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.”
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 milk-house, 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.Iknow 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 whyIcan'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.
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?Inever 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.