by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER XIX. EVADNA GOES CALLING
"I have every reason to believe that your two missing jumpers tookthe train for Shoshone last night," Miss Georgie made answer toGood Indian's account of what had happened since he saw her. "Twofurtive-eyed individuals answering your description bought round-triptickets and had me flag sixteen for them. They got on, all right. I sawthem. And if they got off before the next station they must have landedon their heads, because Sixteen was making up time and Shorty pulled thethrottle wide open at the first yank, I should judge, from the way hejumped out of town. I've been expecting some of them to go and do theirfiling stunt--and if the boys have begun to devil them any, the chancesare good that they'd take turns at it, anyway. They'd leave someonealways on the ground, that's a cinch.
"And Saunders," she went on rapidly, "returned safe enough. He sneakedin just before I closed the office last night, and asked for a telegram.There wasn't any, and he sneaked out again and went to bed--so Pete toldme this morning. And most of the Indians have pulled out--squaws, dogs,papooses, and all--on some fishing or hunting expedition. I don't knowthat it has anything to do with your affairs, or would even interestyou, though. And there has been no word from Peaceful, and they can'tpossibly get back now till the four-thirty--five.
"And that's all I can tell you, Mr. Imsen," she finished crisply, andtook up a novel with a significance which not even the dullest man couldhave ignored.
Good Indian stared, flushed hotly, and made for the door.
"Thank you for the information. I'm afraid this has been a lot of botherfor you," he said stiffly, gave her a ceremonious little bow, and wenthis way stiff-necked and frowning.
Miss Georgie leaned forward so that she could see him through thewindow. She watched him cross to the store, go up the three rough stepsto the platform, and disappear into the yawning blackness beyond thewide-open door.
She did not open the novel and begin reading, even then. She dabbed herhandkerchief at her eyes, muttered: "My Heavens, what a fool!" aproposof nothing tangible, and stared dully out at the forlorn waste ofcinders with rows of shining rails running straight across it upon tieshalf sunken in the black desolation, and at the red abominationwhich was the pump-house squatting beside the dripping tank, the pumpbreathing asthmatically as it labored to keep the sliding watergauge from standing at the figure which meant reproach for the grimyattendant.
"What a fool--what a fool!" she repeated at the end of ten moodyminutes. Then she threw the novel into a corner of the room, set herlower jaw into the square lines of stubbornness, went over to thesleeping telegraph instrument which now and then clicked and twitteredin its sleep, called up Shoshone, and commanded the agent there tosend down a quart freezer of ice cream, a banana cake, and all the latemagazines he could find, including--especially including--the alleged"funny" ones.
"You certainly--are--the prize--fool!" she said, when she switchedoff the current, and she said it with vicious emphasis. Whereupon sherecovered the novel, seated herself determinedly in the beribbonedrocker, flipped the leaves of the book spitefully until she found onewhich had a corner turned down, and read a garden-party chapter much asshe used to study her multiplication table when she was ten and hatedarithmetic.
A freight was announced over the wire, arrived with a great wheezing andsnorting, which finally settled to a rhythmic gasping of the air pump,while a few boxes of store supplies were being dumped unceremoniouslyupon the platform. Miss Georgie was freight agent as well as many otherthings, and she went out and stood bareheaded in the sun to watch theunloading.
She performed, with the unthinking precision which comes of longpractice, the many little duties pertaining to her several offices, andwhen the wheels began once more to clank, and she had waved her handto the fireman, the brakeman, and the conductor, and had seen the dirtyflags at the rear of the swaying caboose flap out of sight around thelow, sage-covered hill, she turned rather dismally to the parlor endof the office, and took up the book with her former air of grimdetermination. So for an hour, perhaps.
"Is Miss Georgie Howard at home?" It was Evadna standing in the doorway,her indigo eyes fixed with innocent gayety--which her mouth somehowfailed to meet halfway in mirth--upon the reader.
"She is, chicken, and overjoyed at the sight of you!" Miss Georgierose just as enthusiastically as if she had not seen Evadna slip fromHuckleberry's back, fuddle the tie-rope into what looked like a knot,and step lightly upon the platform. She had kept her head down--had MissGeorgie--until the last possible second, because she was still being afool and had permitted a page of her book to fog before her eyes. Therewas no fog when she pushed Evadna into the seat of honor, however, andher mouth abetted her eyes in smiling.
"Everything at the ranch is perfectly horrid," Evadna complainedpathetically, leaning back in the rocking-chair. "I'd just as soon beshut up in a graveyard. You can't IMAGINE what it's like, Georgie,since those horrible men came and camped around all over the place! Allyesterday afternoon and till dark, mind you, the boys were down thereshooting at everything but the men, and they began to shoot back, andAunt Phoebe was afraid the boys would be hit, and so we all went downand--oh, it was awful! If Grant hadn't come home and stopped them,everybody would have been murdered. And you should have heard how theyswore at Grant afterward! They just called him everything they couldthink of for making them stop. I had to sit around on the other side ofthe house--and even then I couldn't help hearing most of it.
"And to-day it is worse, because they just go around like a lotof dummies and won't do anything but look mean. Aunt Phoebe was socross--CROSS, mind you!--because I burnt the jam. And some of thejumpers are missing, and nobody knows where they went--and Marie has gotthe toothache worse than ever, and won't go and have it pulled becauseit will HURT! I don't see how it can hurt much worse than it doesnow--she just goes around with tears running down into the flannelaround her face till I could SHAKE her!" Evadna laughed--a self-pityinglaugh, and rocked her small person violently. "I wish I could have anoffice and live in it and telegraph things to people," she sighed, andlaughed again most adorably at her own childishness. "But really andtruly, it's enough to drive a person CRAZY, down at the ranch!"
"For a girl with a brand-new sweetheart--" Miss Georgie reprovedquizzically, and reached for the inevitable candy box.
"A lot of good that does, when he's never there!" flashed Evadna,unintentionally revealing her real grievance. "He just eats andgoes--and he isn't even there to eat, half the time. And when he'sthere, he's grumpy, like all the rest." She was saying the things shehad told herself, on the way up, that she would DIE rather than say; toMiss Georgie, of all people.
"I expect he's pretty worried, chicken, over that land business."Miss Georgie offered her candy, and Evadna waved the box from herimpatiently, as if her spirits were altogether too low for sweets.
"Well, I'm very sure I'M not to blame for those men being there," sheretorted petulantly. "He"--she hesitated, and then plunged heedlesslyon--"he acts just as if I weren't anybody at all. I'm sure, if heexpects me to be a doll to be played with and then dumped into a cornerwhere I'm to smile and smile until he comes and picks me up again--"
"Now, chicken, what's the use of being silly?" Miss Georgie turned herhead slightly away, and stared out of the window. "He's worried, I tellyou, and instead of sulking because he doesn't stay and make love--"
"Well, upon my word! Just as if I wanted--"
"You really ought to help him by being kind and showing a littlesympathy, instead--"
"It appears that the supply of sympathy--"
"Instead of making it harder for him by feeling neglected and lettinghim see that you do. My Heavens above!" Miss Georgie faced her suddenlywith pink cheeks. "When a man is up against a problem--and carries hislife in his hand--"
"You don't know a thing about it!" Evadna stopped rocking, and sat upvery straight in the chair. "And even if that were true, is that anyreason why he should AVOID me? I'M not threatening his life!"
"H
e doesn't avoid you. And you're acting sillier than I ever supposedyou could. He can't be in two places at once, can he? Now, let's besensible, chicken. Grant--"
"Oh--h!" There was a peculiar, sliding inflection upon that word, whichmade Miss Georgie's hand shut into a fist.
"Grant"--Miss Georgie put a defiant emphasis upon it--"is doing all hecan to get to the bottom of that jumping business. There's somethingcrooked about it, and he knows it, and is trying to--"
"I know all that." Evadna interrupted without apology.
"Well, of course, if you DO--then I needn't tell you how silly it is foryou to complain of being neglected, when you know his time is all takenup with trying to ferret out a way to block their little game. He feelsin a certain sense responsible--"
"Yes, I know. He thinks he should have been watching somebody orsomething instead of--of being with me. He took the trouble to make thatclear to me, at least!" Evadna's eyes were very blue and very bright,but there was no look of an angel in her face.
Miss Georgie pressed her lips together tightly for a minute. When shespoke, she was cheerfully impersonal as to tone and manner.
"Chicken, you're a little goose. The man is simply crazy about you, andharassed to death with this ranch business. Once that's settled--well,you'll see what sort of a lover he can be!"
"Thank you so much for holding out a little hope and encouragement, mydear!" Evadna, by the way, looked anything but thankful; indeed, sheseemed to resent the hope and the encouragement as a bit of unwarrantedimpertinence. She glanced toward the door as if she meditated animmediate departure, but ended by settling back in the chair andbeginning to rock again.
"It's a nasty, underhand business from start to finish," said MissGeorgie, ignoring the remark. "It has upset everybody--me included, andI'm sure it isn't my affair. It's just one of those tricky cases thatyou know is rotten to the core, and yet you can't seem to get holdof anything definite. My dad had one or two experiences with oldBaumberger--and if ever there was a sly old mole of a man, he's one.
"Did you ever take after a mole, chicken? They used to get in our gardenat home. They burrow underneath the surface, you know, and one neversees them. You can tell by the ridge of loose earth that they'rethere, and if you think you've located Mr. Mole, and jab a stickdown, why--he's somewhere else, nine times in ten. I used to call themBaumbergers, even then. Dad," she finished reminiscently, "was alwaysjabbing his law stick down where the earth seemed to move--but he neverlocated old Baumberger, to my knowledge."
She stopped, because Evadna, without a shadow of doubt, was lookingbored. Miss Georgie regarded her with the frown she used when she wasapplying her mental measuring-stick. She began to suspect that Evadnawas, after all, an extremely self-centered little person; she wassorry for the suspicion, and she was also conscious of a certaindisappointment which was not altogether for herself.
"Ah, well"--she dismissed analysis and the whole subject with a laughthat was partly yawn--"away with dull care. Away with dull everything.It's too hot to think or feel. A real emotion is as superfluous andoppressive as a--a 'camel petticoat!" This time her laugh was real andinfectiously carefree. "Take off your hat, chicken. I'll go beg a hunkof ice from my dear friend Peter, and make some lemonade as is lemonade;or claret punch, if you aren't a blue ribboner, or white-ribboner, orsome other kind of a good-ribboner." Miss Georgie hated herself forsliding into sheer flippancy, but she preferred that extreme to theother, and she could not hold her ground just then at the "happymedium."
Evadna, however, seemed to disapprove of the flippancy. She did not takeoff her hat, and she stated evenly that she must go, and that she reallydid not care for lemonade, or claret punch, either.
"What, in Heaven's name, DO you care for--besides yourself?" flared MissGeorgie, quite humanly exasperated. "There, chicken--the heat alwaysturns me snappy," she repented instantly. "Please pinch me." She heldout a beautiful, tapering forearm, and smiled.
"I'm the snappy one," said Evadna, but she did not smile as she begandrawing on her gauntlets slowly and deliberately.
If she were waiting for Miss Georgie to come back to the subject ofGrant, she was disappointed, for Miss Georgie did not come to anysubject whatever. A handcar breezed past the station, the foursection-men pumping like demons because of the slight down grade andtheir haste for their dinner.
Huckleberry gave one snort and one tug backward upon the tie rope andthen a coltish kick into the air when he discovered that he wasfree. After that, he took off through the sagebrush at a lope, tooworldly-wise to follow the trail past the store, where someone mightrush out and grab him before he could dodge away. He was a wise littlepinto--Huckleberry.
"And now, I suppose I'll have the pleasure of walking home," grumbledEvadna, standing upon the platform and gazing, with much self-pity,after her runaway.
"It's noon--stay and eat dinner with me, chicken. Some of the boys willbring him back after you the minute he gets to the ranch. It's too hotto walk." Miss Georgie laid a hand coaxingly upon her arm.
But Evadna was in her mood of perversity. She wouldn't stay to dinner,because Aunt Phoebe would be expecting her. She wouldn't wait forHuckleberry to be brought back to her, because she would never hear thelast of it. She didn't mind the heat the least bit, and she would walk.And no, she wouldn't borrow Miss Georgie's parasol; she hated parasols,and she always had and always would. She gathered up her riding-skirt,and went slowly down the steps.
Miss Georgie could be rather perverse herself upon occasion. She waiteduntil Evadna was crunching cinders under her feet before she spokeanother word, and then she only called out a flippant, "Adios,senorita!"
Evadna knew no Spanish at all. She lifted her shoulders in what might bedisdain, and made no reply whatever.
"Little idiot!" gritted Miss Georgie--and this time she was not speakingof herself.