The Valiant Women by Jeanne Williams Page B

everyone was scalped.”
    She shuddered and held the man closer against her. Young, good-looking vaquero, little more than a boy. And he’d kept his hair. “How’d you find him?” Shea demanded.
    That small chin thrust out in a way he was beginning to recognize. “When you were gone so long, I got worried and started down to work my way around the corrals in case you were in trouble.”
    â€œDamn it, I told you to wait! What if this man had been a scalper?”
    â€œWell, he wasn’t! And—and if anything happened to you, I’d want it to happen to me!”
    Her eyes sparkled with held-back tears. Shea’s anger dissolved along with the irrational jealousy he felt at seeing her fuss over the vaquero. Besides, there was too much to do.
    â€œLet’s get him under a ramada . Maybe you can get his fever down, dress that wound with mashed agave. Can you fetch our other gear?”
    She nodded and started up the ridge. Shea hefted the youngster as gently as he could and packed him down to the ramada farthest from the house of death. He’d hoped to get the dead men away from the corrals before Socorro returned, but she reached them before he did, put down her burdens.
    Kneeling by the raddled, stinking corpses, she made the sign of the cross over each and bowed her head for a moment. Then she picked up the food and water, hurrying to the ramada , at once making the man a pillow of the rebozo-wrapped food. She didn’t look up as Shea passed her with the first body, but began to bathe the vaquero’s face and throat with the edge of her rebozo.
    On his reconnaissance of the space behind the big house, Shea had glimpsed an arroyo. Digging separate graves for all these people was pointless; the thing was to get them decently covered with the kind earth, and that quickly!
    More cattle had come up and were bawling their heads off, so as soon as he’d got the remains of the second man to the shallowest part of the arroyo, Shea hauled up more water, pausing as he struggled with the bucket to see that there were dozens of the animals now. Surely Apaches would’ve run them off to slaughter or sell?
    Cows with satisfied thirst gave way to newcomers who crowded in as fast as they could at the long broad trough and seemed to fairly soak up the water. Shea’s back and arms were aching by the time the last of them were drinking. He lowered a much smaller bucket and took it over to Socorro.
    â€œTry this,” he said, filling one of their gourds. “It should taste sweeter than that tinaja juice!”
    She thanked him but lifted the young vaquero and held the gourd to his mouth. He drank and seemed quieter. Compressing his lips, Shea handed her another gourd.
    â€œYou drink, too,” she insisted.
    Shea tilted the bucket and took a long delicious draught. Pure and cool, it tasted better than the finest whiskey or wine. “Stay here till I come back,” he commanded.
    â€œEat a little first,” she suggested.
    He wouldn’t be able to keep it down. Not with what he had to do. “Later. Use the tinaja water to bathe the kid.”
    Several coyotes faded out the back door as he’ entered the house. Ravens flapped out doors and the several small windows. Shea looked at the bodies and choked back vomit. Arms dragged off, feet, legs. And what was left—
    Hadn’t he seen a wheelbarrow out back?
    Into it, breathing as thinly as possible of the tainted air, he loaded the human debris, jolted the grisly burden to the arroyo, having to stop to retrieve an arm that fell off, a head that separated from gnawed shoulders.
    Nineteen people, eight of them children, and the six men by the corrals. Twenty-five human beings wiped out.
    Why?
    The way everyone was scalped made him think of bounty hunters. But these folks weren’t Apaches.
    As he placed the mother and baby on top of other corpses, Shea gritted his teeth and wished he could get hold of