161CHAPTER XIII.THE TRACK IN THE FOREST.
Their camp was about a mile from the Kootenai River, and close to a stream of depth sufficient to carry a canoe; while, a little way north of their camp, a beautiful spring of clear water gurgled out from under a little bank, and added its portion to the larger stream that flowed eastward to the river.
There was a little peculiarity about the spring, which made it one to remember—or, rather, two to remember, for it was really a twin, and its sister stream slipped from the other side of the narrow ledge and ran north for a little way, and then turned to the east and emptied into the Kootenai, not a hundred yards from the stream into which its mate had run.
The two springs were not twenty feet apart, and lay direct north and south from each other. Then their wide curves, in opposite directions, left within their circle a tract of land like an island, for the streams bounded it entirely except for that narrow neck of rock and soil joining it to the bigger hills to the west.
It was in the vicinity of the two springs that the rude sketch of Harris bade them search; but more definite directions than that he had not given. He had marked a tree where the north stream joined the river; and finding that as a clew, they followed the stream to its source. When they reached the larger stream, navigable162for a mile, they concluded to move their tents there, for no lovelier place could be found.
It was ’Tana and Overton who tramped over the lands where the streams lay, and did their own prospecting for location. He was surprised to find her knowledge of the land so accurate. The crude drawing was as a solved problem to her; she never once made a wrong turn.
“Well, I’ve thought over it a heap,” she said, when he commented on her clever ideas. “I saw that marked tree as we went down to the Ferry, and I remembered where it was; and the trail is not hard if you only get started on it right. It’s getting started right that counts—ain’t it, Dan?”
There seemed fewer barriers between them in the free, out-of-door life, where no third person’s views colored their own. They talked of Lyster, and missed him; yet Dan was conscious that if Lyster were with them, he would have come second instead of first in her confidences, and her friendly, appealing ways.
Whether he trusted her or not, she did not know. He had not asked a question as to how that survey of the land came to her; but he watched Harris sometimes when the girl paid him any little attention, and he could read only absolute trust in the man’s eyes.
Overton was not given to keen analysis of people or motives; a healthy unconcern pervaded his mind as to the affairs of most people. But sometimes the girl’s character, her peculiar knowledge, her mysterious past, touched him with a sense of strange confusion, yet in the midst of the confusion—the deepest of it—he had put all else aside when she appealed to him, and had followed her lead into the wilderness.163
And as she ran from him with the particles of gold, and carried them, as he bade her, to Harris, he followed her with his gaze until she disappeared through the green wall of the bushes. Once he started to follow her, and then stopped, suddenly muttered something about a “cursed fool,” and flung himself face down in the tall grass.
“It’s got to end here,” he said, aloud, as men grow used to thinking when they live alone in the woods much. Then he raised himself on his elbows and looked over the little grassy dip of the land to where the stream from the hills sparkled in the warm sun; and then away beyond to where the evergreens raised their dark heads along the heights, looking like somber guardians keeping ward over the sunny valley of the twin springs. Over them all his gaze wandered, and then up into the deep forest above him—a forest unbroken from there to the swift Columbia.
The perfect harmony of it all must have oppressed him until he felt himself the one discordant note, for he closed his eyes with a sigh that was almost a groan.
“I’ll see it all again—often, I suppose,” he muttered; “but never quite as it is now—never, for it’s got to end. The little bits of gold I found are a warning of the changes to come here—that is the way it seems to me. Queer how a man will change his idea of life in a year or so! There have been times when I would have rejoiced over the prospect of wealth there is here; yet all I am actually conscious of is regret that everything must change—the place—the people—all where gold is king. Pshaw! what a fool I would seem to any one else if he knew. Yet—well, I have dreamed all my days of a sort of life where absolute happiness could be lived.164Other men do the same, I suppose—yes, of course. I wonder if others also come in reach of it too late. I suppose so. Well, reasoning won’t change it. I marked out my own path—marked it out with as little thought as many another fool; but I’ve got to walk in it just the same, and cursing back don’t help luck. But I had to have a little pow-wow all alone and be sorry for myself, before turning my back on the man I’d like to be—and—the rest of my dreams that have come in sight for a little while but can never come nearer—There she comes again! I’m glad of it, for she will at least keep me from drifting into dreams alone.”
But she appeared to be dreaming a little herself. At any rate, the scene she had passed through in the tent left memories too dark with feeling to be quickly dispelled, and he noticed at once the change in her face, and the traces of tears left about her eyes.
“What has hurt you?” he asked.
She shook her head and said:
“Nothing.”
“Oh! So you leave here jolly enough, and run around to camp, and cry about nothing—do you?” he asked, with evident unbelief. “Were you crying for joy over those little grains of gold—or over your loneliness in being so far from the Ferry folks?”
She laughed at the mere idea of either—and laughter dispels tear traces so quickly from faces that are young. “Lonely!” she exclaimed: “lonely here? why, I feel a heap more satisfied here than down at the Ferry, where the whole place smelled like saw-mills and new lumber. I always had a grudge against saw-mills, for they spoil all the lovely woods. That is why I like all this,” and she made a sweep of her arm, embracing all the165territory in sight; “for in here not a tree has been touched with an ax. Lonely here! Why, Dan, I’ve been so perfectly happy that I’m afraid—yes, I am. Didn’t you ever feel like that—just as if you were too happy to last, and you were afraid some trouble would come and end it all?”
But Overton stooped to lift the pick he had been using, and so turned his face away from her.
“Well, I’m glad you are not getting blue over lack of company,” he remarked; “for we have only commenced prospecting, you know, and it will be at least a week before we can hope to send for any one else to join us.”
“A week! Do you intend to send for other folks, then?” and her tone was one of regret. “Oh, it would be all different, then. My pretty camp would be spoiled for me if folks should come talking and whistling up our creek. Don’t let any one know so soon!”
“You don’t know what you are talking of,” he answered, a little roughly. “This is a business trip. We did not come up here just because we were looking for a pretty picture of a place to camp in.”
“Oh!” and surprise and dismay were in the exclamation. “Then you don’t care for it—you want other people just as soon as you find the rich streak where the gold is? Well”—and she looked again over their little chosen valley—“I almost hope you won’t find it very soon—not for several days. I would like to live just like this for a whole week. And I thought—I was so sure you liked it, too.”
“Oh, yes,” he answered, indifferently enough, evidently giving his whole attention to examining the soil he had commenced to dig up again, “I like the camp all166right, but we can’t just stand around and admire it, if we want to accomplish what we came for. And see here, ’Tana,” he said, and for the first time he looked at her with a sort of unwillingness, “you must know that this gold is going to make a big change in things for you. You can’t live out in the woods with a couple of miners and an Indian squaw, after your fortune is made—don’t you see that? You must go to school, and live out in the world where your money will help you to—well, the right sort of society for a girl.”
“What is the use of having money if it don’t help you to live where you please?” she demanded. “I thought that was what money was for. I’d a heap rather stay poor here in the woods, with—with the folks I know, instead of going where I’ll have to buy friends with money. Don’t think I’d want the sort of friends who have to be baited with money, anyway.”
He stared at her helplessly. She was saying to him the things he had called himself a fool for thinking. But he could not call her a fool. He could only stifle an impatient groan, and wonder how he was to reason her into thinking as other girls would think of wealth and its advantages.
“Why were you so wild about finding the gold, if you care so little for the things it brings?” he demanded, and she pointed toward the tents.
“It was for him I thought at first—of how the money would, maybe, help to make him well—get him great doctors, and all that. The world had been rough on him—people had brought him trouble, and—and I thought, maybe, I could help clear it away. That was what I had in my mind at first.”167
“You need things, too, don’t you?—not doctors, but education—books, beautiful things. You want pictures, statues, fine music, theaters—all such things. Well, the money will help you get them, and get people to enjoy them with you. I’ve heard you talk to Max about how you would like to live, and what you would like to see; and I think you can soon. But, ’Tana, you will live then where people will be more critical than we are here—”
“More like Captain Leek?” she asked, with a deep wrinkle between her brows; “for if they are, I’ll stay here.”
“N—no; not like him; and yet they will think considerable of his sort of ideas, too,” he answered, blunderingly. “One thing sure is this: When your actual work here is over, you must go at once back to Mrs. Huzzard. It was necessary for you to come, else I wouldn’t have allowed it. But, little girl, when you get among those fine friends you are going to have, I don’t want them to think you had a guardian up here who didn’t take the first bit of civilized care of you. And that’s what they would think if I let you stay here, just as though you were a boy. So you see, ’Tana, I just felt I’d have to tell you plain that you would have to try and fit yourself to city ways of living. And when you are a millionairess, as you count on being, we three partners can’t keep on living in tents in the Kootenai woods.”
She pulled handfuls of the plumy grasses beside her, and stared sulkily ahead of her. Evidently it was a great deal for her to understand at once.
“Would they blame you—youfor it, if they knew?” she asked at last.168
“Yes, they would—if they knew,” he said, savagely; and turning away, he walked across the little grassy level to where the abrupt little wall or ledge commenced—the one from under which the springs flowed.
She thought he was simply out of patience with her. He was going to the woods—anywhere to be rid of her and her stupid ideas; and swift as a bird, she slipped after him.
“Then I’ll go, Dan,” she said reassuringly, catching his arm. “So don’t be vexed at me for being stubborn. Come! let me look for the gold with you, and then—then I’ll go when you say.”
“It’s a bargain,” he said, briefly, and drew his arm away. “And if we are going to do any more prospecting this evening, we had better begin.”
He stood facing her, with his back to the bank that was the first tiny step toward the mountain that rose dark and shadowy far above. He had walked along there before, looking with a miner’s attention to the lay of the land. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation, and a light of comprehension brightened his eyes.
“I’ve got a clew to it, sure, ’Tana!” he said, eagerly. “Do you know where we are standing? Well, if I don’t make a big mistake, a good-sized river once rolled along just where we are now. The little creek is all that’s left of it. This soil is all a comparatively recent deposit, and it and the gold dust in it have been washed down from the mountain. Which means that this little valley is only a gateway, and the dust we found is only a trail we are to follow up to the mine from which it came. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I think so,” she answered, looking at the green-covered banks, and trying to realize how they looked169when a mountain river had cut its way through and covered all the pretty level where the spring stream slipped now. “But doesn’t that make the gold seem farther away—much farther? Will we have to move up higher in the mountains?”
“That is a question I need time to answer, but if I am right—if there is a backing of gold ore somewhere above this old river bed, it means a much surer thing than an occasional bit of dust washed out of the mud here. But we won’t ignore our little placer digging either. There is an advantage to a poor prospector in having a claim he can work without any machinery but a pick, shovel, and pan; while the gold ore needs a fortune to develop it. Let us go back and talk to Harris, to see if his evidence substantiates my theory. If not, we will just stake out our claims on the level, and be thankful. Later we will investigate the hills.”
The girl walked slowly beside him back to their camp. The shadows were commencing to lengthen. It was nearing supper time, and their day had been a busy, tiring one, for they had moved their camp many miles since dawn.
“You are very nearly worn out, aren’t you?” he asked, as he noticed her tired eyes and her listless step. “You see, you would tramp along the shore this morning when I wanted you to stay in the boat.”
“Yes, I know,” she answered; “but I don’t think that made me tired. Maybe it’s the gold we are to find. How queer it is, Dan, that a person will want and want some one thing all his life, and he thinks it will make him so happy; and yet, when at last he gets in sight of it, he isn’t happy at all. That is the way I feel about our gold. I suppose I ought to be singing and laughing and170dancing for joy. I said I would, too. Yet here I am feeling as stupid as can be, and almost afraid of the fine life you say I must go to. Oh, bother! I won’t think over it any more. I am going to get supper.”
For while ’Tana would accept the squaw as an assistant and a gatherer of fuel, she decidedly declined to have her installed as head cook. She herself filled that office with a good deal of girlish conceit, encouraged by the praise of Overton and the approving nods of Harris.
There had been a fifth member of their party, Flap-Jacks’ husband. ’Tana had bestowed that name on the squaw in the very beginning of their acquaintance. But Overton had sent him on an errand back to Sinna Ferry, not wishing to have his watchful eyes prying into their plans in the very beginning of their prospecting. And it was not until he had started on his journey that the pick and pan had disclosed the golden secret of the old river bed.
Harris watched the two approach, and his keen gray eyes turned with a certain fondness from one to the other. They were as guardian angels to him, and their mutual care of him had brought them closer to each other there in the wilderness than they ever had been in the little settlement farther down the river.
“Squaw not here yet?” asked ’Tana, and at once set to work preparing things for the supper.
Harris shook his head, but at that moment their hand-maiden did return, carrying a great load of sticks for fire, and then brought to the girl a number of fine trout she had caught almost at their door. She built the fire outside, where two forked sticks had been driven into the ground, and across them a pole lay, from which kettles could be hung. As ’Tana set the coffee pot on171the hot coals, the Indian woman spoke to her in that low voice which is characteristic of the red people.
“More white men to come into camp?” she asked.
“White men? No. Why do you ask?”
“I see tracks—not Dan’s tracks—not yours.”
“Made when?”
“Now—little while back—only little.”
Overton heard their voices, though not their words; and as ’Tana re-entered the wigwam, he glanced around at her with a dubious smile.
“That is the first time I ever heard you actually talking Chinook,” he observed; “though I’ve had an idea you could, ever since the evening in Akkomi’s village. It is like your poker playing, though you have been very modest about it.”
“I was not the night I played the captain,” she answered; “and I think you might let me alone about that, after I gave him back his money.”
“That is just the part I can not forgive you for,” he said. “He will never get over the idea, now, that you cheated him, and that your conscience got the better of you to such an extent that you tried to wipe a sin away by giving the money back.”
“Perhaps I did,” she answered, quietly. “I had to settle his conceit some way, for he did bother me a heap sometimes. But I’m done with that.”
She seemed rather thoughtful during the frying of the fish and the slicing down of Mrs. Huzzard’s last contribution—a brown loaf.
She was disturbed over the footprints seen by the Indian woman—the track of a white man so close to their camp that day, yet who had kept himself from their sight! Such actions have a meaning in the wild172countries, and the meaning troubled her. While it would have been the most simple thing in the world to tell Overton and have him make a search, something made her want to do the searching herself—but how?
“I was right in my theory about the old river bed,” he said to her, as she poured his coffee. “Harris backs me up in it, and it was ore he found, and not the loose dirt in the soil. So the thing I am going to strike out for is the headquarters where that loose dust comes from.”
“Oh! then it was ore you found?” she asked.
Harris nodded his head.
“Ore on the surface—and near here.”
That news made her even more anxious about that stranger who had prowled around. Perhaps he, too, was searching for the hidden wealth.
When the supper was over, and the sun had slipped back of the mountain, she beckoned to the squaw, and with the water bucket as a visible errand, they started toward the spring.
But they did not stop there. She wanted to see with her own eyes those footprints, and she followed the Indian down into the woods already growing dusky in the dying day.
The birds were singing their good-night songs, and all the land seemed steeped in repose. Only those two figures, gliding between the trees, carried with them the spirit of unrest.
They reached an open space where no trees grew very close—a bit of marsh land, where the soil was black and tall ferns grew. The squaw led her straight to a place where two of the fern fronds were bent and broken. She parted the green lances, and there beside173it was a scraping away of the earth, as though some one walking there had slipped, and in the black sandy loam a shoe had sunk deep. The Indian was right; it was the mark of a white man, for the reds of that country had not yet adopted the footgear of their more advanced neighbors.
“It turn to camp,” said the squaw. “Maybe some white thief, so I tell you. Me tell Dan?”
“Wait,” answered the girl; and, kneeling down, she studied the slender outline of the foot attentively. “Any more tracks?”
“No more—only leaves stirred nearer to camp; he go that way.”
The full moon rose clear and warm in the east, while yet the sun’s light lingered over the wilderness. Beautiful flowers shone white and pink and yellow in the opaline light of the evening; and ’Tana mechanically plucked a few that touched her as she passed, but she gave little notice to their beauty. All her thought was on the slender footprint of the man in the woods, and her face looked troubled.
They walked on, looking to right and left in any nook where deep shadows lay, but never a sign could they see of aught that was human besides themselves, until they neared the springs again, when the squaw laid her hand on the arm of the girl.
“Dan,” she said, in her low, abrupt way.
The girl, looking up, saw him a little way ahead of them, standing there straight, strong, and surely to be trusted; yet her first impulse was to tell him nothing.
“Take the water and go,” she said to the Indian, and the woman disappeared like a mere wraith of a woman in the pale shadows.174
“Don’t go so far next time when you want to pick flowers in the evening,” said Overton, as ’Tana came nearer to him. “You make me realize that I have nerves. If you had not come in sight the instant you did, I should have been after you.”
“But nothing will harm us; I am not afraid, and it is pretty in the woods now,” she answered lamely, and toyed with the flowers. But the touch of her fingers was nervous, and the same quality trembled in her voice. He noticed it and reaching out took her hand in his very gently, and yet with decision that forced her to look up at him.
“Little girl—what is it? You are sick?”
She shook her head.
“No, I am not—I am not sick,” and she tried to free her hand, but could not.
“’Tana,” and his teeth closed for a moment on his lip lest he say all the warm words that leaped up from his heart at sight of her face, which looked startled and pale in the moonlight—“’Tana, you won’t need me very long; and when you go away, I’ll never try to make you remember me. Do you understand, little girl? But just now, while we are so far off from the rest of the world, won’t you trust me with your troubles—with the thoughts that worry you? I would give half of my life to help you. Half of it! Ah, good God! all of it! ’Tana—”
In his voice was all the feeling which compels sympathy, or else builds up a wall that bars it out. But in the eyes of the girl, startled though she was, no resistance could be read. Her hand was in his, her face lifted to him, and alight with sudden gladness. In his eyes she175read the force of an irresistible power taking possession of a man’s soul and touching her with its glory.
“’Tana!” he said very softly, in a tone she had never before heard Dan Overton use—a tone hushed and reverent and appealing. “’Tana!”
Did he guess all the stormy emotions locked alone in the girl’s heart, and wearing out her strength? Did he guess all the childish longing to feel strong, loving arms around her as a shield? His utterance of her name drew her to him. His arm fell around her shoulders, and her head was bowed against his breast. The hat she wore had fallen to the ground, and as he bent over her, his hand caressed her hair tenderly, but there was more of moody regret than of joy in his face.
“’Tana, my girl! poor little girl!” he said softly.
But she shook her head.
“No—not so poor now,” she half whispered and looked up at him—“not so very poor.”
Then she uttered a half-strangled scream of terror and broke away from him; for across his shoulder she saw a face peering at her from the shadows of the over-hanging bushes above them, a white, desperate face, at sight of which she staggered back and would have fallen had Overton not caught her.
He had not seen the cause of her alarm, and for one instant thought it was himself from whom she shrank.
“Tell me—what is it?” he demanded. “’Tana, speak to me!”
She did not speak, but a rustle in the bushes above them caught his ear; and looking up, he saw a form pass lightly through the shadows and away from them. He could not tell whether it was an Indian, a white man, or even an animal scampering off that way through the176bushes. But anything that spied like that and ran when discovered was a thing to shoot at. He dropped his hand to his revolver, but she caught his arm.
“No, Dan! Oh, don’t—don’t shoot him!”
He stared at her, conscious that it was no ordinary fear that whitened her face. What did it mean? She herself had just come from the woods—pale, agitated, and with only a semblance of flower gathering to explain her absence. Had she met some one there—some one who—
He let go of her and started to run up the side of the steep bank; but swiftly as he moved, she caught him and clung to him, half sobbing.
“Don’t go! Oh, Dan, let him go!” she begged, and her grasp made it impossible for him to go unless he picked her up and carried her along.
He stooped, took her head roughly in his hands, and turned her face up, so that the light would fall upon it.
“Him!Then you know who it is?” he said, grimly. “What sort of business is this, ’Tana? Are you going to tell me?”
But she only crouched closer to him, and, sobbing, begged him not to go. Once he tried to break away but lost his footing, and the soil and bits of boulders went clattering down past her.
With a muttered oath of impatience, he gave up the pursuit, and stared down at her with an expression more bitter than any she had ever seen on his face before.
“So you are bound to protect him, are you?” he asked, coldly. “Very well. But if you value him so highly you had better keep him clear of this camp, else he’ll find himself ready for a box. Come! get up and go to the tents. That is a better place for you than here. Your177coming out here this evening has been a mistake all around—or else mine has. I wish to Heaven I could undo it all.”
She stood a little apart from him, but her hand was still outstretched and clasping his arm.
“All, Dan?” she asked, and her mouth trembled. But his own lips were firm enough, as he nodded his head and looked at her.
“All,” he said briefly. “Go now; and here are your flowers for which you hunted so long in the woods.”
He stooped to pick them up for her from where they had fallen—the white, fragrant things he had thought so beautiful as she came toward him with them in the moonlight.
But as he lifted them from the bank, where they were scattered, he saw something else there which was neither beautiful nor fragrant, but over which he bent with earnest scrutiny. An ordinary looking piece of shale or stone it would have seemed to an inexperienced eye, a thing with irregular veins of a greenish appearance, and the green dotted plainly with yellow—so plainly as to show even in the moonlight the nature of the find.
He turned to the girl and reached it to her with the flowers.
“There! When my foot slipped I broke off that bit of ’float’ from the ledge,” he said curtly. “Show it to Harris. We have found the gold ore, and I’ll stake out the claims to-night. You can afford to leave for civilization now as soon as you please, I reckon, for your work in the Kootenai country is over. Your fortune is made.”
178CHAPTER XIV.NEW-COMERS.
Many days went by after that before more time was given to the hunting of gold in that particular valley of the Kootenai lands; for before another day broke, the squaw spoke at the door of Overton’s tent and told him the girl was sick with fever, that she talked as a little child babbles and laughs at nothing.
He went with her, and the face he had seen so pale in the moonlight was flushed a rosy red, and her arms tossed meaninglessly, while she muttered—muttered! Sometimes her words were of the gold, and of flowers. He even heard his name on her lips, but only once; and then she cried out that he hurt her. She was ill—very ill; he could see that, and help must be had.
He went for it as swiftly as a boat could be sped over the water. During the very short season of waiting for the doctor and Mrs. Huzzard, he wrote to Lyster, and secured some Indians for work needed. If the doctor thought her able for the journey, he meant to have her brought back in a boat to Sinna Ferry, where she would have something more substantial than canvas walls about her.
But the doctor did not. He was rather mystified by her sudden illness, as there had been no forewarnings of it. That it was caused by some shock was possible; and that it was serious was beyond doubt.179
The entire party, and especially Mrs. Huzzard, were taken aback by finding a newly arrived, self-imposed guardian at the door of Tana’s tent. It was the blanket-draped figure of old Akkomi, and his gaily painted canoe was pulled up on the bank of the creek.
“I heard on the wind the child was sick,” he said briefly to Overton. “I come to ask if you needed help.”
But Overton looked at him suspiciously. It was impossible that he could have heard of her illness so soon, though he might have heard of her presence there.
“Were any of your people here at nightfall yesterday?” he asked. The old fellow shook his head.
“No, none of my people,” he said briefly; then he puffed away at his pipe, and looked approvingly at Mrs. Huzzard, who tried to pass him without turning her back to him at all, and succeeded in making a circuit bearing some relation to progress made before a throne, though the relationship was rather strained. His approving eyes filled her with terror; for, much as she had reveled in Indian romances (on paper) in her youth, she had no desire to take any active part in them in her middle age.
And so, with the help of the doctor and Mrs. Huzzard, they commenced the nursing of ’Tana back to consciousness and health. Night after night Dan walked alone in the waning moonlight, his heart filled with remorse and blame for which he could find no relief. The gathering of the gold had no longer allurements for him.
But he moved Harris’ tent on to one of the claims, and he cut small timber, and in a day and a half had a little log house of two rooms put up and chinked with dry moss and roofed with bark, that ’Tana might have a home of her own, and have it close to where the ore180streaked with gold had been found. Then he sent the Indians up the river again, and did with his own hands all labor needed about the camp.
“You’ll be sick yourself, Overton,” growled the doctor, who slept in the tent with him, and knew that scarce an hour of the night passed that he was not at the door of ’Tana’s cabin, to learn if any help was needed, or merely to stand without and listen to her voice as she spoke.
“For mercy’s sake, Mr. Dan, do be a little careful of yourself,” entreated Mrs. Huzzard; “for if you should get used up, I don’t know what I ever would do here in this wilderness, with ’Tana and the paralyzed man and you to look after—to say nothing of the fear I’m in every hour because o’ that nasty beast of an Indian that you say is a chief. He is here constant!”
“Proof of your attractive powers,” said Overton, reassuringly. “He comes to admire you, that is all.”
“And enough, too! And if it wasn’t for you that’s here to protect me, the good Lord only knows whether I’d ever see a milliner shop or a pie again, as long as I lived. So I am set on your taking more care of yourself—now won’t you?”
“Wait until you have cause, before you worry,” he advised, “I don’t look like a sick man, do I?”
“You don’t look like a well one, anyway,” she said, looking at him carefully; “and you don’t look as I ever saw you look before. You are as hollow eyed as though you had been sick yourself for a month. Altogether, I think your coming out here to camp in the wild woods has been a big mistake.”
“It looks like it just now,” he agreed, and his eyes, tired and troubled, looked past her into the cabin where ’Tana lay. “Does she seem better?”181
“Just about the same. Eight days now since she was took down; and the doctor, he said to-morrow would be the day to hope for a change, either for the better or—”
But the alternative was not a thing easy for the good soul to contemplate, and she left the sentence unfinished and disappeared into the cabin again, while the man outside dropped his head in his hands, feeling the most helpless creature in all the world.
“Better to-morrow, or—worse;” that was what Mrs. Huzzard meant, but could not utter. Better or worse! And if the last, she might be dying now, each minute! And he was powerless to help her—powerless even to utter all the regret, the remorse, the heart-aching sorrow that was with him, for her ears were closed to the sense of words, and his lips were locked by some key of some past.
His own judgment on himself was not light as he went over in his mind each moment of their hours together. Poor little ’Tana! poor little stray!
“I promised not to question her; yes, I promised that, or she would never have left the Indians with me. And I—I was savage with her, just because she would not tell me what she had a perfect right to keep from me if she chose. Even if it was—a lover, what right had I to object? What right to hold her hands—to say all the things I said? If she were a woman, I could tell her all I think—all, and let her judge. But not as it is—not to a girl so young—so troubled—so much of a stray. Oh, God! she shall never be a stray again, if only she gets well. I’d stay here digging forever if I could only send her out in the world among people who will make her happy. And she—the child, the child! said she would rather live here as we did than to have the gold182that would make her rich. God! it is hard for a man to forget that, no matter what duty says.”
So his thoughts would ramble on each day, each night, and his restlessness grew until Harris took to watching him with a great pity in his eyes, and mutely asked each time he entered if hope had grown any stronger.
By the request of Mrs. Huzzard they had moved Harris into the other room of the cabin, because of a rain which fell one night, and reminded them that his earthen floor might prove injurious to his health. Mrs. Huzzard declared she was afraid, with that room empty; and Harris, though having a partially dead body, had at least a living soul, and she greatly preferred his presence to the spiritless void and the fear of Indian occupancy.
So she shared the room with ’Tana, and the doctor and Overton used one tent, while the squaw used the other. All took turns watching at night beside the girl, who never knew one from the other, but who talked of gold—gold that was too heavy a load for her to carry—gold that ran in streams where she tried to find water to drink and could not—gold that Dan thought was better than friends or their pretty camp. And over those woes she would moan until frightened from them by ghosts, the ghosts she hated, and which she begged them so piteously to keep out of her sight.
So they had watched her for days, and toward the evening of the eighth Overton was keeping an ever-watchful ear for the Indian and the doctor who had gone personally to fetch needed medicines from the settlement.183
Akkomi was there as usual. Each day he would come, sit in the doorway of the Harris cabin for hours, and contemplate the helpless man there. When evening arrived he would enter his canoe and go back to his own camp, which at that time was not more than five miles away.
Overton, fearing that Harris would be painfully annoyed by the presence of this self-invited visitor, offered to entertain him in his own tent, if Harris preferred. But while Harris looked with no kindly eye on the old fellow, he signified that the Indian should remain, if he pleased. This was a decision so unexpected that Overton asked Harris if he had ever met Akkomi before.
He received an affirmative nod, which awakened his curiosity enough to make him question the Indian.
The old fellow nodded and smoked in silence for a little while before making a reply; then he said:
“Yes, one summer, one winter ago, the man worked in the hills beyond the river. Our hunters were there and saw him. His cabin is there still.”
“Who was with him?”
“White man, stranger,” answered Akkomi briefly. “This man stranger, too, in the Kootenai country—stranger from away somewhere there,” and he pointed vaguely toward the east. “Name—Joe—so him called.”
“And the other man?”
“Other man stranger, too—go way—never come back. This one go away, too; but he come back.”
“And that is all you know of them?”
“All. Joe not like Indian friends,” and the old fellow’s eyes wrinkled up in the semblance of laughter; “too much tenderfoot, maybe.”184
“But Joe’s partner,” persisted Overton, “he was not tenderfoot? He had Indian friends on the Columbia River.”
“Maybe,” agreed the old fellow, and his sly, bead-like eyes turned toward his questioner sharply and were as quickly withdrawn, “maybe so. They hunt silver over there. No good.”
Just inside the door Harris sat straining his ears to catch every word, and Akkomi’s assumption of bland ignorance brought a rather sardonic smile to his face, while his lips moved in voiceless mutterings of anger. Impatience was clearly to be read in his face as he waited for Overton to question further, and his right hand opened and closed in his eagerness.
But no other questions were asked just then; for Overton suddenly walked away, leaving the crafty-eyed Akkomi alone in his apparent innocence of Joe’s past or Joe’s partner.
The old fellow looked after him kindly enough, but shook his head and smoked his dirty black pipe, while an expression of undivulged knowledge adorned his withered physiognomy.
“No, Dan, no,” he murmured. “Akkomi good friend to little sick squaw and to you; but he not tell—not tell all things.”
Then his ears, not so keen as in years gone by, heard sounds on the water, sounds coming closer and closer. But Dan’s younger ears had heard them first, and it was to learn the cause that he had left so abruptly and walked to the edge of the stream.
It was the doctor and the Indian boatman who came in sight first around the bend of the creek. Back of them was another canoe, but a much larger, much more185pretentious one. In this was Lyster and a middle-aged gentleman of rather portly build, who dressed in a fashion very fine when compared with the average garb of the wilderness.
Overton watched with some surprise the approach of the man, who was an utter stranger to him, and yet who bore a resemblance to some one seen before. A certain something about the shape of the nose and general contour of the face seemed slightly familiar. He had time to notice, also, that the hair was auburn in color, and inclined to curl, and that back of him sat a female form. By the time he had made these observations, their boat had touched the shore, and Lyster was shaking his hand vigorously.
“I got your letter, telling me of your big strike. It caught me before I was quite started for Helena, so I just did some talking for you where I thought it would do the most good, old fellow, and turned right around and came back. I’ve been wild to hear about ’Tana. How is she? This is my friend, Mr. T. J. Haydon, my uncle’s partner, you know. He has made this trip to talk a little business with you, and when I learned you were not at the settlement, but up here in camp, I thought it would be all right to fetch him along.”
“Of course it is all right,” answered Overton, assuringly. “Our camp has a welcome for your friend even if we haven’t first-class accommodations for him. And is this lady also a friend?”
For Lyster, forgetful of his usual gallantry, had allowed the doctor to assist the other voyager from the canoe—a rather tall lady of the age generally expressed as “uncertain,” although the certainty of it was an indisputable fact.186
A rather childish hat was perched upon her thin but carefully frizzed hair, and over her face floated a white veil, that was on a drawing string around the crown of the hat and drooped gracefully and chastely over the features beneath, after the fashion of 1860. A string of beads adorned the thin throat, and the rest of her array was after the same order of elegance.
The doctor and Lyster exchanged glances, and Lyster was silently proclaimed master of ceremonies.
“Oh, yes,” he said, easily. “Pardon me that I am neglectful, and let me introduce you to Miss Slocum—Miss Lavina Slocum of Cherry Run, Ohio. She is the cousin of our friend, Mrs. Huzzard, and was in despair when she found her relative had left the settlement; so we had the pleasure of her company when she heard we were coming direct to the place where Mrs. Huzzard was located.”
“She will be glad to see you, miss,” said Overton, holding out his hand to her in very hearty greeting. “Nothing could be more welcome to this camp just now than the arrival of a lady, for poor Mrs. Huzzard has been having a sorry siege of care for the last week. If you will come along, I will take you to her at once.”
Gathering up her shawl, parasol, a fluffy, pale pink “cloud,” and a homemade and embroidered traveling bag, he escorted her with the utmost deference to the door of the log cabin, leaving Lyster without another word.
That easily amused gentleman stared after the couple with keen appreciation of the picture they presented. Miss Slocum had a queer, mincing gait which her long limbs appeared averse to, and the result was a little hitchy. But she kept up with Overton, and surveyed187him with weak blue eyes of gratitude. He appeared to her a very admirable personage—a veritable knight of the frontier, possibly a border hero such as every natural woman has an ideal of.
But to Lyster, Dan with his arms filled with female trappings and a lot of pink zephyr blown about his face and streaming over his shoulder, like a veritable banner of Love’s color, was a picture too ludicrous to be lost. He gazed after them in a fit of delight that seemed likely to end in apoplexy, because he was obliged to keep his hilarity silent.
“Just look at him!” he advised, in tones akin to a stage whisper. “Isn’t he a great old Dan? And maybe you think he would not promenade beside that make-up just as readily on Broadway, New York, or on Chestnut street, Philadelphia? Well, sir, he would! If it was necessary that some man should go with her, he would be the man to go, and Heaven help anybody he saw laughing! If you knew Dan Overton twenty years you would not see anything that would give you a better key to his nature than just his manner of acting cavalier to that—wonder.”
But Mr. Haydon did not appear to appreciate the scene with the same degree of fervor.
“Ah!” he said, turning his eyes with indifference to the two figures, and with scrutiny over the little camp-site and primitive dwellings. “Am I to understand, then, that your friend, the ranger, is a sort of modern Don Juan, to whom any order of femininity is acceptable?”
“No,” said Lyster, facing about suddenly. “And if my thoughtless manner of speech would convey such an idea of Dan Overton, then (to borrow one of Dan’s188own expressions) I deserve to be kicked around God’s footstool for a while.”
“Well, when you speak of his devotion to any sort of specimen—”
“Of course,” agreed Lyster. “I see my words were misleading—especially to one unaccustomed to the life and people out here. But Dan, as Don Juan, is one of the most unimaginable things! Why, he does not seem to know women exist as individuals. This is the only fault I have to find with him; for the man who does not care for some woman, or never has cared for any woman, is, according to my philosophy, no good on earth. But Dan just looks the other way if they commence to give him sweet glances—and they do, too! though he thinks that collectively they are all angels. Yes, sir! let the worst old harridan that ever was come to Overton with a tale of virtue and misfortune, and he will take off his hat and divide up his money, giving her a good share, just because she happens to be a woman. That is the sort of devotion to women I had reference to when I spoke first; the wonder to me is that he has not been caught in a matrimonial noose long ere this by some thrifty maid or matron. He seems to me guileless game for them, as his sympathy is always so easily touched.”
“Perhaps he is keeping free from bonds that he may marry this ward of his for whom he appears so troubled,” remarked Mr. Haydon.
Lyster looked anything but pleased at the suggestion.
“I don’t think he would like to hear that said,” he returned. “’Tana is only a little girl in his eyes—one left in his charge at the death of her own people, and one who appeals to him very strongly just now because of her helplessness.”189
“Well,” said Mr. Haydon, with a slight smile, “I appear to be rather unfortunate in all my surmises over the people of this new country, especially this new camp. I do not know whether it is because I am in a stupid mood, or because I have come among people too peculiar to be judged by ordinary standards. But the thing I am interested in above and beyond our host and hisprotégéeis the gold mine he wrote you to find a buyer for. I think I could appreciate that, at least, at its full value, if I was allowed a sight of the output.”
The doctor had hurried to the cabin even before Overton and Miss Slocum, so the two gentlemen were left by themselves, to follow at their leisure. Mr. Haydon seemed a trifle resentful at this indifferent reception.
“One would think this man had been making big deals in gold ore all his life, and was perfectly indifferent as to whether our capital is to be used to develop this find of his,” he remarked, as they approached the cabin. “Did you not tell me he was a poor man?”
“Oh, yes. Poor in gold or silver of the United States mint,” agreed Lyster, with a strong endeavor to keep down his impatience of this magnate of the speculative world, this wizard of the world of stocks and bonds, whom his partners deferred to, whose nod and beck meant much in a circle of capitalists. “I myself, when back East,” thought Lyster to himself, “considered Haydon a wonderful man, but he seems suddenly to have grown dwarfed and petty in my eyes, and I wonder that I ever paid such reverence to his judgment.”
He smiled dubiously to himself at the consciousness that the wide spirit of the West must have already changed his own views of things somewhat, since once he had thought this marketer of mines superior.190
“But no one out here would think of calling Dan Overton poor,” he continued, “simply because he is not among the class that weighs a man’s worth by the dollars he owns. He is considered one of the solid men of the district—one of the best men to know. But no one thinks of gauging his right to independence by the amount of his bank account.”
Mr. Haydon shrugged his shoulders, and tapped his foot with the gold-headed umbrella he carried.
“Oh, yes. I suppose it seems very fine in young minds and a young country, to cultivate an indifference to wealth; but to older minds and civilization it grows to be a necessity. Is that object over there also one of the solid men of the community?”
It was Akkomi he had reference to, and the serene manner with which the old fellow glanced over them, and nonchalantly smoked his pipe in the doorway, did give him the appearance of a fixture about the camp, and puzzled Lyster somewhat, for he had never before met the ancient chief.
He nodded his head, however, saying “How?” in friendly greeting, and the Indian returned the civility in the same way, but gave slight attention to the speaker. All the attention of his little black eyes was given to the stranger, who did not address him, and whose gaze was somewhat critical and altogether contemptuous.
Then Mrs. Huzzard, without waiting for them to reach the door, hurried out to greet Lyster.
“I’m as glad as any woman can be to see you back again,” she said heartily, “though it’s more than I hoped for so soon, and—Yes, the doctor says she’s a little better, thank God! And your name has been on her lips more than once—poor dear!—since she has been191flighty, and all the thanks I feel to you for bringing Lavina right along I can never tell you; for it seems a month since I saw a woman last. I just can’t count the squaw! And do you want to come in and look at our poor little girl now? She won’t know you; but if you wish—”
“May I?” asked Lyster, gratefully. Then he turned to the stranger.
“Your daughter back home is about the same age,” he remarked. “Will you come in?”
“Oh, certainly,” answered Mr. Haydon, rather willing to go anywhere away from the very annoying old redskin of the pipe and the very—very scrutinizing eyes.
The doctor and Overton had passed into the room where Harris was, and Mrs. Huzzard halted at the door with her cousin, so that the two men approached the bed alone. The dark form of Akkomi had slipped in after them like a shadow, but a very alert one, for his head was craned forward that his eyes might lose never an expression of the fine stranger’s face.
’Tana’s eyes were closed, but her lips moved voicelessly. The light was dim in the little room, and Lyster bent over to look at her, and touched her hot forehead tenderly.
“Poor little girl! poor ’Tana!” he said, and turned the covering from about her chin where she had pulled it. He had seen her last so saucy, so defiant of all his wishes, and the change to this utter helplessness brought the quick tears to his eyes. He clasped her hand softly and turned away.
“It is too dark in here to see anything very clearly,” said the stranger, who bent toward her slightly, with his hat in his hand.192
Then Akkomi, who had intercepted the light somewhat, moved from the foot of the bed to the stranger’s side, and a little sunshine rifted through the small doorway and outlined more clearly the girl’s face on the pillow.
The stranger, who was quite close to her, uttered a sudden gasping cry as he saw her face more clearly, and drew back from the bed.
The dark hand of the Indian caught his white wrist and held him, while with the other hand he pointed to the curls of reddish brown clustering around the girl’s pale forehead, and from them to the curls on Mr. Haydon’s own bared head. They were not so luxuriant as those of the girl, but they were of the same character, almost the same color, and the vague resemblance to something familiar by which Overton had been impressed was at once located by the old Indian the moment the stranger lifted the hat from his head.
“Sick, maybe die,” said Akkomi, in a voice that was almost a whisper—“die away from her people, away from the blood that is as her blood,” and he pointed to the blue veins on the white man’s wrist.
With an exclamation of fear and anger, Mr. Haydon flung off the Indian’s hand.
Lyster, scarce hearing the words spoken, simply thought the old fellow was drunk, and was about to interfere, when the girl, as though touched by the contest above her, turned mutteringly on the pillow and opened her unconscious eyes on the face of the stranger.
“See!” said the Indian. “She looks at you.”
“Ah! Great God!” muttered the other and staggered back out of the range of the wide-open eyes.193
Lyster, puzzled, astonished, came forward to question his Eastern friend, who pushed past him rudely, blindly, and made his way out into the sunshine.
Akkomi looked after him with a gratified expression on his dark, wrinkled old face, and bending over the girl, he muttered in a soothing way words in the Indian tongue, as though to quiet her restlessness with Indian witchery.