The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  “My best friend told me I’d get shot if I came to Idaho,” she reminded herself, with a melancholy satisfaction.

  “You didn’t get shot,” Grant contradicted for the sake of drawing more sparks of temper where temper seemed quaintly out of place, and stared hard at her drooping profile. “You just got nicely missed; a bullet that only scrapes off a little skin can’t be said to hit. I’d hate to hit a bear like that.”

  “I believe you’re wishing you had killed me! You might at least have some conscience in the matter, and be sorry you shot a lady. But you’re not. You just wish you had murdered me. You hate girls—you said so. And I don’t know what business it is of yours, if I want to play a joke on my cousin, or why you had to be sleeping outside, anyway. I’ve a perfect right to be a ghost if I choose—and I don’t call it nice, or polite, or gentlemanly for you to chase me all over the place with a gun, trying to kill me! I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live. When I say that I mean it. I never liked you from the very start, when I first saw you this afternoon. Now I hate and despise you. I suppose I oughtn’t to expect you to apologize or be sorry because you almost killed me. I suppose that’s just your real nature coming to the surface. Indians love to hurt and torture people! I shouldn’t have expected anything else of you, I suppose. I made the mistake of treating you like a white man.”

  “Don’t you think you’re making another mistake right now?” Grant’s whole attitude changed, as well as his tone. “Aren’t you afraid to push the white man down into the dirt, and raise up—the indian?”

  She cast a swift, half-frightened glance up into his face and the eyes that glowed ominously in the moonlight.

  “When people make the blunder of calling up the Indian,” he went on steadily, “they usually find that they have to deal with—the Indian.”

  Evadna looked at him again, and turned slowly white before her temper surged to the surface again.

  “I didn’t call up the Indian,” she defended hotly; “but if the Indian wants to deal with me according to his nature—why, let him! But you don’t act like other people! I don’t know another man who wouldn’t have been horrified at shooting me, even such a tiny little bit; but you don’t care at all. You never even said you were sorry.”

  “I’m not in the habit of saying all I think and feel.”

  “You were quick enough to apologize, after supper there, when you hadn’t really done anything; and now, when one would expect you to be at least decently sorry, you—you—well, you act like the savage you are! There, now! It may not be nice to say it, but it’s the truth.”

  Grant smiled bitterly. “All men are savages under the skin,” he said. “How do you know what I think and feel? If I fail to come through with the conventional patter, I am called an Indian—because my mother was a half-breed.” He threw up his head proudly, let his eyes rest for a moment upon the moon, swimming through a white river of clouds just over the tall poplar hedge planted long ago to shelter the orchard from the sweeping west winds; and, when he looked down at her again, he caught a glimpse of repentant tears in her eyes, and softened.

  “Oh, you’re a girl, and you demand the usual amount of poor-pussy talk,” he told her maliciously. “So I’m sorry. I’m heartbroken. If it will help any, I’ll even kiss the hurt to make it well—and I’m not a kissing young man, either, let me tell you.”

  “I’d die before I’d let you touch me!” Her repentance, if it was that, changed to pure rage. She snatched the torn sheet from him and turned abruptly toward the fence. He followed her, apparently unmoved by her attitude; placed his foot upon the lower wire and pressed it into the soft earth, lifted the one next above it as high as it would go, and thus made it easier for her to pass through. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, as though tempted to reject even that slight favor, then stooped, and went through.

  As the wires snapped into place, she halted and looked back at him.

  “Maybe I’ve been mean—but you’re been meaner,” she summed up, in self-justification. “I suppose the next thing you will do will be to tell the boys. Well, I don’t care what you do, so long as you never speak to me again. Go and tell them if you want to—tell. Tell, do you hear? I don’t want even the favor of your silence!” She dexterously tucked the bundle of white under the uninjured arm, caught the loose folds of her skirt up in her hands, and ran away up the path, not once stopping to see whether he still followed her.

  Grant did not follow. He stood leaning against the fence-post, and watched her until her flying form grew indistinct in the shade of the poplar hedge; watched it reappear in a broad strip of white moonlight, still running; saw it turn, slacken speed to a walk, and then lose itself in the darkness of the grove.

  Five minutes, ten minutes, he stood there, staring across the level bit of valley lying quiet at the foot of the jagged-rimmed bluff standing boldly up against the star-flecked sky. Then he shook himself impatiently, muttered something which had to do with a “doddering fool,” and retraced his steps quickly through the orchard, the currant bushes, and the strawberry patch, jumped the ditch, and so entered the grove and returned to his blankets.

  “We thought the spook had got yuh, sure.” Gene lifted his head turtlewise and laughed deprecatingly. “We was just about ready to start out after the corpse, only we didn’t know but what you might get excited and take a shot at us in the dark. We heard yuh shoot—what was it? Did you find out?”

  “It wasn’t anything,” said Grant shortly, tugging at a boot.

  “Ah—there was, too! What was it you shot at?” Clark joined in the argument from the blackness under the locust tree.

  “The moon,” Grant told him sullenly. “There wasn’t anything else that I could see.”

  “And that’s a lie,” Gene amended, with the frankness of a foster-brother. “Something yelled like—”

  “You never heard a screech-owl before, did you, Gene?” Grant crept between his blankets and snuggled down, as if his mind held nothing more important than sleep.

  “Screech-owl my granny! You bumped into something you couldn’t handle—if you want to know what I think about it,” Clark guessed shrewdly. “I wish now I’d taken the trouble to hunt the thing down; it didn’t seem worth while getting up. But I leave it to Gene if you ain’t mad enough to murder whatever it was. What was it?”

  He waited a moment without getting a reply.

  “Well, keep your teeth shut down on it, then, darn yuh!” he growled. “That’s the Injun of it—I know you! Screech-owl—huh! You said when you left it was an Indian—and that’s why we didn’t take after it ourselves. We don’t want to get the whole bunch down on us like they are on you—and if there was one acting up around here, we knew blamed well it was on your account for what happened today. I guess you found out, all right. I knew the minute you heaved in sight that you was just about as mad as you can get—and that’s saying a whole lot. If it was an Indian, and you killed him, you better let us—”

  “Oh, for the lord’s sake, will you shut up!” Grant raised to an elbow, glared a moment, and lay down again.

  The result proved the sort of fellow he was. Clark shut up without even trailing off into mumbling to himself, as was his habit when argument brought him defeat.

  CHAPTER VII

  MISS GEORGIE HOWARD, OPERATOR

  “Where is the delightful Mr. Good Indian off to?” Evadna stopped drumming upon the gatepost and turned toward the person she heard coming up behind her, who happened to be Gene. He stopped to light a match upon the gate and put his cigarette to work before he answered her; and Evadna touched tentatively the wide, blue ribbon wound round her arm and tied in a bow at her elbow, and eyed him guardedly.

  “Straight up, he told me,” Gene answered sourly. “He’s sore over something that happened last night, and he didn’t seem to have any talk to give away this morning. He can go to the dickens, for all I care.”

  “What—happened last night?” Evadna wore her Christmas-angel expression; an
d her tone was the sweet, insipid tone of childlike innocence.

  Gene hesitated. It seemed a sheer waste of opportunity to tell her the truth when she would believe a falsehood just as readily; but, since the truth happened to be quite as improbable as a lie, he decided to speak it.

  “There was a noise when the moon had just come up—didn’t you hear it? The ghost I told you about. Good Injun went after it with a gun, and I guess they mixed, all right, and he got the worst of it. He was sure on the fight when he came back, and he’s pulled out this morning—”

  “Do you mean to tell me—did you see it, really?”

  “Well, you ask Clark, when you see him,” Gene hinted darkly. “You just ask him what was in the grove last night. Ask him what he heard.” He moved closer, and laid his hand impressively upon her arm. Evadna winced perceptibly. “What yuh jumping for? You didn’t see anything, did you?”

  “No; but—was there really something?” Evadna freed herself as unobtrusively as possible, and looked at him with wide eyes.

  “You ask Clark. He’ll tell you—maybe. Good Injun’s scared clean off the ranch—you can see that for yourself. He said he couldn’t be hired to spend another night here. He thinks it’s a bad sign. That’s the Injun of it. They believe in spirits and signs and things.”

  Evadna turned thoughtful. “And didn’t he tell you what he—that is, if he found out—you said he went after it—”

  “He wouldn’t say a blamed thing about it,” Gene complained sincerely. “He said there wasn’t anything—he told us it was a screech-owl.”

  “Oh!” Evadna gave a sigh of relief. “Well, I’m going to ask Clark what it was—I’m just crazy about ghost stories, only I never would dare leave the house after dark if there are funny noises and things, really. I think you boys must be the bravest fellows, to sleep out there—without even your mother with you!”

  She smiled the credulous smile of ignorant innocence and pulled the gate open.

  “Jack promised to take me up to Hartley today,” she explained over her shoulder. “When I come back, you’ll show me just where it was, won’t you, Gene? You don’t suppose it would walk in the grove in the daytime, do you? Because I’m awfully fond of the grove, and I do hope it will be polite enough to confine its perambulations entirely to the conventional midnight hour.”

  Gene did not make any reply. Indeed, he seemed wholly absorbed in staring after her and wondering just how much or how little of it she meant.

  Evadna looked back, midway between the gate and the stable, and, when she saw him standing exactly as she had left him, she waved her hand and smiled. She was still smiling when she came up to where Jack was giving those last, tentative twitches and pats which prove whether a saddle is properly set and cinched; and she would not say what it was that amused her. All the way up the grade, she smiled and grew thoughtful by turns; and, when Jack mentioned the fact that Good Indian had gone off mad about something, she contented herself with the simple, unqualified statement that she was glad of it.

  Grant’s horse dozed before the store, and Grant himself sat upon a bench in the narrow strip of shade on the porch. Evadna, therefore, refused absolutely to dismount there, though her errand had been a post-office money order. Jack was already on the ground when she made known her decision; and she left him in the middle of his expostulations and rode on to the depot. He followed disapprovingly afoot; and, when she brought her horse to a stand, he helped her from the saddle, and took the bridle reins with an air of weary tolerance.

  “When you get ready to go home, you can come to the store,” he said bluntly. “Huckleberry wouldn’t stand here if you hog-tied him. Just remember that if you ever ride up here alone—it might save you a walk back. And say,” he added, with a return of his good-natured grin, “it looks like you and Good Injun didn’t get acquainted yesterday. I thought I saw mum give him an introduction to you—but I guess I made a mistake. When you come to the store, don’t let me forget, and I’ll do it myself.”

  “Oh, thank you, Jack—but it isn’t necessary,” chirped Evadna, and left him with the smile which he had come to regard with vague suspicion of what it might hide of her real feelings.

  Two squaws sat cross-legged on the ground in the shade of the little red depot; and them she passed by hastily, her eyes upon them watchfully until she was well upon the platform and was being greeted joyfully by Miss Georgie Howard, then in one of her daily periods of intense boredom.

  “My, my, but you’re an angel of deliverance—and by rights you should have a pair of gauze wings, just to complete the picture,” she cried, leading her inside and pushing her into a beribboned wicker rocker. “I was just getting desperate enough to haul in those squaws out there and see if I couldn’t teach ’em whist or something.” She sat down and fingered her pompadour absently. “And that sure would have been interesting,” she added musingly.

  “Don’t let me interrupt you,” Evadna began primly. “I only came for a money order—Aunt Phoebe’s sending for—”

  “Never mind what you came for,” Miss Georgie cut in decisively, and laughed. “The express agent is out. You can’t get your order till we’ve had a good talk and got each other tagged mentally—only I’ve tagged you long ago.”

  “I thought you were the express agent. Aunt Phoebe said—”

  “Nice, truthful Aunt Phoebe! I am, but I’m out—officially. I’m several things, my dear; but, for the sake of my own dignity and self-respect, I refuse to be more than one of them at a time. When I sell a ticket to Shoshone, I’m the ticket agent, and nothing else. Telegrams, I’m the operator. At certain times I’m the express agent. I admit it. But this isn’t one of the times.”

  She stopped and regarded her visitor with whimsical appraisement. “You’ll wait till the agent returns, won’t you?” And added, with a grimace: “You won’t be in the way—I’m not anything official right now. I’m a neighbor, and this is my parlor—you see, I planted you on that rug, with the books at your elbow, and that geranium also; and you’re in the rocker, so you’re really and truly in my parlor. I’m over the line myself, and you’re calling on me. Sabe? That little desk by the safe is the express office, and you can see for yourself that the agent is out.”

  “Well, upon my word!” Evadna permitted herself that much emotional relief. Then she leaned her head against the cherry-colored head-rest tied to the chair with huge, cherry-colored bows, and took a deliberate survey of the room.

  It was a small room, as rooms go. One corner was evidently the telegraph office, for it held a crude table, with the instruments clicking spasmodically, form pads, letter files, and mysterious things which piqued her curiosity. Over it was a railroad map and a makeshift bulletin board, which seemed to give the time of certain trains. And small-paned windows gave one sitting before the instruments an unobstructed view up and down the track. In the corner behind the door was a small safe, with door ajar, and a desk quite as small, with, “Express Office: Hours, 8 A.M. to 6 P.M.” on a card above it.

  Under a small window opening upon the platform was another little table, with indications of occasional ticket-selling upon it. And in the end of the room where she sat were various little adornments—“art” calendars, a few books, fewer potted plants, a sewing-basket, and two rugs upon the floor, with a rocker for each. Also there was a tiny, square table, with a pack of cards scattered over it.

  “Exactly. You have it sized up correctly, my dear.” Miss Georgie Howard nodded her—head three times, and her eyes were mirthful. “It’s a game. I made it a game. I had to, in self-defense. Otherwise—” She waved a hand conspicuous for its white plumpness and its fingers tapering beautifully to little, pink nails immaculately kept. “I took at the job and the place just as it stands, without anything in the way of mitigation. Can you see yourself holding it down for longer than a week? I’ve been here a month.”

  “I think,” Evadna ventured, “it must be fun.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s fun—if you make fun of it. Ho
wever, before we settle down for a real visit, I’ve a certain duty to perform, if you will excuse my absence for a moment. Incidentally,” she added, getting lazily out of the chair, “it will illustrate just how I manage my system.”

  Her absence was purely theoretical. She stepped off the rug, went to the “express office,” and took a card from the desk. When she had stood it upright behind the inkwell, Evadna read in large, irregular capitals:

  “OUT. WILL BE BACK LATER.”

  Miss Georgie Howard paid no attention to the little giggle which went with the reading, but stepped across to the ticket desk and to the telegraph table, and put similar cards on display. Then she came back to the rug, plumped down in her rocker with a sigh of relief, and reached for a large, white box—the five pounds of chocolates which she had sent for.

  “I never eat candy when I’m in the office,” she observed soberly. “I consider it unprofessional. Help yourself as liberally as your digestion will stand—and for Heaven’s sake, gossip a little! Tell me all about that bunch of nifty lads I see cavorting around the store occasionally—and especially about the polysyllabic gentleman who seems to hang out at the Peaceful Hart ranch. I’m terribly taken with him. He—excuse me, chicken. There’s a fellow down the line hollering his head off. Wait till I see what he wants.”

  Again she left the rug, stepped to the telegraph instrument, and fingered the key daintily until she had, with the other hand, turned down the “out” card. Then she threw the switch, rattled an impatient reply, and waited, listening to the rapid clicking of the sounder. Her eyes and her mouth hardened as she read.

  “Cad!” she gritted under her breath. Her fingers were spiteful as they clicked the key in answer. She slammed the current off, set up the “out” notice again, kicked the desk chair against the wall, and came back to the “parlor” breathing quickly.