One Bright Morning (46 page)

Maggie blushed and smiled up at him. “Mrs.
Green,” she sighed. “It sounds so strange to me.”

Jubal was surprised at how wonderful he felt
when he looked down into her pretty blue eyes and realized she was
his. Now and forever, she was his. His wife. His Maggie. His hand
closed over hers where she held his arm.

“
I love you, Maggie,” he
whispered into her ear.

Mr. Whitney seemed pleased when they told
him their news. “Why, congratulations, Mr. Green. It’s a shame your
parents can’t be here to meet your bride.”

Jubal’s smile soured a little bit. “Yeah,”
was all he said.

Mr. Whitney seemed to take special care when
he tested the fit of Maggie’s eyeglasses. The wire branches tucked
snugly behind her ears. Jubal was afraid they’d hurt her, but she
assured him they didn’t. Still, he commanded Mr. Whitney to be
absolutely certain that his wife’s tender ears wouldn’t be pinched
by the wires.

“
That’s why we put rubber
tips on them, Mr. Green. See?” Mr. Whitney held up the spectacles
with a smile that told Maggie he wasn’t offended by Jubal’s
concern.

“
Well, all right.” Jubal
bestowed a fierce frown upon him to let him know that he’d be held
personally accountable if Maggie’s ears began to hurt.

Maggie thought her heart might just burst
when she stepped out of the optician’s store with her new
spectacles perched upon her nose. She could see. She looked at the
town and then she looked at her ring and then she looked at her
husband.

Jubal eyed her with concern. “Don’t go to
crying on me, Maggie. Not here on the street.”

“
I won’t, Jubal. I
promise.”

And she looked around some more. She was
surprised at how scruffy the place looked now that she could see
it. Before, all of life’s rough, ragged edges had sort of blurred
together softly. Now she could see every scarred board, every filmy
window, every bullet-pocked wall in the rough frontier town. It was
beautiful. She loved it all. She didn’t allow the painful thought
that she would never be able to clearly see Bright’s Farm take root
and spoil her mood.

She was squeezing Jubal’s arm tightly as she
peered around, and Jubal was hard-pressed to keep from laughing in
delight. His Maggie. His little wife.

She only came up to his shoulder anyway, and
even though she wasn’t as bone-thin as she’d been when he’d first
collapsed into her life, she was still small. Her shiny, ripe-wheat
hair was knotted up on top of her head and she had an absurd little
flowered hat pinned to the knot. Her wire-rimmed spectacles perched
upon her pretty freckled nose so sweetly that he wanted to kiss the
tip of that precious nose.

Maggie’s eyes swept the town before her once
more and when she looked up at Jubal, she was positively
beaming.

“
Oh, Jubal, it’s all so
wonderful.”

“
Good.”

An expression of concern suddenly crossed
her face. “Do I look funny, Jubal? Tell me if I look funny. I don’t
want you to think I look funny.”

Jubal wanted to pick her up and swing her
around, she was such a darling. “You look beautiful, Maggie. You’re
perfect.”

“
Oh, I’m not,” Maggie cried
in delight. She blushed up rosily and smiled with
embarrassment.

They spent a long time in Garza’s. Maggie
was so thrilled at being able to see for the first time since she
could remember, that she spent a lot of time just looking at
things.

Jubal didn’t mind. In fact, he was so
pleased with himself, her, the day, and life in general that he
couldn’t stop smiling. He just let her roam. Any time it looked as
though she especially liked something, he bought it for her. He
didn’t let her know that, of course, or she would have objected. He
just motioned to a clerk, who gladly followed the couple on their
rounds through the store, toting the items Jubal pointed out over
to a counter, and keeping a running tally of the expenses.

Jubal understood that fairy story now, the
one about the prince and the beggar maid. Not, he reminded himself
firmly, that Maggie was anything at all like a beggar maid. Far
from it. His little Maggie was as tough as uncooked grits and he
loved her to death. Still, it felt so good to be able to buy her
things that he wasn’t about to deny himself the pleasure.

As they meandered about the huge store,
Jubal saw something that struck him as exactly what Maggie needed.
It hit him like a flash, and the thought of it both pleased him and
made his heart ache a little bit. But he knew it would make Maggie
happy, and that’s what counted now. He picked it up, but this one
item he didn’t hand to the clerk.

By the time they were ready to leave, Jubal
made an excuse to leave Maggie for a moment. He left his wife
mulling over fabrics while he paid for everything. Then he tucked
that one particular item into his shirt pocket and arranged with
the clerk to have the rest of his surreptitious pile of goods sent
to his ranch. When he rejoined Maggie, he was feeling like the cat
in the cream pot.

“
Your patio is going to look
so pretty, Jubal Green,” Maggie told him with excitement quivering
in her voice, as they exited the store.

She was clutching a brown parcel full of
green calico that Jubal had forced her to buy because she liked it.
She planned to make dresses for Annie and Connie Todd with it. She
thought the green would look pretty with Connie’s red hair.

“
It’s our patio now, Mrs.
Green,” he reminded her.

Maggie glanced up at him with such love that
he nearly keeled over under the force of it. “That’s right, it is,”
she breathed happily.

Mr. and Mrs. Green shared a beautiful dinner
at their hotel. Jubal ordered a bottle of iced champagne.

“
I’ve never had champagne
before,” Maggie confessed.

Somehow that didn’t surprise Jubal any.

“
To us, Mrs. Green.” He
tipped his glass toward his wife and she clinked hers to
his.

“
It tickles,” she announced
with a giggle.

Jubal only smiled at her. Maggie had left
her spectacles in the hotel room because she wanted to look pretty
for him, and the soft candle light in the restaurant was dancing in
her blue eyes. The flickering flames picked up accents from the
flocked crimson wallpaper and whispered them over her face until
she was bathed in a soft rosy glow, and Jubal didn’t think he’d
ever seen anyone as lovely as his new bride was this evening. And
her loveliness had nothing to do with the presence or absence of
spectacles.

She was all he’d ever wanted, and that
knowledge hit him like a punch in the gut. Maggie was all the
softness and goodness and love he’d never had, and he only now
realized how much he needed it. He shook his head with the wonder
of it all.

“
Are you happy, Maggie?” he
asked softly.

“
Oh, yes, Jubal. Thank
you.”

“
So am I.”

Jubal had been saving his next surprise, the
surprise he had found in Garza’s. He decided this was the time, in
the soft light of the evening candles and their love. A little
clumsily, he reached into his breast pocket, hauled out a little
box, and handed it to Maggie.

“
What’s this,
Jubal?”

Maggie had never been given so many things
in her life, and she felt funny about it. Still, she couldn’t stop
the flush of pleasure that pinked her cheeks.

“
Open it, Maggie. It’s for
you.” Jubal felt silly after he’d said that. Who else could it be
for?

So Maggie did as he commanded, opened the
tiny box, and peered at the slender golden chain that lay on its
velvet bed. Then she looked up at Jubal, curiosity making her eyes
shine.

“
It’s lovely, Jubal.” She
wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with it.

Jubal cleared his throat. “I thought you
could put your old ring on it and wear it around your neck,
Maggie.”

“
Oh, Jubal.” Maggie couldn’t
whisper more than those two words because her throat closed up with
emotion. Her fingers trembled when she picked up the chain and
slipped Kenny Bright’s ring—the ring she had tucked into the pocket
of her evening dress—onto it.

Jubal felt awkward when he pushed his chair
back and surged to his feet, but he wanted to clasp the chain
around her neck.

“
Here, Maggie,” he said with
gruff emotion. “Let me.”

Maggie was embarrassed at the two tears that
trickled down her cheeks. She tried to wipe them with her napkin
before Jubal could catch her crying yet again.

“
Thank you so much, Jubal,”
she breathed.

His fingers were warm on her shoulders as he
clasped the chain and she instinctively brushed her cheek against
the back of his hand.

“
I’m sorry about your farm,
Maggie,” Jubal whispered into her hair before he returned to his
chair.

Maggie’s heart clutched in a flinch of pain
that lasted only an instant. Her farm. She still needed to go back
to her farm. The smile she gave him was wistful.

“
Well, I have you now,
Jubal,” she said. “I have you and Annie. I guess I don’t need that
old farm anymore.” She fingered her golden chain adorned with
Kenny’s ring and smiled at him with so much love that Jubal felt an
unfamiliar sting behind his own eyes. For a minute the appalling
thought that he might burst into tears assailed him. He didn’t,
though.

Instead, when their wedding meal was over,
he took his wife upstairs and they consummated their marriage with
sweet and tender passion. Jubal loved Maggie until she thought she
was going to shatter into a million pieces with the splendor of it.
Jubal was sure he’d never walk again.

“
I love you, Maggie Green,”
he whispered as they cuddled into sleep.

“
I love you, too,
Jubal.”

# # #

“
I wish there was something
we could do about it, Mr. Pelch,” said Ferrett miserably. He chewed
on his fingernails and looked as though he were about to
cry.

“
So do I, Mr. Ferrett,”
whispered Pelch. “But if we send a warning, we’re sure to be found
out. You know we can’t do anything without that devil finding out
about it.”

Ferrett shook his head sadly. “That’s so,
Mr. Pelch.”

The two men sat in silence and listened to
the chugging rumble of the train as it sped through the night away
from the New Mexico Territory on its way to the State of Texas.
They would be in El Paso the following day.

“
I feel like a murderer, Mr.
Ferrett,” murmured Pelch.

“
So do I, Mr. Pelch,”
muttered Ferrett.

“
If there were only some way
we could warn them,” cried Pelch in an agony of
frustration.

Ferrett seemed to be barely holding his
tears in check.

“
How many saw blades did we
buy, Mr. Pelch?” he asked.

“
Fifteen, Mr.
Ferrett.”

“
And how many do we have
left?”

“
Twelve.”

Ferrett sighed. “I wish we could see some
progress, Mr. Pelch,” he breathed.

“
So do I, Mr. Ferrett. So do
I.”

Chapter Nineteen

The wagon full of Jubal’s gifts for Maggie,
as well as a note from him telling his ranch friends about their
marriage, arrived at the ranch the day before Maggie and Jubal did.
When they got home, Maggie was nearly overwhelmed with the greeting
they received.

Beula and Cod Fish Todd stood at the ranch
gate, with little Connie and Henry, Jr., flanking them. Beula held
Annie in her arms. Even the children were spanking clean. Beula had
scrubbed their freckled faces until they gleamed in the afternoon
sunlight.

Dan Blue Gully and Four Toes Smith were
dressed in identical blue suits with identical black string ties.
Julio Mendez, the wrangler, wore clean denim trousers over his
lean, bowed legs, and even old Jesus Chavez had dressed for the
occasion, in loose-fitting, all-white cotton trousers and shirt
with a colorful serape thrown over his shoulders.

Sammy Napolitano looked elegant in his black
suit and hat. His security forces, those who weren’t out on the
range guarding the ranch, were lined up in a double row beside him.
They stood at attention with their rifles held at their sides and
looked very well-organized and official.

Garza’s mercantile wagon sat like a load of
treasure beside the gate, awaiting the arrival of Mr. and Mrs.
Jubal Green.

When Jubal’s own wagon pulled into view, the
cheering started, and it didn’t stop until Jubal had reined the
mules to a stop in front of the hollering throng. He looked
frightfully abashed. Maggie was blushing. Her new eyeglasses
twinkled in the sunlight and seemed to fascinate Annie when Beula
handed her up to her mother.

“
All right, what’s going on?
Who’s doing the work if you all are standing around out here?”
Jubal tried to sound grumpy, but he didn’t quite
succeed.

Dan, Four Toes, and Beula only laughed.

“
I swear, I didn’t think
that man would ever fall, but now it looks as though he’s taken
about the biggest tumble I’ve ever seen,” said Dan with a huge grin
to the company in general. He walked up to the wagon and all but
pulled Jubal out of it, shook his hand so hard that Jubal flinched,
and then he hugged him.

“
Take it easy, Danny. I’m a
wounded man.”

“
Like hell.” Dan turned from
his friend to help Maggie out of the wagon.

“
Congratulations, Mrs.
Green,” he said with a big smile.