Stanley’s jaw dropped, but it was surprise which slackened the muscles.
“You—shot—”
“Baumberger. I said it.”
“You’ll hang for that,” Stanley stated impersonally, without moving.
Good Indian smiled, but it only made his face more ominous.
“Well, they can’t hang a man more than once. I’ll see this ranch cleaned up while I’m about it. I’d just as soon,” he added composedly, “be hanged for nine men as for one.”
Stanley sat on his haunches, and regarded him unwinkingly for so long that Phoebe’s nerves took a panic, and she drew Evadna away from the place. The boys edged closer, their hands resting suggestively upon their gun-butts. Old Peaceful half-raised his rifle, and held it so. It was like being compelled to watch a fuse hiss and shrivel and go black toward a keg of gun-powder.
“I believe, by heck, you would!” said Stanley at last, and so long a time had elapsed that even Good Indian had to think back to know what he meant. Stanley squinted up at the sun, hitched himself up so that his back rested against the tree more comfortably, inspected his cigarette, and then fumbled for a match with which to relight it. “How’d you find out Baumberger was back uh this deal?” he asked curiously and without any personal resentment in tone or manner, and raked the match along his thigh.
Good Indian’s shoulders went up a little.
“I knew, and that’s sufficient. The dead line is down past the Point o’ Rocks. After sundown this ranch is going to hold the Harts and their friends—and no one else. Tell that to your pals, unless you’ve got a grudge against them!”
Stanley held his cigarette between his fingers, and blew smoke through his nostrils while he watched Good Indian turn his back and walk away. He did not easily lose his hold of himself, and this was, with him, a cold business proposition.
Miss Georgie stood where she was until she saw that Stanley did not intend to shoot Good Indian in the back, as he might have done easily enough, and followed so quickly that she soon came up with him. Good Indian turned at the rustling of the skirts immediately behind him, and looked down at her somberly. Then he caught sight of something she was carrying in her hand, and he gave a short laugh.
“What are you doing with that thing?” he asked peremptorily.
Miss Georgie blushed very red, and slid the thing into her pocket.
“Well, every little helps,” she retorted, with a miserable attempt at her old breeziness of manner. “I thought for a minute I’d have to shoot that man Stanley—when you turned your back on him.”
Good Indian stopped, looked at her queerly, and went on again without saying a word.
CHAPTER XXVI
“WHEN THE SUN GOES AWAY”
“I wish,” said Phoebe, putting her two hands on Miss Georgie’s shoulders at the gate and looking up at her with haggard eyes, “you’d see what you can do with Vadnie. The poor child’s near crazy; she ain’t used to seeing such things happen—”
“Where is she?” Good Indian asked tersely, and was answered immediately by the sound of sobbing on the east porch. The three went together, but it was Grant who reached her first.
“Don’t cry, Goldilocks,” he said tenderly, bending over her. “It’s all right now. There isn’t going to be any more—”
“Oh! Don’t touch me!” She sprang up and backed from him, horror plain in her wide eyes. “Make him keep away, Aunt Phoebe!”
Good Indian straightened, and stood perfectly still, looking at her in a stunned, incredulous way.
“Chicken, don’t be silly!” Miss Georgie’s sane tones were like a breath of clean air. “You’ve simply gone all to pieces. I know what nerves can do to a woman—I’ve had ’em myself. Grant isn’t going to bite you, and you’re not afraid of him. You’re proud of him, and you know it. He’s acted the man, chicken!—the man we knew he was, all along. So pull yourself together, and let’s not have any nonsense.”
“He—killed a man! I saw him do it. And he’s going to kill some more. I might have known he was like that! I might have known when he tried to shoot me that night in the orchard when I was trying to scare Gene! I can show you the mark—where he grazed my arm! And he laughed about it! I called him a savage then—and I was right—only he can be so nice when he wants to be—and I forgot about the Indian in him—and then he killed Mr. Baumberger! He’s lying out there now! I’d rather die than let him—”
Miss Georgie clapped a hand over her mouth, and stopped her. Also, she gripped her by the shoulder indignantly.
“’Vadna Ramsey, I’m ashamed of you!” she cried furiously. “For Heaven’s sake, Grant, go on off somewhere and wait till she settles down. Don’t stand there looking like a stone image—didn’t you ever see a case of nerves before? She doesn’t know what she’s saying—if she did, she wouldn’t be saying it. You go on, and let me handle her alone. Men are just a nuisance in a case like this.”
She pushed Evadna before her into the kitchen, waited until Phoebe had followed, and then closed the door gently and decisively upon Grant. But not before she had given him a heartening smile just to prove that he must not take Evadna seriously, because she did not.
“We’d better take her to her room, Mrs. Hart,” she suggested, “and make her lie down for a while. That poor fellow—as if he didn’t have enough on his hands without this!”
“I’m not on his hands! And I won’t lie down!” Evadna jerked away from Miss Georgie, and confronted them both pantingly, her cheeks still wet with tears. “You act as if I don’t know what I’m doing’ and I do know. If I should lie down for a million years, I’d feel just the same about it. I couldn’t bear him to touch me! I—”
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t shout it,” Miss Georgie interrupted, exasperatedly. “Do you want him—”
“To hear? I don’t care whether he does or not.” Evadna was turning sullen at the opposition. “He’ll have to know it some time, won’t he? If you think can forgive a thing like that and let—”
“He had to do it. Baumberger would have killed him. He had a perfect right to kill. He’d have been a fool and a coward if he hadn’t. You come and lie down a while.”
“I won’t lie down. I don’t care if he did have to do it—I couldn’t love him afterward. And he didn’t have to go down there and threaten Stanley—and—he’ll do it, too!” She fell to trembling again. “He’ll do it—at sundown.”
Phoebe and Miss Georgie looked at each other. He would, if the men stayed. They knew that.
“And I was going to marry him!” Evadna shuddered when she said it, and covered her face with her two hands. “He wasn’t sorry afterward; you could see he wasn’t sorry. He was ready to kill more men. It’s the Indian in him. He likes to kill people. He’ll kill those men, and he won’t be a bit sorry he did it. And he could come to me afterward and expect me—Oh, what does he think I am?” She leaned against the wall, and sobbed.
“I suppose,” she wailed, lashing herself with every bitter thought she could conjure, “he killed Saunders, too, like old Hagar said. He wouldn’t tell me where he was that morning. I asked him, and he wouldn’t tell. He was up there killing Saunders—”
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll shake you!” Miss Georgie in her fury did not wait, but shook her anyway as if she had been a ten-year-old child in a tantrum.
“My Heavens above! I’ll stand for nerves