One Bright Morning (31 page)

“
What did you find
out?”

His curt greeting did not faze Dan and Four
Toes, who seemed to have expected it. Dan looked up and gestured
him into the scarred wooden chair next to him.

“
Jeez, you could have chosen
a cleaner place to meet, Dan,” Jubal said, looking around with a
grimace.

Dan grinned at him with real amusement. “We
been meetin’ here for years, Jubal. You never bitched about it
before. Must be getting sissy, hanging around with that lady all
this time.”

Jubal shot a furious frown at his friend and
then gave it up, sighed, and offered him a reluctant grin.

“
I guess,” he said ruefully.
“It’s funny what being around a woman will do to a man.”

“
Shit,” said one of the men
at their table. “Ain’t funny a-tall.” He spat onto the sawdust, and
Jubal winced inwardly. Small wonder the floor looked like that, he
thought.

“
Don’t spit on the floor,
Hank,” a shrill voice commanded.

An overblown woman whisked over a cuspidor
and plunked it down next to the chair of the man named Hank. She
was corseted tightly and her ample white flesh spilled out over her
dress in front. Hank gave her big rump a playful spank and ogled
her bosom.

“
Ah, Dolly, we was just
talkin’ about women. You know how itchy that kind of talk makes
me.”

Dolly winked suggestively at him. “Well, you
know how to scratch that itch, don’t you, Hank?”

“
I’ll see you later, Dolly,
honey,” Hank promised.

Jubal watched their playful exchange with an
odd gripping in his gut. He recognized the banter as the same type
he’d participated in hundreds of times. He couldn’t figure out why
it gave him such a lost and lonely feeling now. He shook his head
one more time. He really was getting soft.

“
Well, listen,” he said. “I
don’t have much time. Have you found out anything?”

Hank drew his eyeballs away from Dolly’s
hind end and faced Jubal.

“
Mulrooney’s in the train
and on his way to Santa Fe,” he said in a flat monotone.

Jubal pinned Hank with a steady stare. “You
sure?”

“
I’m sure.”

“
Hellfire.”

“
The man himself,” added
Dan, just in case there was some doubt.

“
Hellfire,” said Jubal
again.

“
According to my contact in
New York, Mulrooney left four days ago. Don’t know whether he’s
found out you’ve left that farm in the hills yet or
not.”

“
Well, look at it this way,
Jubal,” said Dan. “If he wasn’t worried, he wouldn’t leave his
little nest. In a way it’s good. You never could have got at him
there. He was like a goddamned queen bee in a hive, protected on
all sides. This way you have a chance to settle it once and for
all.”

Jubal stared at the filthy table in front of
him.

“
Damn,” he said
softly.

“
Hell, Jubal, it ain’t so
bad,” said Dan. “We can even ride to Santa Fe and blow up the
train, if it comes to that.”

Jubal looked at Dan for a moment. He felt
very troubled about this turn of events. “He’s probably got a
damned army guarding that train, Danny. Besides, I can’t do that
now. Not now. I can’t do something like that without you with me. I
don’t trust anybody else, and I don’t dare go away and leave Mrs.
Bright and Annie with nobody around but hired hands. The biggest
priority now is to keep the two of them safe.”

Dan’s eyebrows arched comically. “Well, now,
did you hear that, Four Toes? Our priorities have changed all of a
sudden.”

Four Toes grinned at Jubal, too. “I guess
so.”

“
I didn’t think there was
anything on the face of the earth that mattered to you more than
killing P. J. Mulrooney, Jubal Green.”

Jubal’s crooked, rueful grin was that of a
defeated man. “I didn’t think so either, Danny,” he said upon a
massive sigh.

Dan and Four Toes exchanged a wickedly
gleeful grin.

While Jubal, Dan, Four Toes and their spies
discussed Prometheus Mulrooney in the saloon, Maggie was trying to
get used to the amazing luxury of her hotel room.

“
Shoot, Annie, I’m afraid to
touch anything,” she admitted to her little girl. Everything was
shinier, prettier, and newer than anything Maggie had ever seen
before.

Annie was busy prancing around on the carpet
in her bare feet and didn’t notice her mother’s awed reaction to
their surroundings. The little girl liked the mattress on the big
bed, too. It was nothing like the prickery tick mattresses at home.
Not only that, but the frame holding it was springy, and Annie
discovered the joy of bed-bouncing for the first time in her young
life.

Maggie was ultimately distracted from her
examination of their luxurious room by her daughter’s shrieks of
glee.

“
Oh, my land, baby, don’t
jump on the bed.”

Maggie snatched her little daughter off of
the bed and carted her into the bathroom. There were even more
amazements in store for them there, because the hotel was equipped
with faucets. Maggie had never seen a faucet before, although she
had seen illustrations once in a magazine Sadie Phillips let her
borrow.

“
Mercy sakes,” she sighed
reverently.

With a trembling hand she reached out and
turned the tap handle. The immediate gush of cold water made her
jump back with a start of alarm.

“
Wa!” shouted a delighted
Annie. She pointed at the cascade of water pouring into the
sink.

Maggie giggled. “It sure is, honey. It’s
water all right. Right here in our own room. Whatever will they
think of next?” Maggie sneaked up to the basin and turned the tap
off quickly, afraid she would flood the place if she let it run
much longer.

A brisk rapping at the door to their room
startled her. She looked at Annie with concern.

“
Who can that be?” she
wondered. It certainly wasn’t time for Jubal to be back
yet.

Maggie wasn’t sure what to do. If it had
been her own home, she’d have merely walked over to the door and
flung it open. But this was a fancy hotel, and she’d never been in
a fancy hotel before. She tiptoed up to the door and stood in front
of it, clutching Annie tightly.

“
Who is it?” she called in a
shaky voice.

“
Room service, ma’am. Mr.
Green requested hot water be brought for a bath in this
room.”

Maggie looked at her daughter in dawning
wonder. Hot water for a bath? She opened the door a crack. Then,
when she saw an army of hotel staff, all holding buckets of
steaming water, she stepped back.

The bell boy smiled at her and swept an arm
out to usher in the maids. There were five of them, and they
trooped in one after the other, headed straight into the bathroom
and, with clock-like precision, each dumped their bucketfuls of
water into the bathtub. Then they left. Each one of them gave
Maggie a little curtsey before she exited the room. The bell boy
tipped his hat then, and shut the door behind him on his way
out.

“
Thank you,” Maggie
whispered to the closed door after they had all left.

“
My Lord in heaven,” she
murmured when she went back into the bathroom.

The water was a little bit hot, so she added
cold water from the tap, then she and Annie had a delightful, warm
bath. She even washed their hair and rinsed it under the cold
running water. They were both laughing by the time they were clean,
and then Maggie dried them off with the fluffiest towels she had
ever seen in her life.

“
I swear, Annie, I think
I’ve died and gone straight to heaven.”

A couple of hours later when Jubal tapped at
the door of their room, Maggie and Annie were both clean as a
whistle and dressed in their Sunday finest. Maggie had surveyed
them both critically and come to the conclusion that their finest
clothes weren’t any too good, but it couldn’t be helped. She did
the best she could.

Jubal had spiffed himself up some, too. He
appeared at Maggie’s door shaved and washed and wearing a new pair
of trousers and a coat he’d bought at the dry goods store after
he’d left Dan and Four Toes in that dismal saloon down the way.

Jubal couldn’t help but notice Maggie’s
happy, bright eyes when she opened the door to admit him. A warm
feeling of contentment spread itself around like soft butter in his
middle. He was almost getting used to that warmth, even though it
was one he’d never felt before he’d met Maggie Bright. As sometimes
happened when he hadn’t seen her for a while, a flash of something
akin to memory flitted through his brain. He couldn’t grab hold of
it, but it had something to do with angels and light. He shook his
head and guessed he’d never figure that one out.

“
You’re looking mighty
pretty tonight, Mrs. Bright.”

Maggie flushed right up.

“
Thank you, Mr. Green. So
are you.”

Jubal grinned and Maggie got flustered. “I
mean, you’re not pretty. You look—you look very handsome.”

“
Thank you.” Jubal’s smile
broadened and he crooked his elbow at her.

Maggie reached for his proffered elbow and
then got even more flustered when she realized she’d forgot
something. She whirled around, leaving Jubal’s smile to crinkle up
some around the edges while she dashed over to the dresser in the
room and snatched up her hat.

It was her very best one. She had ordered
its bare skeleton out of a catalog and decorated it herself with
flowers she’d made from scraps of material and then stiffened with
starch and quilting. She tied the ribbons under her chin, then
scooped up Annie and rejoined Jubal at the door.

“
I almost forgot my hat,”
she said unnecessarily.

Jubal didn’t quite know what to say, so he
opted for, “It’s a pretty hat.”

He felt very good when Maggie beamed at him.
Then she tucked her gloved hand in his elbow and he led her and
Annie downstairs to the restaurant.

Jubal had dined in relatively good
restaurants, by Texas standards at least, with his mother and
sister-in-law, but he’d never taken a lady out to eat like this
before. He had a vague notion that this was courting behavior, but
he didn’t care to examine that notion closely. He could, after all,
have had food taken to Maggie’s room if he’d wanted to. But he was
deriving a great deal of enjoyment out of watching her react to all
the new things to which he was introducing her.

He had a rebellious thought that there were
one or two other new things he’d like to teach her, too, but he
tried to tuck that thought away behind his nobler motives. It
popped out again, however, at odd times during their meal.

“
I’m nervous as a cat,”
Maggie whispered in his ear when Jubal waltzed her over the
threshold of the restaurant.

She clutched tightly at his arm, and Jubal
suppressed the urge to pat her hand. He had made reservations, and
the host led them to their table with a stiff-backed, pompous air
that made Maggie’s eyes go wide.

Jubal had also thought to make arrangements
for Annie, and when the host swept a hand at a chair equipped with
a cushioned bolster, Maggie didn’t know what to do.

“
Here, let me,” said Jubal.
He preempted the baby from her mother’s arms and set her carefully
down on the seat.

“
There you go, Annie. You’ve
got your own little chair now.” He grinned at Annie and patted her
cheek, and she smiled back at him.

Maggie would have thanked him, but she
realized all at once that the host was holding out a chair and
looking at her imperiously. She quickly sat down.

“
Thank you,” she
breathed.

Jubal watched her gazing about the
restaurant and felt himself go all smiley inside. He peered around
and decided the interior of the restaurant reminded him very much
of a whorehouse he’d visited in San Antonio once, but he didn’t
tell Maggie that.

“
I declare, Mr. Green, this
is the prettiest place I’ve ever been in.”

Maggie felt very rustic and
ignorant in the grand restaurant. The walls were covered with
striped, crimson wallpaper, flocked to perfection. The same thick
crimson carpet that graced the lobby hushed against the floor in
here, and each table was adorned with a squat, cranberry-colored,
crystal lamp, in which a real beeswax candle burned. There was no
nasty, heavy tallow smell to mar the ambiance in
this
room.

A waiter appeared and Jubal ordered a bottle
of wine. He hadn’t intended to do that, but Maggie’s pleasure had
suddenly become very important to him. And she was enjoying this
new experience so much that he wanted to do everything he could to
make the evening special for her.

Maggie’s reaction to his generous gesture
was everything he could have hoped for.

“
Why, Mr. Green, I’ve never
tasted wine in my whole life. This is such a—such a—such an
exciting day.”

For a minute, Jubal was afraid she’d cry,
but she didn’t, and he breathed a soft sigh of relief.

“
Well, Mrs. Bright, I
figured you might enjoy having a real night out.”

He thought it was a little lame, but he
couldn’t think of anything better to say. Maggie was neither a
stuffy matron nor a brazen light skirt, both of which types he’d
had a good deal of experience with. Maggie was a sweet, pretty lady
who’d had a hard life with no frills, and she’d saved his life.
That was worth a bottle of wine, at the very least.