She was busy then until the train came screeching down upon the station, paused there while the conductor rushed in, got a thin slip of paper for himself and the engineer, and rushed out again. When the train grumbled away from the platform and went its way, it left man standing there, a fish-basket slung from one shoulder, a trout rod carefully wrapped in its case in his hand, a box which looked suspiciously like a case of some bottled joy at his feet, and a loose-lipped smile upon his face.
“Howdy, Miss Georgie?” he called unctuously through the open door.
Miss Georgie barely glanced at him from under her lashes, and her shoulders indulged themselves in an almost imperceptible twitch.
“How do you do, Mr. Baumberger?” she responded coolly, and very, very gently pushed the door shut just as he had made up his mind to enter.
Baumberger--Johannes was the name he answered to when any of his family called, though to the rest of the world he was simply Baumberger--was what he himself called a true sport. Women, he maintained, were very much like trout; and so, when this particular woman calmly turned her back upon the smile cast at her, he did not linger there angling uselessly, but betook himself to the store, where his worldly position, rather than his charming personality, might be counted upon to bring him his meed of appreciation.
Good Indian and Jack, sitting side by side upon the porch and saying very little, he passed by with a careless nod, as being not worth his attention. Saunders, glancing up from the absorbing last chapter of “The Brokenhearted Bride,” also received a nod, and returned it apathetically. Pete Hamilton, however, got a flabby handshake, a wheezy laugh, and the announcement that he was down from Shoshone for a good, gamy tussle with that four-pounder he had lost last time.
“And I don't go back till I get him--not if I stay here a week,” he declared, with jocular savagery. “Took half my leader and my pet fly--I got him with a peacock-bodied gray hackle that I revised to suit my own notions--and, by the great immortal Jehosaphat, he looked like a whale when he jumped up clear of the riffle, turned over, and--” His flabby, white hand made a soaring movement to indicate the manner in which the four-pounder had vanished.