One Bright Morning (16 page)

She didn’t notice Dan smile at her because
she was too busy watching Jubal and being amazed at her own
audacity.

Jubal was mad. He didn’t like females
talking back to him.

“
Hell,” he snapped. “You
were scared, too, but you didn’t hide in a corner and bawl. You
took your goddamned gun and shot that bastard in the butt. You took
me in and saved my life. People can be scared and still be useful.
They can be scared and still do their rightful job.” He was
frowning fiercely at her, and Maggie quailed inside. “And you sure
as blazes didn’t abandon your little girl because you were scared,”
he added as a clincher.

Maggie blinked. Abandon Annie? “My God, Mr.
Green, I could never do that,” she said, startled into anger at the
mere suggestion. “What on earth are you thinking of?”

“
Well, then, there you go,”
said Jubal, as if she had just made his point for him.

When Maggie turned to walk back to the stove
and put the tea kettle down, her thoughts were troubled. She
absolutely hated to argue, although Jubal Green had certainly
pricked her temper. And she still believed that he was being mighty
hard on his poor mother, too.

As she trod across the kitchen floor,
however, Maggie was suddenly taken up short by the realization that
Jubal Green might just have paid her a compliment. She stood still
at the stove and thought over his words. The more she thought about
it, the more she was convinced that he had actually compared her
favorably to his mother.

Maggie was smiling a little bit when she
turned back to face the two men at the table and said, “Thank you,
Mr. Green.”

Then she scooped Annie up out of her high
chair and bore her off on her hip to her room, where she prepared
her for bed. She felt pretty good all at once.

Jubal and Dan sat at the kitchen table and
stared after her.

Jubal looked at Dan, puzzled. “What did she
thank me for?”

Dan was grinning at him. “I think she just
figured out that you praised her.”

“
Praised her?” Jubal
scowled.

He tried to concentrate on the few words he
and Maggie had exchanged. It seemed to him that he had been irked
with the woman; he didn’t remember praising her. He finally gave up
and shook his head.

“
Hell,” he said. “I’ll never
understand women or Indians.”

Dan just laughed.

# # #

In another week, Jubal decided he was ready
to try to mount his horse.

“
I don’t think that’s a very
good idea, Mr. Green,” said Maggie when he let his intentions be
known to her at breakfast.

Jubal looked up at her and was taken aback
at the concern he read in her eyes.

She’s worried about
me
, he thought, surprised. Then that
surprise turned to pleasure.
I’ll be
damned
, he thought.
She’s worried about me
. For some
reason, that made him feel really good.

“
It will be all right, Mrs.
Bright,” he told her stolidly.

But Maggie looked plenty doubtful. “I don’t
know, Mr. Green. That leg wound is mighty fresh. You’re still
limping awful bad. It would be terrible if it opened up again.”

Maggie knew that he shouldn’t be riding yet.
He was still too weak. He might hurt himself all over again, and
Maggie thought Jubal had been hurt enough already. Besides, the
mere thought of having to doctor another open, bleeding wound made
her blanch. She hated the sight of blood.

Jubal began to frown. He was glad she was
concerned. He did not, however, care for an argument.

“
I already said it would be
all right,” he said, his tone a trifle curt.

“
I know what you said, Mr.
Green,” Maggie snapped back. “But I’m the one has to fix you up if
you get hurt again, and I don’t want to.”

Jubal’s frown deepened. “I’ll be all right,”
he snarled, and stomped, limping, out of the comfort of Maggie’s
kitchen and over to the barn.

“
Hell,” he muttered. “I
thought she was worried about
me
. She just doesn’t want to have to
nursemaid me anymore.”

Then Jubal hollered at Four Toes Smith when
Four Toes, also, suggested that he wait a while before trying to
get up on Old Red again. Old Red was a very large horse with a lot
of spirit. At Jubal’s angry snarl, Four Toes just shrugged and
saddled the horse since Jubal couldn’t perform that chore by
himself yet.

Dan had been riding Old Red every day so
that the horse wouldn’t get wild, and he wasn’t too fresh today.
But he hadn’t been ridden by Jubal for quite a while, and he was a
little skittish.

It hurt when Jubal lifted his left leg up to
the stirrup. It hurt like a son of a gun when he stuck that leg
into the stirrup and braced his entire body weight on it while he
slung his right leg over the horse’s back. He had to clamp his
teeth together in order to keep from bellowing in pain when Old Red
decided to take exception to this activity and skittered a little
bit.

Even when Jubal had made it into the saddle
and the pressure on his left leg was relieved, his thigh still
burned and throbbed like crazy. Jubal began to wonder if this had
really been such a good idea after all. He’d eat hog slop before
he’d admit that to anybody, though.

Maggie watched him from the door of the
house. She had intended to ignore Jubal Green and his foolishness
because his stubborn attitude made her mad, but she found that she
couldn’t bear to do that. She was too frightened for him. So she
stood there in the open doorway worrying her apron with nervous
fingers, and watched. She had to squint her eyes up tight to see
what was going on.

“
He looks like it doesn’t
feel very good, Annie,” she murmured to her daughter.

Annie was playing on the kitchen floor with
a little wooden horse and rider that Four Toes had carved for her.
“Feel good,” she said to her mama.

“
Stubborn man,” muttered
Maggie.

“
Stubban,” agreed
Annie.

Maggie’s heart lurched when Jubal kicked up
Old Red and they began to trot around the barnyard. If she squinted
her eyes up real hard, she could see his lips pinched together and
white with pain.

Jubal was in agony. He saw Maggie standing
at the doorway and determined to himself that he wouldn’t give her
the satisfaction of watching him give up. So he continued to ride
Old Red in circles around the barnyard, even though he was sure
he’d never walk again afterwards. He wished Maggie would go back
into the house so he could quit this foolishness with his dignity
intact.

Maggie was holding her breath. She was just
sure Jubal would open that dratted thigh wound again. She knew he
was in pain and her eyes filled up in sympathy.

“
Damned man,” she
whispered.

“
Damman,” Annie parroted
happily.

That perky statement startled Maggie, and
she glanced down at her child.

“
Oh, Lordy, I’d better start
watching my mouth,” she told herself. She wondered sadly what kind
of terrible mother she must be to swear in front of her baby girl,
and figured her aunt had probably been right about her all
along.

Jubal finally couldn’t stand it another
second. He was sweating with agony. His entire lower body felt as
though he’d been kicked by a mule, and ferocious pains were
radiating from his wounded right shoulder and down through his arm
and chest and back. He decided he’d proved enough for one day and
reined Old Red in with an effort that made him curse furiously
under his breath as blinding pains shot through his upper body.
Sweat beaded on his forehead and began to dribble down his
face.

He looked around, hoping to spot Four Toes,
and didn’t see him. He had hoped the man would be close by to take
custody of Old Red when he dismounted.

“
Well, that’s too bad,”
Jubal decided. “I’ve got to get down or pass out right here in the
saddle. Again.” Maggie had described her first encounter with him.
So he sucked up a huge breath of air in preparation for the
enormous, agonizing effort this was going to cost him.

Maggie watched in apprehension as the big
roan horse came to a slow stop. Her hands went to her mouth when
she saw Jubal’s body heave with the exertion of slinging his right
leg over the horse’s back. She was already running toward the
barnyard by the time his boot hit the ground.

“
Stay there, Annie,” she
called to her daughter as she took off.

Jubal’s leg buckled under him because he was
too weak to stand. He tried to right himself by clutching at the
saddle, an effort that startled Old Red into shuffling away. That
jarred Jubal’s wounded leg and it, too, buckled, effectively
trapping his boot in Old Red’s stirrup.

Maggie skidded into the barnyard just in
time to grab Old Red’s reins and keep him from dragging Jubal
off.

“
Be still, horse,” she said,
very gently, to Old Red.

She wanted to scream her frustration and
fear at Jubal, but she remembered Kenny telling her to always speak
softly to horses so as not to frighten them. It was advice he used
to forget on a regular basis himself, but Maggie didn’t. Her heart
was slamming in her chest so hard she was sure it would burst right
out, but she had Old Red under control in a second.

While she was calming the horse, Jubal was
furiously trying to disengage his boot from the stirrup. Since
neither one of his legs wanted to work and he couldn’t use both of
his arms, he was having no luck at all in that endeavor.

He was also swearing ferociously to himself,
embarrassed to death that his stubbornness had caused him to do
such a blamed stupid thing as get himself stuck in a stirrup. In
front of Maggie. Jubal didn’t want to look like a fool in front of
Maggie Bright more than he didn’t want to look like a fool in front
of anybody else on the face of the earth.

He was also in agony. His entire body was
throbbing by this time.

“
Stop it, Mr. Green,” Maggie
commanded quietly but sternly as she calmed down Old Red. “Just lie
still.” Her fury at him for hurting himself made her voice
shake.

Jubal gave up and did as he was told. If
pain hadn’t completely wiped out any color he’d gained over the
course of his recovery, he would have been blushing in humiliation.
He lay on his back with his boot in the stirrup and called himself
every vile name he could think of and then made up some new
ones.

When the horse was completely settled,
Maggie tied Old Red’s reins to a fence post. She was trembling when
she finally knelt down next to Jubal and carefully disengaged his
boot heel from the stirrup.

Jubal watched her from the haze of pain that
was fogging his brain and realized that tears were streaming down
her cheeks. He frowned. It didn’t seem right to him that she should
be crying. He was the one who hurt.

“
You just put your arm
around my shoulder, Mr. Green, and I’ll help you into the house,”
Maggie was saying to him. The gentleness she had assumed for Old
Red was still evident in her voice because she was too worried
right now to think about how much she wanted to holler at
Jubal.

Jubal just absolutely hated feeling
helpless. Still, it felt pretty good when he put his arm around
Maggie’s shoulder and felt hers slip around his waist. He allowed
her to help him to his feet before he asked the question that was
uppermost in his mind.

“
Why are you
crying?”

Maggie sniffed back her tears and nearly
buckled under Jubal’s weight as they began a slow walk back to the
house. Her throat felt like it was stuffed full of rocks and it
took her a few seconds before she could answer his stupid question.
When she did speak, her words sounded somewhat strangled.

“
I’m crying because I was so
damned worried about you, you stubborn, fool man,” she said. “You
could have killed yourself,” she added, and her tone conveyed a
vivid collection of anger, worry, and fear.

Her arm tightened around his waist. Maggie
could barely restrain herself from bawling right here on this man’s
shoulder, she’d been so scared for him.

Jubal couldn’t think of
anything to say to Maggie.
Thank
you
sprang to mind, and he didn’t know why,
especially when he realized he wouldn’t have been thanking her for
helping him, but for worrying about him. That didn’t make any sense
to him.

He was still in exquisite pain. His whole
lower body felt as though an elephant had stepped on it, and the
right side of his torso was on fire.

“
Ho, mama. Ho, Juba,” said a
happy Annie as they passed her outside the doorway.

Normally Maggie thought it was cute the way
Annie called Jubal “Juba.” Today, she was so worried, she didn’t
even notice her daughter’s cheerful greeting.

Jubal said, “Hello, Annie,” before he limped
past her into the house.

Maggie led him through the door of the
little house and on into the bedroom. She didn’t stop in the
kitchen. Jubal was somewhat surprised. He expected her to dump him
into a chair and yell at him.

“
You lie down now, Mr.
Green. I’ll get those boots off you and then get you some tea and
find Mr. Blue Gully.”

“
Thank you, Mrs. Bright,”
Jubal said through teeth clenched in pain.

Maggie helped him ease down onto the
bed.

He felt like such a damned fool.

Maggie had to squat down next to the bed so
as not to drop him into a heap on the covers. She ended up with one
arm under his back and the other encircling his chest, an intimate
embrace that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been too
upset to think about it.