Free The Promise of Jenny Jones by Maggie Osborne Page B

towns they had chugged through had been large enough to hide a flea. Jenny wasn't sure if hiding out was the safest scheme anyway. Instinct insisted that she should jump on the next train headed north, but what if Luis and Chulo had mustered reinforcements and were sitting in the shade on the Verde Flores depot waiting for her to pass through again? Which she would have to do if she backtracked.
    Chewing a thumbnail, she glared out the window at the heat waves shimmering above gray-brown dirt. She wished she knew what the damned cousins were doing. Were they in pursuit? Were they on a train somewhere behind this one? Or were they waiting for her to return to Verde Flores? This time there wouldn't be some foolhardy cowboy to help her. She'd be outnumbered. The cousins would grab Graciela as easily as plucking a flower out of a pot.
    Right now, she thought, covering her eyes with a sooty hand, she was tempted to hand them the kid and good riddance. Graciela was driving her fricking crazy. Graciela wouldn't do what she was told, squirmed constantly in her seat, complained about everything, and if Jenny heard the word "why" one more time, she would go raving, flaming berserk.
    "I want to go home," Graciela said mournfully. Accusation pulled her lips into a pout.
    "Shut up. I'm trying to think."
    "You have chicken manure on your shoes."
    This was true. It was also a great mystery how the kid could walk to the curtained-off latrine without stepping in offal or tobacco juice but Jenny could not. Jenny scowled at the strands of heat-damp hair sticking to the sides of Graciela's superior little smirk. She was considering slapping that smirk into next Sunday when the train lurched, belched black smoke, and crashed forward. "Thank God."
    Jenny waved down the conductor. "Por favor, Señor, what is the next town of any size and when do we get there?" His boots, she noticed, were as frosty with chicken crap as her own were. If there was any justice, some of the conductor's chicken manure would brush off on Graciela's hem. It didn't happen.
    "Buenos tardes, Señora, Señorita. We'll reachDurangoon schedule," the conductor announced blandly, "around seven this evening."
    "On schedule my butt," Jenny muttered in English. The train had spent more time stopped for one reason or another than in rolling forward.At this rate, the train wouldn't reachMexico City , its final destination, until the next millennium. She would have said so except millennium was a new word, and she wasn't sure how to pronounce it in English let alone Spanish.
    Frowning, she watched the conductor kick aside a rooster,then proceed down the aisle. The question was: Should she stay on the train all the way toMexico Cityor get off inDurango?
    "A lady does not bite her fingernails."
    "Shut up."
    "I hate you! My mama never told me to shut up."
    That did it. Jenny could not spend another day confined with a hot cranky kid, choking on the stench of chickens and an overflowing latrine. She could not endure another night trying to sleep sitting up with Graciela sprawled across her lap. For some unfathomable reason, Graciela weighed as much as a freight wagon when she was asleep.
    "We're getting off inDurango," she decided. Even her stomach rebelled at heading farther south towardMexico Citywhen she needed to go north. At some point she had to risk getting off this train and turning herself and Graciela around.Durangowas as good a place as any to start putting things right.
    "I miss my mama."
    Graciela sank into another of those collapse routines, in which her bones seemed to fold in on themselves. Her shoulders drooped, her chest shrank, her hands went limp, and tears and snot flowed in copious streams.
    Jenny watched and felt wild inside. She didn't know how to deal with grief because she had no experience to draw on, and as far as she was concerned, mother-daughter love was a myth. Love itself was a vast enigma. She had no idea how much time was required to recover from losing a