by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER XVII. A LITTLE TARGET-PRACTICE
A grimy buck with no hat of any sort and with his hair stragglingunbraided over one side of his face to conceal a tumor which grew justover his left eye like a large, ripe plum, stood outside the gate, indoubt whether to enter or remain where he was. When he saw Good Indianhe grunted, fumbled in his blanket, and held out a yellowish envelope.
"Ketchum Squaw-talk-far-off," he explained gutturally.
Good Indian took the envelope, thinking it must be a telegram, thoughhe could not imagine who would be sending him one. His name was writtenplainly upon the outside, and within was a short note scrawled upon atelegraph form:
"Come up as soon as you possibly can. I've something to tell you."
That was what she had written. He read it twice before he looked up.
"What time you ketchum this?" he asked, tapping the message with hisfinger.
"Mebbyso one hour." The buck pulled a brass watch ostentatiouslyfrom under his blanket, held it to his ear a moment, as if he neededauricular assurance that it was running properly, and pointed to thehour of three. "Ketchum one dolla, mebbyso pikeway quick. No stoppum,"he said virtuously.
"You see Peaceful in Hartley?" Good Indian asked the question from anidle impulse; in reality, he was wondering what it was that Miss Georgiehad to tell him.
"Peacefu', him go far off. On train. All same heap fat man go 'long.Mebbyso Shoshone, mebbyso Pocatello."
Good Indian looked down at the note, and frowned; that, probably,was what she had meant to tell him, though he could not see where theknowledge was going to help him any. If Peaceful had gone to Shoshone,he was gone, and that settled it. Undoubtedly he would return the nextday--perhaps that night, even. He was beginning to feel the need of aquiet hour in which to study the tangle, but he had a suspicion thatBaumberger had some reason other than a desire for peace in wanting thejumpers left to themselves, and he started toward the orchard, as he hadat first intended.
"Mebbyso ketchum one dolla, yo'," hinted Charlie, the buck.
But Good Indian went on without paying any attention to him. At the roadhe met Jack and Wally, just returning from the orchard.
"No use going down there," Jack informed him sulkily. "They're justlaying in the shade with their guns handy, doing nothing. They won't letanybody cross their line, and they won't say anything--not even whenyou cuss 'em. Wally and I got black in the face trying to make them comealive. Baumberger got back yet? Wally and I have got a scheme--"
"He and your dad took the train for Shoshone. Say, does anyone know whatthat bunch over in the meadow is up to?" Good Indian leaned his backagainst a tree, and eyed the two morosely.
"Clark and Gene are over there," said Wally. "But I'd gamble they aren'tdoing any more than these fellows are. They haven't started to pan outany dirt--they haven't done a thing, it looks like, but lay around inthe shade. I must say I don't sabe their play. And the worst of it is,"he added desperately, "a fellow can't do anything."
"I'm going to break out pretty darned sudden," Jack observed calmly."I feel it coming on." He smiled, but there was a look of steel in hiseyes.
Good Indian glanced at him sharply.
"Now, you fellows' listen to me," he said. "This thing is partly myfault. I could have prevented it, maybe, if I hadn't been so taken upwith my own affairs. Old Peppajee told me Baumberger was up to somedevilment when he first came down here. He heard him talking to Saundersin Pete Hamilton's stable. And the first night he was here, Peppajee andI saw him down at the stable at midnight, talking to someone. Peppajeekept on his trail till he got that snake bite, and he warned me aplenty. But I didn't take much stock in it--or if I did--" He lifted hisshoulders expressively.
"So," he went on, after a minute of bitter thinking, "I want you to keepout of this. You know how your mother would feel--You don't want to getfoolish. You can keep an eye on them--to-night especially. I've an ideathey're waiting for dark; and if I knew why, I'd be a lot to the good.And if I knew why old Baumberger took your father off so suddenly,why--I'd be wiser than I am now." He lifted his hat, brushed themoisture from his forehead, and gave a grunt of disapproval when hiseyes rested on Jack.
"What yuh loaded down like that for?" he demanded. "You fellows betterput those guns in cold storage. I'm like Baumberger in one respect--wedon't want any violence!" He grinned without any feeling of mirth.
"Something else is liable to be put in cold storage first," Wallyhinted, significantly. "I must say I like this standing around andlooking dangerous, without making a pass! I wish something would breakloose somewhere."
"I notice you're packing yours, large as life," Jack pointed out. "Maybeyou're just wearing it for an ornament, though."
"Sure!" Good Indian, feeling all at once the utter futility of standingthere talking, left them grumbling over their forced inaction, withoutexplaining where he was going, or what he meant to do. Indeed, hescarcely knew himself. He was in that uncomfortable state of mind whereone feels that one must do something, without having the faintest ideaof what that something is, or how it is to be done. It seemed to himthat they were all in the same mental befuddlement, and it seemedimpossible to stay on the ranch another hour without making a hostilemove of some sort--and he knew that, when he did make a move, he atleast ought to know why he did it.
The note in his pocket gave him an excuse for action of some sort, eventhough he felt sure that nothing would come of it; at least, he thought,he would have a chance to discuss the thing with Miss Georgie again--andwhile he was not a man who must have everything put into words, he hadfound comfort and a certain clarity of thought in talking with her.
"Why don't you invite me to go along?" Evadna challenged from the gate,when he was ready to start. She laughed when she said it, but there wassomething beneath the laughter, if he had only been close enough to readit.
"I didn't think you'd want to ride through all that dust and heat againto-day," he called back. "You're better off in the shade."
"Going to call on 'Squaw-talk-far-off'--AGAIN?" She was still laughing,with something else beneath the laugh.
He glanced at her quickly, wondering where she had gotten the name, andin his wonder neglected to make audible reply. Also he passed over thechange to ride back to the gate and tell her good-by--with a hasty kiss,perhaps, from the saddle--as a lover should have done.
He was not used to love-making. For him, it was settled that they lovedeach other, and would marry some day--he hoped the day would be soon. Itdid not occur to him that a girl wants to be told over and over that sheis the only woman in the whole world worth a second thought or glance;nor that he should stop and say just where he was going, and what hemeant to do, and how reluctant he was to be away from her. Trouble satupon his mind like a dead weight, and dulled his perception, perhaps.He waved his hand to her from the stable, and galloped down the trail tothe Point o' Rocks, and his mind, so far as Evadna was concerned, was atease.
Evadna, however, was crying, with her arms folded upon the top of thegate, before the cloud which marked his passing had begun to sprinklethe gaunt, gray sagebushes along the trail with a fresh layer of chokingdust. Jack and Wally came up, scowling at the world and finding nowords to match their gloom. Wally gave her a glance, and went on tothe blacksmith shop, but Jack went straight up to her, for he liked herwell.
"What's the matter?" he asked dully. "Mad because you can't smoke up theranch?"
Evadna fumbled blindly for her handkerchief, scoured her eyes well whenshe found it, and put up the other hand to further shield her face.
"Oh, the whole place is like a GRAVEYARD," she complained. "Nobody willtalk, or do anything but just wander around! I just can't STAND it!"Which was not frank of her.
"It's too hot to do much of anything," he said apologetically. "We mighttake a ride, if you don't mind the heat."
"You don't want to ride," she objected petulantly. "Why didn't you gowith Good Indian?" he countered.
"Because I didn't want to. And I do wish y
ou'd quit calling him that; hehas a real name, I believe."
"If you're looking for a scrap," grinned Jack, "I'll stake you to my sixgun, and you can go down and kill off a few of those claim-jumpers. Youseem to be in just about the proper frame uh mind to murder the wholebunch. Fly at it!"
"It begins to look as if we women would have to do something," sheretorted cruelly. "There doesn't seem to be a man on the ranch withspirit enough to stop them from digging up the whole--"
"I guess that'll be about enough," Jack interrupted her, coldly. "Whydidn't you say that to Good Indian?"
"I told you not to call him that. I don't see why everybody is so meanto-day. There isn't a person--"
When Jack laughed, he shut his eyes until he looked through narrowslits under heavy lashes, and showed some very nice teeth, and two deepdimples besides the one which always stood in his chin. He laughed then,for the first time that day, and if Evadna had been in a less vixenishtemper she would have laughed with him just as everyone else always did.But instead of that, she began to cry again, which made Jack feel verymuch a brute.
"Oh, come on and be good," he urged remorsefully. But Evadna turned andran back into the house and into her room, and cried luxuriously intoher pillow. Jack, peeping in at the window which opened upon the porch,saw her there, huddled upon the bed.
In the spring-house his mother sat crying silently over herhelplessness, and failed to respond to his comforting pats upon theshoulder. Donny struck at him viciously when Jack asked him an idlequestion, and Charlie, the Indian with the tumor over his eye, scowledfrom the corner of the house where he was squatting until someoneoffered him fruit, or food, or tobacco. He was of an acquisitive nature,was Charlie--and the road to his favor must be paved with gifts.
"This is what I call hell," Jack stated aloud, and went straight away tothe strawberry patch, took up his stand with his toes against Stanley'scorner stake, cursed him methodically until he had quite exhausted hisvocabulary, and put a period to his forceful remarks by shooting a neat,round hole through Stanley's coffee-pot. And Jack was the mild one ofthe family.
By the time he had succeeded in puncturing recklessly the frying-pan,and also the battered pan in which Stanley no doubt meant to wash hissamples of soil, his good humor returned. So also did the other boys,running in long leaps through the garden and arriving at the spot verybelligerent and very much out of breath.
"Got to do something to pass away the time," Jack grinned, bringing hisfront sight once more to bear upon the coffee--pot, already badly dentedand showing three black holes. "And I ain't offering any violenceto anybody. You can't hang a man, Mr. Stanley, for shooting up afrying-pan. And I wouldn't--hurt--you--for--anything!" He had justreloaded, so that his bullets saw him to the end of the sentence.
Stanley watched his coffee-pot dance and roll like a thing in pain, andswore when all was done. But he did not shoot, though one could see howhis fingers must itch for the feel of the trigger.
"Your old dad will sweat blood for this--and you'll be packing yourblanket on your back and looking for work before snow flies," was hisway of summing up.
Still, he did not shoot.
It was like throwing pebbles at the bowlder in the Malad, the daybefore.
When Phoebe came running in terror toward the fusillade, with Marieand her swollen face, and Evadna and her red eyes following in greattrepidation far behind, they found four claim-jumpers purple from longswearing, and the boys gleefully indulging in revolver practice withvarious camp utensils for the targets.
They stopped when their belts were empty as well as their guns, and theywent back to the house with the women, feeling much better. Afterwardthey searched the house for more "shells," clattering from room to room,and looking into cigar boxes and upon out-of-the-way shelves, whilePhoebe expostulated in the immediate background.
"Your father would put a stop to it pretty quick if he was here," shedeclared over and over. "Just because they didn't shoot back this timeis no sign they won't next time you boys go to hectoring them." All thewhile she knew she was wasting her breath, and she had a secret fearthat her manner and her tones were unconvincing. If she had been a man,she would have been their leader, perhaps. So she retreated at lastto her favorite refuge, the milk-house, and tried to cover her secretapproval with grumbling to herself.
There was a lull in the house. The boys, it transpired, had gone ina body to Hartley after more cartridges, and the cloud of dust whichhovered long over the trail testified to their haste. They returnedsurprisingly soon, and they would scarcely wait for their supper beforethey hurried back through the garden. One would think that they were ontheir way to a dance, so eager they were.
They dug themselves trenches in various parts of the garden, laidthemselves gleefully upon their stomachs, and proceeded to exchange,at the top of their strong, young voices, ideas upon the subject ofclaim-jumping, and to punctuate their remarks with leaden periodsplanted neatly and with precision in the immediate vicinity of one ofthe four.
They had some trouble with Donny, because he was always jumping up thathe might yell the louder when one of the enemy was seen to step aboutuneasily whenever a bullet pinged closer than usual, and the riflesbegan to bark viciously now and then. It really was unsafe for one todance a clog, with flapping arms and taunting laughter, within range ofthose rises, and they told Donny so.
They ordered him back to the house; they threw clods of earth at hisbare legs; they threatened and they swore, but it was not until Wallygot him by the collar and shook him with brotherly thoroughness thatDonny retreated in great indignation to the house.
They were just giving themselves wholly up to the sport of sendinglittle spurts of loose earth into the air as close as was safe toStanley, and still much too close for his peace of mind or that ofhis fellows, when Donny returned unexpectedly with the shotgun and anenthusiasm for real bloodshed.
He fired once from the thicket of currant bushes, and, from theremarks which Stanley barked out in yelping staccato, he punctured thatgentleman's person in several places with the fine shot of which thecharge consisted. He would have fired again if the recoil had not thrownhim quite off his balance, and it is possible that someone would havebeen killed as a result. For Stanley began firing with murderous intent,and only the dusk and Good Indian's opportune arrival prevented serioustrouble.
Good Indian had talked long with Miss Georgie, and had agreed withher that, for the present at least, there must be no violence. He hadpromised her flatly that he would do all in his power to keep the peace,and he had gone again to the Indian camp to see if Peppajee or some ofhis fellows could give him any information about Saunders.
Saunders had disappeared unaccountably, after a surreptitious conferencewith Baumberger the day before, and it was that which Miss Georgie hadto tell him. Saunders was in the habit of sleeping late, so that she didnot know until noon that he was gone. Pete was worried, and garrulouslyfeared the worst. The worst, according to Pete Hamilton, was suddendeath of a hemorrhage.
Miss Georgie asserted unfeelingly that Saunders was more in danger ofdying from sheer laziness than of consumption, and she even went so faras to hint cynically, that even his laziness was largely hypocritical.
"I don't believe there's a single honest thing about the fellow," shesaid to Good Indian. "When he coughs, it sounds as if he just did it foreffect. When he lies in the shade asleep, I've seen him watching peoplefrom under his lids. When he reads, his ears seem always pricked up tohear everything that's going on, and he gives those nasty littleslanty looks at everybody within sight. I don't believe he's reallygone--because I can't imagine him being really anything. But I dobelieve he's up to something mean and sneaky, and, since Peppajee hastaken this matter to heart, maybe he can find out something. I think youought to go and see him, anyway, Mr. Imsen."
So Good Indian had gone to the Indian camp, and had afterward riddenalong the rim of the bluff, because Sleeping Turtle had seen someonewalking through the sagebrush in that direction. From
the rim-rock abovethe ranch, Good Indian had heard the shooting, though the trees hid fromhis sight what was taking place, and he had given over his search forSaunders and made haste to reach home.
He might have gone straight down the bluff afoot, through a rift inthe rim-rock where it was possible to climb down into the fissure andsqueeze out through a narrow opening to the bowlder-piled bluff. Butthat took almost as much time as he would consume in riding around, andso he galloped back to the grade and went down at a pace to break hisneck and that of Keno as well if his horse stumbled.
He reached home in time to see Donny run across the road with theshotgun, and the orchard in time to prevent a general rush upon Stanleyand his fellows--which was fortunate. He got them all out of the gardenand into the house by sheer determination and biting sarcasm, and borewith surprising patience their angry upbraidings. He sat stoicallysilent while they called him a coward and various other things whichwere unpleasant in the extreme, and he even smiled when they finallydesisted and trailed off sullenly to bed.
But when they were gone he sat alone upon the porch, brooding overthe day and all it had held of trouble and perplexity. Evadna appearedtentatively in the open door, stood there for a minute or two waitingfor some overture upon his part, gave him a chilly good-night when sherealized he was not even thinking of her, and left him. So great washis absorption that he let her go, and it never occurred to him that shemight possibly consider herself ill-used. He would have been distressedif he could have known how she cried herself to sleep but, manlike, hewould also have been puzzled.
