The Promise of Jenny Jones

by Maggie Osborne

  Stumbling, Graciela pushed a low stool against the wall and collapsed. When she fell back against the wall and closed her eyes, her lashes formed sooty crescents against white, white cheeks.

  "Kid! What's wrong with you?" Jumping to her feet, Jenny clapped her hand on Graciela's forehead. The kid was burning up. Damn. She waved Senora Calveras's husband into the room. He carried a washtub dented enough to have belonged to the conquistadors an eon ago. "Okay, listen. A bath will cool you off."

  Senora Calveras followed her husband, carrying two buckets of water, which she poured into the washtub. After glancing at the puddle of vomit, she pulled a rag from her pocket and tossed it to Jenny.

  Jenny looked at the rag; she looked at the vomit. Well, crud on a crust, if that wasn't disgusting. But she could see how Senora Calveras would consider it Jenny's responsibility to clean up the mess. Graciela wasn't Senora Calveras's kid; she was Jenny's cross to bear. But first, she needed to get Graciela out of the heavy maroon riding outfit and into the tub.

  Graciela opened her eyes and stared at the washtub with a dulled and miserable expression, as if bathing were a feat beyond comprehension. She sagged against the adobe wall like a rag doll.

  "All right. Just this once I'll undress you. Stand up."

  The kid not only looked like a rag doll, boneless and crumpled, she felt like a rag doll. Her arms hung limp as Jenny pulled them out of the maroon sleeves, and she swayed on her feet. When Jenny lifted her into the washtub, her skin felt as if a fire burned below the surface. She sat in the washtub, bent forward, staring glassy-eyed at her toes.

  "Wait here." It was a stupid comment, like a naked, throw-uppy kid was going to run away. Reaching deep to summon energy, Jenny strode through the house and outside. She hesitated a minute, then explored the weeds encroaching on the kitchen garden. Thankfully, the moon drifted out of a cloud bank and she found a patch of cockleburrs almost at once, collected a generous handful, and carried them around the house to Senora Calveras's adobe oven.

  "Por favor, Señora," she said in a worried voice. "Would you be kind enough to boil these in about this much water?" Spreading her hands, she indicated a quart. "Boil it down to this much." She narrowed the span to about a pint.

  Senora Calveras placed a loaf of dough on her bread paddle and nodded solemnly. Lantern light gleamed along the center part in her hair. "For the little one," she said, handing Jenny a bowl of sliced onions and long strips of cloth.

  Jenny blinked stupidly at the onions. "Is she supposed to eat them?"

  "No, Señora," Senora Calveras said softly."For the bottoms of her feet. The onions draw out the fever." Lifting her own bare foot, she made a twirling motion with her finger indicating how Jenny should bind the onions with the strips of cloth.

  "Oh." Well, what the hell. For all Jenny knew, the onions were as effective as cockleburr tea. Every woman had her own favored remedies. "Gracias."

  Graciela had not moved. Limp and crumpled forward, she still stared at her toes with fever-cloudy eyes.

  "Kid, you're worrying me bad, and I don't like that." Wringing out a cloth, Jenny gently stroked the dust off Graciela's sunburned face.

  "That hurts," Graciela whispered in a tiny voice.

  "I know. I'll put some aloe on the burn as soon as we get you clean."

  "I don't want supper. I just want to sleep."

  "Fine. Stand up so I can towel you dry." When she lifted Graciela out of the washtub and set her on her feet, Graciela swayed in an invisible wind, her eyes closed.

  "Okay. Let me get your nightgown." She dropped it over Graciela's damp hair, then placed the kid in one of the hammocks, adjusted the pillow and pulled a light sheet to her chin.

  Graciela gazed up at her. "I need my locket pin." Jenny was practically dead on her feet, but the kid "needed" her locket pin. She ground her teeth. "Just a minute." After rummaging through Graciela's clothing, she found the locket and pinned it to the kid's nightgown. "Anything else, Your Majesty?"

  "I didn't say my prayers."

  "I'll say them for you. Our father who art in et cetera, bless all the rotten cousins and kill Jenny. Amen. Now lift up your feet so I can strap these onions on you."

  Wordlessly, Graciela raised one small foot and let Jenny bind the onions to her sole. Apparently she didn't think the remedy as strange as Jenny had thought it was. She did the other foot before she gently rubbed aloe on the kid's face and throat.

  "Does that feel any better?"

  Graciela gazed up at her, gratitude brimming in her blue-green eyes. "Gracias," she whispered, her eyelids fluttering with fatigue. She lifted her cheek for a good night kiss.

  The moment touched and softened Jenny for as long as it took to turn her attention to the vomit on the floor. Revulsion pulled down her lips. She had to do this. The vomit wasn't going to disappear on its own. Dropping to her knees, gagging and swallowing convulsively, she used the bathwater to mop up the puddle. God. She never would have believed she'd see the day when she would wipe up someone else's vomit.

  No wonder her mother had been as mean as a snake. With six kids, she must have been doing this kind of cruddy thing all the damned time. In retrospect, Jenny found it admirable that her mother had not thrown her kids or herself down the nearest mine shaft. She must have wanted to about twenty times a day.

  Reeling with exhaustion, she tossed the rag into a bucket,then contemplated the water left in the tub, wondering if she had the energy to wash herself. She decided it was either find the energy or scratch all night. Sighing, she stripped off her clothes and washed hastily,then she bent over the side of the tub and used a bar of hard brown soap to scrub her hair and scalp. Instantly, the water turned black. Getting rid of the bootblack was the first encouraging thing that had happened all day.

  She longed to fall into her hammock at once, but she had to wait for Senora Calveras and the cockleburr tea, then she had to let the tea cool, then she had to rouse Graciela, which was no easy thing to do, and coax her to drink the tea.

  "Tastes terrible," Graciela protested, shuddering.

  "Just drink it. No, all of it."

  At last, she snuffed out the candles and fell into her hammock, dropping like a rock. But as fatigued as she was, worry kept her awake. Straining, she listened for Graciela's breathing. Every time the kid moved, Jenny bolted upright and peered through the darkness. It was almost worse when the kid didn't move.

  Hands folded behind her head, she stared at the ceiling as anxious thoughts pounded her brain.

  It would absolutely ruin her life if the kid died on her watch. Graciela's illness was her fault. Who else's fault could it be? She'd kept the kid in the sun too long, in the saddle too long. She should have done this differently, or that, or something else.

  If the kid bit it, then Jenny decided she might as well dig a grave and jump inside because if Graciela died, Marguarita was going to be truly and seriously pissed. If Jenny didn't kill herself, Marguarita would reach down from heaven and do it for her, and Marguarita would make it a horrible death, she knew that. If she let Graciela die, she would deserve a horrible death.

  From now on, she vowed to slow their pace. Every other night, she'd rent a room for them. She'd make sure the kid ate three times a day and had fresh milk with every meal.

  And from now on, she was going to start praying herself, begging God and Marguarita to keep Robert Sanders alive and in good health. The worst thing that could happen in her sorry life was for the kid to live but for Robert Sanders to die. Then she'd have the kid on her hands for the next fricking twelve years or so, and she'd be worrying herself half to death all the fricking damned time. Cleaning up vomit and God only knew what else that she hadn't run into yet. Damn, damn, damn.

  Eventually, racked with guilt and inhaling the strong odor of onions, she fell into a restless sleep. In her dreams, she was a child again, being chased by the cowboy and her mother, who pelted her with onions.

  * * *

  "I don't know any stories," Jenny i
nsisted for the fourteenth time. She drew a long, long breath, held it,then let the air seep through her lips. Once kids got an idea in their heads, nothing under heaven could dislodge it. "I haven't learned any stories in the five minutes that have passed since you last asked me. Look, I'll read you some of my favorite words out of the dictionary."

  "We did that this morning."

  "Was it only this morning?" It seemed like weeks ago. Maybe a lifetime. She'd been sitting on a hard stool beside Graciela's hammock so long that her tailbone ached, and so did her spine. The only time she had moved had been to mop up a new splatter of vomit. The rest of the time she'd watched the kid sleep and had struggled to amuse her when she woke.

  Graciela unpinned the locket from her nightgown, opened the gold heart, and stared at the pictures inside. Tears gathered in her eyes.

  "Let me see the locket." Jenny didn't care diddly about the pictures inside, but it was something to do to eat up a few minutes of this eternally endless day. And maybe if the kid wasn't staring at the pictures, she wouldn't cry.

  After Graciela gave her the locket, Jenny hefted it in her palm, testing the weight and feel of real gold jewelry. It irritated her that a six-year-old kid was accustomed to wearing gold when she'd never owned any herself. Not that she wanted to. But every time she glanced at the gold-locket pin, it reminded her of the enormous gulf betweenwho she was and who Graciela was. Sighing, she pried open the little gold heart and looked inside.

  "So this is the sainted Roberto."

  The tiny portrait revealed a good-looking son of a bitch dressed in a formal jacket and wide tie. He had dark hair and light eyes, but Robert was softer-looking than Ty. Jenny knew at once which brother had the cojones in the Sanders family. There was nothing tentative about Ty Sanders. Nothing indecisive in his gaze. Robert looked like a man born to whisper pretty poetry in the moonlight whereas Ty was a man created in the hard heat of the sun. She sensed that Robert bore ink stains on his fingers where Ty had calluses.

  Aside from an anxious concern for his continued good health, Robert Sanders didn't interest Jenny.

  Next she studied Marguarita's portrait. It seemed to her that Marguarita's lovely smile beamed encouragement. Guilt rocked Jenny's chest. Things were turning out pretty much as she had predicted. She didn't have a mother-bone in her body. But Marguarita had refused to believe it. Her unshakable faith in Jenny radiated up from the portrait. Jenny didn't imagine it. Marguarita was smiling at her. Sighing, she closed the locket and tossed it back to Graciela.

  "You must know one story. Make something up."

  "All right," Jenny snapped. "If it will stop you from whining, I'll try. Let me think … okay. Let's say there was—"

  "You're supposed to start with once upon a time."

  Jenny bit down on her back teeth. "You're pushing. But all right. Once upon a time there were six snotty little rich kids who were stolen as infants by a witch and her evil companion who took them to live on the side of a mountain."

  Graciela fixed her gaze on Jenny's face. "Did the witch have red hair and blue eyes?"

  Jenny's gaze narrowed into a long slitted stare. "You know, there are times when I'd really like to smack the crap out of you."

  "What did the witch look like?" Not a flicker of fear or concern troubled the kid's gaze.Which made Jenny wonder if Graciela had noticed that Jenny did a lot of threatening and blustering without much follow-through. She'd have to think about that.

  "Too fricking bad, but the witch did not look like me. She had gray hair and snake eyes."

  "Oooh." Graciela clapped her hands together. "Snake eyes!" She shuddered happily. "Did one of the snotty little rich kids look like me?"

  "There were three girls and three boys, and one of the snotty little rich girls looked exactly like you."

  "What did she wear? Did she wear pretty clothes? Did she have tassels on her boots?"

  Jenny cast a sly look toward the hammock. "What do you think she wore?"

  While she listened to Graciela describe the little girl's dress, she decided telling stories wasn't as difficult as she'd imagined it would be. In fact, she might attempt this again. It was a good way to use new words and teach Graciela a few.

  "The evil witch was a martinet. Do you remember what a martinet is?"

  Graciela nodded solemnly. "A mean person with lots of rules, like you."

  "That's exactly right, and don't you forget it." The kid had a good memory. They'd only learned about a martinet that morning. This story thing was going to work out very well.

  * * *

  On the third day, Jenny scoured the village and brought back some yellowed foolscap and a pencil stub. Graciela drew pictures most of the day. One of them made her laugh, and one of them made her cry. Later, Jennyexamine the pages of foolscap. She couldn't make sense of the blobby pictures or figure out why they had made the kid laugh and cry.

  She did know the delay necessitated by Graciela's illness made her feel frantic inside, and the pungent odor of onions had deadened her sense of smell for anything else. She was desperate to mount up and get moving again.

  On the morning of the fourth day, thank God, the kid's forehead felt normal to the touch, and her eyes were bright and alert. Finally Jenny stopped worrying that Graciela might die and returned to wanting to kill her.

  "We'll go for a walk," she decided, eyeing Graciela. "See how you do on your feet. If that works out, then we'll hit the road tomorrow morning first thing."

  Graciela brightened immediately at the prospect of escaping the small, hot, onion-permeatedroom. She dressed herself more quickly than she had in Jenny's memory. Watching, Jenny was amazed. If she hadn't known better, she would never have believed the kid had spent the last three daysin the hammock, sicker than a pup.

  When they stepped outside into the morning sunlight, Graciela smiled up at her. "The black is all gone from your hair. It looks better. Nice and shiny and the real color again."

  "I've been washing it every day," Jenny explained uncomfortably. Even bland compliments made her uneasy. She didn't know how to respond. By now she knew the kid liked to talk about hair and clothes and dumb topics like that, and some of the talk was even mildly interesting. But this was the first time the kid had said something remotely complimentary about Jenny's appearance. It annoyed her to discover how happy she was that the kid admired something about her.

  Side by side, they walked along the main dirt road, keeping to the shade, nodding to people they passed. The village was small, with no reason for existing that Jenny could see. There was no industry. The railroad was miles to the east.

  "I need an umbrella," Graciela remarked, squinting at the sun.

  "Well, you aren't going to get one."

  "Why not?"

  Each time Jenny heard the word "why," her stomach cramped and her hands curled into fists. She was beginning to loathe that particular word. It curdled her brain.

  "Cousin Jorje!"

  "What?" Jenny broke from her reverie in time to grab the back of Graciela's cape and prevent her from running toward a man who had whirled at the sound of her voice and now stood in the center of the street glaring back at Jenny.

  "Let me go!" Graciela struggled to break free. "That's Cousin Jorje. He's come to take me home!"

  "Cousin Jorje?" Slowly Jenny turned her eyes back to the man in the street. He'd shoved his poncho over his hips to expose the guns at his waist. This was going to get nasty.

  "Kid…" Jenny said, easing back the folds of her own poncho, "just how many fricking cousins do you have?"

  The first bullet whizzed past her ear.

  CHAPTER 9

  T y reined hard and jerked his head toward the sharp explosion of gunfire. If he hadn't heard the shots, he would most likely have ridden past the village, as it looked too small, too dilapidated, to have attracted Jenny's interest. A grudging respect for her judgment and abilities had soared since she'd tracked him and left him hog-tied in his bedroll. Now, when he puzzled where she had gone and w
hat she was doing, he asked himself where he would have gone and what he would have done.

  He would have camped where he could obtain fresh meat and milk for his niece, and that's what Jenny had done. Consequently, she'd left an easy trail to read. He was a couple of days behind her, and that made him crazy, but he could travel faster and longer than she couldhampered by the child. He knew he'd catch up with her sooner or later.

  When he did, it was going to be payback time. He'd had a lot of miles to brood about her getting the jump on him, about being trussed up and left for a day and a half with his nose in the dirt. He was feeling ornery and mean, spoiling for a good fight, just itching to get his hands on Jenny Jones.

  Being in a brawling mood himself, the gunfire erupting from someone else's altercation attracted his interest. Touching his bootheels to the flanks of his horse, he trotted toward the village to judge if the fracas was worth getting involved in. A good fight would knock the edges off the tension between his shoulders, might allow him a restful night's sleep afterward.

  He couldn't believe his eyes. Damned if the first thing he saw wasn't Jenny Jones standing in the middle of a dirt street shooting it out with a mean-eyed, mustachioed Mexican. Even wearing men's trousers and a shapeless poncho, there was no mistaking her. Her hat had flown off and lay in the dust at her feet, exposing a flaming cap of red hair.

  If he'd missed the hair, and no man could, he would have spotted his niece. Jenny was shooting with one hand and fighting to hold Graciela behind her with the other hand. As Ty galloped forward, Graciela gave up trying to wrench free of Jenny's firm grip on her cape. She slipped out of the garment, darting around Jenny and straight into the line of fire.

  "Graciela!" Ty shouted at the same time that Jenny did, sliding off his horse in a cloud of dust. "For Christ's sake, take cover," he snarled,then he shouted again at Graciela. Ignoring their yells, she ran toward the man shooting at Jenny and now at him.

  "Don't shoot Jenny, Cousin Jorje," Graciela screamed. "It's all right. I'm here. You don't have to kill her!"

  Swearing a blue streak, Jenny stamped her boot in frustration and waved her gun in the air. "Don't shoot," she warned Ty. "You might hit the kid!" The gun shook in her hand; she yearned to continue firing, but she didn't.