“If the story won't make you cry,” Maude said, “the spelling will.”
I read the whole of it aloud and the spelling didn't hamper me. “What do you make of it, Marion?”
He was sitting near the fire, keeping an eye on the fatback so it wouldn't burn. “My guess is, the law is trying to make it sound like Maude's the reason they lost their grip on a fellow everybody was looking forward to hanging.”
“I can't believe he's dead,” Maude said, throwing the paper down. She was up and out of the house like something yanked her across the room.
I started up off the floor to follow her, but Marion said, “Let her go. She needs to take it in.”
“It's not like we knew him personal,” I said. I didn't need the look he gave me to know it was a matter of luck that Black Hankie wasn't sitting around reading about Maude.
“She's just thinking,” Marion said. “She'll be in here again in a minute. Eat your supper.”
When Maude came inside, she said, “Maybe we should start out now. We would have the advantage of riding under cover of darkness.”
Marion said, “You're right about night-riding, but we should wait till tomorrow night to start out again. It will give those posses time enough to start wanting to quit and go home.”
“I'm anxious to reach Uncle Arlen,” Maude said.
“To be any help to him at all, we must keep you out of jail.” A quiet did stretch. Maude decided to eat. Marion went out to check on the horses. I took up the paper to read it for myself, but I watched Maude over the top of the damp pages.
She settled down to study the map, sucking noisily on a peppermint. The firelight was barely enough for me to read by; it wasn't sufficient for Maude, who couldn't see things close up so well. After a minute, she was only ignoring me.
“Don't be so hard on Marion,” I said. “He wants to get to Uncle Arlen as bad as we do.”
“Badly.”
I scanned the stories again, trying to figure in all those fellows they let loose and see if the numbers added up. Nothing about me, of course. I never got used to being ignored in these news reports.
“It's the unfairness of it all that gets to me,” I said.
“Well, you're lucky if that's all that does,” Maude said.
I looked my question at her.
“If they're not locking the door on you, you're fine,” she said.
NINETEEN
MARION STAYED GONE LONG ENOUGH TO TAKE A turn around the property. He found a garden claw we could use to poke the fire, and a glove. Only the one glove, big for Maude and small for him, but the leather was thick enough for handling a hot pot. He threw it on top of our sacks.
“All the comforts of home,” Marion said as he sat down with us. We were all sleeping in the front room around the fire.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Maude said to him. A roof over her head and a fire to warm her feet, along with a surfeit of peppermints, had put her in a mellow frame of mind, considering her earlier mood.
Over our heads a butternut rolled across the floor. There was some scrabbling around up there that meant the current owners of this house had come home to dinner.
“Squirrels,” I said.
“All the comforts,” Marion said, and grinned.
“There are not enough marks on this map,” Maude complained.
“It looked fine to me,” I said.
“I believe I can add to it,” Marion said. He went at it with a pencil, making Uncle Arlen's lines darker and the print a little larger. Before he was done, he was entirely back in her good graces.
She said, “How far do you think Uncle Arlen has gotten?”
“He's been gone four days,” Marion said. “He ought to be right about here if he's making a change of horses every so often.”
I watched and saw his pencil point did not come anywhere near halfway. “That's all?”
“The man has to sleep sometime,” Marion said, as if he himself stood accused of slowpoking. “He can't ride hard all the time, no matter how fresh his horse. His old bones won't like to take such a pounding.”
This was no doubt true. Uncle Arlen was a sturdy fellow, but he had passed the quarter-century mark last year.
We had dried out the horse blankets as best we could, and Maude folded that quilt for a pallet. She didn't offer to share it with me. We were no sooner settled and watching the fire die down than a bat glided over our heads, silent, and went on to the next room.
“Holy Mulroney,” Marion said, flattening himself to the floor as it swooped back toward us.
Maude's eyelids flickered, taking in the uninvited company. She wasn't in the least bothered by bats and could have taken care of it, but she didn't look inclined. Her eyes were half closed.
Bats bothered me only a little. I got up to open a window to get rid of it—that is, I hoped it would take the opportunity to leave. It made another pass just as I leaned out to throw the shutters wide open.
Marion yelled, “Get down, Sallie!”
More startled than frightened, I ducked, but the bat veered away from the open window and disappeared into the next room again. It could circle around all night, and I made up my mind to let it.
“Quick, run back here,” Marion said, still rather loudly.
Maude shushed him.
“Those things will suck your blood,” he told her.
“They do not,” Maude said.
“Then what do they eat exactly?” Marion said. “Just tell me that.”
She couldn't tell him, and neither could I. We only had Aunt Ruthie's word for it that they didn't suck blood. A creepy crawling feeling down my back chased me to my horse blanket.
“I think it's time we went to sleep,” Maude said.
“She's just eager to enjoy the extra padding that quilt puts between her old bones and the floor,” I said to cheer Marion.
Like she was the momma, we all got into our sleep positions and waited for it. Ten minutes later, only Maude was breathing in the way of someone sleeping.
Another butternut rolled, upstairs.
“Believe I can live with those,” Marion said. “Although they are some noisier.”
That was when the bat skimmed overhead again. Marion pulled his blanket over his head, then folded it down like he wouldn't be caught hiding.
“Give it some time,” I said, feeling confident a bat could find its way out.
Then another bat flitted across the room, and to state matters honestly, they flew quite a bit lower than before. Marion drew in a breath so loudly Maude flipped over to give him a hard stare.
She noticed the one bat was now two and said, “Dang and blast! Sallie, get up and shut that window.” She was throwing her blanket off as she spoke.
I scurried over to shut the window, but wouldn't you know it, another one made it in before I yanked the shutters closed. Marion pulled his head down between his shoulders.
Maude rooted around in a potato sack for that glove, then stood and watched the bats circle. “Sit down, Sallie,” she said in the tone that said she didn't know what I was up and around for anyway.
I sat. Those bats went on circling the room for some time.
Then, like they'd all heard a whistle somewhere outside, they flew one by one to land on the shutters. They hooked their toes over a slat and hung upside down.
Maude didn't waste any time.
She pulled on the glove, walked over, and clapped her hand over one of those resting bats. It started in right away on that rusty-hinge screaming they make.
The other two bats spread their wings but didn't lift off, as Maude opened one shutter and let that first bat free. She closed the shutter gently before she laid her glove over the next bat.
Maude wasn't in the least bothered, but those critters were, shrieking in scratchy voices until she set them loose. A last slam of the shutters and we were bat-free.
With a glance at Marion, Maude said, “I hope nobody is afraid of squirrels. They're a whole lot harder to c
atch.”
She came back to her pallet, dropped the glove on the floor, and covered herself again.
TWENTY
MAUDE FELL ASLEEP LIKE SHE WAS A CANDLE DOUSED. Marion was still staring into the firelight. “She's afraid the sheriff of Cedar Rapids threw our letter away,” I said in a low voice.
“This has been a niggling worry to me all along,” he said. “She hasn't mentioned the money, exactly, but I expect she has her doubts about it getting all the way back to Des Moines.”
“Now that was the chance we were taking,” Marion said.“Wearing a badge hasn't never been a guarantee of an honorable man. Honesty is more of a personal decision.”
I said, “What about Uncle Arlen? Independence is his home. Me and Maude lived there for five months and he didn't turn her in.”
He met this question in silence. Marion didn't come to a speedy judgment of someone or something newly met. Which is not to say his conclusion was usually right, only reasonably well considered.
“It has me worried,” I said. How could Uncle Arlen go back to the little house he'd built and his business? Besides that, I couldn't imagine where me and Maude would end up if we couldn't go back there with him.
Oh, I could see us landing somewhere and taking jobs, but it could be nothing like the same as we had just left behind. We had come to be part of a home again. Part of a family.
Marion commenced to deep breathing like he might be gone to sleep. In the stillness of the room, another bat swooped overhead. I watched Marion, but he didn't move a muscle.
I turned over on my side to watch the fire die. Times like this changed a man, and I figured I was in the midst of such a change. I reckoned it didn't come without wringing the heart like a sponge.
We woke late the next morning to find the leaky bucket still dripped but nowhere nearly as fast. Maude decided she could have a tepid bath if she heated enough water to mix with cold.
This turned out to be a slow process, but we had all day to wait for nightfall. Before we threw away the water, I combed in the hair color for Maude. She didn't look happy about putting dark color in. For that matter, it didn't look awful different than the boot black to me, but I didn't say so. There weren't many ways to change the look of her.
Maude had to wait for a time for the color to set. She stared out a back window, biting her thumbnail until it bled. She wrapped her shirttail around it.
“Maude.”
“It helps me think. I have to plan.”
“Plan what?”
“I need a rifle,” she said. “We can't get by with only a shotgun and Marion's pistol.”
“Are we going to have a fire?” I said. “If we can't have a fire, we might could stop worrying about a rifle.”
“Birds aren't the only critters we might need to pop,” she said.
“Are we planning now for what we don't want?” I said to her.
She dropped the matter as she rinsed out a little bit of the color to see the results. I saw her hair had taken the color real well.
She looked into the mirror fragment with a doubtful expression. In the next moment, Maude cried out, ran to the tub, and dunked her whole head, shaking it to loosen the color.
“Maude,” I said in surprise.
Then the water turned pure dark. It did give me pause.
“You'd better come up for air,” I said.
She reared up with a sploosh. “I might just as well have used the boot polish,” she said tearfully, and dunked her head again.
I started thinking up things to say right off. “It's supposed to be darker,” I said when she came up for air again.
“Not black,” she said.
“It's just wet.”
Maude grabbed the soap and lathered up and rinsed. I handed her the shirt we were using for a towel. She rough-dried her hair, or as near as she could come, considering the shirt was already quite damp.
She held up the piece of mirror. She was wearing the look of a tantrum. “It'll dry lighter,” I said in some desperation.
“Sallie, why don't you go on outside for a while?”
“They only had brown, Maude. She didn't tell me—”
“I just need to get used to it,” Maude said. “Alone.”
“It ain't that bad,” I said. “Besides which, if it don't wash out, it'll grow out.”
“Just go on outside.”
“You ain't going to cry, I hope.”
“If you say ‚ain't' to me once more in the next hour, I'm going to slather you with boot black.”
I went out to where Marion was sitting on the front step. “How'd it go?”
“Her hair's dark,” I said in the tone of dire news being given.
“What she needed,” Marion said, as if that had anything to do with it.
“She ain't exactly happy about it.”
“Well, it's just temporary,” he said.
I decided not to go over that territory again.
The horses had eaten everything they liked out of the fenced-in place. Marion had picketed them outside the fencing to graze. He was reading the slice of a dimer I had left on the floor. That is, he held it upside down.
This surprised me. “Why, you never said you couldn't read.” Though now I thought about it, he'd several times done a fair job of getting me and Maude to read for him.
He went pink. “I don't care to let on to Maude,” he said. “Your aunt having been a teacher and all, Maude thinks everybody reads.”
“She shoots better than me,” I said, “but she doesn't look down on me for it.”
He looked away.
“How'd you read the map last night?” I said. “How did you do the lettering?”
“For the letters, I followed the lines,” he said. “I don't have to read letters to read a map.”
“Here, if you're going to make a secret of it,” I said, turning the dimer right-side, “you have to know the top from the bottom. See this letter like a pointed hat? That's an A. And this here is T. Look for them and make sure they look right to you.”
“Thank you.”
“I can teach you to read when Maude isn't listening in,” I said.
“I'll help you work on your aim,” he said. “We should have plenty of time to practice out there in Colorado Territory.”
I showed him a few more letters and had him find them on the page, sounding them out. He picked out a couple of words all by himself. He was getting it in no time at all. Don't believe what they say, that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks.
As for my aim, it was better than I let on. I'd discovered I only had to look and shoot, the way Marion had once told Maude to do. It was just I didn't like to hit birds and such.
Maude came out of the house ten minutes later, ready to ride. Her hair wasn't pulled up to the top of her head but hung straight at the sides of her face.
“Well, now,” Marion said at the sight of her. “That is some darker all right.”
Maude didn't reply.
Once her hair was darkened, I should have been satisfied. But I wasn't. The stuff didn't give her a natural brown color but one with a strange purplish cast. She suddenly looked to me more like those wanted posters than ever she had. Like she was drawn in dark pencil. This didn't strike me as a good idea, although I didn't have a better one. Not just yet.
I reached into the sack for the kerchief.
Marion was thinking along the same lines, for he handed his hat to her. “Keep the sun off,” he said, and Maude took it without a thank-you. It came down over her ears, which was an advantage. We didn't mention this.
We rode into a sunset made up of pearly pink clouds and a burning sun, prepared to stay on our horses through the night.
TWENTY-ONE
AT FIRST MARION FELT WE SHOULDN'T RIDE BY DAY, and don't get close to any encampments by night. In this way, we saw no one on the trail. We didn't see trouble, which counted for a great deal.
At the end of one night's travel, we couldn't feel comfortable sleeping in daylight.
After the horses had a good feed, we pushed on, staying off-trail and following the water.
Maude began to complain once more she lacked a rifle.
“We shouldn't shoot game,” Marion said. “Nor do much cooking, unless we run out of store-bought. The smoke and the smell of it may draw unwanted attention.”
“Then we'll need more canned beans,” Maude said.
Not much later, we came upon the remains of a small mule train. Arrows scatter-marked the sides of the wagons. It wasn't a recent event; the animals had dried and shrunk to a thin stretch of leather over the skeletons.
“I still need a rifle,” Maude said. “‚Should not' is a sight different than ‚cannot.'”
The next break in this landscape was a small town called by a woman's name, Eudora. Marion said I should ride in to get Maude a gun. This was no sooner suggested than she worried aloud if this was a good idea after all.
“If a posse comes across us,” Marion said to her, “put your hands in the air. But you can't protect Sallie by being defenseless.”
I went into the store looking to get her the selfsame kind of rifle we had left hanging on the kitchen wall in Independence. As it happened, the fellow had a Springfield carbine up for sale.
I hefted a few likely ones, shut one eye, and squinted through the sights of two of these. When I picked up the Springfield, it was with the air of a man convinced he would find nothing at all that interested him.
Right out, he named me a reasonable price.
When I tried to talk him around to more reasonable yet, he threw in a box of cartridges, and we called it a deal.
I got hats to fit me and Maude and better bedrolls for all of us. I got corn bread and soft cheese for two days. Marion was partial to it. We had some beans left, which would have to do, for their cans were dented and I would not buy them.
I got a dimer, Olen Rushforth, Texas Ranger. I considered this a wise purchase, since we were on the run from the law. I learned practically every useful thing I knew from dimers.
Maude March on the Run! Page 7
