Good Indian Part 16

"Aw, they ain't fightin'," Donny a.s.sured her disgustedly. "They're chewin' the rag down there, is all. Good Injun knows one of 'em."

Peaceful Hart stood indecisively, and stared, one and gripping the back of his chair. His lips were working so that his beard bristled about his mouth.

"They can't do nothing--the ranch belongs to me," he said, his eyes turning rather helplessly to Baumberger. "I've got my patent."

"Jumping our ranch!--for placer claims!" Phoebe stood up, leaning hard upon the table with both hands. "And we've lived here ever since Clark was a baby!"

"Now, now, let's not get excited over this," soothed Baumberger, getting out of his chair slowly, like the overfed glutton he was. He picked up a crisp fragment of biscuit, crunched it between his teeth, and chewed it slowly. "Can't be anything serious--and if it is, why--I'm here. A lawyer right on the spot may save a lot of trouble. The main thing is, let's not get excited and do something rash. Those boys--"

"Not excited?--and somebody jumping--our--ranch?" Phoebe's soft eyes gleamed at him. She was pale, so that her face had a peculiar, ivory tint.

"Now, now!" Baumberger put out a puffy hand admonis.h.i.+ngly. "Let's keep cool--that's half the battle won. Keep cool." He reached for his pipe, got out his twisted leather tobacco pouch, and opened it with a twirl of his thumb and finger.

"You're a lawyer, Mr. Baumberger," Peaceful turned to him, still helpless in his manner. "What's the best thing to be done?"

"Don't--get--excited." Baumberger nodded his head for every word.

"That's what I always say when a client comes to me all worked up. We'll go down there and see just how much there is to this, and--order 'em off. Calmly, calmly! No violence--no threats--just tell 'em firmly and quietly to leave." He stuffed his pipe carefully, pressing down the tobacco with the tip of a finger. "Then," he added with slow emphasis, "if they don't go, after--say twenty-four hours' notice--why, we'll proceed to serve an injunction." He drew a match along the back of his chair, and lighted his pipe.

"I reckon we'd better go and look after those boys of yours," he suggested, moving toward the door rather quickly, for all his apparent deliberation. "They're inclined to be hot-headed, and we must have no violence, above all things. Keep it a civil matter right through. Much easier to handle in court, if there's no violence to complicate the case."

"They're looking for it," Phoebe reminded him bluntly. "The man had a gun, and threw down on Vadnie."

"He only pointed it at me, auntie," Evadna corrected, ignorant of the Western phrase.

The two women followed the men outside and into the shady yard, where the trees hid completely what lay across the road and beyond the double row of poplars. Donny, leaning far forward and digging his bare toes into the loose soil for more speed, raced on ahead, anxious to see and hear all that took place.

"If the boys don't stir up a lot of antagonism," Baumberger kept urging Peaceful and Phoebe, as they hurried into the garden, "the matter ought to be settled without much trouble. You can get an injunction, and--"

"The idea of anybody trying to hold our place for mineral land!"

Phoebe's indignation was c.u.mulative always, and was now bubbling into wrath. "Why, my grief! Thomas spent one whole summer was.h.i.+ng every likely spot around here. He never got anything better than colors on this ranch--and you can get them anywhere in Idaho, almost. And to come right into our garden, in the right--and stake a placer claim!" Her anger seemed beyond further utterance. "The idea!" she finished weakly.

"Well--but we mustn't let ourselves get excited," soothed Baumberger, the shadow of him falling darkly upon Peaceful and Phoebe as he strode along, upon the side next the sun. Peppajee would have called that an evil thing, portending much trouble and black treachery.

"That's where people always blunder in a thing like this. A little cool-headedness goes farther than hard words or lead. And," he added cheeringly, "it may be a false alarm, remember. We won't borrow trouble.

We'll just make sure of our ground, first thing we do."

"It's always easy enough to be calm over the other fellow's trouble,"

said Phoebe sharply, irritated in an indefinable way by the oily optimism of the other. "It ain't your ox that's gored, Mr. Baumberger."

They skirted the double row of grapevines, picked their way over a spot lately flooded from the ditch, which they crossed upon two planks laid side by side, went through an end of the currant patch, made a detour around a small jungle of gooseberry bushes, and so came in sight of the strawberry patch and what was taking place near the lightning-scarred apricot tree. Baumberger lengthened his stride, and so reached the spot first.

The boys were grouped belligerently in the strawberry patch, just outside a line of new stakes, freshly driven in the ground. Beyond that line stood a man facing them with a.45-.70 balanced in the hollow of his arm. In the background stood three other men in open s.p.a.ces in the shrubbery, at intervals of ten rods or so, and they also had rifles rather conspicuously displayed. They were grinning, all three. The man just over the line was listening while Good Indian spoke; the voice of Good Indian was even and quiet, as if he were indulging in casual small talk of the country, but that particular claim-jumper was not smiling.

Even from a distance they could see that he was fidgeting uncomfortably while he listened, and that his breath was beginning to come jerkily.

"Now, roll your blankets and GIT!" Good Indian finished sharply, and with the toe of his boot kicked the nearest stake clear of the loose soil. He stooped, picked it up, and cast it contemptuously from him. It landed three feet in front of the man who had planted it, and he jumped and s.h.i.+fted the rifle significantly upon his arm, so that the b.u.t.t of it caressed his right shoulder-joint.

"Now, now, we don't want any overt acts of violence here," wheezed Baumberger, laying hand upon Good Indian's shoulder from behind. Good Indian shook off the touch as if it were a tarantula upon him.

"You go to the devil," he advised chillingly.

"Tut, tut!" Baumberger reproved gently. "The ladies are within hearing, my boy. Let's get at this thing sensibly and calmly. Violence only makes things worse. See how quiet Wally and Jack and Clark and Gene are! THEY realize how childishly spiteful it would be for them to follow your example. They know better. They don't want--"

Jack grinned, and hitched his gun into plainer view. "When we start in, it won't be STICKS we're sending to His Nibs," he observed placidly.

"We're just waiting for him to ante."

"This," said Baumberger, a peculiar gleam coming into his leering, puffy-lidded eyes, and a certain hardness creeping into his voice, "this is a matter for your father and me to settle. It's just-a-bide-beyond you youngsters. This is a civil case. Don't foolishly make it come under the criminal code. But there!" His voice purred at them again. "You won't. You're all too clear-headed and sensible."

"Oh, sure!" Wally gave his characteristic little snort. "We're only just standing around to see how fast the cabbages grow!"

Baumberger advanced boldly across the dead line.

"Stanley, put down that gun, and explain your presence here and your object," he rumbled. "Let's get at this thing right end to. First, what are you doing here?"

The man across the line did not put down his rifle, except that he let the b.u.t.t of it drop slightly away from his shoulder so that the sights were in alignment with an irrigating shovel thrust upright into the ground ten feet to one side of the group. His manner lost little of its watchfulness, and his voice was surly with defiance when he spoke. But Good Indian, regarding him suspiciously through half-closed lids, would have sworn that a look of intelligence flashed between those two. There was nothing more than a quiver of his nostrils to betray him as he moved over beside Evadna--for the pure pleasure of being near her, one would think; in reality, while the pleasure was there, that he might see both Baumberger's face and Stanley's without turning more than his eyes.

"All there is to it," Stanley began bl.u.s.tering, "you see before yuh.

I've located twenty acres here as a placer claim. That there's the northwest corner--ap-prox'm'tley--close as I could come by sightin'.

Your fences are straight with yer land, and I happen to sabe all yer corners. I've got a right here. I believe this ground is worth more for the gold that's in it than for the turnips you can make grow on top--and that there makes mineral land of it, and as such, open to entry. That's accordin' to law. I ain't goin' to build no trouble--but I sure do aim to defend my prope'ty rights if I have to. I realize yuh may think diffrunt from me. You've got a right to prove, if yuh can, that all this ain't mineral land. I've got jest as much right to prove it is."

He took a breath so deep it expanded visibly his chest--a broad, muscular chest it was--and let his eyes wander deliberately over his audience.

"That there's where _I_ stand," he stated, with arrogant self-a.s.surance.

His mouth drew down at the corners in a smile which asked plainly what they were going to do about it, and intimated quite as plainly that he did not care what they did, though he might feel a certain curiosity as an onlooker.

"I happen to know--" Peaceful began, suddenly for him. But Baumberger waved him into silence.

"You'll have to prove there's gold in paying quant.i.ties here," he stated pompously.

"That's what I aim to do," Stanley told him imperturbably.

"_I_ proved, over fifteen years ago, that there WASN'T," Peaceful drawled laconically, and sucked so hard upon his pipe that his cheeks held deep hollows.

Stanley grinned at him. "Sorry I can't let it go at that," he said ironically. "I reckon I'll have to do some was.h.i.+n' myself, though, before I feel satisfied there ain't."

"Then you haven't panned out anything yet?" Phoebe caught him up.

Stanley's eyes flickered a questioning glance at Baumberger, and Baumberger puffed out his chest and said:

"The law won't permit you to despoil this man's property without good reason. We can serve an injunction--"

"You can serve and be darned." Stanley's grin returned, wider than before.

"As Mr. Hart's legal adviser," Baumberger began, in the tone he employed in the courtroom--a tone which held no hint of his wheezy chuckle or his oily rea.s.surance--"I hereby demand that you leave this claim which you have staked out upon Thomas Hart's ranch, and protest that your continued presence here, after twenty-four hours have expired, will be looked upon as malicious trespa.s.s, and treated as such."

Stanley still grinned. "As my own legal adviser," he returned calmly, "I hereby declare that you can go plumb to HEL-ena." Stanley evidently felt impelled to adapt his vocabulary to feminine ears, for he glanced at them deprecatingly and as if he wished them elsewhere.

If either Stanley or Baumberger had chanced to look toward Good Indian, he might have wondered why that young man had come, of a sudden, to resemble so strongly his mother's people. He had that stoniness of expression which betrays strong emotion held rigidly in check, with which his quivering nostrils and the light in his half-shut eyes contrasted strangely. He had missed no fleeting glance, no guarded tone, and he was thinking and weighing and measuring every impression as it came to him. Of some things he felt sure; of others he was half convinced; and there was more which he only suspected. And all the while he stood there quietly beside Evadna, his att.i.tude almost that of boredom.