Read One Bright Morning for Free Online

wasn’t going anywhere; that was for certain. He’d be lucky to
survive.
    Ozzie came back shortly before Dan Blue
Gully left. He barged right in the back door without knocking. Not
that Maggie expected politeness from Ozzie. Still, it always
irritated her that he didn’t knock. She spoke sharply to him when
he lurched into the kitchen.
    “ Will you ever learn to
knock, you useless bum? And you took your sweet time, didn’t you,
Ozzie?”
    Ozzie looked hurt. Ozzie often looked hurt.
That irritated Maggie, too. If he weren’t such a no-good loafer, he
wouldn’t have so much to look hurt about.
    “ Well, now, Miss Maggie, I
told Sadie Phillips you needed help, like you told me.”
    “ You did that, all
right.”
    Sadie and Annie were still keeping each
other company. They were now in Annie’s room where Sadie was
dressing the baby and Annie was laughing.
    Maggie was trying to clean up after the
various operations that been performed in her own bedroom. Jubal
Green was sleeping—or unconscious—in her bed, and she and Dan Blue
Gully had managed to get one of Kenny’s old night shirts over his
head, so he was at least decent.
    She had covered him with two quilts, and
promised Dan that she would watch very carefully for fever and do
precisely what he told her to do in case fever struck. Maggie
decided that anybody who could cure one of her headaches was a
person whose advice was worth following when it came to medical
matters.
    Now, as she washed out rags and bandages and
Ozzie lounged at the kitchen table, Dan Blue Gully was checking his
friend over one last time before he left to search for French
Jack.
    “ Did you find Doc Prichard,
Ozzie?”
    She felt just a tiny bit guilty for sending
Ozzie after a doctor whom she now no longer needed. Then she
decided she had nothing to feel guilty about. After all, she hadn’t
known that an Indian would show up and take over the show when she
sent Ozzie out earlier.
    “ He was passed out in the
saloon.” Ozzie still looked downcast.
    “ Humph. And I suppose you
had to hang around the saloon, waiting for him to wake
up.”
    Maggie’s tone was unmistakable. She thought
both the doctor and Ozzie were worthless, disgusting specimens of
humankind. She was sure Ozzie had spent a good hour or more
guzzling bad whiskey while pretending to wait for the doctor to
rouse himself.
    “ Well, now, Maggie, it were
a long, thirsty ride to town,” whined Ozzie.
    Maggie just eyeballed him with contempt and
continued scrubbing lye soap over the blood stains on the sheet she
held. The water, when she dunked the sheet, turned a deep scarlet.
This Jubal Green, whoever he was, had fighting-red blood, she
thought. It would be a shame if he didn’t make it.
    She glanced over to Ozzie
again and saw that he had turned paper-white and was staring at her
bedroom door. She figured the reaction must be from his first
glimpse of Dan Blue Gully, and thought contemptuously that at least
Sadie had had the cojones to scream. She nodded over at the
doorway.
    “ Mr. Blue Gully, this here’s
my hired hand, Ozzie Plumb. Ozzie, this is Mr. Dan Blue Gully. He’s
a friend of the gunshot man. His name is Jubal Green.”
    Ozzie just stared at Dan Blue Gully. Maggie
noted that he trembled and decided that was just like him. She
supposed if the Indian had been hostile, Ozzie would have
fainted.
    “ He work for you?” Dan’s
head jerked toward Ozzie.
    A loud sniff accompanied Maggie’s reply.
“He’s supposed to.”
    Dan nodded. “You need help here,” was all he
said to her.
    Then he looked hard at Ozzie. His eyes
narrowed slightly and he pointed a long, brown finger at him.
    “ You help her,” he said. His
voice held no more inflection than it usually did, which meant it
was fairly flat, but Ozzie shrank back into his chair. He looked as
though he might throw up.
    “ Yessir,” he
whimpered.
    Maggie was impressed. There was a lot more
to this Indian than met the eye. Which reminded her of something.
She