Maude March on the Run!

by Audrey Couloumbis

  As for the buyer, I noticed a line of dirt under his finger-nails. This didn't fit with his clothing, which could have cost more than the horse he had in mind.

  The business didn't suffer—Uncle Arlen had been right about that much—and I was sorry he wasn't here to see the cash box overflowing.

  There had been one sour note to the day. When Marion and me went over to George Ray's to eat, Beef rented out Silver Dollar with a little rig. It didn't surprise me to learn the sharp-looking fellow had come back to strike this deal.

  The rig was meant to be rented, along with a horse to pull it, that part was fine. But Uncle Arlen would never have put his favorite horse in the traces.

  Marion swore over it up and down.

  “Why, then, ain't Arlen riding that horse, if it's his best?” Beef said to me.

  “He meant to trade horses all along the way,” I said, “to stay on a fresh one.”

  After a bit, Marion calmed down. “I'm feeling the weight of my responsibilities,” he said to Beef, and my breath caught. “But anyone could have done it.”

  Beef said, “I know it.”

  “You don't have to worry about me and Maude,” I said, once Beef had gone back to the anvil.

  Marion looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  “We don't want to be a heavy responsibility,” I said, and because he appeared to take offense, I steered away to another subject. “I think it grates on Maude that she isn't her own boss.”

  “I don't know anyone more their own boss,” he said. “She has George Ray bent over backwards to get her to bake a pan of cookies.”

  “It ain't the same thing.” I knew this was true, but the difference was hard to put into words.

  I hardly had a minute all day to take in the fact of Uncle Arlen having gone west that morning. To let it sink in that he was not coming home with us that night.

  When Maude took me over to George Ray's for supper, I said, “I don't have an appetite.”

  Sounding like Aunt Ruthie, Maude said, “Eat up. I plucked the chickens this morning. You won't find fresher food being served anywhere in the city than right here.”

  I did eat, but I also thought of Uncle Arlen needing a better horse and coming back because he wanted only his own stock, such as Silver Dollar or that big sorrel Maude rode. I didn't really want a lame horse to befall my uncle; it was just Independence didn't feel so much like home without him.

  Something else had been at the back of my mind all day, and I mulled it over now. I didn't like to be childish, but I wanted to hear myself counted Macdougal's equal.

  I felt in my pocket for the copy of Uncle Arlen's map.

  “We should have gone with him,” Maude said, pushing her clean plate away. “I'm a better shot than he is any day.”

  “I'm going to tie my ankle to yours while we sleep,” I said, for I didn't care to get left behind twice in the same day.

  She offered a flirty smile. “I didn't know you for such a sentimental type.”

  “Don't go without me,” I said. “I want your word on it.”

  “I swear it on my fingertips,” she said, and kissed each of them on her right hand.

  We didn't go home, but back to the livery, where Maude asked Marion to play a game of checkers.

  To keep my spirits up, she gave me a dime out of her waist-band and sent me over to Mr. Palmer's store. This was unusual generous of Maude, who didn't care for dimers, and who could hold tighter to a penny than Aunt Ruthie ever did.

  I purchased that latest in the adventures of Powder Keg McCarthy, a soldier who'd found himself at loose ends once the war was over. I bought some pretty red-and-white candy sticks for Maude.

  Maude took the candy gladly. While she and Marion played checkers under the brass Rochester lamp that hung from a beam, the sharp sweetness of peppermint brightened the livery air. I sat down to read by the lamplight and let their voices fade from my notice.

  It so happened Keg was in Kansas, hired to protect a small town from some local rowdies. They didn't sound a smart bunch, the townspeople, that is, always fighting over who had the best hiding place or falling out of the barn loft or wandering off alone.

  But Keg got the women and children together in the church, which was the nearest thing to a fort they had, and told them to ring the church bell if the rowdies showed up.

  “Sallie, it's time to go home.” Maude was sliding the checkers into the box.

  I helped Marion put feed bags on a few horses that were staying the night; eighteen more of them than we had stalls for.

  “Your uncle didn't count on us having more horses than stalls,” he said. “I'm going to hunker down against the wall out there and make sure none of those nags go missing from the corral before morning. Or at least we're paid for our services before they do.”

  I said, “I know what we can do—”

  “You and Maude can't sleep in the loft,” Marion said.

  SEVEN

  THIS NOTION TOOK HOLD OF ME. I KEPT WONDERING about me and Maude following Uncle Arlen by train out there to Colorado Territory. C.T., folks called it. If that letter came, making Maude a free woman, we could read it when we got back.

  As things worked out, I had reason to look again at my copy of the map only two days later. Maude came across the street from George Ray's, bringing a jar of hot bean soup for the midday meal.

  The day had been cloudy and oddly chill for April, and I pressed my fingers against the jar. “Sit with us,” Marion said to Maude.

  “Not today, I can't,” she said. “It's busy as a hive over there. They made up their minds to hang Black Hankie tomorrow.”

  A boy came in then, bearing another message from Macdougal. He was a boy I'd been forced to whomp to cut down on his remarks about my name. One good thing about being a boy is never having to worry over being liked. One good whomp and everybody likes you fine.

  “‘Sfer Arlen Waters,” he said.

  Maude put her hand out, and he gave it over, never turning a hair upon hearing my sister bore a boy's name.

  She opened the fold of paper and read aloud:

  TOO LATE FOR ME STOP THEY HAVE THIS DAY STAMPEDED MY CATTLE SHOT MY FATHER BURNED DOWN THE BARN STOLEN MY HORSE AND KILLED MY DOG STOP I AM NIGH TO GIVING UP STOP MACDOUGAL

  I grabbed the telegram and read it for myself. “Who are they?” I didn't like to think of Uncle Arlen having to face them.

  Maude dropped to sit on a hay bale as if all her strength had left her. “Too late? Does that mean Mr. Macdougal wanted to stop Uncle Arlen from coming?”

  “I have to go out there,” Marion said. “Your uncle was expecting one more man to fight on their side and that man's been shot.”

  “We all have to go out there,” Maude said.

  “I don't know what I'm riding into,” Marion said. “I'm not about to drag you girls into it.”

  “I am tired to death of being called ‚you girls,'” I said to him. “It's only to kill the argument we have that anyone ever says it.”

  “Sallie's right,” Maude said. “We're as capable as boys.”

  “More capable,” I said, thinking of some of the boys I'd met thereabouts. They tended to look scruffy but could not necessarily hold their own in a scuffle. I had easily whomped a couple of them for speaking too admiringly of my sister. This would've embarrassed them a great deal more had they known they were fighting a girl.

  “Your uncle would never forgive me if I took you along with me,” Marion said.

  “There is that,” Maude said.

  “Maude! Are we just to sit here like ticks on a cow while Uncle Arlen rides to a sorry fate?”

  “Now, Sallie, don't take on like that,” Marion said. “His fate isn't something you could change, even if you did catch up to him.”

  In her most outraged tones, Maude said, “You do expect us to sit here and wait like ticks on a cow! What kind of females do you take us for?”

  “Now, Maude—”

  “Don't you use that coddling tone with
me,” she said. “Sallie and I are making ready to ride. I'm going over to George Ray's to collect three days' pay.”

  I said, “I'll get our horses saddled.”

  Maude hurried outside to dash through a break in the rough stream of horses and wagons. I climbed to the loft.

  I didn't have to look into my sack to know it held a tin cup, a pot, a long-handled spoon, my gun kit, a box of cartridges that were a match to Marion's gun, half a wedge of matches, my compass, my pouch with a few dollars in it, and an empty canteen. I checked this cache nearly every day, sometimes adding to the sum in the pouch, more often taking money to buy a dimer. Saving was not in my nature.

  I threw the loop of the canteen over my head and climbed down.

  “I guess somebody better tell Beef he's on his own,” Marion said. He headed back toward the anvil. I took this to mean he would be coming with me and Maude.

  These last words were no sooner spoken than a shot rang out across the street, lifting bits of the building's roof shakes into the air.

  Horses startled.

  I yelled, “Maude!”

  Pedestrians scattered like pebbles.

  EIGHT

  EVERY LIVING THING IN THE VICINITY HAD JUMPED AT the shot, and all up and down the street, horses were prancing, circling, trying to unseat their riders.

  I ran outside, only to have Marion yank me back by my shirt collar.

  “Don't go running over there, Sallie.”

  “My sister,” I cried, near wild. “Maude!”

  She came out of the door across the street, her arms pulled behind her, a burly man pushing her ahead of him. My head swam at the sight; I might could have fainted. He was the law, I had no doubt.

  Maude's face looked burned from the sun, but I knew better. It was hard not to care when people you talked to every day watched you get arrested.

  I drew breath to yell again, but Marion put a hand over my mouth and hauled me back into the dim of the livery. From there we watched the surge of the midday dinner crowd as they spilled into the street, making Maude the head of her own parade.

  Behind us, the anvil rang like a warning bell come late.

  “Marion,” I said behind his hand, and he loosened me somewhat. “What will we do?”

  “I'm thinking, Sallie.”

  “Well, what are you thinking?”

  “Saddle me a horse.” He hurried off after the crowd following Maude.

  I was shaking as I brought out Marion's horse and mine, the only horse that belonged to me and Maude free and clear. By the time I had those horses tied to a rail so I could throw a saddle on them, the shaking had left me and I was thinking.

  I brought out the horse Uncle Arlen let Maude ride, the big sorrel with a blaze on its face. Most of the lawmen who came to town for Black Hankie's trial were still in town. It didn't take much of a leap for me to figure on those fellows agreeing to hang my sister just as quick. Save themselves another trip.

  There was no question of leaving her in there.

  Beef came to the front of the barn, wondering what the gunshot meant. “You all going for a ride?” he said, seeing what I was about.

  He had to give me a hand with the saddles. The horses weren't bothered by gunshots when we rode out to hunt, but they had been in the stalls all morning and so were in high spirits as well as somewhat startled.

  “I couldn't stop in the midst of fixing that plow blade,” Beef said, still talking about the gunshot, “but it sure got my curiosity up.”

  “Probably some fellow working off a drink or two,” I said to him. He was a sweet fellow, and I didn't like to lie to him. I didn't care to tell him Maude had been arrested. He would find out sooner or later, but later was better.

  I hoped he wouldn't think too poorly of us for keeping our secrets. He'd liked Maude a great deal.

  “Where did Marion go?”

  “To get Maude,” I said. “We've been meaning to tell you. We're planning to follow Uncle Arlen.”

  “There's a good idea,” Beef said. “I didn't want to say nothing, but I'm afraid Arlen used up a cat's nine lives on his last trip.”

  As we saddled the horses, I said, “Should anyone come looking for Marion or me, don't tell them which direction we took. If they ask after Uncle Arlen, say he told you he wanted to see his sister, Ruthie, back east.”

  “How long ago did you leave?” Beef said to me. He was a sharper nail than he looked.

  I didn't want him to get into trouble unnecessarily. “Today will do well enough,” I said.

  As I tied my sack to the saddle horn, I noticed the jar of bean soup, which would soon grow cold. I pointed it out to Beef. “Maude brought you dinner. It smelled good to me.”

  “Much obliged.”

  I ran to the closet at the back of the livery for my shotgun, then snatched up the sack of Maude's own molasses cookies I'd put there early in the morning to keep them safe from the chipmunk. I didn't know how long Marion planned to sit outside the jail, but I didn't like going without a meal.

  Seeing I didn't need any further help, Beef went back to fixing the plow. His fire had died down some, and he had no sooner started to work the bellows than Marion came in.

  Beef kept his back turned to us, I noticed. What he didn't know he couldn't tell. My appreciation for him was growing by the moment.

  Marion knew immediately why I was holding three horses. “You can't come with me, Sallie.”

  “What have they done with Maude?”

  “She's in jail,” he said, surprising me not at all.

  “But what did you find out?” I said. “You must know something more than that.”

  “I could hardly walk in there and say, ‚I'm Joe Harden, the one who robbed that bank in Des Moines, if you want to get your facts straight, and I'd like to know what you plan to do with my friend Mad Maude,' now can I?”

  “What are we going to do?” I expected he'd been working on some story to give the sheriff.

  In a dimer I read once, Cheating Charlie's brother got him out of jail by passing a red pencil through the barred window. Then going in as if he was a doctor, he pointed to the pencil marks on Charlie's face and said, “That fellow is sickening with something contagious.”

  I doubted Marion could pass for a doctor.

  He didn't have much of a plan, either. “I'm going to keep an eye on that jail.”

  “I'm going with you.”

  “There's some things a man has to do alone,” he said, and when I opened my mouth, he added, “There's other people who ought to let him.”

  “One by one my family is being carried off by unfortunate circumstances,” I said. “I cannot stand still and watch it happen to Maude.”

  Marion got on his horse and rode out, his face set, determined.

  I put a foot in the stirrup and slung my other leg over, driving the shotgun into the cloth boot at the saddle horn. I took the reins to lead Maude's horse. Used to the city life, he didn't get tetchy in crowds.

  I rode out at a pace and spotted Marion just as he turned a corner. I kicked up my horse, anxious not to let him out of my sight for long.

  NINE

  INEEDN'T HAVE WORRIED. MARION WAS WAITING FOR ME around that corner. He'd brought his horse to a halt right in the middle of the street. Horses had to make their way around him as if he was a boulder, with no complaint from the riders. This was no doubt due to the dark look on Marion's face.

  “Don't give me any more of a fight,” he said. “Time's a-wastin'.”

  “Then let's ride.” I looked hard back at him.

  He motioned for me to come closer, and I did, pulling my horse up alongside his. With a creak of saddle leather, he leaned in near. Although it was unlikely anyone could hear us over the noise of the street, he said into my ear, “I don't want you anywhere nearby if I break that jail.”

  “You're going to bust Maude out?”

  “Shh!”

  This was better than I'd hoped for. I lowered my voice to say, “Are you carrying enough fi
repower? You might have to kill a few lawmen.”

  Marion pushed his hat up off his forehead. “What kind of man do you take me for?”

  “One who's thinking of jail-breaking my sister.”

  He turned his horse and rode. I followed him through the city, and I didn't fall behind. I knew better than to bother him with my questions. He still wore that dark look.

  Left to my own thoughts, I wished that telegram had come the day before. Or that Uncle Arlen had consented to take us along. I started to wonder if it was the letter I wrote to the sheriff that gave Maude away somehow.

  Uncle Arlen had said I should give it to someone riding out of town, let them mail it somewhere else along the line. I could not bear the thought of wondering when my letter might get posted, never mind worrying about whether it got lost entire. So I sent it from Independence.

  Now I wished I had taken Uncle Arlen's part when he told Maude she ought not keep that job at George Ray's. Marion had taken Uncle Arlen's part.

  Marion hadn't yet said one word to me. I'd been doing my best to look as if I wasn't speaking to him, either, but this was an effort wasted. He hardly noticed me.

  We took up a position on the street.

  The jailhouse was a two-story building with a brick front. It looked a lot like a hotel, except for the bars on the windows. I didn't see how we could take Maude out of there.

  Some hours later, when full dark had fallen, we were still sitting on our horses about a block from the jailhouse. There were fewer people on the street than in daylight, but there was no letup in wagon traffic that I could see.

  “I want to ride past that building a time or two, see how many lawmen are inside,” Marion said, breaking his silence.

  “Don't start up without telling me what you're up to,” I said. “I want to be ready.”

  “I plan to study the situation a while longer,” Marion said. “I can't make a mess of it, like that bank robbery I fumbled.”

  “You got out with the money,” I said. “Even if Maude did make you send it back. It isn't your fault we walked in on you at a crucial moment.”