One Bright Morning

by Duncan, Alice

  “Will—will we stay in the wagon?” Maggie asked in a tiny little voice.

  She’d do whatever Jubal told her to do, but she didn’t relish the thought of trying to sleep in an open wagon in the middle of El Paso, Texas. Maggie had taken full note of the plethora of saloons lining either side of the main street. Although she hadn’t spent much time in Lincoln, the only town of any size near her farm, she knew that it was noisy all night long from the drinking and shooting that went on.

  “The wagon?” Jubal looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. “No. We’ll stay at the hotel down the street.”

  Maggie followed Jubal’s finger until her gaze landed on a building mid-way down the road. She couldn’t read the sign out front, but the building had a tall false front and was painted a little more nicely than the rest of the shabby, brown wooden structures that surrounded it.

  “That’s a hotel?” she asked.

  “Yeah. It’s pretty nice, by El Paso standards.”

  Maggie looked at him with a blank expression. She almost didn’t dare ask how much it cost. She knew how touchy he was. But it somehow didn’t seem proper for him to pay for her overnight accommodations.

  Jubal saw her expression and didn’t know what it meant, but he was pretty sure it presaged an argument. He sighed. How on earth was he supposed to take care of this exasperating woman if she wouldn’t let herself be taken care of?

  He took a deep breath and, instead of yelling at her, he said, “You’ll be able to take a bath there, Mrs. Bright. You and your little girl. You’ll feel much better when you’re cleaned up again, I’m sure.”

  “Yes,” said Maggie. She licked her lips nervously.

  Jubal saw that gesture and had a sudden, almost gut-wrenching desire to kiss Maggie’s moist, tender mouth. He shut his eyes and fisted up his hands instead.

  “Will—will I be able to fix us some supper in the hotel room, Mr. Green?”

  Jubal’s eyes popped open. He frowned at her, and Maggie wondered what she’d said this time to set him off.

  “I’m sorry I don’t know what to do, Mr. Green. I—I’ve never stayed in a hotel before,” she rushed on to forestall any harsh words from him. She felt like a foolish little hick, it was a mortifying feeling, and her voice went sharp to cover it up.

  Jubal didn’t even notice. “No, Mrs. Bright. You’re not going to fix supper in the room. You’re going to check in, take a bath, get your little girl fixed up, and I’m going to take you to dinner in the restaurant in the hotel. It’s the best place in town, and I’m paying for it, so don’t even ask me about it.”

  He sounded truly ferocious.

  To the best of Maggie’s recollection, she’d never been taken to dinner before. Oh, she’d served thousands of people in her aunt and uncle’s chop house in Indiana, and she’d eaten leftovers from those meals, but she’d never stepped out with a gentleman, dressed up, and had him buy her a meal. The idea appealed to her enormously. She especially liked the fact that the gentleman in question was Jubal Green. She forgot all about being sharp and smiled shyly at him.

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Green. Annie and I will like that, I’m sure.”

  Jubal scowled at her, but he couldn’t maintain his fierce expression in the presence of Maggie’s sweet, bashful pleasure at the thought of dining in a restaurant. That touched him. In fact, Jubal was beginning to fear he was permanently touched. Touched in the head.

  Maggie was so intimidated by the elegant lobby of the hotel that she didn’t dare even open her mouth when Jubal checked in for all of them. He got a room for her and Annie and one for himself. Dan and Four Toes were staying with friends in town. The hotel didn’t cater to Indians, anyway. That shocked Maggie a lot when Jubal told her about it later.

  Jubal didn’t care to examine why he insisted that he and Maggie have adjoining rooms. He told himself it was for Maggie’s protection. Just in case.

  Fortunately, Maggie wasn’t around to hear him make the room arrangements. Jubal had left her staring in astonishment at the potted ferns next to the elaborate brocade sofa in the lobby. Maggie was overwhelmed by the luxury of the hotel.

  Jubal heard her hiss in amazement at the first feel of the thick, crimson Turkey carpet under her feet. He watched her brows lift in wonder as she gazed about. A small smile of appreciation curled his lips when she stopped in her tracks, looked around, and then turned at a sharp angle to make her way over to the potted plants. Jubal rightly guessed that she’d never seen an indoor plant before. He was beginning to anticipate her reactions to new things with rare pleasure.

  Maggie stared at the lacy, fronded fern with wonder. “Oh, my land, Annie, will you look at that. I’ve seen pictures of ferns, but I never even hoped to see a real one.”

  The plant looked terribly exotic to Maggie and brought to her mind visions of tropical forests, naked natives, and thrilling adventures. She used to read a lot in Indiana. She’d not had access to many books since she and Kenny had moved to New Mexico. She shook her head slowly.

  “Will you just look at that,” she whispered again.

  Annie didn’t appear to be particularly impressed.

  All at once, Maggie decided her daughter needed to feel the luxury under their feet. She had been carrying Annie until now, worried that the hustle and bustle of the rugged little frontier city might frighten her. But Maggie didn’t suppose anything could hurt her baby in this magnificent hotel.

  “Annie, you’ve got to feel this carpet, sweetie.”

  She didn’t know that Jubal had finished booking their rooms, and she didn’t hear him pad softly across the floor to watch her. She swung her daughter down from her hip.

  Annie’s bright brown eyes quirked up at her mama in surprise. Then she looked down at the fuzzy red floor beneath her feet. Carefully, she lifted one foot and inspected it. Then she peered closely at the other. She’d never felt anything like the soft, thick pile of a carpet under her feet before. Then Annie, being a baby and not understanding the finer points of etiquette, plopped herself down on her tummy and dug her little fingers into the carpet pile.

  Maggie quickly shot a glance around the room, torn between embarrassment at her daughter’s obviously unsophisticated reaction to carpeting, and pleasure that Annie should enjoy the feel of it as much as her mama did. She saw Jubal watching them with a smile on his face and blushed rosily.

  “We’ve never been any place like this before, Mr. Green,” she confessed unnecessarily.

  “So I gather,” said Jubal. Then he wished he hadn’t said it because Maggie dropped her eyes and scooped Annie up. She’d apparently taken his words as some sort of censure, and he cursed himself soundly.

  “You like this place?” he asked her, in an effort to smooth over his gaffe.

  Maggie turned her eyes upon him and Jubal had the impression she was measuring his reason for asking.

  He was right. Maggie didn’t think he’d mock her, but she wasn’t sure about anything anymore, especially as it pertained to Jubal Green and herself. She didn’t want to look like a complete bumpkin. On the other hand, that’s pretty much what she was, and she didn’t suppose it would do her any good to pretend to be anything else. She opted for honesty.

  “It’s just about the prettiest place I’ve ever seen, Mr. Green. Thank you. If it wasn’t for you getting shot and knocking at my door like you did, I’d never, ever have seen such a wonderful place.”

  She looked a little abashed at the shout of laughter that greeted those words.

  As she followed Jubal and the bell boy up the broad, carpeted staircase to her room, she kept peering back over shoulder at the hotel desk clerk as if she expected the snippy-looking man to make a rude gesture at her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I’m going to give you a couple of hours to get cleaned up and rested, Mrs. Bright, and then I’m going to come fetch you for supper. Will that suit you?”

  Jubal saw Maggie to the door of her room. He was surprised at how pleased he was that sh
e seemed so excited about staying in the hotel. Before he met Maggie, he didn’t realize how satisfying it could be to introduce new experiences to a woman who expressed honest, open enjoyment of them. His experiences with women until now had led him to believe they were, at best, dissemblers all.

  Maggie’s eyes glowed. “That will be just fine, Mr. Green. Thank you.” She was so agog that she forgot all about insisting that she repay him for her hotel room.

  After he left Maggie in her room, Jubal quickly stashed his gear in his own room and went in search of Dan and Four Toes. He found them in a saloon down the road a ways. It had been a meeting place for them for several years now. The two Indians were in a deep discussion with a couple of rough-looking men.

  When Jubal first pushed the swinging doors of the saloon open and walked inside, he stopped short and looked around in some surprise. The room smelled rancid, of spilled beer, stale tobacco, and sweat. The smell was one of unpleasant maleness unrelieved by any trace of the softening influence of women. The only females present were heavily painted creatures who seemed oddly sad-looking to Jubal. The thick, constant pall of tobacco smoke had turned the once-white walls a dingy tan and lent a permanent acrid stench to the air. The seedy rankness of the place both appalled and astonished him.

  He shook his head. Jesus, guess I’m not used to saloons anymore, he thought sourly. It had been, what? Jubal shook his head again. It had been months since he’d been in a saloon. He’d forgot what sad, wretched places they were.

  A tinny piano, picked at by a reedy man with an incessant cough, who looked the worse for drink, tinkled away in a corner. A young woman with jet-black hair and a lot of paint on her face waved at Jubal and he waved back without enthusiasm. He hoped she wouldn’t come up and press her bosom against him. He used to look forward to Kitty’s suggestive greeting. Now the mere thought of that greeting made his skin crawl.

  Sawdust had been sprinkled over the plank floor of the saloon in some long-gone-by day. It might have been clean once, but it was rank and filthy now and Jubal eyed it with disgust. Even walking on the stuff was unpleasant. There were sticky patches on the floor, and he didn’t even want to hazard a guess as to what had landed on it to make those patches.

  “What did you find out?”

  His curt greeting did not faze Dan and Four Toes, who seemed to have expected it. Dan looked up and gestured him into the scarred wooden chair next to him.

  “Jeez, you could have chosen a cleaner place to meet, Dan,” Jubal said, looking around with a grimace.

  Dan grinned at him with real amusement. “We been meetin’ here for years, Jubal. You never bitched about it before. Must be getting sissy, hanging around with that lady all this time.”

  Jubal shot a furious frown at his friend and then gave it up, sighed, and offered him a reluctant grin.

  “I guess,” he said ruefully. “It’s funny what being around a woman will do to a man.”

  “Shit,” said one of the men at their table. “Ain’t funny a-tall.” He spat onto the sawdust, and Jubal winced inwardly. Small wonder the floor looked like that, he thought.

  “Don’t spit on the floor, Hank,” a shrill voice commanded.

  An overblown woman whisked over a cuspidor and plunked it down next to the chair of the man named Hank. She was corseted tightly and her ample white flesh spilled out over her dress in front. Hank gave her big rump a playful spank and ogled her bosom.

  “Ah, Dolly, we was just talkin’ about women. You know how itchy that kind of talk makes me.”

  Dolly winked suggestively at him. “Well, you know how to scratch that itch, don’t you, Hank?”

  “I’ll see you later, Dolly, honey,” Hank promised.

  Jubal watched their playful exchange with an odd gripping in his gut. He recognized the banter as the same type he’d participated in hundreds of times. He couldn’t figure out why it gave him such a lost and lonely feeling now. He shook his head one more time. He really was getting soft.

  “Well, listen,” he said. “I don’t have much time. Have you found out anything?”

  Hank drew his eyeballs away from Dolly’s hind end and faced Jubal.

  “Mulrooney’s in the train and on his way to Santa Fe,” he said in a flat monotone.

  Jubal pinned Hank with a steady stare. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Hellfire.”

  “The man himself,” added Dan, just in case there was some doubt.

  “Hellfire,” said Jubal again.

  “According to my contact in New York, Mulrooney left four days ago. Don’t know whether he’s found out you’ve left that farm in the hills yet or not.”

  “Well, look at it this way, Jubal,” said Dan. “If he wasn’t worried, he wouldn’t leave his little nest. In a way it’s good. You never could have got at him there. He was like a goddamned queen bee in a hive, protected on all sides. This way you have a chance to settle it once and for all.”

  Jubal stared at the filthy table in front of him.

  “Damn,” he said softly.

  “Hell, Jubal, it ain’t so bad,” said Dan. “We can even ride to Santa Fe and blow up the train, if it comes to that.”

  Jubal looked at Dan for a moment. He felt very troubled about this turn of events. “He’s probably got a damned army guarding that train, Danny. Besides, I can’t do that now. Not now. I can’t do something like that without you with me. I don’t trust anybody else, and I don’t dare go away and leave Mrs. Bright and Annie with nobody around but hired hands. The biggest priority now is to keep the two of them safe.”

  Dan’s eyebrows arched comically. “Well, now, did you hear that, Four Toes? Our priorities have changed all of a sudden.”

  Four Toes grinned at Jubal, too. “I guess so.”

  “I didn’t think there was anything on the face of the earth that mattered to you more than killing P. J. Mulrooney, Jubal Green.”

  Jubal’s crooked, rueful grin was that of a defeated man. “I didn’t think so either, Danny,” he said upon a massive sigh.

  Dan and Four Toes exchanged a wickedly gleeful grin.

  While Jubal, Dan, Four Toes and their spies discussed Prometheus Mulrooney in the saloon, Maggie was trying to get used to the amazing luxury of her hotel room.

  “Shoot, Annie, I’m afraid to touch anything,” she admitted to her little girl. Everything was shinier, prettier, and newer than anything Maggie had ever seen before.

  Annie was busy prancing around on the carpet in her bare feet and didn’t notice her mother’s awed reaction to their surroundings. The little girl liked the mattress on the big bed, too. It was nothing like the prickery tick mattresses at home. Not only that, but the frame holding it was springy, and Annie discovered the joy of bed-bouncing for the first time in her young life.

  Maggie was ultimately distracted from her examination of their luxurious room by her daughter’s shrieks of glee.

  “Oh, my land, baby, don’t jump on the bed.”

  Maggie snatched her little daughter off of the bed and carted her into the bathroom. There were even more amazements in store for them there, because the hotel was equipped with faucets. Maggie had never seen a faucet before, although she had seen illustrations once in a magazine Sadie Phillips let her borrow.

  “Mercy sakes,” she sighed reverently.

  With a trembling hand she reached out and turned the tap handle. The immediate gush of cold water made her jump back with a start of alarm.

  “Wa!” shouted a delighted Annie. She pointed at the cascade of water pouring into the sink.

  Maggie giggled. “It sure is, honey. It’s water all right. Right here in our own room. Whatever will they think of next?” Maggie sneaked up to the basin and turned the tap off quickly, afraid she would flood the place if she let it run much longer.

  A brisk rapping at the door to their room startled her. She looked at Annie with concern.

  “Who can that be?” she wondered. It certainly wasn’t time for Jubal to be ba
ck yet.

  Maggie wasn’t sure what to do. If it had been her own home, she’d have merely walked over to the door and flung it open. But this was a fancy hotel, and she’d never been in a fancy hotel before. She tiptoed up to the door and stood in front of it, clutching Annie tightly.

  “Who is it?” she called in a shaky voice.

  “Room service, ma’am. Mr. Green requested hot water be brought for a bath in this room.”

  Maggie looked at her daughter in dawning wonder. Hot water for a bath? She opened the door a crack. Then, when she saw an army of hotel staff, all holding buckets of steaming water, she stepped back.

  The bell boy smiled at her and swept an arm out to usher in the maids. There were five of them, and they trooped in one after the other, headed straight into the bathroom and, with clock-like precision, each dumped their bucketfuls of water into the bathtub. Then they left. Each one of them gave Maggie a little curtsey before she exited the room. The bell boy tipped his hat then, and shut the door behind him on his way out.

  “Thank you,” Maggie whispered to the closed door after they had all left.

  “My Lord in heaven,” she murmured when she went back into the bathroom.

  The water was a little bit hot, so she added cold water from the tap, then she and Annie had a delightful, warm bath. She even washed their hair and rinsed it under the cold running water. They were both laughing by the time they were clean, and then Maggie dried them off with the fluffiest towels she had ever seen in her life.

  “I swear, Annie, I think I’ve died and gone straight to heaven.”

  A couple of hours later when Jubal tapped at the door of their room, Maggie and Annie were both clean as a whistle and dressed in their Sunday finest. Maggie had surveyed them both critically and come to the conclusion that their finest clothes weren’t any too good, but it couldn’t be helped. She did the best she could.

  Jubal had spiffed himself up some, too. He appeared at Maggie’s door shaved and washed and wearing a new pair of trousers and a coat he’d bought at the dry goods store after he’d left Dan and Four Toes in that dismal saloon down the way.