Maude March on the Run! (23 page)

“That's the question you might've asked me earlier on.”

“Here's what I would've said to you. Those books aren't about you, particularly. They're about every Joe, the men who are trying to keep skin and bone together out here.”

Marion took up a stalk of grass and twisted it. I was fidgeting some myself. There were too many decisions in the air, like biting flies, and I couldn't be still.

“Tell you the truth, John Henry, I don't mind my made-up name being there,” Marion said. “Maude's story is different. Don't embroider on it.”

“Here, you can't have this conversation without me,” Maude said.

“No, we can't.” John Henry layered a piece of cheese on a cracker. He ate this, then said to Maude, “I reckon you have a day or two to think it over.”

“We won't be traveling with you,” Marion said. “We can ride as the crow flies.”

“Then I hope to have your answer sooner than that,” said J.H. “I hope you decide in my favor. In yours.”

For my money, he could have it. We hadn't been through
thick and thin with John Henry the way we had with Marion Hardly. But he'd put himself on the line to help Maude.

I glanced at Maude, and she nodded her head at me ever so slightly, which I took to mean we were in agreement on the matter. As they reached to shake hands, a flutter of small grass birds rose on the air, making high-pitched cries. Silver Dollar was close by, and he high-stepped a few times, tossing his head.

I reached for that bucket of apples while Marion was telling how accidental it happened to Maude that she got mixed up in robbing the bank. I tried one, first cutting away the bad parts. The good parts were sweet, and juice ran down my chin.

Maude told me not to eat the black specks, but they couldn't be tasted at all. The doctor took out a pocketknife, and Rebecca helped me to winnow the apples down to half a bucket's worth, both of us passing pieces of apple to the others.

The parts we judged too poor did meet the horses' lower standards. I don't believe they left a piece on the ground. As we went through those apples, me and Maude told about the snowstorm and finding our way to Ben Chaplin's.

“Just one accident after another,” I said, enjoying the telling of it. Before I could tell John Henry it really wasn't my fault I killed Willie, Maude said, “One of those boys tripped over his own feet and shot the other one.”

My eyes stretched wide, for I'd never known Maude to tell such a large and deliberate lie, at least not without having planned for it. John Henry didn't notice it.

He said, “Do you know who these other boys were?”

“No idea,” Maude said. I thought the matter through, knowing she had lied to protect me. I could see nothing to be gained by telling John Henry a different story than we had given to the sheriff.

“I believe one of them was said to be a cousin to the dead boy,” John Henry said.

“There was no family resemblance I could see,” Marion said. He went on to tell how we found Uncle Arlen by accident. Maude pinked up some as he told about waiting outside the Lavender Door.

“I guess you know the rest,” I said.

Maude gave him an address for Uncle Arlen's friend Macdougal. John Henry promised to bank some of the funds from the book for me and Maude; that was one reason to give him a way to find us. But we were anxious to hear any news of Maude's name being cleared. That was a better reason.

W
E PARTED RIGHT THERE ON THE WIDE PRAIRIE, WITH
half a day ahead of us to make use of. Me and Maude were taking Silver Dollar out to Uncle Arlen.

John Henry could ride on to the river crossing with Rebecca and the doctor, moving at a slower pace. From there he could get a ride back east, and they could wait in the comfort of a town for the doctor to feel better.

At the last minute, I had an urge to throw my arms around Rebecca's neck. Me and Maude had come back to being a usual part of civilization while living with Uncle Arlen, although we couldn't truly be ourselves.

With Rebecca and the doctor, we stood outside the bounds of usual civilization in a most acceptable way, and we were ourselves entirely. We had Rebecca to thank for that.

“I do like the dress,” I said to her.

I looked back and waved to them a few times. Rebecca always waved back. It wasn't sadness made me look back. I felt good, really, like I'd found some extra time with Aunt Ruthie. I knew myself lucky to have had it.

We reached the river before evening. As we filled our canteens
in readiness for the journey ahead of us, I noticed the few trees along the bank were wilted.

We didn't have to ride far out of our way to find a place to ford the water. The land changed something fierce on the other side of the river. It felt strange to turn in every direction and see nothing but straw-colored grass and cloudless blue sky.

We rode and rode and never felt like we made a distance.

Worse than that, we might could wander in circles, for once the trees petered out there was nothing to fix the eye on up ahead. I often brought my compass out to be sure we were heading westward.

The sky looked to be lower and heavier than ever I'd seen it before. After a time, Marion urged us to leave the trail, wading our horses through grass grown high enough to brush over our feet in the stirrups.

We came upon another patchy trail. It was nearly invisible, for the ruts in the dry earth had crumbled to dusty hollows. Like the trail had worn away under the flat weight of the sky.

“What's C.T. like?” I thought to ask. “Is it more of the same?”

“It's not so flat,” Marion said. “More trees, more hills, more cats.”

“Cats?”

“Big ones.”

“I like it out here,” Maude said, “when I'm not being chased.”

I said, “You're more of a range rider than you know.”

Riding for hours wore on our backsides, and never seeing another soul anywhere along the trail wore on our nerves. It
did nothing to improve the mood, however, to come upon strangers.

We held firm expressions upon our faces, them and us. With sometimes a nod and “Good day” as we passed, since up to then no one had drawn a gun or given us a reason to do so. Our eyes met again as we looked back over our shoulders.

We didn't find water for the horses, so shared the water from the canteens with them. They needed corn, to give them a fresh backbone.

We ran out of hard-boiled eggs and harder biscuits and then went through the canned goods. Me and Maude had thinned down to belting our pants with a rope. She made a joke about it being Beef 's style we were copying.

We rode for five days to reach another creek.

Here we could let the horses drink, but a smoke cloud to the north of us made it unwise to stop long enough to boil water for the canteens. We pushed through half of that night and half of the next on knowing the horses had had a drink.

“We have enough water to get us through tomorrow,” Marion said. Over three days, the dry weather turned hotter. Our noses had burned and peeled until they were sore to touch.

We walked a good deal of the time, since we couldn't push the horses much for speed. It gave us a chance to get our legs moving, even if it did wring us out. We might have turned back for water to boil after all, but Maude was against it. She would rest only enough to keep the horses going.

“We haven't lost that much time in getting to your uncle,” Marion said to her more than once.

I knew this argument was meant to spare the horses.
Wagon travel was slower than horseback by some five or six miles a day. A medicine wagon that was making frequent stops was slower yet. Maude wasn't fooled.

“We're nearly three weeks on the trail and not quite halfway,” Maude said. “Uncle Arlen is probably there, if he was able to do it as he planned.”

There was a look in her eyes. It scared me.

“I know why they call this land the plains,” I said. “It's plain on all sides, nothing of interest for the eye to settle on.”

“Except for all those trees,” Maude said.

“What trees?” The distance rippled like a sheer curtain.

She lifted a hand to shade her eyes. “Those trees.”

Then I knew she was teasing. I yanked off my hat and swatted her. We chased each other a few steps, but the heat and the need for a swallow of water took most of the play out of us.

Our spirits might have slid but for a heavy rustling in the grass a little way from us. I spotted a brown animal, squirrel-like but bigger. “A prairie dog,” I said, pointing.

This was the beginning of a big colony. We kept our eyes open and let the horses walk through it. Several of those animals popped out of one burrow and down another; busy fellows, they were, and interesting to see.

We figured we'd gone more than a mile before we didn't have to worry about one of our horses stepping into a hole. Once that danger was past, we had nothing to take our minds off being thirsty and knowing we were tired to the bone.

“We might could have missed that river we were looking for,” I said.

“They likelier moved it,” Marion said.

In another day, our water was gone and we hadn't come across the river. Our throats burned for water.

“It may only be midday,” I said at one point, looking at the sun, still high in the sky. We had all lost the feeling of how long we had been riding since sunup. “Do you want to stop and rest awhile?”

I looked at Maude as I said this, but her face might have been chiseled out of wood. She didn't change her pace.

“Let's keep going until dark,” Marion said.

We kept on.

“If these horses get thirsty enough, they might find water on their own,” I'd said hopefully early that morning. I had since been watching them for any sign they might smell water but saw not a flicker of interest in any of them.

We spoke not one word in a thousand steps. I couldn't stay alert to signs of danger.

But then, some time later, we passed an area where tepees had once stood. Everything had burned, and from the looks of it, a prairie fire had tried to get going. Likely they threw blankets and skins over the start of it, for the charred remains were still on the ground.

So were the skeletons of several horses.

“They musta been run out,” Marion said.

I said, “What makes you say that?”

“The horses don't have shoes. Likely they were shot before the fire started.”

“Who shot them?”

“Not Indians, that's for sure.”

It was a moment of taking things in before Maude said,
“Are you saying they just came riding in shooting at horses and the Indians, too?”

“That's how it's done.”

Maude rubbed at the back of her neck. I felt the same prickle on mine.

“The ones that lived have carried away their dead,” Marion said. “That's why there's only horse bones to see.”

It might have been an hour later Maude said to me, “Do you see a rider over that way?” I looked but couldn't be sure. So many days of hard sunlight had scalded my eyeballs. They burned even after I shut them at night.

“Let's just drift that way a bit,” she said, and put her arm out to change the drag on the reins.

When her horse shifted, we all followed. “It could be an Indian,” I said, but not fearfully. An Indian that was but a speck on the horizon didn't scare me awful much.

“It could be,” Maude said, craning her neck. She picked up the pace a little, and the horses went along with it, so the rest of us did the same. There was a time without further remarks, until Marion added, “I'll tell you this about an Indian, he'll know where the water is.”

From this, I gathered we didn't plan to catch up, precisely, but in this guess I was wrong. I fell back into riding in a be-numbed state and didn't rouse until Maude hailed them.

They were three buffalo hunters.

They stopped riding and waited on us to catch up to them. They sat straight and strong-looking on the backs of horses that had the same steely look of power.

Each man had a mule tagging along behind. One of these
animals didn't wear any kind of tether but followed them anyway. Despite the mules, gear hung everywhere off their high-cantled saddles.

Except for those saddles, they might easily have been taken for Indians. One of them rode without a shirt; the other two had fashioned sleeveless coverings with gaping armholes. They wore moccasins. Two were wrinkled and sun-browned and the other was about Maude's age.

He did the talking. Don't think this means he was a willing talker.

“Good day,” Maude said to them, and offered the flat smile that was as common out here as a handshake. “We need to find water.”

“It's ahead of you,” the boy said, and ducked his chin. “How far?” My tongue felt thick for want of water. “A day's ride,” he said, looking us over in a glance. I had no doubt he was thinking it unlikely we had half a day left in us.

“What will we look for?” I said. Questioning him took a great effort. “A river? A town?”

“Are you a boy or a girl?” he said to me. “What do you care?” I said to him, for I was in no mood to be thought of as the dirtiest girl he'd ever seen.

“This here is Zeb,” he said, not showing us which one he meant, “and this is Micah,” which introduction didn't make things any clearer. Neither one of them so much as blinked an eye. “They call me Billy Bat.”