kiup.
Killum Hagar--so." He thrust out his arm as one who stabs. "Killum
himself--so." He struck his chest with his clenched fist. "Hagar heap
dead. Rachel heap dead. Kay bueno. Mebbyso yo' heap bad medicine. Yo'
go."

"A squaw just died," he told Miss Georgie curtly, when they rode on. But
her quick eyes noted a new look in his face. Before it had been grave
and stern and bitter; now it was sorrowful instead.

CHAPTER XXVII. LIFE ADJUSTS ITSELF AGAIN TO SOME THINGS

The next day was a day of dust hanging always over the grade because of
much hurried riding up and down; a day of many strange faces whose eyes
peered curiously at the place where Baumberger fell, and at the cold
ashes of Stanley's campfire, and at the Harts and their house, and their
horses and all things pertaining in the remotest degree to the drama
which had been played grimly there to its last, tragic "curtain." They
stared up at the rim-rock and made various estimates of the distance and
argued over the question of marksmanship, and whether it really took a
good shot to fire from the top and hit a man below.

As for the killing of Baumberger, public opinion tried--with the aid of
various plugs of tobacco and much expectoration--the case and rendered
a unanimous verdict upon it long before the coroner arrived. "Done just
right," was the verdict of Public Opinion, and the self-constituted
judges manifested their further approval by slapping Good Indian upon
the back when they had a chance, or by solemnly shaking hands with him,
or by facetiously assuring him that they would be good. All of which
Grant interpreted correctly as sympathy and a desire to show him that
they did not look upon him as a murderer, but as a man who had the
courage to defend himself and those dear to him from a great danger.

With everything so agreeably disposed of according to the crude--though
none the less true, perhaps--ethics of the time and the locality, it was
tacitly understood that the coroner and the inquest he held in the grove
beside the house were a mere concession to red tape. Nevertheless
a general tension manifested itself when the jury, after solemnly
listening, in their official capacity, to the evidence they had heard
and discussed freely hours before, bent heads and whispered briefly
together. There was also a corresponding atmosphere of relief when the
verdict of Public Opinion was called justifiable homicide by the coroner
and so stamped with offici