“I can stand it if you can. And I haven't seen Georgie for DAYS. She must get horribly lonesome, and it's a perfect SHAME that I haven't been up there lately. I'm sure she wouldn't treat ME that way.” Evadna had put on her angelic expression. “I WOULD go oftener,” she declared virtuously, “only you boys always go off without saying anything about it, and I'm silly about riding past that Indian camp alone. That squaw--the one that caught Huckleberry the other day, you know--would hardly let go of the bridle. I was scared to DEATH, only I wouldn't let her see. I believe now she's in with old Hagar, Grant. She kept asking me where you were, and looked so--” “I think, on the whole, we'd better wait till after supper when it's cooler, Goldenhair,” Good Indian observed, when she hesitated over something she had not quite decided to say. “I suppose I really ought to stay and help the boys with that clover patch that Mother Hart is worrying so about. I guess she thinks we're a lazy bunch, all right, when the old man's gone. We'll go up this evening, if you like.” Evadna eyed him with open suspicion, but if she could read his real meaning from anything in his face or his eyes or his manner, she must have been a very keen observer indeed. Good Indian was meditating what he called “making a sneak.” He wanted to have a talk with Miss Georgie himself, and he certainly did not want Evadna, of all people, to hear what he had to say. For just a minute he wished that they had quarreled again. He went down to the stable, started to saddle Keno, and then decided that he would not. After all, Hagar's gossip could do no real harm, he thought, and it could not make much difference if Miss Georgie did not hear of it immediately. CHAPTER XXIV. PEACEFUL RETURNS That afternoon when the four-thirty-five rushed in from the parched desert and slid to a panting halt beside the station platform, Peaceful Hart emerged from the smoker, descended quietly to the blistering planks, and nodded through the open window to Miss Georgie at her instrument taking train orders. Behind him perspired Baumberger, purple from the heat and the beer with which he had sought to allay the discomfort of that searing sunlight. “Howdy, Miss Georgie?” he wheezed, as he passed the window. “Ever see such hot weather in your life? _I_ never did.” Miss Georgie glanced at him while her fingers rattled her key, and it struck her that Baumberger had lost a good deal of his oily amiability since she saw him last. He looked more flabby and loose-lipped than ever, and his leering eyes were streaked plainly with the red veins which told of heavy drinking. She gave him a nod cool enough to lower the thermometer several degrees, and scribbled away upon the yellow pad under her hand as if Baumberger had sunk into the oblivion her temper wished for him. She looked up immediately, however, and leaned forward so that she could see Peaceful just turning to go down the steps.