The Valiant Women Read Online Free PDF

killed two more rabbits and five lizards. Socorro’s pile of meal cakes grew. Together they worked all the flesh off the rabbit skins and then Shea spread brains and offal on them.
    There wouldn’t be time to tan the hides well, but he wanted them as soft as possible to make Socorro’s footgear. The soles of her little leather shoes were now completely worn out. Fortunately he still had his shoes, though his garment was Socorro’s extra rebozo, kilted about his waist. Almost as much as he wanted a deer for food, he wanted one’s hide to cover himself in more manly fashion.
    As he grew stronger, they talked more, especially at night while the stars glittered above them, owls hooted and coyotes sang in the distance.
    â€œI don’t think I ever thanked you for saving me,” he said, aghast at the realization. “God’s whiskers! Well, lady, I’m thanking you now and always will.”
    He sensed her smile in the darkness. “I saved you for myself, Shea. It is not good—it’s almost impossible—to walk the Gran Desierto alone.”
    He knew she spoke of more than a desert journey.
    When he told her about Michael, she reached across the space between them on the sand and pressed his hand. “He is with your mother,” she said softly, “and the mother of us all. But to lose your twin! When you came from so far away. A green land, you say? Big trees? Tell me about it, Shea.”
    And he did, the country he loved, and the English overlordship he hated. He even made a stab at trying to explain to her and himself how the United States and Mexico had come to seem more and more to him like England and Ireland.
    â€œYour cheek is better now,” she told him. “And your back is almost healed.”
    But he knew he’d carry the scars to his grave; and with them a hatred of the United States as searing as the iron that had branded him forever.
    She was still touching him. Sweet pain ran through his nerves, gorged his veins. He made himself keep his hands off her, breaking into sweat with the effort. She was still afraid of men; he sensed it when they happened to touch and she swiftly moved away, or when he was watching her, guard down, and she happened to glance up to meet his eyes. He was sure she liked him, was proud of him in a fiercely protective way because she’d saved his life; but he also knew fear when he saw it.
    Socorro was afraid. He mustn’t risk making that dread worse.
    â€œTell me about Alamos,” he said abruptly, and breathed easier when she took her hand away though he hungered for that light, brushing touch.
    She told him of the old colonial silver town nestled among the mountains, of its great cathedral still bearing the Royal Arms of Spain over the entrance, the Plaza de las Armas, her father’s house with the long gallery.
    â€œDon’t you want to go back?” Shea asked.
    â€œNo,” she said so quickly that he knew she’d already thought about it. “My uncle would make me marry his brother-in-law, an awful old man who smells like a goat and has already buried four wives! It was partly to stop his urging the match that my father betrothed me to my cousin in California.”
    Shea’s heart stopped. But sure, what had he expected? A young woman of her class would naturally marry a Spaniard of good blood and family, someone picked by her folks.
    â€œWell, I’ll get you out there,” Shea promised grimly. He owed her that. He owed her anything.
    â€œI—I don’t want to go.”
    Shea could scarcely believe the whisper. He lay transfixed for a moment. Except as a fleeting dream, he hadn’t let himself think she might stay with him.
    â€œWhat do you want then, lady?”
    Silence. Then muffled weeping. Shea sat up, leaned awkwardly above her. “Socorro! Chiquita! ”
    Sobs wrenched her. To hell with whether or not it scared her, she needed badly to be held! Cradling her