One Bright Morning

by Duncan, Alice

  “I swear. If it isn’t the Apaches, it’s the bugs. If it isn’t the bugs, it’s the prickles. If it isn’t the prickles, it’s the animals. If it isn’t the animals, it’s the outlaws. And if it isn’t the outlaws, it’s the weather.”

  She eased the stranger’s duster off of his shoulders and noticed that there was a folded paper sticking out of his shirt pocket. Maggie opened it up curiously. Half of the paper was soggy with blood and she grimaced. It was a “Wanted” broadside. Maggie looked at the picture on the poster and then peered down again at the stranger on her bed.

  After surveying the two critically for a moment, she decided with some relief that they weren’t the same man. The man on the poster was a mean-eyed, black-haired fellow named Jack Gauthier, and the broadside said he was five-foot-seven. The man hanging over the end of her bed was much taller than that and had brown hair. Maggie shoved the wanted poster out of the way.

  “You look like a strong one, anyway,” she muttered as she peeled the shirt off of his heavily muscled arms. “We’ll wash you up some and then see where I have to dig, if I have to dig. Lord, I hope I won’t have to, especially if you got yourself a chest wound.” Then Maggie breathed a short prayer that Doc Pritchard would be sober, but she didn’t hold out too many hopes.

  When she had his arms and chest washed off, she realized the hole was in the stranger’s right shoulder, just above the armpit. That seemed encouraging to her.

  “As if I knew anything about it. At least it missed your heart, anyway. Assuming you have one.” Maggie wasn’t one to take much on faith any more.

  The stranger moaned when she pressed around the wound after she had bathed him, but he didn’t open his eyes. Maggie’s mouth set into a grim line. She hated this so much, she could hardly stand it. It made her insides curl up into tight little knots to poke and prod and hurt people.

  And her headache wasn’t any better, either. Sometimes the pain was so bad her eyes blurred, but she just blinked hard and kept working.

  She found where the bullet was lodged and decided she’d better try to take it out. Depending on what the man had been shot with, he could die of lead poisoning if the bullet wasn’t dug out quickly even if the wound wasn’t bad enough to kill him on its own. She sterilized her knife over the fire in her lantern and dunked it into hot water, and then swallowed hard.

  “You just hold on, mister. This knife is sharp and it shouldn’t take me long.”

  She flinched when she pressed into the wound with her fingers, trying to ease the bullet up. But she managed to get it loose, the knife did the rest, and she picked it out with tweezers. The stranger groaned some, but he didn’t yell or kick or wake up. That was some kind of blessing, anyway.

  She cleaned up around the chest wound, sprinkled it with alum, packed it well and wrapped it tight. After a critical survey of her work, she didn’t think anything vital had been touched by bullet or knife.

  “As if I could tell if it was.”

  Then she stood up and quickly stretched the crick out of her back.

  “I’ll have to tackle that leg now, I suppose. Oh, Lordy, what a way to start the day.”

  She listened for Annie, heard her cooing contentedly, uttered a small prayer of thanks, squatted down beside the stranger again, and considered what to do next.

  “I wonder if I’ll have to cut those boots off you. They look like good ones. I’d hate to cut them if they don’t need to be cut.” Maggie herself had always been poor, and she didn’t want to ruin a good boot if she didn’t have to. “Besides, if you live, I don’t suppose you’d appreciate having your boots all slit down and spoiled.”

  She decided to try to get them off without cutting, moved to the foot of the bed, and tenderly picked up the stranger’s left boot. That was the one that was full of blood and Maggie shuddered as she felt the slippery, sticky substance all over her hands.

  She tugged gently. The boot slid off the man’s foot with a slick, sloppy pop. A gush of blood poured out of the boot as soon as it was free of the foot, and Maggie almost lost what was left of last-night’s supper.

  She didn’t have time to throw up, though, because a grunt startled her into looking up. Although the sound didn’t come from the direction of the bed, Maggie knew that she and the stranger were the only two people in the little house who could possibly make a grunt like that, so she knew it had to be him.

  When she realized there was an Indian standing in her open bedroom doorway, she was so startled that she screamed.

  Then her eyes squeezed shut for a second. “Oh, God, no,” she sobbed after her scream was over. “Why me, God? Why are you doing these things to me?”

  The man at the door held out his hands in a gesture people make when they’re trying to calm other people down.

  “It’s all right, ma’am,” he said in a very, very deep voice. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Maggie brought a hand up to wipe the straggling hair away from her forehead and realized too late that that particular hand was covered with the gunshot stranger’s blood and that she had just smeared it all over her face. This had been a trying morning for Maggie, and she was very nearly at the end of her tether.

  “I’m real sorry, ma’am,” the man said again. “I knocked, but you was busy and I reckon you didn’t hear me.”

  Maggie figured her headache had sent her over the edge and she was now crazy. She knew that man speaking to her so calmly from the door of her own bedroom was an Indian. He looked like an Indian. He had long, braided hair like an Indian. He had dark, red-brown skin like an Indian. He had black, shiny eyes like an Indian. He wasn’t naked like an Indian, thank God, but he wore cowboy clothes like some Indians wore. He didn’t talk like an Indian. She figured that meant that God was just playing more mean tricks on her.

  Maggie was hugging the gunshot stranger’s boot to her breast in fright and couldn’t figure out what to do. There were no weapons nearby, nothing with which she could defend herself or the wounded stranger. She wondered if the man at the door was the person who had shot him and if he had come here to finish the job. Then she realized that he was talking to her again.

  “I apologize for scarin’ you, ma’am,” he was saying. “I followed the trail to your house. That there’s my partner.” He gestured to the unconscious stranger on Maggie’s bed.

  Through her headache and her tumbling thoughts, Maggie was barely able to comprehend the man’s words; they seeped through her panicked brain slowly. All at once she realized she was hugging a bloody boot and thrust it away from her in revulsion.

  “Ugh!”

  “Here, ma’am, please let me help you. You shouldn’t be here all alone doin’ this.” The fellow stepped further into the room.

  “No!” Maggie’s voice held barely-suppressed panic. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  The man stopped. He was medium-sized, bow-legged, and looked very stolid, as though he had an infinite supply of patience. Maggie wished she had even a little bit of it.

  “My name’s Dan Blue Gully, ma’am.”

  Suddenly Maggie remembered Annie. “Where’s my baby?” she shrieked.

  Her eyes were wild now, and the man sighed as though he were used to this kind of reaction from white people. “She’s in her high chair in the kitchen, ma’am, and she seems real happy. She’s surely a pretty little thing.”

  He looked behind him and Maggie saw that he smiled at something. A horrible image of her beautiful Annie, scalped in her high chair, flashed through her fevered brain. Maybe this person and the stranger on her bed were vicious criminals. God knew, there were plenty of those wandering around in Lincoln County. It was all too much for her, and Maggie began to weep hysterically.

  The expression on the Indian’s face was one of mingled concern and aggravation. “Are you all right, ma’am? I know I give you a start, but I ain’t violent. Swear to God I’m not. Honest.”

  Maggie couldn’t stop herself. Huge, shuddering sobs were making the ache in he
r head slam against the backs of her eyeball like tiny, granite baseballs. The agony had concentrated now, as it usually did eventually, behind and around her left eye. It felt as though the pain on the inside of her head were pushing her left eyeball right out of her skull.

  “No,” she finally managed to choke out. “I’m not all right. There’s a dead man in my bed, and my baby’s been murdered, and I’m crazy, and there’s an Indian in my kitchen. And I have a headache!” The last sentence was wrenched from her gut and wailed out of her mouth like a piercing prairie wind.

  When the man finally gave up trying to reason with her and walked over to take her by the shoulders, she wanted to turn tail and run away. She tried to pull away from him, but he gently and firmly led her out to the kitchen and sat her down next to Annie, who was still working busily away on her arrowroot biscuit. The baby had managed to soften a good deal of it with drool and was gooing it into her soft curls delightedly. Annie gurgled at the brown man and he grinned at her.

  Dan Blue Gully squatted beside Maggie, dipped a rag in some water at the sink, and wiped off her bloody face and hands. He kept her hands in his when he was through doing that.

  “I can tell you got a bad headache, ma’am, and I’m right sorry. But I have to help my friend in there. We’ve been partners for so long that I’ve forgot when I didn’t know him, and I don’t aim to see him die. I appreciate your tryin’ to help him, and I may need you again. You eat this and drink some water, and I hope you feel better in a little while.”

  He opened a leather pouch and handed Maggie a piece of wood. She had no idea what it was. Her tears had stopped, but her head was now pounding so badly that she could barely keep it lifted. She stared dumbly at the man beside her, who was wobbly and shimmered oddly through her watery eyes. The numb realization that her hands were no longer caked with blood seeped slowly through the ache in her head and registered dimly somewhere in her consciousness.

  She was afraid to disobey the man for fear he would harm her and her baby. She only hoped that if he planned to kill them, he’d do it quickly. And soon. The sooner this headache was gone, even if it took her with it, the better.

  Dan Blue Gully pumped a mug of water and brought it to her. “Chew on that piece o’ wood, ma’am. It might help your head. And drink the water with it. Otherwise, it might make you sick. I got to get to work now.”

  With that, he turned and went back into the bedroom.

  Maggie sat in the chair and didn’t know what to do. She was normally a fighter, but right now she couldn’t even see straight, much less fight. Her headache had become so bad that she didn’t think she could stand up without falling over in a faint.

  “Oh, what the hell,” she finally muttered. “If it poisons me, so much the better.” She began to chew.

  It was about ten minutes later that she again had a coherent thought. She suddenly realized how absurd this whole situation was. Here she was, sitting in her kitchen chair, caked with blood, chewing on a piece of wood and drinking water, while her baby sat gurgling in her high chair, gumming a biscuit and smearing glop into her hair, and there was an Indian operating on an unknown dead man in her bedroom.

  She almost laughed before she realized her headache was gone.

  Maggie stared at the remains of the wood in her hand in pure awe. She had never in her whole life had one of these headaches just up and go away.

  She shook her head experimentally back and forth. There was no pain. Not a shard. Not a hammer. Not a wince. She turned her gaze upon her baby. Annie was smiling at her happily. It looked as though she could use another biscuit.

  “Ho, mama,” the baby cried happily.

  Maggie cleared her throat. “Hello to you, pretty Annie.”

  Very carefully, she stood up. She didn’t want the pain to come crashing back into her head again, sneaky-like, and knock her cockeyed.

  Nothing.

  She shook her head once more. Then she looked over to the bedroom door and half expected to see the Indian laughing at her wickedly. Or the devil. There must be some mistake. Something good had happened to Maggie Bright.

  She decided not to argue with the fates. If the devil were playing tricks with her, she might just as well enjoy the few pain-free moments allowed her before the bolt of lightning struck. She looked with disgust at her blood-caked shirtwaist.

  “Ugh, Annie. Your mama’s a mess.”

  The baby gurgled happily, “Mama mess.” Maggie smiled.

  She took an experimental step towards the bedroom, then another. By the time she had made it to the doorway, she almost believed her headache was really, truly gone. She peeked into the room.

  The stranger lay naked on the bed, Dan Blue Gully was kneeling beside him on the other side, and Maggie had a splendid view of the most powerfully built male body she had ever seen. That view made her squeeze her eyes shut tight and gasp. Dan looked up at the noise.

  “Feelin’ better, ma’am?”

  Maggie decided it was impolite not to look at him as she spoke, even if it meant eyeballing him over the very most personal part of the stranger on her bed.

  “Ye-yes. Thank you,” she stuttered. She opened her eyes wide and then shut them tight again.

  The naked stranger on her bed didn’t look at all like Kenny looked the few times Maggie had seen him without his union suit on. This man’s thighs were huge and looked like iron. Iron covered with curly, golden hairs.

  “If you’re feelin’ better, ma’am, I could use a little help in here,” Dan Blue Gully said pleasantly.

  Maggie cleared her throat. “Of course.” Then she said fervently, “Mr. Blue Gully, I can’t hardly believe it, but that piece of wood you gave me actually cured my headache. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “That’s all right, ma’am. You probably saved my partner’s life. That’s worth a piece of wood, I reckon.”

  “Well, I just want you to know how much it means to me, ‘cause it does. It means a whole lot. Just let me take care of the baby for a second and I’ll be right back,” Maggie said, and then fled back to Annie.

  “Oh, Lord Jesus, Annie. Now I’ve got to go into that room and face a naked man and an Indian.”

  Annie sucked on the last of her biscuit and grinned. She had biscuit goo all over her face and hair, and Maggie itched to clean her up, but she didn’t have time.

  When she remembered Ozzie, she cursed him. “I really will break that man’s guitar if he doesn’t get back here pretty quick.” She handed Annie another arrowroot biscuit. “Here, baby, I guess you might as well paste on another one of these.”

  The baby laughed a tinkling little laugh at her, and Maggie smiled and kissed her. Then she straightened up, sighed deeply, and headed back into her bedroom.

  Dan Blue Gully had covered the stranger’s privates with a sheet by the time Maggie reentered the room.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He glanced up as Maggie stepped inside. “If you could hold his leg still, I’ve got to dig out the bullet.”

  Maggie swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “All right.”

  “You did a real good job on his shoulder,” Dan said as he eyeballed the bullet hole in the man’s thigh and poised his knife.

  “Thank you,” Maggie breathed. She couldn’t watch.

  Dan Blue Gully worked in silence for a second or two as Maggie held the stranger’s leg steady. It felt very hard and hairy. Kenny had been hard and hairy, too, but Kenny’s was a wiry hard, not a bulky, muscled hard like this unconscious man whose massive thigh she cradled in her arms.

  She discovered that when she opened her eyes, she was staring straight at his sheet-covered privates. Lord, the bulge they made was big, too. Maggie didn’t want to think about it, so she turned her head to study Dan Blue Gully’s profile.

  He had a nice profile, Maggie decided. His features were sharp and lean, not puffy like some of the Indians she had seen in town who had given themselves over to strong drink. Not, she reminded herself sourly as she recalled Ozzie Plumb
, that addiction to intoxicating spirits was by any means confined to the Indian segment of the population.

  Her eyes had a provoking tendency to slide back to the stranger’s bulge, so Maggie decided to talk to Dan Blue Gully in order to keep herself occupied.

  “That piece of wood you gave me truly worked wonders, Mr. Blue Gully. Nothing I’ve ever done before has ever helped one of those headaches.”

  The Indian grunted. He didn’t say anything until he had pulled the bullet out of his friend’s leg. It came out with a gush of blood that nearly made Maggie gag. Then he said, “Yeah. I hear that stuff works pretty good.”

  Maggie cleared her throat. “What—what is it, Mr. Blue Gully?”

  Dan Blue Gully shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Maggie’s eyes opened wide. “You don’t know?”

  “No. My aunt, she give it to me. She’s a healer over in Arizona. Married her a Hopi, so the relatives sort of kicked her out. That bark comes off a willow tree they got there. Grows by a river.” He grinned at Maggie, and she blinked.

  He had a nice smile. Friendly. She offered him a tentative smile in return.

  “Well,” she said. “It worked and I surely do thank you.” Then, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, she said, “You’re not a Hopi?”

  Dan Blue Gully gave a little snort. “In New Mexico? Naw. I’m Apache. Mescalero. No Hopis around here.”

  Maggie was puzzled. “Then how did your aunt meet one?”

  “Army run us out of New Mexico Territory into Arizona,” he said as he blotted blood away from the wound.

  “Oh.” Maggie didn’t quite know what to say to that. Then she thought of a good question. “What’s this man’s name, Mr. Blue Gully?”

  She eyed the stranger again. His face had relaxed into smooth lines since he had given up the conscious state for a stupor.