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Harvest of Fury
Jeanne Williams
For George Papcun,
who lived for his dream
of a better, brighter world
Arizona 1861–1917
“… Mines without miners and forts without soldiers are common. Politicians without policy, traders without trade, store-keepers without stores, teamsters without teams, and all without means, form the mass of the white population.”
—J. Ross Browne Adventures in the Apache Country (Harper and Brothers, 1969).
“All Indian men of that [Apache] tribe are to be killed whenever and wherever you can find them …”
—General Carleton to Colonel Kit Carson Oct. 12, 1862
“Hostilities in Arizona are kept up with a view of protecting the inhabitants, most of whom are supported by the hostilities.”
—General E. O. C. Ord, Jan. 22, 1870
“I believe that it is of far greater importance to prevent outbreaks than to attempt the difficult and sometimes hopeless task of quelling them after they do occur.… Bad as Indians often are, I have never yet seen one so demoralized that he was not an example in honor and nobility to the wretches who enrich themselves by plundering him of the little our Government appropriates for him.”
—General Crook, quoted in On the Border with Crook by John Bourke (Scribner’s, 1891)
“… But the meat of the cocoanut, and the bone of contention, was contained in the remark of a Mexican laborer to another, who said, ‘Yes, that is all true, but why don’t the company pay the Mexicans the same wages they pay the Americans?’”
—W. B. Kelly, Bisbee Review, June 2, 1906 as quoted in Colonel Green and the Copper Skyrocket by C. L. Sonnichsen (University of Arizona Press, 1974)
“Of all the crimes of the Porfirio Díaz regime the most monstrous was against the village in the sierras of western Chihuahua, Tomochic.… Apart from the heroism of the men of Tomochic … there was a singular and extraordinary factor. This was the inspiration of a nineteen-year-old girl, Teresa Urrea, whom they called La Santa de Cabora. Her name was their battle cry, and was on the lips of the Tomochitecos unto the death of the last man.”
—Mario Gill, Episodios Mexicanos (Mexico, 1960)
“The IWW appealed to rootless, voteless, womanless, alienated men. It embodied and made dramatically tangible the beliefs, dreams, hopes and visions that promised to the victims of industrial capitalism an escape from the futility of their lives.”
—The IWW In Wartime Arizona by James W. Byrkit, in Journal of Arizona History, Summer 1977
“How it could have happened in a civilized country I’ll never know. This is the only country it could have happened in. As far as we’re concerned we’re still on strike! … I’ll forget it when I die! I’ll forget it when I die!”
—Peter Watson, one of the Bisbee deportees, on tape to Dr. Robert Houston, Feb. 12, 1977, Journal of Arizona History, Summer 1977
Who’s Real
As in The Valiant Women, the historical background is as accurate as I could make it. Though my main characters are fictional, many others are drawn from life. Among actual military men were Captain John Irwin, Lieutenant Colonel Baylor, Captain Sherod Hunter, and (Generals Sibley, Carleton, and Crook.
Prominent Arizonans were Granville and William Oury, Sylvester Mowry, Solomon Warner, Sam Hughes, Peter Brady, the Penningtons, Tom Gardner, Esteban Ochoa, and Governor A. P. K. Safford. Pete Kitchen was very real. For fictional purposes, I have him and Doña Rosa remain at their Santa Cruz Valley stronghold though Apache ravages forced even this doughty pioneer to move to Magdalena, Sonora, during the Civil War.
Eskiminzin, Mangus Coloradas, Cochise, and other Apache leaders lived, of course. The Camp Grant Massacre happened as detailed. However, the Papago youths who’d killed for the first time were not killed during their purification vigil as are the ones in this book.
In the third part of the novel, Santa Teresa lived and worked her healings, and Cruz Chavez and his valiant men died at Tomochic. Colonel Greene played his part at Cananea, and Sheriff Harry Wheeler supervised the deportation in Bisbee.
While weaving the lives of my fictional people into the fabric of history, I’ve tried to give a fair and valid presentation of actual people and events.
PART I
La Madama
1861–1862
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, Talitha 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.
On the hill behind the ranch buildings were the crosses raised for Santiago and Socorro, and on the far side of the hill in a small grotto were buried the scalps of many Papagos and Mexicans whose hair had been taken by white scalp hunters hungry to collect the bounty that had been offered for Apache scalps by the government of Sonora, the most northwestern state of Mexico, of which the Gadsden Purchase, presently part of the territory of New Mexico, was a portion. Now that civil war had engulfed the country, Apaches might well reclaim the great expanse of mountains, plains, and river valleys.
But not, if Talitha could prevent it, Rancho del Socorro. As Patrick, hair gilded by sun, rode close to Cat, laughingly calling some big-brotherly tease to her, Talitha thought they must look much as their parents had at the same ages. Patrick O’Shea, known as Shea, had left Ireland during the potato famine of 1845 with his twin, Michael, and joined the U.S. Army, which was preparing to go to war with Mexico. Coming to feel more sympathy with the Catholic Mexicans than with the overbearing sergeant who constantly harassed them, the brothers had swum the Rio Grande and joined the famed San Patricio Battalion, formed of deserters from the U.S. Army. The survivors of the battalion had been court-martialed by the conquering U.S. Many were hanged. Shea and Michael were branded and flogged but escaped, heading for California. Michael died of thirst in the desert, and Shea, a parched-leather skeleton whose gashes couldn’t even bleed and whose tongue was shriveled to a hard lump, had been brought back to life by Socorro.
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