One Bright Morning (10 page)

That didn’t appeal to Maggie a whole lot
but, on the other hand, she guessed it was better than being shot
by French Jack while sitting on the toilet, so she nodded. She felt
much better when she returned to the kitchen after her trip
out-of-doors.

“
Mr. Green looks better
today. How is he doing?” she asked Dan.

He nodded. “Pretty good.”

For some reason Maggie felt nervous. The
thought that it was natural for her to be somewhat ill at ease
under the circumstances, what with a gunshot stranger decorating
her bed and two strange Indians her kitchen, didn’t occur to her.
Being Maggie Bright, she chalked her discomfort up to that weak
flaw in her character for which her aunt used to constantly chide
her.

“
Is there something I should
do for him?” she asked.

“
Eat,” Dan said in a low
rumble.

“
He’s sleeping,” added Four
Toes. “He don’t need nothing right now.”

Maggie looked from man to man and decided
maybe she should eat. She glanced at the chickens, which were
perched delectably on the stove, beckoning to her in all of their
succulent, basted glory, and her stomach growled again. That gave
her all the incentive she needed, and she fixed herself a plate of
food and joined the two men at the table.

“
I’m afraid we’ve sort of
taken over your place, Mrs. Bright,” said Dan.

Maggie opened her mouth to protest politely
but decided against such an overt lie. “That’s all right, I guess,”
she said instead.

The chicken was absolutely delicious. Maggie
had to stop herself from stuffing it into her mouth like some kind
of starving hobo.

“
Well, ma’am, I’m glad to
hear you say you don’t mind us taking over your place like we done,
but I’m afraid we may be causing you a good deal of
trouble.”

Maggie thought about telling Mr. Blue Gully
that he could take over her place with her blessings if he
continued to clean up and cook, but she didn’t.

She was chewing, so she couldn’t respond
immediately, and Dan continued. “You see, French Jack is camped out
there somewheres, and I’m afraid to leave you alone here now until
we get him. We can’t move Jubal yet, and I know French Jack ain’t
going nowhere as long as Jubal’s here.” His eyes told Maggie as
much as did his flat, monotonic voice: Nothing.

She didn’t answer, because she didn’t know
what to say.

“
Four Toes kilt a couple of
your chickens for supper,” Dan mentioned then. “I hope that’s all
right. We’ll pay you for the food. He also wrapped your hired man
up and set him in the barn. Ground’s too hard to dig in yet.
Anyways, thought you might like to tell any kin he’s got so’s they
can have a funeral.”

“
He didn’t have any kin,”
said Maggie, “but I suspect his friends in town might like to bid
him good-bye.”

She refrained from mentioning that most of
those friends were Ozzie’s drinking pals from the saloon who’d
probably be too drunk to remember to go to the funeral, but who
would be more than happy to toast his memory with bottles and
bottles of whiskey.

“
There’s a little cemetery
outside of town,” she added.

“
This is a very good supper,
Mr. Smith,” she said to Four Toes. Then she smiled and was shocked
when the Indian blushed at her praise. She never knew that Indians
could blush.

“
Thanks, ma’am,” Four Toes
mumbled into his cup of coffee.

When Maggie finished her dinner, she felt
better than she could remember feeling in months. She was full of
good food that she hadn’t had to cook herself and she was almost
well-rested.

She also thought it was sort of nice to have
a couple of men around the house to do things, even if they were
strangers. The fact that the entire population of her little home
were all apparently under some strange kind of siege, though, put a
tiny damper on her enthusiasm. That got her to thinking about how
Annie was doing with Sadie, and she started worrying again.

“
Um, Mr. Blue Gully?” she
began timidly.

“
Ma’am?”

“
I’m a little worried about
my daughter.”

“
Oh, yeah,” said
Dan.

He didn’t continue, and that “Oh, yeah,”
didn’t help Maggie much.

“
Well, what if Sadie decides
to bring her back? Do you suppose that French Jack person will try
to hurt her?”

Dan appeared to be considering Maggie’s
question carefully. The effort required him to stare at the kitchen
wall for a long time, and Maggie was beginning to wonder if he’d
heard her when he finally responded.

“
Yeah, he probably would,”
he said.

Maggie’s heart clutched painfully and nearly
stopped beating for a second. She peered at Dan for a long time,
trying to figure out what to say next.

Nothing profound occurred to her, and she
finally blurted out, “He can’t hurt my baby.” There were tears in
her eyes and a quiver in her voice.

“
No,” Dan said.

It sounded as though he were agreeing with
her but, since he didn’t elaborate, Maggie wasn’t sure.

She was becoming very frustrated; indeed,
almost angry. The thought of something happening to her sweet Annie
terrified her. The tension inside of her was building up so fast
that she was on the point of shrieking at Dan Blue Gully when he
spoke again.

“
I’ll go get your baby
tomorrow, ma’am. I won’t let nothing happen to her.”

That took the starch out of Maggie’s anger
immediately, although the frustration still remained to a degree.
She wondered if all Indians were as phlegmatic as this one.

“
Thank you, Mr. Blue Gully.
I’d appreciate that. I’ll be really happy to get my little girl
back again.”

“
Sure thing, ma’am. I’ll go
first thing in the morning.”

Maggie had plumb forgot it was still night.
Realizing that it was made her sleepy again, and she yawned.

“
What time is it?” she
asked. Then she felt a little silly since she didn’t have a clock
in the house.

But Dan apparently wasn’t bothered by that.
He took an engraved silver watch from his pocket and eyeballed it
closely.

“
It’s 1:30 in the morning,
ma’am. You probably ought to get some more sleep. You’ll have to
tend to Jubal while I’m gone tomorrow. Four Toes will be here to
stand guard.”

Maggie yawned again, nodded, and headed back
into her bedroom. On her way over to her little pallet on the
floor, she stopped by Jubal Green’s bed once more.

For a long time, she simply stood there,
staring down at him. He looked peaceful somehow, a fact that
vaguely puzzled Maggie. She didn’t think a person who had been shot
twice and nearly died from it had any reason to appear
peaceful.

She brushed her fingers across his forehead
to see if he was feverish. His skin felt warm but not hot. Her hand
then strayed across his brow, down his face, and paused to stroke
his stubbly cheek. She justified that action by telling herself she
wanted to make sure she hadn’t been mistaken about his feverless
condition.

When her hand slid down the side of his neck
to rest on his naked shoulder, she finally admitted to herself that
she missed having a man in her bed and that she wanted to remind
herself what one felt like. She sighed. Jubal Green’s skin felt
good to her. It was warm and firm and somehow comforting. Maggie
brushed away a tear.

“
Damn Kenny and that stupid
horse,” she breathed.

In the dim recesses of his healing body,
Jubal Green felt a cool hand stroke his forehead and cheek and
wander down to his shoulder. It felt really good. Soft. Sweet. He
wanted that hand to continue to caress his body. For some reason,
it felt as though it were giving him strength, which was silly
because the caress was so gentle. Peace. Maybe that was what it was
giving him. He couldn’t quite make himself wake up so that he could
think about it.

He hated it when the peace-giving stroking
stopped and the gentle hand went away.

When Maggie finally withdrew her hand from
Jubal’s body, she saw him frown. That worried her and she hoped she
hadn’t hurt him.

She woke up feeling pretty perky when dawn
cracked a few hours later. By the feeble winter light that peeked
through the window she brushed and braided her hair and peered out
into the day. It looked so peaceful out there; not at all as though
there might be villains lurking.

Since she had slept in the clothes she had
donned after her bath the prior day and felt very rumpled, she
fetched a clean, faded calico from the wardrobe Kenny had made. The
thought of Kenny and the wardrobe made her feel a sudden, wistful
pang. He could sure build things, Maggie acknowledged, even if he
couldn’t handle horses.

She cast a glance at the bed and wondered if
it would be indiscreet to change clothes in the sick man’s room.
But Jubal looked to be sleeping and, since Maggie knew that Dan
Blue Gully and Four Toes Smith were ensconced in the kitchen and
Annie’s room, she shrugged her shoulders and whipped off
yesterday’s wrinkled frock and tossed the clean one over her
head.

It was the early-winter-morning sun
whispering across his eyelids that woke Jubal up. He didn’t know
where he was at first and tried to yawn and stretch. Although that
had seemed at first to be a perfectly sensible reaction to waking
up, he immediately realized what a terrible mistake it actually
was. The only reason he didn’t bellow in pain was that he couldn’t
seem to get his mouth to work. By the time his wits had gathered
themselves together, he remembered that he had been shot and was
now lying in some bright lady’s house with Dan Blue Gully. That
seemed very odd to Jubal.

He couldn’t lift his head very easily
because it hurt too much, but his eyes creaked to half-mast in time
to observe Maggie brushing her hair by the window. The chilly
February sunbeams bathed her in their silvery light and imbued her
with an otherworldly quality that made Jubal shut his eyes and open
them again in order to make sure he wasn’t mistaken; that there
really was a female brushing the tangles out of her hair in front
his window.

Even before he figured out that Maggie was
indeed a corporeal being and not a mere figment of his sick brain,
his insides told him that it was a good thing to have this female
brushing her hair in front of his window when he awoke in the
morning. He knew that his insides liked it because of the odd
feeling of contentment that washed over him, in spite of the many
and excruciating aches, pains, and throbs that plagued him.

Jubal actually smiled a little bit when
Maggie shrugged off her wrinkled frock. He had a nice view of her
slim body in its camisole and drawers. Maggie wore no corset or
chemise, a fact that fact might have shocked a more conventional
gentleman than Jubal Green.

But Jubal didn’t mind at all. In fact his
smile broadened in appreciation of Maggie’s feminine form displayed
so pleasantly before his interested eyes. He was disappointed when
she whisked the clean dress on over her head. Maggie was a little
on the thin side, he noted, but she still looked pretty good. Soft.
Womanly. He liked that.

Jubal nearly chuckled out loud at the
realization that he was finding a woman appealing. As if he could
do anything about his attraction in his present condition. His eyes
slid shut on the thought and he dozed again.

Maggie straightened up her pallet and laid
her wrinkled dress aside. It was clean; she just needed to iron it.
Maggie always did the ironing on Fridays. She stopped for a moment
when she realized she had completely lost track of time and didn’t
even know when Friday was. Maybe it had come and gone already,
behind her back, when she’d been busy with other things. That would
throw her schedule all to flinders.

“
Maybe Mr. Blue Gully can
tell me,” she murmured.

Then she went over to Jubal’s bedside to
check on her patient’s condition.

“
You look much better, Mr.
Green,” she whispered with real gratitude when she peered down at
him. “Why, you even have a little smile on your face this
morning.”

She couldn’t stop her hand from reaching out
to caress his forehead—to check for fever, she told herself.

When Jubal’s eyelids suddenly opened and his
deep green eyes blinked up at her, she was embarrassed and whipped
her hand away from his face, tucked it behind her back, and
blushed.

It was the angel again. Jubal still wasn’t
able to sort things out very quickly, but as soon as that thought
crossed his mind, he knew it was wrong. He was annoyed that who- or
whatever this vision was, she had removed her soothing hand from
his brow.

“
You’re not an angel,” he
announced in a raspy whisper, frowning slightly at the effort it
took.

Maggie thought she had misunderstood his
words. She just said, “Good morning, Mr. Green.”

Jubal was peeved that this being wouldn’t
clarify her place in the universe, and his brow furrowed.

That furrow worried Maggie and she thought
to soothe him. She said, pleasantly, “You look better today, Mr.
Green. Are you feeling any better?”

“
I feel like hell,” he told
her, too confused at the moment to lie politely.

Maggie stared at him in distress. “I’m
awfully sorry,” she said, her voice breathy and soft.

Jubal could tell she meant it and that made
him feel a little better, although his irritation at the general
state of affairs and his inability to arrange them coherently still
rankled. He decided to try another tack with Maggie since she
wouldn’t tell him if she was an angel or not.