One Bright Morning (40 page)

Beula had commanded her two children to
watch little Annie, who seemed to be over her sulk this morning.
She even, in fact, held out her gourd dolly and smiled shyly when
Connie, who took after her mama and was a very motherly child,
grinned and praised it. Annie even let Connie hold it while she
named its various body parts.

Maggie couldn’t help laughing at Annie’s
firm, “haiw,” when she pointed at the doll’s yarn topping, and
Connie’s considerate, “That’s right, Annie. That’s the dolly’s
hair.”

Maggie figured her baby would do just fine
here.

“
Honest, Beula,” she was
saying now. “I can take care of these men in here. You have a
family to care for.”

Beula eyed Maggie doubtfully over a tub of
soapsuds, as though she weren’t sure such a little thing could
handle three men and a baby all by herself.

“
Well, I don’t want you to
overdo, Maggie,” she said. “I’m pretty used to it, you
know.”

Maggie laughed at that. “Lordy, Beula, I
been running my farm single-handed since my husband Kenny died.
Feeding four people and a little kid is nothing compared to
that.”

Beula’s expression went from doubtful to
incredulous. “You ran that farm all by yourself?”

Maggie, ever honest, looked slightly
abashed. “Well, it wasn’t really much of a farm. And I did have one
hired hand. ‘Course he was drunk most of the time and didn’t do
much. But I’m used to hard work, anyway.” Her eyes got sort of
dreamy when she added, “After Mr. Green got shot and showed up at
my door, and Mr. Blue Gully and Mr. Smith came to stay, it was ever
so much easier.”

Beula’s face held honest astonishment.
“Easier? With three men to feed, one of them gunshot, and them
villains shooting at you all the time?”

Maggie’s face assumed a somewhat
contemplative expression. “Well,” she admitted, “getting shot at
was sort of scary, all right. But, Beula, I never had anybody work
like those men worked around my place. It looks better now than it
ever did.”

“
Do you ‘spect you’ll go
back there after all this is over, Maggie?”

Maggie looked at Beula with a blank
expression and for some reason her heart clutched painfully. Did
she?

“
Why—why, I guess I will,
Beula. Don’t know what else I’d do,” she said after the barest
pause.

Beula eyed Maggie with a slight frown. Then
she shook her head and dunked a pot into her tub and began to scrub
it vigorously.

“
Hmph,” she said, “‘Pears to
me Mr. Green might have something to say about that.”

Maggie blushed. She didn’t want to blush,
but she couldn’t help it. She tried to hide her head behind the big
platter she was drying. “Mr. Green’s been mighty nice to me,” she
muttered.

“
Nice!” said Beula with
another humph. “I should say he pretty well ought to be.” She
pinned Maggie with another sharp stare.

“
Of course, I might be wrong
about this, Maggie Bright, but it seems to me that Jubal Green has
taken quite a shine to you. And it don’t look to me as though you
object to him any too much, neither.”

Maggie couldn’t meet Beula’s eyes. She was
embarrassed to death. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know about Mr.
Green liking me. I—I like him just fine.”

Her face felt so hot now, she expected it to
burst into flames. She busied herself by putting the platter away
on a shelf where it looked like it might belong.

Beula apparently decided her conversation
with Maggie was more important than the pot she had just dunked.
First wiping her hands on her apron, she then settled her fists on
her pillowy hips, and gave Maggie a steady stare.

Maggie had to fan herself with her
hands.

“
Now, I know it ain’t none
of my business, Maggie Bright, but you been married before, ain’t
you?”

“
Of course,” said
Maggie.

Beula nodded. “Were he a good man?”

Maggie’s eyes opened wide. “Oh, yes. Kenny
was wonderful.”

“
And I bet he loved you,
too, didn’t he?”

Maggie swallowed and looked down. “Yes, he
did,” she said very softly.

“
And you loved
him.”

“
Yes.”

“
And you were
happy.”

Maggie looked up quickly and nodded
fervently. “Oh, yes.”

“
But did you get a quivery
feeling in your belly like you were sick all the time and like you
didn’t care how many other men there were on earth, that he was the
only one you ever wanted to be with as long as you lived and you’d
die if he ever went away, and you didn’t know what to do when he
wasn’t around?”

Maggie didn’t have to think about it, but
she was overwhelmed by such a feeling of betrayal that she didn’t
answer Beula’s question immediately.

Beula’s eyes narrowed. “Well?” she asked
firmly.

“
Kenny was a wonderful man,
Beula,” she whispered.

“
I don’t doubt that,
Maggie,” Beula said. “But that don’t answer my
question.”

Maggie dropped her eyes. “No,” she murmured
miserably.

Beula sniffed and resumed scrubbing her pot.
“Didn’t think so,” she said with a nod of satisfaction. “But you
feel that way about Jubal, don’t you?”

Maggie felt absolutely awful now. She
realized with horror that her eyes were filling up, and she swiped
a stray tear away with her dish towel.

“
Yes.”

“
I thought so,” Beula
announced. “I could tell.”

Then she dropped her pot into the water tub
once more with a big splash and turned around to face Maggie.

“
Maggie Bright, like I said,
this ain’t none of it my business, but I can tell you this, and
that’s that when you find the right man, you know it, and you
better grab him while you can, because you might not ever get
another chance in your life. When I found Mr. Todd, I didn’t even
pause to consider. I just up and grabbed him. And I know he’s older
than me and I know he’s a dratted Easterner, and I know my ma and
aunts liked to flay me alive, but I knew, Maggie. I
knew
that he was the only
man on the face of the earth for me. And I was right.”

Beula ran out of breath and stopped
talking.

Maggie didn’t know what to say. She had a
suspicion that Beula was right, too. But Maggie didn’t have only
herself to think about. She not only had Annie to consider, but she
had Kenny Bright’s memory and Kenny Bright’s farm. Her farm. And
she loved both Annie and that memory and that farm with a passion
she couldn’t even begin to explain to anybody.

“
Thank you, Beula,” she said
at last. “I really do thank you for your concern.”

Beula didn’t look as though she were
entirely satisfied with Maggie’s response to her diatribe. She
shook her head again.

“
Well, you just think about
what I said, Maggie, is all,” she finally muttered.

Maggie was still feeling subdued and more
than a little beleaguered when Four Toes found her in the
kitchen.

“
Mrs. Bright, Jubal sent me
in here to fetch you out to the patio. He says you’re finally going
to finish it.”

Maggie flushed with pleasure. “How nice of
him. I’d really like to do that.”

“
It’s a wonderful patio,”
Four Toes said. “All it needs is a smack o’ love.”

Maggie looked at the tall Indian closely.
She was touched by his words. It surprised her that a man who had
been saved from a violent death as a boy by three other boys, none
of whom had known more than a lick or two of love in their lives,
seemed to have so much love of his own to give. Sometimes the human
spirit absolutely astonished Maggie Bright.

She and Four Toes spent a productive morning
in the patio where she made a list of all the things they decided
to do, and Four Toes inventoried supplies on hand at the ranch.
When he was through with that, Maggie was to write up a shopping
list.

In the mean time, she discovered that the
tiles that had been laid nearly three decades earlier and then
left, neglected, to collect layers of dirt and Texas dust, were
absolutely beautiful. Apparently Jubal’s father had imported them
from Spain.

Maggie was nearly quivering with excitement
when Four Toes came back with his inventory report. Her cheeks were
rosy, and her blue eyes gleamed.

“
I’ve never done anything
like this in my life, Mr. Smith,” she confessed with glee. “I’ve
never seen anything as pretty as those tiles. I can’t wait to clean
them up. And I can’t even imagine going to town and buying a bunch
of new stuff and just fixing up a place like this. Even when Kenny
was building the farm, we had to make do with old stuff or stuff he
fixed himself. He cut the trees for the logs and then he built the
shelves on the porch out of old barn siding.”

Four Toes was smiling at her. “Well, Jubal’s
got lots of money, Mrs. Bright. His father left him pretty well off
financially, at any rate, even if he didn’t pay no attention to him
or Benny. I guess him and Mr. Mulrooney made a fortune in New York
before they split up and the feud started.”

Maggie stopped smiling. She’d almost forgot
about that cursed feud. “Isn’t that something?” she said
softly.

Four Toes read her mood and might even have
read her thoughts. “It’ll be all right, Mrs. Bright. Jubal, he’ll
win this war. He ain’t like his pa. He cares about this place and
he cares about his people. His pa—well, Jubal’s pa, he wasn’t
prepared for the pounding life give him. He just sort of seemed
kind of lost-like.”

“
I don’t know how you boys
grew up to be so good, Mr. Smith,” Maggie whispered. “You’re all so
good.”

Four Toes colored up. He hadn’t done that
for a long time, and Maggie was surprised. “Thank you, ma’am. I
think that’s Jubal’s doing, too. Him and Dan’s ma and pa, but I
don’t remember them much.”

Maggie decided she’d better turn the
conversation pretty quickly or end up bawling. “Well, anyway,” she
said briskly, “I’ve got me a shopping list here that will probably
just about curl Mr. Green’s hair.”

Four Toes chuckled. “I don’t think he’ll
mind, ma’am.”

Jubal and Dan spent a profitable day out on
the range, surveying Jubal’s vast cattle empire. Jubal had forgot
just how wide open these Texas spaces could be. It felt good to
breathe in the clean air and to look around and see miles and miles
of nothing but his own land. The thought of Prometheus Mulrooney—or
anybody else, for that matter—trying to wrench all this away from
him hit him with such repugnance that Dan had to ask him if
something were wrong.

“
Nothing’s wrong, Danny,”
Jubal said with a grim smile. “It’s just that I’d almost forgot how
much I have to lose.”

Dan eyed him closely. “You aren’t going to
lose anything, Jubal,” he said.

Jubal nodded. “They’ll have to kill me to
get it, Danny.”

“
They’ll have to kill me
first,” his friend replied.

The two men came home earlier that day than
they would have under normal circumstances. But circumstances were
still far from normal, as far as Jubal’s body was concerned. By the
time he rode through the ranch house gate and over to the stable,
his face was white and pinched with pain, and his thigh felt as
though somebody had jabbed him with a red-hot poker and was now
jiggling it around, just for fun.

His arm didn’t hurt too much, and he
wondered if the exercise he’d been getting with Maggie might have
helped to strengthen it. He hoped so, because he planned to do some
more of that as soon as he could arrange it.

“
Watch it, Jubal,” Dan
called to him when he slid off Old Red and his legs nearly gave out
under him. “Why didn’t you wait for me, you fool man?” Dan was
smiling at him, but he shook his head, too, with
annoyance.

“
Ah, hell, Danny,” Jubal
grimaced through clenched teeth. “I can’t stay an invalid
forever.”

“
A couple of months ain’t
forever, Jubal. You damn near died, remember.”

Jubal was scowling now while he tried to get
his legs to work right. “No, thank God, I don’t remember that part
of it.”

Dan laughed. “It’s just as well. You were a
damn rotten patient.”

All at once Jubal stopped stock still as a
sudden flash of something that was just on the edge of being a
memory assailed him. The flickering, shadowy image of something
ethereally angelic passed before his mind’s eye. His face crunched
up with the effort of concentration.

“
What is it, Jubal?” Dan
asked, eyeballing him oddly.

Jubal didn’t answer for a second or two. He
was trying with all his might to capture the shimmery, whispery
tatters of thought that played so tantalizingly close to his
consciousness, and yet wouldn’t allow themselves to be caught. He
finally shook his head with disgust.

“
Hell,” he said sourly. “I
don’t know. There’s something I can’t remember.”

“
There’s lots of stuff I
don’t remember,” Dan said.

Jubal gave him a crooked grin. “I guess,” he
said. Then he took a big step, leading out with his left leg, and
very nearly ended up in a heap. Dan caught him just before he hit
the ground.

“
Lordy, Jubal, you shouldn’t
have ridden so long with that leg wound so fresh. You could still
open up your thigh, you know.” He grabbed Jubal by the shoulder
and, in spite of his friend’s grumbling protests, helped support
him from the stable to the house.

Jubal allowed Dan to assist him, but he made
him let go of him when they got to the house. He wasn’t about to
advertise the fact that he was a cripple.