Good Indian - Page 155/178

She was interrupted at that point, which was not strange. The interruption lasted for several minutes, but Evadna was a persistent little person. When they came back to mundane matters, she went right on with what she had started out to say.

"You see, that gave old Hagar a chance to accuse you of--well, of a MEETING with Georgie. Which I don't believe, of course. Still, it does seem as if you might have told me in the first place where you had been, and then I could have shut her up by letting her see that I knew all about it. The horrid, mean old THING! To say such things, right to your face! And--Grant, where DID she get hold of that knife, do you suppose--and--that--bunch of--hair?" She took his hand of her own accord, and patted it, and Evadna was not a demonstrative kind of person usually. "It wasn't just a tangle, like combings," she went on slowly. "I noticed particularly. There was a lock as large almost as my finger, that looked as if it had been cut off. And it certainly WAS Georgie's hair."

"Georgie's hair," Good Indian smilingly asserted, "doesn't interest me a little bit. Maybe Hagar scalped Miss Georgie to get it. If it had been goldy, I'd have taken it away from her if I had to annihilate the whole tribe, but seeing it wasn't YOUR hair--"

Well, the argument as such was a poor one, to say the least, but it had the merit of satisfying Evadna as mere logic could not have done, and seemed to allay as well all the doubt that had been accumulating for days past in her mind. But an hour spent in a hammock in the shadiest part of the grove could not wipe out all memory of the past few days, nor quiet the uneasiness which had come to be Good Indian's portion.

"I've got to go up on the hill again right after dinner, Squaw-with-sun-hair," he told her at last. "I can't rest, somehow, as long as those gentlemen are camping down in the orchard. You won't mind, will you?" Which shows that the hour had not been spent in quarreling, at all events.

"Certainly not," Evadna replied calmly. "Because I'm going with you. Oh, you needn't get ready to shake your head! I'm going to help you, from now on, and talk law and give advice and 'scout around,' as you call it. I couldn't be easy a minute, with old Hagar on the warpath the way she is. I'd imagine all sorts of things."

"You don't realize how hot it is," he discouraged.