He named several of them. Solomon Warner, who’d opened his store in 1856 just a few days after the last Mexican troops withdrew, stocking his shelves with goods brought in by mules from Fort Yuma. Leaving his painfully developed business in rebel hands, he was on the way to Sonora. Sam Hughes, born in Wales, a cook, hotelkeeper, and prospector in California, had come to Tucson in 1858 and prospered by supplying grain and meat to the Overland Stage Company stations. Staunchly for the Union, he’d set his face for California.
Gone from the territory, too, was Peter Brady, who’d visited the ranch with Andrew Gray’s railroad surveying party in the spring of 1853 when the German artist of the expedition, Charles Schuchard, had painted for Socorro the picture of the ranch house that hung in the sala. Brady, after the survey, had gone into ranching and mining and had most lately been post trader at Fort Mojave, where Beale’s wagon road crossed the Colorado. Gray himself had gone to fight for the Confederacy.
“And Don Esteban Ochoa, the merchant,” Kitchen went on. “When he wouldn’t swear loyalty to the South, Hunter gave him just time to get his horse, weapons, and a few rations and leave town or be shot.”
Except for Brady, Talitha knew the exiles only by reputation, but they were all decent, honorable men. She hated that they’d lost everything achieved through such risk and persistence. It didn’t seem fair that real Arizonans should be dispossessed by military forces of either side; but perhaps that was what war was all about: property and power.
It was a relief, after Pete had jogged off, to pick up little Sewa and carry her out into the bright sunshine. Always, when she was sad, Talitha found that the warmth of that honey-brown skin and the playful mischief in the big dark eyes were good antidotes. Holding Talitha’s neck with one proprietary arm, the child pointed up the creek where two hawks were soaring.
“Deelicho!” She used the Apache word. Then, chuckling, she added in Spanish, “Gavilán.”
“Yes,” agreed Talitha. “And ‘hawk,’ too. We’ll have to ask Belen for the Yaqui.” Sewa spoke well for her twenty-one months. The main trouble was sorting out her Spanish, English, Apache, and Yaqui.
The red-tails had made their nest for several springs now in a big sycamore and didn’t bother the smaller birds who nested close by, though Talitha had several times seen a group of robins chasing one of the hawks, pecking at the big bird, which made no effort to retaliate. Once, when ravens were after it, Talitha had marveled to see the hawk turn over and offer its talons, at which the ravens retreated, cawing as they flapped away.
The hawks rose in great circles, crossing one another’s arcs till they almost touched, becoming small specks in the blue brightness. Then one dropped at great speed till Talitha could see it had partly folded its wings. When it seemed about to crash into the trees, it opened its wings and climbed high again, seeming to hang above its mate. Wheeling and plummeting, the birds passed out of sight as riders came into view.
All three O’Shea youngsters were learning how to track, how to fade into the landscape, and constantly increasing their skill with bow and arrow. Several times the twins had startled Talitha by speaking suddenly from behind piles of rock where they wore crowns of oak and brush that made them look like scrub growing behind the boulders. The boys could spear targets now with long lances of sotol, tipped with bayonets salvaged from the fort. The lances entered the cedar-bark targets with a force that made Talitha wince, for she had seen them used on people. If the boys were to live in this country, though, it was best they learned to use every possible weapon.
James was holding something bundled up in Cat’s serape. As he came closer, Talitha saw a sharply hooked beak, open to show a pink tongue, and golden eyes that held some of the fire of the sun.
“Gavilán-hawk-deelicho!” squealed Sewa, reaching toward it.
“Don’t touch,” warned Talitha, putting her down. “The hawk doesn’t want to play. Goodness, James, how did you get it?”
“It’s been shot with an arrow, which has dropped out except for the point lodged in the wing,” James explained, dismounting with great caution as Cat sprang down and took Alacran’s reins. “It’s a Chiricahua point. I think it was shot a good distance away, probably by someone wanting arrow feathers. The hawk could fly for a while, but then its wound swelled and the point worked in till the wing’s lame.”
“We’re going to get him well,” Cat said. “Aren’t we, James?”
“We’ll try. Can I make a nest for him in the old granary, Tally?”
She nodded. “No one goes in there. Can I help you get that arrow point out?”
“Yes, but take care. His talons are like knives.”
“You be careful, James!” hissed Cat;
“You take the baby inside,” he retorted.
Miguel, who had a rabbit tied to his saddle, led the horses off to the corral while Patrick, obeying James, fetched heavy gauntlets and restrained the hawk’s head as James got out his knife.
“I think we’d better douse the wound with mescal,” Talitha said. She asked Anita, who was staring from the door, to bring some.
“Hold the wing back,” James said, “And keep that serape tight!”
Pus wept out as he edged the sharp blade down the side of the arrow. In spite of the restraining hands on him, the bird struggled convulsively. James worked to the front, tugging at the flint while he pried upward with the knife.
The point came in a welter of corruption that oozed down the hawk’s white underbody and rust-speckled flanks. James took the gourd of mescal Anita offered and poured it over the wound, holding the angry flesh open so the harsh cleanser could reach deep.
Swaddling talons and beak, James carried the bird around the house to the granary, where Cat had already lined a large willow basket with straw and Miguel waited with the rabbit.
“All of you stay outside,” James warned. He tipped the hawk into the basket and stepped back quickly. It flopped over on its back, holding up its fearful claws. “We’ll give you something to hold, K’aak’eh.” K’aak’eh meant “He was wounded,” and also sounded quite a lot like a red-tail’s cry.
Drawing his knife again, James cut up the rabbit, leaving on the fur, and proffered a haunch on the edge of the knife. The talons gripped, Talitha heard the sharp snap of a bone.
Putting the rest of the luckless rabbit within the hawk’s reach, James shut the door. “All we can do now is feed him. He’s young, not a year old, though he’s beginning to get his red tail feathers. He’ll molt all summer and by fall will have his adult plumage.”
Cat skipped in excitement. “He’ll stay with us, won’t he, James?”
James glanced at her in surprise. “No. Not after he can fly again, hunt for himself.”
“But, James, I’d love to have a tame hawk!”
“Hawks aren’t for taming,” he said sternly. “I’d kill one that hung around people waiting to eat their leavings. It would be like the Apaches around the forts in New Mexico who’ve given up their pride for some moldy corn.”
The disgust in James’s tone made Cat’s mouth tremble. It was probably the first time he’d ever refused to indulge her. But her puzzled hurt passed before they reached the house and she held to his arm, chattering on about how handsome K’aak’eh was and how they’d soon have him well.
The young hawk did mend swiftly. After a few days he stopped threatening James, who nonetheless kept a respectful distance from the vicious claws and beak. But soon James began to wrap his arm and hand in folds of rawhide and let the hawk clamber on, taking him out into the sun and air.
The hawk’s wonderful plumage, a rich rusty brown on the back, with the red of the tail becoming more marked, breast and underbody white with speckling at belly and flanks, ruffled in the breeze that stirred James’s dark hair. Boy and hawk had a savage beauty that sent an ache through Talitha. James was Apache. Like the bird, he had to be free. But she prayed he could make peace with his white blood, not have to live like a hunted animal as Americans spread ove
r Apache lands.
It was at the Agave Feast that Güero sang again, his eyes green flames in the firelight. A dozen agave hearts had been put to bake about noon the day before, after the fire had died down on the stones lining the round pit dug about ten feet wide and a yard deep. Covered then with bear grass and a layer of earth, the hearts were done tonight, mushy golden-brown. Carmencita didn’t approve of eating such heathen food, so there was barbecue, too, and a big pot of spiced beans.
After the meal, the vaqueros began to play their guitars, but the others stopped when Güero began. Truly he had the best voice, deeply resonant. He sang a nonsense song, imitating birdcalls, that had the children laughing, struck a few chords, and swung into the boisterous “Best Vaquero” in a way that soon had the other men clapping and calling out “Eee-ha!” in time to the song.
When he came to the end of that swaggering canter, his gaze rested full on Talitha. He sang a love song, and though she wrapped her rebozo tighter about her, it was as if his eyes and voice penetrated her garments, lingered on her flesh.
“Pardon me if my caresses offend you.
Pardon me if my songs offend you …”
Their eyes met. A fiery chill shot through Talitha. She took Sewa from Cat and off to bed and didn’t return to the fire. But dimly, though the window was shut, she could still hear Güero’s voice.
“They say because of your love some evil will follow me.
I don’t care if it’s the devil, I also know how to die.”
Now that it was spring, maybe he’d go away. She hoped he would, then was angry at herself for that coward’s thought. The ranch needed all the men it would get, she reminded herself.
She thought of Shea and Marc, trying to blot out Güero’s questing stare with their faces, but they kept going faint and vanishing. Were they still alive? Would she ever hear again of either of them?
It had been a long time since she cried, but that night she did, hard and bitterly, with a kind of despair.
A few days later Miguel, on lookout, reported horsemen. At the signal bell, every adult in hearing except for Carmencita grabbed a rifle and took a position.
“Americans,” called James after a few tense minutes. “Most are in gray. They ride like soldiers.”
“Maybe they’re from Tucson. Let’s wait till we’re sure.” Talitha kept her voice steady, even though her heart raced as she couldn’t repress a crazy, flaring hope that Shea might be in the little group of perhaps a dozen men.
Opening the door, rifle in view, Talitha called, “Who are you?”
A young man in the lead swept off his gray hat, exposing long blond hair, and bowed from the saddle, motioning his men to wait as he rode forward. “Lieutenant Todd, ma’am, of Hunter’s Rangers. We’re foraging.”
“Apaches and bandits have been down the Santa Cruz before you,” Talitha said dryly. “I doubt they left much.”
The officer flushed and straightened his shoulders. “I trust, ma’am, that you’re not a Union sympathizer. My orders are to confiscate any cattle and usable goods of such persons.”
“I sympathize with North and South since I have friends on both sides. This ranch is owned, sir, by a man who’s off fighting for your Confederacy. Perhaps you’ve met him. Patrick O’Shea.”
“An older man?”
“Shea’s not old!”
The lieutenant grinned, looking very boyish. “Well, ma’am, older than I, with red hair and a badly scarred cheek?”
Talitha’s heart leaped. She could only nod.
“I saw him at Mesilla,” Todd said. “He went up the Rio with Sibley and would surely have been in the Valverde fight. They moved on to take Albuquerque, and we’ve just heard they’ve secured Santa Fe and run up the Confederate flag. Is Captain O’Shea your husband, ma’am?”
“No.” She didn’t want to explain with all the listening ears. “But I’d be most grateful if you could learn anything about him, or get a message through.”
“I’ll try my best, but don’t count on anything, ma’am. Things are in an uproar, what with Union troops moving toward us from California and a bunch of Coloradans coming down on Sibley. To top all that, President Davis just removed Baylor from the governorship of Arizona.”
“You have a lot of news, Lieutenant,” Talitha interrupted. “Won’t you and your men come in for dinner and rest yourselves?”
He was happy to accept. The vaqueros took the horses off for grain and water while the rangers lounged on the long front porch. Only the officer came in to eat with the family, but the women served the others with generous baskets of tortillas, stewed meat, and beans.
Hunter and his hundred men were doing all they could to impede the advance of several hundred California volunteers who would soon be crossing into Arizona. Constantly moving, Hunter was burning all the hay stored for Union use at the old Butterfield Overland Mail stations, and early that month he had gone to the Pima Villages northwest of Tucson on the way to Fort Yuma to arrest the miller Ammi White, a federal purchasing agent who’d been buying supplies for the California troops. Hunter destroyed the mill and distributed the fifteen hundred confiscated sacks of wheat to the Indians, since he had no way to get it to Tucson.
“A Union captain with a squad of cavalry rode up to the Pima Villages, expecting to make a building where they could store Ammi White’s wheat and flour, scout for more supplies, and then jog down to Tucson to capture or wipe out Hunter’s command.” The lieutenant chuckled. “Well, ma’am, I’d like to have seen that Yank captain’s face when the man he thought was Ammi White turned out to be Capt. Sherod Hunter, C.S.A.! The captain, his nine men, and Ammi White were all brought prisoners to Tucson.”
“But if there are thousands of Californians and only a hundred of you …”
A somber look crossed the young face, but Todd shrugged jauntily as he reached for another tortilla. “We’ll give them a mighty good run for their money. If Sibley wins the showdown in northeastern New Mexico, he can turn on the California column General Carletoh’s put together out in Los Angeles.”
He went on to say why Col. Baylor had been relieved of his command. Jefferson Davis had been horrified at an order sent by Baylor to Capt. Thomas Helm, commander of the Arizona Guards in Tucson.
“Governor Baylor said to lure the Apaches in with whiskey and gifts as if to make peace and then kill all the adults.” Talitha gasped sharply and put out a hand to James, whose eyes blazed. The lieutenant, sopping up meat juices, didn’t notice. “The children were to be sold to pay for the expense of killing their parents. A nasty business. Helm never acted on it, thank heaven!”
After the lieutenant went his way with a gift of ten steers that Talitha thought Shea would want her to make, she sought out her brother, who was holding K’aak’eh on his swaddled arm and staring at the mountains.
She said gently, “James, Baylor lost his command.”
“You gave those soldiers beef.”
“Yes. Out of my animals.”
“Once you said some of those were mine.”
“As many as you need.”
“Next winter, then, in the hungry time for my people, I want to take them thirty or forty or fifty head. If they can eat; maybe they won’t raid so much.”
Talitha certainly didn’t love Apaches, but she was sickened by the thought of cold-blooded slaughter of the sort Baylor and a good many others advocated. “The cattle are yours,” she told her brother. “James, if the Apaches would stop raiding, the soldiers wouldn’t bother them.”
“Tally, my sister, you know that isn’t true. They’d be killed for their reputations, as has already happened with those who tried to keep peace in New Mexico. Besides, if they don’t raid, they starve.”
“They’ve got to learn to grow their food.”
With a harsh laugh, James said to the hawk who watched him with unblinking golden eyes, “You hear that, K’aak’eh? Will you till the soil with your talons, drop seed with your beak?”
In a wave of despairi
ng fear and anger Talitha cried, “James! Men have brains. They can change and choose. Even Apaches …”
“Though they aren’t quite human?” James finished smoothly. “They should be grateful for a bit of earth when they’ve roamed and ruled most of what you-call New Mexico, Arizona, and Sonora?” He offered a squirming mouse to the hawk, settling it on the granary roof to tear and devour its prey. “For nearly three hundred years Apaches have fought Spaniards, Mexicans, Papago, Pima, and sometimes Navajo. You know that while the bluecoat soldiers were here they could do nothing.”
“But when they come again, it’ll be different.” Talitha caught her brother’s sinewy brown hands. “James, you know it’ll be different.”
He looked past her into the mountains. “I know,” he said at last. “But that can’t make a difference to me.”
He wouldn’t look at her at all. At last she had to leave him with the hawk and the wind.
VI
Talitha woke one April morning to music and listened in drowsy pleasure for a moment till she recognized the song, the voice, the day. She was twenty-two; and Güero was singing “Las Mañanitas” for her, “The Beautiful Little Mornings.”
“I wish I were a sunbeam to enter your window
To wish you good morning, lying in your bed …”
Talitha got up quickly. Impossible to lie there with his singing on her as light as the air and as inescapable, as enveloping.
Sewa and Cat were still sleeping. Talitha covered them both, smiling at the way Cat lay, like a swimmer collapsed in the middle of a stroke. She sleeps violently, Talitha thought and wondered what life would bring this girl, who loved violently, too. Sewa, in contrast, was curled in a ball, knuckles pressed to her rosy mouth. She’d be two years old in July, the sweetest age for children. If only Santiago could have seen her! Glancing back at Cat, Talitha realized that neither little girl could remember a mother. Of course, she’d done her best to act as one. She was sure she couldn’t love her own children more.
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