Maude March on the Run! (31 page)

W
E COULDN'T HOPE TO REACH LIBERTY MUCH BEFORE
the middle of the afternoon. We wouldn't push our horses. They were tired. I remembered I had a dimer in my sack.

The title read
Rusty Nael, Blacksmith at Large.
Since there was little talk, I kept everyone up on the developments of the story as I read.

The land was rugged, but dust didn't fly awful bad. It struck me the other, dustier trails had been real cattle trails. The dirt clods had been worn down to near powder.

We were looking at more hills. Once into those hills, the trail got kind of rocky and rough-trod. We crossed more than one dry creek bed. Some of the cracks in the ground were no doubt due to the dry weather.

We came to a place where the trail split and rode through a dry creek. “This is it,” Ellie said. “Macdougal land.

Ellie intended to make a detour to deliver those horses, except for Silver Dollar, to a neighboring ranch. Silver Dollar was on a long tether wound around Maude's saddle horn.

“Ride south there,” she said, pointing to another split in
the trail. “You'll be at the house in an hour or so. I'll see you at the ranch this evening.”

“You can't ride on alone,” Marion said to Ellie, for we had already heard enough about her father's troubles to know she was not let to ride around on her own.

“Go with her,” I said. “Me and Maude can follow this trail without any difficulty.” I glanced at Ellie. “I want to lay eyes on Uncle Arlen.”

Marion said, “I don't think much of this idea.”

“It's only a couple of miles,” Maude said, already moving along the trail.

“Don't let your guard down,” he said.

We struck out for the ranch; Marion and Ellie took the other trail.

I said, “I'm glad to have a little time alone with you, Maude. There are a few things we must have out.”

“I know it,” she said. “We can't go home with Uncle Arlen.”

“We can't go back to Missouri at all,” I said. “At least not until we don't have to worry about getting arrested.”

“That's the corner I can't get around,” Maude said. “Ellie's easy to get along with, but I don't know we can ask to stay at the ranch. Uncle Arlen owes her father his life already. I don't want to make him feel more beholden.”

This was just the line I'd hoped not to hear. “I might could help out with the horses,” I said. “And you could do the baking.”

“Well, that's all ahead of us,” Maude said. “We'll just have to wait and see what Uncle Arlen has in mind.”

“We have to be in one place long enough to hear from John Henry.”

“I'm not counting on John Henry.”

I said, “You don't care if your name gets cleared? You don't want justice?”

Myself, I was guilty of shooting Willie, so this was not fresh territory to me. It made me more of an outlaw than he was. Maude had never been that kind of outlaw. She deserved justice.

“I think we have to change our idea of what that means.” She gave me a thoughtful look. “I think I can live without seeing justice done as we used to think of it.”

A question kept running through my mind—what would become of us? I didn't consider us lost, just at loose ends.

“How are you going to feel, Maude?” “So far, I don't feel bad,” she said. “Bad
ly.
I've had some time to get used to the idea there's more than one way to see a happy ending to this.”

“I'm not so sure,” I said. “I don't like giving up Uncle Arlen now that he's found.”

“His happy ending may have changed more than ours,” Maude said. “Try not to worry about it until we have to. This isn't the kind of thing you can plan for.”

I thought this a remarkable thing for Maude to say. Not because she knew me for being a planner, or because she wasn't so much of one. But because she'd always had clear ideas about how things should work.

Not half an hour later, we were climbing a hill at an easy pace when, on the other side of it, we heard a shot. Me and
Maude pulled on the reins as if we were one, bringing our horses to a standstill.

“They weren't shooting at us?” Maude said, half in surprise. I knew how she felt exactly.

I'd begun to think of gunshot as a sign something had gone wrong. I saw that other people reacted differently. They thought a gunshot meant someone
else
was in trouble. Sometimes they could think of perfectly good uses for a gunshot.

“Could be somebody popped a rabbit,” I said. “Or a bird.” Another three shots rang out, one right after the other.

I headed my horse off the trail. Maude went for the other side, so all we could do, when the shooting stopped, was look at each other. I, for one, felt a little silly. Scared, but silly, too.

When more gunshots didn't come, I rode over to her. Maude said, “What do you think?”

“Bandits?”

There were two more shots, just far enough apart to think somebody might have been taking aim. Our horses snuffled and blew, wanting to run. I whispered quieting words to them, but they weren't in the mood to listen.

“I'll have a look,” Maude said. She dropped her horse's reins over the low-hanging branches of an oak tree. I pulled off my bonnet and hung it over my saddle horn.

“Go slow and try not to make a lot of noise,” I said, for I couldn't go fast. I wished I had stayed in pants.

Maude was already on the move, carrying her rifle. I hadn't yet taken mine out of the boot. When I caught up to her, she whispered, “Go straight up, and I'll work my way over a little.”

Thinking ruefully that Maude had good instincts for someone who had never meant to be a range rider, I picked my skirt free from a stickery branch, some kind of weed. I hoped there wouldn't be many of them.

Maude hadn't gotten far away, and she came back to say, “They aren't going to be wearing masks out here, Sallie. Who's to say which one caused the trouble?”

“Exactly right,” I said. How were we to tell which of them would be the one needing help?

After three or four minutes of climbing, we were nearly to a point where we could look down the other side of that hill. Maude started moving away so she would be able to look down from another angle.

“Wait right here,” she said. “Wait till you hear me whistle like a bird.”

“What bird?” I said, for there wasn't a sound of birds on the air.

“That's how you'll know it's me,” she said with a lift of one eyebrow.

I said, “You'll be careful?”

She said, “I swear it on my fingertips.” And she kissed three fingertips, as if she were perfectly willing to kiss them good-bye.

“Don't show yourself,” I said, the short hairs on my nape all aquiver.

I took up a position behind some blueberry bushes while Maude crawled away. I plucked a berry and popped it into my mouth. Still a mite tart.

Several blueberries later, I hadn't heard a whistle.

I leaned through the bush and couldn't see Maude. She
had gone further on than I thought she would have to. I decided it couldn't hurt to go around the bush for a better view.

But there I still couldn't see her. I could see the road down below us and a dead horse in the middle of it. Behind that, a buckboard with two healthy horses harnessed to it. Those horses didn't want to stay there much longer, judging by the way they were switching their tails and pawing the ground.

I couldn't see who had done the shooting.

I moved forward, trying to be quiet.

A whistle brought me up short. Maude had found a hiding place in the hollow of a tree. She sent me a look that said simply, I knew you couldn't do one thing I asked you to do.

Beyond her, someone slowly poked their rifle out from behind a tree. Directed away from us, it still gave me a start.

I pointed the fellow out to Maude right quick.

I hadn't expected to find anyone so up close, and I was glad she was well hidden.

This fellow put a shot across the way. The bullet whizzed near enough to those horses to make up their minds—they started pulling that wagon up the trail in our direction.

I didn't blame them. They weren't looking for bee stings.

Somebody yelled, “Stop those horses,” but nobody tried. The team skirted the dead horse in their path—it may have been the prospect of getting around that horse kept them from running amuck any sooner. That and the load of dried skins they were carrying in the wagon.

Once started, those horses ran for all they were worth. Nobody could have stopped them, not even in a dimer. “They'll stop when the trail flattens out,” somebody else
shouted as the wagon crested the hill. I tried to know where those voices came from, but there was no telling.

The same fellow shot again. I tried to catch a glimpse of him, but he leaned out on the side away from me.

It did prove, however, the two sides in this fight were separated by the trail between them. One shooter couldn't rush the other without being in the open long enough to have the period put on the end of their sentence.

Maude had worked her way back to me. She was good at being quiet. “I wonder whose horse it is that's dead,” she whispered.

“Lemme get my skins,” the shooter called out, “and I'll call it a day.”

Maude looked at me like I was a fellow jury member. I could not disagree. This did seem to make them the injured party.

“You got those skins by poisoning our cattle,” the other fellow behind a tree called back. This statement did cloud the issue, and it inspired a few more bullets to be traded.

Ducking down when shots were fired, and then peering out through the underbrush, me and Maude played the parts of silent witnesses, unnoticed by either side.

Behind us, the wagon noises didn't fade away but stopped abruptly, so I didn't have to look to know the horses had quit running.

“Where's that fancy shooter of yours now, Wa—ers?”

Maude said, “What did he say?”

“Where's your fancy shooter,” I said, believing this might be a clue. “In many a dimer, it's the bad guys who hire a gunman.”

“No,” Maude said. “The name. Was it Waters?”

“I don't know,” I said.

Maude shushed me, for somebody was shouting something back. We missed it while I was talking and Maude was shushing; they didn't have awful much to say.

It was apparent cause for more shots to be traded.

I began to get some idea where the other fellows were hidden. Then, seeing one of them slip from tree to tree, something about him looked familiar. My heart leapt at that familiar sight.

“That's Uncle Arlen,” I said.

W
HAT WITH THE SHOCK OF IT, I SPOKE OUT LOUD.
There was a rustling in that nearby hiding spot directly after. Me and Maude ducked low. We stayed low for what we judged to be long enough.

“Don't call out,” I said to her when we were giving each other a go-ahead look. “It might cause Uncle Arlen to make the mistake of showing himself.”

We bobbed up, and Maude said, “Where?”

I pointed. In a few seconds, he made another dash between one tree and the next. “See?”

Maude whispered, “Uncle Arlen doesn't wear buckskin.”

“He could change his shirt. And you did hear that other fellow call him Waters.”

“You weren't so sure what that fellow said. What makes you sure it's Uncle Arlen down there?”

“The way he moves,” I said. “Watch. He's trying to get up here, I think, to come around behind them, like.”

We were both of us with our gaze trained on the tree, waiting for Uncle Arlen to show himself long enough for Maude to recognize him.

I saw out of the corner of my eye that down below us another of those fellows was on the move. They knew somebody was up here, and they had decided to find out who.

Uncle Arlen moved, and Maude drew her breath in sharply. She had seen him well enough. I pulled on her sleeve and made her notice the fellow crawling our way through the bushes.

Maude didn't hesitate. She drew a bead and shot a branch off a tree so it fell right in front of him. He jumped about a mile and scooted back into the brush.

“Uncle Arlen,” I called, so he'd know where the shot had come from. “It's Maude and Sallie up here. One of these wranglers is trying to climb the hill.”

There was a moment when nobody said anything. Then Uncle Arlen called out, “That means we've got 'em surrounded.”

Maude broke into a grin. She pumped another shot into the trees, although I saw by the way she turned her rifle she was careful not to hit anyone by accident.

Another branch fell in front of the nearby shooter.

“All right, all right, let's have a little parlay here,” he called out. “You've got ree-inforcemints, you've got our skins. How about if we call it quits? We'll jist walk back aways from here and fergit the whole danged thing.”

“My horse is dead,” Uncle Arlen called back.

“So's mine,” the other fellow answered. “I been riding a mule since one a you fellers killed it last week.”

“We don't make war on horses,” Uncle Arlen said. “You probably killed it yourself with a careless bullet. But someone who shot a dog shouldn't worry over a horse, either.”

“Here now, don't be insulting,” another fellow in the brush said. “We didn't shoot the dog a-purpose.” It sounded to me like wherever there was a gun, there was an accident waiting to happen.