Maude March on the Run! (29 page)

I looked back as I swung a leg over. I saw those soldiers who had rushed into the shed were rushing back out, but I couldn't quickly find Marion in the crowd.

That stranger slapped my horse and I was on my way.

It had been no more than five minutes since the fire started, probably less, and we were on horseback. When I cleared the smoke, I saw the white of Maude's bonnet in front of me as she rode straight for freedom.

We couldn't gather any real speed with so many people and a few dogs about. But the way was cleared when men saw a horse coming at them.

At the gates, more people were pushing their way into the fort. It gave me a bad moment. The way the torchlight played on their anxious faces, it felt like that night when things had gone wrong, and the mob attacked Dr. Aldoradondo.

My horse fought our way through when I faltered. And in another few moments, we were outside. I could still see Maude a ways ahead of me, winding her way through the tent city.

I leaned into the horse's neck and shouted, “Git up!” But there was no clean row to ride, and we had to be satisfied with zigging and zagging around the tents.

A few shots were fired into the dirt nearby as we rode away. I saw the clods fly. The shots brought Maude up short.

At first I feared she might have been hit, but I saw she wasn't riding off till she knew she had collected her people. Marion and another rider were bringing a string of horses along behind. They were dark shadows against the pale tops of tents and wagon.

We all rode away from the fort together. A thought made me smile, even as another shot bit the dirt near my horse.

Maude did have a gang.

W
E WERE SOON OUT OF RANGE OF THE BULLETS.
That last rider put up a hand to signal us to slow down. “Pleased to meet you, Sallie, Marion. My name is Ellie Macdougal,” she said.

I saw right off this was the Macdougal who sent the telegram saying her father had been shot and her dog killed. “Let's all of us spread out,” she said. “We don't want to leave a good trail for them.”

We rode in this order: Marion, Ellie and her horses, me, and Maude, strung out across the high plains. Now we weren't being shot at, I worried about being followed.

We made those horses run.

As we rode, I was turning it over in my mind. I added
started a fire
to the list of accusations that might be made against Maude.

I thought
broke jail twice and broke loose her gang
sounded more serious than burning down that shed. But if it turned into a big fire, that might be a whole lot worse than breaking loose from Fort Dodge.

We would just have to wait and see how the papers wrote it up.

Riding at about twenty yards apart, we went south for a time, and then west, and then south again. I rode tense, waiting and yet dreading to hear the rumble of the cavalry riding down on us.

We were trying to get away from the river trail. I couldn't see the fort plainly any longer, just a spot less purple on the horizon I figured for the light from the fire.

When nothing happened, we slowed the horses for a time. Ellie, I'd noticed, ran her horses crossways behind us now and again, and I figured it had something to do with breaking up the trail we were leaving.

“You were daring,” Marion said to Maude in a tone I thought admiring. “What plan did you have before those fellows obliged you with a fire?”

“Digging under,” Maude said. “Although I won't call it daring.”

“It's good enough.”

She didn't appreciate this compliment, but said to him, “You had my sister in there with you. Could you not get yourself arrested without dragging her into it?”

“She throws a mean kick,” Marion said, looking at me. And to Maude, he said, “Would you have left me in there if I was alone?”

“Not once the place was on fire,” Maude said.

I said, “She doesn't care to have you thinking she's soft-hearted.”

“You stay out of this,” Maude said.

“I could hardly think it,” Marion said to me. “More like, she kicks old dogs, and I'm feeling like an old dog myself.”

I didn't take his meaning, but Maude's voice went high. “Why would I kick an old dog?”

“There was that new dog around for a while.” “John Henry Kirby is funny and sweet,” Maude said, like she was laying down a trump card. “He has a cowlick, like a boy.”

“I'm surprised you didn't take him up on his invite to see New York City,” Marion said. He gigged his horse and rode off a ways, like Ellie had encouraged us to do.

I hadn't known about any invitation. I didn't like the tone of this. None of the things Maude pointed out were what I would have used to describe John Henry.

“I never noticed the cowlick,” I said to her.

“He had one,” Maude said. “Likely Aunt Ruthie wouldn't think highly of it.”

“What do you think of it?”

“You might offer him some of your boot black,” she said to me with a grin. “That's likely to kill it.”

“You can't fight with Marion the way you fight with me,” I said.

“And how is that?”

“To have the last word,” I said.

Ellie had just finished one of those diagonal runs and brought her string of horses near. Riding at this slower pace, I saw Silver Dollar among them.

“I'm glad you brought Uncle Arlen's horse along,” I said to her. “How did you happen to come across us?”

“It wasn't accidental,” she said.

“You were looking for us?”

“Your uncle Arlen got your telegram and sent me back here to find you.”

“That's where she watched for us,” Maude said. “At the telegraph office. We came looking for you and Marion and found your horses hitched to a post. We waited for a time, then Ellie asked around. It didn't take long to find someone who knew there'd been a man and a boy arrested.”

I said, “Where is Uncle Arlen?” “Back at the ranch,” Ellie said. “Doing the job Daddy can't do since he got shot. I couldn't do it.”

“We got your second message,” Maude said. “We started out as soon as we could.”

There was more to the story from there, but Maude decided to save it, for Marion shouted that we should all be riding apart. Ellie took her horses off in another direction.

Maude said, “I wonder if Uncle Arlen has got himself a girl.”

“Wouldn't he tell us?”

“I don't believe he has yet told
her,
” Maude said, “so you can't repeat what I said.”

It may have been hours later that we came back together, close enough to talk. At first we only wondered aloud. Were they tracking us, chasing us? Or were we scot-free?

“Maybe we burned the fort down,” I said to Marion.

“Too much rock for that,” he answered me.

I was back to
broke jail twice.
Why, they might not even know Maude was there. She wouldn't get blamed at all.

We ate on the move, right out of the cans, cold beans and then peaches. The crackers were broken, but we might later
roll the cheese across them and eat well enough, so we didn't throw them away.

Later on I remembered the string-tied box of molasses cookies with great longing. We rode with the sunrise behind us, satisfied most of the miles we'd put in took us further west.

W
E DIDN'T RIDE BACK NORTH TOWARD THE RIVER FOR
three days. We laid low, sparing our water, always keeping our eyes open for any bands of soldiers that might be on the hunt for Joe Harden and his boy sidekick.

We had run out of food when Ellie judged us to be nearing the border, we aimed once more for the trail we had been at such pains to avoid. We rode hard and long.

As dark fell, we hadn't seen any sign of life at all, except for the four-footed kind, and birds.

“There's something up ahead,” Maude said. “Like fireflies.”

I couldn't see them, and it bothered me something fierce. “I can't believe you can look that far away and see a firefly.”

“Oh, hush,” Maude said. “You're just hungry. I see lights, Sallie. But they twinkle like fireflies.”

“How many lights?” Marion said, wanting to tease her.

Maude said, “Don't pester me,” but her tone sounded near to cheerful.

“C.T.,” Ellie said. “We'll find a well there.”

I would have liked to hurry my horse, but he was at least as thirsty as I was, although he wasn't so hungry. I hadn't been eating grass all day.

We could've found this town in full dark, even if they didn't burn lamps. The piano and banjo music, the laughter and shouting, carried on the night air for some distance.

I'd grown used to hearing such rowdy goings-on, standing on the street in front of the Aldoradondos' wagon, and it didn't bother me much. I was tired, which can make a body slow to worry.

But we did go in with a care. The place was mainly a camp of whiskey bars, one after the other, with such names as the Satin Slipper, the Blue Goose, and Rory's House of Cards.

None of them looked to be painted up prettily or securely nailed together. The only upstairs porch sagged like a hammock. I didn't believe anyone would dare to step outside on it.

“Look for a place like George Ray's,” Maude said.

We found one, only not so busy. There was no one up front serving customers, some of which were eating, some weren't.

“See what you can do about rustling up some biscuits and coffee,” Marion said. “I'm going to look around.”

I knew what he was looking for. Soldiers or that bounty hunter, who might be feeling cheated out of his money.

We went inside to stake our claim to a table.

“Chicken dinners for four,” Ellie said when the fellow came to take our order. “We'll put a hurtin' on anything you can bring to the table right away.”

“Are we in Colorado Territory proper?” Maude asked Ellie, but that fellow answered.

“Oh, you are,” he said. “We're half a day from the Kansas border, give or take a few hours.” This was news good enough to bring tears to Maude's eyes.

It brought tears to mine, anyway. “Come a long way, have you?” he said, wiping the table with a damp rag. “Everybody out here has come a long way.”

“How far to Liberty?” Maude asked when that fellow had gone away again.

“Two days' ride,” Ellie said.

We were nearly asleep in our chairs and were grateful when the fellow brought cups of coffee out to us. “On the house,” he said.

Marion came back there to find us.

“We can put our horses up at the livery,” he said. “There's a young fellow over there promises he puts on a real good feed bag.”

Maude got up and stacked the dirty plates on a table. At first this made me stare, wondering what she was about.

Then she took the newspaper someone had left behind, walked back past me, and dropped the paper in front of me.

While she took the plates on to the kitchen, I noticed the paper came from Memphis, Tennessee. It was only a few days old, so I didn't expect to find much that interested me—I got a surprise.

Ellie leaned in to read with me. One article claimed Maude had robbed a general store in St. Joseph, Missouri, a long way from where we had been at the time.

“Every crazy Mary Jane in the country is wearing her name,” Ellie said, as if her breath had been snatched from her.

This wasn't news. Right next to this ran another headline, and I skipped over to it:

I flipped the paper over, thinking that couldn't be all they wrote. However, there was nothing more said on the matter. I
would have read it out to Marion, but Maude came back to the table with a plate of biscuits.