The Valiant Women by Jeanne Williams

grumbled that their halos weren’t bright enough.
    Two days later they started on, having added two more gourds to their water supply. These, and the other gourds, were carried in slings of the new rabbit hides, and scraps of buckskin. The jerky was dry enough to be carried in the blue rebozo along with the other food.
    Shea’s buckskin garment was far from handsome. He’d shaped it to cover as much as possible of his body below the waist in order to ward off thorns and brush, so it reached variously from midthigh to midcalf, depending on where he’d taken the parts for Socorro’s sandals.
    The sandals were also stowed in the rebozo Shea carried. He’d padded the toes of her boots with the softest strips of rabbit fur and she had firm orders to call a halt if a blister started.
    Pinacate increased steadily in size, a longish mountain with its highest elevation on the south. Shea began to suspect uneasily that to know a ranch lay beyond it was like knowing there was a water hole on this side. It could mean almost anywhere.
    They reached the bottom of the rocky, scrub-grown peak that evening, camped in a silted wash and began the ascent next morning before dawn.
    â€œMoses must have felt like this when he was fixing to pass out of the desert into the Promised Land,” Shea said as they paused for breath.
    â€œI think the Promised Land was also a desert.”
    â€œWhat?” He gazed at her in shock. “Then what’s all that about milk and honey?”
    â€œBees make honey in the desert, very fine honey from mesquite, acacia and cactus flowers.” Her chin poked out stubbornly. “That milk must have come from goats because you don’t hear much about cattle. The scriptures tell about shepherds, not vaqueros. It is muy claro that a country that uses mules and camels instead of horses must be desert!”
    â€œBut the Jordan River! The Dead Sea—”
    â€œThat tells you! It’s full of salt. As for the Jordan, pues , don’t you remember how Naaman, commander of the Syrian hosts, came to Elisha to be healed of his leprosy?”
    â€œCan’t say that I do.” Getting to Mass and confession when his mother began to fear for his soul had been about the total of his religious education.
    â€œWhen the prophet told Naaman to wash in the Jordan, he became furious! He said the rivers of Damascus were much cleaner and better. It took his servants a time to persuade him to bathe in the Jordan, even to cure his leprosy.”
    â€œDid it?”
    â€œOf course!”
    â€œThen I’d call it a pretty good old river.”
    She glared at him. “It wasn’t the river at all, you redhead burro!”
    Startled as if a hummingbird had suddenly attacked, Shea blinked, then covered a grin, delighted that she had a temper. It was a sign she was human, had passion that could be reached.
    â€œNot the river?” he asked innocently. “What was it, then?”
    â€œFaith!” she fairly shrieked at him. “Faith and humility!”
    He could no longer control his laughter. Flushing, she stamped her foot, but after an indignant sputter, she laughed, too. They were still chuckling when they reached the top of the ridge and looked down and away.
    The ranch lay just beyond them, but when they saw it, their smiles froze.

IV
    Corrals, a rambling adobe house with smaller ones close by, several ramadas , open shelters for working in the shade where one could catch a breeze. There was a well by some watering troughs with a cluster of trees scattered along an old riverbed.
    What Shea didn’t want to see were the bodies.
    Socorro gasped and caught his arm. He led her over to a shallow cave, made her sit down. “Stay here. I’ll see if anyone’s alive.” He doubted it from the way buzzards, ravens and coyotes had been feeding.
    Leaving everything but the jug and knife with Socorro, he went warily down the slope. As he neared a corral,