第86章

"I don't care--I think it's perfectly awful." Evadna looked distastefully upon her breakfast. "I just can't sleep in that room, Aunt Phoebe. I tried not to think about it, but it opens right that way.""Huh!" snorted Wally. "Board up the window, then, so you can't see the fatal spot!" His gray eyes twinkled. "I could DANCE on it myself," he said, just to horrify her--which he did. Evadna shivered, pressed her wisp of handkerchief against her lips, and left the table hurriedly.

"You boys ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" Phoebe scolded half-heartedly; for she had lived long in the wild, and had seen much that was raw and primitive. "You must take into consideration that Vadnie isn't used to such things. Why, great grief! I don't suppose the child ever SAW a dead man before in her life--unless he was laid out in church with flower-anchors piled knee-deep all over him. And to see one shot right before her very eyes--and by the man she expects--or did expect to marry--why, you can't wonder at her looking at it the way she does. It isn't Vadnie's fault. It's the way she's been raised.""Well," observed Wally in the manner of delivering an ultimatum, "excuse ME from any Eastern raising!"A little later, Phoebe boldly invaded the secret chambers of Good Indian's heart when he was readjusting the rocks which formed the floor of the milk-house.

"Now, Grant," she began, laying her hand upon his shoulder as he knelt before her, straining at a heavy rock, "Mother Hart is going to give you a little piece of her mind about 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.