One Bright Morning (12 page)

He was still smiling when he fell asleep
again.

Chapter Five

Maggie was nervous until she had Annie in
her arms again. Then, once her daughter was back to her in one
piece, she actually began to relax and enjoy life for the first
time since before Kenny had died.

Dan Blue Gully and Four Toes Smith worked
like a couple of Trojans around the place. In two days, they had
the farm looking better and running more smoothly than it had even
before Kenny’s encounter with the wrong end of that horse. They
also replaced the shattered back-door window. Each one of them did
more work in an hour than Ozzie Plumb had done in a week, and
although Maggie felt a little bit guilty and disloyal to admit it,
she was glad for the change. In fact, once Dan had taken Ozzie’s
body to town for storage until it could be buried, it was almost as
though poor Ozzie had never existed.

“
You know, Mr. Blue Gully,”
she said early one morning as she fixed breakfast, “I know it
sounds crazy, but it’s sort of nice having you men around the
place.”

She was embarrassed at her confession and
blushed rosily as she stirred the morning’s cornmeal mush. Dan
didn’t seem to find anything odd about her words, however.

He nodded. “There’s too much work for you to
do here alone,” he observed.

Maggie eyed him over her pot. “I guess
so.”

She sighed when she resumed stirring, and
wondered how she’d get along when Jubal Green got well and she’d
lose the services of Dan and Four Toes. Four Toes had taken Ozzie’s
body into Lincoln the day after Annie got home, and Maggie wouldn’t
even have Ozzie’s questionable services to draw upon after these
men left her. She wasn’t quite sure how to go about hiring another
person to take his place even if there was one, which she
doubted.

The really strange part of this whole
situation was that she liked these men. Dan Blue Gully was pleasant
and friendly and considerate. He could also cure her headaches, a
feat Maggie held right up there along with the discovery of fire
and the invention of the wheel as miraculous accomplishments. And
Four Toes Smith was polite to a fault. In fact, he was bashful and
he blushed, and Maggie thought that was sweet.

She didn’t know Jubal Green yet, but there
was something about him that seemed to draw her to his bedside like
a bee to a flower.

The injured man continued to improve. Within
another week, he was well enough to sit up with help, although the
effort apparently required a good deal of grunting and swearing on
his part.

“
Watch your mouth, Jubal,”
Dan said the first time he made the attempt. “There’s a lady
present.”

“
Hell,” was the only
response Jubal gave to that admonition.

By the time he was sitting up, he was
sweating rivers, and Maggie could tell he was in mortal pain. She
rushed over with her bowl of water and soft cloth to blot his damp
brow.

Since she was feeling so rested and well
lately, she had been inspired to add a couple of drops of her
beloved lilac toilet water to the bowl of water. She didn’t figure
Jubal Green could object to the sweet smell, and it definitely made
her feel good.

She just couldn’t get over how splendid she
felt since all these men had invaded her life. At the moment, Annie
was in the kitchen being entertained by Four Toes Smith, who was
showing her how to build things with some wooden blocks he had
fashioned for her.

I don’t even have to worry
about the baby
, Maggie thought with a smile
of pure wonder as she settled herself next to Jubal’s bed, dipped
the soft flannel cloth in the scented water, squeezed it out, and
pressed it to his forehead.

Jubal’s eyes had been closed in agony, but
they opened as soon as he felt the cool, soothing cloth. He sniffed
suspiciously.

Maggie had not particularly noticed Jubal’s
beautiful, sea-green eyes before. Now, as they stared at her with
uneasy misgiving, they almost took her breath away. Oh my Lord, he
was a handsome man.

His eyes were actually hazel, Maggie
guessed, but they were a deep, deep hazel and they were flecked
with green so that the effect, when they were aimed directly at one
as they were now at her, was stunning. And they were framed by
those beautiful, dark lashes that Maggie had envied before. Jubal’s
eyelashes were thick as grass, black as soot, and curled
naturally.

A woman would pay a fortune
for lashes like that
, Maggie thought as she
sponged his brow.

“
You have pretty eyes, Mr.
Green,” she commented as she gently worked over him.

Jubal frowned slightly. He had finally
figured it all out. This woman was Maggie Bright, a widow lady
whose door he had come to after being shot by French Jack. She had
taken him in and saved his life, and for that he was grateful. It
must have been she, since there were no other females around, who
had seemed to shimmer about him in the night when he’d been
feverish, and who had floated like an angel by the window, brushing
her hair.

No proper lady, however, had ever
complimented him on his eyes before. Plenty of whores had.
According to Dan, Maggie Bright was not a whore, but was, rather, a
proper lady with lots of grit and no pretensions. Jubal didn’t
quite know what to make of her comment about his eyes. It didn’t
square with what he knew about women.

“
Thank you,” he said, since
he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“
You’re welcome,” said
Maggie with a tender smile that made Jubal’s heart flutter so hard,
he was sure it was giving out on him.

He positively hated the fact that he liked
Maggie’s ministrations. Pleasure in this female’s touch was a flaw
he was sure he would overcome as soon as he was healthy again. He
was weak as a kitten now. He sucked in a deep breath of lilac and
his weakness made him say, “That smells real good, ma’am.”

Maggie looked pleased, a reaction that
warmed Jubal’s innards. His innards’ reaction to her pleasure
irritated him.

“
I’m glad you think so, Mr.
Green. It’s my favorite lilac toilet water.”

Jubal didn’t care, but he didn’t want to
seem impolite. After all, this woman had saved his life.

“
It’s nice,” he
said.

“
My husband gave it to me,”
Maggie said with a sigh, glad to have somebody to talk to. Sadie
hadn’t come back since she left with Annie the other day. Dan had
told her it wasn’t safe.

The idea of Maggie Bright with a husband
sent an irrational surge of annoyance through Jubal’s guts. He
frowned.

But Maggie was staring out the window, lost
in memories of happier days with Kenny and didn’t notice Jubal’s
frown. She sighed. It was a heart-felt sigh, and it aggravated
Jubal further.

“
He bought it for me in
Indiana right after we were married,” Maggie said. “I’ve saved it
ever since. Don’t use it very often, ‘cause I never go anywhere.
Besides, I don’t expect I’ll ever get any more when this is
gone.”

“
Yes you will,” said Jubal
Green.

The irritation in his voice surprised Maggie
even more than his words did. Both quickly drew her attention from
the window and back to his face. He was glaring at her for some
reason. She didn’t suppose it would be wise to argue with him, so
she put on a perky smile instead.

“
Well, now that you’re all
cleaned off and sitting up, I’ll get your breakfast, Mr.
Green.”

He didn’t want her to leave his side, but he
didn’t say anything. Instead, he shook his head as he watched her
sway gently out the door to the kitchen.

Hell
, he thought.

He chalked up his reaction to her to his
having almost died and decided he’d be real, real glad when he was
better. He inhaled a lungful of the soft, sweet lilac scent that
lingered in the morning air, and knew that for the rest of his life
he would think of Maggie Bright whenever he smelled lilacs. His
heart hurt with the knowledge.

Dan had told him that they were under siege.
That particular circumstance, however, was drastically altered
early the following morning.

Before daylight yawned over this little
piece of the Lincoln County forest, Four Toes Smith and Dan Blue
Gully left the tidy farmhouse in the clearing near Bright’s Creek
and went a-hunting.

They surprised French Jack and his two
companions still at rest. French Jack’s last mistake in this world
was letting the man whom Maggie wounded stand guard.

“
Probably had no choice,”
Dan told Jubal as he recounted the morning’s events to him a little
later in the day. “They was only the three of ‘em. But the
butt-shot man was too weak to stay awake. We got ‘em
all.”

Maggie, who was folding clean bandages on
the chest across the room, was a little alarmed at the broad smile
with which Jubal greeted Dan’s words.

“
All dead?” the invalid
asked with obvious glee.

“
They are now,” said Dan.
Irony dripped from his words, along with grim
satisfaction.

Maggie stopped folding and watched the two
man while she listened.

“
How’d it go?” Jubal asked
his friend.

“
The butt-shot man took one
through the heart. Dead in a second flat. I expect they’ll be
pieces of his spine stuck in that tree for a hundred years or
more.”

“
You Indians,” said Jubal
with a grin of wry appreciation. “Always thinking about your
ancestors and your posterity.”

“
In this case, I guess it
was posteriority,” said Dan Blue Gully.

Jubal and Dan laughed heartily at Dan’s
joke. Maggie almost puked.

“
What about the other
two?”

“
Well, Jack’s other pal,
Four Toes blew his brains all over his bedroll. I decided it wasn’t
worth takin’ the blanket to clean it up. It was a mess.”

Maggie’s eyes closed in revulsion.

“
And French Jack?” Jubal
asked the question with relish, as though he had been saving the
best for last.

Dan looked up at the ceiling for a minute
and said, almost dreamily, “Well, French Jack, we figgered he
deserved something special. Four Toes and me, bein’ Apache and all,
we decided we ought to give him a little extra care. So first we
strung him up.”

“
Did you go through his
pockets and gear?”

“
Of course. Found what you
was lookin’ for, too,” said Dan. He showed Jubal a folded
paper.

Jubal nodded with satisfaction. “Good. Then
what?” He sounded very eager.

Dan Blue Gully had already begun his
recitation of French Jack’s demise by the time Jubal realized
Maggie was still in the room.

“
Well, first we slit his
belly open and let him watch his guts fall out,” Dan
said.

He was warming up to his description when
Jubal’s deep grunt stopped him. Dan looked down at his friend with
a puzzled expression on his dark face.

Jubal jerked a small warning nod in Maggie’s
direction, and Dan turned and saw her. She was standing still as a
statue by the window, linen bandages dangling forgot from numb
fingers, staring at the two of them with her eyes agog, a horrified
expression on her face.

Dan looked down at his boots in obvious
embarrassment.

Jubal cleared his throat. “Mrs. Bright, you
probably don’t want to hear this.”

He was trying to be polite. He knew how
touchy females were about stuff like this. They didn’t seem to be
able to appreciate the finer aspects of revenge unless it was their
own.

Maggie swallowed hard. She had a hard time
whispering, “No. I don’t guess I do.” Then she practically ran out
of the room, bolted into the kitchen in a pelter, and collapsed at
the table.

Four Toes had just put the finishing touches
on the rest of Annie’s building brick set. As Maggie’s eyes took in
the sweet picture of him squatting on the kitchen floor, handing
her baby a block, the full measure of men’s inconsistencies struck
her like a blow. Four Toes was showing Annie how to build a tower
by placing one block atop another. He was grinning in real, tender
pleasure at the little girl’s ill-coordinated attempts at
construction.

“
That’s right, Annie. Now
this one goes there,” said Four Toes as Maggie’s baby succeeded in
setting one block on top of another one.

Annie laughed with pleasure and clapped her
little hands. Four Toes chuckled softly.

“
You’re real good at this,
Annie,” he said, giving her chubby, angelic cheek a
tweak.

“
Annie good,” the baby
confirmed, winning another chuckle from Four Toes.

Maggie shook her head in wonder. If she
didn’t know it for a certified fact, she would never in her wildest
dreams believe that this sweet man who was playing so peacefully
with her baby had tortured and killed another human being earlier
in the day.

“
I’ll never understand
people as long as I live,” she murmured.

Dan came out of the bedroom as she whispered
the words. He shuffled uncomfortably for a second or two, then
said, “I’m sorry we upset you, ma’am. I guess what we done to them
men probably shocked you some.”

Maggie considered denying it, but decided
against it. After all, they had seen her reaction to their words.
It wouldn’t do any good to lie anyway.

“
Yeah. I guess it did some,”
she whispered.

Dan sat down at the table across from
her.

“
I know it sounds mean,
ma’am, and brutal, but, see, me and Jubal, we been chased and
hunted by French Jack for months now, and we been chasing and
hunting him back. Jubal’s only brother and his family was murdered
in cold blood by that man, Mrs. Bright, and I figured he should pay
for what he done. He’s a criminal, ma’am. There’s a reward’s been
posted on him.”