One Bright Morning

by Duncan, Alice

  “Lord Almighty. Four months ago when we left Green Valley did either one of you think we’d be doing this today?”

  Both of his foster brothers shook their heads, too.

  “No,” said Dan with a wry smile. “Four months ago things were pretty grim, all right.”

  “Real, real grim,” amended Four Toes.

  “Things were hell,” Jubal said.

  “They’re a lot brighter now,” said Dan punnily.

  Jubal eyed him with a pained expression on his face.

  “But I get the feeling they’re going to be green pretty soon,” Four Toes said innocently.

  “Lord above, you two are really reaching now,” Jubal grinned. “Let’s get busy.”

  This was to be the first time since he’d been shot that Jubal would have to ride for any length of time, and he wanted to start early and get as much done as he could before his newly healed wounds could stop him. So he and Dan left for the stables to saddle up and Four Toes went off to the kitchen to find Maggie. She and Beula had fixed breakfast together and were now taking care of the washing up.

  Beula had commanded her two children to watch little Annie, who seemed to be over her sulk this morning. She even, in fact, held out her gourd dolly and smiled shyly when Connie, who took after her mama and was a very motherly child, grinned and praised it. Annie even let Connie hold it while she named its various body parts.

  Maggie couldn’t help laughing at Annie’s firm, “haiw,” when she pointed at the doll’s yarn topping, and Connie’s considerate, “That’s right, Annie. That’s the dolly’s hair.”

  Maggie figured her baby would do just fine here.

  “Honest, Beula,” she was saying now. “I can take care of these men in here. You have a family to care for.”

  Beula eyed Maggie doubtfully over a tub of soapsuds, as though she weren’t sure such a little thing could handle three men and a baby all by herself.

  “Well, I don’t want you to overdo, Maggie,” she said. “I’m pretty used to it, you know.”

  Maggie laughed at that. “Lordy, Beula, I been running my farm single-handed since my husband Kenny died. Feeding four people and a little kid is nothing compared to that.”

  Beula’s expression went from doubtful to incredulous. “You ran that farm all by yourself?”

  Maggie, ever honest, looked slightly abashed. “Well, it wasn’t really much of a farm. And I did have one hired hand. ‘Course he was drunk most of the time and didn’t do much. But I’m used to hard work, anyway.” Her eyes got sort of dreamy when she added, “After Mr. Green got shot and showed up at my door, and Mr. Blue Gully and Mr. Smith came to stay, it was ever so much easier.”

  Beula’s face held honest astonishment. “Easier? With three men to feed, one of them gunshot, and them villains shooting at you all the time?”

  Maggie’s face assumed a somewhat contemplative expression. “Well,” she admitted, “getting shot at was sort of scary, all right. But, Beula, I never had anybody work like those men worked around my place. It looks better now than it ever did.”

  “Do you ‘spect you’ll go back there after all this is over, Maggie?”

  Maggie looked at Beula with a blank expression and for some reason her heart clutched painfully. Did she?

  “Why—why, I guess I will, Beula. Don’t know what else I’d do,” she said after the barest pause.

  Beula eyed Maggie with a slight frown. Then she shook her head and dunked a pot into her tub and began to scrub it vigorously.

  “Hmph,” she said, “‘Pears to me Mr. Green might have something to say about that.”

  Maggie blushed. She didn’t want to blush, but she couldn’t help it. She tried to hide her head behind the big platter she was drying. “Mr. Green’s been mighty nice to me,” she muttered.

  “Nice!” said Beula with another humph. “I should say he pretty well ought to be.” She pinned Maggie with another sharp stare.

  “Of course, I might be wrong about this, Maggie Bright, but it seems to me that Jubal Green has taken quite a shine to you. And it don’t look to me as though you object to him any too much, neither.”

  Maggie couldn’t meet Beula’s eyes. She was embarrassed to death. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know about Mr. Green liking me. I—I like him just fine.”

  Her face felt so hot now, she expected it to burst into flames. She busied herself by putting the platter away on a shelf where it looked like it might belong.

  Beula apparently decided her conversation with Maggie was more important than the pot she had just dunked. First wiping her hands on her apron, she then settled her fists on her pillowy hips, and gave Maggie a steady stare.

  Maggie had to fan herself with her hands.

  “Now, I know it ain’t none of my business, Maggie Bright, but you been married before, ain’t you?”

  “Of course,” said Maggie.

  Beula nodded. “Were he a good man?”

  Maggie’s eyes opened wide. “Oh, yes. Kenny was wonderful.”

  “And I bet he loved you, too, didn’t he?”

  Maggie swallowed and looked down. “Yes, he did,” she said very softly.

  “And you loved him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were happy.”

  Maggie looked up quickly and nodded fervently. “Oh, yes.”

  “But did you get a quivery feeling in your belly like you were sick all the time and like you didn’t care how many other men there were on earth, that he was the only one you ever wanted to be with as long as you lived and you’d die if he ever went away, and you didn’t know what to do when he wasn’t around?”

  Maggie didn’t have to think about it, but she was overwhelmed by such a feeling of betrayal that she didn’t answer Beula’s question immediately.

  Beula’s eyes narrowed. “Well?” she asked firmly.

  “Kenny was a wonderful man, Beula,” she whispered.

  “I don’t doubt that, Maggie,” Beula said. “But that don’t answer my question.”

  Maggie dropped her eyes. “No,” she murmured miserably.

  Beula sniffed and resumed scrubbing her pot. “Didn’t think so,” she said with a nod of satisfaction. “But you feel that way about Jubal, don’t you?”

  Maggie felt absolutely awful now. She realized with horror that her eyes were filling up, and she swiped a stray tear away with her dish towel.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so,” Beula announced. “I could tell.”

  Then she dropped her pot into the water tub once more with a big splash and turned around to face Maggie.

  “Maggie Bright, like I said, this ain’t none of it my business, but I can tell you this, and that’s that when you find the right man, you know it, and you better grab him while you can, because you might not ever get another chance in your life. When I found Mr. Todd, I didn’t even pause to consider. I just up and grabbed him. And I know he’s older than me and I know he’s a dratted Easterner, and I know my ma and aunts liked to flay me alive, but I knew, Maggie. I knew that he was the only man on the face of the earth for me. And I was right.”

  Beula ran out of breath and stopped talking.

  Maggie didn’t know what to say. She had a suspicion that Beula was right, too. But Maggie didn’t have only herself to think about. She not only had Annie to consider, but she had Kenny Bright’s memory and Kenny Bright’s farm. Her farm. And she loved both Annie and that memory and that farm with a passion she couldn’t even begin to explain to anybody.

  “Thank you, Beula,” she said at last. “I really do thank you for your concern.”

  Beula didn’t look as though she were entirely satisfied with Maggie’s response to her diatribe. She shook her head again.

  “Well, you just think about what I said, Maggie, is all,” she finally muttered.

  Maggie was still feeling subdued and more than a little beleaguered when Four Toes found her in the kitchen.

  “Mrs. Bright, Jubal sent me in here to fetch y
ou out to the patio. He says you’re finally going to finish it.”

  Maggie flushed with pleasure. “How nice of him. I’d really like to do that.”

  “It’s a wonderful patio,” Four Toes said. “All it needs is a smack o’ love.”

  Maggie looked at the tall Indian closely. She was touched by his words. It surprised her that a man who had been saved from a violent death as a boy by three other boys, none of whom had known more than a lick or two of love in their lives, seemed to have so much love of his own to give. Sometimes the human spirit absolutely astonished Maggie Bright.

  She and Four Toes spent a productive morning in the patio where she made a list of all the things they decided to do, and Four Toes inventoried supplies on hand at the ranch. When he was through with that, Maggie was to write up a shopping list.

  In the mean time, she discovered that the tiles that had been laid nearly three decades earlier and then left, neglected, to collect layers of dirt and Texas dust, were absolutely beautiful. Apparently Jubal’s father had imported them from Spain.

  Maggie was nearly quivering with excitement when Four Toes came back with his inventory report. Her cheeks were rosy, and her blue eyes gleamed.

  “I’ve never done anything like this in my life, Mr. Smith,” she confessed with glee. “I’ve never seen anything as pretty as those tiles. I can’t wait to clean them up. And I can’t even imagine going to town and buying a bunch of new stuff and just fixing up a place like this. Even when Kenny was building the farm, we had to make do with old stuff or stuff he fixed himself. He cut the trees for the logs and then he built the shelves on the porch out of old barn siding.”

  Four Toes was smiling at her. “Well, Jubal’s got lots of money, Mrs. Bright. His father left him pretty well off financially, at any rate, even if he didn’t pay no attention to him or Benny. I guess him and Mr. Mulrooney made a fortune in New York before they split up and the feud started.”

  Maggie stopped smiling. She’d almost forgot about that cursed feud. “Isn’t that something?” she said softly.

  Four Toes read her mood and might even have read her thoughts. “It’ll be all right, Mrs. Bright. Jubal, he’ll win this war. He ain’t like his pa. He cares about this place and he cares about his people. His pa—well, Jubal’s pa, he wasn’t prepared for the pounding life give him. He just sort of seemed kind of lost-like.”

  “I don’t know how you boys grew up to be so good, Mr. Smith,” Maggie whispered. “You’re all so good.”

  Four Toes colored up. He hadn’t done that for a long time, and Maggie was surprised. “Thank you, ma’am. I think that’s Jubal’s doing, too. Him and Dan’s ma and pa, but I don’t remember them much.”

  Maggie decided she’d better turn the conversation pretty quickly or end up bawling. “Well, anyway,” she said briskly, “I’ve got me a shopping list here that will probably just about curl Mr. Green’s hair.”

  Four Toes chuckled. “I don’t think he’ll mind, ma’am.”

  Jubal and Dan spent a profitable day out on the range, surveying Jubal’s vast cattle empire. Jubal had forgot just how wide open these Texas spaces could be. It felt good to breathe in the clean air and to look around and see miles and miles of nothing but his own land. The thought of Prometheus Mulrooney—or anybody else, for that matter—trying to wrench all this away from him hit him with such repugnance that Dan had to ask him if something were wrong.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Danny,” Jubal said with a grim smile. “It’s just that I’d almost forgot how much I have to lose.”

  Dan eyed him closely. “You aren’t going to lose anything, Jubal,” he said.

  Jubal nodded. “They’ll have to kill me to get it, Danny.”

  “They’ll have to kill me first,” his friend replied.

  The two men came home earlier that day than they would have under normal circumstances. But circumstances were still far from normal, as far as Jubal’s body was concerned. By the time he rode through the ranch house gate and over to the stable, his face was white and pinched with pain, and his thigh felt as though somebody had jabbed him with a red-hot poker and was now jiggling it around, just for fun.

  His arm didn’t hurt too much, and he wondered if the exercise he’d been getting with Maggie might have helped to strengthen it. He hoped so, because he planned to do some more of that as soon as he could arrange it.

  “Watch it, Jubal,” Dan called to him when he slid off Old Red and his legs nearly gave out under him. “Why didn’t you wait for me, you fool man?” Dan was smiling at him, but he shook his head, too, with annoyance.

  “Ah, hell, Danny,” Jubal grimaced through clenched teeth. “I can’t stay an invalid forever.”

  “A couple of months ain’t forever, Jubal. You damn near died, remember.”

  Jubal was scowling now while he tried to get his legs to work right. “No, thank God, I don’t remember that part of it.”

  Dan laughed. “It’s just as well. You were a damn rotten patient.”

  All at once Jubal stopped stock still as a sudden flash of something that was just on the edge of being a memory assailed him. The flickering, shadowy image of something ethereally angelic passed before his mind’s eye. His face crunched up with the effort of concentration.

  “What is it, Jubal?” Dan asked, eyeballing him oddly.

  Jubal didn’t answer for a second or two. He was trying with all his might to capture the shimmery, whispery tatters of thought that played so tantalizingly close to his consciousness, and yet wouldn’t allow themselves to be caught. He finally shook his head with disgust.

  “Hell,” he said sourly. “I don’t know. There’s something I can’t remember.”

  “There’s lots of stuff I don’t remember,” Dan said.

  Jubal gave him a crooked grin. “I guess,” he said. Then he took a big step, leading out with his left leg, and very nearly ended up in a heap. Dan caught him just before he hit the ground.

  “Lordy, Jubal, you shouldn’t have ridden so long with that leg wound so fresh. You could still open up your thigh, you know.” He grabbed Jubal by the shoulder and, in spite of his friend’s grumbling protests, helped support him from the stable to the house.

  Jubal allowed Dan to assist him, but he made him let go of him when they got to the house. He wasn’t about to advertise the fact that he was a cripple.

  Once in the house, he started looking for Maggie. He limped into the parlor. No Maggie. He peeked into his study where he kept all his books. Not a soul in sight. He made a hopeful tour of his bedroom and then checked out Maggie’s room. No luck. He finally made his way to the kitchen only to find Beula stirring a big pot of stew.

  “Maggie said she was going to be cooking for you men, but she’s been working so blamed hard today, I made her let me cook your stew tonight, Jubal,” Beula told him.

  “Working?” Jubal’s frown was so ferocious that Beula actually looked almost frightened.

  “Yes, sir,” she stammered. “She been working like a dog all day long.”

  “Damn.” Jubal swung out of the kitchen and stomped as fast as his throbbing leg would let him stomp out to the patio.

  Sure enough, there she was. On her hands and knees with a bucket of frothy water by her side and a stiff-bristled brush in her hands, her face gleaming with sweat, was Maggie Bright, scrubbing tiles for all she was worth. Jubal didn’t notice that her sweaty face was beaming with happiness or that she was humming a merry tune. He also didn’t notice that Connie Todd was supervising her brother and tiny Annie Bright as they spaded manure into a little plot of dirt behind the fountain. He didn’t see the fountain itself, either. It had undergone a rather startling transformation while he’d been out checking fences and counting cows.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Jubal’s furious bellow startled Maggie into a full-fledged scream. The stiff-bristled brush slithered soapily out of her grip and her hand flew to her bosom. Little Connie shrieked, too. Henry, Jr., clutched his
sister’s skirts with muddy hands, and Annie Bright began to cry.

  Maggie had to swallow her heart again before she could answer him. Then she did so with a horrid, sinking, lead-heavy droop to her spirits.

  “My Lord, Mr. Green, you scared me to death,” she whispered. Then she glanced over to the children. “You scared the kids to death. It’s all right, babies. It’s just Mr. Green.”

  She looked up at Jubal with such an expression of dismay on her face that Jubal could have kicked himself. If it wasn’t for my damned leg, he thought. He wanted to squat down next to her and hold her tight, but he was sure his leg, if it bent at all, would never allow him to stand up again. Instead, he walked up close to her and whispered furiously, “I thought I told you not to work today, Maggie.”

  Maggie’s initial, frightened recoil was rapidly being replaced by irritation. “But, Jubal, I thought you said I could fix up the patio.” She eyed the children and added in a crabby hiss, “There’s no need for you to holler, either. If you’re mad at me for something, tell me. Don’t holler and scare the children.”

  Jubal was embarrassed now. “I’m sorry I hollered at you, Maggie.” He glanced over at the children, too, then looked back at Maggie and whispered, “Of course, you can fix the patio. That’s what I told you. But you’re not supposed to do the work. You’re supposed to get Four Toes and tell him what you want done and then he’ll get people to do it for you. You’re not supposed to do it. You’re supposed to rest. I’m taking care of you now, remember, damn it, Maggie?”

  Maggie’s expression began to clear up when his words penetrated. She never was any good at holding onto her mad, anyway; and the fact that he was upset because he was worried about her working too hard was purely sweet.

  As a matter of fact, her face began to get a downright tender look to it as she gazed up at him. She realized that he was still trying to scowl at her for all he was worth, even though he was obviously abashed at his initial roar, and she smiled.

  “Oh, Jubal. Thank you.”