Good Indian by B. M. Bower (best book club books .TXT) 📕

“Did he!” Miss Georgie eyed her measuringly between bites. “Tag him as being intelligent, a keen observer, with the ability to express himself—” She broke off, and turned her head ungraciously toward the sounder, which seemed to be repeating something over and over with a good deal of insistence. “That's Shoshone calling,” she said, frowning attentively. “They've got an old crank up there in the office—I'd know his touch among a million—and when he calls he means business. I'll have to speak up, I suppose.” She sighed, tucked a chocolate into her cheek, and went scowling to the table. “Can't the idiot see I'm out?” she complained whimsically. “What's that card for, I wonder?”

She threw the switch, rattled a reply, and then, as the sounder settled down to a steady click-clickety-click-click, she drew a pad toward her, pulled up the chair with her foot, sat down, and began to write the message as it came chattering over the wire. When it was finished and the sounder quiet, her hand awoke to life upon the key. She seemed to be repeating the message, word for word. When she was done, she listened, got her answer, threw off the switch with a sweep of her thumb, and fumbled among the papers on the table until she found an envelope. She addressed it with a hasty scrawl of her pencil, sealed it with a vicious little spat of her hand, and then sat looking down upon it thoughtfully.

“I suppose I've got to deliver that immediately, at once, without delay,” she said. “There's supposed to be an answer. Chicken, some queer things happen in this business. Here's that weak-eyed, hollow-chested Saunders, that seems to have just life enough to put in about ten hours a day reading 'The Duchess,' getting cipher messages like the hero of a detective story. And sending them, too, by the way. We operators are not supposed to think; but all the same—” She got her receipt-book, filled rapidly a blank line, tucked it under her arm, and went up and tapped Evadna lightly upon the head with the envelope. “Want to come along? Or would you rather stay here? I won't be more than two minutes.”

She was gone five; and she returned with a preoccupied air which lasted until she had disposed of three chocolates and was carefully choosing a fourth.

“Chicken,” she said then, quietly, “do you know anything about your uncle and his affairs?” And added immediately: “The chances are ten to one you don't, and wouldn't if you lived there till you were gray?”

“I know he's perfectly lovely,” Evadna asserted warmly. “And so is Aunt Phoebe.”

“To be sure.” Miss Georgie smiled indulgently. “I quite agree with you. And by the way, I met that polysyllabic cowboy again—and I discovered that, on the whole, my estimate was incorrect. He's emphatically monosyllabic. I said sixteen nice things to him while I was waiting for Pete to wake up Saunders; and he answered in words of one syllable; one word, of one syllable. I'm beginning to feel that I've simply got to know that young man. There are deeps there which I am wild to explore. I never met any male human in the least like him. Did you? So absolutely—ah—inscrutable, let us say.”

“That's just because he's part Indian,” Evadna declared, with the positiveness of youth and inexperience. “It isn't inscrutability, but stupidity. I simply can't bear him. He's brutal, and rude. He told me—told me, mind you—that he doesn't like women. He actually warned me against thinking his politeness—if he ever is polite, which I doubt—means more than just common humanity. He said he didn't want me to misunderstand him and think he liked me, because he doesn't. He's a perfect savage. I simply loathe him!”

“I'd certainly see that he repented, apologized, and vowed eternal devotion,” smiled Miss Georgie. “That should be my revenge.”

“I don't want any revenge. I simply want nothing to do with him. I don't want to speak to him, even.”

“He's awfully good—looking,” mused Miss Georgie.

“He looks to me just like an Indian. He ought to wear a blanket, like the rest.”

“Then you're no judge. His eyes are dark; but they aren't snaky, my dear. His hair is real wavy, did you notice? And he has the dearest, firm mouth. I noticed it particularly, because I admire a man who's a man. He's one. He'd fight and never give up, once he started. And I think”—she spoke hesitatingly—“I think he'd love—and never give up; unless the loved one disappointed him in some way; and then he'd be strong enough to go his way and not whine about it. I do hate a whiner! Don't you?”

A shadow fell upon the platform outside the door, and Saunders appeared, sidling deprecatingly into the room. He pulled off his black, slouched hat and tucked it under his arm, smoothed his lank, black hair, ran his palm down over his lank, unshaven face with a smoothing gesture, and sidled over to the telegraph table.

“Here's the answer to that message,” he said, in a limp tone, without any especial emphasis or inflection. “If you ain't too busy, and could send it right off—it's to go C.O.D. and make 'em repeat it, so as to be sure—”

“Certainly, Mr. Saunders.” Miss Georgie rose, the crisp, businesslike operator, and went to the table. She took the sheet of paper from him with her finger tips, as if he were some repulsive creature whose touch would send her shuddering, and glanced at the message. “Write it on the regular form,” she said, and pushed a pad and pencil toward him. “I have to place it on file.” Whereupon she turned her back upon him, and stood staring down the railroad track through the smoke-grimed window until a movement warned her that he was through.

“Very well—that is all,” she said, after she had counted the words twice. “Oh—you want to wait for the repeat.”

She laid her fingers on the key and sent the message in a whirl of chittering little sounds, waited a moment while the sounder spoke, paused, and then began a rapid clicking, which was the repeated message, and wrote it down upon its form.

“There—if it's correct, that's all,” she told him in a tone of dismissal, and waited openly for him to go. Which he did, after a sly glance at Evadna, a licking of pale lips, as if he would speak but lacked the courage, and a leering grin at Miss Georgie.

He was no sooner over the threshold than she slammed the door shut, in spite of the heat. She walked to the window, glanced down the track again, turned to the table, and restlessly arranged the form pads, sticking the message upon the file. She said something under her breath, snapped the cover on the inkwell, sighed, patted her pompadour, and finally laughed at her own uneasiness.

“Whenever that man comes in here,” she observed impatiently, “I always feel as if I ought to clean house after him. If ever there was a human toad—or snake, or—ugh! And what does he mean—sending twenty-word messages that don't make sense when you read them over, and getting others that are just a lot of words jumbled together, hit or miss? I wish—only it's unprofessional to talk about it—but, just the same, there's some nasty business brewing, and I know it. I feel guilty, almost, every time I send one of those cipher messages.”