10th June - After the argument

[Maggie comes from here]

Maggie did not know where she was running, nor did she care. She simply wanted to get away - away from Cotton, away from Captain Padstowe, away from talk about Hakeswill and what he had done to her.

She felt angry. Why couldn't the past be forgotten? Why did everyone have to remember and remind her of it constantly? Why couldn't Cotton understand how she felt? How could he curse and shout at her like that? How could he grab at her and not expect her to be startled? Why did he keep forgetting? Why did she always end up being the one to feel guilty?

She kicked at a large pebble in her path. She wished she had Gabe to talk to about all these things, but of course that was the whole problem. He didn't understand. She wished she had Jem, or her mother, or Martha.

And now her toe was hurting. Stupid shoes; she shouldn't have kicked that stone so hard. She sat down on a rock and pulled angrily at the laces.

Burke was humming slightly under his breath as he walked back towards camp. It was nice still being within easy distance of the river, and he was taking full advantage of being able to do things like fill his canteen as often as he liked. He smiled when he saw Maggie sitting a bit further ahead. Maggie was wonderfully sweet, and he was always pleased to see her.

Noticing the look on her face, however, Burke frowned. Something was certainly not right.

"Hallo, there," he called, coming up Maggie. "Are ye alright, lass?"

Maggie tried to control herself. "Oh, Burke. I just kicked a stone a little too hard."

"Sure ye did," he agreed doubtfully. He moved to sit next to her on the large rock. "Now, what did th' rock do t' offend ye so much?"

In spite of her aggravated state, she smiled at his little joke. "Just got in me way, that's all. How's that arm of yours?"

"Nearly good as new," Burke said, rotating his arm in an exaggerated motion. "See?"

He smiled at her, pleased that she looked less glum. "Now, there's a pretty smile. No need t' let rocks ruin yer day, aye?"

The unhappy look came back to her face, though with more sadness than the previous anger. "I just had an argument with Gabe," she confessed.

Ah. Now that was a bit more of a problem.

"Arguments can be pretty awful," Burke said carefully, not entirely sure what to say. Things like this were a bit outside of his experience. But, he was quite fond of Maggie, and seeing her upset was not something he wanted. "Ye alright?"

"Aye," she answered absently. She thought for a moment, her face troubled. Poor Gabe. He really did try. She knew he was trying. He didn't know all the things that might hurt her. But why couldn't he learn? Why couldn't he think before doing or saying things that upset her?

She had missed him terribly over the past week. But now he was back, and it was not the perfect happiness she had expected, all those days that she had been wishing for his return. But really, how well did she know him? Was it really him that she had fallen in love with? Or had it just been the idea of a protector?

He had sounded so frustrated and angry. And rightly so. She really had brought him nothing but trouble, without even being able to offer the physical comforts that a husband expected from a wife. He had all the burden of a marriage without any of the pleasure.

She had meant it when she said she wished the monster had killed her. That would have been better for everyone.

"He probably wishes he'd never married me," she said in a dull voice.

"Now, lass, I'm sure that can't be right," Burke said, frowning. "And iff'n it is, 'e's th' biggest fool what ever lived. Ye're sweet an' kind, an' ye clearly love 'im, aye? 'Ow could anyone regret marryin' ye?"

He moved a hand to rub comfortingly at Maggie's shoulder. "Folks say all kinds o' thing they don't mean when they're angry." Fighting down a bit of anger of his own that someone would make his friend feel that way, he offered her a small smile. "Could always smack a bit o' sense int' 'is head for ye."

His last comment made her smile in spite of her miserable feelings. By now she could barely remember why they had been shouting at all. Cotton clearly had no patience for her.

"I've brought him heaps of trouble. I think he's just tired of it. And of me."

"Iff'n he's tired, I doubt it's of ye, lass," he told her. "Been a long few weeks for everyone, so it has. Now, 's no excuse for makin' ye so upset. Ain't yer fault things was such a mess. But, might make 'im more like t' yell, aye?"

Which still made him angry. Burke had quite liked Cotton on initial meeting, but he was willing to revise his opinion. The man had better be fair sorry for the current state of things, or Burke would be more than willing to have a chat with him about being kind to lasses.

She tilted her head as she considered it. Yes, that might be the case. She had not thought of it that way before. But Burke was only guessing, and he did not know the trouble she had put her husband through, or the frustrations. "I don't know. Maybe." She wiped a hand across her face as a stray tear escaped.

Tears were not something Burke was good at dealing with, particularly tears from someone he cared for, and he felt a rush of dismay.

"There, there," he said, brow creasing in worry. "Don't cry."

Clearly, the argument had been worse than he had thought, and Burke was at a loss for how to comfort the distraught woman. After a moment's hesitation, he placed a hand over one of hers and asked quietly, "What did he say t' ye?"

She sniffed as she tried to remember their exchange. The whole thing had been stupid, really. It was probably as much her fault as his. "He said..."

He had said God damn you, woman. Or was it damn it? Maggie was quite accustomed to hearing such phrases every day, and curses much more vulgar and coarse. But her mother had been a pious woman, and that was one phrase she had forbidden. Even Maggie's father had refrained from speaking it in the house while her mother was alive. Maggie did not want to repeat it, and now she was suddenly shy about confiding her married arguments to a near stranger, even one as kind as Burke. She did not want to give him the wrong impression about what sort of man Cotton was.

"It doesn't matter what he said. It's me. I can't do anything right." If she had not pulled away when he touched her - if she had not been so skittish about Captain Padstowe... But she was damaged goods, and there was no getting around it.

Now that Cotton was over his initial burst of temper - and that had been for nothing he could name, too! - he just felt wretched. Of course Maggie was nervous and jumpy - anyone would be, in her position.

If something startled a horse, it wasn't the horse's fault, was it? So why couldn't he seem to not get it right where Maggie was concerned? She probably wished he'd never asked her to walk out with him.

He had finished curry-combing Captain Padstowe's horse, and there was nothing else that either officer needed him for right at the moment, so he had gone after Maggie, hoping to find her and to apologise.

And when he finally saw her, she was talking to another Rifleman. He was surprised at the initial feeling of jealousy that surged up, and then he noticed her posture - head down and shoulders slumped.

He had done that to her, made her feel like that. And that knowledge cut deep, stabbing his heart like a knife.

"Maggie," he said quietly, drawing closer. He wanted to apologise to her, to make it right, but he couldn't say what he needed to, not in front of a stranger.

"Gabe!" Maggie sprung guiltily to her feet, though it was not guilt for sitting with another man. She checked her impulse to reach her arms around his waist and instead buried her hands in her apron. "I'm sorry, Gabe, I didn't mean to, and I know that don't make it no better, and I wish I could do better but I can't right now and I'm sorry, and I didn't ought to have yelled at you and I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to give me up."

"Maggie, I..." he began and was cut off by the flow of her words. He looked at her helplessly. "I... No, Maggie." He shook his head. "I... I wish I knew what to do. Everythin' I do is wrong, an' I don't mean for it to be."

Give her up, though? He couldn't do that, not unless...

"Do you... do you want to leave me?" he asked, dreading that the answer might be 'yes'. "A-cause I don't want you to, on'y if you do..." He couldn't finish saying it in case saying it might make it come true.

"I want..." She hung her head miserably and spoke in a barely audible voice. "I want you to be happy. You'd be better off without me. We could break it off and I'd go away so you didn't see me. It would be easy - all we do is jump the broomstick again, other way, or some men even sell their wives, there's no shame in it, and you make a little money. If anybody'd take me. Gabe, I'm sorry."

She turned her back so Burke would not see her crying, and she began to move away so their conversation would not be overheard.

"No!" Cotton surprised himself with the realisation that he did not want Maggie to go away. He knew that already, of course, but to hear her offering like that...

He gave the other Rifleman a quick apologetic shrug, and stepped closer to Maggie. "I don't want you to go away. I want you to be happy. An' I dunno that you goin' away will make you happy, I jus' dunno. Only, I don't want you to go away."

He had no idea what he could do to make any of this better, or why they'd even argued in the first place. The one thing he was sure of was that it had been his fault.

"Maggie, please... Look at me, do."

He was careful to keep his hands by his side. Grasping her arm was what had started all this, after all. It was better not to risk making things worse.

She looked up at him, catching her breath and trembling all over with the effort to contain her crying.

"Maggie, I..." He stopped. Words couldn't say what he needed to. He stepped forwards, as cautious as if she were a skittish, nervous horse, and gently put his arms around her. If she wanted to pull away, he wouldn't tighten the hold against her will.

She could not hold her sobs any longer, and it was a relief to finally cry and be held and to hold him again. Poor Gabe. Poor sweet, gentle, patient, loving Gabe. "I don't know how to do it," she managed to weep into his shoulder.

"Me neither," he admitted, tightening the hold reassuringly, and pressing her head against him, stroking her copper-coloured hair. "You reckon you might like to... to figure it out along of me, though?"

Her breath was coming in short little gasps now, and soon she would have hiccups. "Yes," she answered. "If you're sure - you really want to."