We ate those eggs while we rode the next couple of days, and eked the chicken out over the sit-down meals. We had agreed not to worry, but we read through Uncle Arlen's letters again and again, trying to make out the kind of man he was.
It was a mark in his favor that he made it to Independence in the first place, but less of one that he might have left it not long after. We were, needless to say, hopeful of him being a man who stayed in one spot.
“Do you think the Peasleys miss us?” I asked as we put the letters away.
Maude burst out laughing, and although I had not meant it to be a funny question, I very soon found it made me laugh too. Maude got the hiccups and began to say things between each one—“Ungrateful girls, hic… Didn't even make their beds, hic…before they left, hic…hic…”—till I worried I would get hiccups too.
For a farm horse, Flora was a strong swimmer. Maude quit wearing her boots with the pointy toes after taking them off to ford a river. She'd held them over her head as she let Flora make her way across the river, but then made room for them in one of Flora's bags. “They make my feet go numb,” she complained.
“Then maybe they don't fit after all,” I said, growing hopeful that they might fit me.
“They do,” she said. “But my own toes make as good a horse prod as the boot tips. If I wear those things very long, I'm going to walk like a real cowboy. I'll never find a husband that way.”
“I didn't know you were so goldanged interested in finding a husband,” I said. My seat wouldn't have been so sore if she hadn't been so picky about the two husbands she'd already turned down.
Maude sighed. “I'm not looking for him today. But I have to think ahead. And don't swear, Sallie, it's not becoming.”
Of all the unbecoming things we had done, swearing appeared to me to be the least. “Maude, do you think we're going to find Uncle Arlen?” I asked her as we rode on.
“Yes, I do,” she answered.
“It doesn't seem likely, though, does it?” I said. “Even if he was the type to live through getting there, he could be anywhere.”
“Shut up, Sallie.”
We'd been making our way mainly west, by my best reckoning, and I made up my mind to work us further south, and not only because Independence lay to the south. We could feel the cold at night and rode away from it by day.
By what I figured to be Wednesday, I had seen enough of grass and sky. To make matters worse, a chill wind blew in. It was cold work, sitting a horse in the wind. Maude layered socks on her feet. We pulled those pieces of dishtowel up to cover our noses and wore folded blankets like shawls.
Riding face into the wind was hard on the horses too. They were willing to run, but then tired quickly. So we let them strike their own pace. When the wind blew up their noses, it was a trot, jouncing us around too much, so it wasn't long before we slowed them to a walk. I began to doubt we'd cover ten miles the whole livelong day.
I was ready to set camp by the middle of the afternoon. “This seems like a waste,” I told Maude once. “We might just as well see what we have left to eat.”
“A little further,” she said, and so we went on.
“I'm just sick of it,” I said a few miles later. “I wish Uncle Arlen had gone back east. Then we could go by train. We could have sold off all the furniture to make our fare, if we'd had more than one night to do it. I wish we were on our way to Philadelphia.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Maude told me.
“What was the last thing you wished for?” I asked her.
“To be my own boss,” she said sadly.
I didn't ask her when that was.
We had been lucky so far, finding water every day. Sometimes it was green and scummy, but we could let the horses fill up. When we came to clear water, we drank till we sloshed when we walked. After we'd made some room in the potato sacks, by virtue of eating much of what they held, we were able to put an assortment of the household items in them. Once the bucket was emptied of these things, we were able to carry some water.
“Look at that,” Maude said.
I pushed my hat up. “Look at what?”
“The grass there.” Maude pointed. “See how it's been stomped down?”
There was, in fact, a trampled path. Looking more closely, I couldn't decide what it might have been. The ground was too dry to take a print. Too narrow for a buckboard, I decided. Even a one-seat buggy left wheel marks on the grass. But there weren't any wheel marks.
“I think it's a single horse and rider,” Maude said. “That's the same kind of trail we leave behind us.”
“When did you look at the kind of trail we leave behind us?” I asked, immediately looking behind to see we'd made two battened-down paths. I smarted a little to think Maude was going to turn out to be a better range rider than I was. I had a dozen dimers, or at least I once had, that went into some detail on the subject of trailing, and I considered myself well-informed. I didn't like making a poor showing of it right when we'd found our first trail to follow.
“I think we should follow this trail,” I said.
“I don't know, Sallie. Maybe it would be smarter just to ride a mile north and stay away from this fellow.”
“I don't want to catch up to him,” I said. “I just want to know where he is.”
“It's getting late. We'd have to go without a fire.”
This was a point.
“And we're short on water,” Maude said. “What if he plunks himself down right on the only water? What if he sees us before we see him?”
She was right, but I didn't care to admit it. I said, “If we have to ride north a mile every time we're likely to run into someone, we're going to end up in the Canadian territories.”
Then I headed us south. There was not a word of protest from Maude. It made me smile to know that I was not the only one who needed a compass.
WE NEEDN'T HAVE WORRIED ABOUT THE WATER. WE had more than we could use. We didn't have to worry about a fire either; it rained too hard to get one going. The clouds rolled in fast, coming from the northwest.
We had seen them in the distance all day, but they never seemed to be coming our way. Their arrival felt a mite sudden. Because one minute we were remarking that it looked like rain on the way, and the next minute the world was a darker place. Rain started to fall in big, fat drops. We were very soon soaked through.
A mile and a half further on, we huddled under a dripping hemlock. We had to count ourselves lucky at that. It stood alone in the middle of nowhere, with long branches that swooped to the ground.
Behind those branches that had green needles, we found a rabbit warren of bare branches that had to be broken off to make a circular room. This was easy, they were awful dried out. We had the makings, but it didn't look like a good idea to try to start a fire there. We were in for a cold night.
We rubbed the horses down and tied their ropes to the flexible branches of the tree instead of to us. The horses wandered in and out of our makeshift house to nibble at the wet vegetation. Now and then one of us had to unravel the tangle of rope in the branches, but for the most part, things were fine.
We changed into dry clothes. Maude praised me for thinking of the extra set I had packed—at least we were able to warm ourselves. She tried to make the best of things, crediting me even for the pine-scented air. I used one of the branches to sweep the ground free of twigs and pine cones so we could lay our bed down on a smooth floor. We ate one of the chickens entirely.
We were going through our food faster than I thought we would, and it worried me. We had walked our share of miles today, but the fact still remained it hadn't been many miles. The wind had slowed us up, and the rain had stopped us altogether. To start foraging for food meant it would likely take us into winter before we made Independence.
“Let's go to sleep,” Maude said, although we had probably another hour to go before full darkness. “Maybe things will look brighter in the morning.”
Neither of us could sleep. We wrapped ourselves
snugly in our blankets and rested our backs against our carpetbags. We talked a little, trying to stay away from worrisome subjects.
“You're going to think I'm crazy, but I brought a piece of stitchery with me,” Maude said.
“Aw, I don't think you're crazy.” I did wish, if she was thinking up things to bring along, that she'd have thought of something more practical than her handiwork.
She said, “I just loved that pillow cover with the violets that Mrs. Peasley set me to work on. Do you know the one?”
“I do. It was right nice.” Which was more than I could say for the project Mrs. Peasley handed me. But I wasn't all that much of a hand with a needle; I couldn't blame her for giving me something that was ugly from the get-go.
“It was too dark to see what I picked up,” Maude said. “I didn't take the one I was after. Look.” She pulled the embroidery out of her carpetbag and handed it to me.
It was my clumsy stitching and the dark outline of a horse, which I had not even begun to fill in. I had worked on the letters, which read, TROUBLE RIDES A FAST HORSE.
“So much for good intentions,” Maude said.
I dug through my bag and found the dress remnants. “Oh,” Maude cried, much the way she had over the peppermint. The fabric brought on such a rush of tears, she had those dress pieces completely wet down before she was able to stop. She was sweet, though, and tried to offer the soggy patches back to me.
“You keep them,” I said. “I'll ask for them if I want to see them.”
She folded them up like a stack of hankies and put them into her pants pocket. After a moment she took out the gingham, to tell me all her stories of it. “Momma and I walked to town that day, leaving you at home with Poppa… ” She always started there and went on to tell how they chose the pattern from a book and ate licorice on the way home, making their teeth look black.
I wished there was something else she could have thought to talk about. These stories had never made me miss Momma, although I sometimes wished I remembered her better, but this time they made me ache for Aunt Ruthie. I wanted to talk to her just one last time, to tell her how I had begun to see her differently, to tell her I knew how good she was to us.
My eyes started to burn with tears, but Maude looked happy and I let her go on, while I recalled page for page the last Joe Harden dimer I read. This was not too hard, since I had read it till the cover was coming apart.
Joe had been hot on the trail of a wolf hunter who had murdered a rancher.
I had gotten to the part where Joe hears the crunch of small stones right before he is ambushed, and he shoots the hunter left-handed with a rifle, while holding the reins of his rearing horse with his right hand, and wings him. The picture showed very clearly the spurt of blood and the pain on the hunter's face.
That picture was bright on the backs of my eyelids when we heard someone call, “halloo,” as he stepped in out of the rain, holding his hands in the air. Maude shoved the remnant into her pocket.
“Sorry to surprise you fellers,” the man said, keeping his hands up, “but if I stand out there waiting for an invitation I'll drown or freeze, one.” His hat was so completely wetted down the brim hung over his face.
“Where's your horse?” Maude asked him. “Are you by yourself?”
This was a good question, one I wished I'd thought of myself. I would have liked to be able to say I heard him coming, the way Dagnabit Darby always did. I was sure everyone knew the line, “Dagnabit, Darby, you got the drop on me again,” that could be found in every Dagnabit Darby story. As it was, Maude and I were wrapped so tight against the cold, we were caught in our blankets.
“It's just me and my horse, that's right,” he said. “I see you have room for one more, if you wouldn't mind it.” For a moment there, something about him looked familiar to me, but I shook that notion off. “I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't keep your gun trained on me,” he said. “I mean no harm.”
“Bring in your horse,” Maude said, using her most no-nonsense tone. I glanced at her and saw that she had raised herself up on one elbow; she looked half set to leap up from the ground, blanket or no blanket. In the dim light, with one hand still in her pocket, it did look like maybe she held a six-shooter hidden in the folds.
I reached out and poked at her elbow. “Put down your gun,” I whispered.
We sat up to free ourselves of the blankets, standing up just as he came back in. “I'm Johnnie,” Maude said, “and this here is Pete.”
I might have resented this, but the idea was wiped out when the man said, “Joe Harden, son. I'm right sorry to have startled you, but that weather is bearing down hard.”
This brought me up short. It was him. I remembered him, although I had even less light to make him out than last time. I was excited, of course, but I was upset that I hadn't known him right off. Well, I had known, he seemed familiar, but I hadn't listened to my gut. This was not the kind of mistake a frontier fighter ought to make, so I was some disappointed in myself.
“How'd you come to find us,” Maude asked him.
“I started back for the only shelter I could be sure of. There's a farm another couple of miles east and north.”
“That's right,” Maude said, like she knew anything about it. She could be cool under pressure, I'd say that for her, so long as a man wasn't looking to marry her.
“I backtracked, looking for shelter, and saw you veered this way,” Joe said. “I figured you must know something I don't. Turns out you did. You boys live around here?”
“We used to,” Maude said. “Not anymore.”
“I don't mean to be any trouble,” Joe said. “I'll just rag down my horse and make my bed over here, if that's all right with you.”
“That's fine,” Maude told him. “Have you eaten yet?”
I poked her. She wasn't supposed to act like a hostess. We were range riders. Didn't she know that?
“I'd appreciate anything you could share,” Joe said. “Otherwise, I'm gonna sleep hungry. I hadn't yet settled when the rain started. Can't very well start a fire under this umbrella, now can we?”
Maude gave him the last two boiled eggs. She avoided looking at me.
“Why do you keep your horses tied to these long ropes here?” Joe asked. “Don't they get tangled up?”
“They don't wander away,” Maude said, as if we didn't have to sort out those horses every morning.
“Let me show you a little Indian trick,” he said. “It's a way of tying their feet together so they can't take but itty-bitty steps. Called a hobble. Takes a whole lot less rope, and they get better graze.”
WHEN WE TURNED IN, THERE WAS NO TALK BETWEEN Maude and me, except with our eyes. Our eyes said, no sleep until Joe Harden snores. As it was, he snored for some long hours before I was able to shut my eyes again. Maude tossed and turned, so I knew she wasn't sleeping easy either. It felt strange to have another human being so close to us.
I listened to the rain hit the ground all around us. Under our so-called umbrella, the slower drip of water trickled from branch to branch. It was getting colder every minute, too, and I was glad we'd brought enough blankets. Or, that Maude had.
I kept thinking about how many mistakes I had made. I might have walked right into Joe's tracks without noticing them if Maude hadn't spoken up. I never gave a moment's thought to trying to cover up ours. Not that we could cover up wet, trampled-down grass.
It bothered me most that I hadn't known he was there until he came in under the tree, even though our horses had shuffled around some, huffing and blowing. I just figured they were settling down for the night.
I was turning out to be a real disappointment in the hero category.
And then there were the questions that still churned in the back of my brain. If he was Joe Harden, how could he be so different from the way he came across in those stories? How could he shoot Aunt Ruthie? If I wondered more, I don't remember. I slept a black sleep till Joe Harden woke me with the smell of frying bacon.
Maude was already up and ducking under the branches on the far side of the tree for a minute of privacy.
I followed my nose to the campfire. Joe had gathered enough dry pine needles under the tree and had broken up a few of the dry branches to start a fire a little ways off. The rain was still coming down, although not as hard as the evening before.
“How'd you get a fire going?” I asked him as I stood in the rain. He gave me a kind of quick, startled look, then went back to studying his cooking. After a moment he said, “I hold my hat over it till it gets going good. Now the frying pan is doing most of that work.”
I noticed, too, that he had a metal grate that stood on its own, so no need to go around looking for stones to set it on. “Get your beds rolled up and come on out here for some eats,” he said. “You boys supplied supper, and I've made breakfast.”
“Thank you kindly,” Maude said, coming out from under the tree. I ducked under there and out the other side for a minute of privacy. When I got back, they were talking about riding on together for a time.
“I don't know about that,” I said. “Mau—my brother and me figured to travel alone.”
“Hard to travel in winter,” he said, “‘specially when you have far to go.”
“We'll get to Independence before the snow falls,” I said.
“I didn't tell Joe all that much about our plans, Pete,” Maude said. “I just said we could ride west together for a time. Don't see that it makes no never mind.”
I stared at Maude. Her grammar was atrocious. I gathered she thought it would make her sound more like a boy. I knew she thought I told Joe too much, and she was right about that. But she acted like she didn't even know it was Joe who killed Aunt Ruthie.
“I don't see why we have to ride out at all,” I said, hoping to look like a boy turning stubborn. “We can just sit here and stay dry today.”
“You don't want to get caught on the plains in a blizzard,” Joe argued in a mild way.
“I don't want to die of pneumonia either,” I said.
“Why, you're no boy!” Joe said suddenly. “You're that girl that came asking if I was going to hang.”
The Misadventures of Maude March Page 6
