"Well," Miss Georgie summed up the situation, "Baumberger hasn't made any sign of taking up the matter. I don't believe, now, that he will. I wired the news to the papers in Shoshone, so he must know. I think perhaps he's glad to get Saunders out of the way--for he certainly must have known enough to put Baumberger behind the bars.
"But I don't see," she said, in a puzzled way, "how that gun came onto the scene. I looked all around the stable this morning, and I could swear there wasn't any gun."
"Well, he did pick it up--fortunately," Good Indian returned grimly. "I'm glad the thing was settled so easily."
She looked up at him sharply for a moment, opened her lips to ask a question, and then thought better of it.
"Oh, here's your handkerchief," she said quietly, taking it from the bottom of her wastebasket. "As you say, the thing is settled. I'm going to turn you out now. The four-thirty-five is due pretty soon--and I have oodles of work."
He looked at her strangely, and went away, wondering why Miss Georgie hated so to have him in the office lately.
On the next day, at ten o'clock, they buried Saunders on a certain little knoll among the sagebrush; buried him without much ceremony, it is true, but with more respect than he had received when he was alive and shambling sneakily among them. Good Indian was there, saying little and listening attentively to the comments made upon the subject, and when the last bit of yellow gravel had been spatted into place he rode down through the Indian camp on his way home, thankful that everyone seemed to accept the verdict of suicide as being final, and anxious that Rachel should know it. He felt rather queer about Rachel; sorry for her, in an impersonal way; curious over her attitude toward life in general and toward himself in particular, and ready to do her a good turn because of her interest.
But Rachel, when he reached the camp, was not visible. Peppajee Jim was sitting peacefully in the shade of his wikiup when Grant rode up, and he merely grunted in reply to a question or two. Good Indian resolved to be patient. He dismounted, and squatted upon his heels beside Peppajee, offered him tobacco, and dipped a shiny, new nickel toward a bright-eyed papoose in scanty raiment, who stopped to regard him inquisitively.
"I just saw them bury Saunders," Good Indian remarked, by way of opening a conversation. "You believe he shot himself?"
Peppajee took his little stone pipe from his lips, blew a thin wreath of smoke, and replaced the stem between his teeth, stared stolidly straight ahead of him, and said nothing.