The Misadventures of Maude March Read online

  This paper held one story after another about the James Brothers, every robbery they ever did, their days in the Confederacy. Their entire family history was written up, including their father's sad abandonment of the family to join the gold rush. Marion asked us to read every word to him.

  Mad Maude did not get a mention. Again.

  Maude said, “This is big news. It might well be all the papers are filled with for days.”

  Marion looked very much cheered by this news too. “You're small potatoes compared to Frank's daring rescue of Jesse. I'd say they're going to write about little else for weeks.”

  “By then they'll have forgotten about me completely,” Maude said.

  “So long as you don't rob any banks,” Marion joked.

  Maude snatched the paper out from under his elbows so fast his chin nearly hit the table. “Next time I need to get my name out of the paper, I'll know enough to write a note to the James boys.”

  “I never know whether to take the things you say in jest,” Marion said.

  “I never jest,” Maude told him.

  “That's what I was afraid of.”

  The city began to open up for business. At least the livery across the street opened up. “We might stay here a week or more, Sallie,” Maude said. “I want you to board the horse across the street there. You should ask if it's cheaper to pay weekly instead of by the day.”

  “Where are you going to be?”

  “I'll have to find a place to buy a plain cotton dress, cheap, so if it gets ruined working here, I won't mind so much. Should anyone ask,” Maude said smartly to me, “our name is Waters. Like Aunt Ruthie and our momma before she got married.”

  “Sallie Waters,” I said. “I like it.”

  “You and I can meet back here when we finish our business and then we'll see about a place to stay.”

  “Where will you be heading, Marion?” I asked him, because I figured we'd be going back to Lily's. I doubted she'd let Marion sleep on her floor.

  “I might chum around with you two for a while, if it's all right with your sister.”

  “You can chum with Sallie,” Maude said. “See if you can avoid running up the price of boarding the horse.”

  I was growing impatient with Maude's lack of graciousness, but decided to wait until I was alone with her to say so. “Why do you stick with us, Marion?” I asked him once Maude had gone off on her own.

  “I feel responsible for the two of you being orphaned,” he said. “At least that's how it begun.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I kinda like you. Even that hardtack sister of yours,” he said with a grin.

  “She does grow on you,” I said.

  He said, “That's what I should've been afraid of.”

  IWOULD NOT BE OUTDONE. IF MAUDE COULD GET A JOB, so could I. I made up my mind to ask for work at the livery across the street. If I got hired, I would be working right close to Maude. There was that to be said for it. Maybe we would get a reduced rate for the horse too.

  I think I had decided on this not only because I didn't think I'd like to wait on tables but also because it was so warm in a livery. Of course, I reminded myself, it would be a hot job when it was dead summer too.

  I walked up to the first man I saw come out of the building and asked him to give me the job. He was just leaving his horse off, not working there, but he was kind enough about it. Maybe because Marion was standing right behind me.

  “I think you are wrong to do this,” Marion said after the fellow had walked away.

  “If Maude is going to work, so am I,” I said. And remembering one of Aunt Ruthie's favorite sayings, one I had always chafed at, I said, “Every little bit helps.” Only now did I see that it might in some way have been Aunt Ruthie's way of paying me a compliment when I had done a share of the work.

  As I say, she was a spare woman.

  “Are you going to be a boy or a girl?” Marion asked before I went inside.

  “I'm still a boy,” I said to Marion. “Johnnie is my name.”

  “I thought that was your sister's name.”

  “If she wanted it, she shouldn't have left it laying around.”

  “Do you want me to come in with you?” he asked when I hesitated at the open doorway to get my boyish slouch in place.

  “No,” I said, and abandoned the slouch. I walked in tall.

  I waited where I thought I ought to, about a room's distance from where the smithy stood holding a piece of metal to the fire. He sang a lively tune about three crows sitting on a tree, “O Billy Magee,” and I didn't mind hearing all of it, even though the heat was nearly more than I could bear, standing there.

  It was no surprise the smithy worked shirtless. He'd have done well to work in nothing at all if such a thing could be allowed. Watching him, I began to worry that he would never hire me. His arms looked like thick blocks of wood. His back muscles were heavy as ropes. He wasn't likely to think much of using a pip-squeak like me, even to clean stalls. Worse, I was never going to muscle up like that. I would always be a pip-squeak.

  Staring at his back, I noticed he spent more time in the sun than I would have guessed a smithy would. The sundarkened skin drew attention because of some odd whitemarks, not quite round but pointed at top and bottom, that were sprayed across his back. It took me a moment to realize they were scars. I wondered if he'd gotten shot up somewhere or other, if they were bullet holes, but they didn't look anywhere so neatly round as the one bullet hole I'd had a good look at.

  He didn't look unhappy to see me when he turned away from the anvil, more surprised than anything. Because I had been staring at those scars on his back, I wasn't altogether struck to see them on his front. “I advertised for a man,” he said, stopping his song in the middle of a line, and making me think about other than scars.

  “I was hoping you'd hire me, if no men came looking for the job. I'll be thirteen soon,” I added, figuring an extra year couldn't hurt.

  “Well, they have come looking, but it seems I don't like to pay what they're looking for. So if you don't want more than I offered them, you're in luck,” he said cheerfully. “As for me and my luck, I guess you'll be a man someday.”

  I didn't reply to that.

  “It's usually part of the deal that you can sleep in the loft, but I guess that's not much use to you if you're still living at home,” he said.

  “I'm not living at home,” I said. “Can my sister stay with me? She's fifteen.”

  “I don't know about that,” he said. “There's a lot of men in and out of here.”

  “She works all day,” I added. “Can we lock up at night?”

  “You have to lock up at night,” he said. “I don't want anyone stealing horses.”

  “Let's us try it,” I said. “You pay me what I'm worth. If it don't work out, it don't work out.”

  “Most folks around here call me Duck,” he said, putting out a hand. “My name is Arlen Waters.”

  We shook, but I was already thinking. “Uncle Arlen?” I said. I felt certain he must be, but now that the moment was here, I could hardly believe we'd found him.

  “Are you Aunt Ruthie's brother?”

  He gave me an odd look. Then he said, “Who are you?” “

  Aunt Ruthie's dead,” I said in answer, and seeing him take that in, I added, “I'm Sallie. Salome.” I had not said my full name in so long it felt funny in my mouth. “Salome March.”

  “Ruth Ann wrote me last year that you girls were growing fast,” he said. “I didn't really picture you right, though, not so old as you are.”

  I was just flabbergasted. “Aunt Ruthie wrote to you last year?”

  “She wrote me once every year, whether she wanted to or not,” he said, “and it was clear she didn't want to. Her letters somehow ignored the fact that I had ever written. So I quit after a time. I haven't put a letter into the mail in three years.”

  “We didn't know where to find you,” I said.

  “I should have kept on wr
iting,” he said. “I should have written to you girls.”

  “Why didn't you?”

  “Ruth Ann and I never were close,” he said. “She didn't like it when I didn't fall in with her ideas. It isn't a kind thing to say about my own sister, but she was the type to hold a grudge.”

  “That was Aunt Ruthie to a T,” I said. “But she kept yourletters. She tied them together with a ribbon, and Aunt Ruthie wasn't one to waste ribbon.”

  “‘Preciate it,” Uncle Arlen said, and I realized he might not be much more affectionate, generally, than Aunt Ruthie. But his eyes wetted up some, maybe to hear Aunt Ruthie cared about him, in her way.

  “Maude and I were worried you'd have left Independence,” I said. “We figured you could have gone anywhere from here.”

  “I did,” he said. “But the wildness of the Far West isn't for me.”

  “I see you did get shot full of arrows,” I said, nodding toward the scars. “You mentioned it in one of the letters.”

  “Yep, that's why my friends call me Duck,” he said. He had a sparkle in his eye. “Because I didn't.”

  “Well, I hope you'll tell us about it,” I said. “

  It helped me make up my mind about a few things,” he said more seriously. “I came back here and built this place. Been open for business over a year now.”

  “Maude is going to be very happy to hear that,” I said.

  “Little Maude?” he said, and his face lit up. “Where is she?”

  I noticed then, he was rather pretty for a man.

  MAUDE MUST HAVE HAD A HARD TIME FINDING A DRESS that suited her, because she took her time coming back. Marion and I kept an eye peeled to spot her, but when we saw her, she was already working. She didn't give us a chance to tell her a thing.

  “Go somewhere,” she said as she first laid eyes on us. “I don't want you peering at me from some corner or other when you think I won't notice, either. Just be here when I'm done.”

  She was pushing us out as she spoke.

  “She don't want much,” Marion said in a bothered way as we found ourselves standing out in the street, like we had it in mind to sell baked potatoes.

  “She has a lot of Aunt Ruthie in her,” I said, mad twice over as we relayed this information to Uncle Arlen. “No skin off my nose if she thinks she's an orphan another day.”

  “It might be a lot for her to take in,” Marion said. “Let her get the hang of this job, then we'll let her know you're here.”

  Uncle Arlen said, “Let's wait till noonday, and all three of us together go over to see her.”

  It was not a fair deal, but the minute Uncle Arlen learned I was a girl, I lost my job. He said he could not have his niece working as a hired hand. It was a small consolation that he hired Marion instead. When nothing else could be thought of for me to do, I was allowed to help with mucking out stalls. It was a small, if bitter, victory.

  In the end, having such a piece of news to tell got the better of me. After a time, I saw that business across the street had slowed down some, so I went across and ordered a bowl of chili. When Maude came to my table, I said, “Uncle Arlen has the livery across the street.”

  I wanted to say it deadpan, but I couldn't help grinning. “

  There's some good news,” Maude said without cracking a smile, the way Aunt Ruthie would have. But when she turned away to set a plate on somebody else's table, she looked back at me and winked. Her face had gone pink with joy.

  I had just about caught her up on what I had learned when business picked up again. I went back to mucking stalls, which I realized was a never-ending job at a livery. “You could curry a horse now and again,” Marion told me in hopes that I would.

  In the eyes of anyone coming for their horses, he was my boss, and it bothered him that it looked like he was working me so hard, even if I was a boy. But I had a point to make: that I could have done this job, and would do it. I admit, I hoped Uncle Arlen would soften. He could pay me in dimers if that made him feel better.

  Uncle Arlen went over to the restaurant for his midday meal sometime later, which was his habit anyway. I followedhim. Maude left off working and sat down to the table with us. She was breathless, and not just from running around on that floor. “Uncle Arlen?”

  “Little Maude,” he said softly, almost sadly. “You've grown some.” They were shy with each other at first, and then began to remember things only the two of them could share.

  As for her hair, I could see he wanted to say something, but couldn't decide what exactly he ought to say. It was wise of him to keep shut, although I hadn't had a chance to tell him so. We agreed to meet later, as evening came on, leaving Marion to tend the livery business.

  Uncle Arlen hugged Maude as we stood from the table, and they didn't look awkward with each other anymore. Uncle Arlen tousled my hair, which felt close enough to me, and best suited my disguise anyway.

  Uncle Arlen lived two streets away from his livery, in a house with two rooms up and two rooms down. He lived only in the downstairs. The place was furnished comfortably enough by the previous owner, he told us. But Uncle Arlen was not much of a housekeeper.

  He helped us clear a lot of things out of the upstairs rooms, including two stuffed chairs to be taken downstairs. We moved his bed up there, and he said Maude and I could have it for our own. It was not as fine as the room we had in Cedar Rapids, but it might have been spun from gold, it made Maude and me that happy.

  Marion came over to the house after the livery was locked up for the night. Maude fried eggs and toast for an easy supper. She was about dead on her feet. The same was true for me, although I tried not to show it as I set tin plates and forkson the table. Uncle Arlen didn't have napkins, but we set out clean bright blue hankies instead. It looked fair enough for a reunion.

  Now that we were settled in, or maybe because she felt more private than in the restaurant, Maude was much easier with Uncle Arlen. We recounted all our adventures to him, and Maude wasn't reluctant to tell him the worst.

  He said he had seen the papers but never for a moment suspected it was his little Maude they were writing about, largely because he had not seen any of those articles that mentioned Aunt Ruthie. But he wasn't sure he agreed with what we told him Lily said, that Maude March would soon be an old story. He thought Maude should go on calling herself Maude Waters, just to be on the safe side.

  Marion mentioned he was thinking of following the Oregon Trail come good weather. “You mean you're thinking of leaving?” Maude said. “Why would you do that?”

  “I'm still a wanted man. Worse, since I shot your aunt Ruthie, I am still a murderer.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Nobody's sending me out west.”

  “Hush up, Sallie,” Maude said. “You're no such thing. There is a big difference between murder and an accident, and you have both had terrible accidents, but that is all.”

  “In my case, they wanted to hang me for that accident,” Marion said, “and they still would. I'm thinking I would be safer west of the Rockies. It's less likely I'll ever run into someone I know. I can use that bank money to set myself up in a little business.”

  This sounded smart to me, but Maude said, “Uncle Arlen looks like a stout enough fellow, and he says henever wants to go west again. You aren't nearly so stout. Maybe you should consider his thinking on the matter to be good advice.”

  “I've been west of the City of Kansas and liked it just fine,” Marion said stoutly, “and I lived to tell about it.”

  IHAD BEGUN TO REALIZE MARION WAS A MAN SENSITIVE of his pride. But he should have known that telling Maude he'd lived to tell about his adventures would sound like bragging to her.

  She jumped up from her chair real sudden like and yelled her list of complaints against Marion and even, it seemed, against Uncle Arlen. Men were selfish, they were shortsighted, they were too dumb to shut their mouths in the rain.

  She threw a tantrum the likes of which I had never seen, and had to admire, throwing the small pillows off
the chairs and kicking table legs. Uncle Arlen and Marion sat trans-fixed. She called Marion a goose-brain, and when that did not get a reaction, she called him a liar.

  “Here now,” he said. “What lie did I tell you?”

  “Your promises were lies,” Maude said wildly.

  “I don't remember any promises,” Marion said in a voice gone high and a little wild too.

  “It wasn't so much a promise made in words,” Maude said, and stamping her foot, added, “but in deed. You are goingto listen to me now, or I may go against my own grain and shoot you.”

  Uncle Arlen opened his mouth as if to speak but Maude said, “Don't make me swat you one either. You may be my uncle, but you were only a younger brother in Aunt Ruthie's eyes, and that is how I see you, too.”

  Marion and Uncle Arlen both looked the question at me and I shrugged. Maude was never a simple girl, nor easy to get along with.

  “If we ever want to live good lives,” she said, “we have to put right everything we have done wrong. Or as much of it as we can. We can do nothing about Aunt Ruthie or Willie, we may never hear ourselves spoken of kindly by Ben Chaplin no matter what we do, but there are other ways we can show that our hearts are in the right place.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marion asked.

  “The money,” Maude said. She started yanking our plates out from in front of us and throwing them into the wash water, giving us time to think. I knew Maude was right. That money could never be used to build our future. It would only ruin us somewhere down the line.

  Marion and Uncle Arlen found it harder to follow her train of thought, I could tell by the concentrated looks on their faces. Marion would not bite the bullet and ask her to explain, but Uncle Arlen, who had not dealt with Maude's temper in some time, and didn't realize the storm might start again, said, “What is it you want us to do?”

  “I want every penny you have left from that bank robbery,” Maude shouted at Marion.

  He dove for his saddlebags and brought up a sizable canvas-wrapped packet. “It's shy only of what we used to buy some supplies for you and Sallie,” he said.