The Misadventures of Maude March (13 page)

I
T'S YOUR FAULT WE'RE TRAVELING ALONE AGAIN,” I SAID,
feeling mean. “You treated Marion badly.”

“He killed our aunt.”

“You didn't mind that so much yesterday,” I pointed out. “You're only mad because of the newspaper. If you hadn't seen your picture in the newspaper, we would still have Marion here to help us along.”

“We don't need his help.”

“You don't know that for sure,” I said. “You're the one who said 'if we make it.' ”

“We'll make it.”

“If we don't, if we're attacked by Indians or get drowned in some swollen river or”—I thought fast, pulling out sad, bad ends that heroes meet in dimers—“or hung for horse thieves, it will be because you drove off someone who might have protected us.”

This didn't move Maude, so I took another tack.

“The Toleridge boy wasn't sweet, I understood that,” I said. “Mr. Wilburn was old. I'm not sure that's really so bad, but I helped you get away. There ain't nothing wrong with
Marion. He's sweet enough and he ain't too awful old and he ain't asking you for nothing either, but still you treated him poorly.”

Maude sped up on Flora and stayed a distance in front of me for another mile or so. But then she turned and headed back to me. Passed me without a word, and I knew she was headed back to Des Moines.

Maude can be bullied. She just likes to be bullied gently.

My heart lifted as I turned Goldie, unlucky as I was to ride back through a nearly visible cloud that she'd dispatched only moments before.

The saloons were not open for business at this time of day, but many of the shop doors stood open. There had been hardly anyone on the boards when we left an hour or so before, and even fewer horses on the street. Now it looked like someone had started handing out free eats, there were so many people milling about.

We didn't have to ride as far as the bootmaker's before we saw Marion's horse in front of the bank. Right off I could see Marion could do with a couple of riding partners. Why, he hadn't even hitched his horse to the post. Just left the reins laying over it, like.

Maude tied Flora and stepped away, but I called her back with a short whistle. I raised my rifle, reminding her that she was forgetting hers. I wanted to show Marion that we took his advice to heart. It might sway him if he was still of a mind to ride alone. Maude took the hint and untied her rifle. I was right behind her as she opened the door and went into the bank.

I saw everything at once.

A teller stood with his hands in the air. A second teller had stopped midway in filling a lumpy canvas sack with money. Marion stood near the tellers, his gun in one hand and another such sack in the other.

A man lay on the floor, money spilled all around him. Another man—his shirt struck me as such a bright white in the overall dim of the room—lay nearer the door.

“Marion,” Maude said, shock making her voice squeak.

“Miss Maude, what are you doing here?” Marion said, looking equally surprised, but he didn't squeak.

The man nearest us made a quick motion I saw out of the corner of my eye. He reached for his gun, and just as quick, without thinking, I stomped that hand with the butt of my rifle. He yelled and dropped his pistol, so that it skittered across the floor a little.

Maude bent to pick it up, hooking it with her pinkie finger. She moved awkwardly, crossing her rifle in front of her, so that the man took a notion. He moved fast, very fast, and snatched at the barrel of Maude's rifle.

She held on with both hands, even though the pistol still dangled, and would not give up her grip on the rifle. I didn't know what to do. I looked at Marion just as he shot once and the man screamed, falling away from Maude.

I saw blood on the white shirt.

“Run, Miss Maude,” Marion shouted. “Sallie! Run!”

We ran.

I
LED AND MAUDE FOLLOWED. WE RAN OUT OF THE BANK
and down the boardwalk, ran past the bank and then a dress shop, still closed. I ducked into the first narrow alley I saw, and by then Maude was pushing me from behind. I could feel the butt of the six-gun against my back, still hanging from her finger.

Behind us a volley of gunshots broke out. There were four, six, seven shots, maybe. I couldn't count them.

We broke into the open behind the buildings, where there was a scattering of small houses and other sheds. We headed for the edge of town, still running away from the bank, but there was no safe place to go. No one had yet followed us here, but it was only a matter of time.

I ran to the far side of a small barn, stopping to catch my breath. “Maude!” I said, finding two saddled horses hitched to a post. I loosed one and climbed on.

Maude didn't hesitate but was hampered by managing both the rifle and the six-gun with one hand. She passed me the gun and swung up on the other horse, kicked the animal into a lunging gallop and bent low in the saddle.

We rode straight out into the grasslands. My hat was lost in the foot running, Maude's was lost during the ride. We rode without sparing the horses, for three or four miles. At first it was exciting; I felt like we were living in the pages of a dime novel.

But then it got so the ride was just pounding, pounding, pounding, and after a while I knew I couldn't take it for much longer. We stopped at the top of a hill to look back and didn't see any sign that we were being followed.

“We better slow up some,” I told Maude. “It won't do us any good to ride these horses into the ground for nothing. Let's save a little of their strength in case we need it later on.”

It was only when we stopped to water the horses that I realized I'd somehow thought we would come back to having our own horses to ride, that these were only for the moment. But that wasn't true, of course.

It struck me that at only one other time in my life had the future been so uncertain, and then help was offered to us in the form of Aunt Ruthie. We didn't question this turn of events but trailed after her like goslings, setting our feet in her footsteps. These horses had looked to me like the same kind of gift. Without them, we were lost. But now we were genuine criminals. I felt bad. Guilty of wrongdoing—not at all the same feeling I'd had after making a fair trade, as when we left with the Peasleys' horses.

“We're in a fine mess,” Maude said, now that we'd caught our breath enough to talk. “We don't have thing one to eat, or a pot to cook a chicken in if I shoot one. We don't even have a hat.”

I had nothing to add to this. I watched the horses drink.

“And now we're horse thieves, for certain,” she went on, starting to pace back and forth. She was working herself up into a fine lather. “Whoever owned these horses didn't owe us a thing. Nothing. They may not have wanted to hang me before, but they're going to want to hang me now.”

“They'll hang us both,” I said.

Maude stopped pacing. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you should turn back,” Maude said in a voice I didn't know.

“Turn back?”

“I mean, go home. Before we get into any worse trouble. Just go home and pretend this morning never happened. Tell them the last you saw of me, I was riding north.”

“You're talking crazy,” I said, and started to cry. I didn't mean to cry, but once begun, I couldn't stop it either.

“We could both go back, maybe,” she said, mopping me up with the tail of her shirt. “I'll let them think I'm crazy as a bedbug, at least for another week or two. It'll be grief, like the paper said. Mr. Wilburn might still have me once I come to my senses.”

I decided to ignore this manner of talk. It made me feel lost in a way I hadn't been before. Even if the horses were forgiven, even if things worked out so that people believed Maude had for a few days gone mad, it would be a long time before anyone trusted her again. I wouldn't want to go back to that either.

It seemed like a very long time ago that I thought life was simple. Not easy, but simple, in the way that it went from day
to day, and we were safe. At least we felt safe. I had not done away with the idea that life could be that way again, but I was certain that I could never go back to it, or even find it elsewhere, without Maude.

“We aren't going back, either one of us,” I said as if Maude was the one who'd been doing the crying. “Mrs. Peasley will put chains around our ankles, and not a soul will speak up for us.”

“If Mrs. Peasley doesn't, the law will,” Maude agreed. She looked a little lost herself. “It's too late for us, Sallie; there is no one to save us but each other.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I asked her.

She rolled her eyes in answer.

“We'd better watch for a chicken,” Maude said, boarding her horse. “Or maybe that bear Marion warned us about. If I shoot us a bear, we'll have a blanket.”

“Only if I consent to do the skinning,” I said, “and I might not. Skinning a bear is a lot to ask of a ten-year-old.”

“You're eleven,” Maude said as we started off again, our horses somewhat refreshed. “At least that's what I was given to believe. But I'd guess you were twenty if you were a day. Are you watching for chickens?”

She was right about everything, of course. We weren't hungry now, but we would be soon. And we would be cold. These horses didn't carry a blanket roll. I didn't care to point out just yet that they didn't carry any cooking utensils either. Whoever was going to ride them wasn't planning to go far. It was doubtful they were range riders. More likely, ranchers.

My thoughts turned back to range riders, and colored the morning's episode with a rosy glow. It wasn't much fun while
it was happening, but it was a good memory to embroider. It made me ride tall in the saddle.

“We did that old plow horse a kindness,” I said after a time, “leaving it behind. It could never have taken such a rough ride. It would've keeled over dead, and we'd have been nabbed for sure.”

Maude didn't reply to this. She was deep in her own thoughts.

“Do you think Marion meant for us to run to our horses?” I asked.

“I'm pretty sure he never meant for us to run past them,” she said.

I guess the whole business had begun to get to us because we looked at each other and laughed. We had a good, long laugh, and I don't think either of us knew what was funny.

“What do you think happened to him?” I asked Maude after a time.

“I don't know,” she said wearily. “All those gunshots… Did you have any idea he was going to rob a bank?”

“No.” Now that the question stood in the air, I asked, “Do you think he really is Joe Harden?”

“Sallie!” Maude shouted. “What is the matter with you?” she wailed.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Marion is not as nice as we believed him to be,” Maude said in a sharp tone. “Even though we knew he killed Aunt Ruthie, we trusted him.” She broke off to sob loudly and sob long; the cords in her throat were drawn taut as wire. Finally she said, “He shot that man right before our very eyes. Did
you see that? He's dangerous, Sallie, and even if he's famous, we still do not admire him. Do you understand?”

“I don't admire him,” I said. “I just like him. I can't help it.”

“It's not right to like him,” Maude said. She blew her nose into the cuff of her man-sized shirt and then rolled the cuff up again. “We have to hate him. He killed Aunt Ruthie.”

“It's not right to hate him either,” I said. “Aunt Ruthie believed it was wrong to hate, even though she didn't much like anybody.”

“Let's not talk about it anymore,” Maude said. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

“We rode west,” I said, thinking on it. “Mostly west.”

“Are we still headed mostly west?” Maude asked, looking around her like there would be a printed sign.

I looked at the sun and decided it must be coming on noon. But it would be another hour or two at least before I knew for sure what direction we were headed in. I had to get a look at my compass.

“Just keep going,” I told her.

A
LONG ABOUT MIDAFTERNOON, WE TOPPED A RISE AND
found a small town laid out before us. Behind it ran a river, a river we would have to cross sooner or later. From here, we could see a horseman being ferried across on a wooden raft.