One Bright Morning

by Duncan, Alice

  Then another flurry of shots assailed her ears, followed shortly thereafter by the thundering of hooves. She was shaking with terror when she heard Dan Blue Gully call out to her.

  “Mrs. Bright! Mrs. Bright!”

  She peeked out of the front window to perceive Dan Blue Gully’s big chestnut horse slide to a stop across the bare winter yard, sending up a spray of dust and pebbles. Dan Blue Gully was off the horse and running toward the house before the horse had finished skidding. Another horse and rider were following fast on his heels, and Maggie hoped that person was a friend and not an enemy.

  Whoever the second rider was, she was overjoyed to see Dan Blue Gully again. She had the door opened by the time he had run up to it.

  “Are you all right?” He grabbed her by the shoulders in a grip that Maggie knew would leave bruises. Her face squinched up in pain and he eased his hold.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Bright. Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right, Mr. Blue Gully. And I’m so happy to see you, I can hardly see straight.”

  Maggie almost giggled when she realized she could hardly see straight even before he showed up.

  “I’m real, real sorry, Mrs. Bright. French Jack got by us when we doubled back. I thought for sure you was dead when we rode up and heard the shots. Who was it shot his partner?”

  Dan glanced toward the bedroom. He knew better than to expect Jubal Green was well enough to defend the little cabin, but he couldn’t imagine anybody else shooting that well.

  “Me,” said Maggie proudly.

  Dan’s gaze flew away from the bedroom door and landed on her with an amazed thump.

  “You?”

  “Yes.” Maggie’s face, through the grime and exhaustion, was beginning to register the tiniest bit of offended pride.

  “Kenny taught me how to shoot, Mr. Blue Gully, and I know I’m not much of a shot and I can’t see worth a darn, but—but, well, I guess I got lucky.”

  Dan just shook his head as he peered down at her. She looked as though it had been a rough night for her.

  “I think that shot was more than luck, Mrs. Bright. You got him right in the butt. He won’t be able to ride for a month.”

  The Indian grinned and Maggie blushed.

  “I’m real sorry I left you, ma’am,” he said. It sounded as though he felt genuinely guilty.

  “Well, I guess I’m all right. I don’t know about your friend, though.” A sudden fear for Jubal Green almost swamped her.

  She hoped Dan wouldn’t be angry or upset with her. She’d done the best she could.

  “Well, let’s take a look.”

  They both walked toward the bedroom, Maggie trailing a little behind Dan, worry making her footsteps drag.

  Jubal Green looked almost good. He even had a little color in his cheeks.

  “My God, ma’am, what did you do to him?” asked Dan in amazement.

  Maggie’s face fell tragically.

  “Oh, dear,” she whispered. “I tried to do what you told me to do. I had to change the bandage one extra time because he flung his leg around so bad that it began to bleed again. I sponged him off and poured bark tea down him and soup, and—oh, God, Mr. Blue Gully, I’m sorry.”

  This had been such a trying few hours. Maggie was too tired to stop the tears of remorse that slid down her cheeks. She was sure she had killed Jubal Green with her poor nursing.

  Dan’s gaze left his friend and shot over to Maggie, a puzzled frown marring his face.

  “You’re sorry?”

  Maggie’s hands had flown to her cheeks and she was shaking her head miserably. “I’m so sorry. Is he dead?” she whispered.

  “Dead?” Dan stared at Maggie incredulously. “Ma’am, I didn’t expect him to look this good for a week or more. I don’t know what you did, but I swear, you must be magic. He looks wonderful.”

  Maggie blinked several times, certain that she had misunderstood the man.

  “I did all right?” stumbled out of her mouth so softly that Dan had to strain to hear it.

  “You did more than all right, ma’am. You did—you did superior,” he said. He wasn’t used to talking to women and didn’t quite know how to go about it.

  Maggie looked up at him with astonishment evident in her big, tired eyes. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said Dan Blue Gully.

  He took in Maggie’s ragged appearance, her obvious exhaustion, and a sympathetic frown tugged at his lips. The poor woman needed rest. That was obvious.

  “Ma’am, you got French Jack to back off for a while. Now I’m going to take over nurse-maiding Jubal here, and I want you to clean up and rest. All right?”

  Maggie stared at Dan numbly and nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Nobody had ever said she had done anything superior before in her life. That made her want to cry even more than thinking she had killed Jubal Green did.

  All at once fear for her daughter shot through Maggie’s conscious mind, and she very nearly broke down completely. She had forgot clean about Annie. She realized she must be a terrible mother to have forgot about her own daughter, and guilt almost swamped her terror about Annie’s safety.

  “Mr. Blue Gully, I’m worried about Annie,” she blurted out in a rush.

  “Annie, ma’am?”

  Dan had been staring at Jubal Green but at Maggie’s words, he peered down at her in confusion. Then his face cleared as though it had been wiped with a wet rag.

  “Oh, your daughter.”

  Maggie’s head bobbed up and down; she didn’t dare speak for fear her voice would crack. She wasn’t sure how much more of this confusion she would be able to take without falling down in hysterics.

  “I saw your daughter last night, ma’am. She and that screamer lady were walking into a cabin a mile or so down the road to Lincoln. She looked right happy.

  Maggie’s knees nearly buckled with relief. “Thank God,” she whispered. “I was afraid that man got them.”

  Suddenly, another man burst into the house, and Maggie whirled around with a tiny shriek.

  “They’s a dead man on the wood pile,” the new man said.

  Maggie stared at him in fright for only a second before she realized he must be the second man who had ridden up behind Dan Blue Gully.

  “A dead man?” Dan looked down at Maggie, a question in his eyes.

  “Ozzie,” whispered Maggie. “That French Jack person shot him last night, I guess. I don’t know who else would have done it.”

  Dan Blue Gully shook his head as he stared at Maggie.

  “It’s been a bad time for you, ma’am, ain’t it?” he asked softly.

  Maggie could only nod numbly. It had been a real bad time, all right.

  “I’m sorry we brung bad times on you,” the Indian said.

  Maggie just looked at him. She was too tired to form a coherent refutation. Besides, she thought numbly, it was true. They had brought bad times.

  Dan took her gently by arm and led her to the kitchen chair.

  “You sit right there, ma’am. Me and Four Toes will take care of everything.”

  She blinked up at him. “Four Toes?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Dan Blue Gully. “This here’s Four Toes Smith.”

  He gestured toward the second man. Maggie could now plainly see that he was another Indian. She was too tired to ask what tribe he originated from and hoped that wasn’t impolite of her.

  Four Toes Smith nodded at Maggie and tugged at his hat, which was a greasy, floppy-brimmed model with a pheasant feather sticking out of the beaded ribbon that encircled it.

  Maggie nodded back at Four Toes Smith and sat down as Dan Blue Gully had instructed her to do. She was too tired and bemused to do anything else.

  Dan looked around the kitchen for a minute, then slopped up a big bowl of Maggie’s soup. He figured out where the bread was kept and hacked her off a big piece.

  Then he set that fare before her and said, “Here, ma’am, yo
u eat this. You need to eat something.”

  Maggie did indeed look as though a strong wind might just carry her off.

  Dan Blue Gully and Four Toes Smith conferred for a few minutes, then Four Toes headed out onto the back porch.

  “He’s going to fix you a bath in that tub on the porch ma’am. That will make you feel better.”

  Maggie was eating. She hadn’t realized how ravenous she was until she’d had a chance to sit down and think about something other than keeping Jubal Green and herself alive. She couldn’t remember ever being so hungry. At the moment, she was so busy shoveling soup and bread into her mouth that she didn’t ask the first question that flashed through her brain at Dan’s words, which was where she was supposed to bathe with her house full of strange men. It was, after all, pretty nearly the dead of winter, so the porch would be too blamed cold. She decided she’d ask later.

  It turned out she didn’t need to. Four Toes Smith rigged up a curtain out of two bedroll blankets in a warm corner of the kitchen. Then he carried in the heavy tub as though it weighed a mere pound or two and set it down behind the screen.

  Maggie and Ozzie used to have to struggle and struggle to get that tub into the kitchen. During the summer, Maggie used to bathe on the porch because it was easier. It was too cold for that during the winter, though, so she usually only gave herself thorough sponge baths. This tub bath would be a rare, welcome pleasure for her.

  “Thank you very much,” she murmured when she saw what the two men had rigged up for her bathing pleasure. She was very grateful.

  Then Four Toes began to heat water on the stove for her and Maggie thought her cup might just overflow. She’d never had anybody to heat bath water for her. She was infinitely grateful to be spared the back-breaking work of filling the tub for herself.

  Before she took her bath, she tiptoed into the bedroom to fetch clean clothes and check up on Jubal Green. Dan Blue Gully was sitting next to the bed, staring down at his friend’s face.

  “How’s he doing?” Maggie whispered.

  Dan Blue Gully shook his head slowly, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he were about to say.

  Maggie immediately feared the worst had happened.

  “He’s doing good, ma’am. It’s because of your fine care, and I thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without Jubal Green. Him and me has been partners for-damned-near-ever.” then he looked up quickly, and amended his words. “I mean we’ve been together a long time, ma’am. I didn’t mean to swear.”

  Maggie was so relieved she actually smiled. “It’s all right, Mr. Blue Gully. I understand. I’m just glad I could help.” She didn’t bother to tell him that she herself had taken to swearing like a drunken cowboy during the last few months.

  Maggie took her clean clothes behind the screen with her. When she sank into the tub, she thought this must be pure bliss, to be able to bathe in her own warm kitchen and not have to think about anything at all for a while. She fell asleep in the tub.

  Chapter Four

  It was while Maggie dozed in her bath that Jubal Green came fully conscious for the first time since French Jack’s bullets had knocked him senseless.

  Dan Blue Gully still sat at his side. He was staring at Jubal’s face with a frown, and that was the first thing that Jubal saw when he, with a monumental effort, pried his heavy-as-lead eyelids up over his bloodshot eyes.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jubal whispered when he saw the Indian’s ferocious scowl. “Whatever it is, I didn’t mean it.”

  Jubal had a faint, misty memory of waking up once before and finding an angel in his bed. No, he corrected himself. It hadn’t been an angel. It had been a—what? A whore? No. Nor a devil. He decided that that particular memory was buried too deeply and that it would require entirely too much energy to dredge it back again to investigate, so he gave up.

  He had no trouble at all in recognizing Dan Blue Gully, who gave an enormous start at his friend’s words.

  “You’re awake,” Dan said, emotion making his voice a bland, toneless rumble. Emotion always did that to Dan Blue Gully, which was one of the reasons nobody in the world except Jubal Green ever knew what he was thinking.

  “What happened?” Jubal asked, conversationally. He was almost afraid to find out. Whenever Dan sounded like that, Jubal knew whatever it was that had happened was really, really bad.

  “French Jack shot you.”

  Jubal frowned so hard at his friend’s words that his head began to ache, so he stopped frowning and merely glared.

  “No he didn’t,” he said at last.

  “Yes he did,” Dan contradicted.

  “Hell.” Jubal sounded very disgruntled. “I never let myself get shot before.”

  “Weren’t your fault.”

  “Like hell.”

  Jubal Green didn’t believe in chance accidents or luck, good or bad. He knew he must have done something stupid to let French Jack shoot him. After all, now that he thought about it, he remembered that it was French Jack that he and Dan had been after. It made sense, therefore, that he was supposed to have shot French Jack, not the other way around. That annoyed Jubal a lot.

  “They must’ve got another man to ride with ‘em, because we followed their trail and two of ‘em doubled back, but French Jack, he fooled us both and shot you.”

  “Hell,” Jubal said again.

  “I chased the decoys and when I figgered out what they’d done, I went back for you, but he’d already got you so I shot one of ‘em and followed your blood to here.”

  Jubal didn’t react to Dan’s gruesome revelation, but looked around the room in which he lay. He was certain he had never seen it before.

  “Where am I?”

  “Little cabin in the woods near Lincoln. It’s Mrs. Bright’s farm.”

  “Mrs. Bright?” Jubal didn’t recollect knowing a Mrs. Bright. He looked at Dan with a big question in his eyes.

  “Mrs. Bright. She took you in and saved your life,” said Dan.

  Another frown greeted those words. Jubal couldn’t recall ever meeting anyone by the name of Bright before.

  “Who’s Mrs. Bright?”

  “Widow lady. Lives with her daughter here in this cabin. We’re about ten miles outside of Lincoln. French Jack’s still around though. He shot her hired man. Then she up and shot his hired man.”

  Dan Blue Gully grinned at the recollection.

  “She shot him?”

  “Right in the ass.” Dan actually chuckled.

  Jubal’s expression settled into a frown of pained concentration. He was troubled by flittery, shimmery images of a rumpled angel with stringy blonde hair and a tire, good face, and he couldn’t dislodge them from his mind’s eye. He wondered if the person attached to those foggy mental pictures was the one who shot French Jack’s colleague. It didn’t seem likely somehow. He would have shaken his head in an effort to clear it of those strange memories, but everything hurt too much to shake.

  He decided to mention that fact to Dan.

  “I hurt like hell.”

  “I bet you do,” said Dan with another grin. “You got shot all to blazes.”

  That wasn’t exactly what Jubal wanted to hear. He gave his friend a murderous scowl. Then he remembered Dan’s earlier comment.

  “You said this Mrs. Bright saved my life?”

  The question sounded vaguely incredulous. Jubal Green had never known a woman who was good for more than just one thing, and that one thing was something a man only wanted every now and again. Well—a man might want it more often than that, but he only needed it every now and again.

  But Dan Blue Gully was firm on that point.

  “She saved your life,” he said, and Jubal knew he meant it.

  “Hmmmm,” he muttered. “I’ll have to thank her, I guess.” It didn’t sound as though he relished the prospect.

  “You better,” said Dan. “She worked herself damned near to death for you, you ungrateful son of a bitch.” The words were said mildly and were laced with
a liberal dose of fondness.

  Jubal looked up at him and his gaze registered vague curiosity. Dan Blue Gully sounded suspiciously as though he actually respected this Mrs. Bright person, and that was a reaction Jubal would have found perfectly astonishing if he’d had the strength. Neither Jubal Green nor Dan Blue Gully had discovered very many people who were worth respecting in the course of their lives and, thus far, those few people included no women. And he wasn’t forgetting his mother, either.

  “What’s she like?” he asked.

  Dan thought hard about Jubal’s question for a while. All that heavy thinking required him to stare at the wall across from Jubal’s bed for a good two or three minutes until Jubal was so frustrated he would have hollered at him if he’d had the energy.

  “Well?” he finally demanded, irritated beyond rationality. He chalked his short temper up to his having been badly wounded. Generally speaking, he was possessed of an abundance of patience.

  Dan’s face wore a frown of concentration when he peered down at Jubal.

  “She’s got a big spirit. Her spirit’s stronger than her body,” he said at last. That was all.

  Jubal glared at Dan for a few moments until he realized his friend didn’t have anything more to add to his evaluation of the unknown Mrs. Bright. Then Jubal’s glare faded and was replaced by an expression of resignation.

  He sighed heavily. “Hell, Danny, you’re talking like a goddamned Indian again,” he said with the barest hint of a grin.

  Dan looked down at Jubal and relief flooded his features, as though any lingering doubts about his friend’s health and possible recovery had just been banished.

  “I am an Indian,” he said.

  The two men grinned at each other like a couple of idiots for a long time before Jubal Green drifted off to sleep again.

  Maggie finally woke up when the bath water got cold. She was shivering when she washed her hair, dried herself, and put on her clean clothes. It felt good to be clean again, although she was so exhausted that she couldn’t quite keep her balance when she pushed the makeshift screen aside and stepped into the kitchen.