第69章

"The--deuce!" Good Indian brought out the milder expletive with the flat intonation which the unexpected presence of a lady frequently gives to a man's speech. "Lucky I didn't take a shot at you through the bushes. I did, almost, when I saw somebody moving here. Is this your favorite place for a morning ramble?"He had one hand still upon her arm, and he was laughing openly at her plight. But he sobered when he stooped a little so that he could see her face, for there were tears in her eyes, and Miss Georgie was not the sort of young woman whom one expects to shed tears for slight cause.

"If you did it--and you must have--I don't see how you can laugh about it, even if he is a crawling reptile of a man that ought to be hung!" The tears were in her voice as well as her eyes, and there were reproach and disappointment also.

"Did what--to whom--to where, to why?" Good Indian let go her arm, and began helpfully striving with the scraggly scrub and its prongs. "Say, I'll just about have to scalp you to get you loose. Would you mind very much, Squaw-talk-far-off?" He ducked and peered into her face again, and again his face sobered.

"What's the matter?" he asked, in an entirely different tone--which Miss Georgie, in spite of her mood, found less satisfying than his banter.

"Saunders--OUCH; I'd as soon be scalped and done with, as to have you pull out a hair at a time--Saunders crawled home with a bullet in his ribs. And I thought--""Saunders!" Good Indian stared down at her, his hands dropped upon her head.

Miss Georgie reached up, caught him by the wrists, and held him so while she tilted her head that she might look up at him.

"Grant!" she cried softly. "He deserved it. You couldn't help it--he would have shot you down like a dog, just because he was hired to do it, or because of some hold over him. Don't think Iblame you--or that anyone would if they knew the truth. I came out to see--I just HAD to 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 Ididn'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.