The Promise of Jenny Jones (34 page)

"Here." Graciela curved her hand around the neck of a bottle of mescal. Mescal packed a powerful punch and she was glad to have it.

Jenny pulled the cork with her teeth and handed the bottle to Ty. He nodded gratefully, took a long pull,then wiped the back of his hand across his lips. Graciela knelt on one side of him, Jenny on the other.

"This one could get me. It won't … but it could."

"It will," Jenny said flatly, "unless we get some help."

Graciela stared at him. "I'll sew you up!"

Jenny's chest rose and fell before she spoke. "Honey, this is different. That bullet has to come out."

Graciela wrung her hands, and tears and snot rolled down her face. "We'll take it out!"

Jenny gazed into his eyes. He knew what she was going to say. They held each other's gaze. "We'll talk about it, but I don't think so. If I make one tiny mistake, I'll kill him." What she didn't say, what made her wild and frantic inside,was knowing that even if she got the bullet out, he'd already lost too much blood to ride. Ty wasn't going anywhere.

Graciela clawed at her arm. "You have to try! Jenny, you have to cut out the bullet! I'll help!"

Ty held Jenny's gaze for another minute,then reached for Graciela's hand. "Honey, you and Jenny can't stay here. Luis was one of the men who blew up the train. We didn't get him. He'll be coming after us."

"We won't go," Graciela wailed. "We won't leave you!"

"Graciela, we've got two canteens. Only enough water to last until tomorrow, a couple more days if we ration. And no food. Even if Luis wasn't after you, you'll die if you stay here."

Oh God, oh God, oh God. The words clicked through her mind, drowning the scream stuck in her throat.

She made herself speak in a low calm voice. "He'll need nursing, Graciela, constant tending for at least a week. But we don't have food or water to keep us alive for a week. If we stay, it's suicide."

Graciela made a choking sound. "But if we leave, he'll die!"

Reaching across Ty's bloody shirt, she caught Graciela's hand and squeezed it gently, swallowing the scream bubbling in her throat. "I'm going to ask you to do something that I know you don't want to do."

"What?"

"I want you to go stand by the horses and let me and youruncle Ty speak privately."

"I don't want to." But she slowly pushed to her feet and dragged her feet toward the horses, where she stood, looking back at them, wringing her hands together.

Jenny accepted a slug from the mescal bottle, passed it back to him. She took his hand and held it firmly. "Drink up, cowboy. I want you drunk as a skunk before I go poking around your insides. Least I can do isgive that bullet a try. Better I kill you than let the desert or Luisdo it."

He squeezed her hand. "No sense putting either of us through that." His steady gaze told her that he saw his future. "You need to get her somewhere safe. Leave me a canteen and a loaded pistol."

Oh God, oh God, oh God. She gazed into his eyes. "I don't know if I can do this, Ty. Just ride away and leave you here," she said in an unsteady voice, blinking hard.

"Listen to me, darlin'. There's no sense all three of us waiting for the vultures. Now you know I'm right." He clenched his jaw, waited a minute,then continued talking. "How close is the next village, do you figure?"

"You've been through these parts. There isn't much of anything betweenChihuahuaand El Paso Del Norte. No place where they'd have a surgeon or a doctor. Best we can hope for is a local healer and some luck."

He nodded. "You'll have to see to it. I can't ride. Couldn't get back on that horse in a month of Sundays."

She stared at him through a film of tears. "I can't do it, Ty. I can't ride out of here and leave you to die alone in the sun and the desert. I cannot frickingdo that ."

His grip tightened when she would have snatched her hand away. "Listen to me. If you stay here, Graciela dies right along with you and me."

"Someone might come along and—"

"And they might not. Or it might be some more goddamned Barrancas cousins. Luis is still out there unless you killed him, and I missed seeing it."

She shook her head, cursing Luis Barrancas.

"Jenny? Look at me. You made a promise. You gave your word to take her to Robert. Now get on that horse and go. Right now. You think I want you and Graciela sitting here watching me die? Get the hell out of here."

Moaning, she leaned forward and beat her fists on the ground. If she stayed, she might be able to save his life. Maybe. Maybe someone would happen along with food and water.

"Jenny," he said quietly, "there aren't any promises between you and me. But you made a promise to a woman who died in your place."

She lifted her head and screamed at him. "Just shut up about that! Don't you think I know it?" Right now, she hated Graciela. If it wasn't for the risk to Graciela, she'd stay here with Ty and take her chances. But she couldn't do that. She had made a promise to a dying woman, and now a dying man was telling her that she had to honor that promise.

"And I made a promise to my brother. I'm depending on you to keep your promise and mine."

"I know it, I know it. Oh Ty. Oh God." Hands gripping desert sand, she dropped her head and felt the scald of tears burn her eyes. "Don't die," she whispered. "I'll send someone back for you. Just don't die. Hang on."

"That's my girl," he said softly, tipping the Mescal bottle to his lips. "Jenny? I have no right to ask this, but … wait at the ranch for a month. Will you do that?" A painful lopsided grin twisted his mouth. "I'm feeling lucky. I'll come for you."

She lifted her head, tears glittering in her eyes. "You stupid son of a bitch! Why'd you have to go get yourself shot?"Raising on her knees, she leaned forward and kissed him hard on the lips. Then, staring into his eyes, she shouted for Graciela. "Come over here and say goodbye to your uncle. We're leaving."

Graciela ran forward and dropped to her knees beside him. "No! I won't leave you! We have to stay together!"

Ty touched her cheek. "You go with Jenny. I'll meet up with you both at the ranch."

Graciela dashed tears from her eyes. "Please don't die, Uncle Ty. Please don't die! I'll pray real hard for you."

Jenny stood and looked down at him. "Is there anything you want me to tell Robert or your mother?" The talking was making him weaker. And looking at him was killing her by slow degrees. His pale face, the sweat on his brow and upper lip, the blood drying on his shirt. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

"Tell them … ohhell, just tell them to take care of my girls." His eyes urged her to go,then flickered with pain when Graciela threw herself on him, sobbing.

"Do you have everything you need?" Jenny whispered. She picked Graciela up and slung the kid over her shoulder. She saw the canteen and pistol in his lap, and the bottle of mescal before her vision blurred. She'd also seen the effort he made to appear alert, to remain conscious.

"Just go," he muttered, his voice starting to slur.

"Ty?" she whispered, drinking in the last sight of him. "Thank you for … for everything. I love you."

His head dropped and she didn't know if he'd heard. Every instinct screamed at her to stay with him. He needed her. He needed nursing, needed that bullet out of his body. He was a good man; he deserved better than to die alone on the Mexican desert.

"I'll find a village. I'll send someone back. I promise!"

I promise. Never had she detested two words more. Blinded by tears, she threw Graciela up on the black, pulled her skirts to her thighs, and swung up behind her. Because she couldn't bear to look at him again, she cantered away without a backward glance.

* * *

Fighting to hold his eyelids open, Ty watched until all he could see of them was a small plume of dust floating against the horizon. By then he had dulled the pain in his side by drinking most of the mescal. Silence settled like a shroud.

His chances weren't good. He knew that. With a full canteen, and if he didn't move much, he figured he might have four days. As weak as he was, as much blood as he'd lost, he probably had less. But he was a determined bastard, and tough. He wouldn't go easy.

Shifting his back against the saddle, he opened his eyes and spotted three buzzards circling a spot about two miles in the distance. His hand tightened on the grip of the pistol.

He had enough bullets to stave off predators, at least for a while. The night chill would be a problem and the heat of the day, but no worse than the lack of food.

Closing his eyes, he let his head drop toward his chest.

Damn it. He should have told her that he loved her. He should have told them both.

Because when he'd watched them ride away, he'd recognized the truth. The same thing had happened with his father. The old man had to die before Ty realized that he'd loved him. Now it took his own dying to make him recognize what he'd been fighting for weeks.

Damn it. He should have told them. He should have said the words.

The gun slipped from his hand, and he slowly rolled onto his side.

* * *

Jenny rode through the sunset and into the night, Graciela limp and sleeping against her chest. Sometimes exhaustion won, and she dozed, waking with a panicked jerk and wondering how long she had slept. Finally, near dawn, she smelled a village and veered east toward the ripe scents of habitation.

There were only a dozen huts arranged around a weed-clogged plaza and a cracked fountain, which had long ago ceased to function. That was enough. Reining before the first shack she came to, she stumbled toward a rawhide door, reeling with fatigue.

"I need help, por favor," she whispered to a man who peered through the stitching at the edges of the rawhide. "I have dinero , Señor. I can pay, but please … help me."

He studied her reddened, exhausted eyes, scanned her rumpled, bloodstained jacket and skirt. Then he glanced toward Graciela slumped on the horse in front of his house.

He opened the door. " Mi casa es su casa, Señora."

" Gracias, Señor, gracias. My child," she said, collapsing against the doorjamb, her gaze grateful. The man called to someone behind him, and a woman stepped past Jenny, slidingher a look of curiosity before she rushed to help Graciela off the horse and into the house.

First, Jenny saw to it that Graciela washed and ate. Before she touched the food Senora Gonzales offered her, she drew Senor Gonzales into the yard and the early glow of sunshine.

She told him about Ty, her voice urgent and shaking. "He's out about a day and half's ride. He'll need a healing woman and a carrying litter." Senor Gonzales rubbed the money she had pressed into his palm. Then he nodded and turned away from her, heading toward the plaza, which looked more desolate in full daylight than it had in the faint hints of sunrise.

For a long moment Jenny considered waiting for Senor Gonzales to return with Ty. That's what she wanted to do. Then her head cleared and she realized that imposing on the hospitality of these people for three days would strain the resources of the village.

Regardless, if she had truly believed the village men would bring Ty in alive, nothing on earth could have induced her to leave.

But she couldn't bear to be here if what they brought back was his body. She wanted to remember him as he had been, vividly alive, larger than life, a man whose eyes danced with pale fire,a man whose hot touch could send her crashing to her knees. A hard, dangerous man capable of surprising tenderness, a thief who had stolen a love she hadn't know she possessed.

"Damn it!" He would have laughed at the moisture in her eyes, would have ridiculed her weakness. Raising her hands, she ground the heels of her palms against her eyelids. She had to be strong for Graciela. Graciela had loved him, too.

After she ate food she felt too numb to taste, she and Graciela climbed into the same hammock and held each other until Graciela cried herself to sleep. Eventually Jenny slept, not waking until the heat of the day had passed.

She bought fresh clothing from Senora Gonzales, and a wagon from an old man who looked dazed by the number of pesos she dropped in his hand. She hitched the black to the wagon, loaded jugs of water and a basket of food, and she and the kid drove away from the village that would become the grave for her heart.

Two days later, hollow-eyed and trembling with fatigue, Jenny and Graciela crossed theRio Grandeand enteredEl Paso,Texas.

The next afternoon, wearing hastily purchased travelingensembles, they boarded the westbound Southern Pacific, holding tickets forSan Francisco.

* * *

The accommodations on the Southern Pacific were so far superior to those aboard the Mexican National Railway it seemed impossible the two railroads could occupy the same universe.

No dogs, chickens, or piglets roamed the aisles of the Southern Pacific. The scent of food baskets and an overflowing latrine did not permeate every breath. Seats were upholstered. There was a separate dining car and private compartments.

The funds Marguarita had supplied were running low, but Jenny splurged for a private compartment with sleeping shelves rather than subject herself or Graciela to sleeping sitting up.

"I'm sad," Graciela said quietly, leaning her head against Jenny's shoulder.

"I know." Jenny took her hand and held it in her lap.

They stared unseeing out their compartment window asNew Mexicorolled beneath the wheels of the train. The desert wasn't as sparse here. There were clumps of chaparral, more varieties of cactus. Stands of piñon and desert pine.

By now, they would have found Ty's body in the Mexican desert. Perhaps they had buried him there. Or maybe they had brought him back to the village. If the village had a name, Jenny didn't know it. That upset her, and she worried and fretted about it all day. Not until they donned their hats to go to the dining car did she decide it wasn't important that she didn't know the name of the village. He was gone. That's all that mattered. She had found him, and now he was gone.

Long into the night, she lay on her sleeping shelf, gazing at the curved roof, wincing when Graciela moaned in her sleep, listening to the ratchety click of the wheels carrying them into a starry void. She should be considering what she would do after she left the Sanders ranch, but her mind wouldn't function. She hadn't yet accepted Ty's death;she couldn't, wouldn't . How could she bear to think about saying good-bye to Graciela, too?