ONE BRIGHT MORNING
By Alice Duncan
One Bright Morning
Copyright © 1995 by Alice Duncan
All rights reserved
Cover Illustration by Darlene Minuto
Published 1995 by Harper Paperbacks
A Division of HarperCollins Publishers
Smashwords Edition September 2, 2009
Visit aliceduncan.net
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Chapter One
Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, 1880
Maggie had the blasphemous thought that God was seriously at fault when He created women.
“He made a mistake,” she muttered to the rough log ceiling when she awoke for the fifth time. Only this time, unlike the prior four, she had to get out of bed and start her day. The cold, gray dawn was cracking.
She pushed the quilts aside and shivered as the icy air hit her. Pains stabbed through her skull in piercing, furious shafts when she thrust her arms into her heavy wrapper and stuffed her feet into her slippers. Thick woolen stockings already encased her legs; she had worn them to bed for warmth. The frigid cold made the hurt in her skull even worse. She glanced toward the window, hoping to get a glimpse of the day, but the glass was frosted over.
“Maybe it wasn’t a mistake,” she grumbled. “Maybe He hated His mother and He’s punishing all women in order to get back at her.”
Her teeth were chattering from the morning chill by the time she had stumbled out to the kitchen to stoke up the fire and heat the coffee. Every time her teeth chattered, her head throbbed. She lit an oil lamp, hung it on the peg by the door, and, in spite of her miserable headache, appreciated the comfortable yellow glow it cast in the kitchen.
She realized that her earlier thought didn’t make any sense. “I guess that’s not it. He couldn’t hate His mother before He invented women. Could He?”
Maggie was honestly puzzled about that. But there was nobody to ask, now that Kenny was dead. Not that he had ever answered her when he was alive. He would just look at her with those big, sweet calf eyes and smile at her tenderly with that big, sweet smile. Still, she missed him terribly, even if he wasn’t much for conversation.
“At least Kenny loved me,” she sniffed. “That’s some kind of miracle, anyway.” Maggie’s was a life that had been powerfully short on miracles. “I should have known it wouldn’t last.” Her breath hung in the morning air like a soft cloud.
Her fingers were stiff with cold when she cracked the ice in the bucket on the porch, put a pot of water on to boil for mush, and set last night’s coffee on the stove lid to heat.
“Damn it,” she said with rancor as she prepared to meet the day and her child. “Why would God create a body that can’t even function for seven days in the month, and then make her do it anyway?”
Her little daughter started to fuss in the other bedroom, so Maggie squared her shoulders, put on a smile, and tried to look happy when she peek-a-booed into the room.
Annie saw her mama, stopped crying, hiccoughed, and then laughed at Maggie, who was making a silly face at her. She pulled herself up in the crib her daddy had built for her and held out her chubby arms, which were swathed in layers of thick flannel.
In spite of herself, Maggie laughed when she walked over to her little girl and picked her up. Annie looked like a roly-poly muffin, swaddled up as she was.
“How’s mama’s best baby this morning?”
“Mama’s bay,” Annie confirmed, and hugged her mother tightly around the neck.
“I love you so much, I just can hardly stand it, baby girl. And we’re going to be all right. You just see if we aren’t.” Maggie knew she was trying to make herself feel better with those words. The kitchen was warmer than the bedroom, so Maggie carried Annie in there, and laid her down on the table to change her diaper.
Annie’s sweet little face looked wet and red and miserable. So did her sweet little bottom. Annie was just fifteen months old. Maggie wiped the tears off of her baby’s cheeks, kissed her soundly, changed her diapers, rubbed her chafed behind with glycerin, tickled her tummy, and bundled her up again.
“I miss your papa, Annie, honey. He loved you so much, and now you’ll never even know him.”
Maggie shook her head sadly as she settled Annie into the lovely high chair that Kenny had built and lowered the wooden tray that he had fashioned on hinges so that the baby wouldn’t fall out and hurt herself.
It didn’t look as though the water would ever boil. Maggie and her daughter sang a little back-and-forth tune while she poured herself a cup of not-quite-hot coffee. Then she swallowed it with a shudder. Sometimes coffee would ease the pain of these God-awful headaches.
She was startled when she heard a loud, thumping bang on the kitchen door.
“Mercy sakes, what’s that, Annie?”
Annie offered her mama a toothless smile, and Maggie grinned back.
“Ozzie?” she called.
Nobody answered.
The thumping bang came again. This time it was followed by an odd, straggling scrape, as of wood sliding against wood.
Maggie planted a quick kiss on her daughter’s curly hair and headed to the door.
Somebody had told her about zombies once. Whoever it was said that zombies were the undead, and that’s pretty much what Maggie felt like when she trod miserably over to the kitchen door and opened it up.
She expected to find Ozzie, drunk, propped against it with a stupid grin on his face, and she was prepared to lecture him soundly. Ozzie Plumb was her hired man, and if a more useless individual than Ozzie existed on this earth, Maggie had yet to meet him. She’d fire him and hire somebody else, but she didn’t quite know how to go about it. Anyway, there wasn’t anybody else in this neck of the world to hire. And even if there was, who’d work for a woman, except another bum like Ozzie?
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Maggie breathed at the sight that greeted her eyes.
A big roan horse stood there. It seemed to loom from out of the misty dawn, and it was peering at her with solemn brown eyes. Astride the horse was a man unknown to Maggie. The stranger had apparently reached out to bang at her door with the stock of the rifle which now dangled helplessly from his fingers. The rifle slipped out of his slack grip as Maggie stared at him and made a dull, crackling sound as it hit the frozen dirt. Blood dripped from the fingers that had held the gun.
Blood soaked the stranger’s long duster and trouser leg, as well. It had begun to congeal in the icy February dawn, and Maggie saw the glint of ice crystals where blood had dripped down to the stranger’s boot and dribbled over the side.
“I’m awful sorry, ma’am,” the man breathed through white lips. He was drooping at an odd angle in his saddle.
As Maggie watched in horror, the stranger’s eyes slid shut. He slumped over his horse’s neck as he passed out and would have fallen onto the frozen earth, but his duster caught on the saddle horn and he couldn’t.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Maggie murmured again.
She swallowed the sick feeling in her gut and reached for the man’s shoulders. The fellow was leaning perilously, and Maggie didn’t want him to fall.
“Ozzie,” she hollered. “Ozzie, get your worthless butt out here right now!” The sound of her own loud voice ripped through her pounding head like a bullet, but she tried to ignore it.
She’d have to nursemaid this person, she guessed, whoever he was. At least that was one thing she knew how to do, was to nurse people. When Kenny had been kicked by a horse, she’d had to learn. And then he had died anyway. Sometimes life just wasn’t fair.
She could hear the baby beginning to fuss in the kitchen, but Maggie couldn’t see to her child right now. This poor stranger might die right here, half out of his saddle, if she didn’t do something quick.
“Ozzie!” she bellowed again.
“I’m comin’,” came a thin, warbly voice.
Maggie had managed to prop the stranger’s broad shoulders in her arms by the time Ozzie made it out to the kitchen side of the house. He was a small man with a lined, skinny face that ran towards florid. Right now he looked a little green. Maggie figured he must have spent most of last night drinking in town. She guessed that if it were light enough, she would have found the whites surrounding his puffy-lidded, milky-blue eyes shot with blood, and the thought disgusted her.
“This man’s hurt. Help me get him inside.”
“Jesus H. God,” breathed Ozzie. “Whoozat?”
“I have no idea who it is,” Maggie snapped. “Help me get him inside.”
Ozzie lurched over and helped her lower the man out of his saddle. Then they dragged him inside the house. The fire Maggie had built up in the kitchen stove had already warmed the place up considerably.
“Hold him there, Ozzie. I’m going to fix my bed and we can lay him down there.”
She didn’t look to see that he obeyed her. Fortunately, Maggie possessed a stronger will than Ozzie did, and he generally obeyed when he was inside the house and in her line of sight.
“Who dat man?” Annie asked her mama. She stopped fussing and stared at the unconscious man curiously.
“I don’t know, baby, but he’s bad hurt.”
Annie eyed the stranger again. “He hurt,” she said. Her little voice sounded sad.
Maggie raced into her bedroom and ripped the sheets off the bed. Then she reached into the chest in the corner and took out the old oil skin sheeting that had been used during the two months between the time Kenny got kicked by the horse and he had died. Quick as lightning, she swished the oil skin onto the bed and tucked fresh linens over it, then dashed out to the kitchen again.
“Help me, Ozzie,” she commanded. And Ozzie did.
They carried the stranger into the bedroom and laid him on Maggie’s bed. Maggie wished it was warmer in the room, but that couldn’t be helped. She’d just leave the door open so that the heat from the kitchen would warm it up.
In the mean time, she quickly applied a tourniquet of rolled linen to the poor man’s right arm and determined that his left leg was also bleeding. She folded up another pad of linen and, after a couple of exploratory prods, discovered where the blood was seeping out of his leg. Then she strapped the pad tightly over the leak in his thigh.
“I’ll have to figure out exactly what’s the matter with that leg when I have time,” she muttered to her unconscious patient.
Then she piled him with quilts and blankets, hoped he wouldn’t die before she could attend to him, and hurried back to the kitchen.
She turned on Ozzie so furiously that the man stepped back a pace.
“You see to the stranger’s horse right now, Ozzie. Then go run to the Phillips’ place and tell Sadie that I need help. Then you go to town and fetch Doc Pritchard. If you don’t do all of those things I told you to do, Ozzie Plumb, don’t you even bother to come back here. And if you don’t do those things and still try to come back here to get your stupid guitar, I’ll bust it. Swear to God, I will, Ozzie. So you just do what I say.”
An expression of practiced hurt settled onto Ozzie’s wrinkled face. “Now, Miss Maggie, would I fail you?”
“Yes,” Maggie said shortly. “Now you git, Ozzie, and git now. I’m going to tend to the baby and then tend to this stranger.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Maggie eyed him narrowly and decided he probably meant it. Since she didn’t trust him out of her eyesight, however, she quickly marched outside to the shack next to the barn and confiscated his guitar while he tended to the stranger’s horse.
When he led Old Bones, the mule, out of the barn, Maggie lifted up the guitar for him to see. She wanted him to know she was holding it hostage so he wouldn’t neglect any of her instructions.
“You see here, Ozzie? You just do what I say, or I’m going to smash this guitar into a billion pieces. Then I’m going to feed ‘em to you.”
The icy air was breeding with the pains in her head and creating infinite numbers of little new pains, sharp and brittle, and all stabbing into her skull, but she did her best to pretend they weren’t there.
Ozzie still looked hurt when he whined, “Jeez, Miss Maggie, I’m goin’.”
Maggie just snorted and turned back to the house.
“Sometimes I just purely don’t know why life is so blamed hard, Annie,” she muttered as she rummaged around in her kitchen cupboard.
Annie apparently thought her mama had said something very funny, because she laughed at her and thumped on her wooden high-chair tray.
Maggie grinned at the baby because she couldn’t help it. “Here, sweetie, you chew on this. Mama has to tend to a sick man.”
She opened a tin and handed Annie one of the hard biscuits that she had made out of graham flour and arrowroot from a recipe in a Ladies’ Home Companion. The magazine claimed they were good for teething babies. The biscuit would at least keep Annie occupied while she tried to do for the stranger, Maggie figured. Annie banged happily on her tray, and Maggie sighed when she looked at the pretty piece of furniture that Kenny had made.
“Your daddy was so good to us, Annie girl.” She felt like crying all of a sudden.
Whenever Maggie had her monthlies and these detestable headaches, she succumbed to moods. She knew it was weak of her, but she just figured it was her nature to be weak.
Annie gurgled happily as she gummed her biscuit. She smiled at her mama, and Maggie smiled back.
“I love you, baby girl.”
She could see Kenny every time she looked at Annie. The baby had his sweet nature as well as his shiny, curly, light brown hair and big brown eyes, and she was pretty as a picture. Maggie sighed gustily and began foraging in her medicine chest.
Sometimes it seemed to Maggie that life was just too blasted hard. She’d spent most of the first seventeen years of it trying to appease her aunt and uncle and having no luck at all. Then, when Kenny Bright had wandered through southern Indiana, fallen hopelessly in love with her, married her, and brought her to his farm in Lincoln County in the New Mexico Territory, she thought her luck had finally changed.
“I should have known better,” she chided herself grumpily as she gathered up her nursing equipment.
By the time Kenny got kicked by the horse, he had taught Maggie enough so that she could keep herself and the baby alive, at any rate, barring unforeseen Indian raids, outlaw incursions, drought, flood, or fire. Those were things that were liable to happen at any time, Kenny or no Kenny. Now she had a cow and a mule and a vegetable garden and chickens and Annie. And Ozzie, for what good he did her.
“And now I’ve got me a gunshot cowboy.”
Life on a farm had sounded nice to Maggie. She liked animals, and she certainly didn’t mind hard work, although she was kind of little. Life on a farm in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, in 1876, however, was nothing like life in a snug little town in southern Indiana in 1876, the year she had left the state.
“This damned Territory,” she grumbled as she ripped clean linen into bandage-sized strips.
Until she moved to New Mexico, Maggie had never uttered a swear word in her entire life. It had never occurred to her. Now a swear word occurred to her every other minute or so. That was just one more reason she was glad her aunt wasn’t here. Aside from the fact that Maggie and her aunt hated each other, her aunt would have blistered the back of her hand for even thinking a swear word.
The water she had set to boil was bubbling now, so she poured some into a deep bowl. Then she grabbed a tin of alum from the cupboard, gathered up her linens, some soft flannel squares, a knife, her scissors, a couple more bowls, and looked about the kitchen to see if she had missed anything else she might need.
“Lordy, I thought these days were over.” Frowning, she surveyed her kingdom, juggling her nursing tools.
“Wish me luck, Annie, babe,” she told her daughter.
Annie gurgled and gnawed on her biscuit with gusto.
Maggie figured she might need more light, so she hooked an oil lamp over her arm, took a deep breath, and stepped into her bedroom.
“Oh, Lord, please help me.” Some of her stoicism deserted her when she peered at the man passed out on her bed. “He looks dead already.”
She stared down at the stranger for a long moment or two. He was a good-looking man, or would be if he weren’t pale as a frosty window and unconscious. He had thick, sun-bleached brown hair.
“Damn man’s hair is a lot prettier than mine,” Maggie mumbled bitterly, brushing her own tangled mane out of her eyes. She hadn’t had time to brush it yet this morning.
She couldn’t tell what color the man’s eyes were because they were closed, but his eyelashes were long and dark.
“That figures, too. Men always get the lashes.”
He had thick stubble on his chin and cheeks, as though he hadn’t shaved in a few days.
“You’re taller than Kenny was.” Maggie could tell that because of the way his legs dangled over the end of the bed. She wondered if that would prove to be a problem, since she figured his leg to be gunshot, but decided she’d just have to cross that bridge when she came to it.
Then Maggie took one more deep breath, squared her shoulders, laid her tools out, and began unbuttoning the man’s duster. If he’d been hit in the chest, she figured that was the wound she’d better tend first. She didn’t know much about gunshot wounds although, Lord knew, there were enough of them to go around in this Territory. Somebody was always getting shot up. She’d had to dig a bullet out of Ozzie’s arm once when some gun play had erupted in a saloon in town.
“I swear. If it isn’t the Apaches, it’s the bugs. If it isn’t the bugs, it’s the prickles. If it isn’t the prickles, it’s the animals. If it isn’t the animals, it’s the outlaws. And if it isn’t the outlaws, it’s the weather.”
She eased the stranger’s duster off of his shoulders and noticed that there was a folded paper sticking out of his shirt pocket. Maggie opened it up curiously. Half of the paper was soggy with blood and she grimaced. It was a “Wanted” broadside. Maggie looked at the picture on the poster and then peered down again at the stranger on her bed.
After surveying the two critically for a moment, she decided with some relief that they weren’t the same man. The man on the poster was a mean-eyed, black-haired fellow named Jack Gauthier, and the broadside said he was five-foot-seven. The man hanging over the end of her bed was much taller than that and had brown hair. Maggie shoved the wanted poster out of the way.
“You look like a strong one, anyway,” she muttered as she peeled the shirt off of his heavily muscled arms. “We’ll wash you up some and then see where I have to dig, if I have to dig. Lord, I hope I won’t have to, especially if you got yourself a chest wound.” Then Maggie breathed a short prayer that Doc Pritchard would be sober, but she didn’t hold out too many hopes.
When she had his arms and chest washed off, she realized the hole was in the stranger’s right shoulder, just above the armpit. That seemed encouraging to her.
“As if I knew anything about it. At least it missed your heart, anyway. Assuming you have one.” Maggie wasn’t one to take much on faith any more.
The stranger moaned when she pressed around the wound after she had bathed him, but he didn’t open his eyes. Maggie’s mouth set into a grim line. She hated this so much, she could hardly stand it. It made her insides curl up into tight little knots to poke and prod and hurt people.
And her headache wasn’t any better, either. Sometimes the pain was so bad her eyes blurred, but she just blinked hard and kept working.
She found where the bullet was lodged and decided she’d better try to take it out. Depending on what the man had been shot with, he could die of lead poisoning if the bullet wasn’t dug out quickly even if the wound wasn’t bad enough to kill him on its own. She sterilized her knife over the fire in her lantern and dunked it into hot water, and then swallowed hard.
“You just hold on, mister. This knife is sharp and it shouldn’t take me long.”
She flinched when she pressed into the wound with her fingers, trying to ease the bullet up. But she managed to get it loose, the knife did the rest, and she picked it out with tweezers. The stranger groaned some, but he didn’t yell or kick or wake up. That was some kind of blessing, anyway.
She cleaned up around the chest wound, sprinkled it with alum, packed it well and wrapped it tight. After a critical survey of her work, she didn’t think anything vital had been touched by bullet or knife.
“As if I could tell if it was.”
Then she stood up and quickly stretched the crick out of her back.
“I’ll have to tackle that leg now, I suppose. Oh, Lordy, what a way to start the day.”
She listened for Annie, heard her cooing contentedly, uttered a small prayer of thanks, squatted down beside the stranger again, and considered what to do next.
“I wonder if I’ll have to cut those boots off you. They look like good ones. I’d hate to cut them if they don’t need to be cut.” Maggie herself had always been poor, and she didn’t want to ruin a good boot if she didn’t have to. “Besides, if you live, I don’t suppose you’d appreciate having your boots all slit down and spoiled.”
She decided to try to get them off without cutting, moved to the foot of the bed, and tenderly picked up the stranger’s left boot. That was the one that was full of blood and Maggie shuddered as she felt the slippery, sticky substance all over her hands.
She tugged gently. The boot slid off the man’s foot with a slick, sloppy pop. A gush of blood poured out of the boot as soon as it was free of the foot, and Maggie almost lost what was left of last-night’s supper.
She didn’t have time to throw up, though, because a grunt startled her into looking up. Although the sound didn’t come from the direction of the bed, Maggie knew that she and the stranger were the only two people in the little house who could possibly make a grunt like that, so she knew it had to be him.
When she realized there was an Indian standing in her open bedroom doorway, she was so startled that she screamed.
Then her eyes squeezed shut for a second. “Oh, God, no,” she sobbed after her scream was over. “Why me, God? Why are you doing these things to me?”
The man at the door held out his hands in a gesture people make when they’re trying to calm other people down.
“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said in a very, very deep voice. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Maggie brought a hand up to wipe the straggling hair away from her forehead and realized too late that that particular hand was covered with the gunshot stranger’s blood and that she had just smeared it all over her face. This had been a trying morning for Maggie, and she was very nearly at the end of her tether.
“I’m real sorry, ma’am,” the man said again. “I knocked, but you was busy and I reckon you didn’t hear me.”
Maggie figured her headache had sent her over the edge and she was now crazy. She knew that man speaking to her so calmly from the door of her own bedroom was an Indian. He looked like an Indian. He had long, braided hair like an Indian. He had dark, red-brown skin like an Indian. He had black, shiny eyes like an Indian. He wasn’t naked like an Indian, thank God, but he wore cowboy clothes like some Indians wore. He didn’t talk like an Indian. She figured that meant that God was just playing more mean tricks on her.
Maggie was hugging the gunshot stranger’s boot to her breast in fright and couldn’t figure out what to do. There were no weapons nearby, nothing with which she could defend herself or the wounded stranger. She wondered if the man at the door was the person who had shot him and if he had come here to finish the job. Then she realized that he was talking to her again.
“I apologize for scarin’ you, ma’am,” he was saying. “I followed the trail to your house. That there’s my partner.” He gestured to the unconscious stranger on Maggie’s bed.
Through her headache and her tumbling thoughts, Maggie was barely able to comprehend the man’s words; they seeped through her panicked brain slowly. All at once she realized she was hugging a bloody boot and thrust it away from her in revulsion.
“Ugh!”
“Here, ma’am, please let me help you. You shouldn’t be here all alone doin’ this.” The fellow stepped further into the room.
“No!” Maggie’s voice held barely-suppressed panic. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The man stopped. He was medium-sized, bow-legged, and looked very stolid, as though he had an infinite supply of patience. Maggie wished she had even a little bit of it.
“My name’s Dan Blue Gully, ma’am.”
Suddenly Maggie remembered Annie. “Where’s my baby?” she shrieked.
Her eyes were wild now, and the man sighed as though he were used to this kind of reaction from white people. “She’s in her high chair in the kitchen, ma’am, and she seems real happy. She’s surely a pretty little thing.”
He looked behind him and Maggie saw that he smiled at something. A horrible image of her beautiful Annie, scalped in her high chair, flashed through her fevered brain. Maybe this person and the stranger on her bed were vicious criminals. God knew, there were plenty of those wandering around in Lincoln County. It was all too much for her, and Maggie began to weep hysterically.
The expression on the Indian’s face was one of mingled concern and aggravation. “Are you all right, ma’am? I know I give you a start, but I ain’t violent. Swear to God I’m not. Honest.”
Maggie couldn’t stop herself. Huge, shuddering sobs were making the ache in her head slam against the backs of her eyeball like tiny, granite baseballs. The agony had concentrated now, as it usually did eventually, behind and around her left eye. It felt as though the pain on the inside of her head were pushing her left eyeball right out of her skull.
“No,” she finally managed to choke out. “I’m not all right. There’s a dead man in my bed, and my baby’s been murdered, and I’m crazy, and there’s an Indian in my kitchen. And I have a headache!” The last sentence was wrenched from her gut and wailed out of her mouth like a piercing prairie wind.
When the man finally gave up trying to reason with her and walked over to take her by the shoulders, she wanted to turn tail and run away. She tried to pull away from him, but he gently and firmly led her out to the kitchen and sat her down next to Annie, who was still working busily away on her arrowroot biscuit. The baby had managed to soften a good deal of it with drool and was gooing it into her soft curls delightedly. Annie gurgled at the brown man and he grinned at her.
Dan Blue Gully squatted beside Maggie, dipped a rag in some water at the sink, and wiped off her bloody face and hands. He kept her hands in his when he was through doing that.
“I can tell you got a bad headache, ma’am, and I’m right sorry. But I have to help my friend in there. We’ve been partners for so long that I’ve forgot when I didn’t know him, and I don’t aim to see him die. I appreciate your tryin’ to help him, and I may need you again. You eat this and drink some water, and I hope you feel better in a little while.”
He opened a leather pouch and handed Maggie a piece of wood. She had no idea what it was. Her tears had stopped, but her head was now pounding so badly that she could barely keep it lifted. She stared dumbly at the man beside her, who was wobbly and shimmered oddly through her watery eyes. The numb realization that her hands were no longer caked with blood seeped slowly through the ache in her head and registered dimly somewhere in her consciousness.
She was afraid to disobey the man for fear he would harm her and her baby. She only hoped that if he planned to kill them, he’d do it quickly. And soon. The sooner this headache was gone, even if it took her with it, the better.
Dan Blue Gully pumped a mug of water and brought it to her. “Chew on that piece o’ wood, ma’am. It might help your head. And drink the water with it. Otherwise, it might make you sick. I got to get to work now.”
With that, he turned and went back into the bedroom.
Maggie sat in the chair and didn’t know what to do. She was normally a fighter, but right now she couldn’t even see straight, much less fight. Her headache had become so bad that she didn’t think she could stand up without falling over in a faint.
“Oh, what the hell,” she finally muttered. “If it poisons me, so much the better.” She began to chew.
It was about ten minutes later that she again had a coherent thought. She suddenly realized how absurd this whole situation was. Here she was, sitting in her kitchen chair, caked with blood, chewing on a piece of wood and drinking water, while her baby sat gurgling in her high chair, gumming a biscuit and smearing glop into her hair, and there was an Indian operating on an unknown dead man in her bedroom.
She almost laughed before she realized her headache was gone.
Maggie stared at the remains of the wood in her hand in pure awe. She had never in her whole life had one of these headaches just up and go away.
She shook her head experimentally back and forth. There was no pain. Not a shard. Not a hammer. Not a wince. She turned her gaze upon her baby. Annie was smiling at her happily. It looked as though she could use another biscuit.
“Ho, mama,” the baby cried happily.
Maggie cleared her throat. “Hello to you, pretty Annie.”
Very carefully, she stood up. She didn’t want the pain to come crashing back into her head again, sneaky-like, and knock her cockeyed.
Nothing.
She shook her head once more. Then she looked over to the bedroom door and half expected to see the Indian laughing at her wickedly. Or the devil. There must be some mistake. Something good had happened to Maggie Bright.
She decided not to argue with the fates. If the devil were playing tricks with her, she might just as well enjoy the few pain-free moments allowed her before the bolt of lightning struck. She looked with disgust at her blood-caked shirtwaist.
“Ugh, Annie. Your mama’s a mess.”
The baby gurgled happily, “Mama mess.” Maggie smiled.
She took an experimental step towards the bedroom, then another. By the time she had made it to the doorway, she almost believed her headache was really, truly gone. She peeked into the room.
The stranger lay naked on the bed, Dan Blue Gully was kneeling beside him on the other side, and Maggie had a splendid view of the most powerfully built male body she had ever seen. That view made her squeeze her eyes shut tight and gasp. Dan looked up at the noise.
“Feelin’ better, ma’am?”
Maggie decided it was impolite not to look at him as she spoke, even if it meant eyeballing him over the very most personal part of the stranger on her bed.
“Ye-yes. Thank you,” she stuttered. She opened her eyes wide and then shut them tight again.
The naked stranger on her bed didn’t look at all like Kenny looked the few times Maggie had seen him without his union suit on. This man’s thighs were huge and looked like iron. Iron covered with curly, golden hairs.
“If you’re feelin’ better, ma’am, I could use a little help in here,” Dan Blue Gully said pleasantly.
Maggie cleared her throat. “Of course.” Then she said fervently, “Mr. Blue Gully, I can’t hardly believe it, but that piece of wood you gave me actually cured my headache. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“That’s all right, ma’am. You probably saved my partner’s life. That’s worth a piece of wood, I reckon.”
“Well, I just want you to know how much it means to me, ‘cause it does. It means a whole lot. Just let me take care of the baby for a second and I’ll be right back,” Maggie said, and then fled back to Annie.
“Oh, Lord Jesus, Annie. Now I’ve got to go into that room and face a naked man and an Indian.”
Annie sucked on the last of her biscuit and grinned. She had biscuit goo all over her face and hair, and Maggie itched to clean her up, but she didn’t have time.
When she remembered Ozzie, she cursed him. “I really will break that man’s guitar if he doesn’t get back here pretty quick.” She handed Annie another arrowroot biscuit. “Here, baby, I guess you might as well paste on another one of these.”
The baby laughed a tinkling little laugh at her, and Maggie smiled and kissed her. Then she straightened up, sighed deeply, and headed back into her bedroom.
Dan Blue Gully had covered the stranger’s privates with a sheet by the time Maggie reentered the room.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He glanced up as Maggie stepped inside. “If you could hold his leg still, I’ve got to dig out the bullet.”
Maggie swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “All right.”
“You did a real good job on his shoulder,” Dan said as he eyeballed the bullet hole in the man’s thigh and poised his knife.
“Thank you,” Maggie breathed. She couldn’t watch.
Dan Blue Gully worked in silence for a second or two as Maggie held the stranger’s leg steady. It felt very hard and hairy. Kenny had been hard and hairy, too, but Kenny’s was a wiry hard, not a bulky, muscled hard like this unconscious man whose massive thigh she cradled in her arms.
She discovered that when she opened her eyes, she was staring straight at his sheet-covered privates. Lord, the bulge they made was big, too. Maggie didn’t want to think about it, so she turned her head to study Dan Blue Gully’s profile.
He had a nice profile, Maggie decided. His features were sharp and lean, not puffy like some of the Indians she had seen in town who had given themselves over to strong drink. Not, she reminded herself sourly as she recalled Ozzie Plumb, that addiction to intoxicating spirits was by any means confined to the Indian segment of the population.
Her eyes had a provoking tendency to slide back to the stranger’s bulge, so Maggie decided to talk to Dan Blue Gully in order to keep herself occupied.
“That piece of wood you gave me truly worked wonders, Mr. Blue Gully. Nothing I’ve ever done before has ever helped one of those headaches.”
The Indian grunted. He didn’t say anything until he had pulled the bullet out of his friend’s leg. It came out with a gush of blood that nearly made Maggie gag. Then he said, “Yeah. I hear that stuff works pretty good.”
Maggie cleared her throat. “What—what is it, Mr. Blue Gully?”
Dan Blue Gully shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Maggie’s eyes opened wide. “You don’t know?”
“No. My aunt, she give it to me. She’s a healer over in Arizona. Married her a Hopi, so the relatives sort of kicked her out. That bark comes off a willow tree they got there. Grows by a river.” He grinned at Maggie, and she blinked.
He had a nice smile. Friendly. She offered him a tentative smile in return.
“Well,” she said. “It worked and I surely do thank you.” Then, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, she said, “You’re not a Hopi?”
Dan Blue Gully gave a little snort. “In New Mexico? Naw. I’m Apache. Mescalero. No Hopis around here.”
Maggie was puzzled. “Then how did your aunt meet one?”
“Army run us out of New Mexico Territory into Arizona,” he said as he blotted blood away from the wound.
“Oh.” Maggie didn’t quite know what to say to that. Then she thought of a good question. “What’s this man’s name, Mr. Blue Gully?”
She eyed the stranger again. His face had relaxed into smooth lines since he had given up the conscious state for a stupor.
“Jubal. Jubal Green.”
“Green? Well, that’s interesting,” said Maggie, more for conversation than anything else. “He’s Green and you’re Blue. You’re a colorful pair.” She thought about chuckling and decided against it.
Dan Blue Gully looked at her blankly and then shrugged. “I was born on his place.” He smiled ironically. “Of course, the Greens come to live there a long time after the Blue Gullys, because the Mescalero have been there for centuries, but I figure it ain’t worth fighting about anymore. Anyway, Jubal and me, we sort of raised each other.”
Maggie only swallowed and nodded.
Dan had been nimbly working on Jubal Green’s thigh during their conversation. He sprinkled something over the wound and packed it tight, then bandaged it up with the clean, torn linen strips that Maggie had set aside for the purpose.
“How—how did Mr. Green get shot?”
“Saving my life.”
Maggie wondered if she had misunderstood.
“Did—um—did you say saving your life, Mr. Blue Gully?”
“Yep. We trade off.” the grin he gave her along with those words was big.
Maggie felt terribly confused. This Dan Blue Gully didn’t seem to be one to tell a body a whole lot at one time. Then she remembered the wanted poster.
With a nod toward the table where the blood-soaked broadside yet lay, she asked, “Were the two of you looking for that criminal on the poster?” Since she still cradled the stranger’s thigh in her arms, she couldn’t pick the broadside up.
Dan Blue Gully looked over to see where Maggie was indicating and nodded.
“Yep. Kind of.”
Maggie decided to ignore that “kind of” for the present.
“Why?”
The Indian looked at her somberly for a second or two. “French Jack killed Jubal’s family.”
Maggie’s eyes opened wide at that. “Killed his family?” she whispered. “How terrible.”
“Yep,” was all he said.
“He killed his wife and children?” Maggie felt like crying at the thought.
“Nah. His brother and sister-in-law. They all lived on the spread. In west Texas. Near El Paso. Called Green’s Valley.”
“Oh.” Maggie still felt sort of sick. “Why did he do that?”
The Indian shrugged. “It wasn’t personal.”
Maggie gaped at him. “Not personal?” Although she had never tried before, Maggie didn’t think she could come up with of too many things more personal than somebody killing one’s family.
“Naw. He’s bein’ paid.”
“Paid?”
“Yeah. Another feller wants us dead.”
Maggie swallowed hard. “Why?”
Dan shrugged again. “He’s crazy.”
Just then Maggie heard a crash at the kitchen door.
“Oh, I think Ozzie’s back.”
“Maggie!” It was Sadie Phillips shrieking.
Maggie suddenly wondered if asking for Sadie had been a good idea. Sadie was a very nervous sort of person. It was rather pleasant to be around this stolid Indian who seemed so calm. She sighed.
“I’d better go talk to Sadie, Mr. Blue Gully. She’s come to help.”
Dan grunted a “Hmmph.” It didn’t sound like a happy hmmph.
“I’ll—I’ll get rid of her,” Maggie stammered.
Dan smiled at her then and nodded. “Good idea.”
Chapter Two
“Maggie, what on earth is going on? Ozzie said something about a gunshot cowboy come knockin’ at your door and you took him in and laid him out. Is he dead?” Sadie’s voice was pitched low and throbbed with excitement.
“No. He isn’t dead.” Maggie eyed Sadie curiously. “Why are you whispering, Sadie?”
Sadie’s eyes were bright with intrigue. “Why, if you had a dead man in here, I didn’t mean no disrespect.”
Now Maggie really wished she hadn’t sent for Sadie.
“No, he isn’t dead yet, Sadie. He’s bad hurt, though. We had to dig two bullets out of him, and he’s unconscious. I know he lost a lot of blood.”
Maggie remembered the blood-filled boot and shuddered. She figured she’d best take care of that next, before the blood dried and ruined the boot completely.
Sadie had backed up some and was now looking at Maggie with wide, horrified eyes. Maggie didn’t know what was wrong, but she sure hoped Sadie wouldn’t scream.
“What’s the matter, Sadie?”
“Your dress,” Sadie said in a low, dramatic whisper. She pointed an artistically quivering finger at Maggie’s shirtwaist.
Maggie looked down at her bodice and sighed.
“Oh, yeah. I got some blood on me, I guess. I’ll have to clean it up when I have time.” She shook her head in perturbation. “Blood leaves stains, too. Oh, well, I guess it can’t be helped. I’ll just soak it in cold water and soda powder when I get a chance.”
“Vinegar might help that, ma’am,” came the deep, rumbling voice of Dan Blue Gully from the bedroom doorway.
Sadie looked up and then she did shriek.
Maggie grimaced, recalling her recent headache and hoping it wouldn’t decide to come back for a visit. She didn’t trust shrieks and departed headaches to hang out in the same room without getting together and paying her a call.
“Please don’t scream, Sadie,” she said in a tight voice. “Stop that noise. You’ll upset the baby. This here is Mr. Dan Blue Gully. He’s the wounded man’s partner, and he’s been helping me. Or I’ve been helping him. Or something.”
Since Maggie was incurably honest, she didn’t want to usurp any credit due Mr. Blue Gully, but she honestly wasn’t sure exactly how to express their relationship in this instance.
“He’s an Indian,” came Sadie’s throbbing whisper.
Maggie wondered if Sadie thought that fact had escaped her attention. “I know, Sadie,” she said acidly.
“But—but—he’s an Indian.” Sadie was visibly trembling.
“It’s all right, Sadie. He’s not a wild Indian. Mr. Blue Gully is a friend of the stranger’s. His name is Jubal Green and he’s got a spread near El Paso. Some criminal named French Jack shot him because they were looking for him because he was looking for them and he killed Mr. Green’s family. Not his wife and children, but his sister and brother-in-law.”
“Brother and sister-in-law,” Dan Blue Gully corrected her conscientiously.
“Right. Brother and sister-in-law,” amended Maggie, glad for the clarification.
Sadie just stared at Dan Blue Gully, her normally rather squinched-up brown eyes now opened so wide in terror that they displayed a small halo of white around the pupils.
“It’s all right, Sadie,” said Maggie again.
She wondered what on earth to do with the woman now that she was here, and she finally took her by the arm and led her over to Annie. Maybe Sadie could be useful in spite of herself.
“Would you please watch Annie for me, Sadie? I’ve got to tend to Mr. Green a while longer. All I’ve been able to give the baby for breakfast so far is a couple of biscuits. Maybe you could clean her up some and get a little milk down her from the back porch. If it isn’t froze over.”
Sadie sat with a thump and stared up at Maggie.
“Sadie?”
Maggie hoped she wouldn’t have to slap Sadie’s face if she went into hysterics. She’d heard that happened sometimes with ladies who possessed fine sensibilities. Maggie didn’t figure she herself possessed any sensibilities at all, but she wasn’t sure about Sadie.
“I—I—”Sadie swallowed hard. “All right,” she said, and turned her attention to Annie.
Annie said a chipper, toothless, “Ho, Say,” to Sadie.
That won a delighted smile from her mama, but Sadie didn’t even notice Annie’s perfect sentence of greeting.
Maggie sighed and turned back to Dan Blue Gully, who was watching the scene with serene brown eyes. He stepped aside so that Maggie could enter the room before him, and Maggie wondered why all men weren’t that polite.
She walked with him over to the bed and they both looked down at the unconscious Jubal Green. The gunshot man was quite a specimen, all right, thought Maggie. He surely took the shine out of what she remembered of Kenny. Then she shook her head at her disloyal, wicked thoughts.
“What should we do now?” she asked.
Dan didn’t answer her, and she finally noticed that he was looking down at her with a puzzled frown. Then she realized that this was her house and he most likely figured it was up to her to say what happened next. She cleared her throat.
“I mean,” she started over, “I guess he’ll have to stay here for a while. Will you wait here with him?”
Dan Blue Gully still didn’t answer immediately, and Maggie wondered if she were making herself clearly understood. This had been such a confusing morning so far. She pressed a hand to her forehead. Maybe she had a fever and this was all some kind of a vision caused by brain waves. Maggie had read about brain waves.
“You got a man?”
The question startled Maggie into a little twitch of surprise. She turned her gaze toward Dan Blue Gully’s face, which was still staring down at her, the expression it contained unreadable to her.
“He—he died,” she stammered.
Dan uttered a “Hmmm,” that didn’t mean a thing to Maggie.
Then silence reigned once more. It loomed about them like a huge, palpable thing, so big and scary that Maggie felt as though she were about to smother on it. She had an irresistible impulse to send that overwhelming silence-thing to grass, and began to chatter in reaction. She plucked at Jubal’s bedclothes as her tongue ran on like a locomotive.
“He died three months ago. Got himself kicked by a horse. Never was much good with horses. He was a fine man, though. His name was Kenny. Kenny Bright. Mr. Kenneth Anthony Bright. He was born in New York, but he moved to the Territory after the war. His whole family came out here, though some of them stopped before they got this far. Don’t say as I blame them much. It’s pretty rough out here. I don’t know if I’d be here if it wasn’t for Kenny. He married me in Indiana and brought me to this farm. It’s real hard living here in the Territory. I never farmed before. I’m not much good at it. And then there’s Annie. I don’t know if it’s good to raise a baby all alone like this. And there’s also a lot of rough types always wandering into Lincoln. But it is pretty here. And the place mine. That counts for a lot.”
Maggie ran out of breath and stopped talking. Like an engine losing steam, her words just sort of chuffed out and died. She felt her cheeks get hot with embarrassment and hoped it was too dark in the room for Mr. Blue Gully to notice.
Then Dan said, “I had to cut them britches off Jubal. He won’t be usin’ them no more. Your dead man got any britches he can wear?”
Maggie wondered if he had heard a word she had said. Then she wondered how he could have avoided hearing them, they had all tumbled out so loud and fast. She swallowed hard.
“Kenny was a lot smaller than Mr. Green, I’m afraid. I don’t know if they’d fit him.”
“You any good with a needle and thread?”
Maggie didn’t answer for a minute as she considered the question. Dan Blue Gully seemed to home right in on the important things. Cut straight down to the nub, he did.
“Oh,” she said finally. “Oh, sure. I guess I could let some out for him.”
The man nodded. “That would be right nice if you could, Mrs. Bright,” he said. “Otherwise, Jubal’ll have to ride out to kill French Jack buck naked.”
Maggie stared up at him in surprise. “You mean, you’re still going after him?”
Dan just looked at his partner and said, “Yep.”
“Oh.”
“Can I leave Jubal to your care for a day or so, ma’am? I think he’ll be all right, if you keep them wounds clean and sprinkle ‘em with this powder.” He dangled a hide bag with a leather drawstring in front of Maggie.
Maggie gave him a lopsided smile. “Your aunt in Arizona?”
He didn’t smile back. “Yep.” Then he said, “You got to clean them wounds twice a day and sprinkle this stuff on ‘em. Wash them with warm water. Not hot. Not cold. Just tepid. Sprinkle this stuff on ‘em and bind ‘em tight. Not too tight.”
“Right,” said Maggie, memorizing the instructions.
“This here’s some different kind of bark that’s good for fever. Boil it up in some water. Better do that now, because I expect he’ll be feverish before very long.”
“Right,” Maggie said again, and went to do exactly that. She put the bark in a little pot of water and set it on the stove to boil. Then she returned to the room.
“Er, Mr. Blue Gully, do I feed him that bark and water like—like tea?”
Dan Blue Gully considered the man on the bed for a moment before he spoke.
“Might have to spoon it down him, if the fever’s bad. He might not know enough to drink it.”
Maggie blinked at the naked man on her bed and felt so inadequate all of a sudden that she almost cried.
“What about that bark you gave me for my headache? Can I boil a piece of that up for his pain?”
“Better not do that yet, ma’am. If he don’t hurt, he might move around too much.”
“Doc Pritchard should be here soon if Ozzie could find him. If Doc’s sober. If Ozzie’s sober.” Maggie was watching Jubal Green with bleak eyes.
Dan frowned. Maggie looked up in time to catch that frown and it worried her. The man looked fierce when he frowned.
“I don’t know that I want no white doctor messin’ with my friend, ma’am,” he said stolidly after a moment or two.
Maggie took a breath to protest, but was suddenly assailed by the recollection of Doc Pritchard reeling down the street in Lincoln and shut her mouth. She wondered if Mr. Blue Gully might not have a point after all.
“Well,” she said diplomatically, “I don’t suppose Doc Pritchard is any worse than most doctors.”
Dan peered down at Jubal Green thoughtfully. Then he turned somber eyes on Maggie.
“You see, Miz Bright, Jubal Green and me is more than just friends. We grew up together. We were kind of like each other’s family. We’re almost sort of like brothers. Like kin. I don’t know as I want anybody dealin’ with him unless I trust him. I trust you. I don’t know who this Doc Pritchard is, but if you’re ‘feard he’s drunk, I don’t know as I want him messin’ with Jubal. You understand me, ma’am?”
Maggie understood him. She nodded. “Yes.”
Neither one of them spoke for a few moments.
“I’ll tend him,” Maggie said at last. “I won’t let Doc Pritchard touch him. I promise.”
Dan smiled. “Thank you kindly, ma’am.”
“What will you do?” Maggie asked.
“Got to keep track of French Jack,” he said. “I don’t suppose he’s gone far.”
Maggie’s eyebrows shot up.
“Don’t you think he’d try to get away from the scene of his crime?”
Dan Blue gully shook his head. “French Jack’s bein’ paid by a man who hates Jubal Green worse than anything else in the world. French Jack will want to make sure he’s dead so’s he can collect his pay. He won’t go far.”
That information entered Maggie’s brain and settled like sour milk. The more she thought about it, the more it didn’t make her feel particularly good. Her brow crinkled up.
“Mr. Blue Gully,” she ventured tentatively.
He grunted.
“If this French Jack person is after Mr. Green, do you really think it’s a good idea to leave him here? I mean, with me? Alone? With nobody around?”
The Indian looked at her with a level gaze. “You worried, ma’am?” he asked.
Maggie swallowed. “Well, yes. Yes, I guess I am worried, Mr. Blue Gully. I mean, if this crazy man is after your partner and he’s here and you’re not and he’s gunshot and unconscious, don’t you think that might be a little dangerous for us? For all of us? For my daughter and me? And Mr. Green, too?”
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” Dan Blue Gully said. “I’ll be watchin’.”
Maggie looked at him with dismay. He’d be watching? She cast a glance at Jubal Green and sighed. Well, he sure wasn’t going anywhere; that was for certain. He’d be lucky to survive.
Ozzie came back shortly before Dan Blue Gully left. He barged right in the back door without knocking. Not that Maggie expected politeness from Ozzie. Still, it always irritated her that he didn’t knock. She spoke sharply to him when he lurched into the kitchen.
“Will you ever learn to knock, you useless bum? And you took your sweet time, didn’t you, Ozzie?”
Ozzie looked hurt. Ozzie often looked hurt. That irritated Maggie, too. If he weren’t such a no-good loafer, he wouldn’t have so much to look hurt about.
“Well, now, Miss Maggie, I told Sadie Phillips you needed help, like you told me.”
“You did that, all right.”
Sadie and Annie were still keeping each other company. They were now in Annie’s room where Sadie was dressing the baby and Annie was laughing.
Maggie was trying to clean up after the various operations that been performed in her own bedroom. Jubal Green was sleeping—or unconscious—in her bed, and she and Dan Blue Gully had managed to get one of Kenny’s old night shirts over his head, so he was at least decent.
She had covered him with two quilts, and promised Dan that she would watch very carefully for fever and do precisely what he told her to do in case fever struck. Maggie decided that anybody who could cure one of her headaches was a person whose advice was worth following when it came to medical matters.
Now, as she washed out rags and bandages and Ozzie lounged at the kitchen table, Dan Blue Gully was checking his friend over one last time before he left to search for French Jack.
“Did you find Doc Prichard, Ozzie?”
She felt just a tiny bit guilty for sending Ozzie after a doctor whom she now no longer needed. Then she decided she had nothing to feel guilty about. After all, she hadn’t known that an Indian would show up and take over the show when she sent Ozzie out earlier.
“He was passed out in the saloon.” Ozzie still looked downcast.
“Humph. And I suppose you had to hang around the saloon, waiting for him to wake up.”
Maggie’s tone was unmistakable. She thought both the doctor and Ozzie were worthless, disgusting specimens of humankind. She was sure Ozzie had spent a good hour or more guzzling bad whiskey while pretending to wait for the doctor to rouse himself.
“Well, now, Maggie, it were a long, thirsty ride to town,” whined Ozzie.