第40章

THE CLAIM-JUMPERS

"Guess that bobcat was after my ducks again, last night,"commented Phoebe Hart, when she handed Baumberger his cup of coffee. "The way the dogs barked all night--didn't they keep you awake?""Never slept better in my life," drawled Baumberger, his voice sliding upward from the first word to the last. His blood-shot eyes, however, rather gave the lie to his statement. "I'm going to make one more try, 'long about noon, for that big one--girls didn't get him, I guess, for all their threats, or I'd heard about it. And I reckon I'll take the evening train home.

Shoulda gone yesterday, by rights. I'd like to get a basket uh fish to take up with me. Great coffee, Mrs. Hart, and such cream I never did see. I sure do hate to leave so many good things and go back to a boardin' house. Look at this honey, now!" He sighed gluttonously, leaning slightly over the table while he fed.

"Dogs were barking at something down in the orchard," Wally volunteered, passing over Baumberger's monologue. "I was going down there, but it was so dark--and I thought maybe it was Gene's ghost. That was before the moon came up. Got any more biscuits, mum?""My trap wasn't sprung behind the chicken-house," said Donny. "Ilooked, first thing.""Dogs," drawled Baumberger, his enunciation muffled by the food in his mouth, "always bark. And cats fight on shed-roofs. Next door to where I board there's a dog that goes on shift as regular as a policeman. Every night at--""Oh, Aunt Phoebe!" Evadna, crisp and cool in a summery dress of some light-colored stuff, and looking more than ever like a Christmas angel set a-flutter upon the top of a holiday fir in a sudden gust of wind, threw open the door, rushed halfway into the room, and stopped beside the chair of her aunt. Her hands dropped to the plump shoulder of the sitter. "Aunt Phoebe, there's a man down at the farther end of the strawberry patch!

He's got a gun, Aunt Phoebe, and he's camped there, and when he heard me he jumped up and pointed the gun straight at me!""Why, honey, that can't be--you must have seen an Indian prowling after windfalls off the apricot trees there. He wouldn't hurt you." Phoebe reached up, and caught the hands in a reassuring clasp.

Evadna's eyes strayed from one face to another around the table till they rested upon Good Indian, as having found sanctuary there.

"But, Aunt Phoebe, he was WASN'T. He was a white man. And he has a camp there, right by that tree the lightning peeled the bark off. I was close before I saw him, for he was sitting down and the currant bushes were between. But I went through to get round where Uncle Hart has been irrigating and it's all mud, and he jumped up and pointed the gun AT me. Just as if he was going to shoot me. And I turned and ran." Her fingers closed upon the hand of her aunt, but her eyes clung to Good Indian, as though it was to him she was speaking.

"Tramp," suggested Baumberger, in a tone of soothing finality, as when one hushes the fear of a child. "Sick the dogs on him.

He'll go--never saw the hobo yet that wouldn't run from a dog."He smiled leeringly up at her, and reached for a second helping of honey.

Good Indian pulled his glance from Evadna, and tried to bore through the beefy mask which was Baumberger's face, but all he found there was a gross interest in his breakfast and a certain indulgent sympathy for Evadna's fear, and he frowned in a baffled way.

"Who ever heard of a tramp camped in our orchard!" flouted Phoebe. "They don't get down here once a year, and then they always come to the house. You couldn't know there WAS any strawberry patch behind that thick row of trees--or a garden, or anything else.""He's got a row of stakes running clear across tho patch," Evadna recalled suddenly. "Just like they do for a new street, or a railroad, or something. And--"Good Indian pushed back his chair with a harsh, scraping noise, and rose. He was staring hard at Baumberger, and his whole face had sharpened till it had the cold, unyielding look of an Indian.

And suddenly Baumberger raised his head and met full that look.

For two breaths their eyes held each other, and then Baumberger glanced casually at Peaceful.

"Sounds queer--must be some mistake, though. You must have seen something, girl, that reminded you of stakes. The stub off a sagebrush maybe?" He ogled her quite frankly. "When a little girl gets scared--Sick the dogs on him," he advised the family collectively, his manner changing to a blustering anxiety that her fright should be avenged.

Evadna seemed to take his tone as a direct challenge. "I was scared, but I know quite well what I saw. He wasn't a tramp. He had a regular camp, with a coffee-pot and frying-pan and blankets. And there a line of stakes across the strawberry patch."Before, the breakfast had continued to seem an important incident temporarily suspended. Now Peaceful Hart laid hand to his beard, eyed his wife questioningly, let his glance flicker over the faces of his sons, and straightened his shoulders unconsciously.

Good Indian was at the door, his mouth set in a thin, straight, fighting line. Wally and Jack were sliding their chairs back from the table preparing to follow him.

"I guess it ain't anything much," Peaceful opined optimistically.

"They can't do anything but steal berries, and they're most gone, anyhow. Go ask him what he wants, down there." The last sentence was but feeble sort of fiction that his boys would await his commands; as a matter of fact, they were outside before he spoke.

"Take the dogs along," called out Baumberger, quite as futilely, for not one of the boys was within hearing.