Harvest of Fury

by Jeanne Williams

  Wonderful to see them so richly happy, yet it made Cat feel woefully alone. Miguel and Juriana were absorbed in each other and their coming baby. Patrick was still gone. Sewa was a child. I’m not anymore, thought Cat. But she didn’t feel grown up, either. All she was sure of was that the longing for James grew worse, not better, and that it was more than time to hear from Patrick and Cinco.

  With that everyone agreed. Cat overheard Miguel telling Marc that if his twin hadn’t come by the time Juriana’s baby was born, he was going to look for him.

  “Leave it till after the branding and I’ll go with you,” Marc said. Seeing Cat, he warned her. “Don’t mention this to Tally. Just pray we get news of your scampish brother soon.”

  In March, Juriana and Miguel’s baby was born, a delicate little girl with thick black hair, dark brows that slanted upward, and a soft cry, “H’lah!” that began like a sigh of wind and increased to a roar that was astonishing coming from such a tiny being. She was named Vicenta Socorro Elena María, for her grandmothers, but young Shea called her Vi, pronounced Vee, and her other names were forgotten.

  New calves dropped. Cat got her usual orphans and was glad for Sewa’s help in feeding the lustily tugging, leggy creatures. Watching the calves, it was hard to believe that in twelve years their teeth would be wearing down to stubs and long curved horns would be marked with growth rings, the first representing three years, the others a year each. Animals lived such short lives compared to people. Thank goodness, Sangre was only three. She’d have him for a long time yet.

  Wild flowers spangled the hillsides amid freshening grass. Earth and air vibrated with new life. Mares went off a distance from their bands to foal, nuzzling the newborn, nickering. After a few minutes a colt would struggle to its thin legs and find the warm udder. Within an hour it could travel a bit.

  For a few days, even gentle mares would be nervous at the approach of humans and move their colts away as quickly as possible. Most foals were born at night. Belen said that gave extra protection from predators.

  That spring, one young mare fought a wildcat off her colt but was so mangled that she died, though Chuey heard the uproar in time to rescue the foal and add him to Cat’s charges. She was feeding him one morning, facing eastward, when she saw three figures on the horizon.

  Since the establishment of Camp Crittenden, the ranch no longer kept a lookout posted days and moonlit nights. Leaving Sewa to feed the colt, Cat ran to alert the men. By the corral, Belen was, peering into the sparkling distance. The horsemen acquired form. Belen’s frowning squint broke into a joyous smile.

  “Patrick! Cinco, to the left, I’m almost sure!”

  Cat’s heart pounded. “Can you make out the third?”

  Belen shook his head. But it was possible now to make out the set of the horsemen’s heads and shoulders. Suddenly, Cat knew.

  “James!”

  She caught the reins of Chuey’s saddled horse. Miguel was already mounting. Together, they raced toward the three, who had topped the last hill and were riding down the broad valley.

  When they met, she and Patrick flung themselves from their horses to embrace. Cinco glowed as she pressed his hands. But James waited, aloof, his face unreadable. As she turned joyfully to him the words of delighted welcome stuck in her throat.

  This was a man. Not the boy of fifteen she remembered, but an Apache warrior, long black hair held out of his face with a red headcloth, high moccasins reaching to the knee, thighs iron-hard where the breechclout fell away. He wore a cartridge belt and his bowstring crossed his muscular brown chest.

  Only his eyes, the color of a blue storm, were the same, but they watched her in such a different way, guarded, almost hostile, that after a hastily murmured greeting she turned away.

  At the ranch all was happy confusion as Patrick examined his new niece and told what had happened. Yes, he and Cinco had found a rich vein of silver four days east of the San Patricio and had begun working it with a half dozen miners recruited from Mexico. They had amassed a considerable amount of ore and were planning to engage a pack train to take it to a smelter when James rode into camp.

  He was one of a war party bound for Mexico. Fortunately, he’d recognized Patrick’s hair and explained to his companions that this white-eyes was like a brother and he was sworn to defend him. After considerable argument, it was agreed that the miners wouldn’t be harmed if James could persuade them to abandon what would surely become a settlement in Chiricahua country. James’s half brothers, Juh’s full-blood sons, had supported him, but they had also told James that a warrior with divided loyalties was no good. Let him stay with the white “brother” he valued.

  “So the miners went back to Mexico, the Apaches took our mules and supplies, and the ore will sit there till calmer days,” Patrick finished, slipping a careless arm around Sewa, who had come close to gaze solemnly at him. “We fought off bandits, had a cave-in, and barely saved one man from being mauled to death by a grizzly. I’m ready to stay home awhile.”

  “Good!” said Miguel. “We’re just half through the branding.” He looked at James. “Can you still use a rope?”

  The corner of James’s mouth twitched. He spoke slowly, giving some words inflections that made them sound foreign, hesitating over others that he must have nearly forgotten. “In these years I have driven more cows and mules and horses, I think, than any vaquero.”

  No one cared to pursue that. Talitha brought little Shea to him. “Here’s your nephew, James.”

  The fair-haired four-year-old stared up at the splendid barbarian. Awed, he whispered, “You—you’re my uncle James?”

  Regarding him quizzically, James nodded, as if pleased that the child was curious but not frightened. “I am your shidá á, your mother’s brother.”

  Shea gave a soft, delighted laugh, as if he’d just befriended some fabulous creature of his dreams. He threw his small arms as far as they’d go around his big uncle. “I’m glad you’re home,” he said.

  James didn’t answer. His brown hand rested on Shea’s blond curls, but his eyes were fixed on the mountains.

  James’s return in the midst of the branding season helped him slip back into the ways he’d known seven years ago. Everyone was too busy to watch him for Apache manifestations. He shared Patrick’s quarters, and he’d put away his headcloth and breechclout, asked Talitha to trim his hair, and now looked like an especially tall vaquero with blue norteño eyes.

  James was old enough now to accept Talitha’s sisterly spoiling and was on good terms with the twins, who were inclined to treat him with the respect they’d had from babyhood for one eighteen months their elder—the seven-year-old who’d gone off with the giant Mangus, the fourteen-year-old who’d returned during the war and taught them to track and use bows and arrows. The men accepted him as Talitha’s brother and a good hand with stock, however he’d acquired the skills. Only Cinco watched him with distrust. He went home as soon as the branding was done, instead of lingering through the summer as had been his custom.

  Seeking out Cat to tell her good-bye, Cinco banded her a little packet. Opening it, she gasped at the painstakingly carved turquoise bird, its spread wings detailed with feathers, its eyes flecks of obsidian. “I found the stone in a cañon near the mine,” Cinco told her, scuffing his boot in the dust. “I carved it for you winter nights.”

  “It’s beautiful!” she praised. “Why, Cinco, you’re an artist!”

  He shook his head, the ruddy glints and thickness of his black hair a heritage from Shea like his straight nose and lean features. “I’m not an artist, Caterina. I only wish to make pretty things for you. Blue things, like your eyes.”

  “I still have the bird you gave me long ago when we were children. The whistle, too.”

  He pulled a small crucifix out of his shirt. “And I still have this you gave me. I think it protected us against the Apaches.”

  “James did that.”

  Cinco’s face hardened. “It’s not good for him to be he
re. One cannot trust Apaches.”

  “You can say that when he saved you!”

  “It wasn’t the miners or me he cared about. Only Patrick.”

  “You still owe him your life.”

  “Yes, and I hope I may pay him back. A Papago shouldn’t owe an Apache anything but an arrow or a smashed skull.”

  “If you ever hurt James, I’d hate you! We all would.”

  “First, I must save his life.” Cinco climbed on his horse.

  Cat sucked in her breath, tried to push the turquoise bird into his hand. “If—if you feel that way about James, I don’t want this!”

  “It’s yours anyway,” he said. “If you throw it in the marsh or down a mine, it will still be yours.” As she stared up at him, he said slowly, in the courteous phrase picked up from the vaqueros, “I am your servant in all things, Caterina, but I cannot trust an Apache.”

  She watched him go. Clenching her hand on the bird till its wings hurt her, she started to throw it away. But Cinco was her brother. So she trudged up the hill and put the blue amulet on the stones that covered Shea’s grave.

  “From your son,” she said.

  On April 15 of that year, 1870, Arizona had been separated from the Department of California and made a separate military district. Gen. George Stoneman took command in May. A former lieutenant with the Mormon Battalion when it passed through Tucson in 1846, Stoneman was under orders to implement President Grant’s peace policy and feed Indians who seemed inclined to leave off warring and settle on reservations.

  For this he was roundly abused by the territorial papers and citizens, especially when it was learned that he intended to inspect Arizona’s posts and close down those he judged unnecessary. Supplying the posts was a huge business, and though the argument raged again over whether it was cheaper to import government stores through Guaymas or get them from San Diego via Yuma, neither way was cheap.

  “Soldiers are here to protect the civilians,” said Marc, “and civilians come to supply the soldiers. No wonder Sherman thought the best thing to do was pull out the settlers and let the Indians have the place.”

  They all knew that wouldn’t be done. Even though Indian raids were as bad as ever, since the war miners, ranchers, settlers, and merchants had come in increasing numbers. In addition to Arizona City near Fort Yuma and the settlements north along the Colorado like La Paz and Ehrenberg, Prescott thrived as a mining and military center in spite of losing the capital.

  The first U.S. Land Office had been opened in Prescott in 1868, but many early settlers were “pre-emptioneers,” claiming their lands before the federal surveyors came. The Homestead Act of 1862 had entitled any citizen or intending one twenty-one years of age or older and the head of a family to own 160 acres of public land by settling on it for five years and paying $1.25 an acre. Its rugged mountains, desert stretches, and raiding Indians had kept Arizona from filling up like more hospitable regions, but it still had almost doubled its population, not counting the military, since it had become a territory.

  Contrasting with Apache raids were the Tucson Glee Club and the bathhouse and barbering establishment opened by a Negro, Samuel Bostick. Seven nuns arrived late in May, greeted with fireworks and ringing bells. A few weeks later, Sisters Emerentia, Euphrasia, Monica, Martha, Maxine, and Hyacinth had opened a school where girls could study twenty-nine subjects, including sacred and modern history, chemistry, bookkeeping, French, and the making of artificial fruits and flowers. Board and tuition for a five-month session was $125. Governor Safford commended the academy, but he was still determined to establish free public schools throughout the state and had urged Marc to help by running for the legislature again that fall.

  “I guess I will,” said Marc without enthusiasm when the subject came up one night at supper. “At least, located as we are in an old freight warehouse with the quartermaster’s yard behind us, the honest braying of real mules often blots out that of imitations.”

  Miguel groaned. “I’m glad we’ll be busy with branding when the electioneering gets frenzied along about October. Two years ago there were soldiers at Camp Crittenden who voted there and then went to other precincts to vote again. The Arizona Miner claimed that hundreds of Mexicans voted for McCormick two or three times in Tubac and Tucson.”

  That Prescott paper had said quite a few other things about the federally appointed Easterners who were, of course, Republican, though they called themselves Union or Independent. From Goodwin on, they had tried to make peace with the Democrats, holding that the territory was so beleaguered that all white men should make common cause. Goodwin had even appointed fiery secessionist William Oury first mayor of territorial Tucson.

  “I’m not going to buy any votes,” Marc said mildly. “It’d suit me fine to stay right here. But I’d like to help Safford get his schools, even if most people think it’s crazy to worry about that when bandits or Apaches may finish them off any time.”

  Cat glanced nervously at James. There was no way for him to avoid hearing his people spoken of often in tones of hate or fear. How did he feel about it? His face was a mask.

  In the weeks since his return she’d managed to come no closer to him. There seemed no connection with the boy she’d adored, who’d saved her from the outcast Apache and taught her to shoot a bow. This tall, dark man with the broad shoulders and lean flanks made her aware of herself in a strange, prickly, uncomfortable way, so that she began to suspect that perhaps the awkwardness came from changes in herself.

  She wasn’t the eight-year-old who’d flung her arms around Talitha’s lost brother to welcome him home, nor was she the ten-year-old who’d mourned when he went back to his father’s people. She was almost seventeen; she had been proposed to, if Jordan’s aggravating declaration counted, and she had been courted by a handsome if not very satisfactory lieutenant.

  Surely she should have known how to act with this savage stranger. But his eyes, the only thing familiar about him at all, seemed to draw her strength right out of her. When he looked quickly away, as he invariably did, she felt plunged in shadow; lonely and deserted, no matter how many people were around.

  Sometimes she wished he had never come back. But if he left now, it would be like losing the sun.

  About mid-June Lieutenant Claybourne Frazier rode up with a dozen troopers. While the men were watering their horses and being fed on the porch by Anita, Frazier ate with the family and poured out an angry story.

  Tom Gardner’s ranch had been raided on the eighth. Apaches killed one man and carried off a Mexican boy as well as driving off a herd of cattle.

  “By the time Gardner got word to us, we couldn’t catch up with them,” smoldered the young officer. His gray eyes seemed drawn to Cat, but his face tightened and he looked swiftly away. “We found where they’d camped and made moccasins for the boy. At least it seems they don’t intend to kill him. That ought to be some comfort to his mother, though she seems absolutely out of her mind with grief.”

  “Poor woman,” said Talitha, instinctively putting an arm around Shea. “I’ll go to see her, make her understand that the Apaches are good to the boys they decide to adopt.”

  Frazier’s mouth curled. He stared at James. “Yes. They want to turn them into traitors, don’t they?”

  Talitha stiffened. Marc said firmly, “You forget yourself, Lieutenant.”

  “Do I?” Frazier gave an unpleasant laugh. “If Mrs. Revier’s half brother deserves your trust, surely he’ll help us track hostiles when they’ve committed an outrage like this. He knows their hideouts and habits. When all we see is barren rock, he could find a trail.”

  It was fatally true. James was being forced to choose again, as when his Apache kinsmen and companions had repudiated him for protecting Patrick and Cinco.

  “It’s not fair!” Cat protested fiercely. “Whatever James does, either whites or Apaches will blame him.”

  “He’s got to decide,” said Frazier. “He’s living with whites. He owes them something.” H
e looked at Talitha. “What if you were the mother of that boy they carried off? Or the wife of the man they killed?”

  White to the lips, Talitha said in a clear, taut voice, “I still wouldn’t ask my brother to betray his other people.”

  The lieutenant smothered an execration. Marc started to rise but was checked by Talitha, who caught his arm.

  James got to his feet. “You are right, nantan,” he said to Frazier. “I should not be among the whites.” He strode out.

  “James!” Talitha sprang up to follow him, but Marc held her back. “Let me talk to him, dear.”

  Cat scarcely heard. The only reality was James’s resolute back turned on them. “I should not be among the whites.” He’d go away again, and this time, she knew, he’d never come back. Running after him, she burst into the room he shared with Patrick.

  “James! Don’t! Please don’t!”

  He seemed not to hear as he opened a chest and began to stuff his belongings into a rawhide bag. She caught his arm, planting herself between him and the chest. “Don’t pay any mind to that stupid soldier! This is your home, James!”

  He shook his head. “No, Caterina.”

  “You—you won’t go back to them?”

  He smiled slightly at her tone. “They don’t want me, either. But the mines need men and don’t worry about bloodlines. I can work and live like that, maybe, without betraying anyone.”

  It was better than his returning to the Indians, but she felt she couldn’t stand losing him before they’d made friends again.

  “Let me go with you,” she said, tears stinging her eyes, salty on her lips.

  His body went rigid. She heard his breath catch before he slowly released it in a sigh that was like a moan. “Caterina, small one, you don’t know what you say.”

  She did. She suddenly understood why she hadn’t been able to treat him like a brother.

  He was her man, though she still loved the boy in him, ached for the youngster trying to find a place between two worlds. Bowing her head against him so that she heard the speeding pound of his heart, she said, “Let me come.”