The Promise of Jenny Jones (11 page)

Stopping to breathe, she gripped the bars of an iron gate to hold herself upright and cast a fearful glance behind to see if the man pursued. The quiet street was deserted. Here there were no noisy vendors; no wagons rattled over the cobblestones. Only the distant splash of a fountain disturbed the silence.

Thick adobe walls lined the street, overhung with leafy branches, shielding fine houses from envy and curiosity. As her heart quieted, Graciela became aware of voices behind the walls and theiron gate , the light voices of servants gossiping and laughing as they attended to their chores.

"Please?" she called. "I need help." Gripping the iron bars, she peered inside at the statue of a saint guarding the doors to a fine house that reminded her of Aunt Tete's hacienda.

Homesickness raised tears to her eyes and made her knees go weak. "Please. Help me!"

A woman approached the gate wearing a frown and a damp apron that smelled like laundry soap. She scowled at Graciela and waved a hand in front of her nose. "Get away from here! Go!" Someone called a question, and she glanced over her shoulder. "It's only a beggar."

Pride lifted Graciela's chin. "I am not a beggar," she said swiftly. "Inform your mistress that Graciela Sanders, the great-niece of Dona Theodora Barrancas y Talmas, begs your lady's kindness and assistance. You will do this at once, por favor."

The washerwoman grinned and rolled her dark eyes toward heaven. "Where did you learn such a pretty speech?" She turned her head to call over her shoulder. "Even the street trash is putting on airs now."

For the first time in her life Graciela spied no respectful recognition at the mention of her aunt's name. This woman—this servant!—laughed at her. Shock and confusion drained the color from her face.

The servant woman waved her hands in a shooing motion. "There's nothing for you here. Get away from the gate or I'll call someone. You won't welcome a beating from Jose." Frowning, not a flicker of sympathy in her gaze, she watched Graciela's shaking hands fall away from the iron bars.

Frightened, Graciela moved out of the woman's line of sight and sank to her knees, pressing her back to the high wall before she covered her face in her hands. Hot tears wet her fingers.

When she left the hotel this morning, she had anticipated a great adventure. She had not been afraid.

Now she trembled with fear. She was lost and hungry, and every stranger who looked at her made her stomach hurt. Overwhelmed by her own helplessness, she sobbed into her hands.

When no more tears would come, she wiped her eyes, hiccupped, and stared at the filth on her toes. She longed for a bath and something to eat.At this moment she would gladly have taken a pair of scissors to her hair if Jenny had appeared at the end of the quiet street.

The thought made her cringe. Forming a fist, an unladylike gesture her mother would have disapproved, she struck the adobe wall.

The hated Jenny would not have given up. And neither would she. Her small chin steadied into a stubborn angle that her mother would have recognized.

She had begun with a plan, and she would see it through. Somehow. If no more bad men grabbed her. If she was fortunate.

What choice did she have?

After a final homesick glance toward the iron gates that closed her away from the only life she knew, she turned away, dragging her bare feet over the rough cobbles toward the noise and smells of commerce and people.

She told herself that Jenny wouldn't have been afraid.

* * *

Sunlight bounced off the Rio Nazas and momentarily blinded Ty as the train chuffed across the bridge. Turning his face from the window, he consulted his pocket watch. The conductor swore they would arrive inDurangoon schedule atseven o'clock, but clearly it would be later. Nothing ran on schedule inMexico.

After returning his watch to his vest pocket, he pulled his hat down over his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, and tried to doze, but an active mind interfered with sleep.

The way he had it figured,the red-haired woman was headed forMexico City. If he'd guessed right, then catching her bordered on hopeless, but he couldn't return toCaliforniaand tell Robert that he hadn't at least tried.

Unfortunately, he'd heard there was a large Anglo population in the capital. AnAmericanaand a Mexican child wouldn't be an anomaly there. Plus,Mexico Citywas huge. He'd never find the red-haired woman and his niece.

Opening his eyes, he shoved up the brim of his hat and frowned out the window past streaks of soot and oily smoke. The train had entered a fertile valley enclosed by the wrinkled arms of the Sierra Madres. Small farms appeared with increasing frequency, brave patches of green scratched out of the gray-brown earth. He spotted slag piles spilling down the face of hills thrusting up from the valley floor.

Before the train arrived atDurango, he had to decide if he would get off and give the town a cursory search just in case that was the red-haired woman's destination, although he couldn't think why it would be. He doubted she was interested in the thermal springs, and she wasn't a miner.

He stayed on the train after it stopped at theDurangostation, scowling out the window, trying to decide if it was worth looking for her here or if he'd be wasting time.

The town was larger than he had expected, housing perhaps ten to fifteen thousand souls. He saw a church spire rising near the center of town, watched the sun sinking past a surprising number of trees. Losing interest in the town, he idly watched a flock of child beggars descend on the passengers stepping out of the train. When the children were certain no further prey would emerge from the cars, they ran after the people walking toward waiting carts or carriages.

Ty's gaze settled on one of the children who had remained behind. She stared at the train with utter despair, her shoulders dropped,her small body trembling on the verge of collapse. Her hair was filthy and wild, and a thin shapeless rag covered her frame. What a waste, he thought. She was going to be a beauty one day. With those eyes…

"What?" Abruptly, he sat up straight and his gaze sharpened. He knew those eyes as well as he knew his own. Hell, he ought to. He stared into those same blue-green eyes every morning in his shaving mirror.

Before he could recover from the shock of finding his niece so easily and in such unexpected circumstances, a man pushed away from the side wall of the depot and stormed toward her. No, not a man. A woman dressed in male trousers and a lightweight poncho that swung open at the side slits to reveal a pistol strapped to her waist.

Ty couldn't believe his eyes. She had done something to her hair, and now it was as black as roofing pitch. Stiff waxy tufts stuck out between her ears and her hat. Whoever the hell this woman was, she didn't possess a stitch of femalevanity, that was for damned certain.

It was also certain that she was furious. Although he couldn't hear what she was shouting, she started waving her arms and screaming at his niece even before she reached the girl.

Ty rose out of his seat, bending to the window while hastily gathering his belongings. With large hopeless eyes, his niece watched the raging advance of the now black-haired woman. As the woman rushed forward, her expression hardened and her arm rose as if she intended to beat Ty's niece into pulp.

His shoulders tensed. If she struck his niece, by God he would kill her.

When she was almost on top of his niece, the child stumbled forward and wrapped her arms around the now-black-haired woman's waist and sank into her. The woman stopped and the descent of her arm halted. Her expression flickered from fury to surprise to confusion to exasperation. Ty read her emotions as easily as reading words on a page. For a desperado, she was amazingly transparent.

She waved both hands in the air as if she didn't know what to do with them, all the while looking down at the child. Then she rolled her eyes toward heaven, heaved a massive sigh, and dropped to her knees on the cobblestones. She gathered the child into her arms and awkwardly patted the child's back while the child clung to her and sobbed on her neck.

She was a large woman, dressed as a man and wearing a sidearm. Ty didn't doubt that she knew how to use it. But right now, the child-stealer wore an expression of helpless confusion that would have done credit to the smallest, most feminine of creatures.

Ty had no idea what had just happened here. Frowning, he watched the woman and the child holding each other and could not imagine why either of them was dressed the way she was or what their relationship might possibly be.

A cloud of gray-white smoke belched past the window, obscuring his view, and a whistle screamed overhead. The boards lurched beneath his feet. Slinging his saddlebags over his shoulder, he strode down the aisle and out the door at the end of the car,then jumped to the ground. When he looked up, the now-black-haired woman and his niece had disappeared. They couldn't have gone far.

Before he set off to follow, he shot a glance toward the departing train. Damned if his horse wasn't on its way toMexico City. How many horses had he lost now? Three? Cursing, he rapidly crossed the square and peered into the lengthening shadows creeping down narrow streets.

He spotted them about a block ahead, the large woman and the small girl. The woman had a protective hand on the child's shoulder. His niece rested her head against the woman's side.

Ty followed, keeping well behind them, pausing when they did. At the corner, the woman bent and lifted his niece, slinging the child over her shoulder like a sack of grain. She carried the girl another six blocks, to the entrance of a hotel that Ty would have overlooked entirely if the woman hadn't turned in at a door recessed from the street.

When he was certain that she wasn't coming out again, he walked around the block, looking for the alley, pinning the location in his mind. A thick stench of roasting tobacco leaves burned his nostrils when he passed a factory on the north side of the hotel. To the west, a man wearing an apron hung lanterns in front of a cantina. In the street to the south, vendors packed away their wares for the night. When he had circled back to the hotel entrance, he stopped across the street and lit a cigar, frowning and considering his next move.

Who the hell was she? He kept seeing her face in his mind. Tanned, strong features, a chiseled, stubborn jaw, blue eyes, one of them still bruised from the fight in Verde Flores. And that magnificent figure. The poncho she'd worn at the depot was no shield against his memory. A man didn't forget breasts like hers.

He almost laughed aloud. After a lifetime of chasing soft, dainty creatures no larger than dolls, it amused him to realize that no woman had riveted his interest as did the tall strange-haired woman with the wicked punch who had stolen his niece.

Shaking his head, he kicked at a horse-apple and waited for full darkness to settle.

CHAPTER 6

J enny sat by the window, hoping for a cool breeze while she watched Graciela wolf down a plate of food the manager had sent to their room. Between bites, the kid told of a harrowing day, about a man who had stroked her bare legs, about being chased by adults and street children, about falling and skinning her knee, about a wild dog that had terrified her and snapped at her bare feet.

The horror of what might have been robbed Jenny of any appetite. Her own supper sat untouched beside the tub she had ordered up to the room.

She wanted to shout and scream, wanted to beat the kid senseless. She wanted to point out that Graciela deserved the scares she had received and was damned lucky that nothing worse had happened. Through Graciela's bath, and throughout her recitation of the day's frightening events, anger and accusations burned on Jenny's tongue.

"Kid," she said, when Graciela's torrent of words shuddered to a halt, "I've got a lot to say, but first … you did fine out there. You handled yourself a lot better than I ever expected you would."

The praise came hard, but Jenny figured it would soften the kid for the harder discussion to follow. Besides, she conceded grudgingly, the kid deserved a word of praise. Jenny knew how hard it was on the streets. Earlier today, she wouldn't have given a centavo for the kid's chances to end her escapade relatively unscathed.

"How'd you know to kick that bastard in the…"she paused and coughed into her hand. "How'd you know to bite and kick him?"

Graciela pushed a long strand of wet hair away from her face and her chin came up. "I thought about what my mama would do." Her expression dared Jenny to scoff.

"Huh." Jenny tried to imagine Marguarita kicking some son of a bitch in the cojones. Impossible. "Well," she said finally, "your mother was a brave woman." That much was true.

Graciela's eyebrows lifted as if she hadn't expected Jenny's response. They studied each other. "How did you know I'd go to the train station?"

"That wasn't difficult." Jenny shrugged. "I guessed that you'd remember me saying your stinking cousins might show up on theseven o'clock."

The kid frowned. "I forgot you would be there too."

"It's damned lucky for you that I was."

"That's true," the kid admitted in a small voice. Sooty lashes came down on her cheeks as she closed her eyes and shivered. "I didn't want you to cut my hair."

"I figured." Jenny pushed a hand through her own sticky, matted hair. She wondered how long it would take for the bootblack to wear off. "Look, kid,it's good you got scared out there, because we can't go through this again, you understand? You wrecked our plan. I didn't find us a new hotel because I thought you might come back here. Now the clerk knows I've altered my appearance."Which meant that she'd rubbed bootblack in her hair for fricking nothing.

"Plus, you can't imagine what it was like when I didn't know where you were or what was happening to you." She looked out the window, up toward Marguarita's star. "I gave your mother my word. I promised that I'd take you to your father inCalifornia." She turned back to Graciela. "That's what I'm going to do, so you just make up your mind to it. The thing is,I need your help. You can't be fighting me every step of the way. That means we have to agree on a few rules. Such as, you don't run away again."