The Misadventures of Maude March (31 page)

M
AUDE MUST HAVE HAD A HARD TIME FINDING A DRESS
that suited her, because she took her time coming back. Marion and I kept an eye peeled to spot her, but when we saw her, she was already working. She didn't give us a chance to tell her a thing.

“Go somewhere,” she said as she first laid eyes on us. “I don't want you peering at me from some corner or other when you think I won't notice, either. Just be here when I'm done.”

She was pushing us out as she spoke.

“She don't want much,” Marion said in a bothered way as we found ourselves standing out in the street, like we had it in mind to sell baked potatoes.

“She has a lot of Aunt Ruthie in her,” I said, mad twice over as we relayed this information to Uncle Arlen. “No skin off my nose if she thinks she's an orphan another day.”

“It might be a lot for her to take in,” Marion said. “Let her get the hang of this job, then we'll let her know you're here.”

Uncle Arlen said, “Let's wait till noonday, and all three of us together go over to see her.”

It was not a fair deal, but the minute Uncle Arlen learned I was a girl, I lost my job. He said he could not have his niece working as a hired hand. It was a small consolation that he hired Marion instead. When nothing else could be thought of for me to do, I was allowed to help with mucking out stalls. It was a small, if bitter, victory.

In the end, having such a piece of news to tell got the better of me. After a time, I saw that business across the street had slowed down some, so I went across and ordered a bowl of chili. When Maude came to my table, I said, “Uncle Arlen has the livery across the street.”

I wanted to say it deadpan, but I couldn't help grinning. “

There's some good news,” Maude said without cracking a smile, the way Aunt Ruthie would have. But when she turned away to set a plate on somebody else's table, she looked back at me and winked. Her face had gone pink with joy.

I had just about caught her up on what I had learned when business picked up again. I went back to mucking stalls, which I realized was a never-ending job at a livery. “You could curry a horse now and again,” Marion told me in hopes that I would.

In the eyes of anyone coming for their horses, he was my boss, and it bothered him that it looked like he was working me so hard, even if I was a boy. But I had a point to make: that I could have done this job, and would do it. I admit, I hoped Uncle Arlen would soften. He could pay me in dimers if that made him feel better.

Uncle Arlen went over to the restaurant for his midday meal sometime later, which was his habit anyway. I followed
him. Maude left off working and sat down to the table with us. She was breathless, and not just from running around on that floor. “Uncle Arlen?”

“Little Maude,” he said softly, almost sadly. “You've grown some.” They were shy with each other at first, and then began to remember things only the two of them could share.

As for her hair, I could see he wanted to say something, but couldn't decide what exactly he ought to say. It was wise of him to keep shut, although I hadn't had a chance to tell him so. We agreed to meet later, as evening came on, leaving Marion to tend the livery business.

Uncle Arlen hugged Maude as we stood from the table, and they didn't look awkward with each other anymore. Uncle Arlen tousled my hair, which felt close enough to me, and best suited my disguise anyway.

Uncle Arlen lived two streets away from his livery, in a house with two rooms up and two rooms down. He lived only in the downstairs. The place was furnished comfortably enough by the previous owner, he told us. But Uncle Arlen was not much of a housekeeper.

He helped us clear a lot of things out of the upstairs rooms, including two stuffed chairs to be taken downstairs. We moved his bed up there, and he said Maude and I could have it for our own. It was not as fine as the room we had in Cedar Rapids, but it might have been spun from gold, it made Maude and me that happy.

Marion came over to the house after the livery was locked up for the night. Maude fried eggs and toast for an easy supper. She was about dead on her feet. The same was true for me, although I tried not to show it as I set tin plates and forks
on the table. Uncle Arlen didn't have napkins, but we set out clean bright blue hankies instead. It looked fair enough for a reunion.

Now that we were settled in, or maybe because she felt more private than in the restaurant, Maude was much easier with Uncle Arlen. We recounted all our adventures to him, and Maude wasn't reluctant to tell him the worst.

He said he had seen the papers but never for a moment suspected it was his little Maude they were writing about, largely because he had not seen any of those articles that mentioned Aunt Ruthie. But he wasn't sure he agreed with what we told him Lily said, that Maude March would soon be an old story. He thought Maude should go on calling herself Maude Waters, just to be on the safe side.

Marion mentioned he was thinking of following the Oregon Trail come good weather. “You mean you're thinking of leaving?” Maude said. “Why would you do that?”

“I'm still a wanted man. Worse, since I shot your aunt Ruthie, I am still a murderer.”

“Me too,” I said. “Nobody's sending me out west.”

“Hush up, Sallie,” Maude said. “You're no such thing. There is a big difference between murder and an accident, and you have both had terrible accidents, but that is all.”

“In my case, they wanted to hang me for that accident,” Marion said, “and they still would. I'm thinking I would be safer west of the Rockies. It's less likely I'll ever run into someone I know. I can use that bank money to set myself up in a little business.”

This sounded smart to me, but Maude said, “Uncle Arlen looks like a stout enough fellow, and he says he
never wants to go west again. You aren't nearly so stout. Maybe you should consider his thinking on the matter to be good advice.”

“I've been west of the City of Kansas and liked it just fine,” Marion said stoutly, “and I lived to tell about it.”

I
HAD BEGUN TO REALIZE MARION WAS A MAN SENSITIVE
of his pride. But he should have known that telling Maude he'd lived to tell about his adventures would sound like bragging to her.

She jumped up from her chair real sudden like and yelled her list of complaints against Marion and even, it seemed, against Uncle Arlen. Men were selfish, they were shortsighted, they were too dumb to shut their mouths in the rain.

She threw a tantrum the likes of which I had never seen, and had to admire, throwing the small pillows off the chairs and kicking table legs. Uncle Arlen and Marion sat trans-fixed. She called Marion a goose-brain, and when that did not get a reaction, she called him a liar.

“Here now,” he said. “What lie did I tell you?”

“Your promises were lies,” Maude said wildly.

“I don't remember any promises,” Marion said in a voice gone high and a little wild too.

“It wasn't so much a promise made in words,” Maude said, and stamping her foot, added, “but in deed. You are going
to listen to me now, or I may go against my own grain and shoot you.”

Uncle Arlen opened his mouth as if to speak but Maude said, “Don't make me swat
you
one either. You may be my uncle, but you were only a younger brother in Aunt Ruthie's eyes, and that is how I see you, too.”

Marion and Uncle Arlen both looked the question at me and I shrugged. Maude was never a simple girl, nor easy to get along with.

“If we ever want to live good lives,” she said, “we have to put right everything we have done wrong. Or as much of it as we can. We can do nothing about Aunt Ruthie or Willie, we may never hear ourselves spoken of kindly by Ben Chaplin no matter what we do, but there are other ways we can show that our hearts are in the right place.”

“What are you talking about?” Marion asked.

“The money,” Maude said. She started yanking our plates out from in front of us and throwing them into the wash water, giving us time to think. I knew Maude was right. That money could never be used to build our future. It would only ruin us somewhere down the line.

Marion and Uncle Arlen found it harder to follow her train of thought, I could tell by the concentrated looks on their faces. Marion would not bite the bullet and ask her to explain, but Uncle Arlen, who had not dealt with Maude's temper in some time, and didn't realize the storm might start again, said, “What is it you want us to do?”

“I want every penny you have left from that bank robbery,” Maude shouted at Marion.

He dove for his saddlebags and brought up a sizable canvas-wrapped packet. “It's shy only of what we used to buy some supplies for you and Sallie,” he said.

“We're going to send it all back,” Maude said, calming down some.

“We can't very well do that,” Marion said, “without giving them a pretty good idea where to find me. Us,” he added, seeing the determination on her face.

“You're right,” Maude said. “We'll have to send it to someone else.”

“Who?” I asked. “Cleomie?”

“No, I'm afraid we've wrecked her good name with Ben Chaplin,” Maude said. “Let's not do her any worse favors.” She looked lost in thought, but only for about five seconds before she seized on a name. “Reverend Peasley!”

“No!” I said.

“He has his poor points, but I don't know who else we could call on,” Maude said to Uncle Arlen. “It would be too much for Mrs. Golightly.”

“Hard to say,” Uncle Arlen said. “I didn't care much for Peasley myself. But he is a preacher now.”

“I don't care if he is a preacher,” I said. “He didn't strike me as the forgiving type, not way down deep. Or even the honest type.”

“Who, then?” Maude asked.

“The sheriff,” I said, a plan springing to mind. “He's known us forever. We have to write down everything that happened to us, everything, so he'll see how things were. He'll understand.”

Marion was by then sitting with his head resting in his
hands, no doubt picturing lawmen on his tail as he mounted the Rockies. But Maude was listening. Listening as if I was telling her just what she wanted to hear. I thought carefully before I told her the best part of my plan.

“We'll tell him how our part in the bank robbery was an accident, pure and simple, and how we came to take those horses, and how we hoped they found their way home after we set them free.”

“Good,” Uncle Arlen said.

“What about Willie?” Marion said from somewhere deep inside himself, and if he hadn't looked so miserable, I'd have been tempted to swat him myself.

“We were there, but it was a mystery man who shot Willie,” I said snappishly. “It's our word against anybody's. Mystery shooters turn up in dimers all the time.” I had to stop and think a minute. He'd made me lose my train of thought. I picked it up again with, “We'll say we hitched up with a little wagon train that carried us further west and then, much to our surprise, we came across Joe Harden here, again.”

Uncle Arlen nodded his approval.

I had Maude up to that point where Joe Harden's name came up. Ignoring the frown on her face, I put on my most winning voice and said, “Only he'd been shot and gasped out his last breath telling us where to find the money he hid, and we did, and now we'd like to return it and be on the right side of the law the rest of our days.”

Even as Marion put a hand over his heart and said, “I've died?” Maude swatted me and said, “Sallie! You talk like you're reading right out of one of those blasted dime novels.”

“Don't swear,” I said. “It ain't becoming.”

“I think she's got something,” Uncle Arlen said.

“Kill off Joe Harden, once and for all,” Marion said. “Then I am free to be Marion Hardly.”

“I don't know,” Maude said. “It would have to be an awful long letter.”

“I'll start writing,” I said.

W
atching Maude and Sallie find a gang of cowgirls-at-heart to champion them has been sometimes rough-riding, sometimes high-riding, occasionally rowdy, but always a rodeo ride of stellar proportions.

My agent, Jill Grinberg, is caring, thoughtful, and utterly more gracious than Maude, but she also has Maude's best qualities: she can see a far piece, she's a straight shooter, and she's a fine pardner to have by your side should you find yourself in the O.K. Corral at high noon.

My editor, Shana Corey, welcomed these girls with open arms; it's no surprise to me that Maude and Sallie rode home to her with the same unerring sense of direction that led them to Uncle Arlen.

Shana has all of Sallie's best qualities: the same quick courage and easy smile; the right combination of by-the-seat-of-her-pants and timely attention to detail (she's a planner); and a sure sense of the funny side of tragic circumstances.

Like Sallie, Shana possesses a writer's mind and heart and a great freedom of spirit with which to approach the work we
do. As wonderful as it is to find these qualities in a character, it is even more special to find them in an editor.

Jenni Holm steered me toward research materials that turned out to be invaluable. Rides at a gallop, this girl, and thank you, Jenni, for putting out your hand to pull me up onto the historical horse.

I have a collage on the wall in the room where I work. In the collage, there are a few pictures of four women together, all of them pictures of contentment in different ways. In one picture they are working around a computer, in another they are hanging out in a sunroom, laughing, and in the third there are old ladies sitting on a park bench, having a chat. The pictures in that collage have been with me for a while, but now I feel like I know those women's names.

Thank you, Miriam Brenaman, for your true-life account of the rattlesnake that wouldn't die. And for bits of historical information that found its way into our conversation so subtly that I didn't know until later, when I found it useful, that I was being educated.

Thank you, Susan Krawitz, for instruction on the proper care and feeding of horses, and trail lore. These girls never would have made it to Independence without you.

Thank you, Uma Krishnaswami, for your own work, which forever reminds me that there are two sides to every story.

I'm pretty sure you all ride like Calamity Jane, and I am glad to count you among my friends.

My best friend and husband, Akila, dictated the funny, sounds-right newspaper articles while driving in heavy traffic—a high-wire feat for which I am eternally grateful. Thank you, sweetie.

Thank you, Vicki Hughes of the Ushers Ferry Historic Village—it's not only a Web site, it's the real thing (
www.cedar-rapids.org/ushers
).

Geno Paesano is not a cowgirl in any way, but he helped outfit Maude and Sallie for their adventures. We all thank him for telling me what I needed to know about the guns of the period.

My heartfelt thanks to all the people at Random House who put a beautiful book into your hands, with special thanks to Kristin Hall, the editorial assistant; Joanne Yates, the designer; Cathy Goldsmith, the art director; and Gino D'Achille, the illustrator.

Thank you to many unnamed librarians in the reference departments of the Cedar Rapids and Independence libraries and to Suzette, for a time at the Newberry, Florida, library, for your underpaid effort to find answers to the questions a clueless writer asks. More than that, I thank you for having the sand (aka dedication) to go even further and find information for wallpapering this book and the ones to follow it with period detail that will bring them alive in the minds of young readers.

Last, but not least, and I know she would love to hear the strains of “Ghost Riders in the Sky” playing in the background as I say this: Thank you, Pauline Macmillan, for morning cups of tea and storytelling that drifted into the lazy afternoons when I learned to appreciate country-and-western music—especially “My Mother's Hands”—and for writing encouragement of the most inspiring kind.

It was in Pauline's home that I often admired a flea-market purchase: a hand-embroidered pillow with the outline of a running horse and the words “Trouble rides a fast horse.” She always said there ought to be a book with that title.