by Bower, B M
"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. Mebbys
o 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.
CHAPTER XXV. "I'D JUST AS SOON HANG FOR NINE MEN AS FOR ONE"
Baumberger climbed heavily out of the rig, and went lurching drunkenly up the path to the house where the cool shade of the grove was like paradise set close against the boundary of the purgatory of blazing sunshine and scorching sand. He had not gone ten steps from the stable when he met Good Indian face to face.
"Hullo," he growled, stopping short and eying him malevolently with lowered head.
Good Indian's lips curled silently, and he stepped aside to pursue his way. Baumberger swung his huge body toward him.
"I said HULLO. Nothin' wrong in that, is there? HULLO—d'yuh hear?"
"Go to the devil!" said Grant shortly.
Baumberger leered at him offensively. "Pretty Polly! Never learned but one set uh words in his life. Can't yuh say anything but 'Go to the devil!' when a man speaks to yuh? Hey?"
"I could say a whole lot that you wouldn't be particularly glad to hear." Good Indian stopped, and faced him, coldly angry. For one thing, he knew that Evadna was waiting on the porch for him, and could see even if she could not hear; and Baumberger's attitude was insulting. "I think," he said meaningly, "I wouldn't press the point if I were you."
"Giving me advice, hey? And who the devil are you?"
"I wouldn't ask, if I were you. But if you really want to know, I'm the fellow you hired Saunders to shoot. You blundered that time. You should have picked a better man, Mr. Baumberger. Saunders couldn't have hit the side of a barn if he'd been locked inside it. You ought to have made sure—"
Baumberger glared at him, and then lunged, his eyes like an animal gone mad.
"I'll make a better job, then!" he bellowed. "Saunders was a fool. I told him to get down next the trail and make a good job of it. I told him to kill you, you lying, renegade Injun—and if he couldn't, I can! Yuh WILL watch me, hey?"
Good Indian backed from him in sheer amazement. Epithets unprintable poured in a stream from the loose, evil lips. Baumberger was a raving beast of a man. He would have torn the other to pieces and reveled in the doing. He bellowed forth threats against Good Indian and the Harts, young and old, and vaunted rashly the things he meant to do. Heat-mad and drink-mad he was, and it was as if the dam of his wily amiability had broken and let loose the whole vile reservoir of his pirate mind. He tried to strike Good Indian down where he stood, and when his blows were parried he stopped, swayed a minute in drunken uncertainty, and then make one of his catlike motions, pulled a gun, and fired without really taking aim.
Another gun spoke then, and Baumberger collapsed in the sand, a quivering heap of gross human flesh. Good Indian stood and looked down at him fixedly while the smoke floated away from the muzzle of his own gun. He heard Evadna screaming hysterically at the gate, and looked over there inquiringly. Phoebe was running toward him, and the boys—Wally and Gene and Jack, from the blacksmith shop. At the corner of the stable Miss Georgie was sliding from her saddle, her riding whip clenched tightly in her hand as she hurried to him. Peaceful stood beside the team, with the lines still in his hand.
It was Miss Georgie's words which reached him clearly.
"You just HAD to do it, Grant. I saw the whole thing. You HAD to."
"Oh, Grant—GRANT! What have you done? What have you done?" That was Phoebe Hart, saying the same thing over and over with a queer, moaning inflection in her voice.
"D'yuh KILL him?" Gene shouted excitedly, as he ran up to the spot.
"Yes." Good Indian glanced once more at the heap before him. "And I'm liable to kill a few more before I'm through with the deal." He swung short around, discovered that Evadna was clutching his arm and crying, and pulled loose from her with a gesture of impatience. With the gun still in his hand, he walked quickly down the road in the direction of the garden.
"He's mad! The boy is mad! He's going to kill—" Phoebe gave a sob, and ran after him, and with her went Miss Georgie and Evadna, white-faced, all three of them.
"Come on, boys—he's going to clean out the whole bunch!" whooped Gene.
"Oh, choke off!" Wally gritted disgustedly, glancing over his shoulder at them. "Go back to the house, and STAY there! Ma, make Vad quit that yelling, can't yuh?" He looked eloquently at Jack, keeping pace with him and smiling with the steely glitter in his eyes. "Women make me sick!" he snorted under his breath.
Peaceful stared after them, went into the stable, and got a blanket to throw over Baumberger's inert body, stooped, and made sure that the man was dead, with the left breast of his light negligee shirt all blackened with powder and soaked with blood; covered him well, and tied up the team. Then he went to the house, and got the old rifle that had killed Indians and buffalo alike, and went quickly through the grove to the garden. He was a methodical man, and he was counted slow, but nevertheless he reached the scene not much behind the others. Wally was trying to send his mother to the house with Evadna, and neither would go. Miss Georgie was standing near Good Indian, watching Stanley with her lips pressed together.
It is doubtful if Good Indian realized what the others were doing. He had gone straight past the line of stakes to where Stanley was sitting with his back against the lightning-stricken apricot tree. Stanley was smoking a cigarette as if he had heard nothing of the excitement, but his rifle was resting upon his knee in such a manner that he had but to lift it and take aim. The three others were upon their own claims, and they, also, seemed unobtrusively ready for whatever might be going to happen.
Good Indian appraised the situation with a quick glance as he came up, but he did not slacken his pace until he was within ten feet of Stanley.
"You're across the dead line, m' son," said Stanley, with lazy significance. "And you, too," he added, flickering a glance at Miss Georgie.
"The dead line," said Good Indian coolly, "is beyond the Point o' Rocks. I'd like to see you on the other side by sundown."
Stanley looked him over, from the crown of his gray hat to the tips of his riding-boots, and laughed when his eyes came back to Good Indian'
s face. But the laugh died out rather suddenly at what he saw there.
"Got the papers for that?" he asked calmly. But his jaw had squared.
"I've got something better than papers. Your boss is dead. I shot him just now. He's lying back there by the stable." Good Indian tilted his head backward, without taking his eyes from Stanley's face—and Stanley's right hand, too, perhaps. "If you don't want the same medicine, I'd advise you to quit."
Stanley's jaw dropped, but it was surprise which slackened the muscles.
"You—shot—"
"Baumberger. I said it."
"You'll hang for that," Stanley stated impersonally, without moving.
Good Indian smiled, but it only made his face more ominous.
"Well, they can't hang a man more than once. I'll see this ranch cleaned up while I'm about it. I'd just as soon," he added composedly, "be hanged for nine men as for one."
Stanley sat on his haunches, and regarded him unwinkingly for so long that Phoebe's nerves took a panic, and she drew Evadna away from the place. The boys edged closer, their hands resting suggestively upon their gun-butts. Old Peaceful half-raised his rifle, and held it so. It was like being compelled to watch a fuse hiss and shrivel and go black toward a keg of gun-powder.
"I believe, by heck, you would!" said Stanley at last, and so long a time had elapsed that even Good Indian had to think back to know what he meant. Stanley squinted up at the sun, hitched himself up so that his back rested against the tree more comfortably, inspected his cigarette, and then fumbled for a match with which to relight it. "How'd you find out Baumberger was back uh this deal?" he asked curiously and without any personal resentment in tone or manner, and raked the match along his thigh.
Good Indian's shoulders went up a little.
"I knew, and that's sufficient. The dead line is down past the Point o' Rocks. After sundown this ranch is going to hold the Harts and their friends—and NO ONE ELSE. Tell that to your pals, unless you've got a grudge against them!"
