Free Maude March on the Run! by Audrey Couloumbis Page A

itself to the notion of someone living there again.
    Late in the afternoon, Maude went through Marion's sack. It yielded eggs and fatback, some of those dried-outbiscuits, and some coffee and sugar. I did like that he remembered sugar.
    “No matches,” Maude said in a despairing tone.
    I said, “In my sack.” This gave me a feeling of uncommon good cheer, to offer up something I'd kept stashed in the loft.
    Marion made a fire. The chimney was good; it didn't smoke. “Here,” he said, “I'll cook up that fatback, then we can fry some eggs in the fat.” I carved off some thin chunks while the pot heated. The first meat to hit the pot gave off a sweet smell that made my stomach growl.
    At the bottom of Marion's sack, Maude found a newspaper. The light from the windows was fading, but standing right next to them, we could read. Right off, I saw the picture they drew of Maude came not even close. The headline read:
MAD MAUDE APPREHENDED AND ON THE LOOSE AGAIN
    “Read it to me, why don't you?” Marion said.
    Maude read, “‚After laying low in an undiscovered hideout, Maude March was apprehended while serving soup and spuds in a lowly dining room.'—Oh, George Ray is going to appreciate that—‚Her rough-and-ready gang of eleven men'”— Maude bristled at the mention of eleven men. “Who is writing these accounts, anyway?”
    “Someone who is seeing double,” Marion said.
    I looked over Maude's shoulder and finished the article:—broke the now-flaming-haired female out of jail late in the same day. They were not satisfied with this feat but freed the Black Hankie Bandit, too.
    I was right off glad I'd bought some hair color.
    Maude had since begun to read again, and when she finished, I said, “Black Hankie's gang did all the waving guns around. Where's the story about them, anyway?”
    Maude flipped the sheets over with a smart crackle of paper. “Here it is. Why didn't they put him on the front page? He's the one they meant to hang.”
    BLACK HANKIE CHEATS THE HANGMAN
    Those folks who look on a hanging as the next best thing to a barn dance were sorley disappointed today. The Black Hankie Bandit, who was shot off his horse while attempting to escape the jailhouse the night before he was to die, expired of his wounds while resting in a bed with a fether mattress and a goose down pilloe. It is for the reader to decide if justice was done.
    “If the story won't make you cry,” Maude said, “the spelling will.”
    I read the whole of it aloud and the spelling didn't hamper me. “What do you make of it, Marion?”
    He was sitting near the fire, keeping an eye on the fatback so it wouldn't burn. “My guess is, the law is trying to make it sound like Maude's the reason they lost their grip on a fellow everybody was looking forward to hanging.”
    “I can't believe he's dead,” Maude said, throwing the paper down. She was up and out of the house like something yanked her across the room.
    I started up off the floor to follow her, but Marion said, “Let her go. She needs to take it in.”
    “It's not like we knew him personal,” I said. I didn't need the look he gave me to know it was a matter of luck that Black Hankie wasn't sitting around reading about Maude.
    “She's just thinking,” Marion said. “She'll be in here again in a minute. Eat your supper.”
    When Maude came inside, she said, “Maybe we should start out now. We would have the advantage of riding under cover of darkness.”
    Marion said, “You're right about night-riding, but we should wait till tomorrow night to start out again. It will give those posses time enough to start wanting to quit and go home.”
    “I'm anxious to reach Uncle Arlen,” Maude said.
    “To be any help to him at all, we must keep you out of jail.” A quiet did stretch. Maude decided to eat. Marion went out to check on the horses. I took up the paper to read it for myself, but I watched Maude over the top of the damp pages.
    She settled down to study the map,