Harvest of Fury (50 page)

I am Judith who died in a strange land; Talitha who raised her brother to lose him and adored Shea, that Don Patricio of the double brand who so loved Socorro. I am that lady of compassion who found water in the desert; Marc, who was faithful; Santiago; Sewa. They all loved, in spite of death and terror. Shall I be afraid to?

She gave a laugh of strength and joy, exulting in what was past and what was yet to be. Then she heard a voice call her name. Sant was coming toward her.

With a glad cry, she ran to him.

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I

A red-tailed hawk circled the mountain valley above the creek, gliding as if in search of something. As Shea braked the pickup to the side of the road, Geronimo Sanchez gave a soft whistle.

“Reckon that's her mate up there?”

“I think so. There's a relined nest in that biggest sycamore, but no eggs.” Shea glanced at the redtail loosely shrouded with burlap. She seemed a lot less nervous than Geronimo, who had a tight grip on her scaly pale-yellow legs above the wickedly curved talons. “I'll bet our gal is one of the pair that's nested in that tree for years.”

“You gonna walk to the creek?” Geronimo demanded. “Must be a half-mile!”

Snorting, Shea swung his long legs out of the cab and came around to Geronimo's door. “That love grass we seeded is just starting to come up. I don't want you, me or anybody, driving over it, savvy?” He punched his friend's ample girth with his fist. “You better walk a helluva lot more, Sanchez, or you won't be the lithe, agile savage of a maiden's dream!”

“Who wants a maiden?” leered Geronimo. “I'm a lover, not a teacher.” Sobering, he gave Shea a puzzled, almost worried look. “How come a scrawny rooster like you don't have a tender little pullet, or at least a tough old hen?”

Shea stiffened before he chuckled and shrugged. At thirty-two, sun lines were etched deep at the corners of his gray eyes. Thick red-gold hair waved no matter what he did to it. Since they were going to town, his worn denims were clean but his boots showed the marks of rocks and rough use. There was a faint scar above one eye, several hidden by his shirt, and his hands were ridged with scar tissue, the fingers apparently almost reconstructed.

“Now you don't think I'd clue you in to my supply?” he joshed.

Avoiding Geronimo's troubled stare, Shea grasped the redtail's legs, keeping the burlap over her head. So long as she couldn't see, that fearsome beak was no threat. Funny that a bird weighing less than three pounds could contain such energy and force, could kill a rabbit bigger than itself, though mice were the major part of the diet.

Striding across the greening field, Shea grinned at the hawk wheeling against the intense blue sky. “She's back, fella.” Pausing near the towering sycamore which held the hopefully relined nest in branches sixty feet from the ground, Shea eased the hawk to a fallen giant log, let the talons grip, and then moved back, lifting the burlap.

The hawk perched there a moment, golden eyes unveiling as the nictating membrane was drawn up. Sun glinted on the proud dark head, the short, broad reddish tail before she spread her brownish wings and launched from the decaying trunk, rising into the dazzling sky.

“May be too late to populate that nest,” Shea called after her. “But there's always next spring.”

He watched the hawk till he could no longer make out the dark border formed on the whitish underside of the wings by the tips of the primaries and secondaries. No hint in that soaring flight that six weeks ago, in mid-January, he'd found her mangled by a shot that had disabled one wing.

Weak from hunger and exposure, she'd still flopped over on her back and showed him her talons. He'd netted them and covered her with an old gunnysack rummaged out of the pickup. For the first few days, he'd force-fed her with cut-up mice the cats brought up. After that, she'd understood they were food and managed them herself, along with pieces of rabbit he and Geronimo shot as she needed more than the cats' leavings.

There was a shrill cry from high above. The male hawk wheeled around below and above the returned one, almost touching her. And then they rose, together, dwindling against the sun.

“Hurry up!” bellowed Geronimo as Shea marveled at them, feeling as if a part of himself rose with them on invisible but mighty currents of air. “That
chica
's going to wonder where in hell we are!”

Shea saluted the hawks and moved across the field.

Tracy Benoit bit her underlip and wondered if she should phone the ranch or simply rent a car. Vashti had said someone would meet her flight from Houston, but she'd been standing by her luggage for ten minutes, the arriving crowd had thinned away, and she was eager to get to Patrick.

Angered at her indecision, she told herself:
Wait five more minutes
.
Then call the ranch and say you're driving yourself. And, my girl, do it!

Six months ago she wouldn't have needed such a pep talk. Six months ago, she wouldn't have been afraid to drive to the ranch, or anywhere. Maybe that had been her trouble. But a news photographer can't insist on escorts to trouble spots—and it hadn't been at a street fight or explosive rally or even in a dangerous part of town that it had happened. No, it was outside her own apartment house, during that short walk from carport to building.

If she could even have screamed! But those hands had gripped her throat in the same instant that the figure looming out of the dark became a solid, bruising menace, crushing her to the gravel. Choked half unconscious, her next clear memory was of car lights, returning apartment neighbors running after her attacker, wrestling him down. The doctor who examined her assured her that she hadn't actually been raped; her assailant was impotent.

That made it ludicrous—and scary. To be almost strangled by a man unable to do what he wanted! A kind of horrified pity entered her mix of feelings when she learned he was out on furlough from a veteran's hospital, supplied with downers, which, combined with a few drinks, stripped away the few controls he may have had. When he'd flipped in Viet Nam, the results had been more lethal: five squad companions slaughtered by a blast of submachine fire. She had preferred charges, not for revenge, but in the hope he'd be kept where he couldn't brutalize anyone else.

“They'll crucify you,” her editor had warned. “In a rape case, the woman's on trial.”

It hadn't been that bad. The judge heard the case in chambers. Her attacker's counsel had hammered at her to admit she'd been drinking or high on drugs, or had at least invited the assault, but he hadn't been able to shake the truth. The young veteran was ordered to five years' confinement with mandatory psychiatric treatment. Tracy believed he was more of a victim than she was and hoped he could get well. But she was still afraid, she'd become a fearful person, and that was intolerable.

And now she was terrified to rent a car and drive alone to the ranch! Though her palms grew clammy and she felt as if she were strangling again, she forced herself to draw a few deep, calming breaths and move toward the nearest rental booth.

Intent on exorcising this paralysis that was ruining her life, she didn't see the two young men till they stepped squarely in front of her. Startled, she retreated a pace and looked at them, something she had avoided lately with strange men.

One looked like a Mexican brigand, barrel-chested, with a luxuriant black moustache that reached to curly sideburns. His cheeks were dimpled, though, and beneath the hirsute disguise, he had a round, innocent baby face and laughing dark eyes.

The other? Hair that had been blondish-red had darkened to a vibrant auburn streaked from the sun. The lanky eighteen-year-old frame had filled out with hard muscle and use, and gray eyes that used to tease her when he'd deigned to look at her at all now regarded her with cool, critical appraisal.

“Shea! Good grief, it's been forever!”

“Miss Benoit.” The austere line of his mouth relaxed in a slight grin. He returned a villainously battered gray Stetson to his head while his friend did the same with a concho-banded black one. “Did you ever know Geronimo Sanchez?”

There were a good many Sanchezes at the ranch, but she pursued a tugging memory and laughed delightedly, offering her hand. “You used to give me piñon nuts. You even cracked them for me! And you tried to teach me how to rope.”

He didn't shake her hand, but pressed his warm cheek to it for a moment and kissed it. “I thought you were the cutest
chica
around.” He grinned. “Now you're one damn beautiful
mujer!
Why'd you leave us for so long?”

“I went off to school six years ago while you fellows were rambling around Mexico and points south. And since I've had a job, it's been more practical for Patrick to come to see me.”

Geronimo scoffed. “You mean Vashti gives you the heaves.”

“If she makes Patrick happy, that's what counts,” said Tracy defensively. “Especially since he went blind. How is he?”

Shea answered, but his manner was as chillingly remote as Geronimo's was flirtatiously friendly. “If you can imagine Patrick paralyzed on one side, flat in bed, that's how he is.”

She flinched, not able to grasp such a disaster for the man who'd been father and grandfather to her since she came to live at the ranch when she was four, after her parents, freedom riders, had been killed in Alabama.

As nearly as Tracy could decipher the complicated Scott-O'Shea-Revier-Quintana family connections, Patrick was a sort of great-uncle. He was the only son of Santiago Scott and Christina Revier, who between them had mingled the bloods of the founders of Rancho del Socorro, Yaqui, Apache, Irish, German and assorted Anglo strains. Patrick, hence Shea, sprang from the proud, sometimes tragic legitimate side.

Tracy came from the stranger seed, a quixotic graft to the family tree added by Johnny Chance, the young labor organizer killed in the Bisbee deportation of striking miners back in 1917. Christina Revier had borne his child in the shelter of Santiago Scott's love and name, but inside the family there'd never been any mystification about it, or any shame. Johnny Chance's memory was accepted and honored. His son had died in the Spanish Civil War, leaving the daughter who died in the south.

Precariously, that line had survived, managing to reproduce itself in each generation, sustained by the rooted, stable people of the ranch. It was hard not to feel under some kind of a curse, though Tracy was determined not to be a martyr.

“My bags are over there,” she said, not following up on Shea's report of Patrick's condition because there was nothing to say.

Shea frowned at the canvas duffel and under-seat bag. “I hope you're planning to stay longer than that indicates.”

“I can stay as long as Patrick wants. I've learned to travel light.”

He gave her his first grudging approval. “Guess being a big city reporter taught you that.”

“I did travel quite a bit for features.”

And to escape writing up weddings and engagements. That was why she'd learned photography, so she could cover more kinds of news. But even before the mugging, she'd been wanting to get out of the city, maybe try a children's book illustrated with her own photos.

“Will the paper save a job for you?” Geronimo asked.

“They'll buy any features they like.”

Swinging the duffel over his shoulder and scooping up the small bag, Shea sounded almost derisive. “It's not exactly as if you need the money.”

Though the ranch and extensive family holdings in real estate, mining and freighting were controlled by the main branch of the family, Tracy's inherited bar sinister brought with it a very comfortable trust fund. Jet-setting held no lure for her, though. Maybe it was a legacy from Johnny Chance, but she wanted to do something useful, something she could feel good about. Not that she hadn't taken some glamorous vacations and enjoyed them thoroughly. But to live that way all the time was like a steady diet of rich desserts.

“You're not a pauper yourself,” she told Shea crisply. “And maybe people who don't
have
to work need to the most.”

“Zappo!” applauded Geronimo, giving her a lingering hand up into the high-floored cab of the dusty sage-green pickup. It was scratched and dented but sported extra-wide treads to ease through mud and deep sand that would capture most tires. “If this kissin' cousin of yours acts up,
chica
, let him have it in the chops!”

They were cousins, in a degree so elusive that she wasn't about to try to puzzle it out, but she doubted there'd be any kissing. She didn't know why, but Shea was unmistakably hostile.

Maybe he faulted her for not staying in closer touch with his stricken father? She hadn't been back since a brief visit three years ago, when Vashti had been unmistakably rude, but she had phoned Patrick every week and written him occasionally, enclosing clippings of her stories.