"Item: One pound of red-and-white candy for Peppajee Jim next time I see him." Miss Georgie laughed--but she also sat down so that her face was turned to the window. "Are you in urgent need of a heap smart squaw?"
she asked. "I thought"--she caught herself up, and then went recklessly on--"I thought yesterday that you had found one!"
"It"s brains I need just now." After the words were out, Good Indian wanted to swear at himself for seeming to belittle Evadna. "I mean,"
he corrected quickly--"do you know what I mean? I"ll tell you what has happened, and if you don"t know then, and can"t help me, I"ll just have to apologize for coming, and get out."
"Yes, I think you had better tell me why you need me particularly. I know the chicken"s perfect, and doesn"t lack brains, and you didn"t mean that she does. You"re all stirred up over something. What"s wrong?" Miss Georgie would have spoken in just that tone if she had been a man or if Grant had been a woman.
So Good Indian told her.
"And you imagine that it"s partly your fault, and that it wouldn"t have happened if you had spent more time keeping your weather eye open, and not so much making love?" Miss Georgie could be very blunt, as well as keen. "Well, I don"t see how you could prevent it, or what you could have done--unless you had kicked old Baumberger into the Snake. He"s the G.o.d in this machine. I"d swear to that."
Good Indian had been fiddling with his hat and staring hard at a pile of old ties just outside the window. He raised his head, and regarded her steadily. It was beginning to occur to him that there was a good deal to this Miss Georgie, under that offhand, breezy exterior. He felt himself drawn to her as a person whom he could trust implicitly.
"You"re right as far as I"m concerned," he owned, with his queer, inscrutable smile. "I think you"re also right about him. What makes you think so, anyway?"
Miss Georgie twirled a ring upon her middle finger for a moment before she looked up at him.
"Do you know anything about mining laws?" she asked, and when he swung his head slightly to one side in a tacit negative, she went on: "You say there are eight jumpers. Concerted action, that. Premeditated. My daddy was a lawyer," she threw in by way of explanation. "I used to help him in the office a good deal. When he--died, I didn"t know enough to go on and be a lawyer myself, so I took to this." She waved her hand impatiently toward the telegraph instrument.
"So it"s like this: Eight men can take placer claims--can hold them, you know--for one man. That"s the limit, a hundred and sixty acres. Those eight men aren"t jumping that ranch as eight individuals; they"re in the employ of a princ.i.p.al who is engineering the affair. If I were going to shy a pebble at the head mogul, I"d sure try hard to hit our corpulent friend with the fishy eye. And that," she added, "is what all these cipher messages for Saunders mean, very likely. Baumberger had to have someone here to spy around for him and perhaps help him choose--or at least get together--those eight men. They must have come in on the night train, for I didn"t see them. I"ll bet they"re tough customers, every mother"s son of them! Fighters down to the ground, aren"t they?"
"I only saw four. They were heeled, and ready for business, all right,"
he told her. "Soon as I saw what the game was, and that Baumberger was only playing for time and a free hand, I pulled out. I thought Peppajee might give me something definite to go on. He couldn"t, though."
"Baumberger"s going to steal that ranch according to law, you see," Miss Georgie stated with conviction. "They"ve got to pan out a sample of gold to prove there"s pay dirt there, before they can file their claims. And they"ve got to do their filing in Shoshone. I suppose their notices are up O.K. I wonder, now, how they intend to manage that? I believe," she mused, "they"ll have to go in person--I don"t believe Baumberger can do that all himself legally. I"ve got some of daddy"s law-books over in my trunk, and maybe I can look it up and make sure. But I know they haven"t filed their claims yet. They"ve GOT to take possession first, and they"ve got to show a sample of ore, or dust, it would be in this case.
The best thing to do--" She drew her eyebrows together, and she pinched her under lip between her thumb and forefinger, and she stared abstractedly at Good Indian. "Oh, hurry up, Grant!" she cried unguardedly. "Think--think HARD, what"s best to do!"
"The only thing I can think of," he scowled, "is to kill that--"
"And that won"t do, under the circ.u.mstances," she cut in airily.
"There"d still be the eight. I"d like," she declared viciously, "to put rough-on-rats in his dinner, but I intend to refrain from doing as I"d like, and stick to what"s best."
Good Indian gave her a glance of grateful understanding. "This thing has. .h.i.t me hard," he confided suddenly. "I"ve been holding myself in all day. The Harts are like my own folks. They"re all I"ve had, and she"s been--they"ve all been--" Then the instinct of repression walled in his emotion, and he let the rest go in a long breath which told Miss Georgie all she needed to know. So much of Good Indian would never find expression in speech; all that was best of him would not, one might be tempted to think.
"By the way, is there any pay dirt on that ranch?" Miss Georgie kept herself rigidly to the main subject.
"No, there isn"t. Not," he added dryly, "unless it has grown gold in the last few years. There are colors, of course. All this country practically can show colors, but pay dirt? No!"
"Look out," she advised him slowly, "that pay dirt doesn"t grow over night! Sabe?"
Good Indian"s eyes spoke admiration of her shrewdness.
"I must be getting stupid, not to have thought of that," he said.
"Can"t give me credit for being "heap smart"?" she bantered. "Can"t even let me believe I thought of something beyond the ken of the average person? Not," she amended ironically, "that I consider YOU an average person! Would you mind"--she became suddenly matter of fact--"waiting here while I go and rummage for a book I want? I"m almost sure I have one on mining laws. Daddy had a good deal of that in his business, being in a mining country. We"ve got to know just where we stand, it seems to me, because Baumberger"s going to use the laws himself, and it"s with the law we"ve got to fight him."
She had to go first and put a stop to the hysterical chattering of the sounder by answering the summons. It proved to be a message for Baumberger, and she wrote it down in a spiteful scribble which left it barely legible.
"Betraying professional secrets, but I don"t care," she exclaimed, turning swiftly toward him. "Listen to this:
""How"s fishing? Landed the big one yet? Ready for fry?""
She threw it down upon the table with a pettish gesture that was wholly feminine. "Sounds perfectly innocent, doesn"t it? Too perfectly innocent, if you ask me." She stared out of the window abstractedly, her brows pinched together and her lips pursed with a corner between her teeth, much as she had stared after Baumberger the day before; and when she spoke she seemed to have swung her memory back to him then.
"He came up yesterday--with fish for Pete, he SAID, and of course he really did have some--and sent a wire to Shoshone. I found it on file when I came back. That was perfectly innocent, too. It was:
""Expect to land big one to-night. Plenty of small fry. Smooth trail."
"I"ve an excellent memory, you see." She laughed shortly. "Well, I"ll go and hunt up that book, and we"ll proceed to glean the wisdom of the serpent, so that we won"t be compelled to remain as harmless as the dove! You won"t mind waiting here?"
He a.s.sured her that he would not mind in the least, and she ran out bareheaded into the hot sunlight. Good Indian leaned forward a little in his chair so that he could watch her running across to the shack where she had a room or two, and he paid her the compliment of keeping her in his thoughts all the time she was gone. He felt, as he had done with Peppajee, that he had not known Miss Georgie at all until to-day, and he was a bit startled at what he was finding her to be.
"Of course," she laughed, when she rustled in again like a whiff of fresh air, "I had to go clear to the bottom of the last trunk I looked in. Lucky I only have three to my name, for it would have been in the last one just the same, if I"d had two dozen and had ransacked them all.
But I found it, thank Heaven!"
She came eagerly up to him--he was sitting in the beribboned rocker dedicated to friendly callers, and had the rug badly rumpled with his spurs, which he had forgotten to remove--and with a sweep of her forearm she cleared the little table of novel, newspaper, and a magazine and deck of cards, and barely saved her box of chocolates from going bottom up on the floor.
"Like candy? Help yourself, if you do," she said, and tucked a piece into her mouth absent-mindedly before she laid the leather-bound book open on the table. "Now, we"ll see what information Mr. Copp can give us. He"s a high authority--General Land Office Commissioner, if you please. He"s a few years old--several years old, for that matter--but I don"t think he"s out of date; I believe what he says still goes.
M-m-m!-"Liens on Mines"--"Clause Inserted in Patents"--"Affidavits Taken Without Notice to Opposing"--oh, it must be here--it"s GOT to be here!"
She was running a somewhat sticky forefinger slowly down the index pages. "It isn"t alphabetically arranged, which I consider sloppy of Mr.
Copp. Ah-h! "Minerals Discovered After Patent Has Issued to Agricultural Claimant"--two hundred and eight. We"ll just take a look at that first.
That"s what they"re claiming, you know." She hitched her chair closer, and flipped the leaves eagerly. When she found the page, they touched heads over it, though Miss Georgie read aloud.
"Oh, it"s a letter--but it"s a decision, and as such has weight. U-m!
"SIR: In reply to your letter of inquiry... I have to state that all mineral deposits discovered on land after United States Patent therefor has issued to a party claiming under the laws regulating the disposal of agricultural lands, pa.s.s with the patent, and this office has no further jurisdiction in the premise. Very respectfully,"
""Pa.s.s WITH THE PATENT!"" Miss Georgie turned her face so that she could look into Grant"s eyes, so close to her own. "Old Peaceful must surely have his patent--Baumberger can"t be much of a lawyer, do you think?
Because that"s a flat statement. There"s no chance for any legal quibbling in that--IS there?"
"That"s about as straight as he could put it," Good Indian agreed, his face losing a little of its anxiety.
"Well, we"ll just browse along for more of the same," she suggested cheerfully, and went back to the index. But first she drew a lead pencil from where it had been stabbed through her hair, and marked the letter with heavy brackets, wetting the lead on her tongue for emphasis.
""Agricultural Claimants Ent.i.tled to Full Protection,"" she read hearteningly from the index, and turned hastily to see what was to be said about it. It happened to be another decision rendered in a letter, and they jubilated together over the sentiment conveyed therein.
"Now, here is what I was telling you, Grant," she said suddenly, after another long minute of studying silently the index. ""Eight Locaters of Placer Ground May Convey to One Party"--and Baumberger"s certainly that party!--"Who Can Secure Patent for One Hundred and Sixty Acres." We"ll just read up on that, and find out for sure what the conditions are.
Now, here"--she had found the page quickly--"listen to this:
""I have to state that if eight bona-fide locaters"
("Whether they"re that remains to be proven, Mr. Baumberger!")
"each having located twenty acres, in accordance with the congressional rules and regulations, should convey all their right, t.i.tle, and interest in said locations to one person, such person might apply for a patent--"
"And so on into tiresomeness. Really, I"m beginning to think Baumberger"s awfully stupid, to even attempt such a silly thing. He hasn"t a legal leg to stand on. "Goes with the patent"--that sounds nice to me. They"re not locating in good faith--those eight jumpers down there." She fortified herself with another piece of candy. "All you need," she declared briskly, "is a good lawyer to take this up and see it through."
"You seem to be doing pretty well," he remarked, his eyes dwelling rather intently upon her face, and smiling as they did so.