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 butt 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 blustering, “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-assurance. 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 quantities 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 washin’ 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 reassurance—“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 trespass, 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 attitude almost that of boredom.
“I think, since you have been properly notified to leave,” said Baumberger, with the indefinable air of a lawyer who gathers up his papers relating to one case, thrusts them into his pocket, and turns his attention to the needs of his next client, “we’ll just have it out with these other fellows, though I look upon Stanley,” he added half humorously, “as a test case. If he goes, they’ll all go.”
“Better say he’s a tough case,” blurted Wally, and turned on his heel. “What the devil are they standing around on one foot for, making medicine?” he demanded angrily of Good Indian, who unceremoniously left Evadna and came up with him. “I’d run him off the ranch first, and do my talking about it afterward. That hunk uh pork is kicking up a lot uh dust, but he ain’t getting anywhere!”
“Exactly.” Good Indian thrust both hands deep into his trousers pockets, and stared at the ground before him.
Wally gave another snort. “I don’t know how it hits you, Grant—but there’s something fishy about it.”
“Ex-actly.” Good Indian took one long step over the ditch, and went on steadily.
Wally, coming again alongside, turned his head, and regarded him attentively.
“Injun’s on top,” he diagnosed sententiously after a minute. “Looks like he’s putting on a good, thick layer uh war-paint, too.” He waited expectantly. “You might hand me the brush when you’re through,” he hinted grimly. “I might like to get out after some scalps myself.”
“That so?” Good Indian asked inattentively, and went on without waiting for any reply. They left the garden, and went down the road to the stable, Wally passively following Grant’s lead. Someone came hurrying after them, and they turned to see Jack. The others had evidently stayed to hear the legal harangue to a close.
“Say, Stanley says there’s four beside the fellows we saw,” Jack announced, rather breathlessly, for he had been running through the loose, heavy soil of the garden to overtake them. “They’ve located twenty acres apiece, he says—staked ’em out in the night and stuck up their notices—and everyone’s going to stick. They’re all going to put in grizzlies and mine the whole thing, he told