The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  When Paulita had had enough and Caterina could be coaxed off, Shea produced a small rocking chair and a doll that would most certainly have to be put up till Caterina could play with it and not crack the china head, hands and feet. Fortunately, she could play with the soft, floppy rag doll Talitha had made her.

  Cuddling both dolls, she rocked for a while in the chair. Then, carefully, she made Paulita sit down with them, grasped her reata and hauled herself into the saddle.

  Everybody exchanged glances. Patrick put it into words. “What you going to be, Katie-Cat? A mama or a vaquero?”

  “Mama and vaquero!” she assured him, not missing a lusty pitch forward or back. As they all laughed, she rocked harder and sang in a kind of rhythmic croon: “I be everything! I be everything!”

  Later, after everyone had gone to bed, Talitha noticed a soft glow of light cast through the door on the wall. With a sinking heart, she realized a candle had been lit in the kitchen. Through the evening, more than once, she’d seen Shea’s eyes flick toward the niche where the mescal was kept. Was he going to do as he had last year, get drunk to drown the loss of his wife and stay that way for days?

  I won’t have it! Talitha thought. If he has to get drunk sometimes, all right, but he’s not going to do it on Caterina’s birthday!

  Jumping out of bed, she pulled on her dress, ran barefoot across the hard earth of the patio. Bursting into the kitchen, she found him sitting by the dead fire, the bottle in his hand. His head turned toward her, eyes unfocused in a dulled stupidity that made her ache, want to comfort him at the same time it sent her furious.

  After a morose stare, he looked back at the ashes. “Go to bed, Tally.” The words blurred as if a clumsy tongue couldn’t shape them.

  “Not till you do!”

  He seemed to forget her. Unsure of what to do, Talitha stood with hands clenched, body rigid, while she inwardly prayed. Socorro! Socorro! How strange that her foster mother’s name should be the word for aid or help, for succor.

  No flash of enlightenment or inspiration came, but when Shea lifted the bottle again, outrage sent Talitha diving forward. Snatching the mescal, she deliberately poured it into the ashes in the fireplace.

  “Patrick O’Shea!” she shouted into his angry, astounded face. “Sober up and listen to me! This can either be the day your wife died or the day your daughter was born! Which way do you want it?”

  “Oh God, Tally! I—”

  She cut in mercilessly, willing her words to cut like a whip through his drunkenness. “Socorro’s gone, Shea, but would she want this? Caterina’s got her whole life ahead. How’s she going to feel in a few years when she notices that her father goes into a drunken binge of mourning on her birthday?”

  Shaking his head, he buried it in his hands. Resisting the overwhelming sympathy that made her want to cosset him, Talitha ended with harsh challenge.

  “Which are you going to turn your mind to? Your wife’s dying or your daughter’s life?”

  He looked up at her. Tears streaked his cheeks and she longed to caress the branded one, take all his hurts into herself to suffer in his place. But that couldn’t be, each person had to bear his own grief. He stood up, a trifle uncertainly. His jaw hardened and for a moment she wondered if he were going to hit her, at the least give her a shaking and tell her to mind her own business.

  Instead he laughed. “God’s whiskers! That’s just what Socorro would’ve said. Only she might have kicked my shins and called me ‘redhead burro’!”

  His gaze went to the hobbyhorse, the reata over the saddle, the dolls embraced in the rocker, for Caterina had fallen asleep in his arms and been carried to bed without them. “It was a good birthday, wasn’t it? Don’t you suppose the madonna—well, she was a mother, too—”

  Talitha nodded. This time she could let her tears fall. “I’m sure that somehow Socorro was with us tonight, and that she was happy.” That she helped me with you.

  Shea grinned. “Wouldn’t do for her to be with me all the time, especially when I go in to Tubac the way I’ll have to once in a while now that Tjúni’s packed herself off!” He yawned and stretched. “Get to bed with you, Tally! I’m about to fall asleep on my feet.”

  Back in her own room, Talitha stood beside Caterina’s high bed. “Happy birthday, Katie-Cat Caterina,” she whispered. And then to her mother, Socorro, God or Tata Dios, she added as she climbed into bed, Thank you. Thank you.

  It was March of 1856 when Judah returned from Washington with the news that he’d taken a wife, the daughter of a powerful senator. “Leonore won’t come out, of course, till I can have a suitable home built for her in Tucson,” he explained. At Shea’s congratulations, he smiled broadly.

  “She’s a beautiful creature. If I run for political office, as I may do, she’ll be a most elegant asset.”

  Shea gave him a questioning look but Frost was saying that the last Mexican troops had left Tucson early that month under command of Captain Hilarión García, the same soldier who’d come to the aid of Calabazas during the big Apache raid almost three years ago. “Didn’t see anyone at Calabazas when I rode through,” added Frost. “Know what happened?”

  “Hulsemann came over sometime before Christmas. Said the Apaches were too much. He’d decided to drive the stock to Imuris and asked if a couple of my vaqueros would help since he wanted to leave his partners to hold down the hacienda. The Vasquez brothers and Rodolfo went.” Shea shook his head regretfully. “Looks like Gándara double-crossed Hulsemann, who was, as you’ll recall, his partner. One of Gándara’s men, the prefect of San Ignacio, confiscated all the stock, so for all his work and danger, Hulsemann got nothing.”

  “He’s still alive,” Frost said carelessly. “And speaking of partnerships, partner, it’s about time I got back and tended to our freighting enterprise! Solomon Warner’s opened a store in Tucson and a fourteen-mule pack train brought in his supplies from Fort Yuma the last of February. The Santa Cruz Freighting Company should have had that job!”

  “Have you been to the mine yet?” Talitha asked, for though she hated speaking to Frost, she hadn’t seen Marc since Christmas and with nothing left to plunder at Calabazas the Apaches might give more attention to the miners.

  Frost held her eyes a moment before he yielded an answer. “Everything at the Pajarito’s fine. Marc besought me to take over so he could junket about a bit, but I put it to him that I had to get a home for my wife and line up some freighting contracts. He saw the reason in that though he was mightily disappointed.”

  “How’s your lady going to take to Tucson?” Shea wondered. “Don’t suppose she’s ever seen anything like it.”

  “You can bet our last cow she hasn’t!” Frost laughed. “I’d guess the town has a couple of hundred people, not more than a dozen being Anglo-Saxon. But that’ll change.” He turned his glass in his hand, took a slow sip. “She vows she’d live with me in a cave or tent, and though I think she’d quickly change her mind about that, she’s romantical enough to think things are picturesque instead of heathenish and dirty.” He added in a tone of near-contempt, “She’ll adore fiestas and bailes.”

  Talitha pitied his bride. But she also drew a deep breath of relief as if an invisible weight had been lifted. He was married. He couldn’t bother her anymore. Not now. Not when she was eighteen. Not ever!

  That September of 1856, Tubac came alive as it had never been before. Charles Poston, the young Kentuckian Frost had met in Fort Yuma the previous year, hadn’t raised his mining money in San Francisco but in Cincinnati. With the patronage of the Texas Pacific Railroad Company, he’d organized the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company with Major Samuel Heintzelman, the former Fort Yuma commander, as president. In San Antonio he outfitted his party of frontiersmen and miners with Sharps rifles and Colt revolvers and started his long trek.

  At Mesilla, the governmental center for what was now Southern New Mexico all the way to the California border, the enterprising Poston had been appointed deputy clerk for th
e western part of the Gadsden Purchase by the clerk of Doña Ana County which made him the closest thing to a government official for hundreds of miles.

  He also met with Dr. Steck, the Indian agent, who was still trying desperately to wangle land, seed and farming implements for the Indians in his charge, as well as enough rations to carry them till crop time. Steck helped Poston make a treaty with Apaches living near the Santa Rita mines east of Tubac wherein they agreed not to molest any operations he might open in the region so long as the miners didn’t bother them.

  Poston was busy, also, in Tucson, now occupied by United States troops, for though he gave his men two weeks to enjoy the fiesta of St. Augustine and rest from their journey, he helped organize a convention that met late in August. Mark Aldrich, a merchant, the mayor or alcalde, chaired the meetings which passed resolutions urging Congress to make a separate territory of “Arizona.” Nathan Cook, a mining official, was selected as delegate and sent to the House of Representatives with a certificate duly signed by deputy clerk Poston.

  This accomplished, Poston proceeded to Tubac and set up headquarters. A sentinel was posted in the tower to keep constant watch for Apaches and bandits. Animals were loosed in the corrals and company property stored in the guardhouse. The doors and windows that had been hauled away were replaced by pine whip-sawed from the Santa Rita mountains, and Shea, who reported all this after driving cattle over for sale that fall, added that a big dining hall and lounge had been furnished very comfortably with homemade bunks, tables and benches.

  “It’s an interesting lot there and no mistake,” Shea chuckled to Talitha. “Herman Ehrenberg, a German engineer, fought against Mexico twice, once for Texas and once for the United States. The geologists and such graduated from American and European universities; they sound just like Marc! Now that there’s some protection, peaceful Indians and Mexicans are starting to come back and Poston’s hired miners at fifteen to twenty-five dollars a month and rations. The whole valley’s booming!”

  “You like them, then, the Americans?” Talitha quizzed.

  “Hell, Tally, they’re not Yanquis, they’re good people and damned fine to have as neighbors! Next time I go, I’ll take you.” He grinned, cocking his head. “Those good-looking, educated bachelors will swarm like bees to honey!”

  And he wouldn’t care. He’d be relieved if she married one of them, probably, except then he wouldn’t have an English-speaking person to look after three-year-old Caterina. Would she herself always be a child to him? Hurt, Talitha gave her patched skirt a yank and said scornfully, “No fancy gentleman’s going to pay court to me in these clothes!”

  Shea looked at the dress and frowned. “God’s whiskers! That is a rag, Tally! Why haven’t you said you need some new things?”

  “I don’t, around here.”

  Only last summer had she and the other women of the place succeeded in using the last of the garments salvaged from the Cantú ranch. Carmencita was expert at altering and sewing and Anita had some of her skill so Talitha used a needle only to mend.

  “Any woman ought to have a few pretty dresses,” Shea decreed, assuming what Socorro had called his “burro” look. “If you want different cloth from what the mining conducta brings up, we’ll have the Santa Cruz Freighting Company get you something from San Francisco or even St. Louis. Just make out a list of what you want.”

  Talitha stared at him. “I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “I don’t know what ladies are wearing or what kinds of material there are.”

  Grunting, Shea’s brow furrowed deeper before it cleared and he laughed triumphantly. “Judah’ll know, or if he doesn’t that high-falutin’ wife of his sure will!”

  “I don’t want Mr. Frost doing any favors for me!” Talitha protested, but Shea ignored her.

  “Rodolfo’s been wanting to go to Tucson and see some cousins, though I suspicion a girl’s the big attraction. I’ll tell him to go in the morning. You want to write Judah?”

  “No!”

  “Then I’ll just send a message,” said Shea, unperturbed. He had long ago decided not to heed her obvious dislike of his business partner.

  Now that Tubac was occupied by well-armed men, abandoned ranchos along the Santa Cruz came back to life and mines seemed to be everywhere.

  “There must be a hundred and fifty mines within sixteen miles of Tubac,” Marc Revier said on a visit to Rancho del Socorro. “Most of them are primitive affairs, but some are taking out a good amount of ore. The Ajo’s copper ore’s packed to Yuma on Jaeger’s mules, then sent by the Gulf of California to San Francisco for shipment to Wales. We’re still freighting our bullion to Guaymas.”

  With danger from Apaches considerably lessened, Marc came perhaps once a month, sometimes bringing newspapers and periodicals given him by friends he’d made in Tubac. He remained a favorite with the twins, who were eight years old, though they didn’t study much now that they could tag the vaqueros from dawn to dusk. Caterina happily added him to her subjects and scarcely let him out of her sight during his visits.

  Whether it was this or something else, there was, Talitha thought, a change between them. The old ease was gone and he no longer teased her or lured her into arguments. When he called her “Miss Scott,” that was too much.

  “Marc!” she cried reproachfully. “Do you want me to call you Mr. Revier?”

  “No, of course not!” Flustered, he looked directly at her, his blue eyes distressed. “But you’re growing up, Miss Talitha. You must be treated with respect.”

  She made a rude noise. “Friends can respect each other without being stuffy!”

  He bowed. “Whatever you prefer, Miss Talitha.”

  Repressing an urge to pinch him and see what he’d do, she sniffed disgustedly. “For heaven’s sake, Marc, I turned sixteen in April but I haven’t changed! I’m the same person you taught to read and write, the same one who showed you what plants were good for food and medicine. Those things are real!”

  “Those things are very real.”

  “Then can’t you act the way you used to?”

  His gaze swept her face before he seemed to physically wrench it away so that he looked toward the mountains, hands crossed behind him. “No, Miss Talitha, I can’t act the way I did when you were a child. Nor can I, in conscience, behave as I would were you a few years older.” With a wry laugh, he swung about, rumpling his brown hair. “You’re in between, my dear, but that’ll change. Meanwhile, could I escort you to the Christmas festivities at Tubac? A number of respectable ladies are coming from as far as Magdalena, Tucson and Sopori for the holidays and you could, I’m sure, share a room with one of them.”

  As she stared at him in surprise, he laughed and was almost the old Marc. “Shea thinks it’s a wonderful idea, in fact, he’s coming, too. And he’s assured me you’re going to have a party dress!”

  A real party? And Shea coming! People from all around! Talitha thrilled, so breathtaking was the prospect, though it was also fearsome.

  Except for that trip to Nōnó, she hadn’t been off the ranch since Shea and Socorro brought her and James home from the Apaches. If she watched the ladies, though, she could copy them, keep from making any horrible mistakes. And Marc was as traveled and educated as any of the mine officers. It would be good for Shea to have some fun, too, though Talitha hoped, if any of the women were single, Shea wouldn’t have an eye for them.

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice, remembering. “The children! Shea and I can’t both go off and leave them at Christmas.”

  “No more will you,” Marc said cheerfully. “I’ll come the day before Christmas and we’ll all be with the children Christmas Eve. Sometime the next afternoon, I’ll take you to Tubac.”

  “But Shea—”

  “Will ride over after I take you home. They’ll be making merry till the New Year so he won’t miss anything.”

  It sounded too grand and strange for belief. Giving in to delight, Talitha scooped Caterina up and spun in a circle, all though
ts of what Marc could mean by his cryptic statements completely scattered. There was going to be a party and she was going to go!

  As the first week in December passed and her dress material hadn’t come, Talitha worried that it wouldn’t appear in time to be made up.

  “Don’t fret,” Shea admonished. “Rodolfo said Judah promised to have it delivered special if it missed a regular run, and I’ve left word with Mr. Poston to have someone bring it straight over from Tubac when the wagons drop it off there.”

  She scolded herself for getting so wrought up, but there was simply nothing she could wear. If the material didn’t come quickly, she couldn’t go and that made her heart sink.

  Then Judah Frost rode in one evening with a large bundle tied behind his saddle. “Personal delivery for Miss Talitha Scott!” he called as he worked at the knots. “Santa Cruz Freight—farther, faster! That’s our motto, Shea. Aren’t you proud to see your partner living up to it!”

  “Mighty proud,” grinned Shea, shaking hands. “Chuey’ll see to your horse. Come in and warm up!”

  Torn between relief at getting the material and annoyance that Frost had brought it, Talitha thanked him politely and put the package to one side while she went back to preparing supper, though she was longing to peek at the contents. There’d been a most enticing rustle in the moment she held the parcel.

  “God’s whiskers!” Shea exploded, taking over the stew. “Here you’ve been fidgeting for weeks over whether that stuff would get here in time! Open it!”

  “Yes, Tally! Open!” urged Caterina, dancing around her. Even the twins pressed close though they’d been teasing her about the new dress, saying she ought to wear the trousers she used for working cattle.

  Her fingers shook as she unfolded the coarse wrappings, the layers of paper, to reveal a rich shining blue, the color of the sky. When she started to pick it up, she saw that it was already fashioned into a marvelous gown, the three full flounces of the skirt patterned in flowers of deeper blue which were repeated at the deep heart-shaped neckline.