Good Indian half turned with the saddle in his hands, and slapped it down upon its side so close to Baumberger that he took a hasty step backward, seized Keno's dragging bridle-reins, and started for the stable. Baumberger happened to be in the way, and he backed again, more hastily than before, to avoid being run over. “Snow blind?” he interrogated, forcing a chuckle which had more the sound of a growl. Good Indian stopped in the doorway, slipped off the bridle, gave Keno a hint by slapping him lightly on the rump, and when the horse had gone on into the cool shade of the stable, and taking his place in his stall, began hungrily nosing the hay in his manger, he came back to unsaddle Huckleberry, who was nodding sleepily with his under lip sagging much like Baumberger's while he waited. That gentleman seemed to be once more obstructing the path of Good Indian. He dodged back as Grant brushed past him. “By the great immortal Jehosaphat!” swore Baumberger, with an ugly leer in his eyes, “I never knew before that I was so small I couldn't be seen with the naked eye!” “You're so small in my estimation that a molecule would look like a hay-stack alongside you!” Good Indian lifted the skirt of Evadna's side-saddle, and proceeded calmly to loosen the cinch. His forehead smoothed a trifle, as if that one sentence had relieved him of some of his bottled bitterness. “YOU ain't shrunk up none--in your estimation,” Baumberger forgot his pose of tolerant good nature to say. His heavy jaw trembled as if he had been overtaken with a brief attack of palsy; so also did the hand which replaced his pipe between his loosely quivering lips. “That little yellow-haired witch must have given yuh the cold shoulder; but you needn't take it out on me. Had a quarrel?” He painstakingly brushed some ashes from his sleeve, once more the wheezing, chuckling fat man who never takes anything very seriously. “Did you ever try minding your own business?” Grant inquired with much politeness of tone. “We-e-ell, yuh see, m' son, it's my business to mind other people's business!” He chuckled at what he evidently considered a witty retort. “I've been pouring oil on the troubled waters all forenoon--maybe I've kinda got the habit.” “Only you're pouring it on a fire this time.” “That dangerous, yuh mean?” “You're liable to start a conflagration you can't stop, and that may consume yourself, is all.” “Say, they sure do teach pretty talk in them colleges!” he purred, grinning loosely, his own speech purposely uncouth.