by B. M. Bower
“By the way, is there any pay dirt on that ranch?” Miss Georgie kept herself rigidly to the main subject.
“No, there isn’t. Not,” he added dryly, “unless it has grown gold in the last few years. There are colors, of course. All this country practically can show colors, but pay dirt? No!”
“Look out,” she advised him slowly, “that pay dirt doesn’t grow over night! Sabe?”
Good Indian’s eyes spoke admiration of her shrewdness.
“I must be getting stupid, not to have thought of that,” he said.
“Can’t give me credit for being ’heap smart’?” she bantered. “Can’t even let me believe I thought of something beyond the ken of the average person? Not,” she amended ironically, “that I consider you an average person! Would you mind”—she became suddenly matter of fact—“waiting here while I go and rummage for a book I want? I’m almost sure I have one on mining laws. Daddy had a good deal of that in his business, being in a mining country. We’ve got to know just where we stand, it seems to me, because Baumberger’s going to use the laws himself, and it’s with the law we’ve got to fight him.”
She had to go first and put a stop to the hysterical chattering of the sounder by answering the summons. It proved to be a message for Baumberger, and she wrote it down in a spiteful scribble which left it barely legible.
“Betraying professional secrets, but I don’t care,” she exclaimed, turning swiftly toward him. “Listen to this:
“‘How’s fishing? Landed the big one yet? Ready for fry?”’
She threw it down upon the table with a pettish gesture that was wholly feminine. “Sounds perfectly innocent, doesn’t it? Too perfectly innocent, if you ask me.” She stared out of the window abstractedly, her brows pinched together and her lips pursed with a corner between her teeth, much as she had stared after Baumberger the day before; and when she spoke she seemed to have swung her memory back to him then.
“He came up yesterday—with fish for Pete, he said, and of course he really did have some—and sent a wire to Shoshone. I found it on file when I came back. That was perfectly innocent, too. It was:
“‘Expect to land big one tonight. Plenty of small fry. Smooth trail.’
“I’ve an excellent memory, you see.” She laughed shortly. “Well, I’ll go and hunt up that book, and we’ll proceed to glean the wisdom of the serpent, so that we won’t be compelled to remain as harmless as the dove! You won’t mind waiting here?”
He assured her that he would not mind in the least, and she ran out bareheaded into the hot sunlight. Good Indian leaned forward a little in his chair so that he could watch her running across to the shack where she had a room or two, and he paid her the compliment of keeping her in his thoughts all the time she was gone. He felt, as he had done with Peppajee, that he had not known Miss Georgie at all until today, and he was a bit startled at what he was finding her to be.
“Of course,” she laughed, when she rustled in again like a whiff of fresh air, “I had to go clear to the bottom of the last trunk I looked in. Lucky I only have three to my name, for it would have been in the last one just the same, if I’d had two dozen and had ransacked them all. But I found it, thank Heaven!”
She came eagerly up to him—he was sitting in the beribboned rocker dedicated to friendly callers, and had the rug badly rumpled with his spurs, which he had forgotten to remove—and with a sweep of her forearm she cleared the little table of novel, newspaper, and a magazine and deck of cards, and barely saved her box of chocolates from going bottom up on the floor.
“Like candy? Help yourself, if you do,” she said, and tucked a piece into her mouth absent-mindedly before she laid the leather-bound book open on the table. “Now, we’ll see what information Mr. Copp can give us. He’s a high authority—General Land Office Commissioner, if you please. He’s a few years old—several years old, for that matter—but I don’t think he’s out of date; I believe what he says still goes. M-m-m!—‘Liens on Mines’—‘Clause Inserted in Patents’—‘Affidavits Taken Without Notice to Opposing’—oh, it must be here—it’s got to be here!”
She was running a somewhat sticky forefinger slowly down the index pages. “It isn’t alphabetically arranged, which I consider sloppy of Mr. Copp. Ah-h! ’Minerals Discovered After Patent Has Issued to Agricultural Claimant’—two hundred and eight. We’ll just take a look at that first. That’s what they’re claiming, you know.” She hitched her chair closer, and flipped the leaves eagerly. When she found the page, they touched heads over it, though Miss Georgie read aloud.
“Oh, it’s a letter—but it’s a decision, and as such has weight. U-m!
“SIR: In reply to your letter of inquiry. . . I have to state that all mineral deposits discovered on land after United States Patent therefor has issued to a party claiming under the laws regulating the disposal of agricultural lands, pass with the patent, and this office has no further jurisdiction in the premise. Very respectfully,”
“‘Pass with the patent!’” Miss Georgie turned her face so that she could look into Grant’s eyes, so close to her own. “Old Peaceful must surely have his patent—Baumberger can’t be much of a lawyer, do you think? Because that’s a flat statement. There’s no chance for any legal quibbling in that—is there?”
“That’s about as straight as he could put it,” Good Indian agreed, his face losing a little of its anxiety.
“Well, we’ll just browse along for more of the same,” she suggested cheerfully, and went back to the index. But first she drew a lead pencil from where it had been stabbed through her hair, and marked the letter with heavy brackets, wetting the lead on her tongue for emphasis.
“‘Agricultural Claimants Entitled to Full Protection,’” she read hearteningly from the index, and turned hastily to see what was to be said about it. It happened to be another decision rendered in a letter, and they jubilated together over the sentiment conveyed therein.
“Now, here is what I was telling you, Grant,” she said suddenly, after another long minute of studying silently the index. “‘Eight Locaters of Placer Ground May Convey to One Party’—and Baumberger’s certainly that party!—‘Who Can Secure Patent for One Hundred and Sixty Acres.’ We’ll just read up on that, and find out for sure what the conditions are. Now, here”—she had found the page quickly—“listen to this:
“‘I have to state that if eight bona-fide locaters’
(“Whether they’re that remains to be proven, Mr. Baumberger!”)
‘each having located twenty acres, in accordance with the congressional rules and regulations, should convey all their right, title, and interest in said locations to one person, such person might apply for a patent—’
“And so on into tiresomeness. Really, I’m beginning to think Baumberger’s awfully stupid, to even attempt such a silly thing. He hasn’t a legal leg to stand on. ’Goes with the patent’—that sounds nice to me. They’re not locating in good faith—those eight jumpers down there.” She fortified herself with another piece of candy. “All you need,” she declared briskly, “is a good lawyer to take this up and see it through.”
“You seem to be doing pretty well,” he remarked, his eyes dwelling rather intently upon her face, and smiling as they did so.
“I can read what’s in the book,” she remarked lightly, her eyes upon its pages as if she were consciously holding them from meeting his look. “But it will take a lawyer to see the case through the courts. And let me tell you one thing very emphatically.” She looked at him brightly. “Many a case as strong as this has been lost, just by legal quibbling and ignorance of how to handle it properly. Many a case without a leg to stand on has been won, by smooth work on the part of some lawyer. Now, I’ll just jot down what they’ll have to do, and prove, if they get that land—and look here, Mr. Man, here’s another thing to consider. Maybe Baumberger doesn’t expect to get a patent. Maybe he means to make old Peaceful so deucedly sick of the thing that he’ll sell out cheap rather than fight the t
hing to a finish. Because this can be appealed, and taken up and up, and reopened because of some technical error—oh, as Jenny Wren says in—in—”
“‘Our Mutual Friend?’” Good Indian suggested unexpectedly.
“Oh, you’ve read it!—where she always says: ’I know their tricks and their manners!’ And I do, from being so much with daddy in the office and hearing him talk shop. I know that, without a single bit of justice on their side, they could carry this case along till the very expense of it would eat up the ranch and leave the Harts flat broke. And if they didn’t fight and keep on fighting, they could lose it—so there you are.”
She shut the book with a slam. “But,” she added more brightly when she saw the cloud of gloom settle blacker than before on his face, and remembered that he felt himself at least partly to blame, “it helps a lot to have the law all on our side, and—” She had to go then, because the dispatcher was calling, and she knew it must be a train order. “We’ll read up a little more, and see just what are the requirements of placer mining laws—and maybe we can make it a trifle difficult for those eight to comply!” she told him over her shoulder, while her fingers chittered a reply to the call, and then turned her attention wholly to receiving the message.
Good Indian, knowing well the easy custom of the country which makes smoking always permissible, rolled himself a cigarette while he waited for her to come back to his side of the room. He was just holding the match up and waiting for a clear blaze before setting his tobacco afire, when came a tap-tap of feet on the platform, and Evadna appeared in the half-open doorway.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and widened her indigo eyes at him sitting there and looking so much at home.
“Come right in, chicken,” Miss Georgie invited cordially. “Don’t stand there in the hot sun. Mr. Imsen is going to turn the seat of honor over to you this instant. Awfully glad you came. Have some candy.”
Evadna sat down in the rocker, thrust her two little feet out so that the toe, of her shoes showed close together beyond the hem of her riding-skirt, laid her gauntleted palms upon the arms of the chair and rocked methodically, and looked at Grant and then at Miss Georgie, and afterward tilted up her chin and smiled superciliously at an insurance company’s latest offering to the public in the way of a calendar two feet long.
“When did you come up?” Good Indian asked her, trying so hard to keep a placating note out of his voice that he made himself sound apologetic.
“Oh—about an hour ago, I think,” Evadna drawled sweetly—the sweet tones which always mean trouble, when employed by a woman.
Good Indian bit his lip, got up, and threw his cigarette out of the window, and looked at her reproachfully, and felt vaguely that he was misunderstood and most unjustly placed upon the defensive.
“I only came over,” Evadna went on, as sweetly as before, “to say that there’s a package at the store which I can’t very well carry, and I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking it—when you go.”
“I’m going now, if you’re ready,” he told her shortly, and reached for his hat.
Evadna rocked a moment longer, making him wait for her reply. She glanced at Miss Georgie still busy at the telegraph table, gave a little sigh of resignation, and rose with evident reluctance.
“Oh—if you’re really going,” she drawled, and followed him outside.
CHAPTER XVI
“DON’T GET EXCITED!”
Lovers, it would seem, require much less material for a quarrel than persons in a less exalted frame of mind.
Good Indian believed himself very much in love with his Christmas angel, and was very much inclined to let her know it, but at the same time he saw no reason why he should not sit down in Miss Georgie’s rocking-chair, if he liked, and he could not quite bring himself to explain even to Evadna his reason for doing so. It humiliated him even to think of apologizing or explaining, and he was the type of man who resents humiliation more keenly than a direct injury.
As to Evadna, her atmosphere was that of conscious and magnanimous superiority to any feeling so humanly petty as jealousy—which is extremely irritating to anyone who is at all sensitive to atmospheric conditions.
She stopped outside the window long enough to chirp a commonplace sentence or two to Miss Georgie, and to explain just why she couldn’t stay a minute longer. “I told Aunt Phoebe I’d be back to lunch—dinner, I mean—and she’s so upset over those horrible men planted in the orchard—did Grant tell you about it?—that I feel I ought to be with her. And Marie has the toothache again. So I really must go. Good-by—come down whenever you can, won’t you?” She smiled, and she waved a hand, and she held up her riding-skirt daintily as she turned away. “You didn’t say goodby to Georgie,” she reminded Grant, still making use of the chirpy tone. “I hope I am not in any way responsible.”
“I don’t see how you could be,” said Good Indian calmly; and that, for some reason, seemed to intensify the atmosphere with which Evadna chose to surround herself.
She led Huckleberry up beside the store platform without giving Grant a chance to help, mounted, and started on while he was in after the package—a roll not more than eight inches long, and weighing at least four ounces, which brought an ironical smile to his lips. But she could not hope to outrun him on Huckleberry, even when Huckleberry’s nose was turned toward home, and he therefore came clattering up before she had passed the straggling outpost of rusty tin cans which marked, by implication, the boundary line between Hartley and the sagebrush waste surrounding it.
“You seem to be in a good deal of a hurry,” Good Indian observed.
“Not particularly,” she replied, still chirpy as to tone and supercilious as to her manner.
It would be foolish to repeat all that was said during that ride home, because so much meaning was conveyed in tones and glances and in staring straight ahead and saying nothing. They were sparring politely before they were over the brow of the hill behind the town; they were indulging in veiled sarcasm—which came rapidly out from behind the veil and grew sharp and bitter—before they started down the dusty grade; they were not saying anything at all when they rounded the Point o’ Rocks and held their horses rigidly back from racing home, as was their habit, and when they dismounted at the stable, they refused to look at each other upon any pretext whatsoever.
Baumberger, in his shirt-sleeves and smoking his big pipe, lounged up from the pasture gate where he had been indolently rubbing the nose of a buckskin two-year-old with an affectionate disposition, and wheezed out the information that it was warm. He got the chance to admire a very stiff pair of shoulders and a neck to match for his answer.
“I wasn’t referring to your manner, m’ son,” he chuckled, after he had watched Good Indian jerk the latigo loose and pull off the saddle, showing the wet imprint of it on Keno’s hide. “I wish the weather was as cool!”
Good Indian half turned with the saddle in his hands, and slapped it down upon its side so close to Baumberger that he took a hasty step backward, seized Keno’s dragging bridle-reins, and started for the stable. Baumberger happened to be in the way, and he backed again, more hastily than before, to avoid being run over.
“Snow blind?” he interrogated, forcing a chuckle which had more the sound of a growl.
Good Indian stopped in the doorway, slipped off the bridle, gave Keno a hint by slapping him lightly on the rump, and when the horse had gone on into the cool shade of the stable, and taking his place in his stall, began hungrily nosing the hay in his manger, he came back to unsaddle Huckleberry, who was nodding sleepily with his under lip sagging much like Baumberger’s while he waited. That gentleman seemed to be once more obstructing the path of Good Indian. He dodged back as Grant brushed past him.
“By the great immortal Jehosaphat!” swore Baumberger, with an ugly leer in his eyes, “I never knew before that I was so small I couldn’t be seen with the naked eye!”
“You’re so small in my estimation that a molecule would look like a hay-st
ack alongside you!” Good Indian lifted the skirt of Evadna’s side-saddle, and proceeded calmly to loosen the cinch. His forehead smoothed a trifle, as if that one sentence had relieved him of some of his bottled bitterness.
“You ain’t shrunk up none—in your estimation,” Baumberger forgot his pose of tolerant good nature to say. His heavy jaw trembled as if he had been overtaken with a brief attack of palsy; so also did the hand which replaced his pipe between his loosely quivering lips. “That little yellow-haired witch must have given yuh the cold shoulder; but you needn’t take it out on me. Had a quarrel?” He painstakingly brushed some ashes from his sleeve, once more the wheezing, chuckling fat man who never takes anything very seriously.
“Did you ever try minding your own business?” Grant inquired with much politeness of tone.
“We-e-ell, yuh see, m’ son, it’s my business to mind other people’s business!” He chuckled at what he evidently considered a witty retort. “I’ve been pouring oil on the troubled waters all forenoon—maybe I’ve kinda got the habit.”
“Only you’re pouring it on a fire this time.”
“That dangerous, yuh mean?”
“You’re liable to start a conflagration you can’t stop, and that may consume yourself, is all.”
“Say, they sure do teach pretty talk in them colleges!” he purred, grinning loosely, his own speech purposely uncouth.
Good Indian turned upon him, stopped as quickly, and let his anger vent itself in a sneer. It had occurred to him that Baumberger was not goading him without purpose—because Baumberger was not that kind of man. Oddly enough, he had a short, vivid, mental picture of him and the look on his face when he was playing the trout; it seemed to him that there was something of that same cruel craftiness now in his eyes and around his mouth. Good Indian felt for one instant as if he were that trout, and Baumberger was playing him skillfully. “He’s trying to make me let go all holds and tip my hand,” he thought, keenly reading him, and he steadied himself.
