Page 15 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
But her thoughts wouldn’t settle down. Marguarita invaded her mind, and worries about the cousins, and the cowboy kept popping up too.
After a while, Jenny leaned to the bag at her feet, careful not to wake Graciela, and withdrew her battered dictionary. There was nothing like reading words to settle a fevered brain. Some of the definitions were like puzzles. They didn’t make any more sense than the words did. She had to study them and ponder hard to work out the meaning. Many of the words she forgot almost as soon as she read them.
But other words sang to her imagination, and she said them over and over, charmed by the sound and wanting to commit them to memory.
Virile (vir-il) belonging to
Virility (vi-ril-i-ty) n. manhood.
“Virile,” she said quietly. A soft word for a hard thing. Pursing her lips, she considered, then composed a sentence using the word. “The cowboy is virile.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks, surprising her. Damned if thinking about the cowboy and virility didn’t make her blush. Embarrassed, she looked around to see if anyone had noticed. There wasn’t a soul who knew her who would have believed she was capable of blushing, including herself.
It was a damned good thing that she wasn’t going to see that cowboy again. Yes, sir, a damned good thing. She was happy that she and the cowboy had parted ways. Glad that the odds of seeing him again were mighty slim. She sure didn’t want to see any son of a bitch who could make her blush. Nosirree bob, she didn’t.
He’d probably forgotten about her anyway.
That kind of man never gave a woman like Jenny Jones a second glance.
And she was glad about that. Yes, sir, she really was.
She stared out the train window and wished that she were tiny and beautiful, wished she could totter along on little bitty feet and wear pretty clothes that a cowboy might notice.
Sighing, she closed her dictionary, then her eyes, trying to decide what she would do when she and Graciela reached Hermita. She didn’t have a fricking idea.
Chapter Four
A bloodred sunset cast coppery shadows behind Ty’s horse as he rode into the village he had traveled weeks to find. The ruts curving down the main street were flanked by a few adobes; most of the dwellings were constructed of sticks and mud, roofed with tin or thatch. Scraggly patches of maize and beans rusted in the flaming light.
The village was too inconsequential to boast a church, but a small plaza intersected the road that wound up toward the Sierras. At the plaza Ty learned where he could buy a bed for the night, and he hired a boy to carry a message to Dona Theodora Barrancas y Talmas.
He preferred to speak to Marguarita immediately, but to highborn Mexicans, honor and courtesy were woven together as tightly as the strands of a rope. Arriving at the hacienda unannounced, unbathed, and unshaven, and at the dinner hour, would undoubtedly have offended. Choosing the lesser of two aggravations, he sent a message announcing his intention to call on Marguarita tomorrow.
He watched the boy climb on a burro and ride out of the village, then he rented a back room in the adobe across from the cantina and paid for a washtub and hot water. For an additional peso, his sharp-eyed landlady agreed to launder and press the clothing he would wear tomorrow when he rode to the Barrancas estate to inform Marguarita that he was taking her and her kid back to California and Robert. Thinking about it didn’t improve his disposition.
He resented his Mexican sister-in-law, and had argued with Robert against bringing her back. Marguarita had caused enough problems in the Sanders family six years ago. Her return would rekindle hostilities with her father, whose lands adjoined the Sanders ranch. Moreover, Ty didn’t want his pragmatic, no-nonsense mother placed in the position of having to accommodate a skittish, spoiled beauty whose knowledge of cattle was undoubtedly limited to what appeared on her dinner plate.
Because it galled him that Robert had defied their father and married Don Barrancas’s daughter, he didn’t refer to Marguarita as his brother’s wife, not even in his thoughts. His father had often raved that Mexicans belonged in Mexico, not the United States; Ty had to agree that if Antonio Barrancas had remained south of the border, Robert wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with his daughter. And Ty wouldn’t be here now.
The boy still had not returned from the hacienda by the time Ty finished shaving, so he crossed the dusty lane to the cantina to have his supper and a tumbler of pulque.
The no-name village looked better by night. Deep shadow concealed the refuse in the ditches, hid the poverty. Lanterns swayed from tree limbs spreading over the tiny plaza and imparted a festive glow to the drabbest cantina he had yet observed.
The instant Ty stepped inside, the back of his neck prickled with the sudden tension of abruptly halted conversations. No matter how poor the village, there was usually music in the cantina, but not here, not tonight. And he noted the surprising presence of several respectable women. In utter silence he walked to a vacant table near the side door, aware of a dozen hostile eyes stabbing his back.
Similar situations had taught the expediency of pretending not to speak or understand the language.
“Supper,” he said to a short waiter whose narrowed eyes made his resentment of this gringo all too clear. Rubbing his stomach, Ty spoke louder. “You speak American?” The waiter stared at him. “Food.” He smacked his lips, then pantomimed drinking. “Pulque.”
A low hiss of relief and contempt buzzed through the hot closeness of the night, and conversation resumed. A slender man, his upper lip concealed by a luxuriant mustache, addressed the others in a fusillade of words that he fired like bullets.
What the man said drove all thoughts of food out of Ty’s head. He blinked at a savory pozole and a stack of flour tortillas, all appetite gone. After forcing himself to sample the stew, he concentrated on molding his expression into one of uncomprehending indifference.
Within minutes he understood that Marguarita Barrancas Sanders was dead. What shocked the hell out of him was to learn that she had been executed by a firing squad. Disbelief pinched his nostrils. He could sooner imagine his father rising from the grave than he could imagine Marguarita Barrancas committing a crime worthy of execution.
Old man Barrancas had sheltered Marguarita from the outside world, and Ty hadn’t seen her often while they were growing up. When he did catch a glimpse, she had reminded him of a large-eyed doe, timid and poised to spring away. She had grown into a shy beauty with downcast eyes, who hid behind the curtains of her carriage or the edges of her fan. On those rare occasions when Ty had heard her speak, her voice had been low and musical and almost apologetic.
This fragile creature had died against an executioner’s wall?
