The Misadventures of Maude March (11 page)

“Des Moines is not rough?” Maude asked.

“Every place is rough, just some places are rougher than others.”

“We're too cold,” I said, thinking warm thoughts about that fire he mentioned.

“Get down and walk. If we walk fast, we'll warm up, you'll see. We'll warm up and then give the horses a little run to return the favor.”

M
ARION WAS RIGHT ABOUT WALKING. HE WALKED US
fast, and inside an hour we did warm up as good as sitting by the fire. I never would have thought of it myself, but then the cold numbs your brain, that's one thing I learned as well.

We had another river to ford, but Marion was familiar with the territory and walked us alongside the rushing water in fading daylight. After an hour or more of watching the water boil and of me wishing we didn't have to face it, Marion brought us to a point where a ridge of land could be walked across it.

I was filled with admiration for the man.

“Wrap the reins around your hand a time or two. If you end up in the water,” he said to us before we started across, “don't let go of your horse. Stay on it, if you can.”

The horses were underwater up to their bellies in fast-rushing water, however shallow it was at that point. It took some coaxing to get them to walk it in the dark. They kept wanting to give in to the flow of water around their legs and swim. But Maude and I were more able to bully them than we
once were, and we riders got no wetter for this crossing than any others.

We rode till I had lost all hope of finding a place to sleep. When we saw lights in the distance, I thought it was a trick of my eyes. “How late is it?” I asked, instead of asking, was it real?

“Past midnight, I reckon,” Marion said. “Not all cities sleep.” So I knew, it was real. I had been near the point of asking to walk again, but I decided then to bear the cold and get there quicker.

Des Moines was a more sizable place than I expected. It wasn't all shut down, the way most towns would have been by that hour. There were voices raised to sing “Rock of Ages” as we passed the church, coming into town. A little old place stood open to feed people; it didn't have any other purpose that I could see.

The streets weren't dark either, even if many houses looked shut tight for the night. Torches had been stuck in barrels of dirt every so many wagon-lengths and gave off enough light to get by.

As we got deeper into the city, piano music lit the air around one of the saloons and a bathhouse stood open right next door. A sign offered shaves and haircuts and tooth pulling, and a man stood ready in the doorway to do all three. We rode through town for a longer time than would have been my plan. It was not my plan we were following. We crossed another river, but this one could be crossed by bridge, hallelujah.

We passed two likely-looking hotels before Marion
stopped at a bootmaker's shop and knocked on the door. It was shut tighter than a hatbox and dark inside, so I waited to see what good this would do. He knocked two or three times more before a window above the store opened.

“Who's that out there?” a man asked.

“Joe Harden,” Marion answered. “I'm looking for a place to stay.”

“Who's that with you?”

“I'm traveling with my younger brothers.”

The window shut with nothing more said. Maude and I glanced at each other, waiting to see what happened next. A lamp was lit upstairs. After what seemed like a long time, the door in front of Marion opened.

I gathered from their conversation that Marion had stayed here before and slept on the floor for twenty-five cents. Now the man wanted twenty-five cents for each one of us. “For that kind of money, I might just as well take a room at the hotel and have a bath,” Marion said. “We ain't taking up nothing but floor space.”

Maude put in, “The night is more than half gone, besides.” For my part, I kept my teeth from chattering, which might have been considered an argument to bolster the boot-maker's side.

After considerable haggling, a deal was struck: forty cents. The money was handed over, and the door shut in Marion's face without a friendlier word being spoken. But Marion looked pleased with himself as he turned to us and said, “Let's take the horses around back.”

It wasn't more than a lean-to hanging off the back of the building, but there was grass about hip-high back there. We
picked it, broke the thin stems down to make handfuls of it, and wisped the horses until they were dry. They began to eat the grass tops around them as we worked.

The back door had been unlocked for us, and Maude went inside to break out the frying pan and start something to eat. I was glad I wasn't expected to act like a girl, even if I was going to stand cold a little longer.

“How'd you come to use the name Joe Harden?” I asked Marion. “I mean, how'd you choose it over any other?”

“Joe is a friendly enough name,” Marion said. “There ain't too many killers named Joe. And I just fixed my other name to sound stronger. Hardly to Harden, you see? But I did notice that it opened more doors than any other alias I'd tried. I didn't know why.”

“No one ever asked you about your adventures?” I asked him.

“Well, now, if they did, I just told them what I'd been up to lately. Maybe since there was nothing much to tell, they let it go at that.”

I could see that. Even heroes had days when nothing untoward happened, and they had nothing of interest to talk about. “They probably figured you just hit a dry spell, adventure-wise,” I said.

This struck Marion funny, and he kept chuckling to himself as we tied blankets over the horses. We took everything else inside. Marion locked the door behind us.

T
HE PLACE WASN'T ENTIRELY DARK, I SAW ONCE I GOT
inside. Light from the street came through the big shop window at the front. It smelled of leather and boot blacking and something else I couldn't make out. “Glue,” Marion answered when I asked about it.

We took off our boots to keep the quiet and made our way over to the woodstove, which was bucking out heat. We unrolled our wet clothes from the day before and stretched them out to dry.

Maude had set a fry pan on the woodstove and started some bacon. Marion laid his wet blankets all around the room, and I did likewise for Maude and me. We were quiet as we could be, but we were industrious.

There was a water pump at the back door, and Maude put some up to boil the salted ham. Then she laid the bacon on slabs of bread and handed it to us. The bread was awful dry, but it seemed like we ought to be glad something was, so I didn't complain. We ate well, and until we were full, there was no talk, just chewing.

Maude offered Marion fifteen cents for our space on the
floor. “Now what if I was to say we ought to split it more even like?” he asked her.

“I gathered it costs you twenty-five cents to sleep here alone,” Maude said without flinching. “The extra fifteen cents was our cost.”

Marion grinned. “I love the way a woman thinks.”

Maude ignored this, but I couldn't. “How's that?”

“I should've set Miss Maude on the feller in the first place,” Marion said. “She'd have struck a deal for the two of us to sleep for the usual twenty-five cents, I don't doubt. And got your space for nothing, arguing that you don't take up all that much room.”

“Fair's fair,” Maude said.

“See there?” Marion said as if everything was now made clear.

It was probably another good hour before we settled down with any notion of rest. But we were once more fed and warm, and everything we owned was stick-dry too. I couldn't account for how cheerful I felt. All I knew was, it had become the center of contentment to have warm toes and a full belly.

Leaving the door on the woodstove hanging open gave us enough light to read by. “Want me to get out a few of those dimers?” I asked Marion, hoping to stretch the evening a little. It was just wonderful to feel too good to go to sleep.

Marion said, “Maybe we can find me another good name in there.”

“Why do you need another one?” I asked him.

He answered, “Joe Harden is a wanted man now.”

I hadn't thought of that. But once he'd pointed it out, I
started looking for a name in earnest. Marion found a newspaper and gave that to Maude, since she didn't care for dime novels worse than he did.

“It's recent,” he said, as if that would matter to Maude. She tended to go through a paper back to front, first looking through the lists of what people wanted to hire or buy or sell. Maude's idea of a really good newspaper would be one that was entirely made up of such things.

She took the paper as if she intended to do some justice to it. “It came all the way from Cedar Rapids,” she said in surprise. “Home.”

“Somebody probably had it wrapped around his boots,” Marion said. “Somebody riding the stage,” he added, accounting for the fact that the newspaper beat us there.

Maude was propped against her carpetbag and spread the paper over her knees. Her carpetbag had been turned to and fro in front of the woodstove, smelling like a dead cat, till it could be felt to be dry inside and out. I had not followed her lead until she had made a success of it. So it was my carpetbag that now smelled like dead cat.

“Not all of these fellas have so many finer points as Joe Harden,” I said to Marion. “Some are loyal. Some are honest to a fault. Some are good shots.”

“Don't give me the name of a good shot,” Marion said. “I have had my fill of that.”

Maude gasped and sat straight up. “Look at this,” she cried, forgetting to be as quiet as she could. “Would you just look at this? I am ruined!”

I looked. A pretty fair drawing of Maude looked back at me from the page. I pushed the newspaper down so I could
read the print. “Read that out loud, would you?” Marion said, sitting back again.

“Taking the horses was my idea,” I said.

Since I was riding the pretty one, why didn't they even put my picture in the paper? I looked to see if my name showed up in the small print.

But no.

Maude March and Maude March and Maude March was
the only name I saw. To hear it from this paper, I didn't even exist. Marion said, “They don't want to hang you. They think you went mad with grief.”

“My picture has been shown all over,” Maude cried. “I'm a known horse thief, grief-stricken or not. I can't show my face anywhere ever again.”