The Valiant Women

by Jeanne Williams

  “Can’t we go with you?” the twins cried.

  Shea encircled each with an arm, roughly. “I hope my going now will keep you both from having to fight later. You’re to help Tally and do what Belen says. I rely on you.”

  Cat flung her arms around his neck, clinging wildly. “I don’t want you to go, Daddy! Please don’t go! I don’t want you to leave me!”

  His face twisted and he held her close. “I don’t want to leave you, sweetheart. But I must.”

  She sobbed heartbrokerily. James came and led her away. “Caterina,” he said with a sternness that halted her weeping though tears continued to flow. “A man must fight when his time comes or he is no man. Your father is a man.” She buried her face against his arm but made no more protests.

  The vaqueros inclined their heads. Belen stepped forward. “Don Patrico, I will die before harm comes to your children or the doncellita. Go with God. Return to us.”

  Shea’s visit to the Sanchezes took two days. While he was gone, Talitha searched frantically for some way to make him change his mind, but she thought of nothing. He was determined, she knew he would go, and she thought she would die without him; never to see his face, not to know if he was well or if he was even alive.

  After everyone else had gone to bed the night of his return, Talitha was finally alone with him. “I went to the San Manuel and wished Tjúni luck in case I don’t see her again,” he said. “Cinco’s a fine little lad. Looks pure Papago except for a reddish cast to his hair when the sun hits it. If it ever comes in your way, Talitha, will you be his friend?”

  She nodded, too angry and sorrowful to trust herself to speak.

  “There’s one more trip I’d like to make,” Shea continued, eyes holding hers. “Let me go to Marc Revier. Let me say you want him to come.”

  “No.”

  Shea’s breath sounded dragged from him. “Tally, Tally! I want you to be happy, have your strong young man.”

  “Is that why you’re going away?” She looked at him in sudden dread. How could she bear it if her trying to be with him had caused this? “Oh, Shea, if it is, then you stay here! I can go to my father.”

  “And take away the center of the house?” He sighed deeply. “I could wish you’d go with Revier, Tally, or he’d come to you. But till there’s a man you love, your home is here.”

  “I love you. It’s you I’ve always loved.”

  He didn’t speak but watched her with tormented eyes. Coming around to him, she knelt beside him, carried his hand to her breast, held it above her heart. “Shea, love me before you go away.”

  “Tally, I mustn’t.”

  “Why? What can it matter if you’re leaving? It’s not something you’d have to live with.”

  He put her fiercely from him, got to his feet, crossed to the other side of the table. A pulse hammered in his temple, beat in his throat. “God above, girl! Have you any notion how hard it’s been these weeks to keep my hands off you, keep from warming myself with your sweet fire? I’m not going off to fight because of you, but if I didn’t do that I’d sure have to do something else!”

  “You could take me.”

  He stared at her.

  “I want your baby,” she said in a whisper. “I want you to come alive again and laugh and be happy, Shea, please—”

  He took a long breath. His tall lean body relaxed. “I don’t deserve such loving, but I would lie to say I don’t want it. But you must have your chance, Tally. I belong to the first times, to Socorro and Santiago.”

  “You can belong to my time, too.”

  “Maybe. Maybe.” He smiled at her and it ran over her heart like sun, letting her hope. “Let me fight my battle, Tally. That’s how I started my life in this new world. It may be how I can finish that life and begin all over.”

  Her blood seemed to face after being frozen. “Shea, you mean—”

  He threw back his shoulders, looking younger than he had in a long time. “If I come back, and you’re still of a mind, we’ll marry.”

  And then he was around the table and she was in his arms. She had never been so happy. She had never been so sad.

  She could scarcely believe it. But—when he came back? That could be so long. And a quickly suppressed voice whispered that he might not come back. She looked up into his eyes, caressed the scar on his cheek.

  “Shea. Oh my love, we can wait to be married. But please don’t make me wait for you.”

  “But, Tally—”

  “Let me have that. Let me have that to remember. Shea, if you leave me without that, I don’t think I can bear it. Just this night, be my man.”

  He took her in his arms, swept her up and carried her to his room. He loved her with sweetness and fire. Sometimes, he slept. Talitha never did. This time was too precious. She kept her hand lightly on him, loving him so fiercely that she didn’t know how she could endure life without him. But she had this, and so did he. Something that might bring him home.

  Next morning, Talitha, the twins, Cat and James rode with him as far as Fort Buchanan. Talitha had brought Sewa in her cradleboard fastened to the saddle horn. Dismounting, Shea shook hands with his sons, kissed Cat and Sewa. Last of all, he kissed Talitha and it was a man’s kiss to his woman.

  “I want to come back now,” he said, laughing, though his eyes were moist. He glanced at the children. “Take care of them for me, Tally. Take care of yourself.”

  Unable to speak, she tried to smile and nodded her head.

  They watched him out of sight in the bright new day, Cat weeping softly. Talitha could only bear the overwhelming loss and desolation by remembering. At last he loved her!

  Nothing could take that away.

  When they could no longer see him at all, Talitha reined her horse and led the way, back to the Socorro. She would hold it for him. And wait.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Arizona Saga

  I

  Talitha cleared the supper dishes from the oak table before she turned to confront the young, redheaded Irish doctor from Fort Buchanan.

  “John, it’s kind of you to take this trouble, but I can’t leave. The cattle, the horses, the land, everything Shea and the others worked for—it’s up to me now to hold it together.”

  “Shea’s gone to fight the very army he expected to protect his family and ranch,” John Irwin said grimly. “He’d never dream of wanting you to stay now that all the troops in Arizona—not that there were ever that many—are pulling out.” He glanced from the twelve-year-old twins, dark, lithe Miguel and tall, wiry, flame-haired Patrick, to seven-year-old Caterina, who was rocking little Tosalisewa, just past her first birthday. “He’d value these children—and you—above the ranch and the whole damn boiling!”

  Shea’s last words when he rode away had been to tell Talitha to take care of the children for him—and to take care of herself. Not a word about the ranch. He couldn’t have guessed that within a few months the federal government would abandon this region that already called itself Arizona, though it was legally part of Doña Ana County of the Territory of New Mexico. The Overland Mail had stopped running in April; and now, in July 1861, the troops were pulling out of Fort Buchanan, only about four miles from the ranch, and Fort Breckinridge, about fifty miles northwest of Tucson. Laughably small forces to oppose the swift-raiding Apaches; but now even they would be gone.

  Looking at the children, Talitha saw in them their parents who’d braved scalp hunters, Apaches, and the fierce country to reclaim this old Spanish land grant in 1847 after it had been deserted for over twenty years because Mexico had been unable to defend its northwest frontier against Apaches.

  Caterina flashed a smile from those startling gray-blue eyes, otherwise looking so much like her mother, Socorro, that even after nearly eight years Talitha felt a rush of grief and need for the kind and lovely woman who’d been her foster mother. Socorro’s looks were echoed, too, in Miguel, but Patrick was the image of what Shea must have been as a boy, blazing red-gold hair and
eyes the dark gray of a thundercloud. Though he liked John Irwin, the boy glared at him now.

  “We can’t let the ranch go to pieces! And Mangus is our friend. Isn’t he, James?”

  Talitha’s half brother, born of a blond Mormon and her Apache captor, Juh, frowned, his dark blue eyes shocking in his lean brown face. At fourteen, he was a head taller than his sister, his sinewy body hard and spare from his years among the Apaches. From the time he was seven until his return a few months before, he had lived in the camp of Mangus Coloradas, great chief of the Mimbreños.

  “Mangus will do what he can. But the soldiers have hunted the Apaches since they came to these parts five years ago. Miners and other whites have swarmed in. The Apaches are angry. When the soldiers go, the Apaches will want to drive out the rest of the whites. That’s why Mangus sent me to you. To try to protect you if there was a raid. I will do that.”

  “See?” cried Patrick triumphantly. “Miguel and I can shoot as well as Belen and Chuey. And so can you, Tally,” he added kindly. “If Apaches or bandits hit Socorro, we’ll make them wish they hadn’t!”

  “Apaches aren’t too likely to ride up to the house while we’re all together and behind walls,” Talitha reminded him. “We’d probably be scattered around and be picked off one or two at a time.”

  She thought briefly of alternatives. Her father, Jared Scott, who, with Cooke’s Mormon Battalion, had marked a southern route to California in the winter of 1846–47, had stayed in California to pan gold until, three years ago, he had come to see Talitha. Wistfully, for Talitha had been only six when he rode off with his battalion, Jared had offered her a home and any help she might ever need. Though he was resettling deep in Apache country, two hundred miles north on the Verde River, he’d thought he would have the usual Mormon friendship with Indians.

  No word had since come from him. He might be dead, or gone to join the United States Army as he’d done before. Besides, if the Apaches decided to drive out all the whites, Jared’s place would probably be no safer than Socorro. Talitha wouldn’t have gone there herself in any case. She meant to stay at the ranch. But she wished there were some safe place to send at least Cat and Tosalisewa.

  Meeting John Irwin’s worried gaze, Talitha sighed. “There’s no safe place in Arizona, New Mexico, or nothern Mexico, John.”

  “There’s Santa Fe. The troops would escort you there.”

  With a pang, she remembered that little adobe village high in the mountains. That was where the Mormon Battalion had left its weaker members and most of the women and children. Talitha’s mother, uncles, and grandfather had started out to follow the battalion at a slower pace. Talitha still blanked out the way her uncles and grandfather had looked, full of arrows, bound to their wagon wheels and burned, when she and her mother were taken captive.

  Judith had died of fever brought on by James’s difficult birth. One of Juh’s other wives grudgingly nursed James for a few months. After that, Talitha kept him alive by feeding him piñon nuts, finely ground and mixed with water and honey. He’d been less than a year old when Shea had ransomed him by proving to Juh his bravery, taking a second brand on his cheek to go with the one the army had given him.

  Talitha had worshiped Shea since that day, though after his beloved Socorro died his grief and resultant drinking had deepened her love with compassion. Only the night before he left to join the Confederate forces mustering in Texas had he at last permitted himself to treat Talitha as a woman. That one sweet night, ever to be treasured! He’d promised to marry her when he came back, start a fresh new life with her.

  A thrill at once of rapture and of loss ran through Talitha as she straightened. She must be here when he came, hold the ranch for him and these children.

  Meeting the young captain’s eyes, she smiled and shook her head. “Santa Fe’s where I started, John. I’m not going back. None of us have kin in the East, anyone who could be trusted to take care of the children. Even with the danger, they’re better here with me.”

  “We’re not children, Miguel and me!” snorted Patrick.

  Cat, still rocking Sewa, took James’s brown hand and pressed her soft cheek to it. “James loves us, Captain Irwin. He’s part Apache. He won’t let them hurt us.”

  Dropping to one knee beside her, James laughed. Great closeness had grown up between the two of them since his return, a closeness which made Talitha, who’d mothered them both, feel shut out.

  Talitha had longed for years to have James back, but in those seven years he’d changed from the brother she’d kept alive among Juh’s hostile wives to an Apache youth inured to hardship, almost old enough to go on his first raid when he would act as a servant to the older men and his family would pray that he’d bring back many horses and cattle. Only when he played with Cat and Sewa could Talitha see flashes of the little brother who’d so loved Chacho, his princely black cat who had gotten hydrophobia and given it to Shea. It was in taking Shea to a Tarahumare hermit for curing that Socorro had gone into premature labor and hemorrhaged to death. Guilty because he’d lied to protect his stricken cat, James had gone with Mangus from Socorro’s grave.

  Irwin’s jaw squared. “Even Tucson would be safer than this. By God, if this territory were under martial law, I’d pack you up there whether you liked it or not!”

  Talitha stiffened. “How fortunate for our friendship that you can’t!” Her mind had been grappling with the formidable situation, though, and she added persuasively, “It would be wise to bring the El Charco people to the main ranch, to provide more protection for all. I’ll give them the alternative of going deep enough into Mexico to get away from Apaches; but if they stay, that’ll give us four more men—five, if Güero comes.”

  “I don’t like Güero,” Patrick said. “He’s mean to horses.”

  Talitha didn’t like Pedro Sanchez’s older son, either, the way his green eyes seemed to burn through her clothing, but she shrugged and said, “Gracious, John, that gives us more good shots than the presidio at Tubac often used to have when they were supposed to protect the whole Santa Cruz Valley!”

  He slammed his fist into his palm. “Damn it, Talitha, don’t you understand? It’s going back to the way it was when the ranch started, maybe even worse.”

  “Sylvester Mowry’s Patagonia mine is like a fortress,” she reminded him. “Pete Kitchen has his ranch so well fortified that the Apaches don’t try to take his house anymore; they just run off stock and kill his pigs.”

  “And men, when they catch them.”

  There was no answer to that. Irwin stifled a growl of frustration. “You’ll at least move the El Charco vaqueros up here?”

  Talitha laughed. “I’ll surely invite them, most heartily.” She crossed the room and put her hand in the captain’s. “It’s kind of you to worry about us, John. I hate to see you go. Especially when—” She bit her lip.

  “When I’ll fight for the Union, while Shea joins the rebels?” Irwin supplied gently. “I hate that, too, but that stubborn Irishman has it in his head that the Union’s like England, always pushing weaker countries around.”

  That was true. The brand of desertion on Shea’s cheek had seared into his spirit, along with the death of his brother. He’d hated it when Americans had started coming into the Arizona country, though he’d become friendly with some of them, including this Irish-born young surgeon.

  “Come see us as much as you can before you leave,” Talitha urged.

  “I’ll do that.” He bent to kiss Cat and Sewa, then shook hands with all three boys, who suddenly seemed taller and older, sobered and challenged by what lay ahead. Then, with a teasing grin, he swept Talitha close.

  “If you’re not afraid of Apaches, you shouldn’t be afraid of me!”

  He gave her a quick, light kiss, picked up his plumed hat, and went out into the warm July twilight.

  Standing in the door, watching her brother and Shea’s children follow the officer through the opening between the boys’ quarters and the granaries, Tali
tha hugged Sewa close and in the baby’s warm, soft sweetness found some comfort for her sad heart. She had to choose for all of them. If they suffered for it, were slaughtered as so many others had been—

  But this had always been dangerous country. Shea had left them in that knowledge. It wasn’t as if she were willfully plunging the children into this threat. The only other choice was to flee like refugees, abandoning these children’s heritage, all their parents had worked for.

  The peaches that grew in the courtyard were ripe, though the pomegranates were only faintly tinged with crimson. Talitha reached up for a peach she’d noticed earlier that day, rubbed the fuzz off on her skirt, and took a bite, savoring the mellow richness as juice filled her mouth.

  She loved this place—so painfully made by the courage, patience, work, and faith of its founders. It was home, where Shea, her love, would return. If she hoped to prove worthy of him, no matter how young, unsure, and frightened she was, she must somehow be as valiant and enduring as Socorro.

  But she had had Shea! Talitha wailed silently, then had to admit, to herself, Not at first she didn’t. Not when she was left alone in the desert with all her people dead. She was younger then than you are, so let’s have no excuses!

  Even so, trying to emulate Socorro seemed an impossible challenge. Sighing, Talitha savored the fruit and straightened her shoulders. With all her strength and will and devotion, she would hold this ranch. That was all she could do; she could do no less.

  When she said after breakfast next morning that she was going to El Charco and to San Manuel, the Papago enclave of Tjúni, the fourth of Rancho del Socorro’s partners, James said he’d go with her. At that the twins clamored to ride along. Cat, torn, finally decided that Anita was capable of looking after Sewa for the day, and the five began the ride southward. Patrick was on coal black Thunder. Miguel’s Lightning was a creamy gold. Caterina bobbed along on Mancha. James would never love another horse as he had his gray Tordillo, killed one hard winter to feed women and children among the Apaches, but he’d picked a tough, angular roan, Alacrán, or Scorpion, and they respected each other, moving as one.