The B.M. Bower MEGAPACK ®. B.M. Bower

something that’s none of her business maybe.”

      “You can give me as many pieces as you like. They’re always good medicine,” he assured her. But he kept his head bent so that his hat quite hid his face from her. “What about?” he asked, a betraying tenseness in his voice.

      “About Vadnie—and you. I notice you don’t speak—you haven’t that I’ve seen, since that day—on the porch. You don’t want to be too hard on her, Grant. Remember she isn’t used to such things. She looks at it different. She’s never seen the times, as I have, where it’s kill or be killed. Be patient with her, Grant—and don’t feel hard. She’ll get over it. I want,” she stopped because her voice was beginning to shake “—I want my biggest boy to be happy.” Her hand slipped around his neck and pressed his head against her knee.

      Good Indian got up and put his arms around her and held her close. He did not say anything at all for a minute, but when he did he spoke very quietly, stroking her hair the while.

      “Mother Hart, I stood on the porch and heard what she said in the kitchen. She accused me of killing Saunders. She said I liked to kill people; that I shot at her and laughed at the mark I made on her arm. She called me a savage—an Indian. My mother’s mother was the daughter of a chief. She was a good woman; my mother was a good woman; just as good as if she had been white.

      “Mother Hart, I’m a white man in everything but half my mother’s blood. I don’t remember her—but I respect her memory, and I am not ashamed because she was my mother. Do you think I could marry a girl who thinks of my mother as something which she must try to forgive? Do you think I could go to that girl in there and—and take her in my arms—and love her, knowing that she feels as she does? She can’t even forgive me for killing that beast!

      “She’s a beautiful thing—I wanted to have her for my own. I’m a man. I’ve a healthy man’s hunger for a beautiful woman, but I’ve a healthy man’s pride as well.” He patted the smooth cheek of the only woman he had ever known as a mother, and stared at the rough rock wall oozing moisture that drip-dripped to the pool below.

      “I did think I’d go away for awhile,” he said after a minute spent in sober thinking. “But I never dodged yet, and I never ran. I’m going to stay and see the thing through, now. I don’t know—” he hesitated and then went on. “It may not last; I may have to suffer after awhile, but standing out there, that day, listening to her carrying on, kind of—oh, I can’t explain it. But I don’t believe I wes half as deep in love as I thought I was. I don’t want to say anything against her; I’ve no right, for she’s a thousand times better than I am. But she’s different. She never would understand our ways, Mother Hart, or look at life as we do; some people go through life looking at the little things that don’t matter, and passing by the other, bigger things. If you keep your eye glued to a microscope long enough, you’re sure to lose the sense of proportion.

      “She won’t speak to me,” he continued after a short silence. “I tried to talk to her yesterday—”

      “But you must remember, the poor child was hysterical that day when—she went on so. She doesn’t know anything about the realities of life. She doesn’t mean to be hard.”

      “Yesterday,” said Grant with an odd little smile, “she was not hysterical. It seems that—shooting—was the last little weight that tilted the scale against me. I don’t think she ever cared two whoops for me, to tell you the truth. She’s been ashamed of my Indian blood all along; she said so. And I’m not a good lover; I neglected her all the while this trouble lasted, and I paid more attention to Georgie Howard than I did to her—and I didn’t satisfactorily explain about that hair and knife that Hagar had. And—oh, it isn’t the killing, altogether! I guess we were both a good deal mistaken in our feelings.”

      “Well, I hope so,” sighed Phoebe, wondering secretly at the decadence of love. An emotion that could burn high and hot in a week, flare bravely for a like space, and die out with no seared heart to pay for the extravagance—she shook her head at it. That was not what she had been taught to call love, and she wondered how a man and a maid could be mistaken about so vital an emotion.

      “I suppose,” she added with unusual sarcasm for her, “you’ll be falling in love with Georgie Howard, next thing anybody knows; and maybe that will last a week or ten days before you find out you were mistaken!”

      Good Indian gave her one of his quick, sidelong glances.

      “She would not be eternally apologizing to herself for liking me, anyway,” he retorted acrimoniously, as if he found it very hard to forgive Evadna her conscious superiority of race and upbringing. “Squaw.”

      “Oh, I haven’t a doubt of that!” Phoebe rose to the defense of her own blood. “I don’t know as it’s in her to apologize for anything. I never saw such a girl for going right ahead as if her way is the only way! Bull-headed, I’d call her.” She looked at Good Indian afterward, studying his face with motherly solicitude.

      “I believe you’re half in love with her right now and don’t know it!” she accused suddenly.

      Good Indian laughed softly and bent to his work again.

      “Are you, Grant?” Phoebe laid a moist hand on his shoulder, and felt the muscles sliding smoothly beneath his clothing while he moved a rock. “I ain’t mad because you and Vadnie fell out; I kind of looked for it to happen. Love that grows like a mushroom lasts about as long—only I don’t call it love! You might tell me—”

      “Tell you what?” But Grant did not look up. “If I don’t know it, I can’t tell it.” He paused in his lifting and rested his hands upon his knees, the fingers dripping water back into the spring. He felt that Phoebe was waiting, and he pressed his lips together. “Must a man be in love with some woman all the time?” He shook his fingers impatiently so that the last drops hurried to the pool.

      “She’s a good girl, and a brave girl,” Phoebe remarked irrelevantly.

      Good Indian felt that she was still waiting, with all the quiet persistence of her sex when on the trail of a romance. He reached up and caught the hand upon his shoulder, and laid it against his cheek. He laughed surrender.

      “Squaw-talk-far-off heap smart,” he mimicked old Peppajee gravely. “Heap bueno.” He stood up as suddenly as he had started his rock-lifting a few minutes before, and taking Phoebe by the shoulders, shook her with gentle insistence. “Put don’t make me fall out of one love right into another,” he protested whimsically. “Give a fellow time to roll a cigarette, can’t you?”