The Misadventures of Maude March (14 page)

The raft was pulled across on rope traces, but we could see the race of the river put a little strain on the whole works. Before I could get my hopes up, Maude said, “Let's ride north.”

“I'm hungry and so are you,” I said. “Let's go on in and get the supplies we need. Then we'll take the ferry.”

“What if they recognize me?” Maude said. “Even if they don't have a newspaper, the sheriff could have my description. I've already been in one shoot-out today. I don't think I can tolerate another.”

“We have to have something to eat. It's too late in the year to hope for corn or berries to be picked.”

“You go,” Maude said.

“Do I look passable?”

“You look a mess. But you don't look like a red Indian anymore. You just look like you've been living on the land.”

Maude waited for me to say I'd go, and when I said nothing, she tried acting bossy. “Get us each a hat. Thank goodness I kept the money in my pocket, or we'd be in really big trouble.”

“I don't know,” I said, but I did know. I didn't want to go in there alone. I had a bad feeling about it.

“I don't see any way around it,” Maude said, softening a little. “I'll wait for you east of town.”

“No, wait for me here,” I said, seeing the flaw in her planning. “I should ride out the way I came in. That way no one will know for sure which way we were heading.”

“All right.” She gave me part of Aunt Ruthie's nest egg.

I watched her count out five dollars and change. I said, “That's all?”

“We have to hold on to as much as we can. So don't spend any on foolishness. Except peppermints. Have we lost them too?”

“No,” I said, “I have the last few here in my pocket.” We'd come to depend on the peppermints, and we ate one or two of them daily. Marion liked them too, and considered we were awful stingy with them.

“Better get some more,” Maude said. “No dimers. We can both eat peppermints, but I'm not buying dimers.”

I hesitated, thinking longingly of a time when I would have argued that was unfair. Maude must have thought I was working out my argument because she said, “You can read the one you have until our fortunes change.”

As it happened, I hadn't stuffed one into my shirt that morning, not knowing we were going to lose all our belongings, but I didn't say so. I started out, making a list in my head
of the bare necessaries, when an ugly thought popped in. I rode back to Maude and said, “You won't disappear on me, will you? It won't be a kindness.”

“I'm not brave enough for that,” she said.

Still, I kept looking back over my shoulder. I needed to see her there, sitting that horse. My nerve was shot.

The town was smaller than it looked from a distance. The one general store was sizable enough. It carried everything from saddles and horse liniment to farm machinery, ready-made clothing, dry goods, household items, and finally, foodstuffs. Sausages and cheese hung from the rafters, filling the air with a smell that made my mouth water.

Two men and a woman in aprons helped customers in the aisles. They only barely looked up as I tried on hats. The woman helped me hunt up matches and a can opener. They didn't bother me or worry about what was I up to. The secret of this is only touch what you plan to buy.

A girl about Maude's age worked the counter where I did my food shopping, and she wasn't much given to curiosity. I chose what we could eat on the run if need be. I was so taken with the smell of fresh-baked cookies in a box on the counter that I paid a dear price for as many as could be put in a small sack.

The girl wanted to put everything in two boxes but was willing enough to put it all in feed sacks when I told her I was on horseback. I remembered the peppermints at the last minute and added some licorice whips and toffees to the candy order.

I climbed into the saddle to tie one of the feed sacks to the pommel, and then got off again to get the other sack off
the ground. That's when I heard a man say, “You're mighty young to be a hand at the Fieldings' ranch.”

I looked up and saw a lawman looking down at me. His glance moved to the brand on the horse's rump. “My pa works there,” I said, going weak all over.

“You're awful far from home, aren't you?” he asked, taking the weight of the feed sack so I could climb on. I needed the help.

“We're going to look at a horse,” I said. “Another two days' ride.”

“Bob Fielding riding with you?” he said, looking up and down the short street.

“Nope,” I said, hoping this would be the right answer. The last thing I needed was a lawman's company. “It's just my pa and me for this trip,” I said, tying up the feed sack.

“You tell your pa's boss I said hello,” he said. “Landers is the name.”

“I will,” I said. “Thanks for the hand.”

I rode slow as I moved away from him, deciding to ride toward the smithy at the end of town. Landers might get the impression my pa was there, getting a horse shod or something. Whatever he thought, I hoped he'd lose interest in me.

I didn't dare look back over my shoulder. What I did was ride to the smithy, got down slow and easy, and went inside. From the darkness of the interior, I made sure I was no longer being watched.

“Help ya?” someone said from behind me.

“I need oats, five pounds,” I said. This was true enough. We needed to be able to hobble these horses too. “I need a length of rope. Two lengths would be better.”

He added them to the bill, pretty much finishing off my little wad of cash. “Fill your canteen?” he asked, pointing. One hung next to the saddlebags, half hidden by the saddle blanket.

I hefted the canteen, trying to look like I was familiar with it. Filled up, it had to be. “Thanks anyway,” I said. I looked down the street again and couldn't see the lawman anywhere. I rode out of town, moving at a leisurely pace.

I didn't tell Maude about the lawman. I figured it was enough one of us was as nervous and jerky as a turkey two days before Thanksgiving. “Let's get moving,” I said as I rode up to her. I passed her the hat I'd gotten for her.

“What did you get us to eat?”

“Sausage, cheese, corn bread, and crackers. Tinned things, but no fish.” Maude and I were not fond of tinned fish. “I bought a knife. I was supposed to look like I was picking up odds and ends. I couldn't very well start buying pots and pans and platters. We'll pick up the other things piecemeal.”

“Give me some of that corn bread, will you?”

“I wish we could have taken the ferry,” I said, because the river looked cold. It looked fast too, although the surface was smooth enough. But that only meant it was deep enough to drown in.

I was thinking I wished we'd taken the ferry before I ran into that lawman. But when Maude looked back, I added, “This way is best; no one will have any stories to tell the newspaper about Maude March paying to use the ferry.”

W
E FOLLOWED THE RIVER FOR A MILE, THEN MADE OUR
preparations to cross it. I wanted to go on a little ways, following the river, but Maude was determined to cross sooner than later. We cinched up the saddles and took off our heavy pants, to be hung around our necks with our boots stuffed in them.

Remembering a lesson learned from reading
Lamar Lafayette, River Rat,
I divvied up the matches, and we put them in our shirt pockets. If one of us fell into the water, we might still save some.

Maybe we were lucky to hit the river where we did because I had been right; it ran fast as well as cold. We were lucky not to be riding old Flora or that buggy pony too. Mr. Fielding's horses were strong swimmers, and still the river carried us more than a mile before we got to the other side.

I couldn't feel it when my feet came out of the water. We let the horses walk in wide circles till the water stopped running off them, and we took this opportunity to unburden ourselves, dropping boots and sacks to the ground. I barely felt my feet touch the ground when I got off the horse.

“Sallie,” Maude said when she came over to me a minute later, “are you all right?”

“Just like you,” I said, because her teeth were chattering as hard as mine. She had put her pants and boots back on, though.

“Why are you sitting here?”

“My feet,” I said. They were real white. Maude rubbed them dry with the horse's rag till tears poured from my eyes. The warmer my feet got, the more they hurt. They were at their worst when she made me put my socks and boots back on. “Now walk,” she said, “real easy.”

“Should have been going barefoot like you were there for a while,” I said, blubbering. “I'd've toughened up some.”

“You don't need to be tough,” she said. “You're only a little girl.”

“I remember I used to be.”

While I walked in circles, she wiped her horse dry. The pain in my feet subsided after a few minutes, leaving only the dark echo of an ache as I rubbed down my horse. Maude put a wet feed sack on the ground and gave the horses some oats.

I'd hoped to hang on to that feed sack for a while, but when the horses had finished with it, it was too full of horse slobber even to fold it up, let alone fill it up again. Maude picked it up by one corner and threw it into the river.

We had to walk for a time to warm ourselves through and through, the way we'd learned from Marion. We were lucky Maude thought to put the corn bread and crackers in her shirt and had told me to do the same with anything else that would be killed by the wet. As it was, the labels came off the
cans when they got wet, so we couldn't tell the peaches from the beans.

I dug out the sack with the oatmeal cookies. Maude's eyes lit up. They were some broken up, being mashed under my shirt, but the crumbs tasted just as good to us as a whole cookie.

We rode past sundown and forded another river. This one was not fast, but it was mighty cold. Because the night was chill, we weren't going to dry out so well either. I missed the change of clothes we didn't have anymore.

Maude complained about the mean pace, but I didn't let up. I was worried that lawman would get wind of Mr. Fielding's stolen horses and come looking for us. We needed to put in more miles than anyone would believe we could.

Maude didn't complain so much once we were over the second river. Of course, she was cold, and that took some of the bite out of her. We walked fast for some time.

Twice we rode past homesteads where dogs barked. Where light shone from the windows. The smell of wood smoke brought self-pitying tears to our eyes. We had no blankets; I'd been afraid to buy them.

“We must've made thirty miles today,” I said. I hoped. “I'd feel a lot warmer all over about that if we did it headed in the right direction,” Maude said.

“This
is
the right direction,” I said, stung to the marrow. “I'm not lost.”

“Never mind,” Maude said. “I'm just feeling moody.”

“Speaking of warm,” I said, “let's find some place and build a fire.”

“No fire.”

“Maude.”

“No fire. Too many farms around here. We don't want people coming out to see who's camped on their land.”

I slid off my horse to warm myself again, walking. But I was tired, and warmth was something that took a lot of energy. Maude was shortly walking beside me and set a pace that did, in a while, warm us.

“I'm sorry, Sallie,” she said. “For what?” I said, already knowing what the answer would be.

“For getting you into this.”

“You didn't—”

“I should have just married Mr. Wilburn and thought myself lucky.”

“You should have married him so
I
could feel lucky,” I said. “Think how many dimers he would have brought me between now and the wedding.” Maude reached over and swatted me, then laughed. The moment passed, and things were all right again.

When finally we did pick a place to spend the night, we thought of turning one of the saddlebags into a trough for the horses. We still needed that last feed sack. Maude hobbled both horses.

Emptying the saddlebags from my horse, I found a currycomb, and a rough cloth, some carrots. Mr. Fielding, whoever he was, took good care of his horse. Further down, I found a tin spoon, a real pottery cup, and a few other items that would come in real handy. Fish hooks and a reel of line. A saw-toothed knife to gut the fish. Some cartridges
for a gun we didn't have. Just as well, since the cartridges got wet.

“It feels strange to be going through somebody's belongings,” Maude said, refusing for the time being to look through the bags on her horse.

“Someone's going through ours,” I said, like it didn't bother me. But it did. It felt wrong. I told myself this kind of wrong was just being practical. I told myself we couldn't afford to worry about right and wrong just this minute, but I knew that wasn't true either. This was the time to abide by right and wrong, when we were being tested.

Then I found something else in the bottom of the bag. A dimer! I lit a match to get a look at the damp cover. I figured, with my luck, it would be something I'd already read. But in fact it was something I'd never seen before:
Gallop Garrity, the Gritty Cowpoke
.

Maude had pulled the scraps of dress fabric out of her pocket. She spread them over her leg and smoothed out the wrinkles. She looked almost happy.