by Audrey Couloumbis

They say my sixteen-year-old sister passes for a man and shoots like an outlaw, and I cannot argue it, since she has done both in her day.

Maude has been called a hardened criminal, and of this I must tell you, do not believe it. People say a great many things and only some of them are true.

This afternoon I watched from across the street as my sister was arrested. She made a small figure in her plain dark dress, her arms pulled behind her to cuff her wrists. "Maude!" I shouted.

She didn't hear my voice over all those so filled with excitement. I felt my blood rush toward my feet, leaving me so dizzy and breathless I nearly sat down. For everyone around me saw only a fugitive from the law before them, a madwoman accused of being a horse thief, a bank robber, and a cold-blooded killer.

It'd been five months since we found our lost uncle Arlen and settled into a new life with him in Independence. I had begun to believe my sister might never be discovered to be the infamous Mad Maude, even though a dream came to me over and over, in which I opened a sack to find oatmeal cookies and two train tickets. I always found the oatmeal cookies tasty, and there was no sense of being short of time.

Maude stepped into the sunlight, head held high, the law on both sides of her, gripping her at the elbows. It was this sight of her that gave me back my breath.