The Promise of Jenny Jones (19 page)

Never in his life had he wanted to punch someone as much as he wanted to punch the woman staring a challenge into his eyes. But if he raised a hand against her, she'd come right back at him, regardless of her wounded arm, and they'd be fighting and rolling in the dirt street of this tiny village whose curious population stood in doorways staring at them.

He had no idea how he could want to bed a woman and want to knock her senseless at the same time. It was a mystery to ponder some other time.

"The fact is," he snarled, opening and closing his fists, "neither of us has to raise Graciela. Robert will do that. As I've said before, your job is finished. Over. You'd do us both a favor if you'd ride out of here and forget about my niece."

Her lip curled away from straight white teeth. "Did the odds change when I wasn't looking? Did a few of the Barrancas cousins shoot themselves? Or do you plan to go up against four men all by your stupid self? You aren't that good, Sanders."

He flushed, remembering how she'd left him hog-tied in the dirt. His fists closed hard. She didn't know just how good he was, but his time would come, damn it. "You and I can't keep stealing Graciela back and forth. We have to work this out."

"There's nothing to work out," she said, spinning away from him and walking forward. "I'm taking the kid to Robert. Me, not you. I gave my promise, and that's the end of it." She threw the words back at him. "If you want to tag along … well, I agree that's better than what we've been doing. It's up to you. I don't give a piss what you decide."

He didn't talk to her while she collected her gear and watched him saddle her horse; he didn't talk until they were a mile east of the village, following a clear trail left by the cousins.

"Your wound isn't bad," he commented stiffly, coming up alongside her mare. "You should be able to use your arm in a couple of days."

"I could use it now if I had to," she snapped.

Crimson shadows stretched before them, cast by a bloodred sunset. Ty judged they could ride another thirty minutes,then they'd have to set up camp for the night. "We can't make plans until we find out where the cousins are going and what they intend to do."

"They're heading toward the railroad, and they plan to kill Graciela. The only questions are when and how."

Her lack of doubt troubled him. "I want to play devil's advocate for a minute."

She scowled,then muttered, "Wait." After whipping a dictionary out of her roll, she thumbed the pages, held the book to the sunset light streaming over her shoulder,then she nodded grimly. "Go ahead. Be an advocate, you're aperfect devil."

"All you have is Marguarita's opinion that the Barrancas cousins intend to harm Graciela."

"They just rode off with her, didn't they?"

"From their point of view, they rescued Graciela from a stranger who stole her after her mother's death."

She threw up her good hand. "Mexicans are not as dumb as rocks!"

"I didn't say they were," he answered levelly, striving for patience. "I'm just raising the point that the cousins may have the same interest in Graciela as I do. She's family. You have no right to her, they do."

Jenny twisted in the saddle to glare at him. "By now everyone involved in this business knows that Marguarita died on the wall in my place. They know I sure as hell didn't force her to die; it was her choice. They know I didn't ride to the hacienda and steal the kid out of her bed; she was brought to me. They know Marguarita wanted me to take the kid toCalifornia. Count on it. From Dona Theodora on down, everyone knows exactly what happened and why."

"If this unfolds the way it's setting up, you and I are going to kill some Barrancas cousins," he said stubbornly. "I want some assurance that I'm not killing people without a damned good reason."

"Marguarita believed the cousins were murdering sons of bitches. She believed it enough to die rather than trust her daughter to one of them. That's enough assurance for me."

Ty reined in beside a shallow swale, then slid off his horse and walked down the incline to sniff,then sample, a thin puddle at the bottom. "The water's muddy but drinkable," he called up to Jenny. "We'll camp here." After he decided she wasn't going to argue, he returned to unsaddle their horses and handle the heavier items that she couldn't manage one-handed.

While he worked, he reviewed the scene he had witnessed in the cantina of the no-name village. His impression was that Cousin Emil had wanted Graciela for ransom. In retrospect, he recalled that Emil Barrancas had not actually said anything about a ransom. Perhaps the family loved the child and simply wanted her back home where they believed she belonged. That would explain the message from Dona Theodora Barrancas y Talmas. Dona Theodora expected the cousins to find and return the child to her. She didn't want to lose Graciela to a stranger or to the Sanders andCalifornia.

It troubled him that events could have a different explanation than the one Jenny put forward. It was equally troubling to consider that she might be right. Marguarita certainly had believed the cousins were capable of evil. She had died because she believed it.

After eating plates of beans and tortillas, they settled before the flames, drinking coffee as fiery stars burned holes in the desert sky.

"I'm a brawler and a fighter, a shooter when I have to be," Ty remarked, watching fingers of firelight dance across her strong features. "I'm not a murderer."

"If you're squeamish about killing, then head on back toCaliforniaand wait for me and the kid to get there."

He laughed. "Now who's sounding stupid? You're going to face down four men? You aren't that good either, Jones," he said, enjoying dishing back her earlier comment.

She narrowed her eyes,then suddenly she laughed, ending in a smile. The smile transformed her face. With the firelight rosy on her cheeks and lips, and the smile curving her mouth and lighting her eyes, she was beautiful. Ty stared at her.

"I've got you figured," she said in that husky voice. "You'll do what you have to because you promised your brother. You gave your word. You aren't going anywhere without the kid, so I'm not worrying about having to fight alone."

There was nothing to say. She was right, of course. She understood the power of apromise, saw a promise the same way he did.

"Do you have a family, Sanders? A wife and kids of your own?" Resting her coffee cup on her knee, she gazed at him across the flames, her expression unreadable.

"Hell no." The question made him laugh. "I'm not the marrying kind." When she continued to look at him, he leaned forward and poured more coffee into his cup. "A man like me can't live with anyone."

"Is that right?" She raised her coffee cup. "What makes you so ornery that no one could stand to live with you?"

"My ma said I was born mad." He shrugged and gazed into the flames. "Maybe she was right." He thought about it. "I never met a woman I could stand for more than a week." A grin curved his mouth. "I imagine they felt the same about me."

What began as charming feminine traits ended by irritating the bejesus out ofhim. Thencame the naive and often silly or boring conversations. And the obsession with all the tiny nuances of etiquette with the inevitability of his forgetting something and offering insult. Not to mention the endless primping and smoothing and patting. The soft helplessness. And, most offensive, the ubiquitous efforts to change him. All women wanted to reshape a man into something other than what he was.

"So. What do you do with yourself when you aren't inMexico? You a drifter?"

"I drifted along the coast for a few years."

"And then?"

"I always came home to the ranch." His father's ranch, and now his brother's. He frowned. "Why are you asking all these questions?"

"No reason." One shoulder lifted in a shrug that might have passed for indifference if he hadn't known her as well as he was beginning to. "Talking around the fire, that's all. Passing the time. No one says you have to answer."

"I have a place on the ranch. Three hundred acres my father cut out a few years ago. I run cattle, try to prevent old man Barrancas's men from stealing them. You could say we've been stealing each other's stock for twenty years." He'd tried his hand at other professions, but he always returned to the ranch. The land was in his blood. "You ever worked on a ranch?"

"Once, for about a year. The food was good. The pay was lousy. I suppose it's a satisfying life if you own the land."

"How about you? You ever been married?"

"Me? Oh hell no." Her laugh sounded rusty as if she didn't use it much. "I haven't had jobs that inspire romantic leanings. Cursing at mules, skinning carcasses, you get the drift." Yawning, she glanced toward her bedroll. "I'm like you. I never met a man that I didn't want to shoot after about three days." Standing, she adjusted the sling around her arm before bending forward to flex the stiffness out of her shoulders.

"Does your arm hurt?"

Incredulity widened her eyes. "What the hell do you think? Of course it hurts. Hurts like the devil."

Then she tilted her head and gazed up at the night sky. For several minutes she didn't speak. "Graciela is all right … isn't she?" she asked in a whisper, her eyes fixed on a distant star. "Make me believe they haven't killed her yet."

The raw anguish thinning her voice surprised him. This was the first flash of vulnerability and uncertainty that he'd glimpsed. For some reason seeing a vulnerable Jenny Jones made his chest tighten painfully. He cleared his throat and said what she needed to hear.

"Graciela hasn't been harmed," he stated firmly. "No one's going to kill her. We're going to get her back."

"I know we will." Turning her back to him, she faced the desert and the tall cacti standing guard like spiny sentinels. Her shoulders dropped, pulling her chin down.

"The kid asked Jorje not to kill me," she said in a low wondering voice, gazing down at her boots. "You heard her. I didn't imagine it." She stood in silence for a full minute,then she swore softly and kicked a rock toward a clump of scrub oak before she stalked toward her bedroll.

Ty cradled his coffee cup and studied the flames dying in the fire pit. He would have sworn that Jenny's only connection to his niece was her promise to Marguarita. Now he wondered. A minute ago she'd revealed a glimpse of something deeper that made him suspect he'd misjudged her.

"Sanders?"

Raising his head, he frowned toward her bedroll. "What is it?"

"I've got nothing to offer a man, and you've got nothing to offer a woman. So don't get any ideas about acting on that hankering. I've got my Colt in my blankets. You make a move in my direction, and I'll shoot your butt."

Indignation ruffled his brow. "Well, for God's sake. Do you really think I have so little conscience that I'd jump a woman with a shot-up arm?"

After a long silence, she called to him out of the darkness. "You just stay on your side of the fire."

Realization smoothed the anger from his forehead, and he laughed. She was thinking about him, thinking about those hankering feelings. Grinning, he gazed toward the saddle she used as a pillow.

"Darlin', when I'm ready to satisfy this hankering … you'll beg me to crawl in your bedroll. That's a promise."

Sputtering sounds of outrage erupted from her blankets, and she sat up. "That will fricking never happen!" she shouted furiously.

"Yeah. It will," he said softly. Smiling, he tossed the last of his coffee on the ground, then walked to his bedroll and kicked it open.

Whoever broke her hadbroke her wrong.

He was going to fix that. And she was going to enjoy the experience as much as he planned to. Thinking about it made his groin ache with anticipation.

CHAPTER 10

J oy 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. Atonce 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.