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That Girl Montana

by Marah Ellis Ryan · English · Gutenberg #27475 · 572,860 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: That Girl Montana

Author: Marah Ellis Ryan


        
Release date: December 9, 2008 [eBook #27475]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THAT GIRL MONTANA ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net









THAT GIRL MONTANA

BY

MARAH ELLIS RYAN

AUTHOR OF

TOLD IN THE HILLS, THE BONDWOMAN,
A FLOWER OF FRANCE, Etc.

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America




Copyright, 1901, by Rand. McNally & Company.




THAT GIRL MONTANA.

PROLOGUE.


"That girl the murderer of a man--of Lee Holly! That pretty little girl?
Bosh! I don't believe it."

"I did not say she killed him; I said she was suspected. And even though
she was cleared, the death of that renegade adds one more to the mysteries
of our new West. But I think the mere suspicion that she did it entitles
her to a medal, or an ovation of some sort."

The speakers were two men in complete hunting costume. That they were
strangers in the Northwest was evidenced by the very lively interest they
took in each bit of local color in landscape or native humanity. Of the
latter, there was a most picturesque variety. There were the Northern red
men in their bright blankets, and women, too, with their beadwork and
tanned skins for sale. A good market-place for these was this spot where
the Kootenai River is touched by the iron road that drives from the lakes
to the Pacific. The road runs along our Northern boundary so close that it
is called the "Great Northern," and verily the land it touches is great in
its wildness and its beauty.

The two men, with their trophies of elk-horn and beaver paws, with their
scarred outfit and a general air of elation gained from a successful
"outing," tramped down to the little station after a last lingering view
toward far hunting grounds. While waiting for the train bound eastward,
they employed their time in dickering with the Indian moccasin-makers, of
whom they bought arrows and gaily painted bows of ash, with which to deck
the wall of some far-away city home.

While thus engaged, a little fleet of canoes was sighted skimming down the
river from that greater wilderness of the North, penetrated at that time
only by the prospector, or a chance hunter; for the wealth of gold in
those high valleys had not yet been more than hinted at, and the hint had
not reached the ears of the world.

Even the Indians were aroused from their lethargy, and watched with keen
curiosity the approaching canoes. When from the largest there stepped
forth a young girl--a rather remarkable-looking young girl--there was a
name spoken by a tall Indian boatman, who stood near the two strangers.
The Indians nodded their heads, and the name was passed from one to the
other--the name 'Tana--a soft, musical name as they pronounced it. One of
the strangers, hearing it, turned quickly to a white ranchman, who had a
ferry at that turn of the river, and asked if that was the young girl who
had helped locate the new gold find at the Twin Springs.

"Likely," agreed the ranchman. "Word came that she was to cut the diggings
and go to school a spell. A Mr. Haydon, who represents a company that's to
work the mine, sent down word that a special party was to go East over the
road from here to-day; so I guess she's one of the specials. She came near
going on a special to the New Jerusalem, she did, not many days ago. I
reckon you folks heard how Lee Holly--toughest man in the length of the
Columbia--was wiped off the living earth by her last week."

"We heard she was cleared of it," assented the stranger.

"Yes, so she was, so she was--cleared by an alibi, sworn to by Dan
Overton. You don't know Dan, I suppose? Squarest man you ever met! And he
don't have to scratch gravel any more, either, for he has a third interest
in that Twin Spring find, and it pans out big. They say the girl sold her
share for two hundred thousand. She doesn't look top-heavy over it,
either."

And she did not. She walked between two men--one a short, rather pompous
elderly man, who bore a slight resemblance to her, and whom she treated
rather coolly.

"Of course I am not tired," she said, in a strong, musical voice. "I have
been brought all the way on cushions, so how could I be? Why, I have gone
alone in a canoe on a longer trail than we floated over, and I think I
will again some day. Max, there is one thing I want in this world, and
want bad; that is, to get Mr. Haydon out on a trip where we can't eat
until we kill and cook our dinner. He doesn't know anything about real
comfort; he wants too many cushions."

The man she called Max bent his head and whispered something to her, at
which her face flushed just a little and a tiny wrinkle crept between her
straight, beautiful brows.

"I told you not to say pretty things that way, just because you think
girls like to hear them. I don't. Maybe I will when I get civilized; but
Mr. Haydon thinks that is a long ways ahead, doesn't he?" The wrinkle was
gone--vanished in a quizzical smile, as she looked up into the very
handsome face of the young fellow.

"So do I," he acknowledged. "I have a strong desire, especially when you
snub me, to be the man to take you on a lone trail like that. I will, too,
some day."

"Maybe you will," she agreed. "But I feel sorry for you beforehand."

She seemed a tantalizing specimen of girlhood, as she stood there, a
slight, brown slip of a thing, dressed in a plain flannel suit, the color
of her golden-brown short curls. In her brown cloth hat the wings of a
redbird gleamed--the feathers and her lips having all there was of bright
color about her; for her face was singularly colorless for so young a
girl. The creamy skin suggested a pale-tinted blossom, but not a fragile
one; and the eyes--full eyes of wine-brown--looked out with frank daring
on the world.

But for all the daring brightness of her glances, it was not a joyous
face, such as one would wish a girl of seventeen to possess. A little
cynical curve of the red mouth, a little contemptuous glance from those
brown eyes, showed one that she took her measurements of individuals by a
gauge of her own, and that she had not that guileless trust in human
nature that is supposed to belong to young womanhood. The full expression
indicated an independence that seemed a breath caught from the wild beauty
of those Northern hills.

Her gaze rested lightly on the two strangers and their trophies of the
chase, on the careless ferryman, and the few stragglers from the ranch and
the cabins. These last had gathered there to view the train and its people
as they passed, for the ties on which the iron rails rested were still of
green wood, and the iron engines of transportation were recent additions
to those lands of the far North, and were yet a novelty.

Over the faces of the white men her eyes passed carelessly. She did not
seem much interested in civilized men, even though decked in finer raiment
than was usual in that locality; and, after a cool glance at them all, she
walked directly past them and spoke to the tall Indian who had first
uttered her name to the others.

His face brightened when she addressed him; but their words were low, as
are ever the words of an Indian in converse, low and softly modulated; and
the girl did not laugh in the face of the native as she had when the
handsome young white man had spoken to her in softened tones.

The two sportsmen gave quickened attention to her as they perceived she
was addressing the Indian in his own language. Many gestures of her slim
brown hands aided her speech, and as he watched her face, one of the
sportsmen uttered the impulsive exclamation at the beginning of this
story. It seemed past belief that she could have committed the deed with
which her name had been connected, and of which the Kootenai valley had
heard a great deal during the week just passed. That it had become the one
topic of general interest in the community was due partly to the
personality of the girl, and partly to the fact that the murdered man had
been one of the most notorious in all that wild land extending north and
west into British Columbia.

Looking at the frank face of the girl and hearing her musical, decided
tones, the man had a reasonable warrant for deciding that she was not
guilty.

"She is one of the most strongly interesting girls of her age I have ever
seen," he decided. "Girls of that age generally lack character. She does
not; it impresses itself on a man though she never speak a word to him.
Wish she'd favor me with as much of her attention as she gives that
hulking redskin."

"It's a 'case,' isn't it?" asked his friend. "You'll be wanting to use her
as a centerpiece for your next novel; but you can't make an orthodox
heroine of her, for there must have been some reason for the suspicion
that she helped him 'over the range,' as they say out here. There must
have been something socially and morally wrong about the fact that he was
found dead in her cabin. No, Harvey; you'd better write up the inert,
inoffensive red man on his native heath, and let this remarkable young
lady enjoy her thousands in modest content--if the ghosts let her."

"Nonsense!" said the other man, with a sort of impatience. "You jump too
quickly to the conclusion that there must be wrong where there is
suspicion. But you have put an idea into my mind as to the story. If I can
ever learn the whole history of this affair, I will make use of it, and
I'm not afraid of finding my pretty girl in the wrong, either."

"I knew from the moment we heard who she was that your impressionable
nature would fall a victim, but you can't write a story of her alone; you
will want your hero and one or two other people. I suppose, now, that very
handsome young fellow with the fastidious get-up will about suit you for
the hero. He does look rather lover-like when he addresses your girl with
the history. Will you pair them off?"

"I will let you know a year from now," returned the man called Harvey.
"But just now I am going to pay my respects to the very well-fed looking
elderly gentleman. He seems to be the chaperon of the party. I have
acquired a taste for trailing things during our thirty days hunt in
these hills, and I'm going to trail this trio, with the expectation of
bagging a romance."

His friend watched him approach the elder gentleman, and was obviously
doubtful of the reception he would get, for the portly, prosperous-looking
individual did not seem to have been educated in that generous Western
atmosphere, where a man is a brother if he acts square and speaks fair.
Conservatism was stamped in the deep corners of his small mouth, on the
clean-shaven lips, and the correctly cut side-whiskers that added width to
his fat face.

But the journalist proper, the world over, is ever a bit of a diplomat. He
has won victories over so many conservative things, and is daunted by few.
When Harvey found himself confronted by a monocle through which he was
coolly surveyed, it did not disturb him in the least (beyond making it
difficult to retain a grave demeanor at the lively interest shown by the
Indians in that fashionable toy).

"Yes, sir--yes, sir; I am T. J. Haydon, of Philadelphia," acknowledged he
of the glass disc, "but I don't know you, sir."

"I shall be pleased to remedy that if you will allow me," returned the
other, suavely, producing a card which he offered for examination. "You
are, no doubt, acquainted with the syndicate I represent, even if my name
tells you nothing. I have been hunting here with a friend for a month, and
intend writing up the resources of this district. I have a letter of
introduction to your partner, Mr. Seldon, but did not follow the river so
far as to reach your works, though I've heard a good deal about them, and
imagine them interesting."

"Yes, indeed; very interesting--very interesting from a sportsman's or
mineralogist's point of view," agreed the older man, as he twirled the
card in a disturbed, uncertain way. "Do you travel East, Mr.--Mr. Harvey?
Yes? Well, let me introduce Mr. Seldon's nephew--he's a New Yorker--Max
Lyster. Wait a minute and I'll get him away from those beastly Indians. I
never can understand the attraction they have for the average tourist."

But when he reached Lyster he said not a word of the despised reds; he had
other matters more important.

"Here, Max! A most annoying thing has happened," he said, hurriedly.
"Those two men are newspaper fellows, and one is going East on our train.
Worse still--the one knows people I know. Gad! I'd rather lose a thousand
dollars than meet them now! And you must come over and get acquainted.
They've been here a month, and are to write accounts of the life and
country. That means they have been here long enough to hear all about
'Tana and that Holly. Do you understand? You'll have to treat them
well,--the best possible--pull wires even if it costs money, and fix it so
that a record of this does not get into the Eastern papers. And, above and
beyond everything else, so long as we are in this depraved corner of the
country, you must keep them from noticing that girl Montana."

The young man looked across at the girl, and smiled doubtfully.

"I'm willing to undertake any possible thing for you," he said; "but, my
dear sir, to keep people from noticing 'Tana is one of the things beyond
my power. And if she gives notice to all the men who will notice her, I've
an idea jealousy will turn my hair gray early. But come on and introduce
your man, and don't get in a fever over the meeting. I am so fortunate
as to know more of the journalistic fraternity than you, and I happen to
be aware that they are generally gentlemen. Therefore, you'd better not
drop any hints to them of monetary advantages in exchange for silence
unless you want to be beautifully roasted by a process only possible in
printer's ink."

The older man uttered an exclamation of impatience, as he led his young
companion over to the sportsmen, who had joined each other again; and as
he effected the introduction, his mind was sorely upset by dread of the
two gentlemanly strangers and 'Tana.

'Tana was most shamelessly continuing her confidences with the tall
Indian, despite the fact that she knew it was a decided annoyance to her
principal escort. Altogether the evening was a trying one to Mr. T. J.
Haydon.

The sun had passed far to the west, and the shadows were growing longer
under the hills there by the river. Clear, red glints fell across the cool
ripples of the water, and slight chill breaths drifted down the ravines
and told that the death of summer was approaching.

Some sense of the beauty of the dying October day seemed to touch the
girl, for she walked a little apart and picked a spray of scarlet maple
leaves and looked from them to the hills and the beautiful valley, where
the red and the yellow were beginning to crowd out the greens. Yes, the
summer was dying--dying! Other summers would come in their turn, but none
quite the same. The girl showed all the feeling of its loss in her face.
In her eyes the quick tears came, as she looked at the mountains. The
summer was dying; it was autumn's colors she held in her hand, and she
shivered, though she stood in the sunshine.

As she turned toward the group again, she met the eyes of the stranger to
whom Max was talking. He seemed to have been watching her with a great
deal of interest, and her hand was raised to her eyes, lest a trace of
tears should prove food for curiosity.

"It was to one of Akkomi's relations I was talking," she remarked to Mr.
Haydon, when he questioned her. "His little grandson is sick, and I would
like to send him something. I haven't money enough in my pocket, and wish
you would get me some."

After taking some money out of his purse for her, he eyed the tall savage
with disfavor.

"He'll buy bad whisky with it," he grumbled.

"No, he will not," contradicted the girl. "If a person treats these
Indians square, he can trust them. But if a lie is told them, or a promise
broken--well, they get even by tricking you if they can, and I can't say
that I blame them. But they won't trick me, so don't worry; and I'm as
sure the things will go to that little fellow safely as though I took
them."

She was giving the money and some directions to the Indian, when a word
from a squaw drew her attention to the river.

A canoe had just turned the bend not a quarter of a mile away, and was
skimming the water with the swiftness of a swallow's dart. Only one man
was in it, and he was coming straight for the landing.

"Some miner rushing down to see the train go by," remarked Mr. Haydon; but
the girl did not answer. Her face grew even more pale, and her hands
clasped each other nervously.

"Yes," said the Indian beside her, and nodded to her assuringly. Then the
color swept upward over her face as she met his kindly glance, and
drawing herself a little straighter, she walked indifferently away.

The stolid red man did not look at all snubbed; he only pocketed the money
she had given him, and looked after her with a slight smile, accented more
by the deepening wrinkles around his black eyes than by any change about
the lips.

Then there was a low rumbling sound borne on the air, and as the muffled
whistle of the unseen train came to them from the wilderness to the west,
with one accord the Indians turned their attention to their wares, and the
white people to their baggage. When the train slowed up Mr. Haydon, barely
waiting for the last revolution of the wheels, energetically hastened the
young girl up the steps of the car nearest them.

"What's the hurry?" she asked, with a slight impatience.

"I think," he replied quickly, "there is but a short stop made at this
station, and as there are several vacant seats in this car, please occupy
one of them until I have seen the conductor. There may be some changes
made as to the compartments engaged for us. Until that is decided, will
you be so kind as to remain in this coach?"

She nodded rather indifferently, and looked around for Max. He was
gathering up some robes and satchels when the older man joined him.

"We are not going to make the trip to Chicago in the car with those
fellows if it can be helped, Max," he insisted, fussily; "we'll wait and
see what car they are booked for, and I'll arrange for another. Sorry I
did not get a special, as I first intended."

"But see here; they are first-class fellows--worth one's while to meet,"
protested Max; but the other shook his head.

"Look after the baggage while I see the conductor. 'Tana is in one of the
cars--don't know which. We'll go for her when we get settled. Now, don't
argue. Time is too precious."

And 'Tana! She seated herself rather sulkily, as she was told, and looked
at once toward the river.

The canoe was landing, and the man jumped to the shore. With quick,
determined strides, he came across the land to the train. She tried to
follow him with her eyes, but he crossed to the other side of the track.

There was rather a boisterous party in the car--two men and two women. One
of the latter, a flaxen-haired, petite creature, was flitting from one
side of the car to the other, making remarks about the Indians, admiring
particularly one boy's beaded dress, and garnishing her remarks with a
good deal of slang.

"Say, Chub! that boy's suit would be a great 'make-up' for me in that new
turn--the jig, you know; new, too. There isn't a song-and-dance on the
boards done with Indian make-up. Knock them silly in the East, where they
don't see reds. Now sing out, and tell me if it wouldn't make a hit."

"Aw, Goldie, give us a rest on shop talk," growled the gentleman called
Chub. "If you'd put a little more ginger into the good specialty you have,
instead of depending on wardrobe, you'd hit 'em hard enough. It ain't
plans that count, girlie--it's work."

The "girlie" addressed accepted the criticism with easy indifference, and
her fair, dissipated face was only twisted in a grimace, while she held
one hand aloft and jingled the bangles on her bracelets as though
poising a tambourine.

"Better hustle yourself into the smoker again, Chubby dear. It will take a
half-dozen more cigars to put you in your usual sweet frame of mind. Run
along now. Ta-ta!"

The other woman seemed to think their remarks very witty, especially when
Chub really did arise and make his way toward the smoker. Goldie then went
back to the window, where the Indians were to be seen. The quartet were,
to judge by their own frank remarks, a party of variety singers and
dancers who had been doing the Pacific circuit, and were now booked for
some Eastern houses, of which they spoke as "solid."

Some of the passengers had got out and were buying little things from the
Indians, as souvenirs of the country. 'Tana saw Mr. Haydon among them, in
earnest conversation with the conductor; saw Max, with his hand full of
satchels, suddenly reach out the other hand with a great deal of
heartiness and meet the man of the canoe.

He was not so handsome a man as Max, yet would have been noticeable
anywhere--tall, olive-skinned, and dark-haired. His dress had not the
fashionable cut of the young fellow he spoke to. But he wore his buckskin
jacket with a grace that bespoke physical strength and independence; and
when he pushed his broad-brimmed gray hat back from his face, he showed a
pair of dark eyes that had a very direct glance. They were serious,
contemplative eyes, that to some might look even moody.

"There is a fellow with a great figure," remarked the other woman of the
quartet; "that fellow with the sombrero; built right up from the ground,
and looks like a picture; don't he, Charlie?"

"I can't see him," complained Goldie, "but suppose it's one of the
ranchmen who live about here." Then she turned and donated a brief survey
to 'Tana. "Do you live in this region?" she asked.

After a deliberate, contemptuous glance from the questioner's frizzed head
to her little feet, 'Tana answered:

"No; do you?"

With this curt reply, she turned her shoulder very coolly on the searcher
for information.

Vexation sent the angry blood up into the little woman's face. She looked
as though about to retort, when a gentleman who had just taken possession
of a compartment, and noted all that had passed, came forward and
addressed our heroine.

"Until your friends come in, will you not take my seat?" he asked,
courteously. "I will gladly make the exchange, or go for Mr. Lyster or Mr.
Haydon, if you desire it."

"Thank you; I will take your seat," she agreed. "It is good of you to
offer it."

"Say, folks, I'm going outside to take in this free Wild West show,"
called the variety actress to her companions. "Come along?"

But they declined. She had reached the platform alone, when, coming toward
the car, she saw the man of the sombrero, and shrank back with a gasp of
utter dismay.

"Oh, good Heaven!" she muttered, and all the color and bravado were gone
from her face, as she shrank back out of his range of vision and almost
into the arms of the man Harvey, who had given the other girl his seat.

"What's up?" he asked, bluntly.

She only gave a muttered, unintelligible reply, pushed past him to her own
seat, where her feather-laden hat was donned with astonishing rapidity, a
great cloak was thrown around her, and she sank into a corner, a huddled
mass of wraps and feathers. Any one could have walked along the aisle
without catching even a glimpse of her flaxen hair.

'Tana and the stranger exchanged looks of utter wonder at the lightning
change effected before their eyes.

At that moment a tap-tap sounded on the window beside 'Tana, and, looking
around, she met the dark eyes of the man with the sombrero gazing kindly
upward at her.

The people were getting aboard the train again--the time was so short--so
short! and how can one speak through a double glass? The fingers were all
unequal to the fastening of the window, and she turned an imploring,
flushed face to the helpful stranger.

"Can you--oh, will you, please?" she asked, breathlessly. "Thank you, I'm
very much obliged."

Then the window was raised, and her hand thrust out to the man, who was
bareheaded now, and who looked very much as though he held the wealth of
the world when he clasped only 'Tana's fingers.

"Oh, it is you, is it?" she asked, with a rather lame attempt at careless
speech. "I thought you had forgotten to say good-by to me."

"You knew better," he contradicted. "You knew--you know now it wasn't
because I forgot."

He looked at her moodily from under his dark brows, and noticed the color
flutter over her cheek and throat in an adorable way. She had drawn her
hand from him, and it rested on the window--a slim brown hand, with a
curious ring on one finger--two tiny snakes whose jeweled heads formed the
central point of attraction.

"You said you would not wear that again. If it's a hoodoo, as you thought,
why not throw it away?" he asked.

"Oh--I've changed my mind. I need to wear it so that I will be reminded of
something--something important as a hoodoo," she said, with a strange,
bitter smile.

"Give it back to me, 'Tana," he urged. "I will--No--Max will have
something much prettier for you. And listen, my girl. You are going away;
don't ever come back; forget everything here but the money that will be
yours for the claim. Do you understand me? Forget all I said to you
when--you know. I had no right to say it; I must have been drunk. I--I
lied, anyway."

"Oh, you lied, did you?" she asked, cynically, and her hands were clasped
closely, so close the ring must have hurt her. He noticed it, and kept his
eyes on her hand as he continued, doggedly:

"Yes. You see, little girl, I thought I'd own up before you left, so you
wouldn't be wasting any good time in being sorry about the folks back
here. It wasn't square for me to trouble you as I did. And--I lied. I came
down to say that."

"You needn't have troubled yourself," she said, curtly. "But I see you can
tell lies. I never would have believed it if I hadn't heard you. But I
guess, after all, I will give you the ring. You might want it to give to
some one else--perhaps your wife."

The bell was ringing and the wheels began slowly to revolve. She pulled
the circlet from her finger and almost flung it at him.

"'Tana!" and all of keen appeal was in his voice and his eyes, "little
girl--good-by!"

But she turned away her head. Her hand, however, reached out and the spray
of autumn leaves fluttered to his feet where the ring lay.

Then the rumble of the moving train sounded through the valley, and the
girl turned to find Max, Mr. Haydon and a porter approaching, to convey
her to the car ahead. Mr. Haydon's face was a study of dismay at the sight
of Mr. Harvey closing the window and showing evident interest in 'Tana's
comfort.

"So Dan did get down to see you off, 'Tana?" observed Max, as he led her
along the aisle. "Dear old fellow! how I did try to coax him into coming
East later; but it was of no use. He gave me some flowers for you--wild
beauties. He never seemed to say much, 'Tana, but I've an idea you'll
never have a better friend in your life than that same old Dan."

Mr. Harvey watched their exit, and smiled a little concerning Mr. Haydon's
evident annoyance. He watched, also, the flaxen-haired bundle in the
corner, and saw the curious, malignant look with which she followed 'Tana,
and to his friend he laughed over his triumph in exchanging speech with
the pretty, peculiar girl in brown.

"And the old party looked terribly fussy over it. In fact, I've about
sifted out the reason. He imagines me a newspaper reporter on the alert
for sensations. He's afraid his stupidly respectable self may be mentioned
in a newspaper article concerning this local tragedy they all talk about.
Why, bless his pocket-book! if I ever use pen and ink on that girl's
story, it will not be for a newspaper article."

"Then you intend to tell it?" asked his friend. "How will you learn it?"

"I do not know yet. The 'how' does not matter; I'll tell you on paper some
day."

"And write up that handsome Lyster as the hero?"

"Perhaps."

Then a bend of the road brought them again in sight of the river of the
Kootenais. Here and there the canoes of the Indians were speeding across
at the ferry. But one canoe alone was moving north; not very swiftly, but
almost as though drifting with the current.

Using his field-glass, Harvey found it was as he had thought. The occupant
of the solitary canoe was the tall man whose dark face had impressed the
theatrical lady so strongly. He was not using the paddle, and his chin was
resting on one clenched hand, while in the other he held something to
which he was giving earnest attention.

It was a spray of bright-colored leaves, and the watcher dropped his glass
with a guilty feeling.

"He brings her flowers, and gets in return only dead leaves," Harvey
thought, grimly. "I didn't hear a word he said to her; but his eyes spoke
strongly enough, poor devil! I wonder if she sees him, too."

And all through the evening, and for many a day, the picture remained in
his mind. Even when he wrote the story that is told in these pages, he
could never find words to express the utter loneliness of that life, as it
seemed to drift away past the sun-touched ripples of water into that vast,
shadowy wilderness to the north.




CHAPTER I.

A STRANGE GIRL.


"Well, by the help of either her red gods or devils, she can swim,
anyway!"

This explosive statement was made one June morning on the banks of the
Kootenai, and the speaker, after a steady gaze, relinquished his
field-glass to the man beside him.

"Can she make it?" he asked.

A grunt was the only reply given him. The silent watcher was too much
interested in the scene across the water.

Shouts came to them--the yells of frightened Indian children; and from the
cone-shaped dwellings, up from the water, the Indian women were hurrying.
One, reaching the shore first, sent up a shrill cry, as she perceived
that, from the canoe where the children played, one had fallen over, and
was being swept away by that swift-rushing, chill water, far out from the
reaching hands of the others.

Then a figure lolling on the shore farther down stream than the canoe
sprang erect at the frightened scream.

One quick glance showed the helplessness of those above, and another the
struggling little form there in the water--the little one who turned such
wild eyes toward the shore, and was the only one of them all who was not
making some outcry.

The white men, who were watching from the opposite side, could see shoes
flung aside quickly; a jacket dropped on the shore; and then down into the
water a slight figure darted with the swiftness of a kingfisher, and swam
out to the little fellow who had struggled to keep his head above water,
but was fast growing helpless in the chill of the mountain river.

Then it was that Mr. Maxwell Lyster commented on the physical help lent by
the gods of the red people, as the ability of any female to swim thus
lustily in spite of that icy current seemed to his civilized understanding
a thing superhuman. Of course, bears and other animals of the woods swam
it at all seasons, when it was open; but to see a woman dash into it like
that! Well, it sent a shiver over him to think of it.

"They'll both get chilled and drop to the bottom!" he remarked, with
irritated concern. "Of course there are enough of the red vagabonds in
this new El Dorado of yours, without that particular squaw. But it would
be a pity that so plucky a one should be translated."

Then a yell of triumph came from the other shore. A canoe had been
loosened, and was fairly flying over the water to where the child had been
dragged to the surface, and the rescuer was holding herself up by the slow
efforts of one arm, but could make no progress with her burden.

"That's no squaw!" commented the other man, who had been looking through
the glass.

"Why, Dan!"

"It's no squaw, I tell you," insisted the other, with the superior
knowledge of a native. "Thought so the minute I saw her drop the shoes and
jacket that way. She didn't make a single Indian move. It's a white
woman!"

"Queer place for a white woman, isn't it?"

The man called Dan did not answer. The canoe had reached that figure in
the water and the squaw in it lifted the now senseless child and laid him
in the bottom of the light craft.

A slight altercation seemed going on between the woman in the water and
the one in the boat. The former was protesting against being helped on
board--the men could see that by their gestures. She finally gained her
point, for the squaw seized the paddle and sent the boat shoreward with
all the strength of her brown arms, while the one in the water held on to
the canoe and was thus towed back, where half the Indian village had now
swarmed to receive them.

"She's got sand and sense," and Dan nodded his appreciation of the towing
process; "for, chilled as she must be, the canoe would more than likely
have turned over if she had tried to climb into it. Look at the pow-wow
they are kicking up! That little red devil must count for big stakes with
them."

"But the woman who swam after him. See! they try to stand her on her feet,
but she can't walk. There! she's on the ground again. I'd give half my
supper to know if she has killed herself with that ice-bath."

"Maybe you can eat all your supper and find out, too," observed the other,
with a shrug of his shoulders, and a quizzical glance at his companion,
"unless even the glimpse of a petticoat has chased away your appetite. You
had better take some advice from an old man, Max, and swear off
approaching females in this country, for the specimens you'll find here
aren't things to make you proud they're human."

"An old man!" repeated Mr. Lyster with a smile of derision. "You must be
pretty near twenty-eight years old--aren't you, Dan? and just about five
years older than myself. And what airs you do assume in consequence! With
all the weight of those years," he added, slowly, "I doubt, Mr. Dan
Overton, if you have really _lived_ as much as I have."

One glance of the dark eyes was turned on the speaker for an instant, and
then the old felt hat again shaded them as he continued watching the group
on the far shore. The swimmer had been picked up by a stalwart Indian
woman, and was carried bodily up to one of the lodges, while another
squaw--evidently the mother--carried the little redskin who had caused all
the commotion.

"I suppose, by living, you mean the life of settlements--or, to condense
the question still more, the life of cities," continued Overton,
stretching himself lazily on the bank. "You mean the life of a certain set
in one certain city--New York, for instance," and he grinned at the
expression of impatience on the face of the other. "Yes, I reckon New York
is about the one, and a certain part of the town to live in. A certain
gang of partners, who have a certain man to make their clothes and boots
and hats, and stamp his name on the inside of them, so that other folks
can see, when you take off your coat, or your hat, or your gloves, that
they were made at just the right place. This makes you a man worth
knowing--isn't that about the idea? And in the afternoon, at just about
the right hour, you rig yourself out in a certain cut of coat, and stroll
for an hour or so on a certain street! In the evening--if a man wants to
understand just what it is to live--he must get into other clothes and
drop into the theater, making a point of being introduced to any heavy
swell within reach, so you can speak of it afterward, you know. Just as
your chums like to say they had a supper with a pretty actress, after
the curtain went down; but they don't go into details, and own up that the
'actress' maybe never did anything on a stage but walk on in armor and
carry a banner. Oh, scowl if you want to! Of course it sounds shoddy when
a trapper outlines it; but it doesn't seem shoddy to the people who live
like that. Then, about the time that all good girls are asleep, it is just
the hour for a supper to be ordered, at just the right place for the wine
to be good, and the dishes served in A1 shape, with a convenient waiter
who knows how dim to make the lights, and how to efface himself, and let
you wait on your 'lady' with your own hands. And she'll go home wearing a
ring of yours--two, if you have them; and you'll wake up at noon next day,
and think what a jolly time you had, but with your head so muddled that
you can't remember where it was you were to meet her the next night, or
whether it was the next night that her husband was to be home, and she
couldn't see you at all." Overton rolled over on his face and grunted
disdainfully, saying: "That's about the style of thing you call _living_,
don't you, sonny?"

"Great Scott, Dan!" and the "sonny" addressed stared at him in perplexity,
"one never knows what to expect of you. Of course there is _some_ truth in
the sketch you make; but--but I thought you had never ranged to the
East?"

"Did you? Well, I don't look as if I'd ever ranged beyond the timber, do
I?" and he stretched out his long legs with their shabby coverings, and
stuck his fingers through a hole in his hat. "This outfit doesn't look as
if the hands of a Broadway tailor had ever touched it. But, my boy, the
sketch you speak of would be just as true to life among a certain set in
any large city of the States; only in the West, or even in the South,
those ambitious sports would know enough to buy a horse on their own
judgment, if they wanted to ride. Or would bet on the races without
hustling around to find some played-out jockey who would give them tips."

"Well, to say the least, your opinion is not very flattering to us,"
remarked the young man, moodily. "You've got some grudge against the East,
I guess."

"Grudge? Not any. And you're all right, Max. You will find thousands
willing to keep to your idea of life, so we won't split on that wedge. My
old stepdad would chime in with you if he were here. He prates about
civilization and Eastern culture till I get weary sometimes. Culture! Wait
till you see him. He's all right in his way, of course; but as I cut loose
from home when only fifteen, and never ran across the old man again until
two years ago--well, you see, I can make my estimates in that direction
without being biased by family feeling. And I reckon he does the same
thing. I don't know what to expect when I go back this time; but, from
signs around camp when I left, I wouldn't be surprised if he presented me
with a stepmother on my return."

"A stepmother? Whew!" whistled the other. "Well, that shows there are some
white women in your region, anyway."

"Oh, yes, we have several. This particular one is a Pennsylvania product;
talks through her nose, and eats with her knife, and will maybe try to
make eyes at you and keep you in practice. But she is a good, square
woman; simply one of the many specimens that drift out here. Came up from
Helena with the 'boom,' and started a milliner store--a milliner store in
the bush, mind you! But after the Indians had bought all the bright
feathers and artificial flowers, she changed her sign, and keeps an
eating-house now. It is the high-toned corner of the camp. She can cook
some; and I reckon that's what catches the old man."

"Any more interesting specimens like that?"

"Not like that," returned Overton; "but there are some more."

Then he arose, and stood listening to sounds back in the wild forests.

"I hear the 'cayuse' bell," he remarked; "so the others are coming. We'll
go back up to the camp, and, after 'chuck,' we'll go over and give you a
nearer view of the tribe on the other shore, if you want to add them to
the list of your sight-seeing."

"Certainly I do. They'll be a relief after the squads of railroad section
hands we've been having for company lately. They knocked all the romance
out of the wildly beautiful country we've been coming through since we
left the Columbia River."

"Come back next year; then a boat will be puffing up here to the landing,
and you can cross to the Columbia in a few hours, for the road will be
completed then."

"And you--will you be here then?"

"Well--yes; I reckon so. I never anchor anywhere very long; but this
country suits me, and the company seems to need me."

The young fellow looked at him and laughed, and dropped his hand on the
broad shoulder with a certain degree of affection.

"Seems to need you?" he repeated. "Well, Mr. Dan Overton, if the day ever
comes when _I'm_ necessary to the welfare of a section as large as a
good-sized State, I hope I'll know enough to appreciate my own
importance."

"Hope you will," said Overton, with a kindly smile. "No reason why you
should not be of use. Every man with a fair share of health and strength
ought to be of use somewhere."

"Yes, that sounds all right and is easy to grasp, if you have been brought
up with the idea. But suppose you had been trained by a couple of maiden
aunts who only thought to give you the manners of a gentleman, and leave
you their money to get through the world with? I guess, under such
circumstances, you, too, might have settled into the feathery nest
prepared for you, and thought you were doing your duty to the world if you
were only ornamental," and the dubious smile on his really handsome face
robbed the speech of any vanity.

"You're all right, I tell you," returned the other. "Don't growl at
yourself so much. You'll find your work and buckle down to it, some of
these days. Maybe you'll find it out here--who knows? Of course Mr. Seldon
would see to it that you got any post you would want in this district."

"Yes, he's a jolly old fellow, and has shown me a lot of favors. Seems to
me relatives mean more to folks out here than they do East, because so few
have their families or relatives along, I guess. If it had not been for
Seldon, I rather think I would not have had the chance of this wild trip
with you."

"Likely not. I don't generally want a tenderfoot along when I've work to
do. No offense, Max; but they are too often a hindrance. Now that you have
come, though, I'll confess I'm glad of it. The lonely trips over this wild
region tend to make a man silent--a bear among people when he does reach a
camp. But we've talked most of the time, and I reckon I feel the better of
it. I know I'll miss you when I go over this route again. You'll be on
your way East by that time."

The "cayuse" bell sounded nearer and nearer, and directly from the dense
forest a packhorse came stepping with care over the fallen logs, where the
sign of a trail was yet dim to any eyes but those of a woodsman. A bell at
its neck tinkled as it walked, and after it four others followed, all with
heavy loads bound to their backs. It looked strange to see the patient
animals thus walk without guide or driver through the dense timber of the
mountains; but a little later voices were heard, and two horsemen came out
of the shadows of the wood, and followed the horses upward along the bank
of the river to where a little stream of fresh water tumbled down to the
Kootenai. There a little camp was located, an insignificant gathering of
tents, but one that meant a promising event to the country, for it was to
be the connecting point of the boats that would one day float from the
States on the river, and the railroad that would erelong lead westward
over the trail from which the packhorses were bringing supplies.

The sun was setting and all the ripples of the river shone red in its
reflected light. Forests of pine loomed up black and shadowy above the
shores; and there, higher up--up where the snow was, all tips of the river
range were tinged a warm pink, and where the shadows lay, the lavender and
faint purples drifted into each other, and bit by bit crowded the pink
line higher and higher until it dared touch only the topmost peaks with
its lingering kiss.

Lyster halted to look over the wild beauty of the wilderness, and from the
harmony of river and hills and sky his eyes turned to Overton.

"You are right, Dan," he said, with an appreciative smile, a smile that
opened his lips and showed how perfect the mouth was under the brown
mustache--"you are right enough to keep close to all these beauties. You
seem in some way to belong to them--not that you are so much 'a thing of
beauty' yourself," and the smile widened a little; "but you have in you
all the strength of the hills and the patience of the wilderness. You know
what I mean."

"Yes, I guess so," answered Overton. "You want some one to spout verses to
or make love to, and there is no subject handy. I can make allowances for
you, though. Those tendencies are apt to stick to a man for about a year
after a trip to Southern California. I don't know whether it's the girls
down there, or the wine that is accountable for it; but whatever it is,
you have been back from there only three months. You've three-quarters of
a year to run yet--maybe more; for I've a notion that you have a leaning
in that direction even in your most sensible moments."

"H'm! You must have made a trip to that wine country yourself sometime,"
observed Lyster. "Your theory suggests practice. Were there girls and wine
there then?"

"Plenty," returned Overton, briefly. "Come on. There's the cook shouting
supper."

"And after supper we're to go over to the Kootenai camp. Say! what is the
meaning of that name, anyway? You know all their jargons up here; do you
know that, too?"

"Nobody does, I reckon; there are lots of theories flying around. The
generally accepted one is that they were called the '_Court Nez_' by the
French trappers long ago, and that Kootenai is the result, after
generations of Indian pronunciation. They named the '_Nez Perces_,'
too--the 'pierced noses,' you know; but that name has kept its meaning
better. You'll find the trail of the French all through the Indian tribes
up here."

"Think that was a Frenchwoman in the river back there? You said she was
white."

"Yes, I did. But it's generally the Frenchmen you find among the reds, and
not the women; though I do know some square white women across the line
who have married educated Indians."

"But they are generally a lazy, shiftless set?"

The tone was half inquiring, and Overton grimaced and smiled.

"They are not behind the rest, when it comes to a fight," he answered.
"And as to lazy--well, there are several colors of people who are that,
under some circumstances. I have an Indian friend across in the States,
who made eight thousand dollars in a cattle deal last year, and didn't
sell out, either. Now, when you and I can do as well on capital we've
earned ourselves, then maybe we'll have a right to criticise some of the
rest for indolence. But you can't do much to improve Indians, or any one
else, by penning them up in so many square miles and bribing them to be
good. The Indian cattleman I speak of kept clear of the reservation, and
after drifting around for a while, settled down to the most natural
civilized calling possible to an Indian--stock-raising. Dig in the ground?
No; they won't do much of that, just at first. But I've eaten some pretty
good garden truck they've raised."

Lyster whistled and arched his handsome brows significantly.

"So your sympathies run in that direction, do they? Is there a Kootenai
Pocahontas somewhere in the wilderness accountable for your ideas? That is
about the only ground I could excuse you on, for I think they are beastly,
except in pictures."

They had reached a gathering of men who were seated at a table in the open
air--some long boards laid on trestles.

Overton and his friend were called to seats at the head of the table,
where the "boss" of the construction gang sat. The rough pleasantries of
the men, and the way they made room for him, showed that the big bronzed
ranger was a favorite visitor along the "works."

They looked with some curiosity at his more finely garbed companion, but
he returned their regard with a good deal of careless audacity, and won
their liking by his independence. But in the midst of the social studies
he was making of them, he heard Overton say:

"And you have not heard of a white girl in this vicinity?"

"Never a girl. Are you looking for one? Old Akkomi, the Indian, has gone
into camp across the river, and he might have a red one to spare."

"Perhaps," agreed Overton. "He's an old acquaintance of mine--a year old.
But I'm not looking for red girls just now, and I'm going to tell the old
man to keep the families clear of your gang, too." Then to Lyster he
remarked:

"Whether these people know it or not, there is a white girl in the Indian
camp--a young girl, too; and before we sleep, we'll see who she is."




CHAPTER II.

IN THE LODGE OF AKKOMI.


The earliest stars had picked their way through the blue canopy, when the
men from the camp crossed over to the fishing village of the Indians; for
it was only when the moon of May, or of June, lightened the sky that the
red men moved their lodges to the north--their winter resort was the
States.

"Dan--umph! How?" grunted a tall brave lounging at the opening of the
tepee. He arose, and took his pipe from his lips, glancing with assumed
indifference at the handsome young stranger, though, in reality, Black Bow
was not above curiosity.

"How?" returned Overton, and reached out his hand. "I am glad to see that
the lodges by the river hold friends instead of strangers," he continued.
"This, too, is a friend--one from the big ocean where the sun rises. We
call him Max."

"Umph! How?" and Lyster glanced in comical dismay at his friend as his
hand was grasped by one so dirty, so redolent of cooked fish, as the one
Black Bow was gracious enough to offer him.

Thereupon they were asked to seat themselves on the blanket of that
dignitary--no small favor in the eyes of an Indian. Overton talked of the
fish, and the easy markets there would soon be for them, when the boats
and the cars came pushing swiftly through the forests; of the many wolves
Black Bow had killed in the winter past; of how well the hunting shirt
of deer-skin had worn that Black Bow's squaw had sold him when he met them
last on the trail; of any and many things but the episode of the evening
of which Lyster was waiting to hear.

As the dusk fell, Lyster fully appreciated the picturesque qualities of
the scene before him. The many dogs and their friendly attentions
disturbed him somewhat, but he sat there feeling much as if in a theater;
for those barbarians, in their groupings, reminded him of bits of stage
setting he had seen at some time or another.

One big fire was outside the lodges, and over it a big kettle hung, and
the steam drifted up and over the squaws and children gathered there. Some
of them came over and looked at him, and several grunted at Overton. Black
Bow would order them away once in a while with a lordly "Klehowyeh," much
as he did the dogs; and, like the dogs, they would promptly return, and
gaze with half-veiled eyes at the elegance of the high boots covering the
shapely limbs of Mr. Lyster.

The men were away on a hunt, Black Bow explained; only he and Akkomi, the
head chief, had not gone. Akkomi was growing very old and no longer led
the hunts; therefore a young chief must ever be near to his call; so Black
Bow was also absent from the hunt.

"We stay until two suns rise," and Overton pointed across to the camp of
the whites. "To-morrow I would ask that Black Bow and the chief Akkomi eat
at our table. This is the kinsman--_tillicums_--of the men who make the
great work where the mines are and the boats that are big and the cars
that go faster than the horses run. He wants that the two great chiefs of
the Kootenais eat of his food before he goes back again to the towns of
the white people."

Lyster barely repressed a groan as he heard the proposal made, but Overton
was blandly oblivious of the appealing expression of his friend; the thing
he was interested in was to bring Black Bow to a communicative mood, for
not a sign could he discover of a white woman in the camp, though he was
convinced there was or had been one there.

The invitation to eat succeeded. Black Bow would tell the old chief of
their visit; maybe he would talk with them now, but he was not sure. The
chief was tired, his thoughts had been troubled that day. The son of his
daughter had been near death in the river there. He was only a child, and
could not swim yet; a young squaw of the white people had kept him from
drowning, and the squaw of Akkomi had been making medicines for her ever
since.

"Young squaw! Where comes a white squaw from to the Kootenai lakes?" asked
Overton, incredulously. "Half white, half red, maybe."

"White," affirmed their host. "Where? Humph! Where come the sea-birds from
that get lost when they fly too far from shore? Kootenai not know, but
they drop down sometimes by the rivers. So this one has come. She has
talked with Akkomi; but he tell nothing; only maybe we will all dance a
dance some day, and then she will be Kootenai, too."

"_Adopt_ her," muttered Overton, and glanced at Lyster; but that
gentleman's attention was given at the moment to a couple of squaws who
walked past and looked at him out of the corners of their eyes, so he
missed that portion of Black Bow's figurative information.

"I have need to see the chief Akkomi," said Overton, after a moment's
thought. "It would be well if I could see him before sleeping. Of these,"
producing two colored handkerchiefs, "will you give one to him, that he
may know I am in earnest, the other will you not wear for Dan?"

The brave grunted a pleased assent, and carefully selecting the
handkerchief with the brightest border, thrust it within his hunting
shirt. He then proceeded to the lodge of the old chief, bearing the other
ostentatiously in his hand, as though he were carrying the fate of his
nation in the gaudy bit of silk and cotton weaving.

"What are you trading for?" asked Lyster, and looked like protesting, when
Overton answered:

"An audience with Akkomi."

"Great Caesar! is one of that sort not enough? I'll never feel that my hand
is clean again until I can give it a bath with some sort of disinfectant
stuff. Now there's another one to greet! I'll not be able to eat fish
again for a year. Why didn't luck send the old vagabond hunting with the
rest? I can endure the women, for they don't sprawl around you and shake
hands with you. Just tell me what I'm to donate for being allowed to bask
in the light of Akkomi's countenance? Haven't a thing over here but some
cigars."

Overton only laughed silently, and gave more attention to the lodge of
Akkomi than to his companion's disgust. When Black Bow emerged from the
tent, he watched him sharply as he approached, to learn from the Indian's
countenance, if possible, the result of the message.

"If he sends a royal request that we partake of supper, I warn you, I
shall be violently and immediately taken ill--too ill to eat," whispered
Lyster, meaningly.

Black Bow seated himself, filled his pipe, handed it to a squaw to light,
and then sent several puffs of smoke skyward, ere he said:

"Akkomi is old, and the time for his rest has come. He says the door of
his lodge is open--that Dan may go within and speak what there is to say.
But the stranger--he must wait till the day comes again."

"Snubbed me, by George!" laughed Lyster. "Well, am I then to wait outside
the portals, and be content with the crumbs you choose to carry out to
me?"

"Oh, amuse yourself," returned Overton, carelessly, and was on his feet at
once. "I leave you to the enjoyment of Black Bow."

A moment later he reached the lodge of the old chief and, without
ceremony, walked in to the center of it.

A slight fire was there,--just enough to kill the dampness of the river's
edge, and over it the old squaw of Akkomi bent, raking the dry sticks,
until the flames fluttered upward and outlined the form of the chief,
coiled on a pile of skins and blankets against the wall.

He nodded a welcome, said "Klehowyeh," and motioned with his pipe that his
visitor should be seated on another pile of clothing and bedding, near his
own person.

Then it was that Overton discovered a fourth person in the shadows
opposite him--the white woman he had been curious about.

And it was not a woman at all,--only a girl of perhaps sixteen years
instead--who shrank back into the gloom, and frowned on him with great,
dark, unchildlike eyes, and from under brows wide and straight as those of
a sculptor's model for a young Greek god; for, if any beauty of feature
was hers, it was boyish in its character. As for beauty of expression, she
assuredly did not cultivate that. The curved red mouth was sullen and the
eyes antagonistic.

One sharp glance showed Overton all this, and also that there was no
Indian blood back of the rather pale cheek.

"So you got out of the water alive, did you?" he asked, in a matter of
fact way, as though the dip in the river was a usual thing to see.

She raised her eyes and lowered them again with a sort of insolence, as
though to show her resentment of the fact that he addressed her at all.

"I rather guess I'm alive," she answered, curtly, and the visitor turned
to the chief.

"I saw to-day your child's child in the waters of the Kootenai. I saw the
white friend lifting him up out of the river, and fighting with death for
him. It would have been a good thing for a man to do, Akkomi. I crossed
the water to-night, to see if your boy is well once more, or if there is
any way I can do service for the young white squaw who is your friend."

The old Indian smoked in silence for a full minute. He was a sharp-eyed,
shrewd-faced old fellow. When he spoke, it was in the Chinook jargon, and
with a significant nod toward the girl, as though she was not to hear or
understand his words.

"It is true, the son of my daughter is again alive. The breath was gone
when the young squaw reached him, but she was in time. Dan know the young
squaw, maybe?"

"No, Akkomi. Who?"

The old fellow shook his head, as if not inclined to give the information
required.

"She tell white men if she want white men to know," he observed. "The
heart of Akkomi is heavy for her--heavy. A lone trail is a hard one for a
squaw in the Kootenai land--a white squaw who is young. She rests here,
and may eat of our meat all her days if she will."

Overton glanced again at the girl, who was evidently, from the words of
the chief, following some lone trail through the wilderness,--a trail
starting whence, and leading whither? All that he could read was that no
happiness kept her company.

"But the life of a red squaw in the white men's camps is a bad life,"
resumed the old man, after a season of deliberation; "and the life of the
white squaw in the red man's village is bad as well."

Overton nodded gravely, but said nothing. By the manner of Akkomi, he
perceived that some important thought was stirring in the old man's mind,
and that it would develop into speech all the sooner if not hurried.

"Of all the men of the white camps it is you Akkomi is gladdest to talk to
this day," continued the chief, after another season of silence; "for you,
Dan, talk with a tongue that is straight, and you go many times where the
great towns are built."

"The words of Akkomi are true words," assented Overton, "and my ears
listen to hear what he will say."

"Where the white men live is where this young white squaw should live,"
said Akkomi, and the listening squaw of Akkomi grunted assent. It was easy
to read that she looked with little favor on the strange white girl within
their lodge. To be sure, Akkomi was growing old; but the wife of Akkomi
had memories of his lusty youth and of various wars she had been forced to
wage on ambitious squaws who fancied it would be well to dwell in the
lodge of the head chief.

And remembering those days, though so long past, the old squaw was sorely
averse to the adoption dance for the white girl who lay on their blankets,
and thought it good, indeed, that she go to live in the villages of the
white people.

Overton nodded gravely.

"You speak wisely, Akkomi," he said.

Glancing at the girl, Dan noted that she was leaning forward and gazing at
him intently. Her face gave him the uncomfortable feeling that she perhaps
knew what they were talking of, but she dropped back into the shadows
again, and he dismissed the idea as improbable, for white girls were
seldom versed in the lore of Indian jargon.

He waited a bit for Akkomi to continue, but as that dignitary evidently
thought he had said enough, if Overton chose to interpret it correctly,
the white man asked:

"Would it please Akkomi that I, Dan, should lead the young squaw where
white families are?"

"Yes. It is that I thought of when I heard your name. I am old. I cannot
take her. She has come a long way on a trail for that which has not been
found, and her heart is so heavy she does not care where the next trail
leads her. So it seems to Akkomi. But she saved the son of my daughter,
and I would wish good to her. So, if she is willing, I would have her go
to your people."

"If she is willing!" Overton doubted it, and thought of the scowl with
which she had answered him before. After a little hesitation, he said: "It
shall be as you wish. I am very busy now, but to serve one who is your
friend I will take time for a few days. Do you know the girl?"

"I know her, and her father before her. It was long ago, but my eyes are
good. I remember. She is good--girl not afraid."

"Father! Where is her father?"

"In the grave blankets--so she tells me."

"And her name--what is she called?"

But Akkomi was not to be stripped of all his knowledge by questions. He
puffed at the pipe in silence and then, as Overton was as persistently
quiet as himself, he finally said:

"The white girl will tell to you the things she wants you to know, if she
goes with your people. If she stays here, the lodge of Akkomi has a
blanket for her."

The girl was now face downward on the couch of skins, and when Overton
wished to speak to her he crossed over and gently touched her shoulder. He
was almost afraid she was weeping, because of the position; but when she
raised her head he saw no signs of tears.

"Why do you come to me?" she demanded. "I ain't troubling the white folks
any. Huh! I didn't even stop at their camp across the river."

The grunt of disdain she launched at him made him smile. It was so much
more like that of an Indian than a white person, yet she was white,
despite all the red manners she chose to adopt.

"No, I reckon you didn't stop at the white camp, else I'd have heard of
it. But as you're alone in this country, don't you think you'd be better
off where other white women live?"

He spoke in the kindliest tone, and she only bit her lip and shrugged her
angular shoulders.

"I will see that you are left with good people," he continued; "so don't
be afraid about that. I'm Dan Overton. Akkomi will tell you I'm square. I
know where there's a good sort of white woman who would be glad to have
you around, I guess."

"Is it your wife?" she demanded, with the same sullen, suspicious wrinkle
between her brows.

His face paled ever so little and he took a step backward, as he looked at
her through narrowing eyes.

"No, miss, it is not my wife," he said, curtly, and then walked back and
sat down beside the old chief. "In fact, she isn't any relation to me, but
she's the nearest white woman I know to leave you with. If you want to go
farther, I reckon I can help you. Anyway, you come along across the line
to Sinna Ferry, and I feel sure you'll find friends there."

She looked at him unbelievingly. "She's used to being deceived," decided
Overton, as she watched him; but he stood her gaze without flinching and
smiled back at her.

"Do you live there?" she asked again, in that abrupt, uncivil way, and
turned her eyes to Akkomi, as though to read his countenance as well as
that of the white man,--a difficult thing, however, for the head of the
old man was again shrouded in his blanket, from which only the tip of his
nose and his pipe protruded.

In a far corner the squaw of Akkomi was crouched, her bead-like eyes
glittering with a watchful interest, as they turned from one to the other
of the speakers, and missed no tone or gesture of the two so strangely met
within her tepee. Overton noticed her once, and thought what a subject
for a picture Lyster would think the whole thing--at long range. He would
want to view it from the door of the tepee, and not from the interior.

But the questioning eyes of the girl were turned to him, and remembering
them, he said:

"Live there? Well, as much--a little more than I do anywhere else of late.
I am to go there in two days; and if you are ready to go, I will take you
and be glad to do it."

"You don't know anything about me," she protested.

He smiled, for her tone told him she was yielding.

"Oh, no--not much," he confessed, "but you can tell me, you know."

"I know I can, but I won't," she said, doggedly. "So I guess you'll just
move on down to the ferry without me. He knows, and he says I can live
here if I want to. I'm tired of the white people. A girl alone is as well
with the Indians. I think so, anyway, and I guess I'll try camping with
them. They don't ask a word--only what I tell myself. They don't even care
whether I have a name; they would give me one if I hadn't."

"A suitable name--and a nice Indian one--for you would be, 'The Water Rat'
or 'The Girl Who Swims.' Maybe," he added, "they will hunt you up one more
like poetry in books (the only place one finds poetry in Indians),
'Laughing Eyes,' or 'The One Who Smiles.' Oh, yes, they'll find you a name
fast enough. So will I, if you have none. But you have, haven't you?"

"Yes, I have, and it's 'Tana," said the girl, piqued into telling by the
humorous twinkle in the man's eyes.

"'Tana? Why, that itself is an Indian name, is it not? And you are not
Indian."

"It's 'Tana, for short. Montana is my name."

"It is? Well, you've got a big name, little girl, and as it is proof that
you belong to the States, don't you think you'd better let me take you
back there?"

"I ain't going down among white folks who will turn up their noses at me,
just because you found me among these redskins," she answered, scowling at
him and speaking very deliberately. "I know how proud decent women are,
and I ain't going among any other sort and that's settled."

"Why, you poor little one, what sort of folks have you been among?" he
asked, compassionately. Her stubborn antagonism filled him with more of
pity than tears could have done; it showed so much suspicion, that spoke
of horrible associations, and she was so young!

"See here! No one need know I found you among the Indians. I can make up
some story--say you're the daughter of an old partner of mine. It'll be a
lie, of course, and I don't approve of lies. But if it makes you feel
better, it goes just the same! Partner dies, you know, and I fall heir to
you. See? Then, of course, I pack you back to civilization, where you
can--well, go to school or something. How's that?"

She did not answer, only looked at him strangely, from under those
straight brows. He felt an angry impatience with her that she did not take
the proposal differently, when it was so plainly for her good he was
making schemes.

"As to your father being dead--that part of it would be true enough, I
suppose," he continued; "for Akkomi told me he was dead."

"Yes--yes, he is dead," she said coldly, and her tones were so even no one
would imagine it was her father she spoke of.

"Your mother, too?"

"My mother, too," she assented. "But I told you I wasn't going to talk any
more about myself, and I ain't. If I can't go to your Sunday-school
without a pedigree, I'll stop where I am--that's all."

She spoke with the independence of a boy, and it was, perhaps, her
independence that induced the man to be persistent.

"All right, 'Tana," he said cheerfully. "You come along on your own terms,
so long as you get out of these quarters. I'll tell the dead partner
story--only the partner must have a name, you know. Montana is a good
name, but it is only a half one, after all. You can give me another, I
reckon."

She hesitated a little and stared at the glowing embers of the lodge fire.
He wondered if she was deciding to tell him a true one, or if she was
trying to think of a fictitious one.

"Well?" he said at last.

Then she looked up, and the sullen, troubled, unchildlike eyes made him
troubled for her sake.

"Rivers is a good name--Rivers?" she asked, and he nodded his head,
grimly.

"That will do," he agreed. "But you give it just because you were baptized
in the river this evening, don't you?"

"I guess I give it because I haven't any other I intend to be called by,"
she answered.

"And you will cut loose from this outfit?" he asked. "You will come with
me, little girl, across there into God's country, where you must belong."

"You won't let them look down on me?"

"If any one looks down on you, it will be because of something you will
do in the future, 'Tana," he said, looking at her very steadily.
"Understand that, for I will settle it that no one knows how I came across
you. And you will go?"

"I--will go."

"Come, now! that's a good decision--the best you could have made, little
girl; and I'll take care of you as though you were a cargo of gold. Shake
hands on the agreement, won't you?"

She held out her hand, and the old squaw in the corner grunted at the
symbol of friendship. Akkomi watched them with his glittering eyes, but
made no sign.

It surely was a strange beginning to a strange friendship.

"You poor little thing!" said Overton, compassionately, as she half shrank
from the clasp of his fingers. The tender tone broke through whatever wall
of indifference she had built about her, for she flung herself face
downward on the couch, and sobbed passionately, refusing to speak again,
though Overton tried in vain to calm her.




CHAPTER III.

THE IMAGE-MAKER.


The world was a night older ere Dan Overton informed Lyster that they
would have an addition of one to their party when they continued their
journey into the States.

On leaving the village of Akkomi but little conversation was to be had
from Dan. In vain did his friend endeavor to learn something of the white
squaw who swam so well. He simply kept silence, and looked with provoking
disregard on all attempts to surprise him into disclosures.

But when the camp breakfast was over, and he had evidently thought out his
plan of action, he told Lyster over the sociable influence of a pipe, that
he was going over to the camp of Akkomi again.

"The fact, is, Max, that the girl we saw yesterday is to go across home
with us. She's a ward of mine."

"What!" demanded Max, sitting bolt upright in his amazement, "a ward of
yours? You say that as though you had several scattered among the tribes
about here. So it is a Kootenai Pocahontas! What good advice was it you
gave me yesterday about keeping clear of Selkirk Range females? And now
you are deliberately gathering one to yourself, and I will be the
unnecessary third on our journey home. Dan! Dan! I wouldn't have thought
it of you!"

Overton listened in silence until the first outburst was over.

"Through?" he asked, carelessly; "well, then, it isn't a Pocahontas; it
isn't an Indian at all. It is only a little white girl whose father
was--was an old partner. Well, he's gone 'over the range'--dead, you
know--and the girl is left to hustle for herself. Naturally, she heard I
was in this region, and as none of her daddy's old friends were around but
me, she just made her camp over there with the Kootenais, and waited till
I reached the river again. She'll go with me down to Sinna; and if she
hasn't any other home in prospect, I'll just locate her there with Mrs.
Huzzard, the milliner-cook, for the present. Now, that's the story."

"And a very pretty little one it is, too," agreed Mr. Max. "For a
backwoodsman, who is not supposed to have experience, it is very well put
together. Oh, don't frown like that! I'll believe she's your
granddaughter, if you say so," and he laughed in wicked enjoyment at
Overton's flushed face. "It's all right, Dan. I congratulate you. But I
wouldn't have thought it."

"I suppose, now," remarked Dan, witheringly, "that by all these remarks
and giggles you are trying to be funny. Is that it? Well, as the fun of it
is not visible to me yet, I'll just keep my laughter till it is. In the
meantime, I'm going over to call on my ward, Miss Rivers, and you can
hustle for funny things around camp until I come back."

"Oh, say, Dan, don't be vindictive. Take me along, won't you? I'll promise
to be good--'pon honor I will. I'll do penance for any depraved suspicions
I may have indulged in. I'll--I'll even shake hands again with Black
Bow, there! Beyond that, I can think of no more earnest testimony of
repentance."

"I shall go by myself," decided Overton. "So make a note of it, if you see
the young lady before to-morrow, it will be because she specially requests
it. Understand? I'm not going to have her bothered by people who are only
curious; not but that she can take her own part, as you'll maybe learn
later. But she was too upset to talk much last night. So I'll go over and
finish this morning, and in the meantime, this side of the river is plenty
good enough for you."

"Is it?" murmured Mr. Lyster, as he eyed the stalwart form of the
retreating guardian, who was so bent on guarding. "Well, it would do my
heart good, anyway, to fasten another canoe right alongside of yours where
you land over there, and I shouldn't be surprised if I did it."

Thus it happened that while Overton was skimming upward across the river,
his friend, on mischief bent, was getting a canoe ready to launch. A few
minutes after Overton had disappeared toward the Indian village, the
second canoe danced lightly over the Kootenai, and the occupant laughed to
himself, as he anticipated the guardian's surprise.

"Not that I care in the least about seeing the dismal damsel he has to
look after," mused Lyster. "In fact, I'm afraid she'll be a nuisance, and
spoil our jolly good time all the way home. But he is so refreshingly
earnest about everything. And as he doesn't care a snap for girls in
general, it is all the more amusing that it is he who should have a charge
of that sort left on his hands. I'd like to know what she looks like.
Common, I dare say, for the ultra refined do not penetrate these wilds
to help blaze trails; and she swam like a boy."

When he reached the far shore, no one was in sight. With satisfied smiles,
he fastened his canoe to that of Overton, and then cast about for some
place to lie in wait for that selfish personage and surprise him on his
return.

He had no notion of going up to the village, for he wanted only to keep
close enough to trace Overton. Hearing children's voices farther along the
shore, he sauntered that way, thinking to see Indian games, perhaps. When
he came nearer, he saw they were running races.

The contestants were running turn about, two at a time. Each victory was
greeted with shrill cries of triumph. He also noticed that each victor
returned to a figure seated close under some drooping bushes, and each
time a hand was reached out and some little prize was given to the winner.
Then, with shouts of rejoicing, a new race was planned.

As the stranger stood back of the thick bushes, watching the stretch of
level beach and the half-naked, childish figures, he grew curious to see
who that one person just out of sight was.

One thing at last he did discover--that the hand awarding the prizes was
tanned like the hand of a boy, but that it certainly had white blood
instead of red in its veins. What if it should be the ward?

Elated, and full of mischief, he crept closer. If only he could be able to
give Overton a description of her when Overton came back to the canoe!

At first all he could see were the hands--hands playing with a bit of wet
clay--or so it seemed to him.

Then his curiosity was more fully aroused when out of the mass a
recognizable form was apparent--a crudely modeled head and shoulders of a
decided Indian character.

Lyster was so close now that he could notice how small the hands were, and
to see that the head bent above them was covered with short, brown,
loosely curled hair, and that there was just a tinge of reddish gold on
it, where the sunlight fell.

A race was just ended, and one of the little young savages trotted up
where the image-maker was. The small hand was again reached out, and he
could see that the prize the little Indian had raced for was a blue bead
of glass. He could see, also, that the owner of the hand had the face of a
girl--a girl with dark eyes, and long lashes that touched the rather pale
cheeks. Her mouth was deliciously saucy, with its bow-like curve, and its
clear redness. She said something he did not understand, and the children
scampered away to resume the endless races, while she continued the
manipulation of the clay, frowning often when it would not take the
desired form.

Then one of the sharp-eyed little redskins left his companions and slipped
back to her, and said something in a tone so low it was almost a whisper.

She turned at once and looked directly into the thicket, back of which
Lyster stood.

"What are you watching for?" she demanded. "I don't like people who are
afraid to show themselves."

"Well, I'll try to change that as quickly as I can," Lyster retorted, and
circling the clump of bushes, he stood before her with his hat in his
hand, looking smilingly audacious as she frowned on him.

But the frown faded as she looked; perhaps because 'Tana had never seen
any one quite so handsome in all her life, or so fittingly and
picturesquely dressed, for Mr. Maxwell Lyster was artist enough to make
the most of his many good points and to exhibit them all with charming
unconsciousness.

"I hope you will like me better here than across there," he said, with a
smile that was contagious. "You see, I was too shy to come forward at
first, and then I was afraid to interrupt your modeling. It is very
good."

"You don't look shy," she said, combatively, and drew the clay image back,
where he could not look at it. She was not at all sure that he was not
laughing at her, and she covered her worn shoes with the skirt of her
dress, feeling suddenly very poor and shabby in the light of his eyes. She
had not felt at all like that when Overton looked at her in Akkomi's
lodge.

"You would not be so unfriendly if you knew who I am," he ventured meekly.
"Of course, I--Max Lyster--don't amount to much, but I happen to be Dan
Overton's friend, and with your permission, I hope to continue with him to
Sinna Ferry, and with you as well; for I am sure you must be Miss
Rivers."

"If you're sure, that settles it, I suppose," she returned. "So he--he
told you about me?"

"Oh, yes; we are chums, as you will learn. Then I was so fortunate as to
see your brave swim after that child yesterday. You don't look any the
worse for it."

"No, I'm not."

"I suppose, now, you thought that little dip a welcome break in the
monotony of camp-life, while you were waiting for Dan."

She looked at him in a quick, questioning way he thought odd.

"Oh--yes. While I was waiting for--Dan," she said in a queer tone, and
bent her head over the clay image.

He thought her very interesting with her boyish air, her brusqueness, and
independence. Yet, despite her savage surroundings, a certain amount of
education was visible in her speech and manner, and her face had no stamp
of ignorance on it.

The young Kootenais silently withdrew from their races, and gathered
watchfully close to the girl. Their nearness was a discomfiting thing to
Lyster, for it was not easy to carry on a conversation under their
watchful eyes.

"You gave them prizes, did you not?" he asked. "How much wealth must one
offer to get them to run?"

"Run where?" she returned carelessly, though quietly amused at the
scrutiny of the little redskins. They were especially charmed by the
glitter of gold mountings on Mr. Lyster's watch-guard.

"Oh, run races--run anywhere," he said.

From a pocket of her blouse she drew forth a few blue beads that yet
remained.

"This is all I had to give them, and they run just as fast for one of
these as they would for a pony."

"Good enough! I'll have some races for my own edification and comfort,"
and he drew out some coins. "Will you run for this--run far over there?"

The children looked at the girl. She nodded her head, said a word or two
unintelligible to him, but perfectly clear to them; for, with sharp looks
at the coins and pleased yells, they leaped away to their racing.

"Now, this is more comfortable," he said. "May I sit down here? Thanks!
Now would you mind telling me whose likeness it is you are making in the
clay?"

"I guess you know it's nobody's likeness," she answered, and again thrust
it back out of sight, her face flushing that he should thus make a jest of
her poor efforts. "You've seen real statues, I suppose, and know how they
ought to be, but you don't need to look for them in the Purcell Range."

"But, indeed, I am in earnest about your modeling. Won't you believe me?"
and the blue eyes looking into her own were so appealing, that she turned
away her head half shyly, and a pink flush crept up from her throat. Miss
Rivers was evidently not used to eyes with caressive tendencies and they
disturbed her, for all her strangely unchildlike character.

"Of course, your work is only in the rough," he continued; "but it is not
at all bad, and has real Indian features. And if you have had no
teaching--"

"Huh!" and she looked at him with a mirthless smile. "Where'd any one get
teaching of that sort along the Columbia River? Of course, there are some
gentlemen--officers and such--about the reservations, but not one but
would only laugh at such a big girl making doll babies out of mud. No, I
had no teaching to do anything but read, and I did read some in a book
about a sculptor, and how he made animals and people's faces out of clay.
Then I tried."

As she grew communicative, she seemed so much more what she really was in
years--a child; and he noticed, with satisfaction, that she looked at him
more frankly, while the suspicion faded almost entirely from her face.

"And are you going to develop into a sculptor under Overton's
guardianship?" he asked. "You see, he has told me of his good luck."

She made a queer little sound between a laugh and a grunt.

"I'll bet the rest of the blue beads he didn't call it good luck," she
returned, looking at him keenly. "Now, honest Injun--did he?"

"Honest Injun! he didn't speak of it as either good or bad luck; simply as
a matter of course, that at your father's death you should look him up,
and let him know you were alone. Oh, he is a good fellow, Dan is, and
glad, I am sure, to be of use to you."

Her lips opened in a little sigh of content, and a swift, radiant smile
was given him.

"I'm right glad you say that about him," she answered, "and I guess you
know him well, too. Akkomi likes him, and Akkomi's sharp."

The winner of the race here trotted back for the coin, and Lyster showed
another one, as an incentive for all to scatter along the beach again. It
looked as though the two white people must pay for the grant of privacy on
the river-bank.

Having grown more at ease with him, 'Tana resumed again the patting and
pressing of the clay, using only a little pointed stick, while Lyster
watched, with curiosity, the ingenious way in which she seemed to feel her
way to form.

"Have you ever tried to draw?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Only to copy pictures, like I've seen in some papers, but they never
looked right. But I want to do everything like that--to make pictures, and
statues, and music, and--oh, all the lovely things there are somewhere,
that I've never seen--never will see them, I suppose. Sometimes, when I
get to thinking that I never will see them, I just get as ugly as a
drunken man, and I don't care if I never do see anything but Indians
again. I get so awful reckless. Say!" she said, again with that hard,
short laugh, "girls back your way don't get wild like that, do they? They
don't talk my way either, I guess."

"Maybe not, and few of them would be able, either, to do what we saw you
do in this river yesterday," he said kindly. "Dan is a judge of such
things, you know, and he thought you very nervy."

"Nervy? Oh, yes; I guess he'd be nervy himself if he was needed. Say! can
you tell me about the camp, or settlement, at this Sinna Ferry? I never
was there. He says white women are there. Do you know them?"

Lyster explained his own ignorance of the place, knowing it as he did only
through Dan's descriptions.

Then she, from her bit of Indian knowledge, told him Sinna was the old
north Indian name for Beaver. Then he got her to tell him other things of
the Indian country, things of ghost-haunted places and strange witcheries,
with which they confused the game and the fish. He fell to wondering what
manner of man Rivers, the partner of Dan, had been, that his daughter had
gained such strange knowledge of the wild things. But any attempt to learn
or question her history beyond yesterday was always checked in some way or
other.




CHAPTER IV.

DAN'S WARD.


Mr. Max Lyster was not given to the study of deep problems; his habits of
thought did not run in that groove. But he did watch the young stranger
with unusual interest. Her face puzzled him as much as her presence
there.

"I feel as though I had seen you before," he said at last, and her face
grew a shade paler. She did not look up, and when she spoke, it was very
curtly:

"Where?"

"Oh, I don't know--in fact, I believe it is a resemblance to some one I
know that makes me feel that way."

"I look like some one you know?"

"Well, yes, you do--a little--a lady who is a little older than you--a
little more of a brunette than you; yet there is a likeness."

"Where does she live--and what is her name?" she asked, with scant
ceremony.

"I don't suppose her name would tell you much," he answered. "But it is
Miss Margaret Haydon, of Philadelphia."

"Miss Margaret Haydon," she said slowly, almost contemptuously. "So you
know her?"

"You speak as though you did," he answered; "and as if you did not like
the name, either."

"But you think it's pretty," she said, looking at him sharply. "No, I
don't know such swells--don't want to."

"How do you know she is a swell?"

"Oh, there's a man owns big works across the country, and that's his name.
I suppose they are all of a lot," she said, indifferently. "Say! are there
any girls at Sinna Ferry, any family folks? Dan didn't tell me--only said
there was a white woman there, and I could live with her. He hasn't a
wife, has he?"

"Dan?" and he laughed at the idea, "well, no. He is very kind to women,
but I can't imagine the sort of woman he would marry. He is a queer fish,
you know."

"I guess you'll think we're all that up in this wild country," she
observed. "Does he know much about books and such things?"

"Such things?"

"Oh, you know! things of the life in the cities, where there's music and
theaters. I love the theaters and pictures! and--and--well, everything
like that."

Lyster watched her brightening face, and appreciated all the longing in it
for the things he liked well himself. And she loved the theaters! All his
own boyish enthusiasm of years ago crowded into his memory, as he looked
at her.

"You have seen plays, then?" he asked, and wondered where she had seen
them along that British Columbia line.

"Seen plays! Yes, in 'Frisco, and Portland, and Victoria--big, real
theaters, you know; and then others in the big mining camps. Oh, I just
dream over plays, when I do see them, specially when the actresses are
pretty. But I mostly like the villains better than the heroes. Don't know
why, but I do."

"What! you like to see their wickedness prosper?"

"No--I think not," she said, doubtfully. "But I tell you, the heroes are
generally just too good to be live men, that's all. And the villain mostly
talks more natural, gets mad, you know, and breaks things, and rides over
the lay-out as though he had some nerve in him. Of course, they always
make him throw up his hands in the end, and every man in the audience
applauds--even the ones who would act just as he does if such a pretty
hero was in their way."

"Well, you certainly have peculiar ideas of theatrical personages--for a
young lady," decided Lyster, laughing. "And why you have a grievance
against the orthodox handsome hero, I can't see."

"He's too good," she insisted, with the little frown appearing between her
brows, "and no one is ever started in the play with a fair chance against
him. He is always called Willie, where the villain would be called
Bill--now, isn't he? Then the girl in the story always falls in love with
him at first sight, and that's enough to rile any villain, especially when
he wants her himself."

"Oh!" and the face of the young man was a study, as he inspected this
wonderful ward of Dan. Whatever he had expected from the young swimmer of
the Kootenai, from the welcomed guest of Akkomi, he had not expected this
sort of thing.

She was twisting her pretty mouth, with a schoolgirl's earnestness, over a
problem, and accenting thus her patient forming of the clay face. She
built no barriers up between herself and this handsome stranger, as she
had in the beginning with Overton. What she had to say was uttered with
all freedom--her likes, her thoughts, her ambitions. At first the fineness
and perfection of his apparel had been as grandeur and insolence when
contrasted with her own weather-stained, coarse skirt of wool, and her
boy's blouse belted with a strap of leather. Even the blue beads--her one
feminine bit of adornment--had been stripped from her throat, that she
might give some pleasure to the little bronze-tinted runners on the shore.
But the gently modulated, sympathetic tones of Lyster and the kindly
fellowship in his eyes, when he looked at her, almost made her forget her
own shabbiness (all but those hideous coarse shoes!) for he talked to her
with the grace of the people in the plays she loved so, and had not once
spoken as though to a stray found in the shelter of an Indian camp.

But he did look curious when she expressed those independent ideas on
questions over which most girls would blush or appear at least a little
conscious.

"So, you would put a veto on love at first sight, would you?" he asked,
laughingly. "And the beauty of the hero would not move you at all? What a
very odd young lady you would have me think you! I believe love at first
sight is generally considered, by your age and sex, the pinnacle of all
things hoped for."

A little color did creep into her face at the unnecessary personal
construction put on her words. She frowned to hide her embarrassment and
thrust out her lips in a manner that showed she had little vanity as to
her features and their attractiveness.

"But I don't happen to be a young lady," she retorted; "and we think as we
please up here in the bush. Maybe your proper young ladies would be very
odd, too, if they were brought up out here like boys."

She arose to her feet, and he saw more clearly then how slight she was;
her form and face were much more childish in character than her speech,
and the face was looking at him with resentful eyes.

"I'm going back to camp."

"Now, I've offended you, haven't I?" he asked, in surprise. "Really, I did
not mean to. Won't you forgive me?"

She dug her heel in the sand and did not answer; but the fact that she
remained at all assured him she would relent. He was amused at her quick
show of temper. What a prospect for Dan!

"I scarcely know what I said to vex you," he began; but she flashed a
sullen look at him.

"You think I'm odd--and--and a nobody; just because I ain't like fine
young ladies you know somewheres--like Miss Margaret Haydon," and she dug
the sand away with vicious little kicks. "Nice ladies with kid slippers
on," she added, derisively, "the sort that always falls in love with the
pretty man, the hero. Huh! I've seen some men who were heroes--real
ones--and I never saw a pretty one yet."

As she said it, she looked very straight into the very handsome face of
Mr. Lyster.

"A young Tartar!" he decided, mentally, while he actually colored at the
directness of her gaze and her sweepingly contemptuous opinion of "pretty
men."

"I see I'd better vacate your premises since you appear unwilling to
forgive me even my unintentional faults," he decided, meekly. "I'm very
sorry, I'm sure, and hope you will bear no malice. Of course I--nobody
would want you to be different from what you are; so you must not think I
meant that. I had hoped you would let me buy that clay bust as a memento
of this morning, but I'm afraid to ask favors now. I can only hope that
you will speak to me again to-morrow. Until then, good-by."

She raised her eyes sullenly at first, but they dropped, ashamed, before
the kindness of his own. She felt coarse and clumsy, and wished she had
not been so quick to quarrel. And he was turning away! Maybe he would
never speak nicely to her again, and she loved to hear him speak.

Then her hand was thrust out to him, and in it was the little clay model.

"You can have it. I'll give it to you," she said, quite humbly. "It ain't
very pretty, but if you like it--"

Thus ended the first of many differences between Dan's ward and Dan's
friend.

When Daniel Overton himself came stalking down among the Indian children,
looking right and left from under his great slouch hat, he halted
suddenly, and with his lips closed somewhat grimly, stood there watching
the rather pretty picture before him.

But the prettiness of it did not seem to appeal to him strongly. He looked
on the girl's half smiling, drooped face, on Lyster, who held the model
and his hat in one hand and, with his handsome blonde head bared, held out
his other hand to her, saying something in those low, deferential tones
Dan knew so well.

Her hand was given after a little hesitation. When they beheld Dan so near
them, the hands were unclasped and each looked confused.

Mr. Lyster was the first to recover, and adjusting his head covering once
more, he held up the clay model to view.

"Thought you'd be around before long," he remarked, with a provoking gleam
in his eyes. "I really had no hope of meeting Miss Rivers before you this
morning; but fortune favors the brave, you know, and fortune sent me
right along these sands for my morning walk--a most indulgent fortune,
for, look at this! Did you know your ward is an embryo sculptress?"

The older man looked indifferently enough at the exalted bit of clay.

"I leave discoveries of that sort to you. They seem to run in your line
more than mine," he answered, briefly. Then he turned to the girl. "Akkomi
told me you were here with the children, 'Tana. If you had other company,
Akkomi would have made him welcome."

He did not speak unkindly, yet she felt that in some way he was not
pleased; and perhaps--perhaps he would change his mind and leave her where
he found her! And if so, she might never see--either of their faces again!
As the thought came to her, she looked up at Dan in a startled way, and
half put out her hand.

"I--I did not know. I don't like the lodges. It is better here by the
river. It is _your_ friend that came, and I--"

"Certainly. You need not explain. And as you seem to know each other, I
need not do any introducing," he answered, as she seemed to grow confused.
"But I have a little time to talk to you this morning and so came early."

"Which means that I can set sail for the far shore," added Lyster,
amiably. "All right; I'm gone. Good-by till to-morrow, Miss Rivers. I'm
grateful for the clay Indian, and more grateful that you have agreed to be
friends with me again. Will you believe, Dan, that in our short
acquaintance of half an hour, we have had time for one quarrel and 'make
up'? It is true. And now that she is disposed to accept me as a traveling
companion, don't you spoil it by giving me a bad name when my back is
turned. I'll wait at the canoes."

With a wave of his hat, he passed out of sight around the clump of bushes,
and down along the shore, singing cheerily, and the words floated back to
them:

                        "Come, love! come, love!
                        My boat lies low;
                        She lies high and dry
                        On the Ohio."

Overton stood looking at the girl for a little time after Lyster
disappeared. His eyes were very steady and searching, as though he began
to realize the care a ward might be, especially when the antecedents and
past life of the ward were so much of stubborn mystery to him.

"I wonder," he said, at last, "if there is any chance of your being my
friend, too, in so short a time as a half-hour? Oh, well, never mind," he
added, as he saw the red mouth tremble, and tears show in her eyes as she
looked at him. "Only don't commence by disliking, that's all; for
unfriendliness is a bad thing in a household, let alone in a canoe, and I
can be of more downright use to you, if you give me all the confidence you
can."

"I know what you mean--that I must tell you about--about how I came here,
and all; but I won't!" she burst out. "I'll die here before I do! I hated
the people they said were my people. I was glad when they were
dead--glad--glad! Oh, you'll say it's wicked to think that way about
relatives. Maybe it is, but it's natural if they've always been wicked to
you. I'll go to the bad place, I reckon, for feeling this way, and I'll
just have to go, for I can't feel any other way."

"'Tana--_'Tana!_" and his hand fell on her shoulder, as though to shake
her away from so wild a mood. "You are only a girl yet. When you are
older, you will be ashamed to say you ever hated your parents--whoever
they were--your mother!"

"I ain't saying anything about her," she answered bitterly. "She died
before I can mind. I've been told she was a lady. But I won't ever use the
name again she used. I--I want to start square with the world, if I leave
these Indians, and I can't do it unless I change my name and try to forget
the old one. It has a curse on it--it has."

She was trembling with nervousness, and her eyes, though tearless, were
stormy and rebellious.

"You'll think I'm bad, because I talk this way," she continued, "but I
ain't--I ain't. I've fought when I had to, and--and I'd swear--sometimes;
but that's all the bad I ever did do. I won't any more if you take me with
you. I--I can cook and keep house for you, if you hain't got folks of your
own, and--I do want to go with you."

                      "Come, love! come!
                      Won't you go along with me?
                      And I'll take you back
                      To old Tennessee!"

The words of the handsome singer came clearly back to them. Overton, about
to speak, heard the words of the song, and a little smile, half-bitter,
half-sad, touched his lips as he looked at her.

"I see," he said, quietly, "you care more about going to-day, than you did
when I talked to you last night. Well, that's all right. And I reckon you
can make coffee for me as long as you like. That mayn't be long, though,
for some of the young fellows will be wanting you to keep house for them
before many years, and you'll naturally do it. How old are you?"

"I'm--past sixteen," she said, in a deprecating way, as though ashamed of
her years and her helplessness. "I'm old enough to work, and I will work
if I get where it's any use trying. But I won't keep house for any one but
you."

"Won't you?" he asked, doubtfully. "Well, I've an idea you may. But we'll
talk about that when the time comes. This morning I wanted to talk of
something else before we start--you and Max and I--down into Idaho. I'm
not asking the name of the man you hate so; but if I am to acknowledge him
as an old acquaintance of mine, you had better tell me what business he
was in. You see, it might save complications if any one should run across
us some day and know."

"No one will know me," she said, decidedly. "If I didn't know that, I'd
stay right here, I think. And as to him, my fond parent," and she made a
grimace--"I guess you can call him a prospector and speculator--either of
those would be correct. I think they called him Jim, when he was
christened."

"Akkomi said last night you had been on the trail hunting for some one.
Was it a friend, or--or any one I could help you look for?"

"No, it wasn't a friend, and I'm done with the search and glad of it. Did
you," she added, looking at him darkly, "ever put in time hunting for any
one you didn't want to find?"

Without knowing it, Miss Rivers must have touched on a subject rather
sensitive to her guardian, for his face flushed, and he gazed at her
with a curious expression in his eyes.

"Maybe I have, little girl," he said at last. "I reckon I know how to let
your troubles alone, anyway, if I can't help them. But I must tell you,
Max--Max Lyster, you know--will be the only one very curious about your
presence here--as to the route you came, etc. You had better be prepared
for that."

"It won't be very hard," she answered, "for I came over from Sproats'
Landing, up to Karlo, and back down here."

"Over from Sproats--you?" he asked, looking at her nervously. "I heard
nothing of a white girl making that trip. When, and how did you do it?"

"Two weeks ago, and on foot," was the laconic reply. "As I had only a
paper of salt and some matches, I couldn't afford to travel in high style,
so I footed it. I had a ring and a blanket, and I traded them up at Karlo
for an old tub of a dugout, and got here in that."

"You had some one with you?"

"I was alone."

Overton looked at her with more of amazement than she had yet inspired in
him. He thought of that indescribably wild portage trail from the Columbia
to the Kootenai. When men crossed it, they preferred to go in company, and
this slip of a girl had dared its loneliness, its dangers alone. He
thought of the stories of death, by which the trail was haunted; of
prospectors who had verged from that dim path and had been lost in the
wilderness, where their bones were found by Indians or white hunters long
after; of strange stories of wild beasts; of all the weird sounds of the
jungles; of places where a misstep would send one lifeless to the jagged
feet of huge precipices. And through that trail of terror she had
walked--alone!

"I have nothing more to ask," he said briefly. "But it is not necessary to
tell any of the white people you meet that you made the trip alone."

"I know," she said, humbly, "they'd think it either wasn't true--or--or
else that it oughtn't to be true. I know how they'd look at me and whisper
things. But if--if you believe me--"

She paused uncertainly, and looked up at him. All the rebellion and
passion had faded out of her eyes now: they were only appealing. What a
wild, changeable creature she was with those quick contrasts of temper!
wild as the name she bore--Montana--the mountains. Something like that
thought came into his mind as he looked at her.

He had gathered other wild things from his trips into the wilderness;
young bears with which to enliven camp life; young fawns that he had loved
and cared for, because of the beauty of eyes and form; even a pair of
kittens had been carried by him across into the States, and developed into
healthy, marauding panthers. One of these had set its teeth through the
flesh of his hand one day ere he could conquer and kill it, and his fawns,
cubs and smaller pets had drifted from him back to their forests, or else
into the charge of some other prospector who had won their affections.

He remembered them, and the remembrance lent a curious character to the
smile in his eyes, as he held out his hand to her.

"I do believe you, for it is only cowards who tell lies; and I don't
believe you'd make a good coward--would you?"

She did not answer, but her face flushed with pleasure, and she looked up
at him gratefully. He seemed to like that better than words.

"Akkomi called you 'Girl-not-Afraid,'" he continued. "And if I were a
redskin, too, I would look up an eagle feather for you to wear in your
hair. I reckon you've heard that only the braves dare wear eagle
feathers."

"I know, but I--"

"But you have earned them by your own confession," he said, kindly, "and
some day I may run across them for you. In the meantime, I have only
this."

He held out a beaded belt of Indian manufacture, a pretty thing, and she
opened her eyes in glad surprise, as he offered it to her.

"For me? Oh, Dan!--Mr. Overton--I--"

She paused, confused at having called him as the Indians called him; but
he smiled understandingly.

"We'll settle that name business right here," he suggested. "You call me
Dan, if it comes easier to you. Just as I call you 'Tana. I don't know
'Mr. Overton' very well myself in this country, and you needn't trouble
yourself to remember him. Dan is shorter. If I had a sister, she'd call me
Dan, I suppose; so I give you license to do so. As to the belt, I got it,
with some other plunder, from some Columbia River reds, and you use it.
There is some other stuff in Akkomi's tepee you'd better put on, too; it's
new stuff--a whole dress--and I think the moccasins will about fit you. I
brought over two pairs, to make sure. Now, don't get any independent
notions in your head," he advised, as she looked at him as though about to
protest. "If you go to the States as my ward, you must let me take the
management of the outfit. I got the dress for an army friend of mine, who
wanted it for his daughter; but I guess it will about fit you, and she
will have to wait until next trip. Now, as I've settled our business, I'll
be getting back across the river, so until to-morrow, _klahowya_."

She stood, awkward and embarrassed, before him. No words would come to her
lips to thank him. She had felt desolate and friendless for so long, and
now when his kindness was so great, she felt as if she should cry if she
spoke at all. Just as she had cried the night before at his compassionate
tones and touch.

Suddenly she bent forward for the belt, and with some muttered words he
could not distinguish, she grasped his big hand in her little brown
fingers, and touching it with her lips, twice--thrice--turned and ran away
as swiftly as the little Indians who had run on the shore.

The warm color flushed all over Dan's face, as he looked after her. Of
course, she was only a little girl, but he was devoutly glad Max was not
in sight. Max would not have understood aright. Then his eyes traveled
back to his hand, where her mouth had touched it. Her kiss had fallen
where the scar of the panther's teeth was.

And this, also, was a wild thing he was taking from the forests!




CHAPTER V.

AT SINNA FERRY.


"It has been young wolves, an' bears, an' other vicious pets--every formed
thing, but snakes or redskins, and at last it's that!"

"Tush, tush, captain! Now, it's not so bad. Why, I declare, now, I was
kind of pleased when I got sight of her. She's white, anyway, and she's
right smart."

"Smart!" The captain sniffed, dubiously. "We'll get a chance to see about
that later on, Mrs. Huzzard. But it's like your--hem! tender heart to have
a good word for all comers, and this is only another proof of it."

"Pshaw! Now, you're making game, I guess. That's what you're up to,
captain," and Mrs. Huzzard attempted a chaste blush and smile, and
succeeded in a smirk. "I'm sure, now, that to hem a few neckties an' sich
like for you is no good reason for thinking I'm doing the same for every
one that comes around. No, indeed; my heart ain't so tender as all that."

The captain, from under his sandy brows, looked with a certain air of
satisfaction at the well rounded personality of Mrs. Huzzard. His vanity
was gently pleased--she was a fine woman!

"Well, I mightn't like it so well myself if I thought you'd do as much for
any man," he acknowledged. "There's too many men at the Ferry who ain't
fit even to eat one of the pies you make."

Mrs. Huzzard was fluting the edge of a pie at that moment, and looked
across the table at the captain, with arch meaning.

"Maybe so; but there's a right smart lot of fine-looking fellows among
them, too; there's no getting around that."

The unintelligible mutter of disdain that greeted her words seemed to
bring a certain comfort to her widowed heart, for she smiled brightly and
flipped the completed pie aside, with an airy grace.

"Now--now, Captain Leek, you can't be expecting common grubbers of men to
have all the advantages of manners that you've got. No, sir; you can't.
They hain't had the bringing up. They hain't had the schooling, and they
hain't had the soldier drills to teach them to carry themselves like
gentlemen. Now, you've had all that, and it's a sight of profit to you.
But don't be too hard on the folks that ain't jest so finished like as
you. There's that new Rivers girl, now--she ain't a bad sort, though it is
queer to see your boy Dan toting such a stranger into camp, for he never
did seem to take to girls much--did he?"

"It's not so easy to tell what he's taken to in his time," returned the
captain, darkly. "You know he isn't my own boy, as I told you before. He
was eight years old when I married his mother, and after her death he took
the bit in his own teeth, and left home. No great grief to me, for he
wasn't a tender boy to manage!" And Captain Leek heaved a sigh for the
martyrdom he had lived through.

"Oh, well, but see what a fine man he's turned out, and I'm sure no own
son could be better to you," for Mrs. Huzzard was one of the large,
comfortable bodies, who never see any but the brightest side of affairs,
and a good deal of a peacemaker in the little circle where she had taken
up her abode. "Indeed, now, captain, you'll not meet many such fine
fellows in a day's tramp."

"If she'd even been a real Indian," he continued, discontentedly, "it
would have been easier to manage her--to--to put her in some position
where she could earn her own living; for by Dan's words (few enough, too!)
I gather that she has no money back of her. She'll be a dead weight on his
hands, that's what she'll be, and an expensive savage he'll find her, I'll
prophesy."

"Like enough. Young ones of any sort do take a heap of looking after. But
she's smart, as I said before, and I do think it's a sight better to make
room for a likely young girl than to be scared most to death with young
wolves and bears tied around for pets. I was all of a shiver at night on
account of them. I'll take the girl every time. She won't scratch an' claw
at folks, anyway."

"Maybe not," added the captain, who was too contented with his discontent
to let go of it at once. "But no telling what a young animal like that may
develop into. She has no idea whatever of duty, Mrs. Huzzard, or of--of
veneration. She contradicted me squarely this morning when I made some
comment about those beastly redskins; actually set up her ignorance
against my years of service under the American flag, Mrs. Huzzard. Yes,
madame! she did that," and Captain Leek arose in his wrath and tramped
twice across the room, halting again near her table and staring at her as
though defying her to justify that.

When he arose, one could see by the slight unsteadiness in his gait that
the cane in his hand was for practical use. His limp was not a
deformity--in fact, it made him rather more interesting because of it;
people would notice or remember him when nothing else in his personality
would cause them to do so.

For Captain Alphonso Leek was not a striking-looking personage. His blue
eyes had a washed-out, querulous expression. His sandy whiskers had the
appearance of having been blown back from his chin, and lodged just in
front of his ears. An endeavor had been made to train the outlying
portions of his mustache in line with the lengthy, undulating "mutton
chops;" but they had, for well-grounded reasons, failed to connect, and
the effect was somewhat spoiled by those straggling skirmishers, bristling
with importance but waiting in vain for recruits. The top of his head had
got above timber line and glistened in the sun of early summer that
streamed through the clear windows of Mrs. Huzzard's back room.

But as that head was generally covered by a hat that sported a cord and
tassel, and as his bulging breastbone was covered by a dark-blue coat and
vest, on which the brass buttons shone in real military fashion--well, all
those things had their weight in a community where few men wore a coat at
all in warm weather.

Mrs. Huzzard, in the depths of her being, thought it would be a fine thing
to go back to Pennsylvania as "Mrs. Captain," even if the captain wasn't
as forehanded as she'd seen men.

Even the elegant way in which he could do nothing and yet diffuse an air
of importance, was impressive to her admiring soul. The clerical whiskers
and the military dress completed the conquest.

But Mrs. Huzzard, having a bit of native wisdom still left, knew he was
a man who would need managing, and that the best way was not to let his
opinion rule her in all things; therefore, she only laughed cheerily at
his indignation.

"Well, captain, I can't say but she did flare up about the Indians, when
you said they were all thieves and paupers, stealing from the Government,
and all that. But then, by what she says, she has knowed some decent ones
in her time--friends of hers; an' you know any one must say a good word
for a friend. You'd do that yourself."

"Maybe; I don't say I wouldn't," he agreed. "But I do say, the friends
would not be redskins. No, madame! They're no fit friends for a gentleman
to cultivate; and so I have told Dan. And if this girl owns such friends,
it shows plainly enough that the class she belongs to is not a high one.
Dan's mother was a lady, Mrs. Huzzard! She was my wife, madame! And it is
a distress for me to see any one received into our family who does not
come up to that same level. That is just the state of the case, and I
maintain my position in the matter; let Dan take on all the temper he
likes about it."

The lady of the pies did not respond to his remarks at once. She had an
idea that she herself might fall under the ban of Captain Leek's
discriminating eyes, and be excluded from that upper circle of chosen
humanity to which he was born and bred. He liked her pies, her flap-jacks,
and even the many kinds of boiled dinners she was in the habit of
preparing and garnishing with "dumplings." So far as his stomach was
concerned, she could rule supreme, for his digestion was of the best and
her "filling" dishes just suited him. But Lorena Jane Huzzard had read in
the papers some romances of the "gentle folk" he was fond of speaking of
in an intimate way. The gentle folk in her kind of stories always had
titles, military or civil, and were generally English lords and ladies;
the villains, as generally, were French or Italian. But think as she might
over the whole list, she could remember none in which the highbred scion
of blue blood had married either a cook or a milliner. One might marry the
milliner if she was very young and madly beautiful, but Lorena Jane was
neither. She remembered also that beautiful though the milliner or
bailiff's daughter, or housekeeper's niece might be, it was only the
villain in high life who married her. Then the marriage always turned out
at last to be a sham, and the milliner generally died of a broken heart.

So Mrs. Huzzard sighed and, with a thoughtful face, stirred up the batter
pudding.

Captain Leek had given her food for reflection of which he was little
aware, and it was quite a little while before she remembered to answer his
remarks.

"So Mr. Dan is showing temper, too, is he? Well--well--that's a pity. He's
a good boy, captain. I wouldn't waste my time to go against him, if I was
you, and there he is now. Good-morning, Mr. Dan! Come right in! Breakfast
over, but I'll get you up a bite at any time, and welcome. It does seem
right nice for you to be back in town again."

Overton entered at her bidding, and smiled down from his tall stature to
the broad, good-natured face she turned to him.

"Breakfast! Why, I'm thinking more about dinner, Mrs. Huzzard. I was up in
the hills last night, and had a camp breakfast before you city folks were
stirring. Where's 'Tana?"

A dubious sniff from Captain Leek embarrassed Mrs. Huzzard for a moment.
She thought he meant to answer and hesitated to give him a chance. But the
sniff seemed to express all he wanted to say, and she flushed a little at
its evident significance.

"Well, what's the matter now?" demanded the younger man, impatiently,
"where is she--do you know?"

"Oh--why, yes--of course we do," said Mrs. Huzzard hurriedly. "I didn't
mean to leave you without an answer--no, indeed. But the fact is, the
captain is set against something I did this morning, but I do hope you
won't be. Whatever they know or don't know in sussiety, the girl was
ignorant of it as could be when she asked to go, and so was I when I let
her. That's the gospel truth, and I do hope you won't have hard feeling
against me for it."

He came a step nearer them both, and looked keenly from one to the
other--even a little threateningly into the watchful eyes of Captain
Leek.

"Let her go! What do you mean? Where--Out with it!"

"Well, then, it was on the river she went, in one of them tiltuppy Indian
boats that I'm deathly afraid of. But Mr. Lyster, he did promise
faithfully he'd take good care of her. And as she'd seemed a bit
low-spirited this morning, I thought it 'ud do her good, and I part told
her to run along. And to think of its being improper for them to go
together--alone! Well, then, I never did--that's all!"

"Is it?" and Overton drew a long breath as of relief and laughed shortly.
"Well, you are perfectly right, Mrs. Huzzard. There is nothing wrong about
it, and don't you be worried into thinking there is. Max Lyster is a
gentleman--didn't you ever happen to know one, dad? Heavens! what a sinner
you must have been in your time, if you can't conceive two young folks
going out for an innocent boat ride. If any 'sky pilot' drifts up this
way, I'll explain your case to him--and ask for some tracts. Why, man,
your conscience must be a burden to you! I understand, now, how it comes I
find your hair a little scarcer each time I run back to camp."

He had seated himself, and leaning back, surveyed the irate captain as
though utterly oblivious of that gentleman's indignation, and then turned
his attention to Mrs. Huzzard, who was between two fires in her regret
that the captain should be ridiculed and her joy in Overton's commendation
of herself. The captain had dismayed her considerably by a monologue on
etiquette while she was making the pies, and she had inwardly hoped that
the girl and her handsome escort would return before Overton, for vague
womanly fears had been awakened in her heart by the opinions of the
captain. To be sure, Dan never did look at girls much, and he was as
"settled down" as any old man yet. The girl was pretty, and there was a
bit of mystery about her. Who could tell what her guardian intended her
for? This question had been asked by Captain Leek. Dan was very
close-lipped about her, and his reticence had intensified the mystery
regarding his ward. Mrs. Huzzard had seen wars of extermination started
for a less worthy reason than pretty Montana, and so she had done some
quiet fretting over the question until 'Tana's guardian set her free from
worries by his hearty words.

"Don't you bother your precious head, or 'Tana's, with ideas of what rules
people live by in a society of the cities thousands of miles away," he
advised her. "It's all right to furnish guards or chaperons where people
are so depraved as to need them."

This with a turn of his eyes to the captain, who was gathering himself up
with a great deal of dignity.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Huzzard," he said, looking with an unapproachable air
across Dan's tousled head. "If my stepson at times forgets what is due a
gentleman in your house, do not fancy that I reflect on you in the
slightest for it. I regret that he entertains such ideas, as they are
totally at variance with the rules by which he was reared. Good-morning,
madame."

Mrs. Huzzard clasped her hands and gazed with reproach at Overton, but at
the same time she could not repress a sigh of relief.

"Well, now, he is good-natured to take it like that, and speak so
beautiful," she exclaimed, admiringly; "and you surely did try any man's
patience, Mr. Dan. Shame on you!"

But Dan only laughed and held up his finger warningly.

"You'll marry that man some day, if I don't put a stop to this little
mutual admiration society I find here on my return," he said, and caught
her sleeve as she tried to pass him. "Now don't you do it, Mrs. Huzzard.
You are too nice a woman and too much of a necessity to this camp for any
one man to build up a claim for you. Just think what will happen if you do
marry him! Why, you'll be my stepmother! Doesn't the prospect frighten
you?"

"Oh, stop your nonsense, Mr. Dan! I declare you do try a body's patience.
You are too big to send to bed without your supper, or I vow I'd try it
and see if it would tame you any. The captain is surely righteous mad."

"Then let him attend to his postoffice instead of interfering with your
good cooking. Jim Hill said yesterday he guessed the postoffice had moved
to your hotel, and the boys all ask me when the wedding is to be."

She blushed with a certain satisfaction, but tossed her head provokingly.

"Well, now, you can just tell them it won't be this week, Mr. Dan Overton;
so you can quit your plaguing. Who knows but they may be asking the same
about you, if you keep fetching such pretty girls into camp? Oh, I guess
you don't like bein' plagued any more than other folks."

For Overton's smile had vanished at her words, and a tiny wrinkle crept
between his brows. But when she commented on it, he recovered himself, and
answered carelessly:

"But I don't think I will keep on bringing pretty girls into camp--that
is, I scarcely think it will grow into a steady habit," he said, and met
her eyes so steadily that she dismissed all idea of any heart interest in
the girl. "But I'd rather 'Tana didn't hear any chaff of that sort. You
know what I mean. The boys, or any one, is like enough to joke about it at
first; but when they learn 'for keeps,' that I'm not a marrying man,
they'll let up. As she grows older, there'll be enough boys to bother her
in camp without me. All I want is to see that she is looked after right;
and that's what I'm in here to talk about this morning."

"Well, now, I'm right glad to help you all I can--which ain't much, maybe,
for I never did have a sight of schooling. But I can learn her the
milliner trade--though it ain't much use at the Ferry yet; but it's
always a living, anyway, for a woman in a town. And as to cookin' and
bakin'--"

"Oh, yes; they are all right; she will learn such things easily, I think!
But I wanted to ask about that cousin of yours--the lady who, you said,
wanted to come out from Ohio to teach Indians and visit you. Is she
coming?"

"Well, she writes like it. She is a fine scholar, Lavina is; but I kind o'
let up on asking her to come after I struck this camp, for she always held
her head high, I hear, and wouldn't be noways proud of me as a relation,
if she found me doing so much downright kitchen work. I hain't seen her
since she was grow'd up, you know, and I don't know how she'd feel about
it."

"If she's any good, she'll think all the more of you for having pluck to
tackle any honest work that comes," said Overton, decidedly. "We all
do--every man in the settlement. If I didn't, I wouldn't be asking you to
look after this little girl, who hasn't any folks--father or mother--to
look after her right. I thought if that lady teacher would just settle
down here, I would make it worth her while to teach 'Tana."

"Well, now, that would be wise," exclaimed Mrs. Huzzard, delightedly. "An'
I'll write her a letter this very night. Or, no--not to-night," she added,
"for I'll be too busy. To-night the dance is to be."

"What dance?"

"Well, now, I clean forgot to tell you about that. But it was Mr. Lyster
planned it out after you left yesterday. As he's to go back East in a few
days, he is to give a supper and a dance to the boys, and I just thought
if they were going to have it, they might as well have it right and so
it's to be here."

Overton twisted his hat around in silence for a few moments.

"What does 'Tana think of it?" he asked, at last.

"She? Why, land's sakes! She's tickled a heap over it. Indeed, to go back
to the commencement, I guess it was to please her he got it up. At least,
that's the way it looked to me, for she no sooner said she'd like to see a
dance with this crowd at the Ferry than he said there should be one, and I
should get up a supper. I tell you that young chap sets store by that
little girl of yours, though she does sass him a heap. They're a
fine-looking young couple, Mr. Dan."

Mr. Dan evidently agreed, for he nodded his head absently, but did not
speak. He did not look especially pleased over the announcement of the
dance.

"Well, I suppose she's got to learn soon or late whom to meet and whom to
let alone here," he said at last, in a troubled way, "and she might as
well learn now as later. Yet I wish Max had not been in such a hurry. And
he promised to take good care of her on the river, did he?" he added,
after another pause. "Well, he's a good fellow; but I reckon she can guide
him in most things up here."

"No, indeed," answered Mrs. Huzzard, with promptness, "I heard her say
myself that she had never been along this part of the Kootenai River
before."

"Maybe not," he agreed. "I'm not speaking of this immediate locality. I
mean that she has good general ideas about finding ways, and trails, and
means. She's got ideas of outdoor life that girls don't often have, I
reckon. And if she can only look after herself as well in a camp as she
can on a trail, I'll be satisfied."

Mrs. Huzzard looked at him as he stared moodily out of the window.

"I see how it is," she said, nodding her head in a kindly way. "Since
she's here, you're afraid some of the folks is most too rough to teach her
much good. Well, well, don't you worry. We'll do the best we can, and that
dead partner o' yours--her father, you know--will know you do your best;
and no man can do more. I had a notion about her associates when I let her
go out on the river this morning. 'Just go along,' thought I, 'if you get
into the way of making company out of real gentlemen, you'll not be so
like to be satisfied with them as ain't--"

"Good enough," Dan assented, cheerily. "You have been doing a little
thinking on your own account, Mrs. Huzzard? That's all right, then. I'll
know that you are a conscientious care-taker, no matter how far out on a
trail I am. There's another thing I wanted to say; it's this: Just you let
her think that the help she gives you around the house more than pays for
her keeping, will you?"

"Why, of course I will; and I'm willing enough to take her company in
change for boarding, if that's all. You know I didn't want to take the
money when you did pay it."

"I know; that's all right. I want you to have the money, only don't let
her know she is any bill of expense to me. Understand! You see, she said
something about it yesterday--thought she was a trouble to me, or some
such stuff. It seemed to bother her. When she gets older, we can talk to
her square about such things. But now, till she gets more used to the
thought of being with us, we'll have to do some pious cheating in the
matter. I'll take the responsibilities of the lies, if we have to tell
any. It--it seems the only way out, you see."

He spoke a little clumsily, as though uttering a speech prepared
beforehand and by one not used to memorizing, and he did not look at Mrs.
Huzzard as he talked to her.

But she looked at him and then let her hand fall kindly on his shoulder.
She had not read romances for nothing. All at once she fancied she had
found a romance in the life of Dan Overton.

"Yes, I see, as plain as need be," she said. "I see that you've brought
care for yourself with that little mischief in her Indian dress; an' you
take all the care on your shoulders as though it was a blessed privilege.
And she's never to know what she owes you. Well, there's my hand. I'm your
friend, Dan Overton. But don't waste your days with too much care about
this new pet you've brought home. That's all I've got to say. She'll never
think more of you for it. Girls don't; they are as selfish as young
wolves."




CHAPTER VI.

MRS HUZZARD'S SUSPICIONS.


Overton sat silent and thoughtful for a little while after Mrs. Huzzard's
words. Then he glanced up and smiled at her.

"I've just been getting an idea of the direction your fancies are taking,"
he said mockingly, "and they're very pretty, but I reckon you'll change
them to oblige me; what I'm doing for her is what I'd do for any other
child left alone. But as this child doesn't happen to be a boy, I can't
take it on the trail, and a ranger like me is not fit to look after her,
anyway. I think I told you before, I'm not a marrying man, and she, of
course, would not look at me if I was; so what does it matter about her
thinking of me? Of course, she won't--it ain't my intention. Even if she
leaves these diggings some day and forgets all about me, just as the young
wolves or wildcats do--well, what difference? I've helped old bums all
over the country, and never heard or wanted to hear of them again, and I'm
sure it's more worth one's while to help a young girl. Now, you're a nice
little woman, Mrs. Huzzard, and I like you. But if you and I are to keep
on being good friends, don't you speak like that about the child and me.
It's very foolish. If she should hear it, she'd leave us some fine night,
and we'd never learn her address."

Then he put on his hat, nodded to her, and walked out of the door as
though averse to any further discussion of the subject.

"Bums all over the country!" repeated Mrs. Huzzard, looking after him
darkly. "Well, Mr. Dan Overton, it's well for you that ward of yours, as
you call her, wasn't near enough to hear that speech. And you're not a
marrying man, are you? Well, well, I guess there's many a man and woman,
too, goes through life and don't know what they might be, just because
they never meet with the right person who could help them to learn, and
you're just of that sort. Not a marrying man! Humph! When there's not a
better favored one along this valley--that there ain't."

She fidgeted about the dinner preparations, filled with a puzzled
impatience as to why Dan Overton should thus decidedly state that he was
not one of the men to marry, though all the rest of the world might fall
into the popular habit if they chose.

"It's the natural ambition of creation," she declared in confidence to the
dried peach-pie she was slipping from the oven. "Of course, being as I'm a
widow myself, I can't just make that statement to men folks promiscuous
like. But it's true, and every man ought to know it's true, and why Dan
Overton--"

She paused in the midst of her soliloquy, and dropped into the nearest
chair, while a light of comprehension illuminated her broad face.

"To think it never came in my mind before," she ejaculated. "That's it!
Poor boy! he's had a girl somewhere and she's died, I suppose, or married
some other fellow; and that's why he's a bachelor at nearly thirty, I
guess," she added, thoughtfully. "She must have died, and that's why he
never looks as gay or goes on larks with the other boys. He just goes on a
lone trail mostly, Dan does. Even his own stepfather don't seem to have
much knowledge about him. Well, well! I always did feel that he had some
sort of trouble lookin' out of them dark eyes of his, and his words to-day
makes it plain to me all at once. Well, well!"

The pensive expression of her face, as it rested on her fat hand, was
evidence that Lorena Jane Huzzard had, after all, found a romance in real
life suited to her fancy, and the unconscious hero was Dan Overton. Poor
Dan!

The grieving hero to whom her thoughts went out was at that moment walking
in a most prosaic, lazy fashion down the main thoroughfare of the
settlement. The road led down to the Ferry from seemingly nowhere in
particular, for from the Ferry on both sides of the river the road
dwindled into mere trails that slipped away into the wildernesses--trails
traveled by few of the white race until a few short years ago, and then
only by the most daring of hunters, or the most persevering of the
gold-seekers.

In the paths where gold is found the dwellings of man soon follow, and the
quickly erected shanties and more pretentious buildings of Sinna Ferry had
grown there as evidence that the precious metals in that region were no
longer visionary things of the enthusiasts, but veritable facts. The men
who came to it along the water, or over the inland trails, were all in
some way connected with the opening up of the new mining fields.

Overton himself had drifted up there as an independent prospector, two
years before. Then, when works were got under way all along that river and
lake region, when a reliable man was needed by the transfer company to
get specie to their men for pay-days, it was Overton to whom was given the
responsibility.

Various responsible duties he had little by little shouldered, until, as
Lyster said, he seemed a necessity to a large area, yet he had not quite
abandoned the dreams with which he had entered those cool Northern lands.
Some day, when the country was more settled and transportation easier, it
was his intention to slip again up into the mountains, along some little
streams he knew, and work out there in quietness his theories as to where
the gold was to be found.

Meantime, he was contented enough with his lot. No vaulting ambition
touched him. He was merely a ranger of the Kootenai country, and was as
welcome in the scattered lodges of the Indians as he was in the camps of
the miners. He even wore clothes of Indian make, perhaps for the novelty
of them, or perhaps because the buckskin was better suited than cloth to
the wild trails over which he rode. And if, at times, he drifted into talk
of existence beyond the frontier, and gave one an idea that he had drunk
of worldly life deep enough to be tired of it, those times were rare; even
Lyster had but once known him to make reference to it--that one evening
after their ride along the falls of the Kootenai.

But however tired he might at some time have grown of the life of cities,
he was not at all too _blase_ to accommodate himself to Sinna Ferry. If
poor Mrs. Huzzard had seen the very hearty drink of whisky with which he
refreshed himself after his talk with her, she would not have been so apt
to think of him with such pensive sympathy.

The largest and most popular saloon was next door to the postoffice, the
care of which Dan had secured for his stepfather, as the duties of it were
just about as arduous as any that gentleman would deign to accept. The
mail came every two weeks, and its magnitude was of the fourth-class
order. No one else wanted it, for a man would have to possess some other
means of livelihood before he could undertake it, but the captain accepted
it with the attitude of a veteran who was a martyr to his country. As to
the other means of livelihood, that did not cause him much troubled
thought, since he had chanced to fall in Dan's way just as Dan was
starting up to the Kootenai country, and Dan had been the "other means"
ever since.

The captain watched Overton gulp down the "fire-water," while he himself
sipped his with the appreciation of a gentleman of leisure.

"You didn't use to drink so early in the day," the captain remarked, with
a certain watchful malice in his face. "Are your cares as a guardian
wearing on your nerves, and bringing a need of stimulants?"

Overton wheeled about as though to fling the whisky-glass across at the
speaker; but the gallant captain, perceiving that he had overreached his
stepson's patience, promptly dodged around the end of the bar, squatting
close to the floor. Overton, leaning over to look at him, only laughed
contemptuously, and set the glass down again.

"You're not worth the price of the glass," he decided, amused in spite of
himself at the fear in the pale-blue eyes. Even the flowing side-whiskers
betrayed a sort of alarm in their bristling alertness. "And if it wasn't
that one good woman fancied you were true metal instead of slag, I'd--"

He did not complete the sentence, leaving the captain in doubt as to his
half-expressed threat.

"Get up there!" Dan suddenly exclaimed. "Now, you think you will annoy me
about that guardianship until I'll give it up, don't you?" he said, more
quietly, as the captain once more stood erect, but in a wavering,
uncertain way. "Well, you're mightily mistaken, and you might as well end
your childish interference right here. The girl is as much entitled to my
consideration as you are--more! So if any one is dropped out of the family
circle, it will not be her. Do you understand? And if I hear another word
of your insinuations about her amusements, I'll break your neck! Two,
Jim."

This last was to the barkeeper, and had reference to a half-dollar he
tossed on the counter as payment for his own drink and that of the
captain; and again he stalked into the street with his temper even more
rumpled than when he left Mrs. Huzzard's.

Assuredly it was not a good morning for Mr. Overton's peace of mind.

Down along the river he came in sight of the cause of his discontent, the
most innocent-looking cause in the world. She was teaching Lyster to
paddle the canoe with but one paddle, as the Indians do, and was laughing
derisively at his ineffectual attempts to navigate in a straight line.

"You--promised--Mrs. Huzzard--you'd--take--care--of--me," she said, slowly
and emphatically, "and a pretty way you're doing it. Suppose I depended on
you getting me in to shore for my dinner, how many hours do you think I'd
have to go without eating? Just about sixteen. Give me that paddle, and
don't upset the canoe when you move."

These commands Mr. Lyster obeyed with alacrity.

"What a clever little girl you are!" he said, admiringly, as she sent the
canoe skimming straight as a swallow for the shore. "Now, Overton would
appreciate your skill at this sort of work"--and then he laughed a
little--"much more than he would your modeling in clay."

A dark flush crept over her face, and her lips straightened.

"Why shouldn't he look down on that sort of pottering around?" she
demanded. "_He_ isn't the sort of man who has time to waste on trifles."

"Why that emphasis on the _he_?" asked her tormentor. "Do you mean to
insinuate that I do waste time on trifles? Well, well! is that the way I
get snubbed, because I grow enthusiastic over your artistic modeling and
your most charming voice, Miss 'Tana?"

She flashed one sulky, suspicious look at him, and paddled on in silence.

"What a stormy shadow lurks somewhere back of your eyes," he continued,
lazily. "One moment you are all sugar and cream to a fellow, and the next
you are an incipient tornado. I think you might distribute your frowns a
little among the people you know, and not give them all to me. Now,
there's Overton--"

"Don't you talk about him," she commanded, sharply. "You do a lot of
making fun about folks, but don't you go on making fun of him, if that's
what you're trying to do. If it's _me_--pooh!" and she looked at him,
saucily. "I don't care much what you think about me; but Dan--"

"Oh! Dan, then, happens to-day to be one of the saints in your calendar,
and plain mortals like myself must not take his name in vain--is that
it? What a change from this time yesterday!--for I don't think you sent
him to the hills in a very angelic mood. And you!--well, I found you with
a clay Indian crumbled to pieces in your destroying hands; so I don't
imagine Dan's talk to you left a very peaceful impression."

He laughed at her teasingly, expecting to see her show temper again, but
she did not. She only bent her head a little lower, and when she lifted
it, she looked at him with a certain daring.

"He was right, and I was silly, I guess. He was good--so good, and I'm
mostly bad. I was bad to him, anyway, but I ain't too much of a baby to
say so. And if he's mad at me when he comes back, I'll just pack my traps
and take another trail."

"Back to Akkomi?" he asked, gaily. "Now, you know we would not hear to
that."

"It ain't your affair, only Dan's."

"Oh, excuse me for living on the same earth with you and Dan! It is not my
fault, you know. I suppose now, if you did desert us, it would be to act
as a sort of guardian angel to the tribes along the river, turn into a
whole life-saving service yourself, and pick up the superfluous reds who
tumble into the rivers. I wondered for a whole day why you made so strong
a swim for so unimportant an article."

"His mother thought he was important," she answered. "But I didn't know he
had a mother just then; all I thought as I started for him was that he was
so plucky. He tried his little best to save himself, and he never said one
word; that was what I liked about him. It would have been a pity to let
that sort of a boy be lost."

"You think a heap of that--of personal bravery--don't you? I notice you
gauge every one by that."

"Maybe I do. I know I hate a coward," she said, indifferently.

Then, as the canoe ran in to the shore, she for the first time saw
Overton, who was standing there waiting for them. She looked at him with
startled alertness as his eyes met hers. He looked like a statue--a
frontier sentinel standing tall and muscular with folded arms and gazing
with curious intentness from one to the other of the canoeists.

In the bottom of the boat a string of fish lay, fine speckled fellows, to
delight the palate of an epicure. She stooped and picking up the fish,
walked across the sands to him.

"Look, Dan!" she said, with unwonted humility. "They're the best I could
find, and--and I'm sorry enough for being ugly yesterday. I'll try not to
be any more. I'll do anything you want--yes, I will!" she added,
snappishly, as he smiled dubiously, she thought unbelievingly. "I'd--dress
like a boy, and go on the trails with you, paddle your canoe, or feed your
horse--I would, if you like."

Lyster, who was following, heard her words, and glanced at Overton with
curious meaning. Overton met the look with something like a threat in his
own eyes--a sort of "laugh if you dare!"

"But I don't like," Dan said, briefly, to poor 'Tana, who had made such a
great effort to atone for ugly words spoken to him the day before.

She said no more; and Lyster, walking beside her, pulled one of her unruly
curls teasingly, to make her look at him.

"Didn't I tell you it was better to give your smiles to me instead of to
Overton?" he asked, in a bantering way, as he took the string of fish. "I
care a great deal more about your good opinion than he does."

"Oh--you--" she began, and shrugged her shoulders for a silent finish to
her thought, as though words were useless.

"Oh, _me_! Of course, me. Now, if you had offered to paddle a canoe for
me, I'd--"

"You'd loll in the bottom of the boat and let me," she flashed out. "Of
course you would; you're made just that way."

"Sh--h, 'Tana," said Overton, while to himself he smiled in an indulgent
way, and thought: "That is like youth; they only quarrel when there is a
listener." Then turning to the girl, he said aloud:

"You know, 'Tana, I want you to learn other things besides paddling a
canoe. Such things are all right for a boy; but--"

"I know," she agreed; but there was a resentful tone in her voice. "And I
guess I'll never trouble you to do squaw's work for you again."

She looked squaw-like, but for her brown, curly hair, for she still wore
the dress Overton had presented to her at the Kootenai village; and very
becoming it was with its fancy fringes and dots of yellow, green, and
black beads. Only the hat was a civilized affair--the work of Mrs.
Huzzard, and was a wide, pretty "flat" of brown straw, while from its
crown some bunches of yellow rosebuds nodded--the very last "artificial"
blossoms left of Sinna Ferry's first millinery store. The young face
looked very piquant above the beaded collar; not so pinched or worn a face
as when the men had first seen her. The one week of sheltered content
had given her cheeks a fullness and color remarkable. She was prettier
than either man had imagined she would be. But it was not a joyous,
girlish face even yet. There was too much of something like suspicion in
it, a certain watchful attention given to the people with whom she came in
contact; and this did not seem to abate in the least. Overton had noticed
it, and decided that first night that she must have been treated badly by
people to have distrust come so readily to her. He noticed, also, that any
honest show of kindness soon won her over; and that to Lyster, with his
graceful little attentions and his amused interest, she turned from the
first hour of their acquaintance as to some chum who was in the very inner
circle of those to whom her favor was extended. Overton, hearing their
wordy wars and noting their many remarks of friendship, felt old, as
though their light enjoyment of little things made him realize the weight
of his own years, for he could no longer laugh with them.

Looking down now at the clouded young face under the hat, he felt
remorsefully like a "kill-joy;" for she had been cheery enough until she
caught sight of him.

"And you will never do squaw work for me again, little squaw?" Dan
questioned, banteringly. "Not even if I asked you?"

"You never will ask me," she answered, promptly.

"Well, then, not even if I should get sick and need a nurse?"

"You!" and she surveyed him from head to foot with pronounced unbelief.
"_You'll_ never be sick. You're strong as a mountain lion, or an old king
buffalo."

"Maybe," he agreed, and smiled slightly at the dubious compliment. "But
you know even the old king buffaloes die sometime."

"Die? Oh, yes, in a fight, or something of that sort; but they don't need
much medicine!"

"And even if you did," said Lyster, addressing Overton, "I'm going to give
you fair warning you can't depend on 'Tana, unless you mend your ways. She
threatened to-day to leave us, if you allow the shadow of your anger to
fall on her again. So take heed, or she will swim back to Akkomi."

Overton looked at her sharply, and saw that back of Lyster's badinage
there was something of truth.

"You did?" he asked, reproachfully. "I did not know I had been so bad a
friend to you as that."

But no answer was made to him. She was ashamed, and she looked it. She was
also angry at Lyster, and he was made aware of it by a withering glance.

"Now _I'm_ in her bad books," he complained; "but it was only my fear of
losing her that urged me to give you warning. I hope she does not take
revenge by refusing me all the dances I am looking forward to to-night.
I'd like to get you, as her guardian, on my side, Overton."

The girl looked up, expectantly, and rested her slim fingers on the arms
of the two men.

"I could not be of much use, unless I had an invitation myself to the
dance," Dan remarked, dryly; "mine has evidently been delayed in the
mail."

"You don't like it?" said the girl, detecting the fact in his slight
change of tone. "You don't want me to go to dances?"

"What an idea!" exclaimed Lyster. "Of course, he is not going to spoil our
good time by objecting--are you, Dan? I never thought of that. You see,
you were away; but, of course, I fancied you would like it, too. I'll
write you out a flourishing request for your presence, if that's all."

"It isn't necessary; I'll be there, I reckon. But why should you think I
mean to keep you from jollifications?" he asked, looking kindly at 'Tana.
"Don't get the idea in your head that I'm a sort of 'Bad Man from Roaring
River,' who eats a man or so for breakfast every day, and all the little
girls he comes across. No, indeed! I'll whistle for you to dance any time;
so get on your war-paint and feathers when it pleases you."

The prospect seemed to please her, for she walked closer to him and looked
up at him with more content.

"Anyway, you ain't like Captain Leek," she decided. "He's the worst old
baby! Why, he just said all sorts of things about dances. Guess he must be
a heavy swell where he comes from, and where all the fandangoes are got up
in gilt-edged style. I'd like to spoil the gilt for him a little. I will,
too, if he preaches any more of his la-de-da society rules to me. I'll
show him I'm a different boy from Mrs. Huzzard."

"Now, what would you do?" asked Lyster. "He wouldn't trust himself in a
boat with you, so you can't drown him."

"Don't want to. Huh! I wouldn't want to be lynched for _him_. All I'd like
to hit hard would be his good opinion of himself. I could, too, if Dan
wouldn't object."

"If you can, you're a wonder," remarked Dan. "And I'll give you license to
do what I confess I can't. But I think you might take us into your
confidence."

This she would not do, and escaped all their questions, by taking refuge
in Mrs. Huzzard's best room, and much of her afternoon was spent there
under that lady's surveillance, fashioning a party gown with which to
astonish the natives. For Mrs. Huzzard would not consent to her appearing
in the savageness of an Indian dress, when the occasion was one of
importance--namely, the first dance in the settlement held in the house of
a respectable woman.

And as 'Tana stitched, and gathered, and fashioned the dress, according to
Mrs. Huzzard's orders, she fashioned at the same time a little plan of her
own in which the personality of Captain Leek was to figure.

If Mrs. Huzzard fancied that her silent smiles were in anticipation of the
dancing festivities, she was much mistaken.




CHAPTER VII.

A GAME OF POKER.


Mr. Max Lyster, in his hasty plans for an innocent village dance, had
neglected to make allowance for a certain portion of the inhabitants whose
innocence was not of the quality that allowed them to miss anything, no
matter who was host. They would shoot the glass out of every window in a
house, if the owner of the house should be in their bad books for any
trifling slight, and would proceed to "clean out" any establishment where
their own peculiar set was ignored.

There were, perhaps, seven or eight women in the place who were shown all
respect by men in general. They were the wives and daughters of the city
fathers--the first of the "family folks" to give the stamp of permanency
to the little camp by the river. These ladies and their husbands, together
with the better class of the "boys," were the people whom Mr. Lyster
expected to meet and to partake of his hospitality in the cheery abode of
Mrs. Huzzard.

But Overton knew there were one or two other people to consider, and felt
impatient with Lyster for his impulsive arrangements. Of course, 'Tana
could not know and Mrs. Huzzard did not, but Lyster had at least been very
thoughtless.

The fact was that the well-ordered establishment of Mrs. Huzzard was a
grievance and a thorn in the side of certain womankind, who dwelt along
the main street and kept open drinking saloons seven days in the week.
They would have bought ribbons and feathers from her, and as a milliner
thought no more about her, or even if she had opened a hotel, with a bar
attached, they would have been willing to greet her as a fellow worker,
and all would have had even chances. But her effrontery in opening an
eating house, where only water--pure or adulterated with tea or
coffee--was drunk--Well, her immaculate pretensions, to use the vernacular
of one of the disgusted, "made them sick."

It may have been their dislike was made more pronounced because of the
fact that the more sober-minded men turned gladly to the irreproachable
abode of Mrs. Huzzard, and the "bosses" of several "gangs" of workmen had
arranged with her for their meals. Besides, the river men directed any
strangers to her house; whereas, before, the saloons had been the first
point of view from which travelers or miners had seen Sinna Ferry. All
these grievances had accumulated through the weeks, until the climax was
capped when the report went abroad that a dance was to take place at the
sickeningly correct restaurant, and that only the _elite_ of the
settlement were expected to attend.

Thereupon some oaths had been exchanged in a desultory fashion over the
bars at Mustang Kate's and Dutch Lena's; and derisive comments made as to
Mrs. Huzzard and her late charge, the girl in the Indian dress. Some of
the boys, who owned musical instruments--a banjo and a mouth organ--were
openly approached by bribery to keep away from the all too perfect
gathering, so that there might be a dearth of music. But the boys with the
musical instruments evaded the bribes, and even hinted aloud their
desire to dance once anyway with the new girl of the curly hair and the
Indian dress.

This decision increased somewhat the muttering of the storm brewing; and
when Dutch Lena's own man indiscreetly observed that he would have to drop
in line, too, if all the good boys were going, then indeed did the cyclone
of woman's wrath break over that particular branch of Hades. Lena's man
was scratched a little with a knife before quiet was restored, and there
had been some articles of furniture flung around promiscuously; also some
violent language.

Overton divined somewhat of all this, knowing as he did the material of
the neighborhood, though no actual history of events came to his ears. And
'Tana, presenting herself to his notice in all the glory of her party
dress, felt her enthusiasm cool as he looked at her moodily. He would have
liked to shut her away from all the vulgar gaze and comment he knew her
charming face would win for her. His responsibilities as a guardian forced
on him so many new phases of thought. He had never before given the social
side of Sinna Ferry much consideration; but he thought fast and angrily as
he looked down on the slim, girlish, white-draped figure and the lovely
appealing face turned upward to him.

"You don't like it--you don't think it is pretty?" she asked, and her
mouth was a little tremulous. "I tried so hard. I sewed part of it myself,
and Mrs. Huzzard said--"

Lyster arose from a seat by the window. He had entered the room but a
moment before, and now lounged toward her with critical eyes.

"Mrs. Huzzard said you were enchanting in your new gown--is not that it?"
he asked, and then frowned at Overton in a serio-comic way. "And lives
there a man with soul so dead that he cannot perceive the manifold
beauties arranged for his inspection? Well, you know I told you I
appreciate you much more than he will ever do; so--"

"What nonsense you are talking!" said Overton, irritably. "Of course, the
dress is all right. I don't know much about such things, though; so my
opinion is not worth much. But I don't think little girls should be told
so much of their charms, Lyster. They are too likely to be made think that
prettiness is the only thing worth living for."

He smiled at 'Tana to soften the severity of his speech; but she was not
looking at him just then, and so missed the softening accompaniment. She
felt it was herself who was taken to task instead of Lyster, and stood
with drooped, darkening face until the door closed behind Overton.

"That is your fault," she burst out. "He--he might have thought it was
nice, if you hadn't been here with your fool speeches. You just go around
laughing at everything, Mr. Max Lyster, and you're just as empty as that
china cat on the mantel, and it's hollow. I'd like to hit you sometimes
when you say your nice, tantalizing words--that's what _I'd_ like to do;
and maybe some day I will."

"I shouldn't be surprised if you did," he agreed, and stepped back out of
range of her clenched brown hands. "Whew! what a trial you'd be to a
guardian who had nerves. You are spoiling your pretty face with that
satanic expression. Now, why should you make war on me? I'm sure I am one
of your most devoted servants."

"You are your own devoted servant," she retorted, "and you'll never be any
other person's."

"Well, now, I'm not so sure of that," he said, and looked at her
smilingly. All her anger did not keep him from seeing what a wondrous
difference all that white, billowy lawn made in the girl whom he had taken
for a squaw that first day when he saw her swimming the Kootenai.

She looked taller, slighter, with such lovable curves in the girlish form,
and the creamy neck and arms gleaming through the thin material. No
ornaments or ribbons broke the whiteness of her garb--nothing but the
Indian belt of beads that Overton had given her, and in it were reddish
tints and golden brown the color of her hair.

To be sure, the cheeks were a little tanned by the weather, and the little
hand was browner than need be for beauty; but, for all that, he realized,
as Overton had seemingly not done, that the girl, when dressed as dainty
girlhood should be, was very pretty, indeed.

"I am willing to sign myself your bond slave from this hour, if that will
lessen your anger against me," he protested. "Just think, I leave Sinna
Ferry to-morrow. How shall I do penance until then?"

            "'It may be for years, and it may be forever,
            Then why art thou silent, O voice of my heart?'"

She pouted and frowned a little at his warbling, though a smile eventually
touched her lips, and speculation shone in her eyes.

"I _will_ make you do penance," she declared, "and right now, too. I
haven't any money, but I'll put up my moccasins against five dollars in a
game of poker."

"You--play poker?"

"I'll try," she said briefly, and her eyes sparkled; "I'll play you and
ask no favors."

"Your moccasins are not worth five."

"Maybe not. Call it two-fifty then and promise me two hands at that."

"How sure you are to win!" he laughed, well pleased that she was diverted
from her quick displeasure. "We'll call it five against the moccasins.
Here are the cards. And what am I to do with those little moccasins, even
if I do win them?"

"Oh, I'll take care of the moccasins!" she said, easily. "I guess they'll
not trouble you much, Mr. Lyster. Cut for deal?"

He nodded, and they commenced their game there alone in Mrs. Huzzard's
most respectable _cafe_. Mrs. Huzzard herself did not approve of card
playing. No one but Captain Leek had, as yet, been allowed that privilege.
His playing she had really begun to look upon as almost moral in its
effects, since he pursued it as the most innocent of pastimes, never
betting more than a few dimes, and since it secluded him effectually from
the roaring lion of iniquity to which so many men fell victims in the
lively little settlement. But 'Tana, knowing that card playing by a girl
would not be a thing within Mrs. Huzzard's understanding, glanced warily
at the door leading to the second floor of the establishment and comforted
herself that the mistress of the domain was yet employed by her toilet for
the evening.

'Tana dealt, and did it so deftly that Lyster looked at her in
surprise, even irritation. What business had she touching the bits of
pasteboard like that--like some old gambler. Such a slight slip of a
thing, with all the beauty of early youth in her face, and all the
guilelessness of a vestal in the pure white of her garb. He fancied
he would have felt different if he had seen her playing cards in that
Indian dress; it would not have brought such a discord with it. And it was
not merely that she played, but it was the way she played that brought
vexation to him--that careless, assured handling of the cards. It
seemed almost professional,--it seemed--

"I'll just take that little five," remarked his opponent easily, and
spread out the cards before him. "I know what you've got, and it won't
touch this flush, and if you play again I'd advise you to gather your wits
and not play so wild--that is, if you want to win."

He stared at her in astonishment. It was quite true--while his thoughts
had been with her personality and her incongruous occupation, her thoughts
had been centered very decidedly on the points of the game. She, at least,
had not played "wild." A doubt even came into his mind, as to whether she
played honestly.

"I don't think I cared about winning," he answered, "I'd rather have given
you the stakes than to have had you play for them that way--yes, 'Tana,
double the stakes."

"Oh, would you?" she asked, with saucy indifference. "Well, I ain't asking
favors. I guess I can win all I want."

"No doubt you can," he assented, gravely. "But as young ladies do not
generally depend on their skill with cards to earn their pocket money, I'm
afraid Overton would have a lecture ready for you, if he learned of your
skill."

"Let him," she said, recklessly. "I've tried to be good, and tried to be
nice, and--and even pretty," she added, touching the dainty sleeve and
skirt of her dress, "but what use is it? He just stands off and stares
at me, and even speaks sharp as if he's sorry he ever brought me down
here. I didn't think he'd be like that. He was nicer in Akkomi's village;
and now--"

She hesitated, and, seeing that Lyster's eyes were watching her
attentively, she laughed in a careless way, and curled the five-dollar
bill around her finger.

"So I might as well be bad, don't you see? and I'm going to be, too. I
want this five dollars to gamble with, and for nothing else in the world.
I'm going to get square with some one."

"Which means you are going to worry some one else, just because Overton
has annoyed you," decided Lyster. "That is a woman's idea of retaliation,
I believe. Am I the selected victim?"

"Of course you're not, or I wouldn't have told you. All I wanted of you
was to give me a start."

"Exactly; your frankness is not very flattering; but, in spite of it, I'd
like to give you a start in a different way--toward a good school, for
instance. How would you like that?"

She looked at him for a moment suspiciously, she was so used to raillery
from him; then she answered briefly:

"But you are not my guardian, Mr. Max Lyster."

"Then you prefer card playing?"

"No, I don't. I'd like it, but my income can't cover such luxuries, and I
have booked myself to play for a time this evening, if I can get the man I
want to play with."

"But that is what you must not do," he said, hastily. "With Overton or
myself, of course, a game would not do you any special harm; but you
simply must not indulge in such pastime with this promiscuous gathering
of people--of men."

"But it isn't men--it's only one man I want to play--do you see?"

"I might if I knew who it was; but you don't know any men here but Dan and
me."

"Yes, I do, too. I know Captain Alphonso Leek."

"Perhaps, but--" Lyster smiled, and shook his head dubiously.

"But he won't play with me, because he don't like me; that's what you
would say, if you were not too polite--isn't it? He doesn't approve of me,
and can't understand why I'm on the face of the earth, and especially why
Dan should take any responsibility but Captain Leek on his hands. Huh!
Can't I see? Of course I do. I heard him call me _'that'_ this morning.
And so, I want to play a game of poker with him."

She looked impishly at him from under her brows, and twirled the money.

"Won't you be a messenger of peace and fix the game for me?" she asked,
insinuatingly. "You know you promised to do penance."

"Then I forswear all rash promises for the future," he declared.

"But you did promise."

"Well, then, I'll keep my word, since you are such a little Shylock. And
if it is only the captain--"

She laughed after he had gone out, and sat there shuffling the cards and
building them into various forms. She was thus employed when Overton again
passed the window and entered the room ere she could conceal them. He
observed her attempt to do so and smiled indulgently.

"Playing with the cards, are you?" he asked, in a careless way. "They are
expensive toys sometimes. But I'll teach you 'seven-up' some day; it's an
easy game."

"Is it?" she said; but did not look up at him. His indifference to the
pretty dress had not yet ceased to annoy her.

"Yes. And see here, 'Tana! I forgot to give you a present I brought you a
little while ago. It's a ring a fellow from the upper lake region worried
me into buying, as he was dead broke. He bought it from an Indian up near
Karlo. Queer for an Indian to have, isn't it?"

"Near Karlo?" she said, and reached out her hand for it.

There was a strange look on her face, a strange choking sound in her
throat. He noticed it, and his voice was very kindly as he spoke again.

"You don't like even to hear of that region, do you? You must have been
very miserable somewhere up there. But never mind, little girl; we'll try
to forget all that. And if the ring fits you, wear it, no matter what
country it comes from."

She tried to thank him, but the words would not come easily, and her
outstretched hand in which the ring lay was tremulous.

"Oh, that's all right," he said hastily, afraid, no doubt, she was going
to cry, as he had seen her do before at kind words. "Never mind about the
thanks. If you care to wear it, that's all that's necessary; though a
snake ring is not the prettiest of ornaments for a girl. It fits, doesn't
it?"

"Yes, it fits," she returned, and slipped it on her finger. "It is very
nice," but she shivered as with cold, and her hand shook.

It was curious enough to attract notice anywhere, a silver and a gold
snake twined together with their heads meeting, and in the flattened gold
head, eyes of garnet gleamed, while the silver head had eyes of emerald.
Not a girlish looking ornament, surely.

"I'll wear it," she said, and dropped the hand to her side. "But don't
tell the rest where it came from. I may want to tease them."




CHAPTER VIII.

THE DANCE.


"Ain't it lovely, Ora?" and 'Tana danced past Ora Harrison, the doctor's
pretty daughter, as if her feet had wings to them. And as Ora's bright
face smiled an answer, it was clear that the only two young girls in the
settlement were enjoying Lyster's party to the full.

For it was a pronounced success. Every "boy" invited was there in as much
of festive outfit as circumstances would allow. All the "family" people
were there. And the presence of Doctor Harrison--the only "professional"
man in the town--and his wife and daughter gave a stamp of select society
to the gathering in Mrs. Huzzard's rooms.

Mrs. Huzzard beamed with pleasure at the great success of it all. She
would have liked to dance, too, and refused most unwillingly when Lyster
tried to persuade her. But a supercilious glance from the captain made her
refusal decided. The doubt as to whether ladies in "sussiety" ever did
dance after forty years, and one hundred and sixty-three pounds weight,
deterred her. Now, if the captain had asked her to dance, she would have
been more assured.

But the captain did not; and, after a while, he was not to be seen. He had
vanished into the little back sitting room, and she was confident he was
engaged in his innocent pastime of a friendly game of cards with the
doctor.

"Go and dance with 'Tana, or that nice little girl of the doctor's,"
she said to Lyster, when he was trying to inveigle her into a
quadrille--"that's the sort of partner for you."

"But 'Tana has disappeared mysteriously; and as Miss Ora is 'bespoke,' I
can't dance with her unless I want a duel with her partner."

"'Tana disappeared! Well, now, I haven't seen her for two dances," said
Mrs. Huzzard, looking around searchingly, "though I never missed her till
this minute."

"Beg pardon, ma'am," said a voice at her elbow; "but is it the--the young
lady with the white dress you are looking for?"

"Yes, it is," answered Mrs. Huzzard, and turned around to face the
speaker, who was an apologetic-looking stranger with drab-colored chin
whiskers, and a checkered shirt, and a slight impediment in his speech.

"Well, ma'am, I saw her go into that room there quite a spell ago," and he
nodded toward the back sitting room. "She hasn't passed out again, as I've
seen."

Then, as Mrs. Huzzard smiled on him in a friendly way, he ventured
further:

"She's a very pretty girl, as any one can see. Might I ask her name?"

"Oh, yes! Her name is Rivers--Miss Tana Rivers," said Mrs. Huzzard. "You
must be a stranger in the settlement?"

"Yes, ma'am, I am. My name is Harris--Jim Harris. I come down from the
diggings with Mr. Overton this morning. He allowed it would be all right
for me to step inside, if I wanted to see the dancing."

"To be sure it is," agreed Mrs. Huzzard, heartily. "His friends are our
friends, and civil folks are always right welcome."

"Thank, you, ma'am; you're kind, I'm sure. But we ain't just friends,
especial. Only I had business in his line, so we picked up acquaintance
and come into camp together; and when I saw the pretty girl in white, I
did think I'd like to come in a spell. She looks so uncommon like a boy I
knew up in the 'big bend' country. Looks enough like him to be a twin; but
he wasn't called Rivers. Has--has this young lady any brothers or cousins
up there?"

"Well, now, as for cousins, they are far out, and we hain't ever talked
about them; but as for brothers or sisters, father or mother, that she
hasn't got, for she told me so. Her pa and Mr. Dan Overton they was
partners once; and when the pa died he just left his child to the
partner's care; and he couldn't have left her to a squarer man."

"That's what report says of him," conceded the stranger, watching her with
guarded attention. "Then Mr. Overton's partner hasn't been dead long?"

"Oh, no--not very long; not long enough for the child to get used to
talking of it to strangers, I guess; so we don't ask her many questions
about it. But it troubles her yet, I know."

"Of course--of course; such a pretty little girl, too."

Then the two fell into quite a pleasant chat, and it was not until he
moved away from beside her, to make room for the doctor's wife, that Mrs.
Huzzard observed that one arm hung limply beside him, and that one leg
dragged a little as he walked. He was a man who bore paralysis with him.

She thought, while he was talking to her, that he looked like a man who
had seen trouble. A weary, drawn look was about his eyes. She had seen
dissipated men who looked like that; yet this stranger seemed in no ways a
man of that sort. He was so quiet and polite; and when she saw the almost
useless limbs, she thought she knew then what that look in his face
meant.

But there were too many people about for her to study one very
particularly, so she lost sight of the stranger, Harris, and did not
observe that he had moved near the door of the sitting room, or that the
door was open.

But it was; and just inside of it Lyster stood watching, with a certain
vexation, a game of cards played there. The doctor had withdrawn, and was
looking with amusement at the two players--'Tana and Captain Leek. The
captain was getting the worst of it. His scattered whiskers fairly
bristled with perplexity and irritation. Several times he displayed bad
judgment in drawing and discarding, because of his nervous annoyance,
while she seemed surprisingly skillful or lucky, and was not at all
disturbed by her opponent's moods. She looked smilingly straight into his
eyes, and when she exhibited the last winning hand, and the captain dashed
his hand angrily into the pack, she waited for one civil second and then
swept the stakes toward her.

"What! Don't you want to play any more, captain?" she asked, maliciously.
"I would really like to have another dance, yet if you want revenge--"

"Go and dance by all means," he said, testily. "When I want another game
of poker, I'll let you know, but I must say I do not approve of such
pastime for young ladies."

"None of us would, if in your place, captain," laughed the doctor. "And,
for my part, I am glad I did not play against her luck."

The captain mumbled something about a difference between luck and skill,
while 'Tana swept the money off the table and laughed--not a pleasant
laugh, either.

"One--two--three--four!--twenty dollars--that is about a dollar a minute,
isn't it?" she asked provokingly. "Well, captain, I guess we are square up
to to-night, and if you want to open another account, I'm ready."

She spoke with the dash and recklessness of a boy. Lyster noticed it
again, and resented it silently. But when she turned, she read the
displeasure in his eyes.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" she inquired airily. "Is it time for our dance? You
see, the captain wanted some amusement, and, as the doctor was nearly
asleep over the cards, I came in and helped them out."

"Beautifully," agreed the doctor.

But Lyster borrowed no cheeriness from their smiles.

"I think it is our dance," Lyster observed. "And if you will come--"

"Certain," she said, with a nod; but at the door she paused. "Won't you
keep this money for me?" she asked. "I've no pocket. And just put a five
in a locked pocket 'for keeps,' please; I owe it to you."

"To me? You won that five."

"No, I didn't; I cheated you," she whispered. "Keep it, please do."

She pushed the money into his hand. One piece of it fell and rolled to the
feet of the stranger, who leaned carelessly against the doorway, but in
such a position that he could easily see into the sitting room.

He stooped and picked up the money.

"Yours, miss?" he said, courteously, and she smilingly reached out her
hand for it--the hand on which Overton's gift, the strange ring,
glittered.

The paralytic stranger barely repressed an exclamation as he noticed it,
and from it his eyes went swiftly, questioningly, to the girl's face.

"Yes, it's mine," she said, with a nod of thanks. Then she smiled a little
as she saw where his attention was given. "Are you wondering if the snakes
you see are the result of odd drinks? Well, they are not; they are of
metal and won't hurt you."

"Beg pardon, miss. Guess I did look at your pretty ring sharp; and it is
enough to make a man shake if he's been drinking. But a little drink will
do me a long time."

Then Lyster and the girl passed on, the girl smiling at the little
exchange of words with the stranger. But Lyster himself was anything but
well pleased at the entire affair. He resented the fact that he had found
her there gambling, that she had shown such skill, that she had turned to
the seedy-looking stranger and exchanged words, as men might do, but as a
girl assuredly should not do. All these things disturbed him. Why, he
could scarcely have told. Only that morning she had been but a little
half-savage child, who amused him by her varying moods and sharp speech.
But to-night, in her graceful white gown, she seemed to have grown taller
and more womanly and winsome. The glances and homage of the most
acceptable youths about revealed to him the fact that she was somewhat
more than the strong swimmer or clever canoeist. She was deemed charming
by others, in a very different fashion than he had thought of her, and she
appeared rather too conscious of the fact. He fancied that she even
delighted in letting him see that others showed deference to her, when
he had only that day teased her as carelessly as he would have teased a
boy into a rage.

Then to stop and jest like that with the insignificant stranger by the
door! Mr. Lyster said a bad word in his mind, and decided that the
presuming masculinity of the settlement would be allowed few chances for
favors the remainder of the evening. He intended to guard her himself--a
formidable guard for the purpose, as a man would need a good deal of
self-reliance to try for favor if so handsome a personality as Lyster's
was an opponent.

But the rather shabby stranger, standing by the inner door, scarcely
noticed the noticeable young fellow. All his attention was given to the
girl who had spoken to him so frankly. She passed on and did not observe
his excessive interest. But his eyes lighted up when he heard her voice
speaking to him, and his face flushed with color as he stroked his beard
with his well hand and gazed after her.

"So this is where the trail begins, is it?" he whispered to the trembling
hand at his lips. "Well, I would have looked for it many another place
before commencing with a partner of Mr. Dan Overton--law-and-order man. He
must have gulled this whole territory beautifully to have them swear by
him as they do. And 'Monte' is his _protegee_! Well, Miss--or Mr.
Monte--whichever it is--your girl's toggery is more becoming than the
outfit I saw you wear last; but though your hair is a little darker, I'd
swear to you anywhere--yes, and to the ring, too. Well, I think I'll rest
my weary body in this 'burgh' for a few weeks to come. If the devil hasn't
helped his own, and cheated me, this partner--Mr. 'Rivers'--is yet alive
and in the flesh. If so, there is one place he will drift sooner or later,
and that is to this young gambler. And then--then death will be no sham
for him, for I will be here, too."

To 'Tana--jubilant with her victory over her instinctive antagonist, the
captain--all the evening was made for her pleasure, and she floated in the
paradise of sixteen years; and the world where people danced was the only
world worth knowing.

"I will be good now--I can be as good as an angel since I've got even with
the captain."

She whispered those words to Lyster, whose hand was clasping hers, whose
arm was about her waist, as they, drifted around the rather small circle,
to a waltz played on a concertina and a banjo.

She looked up at him, mutely asking him to believe her. Her desire for
revenge satisfied, she could be a very good girl now.

It was just then that Overton, who stood outside the window, glanced in
and saw her lovely upturned face--saw the red lips move in some pouting
protest, to which Lyster smiled but looked doubtfully down at her. To the
man watching them from without, the two seemed always so close--so
confidential. At times he even wondered if Lyster had not learned more
than himself of her life before that day at Akkomi's camp.

All that evening Dan had not once entered the room where they danced, or
added in any way to their merry-making. He had stood outside the door most
of the time, or sometimes rested a little way from it on a store box,
where he smoked placidly, and inspected the people who gathered to the
dance.

All the invited guests came early, and perfect harmony reigned within. A
few of the unsavory order of citizens had sauntered by, as though taking
note of the pleasures from which they were excluded. But it was not
until almost twelve o'clock--just after Overton had turned away from
watching the waltz--that a pistol shot rang out in the street, and several
dancers halted.

Some of the men silently moved to the door, but just then the door was
opened by Overton, who looked in.

"It was only my gun went off by accident," he said, carelessly. "So don't
let me stampede the party. Go on with your music."

The stranger, Harris, was nearest the door, and essayed to pass out, but
Overton touched him on the arm.

"Not just yet," he said hurriedly. "Don't come out or others will follow,
and there'll be trouble. Keep them in some way."

Then the door closed. The concertina sobbed and shrieked out its notes,
and drowned a murmur of voices on the outside. One man lay senseless close
to the doorstep, and four more men with two women stood a little apart
from him.

"If another shot is fired, your houses will be torn down over your heads
to-morrow," said Overton, threateningly; "and some of you will not be
needing an earthly habitation by that time, either."

"Fury! It is Overton!" muttered one of the men to another. "They told us
he wasn't in this thing."

"What for you care?" demanded the angry tones of a Dutch woman. "What
difference that make--eh? If so be as we want to dance--well, then, we go
in and dance--you make no mistake."

But the men were not so aggressive. The most audacious was the senseless
one, who had fired the revolver and whom Overton had promptly and quietly
knocked down.

"I don't think you men want any trouble of this sort," he remarked, and
ignored the women entirely. "If you've been told that I'm not in this,
that's just where some one told you a lie; and if it's a woman, you should
know better than to follow her lead. If these women get through that door,
it will be when I'm an angel. I'm doing you all a good turn by not letting
the boys in there know about this. No religion could save you, if I turned
them loose on you; so you had better get away quiet, and quick."

The men seemed to appreciate his words.

"That's so," mumbled one.

And as the other woman attempted a protest, one of the men put his hand
over her mouth, and, picking her up bodily, walked down the street with
her, she all the time kicking and making remarks of a vigorous nature.

The humor of the situation appealed to the delicate senses of her
companions, until they laughed right heartily, and the entire tone of the
scene was changed from a threat of battle to an excuse for jollity. The
man on the ground reeled upward to his feet with the help of a shake from
Overton.

"Where's my gun?" he asked, sulkily.

Blood trickling from a cut brow compelled him to keep one eye shut.

"Overton has it," explained one of his friends. "Come on, and don't try
another racket."

"I want my gun--it was him hit me," growled the wounded one, whose spirits
had not been enlivened by the spectacle the rest had witnessed.

"You are right--it was him," agreed the other, darkly; "and if it hadn't
been for breaking up the dance, I guess he'd a-killed you. Come on. You
left a ball in his arm by the looks of things, and all he did was to knock
you still. He may want to do more to-morrow. But as you have no gun,
you'd better wait till then."

The door had been opened, and the light streamed out. Men talked in a
friendly, jovial fashion on and about the doorstep. They saw the forms
moving away in the shadows, but no sign of disturbance met them.

Overton stood looking in the window at the dancers. The waltz was not yet
finished, and 'Tana and Lyster drifted past within a few feet of him. The
serenity of their evening had not been disturbed. Her face held all of
joyous content--so it seemed to the watcher. She laughed as she danced;
and hearing the music of her high, girlish tones, he forgot for a time the
stinging little pain in his arm, until his left hand, thrust into his coat
pocket, slowly filled with blood. Then Dan turned to the man nearest him.

"If Doctor Harrison is still in there, would you do me the favor of asking
him to come outside for a few minutes?" he asked, and the man addressed
stepped closer.

"There is a back way into the house. Hadn't you better just step in that
way, and have him fix you up? He's in the back room, alone, smoking."

Overton turned with an impatient exclamation, and a sharp, questioning
look. It was the half-paralyzed stranger--Harris.

"Oh, I ain't interfering!" he said, amiably. "But as I slipped out through
the back door before your visitors left, I dropped to the fact that you
had some damage done to that left arm. Yes, I'll carry any message you
like to your doctor, for I like your nerve. But I must say it's thankless
work to stand up as a silent target for cold lead, just so some one else
may dance undisturbed. Take an old man's advice, sonny, do some of the
dancing yourself."




CHAPTER IX.

THE STRANGER'S WARNING.


That one festive night decided the immediate future of 'Tana. All her joy
in it did not prevent a decision that it should be the last in her
experience, for a year to come, at least.

It was Lyster who broached the subject, and Overton looked at him closely
while he talked.

"You are right," he decided, at last; "a school is the easiest path out of
this jungle, I reckon. I thought of a school, but didn't know where--I'm
not posted on such things. But if you know the trail to a good one, we'll
fix it. She has no family folks at all, so--"

"I'd like to ask, if it's allowable--"

"Don't ask me about her people," said the other, quickly; "she wouldn't
want me to talk of them. You see, Max, all sorts get caught in whirlpools
of one sort or another, when ventures are made in a new country like this,
and often it's a thoroughbred that goes under first, while a lot of scrub
stock will pull through an epidemic and never miss a feed. Well, her folks
belonged to the list that has gone under--speculating people, you know,
who left her stranded when they started 'over the range,' and she's
sensitive about it--has a sort of pride, too, and doesn't want to be
pitied, I guess. Anyway, I've promised she sha'n't be followed by any
reminder of her misfortunes, and I can't go into details."

"Oh, that's all right; I'm not curious to know whether her folks had a
palace or a cabin to live in. But she has brightness. I like her well
enough to give up some useless pastimes that are expensive, and contribute
the results to a school fund for her, if you say yes. But I should like to
know if her people belonged to the class we call ladies and
gentlemen--that is all."

Overton did not answer at once. His eyes were turned toward his bandaged
arm, and a little wrinkle grew between his brows.

"The man is dead, and I don't think there's anything for me to say as to
his gentlemanly qualities," he said at last. "He was a prospector and
speculator, with an equal amount of vice and virtue in him, I suppose;
just about like the rest of us. Her mother I never saw, but have reason to
think she was a lady."

"And you say every word of that as if they were drawn from you with
forceps," said Lyster, cheerily. "Well, I'll not bother you about it
again. But, you see, there is a cousin of mine at the school I spoke of,
and I wanted to know because of that. It's all right, though; my own
instincts would tell me she came of good stock. But even good stock will
grow wild, you know, if it doesn't get the right sort of training. You
know, old fellow, I'm downright in earnest about wanting to help you about
her."

"Yes, I know. You have, too," said the other. "You've pointed out the
school and all, and we see she can't be left here."

"Not when you are ranging around the hills, and never a man to take your
place as a guard," agreed Lyster. "I feel about two years old ever since I
heard of how you kept annoyances from us last night while we were so
serenely unconscious of your trials. 'Tana will scarcely look at me this
morning, for no reason but that I did not divine the state of affairs and
go to help you. That girl has picked up so much queer knowledge herself
that she expects every one to be gifted with second sight."

Then he told, with a good deal of amusement, the episode of the poker game
and the discomfiture of the captain.

Overton said little. He was not so much shocked or vexed over it as Lyster
had been, because he had lived more among people to whom such pastimes
were not unusual.

"And I offered to teach her 'seven-up,' because it was easy," he remarked
grimly. "Yes, the school is best. You see, even if I am on the ground, I'm
not a fit guardian. Didn't I give her leave to get square with the old
man? While, if I'd been the right sort of a guardian, she would have been
given a moral lecture on the sinfulness of revenge. I guess we'd better
begin to talk school right away."

"I imagine she'll object at first, through force of habit, and protest
that she knows enough for one girl."

But she did not. She listened with wonder in her eyes, and something of
shamed contrition in her face, and knew so well--so very well that she did
not deserve it. She had wanted--really wanted to vex him when she played
the cards, when she had danced past, and never let on she saw him looking
somberly in at the window the night before. But in the light of morning
and with the knowledge of his wounded arm, all her resentment was gone.
She could scarcely speak even the words she meant to say.

"I can't do that--go, I mean. It will cost so much, and I have no money.
I can't make any here, and--and you are not rich enough to lend it to me,
even if I could pay it back some day, so--"

"Never mind about the money; it will be got. I'm to start up north of this
soon, and this doesn't seem a good place to school you in, anyway. So, for
a year or so, you go to that school down in Helena. Max knows the name of
it; I forget. When you get all rigged out with an education, and have a
capital of knowledge, you can talk then about the money and paying it, if
it makes you feel more comfortable. But just now you be a good little
girl; go down there with Max to the school, study hard, so that if I drop
into a chasm some night, or am picked off by a bullet, you'll have
learned, anyway, how to look after yourself in the right way."

"Oh, it's Mr. Max, then, that's planning this, is it?" she asked suddenly,
and her face flushed a little--he must have thought in anger, for he
said:

"Why--yes; that is--mostly. You see, 'Tana, I've drifted out from the ways
of the world while Max has kept up with them. So he proposed--well, no
matter about the plan. I'm to suggest it to you, and as it's no loss and
all gain to you, I reckon you'll be sensible enough to say yes."

"I will," she answered, quietly; "it is very kind of you both to be so
good to me, for I haven't been good to you--to either of you, I'm
sorry--I--maybe I'll be better when I come back--and--maybe I can pay you
some day."

"Me? Oh, you won't owe me anything, and I reckon you'd better not make
plans about coming back here! The books and things you learn will likely
turn you toward other places--finer places. This is all right for men
who have money to make; but you--"

"I'm coming back here," she said, nodding her head emphatically. "Maybe
not for always--but I'll come back some time--I will."

She was twisting her fingers in a nervous way, and, as he watched her, he
noticed that her little brown hands were devoid of all ornament.

"Where is the ring?" he asked. "Have you lost it already?"

"No, it's here--in my pocket," and she drew it out that he might see.
"I--I took it off this morning when I saw you were shot. You'll laugh, I
suppose; but I thought the snakes brought bad luck."

"So you are superstitious?"

"Oh, I don't know! I'm not afraid very often; but sometimes I think there
are signs that are true. I've heard old folks say so, and talk of things
unlucky. I took the ring off when I saw your arm."

"But the arm was only scratched--not worth a thought from a little girl
like you," he said; "and surely not worth throwing off your jewelry for.
But some day--some day of good luck, I may find you a prettier ring--one
more like a girl's ring, you know; one you can wear and not be afraid."

"If I'm afraid, it isn't for myself," she said, with that old, unchildlike
look he had not seen in her eyes of late. "But I'll tell you what I'm
afraid of. Have you ever heard of people who were 'hoodoos'? I guess you
have. Well, sometimes I'm afraid I'm just that--like the snakes in that
ring. I'm afraid I bring bad luck to people--people I like. It isn't the
harm to me that ever frightens me. I guess I can fight that; but no one
can fight a 'hoodoo,' I guess; and your arm--"

"Oh, see here! Wake up, 'Tana, you're dreaming! Who put that cussed
nonsense into your head? 'Hoodoo!' Pshaw! I will have patience with you in
anything but that. Did any one look at you last night as if you were a
'hoodoo'? Here comes Max; we'll ask him."

But she did not smile at their badinage.

"I was in earnest, and you think it only funny," she said. "Well, maybe
you won't always laugh at it. Men who know a heap believe in 'hoodoos.'"

"But not 'hoodoos' possessed of the _tout ensemble_ of Miss Rivers,"
objected Lyster. "You are simply trying to scare us--me, out of the
journey I hoped to make with you to Helena. You are trying to evade a year
of scholastic training we have planned for you, and you would like to
prophesy that the boat will blow up or the cars run off the track if you
embark. But it won't. You will say good-by to your ogre of a guardian
to-morrow. You will be guarded by no less a personage than my immaculate
self to the door of your academy; from which you will emerge, later on,
with never a memory of 'hoodoos' in your wise brain; and you will live to
a green old age and make clay busts of us both when we are gray haired.
There! I think I'm a good healthy sort of a prophet; and as a reward will
you go with me to-morrow?"

"With you? Then it is you who--"

"Who has planned the whole brilliant scheme? Exactly--the journey part of
it at all events; and I'm not so modest as our friend here. I'll take the
blame of my share, and his, too, if he doesn't speak up for himself.
Here comes your new friend, Dan. Where did you pick him up?"

It was the man Harris, and beside him was the captain. They were talking
with some animation of late Indian raids to the westward.

"I doubt if it was Indians at all who did the thieving," remarked Harris;
"there are always a lot of scrub whites ready to take advantage of war
signals, and do devilment of that sort, made up as reds."

"Oh, yes--some say so! That man Holly used to get the credit of that sort
of renegade work. Handsome Holly he was called once. But now that he's
dead, maybe we'll see he was not the only one to work mischief between the
whites and reds."

"Holly? Lee Holly?" asked Lyster. "Why, didn't we hear a rumor that he
wasn't dead at all, but had been seen somewhere near Butte?"

"I didn't," returned Overton, who was the one addressed, "though it may be
so. He's a very slippery specimen and full of schemes, from what I hear.
But he doesn't seem to range over this territory, so I've never run across
him. It would be like him, though, to play dead when the Government men
grew warm on his trail, and he'd no doubt get plenty of help from his
Indian allies."

Harris was watching him keenly, and the careless honesty of the speaker's
face and tone evidently perplexed him, for he turned with a baffled look
to the girl, who stood with down-dropped eyes, and twisted a spray of
leaves nervously around her fingers. He noticed one quick, troubled glance
she gave Overton, but even to his suspicious eyes it did not seem a regard
given a fellow-conspirator.

"I believe it was the doctor I heard speak of the rumor that Holly was yet
above ground," said Lyster. "The mail came up yesterday, and perhaps he
found it in the papers. Don't think I had heard of the man before. Is he
one of the important people up here?"

"Rather," remarked Overton, "an accomplished crook who has dabbled in
several trades in the Columbia River region. The latest was a wholesale
horse steal from a ranch over in Washington--Indian work, with him as
leader. The regulars from the fort got after them, there was an ugly
fight, and the reds reported Holly as killed. That is the last I heard of
him. You were asking me yesterday if he ever prospected in our valley,
didn't you?" he asked, turning to Harris.

"A man made undue importance of by the stupid Indians," declared Captain
Leek. "He humored their superstitions and played medicine man with them,
I've heard; and he had a boy for a partner--a young slip the gamblers
called 'Monte' down in Coeur d'Alene. Some said it was his son."

"A fine instructor for youth," observed Lyster. "Who could expect anything
but vice from a man who had such a boyhood?"

"But you would," said 'Tana, suddenly, "if you knew that boy when he grew
to be a man. If he was bad, you'd want him to get off the earth where you
walked; and you never once would stop to ask if he was brought up right or
not--you know you wouldn't--nobody does, I guess. I don't know why it is,
but it seems all wrong to me. Maybe, though, when I go to school, and
learn things, I will think like the rest, and not care."

Lyster shrugged his shoulders and looked after her as she vanished into
the regions where Mrs. Huzzard was concocting dishes for the mid-day
meal.

"I doubt if she thinks like the rest," he remarked. "How fiery she is, and
how independent in her views of things."

But Overton smiled at her curt speech.

"Poor 'Tana has lived among rough scenes until she learns to judge
quickly, and for herself," he said. "Her words are true enough, too; she
may have known just such boys as Holly's clever little partner and seen
how hard it was for them to be any good. I wonder now what has become of
young 'Monte' since Holly disappeared. He would be a good one to follow,
if there is doubt as to Holly's death being a fact. I believe there was a
reward out for him some time ago, to stimulate lagging justice. Don't know
if it's withdrawn or not."

"Square," decided Harris, in silent communion with himself, as he surveyed
Overton; "dead square, and don't scent the trail. I'd like to know what
their little game is with him. Some devilment, sure."

On one pretext and another he kept close to Overton. He was studying the
stalwart, easy-going keeper of the peace, and Dan, who had a sort of
compassion for all who were halt, or blind, or homeless, took kindly
enough to the semi-paralyzed stranger. Harris seemed to belong nowhere in
particular, yet knew each trail of the Kootenai and Columbia country, knew
each drift where the yellow sands were found--each mine where the silver
hunt paid best returns.

"You've prospected some, I see, even if you don't get over the ground very
fast," Dan remarked; "and with it all, I reckon you've staked out some pay
claims for yourself?"

The face of Harris contracted in a swift frown; he drew a long breath, and
his clasped hands tightened on each other.

"I did," he said, in a choked, nervous sort of way; "I did. If I could
tell you of it, I would. You're the sort of man I'd--But never mind. I'm
not well yet--not strong enough to get excited over it. I've got to take
things easy for a spell, or another stroke of this paralysis will come as
my share. That handicaps me considerable. I was--was upset by something
unexpected last night, and I've had a queer, shaky feeling ever since;
can't articulate clear. Did you notice? The--the only thing under God's
heaven I'm afraid of is that paralysis--that it will catch me again before
I get my work done; and to-day--"

"Don't talk of it," advised Overton, as he noticed how the man's voice
hesitated and trembled, how excitable he was over the subject of his
mineral finds and his threatened helplessness. "Don't think of it, and
you'll come out all right yet. If I can do anything for you--"

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