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

make sure—but you must get away from here. You shouldn't have stayed so long—” Miss Georgie gave a most unexpected sob, and stopped that she might grit her teeth in anger over it.

“You think I shot him.” As Good Indian said it, the sentence was merely a statement, rather than an accusation or a reproach.

“I don't blame you. I suspected he was the man up here with the rifle. That day—that first day, when you told me about someone shooting at you—he came over to the station. And I saw two or three scraps of sage sticking under his shirt-collar, as if he had been out in the brush; you know how it breaks off and sticks, when you go through it. And he said he had been asleep. And there isn't any sage where a man would have to go through it unless he got right out in it, away from the trails. I thought then that he was the man—”

“You didn't tell me.” And this time he spoke reproachfully.

“It was after you had left that I saw it. And I did go down to the ranch to tell you. But I—you were so—occupied—in other directions—” She let go his wrists, and began fumbling at her hair, and she bowed her head again so that her face was hidden from him.

“You could have told me, anyway,” Good Indian said constrainedly.

“You didn't want her to know. I couldn't, before her. And I didn't want to—hurt her by—” Miss Georgie fumbled more with her words than with her hair.

“Well, there's no use arguing about that.” Good Indian also found that subject a difficult one. “You say he was shot. Did he say—”

“He wasn't able to talk when I saw him. Pete said Saunders claimed he was shot at the stable, but I know that to be a lie.” Miss Georgie spoke with unfeeling exactness. “That was to save himself in case he got well, I suppose. I believe the man is going to die, if he hasn't already; he had the look—I've seen them in wrecks, and I know. He won't talk; he can't. But there'll be an investigation—and Baumberger, I suspect, will be just as willing to get you in this way as in any other. More so, maybe. Because a murder is always awkward to handle.”

“I can't see why he should want to murder me.” Good Indian took her hands away from her hair, and set himself again to the work of freeing her. “You've been fudging around till you've got about ten million more hairs wound up,” he grumbled.

“Wow! ARE you deliberately torturing me?” she complained, winking with the pain of his good intentions. “I don't believe he does want to murder you. I think that was just Saunders trying to make a dandy good job of it. He doesn't like you, anyway—witness the way you bawled him out that day you roped—ow-w!—roped the dog. Baumberger may have wanted him to keep an eye on you—My Heavens, man! Do you think you're plucking a goose?”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” he retorted, grinning a little. “Honest! I'm trying to go easy, but this infernal bush has sure got a strangle hold on you—and your hair is so fluffy it's a deuce of a job. You keep wriggling and getting it caught in new places. If you could only manage to stand still—but I suppose you can't.

“By the way,” he remarked casually, after a short silence, save for an occasional squeal from Miss Georgie, “speaking of Saunders—I didn't shoot him.”

Miss Georgie looked up at him, to the further entanglement of her hair. “You DIDN'T? Then who did?”

“Search ME,” he offered figuratively and briefly.

“Well, I will.” Miss Georgie spoke with a certain decisiveness, and reaching out a sage-soiled hand, took his gun from the holster at his hip. He shrank away with a man's instinctive dislike of having anyone make free with his weapons, but it was a single movement, which he controlled instantly.

“Stand still, can't you?” he admonished, and kept at work while she examined the gun with a dexterity and ease of every motion which betrayed her perfect familiarity with firearms. She snapped the cylinder into place, sniffed daintily at the end of the barrel, and slipped the gun back into its scabbard.

“Don't think I doubted your word,” she said, casting a slanting glance up at him without moving her head. “But I wanted to be able to swear positively, if I should happen to be dragged into the witness-box—I hope it won't be by the hair of the head!—that your gun has not been fired this morning. Unless you carry a cleaning rod with you,” she added, “which would hardly be likely.”

“You may search me if you like,” Good Indian suggested, and for an engaged young man, and one deeply in love withal, he displayed a contentment with the situation which was almost reprehensible.

“No use. If you did pack one with you, you'd be a fool not to throw it away after you had used it. No, I'll swear to the gun as it is now. Are you ever going to get my hair loose? I'm due at the office right this minute, I'll bet a molasses cooky.” She looked at her watch, and groaned. “I'd have to telegraph myself back to get there on time now,” she said. “Twenty-four—that fast freight—is due in eighteen minutes exactly. I've got to be there. Take your jackknife and cut what won't come loose. Really, I mean it, Mr. Imsen.”

“I was under the impression that my name is Grant—to friends.”

“My name is 'Dennis,' if I don't beat that freight,” she retorted curtly. “Take your knife and give me a hair cut—quick! I can do it a different way, and cover up the place.”

“Oh, all right—but it's a shame to leave a nice bunch of hair like this hanging on a bush.”

“Tell me, what were you doing up here, Grant? And what are you going to do now? We haven't much time, and we've been fooling when we should have been discussing 'ways and means.'”

“Well, I got up early, and someone took a shot at me again. This time he clipped my hat-brim.” He took off his hat, and showed her where the brim had a jagged tear half an inch deep. “I ducked, and made up my mind I'd get him this time, or know the reason why. So I rode up the other way and back behind the orchard, and struck the grade below the Point o' Rocks, and so came up here hunting him. I kept pretty well out of sight—we've done that before; Jack and I took sneak yesterday, and came up here at sunrise, but we couldn't find anything. I was beginning to think he had given it up. So I was just scouting around here when I heard you rustling the bushes over here. I was going to shoot, but I changed my mind, and thought I'd land on you and trust to the lessons I got in football and the gun. And the rest,” he declaimed whimsically, “you know.

“Now, duck away down—oh, wait a minute.” He gave a jerk at the knot of his neckerchief, flipped out the folds, spread it carefully over her head, and tied it under her chin, patting it into place and tucking stray locks under as if he rather enjoyed doing it. “Better wear it till you're