“I’d like to get a chance to talk to him,” Good Indian observed. “I’ll have to just lead him off somewhere by main strength, I guess. Baumberger sticks to him like a bur to a dog’s tail. What are those fellows doing down there now? Does anybody know?”
“You heard what he said to me just now,” Phoebe said, impatiently. “He don’t want anybody to go near. It’s terribly aggravating,” she confessed dispiritedly, “to have a lot of ruffians camped down, cool as you please, on your own ranch, and not be allowed to drive ’em off. I don’t wonder the boys are all sulky. If Baumberger wasn’t here at all, I guess we’d have got rid of ’em before now. I don’t know as I think very much of lawyers, anyhow. I believe I’d a good deal rather fight first and go, to law about it afterward if I had to. But Thomas is so—calm!”
“I think I’ll go down and have a look,” said Good Indian suddenly. “I’m not under Baumberger’s orders, if the rest of the bunch is. And I wish you’d tell Peaceful I want to talk to him, Mother Hart—will you? Tell him to ditch his guardian angel somehow. I’d like to see him on the quiet if I can, but if I can’t—”
“Can’t be nice, and forgiving, and repentant, and—a dear?” Evadna had crept over to him by way of the rocks behind the pond, and at every pause in her questioning she pushed him forward by his two shoulders. “I’m so furious I could beat you! What do you mean, savage, by letting a lady stay all afternoon by herself, waiting for you to come and coax her into being nice to you? Don’t you know I h-a-ate you?” She had him by the ears, then, pulling his head erratically from side to side, and she finished by giving each ear a little slap and laid her arms around his neck. “Please don’t look at me that way, Aunt Phoebe,” she said, when she discovered her there inside the door. “Here’s a horrible young villain who doesn’t know how to behave, and makes me do all the making up. I don’t like him one bit, and I just came to tell him so and be done. And I don’t suppose,” she added, holding her two hands tightly over his mouth, “he has a word to say for himself.”
Since he was effectually gagged, Grant had not a word to say. Even when he had pulled her hands away and held them prisoners in his own, he said nothing. This was Evadna in a new and unaccountable mood, it seemed to him. She had certainly been very angry with him at noon. She had accused him, in that roundabout way which seems to be a woman’s favorite method of reaching a real grievance, of being fickle and neglectful and inconsiderate and a brute.
The things she had said to him on the way down the grade had rankled in his mind, and stirred all the sullen pride in his nature to life, and he could not forget them as easily as she appeared to have done. Good Indian was not in the habit of saying things, even in anger, which he did not mean, and he could not understand how anyone else could do so. And the things she had said!
But here she was, nevertheless, laughing at him and blushing adorably because he still held her fast, and making the blood of him race most unreasonably.
“Don’t scold me, Aunt Phoebe,” she begged, perhaps because there was something in Phoebe’s face which she did not quite understand, and so mistook for disapproval of her behavior. “I should have told you last night that we’re—well, I suppose we’re supposed to be engaged!” She twisted her hands away from him, and came down the steps to her aunt. “It all happened so unexpectedly—really, I never dreamed I cared anything for him, Aunt Phoebe, until he made me care. And last night I couldn’t tell you, and this morning I was going to, but all this horrible trouble came up—and, anyway,” she finished with a flash of pretty indignation, “I think Grant might have told you himself! I don’t think it’s a bit nice of him to leave everything like that for me. He might have told you before he went chasing off to—to Hartley.” She put her arms around her aunt’s neck. “You aren’t angry, are you, Aunt Phoebe?” she coaxed. “You—you know you said you wanted me to be par-tic-ularly nice to Grant!”
“Great grief, child! You needn’t choke me to death. Of course I’m not angry.” But Phoebe’s eyes did not brighten.
“You look angry,” Evadna pouted, and kissed her placatingly.
“I’ve got plenty to be worked up over, without worrying over your love affairs, Vadnie.” Phoebe’s eyes sought Grant’s anxiously. “I don’t doubt but what it’s more important to you than anything else on earth, but I’m thinking some of the home I’m likely to lose.”
Evadna drew back, and made a movement to go.
“Oh, I’m sorry I interrupted you then, Aunt Phoebe. I suppose you and Grant were busy discussing those men in the orchard—”
“Don’t be silly, child. You aren’t interrupting anybody, and there’s no call for you to run off like that. We aren’t talking secrets that I know of.”
In some respects the mind of Good Indian was extremely simple and direct. His knowledge of women was rudimentary and based largely upon his instincts rather than any experience he had had with them. He had been extremely uncomfortable in the knowledge that Evadna was angry, and strongly impelled, in spite of his hurt pride, to make overtures for peace. He was puzzled, as well as surprised, when she seized him by the shoulders and herself made peace so bewitchingly that he could scarcely realize it at first. But since fate was kind, and his lady love no longer frowned upon him, he made the mistake of taking it for granted she neither asked nor expected him to explain his seeming neglect of her and his visit to Miss Georgie at Hartley.
She was not angry with him. Therefore, he was free to turn his whole attention to this trouble which had come upon his closest friends. He reached out, caught Evadna by the hand, pulled her close to him, and smiled upon her in a way to make her catch her breath in a most unaccountable manner.
But he did not say anything to her; he was a young man unused to dalliance when there were serious things at hand.
“I’m going down there and see what they’re up to,” he told Phoebe, giving Evadna’s hand a squeeze and letting it go. “I suspect there’s something more than keeping the peace behind Baumberger’s anxiety to have them left strictly alone. The boys had better keep away, though.”
“Are you going down in the orchard?” Evadna rounded her unbelievably blue eyes at him. “Then I’m going along.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, little Miss Muffit,” he declared from the top step.
“Why not?”
“I might want to do some swearing.” He grinned down at her, and started off.
“Now, Grant, don’t you do anything rash!” Phoebe called after him sharply.
“‘Don’t—get—excited!’” he retorted, mimicking Baumberger.
“I’m going a little way, whether you want me to or not,” Evadna threatened, pouting more than ever.
She did go as far as the porch with him, and was kissed and sent back like a child. She did not, however, go back to her aunt, but ran into her own room, where she could look out through the grove toward the orchard—and to the stable as well, though that view did not interest her particularly at first. It was pure accident that made her witness what took place at the gate.
CHAPTER XVII
A LITTLE TARGET-PRACTICE
A grimy buck with no hat of any sort and with his hair straggling unbraided over one side of his face to conceal a tumor which grew just over his left eye like a large, ripe plum, stood outside the gate, in doubt whether to enter or remain where he was. When he saw Good Indian he grunted, fumbled in his blanket, and held out a yellowish envelope.
“Ketchum Squaw-talk-far-off,” he explained gutturally.
Good Indian took the envelope, thinking it must be a telegram, though he could not imagine who would be sending him one. His name was written plainly upon the outside, and within was a short note scrawled upon a telegraph form: