Page 17 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
Unfortunately, he’d heard there was a large Anglo population in the capital. An Americana and a Mexican child wouldn’t be an anomaly there. Plus, Mexico City was huge. He’d never find the red-haired woman and his niece.
Opening his eyes, he shoved up the brim of his hat and frowned out the window past streaks of soot and oily smoke.
The train had entered a fertile valley enclosed by the wrinkled arms of the Sierra Madres.
Small farms appeared with increasing frequency, brave patches of green scratched out of the grey-brown earth.
He spotted slag piles spilling down the face of hills thrusting up from the valley floor.
Before the train arrived at Durango, he had to decide if he would get off and give the town a cursory search just in case that was the red-haired woman’s destination, although he couldn’t think why it would be. He doubted she was interested in the thermal springs, and she wasn’t a miner.
He stayed on the train after it stopped at the Durango station, scowling out the window, trying to decide if it was worth looking for her here or if he’d be wasting time.
The town was larger than he had expected, housing perhaps ten to fifteen thousand souls.
He saw a church spire rising near the center of town, watched the sun sinking past a surprising number of trees.
Losing interest in the town, he idly watched a flock of child beggars descend on the passengers stepping out of the train.
When the children were certain no further prey would emerge from the cars, they ran after the people walking toward waiting carts or carriages.
Ty’s gaze settled on one of the children who had remained behind.
She stared at the train with utter despair, her shoulders dropped, her small body trembling on the verge of collapse.
Her hair was filthy and wild, and a thin shapeless rag covered her frame.
What a waste, he thought. She was going to be a beauty one day. With those eyes…
“What?” Abruptly, he sat up straight and his gaze sharpened. He knew those eyes as well as he knew his own. Hell, he ought to. He stared into those same blue-green eyes every morning in his shaving mirror.
Before he could recover from the shock of finding his niece so easily and in such unexpected circumstances, a man pushed away from the side wall of the depot and stormed toward her.
No, not a man. A woman dressed in male trousers and a lightweight poncho that swung open at the side slits to reveal a pistol strapped to her waist.
Ty couldn’t believe his eyes. She had done something to her hair, and now it was as black as roofing pitch. Stiff waxy tufts stuck out between her ears and her hat. Whoever the hell this woman was, she didn’t possess a stitch of female vanity, that was for damned certain.
It was also certain that she was furious. Although he couldn’t hear what she was shouting, she started waving her arms and screaming at his niece even before she reached the girl.
Ty rose out of his seat, bending to the window while hastily gathering his belongings. With large hopeless eyes, his niece watched the raging advance of the now black-haired woman. As the woman rushed forward, her expression hardened and her arm rose as if she intended to beat Ty’s niece into pulp.
His shoulders tensed. If she struck his niece, by God he would kill her.
When she was almost on top of his niece, the child stumbled forward and wrapped her arms around the now-black-haired woman’s waist and sank into her.
The woman stopped and the descent of her arm halted.
Her expression flickered from fury to surprise to confusion to exasperation.
Ty read her emotions as easily as reading words on a page.
For a desperado, she was amazingly transparent.
She waved both hands in the air as if she didn’t know what to do with them, all the while looking down at the child.
Then she rolled her eyes toward heaven, heaved a massive sigh, and dropped to her knees on the cobble-stones.
She gathered the child into her arms and awkwardly patted the child’s back while the child clung to her and sobbed on her neck.
She was a large woman, dressed as a man and wearing a sidearm. Ty didn’t doubt that she knew how to use it. But right now, the child-stealer wore an expression of helpless confusion that would have done credit to the smallest, most feminine of creatures.
Ty had no idea what had just happened here. Frowning, he watched the woman and the child holding each other and could not imagine why either of them was dressed the way she was or what their relationship might possibly be.
A cloud of grey-white smoke belched past the window, obscuring his view, and a whistle screamed overhead.
The boards lurched beneath his feet. Slinging his saddlebags over his shoulder, he strode down the aisle and out the door at the end of the car, then jumped to the ground.
When he looked up, the now-black-haired woman and his niece had disappeared. They couldn’t have gone far.
Before he set off to follow, he shot a glance toward the departing train. Damned if his horse wasn’t on its way to Mexico City. How many horses had he lost now? Three? Cursing, he rapidly crossed the square and peered into the lengthening shadows creeping down narrow streets.
He spotted them about a block ahead, the large woman and the small girl. The woman had a protective hand on the child’s shoulder. His niece rested her head against the woman’s side.
Ty followed, keeping well behind them, pausing when they did.
At the corner, the woman bent and lifted his niece, slinging the child over her shoulder like a sack of grain.
She carried the girl another six blocks, to the entrance of a hotel that Ty would have overlooked entirely if the woman hadn’t turned in at a door recessed from the street.
When he was certain that she wasn’t coming out again, he walked around the block, looking for the alley, pinning the location in his mind.
A thick stench of roasting tobacco leaves burned his nostrils when he passed a factory on the north side of the hotel.
To the west, a man wearing an apron hung lanterns in front of a cantina.
In the street to the south, vendors packed away their wares for the night.
When he had circled back to the hotel entrance, he stopped across the street and lit a cigar, frowning and considering his next move.
Who the hell was she? He kept seeing her face in his mind.
Tanned, strong features, a chiseled, stubborn jaw, blue eyes, one of them still bruised from the fight in Verde Flores.
And that magnificent figure. The poncho she’d worn at the depot was no shield against his memory. A man didn’t forget breasts like hers.
He almost laughed aloud. After a lifetime of chasing soft, dainty creatures no larger than dolls, it amused him to realize that no woman had riveted his interest as did the tall strange-haired woman with the wicked punch who had stolen his niece.
Shaking his head, he kicked at a horse-apple and waited for full darkness to settle.