The Valiant Women Read Online Free PDF Page A

and the wild strawberry-tasting cactus fruits which she softened for him with a stick.
    â€œNow,” he said at last, trying to grin, but finding his face muscles wouldn’t work, “reckon—if you’ll help—I can make that water hole.”
    If he’d been able to stand upright, she’d have fitted under his arm. As it was, she put her arm determinedly about his waist and he sort of folded over her. Good thing he was starved way down from his usual 170 pounds. Even so, they made the trip in stages and when she finally eased him down beneath what was a big tree for that country, he was so done in that he couldn’t thank her in words; but he brushed her cheek.
    She shrank away, terror flaring in her eyes. He cursed himself. Must remember what she’d gone through. She shouldn’t have to wonder if she’d saved a wild beast who’d hurt her when its strength came back.
    Then she smiled. To Shea, it was like the lighting of candles in a church.
    Next day he could chew on bits of dried rabbit meat that Socorro had soaked and shredded. He hated to lie in the shade like a lummox, eating her small hoard of food, but he had to get strong in order to pull them out of here. His baked skin peeled, leaving more layers to come off, and he wondered if he’d ever have his own proper covering again.
    And his beard was growing. He didn’t like its itching heat and longed for a razor.
    Desert creatures still came to drink at the lower tinaja , their thirst more powerful than wariness of the intruders. Deer, gray foxes, rabbits and coyotes were the common visitors, along with doves which flew in mornings and evenings and quail which came late in the afternoon and spent the night in sheltering bushes, watering next morning before they flew away.
    Three bighorn sheep filed down one evening, majestic horns curving like the whorls of a massive shell. A solitary badger, gray and squat, dug a ground squirrel out of its burrow, dined and then slapped down to the water on its short legs with mighty curving claws. One twilight a mountain lion sprang on a deer, breaking its neck instantly.
    When Shea was strong enough, he’d get them a deer. On the fourth day after his resurrection, he collected a dozen good throwing stones. When Socorro came back from harvesting acacia, paloverde and ironwood beans, his throwing had garnered a big rabbit, a medium rattlesnake and one small lizard.
    She looked with sadness at the rabbit, with revulsion at the reptiles, before she recovered and smiled. “Why, you’re getting food for us without leaving your bed! I think, señor , you must be a shrewd and lazy man!”
    Though dampened by this, he laughed and said, “Shrewd, no, but lazy, loafing in the shade while you rustle around in the heat! Let me have the knife and I’ll fix the meat for drying.” At her expression, he grinned and said encouragingly, “Snake tastes a lot like chicken and I’ll bet the lizard’s not bad.”
    The truth was, of course, that unsalted meat tasted pretty glum, but at least the sun-drying took out some of the rawness. Taking his kills beyond the water hole, he skinned the rabbit carefully, saved the brains and offal for tanning by digging a hole in the sand, lining it with leaves, sand and a rock too large for animals to paw away. He saved the snakeskin, too.
    Long before he’d cut the creatures into strips he was exhausted, but he made himself hang the meat on a thorn bush and toss the bones and refuse as far as he could along the rocky bank. The snake’s head, of course, he’d cut off and buried. He’d heard too many stories about dead snakes biting.
    â€œShea!” Socorro stood by him with the water jug and a gourd of gruel. “Eat, drink and lie down!”
    â€œYes, lady,” he said with teasing obedience. But he was glad enough to lie down on the grass and vines beneath the tree.
    During the next few days he