Page 11 of The Promise of Jenny Jones

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 to California and 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 in Mexico, not the United 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 northern California, 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 the Americana have 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 the Americana.

In return, the Americana agreed to take Graciela to her father in Norte America. ”

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.

“The father is in California,” the woman whispered. She lowered her gaze and sat on a bench against the wall.

“Then why did the witch take the train south? Explain that, Maria Torrez.”

“South?” Shock clouded the woman’s eyes.

“When Luis returns from the hacienda, you will hear it from his own lips. The witch abducted our little cousin for her own purposes. I say we go after the witch, kill her, and rescue Graciela. I say do not listen to a woman’s prattle.

My cousin would never entrust her daughter to a stranger.

You know this. The honor of the Barrancas family and the honor of this village rest on saving Graciela from the witch. ”

Ty folded the penknife into his boot top, then drained the tumbler of pulque, letting it scald his throat. He set the tumbler down hard and stared out the side door at a swarm of gnats circling a tree lantern.

The witch business was clever nonsense. Emil played on the ignorance of superstitious villagers to refute Maria Torrez’s contention that Marguarita had given her daughter to a stranger rather than, family. That much Ty understood.

But there was much that he did not understand.

One thing, however, was unpleasantly clear.

The knot behind his rib cage told him that he had abetted in the abduction of his own niece.

Now he knew the truth about the fracas at the depot in Verde Flores, and he cursed his role in it.

Damn his hide, he had helped a female desperado steal Robert’s daughter.

Cursing silently, he tossed some coins on the table, then stood.

Cousin Luis was expected at any moment, and Cousin Luis wasn’t likely to have forgotten the cowboy who came to the aid of the red-haired woman.

Common sense urged Ty to step out the side door, fetch his belongings, and get the hell out of here.