Free The Misadventures of Maude March by Audrey Couloumbis

horse, which I had not even begun to fill in. I had worked on the letters, which read, TROUBLE RIDES A FAST HORSE.
    “So much for good intentions,” Maude said.
    I dug through my bag and found the dress remnants. “Oh,” Maude cried, much the way she had over the peppermint. The fabric brought on such a rush of tears, she had those dress pieces completely wet down before she was able to stop. She was sweet, though, and tried to offer the soggy patches back to me.
    “You keep them,” I said. “I'll ask for them if I want to see them.”
    She folded them up like a stack of hankies and put them into her pants pocket. After a moment she took out the gingham, to tell me all her stories of it. “Momma and I walked to town that day, leaving you at home with Poppa… ” She always started there and went on to tell how they chose the pattern from a book and ate licorice on the way home, making their teeth look black.
    I wished there was something else she could have thought to talk about. These stories had never made me miss Momma, although I sometimes wished I remembered her better, but this time they made me ache for Aunt Ruthie. Iwanted to talk to her just one last time, to tell her how I had begun to see her differently, to tell her I knew how good she was to us.
    My eyes started to burn with tears, but Maude looked happy and I let her go on, while I recalled page for page the last Joe Harden dimer I read. This was not too hard, since I had read it till the cover was coming apart.
    Joe had been hot on the trail of a wolf hunter who had murdered a rancher.
    I had gotten to the part where Joe hears the crunch of small stones right before he is ambushed, and he shoots the hunter left-handed with a rifle, while holding the reins of his rearing horse with his right hand, and wings him. The picture showed very clearly the spurt of blood and the pain on the hunter's face.
    That picture was bright on the backs of my eyelids when we heard someone call, “halloo,” as he stepped in out of the rain, holding his hands in the air. Maude shoved the remnant into her pocket.
    “Sorry to surprise you fellers,” the man said, keeping his hands up, “but if I stand out there waiting for an invitation I'll drown or freeze, one.” His hat was so completely wetted down the brim hung over his face.
    “Where's your horse?” Maude asked him. “Are you by yourself?”
    This was a good question, one I wished I'd thought of myself. I would have liked to be able to say I heard him coming, the way Dagnabit Darby always did. I was sure everyone knew the line, “Dagnabit, Darby, you got the drop on me again,” that could be found in every Dagnabit Darby story. Asit was, Maude and I were wrapped so tight against the cold, we were caught in our blankets.
    “It's just me and my horse, that's right,” he said. “I see you have room for one more, if you wouldn't mind it.” For a moment there, something about him looked familiar to me, but I shook that notion off. “I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't keep your gun trained on me,” he said. “I mean no harm.”
    “Bring in your horse,” Maude said, using her most no-nonsense tone. I glanced at her and saw that she had raised herself up on one elbow; she looked half set to leap up from the ground, blanket or no blanket. In the dim light, with one hand still in her pocket, it did look like maybe she held a six-shooter hidden in the folds.
    I reached out and poked at her elbow. “Put down your gun,” I whispered.
    We sat up to free ourselves of the blankets, standing up just as he came back in. “I'm Johnnie,” Maude said, “and this here is Pete.”
    I might have resented this, but the idea was wiped out when the man said, “Joe Harden, son. I'm right sorry to have startled you, but that weather is bearing down hard.”
    This brought me up short. It was him. I remembered him, although I had even less light to make him out than last time. I was excited, of course, but I was upset that I