Good Indian by B. M. Bower (general ebook reader .txt) 📖
- Author: B. M. Bower
Book online «Good Indian by B. M. Bower (general ebook reader .txt) 📖». Author B. M. Bower
Grant looked, saw nothing, stared harder, and so; feeling sure there must be something hidden there, presently believed that a bit of the shadow at that end which was next the corral wavered, stopped, and then moved unmistakably. All the front of the stable was distinctly visible in the white light, and, while they looked, something flitted across it, and disappeared among the sage beyond the trail.
Again they waited; two minutes, three minutes, five. Then another shadow detached itself slowly from the shade of the stable, hesitated, walked out boldly, and crossed the white sand on the path to the house. Baumberger it was, and he stopped midway to light his pipe, and so, puffing luxuriously, went on into the blackness of the grove.
They heard him step softly upon the porch, heard also the bovine sigh with which he settled himself in the armchair there. They caught the aromatic odor of tobacco smoke ascending, and knew that his presence there had all at once become the most innocent, the most natural thing in the world; for any man, waking on such a night, needs no justification for smoking a nocturnal pipe upon the porch while he gazes dreamily out upon the moon-bathed world around him.
Peppajee touched Grant's arm, and turned back, skirting the poplars again until they were well away from the house, and there was no possibility of being heard. He stopped there, and confronted the other.
“What for you no stoppum stable?” he questioned bluntly. “What for you no stoppum ranch, for sleepum?”
“I go for stoppum Hicks' ranch,” said Good Indian, without any attempt at equivocation.
Peppajee grunted. “What for yo' no stoppum all same Peaceful?”
Good Indian scorned a subterfuge, and spoke truly. “That girl, Evadna, no likum me. All time mad me. So I no stoppum ranch, no more.”
Peppajee grinned briefly and understandingly, and nodded his head. “Me heap sabe. Yo' all time heap like for catchum that girl, be yo' squaw. Bimeby that girl heap likum yo'. Me sabe.” He stood a moment staring at the stars peeping down from above the rim-rock which guarded the bluff. “All same, yo' no go stoppum Hicks,” he commanded. “Yo' stoppum dis ranch all time. Yo' all time watchum man—yo' callum Baumberga.” He seemed to remember and speak the name with some difficulty. “Where him go, yo' go, for heap watchum. All time mebbyso me watchum Man-that-coughs. Me no sabe catchum ranch—all same, me watchum. Them mans heap kay bueno. Yo' bet yo' life!”
A moment he stood there after he was through speaking, and then he was not there. Good Indian did not hear him go, though he had stood beside him; neither could he, catching sight of a wavering shadow, say positively that there went Peppajee.
He waited for a space, stole back to where he could hear any sound from the porch even if he could not see, and when he was certain that Baumberger had gone back to his bed, he got his horse, took him by a roundabout way to the stable, and himself slept in a haystack. At least, he made himself a soft place beside one, and lay there until the sun rose, and if he did not sleep it was not his fault, for he tried hard enough.
That is how Good Indian came to take his usual place at the breakfast table, and to touch elbows with Evadna and to greet her with punctilious politeness and nothing more. That is why he got out his fishing-tackle and announced that he thought he would have a try at some trout himself, and so left the ranch not much behind Baumberger. That is why he patiently whipped the Malad riffles until he came up with the portly lawyer from Shoshone, and found him gleeful over a full basket and bubbling with innocent details of this gamy one and that one still gamier. They rode home together, and together they spent the hot afternoon in the cool depths of the grove.
By sundown Good Indian was ready to call himself a fool and Peppajee Jim a meddlesome, visionary old idiot. Steal the Peaceful Hart ranch? The more he thought of it, the more ridiculous the thing seemed.
CHAPTER XI. “YOU CAN'T PLAY WITH ME”
Good Indian was young, which means that he was not always logical, nor much given to looking very far into the future except as he was personally concerned in what he might see there. By the time Sunday brought Miss Georgie Howard and the stir of preparation for the fishing trip, he forgot that he had taken upon himself the responsibility of watching the obviously harmless movements of Baumberger, or had taken seriously the warnings of Peppajee Jim; or if he did not forget, he at least pushed it far into the background of his mind with the assertion that Peppajee was a meddlesome old fool and Baumberger no more designing than he appeared—which was not at all.
What did interest him that morning was the changeful mood of Evadna; though he kept his interest so well hidden that no one suspected it—not even the young lady herself. It is possible that if Evadna had known that Good Indian's attitude of calm oblivion to her moods was only a mask, she might have continued longer her rigorous discipline of averted face and frigid tones.
As it was, she thawed toward him as he held himself more aloof, until she actually came to the point of addressing him directly, with a flicker of a smile for good measure; and, although he responded with stiff civility, he felt his blood pulse faster, and suddenly conceived the idea that women are like the creatures of the wild. If one is very quiet, and makes no advance whatever, the hunted thing comes closer and closer, and then a sudden pounce—he caught his breath. After that he was wary and watchful and full of his purpose.
Within ten minutes Evadna walked into the trap. They had started, and were fifty yards up the trail, when Phoebe shouted frantically after them. And because she was yet a timid rider and feared to keep the pace set by the others, it was Evadna who heard and turned back to see what was the trouble. Aunt Phoebe was standing beside the road, waving a flask.
“It's the cream for your coffee,” she cried, going to meet Evadna. “You can slip it into your jacket-pocket, can't you, honey? Huckleberry is so steady—and you won't do any wild riding like the boys.”
“I've got my veil and a box of bait and two handkerchiefs and a piece of soap,” the girl complained, reaching down for the bottle, nevertheless. “But I can carry it in my hand till I overtake somebody to give it to.”
The somebody proved to be Good Indian, who had found it necessary to stop and inspect carefully the left forefoot of his horse, without appearing aware of the girl's approach. She ambled up at Huckleberry's favorite shuffling gait, struck him with her whip—a blow which would not have perturbed a mosquito—when he showed a disposition to stop beside Grant, and then, when Huckleberry reluctantly resumed his pacing, pulled him up, and looked back at the figure stooped over the hoof he held upon his knee. He was digging into the caked dirt inside the hoof with his
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