As Talitha stared, Frost said brusquely, “Of course I stopped in Tucson to learn what I could. You might have shown some sense and moved in there. But no. I heard that Shea had gone off a year ago to get in some licks at the government that branded him years ago, and that, at Pete Kitchen’s last report, you were forted up at the Socorro.” His even, rather small white teeth flashed. “The Confederates are done for in Arizona and New Mexico, Tally. I was with the Union troops when Hunter’s men were whipped a week ago at Picacho Peak near the Pima Villages. They’ll have Tucson within a month, and you can bet that my good friend Colonel Carleton will declare martial law.”
“Your friend?”
“The best. Because I know this country, he’s relying on me to help him identify traitors.”
Talitha remembered the Union men who had forfeited their property when Hunter banished them. “A traitor in this war,” she said, “is just someone on the other side. And you, Judah Frost, you never had any side but your own.”
“Which sends me to Dante’s deepest hell, doesn’t it?” He smiled at her approvingly. “That’s better, darling. Anger puts color in your cheeks, which have been, till now, distressingly pale. But the point is that at a word from me Carleton can and will confiscate all that Shea owns. I’ll buy it at a ridiculous price. Your defeated hero will come home to find himself as poor as he was when he left Ireland.”
“He had even less, barely his life, when Socorro found him in the desert.”
“And you think you could play Socorro to him?” Frost shook his gleaming head. “Shea’s in his forties now. The war won’t make him any younger. I’m astonished that you’d dream of letting him come home to the loss of all he’s built up. Especially when you’ve braved Apaches and bandits to hang on.” His mouth quirked and a dark eyebrow lifted. “Am I more fearful to you than Apaches, Tally?”
She said nothing. The truth was that she feared him more than death, more than torture, more than anything she’d seen Apaches do. He threatened what her mother and Socorro would have called her soul.
Amused, Frost probed deeper. “I think we can assume that I daunt you more than all the Pinals, Coyoteros, Mimbreños, and Chiricahuas combined. But, on a more personal note, would you have preferred that golden-haired half-breed to me?”
“Yes!” she said without hesitation.
“Oh?” The brow above those gray-silver eyes furrowed. “Can it be you had a tenderness for him that led to his violent declaration this afternoon?”
“No. But I’d rather him than you.” Exhausted by this cat-and-mouse game, she confronted him as they reached their horses. “I’d rather anyone than you—the grossest, filthiest bandit, the cruelest Apache!”
His smile faded. He threw her down. Though she remembered that he needed resistance to keep him potent, she couldn’t stop fighting, struggling in panic, throwing her body one way and the other, till at last, clamping her with knees and hands, he took her savagely. When he fell away, he lay with his arm over her, breathing heavily.
“You feel close to virgin,” he said at last. “Almost as you were when I took you for the first time. Can it be there’s no one else?”
Aching, poisonously soiled by his spilling within her, Talitha knew that, strangely, she had the power to hurt Frost and took bitter comfort in doing so now.
“After you had me, I got another man to make love to me as fast as I could. Often. I had to get rid of the feel of you.”
“Now I wonder who that was?” The look on his face as he raised himself on an elbow made her wish she hadn’t taunted him. He must never know about Shea, and she didn’t want him to suspect Marc, either.
“He’s gone,” she said wearily.
“One of the officers? That redheaded surgeon who was always paying you court?”
She shook her head. “John was just a friend.”
“Well, if he’s gone, it scarcely matters,” Frost said, offering her a surprisingly clean handkerchief as he rearranged his clothes.
When Talitha had cleaned herself the best she could, he helped her into the saddle, then got on his own horse, a beautiful light gold creature with a mane as silvery as its owner’s hair. Even in her misery Talitha admired it.
“What’s it to be, Tally?” in the setting sun, on his pale horse, Frost in his severe, cold beauty looked like an angel of death. “Will you let Carleton confiscate the Socorro and the mine, or will you take me home and explain that, whether those who remember Santiago like it or not, I’m the only person who can save then home?” Reading her mind, he laughed softly. “No, love, it won’t serve to have me quietly ambushed. I left a list of prosperous rebels with the colonel’s adjutant, to be opened and acted on in case of my death. Guess whose name ranks even higher than Sylvester Mowry’s, that ex–West Pointer with his Patagonia mine?”
“Even so, I think Belen will kill you.”
“Not if you explain things properly. That Yaqui adores you. He’ll place your present good above revenge, though I don’t doubt he’ll hope to finish me when times are more auspicious.”
“Tjúni knows you were with the scalp hunters who killed her people. She owns her land, the San Manuel sitio, and she’d probably even be glad if Shea lost the rest of the ranch.”
“Love turned to hate?” Frost grinned. “It’s a pity to dash your hopes, but I stopped by San Manuel on my way here. They had just buried Tjúni. Seems she slipped and broke her neck up in the mountains.”
“Did you—?”
He spread his hand like a man greatly put upon. “You’d like to blame me for everyone that dies, but that’s hardly realistic, my dear. I won’t deny, though, that I went there meaning to make sure that woman would make me no trouble.”
Poor little Cinco, more so than the other children, for they had a living father. Talitha would have to get over as soon as possible and see if there was anything she could do.
Though she’d never liked Tjúni, the Papago woman had demanded respect. She had been one of the all-powerful adults of Talitha’s childhood. Knowledge of her death brought shock, a sense of loss. Of the four who’d begun the ranch, only Shea lived. Could she let him come back to find it gone, his faithful vaqueros scattered, the graves of Santiago and Socorro neglected?
“What is it you want?” she asked Frost.
“You. For good, for my wife.”
“That could hardly be for good.”
“For life, then, let’s say.” He was unruffled.
“I can stay at the ranch? Look after the children?”
“If I said no, that’d end our chance of a bargain, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. The children matter more than the ranch.”
“Then you may stay with them for the foreseeable future. I have business to attend to all the way from Los Angeles to St. Louis. It would be difficult for you to travel with me even if you longed to.” He laughed.
“And when Shea comes home?”
“You and I will remove to one of my properties. I swear that I won’t kill him unless he forces it.” Frost touched her cheek. “Take heart, my love. With great luck, he might make you a widow.”
She looked at this man who had stalked her since she was thirteen and now, at last and finally, had her trapped. “I’ll pray for that.”
His eyes dilated for a moment, black spreading over the crystalline pupils. “Out of all the women I’ve known, I wonder why it’s you I must have? When I saw you first in Mangus’s camp you couldn’t have been more than six, but even then I knew it.”
“You probably wanted my scalp.”
“Have a care, Tally. I’m not always amused by your tongue.” He gave her the bow, arrows, and rifle, knowing she dare not use them. “Well? Do we go to the ranch and tell the good people our happy news?”
With an effort, she pulled herself erect and turned Ceniza toward the ranch.
PART II
Shea
1862
VII
There had been Valverde, the Texans Shea commanded yell
ing like fiends as they charged through grape and canister with double-barreled fowling pieces and revolvers. After the Yanks retreated to Fort Craig, there was a truce while both sides buried their dead in the trampled, bloody sand beside the Rio. A Confederate victory, even though General Sibley halfway through the battle had been “sick” and gone to an ambulance behind the lines, where, it was suspected, he treated his ailment with more of its alcoholic cause.
He’d decided not to besiege Fort Craig—the Yanks had hoaxed them finely with those painted log cannon! So they’d rushed up the river to Albuquerque, short on supplies, to find the Unionists gone and most of the matériel destroyed by the quartermaster. Lucky they were able to get medicine, arms, and three thousand rounds of ammunition out of the federal depot at Cubero.
If we’d had enough supplies, Shea thought, stumbling through a rocky cañon, trying to encourage his thirsty, starving men. Lack of fodder, food, and ammunition, not enemy fire, had defeated the Confederates in New Mexico. When they’d pushed on to Santa Fe, thinking that seizure of the federal stores there would save them, they found the Union quartermaster had sent his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of supplies to Fort Union and burned the vacated storage buildings before the whole Union force retreated to the fort. “Poor New Mexico!” the people said. “So far from heaven, so close to Texas!”
A reeling boy whose blistered feet would carry him no farther sank down in a heap, lank hair plastered with sweat to his freckled forehead. Couldn’t have been more than a few years older than the twins. Poor kid, when he’d volunteered it must have seemed high adventure to him, glorious to fight for the South.
But after the flush of occupying Mesilla and the victory at Valverde, there’d followed that long spring marching up the Rio, not enough forage for either horses or men, few reinforcements, rumors of a big army coming from California and another heading down from Colorado.
It was those blamed Pikes Peakers who’d doomed the Confederate cause in New Mexico, sneaking around to destroy the supply train and kill those horses and mules. Crippled without supplies, there’d been nothing to do but retreat. They’d veered west of the Rio to cut through the San Mateo Mountains where they’d be less harassed by the Federals. Here they’d had to abandon everything they couldn’t carry through the rugged gaps and passes; and though it hadn’t happened yet, Shea knew that soon the lame and wounded would be abandoned, too.
He knelt by the boy and shook him. “Come on, son. I’ll help you.”
Tears streaked the young, sunburned face. “Cap’n, I … I cain’t. Feet’s plumb raw.”
“Want those Dog Canyon Apaches to get your hair?”
Fear opened the blue eyes. “Lord Jesus, Cap’n! Got to be scalped, druther it was by Comanches! They’re Texas Indians, anyways!”
“Get up, then. Here, put your arm around me.”
And so they walked, Shea supporting most of the lad’s weight, thinking grimly that it was a good thing the kid was starved down or he couldn’t have held him up. Had he cared to hang around Sibley, he’d have got more food, maybe even a horse to replace the one shot under him at Glorieta; but though Shea had done his share of heavy drinking, he had no use for a general who stayed so drunk that he couldn’t lead his men or plan for them.
Shea had already been at the rear to urge on the flagging, while Lt. Rip Harris exhorted from the front of their company’s remnant. Rip was sound. If anything happened to Shea, he’d keep the men moving.
Poor Rip. He’d have to leave the ones who couldn’t walk anymore, leave them in order to save the rest. Shea wasn’t brave enough to do that. Duties and command be damned, he couldn’t leave this boy, or any man, to the Apaches.
The scarecrow clinging to him kept buckling at the knees. Shea stopped and gave the young soldier the last of his water. They were far behind the others. The clear cold knowledge came to Shea that only a miracle could get them out of this, and his miracle, Socorro, was dead.
Still, you went on as long as you could. You tried. As he plodded on, now mostly carrying the boy, he thought of Talitha.
He sucked in his breath. In the play of light on pitiless rock and barren earth he saw the shine of her hair, the brilliance of her eyes.
With a wrenching of his guts, he remembered her sweetness that last wild night, her soft warmth that changed to tremulous ecstasy, the passionate tenderness he’d never dreamed he could feel again after Socorro.
Not that it was the same. Socorro had been his soul. But Talitha was a rare woman.
Scarred in heart and body, twice her age, he didn’t deserve her love, but he hadn’t been able to make her see that. He’d begun to think maybe he could make a new life with her, since she was set on it. But he knew he’d be using her flame, drawing on her youth and spirit. Maybe it was best he wouldn’t be going home. He had a letter for her in his pocket. Should have given it to Rip. Too late to think of that now. She’d mourn him, of course she would, but she’d turn to someone like Marc Revier or John Irwin, a man who could love her with all his soul and heart, worship her with his body, as Shea had done with Socorro.
The soldier was almost deadweight now. Shea tried to talk to him, but his mouth was so dry his tongue seemed to fill it. Thirsty. So thirsty. But not yet like that time in the desert, when he’d torn off his clothes and scratched with broken fingernails at rock shadows, thinking they were water. His spirit had left his tormented body, hovered over the pitiful wreck that kept crawling, though the blood was so thick it didn’t even ooze from the gashes and cuts, and the skin was baked to the bones like shrunken rawhide.
Funny. This boy looked a lot like Michael. Michael, his twin, who’d died in the desert. “Come on, lad,” Shea urged. “One step at a time. Come on, now.”
But the boy wasn’t moving his feet at all. Shea got him over his shoulders and staggered onward. The other men were out of sight. Good man, Rip. Keep ’em moving. Get them back to Texas. But I’ve got to stop a minute. Got to rest.
He was lowering the kid to the ground when fire stabbed through his shoulder. An arrowhead thrust out beneath his collarbone.
Impatient, were they!
Rolling the boy behind a ledge, Shea didn’t take time to struggle with the arrow. Sighting at the red of what he thought was a headcloth behind a clump of brush, he fired his revolver. The headcloth seemed to drop. He fired at a moving branch, got off his other shots, loaded the Sharps, and waited.
Nothing. But even if he’d got that one, there were surely others. He had a little more fight in him than they’d expected. Rather than get hurt, they’d wait him out.
That damned arrow … He broke out in sweat, nauseated from the pain. He got out his knife, trying to cut off the head. There was an explosion between his shoulders, tearing through him. Blood bubbled in his throat. In his last conscious motion, he shielded the boy with his body.
The sun fragmented into darkness. Then it was light again, shining and luminous. He heard a voice that for years he’d heard only in dreams and looked up to see Socorro.
Young, beautiful, smiling, she was coming toward him, hands outstretched, holding a flagon. “Redhead burro!” she scolded. “I thought you’d never come!”
She offered the water, cool and crystal. He leaned his head against her breast and drank.
PART III
The Silver Man
1862–1863
VIII
Judah Frost stayed only a few days at Rancho del Socorro. He behaved with circumspection to Talitha in front of others but commanded her to give him pleasure in his bed at night. Since this was Shea’s bed, in his room, at first Talitha thought she couldn’t bear it; but as she lay waking that first night, shamed and hopeless, she seemed to feel Shea’s presence, a strengthening comfort, not a reproach. That sense persisted, gave her endurance. It was as if Shea somehow knew what she was doing for him and was supporting her with his love.
It turned out that Frost didn’t need her struggles to arm him to take her. He could become
brutally potent by watching her in the lamplight as he caressed her, brushing her nipples to a point with his hands, making her move involuntarily; or he would whisper obscenities, or make her fondle him.
He was a skilled womanizer. After his rape of her over a year ago, Marc’s loving had healed that ugliness, taught her delight—and there had been Shea. No matter how she hated Frost, her roused and hungry body began to respond to him in spite of her outraged mind and heart.
“Soon you’re going to fly apart,” he murmured, stroking her throat, smiling as she quivered when he teased her breasts with teeth and tongue. “I’ll feel it when you do, like a fountain of glowing rosy sparks. It’s bound to happen, sweet. Why don’t you let it?”
She moved her head in angry denial, but as he laughed and took her slowly, sensually, pausing to make her feel to the utmost the pulsing hardness within her, she knew despairingly that it was only a matter of time till that urgency building inside her had to explode.
“I know,” he taunted softly. “You’d rather I fell on you with the finesse of a starving wolf on meat. Then you could loathe me with complete integrity, righteously count yourself my victim. But that’s not how I want you, Talitha. You’re going to belong to me. First your body, then your soul.”
She shut her eyes against the shine of him, silver eyes, silver hair, and again she thought him a fallen angel, radiantly evil, a servant of death.
The evening he’d escorted her home, Frost had waited till all the vaqueros were at the supper table. Then he’d told them, in his excellent Spanish, that only his protection could save the ranch from confiscation. “Those of you who bear me a grudge from the past,” he said, with a limpid glance at the tight-lipped Belen, “had better put it aside for the sake of your patrón and his children. It’s true I killed Santiago, but he would have killed me if I hadn’t, and there are two sides to what befell him in Sonora. He accompanied me there with the intent of murdering me, and I simply acted before he could.”
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