A Mating of Hawks

by Jeanne Williams

  “He’s only sixty-one.”

  “He’s blind and paralyzed.” Judd’s voice dropped. “Can you want him to go on like that for years?”

  She couldn’t, wouldn’t, answer.

  Judd gave her a comforting yet admonitory one-armed hug. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. Dad’ll get his way while he lives, even if it is damn nonsense. After that—well, I’ll do what I think is best for the ranch. Hell, I love it just as much as he does!” He laughed as they climbed upward. “Okay, cousin! Settle back and enjoy the empire!”

  The vastness astounded her. Over 200,000 acres, including that leased from the government, stretched from the jagged cañon above Last Spring to the Mexican border, broad valleys and plains marked with sandy washes and protected by hills. Apart from the forested region around Last Spring, it was a sere brown-yellow except where live oak groves sheltered cattle and horses, or along the creeks and bigger washes where cottonwoods, sycamores, walnuts and mesquites were leafing into tender green.

  The velvet lushness of the irrigated fields seemed an insult to the rest of the parched land. It was all too easy to see the stark barrenness surrounding the old ranch house, but it jarred Tracy less than the sparkling pool and oasis of shrubbery and lawn at the new one.

  Windmills pumped into concrete or metal tanks near line shacks. Apart from Shea’s, there were two sub-ranches, each a cluster of adobes, outbuildings and corrals.

  “What’s going on at Stronghold?” Tracy asked as they soared over it. Below, she could see several dozen men going through what seemed to be a tightly controlled gun drill.

  “Pardo’s training some guys who wanted the real stuff,” Judd said briefly. He pointed as they flew over several ramadas and small adobes. “The El Charco ranch house sort of melted back into the mud when Shea moved over, but he hasn’t replaced it. Be damned if they’re not all lazing around under that first ramada!” Judd squinted. “There’s four of them. Shea’s probably sheltering some wetback though God knows what he can find for one to do.”

  Illegals couldn’t find any water to cross at the boundary but they still bore the name bestowed on those who crossed the Rio Grande’s interminable border. From what Tracy had seen of that river, darned few would get wet above the knees.

  Even though they were sometimes robbed of their wages by those “coyotes” who smuggled them in and out, or by their employers; even though they sometimes had to drink water contaminated by pesticides and lived in fear of being deported by the Border Patrol, the stream of job-seekers would keep coming till Mexico offered them a way to support their families. It would take an army to police the Arizona border alone. If there was a guard at one point, it was easy to slip through the fence a mile away.

  “Grubbing out mesquite and seeding grass sounds like work to me,” Tracy said.

  Judd only snorted. “All that graze going to waste,” he brooded. The El Charco range was perceptibly better-grassed than the surrounding pastures. There were no blatantly green irrigated fields, but there were no stretches of baked caliche soil, either.

  As they followed the El Charco fences toward the border, Judd began to scowl. “Should be a herd back here,” he muttered. “Where in hell have they got to?”

  “Cattle drift around.”

  “Sure, but these were just moved a few days ago.” Judd banked above a white border boundary marker, circled high, then flew over into Mexico.

  “Hey!” yelped Tracy. “Now we’re wetbacks—or airbacks!”

  “Who’s to know?” grinned Judd. But he wasn’t grinning when he sighted the distinctive red cattle below, scattered over the sparsely grassed hills. “By damn, there’s the herd!”

  “How’d they get over here?” Tracy wondered.

  Judd’s teeth clamped together. He spoke between them. “I don’t know but I have a pretty good notion! That goddam Shea!”

  “Why would he drive them across?”

  Judd didn’t answer. He cut back across the border.

  It was hot for late March. Shea got up, making no sudden moves, and dug a beer out of the wet sand which served as their refrigerator. “Don Aniceto? Or will you have café con pantalones?”

  The old vaquero usually liked creamed coffee but now he said, “Cerveza, por favor.”

  Even though it must have hurt his horseman’s pride even more than his aged back, he’d insisted on helping to plant tepary beans and Indian corn that morning. Shea rubbed the bottle clean against his pant leg, opened it, and put it in the scarred brown hand that was missing a finger where a rope had cut it off against the saddle horn.

  “Gracias, hijito,” nodded the former top roper and rider of the Socorro. He had taught Shea to ride and work cattle. To him, though Shea loomed head and shoulders above him, the youngest Scott would always be “little son.”

  He didn’t have to poll Geronimo, or Jaime, who had walked or hitchhiked the incredible distance from El Salvador and come into camp last week with bleeding feet and a nearly fatal thirst. Jaime was twenty, with wide-spaced eyes and a broad handsome face which was badly pockmarked. Fatherless, he’d come in from working in the fields to find his mother and sister shot to death by government troops firing at elusive guerrillas. As soon as he’d buried them, Jaime had taken what little food there was and started north. Sometimes, in the night, Shea heard him weeping.

  Still, he grinned and thanked Shea for the beer. Geronimo accepted his with an absent nod. “Why you reckon your brother’s flying over us? Your stepmother sure wouldn’t be.”

  “Now why do you suppose?” Shea said with a grim laugh.

  “Think he’s found out what we did with those cows he turned in on us through those cut fences down south?”

  “If he hasn’t, he soon will.” Shea yawned and stretched. “When he comes charging in here, just act innocent. He’s got his tail in a crack. Chuey Sanchez tells me Judd got around Patrick’s order to sell by letting Dad believe he’d leased more graze.”

  Geronimo took a long swallow. “He must think we don’t ride fence just because we aren’t running cattle. Wonder how long he thought he could get away with it? Damn near a thousand head!”

  “Even if he can work out some deal with the Mexican authorities, he’ll never collect more than a tithe of the herd,” Shea predicted. “We scattered them pretty well. Any rancheros who get some of that stock will hide it out till the hunt’s blown over.”

  Don Aniceto gave a mournful sigh. “Yet I have regret, hijito. Those fine red cattle—Don Patrick’s herd.”

  “He’d told Judd to sell them,” Shea reminded.

  Geronimo cocked his head. “Plane’s heading back.”

  “He can probably land by the corrals,” Shea decided. “The beauty part of this is that he can’t go moaning to Dad without getting caught in his little trick. I bet he doesn’t try running any more cattle into El Charco.”

  He sat down on the army cot and sipped his beer. Judd’s boldness in cutting fence had surprised him, but it had been pretty easy to cut more fence and chouse the herd into Mexico. What gnawed at Shea were Judd’s other activities.

  There was Pardo, mixed up in that crazy paramilitary stuff. Shea had gone back, trying to persuade his onetime comrade to come work for him. But Pardo had given that lopsided grin and shook his head.

  “I’m not fighting for any more flags, man, but I’m not ready to plant nice little gardens, either.”

  “But—”

  Pardo had raised a silencing hand. “Sarge, I’d screw up.” His face twisted before he laughed. “If I ever get to where I can take all that peace and quiet, don’t worry, man, I’ll look you up.”

  Shea had to leave it there. As for Tracy—He scowled, remembering how possessively Judd’s arm had encircled her as he told her to shoot. Seemed he’d been a fool to worry about her, send her Le Moyne. But she had been beautiful, naked with the sunny spring water flowing over her, that mass of auburn-tinged curls framing her face with those proud hidalga cheekbones and full ripe mouth.

>   When she’d opened her eyes, there’d been an instant of terror and then such joy, that startled welcoming.… But she might have looked the same if he had been Judd!

  The old festering wound throbbed as Shea wondered, not for the first time, if Judd had been the one to first seduce Cele, make her so shamed that she’d gone away. Judd’s combination of macho and sweet-talk seemed to make him irresistible to women. Since his teens, there’d been a parade of them. Now, less randy or more discreet, he was down to paying the rent on one woman’s place in Nogales and giving an expensive jet-set strawberry blonde a free lease on a swank townhouse in Tucson’s foothills. He was jaded, but not sated. And how any man could look at Tracy without wanting to try—

  The plane was settling on the level area back of the corrals. Shea put down the bottle and went to meet his brother.

  Shock and pure plain jealousy wrenched his guts when he saw Tracy. Tearing his gaze from her large, bewildered wild-honey eyes, he grinned at Judd, who was climbing out of the plane.

  “Forced landing or would you like a beer?”

  “Neither.” Judd set his hands on his hips and rocked on his heels, eyes shining like an angered mountain lion’s. “You wouldn’t happen to know how my cows got scattered to hell over northern Sonora?”

  “Did they?” Shea shook his head in condolence. “Tough luck.”

  “Luck?” Judd seethed. “Someone cut the fence and drove them through!”

  When they’d been boys, Judd six years the eldest and always bigger and heavier, Shea had dreaded the frequent fights that left him blackeyed, bruised and bloody-nosed, but he’d never been able to truckle and avoid the clashes. Patrick had quizzically wondered how he could get so bunged up on a horse but had evidently thought his sons must come to their own understanding.

  They never had. Judd was still bigger, but there was just the hint of softness in his belly. He lived soft these days, supervising from plane and RV, never doing the physical work, as Patrick always had.

  Shea hadn’t been afraid of him for a long time. A ferocious joy quickened every sense as he stared into those golden eyes and said softly, “Now who do you think would do a thing like that?”

  “You would!” Judd blazed.

  “I’ll tell you what I didn’t do.” Shea was so wickedly pleased at Judd’s rage that he found it easy to sound pleasant. “I didn’t cut your fence. What I do to my fence is my own business.”

  Judd made a strangling sound. “You sneaking bastard! You know damn well—”

  “What?” It was mean and childish, maybe, but Shea couldn’t remember when he’d enjoyed anything so much—except for the puzzled fright on Tracy’s face. She was still in the plane but could hear what they were saying. For her sake, though his hands were itching, Shea held back from direct challenge. “When I find someone else’s cattle on my land, I figure they broke in somehow. And I let ’em out at the nearest fence.”

  Judd swung at him. Shea dodged. “You’ve got a passenger,” he reminded his brother, but Judd came at him, arms outstretched.

  Ducking, Shea hit him in that softening belly. Judd gasped, knocked breathless. Cautious now, he circled warily. Shea turned with him. His blood was up. This had been coming for a long time. But because of Tracy, he’d let it die if Judd would.

  Suddenly, Judd’s foot kicked out and up for Shea’s chin, with all his weight behind it. It would have practically lifted Shea’s head from his shoulders, but Shea swerved, caught the leg and brought Judd right on over with it.

  Dazed, Judd sprawled groggily a moment. Rocking back and forth on his knees, he sprang up, catching Shea off balance, knocking him backward, following with sledging blows. Shea’s nose felt broken. Blood trickled into his right eye. He stumbled over Judd’s outstretched foot.

  “You son of a bitch!” yelled Geronimo’s distant voice. “Quit fouling!”

  Judd’s knees clamped Shea. Steely fingers bit into his throat. Shea went limp, then, as Judd laughed triumphantly, twisted sideways with all his might, broke the choking grip, and got his arm hooked around Judd’s neck, twisting back an arm till it threatened to snap. Judd grunted, threw him off.

  Both men climbed panting to their feet. Shea rubbed blood from his eye. When Judd charged, Shea moved to one side, caught Judd beneath the ribs and drove a fist into his jaw, putting all he had behind it.

  Judd seemed to lift from the ground before he collapsed on it. “Slosh some water over him,” Shea gasped to Geronimo, as Aniceto and Jaime urged him under the ramada and started washing him. He was bleeding like a stuck pig from nose and mouth, battered, wrung out. He closed his eyes and let rough, friendly hands clean him up.

  Slowly, he became aware that the hands were soft. Opening his swelling eyes, he stared incredulously. Tracy was tending him. Her hands were gentle, but her eyes glistened with anger and tears.

  “You’d better take care of Judd,” Shea mumbled through split lips.

  “Shut up!”

  Too wrung out to argue, Shea let his eyes close, savored the feel of her deft, quick hands though what they were doing hurt. The pungent smell of tequila, an accompanying sting on his cuts brought him out of his sodden painful bliss. He swore and looked into Aniceto’s burned-charcoal eyes.

  “It is necessary, hijito. Now I will do the same for him.”

  The old vaquero bowlegged it over to Judd, who was foggily sitting up. The tequila brought him to his feet with a roar. He stood swaying for a few minutes before he made his careful, stiff-legged way to the ramada. Leaning against a pole, he spoke from the corner of a puffed mouth.

  “Army taught you to fight. You’re worth going a round with now, little brother. And there’ll be another round.” His eyes glinted as he turned his gaze on Tracy. “Let’s be going, cousin, if you’re through playing Florence Nightingale.”

  Shea felt her eyes on him in what seemed a sort of trapped pleading. What the hell? She had a tender heart, but she’d been at Stronghold and now she was flying around with Judd. Even so, remembering the blessing of her hands, watching the way her breasts lifted and fell beneath that thin cotton shirt—

  Turning from the silent Shea, her pointed, cleft chin lifted, she moved proudly away. Why did he feel as if he’d failed her? Shea stood up. His head seemed to explode in blinding, throbbing pain.

  He reached for Aniceto’s tequila. “This time it goes inside, old friend.”

  “En el pobre es borrachera, en rico es alegría,” grinned Geronimo. “In a poor guy, it’s drunkenness, in a rich one, it’s having a good time.”

  “Cuando no estás crudo, lo estás refinado,” Shea retorted. Crudo was slang for “hungover,” as well as the word for “crude oil.” “When you’re not crudo, you’re refining it.”

  “Time’s awasting,” said Geronimo.

  XI

  Judd was either in no mood or in no condition to talk. His earlier rage over the cattle seemed to have been tempered by the fight into an even more dangerous, controlled fury. It was pretty clear that instead of leasing more land, he’d had the fence at El Charco cut along the southern border. Now he had cattle spread across Lord only knew how many Mexican hills. It would be the devil to get them back. Patrick only knew what Judd told him, but a loss like that would be hard to gloss over, as well as being a substantial financial disaster.

  It wasn’t till he’d brought the plane to a stop on the runway that Judd faced Tracy. “I guess you know what that was all about.”

  She nodded.

  “Wasn’t smart of me to stop with you along,” he said regretfully. “But I was so damn mad—”

  She longed to get away from him, sort out her scrambled thoughts. If Shea had offered to get her home, she wouldn’t have flown back with Judd. “Don’t worry,” she said tightly. “I’m not going to bother Patrick with it.”

  He shrugged. “I know that. But you sure ran straight past me to tidy up my brother, sweetheart.”

  She didn’t answer. Judd took her hands, both of them, made her face him. His jaw
was marked, there was a split above one eye and another on his chin. “What I’m asking, Tracy, is how do you feel about me?”

  No good to fuel his grudge at Shea, but neither could she evade the direct question. “You lied to Patrick. And you kicked and tripped Shea.”

  “Baby doll, if a man wants to win, he can’t be Sir Galahad.”

  “Maybe not. But I don’t like cheating.”

  The dark pupils spread, blotting out all but thin golden circles of the irises. “You’re acting like a dumb kid!”

  She stared back, willing him to see her unvoiced contempt. He colored. “We’re not through,” he said thickly. “You need a man who can take care of you. It’s damn sure not my brother!”

  He got out. She scrambled down before he could help her and went ahead of him into the house.

  In spite of her tormenting frustration over Shea and worry about the conflicts dividing the family, Tracy got the Stronghold article done that week. The Tucson lab had developed some good pictures. She mailed a choice of these with the text to her editor and felt she’d earned an outing when Geronimo brought Mary over early Sunday morning.

  “Am I glad to see you two!” she greeted as Le Moyne whimpered his delight. “I’ve been wondering what plants are edible but the only ones I’m sure of are watercress, dandelions and miner’s lettuce.”

  Mary and Geronimo eyed each other and grinned sheepishly. “What’s miner’s lettuce?” they asked as one.

  Tracy sighed. “All right, campers. Have your coffee and then we’re going for a walk.”

  With the help of Carolyn Niethammer’s American Indian Food and. Lore, they identified sheep sorrel and added it to the greens Tracy already knew, which had been gathered from a little side rivulet where the water ran slow enough to allow cress to grow thickly. They collected the tenderest young canaigre leaves and the similar curly dock, but the exciting find was a small marsh thick with cattails.

  “We can do all kinds of things with them,” Tracy said delightedly.

  “My mother still makes pollen soup and muffins,” Mary said. “But it’s too early for that.”