Maude March on the Run! (30 page)

Her eyes flicked to the paper. I was quick to fold it over. I kept folding until I could just about hide it under my dinner plate.

“This looks good,” I said, sounding to my own ears like Dr. Aldoradondo.

“It's only hot biscuits.”

Marion reached for one. “Like the boy said, they look good.”

There was no jelly, but they came with a dish of apple butter. I hoped the nervous feeling that felt like it jumped from my fingertips would be taken for hunger.

We ate for a few minutes before Maude said, “What's in the paper?”

“You ain't still dead.”

“Picture any good?”

I said, “Not really. The good thing about so many Maudes running around, they don't all look alike.”

Maude got her incensed look. “How many are there?”

“Maybe three, not counting the ones we met personal. All of them in different states than we are.”

She looked down to spread a little apple butter. I hoped this meant she didn't find the idea of three more all that offensive. Nothing like six or eight more. Eleven. Nor anywhere near knowing Black Hankie's grandmomma blamed Maude for his misfortune.

Ellie said, “Your uncle told me something about your troubles. I admit, it's more disturbing to read these stories than I thought.”

“I don't know what's worse,” Maude said, “the stories the papers make up or the women who pretend to be me so they can be in them.”

“It's worse to be the one lied about,” Marion said, “but John Henry is going to help you with that.”

I hoped this would smooth things over. But then I noticed something—“Maude, look at your hands.”

Her fingertips didn't look like puffy little pillows anymore. Her fingernails had grown out. They were dirty, but they were long enough to just cover the tips of her fingers. “You don't bite your fingernails anymore, Maude.”

“Looks like I don't scrub them,” she said, but she was halfway to smiling.

“You could go to the law with your story,” Ellie said, for she didn't understand the interest I took in Maude's finger-nails.

“They've already tried that,” Marion said.

“Lawmen are deaf to pleas of innocence,” I said. “They have their job to do.”

“Let's us just eat up and make our way to Uncle Arlen,” Maude said. “There's nothing we have to decide tonight.”

“You have the right of it,” I said. “Let's don't bother with the hotel. It's not like we need a bath all that bad.”

This put a grin on Maude's face and Ellie's, and the mood lightened a good deal as forks were lifted. The bird was cooked crisp and tender, the potatoes were plenty, and there was a green sauce to dip everything into, should we care to. That sauce had a bite of its own.

We slept in the loft at the livery.

W
E STARTED OUT AT THE BREAK OF DAWN. THE NICE
thing, we found dew on the ground. I hadn't noticed the lack of it until I saw it, felt it again. Even then, I wasn't so sure.

I touched a vine growing up the wall of the livery. “Did it rain a mite?”

Ellie said, “It's morning dew. We aren't quite so dry out this way as they are on the lower plains.”

The land made a nice change. I saw now the gradual slope to it. If we only overcame a series of treeless grassy ridges, at least we had something to look forward to. The rise wasn't hard on the horses, and a dark blue line we saw on the horizon was easier on the eyes.

“Mountains,” Ellie said when I asked about it.

Near the end of the day, Ellie led us off the trail to follow a trickle of a creek for half a mile before coming to a worn path that climbed the backside of a low bluff.

This looked to me like a chopped-off hillside at the front, atop which we could see an adobe-brick building. We rode for a time around it and then uphill at the backside of it to reach the top.

Once there, I found it to be more of the same, flat grassy plains. I had to walk right up to the broken-off edge to know where the grass stopped. The advantage to this place was it looked in every direction over the plains.

The land sloped away from us in a way that made me feel like we could roll downhill for miles. But this was only a trick of the eyes.

“There was a family here when I was a little girl,” Ellie said. “The Osgoods. We stayed the night here once.”

“Looks like they've been gone for some time,” Marion said.

“A long time,” Ellie said. “But the roof 's still here. The walls stand. The porch is good.”

It was no surprise the walls stood, for they were thick as tree trunks and not overly broken up by windows. The two at the front had been boarded up, and the one at the back still had unbroken glass.

The place didn't have much to offer but shelter from rain or wolves, and there was no rain. A ragged corral had been built up out of flat boards that might have come from a wagon bottom—more than one wagon bottom.

These were worn down some by weather, and there was a gap on one side, where the gate had gone missing. But grass grew over the earth in there, and the horses would graze. We could rope off the opening.

It took us better than an hour to get them all tended to, for Ellie was more careful of horseflesh than Uncle Arlen. I carried the saddles over to the porch and hung the blankets over the rope.

We carried water up from the creek and made ourselves
comfortable for the night. By the time we were settling, the stars twinkled hard and bright overhead.

We would sleep inside, so we wondered if the chimney was still good. This was a short discussion because Marion came inside wanting to show us all something.

We walked out to the place where the bluff overhung the trail. He pointed back east of us, where two campfires could be seen as beacons some distance away.

They were far enough from each other, and down low, so each may not have known the other was there. “What do you figure?” I said to Marion. “Anybody looking for us?”

“Hard to say. But making a fire isn't a good idea.”

We ate cold food, but it didn't feel like any great hardship, for the night was warm. We turned in early, talking like we would be on our way before daybreak.

That was the plan, but we slept a ways into the morning.

Marion was up first, and out without waking me.

Ellie roused me and Maude, but she wasn't truly moving at a pace. She sort of drifted toward the coffee makings and then remembered there was to be no fire.

I felt as if I could sleep longer. But Maude reached over and pinched me so I wouldn't fall back to the soft pillow of my folded pants.

“We need a bath,” Ellie said.

“What good is that?” I said, not wanting to get roped into this. “We'll only be dusty again after we get on the trail.”

“Just a spit bath,” Ellie said. “It won't take ten minutes and we'll be refreshed.”

“I don't need refreshing.”

Maude grabbed me by the shirt. “It'll wake us up.”

I consented to a face-and-neck wash, but I wouldn't allow myself to be talked into wearing my dress.

“Why, look at you. Under all that dirt, you're as pink as one of Betsy's pigs,” Maude teased, and tried to run the cloth over my face again.

“I wouldn't know her for the same boy,” Ellie said with a grin.

“We'll be riding up to Uncle Arlen in a few hours, Sallie,” Maude said. “You have to wear the dress.”

“You make it sound like he'll fall over from the shock,” I complained.

This made them both laugh, and for a moment Maude looked like an ordinary girl, leaning up against Ellie. She still looked weather-tough, but her manner had softened in a way I did like.

I grabbed the cloth and scrubbed myself as near clean as I could get. I even wiped it over my hair. Maude and Ellie went on making little jokes to each other and giggling as I put on my dress and beat it for the outdoors.

I wanted to please Maude, but I wouldn't consider wearing the bloomers, for I didn't care if I showed a bare knee. Those bloomers would be ruined from saddle dirt; I would have to take great care with my skirt.

To his credit, Marion didn't blink when he saw me in a dress. He nodded a “Good morning.”

He'd already been up long enough to bring our horses over to the porch and saddle them up. We had not much grain left for them, and they were eating the grass down to a bare patch.

They looked to me thinned out through the neck, their flanks too flattened. Maude and me were thinner, I reminded
myself, and we weren't suffering awful much. In only another day or two, we could let the horses rest up properly.

“Them women ready to go?” Marion said to me. “Ten minutes,” I said. I dug through my sack and found the bonnet. It was none the worse for my having loaned it to Maude, but I sort of promised it a good wash and starch as soon as I could manage it.

I shoved my hair back and tied the bonnet under my chin. It didn't have quite the smooth feel as when I wore braids beneath it, but my hair was too tangled for braids.

I sat down on the porch.

Beside me, Marion said of the horses, “They've mowed it down here worse than if they were goats. The grass may not come back.”

“It'll come back,” I said. “All it needs is a good rain.” “Let's move them to a fresh spot,” Marion said, chucking me on the shoulder. “Give me a hand with them.”

I'd no sooner wondered if I was going to regret putting on my dress than I heard a racket of horses. It didn't sound like many riders, but they pulled their horses to a stop out there on the trail. This brought us to our feet.

Marion went to the horses, soothing their laid-back ears, shushing them, and I moved quick to help him. Horses did want to call out to each other sometimes.

Clear as if his voice were a bell, one of the riders said, “There's a house up there on the hill.”

I stood stock-still, half-turned to warn Maude.

And in answer, the words “There's no smoke coming up the chimney. We've lost the trail, if it ever was one.”

The first one said, “Don't think I'm pushing for it. I'm not
of a mind to get myself shot at by another war vet. I'm ready to go home.”

There was some muttering over this. My heart pounding, I inched forward, ignoring Marion's frantic waving me back. I could see just the faces of a couple of those fellows, and they weren't looking back at me, which was good, for they were the bounty hunters.

Another voice, as travel-weary as the one before, came from a little distance. “This path looks to be used recently.”

I yanked my bonnet lower and made myself stroll out to the edge of the bluff as if my curiosity had got the best of me. “Who're all you fellows?” I called, letting my voice go high.

“We're a posse,” one of them lied. “Looking for a fellow has broken out of jail over at Fort Dodge.”

I wanted to tell them a posse from Fort Dodge would be lost if it found itself this far west, for we were well out of Kansas. Only I didn't want to look like a smart girl.

“Well, come on in, then,” I said. “My granny will want to hear about that. She will give you all some of her rhubarb tea. You should not be too polite about drinking it, a full cup will give you the runs.”

This invitation was met with a stony silence.

“I'll go tell her she has visitors,” I said, and turned on my heel.

“Girl!” one of them shouted. “Tell your granny we are sorry to have to turn down the invite, but we're in a hurry.”

I let my shoulders slump hard, and for a moment I wondered if I'd overdone it. For one of them said in a kindly way, “Looking forward to a little company yourself, were you?”

I said, “Granny is enough company for anyone. Her hearing is so bad I have to say everything twice at least.”

“Give her our good day,” one of them said, and started out of there. The others followed, the kindlier one waving at me as he went. In only a minute or so, we were alone again.

I walked back to where Marion stood with the horses. “Bounty hunters,” I said, though he had heard the whole thing.

He said, “You're a pistol.”

Maybe I was, for I had the shakes like I had just shot a pistol. I had to sit down on the porch. Marion dropped down into the grass at the edge of the bluff and watched until he was sure those fellows had really turned back for the Kansas border.

When Maude and Ellie came out a few minutes later, they were scrubbed to a rosy glow, both of them. They hadn't heard a thing from the outside world through those walls.