“Ho, Dan,” said Annie cheerily when they stepped into the kitchen.
“Howdy, Annie,” Dan said with a smile for the little girl.
Maggie was almost used to Dan’s thinking patterns by this time, so she didn’t repeat her question. She figured he’d answer her when he got around to it.
Maggie and Dan were met by an uneasy glare from Jubal Green when they stepped into the bedroom.
“Danny,” Jubal said by way of greeting.
Dan shook his head and grinned at the man on the bed. Jubal was looking mighty white around the mouth and mighty sweaty around the scalp. He was in obvious pain.
“Shoot, Jubal. Don’t you think we got more things to do around here than nurse you every time you pull some derned fool stunt?”
“Just check my damned leg, Danny. Mrs. Bright’s already lectured me about trying to ride Old Red too soon.” Jubal sounded very irritated.
Dan chuckled. “Let’s get them britches off, then.”
Maggie’s eyes got big and she hurried to say, “I’ll get the tea, Mr. Blue Gully.”
Jubal watched her hasty retreat with a frown. Then he looked at Dan as the Indian worked Jubal’s belt buckle loose.
“She was worried about me, Danny,” Jubal said.
“Of course she was.”
Jubal scowled. “I mean, she was worried about me, Danny. I thought she was mad because I was giving her more work to do. But she was worried about me.”
Dan looked his old friend straight in the eye. “And I said, ‘Of course she was.’”
Jubal eyed him quizzically. “You mean you’re not surprised?” Then he grunted, “God damn it, Danny, take it easy.”
Dan was easing Kenny Bright’s made-over trousers down Jubal’s hairy legs. They were a tight fit, because the bandages wrapped around Jubal’s thigh made the already bulky-with-muscle leg even larger.
“No,” replied Dan. “I’m not surprised.” He frowned when he looked at the bandage on Jubal’s thigh. “You done it this time, Jubal.”
Jubal forgot about Maggie for a minute. He tried to prop himself up and see his leg, but Dan gestured for him to stay on his back.
“What’s the matter,” Jubal asked, worry tainting the words.
“It’s bleedin’,” said the Indian. He looked at Jubal and shook his head again. “You derned fool.”
Jubal sighed. “Shit.”
“Well,” said Dan, “I’d better take a look-see.”
He began to unwrap the bandages. Then he grabbed a quilt and threw it onto Jubal’s chest.
“Cover yourself up,” he commanded.
“Why?” Jubal asked. “You’ve seen me naked before.”
Dan looked exasperated. “Yeah, and so’s Mrs. Bright, but she ain’t seen you naked for a long time and never when you’ve been awake—least not so’s I know about it. And I don’t want to maim your vanity none, but you ain’t a pretty sight, Jubal. I think we might could spare her, don’t you?”
Jubal was annoyed and a little embarrassed by his friend’s candid comment. “I guess so.”
When she came back into the bedroom with a tray laden with a cup and saucer and a pot of tea, he had barely had time to contemplate the idea of Maggie seeing him naked. By that time, he was discreetly covered by her grandmother’s quilt and Dan Blue Gully had already sprinkled the wound with medicine and was rewrapping it. Jubal looked grouchy.
“For God’s sake, be careful, Danny,” he muttered. “It hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “And who’s fault is that?”
Jubal didn’t answer. He just glared at the top of Dan’s shiny black head as he worked on Jubal’s leg.
“Here’s your tea, Mr. Green,” Maggie said.
“Thank you, Mrs. Bright,” was Jubal’s somewhat surly reply.
Maggie didn’t look at Jubal’s face, a circumstance Jubal noted with interest. Instead, she turned to Dan. When she saw that he was tending to Jubal’s naked thigh, she turned her gaze upon the floor. Jubal grinned, but Maggie didn’t notice.
“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 dow
n 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.
“Oh, my God,” cried Maggie, “What’s the matter?”
“Better get down, Mrs. Bright. Looks like Mulrooney’s people are back.”
Dan and Four Toes squatted in position beside the windows of the little house. For the first time, Maggie realized that her cozy home had been turned into a fortress. Without her even being aware of what they’d been doing, the two Indians had reinforced the windows, carved gunwales into the sills, and added metal bolts to the doors.
“Where’s Annie,” Four Toes wanted to know.
“She was on the bed sleeping, but she probably isn’t anymore,” Maggie said, dashing to the bedroom.
Sure enough, Annie was sitting up, knuckling her eyes, and her little face was puckered up in preparation for a good wail. She’d been frightened by the noises in the kitchen. Maggie ran to the bed to pick her up. Jubal’s hand stopped her from turning right around and rushing into Annie’s room.
“What is it?” His voice sounded gravelly with sleep.
“Your friend Mr. Mulrooney’s sent some more people to kill us,” Maggie told him. Right now she was very angry with all of the men in her house for bringing this danger to her door, and the emotion leaked into her voice.
One Bright Morning Page 13
