A Mating of Hawks Read Free Page A

optimism!” Tracy charged.
    He shrugged. “When you see what’s brewing at the ranch, you’ll know why I’m so bright and cheerful.”
    Turning off the Nogales highway, they followed Sonoita Creek along a bottom flanked by the Santa Ritas to the north and stretching into foothills and mountains to the south, fading into Mexico. Juniper and oak studded red earth and gray rocks ascending up the mountains. Giant black walnuts outlined whitetrunked sycamores and fresh green cottonwoods. Cattle browsed among catclaw and mesquite, and there was comparatively little cactus.
    Red Mountain rose behind the little town of Patagonia. “A developer wanted to put in a big subdivision here,” remarked Geronimo. “But the sewage system is in such bad shape that the State Water Quality Control Board wouldn’t issue a permit.”
    â€œJust wait,” grunted Shea.
    They were getting into country now that Tracy remembered from riding over it. Her eyes feasted on the familiar stretch of the sparkling creek, running shallow in its wide bed, but life-giving here, of boundless importance. The valley broadened, bottom lands and gentle slopes guarded by mountains, and to the east were the jagged Whetstones, dark blue against the azure of the Huachucas.
    Tracy’s flesh prickled and she was close to tears. It wasn’t only that she knew this country. The remembering went deeper than that. “I wonder,” she said softly, “how it looked to them.”
    â€œWho?” frowned Shea.
    â€œSocorro. Patrick O’Shea. Tjúni and Santiago.”
    â€œAfter all they’d been through, I expect they were damned glad to find a place to stop.” Tracy thought Shea must resemble the Irishman for whom he was named, who’d fought for Mexico in the San Patricio Battalion, the one Mangus Coloradas had protected for Socorro’s sake and called “Hair of Flame.”
    â€œSocorro must have been some lady,” said Geronimo. “There she was, brought up guarded and protected, and all of a sudden she’s alone in the cinder cones and lava flows, with her escort dead. Finds water. Lives off desert plants. And then she finds her redhead, just a husk of baked rawhide, and brings him back to life.”
    â€œIt’s strange how all those four who started the ranch had been the same as dead,” Tracy mused. “Santiago was the only person left after scalp-hunters hit, and he’d have died if Shea and Socorro hadn’t found him. Tjúni’s whole village had been wiped out. So there you had an Irishman, a Spanish creole, a Mexican vaquero and a Papago, all thrown together and depending on each other.” Tracy smiled at Geronimo. “And then your family came to work the cattle.”
    He nodded. “Don’t forget Talitha Scott. She raised Socorro’s and Shea’s children after Socorro died so young, and she held the ranch together when Shea went off to the un-Civil War.”
    He’d never come back to that yellow-haired girl who’d adored him since childhood when he’d ransomed her and her half-Apache brother, James, but Talitha had at last found love and peace with Marc Revier, a young German mining engineer who’d taught her to read and waited yearningly for her to grow up.
    Surprisingly, Shea joined in. “The one I’ve always felt for was James. He didn’t fit with either Apaches or whites. When he became Fierro the raider, he must have known there was no chance for his people to shut out the whites.”
    â€œAt least he and Caterina left a child,” Tracy remembered.
    It was Sant, a grandson of Caterina, daughter of Shea and Socorro, who had married Christina, granddaughter of Talitha and Marc, at last uniting the separated bloods in Patrick, Shea’s father.
    The old house was hidden by huge trees except for glimpses of mellow adobe and broad veranda, but they didn’t turn in there, following