The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  “You’re not! Shea, if you’d just take care of yourself—”

  He hushed her with a wave of his hand. “No temperance lectures, Tally.” He eyed her levelly. “What I want to know is when you’re going to marry. You’re past twenty. I know Revier loves you and I reckon you care for him.”

  “I don’t want to marry him. Or anyone.” She swallowed till she could trust her voice to be steady. “I want to stay here, Shea. The twins don’t need me, but Cat does.”

  He bowed his head at that, but in a moment renewed his attack. “If you’d marry Revier, a manager could be found for the Tecolote. You know I bought Don Narciso’s mine after the Gadsden Purchase. Marc could take charge of that and live here.”

  Hope flared in her a moment at the suggestion, but she didn’t like it. Knowing how she felt about Shea, Marc would never consent to a combined household. Besides, she sensed in Shea a sort of withdrawing, a planning to make himself unnecessary.

  Talitha leaned forward, catching his hand. She wouldn’t let him slip away, wouldn’t let him ease out of his place as head of the ranch and the household.

  “If you want to see me married so much, why don’t you ask me?” she demanded angrily.

  His jaw dropped. He put her fingers away from him, shaking his head. “My God, Tally, I can’t do that! You’re like my daughter!”

  She moved swiftly, kissed him on the mouth. For a moment his arms tightened around her, his lips warmed under hers. Her breasts crushed against him and she moaned at the sweet pain. Then he put her roughly from him, stumbled to his feet.

  “I won’t, Tally! Ruin your life with my sour one? I’m not that wicked!”

  He reached down a bottle and started for his room. Desperate, Talitha caught his arm. “Shea, I’m not a virgin. Frost had me. And I love you, I want you! I don’t want another man!”

  “Frost?” Turning slowly, he took her in his arms, held her as he had when she was a child. “How awful for you, lass, and you never told me!”

  “I thought it would just upset you for no reason. But you mustn’t think I’m some innocent young girl. Shea, please! If—if you can’t marry me because of Socorro, that’s all right. Just let me be with you.”

  He groaned. By the way his body changed, she knew that he desired her. She pressed closer, offering her lips, but he tore himself away. “I didn’t protect you from that devil but damned if I’ll do worse! You need a young man, Tally, one all your own! God damn me if I’ll be spoiling your life.”

  He flung outside, into the darkness, and she knew where he was going. Up to the hill where his heart was buried.

  After a time the constraint between them eased, but there was tension of a different sort. From the shocks that fanned through her when they accidentally touched, from the look she sometimes found in his eyes, Talitha knew that Shea at last saw her as a woman. His love for her might be that of a father, perhaps he couldn’t love her any other way, but his body was aware of hers now.

  With a sort of despairing triumph, she waited. The time must come. And then surely, surely, she could make him happy, make him want to live again. She couldn’t be for him what Socorro was, but she could comfort his loneliness.

  It was shortly before Christmas that Belen brought in a baby about six months old, holding it in his scarred rough hands as if fearful of breaking it.

  “Don Patricio!” he cried. “Doncellita! This is Santiago’s child!”

  As the family gathered around, amazed, he gave the baby to Talitha who stared at the petal-soft brown skin, large tawny eyes and tiny mouth. “How—?”

  Belen breathlessly explained. Santiago, when released by rebel Yaquis from hard labor in the mines, had been sick. One of the girls who helped care for him loved him even though she knew he was determined to return to Rancho del Socorro. When she fell ill a month ago, she’d besought her brother to bring the baby to Santiago, not only wanting him to have her, but because she’d have a safer rearing than among the embattled Yaquis.

  “Santiago told the girl of you,” Belen said to Talitha. “She was jealous, for she suspected you were in his mind even more than vengeance on Frost. But when she told him she was pregnant, he married her and promised to come back when he’d settled with Frost.”

  Caterina had come close and pressed the baby’s little fist to her cheek. “She can stay with us? I hope she’s a girl!”

  “You get your wish,” smiled Belen. “She’s named Tosalisewa, which means ‘white flower.’”

  “Too much for me!” said Shea. “I’ll call her Sewa.” Wonderingly, he touched the soft black hair, the dimpled cheek. “Santiago’s child! Thank God, she’s come to us, though it’s a shame that poor lass, her mother, died. I hope she and Santiago were happy in the short time they had. Can we see the brother? I’d like to find out all he knows about Santiago.”

  Belen shook his head. “When I told him Santiago was dead, he was going to take the child away, but I persuaded him you’d all love her for Santiago’s sake, so he took food and departed.”

  The baby’s mouth began to tremble. Her eyes closed, so did her fists, and she gave a wail of protest so soft it was almost a question. “She’s surely hungry,” Belen said. “An aunt had been nursing her, but on the trip she’s had only watered pinole.”

  “Fetch Anita,” Talitha said, giving thanks that in June Anita had produced a second son, Tomás, and had more than enough milk.

  Anita’s warm breast solved the most important of Tosalisewa’s needs. In a few days, she’d recovered from slight diarrhea caused by the pinole and was sleeping as soundly in James’s willow basket as if it had always been her haven. The basket was in between Talitha’s and Caterina’s beds. When the baby whimpered, Caterina was often there first.

  Little Sewa, as they came to call her, was by way of being outrageously spoiled. Caterina lugged her about in James’s cradleboard in a way that made Talitha marvel to remember that she’d been somewhat younger than the eight-year-old when she’d had to mother James.

  Shea loved the child for his comrade’s sake as well as for her beguiling self. “Her eyes will be gold like Santiago’s,” he said once. “Tigre eyes. Strange in a girl, but won’t she be a beauty?”

  Talitha nodded, grateful that there had been loving care for Santiago; and that something of him lived on to be cherished by all of them.

  January of 1861 brought more snow than anyone could remember, covering valleys as well as the peaks. Early that month all the livestock of the Santa Rita Mining Company in the mountains east of Tubac were stolen by Indians, and there were smaller thefts from the San Pedro to the Santa Cruz. The hard winter brought hunger to the Apaches, but they were not much afraid of being caught by infantry.

  John Irwin was to have his share in what proved a bloody lesson on both sides. On February 1st, Lieutenant George Bascom, fresh out of West Point, left Fort Buchanan with fifty-four enlisted men, mostly infantry mounted on mules. His orders were to find Cochise, friend and son-in-law of Mangus, and make him return livestock and a twelve-year-old boy he was suspected of carrying off.

  Cochise met Bascom at Apache Pass and denied that his band had stolen either the boy or the cattle. Bascom threatened to hold him prisoner. Cochise escaped but six of his people were held hostage. Expecting trouble, Bascom sent to Fort Buchanan for medical help. His messengers came across what was left of a wagon train. Eight men had been tortured and killed.

  Sent to Apache Pass with supplies and a small relief column, Irwin picked up several Coyotero prisoners along the way and got to Apache Pass shortly before dragoons arrived from Fort Breckinridge in New Mexico, summoned by the Butterfield agent in Tucson after an express rider brought news of the slaughtered wagon teamsters.

  Cochise held three men from the stage station captive and offered to exchange them for Bascom’s six prisoners. Bascom refused unless the allegedly abducted boy was turned over. Cochise and his Chiricahuas killed their station men and vanished.

  Bascom and Lieutenant Moore fro
m Breckinridge hanged the three Chiricahua men, one Cochise’s brother, and also Irwin’s three Coyoteros close to the burned wagon train, but they couldn’t track down Cochise and went back to their posts.

  “I advised Bascom to hang the prisoners,” Irwin said truculently when he came to Socorro late in February. “Men tied to wagon wheels and roasted—Wallace, the station attendant, who’d been the Apaches’ friend and voluntarily went to talk with them, dragged to death behind a galloping horse! And you haven’t forgotten Larcena Page, have you? Did you know her husband was killed about a week ago? Apaches shot him while he was escorting a provision wagon!”

  Numbly, Talitha shook her head. Poor Larcena! But Irwin’s bitter gaze brought her back to the fear that haunted her. “I—I was thinking in a few years you might hang my brother like that.”

  Irwin stared, then remembered. He passed his hand across his face wearily. “Talitha, I’m sorry. But if your brother will run with savages, he’ll wind up killing as they do.”

  “And you?” she thrust.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I did what I felt to be my duty.” He rose, reaching for his hat, but Shea commanded him to sit down. After learning details of John Page’s death, he sighed heavily.

  “Cochise maybe didn’t have the Martinez boy and Bascom probably shouldn’t have tried to hold him, but once it was done and Cochise killed those wagon people and station attendants, I don’t see what else could be done. What do you hear about the seceding states, John? Have they held a convention?” For after South Carolina’s secession in December, seven of the southernmost states had followed, including Texas.

  “They had a convention in Montgomery, Alabama, several weeks ago,” the doctor said. “Framed a constitution and set up a provisional government with Jefferson Davis, the former U.S. Secretary of War, as president.”

  “Do you think the Confederacy will recognize Arizona as a territory?”

  Irwin snorted. “Jeff Davis will recognize anything that gives him an outlet to the West Coast. The South could use the minerals and if it could take over the whole Southwest, including California, it wouldn’t be a weaker neighbor of the North for long. But Lincoln won’t allow the Union to dissolve. The South will have to fight. It can’t do anything for Arizona.”

  “The United States hasn’t done a hell of a lot!”

  Irwin laughed, then sobered. “It was making a start. Now …” He shrugged. “The Union itself’s at stake.”

  There had been a meeting February 4th in Tucson to debate secession, but the resolutions passed expressed faith in the Union. However, when the Overland Mail stopped in March, a sense of being abandoned by the national government grew swiftly. On March 12th Congress passed a bill routing the Overland Mail through South Pass instead of along the southern route through Arizona, but a week before this, the company had stopped the route because secessionists, as well as Apaches, were running off their stock and raiding stations and wagons.

  At a meeting late in March delegates resolved to support the Confederacy and ask for territorial status.

  And in April, a few days before Talitha’s birthday, James came home.

  She screamed when she first looked up to see a young Apache standing in the door. Boots came to his knee. He wore a deerskin loincloth and a red headcloth. His body was brown and muscled, lithe and wiry. But when she saw his eyes, blue in that dark face, she knew him, and her fear changed to joy.

  “James!” she cried, running toward him.

  He permitted her embrace, but stood so still that she reluctantly moved back. “James! You’ve come!”

  He put down his bow and quiver. His English was hesitating, deeply accented, and his voice was changing, sometimes a boy’s, sometimes a man’s. “Mangus said I should. No one is left at the stage stations, the wagons do not come anymore. The soldiers may kill a few Apaches, but they cannot do much. This will be Apache country again. But because of his old promise, Mangus will not harm this ranch. I am here to warn Pinals and Coyoteros that Mangus still protects you.”

  It was clear that he considered himself Apache. Juh, dead, had his son back. Grief welled up in Talitha as she remembered Judith. But James could not, of course, nor could he remember how Juh’s wives would have let him starve.

  He was alive, he was well. And he was back! He would be fourteen in July. In late September he would have been gone seven years. But the earliest years he remembered had been here. Surely, surely there was a chance he’d come back in heart as well as body. She wished Santiago were alive, he’d had a special bond with his godson.

  Cat ran into the kitchen, stopped at the sight of the boy-warrior. Amazingly, she didn’t scream. After one glance at Talitha, she darted forward and caught his hands, hugging them to her cheek.

  “You’re James! You’re our James! You’ll stay with us now, won’t you, forever and ever?”

  He stared at her. It was like watching a wild proud animal that could be fierce beguiled by the antics of some smaller creature, suspicious, yet wanting to join in the frolic.

  “What’s your name, little girl?”

  “I’m Cat or Katie or Caterina.” She added disdainfully, “The twins call me Katie-Cat, but that’s a baby name.”

  He smiled and touched her hair. “I shall call you Caterina.”

  At the sight of his brown fingers resting in the black glossiness, Talitha thought of scalps though she knew Apaches seldom took them. “The twins will be glad to see you,” she told her brother. Brother, not Apache. “They still speak of you and wish you’d come home.”

  “My home is the mountains. I visit here.”

  Clinging possessively to his arm, Cat said, “Oh no, James, this is your place, too. You can have both! Come on, hurry! We have to find the twins! And you must see Santiago’s little girl, Sewa.”

  Miguel fell at once under James’s sway, not that he tried to lead. Patrick, jealous, taller than James, and as heavy though over a year younger, made one taunt about Apaches. The ensuing tangle resulted in a draw, both boys too exhausted to fight further, and after that, they were friends. James was enchanted with Sewa and often took the cradleboard from Caterina and carried her himself.

  He’d kept up his roping skills—how, it was probably better not to ask—and made a good hand for the spring roundup. He was a fine horseman, too, though he said Tordillo had been slaughtered for food last winter when food was scarce.

  It pleased him greatly to know Santiago’s cattle were his. “I won’t have to kill my horse again to eat,” he said. “I wouldn’t have done it, but the children starved.”

  He was soon on easy terms with Chuey and Belen, but Rodolfo was nervous of him even though James had matter-of-factly accepted white clothing. He wouldn’t cut his long hair, though, and wore his headcloth.

  He was respectful to Shea who welcomed him wholeheartedly, bringing home to Talitha the thought that however Shea mourned Socorro, he’d never blamed James for setting in motion the events that led to her death. James remembered, though. And he’d stiffened with shock when he heard what had happened to Santiago. Sometimes Talitha saw him and Cat outlined on the hill by the crosses.

  “What are you doing up there?” she asked Cat one day.

  “We take them flowers.” Cat wriggled restlessly against Talitha’s arm. “James says I look like mother. Do I, Tally? Will I be as pretty as she was?”

  “Prettier, I think. You’ve got your father’s eyes.”

  Cat shook her head. “I don’t want to be prettier. Just as.”

  Talitha laughed and kissed her, but there was a small bewildered knot of hurt in her. She was blessedly happy to have her brother back, glad and relieved that he’d slipped into place without trouble, that he and the twins were companions and that instead of seeing Cat as a reproach and reminder of his childish transgression, he was protectively fond of her. But in that last closeness, Talitha felt excluded, shut out.

  Where she’d once been the most important human in James’s world, now she was
the woman in charge of the house, respected and obeyed where once she’d been loved. He showed more affection to Anita, who, recovering from shock, soon petted James as much as he’d allow and brought him special dishes.

  Cat had James’s love now, and she returned it with adoration. When John Irwin came and James faded away, she faded with him. She, who wept over dead animals, went hunting with him. When he wasn’t working cattle, they were inseparable.

  The twins were usually along, too, so Talitha didn’t think anyone but she noticed the special bond between them. Cat’s motherliness found in James someone who needed it as much as tiny Sewa but who couldn’t accept tenderness from an older person. In her, he had a lovely soft little being who thought him completely wonderful while sensing that in some deep part of his soul, he needed her.

  They had each other. The twins had always shared everything. And Shea had his bottle.

  Why? Talitha wanted to shout at him when that secret current flowed between them and he hastily left or busied himself with something that dissipated its force. Why? You don’t have to love me, just let me love you!

  There was a kind of waiting in the days, a mounting tension in the atmosphere, as the air grows heavy before a thunderstorm. When John Irwin brought word that war had broken out, Shea said nothing at all, but a few days later he rode into Tucson.

  When he returned, he called in all the men and Anita, the twins and James as well. “I’m convinced the North won’t give Arizona the government and peace we need,” he said. “I’m equally sure the Confederacy will, so I’m going to fight for it.” He handed Talitha a large envelope. “While I’m away, Talitha’s in charge, with Belen foreman. I’ve seen a lawyer and made a will. Tomorrow I’ll go see the Sanchezes, and then I’ll leave as soon as I can.”

  He glanced from startled face to startled face, added heavily, “It comes hard to leave you, with dangers all about. But we know Mangus still holds his hand over the Socorro, and James should be more help, in case of a raid, than I could be. I’ve talked with John Irwin and the Fort Buchanan commander. Even though they know I’ll be fighting against their uniform, they’ve promised to be watchful for you. Irwin, especially, will assist in any way he can. Are there any questions?”