The Misadventures of Maude March Read online

  “Nope,” she said with no little satisfaction. “Nothing in here but us chickens. And Cleomie's mule. Did you brush him down?”

  “I didn't get to him yet.”

  “I'll do it.”

  “No, let me,” I said. I bundled the cheese up with badly shaking hands.

  “Sallie,” Maude said, seeing this. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

  “Just see if you can find the biscuits, will you? And keep an eye on the fishing lines. My hands got cold is all.”

  I brushed that mule to within an inch of his life. He didn't seem to mind. I just kept thinking over the words I'd read. They thought Maude shot that man. They thought robbing that bank was her idea. They thought she was heading up a gang.

  The thoughts swirled till I couldn't think them anymore. Behind me, Maude had been talking and talking, I didn't even know about what. She'd cut the biscuits in half and put a slice of cheese on each one so it looked like a ladies' tea.

  “That mule looks good enough to lead a parade,” she said. “Come on over here and have some cheese and biscuits.”

  I threw a woolen blanket over the mule and tied it at his neck. Cleomie called this his baby blanket. Then I sat. In fact, I fell back against the saddlebags, suddenly too tired to eat. I did not know how I could go on. Every move we made threw Maude into deeper and deeper trouble. I had begun to wish it wasn't too late for her to go back to Cedar Rapids and marry Mr. Wilburn, where she would be safe even if she was not happy.

  “Just cover me over and wake me in the morning,” I said. “Oh, no, you don't,” Maude said. “Eat. And if we catch a fish, we're frying it up. I don't know that I can eat enough cheese and biscuits to hold me.”

  By the second bite my strength was returning. But the few moments I felt otherwise got me to thinking. “You're getting skinnier, Maude,” I told her. It was true. Now I thought about it, the likeness in the paper was all off. Maude's chin looked pointy, and her cheeks had hollowed out.

  “It isn't just me that's thinned out. We're both going to need fattening up once we get to Independence.”

  “No one from Cedar Rapids would know you if they came across you.”

  “I wish that was true,” she said.

  I watched the trotline as we ate and warmed ourselves by the fire. I just stared and gave my brain a rest from thinking. It was better that way.

  “I thought we'd get further than this,” Maude said after a while.

  “We'll get where we're going tomorrow anyway,” I said.

  One of the fishing lines jigged, and I ran over to pull it in. I got a big catfish. Before I finished bragging about that one, I'd caught another. I cleaned them up, and Maude fried them. We ate our fill of sweet meat and still had plenty left for breakfast. We could wrap that in a sheet of the newspaper.

  It was terrible dark; not the stars or even the moon could be seen in the sky above. We were cold, so we built up the fire and set a small store of broken branches to use during the night.

  I tried to figure out how much longer it would take us to reach Independence once we were riding a horse again. My best guess was twelve or fourteen days, but it made me want to build a little shanty right where I sat. I built in my mind a very large fireplace. I was not much in the mood to be a range rider at just that moment.

  When she'd done with wrapping the fish, Maude woke me and rolled me into a blanket. She curled up behind me, herself wrapped in a worn quilt Cleomie had made some years before, and threw an arm over me. In this way, she let me sleep closest to the warmth of the fire.

  WE WOKE TO AN UNUSUAL SILENCE. THE SNOW WAS coming down fast and steadily, and where it had fallen on our faces, it was melting and dripping like tears. A silvery gray light made it early morning to my eyes, but I felt we had slept late into the day. There was not a bird sound to be heard.

  The ground was blanketed, but tufts of tall dried grasses poked holes in the look of a clean sheet. “Oh, no,” Maude said, sitting up and letting cold air sneak under the blankets. My first thought was to tuck in, but then I thought better to get it over with. I threw off the blankets.

  “Let's just get moving,” I said as a wave of shivers went through me. “We'll eat on foot.” Maude buttoned her jacket up to her chin and pulled the sleeves down over her fists. “Pull out those gloves,” I said to her. “Scarves too.”

  It was while we were shuffling through the powdery snow, hurrying to put our necessaries back on the mule, that I noticed the tracks. First the mule's tracks in the snow told me he'd been pacing back and forth behind Maude while we slept. This looked strange to me.

  Near the creek there were cat tracks, paw prints with no claws. Good-sized tracks, belonging to probably the biggest bobcat I had ever seen. The fish heads and the innards I'd left on the bank the night before were gone.

  I didn't say a word to Maude.

  We walked fast to warm ourselves, each of us wearing one glove so we could eat fried fish out of the fold of newspaper with our fingers. We had to hold it in our mouths for a minute to make it warm enough to chew. But the taste was good, and our bellies welcomed the weight of it.

  The wind was cold and bit right through our clothing. It was easier to bear when we were moving. Gusts of snow blew like gauzy curtains, first one way, then another. After a time, still eating, we began to suck on our fingers to warm them.

  We had started on the hardest part of the trail. We would be watching for certain trees till we came to a stone wall that led right to the ranch. We were nearly all the sound we could hear; there was the wind, the creak of a branch, and the crunch and squeak of our boots in the snow. Sometimes we could hear the river off at a distance.

  The light, the ghostly light of early morning, remained the same. If the sun was up there somewhere, it was behind a cloud bank as thick as a feather mattress. I thought sad thoughts for Wild Woolly, and hoped he had by now found his way home.

  “If the snow gets any heavier, we won't see the stone wall,” Maude said when she pointed to the lightning-struck tree that we were still watching for up ahead. We were passing right by it, having veered a little east.

  I began worrying that we might get lost. Finished with little-girl games, I pulled out my compass and checked that we were still headed due south.

  “Where'd you get that?” Maude asked.

  “It was Daddy's,” I said. “Aunt Ruthie showed it to me once, when I asked her how explorers kept from getting lost.”

  “Is that how you've kept us headed aright?” she asked.

  “It is.”

  “Good girl,” she said. “Tell me now, are we headed south to Independence?”

  “We are,” I said, which was near enough the truth. It might be a little to the east or west, but it was south of us, sure enough. “But I don't know that the horse trader Cleomie told us about was such a straight line from her place. We have to watch for the landmarks or we might miss him.”

  “Let's keep our eyes open,” Maude said.

  Walking gave me a chance to think about things. It seemed to me that I'd been too hasty in burning up that piece of the newspaper. I had not thought to look through it to see if there was any mention made of Marion's capture.

  On the other hand, it no longer seemed likely that it was Marion that posse was hunting. The thought gave me a chill that had nothing to do with the snow falling down the neck of my jacket.

  The other thing I thought about was how alone we were out there. Only the day before, we had passed herds of grazing deer. We had seen a fox, three raccoons, any number of turkeys and prairie dogs, and birds had flown overhead. Now we saw nothing.

  The snow piled up fast. Pretty soon the tops of grasses were only freckles on the white. Falling snow had been catching around the tops of our boots, where it melted down our legs. Both of us had socks wet around the ankles. Maude stopped and stuffed the last of the newspaper in the tops of our boots.

  “I'm glad I've got these,” she said of her boots. “I'd've had frostbite by now if I was wearing
those ones with the narrow toes.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to remind her Marion had bought them for her. But then I doubted she needed me to remind her. I shook my head and said, “I wonder how it is that cowboys do so well with those boots.”

  “They probably shot off all their toes practicing those fast draws,” Maude said with some irritation, maybe because she'd reminded herself to worry about Marion. “They need those long, hard boot toes to keep them from falling on their faces.”

  For some reason this struck me funny. Laughter escaped me in bursts until even Maude was affected. That laughter carried us another mile or more.

  We kept on the move, but we were slowed down as the snow got deeper. We tried to get the mule to take his turn at beating a path, but he would have nothing to do with it. He liked having us clear a path for him. “It's only fair,” Maude said when our efforts to push him ahead were twice failed. “He's carrying everything but us.”

  We had walked on for some time in this manner before Maude said, “Maybe we ought to just hunker down somewhere. It's getting so I can't see very far ahead of us.”

  “How far does that mean?” I asked her.

  “To that tree,” she said, and pointed.

  “That's as far as I can see,” I said, “and it's good enough for me. Let's keep on going.” It wasn't that I wanted to keep on going. It was awful tiring. But I wanted to step inside a house and be offered cake with thick frosting. I wanted to sit so close to a warm fire that I felt the need of a mug of cold milk.

  But I wasn't going to get that. I wasn't even going to get close. The snow had covered any fire makings we might have used. What I wanted least was to sit huddled under some makeshift cover, chilled to the bone and hoping the snow would stop soon.

  So we walked. Always panting with the work of driving a path through the snow, we walked.

  I was hot enough to open my coat if I was the one breaking snow. And when it was Maude's turn, I got so cold my teeth chattered. The snow came down more heavily all the time, and the wind got stronger, but I didn't like to mention this to Maude.

  “There's probably a place far enough south that it never snows,” I said. “Do you think Independence is that far south?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Why?”

  Maude said, “I keep telling myself it's only a day further. If I have to think of walking past where it can snow, I might sit right down here and cry.”

  We went on, hardly speaking. We ate fish or boiled eggs when our stomachs growled. We ate because we had not filled up at the start of the day, but we neither one of us mentioned stopping to have a real meal. When I judged it to be late in the morning, perhaps early afternoon, I said, “I'd just like to think Independence is going to be really good.”

  “Do you want the last piece of fish?” Maude asked me. I figured we were eating something every hour or so, not because we were hungry that often, but because we felt better when we ate. We didn't think that much about the cold when we had the fullness of egg or the sweet taste of catfish in our mouths.

  “Half of it,” I said.

  We were just finishing it off when Maude said, “What was that?”

  “I didn't hear anything.”

  “You were chewing,” Maude said.

  The wind howled all around us, so I thought it might be that Maude only heard the wind. “What did it sound like?”

  She pulled her rifle off the mule and cocked it, then moved around to the other side of him. I got my shotgun and pulled back one hammer.

  Then I heard a yowl.

  “Holy Maloney,” Maude said.

  “A cat,” I said with a certainty that surprised even me. I had never heard the like before. I had only read a description of such a sound in one of my dimers, as something to raise the hair on the back of the neck. It seemed a close enough match to me.

  The mule bolted.

  The reins were pulled through my hand so fast they left me with a burn.

  Practically everything we needed was tied to that mule. Our food, our blankets, the matches, that six-gun. Even our spare ammunition. We couldn't get by with the loads we carried in our guns. That mule meant life or death to us.

  It helped a little that he ran straight ahead, because when Maude and I both ran after him, he'd done a fine job of beating a path through the snow. We ran, carefully because we carried guns ready to shoot, but with a purpose. Maude had a different purpose in mind than I had.

  “When I find that mule, I'm going to kill him deader than a door,” Maude shouted at me. For once she was not careful of her grammar.

  ISAVED MY BREATH FOR THE RUNNING. WE HAD TO GO on and on; it felt like we'd run at least a mile when Maude came to a sudden stop. “Look at this, Sallie,” she said as I caught up to her.

  I saw the mule's path crossed another; it was the imprint of a boot, fast filling with snow. “That fool animal has run himself in a circle,” Maude said, recognizing the boot track for our own. “He might even be headed right straight at that cat.”

  The mule screamed.

  It didn't sound all that far away, but it did sound like it was all around us. It went on braying as Maude took off running again, following the path of broken snow. I will say this for Maude. She could run.

  She got some distance on me again before she stopped. But this time she put her gun to her shoulder. I pulled even with her just as she took a bead on the cat. I saw that the mule bucked like a bronco, making a tight circle, and the cat rode him like a buster.

  It was not a clear shot, with the mule rearing up at one moment, then kicking up hind legs in the next. It was not a shot I could have made. Maude's gun barrel drew little figures in the air, then stilled, and she fired.

  The mule and the cat both fell to the ground.

  “Oh, no,” Maude cried, and started to run again.

  “Maude, wait,” I yelled after her. She kept on running.

  If the mule was hit, then the cat was not; that was my thought. I raised my shotgun and aimed, hoping that I would get a clear shot if the cat went for Maude. But I didn't have high hopes. Not only was I not a good shot, but shotgun pellets don't make a clean hit. Maude was sure to take a few pellets.

  I saw the mule lift his head. He looked fairly calm, all things considered. I lowered the shotgun and watched the mule come to realize he was not done for.

  Maude had killed the cat with an incredible shot through its eye. She claimed that was only a bit of luck; she was aiming to hit it anywhere at all. But she might just as easily have said that about shooting the head off that rattler if she had been willing to talk about it.

  We stood over it, catching our breath, my throat burning from the cold air I had let come rushing in so fast.

  “Did you know you hit it?” I asked her.

  “I thought so,” Maude said. “But when the mule fell, I wanted to beat that cat to a pulp for making me kill the mule.”

  It wasn't even a bobcat. It was a mountain lion. Called a painter, a panther, in the dimers. I never expected to see one. Smallish, but long-legged, the cat had that young look that older kittens have. Soft around the edges in some way.

  “You would make Wild Woolly proud,” I told Maude, staying away from a mention of Joe Harden. It occurred to me that I might have been wrong; Maude might make the better range rider after all. Before I could say so, my thoughts were turned back to the mule.

  It had a bite on its neck that bled hard until Maude packed it with snow. Together we dragged the cat away, and the mule worked its way back up to a stand. We checked the pack and found we had lost nothing.

  It was probably the fact of being so fully loaded with bags that protected the mule from the cat's claws. There was not a scratch on him, save the teeth marks.

  “Can you set us back on course?” Maude asked me. “This animal has completely lost us our direction.”

  I brought out the compass and held it as we walked, keeping us headed due south, even when the mule's tracks, and ours, veere
d eastward from where we heard the cat scream.

  “You sure you don't want to take the cat?” I asked Maude. It seemed quite a trophy to leave in the snow. “I could skin it if you want.”

  “I doubt the mule will consent to carry it,” Maude said. The mule had moved right on past its old tracks and was breaking snow, which made the going somewhat easier for us. It seemed wise not to remind the animal of the old rules.

  “The cat was awful young, did you see that?” Maude said. “It hadn't even learned how to make a big kill yet, I don't think.”

  “It ate the fish heads last night.”

  “Sallie, you have to tell me when you see something like that,” Maude said, sounding more tired than mad. “It probably followed us all day, eating crumbs that we dropped in the snow.”

  “What would you have done different?” I asked her. “I wouldn't have been surprised, that's the important thing,” she said.

  “You're tougher than I knew,” I told her.

  “I know it,” she said.

  For those several minutes we were distracted from the storm. But the weather was only getting worse. Sometimes the snow drove right at our faces, and we stumbled ahead blindly. Other times it pushed past us from behind, and still we were as good as blind.

  Only now and again we could see some distance before us. Never a great distance, about the length of a horse and wagon, but we saw there was plenty more of the same ahead of us.

  Very shortly we came to a point where the mule would not break snow again. Maude took the lead, muttering something to the mule that I couldn't hear. We had to nearly shout to make ourselves understood over the wind now. But the mule laid his ears back as if he'd had no trouble hearing what I guessed were threats of sending him straight to the glue pots.

  “We'll have to find a place soon,” Maude said after a time. The snow was well up to my hips, so that for me, breaking snow was more or less a matter of falling through it.

  “We're getting too tired,” Maude said breathlessly. “We have to have enough strength left to get through the night.”