Page 5 of The Promise of Jenny Jones

“Come on, kid. Let’s vamoose. ” She extended her arms to Graciela, intending to hoist her up on the horse, but the kid jerked backward.

“I’m not going with you! I want my mama!” She cast an imploring look at the woman standing in the shadows, then ran to her and buried a storm of sobbing in the woman’s apron. “I hate her! I want to stay here with you!”

This was exactly the situation Jenny had feared.

Frowning, she shifted from one foot to the other, running a dozen solutions through her mind.

She could knock the kid unconscious, throw her over the horse’s neck, and go.

She could hog-tie the kid, stuff the gloves in her mouth, and go.

She could do just about anything except leave without the kid.

The woman’s dark eyes burned in the darkness, scorching Jenny’s face. Marguarita had told the woman and the kid that dying was her choice, Jenny knew this, but both of them seemed to place the blame squarely on her.

Pursing her lips, she inspected the lightening sky. In minutes, the sun would drift above the horizon. She wanted to be far enough away by then that Graciela would not hear the fusillade of gunshots from the camp. Jenny didn’t want to hear them either.

She stepped up to the woman and gazed into her accusing eyes. “I want to be far away before the sun comes up. Do you get my meaning?” She jerked a thumb toward Graciela.

The woman leaned to one side and spit near the hem of Jenny’s skirt. She glared hard, then bent to take Graciela’s shaking body in her arms. Soft crooning sounds sang in her throat.

“Remember what your mama said? Dry your tears, little one. This Americana is going to take you home to your papa.”

“She killed my mama!” Sobs slurred the words, but Jenny heard them clearly enough. She ground her teeth and clenched her fists. She wanted to smack the kid for wasting time.

“No, no, little flower.” The woman eased backward, smoothed a strand of silky brown hair beneath the edge of Graciela’s stylish little hat.

She sent a murderous glare in Jenny’s direction, then managed a smile for the child.

“Remember? Your mama was dying slowly. Now, she will join the angels swiftly and without pain. She will be happy as she was not happy on earth.”

“She’ll join those angels very soon,” Jenny reminded the woman, giving the sky a meaningful nod. “Graciela? Get your butt over here. We’re leaving. Now. ”

The woman half led, half pulled Graciela toward the horse. “The Americana will take good care of you,” she promised in a soothing tone. Her hot eyes warned that if Jenny harmed a hair on Graciela’s head, she would hunt Jenny to the ends of creation and eat the heart out of her chest.

Jenny flexed her shoulders, then stared down at Graciela.

She didn’t know how big a kid of six was supposed to be, but the feather atop Graciela’s hat reached only to Jenny’s chest. To her, the kid looked like a large doll dressed in miniature adult clothing.

Aside from the fashionable attire, Jenny couldn’t identify much of Marguarita in her daughter.

The kid had brown hair instead of black, and her skin was a shade lighter than Marguarita’s.

Most startling, Graciela had not inherited her mother’s large, soft brown eyes.

Graciela glared hatred through eyes that were as blue-green as the sea.

She had received her mother’s patrician nose and cheekbones, but the rest of her face must have come from her father’s side, the family of the sainted Roberto.

The stubbornness, Jenny suspected, was Graciela’s alone.

Feeling that something more needed to be said to get Graciela’s butt on the horse, Jenny bent until her face was on a level with the kid’s.

“All right, you hate me. I don’t like you either.

But we’re stuck with each other. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t right, but—” How had the woman put it?

“Your mama has gone to join the angels. Your daddy is all you got left, and I promised your mama that I’d take you to him.

And you promised your mama that you would go. She told me so. Isn’t that right?”

Tiny gloved fists scrubbed at Graciela’s eyes. “I don’t want to leave Maria or my great-aunt Tete or my cousins.”

“Well, you have to. You’ll be safe and happy with your daddy.” Jenny didn’t have a fricking notion if she was telling the truth or not. She hated that. “Most important, this is what your mama wanted. You and me… we both promised her that you’d go.”

They glared at each other for a full minute, then Graciela turned and flung herself on the woman, sobbing out a long good-bye.

The two of them would have been saying good-bye a week from Sunday if Jenny hadn’t grabbed Graciela by the waist and tossed her up on the horse.

The idiot skirt and petticoats tripped her on the first try, but she mounted on the second.

The woman tapped her on the thigh, but didn’t say anything when Jenny frowned down at her. “I hear you,” Jenny muttered. “I’ll do the best that I can.”

Then she warned the kid to hang on, and she dug the heels of her boots into the horse’s side. They galloped away from the mesquite tree and the woman, away from the walled camp in the distance.

Five minutes later, Jenny heard the shots.

“Thunder,” she said to Graciela, closing her eyes above the kid’s head.

All right, Marguarita. You’re an angel now.

There’s not going to be anymore pain, no more blood on your handkerchief If there’s any blood around here, it’s going to be mine.

If you have any influence up there, me and the kid could use a helping hand.

Just keep that in mind, okay? Do what you fricking can.

They rode spit for leather, keeping away from the main roads, until midday.

Jenny wouldn’t have stopped then, but the kid’s body pressed next to hers radiated heat like a small oven.

They were both soaked in sweat when she found a trickle of water and some shade and decided to stop, hoping Maria, or whatever her name was, had remembered to pack some food in the saddlebags.

Wordless, she lifted Graciela to the ground, then walked toward the trickle, kneeled, and scooped water over her face. A long sigh lifted her chest as the water ran down her throat and soaked into her high-necked shirtwaist.

“You stink,” Graciela announced, dropping down beside Jenny and cupping her hands for the water. She let the water dribble through her fingers, then patted her face delicately.

“You’d stink too if you’d just spent six weeks in a jail cell.” Jenny opened her collar and poured water out of her hand down between her breasts. She released a long sigh of pleasure.

Graciela slid her a sullen look. “Were there rats in your jail cell?”

“Rats almost as big as cats.” Jenny reached for the pins in her hair. “Would you know if whoever packed the saddlebags packed scissors or a knife?”

“Is that true?” Graciela said suspiciously. “As big as cats?” A shudder convulsed her shoulders.

Jenny eyed the trickle of water. She hoped to reach Verde Flores the day after tomorrow.

And she hoped to board the train without attracting undue attention.

That wasn’t going to happen if she smelled rank enough to drop an ox.

Another sigh lifted her shoulders. She hated to waste a single minute, but this might be one of those ounce-of-prevention things.

Standing, she fetched the saddlebags and opened them beneath the shade of a scrub oak at the edge of the trickle.

Whoever had packed the bags had managed to cram an amazing amount inside.

Jenny found a change of clothing for both of them, and nightdresses.

Nightdresses! There were toilet articles including a sewing kit, and a skillet, and the money pouch, which felt satisfyingly heavy in her palm, and a thin packet of papers.

She found a bar of soap at once, and another pouch that contained smaller bags of medicinal supplies.

She sniffed the bags of powders and ointments, and uttered a low sound when the pungent scent of crushed sabadilla seed made her nostrils flare. This was the remedy she had hoped to find.

Rocking back on her heels, she studied Graciela’s reddened eyes. “I’m going to need your help.”

“I hate you,” Graciela hissed.

“I need your help anyway.” Now that she could see Graciela in full sunlight, she had to concede the kid was different from Marguarita, but equally lovely.

Graciela’s eyes were particularly beautiful, thick-lashed and changing from blue to green, then back again.

Right now those eyes were as hard as rocks.

Patrician and spoiled to the core, Graciela stared at her with haughty disdain.

Jenny dug through the sewing materials and removed a small pair of scissors. “Do you know how to use these?”

“Of course I know how to use scissors.”

“Well, how do I know what a six-year-old can or cannot do?” Jenny snapped. She pushed the scissors at Graciela, then shook out tangled skeins of matted red hair. “Cut it off.”

Graciela twitched and stared.

“Lice,” Jenny explained with a shrug, enjoying the horror in the kid’s expression. “Keep in mind that I have to appear in public, and you’ll be there with me. So cut it short, but not too close to the scalp. Leave me enough that I won’t look peculiar wearing a bonnet.”

“Lice! Ack! I don’t want to touch them!”

“Either we get rid of them now, or in a day or two, you’ll have lice, too.”

Graciela’s hand flew to the brown curls peeping beneath the edge of her little feathered hat. “No!”

Jenny pointed to her head, wondering at the wisdom of allowing someone who hated her, even a kid, near her head with a pair of sharp scissors.

Graciela approached with huge reluctance, as if Jenny had admitted to leprosy. She made herself lift a dirty strand between her thumb and forefinger. “Ugh!”