy on her soon. “Please, I want to be your woman. Can you—take me and yet do it so I can know you, remember who you are?”

  The rigidity of his face dissolved, even the scar looked less raised and livid. His arms were around her, no matter now that her knees had given way, and his face was in her hair.

  “I can be patient, little love. I can be gentle. It’ll be sweet agony to woo you from one delight to the next till you finally want me as much as I want you now! But are you sure?” He kissed her eyes, the curve of her cheek. “It’s not that I’ve blackmailed you into this?”

  She laughed shakily, leaning back to caress his face, luxuriating in permitting her fingers to trace that long mouth, his eyes, the scar that ran from shadowed cheekbone to lean jaw, the places where his hair fell over his forehead enough to leave the skin fair in contrast to the red-gold flame above and the sun-darkened expanse beneath. She touched his hard-muscled neck, the place where the collarbones angled on either side.

  “I have so much to learn about you!” she murmured.

  He turned up her face. “No tricks! Is this because I said I’d go away?”

  “Well, of course it is, redhead burro!” She scowled ferociously. “It made me know I can’t live without you, that I don’t want to!”

  He shook his head, the amazed joy in his face dimming. “To have you grit your teeth, accept me in spite of how you feel—that would be worst of all.”

  “No. The worst would be for you to stay and run yourself nobly, silently mad because of my foolishness.” She stroked his hair, reveled in the way it felt curling to her fingers. “I don’t want to be trapped forever by what happened, querido! Help me.”

  “We’ll help each other,” he said huskily. Were those tears glinting at the back of his eyes? “But I want to make you my wife.”

  Touched, amused more than dismayed to realize how far they were from conventions or the means to observe them, Socorro said, “But, love, it’s hundreds of miles to a priest! Santiago said both Tumacácori and San Xavier del Bac at Tucson were abandoned years ago!”

  “Then we can go to Hermosillo. Or your old home, Alamos,” he said stubbornly.

  Her mouth dropped open. “Are you mad? Risk our lives, spend months in traveling the desert, and for what?”

  “Why, the blessing! To show you honor!”

  “Thousand thanks,” she said dryly. “But I’d rather stay alive!”

  His brows knit and his jaw set stubbornly. “Listen!” she adjured before he could argue. “Have we not buried people without the church? Your brother, my father? All the others? Don’t you believe God can allow for our circumstances? I’ve felt closer to Him in the desert, and all these weeks we’ve risked our lives, than ever I did at Mass in the cathedral! I’m glad there’s no priest, no ritual, no easy habit, to stand between me and my God.”

  “But what can we do?” he growled, troubled. “Someday there’ll be towns and priests—all of civilization, damn it! We can be proper married then, of course. But before, if someone hinted you were just my—” He swallowed. “I’d kill them!”

  “You won’t have to!” she promised. “We can be married at our feast, under our new roof! Santiago and Tjúni will be our witnesses. And when a priest finally dares come back to this country and we can get caught up on marriages and christening
s and the other sacraments, he’d better not reproach us for what his kind’s dereliction has made us do!”

  “When?”

  His voice was soft, almost inaudible, but it sent quick, bright terror through her. What had she vowed? What had she done? Maybe in a week; maybe a month—

  She checked the skittering of her mind. Time enough had passed. Too much, perhaps. More wouldn’t help.

  “Tonight. Before our feast.” She made her tone happily confident. “It will make a fine memory to have our marriage marked by a roof on the house!”

  But after he was gone and she heard the joy in his voice, though she couldn’t hear his words as he told Santiago the news, she was full of panic.

  Married without a priest? Married without family? Married without a beautiful dress?

  Ridiculous to care, after all she’d been through, but she felt like crying when she remembered the painstakingly hand-stitched pearl-encrusted gown and veil which must have fallen to shreds long ago on some Areneño.

  Married at all …

  She threw back her head. She wouldn’t think of that, what came after the plighting, after the feast. Only that she loved him, and, loving him, it was unthinkable to let him go on as he had.

  Though some of the Cantú ranch women’s clothes, like the dress she was wearing, were in better condition than the tattered one she’d worn in the desert, she preferred to use it. After all, she’d been wearing it when they met—and weeks afterward, too!

  It was clean and she’d already mended it as best she could. Their bed? Shea would simply move his pallet in by hers. It would be a comforting thing to sleep beside him again, worth enduring those moments when they weren’t.

  Tjúni came in while Socorro stood there trying to think of any other preparations she should make. “So you be El Señor’s woman,” Tjúni said without a flicker of expression. “No time to ferment tulbai, corn liquor, but I make some good thing with this!”

  She got one of the treasured piloncillos from the peghung bag where it was stored, gazed at it like an artist considering how to use a rare and wonderful pigment. “Go wash hair,” she told Socorro crossly, sounding almost like Great Aunt Teresa Catalina. “Bathe in creek. No need you here! I make food.”

  Grateful that Tjúni knew, that she herself wouldn’t have to tell her, Socorro thanked the Papago girl, got the dress she meant to wear, some yucca root, and escaped. Tjúni had the right to some time alone to get used to the idea.

  It was late afternoon and sun still kissed the water, tempered the brisk sparkling air. Picking a place shielded by willows, downstream from where they got drinking water, Socorro slipped off her dress, chemise and the sandals Shea had made for her when she’d rubbed that blister onto her foot.

  Water had rounded the many-colored pebbles, trickled over them like molten crystal. Catching in her breath at the chill sting, Socorro moved into the deepest part which came only slightly above her knees.

  Gooseflesh prickled her arms, made her nipples stand out, rosy beige, and as she scrubbed with the soapy root, she tried to repress an imagining of Shea fondling and kissing those tender budlike tips.

  But why shove thoughts away?

  He would be her husband! Better that she think of him as she washed, smoothing thighs, waist, between her legs, better think of his touching the same places and with that cleanse the taint of those other hands.

  “Shea,” she murmured. “Shea, how I love you.”

  But the water was too cold for languorous fantasies. She washed her hair, rinsed it and splashed swiftly out, shivering as she rubbed her body to warm glowing with her old rebozo, dried her hair and, bending over, tossed the long black tresses till they began to dry. A good thing for her the Areneños hadn’t been selling scalps to anyone and had left hers in place!

  Slipping into her old dress, she wished she had perfume or scented creams, told herself she had a brush, which was much more important. As she started for the house, she met Shea with clean clothes over his arm and a piece of root in his hand.

  Late sun turned his hair to glory as he blocked her path, laughing, and gathered her into his arms, wet rebozo and all. “Someday I’ll buy you gorgeous gowns and jewels, my lovely almost-Mrs. O’Shea! But I’m glad you’ll wear that dress while we’re getting married. Did I ever tell you that when I first saw you after my fever broke enough for me to know anything, I thought myself in heaven with the Blessed Mother herself tending my poor baked hide?” He chuckled, playing with damp tendrils of Socorro’s hair. “I remember thinking it strange, though, that God couldn’t get His mother a decent gown!”

  “Shea!” She put her fingers on his mouth though she couldn’t help giggling. “That’s sacrilege!”

  “Not so much as the thoughts I got, even weak as I was, when the tears in your dress gave me tantalizing glimpses of things the poor angels wouldn’t know what to do with!” said Shea unrepentantly. “I expect that’s why I decided to get well.” His lips brushed hers. In the sunlight, in the flush of laughter, she welcomed his kiss. His arms tightened possessively. “My God! I can’t believe it!” He held her back, searched her eyes. “You’re sure, chiquita?”

  “I’m sure. Just—oh, Shea, please help me!”

  He held her gently, smoothing her hair. The steady strong rhythm of his heart seemed to enter her own and calm it. “Now let me get bathed before that sun dips and you have a frozen husband!”

  The last light of the sun was a shaft of gold slanting through the small high window in the back of the sala, illuminating Guadalupana’s smile, the moon beneath her feet, the touches of gold on her blue robe.

  Socorro and Shea knelt, silently praying, dedicating their spirits and will to this marriage, as well as their hearts and bodies. Then they rose, facing each other, and Shea took Socorro’s hand.

  “Before God and these friends, Socorro Quintana y Montez, I, Patrick O’Shea, take you for my wife. I promise to love and honor you all our years. All I have or will ever have is yours, as is my life.”

  Looking up at him, she said clearly, “I, Socorro Beatriz Elena Maria Quintana y Montez, take you, Patrick O’Shea, for my husband. I will love and honor you through the years God gives us, with all my being and all my will and all my heart, saving only the worship that belongs to God.”

  And perhaps that, too, may the Mother who would understand intercede for me! she thought as he bent his head to kiss her.

  They knelt again and, with hands joined, said an Our Father. When they rose, solemn and a bit uneasy, Santiago, with his almost unnoticeable limp, came over. He gave Shea an abrazo, thumping his back harder than necessary.

  “You are fortunate above all men, Don Patrick! You scarcely need my felicitations. With such a bride, how can you not be joyous?”

  Turning to Socorro, he bowed over her hand. His lips touched her skin lightly, briefly, yet they seemed to burn, and as he straightened, the torment in his eyes made her flinch. It was gone so quickly that she told herself it was only a trick of the light on those golden tigre eyes.

  “My lady, if you have even half the happiness you deserve, you will be blissful beyond words. Like Don Patrick, I owe you my life. If you permit, I will serve you all my years.”

  Gravely, she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Santiago.” She wanted to add that she thought of him as the brother she’d always longed for, but suspected that was about the last thing he’d care to hear.

  The sunlight was gone when Tjúni stepped forward. “I no have pretty words like Santiago. But I serve wedding feast.” She gestured about the long empty room. “Eat here, not in kitchen. El Señor light fire, Santiago fetch mats.”

  By the time Shea had the laid fire going, Santiago had arranged the mats and Tjúni had spread the food on one of them, refusing Socofro’s help.

  “This one night, you sit, watch others work.” She almost smiled. “Bride only one time.”

  And it’s clear that though you accept it, you don’t like it a bit. Ironic that their witnesses must be
the two who felt deprived by the union. Socorro smothered a sigh. Santiago was of the age and temperament to fancy himself in love with any pretty woman he met. It was the group’s total isolation that kept him focused on Socorro, that and the fact that Tjúni had given him no encouragement.

  Tjúni. This time the sigh escaped. How tangled their relationship was! Tjúni worshiped Shea. Her unspoken conviction that Socorro was too incompetent and soft for being his mate, living beside him in the wilderness, was one that Socorro often came despairingly near to sharing.

  But again, if there were other men around, enough of them, surely the beautiful girl would attract one determined enough to lay siege till he won her. Just as Santiago was bound to find a woman to capture him if he met enough of them.

  The ranch would need vaqueros. If some were young and unmarried, if others had daughters … Smiling at the play of flame on flame as the fire gleamed on her new husband’s hair, Socorro was so happy that she wanted everyone else to be too.

  Tjúni had prepared a feast. Besides succulent baked quail with flavorsome stuffing, venison and tortillas, there was pipián, toasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds, corn soup and frijoles mashed and fried with chilis. Socorro didn’t care much for the strong coffee, nor did Tjúni, but Shea and Santiago, when they saw the women didn’t want more, zestfully tippled away the whole pot.

  “At least no one will be crudo, hung-over, tomorrow,” Santiago laughed. “But it’s a shame we have no wine, or at least mescal or tiswino!”

  Tjúni nodded agreement to that and went to bring the special treat she had concocted with the piloncillo. It was candy, small squares of dried pumpkin boiled repeatedly with sugar in the pumpkin’s soaking fluid and at last rolled in finely grated bits cut from the cone.

  “I’d forgotten how such things taste!” murmured Santiago, eyes closed to better savor the confection. “Don Patrick, my lady, may much of your marriage be sweet as this, and the rest as good and strong as the other food we’ve eaten.”

  When it came time to clear away, Tjúni again refused Socorro’s help. “Only one night you bride.”