Read Online One Bright Morning by Alice Duncan - Free Book Online Page B

nurse-maiding
Jubal here, and I want you to clean up and rest. All
right?”
    Maggie stared at Dan numbly and nodded. She
didn’t trust herself to speak. Nobody had ever said she had done
anything superior before in her life. That made her want to cry
even more than thinking she had killed Jubal Green did.
    All at once fear for her daughter shot
through Maggie’s conscious mind, and she very nearly broke down
completely. She had forgot clean about Annie. She realized she must
be a terrible mother to have forgot about her own daughter, and
guilt almost swamped her terror about Annie’s safety.
    “ Mr. Blue Gully, I’m worried
about Annie,” she blurted out in a rush.
    “ Annie, ma’am?”
    Dan had been staring at Jubal Green but at
Maggie’s words, he peered down at her in confusion. Then his face
cleared as though it had been wiped with a wet rag.
    “ Oh, your
daughter.”
    Maggie’s head bobbed up and down; she didn’t
dare speak for fear her voice would crack. She wasn’t sure how much
more of this confusion she would be able to take without falling
down in hysterics.
    “ I saw your daughter last
night, ma’am. She and that screamer lady were walking into a cabin
a mile or so down the road to Lincoln. She looked right
happy.
    Maggie’s knees nearly buckled with relief.
“Thank God,” she whispered. “I was afraid that man got them.”
    Suddenly, another man burst into the house,
and Maggie whirled around with a tiny shriek.
    “ They’s a dead man on the
wood pile,” the new man said.
    Maggie stared at him in fright for only a
second before she realized he must be the second man who had ridden
up behind Dan Blue Gully.
    “ A dead man?” Dan looked
down at Maggie, a question in his eyes.
    “ Ozzie,” whispered Maggie.
“That French Jack person shot him last night, I guess. I don’t know
who else would have done it.”
    Dan Blue Gully shook his head as he stared
at Maggie.
    “ It’s been a bad time for
you, ma’am, ain’t it?” he asked softly.
    Maggie could only nod numbly. It had been a
real bad time, all right.
    “ I’m sorry we brung bad
times on you,” the Indian said.
    Maggie just looked at him. She was too tired
to form a coherent refutation. Besides, she thought numbly, it was
true. They had brought bad times.
    Dan took her gently by arm and led her to
the kitchen chair.
    “ You sit right there, ma’am.
Me and Four Toes will take care of everything.”
    She blinked up at him. “Four Toes?” she
asked in a tiny voice.
    “ Oh, yeah,” said Dan Blue
Gully. “This here’s Four Toes Smith.”
    He gestured toward the second man. Maggie
could now plainly see that he was another Indian. She was too tired
to ask what tribe he originated from and hoped that wasn’t impolite
of her.
    Four Toes Smith nodded at Maggie and tugged
at his hat, which was a greasy, floppy-brimmed model with a
pheasant feather sticking out of the beaded ribbon that encircled
it.
    Maggie nodded back at Four Toes Smith and
sat down as Dan Blue Gully had instructed her to do. She was too
tired and bemused to do anything else.
    Dan looked around the kitchen for a minute,
then slopped up a big bowl of Maggie’s soup. He figured out where
the bread was kept and hacked her off a big piece.
    Then he set that fare before her and said,
“Here, ma’am, you eat this. You need to eat something.”
    Maggie did indeed look as though a strong
wind might just carry her off.
    Dan Blue Gully and Four Toes Smith conferred
for a few minutes, then Four Toes headed out onto the back
porch.
    “ He’s going to fix you a
bath in that tub on the porch ma’am. That will make you feel
better.”
    Maggie was eating. She hadn’t realized how
ravenous she was until she’d had a chance to sit down and think
about something other than keeping Jubal Green and herself alive.
She couldn’t remember ever being so hungry. At the moment, she was
so busy shoveling soup and bread into her mouth that she didn’t ask
the first question that