Maude March on the Run! (4 page)

M
E AND MAUDE AND UNCLE ARLEN SAT AT THE
table again the next morning, in the half-light of daybreak. We ate soft-fried eggs and yeast-raised biscuits made the night before, Uncle Arlen's favorite breakfast.

“I want to go with you,” Maude said to him, and I perked up. “I don't feel safe here since Sallie came across that poster.”

Uncle Arlen said, “Are you talking about
staying
out west?” He glanced up as he scraped the last bit of egg yolk onto a piece of biscuit. “You are.”

“I should find out if I could get along there.”

“You can't want to lead Sallie out of safety,” Uncle Arlen said, “any more than I can take you into unknown danger. Can we talk about this when I get back from Liberty?”

I knew when a horse was dead and so did Maude. She sat at the table, worrying her thumb, while I smoothed my socks and pulled on my boots.

Marion had opened the livery by the time we got there, and he had a horse ready for Uncle Arlen. Me and Maude tied the bedroll and the sack of foodstuffs onto his saddle.

Beef was stoking the fire for a day of bending iron, and Uncle Arlen went back there for a word with him.

“I do hope you girls aren't prone to tearful good-byes,” Marion said to us as we worked, “because I'm not much good at back-patting.”

“Don't you worry about it,” Maude said. “We'll pat each other's backs, and we'll pass you a hankie.”

They went back and forth like this until Uncle Arlen got on his horse. “I don't like leaving you girls alone,” he said.

Maude's chin firmed up. “Sallie and I can take care of ourselves. We've done it before.”

Uncle Arlen looked like he might argue this but thought better of it.

We had no sooner seen Uncle Arlen out the livery door than those boat rats I had seen over at George Ray's came through it, quarrelsome as ever. They wanted to put their horses up with us, reminding us there was a little excitement in town—the trial of the Black Hankie Bandit.

They were only the first of the day. Independence was a busy place, with wagons backed up waiting to turn a corner. But the trial made things worse than any day I'd seen so far. I had to skip school to lend a hand; not a sacrifice. I hoped for a long trial, although many others said they expected to see a hanging that day.

Black Hankie had murdered someone, but the fish were biting and the judge wanted to see it done right soon. A sign had gone up in the window of the courthouse:

HANGMAN WANTED

This made for a general feeling of justice having triumphed, but when those three fellows came for their horses, their spirits were clearly flattened.

Marion was called out to collect a horse, and during this time Beef showed a horse to a sharp-looking fellow, but didn't sell it. I listened in and was convinced Beef knew horseflesh as well as how to bend metal.

As for the buyer, I noticed a line of dirt under his finger-nails. This didn't fit with his clothing, which could have cost more than the horse he had in mind.

The business didn't suffer—Uncle Arlen had been right about that much—and I was sorry he wasn't here to see the cash box overflowing.

There had been one sour note to the day. When Marion and me went over to George Ray's to eat, Beef rented out Silver Dollar with a little rig. It didn't surprise me to learn the sharp-looking fellow had come back to strike this deal.

The rig was meant to be rented, along with a horse to pull it, that part was fine. But Uncle Arlen would never have put his favorite horse in the traces.

Marion swore over it up and down.

“Why, then, ain't Arlen riding that horse, if it's his best?” Beef said to me.

“He meant to trade horses all along the way,” I said, “to stay on a fresh one.”

After a bit, Marion calmed down. “I'm feeling the weight of my responsibilities,” he said to Beef, and my breath caught. “But anyone could have done it.”

Beef said, “I know it.”

“You don't have to worry about me and Maude,” I said, once Beef had gone back to the anvil.

Marion looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“We don't want to be a heavy responsibility,” I said, and because he appeared to take offense, I steered away to another subject. “I think it grates on Maude that she isn't her own boss.”

“I don't know anyone more their own boss,” he said. “She has George Ray bent over backwards to get her to bake a pan of cookies.”

“It ain't the same thing.” I knew this was true, but the difference was hard to put into words.

I hardly had a minute all day to take in the fact of Uncle Arlen having gone west that morning. To let it sink in that he was not coming home with us that night.

When Maude took me over to George Ray's for supper, I said, “I don't have an appetite.”

Sounding like Aunt Ruthie, Maude said, “Eat up. I plucked the chickens this morning. You won't find fresher food being served anywhere in the city than right here.”

I did eat, but I also thought of Uncle Arlen needing a better horse and coming back because he wanted only his own stock, such as Silver Dollar or that big sorrel Maude rode. I didn't really want a lame horse to befall my uncle; it was just Independence didn't feel so much like home without him.

Something else had been at the back of my mind all day, and I mulled it over now. I didn't like to be childish, but I wanted to hear myself counted Macdougal's equal.

I felt in my pocket for the copy of Uncle Arlen's map.

“We should have gone with him,” Maude said, pushing her clean plate away. “I'm a better shot than he is any day.”

“I'm going to tie my ankle to yours while we sleep,” I said, for I didn't care to get left behind twice in the same day.

She offered a flirty smile. “I didn't know you for such a sentimental type.”

“Don't go without me,” I said. “I want your word on it.”

“I swear it on my fingertips,” she said, and kissed each of them on her right hand.

We didn't go home, but back to the livery, where Maude asked Marion to play a game of checkers.

To keep my spirits up, she gave me a dime out of her waist-band and sent me over to Mr. Palmer's store. This was unusual generous of Maude, who didn't care for dimers, and who could hold tighter to a penny than Aunt Ruthie ever did.

I purchased that latest in the adventures of Powder Keg McCarthy, a soldier who'd found himself at loose ends once the war was over. I bought some pretty red-and-white candy sticks for Maude.

Maude took the candy gladly. While she and Marion played checkers under the brass Rochester lamp that hung from a beam, the sharp sweetness of peppermint brightened the livery air. I sat down to read by the lamplight and let their voices fade from my notice.

It so happened Keg was in Kansas, hired to protect a small town from some local rowdies. They didn't sound a smart bunch, the townspeople, that is, always fighting over who had the best hiding place or falling out of the barn loft or wandering off alone.

But Keg got the women and children together in the
church, which was the nearest thing to a fort they had, and told them to ring the church bell if the rowdies showed up.

“Sallie, it's time to go home.” Maude was sliding the checkers into the box.

I helped Marion put feed bags on a few horses that were staying the night; eighteen more of them than we had stalls for.

“Your uncle didn't count on us having more horses than stalls,” he said. “I'm going to hunker down against the wall out there and make sure none of those nags go missing from the corral before morning. Or at least we're paid for our services before they do.”

I said, “I know what we can do—”

“You and Maude can't sleep in the loft,” Marion said.

T
HIS NOTION TOOK HOLD OF ME. I KEPT WONDERING
about me and Maude following Uncle Arlen by train out there to Colorado Territory. C.T., folks called it. If that letter came, making Maude a free woman, we could read it when we got back.

As things worked out, I had reason to look again at my copy of the map only two days later. Maude came across the street from George Ray's, bringing a jar of hot bean soup for the midday meal.

The day had been cloudy and oddly chill for April, and I pressed my fingers against the jar. “Sit with us,” Marion said to Maude.

“Not today, I can't,” she said. “It's busy as a hive over there. They made up their minds to hang Black Hankie tomorrow.”

A boy came in then, bearing another message from Macdougal. He was a boy I'd been forced to whomp to cut down on his remarks about my name. One good thing about being a boy is never having to worry over being liked. One good whomp and everybody likes you fine.

“‘Sfer Arlen Waters,” he said.

Maude put her hand out, and he gave it over, never turning a hair upon hearing my sister bore a boy's name.

She opened the fold of paper and read aloud:

TOO LATE FOR ME STOP THEY HAVE THIS DAY STAMPEDED MY CATTLE SHOT MY FATHER BURNED DOWN THE BARN STOLEN MY HORSE AND KILLED MY DOG STOP I AM NIGH TO GIVING UP STOP MACDOUGAL

I grabbed the telegram and read it for myself. “Who are they?” I didn't like to think of Uncle Arlen having to face them.

Maude dropped to sit on a hay bale as if all her strength had left her. “Too late? Does that mean Mr. Macdougal wanted to stop Uncle Arlen from coming?”

“I have to go out there,” Marion said. “Your uncle was expecting one more man to fight on their side and that man's been shot.”

“We all have to go out there,” Maude said.

“I don't know what I'm riding into,” Marion said. “I'm not about to drag you girls into it.”

“I am tired to death of being called ‚you girls,'” I said to him. “It's only to kill the argument we have that anyone ever says it.”

“Sallie's right,” Maude said. “We're as capable as boys.”

“More capable,” I said, thinking of some of the boys I'd met thereabouts. They tended to look scruffy but could not necessarily hold their own in a scuffle. I had easily whomped a couple of them for speaking too admiringly of my sister. This
would've embarrassed them a great deal more had they known they were fighting a girl.

“Your uncle would never forgive me if I took you along with me,” Marion said.

“There is that,” Maude said.

“Maude! Are we just to sit here like ticks on a cow while Uncle Arlen rides to a sorry fate?”

“Now, Sallie, don't take on like that,” Marion said. “His fate isn't something you could change, even if you did catch up to him.”

In her most outraged tones, Maude said, “You do expect us to sit here and wait like ticks on a cow! What kind of females do you take us for?”

“Now, Maude—”

“Don't you use that coddling tone with me,” she said. “Sallie and I are making ready to ride. I'm going over to George Ray's to collect three days' pay.”

I said, “I'll get our horses saddled.”

Maude hurried outside to dash through a break in the rough stream of horses and wagons. I climbed to the loft.

I didn't have to look into my sack to know it held a tin cup, a pot, a long-handled spoon, my gun kit, a box of cartridges that were a match to Marion's gun, half a wedge of matches, my compass, my pouch with a few dollars in it, and an empty canteen. I checked this cache nearly every day, sometimes adding to the sum in the pouch, more often taking money to buy a dimer. Saving was not in my nature.

I threw the loop of the canteen over my head and climbed down.

“I guess somebody better tell Beef he's on his own,” Marion
said. He headed back toward the anvil. I took this to mean he would be coming with me and Maude.

These last words were no sooner spoken than a shot rang out across the street, lifting bits of the building's roof shakes into the air.

Horses startled.

I yelled, “Maude!”

Pedestrians scattered like pebbles.

E
VERY LIVING THING IN THE VICINITY HAD JUMPED AT
the shot, and all up and down the street, horses were prancing, circling, trying to unseat their riders.

I ran outside, only to have Marion yank me back by my shirt collar.

“Don't go running over there, Sallie.”