Text won't follow background image
===

I'm constructing my first site (I've only ever maintained sites or used programs to create them before) from scratch, and I can't seem to get the text to stay on top of the background image without it all going to the left. Here's my HTML:

    <html>
	    <head>
	    	<title>Abbey Court Guest House</title>
	    	<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
	    </head>
	    <body>
		    <div class="header">
		    	<p>About Us | Contact Us</p>
		    </div>
	    </body>
    </html>

And here's the CSS that does vaguely what I want it to, but it aligns everything to the left:

    .header {
    background-image:url('images/header.jpg');
    background-position: center;
    height: 250px;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    color: #73622b;
    width: 1000px;
    text-align: right;
    font-family: "Verdana", "Helvetica", "sans-serif";
    }
Removing the "width: 1000px;" fixes the aligning issue, but pushes the text to the far right. *P.S. "header.jpg" is 1000px wide and 250px tall*. Any ideas on how to fix this?