The Promise of Jenny Jones (16 page)

According to her dictionary, ambrosia, a word she liked the sound of, was the imaginary food of the gods. Now that was something to think about. Before she ran across ambrosia, Jenny had never imagined God sitting down to supper. All day she'd been wondering who cooked the ambrosia. Surely God didn't prepare it Himself. Or maybe imaginary food didn't need to be cooked.

Graciela forked up a piece of goat meat, tasted it, and made a face. "Ack."

"It's not ambrosia, but it's all we've got, so eat it," Jenny said, pleased to have worked a new word into conversation.

"Uncle Ty wouldn't make me eat something I don't like."

Jenny narrowed her eyes. "I'm getting sick and tired of hearing what a swell fellow your Uncle Ty is."

"He's nicer than you are."

"Why? Because you wrapped him around your little finger? Because he waited on you and let you sit there like a useless bump on a rock?" She snorted. "Let me tell you something, kid. Sorry … Graciela. Since you andme hitched up, you've learned to make a halfway decent pot of coffee, you've learned how to lay a fire, you're dressing and undressing yourself, and you've learned to pin up your own hair. You can water the horses and fold up a bedroll. You can scrub out the supper dishes, and tomorrow, like it or not, you're going to cook most of our supper. You still don't know squat about most things, but you aren't as dumb as you used to be. Now you tell me … doesn't it feel good to know how to do something more than sit on your behind and watch other people take care of you?"

Graciela chewed another bite of goat meat and didn't say anything.

Now was as good a time as any to ask a question that Jenny had been wondering about. As casually as she could manage, she inquired, "Did your uncle Ty say anything about me?"

"He hates you because you killed my mama," Graciela answered, after she had swallowed and patted her lips with her handkerchief.

"He said that?" Jenny stared. "I told him what happened. He knows damned well that I didn't have anything to do with Marguarita's death! Did you explain to him that I don't lie?"

Graciela hesitated. "I told him what you said about promises."

"But he still thinks I had something to do with your mother's death?" She set her plate on the ground. "That son of a bitch."

She was still fuming after she got the kid into her bedroll and settled for the night. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, she stared into the embers of their cook fire and thought about Ty Sanders. It occurred to her that she was spending a hell of a lot of time thinking about Ty Sanders.

She couldn't look at Graciela without seeing the cowboy's blue-green eyes. Every time the kid mentioned Uncle Ty, and that was about two hundred times a day, she saw his lean wiry body in her mind. Remembered the hard muscle knotting his thighs and arms.

Jenny didn't seek out brawls, but she'd been in a few fights over the years. This was the first time, however, that remembering a tussle with a man had made her feel hot and strange when she thought about it afterward.

Worse, she knew what feeling hot and strange meant. Rubbing a hand over her forehead, she rose from the embers and walked toward the campesino's scraggly maize field, then turned and walked back to the campsite.

There had been a man in Yuma a few years ago, a man who for no reason that she could figure had made her feel hot and strange inside. Eventually she'd recognized it meant she had a hankering for him, and she had satisfied that hankering out behind Shorty Barrow's saloon in a wholly unsatisfactory coupling that had left the man smiling and her blinking up at the stars in bewildered disappointment.

Now here she was, having another hankering when she knew damned well that sex was a man's sport and there was nothing in it for a woman except a few bruises and two minutes of having someone's breath in your face. And, afterward, a feeling of loneliness as dry and empty as a desert. Never in her life had she felt as gut-bad lonely as she had that night out behind Shorty Barrow's saloon.

Until she met the cowboy, she hadn't had a hankering since.

Drawing back her boot, she kicked dirt over the embers in the fire pit, then strode over to her bedroll and crawled inside. Folding her hands behind her head, she stared up at the stars until she found Marguarita.

"I'm too fricking tired to tell you about today. Nothing happened anyway," she said. She squinted suspiciously. "Can you read my thoughts?"

That was a disconcerting possibility. She'd have to find a subtle way to ask the kid if people in heaven knew the thoughts of living people. She had a sinking feeling that dead people knew everything, especially those like Marguarita, who probably became angels. After worrying about it for several minutes, she decided that she didn't care if God knew she had a hankering for the cowboy. God was in the forgiveness business. She didn't think God wasted too much time thinking about Jenny Jones anyway.

But it made her acutely uncomfortable that Marguarita probably knew she liked to remember how good it had felt rolling around the hotel room floor with the cowboy on top of her. There had been one startling moment when she'd had a chance to knee him in the groin, but she hadn't done it because the hankering feeling had suddenly hit her hard and addled her brains.

Well damn. Her hands formed into fists behind her head. For all she knew Ty Sanders had a wife and family back inCalifornia. Not that it mattered. A man that good-looking wouldn't give Jenny a second glance in any case. He'd want some tiny little woman rigged out in lace and ribbon. Most men did. Men preferred birdlike women who smelled like flowers. Women who thought a callus was something unique to men.

Men turned their eyes away from rawboned women with a mule skinner's vocabulary. Women like Jenny might be good for satisfying a temporary hankering, but not for long-term company. There was no one out there wishing and pining to spend his life with a woman like Jenny Jones. There never would be. She'd learned that lesson a long time ago.

But it usually didn't hurt as much as it did tonight.

* * *

Much as she hated it, by late afternoon of the next day, Jenny recognized the need to find a room for the night. Graciela sat wilted on the saddle in front of her, sagging against Jenny's chest like a bag of hot rocks, too exhausted even to complain. The relentless white sun had severely burned the kid's face, and she felt feverish to the touch. They both needed a bath, especially Jenny. Her blackened hair was stiff and waxy, coated with dust and sweat. They needed some decent food and a real bed.

Knowing she'd run across a village if she angled toward the east and the railroad, she rode another four hours until she spotted smoky curls of burning chaparral, signaling cook fires ahead. Another few minutes brought the scents of food and smoldering refuse and animals and humans.

"Buenos noches, Señora," she called to a woman standing beside a small yard garden at the edge of the village. "Where can I find a room, a bath, and a meal?"

The village wasn't large enough to boast a hotel, she could see that. But she had always found the Mexican people to be warm and hospitable. She and Graciela would not sleep on the ground tonight. Indeed, the senora walked them to the home of a daughter, who hurriedly moved two children out of a room and offered it to Jenny and Graciela.

"Gracias, Señora." Exhaustion caused her voice to emerge from deep in her throat, sounding huskier than usual. If Jenny had been by herself, she would have said to hell with a bath and supper and fallen gratefully into one of the hammocks spanning the corners. But she had the kid to worry about.

Graciela stood in the center of the small room, one hand clasping the heart locket pinned to her chest, the other touching her fiery face. "I don't feel good."

"Senora Calvera is bringing a tub and something to eat," Jenny said wearily, sinking to a stool beside an open window. A warm breeze had appeared with the stars, and she jerked open her collar to dry the salty sweat slicking her throat and chest. The leaves of a courtyard tree blocked the night sky, and she couldn't see Marguarita's star. Good. She had begun to dread the night, as that was when Marguarita appeared in the heavens to gaze down and judge Jenny and the day's events.

Graciela bent at the waist and vomited on the floor. When the spasm passed, she pressed a hand to her mouth and raised stricken eyes to Jenny's openmouthed stare. "I'm sorry."

Stumbling, Graciela pushed a low stool against the wall and collapsed. When she fell back against the wall and closed her eyes, her lashes formed sooty crescents against white, white cheeks.

"Kid! What's wrong with you?" Jumping to her feet, Jenny clapped her hand on Graciela's forehead. The kid was burning up. Damn. She waved Senora Calveras's husband into the room. He carried a washtub dented enough to have belonged to the conquistadors an eon ago. "Okay, listen. A bath will cool you off."

Senora Calveras followed her husband, carrying two buckets of water, which she poured into the washtub. After glancing at the puddle of vomit, she pulled a rag from her pocket and tossed it to Jenny.

Jenny looked at the rag; she looked at the vomit. Well, crud on a crust, if that wasn't disgusting. But she could see how Senora Calveras would consider it Jenny's responsibility to clean up the mess. Graciela wasn't Senora Calveras's kid; she was Jenny's cross to bear. But first, she needed to get Graciela out of the heavy maroon riding outfit and into the tub.

Graciela opened her eyes and stared at the washtub with a dulled and miserable expression, as if bathing were a feat beyond comprehension. She sagged against the adobe wall like a rag doll.

"All right. Just this once I'll undress you. Stand up."

The kid not only looked like a rag doll, boneless and crumpled, she felt like a rag doll. Her arms hung limp as Jenny pulled them out of the maroon sleeves, and she swayed on her feet. When Jenny lifted her into the washtub, her skin felt as if a fire burned below the surface. She sat in the washtub, bent forward, staring glassy-eyed at her toes.

"Wait here." It was a stupid comment, like a naked, throw-uppy kid was going to run away. Reaching deep to summon energy, Jenny strode through the house and outside. She hesitated a minute, then explored the weeds encroaching on the kitchen garden. Thankfully, the moon drifted out of a cloud bank and she found a patch of cockleburrs almost at once, collected a generous handful, and carried them around the house to Senora Calveras's adobe oven.

"Por favor, Señora," she said in a worried voice. "Would you be kind enough to boil these in about this much water?" Spreading her hands, she indicated a quart. "Boil it down to this much." She narrowed the span to about a pint.

Senora Calveras placed a loaf of dough on her bread paddle and nodded solemnly. Lantern light gleamed along the center part in her hair. "For the little one," she said, handing Jenny a bowl of sliced onions and long strips of cloth.

Jenny blinked stupidly at the onions. "Is she supposed to eat them?"

"No, Señora," Senora Calveras said softly."For the bottoms of her feet. The onions draw out the fever." Lifting her own bare foot, she made a twirling motion with her finger indicating how Jenny should bind the onions with the strips of cloth.

"Oh." Well, what the hell. For all Jenny knew, the onions were as effective as cockleburr tea. Every woman had her own favored remedies. "Gracias."

Graciela had not moved. Limp and crumpled forward, she still stared at her toes with fever-cloudy eyes.

"Kid, you're worrying me bad, and I don't like that." Wringing out a cloth, Jenny gently stroked the dust off Graciela's sunburned face.

"That hurts," Graciela whispered in a tiny voice.

"I know. I'll put some aloe on the burn as soon as we get you clean."

"I don't want supper. I just want to sleep."

"Fine. Stand up so I can towel you dry." When she lifted Graciela out of the washtub and set her on her feet, Graciela swayed in an invisible wind, her eyes closed.

"Okay. Let me get your nightgown." She dropped it over Graciela's damp hair, then placed the kid in one of the hammocks, adjusted the pillow and pulled a light sheet to her chin.

Graciela gazed up at her. "I need my locket pin." Jenny was practically dead on her feet, but the kid "needed" her locket pin. She ground her teeth. "Just a minute." After rummaging through Graciela's clothing, she found the locket and pinned it to the kid's nightgown. "Anything else, Your Majesty?"

"I didn't say my prayers."

"I'll say them for you. Our father who art in et cetera, bless all the rotten cousins and kill Jenny. Amen. Now lift up your feet so I can strap these onions on you."

Wordlessly, Graciela raised one small foot and let Jenny bind the onions to her sole. Apparently she didn't think the remedy as strange as Jenny had thought it was. She did the other foot before she gently rubbed aloe on the kid's face and throat.

"Does that feel any better?"

Graciela gazed up at her, gratitude brimming in her blue-green eyes. "Gracias," she whispered, her eyelids fluttering with fatigue. She lifted her cheek for a good night kiss.

The moment touched and softened Jenny for as long as it took to turn her attention to the vomit on the floor. Revulsion pulled down her lips. She had to do this. The vomit wasn't going to disappear on its own. Dropping to her knees, gagging and swallowing convulsively, she used the bathwater to mop up the puddle. God. She never would have believed she'd see the day when she would wipe up someone else's vomit.

No wonder her mother had been as mean as a snake. With six kids, she must have been doing this kind of cruddy thing all the damned time. In retrospect, Jenny found it admirable that her mother had not thrown her kids or herself down the nearest mine shaft. She must have wanted to about twenty times a day.

Reeling with exhaustion, she tossed the rag into a bucket,then contemplated the water left in the tub, wondering if she had the energy to wash herself. She decided it was either find the energy or scratch all night. Sighing, she stripped off her clothes and washed hastily,then she bent over the side of the tub and used a bar of hard brown soap to scrub her hair and scalp. Instantly, the water turned black. Getting rid of the bootblack was the first encouraging thing that had happened all day.