by B. M. Bower
“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 today, 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 porc
h 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 he 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 bueno1 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?”
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 milk-house.
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, a
nd 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.