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

flashed Evadna, unintentionally revealing her real grievance. “He just eats and goes—and he isn't even there to eat, half the time. And when he's there, he's grumpy, like all the rest.” She was saying the things she had told herself, on the way up, that she would DIE rather than say; to Miss Georgie, of all people.

“I expect he's pretty worried, chicken, over that land business.” Miss Georgie offered her candy, and Evadna waved the box from her impatiently, as if her spirits were altogether too low for sweets.

“Well, I'm very sure I'M not to blame for those men being there,” she retorted petulantly. “He”—she hesitated, and then plunged heedlessly on—“he acts just as if I weren't anybody at all. I'm sure, if he expects me to be a doll to be played with and then dumped into a corner where I'm to smile and smile until he comes and picks me up again—”

“Now, chicken, what's the use of being silly?” Miss Georgie turned her head slightly away, and stared out of the window. “He's worried, I tell you, and instead of sulking because he doesn't stay and make love—”

“Well, upon my word! Just as if I wanted—”

“You really ought to help him by being kind and showing a little sympathy, instead—”

“It appears that the supply of sympathy—”

“Instead of making it harder for him by feeling neglected and letting him see that you do. My Heavens above!” Miss Georgie faced her suddenly with pink cheeks. “When a man is up against a problem—and carries his life in his hand—”

“You don't know a thing about it!” Evadna stopped rocking, and sat up very straight in the chair. “And even if that were true, is that any reason why he should AVOID me? I'M not threatening his life!”

“He doesn't avoid you. And you're acting sillier than I ever supposed you could. He can't be in two places at once, can he? Now, let's be sensible, chicken. Grant—”

“Oh—h!” There was a peculiar, sliding inflection upon that word, which made Miss Georgie's hand shut into a fist.

“Grant”—Miss Georgie put a defiant emphasis upon it—“is doing all he can to get to the bottom of that jumping business. There's something crooked about it, and he knows it, and is trying to—”

“I know all that.” Evadna interrupted without apology.

“Well, of course, if you DO—then I needn't tell you how silly it is for you to complain of being neglected, when you know his time is all taken up with trying to ferret out a way to block their little game. He feels in a certain sense responsible—”

“Yes, I know. He thinks he should have been watching somebody or something instead of—of being with me. He took the trouble to make that clear to me, at least!” Evadna's eyes were very blue and very bright, but there was no look of an angel in her face.

Miss Georgie pressed her lips together tightly for a minute. When she spoke, she was cheerfully impersonal as to tone and manner.

“Chicken, you're a little goose. The man is simply crazy about you, and harassed to death with this ranch business. Once that's settled—well, you'll see what sort of a lover he can be!”

“Thank you so much for holding out a little hope and encouragement, my dear!” Evadna, by the way, looked anything but thankful; indeed, she seemed to resent the hope and the encouragement as a bit of unwarranted impertinence. She glanced toward the door as if she meditated an immediate departure, but ended by settling back in the chair and beginning to rock again.

“It's a nasty, underhand business from start to finish,” said Miss Georgie, ignoring the remark. “It has upset everybody—me included, and I'm sure it isn't my affair. It's just one of those tricky cases that you know is rotten to the core, and yet you can't seem to get hold of anything definite. My dad had one or two experiences with old Baumberger—and if ever there was a sly old mole of a man, he's one.

“Did you ever take after a mole, chicken? They used to get in our garden at home. They burrow underneath the surface, you know, and one never sees them. You can tell by the ridge of loose earth that they're there, and if you think you've located Mr. Mole, and jab a stick down, why—he's somewhere else, nine times in ten. I used to call them Baumbergers, even then. Dad,” she finished reminiscently, “was always jabbing his law stick down where the earth seemed to move—but he never located old Baumberger, to my knowledge.”

She stopped, because Evadna, without a shadow of doubt, was looking bored. Miss Georgie regarded her with the frown she used when she was applying her mental measuring-stick. She began to suspect that Evadna was, after all, an extremely self-centered little person; she was sorry for the suspicion, and she was also conscious of a certain disappointment which was not altogether for herself.

“Ah, well”—she dismissed analysis and the whole subject with a laugh that was partly yawn—“away with dull care. Away with dull everything. It's too hot to think or feel. A real emotion is as superfluous and oppressive as a—a 'camel petticoat!” This time her laugh was real and infectiously carefree. “Take off your hat, chicken. I'll go beg a hunk of ice from my dear friend Peter, and make some lemonade as is lemonade; or claret punch, if you aren't a blue ribboner, or white-ribboner, or some other kind of a good-ribboner.” Miss Georgie hated herself for sliding into sheer flippancy, but she preferred that extreme to the other, and she could not hold her ground just then at the “happy medium.”

Evadna, however, seemed to disapprove of the flippancy. She did not take off her hat, and she stated evenly that she must go, and that she really did not care for lemonade, or claret punch, either.

“What, in Heaven's name, DO you care for—besides yourself?” flared Miss Georgie, quite humanly exasperated. “There, chicken—the heat always turns me snappy,” she repented instantly. “Please pinch me.” She held out a beautiful, tapering forearm, and smiled.

“I'm the snappy one,” said Evadna, but she did not smile as she began drawing on her gauntlets slowly and deliberately.

If she were waiting for Miss Georgie to come back to the subject of Grant, she was disappointed, for Miss Georgie did not come to any subject whatever. A handcar breezed past the station, the four section-men pumping like demons because of the slight down grade and their haste for their dinner.

Huckleberry gave one snort and one tug backward upon the tie rope and then a coltish kick into the air when he discovered that he was free. After that, he took off through the sagebrush at a lope, too worldly-wise to follow the trail past the store, where someone might rush out and grab him before he could dodge away. He was a wise little pinto—Huckleberry.

“And now, I suppose I'll have the pleasure of walking home,” grumbled Evadna, standing upon the platform and gazing, with much self-pity, after her runaway.

“It's noon—stay and eat dinner with me, chicken. Some of the boys