Save for the fact that she kept her eyes studiously turned away from a certain place near by, where the dust was pressed down smoothly with the weight of a heavy body, and all around was trampled and tracked, one could not have told that Miss Georgie remembered anything tragic.
But Good Indian seemed to recall something, and went quickly over to her just in time to prevent her starting.
"Was there something in particular you wanted when you came?" he asked, laying a hand on the neck of the bay. "It just occurred to me that there must have been."
She leaned so that the others could not hear, and her face was grave enough now.
"Why, yes. It's old Hagar. She came to me this afternoon, and she had that bunch of hair you cut off that was snarled in the bush. She had your knife. She wanted me to buy them--the old blackmailer! She made threats, Grant--about Saunders. She says you--I came right down to tell you, because I was afraid she might make trouble. But there was so much more on hand right here"--she glanced involuntarily at the trampled place in the dust. "She said she'd come back this evening, 'when the sun goes away.' She's there now, most likely. What shall I tell her? We can't have that story mouthed all over the country."
Good Indian twisted a wisp of mane in his fingers, and frowned abstractedly.
"If you'll ride on slowly," he told her, at last straightening the twisted lock, "I'll overtake you. I think I'd better see that old Jezebel myself."
Secretly he was rather thankful for further action. He told the boys when they fired questions at his hurried saddling that he was going to take Miss Georgie home, and that he would be back before long; in an hour, probably. Then he galloped down the trail, and overtook her at the Point o' Rocks.
The sun was down, and the sky was a great, glowing mass of color. Round the second turn of the grade they came upon Stanley, walking with his hands thrust in his trousers pockets and whistling softly to himself as if he were thinking deeply. Perhaps he was glad to be let off so easily.
"Abandoning my claim," he announced, lightly as a man of his prosaic temperament could speak upon such a subject. "Dern poor placer mining down there, if yuh want to know!"
Good Indian scowled at him and rode on, because a woman rode beside him. Seven others they passed farther up the hill. Those seven gave him scowl for scowl, and did not speak a word; that also because a woman rode beside him. And the woman understood, and was glad that she was there.