Page 30 of The Promise of Jenny Jones

Joy and confusion alternated like twin beacons blinking across Graciela’s expression. She was going home. Home to Aunt Tete and her own room and the comforts of the hacienda and the servants who staffed it, home to a secure life she understood.

But her mother would not be there. Home would never again be the place she had known. A shine of tears dampened her eyes.

Wrapping her arms around her knees, she sat in front of the campfire, shivering slightly as the sun sank behind the Sierras and the evening chill crept over the desert.

Idly she watched Cousin Tito remove a tightly woven sack from a strap on his saddle and carry it toward the fire.

At once her thoughts focused. Her neck prickled, and she sat up straight when she realized something moved inside the sack.

“Have you eaten snake before?” Tito asked, grinning at her. Eyes fixed on the sack, Graciela slowly rose to her feet. Nothing on earth frightened her more than snakes.

Holding the sack by his side, Tito swept a hard glance over Jorje, Carlos, and Favre, and abruptly Graciela became sharply aware of a strange unnerving tension that she had vaguely sensed all day.

Now the tension leaped into her as well.

Eyes wide, mouth dry, she tried to move backward a step as Tito knelt beside her and placed the sack on the ground, but her trembling legs would not obey.

“I’ll release one of the snakes,” Tito explained, smiling at her with a strange expression. “I’ll club it. Then we’ll skin it and roast it over the fire. The meat is white and juicy. You’ll think you’re eating chicken.”

Graciela swallowed convulsively. She couldn’t wrest her eyes from the horrifying sinuous movement slithering beneath the folds of the sack. Fear dried her mouth to dust and paralyzed her. Her heart thudded so loudly that she was only dimly aware the others had fallen silent.

Tito stood, inspecting the sliding movements within the sack before he flicked a look toward Cousin Jorje.

Graciela didn’t see what passed between them as she couldn’t take her eyes off of the sack.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. All she could manage was a gasp when Tito grinned and upended the sack in front of her.

Three large, thick rattlesnakes dropped to the ground in front of her feet.

Terror gripped her in paralyzing shock. She couldn’t breathe; she thought surely she would faint. One of the snakes slithered past on her left, leaving an S-shaped track as it headed for the desert and darkness. One of the snakes lashed into a coil, its head raised, its tongue flicking and hissing.

Graciela knew the coiled snake would strike at any movement, so she fought to hold her shaking body still even though every muscle trembled and her brain screamed at her to run.

Whispering through dry lips, she prayed that one of her cousins would shoot the hissing snake before it struck her. But none of them moved.

Shocked and dizzy with horror, she watched the third snake wind toward her.

And she shook violently as it glided over the top of her shoe, then disappeared behind her.

She desperately wanted to peer over her shoulder to make sure the snake continued toward the desert.

Irrationally, she was terrifyingly certain that the snake would slip beneath her hem and twist up her leg before it sank its fangs into her flesh.

She could only hope the snake wasn’t sliding under her hem at this very minute, but she dared not look to see if it was.

The movement would attract the coiled snake, the hissing snake that posed the greatest danger.

Striding forward, Favre shoved Tito out of his way, then shot the head off the coiled snake.

Graciela jumped at the sound of the gunshot.

Relief crumpled her bones and she fell to the ground as limp as a pile of rags.

Almost at once, she leaped to her feet and shook her skirt furiously, then peered anxiously around her, frantically wiping at tears in order to see better.

Knowing the other two snakes were out there, maybe just beyond the light cast by the campfire, made her shake with fear.

Favre stared at Tito, and his lip curled. “El Stupido!” Kneeling, he withdrew a knife from his belt and began to skin the snake he’d shot. One of the others laughed, then everyone returned to their tasks and finished setting up camp.

Deeply frightened, Graciela wiped her eyes and peered at Tito, expecting him to apologize for an accident that could easily have gotten her killed, expecting him to hug and pet her, hoping for reassurance. But he returned her gaze with cold eyes, and all he said was, “You are very lucky, chica. ”

Confused and still stunned, Graciela moved close to the fire and extended trembling hands toward the flames. She took care to stand well away from the dead snake.

After setting two forked sticks, Favre draped the skinned snake above the fire to cook. Graciela could not look at it. And when the time came to eat, her stomach rebelled. She tasted a few spoonfuls of rice and nibbled at a tortilla, but she didn’t touch the lumps of roasted snake.

After the dishes were tossed aside, her cousins brought out a bottle of tequila and passed it among themselves. Occasionally one of them studied her with eyes kept carefully blank. The snakes were gone—she fervently hoped—but her fear remained.

Now that the incident had receded somewhat, Graciela found terrible thoughts creeping into her mind.

As hard as she struggled to banish the thought, she felt a growing conviction that dropping the sack of snakes at her feet had been no accident.

In the instant before Tito dropped the sack, he had looked at her with dark greedy eyes, and a small smile of anticipation had curved beneath his mustache.

None of the cousins had rushed to snatch her away from the snakes.

None had drawn the pistol at his hip until Favre finally stepped forward.

Shifting her gaze to his firelit face, she wondered if Favre had acted to save her, or if he had merely feared that the last snake would escape to the desert and they would have no meat with their beans and rice.

“Your bedroll is over there,” Cousin Jorje said, jerking his head toward the darkness.

Twitching, Graciela turned large eyes to him, mute with silent terror.

“The snakes are long gone,” Jorje said impatiently.

When she still could not move, he strode away from the fire, pulling her by the elbow.

While she watched, trembling and quiet, he turned out her blankets to show her nothing fanged or poisonous waited within.

“Go to sleep now,” he ordered in a voice she recognized.

It was the voice grown-ups used when they wished to discuss adult matters that children should not hear.

“Good night,” she whispered, feeling abandoned as Cousin Jorje strode away from her, returning to the safety and companionship of the campfire.

Before she crawled into her bedroll, she walked on top of it even though she had watched Cousin Jorje shake out the blankets. When she felt nothing snake-shaped beneath her shoes, she reluctantly slid inside and turned anxious eyes toward the fire.

For the first time in her young life, Graciela Sanders did not feel safe in the presence of relatives. Something was very wrong. These men were not cousins she saw frequently, like Luis or Chulo, but she remembered the men around the fire as being talkative and boastful, teasing and gay.

No one had laughed tonight. There had been no jests or merrymaking along the trail or around the fire. They had not petted her or heaped lavish compliments on her as they had at Aunt Tete’s hacienda. They had treated her like an unwelcome stranger.

After murmuring hasty prayers, she wrenched her mind from disturbing thoughts and let herself recall the softness of her bed at home and the row of vividly clad dolls on her shelf. Her books, her slate, the small box of treasures she hadn’t thought to see again. These memories cheered her.

But when she remembered that she would never again run to her mother’s room to share cups of morning chocolate, would never say her prayers with her mother kneeling beside her, would not ride in the carriage breathing her mother’s perfume or hear her mother’s voice, a rush of pain crushed her chest.

Her mother was dead, and she was afraid of the men at the campfire.

Burrowing deeper into the blankets, struggling not to cry, Graciela sought something good to think about. She thought about telling her friend Consuelo about her recent adventures.

Consuelo had never ridden a train or seen a town the size of Durango, she was sure of it.

Certainly Consuelo had never had a day alone with no duenna or family in attendance.

Nor had she dressed her own hair or bathed in a stream.

Consuelo’s eyes would widen and she would gasp when she learned that Graciela had exchanged clothing with a street urchin and that Graciela had eaten food cooked over an open fire and had slept on the ground.

“Is she asleep yet?”

When Cousin Jorje came quietly to look at her, she squeezed her eyes shut and pretended not to know he stood over her gazing down. After she heard the chink of his spurs retreating, she returned her thoughts to Consuelo, trying to decide how she would explain Jenny to her friend.

Jenny had killed her mother and Graciela hated her for that. But it was also true that Jenny had cared for her when she was ill, and Jenny had taught her good things to know. She resented that Jenny treated her like a servant, yet Jenny’s approval had become oddly important to her.