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

manage that? I believe,” she mused, “they'll have to go in person—I don't believe Baumberger can do that all himself legally. I've got some of daddy's law-books over in my trunk, and maybe I can look it up and make sure. But I know they haven't filed their claims yet. They've GOT to take possession first, and they've got to show a sample of ore, or dust, it would be in this case. The best thing to do—” She drew her eyebrows together, and she pinched her under lip between her thumb and forefinger, and she stared abstractedly at Good Indian. “Oh, hurry up, Grant!” she cried unguardedly. “Think—think HARD, what's best to do!”

“The only thing I can think of,” he scowled, “is to kill that—”

“And that won't do, under the circumstances,” she cut in airily. “There'd still be the eight. I'd like,” she declared viciously, “to put rough-on-rats in his dinner, but I intend to refrain from doing as I'd like, and stick to what's best.”

Good Indian gave her a glance of grateful understanding. “This thing has hit me hard,” he confided suddenly. “I've been holding myself in all day. The Harts are like my own folks. They're all I've had, and she's been—they've all been—” Then the instinct of repression walled in his emotion, and he let the rest go in a long breath which told Miss Georgie all she needed to know. So much of Good Indian would never find expression in speech; all that was best of him would not, one might be tempted to think.

“By the way, is there any pay dirt on that ranch?” Miss Georgie kept herself rigidly to the main subject.

“No, there isn't. Not,” he added dryly, “unless it has grown gold in the last few years. There are colors, of course. All this country practically can show colors, but pay dirt? No!”

“Look out,” she advised him slowly, “that pay dirt doesn't grow over night! Sabe?”

Good Indian's eyes spoke admiration of her shrewdness.

“I must be getting stupid, not to have thought of that,” he said.

“Can't give me credit for being 'heap smart'?” she bantered. “Can't even let me believe I thought of something beyond the ken of the average person? Not,” she amended ironically, “that I consider YOU an average person! Would you mind”—she became suddenly matter of fact—“waiting here while I go and rummage for a book I want? I'm almost sure I have one on mining laws. Daddy had a good deal of that in his business, being in a mining country. We've got to know just where we stand, it seems to me, because Baumberger's going to use the laws himself, and it's with the law we've got to fight him.”

She had to go first and put a stop to the hysterical chattering of the sounder by answering the summons. It proved to be a message for Baumberger, and she wrote it down in a spiteful scribble which left it barely legible.

“Betraying professional secrets, but I don't care,” she exclaimed, turning swiftly toward him. “Listen to this:

“'How's fishing? Landed the big one yet? Ready for fry?”'

She threw it down upon the table with a pettish gesture that was wholly feminine. “Sounds perfectly innocent, doesn't it? Too perfectly innocent, if you ask me.” She stared out of the window abstractedly, her brows pinched together and her lips pursed with a corner between her teeth, much as she had stared after Baumberger the day before; and when she spoke she seemed to have swung her memory back to him then.

“He came up yesterday—with fish for Pete, he SAID, and of course he really did have some—and sent a wire to Shoshone. I found it on file when I came back. That was perfectly innocent, too. It was:

“'Expect to land big one to-night. Plenty of small fry. Smooth trail.'

“I've an excellent memory, you see.” She laughed shortly. “Well, I'll go and hunt up that book, and we'll proceed to glean the wisdom of the serpent, so that we won't be compelled to remain as harmless as the dove! You won't mind waiting here?”

He assured her that he would not mind in the least, and she ran out bareheaded into the hot sunlight. Good Indian leaned forward a little in his chair so that he could watch her running across to the shack where she had a room or two, and he paid her the compliment of keeping her in his thoughts all the time she was gone. He felt, as he had done with Peppajee, that he had not known Miss Georgie at all until to-day, and he was a bit startled at what he was finding her to be.

“Of course,” she laughed, when she rustled in again like a whiff of fresh air, “I had to go clear to the bottom of the last trunk I looked in. Lucky I only have three to my name, for it would have been in the last one just the same, if I'd had two dozen and had ransacked them all. But I found it, thank Heaven!”

She came eagerly up to him—he was sitting in the beribboned rocker dedicated to friendly callers, and had the rug badly rumpled with his spurs, which he had forgotten to remove—and with a sweep of her forearm she cleared the little table of novel, newspaper, and a magazine and deck of cards, and barely saved her box of chocolates from going bottom up on the floor.

“Like candy? Help yourself, if you do,” she said, and tucked a piece into her mouth absent-mindedly before she laid the leather-bound book open on the table. “Now, we'll see what information Mr. Copp can give us. He's a high authority—General Land Office Commissioner, if you please. He's a few years old—several years old, for that matter—but I don't think he's out of date; I believe what he says still goes. M-m-m!-'Liens on Mines'—'Clause Inserted in Patents'—'Affidavits Taken Without Notice to Opposing'—oh, it must be here—it's GOT to be here!”

She was running a somewhat sticky forefinger slowly down the index pages. “It isn't alphabetically arranged, which I consider sloppy of Mr. Copp. Ah-h! 'Minerals Discovered After Patent Has Issued to Agricultural Claimant'—two hundred and eight. We'll just take a look at that first. That's what they're claiming, you know.” She hitched her chair closer, and flipped the leaves eagerly. When she found the page, they touched heads over it, though Miss Georgie read aloud.

“Oh, it's a letter—but it's a decision, and as such has weight. U-m!

“SIR: In reply to your letter of inquiry. . . I have to state that all mineral deposits discovered on land after United States Patent therefor has issued to a party claiming under the laws regulating the disposal of agricultural lands, pass with the patent, and this office has no further jurisdiction in the premise. Very respectfully,”

“'PASS WITH THE PATENT!'” Miss Georgie turned her face so that she could look into Grant's eyes, so close to her own. “Old Peaceful must surely have his patent—Baumberger can't be much of a lawyer, do you think? Because that's a flat statement. There's no chance for any legal quibbling in that—IS there?”

“That's about as straight as he could put it,” Good Indian agreed, his face losing a little of its anxiety.

“Well, we'll just browse along for