Maude March on the Run!

by Audrey Couloumbis

  “Picture any good?”

  I said, “Not really. The good thing about so many Maudes running around, they don't all look alike.”

  Maude got her incensed look. “How many are there?”

  “Maybe three, not counting the ones we met personal. All of them in different states than we are.”

  She looked down to spread a little apple butter. I hoped this meant she didn't find the idea of three more all that offensive. Nothing like six or eight more. Eleven. Nor anywhere near knowing Black Hankie's grandmomma blamed Maude for his misfortune.

  Ellie said, “Your uncle told me something about your troubles. I admit, it's more disturbing to read these stories than I thought.”

  “I don't know what's worse,” Maude said, “the stories the papers make up or the women who pretend to be me so they can be in them.”

  “It's worse to be the one lied about,” Marion said, “but John Henry is going to help you with that.”

  I hoped this would smooth things over. But then I noticed something—“Maude, look at your hands.”

  Her fingertips didn't look like puffy little pillows anymore. Her fingernails had grown out. They were dirty, but they were long enough to just cover the tips of her fingers. “You don't bite your fingernails anymore, Maude.”

  “Looks like I don't scrub them,” she said, but she was halfway to smiling.

  “You could go to the law with your story,” Ellie said, for she didn't understand the interest I took in Maude's finger-nails.

  “They've already tried that,” Marion said.

  “Lawmen are deaf to pleas of innocence,” I said. “They have their job to do.”

  “Let's us just eat up and make our way to Uncle Arlen,” Maude said. “There's nothing we have to decide tonight.”

  “You have the right of it,” I said. “Let's don't bother with the hotel. It's not like we need a bath all that bad.”

  This put a grin on Maude's face and Ellie's, and the mood lightened a good deal as forks were lifted. The bird was cooked crisp and tender, the potatoes were plenty, and there was a green sauce to dip everything into, should we care to. That sauce had a bite of its own.

  We slept in the loft at the livery.

  FIFTY-TWO

  WE STARTED OUT AT THE BREAK OF DAWN. THE NICE thing, we found dew on the ground. I hadn't noticed the lack of it until I saw it, felt it again. Even then, I wasn't so sure.

  I touched a vine growing up the wall of the livery. “Did it rain a mite?”

  Ellie said, “It's morning dew. We aren't quite so dry out this way as they are on the lower plains.”

  The land made a nice change. I saw now the gradual slope to it. If we only overcame a series of treeless grassy ridges, at least we had something to look forward to. The rise wasn't hard on the horses, and a dark blue line we saw on the horizon was easier on the eyes.

  “Mountains,” Ellie said when I asked about it.

  Near the end of the day, Ellie led us off the trail to follow a trickle of a creek for half a mile before coming to a worn path that climbed the backside of a low bluff.

  This looked to me like a chopped-off hillside at the front, atop which we could see an adobe-brick building. We rode for a time around it and then uphill at the backside of it to reach the top.

  Once there, I found it to be more of the same, flat grassy plains. I had to walk right up to the broken-off edge to know where the grass stopped. The advantage to this place was it looked in every direction over the plains.

  The land sloped away from us in a way that made me feel like we could roll downhill for miles. But this was only a trick of the eyes.

  “There was a family here when I was a little girl,” Ellie said. “The Osgoods. We stayed the night here once.”

  “Looks like they've been gone for some time,” Marion said.

  “A long time,” Ellie said. “But the roof 's still here. The walls stand. The porch is good.”

  It was no surprise the walls stood, for they were thick as tree trunks and not overly broken up by windows. The two at the front had been boarded up, and the one at the back still had unbroken glass.

  The place didn't have much to offer but shelter from rain or wolves, and there was no rain. A ragged corral had been built up out of flat boards that might have come from a wagon bottom—more than one wagon bottom.

  These were worn down some by weather, and there was a gap on one side, where the gate had gone missing. But grass grew over the earth in there, and the horses would graze. We could rope off the opening.

  It took us better than an hour to get them all tended to, for Ellie was more careful of horseflesh than Uncle Arlen. I carried the saddles over to the porch and hung the blankets over the rope.

  We carried water up from the creek and made ourselves comfortable for the night. By the time we were settling, the stars twinkled hard and bright overhead.

  We would sleep inside, so we wondered if the chimney was still good. This was a short discussion because Marion came inside wanting to show us all something.

  We walked out to the place where the bluff overhung the trail. He pointed back east of us, where two campfires could be seen as beacons some distance away.

  They were far enough from each other, and down low, so each may not have known the other was there. “What do you figure?” I said to Marion. “Anybody looking for us?”

  “Hard to say. But making a fire isn't a good idea.”

  We ate cold food, but it didn't feel like any great hardship, for the night was warm. We turned in early, talking like we would be on our way before daybreak.

  That was the plan, but we slept a ways into the morning.

  Marion was up first, and out without waking me.

  Ellie roused me and Maude, but she wasn't truly moving at a pace. She sort of drifted toward the coffee makings and then remembered there was to be no fire.

  I felt as if I could sleep longer. But Maude reached over and pinched me so I wouldn't fall back to the soft pillow of my folded pants.

  “We need a bath,” Ellie said.

  “What good is that?” I said, not wanting to get roped into this. “We'll only be dusty again after we get on the trail.”

  “Just a spit bath,” Ellie said. “It won't take ten minutes and we'll be refreshed.”

  “I don't need refreshing.”

  Maude grabbed me by the shirt. “It'll wake us up.”

  I consented to a face-and-neck wash, but I wouldn't allow myself to be talked into wearing my dress.

  “Why, look at you. Under all that dirt, you're as pink as one of Betsy's pigs,” Maude teased, and tried to run the cloth over my face again.

  “I wouldn't know her for the same boy,” Ellie said with a grin.

  “We'll be riding up to Uncle Arlen in a few hours, Sallie,” Maude said. “You have to wear the dress.”

  “You make it sound like he'll fall over from the shock,” I complained.

  This made them both laugh, and for a moment Maude looked like an ordinary girl, leaning up against Ellie. She still looked weather-tough, but her manner had softened in a way I did like.

  I grabbed the cloth and scrubbed myself as near clean as I could get. I even wiped it over my hair. Maude and Ellie went on making little jokes to each other and giggling as I put on my dress and beat it for the outdoors.

  I wanted to please Maude, but I wouldn't consider wearing the bloomers, for I didn't care if I showed a bare knee. Those bloomers would be ruined from saddle dirt; I would have to take great care with my skirt.

  To his credit, Marion didn't blink when he saw me in a dress. He nodded a “Good morning.”

  He'd already been up long enough to bring our horses over to the porch and saddle them up. We had not much grain left for them, and they were eating the grass down to a bare patch.

  They looked to me thinned out through the neck, their flanks too flattened. Maude and me were thinner, I reminded myself, and we weren't suffering awful much. In only another day or two, we could
let the horses rest up properly.

  “Them women ready to go?” Marion said to me. “Ten minutes,” I said. I dug through my sack and found the bonnet. It was none the worse for my having loaned it to Maude, but I sort of promised it a good wash and starch as soon as I could manage it.

  I shoved my hair back and tied the bonnet under my chin. It didn't have quite the smooth feel as when I wore braids beneath it, but my hair was too tangled for braids.

  I sat down on the porch.

  Beside me, Marion said of the horses, “They've mowed it down here worse than if they were goats. The grass may not come back.”

  “It'll come back,” I said. “All it needs is a good rain.” “Let's move them to a fresh spot,” Marion said, chucking me on the shoulder. “Give me a hand with them.”

  I'd no sooner wondered if I was going to regret putting on my dress than I heard a racket of horses. It didn't sound like many riders, but they pulled their horses to a stop out there on the trail. This brought us to our feet.

  Marion went to the horses, soothing their laid-back ears, shushing them, and I moved quick to help him. Horses did want to call out to each other sometimes.

  Clear as if his voice were a bell, one of the riders said, “There's a house up there on the hill.”

  I stood stock-still, half-turned to warn Maude.

  And in answer, the words “There's no smoke coming up the chimney. We've lost the trail, if it ever was one.”

  The first one said, “Don't think I'm pushing for it. I'm not of a mind to get myself shot at by another war vet. I'm ready to go home.”

  There was some muttering over this. My heart pounding, I inched forward, ignoring Marion's frantic waving me back. I could see just the faces of a couple of those fellows, and they weren't looking back at me, which was good, for they were the bounty hunters.

  Another voice, as travel-weary as the one before, came from a little distance. “This path looks to be used recently.”

  I yanked my bonnet lower and made myself stroll out to the edge of the bluff as if my curiosity had got the best of me. “Who're all you fellows?” I called, letting my voice go high.

  “We're a posse,” one of them lied. “Looking for a fellow has broken out of jail over at Fort Dodge.”

  I wanted to tell them a posse from Fort Dodge would be lost if it found itself this far west, for we were well out of Kansas. Only I didn't want to look like a smart girl.

  “Well, come on in, then,” I said. “My granny will want to hear about that. She will give you all some of her rhubarb tea. You should not be too polite about drinking it, a full cup will give you the runs.”

  This invitation was met with a stony silence.

  “I'll go tell her she has visitors,” I said, and turned on my heel.

  “Girl!” one of them shouted. “Tell your granny we are sorry to have to turn down the invite, but we're in a hurry.”

  I let my shoulders slump hard, and for a moment I wondered if I'd overdone it. For one of them said in a kindly way, “Looking forward to a little company yourself, were you?”

  I said, “Granny is enough company for anyone. Her hearing is so bad I have to say everything twice at least.”

  “Give her our good day,” one of them said, and started out of there. The others followed, the kindlier one waving at me as he went. In only a minute or so, we were alone again.

  I walked back to where Marion stood with the horses. “Bounty hunters,” I said, though he had heard the whole thing.

  He said, “You're a pistol.”

  Maybe I was, for I had the shakes like I had just shot a pistol. I had to sit down on the porch. Marion dropped down into the grass at the edge of the bluff and watched until he was sure those fellows had really turned back for the Kansas border.

  When Maude and Ellie came out a few minutes later, they were scrubbed to a rosy glow, both of them. They hadn't heard a thing from the outside world through those walls.

  FIFTY-THREE

  WE COULDN'T HOPE TO REACH LIBERTY MUCH BEFORE the middle of the afternoon. We wouldn't push our horses. They were tired. I remembered I had a dimer in my sack.

  The title read Rusty Nael, Blacksmith at Large. Since there was little talk, I kept everyone up on the developments of the story as I read.

  The land was rugged, but dust didn't fly awful bad. It struck me the other, dustier trails had been real cattle trails. The dirt clods had been worn down to near powder.

  We were looking at more hills. Once into those hills, the trail got kind of rocky and rough-trod. We crossed more than one dry creek bed. Some of the cracks in the ground were no doubt due to the dry weather.

  We came to a place where the trail split and rode through a dry creek. “This is it,” Ellie said. “Macdougal land.

  Ellie intended to make a detour to deliver those horses, except for Silver Dollar, to a neighboring ranch. Silver Dollar was on a long tether wound around Maude's saddle horn.

  “Ride south there,” she said, pointing to another split in the trail. “You'll be at the house in an hour or so. I'll see you at the ranch this evening.”

  “You can't ride on alone,” Marion said to Ellie, for we had already heard enough about her father's troubles to know she was not let to ride around on her own.

  “Go with her,” I said. “Me and Maude can follow this trail without any difficulty.” I glanced at Ellie. “I want to lay eyes on Uncle Arlen.”

  Marion said, “I don't think much of this idea.”

  “It's only a couple of miles,” Maude said, already moving along the trail.

  “Don't let your guard down,” he said.

  We struck out for the ranch; Marion and Ellie took the other trail.

  I said, “I'm glad to have a little time alone with you, Maude. There are a few things we must have out.”

  “I know it,” she said. “We can't go home with Uncle Arlen.”

  “We can't go back to Missouri at all,” I said. “At least not until we don't have to worry about getting arrested.”

  “That's the corner I can't get around,” Maude said. “Ellie's easy to get along with, but I don't know we can ask to stay at the ranch. Uncle Arlen owes her father his life already. I don't want to make him feel more beholden.”

  This was just the line I'd hoped not to hear. “I might could help out with the horses,” I said. “And you could do the baking.”

  “Well, that's all ahead of us,” Maude said. “We'll just have to wait and see what Uncle Arlen has in mind.”

  “We have to be in one place long enough to hear from John Henry.”

  “I'm not counting on John Henry.”

  I said, “You don't care if your name gets cleared? You don't want justice?”

  Myself, I was guilty of shooting Willie, so this was not fresh territory to me. It made me more of an outlaw than he was. Maude had never been that kind of outlaw. She deserved justice.

  “I think we have to change our idea of what that means.” She gave me a thoughtful look. “I think I can live without seeing justice done as we used to think of it.”

  A question kept running through my mind—what would become of us? I didn't consider us lost, just at loose ends.

  “How are you going to feel, Maude?” “So far, I don't feel bad,” she said. “Badly. I've had some time to get used to the idea there's more than one way to see a happy ending to this.”

  “I'm not so sure,” I said. “I don't like giving up Uncle Arlen now that he's found.”

  “His happy ending may have changed more than ours,” Maude said. “Try not to worry about it until we have to. This isn't the kind of thing you can plan for.”

  I thought this a remarkable thing for Maude to say. Not because she knew me for being a planner, or because she wasn't so much of one. But because she'd always had clear ideas about how things should work.

  Not half an hour later, we were climbing a hill at an easy pace when, on the other side of it, we heard a shot. Me and Maude pulled on the reins as if we were on
e, bringing our horses to a standstill.

  “They weren't shooting at us?” Maude said, half in surprise. I knew how she felt exactly.

  I'd begun to think of gunshot as a sign something had gone wrong. I saw that other people reacted differently. They thought a gunshot meant someone else was in trouble. Sometimes they could think of perfectly good uses for a gunshot.

  “Could be somebody popped a rabbit,” I said. “Or a bird.” Another three shots rang out, one right after the other.

  I headed my horse off the trail. Maude went for the other side, so all we could do, when the shooting stopped, was look at each other. I, for one, felt a little silly. Scared, but silly, too.

  When more gunshots didn't come, I rode over to her. Maude said, “What do you think?”

  “Bandits?”

  There were two more shots, just far enough apart to think somebody might have been taking aim. Our horses snuffled and blew, wanting to run. I whispered quieting words to them, but they weren't in the mood to listen.

  “I'll have a look,” Maude said. She dropped her horse's reins over the low-hanging branches of an oak tree. I pulled off my bonnet and hung it over my saddle horn.

  “Go slow and try not to make a lot of noise,” I said, for I couldn't go fast. I wished I had stayed in pants.

  Maude was already on the move, carrying her rifle. I hadn't yet taken mine out of the boot. When I caught up to her, she whispered, “Go straight up, and I'll work my way over a little.”

  Thinking ruefully that Maude had good instincts for someone who had never meant to be a range rider, I picked my skirt free from a stickery branch, some kind of weed. I hoped there wouldn't be many of them.

  Maude hadn't gotten far away, and she came back to say, “They aren't going to be wearing masks out here, Sallie. Who's to say which one caused the trouble?”

  “Exactly right,” I said. How were we to tell which of them would be the one needing help?

  After three or four minutes of climbing, we were nearly to a point where we could look down the other side of that hill. Maude started moving away so she would be able to look down from another angle.