Free The Misadventures of Maude March by Audrey Couloumbis Page B

rolled up and come on out here for some eats,” he said. “You boys supplied supper, and I've made breakfast.”
    “Thank you kindly,” Maude said, coming out from under the tree. I ducked under there and out the other side for a minute of privacy. When I got back, they were talking about riding on together for a time.
    “I don't know about that,” I said. “Mau—my brother and me figured to travel alone.”
    “Hard to travel in winter,” he said, “‘specially when you have far to go.”
    “We'll get to Independence before the snow falls,” I said.
    “I didn't tell Joe all that much about our plans, Pete,” Maude said. “I just said we could ride west together for a time. Don't see that it makes no never mind.”
    I stared at Maude. Her grammar was atrocious. I gathered she thought it would make her sound more like a boy. I knew she thought I told Joe too much, and she was right about that. But she acted like she didn't even know it was Joe who killed Aunt Ruthie.
    “I don't see why we have to ride out at all,” I said, hoping to look like a boy turning stubborn. “We can just sit here and stay dry today.”
    “You don't want to get caught on the plains in a blizzard,” Joe argued in a mild way.
    “I don't want to die of pneumonia either,” I said.
    “Why, you're no boy!” Joe said suddenly. “You're that girl that came asking if I was going to hang.”
    “What?” Maude said, the blood draining from her face.
    “I am not,” I said. There was no going back, though; I'd tipped him off somehow. “How'd you get out of jail anyway?”
    “Sallie,” Maude said, “what are you talking about? What is he talking about?”
    “You're not supposed to call me Sallie.” “It's one of those heated moments you mentioned,” Maude said, going pink with embarrassment.
    “I thought you said you had a sister,” he said, giving Maude a measuring look. “You're no boy either. Is that it?”
    “How did you know me?” I asked him. “Did I do something girlish?”
    “It's your voice I knew,” he said. “I have a memory for voices, that's all. Why're the two of you dressed up this way?”
    “So we can travel,” I told him. “We're on our own now. You made orphans of us, once and for all.”
    “He's the one who shot Aunt Ruthie?” Maude asked, her eyes going wide.
    “He is,” I said. “And it's a sad state for a man like you to arrive at, Mr. Harden. I've read about your exploits and you never conducted yourself so poorly—”
    “Sallie, hush!”
    “I told your little sister, here,” Joe said. “I'm right sorry.”
    “Then you did shoot our aunt?”
    “I wasn't shooting at any relatives of yours,” Joe said. “I wasn't shooting at anyone.”
    “Joe Harden never misses,” I told Maude, and she clapped a hand over my face the way she used to do when we were younger, clapped a hand over and squeezed so that her thumb and a finger bit painfully into the hinge of my jaw. It always shut me up when I was little, and it shut me up now.
    “What were you shooting at?” Maude asked in a polite fashion, as if she weren't squeezing the life out of my face.
    “Bottles,” Joe said. “First I was winning at cards, but then I could see the worst loser was getting up the juice to shoot me. So I bet him I could hit more empty bottles in a minute than he could. He's known to be a handy enough shot, and my intention was to lose a few dollars back to him.”
    “What if he was too drunk to shoot his best?” Maude asked him.
    “That was the tricky part, all right,” Joe said. “We checked that our pistols was fully loaded, and borrowed as many guns as we could from the other men in the room. This was more armament than you might expect. Cedar Rapids isn't the kind of town a man expects to get shot up in.”
    If this was a bid for sympathy, it was lost on Maude, who said, “Go on. Tell us what happened.” For that matter, it was lost on me. It was a bitter disappointment to me to hear of Joe Harden