One Bright Morning

by Duncan, Alice

  If his own emotions had not been so raw, his own thoughts so tumbled, he might have got mad and yelled at her. As it was, it took him a moment or two to take in her question. He couldn’t believe she’d asked it, and he had to turn on his seat and stare at her for a second before he realized she actually seemed to require an answer.

  He was somber when he told her, “Maggie, I’ve never met a woman in my life who had a stronger character than you. My mother—well, my mother had a weak character. But there’s not a weak bone in your body, Maggie. Your Aunt Lucy was a bitch. Don’t even think about anything she ever said to you. She was wrong. She was mean and wrong and hated you because she resented you. Forget her.”

  Maggie stared at him as he spoke, listening for all she was worth. And for once in her life, she wasn’t allowing her mind to interfere with her listening and filter Jubal’s words through a lifetime of Aunt Lucy’s training. She allowed them to settle in so that she could think about them.

  Jubal wondered why she didn’t respond after he said his piece, but he was too occupied with his own unhappy thoughts to question her.

  After what seemed like another hour, Maggie said, “Thank you, Jubal. I think you’re right.”

  They rode the rest of the way home in silence.

  Except for the rumbling of the wagon and the clop-clop of Old Red and Dan’s horse, the ranch was silent when they made their way through the gate and lumbered into the yard.

  “I’ll take care of the horses.” Dan’s voice sounded raspy and it cracked a little bit, as though it had dried up in the desert.

  “I’ll make some tea.” Maggie didn’t wait to be helped down from the wagon, but handed her daughter to Jubal and scrambled down over the big, dusty wheel.

  Jubal adjusted Annie against his shoulder and carefully climbed down from the wagon. Then he put a hand on Maggie’s shoulder, and said, “I’ll put Annie in bed while you do that, Maggie.”

  On the way home, he had decided that Annie was his daughter. He knew that he hadn’t fathered her in the literal sense, but she was his daughter now, and he was her father, and he wasn’t going to fight it any longer. All the fatherly urges he’d been feeling since he’d met these two females weren’t a weakness. They were a strength, like Maggie’s character, and he was going to enjoy them and to hell with anybody who thought otherwise.

  Beula Todd met them before they got to the kitchen door. Her face was red. She was wiping her hands on her apron, and she looked as though she had been crying. She flapped her hands in front of her face, trying to speak.

  “Oh, thank God you’re back!” was her welcome, as Maggie and Jubal stepped toward the door. “I was so worried about you. But Doc Haskins says he’s going to be all right. It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle!”

  Upon those words, Beula burst into tears that looked suspiciously hysterical to Jubal.

  With a very few quick steps, Maggie covered the distance between them and wrapped Beula in her arms. “It’s all right, Beula,” she soothed. “Everything will be all right.”

  Maggie thought she heard Beula say, “I know, I know,” but she wasn’t sure, because the words came out waterlogged, soggy, and heavy with tears.

  “What’s Doc Haskins doing here?” Jubal’s question was sharp.

  It took a while for Beula to compose herself enough to sniff back her tears and answer him. Her voice was still thick when she said, “Why, Four Toes. When that man brought him in, we thought he was dead, but Doc Haskins was passing by, and he dug the bullet out, and he says that if we’re careful, he’ll live.” She took another watery sniff and repeated, “It’s a miracle.”

  Heedless of the sleeping child in his arms, Jubal whirled around and yelled as loud as he could, “Dan! Dan! Come here right now!”

  Everything seemed to freeze for several seconds. Later, Maggie couldn’t even remember what she’d been thinking during those seconds. Or even if she’d been thinking. She was too stunned.

  She couldn’t believe it was her husband’s voice that croaked a ragged, whispery, “He’s alive,” when Dan came running hell for leather up to them. Then she couldn’t believe it was the same two men she knew and loved who first threw their arms around each other, then opened their little circle to include her. Then she stood there in that circle and every one of them cried like babies.

  In all the years she’d known Dan Blue Gully and Jubal Green, Beula Todd had never seen either of them even close to shedding a tear. She was wiping her own streaming eyes with her apron when they finally quit embracing each other and surged toward the house, the horses Dan had been going to take care of clearly forgot.

  It was much later, after the doctor had left, when they were sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea, that Beula told them the story.

  “It was the strangest thing,” she said. “Oh, I didn’t think anything about it then because I was too worried about Four Toes. But now I think about it, it was really strange.

  “This man showed up with Four Toes propped in front of him on his horse. I don’t know how he knew where to come. Four Toes was unconscious.”

  “What’s his name?” Jubal was going to be damned sure that the good Samaritan was well rewarded for saving his brother’s life.

  “Well, that’s just the strange thing, Mr. Green,” Beula told him. “We don’t know. We were so busy fussing over Four Toes for the first little while after he’d brought him home. And then, when we went to see to the stranger, he was gone. As if he’d never even been here. Didn’t say a word. I felt bad because I wanted to thank him and feed him, but he was gone. And nobody remembers ever seeing him before.” She shrugged and shook her head.

  “Maybe he went on to El Paso,” said Jubal. “What did he look like? I’ll try to find him.”

  “Oh,” said Beula, smiling at the memory, “He was the nicest man. Had the sweetest smile and the prettiest brown eyes I ever seen. Curly brown hair—pretty brown, like Annie’s. He was tall and sort of gangly. Wore a blue plaid shirt and a denim jacket. I remember that jacket because it had a pretty patchwork flower sewn onto the pocket. Like a sweetheart had made it for him or something. Had a ring on his finger. Guess he’s married.”

  Maggie had been staring at Beula with an odd expression on her face. Now she uttered a strangled gasp and Beula and Jubal looked at her.

  “You okay, Maggie?” Jubal gave her a squeeze. He had put Annie to bed at last, and the little girl was still sleeping soundly, Four Toes Smith’s hat gracing one of the posts at the foot of her bed.

  Since she didn’t trust herself to speak, Maggie only nodded.

  It was impossible. She knew it was impossible. Things like this just didn’t happen. In books. In fairy tales. In dreams they happened. But they didn’t really happen. Maggie knew that.

  “Did he say anything at all?” That was Jubal.

  Beula sighed, remembering. “Said as how he found Four Toes on the desert. Padded the bullet wound and wrapped it up, got him on his horse, and brung him here. Didn’t say how he knew where he lived.”

  “Well, it happened on my land. Guess this is the closest place to bring him.” Jubal was frowning into his tea, trying to make sense of it, wondering how the man had got past the guards. “Must have followed the wagon tracks.”

  But Maggie knew that wasn’t it. She couldn’t say so because her husband and Beula would think she was crazy beyond hope, but she knew that wasn’t it.

  The man Beula described was Kenny. Kenneth Anthony Bright, Maggie’s dear, sweet, dead husband, her guardian spirit for all these months, had found Four Toes and brought him home. It even sounded crazy to her. But they’d buried him in that jacket. The man was Kenny.

  “Did—” Maggie fought hard for her voice and managed, with an enormous effort of will, to keep from shrieking her question. “Did he say anything else? Anything? Anything else at all?”

  This was important. She wanted to know. Needed to know.

  Beula thought for a moment; seemed to be collecting her memories toget
her into some kind of sensible whole.

  “Yeah. That was a little bit strange, too, come to think on it. Looked around him after Cod Fish and Sammy took Four Toes into the bedroom. Smiled. Said something odd, like, ‘This is a good place. Good place to raise kids. Good place to be happy.’ Something like that. Then he said, ‘Tell the lady of the house I’m happy for her.’” Beula nodded at Maggie and Jubal. “I remember that especially because it seemed so strange.”

  Maggie lurched from the table, upsetting her tea, and flailed blindly toward the window. It was dark outside now, and she didn’t see a thing as she stared out that window but her own memories. They were almost indecipherable through the tears that blinded her and the roaring in her head.

  “Maggie? Maggie, are you all right?” Jubal surged to his feet and followed her, concerned.

  When his warm hands touched her shoulders, Maggie turned and flung herself into his arms.

  “I’m fine, Jubal,” she sobbed, her words almost impossible to understand through the choking tears in her throat. “I’m fine. Everything is just fine.”

  And it was. She knew that now. Everything was just fine, and it always would be. She had been given a sign. Kenny had told her so.

  # # #

  Jubal sat beside Four Toes’ bed on one side, and Dan sat on the other. It was difficult for either man to tend to business while their brother remained so sick. But today, Four Toes was conscious, and they dared to talk to him.

  “You damned Indians and your ‘good day to die’ shit,” Jubal was telling him with a grin that he was using to try to cover the emotion he felt, “You don’t know so damned much at all.”

  Four Toes was almost too weak to respond to that grin, but he did it anyway.

  “Maggie told you that, did she?” Four Toes, in spite of his weakness, looked a little bit embarrassed.

  “She sure did.” Jubal shook his head, his heart too full to say anything else, even though he longed to rib Four Toes some more for scaring the hell out of them all and almost dying.

  “Hell, Jubal, we can’t be right all the time. Besides, it was a good day to die. I guess it was a better day to live.” Four Toes gave him the biggest grin he could summon up. It was crooked and teetered on the edge of his lips for only a second or two before he couldn’t maintain it any longer and his face crumpled up into a mask of pain once more.

  Jubal almost gave in to the tears that threatened to overwhelm him when he said, “I’m sure as hell glad you weren’t right this time, you fool Indian.”

  “Amen to that,” added Dan, unconsciously muddling his cultures together.

  # # #

  Sammy Napolitano felt responsible for Four Toes’ injuries, and he made it his personal business to deal with Sloane and Potts. He left the ranch right after he and Cod Fish settled Four Toes into his sick bed and was gone for days.

  When he came back, he was mighty disgruntled that he hadn’t been able to find the two men and exact the appropriate retribution, the kind of retribution he remembered from his childhood in Sicily.

  Maggie didn’t tell a soul that she was glad he had failed to kill the two villains. There had already been too much blood spilled during the years of the horrible feud. It was over now, and she was glad it had ended with no more deaths.

  # # #

  By mid-July, Maggie was sure she was pregnant.

  Life at Green’s Valley Ranch gradually settled into a smooth routine. In any other household, it might have been said that things were getting back to normal. But normal in Jubal Green’s life had always meant a perilous balancing act between running his ranch and staying alive. It seemed odd to him, not having to look over his shoulder all the time to check for predators.

  “I’m jumpy as a frog on a hot rock,” he confessed to Maggie one warm July night as they undressed for bed.

  Maggie smiled with infinite tenderness at her husband. She loved him so much, she could hardly stand it. And she felt so free now; now that she knew Kenny approved.

  She still hadn’t told anybody about how he had saved Four Toes’ life. That was between her and Kenny. She expressed suitable remorse when Jubal had returned from El Paso disgruntled that he hadn’t been able to find the charitable stranger who had saved his brother’s life, but she knew before he set out that he was tackling an impossible task. How could a human being, even a human being as skilled at tracking as Jubal Green, track down a guardian angel?

  She hadn’t told him yet that she was expecting his child. For some reason, the knowledge that she was pregnant was making her think of her farm again, and she knew that now was the time. She had to go back to see it again, to say good-bye. And Kenny’s grave; she needed to see Kenny’s grave one last time. It had become imperative. She had some things to tell her dead husband, and she had been trying hard to think of a way to ask Jubal to take her.

  “You’ll get used to it,” she predicted. “You know, Jubal Green, it’s really more normal not to have people trying to murder you all the time than the other way around.”

  Maggie smoothed a tumbled lock from her husband’s forehead as he sat on the edge of the bed. He had doffed his shirt and boots, but still wore his trousers. As ever, Maggie was impressed at his muscular shoulders and arms. She loved looking at him. His big brown hand caught hers and drew it to his lips.

  “I guess so.”

  He looked up at her. Maggie had brushed her hair out and taken off her spectacles, and her smiling face was angelic in the candlelight. Jubal’s breath caught when he looked at her.

  “God, Maggie, I love you so much. Don’t ever leave me.” His whisper was fervent, and it surprised her. “I’ll never leave you, Jubal.” She kissed him on the forehead.

  “You left me when I was sick. I remember. I thought you were an angel and you kept going away.”

  Maggie laughed softly. “I only went away to get you tea or water or medicine, Jubal Green. I never left you, and I never will. And I’m not an angel, either.”

  “Yes you are,” Jubal said, and it didn’t sound as though he planned to entertain any arguments about that. “You’re my angel.”

  Maggie looked down into his eyes and saw the love in them, and she wanted to cry. She shook her head.

  “Why are you shaking your head, Maggie?”

  “Because I’m so silly. Every time anything happens I want to cry.”

  Jubal smiled up at her. “That’s not silly, Maggie. That’s you. I love it.”

  That really did make her cry.

  They made beautiful love then. Maggie didn’t understand how it could keep getting better, but it did. His every touch made her body surge with longing. That night he took her to a place she didn’t even know existed, and when she spiraled over the edge into ecstasy, he joined her there.

  They lay side by side in each other’s arms afterwards, relishing the quiet night and the peace that had settled over their life together. That peace had been hard-won, and they appreciated it all the more because of it.

  “Will you take me back to see my farm, Jubal?”

  Maggie whispered her tentative request hopefully. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but her quickening body seemed to tug at her to go back there again; to say a last good-bye to her old life, to Kenny Bright. She had to. Some day had come.

  Jubal didn’t answer her for a minute. He had just been experiencing an incredible and completely unfamiliar sense of peace and happiness, but Maggie’s words made his chest constrict painfully all at once. She wanted to go home. His heart plummeted and he felt as though somebody had just sprinkled salt onto his raw, bleeding soul.

  His mouth was dry when he said, “You want to go back to New Mexico?”

  Maggie heard the fear and worry in his voice and felt bad. She put a comforting hand on his chest.

  “Just to say good-bye, Jubal. I—I never got to really say good-bye.”

  Jubal turned to look at her. He could barely make out her face in the moonlight. She looked pale and ethereal to him and he had a mom
entary thought that she was his only temporarily, that she was destined to be snatched away from him as suddenly as she had come to him. He tried to shut his heart against that dreadful thought.

  “That’s all? You just want to say good-bye?”

  Maggie nodded. “That’s all, Jubal. Honest.”

  He looked mighty worried to her, and that bothered her a lot. She didn’t want to hurt him.

  “It’s the first place I was ever happy, Jubal. I—I just want to see it again.”

  Jubal was silent for a couple of seconds.

  “It’s not even there anymore, Maggie. Mulrooney burned it down.”

  Maggie sighed. “I know, Jubal. Please?”

  Jubal felt his heart constrict painfully when he said, reluctantly, as though the words were being dragged from his toes, “All right.”

  # # #

  Annie and Dan went with them. Four Toes was still too weak to make the trek. It took two days to get there, and they rode at night again because it was now full summer and even hotter than when they’d made the trip from New Mexico to El Paso in the springtime. Jubal’s spirits drooped lower and lower the closer they got to the little clearing near Bright’s Creek. He didn’t speak at all for the last dozen miles or so.

  When he heard Maggie’s gasp of dismay as she finally saw the charred rubble of her home, he frowned unhappily.

  “Oh, my God,” Maggie whispered. “This is the first time I’ve ever been able to see the place—really, truly, see the place—and look at it. It’s all gone.” Tears trickled down her cheeks as she scanned the clearing through her spectacles.

  Jubal only grunted. Dan helped Maggie get down from the wagon. Then she carried Annie through the clearing toward the blackened heap that used to be her home. Annie peered about the rubble with eyes that were solemn with her mama’s borrowed mood.

  Jubal watched his wife and daughter pick their way through the mess and his heart ached. Maggie was looking at everything closely, peering at the charred remains with minute care.