One Bright Morning (53 page)

“
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 momentary 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.

She was remembering everything as she looked
around and tried to determine exactly where it all had been. It was
with a distant, aching fondness that she recalled the years she’d
spent here as Kenny’s wife. More clear to her was the memory of
that bleak February day when she was in the throes of a vicious
headache and a gunshot stranger banged at her door with the butt of
his rifle. She shook her head.

The clearing smelled acrid, bitter, like
old, burned wood, and her heart hurt. She recalled when she used to
stand outside her door, breathing the crisp mountain air that
always seemed to have an overlay of clean, freshly chopped wood.
She loved that smell. Those days were gone forever, she guessed. Or
at least until unstoppable Nature took over, healing the scars that
stupid men had left behind, softening the rubble with vegetation,
creating new life on the ruins of the old.

“
Life is really strange, the
way it works, Annie,” she whispered to her little girl.

Annie didn’t respond.

Maggie slowly walked to where the back of
the house would have been and tried to determine where the wood
pile used to be. She remembered finding Ozzie Plumb draped over it
and a little burst of left-over fear shot through her and almost
immediately dissipated. That had been a terrible night, to be
sure.

When he watched Maggie slowly pick her way
over to Kenneth Anthony Bright’s grave and squat down beside it,
Jubal thought his heart had just been hacked in two.

But she didn’t linger long by the grave. She
whispered a soft, “Thank you, Kenny Bright. Thank you for saving
Four Toes. And you were right. Annie and I are going to be fine
now. Jubal’s ranch is a wonderful place for us both. You were so
good to us, Kenny, and I’ll always love you.” She sighed when she
said, “I wish I could keep up your grave for you, but Annie and I
have to go back and live in Texas now. I just came to say
good-bye.”

She knelt there for another minute or two
and then said, “I guess it’s all right. I guess you don’t confine
yourself to this silly little piece of dirt.” She smiled at that
happy realization.

Kenny’s spirit—or maybe it was her
imagination—whispered to her soul that it was all right. He was
happy for her, and he would always love them both. Maggie smiled
again.

And then she picked herself and her daughter
up and strode firmly toward her husband. She smiled at Dan, who
helped her back onto the seat of the wagon and then remounted his
horse.

“
Thank you, Jubal,” Maggie
said pleasantly. She felt really good now.

Jubal blinked at her.

“
That’s it?”

Maggie nodded. “That’s it. I just wanted to
say good-bye.”

Jubal didn’t figure he’d better argue. He
was too relieved. He just shook the reins and the two mules began a
slow turn-around in the clearing.

Annie waved good-bye to the remains of her
first home as the mules began the weary trudge back to El Paso.
Maggie looked back at the clearing until it was out of sight. Then
she sighed.

“
Well, that’s
that.”

Jubal eyed her suspiciously. He wasn’t used
to good things lasting any more than Maggie was, and he didn’t
altogether trust her, “that’s that.”

Maggie noticed his uneasy glance and smiled
at him. She reached out to caress his cheek.

“
I guess since we’re going
to be starting a family at your ranch pretty soon, I just needed to
say good-bye to my old life, Jubal. It sort of came on me
sudden-like, the need to say good-bye.”

Jubal grunted and turned his attention to
the mules. Annie was sleepy, so Maggie laid her down in the wagon
bed to rest. They had ridden nearly another mile before Jubal
realized what Maggie had said. Then his head whipped around and he
pinned her with a hard stare.

“
What?”

Maggie was startled. “What what?”

“
What did you
say?”

“
About wanting to say
good-bye?”