226CHAPTER XVIII.AWAKENING.
“Flap-Jacks,” said ’Tana, softly, so as to reach no ear but that of the squaw, who came in from Harris’ cabin to find the parasol of Miss Slocum, who was about to walk in the sunshine. To the red creature of the forest this parasol seemed the most wonderfully beautiful thing of all the strange things which the white squaws made use of. “Flap-Jacks, are they gone?”
Three weeks had gone by, three weeks of miraculous changes in the beauty of their wild nook along the trail of the old river.
“Twin Springs,” the place was called now—Twin Spring Mines. Already men were at work on the new lode, and doing placer digging for the free gold in the soil. Wooden rails were laid to the edge of the stream, and over it the small, rude car was pushed with the new ore down to a raft on which a test load had been drifted to the immense crusher at the works on Lake Kootenai. And the test had resulted so favorably that the new strike at Twin Springs was considered by far the richest one of the year.
Through all the turbulence that swept up the little stream to their camp, two of the discovering party were housed, sick and silent, in the little double cabin. The doctor could see no reason why ’Tana was so slow in her recovery; he had expected so much more of her—that227she would be carried into health again by the very force of her ambition, and her eager delight in the prospects which her newly acquired wealth was opening up to her.
But puzzling to relate, she showed no eagerness at all about it. Her ambitions, if she had any, were asleep, and she scarcely asked a question concerning all the changes of life and people around her. Listless she lay from one day to another, accepting the attention of people indifferently. Max would read to her a good deal, and several times she asked to be carried into the cabin of Harris, where she would sit for hours talking to him, sometimes in a low voice and then again sitting close beside him in long silences, which, strangely enough, seemed more of companionship to her than the presence of people who laughed and talked. They wearied her at times. When she was able to walk out, she liked to go alone; even Max she had sent back when he followed her.
But she never went far. Sometimes she would sit for an hour by the stream, watching the water slip past the pebbles and the grasses, and on to its turbulent journey toward a far-off rest in the Pacific. And again, she would watch some strange miner dig and wash the soil in his search for the precious “yellow.” But her walks were ever within the limits of the busy diggings; all her old fondness for the wild places seemed sleeping—like her ambitions.
“She needs change now. Get her away from here,” advised the doctor, who no longer felt that she needed medicines, but who could not, with all his skill, build her up again into the daring, saucy ’Tana, who had228won the game of cards from the captain that night at the select party at Sinna Ferry.
But when Overton, after much hesitation, broached the subject of her going away, she did look at him with a touch of the old defiance in her face, and after a bit said:
“I guess the camp will have to be big enough for you and me, too, a few days longer. I haven’t made up my mind as to when I want to go.”
“But the summer will not last long, now. You must commence to think of where you want to go; for when the cold weather comes, ’Tana, you can’t remain here.”
“I can if I want to,” she answered.
After one troubled, helpless look at her pale face, he walked out of the cabin; and Lyster, who had wanted to ask the result of the interview, could not find him all that evening. He had gone somewhere alone, up on the mountain.
She had answered him with a great deal of cool indifference; but when the two cousins entered her room, she was on the bed with her face buried in the pillows, weeping in an uncontrollable manner that filled them with dismay. The doctor decided that while Dan was a good fellow in most ways, he evidently had not a soothing influence on ’Tana, possibly not realizing the changed mental condition laid on her by her sickness. The doctor further made up his mind that, without hurting Dan’s feelings, he must find some other mouthpiece for his ideas concerning her or reason with her himself.
But, so far, she would only say she was not ready to go yet. Dan, wishing to make her stay comfortable as possible, went quietly to all the settlements within reach for luxuries in the way of house-furnishing, and had229Mrs. Huzzard use them in ’Tana’s cabin. But when he had done all this, she never asked a question as to where the comforts came from—she, who, a short month before, had valued each kind glance received from him.
Mrs. Huzzard was sorely afraid that it was pride, the pride of newly acquired wealth, that changed her from the gay, saucy girl into a moody, dreamy being, who would lie all alone for hours and not notice any of them coming and going. The good soul had many a heartache over it all, never guessing that it was an ache and a shame in the heart of the girl that made the new life that was given her seem a thing of little value.
’Tana had watched the squaw wistfully at times, as if expecting her to say something to her when the others were not around, but she never did. When ’Tana heard the ladies ask Lyster to go with them to a certain place where beautiful mosses were to be found, she waited with impatience until their voices left the door.
The squaw shook her head when asked in that whispering way of their departure; but when she had carried out the parasol and watched the party disappear beyond the numerous tents now dotting the spaces where the grass grew rank only a month before, then she slipped back and stood watchful and silent inside the door.
“Come close,” said the girl, motioning with a certain nervousness to her. She was not the brave, indifferent little girl she had been of old. “Come close—some one might listen, somewhere. I’ve been so sick—I’ve dreamed so many things that I can’t tell some days what is dream and what is true. I lie here and think and think, but it will not come clear. Listen! I think sometimes you and I hunted for tracks—a white man’s tracks—across there where the high ferns are. You showed them to me,230and then we came back when the moon shone, and it was light like day, and I picked white flowers. Some days I think of it—of the tracks, long, slim tracks, with the boot heel. Then my head hurts, and I think maybe we never found the tracks, maybe it is only a dream, like—like other things!”
She did not ask if it were so, but she leaned forward with all of eager question in her eyes. It was the first time she had shown strong interest in anything. But, having aroused from her listlessness to speak of the ghosts of fancy haunting her, she seemed quickened to anxiety by the picture her own words conjured up.
“Ah! those tracks in the black mud and that face above the ledge!”
“It is true,” said the squaw, “and not a dream. The track of the white man was there, and the moon was in the sky, as you say.”
“Ah!” and the evidently unwelcome truth made her clench her fingers together despairingly; she had hoped so that it was a dream. The truth of it banished her lethargy, made her think as nothing else had. “Ah! it was so, then; and the face—the face was real, was—”
“I saw no face,” said the squaw.
“But I did—yes, I did,” she muttered. “I saw it like the face of a white devil!”
Then she checked herself and glanced at the Indian woman, whose dark, heavy face appeared so stupid. Still, one never could tell by the looks of an Indian how much or how little he knows of the thing you want to know; and after a moment’s scrutiny, the girl asked:
“Did you learn more of the tracks?—learn who the white man was that made them?”
The woman shook her head.231
“You sick—much sick,” she explained. “All time Dan he say: ‘Stay here by white girl’s bed. Never leave.’ So I not get out again, and the rain come wash all track away.”
“Does Dan know?—did you tell him?”
“No, Dan never ask—never talk to me, only say, ‘Take care ’Tana,’ that all.”
The girl asked no more, but lay there on her couch, filled with dry moss and covered with skins of the mountain wolf. Her eyes closed as though she were asleep; but the squaw knew better, and after a little, she said doubtfully:
“Maybe Akkomi know.”
“Akkomi!” and the eyes opened wide and slant. “That is so. I should have remembered. But oh, all the thoughts in my brain have been so muddled. You have heard something, then? Tell me.”
“Not much—only little,” answered the squaw. “That night—late that night, a white stranger reached Akkomi’s tent, to sleep. No one else of the tribe got to see him, so the word is. Kawaka heard on the river, and it was that night.”
“And then? Where did the stranger go?”
The squaw shook her head.
“Me not know. Kawaka not hear. But I thought of the track. Now many white men make tracks, and one no matter.”
“Akkomi,” and the thoughts of the girl went back to the very first she could remember of her recovery; and always, each day, the face of Akkomi had been near her. He had not talked, but would look at her a little while with his sharp, bead-like eyes, and then betake himself to the sunshine outside her door, where he would232smoke placidly for hours and watch the restless Anglo-Saxon in his struggle to make the earth yield up its riches.
Each day Akkomi had been there, and she had not once aroused herself to question why; but she would.
Rising, she passed out and looked right and left; but no blanketed brave met her gaze. Only Kawaka, the husband of Flap-Jacks, worked about the canoes by the water. Then she entered Harris’ cabin, where the sight of his helpless form, and his welcoming smile, made her halt, and drop down on the rug beside him. She had forgotten him so much of late, and she touched his hand remorsefully.
“I feel as if I had just got awake, Joe,” she said, and stretched out her arms, as though to drive away the last vestige of sleep. “Do you know how that feels? To lie for days, stupid as a chilled snake, and then, all at once, to feel the sun creeping around where you are and warming you until you begin to wonder how you could have slept so many days away. Well, just now I feel almost well again. I did not think I would get well; I did not care. All the days I lay in there I wished they would just let me be, and throw their medicines in the creek. I think, Joe, that there are times when people should be allowed to die, when they grow tired—tired away down in their hearts; so tired that they don’t want to take up the old tussle of living again. It is so much easier to die then than when a person is happy, and—and has some one to like them, and—”
She left the sentence unfinished, but he nodded a perfect understanding of her thoughts.
“Yes, you have felt like that, too, I suppose,” she continued, after a little. “But now, Joe, they tell me we233are rich—you and Dan and I—so rich we ought to be happy, all of us. Are we?”
He only smiled at her, and glanced at the cozy furnishing of his rude cabin. Like ’Tana’s, it had been given a complete going over by Overton, and rugs and robes did much to soften its crude wood-work. It had all the luxury obtainable in that district, though even yet the doors were but heavy skins.
She noticed the look but shook her head.
“Thick rugs and soft pillows don’t make troubles lighter,” she said, with conviction; and then: “Maybe Dan is happy. He—he must be. All he thinks of now is the gold ore.”
She spoke so wistfully, and her own eyes looked so far, far from happy, that the face of the man was filled with longing to comfort her—the little girl who had tramped so long on a lone trail—how lonely none knew so well as he. His fingers closed and unclosed, as if with the desire to clasp her hand,—to make some visible show of friendship.
She saw the slight movement, and looked up at him with a new interest.
“Oh, I forgot, Joe! I never once have asked how you have got along while I have been so sick. Can you use your hands any at all? You could once, a little bit that day—the day we found the gold.”
But he shook his head, and just then a step was heard outside, and Lyster looked in.
A shade of surprise touched his face, as he saw ’Tana there, with so bright an expression in her eyes.
“What has Harris been telling you that has aroused you to interest, Tana?” he asked, jestingly. “He has234more influence than I, for I have scarcely been able to get you to talk at all.”
“You don’t need me; you have Miss Slocum,” she answered. “Have you dropped her in the creek and run back to camp? And have you seen Akkomi lately? I want him.”
“Of course you do. The moment I make my appearance, you want to get rid of me by sending me for some other man. No, I am happy to say I have not seen that royal loafer for the past hour. And I am more happy still to find that you really want some one—any one—once more. Do you realize, my dear girl, how very many days it is since you have condescended to want anything on this earth of ours? Won’t you accept me as a substitute for Akkomi?”
“I don’t want you.”
But her eyes smiled on him kindly, and he did not believe her.
“Perhaps not; but won’t you pretend you do for a little while, long enough to come with me for a little walk—or else to talk to me in your cabin?”
“To talk to you? I don’t think I can talk much to any one yet. I just told Joe I feel as if I was only waking up.”
“So I see; that is the reason I am asking an audience. I will do the talking, and it need not be a very long talk, if you are too tired.”
“I believe I will go,” she said, at last. “I was thinking it would be nice to float in a canoe again—just to float lazy on the current. Can’t we do that?”
“Nothing easier,” he answered, entirely delighted that she was again more like the ’Tana of two months before. She seemed to him a little paler and a little taller, but235as they walked together to the canoe, he felt that they would again come to the old chummy days of Sinna Ferry, when they quarreled and made up as regularly as the sun rose and set.
“Well, why don’t you talk?” she asked, as their little craft drifted away from the tents and the man who washed the soil by the spring run. “What did you do with the women folks?”
“Gave them to Overton. They concluded not to risk their precious selves with me, when they discovered that he, for a wonder, was disengaged. Really and truly, that angular schoolmistress will make herself Mrs. Overton if he is not careful. She flatters him enough to spoil an average man; looks at him with so much respectful awe, you know, though she never does say much to him.”
“Saves her breath to drill Mrs. Huzzard with,” observed the girl, dryly. “That poor, dear woman has a bee in her muddled old head, and the bee is Captain Leek and his fine manners. I can see it, plain as day. Bless her heart! I hear her go over and over words that she always used to say wrong, and she does eat nicer than she used to. Humph! I wonder if Dan Overton will take as kindly to being taught, when the school-teacher begins with him.”
There was a mirthless, unlovely smile about her lips, and Lyster reached over and clasped her hand coaxingly.
“’Tana, what has changed you so?” he asked. “Is it your sickness—is it the gold—or what, that makes you turn from your old friends? Dan never says a word, but I notice it. You never talk to him, and he has almost quit going to your cabin at all, though he would236do anything for you, I know. My dear, you will find few friends like him in the world.”
“Oh, don’t—don’t bother me about him,” she answered, irritably. “He is all right, of course. But I—”
Then she stopped, and with a determined air turned the subject.
“You said you had something to talk to me about. What was it?”
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear you speak as you used to,” he said, looking at her kindly. “I would be rejoiced even to get a scolding from you these days. But that was not exactly what I brought you out to tell you, either,” and he drew from his pocket the letter he had carried for three weeks, waiting until she appeared strong enough to accept surprises. “I suppose, of course, you have heard us talk a good deal about the Eastern capitalist who was here when you were so sick, and who, unhesitatingly, made purchase of the Twin Spring Mines, as it is called now.”
“You mean the very fine Mr. Haydon, who had curly hair and looked like me?” she asked, ironically. “Yes, I’ve heard the women folks talking about him a good deal, when they thought me asleep. Old Akkomi scared him a little, too, didn’t he?”
“So, youhaveheard?” he asked, in surprise. “Well, yes, he does look a little like you; it’s the hair, I think. But I don’t see why you utter his name with so much contempt, ’Tana.”
“Maybe not; but I’ve heard the name of Haydon before to-day, and I have a grudge against it.”
“But not this Haydon.”
“I don’t know which Haydon. I never saw any of237them—don’t know as I want to. I guess this one is almost too fine for Kootenai country people, anyway.”
“But that is where you are wrong, entirely wrong, ’Tana,” he hastened to explain. “He was very much interested in you—very much, indeed; asked lots of questions about you, and—and here is what I wanted to speak of. When he went away, he gave me this letter for you. I imagine he wants to help make arrangements for you when you go East, have you know nice people and all that. You see, ’Tana, his daughter is about your age, and looks just a little as you do sometimes; and I think he wants to do something for you. It’s an odd thing for him to take so strong an interest in any stranger; but they are the very best people you could possibly know if you go to Philadelphia.”
“Maybe if you would let me see the letter myself, I could tell better whether I wanted to know them or not,” she said, and Lyster handed it to her without another word.
It was a rather long letter, two closely-written sheets, and he could not understand the little contemptuous smile with which she opened it. Haydon, the great financier, had seemed to him a very wonderful personage when he was ’Tana’s age.
The girl was not so indifferent as she tried to appear. Her fingers trembled a little, though her mouth grew set and angry as she read the carefully kind words of Mr. Haydon.
“It is rather late in the day for them to come with offers to help me,” she said, bitterly. “I can help myself now; but if they had looked for me a year ago—two or three years ago—”
“Looked for you!” he exclaimed, with a sort of238impatient wonder. “Why, my dear girl, who would even think of hunting for little white girls in these forests? Don’t be foolishly resentful now that people want to be nice to you. You could not expect attention from people before they were aware of your existence.”
“But they did know of my existence!” she answered, curtly. “Oh! you needn’t stare at me like that, Mr. Max Lyster! I know what I’m talking about. I have the very shaky honor of being a relation of your fine gentleman from the East. I thought it when I heard the name, but did not suppose he would know it. And I’m not too proud of it, either, as you seem to think I ought to be.”
“But they are one of our best families—”
“Then your worst must be pretty bad,” she interrupted. “I know just about what they are.”
“But ’Tana—how does it come—”
“I won’t answer any questions about it, Max, so don’t ask,” and she folded up the letter and tore it into very little pieces, which she let fall into the water. “I am not going to claim the relationship or their hospitality, and I would just as soon you forgot that I acknowledged it. I didn’t mean to tell, but that letter vexed me.”
“Look here, ’Tana,” and Lyster caught her hand again. “I can’t let you act like this. They can be of much more help to you socially than all your money. If the family are related to you, and offer you attention, you can’t afford to ignore it. You do not realize now how much their attention will mean; but when you are older, you will regret losing it. Let me advise you—let me—”
“Oh, hush!” she said, closing her eyes, wearily. “I am tired—tired! What difference does it make to you—why need you care?”239
“May I tell you?” and he looked at her so strangely, so gravely, that her eyes opened in expectation of—she knew not what.
“I did not mean to let you know so soon, ’Tana,” and his clasp of her hand grew closer; “but, it is true—I love you. Everything that concerns you makes a difference to me. Now do you understand?”
“You!—Max—”
“Don’t draw your hand away. Surely you guessed—a little? I did not know myself how much I cared till you came so near dying. Then I knew I could not bear to let you go. And—and you care a little too, don’t you! Speak to me!”
“Let us go home,” she answered in a low voice, and tried to draw her fingers away. She liked him—yes; but—
“Tana, won’t you speak? Oh, my dear, dear one, when you were so ill, so very ill, you knew no one else, but you turned to me. You went asleep with your cheek against my hand, and more than once, ’Tana, with your hand clasping mine. Surely that was enough to make me hope—for you did like me a little, then.”
“Yes, I—liked you,” but she turned her head away, that he could not see her flushed face. “You were good to me, but I did not know—I could not guess—” and she broke down as though about to cry, and his own eyes were full of tenderness. She appealed to him now as she had never done in her days of brightness and laughter.
“Listen to me,” he said, pleadingly. “I won’t worry you. I know you are too weak and ill to decide yet about your future. I don’t ask you to answer me now. Wait. Go to school, as I know you intend to do; but don’t forget me. After the school is over you can decide. I will240wait with all patience. I would not have told you now, but I wanted you to know I was interested in the answer you would give Haydon. I wanted you to know that I would not for the world advise you, but for your best interests. Won’t you believe—”
“I believe you; but I don’t know what to say to you. You are different from me—your people are different. And of my people you know nothing, nothing at all, and—”
“And it makes no difference,” he interrupted. “I know you have had a lot of trouble for a little girl, or your family have had trouble you are sensitive about. I don’t know what it is, but it makes no difference—not a bit. I will never question about it, unless you prefer to tell of your own accord. Oh, my dear! if some day you could be my wife, I would help you forget all your childish troubles and your unpleasant life.”
“Let us go home,” she said, “you are good to me, but I am so tired.”
He obediently turned the canoe, and at that moment voices came to them from toward the river—ringing voices of men.
“It is possibly Mr. Haydon and others,” he exclaimed, after listening a moment. “We have been expecting them for days. That was why I could no longer put off giving you the letter.”
“I know,” she said, and her face flushed and paled a little, as the voices came closer. He could see she nervously dreaded the meeting.
“Shall I get the canoe back to camp before they come?” he asked kindly; but she shook her head.
“You can’t, for they move fast,” she answered, as she241listened. “They would see us; and, if he is with them, he—would think I was afraid.”
He let the canoe drift again, and watched her moody face, which seemed to grow more cold with each moment that the strangers came closer. He was filled with surprise at all she had said of Haydon and of the letter. Who would have dreamed that she—the little Indian-dressed guest of Akkomi’s camp—would be connected with the most exclusive family he knew in the East? The Haydon family was one he had been especially interested in only a year ago, because of Mr. Haydon’s very charming daughter. Miss Haydon, however, had a clever and ambitious mamma, who persisted in keeping him at a safe distance.
Max Lyster, with his handsome face and unsettled prospects, was not the brilliant match her hopes aspired to. Pretty Margaret Haydon had, in all obedience, refused him dances and affected not to see his efforts to be near her. But he knew she did see; and one little bit of comfort he had taken West with him was the fancy that her refusals were never voluntary affairs, and that she had looked at him as he had never known her to look at another man.
Well, that was a year ago, and he had just asked another girl to marry him—a girl who did not look at him at all, but whose eyes were on the swift-flowing current—troubled eyes, that made him long to take care of her.
“Won’t you speak to me at all?” he asked. “I will do anything to help you, ’Tana—anything at all.”
She nodded her head slowly.
“Yes—now,” she answered. “So would Mr. Haydon, Max.”242
“’Tana! do you mean—” His face flushed hotly, and he looked at her for the first time with anger in his face.
She put out her hand in a tired, pleading way.
“I only mean that now, when I have been lucky enough to help myself, it seems as if every one thinks I need looking after so much more than they used to. Maybe because I am not strong yet—maybe so; I don’t know.” Then she smiled and looked at him curiously.
“But I made a mistake when I said ’every one,’ didn’t I? For Dan never comes near me any more.”
Then the strange canoes came in sight and very close to them, as they turned a bend in the creek. There were three large boats—one carrying freight, one filled with new men for the works, and in the other—the foremost one—was Mr. Haydon, and a tall, thin, middle-aged stranger.
“Uncle Seldon!” exclaimed Lyster, with animation, and held the canoe still in the water, that the other might come close, and in a whisper he said:
“The one to the right is Mr. Haydon.”
He glanced at her and saw she was making a painful effort at self-control.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “We will just speak, and drift on past them.”
But when they called greeting to each other, and the Indian boatman was told to send their craft close to the little camp canoe, she raised her head and looked very levelly across the stranger, who had hair so like her own, and spoke to the Indian who paddled their boat as though he were the only one there to notice.
“Plucky!” decided Mr. Haydon, “and stubborn;” but he kept those thoughts to himself, and said aloud: “My dear young lady, I am indeed pleased to see you so far243recovered since my last visit. I presume you know who I am,” and he looked at her in a smiling, confidential way.
“Yes, I know who you are. Your name is Haydon, and—there is a piece of your letter.”
She picked up a fragment of paper that had fallen at her feet, and flung it out from her on the water. Mr. Haydon affected not to see the pettish act, but turned to his companion.
“Will you allow me, Miss Rivers, to introduce another member of our firm? This is Mr. Seldon. Seldon, this is the young girl I told you of.”
“I knew it before you spoke,” said the other man, who looked at her with a great deal of interest, and a great deal of kindness. “My child, I was your mother’s friend long ago. Won’t you let me be yours?”
She reached out her hand to him, and the quick tears came to her eyes. She trusted without question the earnest gray eyes of the speaker, and turned from her own uncle to the uncle of Max.
244CHAPTER XIX.THE MAN IN AKKOMI’S CLOAK.
“My dear fellow, there is, of course, no way of thanking you sufficiently for your care of her; but I can only say I am mighty glad to know a man like you.”
It was Mr. Seldon who said so, and Dan Overton looked embarrassed and deprecating under the praise he had to accept.
“It is all right for you to make a fuss over it, Seldon,” he returned; “but you know, as well as you know dinner time, that you would have done no less if you had found a young girl anywhere without a home—and especially if you found her in an Indian camp.”
“Did she give you any information as to how she came to be there?”
Overton looked at him good-naturedly, but shook his head.
“I can’t give you any information about that,” he answered. “If you want to know anything of her previous to meeting her here, she will have to tell you.”
“But she won’t. I can’t understand it; for I can see no need of mystery. I knew her mother when she was a girl like ’Tana, and—”
“You did?”
“Yes, I did. So now, perhaps, you will understand why I take such an interest in her—why Mr. Haydon takes an interest in her. Simply because she is his niece.”245
“Oh, she is—is she? And he came here, found her dying, or next door to it, and never claimed her.”
“No; that is a little way of his,” acknowledged his partner. “If she had really died, he never would have said a word about it, for it would have caused him a lot of troublesome explanation at home. But I guess he knew I would be likely to come across her. She is the very image of what her mother was. He told me the whole story of how he found her here, and all. And now he wants to do the proper thing and take her home with him.”
“The devil he does!” growled Overton. “Well, why do you come to me about it?”
“Your influence with her was one thing,” answered Mr. Seldon, with a dubious smile at the dark face before him. “Thisprotégéeof yours has a will of her own, it seems, and refuses utterly to acknowledge her aristocratic relations, refuses to be a part of her uncle’s household; and we want your influence toward changing her mind.”
“Well, you’ll never get it,” and the tone was decided as the words. “If she says she is no relation to anybody, I’ll back her up in it, and not ask her her reasons, either. If she doesn’t want to go with Mr. Haydon, she is the only one I will allow to decide, unless he brings a legal order from some court, and I might try to hinder him even then. She willingly came under my guardianship, and when she leaves it, it must be willingly.”
“Oh, of course there will be no coercion about the matter,” explained Mr. Seldon, hastily. “But don’t you, yourself, think it would be a decided advantage for her to live for a while with her own relatives?”246
“I am in no position to judge. I don’t know her relatives. I don’t know why it is that she has not been taken care of by them long ago; and I am not asking any questions. She knows, and that is enough; and I am sure her reasons for not going would satisfy me.”
“Well, you are a fine specimen to come to for influence,” observed the other. “She has a grudge against Haydon, that is the obstacle—a grudge, because he quarreled with her mother long ago. I thought that as you have done so much for her, your word might have weight in showing her the folly of it.”
“My word would have no more weight than yours,” he answered, curtly. “All I have done for her amounts to nothing; and I’ve an idea that if she wanted me to know her family affairs, she would tell me.”
“Which, interpreted, means that I had better be at other business than gossiping,” said Mr. Seldon, with much good humor. “Well, you are a fine pair, and something alike, too—you goldfinders! She snubbed Max for trying to persuade her, and you snub me. As a last resort, I think I shall try to get that old Indian into our lobbying here. He is her next great friend, I hear.”
“I haven’t seen him in camp to-day, for a wonder; but he is sure to be around before night.”
“But, you see, we are to go on up to the new works on the lake to-day, and be back day after to-morrow. I wish you, too, could go up to-morrow, for I would like your judgment about some changes we expect to make. Could you leave here for twenty-four hours?”
“I’ll try,” promised Overton. “But the new men from the Ferry will be up to-day or to-morrow, so I may not reach there until you are about ready to start back.”247
“Come anyway, if you can, I don’t seem to get much chance to talk to you here in camp—maybe I could on the river. You may be in a more reasonable mood about ’Tana by that time, and try to influence her to partake of civilization.”
“‘Civilization!’ Oh, yes, of course, you imagine it all lies east of the Appalachian range,” remarked Overton, slightingly. “I expect that from a man of Haydon’s stamp, but not from you.”
Seldon only laughed.
“One would think you had been born and bred out here in the West,” he remarked, “while you are really only an importation. But what is that racket about?”
For screeches were sounding from the cabin—cries, feminine and frightened.
Overton and Seldon started for it, as did several of the workmen, but their haste slackened as they saw ’Tana leaning against a doorway and laughing, while the squaw stood near her, chuckling a little as a substitute for merriment.
But there were two others within the cabin who were by no means merry—the two cousins, who were standing huddled together on the couch, uttering spasmodic screeches at every movement made by a little gray snake on the floor.
It had crept in at a crevice, and did not know how to make its escape from the noisy shelter it had found. Its fright was equal to that of the women, for it appeared decidedly restless, and each uneasy movement of it was a signal for fresh screams.
“Oh, Mr. Overton! I beg of you, kill the horrible reptile!” moaned Miss Slocum, who at that moment was as indifferent to the proprieties as Mrs. Huzzard, and was248displaying considerable white hosiery and black gaiter tops.
“Oh, lawsy! It is coming this way again. Ooh—ooh—h!” and Mrs. Huzzard did a little dance from one foot to the other, in a very ecstasy of fear. “Oh, Lavina, I’ll never forgive myself for advising you to come out to this Idaho country! Oh, Lord! won’t somebody kill it?”
“Why, there is no need to fear that little thing,” said Overton. “Really, it is not a snake to bite—no more harm in it than in a mouse.”
“Amouse!” they both shrieked. “Oh, please take it away.”
Just then Akkomi came in through the other cabin, and, hearing the shrieks, simply stooped and picked up the little stranger in his hand, holding it that they might see how harmless it was.
But, instead of pacifying them, as he had kindly intended, they only cowered against the wall, too horrified even to scream, while they gazed at the old Indian, as at something just from the infernal regions.
“Lord, have mercy on our souls,” muttered Lavina, in a sepulchral tone, and with pallid, almost moveless, lips.
“Forever and ever, amen,” added Lorena Jane, clutching her drapery a little closer, and a little higher.
And not until Overton persuaded Akkomi to throw the frightened little thing away did they consent to move from their pedestal. Even then it was with fear and trembling, and many an awful glance toward the placid old Indian, who smoked his pipe and never glanced toward them.249
“Never again will I sleep in that room—not if I die for it!” announced Mrs. Huzzard, and Miss Slocum was of the same mind.
“But the cabin is as safe as a tent,” said ’Tana, persuasively, “and, really, it was not a dangerous snake.”
“Ooh—h! I beg that you will not mention it,” shivered Miss Slocum. “For my part, I don’t expect to sleep anywhere after this terrible experience. But I’ll go wherever Lorena Jane goes, and do what I can to comfort and protect her, while she rests.”
Akkomi sat on Harris’ doorstep, and smoked, while they argued on the dangers around them, and were satisfied only when Overton put a tent at their disposal. They proceeded to have hammocks swung in it on poles set for the purpose, as they could feel safe on no bed resting on the ground.
“But, really, my conscience troubles me about leaving you here alone, ’Tana,” said Mrs. Huzzard, and Overton also looked at her as if interested in her comfort.
“Well, your conscience had better give itself a rest, if that is all it has to disturb it,” she answered. “I don’t care the least bit about staying alone—I rather like it; though, if I need any one, I’ll have Flap-Jacks stay.”
So Overton left them to their arrangements, and said nothing to ’Tana; but as Seldon and Haydon were about to embark, he spoke to the former.
“I may not be able to get up there after all, as I may feel it necessary to be here at night, so don’t wait for me.”
“All right, Overton; but we’d like to have you.”
After the others had left the cabin, Akkomi still remained, and the girl watched him uneasily but did not speak. She talked to Harris, telling him of the funny actions of the two frightened women, but all the time she250talked and tried to entertain the helpless man, it was with an evident effort, for the dark old Indian’s face at the door was constantly drawing her attention.
When she finally entered her own room, he appeared at the entrance, and, after a careful glance, to see that no one was near, he entered and spoke:
“’Tana, it is now two suns since we talked. Will you go to-day in my boat for a little ways?”
“No,” she said, angrily. “Go home to your tepee, Akkomi, and tell the man there I am sorry he is not dead. I never will see him again. I go away from this place now—very soon—maybe this week. What becomes of him I do not care, and it will be long before I come back.”
He muttered some words of regret, and she turned to him more kindly.
“Yes, I know, Akkomi, you are my good friend. You think it is right to do what you are doing now. Maybe it is; maybe I am wrong. But I will not be different in this matter—never—never!”
“If he should come here—”
“He would not dare. There are people here he had better fear. Give him the names of Seldon and of Haydon.”
“He knows; but it is the new miners he fears most; they come from all parts. He wants money.”
“Let him work for it, like an honest man,” she said, curtly. “Don’t talk of it again. I will not go outside the camp alone, and I will not listen to any more words about it. Now mind that!”
In the other cabin, Harris listened intently to each word uttered. His eyes fairly blazed in his eagerness to hear ’Tana’s final decision. But when Akkomi slouched past his door, and peered in, with his sharp,251quick eyes, he had relapsed again into the apathetic state habitual to him. To all appearances he had not heard their words, and the old Indian walked thoughtfully past the tents and out into the timber.
Lyster called some light greeting to him, but he barely looked up and made no reply whatever. His thoughts were evidently on other things than camp sociabilities.
It was dark when he returned, and his fit of thoughtfulness was yet upon him, for he spoke to no one. Overton, who had been talking to Harris, noticed him smoking beside the door as he came out.
“You had better bring your camp down here,” he remarked, ironically. “Well, for to-night you will have to spread your blanket in this room if Harris doesn’t object. That is what I am to do, for I’ve given up my quarters to the ladies, who are afraid of snakes.”
Akkomi nodded, and then Overton moved nearer the door again.
“Jim, I may not be back for an hour or so. I am going either on the water or up on the mountain for a little while. Don’t lie awake for me, and I’ll send a fellow in to look after you.”
Harris nodded, and ’Tana, in her own room, heard Overton’s steps die away in the night. He was going on the water or on the mountains—the places she loved to go, and dared not.
She felt like calling after him to wait to take her with him once more, and did rise and go to the door, but no farther.
Lights were gleaming all along the little stream; laughter and men’s voices came to her across the level. Her own corner of the camp looked very dark and252shadowy in comparison. But she turned back to it with a sigh.
“You may go, Flap-Jacks,” she said to the squaw. “I don’t mind being alone, but first fix the bed of Harris.”
She noticed Akkomi outside the door, but did not speak to him. She heard the miner enter the other cabin and assist Harris to his couch and then depart. She wondered a little that the old Indian still sat there smoking, instead of spreading his blanket, as Overton had invited him to do.
A book of poems, presented to her by Lyster, was so engrossing, however, that she forgot the old fellow, until a movement at the door aroused her, and she turned to find the silent smoker inside her cabin.
But it was not Akkomi, though it was the cloak of Akkomi that fell from his shoulders.
It was a man dressed as an Indian, but his speech was the speech of a white man, as he frowned on her white, startled face.
“So, my fine lady, I’ve found you at last, even if you have got too high and mighty to come when I sent for you,” he said, growlingly. “But I’ll change your tune very quick for you.”
“Don’t forget that I can change yours,” she retorted. “A word from me, and you know there is not a man in this camp wouldn’t help land you where you belong—in a prison, or at the end of a rope.”
“Oh, no,” and he grimaced in a sardonic way. “I’m not a bit afraid of that—not a bit in the world. You can’t afford it. These high-toned friends you’ve been making might drop off a little if they heard your old record.”253
“And who made it for me?” she demanded. “You! You’ve been a curse to every one connected with you. In that other room is a man who might be strong and well to-day but for you. And there is that girl buried over there by the picture rocks of Arrow Lake. Think of my mother, dragged to death through the slums of ’Frisco! And me—”
“And you with a gold mine, or the price of one,” he concluded—“plenty of money and plenty of friends. That is about the facts of your case—friends, from millionaires down to that digger I saw you with the other night.”
“Don’t you dare say a word against him!” she exclaimed, threateningly.
“Oh, that’s the way the land lies, is it?” he asked, with an ugly leer at her. “And that is why you were playing ’meet me by moonlight alone,’ that night when I saw you together at the spring. Well, I think your money might help you to some one besides a married man.”
“A married man?” she gasped. “Dan!”
“Dan, it is,” he answered, insolently. “But you needn’t faint away on that account. I have other use for you—I want some money.”
“You are telling that lie about him because you think it will trouble me,” she said, regarding his painted face closely and giving no heed to his demand. “You know it is not true.”
“About the marriage? I’ll swear—”
“I would not believe your oath for anything.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t? Well, now, what if I prove to you, right in this camp, that I know his wife?”
“His wife?” She sat down on the side of the couch, and all the cabin seemed whirling around her.254
“Well—a girl he married. You may call her what you please. She had been called a good many things before he picked her up. Humph! Now that he has struck it rich, some one ought to let her know. She’d make the dollars fly.”
“It is not true! It is nottrue!” she murmured to herself, as if by the words she could drive away the possibility of it.
He appeared to enjoy the sensation he had created.
“It is true,” he answered—“every word of it, and he has been keeping quiet about it, has he? Well, see here. You don’t believe me—do you? Now, while I was waiting there at the door, a man came in to put your paralyzed partner to bed. The man was Jake Emmons—used to hang out at Spokane. He knew Lottie Snyder before this Overton did—and after Overton married her, too, I guess. You ask him anything you want to know of it. He can tell you—if he will.”
She did not answer. She feared, as he talked, that it was true; and she longed for him to go away, that she could think alone. The hot blood burned in her cheeks, as she remembered that night by the Twin Springs. The humiliation of it, if it proved true!
“But, see here, ’Tana. I didn’t come here to talk about your virtuous ranger. I want some money—enough to cut the country. It ain’t any more than fair, anyway, that you divide with me, for if it hadn’t been for that sneaking hound in the other room, half of this find would have been mine a year ago.”
“It will do more good where it is,” she answered. “He did right not to trust you. And if he were able to walk, you would not be allowed to live many minutes within reach of him.”255
“Oh, yes; I know he was trailing me,” he answered, indifferently, “but it was no hard trick to keep out of his road. I suppose you let him know you approve of his feelings toward me.”
“Yes, I would load a gun for him to use on you if he were able to hold it,” she answered, and he seemed to think her words amusing.
“You have mighty little regard for your duty to me,” he observed.
“Duty? I can’t owe you any duty when I never received any from you. I am nearly seventeen, and in all the years I remember you, I can’t recall any good act you have ever done for me.”
“Nearly seventeen,” and he smiled at her in the way she hated. “Didn’t your new uncle, Haydon, tell you better than that? You are nearly eighteen years old.”
“Eighteen!” and she rose in astonishment. “I?”
“You—though you don’t look it. You always were small for your age, so I just told you a white lie about it in order to manage you better. But that is over; I don’t care what you do in the future. All I want of you is money to get to South America; so fix it up for me.”
“I ought to refuse, and call them in to arrest you.”
“But you won’t,” he rejoined. “You can’t afford it.”
He watched her, though, with some uncertainty, as she sat silent, thinking.
“No, I can’t afford it,” she said, at last. “I will be doing wrong to help you, just as if I let a poison snake loose where people travel—for that is what you are. But I am not strong enough to let these friends go and start over again; so I will help you away this once.”
He drew a breath of relief, and gathered up his blanket.256
“That is the way to talk. You’ve got a level head—”
“That will do,” she said, curtly. “I don’t want praise from a coward, a thief, or a murderer. You are all three. I have no money here. You will have to come again for it to-morrow night.”
“A trick—is it?”
“It is no trick. I haven’t got it, that is all. Maybe I can’t get it in money, but I will get it in free gold by to-morrow at dusk. I will put it here under the pillow, and will manage to keep the rest away at that time. You can come as you came this evening, and get it; but I will neither take it nor send it to you. You will have to risk your freedom and your life to come for it. But while I can’t quite decide to give you up or to kill you, myself, I hope some one else will.”
“Hope what you please,” he returned, indifferently. “So long as you get the dust for me, I can stand your opinion. And you will have it here?”
“I will have it here.”
“I trust you only because I know you can’t afford to go back on me,” he said, as he wrapped the blanket around him, and dropped his taller form to the height of Akkomi. “It is a bargain, then, my dear. Good-night.”
“I don’t wish you a good-night,” she answered. “I hope I shall never see you alive again.”
And she never did.