Maude March on the Run!

by Audrey Couloumbis

  His wife beside him wasn't so showy. She looked older in a way that he didn't. Her hair was pure white, and her cheeks were softly wrinkled. She smiled at me, and from somewhere inside myself, I mustered up one of my own.

  “Thanking you for your offer, Dr. Aldoradondo,” I said. “I'd like to talk to my sister alone for a minute, if you don't mind.”

  I didn't wait for a reply but rode past the horse end of that wagon and then some. Any minute now there would be a new story to hit the papers, one that would truly place Maude right about here. Maude and her little brother.

  “I know what you're going to say, Sallie,” Maude said in a fierce whisper as she came to stand beside my horse. “But don't take it up with me. Marion overheard the missus, Rebecca, say she was looking for a hand and told her he knew of four.”

  “You stood still for that?”

  “He told her it was unseemly for me to be traveling un-chaperoned with the likes of him.”

  “You should have whomped him,” I said. “Made it clear to the missus there was a good case of unseemly going around.”

  “I wish I'd thought of it,” Maude said. “I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.”

  “Where is he?”

  Maude said, “He'll ride ahead of us at some distance until he's sure it's working out. Then he'll wait for us at the Cottonwood River crossing.”

  “But why?”

  “I'll be disguised,” Maude said with that impatience all big sisters master. “I must get out of boy clothes, now that sheriff has seen me dressed this way. You said yourself my hair is long enough to pull back, and I can hide its color entirely with the right hat.”

  “You make it sound like you've thought it through,” I said, meaning I could see she'd made up her mind.

  “It's only for a few days,” Maude said. “Soon the towns will be few and far between, and we'll be able to make good time on the open prairie.”

  “Why'd you go and tell them I'm a girl?”

  “I don't know why I told them, Sallie. I just felt like it would be good to have one truthful thing to say.”

  I understood that feeling and felt more inclined to forgive her. But I wasn't yet ready to give in. I said, “If you're selling elixirs, what am I doing?”

  Maude looked bewildered and said, “What do you want to do?”

  “Ride shotgun,” I said.

  “I've lost a dress size; my hair is falling out and may never see its true color again,” Maude said, and the scariest part was, she wasn't yelling. “I don't want to go back to anyplace where the mattress is wet and the soles of my boots crickle as I walk over the sticky floor. I have only a shred of sanity left. Do you think you could just do what I ask of you, at least when they're within earshot?”

  “I guess so,” I said, but Maude would not settle at that.

  “I want to look like we're just ordinary girls.”

  “You want a great deal,” I said to her.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  MAUDE SHOWED HER WORKING DRESS TO THE MISSUS, who promptly started looking for a dress she considered more suitable. I figured she meant cleaner. She did have a trunk with a great many dresses in it.

  Also, Maude carried water inside to take a spit bath.

  While they were busy with this, Dr. Aldoradondo stripped off his fancy jacket and shiny red vest. I helped him see to watering the horses and putting a little hay in front of them.

  I'd hung the sack of foodstuffs from Maude's saddle before coming into town, and it was gone now. Maude must've given it to Marion. He would eat well tonight, I knew that much.

  “Where'd you get such big horses?” I asked the doctor. The broad backs of these animals outsized Uncle Arlen's big bay.

  “They're a special breed for working, better than oxen for speed, but equal to oxen for pulling strength.”

  A simple question didn't need so much of a voice to answer it. He didn't notice his manner put me off a little. He checked the felts on the team's harnesses and made sure nothing was rubbing them any which way.

  I didn't want to look any less careful, so I pulled the saddles off our horses and rubbed them down. The doctor put a little back into this, which I appreciated, seeing he didn't have to do anything for my horse, by rights.

  I had not mentioned to Maude the worry that we would find less water ahead of us. The lack of rain lately didn't appear to trouble the doctor. The rain barrels were nearly empty, and I pointed this out.

  “We'll get water from the town well before we go,” Dr. Aldoradondo said in an offhand way.

  Where we stood, tracks made deep marks in shifting powdery dust. Maybe he hadn't noticed this because he wasn't striking out on any great stretch of land that didn't promise a well. But the creeks were low.

  “I'll get the water,” I said, for I was sure the well would be covered after dark. It made me feel a sight better to pour a couple of buckets of water into those rain barrels.

  “I see you're a hard worker,” he said. “Hard workers make a success of themselves in this world.”

  “Not always,” I said. “Or my Aunt Ruthie wouldn't have been behind in her house payments when she died.”

  “Ah,” he said to this. And after a moment, “You have the right of it. Luck plays a hand in most endeavors.”

  “Endeavors?”

  “The effort we make,” he said. “Some efforts don't play out well if the luck isn't with us.”

  “That's it exactly,” I said. He wasn't so bad, after all.

  But he had meant for this talk to lead up to something, and after another sashay or two, he got his point in. “You could be working alongside your sister, if you care to.”

  “How's that?”

  He showed me a basket with a neck strap affixed to it so it could be worn, leaving a person's hands free. When he talked up his goods to the ladies, he wanted me outside in the street hawking small items that could be sold for a nickel or a dime.

  “Why do you sell sundries if your business is medicine?” I asked him outright.

  “Some customers are just naturally leery of buying something for the first time,” he said. “A first small purchase of something they trust can change their minds.”

  I nodded. I would do it. I didn't care to be eating for free.

  In the evening, when the customers were men, I would have an assortment of envelopes of tobacco for chewing or smoking, rolling paper, and the like. The pricing, he told me, was set so there was little need to make change, just shove the coins or bills in my apron pocket.

  I ignored the mention of an apron pocket.

  Truth to tell, there was some excitement in this for me.

  I liked the feel of money in my hands. It never mattered to me that I would hand it over to Uncle Arlen or, now, to the Aldoradondos. It was the doings of business I liked, the question of how much to pay or to sell for, not the keeping.

  I knew someone had come across Borden Kind by now and heard the story he had to tell. While me and the doctor talked, and then as we waited for Maude and the missus to finish the work they were about, I watched for any sign of the law, or anyone else hurrying about. I saw nothing to alarm me.

  Maude came out of that wagon and, under the sunburn, her cheeks were lit up like Christmas. She wore a dark blue dress that rustled when she moved. The skirt spilled ruffles down the back and had some spangles besides.

  “Sequins,” the missus called them. Her tone had a bit of Aunt Ruthie in it, giving me to know there was nothing wrong with them.

  I don't suppose there was anything wrong with them except I'd never seen my sister wearing them. I'd had half an idea Maude might get to work inside the wagon. I saw now they wanted her to stand in the street and do her best to attract attention. That was the business they were in.

  “She has to cover her hair,” I said, giving in on the spangles and going to what really mattered.

  Maude said, “I believe a hat makes a lady respectable.”

  The missus turned back into the wagon, using the
little step at the back, and Maude went in behind her. I followed them with great curiosity. On one side—the home side, you might say—a long bunk ran along the wall from corner to corner, only wide enough for one person to sleep.

  On the business side, where part of the wall let down to become a shelf, bottles were lined up on narrow shelves with railings so they couldn't fall off. A rocker occupied the floor behind the wagon seat.

  “Look over your head, Sallie,” Maude said. And there I saw two chairs and a table with folding legs were fitted into wood angles so they hung out of the way till they were to be used.

  Lanterns hung there as well. “I've never seen anything like it,” I said, and the missus was pleased. I sat on the bunk to watch her work.

  She pulled Maude's hair back extremely tight and pinned a hairpiece in the wrong color over the short ends. A deep purple scarf was wrapped around Maude's head so it couldn't be seen that the hair didn't match, and an ostrich plume was added to that.

  The effect transformed Maude entirely. I was satisfied that, if she didn't look like my Maude, she didn't look like that Maude in the newspaper, either. I doubted Uncle Arlen or Marion would know her right off.

  The missus turned to me and said, “You'd look real nice in a dress. We can buy you a bonnet.”

  Only the week before I would have fought this idea tooth and nail. But I was bothered to think people might watch out for Maude riding with a younger brother, especially now that Borden Kind could back up that story.

  I didn't say no precisely, but I didn't say yes just yet.

  Come time to work, small square bottles were set out on the shelf in a box. The bottom of the box slid out, and when the bottles stopped jiggling, the sides were lifted, leaving the bottles lined up for purchase. It made for fast work, done easily.

  These weren't the pretty bottles I remembered. They were filled with liquid dark brown and strong-smelling. This discouraged no one, apparently.

  Maude took the money and made change as needed, doing a brisk business. At first I watched to see if anyone looked at her with special interest. Maybe it was the cover of near darkness or the come-to-me tone in the doctor's voice, but men hardly looked at Maude once they got next to her. They almost acted like they were in a hurry to get away.

  I figured it had to do with a night on the town. The pianos in the halls played lively music. Laughter and loud voices could be heard from inside the saloons and, once in a while, the crash of glass.

  The doctor sounded like a cross between a preacher and a gun-toting sheriff. “Gentlemen, your valleys shall be raised and your mountains ironed flat, your crookeds made straight as a corpse in December, and your rough places smooth as a mule's coat.”

  This sounded like a big promise. I figured the doctor was going to need some help from on high to make good on it. One fellow asked him what he had in those bottles and was given this answer: “These good soldiers hold the cure for the disease of royalty.”

  For most, this was proof enough we were selling the very thing they were looking for. I thought Dr. Aldoradondo was smart to have found a way to compliment them into buying his wares.

  Three men rode past us at one point, and I realized they were lawmen. I didn't stand there like a tent pole, but strolled among the customers, saying, “Finest pipe tobacco, sweet cherry smoke, thin paper for rolling,” like it read on the packages.

  These riders looked us over and moved on.

  Maude's horse and mine were tied at a trough a little distance from the wagon. So were several others, but it struck me as a good thing that ours were. Looking at us, our disguise was helped by the fact the peddler's wagon didn't have two more horses tied to it.

  I resolved to do this again if we continued on to another town with the Aldoradondos.

  In fact, but for the neck strap did rub a little, I didn't find the work unpleasant. The tobacco smelled of cherry, one kind, and another tobacco smelled like honey.

  It reminded me of the stuff Aunt Ruthie never would buy at church socials, little sachets with dried flower bits inside. There was an odd comfort in this and in thoughts of Aunt Ruthie.

  I kept an eye open for Marion, but he was nowhere to be seen. He liked to play down the stories that were told about him, but he had his talents. Blending in was one of them.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  JUST AS I BEGAN TO WONDER WHEN THE PIANOS would stop playing, the doctor pulled in three unsold bottles and shut the wagon up. I saw Maude's shoulders relax. I was growing oddly impatient by then, wanting to ride further, and faster, wanting to make more distance.

  Equally, I wanted a glimpse of Marion. I hadn't had a share in the making of this plan, and I didn't feel quite resigned to it. I was growing tired, and that helped me through this.

  We rode outside of town and camped for the night.

  Once we had put the horses to bed, that was how the doctor put it, I was ready to take to a bed as well. We sat for a few minutes inside the wagon, me and Maude on the two chairs the doctor took down from the hooks in the ceiling, the missus and him on the long bunk they slept on, the bottoms of their feet touching. She laughed as she told us this, and sliced apples for us, and made us feel quite at home.

  I began to warm to them.

  To the doctor, I said, “You closed down right smartly once you made up your mind you were finished. Don't you lose a few customers that way?”

  “I shut down the minute I see no one is looking for a loose coin,” he said. “The hesitant come to the table quicker next time.”

  “I guess that's wise,” I said. “What's your elixir made of, anyway?”

  “I start with a base of brandy or whiskey,” he said. “Both of these have medicinal properties. I add amounts of cascara and horseradish, goldenseal or turpentine, depending on the desired effect.”

  “People swallow turpentine?”

  “People swallow most anything,” he said. “A few drops of oil of peppermint or wintergreen will disguise any unpleasant odors.”

  “Sounds not altogether bad,” I said.

  He said, “Tastes terrible,” and made a face.

  I didn't reply to this, nor did Maude.

  A look passed over his face in an instant, as had happened with Borden Kind, but after a minute I realized it only meant he'd hoped to make me and Maude giggle.

  “We're some tired,” I said, for I didn't care to hurt his feelings.

  The missus stood to clear away the bowl of apples, saying, “Well, of course you must be. It's been a day of change for you.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” I said.

  We slept that night on the floor of the wagon. Dr. Aldoradondo took a pallet under the wagon “to make a ladies' space.” I thought it right good of him.

  The only odd thing, he insisted we all wash our hands with strong soap. He kept a pail of water in the wagon for the sole purpose of hand-washing, and he didn't stop talking about the need for it while the four of us took turns at the basin.

  “We bathe as often as circumstance allows us,” the missus said.

  They didn't look uncommonly clean to me, but I took this to mean me and Maude looked dirtier yet, at any rate not clean enough to be working for them. This was undoubtedly true after several days on the trail, and I felt some apologetic for it.

  He was real finicky about his fingernails. I asked him about it and regretted it ten minutes later, when he was still telling me how important it was to have clean hands in every task from household cooking to putting balm on a scratch.

  I could have spared myself this lecture if I'd told him I rarely found a scratch worth bothering about, I felt sure, but there was something kindly in his manner that made me listen equally politely. Probably he couldn't help it he still sounded like he spoke through a horn.

  In the morning, me and Maude hitched our horses to the wagon rail and rode into the next town sitting on the back step of the wagon. It was a rocky ride, but we couldn't be overheard.

  I said, “Have you told Dr. Aldoradondo or the missus
what we're running from?”

  “Let's keep our story to ourselves,” Maude said. “We don't yet know what they're running from.”

  It had not occurred to me they were running from anything.

  “I forget,” Maude said. “Working at George Ray's, I would forget how beautiful it is out here. How much there is to feel.” She had taken on that look of love again.

  I didn't know what to make of this at any time, and I didn't know what to say now. I pulled my compass out of my pocket and watched the needle quiver. “Due west,” I said. “We're traveling due west.”

  “I know that,” Maude said in lilting tones.

  Aunt Ruthie used to scold her for that manner; Aunt Ruthie thought those tones meant she was teasing and not caring. But that was never so. I never truly understood those tones, but they weren't teasing and Maude was ever caring.

  “Do you want to see Uncle Arlen's map?”

  Maude gave me a smiling look, like I was a puzzle she couldn't complete. “Don't wear it out,” she said, and she was fully my big sister again.

  Once in the town of Council Grove, we drew a running herd of children. No one I saw looked twice at Maude or me.

  “Run alongside the wagon,” the missus said, giving me a handful of candy sticks. “Pass them around.”

  We did indeed take advantage of the bathhouse, first thing. As she paid for my bath, I told the missus, “Me and Maude are fond of bathing.”

  I felt the need to say this, although it was truer of Maude than myself. Her rule was twice a week, and at that I thought the practice overdone. What was accomplished in two baths that couldn't be done with one?

  By the time we were ready to do business, the children's mommas were collected in the street around the wagon. My basket was filled with packages of needles and pins, thimbles, nail brushes, and hair combs.

  I had the chance to see how useful that basket could be. Even those ladies who wanted such favors as packets broken up for the sale of one needle put down a coin for one of those colored bottles, or maybe for the cure inside it.