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

shade where Pete Hamilton was resting after the excitement of the past thirty-six hours.

“I lied to you, Mr. Hart,” she confessed, engagingly. “I haven't a thing for you except a lot of questions, and I simply must ask them or die. I'm not just curious, you know. I'm horribly anxious. Won't you take the seat of honor, please? The ranch won't run off if you aren't there for a few minutes after you had expected to be. I've been waiting to have a little talk with you, and I simply couldn't let the opportunity go by.” She talked fast, but she was thinking faster, and wondering if this calm, white-bearded old man thought her a meddlesome fool.

“There's time enough, and it ain't worth much right now,” Peaceful said, sitting down in the beribboned rocker and stroking his beard in his deliberate fashion. “It seems to be getting the fashion to be anxious,” he drawled, and waited placidly for her to speak.

“You just about swear by old Baumberger, don't you?” she began presently, fiddling with her lead pencil and going straight to the heart of what she wanted to say.

“Well, I dunno. I've kinda learned to fight shy of swearing by anybody, Miss Georgie.” His mild blue eyes settled attentively upon her flushed face.

“That's some encouragement, anyhow,” she sighed. “Because he's the biggest old blackguard in Idaho and more treacherous than any Indian ever could be if he tried. I just thought I'd tell you, in case you didn't know it. I'm certain as I can be of anything, that he's at the bottom of this placer-claim fraud, and he's just digging your ranch out from under your feet while he wheedles you into thinking he's looking after your interests. I'll bet you never got an injunction against those eight men,” she hazarded, leaning toward him with her eyes sparkling as the subject absorbed all her thoughts. “I'll bet anything he kept you fiddling around until those fellows all filed on their claims. And now it's got to go till the case is finally settled in court, because they are technically within their rights in making lawful improvements on their claims.

“Grant,” she said, and her voice nearly betrayed her when she spoke his name, “was sure they faked the gold samples they must have used in filing. We both were sure of it. He and the boys tried to catch them at some crooked work, but the nights have been too dark, for one thing, and they were always on the watch, and went up to Shoshone in couples, and there was no telling which two meant to sneak off next. So they have all filed, I suppose. I know the whole eight have been up—”

“Yes, they've all filed—twenty acres apiece—the best part of the ranch. There's a forty runs up over the bluff; the lower line takes in the house and barn and down into the garden where the man they call Stanley run his line through the strawberry patch. That forty's mine yet. It's part uh the homestead. The meadowland is most all included. That was a preemption claim.” Peaceful spoke slowly, and there was a note of discouragement in his voice which it hurt Miss Georgie to hear.

“Well, they've got to prove that those claims of theirs are lawful, you know. And if you've got your patent for the homestead—you have got a patent, haven't you?” Something in his face made her fling in the question.

“Y-es—or I thought I had one,” he answered dryly. “It seems now there's a flaw in it, and it's got to go back to Washington and be rectified. It ain't legal till that's been done.”

Miss Georgie half rose from her chair, and dropped back despairingly. “Who found that mistake?” she demanded. “Baumberger?”

“Y-es, Baumberger. He thought we better go over all the papers ourselves, so the other side couldn't spring anything on us unawares, and there was one paper that hadn't been made out right. So it had to be fixed, of course. Baumberger was real put out about it.”

“Oh, of course!” Miss Georgie went to the window to make sure of the gentleman's whereabouts. He was still sitting upon the store porch, and he was just in the act of lifting a tall, glass mug of beer to his gross mouth when she looked over at him. “Pig!” she gritted under her breath. “It's a pity he doesn't drink himself to death.” She turned and faced Peaceful anxiously.

“You spoke a while ago as if you didn't trust him implicitly,” she said. “I firmly believe he hired those eight men to file on your land. I believe he also hired Saunders to watch Grant, for some reason—perhaps because Grant has shown his hostility from the first. Did you know Saunders—or someone—has been shooting at Grant from the top of the bluff for—well, ever since you left? The last shot clipped his hat-brim. Then Saunders was shot—or shot himself, according to the inquest—and there has been no more rifle practice with Grant for the target.”

“N-no, I hadn't heard about that.” Peaceful pulled hard at his beard so that his lips were drawn slightly apart. “I don't mind telling yuh,” he added slowly, “that I've got another lawyer working on the case—Black. He hates Baumberger, and he'd like to git something on him. I don't want Baumberger should know anything about it, though. He takes it for granted I swallow whole everything he says and does—but I don't. Not by a long shot. Black'll ferret out any crooked work.”

“He's a dandy if he catches Baumberger,” Miss Georgie averred, gloomily. “I tried a little detective work on my own account. I hadn't any right; it was about the cipher messages Saunders used to send and receive so often before your place was jumped. I was dead sure it was old Baumberger at the other end, and I—well, I struck up a mild sort of flirtation with the operator at Shoshone.” She smiled deprecatingly at Peaceful.

“I wanted to find out—and I did by writing a nice letter or two; we have to be pretty cute about what we send over the wires,” she explained, “though we do talk back and forth quite a lot, too. There was a news-agent and cigar man—you know that kind of joint, where they sell paper novels and magazines and tobacco and such—getting Saunders' messages. Jim Wakely is his name. He told the operator that he and Saunders were just practicing; they were going to be detectives, he said, and rigged up a cipher that they were learning together so they wouldn't need any codebook. Pretty thin that—but you can't prove it wasn't the truth. I managed to find out that Baumberger buys cigars and papers of Jim Wakely sometimes; not always, though.”

Miss Georgie laughed ruefully, and patted her pompadour absent-mindedly.

“So all I got out of that,” she finished, “was a correspondence I could very well do without. I've been trying to quarrel with that operator ever since, but he's so darned easy-tempered!” She went and looked out of the window again uneasily.

“He's guzzling beer over there, and from the look of him he's had a good deal more than he needs already,” she informed Peaceful. “He'll burst if he keeps on. I suppose I shouldn't keep you any longer—he's looking this way pretty often, I notice; nothing but the beer-keg holds him, I imagine. And when he empties that—” She shrugged her shoulders, and sat down facing Hart.

“Maybe you could bribe Jim Wakely into giving something away,” she suggested. “I'd sure like to see