Free The Promise of Jenny Jones by Maggie Osborne Page A

daughter was dead and this child was his only surviving family. If she survived. It occurred to Ty that the child's death would lead to an inheritance which was a less cumbersome solution than kidnapping and ransom.
    The promise of a hefty inheritance or ransom would strongly appeal to villagers living in shacks built of sticks and mud. If honor didn't motivate them, Emil would eventually relinquish shares in the windfall and let greed work its persuasion.
    Grim-faced, Ty saddled his horse and jerked hard on the cinch.
    The Barrancas cousins didn't know it yet, but a new player had entered the game. If they thought Dona Theodora's message had duped him into returning toCaliforniawithout Graciela, they were in for an unpleasant surprise.
    No longer was he inMexicoon a grudging errand undertaken on behalf of his brother. It was personal now. Dona Theodora had lied to him. He'd tasted Chulo's fists in Verde Flores. He doubted he was wrong about the cousins wanting Graciela for evil purposes. In the span of a few minutes, his motivations had altered.
    Giving the cantina a wide berth, he rode out of the no-name village, grateful for a sliver of moon to illuminate the trail.
    Near dawn, to keephimself awake, he focused his thoughts on the red-haired woman who had taken Graciela. What was her game? The people in the cantina referred to her as a murderess and implied that it was she who deserved the execution that had killed Marguarita. This didn't strike him as entirely implausible, he thought, rubbing a hand across his jaw.
    However, at this point, his mind locked. Was the red-haired woman rescuing his niece? Or had she, too, seen a way to profit by kidnapping the child? Or, and this seemed extremely unlikely, had Marguarita known a woman convicted of murder well enough to entrust her daughter into the murderess's keeping? At present he lacked enough information to form a clear judgment of the situation.
    As the glow of dawn revealed the low hazy silhouette of Verde Flores, Ty's lips thinned to a hard straight line. The Barrancas cousins were not going to hold his niece for ransom, and neither was the red-haired woman if that was her intention. This he swore on his father's grave. If he had to track her into the maw of hell, he would do it. He was not returning toCaliforniawithout his niece.
    When the sun climbed out of the desert, Ty was sitting on a bench on the Verde Flores depot platform, hat pulled over his eyes, dozing while he waited for the first train south.
    He no longer believed the red-haired woman had intended to go north. That had been a ruse meant to reach the cousins' ears and send them chasing in the wrong direction. She'd intended to take the southbound train all along.
    He would find her.
    * * *
    "Crud on a crust!" Jenny was unaccustomed to indecisiveness, and she didn't handle it well. Nor was she a patient sort. Pressing her nose to the train window, she peered at cacti baking in the desert heat. "We're stopped again."
    "They're fixing the track," Graciela said listlessly. She waved a torn paper fan in front of her heat red cheeks. "I haven't had a bath since I left Aunt Tete," she added in an accusing voice. "I want a bath."
    "Have we been on this fricking train for two days or three days?" No wonder Jenny felt ready to explode. People weren't made to sit in one spot for three fricking days. Her tailbone hurt. The hot greasy food sold at various stops along the way was burning holes in her innards, and the heat trapped inside the car was cooking her outsides. Chickens ran loose in the aisle and left strings of stench that fouled the air. The noise of crying babies and bickering children were frazzling already frayed tempers.
    "If we don't get off this hell train, I'm going to do damage to someone or something." Sweat pasted her bodice to her skin, and she pulled it away from her ribs with a grimace. She had to get off this train before she melted, and she had to figure out a plan.
    None of the villages and