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  NAZ STOP THIS IS THE PERFECT PLACE

  TO WRITE DOWN ALL THE THINGS I

  WANT YOU TO KNOW STOP TROUBLE

  IS I LEARNED ALL THE BEST STUFF

  FROM YOU STOP FORTUNATE ME STOP

  LOVE, MOM

  ONE

  THEY SAY MY SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD SISTER PASSES FOR A man and shoots like an outlaw, and I cannot argue it, since she has done both in her day.

  Maude has been called a hardened criminal, and of this I must tell you, do not believe it. People say a great many things and only some of them are true.

  This afternoon I watched from across the street as my sister was arrested. She made a small figure in her plain dark dress, her arms pulled behind her to cuff her wrists.

  “Maude!” I shouted.

  She didn't hear my voice over all those so filled with excitement. I felt my blood rush toward my feet, leaving me so dizzy and breathless I nearly sat down. For the crowd only saw my sister as a fugitive from the law, accused of being a horse thief, a bank robber, and a cold-blooded killer.

  It'd been five months since we found our lost uncle Arlen and settled into a new life with him in Independence. I had begun to believe she might never be discovered to be the infamous Mad Maude, even though a dream came to me over and over, in which I opened a sack to find oatmeal cookies and two train tickets. I always found the oatmeal cookies tasty, and there was no sense of being short of time to catch a train.

  The dream flashed behind my eyes as Maude stepped into the sunlight, head held high, the law on both sides of her gripping her at the elbows. I'd never told my sister about this dream, not even that recent time she tried to talk me out of my determination to be ready for just such an occasion as this.

  We were getting dressed for the day ahead of us, which was also my twelfth birthday. “When do you plan to go back to looking like a girl?” she said to me. Unlike my sister, I hadn't yet taken to wearing skirts again. Maude said of course I must, as soon as my hair grew in nicely. So long as I could wield the scissors this fate would not befall me.

  “It doesn't matter how you dress, Sallie,” Maude said. “They might still find me out. Then again, they might not. I'm meanwhile missing the sight of my little sister.”

  “I'll whisper it into her ear,” I said. “See if she don't surprise you one day.”

  “Doesn't,” she said. “Is that a few bristles I see under your nose? Why, it looks like the beginning of a mustache.”

  “It's a shame I didn't ask your admirer, Mr. Wilburn, for a shaving lesson,” I said. “That fellow had mustache material growing out of his ears.”

  Maude whopped me with her feather pillow and we were occupied with battle for a time. As soon as she wasn't looking, I touched my upper lip to be sure she was teasing.

  I had begun to think she might be right about one thing—that we might never need to make a sudden run for it. But past events had impressed upon me how fast things could go wrong, and how different life might be after they did. Because of this, I kept some handy items for life on the trail in a sack in the loft. This meant fewer necessaries than you might guess. A horse and a canteen can get you through most anything.

  The heroes in the dime novels I read were always planning ahead this way. Maude did not read much and so didn't appreciate this fact. That sack prompted her to remind me of a Bible story.

  Three kings were in the desert and couldn't find water for themselves or their horses. They put their troubles before the prophet Elisha, who said to them what the Lord told him, which was, “Make this valley full of ditches…. Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water.”

  Even though it didn't make good sense to those kings to dig ditches, they did it, and sure enough, a big flood came and filled the ditches with water. Which meant you have to get ready for what you want.

  “Or in this case,” Maude had said, “don't get ready for what you don't want.”

  Maybe she was right, for a scant hour after Maude was arrested, I was taking stock and judged myself to be as ready as anyone can be for an event that will spin their lives in an unexpected direction.

  My plan, in case of Maude's arrest, had always been to go in like a confused younger brother looking for his sister, arguing a case of they had mistook her for this other one. I had half a chance, for no one appeared to have noticed Maude had a younger sister, let alone an unexpected brother. Only as I was riding to the sheriff's office, I knew why people resorted to packing a gun—in case that first plan didn't work out the way they hoped it would.

  The way I saw it, I might could breach the doorway when there was only one lawman on hand. Then, in case he didn't believe my story of they had the wrong female and release my sister to me, I could try to get the drop on that single fellow.

  I could see flaws all over this thinking.

  One, Mad Maude and the Black Hankie Bandit, both notorious outlaws, were stuck in the same jailhouse. It might never come a time when only one lawman stood on duty. I could be waiting outside till I took root and sprouted leaves.

  Two, once me and Maude were on the run, they would know to watch for her traveling with a boy. We had already been two boys, so they'd watch for that as well. And girls couldn't travel on their own without someone wondering why.

  Three, the likelihood of getting myself shot.

  It might could happen I'd get shot and killed some time or other, but if it was because I'd packed a gun, Maude would never let me rest. From every side, this was flaw enough to quit right there, if only my sister wasn't in the jail.

  I did wish myself taller and wider and more truly a man. For in front of the jail, I couldn't step forward smartly. I stood shivering like winter had come back all of a sudden. My heart was pounding so hard I stopped hearing the sounds in the street.

  I saw a man-on-his-horse-shaped shadow glide into the alleyway nearby. It gave me a start, but it also got me on the move. Uncle Arlen had once said to me that I was not truly the criminal type. I didn't care to be the proof of his statement.

  I let Maude see me heading into the sheriff's office, directly beneath the window where she stood. Like something in me knew the exact way, tears started to flow.

  Making a loud, obnoxious crying noise, I walked inside.

  TWO

  LOOKING BACK, I KNEW I OUGHT TO HAVE SEEN THIS turn of events coming. It didn't help one bit that the hero in every dimer I'd read had much the same thing to say when they messed up. For a sign should be read as carefully as a book.

  I'd seen a new wanted poster just lately, offering a reward of three hundred dollars. The picture was bad and the particulars weren't awful particularly right, but Mad Maude March was printed at the top. It looked like news of her name being cleared didn't travel as fast as tales of her exploits.

  Without thinking about how Maude would take it, I'd carried that fresh news
straight to the supper table. For a fact, the picture was the worst of the thing. It made Maude out to be past plain, and leaning toward downright ugly. Maude took the insult of it right to heart.

  “Burn it,” she said.

  “Where did you get this?” Uncle Arlen wanted to know.

  “On the ground,” I said, “where somebody dropped it.

  ” “Who would carry a wanted poster around?” Maude said as if we didn't all know the answer to that: the law.

  “Maybe some fellow who thinks you're pretty,” Marion said, and caught a swat for his trouble. Being he's some younger than Uncle Arlen, Maude didn't treat him with the same respect.

  “I don't care to be made fun of,” she said.

  I said, “He don't like it when anyone else makes fun of you.” But that poster lit a fire under her.

  “I've thought it over,” she said. “I'd rather tell them my story and be thought a liar than too chicken-hearted to show my face.”

  “You haven't thought it over long,” I said. “You've only had that poster in your hand for a minute.”

  Only worry for Uncle Arlen kept her from walking into the nearest sheriff's office and telling her right side of the story.

  Then, in one Sunday morning at the livery, I saw four separate men with badges on the vests they wore under their coats. Later in the same day, while I ate noon dinner over at George Ray's restaurant, I heard the name of Maude March come up in the conversation of three men who made me think of boat rats.

  Boat rats being what a person living near the river took a broom to at least once a week. Now and again it happened a rat tried to run up the broomstick. These fellows were that feisty, and not more appealing, either.

  They talked like they were friends of the Black Hankie Bandit, who had been jailed earlier in the week. Two of them didn't sound like they were in favor of this.

  The one said, “Hankie done his share of wrong, but he don't deserve hanging,” and the other one agreed, saying, “That feller got shot twice before, and it didn't kill him.”

  The third one wondered aloud where the James boys were these days. This I understood entirely, for the James boys did a fine job of taking the law's mind off other matters.

  Then came the mention of Maude. “What do you hear a that one?” one of those two said. “Wa'nt she in Mississip last I heard a her? I ain't heard nuthin about her lately.”

  “A flash in the pan,” the other one said.

  I wasn't happy to hear my sister, Maude, made light of, and I was glad when the first one didn't care for it, either.

  “How would you know?” he said. “You been out there in the middle a nowhere with me, and I didn't hear word one about her or anybody else. What I didn't hear, you didn't hear.”

  “All I'm saying is, if she'd done anything of note, we would've.”

  “She coulda peeled a strip a land off this continent to rival the Oregon Trail, and we wouldn't know.”

  The argument was getting a little heated when the third fellow spoke up again. “She could be anywheres by now. I don't listen to them papers. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if she was sitting right in this here restaurant.”

  While I was noticing this one was a thinker, the other two looked around the place. Some of the patrons were locals, more of them were dusty travelers, and a few of each of those were mighty suspicious-looking.

  The most innocent face in the place was coming to their table carrying a tray full of eats. They didn't look at her.

  Her name was Maude March.

  It's hard for people to grasp the fact of Maude being a young woman with a respectable demeanor. They think she must enter every door with teeth bared, guns drawn, and coattails flapping in an unnatural gust of wind.

  They also don't think of a rough-and-ready outlaw combing her hair into a crown of bright curls. This was a great relief to Uncle Arlen, for he wasn't in favor of my sister working right out in the open. He fought her on this point, but her stubborn streak won out.

  All unawares of the rats' conversation, Maude gave them their dinners. When she came over to me, I said, “Can you get out of here for a couple of hours?”

  “As soon as these fellows eat up,” she said. They were scooping food into their mouths as regular as shoveling coal into a furnace.

  Listening to those fellows talk, I'd learned a few more lawmen were coming to town to say their piece at Black Hankie's trial. I wanted to tell Maude of this.

  I said, “Quarter of an hour?”

  She said, “Saddle up our horses, why don't you?” Lately Maude liked to ride out to the edge of the prairie and stare across it like someone in love.

  I first went on down the street to treat myself to a new dimer. I worried back and forth between Powder Keg McCarthy and Hardweather Hampton.

  I didn't anymore read them as the innocent I once was. I could see through the adventure of them, oftentimes, to the wearing part. I knew the sick feeling that came with the danger. When everything came right in the end, I took particular satisfaction in it.

  As I paid up, Mr. Palmer, at the counter, said to me his usual piece of advice: “Son, those things are a waste of your hard-earned pennies.”

  I walked away from the counter a happy man. It had taken some doing to get to the point where people didn't see through my disguise and know me to be a girl right off.

  Outside, a pack of boys were running behind a wagon of squealing piglets. I ran along with them as far as the livery. Maude hurried across the street ahead of us, the flurry of her new petticoat ruffling the edge of her skirt.

  Maude had taken to riding sidesaddle, with one leg hooked over the saddle horn. I admired the look of this myself, and didn't worry about her taking a fall, for that sorrel she favored was not one for sudden starts.

  Once the city was behind us, the sky made a great room all around and the prairie a thick carpet. Blocks of yellow lay over the grass like quilt patches. Maude had a weakness for flowers. Only when we rode among them did we see they were bright tiny flowers on a weedy stem. No good for picking.

  I said, “There's a fresh mess of lawmen in town for a trial.” “I know it,” she said. “I stayed in the kitchen all morning to bake cookies. When that ran out, I told the other girls I didn't feel like taking orders but wanted only to carry the plates out to the tables.”

  My eyebrows raised over this.

  “Don't worry,” Maude said. “Not many people look at me when the food is being set before them.”

  We didn't get off our horses until we had a grassy field all around. I couldn't see wasting free time by staring. While I stomped down a cleared space and began to read, Maude stared westward.

  The unbroken line of the horizon fooled the eye. Something seen clearly could turn out to be much further away than expected, or clouds seen at the distance could close over your head so quickly you had no chance to find shelter.

  THREE

  “IT'S LIKE AN OCEAN, THE WAY THE GRASS MOVES LIKE water,” Maude said after a time.

  “It's just an awful lot of grass,” I said back to her.

  “An ocean is just an awful lot of water,” she said, “but it's special because of that.”

  I didn't reply to this. Hardweather Hampton had just been charged by a buffalo and, of course, not a tree in sight.

  Not knowing of his desperate situation, Maude said, “It still troubles me, Sallie, that we're running from the law.”

  “We ain't running,” I said. “We're at Uncle Arlen's.

  ” “Hiding, then,” she said, and made the hard little sound of biting a fingernail. “Although there's little difference.”

  “What choice do we have?”

  “My stomach was knotted up all morning, Sallie, till I got over expecting to be noticed.”

  I let Hardweather fend for himself for a minute. “Maude, we have to think of Uncle Arlen—”

  “I am thinking of him,” she said, and made a series of little biting sounds.

  She didn't used to bite her nails and
would not have tolerated such a habit from me. Myself, I wasn't picky about my nails. I wouldn't have been picky about my sister's, but for she had bitten them down to the quick. Her fingertips looked puffy and too new, like they hadn't grown used to the light of day.

  “We're hiding under his roof, Sallie. If I'm found out, he's guilty, too. Marion said so.”

  I pulled a handful of grass, not liking the sound of this. Maude tended to think quick. Maybe because of this, she didn't think long.

  Our friend Marion tended in the other direction, and— he was fond of pointing this out—he was not dead yet. This was saying something, for Marion Hardly did used to go by the name of Joe Harden.

  He was the actual hero of those Joe Harden stories that were so popular before the rumor of his death got around. I started this rumor deliberate.

  “I wrote that letter to the sheriff, explaining everything,” I said. It was a long, long, long, long, long letter. It took me two months to write that letter, and near as much paper as a book. Some parts brought tears to my eyes.

  The doubtiest part was telling how it happened that, at the bank robbery, me and Maude had simply shown up at the wrong time. As for Willie, it was the fullest truth that while Maude had grabbed her rifle when the shooting started, she didn't fire off a shot on the day he died.

  We had yet to hear how our story was received.

  Maude shrugged. “What if the sheriff didn't believe what you said in the letter?”

  “We sent the money back,” I reminded her. “That ought to have swayed opinion somewhat.”

  Besides which I told only two small lies: that we had no way of knowing whose shot killed Willie, and that Joe Harden had breathed his last. They were small lies, because “lies” is a strong word for a fib that was meant to put things right.

  There was nothing to be gained by telling them I killed Willie by accident, so I did not tell them I shot him at all. Things happen in this world that cannot be properly understood unless you were there in the midst of them.