The Promise of Jenny Jones (7 page)

"Why?" Jenny blinked. She'd never considered the why of it. "I guess I don't rightly know." Frowning, she turned her face to the window and sucked on her blistered tongue. "Maybe life didn't work out like she wanted it to. Maybe she didn't like living in a one-room shack at the edge of a played-out mine, trying to stretch one squirrel far enough to feed six kids." It occurred to her that things looked a little different when seen through an adult's perspective rather than through the eyes of one of those six kids. "Maybe she didn't like it that my pa hit her and kept her knocked—" She gave Graciela a long look. "Kept her with child," she finished primly.

Graciela turned the fiery tortilla between her fingers. "Did she tell you stories and give you kisses?"

"Huh? Well, I guess not! She didn't even kiss my pa. Kisses! Huh!"

"Oh." Graciela placed the tortilla on the seat beside her,then she blotted her lips with the torn piece of petticoat. She carefully tucked the piece of petticoat inside the cuff of her sleeve, then turned to Jenny and placed her small hands on top of Jenny's. She looked into Jenny's eyes. "I'm sorry you had a bad mama when you were little. She should have told you stories and given you kisses."

Jenny stared at her. Her chest suddenly hurt. "I'm sorry, too," she said in a strange voice that didn't sound like hers. She was silent for a minute,then said, "I thought you hated me."

"I do," Graciela said firmly, taking her hands away.

That was better, Jenny thought, feeling angry for no reason. It was a thousand times preferable to be hated than to have a six-year-old feeling sorry for her, for Christ's sake. She threw her tortilla out the window,then gazed at the passing landscape. She hadn't thought about her mother in years, not since she'd heard that the old lady had died. And then her first thought had been: Good riddance.

Now here she sat on a train going in the wrong direction, feeling sorry for herself because her mother hadn't looked like Marguarita, but instead had smelled like despair, and had never told her a story. Well, crud on a crust. So what? The day Jenny Jones drew aces was the day she'd fall over in a dead faint.

The heat built inside the car, and Graciela's eyes closed. She sagged against Jenny's shoulder,then slid down until her head was on Jenny's lap and her legs curled all tight and ladylike on the wooden seat.

Jenny leaned her head against the sooty windowpane, wishing it would open, and thought about the cousins. She needed a plan, because her sixth sense warned they would be on the next train after her. And next time, she wouldn't have the cowboy to help her

Thinking of him in her sleepy state, Jenny had to admit that the cowboy had been one good-looking son of a bitch.

Usually Jenny didn't pay much mind to a man's appearance. She just didn't think about men in terms of how they looked. But the cowboy had the same kind of eyes as Graciela, blue-green like the sea and fringed with soft brown lashes. Those eyes had been something to see, startling next to sun-darkened cheeks. Idly, she wondered how he'd gotten the black eye. It had started to go yellow so it wasn't fresh. He hadn't gotten it in the fight with Cousin Chub.

Miles rolled under the train, and her thoughts kept drifting back to him. The cowboy had the kind of tall, lanky physique that could mislead a person into thinking he might be more string than muscle. When Jenny first saw him, she'd half figured that Cousin Chulo, who was built like a beer barrel, would drop the cowboy after a couple of punches. But the cowboy's wiry form was all muscle, and he had staying power, by God.At the end, it was the cowboy who was still standing. Jenny grinned, remembering.

She wondered what the cowboy was doing this deep inMexico. That question led to a consideration ofher own situation.

Touching her fingertips to her forehead, she thought about her rig and the freight she'd been commissioned to haul back toEl Paso. Undoubtedly, her rig and cargo had been stolen seconds after her arrest. Mr. Comden would charge her for losing the load of bone buttons if she ever saw him again. She had to make sure that didn't happen. Good-byeTexas, hello somewhere else. It looked like her mule-skinning days were over.

To pass the time, she tried to remember what was inside the shack she'd rented inEl Paso, but couldn't recall anything she minded walking away from. A person like her didn't accumulate anything of much value. Unlike a certain prissy kid she knew, she was no fricking heiress.

Gazing out the window, Jenny watched a dry little village slip past the smoke-streaked pane. It was about as appealing as the cacti that surrounded it. Frowning, she looked down at Graciela's head in her lap and wished she could fall asleep that easily.

But her thoughts wouldn't settle down. Marguarita invaded her mind, and worries about the cousins, and the cowboy kept popping up too.

After a while, Jenny leaned to the bag at her feet, careful not to wake Graciela, and withdrew her battered dictionary. There was nothing like reading words to settle a fevered brain. Some of the definitions were like puzzles. They didn't make any more sense than the words did. She had to study them and ponder hard to work out the meaning. Many of the words she forgot almost as soon as she read them.

But other words sang to her imagination, and she said them over and over, charmed by the sound and wanting to commit them to memory.

Virile (vir-il) belonging to

Virility (vi-ril-i-ty) n. manhood.

"Virile," she said quietly. A soft word for a hard thing. Pursing her lips, she considered,then composed a sentence using the word. "The cowboy is virile."

Heat rushed into her cheeks, surprising her. Damned if thinking about the cowboy and virility didn't make her blush. Embarrassed, she looked around to see if anyone had noticed. There wasn't a soul who knew her who would have believed she was capable of blushing, in eluding herself.

It was a damned good thing that she wasn't going to see that cowboy again. Yes, sir, a damned good thing. She was happy that she and the cowboy had parted ways. Glad that the odds of seeing him again were mighty slim. She sure didn't want to see any son of a bitch who could make her blush. No sirree bob, she didn't.

He'd probably forgotten about her anyway.

That kind of man never gave a woman like Jenny Jones a second glance.

And she was glad about that. Yes, sir, she really was.

She stared out the train window and wished that she were tiny and beautiful, wished she could totter along on little bitty feet and wear pretty clothes that a cowboy might notice.

Sighing, she closed her dictionary, then her eyes, trying to decide what she would do when she and Graciela reached Hermits. She didn't have a fricking idea.

CHAPTER 4

A bloodred sunset cast coppery shadows behind Ty's horse as he rode into the village he had traveled weeks to find. The ruts curving down the main street were flanked by a few adobes; most of the dwellings were constructed of sticks and mud, roofed with tin or thatch. Scraggly patches of maize and beans rusted in the flaming light.

The village was too inconsequential to boast a church, but a small plaza intersected the road that wound up toward the Sierras. At the plaza Ty learned where he could buy a bed for the night, and he hired a boy to carry a message to Dona Theodora Barrancas y Talmas.

He preferred to speak to Marguarita immediately, but to highborn Mexicans, honor and courtesy were woven together as tightly as the strands of a rope. Arriving at the hacienda unannounced, unbathed, and unshaven, and at the dinner hour, would undoubtedly have offended. Choosing the lesser of two aggravations, he sent a message announcing his intention to call on Marguarita tomorrow.

He watched the boy climb on a burro and ride out of the village,then he rented a back room in the adobe across from the cantina and paid for a washtub and hot water. For an additional peso, his sharp-eyed landlady agreed to launder and press the clothing he would wear tomorrow when he rode to the Barrancas estate to inform Marguarita that he was taking her and her kid back toCaliforniaand Robert. Thinking about it didn't improve his disposition.

He resented his Mexican sister-in-law, and had argued with Robert against bringing her back. Marguarita had caused enough problems in the Sanders family six years ago. Her return would rekindle hostilities with her father, whose lands adjoined the Sanders ranch. Moreover, Ty didn't want his pragmatic, no-nonsense mother placed in the position of having to accommodate a skittish, spoiled beauty whose knowledge of cattle was undoubtedly limited to what appeared on her dinner plate.

Because it galled him that Robert had defied their father and married Don Barrancas's daughter, he didn't refer to Marguarita as his brother's wife, not even in his thoughts. His father had often raved that Mexicans belonged inMexico, not theUnited States; Ty had to agree that if Antonio Barrancas had remained south of the border, Robert wouldn't have gotten mixed up with his daughter. And Ty wouldn't be here now.

The boy still had not returned from the hacienda by the time Ty finished shaving, so he crossed the dusty lane to the cantina to have his supper and a tumbler of pulque.

The no-name village looked better by night. Deep shadow concealed the refuse in the ditches, hid the poverty. Lanterns swayed from tree limbs spreading over the tiny plaza and imparted a festive glow to the drabbest cantina he had yet observed.

The instant Ty stepped inside, the back of his neck prickled with the sudden tension of abruptly halted conversations. No matter how poor the village, there was usually music in the cantina, but not here, not tonight. And he noted the surprising presence of several respectable women. In utter silence he walked to a vacant table near the side door, aware of a dozen hostile eyes stabbing his back.

Similar situations had taught the expediency of pretending not to speak or understand the language.

"Supper," he said to a short waiter whose narrowed eyes made his resentment of this gringo all too clear. Rubbing his stomach, Ty spoke louder. "You speak American?" The waiter stared at him. "Food." He smacked his lips,then pantomimed drinking. "Pulque."

A low hiss of relief and contempt buzzed through the hot closeness of the night, and conversation resumed. A slender man, his upper lip concealed by a luxuriant mustache, addressed the others in a fusillade of words that he fired like bullets.

What the man said drove all thoughts of food out of Ty's head. He blinked at a savory pozole and a stack of flour tortillas, all appetite gone. After forcing himself to sample the stew, he concentrated on molding his expression into one of uncomprehending indifference.

Within minutes he understood that Marguarita Barrancas Sanders was dead. What shocked the hell out of him was to learn that she had been executed by a firing squad. Disbelief pinched his nostrils. He could sooner imagine his father rising from the grave than he could imagine Marguarita Barrancas committing a crime worthy of execution.

Old man Barrancas had sheltered Marguarita from the outside world, and Ty hadn't seen her often while they were growing up. When he did catch a glimpse, she had reminded him of a large-eyed doe, timid and poised to spring away. She had grown into a shy beauty with downcast eyes,who hid behind the curtains of her carriage or the edges of her fan. On those rare occasions when Ty had heard her speak, her voice had been low and musical and almost apologetic.

This fragile creature had died against an executioner's wall?

Highborn Mexican women were reared like hothouse flowers, protected and sheltered from life's unpleasant realities. They were guarded by hawkeyed duennas, fiercely shielded from insult by male relatives. Ty had long pondered how Robert had managed to get Marguarita alone long enough to impregnate her, and what he had seen in her to make him wish to bed her. From what Ty had observed of the aristocratic families in northernCalifornia, a patrician Mexican woman was the most boring creature in femininity. She prayed, embroidered, and gazed at the world with eloquent indifference.

What in God's name had such a woman done to merit a firing squad?

Pushing aside the platter of pozole, Ty leaned back on the legs of his chair and swallowed a long draft of pulque, letting the fiery alcohol burn down his gullet. Removing a penknife from the top of his boot, he lazily pared his fingernails, listening intently.

Gradually he culled the information that the slender man with the proud mustache was named Emil and was apparently one of Marguarita's Barrancas cousins. Fury twisted Cousin Emil's features as he shouted and exhorted those in the cantina to join him in pursuing a witch who had cast a spell on Marguarita.

"Think, Emil!" A woman stood, clutching a shawl to her breast though the night was hot. "You knew your cousin. Could theAmericanahave persuaded the senora to die against her will? The senora could have cried out and exposed the pretense. But she did not. What does this tell you?"

"It tells me Marguarita was bewitched." Emil gazed at the faces frowning up at him. "Are we to sit idle and allow a murderess to kill my cousin and kidnap her daughter?" He spit on the ground in disgust. "Do the men of this village have no honor?"

Until this moment Ty had not known if Robert's child was a girl or a boy. So it was a girl. He had a niece.

The woman stepped farther into the light and spoke into a swell of angry voices. "Senora Sanders was dying. Everyone knows this. I have it from the senora's own lips that it was her plan to switch places with theAmericana. In return, theAmericanaagreed to take Graciela to her father in NorteAmerica."

Emil flattened his palms on the table and leaned forward. His eyes glittered dangerously. "You lie. My cousin would never have trusted her daughter to a witch, to a convicted murderess. If Marguarita wanted Graciela to go north, which I am sure she did not, she would have asked me or Luis or Chulo to undertake this journey. Never would she ask a stranger."

The woman hesitated. A sharp reply hovered on her tongue, but she gazed into Emil's hot eyes and did not speak.

Emil's anger seared those around him. Spittle flew from his lips. "You all heard. Maria claims my cousin sent Graciela to her Americano father." His eyes returned to the woman and pinned her. "And where would that be?" he demanded in a voice that told everyone he knew the answer.