The Promise of Jenny Jones

by Maggie Osborne

The mother didn't need Ty's help. She was standing over Cousin Luis, panting and gulping air, staring hate down at his unconscious form. She had a bloody rock in her hand.

  Ty stumbled toward her, sucking mouthfuls of searingmiddayair into his aching lungs. He prodded Cousin Luis with the toe of his boot. The man was going to sleep for a long time and wake up with the worst headache of his brutish life.

  "What the hell was that all about?" he asked when he could speak. "Who are you?"

  She'd lost her hat in the fight, and short red hair was sweat-plastered to her head. Her cape had disappeared, and her shirtwaist was dirty and pasted tight to her skin by perspiration. Ty stared. Good God. She'd been hiding an awesome figure under that cape. She wasn't small, but God had arranged her in absolutely perfect proportion. He dragged his eyes up from breathtaking breasts and studied her face. He found himself wishing he'd taken a closer look at her when she wasn't dirty and sweating and cherry-faced from fury and exertion.

  "You've got a cut on your cheek," he said, staring at her. And she was going to have a black eye to remind her of Cousin Luis. "Ma'am, I have to say this. You are one hell of a fighter."

  She put a hand on his chest and pushed him backward, sudden panic flaring in her blue eyes. "Graciela!"

  The daughter pulled to her feet with a dazed expression. She touched the back of her head, looked around, then wobbled forward and fell to her knees. "Cousin Chulo!" Stricken eyes darted to Cousin Luis, then back, taking in the two unconscious men. She burst into tears, flung a look at the mother, and shouted, "I hate you!"

  The mother nodded grimly,then lifted on her toes to look Ty square in the eyes. The experience was a new one. Not many women could look a six-foot-three man in the eyes. Maybe she was closer to six feet tall than he'd originally guessed. He forced himself to hold his gaze on her face and not let it slide down to those magnificent breasts.

  She held his eyes, seemed to consider,then admitted, "We're having a goddamned family problem here."

  He laughed, liking this tough woman who refused to let a man hit her without fighting back. Ty suspected old Cousin Luis would give it a second thought before he hit another woman.

  "So it appears," he said, grinning at her.

  "Cousin Chulo over there messed you up some," she stated, inspecting his face. Until she mentioned it, he hadn't noticed the blood dripping down his chin. He swiped at it with the back of his hand. "I'm thanking you, mister." She thrust out her hand, and he gripped it in a hard shake. "I don't know what I'd a done when the second one showed up. I'm glad you stepped in. Much obliged."

  "It was my pleasure, ma'am," Ty said, meaning it. "It's a privilege to lend a hand to a fellow American." They'd moved into English about halfway through the brief conversation.

  People had begun to drift off the platform, boarding the train, looking back at them over their shoulders. The woman stepped away from Ty and moved hastily around Cousin Luis and Cousin Chulo, picking up her hat, her cape, a heavy fabric traveling bag. When she had everything, she strode toward her daughter. Curious, Ty followed at a distance.

  "We're leaving now. We're taking that train."

  "No!" The child threw herself across Cousin Chulo's chest. "I'm not going!"

  "Yeah. You are." Grim-faced and grinding her teeth, she grabbed the daughter by the arm and dragged her to the steps leading into the train. "Where's this train going?" she demanded, glaring into the conductor's eyes.

  "The next stop is Hermita, Señora." The conductor stepped backward as if he feared that she'd take him on next.

  "Where's that?"

  "Fifty miles south of here, Señora."

  "South?" She spit a string of cusswords that made Ty grin. "Well, it will have to do." She scowled back at the unconscious cousins,then gave the conductor a shove. "Get out of my way."

  She dragged the daughter on board the train. Two minutes later, Ty spotted them through the window as the train chugged away from the depot.

  He watched until the train rocked into a curve and puffed out of sight,then he shook his head, found his hat, and dusted off his pant legs. It occurred to him that it wouldn't be a bad idea for him to follow her example and put some space between himself and the cousins.

  Fifteen minutes later he cantered out of Verde Flores, heading west toward the village that would mark the halfway point of a journey he hadn't wanted to make. The second part would be the hardest, taking Marguarita and her child back toCalifornia.

  Because thinking about Marguarita made him mad, he turned his thoughts back to the woman at the depot.

  He guessed he had it figured out. The red-haired woman was married to a Mexican husband. That accounted for the half-Mex daughter and the cousins. She was leaving the husband, and the daughter was torn between her parents, not wanting to leave her father. That accounted for her delight at spotting Cousin Luis and fighting with the mother. For some reason the father couldn't chase after them, so he'd sent the cousins in pursuit.

  It pleased him that the woman had escaped, even though she'd jumped on a train heading in a direction she plainly hadn't wanted to go. He hoped for her sake that she'd left her problems behind.

  Touching his fingertips to his chin, he looked at the blood and frowned. His problems were ahead of him.

  It was too bad that he'd never see the red-haired woman again. She had the best breasts he'd ever wanted to put his hands on. She was one hell of a woman.

  * * *

  Jenny smoothed herself up the best she could, and stared down the people looking at her. Now that the fight was over, her hands started to shake. If that cowboy hadn't leaped into the fray, the second cousin would have stolen Graciela. She'd come that close—that close!—to letting Graciela get captured. A shudder ran down her spine.

  Well, it hadn't happened. And she'd learned something. Marguarita hadn't been whittling soft wood when she claimed the cousins were a threat. They wanted Graciela, all right. And after getting an eyeful of Luis and Chulo, Jenny didn't doubt that either of them could drown Graciela or shoot her in a ravine and stroll away without a qualm.

  "What are you doing?" she said when she became aware of Graciela's soft murmuring.

  "I'm praying that the train will wreck and kill you,then Cousin Chulo and Cousin Luis will come and take me home."

  "You see this?" Jenny pointed to the scab forming on her cheek. "And this?" She leaned her eye down toward Graciela, an eye that was swelling by the second. "I got these fighting your stinking cousins so they wouldn't capture you and kill you."

  Outrage and disbelief stiffened Graciela's little shoulders. "My cousins would never hurt me! They came to rescue me from you and to take me home to Aunt Tete."

  Jenny's mouthdropped, and she felt her heart fall through her body and hit the wooden seat. She knew the answer, but she asked the question anyway. "Didn't your mother tell you about your cousins?"

  When Graciela just stared at her, she sighed and closed her eyes. Marguarita, you fricking coward.

  A more generous approach would be to remember that Marguarita had been burdened with a lot of bad news tolay on the kid. Maybe she'd felt it was enough that she had to tell her child about the firing squad and that a stranger was going to take Graciela to a daddy she'd never met. Marguarita might have figured that informing a six-year-old that her nice cousins wanted to kill her was just too much. Or maybe Marguarita doubted her own assessment of the situation. Who the hell knew?

  Jenny drew a breath. "All right, here's how it is. Luis and Chulo used to like you, but they don't anymore. Now they want to hurt you. It's my job to make sure they don't get you."

  Tears welled in Graciela's eyes. "You are so mean to say that," she whispered. "My cousins love me. Cousin Luis brings me presents, and Cousin Chulo rides me on his horse. They would never hurt me. You're lying."

  Jenny whirled on the seat and gripped Graciela's shoulders. She shook the kid until Graciela's teeth chattered. "Listen to me! I do not lie. Not ever. When Jenny Jones says a thing, that's how
it is. Now, you don't have to like me. And you can call me any name you want to. You can pray that God strikes me down. But don't you ever, not ever, call me a liar. Do you understand that?"

  Graciela shrank from Jenny's blazing eyes.

  "Your mama could have picked from a dozen people to take you to your daddy. But she picked me. She picked me because I never lie. She didn't pick one of your son-of-a-bitch cousins because she knew they want to harm you. She told me so. Now, you just think about that for a while."

  The miles rolled past, and Jenny started to calm down.

  "Why would my cousins want to hurt me?" Graciela asked in a little voice. She looked up at Jenny with eyes that seemed too large for her face.

  "It has to do with money, lots of money. If you're dead, your cousins get lots of money."

  "My cousins would rather have money than me?"

  "Your mama thought so, and it looks like she was right."

  "That's a—"

  Jenny just stared, until Graciela dropped her head. Tears dripped down on the hands squeezed tightly together in her lap.

  Jenny watched her for a minute, waiting for the snot. "Don't you have a handkerchief?"

  "I lost it."

  Reaching down, Jenny tore another piece out of her petticoat and handed it to Graciela. "Wipe your nose."

  "Thank you."

  "Look, kid, I know it's hard right now. You've lost your mama, your cousins want to kill you, you don't know where you're going or who's on the other end, you hate me…"When she listed it out like that, the kid's life sounded lousy even by Jenny's standards. "Well, okay. You've been dealt a rotten hand. But that's how it is. You have to play the cards you've got. There's no use crying about it. Tears and snot aren't going to change a damned thing."

  The kid didn't speak. She sat there, head down, her fingers on the gold-heart locket that was pinned to her chest.

  An hour later, a man came weaving down the aisle selling greasy tortillas filled with something unidentifiable that tasted like shredded fire. The first bite made Jenny's eyes water and blistered her tongue.

  "Didn't you cry when your mama died?"

  Jenny had forgotten that she'd told Graciela about her ma. "Oh hell, no. I wasn't around when my ma died. But even if I had been, I wouldn't have cried. My ma was mean as a snake. Looked like one, too."

  Graciela's eyes widened. "She didn't!"

  Jenny laughed. "Well, she looked like a snake to me. The meanest woman who ever sucked air. I'm telling you, that woman never said a soft word to anyone in her whole life."

  "Why was she so mean?"

  "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 u
sing 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.