The Misadventures of Maude March (28 page)

At first I went on worrying that someone would recognize Maude, but when one blacksmith or vendor after another did not, I let go of this worry. Either we were too dirty to be recognizable in any fashion, or nobody cared to wonder why she might have looked familiar.

We went from livery stable to livery stable, and none of them belonged to Arlen Waters. No one knew who he was. We began to realize we might just as well go looking for a needle in a haystack. There were so many streets in this city and nearly that many stables. It was a terrible discouragement.

“We don't even know for sure that's what he did when he got here either,” Maude said. It was by then well past dark.

Maude was right, and I had no useful argument to give her. I had gotten used to feeling like a sardine packed tight in a can, but I had grown tired and low-spirited.

“He might have gone on, the way he wrote he planned to,” Maude said wearily. “He might be somewhere else, doing something else. He might be dead. That letter could have been his last.”

She was getting low too. I wanted to lift her spirits, but I was more of the mind that says misery loves company at just that moment. “I know we talked about how we might not find Uncle Arlen,” I said, “but somehow I thought sure we would.”

“Let's find a room to sleep,” Maude said as we came to the next livery we had been told of. “We'll ask for Uncle Arlen at this place, but let's board the horse too.”

We knew it would be necessary to pay for the horse's keep. Independence was some larger than Des Moines, and the back doors stood only a few feet from another back door. There were no sheds fitted to sleep a horse. It was a good thing Ben Chaplin gave us the horse to get rid of us, or we would not have had the money for boarding it.

Before we went in, I said, “We ought to ask if we couldn't sleep in the loft.”

Maude considered this, then said, “No, I think we should
look for a bootmaker or the like and ask to sleep on the shop floor. That's more to my liking.”

“If we're going to spend money anyway, we might go to a hotel and take a bath,” I said. We had passed many hotels.

“They aren't likely to let us into a hotel, the way you look,” she said.

Which made me grin. I didn't know if she'd washed her face even once since climbing onto Cleomie's mule. I had not.

I
N THE END, IT WAS NOT A BOOTMAKER'S SHOP BUT A
hatmaker's that had a light burning in the back. Since we were carrying our blankets and the saddlebags, we couldn't be too picky. “Lily's Box,” the fancy lettering painted on the window read.

Lily opened her door only a crack, since it was past closing time, and Maude offered her twenty cents for a night on the floor. Lily impressed me in the way Aunt Ruthie could. Not with Aunt Ruthie's spare form and stern manner, but with the lot of hair she had tumbling over her shoulders and the full figure she covered with a silky robe. There was something to be said for a woman who made an impression.

“Are you boys or girls?” Lily asked after a long, doubtful look.

“Girls,” Maude admitted. “We thought we'd be safer this way.”

“I imagine you are,” Lily said, and let us in. “You can have a bath if you want,” she said. “I can draw the curtain and get into bed so you'll be private.”

I could make out a row of pretty feathered hats on wire stands as we crossed her shop. She led us to a large room, outfitted with a comfortable reading chair, a big iron bed, and a corner that served as a kitchen. Waist-high bookcases ran around two of the walls and were filled with books of all description, but I did not see any dimers.

“Why don't you sleep upstairs, if you don't mind me asking?” Maude said when we had put the pots of water on to boil.

“Hat glue smells to high heaven,” Lily answered. “Best if I work upstairs and live down here where I sell the hats. Less mess, less odor to live with. Have you girls eaten?”

“We have, thank you for asking,” I said. “It's good of you to let us have a bath.” Maude used to be the one to say these things, but she sat on the floor to wait for the water, and had grown quiet.

“I'll leave you girls to your bath,” Lily said, seeing Maude's interest was not in conversation. “Douse the light when you're done.”

Lily had no sooner drawn the curtain than I reached for a newspaper left lying on a footstool. “What do you find?” Maude said after I had paused to read.

“Nothing,” I said. “A receipt for pumpkin pie that reads very tasty. Tastily.”

“You're reading recipes?” she said in a disbelieving tone.

“If they'd been kind enough to draw a picture, I might have tried chewing paper,” I said truthfully. “There are many things about the civilized life that I miss.”

Maude snatched the paper away from me. I watched
over her shoulder as she looked through pages of local news. With each page turned and no awful discovery made, my heart lifted.

But then, on page seven, there it was:

Maude slapped the paper down angrily again. “They're saying I'm crazy.”

“They didn't run a picture,” I said, ticking off the good points, “you didn't make the front page, and even the print is smaller.”

“I hope you don't think that makes it all right,” Maude said. “Did I shoot that boy, Sallie, did I?”

“No, I did,” I said, and seeing the look on her face, quickly added, “By accident, like. I mean to say, it was the gun I was holding that went off.”

“Don't ever tell anyone that,” she said. “Not even if they catch me and hang me.”

I snatched the paper away and stuffed it into the open woodstove. “I don't know why you even want to read these things,” I told her. “You're only making yourself sick over it. You never even used to read anything but the wanteds, did you?”

“I never expected to be a headline before,” she said.

“Maude, don't talk like that, will you? About them hanging you? It gives me a bellyache.”

“All right, then, I won't say another word about it.”

I shut the stove door quietly and slid down into my blanket. I said, “They think you're headed for Texas. That's not so bad.”

After a time, Maude said, “You may be right.”

“About what?” I was nearly asleep and dreaming off and on of sitting in a schoolroom. Funny how that used to seem like the start of a nightmare, but now I found it right comforting. If Maude answered, I didn't hear her.

I
N THE MORNING, LILY PUT A LOAF OF BREAD ON THE
table and began to slice it, saying, “I'm going to give you girls a piece of advice. I know you aren't asking for advice, and if you don't want to hear it, I guess you won't listen.”

“We'll listen,” Maude said, made meek by Lily's manner, which was suddenly easily as rough as Aunt Ruthie's.

“Don't take this stuff of the newspapers to heart,” Lily said.

Maude rose from her chair so fast it fell over. Myself, I was too shocked to move.

“Sit right back down there,” Lily said, setting her bread knife aside. She took up the butter knife and started to fix herself something to eat, her manner as offhand as if she had shared breakfast with hardened criminals before. “The first thing you're going to learn about people out here is they are practically all of them living down something. If it isn't a reputation, it's a failure of some kind. Usually it's the men, of course, not young girls, but they come out here for a fresh start.”

Lily passed me a piece of bread she had buttered, having sprinkled sugar over it as well.

“How'd you come to be here?” Maude asked shakily, having picked up her chair and taken her seat.

“In my case, I believe we'd have to call it a failure of reputation,” Lily said, passing her the butter. “Just keep your heads down wherever it is you're going, and the whole mess is likely to blow over. The further west you go, the more you'll be judged by what you show people, not by any reputation that follows you. Most everybody out here has a reputation of their own.”

“Don't most people deserve their reputations?” Maude asked.

“If you're lucky, a reputation is made up of what people think of you,” Lily said, “but it's just as often made up when people don't think at all.”

“It's very kind of you to say so,” Maude said, “but you took a big risk letting Sallie and me sleep in your place. We might have been deserving of my reputation.”

“When I read that you and your gang were tearing up the pea patch in Arkansas, I had every reason to doubt that two little girls in need of a bed and a bath were going to do me any harm.”

“What trouble have we caused in Arkansas?” Maude said.

Lily flushed slightly. “Never mind,” she said. “Rival newspaper ran a different story, that's all.”

“I should take a look at that,” Maude said in a grim tone.

“No, you shouldn't. That's what I'm telling you,” Lily said. “Just don't head toward Arkansas either.”

We agreed that Arkansas sounded like a bad idea.

The search for Uncle Arlen did not lift our spirits. In most cases, it was a long, cold ride from one livery to another. Out of the maybe eight different people we talked to, all of them who worked with horses in one way or another, only two thought they knew Uncle Arlen once.

One of them said he thought Uncle Arlen had gone to St. Louis, and the other thought he'd gone off with a railroad crew, headed for Denver. To make matters worse, late in the day, Maude found a newspaper on the ground, and on page three, she found: