Harvest of Fury by Jeanne Williams Page B

sombrero trimmed with silver coins. Patrick had cut down a silver-buckled belt she’d long coveted. From the vaqueros and their families came a fringed jacket of softest buckskin and a new reata . Talitha, with Anita’s help, had fashioned a gay red dress out of material in the storeroom.
    Cat rejoiced, putting on all her presents, not sure whether to mince to match the dress or swagger for the hat, belt, and jacket. Then, without a word, James gave her his gifts.
    There was a quiver of mountain-lion skin lined with red flannel and filled with arrows winged with turkey feathers, and an arced bow, a leather wrist guard, and a hawk carved from polished mesquite. It perched on a knotty crag, talons painstakingly carved, beak realistically hooked. In spite of its crudities, it captured amazingly the proud, free essence of the bird.
    â€œWhy, James!” cried Talitha. “I didn’t know you could carve like that.”
    He didn’t answer but said to Cat, “This is a red-tailed hawk. His feathers are very good for arrows, but I didn’t want to kill him so I used some from a turkey. The bow’s of wild mulberry.”
    â€œOh, James!” Throwing her arms about him, Cat gave him a resounding kiss. “The hawk’s wonderful! But I won’t let him catch my little blue bird. Will you teach me how to shoot?”
    â€œAnd us, too!” clamored Patrick and Miguel.
    â€œI’ll teach anyone who wants to learn,” James promised expansively.
    Talitha watched her brother in surprise. Happiness softened the proud set of his mouth, and there was a glow about him. It came to her that he wasn’t as haughty and scornful as she’d thought.
    â€œIt was with bows that Tjúni and Socorro killed the scalp hunters and won Mangus’s friendship,” Talitha said slowly. “I’d like to learn to shoot, James.”
    He nodded approval. “An Apache may have two good revolvers and a rifle, but he always has his bow. It makes no sound to alarm enemies when a sentry is killed, and half a dozen antelope can be killed in a herd before the rest notice and run. It’s easy to carry and can be relied on when a weapon jams or there’s no ammunition. Guns are good, but if I had to choose, I’d have a good bow and arrows feathered from the red-tailed hawk.”
    And so it was that when the twins’ thirteenth birthdays came the fifteenth of October, work stopped early to give time for target shooting before the festive meal.
    Of the vaqueros, only Belen had chosen to make a bow, and Talitha overheard Chuey reminding Rodolfo that their older companion was, after all, a Yaqui and thus had an affinity for uncivilized weapons.
    â€œWhat about me, Chuey?” she had teased, stepping out from behind the door.
    â€œI—uh—” Chuey strangled a moment, gulped, and then said forthrightly, “ Madama , with your pardon, who can explain gringos?”
    It had been fun to make the equipment, hunting for branches of wild mulberry that were straight and without knots, then stripping them of bark and working the green wood into shape with the arched center to be hung for drying.
    Arrows were more tedious. Fortunately, there was plenty of the proper sort of cane growing along the creek. After these were cut, they had to be smoothed and the joints leveled out by running them back and forth across the bottom of a heated skillet. Much easier, James explained, than heating and using a grooved stone arrow-smoother.
    Belen, who did the ranch’s blacksmithing, forged tips from steel salvaged at the fort. These were fitted into notches cut in the hardwood foreshafts which were then tied on with sinew. The next step was to settle down amid the canes with supplies of quail and turkey feathers, wet, softened sinews, and charcoal and an earthy reddish mineral that Talitha remembered from Marc’s geology lessons as hematite.
    The part of the shaft where the feathers