Maude March on the Run! Read Online Free PDF Page A

to look again at my copy of the map only two days later. Maude came across the street from George Ray's, bringing a jar of hot bean soup for the midday meal.
    The day had been cloudy and oddly chill for April, and I pressed my fingers against the jar. “Sit with us,” Marion said to Maude.
    “Not today, I can't,” she said. “It's busy as a hive over there. They made up their minds to hang Black Hankie tomorrow.”
    A boy came in then, bearing another message from Macdougal. He was a boy I'd been forced to whomp to cut down on his remarks about my name. One good thing about being a boy is never having to worry over being liked. One good whomp and everybody likes you fine.
    “‘Sfer Arlen Waters,” he said.
    Maude put her hand out, and he gave it over, never turning a hair upon hearing my sister bore a boy's name.
    She opened the fold of paper and read aloud:
    TOO LATE FOR ME STOP THEY HAVE THIS DAY STAMPEDED MY CATTLE SHOT MY FATHER BURNED DOWN THE BARN STOLEN MY HORSE AND KILLED MY DOG STOP I AM NIGH TO GIVING UP STOP MACDOUGAL
    I grabbed the telegram and read it for myself. “Who are they?” I didn't like to think of Uncle Arlen having to face them.
    Maude dropped to sit on a hay bale as if all her strength had left her. “Too late? Does that mean Mr. Macdougal wanted to stop Uncle Arlen from coming?”
    “I have to go out there,” Marion said. “Your uncle was expecting one more man to fight on their side and that man's been shot.”
    “We all have to go out there,” Maude said.
    “I don't know what I'm riding into,” Marion said. “I'm not about to drag you girls into it.”
    “I am tired to death of being called ‚you girls,'” I said to him. “It's only to kill the argument we have that anyone ever says it.”
    “Sallie's right,” Maude said. “We're as capable as boys.”
    “More capable,” I said, thinking of some of the boys I'd met thereabouts. They tended to look scruffy but could not necessarily hold their own in a scuffle. I had easily whomped a couple of them for speaking too admiringly of my sister. Thiswould've embarrassed them a great deal more had they known they were fighting a girl.
    “Your uncle would never forgive me if I took you along with me,” Marion said.
    “There is that,” Maude said.
    “Maude! Are we just to sit here like ticks on a cow while Uncle Arlen rides to a sorry fate?”
    “Now, Sallie, don't take on like that,” Marion said. “His fate isn't something you could change, even if you did catch up to him.”
    In her most outraged tones, Maude said, “You do expect us to sit here and wait like ticks on a cow! What kind of females do you take us for?”
    “Now, Maude—”
    “Don't you use that coddling tone with me,” she said. “Sallie and I are making ready to ride. I'm going over to George Ray's to collect three days' pay.”
    I said, “I'll get our horses saddled.”
    Maude hurried outside to dash through a break in the rough stream of horses and wagons. I climbed to the loft.
    I didn't have to look into my sack to know it held a tin cup, a pot, a long-handled spoon, my gun kit, a box of cartridges that were a match to Marion's gun, half a wedge of matches, my compass, my pouch with a few dollars in it, and an empty canteen. I checked this cache nearly every day, sometimes adding to the sum in the pouch, more often taking money to buy a dimer. Saving was not in my nature.
    I threw the loop of the canteen over my head and climbed down.
    “I guess somebody better tell Beef he's on his own,” Marionsaid. He headed back toward the anvil. I took this to mean he would be coming with me and Maude.
    These last words were no sooner spoken than a shot rang out across the street, lifting bits of the building's roof shakes into the air.
    Horses startled.
    I yelled, “Maude!”
    Pedestrians scattered like pebbles.

EIGHT

    E VERY LIVING THING IN THE VICINITY HAD JUMPED AT the shot, and all up and down the street, horses were prancing, circling, trying to