One Bright Morning (13 page)

Dan laid the wanted broadside, Jubal’s blood
now dry upon it, on the table in front of her. Maggie stared at it
numbly.

“
And it ain’t only that,
ma’am. You see, French Jack, he was just a pawn. He was a crazy,
mean pawn, but he was still only a pawn. The man who hired him is
even worse.”

The Indian laid another paper in front of
Maggie. It took her a couple of seconds to realize that it was a
letter. She picked it up and read it, holding it close so that her
poor eyes could decipher the closely-written missive.

She had to read it twice because she didn’t
believe she had read it properly the first time. When she was
through with her second reading, she looked over the crumpled paper
into Dan Blue Gully’s eyes and there were tears in her own.

“
Why, this Mr. Mulrooney
fellow says he means to kill the entire Green family, Mr. Blue
Gully. ‘Wipe them off the face of the earth,’ it says here. He was
paying this Mr. Gauthier five thousand dollars to get Mr. Green.”
Her voice held pained awe. “And you and Mr. Smith.”

“
Yep,” the Indian agreed
somberly.

Maggie stared at the letter once more.

“
I don’t understand,” she
muttered weakly. “Why would anybody hate another person that
much?”

“
Well, Mrs. Bright, it’s a
long story and it ain’t really mine, except by—well, by adoption, I
guess you might say. I expect I should let Jubal tell you about
that.”

Maggie just stared at him. She didn’t know
what to say.

“
There’s a reward on French
Jack, Mrs. Bright. Four Toes and me, we’ll haul the bodies into
Lincoln this afternoon and visit the sheriff there. You’re due some
of the reward, ma’am. In fact, you’re probably due all of it, for
putting up with us like you been doing.” He said that with a
grin.

The Indian’s last words shocked Maggie out
of her torpor. She turned her big eyes on Dan Blue Gully with a
look so poignant that he blinked.

“
Will you be leaving now?”
Maggie asked in a faint whisper.

Suddenly she couldn’t bear even the idea of
these two good men leaving her. They’d been here for over a week
and turned her life upside down and inside out and killed three
people and scared her to death, and yet she didn’t want them to
go.

Dan cleared his throat, as though he didn’t
much want to tell her what he had to tell her next.

“
Well, ma’am, you see,
Jubal, he ain’t up to traveling yet.”

“
Of course not,” Maggie
agreed.

Dan didn’t continue, and Maggie wondered if
that was all he was going to say.

“
Mr. Green can certainly
stay here until he’s well,” she offered. The prospect of caring for
an invalid while keeping up her farm single-handed and mothering
Annie made her heart sink like a lead weight into her sturdy
shoes.

Dan still didn’t speak. He seemed troubled,
and he was apparently having a hard time looking at Maggie.

Finally Maggie couldn’t stand his silence.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Blue Gully?”

Dan sighed. “Well, ma’am, I’m afraid this
might not be as easy as that.”

Easy? Maggie almost laughed.

“
You see, Jubal is writing a
letter to Mr. Mulrooney right now, telling him what
happened.”

“
What on earth is he doing
that for?” Maggie hadn’t meant to yell her question.

Dan shrugged. “He thinks he has to, this
being sort of a family feud. They write back and forth to each
other all the time, Jubal tellin’ Mulrooney to give it up and
Mulrooney tellin’ Jubal that he ain’t goin’ to give it up ‘til one
of ‘em’s dead. When Mr. Mulrooney gets that letter, he’ll be mad as
fire. There’s no way he’ll be able to avoid learning that you
helped us. Anyway, I expect he already knows, since he’s got spies
followin’ Jubal everywhere, and he’s probably got more killers on
his tail right now. Then you’ll be a target too, ma’am, and Jubal
and me--well, we don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Maggie’s face had begun falling at the
mention of Jubal’s letter. By the time Dan had finished his little
recitation, her face had fallen so far it had nearly joined her
heart in her shoes.

“
No,” she whispered
miserably.

“
So, you see, ma’am, I know
it’s a bother to have us here, but we don’t dare leave
yet.”

“
No,” Maggie said again, but
with a little more hope.

“
But we don’t want to
trouble you no more than we have to, so Four Toes and me, we’ll
help out around the place. The reason I brought Four Toes along in
the first place was to do some work for you since your other hired
fellow was a no-good drunk.”

The way Dan said it was so matter-of-fact
that Maggie could only nod. Hearing Ozzie Plumb described as a
no-good drunk by an impartial third party sort of eased her guilt
about having found the man so aggravating. She still had his
guitar.

“
Do either of you play the
guitar?” she asked curiously.

Dan seemed taken aback momentarily, as
though he considered Maggie’s question a flippant departure from
the subject at hand.

“
No, ma’am,” he
answered.

Maggie sighed.

“
Well, I’ve still got
Ozzie’s guitar if you want to learn,” she said sadly.

Dan didn’t say anything for a moment or two.
He just watched Maggie as she stared at the table top in front of
her. His normally expressionless eyes held a world of sympathy.

“
Thank you, ma’am,” he
finally said. “Four Toes, he’s kind of musical.”

Dan looked a little doubtfully at Four Toes
Smith, who was now sitting on the floor having a delightful
conversation with baby Annie while they built a wood-block
cabin.

Maggie followed his stare and smiled at the
young Indian man and her daughter.

“
He’s good with babies,
too,” she said.

“
Yeah,” agreed Dan. “He
likes kids.”

“
Is he married?” Maggie
asked for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom.

“
Naw. He don’t want to live
on a reservation, and if he got married, he’d have to do that or be
chased for the rest of his life.”

Maggie’s gaze returned to Dan’s face, and
she looked vaguely puzzled. “Really?”

Dan nodded. “Yeah. Most white folks can
tolerate one or two of us at a time, but they don’t want a whole
family of us anywheres near ‘em. Four Toes and me, we never lived
on a reservation before.”

Maggie wasn’t embarrassed, a fact she later
found rather surprising. She only said, “How sad,” as her eyes
wandered back to her baby playing with her new friend.

“
Besides,” Dan continued.
“Four Toes has it in his head that he ain’t going to live
long.”

Maggie shook her head. “How odd,” she mused.
Then she stood with a weary sigh. “Well, if you two are going to
get those dead men to town, I’d better pack you a lunch.”

Dan smiled. “That would be real nice, Mrs.
Bright.”

Chapter Six

When Prometheus Mulrooney read the wire
Jubal Green had Dan Blue Gully send him from Lincoln, his face
turned a brilliant red and he bellowed loud enough to be heard on
all three stories of his mansion in New York City.

“
Ferrett! Ferrett!” he
roared.

He stood up, his rage propelling him out of
his chair like a rocket. He was so angry that his enormous belly
quivered like the jellied aspic he had consumed at luncheon. He sat
down again because he didn’t know what to do with himself once he
was on his feet. Then he stood up once more, furious that Ferrett
hadn’t responded to his command yet. Approximately ten seconds had
passed since his first bellow.

When Ferrett pushed Mulrooney’s office door
open and skidded to a halt in front of his boss’s desk, his own
face was red from having run up two flights of stairs three steps
at a time. Ferrett was Mulrooney’s secretary, and he looked like
his name. He was a thin, small man with thin, small features that
all squeezed together into a rodent-like point in front.

“
Yes sir,” Ferrett cried in
a nasal squeak. Then he saluted. Ferrett did not normally salute
his employer, but he had been rattled by Mulrooney’s bellow and was
scared.

Mulrooney glared at his secretary with
malice. He shook the wire in his hand at him viciously.

“
What is the meaning of
this?” he demanded.

Ferrett looked from the wire to Mulrooney’s
face to the wire and back to Mulrooney’s face and blinked.

“
Sir?” he asked in a reedy,
tin-whistle voice. He was shaking.

Mulrooney stared down his bulbous nose,
which sat like a lump of lard between his piggy eyes and above his
quivering jowls, and pinned Ferrett with a contemptuous stare.
Mulrooney didn’t respect his secretary. He didn’t respect anybody
who quailed before him, yet he employed nobody who might possibly
defy him. He was, therefore, in a perpetual rage.

“
You repulsive, spineless
creature. Did you see this wire?”

Ferrett gulped and his Adam’s apple jerked
up and down. “Yes, sir.”

Mulrooney slammed the wire down and leaned
forward over his desk, supporting his bulk on two meaty
forearms.

“
Then you know that Jack
Gauthier failed.”

“
Yes, sir.”

Mulrooney sat back in his chair with a huge
grunt. The chair groaned.

“
Damn Jubal Green to hell,”
he muttered savagely.

Although the words were barely discernible,
Ferrett cringed at the venomous hate with which they were
uttered.

Mulrooney scowled ferociously at Ferrett. “I
thought you said this Jack Gauthier was the best,” he roared. “What
the hell did he get himself shot for if he’s the best?”

Ferrett swallowed hard and then tried to
answer his boss. “Well, sir, no, sir, actually, sir, it wasn’t me
said that, sir. It was the agent from Texas, sir, who said that,”
he stammered, and added another, “Sir,” on the end just to make
sure.

Mulrooney’s pig eyes skewered Ferrett and
the man seemed to shrink up even further.

“
Disgusting toad,” Mulrooney
said.

“
Yes, sir,” Ferrett
whispered miserably.

Mulrooney’s gaze left Ferrett to his
cringing in front of the desk and he turned to stare out of his
window. A baleful expression settled like curdled cream upon his
face.

“
Damn,” he whispered. “Just
a week ago Gauthier sent a wire saying Green had been shot. I
thought it was over then except for those damned Indians.”
Mulrooney paused in his musings to whip his head around and glare
at his secretary. He wanted to be absolutely sure that Ferrett was
still cowering. He was.

“
I thought Jack Gauthier
would solve my problems this time for sure.”

“
Yes, sir,” said Ferrett
nervously. He never quite knew when his employer expected him to
comment and when he did not.

Mulrooney squinted with palpable malevolence
at Ferrett.

“
Oh, what do you know about
it, you ridiculous rat-faced worm?”

Ferrett gulped again. “N-nothing, sir,” he
stammered.

“
Damned right,” Mulrooney
said with a nod that squished several of his chins
together.

He glared at the wire again. Then he
shuffled through the messy pile of papers on his desk until he
found what he was looking for, picked it up, and glared at it. It
looked to Ferrett as though he were comparing the paper he had just
picked up to the wire.

“
It says here,” said
Mulrooney, shaking the newly picked-up paper, “that a Miss Maggie
Bright is nursing Green in her farm in Lincoln County in the
Territory.” He paused to think. Then he glared once more at
Ferrett.

“
Lincoln County’s always
being written about in the papers because of its violence and
feuds, isn’t it, Ferrett?” He roared the question. He liked to keep
his people off guard.

He succeeded well with Ferrett, who jumped a
yard in the air and whimpered, “Yes, sir,” pathetically.

Mulrooney tapped a bloated finger on the arm
of his chair for several seconds and pondered. A smile began to
curl itself up in his fat lips as he thought. He peered at Ferrett
and gave him that smile. The smile did not lessen Ferrett’s
nervousness.

“
I don’t like it when people
aid my enemies, Ferrett,” Mulrooney said
conversationally.

“
No, sir,” agreed
Ferrett.

Mulrooney’s gaze strayed out the window
again. The smile didn’t leave his face. His finger stopped
tapping.

“
Still, even though Jubal
Green lives, something good was achieved by this Gauthier fool,”
Mulrooney mused. “Jubal Green is the last of his line now since
Gauthier wiped out his brother and his family. Dan Blue Gully, of
course, has no family. Nor does Four Toes Smith. The army helped me
there.”

A chuckle that sounded nearly jolly rumbled
out from between Mulrooney’s fat lips. Ferrett dared to produce a
tiny little smile. The smile lasted only long enough for Mulrooney
to turn his head and glare at him. Then it died fast.

“
This is not funny, Ferrett,
you miserable wad of slime.”

“
No, sir.”

“
His father ruined me, you
piece of scum,” Mulrooney added, still stabbing Ferrett with his
razor-sharp gaze.

“
Yes, sir.”

“
He stole the woman I was to
have married.”