The Valiant Women by Jeanne Williams Page A

made by stacking rough lengths of wood between uprights, a coyote trotted into the brush and several ravens scolded as they rose heavily.
    What must have been two men sprawled there, eyes pecked out, faces with a strange melted look because the scalps were gone. Shea swallowed the hot scalding in his throat, walked on, watching for any movement. The corpses stank. Must have happened yesterday; much longer than that and the wild scavengers would’ve left nothing but bones.
    Four more men lay between the corrals and houses, so mutilated that he couldn’t tell how they’d died. No arrows sticking out of them, though. Buzzards flopped only a little way off, bald red heads grotesquely small on hulking bodies with wingspans almost as much as Shea’s six foot two.
    The big house was where the real carnage was. Apparently the attackers had surprised the six men outside, but eight more men, three women and a half-dozen children, from a babe to ones of ten or eleven years, had taken refuge in the house.
    They’d fought for their lives. A few still gripped the makeshift weapons they’d snatched up, a hunk of wood, an iron ladle, part of a broken yoke. Such real weapons as they’d had must have been looted by their murderers.
    All were scalped, even a baby that had held to its mother’s breast as she tried to protect it. The skirts of all the women, from a toothless aged one to a girl so young she had no breasts, were rucked up about their hips.
    Shea leaned against the lintel. He’d seen battlefields, but nothing like this. Birds and beasts had feasted here, too, but he could see that several of the men had been shot. And weren’t Apaches said to usually take children, often women, into captivity?
    Dazed, he made the women’s clothes as decent as possible and put the baby’s head beneath its mother’s arm so its wound didn’t show.
    He had to get these people buried, a huge task in itself. He didn’t want Socorro to see that. As for the Promised Land—if this was any sample, they’d be better off at one of their tinajas! Except, sometime, the Areneños would turn up.
    Stepping out the open back door, he found two more children, evidently caught as they tried to run in from play or chores. They were so chewed up that he couldn’t tell whether they were boys or girls, they were just thin and brown and little.
    Faint at the sight and stench, he circled the buildings and corrals. The remains of a butchered cow lay by the trough which was dry. Cattle were crowding up, evidently hoping for water.
    Going over to the well, he lowered the big rawhide bucket by its rawhide rope which passed over a pulley. It must have held over ten gallons, weighing close to a hundred pounds, so it didn’t take too long to water the stock enough to hold them till he could finish the job. Had to get back to Socorro, tell her to wait while he took care of the bodies.
    She wasn’t in the shallow cave. Shea’s heart plunged. Then he saw her down the slope quite a distance, not far from the most outlying corral, kneeling by something obscured by the brush which had kept him from seeing her as he climbed.
    He ran toward her. She glanced about imploringly. He could see now that she was giving water to a man, supporting his head and shoulders.
    The man’s left thigh looked to be half-shot away. It teemed with maggots; good thing, ugly’ as they were. Cleaned out rotten flesh better than any surgeon.
    He choked on the water, struggled feebly, moaning. “Out of his head, poor devil,” said Shea, dropping on one knee to examine the wound. “Looks like a musket ball passed through, tore a big hole on its way out. Don’t think it touched the joint.”
    â€œHe has fever. If we could get him into some shade—” Her eyes widened as she remembered. “Is anyone else alive?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œApache?”
    He shrugged. “No arrows. But