第83章

There was nothing they could gain by staying, he knew, now that Baumberger was out of it. Unless they got stubborn and wanted to fight. In that case, he supposed he would eventually be planted alongside his father. He wished he could keep the boys and old Peaceful out of it, in case there was a fight, but he knew that would be impossible. The boys, at least, had been itching for something like this ever since the trouble started.

Good Indian had, not so long ago, spent hours in avoiding all thought that he might prolong the ecstasy of mere feeling. Now he had reversed the desire. He was thinking of this thing and of that, simply that he might avoid feeling. If someone didn't kill him within the next hour or so, he was going to feel something--something that would hurt him more than he had been hurt since his father died in that same house. But in the meantime he need only think.

The shadow of the grove, with the long fingers of tho poplars to point the way, climbed slowly up the bluff. Good Indian smoked another cigarette while he watched it. When a certain great bowlder that was like a miniature ledge glowed rosily and then slowly darkened to a chill gray, he threw his cigarette stub unerringly at a lily-pad which had courtesied many a time before to a like missile from his hand, pulled his hat down over his eyes, jumped off the porch, and started around the house to the gate which led to the stable.

Phoebe came out from the sitting-room, ran down the steps, and barred his way.

"Grant!" she said, and there were tears in her eyes, "don't do anything rash--don't. If it's for our sakes--and I know it is--don't do it. They'll go, anyway. We'll have the law on them and make them go. But don't YOU go down there. You let Thomas handle that part. You're like one of my own boys. I can't let you go!"He looked down at her commiseratingly. "I've got to go, Mother Hart. I've made my war-talk." He hesitated, bent his head, and kissed her on the forehead as she stood looking up at him, and went on.

"Grant--GRANT!" she cried heartbrokenly after him, and sank down on the porch-steps with her face hidden in her arms.

Miss Georgie was standing beside the gate, looking toward the stable. She may not have been waiting for him, but she turned without any show of surprise when he walked up behind her.

"Well, your jumpers seem to have taken the hint," she informed him, with a sort of surface cheerfulness. "Stanley is down there talking to Mr. Hart now, and the others have gone on. They'll all be well over the dead-line by sundown. There goes Stanley now. Do you really feel that your future happiness depends on getting through this gate? Well--if you must--" She swung it open, but she stood in the opening.

"Grant, I--it's hard to say just what I want to say--but--you did right. You acted the man's part. No matter what--others--may think or say, remember that I think you did right to kill that man. And if there's anything under heaven that I can do, to--to help--you'll let me do it, won't you?" Her eyes held him briefly, unabashed at what they might tell. Then she stepped back, and contradicted them with a little laugh. "I will get fired sure for staying over my time," she said. "I'll wire for the coroner soon as I get to the office. This will never come to a trial, Grant. He was like a crazy man, and we all saw him shoot first."She waited until he had passed through and was a third of the way to the stable where Peaceful Hart and his boys were gathered, and then she followed him briskly, as if her mind was taken up with her own affairs.

"It's a shame yon fellows got cheated out of a scrap," she taunted Jack, who held her horse for her while she settled herself in the saddle. "You were all spoiling for a fight--and there did seem to be the makings of a beautiful row!"Save for the fact that she kept her eyes studiously turned away from a certain place near by, where the dust was pressed down smoothly with the weight of a heavy body, and all around was trampled and tracked, one could not have told that Miss Georgie remembered anything tragic.