Maude March on the Run! (25 page)

Sitting down to the conversation, I heard Maude admire the chicken crates. “We can't let the chickens run loose,” Betsy said. “They don't keep up.”

Maude said, “But your pigs are safe?”

“Their momma died after they were born, so I had to feed them milk from Lucy's cow,” she said. Telling us this brought a smile to her face. “They think I'm their momma, and they don't stray ten feet away.”

“How are you going to be able to bring yourself to eat them?” Maude asked her.

“Posie and Petunia?” She laughed. “I could never eat them. I'm going to have to marry up with somebody has a boar hog, that's all.”

We were served plates of eggs fried to perfection, with a tasty brown crust on the outside and a tender yolk on the inside.
We didn't waste time on polite reluctance. We ate with our fingers, although we were given forks.

Betsy did the talking, telling us they were twenty-eight women from back east hoping to find husbands out west.

“Expecting to find husbands,” Lucy said.

“Although we aren't yet promised,” another of them said.

“Where you coming from?” Betsy asked us.

“We came from the old Fort Zarah site most recently,” I said. “We're headed for Liberty in the Colorado Territory.”

“That doesn't sound like a bad place,” another woman, name of Miriam, said. “We're going into C.T. ourselves, but I still think we ought to try for Wyoming, where they're giving women the vote.”

Betsy said, “I told Miriam it's too far north. The winters are bound to be hard, and there she is, a sparrow of a woman.”

Lucy said, “Besides that, it's a territory settled on trying to live with new ideas. I read that someplace.”

Maude didn't enter into this conversation. I believe they thought her to be too hungry for talk, and didn't judge her rude. Marion had kept his head down mostly, like a shy fellow.

“New ideas, and a great many men to choose from,” another woman said. “How could we go wrong?”

At this, Marion stood to excuse himself. “Think I'll just mosey on over there and sit with those fellows.”

Betsy said, “They're friendlies. Just introduce yourself.”

“Thanks for the eats,” Marion said. “Give a holler if I can do anything for you.”

This seemed to kill the mood. Everyone got up, remembering a chore they had to finish. Making good on my word, I took up the bucket of potatoes and started peeling.

Betsy was right, those pigs followed her like dogs. And they had a taste for buttermilk. They stood watching each swallow we took and, when we finished, nuzzled out the bowls.

Having done with the buttermilk, one of the pigs leaned over the cookfire to check what was in the pot. One of the women spotted this and whacked it on the nose with the wooden spoon. The pig set up a noisy squealing and ran to Betsy, who soothed it like a child.

“What made you decide to come west, Betsy?” Maude asked her as she sat beside us at supper.

“Men,” Betsy said. “Not the finding of one so much as getting away from a certain kind.”

“What kind is that?” I asked her.

Betsy said, “The kind who don't know that being little and delicate isn't the making of a woman. It will be the icing on the cake to find a man who already knows a woman with grit and substance is the equal of any pretty sparrow who graces a ballroom.”

“There must be a lot of men who know that,” I said.

“I believe there are,” Betsy said. “If I find one who loves me for my grit and substance, I'll have my cake and eat it both.”

“Yes, but what made you want to go west to find it?” Maude asked her. “Are there more of those men out there?”

Betsy shrugged. “Maybe it's that there are so many men who know what it takes to get there at all. They're sure to appreciate a woman who can do it. Don't you agree?”

“I do,” Maude said. “It doesn't take but a few days of riding
the trail out here to appreciate it's another thing entirely from a wagon trip to visit with relatives, back east.”

A small child kept crawling in our direction, a toothless grin of welcome on his face, or hers, I couldn't tell.

A girl of maybe four years doggedly brought him back to their momma's side over and over again. After one of these efforts, she came back over to tell us, “He's a lot of trouble. I don't know why we had to have him.”

I didn't know how to reply to this, but Maude said, “He'll be more useful later. He'll play tea party with you.”

The girl gave Maude a look that suggested she'd heard this empty promise before. “Whenever you break something,” I said, “you can say he did it.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“If he leaves his jelly and biscuit lying around, you can eat it and know it for a good joke on him,” Maude said, and this made the little girl grin.

T
HE FULL MOON HAD RISEN PALE THAT NIGHT, FAINTLY
blue, like milk once the cream is skimmed off. I expected everyone to sit down around the campfire once the supper things were put away.

But there was butter to be churned and cheese to be hung in the pantry wagon. The moon had hit its peak and was headed west before that camp settled down for the night.

“You and Sallie could ride on with us if you care to, Maude,” Betsy said from the opening at the end of her wagon. She was pretty, in the most billowing nightgown I'd ever seen. “Your friend, too. There's safety in numbers, most times.”

Miriam said, “We have several women who are good shots.”

“Maude once shot the eye out of a panther,” I said, jumping in where I could.

This raised some oohs and aahs. Lucy said admiringly, “You have the makings of a gunslinger.”

At this, me and Maude fell silent. We didn't mean to draw attention to ourselves in this way, but we did. These women
were ever faithful conversationalists, and falling silent was foreign to them.

It broke up the party, with them wondering who we might be they were laughing with around their fire. But if they were a more solemn group as they turned in for the night, they didn't refuse us the warmth of their circle to sleep in.

Maude soon lay sound asleep, with her hair spread over the saddlebags she used for a pillow. She fought to stay awake, but once she lay down, sleep had been the winner of that battle.

The woman called Young Etta—for they had started out with an older one as well—came to sit with me. She brought two onion crates to sit upon, which did improve the accommodations. I thanked her and went on watching the stars come out.

“You aren't much for talk,” she said. “What do you like to talk about?” I asked her. “Home,” she said.

The very word brought a funny ache to my chest. I'd begun to think of home as the piece of ground I was going to lay on during the night, and just now it already looked familiar to me. I was resigned each morning to leaving it behind.

I didn't ask her why she left home, if she was so happy there. People have their reasons, I had learned that. Reluctant as I was to start out before Maude could travel as a free woman, I didn't regret it now.

I'd had that time with Rebecca, and I'd sold more than a hundred bottles from my basket. We'd never have found John Henry in any other way, and perhaps, in the end, he would be the saving of Maude.

Young Etta said to me, “What about you?”

“I'm right fond of home,” I said, “but it isn't so much a place with me. It's Maude. Our uncle Arlen. Marion.”

“So you are always on the move? Don't you get tired of that?”

“We stopped for a time in Independence,” I said, “and we'll stop again in C.T. Meanwhile, there's something fine about living each day different than the last.”

I saw the first sign—the pigs woke and started running among the horses and cow—and I should have known it for trouble.

Minutes later, Maude's horse took to blowing through his nose. Horses don't like having pigs run under their bellies, so I ignored the blowing, and still ignored it when I saw him pointing his ears off into the darkness. That was the second sign, the horse's ears, and I missed it.

The third sign came from the pigs again. They ran out into the darkness, and we could hear the speedy patter of their hooves as they skittered about out there.

Betsy looked out from her wagon and sniffed the air like a dog. She said, “Something's out there,” and ducked back inside.

One of the pigs came running back into the circle of fire-light squealing to high heaven, cutting up the last vestige of peace. Some of the other women tumbled out of their wagons.

Maude sat up, her quilt still around her.

After a moment, the second pig came through, complaining as loudly as the first. The noise a pig could make was amazing to me.

They raced about the camp. We had just begun to talk loudly of wrestling them to the ground—because talking loudly was the only way to be heard over the racket they were making—when a gnarly crew of troublemakers ran into our midst, yowling and shrieking and shooting in all directions.

They weren't cautious about their firearms and might well have killed someone, but they only killed a chicken in its crate. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw its feathers puff and float to the ground. The pigs ran off to the horses and cow.

The leader of this band was a woman. And she had with her six men who had pulled their kerchiefs up over their noses. Six men, and one of them had a gun in each hand. They stirred up a ruckus worse than the pigs.

“Everybody with your hands in the air,” the woman yelled. Her hair was ash gray and her face as weathered as an old board fence.

Everyone's hands went straight up, including mine. And Maude's. Old she may have been, but the gal had a knack for this kind of work.

“I am crazy Maude March, so don't cross me,” she shouted.

I saw many a woman holding all manner of useful weapons grabbed up during the shooting, from peeling knife to knitting needles, but no one looked likely to cross her.

It struck me at once that no matter how many of these women could take aim and hit their mark, they were not yet convinced of the need to shoot at anything but what could be turned into dinner.

For their part, our men didn't look any more ready to do something than the women. Their rifles were kicked away before they could decide to reach for them.

The odds were on this old gal's side, I feared, but I started to look for any odds that were left to be on ours. Maude didn't look dangerous in her quilt, but her face had gone from surprised to angry as Aunt Ruthie knowing there was a fox in her chicken coop.

“Where are the rest of your men?” the old gal shouted after realizing she was holding up mostly women.

“They're off hunting,” I said, since five men was all we had, counting me and Maude. “They're coming back directly.”

“Let's not waste any time, then,” she said. “Give me your valuables.”

There was not a move made.

Part of it might have been a matter of figuring out what she was asking for, for she said “vowel-you-bulls.” This was a mite confusing to me, and may well have been for the others. But few of us, maybe none of us, had anything that fit the description. Also, the pigs kept up a noise.

“We don't have anything,” Lucy said, her voice full of genuine confusion.

“We are brides on the trail of grooms,” Betsy said. “What do you expect us to have?”

“Dowries,” the old gal said promptly, and Betsy laughed. “I have two pigs,” she said, “but I beg you not to take them. They have become my pets.”

“I have a cow,” Lucy said with a smile. “Even after this long trek, she gives enough milk to earn you twenty dollars a day. But the men will be back before you get twenty yards with her. Cows aren't built for getaways.”

“They think we're fooling with them,” said the man
with two guns. “I say we shoot one of them and change the mood.”

There was something familiar about him, but I didn't think about it as a pig came near knocking that old gal off her feet. She shouted, “Don't make fun of me. I am a dangerous woman.”

“I forget, what did you say your name was?” Maude asked her.

“Mad Maude,” the other one said. “You heard a me.”

I said, “How do we know you are who you say you are?” She said, “Did you not see my face in the newspapers all this last year?”

“Tell me which of those Maudes you are,” Maude said, “or we may not believe you at all. Likelier you're a ninny.”

“You look to me like a missy who likes trouble,” the other one sneered.

“My middle name is trouble,” Maude said in a sure and certain voice. Quick as a snake, she lunged for the rifle under her blanket and loosed a cartridge.

The old gal had just enough time to see it coming, and she let fly a bullet, but her bullet went into the dirt.

Maude hit the pistol dead-on without touching the other Maude, and two things happened because of it. Maude's rifle cartridge ricocheted and hit another bandit in the leg with a sound like
thwap!
A red flower bloomed there in the blink of an eye.

Also, the other one's pistol flew and hit the man standing nearest her, the one with two guns. It spooked him so he swung his pistols toward the old gal as he shot.

A bullet nipped her trigger finger and whizzed so close to my arm it felt like a bee sting, the heat and the noise together.