ded with unusual sarcasm for her, "you'll be falling
in love with Georgie Howard, next thing anybody knows; and maybe that
will last a week or ten days before you find out you were MISTAKEN!"

Good Indian gave her one of his quick, sidelong glances.

"She would not be eternally apologizing to herself for liking me,
anyway," he retorted acrimoniously, as if he found it very hard to
forgive Evadna her conscious superiority of race and upbringing.
"Squaw."

"Oh, I haven't a doubt of that!" Phoebe rose to the defense of her own
blood. "I don't know as it's in her to apologize for anything. I never
saw such a girl for going right ahead as if her way is the only way!
Bull-headed, I'd call her." She looked at Good Indian afterward,
studying his face with motherly solicitude.

"I believe you're half in love with her right now and don't know it!"
she accused suddenly.

Good Indian laughed softly and bent to his work again.

"ARE you, Grant?" Phoebe laid a moist hand on his shoulder, and felt the
muscles sliding smoothly beneath his clothing while he moved a rock. "I
ain't mad because you and Vadnie fell out; I kind of looked for it to
happen. Love that grows like a mushroom lasts about as long--only _I_
don't call it love! You might tell me--"

"Tell you what?" But Grant did not look up. "If I don't know it, I can't
tell it." He paused in his lifting and rested his hands upon his knees,
the fingers dripping water back into the spring. He felt that Phoebe was
waiting, and he pressed his lips together. "Must a man be in love with
some woman all the time?" He shook his fingers impatiently so that the
last drops hurried to the pool.

"She's a good girl, and a brave girl," Phoebe remarked irrelevantly.

Good Indian felt that she was still waiting, with all the quiet
persistence of her sex when on the trail of a romance. He reached up
and caught the hand upon his shoulder, and laid it against his cheek. He
laughed surrender.

"Squaw-talk-far-off heap smart," he mimicked old Peppajee gravely. "Heap
bueno." He stood up as suddenly as he had started his rock-lifting a
few minutes before, and taking Phoebe by the shoulders, shook her with
gentle insistence. "Put don't make me fall out of one love right into
another," he protested whimsically. "Give a fellow time to roll a
cigarette, can't you?"

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Good Indian, by B. M. Bower

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOOD INDIAN ***