第72章

Pete Hamilton, anxious that the passing of his unprofitable servant should be marked by decorum if not by grief, mentally classed the event with election day, in that he refused to sell any liquor until the sheriff and coroner arrived. He also, after his first bewilderment had passed, conceived the idea that Saunders had committed suicide, and explained to everyone who would listen just why he believed it. Saunders was sickly, for one thing. For another, Saunders never seemed to get any good out of living. He had read everything he could get his hands on--and though Pete did not say that Saunders chose to die when the stock of paper novels was exhausted, he left that impression upon his auditors.

The sheriff and the coroner came at nine. All the Hart boys, including Donny, were there before noon, and the group of Indians remained all day wherever the store cast its shadow. Squaws and bucks passed and repassed upon the footpath between Hartley and their camp, chattering together of the big event until they came under the eye of strange white men, whereupon they. were stricken deaf and dumb, as is the way of our nation's wards.

When the sheriff inspected the stable and its vicinity, looking for clews, not a blanket was in sight, though a dozen eyes watched every movement suspiciously. When at the inquest that afternoon, he laid upon the table a battered old revolver of cheap workmanship and long past its prime, and testified that he had found it ten feet from the stable-door, in a due line southeast from the hay-corral, and that one shot had been fired from it, there were Indians in plenty to glance furtively at the weapon and give no sign.

The coroner showed the bullet which he had extracted from the body of Saunders, and fitted it into the empty cartridge which had been under the hammer in the revolver, and thereby proved to the satisfaction of everyone that the gun was intimately connected with the death of the man. So the jury arrived speedily, and without further fussing over evidence, at the verdict of suicide.

Good Indian drew a long breath, put on his hat, and went over to tell Miss Georgie. The Hart boys lingered for a few minutes at the store, and then rode on to the ranch without him, and the Indians stole away over the hill to their camp. The coroner and the sheriff accepted Pete's invitation into the back part of the store, refreshed themselves after the ordeal, and caught the next train for Shoshone. So closed the incident of Saunders' passing, so far as the law was concerned.

"Well," Miss Georgie summed up the situation, "Baumberger hasn't made any sign of taking up the matter. I don't believe, now, that he will. I wired the news to the papers in Shoshone, so he must know. I think perhaps he's glad to get Saunders out of the way--for he certainly must have known enough to put Baumberger behind the bars.

"But I don't see," she said, in a puzzled way, "how that gun came onto the scene. I looked all around the stable this morning, and I could swear there wasn't any gun.""Well, he did pick it up--fortunately," Good Indian returned grimly. "I'm glad the thing was settled so easily."She looked up at him sharply for a moment, opened her lips to ask a question, and then thought better of it.

"Oh, here's your handkerchief," she said quietly, taking it from the bottom of her wastebasket. "As you say, the thing is settled. I'm going to turn you out now. The four-thirty-five is due pretty soon--and I have oodles of work."He looked at her strangely, and went away, wondering why Miss Georgie hated so to have him in the office lately.

On the next day, at ten o'clock, they buried Saunders on a certain little knoll among the sagebrush; buried him without much ceremony, it is true, but with more respect than he had received when he was alive and shambling sneakily among them. Good Indian was there, saying little and listening attentively to the comments made upon the subject, and when the last bit of yellow gravel had been spatted into place he rode down through the Indian camp on his way home, thankful that everyone seemed to accept the verdict of suicide as being final, and anxious that Rachel should know it. He felt rather queer about Rachel; sorry for her, in an impersonal way; curious over her attitude toward life in general and toward himself in particular, and ready to do her a good turn because of her interest.