Maude March on the Run! (15 page)

Maude said, “I believe a hat makes a lady respectable.”

The missus turned back into the wagon, using the little step at the back, and Maude went in behind her. I followed them with great curiosity. On one side—the home side, you might say—a long bunk ran along the wall from corner to corner, only wide enough for one person to sleep.

On the business side, where part of the wall let down to become a shelf, bottles were lined up on narrow shelves with railings so they couldn't fall off. A rocker occupied the floor behind the wagon seat.

“Look over your head, Sallie,” Maude said. And there I saw two chairs and a table with folding legs were fitted into wood angles so they hung out of the way till they were to be used.

Lanterns hung there as well. “I've never seen anything like it,” I said, and the missus was pleased. I sat on the bunk to watch her work.

She pulled Maude's hair back extremely tight and pinned a hairpiece in the wrong color over the short ends. A deep
purple scarf was wrapped around Maude's head so it couldn't be seen that the hair didn't match, and an ostrich plume was added to that.

The effect transformed Maude entirely. I was satisfied that, if she didn't look like my Maude, she didn't look like that Maude in the newspaper, either. I doubted Uncle Arlen or Marion would know her right off.

The missus turned to me and said, “You'd look real nice in a dress. We can buy you a bonnet.”

Only the week before I would have fought this idea tooth and nail. But I was bothered to think people might watch out for Maude riding with a younger brother, especially now that Borden Kind could back up that story.

I didn't say no precisely, but I didn't say yes just yet.

Come time to work, small square bottles were set out on the shelf in a box. The bottom of the box slid out, and when the bottles stopped jiggling, the sides were lifted, leaving the bottles lined up for purchase. It made for fast work, done easily.

These weren't the pretty bottles I remembered. They were filled with liquid dark brown and strong-smelling. This discouraged no one, apparently.

Maude took the money and made change as needed, doing a brisk business. At first I watched to see if anyone looked at her with special interest. Maybe it was the cover of near darkness or the come-to-me tone in the doctor's voice, but men hardly looked at Maude once they got next to her. They almost acted like they were in a hurry to get away.

I figured it had to do with a night on the town. The pianos
in the halls played lively music. Laughter and loud voices could be heard from inside the saloons and, once in a while, the crash of glass.

The doctor sounded like a cross between a preacher and a gun-toting sheriff. “Gentlemen, your valleys shall be raised and your mountains ironed flat, your crookeds made straight as a corpse in December, and your rough places smooth as a mule's coat.”

This sounded like a big promise. I figured the doctor was going to need some help from on high to make good on it. One fellow asked him what he had in those bottles and was given this answer: “These good soldiers hold the cure for the disease of royalty.”

For most, this was proof enough we were selling the very thing they were looking for. I thought Dr. Aldoradondo was smart to have found a way to compliment them into buying his wares.

Three men rode past us at one point, and I realized they were lawmen. I didn't stand there like a tent pole, but strolled among the customers, saying, “Finest pipe tobacco, sweet cherry smoke, thin paper for rolling,” like it read on the packages.

These riders looked us over and moved on.

Maude's horse and mine were tied at a trough a little distance from the wagon. So were several others, but it struck me as a good thing that ours were. Looking at us, our disguise was helped by the fact the peddler's wagon didn't have two more horses tied to it.

I resolved to do this again if we continued on to another town with the Aldoradondos.

In fact, but for the neck strap did rub a little, I didn't find the work unpleasant. The tobacco smelled of cherry, one kind, and another tobacco smelled like honey.

It reminded me of the stuff Aunt Ruthie never would buy at church socials, little sachets with dried flower bits inside. There was an odd comfort in this and in thoughts of Aunt Ruthie.

I kept an eye open for Marion, but he was nowhere to be seen. He liked to play down the stories that were told about him, but he had his talents. Blending in was one of them.

J
UST AS I BEGAN TO WONDER WHEN THE PIANOS
would stop playing, the doctor pulled in three unsold bottles and shut the wagon up. I saw Maude's shoulders relax. I was growing oddly impatient by then, wanting to ride further, and faster, wanting to make more distance.

Equally, I wanted a glimpse of Marion. I hadn't had a share in the making of this plan, and I didn't feel quite resigned to it. I was growing tired, and that helped me through this.

We rode outside of town and camped for the night.

Once we had put the horses to bed, that was how the doctor put it, I was ready to take to a bed as well. We sat for a few minutes inside the wagon, me and Maude on the two chairs the doctor took down from the hooks in the ceiling, the missus and him on the long bunk they slept on, the bottoms of their feet touching. She laughed as she told us this, and sliced apples for us, and made us feel quite at home.

I began to warm to them.

To the doctor, I said, “You closed down right smartly once you made up your mind you were finished. Don't you lose a few customers that way?”

“I shut down the minute I see no one is looking for a loose coin,” he said. “The hesitant come to the table quicker next time.”

“I guess that's wise,” I said. “What's your elixir made of, anyway?”

“I start with a base of brandy or whiskey,” he said. “Both of these have medicinal properties. I add amounts of cascara and horseradish, goldenseal or turpentine, depending on the desired effect.”

“People swallow turpentine?”

“People swallow most anything,” he said. “A few drops of oil of peppermint or wintergreen will disguise any unpleasant odors.”

“Sounds not altogether bad,” I said.

He said, “Tastes terrible,” and made a face.

I didn't reply to this, nor did Maude.

A look passed over his face in an instant, as had happened with Borden Kind, but after a minute I realized it only meant he'd hoped to make me and Maude giggle.

“We're some tired,” I said, for I didn't care to hurt his feelings.

The missus stood to clear away the bowl of apples, saying, “Well, of course you must be. It's been a day of change for you.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said.

We slept that night on the floor of the wagon. Dr. Aldoradondo took a pallet under the wagon “to make a ladies' space.” I thought it right good of him.

The only odd thing, he insisted we all wash our hands with strong soap. He kept a pail of water in the wagon for the
sole purpose of hand-washing, and he didn't stop talking about the need for it while the four of us took turns at the basin.

“We bathe as often as circumstance allows us,” the missus said.

They didn't look uncommonly clean to me, but I took this to mean me and Maude looked dirtier yet, at any rate not clean enough to be working for them. This was undoubtedly true after several days on the trail, and I felt some apologetic for it.

He was
real
finicky about his fingernails. I asked him about it and regretted it ten minutes later, when he was still telling me how important it was to have clean hands in every task from household cooking to putting balm on a scratch.

I could have spared myself this lecture if I'd told him I rarely found a scratch worth bothering about, I felt sure, but there was something kindly in his manner that made me listen equally politely. Probably he couldn't help it he still sounded like he spoke through a horn.

In the morning, me and Maude hitched our horses to the wagon rail and rode into the next town sitting on the back step of the wagon. It was a rocky ride, but we couldn't be overheard.

I said, “Have you told Dr. Aldoradondo or the missus what we're running from?”

“Let's keep our story to ourselves,” Maude said. “We don't yet know what they're running from.”

It had not occurred to me they were running from anything.

“I forget,” Maude said. “Working at George Ray's, I would
forget how beautiful it is out here. How much there is to feel.” She had taken on that look of love again.

I didn't know what to make of this at any time, and I didn't know what to say now. I pulled my compass out of my pocket and watched the needle quiver. “Due west,” I said. “We're traveling due west.”

“I know that,” Maude said in lilting tones.

Aunt Ruthie used to scold her for that manner; Aunt Ruthie thought those tones meant she was teasing and not caring. But that was never so. I never truly understood those tones, but they weren't teasing and Maude was ever caring.

“Do you want to see Uncle Arlen's map?”

Maude gave me a smiling look, like I was a puzzle she couldn't complete. “Don't wear it out,” she said, and she was fully my big sister again.

Once in the town of Council Grove, we drew a running herd of children. No one I saw looked twice at Maude or me.

“Run alongside the wagon,” the missus said, giving me a handful of candy sticks. “Pass them around.”

We did indeed take advantage of the bathhouse, first thing. As she paid for my bath, I told the missus, “Me and Maude are fond of bathing.”

I felt the need to say this, although it was truer of Maude than myself. Her rule was twice a week, and at that I thought the practice overdone. What was accomplished in two baths that couldn't be done with one?

By the time we were ready to do business, the children's mommas were collected in the street around the wagon. My basket was filled with packages of needles and pins, thimbles, nail brushes, and hair combs.

I had the chance to see how useful that basket could be. Even those ladies who wanted such favors as packets broken up for the sale of one needle put down a coin for one of those colored bottles, or maybe for the cure inside it.

I didn't waste twenty minutes deciding my daylight customers were those ladies who stood on the outside of the circle, the shy ones. And right after that, the ones who hung about in doorways, unwilling to mix with the “nicer” ladies of the town, but every bit as much in need of relief from their ills.

To the sundry items in my basket, I added a few well-chosen bottles.

“Are you worn up and worn down?” I said in a low voice that didn't interfere with the doctor's. “Is your sleep fitful; are you full of worry and woe, aches and pains? One spoonful of this panacea will bring you sure recovery.”

I sold twelve bottles the first time out. My pocket was heavy with change each time I worked my way over to the back door of the wagon, and after the first time, the missus, Rebecca, was waiting to hand me more bottles.

When the last of my customers drifted over to hear what more was being said by Dr. Aldoradondo, I stepped inside the wagon. The money was counted, and Maude put two dollars in her pouch.

There was hand-washing to follow touching the money. I got first turn at the basin. The doctor said, “I think we could have another round of sales in an hour's time.”

“I'm ready for it,” I said.

I chose a different set of bottles to sell. I liked a clear, square bottle that was plain but for the bird etched in the
glass. The doctor took it out of my basket without saying a word.

For a moment I thought he meant I shouldn't sell bottles. But he didn't look angry. When I reached for a different bottle, he nodded. I made up my basket.

When we went back to work, I noticed the doctor sometimes sold that clear bottle, but he didn't set it out on the shelf with the others.

Later in the day, as they treated us to a meal at the hotel, I said, “Why won't everybody sell medicine, if it makes so much money?”

“Not everyone trusts medicine,” Dr. Aldoradondo said. “Many times I've paid the price of someone else's shoddy practices.”

“What does that mean?” Maude asked with a sharp look at him. “You got run out of town?”

“Those were the old days,” the missus said, her frown telling me they were also days she remembered.

“That kind of thing doesn't happen anymore, does it?” Maude asked, passing the bowl of stewed meat and potatoes to me. I'd put my suspicion of stew meat aside in favor of good manners. “I can't let Sallie get hurt.”

“You need have no fear,” Dr. Aldoradondo said, the way he'd told his customers his medicines were surefire. Most people were reassured by his manner, I'd give him that, but Maude was not most people.

“I can't let Sallie get hurt,” she said again.

He looked at his wife and said, “Isn't there a bit of shopping you mean to do, my dear, before we ride on?”

“I could use a twist of peppermints,” Maude said to me. “Run to the store for me, won't you?”

I went over to a sweet shop and bought the candy. I was tempted into buying a dozen oatmeal cookies dotted with raisins.