One Bright Morning (49 page)

Kenny would have, if he’d
had any money
, she reminded herself a
little guiltily. Then she realized that it was all right; Kenny
wouldn’t mind that she was happy now. She’d make sure of that when
she returned to their farm. Some day.

Connie and Henry, Jr., seemed to be
suffering from the same malady that had been plaguing Sammy
Napolitano’s little army.

“
Oh, that’s too bad.” Maggie
didn’t like the idea of having a nice picnic on the desert without
taking Connie and little Henry along. It didn’t seem fair
somehow.

“
You just go along with
you,” Beula told her. “You can have another picnic another day and
take my kids along then. They both know you’d take them today if
you could. Life isn’t always fair you know, Maggie. The sooner they
learn that, the better.”

Although Maggie agreed wholeheartedly with
Beula that life wasn’t always fair, she had serious doubts about
whether children needed be initiated into that sad fact at such a
tender age. She didn’t argue with Beula, though. She guessed people
just believed things according to what life had dealt them, and
Maggie figured that life had been pretty kind to Beula Todd.

Nevertheless, since Maggie’s picnic basket
was already packed, Annie was outfitted in her sturdy new shoes and
pretty checked sunbonnet, she and Four Toes set out on the wagon to
go exploring. Two of Jubal’s guards came along to ride shotgun.

They weren’t the two men who usually
accompanied Maggie whenever she and Four Toes or Jubal went out
wandering. Those men were victims of the mysterious stomach ailment
that seemed to be making its way through the ranch denizens. They
were hand-picked by Sammy Napolitano, though, so they must be
capable. Maggie couldn’t account for the feeling of uneasiness that
assailed her when she observed the two new men.

They look rough, she thought. Then she
decided she was being fanciful. These men were hired to be rough.
Jubal had hired a whole band of rough men to protect the ranch.

Maggie also knew that it was necessary to
have guards when one went away from the ranch house, but it still
made her uncomfortable. Every now and then, when she was working in
the house, or digging in the garden, or reading in the patio, she
could forget about the threat that Prometheus Mulrooney posed to
everything she loved. But with two armed men riding alongside the
wagon, that blissful forgetfulness was impossible. She was already
worried today for some reason; those armed men, especially since
she didn’t know them, just made her feel more skittish. She chalked
her uneasiness up to her impending monthly flux.

“
We’re going on a picnic,
Annie,” Maggie told her daughter.

“
We going pic-ic,” Annie
told the gourd dolly she held hugged to her chest.

Four Toes chuckled and flicked the reins.
The two mules jerked the wagon forward and ambled into a sluggish
walk. The rifle Four Toes always carried with him lay on the floor
at his feet, in easy reach in case of any danger.

Maggie tried to keep her mind on their
conversation as the mules bumped the wagon along. Four Toes was
talking to her about plants. But for some reason, Maggie kept
looking back at the ranch today. She was loath to watch it getting
smaller and smaller as they drove away from it.

The early June day was pleasant. Recent
rains had blessed the normally dry desert so that it was greener
than usual. Wild flowers bloomed in clumps of yellow and purple.
This time, since she wore her new spectacles, Maggie could discern
the tiny lavender blooms that she hadn’t been able to see on the
ride from her farm to El Paso. Her heart constricted at the memory,
and she mentally uttered a little prayer of thanks for her husband
and for whatever kind spirit had brought him to her door. She
pointed the purple flowers out to her daughter now.

When she looked over her shoulder again, she
felt a terrible uneasiness as she realized they were so far away
from the ranch that she couldn’t see it any longer. She shook her
head, wondering what the problem was. Her head just seemed to be
stuffed full of foreboding.

“
Maggie, are you all right?”
Four Toes’ voice penetrated Maggie’s thick thoughts and made her
jump.

“
Oh, I’m sorry, Four Toes. I
don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel funny.”

He looked at her curiously. “What do you
mean by ‘funny’?”

“
Oh, I don’t know.” Maggie
sighed. “You’ll think I’m being stupid. I feel—I feel—I’m worried.
I guess that’s what it is. And I don’t know why.”

Four Toes eyed her with concern. “Anything
in particular you’re worried about?”

Maggie shook her head. “No. There’s nothing.
It’s probably just stupid.” She tried to smile at him, but only
achieved a crooked grimace.

“
Maybe we ought to go back,”
said Four Toes. “I don’t scoff at premonitions, Maggie. People
don’t usually feel uneasy for no reason, even if they can’t put
their finger on what the reason is.”

Maggie did smile then. “Do you really think
so? I feel so silly for thinking we’d be safer back on the ranch.
There’s just something about being away from it that makes me
nervous today.”

Four Toes pulled up on the mules. “We’re
going back,” he announced. “We can picnic in the patio.”

The two guards had ridden up next to the
wagon.

“
What’s going on?” asked one
of them.

He was a surly-looking man with longish
black hair and a droopy black mustache. Maggie was sure she was
being silly for the revulsion she felt when she eyed the man, since
Sammy Napolitano never hired anybody who didn’t have good
references. She peered at the second guard, a small fellow with
light brown hair and milky blue eyes, and realized she didn’t feel
any better about him. It must just be her monthly.

“
We’re heading back to Green
Valley,” Four Toes told the two guards.

The dark-haired man looked across Four Toes
and Maggie to the light-haired man. Maggie saw him give what she
thought was a slight nod and suddenly her heart clutched with fear.
When she saw the light-haired man nod back, she frowned.

“
I thought you were going on
a picnic,” the dark-haired man said. He sounded as though he were
trying to be pleasant.

“
We were, but we changed our
minds.” It was Maggie this time. Her voice was hard and the sharp
edge to her words surprised her.

She noticed that Four Toes’ eyes had
narrowed, and her fear surged higher.

“
Mrs. Green wants to go back
to the ranch now, so we’re going,” Four Toes said. He raised the
reins to slap the mules’ backs.

“
I don’t think that’s a good
idea,” said the black-haired man.

With one fluid movement, Four Toes had
picked up the rifle and lifted it to his shoulder. But when he saw
the black-haired man’s gun, cocked, and aimed at his chest, the
Indian slowly lowered the gun.

“
Damn,” he whispered. Maggie
heard the frustration and defeat in the word, and she squeezed
Annie tight.

Annie had nearly fallen asleep while Maggie
and Four Toes had been talking, but with her mother’s convulsive
hug, her big brown eyes flew open. She rubbed her eyes with a tiny
fist, looked at the dark-haired man, and frowned.

“
Mama, dat man has a gun,”
she said. She obviously did not approve.

“
Shhh. I know it, baby.”
Maggie didn’t want to do anything that might get her daughter hurt.
She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she suspected the
unthinkable: that Jubal’s security forces had been breached and
these men were traitors. She got mad.

“
Why are you pointing that
gun at us?” she demanded. “My husband employs you to protect us,
not point guns at us.”

The black-haired man spit a jaw-full of
tobacco juice into the desert and Maggie watched dust puff up
around it. It seemed to her that things were happening very
slowly.

“
He don’t pay as good as
Mulrooney, though, ma’am,” the black-haired man said with a yellow,
rather apologetic, grin.

“
You traitors.” Maggie’s
furious whisper cut through the warm June air. “You damned
traitors.”

“
I guess you got a right to
call us anything you want to, ma’am. But we still got to take you
to Mulrooney’s train.”

“
Train? I thought he was in
El Paso.”

“
Not no more he ain’t. When
he heard your man and that Injun was headin’ to El Paso today, he
got on his train. We’re goin’ to take you and meet him along the
way.”

“
I’m not going anywhere with
you,” Maggie said firmly. She was holding Annie so tightly, that
the little girl began to whimper. Annie was scared, too.

“
I’m afraid you got no
choice, Mrs. Green,” the man said.

Maggie glared at the man and hate radiated
from every pore of her body. “I’ve never seen a real, live traitor
before. You’re a hateful man, mister, you and your friend.”

“
Oh, we ain’t friends,
ma’am, just employees.”

Maggie shook her head. She couldn’t think of
anything foul enough to say to the two men.

“
You’d better just go along
with them, Maggie.”

Maggie stared at Four Toes in horror.

“
Four Toes Smith, we can’t
just go with them,” she cried. “They’ll use us as hostages to lure
Jubal to that horrid man. I’d sooner die than lure my husband to
his death.”

The look Four Toes gave Maggie then stopped
her words and dried her mouth and made her heart begin to thud with
a funereal dread.

“
It isn’t ‘us’ they want,
Maggie. It’s you. I’m afraid this is it for me.” Four Toes looked
at her kindly, as if he knew his words would make her
cry.

He was right. Maggie’s mouth dropped open
and she couldn’t talk. Tears pooled in her blue eyes until the
irises looked like sapphires glinting in a brook.

“
Four Toes,” she gasped in
horror. “You can’t mean—”

The Indian put a brown hand on her cheek.
Then he stroked little Annie’s soft curls.

“
I don’t want to scare
Annie, Maggie. Please don’t screech or anything. This is all right.
You know, I grew up with Jubal and Dan. They raised me. But Dan
taught me enough about being an Apache that I know one or two
things. These men are nothing. I know Jubal and Dan will rescue
you. They’ll get Mulrooney. I feel it in my gut. I knew I wasn’t
going to live very long. It’s just something that I grew up
knowing. It’s all right, Maggie.”

Four Toes seemed to be more concerned about
the tears that were now flowing freely down Maggie’s cheeks than he
was about his own destiny. “It’s all right, Maggie. Really. I’ve
had a good life, thanks to Jubal and Dan. As my people say, it’s a
good day to die. The main thing is not to frighten Annie.”

Maggie nodded numbly. She couldn’t stop her
tears. Little Annie was beginning to cry, too, because her mama was
crying and Four Toes seemed so somber, and those bad men were
pointing guns at them.

“
Better come with me,
Injun.” Those were the first words the light-haired man had spoken
since guns were drawn. They weren’t spoken unkindly.

Four Toes leaned over and kissed Annie. “I
love you, Annie,” he said. Then he kissed Maggie on her
tear-drenched cheek. “Take care of Jubal and Dan for me, Maggie.
They’re my brothers.”

Maggie was shaking her head now. “You can’t
just go off with that man, Four Toes. You can’t.” Her voice was an
incredulous, miserable whisper.

Four Toes shrugged and grinned ruefully.
“Got no choice, Maggie. Only gun I got is that rifle,” he pointed
at the floor of the wagon. “I can’t risk getting you and Annie
hurt.” He shook his head sadly. “We lost this one, Maggie.”

“
Oh, my God,” Maggie
whispered. “Oh, my God.”

She watched as the black-haired man
dismounted and tied his horse to the wagon. Then he got into the
driver’s seat and whipped up the mules.

Maggie lurched off her seat, but the
black-haired man shoved her, hard, back onto it. Her glasses flew
off of her face and landed on the desert floor. Maggie could just
barely see them: two bright circles of glass reflecting the sun.
Her stomach lurched.

She looked over her shoulder as they drove
off. Four Toes smiled at her, and she knew her heart was breaking.
He waved at Annie.

“
Bye-bye, Annie,” he
called.

“
Bye, Fo Toe,” Annie said
back. She sounded puzzled. Then she turned to her mother. “Why Fo
Toe stay der, Mama?”

But Maggie couldn’t answer her daughter’s
question. Her throat was tight and aching, and her tears would have
drowned any words she might have spoken. She just shook her head
and sobbed.

The two men at least spared Annie and Maggie
the sight of Four Toes’ murder. The light-haired man and Four Toes
were out of sight by the time Maggie heard the sound of one
far-away gunshot. It sounded muffled, as though it had to travel
over many lifetimes to reach her ears. She couldn’t stop the ragged
cry of grief that tore from her throat.

“
How could you? How could
you? How could you?” she asked the black-haired man, over and over.
She sobbed into her baby’s pretty bonnet.

“
It’s not personal, ma’am,”
the black-haired man told her. He sounded just a little bit sorry
about it all.

“
Not personal?” The words
stumbled out of Maggie’s throat thick and sad.

Maggie remembered from what seemed like a
century ago Dan Blue Gully’s words as he knelt beside her in the
kitchen of her farm and tried to calm her down. He told her then it
wasn’t personal. Maggie knew that she’d never understand as long as
she lived why this had to happen. It was the most personal thing
she’d ever experienced.