69CHAPTER 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.”70
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, who71never 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 for72practical 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 still73left, 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 some74romances 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?”75
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, and76don’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 of77the 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 it78would 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—though79it 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 if80they 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, I81reckon. 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. But82now, 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.”
83CHAPTER 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.”84
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,85and 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,86when 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 tooblaséto 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.87
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’t88that 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 about89sixteen. 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. “Heisn’t the sort of man who has time to waste on trifles.”
“Why that emphasis on thehe?” 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’sme—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 must90not 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.”91
“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.92
“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 one93week 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’llnever be sick. You’re strong as a mountain lion, or an old king buffalo.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, and smiled slightly at the dubious94compliment. “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.
“NowI’min 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;95but, 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 forhim. 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’s96surveillance, 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.