“Rachel. Peppajee, he my uncle.” She glanced up at him shyly, then down to where the pliant toe of her moccasin was patting a tiny depression into the dust. “Bad mans like for shoot yo',” she said, not looking directly at him again. “Him up there, all time walk where him can look down, mebbyso see you, mebbyso shootum.”
“I know—I'm going to ride around that way and round him up.” Unconsciously his manner had the arrogance of strength and power to do as he wished, which belongs to healthy young males.
“N-o, no-o!” She drew a sharp breath “o' no good there! Dim shoot yo'. Yo' no go! Ah-h—I sorry I tellum yo' now. Bad mans, him. I watch, I take care him no shoot. Him shoot, mebbyso I shoot!”
With a little laugh that was more a plea for gentle judgment than anything else, she raised the plaid shawl, and gave him a glimpse of a rather battered revolver, cheap when it was new and obviously well past its prime.
“I want yo'—” she hesitated; “I want yo'—be heap careful. I want yo' no ride close by hill. Ride far out!” She made a sweeping gesture toward the valley. “All time I watch.”
He was staring at her in a puzzled way. She was handsome, after her wild, half-civilized type, and her anxiety for his welfare touched him and besought his interest.
“Indians go far down—” She swept her arm down the narrowing river valley. “Catch fish. Peppajee stay—no can walk far. I stay. All go, mebbyso stay five days.” Her hand lifted involuntarily to mark the number.
He did not know why she told him all that, and he could not learn from her anything about his assailant. She had been walking along the bluff, he gathered—though why, she failed to make clear to him. She had, from a distance, caught a glimpse of a man watching the valley beneath him. She had seen him raise a rifle, take long aim, and shoot—and she had known that he was shooting at Good Indian.
When he asked her the second time what was her errand up there—whether she was following the man, or had suspected that he would be there—she shook her head vaguely and took refuge behind the stolidity of her race.
In spite of her pleading, he put his horse to scrambling up the first slope which it was possible to climb, and spent an hour riding, gun in hand, along the rim of the bluff, much as he had searched it the evening before.