Maude March on the Run! (7 page)

“He didn't; I let myself in on it,” I said, forgetting to keep my voice down. “We don't know for sure that Marion or Uncle Arlen is safe, either one. Don't be mad till you know for sure we ain't alone in the world again, for Pete's sake.”

It could be argued we were foolish to stick to the trail, knowing a posse would sooner or later come down the same road. But we were sure of our direction, and we made good time.

The moon gave off just enough shine to make gopher holes of every pocket of shadow, which would've slowed us down considerable had we ridden off-trail. Low bushes looked very like something crouching there.

We continued a brisk pace and stayed alert. We rode till we hadn't seen anyone ahead of us or behind us for some time; we were near to being alone on the road.

The good side of this was, neither Maude's wild red hair nor her manner of riding were so likely to be noticed in the dark. Maude had gone back to riding like a boy. Once daylight came, she was someone who was bound to be noticed.

When we came upon a creek, we drew up to let the horses
drink. Maude said, “Someone had peed on the mattress. I couldn't sit on it.”

“You couldn't stay in there.”

“I couldn't have gone without you, either,” Maude said. “Not even knowing Uncle Arlen needed my help.”

“Our help,” I said, and Maude grinned.

I thought things were going good, in a way. Maude was free and as ready as me to beat it for Colorado Territory. “I saved the last three molasses cookies for you,” I said, and held the sack out to her. She took two and motioned at me to take the other one.

Maude said, “They talked about hanging me. Like the other one.”

“Black Hankie, you mean.” It bothered me to think of her listening to talk like that. “Did you tell them your reputation is undeserved?”

“I did,” she said. “It gave them a good laugh.”

“How'd they know to find you at George Ray's, do you think?”

“Somebody saw my face on the newspaper under their plate and realized I'd served them their dinner,” Maude said.

I said, “It must have been an old one,” for we had been living a quiet life at Uncle Arlen's. Maude hadn't shown up at the scene of anything more serious than the killing of a chicken.

“They had a paper, two weeks old,” Maude said. “I might have been all right if I had ignored the fellow who called out my name.”

“Maude Waters?” For she'd been answering to Uncle Arlen's and Aunt Ruthie's last name for some time.

“Maude March. I turned around, Sallie, and gave myself away.”

“Anybody else would've done the same,” I said.

“Not true.” Her shoulders slumped with those words. “Or there would be more outlaws in the jails.”

“Why would you be mentioned in the papers now?” I asked her.

“I don't know. They wouldn't give me time to read it.” She brushed the cookie crumbs off her skirt in a ladylike way that didn't take into account she was sitting astraddle her horse. “This is my own fault. I used to be more watchful of the papers we were laying down.”

“You can't kick yourself over this,” I said. “You don't do nothing but wait on tables and go home and to church on Sundays. You are as proper as they come. Besides, you aren't the only person who papers the tables.”

“I should have laid low,” Maude said. “Uncle Arlen told me, and I didn't listen.” She gigged her horse and trotted ahead.

“You couldn't have laid any lower if you had set up housekeeping in a rabbit burrow,” I said, following her. For good measure, I added the argument she'd made to Uncle Arlen: “Somebody around us would've gotten curious about you if you didn't show your face.”

Maude sat a little straighter. “That's true.”

I kept watch for Marion, but we rode around anything that looked like a settlement and took no more apparent interest in other riders than to nod as we passed them.

As the hours crept by, we saw fewer riders.

Cloud cover rolled in somewheres after midnight, but
even with the moon in hiding, we had the benefit of some kind of reflected light. I thought it a strange thing that in full moonless dark, the earth could be read as light and dark shadows, the stomped-down trail being lightest and the shapes of bush and tree being darkest.

Some time later, Maude woke me.

I
“CAN'T LET YOU SLEEP ON YOUR HORSE,” SHE SAID. “I'M
afraid you'll fall off.”

She'd already struck out across the grassland, where we shortly came upon a dry creek bed deep enough to provide cover for the horses.

Coming off the horses, we stood a minute on sore feet, getting used to the idea of walking. I wondered sometimes why no one mentioned in dimers how long hours in the saddle made the feet swell.

We clambered down the bank by moonlight and by touch, where the horses might graze the greener grass. At least I suspected it was greener. It was silkier to my fingertips, and so I figured more tender fodder.

We wiped the horses down, turned the blankets over, and saddled them up again in case we had to make an escape. Maude said, “Maybe Marion will catch up to us here.”

I heard a kind of rumbling noise.

I didn't pay attention to it right away. I was running a hand down my horse's leg, twisting a hobble to keep him from wandering off.

“What is that?” Maude said.

“Riders,” I hurried over to the bank of the creek and climbed halfway up. There in the darkness, I saw three or maybe four riders, but we were far enough off the trail they didn't see us. This was likely very good luck.

“Posse?” she said.

“I don't know.” I made my way back to where Maude stood soothing our horses. “It didn't look like enough men to be a posse.”

Maude said, “I feel like we ought to hide, but then, we are. Hiding.”

My stomach was churning, realizing we'd just had a close call. But then, maybe I was just hungry. I said, “I wish we had some cookies left.”

“See, that's why you are convincing as a boy,” Maude said. “Your stomach runs your brain.”

We stood at a kind of attention until the only sounds came from the horses, and from Maude biting her nails. She said, “How many men do they send out, do you think?”

I tried to think of any chases I had ever read of in a dimer. “Eight or ten is likely,” I said. “So they can split up when half the gang goes one way and half the other.”

“Why would the gang do that?”

“So the posse will follow just the one set of tracks.”

“You just said they take enough men to split up.”

“It sounds pretty tricky when you read about it,” I said.

Maude made a little “hmph” sound to herself. Probably she regretted asking me what I might have learned from a dimer. “They don't always have a dry creek bed to hide in,” I said to her.

She said, “I'm getting worried about Marion.”

“He knows how to shake off a posse.”

“Are you sure he knew where to look for us?”

“He has surprised us before,” I said, “passing us and waiting for us to catch up to him.”

“Only once,” she said. “Not right after breaking me out of jail, either.”

I didn't have a reply to this.

The air had begun to look blue; morning wasn't far away. We settled ourselves in the knee-high grass, but I couldn't sleep. My mind was humming. I rolled over, hoping a view of the stars would quiet me.

There were birds calling to each other in low, sleepy voices.

“Are those wood doves?” Maude asked me.

“Are you thinking of popping a few?” I said.

“No.”

I was glad to hear it. Maude's rifle was back there in the kitchen. Because Marion took my shotgun with him, we didn't have a weapon to our name.

“Beans are fine for a day or two, if we can get hold of any,” she said. “I don't want to make a fire. Somebody might notice us. We aren't so well outfitted for this, are we?”

“We have my compass and the copy of Uncle Arlen's map and a canteen,” I said. “We have horses and the fair chance of finding well water to put into the canteen sooner or later.”

At this, Maude made a strange sound that might have been laughter. “You are a practical woman.”

“At least it's not dead winter,” I said. “We ain't likely to freeze.”

“Don't say ‚ain't' to me. It makes my teeth ache.”

“They wouldn't do that if you wouldn't grind them together so.”

“Are you asleep yet?” she said.

I wasn't asleep, and didn't think I would sleep. I'd forgotten what a busy place the grass was, the wind rustling through, the cautious passing of any kind of bug or small creature you could name. It never failed to leave me with a fellow feeling, for when we slept in the grass, we were living by much the same laws as them, where every moment might be our last.

“I'm an outlaw, Sallie,” my sister said. “That can't be changed now.”

I wanted to argue this. Wanted at least to say it wasn't true until now. For she was more of one now than she had been when she got out of bed this morning.

Me and Marion had acted to save her, never asking ourselves, was this what Maude would have chosen?

Maude was speaking low when she added, “I have been an outlaw since the day we left Cedar Rapids. It's time to know things for what they are.”

“Then we're both outlaws,” I said to her just as low. “We left Cedar Rapids together.”

“No, Sallie,” she said. “I don't think you are.”

“Why not?” I said, and I was thinking, I'm the one who killed a man.

I didn't say it. Maude would rather I put it this way: “I was holding a gun that went off.”

I didn't need to mince words with the truth. He was an awful black-hearted sort of man bent on killing someone else.
He had in mind no one in particular, just someone who wasn't likely to kill him back.

The long and short of it was, if I hadn't made the mistake of pulling on that gun by its trigger, he'd probably have done in someone more innocent than me by now.

I reminded myself of this every time I woke from a black dream of shooting him, feeling cold and damp. I thought about how, somewhere, someone would've been missing a loved one if he had his way.

Maude said, “You don't watch for things to go wrong the way I do, Sallie. It would break my heart if you did, so don't feel bad that you're still a little girl at bottom.”

I knew myself to be as much an outlaw as Maude believed herself to be. If she thought it was pure chance I noticed her picture on a poster and didn't know I regularly watched for a badge under a man's jacket, then that was fine.

One thing Maude didn't need was a broken heart.

I
T WASN'T WITH WHAT I'D CALL A COMPLAINT THAT I
woke up an hour or so later to feel a tenderness where I'd slept hard against a pebble. I was grateful I wasn't waking up to being chased. I wasn't waking up to look into the dark eye of somebody's gun. But I did wish I had kept bedrolls in the loft.

Maude had slept sitting up. I thought of a comb, first thing. Bad enough her hair was bright; she couldn't let it get into a worse snarl without drawing every eye to herself.

The horses woke now and again for a few minutes of grazing, the way horses will. The moon had sunk low in the west, and in the east, clusters of deep purple and night-blue clouds were outlined in a fierce orange light.

I sat in the center of a kind of silence, and yet there were small sounds all about me; something in me stretched to hear them. I missed this when sleeping in a bed.

A mosquito whined in my ear, and I lost my friendly feeling toward waking in the grass. I swiped at the air, suddenly itching from bug bites up and down. I had to scratch so bad I wondered if I'd picked up fleas or chiggers.

The creek bed was dry as powder, I already knew. There wasn't a smidgen of mud to spread on an itchy spot. I scratched quietly at each complaint. Yet I didn't fail to notice how green and clean the air smelled. It was a far cry from the way of people and horses living elbow to hock in the city.

I watched all around us for lamplight that wouldn't have been on two hours before. There were no windows, but there was a lone slow-moving buggy in the distance, just a dark silhouette against a lavender stripe of sky.