by B. M. Bower
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 today 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-that-coughs, 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.