GOOD INDIAN by B.M. Bower

H
II GOOD INDIAN
III OLD WIVES' TALES
IV THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL
V "I DON'T CARE MUCH ABOUT GIRLS"
VI THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL PLAYS GHOST
VII MISS GEORGIE HOWARD, OPERATOR
VIII THE AMIABLE ANGLER
IX PEPPAJEE JIM "HEAP SABES"
X MIDNIGHT PROWLERS
XI "YOU CAN'T PLAY WITH ME"
XII "THEM DAMN' SNAKE"
XIII CLOUD-SIGN VERSUS CUPID
XIV THE CLAIM-JUMPERS
XV SQUAW-TALK-FAR-OFF HEAP SMART
XVI "DON'T GET EXCITED!"
XVII A LITTLE TARGET PRACTICE
XVIII A SHOT FROM THE RIM-ROCK
XIX EVADNA GOES CALLING
XX MISS GEORGIE ALSO MAKES A CALL
XXI SOMEBODY SHOT SAUNDERS
XXII A BIT OF PAPER
XXIII THE MALICE OF A SQUAW
XXIV PEACEFUL RETURN
XXV "I'D JUST AS SOON HANG FOR NINE MEN AS FOR ONE"
XXVI "WHEN THE SUN GOES AWAY"
XXVII LIFE ADJUSTS ITSELF AGAIN TO SMALL THINGS
GOOD INDIAN
by
B.M. Bower
CHAPTER I
PEACEFUL HART RANCH
It was somewhere in the seventies when old Peaceful Hart woke to
a realization that gold-hunting and lumbago do not take kindly to
one another, and the fact that his pipe and dim-eyed meditation
appealed to him more keenly than did his prospector's pick and
shovel and pan seemed to imply that he was growing old. He was a
silent man, by occupation and by nature, so he said nothing about
it; but, like the wild things of prairie and wood, instinctively
began preparing for the winter of his life. Where he had lately
been washing tentatively the sand along Snake River, he built a
ranch. His prospector's tools he used in digging ditches to
irrigate his new-made meadows, and his mining days he lived over
again only in halting recital to his sons when they clamored for
details of the old days when Indians were not mere untidy
neighbors to be gossiped with and fed, but enemies to be fought,
upon occasion.
They felt that fate had cheated them--did those five sons; for
they had been born a few years too late for the fun. Not one of
them would ever have earned the title of "Peaceful," as had his
father. Nature had played a joke upon old Peaceful Hart; for he,
the mildest-mannered man who ever helped to tame the West when it
really needed taming, had somehow fathered five riotous young
males to whom fight meant fun--and the fiercer, the funnier.
He used to suck at his old, straight-stemmed pipe and regard them
with a bewildered curiosity sometimes; but he never tried to put
his puzzlement into speech. The nearest he ever came to
elucidation, perhaps, was when he turned from them and let his
pale-blue eyes dwell speculatively upon the face of his wife,
Phoebe. Clearly he considered that she was responsible for their
dispositions.
The house stood cuddled against a rocky bluff so high it dwarfed
the whole ranch to pygmy size when one gazed down from the rim,
and so steep that one wondered how the huge, gray bowlders
managed to perch upon its side instead of rolling down and
crushing the buildings to dust and fragments. Strangers used to
keep a wary eye upon that bluff, as if they never felt quite safe
from its menace. Coyotes skulked there, and tarantulas and
"bobcats" and snakes. Once an outlaw hid there for days, within
sight and hearing of the house, and stole bread from Phoebe's
pantry at night--but that is a story in itself.
A great spring gurgled out from under a huge bowlder just behind
the house, and over it Peaceful had built a stone milk house,
where Phoebe spent long hours in cool retirement on churning day,
and where one went to beg good things to eat and to drink. There
was fruit cake always hidden away in stone jars, and cheese, and
buttermilk, and cream.
Peaceful Hart must have had a streak of poetry somewhere hidden
away in his silent soul. He built a pond against the bluff;
hollowed it out from the sand he had once washed for traces of
gold, and let the big spring fill it full and seek an outlet at
the far end, where it slid away under a little stone bridge. He
planted the pond with rainbow trout, and on the margin a rampart
of Lombardy poplars, which grew and grew until they threatened to
reach up and tear ragged holes in the drifting clouds. Their
slender shadows lay, like gigantic fingers, far up the bluff when
the sun sank low in the afternoon.
Behind them grew a small jungle of trees-catalpa and locust among
them--a jungle which surrounded the house, and in summer hid it
from sight entirely.
With the spring creek whispering through the grove and away to
where it was defiled by trampling hoofs in the corrals and
pastures beyond, and with the roses which Phoebe Hart kept abloom
until tho frosts came, and the bees, and humming--birds which
somehow found their way across the parched sagebrush plains and
foregathered there, Peaceful Hart's ranch betrayed his secret
longing for girls, as if he had unconsciously planned it for the
daughters he had been denied.
It was an ideal place for hammocks and romance--a place where
dainty maidens might dream their way to womanhood. And Peaceful
Hart, when all was done, grew old watching five full-blooded boys
clicking their heels unromantically together as they roosted upon
the porch, and threw cigarette stubs at the water lilies while
they wrangled amiably over the merits of their mounts; saw them
drag their blankets out into the broody dusk of the grove when
the nights were hot, and heard their muffled swearing under their
"tarps" because of the mosquitoes which kept the night air
twanging like a stricken harp string with their song.
They liked the place well enough. There were plenty of shady
places to lie and smoke in when the mercury went sizzling up its
tiny tube. Sometimes, when there was a dance, they would choose
the best of Phoebe's roses to decorate their horses' bridles; and
perhaps their hatbands, also. Peaceful would then suck harder
than ever at his pipe, and his faded blue eyes would wander
pathetically about the little paradise of his making, as if he
wondered whether, after all, it had been worth while.
A tight picket fence, built in three unswerving lines from the
post planted solidly in a cairn of rocks against a bowlder on the
eastern rim of the pond, to the road which cut straight through
the ranch, down that to the farthest tree of the grove, then back
to the bluff again, shut in that tribute to the sentimental side
of Peaceful's nature. Outside the fence dwelt sturdier, Western
realities.
Once the gate swung shut upon the grove one blinked in the garish
sunlight of the plains. There began the real ranch world. There
was the pile of sagebrush fuel, all twisted and gray, pungent as
a bottle of spilled liniment, where braided, blanketed bucks were
sometimes prevailed upon to labor desultorily with an ax in hope
of being rewarded with fruit new-gathered from the orchard or a
place at Phoebe's long table in the great kitchen.
There was the stone blacksmith shop, where the boys sweated over
the nice adjustment of shoes upon the feet of fighting, wild-eyed
horses, which afterward would furnish a spectacle of unseemly
behavior under the saddle.
Farther away were the long stable, the corrals where
broncho-taming was simply so much work to be performed,
hayfields, an orchard or two, then rocks and sand and sage which
grayed the earth to the very skyline.
A glint of slithering green showed where the Snake hugged the
bluff a mile away, and a brown trail, ankle-deep in dust,
stretched straight out to the west, and then lost itself
unexpectedly behind a sharp, jutting point of rocks where the
blufF had thrust out a rugged finger into the valley.
By devious turnings and breath-taking climbs, the trail finally
reached the top at the only point for miles, where it was
possible for a horseman to pass up or down.
Then began the desert, a great stretch of unlovely sage and lava
rock and sand for mile upon mile, to where the distant mountain
ridges reached out and halted peremptorily the ugly sweep of it.
The railroad gashed it boldly, after the manner of the iron trail
of modern industry; but the trails of the desert dwellers wound
through it diffidently, avoiding the rough crest of lava rock
where they might, dodging the most aggressive sagebrush and
dipping tentatively into hollows, seeking always the easiest way
to reach some remote settlement or ranch.
Of the men who followed those trails, not one of them but could
have ridden straight to the Peaceful Hart ranch in black
darkness; and there were few, indeed, white men or Indians, who
could have ridden there at midnight and not been sure of blankets
and a welcome to sweeten their sleep. Such was the Peaceful Hart
Ranch, conjured from the sage and the sand in the valley of the
Snake.
CHAPTER II
GOOD INDIAN
There is a saying--and if it is not purely Western, it is at
least purely American--that the only good Indian is a dead
Indian. In the very teeth of that, and in spite of tho fact that
he was neither very good, nor an Indian--nor in any sense
"dead"-- men called Grant Imsen "Good Indian" to his face; and if
he resented the title, his resentment was never made
manifest--perhaps because he had grown up with the name, he
rather liked it when he was a little fellow, and with custom had
come to take it as a matter of course.
Because his paternal ancestry went back, and back to no one knows
where among the race of blue eyes and fair skin, the Indians
repudiated relationship with him, and called him white
man--though they also spoke of him unthinkingly as "Good Injun."
Because old Wolfbelly himself would grudgingly admit under
pressure that the mother of Grant had been the half-caste
daughter of Wolfbelly's sister, white men remembered the taint
when they were angry, and called him Injun. And because he stood
thus between the two races of men, his exact social status a
subject always open to argument, not even the fact that he was
looked upon by the Harts as one of the family, with his own bed
always ready for him in a corner of the big room set apart for
the boys, and with a certain place at the table which was called
his--not even his assured position there could keep him from
sometimes feeling quite alone, and perhaps a trifle bitter over
his loneliness.
Phoebe Hart had mothered him from the time when his father had
sickened and died in her house, leaving Grant there with twelve
years behind him, in his hands a dirty canvas bag of gold coin so
heavy he could scarce lift it, which stood for the mining claim
the old man had just sold, and the command to invest every one of
the gold coins in schooling.
Old John Imsen was steeped in knowledge of the open; nothing of
the great outdoors had ever slipped past him and remained
mysterious. Put when he sold his last claim--others he had
which promised little and so did not count--he had signed his
name with an X. Another had written the word John before that X,
and the word Imsen after; above, a word which he explained was
"his," and below the word "mark." John Imsen had stared down
suspiciously at the words, and he had not felt quite easy in his
mind until the bag of gold coins was actually in his keeping.
Also, he had been ashamed of that X. It was a simple thing to
make with a pen, and yet he had only succeeded in making it look
like two crooked sticks thrown down carelessly, one upon the
other. His face had gone darkly red with the shame of it, and he
had stood scowling down at the paper.
"That boy uh mine's goin' to do better 'n that, by God!" he had
sworn, and the words had sounded like a vow.
When, two months after that, he had faced--incredulously, as is
the way with strong men--the fact that for him life was over,
with nothing left to him save an hour or so of labored breath and
a few muttered sentences, he did not forget that vow. He called
Phoebe close to the bed, placed the bag of gold in Grant's
trembling hands, and stared intently from one face to the other.
"Mis' Hart, he ain't got--anybody--my folks--I lost track of 'em
years ago. You see to it--git some learnin' in his head. When a
man knows books--it's--like bein' heeled--good gun--plenty uh
ca't'idges-- in a fight. When I got that gold--it was like
fightin' with my bare hands--against a gatlin' gun. They coulda
cheated me--whole thing--on paper--I wouldn't know--luck--just
luck they didn't. So you take it--and git the boy schoolin'.
Costs money--I know that--git him all it'll buy. Send him--
where they keep--the best. Don't yuh let up--n'er let
him--whilst they's a dollar left. Put it all--into his
head--then he can't lose it, and he can--make it earn more.
An'--I guess I needn't ask yuh--be good to him. He ain't got
anybody--not a soul--Injuns don't count. You see to it--don't
let up till--it's all gone."
Phoebe had taken him literally. And Grant, if he had little
taste for the task, had learned books and other things not
mentioned in the curriculums of the schools she sent him to--and
when the bag was reported by Phoebe to be empty, he had returned
with inward relief to the desultory life of the Hart ranch and
its immediate vicinity.
His father would probably have been amazed to see how little
difference that schooling made in the boy. The money had lasted
long enough to take him through a preparatory school and into the
second year of a college; and the only result apparent was speech
a shade less slipshod than that of his fellows, and a vocabulary
which permitted him to indulge in an amazing number of epithets
and in colorful vituperation when the fancy seized him.
He rode, hot and thirsty and tired, from Sage Hill one day and
found Hartley empty of interest, hot as the trail he had just now
left thankfully behind him, and so absolutely sleepy that it
seemed likely to sink into the sage-clothed earth under the
weight of its own dullness. Even the whisky was so warm it
burned like fire, and the beer he tried left upon his outraged
palate the unhappy memory of insipid warmth and great bitterness.
He plumped the heavy glass down upon the grimy counter in the
dusty far corner of the little store and stared sourly at Pete
Hamilton, who was apathetically opening hatboxes for the
inspection of an Indian in a red blanket and frowsy braids.
"How much?" The braided one fingered indecisively the broad brim
of a gray sombrero.
"Nine dollars." Pete leaned heavily against the shelves behind
him and sighed with the weariness of mere living.
"Huh! All same buy one good hoss." The braided one dropped the
hat, hitched his blanket over his shoulder in stoical disregard
of the heat, and turned away.
Pete replaced the cover, seemed about to place the box upon the
shelf behind him, and then evidently decided that it was not
worth the effort. He sighed again.
"It is almighty hot," he mumbled languidly. "Want another drink,
Good Injun?"
"I do not. Hot toddy never did appeal to me, my friend. If you
weren't too lazy to give orders, Pete, you'd have cold beer for a
day like this. You'd give Saunders something to do beside lie in
the shade and tell what kind of a man he used to be before his
lungs went to the bad. Put him to work. Make him pack this
stuff down cellar where it isn't two hundred in the shade. Why
don't you?"
"We was going to get ice t'day, but they didn't throw it off when
the train went through."
"That's comforting--to a man with a thirst like the great Sahara.
Ice! Pete, do you know what I'd like to do to a man that mentions
ice after a drink like that?"
Pete neither knew nor wanted to know, and he told Grant so. "If
you're going down to the ranch," he added, by way of changing the
subject, "there's some mail you might as well take along."
"Sure, I'm going--for a drink out of that spring, if nothing
else. You've lost a good customer to-day, Pete. I rode up here
prepared to get sinfully jagged--and here I've got to go on a
still hunt for water with a chill to it--or maybe buttermilk.
Pete, do you know what I think of you and your joint?"
"I told you I don't wanta know. Some folks ain't never
satisfied. A fellow that's rode thirty or forty miles to get
here, on a day like this, had oughta be glad to get anything that
looks like beer."
"Is that so?" Grant walked purposefully down to the front of the
store, where Pete was fumbling behind the rampart of crude
pigeonholes which was the post-office. "Let me inform you, then,
that--"
There was a swish of skirts upon the rough platform outside, and
a young woman entered with the manner of feeling perfectly at
home there. She was rather tall, rather strong and capable
looking, and she was bareheaded, and carried a door key suspended
from a smooth-worn bit of wood.
"Don't get into a perspiration making up the mail, Pete," she
advised calmly, quite ignoring both Grant and the Indian.
"Fifteen is an hour late--as usual. Jockey Bates always seems to
be under the impression he's an undertaker's assistant, and is
headed for the graveyard when he takes fifteen out. He'll get
the can, first he knows--and he'll put in a month or two
wondering why. I could make better time than he does myself."
By then she was leaning with both elbows upon the counter beside
the post-office, bored beyond words with life as it must be
lived--to judge from her tone and her attitude.
"For Heaven's sake, Pete," she went on languidly, "can't you
scare up a novel, or chocolates, or gum, or--ANYTHING to kill
time? I'd even enjoy chewing gum right now--it would give my
jaws something to think of, anyway."
Pete, grinning indulgently, came out of retirement behind the
pigeonholes, and looked inquiringly around the store.
"I've got cards," he suggested. "What's the matter with a game
of solitary? I've known men to put in hull winters alone, up in
the mountains, jest eating and sleeping and playin' solitary."
The young woman made a grimace of disgust. "I've come from three
solid hours of it. What I really do want is something to read.
Haven't you even got an almanac?"
"Saunders is readin' 'The Brokenhearted Bride'-- you can have it
soon's he's through. He says it's a peach."
"Fifteen is bringing up a bunch of magazines. I'll have reading
in plenty two hours from now; but my heavens above, those two
hours!" She struck both fists despairingly upon the counter.
"I've got gumdrops, and fancy mixed--"
"Forget it, then. A five-pound box of chocolates is due--on
fifteen." She sighed heavily. "I wish you weren't so old, and
hadn't quite so many chins, Pete," she complained. "I'd inveigle
you into a flirtation. You see how desperate I am for something
to do!"
Pete smiled unhappily. He was sensitive about all those chins,
and the general bulk which accompanied them.
"Let me make you acquainted with my friend, Good In--er--Mr.
Imsen." Pete considered that he was behaving with great
discernment and tact. "This is Miss Georgie Howard, the new
operator." He twinkled his little eyes at her maliciously.
"Say, he ain't got but one chin, and he's only twenty-three years
old." He felt that the inference was too plain to be ignored.
She turned her head slowly and looked Grant over with an air of
disparagement, while she nodded negligently as an acknowledgment
to the introduction. "Pete thinks he's awfully witty," she
remarked. "It's really pathetic."
Pete bristled--as much as a fat man could bristle on so hot a
day. "Well, you said you wanted to flirt, and so I took it for
granted you'd like--"
Good Indian looked straight past the girl, and scowled at Pete.
"Pete, you're an idiot ordinarily, but when you try to be smart
you're absolutely insufferable. You're mentally incapable of
recognizing the line of demarcation between legitimate persiflage
and objectionable familiarity. An ignoramus of your particular
class ought to confine his repartee to unqualified affirmation or
the negative monosyllable." Whereupon he pulled his hat more
firmly upon his head, hunched his shoulders in disgust,
remembered his manners, and bowed to Miss Georgie Howard, and
stalked out, as straight of back as the Indian whose blanket he
brushed, and who may have been, for all he knew, a blood relative
of his.
"I guess that ought to hold you for a while, Pete," Miss Georgie
approved under her breath, and stared after Grant curiously.
"'You're mentally incapable of recognizing the line of
demarcation between legitimate persiflage and objectionable
familiarity.' I'll bet two bits you don't know what that means,
Pete; but it hits you off exactly. Who is this Mr. Imsen?"
She got no reply to that. Indeed, she did not wait for a reply.
Outside, things were happening--and, since Miss Georgie was dying
of dullness, she hailed the disturbance as a Heaven-sent
blessing, and ran to see what was going on.
Briefly, Grant had inadvertently stepped on a sleeping dog's
paw--a dog of the mongrel breed which infests Indian camps, and
which had attached itself to the blanketed buck inside. The dog
awoke with a yelp, saw that it was a stranger who had perpetrated
the outrage, and straightway fastened its teeth in the leg of
Grant's trousers. Grant kicked it loose, and when it came at him
again, he swore vengeance and mounted his horse in haste.
He did not say a word. He even smiled while he uncoiled his
rope, widened the loop, and, while the dog was circling warily
and watching for another chance at him, dropped the loop neatly
over its front quarters, and drew it tight.
Saunders, a weak-lunged, bandy-legged individual, who was
officially a general chore man for Pete, but who did little
except lie in the shade, reading novels or gossiping, awoke then,
and, having a reputation for tender-heartedness, waved his arms
and called aloud in the name of peace.
"Turn him loose, I tell yuh! A helpless critter like that--you
oughta be ashamed--abusin' dumb animals that can't fight back!"
"Oh, can't he?" Grant laughed grimly.
"You turn that dog loose!" Saunders became vehement, and paid the
penalty of a paroxysm of coughing.
"You go to the devil. If you were an able-bodied man, I'd get
you, too--just to have a pair of you. Yelping, snapping curs,
both of you." He played the dog as a fisherman plays a trout.
"That dog, him Viney dog. Viney heap likum. You no killum, Good
Injun." The Indian, his arms folded in his blanket, stood upon
the porch watching calmly the fun. "Viney all time heap mad, you
killum," he added indifferently.
"Sure it isn't old Hagar's?"
"No b'long-um Hagar--b'long-um Viney. Viney heap likum."
Grant hesitated, circling erratically with his victim close to
the steps. "All right, no killum--teachum lesson, though. Viney
heap bueno squaw--heap likum Viney. No likum dog, though. Dog
all time come along me." He glanced up, passed over the fact
that Miss Georgie Howard was watching him and clapping her hands
enthusiastically at the spectacle, and settled an unfriendly
stare upon Saunders.
"You shut up your yowling. You'll burst a blood vessel and go to
heaven, first thing you know. I've never contemplated hiring you
as my guardian angel, you blatting buck sheep. Go off and lie
down somewhere." He turned in the saddle and looked down at the
dog, clawing and fighting the rope which held him fast just back
of the shoulder--blades. "Come along, doggie--NICE doggie!" he
grinned, and touched his horse with the spurs. With one leap, it
was off at a sharp gallop, up over the hill and through the
sagebrush to where he knew the Indian camp must be.
Old Wolfbelly had but that morning brought his thirty or forty
followers to camp in the hollow where was a spring of clear
water--the hollow which had for long been known locally as "the
Indian Camp," because of Wolfbelly's predilection for the spot.
Without warning save for the beat of hoofs in the sandy soil,
Grant charged over the brow of the hill and into camp, scattering
dogs, papooses, and squaws alike as he rode.
ShriLL clamor filled the sultry air. Sleeping bucks awoke,
scowling at the uproar; and the horse of Good Indian, hating
always the smell and the litter of an Indian camp, pitched
furiously into the very wikiup of old Hagar, who hated the rider
of old. In the first breathing spell he loosed the dog, which
skulked, limping, into the first sheltered spot be found, and
laid him down to lick his outraged person and whimper to himself
at the memory of his plight. Grant pulled his horse to a restive
stand before a group of screeching squaws, and laughed outright
at the panic of them.
"Hello! Viney! I brought back your dog," he drawled. "He tried
to bite me--heap kay bueno* dog. Mebbyso you killum. Me no
hurtum--all time him Hartley, all time him try hard bite me.
Sleeping Turtle tell me him Viney dog. he likum Viney, me no
kill Viney dog. You all time mebbyso eat that dog--sabe? No
keep--Kay bueno. All time try for bite. You cookum, no can
bite. Sabe?"
*AUTHOR'S NOTE.--The Indians of southern Idaho spoke a somewhat
mixed dialect. Bueno (wayno), their word for 'good,' undoubtedly
being taken from the Spanish language. I believe the word "kay"
to be Indian. It means "no', and thus the "Kay bueno" so often
used by them means literally 'no good," and is a term of reproach
On the other hand, "heap bueno" is "very good," their enthusiasm
being manifested merely by drawing out the word "heap." In
speaking English they appear to have no other way of expressing,
in a single phrase, their like or dislike of an object or person.
Without waiting to see whether Viney approved of his method of
disciplining her dog, or intended to take his advice regarding
its disposal, he wheeled and started off in the direction of the
trail which led down the bluff to the Hart ranch. When he
reached the first steep descent, however, he remembered that Pete
had spoken of some mail for the Harts, and turned back to get it.
Once more in Hartley, he found that the belated train was making
up time, and would be there within an hour; and, since it carried
mail from the West, it seemed hardly worthwhile to ride away
before its arrival. Also, Pete intimated that there was a good
chance of prevailing upon the dining-car conductor to throw off a
chunk of ice. Grant, therefore, led his horse around into the
shade, and made himself comfortable while he waited.
CHAPTER III
OLD WIVES TALES
Down the winding trail of Snake River bluff straggled a blanketed
half dozen of old Wolfbelly's tribe, the braves stalking moodily
in front and kicking up a gray cloud of dust which enveloped the
squaws behind them but could not choke to silence their shrill
chatter; for old Hagar was there, and Viney, and the incident of
the dog was fresh in their minds and tickling their tongues.
The Hart boys were assembled at the corral, halter-breaking a
three-year-old for the pure fun of it. Wally caught sight of the
approaching blotch of color, and yelled a wordless greeting; him
had old Hagar carried lovingly upon her broad shoulders with her
own papoose when he was no longer than her arm; and she knew his
voice even at that distance, and grinned--grinned and hid her joy
in a fold of her dingy red blanket.
"Looks like old Wolfbelly's back," Clark observed needlessly.
"Donny, if they don't go to the house right away, you go and tell
mum they're here. Chances are the whole bunch'll hang around
till supper."
"Say!" Gene giggled with fourteen-year-old irrepressibility.
"Does anybody know where Vadnie is? If we could spring 'em on
her and make her believe they're on the warpath--say, I'll gamble
she'd run clear to the Malad!"
"I told her, cross my heart, this morning that the Injuns are
peaceful now. I said Good Injun was the only one that's
dangerous--oh, I sure did throw a good stiff load, all right!"
Clark grinned at the memory. "I've got to see Grant first, when
he gets back, and put him wise to the rep he's got. Vad didn't
hardly swallow it. She said: 'Why, Cousin Clark! Aunt Phoebe
says he's perfectly lovely!"' Clark mimicked the girl's voice
with relish.
"Aw--there's a lot of squaws tagging along behind!" Donny
complained disgustedly from his post of observation on the fence.
"They'll go to the house first thing to gabble--there's old Hagar
waddling along like a duck. You can't make that warpath business
stick, Clark--not with all them squaws."
"Well, say, you sneak up and hide somewhere till yuh see if
Vadnie's anywhere around. If they get settled down talking to
mum, they're good for an hour--she's churning, Don--you hide in
the rocks by the milk-house till they get settled. And I'll see
if-- Git! Pikeway, while they're behind the stacks!"
Donny climbed down and scurried through the sand to the house as
if his very life depended upon reaching it unseen. The group of
Indians came up, huddled at the corral, and peered through the
stout rails.
"How! How!" chorused the boys, and left the horse for a moment
while they shook hands ceremoniously with the three bucks. Three
Indians, Clark decided regretfully, would make a tame showing on
the warpath, however much they might lend themselves to the
spirit of the joke. He did not quite know how he was going to
manage it, but he was hopeful still. It was unthinkable that
real live Indians should be permitted to come and go upon the
ranch without giving Evadna Ramsey, straight from New Jersey, the
scare of her life.
The three bucks, grunting monosyllabic greetings' climbed, in all
the dignity of their blankets, to the top rail of the corral, and
roosted there to watch the horse-breaking; and for the present
Clark held his peace.
The squaws hovered there for a moment longer, peeping through the
rails. Then Hagar--she of much flesh and more temper--grunted a
word or two, and they turned and plodded on to where the house
stood hidden away in its nest of cool green. For a space they
stood outside the fence, peering warily into the shade,
instinctively cautious in their manner of approaching a strange
place, and detained also by the Indian etiquette which demands
that one wait until invited to enter a strange camp.
After a period of waiting which seemed to old Hagar sufficient,
she pulled her blanket tight across her broad hips, waddled to
the gate, pulled it open with self-conscious assurance, and led
the way soft-footedly around the house to where certain faint
sounds betrayed the presence of Phoebe Hart in her stone milkhouse.
At the top of the short flight of wide stone steps they stopped
and huddled silently, until the black shadow of them warned
Phoebe of their presence. She had lived too long in the West to
seem startled when she suddenly discovered herself watched by
three pair of beady black eyes, so she merely nodded, and laid
down her butter-ladle to shake hands all around.
"How, Hagar? How, Viney? How, Lucy? Heap glad to see you.
Bueno buttermilk--mebbyso you drinkum?"
However diffident they might be when it came to announcing their
arrival, their bashfulness did not extend to accepting offers of
food or drink. Three brown hands were eagerly
outstretched--though it was the hand of Hagar which grasped first
the big tin cup. They not only drank, they guzzled, and
afterward drew a fold of blanket across their milk-white lips,
and grinned in pure animal satisfaction.
"Bueno. He-e-ap bueno!" they chorused appreciatively, and
squatted at the top of the stone steps, watching Phoebe
manipulate the great ball of yellow butter in its wooden bowl.
After a brief silence, Hagar shook the tangle of unkempt, black
hair away from her moonlike face, and began talking in a soft
monotone, her voice now and then rising to a shrill singsong.
"Mebbyso Tom, mebbyso Sharlie, mebbyso Sleeping Turtle all time
come along," she announced. "Stop all time corral, talk yo'
boys. Mebbyso heap likum drink yo' butter water. Bueno."
When Phoebe nodded assent, Hagar went on to the news which had
brought her so soon to the ranch--the news which satisfied both
an old grudge and her love of gossip.
"Good Injun, him all time heap kay bueno," she stated
emphatically, her sloe black eyes fixed unwaveringly upon
Phoebe's face to see if the stab was effective. "Good Injun come
Hartley, all time drunk likum pig.
"All time heap yell, heap shoot--kay bueno. Wantum fight
Man-that-coughs. Come all time camp, heap yell, heap shoot some
more. I fetchum dog--Viney dog--heap dragum through
sagebrush--dog all time cry, no can get away--me thinkum kill
that dog. Squaws cry--Viney cry--Good Injun"--Hagar paused here
for greater effect--"makum horse all time buck--ridum in
wikiup--Hagar wikiup--all time breakum--no can fix that wikiup.
Good Injun, hee-e-ap kay bueno!" At the last her voice was high
and tremulous with anger.
"Good Indian mebbyso all same my boy Wally." Phoebe gave the
butter a vicious slap. "Me heap love Good Indian. You no call
Good Indian, you call Grant. Grant bueno. Heap bueno all time.
No drunk, no yell, no shoot, mebbyso"--she hesitated, knowing
well the possibilities of her foster son--"mebbyso catchum
dog--me think no catchum. Grant all same my boy. All time me
likum--heap bueno."
Viney and Lucy nudged each other and tittered into their
blankets, for the argument was an old one between Hagar and
Phoebe, though the grievance of Hagar might be fresh. Hagar
shifted her blanket and thrust out a stubborn under lip.
"Wally boy, heap bueno," she said; and her malicious old face
softened as she spoke of him, dear as her own first-born. "Jack
bueno, mebbyso Gene bueno, mebbyso Clark, mebbyso Donny all time
bueno." Doubt was in her voice when she praised those last two,
however, because of their continual teasing. She stopped short
to emphasize the damning contrast. "Good Injun all same mebbyso
yo' boy Grant, hee-ee-eap kay bueno. Good Injun Grant all time
DEBBIL!"
It was at this point that Donny slipped away to report that
"Mamma and old Hagar are scrappin' over Good Injun again," and
told with glee the tale of his misdeeds as recounted by the
squaw.
Phoebe in her earnestness forgot to keep within the limitations
of their dialect.
"Grant's a good boy, and a smart boy. There isn't a
better-hearted fellow in the country, if I have got five boys of
my own. You think I like him better than I like Wally, is all
ails you, Hagar. You're jealous of Grant, and you always have
been, ever since his father left him with me. I hope my heart's
big enough to hold them all." She remembered then that they
could not understand half she was saying, and appealed to Viney.
Viney liked Grant.
"Viney, you tell me. Grant no come Hartley, no drunk, no yell,
no catchum you dog, no ride in Hagar's wikiup? You tell me,
Viney."
Viney and Lucy bobbed their heads rapidly up and down. Viney,
with a sidelong glance at Hagar, spoke softly.
"Good Injun Grant, mebbyso home Hartley," she admitted
reluctantly, as if she would have been pleased to prove Hagar a
liar in all things. "Me thinkum no drunk. Mebbyso ketchum
dog--dog kay bueno, mebbyso me killing. Good Injun Grant no heap
yell, no shoot all time--mebbyso no drunk. No breakum wikiup.
Horse all time kay bueno, Hagar--"
"Shont-isham!" (big lie) Hagar interrupted shrilly then, and
Viney relapsed into silence, her thin face growing sullen under
the upbraiding she received in her native tongue. Phoebe,
looking at her attentively, despaired of getting any nearer the
truth from any of them.
There was a sudden check to Hagar's shrewish clamor. The squaws
stiffened to immobility and listened stolidly, their eyes alone
betraying the curiosity they felt. Off somewhere at the head of
the tiny pond, hidden away in the jungle of green, a voice was
singing; a girl's voice, and a strange voice--for the squaws knew
well the few women voices along the Snake.
"That my girl," Phoebe explained, stopping the soft pat--pat of
her butter-ladle.
"Where ketchum yo' girl?" Hagar forgot her petulance, and became
curious as any white woman.
"Me ketchum 'way off, where sun come up. In time me have heap
boys--mebbyso want girl all time. My mother's sister's boy have
one girl, 'way off where sun come up. My mother's sister's boy
die, his wife all same die, that girl mebbyso heap sad; no got
father, no got mother--all time got nobody. Kay bueno. That
girl send one letter, say all time got nobody. Me want one girl.
Me send one letter, tell that girl come, be all time my girl.
Five days ago, that girl come. Her heap glad; boys all time heap
glad, my man heap glad. Bueno. Mebbyso you glad me have one
girl." Not that their approval was necessary, or even of much
importance; but Phoebe was accustomed to treat them like spoiled
children.
Hagar's lip was out-thrust again. "Yo' ketchum one girl, mebbyso
yo' no more likum my boy Wally. Kay bueno."
"Heap like all my boys jus' same," Phoebe hastened to assure her,
and added with a hint of malice, "Heap like my boy Grant all
same."
"Huh!" Hagar chose to remain unconvinced and antagonistic. "Good
Injun kay bueno. Yo' girl, mebbyso kay bueno."
"What name yo' girl?" Viney interposed hastily.
"Name Evadna Ramsey." In spite of herself, Phoebe felt a trifle
chilled by their lack of enthusiasm. She went back to her
butter-making in dignified silence.
The squaws blinked at her stolidly. Always they were inclined
toward suspicion of strangers, and perhaps to a measure of
jealousy as well. Not many whites received them with frank
friendship as did the Hart family, and they felt far more upon
the subject than they might put into words, even the words of
their own language.
Many of the white race looked upon them as beggars, which was bad
enough, or as thieves, which was worse; and in a general way they
could not deny the truth of it. But they never stole from the
Harts, and they never openly begged from the Harts. The friends
of the Harts, however, must prove their friendship before they
could hope for better than an imperturbable neutrality. So they
would not pretend to be glad. Hagar was right--perhaps the girl
was no good. They would wait until they could pass judgment upon
this girl who had come to live in the wikiup of the Harts. Then
Lucy, she who longed always for children and had been denied by
fate, stirred slightly, her nostrils aquiver.
"Mebbyso bueno yo' girl,', she yielded, speaking softly.
"Mebbyso see yo' girl."
Phoebe's face cleared, and she called, in mellow crescendo: "Oh,
Va-ad-NIEE?" Immediately the singing stopped.
"Coming, Aunt Phoebe," answered the voice.
The squaws wrapped themselves afresh in their blankets, passed
brown palms smoothingly down their hair from the part in the
middle, settled their braids upon their bosoms with true feminine
instinct, and waited. They heard her feet crunching softly in
the gravel that bordered the pond, but not a head turned that
way; for all the sign of life they gave, the three might have
been mere effigies of women. They heard a faint scream when she
caught sight of them sitting there, and their faces settled into
more stolid indifference, adding a hint of antagonism even to the
soft eyes of Lucy, the tender, childless one.
"Vadnie, here are some new neighbors I want you to get acquainted
with." Phoebe's eyes besought the girl to be calm. "They're all
old friends of mine. Come here and let me introduce you--and
don't look so horrified, honey!"
Those incorrigibles, her cousins, would have whooped with joy at
her unmistakable terror when she held out a trembling hand and
gasped faintly: "H-how do you--do?"
"This Hagar," Phoebe announced cheerfully; and the old squaw
caught the girl's hand and gripped it tightly for a moment in
malicious enjoyment of her too evident fear and repulsion.
"This Viney."
Viney, reading Evadna's face in one keen, upward glance, kept her
hands hidden in the folds of her blanket, and only nodded twice
reassuringly.
"This Lucy."
Lucy read also the girl's face; but she reached up, pressed her
hand gently, and her glance was soft and friendly. So the ordeal
was over.
"Bring some of that cake you baked to-day, honey--and do brace
up!" Phoebe patted her upon the shoulder.
Hagar forestalled the hospitable intent by getting slowly upon
her fat legs, shaking her hair out of her eyes, and grunting a
command to the others. With visible reluctance Lucy and Viney
rose also, hitched their blankets into place, and vanished,
soft-footed as they had come.
"Oo-oo!" Evadna stared at the place where they were not. "Wild
Indians--I thought the boys were just teasing when they said
so--and it's really true, Aunt Phoebe?"
"They're no wilder than you are," Phoebe retorted impatiently.
"Oh, they ARE wild. They're exactly like in my history--and they
don't make a sound when they go--you just look, and they're gone!
That old fat one--did you see how she looked at me? As if she
wanted to--SCALP me, Aunt Phoebe! She looked right at my hair
and--"
"Well, she didn't take it with her, did she? Don't be silly.
I've known old Hagar ever since Wally was a baby. She took him
right to her own wikiup and nursed him with her own papoose for
two months when I was sick, and Viney stayed with me day and
night and pulled me through. Lucy I've known since she was a
papoose. Great grief, child! Didn't you hear me say they're old
friends? I wanted you to be nice to them, because if they like
you there's nothing they won't do for you. If they don't,
there's nothing they WILL do. You might as well get used to
them--"
Out by the gate rose a clamor which swept nearer and nearer until
the noise broke at the corner of the house like a great wave, in
a tumult of red blanket, flying black hair, the squalling of a
female voice, and the harsh laughter of the man who carried the
disturbance, kicking and clawing, in his arms. Fighting his way
to the milk-house, he dragged the squaw along beside the porch,
followed by the Indians and all the Hart boys, a yelling, jeering
audience.
"You tell her shont-isham! Ah-h--you can't break loose, you old
she-wildcat. Quit your biting, will you? By all the big and
little spirits of your tribe, you'll wish--"
Panting, laughing, swearing also in breathless exclamations, he
forced her to the top of the steps, backed recklessly down them,
and came to a stop in the corner by the door. Evadna had taken
refuge there; and he pressed her hard against the rough wall
without in the least realizing that anything was behind him save
unsentient stone.
"Now, you sing your little song, and be quick about it!" he
commanded his captive sternly. "You tell Mother Hart you lied.
I hear she's been telling you I'm drunk, Mother Hart--didn't you,
you old beldam? You say you heap sorry you all time tellum lie.
You say: 'Good Injun, him all time heap bueno.' Say: 'Good Injun
no drunk, no heap shoot, no heap yell--all time bueno.' Quick, or
I'll land you headforemost in that pond, you infernal old hag!"
"Good Injun hee-eeap kay bueno! Heap debbil all time." Hagar
might be short of breath, but her spirit was unconquered, and her
under lip bore witness to her stubbornness.
Phoebe caught him by the arm then, thinking he meant to make good
his threat--and it would not have been unlike Grant Imsen to do
so.
"Now, Grant, you let her go," she coaxed. "I know you aren't
drunk--of course, I knew it all the time. I told Hagar so. What
do you care what she says about you? You don't want to fight an
old woman, Grant--a man can't fight a woman--"
"You tell her you heap big liar!" Grant did not even look at
Phoebe, but his purpose seemed to waver in spite of himself.
"You all time kay bueno. You all time lie." He gripped her more
firmly, and turned his head slightly toward Phoebe. "You'd be
tired of it yourself if she threw it into you like she does into
me, Mother Hart. It's got so I can't ride past this old hag in
the trail but she gives me the bad eye, and mumbles into her
blanket. And if I look sidewise, she yowls all over the country
that I'm drunk. I'm getting tired of it!" He shook the squaw as
a puppy shakes a shoe--shook her till her hair quite hid her ugly
old face from sight.
"All right--Mother Hart she tellum mebbyso let you go. This time
I no throw you in pond. You heap take care next time, mebbyso.
You no tellum big lie, me all time heap drunk. You kay bueno.
All time me tellum Mother Hart, tellum boys, tellum Viney, Lucy,
tellum Charlie and Tom and Sleeping Turtle you heap big liar. Me
tell Wally shont-isham. Him all time my friend--mebbyso him no
likum you no more.
"Huh. Get out--pikeway before I forget you're a lady!"
He laughed ironically, and pushed her from him so suddenly that
she sprawled upon the steps. The Indians grinned
unsympathetically at her, for Hagar was not the most popular
member of the tribe by any means. Scrambling up, she shook her
witch locks from her face, wrapped herself in her dingy blanket,
and scuttled away, muttering maledictions under her breath. The
watching group turned and followed her, and in a few seconds the
gate was heard to slam shut behind them. Grant stood where he
was, leaning against the milk-house wall; and when they were
gone, he gave a short, apologetic laugh.
"No need to lecture, Mother Hart. I know it was a fool thing to
do; but when Donny told me what the old devil said, I was so mad
for a minute--"
Phoebe caught him again by the arm and pulled him forward.
"Grant! You're squeezing Vadnie to death, just about! Great
grief, I forgot all about the poor child being here! You poor
little--"
"Squeezing who?" Grant whirled, and caught a brief glimpse of a
crumpled little figure behind him, evidently too scared to cry,
and yet not quite at the fainting point of terror. He backed,
and began to stammer an apology; but she did not wait to hear a
word of it. For an instant she stared into his face, and then,
like a rabbit released from its paralysis of dread, she darted
past him and deaf up the stone steps into the house. He heard
the kitchen-door shut, and the click of the lock. He heard other
doors slam suggestively; and he laughed in spite of his
astonishment.
"And who the deuce might that be?" he asked, feeling in his
pocket for smoking material.
Phoebe seemed undecided between tears and laughter. "Oh, Grant,
GRANT! She'll think you're ready to murder everybody on the
ranch--and you can be such a nice boy when you want to be! I did
hope--"
"I don't want to be nice," Grant objected, drawing a match along
a fairly smooth rock.
"Well, I wanted you to appear at your best; and, instead of that,
here you come, squabbling with old Hagar like--"
"Yes--sure. But who is the timid lady?"
"Timid! You nearly killed the poor girl, besides scaring her half
to death, and then you call her timid. I know she thought there
was going to be a real Indian massacre, right here, and she'd be
scalped--"
Wally Hart came back, laughing to himself.
"Say, you've sure cooked your goose with old Hagar, Grant! She's
right on the warpath, and then some. She'd like to burn yuh
alive--she said so. She's headed for camp, and all the rest of
the bunch at her heels. She won't come here any more till you're
kicked off the ranch, as near as I could make out her jabbering.
And she won't do your washing any more, mum--she said so. You're
kay bueno yourself, because you take Good Indian's part. We're
all kay bueno--all but me. She wanted me to quit the bunch and
go live in her wikiup. I'm the only decent one in the outfit."
He gave his mother an affectionate little hug as he went past,
and began an investigative tour of the stone jars on the cool
rock floor within. "What was it all about, Grant? What did yuh
do to her, anyway?"
"Oh, it wasn't anything. Hand me up a cup of that buttermilk,
will you? They've got a dog up there in camp that I'm going to
kill some of these days--if they don't beat me to it. He was up
at the store, and when I went out to get my horse, he tried to
take a leg off me. I kicked him in the nose and he came at me
again, so when I mounted I just dropped my loop over Mr. Dog.
Sleeping Turtle was there, and he said the dog belonged to Viney,
So I just led him gently to camp."
He grinned a little at the memory of his gentleness. "I told
Viney I thought he'd make a fine stew, and, they'd better use him
up right away before he spoiled. That's all there was to it.
Well, Keno did sink his head and pitch around camp a little, but
not to amount to anything. He just stuck his nose into old
Hagar's wikiup--and one sniff seemed to be about all he wanted.
He didn't hurt anything."
He took a meditative bite of cake, finished the buttermilk in
three rapturous swallows, and bethought him of the feminine
mystery.
"If you please, Mother Hart, who was that Christmas angel I
squashed?"
"Vad? Was Vad in on it, mum? I never saw her." Wally
straightened up with a fresh chunk of cake in his hand. "Was she
scared?"
"Yes," his mother admitted reluctantly, "I guess she was, all
right. First the squaws--and, poor girl, I made her shake hands
all round--and then Grant here, acting like a wild hyena--"
"Say, PLEASE don't tell me who she is, or where she belongs, or
anything like that," Grant interposed, with some sarcasm. "I
smashed her flat between me and the wall, and I scared the
daylights out of her; and I'm told I should have appeared at my
best. But who she is, or where she belongs--"
"She belongs right here." Phoebe's tone was a challenge, whether
she meant it to be so or not. "This is going to be her home from
now on; and I want you boys to treat her nicer than you've been
doing. She's been here a week almost; and there ain't one of you
that's made friends with her yet, or tried to, even. You've
played jokes on her, and told her things to scare her--and my
grief! I was hoping she'd have a softening influence on you, and
make gentlemen of you. And far as I can make out, just having
her on the place seems to put the Old Harry into every one of
you! It isn't right. It isn't the way I expected my boys would
act toward a stranger--a girl especially. And I did hope Grant
would behave better."
"Sure, he ought to. Us boneheads don't know any better--but
Grant's EDUCATED." Wally grinned and winked elaborately at his
mother's back.
"I'm not educated up to Christmas angels that look as if they'd
been stepped on," Grant defended himself.
"She's a real nice little thing. If you boys would quit teasing
the life out of her, I don't doubt but what, in six months or so,
you wouldn't know the girl," Phoebe argued, with some heat.
"I don't know the girl now." Grant spoke dryly. "I don't want
to. If I'd held a tomahawk in one hand and her flowing locks in
the other, and was just letting a war-whoop outa me, she'd look
at me--the way she did look." He snorted in contemptuous
amusement, and gave a little, writhing twist of his slim body
into his trousers. "I never did like blondes," he added, in a
tone of finality, and started up the steps.
"You never liked anything that wore skirts," Phoebe flung after
him indignantly; and she came very close to the truth.
CHAPTER IV
THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL
Phoebe watched the two unhappily, sighed when they disappeared
around the corner of the house, and set her bowl of butter upon
the broad, flat rock which just missed being overflowed with
water, and sighed again.
"I'm afraid it isn't going to work," she murmured aloud; for
Phoebe, having lived much of her life in the loneliness which the
West means to women, frequently talked to herself. "She's such a
nice little thing--but the boys don't take to her like I thought
they would. I don't see as she's having a mite of influence on
their manners, unless it's to make them act worse, just to shock
her. Clark USED to take off his hat when he come into the house
most every time. And great grief! Now he'd wear it and his chaps
and spurs to the table, if I didn't make him take them off.
She's nice--she's most too nice. I've got to give that girl a
good talking to."
She mounted the steps to the back porch, tried tho kitchen door,
and found it locked. She went around to the door on the west
side, opposite the gate, found that also secured upon the inside,
and passed grimly to the next.
"My grief! I didn't know any of these doors COULD be locked!" she
muttered angrily. "They never have been before that I ever heard
of." She stopped before Evadna's window, and saw, through a slit
in the green blind, that the old-fashioned bureau had been pulled
close before it. "My grief!" she whispered disgustedly, and
retraced her steps to the east side, which, being next to the
pond, was more secluded. She surveyed dryly a window left wide
open there, gathered her brown-and-white calico dress close about
her plump person, and crawled grimly through into the sittingroom,
where, to the distress of Phoebe's order-loving soul, the
carpet was daily well-sanded with the tread of boys' boots fresh
from outdoors, and where cigarette stubs decorated every
window-sill, and the stale odor of Peaceful's pipe was never long
absent.
She went first to all the outer rooms, and unlocked every one of
the outraged doors which, unless in the uproar and excitement of
racing, laughing boys pursuing one another all over the place
with much slamming and good-natured threats of various sorts, had
never before barred the way of any man, be he red or white, came
he at noon or at midnight.
Evadna's door was barricaded, as Phoebe discovered when she
turned the knob and attempted to walk in. She gave the door an
indignant push, and heard a muffled shriek within, as if Evadna's
head was buried under her pillow.
"My grief! A body'd think you expected to be killed and eaten,"
she called out unsympathetically. "You open this door! Vadnie
Ramsey. This is a nice way to act with my own boys, in my own
house! A body'd think--"
There was the sound of something heavy being dragged laboriously
away from tho barricaded door; and in a minute a vividly blue eye
appeared at a narrow crack.
"Oh, I don't see how you dare to L-LIVE in such a place, Aunt
Phoebe!" she cried tearfully, opening the door a bit wider.
"Those Indians--and that awful man--"
"That was only Grant, honey. Let me in. There's a few things I
want to say to you, Vadnie. You promised to help me teach my
boys to be gentle--it's all they lack, and it takes gentle women,
honey--"
"I am gentle," Evadna protested grievedly. "I've never once
forgotten to be gentle and quiet, and I haven't done a thing to
them--but they're horrid and rough, anyway--"
"Let me in, honey, and we'll talk it over. Something's got to be
done. If you wouldn't be so timid, and would make friends with
them, instead of looking at them as if you expected them to
murder you--I must say, Vadnie, you're a real temptation; they
can't help scaring you when you go around acting as if you
expected to be scared. You--you're TOO--" The door opened still
wider, and she went in. "Now, the idea of a great girl like you
hiding her head under a pillow just because Grant asked old Hagar
to apologize!"
Evadna sat down upon the edge of the bed and stared unwinkingly
at her aunt. "They don't apologize like that in New Jersey," she
observed, with some resentment in her voice, and dabbed at her
unbelievably blue eyes with a moist ball of handkerchief.
"I know they don't, honey." Phoebe patted her hand reassuringly.
"That's what I want you to help me teach my boys--to be real
gentlemen. They're pure gold, every one of them; but I can't
deny they're pretty rough on the outside sometimes. And I hope
you will be--"
"Oh, I know. I understand perfectly. You just got me out here
as a--a sort of sandpaper for your boys' manners!" Evadna choked
over a little sob of self-pity. "I can just tell you one thing,
Aunt Phoebe, that fellow you call Grant ought to be smoothed with
one of those funny axes they hew logs with."
Phoebe bit her lips because she wanted to treat the subject very
seriously. "I want you to promise me, honey, that you will be
particularly nice to Grant; PARTICULARLY nice. He's so alone,
and he's very proud and sensitive, because he feels his
loneliness. No one understands him as I do--"
"I hate him!" gritted Evadna, in an emphatic whisper which her
Aunt Phoebe thought it wise not to seem to hear.
Phoebe settled herself comfortably for a long talk. The murmur
of her voice as she explained and comforted and advised came
soothingly from the room, with now and then an interruption while
she waited for a tardy answer to some question. Finally she rose
and stood in the doorway, looking back at a huddled figure on the
bed.
"Now dry your eyes and be a good girl, and remember what you've
promised," she admonished kindly. "Aunt Phoebe didn't mean to
scold you, honey; she only wants you to feel that you belong
here, and she wants you to like her boys and have them like you.
They've always wanted a sister to pet; and Aunt Phoebe is hoping
you'll not disappoint her. You'll try; won't you, Vadnie?"
"Y--yes," murmured Vadnie meekly from the pillow. "I know you
will." Phoebe looked at her for a moment longer rather
wistfully, and turned away. "I do wish she had some spunk," she
muttered complainingly, not thinking that Evadna might hear her.
"She don't take after the Ramseys none--there wasn't anything
mushy about them that I ever heard of."
"Mushy! MUSHY!" Evadna sat up and stared at nothing at all while
she repeated the word under her breath. "She wants me to be
gentle--she preached gentleness in her letters, and told how her
boys need it, and then--she calls it being MUSHY!"
She reached mechanically for her hair-brush, and fumbled in a
tumbled mass of shining, yellow hair quite as unbelievable in its
way as were her eyes--Grant had shown a faculty for observing
keenly when he called her a Christmas angel--and drew out a halfdozen
hairpins, letting them slide from her lap to the floor.
"MUSHY!" she repeated, and shook down her hair so that it framed
her face and those eyes of hers. "I suppose that's what they all
say behind my back. And how can a girl be nice WITHOUT being
mushy?" She drew the brush meditatively through her hair. "I am
scared to death of Indians," she admitted, with analytical
frankness, "and tarantulas and snakes--but--MUSHY!"
Grant stood smoking in the doorway of the sitting-room, where he
could look out upon the smooth waters of the pond darkening under
the shade of the poplars and the bluff behind, when Evadna came
out of her room. He glanced across at her, saw her hesitate, as
if she were meditating a retreat, and gave his shoulders a twitch
of tolerant amusement that she should be afraid of him. Then he
stared out over the pond again. Evadna walked straight over to
him.
"So you're that other savage whose manners I'm supposed to
smooth, are you?" she asked abruptly, coming to a stop within
three feet of him, and regarding him carefully, her hands clasped
behind her.
"Please don't tease the animals," Grant returned, in the same
impersonal tone which she had seen fit to employ--but his eyes
turned for a sidelong glance at her, although he appeared to be
watching the trout rise lazily to the insects skimming over the
surface of the water.
"I'm supposed to be nice to you--par-TIC-ularly nice--because you
need it most. I dare say you do, judging from what I've seen of
you. At any rate, I've promised. But I just want you to
understand that I'm not going to mean one single bit of it. I
don't like you--I can't endure you!--and if I'm nice, it will
just be because I've promised Aunt Phoebe. You're not to take my
politeness at its face value, for back of it I shall dislike you
all the time."
Grant's lips twitched, and there was a covert twinkle in his
eyes, though he looked around him with elaborate surprise.
"It's early in the day for mosquitoes," he drawled; "but I was
sure I heard one buzzing somewhere close."
"Aunt Phoebe ought to get a street roller to smooth your
manners," Evadna observed pointedly.
"Instead it's as if she hung her picture of a Christmas angel up
before the wolf's den, eh?" he suggested calmly, betraying his
Indian blood in the unconsciously symbolic form of expression.
"No doubt the wolf's nature will be greatly benefited--his teeth
will be dulled for his prey, his voice softened for the
nightcry--if he should ever, by chance, discover that the
Christmas angel is there."
"I don't think he'll be long in making the discovery." The blue
of Evadna's eyes darkened and darkened until they were almost
black. "Christmas angel,--well, I like that! Much you know about
angels."
Grant turned his head indolently and regarded her.
"If it isn't a Christmas angel--they're always very blue and very
golden, and pinky-whitey--if it isn't a Christmas angel, for the
Lord's sake what is it?" He gave his head a slight shake, as if
the problem was beyond his solving, and flicked the ashes from
his cigarette.
"Oh, I could pinch you!" She gritted her teeth to prove she meant
what she said.
"It says it could pinch me." Grant lazily addressed the trout.
"I wonder why it didn't, then, when it was being squashed?"
"I just wish to goodness I had! Only I suppose Aunt Phoebe--"
"I do believe it's got a temper. I wonder, now, if it could be a
LIVE angel?" Grant spoke to the softly swaying poplars.
"Oh, you--there now!" She made a swift little rush at him, nipped
his biceps between a very small thumb and two fingers, and stood
back, breathing quickly and regarding him in a shamed defiance.
"I'll show you whether I'm alive!" she panted vindictively.
"It's alive, and it's a humming-bird. Angels don't pinch."
Grant laid a finger upon his arm and drawled his solution of a
trivial mystery. "It mistook me for a honeysuckle, and gave me a
peck to make sure." He smiled indulgently, and exhaled a long
wreath of smoke from his nostrils. "Dear little
humming-birds--so simple and so harmless!"
"And I've promised to be nice to--THAT!" cried Evadna, in
bitterness, and rushed past him to the porch.
Being a house built to shelter a family of boys, and steps being
a superfluity scorned by their agile legs, there was a sheer drop
of three feet to the ground upon that side. Evadna made it in a
jump, just as the boys did, and landed lightly upon her slippered
feet.
"I hate you--hate you--HATE YOU!" she cried, her eyes blazing up
at his amused face before she ran off among the trees.
"It sings a sweet little song," he taunted, and his laughter
followed her mockingly as she fled from him into the shadows.
"What's the joke, Good Injun? Tell us, so we can laugh too."
Wally and Jack hurried in from the kitchen and made for the
doorway where he stood.
From under his straight, black brows Grant sent a keen glance
into the shade of the grove, where, an instant before, had
flickered the white of Evadna's dress. The shadows lay there
quietly now, undisturbed by so much as a sleepy bird's fluttering
wings.
"I was just thinking of the way I yanked that dog down into old
Wolfbelly's camp," he said, though there was no tangible reason
for lying to them. "Mister!" he added, his eyes still searching
the shadows out there in the grove, "we certainly did go some!"
CHAPTER V
"I DON'T CARE MUCH ABOUT GIRLS"
"There's no use asking the Injuns to go on the warpath," Gene
announced disgustedly, coming out upon the porch where the rest
of the boys were foregathered, waiting for the ringing tattoo
upon the iron triangle just outside the back door which would be
the supper summons. "They're too lazy to take the trouble--and,
besides, they're scared of dad. I was talking to Sleeping Turtle
just now--met him down there past the Point o' Rocks."
"What's the matter with us boys going on the warpath ourselves?
We don't need the Injuns. As long as she knows they're hanging
around close, it's all the same. If we could just get mum off
the ranch--"
"If we could kidnap her--say, I wonder if we couldn't!" Clark
looked at the others tentatively.
"Good Injun might do the rescue act and square himself with her
for what happened at the milk-house," Wally suggested dryly.
"Oh, say, you'd scare her to death. There's no use in piling it
on quite so thick," Jack interposed mildly. "I kinda like the
kid sometimes. Yesterday, when I took her part way up the bluff,
she acted almost human. On the dead, she did!"
"Kill the traitor! Down with him! Curses on the man who betrays
us!" growled Wally, waving his cigarette threateningly.
Whereupon Gene and Clark seized the offender by heels and
shoulders, and with a brief, panting struggle heaved him bodily
off the porch.
"Over the cliff he goes--so may all traitors perish!" Wally
declaimed approvingly, drawing up his legs hastily out of the way
of Jack's clutching fingers.
"Say, old Peppajee's down at the stable with papa," Donny
informed them breathlessly. "I told Marie to put him right next
to Vadnie if he stays to supper--and, uh course, he will. If
mamma don't get next and change his place, it'll be fun to watch
her; watch Vad, I mean. She's scared plum to death of anything
that wears a blanket, and to have one right at her elbow--wonder
where she is--"
"That girl's got to be educated some if she's going to live in
this family," Wally observed meditatively. "There's a whole lot
she's got to learn, and the only way to learn her thorough is--"
"You forget," Grant interrupted him ironically, "that she's going
to make gentlemen of us all."
"Oh, yes--sure. Jack's coming down with it already. You oughta
be quarantined, old-timer; that's liable to be catching." Wally
snorted his disdain of the whole proceeding. "I'd rather go to
jail myself."
Evadna by a circuitous route had reached the sitting-room without
being seen or heard; and it was at this point in the conversation
that she tiptoed out again, her hands doubled into tight little
fists, and her teeth set hard together. She did not look, at
that moment, in the least degree "mushy."
When the triangle clanged its supper call, however, she came
slowly down from her favorite nook at the head of the pond, her
hands filled with flowers hastily gathered in the dusk.
"Here she comes--let's get to our places first, so mamma can't
change Peppajee around," Donny implored, in a whisper; and the
group on the porch disappeared with some haste into the kitchen.
Evadna was leisurely in her movements that night. The tea had
been poured and handed around the table by the Portuguese girl,
Marie, and the sugar-bowl was going after, when she settled
herself and her ruffles daintily between Grant and a braided,
green-blanketed, dignifiedly loquacious Indian.
The boys signaled each another to attention by kicking
surreptitiously under the table, but nothing happened. Evadna
bowed a demure acknowledgment when her Aunt Phoebe introduced the
two, accepted the sugar-bowl from Grant and the butter from
Peppajee, and went composedly about the business of eating her
supper. She seemed perfectly at ease; too perfectly at ease,
decided Grant, who had an instinct for observation and was
covertly watching her. It was unnatural that she should rub
elbows with Peppajee without betraying the faintest trace of
surprise that he should be sitting at the table with them.
"Long time ago," Peppajee was saying to Peaceful, taking up the
conversation where Evadna had evidently interrupted it, "many
winters ago, my people all time brave. A]1 time hunt, all time
fight, all time heap strong. No drinkum whisky all same now."
He flipped a braid back over his shoulder, buttered generously a
hot biscuit, and reached for the honey." No brave no more--kay
bueno. All time ketchum whisky, get drunk all same likum hog.
Heap lazy. No hunt no more, no fight. Lay all time in sun,
sleep. No sun come, lay all time in wikiup. Agent, him givum
flour, givum meat, givum blanket, you thinkum bueno. He tellum
you, kay bueno. Makum Injun lazy. Makum all same wachee-typo"
(tramp). "All time eat, all time sleep, playum cards all time,
drinkum whisky. Kay bueno. Huh." The grunt stood for disgust
of his tribe, always something of an affectation with Peppajee.
"My brother, my brother's wife, my brother's wife's--ah--" He
searched his mind, frowning, for an English word, gave it up, and
substituted a phrase. "All the folks b'longum my brother's wife,
heap lazy all time. Me no likum. Agent one time givum plenty
flour, plenty meat, plenty tea. Huh. Them damn' folks no eatum.
All time playum cards, drinkum whisky. All time otha fella
ketchum flour, ketchum meat, ketchum tea--ketchum all them thing
b'longum." In the rhetorical pause he made there, his black eyes
wandered inadvertently to Evadna's face. And Evadna, the timid
one, actually smiled back.
"Isn't it a shame they should do that," she murmured
sympathetically.
"Huh." Peppajee turned his eyes and his attention to Peaceful,
as if the opinion and the sympathy of a mere female were not
worthy his notice. "Them grub all gone, them Injuns mebbyso
ketchum hungry belly." Evadna blushed, and looked studiously at
her plate.
"Come my wikiup. Me got plenty flour, plenty meat, plenty tea.
Stay all time my wikiup. Sleepum my wikiup. Sun come up"--he
pointed a brown, sinewy hand toward the east--"eatum my grub.
Sun up there"--his finger indicated the zenith--"eatum some more.
Sun go 'way, eatum some more. Then sleepum all time my wikiup.
Bimeby, mebbyso my flour all gone, my meat mebbyso gone, mebbyso
tea--them folks all time eatum grub, me no ketchum. Me no playum
cards, all same otha fella ketchum my grub. Kay bueno. Better
me playum cards mebbyso all time.
"Bimeby no ketchum mo' grub, no stopum my wikiup. Them folks
pikeway. Me tellum 'Yo' heap lazy, heap kay bueno. Yo' all time
eatum my grub, yo' no givum me money, no givum hoss, no givum
notting. Me damn' mad all time yo'. Yo' go damn' quick!'"
Peppajee held out his cup for more tea. "Me tellum my brother,"
he finished sonorously, his black eyes sweeping lightly the faces
of his audience, "yo' no come back, yo'--"
Evadna caught her breath, as if someone had dashed cold water in
her face. Never before in her life had she heard the epithet
unprintable, and she stared fixedly at the old-fashioned, silver
castor which always stood in the exact center of the table.
Old Peaceful Hart cleared his throat, glanced furtively at
Phoebe, and drew his hand down over his white beard. The boys
puffed their cheeks with the laughter they would, if possible,
restrain, and eyed Evadna's set face aslant. It was Good Indian
who rebuked the offender.
"Peppajee, mebbyso you no more say them words," he said quietly.
"Heap kay bueno. White man no tellum where white woman hear.
White woman no likum hear; all time heap shame for her."
"Huh," grunted Peppajee doubtingly, his eyes turning to Phoebe.
Times before had he said them before Phoebe Hart, and she had
passed them by with no rebuke. Grant read the glance, and
answered it.
"Mother Hart live long time in this place," he reminded him.
"Hear bad talk many times. This girl no hear; no likum hear.
You sabe? You no make shame for this girl." He glanced
challengingly across the table at Wally, whose grin was growing
rather pronounced.
"Huh. Mebbyso you boss all same this ranch?" Peppajee retorted
sourly. "Mebbyso Peacefu' tellum, him no likum."
Peaceful, thus drawn into the discussion, cleared his throat
again.
"Wel-l-l--WE don't cuss much before the women," he admitted
apologetically "We kinda consider that men's talk. I reckon
Vadnie'll overlook it this time." He looked across at her
beseechingly. "You no feelum bad, Peppajee."
"Huh. Me no makum squaw-talk." Peppajee laid down his knife,
lifted a corner of his blanket, and drew it slowly across his
stern mouth. He muttered a slighting sentence in Indian.
In the same tongue Grant answered him sharply, and after that was
silence broken only by the subdued table sounds. Evadna's eyes
filled slowly until she finally pushed back her chair and hurried
out into the yard and away from the dogged silence of that
blanketed figure at her elbow.
She was scarcely settled, in the hammock, ready for a comforting
half hour of tears, when someone came from the house, stood for a
minute while he rolled a cigarette, and then came straight toward
her.
She sat up, and waited defensively. More baiting, without a
doubt--and she was not in the mood to remember any promises about
being a nice, gentle little thing. The figure came close,
stooped, and took her by the arm. In the half--light she knew
him then. It was Grant.
"Come over by the pond," he said, in what was almost a command."
I want to talk to you a little."
"Does it occur to you that I might not want to talk t to you?"
Still, she let him help her to her feet.
"Surely. You needn't open your lips if you don't want to. Just
'lend me your ears, and be silent that ye may hear.' The boys
will be boiling out on tho porch, as usual, in a minute; so
hurry."
"I hope it's something very important," Evadna hinted
ungraciously." Nothing else would excuse this ~high--handed
proceeding."
When they had reached the great rock where the i pond had its
outlet, and where was a rude seat hidden away in a clump of young
willows just across the bridge, he answered her.
"I don't know that it's of any importance at all," he said
calmly." I got to feeling rather ashamed of myself, is all, and
it seemed to me the only decent thing was to tell you so. I'm
not making any bid for your favor--I don't know that I want it.
I don't care much about girls, one way or the other. But, for
all I've got the name of being several things--a savage among the
rest--I don't like to feel such a brute as to make war on a girl
that seems to be getting it handed to her right along."
He tardily lighted his cigarette and sat smoking beside her, the
tiny glow lighting his face briefly now and then.
"When I was joshing you there before supper," he went on,
speaking low that he might not be overheard--and ridiculed--from
the house, "I didn't know the whole outfit was making a practice
of doing the same thing. I hadn't heard about the dead tarantula
on your pillow, or the rattler coiled up on the porch, or any of
those innocent little jokes. But if the rest are making it their
business to devil the life out of you, why--common humanity
forces me to apologize and tell you I'm out of it from now on."
"Oh! Thank you very much." Evadna's tone might be considered
ironical. "I suppose I ought to say that your statement lessens
my dislike of you--"
"Not at all." Grant interrupted her. "Go right ahead and hate
me, if you feel that way. It won't matter to me--girls never did
concern me much, one way or the other. I never was susceptible
to beauty, and that seems to be a woman's trump card, always--"
"Well, upon my word!"
"Sounds queer, does it? But it's the truth, and so what's the
use of lying, just to be polite? I won't torment you any more;
and if the boys rig up too strong a josh, I'm liable to give you
a hint beforehand. I'm willing to do that--my sympathies are
always with the under dog, anyway, and they're five to one. But
that needn't mean that I'm--that I--" He groped for words that
would not make his meaning too bald; not even Grant could quite
bring himself to warn a girl against believing him a victim of
her fascinations.
"You needn't stutter. I'm not really stupid. You don't like me
any better than I like you. I can see that. We're to be as
decent as possible to each other--you from 'common humanity,' and
I because I promised Aunt Phoebe."
"We-e-l!--that's about it, I guess." Grant eyed her sidelong."
Only I wouldn't go so far as to say I actually dislike you. I
never did dislike a girl, that I remember. I never thought
enough about them, one way or the other." He seemed rather fond
of that statement, he repeated it so often." The life I live
doesn't call for girls. Put that's neither here nor there. What
I wanted to say was, that I won't bother you any more. I
wouldn't have said a word to you tonight, if you hadn't walked
right up to me and started to dig into me. Of course, I had to
fight back--tho man who won't isn't a normal human being."
"Oh, I know." Evadna's tone was resentful. "From Adam down to
you, it has always been 'The woman, she tempted me.' You're
perfectly horrid, even if you have apologized. 'The woman, she
tempted me,' and --"
"I beg your pardon; the woman didn't," he corrected blandly.
"The woman insisted on scrapping. That's different."
"Oh, it's different! I see. I have almost forgotten something I
ought to say, Mr. Imsen. I must thank you for--well, for
defending me to that Indian."
"I didn't. Nobody was attacking you, so I couldn't very well
defend you, could I? I had to take a fall out of old Peppajee,
just on principle. I don't get along very well with my noble red
cousins. I wasn't doing it on your account, in particular."
"Oh, I see." She rose rather suddenly from the bench. "It
wasn't even common humanity, then--"
"Not even common humanity," he echoed affirmatively. "Just a
chance I couldn't afford to pass up, of digging into Peppajee."
"That's different." She laughed shortly and left him, running
swiftly through the warm dusk to the murmur of voices at the
house.
Grant sat where she left him, and smoked two cigarettes
meditatively before he thought of returning to the house. When
he finally did get upon his feet, he stretched his arms high
above his head, and stared for a moment up at the treetops
swaying languidly just under the stars.
"Girls must play the very deuce with a man if he ever lets them
get on his mind," he mused. "I see right now where a fellow
about my size and complexion had better watch out." But he
smiled afterward, as if he did not consider the matter very
serious, after all.
CHAPTER VI
THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL PLAYS GHOST
At midnight, the Peaceful Hart ranch lay broodily quiet under its
rock-rimmed bluff. Down in tho stable the saddle-horses were but
formless blots upon the rumpled bedding in their stalls--except
Huckleberry, the friendly little pinto with the white eyelashes
and the blue eyes, and the great, liver-colored patches upon his
sides, and the appetite which demanded food at unseasonable
hours, who was now munching and nosing industriously in the
depths of his manger, and making a good deal of noise about it.
Outside, one of the milch cows drew a long, sighing breath of
content with life, lifted a cud in mysterious, bovine manner, and
chewed dreamily. Somewhere up the bluff a bobcat squalled among
the rocks, and the moon, in its dissipated season of late rising,
lifted itself indolently up to where it could peer down upon the
silent ranch.
In the grove where the tiny creek gurgled under the little stone
bridge, someone was snoring rhythmically in ~his blankets, for
the boys had taken to sleeping in the open air before the
earliest rose had opened buds in the sunny shelter of the porch.
Three feet away, a sleeper stirred restlessly, lifted his head
from the pillow, and slapped half-heartedly at an early mosquito
that was humming in his ear. He reached out, and jogged the
shoulder of him who snored.
"Say, Gene, if you've got to sleep at the top of your voice, you
better drag your bed down into the orchard," he growled. "Let up
a little, can't yuh?"
"Ah, shut up and let a fellow sleep!" mumbled Gene, snuggling the
covers up to his ears.
"Just what I want YOU to do. You snore like a sawmill. Darn it,
you've got to get out of the grove if yuh can't--"
"Ah-h-EE-EE!" wailed a voice somewhere among the trees, the sound
rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one's
flesh went creepy, and then sliding mournfully down to silence.
"What's that?" The two jerked themselves to a sitting position,
and stared into the blackness of the grove.
"Bobcat," whispered Clark, in a tone which convinced not even
himself.
"In a pig's ear," flouted Gene, under his breath. He leaned far
over and poked his finger into a muffled form. "D'yuh hear that
noise, Grant?"
Grant sat up instantly. "What's tho matter?" he demanded, rather
ill-naturedly, if the truth be told.
"Did you hear anything--a funny noise, like--"
The cry itself finished the sentence for him. It came from
nowhere, it would seem, since they could see nothing; rose slowly
to a subdued shriek, clung there nerve-wrackingly, and then
wailed mournfully down to silence. Afterward, while their ears
were still strained to the sound, the bobcat squalled an answer
from among the rocks.
"Yes, I heard it," said Grant. "It's a spook. It's the wail of
a lost spirit, loosed temporarily from the horrors of purgatory.
It's sent as a warning to repent you of your sins, and it's
howling because it hates to go back. What you going to do about
it?"
He made his own intention plain beyond any possibility of
misunderstanding. He lay down and pulled the blanket over his
shoulders, cuddled his pillow under his head, and disposed
himself to sleep.
The moon climbed higher, and sent silvery splinters of light
quivering down among the trees. A frog crawled out upon a great
lily--pad and croaked dismally.
Again came the wailing cry, nearer than before, more subdued, and
for that reason more eerily mournful. Grant sat up, muttered to
himself, and hastily pulled on some clothes. The frog cut
himself short in the middle of a deep-throated ARR-RR-UMPH and
dove headlong into the pond; and the splash of his body cleaving
the still surface of the water made Gene shiver nervously. Grant
reached under his pillow for something, and freed himself
stealthily from a blanketfold.
"If that spook don't talk Indian when it's at home, I'm very much
mistaken," he whispered to Clark, who was nearest. "You boys
stay here."
Since they had no intention of doing anything else, they obeyed
him implicitly and without argument, especially as a flitting
white figure appeared briefly and indistinctly in a
shadow-flecked patch of moonlight. Crouching low in the shade of
a clump of bushes, Grant stole toward the spot.
When he reached the place, the thing was not there. Instead, he
glimpsed it farther on, and gave chase, taking what precautions
he could against betraying himself. Through the grove and the
gate and across the road he followed, in doubt half the time
whether it was worth the trouble. Still, if it was what he
suspected, a lesson taught now would probably insure against
future disturbances of the sort, he thought, and kept stubbornly
on. Once more he heard the dismal cry, and fancied it held a
mocking note.
"I'll settle that mighty quick," he promised grimly, as he jumped
a ditch and ran toward the place.
Somewhere among the currant bushes was a sound of eery laughter.
He swerved toward the place, saw a white form rise suddenly from
the very ground, as it seemed, and lift an arm with a slow,
beckoning gesture. Without taking aim, he raised his gun and
fired a shot at it. The arm dropped rather suddenly, and the
white form vanished. He hurried up to where it had stood, knelt,
and felt of the soft earth. Without a doubt there were
footprints there--he could feel them. But he hadn't a match with
him, and the place was in deep shade.
He stood up and listened, thought he heard a faint sound farther
along, and ran. There was no use now in going quietly; what
counted most was speed.
Once more he caught sight of the white form fleeing from him like
the very wraith it would have him believe it. Then he lost it
again; and when he reached the spot where it disappeared, he fell
headlong, his feet tangled in some white stuff. He swore
audibly, picked himself up, and held the cloth where the moon
shone full upon it. It looked like a sheet, or something of the
sort, and near one edge was a moist patch of red. He stared at
it dismayed, crumpled the cloth into a compact bundle, tucked it
under his arm, and ran on, his ears strained to catch some sound
to guide him.
"Well, anyhow, I didn't kill him," he muttered uneasily as he
crawled through a fence into the orchard. "He's making a pretty
swift get-away for a fellow that's been shot."
In the orchard the patches of moonlight were larger, and across
one of them he glimpsed a dark object, running wearily. Grant
repressed an impulse to shout, and used the breath for an extra
burst of speed. The ghost was making for the fence again, as if
it would double upon its trail and reach some previously chosen
refuge. Grant turned and ran also toward the fence, guessing
shrewdly that the fugitive would head for the place where the
wire could be spread about, and a beaten trail led from there
straight out to the road which passed the house. It was the
short cut from the peach orchard; and it occurred to him that
this particular spook seemed perfectly familiar with the byways
of the ranch. Near the fence he made a discovery that startled
him a little.
"It's a squaw, by Jove!" he cried when he caught an unmistakable
flicker of skirts; and the next moment he could have laughed
aloud if he had not been winded from the chase. The figure
reached the fence before him, and in the dim light he could see
it stoop to pass through. Then it seemed as if the barbs had
caught in its clothing and held it there. It struggled to free
itself; and in the next minute he rushed up and clutched it fast.
"Why don't you float over the treetops?" he panted ironically.
"Ghosts have no business getting their spirit raiment tangled up
in a barbed-wire fence."
It answered with a little exclamation, with a sob following close
upon it. There was a sound of tearing cloth, and he held his
captive upright, and with a merciless hand turned her face so
that the moonlight struck it full. They stared at each other,
breathing hard from more than the race they had run.
"Well--I'll--be--" Grant began, in blank amazement.
She wriggled her chin in his palm, trying to free herself from
his pitiless staring. Failing that, she began to sob angrily
without any tears in her wide eyes.
"You--shot me, you brute!" she cried accusingly at last.
"You--SHOT me!" And she sobbed again.
Before he answered, he drew backward a step or two, sat down upon
the edge of a rock which had rolled out from a stone-heap, and
pulled her down beside him, still holding her fast, as if he half
believed her capable of soaring away over the treetops, after
all.
"I guess I didn't murder you--from the chase you gave me. Did I
hit you at all?"
"Yes, you did! You nearly broke my arm--and you might have killed
me, you big brute! Look what you did--and I never harmed you at
all!" She pushed up a sleeve, and held out her arm accusingly in
the moonlight, disclosing a tiny, red furrow where the skin was
broken and still bleeding. "And you shot a big hole right
through Aunt Phoebe's sheet!" she added, with tearful severity.
He caught her arm, bent his head over it--and for a moment he was
perilously near to kissing it; an impulse which astonished him
considerably, and angered him more. He dropped the arm rather
precipitately; and she lifted it again, and regarded the wound
with mournful interest.
"I'd like to know what right you have to prowl around shooting at
people," she scolded, seeing how close she could come to touching
the place with her fingertips without producing any but a
pleasurable pain.
"Just as much right as you have to get up in the middle of the
night and go ahowling all over the ranch wrapped up in a sheet,"
he retorted ungallantly.
"Well, if I want to do it, I don't see why you need concern
yourself about it. I wasn't doing it for your benefit, anyway."
"Will you tell me what you DID do it for? Of all the silly
tomfoolery--"
An impish smile quite obliterated the Christmas-angel look for an
instant, then vanished, and left her a pretty, abused maiden who
is grieved at harsh treatment.
"Well, I wanted to scare Gene," she confessed. "I did, too. I
just know he's a cowardy-cat, because he's always trying to scare
ME. It's Gene's fault--he told me the grove is haunted. He said
a long time ago, before Uncle Hart settled here, a lot of Indians
waylaid a wagon-train here and killed a girl, and he says that
when the moon is just past the full, something white walks
through the grove and wails like a lost soul in torment. He says
sometimes it comes and moans at the corner of the house where my
room is. I just know he was going to do it himself; but I guess
he forgot. So I thought I'd see if he believed his own yarns. I
was going to do it every night till I scared him into sleeping in
the house. I had a perfectly lovely place to disappear into,
where he couldn't trace me if he took to hunting around--only he
wouldn't dare." She pulled down her sleeve very carefully, and
then, just as carefully, she pushed it up again, and took another
look.
"My best friend TOLD me I'd get shot if I came to Idaho," she
reminded herself, with a melancholy satisfaction.
"You didn't get shot," Grant contradicted for the sake of drawing
more sparks of temper where temper seemed quaintly out of place,
and stared hard at her drooping profile. "You just got nicely
missed; a bullet that only scrapes off a little skin can't be
said to hit. I'd hate to hit a bear like that."
"I believe you're wishing you HAD killed me! You might at least
have some conscience in the matter, and be sorry you shot a lady.
But you're not. You just wish you had murdered me. You hate
girls--you said so. And I don't know what business it is of
yours, if I want to play a joke on my cousin, or why you had to
be sleeping outside, anyway. I've a perfect right to be a ghost
if I choose--and I don't call it nice, or polite, or gentlemanly
for you to chase me all over the place with a gun, trying to kill
me! I'll never speak to you again as long as I live. When I say
that I mean it. I never liked you from the very start, when I
first saw you this afternoon. Now I hate and despise you. I
suppose I oughtn't to expect you to apologize or be sorry because
you almost killed me. I suppose that's just your real nature
coming to the surface. Indians love to hurt and torture people!
I shouldn't have expected anything else of you, I suppose. I
made the mistake of treating you like a white man."
"Don't you think you're making another mistake right now?"
Grant's whole attitude changed, as well as his tone. "Aren't you
afraid to push the white man down into the dirt, and raise
up--the INDIAN?"
She cast a swift, half-frightened glance up into his face and the
eyes that glowed ominously in the moonlight.
"When people make the blunder of calling up the Indian," he went
on steadily, "they usually find that they have to deal with--the
Indian."
Evadna looked at him again, and turned slowly white before her
temper surged to the surface again.
"I didn't call up the Indian," she defended hotly; "but if the
Indian wants to deal with me according to his nature--why, let
him! But you don't ACT like other people! I don't know another
man who wouldn't have been horrified at shooting me, even such a
tiny little bit; but you don't care at all. You never even said
you were sorry."
"I'm not in the habit of saying all I think and feel."
"You were quick enough to apologize, after supper there, when you
hadn't really done anything; and now, when one would expect you
to be at least decently sorry, you--you--well, you act like the
savage you are! There, now! It may not be nice to say it, but
it's the truth."
Grant smiled bitterly. "All men are savages under the skin," he
said. "How do YOU know what I think and feel? If I fail to come
through with the conventional patter, I am called an
Indian--because my mother was a half-breed." He threw up his
head proudly, let his eyes rest for a moment upon the moon,
swimming through a white river of clouds just over the tall
poplar hedge planted long ago to shelter the orchard from the
sweeping west winds; and, when he looked down at her again, he
caught a glimpse of repentant tears in her eyes, and softened.
"Oh, you're a girl, and you demand the usual amount of poor-pussy
talk," he told her maliciously. "So I'm sorry. I'm heartbroken.
If it will help any, I'll even kiss the hurt to make it well--and
I'm not a kissing young man, either, let me tell you."
"I'd die before I'd let you touch me!" Her repentance, if it was
that, changed to pure rage. She snatched the torn sheet from him
and turned abruptly toward the fence. He followed her,
apparently unmoved by her attitude; placed his foot upon the
lower wire and pressed it into the soft earth, lifted the one
next above it as high as it would go, and thus made it easier for
her to pass through. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, as
though tempted to reject even that slight favor, then stooped,
and went through.
As the wires snapped into place, she halted and looked back at
him.
"Maybe I've been mean--but you're been meaner," she summed up, in
self-justification. "I suppose the next thing you will do will
be to tell the boys. Well, I don't care what you do, so long as
you never speak to me again. Go and tell them if you want
to--tell. TELL, do you hear ? I don't want even the favor of
your silence!" She dexterously tucked the bundle of white under
the uninjured arm, caught the loose folds of her skirt up in her
hands, and ran away up the path, not once stopping to see whether
he still followed her.
Grant did not follow. He stood leaning against the fence-post,
and watched her until her flying form grew indistinct in the
shade of the poplar hedge; watched it reappear in a broad strip
of white moonlight, still running; saw it turn, slacken speed to
a walk, and then lose itself in the darkness of the grove.
Five minutes, ten minutes, he stood there, staring across the
level bit of valley lying quiet at the foot of the jagged-rimmed
bluff standing boldly up against the star-flecked sky. Then he
shook himself impatiently, muttered something which had to do
with a "doddering fool," and retraced his steps quickly through
tho orchard, the currant bushes, and the strawberry patch,
jumped the ditch, and so entered the grove and returned to his
blankets.
"We thought the spook had got yuh, sure." Gene lifted his head
turtlewise and laughed deprecatingly. "We was just about ready
to start out after the corpse, only we didn't know but what you
might get excited and take a shot at us in the dark. We heard
yuh shoot--what was it? Did you find out?"
"It wasn't anything," said Grant shortly, tugging at a boot.
"Ah--there was, too! What was it you shot at?" Clark joined in
the argument from the blackness under the locust tree.
"The moon," Grant told him sullenly. "There wasn't anything else
that I could see."
"And that's a lie," Gene amended, with the frankness of a
foster-brother. "Something yelled like--"
"You never heard a screech-owl before, did you, Gene?" Grant
crept between his blankets and snuggled down, as if his mind held
nothing more important than sleep.
"Screech-owl my granny! You bumped into something you couldn't
handle--if you want to know what _I_ think about it," Clark
guessed shrewdly. "I wish now I'd taken the trouble to hunt the
thing down; it didn't seem worth while getting up. But I leave
it to Gene if you ain't mad enough to murder whatever it was.
What was it?"
He waited a moment without getting a reply.
"Well, keep your teeth shut down on it, then, darn yuh!" he
growled. "That's the Injun of it--I know YOU! Screech-owl--huh!
You said when you left it was an Indian--and that's why we didn't
take after it ourselves. We don't want to get the whole bunch
down on us like they are on you--and if there was one acting up
around here, we knew blamed well it was on your account for what
happened to-day. I guess you found out, all right. I knew the
minute you heaved in sight that you was just about as mad as you
can get--and that's saying a whole lot. If it WAS an Indian, and
you killed him, you better let us--"
"Oh, for the lord's sake, WILL YOU SHUT UP!" Grant raised to an
elbow, glared a moment, and lay down again.
The result proved the sort of fellow he was. Clark shut up
without even trailing off into mumbling to himself, as was his
habit when argument brought him defeat.
CHAPTER VII
MISS GEORGIE HOWARD, OPERATOR
"Where is the delightful Mr. Good Indian off to?" Evadna stopped
drumming upon the gatepost and turned toward the person she heard
coming up behind her, who happened to be Gene. He stopped to
light a match upon the gate and put his cigarette to work before
he answered her; and Evadna touched tentatively the wide, blue
ribbon wound round her arm and tied in a bow at her elbow, and
eyed him guardedly.
"Straight up, he told me," Gene answered sourly. "He's sore over
something that happened last night, and he didn't seem to have
any talk to give away this morning. He can go to the dickens,
for all I care."
"WHAT--happened last night?" Evadna wore her Christmas-angel
expression; and her tone was the sweet, insipid tone of childlike
innocence.
Gene hesitated. It seemed a sheer waste of opportunity to tell
her the truth when she would believe a falsehood just as readily;
but, since the truth happened to be quite as improbable as a lie,
he decided to speak it.
"There was a noise when the moon had just come up--didn't you
hear it? The ghost I told you about. Good Injun went after it
with a gun, and I guess they mixed, all right, and he got the
worst of it. He was sure on the fight when he came back, and
he's pulled out this morning--"
"Do you mean to tell me--did you see it, really?"
"Well, you ask Clark, when you see him," Gene hinted darkly.
"You just ask him what was in the grove last night. Ask him what
he HEARD." He moved closer, and laid his hand impressively upon
her arm. Evadna winced perceptibly. "What yuh jumping for? You
didn't see anything, did you?"
"No; but--was there REALLY something?" Evadna freed herself as
unobtrusively as possible, and looked at him with wide eyes.
"You ask Clark. He'll tell you--maybe. Good Injun's scared
clean off the ranch--you can see that for yourself. He said he
couldn't be hired to spend another night here. He thinks it's a
bad sign. That's the Injun of it. They believe in spirits and
signs and things."
Evadna turned thoughtful. "And didn't he tell you what he--that
is, if he found out--you said he went after it--"
"He wouldn't say a blamed thing about it," Gene complained
sincerely. "He said there wasn't anything--he told us it was a
screech-owl."
"Oh!" Evadna gave a sigh of relief. "Well, I'm going to ask
Clark what it was--I'm just crazy about ghost stories, only I
never would DARE leave the house after dark if there are funny
noises and things, really. I think you boys must be the bravest
fellows, to sleep out there--without even your mother with you!"
She smiled the credulous smile of ignorant innocence and pulled
the gate open.
"Jack promised to take me up to Hartley to-day," she explained
over her shoulder. "When I come back, you'll show me just where
it was, won't you, Gene? You don't suppose it would walk in the
grove in the daytime, do you? Because I'm awfully fond of the
grove, and I do hope it will be polite enough to confine its
perambulations entirely to the conventional midnight hour."
Gene did not make any reply. Indeed, he seemed wholly absorbed
in staring after her and wondering just how much or how little of
it she meant.
Evadna looked back, midway between the gate and the stable, and,
when she saw him standing exactly as she had left him, she waved
her hand and smiled. She was still smiling when she came up to
where Jack was giving those last, tentative twitches and pats
which prove whether a saddle is properly set and cinched; and she
would not say what it was that amused her. All the way up the
grade, she smiled and grew thoughtful by turns; and, when Jack
mentioned the fact that Good Indian had gone off mad about
something, she contented herself with the simple, unqualified
statement that she was glad of it.
Grant's horse dozed before the store, and Grant himself sat upon
a bench in the narrow strip of shade on the porch. Evadna,
therefore, refused absolutely to dismount there, though her
errand had been a post-office money order. Jack was already on
the ground when she made known her decision; and she left him in
the middle of his expostulations and rode on to the depot. He
followed disapprovingly afoot; and, when she brought her horse to
a stand, he helped her from the saddle, and took the bridle reins
with an air of weary tolerance.
"When you get ready to go home, you can come to the store," he
said bluntly. "Huckleberry wouldn't stand here if you hog-tied
him. Just remember that if you ever ride up here alone--it might
save you a walk back. And say," he added, with a return of his
good-natured grin, "it looks like you and Good Injun didn't get
acquainted yesterday. I thought I saw mum give him an
introduction to you--but I guess I made a mistake. When you come
to the store, don't let me forget, and I'll do it myself."
"Oh, thank you, Jack--but it isn't necessary," chirped Evadna,
and left him with the smile which he had come to regard with
vague suspicion of what it might hide of her real feelings.
Two squaws sat cross-legged on the ground in the shade of the
little red depot; and them she passed by hastily, her eyes upon
them watchfully until she was well upon the platform and was
being greeted joyfully by Miss Georgie Howard, then in one of her
daily periods of intense boredom.
"My, my, but you're an angel of deliverance--and by rights you
should have a pair of gauze wings, just to complete the picture,"
she cried, leading her inside and pushing her into a beribboned
wicker rocker. "I was just getting desperate enough to haul in
those squaws out there and see if I couldn't teach 'em whist or
something." She sat down and fingered her pompadour absently.
"And that sure would have been interesting," she added musingly.
"Don't let me interrupt you," Evadna began primly. "I only came
for a money order--Aunt Phoebe's sending for--"
"Never mind what you came for," Miss Georgie cut in decisively,
and laughed. "The express agent is out. You can't get your
order till we've had a good talk and got each other tagged
mentally--only I've tagged you long ago."
"I thought you were the express agent. Aunt Phoebe said--"
"Nice, truthful Aunt Phoebe! I am, but I'm out--officially. I'm
several things, my dear; but, for the sake of my own dignity and
self-respect, I refuse to be more than one of them at a time.
When I sell a ticket to Shoshone, I'm the ticket agent, and
nothing else. Telegrams, I'm the operator. At certain times I'm
the express agent. I admit it. But this isn't one of the
times."
She stopped and regarded her visitor with whimsical appraisement.
"You'll wait till the agent returns, won't you?" And added, with
a grimace: "You won't be in the way--I'm not anything official
right now. I'm a neighbor, and this is my parlor--you see, I
planted you on that rug, with the books at your elbow, and that
geranium also; and you're in the rocker, so you're really and
truly in my parlor. I'm over the line myself, and you're calling
on me. Sabe? That little desk by the safe is the express
office, and you can see for yourself that the agent is out."
"Well, upon my word!" Evadna permitted herself that much
emotional relief. Then she leaned her head against the
cherry-colored head-rest tied to the chair with huge,
cherry-colored bows, and took a deliberate survey of the room.
It was a small room, as rooms go. One corner was evidently the
telegraph office, for it held a crude table, with the instruments
clicking spasmodically, form pads, letter files, and mysterious
things which piqued her curiosity. Over it was a railroad map
and a makeshift bulletin board, which seemed to give the time of
certain trains. And small-paned windows gave one sitting before
tho instruments an unobstructed view up and down the track. In
the corner behind the door was a small safe, with door ajar, and
a desk quite as small, with, "Express Office: Hours, 8 A.M. to 6
P.M." on a card above it.
Under a small window opening upon the platform was another little
table, with indications of occasional ticket-selling upon it.
And in the end of the room where she sat were various little
adornments--"art" calendars, a few books, fewer potted plants, a
sewing-basket, and two rugs upon the floor, with a rocker for
each. Also there was a tiny, square table, with a pack of cards
scattered over it.
"Exactly. You have it sized up correctly, my dear." Miss
Georgie Howard nodded her--head three times, and her eyes were
mirthful." It's a game. I made it a game. I had to, in
self-defense. Otherwise--" She waved a hand conspicuous for its
white plumpness and its fingers tapering beautifully to little,
pink nails immaculately kept. "I took at the job and the place
just as it stands, without anything in the way of mitigation.
Can you see yourself holding it down for longer than a week?
I've been here a month."
"I think," Evadna ventured, "it must be fun."
"Oh, yes. It's fun--if you make fun OF it. However, before we
settle down for a real visit, I've a certain duty to perform, if
you will excuse my absence for a moment. Incidentally," she
added, getting lazily out of the chair, "it will illustrate just
how I manage my system."
Her absence was purely theoretical. She stepped off the rug,
went to the "express office," and took a card from the desk.
When she had stood it upright behind the inkwell, Evadna read in
large, irregular capitals:
"OUT. WILL BE BACK LATER."
Miss Georgie Howard paid no attention to the little giggle which
went with the reading, but stepped across to the ticket desk and
to the telegraph table, and put similar cards on display. Then
she came back to the rug, plumped down in her rocker with a sigh
of relief, and reached for a large, white box--the five pounds of
chocolates which she had sent for.
"I never eat candy when I'm in the office," she observed soberly.
"I consider it unprofessional. Help yourself as liberally as
your digestion will stand--and for Heaven's sake, gossip a
little! Tell me all about that bunch of nifty lads I see
cavorting around the store occasionally--and especially about the
polysyllabic gentleman who seems to hang out at the Peaceful Hart
ranch. I'm terribly taken with him. He--excuse me, chicken.
There's a fellow down the line hollering his head off. Wait till
I see what he wants."
Again she left the rug, stepped to the telegraph instrument, and
fingered the key daintily until she had, with the other hand,
turned down the "out" card. Then she threw the switch, rattled
an impatient reply, and waited, listening to the rapid clicking
of the sounder. Her eyes and her mouth hardened as she read.
"Cad!" she gritted under her breath. Her fingers were spiteful
as they clicked the key in answer. She slammed the current off,
set up the "out" notice again, kicked the desk chair against the
wall, and came back to the "parlor" breathing quickly.
"I think it must be perfectly fascinating to talk that way to
persons miles off," said Evadna, eying the chittering sounder
with something approaching awe. "I watched your fingers, and
tried to imagine what it was they were saying--but I couldn't
even guess."
Miss Georgie Howard laughed queerly. "No, I don't suppose you
could," she murmured, and added, with a swift glance at the
other: "They said, 'You go to the devil.'" She held up the
offending hand and regarded it intently. "You wouldn't think it
of them, would you? But they have to say things sometimes--in
self-defense. There are two or three fresh young men along the
line that can't seem to take a hint unless you knock them in the
head with it."
She cast a malevolent look at the clicking instrument. "He's
trying to square himself," she observed carelessly. "But,
unfortunately, I'm out. He seems on the verge of tears, poor
thing."
She poked investigatingly among the chocolates, and finally
selected a delectable morsel with epicurean care.
"You haven't told me about the polysyllabic young man," she
reminded. "He has held my heart in bondage since he said to Pete
Hamilton yesterday in the store--ah--" She leaned and barely
reached a slip of paper which was lying upon a row of books. "I
wrote it down so I wouldn't forget it," she explained
parenthetically. "He said to Pete, in the store, just after Pete
had tried to say something funny with the usual lamentable
failure--um--'You are mentally incapable of recognizing the line
of demarcation between legitimate persiflage and objectionable
familiarity.' Now, I want to know what sort of a man, under fifty
and not a college professor, would--or could--say that without
studying it first. It sounded awfully impromptu and easy--and
yet he looks--well, cowboyish. What sort of a young man is he?"
"He's a perfectly horrid young man." Evadna leaned to help
herself to more chocolates. "He--well, just to show you how
horrid, he calls me a--a Christmas angel! And--"
"Did he!" Miss Georgie eyed her measuringly between bites. "Tag
him as being intelligent, a keen observer, with the ability to
express himself--" She broke off, and turned her head
ungraciously toward the sounder, which seemed to be repeating
something over and over with a good deal of insistence. "That's
Shoshone calling," she said, frowning attentively. "They've got
an old crank up there in the office--I'd know his touch among a
million--and when he calls he means business. I'll have to speak
up, I suppose." She sighed, tucked a chocolate into her cheek,
and went scowling to the table. "Can't the idiot see I'm out?"
she complained whimsically. "What's that card for, I wonder?"
She threw the switch, rattled a reply, and then, as the sounder
settled down to a steady click-clickety-click-click, she drew a
pad toward her, pulled up the chair with her foot, sat down, and
began to write the message as it came chattering over the wire.
When it was finished and the sounder quiet, her hand awoke to
life upon the key. She seemed to be repeating the message, word
for word. When she was done, she listened, got her answer, threw
off the switch with a sweep of her thumb, and fumbled among the
papers on the table until she found an envelope. She addressed
it with a hasty scrawl of her pencil, sealed it with a vicious
little spat of her hand, and then sat looking down upon it
thoughtfully.
"I suppose I've got to deliver that immediately, at once, without
delay," she said. "There's supposed to be an answer. Chicken,
some queer things happen in this business. Here's that
weak-eyed, hollow-chested Saunders, that seems to have just life
enough to put in about ten hours a day reading 'The Duchess,'
getting cipher messages like the hero of a detective story. And
sending them, too, by the way. We operators are not supposed to
think; but all the same--" She got her receipt-book, filled
rapidly a blank line, tucked it under her arm, and went up and
tapped Evadna lightly upon the head with the envelope. "Want to
come along? Or would you rather stay here? I won't be more than
two minutes."
She was gone five; and she returned with a preoccupied air which
lasted until she had disposed of three chocolates and was
carefully choosing a fourth.
"Chicken," she said then, quietly, "do you know anything about
your uncle and his affairs?" And added immediately: "The chances
are ten to one you don't, and wouldn't if you lived there till
you were gray?"
"I know he's perfectly lovely," Evadna asserted warmly. "And so
is Aunt Phoebe."
"To be sure." Miss Georgie smiled indulgently. "I quite agree
with you. And by the way, I met that polysyllabic cowboy
again--and I discovered that, on the whole, my estimate was
incorrect. He's emphatically monosyllabic. I said sixteen nice
things to him while I was waiting for Pete to wake up Saunders;
and he answered in words of one syllable; one word, of one
syllable. I'm beginning to feel that I've simply got to know
that young man. There are deeps there which I am wild to
explore. I never met any male human in the least like him. Did
you? So absolutely--ah--inscrutable, let us say."
"That's just because he's part Indian," Evadna declared, with the
positiveness of youth and inexperience. "It isn't
inscrutability, but stupidity. I simply can't bear him. He's
brutal, and rude. He told me--told me, mind you--that he doesn't
like women. He actually warned me against thinking his
politeness--if he ever is polite, which I doubt--means more than
just common humanity. He said he didn't want me to misunderstand
him and think he liked me, because he doesn't. He's a perfect
savage. I simply loathe him!"
"I'd certainly see that he repented, apologized, and vowed
eternal devotion," smiled Miss Georgie. "That should be my
revenge."
"I don't want any revenge. I simply want nothing to do with him.
I don't want to speak to him, even."
"He's awfully good--looking," mused Miss Georgie.
"He looks to me just like an Indian. He ought to wear a blanket,
like the rest."
"Then you're no judge. His eyes are dark; but they aren't snaky,
my dear. His hair is real wavy, did you notice? And he has the
dearest, firm mouth. I noticed it particularly, because I admire
a man who's a man. He's one. He'd fight and never give up, once
he started. And I think"--she spoke hesitatingly-- "I think he'd
love--and never give up; unless the loved one disappointed him in
some way; and then he'd be strong enough to go his way and not
whine about it. I do hate a whiner! Don't you?"
A shadow fell upon the platform outside the door, and Saunders
appeared, sidling deprecatingly into the room. He pulled off his
black, slouched hat and tucked it under his arm, smoothed his
lank, black hair, ran his palm down over his lank, unshaven face
with a smoothing gesture, and sidled over to the telegraph table.
"Here's the answer to that message," he said, in a limp tone,
without any especial emphasis or inflection. "If you ain't too
busy, and could send it right off--it's to go C.O.D. and make
'em repeat it, so as to be sure--"
"Certainly, Mr. Saunders." Miss Georgie rose, the crisp,
businesslike operator, and went to the table. She took the sheet
of paper from him with her finger tips, as if he were some
repulsive creature whose touch would send her shuddering, and
glanced at the message. "Write it on the regular form," she
said, and pushed a pad and pencil toward him." I have to place
it on file." Whereupon she turned her back upon him, and stood
staring down the railroad track through the smoke-grimed window
until a movement warned her that he was through.
"Very well--that is all," she said, after she had counted the
words twice. "Oh--you want to wait for the repeat."
She laid her fingers on the key and sent the message in a whirl
of chittering little sounds, waited a moment while the sounder
spoke, paused, and then began a rapid clicking, which was the
repeated message, and wrote it down upon its form.
"There--if it's correct, that's all," she told him in a tone of
dismissal, and waited openly for him to go. Which he did, after
a sly glance at Evadna, a licking of pale lips, as if he would
speak but lacked the courage, and a leering grin at Miss Georgie.
He was no sooner over the threshold than she slammed the door
shut, in spite of the heat. She walked to the window, glanced
down the track again, turned to the table, and restlessly
arranged the form pads, sticking the message upon the file. She
said something under her breath, snapped the cover on the
inkwell, sighed, patted her pompadour, and finally laughed at her
own uneasiness.
"Whenever that man comes in here," she observed impatiently, "I
always feel as if I ought to clean house after him. If ever
there was a human toad--or snake, or--ugh! And what does he
mean--sending twenty-word messages that don't make sense when you
read them over, and getting others that are just a lot of words
jumbled together, hit or miss? I wish--only it's unprofessional
to talk about it--but, just the same, there's some nasty business
brewing, and I know it. I feel guilty, almost, every time I send
one of those cipher messages."
"Maybe he's a detective," Evadna hazarded.
"Maybe." Miss Georgie's tone, however, was extremely skeptical.
"Only, so far as I can discover, there's never been anything
around here to detect. Nobody has been murdered, or robbed, or
kidnapped that I ever heard of. Pete Hamilton says not. And--I
wonder, now, if Saunders could be watching somebody! Wouldn't it
be funny, if old Pete himself turned out to be a Jesse James
brand of criminal? Can you imagine Pete doing anything more
brutal than lick a postage stamp?"
"He might want to," Evadna guessed shrewdly, "but it would be too
much trouble."
"Besides," Miss Georgie went on speculating, "Saunders never does
anything that anyone ever heard of. Sweeps out the store, they
say--but I'd hate to swear to that. _I_ never could catch it
when it looked swept--and brings the mail sack over here twice a
day, and gets one to take back. And reads novels. Of course,
the man's half dead with consumption; but no one would object to
that, if these queer wires hadn't commenced coming to him."
"Why don't you turn detective yourself and find out?" Plainly,
Evadna was secretly laughing at her perturbed interest in the
matter.
"Thanks. I'm too many things already, and I haven't any false
hair or dark lantern. And, by the way, I'm going to have the day
off, Sunday. Charlie Green is coming up to relieve me.
And--couldn't we do something?" She glanced wearily around the
little office. "Honest, I'd go crazy if I stayed here much
longer without a play spell. I want to get clear out, away from
the thing--where I can't even hear a train whistle."
"Then you shall come down to the ranch the minute you can get
away, and we'll do something or go somewhere. The boys said
they'd take me fishing--but they only propose things so they can
play jokes on me, it seems to me. They'd make me fall in the
river, or something, I just know. But if you'd like to go along,
there'd be two of us--"
"Chicken, we'll go. I ought to be ashamed to fish for an
invitation the way I did, but I'm not. I haven't been down to
the Hart ranch yet; and I've heard enough about it to drive me
crazy with the desire to see it. Your Aunt Phoebe I've met, and
fallen in love with--that's a matter of course. She told me to
visit her just any time, without waiting to be invited
especially. Isn't she the dearest thing? Oh! that's a train
order, I suppose--sixteen is about due. Excuse me, chicken."
She was busy then until the train came screeching down upon the
station, paused there while the conductor rushed in, got a thin
slip of paper for himself and the engineer, and rushed out again.
When the train grumbled away from the platform and went its way,
it left man standing there, a fish-basket slung from one
shoulder, a trout rod carefully wrapped in its case in his hand,
a box which looked suspiciously like a case of some bottled joy
at his feet, and a loose-lipped smile upon his face.
"Howdy, Miss Georgie?" he called unctuously through the open
door.
Miss Georgie barely glanced at him from under her lashes, and her
shoulders indulged themselves in an almost imperceptible twitch.
"How do you do, Mr. Baumberger?" she responded coolly, and very,
very gently pushed the door shut just as he had made up his mind
to enter.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AMIABLE ANGLER
Baumberger--Johannes was the name he answered to when any of his
family called, though to the rest of the world he was simply
Baumberger--was what he himself called a true sport. Women, he
maintained, were very much like trout; and so, when this
particular woman calmly turned her back upon the smile cast at
her, he did not linger there angling uselessly, but betook
himself to the store, where his worldly position, rather than his
charming personality, might be counted upon to bring him his meed
of appreciation.
Good Indian and Jack, sitting side by side upon the porch and
saying very little, he passed by with a careless nod, as being
not worth his attention. Saunders, glancing up from the
absorbing last chapter of "The Brokenhearted Bride," also
received a nod, and returned it apathetically. Pete Hamilton,
however, got a flabby handshake, a wheezy laugh, and the
announcement that he was down from Shoshone for a good, gamy
tussle with that four-pounder he had lost last time.
"And I don't go back till I get him--not if I stay here a week,"
he declared, with jocular savagery. "Took half my leader and my
pet fly--I got him with a peacock-bodied gray hackle that I
revised to suit my own notions--and, by the great immortal
Jehosaphat, he looked like a whale when he jumped up clear of tho
riffle, turned over, and--" His flabby, white hand made a soaring
movement to indicate the manner in which the four-pounder had
vanished.
"Better take a day off and go with me, Pete," he suggested,
getting an unwieldy-looking pipe from the pocket of his canvas
fishing-coat, and opening his eyes at a trout-fly snagged in the
mouthpiece. "Now, how did that fly come there?" he asked
aggrievedly, while he released it daintily for all his fingers
looked so fat and awkward. He stuck the pipe in the corner of
his mouth, and held up the fly with that interest which seems
fatuous to one who has no sporting blood in his veins.
"Last time I used that fly was when I was down here three weeks
ago--the day I lost the big one. Ain't it a beauty, eh? Tied it
myself. And, by the great immortal Jehosaphat, it fetches me the
rainbows, too. Good mind to try it on the big one. Don't see
how I didn't miss it out of my book--I must be getting
absent-minded. Sign of old age, that. Failing powers and the
like." He shook his head reprovingly and grinned, as if he
considered the idea something of a joke. "Have to buck up--a
lawyer can't afford to grow absent-minded. He's liable to wake
up some day and find himself without his practice."
He got his fly-book from the basket swinging at his left hip,
opened it, turned the leaves with the caressing touch one gives
to a cherished thing, and very carefully placed the fly upon the
page where it belonged; gazed gloatingly down at the tiny, tufted
hooks, with their frail-looking five inches of gut leader, and
then returned the book fondly to the basket.
"Think I'll go on down to the Harts'," he said, "so as to be that
much closer to the stream. Daylight is going to find me whipping
the riffles, Peter. You won't come along? You better. Plenty
of--ah--snake medicine," he hinted, chuckling so that the whole,
deep chest of him vibrated. "No? Well, you can let me have a
horse, I suppose--that cow-backed sorrel will do--he's gentle, I
know. I think I'll go out and beg an invitation from that Hart
boy--never can remember those kids by name--Gene, is it, or
Jack?"
He went out upon the porch, laid a hand upon Jack's shoulder, and
beamed down upon him with what would have passed easily for real
affection while he announced that he was going to beg supper and
a bed at the ranch, and wanted to know, as a solicitous
after-thought, if Jack's mother had company, or anything that
would make his presence a burden.
"Nobody's there--and, if there was, it wouldn't matter," Jack
assured him carelessly. "Go on down, if you want to. It'll be
all right with mother."
"One thing I like about fishing down here," chuckled Baumberger,
his fat fingers still resting lightly upon Jack's shoulder, "is
the pleasure of eating my fish at your house. There ain't
another man, woman, or child in all Idaho can fry trout like your
mother. You needn't tell her I said so--but it's a fact, just
the same. She sure is a genius with the frying-pan, my boy."
He turned and called in to Pete, to know if he might have the
sorrel saddled right away. Since Pete looked upon Baumberger
with something of the awed admiration which he would bestow upon
the President, he felt convinced that his horses were to be
congratulated that any one of them found favor in his eyes.
Pete, therefore, came as near to roaring at Saunders as his good
nature and his laziness would permit, and waited in the doorway
until Saunders had, with visible reluctance, laid down his book
and started toward the stable.
"Needn't bother to bring the horse down here, my man," Baumberger
called after him. "I'll get him at the stable and start from
there. Well, wish me luck, Pete--and say! I'll expect you to
make a day of it with me Sunday. No excuses, now. I'm going to
stay over that long, anyhow. Promised myself three good
days--maybe more. A man's got to break away from his work once
in a while. If I didn't, life wouldn't be worth living. I'm
willing to grind--but I've got to have my playtime, too. Say, I
want you to try this rod of mine Sunday. You'll want one like it
yourself, if I'm any good at guessing. Just got it, you
know--it's the one I was talking to yuh about last time I was
down.
"W-ell--I reckon my means of conveyance is ready for me--so long,
Peter, till Sunday. See you at supper, boys."
He hooked a thumb under the shoulder-strap of his basket, pulled
it to a more comfortable position, waved his hand in a farewell,
which included every living thing within sight of him, and went
away up the narrow, winding trail through the sagebrush to the
stable, humming something under his breath with the same impulse
of satisfaction with life which sets a cat purring.
Some time later, he appeared, in the same jovial mood, at the
Hart ranch, and found there the welcome which he had counted
upon--the welcome which all men received there upon demand.
When Evadna and Jack rode up, they found Mr. Baumberger taking
his ease in Peaceful's armchair on the porch, discussing, with
animated gravity, the ins and outs of county politics; his
fishing-basket lying on its flat side close to his chair, his rod
leaning against the house at his elbow, his heavy pipe dragging
down one corner of his loose-lipped mouth; his whole gross person
surrounded by an atmosphere of prosperity leading the simple life
transiently and by choice, and of lazy enjoyment in his own
physical and mental well-being.
CHAPTER IX
PEPPAJEE JIM "HEAP SABES"
Peppajee Jim had meditated long in the shade of his wikiup, and
now, when the sun changed from a glaring ball of intense, yellow
heat to a sullen red disk hanging low over the bluffs of Snake
River, he rose, carefully knocked the ashes from his little stone
pipe, with one mechanical movement of his arms, gathered his
blanket around him, pushed a too-familiar dog from him with a
shove of moccasined foot, and stalked away through the sagebrush.
On the brow of the hill, just where the faint footpath dipped
into a narrow gully at the very edge, almost, of the bluff, he
stopped, and lifted his head for an unconsciously haughty stare
at his surroundings.
Beneath him and half a mile or so up the river valley, the mellow
green of Peaceful's orchard was already taking to itself the
vagueness of evening shadows. Nearer, the meadow of alfalfa and
clover lay like a soft, green carpet of velvet, lined here and
there with the irrigation ditches which kept it so. And in the
center of the meadow, a small inclosure marked grimly the spot
where lay the bones of old John Imsen. All around the man-made
oasis of orchards and meadows, the sage and the sand, pushed from
the river by the jumble of placer pits, emphasized by sharp
contrast what man may do with the most unpromising parts of the
earth's surface, once he sets himself heart and muscle to the
task.
With the deliberation of his race, Peppajee stood long minutes
motionless, gazing into the valley before ho turned with a true
Indian shrug and went down into the gully, up the steep slope
beyond, and then, after picking his way through a jumble of great
bowlders, came out eventually into the dust-ridden trail of the
white man. Down that he walked, erect, swift, purposeful, his
moccasins falling always with the precision of a wild animal upon
the best footing among the loose rocks, stubs of sage-roots, or
patches of deep dust and sand beside the wagon-road, his sharp,
high-featured face set in the stony calm which may hide a tumult
of elemental passions beneath and give no sign.
Where the trail curved out sharply to round the Point o' Rocks,
he left it, and kept straight on through the sage, entered a
rough pass through the huge rock tongue, and came out presently
to the trail again, a scant two hundred yards from the Hart
haystacks. When he reached the stable, he stopped and looked
warily about him, but there was no sight or sound of any there
save animals, and he went on silently to the house, his shadow
stretching long upon the ground before him until it merged into
the shade of the grove beyond the gate, and so was lost for that
day.
"Hello, Peppajee," called Wally over his cigarette. "Just in
time for supper."
Peppajee grunted, stopped in the path two paces from the porch,
folded his arms inside his blanket, and stood so while his eyes
traveled slowly and keenly around the group lounging at ease
above him. Upon the bulky figure of Baumberger they dwelt
longest, and while he looked his face hardened until nothing
seemed alive but his eyes.
"Peppajee, this my friend, Mr. Baumberger. You heap sabe
Baumberger--come all time from Shoshone, mebbyso catchum heap
many fish." Peaceful's mild, blue eyes twinkled over his old
meerschaum. He knew the ways of Indians, and more particularly
he knew the ways of Peppajee; Baumberger, he guessed shrewdly,
had failed to find favor in his eyes.
"Huh!" grunted Peppajee non-commitally, and made no motion to
shake hands, thereby confirming Peaceful's suspicion. "Me heap
sabe Man-that-catchum-fish." After which he stood as before, his
arms folded tightly in his blanket, his chin lifted haughtily,
his mouth a straight, stern line of bronze.
"Sit down, Peppajee. Bimeby eat supper," Peaceful invited
pacifically, while Baumberger chuckled at the Indian's attitude,
which he attributed to racial stupidity.
Peppajee did not even indicate that he heard or, hearing,
understood.
"Bothered much with Injuns?" Baumberger asked carelessly, putting
away his pipe. "I see there's quite a camp of 'em up on the
hill. Hope you've got good watchdogs--they're a thieving lot.
If they're a nuisance, Hart, I'll see what can be done about
slapping 'em back on their reservation, where they belong. I
happen to have some influence with the agent."
"I guess you needn't go to any trouble about it," Peaceful
returned dryly. "I've had worse neighbors."
"Oh--if you're stuck on their company!" laughed Baumberger
wheezily. "'Every fellow to his taste, as the old woman said
when she kissed her cow.' There may be good ones among the lot,"
he conceded politely when he saw that his time-worn joke had met
with disfavor, even by the boys, who could--and usually
did--laugh at almost anything. "They all look alike to me, I
must admit; I never had any truck with 'em."
"No, I guess not," Peaceful agreed in his slow way, holding his
pipe three inches from his face while he eyed Peppajee
quizzically. "Don't pay to have any truck with 'em while you
feel that way about it." He smoothed down his snow-white beard
with his free hand, pushed the pipe-stem between his teeth, and
went on smoking.
"I never liked the breed, any way you look at 'em," Baumberger
stated calmly.
"Say, you'll queer yourself good and plenty, if you keep on,"
Wally interrupted bluntly. "Peppajee's ears aren't plugged with
cotton--are they, Jim?"
Neither Peppajee nor Baumberger made reply of any sort, and
Peaceful turned his mild eyes reproachfully toward his untactful
son. But the supper summons clanged insistently from the iron
triangle on the back porch and saved the situation from becoming
too awkward. Even Baumberger let his tilted chair down upon its
four legs with a haste for which his appetite was not alone
responsible, and followed the boys into the house as if he were
glad to escape from the steady, uncompromising stare of the
Indian.
"Better come and eat, Peppajee," Peaceful lingered upon the porch
to urge hospitably. "You no get mad. You come eat supper."
"No!" Peppajee jerked the word out with unmistakable finality.
"No eat. Bimeby mebbyso makum big talk yo'."
Peaceful studied his face, found it stern and unyielding, and
nodded assent. "All right. I eat, then I talk with you." He
turned somewhat reluctantly and followed the others inside,
leaving Peppajee to pass the time away as pleased him best.
Peppajee stood still for a moment listening to the clatter of
dishes from the kitchen, and then with dignity end deliberation
seated himself upon the lowest step of the porch, and, pulling
his blanket tight around him, resettled his disreputable old
sombrero upon his head and stared fixedly at the crimson glow
which filled all the west and made even the rugged bluff a
wonderful thing of soft, rose tints and shadows of royal purple.
Peaceful, coming out half an hour after with Baumberger at his
heels, found him so and made a movement to sit down beside him.
But Peppajee rose and stalked majestically to the gate, then
turned and confronted the two.
"I talk yo'. Mebbyso no talk Man-with-big-belly." He waited
impassively.
"All right, Jim." Peaceful turned apologetically toward his
guest. "Something he wants to tell me, Baumberger; kinda
private, I guess. I'll be back in a minute, anyway."
"Now don't mind me at all," Baumberger protested generously. "Go
ahead just as if I wasn't here--that's what'll please me best. I
hope I ain't so much of a stranger you've got to stand on
ceremony. Go on, and find out what the old buck wants; he's got
something on his mind, that's sure. Been stealing fruit, maybe,
and wants to square himself before you catch him at it." He
laughed his laziest, and began leisurely to fill his pipe.
Peppajee led the way to the stable, where he stopped short and
faced Peaceful, his arms folded, one foot thrust forward in the
pose he affected when about to speak of matters important.
"Long time ago, when yo' hair black," he began deliberately, with
a sonorous lingering upon his vowels, "yo' all time my frien'. I
yo' frien' all same. Yo' no likum otha white man. Yo' all time
bueno. Yo' house all same my wikiup. Me come eat at yo' house,
talk yo' all same brotha. Yo' boys all same my boys--all time my
frien'. Me speakum all time no lie, mebbyso."
"No," Peaceful assented unhesitatingly, "you no tell lies,
Peppajee. We good friends, many years."
"Huh! Man-that-catchum-fish, him no yo' frien'. Shont-isham.
All time him speakum lies--tellum frien' yo', no frien'. Yo' no
more tellum stop yo' wikiup. Kay bueno. Yo' thinkum frien'.
All time him have bad heart for yo'. Yo' got ranch. Got plenty
hay, plenty apple, plenty all thing for eat. All time him think
bad for yo'. All time him likum steal yo' ranch."
Peaceful laughed indulgently. "You no sabe," he explained. "Him
like my ranch. Him say, long time ago, pay much money for my
ranch. Me no sell--me like for keep all time. Baumberger good
man. Him no steal my ranch. Me got one paper from government
--you sabe?--one paper say ranch all time b'longum me all same.
Big white chief say ranch b'longum me all time. I die, ranch
b'longum my boys. You sabe?"
Peppajee considered. "Me sabe," he said at length. "Me sabe
paper, sabe ranch all time b'longum yo'. All same, him like for
ketchum yo' ranch. Me hear much talk, him talk Man-that-coughs,
tellum him ketchum ranch. Much white man come, so--" He lifted
one hand with thumb and fingers outspread, made a downward
gesture, and then raised three fingers. "Catchum ranch."
Peaceful shook his head while he smiled. "No can do that.
Mebbyso much men come, heap fight, mebbyso killum me, ranch all
same b'longum my boys. Men that fights go to jail, mebbyso
hangum." He indicated by signs his exact meaning.
Peppajee scowled, and shook his head stubbornly. "Me heap sabe.
All same, ketchum yo' ranch. Man-that-catchum-fish kay bueno.
Yo' thinkum frien', yo' damfool. Him all same rattlesnake.
Plenty foolum yo'. Yo' see. Yo' thinkum Peppajee Jim heap big
fool. Peaceful Hart, him all time one heap big damfool. Him
ketchum yo' ranch. Yo' see." He stopped and stared hard at the
dim bulk of the grove, whence came the faint odor of smoke from
Baumberger's pipe.
"Yo' be smart man," he added grimly, "yo' all same kickum dat
mans off yo' ranch." For emphasis he thrust out a foot
vigorously in the direction of the house and the man he maligned,
and turned his face toward camp. Peaceful watched until the
blanketed form merged into the dusk creeping over the valley, and
when it disappeared finally into the short cut through the sage,
he shook his gray head in puzzlement over the absurd warning, and
went back to talk politics with Baumberger.
CHAPTER X MIDNIGHT PROWLERS
Came midnight and moonlight together, and with them came also
Good Indian riding somewhat sullenly down the trail to the ranch.
Sullen because of Evadna's attitude, which seemed to him
permanently antagonistic, and for very slight cause, and which
made the ranch an unpleasant abiding place.
He decided that he would not stop at the ranch, but would go on
up the valley to where one Abuer Hicks lived by himself in a
half-dugout, half-board shack, and by mining a little where his
land was untillable, and farming a little where the soil took
kindly to fruit and grasses, managed to exist without too great
hardship. The pension he received for having killed a few of his
fellow-men at the behest of his government was devoted solely to
liquid relief from the monotony of his life, and welcome indeed
was the man who brought him a bottle of joy between times.
Wherefore Good Indian had thoughtfully provided himself with a
quart or so and rode with his mind at ease so far as his welcome
at the Hicks dwelling place was concerned.
Once again the Peaceful Hart ranch lay in brooding silence under
the shadow of the bluff. A few crickets chirped shrilly along
the trail, and from their sudden hush as he drew near marked
unerringly his passing. Along the spring-fed creek the frogs
croaked a tuneless medley before him, and, like the crickets,
stopped abruptly and waited in absolute silence to take up their
night chant again behind him. His horse stepped softly in the
deep sand of the trail, and, when he found that his rider refused
to let him stop at the stable-door, shook his head in mute
displeasure, and went quietly on. As he neared the silent house,
the faint creak of saddle-leather and the rattle of spur-chains
against his iron stirrups were smothered in the whispering of the
treetops in the grove, so that only the quick hushing of night
noises alone betrayed him to any wakeful ear.
He was guilty of staring hard at that corner of the house where
he knew Evadna slept, and of scowling over the vague disquiet
which the thought of her caused him. No girl had ever troubled
his mind before. It annoyed him that the face and voice of
Evadna obtruded, even upon his thoughts of other things.
The grove was quiet, and he could hear Gene's unmistakable snore
over by the pond--the only sound save the whispering of the
trees, which went on, unmindful of his approach. It was evident,
he thought, that the ghost was effectually laid--and on the heels
of that, as he rode out from the deep shade of the grove and on
past the garden to the meadows beyond, he wondered if, after all,
it was again hardily wandering through the night; for he thought
he glimpsed a figure which flitted behind a huge rock a few rods
in advance of him, and his eyes were not used to playing him
tricks.
He gave a twitch of his fingers upon the reins, and turned from
the trail to investigate. He rode up to the rock, which stood
like an island of shade in that sea of soft moonlight, and,
peering into the shadows, spoke a guarded challenge:
"Who's that?"
A figure detached itself without sound from the blot of darkness
there, and stood almost at his stirrup.
"Yo' Good Injun--me likum for talk yo'."
Good Indian was conscious of a distinct disappointment, though he
kept it from his voice when he answered:
"Oh, it's you, Peppajee. What you do here? Why you no sleepum
yo' wikiup?"
Peppajee held up a slim, brown hand for silence, and afterward
rested it upon the saddle-fork.
"Yo' heap frien' Peaceful. Me heap frien' all same. Mebbyso we
talk. Yo' get down. No can see yo', mebbyso; yo' no likum bad
man for se--" He stepped back a pace, and let Good Indian
dismount; then with a gesture he led him back into the shadow of
the rock.
"Well, what's the row?" Good Indian asked impatiently, and
curiously as well.
Peppajee spoke more hastily than was usual. "Me watchum
Man-that-catchum-fish. Him hee-eeap kay bueno. Me no sabe why
him walk, walk in night--me heap watchum."
"You mean Baumberger? He's all right. He comes down here to
catchum many fish--trout, up in the Malad, you sabe. Heap friend
Peaceful. You no likum?"
"Kay bueno." Peppajee rested a forefinger upon Good Indian's
arm. "Sun up there," he pointed high in the west. "Me go all
same Hartley. Come stable--Pete stable--me walkum close--no
makum noise. Me hear talk. Stoppum--no can see--me hear much
bad talk. All time me hear, heap likum for steal dis ranch. Me
no sabe"--his tone was doubtful for a space--"all same, me hear
stealum this ranch. Man, you callum--"
"Baumberger?" suggested Grant.
"Him. All same Baumberga, him talk Man-that-coughs. All time
say stealum ranch. Makum much bad talk, them mans. Me come
ranch, me tellum Peaceful, him all time laugh, me. All time
shakum head. Mebbyso thinkum I lie--shont-isham!"
"What more you do?" Good Indian, at least, did not laugh.
"Me go camp. Me thinkum, thinkum all time. Dat man have bad
heart. Kay bueno. No can sleep--thinkum mebbyso do bad for
Peaceful. Come ranch, stop all time dark, all time heap watchum.
Bimeby, mebbyso man--all same yo' callum Baumberga--him come,
look, so--" He indicated, by a great craning of neck in all
directions, the wariness of one who goes by stealth. "Him walk
still all time, go all time ova there." He swept his arm toward
the meadows. "Me go still, for watchum. Yo' come, mebbyso make
heap much noise--kay bueno. Dat mans, him hear, him heap scare.
Me tellum, yo' mebbyso go still." He folded his arms with a
gesture of finality, and stood statue-like in the deep gloom
beside the rock.
Good Indian fingered his horse's mane while he considered the
queer story. There must be something in it, he thought, to bring
Peppajee from his blankets at midnight and to impel him,
unfriendly as he usually seemed, to confide his worry to him at
once and without urging. And yet, to steal the Peaceful Hart
ranch--the idea was ludicrous. Still, there was no harm in
looking around a bit. He sought a sagebrush that suited his
purpose, tied his horse to it, stooped, and took tho clanking
Mexican spurs from his heels, and touched Peppajee on the
shoulder.
"All right," he murmured close to his ear, "we go see."
Without a word, Peppajee turned, and stole away toward the
meadows, keeping always in the shadow of rock or bush,
silent-footed as a prowling bobcat. Close behind him, not quite
so silent because of his riding-boots, which would strike now and
then upon a rock, however careful he was of his footing, went
Good Indian.
So they circled the meadow, came into sand and sage beyond,
sought there unavailingly, went on to the orchard, and skirted
it, keen of eye and ear, struck quietly through it, and came at
last to the place where, the night before, Grant had overtaken
Evadna--and it surprised him not a little to feel his heart
pounding unreasonably against his ribs when he stopped beside the
rock where they had sat and quarreled.
Peppajee looked back to see why Grant paused there, and then,
wrapping his blanket tightly around him, crawled through the
fence, and went on, keeping to the broad belt of shade cast upon
the ground by the row of poplars. Where the shade stopped
abruptly, and beyond lay white moonlight with the ranch buildings
blotching it here and there, he stopped and waited until Good
Indian stood close beside him. Even then he did not speak, but,
freeing an arm slowly from the blanket folds, pointed toward the
stable.
Grant looked, saw nothing, stared harder, and so; feeling sure
there must be something hidden there, presently believed that a
bit of the shadow at that end which was next the corral wavered,
stopped, and then moved unmistakably. All the front of the
stable was distinctly visible in the white light, and, while they
looked, something flitted across it, and disappeared among the
sage beyond the trail.
Again they waited; two minutes, three minutes, five. Then
another shadow detached itself slowly from the shade of the
stable, hesitated, walked out boldly, and crossed the white sand
on the path to the house. Baumberger it was, and he stopped
midway to light his pipe, and so, puffing luxuriously, went on
into the blackness of the grove.
They heard him step softly upon the porch, heard also the bovine
sigh with which he settled himself in the armchair there. They
caught the aromatic odor of tobacco smoke ascending, and knew
that his presence there had all at once become the most innocent,
the most natural thing in the world; for any man, waking on such
a night, needs no justification for smoking a nocturnal pipe upon
the porch while he gazes dreamily out upon the moon-bathed world
around him.
Peppajee touched Grant's arm, and turned back, skirting the
poplars again until they were well away from the house, and there
was no possibility of being heard. He stopped there, and
confronted the other.
"What for you no stoppum stable?" he questioned bluntly. "What
for you no stoppum ranch, for sleepum?"
"I go for stoppum Hicks' ranch," said Good Indian, without any
attempt at equivocation.
Peppajee grunted." What for yo' no stoppum all same Peaceful?"
Good Indian scorned a subterfuge, and spoke truly. "That girl,
Evadna, no likum me. All time mad me. So I no stoppum ranch, no
more."
Peppajee grinned briefly and understandingly, and nodded his
head. "Me heap sabe. Yo' all time heap like for catchum that
girl, be yo' squaw. Bimeby that girl heap likum yo'. Me sabe."
He stood a moment staring at the stars peeping down from above
the rim-rock which guarded the bluff. "All same, yo' no go
stoppum Hicks," he commanded. "Yo' stoppum dis ranch all time.
Yo' all time watchum man--yo' callum Baumberga." He seemed to
remember and speak the name with some difficulty. "Where him go,
yo' go, for heap watchum. All time mebbyso me watchum
Man-that-coughs. Me no sabe catchum ranch--all same, me watchum.
Them mans heap kay bueno. Yo' bet yo' life!"
A moment he stood there after he was through speaking, and then
he was not there. Good Indian did not hear him go, though he had
stood beside him; neither could he, catching sight of a wavering
shadow, say positively that there went Peppajee.
He waited for a space, stole back to where he could hear any
sound from the porch even if he could not see, and when he was
certain that Baumberger had gone back to his bed, he got his
horse, took him by a roundabout way to the stable, and himself
slept in a haystack. At least, he made himself a soft place
beside one, and lay there until the sun rose, and if he did not
sleep it was not his fault, for he tried hard enough.
That is how Good Indian came to take his usual place at the
breakfast table, and to touch elbows with Evadna and to greet her
with punctilious politeness and nothing more. That is why he got
out his fishing-tackle and announced that he thought he would
have a try at some trout himself, and so left the ranch not much
behind Baumberger. That is why he patiently whipped the Malad
riffles until he came up with the portly lawyer from Shoshone,
and found him gleeful over a full basket and bubbling with
innocent details of this gamy one and that one still gamier.
They rode home together, and together they spent the hot
afternoon in the cool depths of the grove.
By sundown Good Indian was ready to call himself a fool and
Peppajee Jim a meddlesome, visionary old idiot. Steal the
Peaceful Hart ranch? The more he thought of it, the more
ridiculous the thing seemed.
CHAPTER XI
"YOU CAN'T PLAY WITH ME"
Good Indian was young, which means that he was not always
logical, nor much given to looking very far into the future
except as he was personally concerned in what he might see there.
By the time Sunday brought Miss Georgie Howard and the stir of
preparation for the fishing trip, he forgot that he had taken
upon himself the responsibility of watching the obviously
harmless movements of Baumberger, or had taken seriously the
warnings of Peppajee Jim; or if he did not forget, he at least
pushed it far into the background of his mind with the assertion
that Peppajee was a meddlesome old fool and Baumberger no more
designing than he appeared--which was not at all.
What did interest him that morning was the changeful mood of
Evadna; though he kept his interest so well hidden that no one
suspected it--not even the young lady herself. It is possible
that if Evadna had known that Good Indian's attitude of calm
oblivion to her moods was only a mask, she might have continued
longer her rigorous discipline of averted face and frigid tones.
As it was, she thawed toward him as he held himself more aloof,
until she actually came to the point of addressing him directly,
with a flicker of a smile for good measure; and, although he
responded with stiff civility, he felt his blood pulse faster,
and suddenly conceived the idea that women are like the creatures
of the wild. If one is very quiet, and makes no advance
whatever, the hunted thing comes closer and closer, and then a
sudden pounce--he caught his breath. After that he was wary and
watchful and full of his purpose.
Within ten minutes Evadna walked into the trap. They had
started, and were fifty yards up the trail, when Phoebe shouted
frantically after them. And because she was yet a timid rider
and feared to keep the pace set by the others, it was Evadna who
heard and turned back to see what was the trouble. Aunt Phoebe
was standing beside the road, waving a flask.
"It's the cream for your coffee," she cried, going to meet
Evadna. "You can slip it into your jacket-pocket, can't you,
honey? Huckleberry is so steady--and you won't do any wild
riding like the boys."
"I've got my veil and a box of bait and two handkerchiefs and a
piece of soap," the girl complained, reaching down for the
bottle, nevertheless. "But I can carry it in my hand till I
overtake somebody to give it to."
The somebody proved to be Good Indian, who had found it necessary
to stop and inspect carefully the left forefoot of his horse,
without appearing aware of the girl's approach. She ambled up at
Huckleberry's favorite shuffling gait, struck him with her
whip--a blow which would not have perturbed a mosquito--when he
showed a disposition to stop beside Grant, and then, when
Huckleberry reluctantly resumed his pacing, pulled him up, and
looked back at the figure stooped over the hoof he held upon his
knee. He was digging into the caked dirt inside the hoof with
his pocketknife, and, though Evadna waited while she might have
spoken a dozen words, he paid not the slightest attention--and
that in spite of the distinct shadow of her head and shoulders
which lay at his feet.
"Oh--Grant," she began perfunctorily, "I'm sorry to trouble
you--but do you happen to have an empty pocket?"
Good Indian gave a final scrape with his knife, and released the
foot, which Keno immediately stamped pettishly into the dust. He
closed the knife, after wiping the blade upon his trousers leg,
and returned it to his pocket before he so much as glanced toward
her.
"I may have. Why?" He picked up the bridle-reins, caught the
saddle-horn, and thrust his toe into the stirrup. From under his
hat-brim he saw that she was pinching her under lip between her
teeth, and the sight raised his spirits considerably.
"Oh, nothing. Aunt Phoebe called me back, and gave me a bottle
of cream, is all. I shall have to carry it in my hand, I
suppose." She twitched her shoulders, and started Huckleberry
off again. She had called him Grant, instead of the formal Mr.
Imsen she had heretofore clung to, and he had not seemed to
notice it even.
He mounted with perfectly maddening deliberation, but for all
that he overtook her before she had gone farther than a few rods,
and he pulled up beside her with a decision which caused
Huckleberry to stop also; Huckleberry, it must be confessed, was
never known to show any reluctance in that direction when his
head was turned away from home. He stood perfectly still while
Good Indian reached out a hand.
"I'll carry it--I'm more used to packing bottles," he announced
gravely.
"Oh, but if you must carry it in your hand, I wouldn't dream
of--" She was holding fast the bottle, and trying to wear her
Christmas-angel look.
Good Indian laid hold of the flask, and they stood there
stubbornly eying each other.
"I thought you wanted me to carry it," he said at last, pulling
harder.
"I merely asked if you had an empty pocket." Evadna clung the
tighter.
"Now, what's the use--"
"Just what I was thinking!" Evadna was so impolite as to
interrupt him.
Good Indian was not skilled in the management of women, but he
knew horses, and to his decision he added an amendment.
Instinctively he followed the method taught him by experience,
and when he fancied he saw in her eyes a sign of weakening, he
followed up the advantage he had gained.
"Let go--because I'm going to have it anyway, now," he said
quietly, and took the flask gently from her hands. Then he
smiled at her for yielding, and his smile was a revelation to the
girl, and brought the blood surging up to her face. She rode
meekly beside him at the pace he himself set--which was not
rapid, by any means. He watched her with quick, sidelong
glances, and wondered whether he would dare say what he wanted to
say--or at least a part of it.
She was gazing with a good deal of perseverance at the trail,
down the windings of which the others could be seen now and then
galloping through the dust, so that their progress was marked
always by a smothering cloud of gray. Then she looked at Grant
unexpectedly, met one of his sharp glances, and flushed hotly
again.
"How about this business of hating each other, and not speaking
except to please Aunt Phoebe?" he demanded, with a suddenness
which startled himself. He had been thinking it, but he hadn't
intended to say it until the words spoke themselves. "Are we
supposed to keep on acting the fool indefinitely?"
"I was not aware that I, at least, was acting the fool," she
retorted, with a washed-out primness.
"Oh, I can't fight the air, and I'm not going to try. What I've
got to say, I prefer to say straight from the shoulder. I'm sick
of this standing off and giving each other the bad eye over
nothing. If we're going to stay on the same ranch, we might as
well be friends. What do you say?"
For a time he thought she was not going to say anything. She was
staring at the dust-cloud ahead, and chewing absently at the
corner of her under lip, and she kept it up so long that Good
Indian began to scowl and call himself unseemly names for making
any overture whatever. But, just as he turned toward her with
lips half opened for a bitter sentence, he saw a dimple appear in
the cheek next to him, and held back the words.
"You told me you didn't like me," she reminded, looking at him
briefly, and afterward fumbling her reins. "You can't expect a
girl--"
"I suppose you don't remember coming up to me that first night,
and calling me names, and telling me how you hated me, and--and
winding up by pinching me?" he insinuated with hypocritical
reproach, and felt of his arm. "If you could see the mark--" he
hinted shamelessly.
Evadna replied by pushing up her sleeve and displaying a scratch
at least an inch in length, and still roughened and red. "I
suppose you don't remember trying to MURDER me?" she inquired,
sweetly triumphant. "If you could shoot as well as Jack, I'd
have been killed very likely. And you'd be in jail this minute,"
she added, with virtuous solemnity.
"But you're not killed, and I'm not in jail."
"And I haven't told a living soul about it--not even Aunt
Phoebe," Evadna remarked, still painfully virtuous. "If I had--"
"She'd have wondered, maybe, what you were doing away down there
in the middle of the night," Good Indian finished. "I didn't
tell a soul, either, for that matter."
They left the meadowland and the broad stretch of barren sand and
sage, and followed, at a leisurely pace, the winding of the trail
through the scarred desolation where the earth had been washed
for gold. Evadna stared absently at the network of deep gashes,
evidently meditating very seriously. Finally she turned to
Grant with an honest impulse of friendliness.
"Well, I'm sure I'm willing to bury the tomahawk--er--that is, I
mean--" She blushed hotly at the slip, and stammered
incoherently.
"Never mind." His eyes laughed at her confusion. "I'm not as
bad as all that; it doesn't hurt my feelings to have tomahawks
mentioned in my presence."
Her cheeks grew redder, if that were possible, but she made no
attempt to finish what she had started to say.
Good Indian rode silent, watching her unobtrusively and wishing
he knew how to bring the conversation by the most undeviating
path to a certain much-desired conclusion. After all, she was
not a wild thing, but a human being, and he hesitated. In
dealing with men, he had but one method, which was to go straight
to the point regardless of consequences. So he half turned in
the saddle and rode with one foot free of the stirrup that he
might face her squarely.
"You say you're willing to bury the tomahawk; do you mean it?"
His eyes sought hers, and when they met her glance held it in
spite of her blushes, which indeed puzzled him. But she did not
answer immediately, and so he repeated the question.
"Do you mean that? We've been digging into each other pretty
industriously, and saying how we hate each other--but are you
willing to drop it and be friends? It's for you to say--and
you've got to say it now."
Evadna hung up her head at that. "Are you in the habit of laying
down the law to everyone who will permit it?" she evaded.
"Am I to take it for granted you meant what you said?" He stuck
stubbornly to the main issue. "Girls seem to have a way of
saying things, whether they mean anything or not. Did you?"
"Did I what?" She was wide-eyed innocence again.
Good Indian muttered something profane, and kicked his horse in
the ribs. When it had taken no more than two leaps forward,
however, he pulled it down to a walk again, and his eyes boded
ill for the misguided person who goaded him further. He glanced
at the girl sharply.
"This thing has got to be settled right now, without any more
fooling or beating about the bush," he said--and he said it so
quietly that she could scarcely be blamed for not realizing what
lay beneath. She was beginning to recover her spirits and her
composure, and her whole attitude had become demurely impish.
"Settle it then, why don't you?" she taunted sweetly. "I'm sure
I haven't the faintest idea what there is to settle--in that
solemn manner. I only know we're a mile behind the others, and
Miss Georgie will be wondering--"
"You say I'm to settle it, the way I want it settled?"
If Evadna did not intend anything serious, she certainly was a
fool not to read aright his ominously calm tone and his tensely
quiet manner. She must have had some experience in coquetry, but
it is very likely that she had never met a man just like this
one. At all events, she tilted her blonde head, smiled at him
daringly, and then made a little grimace meant to signify her
defiance of him and his unwarranted earnestness.
Good Indian leaned unexpectedly, caught her in his arms, and
kissed her three times upon her teasing, smiling mouth, and while
she was gasping for words to voice her amazement he drew back his
head, and gazed sternly into her frightened eyes.
"You can't play with ME," he muttered savagely, and kissed her
again. "This is how I settle it. You've made me want you for
mine. It's got to be love or--hate now. There isn't anything
between, for me and you." His eyes passed hungrily from her
quivering lips to her eyes, and the glow within his own made her
breath come faster. She struggled weakly to free herself, and
his clasp only tightened jealously.
"If you had hated me, you wouldn't have stopped back there, and
spoken to me," he said, the words coming in a rush. "Women like
to play with love, I think. But you can't play with me. I want
you. And I'm going to have you. Unless you hate me. But you
don't. I'd stake my life on it." And he kissed her again.
Evadna reached up, felt for her hat, and began pulling it
straight, and Good Indian, recalled to himself by the action,
released her with manifest reluctance. He felt then that he
ought never to let her go out of his arms; it was the only way,
it seemed to him, that he could be sure of her. Evadna found
words to express her thoughts, and her thoughts were as wholly
conventional as was the impulse to straighten her hat.
"We've only known each other a week!" she cried tremulously,
while her gloved fingers felt inquiringly for loosened hairpins.
"You've no right--you're perfectly horrid! You take everything
for granted--"
Good Indian laughed at her, a laugh of pure, elemental joy in
life and in love.
"A man's heart does not beat by the calendar. Nature made the
heart to beat with love, ages before man measured time, and
prattled of hours and days and weeks," he retorted. "I'm not the
same man I was a week ago. Nor an hour ago. What does it matter
~ I am--the man I am NOW." He looked at her more calmly. "An
hour ago," he pointed out, "I didn't dream I should kiss you.
Nor you, that you would let me do it."
"I didn't! I couldn't help myself. You--oh, I never saw such
a--a brute!" The tears in her eyes were, perhaps, tears of rage
at the swiftness with which he had mastered the situation and
turned it in a breath from the safe channel of petty argument.
She struck Huckleberry a blow with her whip which sent that
astonished animal galloping down the slope before them, his ears
laid back and his white eyelashes blinking resentment against the
outrage.
Good Indian laughed aloud, spurred Keno into a run, and passed
her with a scurry of dust, a flash of white teeth and laughing
black eyes, and a wave of his free hand in adieu. He was still
laughing when he overtook the others, passed by the main group,
and singled out Jack, his particular chum. He refused to explain
either his hurry or his mirth further than to fling out a vague
sentence about a race, and thereafter he ambled contentedly along
beside Jack in the lead, and told how he had won a hundred and
sixty dollars in a crap game the last time he was in Shoshone,
and how he had kept on until he had "quit ten dollars in the
hole." The rest of the boys, catching a few words here and
there, crowded close, and left the two girls to themselves, while
Good Indian recounted in detail the fluctuations of the game;
how he had seesawed for an hour, winning and losing alternately;
and how his luck had changed suddenly just when he had made up
his mind to play a five-dollar gold piece he had in his hand and
quit.
"I threw naturals three times in succession," he said, "and let
my bets ride. Then I got Big Dick, made good, and threw another
natural. I was seeing those Spanish spurs and that peach of a
headstall in Fernando's by that time; seeing them on Keno and
me--they're in the window yet, Jack, and I went in when I first
hit town and looked them over and priced them; a hundred and
fifty, just about what we guessed he'd hold them at. And say,
those conchos--you remember the size of 'em, Jack?--they're solid
silver, hammered out and engraved by hand. Those Mexicans sure
do turn out some fine work on their silver fixings!" He felt in
his pocket for a match.
"Pity I didn't let well enough alone," he went on. "I had the
price of the outfit, and ten dollars over. But then I got
hoggish. I thought I stood a good chance of making seven lucky
passes straight--I did once, and I never got over it, I guess. I
was going to pinch down to ten--but I didn't; I let her ride.
And SHOT CRAPS!"
He drew the match along the stamped saddle-skirt behind the
cantle, because that gave him a chance to steal a look behind him
without being caught in the act. Good, wide hat-brims have more
uses than to shield one's face from the sun. He saw that Evadna
was riding in what looked like a sulky silence beside her friend,
but he felt no compunction for what he had done; instead he was
exhilarated as with some heady wine, and he did not want to do
any thinking about it--yet. He did not even want to be near
Evadna. He faced to the front, and lighted his cigarette while
he listened to the sympathetic chorus from the boys.
"What did you do then?" asked Gene.
"Well, I'd lost the whole blamed chunk on a pair of measly aces,"
he said. "I was pretty sore by that time, I'm telling you! I was
down to ten dollars, but I started right in to bring back that
hundred and sixty. Funny, but I felt exactly as if somebody had
stolen that headstall and spurs right out of my hand, and I just
had to get it back pronto. I started in with a dollar, lost it
on craps--sixes, that time--sent another one down the same trail
trying to make Little Joe come again, third went on craps, fourth
I doubled on nine, lost 'em both on craps--say, I never looked so
many aces and sixes in the face in my life! It was sure kay
bueno, the luck I had that night. I got up broke, and had to
strike Riley for money to get out of town with."
So for a time he managed to avoid facing squarely this new and
very important factor which must henceforth have its place in the
problem of his life.
CHAPTER XII
"THEM DAMN SNAKE"
Three hundred yards up the river, in the shade of a huge bowlder,
round an end of which the water hurried in a green swirl that it
might the sooner lie quiet in the deep, dark pool below, Good
Indian, picking his solitary way over the loose rocks, came
unexpectedly upon Baumberger, his heavy pipe sagging a corner of
his flabby mouth, while he painstakingly detached a fly from his
leader, hooked it into the proper compartment of his fly-book,
and hesitated over his selection of another to take its place.
Absorption was writ deep on his gross countenance, and he
recognized the intruder by the briefest of flickering glances and
the slightest of nods.
"Keep back from that hole, will yuh?" he muttered, jerking his
head toward the still pool. "I ain't tried it yet."
Good Indian was not particularly interested in his own fishing.
The sight of Baumberger, bulking there in the shade with his
sagging cheeks and sagging pipe, his flopping old hat and baggy
canvas fishing-coat, with his battered basket slung over his
slouching shoulder and sagging with the weight of his catch; the
sloppy wrinkles of his high, rubber boots shining blackly from
recent immersion in the stream, caught his errant attention, and
stayed him for a few minutes to watch.
Loosely disreputable looked Lawyer Baumberger, from the snagged
hole in his hat-crown where a wisp of graying hair fluttered
through, to the toes of his ungainly, rubber-clad feet; loosely
disreputable, but not commonplace and not incompetent. Though
his speech might be a slovenly mumble, there was no purposeless
fumbling of the fingers that chose a fly and knotted it fast upon
the leader. There was no bungling movement of hand or foot when
he laid his pipe upon the rock, tiptoed around the corner, sent a
mechanical glance upward toward the swaying branches of an
overhanging tree, pulled out his six feet of silk line with a
sweep of his arm, and with a delicate fillip, sent the fly
skittering over the glassy center of the pool.
Good Indian, looking at him, felt instinctively that a part, at
least, of the man's nature was nakedly revealed to him then. It
seemed scarcely fair to read the lust of him and the utter
abandonment to the hazard of the game. Pitiless he looked, with
clenched teeth just showing between the loose lips drawn back in
a grin that was half-snarl, half-involuntary contraction of
muscles sympathetically tense.
That was when a shimmering thing slithered up, snapped at the
fly, and flashed away to the tune of singing reel and the dance
of the swaying rod. The man grew suddenly cruel and crafty and
full of lust; and Good Indian, watching him, was conscious of an
inward shudder of repulsion. He had fished all his life--had
Good Indian--and had found joy in the sport. And here was he
inwardly condemning a sportsman who stood self-revealed,
repelling, hateful; a man who gloated over the struggle of
something alive and at his mercy; to whom sport meant power
indulged with impunity. Good Indian did not try to put the thing
in words, but he felt it nevertheless.
"Brute!" he muttered aloud, his face eloquent of cold disgust.
At that moment Baumberger drew the tired fish gently into the
shallows, swung him deftly upon the rocks, and laid hold of him
greedily.
"Ain't he a beaut?" he cried, in his wheezy chuckle. "Wait a
minute while I weigh him. He'll go over a pound, I'll bet money
on it." Gloatingly he held it in his hands, removed the hook,
and inserted under the gills the larger one of the little scales
he carried inside his basket.
"Pound and four ounces," he announced, and slid the fish into his
basket. He was the ordinary, good-natured, gross Baumberger now.
Ho reached for his pipe, placed it in his mouth, and held out a
hand to Good Indian for a match.
"Say, young fella, have you got any stand-in with your noble red
brothers?" he asked, after he had sucked life into the charred
tobacco.
"Cousins twice or three times removed, you mean," said Good
Indian coldly, too proud and too lately repelled to meet the man
on friendly ground. "Why do you ask?"
Baumberger eyed him speculatively while he smoked, and chuckled
to himself.
"One of 'em--never mind placing him on his own p'ticular limb of
the family tree--has been doggin' me all morning," he said at
last, and waved a fishy hand toward the bluff which towered high
above them. "Saw him when I was comin' up, about sunrise, pokin'
along behind me in the sagebrush. Didn't think anything of
that--thought maybe he was hunting or going fishing--but he's
been sneakin' around behind me ever since. I don't reckon he's
after my scalp--not enough hair to pay--but I'd like to know what
the dickens he does mean."
"Nothing probably," Good Indian told him shortly, his eyes
nevertheless searching the rocks for a sight of the watcher.
"Well, I don't much like the idea," complained Baumberger,
casting an eye aloft in fear of snagging his line when he made
another cast. "He was right up there a few minutes ago." He
pointed his rod toward a sun-ridden ridge above them. "I got a
flicker of his green blanket when he raised up and scowled down
at me. He ducked when he saw me turn my head--looked to me like
the surly buck that blew in to the ranch the night I came; Jim
something-or-other. By the great immortal Jehosaphat!" he swore
humorously, "I'd like to tie him up in his dirty blanket and
heave him into the river--only it would kill all the fish in the
Malad."
Good Indian laughed.
"Oh, I know it's funny, young fella," Baumberger growled. "About
as funny as being pestered by a mosquito buzzing under your nose
when you're playing a fish that keeps cuttin' figure eights in a
hole the size uh that one there."
"I'll go up and take a look," Good Indian offered carelessly.
"Well, I wish you would. I can't keep my mind on m'
fishing--just wondering what the deuce he's after. And say! You
tell him I'll stand him on his off ear if I catch him doggie' me
ag'in. Folks come with yuh?" he remembered to ask as he prepared
for another cast into the pool.
"They're down there getting a campfire built, ready to fry what
fish they catch," Good Indian informed him, as he turned to climb
the bluff. "They're going to eat dinner under that big ledge by
the rapids. You better go on down."
He stood for a minute, and watched Baumberger make a dexterous
cast, which proved fruitless, before he began climbing up the
steep slope of jumbled bowlders upon which the bluff itself
seemed to rest. He was not particularly interested in his quest,
but he was in the mood for purposeless action; he still did not
want to think.
He climbed negligently, scattering loose rocks down the hill
behind him. He had no expectation of coming upon
Peppajee--unless Peppajee deliberately put himself in his
way--and so there was no need of caution. He stopped once, and
stood long minutes with his head turned to catch the faint sound
of high-keyed laughter and talk which drifted up to him. If he
went higher, he thought, he might get a glimpse of them--of her,
to tell his thought honestly. Whereupon he forgot all about
finding and expostulating with Peppajee, and thought only a point
of the ridge which would give him a clear view downstream.
To be sure, he might as easily have retraced his steps and joined
the group, and seen every changing look in her face. But he did
not want to be near her when others were by; he wanted her to
himself, or not at all. So he went on, while the sun beat hotly
down upon him and the rocks sent up dry waves of heat like an
oven.
A rattlesnake buzzed its strident warning between two rocks, but
before he turned his attention to the business of killing it, the
snake had crawled leisurely away into a cleft, where he could not
reach it with the stones he threw. His thoughts, however, were
brought back to his surroundings so that he remembered Peppajee.
He stood still, and scanned carefully the jumble of rocks and
bowlders which sloped steeply down to the river, looking for a
betraying bit of color or dirty gray hat-crown.
"But I could look my eyes out and welcome, if he didn't want to
be seen," he concluded, and sat down while he rolled a cigarette.
"And I don't know as I want to see him, anyway." Still, he did
not move immediately. He was in the shade, which was a matter
for congratulation on such a day. He had a cigarette between his
lips, which made for comfort; and he still felt the exhilarating
effects of his unpremeditated boldness, without having come to
the point of sober thinking. He sat there, and blew occasional
mouthfuls of smoke into the quivering heat waves, and stared down
at the river rushing over the impeding rocks as if its very
existence depended upon reaching as soon as possible the broader
sweep of the Snake.
He finished the first cigarette, and rolled another from sheer
force of habit rather than because he really wanted one. He
lifted one foot, and laid it across his knee, and was drawing a
match along the sole of his boot when his eyes chanced to rest
for a moment upon a flutter of green, which showed briefly around
the corner of a great square rock poised insecurely upon one
corner, as if it were about to hurl its great bulk down upon the
river it had watched so long. He held the blazing match poised
midway to its destination while he looked; then he put it to the
use he had meant it for, pulled his hat-brim down over his right
eye and ear to shield them from the burn of the sun, and went
picking his way idly over to the place.
"HUL-lo!" he greeted, in the manner of one who refuses to
acknowledge the seriousness of a situation which confronts him
suddenly. "What's the excitement?"
There was no excitement whatever. There was Peppajee, hunched up
against the rock in that uncomfortable attitude which permits a
man to come at the most intimate relations with the outside of
his own ankle, upon which he was scowling in seeming malignity.
There was his hunting-knife lying upon a flat stone near to his
hand, with a fresh red blotch upon the blade, and there was his
little stone pipe clenched between his teeth and glowing red
within the bowl. Also there was the ankle, purple and swollen
from the ligature above it--for his legging was off and torn into
strips which formed a bandage, and a splinter of rock was twisted
ingeniously in the wrappings for added tightness. From a
crisscross of gashes a sluggish, red stream trickled down to the
ankle-bone, and from there drip-dropped into a tiny, red pool in
the barren, yellow soil.
"Catchum rattlesnake bite?" queried Good Indian inanely, as is
the habit of the onlooker when the scene shouts forth eloquently
its explanation, and questions are almost insultingly
superfluous.
"Huh!" grunted Peppajee, disdaining further speech upon the
subject, and regarded sourly the red drip.
"Want me to suck it?" ventured Good Indian unenthusiastically,
eying the wound.
"Huh!" Peppajee removed the pipe, his eyes still upon his ankle.
"Plenty blood come, mebbyso." To make sure, however, he kneaded
the swollen flesh about the wound, thus accelerating slightly
the red drip.
Then deliberately he took another turn with the rock, sending the
buckskin thongs deeper into the flesh, and held the burning pipe
against the skin above the wound until Good Indian sickened and
turned away his head. When he looked again, Peppajee was sucking
hard at the pipe, and gazing impersonally at the place. He bent
again, and hid the glow of his pipe against his ankle. His thin
lips tightened while he held it there, but the lean, brown
fingers were firm as splinters of the rock behind him. When the
fire cooled, he fanned it to life again with his breath, and when
it winked redly at him he laid it grimly against his flesh.
So, while Good Indian stood and looked on with lips as tightly
drawn as the other's, he seared a circle around the wound--a
circle which bit deep and drew apart the gashes like lips opened
for protest. He regarded critically his handiwork, muttered a
"Bueno" under his breath, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and
returned it to some mysterious hiding-place beneath his blanket.
Then he picked up his moccasin.
"Them damn' snake, him no speakum," he observed disgustedly.
"Heap fool me; him biteum"--he made a stabbing gesture with thumb
and finger in the air by way of illustration--"then him go
quick." He began gingerly trying to force the moccasin upon his
foot, his mouth drawn down with the look of one who considers
that he has been hardly used.
"How you get home?" Good Indian's thoughts swung round to
practical things. "You got horse?"
Peppajee shook his head, reached for his knife, and slit the
moccasin till it was no more than a wrapping. "Mebbyso heap
walk," he stated simply.
"Mebbyso you won't do anything of the kind," Good Indian
retorted. "You come down and take a horse. What for you all
time watchum Baumberger?" he added, remembering then what had
brought them both upon the bluff. "Baumberger all time fish--no
more." He waved his hand toward the Malad. "Baumberger
bueno--catchum fish--no more."
Peppajee got slowly and painfully upon his feet--rather, upon one
foot. When Good Indian held out a steadying arm, he accepted it,
and leaned rather heavily.
"Yo' eyes sick," said Peppajee, and grinned sardonically. "Yo'
eyes see all time Squaw-with-sun-hair. Fillum yo' eyes, yo' see
notting. Yo' catchum squaw, bimeby mebbyso see plenty mo'. Me
no catchum sick eye. Mebbyso me see heap plenty."
"What you see, you all time watchum Baumberger?"
But Peppajee, hobbling where he must walk, crawling where he
might, sliding carefully where a slanting bowlder offered a few
feet of smooth descent, and taking hold of Good Indian's offered
arm when necessity impelled him, pressed his thin lips together,
and refused to answer. So they came at last to the ledge beside
the rapids, where a thin wisp of smoke waved lazily in the
vagrant breeze which played with the ripples and swayed languidly
the smaller branches of the nearby trees.
Only Donny was there, sitting disgruntled upon the most
comfortable rock he could find, sulking because the others had
taken all the fishing-tackle that was of any account, and had
left him to make shift with one bent, dulled hook, a lump of fat
pork, and a dozen feet of line.
"And I can catch more fish than anybody in the bunch!" he began
complainingly and without preface, waving a dirty hand
contemptuously at the despised tackle when the two came slowly
up. "That's the way it goes when you take a lot of girls along!
They've got to have the best rods and tackle, and all they'll do
will be to snag lines and lose leaders and hooks, and giggle alla
squeal. Aw--DARN girls!"
"And I'm going to pile it on still thicker, Donny!" Good Indian
grinned down at him. "I'm going to swipe your Pirate Chief for a
while, till I take Peppajee into camp. He's gentle, and
Peppajee's got a snake-bite. I'll be back before you get ready
to go home."
"I'm ready to go home right now," growled Donny, sinking his chin
between his two palms. "But I guess the walkin' ain't all taken
up."
Good Indian regarded him frowningly, gave a little snort, and
turned away. Donny in that mood was not to be easily placated,
and certainly not to be ignored. He went over to the little
flat, and selected Jack's horse, saddled him, and discovered that
it had certain well-defined race prejudices, and would not let
Peppajee put foot to the stirrup. Keno he knew would be no more
tractable, so that he finally slapped Jack's saddle on
Huckleberry, and so got Peppajee mounted and headed toward camp.
"You tell Jack I borrowed his saddle and Huckleberry," he called
out to the drooping little figure on the rock. "But I'll get
back before they want to go home."
But Donny was glooming over his wrongs, and neither heard nor
wanted to hear. Having for his legacy a temper cumulative in its
heat, he was coming rapidly to the point where he, too, started
home, and left no word or message behind; a trivial enough
incident in itself, but one which opened the way for some
misunderstanding and fruitless speculation upon the part of
Evadna.
CHAPTER XIII
CLOUD-SIGN VERSUS CUPID
Few men are ever called upon by untoward circumstance to know the
sensations caused by rattlesnake bite, knife gashes, impromptu
cauterization, and, topping the whole, the peculiar torture of
congested veins and swollen muscles which comes from a
tourniquet. The feeling must be unpleasant in the extreme, and
the most morbid of sensation-seekers would scarcely put himself
in the way of that particular experience.
Peppajee Jim, therefore, had reason in plenty for glowering at
the world as he saw it that day. He held Huckleberry rigidly
down to his laziest amble that the jar of riding might be
lessened, kept his injured foot free from the stirrup, and merely
grunted when Good Indian asked him once how he felt.
When they reached the desolation of the old placer-pits, however,
he turned his eyes from the trail where it showed just over
Huckleberry's ears, and regarded sourly the deep gashes and
dislodged bowlders which told where water and the greed of man
for gold had raged fiercest. Then, for the first time during the
whole ride, he spoke.
"All time, yo' sleepum," he said, in the sonorous, oracular tone
which he usually employed when a subject held his serious
thought. "Peaceful Hart, him all same sleepum. All same sleepum
'longside snake. No seeum snake, no thinkum mebbyso catchum
bite." He glanced down at his own snake-bitten foot. "Snake
bite, make all time much hurt." His eyes turned, and dwelt
sharply upon the face of Good Indian.
"Yo' all time thinkum Squaw-with-sun-hair. Me tell yo' for
watchum, yo' no think for watchum. Baumberga, him all same
snake. Yo' think him all time catchum fish. HUH! Yo' heap big
fool, yo' thinkum cat. Rattlesnake, mebbyso sleepum in sun one
time. Yo' no thinkum bueno, yo' seeum sleep in sun. Yo' heap
sabe him all time kay bueno jus' same. Yo' heap sabe yo' come
close, him biteum. Mebbyso biteum hard, for killum yo' all
time." He paused, then drove home his point like the true
orator. "Baumberga catchum fish. All same rattlesnake sleepum
in sun. Kay bueno."
Good Indian jerked his mind back from delicious recollection of
one sweet, swift-passing minute, and half opened his lips for
reply. But he did not speak; he did not know what to say, and it
is ill-spent time--that passed in purposeless speech with such as
Peppajee. Peppajee roused himself from meditation brief as it
seemed deep, lifted a lean, brown hand to push back from his eyes
a fallen lock of hair, and pointed straight away to the west.
"Las' night, sun go sleepum. Clouds come all same blanket, sun
wrappum in blanket. Cloud look heap mad--mebbyso make much
storm. Bimeby much mens come in cloud, stand so--and so--and
so." With pointing finger he indicated a half circle. "Otha man
come, heap big man. Stoppum 'way off, all time makeum sign, for
fight. Me watchum. Me set by fire, watchum cloud makeum sign.
Fire smoke look up for say, 'What yo' do all time, mebbyso?'
Cloud man shakeum hand, makeum much sign. Fire smoke heap sad,
bend down far, lookum me, lookum where cloud look. All time
lookum for Peaceful Hart ranch. Me lay down for sleepum, me
dream all time much fight. All time bad sign come. Kay bueno."
Peppajee shook his head slowly, his leathery face set in deep,
somber lines.
"Much trouble come heap quick," he said gravely, hitching his
blanket into place upon his shoulder. "Me no sabe--all same,
heap trouble come. Much mens, mebbyso much fight, much
shootum--mebbyso kill. Peaceful Hart him all time laugh me. All
same, me sabe smoke sign, sabe cloud sign, sabe--Baumberga. Heap
ka-a-ay bueno!"
Good Indian's memory dashed upon him a picture of bright
moonlight and the broody silence of a night half gone, and of a
figure forming sharply and suddenly from the black shadow of the
stable and stealing away into the sage, and of Baumberger
emerging warily from that same shadow and stopping to light his
pipe before he strolled on to the house and to the armchair upon
the porch.
There might be a sinister meaning in that picture, but it was so
well hidden that he had little hope of ever finding it. Also, it
occurred to him that Peppajee, usually given over to creature
comforts and the idle gossip of camp and the ranches he visited,
was proving the sincerity of his manifest uneasiness by a
watchfulness wholly at variance with his natural laziness. On
the other hand, Peppajee loved to play the oracle, and a waving
wisp of smoke, or the changing shapes in a wind-riven cloud meant
to him spirit-sent prophecies not to be ignored.
He turned the matter over in his mind, was the victim of
uneasiness for five minutes, perhaps, and then drifted off into
wondering what Evadna was doing at that particular moment, and to
planning how he should manage to fall behind with her when they
all rode home, and so make possible other delicious moments. He
even took note of certain sharp bends in the trail, where a
couple riding fifty yards, say, behind a group would be for the
time being quite hidden from sight and to all intents and
purposes alone in the world for two minutes, or three--perhaps
the time might be stretched to five.
The ranch was quiet, with even the dogs asleep in the shade.
Peppajee insisted in one sentence upon going straight on to camp,
so they did not stop. Without speaking, they plodded through the
dust up the grade, left it, and followed the dim trail through
the sagebrush and rocks to the Indian camp which seemed asleep
also, except where three squaws were squatting in the sharply
defined, conical shadow of a wikiup, mumbling desultorily the
gossip of their little world, while their fingers moved with
mechanical industry--one shining black head bent over a
half-finished, beaded moccasin, another stitching a crude gown of
bright-flowered calico, and the third braiding her hair afresh
with leisurely care for its perfect smoothness. Good Indian took
note of the group before it stirred to activity, and murmured
anxiety over the bandaged foot of Peppajee.
"Me no can watchum more, mebbyso six days. Yo' no sleepum all
time yo' walk--no thinkum all time squaw. Mebbyso yo' think for
man-snake. Mebbyso yo' watchum," Peppajee said, as he swung
slowly down from Huckleberry's back.
"All right. I'll watchum plenty," Good Indian promised lightly,
gave a glance of passing, masculine interest at the squaw who was
braiding her hair, and who was young and fresh-cheeked and
bright-eyed and slender, forgot her the instant his eyes left
her, and made haste to return to the Malad and the girl who held
all his thoughts and all his desire.
That girl was sitting upon the rock which Donny had occupied, and
she looked very much as if she were sulking, much as Donny had
sulked. She had her chin in a pink palm and was digging little
holes in the sand with the tip of her rod, which was not at all
beneficial to the rod and did not appear even to interest the
digger; for her wonderfully blue eyes were staring at the
green-and-white churn of the rapids, and her lips were pursed
moodily, as if she did not even see what she was looking at so
fixedly.
Good Indian's eyes were upon her while he was dismounting, but he
did not go to her immediately. Instead, he busied himself with
unsaddling, and explained to the boys just why he had left so
unaccountably. Secretly he was hoping that Evadna heard the
explanation, and he raised his voice purposely. But Evadna was
not listening, apparently; and, if she had been, the noise of the
rapids would have prevented her hearing what he said.
Miss Georgie Howard was frying fish and consistently snubbing
Baumberger, who hulked loosely near the campfire, and between
puffs at his pipe praised heavily her skill, and professed to own
a ravenous appetite. Good Indian heard him as he passed close by
them, and heard also the keen thrust she gave in return; and he
stopped and half turned, looking at her with involuntary
appreciation. His glance took in Baumberger next, and he lifted
a shoulder and went on. Without intentionally resorting to
subterfuge, he felt an urge to wash his hands, and he chose for
his ablutions that part of the river's edge which was nearest
Evadna.
First he stooped and drank thirstily, his hat pushed back, while
his lips met full the hurrying water, clear and cold, yet with
the chill it had brought from the mountain springs which fed it,
and as he lifted his head he looked full at her.
Evadna stared stonily over him to where the water boiled fastest.
He might have been one of the rocks, for all the notice she took
of him.
Good Indian frowned with genuine puzzlement, and began slowly to
wash his hands, glancing at her often in hope that he might meet
her eyes. When she did not seem to see him at all, the smile of
a secret shared joyously with her died from his own eyes, and
when he had dried his hands upon his handkerchief he cast aside
his inward shyness in the presence of the Hart boys and Miss
Georgie and Baumberger, and went boldly over to her.
"Aren't you feeling well?" he asked, with tender proprietorship
in his tone.
"I'm feeling quite well, thank you," returned Evadna frigidly,
neglecting to look at him.
"What is the matter, then? Aren't you having a good time?"
"I'm enjoying myself very much--except that your presence annoys
me. I wish you'd go away."
Good Indian turned on his heel and went; he felt that at last
Evadna was looking at him, though he would not turn to make sure.
And his instinct told him withal that he must ignore her mood if
he would win her from it. With a freakish impulse, he headed
straight for the campfire and Miss Georgie, but when he came up
to her the look she gave him of understanding, with sympathy to
soften it, sent him away again without speaking.
He wandered back to the river's edge--this time some distance
from where Evadna sat--and began throwing pebbles at the black
nose of a wave-washed bowlder away toward the other side. Clark
and Gene, loitered up, watched him lazily, and, picking up other
pebbles, started to do the same thing. Soon all the boys were
throwing at the bowlder, and were making a good deal of noise
over the various hits and misses, and the spirit of rivalry waxed
stronger and stronger until it was like any other game wherein
full-blooded youths strive against one another for supremacy.
They came to the point of making bets, at first extravagant and
then growing more and more genuinely in earnest, for we're
gamblers all, at heart.
Miss Georgie burned a frying-panful of fish until they sent up an
acrid, blue smoke, while she ran over to try her luck with a
stone or two. Even Baumberger heaved himself up from where he
was lounging, and strolled over to watch. But Evadna could not
have stuck closer to her rock if she had been glued there, and if
she had been blind and deaf she would not have appeared more
oblivious.
Good Indian grew anxious, and then angry. The savage stirred
within him, and counseled immediate and complete mastery of
her--his woman. But there was the white man of him who said the
thought was brute] and unchivalrous, and reminded the savage that
one must not look upon a woman as a chattel, to be beaten or
caressed, as the humor seized the master. And, last of all,
there was the surface of him laughing with the others, fleering
at those who fell short of the mark, and striving his utmost to
be first of them all in accuracy.
He even smiled upon Miss Georgie when she hit the bowlder fairly,
and, when the stench of the burning fish drifted over to them, he
gave his supply of pebbles into her two hands, and ran to the
rescue. He caught Evadna in the act of regarding him sidelong,
just as a horse sometimes will keep an eye on the man with the
rope in a corral; so he knew she was thinking of him, at least,
and was wondering what he meant to do next, and the savage in him
laughed and lay down again, knowing himself the master.
What he did was to throw away the burnt fish, clean the
frying-pan, and start more sizzling over the fire, which he
kicked into just the right condition. He whistled softly to
himself while he broke dry sticks across his knee for the fire,
and when Miss Georgie cried out that she had made three hits in
succession, he called back: "Good shot!" and took up the tune
where he had left off. Never, for one instant, was he
unconscious of Evadna's secret watchfulness, and never, for one
instant, did he let her see that she was in his thoughts.
He finished frying the fish, set out the sandwiches and
doughnuts, and pickled peaches and cheese, and pounded upon a tin
plate to announce that dinner was ready. He poured the coffee
into the cups held out to him, and got the flask of cream from a
niche between two rocks at the water's edge. He said "Too bad,"
when it became generally known that the glare of the sun upon the
water had given Evadna a headache, and he said it exactly as he
would have spoken if Jack, for instance, had upset the sugar.
He held up the broken-handled butcher knife that was in the camp
kit, and declaimed tragically: "Is this a dagger that I see
before me?" and much more of the kind that was eery. He saw the
reluctant dimple which showed fleetingly in Evadna's cheek, and
also the tears which swelled her eyelids immediately after, but
she did not know that he saw them, though another did.
He was taken wholly by surprise when Miss Georgie, walking past
him afterward on her way to an enticing pool, nipped his arm for
attention and murmured:
"You're doing fine--only don't overdo it. She's had just about
all she can stand right now. Give her a chance to forgive
you--and let her think she came out ahead! Good luck!" Whereupon
she finished whatever she pretended to have been doing to her
fishing-tackle, and beckoned Wally and Jack to come along.
"We've just got to catch that big one," she laughed, "so Mr.
Baumberger can go home and attend to his own business!" It took
imagination to feel sure there had been a significant accent on
the last of the sentence, and Baumberger must have been
imaginative. He lowered his head like a bull meditating assault,
and his leering eyes shot her a glance of inquiry and suspicion.
But Miss Georgie Howard met his look with a smile that was
nothing more than idle amusement.
"I'd like nothing better than to get that four-pounder on my
line," she added. "It would be the joke of the season--if a
woman caught him."
"Bet you couldn't land him," chuckled Baumberger, breathing a
sigh which might have been relief, and ambled away contentedly."I
may not see you folks again till supper," he bethought him to
call back. "I'm going to catch a dozen more--and then I thought
I'd take 'em up to Pete Hamilton; I'm using his horse, yuh see,
and--" He flung out a hand to round off the sentence, turned, and
went stumbling over a particularly rocky place.
Miss Georgie stood where she was, and watched him with her mouth
twisted to one side and three perpendicular creases between her
eyebrows. When he was out of sight, she glanced at Evadna--once
more perched sulkily upon the rock.
"Head still bad, chicken?" she inquired cheerfully. "Better stay
here in the shade--I won't be gone long."
"I'm going to fish," said Evadna, but she did not stir, not even
when Miss Georgie went on, convoyed by all the Hart boys.
Good Indian had volunteered the information that he was going to
fish downstream, but he was a long time in tying his leader and
fussing with his reel. His preparations were finished just when
the last straggler of the group was out of sight. Then he laid
down his rod, went over to Evadna, took her by the arm, and drew
her back to the farther shelter of the ledge.
"Now, what's the trouble?" he asked directly. "I hope you're not
trying to make yourself think I was only-- You know what I meant,
don't you? And you said yes. You said it with your lips, and
with your eyes. Did you want more words? Tell me what it is
that bothers you."
There was a droop to Evadna's shoulders, and a tremble to her
mouth. She would not look at him. She kept her eyes gazing
downward, perhaps to hide tears. Good Indian waited for her to
speak, and when it seemed plain that she did not mean to do so,
he yielded to his instinct and took her in his arms.
"Sweetheart!" he murmured against her ear, and it was the first
time he had ever spoken the word to any woman. "You love me, I
know it. You won't say it, but I know you do. I should have
felt it this morning if you hadn't cared. You--you let me kiss
you. And--"
"And after that you--you rode off and left me--and you went away
by yourself, just as if--just as if nothing had happened, and
you've acted ever since as if--" She bit her lips, turned her
face away from him, plucked at his hands to free herself from his
clasping arms, and then she laid her face down against him, and
sobbed.
Good Indian tried his best to explain his mood and his actions
that day, and if he did not make himself very clear--which could
scarcely be expected, since he did not quite understand it
himself--he at least succeeded in lifting from her the weight of
doubt and of depression.
They were astonished when Wally and Jack and Miss Georgie
suddenly confronted them and proved, by the number of fish which
they carried, that they had been gone longer than ten minutes or
so. They were red as to their faces, and embarrassed as to
manner, and Good Indian went away hurriedly after the horses,
without meeting the quizzical glances of the boys, or replying t
to certain pointed remarks which they fired after him.
"And he's the buckaroo that's got no use for girls!" commented
Wally, looking after him, and ran his tongue meditatively along
the loose edge of his cigarette. "Kid, I wish you'd tell me how
you done it. It worked quick, anyhow."
"And thorough," grinned Jack. "I was thinking some of falling in
love with you myself, Vad. Soon as some of the shine wore off,
and you got so you acted like a real person."
"I saw it coming, when it first heaved in sight," chirped Miss
Georgie, in a more cheerful tone than she had used that day; in
too cheerful a tone to be quite convincing, if any one there had
been taking notice of mere tones.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CLAIM-JUMPERS
"Guess that bobcat was after my ducks again, last night,"
commented Phoebe Hart, when she handed Baumberger his cup of
coffee. "The way the dogs barked all night--didn't they keep you
awake?"
"Never slept better in my life," drawled Baumberger, his voice
sliding upward from the first word to the last. His blood-shot
eyes, however, rather gave the lie to his statement. "I'm going
to make one more try, 'long about noon, for that big one--girls
didn't get him, I guess, for all their threats, or I'd heard
about it. And I reckon I'll take the evening train home.
Shoulda gone yesterday, by rights. I'd like to get a basket uh
fish to take up with me. Great coffee, Mrs. Hart, and such cream
I never did see. I sure do hate to leave so many good things and
go back to a boardin' house. Look at this honey, now!" He sighed
gluttonously, leaning slightly over the table while he fed.
"Dogs were barking at something down in the orchard," Wally
volunteered, passing over Baumberger's monologue. "I was going
down there, but it was so dark--and I thought maybe it was Gene's
ghost. That was before the moon came up. Got any more biscuits,
mum?"
"My trap wasn't sprung behind the chicken-house," said Donny. "I
looked, first thing."
"Dogs," drawled Baumberger, his enunciation muffled by the food
in his mouth, "always bark. And cats fight on shed-roofs. Next
door to where I board there's a dog that goes on shift as regular
as a policeman. Every night at--"
"Oh, Aunt Phoebe!" Evadna, crisp and cool in a summery dress of
some light-colored stuff, and looking more than ever like a
Christmas angel set a-flutter upon the top of a holiday fir in a
sudden gust of wind, threw open the door, rushed halfway into the
room, and stopped beside the chair of her aunt. Her hands
dropped to the plump shoulder of the sitter. "Aunt Phoebe,
there's a man down at the farther end of the strawberry patch!
He's got a gun, Aunt Phoebe, and he's camped there, and when he
heard me he jumped up and pointed the gun straight at me!"
"Why, honey, that can't be--you must have seen an Indian prowling
after windfalls off the apricot trees there. He wouldn't hurt
you." Phoebe reached up, and caught the hands in a reassuring
clasp.
Evadna's eyes strayed from one face to another around the table
till they rested upon Good Indian, as having found sanctuary
there.
"But, Aunt Phoebe, he was WASN'T. He was a white man. And he
has a camp there, right by that tree the lightning peeled the
bark off. I was close before I saw him, for he was sitting down
and the currant bushes were between. But I went through to get
round where Uncle Hart has been irrigating and it's all mud, and
he jumped up and pointed the gun AT me. Just as if he was going
to shoot me. And I turned and ran." Her fingers closed upon the
hand of her aunt, but her eyes clung to Good Indian, as though it
was to him she was speaking.
"Tramp," suggested Baumberger, in a tone of soothing finality, as
when one hushes the fear of a child. "Sick the dogs on him.
He'll go--never saw the hobo yet that wouldn't run from a dog."
He smiled leeringly up at her, and reached for a second helping
of honey.
Good Indian pulled his glance from Evadna, and tried to bore
through the beefy mask which was Baumberger's face, but all he
found there was a gross interest in his breakfast and a certain
indulgent sympathy for Evadna's fear, and he frowned in a baffled
way.
"Who ever heard of a tramp camped in our orchard!" flouted
Phoebe. "They don't get down here once a year, and then they
always come to the house. You couldn't know there WAS any
strawberry patch behind that thick row of trees--or a garden, or
anything else."
"He's got a row of stakes running clear across tho patch," Evadna
recalled suddenly. "Just like they do for a new street, or a
railroad, or something. And--"
Good Indian pushed back his chair with a harsh, scraping noise,
and rose. He was staring hard at Baumberger, and his whole face
had sharpened till it had the cold, unyielding look of an Indian.
And suddenly Baumberger raised his head and met full that look.
For two breaths their eyes held each other, and then Baumberger
glanced casually at Peaceful.
"Sounds queer--must be some mistake, though. You must have seen
something, girl, that reminded you of stakes. The stub off a
sagebrush maybe?" He ogled her quite frankly. "When a little
girl gets scared--Sick the dogs on him," he advised the family
collectively, his manner changing to a blustering anxiety that
her fright should be avenged.
Evadna seemed to take his tone as a direct challenge. "I was
scared, but I know quite well what I saw. He wasn't a tramp. He
had a regular camp, with a coffee-pot and frying-pan and
blankets. And there a line of stakes across the strawberry
patch."
Before, the breakfast had continued to seem an important incident
temporarily suspended. Now Peaceful Hart laid hand to his beard,
eyed his wife questioningly, let his glance flicker over the
faces of his sons, and straightened his shoulders unconsciously.
Good Indian was at the door, his mouth set in a thin, straight,
fighting line. Wally and Jack were sliding their chairs back
from the table preparing to follow him.
"I guess it ain't anything much," Peaceful opined optimistically.
"They can't do anything but steal berries, and they're most gone,
anyhow. Go ask him what he wants, down there." The last
sentence was but feeble sort of fiction that his boys would await
his commands; as a matter of fact, they were outside before he
spoke.
"Take the dogs along," called out Baumberger, quite as futilely,
for not one of the boys was within hearing.
Until they heard footsteps returning at a run, the four stayed
where they were. Baumberger rumbled on in a desultory sort of
way, which might have caused an observant person to wonder where
was his lawyer training, and the deep cunning and skill with
which he was credited, for his words were as profitless and
inconsequential as an old woman's. He talked about tramps, and
dogs that barked o' nights, and touched gallantly upon feminine
timidity and the natural, protective instincts of men.
Peaceful Hart may have heard half of what he said--but more
likely he heard none of it. He sat drawing his white beard
through his hand, and his mild, blue eyes were turned often to
Phoebe in mute question. Phoebe herself was listening, but not
to Baumberger; she was permitting Evadna to tuck in stray locks
of her soft, brown hair, but her face was turned to the door
which opened upon the porch. At the first clatter of running
footsteps on the porch, she and Peaceful pushed back their chairs
instinctively.
The runner was Donny, and every freckle stood out distinctly upon
his face.
"There's four of 'em, papa!" he shouted, all in one breath.
"They're jumpin' the ranch for placer claims. They said so.
Each one's got a claim, and they're campin' on the corners, so
they'll be close together. They're goin' to wash gold. Good
Injun--"
"Oh!" screamed Evadna suddenly. "Don't let him--don't let them
hurt him, Uncle Hart!"
"Aw, they ain't fightin'," Donny assured her disgustedly.
"They're chewin' the rag down there, is all. Good Injun knows
one of 'em."
Peaceful Hart stood indecisively, and stared, one and gripping
the back of his chair. His lips were working so that his beard
bristled about his mouth.
"They can't do nothing--the ranch belongs to me," he said, his
eyes turning rather helplessly to Baumberger. "I've got my
patent."
"Jumping our ranch!--for placer claims!" Phoebe stood up, leaning
hard upon the table with both hands. "And we've lived here ever
since Clark was a baby!"
"Now, now, let's not get excited over this," soothed Baumberger,
getting out of his chair slowly, like the overfed glutton he was.
He picked up a crisp fragment of biscuit, crunched it between his
teeth, and chewed it slowly. "Can't be anything serious--and if
it is, why--I'm here. A lawyer right on the spot may save a lot
of trouble. The main thing is, let's not get excited and do
something rash. Those boys--"
"Not excited?--and somebody jumping--our--ranch?" Phoebe's soft
eyes gleamed at him. She was pale, so that her face had a
peculiar, ivory tint.
"Now, now!" Baumberger put out a puffy hand admonishingly.
"Let's keep cool--that's half the battle won. Keep cool." He
reached for his pipe, got out his twisted leather tobacco pouch,
and opened it with a twirl of his thumb and finger.
"You're a lawyer, Mr. Baumberger," Peaceful turned to him, still
helpless in his manner. "What's the best thing to be done?"
"Don't--get--excited." Baumberger nodded his head for every
word. "That's what I always say when a client comes to me all
worked up. We'll go down there and see just how much there is to
this, and--order 'em off. Calmly, calmly! No violence--no
threats--just tell 'em firmly and quietly to leave." He stuffed
his pipe carefully, pressing down the tobacco with the tip of a
finger. "Then," he added with slow emphasis, "if they don't go,
after--say twenty-four hours' notice--why, we'll proceed to serve
an injunction." He drew a match along the back of his chair, and
lighted his pipe.
"I reckon we'd better go and look after those boys of yours," he
suggested, moving toward the door rather quickly, for all his
apparent deliberation. "They're inclined to be hot-headed, and
we must have no violence, above all things. Keep it a civil
matter right through. Much easier to handle in court, if there's
no violence to complicate the case."
"They're looking for it," Phoebe reminded him bluntly. "The man
had a gun, and threw down on Vadnie."
"He only pointed it at me, auntie," Evadna corrected, ignorant of
the Western phrase.
The two women followed the men outside and into the shady yard,
where the trees hid completely what lay across the road and
beyond the double row of poplars. Donny, leaning far forward and
digging his bare toes into the loose soil for more speed, raced
on ahead, anxious to see and hear all that took place.
"If the boys don't stir up a lot of antagonism," Baumberger kept
urging Peaceful and Phoebe, as they hurried into the garden, "the
matter ought to be settled without much trouble. You can get an
injunction, and--"
"The idea of anybody trying to hold our place for mineral land!"
Phoebe's indignation was cumulative always, and was now bubbling
into wrath. "Why, my grief! Thomas spent one whole summer
washing every likely spot around here. He never got anything
better than colors on this ranch--and you can get them anywhere
in Idaho, almost. And to come right into our garden, in the
right--and stake a placer claim!" Her anger seemed beyond further
utterance. "The idea!" she finished weakly.
"Well--but we mustn't let ourselves get excited," soothed
Baumberger, the shadow of him falling darkly upon Peaceful and
Phoebe as he strode along, upon the side next the sun. Peppajee
would have called that an evil thing, portending much trouble and
black treachery.
"That's where people always blunder in a thing like this. A
little cool-headedness goes farther than hard words or lead.
And," he added cheeringly, "it may be a false alarm, remember.
We won't borrow trouble. We'll just make sure of our ground,
first thing we do."
"It's always easy enough to be calm over the other fellow's
trouble," said Phoebe sharply, irritated in an indefinable way by
the oily optimism of the other. "It ain't your ox that's gored,
Mr. Baumberger."
They skirted the double row of grapevines, picked their way over
a spot lately flooded from the ditch, which they crossed upon two
planks laid side by side, went through an end of the currant
patch, made a detour around a small jungle of gooseberry bushes,
and so came in sight of the strawberry patch and what was taking
place near the lightning-scarred apricot tree. Baumberger
lengthened his stride, and so reached the spot first.
The boys were grouped belligerently in the strawberry patch, just
outside a line of new stakes, freshly driven in the ground.
Beyond that line stood a man facing them with a .45-.70 balanced
in the hollow of his arm. In the background stood three other
men in open spaces in the shrubbery, at intervals of ten rods or
so, and they also had rifles rather conspicuously displayed.
They were grinning, all three. The man just over the line was
listening while Good Indian spoke; the voice of Good Indian was
even and quiet, as if he were indulging in casual small talk of
the country, but that particular claim-jumper was not smiling.
Even from a distance they could see that he was fidgeting
uncomfortably while he listened, and that his breath was
beginning to come jerkily.
"Now, roll your blankets and GIT!" Good Indian finished sharply,
and with the toe of his boot kicked the nearest stake clear of
the loose soil. He stooped, picked it up, and cast it
contemptuously from him. It landed three feet in front of the
man who had planted it, and he jumped and shifted the rifle
significantly upon his arm, so that the butt of it caressed his
right shoulder-joint.
"Now, now, we don't want any overt acts of violence here,"
wheezed Baumberger, laying hand upon Good Indian's shoulder from
behind. Good Indian shook off the touch as if it were a
tarantula upon him.
"You go to the devil," he advised chillingly.
"Tut, tut!" Baumberger reproved gently. "The ladies are within
hearing, my boy. Let's get at this thing sensibly and calmly.
Violence only makes things worse. See how quiet Wally and Jack
and Clark and Gene are! THEY realize how childishly spiteful it
would be for them to follow your example. They know better.
They don't want--"
Jack grinned, and hitched his gun into plainer view. "When we
start in, it won't be STICKS we're sending to His Nibs," he
observed placidly. "We're just waiting for him to ante."
"This," said Baumberger, a peculiar gleam coming into his
leering, puffy-lidded eyes, and a certain hardness creeping into
his voice, "this is a matter for your father and me to settle.
It's just-a-bide-beyond you youngsters. This is a civil case.
Don't foolishly make it come under the criminal code. But
there!" His voice purred at them again. "You won't. You're all
too clear-headed and sensible."
"Oh, sure!" Wally gave his characteristic little snort."We're
only just standing around to see how fast the cabbages grow!"
Baumberger advanced boldly across the dead line.
"Stanley, put down that gun, and explain your presence here and
your object," he rumbled. "Let's get at this thing right end to.
First, what are you doing here?"
The man across the line did not put down his rifle, except that
he let the butt of it drop slightly away from his shoulder so
that the sights were in alignment with an irrigating shovel
thrust upright into the ground ten feet to one side of the
group. His manner lost little of its watchfulness, and his voice
was surly with defiance when he spoke. But Good Indian,
regarding him suspiciously through half-closed lids, would have
sworn that a look of intelligence flashed between those two.
There was nothing more than a quiver of his nostrils to betray
him as he moved over beside Evadna--for the pure pleasure of
being near her, one would think; in reality, while the pleasure
was there, that he might see both Baumberger's face and Stanley's
without turning more than his eyes.
"All there is to it," Stanley began blustering, "you see before
yuh. I've located twenty acres here as a placer claim. That
there's the northwest corner--ap-prox'm'tley--close as I could
come by sightin'. Your fences are straight with yer land, and I
happen to sabe all yer corners. I've got a right here. I
believe this ground is worth more for the gold that's in it than
for the turnips you can make grow on top--and that there makes
mineral land of it, and as such, open to entry. That's accordin'
to law. I ain't goin' to build no trouble--but I sure do aim to
defend my prope'ty rights if I have to. I realize yuh may think
diffrunt from me. You've got a right to prove, if yuh can, that
all this ain't mineral land. I've got jest as much right to
prove it is."
He took a breath so deep it expanded visibly his chest--a broad,
muscular chest it was--and let his eyes wander deliberately over
his audience.
"That there's where _I_ stand," he stated, with arrogant
self-assurance. His mouth drew down at the corners in a smile
which asked plainly what they were going to do about it, and
intimated quite as plainly that he did not care what they did,
though he might feel a certain curiosity as an onlooker.
"I happen to know--" Peaceful began, suddenly for him. But
Baumberger waved him into silence.
"You'll have to prove there's gold in paying quantities here," he
stated pompously.
"That's what I aim to do," Stanley told him imperturbably.
"_I_ proved, over fifteen years ago, that there WASN'T," Peaceful
drawled laconically, and sucked so hard upon his pipe that his
cheeks held deep hollows.
Stanley grinned at him. "Sorry I can't let it go at that," he
said ironically. "I reckon I'll have to do some washin' myself,
though, before I feel satisfied there ain't."
"Then you haven't panned out anything yet?" Phoebe caught him up.
Stanley's eyes flickered a questioning glance at Baumberger, and
Baumberger puffed out his chest and said:
"The law won't permit you to despoil this man's property without
good reason. We can serve an injunction--"
"You can serve and be darned." Stanley's grin returned, wider
than before.
"As Mr. Hart's legal adviser," Baumberger began, in the tone he
employed in the courtroom--a tone which held no hint of his
wheezy chuckle or his oily reassurance--"I hereby demand that you
leave this claim which you have staked out upon Thomas Hart's
ranch, and protest that your continued presence here, after
twenty-four hours have expired, will be looked upon as malicious
trespass, and treated as such."
Stanley still grinned. "As my own legal adviser," he returned
calmly, "I hereby declare that you can go plumb to HEL-ena."
Stanley evidently felt impelled to adapt his vocabulary to
feminine ears, for he glanced at them deprecatingly and as if he
wished them elsewhere.
If either Stanley or Baumberger had chanced to look toward Good
Indian, he might have wondered why that young man had come, of a
sudden, to resemble so strongly his mother's people. He had that
stoniness of expression which betrays strong emotion held rigidly
in check, with which his quivering nostrils and the light in his
half-shut eyes contrasted strangely. He had missed no fleeting
glance, no guarded tone, and he was thinking and weighing and
measuring every impression as it came to him. Of some things he
felt sure; of others he was half convinced; and there was more
which he only suspected. And all the while he stood there
quietly beside Evadna, his attitude almost that of boredom.
"I think, since you have been properly notified to leave," said
Baumberger, with the indefinable air of a lawyer who gathers up
his papers relating to one case, thrusts them into his pocket,
and turns his attention to the needs of his next client, "we'll
just have it out with these other fellows, though I look upon
Stanley," he added half humorously, "as a test case. If he goes,
they'll all go."
"Better say he's a TOUGH case," blurted Wally, and turned on his
heel. "What the devil are they standing around on one foot for,
making medicine?" he demanded angrily of Good Indian, who
unceremoniously left Evadna and came up with him. "I'D run him
off the ranch first, and do my talking about it afterward. That
hunk uh pork is kicking up a lot uh dust, but he ain't GETTING
anywhere!"
"Exactly." Good Indian thrust both hands deep into his trousers
pockets, and stared at the ground before him.
Wally gave another snort. "I don't know how it hits you,
Grant--but there's something fishy about it."
"Ex-actly." Good Indian took one long step over the ditch, and
went on steadily.
Wally, coming again alongside, turned his head, and regarded him
attentively.
"Injun's on top," he diagnosed sententiously after a minute.
"Looks like he's putting on a good, thick layer uh war-paint,
too." He waited expectantly. "You might hand me the brush when
you're through," he hinted grimly. "I might like to get out
after some scalps myself."
"That so?" Good Indian asked inattentively, and went on without
waiting for any reply. They left the garden, and went down the
road to the stable, Wally passively following Grant's lead.
Someone came hurrying after them, and they turned to see Jack.
The others had evidently stayed to hear the legal harangue to a
close.
"Say, Stanley says there's four beside the fellows we saw," Jack
announced, rather breathlessly, for he had been running through
the loose, heavy soil of the garden to overtake them. "They've
located twenty acres apiece, he says--staked 'em out in the night
and stuck up their notices--and everyone's going to STICK.
They're all going to put in grizzlies and mine the whole thing,
he told dad. He just the same as accused dad right out of
covering up valuable mineral land on purpose. And he says the
law's all on their side." He leaned hard against the stable, and
drew his fingers across his forehead, white as a girl's when he
pushed back his hat. "Baumberger," he said cheerlessly, "was
still talking injunction when I left, but--" He flung out his
hand contemptuously.
"I wish dad wasn't so--" began Wally moodily, and let it go at
that.
Good Indian threw up his head with that peculiar tightening of
lips which meant much in the way of emotion.
"He'll listen to Baumberger, and he'll lose the ranch listening,"
he stated distinctly. "If there's anything to do, we've got to
do it."
"We can run 'em off--maybe," suggested Jack, his fighting
instincts steadied by the vivid memory of four rifles held by
four men, who looked thoroughly capable of using them.
"This isn't a case of apple-stealing," Good Indian quelled
sharply, and got his rope from his saddle with the manner of a
man who has definitely made up his mind.
"What CAN we do, then?" Wally demanded impatiently.
"Not a thing at present." Good Indian started for the little
pasture, where Keno was feeding and switching methodically at the
flies. "You fellows can do more by doing nothing to-day than if
you killed off the whole bunch."
He came back in a few minutes with his horse, and found the two
still moodily discussing the thing. He glanced at them casually,
and went about the business of saddling.
"Where you going?" asked Wally abruptly, when Grant was looping
up the end of his latigo.
"Just scouting around a little," was the unsatisfactory reply he
got, and he scowled as Good Indian rode away.
CHAPTER XV
SQUAW-TALK-FAR-OFF HEAP SMART
Good Indian spoke briefly with the good-looking young squaw, who
had a shy glance for him when he came up; afterward he took hold
of his hat by the brim, and ducked through the low opening of a
wikiup which she smilingly pointed out to him.
"Howdy, Peppajee? How you foot?" he asked, when his unaccustomed
eyes discerned the old fellow lying back against the farther
wall.
"Huh! Him heap sick all time." Having his injury thus brought
afresh to his notice, Peppajee reached down with his hands, and
moved the foot carefully to a new position.
"Last night," Good Indian began without that ceremony of long
waiting which is a part of Indian etiquette, "much men come to
Hart ranch. Eight." He held up his two outspread hands, with
the thumbs tucked inside his palms. "Come in dark, no seeum till
sun come back. Makeum camp. One man put sticks in ground, say
that part belong him. Twenty acres." He flung up his hands,
lowered them, and immediately raised them again. "Eight men do
that all same. Have guns, grub, blankets--stop there all time.
Say they wash gold. Say that ranch have much gold, stake placer
claims. Baumberger"--he saw Peppajee's eyelids draw
together--"tell men to go away. Tell Peaceful he fight those
men--in court. You sabe~ Ask Great Father to tell those men they
go away, no wash gold on ranch." He waited.
There is no hurrying the speech of an Indian. Peppajee smoked
stolidly, his eyes half closed and blinking sleepily. The veneer
of white men's ways dropped from him when he entered his own
wikiup, and he would not speak quickly.
"Las' night--mebbyso yo' watchum?" he asked, as one who holds his
judgment in abeyance.
"I heap fool. I no watch. I let those men come while I think
of--a girl. My eyes sleep." Good Indian was too proud to parry,
too bitter with himself to deny. He had not said the thing
before, even to himself, but it was in his heart to hate his
love, because it had cost this catastrophe to his friends.
"Kay bueno." Peppajee's voice was harsh. But after a time he
spoke more sympathetically. "Yo' no watchum. Yo' let heap
trouble come. This day yo' heart bad, mebbyso. This day yo' no
thinkum squaw all time. Mebbyso yo' thinkum fight, no sabe how
yo' fight."
Grant nodded silently. It would seem that Peppajee understood,
even though his speech was halting. At that moment much of the
unfounded prejudice, which had been for a few days set aside
because of bigger things, died within him. He had disliked
Peppajee as a pompous egotist among his kind. His latent
antagonism against all Indians because they were unwelcomely his
blood relatives had crystallized here and there against; certain
individuals of the tribe. Old Hagar he hated coldly. Peppajee's
staginess irritated him. In his youthful arrogance he had not
troubled to see the real man of mettle under that dingy green
blanket. Now he looked at Peppajee with a startled sense that he
had never known him at all, and that Peppajee was not only a
grimy Indian--he was also a man.
"Me no sabe one thing. One otha thing me sabe. Yo' no b'lieve
Baumberga one frien'. Him all same snake. Them mens come,
Baumberga tellum come all time. All time him try for foolum
Peaceful. Yo' look out. Yo' no sleepum mo'. All time yo'
watchum."
"I come here," said Good Indian; "I think you mebbyso hear talk,
you tell me. My heart heap sad, I let this trouble come. I want
to kill that trouble. Mebbyso make my friends laugh, be heap
glad those men no stealum ranch. You hear talk, mebbyso you tell
me now."
Peppajee smoked imperturbably what time his dignity demanded. At
length he took the pipe from his mouth, stretched out his arm
toward Hartley, and spoke in his sonorous tone, calculated to add
weight to his words.
"Yo' go speakum Squaw-talk-far-off," he commanded. "All time
makum talk--talk--" He drummed with his fingers upon his left
forearm. "Mebbyso heap sabe. Heap sabe Baumberga kay bueno. He
thinkum sabe stealum ranch. All time heap talk come Man-thatcoughs,
come all same Baumberga. Heap smart, dat squaw." A
smile laid its faint light upon his grim old lips, and was gone.
"Thinkum yo' heap bueno, dat squaw. All time glad for talkum
yo'. Yo' go."
Good Indian stood up, his head bent to avoid scraping his hat
against the sloping roof of the wikiup.
"You no hear more talk all time you watch?" he asked, passing
over Miss Georgie's possible aid or interest in the affair.
"Much talkum--no can hear. All time them damn' Baumberga shut
door--no talkum loud. All time Baumberga walkum in dark. Walkum
where apples grow, walkum grass, walkum all dat ranch all time.
All time me heap watchum. Snake come, bitum foot--no can watchum
mo'. Dat time, much mens come. Yo' sabe. Baumberga all time
talkum, him heap frien' Peacefu'--heap snake all time. Speakum
two tongue Yo' no b'lievum. All time heap big liar, him. Yo'
go, speakum Squaw-talk-far-off. Bueno, dat squaw. Heap smart,
all same mans. Yo' go. Pikeway." He settled back with a
gesture of finality, and so Good Indian left him.
Old Hagar shrilled maledictions after him when he passed through
the littered camp on his way back to where he had left his horse,
but for once he was deaf to her upbraidings. Indeed, he never
heard her--or if he did, her clamor was to him as the yelping of
the dogs which filled his ears, but did not enter his thoughts.
The young squaw smiled at him shy-eyed as he went by her, and
though his physical eyes saw her standing demurely there in the
shade of her wikiup, ready to shrink coyly away from too bold a
glance, the man-mind of him was blind and took no notice. He
neither heard the baffled screaming of vile epithets when old
Hagar knew that her venom could not strike through the armor of
his preoccupation, nor saw the hurt look creep into the soft eyes
of the young squaw when his face did not turn toward her after
the first inattentive glance.
Good Indian was thinking how barren had been his talk with
Peppajee, and was realizing keenly how much he had expected from
the interview. It is frequently by the depth of our
disappointment only that we can rightly measure the height of
our hope. He had come to Peppajee for something tangible, some
thing that might be called real evidence of the conspiracy he
suspected. He had got nothing but suspicion to match his own.
As for Miss Georgie Howard--
"What can she do?" he thought resentfully, feeling as if he had
been offered a willow switch with which to fight off a grizzly.
It seemed to him that he might as sensibly go to Evadna herself
for assistance, and that, even his infatuation was obliged to
admit, would be idiotic. Peppajee, he told himself when he
reached his horse, was particularly foolish sometimes.
With that in his mind, he mounted--and turned Keno's head toward
Hartley. The distance was not great--little more than half a
mile--but when he swung from the saddle in the square blotch of
shade east by the little, red station house upon the parched sand
and cinders, Keno's flanks were heaving like the silent sobbing
of a woman with the pace his master's spurred heels had required
of him.
Miss Georgie gave her hair a hasty pat or two, pushed a novel out
of sight under a Boise newspaper, and turned toward him with a
breezily careless smile when he stepped up to the open door and
stopped as if he were not quite certain of his own mind, or of
his welcome.
He was secretly thinking of Peppajee's information that Miss
Georgie thought he was "bueno," and he was wondering if it were
true. Not that he wanted it to be true! But he was man enough to
look at her with a keener interest than he had felt before. And
Miss Georgie, if one might judge by her manner, was woman enough
to detect that interest and to draw back her skirts, mentally,
ready for instant flight into unapproachableness.
"Howdy, Mr. Imsen?" she greeted him lightly. "In what official
capacity am I to receive you, please? Do YOU want to send a
telegram?" The accent upon the pronoun was very faint, but it was
there for him to notice if he liked. So much she helped him.
She was a bright young woman indeed, that she saw he wanted help.
"I don't believe I came to see you officially at all," he said,
and his eyes lighted a little as he looked at her. "Peppajee Jim
told me to come. He said you're a 'heap smart squaw, all same
mans.'"
"Item: One pound of red-and-white candy for Peppajee Jim next
time I see him." Miss Georgie laughed--but she also sat down so
that her face was turned to the window. "Are you in urgent need
of a heap smart squaw?" she asked. "I thought"--she caught
herself up, and then went recklessly on--"I thought yesterday
that you had found one!"
"It's brains I need just now." After the words were out, Good
Indian wanted to swear at himself for seeming to belittle Evadna.
"I mean," he corrected quickly--"do you know what I mean? I'll
tell you what has happened, and if you don't know then, and can't
help me, I'll just have to apologize for coming, and get out."
"Yes, I think you had better tell me why you need me
particularly. I know the chicken's perfect, and doesn't lack
brains, and you didn't mean that she does. You're all stirred up
over something. What's wrong?" Miss Georgie would have spoken in
just that tone if she had been a man or if Grant had been a
woman.
So Good Indian told her.
"And you imagine that it's partly your fault, and that it
wouldn't have happened if you had spent more time keeping your
weather eye open, and not so much making love?" Miss Georgie
could be very blunt, as well as keen. "Well, I don't see how you
could prevent it, or what you could have done--unless you had
kicked old Baumberger into the Snake. He's the god in this
machine. I'd swear to that."
Good Indian had been fiddling with his hat and staring hard at a
pile of old ties just outside the window. He raised his head,
and regarded her steadily. It was beginning to occur to him
that there was a good deal to this Miss Georgie, under that
offhand, breezy exterior. He felt himself drawn to her as a
person whom he could trust implicitly.
"You're right as far as I'm concerned," he owned, with his queer,
inscrutable smile. "I think you're also right about him. What
makes you think so, anyway?"
Miss Georgie twirled a ring upon her middle finger for a moment
before she looked up at him.
"Do you know anything about mining laws?" she asked, and when he
swung his head slightly to one side in a tacit negative, she went
on: "You say there are eight jumpers. Concerted action, that.
Premeditated. My daddy was a lawyer," she threw in by way of
explanation. "I used to help him in the office a good deal.
When he--died, I didn't know enough to go on and be a lawyer
myself, so I took to this." She waved her hand impatiently
toward the telegraph instrument.
"So it's like this: Eight men can take placer claims--can hold
them, you know--for one man. That's the limit, a hundred and
sixty acres. Those eight men aren't jumping that ranch as eight
individuals; they're in the employ of a principal who is
engineering the affair. If I were going to shy a pebble at the
head mogul, I'd sure try hard to hit our corpulent friend with
the fishy eye. And that," she added, "is what all these cipher
messages for Saunders mean, very likely. Baumberger had to have
someone here to spy around for him and perhaps help him
choose--or at least get together--those eight men. They must
have come in on the night train, for I didn't see them. I'll bet
they're tough customers, every mother's son of them! Fighters
down to the ground, aren't they?"
"I only saw four. They were heeled, and ready for business, all
right," he told her. "Soon as I saw what the game was, and that
Baumberger was only playing for time and a free hand, I pulled
out. I thought Peppajee might give me something definite to go
on. He couldn't, though."
"Baumberger's going to steal that ranch according to law, you
see," Miss Georgie stated with conviction. "They've got to pan
out a sample of gold to prove there's pay dirt there, before they
can file their claims. And they've got to do their filing in
Shoshone. I suppose their notices are up O.K. I wonder, now,
how they intend to manage that? I believe," she mused, "they'll
have to go in person--I don't believe Baumberger can do that all
himself legally. I've got some of daddy's law-books over in my
trunk, and maybe I can look it up and make sure. But I know they
haven't filed their claims yet. They've GOT to take possession
first, and they've got to show a sample of ore, or dust, it would
be in this case. The best thing to do--" She drew her eyebrows
together, and she pinched her under lip between her thumb and
forefinger, and she stared abstractedly at Good Indian. "Oh,
hurry up, Grant!" she cried unguardedly. "Think--think HARD,
what's best to do!"
"The only thing I can think of," he scowled, "is to kill that--"
"And that won't do, under the circumstances," she cut in airily."
There'd still be the eight. I'D like," she declared viciously,
"to put rough-on-rats in his dinner, but I intend to refrain from
doing as I'd like, and stick to what's best."
Good Indian gave her a glance of grateful understanding. "This
thing has hit me hard," he confided suddenly. "I've been holding
myself in all day. The Harts are like my own folks. They're all
I've had, and she's been--they've all been--" Then the instinct
of repression walled in his emotion, and he let the rest go in a
long breath which told Miss Georgie all she needed to know. So
much of Good Indian would never find expression in speech; all
that was best of him would not, one might be tempted to think.
"By the way, is there any pay dirt on that ranch?" Miss Georgie
kept herself rigidly to the main subject.
"No, there isn't. Not," he added dryly, "unless it has grown
gold in the last few years. There are colors, of course. All
this country practically can show colors, but pay dirt? No!"
"Look out," she advised him slowly, "that pay dirt doesn't grow
over night! Sabe?"
Good Indian's eyes spoke admiration of her shrewdness.
"I must be getting stupid, not to have thought of that," he said.
"Can't give me credit for being 'heap smart'?" she bantered.
"Can't even let me believe I thought of something beyond the ken
of the average person? Not," she amended ironically, "that I
consider YOU an average person! Would you mind"--she became
suddenly matter of fact--"waiting here while I go and rummage for
a book I want? I'm almost sure I have one on mining laws. Daddy
had a good deal of that in his business, being in a mining
country. We've got to know just where we stand, it seems to me,
because Baumberger's going to use the laws himself, and it's with
the law we've got to fight him."
She had to go first and put a stop to the hysterical chattering
of the sounder by answering the summons. It proved to be a
message for Baumberger, and she wrote it down in a spiteful
scribble which left it barely legible.
"Betraying professional secrets, but I don't care," she
exclaimed, turning swiftly toward him. "Listen to this:
"'How's fishing? Landed the big one yet? Ready for fry?"'
She threw it down upon the table with a pettish gesture that was
wholly feminine. "Sounds perfectly innocent, doesn't it? Too
perfectly innocent, if you ask me." She stared out of the window
abstractedly, her brows pinched together and her lips pursed with
a corner between her teeth, much as she had stared after
Baumberger the day before; and when she spoke she seemed to have
swung her memory back to him then.
"He came up yesterday--with fish for Pete, he SAID, and of course
he really did have some--and sent a wire to Shoshone. I found it
on file when I came back. That was perfectly innocent, too. It
was:
"'Expect to land big one to-night. Plenty of small fry. Smooth
trail.'
"I've an excellent memory, you see." She laughed shortly.
"Well, I'll go and hunt up that book, and we'll proceed to glean
the wisdom of the serpent, so that we won't be compelled to
remain as harmless as the dove! You won't mind waiting here?"
He assured her that he would not mind in the least, and she ran
out bareheaded into the hot sunlight. Good Indian leaned forward
a little in his chair so that he could watch her running across
to the shack where she had a room or two, and he paid her the
compliment of keeping her in his thoughts all the time she was
gone. He felt, as he had done with Peppajee, that he had not
known Miss Georgie at all until to-day, and he was a bit startled
at what he was finding her to be.
"Of course," she laughed, when she rustled in again like a whiff
of fresh air, "I had to go clear to the bottom of the last trunk
I looked in. Lucky I only have three to my name, for it would
have been in the last one just the same, if I'd had two dozen and
had ransacked them all. But I found it, thank Heaven!"
She came eagerly up to him--he was sitting in the beribboned
rocker dedicated to friendly callers, and had the rug badly
rumpled with his spurs, which he had forgotten to remove--and
with a sweep of her forearm she cleared the little table of
novel, newspaper, and a magazine and deck of cards, and barely
saved her box of chocolates from going bottom up on the floor.
"Like candy? Help yourself, if you do," she said, and tucked a
piece into her mouth absent-mindedly before she laid the
leather-bound book open on the table. "Now, we'll see what
information Mr. Copp can give us. He's a high authority--General
Land Office Commissioner, if you please. He's a few years
old--several years old, for that matter--but I don't think he's
out of date; I believe what he says still goes. M-m-m!-'Liens on
Mines'--'Clause Inserted in Patents'--'Affidavits Taken Without
Notice to Opposing'--oh, it must be here--it's GOT to be here!"
She was running a somewhat sticky forefinger slowly down the
index pages. "It isn't alphabetically arranged, which I consider
sloppy of Mr. Copp. Ah-h! 'Minerals Discovered After Patent Has
Issued to Agricultural Claimant'--two hundred and eight. We'll
just take a look at that first. That's what they're claiming,
you know." She hitched her chair closer, and flipped the leaves
eagerly. When she found the page, they touched heads over it,
though Miss Georgie read aloud.
"Oh, it's a letter--but it's a decision, and as such has weight.
U~m!
"SIR: In reply to your letter of inquiry . . . I have to state
that all mineral deposits discovered on land after United States
Patent therefor has issued to a party claiming under the laws
regulating the disposal of agricultural lands, pass with the
patent, and this office has no further jurisdiction in the
premise. Very respectfully,"
"'PASS WITH THE PATENT!'" Miss Georgie turned her face so that
she could look into Grant's eyes, so close to her own. "Old
Peaceful must surely have his patent--Baumberger can't be much of
a lawyer, do you think? Because that's a flat statement.
There's no chance for any legal quibbling in that--IS there?"
"That's about as straight as he could put it," Good Indian
agreed, his face losing a little of its anxiety.
"Well, we'll just browse along for more of the same," she
suggested cheerfully, and went back to the index. But first she
drew a lead pencil from where it had been stabbed through her
hair, and marked the letter with heavy brackets, wetting the lead
on her tongue for emphasis.
"'Agricultural Claimants Entitled to Full Protection,'" she read
hearteningly from the index, and turned hastily to see what was
to be said about it. It happened to be another decision rendered
in a letter, and they jubilated together over the sentiment
conveyed therein.
"Now, here is what I was telling you, Grant," she said suddenly,
after another long minute of studying silently the index.
"'Eight Locaters of Placer Ground May Convey to One Party'--and
Baumberger's certainly that party!--'Who Can Secure Patent for
One Hundred and Sixty Acres.' We'll just read up on that, and
find out for sure what the conditions are. Now, here"--she had
found the page quickly--"listen to this:
"'I have to state that if eight bona-fide locaters'
("Whether they're that remains to be proven, Mr. Baumberger!")
'each having located twenty acres, in accordance with the
congressional rules and regulations, should convey all their
right, title, and interest in said locations to one person, such
person might apply for a patent--'
"And so on into tiresomeness. Really, I'm beginning to think
Baumberger's awfully stupid, to even attempt such a silly thing.
He hasn't a legal leg to stand on. 'Goes with the patent'--that
sounds nice to me. They're not locating in good faith--those
eight jumpers down there." She fortified herself with another
piece of candy. "All you need," she declared briskly, "is a good
lawyer to take this up and see it through."
"You seem to be doing pretty well," he remarked, his eyes
dwelling rather intently upon her face, and smiling as they did
so.
"I can read what's in the book," she remarked lightly, her eyes
upon its pages as if she were consciously holding them from
meeting his look. "But it will take a lawyer to see the case
through the courts. And let me tell you one thing very
emphatically." She looked at him brightly. "Many a case as
strong as this has been lost, just by legal quibbling and
ignorance of how to handle it properly. Many a case without a
leg to stand on has been won, by smooth work on the part of some
lawyer. Now, I'll just jot down what they'll have to do, and
prove, if they get that land--and look here, Mr. Man, here's
another thing to consider. Maybe Baumberger doesn't expect to
get a patent. Maybe he means to make old Peaceful so deucedly
sick of the thing that he'll sell out cheap rather than fight the
thing to a finish. Because this can be appealed, and taken up
and up, and reopened because of some technical error--oh, as
Jenny Wren says in--in--"
"'Our Mutual Friend?'" Good Indian suggested unexpectedly.
"Oh, you've read it!--where she always says: '_I_ know their
tricks and their manners!' And I do, from being so much with
daddy in the office and hearing him talk shop. I know that,
without a single bit of justice on their side, they could carry
this case along till the very expense of it would eat up the
ranch and leave the Harts flat broke. And if they didn't fight
and keep on fighting, they could lose it--so there you are."
She shut the book with a slam. "But," she added more brightly
when she saw the cloud of gloom settle blacker than before on his
face, and remembered that he felt himself at least partly to
blame, "it helps a lot to have the law all on our side, and--"
She had to go then, because the dispatcher was calling, and she
knew it must be a train order. "We'll read up a little more, and
see just what are the requirements of placer mining laws--and
maybe we can make it a trifle difficult for those eight to
comply!" she told him over her shoulder, while her fingers
chittered a reply to the call, and then turned her attention
wholly to receiving the message.
Good Indian, knowing well the easy custom of the country which
makes smoking always permissible, rolled himself a cigarette
while he waited for her to come back to his side of the room. He
was just holding the match up and waiting for a clear blaze
before setting his tobacco afire, when came a tap-tap of feet on
the platform, and Evadna appeared in the half-open doorway.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, and widened her indigo eyes at him sitting
there and looking so much at home.
"Come right in, chicken," Miss Georgie invited cordially. "Don't
stand there in the hot sun. Mr. Imsen is going to turn the seat
of honor over to you this instant. Awfully glad you came. Have
some candy."
Evadna sat down in the rocker, thrust her two little feet out so
that the toe, of her shoes showed close together beyond the hem
of her riding-skirt, laid her gauntleted palms upon the arms of
the chair and rocked methodically, and looked at Grant and then
at Miss Georgie, and afterward tilted up her chin and smiled
superciliously at an insurance company's latest offering to the
public in the way of a calendar two feet long.
"When did you come up?" Good Indian asked her, trying so hard to
keep a placating note out of his voice that he made himself sound
apologetic.
"Oh--about an hour ago, I think," Evadna drawled sweetly--the
sweet tones which always mean trouble, when employed by a woman.
Good Indian bit his lip, got up, and threw his cigarette out of
the window, and looked at her reproachfully, and felt vaguely
that he was misunderstood and most unjustly placed upon the
defensive.
"I only came over," Evadna went on, as sweetly as before, "to say
that there's a package at the store which I can't very well
carry, and I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind taking it--when
you go."
"I'm going now, if you're ready," he told her shortly, and
reached for his hat.
Evadna rocked a moment longer, making him wait for her reply.
She glanced at Miss Georgie still busy at the telegraph table,
gave a little sigh of resignation, and rose with evident
reluctance.
"Oh--if you're really going," she drawled, and followed him
outside.
CHAPTER XVI
"DON'T GET EXCITED!"
Lovers, it would seem, require much less material for a quarrel
than persons in a less exalted frame of mind.
Good Indian believed himself very much in love with his Christmas
angel, and was very much inclined to let her know it, but at the
same time he saw no reason why he should not sit down in Miss
Georgie's rocking-chair, if he liked, and he could not quite
bring himself to explain even to Evadna his reason for doing so.
It humiliated him even to think of apologizing or explaining, and
he was the type of man who resents humiliation more keenly than a
direct injury.
As to Evadna, her atmosphere was that of conscious and
magnanimous superiority to any feeling so humanly petty as
jealousy--which is extremely irritating to anyone who is at all
sensitive to atmospheric conditions.
She stopped outside the window long enough to chirp a commonplace
sentence or two to Miss Georgie, and to explain just why she
couldn't stay a minute longer. "I told Aunt Phoebe I'd be back
to lunch--dinner, I mean--and she's so upset over those horrible
men planted in the orchard--did Grant tell you about it?--that I
feel I ought to be with her. And Marie has the toothache again.
So I really must go. Good-by--come down whenever you can, won't
you?" She smiled, and she waved a hand, and she held up her
riding-skirt daintily as she turned away. "You didn't say goodby
to Georgie," she reminded Grant, still making use of the chirpy
tone. "I hope I am not in any way responsible."
"I don't see how you could be," said Good Indian calmly; and
that, for some reason, seemed to intensify the atmosphere with
which Evadna chose to surround herself.
She led Huckleberry up beside the store platform without giving
Grant a chance to help, mounted, and started on while he was in
after the package--a roll not more than eight inches long, and
weighing at least four ounces, which brought an ironical smile to
his lips. But she could not hope to outrun him on Huckleberry,
even when Huckleberry's nose was turned toward home, and he
therefore came clattering up before she had passed the straggling
outpost of rusty tin cans which marked, by implication, the
boundary line between Hartley and the sagebrush waste surrounding
it.
"You seem to be in a good deal of a hurry," Good Indian observed.
"Not particularly," she replied, still chirpy as to tone and
supercilious as to her manner.
It would be foolish to repeat all that was said during that ride
home, because so much meaning was conveyed in tones and glances
and in staring straight ahead and saying nothing. They were
sparring politely before they were over the brow of the hill
behind the town; they were indulging in veiled sarcasm--which
came rapidly out from behind the veil and grew sharp and
bitter--before they started down the dusty grade; they were not
saying anything at all when they rounded the Point o' Rocks and
held their horses rigidly back from racing home, as was their
habit, and when they dismounted at the stable, they refused to
look at each other upon any pretext whatsoever.
Baumberger, in his shirt-sleeves and smoking his big pipe,
lounged up from the pasture gate where he had been indolently
rubbing the nose of a buckskin two-year-old with an affectionate
disposition, and wheezed out the information that it was warm.
He got the chance to admire a very stiff pair of shoulders and a
neck to match for his answer.
"I wasn't referring to your manner, m' son," he chuckled, after
he had watched Good Indian jerk the latigo loose and pull off the
saddle, showing the wet imprint of it on Keno's hide. "I wish
the weather was as cool!"
Good Indian half turned with the saddle in his hands, and slapped
it down upon its side so close to Baumberger that he took a hasty
step backward, seized Keno's dragging bridle-reins, and started
for the stable. Baumberger happened to be in the way, and he
backed again, more hastily than before, to avoid being run over.
"Snow blind?" he interrogated, forcing a chuckle which had more
the sound of a growl.
Good Indian stopped in the doorway, slipped off the bridle, gave
Keno a hint by slapping him lightly on the rump, and when the
horse had gone on into the cool shade of the stable, and taking
his place in his stall, began hungrily nosing the hay in his
manger, he came back to unsaddle Huckleberry, who was nodding
sleepily with his under lip sagging much like Baumberger's while
he waited. That gentleman seemed to be once more obstructing the
path of Good Indian. He dodged back as Grant brushed past him.
"By the great immortal Jehosaphat!" swore Baumberger, with an
ugly leer in his eyes, "I never knew before that I was so small I
couldn't be seen with the naked eye!"
"You're so small in my estimation that a molecule would look like
a hay-stack alongside you!" Good Indian lifted the skirt of
Evadna's side-saddle, and proceeded calmly to loosen the cinch.
His forehead smoothed a trifle, as if that one sentence had
relieved him of some of his bottled bitterness.
"YOU ain't shrunk up none--in your estimation," Baumberger forgot
his pose of tolerant good nature to say. His heavy jaw trembled
as if he had been overtaken with a brief attack of palsy; so also
did the hand which replaced his pipe between his loosely
quivering lips. "That little yellow-haired witch must have given
yuh the cold shoulder; but you needn't take it out on me. Had a
quarrel?" He painstakingly brushed some ashes from his sleeve,
once more the wheezing, chuckling fat man who never takes
anything very seriously.
"Did you ever try minding your own business?" Grant inquired with
much politeness of tone.
"We-e-ell, yuh see, m' son, it's my business to mind other
people's business!" He chuckled at what he evidently considered a
witty retort. "I've been pouring oil on the troubled waters all
forenoon--maybe I've kinda got the habit."
"Only you're pouring it on a fire this time."
"That dangerous, yuh mean?"
"You're liable to start a conflagration you can't stop, and that
may consume yourself, is all."
"Say, they sure do teach pretty talk in them colleges!" he
purred, grinning loosely, his own speech purposely uncouth.
Good Indian turned upon him, stopped as quickly, and let his
anger vent itself in a sneer. It had occurred to him that
Baumberger was not goading him without purpose--because
Baumberger was not that kind of man. Oddly enough, he had a
short, vivid, mental picture of him and the look on his face when
he was playing the trout; it seemed to him that there was
something of that same cruel craftiness now in his eyes and
around his mouth. Good Indian felt for one instant as if he were
that trout, and Baumberger was playing him skillfully. "He's
trying to make me let go all holds and tip my hand," he thought,
keenly reading him, and he steadied himself.
"What d'yuh mean by me pouring oil on fire!" Baumberger urged
banteringly. "Sounds like the hero talking to the villain in one
of these here save-him-he's-my-sweetheart plays."
"You go to the devil," said Good Indian shortly.
"Don't repeat yourself, m' son; it's a sign uh failing powers.
You said that to me this morning, remember?
And--don't--get--excited!" His right arm raised slightly when he
said that, as if he expected a blow for his answer.
Good Indian saw that involuntary arm movement, but he saw it from
the tail of his eye, and he drew his lips a little tighter.
Clearly Baumberger was deliberately trying to force him into a
rage that would spend some of its force in threats, perhaps. He
therefore grew cunningly calm, and said absolutely nothing. He
led Huckleberry into the stable, came out, and shut the door, and
walked past Baumberger as if he were not there at all. And
Baumberger stood with his head lowered so that his flabby jaw was
resting upon his chest, and stared frowningly after him until the
yard gate swung shut behind his tall, stiffly erect figure.
"I gotta WATCH that jasper," he mumbled over his pipe, as a sort
of summing up, and started slowly to the house. Halfway there he
spoke again in the same mumbling undertone. "He's got the Injun
look in his eyes t'-day. I gotta WATCH him."
He did watch him. It is astonishing how a family can live for
months together, and not realize how little real privacy there is
for anyone until something especial comes up for secret
discussion. It struck Good Indian forcibly that afternoon,
because he was anxious for a word in private with Peaceful, or
with Phoebe, and also with Evadna--if it was only to continue
their quarrel.
At dinner he could not speak without being heard by all. After
dinner, the family showed an unconscious disposition to "bunch."
Peaceful and Baumberger sat and smoked upon that part of the
porch which was coolest, and the boys stayed close by so that
they could hear what might be said about the amazing state of
affairs down in the orchard.
Evadna, it is true, strolled rather self-consciously off to the
head of the pond, carefully refraining, as she passed, from
glancing toward Good Indian. He felt that she expected him to
follow, but he wanted first to ask Peaceful a few questions, and
to warn him not to trust Baumberger, so he stayed where he was,
sprawled upon his back with a much-abused cushion under his head
and his hat tilted over his face, so that he could see
Baumberger's face without the scrutiny attracting notice.
He did not gain anything by staying, for Peaceful had little to
say, seeming to be occupied mostly with dreamy meditations. He
nodded, now and then, in response to Baumberger's rumbling
monologues, and occasionally he removed his pipe from his mouth
long enough to reply with a sentence where the nod was not
sufficient. Baumberger droned on, mostly relating the details of
cases he had won against long odds--cases for the most part
similar to this claim-jumping business.
Nothing had been done that day, Grant gathered, beyond giving the
eight claimants due notice to leave. The boys were evidently
dissatisfied about something, though they said nothing. They
shifted their positions with pettish frequency, and threw away
cigarettes only half smoked, and scowled at dancing leaf-shadows
on the ground.
When he could no longer endure the inaction, he rose, stretched
his arms high above his head, settled his hat into place, gave
Jack a glance of meaning, and went through the kitchen to the
milk~house. He felt sure that Baumberger's ears were pricked
toward the sound of his footsteps, and he made them purposely
audible.
"Hello, Mother Hart," he called out cheerfully to Phoebe,
pottering down in the coolness. "Any cream going to waste, or
buttermilk, or cake?" He went down to her, and laid his hand upon
her shoulder with a caressing touch which brought tears into her
eyes. "Don't you worry a bit, little mother," he said softly.
"I think we can beat them at their own game. They've stacked the
deck, but we'll beat it, anyhow." His hand slid down to her arm,
and gave it a little, reassuring squeeze.
"Oh, Grant, Grant!" She laid her forehead against him for a
moment, then looked up at him with a certain whimsical
solicitude. "Never mind our trouble now. What's this about you
and Vadnie? The boys seem to think you two are going to make a
match of it. And HAVE you been quarreling, you two? I only
want," she added, deprecatingly, "to see my biggest boy happy,
and if I can do anything in any way to help--"
"You can't, except just don't worry when we get to scrapping."
His eyes smiled down at her with their old, quizzical humor,
which she had not seen in them for some days. "I foresee that
we're due to scrap a good deal of the time," he predicted.
"We're both pretty peppery. But we'll make out, all right. You
didn't"--he blushed consciously--"you didn't think I was going
to--to fall dead in love--"
"Didn't I?" Phoebe laughed at him openly. "I'd have been more
surprised if you hadn't. Why, my grief! I know enough about
human nature, I hope, to expect--"
"Churning?" The voice of Baumberger purred down to them. There
he stood bulkily at the top of the steps, good-naturedly
regarding them. "Mr. Hart and I are goin' to take a ride up to
the station--gotta send a telegram or two about this little
affair"--he made a motion with his pipe toward the orchard--"and
I just thought a good, cold drink of buttermilk before we start
wouldn't be bad." His glance just grazed Good Indian, and passed
him over as being of no consequence.
"If you don't happen to have any handy, it don't matter in the
least," he added, and turned to go when Phoebe shook her head.
"Anything we can get for yuh at the store, Mrs. Hart? Won't be
any trouble at all--Oh, all right." He had caught another shake
of the head.
"We may be gone till supper-time," he explained further, "and I
trust to your good sense, Mrs. Hart, to see that the boys keep
away from those fellows down there." The pipe, and also his
head, again indicated the men in the orchard. "We don't want any
ill feeling stirred up, you understand, and so they'd better just
keep away from 'em. They're good boys--they'll do as you say."
He leered at her ingratiatingly, shot a keen, questioning look at
Good Indian, and went his lumbering way.
Grant went to the top of the steps, and made sure that he had
really gone before he said a word. Even then he sat down upon
the edge of the stairway with his back to the pond, so that he
could keep watch of the approaches to the spring-house; he had
become an exceedingly suspicious young man overnight.
"Mother Hart, on the square, what do you think of Baumberger?" he
asked her abruptly. "Come and sit down; I want to talk with
you--if I can without having the whole of Idaho listening."
"Oh, Grant--I don't know what to think! He seems all right, and I
don't know why he shouldn't be just what he seems; he's got the
name of being a good lawyer. But something--well, I get notions
about things sometimes. And I can't, somehow, feel just right
about him taking up this jumping business. I don't know why. I
guess it's just a feeling, because I can see you don't like him.
And the boys don't seem to, either, for some reason. I guess
it's because he won't let 'em get right after those fellows and
drive 'em off the ranch. They've been uneasy as they could be
all day." She sat down upon a rough stool just inside the door,
and looked up at him with troubled eyes. "And I'm getting it,
too--seems like I'd go all to pieces if I can't do SOMETHING!"
She sighed, and tried to cover the sigh with a laugh--which was
not, however, a great success. "I wish I could be as cool-headed
as Thomas," she said, with a tinge of petulance. "It don't seem
to worry him none!"
"What does he think of Baumberger? Is he going to let him take
the case and handle it to please himself?" Good Indian was
tapping his boot-toe thoughtfully upon the bottom step, and
glancing up now and then as a precaution against being overheard.
"I guess so," she admitted, answering the last question first.
"I haven't had a real good chance to talk to Thomas all day.
Baumberger has been with him most of the time. But I guess he
is; anyway, Baumberger seems to take it for granted he's got the
case. Thomas hates to hurt anybody's feelings, and, even if he
didn't want him, he'd hate to say so. But he's as good a lawyer
as any, I guess. And Thomas seems to like him well enough.
Thomas," she reminded Good Indian unnecessarily, "never does say
much about anything."
"I'd like to get a chance to talk to him," Good Indian observed.
"I'll have to just lead him off somewhere by main strength, I
guess. Baumberger sticks to him like a bur to a dog's tail.
What are those fellows doing down there now ? Does anybody
know?"
"You heard what he said to me just now," Phoebe said,
impatiently. "He don't want anybody to go near. It's terribly
aggravating," she confessed dispiritedly, "to have a lot of
ruffians camped down, cool as you please, on your own ranch, and
not be allowed to drive 'em off. I don't wonder the boys are all
sulky. If Baumberger wasn't here at all, I guess we'd have got
rid of 'em before now. I don't know as I think very much of
lawyers, anyhow. I believe I'd a good deal rather fight first
and go,to law about it afterward if I had to. But Thomas is
so--CALM!"
"I think I'll go down and have a look," said Good Indian
suddenly. "I'm not under Baumberger's orders, if the rest of the
bunch is. And I wish you'd tell Peaceful I want to talk to him,
Mother Hart--will you? Tell him to ditch his guardian angel
somehow. I'd like to see him on the quiet if I can, but if I
can't--"
"Can't be nice, and forgiving, and repentant, and--a dear?"
Evadna had crept over to him by way of the rocks behind the pond,
and at every pause in her questioning she pushed him forward by
his two shoulders. "I'm so furious I could beat you! What do you
mean, savage, by letting a lady stay all afternoon by herself,
waiting for you to come and coax her into being nice to you?
Don't you know I H-A-ATE you?" She had him by the ears, then,
pulling his head erratically from side to side, and she finished
by giving each ear a little slap and laid her arms around his
neck. "Please don't look at me that way, Aunt Phoebe," she said,
when she discovered her there inside the door. "Here's a
horrible young villain who doesn't know how to behave, and makes
me do all the making up. I don't like him one bit, and I just
came to tell him so and be done. And I don't suppose," she
added, holding her two hands tightly over his mouth, "he has a
word to say for himself."
Since he was effectually gagged, Grant had not a word to say.
Even when he had pulled her hands away and held them prisoners in
his own, he said nothing. This was Evadna in a new and
unaccountable mood, it seemed to him. She had certainly been
very angry with him at noon. She had accused him, in that
roundabout way which seems to be a woman's favorite method of
reaching a real grievance, of being fickle and neglectful and
inconsiderate and a brute.
The things she had said to him on the way down the grade had
rankled in his mind, and stirred all the sullen pride in his
nature to life, and he could not forget them as easily as she
appeared to have done. Good Indian was not in the habit of
saying things, even in anger, which he did not mean, and he could
not understand how anyone else could do so. And the things she
had said!
But here she was, nevertheless, laughing at him and blushing
adorably because he still held her fast, and making the blood of
him race most unreasonably.
"Don't scold me, Aunt Phoebe," she begged, perhaps because there
was something in Phoebe's face which she did not quite
understand, and so mistook for disapproval of her behavior. "I
should have told you last night that we're--well, I SUPPOSE we're
supposed to be engaged!" She twisted her hands away from him, and
came down the steps to her aunt. "It all happened so
unexpectedly--really, I never dreamed I cared anything for him,
Aunt Phoebe, until he made me care. And last night I couldn't
tell you, and this morning I was going to, but all this horrible
trouble came up--and, anyway," she finished with a flash of
pretty indignation, "I think Grant might have told you himself! I
don't think it's a bit nice of him to leave everything like that
for me. He might have told you before he went chasing off to--to
Hartley." She put her arms around her aunt's neck. "You aren't
angry, are you, Aunt Phoebe?" she coaxed. "You--you know you
said you wanted me to be par-TIC-ularly nice to Grant!"
"Great grief, child! You needn't choke me to death. Of course
I'm not angry." But Phoebe's eyes did not brighten.
"You look angry," Evadna pouted, and kissed her placatingly.
"I've got plenty to be worked up over, without worrying over your
love affairs, Vadnie." Phoebe's eyes sought Grant's anxiously.
"I don't doubt but what it's more important to you than anything
else on earth, but I'm thinking some of the home I'm likely to
lose."
Evadna drew back, and made a movement to go.
"Oh, I'm sorry I interrupted you then, Aunt Phoebe. I suppose
you and Grant were busy discussing those men in the orchard--"
"Don't be silly, child. You aren't interrupting anybody, and
there's no call for you to run off like that. We aren't talking
secrets that I know of."
In some respects the mind of Good Indian was extremely simple and
direct. His knowledge of women was rudimentary and based largely
upon his instincts rather than any experience he had had with
them. He had been extremely uncomfortable in the knowledge that
Evadna was angry, and strongly impelled, in spite of his hurt
pride, to make overtures for peace. He was puzzled, as well as
surprised, when she seized him by the shoulders and herself made
peace so bewitchingly that he could scarcely realize it at first.
But since fate was kind, and his lady love no longer frowned upon
him, he made the mistake of taking it for granted she neither
asked nor expected him to explain his seeming neglect of her and
his visit to Miss Georgie at Hartley.
She was not angry with him. Therefore, he was free to turn his
whole attention to this trouble which had come upon his closest
friends. He reached out, caught Evadna by the hand, pulled her
close to him, and smiled upon her in a way to make her catch her
breath in a most unaccountable manner.
But he did not say anything to her; he was a young man unused to
dalliance when there were serious things at hand.
"I'm going down there and see what they're up to," he told
Phoebe, giving Evadna's hand a squeeze and letting it go. "I
suspect there's something more than keeping the peace behind
Baumberger's anxiety to have them left strictly alone. The boys
had better keep away, though."
"Are you going down in the orchard?" Evadna rounded her
unbelievably blue eyes at him. "Then I'm going along."
"You'll do nothing of the kind, little Miss Muffit," he declared
from the top step.
"Why not?"
"I might want to do some swearing." He grinned down at her, and
started off.
"Now, Grant, don't you do anything rash!" Phoebe called after him
sharply.
"'Don't--get--excited!'" he retorted, mimicking Baumberger.
"I'm going a little way, whether you want me to or not," Evadna
threatened, pouting more than ever.
She did go as far as the porch with him, and was kissed and sent
back like a child. She did not, however, go back to her aunt,
but ran into her own room, where she could look out through the
grove toward the orchard--and to the stable as well, though that
view did not interest her particularly at first. It was pure
accident that made her witness what took place at the gate.
CHAPTER XVII
A LITTLE TARGET-PRACTICE
A grimy buck with no hat of any sort and with his hair straggling
unbraided over one side of his face to conceal a tumor which grew
just over his left eye like a large, ripe plum, stood outside the
gate, in doubt whether to enter or remain where he was. When he
saw Good Indian he grunted, fumbled in his blanket, and held out
a yellowish envelope.
"Ketchum Squaw-talk-far-off," he explained gutturally.
Good Indian took the envelope, thinking it must be a telegram,
though he could not imagine who would be sending him one. His
name was written plainly upon the outside, and within was a short
note scrawled upon a telegraph form:
"Come up as soon as you possibly can. I've something to tell
you."
That was what she had written. He read it twice before he looked
up.
"What time you ketchum this?" he asked, tapping the message with
his finger.
"Mebbyso one hour." The buck pulled a brass watch ostentatiously
from under his blanket, held it to his ear a moment, as if he
needed auricular assurance that it was running properly, and
pointed to the hour of three. "Ketchum one dolla, mebbyso
pikeway quick. No stoppum," he said virtuously.
"You see Peaceful in Hartley?" Good Indian asked the question
from an idle impulse; in reality, he was wondering what it was
that Miss Georgie had to tell him.
"Peacefu', him go far off. On train. All same heap fat man go
'long. Mebbyso Shoshone, mebbyso Pocatello."
Good Indian looked down at the note, and frowned; that, probably,
was what she had meant to tell him, though he could not see where
the knowledge was going to help him any. If Peaceful had gone to
Shoshone, he was gone, and that settled it. Undoubtedly he would
return the next day--perhaps that night, even. He was beginning
to feel the need of a quiet hour in which to study the tangle,
but he had a suspicion that Baumberger had some reason other than
a desire for peace in wanting the jumpers left to themselves, and
he started toward the orchard, as he had at first intended.
"Mebbyso ketchum one dolla, yo'," hinted Charlie, the buck.
But Good Indian went on without paying any attention to him. At
the road he met Jack and Wally, just returning from the orchard.
"No use going down there," Jack informed him sulkily. "They're
just laying in the shade with their guns handy, doing nothing.
They won't let anybody cross their line, and they won't say
anything--not even when you cuss 'em. Wally and I got black in
the face trying to make them come alive. Baumberger got back
yet? Wally and I have got a scheme--"
"He and your dad took the train for Shoshone. Say, does anyone
know what that bunch over in the meadow is up to?" Good Indian
leaned his back against a tree, and eyed the two morosely.
"Clark and Gene are over there," said Wally. "But I'd gamble
they aren't doing any more than these fellows are. They haven't
started to pan out any dirt--they haven't done a thing, it looks
like, but lay around in the shade. I must say I don't sabe their
play. And the worst of it is," he added desperately, "a fellow
can't do anything."
"I'm going to break out pretty darned sudden," Jack observed
calmly. "I feel it coming on." He smiled, but there was a look
of steel in his eyes.
Good Indian glanced at him sharply.
"Now, you fellows' listen to me," he said. "This thing is partly
my fault. I could have prevented it, maybe, if I hadn't been so
taken up with my own affairs. Old Peppajee told me Baumberger
was up to some devilment when he first came down here. He heard
him talking to Saunders in Pete Hamilton's stable. And the first
night he was here, Peppajee and I saw him down at the stable at
midnight, talking to someone. Peppajee kept on his trail till he
got that snake bite, and he warned me a plenty. But I didn't
take much stock in it--or if I did--" He lifted his shoulders
expressively.
"So," he went on, after a minute of bitter thinking, "I want you
to keep out of this. You know how your mother would feel--You
don't want to get foolish. You can keep an eye on them--to-night
especially. I've an idea they're waiting for dark; and if I knew
why, I'd be a lot to the good. And if I knew why old Baumberger
took your father off so suddenly, why--I'd be wiser than I am
now." He lifted his hat, brushed the moisture from his forehead,
and gave a grunt of disapproval when his eyes rested on Jack.
"What yuh loaded down like that for?" he demanded. "You fellows
better put those guns in cold storage. I'm like Baumberger in
one respect--we don't want any violence!" He grinned without any
feeling of mirth.
"Something else is liable to be put in cold storage first," Wally
hinted, significantly. "I must say I like this standing around
and looking dangerous, without making a pass! I wish something
would break loose somewhere."
"I notice you're packing yours, large as life," Jack pointed out.
"Maybe you're just wearing it for an ornament, though."
"Sure!" Good Indian, feeling all at once the utter futility of
standing there talking, left them grumbling over their forced
inaction, without explaining where he was going, or what he meant
to do. Indeed, he scarcely knew himself. He was in that
uncomfortable state of mind where one feels that one must do
something, without having the faintest idea of what that
something is, or how it is to be done. It seemed to him that
they were all in the same mental befuddlement, and it seemed
impossible to stay on the ranch another hour without making a
hostile move of some sort--and he knew that, when he did make a
move, he at least ought to know why he did it.
The note in his pocket gave him an excuse for action of some
sort, even though he felt sure that nothing would come of it; at
least, he thought, he would have a chance to discuss the thing
with Miss Georgie again--and while he was not a man who must have
everything put into words, he had found comfort and a certain
clarity of thought in talking with her.
"Why don't you invite me to go along?" Evadna challenged from the
gate, when he was ready to start. She laughed when she said it,
but there was something beneath the laughter, if he had only been
close enough to read it.
"I didn't think you'd want to ride through all that dust and heat
again to-day," he called back. "You're better off in the shade."
"Going to call on 'Squaw-talk-far-off'--AGAIN?" She was still
laughing, with something else beneath the laugh.
He glanced at her quickly, wondering where she had gotten the
name, and in his wonder neglected to make audible reply. Also he
passed over the change to ride back to the gate and tell her
good-by--with a hasty kiss, perhaps, from the saddle--as a lover
should have done.
He was not used to love-making. For him, it was settled that
they loved each other, and would marry some day--he hoped the day
would be soon. It did not occur to him that a girl wants to be
told over and over that she is the only woman in the whole world
worth a second thought or glance; nor that he should stop and say
just where he was going, and what he meant to do, and how
reluctant he was to be away from her. Trouble sat upon his mind
like a dead weight, and dulled his perception, perhaps. He waved
his hand to her from the stable, and galloped down the trail to
the Point o' Rocks, and his mind, so far as Evadna was concerned,
was at ease.
Evadna, however, was crying, with her arms folded upon the top of
the gate, before the cloud which marked his passing had begun to
sprinkle the gaunt, gray sagebushes along the trail with a fresh
layer of choking dust. Jack and Wally came up, scowling at the
world and finding no words to match their gloom. Wally gave her
a glance, and went on to the blacksmith shop, but Jack went
straight up to her, for he liked her well.
"What's the matter?" he asked dully. "Mad because you can't
smoke up the ranch?"
Evadna fumbled blindly for her handkerchief, scoured her eyes
well when she found it, and put up the other hand to further
shield her face.
"Oh, the whole place is like a GRAVEYARD," she complained.
"Nobody will talk, or do anything but just wander around! I just
can't STAND it!" Which was not frank of her.
"It's too hot to do much of anything," he said apologetically.
"We might take a ride, if you don't mind the heat."
"You don't want to ride," she objected petulantly. "Why didn't
you go with Good Indian?" he countered.
"Because I didn't want to. And I do wish you'd quit calling him
that; he has a real name, I believe."
"If you're looking for a scrap," grinned Jack, "I'll stake you to
my six gun, and you can go down and kill off a few of those
claim-jumpers. You seem to be in just about the proper frame uh
mind to murder the whole bunch. Fly at it!"
"It begins to look as if we women would have to do something,"
she retorted cruelly. "There doesn't seem to be a man on the
ranch with spirit enough to stop them from digging up the
whole--"
"I guess that'll be about enough," Jack interrupted her, coldly.
"Why didn't you say that to Good Indian?"
"I told you not to call him that. I don't see why everybody is
so mean to-day. There isn't a person--"
When Jack laughed, he shut his eyes until he looked through
narrow slits under heavy lashes, and showed some very nice teeth,
and two deep dimples besides the one which always stood in his
chin. He laughed then, for the first time that day, and if
Evadna had been in a less vixenish temper she would have laughed
with him just as everyone else always did. But instead of that,
she began to cry again, which made Jack feel very much a brute.
"Oh, come on and be good," he urged remorsefully. But Evadna
turned and ran back into the house and into her room, and cried
luxuriously into her pillow. Jack, peeping in at the window
which opened upon the porch, saw her there, huddled upon the bed.
In the spring-house his mother sat crying silently over her
helplessness, and failed to respond to his comforting pats upon
the shoulder. Donny struck at him viciously when Jack asked him
an idle question, and Charlie, the Indian with the tumor over his
eye, scowled from the corner of the house where he was squatting
until someone offered him fruit, or food, or tobacco. He was of
an acquisitive nature, was Charlie--and the road to his favor
must be paved with gifts.
"This is what I call hell," Jack stated aloud, and went straight
away to the strawberry patch, took up his stand with his toes
against Stanley's corner stake, cursed him methodically until he
had quite exhausted his vocabulary, and put a period to his
forceful remarks by shooting a neat, round hole through Stanley's
coffee-pot. And Jack was the mild one of the family.
By the time he had succeeded in puncturing recklessly the
frying-pan, and also the battered pan in which Stanley no doubt
meant to wash his samples of soil, his good humor returned. So
also did the other boys, running in long leaps through the garden
and arriving at the spot very belligerent and very much out of
breath.
"Got to do something to pass away the time," Jack grinned,
bringing his front sight once more to bear upon the coffee--pot,
already badly dented and showing three black holes. "And I ain't
offering any violence to anybody. You can't hang a man, Mr.
Stanley, for shooting up a frying-pan. And I wouldn't--hurt--
you--for--anything!" He had just reloaded, so that his bullets
saw him to the end of the sentence.
Stanley watched his coffee-pot dance and roll like a thing in
pain, and swore when all was done. But he did not shoot, though
one could see how his fingers must itch for the feel of the
trigger.
"Your old dad will sweat blood for this--and you'll be packing
your blanket on your back and looking for work before snow
flies," was his way of summing up.
Still, he did not shoot.
It was like throwing pebbles at the bowlder in the Malad, the day
before.
When Phoebe came running in terror toward the fusillade, with
Marie and her swollen face, and Evadna and her red eyes following
in great trepidation far behind, they found four claim-jumpers
purple from long swearing, and the boys gleefully indulging in
revolver practice with various camp utensils for the targets.
They stopped when their belts were empty as well as their guns,
and they went back to the house with the women, feeling much
better. Afterward they searched the house for more "shells,"
clattering from room to room, and looking into cigar boxes and
upon out-of-the-way shelves, while Phoebe expostulated in the
immediate background.
"Your father would put a stop to it pretty quick if he was here,"
she declared over and over. "Just because they didn't shoot back
this time is no sign they won't next time you boys go to
hectoring them." All the while she knew she was wasting her
breath, and she had a secret fear that her manner and her tones
were unconvincing. If she had been a man, she would have been
their leader, perhaps. So she retreated at last to her favorite
refuge, the milk-house, and tried to cover her secret approval
with grumbling to herself.
There was a lull in the house. The boys, it transpired, had gone
in a body to Hartley after more cartridges, and the cloud of dust
which hovered long over the trail testified to their haste. They
returned surprisingly soon, and they would scarcely wait for
their supper before they hurried back through the garden. One
would think that they were on their way to a dance, so eager they
were.
They dug themselves trenches in various parts of the garden, laid
themselves gleefully upon their stomachs, and proceeded to
exchange, at the top of their strong, young voices, ideas upon
the subject of claim-jumping, and to punctuate their remarks with
leaden periods planted neatly and with precision in the immediate
vicinity of one of the four.
They had some trouble with Donny, because he was always jumping
up that he might yell the louder when one of the enemy was seen
to step about uneasily whenever a bullet pinged closer than
usual, and the rifles began to bark viciously now and then. It
really was unsafe for one to dance a clog, with flapping arms and
taunting laughter, within range of those rises, and they told
Donny so.
They ordered him back to the house; they threw clods of earth at
his bare legs; they threatened and they swore, but it was not
until Wally got him by the collar and shook him with brotherly
thoroughness that Donny retreated in great indignation to the
house.
They were just giving themselves wholly up to the sport of
sending little spurts of loose earth into the air as close as was
safe to Stanley, and still much too close for his peace of mind
or that of his fellows, when Donny returned unexpectedly with the
shotgun and an enthusiasm for real bloodshed.
He fired once from the thicket of currant bushes, and, from the
remarks which Stanley barked out in yelping staccato, he
punctured that gentleman's person in several places with the fine
shot of which the charge consisted. He would have fired again if
the recoil had not thrown him quite off his balance, and it is
possible that someone would have been killed as a result. For
Stanley began firing with murderous intent, and only the dusk and
Good Indian's opportune arrival prevented serious trouble.
Good Indian had talked long with Miss Georgie, and had agreed
with her that, for the present at least, there must be no
violence. He had promised her flatly that he would do all in his
power to keep the peace, and he had gone again to the Indian camp
to see if Peppajee or some of his fellows could give him any
information about Saunders.
Saunders had disappeared unaccountably, after a surreptitious
conference with Baumberger the day before, and it was that which
Miss Georgie had to tell him. Saunders was in the habit of
sleeping late, so that she did not know until noon that he was
gone. Pete was worried, and garrulously feared the worst. The
worst, according to Pete Hamilton, was sudden death of a
hemorrhage.
Miss Georgie asserted unfeelingly that Saunders was more in
danger of dying from sheer laziness than of consumption, and she
even went so far as to hint cynically, that even his laziness was
largely hypocritical.
"I don't believe there's a single honest thing about the fellow,"
she said to Good Indian. "When he coughs, it sounds as if he
just did it for effect. When he lies in the shade asleep, I've
seen him watching people from under his lids. When he reads, his
ears seem always pricked up to hear everything that's going on,
and he gives those nasty little slanty looks at everybody within
sight. I don't believe he's really gone--because I can't imagine
him being really anything. But I do believe he's up to something
mean and sneaky, and, since Peppajee has taken this matter to
heart, maybe he can find out something. I think you ought to go
and see him, anyway, Mr. Imsen."
So Good Indian had gone to the Indian camp, and had afterward
ridden along the rim of the bluff, because Sleeping Turtle had
seen someone walking through the sagebrush in that direction.
From the rim-rock above the ranch, Good Indian had heard the
shooting, though the trees hid from his sight what was taking
place, and he had given over his search for Saunders and made
haste to reach home.
He might have gone straight down the bluff afoot, through a rift
in the rim-rock where it was possible to climb down into the
fissure and squeeze out through a narrow opening to the
bowlder-piled bluff. But that took almost as much time as he
would consume in riding around, and so he galloped back to the
grade and went down at a pace to break his neck and that of Keno
as well if his horse stumbled.
He reached home in time to see Donny run across the road with the
shotgun, and the orchard in time to prevent a general rush upon
Stanley and his fellows--which was fortunate. He got them all
out of the garden and into the house by sheer determination and
biting sarcasm, and bore with surprising patience their angry
upbraidings. He sat stoically silent while they called him a
coward and various other things which were unpleasant in the
extreme, and he even smiled when they finally desisted and
trailed off sullenly to bed.
But when they were gone he sat alone upon the porch, brooding
over the day and all it had held of trouble and perplexity.
Evadna appeared tentatively in the open door, stood there for a
minute or two waiting for some overture upon his part, gave him a
chilly good-night when she realized he was not even thinking of
her, and left him. So great was his absorption that he let her
go, and it never occurred to him that she might possibly consider
herself ill-used. He would have been distressed if he could have
known how she cried herself to sleep but, manlike, he would also
have been puzzled.
CHAPTER XVIII
A SHOT FROM THE RIM-ROCK
Good Indian was going to the stable to feed the horses next
morning, when something whined past him and spatted viciously
against the side of the chicken-house. Immediately afterward he
thought he heard the sharp crack which a rifle makes, but the
wind was blowing strongly up the valley, and he could not be
sure.
He went over to the chicken-house, probed with his knife-blade
into the plank where was the splintered hole, and located a
bullet. He was turning it curiously in his fingers when another
one plunked into the boards, three feet to one side of him; this
time he was sure of the gun-sound, and he also saw a puff of blue
smoke rise up on the rim-rock above him. He marked the place
instinctively with his eyes, and went on to the stable, stepping
rather more quickly than was his habit.
Inside, he sat down upon the oats-box, and meditated upon what he
should do. He could not even guess at his assailant, much less
reach him. A dozen men could be picked off by a rifle in the
hands of one at the top, while they were climbing that bluff.
Even if one succeeded in reaching the foot of the rim-rock, there
was a forty-foot wall of unscalable rock, with just the one
narrow fissure where it was possible to climb up to the level
above, by using both hands to cling to certain sharp projections
while the feet sought a niche here and there in the wall. Easy
enough--if one were but left to climb in peace, but absolutely
suicidal if an enemy stood above.
He scowled through the little paneless window at what he could
see of the bluff, and thought of the mile-long grade to be
climbed and the rough stretch of lava rock, sage, and scattered
bowlders to be gone over before one could reach the place upon a
horse. Whoever was up there, he would have more than enough time
to get completely away from the spot before it would be possible
to gain so much as a glimpse of him.
And who could he be? And why was he shooting at Good Indian, so
far a non-combatant, guiltless of even firing a single shot since
the trouble began?
Wally came in, his hat far back on his head, a cigarette in the
corner of his mouth, and his manner an odd mixture of
conciliation and defiance, ready to assume either whole-heartedly
at the first word from the man he had cursed so unstintingly
before he slept. He looked at Good Indian, caught sight of the
leaden pellet he was thoughtfully turning round and round in his
fingers, and chose to ignore for the moment any unpleasantness in
their immediate past.
"Where you ketchum?" he asked, coming a bit closer.
"In the side of the chicken-house." Good Indian's tone was
laconic.
Wally reached out, and took the bullet from him that he might
juggle it curiously in his own fingers. "I don't think!" he
scouted.
"There's another one there to match this," Good Indian stated
calmly, "and if I should walk over there after it, I'll gamble
there'd be more."
Wally dropped the flattened bullet, stooped, and groped for it in
the litter on the floor, and when he had found it he eyed it more
curiously than before. But he would have died in his tracks
rather than ask a question.
"Didn't anybody take a shot at you, as you came from the house?"
Good Indian asked when he saw the mood of the other.
"If he did, he was careful not to let me find it out." Wally's
expression hardened.
"He was more careless a while ago," said Good Indian. "Some
fellow up on the bluff sent me a little morning salute. But," he
added slowly, and with some satisfaction, "he's a mighty poor
shot."
Jack sauntered in much as Wally had done, saw Good Indian sitting
there, and wrinkled his eyes shut in a smile.
"Please, sir, I never meant a word I said!" he began, with
exaggerated trepidation. "Why the dickens didn't you murder the
whole yapping bunch of us, Grant?" He clapped his hand
affectionately upon the other's shoulder. "We kinda run amuck
yesterday afternoon," he confessed cheerfully, "but it sure was
fun while it lasted!"
"There's liable to be some more fun of the same kind," Wally
informed him shortly. "Good Injun says someone on the bluff took
a shot at him when he was coming to the stable. If any of them
jumpers--"
"It's easy to find out if it was one of them," Grant cut in, as
if the idea had just come to him. We can very soon see if
they're all on their little patch of soil. Let's go take a
look."
They went out guardedly, their eyes upon the rim-rock. Good
Indian led the way through the corral, into the little pasture,
and across that to where the long wall of giant poplars shut off
the view.
"I admire courage," he grinned, "but I sure do hate a fool."
Which was all the explanation he made for the detour that hid
them from sight of anyone stationed upon the bluff, except while
they were passing from the stable-door to the corral; and that,
Jack said afterward, didn't take all day.
Coming up from the rear, they surprised Stanley and one other
peacefully boiling coffee in a lard pail which they must have
stolen in the night from the ranch junk heap behind the
blacksmith shop. The three peered out at them from a distant
ambush, made sure that there were only two men there, and went on
to the disputed part of the meadows. There the four were
pottering about, craning necks now and then toward the ranch
buildings as if they half feared an assault of some kind. Good
Indian led the way back to the stable.
"If there was any way of getting around up there without being
seen," he began thoughtfully, "but there isn't. And while I
think of it," he added, "we don't want to let the women know
about this."
"They're liable to suspect something," Wally reminded dryly, "if
one of us gets laid out cold."
Good Indian laughed. "It doesn't look as if he could hit
anything smaller than a haystack. And anyway, I think I'm the
boy he's after, though I don't see why. I haven't done a
thing--yet."
"Let's feed the horses and then pace along to the house, one at
a time, and find out," was Jack's reckless suggestion. "Anybody
that knows us at all can easy tell which is who. And I guess it
would be tolerably safe."
Foolhardy as the thing looked to be, they did it, each after his
own manner of facing a known danger. Jack went first because, as
he said, it was his idea, and he was willing to show his heart
was in the right place. He rolled and lighted a cigarette,
wrinkled his eyes shut in a laugh, and strolled nonchalantly out
of the stable.
"Keep an eye on the rim-rock, boys," he called back, without
turning his head. A third of the way he went, stopped dead
still, and made believe inspect something upon the ground at his
feet.
"Ah, go ON!" bawled Wally, his nerves all on edge.
Jack dug his heel into the dust, blew the ashes from his
cigarette, and went on slowly to the gate, passed through, and
stood well back, out of sight under the trees, to watch.
Wally snorted disdain of any proceeding so spectacular, but he
was as he was made, and he could not keep his dare-devil spirit
quite in abeyance. He twitched his hat farther back on his head,
stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked deliberately
out into the open, his neck as stiff as a newly elected
politician on parade. He did not stop, as Jack had done, but he
facetiously whistled "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are
marching," and he went at a pace which permitted him to finish
the tune before he reached the gate. He joined Jack in the
shade, and his face, when he looked back to the stable, was
anxious.
"It must be Grant he wants, all right," he muttered, resting one
hand on Jack's shoulder and speaking so he could not be overheard
from the house. "And I wish to the Lord he'd stay where he's
at."
But Good Indian was already two paces from the door, coming
steadily up the path, neither faster nor slower than usual, with
his eyes taking in every object within sight as he went, and his
thumb hooked inside his belt, near where his gun swung at his
hip. It was not until his free hand was upon the gate that lack
and Wally knew they had been holding their breath.
"Well--here I am," said Good Indian, after a minute, smiling down
at them with the sunny look in his eyes. "I'm beginning to think
I had a dream. Only"--he dipped his fingers into the pocket of
his shirt and brought up the flattened bullet--"that is pretty
blamed realistic--for a dream." His eyes searched involuntarily
the rim-rock with a certain incredulity, as if he could not bring
himself to believe in that bullet, after all.
"But two of the jumpers are gone," said Wally. "I reckon we
stirred 'em up some yesterday, and they're trying to get back at
us."
"They've picked a dandy place," Good Indian observed. "I think
maybe it would be a good idea to hold that fort ourselves. We
should have thought of that; only I never thought--"
Phoebe, heavy-eyed and pale from wakefulness and worry, came
then, and called them in to breakfast. Gene and Clark came in,
sulky still, and inclined to snappishness when they did speak.
Donny announced that he had been in the garden, and that Stanley
told him he would blow the top of his head off if he saw him
there again. "And I never done a thing to him!" he declared
virtuously.
Phoebe set down the coffee-pot with an air of decision.
"I want you boys to remember one thing," she said firmly, "and
that is that there must be no more shooting going on around here.
It isn't only what Baumberger thinks--I don't know as ho's got
anything to say about it--it's what _I_ think. I know I'm only a
woman, and you all consider yourselves men, whether you are or
not, and it's beneath your dignity, maybe, to listen to your
mother.
"But your mother has seen the day when she was counted on as
much, almost, as if she'd been a man. Why, great grief! I've
stood for hours peeking out a knot-hole in the wall, with that
same old shotgun Donny got hold of, ready to shoot the first
Injun that stuck his nose from behind a rock."
The color came into her cheeks at the memory, and a sparkle into
her eyes. "I've seen real fighting, when it was a life-and-death
matter. I've tended to the men that were shot before my eyes,
and I've sung hymns over them that died. You boys have grown up
on some of the stories about the things I've been through.
"And here last night," she reproached irritatedly, I heard
someone say: 'Oh, come on--we're scaring Mum to death!' The idea!
'scaring Mum!' I can tell you young jackanapes one thing: If I
thought there was anything to be gained by it, or if it would
save trouble instead of MAKING trouble,'MUM' could go down there
right now, old as she is, and SCARED as she is, and clean out the
whole, measly outfit!" She stared sternly at the row of faces
bent over their plates.
"Oh, you can laugh--it's only your mother!" she exclaimed
indignantly, when she saw Jack's eyes go shut and Gene's mouth
pucker into a tight knot. "But I'll have you to know I'm boss of
this ranch when your father's gone, and if there's any more of
that kid foolishness to-day--laying behind a currant bush and
shooting COFFEE-POTS!--I'll thrash the fellow that starts it! It
isn't the kind of fighting I'VE been used to. I may be away
behind the times--I guess I am!--but I've always been used to the
idea that guns weren't to be used unless you meant business.
This thing of getting out and PLAYING gun-fight is kinda
sickening to a person that's seen the real thing.
"'Scaring Mum to death!"' She seemed to find it very hard to
forget that, or to forgive it. "'SCARING MUM'--and Jack, there,
was born in the time of an Indian uprising, and I laid with your
father's revolver on the pillow where I could put my hand on it,
day or night! YOU scare Mum! MUM will scare YOU, if there's any
more of that let's-play-Injun business going on around this
ranch. Why, I'd lead you down there by the ear, every mother's
son of you, and tell that man Stanley to SPANK you!"
"Mum can whip her weight in wildcats any old time," Wally
announced after a heavy silence, and glared aggressively from one
foolish-looking face to another.
As was frequently the case, the wave of Phoebe's wrath ebbed
harmlessly away in laughter as the humorous aspect of her tirade
was brought to her attention.
"Just the same, I want you should mind what I tell you," she
said, in her old motherly tone, "and keep away from those
ruffians down there. You can't do anything but make 'em mad,
and give 'em an excuse for killing someone. When your father
gets back, we'll see what's to be done."
"All right, Mum. We won't look toward the garden to-day," Wally
promised largely, and held out his cup to her to be refilled."
You can keep my gun, if you want to make dead sure."
"No, I can trust my boys, I hope," and she glowed with real pride
in them when she said it.
Good Indian lingered on the porch for half an hour or so, waiting
for Evadna to appear. She may have seen him through the
window--at any rate she slipped out very quietly, and had her
breakfast half eaten before he suspected that she was up; and
when he went into the kitchen, she was talking animatedly with
Marie about Mexican drawn-work, and was drawing intricate little
diagrams of certain patterns with her fork upon the tablecloth.
She looked up, and gave him a careless greeting, and went back to
discussing certain "wheels" in the corner of an imaginary
lunch-cloth and just how one went about making them. He made a
tentative remark or two, trying to win her attention to himself,
but she pushed her cup and saucer aside to make room for further
fork drawings, and glanced at him with her most exaggerated
Christmas-angel look.
"Don't interrupt, please," she said mincingly. "This is
IMPORTANT. And," she troubled to explain, "I'm really in a
hurry, because I'm going to help Aunt Phoebe make strawberry
jam."
If she thought that would fix his determination to remain and
have her to himself for a few minutes, she was mistaken in her
man. Good Indian turned on his heel, and went out with his chin
in the air, and found that Gene and Clark had gone off to the
meadow, with Donny an unwelcome attendant, and that Wally and
Jack were keeping the dust moving between the gate and the
stable, trying to tempt a shot from the bluff. They were much
inclined to be skeptical regarding the bullet which Good Indian
carried in his breast-pocket.
"WE can't raise anybody," Wally told him disgustedly, "and I've
made three round trips myself. I'm going to quit fooling around,
and go to work."
Whether he did or not, Good Indian did not wait to prove. He did
not say anything, either, about his own plans. He was hurt most
unreasonably because of Evadna's behavior, and he felt as if he
were groping about blindfolded so far as the Hart trouble was
concerned. There must be something to do, but he could not see
what it was. It reminded him oddly of when he sat down with his
algebra open before him, and scowled at a problem where the x y
z's seemed to be sprinkled through it with a diabolical
frequency, and there was no visible means of discovering what the
unknown quantities could possibly be.
He saddled Keno, and rode away in that silent preoccupation which
the boys called the sulks for want of a better understanding of
it. As a matter of fact, he was trying to put Evadna out of his
mind for the present, so that he could think clearly of what he
ought to do. He glanced often up at the rim-rock as he rode
slowly to the Point o' Rocks, and when he was halfway to the turn
he thought he saw something moving up there.
He pulled up to make sure, and a little blue ball puffed out like
a child's balloon, burst, and dissipated itself in a thin,
trailing ribbon, which the wind caught and swept to nothing. At
the same time something spatted into the trail ahead of him,
sending up a little spurt of fine sand.
Keno started, perked up his ears toward the place, and went on,
stepping gingerly. Good Indian's lips drew back, showing his
teeth set tightly together. "Still at it, eh?" he muttered
aloud, pricked Keno's flanks with his rowels, and galloped around
the Point.
There, for the time being, he was safe. Unless the shooter upon
the rim-rock was mounted, he must travel swiftly indeed to reach
again a point within range of the grade road before Good Indian
would pass out of sight again. For the trail wound in and out,
looping back upon itself where the hill was oversleep, hidden
part of the time from the receding wall of rock by huge bowlders
and giant sage.
Grant knew that he was safe from that quarter, and was wondering
whether he ought to ride up along the top of the bluff before
going to Hartley, as he had intended.
He had almost reached the level, and was passing a steep, narrow,
little gully choked with rocks, when something started up so
close beside him that Keno ducked away and squatted almost upon
his haunches. His gun was in his hand, and his finger crooked
upon the trigger, when a voice he faintly recognized called to
him softly:
"Yo' no shoot--no shoot--me no hurtum. All time yo' frien'."
She stood trembling beside the trail, a gay, plaid shawl about
her shoulders in place of the usual blanket, her hair braided
smoothly with bright, red ribbons entwined through it. Her dress
was a plain slip of bright calico, which had four-inch roses,
very briery and each with a gaudy butterfly poised upon the
topmost petals running over it in an inextricable tangle. Beaded
moccasins were on her feet, and her eyes were frightened eyes,
with the wistfulness of a timid animal. Yet she did not seem to
be afraid of Good Indian.
"I sorry I scare yo' horse," she said hesitatingly, speaking
better English than before. "I heap hurry to get here. I speak
with yo'."
"Well, what is it?" Good Indian's tone was not as brusque as his
words; indeed, he spoke very gently, for him. This was the
good-looking young squaw he had seen at the Indian camp. "What's
your name?" he asked, remembering suddenly that he had never
heard it.
"Rachel. Peppajee, he my uncle." She glanced up at him shyly,
then down to where the pliant toe of her moccasin was patting a
tiny depression into the dust. "Bad mans like for shoot yo',"
she said, not looking directly at him again. "Him up there, all
time walk where him can look down, mebbyso see you, mebbyso
shootum."
"I know--I'm going to ride around that way and round him up."
Unconsciously his manner had the arrogance of strength and power
to do as he wished, which belongs to healthy young males.
"N-o, no-o!" She drew a sharp breath " o' no good there! Dim
shoot yo'. Yo' no go! Ah-h--I sorry I tellum yo' now. Bad mans,
him. I watch, I take care him no shoot. Him shoot, mebbyso _I_
shoot!"
With a little laugh that was more a plea for gentle judgment than
anything else, she raised the plaid shawl, and gave him a glimpse
of a rather battered revolver, cheap when it was new and
obviously well past its prime.
"I want yo'--" she hesitated; "I want yo'--be heap careful. I
want yo' no ride close by hill. Ride far out!" She made a
sweeping gesture toward the valley. "All time I watch."
He was staring at her in a puzzled way. She was handsome, after
her wild, half-civilized type, and her anxiety for his welfare
touched him and besought his interest.
"Indians go far down--" She swept her arm down the narrowing
river valley. "Catch fish. Peppajee stay--no can walk far. I
stay. All go, mebbyso stay five days." Her hand lifted
involuntarily to mark the number.
He did not know why she told him all that, and he could not learn
from her anything about his assailant. She had been walking
along the bluff, he gathered--though why, she failed to make
clear to him. She had, from a distance, caught a glimpse of a
man watching the valley beneath him. She had seen him raise a
rifle, take long aim, and shoot--and she had known that he was
shooting at Good Indian.
When he asked her the second time what was her errand up
there--whether she was following the man, or had suspected that
he would be there--she shook her head vaguely and took refuge
behind the stolidity of her race.
In spite of her pleading, he put his horse to scrambling up the
first slope which it was possible to climb, and spent an hour
riding, gun in hand, along the rim of the bluff, much as he had
searched it the evening before.
But there was nothing alive that he could discover, except a hawk
which lifted itself languorously off a high, sharp rock, and
flapped lazily out across the valley when he drew near. The man
with the rifle had disappeared as completely as if he had never
been there, and there was not one chance in a hundred of hunting
him out, in all that rough jumble.
When he was turning back at last toward Hartley, he saw Rachel
for a moment standing out against the deep blue of the sky, upon
the very rim of the bluff. He waved a hand to her, but she gave
no sign; only, for some reason, he felt that she was watching him
ride away, and he had a brief, vagrant memory of the wistfulness
he had seen in her eyes.
On the heels of that came a vision of Evadna swinging in the
hammock which hung between the two locust trees, and he longed
unutterably to be with her there. He would be, he promised
himself, within the next hour or so, and set his pace in
accordance with his desire, resolved to make short work of his
investigations in Hartley and his discussion of late events with
Miss Georgie.
He had not, it seemed to him, had more than two minutes with
Evadna since that evening of rapturous memory when they rode home
together from the Malad, and afterward sat upon the stone bench
at the head of the pond, whispering together so softly that they
did not even disturb the frogs among the lily-pads within ten
feet of them. It was not so long ago, that evening. The time
that had passed since might be reckoned easily in hours, but to
Good Indian it seemed a month, at the very least.
CHAPTER XIX
EVADNA GOES CALLING
"I have every reason to believe that your two missing jumpers
took the train for Shoshone last night," Miss Georgie made answer
to Good Indian's account of what had happened since he saw her."
Two furtive-eyed individuals answering your description bought
round-trip tickets and had me flag sixteen for them. They got
on, all right. I saw them. And if they got off before the next
station they must have landed on their heads, because Sixteen was
making up time and Shorty pulled the throttle wide open at the
first yank, I should judge, from the way he jumped out of town.
I've been expecting some of them to go and do their filing
stunt--and if the boys have begun to devil them any, the chances
are good that they'd take turns at it, anyway. They'd leave
someone always on the ground, that's a cinch.
"And Saunders," she went on rapidly, "returned safe enough. He
sneaked in just before I closed the office last night, and asked
for a telegram. There wasn't any, and he sneaked out again and
went to bed--so Pete told me this morning. And most of the
Indians have pulled out--squaws, dogs, papooses, and all--on some
fishing or hunting expedition. I don't know that it has anything
to do with your affairs, or would even interest you, though. And
there has been no word from Peaceful, and they can't possibly get
back now till the four-thirty--five.
"And that's all I can tell you, Mr. Imsen," she finished crisply,
and took up a novel with a significance which not even the
dullest man could have ignored.
Good Indian stared, flushed hotly, and made for the door.
"Thank you for the information. I'm afraid this has been a lot
of bother for you," he said stiffly, gave her a ceremonious
little bow, and went his way stiff-necked and frowning.
Miss Georgie leaned forward so that she could see him through the
window. She watched him cross to the store, go up the three
rough steps to the platform, and disappear into the yawning
blackness beyond the wide-open door.
She did not open the novel and begin reading, even then. She
dabbed her handkerchief at her eyes, muttered: "My Heavens, what
a fool!" apropos of nothing tangible, and stared dully out at the
forlorn waste of cinders with rows of shining rails running
straight across it upon ties half sunken in the black
desolation, and at the red abomination which was the pump-house
squatting beside the dripping tank, the pump breathing
asthmatically as it labored to keep the sliding water gauge from
standing at the figure which meant reproach for the grimy
attendant.
"What a fool--what a fool!" she repeated at the end of ten moody
minutes. Then she threw the novel into a corner of the room, set
her lower jaw into the square lines of stubbornness, went over to
the sleeping telegraph instrument which now and then clicked and
twittered in its sleep, called up Shoshone, and commanded the
agent there to send down a quart freezer of ice cream, a banana
cake, and all the late magazines he could find,
including--especially including--the alleged "funny" ones.
"You certainly--are--the prize--fool!" she said, when she
switched off the current, and she said it with vicious emphasis.
Whereupon she recovered the novel, seated herself determinedly in
the beribboned rocker, flipped the leaves of the book spitefully
until she found one which had a corner turned down, and read a
garden-party chapter much as she used to study her multiplication
table when she was ten and hated arithmetic.
A freight was announced over the wire, arrived with a great
wheezing and snorting, which finally settled to a rhythmic
gasping of the air pump, while a few boxes of store supplies were
being dumped unceremoniously upon the platform. Miss Georgie was
freight agent as well as many other things, and she went out and
stood bareheaded in the sun to watch the unloading.
She performed, with the unthinking precision which comes of long
practice, the many little duties pertaining to her several
offices, and when the wheels began once more to clank, and she
had waved her hand to the fireman, the brakeman, and the
conductor, and had seen the dirty flags at the rear of the
swaying caboose flap out of sight around the low, sage-covered
hill, she turned rather dismally to the parlor end of the office,
and took up the book with her former air of grim determination.
So for an hour, perhaps.
"Is Miss Georgie Howard at home?" It was Evadna standing in the
doorway, her indigo eyes fixed with innocent gayety--which her
mouth somehow failed to meet halfway in mirth--upon the reader.
"She is, chicken, and overjoyed at the sight of you!" Miss
Georgie rose just as enthusiastically as if she had not seen
Evadna slip from Huckleberry's back, fuddle the tie-rope into
what looked like a knot, and step lightly upon the platform. She
had kept her head down--had Miss Georgie--until the last
possible second, because she was still being a fool and had
permitted a page of her book to fog before her eyes. There was
no fog when she pushed Evadna into the seat of honor, however,
and her mouth abetted her eyes in smiling.
"Everything at tho ranch is perfectly horrid," Evadna complained
pathetically, leaning back in the rocking-chair. "I'd just as
soon be shut up in a graveyard. You can't IMAGINE what it's
like, Georgie, since those horrible men came and camped around
all over the place! All yesterday afternoon and till dark, mind
you, the boys were down there shooting at everything but the men,
and they began to shoot back, and Aunt Phoebe was afraid the boys
would be hit, and so we all went down and--oh, it was awful! If
Grant hadn't come home and stopped them, everybody would have
been murdered. And you should have heard how they swore at Grant
afterward! They just called him everything they could think of
for making them stop. I had to sit around on the other side of
the house--and even then I couldn't help hearing most of it.
"And to-day it is worse, because they just go around like a lot
of dummies and won't do anything but look mean. Aunt Phoebe was
so cross--CROSS, mind you!--because I burnt the jam. And some of
the jumpers are missing, and nobody knows where they went-- and
Marie has got the toothache worse than ever, and won't go and
have it pulled because it will HURT! I don't see how it can hurt
much worse than it does now--she just goes around with tears
running down into the flannel around her face till I could SHAKE
her!" Evadna laughed--a self-pitying laugh, and rocked her small
person violently. "I wish I could have an office and live in it
and telegraph things to people," she sighed, and laughed again
most adorably at her own childishness. "But really and truly,
it's enough to drive a person CRAZY, down at the ranch!"
"For a girl with a brand-new sweetheart--" Miss Georgie reproved
quizzically, and reached for the inevitable candy box.
"A lot of good that does, when he's never there!" flashed Evadna,
unintentionally revealing her real grievance. "He just eats and
goes--and he isn't even there to eat, half the time. And when
he's there, he's grumpy, like all the rest." She was saying the
things she had told herself, on the way up, that she would DIE
rather than say; to Miss Georgie, of all people.
"I expect he's pretty worried, chicken, over that land business."
Miss Georgie offered her candy, and Evadna waved the box from her
impatiently, as if her spirits were altogether too low for
sweets.
"Well, I'm very sure I'M not to blame for those men being there,"
she retorted petulantly. "He"-- she hesitated, and then plunged
heedlessly on--"he acts just as if I weren't anybody at all. I'm
sure, if he expects me to be a doll to be played with and then
dumped into a corner where I'm to smile and smile until he comes
and picks me up again--"
"Now, chicken, what's the use of being silly?" Miss Georgie
turned her head slightly away, and stared out of the window.
"He's worried, I tell you, and instead of sulking because he
doesn't stay and make love--"
"Well, upon my word! Just as if I wanted--"
"You really ought to help him by being kind and showing a little
sympathy, instead--"
"It appears that the supply of sympathy--"
"Instead of making it harder for him by feeling neglected and
letting him see that you do. My Heavens above!" Miss Georgie
faced her suddenly with pink cheeks. "When a man is up against a
problem--and carries his life in his hand--"
"You don't know a thing about it!" Evadna stopped rocking, and
sat up very straight in the chair. "And even if that were true,
is that any reason why he should AVOID me? I'M not threatening
his life!"
"He doesn't avoid you. And you're acting sillier than I ever
supposed you could. He can't be in two places at once, can he?
Now, let's be sensible, chicken. Grant--"
"Oh--h!" There was a peculiar, sliding inflection upon that word,
which made Miss Georgie's hand shut into a fist.
"Grant"--Miss Georgie put a defiant emphasis upon it--"is doing
all he can to get to the bottom of that jumping business.
There's something crooked about it, and he knows it, and is
trying to--"
"I know all that." Evadna interrupted without apology.
"Well, of course, if you DO--then I needn't tell you how silly it
is for you to complain of being neglected, when you know his time
is all taken up with trying to ferret out a way to block their
little game. He feels in a certain sense responsible--"
"Yes, I know. He thinks he should have been watching somebody or
something instead of--of being with me. He took the trouble to
make that clear to me, at least!" Evadna's eyes were very blue
and very bright, but there was no look of an angel in her face.
Miss Georgie pressed her lips together tightly for a minute.
When she spoke, she was cheerfully impersonal as to tone and
manner.
"Chicken, you're a little goose. The man is simply crazy about
you, and harassed to death with this ranch business. Once that's
settled--well, you'll see what sort of a lover he can be!"
"Thank you so much for holding out a little hope and
encouragement, my dear!" Evadna, by the way, looked anything but
thankful; indeed, she seemed to resent the hope and the
encouragement as a bit of unwarranted impertinence. She glanced
toward the door as if she meditated an immediate departure, but
ended by settling back in the chair and beginning to rock again.
"It's a nasty, underhand business from start to finish," said
Miss Georgie, ignoring the remark. "It has upset everybody--me
included, and I'm sure it isn't my affair. It's just one of
those tricky cases that you know is rotten to the core, and yet
you can't seem to get hold of anything definite. My dad had one
or two experiences with old Baumberger--and if ever there was a
sly old mole of a man, he's one.
"Did you ever take after a mole, chicken? They used to get in
our garden at home. They burrow underneath the surface, you
know, and one never sees them. You can tell by the ridge of
loose earth that they're there, and if you think you've located
Mr. Mole, and jab a stick down, why--he's somewhere else, nine
times in ten. I used to call them Baumbergers, even then. Dad,"
she finished reminiscently, "was always jabbing his law stick
down where the earth seemed to move--but he never located old
Baumberger, to my knowledge."
She stopped, because Evadna, without a shadow of doubt, was
looking bored. Miss Georgie regarded her with the frown she used
when she was applying her mental measuring-stick. She began to
suspect that Evadna was, after all, an extremely self-centered
little person; she was sorry for the suspicion, and she was also
conscious of a certain disappointment which was not altogether
for herself.
"Ah, well"--she dismissed analysis and the whole subject with a
laugh that was partly yawn--"away with dull care. Away with dull
everything. It's too hot to think or feel. A real emotion is as
superfluous and oppressive as a--a 'camel petticoat!" This time
her laugh was real and infectiously carefree. "Take off your
hat, chicken. I'll go beg a hunk of ice from my dear friend
Peter, and make some lemonade as is lemonade; or claret punch, if
you aren't a blue ribboner, or white-ribboner, or some other kind
of a good-ribboner." Miss Georgie hated herself for sliding into
sheer flippancy, but she preferred that extreme to the other, and
she could not hold her ground just then at the "happy medium."
Evadna, however, seemed to disapprove of the flippancy. She did
not take off her hat, and she stated evenly that she must go, and
that she really did not care for lemonade, or claret punch,
either.
"What, in Heaven's name, DO you care for--besides yourself?"
flared Miss Georgie, quite humanly exasperated. "There,
chicken--the heat always turns me snappy," she repented
instantly. "Please pinch me." She held out a beautiful,
tapering forearm, and smiled.
"I'm the snappy one," said Evadna, but she did not smile as she
began drawing on her gauntlets slowly and deliberately.
If she were waiting for Miss Georgie to come back to the subject
of Grant, she was disappointed, for Miss Georgie did not come to
any subject whatever. A handcar breezed past the station, the
four section-men pumping like demons because of the slight down
grade and their haste for their dinner.
Huckleberry gave one snort and one tug backward upon the tie rope
and then a coltish kick into the air when he discovered that he
was free. After that, he took off through the sagebrush at a
lope, too worldly-wise to follow the trail past the store, where
someone might rush out and grab him before he could dodge away.
He was a wise little pinto--Huckleberry.
"And now, I suppose I'll have the pleasure of walking home,"
grumbled Evadna, standing upon the platform and gazing, with much
self-pity, after her runaway.
"It's noon--stay and eat dinner with me, chicken. Some of the
boys will bring him back after you the minute he gets to the
ranch. It's too hot to walk." Miss Georgie laid a hand
coaxingly upon her arm.
But Evadna was in her mood of perversity. She wouldn't stay to
dinner, because Aunt Phoebe would be expecting her. She wouldn't
wait for Huckleberry to be brought back to her, because she would
never hear the last of it. She didn't mind the heat the least
bit, and she would walk. And no, she wouldn't borrow Miss
Georgie's parasol; she hated parasols, and she always had and
always would. She gathered up her riding-skirt, and went slowly
down the steps.
Miss Georgie could be rather perverse herself upon occasion. She
waited until Evadna was crunching cinders under her feet before
she spoke another word, and then she only called out a flippant,
"Adios, senorita!"
Evadna knew no Spanish at all. She lifted her shoulders in what
might be disdain, and made no reply whatever.
"Little idiot!" gritted Miss Georgie--and this time she was not
speaking of herself.
CHAPTER XX
MISS GEORGIE ALSO MAKES A CALL
Saunders, limp and apathetic and colorless, shuffled over to the
station with a wheelbarrow which had a decrepit wheel, that left
an undulating imprint of its drunken progress in the dust as it
went. He loaded the boxes of freight with the abused air of one
who feels that Fate has used him hardly, and then sidled up to
the station door with the furtive air which Miss Georgie always
inwardly resented.
She took the shipping bill from him with her fingertips, reckoned
the charges, and received the money without a word, pushing a few
pieces of silver toward him upon the table. As he bent to pick
them up clawing unpleasantly with vile finger-nails--she glanced
at him contemptuously, looked again more attentively, pursed her
lips with one corner between her teeth, and when he had clawed
the last dime off the smooth surface of the table, she spoke to
him as if he were not the reptile she considered him, but a live
human.
"Horribly hot, isn't it? I wish _I_ could sleep till noon. It
would make the days shorter, anyway."
"I opened up the store, and then I went back to bed," Saunders
replied limply. "Just got up when the freight pulled in. Made
so blamed much noise it woke me. I seem to need a good deal of
sleep." He coughed behind his hand, and lingered inside the
door. It was so unusual for Miss Georgie to make conversation
with him that Saunders was almost pitifully eager to be
agreeable.
"If it didn't sound cruel, this weather," said Miss Georgie
lightly, still looking at him--or, more particularly, at the
crumpled, soiled collar of his coarse blue shirt--"I'd advise you
to get out of Hartley once a day, if it was no more than to take
a walk. Though to be sure," she smiled, "the prospect is not
inviting, to say the least. Put it would be a change; I'd run up
and down the track, if I didn't have to stick here in this office
all day."
"I can't stand walking," Saunders whined. "It makes me cough."
To illustrate, he gave another little hack behind his hand. "I
went up to the stable yesterday with a book, and laid down in the
hay. And I went to sleep, and Pete thought I was lost, I guess."
He grinned, which was not pleasant, for he chewed tobacco and had
ugly, discolored teeth into the bargain.
"I like to lay in the hay," he added lifelessly. "I guess I'll
take my bed up there; that lean-to is awful hot."
"Well, you're lucky that you can do exactly as you please, and
sleep whenever you please." Miss Georgie turned to her telegraph
instrument, and began talking in little staccato sparks of
electricity to the agent at Shoshone, merely as a hint to
Saunders to take himself away.
"Ain't been anything for me?" he asked, still lingering.
Miss Georgie shook her head. He waited a minute longer, and then
sidled out, and when he was heard crunching over the cinders with
his barrow-load of boxes, she switched off the current abruptly,
and went over to the window to watch him.
"Item," she began aloud, when he was quite gone, her eyes staring
vacantly down the scintillating rails to where they seemed to
meet in one glittering point far away in the desert." Item--"
But whatever the item was, she jotted it down silently in that
mental memorandum book which was one of her whims. "Once I put a
thing in that little blue book of mine," she used to tell her
father, "it's there for keeps. And there's the advantage that I
never leave it lying around to be lost, or for other people to
pick up and read to my everlasting undoing. It's better than
cipher--for I don't talk in my sleep."
The four- thirty- five train came in its own time, and brought
the two missing placer miners. But it did not bring Baumberger,
nor Peaceful Hart, nor any word of either. Miss Georgie spent a
good deal of time staring out of the window toward the store that
day, and when she was not doing that she was moving restlessly
about the little office, picking things up without knowing why
she did so, and laying them down again when she discovered them
in her hands and had no use for them. The ice cream came, and
the cake, and the magazines; and she left the whole pile just
inside the door without undoing a wrapping.
At five o'clock she rose abruptly from the rocker, in which she
had just deposited herself with irritated emphasis, and wired her
chief for leave of absence until seven.
"It's important, Mr. Gray. Business which can't wait," she
clicked urgently. "I'll be back before Eight is due. Please."
Miss Georgie did not often send that last word of her own
volition. All up and down the line she was said to be
"Independent as a hog on ice"--a simile not pretty, perhaps, nor
even exact, but frequently applied, nevertheless, to self-reliant
souls like the Hartley operator.
Be that as it may, she received gracious permission to lock the
office door from the outside, and she was not long in doing so,
and heaved a great sigh of relief when it was done. She went
straight to the store, and straight back to where Pete Hamilton
was leaning over a barrel redolent of pickled pork. He came up
with dripping hands and a treasure-trove of flabby meat, and
while he was dangling it over the barrel until the superfluous
brine dripped away, she asked him for a horse.
"I dunno where Saunders is again," he said, letting his consent
be taken for granted. "But I'll go myself and saddle up, if
you'll mind the store. Soon as I finish waitin' on this
customer," he added, casting a glance toward a man who sat upon
the counter and dangled his legs while he apathetically munched
stale pretzels and waited for his purchases.
"Oh, I can saddle, all right, Pete. I've got two hours off, and
I want to ride down to see how the Harts are getting along.
Exciting times down there, from all accounts."
"Maybe I can round up Saunders. He must be somewheres around,"
Pete suggested languidly, wrapping the pork in a piece of brown
paper and reaching for the string which dangled from the ball
hung over his head.
"Saunders is asleep, very likely. If he isn't in his room, never
mind hunting him. The horse is in the stable, I suppose. I can
saddle better than Saunders."
Pete tied the package, wiped his hands, and went heavily out. He
returned immediately, said that Saunders must be up at the
stable, and turned his attention to weighing out five pounds of
white beans.
Miss Georgie helped herself to a large bag of mixed candy, and
put the money in the drawer, laid her key upon the desk for
safe-keeping, repinned her white sailor hat so that the hot wind
which blew should not take it off her head, and went cheerfully
away to the stable.
She did not saddle the horse at once. She first searched the
pile of sweet-smelling clover in the far end, made sure that no
man was there, assured herself in the same manner of the fact
that she was absolutely alone in the stable so far as humans were
concerned, and continued her search; not for Saunders now, but
for sagebrush. She went outside, and looked carefully at her
immediate surroundings.
"There's hardly a root of it anywhere around close," she said to
herself. "Nor around the store, either--nor any place where one
would be apt to go ordinarily."
She stood there meditatively for a few minutes, remembered that
two hours do not last long, and saddled hurriedly. Then,
mounting awkwardly because of the large, lumpy bag of candy
which she must carry in her hands for want of a pocket large
enough to hold it, she rode away to the Indian camp.
The camp was merely a litter of refuse and the ashes of various
campfires, with one wikiup standing forlorn in the midst. Miss
Georgie never wasted precious time on empty ceremony, and she
would have gone into that tent unannounced and stated her errand
without any compunction whatever. Put Peppajee was lying
outside, smoking in the shade, with his foot bandaged and
disposed comfortably upon a folded blanket. She tossed him the
bag of candy, and stayed upon her horse.
"Howdy, Peppajee? How your foot? Pretty well, mebbyso?"
"Mebbyso bueno. Sun come two time, mebbyso walk all same no
snake biteum." Peppajee's eyes gloated over the gift as he laid
it down beside him.
"That's good. Say, Peppajee," Miss Georgie reached up to feel
her hatpins and to pat her hair, "I wish you'd watch Saunders.
Him no good. I think him bad. I can't keep an eye on him. Can
you?"
"No can walk far." Peppajee looked meaningly at his bandages.
"No can watchum."
"Well, but you could tell somebody else to watch him. I think he
do bad thing to the Harts. You like Harts. You tell somebody to
watch Saunders."
"Indians pikeway--ketchum fish. Come back, mebbyso tellum
watchum."
Miss Georgie drew in her breath for further argument, decided
that it was not worth while, and touched up her horse with the
whip. "Good-by," she called back, and saw that Peppajee was
looking after her with his eyes, while his face was turned
impassively to the front.
"You're just about as satisfying to talk to as a stump," she paid
tribute to his unassailable calm. "There's four bits wasted,"
she sighed, "to say nothing of the trouble I had packing that
candy to you--you ungrateful old devil." With which unladylike
remark she dismissed him from her mind as a possible ally.
At the ranch, the boys were enthusiastically blistering palms and
stiffening the muscles of their backs, turning the water away
from the ditches that crossed the disputed tracts so that the
trespassers there should have none in which to pan gold--or to
pretend that they were panning gold. Since the whole ranch was
irrigated by springs running out here and there from under the
bluff, and all the ditches ran to meadow and orchard and patches
of small fruit, and since the springs could not well be stopped
from flowing, the thing was not to be done in a minute.
And since there were four boys with decided ideas upon the
subject--ideas which harmonized only in the fundamental desire to
harry the interlopers, the thing was not to be done without much
time being wasted in fruitless argument.
Wally insisted upon running the water all into a sandy hollow
where much of it would seep away and a lake would do no harm, the
main objection to that being that it required digging at least a
hundred yards of new ditch, mostly through rocky soil.
Jack wanted to close all the headgates and just let the water go
where it wanted to--which was easy enough, but ineffective,
because most of it found its way into the ditches farther down
the slope.
Gene and Clark did not much care how the thing was done--so long
as it was done their way. At least, that is what they said.
It was Good Indian who at length settled the matter. There were
five springs altogether; he proposed that each one make himself
responsible for a certain spring, and see to it that no water
reached the jumpers.
"And I don't care a tinker's dam how you do it," he said. "Drink
it all, if you want to. I'll take the biggest--that one under
the milk-house." Whereat they jeered at him for wanting to be
close to Evadna.
"Well, who has a better right?" he challenged, and then
inconsiderately left them before they could think of a
sufficiently biting retort.
So they went to work, each in his own way, agreeing mostly in
untiring industry. That is how Miss Georgie found them
occupied--except that Good Indian had stopped long enough to
soothe Evadna and her aunt, and to explain that the water would
really not rise much higher in the milk-house, and that he didn't
believe Evadna's pet bench at the head of the pond would be
inaccessible because of his efforts.
Phoebe was sloshing around upon the flooded floor of her
milk-house, with her skirts tucked up and her indignation growing
greater as she gave it utterance, rescuing her pans of milk and
her jars of cream. Evadna, upon the top step, sat with her feet
tucked up under her as if she feared an instant inundation. She,
also, was giving utterance to her feminine irritation at the
discomfort--of her aunt presumably, since she herself was high
and dry.
"And it won't do a BIT of good. They'll just knock that dam
business all to pieces to-night--" She was scolding Grant.
"Swearing, chicken? Things must be in a great state!"
Grant grinned at Miss Georgie, forgetting for the moment his
rebuff that morning. "She did swear, didn't she?" he confirmed
wickedly. "And she's been working overtime, trying to reform me.
Wanted to pin me down to 'my goodness!' and 'oh, dear!'--with all
this excitement taking place on the ranch!"
"I wasn't swearing at all. Grant has been shoveling sand all
afternoon, building a dam over by the fence, and the water has
been rising and rising till--" She waved her hand gloomily at her
bedraggled Aunt Phoebe working like a motherly sort of gnome in
its shadowy grotto. "Oh, if I were Aunt Phoebe, I should just
shake you, Grant Imsen!"
"Try it," he invited, his eyes worshiping her in her pretty
petulance. "I wish you would."
As Miss Georgie went past them down the steps, her face had the
set look of one who is consciously and deliberately cheerful
under trying conditions.
"Don't quarrel, children," she advised lightly. "Howdy, Mrs.
Hart? What are they trying to do--drown you?"
"Oh, these boys of mine! They'll be the death of me, what with
the things they won't do, and the things they WILL do. They're
trying now to create a water famine for the jumpers, and they're
making their own mother swim for the good of the cause." Phoebe
held out a plump hand, moist and cold from lifting cool crocks of
milk, and laughed at her own predicament.
"The water won't rise any more, Mother Hart," Grant called down
to her from the top step, where he was sitting unblushingly
beside Evadna. "I told you six inches would be the limit, and
then it would run off in the new ditch. You know I explained
just why--"
"Oh, yes, I know you explained just WHY," Phoebe cut in
disconsolately and yet humorously, "but explanations don't seem
to help my poor milk-house any. And what about the garden, and
the fruit, if you turn tho water all down into the pasture? And
what about the poor horses getting their feet wet and catching
their death of cold? And what's to hinder that man Stanley and
his gang from packing water in buckets from the lake you're going
to have in the pasture?"
She looked at Miss Georgie whimsically. "I'm an ungrateful,
bad-tempered old woman, I guess, for they're doing it because
it's the only thing they can do, since I put my foot down on all
this bombarding and burning good powder just to ease their minds.
They've got to do something, I suppose, or they'd all burst. And
I don't know but what it's a good thing for 'em to work off their
energy digging ditches, even if it don't do a mite of good."
Good Indian was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees,
murmuring lover's confidences behind the shield of his tilted
hat, which hid from all but Evadna his smiling lips and his
telltale, glowing eyes. He looked up at that last sentence,
though it is doubtful if he had heard much of what she had been
saying.
"It's bound to do good if it does anything," he said. with an
optimism which was largely the outgrowth of his beatific mood,
which in its turn was born of his nearness to Evadna and her
gracious manner toward him. "We promised not to molest them on
their claims. But if they get over the line to meddle with our
water system, or carry any in buckets--which they can't, because
they all leak like the deuce"--he grinned as he thought of the
bullet holes in them--"why, I don't know but what someone might
object to that, and send them back on their own side of the
line."
He picked up a floating ribbon-end which was a part of Evadna's
belt, and ran it caressingly through his fingers in a way which
set Miss Georgie's teeth together. "I'm afraid," he added dryly,
his eyes once more seeking Evadna's face with pure love hunger,
"they aren't going to make much of a stagger at placer mining, if
they haven't any water." He rolled the ribbon up tightly, and
then tossed it lightly toward her face. "ARE they, Goldilocks?"
"Are they what? I've told you a dozen times to stop calling me
that. I had a doll once that I named Goldilocks, and I melted
her nose off--she was wax--and you always remind me of the
horrible expression it gave to her face. I'd go every day and
take her out of the bureau-drawer and look at her, and then cry
my eyes out. Won't you come and sit down, Georgie? There's
room. Now, what was the discussion, and how far had we got?
Aunt Phoebe, I don't believe it has raised a bit lately. I've
been watching that black rock with the crack in it." Evadna
moved nearer to Good Indian, and pulled her skirts close upon the
other side, thereby making a space at least eight inches wide for
Miss Georgie's accommodation.
"I can't sit anywhere," said Miss Georgie, looking at her watch.
"By the way, chicken, did you have to walk all the way home?"
Evadna looked sidelong at Good Indian, as if a secret had been
betrayed." No," she said, "I didn't. I just got to the top of
the grade when a squaw came along, and she was leading
Huckleberry. A gaudy young squaw, all red and purple and yellow.
She was awfully curious about you, Grant. She wanted to know
where you were and what you were doing. I hope you aren't a
flirtatious young man. She seemed to know you pretty well, I
thought."
She had to explain to her Aunt Phoebe and Grant just how she
came to be walking, and she laughed at the squaw's vivid
costume, and declared she would have one like it, because Grant
must certainly admire colors. She managed, innocently enough, to
waste upon such trivialities many of Miss Georgie's precious
minutes.
At last that young woman, after glancing many times at her watch,
and declining an urgent invitation to stay to supper, declared
that she must go, and tried to give Good Indian a significant
look without being detected in the act by Evadna. But Good
Indian, for the time being wholly absorbed by the smiles of his
lady, had no eyes for her, and seemed to attach no especial
meaning to her visit. So that Miss Georgie, feminine to her
finger-tips and oversensitive perhaps where those two were
concerned, suddenly abandoned her real object in going to the
ranch, and rode away without saying a word of what she had come
to say.
She was a direct young woman who was not in the habit of mincing
matters with herself, or of dodging an issue, and she bluntly
called herself a fool many times that evening, because she had
not said plainly that she would like to talk with Grant "and
taken him off to one side--by the ear, if necessary--and talked
to him, and told him what I went down there to tell him," she
said to herself angrily. "And if Evadna didn't like it, she
could do the other thing. It does seem as if girls like that are
always having the trail smoothed down for them to dance their
way through life, while other people climb over rocks--mostly
with packs on their shoulders that don't rightly belong to them."
She sighed impatiently. "It must be lovely to be absolutely
selfish--when you're pretty enough and young enough to make it
stick!" Miss Georgie was, without doubt, in a nasty temper that
night.
CHAPTER XXI
SOMEBODY SHOT SAUNDERS
The hot days dropped, one by one, into the past like fiery beads
upon a velvety black cord. Miss Georgie told them silently in
the meager little office, and sighed as they slipped from under
her white, nervous fingers. One--nothing happened that could be
said to bear upon the one big subject in her mind, the routine
work of passing trains and dribbling business in the express and
freight departments, and a long afternoon of heat and silence
save for the asthmatic pump, fifty yards down the main track.
Two--this exactly like the first, except that those inseparables,
Hagar, Viney, and Lucy, whom Miss Georgie had inelegantly dubbed
"the Three Greases," appeared, silent, blanket-enshrouded, and
perspiring, at the office door in mid-afternoon. Half a box of
soggy chocolates which the heat had rendered a dismally sticky
mass won from them smiles and half-intelligible speech. Fishing
was poor--no ketchum. Three--not even the diversion of the
squaws to make her forget the dragging hours.
Nothing--nothing--nothing, she told herself apathetically when
that third day had slipped upon the black cord of a soft, warm
night, star-sprinkled and unutterably lonely as it brooded over
the desert.
On the morning of the fourth day, Miss Georgie woke with the
vague sense that something had gone wrong. True railroader as
she had come to be, she thought first that there had been a
wreck, and that she was wanted at the telegraph instrument. She
was up and partly dressed before the steps and the voices which
had broken her sleep had reached her door.
Pete Hamilton's voice, trembling with excitement, called to her.
"What is it? What has happened?" she cried from within, beset by
a hundred wild conjectures.
"Saunders--somebody shot Saunders. Wire for a doctor, quick as
yuh can. He ain't dead yet--but he's goin' t' die, sure. Hurry
up and wire--" Somebody at the store called to him, and he broke
off to run lumberingly in answer to the summons. Miss Georgie
made haste to follow him.
Saunders was lying upon a blanket on the store platform, and Miss
Georgie shuddered as she looked at him.
He was pasty white, and his eyes looked glassy under his
half-closed lids. He had been shot in the side-- at the stable,
he had gasped out when Pete found him lying in the trail just
back of the store. Now he seemed beyond speech, and the little
group of section-hands, the Chinese cook at the section-house,
and the Swede foreman, and Pete seemed quite at a loss what to
do.
"Take him in and put him to bed," Miss Georgie commanded, turning
away. "See if he's bleeding yet, and--well, I should put a cold
compress on the wound, I think. I'll send for a doctor--but he
can't get here till nine o'clock unless you want to stand the
expense of a special. And by that time--"
Saunders moved his head a trifle, and lifted his heavy lids to
look at her, which so unnerved Miss Georgie that she turned and
ran to the office. When she had sent the message she sat
drumming upon the table while she waited for an answer.
"G-r-a-n-" her fingers had spelled when she became conscious of
the fact, flushed hotly, and folded her hands tightly together in
her lap.
"The doctor will come--Hawkinson, I sent for," she announced
later to Pete, holding out the telegram. She glanced reluctantly
at the wrinkled blanket where Saunders had lain, caught a corner
of her under lip between her teeth, and, bareheaded though she
was, went down the steps and along the trail to the stable.
"I've nearly an hour before I need open the office," she said to
herself, looking at her watch. She did not say what she meant to
do with that hour, but she spent a quarter of it examining the
stable and everything in it. Especially did she search the
loose, sandy soil in its vicinity for tracks.
Finally she lifted her skirts as a woman instinctively does at a
street crossing, and struck off through the sagebrush, her eyes
upon a line of uncertain footsteps as of a drunken man reeling
that way. They were not easy to follow--or they would not have
been if she had not felt certain of the general direction which
they must take. More than once she lost sight of them for
several rods, but she always picked them up farther along. At
one place she stopped, and stood perfectly still, her skirts held
back tightly with both hands, while she stared fascinatedly at a
red smear upon a broken branch of sage and the smooth-packed
hollow in the sand where he must have lain.
"He's got nerve--I'll say that much for him," she observed aloud,
and went on.
The footprints were plain where he crossed the grade road near
the edge of the bluff, but from there on it was harder to follow
them because of the great patches of black lava rock lying even
with the surface of the ground, where a dozen men might walk
abreast and leave no sign that the untrained eye, at least, could
detect.
"This is a case for Indians," she mused, frowning over an open
space where all was rock. "Injun Charlie would hunt tracks all
day for a dollar or two; only he'd make tracks just to prove
himself the real goods." She sighed, stood upon her tiptoes, and
peered out over the sage to get her bearings, then started on at
a hazard. She went a few rods, found herself in a thick tangle
of brush through which she could not force her way, started to
back out, and caught her hair on a scraggly scrub which seemed to
have as many prongs as there are briers on a rosebush. She was
struggling there with her hands fumbling unavailingly at the back
of her bowed head, when she was pounced upon by someone or
something through the sage. She screamed.
"The--deuce!" Good Indian brought out the milder expletive with
the flat intonation which the unexpected presence of a lady
frequently gives to a man's speech. "Lucky I didn't take a shot
at you through the bushes. I did, almost, when I saw somebody
moving here. Is this your favorite place for a morning ramble?"
He had one hand still upon her arm, and he was laughing openly at
her plight. But he sobered when he stooped a little so that he
could see her face, for there were tears in her eyes, and Miss
Georgie was not the sort of young woman whom one expects to shed
tears for slight cause.
"If you did it--and you must have--I don't see how you can laugh
about it, even if he is a crawling reptile of a man that ought to
be hung!" The tears were in her voice as well as her eyes, and
there were reproach and disappointment also.
"Did what--to whom--to where, to why?" Good Indian let go her
arm, and began helpfully striving with the scraggly scrub and its
prongs. "Say, I'll just about have to scalp you to get you
loose. Would you mind very much, Squaw-talk-far-off?" He ducked
and peered into her face again, and again his face sobered.
"What's the matter?" he asked, in an entirely different
tone--which Miss Georgie, in spite of her mood, found less
satisfying than his banter.
"Saunders--OUCH; I'd as soon be scalped and done with, as to have
you pull out a hair at a time--Saunders crawled home with a
bullet in his ribs. And I thought--"
"Saunders!" Good Indian stared down at her, his hands dropped
upon her head.
Miss Georgie reached up, caught him by the wrists, and held him
so while she tilted her head that she might look up at him.
"Grant!" she cried softly. "He deserved it. You couldn't help
it--he would have shot you down like a dog, just because he was
hired to do it, or because of some hold over him. Don't think I
blame you--or that anyone would if they knew the truth. I came
out to see--I just HAD to make sure--but you must get away from
here. You shouldn't have stayed so long--" Miss Georgie gave a
most unexpected sob, and stopped that she might grit her teeth in
anger over it.
"You think I shot him." As Good Indian said it, the sentence was
merely a statement, rather than an accusation or a reproach.
"I don't blame you. I suspected he was the man up here with the
rifle. That day--that first day, when you told me about someone
shooting at you--he came over to the station. And I saw two or
three scraps of sage sticking under his shirt-collar, as if he
had been out in the brush; you know how it breaks off and sticks,
when you go through it. And he said he had been asleep. And
there isn't any sage where a man would have to go through it
unless he got right out in it, away from the trails. I thought
then that he was the man--"
"You didn't tell me." And this time he spoke reproachfully.
"It was after you had left that I saw it. And I did go down to
the ranch to tell you. But I--you were so--occupied--in other
directions--" She let go his wrists, and began fumbling at her
hair, and she bowed her head again so that her face was hidden
from him.
"You could have told me, anyway," Good Indian said constrainedly.
"You didn't want her to know. I couldn't, before her. And I
didn't want to--hurt her by--" Miss Georgie fumbled more with her
words than with her hair.
"Well, there's no use arguing about that." Good Indian also
found that subject a difficult one. "You say he was shot. Did
he say--"
"He wasn't able to talk when I saw him. Pete said Saunders
claimed he was shot at the stable, but I know that to be a lie."
Miss Georgie spoke with unfeeling exactness. "That was to save
himself in case he got well, I suppose. I believe the man is
going to die, if he hasn't already; he had the look--I've seen
them in wrecks, and I know. He won't talk; he can't. But
there'll be an investigation--and Baumberger, I suspect, will be
just as willing to get you in this way as in any other. More so,
maybe. Because a murder is always awkward to handle."
"I can't see why he should want to murder me." Good Indian took
her hands away from her hair, and set himself again to the work
of freeing her. "You've been fudging around till you've got
about ten million more hairs wound up," he grumbled.
"Wow! ARE you deliberately torturing me?" she complained, winking
with the pain of his good intentions. "I don't believe he does
want to murder you. I think that was just Saunders trying to
make a dandy good job of it. He doesn't like you,
anyway--witness the way you bawled him out that day you
roped--ow-w!--roped the dog. Baumberger may have wanted him to
keep an eye on you--My Heavens, man! Do you think you're plucking
a goose?"
"I wouldn't be surprised," he retorted, grinning a little.
"Honest! I'm trying to go easy, but this infernal bush has sure
got a strangle hold on you--and your hair is so fluffy it's a
deuce of a job. You keep wriggling and getting it caught in new
places. If you could only manage to stand still--but I suppose
you can't.
"By the way," he remarked casually, after a short silence, save
for an occasional squeal from Miss Georgie, "speaking of
Saunders--I didn't shoot him."
Miss Georgie looked up at him, to the further entanglement of her
hair. "You DIDN'T? Then who did?"
"Search ME," he offered figuratively and briefly.
"Well, I will." Miss Georgie spoke with a certain decisiveness,
and reaching out a sage-soiled hand, took his gun from the
holster at his hip. He shrank away with a man's instinctive
dislike of having anyone make free with his weapons, but it was
a single movement, which he controlled instantly.
"Stand still, can't you?" he admonished, and kept at work while
she examined the gun with a dexterity and ease of every motion
which betrayed her perfect familiarity with firearms. She
snapped the cylinder into place, sniffed daintily at the end of
the barrel, and slipped the gun back into its scabbard.
"Don't think I doubted your word," she said, casting a slanting
glance up at him without moving her head. "But I wanted to be
able to swear positively, if I should happen to be dragged into
the witness-box--I hope it won't be by the hair of the
head!--that your gun has not been fired this morning. Unless you
carry a cleaning rod with you," she added, "which would hardly be
likely."
"You may search me if you like," Good Indian suggested, and for
an engaged young man, and one deeply in love withal, he displayed
a contentment with the situation which was almost reprehensible.
"No use. If you did pack one with you, you'd be a fool not to
throw it away after you had used it. No, I'll swear to the gun
as it is now. Are you ever going to get my hair loose? I'm due
at the office right this minute, I'll bet a molasses cooky." She
looked at her watch, and groaned. "I'd have to telegraph myself
back to get there on time now," she said. "Twenty-four--that
fast freight--is due in eighteen minutes exactly. I've got to be
there. Take your jackknife and cut what won't come loose.
Really, I mean it, Mr. Imsen."
"I was under the impression that my name is Grant--to friends."
"My name is 'Dennis,' if I don't beat that freight," she retorted
curtly. "Take your knife and give me a hair cut--quick! I can do
it a different way, and cover up the place."
"Oh, all right--but it's a shame to leave a nice bunch of hair
like this hanging on a bush."
"Tell me, what were you doing up here, Grant? And what are you
going to do now? We haven't much time, and we've been fooling
when we should have been discussing 'ways and means.'"
"Well, I got up early, and someone took a shot at me again. This
time he clipped my hat-brim." He took off his hat, and showed
her where the brim had a jagged tear half an inch deep. "I
ducked, and made up my mind I'd get him this time, or know the
reason why. So I rode up the other way and back behind the
orchard, and struck the grade below the Point o' Rocks, and so
came up here hunting him. I kept pretty well out of sight--we've
done that before; Jack and I took sneak yesterday, and came up
here at sunrise, but we couldn't find anything. I was beginning
to think he had given it up. So I was just scouting around here
when I heard you rustling the bushes over here. I was going to
shoot, but I changed my mind, and thought I'd land on you and
trust to the lessons I got in football and the gun. And the
rest," he declaimed whimsically, "you know.
"Now, duck away down--oh, wait a minute." He gave a jerk at the
knot of his neckerchief, flipped out the folds, spread it
carefully over her head, and tied it under her chin, patting it
into place and tucking stray locks under as if he rather enjoyed
doing it." Better wear it till you're out of the brush," he
advised, "if you don't want to get hung up somewhere again."
She stood up straight, with a long, deep sigh of relief.
"Now, pikeway," he smiled. "And don't run bareheaded through the
bushes again. You've still got time to beat that train.
And--about Saunders-- don't worry. I can get to the ranch
without being seen, and no one will know I was up here, unless
you tell them."
"Oh, I shall of course!" Miss Georgie chose to be very sarcastic.
"I think I shall wire the information to the sheriff. Don't come
with me--and leave tracks all over the country. Keep on the
lava rock. Haven't you got any sense at all?"
"You made tracks yourself, madam, and you've left a fine lot of
incriminating evidence on that bush. I'll have to waste an hour
picking off the hair, so they won't accuse you of shooting
Saunders." Good Indian spoke lightly, but they both stopped,
nevertheless, and eyed the offending bush anxiously.
"You haven't time," Miss Georgie decided. "I can easily get
around that, if it's put up to me. You go on back. Really, you
must!" her eyes implored him.
"Oh, vey-ree well. We haven't met this morning. Good-by,
Squaw-talk-far-off. I'll see you later, perhaps."
Miss Georgie still had that freight heavy on her conscience, but
she stood and watched him stoop under an overhanging branch and
turn his head to smile reassuringly back at her; then, with a
pungent stirring of sage odors, the bushes closed in behind him,
and it was as if he had never been there at all. Whereupon Miss
Georgie once more gathered her skirts together and ran to the
trail, and down that to the station.
She met a group of squaws, who eyed her curiously, but she was
looking once more at her watch, and paid no attention, although
they stood huddled in the trail staring after her. She
remembered that she had left the office unlocked and she rushed
in, and sank panting into the chair before her telegraph table
just as the smoke of the fast freight swirled around the nose of
the low, sage-covered hill to the west.
CHAPTER XXII
A BIT OF PAPER
Good Indian came out upon the rim-rock, looked down upon the
ranch beneath him, and knew, by various little movements about
the place, that breakfast was not yet ready. Gene was carrying
two pails of milk to the house, and Wally and Jack were watering
the horses that had been stabled overnight. He was on the point
of shouting down to them when his arm was caught tightly from
behind. He wheeled about and confronted Rachel. Clothed all in
dull gray she was, like a savage young Quakeress. Even the red
ribbons were gone from her hair, which was covered by the gray
blanket wrapped tightly around her slim body. She drew him back
from the rim of the bluff.
"You no shout," she murmured gravely. "No lettum see you here.
You go quick. Ketchum you cayuse, go to ranch. You no tellum
you be this place."
Good Indian stood still, and looked at her. She stood with her
arms folded in her blanket, regarding him with a certain yearning
steadfastness.
"You all time think why," she said, shrewdly reading his
thoughts, "I no take shame. I glad." She flushed, and looked
away to the far side of the Snake. "Bad mans no more try for
shoot you, mebbyso. I heap--"
Good Indian reached out, and caught her by both shoulders.
"Rachel--if you did that, don't tell me about it. Don't tell me
anything. I don't ask you--I don't want to know." He spoke
rapidly, in the grip of his first impulse to shield her from what
she had done. But he felt her begin to tremble under his
fingers, and he stopped as suddenly as he had begun.
"You no glad? You think shame for me? You think I--all
time--very--bad!" Tragedy was in her voice, and in her great,
dark eyes. Good Indian gulped.
"No, Rachel. I don't think that. I want to help you out of
this, if I can, and I meant that if you didn't tell me anything
about it, why--I wouldn't know anything about it. You sabe."
"I sabe." Her lips curved into a pathetic little smile. "I sabe
you know all what I do. You know for why, me thinkum. You think
shame. I no take shame. I do for you no get kill-dead. All
time Man-that-coughs try for shootum you. All time I try for--"
She broke off to stare questioningly up into his face. "I no
tell, you no like for tell," she said quietly. "All same, you
go. You ketchum you hoss, you go ranch. I think sheriff mans
mebbyso come pretty quick. No find out you be here. I no like
you be here this time."
Good Indian turned, yielding to the pleading of her eyes. The
heart of him ached dully with the weight of what she had done,
and with an uneasy comprehension of her reason for doing it. He
walked as quickly as the rough ground would permit, along the
bluff toward the grade; and she, with the instinctive deference
to the male which is the heritage of primitive woman, followed
soft-footedly two paces behind him. Once where the way was clear
he stopped, and waited for her to come alongside, but Rachel
stopped and waited also, her eyes hungrily searching his face
with the look a dog has for his master. Good Indian read the
meaning of that look, and went on, and turned no more toward her
until he reached his horse.
"You'd better go on to camp, and stay there, Rachel," he said, as
casually as he could. "No trouble will come to you." He
hesitated, biting his lip and plucking absently the tangles from
the forelock of his horse. "You sabe grateful?" he asked
finally. And when she gave a quick little nod, he went on:
"Well, I'm grateful to you. You did what a man would do for his
friend. I sabe. I'm heap grateful, and I'll not forget it. All
time I'll be your friend. Good--by." He mounted, and rode away.
He felt, just then, that it was the kindest thing he could do.
He looked back once, just as he was turning into the grade road.
She was standing, her arms folded in her gray blanket, where he
had left her. His fingers tightened involuntarily the reins, so
that Keno stopped and eyed his master inquiringly. But there was
nothing that he might say to her. It was not words that she
wanted. He swung his heels against Keno's flanks, and rode home.
Evadna rallied him upon his moodiness at breakfast, pouted a
little because he remained preoccupied under her teasing, and
later was deeply offended because he would not tell her where he
had been, or what was worrying him.
"I guess you better send word to the doctor he needn't come," the
pump man put his head in at the office door to say, just as the
freight was pulling away from the water-tank. "Saunders died a
few minutes ago. Pete says you better notify the coroner--and I
reckon the sheriff, too. Pretty tough to be shot down like that
in broad daylight."
"I think I'd rather be shot in daylight than in the dark," Miss
Georgie snapped unreasonably because her nerves were all
a-jangle, and sent the messages as requested.
Saunders was neither a popular nor a prominent citizen, and there
was none to mourn beside him. Peter Hamilton, as his employer
and a man whose emotions were easily stirred, was shocked a shade
lighter as to his complexion and a tone lower as to his voice
perhaps, and was heard to remark frequently that it was "a
turrible thing," but the chief emotion which the tragedy roused
was curiosity, and that fluttering excitement which attends death
in any form.
A dozen Indians hung about the store, the squaws peering
inquisitively in at the uncurtained window of the lean-to--where
the bed held a long immovable burden with a rumpled sheet over
it--and the bucks listening stolidly to the futile gossip on the
store porch.
Pete Hamilton, anxious that the passing of his unprofitable
servant should be marked by decorum if not by grief, mentally
classed the event with election day, in that he refused to sell
any liquor until the sheriff and coroner arrived. He also, after
his first bewilderment had passed, conceived the idea that
Saunders had committed suicide, and explained to everyone who
would listen just why he believed it. Saunders was sickly, for
one thing. For another, Saunders never seemed to get any good
out of living. He had read everything he could get his hands
on--and though Pete did not say that Saunders chose to die when
the stock of paper novels was exhausted, he left that impression
upon his auditors.
The sheriff and the coroner came at nine. All the Hart boys,
including Donny, were there before noon, and the group of Indians
remained all day wherever the store cast its shadow. Squaws and
bucks passed and repassed upon the footpath between Hartley and
their camp, chattering together of the big event until they came
under the eye of strange white men, whereupon they. were
stricken deaf and dumb, as is the way of our nation's wards.
When the sheriff inspected the stable and its vicinity, looking
for clews, not a blanket was in sight, though a dozen eyes
watched every movement suspiciously. When at the inquest that
afternoon, he laid upon the table a battered old revolver of
cheap workmanship and long past its prime, and testified that he
had found it ten feet from the stable-door, in a due line
southeast from the hay-corral, and that one shot had been fired
from it, there were Indians in plenty to glance furtively at the
weapon and give no sign.
The coroner showed the bullet which he had extracted from the
body of Saunders, and fitted it into the empty cartridge which
had been under the hammer in the revolver, and thereby proved to
the satisfaction of everyone that the gun was intimately
connected with the death of the man. So the jury arrived
speedily, and without further fussing over evidence, at the
verdict of suicide.
Good Indian drew a long breath, put on his hat, and went over to
tell Miss Georgie. The Hart boys lingered for a few minutes at
the store, and then rode on to the ranch without him, and the
Indians stole away over the hill to their camp. The coroner and
the sheriff accepted Pete's invitation into the back part of the
store, refreshed themselves after the ordeal, and caught the next
train for Shoshone. So closed the incident of Saunders' passing,
so far as the law was concerned.
"Well," Miss Georgie summed up the situation, "Baumberger hasn't
made any sign of taking up the matter. I don't believe, now,
that he will. I wired the news to the papers in Shoshone, so he
must know. I think perhaps he's glad to get Saunders out of the
way--for he certainly must have known enough to put Baumberger
behind the bars.
"But I don't see," she said, in a puzzled way, "how that gun came
onto the scene. I looked all around the stable this morning, and
I could swear there wasn't any gun."
"Well, he did pick it up--fortunately," Good Indian returned
grimly. "I'm glad the thing was settled so easily."
She looked up at him sharply for a moment, opened her lips to ask
a question, and then thought better of it.
"Oh, here's your handkerchief," she said quietly, taking it from
the bottom of her wastebasket. "As you say, the thing is
settled. I'm going to turn you out now. The four-thirty-five is
due pretty soon--and I have oodles of work."
He looked at her strangely, and went away, wondering why Miss
Georgie hated so to have him in the office lately.
On the next day, at ten o'clock, they buried Saunders on a
certain little knoll among the sagebrush; buried him without much
ceremony, it is true, but with more respect than he had received
when he was alive and shambling sneakily among them. Good Indian
was there, saying little and listening attentively to the
comments made upon the subject, and when the last bit of yellow
gravel had been spatted into place he rode down through the
Indian camp on his way home, thankful that everyone seemed to
accept the verdict of suicide as being final, and anxious that
Rachel should know it. He felt rather queer about Rachel; sorry
for her, in an impersonal way; curious over her attitude toward
life in general and toward himself in particular, and ready to do
her a good turn because of her interest.
But Rachel, when he reached the camp, was not visible. Peppajee
Jim was sitting peacefully in the shade of his wikiup when Grant
rode up, and he merely grunted in reply to a question or two.
Good Indian resolved to be patient. He dismounted, and squatted
upon his heels beside Peppajee, offered him tobacco, and dipped a
shiny, new nickel toward a bright-eyed papoose in scanty raiment,
who stopped to regard him inquisitively.
"I just saw them bury Saunders," Good Indian remarked, by way of
opening a conversation. "You believe he shot himself?"
Peppajee took his little stone pipe from his lips, blew a thin
wreath of smoke, and replaced the stem between his teeth, stared
stolidly straight ahead of him, and said nothing.
"All the white men say that," Good Indian persisted, after he had
waited a minute. Peppajee did not seem to hear.
"Sheriff say that, too. Sheriff found the gun."
"Mebbyso sheriff mans heap damfool. Mebbyso heap smart. No
sabe."
Good Indian studied him silently. Reticence was not a general
characteristic of Peppajee; it seemed to indicate a thorough
understanding of the whole affair. He wondered if Rachel had
told her uncle the truth.
"Where's Rachel?" he asked suddenly, the words following
involuntarily his thought.
Peppajee sucked hard upon his pipe, took it away from his mouth,
and knocked out the ashes upon a pole of the wikiup frame.
"Yo' no speakum Rachel no more," he said gravely. "Yo' ketchum
'Vadnah; no ketchum otha squaw. Bad medicine come. Heap much
troubles come. Me no likeum. My heart heap bad."
"I'm Rachel's friend, Peppajee." Good Indian spoke softly so
that others might not hear. "I sabe what Rachel do. Rachel good
girl. I don't want to bring trouble. I want to help."
Peppajee snorted.
"Yo' make heap bad heart for Rachel," he said sourly. "Yo' like
for be friend, yo' no come no more, mebbyso. No speakum. Bimeby
mebbyso no have bad heart no more. Kay bueno. Yo' white mans.
Rachel mebbyso thinkum all time yo' Indian. Mebbyso thinkum be
yo' squaw. Kay bueno. Yo' all time white mans. No speakum
Rachel no more, yo' be friend.
Yo' speakum, me like to kill yo', mebbyso." He spoke calmly, but
none the less his words carried conviction of his sincerity.
Within the wikiup Good Indian heard a smothered sob. He
listened, heard it again, and looked challengingly at Peppajee.
But Peppajee gave no sign that he either heard the sound or saw
the challenge in Good Indian's eyes.
"I Rachel's friend," he said, speaking distinctly with his face
half turned toward the wall of deerskin. "I want to tell Rachel
what the sheriff said. I want to thank Rachel, and tell her I'm
her friend. I don't want to bring trouble." He stopped and
listened, but there was no sound within.
Peppajee eyed him comprehendingly, but there was no yielding in
his brown, wrinkled face.
"Yo' Rachel's frien', yo' pikeway," he insisted doggedly.
From under the wall of the wikiup close to Good Indian on the
side farthest from Peppajee, a small, leafless branch of sage was
thrust out, and waggled cautiously, scraping gently his hand.
Good Indian's fingers closed upon it instinctively, and felt it
slowly withdrawn until his hand was pressed against the hide
wall. Then soft fingers touched his own, fluttered there
timidly, and left in his palm a bit of paper, tightly folded.
Good Indian closed his hand upon it, and stood up.
"All right, I go," he said calmly to Peppajee, and mounted.
Peppajee looked at him stolidly, and said nothing.
"One thing I would like to know." Good Indian spoke again. "You
don't care any more about the men taking Peaceful's ranch.
Before they came, you watch all the time, you heap care. Why you
no care any more? Why you no help?"
Peppajee's mouth straightened in a grin of pure irony.
"All time Baumberga try for ketchum ranch, me try for stoppum,"
he retorted. "Yo' no b'lievum, Peacefu' no b'lievum. Me tellum
yo' cloud sign, tellum yo' smoke sign, tellum yo' hear much bad
talk for ketchum ranch. Yo' all time think for ketchum 'Vadnah
squaw. No think for stoppum mens. Yo' all time let mens come,
ketchum ranch. Yo' say fightum in co't. Cloud sign say me do
notting. Yo' lettum come. Yo' mebbyso makum go. Me no care."
"I see. Well, maybe you're right." He tightened the reins, and
rode away, the tight little wad of paper still hidden in his
palm. When he was quite out of sight from the camp and jogging
leisurely down the hot trail, he unfolded it carefully and looked
at it long.
His face was grave and thoughtful when at last he tore it into
tiny bits and gave it to the hot, desert wind. It was a pitiful
little message, printed laboriously upon a scrap of brown
wrapping--paper. It said simply:
"God by i lov yo."
CHAPTER XXIII
THE MALICE OF A SQUAW
Good Indian looked in the hammock, but Evadna was not there. He
went to the little stone bench at the head of the pond, and when
he still did not see her he followed the bank around to the milkhouse,
where was a mumble of voices. And, standing in the
doorway with her arm thrown around her Aunt Phoebe's shoulders in
a pretty protective manner, he saw her, and his eyes gladdened.
She did not see him at once. She was facing courageously the
three inseparables, Hagar, Viney, and Lucy, squatted at the top
of the steps, and she was speaking her mind rapidly and angrily.
Good Indian knew that tone of old, and he grinned. Also he
stopped by the corner of the house, and listened shamelessly.
"That is not true," she was saying very clearly. "You're a bad
old squaw and you tell lies. You ought to be put in jail for
talking that way." She pressed her aunt's shoulder
affectionately. "Don't you mind a word she says, Aunt Phoebe.
She's just a mischief-making old hag, and she--oh, I'd like to
beat her!"
Hagar shook her head violently, and her voice rose shrill and
malicious, cutting short Evadna's futile defiance.
"Ka-a-ay bueno, yo'!" Her teeth gnashed together upon the words.
"I no tellum lie. Good Injun him kill Man-that-coughs. All time
I seeum creep, creep, through sagebrush. All time I seeum hoss
wait where much rock grow. I seeum. I no speakum heap lie.
Speakum true. I go tell sheriff mans Good Indian killum
Man-that-coughs. I tellum--"
"Why didn't you, then, when the sheriff was in Hartley?" Evadna
flung at her angrily. "Because you know it's a lie. That's
why."
"Yo' thinkum Good Injun love yo', mebbyso." Hagar's witch-grin
was at its malevolent widest. Her black eyes sparkled with
venom. "Yo' heap fool. Good Injun go all time
Squaw-talk-far-off. Speakum glad word. Good Injun ka-a-ay
bueno. Love Squaw-talk-far-off. No love yo'. Speakum lies,
yo'. Makum yo' heap cry all time. Makeum yo' heart bad." She
cackled, and leered with vile significance toward the girl in the
doorway.
"Don't you listen to her, honey." It was Phoebe's turn to
reassure.
Good Indian took a step forward, his face white with rage. Viney
saw him first, muttered an Indian word of warning, and the three
sprang up and backed away from his approach.
"So you've got to call me a murderer!" he cried, advancing
threateningly upon Hagar. "And even that doesn't satisfy you.
You--"
Evadna rushed up the steps like a crisp little whirlwind, and
caught his arm tightly in her two hands.
"Grant! We don't believe a word of it. You couldn't do a thing
like that. Don't we KNOW? Don't pay any attention to her. We
aren't going to. It'll hurt her worse than any kind of
punishment we could give her. Oh, she's a VILE old thing! Too
vile for words! Aunt Phoebe and I shouldn't belittle ourselves by
even listening to her. SHE can't do any harm unless we let it
bother us--what she says. _I_ know you never could take a human
life, Grant. It's foolish even to speak of such a thing. It's
just her nasty, lying tongue saying what her black old heart
wishes could be true." She was speaking in a torrent of
trepidation lest he break from her and do some violence which
they would all regret. She did not know what he could do, or
would do, but the look of his face frightened her.
Old Hagar spat viciously at them both, and shrilled vituperative
sentences--in her own tongue fortunately; else the things she
said must have brought swift retribution. And as if she did not
care for consequences and wanted to make her words carry a
definite sting, she stopped, grinned maliciously, and spoke the
choppy dialect of her tribe.
"Yo' tellum me shont-isham. Mebbyso yo' tellum yo' no ketchum
Squaw-talk-far-off in sagebrush, all time Saunders go dead! Me
ketchum hair--Squaw-talk-far-off hair. You like for see, you
thinkum me tell lies?"
From under her blanket she thrust forth a greasy brown hand, and
shook triumphantly before them a tangled wisp of woman's
hair--the hair of Miss Georgie, without a doubt. There was no
gainsaying that color and texture. She looked full at Evadna.
"Yo' like see, me show whereum walk," she said grimly. "Good
Injun boot make track, Squaw-talk-far-off little shoe make track.
Me show, yo' thinkum mebbyso me tell lie. Stoppum in sagebrush,
ketchum hair. Me ketchum knife--Good Injun knife, mebbyso."
Revenge mastered cupidity, and she produced that also, and held
it up where they could all see.
Evadna looked and winced.
"I don't believe a word you say," she declared stubbornly. "You
STOLE that knife. I suppose you also stole the hair. You can't
MAKE me believe a thing like that!"
"Squaw-talk-far-off run, run heap fas', get home quick. Me
seeum, Viney seeum, Lucy seeum." Hagar pointed to each as she
named her, and waited until they give a confirmatory nod. The
two squaws gazed steadily at the ground, and she grunted and
ignored them afterward, content that they bore witness to her
truth in that one particular.
"Squaw-talk-far-off sabe Good Injun killum Man-that-coughs,
mebbyso," she hazarded, watching Good Indian's face cunningly to
see if the guess struck close to the truth.
"If you've said all you want to say, you better go," Good Indian
told her after a moment of silence while they glared at each
other. "I won't touch you--because you're such a devil I
couldn't stop short of killing you, once I laid my hands on you."
He stopped, held his lips tightly shut upon the curses he would
not speak, and Evadna felt his biceps tauten under her fingers as
if he were gathering himself for a lunge at the old squaw. She
looked up beseechingly into his face, and saw that it was sharp
and stern, as it had been that morning when the men had first
been discovered in the orchard. He raised his free arm, and
pointed imperiously to the trail.
"Pikeway!" he commanded.
Viney and Lucy shrank from the tone of him, and, hiding their
faces in a fold of blanket, slunk silently away like dogs that
have been whipped and told to go. Even Hagar drew back a pace,
hardy as was her untamed spirit. She looked at Evadna clinging
to his arm, her eyes wide and startlingly blue and horrified at
all she had heard. She laughed then--did Hagar--and waddled
after the others, her whole body seeming to radiate contentment
with the evil she had wrought.
"There's nothing on earth can equal the malice of an old squaw,"
said Phoebe, breaking into the silence which followed. "I'd hope
she don't go around peddling that story--not that anyone would
believe it, but--"
Good Indian looked at her, and at Evadna. He opened his lips for
speech, and closed them without saying a word. That near he came
to telling them the truth about meeting Miss Georgie, and
explaining about the hair and the knife and the footprints Hagar
had prated about. But he thought of Rachel, and knew that he
would never tell anyone, not even Evadna. The girl loosened his
arm, and moved toward her aunt.
"I hate Indians--squaws especially," she said positively. "I
hate the way they look at one with their beady eyes, just like
snakes. I believe that horrid old thing lies awake nights just
thinking up nasty, wicked lies to tell about the people she
doesn't like. I don't think you ought to ride around alone so
much, Grant; she might murder you. It's in her to do it, if she
ever got the chance."
"What do you suppose made her ring Georgie Howard in like that?"
Phoebe speculated, looking at Grant. "She must have some grudge
against her, too."
"I don't know why." Good Indian spoke unguardedly, because he
was still thinking of Rachel and those laboriously printed words
which he had scattered afar. "She's always giving them candy and
fruit, whenever they show up at the station."
"Oh--h!" Evadna gave the word that peculiar, sliding inflection
of hers which meant so much, and regarded him unwinkingly, with
her hands clasped behind her.
Good Indian knew well the meaning of both her tone and her stare,
but he only laughed and caught her by the arm.
"Come on over to the hammock," he commanded, with all the
arrogance of a lover. "We're making that old hag altogether too
important, it seems to me. Come on, Goldilocks--we haven't had a
real satisfying sort of scrap for several thousand years."
She permitted him to lead her to the hammock, and pile three
cushions behind her head and shoulders--with the dark-blue one on
top because her hair looked well against it--and dispose himself
comfortably where he could look his fill at her while he swung
the hammock gently with his boot-heel, scraping a furrow in the
sand. But she did not show any dimples, though his eyes and his
lips smiled together when she looked at him, and when he took up
her hand and kissed each finger-tip in turn, she was as passive
as a doll under the caresses of a child.
"What's the matter?" he demanded, when he found that her manner
did not soften. "Worrying still about what that old squaw said?"
"Not in the slightest." Evadna's tone was perfectly
polite--which was a bad sign.
Good Indian thought he saw the makings of a quarrel in her
general attitude, and he thought he might as well get at once to
the real root of her resentment.
"What are you thinking about? Tell me, Goldilocks," he coaxed,
pushing his own troubles to the back of his mind.
"Oh, nothing. I was just wondering--though it's a trivial matter
which is hardly worth mentioning--but I just happened to wonder
how you came to know that Georgie Howard is in the habit of
giving candy to the squaws--or anything else. I'm sure I
never--" She bit her lips as if she regretted having said so
much.
Good Indian laughed. In truth, he was immensely relieved; he
had been afraid she might want him to explain something
else--something which he felt he must keep to himself even in the
face of her anger. But this--he laughed again.
"That's easy enough," he said lightly. "I've seen her do it a
couple of times. Maybe Hagar has been keeping an eye on me--I
don't know; anyway, when I've had occasion to go to the store or
to the station, I've nearly always seen her hanging around in the
immediate vicinity. I went a couple of times to see Miss Georgie
about this land business. She's wise to a lot of law--used to
help her father before he died, it seems. And she has some of
his books, I discovered. I wanted to see if there wasn't some
means of kicking these fellows off the ranch without making a lot
more trouble for old Peaceful. But after I'd read up and talked
the thing over with her, we decided that there wasn't anything to
be done till Peaceful comes back, and we know what he's been
doing about it. That's what's keeping him, of course.
"I suppose," he added, looking at her frankly, "I should have
mentioned my going there. But to tell you the truth, I didn't
think anything much about it. It was just business, and when I'm
with you, Miss Goldilocks, I like to forget my troubles. You,"
he declared, his eyes glowing upon her, "are the antidote. And
you wouldn't have mo believe you could possibly be jealous!"
"No," said Evadna, in a more amiable tone. "Of course I'm not.
But I do think you showed a--well, a lack of confidence in me. I
don't see why _I_ can't help you share your troubles. You know I
want to. I think you should have told me, and let me help. But
you never do. Just for instance--why wouldn't you tell me
yesterday where you were before breakfast? I know you were
SOMEWHERE, because I looked all over the place for you," she
argued naively. "I always want to know where you are, it's so
lonesome when I don't know. And you see--"
She was interrupted at that point, which was not strange. The
interruption lasted for several minutes, but Evadna was a
persistent little person. When they came back to mundane
matters, she went right on with what she had started out to say.
"You see, that gave old Hagar a chance to accuse you of--well, of
a MEETING with Georgie. Which I don't believe, of course.
Still, it does seem as if you might have told me in the first
place where you had been, and then I could have shut her up by
letting her see that I knew all about it. The horrid, mean old
THING! To say such things, right to your face! And--Grant, where
DID she get hold of that knife, do you suppose--and--that--bunch
of--hair?" She took his hand of her own accord, and patted it,
and Evadna was not a demonstrative kind of person usually. "It
wasn't just a tangle, like combings," she went on slowly. "I
noticed particularly. There was a lock as large almost as my
finger, that looked as if it had been cut off. And it certainly
WAS Georgie's hair."
"Georgie's hair," Good Indian smilingly asserted, "doesn't
interest me a little bit. Maybe Hagar scalped Miss Georgie to
get it. If it had been goldy, I'd have taken it away from her if
I had to annihilate the whole tribe, but seeing it wasn't YOUR
hair--"
Well, the argument as such was a poor one, to say the least, but
it had the merit of satisfying Evadna as mere logic could not
have done, and seemed to allay as well all the doubt that had
been accumulating for days past in her mind. But an hour spent
in a hammock in the shadiest part of the grove could not wipe out
all memory of the past few days, nor quiet the uneasiness which
had come to be Good Indian's portion.
"I've got to go up on the hill again right after dinner,
Squaw-with-sun-hair," he told her at last. "I can't rest,
somehow, as long as those gentlemen are camping down in the
orchard. You won't mind, will you?" Which shows that the hour
had not been spent in quarreling, at all events.
"Certainly not," Evadna replied calmly. "Because I'm going with
you. Oh, you needn't get ready to shake your head! I'm going to
help you, from now on, and talk law and give advice and 'scout
around,' as you call it. I couldn't be easy a minute, with old
Hagar on the warpath the way she is. I'd imagine all sorts of
things."
"You don't realize how hot it is," he discouraged.
"I can stand it if you can. And I haven't seen Georgie for DAYS.
She must get horribly lonesome, and it's a perfect SHAME that I
haven't been up there lately. I'm sure she wouldn't treat ME
that way." Evadna had put on her angelic expression. "I WOULD
go oftener," she declared virtuously, "only you boys always go
off without saying anything about it, and I'm silly about riding
past that Indian camp alone. That squaw--the one that caught
Huckleberry the other day, you know--would hardly let go of the
bridle. I was scared to DEATH, only I wouldn't let her see. I
believe now she's in with old Hagar, Grant. She kept asking me
where you were, and looked so--"
"I think, on the whole, we'd better wait till after supper when
it's cooler, Goldenhair," Good Indian observed, when she
hesitated over something she had not quite decided to say. "I
suppose I really ought to stay and help the boys with that clover
patch that Mother Hart is worrying so about. I guess she thinks
we're a lazy bunch, all right, when the old man's gone. We'll go
up this evening, if you like."
Evadna eyed him with open suspicion, but if she could read his
real meaning from anything in his face or his eyes or his manner,
she must have been a very keen observer indeed.
Good Indian was meditating what he called "making a sneak." He
wanted to have a talk with Miss Georgie himself, and he certainly
did not want Evadna, of all people, to hear what he had to say.
For just a minute he wished that they had quarreled again. He
went down to the stable, started to saddle Keno, and then decided
that he would not. After all, Hagar's gossip could do no real
harm, he thought, and it could not make much difference if Miss
Georgie did not hear of it immediately.
CHAPTER XXIV
PEACEFUL RETURNS
That afternoon when the four-thirty-five rushed in from the
parched desert and slid to a panting halt beside the station
platform, Peaceful Hart emerged from the smoker, descended
quietly to the blistering planks, and nodded through the open
window to Miss Georgie at her instrument taking train orders.
Behind him perspired Baumberger, purple from the heat and the
beer with which he had sought to allay the discomfort of that
searing sunlight.
"Howdy, Miss Georgie?" he wheezed, as he passed the window.
"Ever see such hot weather in your life? _I_ never did."
Miss Georgie glanced at him while her fingers rattled her key,
and it struck her that Baumberger had lost a good deal of his
oily amiability since she saw him last. He looked more flabby
and loose-lipped than ever, and his leering eyes were streaked
plainly with the red veins which told of heavy drinking. She
gave him a nod cool enough to lower the thermometer several
degrees, and scribbled away upon the yellow pad under her hand
as if Baumberger had sunk into the oblivion her temper wished for
him. She looked up immediately, however, and leaned forward so
that she could see Peaceful just turning to go down the steps.
"Oh, Mr. Hart! Will you wait a minute?" she called clearly above
the puffing of the engine. "I've something for you here. Soon
as I get this train out--" She saw him stop and turn back to the
office, and let it go at that for the present.
"I sure have got my nerve," she observed mentally when the
conductor had signaled the engineer and swung up the steps of the
smoker, and the wheels were beginning to clank. All she had for
Peaceful Hart in that office was anxiety over his troubles.
"Just held him up to pry into his private affairs," she put it
bluntly to herself. But she smiled at him brightly, and waited
until Baumberger had gone lumbering with rather uncertain steps
to the store, where he puffed up the steps and sat heavily down
in the shade where Pete Hamilton was resting after the excitement
of the past thirty-six hours.
"I lied to you, Mr. Hart," she confessed, engagingly. "I haven't
a thing for you except a lot of questions, and I simply must ask
them or die. I'm not just curious, you know. I'm horribly
anxious. Won't you take the seat of honor, please? The ranch
won't run off if you aren't there for a few minutes after you had
expected to be. I've been waiting to have a little talk with
you, and I simply couldn't let the opportunity go by." She
talked fast, but she was thinking faster, and wondering if this
calm, white-bearded old man thought her a meddlesome fool.
"There's time enough, and it ain't worth much right now,"
Peaceful said, sitting down in the beribboned rocker and stroking
his beard in his deliberate fashion. "It seems to be getting the
fashion to be anxious," he drawled, and waited placidly for her
to speak.
"You just about swear by old Baumberger, don't you?" she began
presently, fiddling with her lead pencil and going straight to
the heart of what she wanted to say.
"Well, I dunno. I've kinda learned to fight shy of swearing by
anybody, Miss Georgie." His mild blue eyes settled attentively
upon her flushed face.
"That's some encouragement, anyhow," she sighed. "Because he's
the biggest old blackguard in Idaho and more treacherous than any
Indian ever could be if he tried. I just thought I'd tell you,
in case you didn't know it. I'm certain as I can be of anything,
that he's at the bottom of this placer-claim fraud, and he's just
digging your ranch out from under your feet while he wheedles
you into thinking he's looking after your interests. I'll bet
you never got an injunction against those eight men," she
hazarded, leaning toward him with her eyes sparkling as the
subject absorbed all her thoughts. "I'll bet anything he kept
you fiddling around until those fellows all filed on their
claims. And now it's got to go till the case is finally settled
in court, because they are technically within their rights in
making lawful improvements on their claims.
"Grant," she said, and her voice nearly betrayed her when she
spoke his name, "was sure they faked the gold samples they must
have used in filing. We both were sure of it. He and the boys
tried to catch them at some crooked work, but the nights have
been too dark, for one thing, and they were always on the watch,
and went up to Shoshone in couples, and there was no telling
which two meant to sneak off next. So they have all filed, I
suppose. I know the whole eight have been up--"
"Yes, they've all filed--twenty acres apiece--the best part of
the ranch. There's a forty runs up over the bluff; the lower
line takes in the house and barn and down into the garden where
the man they call Stanley run his line through the strawberry
patch. That forty's mine yet. It's part uh the homestead. The
meadowland is most all included. That was a preemption claim."
Peaceful spoke slowly, and there was a note of discouragement in
his voice which it hurt Miss Georgie to hear.
"Well, they've got to prove that those claims of theirs are
lawful, you know. And if you've got your patent for the
homestead--you have got a patent, haven't you?" Something in his
face made her fling in the question.
"Y-es--or I thought I had one," he answered dryly. "It seems now
there's a flaw in it, and it's got to go back to Washington and
be rectified. It ain't legal till that's been done."
Miss Georgie half rose from her chair, and dropped back
despairingly. "Who found that mistake?" she demanded.
"Baumberger?"
"Y-es, Baumberger. He thought we better go over all the papers
ourselves, so the other side couldn't spring anything on us
unawares, and there was one paper that hadn't been made out
right. So it had to be fixed, of course. Baumberger was real
put out about it."
"Oh, of course!" Miss Georgie went to the window to make sure of
the gentleman's whereabouts. He was still sitting upon the store
porch, and he was just in the act of lifting a tall, glass mug of
beer to his gross mouth when she looked over at him. "Pig!" she
gritted under her breath. "It's a pity he doesn't drink himself
to death." She turned and faced Peaceful anxiously.
"You spoke a while ago as if you didn't trust him implicitly,"
she said. "I firmly believe he hired those eight men to file on
your land. I believe he also hired Saunders to watch Grant, for
some reason--perhaps because Grant has shown his hostility from
the first. Did you know Saunders--or someone--has been shooting
at Grant from the top of the bluff for--well, ever since you
left? The last shot clipped his hat-brim. Then Saunders was
shot--or shot himself, according to the inquest--and there has
been no more rifle practice with Grant for the target."
"N-no, I hadn't heard about that." Peaceful pulled hard at his
beard so that his lips were drawn slightly apart. "I don't mind
telling yuh," he added slowly, "that I've got another lawyer
working on the case--Black. He hates Baumberger, and he'd like
to git something on him. I don't want Baumberger should know
anything about it, though. He takes it for granted I swallow
whole everything he says and does--but I don't. Not by a long
shot. Black'll ferret out any crooked work."
"He's a dandy if he catches Baumberger," Miss Georgie averred,
gloomily. "I tried a little detective work on my own account. I
hadn't any right; it was about the cipher messages Saunders used
to send and receive so often before your place was jumped. I was
dead sure it was old Baumberger at the other end, and I--well, I
struck up a mild sort of flirtation with the operator at
Shoshone." She smiled deprecatingly at Peaceful.
"I wanted to find out--and I did by writing a nice letter or two;
we have to be pretty cute about what we send over the wires," she
explained, "though we do talk back and forth quite a lot, too.
There was a news-agent and cigar man--you know that kind of
joint, where they sell paper novels and magazines and tobacco and
such--getting Saunders' messages. Jim Wakely is his name. He
told the operator that he and Saunders were just practicing; they
were going to be detectives, he said, and rigged up a cipher that
they were learning together so they wouldn't need any codebook.
Pretty thin that--but you can't prove it wasn't the truth. I
managed to find out that Baumberger buys cigars and papers of Jim
Wakely sometimes; not always, though."
Miss Georgie laughed ruefully, and patted her pompadour
absent-mindedly.
"So all I got out of that," she finished, "was a correspondence I
could very well do without. I've been trying to quarrel with
that operator ever since, but he's so darned easy-tempered!" She
went and looked out of the window again uneasily.
"He's guzzling beer over there, and from the look of him he's had
a good deal more than he needs already," she informed Peaceful.
"He'll burst if he keeps on. I suppose I shouldn't keep you any
longer--he's looking this way pretty often, I notice; nothing but
the beer-keg holds him, I imagine. And when he empties that--"
She shrugged her shoulders, and sat down facing Hart.
"Maybe you could bribe Jim Wakely into giving something away,"
she suggested. "I'd sure like to see Baumberger stub his toe in
this deal! Or maybe you could get around one of those eight
beauties you've got camping down on your ranch--but there isn't
much chance of that; he probably took good care to pick clams for
that job. And Saunders," she added slowly, "is eternally silent.
Well, I hope in mercy you'll be able to catch him napping, Mr.
Hart."
Peaceful rose stiffly,--and took up his hat from where he had
laid it on the table.
"I ain't as hopeful as I was a week ago," he admitted mildly.
"Put if there's any justice left in the courts, I'll save the old
ranch. My wife and I worked hard to make it what it is, and my
boys call it home. We can't save it by anything but law.
Fightin' would only make a bad matter worse. I'm obliged to
yuh, Miss Georgie, for taking such an interest--and I'll tell
Black about Jim Wakely."
"Don't build any hopes on Jim," she warned. "He probably doesn't
know anything except that he sent and received messages he
couldn't read any sense into."
"Well--there's always a way out, if we can find it. Come down
and see us some time. We still got a house to invite our friends
to." He smiled drearily at her, gave a little, old-fashioned
bow, and went over to join Baumberger--and to ask Pete Hamilton
for the use of his team and buckboard.
Miss Georgie, keeping an uneasy vigil over everything that moved
in the barren portion of Hartley which her window commanded, saw
Pete get up and start listlessly toward the stable; saw Peaceful
sit down to wait; and then Pete drove up with the rig, and they
started for the ranch. She turned with a startled movement to
the office door, because she felt that she was being watched.
"How, Hagar, and Viney, and Lucy," she greeted languidly when she
saw the three squaws sidle closer, and reached for a bag of candy
for them.
Hagar's greasy paw stretched out greedily for the gift, and
placed it in jealous hiding beneath her blanket, but she did not
turn to go, as she most frequently did after getting what she
came for. Instead, she waddled boldly into the office, her eyes
searching cunningly every corner of the little room. Viney and
Lucy remained outside, passively waiting. Hagar twitched at
something under her blanket, and held out her hand again; this
time it was not empty.
"Ketchum sagebrush," she announced laconically. "Mebbyso yo'
like for buy?"
Miss Georgie stared fixedly at the hand, and said nothing. Hagar
drew it under her blanket, held it fumbling there, and thrust it
forth again.
"Ketchum where ketchum hair," she said, and her wicked old eyes
twinkled with malice. "Mebbyso yo' like for buy?"
Miss Georgie still stared, and said nothing. Her under lip was
caught tightly between her teeth by now, and her eyebrows were
pulled close together.
"Ketchum much track, same place," said Hagar grimly. "Good Injun
makeum track all same boot. Seeum Good Injun creep, creep in
bushes, all time Man-that-coughs be heap kill. Yo' buy hair, buy
knife, mebbyso me no tell me seeum Good Injun. Me tell, Good
Injun go for jail; mebbyso killum rope." She made a horrible
gesture of hanging by the neck. Afterward she grinned still more
horribly. "Ketchum plenty mo' dolla, me no tell, mebbyso."
Miss Georgie felt blindly for her chair, and when she touched it
she backed and sank into it rather heavily. She looked white and
sick, and Hagar eyed her gloatingly.
"Yo' no like for Good Injun be killum rope," she chuckled. "Yo'
all time thinkum heap bueno. Mebbyso yo' love. Yo' buy? Yo'
payum much dolla?"
Miss Georgie passed a hand slowly over her eyes. She felt numb,
and she could not think, and she must think. A shuffling sound
at the door made her drop her hand and look up, but there was
nothing to lighten her oppressive sense of danger to Grant.
Another squaw had appeared, was all. A young squaw, with
bright-red ribbons braided into her shining black hair, and
great, sad eyes brightening the dull copper tint of her face.
"You no be 'fraid," she murmured shyly to Miss Georgie, and
stopped where she was just inside the door. "You no be sad. No
trouble come Good Injun. I friend."
Hagar turned, and snarled at her in short, barking words which
Miss Georgie could not understand. The young squaw folded her
arms inside her bright, plaid shawl, and listened with an
indifference bordering closely on contempt, one would judge from
her masklike face. Hagar turned from berating her, and thrust
out her chin at Miss Georgie.
"I go. Sun go 'way, mebbyso I come. Mebbyso yo' heart bad. Me
ketchum much dolla yo', me no tellum, mebbyso. No ketchum, me
tell sheriff mans Good Injun all time killum Man-that-coughs."
Turning, she waddled out, jabbing viciously at the young squaw
with her elbow as she passed, and spitting out some sort of
threat or command--Miss Georgie could not tell which.
The young squaw lingered, still gazing shyly at Miss Georgie.
"You no be 'fraid," she repeated softly. "I friend. I take
care. No trouble come Good Injun. I no let come. You no be
sad." She smiled wistfully, and was gone, as silently as moved
her shadow before her on the cinders.
Miss Georgie stood by the window with her fingernails making
little red half-moons in her palms, and watched the three squaws
pad out of sight on the narrow trail to their camp, with the
young squaw following after, until only a black head could be
seen bobbing over the brow of the hill. When even that was gone,
she turned from the window, and stood for a long minute with her
hands pressed tightly over her face. She was trying to think,
but instead she found herself listening intently to the
monotonous "Ah-h-CHUCK! ah-h-CHUCK!" of the steam pump down the
track, and to the spasmodic clicking of an order from the
dispatcher to the passenger train two stations to the west.
When the train was cleared and the wires idle, she went suddenly
to the table, laid her fingers purposefully upon the key, and
called up her chief. It was another two hours' leave of absence
she asked for "on urgent business." She got it, seasoned with a
sarcastic reminder that her business was supposed to be with the
railroad company, and that she would do well to cultivate
exactness of expression and a taste for her duties in the office.
She was putting on her hat even while she listened to the
message, and she astonished the man at the other end by making no
retort whatever. She almost ran to the store, and she did not
ask Pete for a saddle-horse; she just threw her office key at
him, and told him she was going to take his bay, and she was at
the stable before he closed the mouth he had opened in amazement
at her whirlwind departure.
CHAPTER XXV
"I'D JUST AS SOON HANG FOR NINE MEN AS FOR ONE"
Baumberger climbed heavily out of the rig,and went lurching
drunkenly up the path to the house where the cool shade of the
grove was like paradise set close against the boundary of the
purgatory of blazing sunshine and scorching sand. He had not
gone ten steps from the stable when he met Good Indian face to
face.
"Hullo," he growled, stopping short and eying him malevolently
with lowered head.
Good Indian's lips curled silently, and he stepped aside to
pursue his way. Baumberger swung his huge body toward him.
"I said HULLO. Nothin' wrong in that, is there? HULLO--d'yuh
hear?"
"Go to the devil!" said Grant shortly.
Baumberger leered at him offensively. "Pretty Polly! Never
learned but one set uh words in his life. Can't yuh say anything
but 'Go to the devil!' when a man speaks to yuh? Hey?"
"I could say a whole lot that you wouldn't be particularly glad
to hear." Good Indian stopped, and faced him, coldly angry. For
one thing, he knew that Evadna was waiting on the porch for him,
and could see even if she could not hear; and Baumberger's
attitude was insulting. "I think," he said meaningly, "I
wouldn't press the point if I were you."
"Giving me advice, hey? And who the devil are you?"
"I wouldn't ask, if I were you. But if you really want to know,
I'm the fellow you hired Saunders to shoot. You blundered that
time. You should have picked a better man, Mr. Baumberger.
Saunders couldn't have hit the side of a barn if he'd been locked
inside it. You ought to have made sure--"
Baumberger glared at him, and then lunged, his eyes like an
animal gone mad.
"I'll make a better job, then!" he bellowed. "Saunders was a
fool. I told him to get down next the trail and make a good job
of it. I told him to kill you, you lying, renegade Injun--and if
he couldn't, I can! Yuh WILL watch me, hey?"
Good Indian backed from him in sheer amazement. Epithets
unprintable poured in a stream from the loose, evil lips.
Baumberger was a raving beast of a man. He would have torn the
other to pieces and reveled in the doing. He bellowed forth
threats against Good Indian and the Harts, young and old, and
vaunted rashly the things he meant to do. Heat-mad and drink-mad
he was, and it was as if the dam of his wily amiability had
broken and let loose the whole vile reservoir of his pirate mind.
He tried to strike Good Indian down where he stood, and when his
blows were parried he stopped, swayed a minute in drunken
uncertainty, and then make one of his catlike motions, pulled a
gun, and fired without really taking aim.
Another gun spoke then, and Baumberger collapsed in the sand, a
quivering heap of gross human flesh. Good Indian stood and
looked down at him fixedly while the smoke floated away from the
muzzle of his own gun. He heard Evadna screaming hysterically at
the gate, and looked over there inquiringly. Phoebe was running
toward him, and the boys--Wally and Gene and Jack, from the
blacksmith shop. At the corner of the stable Miss Georgie was
sliding from her saddle, her riding whip clenched tightly in her
hand as she hurried to him. Peaceful stood beside the team, with
the lines still in his hand.
It was Miss Georgie's words which reached him clearly.
"You just HAD to do it, Grant. I saw the whole thing. You HAD
to."
"Oh, Grant--GRANT! What have you done? What have you done?"
That was Phoebe Hart, saying the same thing over and over with a
queer, moaning inflection in her voice.
"D'yuh KILL him?" Gene shouted excitedly, as he ran up to the
spot.
"Yes." Good Indian glanced once more at the heap before him.
"And I'm liable to kill a few more before I'm through with the
deal." He swung short around, discovered that Evadna was
clutching his arm and crying, and pulled loose from her with a
gesture of impatience. With the gun still in his hand, he walked
quickly down the road in the direction of the garden.
"He's mad! The boy is mad! He's going to kill--" Phoebe gave a
sob, and ran after him, and with her went Miss Georgie and
Evadna, white-faced, all three of them.
"Come on, boys--he's going to clean out the whole bunch!" whooped
Gene.
"Oh, choke off!" Wally gritted disgustedly, glancing over his
shoulder at them. "Go back to the house, and STAY there! Ma,
make Vad quit that yelling, can't yuh?" He looked eloquently at
Jack, keeping pace with him and smiling with the steely glitter
in his eyes. "Women make me sick!" he snorted under his breath.
Peaceful stared after them, went into the stable, and got a
blanket to throw over Baumberger's inert body, stooped, and made
sure that the man was dead, with the left breast of his light
negligee shirt all blackened with powder and soaked with blood;
covered him well, and tied up the team. Then he went to the
house, and got the old rifle that had killed Indians and buffalo
alike, and went quickly through the grove to the garden. He was
a methodical man, and he was counted slow, but nevertheless he
reached the scene not much behind the others. Wally was trying
to send his mother to the house with Evadna, and neither would
go. Miss Georgie was standing near Good Indian, watching Stanley
with her lips pressed together.
It is doubtful if Good Indian realized what the others were
doing. He had gone straight past the line of stakes to where
Stanley was sitting with his back against the lightning-stricken
apricot tree. Stanley was smoking a cigarette as if he had heard
nothing of the excitement, but his rifle was resting upon his
knee in such a manner that he had but to lift it and take aim.
The three others were upon their own claims, and they, also,
seemed unobtrusively ready for whatever might be going to happen.
Good Indian appraised the situation with a quick glance as he
came up, but he did not slacken his pace until he was within ten
feet of Stanley.
"You're across the dead line, m' son," said Stanley, with lazy
significance. "And you, too," he added, flickering a glance at
Miss Georgie.
"The dead line," said Good Indian coolly, "is beyond the Point o'
Rocks. I'd like to see you on the other side by sundown."
Stanley looked him over, from the crown of his gray hat to the
tips of his riding-boots, and laughed when his eyes came back to
Good Indian's face. But the laugh died out rather suddenly at
what he saw there.
"Got the papers for that?" he asked calmly. But his jaw had
squared.
"I've got something better than papers. Your boss is dead. I
shot him just now. He's lying back there by the stable." Good
Indian tilted his head backward, without taking his eyes from
Stanley's face--and Stanley's right hand, too, perhaps. "If you
don't want the same medicine, I'd advise you to quit."
Stanley's jaw dropped, but it was surprise which slackened the
muscles.
"You--shot--"
"Baumberger. I said it."
"You'll hang for that," Stanley stated impersonally, without
moving.
Good Indian smiled, but it only made his face more ominous.
"Well, they can't hang a man more than once. I'll see this ranch
cleaned up while I'm about it. I'd just as soon," he added
composedly, "be hanged for nine men as for one."
Stanley sat on his haunches, and regarded him unwinkingly for so
long that Phoebe's nerves took a panic, and she drew Evadna away
from the place. The boys edged closer, their hands resting
suggestively upon their gun-butts. Old Peaceful half-raised his
rifle, and held it so. It was like being compelled to watch a
fuse hiss and shrivel and go black toward a keg of gun-powder.
"I believe, by heck, you would!" said Stanley at last, and so
long a time had elapsed that even Good Indian had to think back
to know what he meant. Stanley squinted up at the sun, hitched
himself up so that his back rested against the tree more
comfortably, inspected his cigarette, and then fumbled for a
match with which to relight it. "How'd you find out Baumberger
was back uh this deal?" he asked curiously and without any
personal resentment in tone or manner, and raked the match along
his thigh.
Good Indian's shoulders went up a little.
"I knew, and that's sufficient. The dead line is down past the
Point o' Rocks. After sundown this ranch is going to hold the
Harts and their friends--and NO ONE ELSE. Tell that to your
pals, unless you've got a grudge against them!"
Stanley held his cigarette between his fingers, and blew smoke
through his nostrils while he watched Good Indian turn his back
and walk away. He did not easily lose his hold of himself, and
this was, with him, a cold business proposition.
Miss Georgie stood where she was until she saw that Stanley did
not intend to shoot Good Indian in the back, as he might have
done easily enough, and followed so quickly that she soon came up
with him. Good Indian turned at the rustling of the skirts
immediately behind him, and looked down at her somberly. Then he
caught sight of something she was carrying in her hand, and he
gave a short laugh.
"What are you doing with that thing?" he asked peremptorily.
Miss Georgie blushed very red, and slid the thing into her
pocket.
"Well, every little helps," she retorted, with a miserable
attempt at her old breeziness of manner. "I thought for a minute
I'd have to shoot that man Stanley--when you turned your back on
him."
Good Indian stopped, looked at her queerly, and went on again
without saying a word.
CHAPTER XXVI
"WHEN THE SUN GOES AWAY"
"I wish," said Phoebe, putting her two hands on Miss Georgie's
shoulders at the gate and looking up at her with haggard eyes,
"you'd see what you can do with Vadnie. The poor child's near
crazy; she ain't used to seeing such things happen--"
"Where is she?" Good Indian asked tersely, and was answered
immediately by the sound of sobbing on the east porch. The three
went together, but it was Grant who reached her first.
"Don't cry, Goldilocks," he said tenderly, bending over her.
"It's all right now. There isn't going to be any more--"
"Oh! Don't TOUCH me!" She sprang up and backed from him, horror
plain in her wide eyes. "Make him keep away, Aunt Phoebe!"
Good Indian straightened, and stood perfectly still, looking at
her in a stunned, incredulous way.
"Chicken, don't be silly!" Miss Georgie's sane tones were like a
breath of clean air. "You've simply gone all to pieces. I know
what nerves can do to a woman--I've had 'em myself. Grant isn't
going to bite you, and you're not afraid of him. You're proud of
him, and you know it. He's acted the man, chicken!--the man we
knew he was, all along. So pull yourself together, and let's not
have any nonsense."
"He--KILLED a man! I saw him do it. And he's going to kill some
more. I might have known he was like that! I might have KNOWN
when he tried to shoot me that night in the orchard when I was
trying to scare Gene! I can show you the mark--where he grazed my
arm! And he LAUGHED about it! I called him a savage then--and I
was RIGHT--only he can be so nice when he wants to be--and I
forgot about the Indian in him--and then he killed Mr.
Baumberger! He's lying out there now! I'd rather DIE than let
him--"
Miss Georgie clapped a hand over her mouth, and stopped her.
Also, she gripped her by the shoulder indignantly.
"'Vadna Ramsey, I'm ashamed of you!" she cried furiously. "For
Heaven's sake, Grant, go on off somewhere and wait till she
settles down. Don't stand there looking like a stone
image--didn't you ever see a case of nerves before? She doesn't
know what she's saying--if she did, she wouldn't be saying it.
You go on, and let me handle her alone. Men are just a nuisance
in a case like this."
She pushed Evadna before her into the kitchen, waited until
Phoebe had followed, and then closed the door gently and
decisively upon Grant. But not before she had given him a
heartening smile just to prove that he must not take Evadna
seriously, because she did not.
"We'd better take her to her room, Mrs. Hart," she suggested,
"and make her lie down for a while. That poor fellow--as if he
didn't have enough on his hands without this!"
"I'm not on his hands! And I won't lie down!" Evadna jerked away
from Miss Georgie, and confronted them both pantingly, her cheeks
still wet with tears. "You act as if I don't know what I'm
doing' and I DO know. If I should lie down for a MILLION YEARS,
I'd feel just the same about it. I couldn't bear him to TOUCH
me! I--"
"For Heaven's sake, don't shout it," Miss Georgie interrupted,
exasperatedly. "Do you want him--"
"To hear? _I_ don't care whether he does or not." Evadna was
turning sullen at the opposition. "He'll have to know it SOME
TIME, won't he? If you think can forgive a thing like that and
let--"
"He had to do it. Baumberger would have killed HIM. He had a
perfect right to kill. He'd have been a fool and a coward if he
hadn't. You come and lie down a while."
"I WON'T lie down. I don't care if he did have to do it--I
couldn't love him afterward. And he didn't have to go down there
and threaten Stanley--and--HE'LL DO IT, TOO!" She fell to
trembling again. "He'll DO it--at sundown."
Phoebe and Miss Georgie looked at each other. He would, if the
men stayed. They knew that.
"And I was going to marry him!" Evadna shuddered when she said
it, and covered her face with her two hands. "He wasn't sorry
afterward; you could see he wasn't sorry. He was ready to kill
more men. It's the Indian in him. He LIKES to kill people.
He'll kill those men, and he won't be a bit sorry he did it. And
he could come to me afterward and expect me--Oh, what does he
think I AM?" She leaned against the wall, and sobbed.
"I suppose," she wailed, lashing herself with every bitter
thought she could conjure, "he killed Saunders, too, like old
Hagar said. He wouldn't tell me where he was that morning. I
asked him, and he wouldn't tell. He was up there killing
Saunders--"
"If you don't shut up, I'll shake you!" Miss Georgie in her fury
did not wait, but shook her anyway as if she had been a
ten-year-old child in a tantrum.
"My Heavens above! I'll stand for nerves and hysterics, and
almost any old thing, but you're going a little bit too far, my
lady. There's no excuse for your talking such stuff as that, and
you're not going to do it, if I have to gag you! Now, you march
to your own room and--STAY there. Do you hear? And don't you
dare let another yip out of you till you can talk sense."
Good Indian stood upon the porch, and heard every word of that.
He heard also the shuffle of feet as Miss Georgie urged Evadna to
her room--it sounded almost as if she dragged her there by
force--and he rolled a cigarette with fingers that did not so
much as quiver. He scratched a match upon the nearest post, and
afterward leaned there and smoked, and stared out over the pond
and up at the bluff glowing yellow in the sunlight. His face was
set and expressionless except that it was stoically calm, and
there was a glitter deep down in his eyes. Evadna was right, to
a certain extent the Indian in him held him quiet.
It occurred to him that someone ought to pick up Baumberger, and
put him somewhere, but he did not move. The boys and Peaceful
must have stayed down in the garden, he thought. He glanced up
at the tops of the nodding poplars, and estimated idly by their
shadow on the bluff how long it would be before sundown, and as
idly wondered if Stanley and the others would go, or stay.
There was nothing they could gain by staying, he knew, now that
Baumberger was out of it. Unless they got stubborn and wanted to
fight. In that case, he supposed he would eventually be planted
alongside his father. He wished he could keep the boys and old
Peaceful out of it, in case there was a fight, but he knew that
would be impossible. The boys, at least, had been itching for
something like this ever since the trouble started.
Good Indian had, not so long ago, spent hours in avoiding all
thought that he might prolong the ecstasy of mere feeling. Now
he had reversed the desire. He was thinking of this thing and of
that, simply that he might avoid feeling. If someone didn't kill
him within the next hour or so, he was going to feel
something--something that would hurt him more than he had been
hurt since his father died in that same house. But in the
meantime he need only think.
The shadow of the grove, with the long fingers of tho poplars to
point the way, climbed slowly up the bluff. Good Indian smoked
another cigarette while he watched it. When a certain great
bowlder that was like a miniature ledge glowed rosily and then
slowly darkened to a chill gray, he threw his cigarette stub
unerringly at a lily-pad which had courtesied many a time before
to a like missile from his hand, pulled his hat down over his
eyes, jumped off the porch, and started around the house to the
gate which led to the stable.
Phoebe came out from the sitting-room, ran down the steps, and
barred his way.
"Grant!" she said, and there were tears in her eyes, "don't do
anything rash--don't. If it's for our sakes--and I know it
is--don't do it. They'll go, anyway. We'll have the law on them
and make them go. But don't YOU go down there. You let Thomas
handle that part. You're like one of my own boys. I can't let
you go!"
He looked down at her commiseratingly. "I've got to go, Mother
Hart. I've made my war-talk." He hesitated, bent his head, and
kissed her on the forehead as she stood looking up at him, and
went on.
"Grant--GRANT!" she cried heartbrokenly after him, and sank down
on the porch-steps with her face hidden in her arms.
Miss Georgie was standing beside the gate, looking toward the
stable. She may not have been waiting for him, but she turned
without any show of surprise when he walked up behind her.
"Well, your jumpers seem to have taken the hint," she informed
him, with a sort of surface cheerfulness. "Stanley is down there
talking to Mr. Hart now, and the others have gone on. They'll
all be well over the dead-line by sundown. There goes Stanley
now. Do you really feel that your future happiness depends on
getting through this gate? Well--if you must--" She swung it
open, but she stood in the opening.
"Grant, I--it's hard to say just what I want to say--but--you did
right. You acted the man's part. No matter what--others--may
think or say, remember that I think you did right to kill that
man. And if there's anything under heaven that I can do, to--to
help--you'll let me do it, won't you?" Her eyes held him briefly,
unabashed at what they might tell. Then she stepped back, and
contradicted them with a little laugh. "I will get fired sure
for staying over my time," she said. "I'll wire for the coroner
soon as I get to the office. This will never come to a trial,
Grant. He was like a crazy man, and we all saw him shoot first."
She waited until he had passed through and was a third of the way
to the stable where Peaceful Hart and his boys were gathered, and
then she followed him briskly, as if her mind was taken up with
her own affairs.
"It's a shame yon fellows got cheated out of a scrap," she
taunted Jack, who held her horse for her while she settled
herself in the saddle. "You were all spoiling for a fight--and
there did seem to be the makings of a beautiful row!"
Save for the fact that she kept her eyes studiously turned away
from a certain place near by, where the dust was pressed down
smoothly with the weight of a heavy body, and all around was
trampled and tracked, one could not have told that Miss Georgie
remembered anything tragic.
But Good Indian seemed to recall something, and went quickly over
to her just in time to prevent her starting.
"Was there something in particular you wanted when you came?" he
asked, laying a hand on the neck of the bay. "It just occurred
to me that there must have been."
She leaned so that the others could not hear, and her face was
grave enough now.
"Why, yes. It's old Hagar. She came to me this afternoon, and
she had that bunch of hair you cut off that was snarled in the
bush. She had your knife. She wanted me to buy them--the old
blackmailer! She made threats, Grant--about Saunders. She says
you--I came right down to tell you, because I was afraid she
might make trouble. But there was so much more on hand right
here"--she glanced involuntarily at the trampled place in the
dust. "She said she'd come back this evening, 'when the sun
goes away.' She's there now, most likely. What shall I tell her?
We can't have that story mouthed all over the country."
Good Indian twisted a wisp of mane in his fingers, and frowned
abstractedly.
"If you'll ride on slowly," he told her, at last straightening
the twisted lock, "I'll overtake you. I think I'd better see
that old Jezebel myself."
Secretly he was rather thankful for further action. He told the
boys when they fired questions at his hurried saddling that he
was going to take Miss Georgie home, and that he would be back
before long; in an hour, probably. Then he galloped down the
trail, and overtook her at the Point o' Rocks.
The sun was down, and the sky was a great, glowing mass of color.
Round the second turn of the grade they came upon Stanley,
walking with his hands thrust in his trousers pockets and
whistling softly to himself as if he were thinking deeply.
Perhaps he was glad to be let off so easily.
"Abandoning my claim," he announced, lightly as a man of his
prosaic temperament could speak upon such a subject. "Dern poor
placer mining down there, if yuh want to know!"
Good Indian scowled at him and rode on, because a woman rode
beside him. Seven others they passed farther up the hill. Those
seven gave him scowl for scowl, and did not speak a word; that
also because a woman rode beside him. And the woman understood,
and was glad that she was there.
From the Indian camp, back in the sage-inclosed hollow, rose a
sound of high-keyed wailing. The two heard it, and looked at
each other questioningly.
"Something's up over there," Good Indian said, answering her
look. "That sounds to me like the squaws howling over a death."
"Let's go and see. I'm so late now, a few minutes more won't
matter, one way or the other." Miss Georgie pulled out her
watch, looked at it, and made a little grimace. So they turned
into the winding trail, and rode into the camp.
There were confusion, and wailing, and a buzzing of squaws around
a certain wikiup. Dogs sat upon their haunches, and howled
lugubriously until someone in passing kicked them into yelping
instead. Papooses stood nakedly about, and regarded the uproar
solemnly, running to peer into the wikiup and then scamper back
to their less hardy fellows. Only the bucks stood apart in
haughty unconcern, speaking in undertones when they talked at
all. Good Indian commanded Miss Georgie to remain just outside
the camp, and himself rode in to where the bucks were gathered.
Then he saw Peppajee sitting beside his own wikiup, and went to
him instead.
"What's the matter here, Peppajee?" he asked. "Heap trouble walk
down at Hart Ranch. Trouble walk here all same, mebbyso?"
Peppajee looked at him sourly, but the news was big, and it must
be told.
"Heap much trouble come. Squaw callum Hagar make much talk. Do
much bad, mebbyso. Squaw Rachel ketchum bad heart along yo'.
Heap cry all time. No sleepum, no eatum--all time heap sad.
Ketchum bad spirit, mebbyso. Ketchum debbil. Sun go 'way,
ketchum knife, go Hagar wikiup. Killum Hagar--so." He thrust
out his arm as one who stabs. "Killum himself--so." He struck
his chest with his clenched fist. "Hagar heap dead. Rachel heap
dead. Kay bueno. Mebbyso yo' heap bad medicine. Yo' go."
"A squaw just died," he told Miss Georgie curtly, when they rode
on. But her quick eyes noted a new look in his face. Before it
had been grave and stern and bitter; now it was sorrowful
instead.
CHAPTER XXVII
LIFE ADJUSTS ITSELF AGAIN TO SOME THINGS
The next day was a day of dust hanging always over the grade
because of much hurried riding up and down; a day of many strange
faces whose eyes peered curiously at the place where Baumberger
fell, and at the cold ashes of Stanley's campfire, and at the
Harts and their house, and their horses and all things pertaining
in the remotest degree to the drama which had been played grimly
there to its last, tragic "curtain." They stared up at the
rim-rock and made various estimates of the distance and argued
over the question of marksmanship, and whether it really took a
good shot to fire from the top and hit a man below.
As for the killing of Baumberger, public opinion tried--with the
aid of various plugs of tobacco and much expectoration--the case
and rendered a unanimous verdict upon it long before the coroner
arrived. "Done just right," was the verdict of Public Opinion,
and the self-constituted judges manifested their further approval
by slapping Good Indian upon the back when they had a chance, or
by solemnly shaking hands with him, or by facetiously assuring
him that they would be good. All of which Grant interpreted
correctly as sympathy and a desire to show him that they did not
look upon him as a murderer, but as a man who had the courage to
defend himself and those dear to him from a great danger.
With everything so agreeably disposed of according to the
crude--though none the less true, perhaps--ethics of the time and
the locality, it was tacitly understood that the coroner and the
inquest he held in the grove beside the house were a mere
concession to red tape. Nevertheless a general tension
manifested itself when the jury, after solemnly listening, in
their official capacity, to the evidence they had heard and
discussed freely hours before, bent heads and whispered briefly
together. There was also a corresponding atmosphere of relief
when the verdict of Public Opinion was called justifiable
homicide by the coroner and so stamped with official approval.
When that was done they carried Baumberger's gross physical shell
away up the grade to the station; and the dust of his passing
settled upon the straggling crowd that censured his misdeeds and
mourned not at all, and yet paid tribute to his dead body with
lowered voices while they spoke of him, and with awed silence
when the rough box was lowered to the station platform.
As the sky clears and grows blue and deep and unfathomably
peaceful after a storm, as trees wind-riven straighten and nod
graciously to the little cloud-boats that sail the blue above,
and wave dainty finger-tips of branches in bon voyage, so did the
Peaceful Hart ranch, when the dust had settled after the latest
departure and the whistle of the train--which bore the coroner
and that other quiet passenger--came faintly down over the
rim-rock, settle with a sigh of relief into its old, easy habits
of life.
All, that is, save Good Indian himself, and perhaps one other.
. . . . . . . . .
Peaceful cleared his white mustache and beard from a few stray
drops of coffee and let his mild blue eyes travel slowly around
the table, from one tanned young face to another.
"Now the excitement's all over and done with," he drawled in his
half-apologetic tones, "it wouldn't be a bad idea for you boys to
get to work and throw the water back where it belongs. I dunno
but what the garden's spoiled already; but the small fruit can be
saved."
"Clark and I was going up to the Injun camp," spoke up Gene. "We
wanted to see--"
"You'll have to do some riding to get there," Good Indian
informed them dryly. "They hit the trail before sunrise this
morning."
"Huh! What were YOU doing up there that time of day?" blurted
Wally, eying him sharply.
"Watching the sun rise." His lips smiled over the retort, but
his eyes did not. "I'll lower the water in your milk-house now,
Mother Hart," he promised lightly, "so you won't have to wear
rubber-boots when you go to skim the milk." He gave Evadna a
quick, sidelong glance as she came into the room, and pushed back
his chair. "I'll get at it right away," he said cheerfully,
picked up his hat, and went out whistling. Then he put his head
in at the door. "Say," he called, "does anybody know where that
long-handled shovel is?" Again he eyed Evadna without seeming to
see her at all.
"If it isn't down at the stable," said Jack soberly, "or by the
apple-cellar or somewhere around the pond or garden, look along
the ditches as far up as the big meadow. And if you don't run
across it there--" The door slammed, and Jack laughed with his
eyes fast shut and three dimples showing.
Evadna sank listlessly into her chair and regarded him and all
her little world with frank disapproval.
"Upon my WORD, I don't see how anybody can laugh, after what has
happened on this place," she said dismally, "or--WHISTLE,
after--" Her lips quivered a little. She was a distressed
Christmas angel, if ever there was one.
Wally snorted. "Want us to go CRYING around because the row's
over?" he demanded. "Think Grant ought to wear crepe, I
suppose--because he ain't on ice this morning--or in jail, which
he'd hate a lot worse. Think we ought to go around with our jaws
hanging down so you could step on 'em, because Baumberger cashed
in? Huh! All hurts MY feelings is, I didn't get a whack at the
old devil myself!" It was a long speech for Wally to make, and he
made it with deliberate malice.
"Now you're shouting!" applauded Gene, also with the intent to be
shocking.
"THAT'S the stuff," approved Clark, grinning at Evadna's
horrified eyes.
"Grant can run over me sharp-shod and I won't say a word, for
what he did day before yesterday," declared Jack, opening his
eyes and looking straight at Evadna. "You don't see any tears
rolling down MY cheeks, I hope?"
"Good Injun's the stuff, all right. He'd 'a' licked the hull
damn--"
"Now, Donny, be careful what language you use," Phoebe
admonished, and so cut short his high-pitched song of praise.
"I don't care--I think it's perfectly awful." Evadna looked
distastefully upon her breakfast. "I just can't sleep in that
room, Aunt Phoebe. I tried not to think about it, but it opens
right that way."
"Huh!" snorted Wally. "Board up the window, then, so you can't
see the fatal spot!" His gray eyes twinkled. "I could DANCE on
it myself," he said, just to horrify her--which he did. Evadna
shivered, pressed her wisp of handkerchief against her lips, and
left the table hurriedly.
"You boys ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" Phoebe scolded
half-heartedly; for she had lived long in the wild, and had seen
much that was raw and primitive. "You must take into
consideration that Vadnie isn't used to such things. Why, great
grief! I don't suppose the child ever SAW a dead man before in
her life--unless he was laid out in church with flower-anchors
piled knee-deep all over him. And to see one shot right before
her very eyes--and by the man she expects--or did expect to
marry--why, you can't wonder at her looking at it the way she
does. It isn't Vadnie's fault. It's the way she's been raised."
"Well," observed Wally in the manner of delivering an ultimatum,
"excuse ME from any Eastern raising!"
A little later, Phoebe boldly invaded the secret chambers of Good
Indian's heart when he was readjusting the rocks which formed the
floor of the milk-house.
"Now, Grant," she began, laying her hand upon his shoulder as he
knelt before her, straining at a heavy rock, "Mother Hart is
going to give you a little piece of her mind about something
that's none of her business maybe."
"You can give me as many pieces as you like. They're always good
medicine," he assured her. But he kept his head bent so that his
hat quite hid his face from her. "What about?" he asked, a
betraying tenseness in his voice.
"About Vadnie--and you. I notice you don't speak--you haven't
that I've seen, since that day--on the porch. You don't want to
be too hard on her, Grant. Remember she isn't used to such
things. She looks at it different. She's never seen the times,
as I have, where it's kill or be killed. Be patient with her,
Grant--and don't feel hard. She'll get over it. I want," she
stopped because her voice was beginning to shake "--I want my
biggest boy to be happy." Her hand slipped around his neck and
pressed his head against her knee.
Good Indian got up and put his arms around her and held her
close. He did not say anything at all for a minute, but when he
did he spoke very quietly, stroking her hair the while.
"Mother Hart, I stood on the porch and heard what she said in the
kitchen. She accused me of killing Saunders. She said I liked
to kill people; that I shot at her and laughed at the mark I made
on her arm. She called me a savage--an Indian. My mother's
mother was the daughter of a chief. She was a good woman; my
mother was a good woman; just as good as if she had been white.
"Mother Hart, I'm a white man in everything but half my mother's
blood. I don't remember her--but I respect her memory, and I am
not ashamed because she was my mother. Do you think I could
marry a girl who thinks of my mother as something which she must
try to forgive? Do you think I could go to that girl in there
and--and take her in my arms--and love her, knowing that she
feels as she does? She can't even forgive me for killing that
beast!
"She's a beautiful thing--I wanted to have her for my own. I'm a
man. I've a healthy man's hunger for a beautiful woman, but I've
a healthy man's pride as well." He patted the smooth cheek of
the only woman he had ever known as a mother, and stared at the
rough rock wall oozing moisture that drip-dripped to the pool
below.
"I did think I'd go away for awhile," he said after a minute
spent in sober thinking. "But I never dodged yet, and I never
ran. I'm going to stay and see the thing through, now. I don't
know--" he hesitated and then went on. "It may not last; I may
have to suffer after awhile, but standing out there, that day,
listening to her carrying on, kind of--oh, I can't explain it.
But I don't believe I wes half as deep in love as I thought I
was. I don't want to say anything against her; I've no right,
for she's a thousand times better than I am. But she's
different. She never would understand our ways, Mother Hart, or
look at life as we do; some people go through life looking at the
little things that don't matter, and passing by the other, bigger
things. If you keep your eye glued to a microscope long enough,
you're sure to lose the sense of proportion.
"She won't speak to me," he continued after a short silence. "I
tried to talk to her yesterday--"
"But you must remember, the poor child was hysterical that day
when--she went on so. She doesn't know anything about the
realities of life. She doesn't mean to be hard."
"Yesterday," said Grant with an odd little smile, "she was not
hysterical. It seems that--shooting--was the last little weight
that tilted the scale against me. I don't think she ever cared
two whoops for me, to tell you the truth. She's been ashamed of
my Indian blood all along; she said so. And I'm not a good
lover; I neglected her all the while this trouble lasted, and I
paid more attention to Georgie Howard than I did to her--and I
didn't satisfactorily explain about that hair and knife that
Hagar had. And--oh, it isn't the killing, altogether! I guess we
were both a good deal mistaken in our feelings."
"Well, I hope so," sighed Phoebe, wondering secretly at the
decadence of love. An emotion that could burn high and hot in a
week, flare bravely for a like space, and die out with no seared
heart to pay for the extravagance--she shook her head at it.
That was not what she had been taught to call love, and she
wondered how a man and a maid could be mistaken about so vital an
emotion.
"I suppose," she added with unusual sarcasm for her, "you'll be
falling in love with Georgie Howard, next thing anybody knows;
and maybe that will last a week or ten days before you find out
you were MISTAKEN!"
Good Indian gave her one of his quick, sidelong glances.
"She would not be eternally apologizing to herself for liking me,
anyway," he retorted acrimoniously, as if he found it very hard
to forgive Evadna her conscious superiority of race and
upbringing. "Squaw."
"Oh, I haven't a doubt of that!" Phoebe rose to the defense of
her own blood. "I don't know as it's in her to apologize for
anything. I never saw such a girl for going right ahead as if
her way is the only way! Bull-headed, I'd call her." She looked
at Good Indian afterward, studying his face with motherly
solicitude.
"I believe you're half in love with her right now and don't know
it!" she accused suddenly.
Good Indian laughed softly and bent to his work again.
"ARE you, Grant?" Phoebe laid a moist hand on his shoulder, and
felt the muscles sliding smoothly beneath his clothing while he
moved a rock. "I ain't mad because you and Vadnie fell out; I
kind of looked for it to happen. Love that grows like a mushroom
lasts about as long--only _I_ don't call it love! You might tell
me--"
"Tell you what?" But Grant did not look up. "If I don't know it,
I can't tell it." He paused in his lifting and rested his hands
upon his knees, the fingers dripping water back into the spring.
He felt that Phoebe was waiting, and he pressed his lips
together. "Must a man be in love with some woman all the time?"
He shook his fingers impatiently so that the last drops hurried
to the pool.
"She's a good girl, and a brave girl," Phoebe remarked
irrelevantly.
Good Indian felt that she was still waiting, with all the quiet
persistence of her sex when on the trail of a romance. He
reached up and caught the hand upon his shoulder, and laid it
against his cheek. He laughed surrender.
"Squaw-talk-far-off heap smart," he mimicked old Peppajee
gravely. "Heap bueno." He stood up as suddenly as he had
started his rock-lifting a few minutes before, and taking Phoebe
by the shoulders, shook her with gentle insistence. "Put don't
make me fall out of one love right into another," he protested
whimsically. "Give a fellow time to roll a cigarette, can't
you?"