Free One Bright Morning by Alice Duncan Page B

the wall
across from Jubal’s bed for a good two or three minutes until Jubal
was so frustrated he would have hollered at him if he’d had the
energy.
    “ Well?” he finally demanded,
irritated beyond rationality. He chalked his short temper up to his
having been badly wounded. Generally speaking, he was possessed of
an abundance of patience.
    Dan’s face wore a frown of concentration
when he peered down at Jubal.
    “ She’s got a big spirit. Her
spirit’s stronger than her body,” he said at last. That was
all.
    Jubal glared at Dan for a few moments until
he realized his friend didn’t have anything more to add to his
evaluation of the unknown Mrs. Bright. Then Jubal’s glare faded and
was replaced by an expression of resignation.
    He sighed heavily. “Hell, Danny, you’re
talking like a goddamned Indian again,” he said with the barest
hint of a grin.
    Dan looked down at Jubal and relief flooded
his features, as though any lingering doubts about his friend’s
health and possible recovery had just been banished.
    “ I am an Indian,” he
said.
    The two men grinned at each other like a
couple of idiots for a long time before Jubal Green drifted off to
sleep again.
    Maggie finally woke up when the bath water
got cold. She was shivering when she washed her hair, dried
herself, and put on her clean clothes. It felt good to be clean
again, although she was so exhausted that she couldn’t quite keep
her balance when she pushed the makeshift screen aside and stepped
into the kitchen.
    Dan Blue Gully caught her before she hit the
floor when she fainted.
    “ Lordy, ma’am, you’d better
get some rest,” he murmured.
    He carried her into the bedroom and laid her
on the pallet he’d made for her against the wall. Then he went out
to the kitchen and gave Four Toes Smith a few instructions and,
while Maggie slept, the two Indians went to work.
    When Maggie woke up again, it was deep
night. She yawned and stretched and then curled back up and hugged
her pillow. She felt good and wondered why. It had been so long
since she’d felt good that she’d forgot what it was like. She lay
there for another couple of minutes before the events of the past
couple of days sifted through the pleasant fog of well-being that
engulfed her and reclaimed her attention. Then she sat up on her
pallet with a gasp of dismay.
    “ Oh my sweet Lord,” she
breathed.
    She looked wildly around her and couldn’t
figure out exactly where in her house she was. The last thing she
recalled was being in the bathtub. She felt her hair and discovered
that it was dry.
    “ Oh, my land,” she murmured
again. “I must have been asleep for hours and I don’t even know how
I got here. I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”
    She knew she couldn’t be in her bed because,
last she remembered, somebody else was there. When her pulse
stopped hammering in her ears and she had calmed down some, she
took a careful survey of her surroundings.
    It was pretty nearly pitchy black in the
room, but a kerosene lamp, turned very, very low, squatted on the
bedside table and cast its feeble light upon the bulky form
sleeping on her bed. Maggie finally figured out that Dan Blue Gully
must have made her a bed on the floor. She appreciated that.
    “ I guess I needed some
rest,” she commented softly to herself. She wondered how long she
had been sleeping.
    Very carefully, she rose from her pallet and
stepped toward the bed. She guessed she should check on the health
of the invalid she had abandoned.
    A quick stab of guilt shot through her at
that thought, but she tamped it down almost immediately. After all,
she hadn’t abandoned him until help had returned to them. She half
expected to see the hunkered form of Dan Blue Gully sitting on the
chair by the bed, but he wasn’t there.
    Maggie stood beside the bed, stared down at
Jubal Green, and decided that he looked a little better tonight.
She sighed. He was a handsome devil, all right, and she hoped he
made it. It