Dan Blue Gully caught her before she hit the floor when she fainted.
“Lordy, ma’am, you’d better get some rest,” he murmured.
He carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the pallet he’d made for her against the wall. Then he went out to the kitchen and gave Four Toes Smith a few instructions and, while Maggie slept, the two Indians went to work.
When Maggie woke up again, it was deep night. She yawned and stretched and then curled back up and hugged her pillow. She felt good and wondered why. It had been so long since she’d felt good that she’d forgot what it was like. She lay there for another couple of minutes before the events of the past couple of days sifted through the pleasant fog of well-being that engulfed her and reclaimed her attention. Then she sat up on her pallet with a gasp of dismay.
“Oh my sweet Lord,” she breathed.
She looked wildly around her and couldn’t figure out exactly where in her house she was. The last thing she recalled was being in the bathtub. She felt her hair and discovered that it was dry.
“Oh, my land,” she murmured again. “I must have been asleep for hours and I don’t even know how I got here. I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”
She knew she couldn’t be in her bed because, last she remembered, somebody else was there. When her pulse stopped hammering in her ears and she had calmed down some, she took a careful survey of her surroundings.
It was pretty nearly pitchy black in the room, but a kerosene lamp, turned very, very low, squatted on the bedside table and cast its feeble light upon the bulky form sleeping on her bed. Maggie finally figured out that Dan Blue Gully must have made her a bed on the floor. She appreciated that.
“I guess I needed some rest,” she commented softly to herself. She wondered how long she had been sleeping.
Very carefully, she rose from her pallet and stepped toward the bed. She guessed she should check on the health of the invalid she had abandoned.
A quick stab of guilt shot through her at that thought, but she tamped it down almost immediately. After all, she hadn’t abandoned him until help had returned to them. She half expected to see the hunkered form of Dan Blue Gully sitting on the chair by the bed, but he wasn’t there.
Maggie stood beside the bed, stared down at Jubal Green, and decided that he looked a little better tonight. She sighed. He was a handsome devil, all right, and she hoped he made it. It would be a shame for such a handsome man to die in her bed. Or for anybody else to die there, either, she amended guiltily.
It was so dark in the room and Maggie was still so fuddled with sleep that she didn’t notice Jubal Green’s eyes slit open and stare up at her.
It’s that damned angel again, he thought groggily. Maggie looked distinctly less scruffy and more angelic since her bath.
Jesus, I wonder if I really am dead, crossed his mind.
Then he remembered Dan telling him about something bright. He couldn’t remember the words, but they had had something to do with a bright woman shooting French Jack in the hand. Or was it the ass. He peered at Maggie’s face, which was, at that moment, catching the soft glow of the kerosene lamp rather artistically. Her dark, burnt-honey hair was clean and shimmered in the low, flickering light. Jubal was a little puzzled.
He couldn’t tell from where he lay whether Maggie looked bright or not, but she looked very peaceful to Jubal and not at all the sort of female who would want to shoot people. Still, she must be the woman who had helped him. Maybe there were two of them.
Maggie was startled when she felt Jubal’s hand clutch at hers where it dangled at her side.
Jubal frowned at her startled reaction to his touch, but he decided not to take exception. He didn’t have the energy and anyway, according to Dan, he owed this woman a portion of gratitude.
Instead of becoming surly as he usually did around women, he whispered, “Thank you, ma’am.” There. That was polite of him, wasn’t it?
He couldn’t figure out why the blasted woman’s eyes looked like they were suddenly full to overflowing. Jubal Green hated like hell when women cried at him. He scowled at Maggie. His hand dropped.
“You’re welcome, Mr. Green,” Maggie whispered back to him.
In spite of the frown Jubal was aiming at her, she smiled a happy, tired smile down at him.
While Jubal wasn’t entirely satisfied about it all, he decided that her smile was enough for now. He couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open any longer anyway.
Maggie wiped her tears away as Jubal drifted back into sleep.
“He’s going to make it,” she breathed to herself over Jubal’s sleeping body. “He’s going to make it.”
She didn’t know why she was so happy or why, when she was so happy, she felt like bursting into tears, but both of those conditions prevailed within her at the moment. She decided she’d better calm down before she went into the kitchen in search of Dan Blue Gully.
It was her physical needs, which she had forgot all about and which were becoming perilously insistent, which finally propelled Maggie out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. As soon as she passed through the doorway, she stopped dead and gaped into the room, astonished.
The kitchen was Maggie’s favorite room in the house. It was always warm and welcoming in there for her, and smelled pleasantly of the herbs that she bundled and hung up to dry. But she hadn’t expected it to be warm and welcoming at the moment since she herself had not had time to tidy it up for days. And then, instead of cleaning the kitchen as a proper farm wife should, she had apparently been sleeping for hours and hours.
Yet when Maggie stepped into the room, it looked just like home should look. In fact, it looked a good deal better than her own home usually did.
Either one or both of the Indians had swept and mopped the floor, and there was a neat stack of freshly chopped wood in a basket by the pot-bellied stove. The stove itself gleamed. She’d been meaning to clean it for weeks and hadn’t had the time. She would have made Ozzie do it, but she could never find him when she needed him.
Her soup simmered on the immaculate stove lid, ready for anyone who wanted it. It had been joined by two beautifully roasted chickens, a pan full of golden corn bread, and a huge pot of greens.
“Greens,” whispered Maggie, awed that anyone could have found greens in February.
Three-quarters of one of the chickens had been consumed already, and Maggie’s eyes strayed from the stove to the table, where Dan Blue gully and Four Toes Smith sat. They had just eaten, a fact that was obvious to Maggie from their satisfied expressions and the dirty plates and full coffee cups that sat in front of them.
“Good evening, Mrs. Bright,” said Dan formally.
“Good evening, Mr. Blue Gully,” said Maggie back.
“Ma’am,” said Four Toes Smith by way of greeting, and then ducked his head bashfully.
Maggie nodded and smiled at him.
“Feel better, ma’am? More rested?” asked Dan.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Four Toes fixed us up a good meal, Mrs. Bright. Four Toes and you. That soup goes real good with the chickens and greens and corn bread.”
“Where on earth did you find greens?” Maggie couldn’t help asking.
“Woods,” said Four Toes in a muffled undertone.
Dan jerked a thumb at his friend. “He kin find food anywhere, ma’am. It’s a gift.”
Maggie figured it must be. Greens in February. She couldn’t get over it.
“Sit down and have some, ma’am. It’s real good.” Dan stood up and pulled out a chair for her.
Maggie’s stomach took that opportunity to growl painfully, and she realized just how hungry she was.
“Thank you,” she said. “But first I need to use the privy.” She felt quite embarrassed to be speaking aloud of such things, but she needed to know the answer to her next question. “Is it safe to go outside?”
Dan nodded. “Four Toes will go out with you, Mrs. Bright. He’ll stand guard.”
; 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 sh
e 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.
One Bright Morning Page 7