Part 23 (1/2)

”Keep an eye on the rim-rock, boys,” he called back, without turning his head. A third of the way he went, stopped dead still, and made believe inspect something upon the ground at his feet.

”Ah, go ON!” bawled Wally, his nerves all on edge.

Jack dug his heel into the dust, blew the ashes from his cigarette, and went on slowly to the gate, pa.s.sed through, and stood well back, out of sight under the trees, to watch.

Wally snorted disdain of any proceeding so spectacular, but he was as he was made, and he could not keep his dare-devil spirit quite in abeyance.

He twitched his hat farther back on his head, stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked deliberately out into the open, his neck as stiff as a newly elected politician on parade. He did not stop, as Jack had done, but he facetiously whistled ”Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,” and he went at a pace which permitted him to finish the tune before he reached the gate. He joined Jack in the shade, and his face, when he looked back to the stable, was anxious.

”It must be Grant he wants, all right,” he muttered, resting one hand on Jack's shoulder and speaking so he could not be overheard from the house. ”And I wish to the Lord he'd stay where he's at.”

But Good Indian was already two paces from the door, coming steadily up the path, neither faster nor slower than usual, with his eyes taking in every object within sight as he went, and his thumb hooked inside his belt, near where his gun swung at his hip. It was not until his free hand was upon the gate that lack and Wally knew they had been holding their breath.

”Well--here I am,” said Good Indian, after a minute, smiling down at them with the sunny look in his eyes. ”I'm beginning to think I had a dream. Only”--he dipped his fingers into the pocket of his s.h.i.+rt and brought up the flattened bullet--”that is pretty blamed realistic--for a dream.” His eyes searched involuntarily the rim-rock with a certain incredulity, as if he could not bring himself to believe in that bullet, after all.

”But two of the jumpers are gone,” said Wally. ”I reckon we stirred 'em up some yesterday, and they're trying to get back at us.”

”They've picked a dandy place,” Good Indian observed. ”I think maybe it would be a good idea to hold that fort ourselves. We should have thought of that; only I never thought--”

Phoebe, heavy-eyed and pale from wakefulness and worry, came then, and called them in to breakfast. Gene and Clark came in, sulky still, and inclined to snappishness when they did speak. Donny announced that he had been in the garden, and that Stanley told him he would blow the top of his head off if he saw him there again. ”And I never done a thing to him!” he declared virtuously.

Phoebe set down the coffee-pot with an air of decision.

”I want you boys to remember one thing,” she said firmly, ”and that is that there must be no more shooting going on around here. It isn't only what Baumberger thinks--I don't know as ho's got anything to say about it--it's what _I_ think. I know I'm only a woman, and you all consider yourselves men, whether you are or not, and it's beneath your dignity, maybe, to listen to your mother.

”But your mother has seen the day when she was counted on as much, almost, as if she'd been a man. Why, great grief! I've stood for hours peeking out a knot-hole in the wall, with that same old shotgun Donny got hold of, ready to shoot the first Injun that stuck his nose from behind a rock.”

The color came into her cheeks at the memory, and a sparkle into her eyes. ”I've seen real fighting, when it was a life-and-death matter.

I've tended to the men that were shot before my eyes, and I've sung hymns over them that died. You boys have grown up on some of the stories about the things I've been through.

”And here last night,” she reproached irritatedly, ”I heard someone say: 'Oh, come on--we're scaring Mum to death!' The idea! 'scaring Mum!' I can tell you young jackanapes one thing: If I thought there was anything to be gained by it, or if it would save trouble instead of MAKING trouble, 'MUM' could go down there right now, old as she is, and SCARED as she is, and clean out the whole, measly outfit!” She stared sternly at the row of faces bent over their plates.

”Oh, you can laugh--it's only your mother!” she exclaimed indignantly, when she saw Jack's eyes go shut and Gene's mouth pucker into a tight knot. ”But I'll have you to know I'm boss of this ranch when your father's gone, and if there's any more of that kid foolishness to-day--laying behind a currant bush and shooting COFFEE-POTS!--I'll thrash the fellow that starts it! It isn't the kind of fighting I'VE been used to. I may be away behind the times--I guess I am!--but I've always been used to the idea that guns weren't to be used unless you meant business. This thing of getting out and PLAYING gun-fight is kinda sickening to a person that's seen the real thing.

”'Scaring Mum to death!”' She seemed to find it very hard to forget that, or to forgive it. ”'SCARING MUM'--and Jack, there, was born in the time of an Indian uprising, and I laid with your father's revolver on the pillow where I could put my hand on it, day or night! YOU scare Mum! MUM will scare YOU, if there's any more of that let's-play-Injun business going on around this ranch. Why, I'd lead you down there by the ear, every mother's son of you, and tell that man Stanley to SPANK you!”

”Mum can whip her weight in wildcats any old time,” Wally announced after a heavy silence, and glared aggressively from one foolish-looking face to another.

As was frequently the case, the wave of Phoebe's wrath ebbed harmlessly away in laughter as the humorous aspect of her tirade was brought to her attention.

”Just the same, I want you should mind what I tell you,” she said, in her old motherly tone, ”and keep away from those ruffians down there.

You can't do anything but make 'em mad, and give 'em an excuse for killing someone. When your father gets back, we'll see what's to be done.”

”All right, Mum. We won't look toward the garden to-day,” Wally promised largely, and held out his cup to her to be refilled. ”You can keep my gun, if you want to make dead sure.”

”No, I can trust my boys, I hope,” and she glowed with real pride in them when she said it.

Good Indian lingered on the porch for half an hour or so, waiting for Evadna to appear. She may have seen him through the window--at any rate she slipped out very quietly, and had her breakfast half eaten before he suspected that she was up; and when he went into the kitchen, she was talking animatedly with Marie about Mexican drawn-work, and was drawing intricate little diagrams of certain patterns with her fork upon the tablecloth.

She looked up, and gave him a careless greeting, and went back to discussing certain ”wheels” in the corner of an imaginary lunch-cloth and just how one went about making them. He made a tentative remark or two, trying to win her attention to himself, but she pushed her cup and saucer aside to make room for further fork drawings, and glanced at him with her most exaggerated Christmas-angel look.

”Don't interrupt, please,” she said mincingly. ”This is IMPORTANT. And,”