One Bright Morning (29 page)

“
Two cents,” said the
clerk.

Maggie smiled with relief. “I’ll take some,
then,” she said happily.

“
Do you need edging? Lace?
Ribbons? Buttons?”

Maggie thought hard. She had
lots of lace scraps she’d rescued from old dresses and bonnets. She
wasn’t so sure about buttons, though. She wanted to make Annie’s
dress out of a pattern she’d saved from a
McCall’s
, and it required a row of
tiny buttons. The only buttons Maggie had were big and
ugly.

“
I’d like some small white
buttons, please, about twenty of them.”

The clerk scanned his notions shelf for a
moment or two. “Here you go, ma’am, they come on papers of twelve
each, so here are two of them. Genuine pearl buttons.”

The buttons winked at Maggie from the
counter. They were shiny, pretty, and little, exactly what Maggie
had hoped for. She beamed at the clerk.

“
Thank you,” she
said.

“
Thank
you
, ma’am,” replied the clerk with a
smile. “That will be one-twenty-seven, please, ma’am.”

“
Oh, yes.” Maggie was
momentarily flustered. She glanced quickly at Jubal.

“
Will you please hold Annie
for me, Mr. Green?” she asked bashfully.

“
Why don’t you just let me
pay for this, Mrs. Bright?” Jubal asked gruffly. “It’s the least I
can do.”

Maggie looked positively shocked. “Oh, no,
Mr. Green. I could never let you do that.”

She thrust Annie into Jubal’s arms and
opened the little bag that dangled from her wrist. Very carefully,
she counted out the appropriate number of coins while Jubal held
her daughter. He looked almost scared at having to carry the baby.
Jubal couldn’t remember ever holding a baby before, not even Sara.
He eyed Annie with misgiving.

Annie smiled at him and reached for his
nose. “Ho, Juba,” she said, and pulled his nose.

Jubal laughed. “What are you doing with my
nose, Annie?”

“
Juba’s nose,” affirmed
Annie with a wise nod.

“
Yes, that’s Jubal’s nose,
all right. And this is Annie’s nose.” Jubal pinched Annie’s nose,
and the little girl giggled.

The clerk handed Maggie her package of
goods, carefully wrapped up in brown paper and tied with string,
and Maggie felt very sophisticated when she turned toward Jubal
again. When she discovered him engaged in a nose-pulling match with
Annie, her big-city airs dropped from her shoulders with a
laugh.

“
Here, Mr. Green, I’ll trade
you.” She offered Jubal her package, and he gave her back Annie,
and they began to wend their way through the rest of the
mercantile.

Maggie’s nose led her from the fabrics to
the toiletries counter. The sweet smell of fancy Paris soaps,
sachets, bottles of toilet water, talcums, bath oils, skin balms,
lotions, hair tonics, and pomades drew her like a magnet.

“
Oh, my goodness, Mr. Green,
I’ve never seen anything like this in all my life.”

Jubal considered telling her he already knew
that, but he restrained himself. He smiled as he watched her
reverently walk up and down the aisle, her eyes wide and wondering
at the vast selection of goods available for purchase. He noticed a
little display of different toilet waters, and picked himself up a
bottle of lilac fragrance. He wasn’t exactly sure when or how he
would give it to her, but he knew he would.

Maggie paused over a pretty display of
hairbrushes. One in particular caught her eye. It was advertised to
have come all the way from England. Its boar bristles were stiff,
cream-colored, and new, and its wooden back was painted black and
lacquered to a fare-thee-well. It was decorated with a pretty
bouquet of flowers in pink, blue, and white on green stems, and
Maggie thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life.
She picked it up very carefully.

“
Oh, look at this, Annie,”
she breathed. “Isn’t it pretty.”

“
Pretty fowers,” Annie
confirmed. She reached for the brush.

“
Better not touch it,
Annie,” her mother said. “It’s not ours.”

“
Not ours,” Annie said, her
little voice mimicking her mama’s regret.

Maggie placed the brush back on the counter
with great care.

Jubal, strolling along behind Maggie and
Annie, waited until they had turned down another aisle before he
picked up the brush and tucked it under his arm along with the
bottle of lilac toilet water. He felt silly all at once, hiding
these things from the woman he intended to give them to.

“
Just about ready to
go?”

Dan walked up to Jubal and Maggie just as
Maggie thought her head would start spinning if she stayed in the
huge mercantile any longer.

“
Yes,” she said.

“
Yeah,” said Jubal. “I’ve
got one or two other things to see to. You go on out to the
wagon.”

Dan nodded and guided Maggie through the
maze of merchandise and out to the wagon.

“
I’ve never seen anything
like that in my life, Mr. Blue Gully,” Maggie whispered when they
were out in the light of day once more.

Dan grinned. “Garza’s takes some getting
used to.”

“
I should say
so.”

Maggie began fanning herself as she peered
around. It was hot again today. El Paso didn’t seem quite as hot as
the bare desert had, but it was plenty warm enough to suit Maggie.
There seemed to be a permanent pall of dust hanging a foot or so
above the ground, stirred up by people and animals walking along
the dry street. Maggie noticed a couple of little funnel clouds
hovering in the distance, where the wind had whipped the loose dirt
into dust devils.

“
It’s real dry here,” she
ventured to Dan.

“
Yep,” he agreed. “It is
that.”

Neither one of them saw Jubal step out of
Garza’s, take one look at Maggie fanning herself with her flat
hand, and turn himself right around and march back inside the
mercantile. When he emerged again, he not only carried Maggie’s
bundle of fabric, but a little paper packet of his own, as well as
a pretty folding fan.

“
Here, Mrs. Bright, you’ll
need this in this neck of the woods.” He shoved the fan into
Maggie’s hand when he joined her and Dan beside the wagon. He then
turned immediately and stuffed his packages inside the
wagon.

Maggie’s mouth dropped open and her eyes got
big.

“
Oh, my, Mr. Green. I
can’t—”

“
Yes you can,” snapped
Jubal, interrupting her protest. “Now come along. We’re going to
the seed store.”

He grabbed Maggie’s arm and hauled her
around and held onto her arm as he ate up the distance to the seed
store. Maggie had to run to keep up.

Dan watched them race off down the street
with a big grin on his face. He followed them at a leisurely
amble.

“
Thank you, Mr. Green,”
Maggie panted when Jubal had yanked her inside the seed store and
she could catch her breath long enough to speak.

“
You’re welcome,” Jubal
grunted.

Four Toes was already in the store. He’d
been considering Maggie’s flower garden while she’d been mooning
around the mercantile.

“
How about some dahlias and
cosmos, Mrs. Bright?” was Four Toes’ greeting. “They’re pretty, and
I think the colors will go together.” Four Toes was soberly
contemplating the pretty illustrations on the flower advertisement
printed up by the seed distributor.

Maggie had been reverently inspecting her
brand-new fan. It was made out of stiff paper, separated by tiny
stick ribs, and folded up tight. The paper was white and it was
decorated with bright flowers.

She looked up at Four Toes’ words, though.
“Flowers?” she whispered in wonder. “You’re buying flower
seeds?”

“
Well, we never got your
flower bed planted on your farm. Jubal’s got room for a dozen
flower beds at his place.”

“
Oh, but, I
can’t—”

Jubal was feeling really, really touchy now,
although he couldn’t have told anybody exactly why.

“
Will you stop saying you
can’t do this and you can’t do that, Mrs. Bright?” he snapped at
her. “We came in and tore up your whole life and then dragged you
away from your home. The least we can do is make your stay at my
place pleasant. You saved my life, for God’s sake. If you don’t
think my life’s worth a few flower seeds, I sure do. If you want
flowers, for God’s sake, shut up and buy some seeds.”

Maggie’s mouth shut with a snap and her eyes
dropped.

Jubal felt like a big bully.

“
Thank you, Mr. Green and
Mr. Smith,” Maggie said humbly.

Four Toes had stared at Jubal with
astonishment, as though his gruff outburst took him by surprise.
But when he heard the quiver in Maggie’s voice, he turned his
attention to her. With one last, puzzled glance at Jubal, he took
her gently by the arm and led her over to look at the pretty flower
poster.

By the time they left the seed store, Maggie
had forgot all about Jubal’s grumpiness. She and Four Toes had
selected seeds that would, with any luck and a good deal of tender
care, produce huge purple and pink dahlias, pink and white cosmos,
and lavender and purple petunias. Maggie’s eyes were bright with
excitement.

Jubal watched her with satisfaction.

“
Annie, we’re going to have
pretty flowers,” she told her daughter in a happy
whisper.

“
Fowers pretty,” said
Annie.

“
I can’t begin to thank you,
Mr. Green,” Maggie said to Jubal shyly.

Her eyes were positively shining at him.
Jubal didn’t guess he needed more thanks than that, but her words
suddenly gave him the excuse he’d been looking for to get her to
accept his next surprise without arguing with him about it.

“
Yes, you can,” he
said.

Maggie sobered up in a second and looked at
him with puzzlement. Oh, Lord. This was it. What she’d been waiting
for. She knew it couldn’t be this easy, just go with him to El Paso
and be taken care of.

“
I’ll do anything I can, Mr.
Green,” she told him somberly. She expected him to demand that she
cook and clean for them while she stayed on his ranch. She had
expected to do that anyway, had meant to offer a long time ago, in
fact, but had been distracted. “What would you like me to
do?”

“
You can come with me,”
Jubal said.

“
Why, certainly, I will.
Where are we going?”

“
To get you some
spectacles.” Jubal spoke the words as though he neither wanted nor
expected any fuss from her.

Maggie, whose head was swimming with all the
new things she had seen today, not to mention the prospect of new
clothes and a flower garden, was slow to comprehend his words. When
she did, she stopped dead in her tracks, stunned.

Jubal’s arm, the one that was healing,
jerked painfully when she stopped so suddenly.

“
Ow!”

“
Spectacles?”

“
Spectacles.” Jubal let go
of Maggie and rubbed his arm. It was throbbing like a son of a gun,
and he wanted to swear but didn’t, out of deference to
Maggie.

“
I’m sorry, Mr. Green,”
Maggie whispered softly. She reached out to rub his arm, too. Her
touch sent a thrill through Jubal that surprised the hell out of
him. “But—but you can’t mean to buy me spectacles.”

“
I can, too,” Jubal snarled.
He didn’t trust that thrill he felt at her touch and jerked his arm
away from it. That hurt it even more.

“
But that’s just too much,
Mr. Green. Spectacles cost a lot of money. I—I can’t accept such a
fine present.”

But Jubal had been prepared for that.

“
Yes you can, Mrs. Bright.
Your eyes are bad. There are people who want me dead, and because
you helped me, they want you dead, too. If you can’t even see the
stars at night, you sure as hell won’t be able to—to protect your
daughter from somebody who wants to kill her. You’ll be in a new
place in unfamiliar country, and the better your eyes are, the
better you’ll be able to stay alive.”

Maggie didn’t say anything for a moment. Her
brain was whirling. Jubal’s words made sense to her, but it didn’t
make any sense at all for him to pay for her eyeglasses.

“
I guess you’re right, Mr.
Green,” she said at last.

“
You’re blamed right I am,”
growled Jubal.

Maggie took a deep breath. “But you still
shouldn’t have to pay the expense for my spectacles. I have plenty
of money since you gave me that reward money for Mr. Jack. I can
pay for them.”

Jubal scowled down at Maggie. He couldn’t
figure out why she was so blamed irritating. She just insisted upon
arguing with him every blessed time he wanted to do something for
her. It annoyed the hell out of him.

“
Blast it, Mrs. Bright, will
you quit fighting with me about it? I’m going to get you some
eyeglasses, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

He yanked on her arm again. Maggie didn’t
want to make a scene on this public street, so she trotted along
beside him. But she decided that, when the critical moment came and
it was time to pay, she would reach into her own handbag and use
her own money. She wouldn’t allow Jubal Green to pay for her
spectacles. That was just too much largesse to accept in one
day.