"Hello," he said. "What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing with me," Rennie returned. "I was just doin' an errand. But they tell me the doc's out."
"What is it?" Angus asked, for Rennie's face was troubled.
"You ain't heard? Well, Mary, that granddaughter of old Paul Sam, has been missin' some days, and to-day they find her—drowned."
"Good Lord!" Angus exclaimed. "How did it happen?" Rennie's face darkened.
"I dunno. They say she drowned herself. They say some white man is mixed up in it. She was a notch or two above the ordinary klootch, and so—oh, well, it's just the same old rotten mess!"
"Poor girl!" Angus said after a moment of silence. "This will be hard on old Paul Sam. Do the Indians know this white man?"
"I dunno. I heard—mind you I dunno what there is in it—that Blake French is the man. He's dirty enough. But I dunno's the Injuns know it. I seen old Paul Sam. He wasn't talkin'. Just sittin' starin' straight ahead. And the klootch lyin' on her bed alongside him where they'd put her down. Ugh! Some of 'em wanted to send the doc out. He makes reports of deaths and such to the government, and then he's coroner. So I come."
The event touched Angus deeply. He had known the dead girl all his life. She was, as Rennie said, a notch or two above the ordinary klootch. Paul Sam, too, was a good Indian, a friend of his and of his father's, so far as the white man who knows the Indian admits him to friendship. It would be a heavy blow for the old man. But unless some of the young bucks took the law into their own hands it was unlikely that the man responsible for the tragedy—Blake French or another—would suffer at all.
It was long after dark when the judge drove in, and Angus waiting at the livery stable, greeted him.