The Misadventures of Maude March (21 page)

“Holy Maloney,” Maude said.

“A cat,” I said with a certainty that surprised even me. I had never heard the like before. I had only read a description of such a sound in one of my dimers, as something to raise the hair on the back of the neck. It seemed a close enough match to me.

The mule bolted.

The reins were pulled through my hand so fast they left me with a burn.

Practically everything we needed was tied to that mule.
Our food, our blankets, the matches, that six-gun. Even our spare ammunition. We couldn't get by with the loads we carried in our guns. That mule meant life or death to us.

It helped a little that he ran straight ahead, because when Maude and I both ran after him, he'd done a fine job of beating a path through the snow. We ran, carefully because we carried guns ready to shoot, but with a purpose. Maude had a different purpose in mind than I had.

“When I find that mule, I'm going to kill him deader than a door,” Maude shouted at me. For once she was not careful of her grammar.

I
SAVED MY BREATH FOR THE RUNNING. WE HAD TO GO
on and on; it felt like we'd run at least a mile when Maude came to a sudden stop. “Look at this, Sallie,” she said as I caught up to her.

I saw the mule's path crossed another; it was the imprint of a boot, fast filling with snow. “That fool animal has run himself in a circle,” Maude said, recognizing the boot track for our own. “He might even be headed right straight at that cat.”

The mule screamed.

It didn't sound all that far away, but it did sound like it was all around us. It went on braying as Maude took off running again, following the path of broken snow. I will say this for Maude. She could run.

She got some distance on me again before she stopped. But this time she put her gun to her shoulder. I pulled even with her just as she took a bead on the cat. I saw that the mule bucked like a bronco, making a tight circle, and the cat rode him like a buster.

It was not a clear shot, with the mule rearing up at one
moment, then kicking up hind legs in the next. It was not a shot I could have made. Maude's gun barrel drew little figures in the air, then stilled, and she fired.

The mule and the cat both fell to the ground.

“Oh, no,” Maude cried, and started to run again.

“Maude, wait,” I yelled after her. She kept on running.

If the mule was hit, then the cat was not; that was my thought. I raised my shotgun and aimed, hoping that I would get a clear shot if the cat went for Maude. But I didn't have high hopes. Not only was I not a good shot, but shotgun pellets don't make a clean hit. Maude was sure to take a few pellets.

I saw the mule lift his head. He looked fairly calm, all things considered. I lowered the shotgun and watched the mule come to realize he was not done for.

Maude had killed the cat with an incredible shot through its eye. She claimed that was only a bit of luck; she was aiming to hit it anywhere at all. But she might just as easily have said that about shooting the head off that rattler if she had been willing to talk about it.

We stood over it, catching our breath, my throat burning from the cold air I had let come rushing in so fast.

“Did you know you hit it?” I asked her.

“I thought so,” Maude said. “But when the mule fell, I wanted to beat that cat to a pulp for making me kill the mule.”

It wasn't even a bobcat. It was a mountain lion. Called a painter, a panther, in the dimers. I never expected to see one. Smallish, but long-legged, the cat had that young look that older kittens have. Soft around the edges in some way.

“You would make Wild Woolly proud,” I told Maude, staying away from a mention of Joe Harden. It occurred to me that I might have been wrong; Maude might make the better range rider after all. Before I could say so, my thoughts were turned back to the mule.

It had a bite on its neck that bled hard until Maude packed it with snow. Together we dragged the cat away, and the mule worked its way back up to a stand. We checked the pack and found we had lost nothing.

It was probably the fact of being so fully loaded with bags that protected the mule from the cat's claws. There was not a scratch on him, save the teeth marks.

“Can you set us back on course?” Maude asked me. “This animal has completely lost us our direction.”

I brought out the compass and held it as we walked, keeping us headed due south, even when the mule's tracks, and ours, veered eastward from where we heard the cat scream.

“You sure you don't want to take the cat?” I asked Maude. It seemed quite a trophy to leave in the snow. “I could skin it if you want.”

“I doubt the mule will consent to carry it,” Maude said. The mule had moved right on past its old tracks and was breaking snow, which made the going somewhat easier for us. It seemed wise not to remind the animal of the old rules.

“The cat was awful young, did you see that?” Maude said. “It hadn't even learned how to make a big kill yet, I don't think.”

“It ate the fish heads last night.”

“Sallie, you have to tell me when you see something like
that,” Maude said, sounding more tired than mad. “It probably followed us all day, eating crumbs that we dropped in the snow.”

“What would you have done different?” I asked her. “I wouldn't have been surprised, that's the important thing,” she said.

“You're tougher than I knew,” I told her.

“I know it,” she said.

For those several minutes we were distracted from the storm. But the weather was only getting worse. Sometimes the snow drove right at our faces, and we stumbled ahead blindly. Other times it pushed past us from behind, and still we were as good as blind.

Only now and again we could see some distance before us. Never a great distance, about the length of a horse and wagon, but we saw there was plenty more of the same ahead of us.

Very shortly we came to a point where the mule would not break snow again. Maude took the lead, muttering something to the mule that I couldn't hear. We had to nearly shout to make ourselves understood over the wind now. But the mule laid his ears back as if he'd had no trouble hearing what I guessed were threats of sending him straight to the glue pots.

“We'll have to find a place soon,” Maude said after a time. The snow was well up to my hips, so that for me, breaking snow was more or less a matter of falling through it.

“We're getting too tired,” Maude said breathlessly. “We have to have enough strength left to get through the night.”

“I keep hoping we'll get to the horse trader's.” My toes
hurt with the cold, and I wanted to spend the night where it was warm. I wanted to get there soon.

“We won't make it that far,” Maude said, lunging ahead again. “The snow slows us down too much.”

“We need a pine tree, a big pine tree,” I said. “Maybe we can even build a fire under there.”

“Under a pine?” Maude said. We had once caused a chimney fire by throwing some pine branches into our fireplace, thinking to make the house smell like Christmas. She said, “We're likely to burn the whole tree right to the ground.”

“Sounds good to me,” I told her. “A nice size fire like that ought to keep us warm for a while.”

Maude laughed. I admired that laugh. There wasn't much that seemed funny to me right then. And I wasn't even the one breaking the most snow.

“Are we headed south?” Maude called back to me.

I looked at the compass and yelled, “Bear right.”

“What happened to the river?” Maude asked me.

“It's there. Let's don't walk right into it.”

“We'd hear it, right?” she asked.

“I hope so.”

“I don't see any trees, Sallie.” We were stopped now. “Shouldn't there be trees near the river?”

I looked at my compass and turned it in my palm. It struck me that the needle didn't turn so freely as it did once. “Maybe this thing gets frozen,” I said.

“Put it under your arm,” Maude said. “Then we'll look at it again later.”

“But how can we be sure of our direction now?”

“We can't stand here and talk about it, Sallie,” Maude said, her teeth chattering slightly. “Let's just go. Keep watching for trees.”

We went on this way for another hundred steps. Maude breaking snow, me leading the mule. And then suddenly Maude picked up speed. Not a great deal of speed, not enough that it was alarming, but it did raise my curiosity. A moment later, I found I was walking more easily too.

The snow was not less deep here, because on either side of me, it stood as high as my waist. But it had been tamped down some right where we walked now. Although fresh snow had fallen on that, it was not such hard going.

“What is it?” I shouted to Maude.

“Something went through here,” she said, turning back to speak to me. “Animals, I guess. I'm going to follow this path.”

I followed Maude, trying to think if this was something Wild Woolly would have done. It seemed unlikely. I tried to think of what kind of animals we might be talking about. Wolves? Or even one large bear, heading for a cave?

W
E HAD NO IDEA WHETHER WE WALKED SOUTH OR EVEN
north. But we walked nearly as easily as when we had started out that morning. We didn't even think of trying to break snow so long as that path lay before us.

It seemed we were on that path for some time, maybe half of an hour. All at once something loomed ahead of us, and it was a moment before I saw that it was trees. Snow-covered trees.

Maude stooped down on the path and brushed the loose snow away from the packed snow underneath. “What are you looking for?” I asked her.

“I hoped we were following cows back to the barn,” Maude said. “Now I'm trying to figure out just what it is that we're following.”

“Deer,” I suddenly realized.

“Do you see a track?”

“Everything else has a burrow or a cave,” I said. I had read that in
Wild Woolly
.

“Are you sure?”

I shrugged. Reminded of the compass in my armpit, I dug
it out and found the needle was looking a little more lively. But we had seen no sign of the stone wall Cleomie told us to look for. The stand of trees was all that lay ahead if we went on moving south.

“We have to try it,” I said, shoving the compass into my pocket for safekeeping. “There isn't any other place for us that I can see. I think it's getting dark.” In fact, I knew it was getting dark; I just hadn't realized it until we saw how shadowed the trees looked.

“All right, then,” Maude said. “Move slowly. Let's don't talk unless we have to. Just till we know how things stand.”

Maude carried my shotgun because she'd never reloaded her rifle. She moved slowly, looking for a place to part the branches so that I could lead the mule through. He was so eager he all but trampled me getting in first. It was probably for the best that his big horsey face took the lead.

There were deer beneath that stand of trees, huddled in groups for warmth. While the mule made a startling appearance, it seemed that his presence made us less scary than if we had gone in alone. At least that was how it seemed. Because while there were wide, watchful eyes upon us, and some shuffling of hooved feet, not one of them skittered off to another spot.

“Don't look at them,” Maude said, leaning in close to whisper. It was much quieter under the trees, and the scent of the needles sharp and sweet in my nostrils.

“Real slow,” I whispered back as I took the rein off my hand and tied it to a branch.

Slow and quiet. That was how we did everything. Unburdened
the mule and wiped him down. Laid his blanket over him.

Maude took out biscuits for us, and oats for the mule. The deer watched all of this with a kind of interest. Maude filled her hat and walked around at a very slow pace, spilling oats on the ground. The grain dust hung in the air like a small cloud. The mule followed her, eating, but it wasn't long before most of the deer had a mouthful too. And a few very bold ones followed her for more.

The excited light in her eyes as she walked back to me made me smile. Maude had always been fond of deer. “Don't grin,” she said in a low voice. “Deer don't like to see teeth.” I clamped my mouth shut.