“Oh,” I said. “That's right fair of him. You didn't have to punch him?”
“No. I told him you would help me write the letter.”
This pleased me well enough I almost forgot the flies.
From the other side of the wall I heard a cat hiss.
FORTY-NINE
AT LEAST I BELIEVED IT TO BE A CAT THE FIRST TIME. The second time, I wondered. And when my name was whispered, I stood up. I stood up rather suddenly, then looked around.
The man with the scarred face watched me from his pallet. I could see he wanted to know what I was up to. “Believe I'll try to get some air on my face,” I said somewhat loudly.
I could just see through a crack in the wall. It was dark to begin with, except for our lantern light, but also this little shed was backed up to the corner of the fort. With walls on two sides, the torchlight from outside didn't creep back there.
I heard another whisper. “It's me, Sallie. Maude.”
I strained to see her, but I said nothing. I didn't dare.
Behind me, the dirty fellow got up. He might could have been on his way over to peer out through that crack where I was, but he had to cross in front of the scarred one.
That one was still mad, their tussle not forgotten, because at the last moment he stuck his foot out and tripped his enemy. The lantern went over, spilling oil and flame that was somewhat soaked up by the dirt floor, but not before it had teased a bite out of the wall.
They fell to it just as before, a silent struggle but for grunts and wheezes.
“What's happening?” I heard Maude say; she'd forgotten to whisper. “Sallie?”
“It's a fire,” I said, in not much more dire tones than I would have used for “it's a rat.”
“Do you have a pitcher of water in there?” “Yes.” “Dip a rag in the wet for you and Marion,” she said. “I'll be waiting. Macdougal, too.”
I wondered if I'd heard the last rightly.
“Do it, Sallie.”
I made a quick inventory and decided the only likely rag was the torn-off piece of Maude's petticoat I had put in my pocket as a change of bandage.
“Tear off a piece of your shirttail,” I said to Marion. He had stepped over to the door as if to bang on it, but after one look at me he thought better of letting them outside know what was happening.
I dipped the bit of ruffle in water, and the piece of Marion's shirttail. We stood quiet, but clapped the wet rags over our noses.
Those fellows went on pulling and tugging at each other. It took maybe two minutes before the backside of our shed lit up some.
Someone outside yelled, “Fire!”
As if discovery hurried it along, the smoke and flames slipped across the wall and climbed to the roof of the shed. The wood began to snap and crackle. Outside, the cry went up, and I heard the heavy tread of men running.
Smoke collected under the roof faster than I would have believed it could. Those wet rags did cut the smoke some, but my eyes stung and tears ran down our faces.
It was bright as daylight in there by then. The old man began to rock back and forth, but he didn't move away as the flames climbed higher and reached out in his direction.
The door opened and two soldiers rushed in with buckets and threw the contents at the wall. Sand, that's what it was, and it didn't discourage the fire much. The two on the floor abandoned their fight and were gone before the buckets were emptied.
Everything happened fast.
I saw those fellows on the move and knew Marion and me should be right in front of them, never mind behind. But Marion ran across to that old man in the corner instead, and I followed him.
The soldiers rushed out, maybe for more sand.
We tried to get the man on his feet, but he only commenced to screaming and fighting us off.
His shirt caught a bit of fire. I saw it and shoved him back to the ground and tried to stomp it out. The old fellow took to shrieking like something wild.
Marion rolled him over to smother the flames.
“Get out!” he shouted.
I shook my head.
He'd lost his wet shirttail and started to cough. But he reached down and snatched that man out of the corner as if he was a sack of feed. “Go on,” Marion said to me, half carrying and half dragging him along.
There were soldiers rushing in, yelling orders at each other. We didn't make a speedy exit, but no one put down a bucket to stop us.
The officer was standing only a short distance from the shed. Marion lifted that kicking, screaming bundle and set it into his arms. The officer took the old fellow before he thought better of it.
The fire was taking the shed down and had leapt to the next one. Men in the guardhouse had been turned both bright and shadowy as they ran along the catwalk to other corners. Smoke wafted through the night air like draperies.
Someone yanked at my hand, and I didn't resist. I ran. In the next few seconds, I realized a strange woman had taken hold of me, not Maude.
“Follow your sister,” she shouted over all the other noise. She held my horse and pointed me in the right direction.
I looked back as I swung a leg over. I saw those soldiers who had rushed into the shed were rushing back out, but I couldn't quickly find Marion in the crowd.
That stranger slapped my horse and I was on my way.
It had been no more than five minutes since the fire started, probably less, and we were on horseback. When I cleared the smoke, I saw the white of Maude's bonnet in front of me as she rode straight for freedom.
We couldn't gather any real speed with so many people and a few dogs about. But the way was cleared when men saw a horse coming at them.
At the gates, more people were pushing their way into the fort. It gave me a bad moment. The way the torchlight played on their anxious faces, it felt like that night when things had gone wrong, and the mob attacked Dr. Aldoradondo.
My horse fought our way through when I faltered. And in another few moments, we were outside. I could still see Maude a ways ahead of me, winding her way through the tent city.
I leaned into the horse's neck and shouted, “Git up!” But there was no clean row to ride, and we had to be satisfied with zigging and zagging around the tents.
A few shots were fired into the dirt nearby as we rode away. I saw the clods fly. The shots brought Maude up short.
At first I feared she might have been hit, but I saw she wasn't riding off till she knew she had collected her people. Marion and another rider were bringing a string of horses along behind. They were dark shadows against the pale tops of tents and wagon.
We all rode away from the fort together. A thought made me smile, even as another shot bit the dirt near my horse.
Maude did have a gang.
FIFTY
WE WERE SOON OUT OF RANGE OF THE BULLETS. That last rider put up a hand to signal us to slow down. “Pleased to meet you, Sallie, Marion. My name is Ellie Macdougal,” she said.
I saw right off this was the Macdougal who sent the telegram saying her father had been shot and her dog killed. “Let's all of us spread out,” she said. “We don't want to leave a good trail for them.”
We rode in this order: Marion, Ellie and her horses, me, and Maude, strung out across the high plains. Now we weren't being shot at, I worried about being followed.
We made those horses run.
As we rode, I was turning it over in my mind. I added started a fire to the list of accusations that might be made against Maude.
I thought broke jail twice and broke loose her gang sounded more serious than burning down that shed. But if it turned into a big fire, that might be a whole lot worse than breaking loose from Fort Dodge.
We would just have to wait and see how the papers wrote it up.
Riding at about twenty yards apart, we went south for a time, and then west, and then south again. I rode tense, waiting and yet dreading to hear the rumble of the cavalry riding down on us.
We were trying to get away fr
om the river trail. I couldn't see the fort plainly any longer, just a spot less purple on the horizon I figured for the light from the fire.
When nothing happened, we slowed the horses for a time. Ellie, I'd noticed, ran her horses crossways behind us now and again, and I figured it had something to do with breaking up the trail we were leaving.
“You were daring,” Marion said to Maude in a tone I thought admiring. “What plan did you have before those fellows obliged you with a fire?”
“Digging under,” Maude said. “Although I won't call it daring.”
“It's good enough.”
She didn't appreciate this compliment, but said to him, “You had my sister in there with you. Could you not get yourself arrested without dragging her into it?”
“She throws a mean kick,” Marion said, looking at me. And to Maude, he said, “Would you have left me in there if I was alone?”
“Not once the place was on fire,” Maude said.
I said, “She doesn't care to have you thinking she's soft-hearted.”
“You stay out of this,” Maude said.
“I could hardly think it,” Marion said to me. “More like, she kicks old dogs, and I'm feeling like an old dog myself.”
I didn't take his meaning, but Maude's voice went high. “Why would I kick an old dog?”
“There was that new dog around for a while.” “John Henry Kirby is funny and sweet,” Maude said, like she was laying down a trump card. “He has a cowlick, like a boy.”
“I'm surprised you didn't take him up on his invite to see New York City,” Marion said. He gigged his horse and rode off a ways, like Ellie had encouraged us to do.
I hadn't known about any invitation. I didn't like the tone of this. None of the things Maude pointed out were what I would have used to describe John Henry.
“I never noticed the cowlick,” I said to her.
“He had one,” Maude said. “Likely Aunt Ruthie wouldn't think highly of it.”
“What do you think of it?”
“You might offer him some of your boot black,” she said to me with a grin. “That's likely to kill it.”
“You can't fight with Marion the way you fight with me,” I said.
“And how is that?”
“To have the last word,” I said.
Ellie had just finished one of those diagonal runs and brought her string of horses near. Riding at this slower pace, I saw Silver Dollar among them.
“I'm glad you brought Uncle Arlen's horse along,” I said to her. “How did you happen to come across us?”
“It wasn't accidental,” she said.
“You were looking for us?”
“Your uncle Arlen got your telegram and sent me back here to find you.”
“That's where she watched for us,” Maude said. “At the telegraph office. We came looking for you and Marion and found your horses hitched to a post. We waited for a time, then Ellie asked around. It didn't take long to find someone who knew there'd been a man and a boy arrested.”
I said, “Where is Uncle Arlen?” “Back at the ranch,” Ellie said. “Doing the job Daddy can't do since he got shot. I couldn't do it.”
“We got your second message,” Maude said. “We started out as soon as we could.”
There was more to the story from there, but Maude decided to save it, for Marion shouted that we should all be riding apart. Ellie took her horses off in another direction.
Maude said, “I wonder if Uncle Arlen has got himself a girl.”
“Wouldn't he tell us?”
“I don't believe he has yet told her,” Maude said, “so you can't repeat what I said.”
It may have been hours later that we came back together, close enough to talk. At first we only wondered aloud. Were they tracking us, chasing us? Or were we scot-free?
“Maybe we burned the fort down,” I said to Marion.
“Too much rock for that,” he answered me.
I was back to broke jail twice. Why, they might not even know Maude was there. She wouldn't get blamed at all.
We ate on the move, right out of the cans, cold beans and then peaches. The crackers were broken, but we might later roll the cheese across them and eat well enough, so we didn't throw them away.
Later on I remembered the string-tied box of molasses cookies with great longing. We rode with the sunrise behind us, satisfied most of the miles we'd put in took us further west.
FIFTY-ONE
WE DIDN'T RIDE BACK NORTH TOWARD THE RIVER FOR three days. We laid low, sparing our water, always keeping our eyes open for any bands of soldiers that might be on the hunt for Joe Harden and his boy sidekick.
We had run out of food when Ellie judged us to be nearing the border, we aimed once more for the trail we had been at such pains to avoid. We rode hard and long.
As dark fell, we hadn't seen any sign of life at all, except for the four-footed kind, and birds.
“There's something up ahead,” Maude said. “Like fireflies.”
I couldn't see them, and it bothered me something fierce. “I can't believe you can look that far away and see a firefly.”
“Oh, hush,” Maude said. “You're just hungry. I see lights, Sallie. But they twinkle like fireflies.”
“How many lights?” Marion said, wanting to tease her.
Maude said, “Don't pester me,” but her tone sounded near to cheerful.
“C.T.,” Ellie said. “We'll find a well there.”
I would have liked to hurry my horse, but he was at least as thirsty as I was, although he wasn't so hungry. I hadn't been eating grass all day.
We could've found this town in full dark, even if they didn't burn lamps. The piano and banjo music, the laughter and shouting, carried on the night air for some distance.
I'd grown used to hearing such rowdy goings-on, standing on the street in front of the Aldoradondos' wagon, and it didn't bother me much. I was tired, which can make a body slow to worry.
But we did go in with a care. The place was mainly a camp of whiskey bars, one after the other, with such names as the Satin Slipper, the Blue Goose, and Rory's House of Cards.
None of them looked to be painted up prettily or securely nailed together. The only upstairs porch sagged like a hammock. I didn't believe anyone would dare to step outside on it.
“Look for a place like George Ray's,” Maude said.
We found one, only not so busy. There was no one up front serving customers, some of which were eating, some weren't.
“See what you can do about rustling up some biscuits and coffee,” Marion said. “I'm going to look around.”
I knew what he was looking for. Soldiers or that bounty hunter, who might be feeling cheated out of his money.
We went inside to stake our claim to a table.
“Chicken dinners for four,” Ellie said when the fellow came to take our order. “We'll put a hurtin' on anything you can bring to the table right away.”
“Are we in Colorado Territory proper?” Maude asked Ellie, but that fellow answered.
“Oh, you are,” he said. “We're half a day from the Kansas border, give or take a few hours.” This was news good enough to bring tears to Maude's eyes.
It brought tears to mine, anyway. “Come a long way, have you?” he said, wiping the table with a damp rag. “Everybody out here has come a long way.”
“How far to Liberty?” Maude asked when that fellow had gone away again.
“Two days' ride,” Ellie said.
We were nearly asleep in our chairs and were grateful when the fellow brought cups of coffee out to us. “On the house,” he said.
Marion came back there to find us.
“We can put our horses up at the livery,” he said. “There's a young fellow over there promises he puts on a real good feed bag.”
Maude got up and stacked the dirty plates on a table. At first this made me stare, wondering what she was about.
Then she took the newspaper someone had left behind, walked back past me
, and dropped the paper in front of me.
While she took the plates on to the kitchen, I noticed the paper came from Memphis, Tennessee. It was only a few days old, so I didn't expect to find much that interested me—I got a surprise.
Ellie leaned in to read with me. One article claimed Maude had robbed a general store in St. Joseph, Missouri, a long way from where we had been at the time.
MAD MAUDE ON THE RUN!
Latest reports hold that that wily madwoman who has made a name for herself, none other than Maude March, has been riding hard and long. She and her gang of five burlies showed up in a general store south of the Missouri border, guns a-blazing—
“Every crazy Mary Jane in the country is wearing her name,” Ellie said, as if her breath had been snatched from her.
This wasn't news. Right next to this ran another headline, and I skipped over to it:
GRANDMOMMA VOWS REVENGE
Black Hankie's grandmomma claimed he always had a romantic nature, as she folded and refolded his dusty mantilla, the scrap of lace he wore at his neck. It was delivered to her today at her home in Tennessee. It is her opinion this weakness for the ladies caused him to be led astray by that wicked madwoman, Maude March.
I flipped the paper over, thinking that couldn't be all they wrote. However, there was nothing more said on the matter. I would have read it out to Marion, but Maude came back to the table with a plate of biscuits.
Her eyes flicked to the paper. I was quick to fold it over. I kept folding until I could just about hide it under my dinner plate.
“This looks good,” I said, sounding to my own ears like Dr. Aldoradondo.
“It's only hot biscuits.”
Marion reached for one. “Like the boy said, they look good.”
There was no jelly, but they came with a dish of apple butter. I hoped the nervous feeling that felt like it jumped from my fingertips would be taken for hunger.
We ate for a few minutes before Maude said, “What's in the paper?”
“You ain't still dead.”
Maude March on the Run! Page 20
