The Promise of Jenny Jones

by Maggie Osborne

  "Look," he said, struggling against images no decent man should imagine in the presence of an innocent child, "we'll give the horse problem another day, all right? But we have to cover more ground. We'll trot and walk, trot and walk, until you're comfortable."

  He'd known a redheaded whore inSan Francisco. Her skin had been milk white, brushed with flame down there. Oh God, he couldn't think about this in front of his six-year-old niece. What kind of man was he? Sweating slightly, he poured a cup of coffee and watched her eat, making himself think about tomorrow's ride.

  "Uncle Ty?"

  "What?"

  "I said I'd scrub the plates. Jenny showed me how. You rub them out with sand,then wipe them off with a wet cloth."

  "Fine," he said absently, staring into the fire. He wondered if Jenny Jones's skin was milk white and brushed with flame down there.

  "I'm tired. I'm going to go to sleep now." When Ty didn't respond, she made a little sound. "You have to turn your back, so I can undress and put on my nightgown."

  "Oh." He spun on his heels so rapidly that coffee flew out of his cup. Damn Robert. Robert should have been here instead of him. Robert could have waited until their father's estate was settled; what difference would a few more months have made?"

  "I'm ready to say my prayers now."

  "Fine … is there something I'm supposed to do?" Tentatively he turned around and saw her kneeling beside her bedroll, dressed in a lacy white nightgown.

  "You're supposed to kneel with me and listen."

  "I guess I can do that." He supposed hearing a prayer wouldn't harm him. Might do him some good. But he was glad there was no one to see him going down on his knees.

  "Fold your hands like this."

  He dug his knees into the hard dirt and glared into the darkness. "Just say your prayers."

  She said the "Our Father," then she asked God to bless a numbing list of people. It was sobering to hear how many Barrancas cousins there were. He wondered how many of them were searching for her right now.

  Pausing, she opened one eye. "I don't know what to say about Jenny. She's gone now, so I guess I can stop asking God to kill her, but she still should be punished for killing my mama."

  Shock narrowed his eyes. "You've been asking God to kill Jenny Jones?"

  Graciela nodded solemnly. "But He hasn't done it yet."

  He stared at her. "Does Jenny know you're asking God to kill her?"

  "What should I ask God to do about punishing her? Should I tell Him some good punishments or just let Him decide what's best?"

  "Graciela," he said slowly, inching into unknown territory, "now you know Jenny didn't kill your mother."

  "Jenny was supposed to die, not my mama." Her chin lifted in a stubborn expression that inexplicably made Ty think of his father.

  He studied the fresh onslaught of tears and decided he didn't want to get into this. "Why don't you just sayamen. "

  She closed her eyes again. "God? You don't have to kill Jenny anymore, but you should punish her bad. You should make her cry and bleed a lot. She should feel very very sorry for killing my mama. Amen."

  Ty blinked. His niece was praying for blood and death, and he'd thought she was an innocent?

  "You can kiss me good night now," she said, smiling at him and lifting her cheek. He peered over his shoulder into the darkness,then brushed a hasty peck across her cheek. "Now you're supposed to tuck me in."

  After pulling the blankets up to her chin, he rose to his feet and stared down at her. His bloodthirsty little niece looked like an angel with her hair flowing around her face and her lashes feathered on her cheeks.

  Shaking his head, he returned to the fire and sat on a rock to finish the pot of coffee. This had been one hell of a day, and he felt the exhaustion in his shoulders, but he suspected he wouldn't fall asleep anytime soon.

  It was aftermidnightbefore he crawled into his bedroll, and later still before he dropped into an uneasy doze.

  * * *

  The next thing he heard was the tiny click of a hammer being drawn. When he tried to sit up, a fist pressed him down, and he couldn't turn his head. His temple hit the barrel of his own Colt. Staring up at the first opalescent tints of dawn, he ground his teeth together and waited.

  "I didn't figure you to be such a sound sleeper," said a cheerful voice whose husky tone he recognized all too well. "Put your hands on top of the blankets.Do it slow."

  "You know I'll come after you," he said, narrowing his eyes at the sky. If she was a killer, he'd just advised her to shoot him now.Mexicohad roasted his brains.

  "If you do," Jenny said, whipping a rope around his wrists before he could make a grab for her, "I'll shoot you down like a dog. You just go on home toCaliforniaand tell the sainted Roberto thatme and the kid are on our way. You're not part of this anymore."

  He hated himself for suggesting this, but it was a possible way out of a bad situation. "If you're so dead set on intruding where you don't belong, we could take her toCaliforniatogether."

  "Do you really think I'm going to fall for that? The minute I relaxed my guard, you'd take Graciela and leave me behind faster than a fly can flap its wings."

  Once she had him trussed up like a hog, she woke Graciela. Ty couldn't see them, but he heard them shouting at each other. Eventually, Jenny dragged Graciela over to him and pointed.

  "Take a good look at your uncle Ty," she said, leaning next to Graciela's face. "He's not taking you anywhere. I am. So get your butt dressed. We're going."

  Graciela stared down at him with disappointment and contempt. "I trusted you." Having plunged this verbal blade into his heart, she spun in a billow of ruffled nightgown and flounced out of his line of sight.

  Jenny leaned over him, her eyes narrowed into slits. "I made the promise. You didn't. Remember what I said. If I see you again, I'll kill you if for no other reason than the trouble you've caused me."

  He lay on his side, tangled in his bedroll, as furious and mortified as it was possible for a man to be, listening to the sound of a horse receding in the distance.

  One horse. Jenny Jones had solved the Graciela/horse problem in two minutes flat.

  He stared at a tiny flowering cactus three inches from his nose and passed the time by imagining himself strangling a certain woman with milk white skin who was brushed with flame down there.

  CHAPTER 8

  J enny set a northern course midway between the Sierra Madres and the railroad tracks that rolled down the Central Plateau. If she could hold to a hard pace of twenty miles a day, she figured to makeChihuahuain about two weeks.

  But two weeks was beginning to look like a wildly optimistic estimate. Three days out ofDurango, the terrain gave way to rocky desert soil and deep arroyos that slowed her pace. Noonday heat blistered the ground, and they had to stop, seeking shelter where they could find it until later in the day.

  As night approached, Jenny sought out the low shacks of the campesinos who labored to scratch a life from the poor soil. She knew she'd find a trickle of water near their pitiful patches and maybe a chance to buy fresh meat and milk for the kid.

  "My face hurts," Graciela mentioned sullenly, staring with distaste at the chunk of goat meat roasting over the fire.

  "Did you rub aloe on your skin like I told you?" Thesmell of roasting meat made Jenny's mouth water in anticipation. The campesino's woman had sold her fresh tortillas, too, and a ripe squash. They would feast tonight. "Drink that milk," she reminded Graciela. "It cost the earth."

  Graciela turned her sunburned face toward the campesino's shack, a dark smudge against the night. No light showed through the walls of mud and branch. Either the residents had gone to bed, or they sat around a flame too small to penetrate the chinks.

  "Why can't we sleep in the house with them?" Graciela asked in a whiny singsong that had begun to grate against Jenny's nerves two days ago. "I don't like to sleep on the ground. I'mafraid bugs or snakes will crawl in my bedroll."

  "Kid," Jenny said, striving migh
tily for patience, "That's no hacienda up there. Believe it or not, most people don't live like you did. Most people aren't rich and don't have servants, they don't have extra food or beds. Eight people live in that shack already. They don't have a square inch for you. Plus, no one up there is sleeping in a bed. They're either in hammocks or sleeping on the ground just like we are."

  Graciela flung her the I-hate-you look. "You said you wouldn't call me kid."

  After an interior struggle Jenny conceded that she deserved the accusing tone. "You're right," she snapped, leaning to inspect the chunk of roasting meat. "I'm sorry. If you find a bug in your blankets, squash it. If a snake gets in there, you get out." She stared at Graciela across the fire pit. "Complaining isn't going to change a damned thing. So just make up your mind that it's going to be a tough couple of weeks and keep your mouth shut about the inconveniences, all right? You aren't the only one who'd rather be sleeping in a bed, but you don't hear me complaining all the time."

  The kid already looked a bit worse for the wear. Her fashionable maroon riding outfit was gray with dust and soiled by sweat. Part of the hem had torn loose. Since they had no water to spare for washing, their faces were dirty above fresh sunburns. Perspiration had blended with the dust near their scalps, creating a film of mud that eventually dried and began to itch and torment.

  When a charred crust had formed on the meat, Jenny cut slices onto their plates and scooped mounds of hot squash on the side. "I know you're tired," she said to Graciela, "but you have to eat to keep up your strength. So clean your plate."

  Graciela glared at her. "Uncle Ty didn't order me around."

  "Huh! From what you've told me, you ordered him around." The goat meat was dry and on the tough side, but not bad, not bad at all. She'd eaten worse in her time. The tortillas, on the other hand, were thick and chewy and went down the throat the way she imagined ambrosia probably would.

  According to her dictionary, ambrosia, a word she liked the sound of, was the imaginary food of the gods. Now that was something to think about. Before she ran across ambrosia, Jenny had never imagined God sitting down to supper. All day she'd been wondering who cooked the ambrosia. Surely God didn't prepare it Himself. Or maybe imaginary food didn't need to be cooked.

  Graciela forked up a piece of goat meat, tasted it, and made a face. "Ack."

  "It's not ambrosia, but it's all we've got, so eat it," Jenny said, pleased to have worked a new word into conversation.

  "Uncle Ty wouldn't make me eat something I don't like."

  Jenny narrowed her eyes. "I'm getting sick and tired of hearing what a swell fellow your Uncle Ty is."

  "He's nicer than you are."

  "Why? Because you wrapped him around your little finger? Because he waited on you and let you sit there like a useless bump on a rock?" She snorted. "Let me tell you something, kid. Sorry … Graciela. Since you andme hitched up, you've learned to make a halfway decent pot of coffee, you've learned how to lay a fire, you're dressing and undressing yourself, and you've learned to pin up your own hair. You can water the horses and fold up a bedroll. You can scrub out the supper dishes, and tomorrow, like it or not, you're going to cook most of our supper. You still don't know squat about most things, but you aren't as dumb as you used to be. Now you tell me … doesn't it feel good to know how to do something more than sit on your behind and watch other people take care of you?"

  Graciela chewed another bite of goat meat and didn't say anything.

  Now was as good a time as any to ask a question that Jenny had been wondering about. As casually as she could manage, she inquired, "Did your uncle Ty say anything about me?"

  "He hates you because you killed my mama," Graciela answered, after she had swallowed and patted her lips with her handkerchief.

  "He said that?" Jenny stared. "I told him what happened. He knows damned well that I didn't have anything to do with Marguarita's death! Did you explain to him that I don't lie?"

  Graciela hesitated. "I told him what you said about promises."

  "But he still thinks I had something to do with your mother's death?" She set her plate on the ground. "That son of a bitch."

  She was still fuming after she got the kid into her bedroll and settled for the night. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, she stared into the embers of their cook fire and thought about Ty Sanders. It occurred to her that she was spending a hell of a lot of time thinking about Ty Sanders.

  She couldn't look at Graciela without seeing the cowboy's blue-green eyes. Every time the kid mentioned Uncle Ty, and that was about two hundred times a day, she saw his lean wiry body in her mind. Remembered the hard muscle knotting his thighs and arms.

  Jenny didn't seek out brawls, but she'd been in a few fights over the years. This was the first time, however, that remembering a tussle with a man had made her feel hot and strange when she thought about it afterward.

  Worse, she knew what feeling hot and strange meant. Rubbing a hand over her forehead, she rose from the embers and walked toward the campesino's scraggly maize field, then turned and walked back to the campsite.

  There had been a man in Yuma a few years ago, a man who for no reason that she could figure had made her feel hot and strange inside. Eventually she'd recognized it meant she had a hankering for him, and she had satisfied that hankering out behind Shorty Barrow's saloon in a wholly unsatisfactory coupling that had left the man smiling and her blinking up at the stars in bewildered disappointment.

  Now here she was, having another hankering when she knew damned well that sex was a man's sport and there was nothing in it for a woman except a few bruises and two minutes of having someone's breath in your face. And, afterward, a feeling of loneliness as dry and empty as a desert. Never in her life had she felt as gut-bad lonely as she had that night out behind Shorty Barrow's saloon.

  Until she met the cowboy, she hadn't had a hankering since.

  Drawing back her boot, she kicked dirt over the embers in the fire pit, then strode over to her bedroll and crawled inside. Folding her hands behind her head, she stared up at the stars until she found Marguarita.

  "I'm too fricking tired to tell you about today. Nothing happened anyway," she said. She squinted suspiciously. "Can you read my thoughts?"

  That was a disconcerting possibility. She'd have to find a subtle way to ask the kid if people in heaven knew the thoughts of living people. She had a sinking feeling that dead people knew everything, especially those like Marguarita, who probably became angels. After worrying about it for several minutes, she decided that she didn't care if God knew she had a hankering for the cowboy. God was in the forgiveness business. She didn't think God wasted too much time thinking about Jenny Jones anyway.

  But it made her acutely uncomfortable that Marguarita probably knew she liked to remember how good it had felt rolling around the hotel room floor with the cowboy on top of her. There had been one startling moment when she'd had a chance to knee him in the groin, but she hadn't done it because the hankering feeling had suddenly hit her hard and addled her brains.

  Well damn. Her hands formed into fists behind her head. For all she knew Ty Sanders had a wife and family back inCalifornia. Not that it mattered. A man that good-looking wouldn't give Jenny a second glance in any case. He'd want some tiny little woman rigged out in lace and ribbon. Most men did. Men preferred birdlike women who smelled like flowers. Women who thought a callus was something unique to men.

  Men turned their eyes away from rawboned women with a mule skinner's vocabulary. Women like Jenny might be good for satisfying a temporary hankering, but not for long-term company. There was no one out there wishing and pining to spend his life with a woman like Jenny Jones. There never would be. She'd learned that lesson a long time ago.

  But it usually didn't hurt as much as it did tonight.

  * * *

  Much as she hated it, by late afternoon of the next day, Jenny recognized the need to find a room for the night. Graciela sat wilted on the saddle in front of her, saggi
ng against Jenny's chest like a bag of hot rocks, too exhausted even to complain. The relentless white sun had severely burned the kid's face, and she felt feverish to the touch. They both needed a bath, especially Jenny. Her blackened hair was stiff and waxy, coated with dust and sweat. They needed some decent food and a real bed.

  Knowing she'd run across a village if she angled toward the east and the railroad, she rode another four hours until she spotted smoky curls of burning chaparral, signaling cook fires ahead. Another few minutes brought the scents of food and smoldering refuse and animals and humans.

  "Buenos noches, Señora," she called to a woman standing beside a small yard garden at the edge of the village. "Where can I find a room, a bath, and a meal?"

  The village wasn't large enough to boast a hotel, she could see that. But she had always found the Mexican people to be warm and hospitable. She and Graciela would not sleep on the ground tonight. Indeed, the senora walked them to the home of a daughter, who hurriedly moved two children out of a room and offered it to Jenny and Graciela.

  "Gracias, Señora." Exhaustion caused her voice to emerge from deep in her throat, sounding huskier than usual. If Jenny had been by herself, she would have said to hell with a bath and supper and fallen gratefully into one of the hammocks spanning the corners. But she had the kid to worry about.

  Graciela stood in the center of the small room, one hand clasping the heart locket pinned to her chest, the other touching her fiery face. "I don't feel good."

  "Senora Calvera is bringing a tub and something to eat," Jenny said wearily, sinking to a stool beside an open window. A warm breeze had appeared with the stars, and she jerked open her collar to dry the salty sweat slicking her throat and chest. The leaves of a courtyard tree blocked the night sky, and she couldn't see Marguarita's star. Good. She had begun to dread the night, as that was when Marguarita appeared in the heavens to gaze down and judge Jenny and the day's events.

  Graciela bent at the waist and vomited on the floor. When the spasm passed, she pressed a hand to her mouth and raised stricken eyes to Jenny's openmouthed stare. "I'm sorry."