One Bright Morning

by Duncan, Alice

  “You vicious fiend! You actually created all this misery just because a woman wouldn’t marry you? Who’d want to marry you? You’re a stinking, filthy, fat, disgusting blob! No woman on the earth would want you! I can’t believe you murdered all those people just because a woman spurned you. You’re not even a man. A man would have accepted his fate and gone on with his life. But not you. No. You had to get even. Like a little baby, you had to get your revenge. You’re crazy! You’re a maniac! You may kill me and my little girl, you filthy pig, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you do it before I tell you what I think of you.”

  Since Maggie had been telling Mulrooney what she thought of him for several minutes now, her words might have been considered silly if anybody had been of a mind to pay attention to the context of her assault.

  But the hollow rattle of the train as it crossed the bridge and the loud crackling of the iron railing as it gave way combined to distract everybody who stood on the deck.

  Pelch reached out a hand to grab Maggie’s arm before she could follow Mulrooney through the gap that opened up as the bolts fastening the metal railing to the carriage wall gave way. Mulrooney’s roar of alarm and his sudden, wide-eyed look of horrified surprise stopped Maggie’s tirade in mid-holler. Her mouth was opened to spew more bile onto Prometheus Mulrooney, but he suddenly wasn’t there anymore. She saw his fat hands reach desperately at the broken railing and saw the jagged metal bend and slice his palm open as his hands slithered off the bar. The metal was too weak to hold the enormity of Mulrooney’s evil bulk.

  After Pelch steadied her, Maggie found herself alone all at once, as both Pelch and Ferrett dashed past her to the new opening in the railing. They clutched each other convulsively as they leaned carefully over to peer into the gorge. She heard a terrified bellow that seemed to get weaker and weaker as Mulrooney neared the rocky bottom of the valley.

  “Will you look at him flail about, Mr. Pelch,” Ferrett murmured in an awed voice.

  “I’ve never seen the like, Mr. Ferrett,” whispered Pelch.

  There were several seconds where the only sounds that Maggie heard were the rumble of the train and the frantic wail that drifted up from the gigantic hole in the earth. Then that far-away wail stopped abruptly, and she noticed both Ferrett and Pelch flinch.

  “My goodness gracious,” breathed Ferrett.

  Pelch shook his head. “Burst like a melon,” he murmured.

  Maggie clutched Annie closely. “Oh, my God,” she breathed.

  “Where dat bad fat man go, mama?” came the puzzled voice of her little girl.

  Maggie swallowed hard. “To the devil, I guess, baby,” she whispered.

  “And did you notice where it broke, Mr. Pelch? It wasn’t even where we sawed.”

  Ferrett’s voice held vast astonishment as he fingered the ragged iron and eyed it closely. The bolts had ripped away from the wall of the carriage, apparently unable to bear the gigantic weight pressed against the railing.

  Pelch nodded in bemusement. “Perhaps we could have just loosened the bolts, Mr. Ferrett.”

  Ferrett looked at Pelch blankly. “I guess it doesn’t matter now, Mr. Pelch.”

  “I guess not, Mr. Ferrett.”

  Maggie backed up and squeezed Annie when the two men suddenly grinned wildly and grabbed each other. She was sure they had lost their minds when they began dancing up and down Mulrooney’s elaborate carriage to shrill cries of, “We’re free! We’re free!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jubal’s heart just about broke when he and Dan found the spot where the abduction had taken place. The tracks were plain to read, as was the sickening, black stain on the desert made by Four Toes Smith’s dried blood. His hat, the greasy, floppy-brimmed hat he always wore, lay brim up next to the patch of gore.

  “Oh, God, Danny,” Jubal breathed. He leapt off of Old Red’s back and tore over to the hat, hoping against reason that he would find Four Toes somewhere, anywhere, still alive.

  “Leave it be, Jubal,” Dan told him when Jubal made as if to begin to search for Four Toes.

  Jubal turned haunted eyes toward his friend. “We can’t just leave him out here, Danny. He’s our brother.”

  Dan’s face was grim. “We’ll come back to look for him, Jubal. I ain’t going to leave him here forever without lookin’. But you know as well as me that if he lost that much blood, it’s too late.”

  Jubal couldn’t speak.

  “You know what probably happened, Jubal.” Dan’s voice was thick.

  “Yeah. I know.” But he couldn’t say it out loud. A cougar or a coyote dragged the body off and ate it. That’s what happened out here. He knew it. Dan knew it.

  Jubal whispered as he walked back to Old Red, “We’ll be back for you.” He hooked Four Toes’ hat over the horn of his saddle.

  Then he spotted Maggie’s eyeglasses. They were unbroken and lay as they had fallen, two bright ovals of clear glass, shimmering in the heat. He picked them up and stared at them.

  Dan didn’t say a word. His lips were pinched tightly together, and his face was set into grim lines.

  Jubal folded the glasses up carefully and put them in his shirt pocket.

  When he swung his leg over Old Red’s back, he felt as though his soul had died. He couldn’t see anything for a few seconds; the world had gone all blurry on him. He passed his gloved hand over his face and didn’t realize the moisture the soft leather picked up from his cheek was from his own tears. He nudged at Old Red’s side and the horse began to trot again, following the trail left by the ranch wagon.

  Dan’s sad eyes scrutinized Jubal narrowly. “Maggie’s probably still all right, Jubal.”

  “Yeah.”

  The two men rode on in silence for another few minutes.

  “He knew it was his time, Jubal. He told me. He’d been feelin’ it.”

  Jubal couldn’t look at his friend. His hurt was almost too big for him to speak of. “Well he didn’t tell me.” His voice cracked, and his throat was paining him from him trying not to bawl like a baby.

  Dan gave him a bitter grin. “You been busy with your wife, Jubal. Besides, you ain’t Indian.”

  “Hell,” was all Jubal said to that.

  They were surprised when, an hour or so later, they came upon the special train Prometheus Mulrooney had hired, stopped dead on the railroad tracks, half-way to Amarillo. They were even more surprised when no gunfire erupted as they boldly stormed up to the engine.

  When they climbed aboard and discovered the engine abandoned by the engineer and heard the sounds of a party coming from a back carriage, they were flabbergasted. They eyed each other uneasily.

  “I don’t like this, Danny,” said Jubal. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Dan shook his head. “Beats me.”

  They had their guns drawn as they crept stealthily from the engine to the next car, which had also been abandoned. That car was apparently the kitchen. Another empty carriage was obviously where Mulrooney’s hired help slept. It was from the fourth carriage that all the noise was coming. They heard whoops of laughter and even jolly, out-of-tune, masculine singing. They stared at each other in bemused wariness.

  Jubal carefully opened the door of the carriage. Dan was right behind him. Both men’s guns were cocked and ready for use, and Dan made sure his knife was within easy reach. They stood just inside the open door and stared in astonishment at the scene in front of them.

  Ferrett and Pelch were still dancing. Mulrooney’s other hired help, among whom were the train’s engineer and his mechanic, were toasting each other with opened bottles of champagne. The bubbly wine had foamed over the bottles’ mouths and was sloshing over the floor, walls, and furniture. Maggie and Annie sat upon a cushioned bench in a corner. Maggie appeared to be a little ragged around the edges. She wasn’t smiling, and her eyes seemed empty. Annie was laughing and clapping her hands at the antics of the men in front of her. She saw Jubal and Dan first.

  “Look, Mama, it Juba,” she
cried.

  Maggie’s looked up numbly. She still felt vaguely unsettled about her part in Mulrooney’s demise, although she was glad he was dead. But her heart ached so painfully about Four Toes that she wasn’t sure she could stand it.

  When she realized it was her husband standing at the door, she leapt to her feet with Annie in her arms. She didn’t even notice people scatter out of her way when she ran into his embrace.

  “Jubal! Jubal!” Maggie wasn’t numb any longer. She felt as though someone had gashed a rip in her heart and she was crying now, full-bore. “Jubal, they killed Four Toes! They murdered him! Then Mulrooney fell out of the train and into a gorge and he’s dead, and I did it, and—and—oohhh!”

  Jubal barely had time to holster his gun before Maggie and Annie hit him in the stomach. He staggered back with a grunt and wrapped his arms around them. He tried to say something, but his throat was too tight.

  “Mulrooney’s dead?” Dan’s incredulous words didn’t penetrate anybody for a second.

  Ferrett and Pelch and the engineer and mechanic had all stopped dancing and singing. They were standing still now, and stupid grins looked as though they had been painted on their faces. It was Ferrett who spoke first.

  “He’s dead,” Ferrett confirmed in a high-pitched, silly, squeak of a voice.

  Pelch nodded.

  Then Ferrett picked up a pile of papers and threw them into the air. “He’d dead! He’s dead! He’s dead!” he shrieked, as though he were ringing in a new year or out the end of a war.

  Jubal had buried his face in Maggie’s hair, but he lifted it when he realized what Ferrett had said.

  Maggie took a huge sniff and drew her wet face away from Jubal’s shirt.

  Annie smiled up at Jubal and held out her gourd dolly.

  “They killed Four Toes, Jubal,” Maggie whispered, and she had to swallow hard.

  “I know, baby. We found the place.” Jubal brushed his lips across her hair again.

  “How did Mulrooney die?” Dan hadn’t been able to follow Maggie’s ragged explanation before she collapsed into Jubal’s arms, and Mulrooney’s hired help didn’t seem to be of much help right now.

  “Mama yell at dat bad fat man and he fall down,” little Annie told them all.

  “Your mama made him fall down?” Dan pinned Maggie with a bright black gaze.

  Annie nodded seriously. “He bad fat man,” she said firmly.

  Jubal gave both of his women another squeeze. “He was a real bad fat man, parsnip,” he said to Annie in a ragged whisper.

  “But he gone to da devil now,” Annie told him solemnly, as though she figured that circumstance might make him feel better.

  # # #

  Jubal and Dan ultimately restored order to the little train. The two friends supervised Ferrett and Pelch’s clean-up of Mulrooney’s papers. Both men from Green Valley wanted to read them to make sure Mulrooney hadn’t planned any further treachery that might sneak up on them later.

  Then Jubal made Maggie sit down and tell him exactly what happened from the time Sloane and Potts kidnapped her and killed Four Toes Smith, to Mulrooney’s demise through the broken railing of the train platform. At the mention of Sloane and Potts, Jubal shot a quick glance at Dan, Dan nodded, and Maggie knew that Four Toes would be avenged. She wasn’t sure whether she was glad or not. There had already been so much bloodshed.

  She didn’t have too much time to think about it, though, because just then Jubal remembered he had her spectacles in his pocket.

  “Here, sweetheart, you probably miss these.” He tried to wipe the lenses off on his flannel shirt.

  “Oh, Jubal,” Maggie whispered. “I thought they were broken.” And she burst into tears once more.

  Jubal looked at Dan with resignation while he held and comforted his wife yet again. Dan just chuckled at them and shook his head.

  Ferrett and Pelch managed to find some food for everybody, and then Jubal made Maggie lie down and rest. Annie was already napping.

  “We’ll see that the train is tidied up, sir,” said Pelch, who had already transferred his subservience to Jubal.

  “Indeed we will, sir,” added Ferrett. “And we’ll be absolutely certain that nobody makes a loud noise and wakes the lady.” He spoke of Maggie with reverence.

  Jubal nodded at the two men. Then he took Maggie’s glasses off of her nose, laid them carefully on the table beside her sleeping head, and kissed her.

  “Come on, Danny.”

  The two brothers, one white, one Mescalero, mounted up and nudged their horses alongside the rails, backtracking. They rode silently through the still desert; neither one of them felt like talking. No wind stirred the air. The June sunshine gleamed against mica-crusted rocks, and lizards scurried out of the way of their horses’ hooves. They walked their mounts slowly until they reached the bridge over the gully. Then they dismounted, tied up their horses, and began to walk across the trestle.

  About halfway over the span, Jubal stopped and gestured to his friend. They both leaned over and squinted down into the deep gorge. The sides of the gorge were steep and slick and glinted in the sun. Jagged rocks lined the bottom of the gully, and a thin, silvery thread of water snaked between the huge boulders. Although not a breath of air stirred above the huge hole in the earth, they could hear the wind moaning like a malevolent ghost through the deep valley beneath them.

  “Shoot, that’s a long way down,” muttered Dan.

  “Can you see him, Danny?”

  “I can see what’s left of him. It ain’t much.”

  “Maggie said she could hear him yelling for a long time. I wonder how long it took before he hit those rocks.”

  “Long enough, I guess.”

  “Sweet Lord above, I didn’t think this feud would ever end.” Jubal’s voice was a study in amazement, and it was frosted with relief and a soul-deep sadness.

  “It was Maggie ended it.” Dan was smiling a little bit now as he peered into the gorge.

  “She hollered him right over the railing.” Jubal smiled a little bit, too.

  “Hope she don’t never yell at you like that.”

  “I’ll do my best never to give her cause.” Jubal was only half teasing about that.

  “You better never.” Dan wasn’t teasing at all.

  Jubal shook his head. “I’m sorry she had to go through all this.”

  Dan lifted his head and pinned Jubal with a steady gaze. “I told you a long time ago that she had a strong spirit. It’s strong enough to get her through this.”

  Jubal grinned. “I know you did, Danny. And I know you’re right.” His grin faded. “I guess the worst of it was when those bastards got Four Toes.”

  Dan looked down into the gully again. “That was the worst of it for all of us, I reckon.” His voice was deep and still in the breathless day.

  Neither man spoke for a minute as they peered into the gorge.

  “Should we pick him up?” Jubal didn’t sound as though he were thrilled at the prospect.

  “Hell, no. Just tell the authorities in El Paso there’s been an accident. Let them deal with the bastard. With any luck, the buzzards will have picked his bones clean by that time.”

  Jubal shuddered in spite of himself. “I guess he’ll feed a lot of buzzards for a long time. And maybe even a coyote or two.”

  “I guess.”

  The two men were silent when they rode back to the train.

  # # #

  Jubal drove Maggie and Annie in the wagon back to Green’s Valley. He wanted to put his arm around them both, but he had to drive the mules so he couldn’t.

  Dan rode his own horse and led Old Red. He rode a little ways away from the wagon, obviously not willing to talk right now, too busy thinking his own thoughts. He fingered the medicine pouch that hung on a leather thong around his neck and his eyes looked as though they weren’t seeing the landscape around him, but were focused on something in his memory.

  Maggie was sitting as close to Jubal as she could get, h
er insides so full of confused emotions that she couldn’t even begin to voice them.

  Worst of all—worse than being kidnapped or watching Prometheus Mulrooney fall to his death or being afraid she and her baby would die—was the knowledge that Four Toes was gone. Murdered.

  Annie was wearing Four Toes’ hat as they drove home. It was so big that it swallowed her head whole and rode on her little nose but since she was sleeping soundly in her mother’s arms it didn’t matter. Every now and then Maggie would look at that hat and feel like bawling.

  All of a sudden she was glad that she had been instrumental in Mulrooney’s death. She felt as though, for once in her life, she had accomplished something worthwhile.

  Her Aunt Lucy always told her that anger was bad, that she was wrong to get mad and that it was bad to make anybody else mad. Aunt Lucy drummed it into her head that she was weak and stupid and had a faulty character because she made her aunt mad and because, every now and then when pressed beyond endurance, she herself flared into anger. For her entire short life, thanks to Aunt Lucy’s training, Maggie had tried never to get mad.

  She wondered about that now. She wondered if, in spite of her aunt, anger might just serve a useful purpose in life. Maybe her character wasn’t as weak as she’d always believed it to be. She thought about it for an hour or more before she felt she’d sorted her thoughts out enough to ask Jubal about it.

  “Jubal?” The word was a near-whisper. Her throat still felt tight.

  Jubal, whose own thoughts were as confused as Maggie’s, didn’t even hear her at first. He was still numb about Mulrooney’s death. It hadn’t quite settled into his gut that the feud—the feud that had spanned decades, miles, and way too many lives—was over. More clear to him was the fact that he had lost another brother. He wasn’t sure he could stand it.

  “Jubal?”

  She said it with more force this time, and it startled her husband. He dared loop the reins into one hand for long enough to give her a squeeze.

  “Yes, Maggie?”

  Although Maggie had been thinking about this for an entire hour, she still fumbled a little bit when she ask, “Do—Well—I mean, Aunt Lucy—Oh, Lord.” She took a deep breath. “Jubal, do you think I have a weak character?”