Keno started, perked up his ears toward the place, and went on, stepping gingerly. Good Indian’s lips drew back, showing his teeth set tightly together. “Still at it, eh?” he muttered aloud, pricked Keno’s flanks with his rowels, and galloped around the Point.
There, for the time being, he was safe. Unless the shooter upon the rim-rock was mounted, he must travel swiftly indeed to reach again a point within range of the grade road before Good Indian would pass out of sight again. For the trail wound in and out, looping back upon itself where the hill was oversleep, hidden part of the time from the receding wall of rock by huge bowlders and giant sage.
Grant knew that he was safe from that quarter, and was wondering whether he ought to ride up along the top of the bluff before going to Hartley, as he had intended.
He had almost reached the level, and was passing a steep, narrow, little gully choked with rocks, when something started up so close beside him that Keno ducked away and squatted almost upon his haunches. His gun was in his hand, and his finger crooked upon the trigger, when a voice he faintly recognized called to him softly:
“Yo’ no shoot—no shoot—me no hurtum. All time yo’ frien’.” She stood trembling beside the trail, a gay, plaid shawl about her shoulders in place of the usual blanket, her hair braided smoothly with bright, red ribbons entwined through it. Her dress was a plain slip of bright calico, which had four-inch roses, very briery and each with a gaudy butterfly poised upon the topmost petals running over it in an inextricable tangle. Beaded moccasins were on her feet, and her eyes were frightened eyes, with the wistfulness of a timid animal. Yet she did not seem to be afraid of Good Indian.
“I sorry I scare yo’ horse,” she said hesitatingly, speaking better English than before. “I heap hurry to get here. I speak with yo’.”
“Well, what is it?” Good Indian’s tone was not as brusque as his words; indeed, he spoke very gently, for him. This was the good-looking young squaw he had seen at the Indian camp. “What’s your name?” he asked, remembering suddenly that he had never heard it.
“Rachel. Peppajee, he my uncle.” She glanced up at him shyly, then down to where the pliant toe of her moccasin was patting a tiny depression into the dust. “Bad mans like for shoot yo’,” she said, not looking directly at him again. “Him up there, all time walk where him can look down, mebbyso see you, mebbyso shootum.”
“I know—I’m going to ride around that way and round him up.” Unconsciously his manner had the arrogance of strength and power to do as he wished, which belongs to healthy young males.
“N-o, no-o!” She drew a sharp breath “o’ no good there! Dim shoot yo’. Yo’ no go! Ah-h—I sorry I tellum yo’ now. Bad mans, him. I watch, I take care him no shoot. Him shoot, mebbyso I shoot!”
With a little laugh that was more a plea for gentle judgment than anything else, she raised the plaid shawl, and gave him a glimpse of a rather battered revolver, cheap when it was new and obviously well past its prime.
“I want yo’—” she hesitated; “I want yo’—be heap careful. I want yo’ no ride close by hill. Ride far out!” She made a sweeping gesture toward the valley. “All time I watch.”
He was staring at her in a puzzled way. She was handsome, after her wild, half-civilized type, and her anxiety for his welfare touched him and besought his interest.
“Indians go far down—” She swept her arm down the narrowing river valley. “Catch fish. Peppajee stay—no can walk far. I stay. All go, mebbyso stay five days.” Her hand lifted involuntarily to mark the number.
He did not know why she told him all that, and he could not learn from her anything about his assailant. She had been walking along the bluff, he gathered—though why, she failed to make clear to him. She had, from a distance, caught a glimpse of a man watching the valley beneath him. She had seen him raise a rifle, take long aim, and shoot—and she had known that he was shooting at Good Indian.
When he asked her the second time what was her errand up there—whether she was following the man, or had suspected that he would be there—she shook her head vaguely and took refuge behind the stolidity of her race.
In spite of her pleading, he put his horse to scrambling up the first slope which it was possible to climb, and spent an hour riding, gun in hand, along the rim of the bluff, much as he had searched it the evening before.
But there was nothing alive that he could discover, except a hawk which lifted itself languorously off a high, sharp rock, and flapped lazily out across the valley when he drew near. The man with the rifle had disappeared as completely as if he had never been there, and there was not one chance in a hundred of hunting him out, in all that rough jumble.
When he was turning back at last toward Hartley, he saw Rachel for a moment standing out against the deep blue of the sky, upon the very rim of the bluff. He waved a hand to her, but she gave no sign; only, for some reason, he felt that she was watching him ride away, and he had a brief, vagrant memory of the wistfulness he had seen in her eyes.
On the heels of that came a vision of Evadna swinging in the hammock which hung between the two locust trees, and he longed unutterably to be with her there. He would be, he promised himself, within the next hour or so, and set his pace in accordance with his desire, resolved to make short work of his investigations in Hartley and his discussion of late events with Miss Georgie.
He had not, it seemed to him, had more than two minutes with Evadna since that evening of rapturous memory when they rode home together from the Malad, and afterward sat upon the stone bench at the head of the pond, whispering together so softly that they did not even disturb the frogs among the lily-pads within ten feet of them. It was not so long ago, that evening. The time that had passed since might be reckoned easily in hours, but to Good Indian it seemed a month, at the very least.
CHAPTER XIX
EVADNA GOES CALLING
“I have every reason to believe that your two missing jumpers took the train for Shoshone last night,” Miss Georgie made answer to Good Indian’s account of what had happened since he saw her. “Two furtive-eyed individuals answering your description bought round-trip tickets and had me flag sixteen for them. They got on, all right. I saw them. And if they got off before the next station they must have landed on their heads, because Sixteen was making up time and Shorty pulled the throttle wide open at the first yank, I should judge, from the way he jumped out of town. I’ve been expecting some of them to go and do their filing stunt—and if the boys have begun to devil them any, the chances are good that they’d take turns at it, anyway. They’d leave someone always on the ground, that’s a cinch.
“And Saunders,” she went on rapidly, “returned safe enough. He sneaked in just before I closed the office last night, and asked for a telegram. There wasn’t any, and he sneaked out again and went to bed—so Pete told me this morning. And most of the Indians have pulled out—squaws, dogs, papooses, and all—on some fishing or hunting expedition. I don’t know that it has anything to do with your affairs, or would even interest you, though. And there has been no word from Peaceful, and they can’t possibly get back now till the four-thirty—five.
“And that’s all I can tell you, Mr. Imsen,” she finished crisply, and took up a novel with a significance which not even the dullest man could have ignored.
Good Indian stared, flushed hotly, and made for the door.
“Thank you for the information. I’m afraid this has been a lot of bother for you,” he said stiffly, gave her a ceremonious little bow, and went his way stiff-necked and frowning.
Miss Georgie leaned forward so that she could see him through the window. She watched him cross to the store, go up the three rough steps to the platform, and disappear into the yawning blackness beyond the wide-open door.
She did not open the novel and begin reading,