Harvest of Fury by Jeanne Williams

from Shea’s.
    Would the whole war be like this? Hearing of battles, but not knowing if Shea or Marc—or John Irwin, was in them, if they’d been hurt? Wrenching away from that agonizing prospect, she asked Pete if he thought the Confederates could give the Santa Cruz Valley any protection.
    â€œThose hundred men can’t do much but garrison Tucson and scout around a little.” Kitchen shrugged. “There aren’t many Unionists left in Tucson, but Hunter gave them a choice of swearing allegiance to the Confederacy or having their property confiscated and leaving the territory.”
    He named several of them. Solomon Warner, who’d opened his store in 1856 just a few days after the last Mexican troops withdrew, stocking his shelves with goods brought in by mules from Fort Yuma. Leaving his painfully developed business in rebel hands, he was on the way to Sonora. Sam Hughes, born in Wales, a cook, hotelkeeper, and prospector in California, had come to Tucson in 1858 and prospered by supplying grain and meat to the Overland Stage Company stations. Staunchly for the Union, he’d set his face for California.
    Gone from the territory, too, was Peter Brady, who’d visited the ranch with Andrew Gray’s railroad surveying party in the spring of 1853 when the German artist of the expedition, Charles Schuchard, had painted for Socorro the picture of the ranch house that hung in the sala . Brady, after the survey, had gone into ranching and mining and had most lately been post trader at Fort Mojave, where Beale’s wagon road crossed the Colorado. Gray himself had gone to fight for the Confederacy.
    â€œAnd Don Esteban Ochoa, the merchant,” Kitchen went on. “When he wouldn’t swear loyalty to the South, Hunter gave him just time to get his horse, weapons, and a few rations and leave town or be shot.”
    Except for Brady, Talitha knew the exiles only by reputation, but they were all decent, honorable men. She hated that they’d lost everything achieved through such risk and persistence. It didn’t seem fair that real Arizonans should be dispossessed by military forces of either side; but perhaps that was what war was all about: property and power.
    It was a relief, after Pete had jogged off, to pick up little Sewa and carry her out into the bright sunshine. Always, when she was sad, Talitha found that the warmth of that honey-brown skin and the playful mischief in the big dark eyes were good antidotes. Holding Talitha’s neck with one proprietary arm, the child pointed up the creek where two hawks were soaring.
    â€œ Deelicho! ” She used the Apache word. Then, chuckling, she added in Spanish, “ Gavilán .”
    â€œYes,” agreed Talitha. “And ‘hawk,’ too. We’ll have to ask Belen for the Yaqui.” Sewa spoke well for her twenty-one months. The main trouble was sorting out her Spanish, English, Apache, and Yaqui.
    The red-tails had made their nest for several springs now in a big sycamore and didn’t bother the smaller birds who nested close by, though Talitha had several times seen a group of robins chasing one of the hawks, pecking at the big bird, which made no effort to retaliate. Once, when ravens were after it, Talitha had marveled to see the hawk turn over and offer its talons, at which the ravens retreated, cawing as they flapped away.
    The hawks rose in great circles, crossing one another’s arcs till they almost touched, becoming small specks in the blue brightness. Then one dropped at great speed till Talitha could see it had partly folded its wings. When it seemed about to crash into the trees, it opened its wings and climbed high again, seeming to hang above its mate. Wheeling and plummeting, the birds passed out of sight as riders came into view.
    All three O’Shea youngsters were learning how to track, how to fade into the landscape, and constantly increasing their skill with bow and arrow.