One Bright Morning (18 page)

“
What about that bark?”
Maggie asked Dan. She knew she probably didn’t need to remind the
Indian, but she was nervous.

Dan grunted and continued to wrap the
thigh.

“
Well,” he said at last. “I
don’t know. You seen what he done today, and he was still hurting.
If you give him some of that bark and he don’t hurt no more, he’s
liable to do derned near anything.”

Maggie’s eyebrows shot up. She hadn’t
considered that. “Hmmmm,” she murmured thoughtfully.

She dared a peek at Jubal Green. He wasn’t
smiling anymore. His brow was furrowed, and he was sweating with
pain over what Dan was doing to his leg. His face was pale, and his
lips were set into a grim line.

“
Well,” she said, knowing
what Dan said to be true, but longing to relieve Jubal’s suffering,
“Maybe if we made him promise.”

Pain was making Jubal’s touchy temper run
perilously thin by this time. “Are the two of you talking about
me?” he asked with a grunt of pain as Dan tugged on his leg.

“
Yeah,” said Dan, grinning
up at him from his chore.

“
Well, for God’s sake, I’m
right here. What are you talking about?” Jubal sounded very
sulky.

Maggie’s own temper was short at the moment.
Here she had tried to stop this foolish man from hurting himself,
then worried herself half to death about him when he wouldn’t be
stopped, and then she’d had to rescue him when he had hurt himself
anyway. Then she’d made a complete idiot of herself and kissed him.
And now he was complaining at Dan Blue Gully and herself, both of
whom only had his welfare at heart.

“
We’re talking about whether
to give you some medicine that might make you stop hurting, Mr.
Green. But what Mr. Blue Gully said is correct. You can’t be
trusted,” she snapped.

Jubal turned his head to glower up at her.
“What do you mean I can’t be trusted?” he bellowed. Nobody had ever
called Jubal Green untrustworthy before, and he didn’t like it.

“
You can’t be trusted not to
do something else stupid and hurt yourself again. You already
proved that,” Maggie hollered back. Her fists were planted on her
hips and her eyes were spitting blue fire.

“
Oh,” Jubal growled, only
slightly mollified when he realized that she hadn’t meant to
disparage his entire character. “That’s what you meant.”

“
Yes,” Maggie said, now
angry beyond reason. “That’s exactly what I meant. If I give you
some of my bark, you’d better promise me on whatever you consider
holy that you won’t try to get up and do something else stupid and
get yourself hurt again.”

She turned to Dan. “Does he keep his word
when he gives it, Mr. Blue Gully?”

Jubal roared, “Do I
what
?”

Dan laughed outright at that. Then he
nodded. “Yeah, I guess he keeps his word.”

“
You
guess
?” Jubal wanted to strangle the
both of them.

Maggie eyed Jubal Green angrily. “All right,
Mr. Green, I’m willing to waste one piece of my bark on you, if you
promise me you won’t get up when you feel better.”

Jubal wanted to tell them both to go to hell
and take Maggie’s bark with them. His glare was hot enough to scald
milk when his eyes raked back and forth between them. His fury
found voice when Dan laid his leg down and a monumentally vicious
pain tore through him, making his entire body buck up off the
bed.

“
Damnation!” he
bellowed.

“
I guess he does hurt some,”
Dan said mildly.

“
I’m not moving until he
gives his word.” Maggie’s tone was prim.

“
Hell,” was Jubal’s violent
response.

His face was running rivulets of sweat. His
hands gripped the mattress as though he were afraid he would fly
off of it if he let go. Of course, tensing his arm muscles made his
shoulder throb like thunder.

“
Your word, Mr. Green,”
Maggie said stubbornly.

“
All right,” Jubal finally
hollered in defeat. “You’ve got my word.”

Dan smiled at Maggie. “We can try one,” he
said calmly.

“
All right,” Maggie
agreed.

She returned to the kitchen, opened her
leather pouch, and retrieved one of her treasured pieces of
medicine bark.

Before she handed it to Jubal, she said,
holding it like a wand in front of him, “I want you to know, Mr.
Green, that this bark is very important to me. This is the first
medicine I’ve ever taken in my entire life that has helped me. If
you waste this piece or don’t keep your word about it, I’m going to
get Mr. Blue Gully and Mr. Smith in here to tie you to the bed. And
I keep my word, too, Mr. Green. Do I make myself clear?”

Jubal didn’t know whether his fury or his
pain was worse. He cast a ferocious glare at Maggie Bright. “You
make yourself clear,” he muttered grimly.

“
All right then.”

Maggie handed Jubal the bark and poured him
out some tea. She put milk and sugar in it, just the way he liked
it, and sat beside the bed.

“
Now, drink this tea with it
so it doesn’t make your stomach sick.” She sounded just like a
nurse with a patient.

“
Yes, ma’am,” Jubal muttered
in a grump.

Dan covered Jubal up with the quilt. He
smiled at the uneasy couple as he left them to go out and tend to
the goat pen with Four Toes Smith.

Chapter Eight

The bark worked its magic on Jubal, as it
had on Maggie. It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes after he had
begun munching on it that he noticed a big difference in the level
of his pain. His sweating stopped and his muscles, which had been
tensed up in agony, began to relax.

Maggie was sitting beside the bed to monitor
his progress because she wanted to be on hand if he had some kind
of bad reaction to the bark. She watched him with great concern and
sponged off his forehead every now and then when the sweat dripped
into his eyes.

Annie had moved her arena of operation into
the bedroom. She was being quiet, so Maggie didn’t make her go
away. The little girl was still playing horse-and-rider. Annie had
also toddled into the other room to fetch her building-brick set,
which was now housed in a neat little cloth bag with a corded
drawstring that Maggie had sewn for the purpose. She was at present
busily creating a little pen to hold her wooden horse.

Maggie had been watching her daughter for a
while, a soft smile playing on her lips. Now she turned her
attention back to Jubal Green, and found him peering up at her. He
looked a little bit less tense and his lips weren’t pressed as
tightly together as they had been.

“
Are you feeling any better,
Mr. Green?” she asked politely.

“
Yes.”

He really liked to look at Maggie Bright.
When she’d been watching her daughter with her eyes gone so soft
and loving and her full lips possessed of that Mona-Lisa smile, she
looked almost like an angel. Jubal had a faint, creeping memory of
an angel hovering over him when he’d been so near death after he’d
been shot.

“
I’m glad you feel better,”
Maggie admitted. She wasn’t angry anymore, never having been one to
hold a grudge.

“
Thank you, Mrs. Bright,”
Jubal said softly. He wished she’d kiss him again. Only he wanted
it to last longer this time. He sighed.

“
What do you chew on this
stuff for?” he asked Maggie then, curious. He held the remains of
his bark up for her to see.

“
I get awful headaches, Mr.
Green. They really knock me for a loop. Sometimes they’re so bad, I
throw up.” She shook her head reverently. “Until Mr. Blue Gully
showed up with this bark, I just had to suffer through
them.”

Jubal had heard of headaches like that, but
he hadn’t ever experienced one himself. He’d always just figured
the people who claimed to have them were exaggerating. But by this
time, he knew Maggie Bright too well to suspect her of deceit.

“
That’s a shame, Mrs.
Bright. What did you do with your farm and your kid when you got
one of them before Dan showed up?” It didn’t sound to him as though
she’d be able to function too well while in the throes of one of
those headaches.

Maggie sighed. “I just did the best I could,
Mr. Green. There wasn’t much else I could do.” She looked at her
daughter again. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so weak,” she admitted
sadly, ashamed of the flaw that her aunt had so despised.

Jubal’s gaze flew to her face. “Weak?”

He was astounded. He was even more astounded
when he realized all at once that Maggie Bright was the first woman
on the face of the earth whom he actually respected. She’d earned
that respect, too. Jubal Green’s respect was never bestowed
lightly.

“
My aunt always complained
about it, too,” Maggie continued hesitantly. She was embarrassed to
be speaking to Jubal this way, but for some reason felt unable to
stop herself.

“
Who the hell is your aunt
to complain about you?” Jubal wanted to know. He had a sudden,
angry urge to talk to this stupid aunt of Maggie’s and set her
straight.

Maggie looked at him, surprised at the
vehemence in his voice.

“
Why, she and my uncle live
in Indiana, Mr. Green. They took me in when my folks died. I know
it was good of them to do it, but, well, they never let me forget
it, if you know what I mean.” She felt a little bit traitorous to
be telling him this. After all, she owed her aunt and uncle a lot.
They had told her that over and over. And, while in her heart of
hearts, Maggie detested her aunt and knew that the feeling was
returned ten-fold, she’d never told anybody that. She actually
considered it just another indication of her own weak
character.

“
I know exactly what you
mean,” Jubal said grimly.

“
I just never could seem to
please her, though,” Maggie admitted with chagrin. “I was always
wearing out.”

There. She’d made a full confession of her
weakness. Maggie had been told that confession was good for the
soul, but she didn’t feel a bit better now. In fact, she felt like
a pure fool.

Jubal was just about to tell Maggie exactly
what he thought of her aunt and uncle, but Annie tugged on her
mother’s apron right then, so he didn’t get the chance.

“
Look, Mama. Look, Juba,”
the little girl said.

Jubal glanced down at little Annie. Her big
brown eyes sparkled with glee, and he couldn’t help but grin. Annie
was almost as cute as Sara had been.

Maggie smiled her angel-smile at her
daughter. “Show us, Annie.”

“
See?”

Annie pulled her mother off the chair to
view her handiwork, and Maggie knelt on the floor to watch. Annie
had built a corral for her horse out of her building bricks. She
squatted down next to the corral and put her wooden man on top of
her wooden horse and made them trot around the corral. Then she
made the horse stop. Then she made the man fall off the horse and
lie on his back.

“
See?” Annie said again.
“It’s Juba.” She smiled broadly at the two adults.

Maggie burst into laughter. Jubal expelled a
big gust of air and then he, too, reluctantly laughed.

Maggie had never heard Jubal laugh before.
He had a marvelous laugh. It was rich and deep, and it made her
toes curl up and her heart sing.

“
That’s wonderful, Annie,”
she said when she could catch her breath.

“
My God,” said Jubal. “I’m
going to be one of those legends that never die and people laugh
about for centuries.”

“
Well, that will just teach
you to disobey your nurse,” Maggie said sassily. She rose from the
floor and stood beside him once more with her hands on her
hips.

Jubal grinned up at her. “I’ll be sure not
to do that again.”

His voice was a caress, and Maggie got
embarrassed. “Do you want more tea, Mr. Green?”

“
No, thank you,” Jubal said.
Then he yawned. The yawn took him by surprise.

“
You need to sleep, Mr.
Green.”

“
I guess so.” Jubal was
surprised at just how exhausting acting like a fool could
be.

“
I’d better start supper
now. Do you want me to take Annie out so you can rest?”

“
Nah. Let her stay. She’s
not bothering me. Besides, maybe I can set her straight about a few
things before she maligns my skills any further.”

Maggie grinned down at him. “I don’t know
about that, Mr. Green. ‘Pears to me, she’s got it just about
right.”

Jubal smiled at Maggie until she left the
bedroom for the kitchen. He kept smiling until he fell asleep.

When Maggie came back into the room to check
up on her charges a half hour or so later, Annie had climbed onto
the bed with Jubal and was snuggled up against him, asleep. He was
cradling her in his good arm. Annie held her wooden horse and
wooden man hugged to her chest. The spurt of pure pleasure that
Maggie felt when she observed them surprised her.

Jubal and Annie dozed the afternoon away
while Maggie cooked. She peeked in on them every now and then, and
her heart warmed right up every time she did. She was singing
softly as she stirred the chicken and vegetables she had put on to
stew and began to measure out the rice. The reality that the
occupants of her little house were still in danger had completely
fled from her consciousness.

That reality was rudely reintroduced a
second or two later when Dan Blue Gully and Four Toes Smith slammed
into the kitchen at a dead run. They bolted the door behind them
and grabbed for their firearms.