The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  His wife lived but his healing power left him. From then on, he was as any peon.

  “I think he did right,” Socorro breathed, glancing at Shea. “What good is power without the one you love?”

  Santiago’s tawny eyes held hers. “You are fortunate, lady.”

  She bowed her head and dug intently at a nut. It wasn’t comfortable, being so happy with Shea, sleeping every night in his arms, when Santiago and Tjúni had no one. But at least more vaqueros must be found by summer and that should change things. There’d be more people around, at any rate, so the four wouldn’t be so totally dependent on each other for company.

  Still, even with the undercurrents, there was a sharing and companionship about that winter that Socorro knew wouldn’t have happened with other people around. It was a special bond, even with Tjúni, who kept herself aloof from friendship with Socorro, though she’d been neither spiteful nor insulting since the day they encountered Mangus.

  Along with their mingling of songs, stories and talk, Shea suggested that he teach them English. “If the Americans make a road through Sonora—and you can just bet they will—next, there’ll be soldiers and towns.” The brand on his cheek contracted as he set his lean jaw. “I don’t like the idea of trading with them but we’ll damned well have to! If you don’t understand what a man’s saying, it’s easy for him to cheat you.”

  So they made it a habit to spend an hour or so in. English practice each night. Tjúni learned more quickly than the others. Either she had a better ear or she wanted to outdo Socorro and bask in Shea’s praise. Which she did.

  After enough wood was stacked outside the house for winter, the men repaired corrals and ramadas and the women helped at making adobe bricks. When enough of these were cured, another building was started at a right angle to the house. This would house the vaqueros they still hoped would present themselves before spring.

  The women also learned how to use the rifles, though again Tjúni proved a much superior shot. Santiago also engineered the mill located a discreet distance from the creek. An elevated floor standing on four legs had been made of roughly hewn pine and a small house about six feet high was built on this eight-foot foundation. It had taken a lot of hunting to find just the right millstones, broad and smooth and round.

  It took so many hours to chip, bore and drill holes in them that Socorro shook her head. “Really, Tjúni and I don’t mind grinding the corn.”

  “No use spending half your day at it,” Shea grunted.

  One millstone was fastened to the floor. A wooden shaft was set in a socket in a rock beneath the floor and protruded through the first stone. The lower end of the shaft, beneath the floor, was equipped with three-foot-long horizontal paddles. These paddles were turned by the force of water guided against them by a small trough formed in the end of several hollowed-out half-trunks of big cottonwoods that fed water from the creek.

  When, after immense labor, all was ready, the women were invited to bring as much corn for the grinding as would keep for several weeks.

  With a flourish, Santiago poured kernels through a hole in the upper stone, and Shea opened the sluice. With tremendous groaning, the stones turned. Gradually meal began to spill out from between stones, falling to the platform.

  Within minutes the mill had ground as much as the women, working steadily, could have done in several days. When, at a shout from Santiago, Shea closed the sluice, Tjúni and Socorro began scraping the meal into baskets. Tjúni had such a frown that Socorro asked what was wrong.

  “Not right way to grind corn! Metate better.”

  “Why, the meal looks the same!”

  “Won’t be,” said Tjúni dourly. She glanced with loathing at the millstones. “How that do anything but smash corn?”

  “I’m glad it can,” retorted Socorro. “I can certainly find things I’d rather do than kneel slaving at a metate for hours a day!”

  “Papago girl who grinds good much wanted for wife. If all get meal from such thing, how tell good wife from bad?”

  “There must be other ways.” Socorro laughed.

  It was clear that the mill struck at deep roots in Tjúni’s tribal heritage. Though the tortillas from its grinding tasted as good to the others, Tjúni grimly maintained that she could tell a lot of difference and was sure the mill-ground meal was neither as tasty nor as healthy.

  Since they were close to the marsh, cattail roots and stalks continued to be an important addition to their cooking, a blessing since, as Tjúni pointed out, they’d been too late to collect stores of mesquite, cholla buds, or acorns.

  “But we can roast agave in winter,” she said, and gave one of her rare smiles. “No need make bake pit, already one not far from corral.”

  “You mean that big rock-lined hole?” Socorro had noticed it, but all Tjúni had said at the time was that it looked like something Apache had used.

  Tjúni nodded. “Pit much larger than what we need. Made to bake dozen, two dozen agave hearts. We bake maybe two, use one side only.”

  On the morning of their expedition Tjúni left Socorro to make the breakfast tortillas, a chore she delegated more and more out of disgust for the mill-ground meal, while she went off to start a fire in the baking pit.

  She borrowed Santiago’s machetelike knife. Socorro had her own, and right after breakfast, equipped with a long woven mat for carrying the agave hearts, the women started out, passing the pit which was about ten feet wide and three deep. The fire blazed against one wall, sending out a pungent scent of juniper and mesquite, a curl of blue-gray smoke that reminded Socorro of Shea’s eyes.

  They were so happy. A woman, according to Great Aunt Teresa Catalina, had to endure her husband’s appetites; she wasn’t supposed to enjoy them, but of late Shea had begun to stare at her with teasing incredulity.

  “God’s whiskers, chiquita, you’re wearing me out!” he’d whispered last night when her fleeting delicate touches had waked him while rousing another very independent part of him. “I’ll have my revenge, though!”

  Gathering her in his arms, he tantalized and teased till she was quivering, arching against him. There came that wonderful moment, that always new, heart-stopping instant when he entered her, sometimes in one joyous thrust, other times with a deliberation that made her intensely aware of the sensation flowing through her blood and nerves at his sinking deeply, sweetly, ever more completely, into her.

  She loved those pauses best, when he filled her and they lay quietly, feeling the secret internal pulses of each other, till one or the other could bear it no longer and they loved with a violence increased by earlier control.

  Last night had been their longest, wildest, deepest joining yet. She felt the glow of it on her like a film of liquid sunlight. Though she managed not to skip or sing, there was a lilt in her step.

  “You have baby?” Tjúni asked abruptly.

  Socorro stared. “Why, no. No, I don’t think so.”

  “I think one started,” Tjúni persisted. Her dark eyes studied Socorro’s face but it was impossible to read her own. “Next fall, about time for ripe acorns, I think you have child.”

  Shea and Socorro were too busy discovering each other to want children yet, but of course they expected them. Socorro was especially desirous of a small Patrick with eyes like his father’s and hair as vibrantly flaming. And if in last night’s loving they’d begun a child, it should be a strong one, full of life and hungry for more.

  “Well, if it’s true, I should know before long,” she said. Though Tjúni had brought up the subject, she could scarcely enjoy it. Scanning the area between them and the hills stretching behind the house, Socorro remarked that there were few agave of any size.

  “They grow slow. Apache make pit, roast all agave they find close except ‘men’ plants.”

  “‘Men’ plants? What are they?”

  “The ones with no flower stalk in spring. ‘Woman’ plant with stalk very sweet. Life run into stalk that grow inches every day. Leaves wilt. Every
thing in stalk. Then dies.”

  Socorro had seen agave, of course, including the withered stalks and leaves of dead plants. It was from agave that mescal and pulque were made, the first a fiery intoxicant, the last a milder drink sometimes given even to babies.

  It was new, though, to consider it as a food. She felt as if she’d been blindly walking around in a food storehouse all her life and was only, since her time in the desert, discovering the keys.

  Tjúni stopped beside a large agave that must have measured five feet from the tips of the outthrusting leaves. Another almost as large grew a short distance away.

  “Raw agave poison,” Tjúni warned. “Juice sting skin, be careful. I do this plant, you start other.”

  She showed how to begin with the largest leaves at the bottom of the plant, cutting where they broadened and began to turn white where they joined the core. Avoiding the dripping juice, Tjúni tossed the leaves on the fiber matting.

  When Socorro thought she knew how to proceed, she started on her plant, cutting as deeply and firmly as possible. It was slow, hard work. In spite of her caution, she got juice on her hands which reddened the skin and stung ferociously, and she got more than one prick from the sharply pointed leaves which hurt long after the contact.

  At last the core was stripped. While Socorro moved her aching shoulders back and forth to ease them, Tjúni loosed the earth about the core with a pointed stick, then pushed it over with her foot. Collecting grass to protect her hands, she picked up the heart and placed it on the leaves, added the second, and they started for the pit, each carrying an end of the mat.

  The fire had burned down, leaving smoldering coals. Tjúni asked Socorro to bring water while she picked more grass. With the water, they washed the agave hearts and wet the grass which was thrown on top of the coals.

  Some leaves came next, then the hearts and more leaves, Socorro going back to fetch the one they’d not been able to bring the first time. More bear grass was put on, a layer of earth, and then, using the mat to protect her hands, Tjúni covered the exposed sides and top with hot stones she’d banked up near the fire. More earth went over these.

  “Now,” she said, rising from her labors, “no more work till we fix leaves tomorrow, have feast!”

  Socorro and Tjúni went down to the creek and washed off the juice with powdered yucca root before starting the midday meal. When the women entered the kitchen, Shea and Santiago warned them away from the sala.

  “Just stay out of here till we say you can look,” Shea admonished.

  For days now he and Santiago had been busy with axes and adzes but Socorro had supposed they were preparing door and window poles for the vaqueros’ quarters, which were almost ready for them.

  Wondering what they were up to added a pleasant spice of curiosity to the rest of the day. When supper was almost ready, Shea and Santiago told the women to shut their eyes and not open them till they had permission.

  There were bumping sounds, shuffling, and then Shea’s arm went around Socorro. “Look!” he commanded jubilantly. “No more sitting on the floor while we eat! And you can do a lot of your cooking now without kneeling or bending over!”

  The table was rough-hewn oak, slabs from two large trees joined together with pegs, the legs fitted tightly into the thick top. It was eight feet long and what it lacked in beauty was made up for by its ruggedness.

  “It’ll take whatever you do to it,” Shea said proudly. “Pounding, hacking, hot kettles. Could even have a baby up there! And that’s not all!”

  He and Santiago were back in a moment with a bench, a log smoothed only on top, grooved to fit the slab legs. “Now if we put the table with one side close to the benches built out of the wall, and this bench on the other side, we could have a pretty fair bunch of people for dinner and all sit at one table!”

  “It’s splendid!” praised Socorro.

  She was sure from Tjúni’s silence that the Papago girl didn’t like it, but they put on the food and settled down without any open storm. Tjúni did sit on the adobe bench beside Santiago. It was as if she took comfort from still being close to a sort of earth even if it was elevated and kept her from sitting in the way that was natural to her.

  Next day when the roasted agave heart and leaves were taken from the pit and carried to the house on the mat covered with fresh grass, the golden mushy hearts were placed in a big earthenware bowl.

  “Now we scrape pulp from leaves,” Tjúni said. Spreading grass on the large flat stone they used for food preparation, she ran a broad-bottomed stick along the leaf, pressing to force out the yellow-brown pulp.

  “That would be easier on the table,” Socorro decided. Doggedly, Tjúni continued where she was. They had discarded some burned leaves but there were enough to yield well over a quart of syrupy pulp.

  Tjúni regarded this with great satisfaction. “Grind sunflower seeds and piñon nuts to mix with some,” she said. “Rest we boil to syrup after boil leaves for rest of juice. Syrup good in mush.”

  So it was an agave feast they sat down to that night: the sweet soft heart eaten with wooden spoons Shea had made, the nut confection, corn mush sweetened with syrup, and, for scooping up with tortillas, there was the wild turkey Santiago had brought in and cleaned that afternoon, cut in large sections and simmered in a sauce of chilis, ground walnuts, cattail root and syrup.

  Everyone ate with gusto, enjoying the new tastes and variety. This was the first festive meal they’d had since Shea and Socorro’s wedding, the day they celebrated the roof’s completion.

  “I’ve heard about roasted agave,” Santiago said. “But I didn’t think it’d be so good! Mmm! Just like piloncillo melted down!”

  “Mighty good!” agreed Shea. He grinned ruefully at the women. “All you’ve done the last two days is get this meal ready! Doesn’t seem right that we sit here and gobble it up in half an hour.”

  “There’s enough for tomorrow, too,” said Socorro.

  “Syrup, nut-seed candy for two week, maybe three,” added Tjúni.

  “All the same, I think we should save agave for special occasions or if we’re short on other food,” Shea said. “Next time Santiago and I can help, too, roast enough to make a lot of syrup.”

  Tjúni sniffed. “You want to be like Apache, make big party out of it! Next thing you want to make cross of cattail pollen on biggest agave heart before it goes in pit!”

  “Why not?” laughed Shea. “We need some festivals!” Taking Socorro’s hand beneath the table, he lifted his gourd cup of joint fir tea. “My good companions, let’s drink to our first, but not last, agave feast!”

  They all did. Even Tjúni smiled.

  XII

  Snow stayed on the Santa Rita peaks to the northwest most of the winter, reached to the hills on occasion, but only two or three times was the valley white-blanketed, and that not thickly or for long. Socorro never tired of gazing at the march of mountains surrounding the long fertile valley that followed the creek.

  The Santa Ritas were the highest, of course, but across plains, valleys and the foothills to the east was a jagged sawtooth range, and south, beyond a long stretch of smaller hills, lay the Huachuca and Santa Cruz Mountains, stark savagery tempered by distance to azure and heaven blue.

  The roof was on the vaquero quarters now and the men had made a cedar chest for storing clothes and serapes and two large chairs with rawhide bottoms which Tjúni would not sit in.

  “Mill first,” she grumbled to Socorro, out of earshot of Shea whose feelings she continued to spare. “Then table, bench, chair! How people move around with such things?”

  “They don’t, at least not often,” Socorro explained.

  “Not good, tied one place. Better, able move right away! Not like Santa Rita mines people all loaded down, easy killing.”

  “We don’t want to move,” Socorro said. “We want to stay here all our lives.”

  “And get more chair, table, chest!” grunted Tjúni. “More buildings. More cows, mules. More eve
rything!”

  Remembering her home in Alamos, Socorro repressed a chuckle at Tjúni’s condemnation of this “luxury.” “Of course we’ll accumulate more things,” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “They own you!” Tjúni said darkly. “No go where you want when you want. Someone might steal things. Or must find way to take them. Great nonsense.”

  There was truth to this but Socorro had no longing to return to the state in which she and Shea had come out of the region of dead volcanoes.

  She was glad of the cooking ladles, the spoons and plates the men had made from oak. And she enjoyed the woven rawhide and post bed now filling a corner of the bedroom. Though anywhere she could sleep by Shea was better than the finest bed without him.

  The men had also fixed up an abandoned cart. Its wheels were three feet high and four inches thick, made from cottonwood slabs fastened into one piece and cut to rounds. It was all wood, including the axles, and this first vehicle of theirs was sheltered under a ramada, for Shea said he wasn’t working that hard to let the result warp and rot in the weather.

  No one had been ill all that winter till Shea got a cold and an extremely sore throat late in February. Socorro caught it next, and in a few more days both Santiago and Tjúni were snuffling. At Shea’s first complaint, Tjúni took Socorro to hunt for canaigre.

  “Good plant to know,” she said, stopping by a plant with long slender leaves and short reddish stems. “Root helps sore throats, sore gums, heals bad skin. And young leaves, like now, healthy to eat.”

  The leaves needed three changes of water to get out their bitterness, but they were a welcome addition to the dried staples. Shea dutifully chewed the root several times a day.

  “It’s either helping or it’s paralyzed my throat,” he grimaced.

  Socorro, soon chewing in turn, could scarcely force herself to swallow the acrid dose, but it did seem to ease her cough and inflamed throat. No one got sick enough to go to bed and by the time their coughing stopped, spring was tinting the valley a soft new green.

  “Time to plant corn,” Tjúni said. She frowned anxiously. “No one of corn brotherhood to sing proper songs. Hope it grows!”