第70章

"Well, I will." Miss Georgie spoke with a certain decisiveness, and reaching out a sage-soiled hand, took his gun from the holster at his hip. He shrank away with a man's instinctive dislike of having anyone make free with his weapons, but it was a single movement, which he controlled instantly.

"Stand still, can't you?" he admonished, and kept at work while she examined the gun with a dexterity and ease of every motion which betrayed her perfect familiarity with firearms. She snapped the cylinder into place, sniffed daintily at the end of the barrel, and slipped the gun back into its scabbard.

"Don't think I doubted your word," she said, casting a slanting glance up at him without moving her head. "But I wanted to be able to swear positively, if I should happen to be dragged into the witness-box--I hope it won't be by the hair of the head!--that your gun has not been fired this morning. Unless you carry a cleaning rod with you," she added, "which would hardly be likely.""You may search me if you like," Good Indian suggested, and for an engaged young man, and one deeply in love withal, he displayed a contentment with the situation which was almost reprehensible.

"No use. If you did pack one with you, you'd be a fool not to throw it away after you had used it. No, I'll swear to the gun as it is now. Are you ever going to get my hair loose? I'm due at the office right this minute, I'll bet a molasses cooky." She looked at her watch, and groaned. "I'd have to telegraph myself back to get there on time now," she said. "Twenty-four--that fast freight--is due in eighteen minutes exactly. I've got to be there. Take your jackknife and cut what won't come loose.

Really, I mean it, Mr. Imsen."

"I was under the impression that my name is Grant--to friends.""My name is 'Dennis,' if I don't beat that freight," she retorted curtly. "Take your knife and give me a hair cut--quick! I can do it a different way, and cover up the place.""Oh, all right--but it's a shame to leave a nice bunch of hair like this hanging on a bush.""Tell me, what were you doing up here, Grant? And what are you going to do now? We haven't much time, and we've been fooling when we should have been discussing 'ways and means.'""Well, I got up early, and someone took a shot at me again. This time he clipped my hat-brim." He took off his hat, and showed her where the brim had a jagged tear half an inch deep. "Iducked, and made up my mind I'd get him this time, or know the reason why. So I rode up the other way and back behind the orchard, and struck the grade below the Point o' Rocks, and so came up here hunting him. I kept pretty well out of sight--we've done that before; Jack and I took sneak yesterday, and came up here at sunrise, but we couldn't find anything. I was beginning to think he had given it up. So I was just scouting around here when I heard you rustling the bushes over here. I was going to shoot, but I changed my mind, and thought I'd land on you and trust to the lessons I got in football and the gun. And the rest," he declaimed whimsically, "you know.

"Now, duck away down--oh, wait a minute." He gave a jerk at the knot of his neckerchief, flipped out the folds, spread it carefully over her head, and tied it under her chin, patting it into place and tucking stray locks under as if he rather enjoyed doing it." Better wear it till you're out of the brush," he advised, "if you don't want to get hung up somewhere again."She stood up straight, with a long, deep sigh of relief.

"Now, pikeway," he smiled. "And don't run bareheaded through the bushes again. You've still got time to beat that train.

And--about Saunders-- don't worry. I can get to the ranch without being seen, and no one will know I was up here, unless you tell them.""Oh, I shall of course!" Miss Georgie chose to be very sarcastic.

"I think I shall wire the information to the sheriff. Don't come with me--and leave tracks all over the country. Keep on the lava rock. Haven't you got any sense at all?""You made tracks yourself, madam, and you've left a fine lot of incriminating evidence on that bush. I'll have to waste an hour picking off the hair, so they won't accuse you of shooting Saunders." Good Indian spoke lightly, but they both stopped, nevertheless, and eyed the offending bush anxiously.

"You haven't time," Miss Georgie decided. "I can easily get around that, if it's put up to me. You go on back. Really, you must!" her eyes implored him.

"Oh, vey-ree well. We haven't met this morning. Good-by, Squaw-talk-far-off. I'll see you later, perhaps."Miss Georgie still had that freight heavy on her conscience, but she stood and watched him stoop under an overhanging branch and turn his head to smile reassuringly back at her; then, with a pungent stirring of sage odors, the bushes closed in behind him, and it was as if he had never been there at all. Whereupon Miss Georgie once more gathered her skirts together and ran to the trail, and down that to the station.

She met a group of squaws, who eyed her curiously, but she was looking once more at her watch, and paid no attention, although they stood huddled in the trail staring after her. She remembered that she had left the office unlocked and she rushed in, and sank panting into the chair before her telegraph table just as the smoke of the fast freight swirled around the nose of the low, sage-covered hill to the west.