第45章

Good Indian was thinking how barren had been his talk with Peppajee, and was realizing keenly how much he had expected from the interview. It is frequently by the depth of our disappointment only that we can rightly measure the height of our hope. He had come to Peppajee for something tangible, some thing that might be called real evidence of the conspiracy he suspected. He had got nothing but suspicion to match his own.

As for Miss Georgie Howard--

"What can she do?" he thought resentfully, feeling as if he had been offered a willow switch with which to fight off a grizzly.

It seemed to him that he might as sensibly go to Evadna herself for assistance, and that, even his infatuation was obliged to admit, would be idiotic. Peppajee, he told himself when he reached his horse, was particularly foolish sometimes.

With that in his mind, he mounted--and turned Keno's head toward Hartley. The distance was not great--little more than half a mile--but when he swung from the saddle in the square blotch of shade east by the little, red station house upon the parched sand and cinders, Keno's flanks were heaving like the silent sobbing of a woman with the pace his master's spurred heels had required of him.

Miss Georgie gave her hair a hasty pat or two, pushed a novel out of sight under a Boise newspaper, and turned toward him with a breezily careless smile when he stepped up to the open door and stopped as if he were not quite certain of his own mind, or of his welcome.

He was secretly thinking of Peppajee's information that Miss Georgie thought he was "bueno," and he was wondering if it were true. Not that he wanted it to be true! But he was man enough to look at her with a keener interest than he had felt before. And Miss Georgie, if one might judge by her manner, was woman enough to detect that interest and to draw back her skirts, mentally, ready for instant flight into unapproachableness.

"Howdy, Mr. Imsen?" she greeted him lightly. "In what official capacity am I to receive you, please? Do YOU want to send a telegram?" The accent upon the pronoun was very faint, but it was there for him to notice if he liked. So much she helped him.

She was a bright young woman indeed, that she saw he wanted help.

"I don't believe I came to see you officially at all," he said, and his eyes lighted a little as he looked at her. "Peppajee Jim told me to come. He said you're a 'heap smart squaw, all same mans.'""Item: One pound of red-and-white candy for Peppajee Jim next time I see him." Miss Georgie laughed--but she also sat down so that her face was turned to the window. "Are you in urgent need of a heap smart squaw?" she asked. "I thought"--she caught herself up, and then went recklessly on--"I thought yesterday that you had found one!""It's brains I need just now." After the words were out, Good Indian wanted to swear at himself for seeming to belittle Evadna.

"I mean," he corrected quickly--"do you know what I mean? I'll tell you what has happened, and if you don't know then, and can't help me, I'll just have to apologize for coming, and get out.""Yes, I think you had better tell me why you need me particularly. I know the chicken's perfect, and doesn't lack brains, and you didn't mean that she does. You're all stirred up over something. What's wrong?" Miss Georgie would have spoken in just that tone if she had been a man or if Grant had been a woman.

So Good Indian told her.

"And you imagine that it's partly your fault, and that it wouldn't have happened if you had spent more time keeping your weather eye open, and not so much making love?" Miss Georgie could be very blunt, as well as keen. "Well, I don't see how you could prevent it, or what you could have done--unless you had kicked old Baumberger into the Snake. He's the god in this machine. I'd swear to that."Good Indian had been fiddling with his hat and staring hard at a pile of old ties just outside the window. He raised his head, and regarded her steadily. It was beginning to occur to him that there was a good deal to this Miss Georgie, under that offhand, breezy exterior. He felt himself drawn to her as a person whom he could trust implicitly.

"You're right as far as I'm concerned," he owned, with his queer, inscrutable smile. "I think you're also right about him. What makes you think so, anyway?"Miss Georgie twirled a ring upon her middle finger for a moment before she looked up at him.

"Do you know anything about mining laws?" she asked, and when he swung his head slightly to one side in a tacit negative, she went on: "You say there are eight jumpers. Concerted action, that.

Premeditated. My daddy was a lawyer," she threw in by way of explanation. "I used to help him in the office a good deal.

When he--died, I didn't know enough to go on and be a lawyer myself, so I took to this." She waved her hand impatiently toward the telegraph instrument.