Page 8 of The Promise of Jenny Jones

Ty stepped off the train, stretched, and wiped soot and smoke off his forehead. He resettled his hat, flexed the stiffness out of his shoulders and thighs.

The small Verde Flores depot was unpainted and looked like a puff of wind could knock down the haphazard weathered walls. Clusters of people waiting for the next train sweated in the heat, but they would have broiled if it hadn’t been for the leafy trees bending over the platform roof.

After checking on his horse through the slats of a boxcar, and accepting that it would be a while before the animals were unloaded, Ty continued around to the side of the depot and inspected the town behind it.

A small stream divided the town into two sleepy halves.

Because of the water, trees flourished in Verde Flores.

Flowers nodded on windowsills, splashes of red and yellow that made the town seem almost inviting.

Ty watched some women washing clothes in the stream, chattering to one another, and was glad he had arrived before everyone vanished indoors to escape the midday heat.

At one o’clock, a Mexican village resembled a ghost town.

Returning to the platform, he confirmed that no one had yet opened the boxcars. He’d have to wait. As benches were scarce, filled with people waiting for luggage or the next boarding call, he leaned in the doorway to the station house and searched his pockets for a cigar.

“Pardone, Senor” A woman’s husky voice spoke from immediately behind him.

“Con gusto,” he said politely, stepping out of her way.

To his surprise, she wasn’t Spanish. Leaving an odd medicinal smell behind her, she strode past him, then stopped suddenly as if she had forgotten something.

She looked over her shoulder at her daughter.

At least Ty assumed the girl lagging behind was her daughter.

They both had blue eyes; they seemed to be traveling together.

Obviously, the little girl’s father must be a Mex, and that disturbed him.

A Spanish/Anglo marriage had torn his own family apart which was part of the reason why he couldn’t help feeling some prejudice against Mexicans.

The larger part of his bias had taken root as he grew up witnessing his father’s intolerance, especially toward Don Antonio Barrancas who owned the ranch sharing a border with the Sanders’ spread.

It was hard to argue with his father, given the hostilities between the Sanders and the Barrancas family.

Ty had grown up agreeing with his father’s opinions and not understanding why Robert didn’t feel the same level of intolerance.

Turning his thoughts back to the woman, he decided she wasn’t a beauty, but she wasn’t thumbs-down either.

On closer inspection, her hair was peculiar, he decided, striking a match against the bottom of his boot.

He lit a cigar and exhaled. Maybe she’d been ill or something, and she’d had to cut her hair.

There should have been a bun at the back, but there was only a fringe of red curling up over the bottom of a hat that hadn’t been designed to be worn so far back on the head.

Usually Ty wasn’t drawn to tall, big-boned women who looked like they could do everything a man could do and maybe do it better.

But this woman caught his attention. He guessed she was at least five feet ten or eleven, but she didn’t hunch or try to pretend she was a foot shorter.

She didn’t affect breathless airs better left to little women, and she wasn’t foolish enough to mimic daintiness.

She carried herself as if height were an advantage, not the disaster women usually considered it.

She moved like a real person, not like someone sandwiched between metal stays.

And she looked around her with an expression that dared anyone to challenge her or get in her way.

Ty smiled, then realizing he was staring and turned his head toward the crowded benches.

He hoped the woman and her daughter didn’t have long to wait because there was no place for them to sit.

After smoking a third of his cigar, he shoved away from the doorjamb and ambled down to check on the boxcars again.

A half dozen sweating men were unloading cartons.

“You should have unloaded the horses first,” he commented in disgust. The men ignored him, and after a few minutes, he swore, then returned to the platform and the shade.

The woman had taken her daughter to stand beneath the spreading branches of a large tree growing to the side of the depot. Ty leaned in the doorway again, watching them for lack of anything else to occupy his interest.

They were arguing. Too many people were coming and going on the platform, voices rattling all around him, for Ty to hear why the mother and daughter argued, but it wasn’t hard to guess.

The daughter kept pointing to her hair, a sheet of silky brown rippling almost to her waist. She tried to push it up under a little hat that was more fashionable than the mother’s. Without pins, her hair cascaded back to her waist.

The mother threw out her hands, her cheeks reddened, and she turned in a full circle, glaring up at the tree limbs in growing frustration. It was an odd gesture of helplessness from a woman who projected an impression of spit-in-your-eye capability.

Ty shook his head. The mother’s hair was god-awful, but it didn’t seem to bother her. The daughter’s hair was beautiful, but she wanted it tucked away. No wonder men had difficulty understanding women.

Losing interest, he relit his cigar and shifted his attention to a hard-eyed man who galloped a lathered horse up to the depot steps and reared to a halt. He jumped from the saddle and tossed his reins to a boy who rose from a seat on the steps.

Ty watched the man stride toward the train conductor, and his eyes narrowed. There was a puffed-up thug like this one in every small town in the world. They were identifiable at a glance, angry men searching for an offense to serve as an excuse to release the fury they’d been born with.

This one was on the short side, but well muscled, covered with road dust. His hat was as black as his eyes and mustache. Rage vibrated the air around him. Conversation died and left only the sound of his spurs chinking across the boards of the platform.

The thug lowered burning black eyes to the conductor’s face. “How many trains have left this station today?”

The conductor’s gaze darted to a chalkboard the thug would have seen if he’d looked over his shoulder.

“The first train north leaves in an hour, Senor. To Chihuahua. This train departs in thirty minutes. South. Just as soon as they finish—” He nodded toward the men leading horses out of the final boxcar.

“Cousin Luis!”

Ty looked toward the mother and daughter.

The daughter’s face lit as if a candle glowed behind her cheeks, and she started to run forward, but the mother grabbed her arm and dragged her back.

The mother’s eyes narrowed into slits as she studied the thug, and her lips moved.

She might have been praying, but Ty didn’t think so from her expression.

He flipped his cigar off the platform and straightened in the doorway.

He opened his fingers wide, then curled his hands into fists.

Cousin Luis spun, and the spurs chinked across the platform, moving toward the steps.

The daughter was struggling to break free from the mother.

Ty could see that the mother had her hands full, trying to subdue the daughter, and shouting at Cousin Luis, who advanced with the single-minded purpose of a bullet.

What happened next caused an abrupt silence so profound that the insects in the trees sounded as loud as buzzards, and Ty heard the slap of clothing against the rocks in the stream, a sound too distance to be audible until now.

The thug swaggered up to the mother and daughter, and he backhanded the mother, knocking her to her knees.

For a minute it looked as if he would strike her with his fist, but he hesitated, glanced at the people silently watching from the platform.

Then he tossed the daughter up on his shoulder and started toward his horse. No one moved.

“You fricking bastard!”

The mother launched herself from the ground as if she’d been hurled from a catapult. Flying forward, she caught Cousin Luis around the knees, and he went down with a surprised and furious shout. The daughter flew out of his arms, hit her head on a rock, and went limp on the ground, dazed.

Neither the mother nor Cousin Luis noticed the daughter.

The mother sprang on top of him, and started hammering away, doing her damnedest to break his nose with her fists.

It was the most astonishing thing Ty had ever seen.

Cousin Luis tried to buck her off of his chest, but she was stuck like a burr to his vest until he flipped on his side.

Then they rolled in the dirt, slugging and kicking like two men, except the mother was hampered by her skirts and petticoats.

Ty was so thunderstruck that he didn’t move until he heard the women on the platform sucking in their breath. The hissing sound galvanized him. He wasted one second looking around, then accepted that no one was going to interfere. No one was going to help the woman.

He spit on his hands with a curse of disgust. What kind of yellow-belly stood by while some puffed-up son of a bitch beat the hell out of a mother? He didn’t care if Cousin Luis was a relative or not. If someone didn’t stop him, he was going to kill the red-haired woman.

By the time Ty reached them, they were both on their feet.

The woman threw a right, missed the thug, and her fist glanced off Ty’s jaw.

Jesus. He staggered backward a step. If she’d connected squarely, she would have laid him out in the dirt.

This wasn’t quite the mismatch he had initially supposed.

“Behind you,” she shouted, then returned to hammering at Cousin Luis.