Good Indian by B. M. Bower (best beach reads of all time .txt) 📗

“He wasn't sorry afterward; you could see he wasn't sorry. He was ready to kill more men. It's the Indian in him. He LIKES to kill people. He'll kill those men, and he won't be a bit sorry he did it. And he could come to me afterward and expect me—Oh, what does he think I AM?” She leaned against the wall, and sobbed.

“I suppose,” she wailed, lashing herself with every bitter thought she could conjure, “he killed Saunders, too, like old Hagar said. He wouldn't tell me where he was that morning. I asked him, and he wouldn't tell. He was up there killing Saunders—”

“If you don't shut up, I'll shake you!” Miss Georgie in her fury did not wait, but shook her anyway as if she had been a ten-year-old child in a tantrum.

“My Heavens above! I'll stand for nerves and hysterics, and almost any old thing, but you're going a little bit too far, my lady. There's no excuse for your talking such stuff as that, and you're not going to do it, if I have to gag you! Now, you march to your own room and—STAY there. Do you hear? And don't you dare let another yip out of you till you can talk sense.”

Good Indian stood upon the porch, and heard every word of that. He heard also the shuffle of feet as Miss Georgie urged Evadna to her room—it sounded almost as if she dragged her there by force—and he rolled a cigarette with fingers that did not so much as quiver. He scratched a match upon the nearest post, and afterward leaned there and smoked, and stared out over the pond and up at the bluff glowing yellow in the sunlight. His face was set and expressionless except that it was stoically calm, and there was a glitter deep down in his eyes. Evadna was right, to a certain extent the Indian in him held him quiet.

It occurred to him that someone ought to pick up Baumberger, and put him somewhere, but he did not move. The boys and Peaceful must have stayed down in the garden, he thought. He glanced up at the tops of the nodding poplars, and estimated idly by their shadow on the bluff how long it would be before sundown, and as idly wondered if Stanley and the others would go, or stay. There was nothing they could gain by staying, he knew, now that Baumberger was out of it. Unless they got stubborn and wanted to fight. In that case, he supposed he would eventually be planted alongside his father. He wished he could keep the boys and old Peaceful out of it, in case there was a fight, but he knew that would be impossible. The boys, at least, had been itching for something like this ever since the trouble started.

Good Indian had, not so long ago, spent hours in avoiding all thought that he might prolong the ecstasy of mere feeling. Now he had reversed the desire. He was thinking of this thing and of that, simply that he might avoid feeling. If someone didn't kill him within the next hour or so, he was going to feel something—something that would hurt him more than he had been hurt since his father died in that same house. But in the meantime he need only think.

The shadow of the grove, with the long fingers of the poplars to point the way, climbed slowly up the bluff. Good Indian smoked another cigarette while he watched it. When a certain great bowlder that was like a miniature ledge glowed rosily and then slowly darkened to a chill gray, he threw his cigarette stub unerringly at a lily-pad which had courtesied many a time before to a like missile from his hand, pulled his hat down over his eyes, jumped off the porch, and started around the house to the gate which led to the stable.

Phoebe came out from the sitting-room, ran down the steps, and barred his way.

“Grant!” she said, and there were tears in her eyes, “don't do anything rash—don't. If it's for our sakes—and I know it is—don't do it. They'll go, anyway. We'll have the law on them and make them go. But don't YOU go down there. You let Thomas handle that part. You're like one of my own boys. I can't let you go!”

He looked down at her commiseratingly. “I've got to go, Mother Hart. I've made my war-talk.” He hesitated, bent his head, and kissed her on the forehead as she stood looking up at him, and went on.

“Grant—GRANT!” she cried heartbrokenly after him, and sank down on the porch-steps with her face hidden in her arms.

Miss Georgie was standing beside the gate, looking toward the stable. She may not have been waiting for him, but she turned without any show of surprise when he walked up behind her.

“Well, your jumpers seem to have taken the hint,” she informed him, with a sort of surface cheerfulness. “Stanley is down there talking to Mr. Hart now, and the others have gone on. They'll all be well over the dead-line by sundown. There goes Stanley now. Do you really feel that your future happiness depends on getting through this gate? Well—if you must—” She swung it open, but she stood in the opening.

“Grant, I—it's hard to say just what I want to say—but—you did right. You acted the man's part. No matter what—others—may think or say, remember that I think you did right to kill that man. And if there's anything under heaven that I can do, to—to help—you'll let me do it, won't you?” Her eyes held him briefly, unabashed at what they might tell. Then she stepped back, and contradicted them with a little laugh. “I will get fired sure for staying over my time,” she said. “I'll wire for the coroner soon as I get to the office. This will never come to a trial, Grant. He was like a crazy man, and we all saw him shoot first.”

She waited until he had passed through and was a third of the way to the stable where Peaceful Hart and his boys were gathered, and then she followed him briskly, as if her mind was taken up with her own affairs.

“It's a shame you fellows got cheated out of a scrap,” she taunted Jack, who held her horse for her while she settled herself in the saddle. “You were all spoiling for a fight—and there did seem to be the makings of a beautiful row!”

Save for the fact that she kept her eyes studiously turned away from a certain place near by, where the dust was pressed down smoothly with the weight of a heavy body, and all around was trampled and tracked, one could not have told that Miss Georgie remembered anything tragic.

But Good Indian seemed to recall something, and went quickly over to her just in time to prevent her starting.

“Was there something in particular you wanted when you came?” he asked, laying a hand on the neck of the bay. “It just occurred to me that there must have been.”

She leaned so that the others could not hear, and her face was grave enough now.

“Why, yes. It's old Hagar. She came to me this afternoon, and she had that bunch of hair you cut off that was snarled in the bush. She had your knife. She wanted me to buy them—the old blackmailer! She made threats, Grant—about Saunders. She says you—I came right down to tell you, because I was afraid she might make trouble. But there was