One Bright Morning (28 page)

“
Well,” Jubal said at last,
“I’m sorry.”

Maggie sighed again. “It’s all right.”

They didn’t speak to each other again during
the long, black night. Maggie continued to stare at the stars and
wish she could see them. Jubal continued to drive the team and try
not to think about Maggie sitting next to him in the wagon.

The following day, the little band rested
under some dusty brown outcroppings in the middle of the blank,
blazing desert.

“
My goodness, I’ve never
seen anything so empty before,” Maggie said as she surveyed the
miles and miles of nothing that spread out before and around them.
There didn’t seem to be any vegetation at all but gray, dry scrub,
but that appeared to go on forever.

Dan was spreading his saddle blanket out to
sleep upon. “Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s pretty ugly around here, all
right.”

For the first time since that first surge of
excitement had begun to blossom within her when they were a few
miles away from her farm, Maggie’s spirits started to droop. She
hoped Jubal’s ranch wouldn’t look like this. She was used to green
trees and water. This was the devil’s land here.

She kept her opinion to herself, but Jubal
noticed her mood and was sure he was the cause. He cursed
himself.

“
Here, Mrs. Bright,” he
said. “You and Annie better drink some water now. You have to keep
drinking in this desert, or you’ll dry up and blow away before you
know it.”

“
Thank you, Mr. Green,” said
Maggie in a shy little voice. She took the proffered cup of water
from him, drank some of it, and held the cup to her daughter’s
lips.

“
Thank, Juba,” said
Annie.

Jubal grinned down at the tiny girl. “You’re
welcome, Annie.”

That little exchange seemed to lighten
Maggie’s mood some.

The desert was a perilous place, and Four
Toes rigged up a rope to keep Annie safe. One end of the rope was
tied around Annie’s waist, and the other was tied to his wrist.
That way, if the baby got bored and wandered off while the adults
slept, the rope would tug on his arm and he would wake up.

Maggie was terribly impressed with his
thoughtfulness. “Thank you very much, Mr. Smith. I really
appreciate that.”

“
It’s all right, Mrs.
Bright. I grew up tied to the end of a rope myself.” He laughed
when Maggie’s eyes got round.

“
It’s the truth,” he said.
“There’s all sorts of things around here that can hurt a child. The
cougars find little kids easy pickings. And a kid can wander off
easy as pie. Anything tiny is hard to spot in this land, and if a
body don’t keep drinking, you can die in just a few hours. It’s
better to be tied to a rope than die, my family always thought.” He
grinned at Dan and Jubal, and they grinned back.

Maggie didn’t understand that shared grin,
but the words made sense and she swallowed hard. “I should say
so.”

It turned out that Annie wasn’t much of a
problem. She was happy to play with her nice new wooden toys while
her mama and the men slept. It was too hot for adventures, anyway.
When Maggie woke up a few hours later, Annie was sound asleep next
to her. She herself was drenched in sweat, but there would be no
bath today. There wasn’t a crick or a stream or even a mud hole
around for miles and miles.

All of the adults were glad when the next
morning found them rumbling along the dry, dusty streets of El
Paso.

Chapter Twelve

“
We’re going to stop at
Garza’s and get some supplies,” Jubal told Maggie. “Then I have a
couple other stops to make.”

“
What’s Garza’s?” Maggie
wanted to know.

“
Big mercantile. They have
dry goods and food supplies. I want to stop by the seed store after
we stock up with flour and beans and such.”

Maggie nodded. She guessed Jubal would know
what they needed on his ranch.

Her astonishment nearly overwhelmed her when
she stepped into Garza’s Dry Goods Emporium. She’d never been in
such a big store in her entire life. Even the mercantile in
Indiana, while tidier and more civilized-looking than this place,
was tiny by comparison.

Jubal noticed her reaction and grinned to
himself. He and Maggie were becoming easier around each other, now
that a day or so had passed since their mutual indiscretion.

“
Big place, isn’t
it?”

Maggie looked at him blankly. “Big?” she
said. “It’s huge. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

She stood in the entrance of Garza’s and
tried to adjust her eyes to the bounty arrayed before her. She held
Annie tightly. Annie, too, seemed amazed. The little girl’s big
brown eyes were wide and she stuffed her fist into her mouth.
That’s what she did whenever she was surprised.

Immediately in front of them was a long
aisle that ended in the biggest, shiniest plank counter Maggie had
ever seen in her life. The shelves that lined the aisle were
stacked with jars full of spices and patent medicines. There were
spices Maggie had never heard of before in her life. She picked up
a jar of allspice and wondered if it contained a combination of
other spices. She put it back again and felt foolish.

She noticed three different brands of cod
liver oil. There were bitters, pain killers, magnesia tablets,
tonics, seltzers, syrups, salves, and balms. She wondered what
Appolinaris Water was good for. She liked the name. If she dared,
she would have spent a few of her carefully saved pennies and
bought Annie a bottle of cherry seltzer. But she felt intimidated
in this new place and merely looked with awe at the vast array of
goods neatly stacked before her.

It took her quite a while to walk down that
one center aisle, she was so fascinated by everything. Once past
that first intriguing lane, though, she gasped with pleasure.

“
Oh, my, Annie, will you
look at that,” Maggie breathed.

“
Look dat,” said Annie. She
pulled her fist out of her mouth and pointed a moist finger toward
where her mother was staring, agape.

It seemed to Maggie as if she were looking
at a mile’s worth of fabric and notions, at the very least. Bolts
and bolts of bright calicos and ginghams tempted shoppers. Heavy
denims, gabardines, and muslins lined a wall. There were wools for
cloaks and coats, percales for sheets, and gauze for diapers. There
were even satins, frilly laces, and tulles for wedding dresses and
veils. A shelf laden with cotton batting, threads, cords, and
braids took up an entire wall behind the cloth.

Maggie fingered several pretty fabrics and
wished she dared buy something. She’d love to sew her little Annie
up a dress out of a pink checked gingham.

“
I can’t do it, though,
Annie,” Maggie said, as though she were apologizing to her
daughter. “I don’t know even where we’re going to be pretty soon. I
can’t start spending our money foolishly, now can I?”

Right before they’d left New Mexico, Jubal
had handed her what seemed to Maggie to be a phenomenal amount of
money. It was the reward that had been paid for French Jack’s
corpse, and he had given all of it to Maggie in spite of her
protests. In fact, it was his swelling anger at her refusal that
finally shut her up about it. The mere thought of spending any of
that money on frivolities made her feel guilty.

“
I’ve never had so much
money in my life, Annie,” Maggie said now as she stared with
longing at the bounty before her. She eyed the pretty pink gingham
and then wondered if her notion was completely
frivolous.

“
Of course, baby,” she said
thoughtfully, “If I made me a dress, too, then it wouldn’t be such
a waste. We could wear them to church. There must be a church near
Mr. Green’s ranch.” She looked around, wishing she could spot Dan
or Four Toes in this amazing place. Maybe they could guide her in
the proper way to go about buying fabric in such a fancy
store.

A voice behind her startled her into
squeezing Annie too hard, and the little girl uttered a chirping
protest.

“
Find anything you like,
Mrs. Bright?”

Jubal had been watching Maggie eyeball the
fabrics with a funny feeling swelling in his chest. Her wistful
expression did not escape his notice. At first he wondered why she
didn’t just start yanking bolts off the shelf like his mother or
Janie would have done. Then he realized, yet again, that Maggie
Bright was nothing at all like his mother or Janie. Maggie was a
woman who appreciated how hard life was. She didn’t take things
like bolts of pretty fabric for granted.

Maggie turned quickly to find Jubal looking
at her with a soft smile on his face. His green eyes, which were
sometimes so hard and cranky, were watching her with a tenderness
that made her swallow and drop her own gaze to the floor.

“
Mr. Green! I didn’t know
you were there. I—I’ve never seen anything like this store before.
It’s so big.” Maggie’s voice held awe.

Jubal chuckled. “Yep, it’s big, all right.
Garza’s got the biggest place for hundreds of miles. There are huge
spreads around this neck of the woods, Mrs. Bright, and they all
come here for supplies. Pretty nearly all the people who live in
the other small towns come here, too. Garza has a regular
mercantile empire in west Texas.”

“
I guess he has, all right,”
Maggie breathed. Her eyes swept the store again and she shook her
head.

Jubal cleared his throat. “You like that
cloth, Mrs. Bright?” He nodded at the pink gingham.

Maggie could feel her face flush up. She
felt stupid because she didn’t know how to buy something in this
huge place. Every other mercantile she’d ever been in in her life
was basically one small room with a proprietor never further than a
holler away. To Maggie, hollering in Garza’s would be akin to
hollering in church.

“
Well,” she said, “I—I was
thinking about it.”

“
It would look good on you,”
Jubal said. Then he was embarrassed at having said something so
perfectly inane.

Maggie looked up at him quickly. “Thank
you,” she said shyly. “I thought I’d make a dress for Annie out of
it, too.”

Jubal nodded, as though he were considering
her words carefully. In truth, he knew very little and cared even
less about ladies’ apparel. He just wanted Maggie to be happy.

“
Good idea,” he
said.

“
Do you think so?” Maggie
asked her question with a bright lilt to her voice, obviously
relieved to find somebody who could advise her.

Jubal nodded again. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll
go get a clerk.”

“
All right,” Maggie said.
She didn’t know what a clerk was.

She found out a minute or so later when an
efficient young Mexican man accompanied Jubal back to her side.

“
You’d like this gingham,
ma’am?” the young man asked her politely.

“
Yes, please,” Maggie
answered in a tiny voice.

The clerk had a pencil tucked behind his ear
and carried a pair of scissors and an account pad in his waistband.
He hefted the bolt of gingham off the counter and carried it to a
cutting board. Maggie dashed after him, afraid she’d get lost if
she didn’t keep up with him.

“
And how much would you
like, ma’am?”

The question made her blush. She didn’t
know. She’d never bought yardage before. Her aunt had doled out
fabric by the inch when she was growing up, and Kenny had brought
her lengths of cloth from Lincoln occasionally. She’d made all of
Annie’s clothes out of left-over odds and ends she had at home.

“
I—I don’t know,” she
stammered.

The well-trained clerk didn’t look at all
disconcerted at her innocent confession. Instead he just asked,
“What do you intend to make out of it, ma’am?”

“
Well, I guess a dress for
my little girl and me,” said Maggie.

The clerk eyed her critically for a few
seconds. “I think ten yards will provide enough for both of you. If
you’d like more for sunbonnets, you can get twelve yards for a
dollar.”

Jubal was watching Maggie closely. He saw
that she seemed terribly confused and realized she’d probably never
done this before.

“
I think the twelve yards is
a pretty good deal, Mrs. Bright,” he said thoughtfully in an
attempt to rescue her. He was unprepared for the swift look of
gratitude she shot him. It hadn’t occurred to him before how
satisfying helping out Maggie Bright could be.

“
Yes. Thank you. I’ll take
twelve yards.”

“
What about spool cotton?”
asked the clerk.

“
Yes, please.”

The clerk pulled a spool of thread from the
shelf behind him. “Do you need cardboard for the bonnets?” he asked
politely.

Maggie’s mouth dropped open. She’d always
stiffened her bonnet brims by stitching layers and layers of fabric
together, quilting them until her fingers ached from the tiny
needlework, and then starching them until they couldn’t have bent
if they’d wanted to. The thought of putting cardboard into a
bonnet’s brim to hold it stiff had never occurred to her. All at
once she visualized how easy it would be to make a slatted bonnet
with openings to slip strips of heavy cardboard in and out. Lord,
that would make her life easier. She looked at the clerk shyly.

“
How much is the cardboard?”
she asked very softly.

Jubal wanted to curse and tell her he’d buy
the damned cardboard. How much could cardboard cost? He held his
tongue. Maggie couldn’t help her circumstances. She couldn’t
possibly know that, all at once, just in the time he’d been
standing with her here at this dry goods counter, one of Jubal’s
major priorities in life had become seeing to her welfare.