Page 88 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
“If you have to go, then I’m going with you!”
“No, honey girl, you can’t.” Jesus Lord, this was driving a knife through her heart. She’d rather have relived Chulo’s blade slicing her belly than have these little arms clinging around her neck and feel a child’s sweet tears on her cheek. “These are your people. They love you, and you love them, too. You’ll have a good life here.”
“I’myourpeople! I love you, and you won’t say it, but you love me, too, I know you do, Jenny! You have to take me with you. Who’ll give you clean hankies? Who’ll sew you up?” Her arms tightened, holding on. “Who’ll teach me new words and new things? If you go, who’ll teach me how to be like you?”
“Oh Graciela. God.” She held on so tight that she feared she might hurt the child. When Graciela pushed back to peer in her eyes, she had to force herself to loosen her grip.
“Jenny! You’re crying! Oh!”
They clung together and let the tears come, sobbing until their eyes were dry, until all they could do was sit together in combined misery. Jenny adjusted Graciela’s weight on her lap and rested her cheek against the kid’s hair. She would never forget the fragrance of Graciela’s hair and the weight of her small, warm body. That weight had started off mighty heavy; now she welcomed it. How was she going to live without this child? Losing Ty had already carved away half of her heart; she would leave the other half behind when she rode away tomorrow.
“I do love you, Graciela,” she murmured hoarsely. “No, don’t look at me. I have some things to say, and it’ll go easier on me if you don’t look while I’m saying them.”
“I’ll follow you when you go. You can’t stop me.”
“I don’t want you to do that.”
Marguarita? If you’re listening, I beg you… please. Please, help us both.
“Honey girl, believe me. I’ve tried to think of some way that we could stay together, but there is none.”
“You could marry my daddy.”
She had considered this possibility herself. And had concluded that even if Robert accepted such a doomed proposal, it would end in disaster. She disliked him intensely for keeping himself a stranger to his daughter, felt contempt for his weakness, past and present. “Your mama is the only woman your daddy will ever love.” Graciela would grow up motherless and mostly fatherless, and there wasn’t a fricking thing she could do about it.
“Butwhycan’t you take me with you?”
She fought the hot lump threatening to strangle her. “Because I love you enough to give you the life your mama wanted for you. I don’t want you growing up on the streets like I did. I want to know you’re safe and happy and loved. I want to know that you’re clean and eating good food and sleeping in a bed with a pillow. When I think of you, and Graciela I will think of you every day until I die, I want to think of you here. If you want to make me happy, then stay here with your daddy and your grandma Ellen, and be happy yourself.”
“I can’t—”
A shot exploded through the quiet sunny spring morning. Splinters flew from the post above Jenny’s hat.
Before the slivers of wood hit the porch floor, Jenny had tossed Graciela over the railing and dived after her, drawing her pistol as she fell. Easing her head up, she peered through the porch rails, scanning the shrubs and underbrush. “Did you see anyone?”
Graciela peeked, then gasped and ducked down again. “It’s Luis! And my cousin Emil, and I think I saw the Cortez brothers.”
Jenny released a stream of silent cussing that would have curdled a preacher’s eyes. Now she saw the forms slipping through the trees and brush, maybe six men, and she spotted a man who looked enough like Luis Barrancas that Graciela had to be right. It was Luis. Her first shocked thought was: It can’t be. Followed by: Yes, it can. The bastard had followed them and found them in California.
She fanned a barrage of shots toward the trees and underbrush, her mind racing. Ty’s place was too far from the Sanders ranch house to hope that anyone there would hear the shots. She could expect no assistance from that quarter. But without help, the outcome was predictable. She was outnumbered, outgunned.
“Kid, listen to me. We’ve got one chance.” And it was probably a slim one. She squeezed off a shot, felt Graciela’s wide, frightened eyes fixed on her face. “When I stand up and run toward that low rock wall, you run as fast as you can in the other direction, to the hitching post. Follow me so far?”
Graciela nodded. “You want me to ride back to the ranch.”
“No, honey, that will take too long. Ride like hell for your grandpa Barrancas’s place. You tell him these are his fricking relatives and his fricking problem, only say it nice, no cussing.” A bullet tore through the brim of her hat, knocking it off her head before she ducked down, face-to-face with Graciela.
“What if Grandpa won’t come?” Graciela asked anxiously.
She touched the kid’s cheek. “If he’s decided to accept you, he’ll come. If he’s still being a jackass, he won’t. It’s that simple.” But Graciela would be safe. Ellen had told Jenny enough about Don Antonio Barrancas that Jenny believed him to be a man of pride and honor. Ellen had hinted that the hostilities between the families had originated with Cal Sanders, not Don Antonio. There was not a doubt in Jenny’s mind that the cousins had to be here without Don Antonio’s knowledge. “Use some of that charm you’re always telling me you have, or my butt is dead. Now give me a kiss for luck, and let’s do it.”
Graciela kissed her hard on the lips, then they looked at each other for a long minute.
“All right, on the count of three. One… two… go!”
Fanning her gun and running in a crouched zigzag, she dashed across the yard, bullets shaving weeds all around her, but somehow she made it to the stone fence with all her parts intact. She leaped over the stones, then dropped flat to the ground. Behind her, she heard Graciela’s pony crashing through the underbrush and prayed there were no Barrancas cousins on that side of the house. If she had guessed right, that the cousins were here without Don Antonio’s knowledge, she didn’t think they would risk exposing themselves to being sighted from his hacienda. But who could tell what the crazy bastards might be thinking?
Rolling on her back, she reloaded, then flipped onto her stomach and got off a couple of shots, narrowing the odds against her by one Mexican, who fell out of the brush, twitched, then lay still. But she didn’t celebrate.
