Maude March on the Run! (22 page)

“Keep going,” I said to Maude as I boarded Silver Dollar. “I'll catch up to you before long.”

“A lot of things could catch up to us,” Maude said. “Do not take long.”

Apart from half a dozen cabins, the town was only an old stage station turned livery, a whiskey bar, and a general store. But there was enough brisk business being done that I didn't stand out as a matter of curiosity.

I rode in with the intention to buy an evening meal and the makings for breakfast while Silver Dollar was being shoed. A sign in front of the store read:

BUY HERE OR WE'LL BOTH CROAK

This inspired me to think of getting more of everything. The well had a fence around it, which made me glad of my fat purse.

The fellow at the general store knew his business was canteens, and he sold them cheap enough. I paid a few cents extra to have them filled. I'd never heard of such a thing as paying for water but couldn't chance an argument.

The candy, two apple pies, and a sack of dried fruit and nuts would have to hold us in the sweets department. I found egg custard for the doctor and was glad of Rebecca's reminder not to stint, for I had to buy the dish in order to take the whole thing with me.

Chicken and ham and potatoes were all cold but didn't
look greasy. It had looked good to everyone who had come before me. I bought all that was left, which might last us the day.

I added enough cheese and hard-boiled eggs and biscuits to last a week, I figured. Because I didn't like to think of a week of cheese and eggs, I bought a bucketful of last season's apples.

I saw the newspaper first thing on going in, but I did as most shoppers did, picked it up while they totted up my bill. I didn't look at it especially, but the headline was impossible to miss:

I was given a box to carry on one shoulder and held the bucket in my other hand. I couldn't set these down anywhere until I got back to the livery. There, I read through the article.

I looked up to find some fellow noticing my interest in the story. I hadn't seen him standing in the shadows of the livery, until he lit a cigar. He didn't say anything right away, but drew deep on that thing.

A puff of smoke escaped into the air when he said, “She makes good reading, don'tcha think?”

I didn't reply to this.

“Some fella come through here this morning said he heard she was just down the road a piece,” he said.

“You don't say.”

“Some sheriff got himself tied to a chair,” the fellow said. “He claimed Maude and her gang did it.”

I said, “How many men?”

“Now, he didn't say,” the fellow said. “I didn't think to ask.”

I made like I'd lost interest in the matter and ran my eyes over the horseflesh. Silver Dollar was his old plump self. Maude's horse and mine were a question in my mind. A diet
of grasses had thinned them out. We had a punishing ride ahead of us, and they could get played out.

I thought of my own horse, the selfsame horse we had picked up at Ben Chaplin's. He was sensitive to the bit and could hit any clip I called for, and he could stay with it until he heard from me again. He didn't mind a long day, and I'd come to know him for a real trail horse.

I believed it far better to leave my horse here where he could rest for a time and eat a little grain with molasses than to drive him across the plains and peter him out entire.

It turned out that talkative fellow worked there, and he threw himself into the pitch with some energy.

He offered a sweet-natured dark buckskin with mane and tail of a cream color. Its spine swayed like a back porch. That one was followed by an offer of a roan with popped knees. All of them otherwise lovely horses, but I wouldn't fall for a pretty face.

He thought I'd go for a pretty gray with bowed tendons. She ought to have been put out to pasture. I felt nothing but sorry for her.

This decided me. If the riding wore on my horse, I would put him out to pasture at Macdougal's, giving him a better finish. I said, “I have a good horse and feet left under me to walk on if he wears out.”

“Gonna be a long walk in any direction,” the fellow said. Which was a point. I began to like talking to him.

When I didn't bite at these offerings, he showed me a plain horse in better shape overall, but as hard-mouthed as a new boot. The only difference being, a boot can be broke in. This horse was past that.

I said, “I would do better to ride a mule.”

“Never a mule, son, they is incurable,” he told me. “This horse is fine. Here, just hold him by the ears, see, and you can get by without reins, too.”

This brought some snuffled laughter from a few old cronies sitting around a cold woodstove. “You can't expect me to pay top dollar for a bottomed-out horse,” I said to him. I sounded more like Aunt Ruthie than I cared to, but it couldn't be helped.

Another fellow came over just then, leading Silver Dollar and handing me some pieces of shriveled carrot, cut up. When Silver Dollar had put away all the pieces of carrot and had his nose rubbed good, I turned to find a man standing behind me.

M
ARION SAID, “HOW DID YOU COME TO HAVE SILVER
Dollar?”

“It's a long story.” I took him in at a glance and saw he looked well.

“I got worried when you and your sister didn't show up,” he said. “I started back from the crossing this morning. I couldn't go on to Liberty without the two of you in tow.”

“Did you think the coyotes got us?”

“Naw. They might eat you,” he said. “But they wouldn't dare mess with the likes of your sister.”

“Good to have you back,” I said, grinning.

We began walking to his horse where it stood at a corner of the corral. It didn't look nearly as fagged as it had on the day Maude would have traded it in. All it had needed was a good rest. This made me feel a sight better about my own horse.

“We are still with the medicine peddler,” I said to him.

“That worked out all right.”

I didn't think he needed the whole of the story. Not yet anyway. “Maude's hair was covered and I wore a dress.”

His eyebrows rose. “Did the dress suit you?”

“Well enough.”

“Do you still have it?”

“In my sack.” We mounted our horses and rode out.

“Come Christmas, you will have to wear it so I can see what a girl named Sallie looks like.”

“Come Christmas,” I agreed. “Did you see the paper hereabouts?”

“Your sister gets around.”

“It strikes me the papers are making our case for her innocence.”

“Now don't warm to them, son,” Marion said. “It's only the story that interests them, and the story could be some different tomorrow.”

We came to the edge of the town and dug into those horses for a little speed. We hadn't ridden far before I saw the wagon ahead of us. I signaled to Marion to slow down. “I forgot to say we ran into some trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The unexpected kind,” I said. “A fellow helped us out, goes by the name John Kirby.”

“John Henry Kirby?”

“He didn't give us his middle name,” I said.

“What did he look like?”

“He wears a vest,” I said. “And reading glasses.”

“Sounds like John Henry,” Marion said.

I said, “That John Henry? The one who wrote about your adventures as Joe Harden?” I tried to recall the name of the man who wrote those books. “J. H. somebody.”

“J. H. Kirby,” Marion said. “The very same.”

It'll sound funny, but I liked it that John Kirby might turn out to be J.H. “He was riding Silver Dollar,” I said, and filled him in on John Kirby's offer to write Maude's story.

By then, we had picked up our pace. Maude greeted him by walking back to meet us when she saw us coming.

“You girls take your old sweet time,” he said, getting off his horse.

“You were just worried we'd beat you to the Colorado Territory,” Maude answered him playful-like. I thought she wasn't in the mood to fight with him as she had right after he'd broken her out of jail that last time.

She climbed up behind me, and we rode up to the wagon, which was not moving. John Kirby came away from checking the horses' hooves. Marion was expecting to see him, but John Henry was taken by surprise.

John Henry, that was how I began to think of him the moment I saw color rise in his face. He and Marion greeted each other with a handshake and stiff punches to each other's arms. They started to look glad to see each other.

“We have a lot to talk about,” Marion said.

Maude said, “You know each other?”

“Marion was the side gun on the stage coach I rode the first time I came west,” John Henry said. “He must've saved my skin twice a day.”

We couldn't make more of an explanation then, as we made Marion known to Rebecca and the doctor. The doctor lay in the grass with Rebecca's quilt-stuffed carpetbag at his back.

Maude and Marion set out a little meal of eggs and biscuits.
John Henry made the coffee. Over these doings, we each told something of the trip we'd shared in Marion's absence.

Maude told Marion how we had come across John Henry.

John Henry talked about how he had thought Maude a venturesome young woman until she gave her name. He had been reading old newspaper clippings and put the Maude together with the Ruth Waters of the stories.

I thought Maude wasn't yet ready to talk about the scary business of riding into that mob, so I said, “Turned out, the best way to disguise Maude is to trick her up in sequins and feathers.”

John Henry reached for her hand, saying, “Feathers are becoming to pretty birds.” Maude blushed and pulled her hand away.

Marion stepped between them to hand plates of food to Rebecca and the doctor. He said, “I count myself lucky I got here in time to see Sallie's dealings with that horse trader. He didn't know who he was up against,” he said. “She had him agreeing to trade a perfectly fine horse for a broke-down dog she had not even located yet.”

I began to feel the adventure of it all once more. For we all had a story. Although Marion didn't have enough of a story to suit Maude. “You can't have enjoyed a trip so uneventful as to have nothing else to tell but finding Sallie,” she said.

I wondered if she wanted to brag a little, if she might be sorry she'd taken to wearing her plain dress. She might be wishing she still wore that dress with spangles.

“I got lucky, I guess, eventful-wise,” Marion said. “I waited around till I got the feeling something must have gone bad.”

“What gave you that feeling?” Maude said in an unusual snippy tone.

“Just nothing,” Marion said. “A feeling. Then I got the idea to mosey on back.”

She got up suddenly and stalked off through the grass. John Henry made a move to get up, but I was quicker. “Leave this to me,” I said.

I ran to catch up to Maude. “What's the matter with you?” I said to her.

“He's a waste of my worry,” she said, never slowing down.

“You're a match for Aunt Ruthie yourself,” I said. “We're the three of us together again and able to ride on to Uncle Arlen. Why can't you just count our blessings instead of looking for grudge material?”

To this she said nothing.

“We'll soon know everything we ever wondered about the Joe Harden stories,” I said. Which was how I put it, though I'd thought a great deal more about them than Maude ever had.

“What are you talking about?”

“John Kirby,” I said. “He's the one who writes them.”

She gave me a look of surprise. I grinned and started back to the others. She wasn't far behind me.

Marion and John Henry were going back and forth on that issue. The Aldoradondos sat in quiet suspense.

“They're interesting books you've written,” Marion said. “I'll say that much for them.”

John Henry said, “Good books.”

“Sallie likes them,” Marion said.

“That isn't a recommendation,” Maude said.

“Not true,” the doctor said. “It's exactly what we were talking about earlier, public sentiment.”

“What everybody wants, isn't it?” John Henry said. “To have a book written about them? It makes people feel important, isn't that so, Marion?”

Maude glanced at Marion, but he didn't answer.

John Henry blinked behind his dusty eyeglasses. He said, “Didn't you want to have a book written about you, Joe— Marion?”