Maude March on the Run!

by Audrey Couloumbis

  I was still not sure why this fellow had taken such a risk to help us. Barring ink smudges, he looked like he'd never been this dirty before in his life, let alone interfered with a crazed mob.

  Maude sent me outside, saying, “See to the horses, Sallie.”

  I reached for the lathered-up reins on Maude's horse and mine, wanting to get them under cover. As for Silver Dollar, I only needed to whistle for him. He was ever expectant of good things, such as pieces of apple or carrot, or a nose bag, and he answered readily enough by following me to the far side of the wagon.

  While I pulled the saddles off our horses, Maude yanked the door shut on the wagon. That was how I knew there might be men to follow. She didn't want a light to lead them straight to us. By a stroke of good luck, the part of the wall that came down as a shelf was turned away from the trail, so any light leaking through the seam wouldn't be seen.

  I kept the horses well behind the wagon, and as I rubbed them down, I listened for men coming along the trail. I'd lost track of how far we might have traveled when the horses were running wild. It could have been two miles, it could have been twelve.

  The more I didn't hear anyone coming, the better I felt.

  Dr. Aldoradondo had escaped the tar and feathers and, in Maude's estimation, wasn't dying.

  We had added one more to our band, was how I decided to look at it, and maybe we could trust him. At any rate, he had proven himself helpful when we needed help most.

  I couldn't help feeling things were looking up.

  I'd brushed the horses down and moved the nose bags over to feed them the same light rations I'd given the others before the back door swung open again.

  Maude came outside carrying her rifle and the doctor's. She handed me the weight of her kit bag so she could load. I said, “What happened back there?”

  “Their taste for mayhem has been satisfied. Only one of them came back after you scattered them,” Maude said as she loaded her rifle. “We left that one trussed up like a chicken for his persistence.”

  “I couldn't manage the horses,” I said. “I couldn't stay in the wagon with her, Maude.”

  I didn't like to think I hadn't done entirely right by Rebecca. She had turned scary, but I should have found the nerve to face our situation.

  “There's nothing you could have done for her,” Maude said. “She isn't hurt, don't worry.”

  Silently, I resolved to do better the next time I was needed to do the right thing.

  “Everything will turn out all right,” Maude said, but not with a great deal of assurance.

  “It looked like gunfire took a few of them down,” I said. “You'd have mentioned it if any of them died, wouldn't you?”

  “Two are bullet-nicked, but it isn't more than a scratch on either of them.” She raked her fingers over the open box. She had to load without any light, just feeling her way along. “I tied up the worst with a kerchief.”

  “A clean kerchief ?” I said. Since traveling with Dr. Aldoradondo, I'd learned more than I ever cared to know about infection. “It ain't a good idea to keep racking up accidental killings.”

  “It was his own kerchief,” Maude said, her voice coming on stronger. “And quit saying ‚ain't.' How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “What about the woman who died?”

  “None of them knew who she was,” Maude said in a bitter tone. She set down the rifle she'd finished with and picked up the other. “Thanks to the drink in them, they were only half the men they ever were.”

  I said, “I'm proud of you, Maude.”

  “You don't know what a close thing it was, Sallie,” she said. “I'm glad you didn't take off in the other direction, after all. We're just that much further west.”

  “I didn't have any say in the matter,” I told her. “Those horses had a mind of their own.”

  Maude said, “How are they holding up? We have a ways to go.”

  “They're as tireless as Aunt Ruthie's rocking chair.” It was true, they had the grit to go a distance. I only hoped they had some speed left in them after the run we'd made.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  INSIDE THE WAGON, REBECCA HAD RALLIED ENOUGH TO put out a basin of water for John Kirby to wash his hands. However, she looked some wobbly as she passed a wrung-out cloth over the doctor's face.

  “Cleanliness is most important,” she said for maybe the third time. But I wasn't sure she had noticed a stranger sat beside her.

  The doctor had come around enough to say which balm was needed for his cuts. His face had a couple of lumpy swellings, but he didn't appear to have been broken anywhere. I was glad of this, but also satisfied I could move on to my next concern.

  “You have a nerve to trade away Uncle Arlen's buggy,” I said to John Kirby as he touched the paste to the doctor's face and ears.

  “Sallie,” Maude said in that way she had when my manners were lacking. In fact, this hadn't been foremost in my thoughts until I'd laid eyes on him again.

  “Who is he, anyway?” I said to Maude before I turned back to him. “And don't think you can put me off with word-play. You had a reason to follow us from Diamond Springs.”

  As I neared him, he reached for me and dabbed a bit of that paste on my scraped knuckles. I dropped the feed sack, reacting as if I expected it to sting, and for a moment it did want to, but then the hurt went numb.

  I said, “What's your interest in us?”

  “I know who your sister is,” he said, and when I didn't say more, he did. “Not Maude Waters, but Maude March.”

  “Maude March?” Rebecca said as if a fresh weakness had come upon her. “You're Maude March?”

  Maude did look like the worst of the posters under the lantern light.

  “I have been following your story in the papers,” he said. “It interests me.”

  “She is innocent,” I said, without inquiring of his interest. “We'll clear her name.”

  Always quick to read a man, or a woman, Dr. Aldoradondo saw right away how things stood. “It won't make it any easier, now you've broken up a mob with gunfire,” he said.

  I looked at John Kirby. “You did the shooting.”

  “No one is dead of it,” he said.

  “What I'm saying is this, Maude will be blamed for it, unless you stand up.” My feelings for him were mixed; I couldn't get the measure of the man.

  Maude made the more timely argument. “They didn't have any business taking the law into their own hands. Is it possible they never gave chase?”

  “Any reasonable mind might think this way,” John Kirby said. “But these are not reasonable minds we're dealing with.”

  “Then we must save the talk for later,” Maude said. “The sheriff might yet make a showing.”

  I left the wagon, and John Kirby was right behind me. We hitched the horses to the wagon rail in a tight silence. The doctor remained on the bunk, and I heard Maude settling Rebecca next to him in her rocker.

  I took to the wagon seat, and after a moment John Kirby decided to ride up there. He took over handling the team, and I didn't mind it. Those horses took to the trail again as if they were starting fresh, and set a brisk pace.

  In the tone of making sure he knew what he was doing, I said, “Are you not worried about someone following us down this trail?”

  “If we don't hear from that mob in the next few minutes, we don't have to worry till morning,” he said. “If anyone comes after us in the morning, it'll be the sheriff, and he won't be in a mood to listen to our side of things. Either way, it's a matter of getting as far from here as we can by the middle of tomorrow.”

  He was a planner, I had to give him that. And there was no better way to make speed than to follow the trail.

  Maude rode watchful at the back door for a time. It was still full dark, and all was quiet. I loosened my jaw just enough to say to John Kirby, “I haven't thanked you for stepping in to help my sister.”

  He said, “No need.”

  “I don't have a generous supply of s
isters,” I said. “This one means a great deal to me. I saw that fellow drawing on her.”

  “He might have missed, being jostled by the crowd. But I couldn't take the chance,” he said. “His aim might be bad and he could hit her accidentally. People die both ways.”

  I said, “I'm just glad you did not kill him. Maude already stands wrongly accused for a death.”

  “You have a point,” he said. “But I wasn't thinking of Maude's reputation. Only my own. As you already know, reputations are easier to pick up than to put down.”

  I said to him, “How is it you came to be in Independence to rent Silver Dollar and were in Diamond Springs when we got there?”

  “There's a good question,” Maude said, coming to stand behind the wagon seat.

  “I was staying for a time in Independence. I got news of my cousin's death in Diamond Springs,” John Kirby said. “He was the newspaperman. The letter-writing business was his as well.”

  “So you found yourself set up in business,” Maude said.

  “I thought about it,” he said. “But business isn't my game.”

  Me and Maude spoke up together. “What game is that?”

  “I write books,” he said.

  I said, “What kind of books?”

  “True stories, when there's a call for it. I could write your sister's story.”

  “You were planning to write about my sister.” I felt the beginnings of excitement in my belly. “That's why you followed us. Admit it.”

  John Kirby said, “Don't you want your sister's story told?”

  “I don't want another lie told.” A truthful account did matter to me, for what use was it otherwise? But it wasn't only the thought of truth made my heart beat harder. I was ever a fool for an interesting story.

  Maude wasn't decided; I could see it in the set of her mouth.

  John Kirby said, “You are, what? Ten years old? Who has the last word here?”

  “I do, and I'm thirteen.”

  “She's twelve,” Maude said, “and she makes an excellent point. Do you have the truth in you?”

  “You don't trust me?” he said.

  Maude turned from him a little, impatience partly, but also, she didn't trust him entire. “We have a great deal more than a twenty-five-cent letter riding on your answer,” I said.

  “Think of it this way,” he said, talking direct to Maude. “I'll make you the hero of your story. People are near to admiring you for your boldness; it won't take much to make them love you.”

  Maude said, “What people are you talking about? The law wants to hang me.”

  “Public sentiment hangs more men than the law,” John Kirby said.

  I said, “Would such a book clear my sister's name?”

  “It will go a long way toward swaying public opinion,” John Kirby said.

  Rebecca piped up from inside the wagon. “Public sentiment won't want to punish her for any misdeeds that occurred while she was trying to save herself. And she did indeed act the hero tonight.”

  “Public sentiment does not always carry the day,” the doctor said. “She will have to prove her innocence.”

  This had the makings of a lively debate.

  John Kirby said, “People will read a book longer than they'll stand still and listen. You need to publish your story. You need me to write it.”

  “Why you?” Maude said to him.

  “I have been an eyewitness to all that you've done since being broken out of jail, including saving this man's life.”

  “That isn't precisely true,” Maude said.

  “It's close enough,” he said.

  I took his point. If there was more than one crazy woman going around pretending to be my sister, the one thing we needed was someone who could claim they knew the truth. Better he was not a friend of ours, or a relative, like me.

  Maude said, “Would you have returned Silver Dollar to Independence and paid us for the buggy?” She took matters of business very seriously.

  “I would,” he said, his teeth flashing in the moonlight. “It would be horse thievery if I did not.”

  We let the matter drop. It was a long night ahead of us, and tempers shortened by disagreement would not make it easier.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  A“T LEAST WE DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT WATER for the horses,” Maude said sometime later. The trail had come to a point where it followed the river again, and the water looked like a bright ribbon shining in the moonlight.

  “We need water for us,” John Kirby said.

  “I've been refilling the rain barrels from the wells we passed,” I said. “We haven't seen one day of rain since we started out.”

  “It's a drought,” John Kirby said. “It's in all the newspapers.”

  I didn't remember reading about it. “That's not what I watch the newspapers for, I guess.”

  Rebecca said, “Is anyone hungry?”

  I climbed back into the wagon, where me and Maude dished up ham and potatoes and greens. In a low voice, I said, “We've both found ourselves in a situation of having horses that didn't belong to us and no clear idea how we might return them. We were lucky enough circumstances did the hard part for us.”

  “I haven't forgotten,” Maude said.

  Rebecca listened in as she moved shakily around the table, poking forks and knives into the meat on the plates. This didn't worry me. It was John Kirby I didn't want to make part of this conversation.

  She made up a dish for the doctor, choosing stewed corn and then fully half of the dried apple pie, mashed with a fork, for he wasn't up to chewing hard.

  She meant to feed him like a child but was hardly able to handle the fork. I took this task on; it was not so distasteful as it sounds. He was grateful for the help and admired the apple pie so outrageously that Rebecca laughed.

  By then, Maude had eaten and made up a plate for John Kirby. I stood near her and said, “I'm contented that circumstances have put Silver Dollar on the road to Uncle Arlen.”

  I didn't need more than that. I hoped that same was true for Maude.

  She made no sign of how she felt, only clambered over the wagon seat. “Let me spell you,” she said to him.

  “Greens are for horses,” Rebecca said to me quietly when I got around to making up our plates. I agreed with her complete and didn't put them on our plates.

  Hoping to be forgiven for having been leery of her earlier on, I said, “I'm sorry. I can't think what got into me.”

  She said, “Let us admit we were both badly frightened and call that the end of it.” She patted the place beside herself on the bunk. Together we finished off the ham and potatoes and corn in a companionable way. We were quiet, though, for the doctor had fallen asleep and we didn't want to disturb him.

  Much of the night was taken up with Maude telling bits and pieces of our story in answer to John Kirby's questions. He had a way of turning a story that could polish coal to a gloss. I had to admire the man, and more, I came to realize that he might make the doubtiest parts of Maude's story believable.

  Maude didn't admire this entirely. She didn't care for his method nor trust him complete. “This book-writing business has turned your head around,” she said. “These are dimers you are writing, not stone tablets.”

  “What you are most in need of is a stone tablet,” he said back to her.

  I thought dimers good enough, and one that explained Maude's circumstances would be useful. I climbed out onto the wagon seat to sit between them. I didn't offer an opinion.

  Although we traveled westward, the sunrise in the east did paint the sky in a wash of color and shadow. Rebecca had become more like herself as the night wore on, and she was steady enough on her feet to stand behind the wagon seat with me to watch the show.

  For Maude missed it entire. It was blue-dark when she fell asleep, leaning back, Rebecca's arms wrapped around her. The last streak of pink was fading when she jerked awake with a sudden sit-up.

  “Oh,” she said, looking about us in some relief
. “I had a bad dream.”

  “I had a good one,” I said, wanting her to forget hers as quick as she could. I told her the one about dancing ring-around-the-rosy with Aunt Ruthie.

  Maude's face lit right up. “Why, Sallie, that was Momma. You confuse them sometimes.”

  “No, it was Aunt Ruthie.”

  “I remember that day, I do,” Maude said. “I wore the green calico in your dream, didn't I, and you were in my old rose-figured cotton. Those ones you cut the patches out of.”

  “I remember the dresses,” I said. “I do think you were wearing the green one in the dream.”

  “You remember Momma,” Maude said. She put one arm around me and squeezed.

  “You are such good girls,” Rebecca said.

  John Kirby snapped the reins a little. Those horses didn't change pace. But I saw the end of his nose was pink, and it struck me he was a sentimental man.

  Maude woke me midmorning by standing on the wagon seat. She looked around and didn't see a worrisome cloud of dust being raised in any direction. On her worst day, and maybe this was one of them, she could see further than most people did on their best.

  “I don't see any kind of cloud,” she said. “The sky is unbroken by any feature, save the sun.”

  This news of more dry weather did not cheer me much.

  We weren't stopped for but a moment before all of the horses busied themselves with getting a meal off the grass. My stomach growled at the sound of their teeth grinding.

  To take my mind off it, I said to Maude, “You might go back to wearing your work dress and wrap your hair in that dark blue scarf.”

  “Only a few days ago, you thought I should wear pants,” she said.

  “I've changed my mind,” I said, turning to get my sack. “You look too girly to make anyone believe you are a boy. The same isn't true for me.”

  “Just go on being a girl for a time,” Maude said, catching me by the arm. “It will not hamper your grip on a shotgun, but you will surprise the heck out of someone if you need to use it.”

  “Don't swear,” I said to Maude, but only to have something to say. “It ain't becoming.” I picked up a blanket and went out the back door.