One Bright Morning (15 page)

Maggie wasn’t a beautiful woman by most
standards, but she had a pretty face, with wide-set, big, blue
eyes, and a cute little nose that sat above a mouth that looked
temptingly kissable to Jubal. He wasn’t altogether sure he approved
of his reaction to her, and he chalked that reaction, too, up to
his weakened condition.

The fact that Maggie also made him feel good
didn’t annoy him quite as much, since he figured it was only
natural to feel better when one’s nurse was around.

“
You’re a good nurse,” he
muttered after swallowing a mouthful of soup.

Maggie looked up from her work in surprise.
“Thank you, Mr. Green. Actually, Mr. Blue Gully is the one who told
me how to help you,” she said deprecatingly.

“
That’s not what he said,”
Jubal told her. “He said if it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead
now.”

“
Did he really?” Maggie
could feel herself blush. She wasn’t used to hearing praise sung in
her favor, her aunt having conditioned her to expect criticism, if
anything. It both pleased and embarrassed her.

“
Well, thank you again,” she
said, and turned her eyes to the corn bread. She broke off a piece
and stuffed it into Jubal’s mouth before he could say any more nice
words about her and embarrass her further.

After Jubal chewed and swallowed his bread,
he said, “And you’re a good cook, too.”

“
Well, you know, truly, Mr.
Smith is the one. He goes out every day and finds things in the
woods that I wouldn’t even know were there if it wasn’t for him. He
gets all sorts of greens and things that I don’t usually get this
time of year.” She nodded to herself and Jubal. “Mr. Smith’s the
one, all right.”

Jubal was becoming right aggravated by
Maggie’s always disparaging her own accomplishments.

“
God damn it, it’s not them,
it’s you. You’re the one saved my life and you’re the one cooks.
Now, when I say you’re a good cook, I mean you’re a good cook, and
I don’t want any argument.” His voice was gruff and his expression
was ferocious.

Maggie’s face registered real surprise at
his words. She didn’t speak for a moment, an old, familiar knot of
frustration squeezing her chest. Long, long ago, Maggie had learned
not to argue with difficult people. Still, she was surprised at how
hard it was to bite back a frosty retort. She guessed she’d got
kind of soft, living with the easy-going Kenny Bright for so
long.

She murmured somewhat stiffly, “I beg your
pardon, Mr. Green. I didn’t mean to argue with you.”

That little comment riled Jubal even
further, but he decided he didn’t have the energy to set Maggie
straight at the moment. He chomped down on the spoon she stuck in
his mouth so hard that his teeth clanked on the metal.

When he had swallowed, he said, “You’re an
irritating woman, Mrs. Bright.”

Then he could have hollered when Maggie’s
lips clamped together, her eyes dropped, and it looked like she was
going to cry. He’d rather she just yell at him. That’s what Dan or
Four Toes always did when he got touchy and they got mad at
him.

Oh, hell
, Jubal thought to himself.
Why
are women so blamed
difficult
?

Instead of pursuing the question with a
member of that difficult sex, he said, “I want to go outside.”

He didn’t add that he wanted to be outside
when Maggie was outside, and that he wanted to be able to watch her
the next time she sang “Annie Laurie” and hung up the wash.

Maggie looked at him speculatively for
several moments. She wasn’t sure she liked Jubal Green. He said
mean things, or at least things she didn’t understand. She couldn’t
figure out why he had at first praised her and then told her she
was irritating, and she wished he could be as obliging as his
Indian friends.

Her long appraisal of him was making Jubal
fidget, and he was glad when she drew breath to speak again.

“
Well, Mr. Green, I don’t
know if it’s a good idea for you to move around much yet. I hope
you won’t think it irritating of me to say that I’d like to talk to
Mr. Blue Gully before trying to help you stand up.” Her words were
clipped and a little snappish.

Jubal sighed.

“
I didn’t mean it that way,
ma’am,” he said.

Hell. He hadn’t meant to offend her. He
didn’t know how to talk to women. Except for his mother, he’d grown
up around men. His mother was always cringing and crying in a
corner somewhere, so he’d just mainly tried to keep out of her way
and not aggravate her further.

Virtually all the women he’d been associated
with since he’d grown up were whores, except his sister-in-law
Janie. He’d only known Janie a few years before she, his brother
Benny, and their daughter Sara had been killed by French Jack. He’d
been sort of getting used to Janie and was kind of sorry she was
dead, although it was her own fault.

But he’d loved Sara. He acknowledged that
fact only to himself and with an ache in his chest that he was sure
would never heal. Sara had been bright and pretty and had loved
him, in spite of himself. Little Sara hadn’t cared that Jubal was
morose and broody around women. She’d just climbed up his leg and
hugged him. His heart hurt whenever he thought about her.

His sister-in-law hadn’t been as bad as his
mother, but she wasn’t one to be easy around, either. He’d never
been around as easy a woman as Maggie Bright before. She just went
about her business, smiled and sang, and didn’t screech at bugs or
yell at her baby. Jubal liked to listen to her and Annie. He wanted
to be able to watch them, to see just what it was that mothers and
children did together, since he didn’t know from personal
experience.

“
Please talk to Danny and
see what he thinks,” he said politely. “I’d like to be able to get
up, even if I can’t get around yet. I feel—I feel lonely in here.”
He stared at the quilts tucked around him and felt like a fool
after admitting to that weakness.

But Maggie’s heart melted immediately and
her primly pursed lips relaxed. She understood lonely. She’d been
lonely most of her life. She put a comforting hand over his.

That gesture surprised the socks off of
Jubal Green. He liked it a lot, and he liked the feel of Maggie’s
soft hand on his.

“
I’m sorry, Mr. Green. Of
course, you’re lonely. You’re all shot up and hurting and stuck
away in here while we’re outside or in the kitchen doing our
regular chores and leaving you out. I’m sure we can think of some
way to help you.”

Jubal was surprised at how natural it all
sounded coming out of Maggie’s mouth. It didn’t sound like a
puling, sniveling, weak request on his part when Maggie said it.
That pleased him and he smiled at her.

“
Thank you, Mrs.
Bright.”

He had a nice smile. In fact, he had a real
nice smile. It was a warm smile. When he smiled, all those little
skinny white lines around his eyes crinkled up and he lost some of
that hard-as-nails look that he usually wore. Maggie felt a sudden
slithery warmth invade her heart. She really, really liked Jubal
Green’s smile.

“
Sure, Mr.
Green.”

Then she finished helping him eat and went
out to find Dan Blue Gully.

By the end of the early March afternoon, the
air was getting chilly and Jubal Green was ensconced on a chair out
back where he could watch Four Toes Smith chop wood while Maggie
planted winter kale, beets, and carrots in the kitchen garden.
Little Annie was helping her mother, more or less.

Dan Blue Gully was mending the chicken coop
that Ozzie had never managed to get fixed so that the chickens
would stay in. Dan and Maggie were swapping tales about farming
with each other. It was a subject that was relatively new to both
of them.

Jubal Green breathed deeply of the crisp
air. As he inhaled the fragrance of freshly chopped wood and newly
turned earth, he felt just fine.

Chapter Seven

Four more weeks passed by without
incident.

“
It can’t last much longer,”
Jubal commented to Dan after supper one night.

The kitchen smelled of the good supper
Maggie had just served, freshly brewed tea, and cinnamon, because
she had spent the afternoon baking. Jubal liked the way her house
always smelled of good things to eat. That was also something he
had never experienced before. He was up and about now, limping,
sore, and crabby, but able to get around without help.

“
Do you think Mulrooney
knows about French Jack killing your brother yet?” Dan
asked.

“
Hell, yes,” said Jubal.
“You don’t think French Jack didn’t keep him informed, do
you?.”

“
No,” Dan mumbled, “I don’t
guess so.”

“
Probably wired him every
day that he was near enough to a town to do it,” Jubal
muttered.

“
I suppose so.”

“
You know Mulrooney,” Jubal
said joylessly.

“
Yeah,” said Dan. “I know
Mulrooney.”

“
Can’t be too much longer,”
Jubal repeated.

“
No,” sighed Dan.
“Mulrooney’s probably already got somebody else on our tail right
now.”

Jubal sighed back. “Yeah.”

The two men were lingering over their tea.
Four Toes had gone out to the barn to see that the animals were
properly tucked in for the night. Jubal didn’t want to get up and
go into the parlor. He liked to sit at the kitchen table, smell the
good smells, and watch Maggie work. It was real peaceful in the
kitchen.

Right now Maggie was doing the washing-up
and singing an alphabet song with her daughter. Annie was banging
on her wooden high chair tray with a spoon, trying to keep time
with the music, Jubal supposed, although he didn’t know much about
either music or babies. She made him grin, though.

Jubal wasn’t altogether certain he approved
of the warm, comfy feeling that always snuck up on him when he sat
in Maggie’s kitchen. It seemed somehow weak to him that he should
entertain feelings of that soft nature, and Jubal was not normally
weak. For several weeks now he had chalked up that particular
weakness to his having been injured, but he wasn’t so sure anymore.
After all, his wounds were almost healed. But those contented,
peaceful feelings still grabbed hold of him every blessed time he
ate a meal in the kitchen. Or even walked into the room.

He felt even more uneasy when he
acknowledged that those feelings didn’t only wallop him in the
kitchen. They attacked him whenever he was in Maggie’s presence,
and that fact troubled him a good deal.

But tonight he didn’t want to think about
his odd reaction to Maggie Bright. He figured he and Dan had better
consider what was to be done when the next contingent of thugs
hired by Prometheus Mulrooney came out to the New Mexico Territory
to murder them.

Jubal was scowling into his teacup. “Hell, I
almost wish my mother had married that devil and spared us all this
grief.”

Dan eyed him speculatively. “I don’t suppose
you really mean that, Jubal.”

“
I don’t know,” Jubal
muttered, his mood unsettled. “All she ever did was slink around
the place and fret and worry and cry and stew because of
him.”

“
Well,” said his friend,
“that was because he was scarin’ her.”

“
Maybe,” growled Jubal, “but
for her, fretting was a full-time occupation. She didn’t have time
for her husband or her kids or her house or anything. She was too
busy bein’ scared.”

Maggie had come over with the tea kettle to
fill the pot with water and she listened with interest as the men
talked. She was very curious about why this Mulrooney fellow seemed
so determined to rid the world of Jubal Green. She felt easier
around Jubal now than she had at first, although she had begun to
consider him a somewhat hard man. He still gave her odd, warm
feelings in her middle when she watched him, though. She liked to
look at him when he didn’t know she was watching. She got
embarrassed when he looked back at her.

“
Is that your mother you’re
talking about, Mr. Green?” she asked, curious.

“
Yes.”

Jubal wasn’t sure he should have mentioned
anything about his mother in front of Maggie. Women never
understood anything, especially when it came to other people’s
mothers.

“
Those are pretty hard
things to say about your own mother, aren’t they?” Maggie ventured
softly.

She felt quite shy about voicing an opinion
in this matter. After all, her aunt had taught her over and over
again that her opinion was worth less than nothing. Her marriage to
Kenny had softened her perspective on the matter some since he
deferred to her in almost everything but, still, Maggie wasn’t at
all certain of her position among these men. Not only that, but she
was almost positive that Jubal Green wouldn’t appreciate her
interference in what he might consider none of her business. Still,
it was her business now, in a way, since her own life and that of
her baby girl had been imperiled by the feud between him and
Mulrooney.

When Jubal turned to scowl at her, though,
she was sure she shouldn’t have spoken.

“
Hard words or not, they’re
the truth,” he said. “My father needed a wife. He didn’t need a
weeping, wailing woman clinging to him all the time and interfering
with his work. All her whining took his mind off his
business.”

“
Well,” said Maggie in
defense of Jubal’s unknown parent, “I suppose she was near scared
to death with that man trying to kill her and all.”