Harvest of Fury

by Jeanne Williams

  “Shooting a man is one thing,” growled Belen. “But you carried off Señorita Scott.” Only Shea and Marc knew Frost had done more than that.

  “It saved more killing, didn’t it?” returned Frost easily. “The señorita was my hostage, but, as I promised, I let her go. Ask her and she’ll tell you that only I can keep Don Patricio from losing all he has.”

  Inquiring eyes swung to Talitha: Belen’s angry, Pedro’s troubled, Carmencita’s bewildered, the vaqueros’ confused. Amazingly, it was James whose gaze locked with Frost’s.

  “You killed my godfather,” he said. “If my sister asks it, I will not kill you now. But I will someday.”

  Frost only laughed. “You’re the Apache cub. Thanks for the warning. But perhaps you’ll relent and spare your brother-in-law.”

  “Brother-in-law?” choked James.

  Belen half rose. “What’s this, madama?”

  “It’s the bargain.” Talitha kept her voice even, but she looked at Carmencita, not her brother or Belen. “Unless I marry Mr. Frost, Shea’s name will be given to the Union commander as a Southern sympathizer whose land should be forfeited.” She shook her head at a sudden gleam in Chuey’s eyes. “No, Chuey. If Frost is killed, he’s arranged for someone else to turn Shea in. I’ll marry him, and we’ll keep the ranch for Shea. I implore you all not to worry about me. I know what I’m doing.”

  Frost smiled into the hostile heavy silence, the averted faces, James’s undisguised hatred, the fascinated stares of the twins and Caterina.

  After he had possessed Talitha that night, he lay on his back and said amusedly, “My visits here will be diverting, love. Seldom have I felt such concentrated waves of enmity, especially from your young brother! Most gratifying to know they can’t do a thing without ruining my old partner, whom they love as much as they detest me.”

  “Don’t poke fun at James.”

  “How can I resist? He glares at me with those lapis-lazuli eyes in that Apache face and I want to teach him what he is.”

  “He’s my brother. If you hurt him—”

  He closed her mouth with his.

  Güero’s horse had come in during the night. His brothers, Chuey and Natividad, followed its tracks to where it had been left along the mountain. They hadn’t been able to track him over the rocks, but coyotes had been at work, and as they circled the area Chuey found a gnawed arm. They soon discovered what was left of the rest. They brought it home wrapped in a serape and put it in the ground, not allowing their distraught mother to look.

  The burial was at El Charco. “When times are better, we’ll be going back there to live,” said Carmencita. “I want to be able to visit my son’s grave. Ay, who did it? Apaches or robbers, may God destroy them!”

  Frost accompanied Talitha to the Sanchez home and listened with a smooth face while Pedro said the prayers he could remember and Carmencita sobbed in Talitha’s arms. Anita and Juana wept, too, but Talitha suspected it was for their mother’s grief more than for their brother.

  “You might have had the decency not to come to the burial,” Talitha told Frost later. “I’m surprised you weren’t struck dead when you held Carmencita’s hand and told her all those consoling things about his waiting in heaven!”

  “They did console her. And you’re a fine hypocrite yourself, Tally, going to the funeral of a man who damn near raped you!”

  “I’d be delighted to attend yours.”

  “Would you, my sweet?” His eyes held hers. It was like gazing into ice frozen deep over dark waters. She went cold to the heart, though his kiss burned as he drew her into his arms.

  When he left, saying he’d be back as soon as he’d tended to various pressing business matters, Talitha felt as if she’d been holding her breath and now could breathe again. She slept again in her own bed, and if it hadn’t been for Carmencita’s woe, she could have believed that everything that had happened from the moment Güero approached her at the hot spring till Frost rode away had been a nightmare.

  As soon as she could, she rode to San Manuel, accompanied by the twins, Cat, and James. Tjúni’s husband, a heavy, tall Papago with a broad, kindly face, spoke a little Spanish. An aged female relative was cooking for him and his brood. Cinco scampered about with his half brothers and sister, obviously accepted as one of them; but when he saw Cat, he stopped playing to watch her, then ran inside the mud-daubed house and returned with a willow whistle.

  This he handed to Cat, smiling shyly. She jumped down from Mancha and kissed him, looking at Talitha over his head, for she was several inches the taller. “Can’t we take him home, Tally? He is my brother!”

  “That would not be a good thing, Caterina.” James spoke sternly. “Cinco may be half your brother in blood, but in soul he is Papago.”

  Does he think I shouldn’t have taken him away from the Apaches? Talitha thought with indignation. Why, those women of Juh’s would have let him starve! And he was fine at the ranch, would have grown up white if only he hadn’t felt to blame for Socorro’s dying and gone off with that damned old Mangus!

  Because she didn’t like what he was saying, Cat stuck out her pointed tongue at James and looked beseechingly at Talitha, who shook her head.

  “We can’t just whisk him away, dear. But I’ll tell his foster father that Cinco has a home with us if he ever wants it. Maybe when he’s older he can visit us sometimes.”

  Or perhaps when Shea came back he could make the acquaintance of this son Tjúni had resentfully kept from him. Not that Talitha blamed the Papago woman much for that. Tjúni must have loved Shea all those years he was married to Socorro. After her death, when he finally took Tjúni to his bed, it was no wonder she’d hoped he’d marry her, though she’d apparently undertaken that there’d be no children. And after Cinco was born, when Shea still refused to make her his wife, no wonder Tjúni had angrily departed with her child to her part of the ranch.

  Thwarted, Cat glared for a moment at her brothers, Talitha, and James before her eye lit on Mancha. “James,” she said sweetly, “please, will you help Cinco up behind me? I’ll take him for a little ride.”

  James shrugged and did as she asked, glad enough to humor her. By the time they returned, Talitha and Tjúni’s husband and his aunt had exhausted all they could say to each other. Saying good-bye with mutual relief, they shook hands gravely all around, and Cat kissed Cinco. As they rode off she kept turning to wave at him. Only when they passed out of view behind a slope did she glance triumphantly at Talitha.

  “He loved riding Mancha. All they have in the village are burros.”

  Talitha frowned. “So?”

  “So he’ll want to ride horses when he’s older. He’ll come to us and make un gran vaquero.”

  “Cat,” said Talitha sternly, “you can’t mother everyone, and you mustn’t play with people as if they were your dolls.”

  Cat tossed her shimmering black hair. “I haven’t played with dolls for years, Tally! Caray! I’m almost nine!”

  Laughing, she challenged James to a race, and as they dwindled to tiny dots against the mountains Talitha felt a chill. When James went back to the Apaches, it would break Cat’s heart—and he would go back.

  Apaches or bandits had thinned out the cattle on the eastern and southern ranges, but there was a good calf crop. It was to be hoped that the two thousand California volunteers, in addition to chasing out the Confederates, might bring some order and peace to the Santa Cruz region.

  Meanwhile, the vaqueros, with Talitha and the boys, split as they had for the fall cow work, one group working near the ranch buildings in case of alarm, the other combing the remote areas, branding, earmarking, and castrating.

  From now on through the hot months they’d have to keep a vigilant eye for screwworm, especially in the scrotums of newly castrated calves. Blowflies would lay their eggs in wounds, and within the day screwworms would be swarming in the injury. If such an infestation wasn’t treated within a day or two, screwworms could burrow deeper and deeper into the
flesh, feeding on the unlucky animal till it was terribly weakened or even dead.

  The juice of black walnut hulls was a good treatment, but more often, when the animal was roped and tied, Talitha or a vaquero pulverized part of a dry cow chip and packed the wound tightly with it. If no air reached the worms, they’d suffocate, and the packing kept the sore protected until it scabbed over.

  Talitha could rope and tie a calf, hold it down, or brand, but she left castrating and earmarking to the deft, experienced hands of the vaqueros. Every spring a few cows died in calving, and the orphans had to be brought back to the ranch and fed by hand unless the calf could be matched up with a cow who’d lost her own. Usually it worked to skin the dead calf and tie his hide over the motherless one. If the smell of her own baby convinced the cow that the hungry imposter was indeed hers, she’d let him suck and the problem was solved for both.

  Talitha had helped with cattle work for about ten years, and slipping back into its rhythm after Frost’s departure increased the feeling of unreality about his return. What was real was that during the summer if the tanks at El Charco went dry they had to be filled from the well, screwworms must be treated, orphaned calves looked after, and the bulls put on the ranges where they were needed.

  Fall meant branding late-dropped calves and culling out the cattle that would be driven to market. By then, thank goodness, blowflies were gone.

  In the winter, corrals were built or fixed, equipment made or mended, and horses broken, using the slower, gentler techniques that Shea had introduced from what he remembered of his father’s rare way with horses. The range had to be ridden over to keep track of the cattle, of course, and then it was spring again, with the new little calves staggering up on their spindly’ legs and eagerly finding their mothers’ warm milk.

  Frost came back at the end of May. The familiar pattern snapped when Talitha saw the sheen of his pale golden horse coming along the creek one evening, accompanied by another horseman. He was alive, he was here. Reality was a nightmare again.

  In that nightmare, they were married by the Reverend Esau Tranton, who was on his way to California and looked more like a brigand than a minister. He raised his heavy eyebrows when Talitha insisted that she didn’t want anyone to witness the marriage, then shrugged and took another pull on his bottle.

  “For the handsome consideration Mr. Frost has given me, ma’am, I’d splice you underground or on a mountain, wherever your heart desires.” When Frost started for the sala, Talitha shook her head. Not in there, where Shea and Socorro had married, not where Guadalupana would look down at the mockery.

  “Let’s go outside,” she said. “I—I’d like to be able to see the mountains.”

  “Most poetic,” Tranton approved.

  Frost’s down-curved mouth hinted that he guessed her reason, but he gave her his arm with exquisite courtesy. The last of the sunset blazed crimson on them when the final words were said and Frost put on her finger a broad gold band studded with diamonds.

  “Beautiful ring, that,” said Tranton covetously.

  To Talitha, it seemed to sear her flesh. This man, her husband? Truly, according to law? When, after he’d kissed her, he touched her cheek, it was like being caressed by a lion’s claw that might at any second rip her bloody.

  Tranton went his way next morning, and in a week Frost returned to Tucson, for he estimated his friend Colonel Carleton should arrive about then. Tucson was already in Union hands.

  Sam Hughes, the merchant dispossessed by Captain Hunter for his Union sympathies, had returned with the Californians. Hunter, with his rangers and a few Southern sympathizers had left Tucson May 4. Don Esteban Ochoa, also a Union exile, was busily getting ready to freight for the army. Anyone with close ties to the Confederacy had either left with Hunter or refuged in Sonora, just as their Union counterparts had been forced to do that February.

  “I’ve got my freighting company pretty well organized,” Frost boasted. “Made a deal with Governor Pesqueira to haul from Guaymas duty free, so I can do it for five cents a pound to Tucson compared to 12½ cents from Yuma plus 3½ for the river steamer and $4 to ferry each wagon at Yuma. Fort Breckinridge has to be supplied, and there’s bound to be another post established somewhere along the old Butterfield route toward New Mexico.”

  “I should think you’d be more inclined to waylay freight than haul it,” Talitha said. They were alone and she didn’t have to watch her tongue.

  He laughed, unruffled. “Freight may not be glamorous, but there’s a fortune in supplying troops in this godforsaken, Apache-bedeviled wilderness. After the war, there’ll be lots of troops out here trying to tame the Indians, and once the heathens are settled on reservations, they’ll have to be fed. More government contracts.”

  “That’s all any of it is to you, isn’t it? A chance to make money?”

  “What does any man try to do? I’m simply more astute than most. For instance, I’ve heavily invested in railroads, so I won’t be hurt when they supersede mule and ox freight.” He smiled lazily. “Would you care to invest some of Shea’s money in my freighting company, sweetheart? For old times’ sake, I’d give him shares at advantageous terms.”

  “Shea wouldn’t want to be mixed up with you. Besides, what happened to his interest in the freighting company in which he was partners with you?”

  Frost shrugged. “The California assets of the Santa Cruz freighting company helped start my new venture, but since Shea, at my presumed death, got the income from the Tecolote mine where we were also partners, I figure we’re even. Of course, now that I’m back, I’m reassuming my shares in the mine. I’ve already hired a superintendent to get it working again. It seems Revier, staunch freedom fighter that he is all these years after he and his idealistic friends defied the Prussian king and fought for general suffrage and liberty, had to throw himself into the battle against slavery.”

  How strange. Marc had construed the war like that, but to Shea the oppression had been on the part of the North. Shea hated slavery, too, having been close to it in Ireland, but to him the United States was a government that had first invaded Catholic Mexico to wrest away much of its land, and was now trying to bully the Southern states and hold them against their will. The war was many things to many people. For some, like Frost, it was a golden opportunity for fast profits, but men of substantial property on both sides had lost all that they had rather than swear allegiance to the enemy. Southern-born officers of equal conscience and integrity had chosen opposite sides when they’d finally been forced to it. It was an awful war.

  “Didn’t Revier stop to bid you farewell?” Frost questioned. “He always seemed to have a weakness for you, since the days when he rode over with books to teach you how to read and write.”

  Weakness? No, Marc had a strength for her. If Shea hadn’t been first in her heart, she could have happily loved the young engineer; as it was, she loved him not so happily, knowing she hurt him and hating it.

  Turning from Frost, she spoke without expression. “Yes, Mr. Revier stopped to say good-bye on his way to join the Union.”

  With mock sympathy, Frost probed one of her deepest fears. “What a pity if he and Shea had to fight each other. Much easier to kill men one doesn’t know.”

  “I shouldn’t think you’d find anything in that line difficult.”

  He grasped her hand and noticed for the first time that she wasn’t wearing his ring. “Where’s your wedding band, my love?”

  “It’s so broad it makes my finger break out beneath it. Besides, it’s not practical to wear when I’m working.”

  “I judge it highly practical to have you wear a tangible sign that you belong to me.”

  “But the diamonds will fall out—”

  “I’ll have them replaced.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to brand me!”

  “I have, where it matters.” His eyes went dark. “I had your maidenhead, Talitha. You may have broken down Shea’s scruples and dallied with some officer, but that�
�s in the past. I took you first. Now I intend that no one else will ever have you. And you will wear my ring.”

  As she stared at him he murmured silkily, “Fetch it, darling.” There was nothing for it but to get the heavy, glittering ring from a dish on the window ledge.

  Taking her to the bed, though it was daylight, he stripped her and had her with brutal swiftness. She set her jaws against the pain, hoping he would finish quickly and leave her.

  Instead, he began almost at once to caress and stroke her, fondling her breasts, gently touching the aching place he’d just ravished. “Tender, my sweet?” he murmured. “I’ll help you forget that.”

  In a moment, shocked past belief, she felt his warm, skillful tongue. Stiffening, gripped with shame at what seemed to her unnatural, she tried to push him away, but he brought her to the edge of the bed, and flame quivered through her as he seemed to feast on the hot, rich honey she felt melting her. Her body arched and she shuddered, then couldn’t repress a cry as the flood throbbed through her.

  Even as the warm glow ebbed she hated Frost, despised herself. Till now she had managed not to cry in front of him, but he’d smashed her pride. Turning her face into the pillow, she sobbed in guilty humiliation. He took her hand. She felt him slipping the ring on her finger.

  “I gave you pleasure today,” he said softly, drawing her into his arms and tasting her tears as he kissed her. “But that’s not what you’ll get if I find you without my ring again. You’ll wear it, love, feel it every moment as a mark that you’re mine.”

  He closed his hand around hers, and the diamonds dug into her flesh.

  Sewa was two in June, clambering on top of the corrals, tagging after whichever elders took her fancy, though most often at the twins’ heels or James’s. She was beginning to sort out her languages, though her remarks were frequently a hodgepodge of Yaqui, Apache, English, and Spanish. She shrieked each morning when Cat held her between her knees and combed her straight black hair free of tangles before braiding it into one long plait to be secured with a bit of ribbon. Apart from that ritual protest she seldom cried, and in the bright little dresses Anita and Carmencita made for her she was like a hummingbird, hovering here and there, in constant palpitation. She regarded the laps of all adults as her rightful perches.