"Aw--there's a lot of squaws tagging along behind!" Donny complained disgustedly from his post of observation on the fence. "They'll go to the house first thing to gabble--there's old Hagar waddling along like a duck. You can't make that warpath business stick, Clark--not with all them squaws."

"Well, say, you sneak up and hide somewhere till yuh see if Vadnie's anywhere around. If they get settled down talking to mum, they're good for an hour--she's churning, Don--you hide in the rocks by the milk-house till they get settled. And I'll see if--Git! Pikeway, while they're behind the stacks!"

Donny climbed down and scurried through the sand to the house as if his very life depended upon reaching it unseen. The group of Indians came up, huddled at the corral, and peered through the stout rails.

"How! How!" chorused the boys, and left the horse for a moment while they shook hands ceremoniously with the three bucks. Three Indians, Clark decided regretfully, would make a tame showing on the warpath, however much they might lend themselves to the spirit of the joke. He did not quite know how he was going to manage it, but he was hopeful still. It was unthinkable that real live Indians should be permitted to come and go upon the ranch without giving Evadna Ramsey, straight from New Jersey, the scare of her life.

The three bucks, grunting monosyllabic greetings' climbed, in all the dignity of their blankets, to the top rail of the corral, and roosted there to watch the horse-breaking; and for the present Clark held his peace.

The squaws hovered there for a moment longer, peeping through the rails.

Then Hagar--she of much flesh and more temper--grunted a word or two, and they turned and plodded on to where the house stood hidden away in its nest of cool green. For a s.p.a.ce they stood outside the fence, peering warily into the shade, instinctively cautious in their manner of approaching a strange place, and detained also by the Indian etiquette which demands that one wait until invited to enter a strange camp.

After a period of waiting which seemed to old Hagar sufficient, she pulled her blanket tight across her broad hips, waddled to the gate, pulled it open with self-conscious a.s.surance, and led the way soft-footedly around the house to where certain faint sounds betrayed the presence of Phoebe Hart in her stone milk-house.

At the top of the short flight of wide stone steps they stopped and huddled silently, until the black shadow of them warned Phoebe of their presence. She had lived too long in the West to seem startled when she suddenly discovered herself watched by three pair of beady black eyes, so she merely nodded, and laid down her b.u.t.ter-ladle to shake hands all around.

"How, Hagar? How, Viney? How, Lucy? Heap glad to see you. Bueno b.u.t.termilk--mebbyso you drink.u.m?"

However diffident they might be when it came to announcing their arrival, their bashfulness did not extend to accepting offers of food or drink. Three brown hands were eagerly outstretched--though it was the hand of Hagar which grasped first the big tin cup. They not only drank, they guzzled, and afterward drew a fold of blanket across their milk-white lips, and grinned in pure animal satisfaction.

"Bueno. He-e-ap bueno!" they chorused appreciatively, and squatted at the top of the stone steps, watching Phoebe manipulate the great ball of yellow b.u.t.ter in its wooden bowl.

After a brief silence, Hagar shook the tangle of unkempt, black hair away from her moonlike face, and began talking in a soft monotone, her voice now and then rising to a shrill singsong.

"Mebbyso Tom, mebbyso Sharlie, mebbyso Sleeping Turtle all time come along," she announced. "Stop all time corral, talk yo' boys. Mebbyso heap lik.u.m drink yo' b.u.t.ter water. Bueno."

When Phoebe nodded a.s.sent, Hagar went on to the news which had brought her so soon to the ranch--the news which satisfied both an old grudge and her love of gossip.

"Good Injun, him all time heap kay bueno," she stated emphatically, her sloe black eyes fixed unwaveringly upon Phoebe's face to see if the stab was effective. "Good Injun come Hartley, all time drunk lik.u.m pig.

"All time heap yell, heap shoot--kay bueno. Wantum fight Man-that-coughs. Come all time camp, heap yell, heap shoot some more. I fetchum dog--Viney dog--heap dragum through sagebrush--dog all time cry, no can get away--me think.u.m kill that dog. Squaws cry--Viney cry--Good Injun"--Hagar paused here for greater effect--"mak.u.m horse all time buck--ridum in wikiup--Hagar wikiup--all time break.u.m--no can fix that wikiup. Good Injun, hee-e-ap kay bueno!" At the last her voice was high and tremulous with anger.

"Good Indian mebbyso all same my boy Wally." Phoebe gave the b.u.t.ter a vicious slap. "Me heap love Good Indian. You no call Good Indian, you call Grant. Grant bueno. Heap bueno all time. No drunk, no yell, no shoot, mebbyso"--she hesitated, knowing well the possibilities of her foster son--"mebbyso catchum dog--me think no catchum. Grant all same my boy. All time me lik.u.m--heap bueno."

Viney and Lucy nudged each other and t.i.ttered into their blankets, for the argument was an old one between Hagar and Phoebe, though the grievance of Hagar might be fresh. Hagar shifted her blanket and thrust out a stubborn under lip.

"Wally boy, heap bueno," she said; and her malicious old face softened as she spoke of him, dear as her own first-born. "Jack bueno, mebbyso Gene bueno, mebbyso Clark, mebbyso Donny all time bueno." Doubt was in her voice when she praised those last two, however, because of their continual teasing. She stopped short to emphasize the d.a.m.ning contrast.

"Good Injun all same mebbyso yo' boy Grant, hee-ee-eap kay bueno. Good Injun Grant all time DEBBIL!"

It was at this point that Donny slipped away to report that "Mamma and old Hagar are sc.r.a.ppin' over Good Injun again," and told with glee the tale of his misdeeds as recounted by the squaw.

Phoebe in her earnestness forgot to keep within the limitations of their dialect.

"Grant's a good boy, and a smart boy. There isn't a better-hearted fellow in the country, if I have got five boys of my own. You think I like him better than I like Wally, is all ails you, Hagar. You're jealous of Grant, and you always have been, ever since his father left him with me. I hope my heart's big enough to hold them all." She remembered then that they could not understand half she was saying, and appealed to Viney. Viney liked Grant.

"Viney, you tell me. Grant no come Hartley, no drunk, no yell, no catchum you dog, no ride in Hagar's wikiup? You tell me, Viney."

Viney and Lucy bobbed their heads rapidly up and down. Viney, with a sidelong glance at Hagar, spoke softly.

"Good Injun Grant, mebbyso home Hartley," she admitted reluctantly, as if she would have been pleased to prove Hagar a liar in all things.

"Me think.u.m no drunk. Mebbyso ketchum dog--dog kay bueno, mebbyso me killing. Good Injun Grant no heap yell, no shoot all time--mebbyso no drunk. No break.u.m wikiup. Horse all time kay bueno, Hagar--"

"Shont-isham!" (big lie) Hagar interrupted shrilly then, and Viney relapsed into silence, her thin face growing sullen under the upbraiding she received in her native tongue. Phoebe, looking at her attentively, despaired of getting any nearer the truth from any of them.

There was a sudden check to Hagar's shrewish clamor. The squaws stiffened to immobility and listened stolidly, their eyes alone betraying the curiosity they felt. Off somewhere at the head of the tiny pond, hidden away in the jungle of green, a voice was singing; a girl's voice, and a strange voice--for the squaws knew well the few women voices along the Snake.

"That my girl," Phoebe explained, stopping the soft pat--pat of her b.u.t.ter-ladle.

"Where ketchum yo' girl?" Hagar forgot her petulance, and became curious as any white woman.

"Me ketchum 'way off, where sun come up. In time me have heap boys--mebbyso want girl all time. My mother's sister's boy have one girl, 'way off where sun come up. My mother's sister's boy die, his wife all same die, that girl mebbyso heap sad; no got father, no got mother--all time got n.o.body. Kay bueno. That girl send one letter, say all time got n.o.body. Me want one girl. Me send one letter, tell that girl come, be all time my girl. Five days ago, that girl come. Her heap glad; boys all time heap glad, my man heap glad. Bueno. Mebbyso you glad me have one girl." Not that their approval was necessary, or even of much importance; but Phoebe was accustomed to treat them like spoiled children.

Hagar's lip was out-thrust again. "Yo' ketchum one girl, mebbyso yo' no more lik.u.m my boy Wally. Kay bueno."

"Heap like all my boys jus' same," Phoebe hastened to a.s.sure her, and added with a hint of malice, "Heap like my boy Grant all same."

"Huh!" Hagar chose to remain unconvinced and antagonistic. "Good Injun kay bueno. Yo' girl, mebbyso kay bueno."

"What name yo' girl?" Viney interposed hastily.

"Name Evadna Ramsey." In spite of herself, Phoebe felt a trifle chilled by their lack of enthusiasm. She went back to her b.u.t.ter-making in dignified silence.

The squaws blinked at her stolidly. Always they were inclined toward suspicion of strangers, and perhaps to a measure of jealousy as well.

Not many whites received them with frank friendship as did the Hart family, and they felt far more upon the subject than they might put into words, even the words of their own language.

Many of the white race looked upon them as beggars, which was bad enough, or as thieves, which was worse; and in a general way they could not deny the truth of it. But they never stole from the Harts, and they never openly begged from the Harts. The friends of the Harts, however, must prove their friendship before they could hope for better than an imperturbable neutrality. So they would not pretend to be glad. Hagar was right--perhaps the girl was no good. They would wait until they could pa.s.s judgment upon this girl who had come to live in the wikiup of the Harts. Then Lucy, she who longed always for children and had been denied by fate, stirred slightly, her nostrils aquiver.

"Mebbyso bueno yo' girl," she yielded, speaking softly. "Mebbyso see yo' girl."

Phoebe's face cleared, and she called, in mellow crescendo: "Oh, Va-ad-NIEE?" Immediately the singing stopped.

"Coming, Aunt Phoebe," answered the voice.

The squaws wrapped themselves afresh in their blankets, pa.s.sed brown palms smoothingly down their hair from the part in the middle, settled their braids upon their bosoms with true feminine instinct, and waited.

They heard her feet crunching softly in the gravel that bordered the pond, but not a head turned that way; for all the sign of life they gave, the three might have been mere effigies of women. They heard a faint scream when she caught sight of them sitting there, and their faces settled into more stolid indifference, adding a hint of antagonism even to the soft eyes of Lucy, the tender, childless one.

"Vadnie, here are some new neighbors I want you to get acquainted with."

Phoebe's eyes besought the girl to be calm. "They're all old friends of mine. Come here and let me introduce you--and don't look so horrified, honey!"

Those incorrigibles, her cousins, would have whooped with joy at her unmistakable terror when she held out a trembling hand and gasped faintly: "H-how do you--do?"

"This Hagar," Phoebe announced cheerfully; and the old squaw caught the girl's hand and gripped it tightly for a moment in malicious enjoyment of her too evident fear and repulsion.

"This Viney."

Viney, reading Evadna's face in one keen, upward glance, kept her hands hidden in the folds of her blanket, and only nodded twice rea.s.suringly.

"This Lucy."