“Mebbyso bueno yo’ girl,” she yielded, speaking softly. “Mebbyso see yo’ girl.”
Phoebe’s face cleared, and she called, in mellow crescendo: “Oh, Va-ad-niee?” Immediately the singing stopped.
“Coming, Aunt Phoebe,” answered the voice.
The squaws wrapped themselves afresh in their blankets, passed brown palms smoothingly down their hair from the part in the middle, settled their braids upon their bosoms with true feminine instinct, and waited. They heard her feet crunching softly in the gravel that bordered the pond, but not a head turned that way; for all the sign of life they gave, the three might have been mere effigies of women. They heard a faint scream when she caught sight of them sitting there, and their faces settled into more stolid indifference, adding a hint of antagonism even to the soft eyes of Lucy, the tender, childless one.
“Vadnie, here are some new neighbors I want you to get acquainted with.” Phoebe’s eyes besought the girl to be calm. “They’re all old friends of mine. Come here and let me introduce you—and don’t look so horrified, honey!”
Those incorrigibles, her cousins, would have whooped with joy at her unmistakable terror when she held out a trembling hand and gasped faintly: “H-how do you—do?”
“This Hagar,” Phoebe announced cheerfully; and the old squaw caught the girl’s hand and gripped it tightly for a moment in malicious enjoyment of her too evident fear and repulsion.
“This Viney.”
Viney, reading Evadna’s face in one keen, upward glance, kept her hands hidden in the folds of her blanket, and only nodded twice reassuringly.
“This Lucy.”
Lucy read also the girl’s face; but she reached up, pressed her hand gently, and her glance was soft and friendly. So the ordeal was over.
“Bring some of that cake you baked today, honey—and do brace up!” Phoebe patted her upon the shoulder.
Hagar forestalled the hospitable intent by getting slowly upon her fat legs, shaking her hair out of her eyes, and grunting a command to the others. With visible reluctance Lucy and Viney rose also, hitched their blankets into place, and vanished, soft-footed as they had come.
“Oo-oo!” Evadna stared at the place where they were not. “Wild Indians—I thought the boys were just teasing when they said so—and it’s really true, Aunt Phoebe?”
“They’re no wilder than you are,” Phoebe retorted impatiently.
“Oh, they are wild. They’re exactly like in my history—and they don’t make a sound when they go—you just look, and they’re gone! That old fat one—did you see how she looked at me? As if she wanted to—scalp me, Aunt Phoebe! She looked right at my hair and—”
“Well, she didn’t take it with her, did she? Don’t be silly. I’ve known old Hagar ever since Wally was a baby. She took him right to her own wikiup and nursed him with her own papoose for two months when I was sick, and Viney stayed with me day and night and pulled me through. Lucy I’ve known since she was a papoose. Great grief, child! Didn’t you hear me say they’re old friends? I wanted you to be nice to them, because if they like you there’s nothing they won’t do for you. If they don’t, there’s nothing they will do. You might as well get used to them—”
Out by the gate rose a clamor which swept nearer and nearer until the noise broke at the corner of the house like a great wave, in a tumult of red blanket, flying black hair, the squalling of a female voice, and the harsh laughter of the man who carried the disturbance, kicking and clawing, in his arms. Fighting his way to the milk-house, he dragged the squaw along beside the porch, followed by the Indians and all the Hart boys, a yelling, jeering audience.
“You tell her shont-isham! Ah-h—you can’t break loose, you old she-wildcat. Quit your biting, will you? By all the big and little spirits of your tribe, you’ll wish—”
Panting, laughing, swearing also in breathless exclamations, he forced her to the top of the steps, backed recklessly down them, and came to a stop in the corner by the door. Evadna had taken refuge there; and he pressed her hard against the rough wall without in the least realizing that anything was behind him save unsentient stone.
“Now, you sing your little song, and be quick about it!” he commanded his captive sternly. “You tell Mother Hart you lied. I hear she’s been telling you I’m drunk, Mother Hart—didn’t you, you old beldam? You say you heap sorry you all time tellum lie. You say: ‘Good Injun, him all time heap bueno.’ Say: ‘Good Injun no drunk, no heap shoot, no heap yell—all time bueno.’ Quick, or I’ll land you headforemost in that pond, you infernal old hag!”
“Good Injun hee-eeap kay bueno! Heap debbil all time.” Hagar might be short of breath, but her spirit was unconquered, and her under lip bore witness to her stubbornness.
Phoebe caught him by the arm then, thinking he meant to make good his threat—and it would not have been unlike Grant Imsen to do so.
“Now, Grant, you let her go,” she coaxed. “I know you aren’t drunk—of course, I knew it all the time. I told Hagar so. What do you care what she says about you? You don’t want to fight an old woman, Grant—a man can’t fight a woman—”
“You tell her you heap big liar!” Grant did not even look at Phoebe, but his purpose seemed to waver in spite of himself. “You all time kay bueno. You all time lie.” He gripped her more firmly, and turned his head slightly toward Phoebe. “You’d be tired of it yourself if she threw it into you like she does into me, Mother Hart. It’s got so I can’t ride past this old hag in the trail but she gives me the bad eye, and mumbles into her blanket. And if I look sidewise, she yowls all over the country that I’m drunk. I’m getting tired of it!” He shook the squaw as a puppy shakes a shoe—shook her till her hair quite hid her ugly old face from sight.
“All right—Mother Hart she tellum mebbyso let you go. This time I no throw you in pond. You heap take care next time, mebbyso. You no tellum big lie, me all time heap drunk. You kay bueno. All time me tellum Mother Hart, tellum boys, tellum Viney, Lucy, tellum Charlie and Tom and Sleeping Turtle you heap big liar. Me tell Wally shont-isham. Him all time my friend—mebbyso him no likum you no more.
“Huh. Get out—pikeway before I forget you’re a lady!”
He laughed ironically, and pushed her from him so suddenly that she sprawled upon the steps. The Indians grinned unsympathetically at her, for Hagar was not the most popular member of the tribe by any means. Scrambling up, she shook her witch locks from her face, wrapped herself in her dingy blanket, and scuttled away, muttering maledictions under her breath. The watching group turned and followed her, and in a few seconds the gate was heard to slam shut behind them. Grant stood where he was, leaning against the milk-house wall; and when they were gone, he gave a short, apologetic laugh.
“No need to lecture, Mother Hart. I know it was a fool thing to do; but when Donny told me what the old devil said, I was so mad for a minute—”
Phoebe caught him again by the arm and pulled him forward. “Grant! You’re squeezing Vadnie to death, just about! Great grief, I forgot all about the poor child being here! You poor little—”
“Squeezing who?” Grant whirled, and caught a brief glimpse of a crumpled little figure behind him, evidently too scared to cry, and yet not quite at the fainting point of terror. He backed, and began to stammer an apology; but she did not wait to hear a word of it. For an instant she stared into his face, and then, like a rabbit released from its paralysis of dread, she darted past him and deaf up the stone steps into the house. He heard