289CHAPTER XXIII.GOOD-BY.
“Oh, ’Tana, it is awful—awful!” and poor Mrs. Huzzard rocked herself in a spasm of woe. “And to think that you won’t say a word—not a single word! It just breaks my heart.”
“Now, now! I’ll say lots of things if you will talk of something besides murders. And I’ll mend your broken heart when this trouble is all over, you will see!”
“Over! I’m mightily afraid it is only commencing. And you that cool and indifferent you are enough to put one crazy! Oh, if Dan Overton was only here.”
The girl smiled. All the hours of the night had gone by. He had at least twelve hours’ start, and the men of the camp had not yet suspected him for even a moment. They had questioned Harris, and he told them, by signs, that no man had gone through his cabin, no one had been in since dark; but he had heard a movement in the other room. The knife he had seen ’Tana take into the other room long before dark.
“And some one quarreling with this Holly—or following him—may have chanced on it and used it,” contested Lyster, who was angered, dismayed, and puzzled at ’Tana, quite as much as at the finding of the body. Her answers to all questions were so persistently detrimental to her own cause.290
“Don’t be uneasy—they won’t hang me,” she assured him. “Think of them hanging any one for killing Lee Holly! The man who did it—if he knows whom he was settling for—was a fool not to face the camp and get credit for it. Every man would have shaken hands with him. But just because there is a little mystery about it, they try to make it out a crime. Pooh!”
“Oh, child!” exclaimed Mrs. Huzzard, totally scandalized. “A murder! Of course it is a crime—the greatest.”
“I don’t think so. It is a greater crime to bring a soul into the world and then neglect it—let it drift into any hell on earth that nets it—than it is to send a soul out of the world, to meet heaven, if it deserves it. There are times when murder is justifiable, but there are certain other crimes that nothing could ever justify.”
“Why, ’Tana!” and Mrs. Huzzard looked at her helplessly. But Miss Slocum gave the girl a more understanding regard.
“You speak very bitterly for a young girl; as if you had thought a great deal on this question.”
“I have,” she acknowledged, promptly; “you think it is not a very nice question for girls to study about, don’t you? Well, it isn’t nice, but it’s true. I happen to be one of the souls dragged into life by people who didn’t think they had responsibilities. Miss Slocum, maybe that is why I am extra bitter on the subject.”
“But not—not against your parents, ’Tana?” said Mrs. Huzzard, in dismay.
The girl’s mouth drew hard and unlovely at the question.
“I don’t know much about religion,” she said, after a little, “and I don’t know that it matters much—now291don’t faint, Mrs. Huzzard! but I’m pretty certain old married men who had families were the ones who laid down the law about children in the Bible. They say ’spare the rod and spoil the child,’ and then say ‘honor your father and mother.’ They seem to think it a settled thing that all fathers and mothers are honorable—but they ain’t; and that all children need beating—and they don’t.”
“Oh, ’Tana!”
“And I think it is that one-sided commandment that makes folks think that all the duty must go from children to the parents, and not a word is said of the duty people owe to the souls they bring into the world. I don’t think it’s a square deal.”
“A square deal! Why, ’Tana!”
“Isn’t it so?” she asked, moodily. “You think a girl is a pretty hard case if she doesn’t give proper respect and duty to her parents, don’t you? But suppose they are the sort of people no one can respect—what then? Seems to me the first duty is from the parent to the children—the duty of caring for them, loving them, and teaching them right. A child can’t owe a debt of duty when it never received the duties it should have first. Oh, I may not say this clearly as I feel it.”
“But you know, ’Tana,” said Miss Slocum, “that if there is no commandment as to parents giving care to their children, it is only because it is so plainly a natural thing to do that it was unnecessary to command it.”
“No more natural than for a child to honor any person who is honorable, or to love the parent who loves him, and teaches him rightly. Huh! If a child is not able to love and respect a parent, it is the child who loses the most.”292
Miss Slocum looked at her sadly.
“I can’t scold you as I would try to scold many a one in your place,” she said, “for I feel as if you must have traveled over some long, hard path of troubles, before you could reach this feeling you have. But, ’Tana, think of brighter things; young girls should never drift into those perplexing questions. They will make you melancholy if you brood on such things.”
“Melancholy? Well, I think not,” and she smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Seems to me I’m the least gloomy person in camp this morning. All the rest of you look as though Mr. Holly had been your bosom friend.”
She talked recklessly—they thought heartlessly—of the murder, and the two women were strongly inclined to think the shock of the affair had touched her brain, for she showed no concern whatever as to her own position, but treated it as a joke. And when she realized that she was to a certain extent under guard, she seemed to find amusement in that, too. Her expressions, when the cousins grew pitiful over the handsome face of Holly, were touched with ridicule.
“I wonder if there was ever a man too low and vile to get woman’s pity, if he only had a pretty face,” she said, caustically. “If he was an ugly, old, half-decent fellow, you wouldn’t be making any soft-hearted surmises as to what he might have been under different circumstances. He has spoiled the lives of several tenderhearted women like you—yet you pity him!”
“’Tana, I never knew you to be so set against any one as you are against that poor dead man,” declared Mrs. Huzzard. “Not so much wonder the folks think you know how it happened, for you always had a293helping word for the worst old tramp or beggarly Indian that came around; but for this man you have nothing but unkindness.”
“No,” agreed the girl, “and you would like to think him a romantic victim of somebody, just because he is so good-looking. I’m going to talk to Harris. He won’t sympathize with the wrong side, I am sure.”
He looked up eagerly as she entered, his eyes full of anxious question. She touched his hand kindly and sat close beside him as she talked.
“You want to know all about it, don’t you?” she asked, softly. “Well, it is all over. He was alive, after all, and I would not believe it. But now you need never trail him again, you can rest now, for he is dead. Somebody else has—has owed him a grudge, too. They think I am the somebody, but you don’t believe that?”
He shook his head decidedly.
“No,” she continued; “though for one moment, Joe, I thought that it might have been you. Yes, I did; for of course I knew it was only weakness would keep you from it, if you were in reach of him. But I remembered at once that it could not be, for the hand that struck him was strong.”
He assented in his silent way, and watched her face closely, as if to read the shadows of thought thrown on it by her feelings.
“It’s awful, ain’t it?” she whispered. “It is what I said I hoped for, and just yet I can’t be sorry—I can’t! But, after this stir is all over, I know it will trouble me, make me sorry because I am not sorry now. I can’t cry, but I do feel like screaming. And see! every once in a while my hands tremble; I tremble all over. Oh, it is awful!”294
She buried her face in her hands. Only to him did she show any of the feeling with which the death of the man touched her.
“And you can’t tell me anything of how it was done?” she said, at last. “You so near—did you see any one?”
She longed to ask if he had seen Overton, but dared not utter his name, lest he might suspect as she did. Each hour that went by was an added gain to her for him. Of course he had struck, not knowing who the man was. If he had known, it would have been so easy to say, “I found him robbing the cabin. I killed him,” and there would have been no further question concerning it.
“But if all the other bars were beaten down between us, this one would keep me from ever shaking hands with him again. Why should it have been he out of all the camp? Oh, it makes my heart ache!”
While she sat thus, with miserable thoughts, others came to the door, and looking up, she saw Akkomi, who looked on her with keen, accusing eyes.
“No—it is not true, Akkomi,” she said, in his own jargon. “Keep silent for a little while of the things these people do not know—a little while, and then I can tell you who it is I am shielding, but not yet.”
“Him!” and the eyes of the Indian turned to the paralytic.
“No—not him; truly not,” she said, earnestly. “It is some one you would want to help if you knew—some one who is going fast on the path from these people. They will learn soon it is not I; but till then, keep silence.”
“Dan—where?” he asked, laconically, and her face paled at the question.295
Had he any reason to suspect the dread in her own mind? But a moment’s thought reassured her. He had asked simply because Overton seemed always to him the controlling spirit of the camp, and Overton was the one he would have speech with, if any.
“Overton left last night for the lake,” explained Lyster, who had entered and heard the name of Dan and the interrogative tone. Then the blanket was brought to Akkomi—his blanket, in which the man had died.
“I sold it to the white man—that is all,” he answered through ’Tana; and more than that he would not say except to inform them he would wait for Dan. Which was, in fact, the general desire of the committee organized to investigate.
They all appeared to be waiting for Dan. Lyster did not by any means fill his place, simply because Lyster’s interest in ’Tana was too apparent, and there was little of the cool quality of reason in his attitude toward the mysterious case. He did not believe the ring she wore had belonged to Holly, though she refused to tell the source from which it had reached her. He did not believe the man who said he heard that war of words at her cabin in the evening—at least, when others were about, he acted as if he did not believe it. But when he and ’Tana chanced to be alone, she felt the doubt there must be in his mind, and a regret for him touched her. For his sake she was sorry, but not sorry enough to clear the mystery at the expense of that other man she thought she was shielding.
Captain Leek had been dispatched with all speed to the lake works, that Seldon, Haydon, and Overton might be informed of the trouble in camp, and hasten back to settle it. To send for them was the only thing296Lyster thought of doing, for he himself felt powerless against the lot of men, who were not harsh or rude in any way, but who simply wanted to know “why”—so many “whys” that he could not answer.
Not less trying to him were the several who persisted in asserting that she had done a commendable thing—that the country ought to feel grateful to her, for the man had made trouble along the Columbia for years. He and his confederates had done ugly work along the border, etc., etc.
“Sorry you asked me, Max?” she said, seeing his face grow gloomy under their cheering (?) assertions.
He did not answer at once, afraid his impatience with her might make itself apparent in his speech.
“No, I’m not sorry,” he said, at last; “but I shall be relieved when the others arrive from the lake. Since you utterly refuse to confide even in me, you render me useless as to serving you; and—well—I can’t feel flattered that you confide in me no more than in the strangers here.”
“I know,” she agreed, with a little sigh, “it is hard on you, and it will be harder still if the story of this should ever creep out of the wilderness to the country where you come from—wouldn’t it?” and she looked at him very sharply, noting the swift color flush his face, as though she had read his thoughts. “Yes—so it’s lucky, Max, that we haven’t talked to others about that little conditional promise, isn’t it? So it will be easier to forget, and no one need know.”
“You mean you think me the sort of fellow to break our engagement just because these fools have mixed you up with this horror?” he asked, angrily. “You’ve no right to think that of me; neither have you the297right—in justice to me as well as yourself—to maintain this very suggestive manner about all things connected with the murder. Why can you not tell more clearly where your time was spent last evening? Why will you not tell where the ring came from? Why will you see me half-frantic over the whole miserable affair, when you could, I am sure, easily change it?”
“Oh, Max, I don’t want to worry you—indeed I don’t! But—” and she smiled mirthlessly. “I told you once I was a ’hoodoo.’ The people who like me are always sure to have trouble brewing for them. That is why I say you had better give me up, Max; for this is only the beginning.”
“Don’t talk like that; it is folly,” he said, in a sharp tone. “‘Hoodoo!’ Nonsense! When Overton and the others arrive, they will find a means of changing the ideas of these people, in spite of your reticence; and then maybe old Akkomi may find words, too. He sits outside the door as impassive as the clay image you gave me and bewitched me with.”
She smiled faintly, thinking of those days—how very long ago they seemed, yet it was this same summer.
“I feel as if I had lived a long time since I played with that clay,” she said, wistfully; “so many things have been made different for me.”
Then she arose and walked about the little room restlessly, while the eyes of Harris never left her. Into the other room she had not gone at all, for in it was the dead stranger.
“When do you look for your uncle and Mr. Haydon?” she asked, at last, for the silences were hardest to endure.298
She would laugh, or argue, or ridicule—do anything rather than sit silent with questioning eyes upon her. She even grew to fancy that Harris must accuse her—he watched her so!
“When do we look for them? Well, I don’t dare let myself decide. I only hope they may have made a start back, and will meet the captain on his way. As to Dan—he had not so very much the start, and they ought to catch up with him, for there were the two Indian canoeists—the two best ones; and when they are racing over the water, with an object, they surely ought to make better time than he. I can’t see that he had any very pressing reason for going at all.”
“He doesn’t talk much about his reasons,” she answered.
“No; that’s a fact,” he agreed, “and less of late than when I knew him first. But he’ll make Akkomi talk, maybe, when he arrives—and I hope you, too.”
“When he arrives!”
She thought the words, but did not say them aloud. She sat long after Max had left her, and thought how many hours must elapse before they discovered that Dan had not followed the other men to the lake works. She felt sure that he was somewhere in the wilderness, avoiding the known paths, alone, and perhaps hating her as the cause of his isolation, because she would not confess what the man was to her, but left him blindly to keep his threat, and kill him when found in her room.
Ah! why not have trusted him with the whole truth? She asked herself the question as she sat there, but the mere thought of it made her face grow hot, and her jaws set defiantly.
She would not—she could not! so she told herself.299Better—better far be suspected of a murder—live all her life under the blame of it for him—than to tell him of a past that was dead to her now, a past she hated, and from which she had determined to bar herself as far as silence could build the wall. And to tell him—him—she could not.
But even as she sat, with her burning face in her hands, quick, heavy steps came to the door, halted, and looking up she found Dan before her.
“Oh! you should not,” she whispered, hurriedly. “Why did you come back? They do not suspect; they think I did it—and so—”
“What does this all mean?—what do you mean?” he asked. “Can’t you speak?”
It seemed she could not find any more words, she stared at him so helplessly.
“Max, come here!” he called, to hasten steps already approaching. “Come, all of you; I had only a moment to listen to the captain when he caught up with me. But he told me she is suspected of murder—that a ring she wore last night helped the suspicion on. I didn’t wait to hear any more, for I gave the little girl that snake ring—gave it to her weeks ago. I bought it from a miner, and he told me he got it from an Indian near Karlo. Now are you ready to suspect me, too, because I had it first?”
“The ring wasn’t just the most important bit of circumstantial evidence, Mr. Overton,” answered the man named Saunders; “and we are all mighty glad you’ve got here. It was in her room the man was found, and a knife she borrowed from you was what killed him; and of where she was just about the time the thing happened she won’t say anything.”300
His face paled slightly as he looked at her and heard the brief summing up of the case.
“My knife?” he said, blankly.
“Yes, sir. When some one said it was your knife, she spoke up and said it was, but that you had not had it since noon, for she borrowed it then to cut a stick; but beyond that she don’t tell a thing.”
“Who is the man?”
“The renegade—Lee Holly.”
“Lee Holly!” He turned a piercing glance on Harris, remembering the deep interest he had shown in that man Lee Holly and his partner, “Monte.”
Harris met his gaze without flinching, and nodded his head as if in assent.
And that was the man found dead in her room!
The faces of the people seemed for a moment an indistinct blur before his eyes; then he rallied and turned to her.
“’Tana, you never did it,” he said, reassuringly; “or if you did, it has been justifiable, and I know it. If it was necessary to do it in any self-defense, don’t be afraid to tell it all plainly. No one would blame you. It is only this mystery that makes them want to hear the truth.”
She only looked at him. Was he acting? Did he himself know nothing? The hope that it was so—that she had deceived herself—made her tremble as she had not at danger to herself. She had risen to her feet as he entered, but she swayed as if to fall, and he caught her, not knowing it was hope instead of despair that took the color from her face and left her helpless.
“Courage, ’Tana! Tell us what you can. I left you301just as the moon came up. I saw you go to Mrs. Huzzard’s tent. Now, where did you go after that?”
“What?” almost shouted Lyster. “You were with her when the moon rose. Are you sure?”
“Sure? Of course I am. Why?”
“And how long before that, Mr. Overton?” asked Saunders; “for that is a very important point.”
“About a half-hour, I should say—maybe a little more,” he answered, staring at them. “Now, what important thing does that prove?”
One of the men gave a cheer; three or four had come up to the door when they saw Overton, and they took the yell up with a will. Mrs. Huzzard started to run from the tent, but grew so nervous that she had to wait until Miss Slocum came to her aid.
“What in the world does it mean?” she gasped.
Saunders turned around with an honestly pleased look.
“It means that Mr. Overton here has brought word that clears Miss Rivers of being at the cabin when the murder was done—that’s what it means; and we are all too glad over it to keep quiet. But why in the world didn’t you tell us that, miss?”
But she did not say a word. All about Dan were exclamations and disjointed sentences, from which he could gain little actual knowledge, and he turned to Lyster, impatiently:
“Can’t you tell me—can’t some of you tell me, what I have cleared up for her? When was this killing supposed to be done?”
“At or a little before moonrise,” said Max, his face radiant once more. “’Tana—don’t you know what he has done for you? taken away all of that horribly302mistaken suspicion you let rest on you. Where was she, Dan?”
“Last night? Oh, up above the bluff there—went up when the pretty red lights were in the sky, and staid until the moon rose. I came across her up there, and advised her not to range away alone; so, when she got good and ready, she walked back again, and went to the tent where you folks were. Then I struck the creek, decided I would take a run up the lake, and left without seeing any of you again. And all this time ’Tana has had a guard over her. Some of you must have been crazy.”
“Well, then, I guess I was the worst lunatic of the lot,” confessed Saunders. “But to tell the truth, Mr. Overton, it looks to me now as if she encouraged suspicion—yes, it does. ‘Overton’s knife,’ said some one; but, quick as could be, she spoke up and said it was she who had it, and she didn’t mind just where she left it. And as to where she was at that time, well, she just wouldn’t give us a bit of satisfaction. Blest if I don’t think she wanted us to suspect her.”
“Oh!” he breathed, as if in understanding, and her first words swept back to him, her nervous—“Why did you come back? They suspect me!” Surely that cry was as a plea for his own safety; it spoke through eyes and voice as well as words. Some glimmer of the truth came to him.
“Come, ’Tana!” he said, and reached his hand to her. “Where is the man—Holly? I should like to go in. Will you come, too?”
She rose without a word, and no one attempted to follow them.
Mrs. Huzzard heaved a prodigious sigh of content.303
“Oh, that girl Montana!” she exclaimed. “I declare she ain’t like any girl I ever did see! This morning, when she was a suspected criminal, she was talky, and even laughed, and now that she’s cleared, she won’t lift her head to look at any one. I do wonder if that sort of queerness is catching in these woods. I declare I feel most scared enough to leave.”
But Lyster reassured her.
“Remember how sick she has been; and think what a shock this whole affair has been to weak nerves,” he said, for with Dan’s revelations he had grown blissfully content once more, “and as for that fellow hearing voices in her cabin—nonsense! She had been reading some poem or play aloud. She is fond of reading so, and does it remarkably well. He heard her spouting in there for the benefit of Harris, and imagined she was making threats to some one. Poor little girl! I’m determined she sha’n’t remain here any longer.”
“Are you?” asked Mrs. Huzzard, dryly. “Well, Mr. Max, so long as I’ve known her, I’ve always found ’Tana makes her own determinations—and sticks to them, too.”
“I’m glad to be reminded of that,” he retorted, “for she promised me yesterday to marry me some time.”
“Bless my soul!”
“If she didn’t change her mind,” he added, laughingly.
“To marry you! Well, well, well!” and she stared at him so queerly, that a shade of irritation crossed his face.
“Why not?” he asked. “Don’t you think that a plain, ordinary man is good enough for your wild-flower of the Kootenai hills?”304
“Oh, you’re not plain at all, Mr. Max Lyster,” she returned, “and I’ll go bail many a woman who is smarter than either ’Tana or me has let you know it! It ain’t the plainness—it’s the difference. And—well, well! you know you’ve been quarreling ever since you met.”
“But that is all over now,” he promised; “and haven’t you a good wish for us?”
“Indeed I have, then—a many of them, but you have surprised me. I used to think that’s how it would end; and then—well, then, a different notion got in my head. Now that it’s settled, I do hope you will be happy. Bless the child! I’ll go and tell her so this minute.”
“No,” he said, quickly, “let her and Dan have their talk out—if she will talk to him. That fever left her queer in some things, and one of them is her avoidance of Dan. She hasn’t been free and friendly with him as she used to be, and it is too bad; for he is such a good fellow, and would do anything for her.”
“Yes, he would,” assented Mrs. Huzzard.
“And she will be her own spirited self in a few weeks—when she gets away from here—and gets stronger. She’ll appreciate Dan more after a while, for there are few like him. And so—as she is to go away so soon, I hope something will put them on their former confidential footing. Maybe this murder will be the something.”
“You are a good friend, Mr. Max,” said the woman, slowly, “and you deserve to be a lucky lover. I’m sure I hope so.”
Within the cabin, those two of whom they spoke stood together beside the dead outlaw, and their words were low—so low that the paralyzed man in the next room listened in vain.305
“And you believed that of me—of me?” he asked, and she answered, falteringly:
“How did I know? You said—you threatened—you would kill him—any man you found in here. So, when he was here dead, I—did not know.”
“And you thought I had stuck that knife in him and left?”
She nodded her head.
“And you thought,” he continued, in a voice slightly tremulous, “that you were giving me a chance to escape just so long as you let them suspect—you?”
She did not answer, but turned toward the door. He held his arm out and barred her way.
“Only a moment!” he said, pleadingly. “It never can be that—that I would be anything to you, little girl—never, never! But—just once—let me tell you a truth that shall never hurt you, I swear! I love you! No other word but that will tell your dearness to me. I—I never would have said it, but—but what you risked for me has broken me down. It has told me more than your words would tell me, and I—Oh, God! my God!”
She shrank from the passion in his words and tone, but the movement only made him catch her arm and hold her there. Tears were in his eyes as he looked at her, and his jaws were set firmly.
“You are afraid of me—of me?” he asked. “Don’t be. Life will be hard enough now without leaving me that to remember. I’m not asking a word in return from you; I have no right. You will be happy somewhere else—and with some one else—and that is right.”
He still held her wrist, and they stood in silence. She could utter no word; but her mouth trembled and she tried to smother a sob that arose in her throat.306
But he heard it.
“Don’t!” he said, almost in a whisper—“for God’s sake, don’t cry. I can’t stand that—not your tears. Here! be brave! Look up at me, won’t you? See! I don’t ask you for a word or a kiss or a thought when you leave me—only let me see your eyes! Look at me!”
What he read in her trembling lips and her shrinking, shamed eyes made him draw his breath hard through his shut teeth.
“My brave little girl!” he said softly. “You will think harshly of me for this some day—if you ever know—know all. But what you did this morning made a coward of me—that and my longing for you. Try to forgive me. Or, no—you had better not. And when you are his wife—Oh, it’s no use—I can’t think or speak of that—yet. Good-by, little girl—good-by!”
307CHAPTER XXIV.LEAVING CAMP.
Afterward, ’Tana never could remember clearly the incidents of the few days that followed. Only once more she entered the cabin of death, and that was when Mr. Haydon and Mr. Seldon returned with all haste to the camp, after meeting with Captain Leek and the Indian boatman.
Then, as some of the men offered to go with them to view the remains of the outlaw, she came forward.
“No. I will take them,” she said.
When Mr. Haydon demurred, feeling that a young girl should be kept as much as possible from such scenes, she had laid her hand on Seldon’s arm.
“Come!” she said, and they went with her.
But when inside the door, she did not approach the blanket-covered form stretched on the couch; only pointed toward it, and stood herself like a guard at the entrance.
When Seldon lifted the Indian blanket from the face, he uttered a startled exclamation, and looked strangely at her. She never turned around.
“What is it?” asked Mr. Haydon.
No one replied, and as he looked with anxiety toward the form there, his face grew ashen in its horror.
“Lord in heaven!” he gasped; “first her on that bed308and nowhim! I—I feel as if I was haunted in this camp. Seldon, is it—is it—”
“No mistake possible,” answered the other man, decidedly. “I could swear to the identity. It is George Rankin!”
“And Holly, the renegade!” added Haydon, in consternation; “and Lord only knows how many other aliases he has worn. Oh, what a sensation the papers would make over this if they got hold of it all. My! my! it would be awful! And that girl, Montana, as she calls herself, she has been clever to keep it quiet as she has, for—Oh, Lord!”
“What is the matter now? You look fairly sick,” said the other, impatiently. “I didn’t fancy you’d grieve much over his death.”
“No, it isn’t that,” said Haydon, huskily. “But that girl—don’t you see she was accused of this? And—well seeing who he is, how do we know—”
He stopped awkwardly, unable to continue with the girl herself so near and with Seldon’s warning glance directed to him.
She leaned against the wall, and apparently had not heard their words. Seldon’s face softened as he looked at her; and, going over, he put his hand kindly on her hair.
“I am going to be your uncle, now,” he said in a caressing tone. “You have kept up like a soldier under some terrible things here; but we will try to make things brighter for you now.”
She smiled in a dreary way without looking at him. His knowledge of the terrible things she had endured seemed to her very limited.
“And you will go now with us—with Mr. Haydon—back309to your mother’s old home, won’t you?” he said, in a persuasive way. “It is not good, you know, for a little girl not to know any of her relations, or to bear such shocking grudges,” he added, in a lower tone.
But she gave him no answering smile.
“I will go to your house if you will have me,” she said. “You and Max are my friends. I will go only with people I like.”
“You know, my dear,” said Mr. Haydon, who heard her last words. “You know I offered you a home in my house until such time as you got to school, and—and of course, I’ll stick to it.”
“Though you are a little afraid to risk it, aren’t you?” she asked, with an unpleasant smile. “Haven’t you an idea that I might murder you all in your beds some fine night? You know I belong to a country where they do such things for pastime. Aren’t you afraid?”
“That is a very horrible sort of pleasantry,” he answered, and moved away from the dead face he had been staring at. “I beg you will not indulge in it, especially when you move in a society more refined than these mining camps can afford. It will be a disadvantage to you if you carry with you customs and memories of this unfinished section. And after all, you do not belong here, your family was of the East. When you go back there, it would be policy for you to forget that you had ever lived anywhere else.”
Mr. Haydon had never made so long a speech to her before, and it was delivered with a certain persistence, as if it was a matter of conscience he would be relieved to have off his mind.
“I think you are mistaken when you say I do not belong here,” she answered, coolly. “Some of my family310have been a good many things I don’t intend to be. I was born in Montana; and I might have starved to death for any help my ’family’ would have given me, if I hadn’t struck luck and helped myself here in Idaho. So I think I belong out here, and if I live, I will come back again—some day.”
She turned to Seldon and pointed to the dead form.
“They will take him away to-day—I heard them say so,” she said quietly. “Let it be somewhere away from the camp—not near—not where I can see.”
“Can’t you forget—even now, ’Tana?”
“Does anybody ever forget?” she asked. “When people say they can forget and forgive, I don’t trust them, for I don’t believe them.”
“Have you any idea who killed him?” he asked. “It is certainly a strange affair. I thought you might suspect some one these people know nothing of.”
But she shook her head. “No,” she said. “There were several who would have liked to do it, I suppose—people he had wronged or ruined; for he had few friends left, or he would not have come across to these poor reds to hide. Give old Akkomi part of that gold; he was faithful to me—and to him, too. No, I don’t know who did it. I don’t care, now. I thought I knew once; but I was wrong. This way of dying is better than the rope; and that is what the law would have given him. He would have chosen this—I know.”
“Did you ever in your life hear such cold-blooded words from a girl?” demanded Haydon, when she left them and went to Harris. “Afraid of her? Humph! Well, some people would be. No wonder they suspected her when she showed such indifference. Every word she says makes me regret more and more that I311acknowledged her. But how was I to know? She was ill, and made me feel as if a ghost had come before me. I couldn’t sleep till I had made up my mind to take the risk of her. Max sung her praises as if she was some rare untrained genius. Nothing gave me an idea that she would turn out this way.”
“‘This way’ has not damaged you much so far,” remarked Mr. Seldon, dryly. “And as she is not likely to be much of a charge on your hands, you had better not borrow trouble on that score.”
“All very well—all very well for you to be indifferent,” returned Mr. Haydon, with some impatience. “You have no family to consider, no matter what wild escapade she would be guilty of, you would not be touched by the disgrace of it, because she doesn’t belong in any way to your family.”
“Maybe she will, though,” suggested Seldon.
Mr. Haydon shrugged his shoulders significantly.
“You mean through Max, don’t you?” he asked. “Yes, I was simple enough to build on that myself—thought what a nice, quiet way it would be of arranging the whole affair; but after a talk with this ranger, Overton, whom you and Max unite in admiring, I concluded he might be in the way.”
“Overton? Nonsense!”
“Well, maybe; but he made himself very autocratic when I attempted to discuss her future. He seemed to show a good deal of authority concerning her affairs.”
“Not a bit more than he does over the affairs of their paralyzed partner in there,” answered Seldon. “If she always makes as square friends as Dan Overton, I shan’t quarrel with her judgment.”312
When ’Tana left them and went into the other cabin, she stood looking at Harris a long time in a curious, scrutinizing way, and his face changed from doubt to dread before she spoke.
“I am hardly able to think any more, Joe,” she said at last, and her tired eyes accented the truth of her words; “but something like a thought keeps hammering in my head about you—about you and—” She pointed to the next room. “If you could walk, I should know you did it. If you could talk, I should know you had it done. I wouldn’t tell on you; but I’d be glad I was going where I would not see you, for I never could touch your hand again. I am going away, Joe; won’t you tell me true whether you know who did it? Do you?”
He shook his head with his eyes closed. He, too, looked pale and worn, and noticing it, she asked if he would not rather move to some other dwelling, since—
He nodded his head with a sort of eagerness. All of the two days and the night he had sat there, with only the folds of a blanket to separate him from the room where his dead foe lay.
“I will speak to them about it right away.” She lifted his hand and stroked it with a sort of sympathy. “Joe, can you forgive him now?” she whispered.
He made her no reply; only closed his eyes as before.
“You can’t, then? and I can’t ask you to, though I suppose I ought to. Margaret would,” and she smiled strangely. “You don’t know Margaret, do you? Well, neither do I. But I guess she is the sort of girl I ought to be. Joe, I can’t stay in camp any longer. Maybe I’ll leave for the Ferry to-day. Will you miss me? Yes, I313know you will,” she added, “and I will miss you, too. Do you know—can you tell when Dan will come back?”
He shook his head, and an hour later she said to Max:
“Take me away from here, back to the Ferry—any place. Mrs. Huzzard will, maybe, come for a few days—or Miss Slocum. Ask them, and let me go soon.”
And an hour after they had started, another canoe went slowly over the water toward the Kootenai River, a canoe guided by Akkomi; and in it lay the blanket-draped figure of the man whose death was yet a mystery to the camp. He was at least borne to his resting place by a friend, though what the reason for Akkomi’s faithfulness, no one ever knew; for some favor in the past, no doubt. Seldon knew that ’Tana would rather Akkomi should be the one to cover his grave, though where it was made, no white man ever knew.
314CHAPTER XXV.ON MANHATTAN ISLAND.
“What do you intend to make of your life, Montana, since you avoid all questions of marriage? You will not go to school, and care nothing about fitting yourself for the society where by right you should belong.”
A whole winter had gone, and the springtime had come again; and over all the Island of Manhattan, and on the heights back from the rivers, the green of the leaves was creeping over the boughs from which winter had swept all signs of life months ago.
In a very lovely little room, facing a park where the glitter of a tiny lake could be seen, ’Tana lounged and stared at the waving branches and the fettered water.
Not just the same ’Tana as when, a year ago, she had breasted the cold waves of the Kootenai. No one, to look at her now, would connect the taller, stylishly dressed figure, with that little half-savage who had scowled at Overton in the lodge of Akkomi. Her hair was no longer short and boyish in its arrangement. A silver comb held it in place, except where the tiny curls crept down to cluster about her neck. A gown of soft white wool was caught at her waist by a flat woven belt of silver, and an embroidered shoe of silvery gleam peeped from under the white folds.
No, it was not the same ’Tana. And the little gray-haired lady, who slipped ivory knitting needles in and315out of silky flosses, watched her with troubled concern as she asked:
“And what do you intend to make of your life, Montana?”
“You are out of patience with me, are you not, Miss Seldon?” asked the girl. “Oh, yes, I know you are; and I don’t blame you. Everything I have ever wanted in my life is in reach of me here—everything a girl should have; yet it doesn’t mean so much to me as I thought it would.”
“But if you would go to school, perhaps—”
“Perhaps I would learn to appreciate all this,” and the girl glanced around at the fine fittings of the room, and then back to the point of her own slipper.
“But I do study hard at home. Doesn’t Miss Ackerman give me credit for learning very quickly? and doesn’t that music teacher hop around and wave his hands over my most excellent, ringing voice? They say I study well.”
“Yes, yes; you do, too. But at a school, my dear, where you would have the association of other girls, you would naturally grow more—more girlish yourself, if I may say so; for you are old beyond your years in ways that are peculiar. Your ideas of things are not the ideas of girlhood; and yet you are very fond of girls.”
“And how do you know that?” asked ’Tana.
“Why, my dear, you never go past one on the street that you don’t give her more notice than the very handsomest man you might see. And at the matinees, if the play does not hold you very close, your eyes are always directed to the young girls in the audience. Yes, you are fond of them, yet you will not allow yourself to be intimate with any.”316
And the pretty, refined-looking lady smiled at her and nodded her head in a knowing way, as though she had made an important discovery.
The girl on the couch lay silent for a while, then she rose and went over to the window, gazing across to the park, where people were walking and riding along the green knolls and levels. Young girls were there, too, and she watched them a little while, with the old moody expression in her dark eyes.
“Perhaps it is because I don’t like to make friends under false pretenses,” she said, at last. “Your society is a very fine and very curious thing, and there is a great deal of false pretense about it. Individually, they would overlook the fact that I was accused of murder in Idaho—the gold mine would help some of them to do that! But if it should ever get in their papers here, they would collectively think it their duty to each other not to recognize me.”
“Oh, Montana, my dear child, why do you not forget that horrible life, and leave your mind free to partake of the advantages now surrounding you?” and Miss Seldon sighed with real distress, and dropped her ivory needles despairingly. “It seems so strange that you care to remember that which was surely a terrible life.”
“Much more so than you can know,” answered the girl, coming over to her and drawing a velvet hassock to her side. “And, my dear, good, innocent little lady, just so long as you all try to persuade me that I should go out among young people of my own age, just so long must I be forced to think of how different my life has been to theirs. Some day they, too, might learn how different it has been, and resent my presence among them. I prefer not to run that risk. I might get to like some317of them, and then it would hurt. Besides, the more I see of people since I came here, the more I feel that every one should remain with their own class in life.”
“But, Montana, that is not an American sentiment at all!” said Miss Seldon, with some surprise. “But even that idea should not exclude from refined circles. By birth you are a lady.”
The girl smiled bitterly. “You mean my mother was,” she answered. “But she did not give me a gentleman for a father; and I don’t believe the parents of any of those lovely girls we meet would like them to know the daughter of such a man, if they knew it. Now, do you understand how I feel about myself and this social question?”
“You are foolishly conscientious and morbid,” exclaimed the older lady. “I declare, Montana, I don’t know what to do with you. People like you—you are very clever, you have youth, wealth, and beauty—yes, the last, too! yet you shut yourself up here like a young nun. Only the theaters and the art galleries will you visit—never a person—not even Margaret.”
“Not even Margaret,” repeated the girl; “and that is the crowning sin in your eyes, isn’t it? Well, I don’t blame you, for she is very lovely; and how much she thinks of you!”
“Yes!” sighed the little lady. “Mrs. Haydon is a woman of very decided character, but not at all given to loving demonstrations to children. Long ago, when we lived closer, little Margie would come to me daily to be kissed and petted. Max was only a boy then, and they were great companions.”
“Yes; and if he had been sensible, he would have fallen in love with her and made her Mrs. Lyster,318instead of knocking around Western mining towns, and making queer friends,” said the girl, smiling at the old lady’s astonished face. “She is just the sort of girl to suit him.”
“My dear,” she said, solemnly, “do you really care for him a particle?”
“Who—Max? Of course I do. He is the best fellow I know, and was so good to me out there in the wilderness. There was no one out there to compare me with, so I suppose I loomed up big when compared with the average squaw. But everything is different here. I did not know how different. I know now, however, and I won’t let him go on making a mistake.”
“Oh, Montana!” cried the little lady, pleadingly.
Just then a maid entered with two cards, at which she glanced with a dismay that was comical.
“Margaret and Max! Why, is it not strange they should call at the same time, and at a time when—”
“When I was pairing them off so nicely, without their knowledge,” added the girl. “Have them come up here, won’t you? It is so much more cozy than that very elegant parlor. And I always feel as if poor Max had been turned out of his home since I came.”
So they came to the little sitting room—pretty, dark-eyed Margaret, with her faultless manners and her real fondness for Miss Seldon, whom she kissed three times.
“For I have not seen you for three days,” she explained, “and those two are back numbers.” Then she turned to ’Tana and eyed her admiringly as they clasped hands.
“You look as though you had stepped from a picture of classic Greek,” she declared. “Where in that pretty curly head of yours do you find the ideas for those319artistic arrangements of form and color? You are an artist, Montana, and you don’t know it.”
“I will begin to believe it if people keep telling me so.”
“Who else has told you?” asked Lyster, and she laughed at him.
“Not you,” she replied; “at least not since you teased me about the clay Indians I made on the shores of the Kootenai. But some one else has told me—Mr. Roden.”
“Roden, the sculptor! But how does he know?”
She glanced from one face to the other, and sighed with a serio-comic expression. “I might as well confess,” she said, at last. “I am so glad you are here, Miss Margaret, for I may need an advocate. I have been working two hours a day in Mr. Roden’s studio for over a month.”
“Montana!” gasped Miss Seldon, “but—how—when?”
“Before you were awake in the morning,” she said, and looked from one to the other of their blank faces. “You look as if it were a shock, instead of a surprise,” she added. “I did not tell you at first, as it would seem only a whim. But he has told me I have reason for the whim, and that I should continue. So—I think I shall.”
“But, my child—for you are a child, after all—don’t you know it is a very strange thing for a girl to go alone like that, and—and—Oh, dear! Max, can’t you tell her?”
But Max did not. There was a slight wrinkle between his brows, but she saw it and smiled.
“You can’t scold me, though, can you?” she asked. “That is right, for it would be no use. I know you would say that in your set it would not be proper for a girl to do such independent things. But you see, I do not belong to any set. I have just been telling this dear little320lady, who is trying to look stern, some of the reasons why society life and I can never agree. But I have found several reasons why Art life and I should agree perfectly. I like the freedom of it—the study of it. And, even if I never accomplish much, I shall at least have tried my best.”
“But, Montana, it is not as though you had to learn such things,” pleaded Miss Seldon. “You have plenty of money.”
“Oh, money—money! But I have found there are a few things in this world money can not buy. Art study, little as I have attempted, has taught me that.”
Lyster came over and sat beside her by the window.
“’Tana,” he said, and looked at her with kindly directness, “can the Art study give you that which you crave, and which money can not buy?”
Her eyes fell to the floor. She could not but feel sorry to go against his wishes; and yet—
“No, it can not, entirely,” she said, at last. “But it is all the substitute I know of, and, maybe, after a while, it will satisfy me.”
Miss Seldon took Margaret from the room on some pretext, and Lyster rose and walked across to the other window. He was evidently much troubled or annoyed.
“Then you are not satisfied?” he asked. “The life that seemed possible to you, when out there in camp, is impossible to you now.”
“Oh, Max! don’t be angry—don’t. Everything was all wrong out there. You were sorry for me out there; you thought me different from what I am. I could never be the sort of girl you should marry—not like Margaret—”321
“Margaret!” and his face paled a little, “why do you speak of her?”
“I know, if you do not, Max,” she answered, and smiled at him. “I have learned several things since I came here, and one of them is Mr. Haydon’s reason for encouraging our friendship so much. It was to end any attachment between you and Margaret. Oh, I know, Max! If I had not looked just a little bit like her, you would never have fancied you loved me—for it was only a fancy.”
“It was no fancy! I did love you. I was honest with you, and I have waited patiently, while you have grown more and more distant until now—”
“Now we had better end it all, Max. I could not make you happy, for I am not happy myself.”
“Perhaps I—”
“No, you can not help me; and it is not your fault. You have been good to me—very good; but I can’t marry any one.”
“No one?” he asked, looking at her doubtfully. “’Tana, sometimes I have fancied you might have cared for some one else—some one before you met me.”
“No, I cared for no one before I met you,” she answered, slowly. “But I could not be happy in the social life of your people here. They are charming, but I am not suited to their life. And—and I can’t go back to the hills. So, in a month, I am going to Italy.”
“You have it all decided, then?”
“All—don’t be angry, Max. You will thank me for it some day, though I know our friends will think badly of me just now.”
“No, they shall not; you are breaking no promises. You took me only on trial, and it seems I don’t suit,”322he said, with a grimace. “I will see that you are not blamed. And so long as you do not leave America, I should like you to remain here. Don’t let anything be changed in our friendship, ’Tana.”
She turned to him with tears in her eyes, and held out her hand.
“You are too good to me, Max,” she said, brokenly, “God knows what will become of me when I leave you all and go among foreign faces, among whom I shall not have a friend. I hope to work and—be contented; but I shall never meet a friend like you again.”
He drew her to him quickly.
“Don’t go!” he whispered, pleadingly. “I can’t let you go out into the world alone like that! I will love you—care for you—”
“Hush!” and she put her hand on his face to push it away; “it is no use, and don’t do that—try to kiss me; you must not. No man has ever kissed me, and you—”
“And I sha’n’t be the first,” he added, shrugging his shoulders. “Well, I confess I hoped to be, and you are a greater temptation than you know, Miss Montana. And you ought to pardon me the attempt.”
Her face was flushed and shamed. “I could pardon a great deal in you, Max,” she answered; “but don’t speak of it again. Talk to me of other things.”
“Other things? Well, I haven’t many other things in my mind just now. Still, I did see some one down town this morning whom you rather liked, and who asked after you. It was Mr. Harvey, the writer, whom we met first at Bonner’s Ferry, up in the Kootenai land. Do you remember him?”
“Certainly. We met him afterward at one of the art galleries, and I have seen him several times at Roden’s323studio. They are great friends. He looked surprised to find me there, but, after I spoke to him, he talked to me a great deal. You know, Max, I always imagine he heard that suspicion of me up at the camp. Do you think so?”
“He never intimated it to me,” answered Max; “though Haydon nearly went into spasms of fear lest he would put it all in some paper.”
“I remember. He would scarcely allow me breathing space for fear the stranger would get near enough to speak to me again. I remember all that journey, because when I reached the end of it, the past seemed like a troubled dream, for this life of fineness and beauty and leisure was all so different.”
“And yet you are not contented?”
“Oh, don’t talk of that—of me!” she begged. “I am tired of myself. I just remembered another one on the train that journey—the little variety actress who had her dresses made to look cute and babyish—the one with bleached hair, and they called her Goldie. She looked scared to death when he—Overton—stopped at the window to say good-by. I often wondered why.”
“Oh, you know Dan was a sort of sheriff, or law-and-order man, up there. He might have known her unfavorably, and she was afraid of being identified by him, or something of that sort. She belonged to the rougher element, no doubt.”
“Max, it makes me homesick to think of that country,” she confessed. “Ever since the grass has commenced to be green, and the buds to swell, it seems to me all the woods are calling me. All the sluggish water I see here in the parks and the rivers makes me dream of the rush of the clear Kootenai, and long for a canoe and324paddle. Contrive something to make me forget it, won’t you? Make up a party to go somewhere—anywhere. I will be cavalier to your lovely little aunt, and leave you to Margaret.”
“I asked you before why you speak of Margaret and me in that tone?” he said. “Are you going to tell me? You have no reason but your own fancy.”
“Haven’t I? Well, this isn’t fancy, Max—that I would like to see my cousin—you see, I claim them for this once—happy in her own way, instead of unhappy in the life her ambitious family are trying to arrange for her. And I promise to trade some surplus dust for a wedding present just as soon as you conclude to spoil their plans, and make yourself and that little girl and your aunt all happy by a few easily spoken words.”
“But I have just told you I love you.”
“You will know better some day,” she said, and turned away. “Now go and pacify your aunt, won’t you? She seemed so troubled about the modeling—bless her dear heart! I didn’t want to trouble her, but the work—some work—was a necessity to me. I was growing so homesick for the woods.”
After she was left alone, she drew a letter from her pocket, one she had got in the morning mail, and read over again the irregular lines sent by Mrs. Huzzard.