ould have shot you down like a dog, just because he was hired to do
it, or because of some hold over him. Don't think I blame you--or that
anyone would if they knew the truth. I came out to see--I just HAD to
make sure--but you must get away from here. You shouldn't have stayed
so long--" Miss Georgie gave a most unexpected sob, and stopped that she
might grit her teeth in anger over it.

"You think I shot him." As Good Indian said it, the sentence was merely
a statement, rather than an accusation or a reproach.

"I don't blame you. I suspected he was the man up here with the rifle.
That day--that first day, when you told me about someone shooting at
you--he came over to the station. And I saw two or three scraps of sage
sticking under his shirt-collar, as if he had been out in the brush; you
know how it breaks off and sticks, when you go through it. And he said
he had been asleep. And there isn't any sage where a man would have to
go through it unless he got right out in it, away from the trails. I
thought then that he was the man--"

"You didn't tell me." And this time he spoke reproachfully.

"It was after you had left that I saw it. And I did go down to the ranch
to tell you. But I--you were so--occupied--in other directions--" She
let go his wrists, and began fumbling at her hair, and she bowed her
head again so that her face was hidden from him.

"You could have told me, anyway," Good Indian said constrainedly.

"You didn't want her to know. I couldn't, before her. And I didn't want
to--hurt her by--" Miss Georgie fumbled more with her words than with
her hair.

"Well, there's no use arguing about that." Good Indian also found that
subject a difficult one. "You say he was shot. Did he say--"

"He wasn't able to talk when I saw him. Pete said Saunders claimed he
was shot at the stable, but I know that to be a lie." Miss Georgie spoke
with unfeeling exactness. "That was to save himself in case he got well,
I suppose. I believe the man is going to die, if he hasn't already; he
had the look--I've seen them in wrecks, and I know. He won't talk; he
can't. But there'll be an investigation--and Baumberger, I suspect,
will be just as willing to get you in this way as in any other. More so,
maybe. Because a murder is always awkward to handle."

"I can't see why he should want to murder me." Good Indian took her
hands away from her hair, and set himself again to the work of freeing
her. "You've been fudging around t