by B. M. Bower
“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 the 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 you 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.