One Bright Morning

by Duncan, Alice

  “I don’t want you working hard here, Maggie,” Jubal told her tersely. “You’ve worked too hard in your life.” He shot her a brief scowl before he returned his attention to the desert in front of him.

  “Oh.” Maggie didn’t know what to say to that. She opted for, “Thank you,” and hoped he wouldn’t get fussy at her for thanking him. Then she contemplated her folded hands and hoped against hope that he wouldn’t suggest she become his mistress. The possibility made her want to cry, but she braced herself.

  He didn’t. Instead, he just growled, “You’re welcome,” and flicked the reins.

  It was another forty-five minutes before either of them spoke again. Then Jubal told her, “I think it’s time to wake Annie up.”

  Maggie had been nodding on the hard wooden seat with her eyes closed. The sun was barely visible above the hills now, the worst of the heat had burned itself out, and she was feeling sleepy and oddly happy. Jubal’s words snapped her awake in a jiffy, and she was amazed to see that they had driven through a steep-sided rocky gorge and out into a lovely green valley.

  Her gasp of pleased surprise was music to Jubal’s ears. He grinned at the mules and peered at Maggie out of the corner of his eye. She was staring around in happy astonishment.

  “I had no idea, Jubal. This is wonderful. I expected it to be all brown and dry like the rest of the land around here.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “My pa always used to say that the first time he saw this stretch of land, he knew that this was where he was going to make his heaven on earth.”

  “What a pretty thing to say,” said Maggie, impressed with the poetic nature that Jubal’s father apparently hadn’t handed down to his son.

  Jubal snorted. “Yeah, well, his intentions were good, anyway. It didn’t exactly work out that way, thanks to Prometheus Mulrooney and my mother.”

  Maggie peered at him quickly and saw that his face had gone hard. She decided she’d better not say anything about being kind to mothers. After all, she hated her aunt; maybe Jubal’s mother had been like her. It was an appalling thought, but it did occur to her that perhaps some people were just not worth the energy it took to love them.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. She didn’t see Jubal glance at her in surprise, because she was too busy leaning over the back of the wagon seat to wake her daughter up.

  “Annie, honey, we’re here. Wake up, sweetheart. We’re at Jubal’s ranch. You can meet his dog Rover now. And there’s a man named Cod Fish, too, and a lady named Beula. It’s pretty here, Annie. There’s a river and trees, and—” Maggie glanced up. They were in view of the ranch house itself now, and her mouth dropped open momentarily. The house was so big and pretty, Maggie gaped in astonishment. “Oh, Annie, it’s beautiful,” she breathed.

  Jubal heard the awe in her voice and his grin broadened. He was very proud of himself all of a sudden.

  Annie had been sleeping hard and obviously wasn’t convinced that waking up was a good idea. She grumbled and whimpered and ground her little fist against her sleepy eyes. Her piquant face puckered up and it looked like she might be winding up for a good wail, when Maggie remembered her new dolly. She leaned over to pick it up and rattled it in front of Annie’s unhappy face.

  “Look, Annie, your dolly likes it here. This will be her new home, too, for a while.”

  “Mine,” Annie announced. She snatched the doll out of her mother’s hand and hugged it hard to her little chest. Then she glared at her mother, and Maggie sighed.

  “Oh, my. I wish there were some children around for you to play with, baby girl. You need to learn to share.”

  “Ah, she just doesn’t want to wake up,” said Jubal with a grin at Annie, who still looked grumpy. “I get like that, too, sometimes.”

  Maggie considered telling him that she’d be sure to keep that in mind, but decided she’d better not. Instead, she said, “Well, it sure would be good for her to have kids to play with. Sadie and I used to get her together with the twins as often as we could, but I didn’t used to have much time.”

  Jubal wondered how Maggie would take to the idea of having one or two children with him, then decided it was definitely too soon to be asking her that. Instead, he said thoughtfully, “Cod Fish and Beula have a couple of kids. I think they’re about four and seven.”

  “Really? Oh, how wonderful,” Maggie breathed. “Did you hear that, Annie? You’ll have friends here.”

  She hugged her sleepy baby tightly to her breast as Annie sat on her lap and the wagon rumbled nearer and nearer to their goal. As they approached, things began to take on definition for Maggie. She saw the stream and the lacy-leafed willows weeping on the bank. The cottonwoods had leafed out after their winter rest and dappled the fresh spring grass with early evening shade.

  The ranch house was a one-story, sprawling affair, built upon square, Spanish lines, with a patio in the middle. A smaller house, fashioned of the same whitewashed adobe, squatted to the west of the main house and it had a tidy picket fence around it. Flowers bloomed in a little bed, and Maggie figured that house for the home of Cod Fish and Beula.

  “Flowers,” she breathed. “Oh, look, Annie, flowers.”

  She pointed the flowers out to her daughter and then offered Jubal a perfectly heavenly smile. He nearly died right there when his heart quit beating for a second. The first thing he was going to do, he told himself, was dig this woman a flower bed. If she got that dewy-eyed over a couple of black-eyed Susans, he couldn’t wait to see her reaction to a bed full of those tall pink things Four Toes had told him were dahlias.

  “I don’t know how you can stand to be away from here for so long at a time, Jubal,” Maggie sighed as she gazed around her with rapture. It was the loveliest place Maggie had ever seen.

  “Well,” he said with an ironic chuckle, “I hadn’t planned on being away for quite this long.”

  Maggie looked over at him with chagrin. “Of course not,” she said. “I don’t know how I could have forgotten.”

  Jubal laughed out loud at that. “Hell, I don’t know either, Maggie. It turned your life right upside down and inside out.”

  Maggie gave him a soft smile that ate up the rest of his heart. “I guess it did at that.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well, anyway, I’ve got a good crew. And Cod Fish is a mean son of a buck. He makes sure everybody does his job, believe me. Nobody shirks his work around Cod Fish. Not even me.”

  He spoke of the man with great affection in his voice, so Maggie didn’t get worried. She didn’t like mean people much, no matter who they were mean to. Her aunt and uncle had cured her of any tendency in that direction very early in life.

  Jubal drove the wagon past what seemed like miles of fences. Maggie guessed they were corrals. It looked to her as though a whole heard of horses were residing in one green, fenced pasture. She pointed out the ponies to Annie with a thrill of excitement. Further away, Maggie noticed a huge meadow that seemed to have only one big, surly-looking, long-horned beast lodged within its fenced confines.

  “Why is there only one cow in that pasture, Jubal?”

  “That’s not a cow, Maggie,” Jubal told her with a laugh. “That’s Cannibal. He’s my stud bull.”

  “Oh!” Maggie blushed.

  “He likes his job,” Jubal grinned, amused by her reaction.

  Maggie shot him a quick look and then she grinned, too. “I just bet he does. Why do you call him Cannibal.”

  “He’s mean as hell. Don’t ever let Annie get near that fence, Maggie. Any bull is unpredictable, and that particular Texas Long Horn is about the sorriest-disposed bastard I’ve ever seen.”

  Maggie immediately imparted that important piece of information to her daughter. “Did you hear that, Annie? You see that bull in that field? Don’t ever go in that field, Annie. That bull is mean and will stick you with his horns.”

  Annie looked curiously at where her mother pointed. “Boo stick Annie,” she said. She glowered at the bull as if daring hi
m to try it.

  Jubal laughed again.

  “The bunk house is over there by the stable. There’s a hog wallow out back behind the barn where the smell can’t get to the house, and the chickens are back there, too. I think you’ll like Beula. She likes to grow things, too.”

  A friend. Maggie would have a friend. Except for Sadie, who wasn’t entirely satisfactory because her flair for the dramatic sometimes interfered with honest interaction, Maggie had never had a friend. She’d not been allowed friendships when she was growing up, and Bright’s Farm was too far away from anybody but the Phillipses to make the luxury of friendship practical.

  Jubal was appalled to see a tear slide down Maggie’s cheek when he turned to see why she’d gone so quiet all of a sudden.

  “Are you all right?” he asked in alarm.

  Maggie turned such a glowing gaze upon him that he would have stopped the wagon and scooped her into his arms, except that the welcoming committee had already formed and such a display of unmanly behavior would be too embarrassing.

  “Oh, I’m just fine. I’m just fine. Thank you,” she whispered.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The first two people Maggie spotted in the jumble of humanity that surged toward them from the front of the ranch house were Dan and Four Toes. They were both waving and grinning at them as Jubal drove the two tired mules to a plodding stop in front of the white fence.

  Jubal decided to show his eager ranch family that he was fully recovered from his injuries by bracing his right arm on the wagon and bounding out of his seat. He immediately decided that the decision to bound had been a foolishly rash one. His right shoulder objected like fire, and the jolt to his left thigh when his feet hit the ground nearly made him holler. He gritted his teeth and managed to keep from making a total fool of himself only with great effort.

  He almost got mad when Maggie, horrified at his move, leaned over the driver’s side of the wagon and said, “Oh, my land, Mr. Green, you shouldn’t have done that! Are you all right?”

  But she looked so sweet and concerned and worried, that he didn’t get mad. He grinned up at her instead and said, “I’m just fine, Maggie,” and, in spite of his throbbing shoulder, he reached up to take Annie out of her arms.

  Since Annie reached down to him at the same time, Maggie let him have her. Then she thanked Four Toes for helping her down. Then she stood there in the middle of a huge welter of people and didn’t know what to do.

  An ecstatic spaniel was leaping on Jubal and barking energetically, and Jubal was smiling at Annie and pointing at the dog. Maggie assumed that the beast was Rover. She hoped the dog wouldn’t frighten Annie.

  She didn’t have time to worry for long, though, because she suddenly found herself crushed into the largest, softest bosom she’d ever encountered in her life.

  “Oh, you must be Miss Maggie!” cried the owner of the bosom. “You saved our Jubal’s life. Dan and Four Toes told us. You’re so brave!”

  Maggie was certain she was going to smother and wondered if it would be rude to struggle. Fortunately, the woman quit hugging her before it became imperative to make the decision. She staggered back to behold a large female, luxuriously padded just about everywhere, with flaming red hair knotted onto the top of her head, and freckles everywhere. Freckles danced across her nose and over her cheeks and down her arms and, Maggie was sure, covered the rest of her voluptuous body as well. Right now, her friendly, freckled face was shiny with tears which she brushed away impatiently with the back of her hand.

  “I’m Beula Todd, Miss Bright. I’m so glad to meet you.” She stuck out her tear-bedewed hand and Maggie shook it because she figured she should. Actually, she was kind of rattled.

  “Beula’s Cod Fish’s wife, Maggie,” Jubal whispered. She could hear the grin in his voice and guessed that this was normal behavior for Beula Todd.

  Maggie smiled at her. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Beula beamed at her. “Now you have to meet my husband Henry.”

  She tugged Maggie over to a person who, if she had seen him on a street in El Paso, she would have guessed must have blown in by accident on the end of a hard gale. Cod Fish Todd looked exactly like Maggie’s idea of Captain Ahab. He was tall, sunburned, wrinkled, and old, and had stark, thick, white hair and a white beard. A tattered sailor’s cap perched upon his white head, and he had a black pipe stuck in his mouth. The pipe was, at this moment, wreathing his head with a halo of fragrant smoke. All he needed was a sou’wester and a harpoon. Maggie figured him for at least fifty-five. Beula didn’t look much more than thirty, if that.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” she said meekly, and held out her hand for him to shake.

  Cod Fish paused for a moment to remove the pipe from his mouth before he very slowly shook Maggie’s proffered hand. Then he grinned and said, “Aeyup.” That was all.

  Maggie didn’t have time to ponder this oddly matched pair, though, because Dan caught her by the arm and swung her around to meet the rest of the household crew. He introduced her to Julio Mendez, Jubal’s tall Mexican wrangler, who seemed quite shy; Jesus Chavez, another, older, Mexican man with a wrinkled face, yellow teeth, and a kind smile, who did carpentry work around the place; and Sammy. Sammy Napolitano was a young Sicilian who had washed up on the shores of the United States and found himself a job with the Army, fighting Indians in Texas. Sammy was out of the army now and in charge of Jubal’s security forces.

  Maggie was sure she’d forget everybody’s name. Since she’d come with Kenny to live on their farm in New Mexico Territory, she hadn’t seen so many people all lumped together in one place, and she felt almost dizzy with the introductions.

  Beula’s, “And here are my children,” snapped her back to attention, though.

  She discovered that she had been clinging like a vine to Jubal’s arm and glanced up at him nervously, worried that she’d irk him with her display of trepidation. She sighed with relief to discover him peering down at her with a very tender, almost possessive expression on his hard face. She smiled a brief, flickering, nervous smile at him, and turned to meet Beula’s children.

  Then she nearly laughed to behold a miniature Beula standing before her. A little butterball of a girl, seven years old, with red hair and freckles and a chubby little body that foretold a buxom future, held out her hand and said quite precisely that her name was Connie.

  Henry, Jr., was four years old. He was lean and small and he, too, had red hair and freckles. They were really rather handsome children, if one overlooked the freckles. Maggie herself had never found freckles unattractive, although she knew that a proper lady would probably be aghast and advise Beula to rub their skin with coconut milk or witch hazel or something.

  “How do you do?” She smiled at the children and shook their hands. Connie curtsied, and Maggie thought that was about the sweetest thing she’d ever seen.

  She took Annie out of Jubal’s arms and introduced her to Connie and Henry. Annie looked uncertainly at the little boy and girl from the safety of her mother’s arms. One fist was stuffed securely into her mouth and the other gripped her dolly tightly. She studied the two children with solemn brown eyes for a long time before she pulled her fist out of her mouth with a moist pop, held out her gourd dolly, and said, “Mine.”

  Maggie sighed and looked at Beula, who smiled at her and winked. Maggie appreciated that wink. She decided she liked Beula Todd.

  “Well, I guess you’d both better meet Rover before he busts a gut,” said Jubal with a chuckle.

  He took Annie back from Maggie and knelt down. Annie seemed a little uncertain about the rambunctious spaniel. When Rover gave her a huge, slurping kiss on the cheek, she tucked her little head into Jubal’s shoulder, flung her arms around his neck, and Jubal suddenly felt like a father.

  At least, he was sure that was what he felt like. But it was sort of like being in love. He’d never felt that way before and didn’t quite know what to do about it. It was bewildering, all these new emoti
ons. He peered up at Maggie for guidance and discovered that every single employee on his spread seemed to be watching him with huge, eager eyes. He stood up in a rush and thrust the baby into her mother’s arms.

  “Let’s get inside,” he said gruffly.

  Then he turned quickly to see who it was that had snickered. He pinned Dan Blue Gully with a piercing glare, but Dan just grinned back at him and snickered again.

  # # #

  Ferrett and Pelch huddled miserably in the flickering shadows, hunched together for solace. They watched as the soaring flames splayed unsteady light across the florid, fat, unpleasant features of their employer.

  Prometheus Mulrooney was beside himself with glee as greedy tendrils of fire gobbled up Maggie Bright’s farmhouse.

  The ride down to Lincoln from Santa Fe had been one of unrelieved agony for Mulrooney’s underlings, and he himself had been petulant and uncomfortable during the entire two-hundred-mile trek. There was simply no easy way to get here, and Mulrooney took that fact as a personal affront. Even after special alterations, he found the wagon in which he rode hellishly uncomfortable.

  The weather was miserable, too. During the day, the sun scalded Mulrooney’s pink face underneath his sparse yellow hair until he looked like a tomato, even when he wore his big, wide-brimmed sombrero. Rivers of perspiration soaked his clothing and then dried so that when his fat thighs rubbed against one another, they chafed. Ferrett had not thought to purchase talcum, so he was in Mulrooney’s black books, a circumstance that made poor Ferrett’s life even more terrible than usual.

  What with the heat and the sweat, everybody riding with Mulrooney smelled bad, too, and there was no way to bathe. He hadn’t realized life could be so damnably awful.

  “Serves that bastard Green right,” he whimpered to himself as he dabbed a scented hanky to his heated brow. “He deserves this hellish place.”

  Then at night, Mulrooney nearly froze to death. He confiscated everybody’s blankets to keep himself warm.