The Misadventures of Maude March by Audrey Couloumbis

taking part in such poor sport to save his sorry skin. To find that Maude was only too right; he was not much of a man at all.
    “Since I was to shoot first, I figured I had to miss altogether to ensure that I lost,” Joe said. “So I pretended I was just drunk enough to be clumsy as we stood a long line of bottles at the end of the alley.”
    He paused, as if the picture he drew bothered him too much to go on. Maude went on waiting for the rest of the story, her eyes boring into him like coals through a blanket. I waited too, because she never let go of her grip on my face.
    “One of the loser's buddies knew my reputation and kicked my foot out from under me as I took aim—I got a bad ankle on this side. The shot went wild as I fell, hitting a stone bench, and the bullet ricocheted. It's purely bad luck that I didn't hit one of them fellers instead of your aunt.” Joe thought for a moment and added, “It's a rough crowd those saloons draw, miss.”
    “So you're sure it was your bullet that hit Aunt Ruthie?” Maude asked. She relaxed the hold she had on my jaw.
    “Of course, he's sure,” I said. “He's Joe Harden.”
    “Oh, will you stop nattering about those dime novels, Sallie? He's no more Joe Harden than I am.”
    “You're wrong—”
    “Your sister is right, my name ain't Joe Harden.”
    “It ain't?” Maude said, but then shook her head as if to clear it. “Well, of course, it isn't. You're a real flesh-and-blood man, not a walking piece of a story.”
    “We're all walking pieces of a story, miss,” he said. “My name is Marion Hardly. I wouldn't last long out here with a name like that, though.”
    “But you are the man who killed our Aunt Ruthie,” Maude said, never one to let a thing go.
    Marion said, “They were going to hang me. They don't take an accident lightly when it appears you were careless of another's life.” He nodded. “That's as it should be, I agree, but I wasn't drunk, and I wasn't careless, I swear to you.”
    “It doesn't matter to me, one way or the other,” Maude said.
    Marion couldn't be satisfied with this. “It took nearly every penny I had to make good on that bench I damaged, but that's the kind of man I really am.”
    “It just seems like such a no-account reason to die,” Maude said sadly. “Getting shot while doing a little household shopping.”
    “I don't personally know anyone who died of a good reason,” Marion said.

W E RODE DESPITE THE RAIN AND COLD, ACCOMPANIED BY Marion Hardly. He told us it was the wisest thing to do, if we were on the run. He said the rain might hold up the ones who were chasing us for a day. That would put us a day ahead.
    We had not told him we were on the run, but the man made good guesses.
He
was on the run, of course. “So how did you get out of that jail?” I asked him.
    “I just waited till the middle of the night when everyone was sleeping. There's only one lawman around most times anyway, so once I figured the whole town was asleep, I just jimmied the lock and left.”
    “You were there for a long time,” I said. “Why didn't you leave before?”
    “I didn't want to go till I was sure they wanted to hang me. There's no reason to add being a hunted man to my bug bites unless it's the only way to stay alive.”
    “You thought they would find you innocent?” Maude asked him, but not as if she found this ridiculous.
    “No, Miss Maude, but I thought they might see the accidental side of it.”
    She nodded and asked him no more about it. I hadn't figured out how she managed to be so forgiving. Not that I expected her to shoot him to get revenge, but she did seem to swing far and wide to the other side.
    Myself, I thought he deserved hanging for shooting Aunt Ruthie. Not that I wanted it to happen. I had the strongest notion that hangings were nowhere nearly so entertaining as dime novels would lead a body to think.
    I had come close to seeing a hanged man only once. A number of those people who were tall enough to