Chapter 22 - Page 2

soft-footedly two paces behind him. Once where the way was clear he stopped, and waited for her to come alongside, but Rachel stopped and waited also, her eyes hungrily searching his face with the look a dog has for his master. Good Indian read the meaning of that look, and went on, and turned no more toward her until he reached his horse.

"You'd better go on to camp, and stay there, Rachel," he said, as casually as he could. "No trouble will come to you." He hesitated, biting his lip and plucking absently the tangles from the forelock of his horse. "You sabe grateful?" he asked finally. And when she gave a quick little nod, he went on: "Well, I'm grateful to you. You did what a man would do for his friend. I sabe. I'm heap grateful, and I'll not forget it. All time I'll be your friend. Good--by." He mounted, and rode away. He felt, just then, that it was the kindest thing he could do.

He looked back once, just as he was turning into the grade road. She was standing, her arms folded in her gray blanket, where he had left her. His fingers tightened involuntarily the reins, so that Keno stopped and eyed his master inquiringly. But there was nothing that he might say to her. It was not words that she wanted. He swung his heels against Keno's flanks, and rode home.

Evadna rallied him upon his moodiness at breakfast, pouted a little because he remained preoccupied under her teasing, and later was deeply offended because he would not tell her where he had been, or what was worrying him.

"I guess you better send word to the doctor he needn't come," the pump man put his head in at the office door to say, just as the freight was pulling away from the water-tank. "Saunders died a few minutes ago. Pete says you better notify the coroner--and I reckon the sheriff, too. Pretty tough to be shot down like that in broad daylight."

"I think I'd rather be shot in daylight than in the dark," Miss Georgie snapped unreasonably because her nerves were all a-jangle, and sent the messages as requested.

Saunders was neither a popular nor a prominent citizen, and there was none to mourn beside him. Peter Hamilton, as his employer and a man whose emotions were easily stirred, was shocked a shade lighter as to his complexion and a tone lower as to his voice perhaps, and was heard to remark frequently that it was "a turrible thing," but the chief emotion which the tragedy roused was curiosity, and that fluttering excitement which attends death in any form.

A dozen Indians hung about the store, the squaws peering inquisitively in at the uncurtained window of the lean-to--where the bed held a long immovable burden with a rumpled sheet over it--and the bucks listening stolidly to the futile gossip on the store porch.

Pete Hamilton, anxious that the passing of his unprofitable servant should be marked by decorum if not by