257CHAPTER XX.’TANA’S ENGAGEMENT
“And she wants a thousand dollars in money or free gold—a thousand dollars to-day?”
“No use asking me what for, Dan, for I don’t know,” confessed Lyster. “I can’t see why she don’t tell you herself; but you know she has been a little queer since the fever—childish, whimsical, and all that. Maybe as she has not yet handled any specie from your bonanza, she wants some only to play with, and assure herself it is real.”
“Less than a thousand in money and dust would do for a plaything,” remarked Overton. “Of course she has a right to get what she wants; but that amount will be of no use to her here in camp, where there is not a thing in the world to spend it for.”
“Maybe she wants to pension off some of her Indian friends before she leaves,” suggested Max—“old Akkomi and Flap-Jacks, perhaps. I am a little like Miss Slocum in my wonder as to how she endures them, though, of course, the squaw is a necessity.”
“Oh, well, she was not brought up in the world of Miss Slocum—or your world, either,” answered Overton. “You should make allowance for that.”
“Make allowance—I?” and Lyster looked at him curiously. “Are you trying to justify her to me? Why, man, you ought to know by this time what keeps me here258a regular lounger around camp, and there is no need to make excuses for her to me. I thought you knew.”
“You mean you—like her?”
“Worse than that,” said Max, with his cheery, confident smile. “I’m trying to get her to say she likes me.”
“And she?”
“Well, she won’t meet me as near half-way as I would like,” he confessed; “talks a lot of stuff about not being brought up right, and not suited to our style of life at home, and all that. But she did seem rather partial to me when she was ill and off guard. Don’t you think so? That is all I have to go on; but it encourages me to remember it.”
Overton did not speak, and Lyster continued speculating on his chances, when he noticed his companion’s silence.
“Why don’t you speak, Dan? I did hope you would help me rather than be indifferent.”
“Help you!” and Lyster was taken aback at the fierce straightening of the brows and the strange tone in which the words were uttered. The older man could not but see his surprised look, for he recovered himself, and dropped his hand in the old familiar way on Lyster’s shoulder.
“Not much chance of my helping you when she employs you as an agent when she wants any service, rather than exchange words with me herself. Now, that is the way it looks, Max.”
“I know,” agreed Lyster. “And to tell the truth, Dan, the only thing she does that really vexes me is her queer attitude toward you of late. I can’t think she means to be ungrateful, but—”259
“Don’t bother about that. Everything has changed for her lately, and she has her own troubles to think of. Don’t you doubt her on my account. Just remember that. And if—she says ’yes’ to you, Max, be sure I would rather see her go to you than any other man I know.”
“That is all right,” observed Lyster, laughingly; “but if you only had a love affair or two of your own, you could perhaps get up more enthusiasm over mine.”
Then he sauntered off to report the financial interview to ’Tana, and laughed as he went at the impatient look flung at him by Overton.
He found ’Tana visiting at the tent of the cousins, who were using all arguments to persuade her to share their new abode. Each was horrified to learn that she had dismissed the squaw at sleeping time, and had remained in the cabin alone.
“Not quite alone,” she corrected, “for Harris was just on the other side of the door.”
“Much protection he would be.”
“Well, then, Dan Overton was with him. How is he for protection?”
“Thoroughly competent, no doubt,” agreed Miss Lavina, with a rather scandalized look. “But, my dear, the propriety?”
“Do you think Flap-Jacks would help any one out in propriety?” retorted ’Tana. “But we won’t stumble over that question long, for I want to leave the camp and go back to the Ferry.”
“And then, ’Tana?”
“And then—I don’t know, Mrs. Huzzard, to school, maybe—though I feel old for that, older than either of you, I am sure—so old that I care nothing for all the260things I wanted less than a year ago. They are within my reach now, yet I only want to rest—”
She did not finish the sentence.
Mrs. Huzzard, noticing the tired look in her eyes and the wistfulness of her voice, reached out and patted her head affectionately.
“You want, first of all, to grow strong and hearty, like you used to be—that is what you need first, then the rest will all come right in good time. You’ll want to see the theaters, and the pictures, and hear the fine music you used to talk of. And you’ll travel, and see all the fine places you used to dream about. Then, maybe, you’ll get ambitious, like you used to be, about making pictures out of clay. For you can have fine teaching now, you know, and you’ll find, after a while, that the days will hardly seem long enough for all the things you want to do. That is how it will be when you get strong again.”
’Tana tried to smile at the cheerful picture, but the smile was not a merry one. Her attention was given to Lyster and Overton, whom she could see from the tent door.
How tall and strong Dan looked! Was she to believe that story of him heard last night? The very possibility of it made her cheeks burn at the thought of how she had stood with his arm around her. And he had pitied her that night. “Poor little girl!” he had said. Was his pity because he saw how much he was to her, while he himself thought only of some one else? One after another those thoughts had come to her through the sleepless night, and when the day came she could not face him to speak to him of the simplest thing. And of the money she must have, she could not ask him at all. She261wished she could have courage to go to him and tell him the thing she had heard; but courage was not strong in her of late. The fear that he might look indifferently on her and say, “Yes, it is true—what then?”—the fear of that was so great that she had walked by the water’s edge, as the sun rose, and felt desperate enough to think of sleep under the waves, as a temptation. For if it was true—
The two older women watched her, and decided that she was not yet strong enough to think of long journeys. Her hands would tremble at times, and tears, as of weakness, would come to her eyes, and she scarcely appeared to hear them when they spoke.
She never walked through the woods as of old, though sometimes she would stand and look up at the dark hills with a perfect hunger in her eyes. And when the night breeze would creep down from the heights, and carry the sweet wood scents of the forest to her, she would close her eyes and draw in long breaths of utter content. The strong love for the wild places was as second nature to her; yet when Max would ask her to go with him for flowers or mosses, her answer was always “no.”
But she would go to the boat sometimes, though no longer having strength to use the paddle. It was a good place to think, if she could only keep the others from going, too, so she slipped away from Max and the women and went down. A chunky, good-looking fellow was mending one of the canoes, and raised his head at her approach, nodding to her and evidently pleased when she addressed him.
“Yes, it is a shaky old tub,” he agreed, “but I told Overton I thought it could be fixed to carry freight for another trip; so he put me at it.”262
“You are new in camp, aren’t you?” she asked, not caring at all whether he was or not. She was always friendly with the workmen, and this one smiled and bowed.
“We are all that, I guess,” he said. “But I came up the day Haydon and Seldon came. I lived with Seldon down the country, and was staggered a little, I tell you, when I found Overton was in charge, and had struck it rich. But no man deserves good luck more.”
“No,” she agreed. “Then you knew him before?”
“Yes, indeed—over in Spokane. He don’t seem quite the same fellow, though. We thought he would just go to the dogs after he left there, for he started to drink heavily. But he must have settled in his own mind that it wasn’t worth while; so here he is, straight as a string, and counting his dollars by the thousands, and I’m glad to see it.”
“Drink! He never drinks to excess, that we know of,” she answered. “Doesn’t seem to care for that sort of thing.”
“No, he didn’t then, either,” agreed this loquacious stranger, “but a woman can drive as good men as him to drink; and that is about the way it was. No one thought any worse of Overton, though—don’t think that. The worst any one could say was that he was too square—that’s all.”
Too square! She walked away from him a little way, all her mind aflame with his suggestions. He had taken to drink and dissipation because of some woman. Was it the woman whose name she had heard last night? The key to the thing puzzling her had been dropped almost at her feet, yet she feared to pick it up. No teaching she had ever received told her it was unprincipled to steal263through another the confidence he himself had not chosen to give her. But some instinct of justice kept her from further question.
She knew the type of fellow who was rigging up the canoe, a light-headed, assuming specimen, who had not yet learned to keep a still tongue in his head, but he did not impress her as being a deliberate liar. Then, all at once, she realized who he must be, and turned back. There was no harm in asking that, at any rate.
“You are the man whom Overton sent to put Harris to bed last night, are you not?” she asked.
He nodded, cheerfully.
“And your name is Jake Emmons, of the Spokane country?”
“Thet’s who,” he assented; “that’s where I came across Lottie Snyder, Overton’s wife, you know. I was running a little stage there for a manager, and she—”
“I am not asking you about—about Mr. Overton’s affairs,” she said, and she sat down, white and dizzy, on the overturned canoe. “And he might not like it if he knew you were talking so free. Don’t do it again.”
“All right,” he agreed. “I won’t. No one here seems to know about the bad break he made over there; but, Lord! there was excuse enough. She is one of those women that look just like a little helpless baby; and that caught Overton. Young, you know. But I won’t whisper her name in camp again, for it is hard on the old man. But, as you are partners, I guessed you must know.”
“Yes,” she said, faintly; “but don’t talk, don’t—”
“Say! You are sick, ain’t you?” he demanded, as her voice dropped to a whisper. “Say! Look here, Miss Rivers! Great snakes! She’s fainted!”
When she opened her eyes again, the rough roof of264her cabin was above her, instead of the blue sky. The women folks were using the camp restorative—whisky—on her to such good purpose that her hands and face and hair were redolent of it, and the amount she had been forced to swallow was strangling her.
The face she saw first was that of Max—Max, distressed and anxious, and even a little pale at sight of her death-like face.
She turned to him as to a haven of refuge from the storm of emotion under which she had fallen prostrate.
It was all settled now—settled forever. She had heard the worst, and knew she must go away—away from where she must see that one man, and be filled with humiliation if ever she met his gaze. A man with a wife somewhere—a man into whose arms she had crept!
“Are you in pain?” asked Miss Lavina, as ’Tana groaned and shut her eyes tight, as if to bar out memory.
“No—nothing ails me. I was without a hat, and the sun on my head made me sick, I suppose,” she answered, and arose on her elbow. “But I am not going to be a baby, to be watched and carried around any more. I am going to get up.”
Just outside her door Overton stood; and when he heard her voice again, with its forced independent words, he walked away content that she was again herself.
“I am going to get up,” she continued. “I am going away from here to-morrow or next day—and there are things to do. Help me, Max.”
“Best thing you can do is to lie still an hour or two,” advised Mrs. Huzzard, but the girl shook her head.
“No, I’m going to get up,” she said, with grim decision; and when Lyster offered his hand to help her, she took it, and, standing erect, looked around at the couch.265
“That is the last time I’m going to be thrown on you for any such fool cause,” she said, whimsically. “Who toted me in here—you?”
“I? Not a bit of it,” confessed Lyster. “Dan reached you before any of the others knew you were ill. He carried you up here.”
“He? Oh!” and she shivered a little. “I want to talk to Harris. Max, come with me.”
He went wonderingly, for he could see she was excited and nervous. Her hand trembled as it touched his, but her mouth was set so firmly over the little white teeth that he knew it was better to humor her than fret her by persuading her to rest.
But once beside Harris, she sat a long time in silence, looking out from the doorway across the level now active with the men of the works. Not until the two cousins had walked across to their other shelter did she speak, and then it was to Harris.
“Joe, I am sick,” she confessed; “not sick with the fever, but heartsick and headsick. You know how and maybe why.”
He nodded his head, and looked at Lyster questioningly.
“And I’ve come in here to tell you something. Max, you won’t mind. He can’t talk, but knows me better than you do, I guess; for I’ve come to him before when I was troubled, and I want to tell him what you said to me in the boat.”
Max stared at her, but silently agreed when he saw she was in earnest. He even reached out his hand to take hers, but she drew away.
“Wait till I tell him,” she said, and turned to the266helpless man in the chair. “He asked me to marry him—some day. Would it be right for me to say yes?”
“’Tana!” exclaimed Lyster; but she raised her hand pleadingly.
“I haven’t any other person in the world I could go to and ask,” she said. “He knows me better than you do, Max, and I—Oh! I don’t think I should be always contented with your ways of living. I was born different—a heap different. But to-day it seems as if I am not strong enough to do without—some one—who likes me, and I do want to say ’yes’ to you, yet I’m afraid it is only because I am sick at heart and lonely.”
It was a declaration likely to cool the ardor of most lovers, but Lyster reached out his hand to her and laughed.
“Oh, you dear girl,” he said, fondly. “Did your conscience make it necessary for you to confess in this fashion? Now listen. You are weak and nervous; you need some one to look after you. Doesn’t she, Harris? Well, take me on trial. I will devote myself to your interests for six months, and if at the end of that time you find that it was only sickness and loneliness that ailed you, and not liking me, then I give you my word I’ll never try to hold you to a promise. You will be well and strong by that time, and I’ll stand by the decision you make then. Will you say ’yes,’ now?”
She looked at Harris, who nodded his head. Then she turned and gave her hand to Max.
“Yes,” she said. “But if you should be sorry—”
“Not another word,” he commanded; “the ’yes’ is all I want to hear just now; when I get sorry I’ll let you know.”
And that is the way their engagement began.
267CHAPTER XXI.LAVINA AND THE CAPTAIN.
As the day wore on, ’Tana became more nervous and restless. With the dark, that man was to come for the gold she had promised.
Lyster brought it to her, part in money, part in free gold, and as he laid it on the couch, she looked at him strangely.
“How much you trust me when you never even ask what I am to do with all this!” she said. “Yet it is enough to surprise you.”
“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “But when you are ready you will tell me.”
“No, I will not tell you,” she answered, “but it is the last thing—I think—that I will keep from you, Max. It is a debt that belongs to days before I knew you. What did Overton say?”
“Not much, maybe he will leave for the upper works this evening or to-morrow morning.”
“Did you—did you tell him—”
“That you are going to belong to me? Well, no, I did not. You forgot to give me permission.”
Her face flushed shyly at his words.
“You must think me a queer girl, Max,” she said. “And you are so good and patient with me, in spite of my queer ways. But, never mind; they will not last always, I hope.”268
“Which?—my virtues or your queerness?” he asked.
She only smiled and pushed the gold under the pillow.
“Go away now for a little while. I want to rest.”
“Well, rest if you like; but don’t think. You have been fretting over some little personal troubles until you fancy them heavy enough to overbalance the world. But they won’t. And I’m not going to try and persuade you into Haydon’s house, either, now that you’ve been good to me; unless, of course, you fall in love with Margaret, and want to be with her, and it is likely to happen. But Uncle Seldon and my aunts will be delighted to have you, and you could live as quiet as you please there.”
“So I am likely to fall in love with Margaret, am I?” she asked. “Why? Does everybody? Did you—Max? Now, don’t blush like that, or I’ll be sure of it. I never saw you blush so pretty before. It made you almost good looking. Now go; I want to be alone.”
“Sha’n’t I send one of the ladies up?”
“Not a soul! Go, Max. I am tired.”
So he went, in all obedience, and he and the cousins had a long talk about the girl and the danger of leaving her alone another night. Her sudden illness showed them she was not strong enough yet to be allowed to guide herself.
“I shall try hard to get her to leave to-morrow, or next day,” said Lyster. “Where is Dan? I would like to talk to him about it, but he has evidently disappeared.”
“I don’t know what to think of Dan Overton,” confessed Mrs. Huzzard. “He isn’t ever around, chatty and sociable, like he used to be. When we do see him, he is nearly always busy; and when he isn’t busy, he strikes for the woods.”269
“Maybe he is still searching for new gold mines,” suggested Miss Lavina. “I notice he does seem very much engaged in thought, and is of a rather solitary nature.”
“Never was before,” protested her cousin. “And if these gold finds just twist a person’s nature crosswise, or send them into a fever, then I hope the good Lord’ll keep the rest of them well covered up in future.”
“Lorena Jane,” said Miss Lavina, in a reproachful tone, “it is most essential that you free yourself from those very forcible expressions. They are not a bit genteel.”
“No, I reckon they ain’t, Lavina; and the more I try the more I’m afraid I never will be. Land sakes, if folks would only teach their young ones good manners when they are young, what a sight of mortified feelings would be saved after a while!”
Lyster left them in the midst of the very earnest plea for better training, for he espied a new boat approaching camp. As it came closer, he found that among the other freight it carried was the autocrat of Sinna Ferry—Captain Leek.
“What a God-forsaken wilderness!” he exclaimed, and looked around with a supercilious air, suggesting that he would have given the Creator of the Kootenai country valuable points if he had been consulted. “Well, my dear young fellow, how you have managed to exist here for three weeks I don’t know.”
“Well, we had Mrs. Huzzard,” explained Max, with a twinkle in his eye; “and she is a panacea for many ills. She has made our wilderness very endurable.”
“Yes, yes; excellent woman,” agreed the other, with a suspicious look. “And ’Tana? How is she—the dear girl! I really have been much grieved to hear of her270illness; and at the earliest day I could leave my business I am here to inquire in person regarding her health.”
“Oh!” and Max struggled with a desire to laugh at the change in the captain’s attitude since ’Tana was a moneyed individual instead of a little waif. Poor ’Tana! No wonder she looked with suspicion on late-coming friends.
“Yes, she is better—much better,” he continued, as they walked up from the boat. “I suppose you knew that a cousin of Mrs. Huzzard, a lady from Ohio, has been with us—in fact, came up with our party.”
“So I heard—so I heard. Nice for Mrs. Huzzard. I was not in town, you know, when you rested at the Ferry. I heard, however, that a white woman had come up. Who is she?”
They had reached the tent, and Mrs. Huzzard, after a frantic dive toward their very small looking glass, appeared at the door with a smile enchanting, and a courtesy so nicely managed that it nearly took the captain’s breath away. It was the very latest of Lavina’s teachings.
“Well, now, I’m mighty—hem!—I’m extremely pleased that you have called. Have a nice trip?”
But the society tone of Mrs. Huzzard was so unlike the one he had been accustomed to hearing her use, that the captain could only stare, and before he recovered enough to reply, she turned and beckoned Miss Slocum, with the idea of completing the impression made, and showing with what grace she could present him to her cousin.
But the lately acquired style was lost on him this time, overtopped by the presence of Miss Lavina, who gazed at him with a prolonged and steady stare.271
“And this is your friend, Captain Leek, of the Northern Army, is it?” she asked, in her very sharpest voice—a voice she tried to temper with a smile about her lips, though none shone in her eyes. “I have no doubt you will be very welcome to the camp, Captain Leek.”
Mrs. Huzzard had surely expected of Lavina a much more gracious reception. But Mrs. Huzzard was a bit of a philosopher, and if Lavina chose to be somewhat cold and unresponsive to the presence of a cultured gentleman, well, it gave Lorena Jane so much better chance, and she was not going to slight it.
“Come right in; you must be dead tired,” she said, cordially. “Mr. Max, you’ll let Dan know he’s here, won’t you—that is, when he does show up again, but no one knows how long that will be.”
“Yes, I am tired,” agreed the captain, meekly, and not quite at his ease with the speculative eyes of Miss Slocum on him. “I—I brought up a few letters that arrived at the Ferry. I can’t make up my mind to trust mail with these Indian boatmen Dan employs.”
“They are a trial,” agreed Mrs. Huzzard, “though they haven’t the bad effect on our nerves that one or two of the camp Indians have—an awful squaw, who helps around, and an ugly old man, who only smokes and looks horrible. Now, Lavina—she ain’t used to no such, and she just shivers at them.”
“Yes—ah—yes,” murmured the captain.
“Lavina says she knew folks of your name back in Ohio,” continued Mrs. Huzzard, cheerfully, in order to get the two strangers better acquainted. “I thought at first maybe you’d turn out to know each other; but she says they was Democrats,” and she turned a sharp glance toward him, as if to read his political tendencies.272
“No, I never knew any Captain Leek,” said Miss Slocum, “and the ones I knew hadn’t any one in the Union Army. Their principles, if they had any, were against it, and there wasn’t a Republican in the family.”
“Then, of course, that would settle Captain Leek belonging to them,” decided Mrs. Huzzard, promptly. “I don’t know much about politics, but as all our men folks wore the blue clothes, and fought in them, I was always glad I come from a Republican State. And I guess all the Republicans that carried guns against the Union could be counted without much arithmetic.”
“I—I think I will go and look for Dan myself,” observed the captain, rising and looking around a little uncertainly at Miss Slocum. “I brought some letters he may want.”
He made his bow and placed the picturesque corded hat on his head as he went out. But Mrs. Huzzard looked after him somewhat anxiously.
“He’s sick,” she decided as he vanished from her view; “I never did see him walk so draggy like. And don’t you judge his manners, either, Lavina, from this first sight of him, for he ain’t himself to-day.”
“He didn’t look to me as though he knew who he was,” remarked Lavina; and after a little she looked up from the tidy she was knitting. “So, Lorena Jane, that is the man you’ve been trying to educate yourself up to more than for anybody else—now, tell the truth!”
“Well, I don’t mind saying that it was his good manners made me see how bad mine were,” she confessed; “but as for training for him—”
“I see,” said Miss Lavina, grimly, “and it is all right; but I just thought I’d ask.”273
Then she relapsed into deep thought, and made the needles click with impatience all that afternoon.
The captain came near the tent once, but retreated at the vision of the knitter. He talked with Mrs. Huzzard in the cabin of Harris, but did not visit her again in her own tent; and the poor woman began to wonder if the air of the Kootenai woods had an erratic influence on people. Dan was changed, ’Tana was changed, and now the captain seemed unlike himself from the very moment of his arrival. Even Lavina was a bit curt and indifferent, and Lorena Jane wondered where it would end.
In the midst of her perplexity, ’Tana added to it by appearing before her in the Indian dress Overton had presented her with. Since her sickness it had hung unused in her cabin, and the two women had fashioned garments more suitable, they thought, to a young girl who could wear real laces now if she chose. But there she was again, dressed like any little squaw, and although rather pale to suit the outfit, she said she wanted a few more “Indian hours” before departing for the far-off Eastern city that was to her as a new world.
She received Captain Leek with an unconcern that was discouraging to the pretty speeches he had prepared to utter.
Dan returned and looked sharply at her as she sat whittling a stick of which she said she meant to make a cane—a staff for mountain climbing.
“Where do you intend climbing?” he asked.
She waved the stick toward the hill back of them, the first step of the mountain.
“It is only a few hours since I picked you up down there, looking as if you were dead,” he said, impatiently; “and you know you are not fit to tramp.”274
“Well, I’m not dead yet, anyway,” she answered, with a shrug of her shoulders; “and as I’m going to break away from this camp about to-morrow, I thought I’d like to see a bit of the woods first.”
“You—are going—to-morrow?”
“I reckon so.”
“’Tana! And you have not said a word to me of it? That was not very friendly, little girl.”
She did not reply, but bent her head low over her work.
After observing her for a while in silence, he arose and put on his hat.
“Here is my knife,” he remarked. “You had better use it, if you are determined to haggle at that stick. Your own knife is too dull for any use. You can leave it here in the cabin when you are done with it.”
She accepted it without a word, but flushed red when he had gone, and she found the eyes of Harris regarding her sadly.
“‘Not very friendly,’” she said, going over Overton’s words—“you think that, too—don’t you? You think I’m ugly, and saucy, and awful, I know! You look scoldings at me; but if you knew all, maybe you wouldn’t—if you knew that my heart is just about breaking. I’m going out where there is no one to talk to, or I’ll be crying next.”
The two cousins and the captain were in ’Tana’s cabin. Mrs. Huzzard was determined that Miss Slocum and the captain should become acquainted, and, getting sight of the girl, who was walking alone across the level, she at once followed her, thinking that the two left behind would perhaps become more social if left entirely to275themselves. And they did; that is, they talked, and the captain spoke first.
“So you—you bear a grudge—don’t you, Lavina?”
“Well, I guess if I owed you a very heavy one, I’ve got a good chance to pay it off now,” she remarked, grimly.
He twirled his hat in a dejected way, and did not speak.
“You an officer in the Union Army?” she continued, derisively. “You a pattern of what a gentleman should be; you to set up as superior to these rough-handed miners; you to act as if this Government owes you a pension! Why, how would it be with you, Alf Leek, if I’d tell this camp the truth of how you went away, engaged to me, twenty-five years ago, and never let me set eyes on you since—of how I wore black for you, thinking you were killed in the war, till I heard that you had deserted. I took off that mourning quick, I can tell you! I thought you were fighting on the wrong side; yet if you had a good reason for being there, you should have staid and fought so long as there was breath in you. And if I was to tell them here that you haven’t a particle of right to wear that blue suit that looks like a uniform, and that you were no more ’captain’ of anything than I am—well, I guess Lorena Jane wouldn’t have much to say to you, though maybe Mr. Overton would.”
He grew actually pale as he listened. His fear of some one overhearing her was as great as his own mortification.
“But you—you won’t tell—will you, Lavina?” he said pleadingly. “I haven’t done any harm! I—”
“Harm! Alf Leek, you never had enough backbone to do either harm or help to any one in this world. But276don’t you suppose you did me harm when you spoiled me for ever trusting any other man?”
“I—I would have come back, but I thought you’d be married,” he said, in a feeble, hopeless way.
“Likely that is now, ain’t it?” she demanded. And, woman-like, now that she had reduced him to meekness and humiliation, she grew a shade less severe, as if pretty well satisfied. “I had other things to think of besides a husband.”
“You won’t tell—will you, Lavina? I’ll tell you how it all happened, some day. Then I’ll leave this country.”
“You’ll not,” she contradicted. “You’ll stay right here as long as I do, and I won’t tell just so long as you keep from trying to make Lorena Jane believe how great you are. But at the first word of your heroic actions, or the cultured society you were always used to—”
“You’ll never hear of them,” he said eagerly, “never. I knew you wouldn’t make trouble, Lavina, for you always were such a good, kind-hearted girl.”
He offered his hand to her, sheepishly, and she gave it a vixenish slap.
“Don’t try any of your skim-milk praise on me,” she said, tartly. “Huh! You, that Lorena thought was a pillar of cultured society! When, the Lord knows, you wouldn’t have known how to read the addresses on your own letters if I hadn’t taught you!”
He moved to the door in a crestfallen manner, and stood there a moment, moistening his lips, and apparently swallowing words that could not be uttered.
“That’s so, Lavina,” he said, at last, and went out.
“There!” she muttered aggrievedly—“that’s Alf Leek, just as he always was. Give him a chance, and he’d ride over any one; but get the upper hand of him, and he is277meeker than Moses. Not that much meekness is needed to come up to Moses, either.” Then, after an impatient tattoo, she exclaimed:
“Gracious me! I do wish he hadn’t looked so crushed, and had talked back a little.”
278CHAPTER XXII.THE MURDER.
That evening, as the dusk fell, a slight figure in an Indian dress slipped to the low brush back of the cabin, and thence to the uplands.
It was ’Tana, ready to endure all the wilds of the woods, rather than stay there and meet again the man she had met the night before. She had sent the squaw away; she had arranged in Mrs. Huzzard’s tent a little game of cards that would hold the attention of Lyster and the others; and then she had slipped away, that she might, for just once more, feel free on the mountain, as she had felt when they first located their camp in the sweet grass of the Twin Springs.
The moon would be up after a while. She could not walk far, but she meant to sit somewhere up there in the high ground until the moon should roll up over the far mountains.
The mere wearing of the Indian dress gave her a feeling of being herself once more, for in the pretty conventional dress made for her by Mrs. Huzzard, she felt like another girl—a girl she did not know very well.
In the southwest long streaks of red and yellow lay across the sky, and a clear radiance filled the air, as it does when a new moon is born after the darkness. She felt the beauty of it all, and stretched out her arms as though to draw the peaks of the hills to her.279
But, as she stepped forward, a form arose before her—a tall, decided form, and a decided voice said:
“No, ’Tana, you have gone far enough.”
“Dan!”
“Yes—it is Dan this time, and not the other fellow. If he is waiting for you to-night, I will see that he waits a long time.”
“You—you!” she murmured, and stepped back from him. Then, her first fright over, she straightened herself defiantly.
“Why do you think any one is waiting for me?” she demanded. “What do you know? I am heartsick with all this hiding, and—and deceit. If you know the truth, speak out, and end it all!”
“I can’t say any more than you know already,” he answered—“not so much; but last night a man was in your cabin, a man you know and quarreled with. I didn’t hear you; don’t think I was spying on you. A miner who passed the cabin heard your voices and told me something was wrong. You don’t give me any right to advise you or dictate to you, ’Tana, but one thing you shall not do, that is, steal to the woods to meet him. And if I find him in your cabin, I promise you he sha’n’t die of old age.”
“You would kill him?”
“Like a snake!” and his voice was harsher, colder, than she had ever heard it. “I’m not asking you any questions, ’Tana. I know it was the man whom you—saw that night at the spring, and would not let me follow. I know there is something wrong, or he would come to see you, like a man, in daylight. If the others here knew it, they would say things not kind to you. And that is why it sha’n’t go on.”280
“Sha’n’t? What right have you—to—to—”
“You will say none,” he answered, curtly, “because you do not know.”
“Do not know what?” she interrupted, but he only drew a deep breath and shook his head.
“Tana, don’t meet this man again,” he said, pleadingly. “Trust me to judge for you. I don’t want to be harsh with you. I don’t want you to go away with hard thoughts against me. But this has got to stop—you must promise me.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I’d look for the man, and he never would meet you again.”
A little shiver ran over her as he spoke. She knew what he meant, and, despite her bitter words last night to her visitor, the thought was horrible to her that Dan—
She covered her face with her hands and turned away.
“Don’t do that, little girl,” he said, and laid his hand on her arm. “’Tana!”
She flung off his hand as though it stung her, and into her mind flashed remembrance of Jake Emmons from Spokane—of him and his words.
“Don’t touch me!” she half sobbed. “Don’t you say another word to me! I am going away to-morrow, and I have promised to marry Max Lyster.”
His hand dropped to his side, and his face shone white in the wan glimmer of the stars.
“You have promised that?” he said, at last, drawing his breath hard through his shut teeth. “Well—it is right, I suppose—right. Come! I will take you back to him now. He is the best one to guard you. Come!”
She drew away and looked from him across to where the merest rim of the rising moon was to be seen across281the hills. The thought of that other night came to her, the night when they had stood close to each other in the moonlight. How happy she had been for that one little space of time! And now—Ah! she scarcely dare allow him to speak kindly to her, lest she grow weak enough to long for that blind content once more.
“Come, Tana.”
“Go. I will follow after a little,” she answered, without turning her head.
“I may never trouble you to walk with you again,” he said, in a low, constrained tone; “but this time I must see you safe in the tent before I leave.”
“Leave! Going! Where to?” she asked, and her voice trembled in spite of herself. She clasped her hands tightly, and he could see the flash of the ring he had given her. She had put it on with the Indian dress.
“That does not matter much, does it?” he returned; “but somewhere, far enough up the lake not to trouble you again while you stay. Come.”
She walked beside him without another word; words seemed so useless. She had said words over and over again to herself all that day—words of his wrong to her in not telling her of that other woman, words of reproach, bitter and keen; yet none of her reasoning kept her from wanting to touch his hand as he walked beside her.
But she did not. Even when they reached the level by the springs, she only looked her farewell to him, but did not speak.
“Good-by,” he said, in a voice that was not like Dan’s voice.
She merely bowed her head, and walked away toward the tent where she heard Mrs. Huzzard laughing.282
She halted near the cabin, and then hurried on, dreading to enter it yet, lest she should meet the man she was trying to avoid.
Overton watched her until she reached the tent. The moon had just escaped the horizon, and threw its soft misty light over all the place. He pulled his hat low over his eyes, and, turning, took the opposite direction.
Only a few minutes elapsed when Lyster remembered he had promised Dan to look after Harris, and rose to go to the cabin.
“I will go, too,” said ’Tana, filled with nervous dread lest he encounter some one on her threshold, though she had all reason to expect that her disguised visitor had come and gone ere that.
“Well, well, ’Tana, you are a restless mortal,” said Mrs. Huzzard. “You’ve only just come, and now you must be off again. What did you do that you wanted to be all alone for this evening? Read verses, I’ll go bail.”
“No, I didn’t read verses,” answered ’Tana. “But you needn’t go along to the cabin.”
“Well, I will then. You are not fit to sleep alone. And, if it wasn’t for the beastly snakes!—”
“We will go and see Harris,” said the girl, and so they entered his cabin, where he sat alone with a bright light burning.
Some newspapers, brought by the captain, were spread before him on a rough reading stand rigged up by one of the miners.
He looked pale and tired, as though the effort of perusing them had been rather too much for him.
Listen as she might, the girl could hear never a sound from her own cabin. She stood by the blanket door,283connecting the two rooms, but not a breath came to her. She sighed with relief at the certainty that he had come and gone. She would never see him again.
“Shall I light your lamp?” asked Lyster; and, scarce waiting for a reply, he drew back the blanket and entered the darkness of the other cabin.
Two of the miners came to the door just then, detailed to look after Harris for the night. One was the good-natured, talkative Emmons.
“Glad to see you are so much better, miss,” he said, with an expansive smile. “But you scared the wits nearly out of me this morning.”
Then they heard the sputter of a match in the next room, and a sharp, startled cry from Lyster, as the blaze gave a feeble light to the interior.
He staggered back among the rest, with the dying match in his fingers, and his face ashen gray.
“Snakes!” half screamed Mrs. Huzzard. “Oh, my! oh, my!”
’Tana, after one look at Lyster, tried to enter the room, but he caught and held her.
“Don’t, dear!—don’t go in there! It’s awful—awful!”
“What’s wrong?” demanded one of the miners, and picked up a lamp from beside Harris.
“Look! It is Akkomi!” answered Lyster.
At the name ’Tana broke from him and ran into the room, even before the light reached it.
But she did not take many steps. Her foot struck against something on the floor, an immovable body and a silent one.
“Akkomi—sure enough,” said the miner, as he saw the Indian’s blanket. “Drunk, I suppose—Indian fashion.”284
But as he held the light closer, he took hold of the girl’s arm, and tried to lead her from the scene.
“You’d better leave this to us, miss,” he added, in a grave tone. “The man ain’t drunk. He’s been murdered!”
’Tana, white as death itself, shook off his grasp and stood with tightly clasped hands, unheeding the words of horror around her, scarce hearing the shriek of Mrs. Huzzard, as that lady, forgetful even of the snakes, sank to the floor, a very picture of terror.
’Tana saw the roll of money scattered over the couch; the little bag of free gold drawn from under the pillow. He had evidently been stooping to secure it when the assassin crept behind him and left him dead there, with a knife sticking between his shoulders.
“The very knife you had to-day!” said Lyster, horror-stricken at the sight.
The miner with the lamp turned and looked at her strangely, and his eyes dropped from her face to her clasped hands, on which the ring of the snakes glittered.
“Your knife?” he asked, and others, attracted by Mrs. Huzzard’s scream, stood around the doors and looked at her too.
She nodded her head, scarce understanding the significance of it, and never taking her eyes from the dead man, whose face was yet hidden.
“He may not be dead,” she said, at last. “Look!”
“Oh, he’s dead, safe enough,” and Emmons lifted his hand. “Was he trying to rob you?”
“I—no—I don’t know,” she answered, vaguely.
Then another man turned the body over, and utter surprise was on every face; for, though it was Akkomi’s blanket, it was a much younger man who lay there.285
“A white man, by Heavens!” said the miner who had first entered. “A white man, with brown paint on his face and hands! But, look here!” and he pulled down the collar of the dead man’s shirt, and showed a skin fair as a child’s.
“Something terribly crooked here,” he continued. “Where is Overton?”
Overton! At the name her very heart grew cold within her. Had he not threatened he would kill the man who visited her at night? Had he come straight to the cabin after leaving her? Had he kept his word? Had he—
“I think Overton left camp after supper—started for the lake,” answered some one.
“Well, we’ll do our best to get it straight without him, then. Some of you see what time it is. This man has been dead about a half hour. Mr. Lyster, you had better write down all about it; and, if any one here has any information to give, let him have it.”
His eyes were on the girl’s face, but she said nothing, and he bent to wipe off the stain from the dead man’s face. Some one brought water, and in a little while was revealed the decidedly handsome face of a man about forty-five years old.
“Do any of you know him?” asked the miner, who, by circumstance, appeared to have been given the office of speaker—“look—all of you.”
One after another the men approached, but shook their heads; until an old miner, gray-haired and weather-beaten, gave vent to a half-smothered oath at sight of him.
“Know him?” he exclaimed. “Well, I do, though it’s five years since I saw him. Heavens! I’d rather have found him alive than dead, though, for there is a286standing reward offered for him by two States. Why, it’s the card-sharper, horse-thief and renegade—Lee Holly!”
“But who could have killed him?”
“That is Overton’s knife,” said one of the men.
“But Overton had not had it since noon,” said ’Tana, speaking for the first time in explanation. “I borrowed it then.”
“You borrowed it? For what?”
“Oh—I forget. To cut a stick with, I think.”
“You think. I’m sorry to speak rough to a lady, miss but this is a time for knowing—not thinking.”
“What do you mean by that?” demanded Lyster.
The man looked at him squarely.
“Nothing to offend innocent folks,” he answered. “A murder has been done in this lady’s room, with a knife she acknowledges she has had possession of. It’s natural enough to question her first of all.”
The color had crept into her face once more. She knew what the man meant, and knew that the longer they looked on her with suspicion, the more time Overton would have to escape. Then, when they learned they were on a false scent, it would be late—too late to start after him. She wished he had taken the money and the gold. She shuddered as she thought him a murderer—the murderer of that man; but, with what skill she could, she would keep them off his track.
Her thoughts ran fast, and a half smile touched her lips. Even with that dead body at her feet, she was almost happy at the hope of saving him. The others noticed it, and looked at her in wonder. Lyster said:
“You are right. But Miss Rivers could know nothing of this. She has been with us since the moon rose, and that is more than a half-hour.”287
“No, only fifteen minutes,” said one of the men.
“Well, where were you for the half-hour before the moon rose?” asked the man who seemed examiner. “That is really the time most interesting to this case.”
“Why, good heavens, man!” cried Lyster, but ’Tana interrupted:
“I was walking up on the hill about that time.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.”
Mrs. Huzzard groaned dismally, and Lyster caught ’Tana by the hand.
“’Tana! think what you are saying. You don’t realize how serious this is.”
“One more question,” and the man looked at her very steadily. “Were you not expecting this man to-night?”
“I sha’n’t answer any more of your questions,” she answered, coldly.
Lyster turned on the man with clenched hands and a face white with anger.
“How dare you insult her with such a question?” he asked, hoarsely. “How could it be possible for Miss Rivers to know this renegade horse-thief?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said the man, drawing a long breath and looking at the girl. “It ain’t a pleasant thing to do; but as we have no courts up here, we have to straighten out crimes in a camp the best way we can. My name is Saunders. That man over there is right—this is Lee Holly; and I am sure now that I saw him leave this cabin last night. I passed the cabin and heard voices—hers and a man’s. I heard her say: ‘While I can’t quite decide to kill you myself, I hope some one else will.’ The rest of their words were not so clear. I288told Overton when he came back, but the man was gone then. You ask me how I dare think she could tell something of this if she chose. Well, I can’t help it. She is wearing a ring I’ll swear I saw Lee Holly wear three years ago, at a card table in Seattle. I’ll swear it! And he is lying here dead in her room, with a knife sticking in him that she had possession of to-day. Now, gentlemen, what do you think of it yourselves?”