Page 27 of The Promise of Jenny Jones

Ty 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 what 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 could hampered 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.

“Get your butt behind that tree!” After giving Jenny a shove, he dived toward the water trough and dropped into a crouch.

She leaned around the tree trunk. “Crud on a crust! There’s more of them!”

Lifting his head above the trough, Ty spotted three men running toward the sound of the shots. Smiling and clapping her hands, Graciela called their names.

“More fricking cousins! My God. She’s got a cousin in every jerkwater village in Mexico. They’re everywhere.”

Swiftly, he assessed the situation and reached a reluctant conclusion.

“We’re outnumbered.” He glanced toward the tree and saw that Jenny had stepped away from the trunk.

He shouted to her over the sound of gunfire.

“Damn it, get behind that tree!” She had more guts than brains.

“Listen to me. We can’t win this fight. Hold your fire and let them go. ”

She whirled toward the water trough. “What are you saying, you son of a bitch? That we give up and let them take her?”

“We’ll get her back. But not if we’re dead.”

She stared hard at him, then looked toward the street.

Ty watched her face as she accepted the inevitable.

Her shoulders slumped, her gun dropped to her side, and she covered her eyes with a shaking hand.

A bullet chunked into the water trough; another pinged the dust in front of the tree.

Cautiously, Ty raised his head, burning to return fire, but holding back because Graciela was happily running back and forth between the men.

Frustrated, he made a fist and hit the trough hard enough to slop water over the sides.

Now the Mexes were retreating toward the cantina, the man at the rear firing back at Ty and Jenny. “Wait!” Graciela shouted.

She broke from the group of men and stood silently staring back at Jenny who had stepped into the street when she heard Graciela’s shout.

They looked at each other for a long moment, then Graciela wriggled her fingers in a shy wave, spun, and ran back to the men.

One of the insolent bastards swung her up on his shoulders, arrogantly certain that Ty and Jenny wouldn’t shoot, and the men moved swiftly toward the horses tied in front of the cantina.

Jenny sagged against the tree trunk, watching with dulled eyes as the men trotted out of the village, Graciela perched in front of Cousin Jorje. “They’ll kill her. You know that, don’t you?” she said, not looking at him.

Slowly Ty pulled to his feet and turned away from the dust kicked up by the Mexes’ horses.

He glared. “What the hell were you thinking about? Standing there in the middle of the street like some cocksure gunfighter with not a fricking thing between you and getting killed! You’re damned lucky that Mex was a lousy shot.

I’m amazed that you didn’t take a bullet. ”

“I did take a bullet.”

Swearing, he strode forward and ran his hands roughly over her shoulders, found the wetness just above her elbow. “Christ!” He stared down into her eyes. “Anywhere else?”

“Just the arm.”

Shoving back her poncho, he gripped her shirt and tore it open down the sleeve. She winced when he probed the wound. “You live right. The shot passed through the fleshy part. It didn’t hit bone.”

“We’re wasting time, Sanders.” She jerked away from him. “We’ve got to go after her.”

“We will,” he said grimly, wiping blood off his fingers. “First we get you doctored.”

She made a snorting sound. “There’s no doctor in this place. We need to go after them now.”

“Were the cousins specifically looking for you, or was this shoot-out the result of an accidental meeting? Because if it was accidental, then nothing is going to happen immediately. Graciela is safe until they decide what they’re going to do.

It takes two Mexicans a full day of arguing just to agree the sky is blue. ”

Ty stopped, thinking about what he had just said, hearing the echo of his father. “Look,” he said, frowning. “Four men, and that’s what we’ve got here, are going to need two days merely to agree that they need a plan and another two or three days to decide what the plan’s going to be.”

Jenny tilted her head. “You don’t think much of the Mexicans, do you, Sanders?”

He turned her toward the cantina and pulled her into step beside him. “For as long as I can remember, Don Antonio Barrancas has been trying to claim Sanders land as his, and he turns a blind eye when his men steal our cattle. His daughter split our family apart.”

“That’s one family, and it could have been anyone. Barrancas doesn’t represent all Mexicans.”

He frowned at her. “Maybe I’m starting to see that. And maybe you should mind your own business.”

“I’m thinking about Graciela, and that makes it my business. Maybe your intolerance is one of the reasons I’m never going to let her go off alone with you.”

They stood nose to nose, glaring at each other.

“Well, I take offense at that statement. I’m not so blinded by—certain things—that I’d dislike a child just because…” He was floundering here, starting to sputter. “If you’re on some kind of mission to convince me that all Mexicans wear a halo—”

“I’m not on any kind of mission except to keep my promise to a good woman. I’d be the first to concede that the Barrancas cousins are rotten sons of bitches.”

“That’s the one thing in this world that you and I agree on.” Taking her good arm, he pulled her into the cantina and ordered a bottle of tequila. “Sit there,” he ordered, pointing to a stool in front of bare planks laid out as a bar. “Put your arm on the top.”

“?Que esta?” The man behind the bar stared at Jenny’s bloody arm. He feigned surprise, as if he hadn’t heard the shots in the street, hadn’t watched the cousins jump on their horses right in front of the open-faced cantina.

“Your pals shot a woman. I’m going to clean her wound,” Ty snarled. “You got a problem with that?” The man lifted both hands and moved backward a step. “How about you?” he asked Jenny.

She shrugged. “Has to be done.”

Pushing back the edges of her poncho, he pulled open the halves of her bloody sleeve and inspected the wound at close quarters.

A quarter of an inch to the left, and the bullet would have shattered bone, leaving her with a useless arm.

A couple of inches to the right, and he’d be burying her right now.

He poured tequila into a shot glass and shoved it toward her.

“Drink up. This is going to hurt like hell.”

She tossed back the tequila without a gasp, suggesting she’d tipped a few in her time.

“Been shot before. Outside El Paso.” She wiped her good hand across her lips.

“Some bastard tried to steal my rig and freight. He didn’t get it.

But he shot me just below the ribs.” She looked up at him. “You ever been bored?”

“About five years ago. One of old man Barrancas’s men winged me when I rode onto Barrancas land looking for the cattle they stole.” He poured her another shot of tequila, watched her throw it back.