Maude March on the Run! (32 page)

“You shot old Macdougal, too,” Uncle Arlen yelled back.

“That's another story,” the fellow in the brush said. “He had it coming.”

“Are we letting them run for it or not?” Maude shouted out. “I can pick off two of them from here without any trouble at all.”

There was a great rushing about in the underbrush below us. When they mounted their horses, which were hidden as well, beneath a skirt of pine trees, we saw there were no fewer than five of them. Because Uncle Arlen didn't shoot, we didn't shoot, either.

It took maybe five minutes for them to clear out and get far enough away to cause no trouble.

In this time, we listened to the sounds of their leaving and did a little talking back and forth.

“Uncle Arlen, is everyone down there all right?” Maude asked.

“Dabney. His shoulder is broke,” Uncle Arlen said. “He landed funny when the horse fell.”

We clambered down the trail to have a look at them. Apart from Dabney, I saw only an old codger Uncle Arlen introduced as Whistler. He looked hard at me and Maude.

“Whooo-ee, pretty girls,” he said. “What'cha don't see when you ain't lookin' through a gun.”

“You silk-tongued flatterer,” Dabney shouted. “Give the rest of us a fair chance, why don'tcha?”

“Don't get yourself all in a lather,” Whistler said. “They're pretty, all right, but we've any of us got about a fair chance at playing granddaddy to them at Christmas.”

To Uncle Arlen, I said, “How many more of you are there?” “We are it,” he said. “We didn't want to take too many hands from the ranch, not knowing these fellows were waiting to ambush us.”

We hugged each other all around, even Dabney, who squeezed our hands. Whistler had gotten Dabney splinted up while the shooting was going on.

“We ought to get Dabney back to the ranch,” he said. “There's no sawbones, but Dismal will take care of him.

I said, “Dismal? There's an odd name.”

“Cain't say if he has another. He used to be a dismal trader. Getting the dead ready for a last review has made him a fair hand with repairs.”

“That sounds all right to me,” I said, thinking I'd rather have an undertaker to fix a broken bone than a doctor too easily referred to as a sawbones.

We double-timed it back down the other side of that hill and brought the buckboard back to carry Dabney. Those pelts made a soft bed for him, and likely the trip wouldn't bother him near as much as it would have without the padding.

By then, Marion and Ellie had come in answer to the sound of gunshots. “I told you this wasn't a good idea,” Marion said to Maude.

“What was that he said?” she said to me, teasing. “My hearing is suffering from the noise of gunshots. Did he say he was glad to see we aren't shot down?”

I put my hands around my mouth like an ear horn and shouted, “I believe that's what he said.”

A
S WE RODE ON TO THE RANCH, UNCLE ARLEN HAD A
little reunion with Silver Dollar. I wouldn't have known to say that horse was down in the dumps while we were leading him, but he did look to me to be a great deal more cheerful with Uncle Arlen on his back.

“I've been worried about you girls,” he said to us next. Uncle Arlen was determined to hear my side of Maude's jailbreak. I concentrated Uncle Arlen's interest on John Henry and that maybe, once Maude's true story was known, her name would be cleared.

He was moderately cheered by this. I'd hoped for more enthusiasm, but he only said, “Tell me about the trip from Independence. Did you run into any trouble?”

Maude told Uncle Arlen how we traveled with the Aldoradondos for a good part of the time. I promised to put on my button shoes, but of course we left out the part having to do with tar and feathers.

In fact, there were so many parts we felt it prudent to leave out, me and Maude were down to pretty much, “Hot and dry. No rain at all. We saw a lot of grass, and then more grass.”

I figured we could get together later to decide exactly how we should tell our story. Because we were for sure going to have to tell everything all over again.

Uncle Arlen had given Dabney a flask filled with something golden-colored and potent, it being our uncle's intention to medicate him against the pain. Dabney had three or four swallows together and pretty much passed out.

It looked to be some more potent than anything Dr. Aldoradondo kept in his wagon. I watched in some suspense as Whistler sipped at it and choked, but he didn't pass out.

We topped a rise and saw there was a ranch in a hollow of the land—a house made of cedar and pine, with green shutters, behind which there was a sizable garden patch. A new barn was being raised alongside the spot where another one had burned to the ground. I thought I wouldn't be run out of this place without putting up a fight, either.

Another old fellow was sitting on the porch in a long chair made of picket-fence slats. “Right nice chair you have there,” I said to him after we were introduced. Mr. Macdougal, I was to call him.

“A convalescent chair, my daughter calls it,” he told me. “Lets me lay back like a pasha.”

I didn't at that moment ask him what a pasha was, for my eyes lit on a little stack of dimers on the table at his elbow. He said to me, “I like to read about this fellow, Wild Woolly. Have you heard of him?”

“Is he still lost out there on the icy plains?” “Well, now,” he said, but the door opened, and out of the house came an older woman with strong features and graying hair pulled to the back of her head in a thick broomtail.

“You found them,” she said to Uncle Arlen. “They showed up in the middle of nowhere,” he said, “just in time to save our bacon. Dabney's been hurt.” Dabney raised his good arm as if to make little of it. However, he didn't raise the injured arm.

“She hurried out to the wagon to look him over. “It's not too bad,” Uncle Arlen said. “He's had a strong dose of medicament, is all.”

Her attention was drawn back to us as Uncle Arlen said to Maude and me, “This is Maria, Ellie's aunt.”

“It's about time,” she said. “Once we knew you were making your way here, I made them go over the map and over it, figuring out where you ought to have been, day by day.”

“She was like a mother lion,” Macdougal said. “Sent her own niece out there to bring you through the wilderness.”

Maria said, “I thought for sure something terrible must've befallen you. But, Arlen, he said you two girls were like corks in the rapids, you always bob to the top.”

“I like to hope so,” Maude said, being led into the house.

“They are not just girls,” Uncle Arlen said. “In a tight spot, they have the Macdougal touch. They can be counted on.”

I rode to the barn with Uncle Arlen, feeling myself tall in the saddle.

The undertaker was in the new barn, keeping himself busy with a wooden puzzle, a small box with parts that had to be put together just so. He looked relieved to hear we needed him to set a bone.

We put Dabney on a worktable littered with wood shavings, trying not to jog his shoulder. It pained him something
awful. Uncle Arlen poured more of that medication down his throat. Dabney whooped and coughed.

“Easy there,” Whistler said. “We don't care to drown him.” Dabney, still gasping from the drink, said, “Am I getting ready to die?”

“I don't believe your shoulder is broken,” Dismal said. “It's just dislocated. I believe we can have you right as rain in only a moment.”

He instructed Uncle Arlen and Whistler on holding Dabney just so, then yanked his arm, causing Dabney to give a yell, but the whole thing was over quickly.

“That feels some better,” he said after a minute. Then he passed out again. The stuff in that flask more than beat the liquid Dr. Aldoradondo measured out with a dropper.

“He'll sleep through the night,” Uncle Arlen said. “Let's go up to the house and let Maria fuss over us.”

M
ARIA MANAGED TO BOSS EVERYBODY ABOUT WHILE
she made them feel welcome. “Come on in here and let me fatten you up a little,” she said to us, and we weren't reluctant.

When I had nearly done with eating a cake with blueberries running through it, I started to think about questions we had traveled with. “In your telegram, Ellie, you said it was too late for you,” I said to her. “I thought you must be in much worse shape, somehow.”

“I wanted to go home,” Ellie said. “Daddy didn't want me to get caught up in this fight. Then they shot him, and truly I'm glad I was here to care for him. But they also killed my dog, the devils.”

Maria said, “This ranch is your daddy's dream, not your own. You ought to have been safe home with your momma.”

Maude looked to Ellie. “You don't live here?” “No. Daddy went west in 'forty-nine to make his fortune in gold,” Ellie said. “The wonder was, he lived to tell about it. That we all lived to tell about it.”

“Oh, I see,” Maude said.

“No, you don't,” Maria said, sitting down and leaning across the table to us. “Her momma is now living in California while her daddy is following a different dream. He wants to be a cattle baron, and he has to be east of the mountains and the worst of the deserts to do it.”

Ellie took up the telling. “Momma wants to create a fabulous vineyard, like her poppa had in Italy, where she hails from. She's trying to grow grapes out there in a place called Rutherford.”

“Have you seen the ocean?” Maude asked her.

“Many times,” Ellie said. “We're two days' ride away from it, in a wagon.”

I could see this information being tucked away in Maude's heart. “Are you going back?” I asked Ellie.

“I'm in no hurry just now,” she said, glancing across the room at Uncle Arlen. “I want to see Daddy through this rough patch.”

“Uncle Arlen will see him through,” I said.

At this, Ellie smiled, and so did I. Me and Maude weren't going back to Independence, and Ellie looked like one more reason why Uncle Arlen wouldn't go back, either.

“I believe the West has begun to agree with him,” Maude said.

Some time later, after supper, we settled out on the porch for a spell. There were crickets singing, and an owl hoot-hoot-hooted every so often. The air was cool and fresh.

One of the ranch hands had brought over a fiddle, but hadn't played it yet. There was much recounting of one adventure and another. After a while I took a seat on the steps and pulled my boots off. It hadn't yet been said in so many
words, but I could see we were going to be calling this place home for a time.

Maude came to sit beside me. I said, “Did you like Independence?”

“It was noisy and smelly and dusty,” Maude said. “But I liked it now and again.”

I pressed my toes into the cool of the dirt. “Do you like it here?”

“It looks fine to me,” Maude said. “We haven't been here long.”

I said, “Let me know if you decide to really like it.”

While the conversation going on behind us didn't miss us, Maude said, “You have to take things as they are and just go on living, that's what Aunt Ruthie used to say.”

I said, “Do you think of Aunt Ruthie very often? Think about what she taught us and how useful those things are?”

“Every day,” Maude said.

“I wish I could tell her how smart she looks to me now.”

“That would give her a laugh,” Maude said.

“Likelier she'd make that little ‚hmph' sound, like she was holding down a sneeze.”

“Same thing,” Maude said.

Well, it was, since we were talking about Aunt Ruthie.

The full moon hung above us, low and large in the east, and made it nearly as bright as before the sun went down. I could see my shadow.

“I dreamed once that she laughed out loud,” I said. “It looked good on her.”

“Sallie, I feel like I'm making myself new.”

I walked barefoot out into the grass. I liked the feel of
grass between my toes. On the porch, one of those fellows lifted up his fiddle and began to play a reel. The music looped through the air like a hawk in flight.

Maude followed me, saying, “It's all right with you, isn't it?”

“It's all right,” I answered, putting into my voice lilting tones I had copied from her. Maude had many a good point, and the lilt that showed up in her voice now and again was one of them.