The Misadventures of Maude March

by Audrey Couloumbis

  “We're going to send it all back,” Maude said, calming down some.

  “We can't very well do that,” Marion said, “without giving them a pretty good idea where to find me. Us,” he added, seeing the determination on her face.

  “You're right,” Maude said. “We'll have to send it to someone else.”

  “Who?” I asked. “Cleomie?”

  “No, I'm afraid we've wrecked her good name with Ben Chaplin,” Maude said. “Let's not do her any worse favors.” She looked lost in thought, but only for about five seconds before she seized on a name. “Reverend Peasley!”

  “No!” I said.

  “He has his poor points, but I don't know who else we could call on,” Maude said to Uncle Arlen. “It would be too much for Mrs. Golightly.”

  “Hard to say,” Uncle Arlen said. “I didn't care much for Peasley myself. But he is a preacher now.”

  “I don't care if he is a preacher,” I said. “He didn't strike me as the forgiving type, not way down deep. Or even the honest type.”

  “Who, then?” Maude asked.

  “The sheriff,” I said, a plan springing to mind. “He's known us forever. We have to write down everything that happened to us, everything, so he'll see how things were. He'll understand.”

  Marion was by then sitting with his head resting in hishands, no doubt picturing lawmen on his tail as he mounted the Rockies. But Maude was listening. Listening as if I was telling her just what she wanted to hear. I thought carefully before I told her the best part of my plan.

  “We'll tell him how our part in the bank robbery was an accident, pure and simple, and how we came to take those horses, and how we hoped they found their way home after we set them free.”

  “Good,” Uncle Arlen said.

  “What about Willie?” Marion said from somewhere deep inside himself, and if he hadn't looked so miserable, I'd have been tempted to swat him myself.

  “We were there, but it was a mystery man who shot Willie,” I said snappishly. “It's our word against anybody's. Mystery shooters turn up in dimers all the time.” I had to stop and think a minute. He'd made me lose my train of thought. I picked it up again with, “We'll say we hitched up with a little wagon train that carried us further west and then, much to our surprise, we came across Joe Harden here, again.”

  Uncle Arlen nodded his approval.

  I had Maude up to that point where Joe Harden's name came up. Ignoring the frown on her face, I put on my most winning voice and said, “Only he'd been shot and gasped out his last breath telling us where to find the money he hid, and we did, and now we'd like to return it and be on the right side of the law the rest of our days.”

  Even as Marion put a hand over his heart and said, “I've died?” Maude swatted me and said, “Sallie! You talk like you're reading right out of one of those blasted dime novels.”

  “Don't swear,” I said. “It ain't becoming.”

  “I think she's got something,” Uncle Arlen said.

  “Kill off Joe Harden, once and for all,” Marion said. “Then I am free to be Marion Hardly.”

  “I don't know,” Maude said. “It would have to be an awful long letter.”

  “I'll start writing,” I said.

  Watching Maude and Sallie find a gang of cowgirls-at-heart to champion them has been sometimes rough-riding, sometimes high-riding, occasionally rowdy, but always a rodeo ride of stellar proportions.

  My agent, Jill Grinberg, is caring, thoughtful, and utterly more gracious than Maude, but she also has Maude's best qualities: she can see a far piece, she's a straight shooter, and she's a fine pardner to have by your side should you find yourself in the O.K. Corral at high noon.

  My editor, Shana Corey, welcomed these girls with open arms; it's no surprise to me that Maude and Sallie rode home to her with the same unerring sense of direction that led them to Uncle Arlen.

  Shana has all of Sallie's best qualities: the same quick courage and easy smile; the right combination of by-the-seat-of-her-pants and timely attention to detail (she's a planner); and a sure sense of the funny side of tragic circumstances.

  Like Sallie, Shana possesses a writer's mind and heart and a great freedom of spirit with which to approach the work wedo. As wonderful as it is to find these qualities in a character, it is even more special to find them in an editor.

  Jenni Holm steered me toward research materials that turned out to be invaluable. Rides at a gallop, this girl, and thank you, Jenni, for putting out your hand to pull me up onto the historical horse.

  I have a collage on the wall in the room where I work. In the collage, there are a few pictures of four women together, all of them pictures of contentment in different ways. In one picture they are working around a computer, in another they are hanging out in a sunroom, laughing, and in the third there are old ladies sitting on a park bench, having a chat. The pictures in that collage have been with me for a while, but now I feel like I know those women's names.

  Thank you, Miriam Brenaman, for your true-life account of the rattlesnake that wouldn't die. And for bits of historical information that found its way into our conversation so subtly that I didn't know until later, when I found it useful, that I was being educated.

  Thank you, Susan Krawitz, for instruction on the proper care and feeding of horses, and trail lore. These girls never would have made it to Independence without you.

  Thank you, Uma Krishnaswami, for your own work, which forever reminds me that there are two sides to every story.

  I'm pretty sure you all ride like Calamity Jane, and I am glad to count you among my friends.

  My best friend and husband, Akila, dictated the funny, sounds-right newspaper articles while driving in heavy traffic—a high-wire feat for which I am eternally grateful. Thank you, sweetie.

  Thank you, Vicki Hughes of the Ushers Ferry Historic Village—it's not only a Web site, it's the real thing (www.cedar-rapids.org/ushers).

  Geno Paesano is not a cowgirl in any way, but he helped outfit Maude and Sallie for their adventures. We all thank him for telling me what I needed to know about the guns of the period.

  My heartfelt thanks to all the people at Random House who put a beautiful book into your hands, with special thanks to Kristin Hall, the editorial assistant; Joanne Yates, the designer; Cathy Goldsmith, the art director; and Gino D'Achille, the illustrator.

  Thank you to many unnamed librarians in the reference departments of the Cedar Rapids and Independence libraries and to Suzette, for a time at the Newberry, Florida, library, for your underpaid effort to find answers to the questions a clueless writer asks. More than that, I thank you for having the sand (aka dedication) to go even further and find information for wallpapering this book and the ones to follow it with period detail that will bring them alive in the minds of young readers.

  Last, but not least, and I know she would love to hear the strains of “Ghost Riders in the Sky” playing in the background as I say this: Thank you, Pauline Macmillan, for morning cups of tea and storytelling that drifted into the lazy afternoons when I learned to appreciate country-and-western music—especially “My Mother's Hands”—and for writing encouragement of the most inspiring kind.

  It was in Pauline's home that I often admired a flea-market purchase: a hand-embroidered pillow with the outline of a running horse and the words “Trouble rides a fast horse.” She always said there ought to be a book with that title.

  Saddle up!

  The West is about to get a little wilder in Sallie and Maude's next rootin' tootin' adventure…

  Maude March on the Run

  Galloping into stores January 2007 Turn the page for a sneak peek!

  Excerpt copyright © 2007 by Audrey Couloumbis. Published by Random House Children's Books.

  One

  They say my sixteen-year-old sister passes for a man and shoots like an outlaw, and I cannot argue it, since she has done both in her day.

  Maude has been called a hardened criminal, and of this I can honestly s
ay, do not believe it. People say a great many things and only some of them are true.

  This afternoon I watched from across the street as my sister was arrested. She made a small figure in her plain dark dress, her arms pulled behind her to cuff her wrists. “Maude!” I shouted, but she did not seem to hear my voice over all those so filled with excitement.

  I felt my blood rush toward my feet, leaving me so light-headed I nearly sat down. For in that moment, I saw her as the crowd did, a fugitive from the law, accused of being a horse thief, a bank robber, and a cold-blooded killer.

  But it was five months since we found our lost Uncle Arlen and settled into a new life with him in Independence. My sister had begun to believe she would never be discovered to be the infamous Mad Maude.

  I hoped for the same thing. But I did not often fall asleep without asking myself, What will I do if Maude is found out?

  Maude had recently tried to talk me out of my determination to be ready for just such an occasion as this. We were getting dressed for the day ahead of us, which was also my twelfth birthday.

  “When do you plan to go back to looking like a girl?” she said to me. Unlike my sister Maude, I had not yet taken to wearing skirts again. She said that of course I must, as soon as my hair grew in nicely, but so long as I could wield the scissors this fate would not befall me.

  I said, “One of these days.” I did not say it to Maude, but I did not care if I never wore another skirt.

  “It doesn't matter how you dress, Sallie,” Maude said. “They might still find out. Then again, they might not. But I'm meanwhile missing the sight of my little sister.”

  “I will whisper it in her ear,” I said. “See if she don't surprise you one day.”

  “Doesn't,” she said. “Is that a few bristles I see under your nose? Why, it looks like the beginning of a mustache.”

  “It is a shame I did not ask your admirer, Mr. Wilburn, for a shaving lesson,” I said. “That fellow had mustache material growing out of his ears.”

  Maude wopped me with her feather pillow and we were occupied with battle for a time. But as soon as she was not looking I touched my upper lip to be sure she was teasing.

  I had begun to think she might be right about one thing— that we would never need to make a sudden run for it. But past events had impressed upon me how fast things could go wrong, and how different life might be after they did.

  I kept some of our things in a sack in the loft. The heroes in the dime novels I read were always planning ahead this way. Maude did not read much and so did not appreciate this fact.

  That sack prompted her to remind me of a Bible story about the three kings who were in the desert and could not find water for themselves or their horses.

  They put their troubles before the prophet Elisha, who said to them what the Lord told him, which was “Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain, yet make this valley full of ditches.”

  Even though it didn't make good sense to those kings to dig ditches, they did it, and sure enough, a big rain came and filled the ditches with water. Which meant, you have to get ready for what you want.

  “Or in this case,” Maude had said, “don't get ready for what you don't want.”

  Maybe she was right; for a scant hour after Maude was arrested, I was taking stock and judged myself to be as ready as anyone can be for an event that will spin their lives in an unexpected direction. This meant fewer necessaries than you might guess. A horse and a canteen can get you through most anything.

  My plan, in case of Maude's arrest, had always been to go in like a confused younger brother looking for his sister, arguing a case of mistaken identity. I had half a chance with this, for no one appeared to have noticed that Maude had a younger sister, let alone an unexpected brother.

  Only as I was riding to the sheriff's office, I knew why people resorted to packing a gun—it was in case that first plan didn't work out the way they hoped it would.

  The way I saw it, I might could breach the doorway whenthere was only one lawman on hand. Then, in case he did not believe my story, and release my sister to me, I could try to get the drop on that single fellow.

  There was a second chance in this, but I could see flaws all over.

  One, Mad Maude and the Black Hankie Bandit, both notorious outlaws, were stuck in the same jailhouse. It might never come a time when only one lawman stood on duty. I could be waiting outside for a very long while.

  Two, once me and Maude were on the run, they would know to watch for her traveling with a boy. This was bad because we had already been two boys, so they'd watch for that as well. And two girls could not travel on their own without someone wondering why.

  And three, the likelihood of getting myself shot.

  It might could happen I'd get killed some time or other, but if it was because I'd packed a gun, Maude would never let me rest. From every side, this was flaw enough to quit right there, if only my sister was not in the jail.

  I did wish myself taller and wider and more truly a man. For in front of the jail, I could not step forward smartly, but stood shivering like winter had come back all of a sudden.

  Uncle Arlen had once said to me that I was not truly the criminal type. My heart was pounding so hard I stopped hearing the sounds in the street, which seemed to be the proof of that statement.

  I told myself I had to go right then, or don't bother to try.

  I saw a man-on-his-horse-shaped shadow glide into the alleyway nearby. It gave me a start, but it also got me on the move.

  I let Maude see me heading into the sheriff's office, directly beneath the window where she stood. Like something in me knew the exact way, tears started to flow.

  Making a loud obnoxious crying noise, I walked inside.

  ALSO BY AUDREY COULOUMBIS

  Getting Near to Baby

  Say Yes

  Abandoned Cabin

  Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children's Books

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  Copyright © 2005 by Audrey Couloumbis

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-48829-9

  January 2007

  v3.0