Idaho -- Fiction; Ranch life -- Fiction; Western stories
She waited until he had passed through and was a third of the way to
the stable where Peaceful Hart and his boys were gathered, and then she
followed him briskly, as if her mind was taken up with her own affairs.
“It's a shame you fellows got cheated out of a scrap,” she taunted Jack,
who held her horse for her while she settled herself in the saddle. “You
were all spoiling for a fight--and there did seem to be the makings of a
beautiful row!”
Save for the fact that she kept her eyes studiously turned away from a
certain place near by, where the dust was pressed down smoothly with
the weight of a heavy body, and all around was trampled and tracked, one
could not have told that Miss Georgie remembered anything tragic.
But Good Indian seemed to recall something, and went quickly over to her
just in time to prevent her starting.
“Was there something in particular you wanted when you came?” he asked,
laying a hand on the neck of the bay. “It just occurred to me that there
must have been.”
She leaned so that the others could not hear, and her face was grave
enough now.
“Why, yes. It's old Hagar. She came to me this afternoon, and she had
that bunch of hair you cut off that was snarled in the bush. She had
your knife. She wanted me to buy them--the old blackmailer! She made
threats, Grant--about Saunders. She says you--I came right down to tell
you, because I was afraid she might make trouble. But there was so much
more on hand right here”--she glanced involuntarily at the trampled
place in the dust. “She said she'd come back this evening, 'when the
sun goes away.' She's there now, most likely. What shall I tell her? We
can't have that story mouthed all over the country.”
Good Indian twisted a wisp of mane in his fingers, and frowned
abstractedly.
“If you'll ride on slowly,” he told her, at last straightening the
twisted lock, “I'll overtake you. I think I'd better see that old
Jezebel myself.”
Secretly he was rather thankful for further action. He told the boys
when they fired questions at his hurried saddling that he was going to
take Miss Georgie home, and that he would be back before long; in an
hour, probably. Then he galloped down the trail, and overtook her at the
Point o' Rocks.
The sun was down, and the sky was a great, glowing mass of color. Round
the second turn of the grade they came upon Stanley, walking with his
hands thrust in his trousers pockets and whistling softly to himself as
if he were thinking deeply. Perhaps he was glad to be let off so easily.
“Abandoning my claim,” he announced, lightly as a man of his prosaic
temperament could speak upon such a subject. “Dern poor placer mining
down there, if yuh want to know!”
Good Indian scowled at him and rode on, because a woman rode beside him.
Seven others they passed farther up the hill. Those seven gave him scowl
for scowl, and did not speak a word; that also because a woman rode
beside him. And the woman understood, and was glad that she was there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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