The Misadventures of Maude March (15 page)

I blew out the match with a lighter heart than I'd had moments before.

We ate potted meat from the tins—it went well enough with the last of the corn bread—and peaches. We were glad to have the spoon. We were glad to have the saddle blankets too. We slept on one and covered ourselves with the other, lying back to back.

“Sallie? There's something been bothering me all day.”

“What's that?”

“Marion's horse. It wasn't tied to the hitching post. Do you remember?”

I knew she didn't want to admit she was worried about Marion. “I remember. I pointed it out to you before we went into the bank.”

Maude said, “The gunshots didn't scare it away, did they? It was used to gunshots.”

“I didn't see any horses on the way out,” I said, and we laughed again. It was that terrible laughter that, I knew now, came from surviving something that could've killed you.

W
E STARTED OUT BEFORE LIGHT THE NEXT MORNING.
We couldn't have started a fire even if we thought it was a good idea; the ground was wet with a heavy dew. We woke up cold and miserable.

We walked, passing a tin of beans and the spoon back and forth to each other. I had hoped for peaches, but when the can was opened, it was beans. “You should have put the beans in one sack and the peaches in the other,” Maude complained. “You knew we had to cross that river.” She had the sniffles.

“Don't go getting sick now,” I said.

“Why not?” she said in her most sullen tone. She wasn't awful fond of beans, and we hadn't saved one crumb of the corn bread or the cookies for the morning. She didn't want the crackers either; it would have ruined her mad if something suited her.

“It'll be a terrible embarrassment if we can't ride the range for a few weeks without catching our death,” I said. “Wild Woolly has been lost in the Yukon for longer than that, and he didn't even get sniffles.”

“Guess you better ride with him next time,” she muttered.

The sun finally came up high enough to warm us. But it didn't do enough to keep Maude from working up to a cough, a hard, choking cough that made her face turn dark before it would let up.

We stopped talking, since that could bring it on. The peppermints staved it off, so Maude took one peppermint after another all the livelong day. I was glad we had a plentiful supply.

That night we slept in an abandoned log cabin. It was breezy; a lot of the mud chinking in the walls had dried up and crumbled away. But the chimney was in good working order.

The furniture had been broken up some. There was nothing about the place that looked like anyone had even come there to get out of the rain lately. There were no footprints, and a thick layer of dust had settled over everything. We burned the square bench seats, the table legs, and the smaller pieces of the bed frame.

We had the warmth of the fire, that was something, but we didn't have it to ourselves for long. Maude insisted that we bring the horses indoors too. “I don't want to be cleaning up horse plop in the middle of the night,” I said.

“I'm willing to take my chances with horse plop,” Maude said. “I just don't care to let my horse out of my sight.”

The horses proved well behaved, and we slept without disturbance. Even Maude's cough seemed to leave her alone. We woke to broad daylight and an unfamiliar sound. “Maaaa-aa, maa-aa-aa.”

Maude sat up, shivering. “What's that?”

“A baby?”

“Maa-aa-aa.”

“Sheep,” she said, her voice filled with dread. Sheep meant people. Sheep most likely meant somebody did live here after all.

I looked out the cutout that served as a window, squinting into the bright sunlight. Even once my eyes were used to it, I didn't see anyone on horseback; I didn't see anyone at all.

“Maa-aa-aa.”

I went to the door and pulled it open. There was a goat right outside and a snake nearer yet.

I stood stock-still. The snake was coiled and had turned my way. The rattle alerted Maude.

“Don't move,” she said, reaching for her rifle. “The important thing is, don't move. They don't like it if you move.”

I didn't move.

“Maa-aa-aa.” The snake swerved back to threaten the goat.

Maude moved gingerly in her bare feet, but still that snake took notice. The rattle sounded again, and one of the horses blew air out of its nostrils. The snake's tongue flickered, tasting the air, as its rattle kept up a steady beat.

One shot rang out, and the snake's head disappeared entirely.

The goat took off, lickety-split. The snake's body darted out in little searching motions, then settled back into a coil, the rattles still going. That made the hair on my arms dance. I did a little hop-step to shake off the willies. This excited the snake into making a strike.

“Maude!”

She had turned away to sit down. “I feel sore all over,” she said, resting her head against her hand.

When Maude's rifle butt knocked on the floor, that snake body struck at the door with a thump. I saw it. I heard it, even though my ears still rang from the gunshot. I thought it must be a trick of my mind. I stared at the hole in the floorboards, that was real enough, and so was the spatter of blood. The snake's head was gone; any fool could see that.

The horses had startled at the rifle shot but were much more disturbed at the rattle of the snake's tail. They shuffled around, ears laid back tight, which was not a good sign. We had not bothered to hobble them since they were indoors, but we did put rope loops around their necks once we removed their headgear. I reached for the nearest horse, but it shied away from me, eyes wild.

I was afraid one or both of them would bolt, making this cabin a new back doorway. I got a bed slat that was propped against the wall and went back to move the snake's body out of the doorway. I'd no sooner touched it than it struck at the stick.

I yelped and jumped back.

“What?” Maude said, looking up.

I touched the snake and again it struck, not once, but three times, in a maddened way. This so unnerved me that I dropped the stick.

Maude made a sound like a cat mewing.

The headless body threw itself at the only victim it could find—the stick. In all its writhing, the snake fell across the doorsill and coiled for another strike. The horses showed cracked yellow teeth as they clomped around.

“Shoot it again,” I cried. I did get hold of both horses and wrapped one dangling lead rope a few times around a hook on the wall, knowing that wouldn't hold the horse long. I led the other horse to the opposite side of the room and hoped for the best.

“I think I'm going to be sick to my stomach,” Maude said.

The snake had begun to make little jabbing motions into the air, like it was searching for us. The rattle never stopped. “I don't think I can hit it again,” Maude said. “But if I do, what will we do if that doesn't kill it?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Just shoot it before we lose these horses.”

She took up my rifle with shaking hands, and the snake did indeed turn toward her and make several more frenzied strikes, driving Maude to the other side of the room. “Shoot, Maude!”

She did, with both eyes closed, it looked like to me. So it was largely a matter of good luck that she hit that thing and cut it in three pieces, all of which wriggled wildly on the floor, the rattle making a constant racket.

Maude dropped a saddle blanket over the whole mess and shoved it outside. The place went amazingly dark and quiet when she shut the door. She sighed and set to picking up our stuff, and packing everything she possibly could into the saddlebags.

One of the horses had knocked the sack of oats on its side, spilling them across the floor. I got a splinter scraping them up. “If this isn't a fine start to the day,” I said.

“It's the start we've got,” Maude said, sounding an awful lot like Aunt Ruthie. “Let's make the most of it.”

She went out for the other saddle blanket and brought it back, saying, “It knows it's dead now.” She slapped the saddle blankets over the horses' backs, and we saddled them up. That was Maude's way, and Aunt Ruthie's too. They could neither one of them be called a whiner.

Once we were outside on the horses, things settled into the pace we had grown used to. Almost familiar enough to call it home, although not that comfortable. I began to think about how well Maude handled herself, considering she didn't like snakes worse than me. “That was fine shooting,” I said, thanking her for saving my life.

“I should never have neglected your shooting lessons,” she said. “If it was the other way around, I'd be dying now, and you'd be alone in the world.”

“It's never too late to start.”

“We'll buy ammunition today,” she said, “should we come across a town. We'll get blankets for ourselves too. We may not always be lucky enough to have a fire.”

“I don't know that I can learn to shoot the head off a snake,” I said. But Maude didn't want to talk about it.

W
E CAME ACROSS THE GOAT AFTER ABOUT HALF AN
hour's ride. She was crying again, and the reason was easy to see. She needed milking. She acted like she remembered us as I put a tether rope around her neck. She let me fill our pottery cup over and over. After Maude and I drank our fill, I stripped the rest of her milk into the dirt.

“Who do you figure she belongs to?” I asked.

“Nobody, judging from the filthy state she's in,” Maude said. She seemed to consider the animal's other state, that of sheer misery. “Maybe she had a kid and something carried it off. A bobcat or something.”

“I'm taking her with us,” I said.

“How are we going to travel with a nanny goat tagging along?”

“Since we aren't moving so fast as it is, she's not going to hold us up all that much,” I argued. “We're bound to pass a farm soon. We'll set her loose near enough that someone will find her.”

“Someone will find her anyway. We did.”

“She was nearly bit by that rattler. I know exactly how she feels,” I said. “She looks like an orphan to me.”

“All we have in common with that goat is our dirty faces.”

“We drank her milk,” I said, “and now I just don't feel right about leaving her to fend for herself.”

I'd begun to regret this decision an hour later. We'd eaten our breakfast in the saddle, cheese and crackers, then goat's milk, then more cheese and crackers. We were ready to put some miles on the day, but we were still moving along at the nanny goat's pace.

It halted Maude and me in our tracks when we heard laughter. The goat trotted on ahead till it ran out of line and then looked like it was leading the horse.

After a moment we heard it again. High, girlish laughter.

It came from behind some blueberry bushes off to one side of us.

We rode over and found two little girls in the middle of a tea party. One of them wasn't so little, she was nearly my age, but she seemed awful young to me. They stopped their play and looked up at us, a little afraid.

“You are just the two we've been looking for,” I said in a friendly way.

“We are?” the older one said.

“We found this goat here, wandering around all by her lonesome and looking for a home.” I got off the horse so I wouldn't look so tall.

“Does it butt?” It was just that girl and me doing the
talking. The little one and Maude sat like they'd been struck dumb.

“Not that I've seen,” I said, and joined her in looking the goat over for any sign of bad habits. “Her milk tastes good.”

“My ma wants a goat,” the girl said. “I'll take her, if she isn't mean.”

“I don't believe this one's mean.” I led the goat around so the girl would see. That animal acted like she thought she was the star of a parade. It made me glad I took the trouble to find her a home, seeing her show off like that with her rumpled coat and dirty face. “She needs a little cleaning up,” I said.

This girl was not put off by a few smudges. “We'll take her.”

“Shall I tie her to this bush till you're ready to take her home?”

“I'll take her now,” the girl said. “We can come back here later.”

“Where do you live?” I asked her.

“That way.”

I nodded. “We're traveling a different way. Can you manage on your own?”