31CHAPTER 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 in32the 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 the33Kootenais 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.”
“Adopther,” 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 he34missed 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 Cæsar! 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 of35supper, 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 a36sculptor’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?”37
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 growing38old; 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 you39wish. 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?”40
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 thought41what 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.”42
“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.43
“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 of44something 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.
45CHAPTER 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!”46
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 with47Black 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,48I 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.49
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 because50’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.51
“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?”52
“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.”53
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,54I 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.
55CHAPTER 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.”56
“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 tell57you, 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 of58wool, 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.59
“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.”60
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 sent61me 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 isyourfriend 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 traveling62companion, 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.”63
“’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,64though, 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 his65face 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 the66jagged 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?”67
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, who68wanted 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!