Harvest of Fury

by Jeanne Williams

  Cat had never been to Tucson, and except for the company store at the San Patricio, the only store she’d been in was the one at Camp Crittenden. Ordinarily she’d have longed to go into Zeckendorf’s or Lord & Williams or one of the other merchandise dealers who freighted in their goods. It would have been fun to eat in the Shoo Fly, which Marc had so often mentioned, though she couldn’t go in the saloons. The Territorial Capitol looked like the old warehouse it was, and the urgings of the bullwhackers in the quartermaster’s corral behind it made vaqueros’ language pale. Camp Lowell on Military Plaza had two adobe mess halls, but the men lived in two long lines of tents. As well as an arsenal, corral and hay yard, there was a post pigpen.

  Wagons drawn by oxen or by four or even five teams of mules creaked past the Pima County Courthouse, and next to San Augustin Church was St. Joseph’s Academy for Young Ladies.

  The noise and confusion—the barking dogs, the playing children, the bustle of freighters—would ordinarily have enthralled her. Marc said there were over three thousand people in town, an unbelievable number. There were also great heaps of smelly rubbish and manure, and a burro rotting where it had apparently died. The town of dusty, narrow streets and mud houses seemed pestilential to her, a place that bred murder as its garbage hatched flies. She looked at every man they passed and wondered if he had been at the butchering.

  “I must ask some questions,” Marc told her. “Would you like to look in the stores, or shall I get a room for you at Neugass’ Hotel?”

  It was late afternoon and Cat was weary, but she didn’t want to spend the night in that town. “I’ll wait in the church,” she said, and that was what she did, praying for those killed and their families, praying for James,” till Marc touched her shoulder.

  They camped north of town on the Rillito that night, sharing tamales Marc had bought, while he told her what he’d learned. Sam Hughes, adjutant general of the territory, had supplied the wagon of Sharps, Spencers, ammunition, and food that had outfitted the expedition. The commander of Camp Lowell had heard rumors and sent messengers to warn Lieutenant Whitman at Camp Grant, but the news had come too late.

  Over a hundred Aravaipa were dead, all but eight of them women and children. Others were missing. Whitman was doing what he could to convince the survivors that his government and the army had had nothing to do with the outrage and was trying to recover the stolen children.

  “Most of the fighting men are alive, and jumping the two of us would be a tempting vengeance,” Marc said. “Let me go to Camp Grant, Cat, and you wait for me in Tucson.”

  She shook her head, tears coursing down her cheeks. Marc sighed but didn’t argue. Perhaps he knew she was so full of shame and pity that she felt revulsion at living in a world where such things could happen. If it was so for her, what would it be for James?

  They didn’t take the Apache trail through Cebedilla Pass but traveled the easier, longer wagon road skirting the Catalinas, going through Cañada del Oro. After spending the night under a giant mesquite growing beside a wash, they reached Camp Grant that afternoon.

  Some of its adobe buildings must have been left from old Fort Breckinridge, abandoned at the start of the Civil War. The dilapidated tents looked almost as old, and the mud-chinked log buildings looked as if their branch-and-mud roofs would leak in any rain. Facing the parade ground were the bakery, guardhouse, commissary, hospital, officers’ quarters, and sutler’s store. The forge, stables, and butcher’s corral were beyond the quartermaster’s storehouses.

  A guard asked their business and called another soldier to escort them across the parade ground. The door of the adjutant’s office stood open. A worn-looking officer in rumpled blue rose from a table to greet them and told the soldier to take care of their horses.

  Marc introduced himself and Cat. The officer said he was Royal Whitman, in charge while Captain Stanwood was away on a scout. When Marc explained their business, the lieutenant shook his head.

  “I knew James. Even if his face had been unrecognizable, there were no strong young men among the slaughtered. I took about thirty soldiers to the ranchería May first to bury the dead. Survivors came while we were doing that, men who’d lost their whole families, women with missing children.” He paused, running a trembling hand through his hair as his bloodshot eyes seemed to stare blindly at a horror he would never escape. “I fed them and talked with them, promised to do what I can about the captive children. Eskiminzin was there with his little daughter, the only one of his family he was able to save. He believed me when I said the army had had no part in the killing, nor the farmers living nearby. He knew that men from Tucson had stirred up the Papagos.”

  “The talk in Tucson is that animals stolen from San Xavier were found at the ranchería,” said Marc. “Worse, so were a brooch of Doña Trinidad’s and one of her dresses.”

  Whitman shrugged. “They’ll say anything to justify what they did.” He sent for coffee and patiently answered their questions about James.

  Yes, the young man had talked to the officer about trying to persuade more Apaches to come in; in fact, Whitman thought he’d been away on such a mission when the massacre occurred. No, James hadn’t been seen. Some of the Aravaipa were settling near Camp Grant again, trusting in the army for protection. If Marc and Cat wanted to ask the survivors about James, the interpreter Merejildo Grijalva would go with them.

  It was a useless expedition. In the makeshift village that had sprung up near the camp, even the children were hushed. Men and women, some wounded, gazed into space or moved numbly about. All Grijalva could learn was that James, who’d been well liked though he was Mimbres, had gone out a few days before the attack to persuade more Apaches to settle at the post.

  One young woman came up to Cat and pleaded with her, tears glistening in her eyes. “She asks if you can get her child back,” Grijalva explained. “A little girl, about four years old. Very afraid of the dark.”

  “Tell her we’ll do what we can,” Cat said and pressed the woman’s hand.

  After spending the night in the absent commander’s quarters, Marc and Cat left early next morning. “At least it seems likely that James is alive,” Marc comforted.

  Cat nodded, but her heart ached, both for the misery she’d seen and for James. She was terribly afraid. What would he do now? It didn’t bear thinking of, yet she could think of nothing else.

  Riding south, Cat and Marc were in sight of Black Mountain when a Papago crawled toward them, calling feebly. Getting down, they ran to him. An arrow protruded from his shoulders, and he was coughing bubbles of frothy blood.

  “Blue-eyed devil,” he gasped in Spanish. “Apaches! Cut throats of enemy killers!”

  Blue-eyed? Cat’s heart beat faster.

  Marc cut off the arrowhead thrusting from the man’s chest. When he tried to pull out the shaft, the man gave a great cry. Blood poured from his mouth. He died while they held him.

  Lowering the body, Cat and Marc looked at each other. Without a word, they sprang on their horses and made for Black Mountain.

  All the enemy killers were young men. All of them were dead, crumpled near the bodies of their guardians who’d been instructing them. Cat recognized one of Mársat’s brothers. Cinco’s eyes stared up at the sky, unseeing, from his blackened face. His head was almost severed.

  Kneeling, dazed, Cat whispered his name. Blue-eyed devil … Had James done this, killed her brother? Who had, in his turn, killed a child, an old man, a woman?

  She closed Cinco’s eyes and put the crucifix from her neck in his lifeless hand. Then she began to scream.

  Cat couldn’t remember the ride to the ranch, though she dimly heard the shots Marc fired to signal the Papagos, dimly remembered the wailing of the women as their rejoicing turned to furious grief. When she really knew what was going on again, Marc had gone to collect the ransomed children and restore them to the Aravaipas, along with any he could buy in Tucson.

  Rousing to find Talitha trying to feed her gruel, Cat sat u
p in bed. Her throat was sore and an echo of mad cries lingered in her ears, but her mind was clear. Too clear.

  She caught Talitha’s hands. “Tally! James—it must be James who killed Cinco!”

  Talitha’s fair head drooped for a moment before she straightened her shoulders. “It seems likely. There aren’t many blue-eyed Apaches. And James is all Apache now, Cat. We have to face that.”

  And my baby?

  Refusing the food Talitha offered, Cat said, “I don’t want any. Please Tally! I—I’ll be all right. Just leave me alone.”

  But when Talitha was gone, Cat got up and dressed shakily. She took the little blue bird Cinco had given her, got her knife, and started up the hill to her mother’s grave and her father’s cross.

  She put the bird by Shea’s marker, above the turquoise carving, protecting it with rocks. “I hope you and Cinco are friends now,” she said.

  She made a prayer for Santiago, and poor Lonnie, too, then sat beside her mother’s grave. I’ve always wondered what you were like. I’ve always missed you. Please, my mother, be with me now.

  Taking the knife from its sheath, she was wondering how to best use it when a shadow fell across her. Swooping down, “swift for all her bulk, Talitha snatched away the knife, then gave Cat a resounding slap that made her ears ring.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I—I—” Impossible to “meet the blue blaze of Talitha’s eyes. “James. Cinco.”

  “Cinco’s dead. James is Apache.” Talitha’s words stung like whips. “What are you? A coward?”

  Mutely, Cat hugged her knees. “It’s too much for you?” Talitha flamed on. “You can’t stand it? Then you’ve a lot of gall to kill yourself on your mother’s grave. She was brave.”

  “I’m not brave.” Cat’s voice frayed. She had to battle for control before she could go on. “I just love James. Now he’s killed Cinco and he’ll kill lots more and I—I’m going to have his baby.”

  “A baby?”

  Cat nodded.

  “Does he know?”

  With a shake of her head Cat said, “I was going to tell him when he stopped on his way to Camp Grant. I wanted to go with him. But he needed to try to get more Apaches to come in. He—he said when he’d done what he could, he’d come to me and we’d get married.”

  Talitha, heavy with child, sank down by Cat, and at that moment something stirred deep inside Cat, a movement in her vitals.

  Her baby? Almost half its time in the blind womb gone. A girl or a boy? With the look of James?

  “Oh, my God,” Talitha breathed. She was trembling and tears ran down her face. “James! James!”

  Aghast, for she’d never seen Talitha so close to losing control, Cat put her arms around the older woman. “Tally! Please Tally!”

  With great effort Talitha steadied, but the pain in her eyes was like a piercing cry. “I’ve always known he might turn wholly Apache. After what he’s seen, I can’t bear to think what he’ll do now. He won’t care whether he lives or dies. Sooner or later, Cat, he will die.”

  “No!” Cat wailed, covering her ears.

  Inexorably, Talitha caught her hands, made her listen. “If you love James, Cat, have his baby. Our James, my brother, your lover, is dead, but you can see to it that something of him lives on.”

  “Yes. I can do that.” Desolated, Cat saw the years stretch before her, years when James, if he lived, would kill her people and be hunted in turn; but though she sickened and trembled, she made a vowing. “I will do that.”

  Talitha put her arms around her, and they wept.

  Marc was gone for several weeks, restoring the children ransomed at San Xavier to their people, bargaining for others in Tucson, though few of those were given up since the families who’d taken them in felt it a duty to rear them as Christians and redeem them from savagery.

  The territorial papers, as well as the Western press in general, strongly supported the massacre as self-defense, insisting that Camp Grant Indians had been guilty of raids and murders the army would do nothing to avenge. The Eastern press published a letter Lieutenant Whitman had written to another officer which gave details of the bloody attack. Horrified Easterners demanded that something be done. President Grant called it “pure murder” and promised a thorough investigation. More to the point of settling Arizona’s problems, at Governor Safford’s urging Grant had arranged for Gen. Stoneman’s transfer and replaced him with Gen. George Crook in June.

  Crook had a reputation as a firm, just soldier who believed the Indians had to be subdued before they’d live in peace. Arizonans looked forward to his coming even as they mourned the death of courageous young Lt. Howard Cushing, killed along with four of his command in a fight with Cochise and a large band of Chiricahuas near Bear Spring in the Whetstone Mountains to the east.

  Reluctantly, Marc added that Eskiminzin and his surviving people had tried to rebuild their ranchería near Camp Grant, but a patrol of soldiers from Fort Apache had ridden into the cañon and blundered into the Apaches. Panicked, the cavalrymen opened fire, and though none of his band was killed, Eskiminzin had told Whitman that the whites had twice broken the peace and that he was taking his people into the mountains.

  Just before Marc left Tucson, he’d heard that Eskiminzin had eaten supper with a white friend, Charles McKinney, who had a farm on the San Pedro. They talked, drank coffee and smoked. Then Eskiminzin thanked his friend, drew a pistol and shot McKinney through the head.

  “Why?” shuddered Talitha. “Why his friend?”

  Somberly, Marc said, “To show that between white and Apache there can now be no peace or trust.”

  In the first week of June, Lt. Claybourne Frazier stopped at the Socorro about nooning. Stiffly refusing to eat with the family, he officially informed Talitha that her half brother James was reputed to be the raider known as Fierro who was swiftly making his name one of terror, blazoned by burning homes and wagons, red with the blood of his victims.

  “If he stops here, Mrs. Revier, it is your duty to hold him and send for the military. Any other course will make you a traitor to your race.”

  Talitha flushed angrily, but before she could reply Marc closed his hand protectively over hers and said coolly to the officer, “I think we know our duty, sir. It is presumptuous of you to take that tone with my wife.”

  Frazier glanced at Cat. Tight-lipped, he said roughly, “The warning is for everyone, Mr. Revier.” Then, eyes dilating, he sucked in his breath and turned crimson to the roots of his pale blond hair. “Miss O’Shea, I didn’t know that you had married.”

  No one spoke for a startled moment. Cat felt as if everyone were staring at the slight rounding of her belly beneath the cotton dress. Except for Talitha no one knew, though it could only be a matter of weeks before her condition was obvious. Frazier must have noticed because he hadn’t seen her for a long time and the thickening of her waist was immediately evident.

  In the awkward silence Jordan said easily, “Miss O’Shea has been betrothed to me since her sixteenth birthday. We decided we’d waited long enough.”

  “It only remains for me to wish you happy,” Frazier said. Bowing, he turned abruptly and strode out into the sun.

  Jordan got up from his seat at the end of the bench, came to Cat, and dropped on one knee beside her, taking her hands, pressing them to his face.

  “Katie,” he said huskily, “I’ve been waiting. I’ve always loved you. This may not be the right time, but still it is the time.”

  PART V

  The Maimed Hawk

  1881

  XIX

  In Scott Valley, lush with grama grass, watered by the oak and sycamore-shaded East Verde River, corn stood high and tasseling in the fields that late summer of 1881. Cucumbers, pumpkins, squash, and melons ripened on trailing vines; there were rows of cabbage; peas and beans were hulled and drying; and potato plants were starting to wither as a sign that it was almost time to dig. Apple trees were weighted with fruit that grew rosier
each day, and there were apricots, plums, pears, and cherries in the orchards cared for and shared by the Scott clan.

  Shut out of fields and gardens by rock walls and post fences—for Jared would have none of the barbed wire coming into use—sheep, cattle, and horses grazed in bountiful pastures. There were stout pigpens and chicken coops, and Jared’s pride, a pack of greyhounds, to keep off preying coyotes, raccoons, and foxes. They coursed down jackrabbits, too, a frequent food in Scott Valley, along with venison, wild turkey, and quail.

  The houses and outbuildings were sheltered by great pines and immense spreading oaks. Each dwelling had a wellhouse where butter, milk, and cream kept cool in the hottest weather, immersed in rock water troughs. A few miles east, where the valley widened even more, Thomas Scott had a sawmill, and a grist mill below Jared’s house served people for miles around. A mail rider traveled past on one of the good roads General Crook had made, and Mormon neighbors came to worship in the little steepled church Jared had built in the broadest part of the valley.

  They also sent their children to the school Cat taught during the winter months. She still smiled to remember how Governor Safford, who had persuaded Jordan to start the school, had visited several times, mounted on one of his handsome mules, and ridden off after quizzing the pupils, his satisfaction evidenced by the lusty way he was singing “There’s a Land That Is Fairer Than Day,” his favorite hymn. In a territory bedeviled by Apache and bandit raids, where most people were occupied with mere survival, Safford had stubbornly insisted that all children must be educated, and by the time he left office in 1877 Arizona was studded with schools he’d prodded and persuaded people into starting.

  Cat enjoyed teaching. Ten of her fifteen scholars were Jordan’s nephews and nieces, but they took no liberties because of the kinship. Michael, her son, found it a bit galling to be the schoolmarm’s child, but hints that his love of reading made him a sissy brought such swift chastisement from his fists that few boys even much larger than he dared his wrath more than once.