Maude March on the Run! by Audrey Couloumbis Page B

hat? That's an A. And this here is T. Look for them and make sure they look right to you.”
    “Thank you.”
    “I can teach you to read when Maude isn't listening in,” I said.
    “I'll help you work on your aim,” he said. “We should have plenty of time to practice out there in Colorado Territory.”
    I showed him a few more letters and had him find them on the page, sounding them out. He picked out a couple of words all by himself. He was getting it in no time at all. Don't believe what they say, that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks.
    As for my aim, it was better than I let on. I'd discovered I only had to look and shoot, the way Marion had once told Maude to do. It was just I didn't like to hit birds and such.
    Maude came out of the house ten minutes later, ready to ride. Her hair wasn't pulled up to the top of her head but hung straight at the sides of her face.
    “Well, now,” Marion said at the sight of her. “That is some darker all right.”
    Maude didn't reply.
    Once her hair was darkened, I should have been satisfied.But I wasn't. The stuff didn't give her a natural brown color but one with a strange purplish cast. She suddenly looked to me more like those wanted posters than ever she had. Like she was drawn in dark pencil. This didn't strike me as a good idea, although I didn't have a better one. Not just yet.
    I reached into the sack for the kerchief.
    Marion was thinking along the same lines, for he handed his hat to her. “Keep the sun off,” he said, and Maude took it without a thank-you. It came down over her ears, which was an advantage. We didn't mention this.
    We rode into a sunset made up of pearly pink clouds and a burning sun, prepared to stay on our horses through the night.

TWENTY-ONE

    A T FIRST MARION FELT WE SHOULDN'T RIDE BY DAY, and don't get close to any encampments by night. In this way, we saw no one on the trail. We didn't see trouble, which counted for a great deal.
    At the end of one night's travel, we couldn't feel comfortable sleeping in daylight. After the horses had a good feed, we pushed on, staying off-trail and following the water.
    Maude began to complain once more she lacked a rifle.
    “We shouldn't shoot game,” Marion said. “Nor do much cooking, unless we run out of store-bought. The smoke and the smell of it may draw unwanted attention.”
    “Then we'll need more canned beans,” Maude said.
    Not much later, we came upon the remains of a small mule train. Arrows scatter-marked the sides of the wagons. It wasn't a recent event; the animals had dried and shrunk to a thin stretch of leather over the skeletons.
    “I still need a rifle,” Maude said. “‚Should not' is a sight different than ‚cannot.'”
    The next break in this landscape was a small town called by a woman's name, Eudora. Marion said I should ride in toget Maude a gun. This was no sooner suggested than she worried aloud if this was a good idea after all.
    “If a posse comes across us,” Marion said to her, “put your hands in the air. But you can't protect Sallie by being defenseless.”
    I went into the store looking to get her the selfsame kind of rifle we had left hanging on the kitchen wall in Independence. As it happened, the fellow had a Springfield carbine up for sale.
    I hefted a few likely ones, shut one eye, and squinted through the sights of two of these. When I picked up the Springfield, it was with the air of a man convinced he would find nothing at all that interested him.
    Right out, he named me a reasonable price.
    When I tried to talk him around to more reasonable yet, he threw in a box of cartridges, and we called it a deal.
    I got hats to fit me and Maude and better bedrolls for all of us. I got corn bread and soft cheese for two days. Marion was partial to it. We had some beans left, which would have to do, for their cans were dented and I would not buy them.
    I got a dimer,
Olen Rushforth, Texas Ranger.
I considered this a wise purchase, since we were on the run