"Killed him?"
"Dead as a door-nail. Right over the ridge north. Our boys were just coming in, after skirmishing for signs from last night. They heard the shot, and rode up; and then, almost before they saw them, some ambushed Injuns burst out on them like all-possessed. They'd come with the young one, who was sent ahead, you see. Well, there was a go-as-you-please fight, I guess, till our men got out from camp, and chased them so far they haven't showed up since. Some of us went out afoot to the ridge, and found the dead buck. We buried him up there, and have been keeping an eye open for the boys ever since."
"Did Captain Holt go?"
"You bet! and every other man that had a horse to go on; even that Mr. Stuart and Hardy from the ranch went."
"And they haven't showed up?"
"Naw."
No more questions were asked, and the guard betook himself to his pipe and enjoyment of the warm room, for intense cold had followed in the wake of the snow.
And the prisoner? The man on watch eyed dubiously the dark face as it lounged on the bunk. Aroused and refreshed by rest, he drifted away from the remembrance of his prison by living over with tender eyes the victory of the night before. Once he had seen it was possible for her to care for him—that once of a year ago, before she knew what he was; but lately—well, he thought her a plucky, cool-headed girl, who wouldn't go back on a friend, and her stanchness had shown that; but the very frank and outspoken showing had taken from him any hope of the warmer feeling that had existed in the old days, when she had likened him to a Launcelot in buckskin. The hope? His teeth set viciously as he thought of it as a hope. What right had he for such a wish? What right had he to let go of himself as he had done, and show her how his life was bound up in hers? What a hopeless tangle it was; and if she cared for him, it meant plainly enough that he was to repay her by communicating its hopelessness to her.
If she cared! In the prosaic light of day he even attempted to tell himself that the victory of the night might have been in part a delusion; that she had pitied him and the passion she had raised, and so had stooped from the saddle. Might it not have been only that? His reason told him—perhaps; and then all the wild unreason in the man turned rebel, and the force of a tumultuous instinct arose and took possession of him—of her, for it gave her again into his arms, and the laws of people were as nothing. She was his by her own gift; the rest of the world was blotted out.
At the ranch a strange cloak of silence hung around the household in regard to the horse-stealing. The men, hearing of the night raid, had endeavored to keep it from the women for fear of giving them uneasiness, but had not altogether succeeded. Jim had frustrated that attempt by forgetting, and blurting out at the dinner table something about Genesee's arrest.
"It isn't true; it can't be true!" and Rachel turned with such an appeal in her tired eyes that Andrews dropped his own.
"It's true, Miss; he's accused of knowin' all about it, even if he didn't help. It's supposed to be his Kootenai friends that did it, and they say he's mighty close-mouthed over it; that tells against him. I hope to God it ain't true, for he seemed a mighty good man; but he's under guard at the camp; won't allow folks to see him, I hear—leastwise, no Injuns."
Rachel glanced at the others, but found in their faces no strong partisanship for Genesee. Tillie and Fred were regretful, but not hopeful.
"It seems a shame that such a fine-looking fellow should be a squaw man," said the Major's daughter; "but since he is one, there is not much to be hoped of him, though papa did have a wonderful lot of faith in this one."
Rachel's eyes lightened at the words. "What day do they look for your father back?" she asked quickly.
"To-day or to-morrow, though this snow may hinder them some."
"Well, he can't get here any too soon," chipped in the loquacious Jim. "I reckon they—"
Then his discourse was cut short by the toe of Andrews' boot under the table. Although the horse-stealing was known at the ranch, and now the suspicion of Genesee, yet there was one thing that Andrews and Ivans had maneuvered to keep quiet, and that was the absence of Hardy and Stuart, and the fact that hostile Indians had descended from the hills.
Apocryphal stories had been told Tillie of an early supper her husband and guest had eaten at camp, and a ride they had taken after stock overlooked the night before; and the hours dragged on, the night came, and the two conspirators were gaining themselves the serious anxiety they had endeavored to shield the women from, and Jim, once outside the door, was threatened with instant annihilation if he let his tongue run so far ahead of his wit again.
The ladies had decided not to tell Rachel about Genesee—Tillie had so clear a remembrance of her stubborn friendliness for that outlaw; but Jim had settled the question of silence, and all the weariness dropped from her at thought of what that accusation meant to him—death. Once she got up with the strong light of hope in her eyes, and running across the snow in the dark, opened the door of the stable where Jim was bedding the horses.
"Jim!" she called sharply; "when was it the stock was run off from camp—what time?"
"Early this mornin'," answered that youth sulkily. He had just received the emphatic warning against "tattling."
"This morning? What time this morning?"
"Oh, early; afore daylight."
Before daylight! She had gained a wild hope that it was during the time they were together; but from Jim's vague suggestion they had returned just about the time it had occurred—in time for it. She turned hopelessly toward the house, then hesitated and came back.
"Jim."
"Well?"
"Is Mowitza here?"
"Yes, can't you see?"
But she could not see very clearly. Something in her eyes blinded her as she thought of Mowitza and the glad days when they knew each other first; and of Mowitza's master, and his voice as she had heard it last—and the words! Oh, the despairing, exultant, compelling words! And then, after he had gone from her, could it be so?
"Take good care of the mare, Jim, until—until he needs her."
When the girl re-entered the house, Tillie turned with a lecture to deliver on the idiocy of going out without a wrap; it was not spoken, for a glance into Rachel's eyes told she had been crying—something so unusual as to awe the little woman into silence, and perplex her mightily. Headstrong as the girl had been in her championship of Genesee, Tillie had always been very sure that the cause was mainly Rachel's contrariness; and to associate him with the tears never entered her mind.
The evening wore on, and about the fire there were conjectures about the protracted stay of Hardy and Stuart, and wonderment from Fred that not a man had called from the camp all day and evening. Rachel sat silent, thinking—thinking, and finding a glimmer of hope in the thought that Major Dreyer would soon be back; there, she felt, would be no prejudiced mind come to judgment.
At last they were startled by the sound of a step on the porch, and all looked around, glad of the return of the two wanderers, when the door opened, and there entered Kalitan—a very tired-looking Arrow, and with something in his face that was more than fatigue—anxiety.
"Rashell Hardy?" he said, and deliberately walked into the other room, intimating that she was to follow and the interview to be private—an interview conducted in low tones and in Chinook, after which Rachel asked Aunty Luce to give him some supper; for he was very tired, and would not go on to camp until morning.
The night before had been one of wakefulness, because of Rachel's absence, and all were sleepy enough to hunt beds early; and leaving a lunch on the table for the absent ones, the hearth was soon deserted—Ivans and Andrews, however, agreeing to sleep with one eye open.
Both must have closed unawares, or else the moccasined feet that stole out in the darkness must have been very, very light, and the other figure beside him very stealthy; for no alarm was given, no ear took note. It was late, past eleven o'clock, when the sentry challenged a horse and rider coming as briskly and nonchalantly into camp as if it had been eleven in the morning, and occasioning as much astonishment as had Genesee, when it was seen to be Miss Hardy.
"Rather late to be out alone, Miss, ain't it?" asked the sentry, as she stopped to chat with him of the continued absence of the men.
"Is it?" she laughed. "I don't know what you call late over here; but I suppose we of the ranch would be considered night-owls. I rode over with some mail that came late, and thought I'd hear if there was any news before we went to bed. Who's in command?"
"Lieutenant Kennedy; but he turned in an hour ago."
"Good gracious! Do you folks go to bed with the sun? I have a magazine for him, but he can wait for it, then, until to-morrow. Tell him I will expect him over."
"Yes, Miss."
Just then from along the avenue sauntered a soldierly figure, who drew near at the sound of voices.
"There comes Sergeant Kelp," remarked the sentry. "He's on night duty in Kennedy's place."
Instantly the girl turned to the officer in charge.
"Well, I'm glad to find someone up and awake," she said, leaning over to shake hands with him. "It helps to keep me from seeming altogether a night-prowler. I came over to get the returns, if there were any. The folks are getting anxious at the ranch."
"Naturally," answered the young fellow. "I would have called this evening, but am on duty. Don't let the ladies worry if you can help it. We are likely to hear from the men before morning. Every scout we had went with them, and without horses we can't do much but just stay here and wait; all the boys find it mighty hard work, too."
"You remind me of half my mission, Sergeant, when you speak of your scouts. I brought over some mail, and everyone I wanted to see is either away or asleep. How about your chief of scouts—is he asleep, too?"
It seemed to her that her heart ceased beating, the wind ceased blowing, and the stars ceased twinkling above the snow, as she waited for his disgusted reply.
"No; not by a good deal. I never saw such a crank as that fellow! When everything was smooth sailing, that man would skulk around camp without a word to speak to anyone, the surliest white man I want to see; but now that he's jailed for horse-stealing, tied up and watched in the shack, I'm blest if he doesn't put in the time singing. Yes, he does; been at it ever since taps. I threatened to have him gagged if he disturbed the boys; but they say he don't. Roberts is the only one who has to listen to it; says he never heard so many Indian songs in his life. But it's a mighty queer streak of luck for a man to be musical over."
Rachel laughed, and agreed. "I have a letter for him, too," she added. "Look, here; I'd like to take it to him myself, and get to hear some of those songs. Can I? I know it's rather late, but if he is awake, it doesn't matter, I suppose; or is no one allowed to see him?"
"Indians only are tabooed, but none of them have shown up, not even his runner, and I guess you can speak to him if you want to; it isn't a thing most ladies would like to do, though," he added.
"I suppose not," she said good-humoredly, "but then, I've known the man for something over a year, and am not at all afraid—in fact, I'd rather like to do it and have something to horrify the ladies at the ranch with. Think of it! An interview with a horse-thief—perhaps a duet with him all alone in the middle of the night. Oh, yes, that's too good to miss. But I must hurry up, or they will be sending someone after me."
At the door of the shack, however, she paused a moment in what might be trepidation, her hand laid hesitatingly on the saddle, as if in doubt whether to remount or enter the shanty, from which she could hear the low refrain of a song of theircultus corrie—"Tsolo, tsolo!"
"The guard will not leave the door?" she whispered; and Sergeant Kelp concluded that, after all, she was pretending to greater nerve than she possessed.
"Never fear," he returned; "I will call him out to hold your horse, and he won't stir from the door. By the way, I'll have someone to see you home when you're ready to go. Good-night."
Then the guard was called out, and a moment later the visitor slipped in, the prisoner never turning his head or noticing the exchange until she spoke.
"Jack!"
He turned quickly enough.
"God A'mighty, girl! What are you doing here?"
She thought of the ears, possibly listening ears, on the other side of the door, and her tone was guarded and careless, as it had been with the Sergeant, as she laughed and answered in Chinook:
"To pay a visit; what else?"
She noticed with exultation that it was only rope he was tied with—his hands and his feet, as he sat on the bunk—a plaited rope of rawhide; strong enough when strengthened by a guard opposite and a loaded gun; but without the guard and with a keen knife!
She checked him in the midst of a passionate protest against her coming.
"I am here, so that fact is settled," she said quietly. "I didn't come for fun, and we haven't any time to lose. I brought you a letter; it is in this," she said.
"You have seen Kalitan?"
He took from her the rubber case and extracted the letter from it, but scarcely noticed it, his eyes were turned so anxiously to her face.
"Yes; and you had better read it," she advised, walking back to the door.
"Rachel—"
"Read it; let them see you!" and she opened the door wide and stepped out as if to make sure of the guard's presence.
"It's all right, Miss, I'm here," he whispered, looking past her to the prisoner opening the letter and throwing the envelope in the fire. "I'll not stir from here with the beast. Don't be uneasy;" and then she turned back and closed the door. She had seen he was not close enough to listen.
"Jack," she said, coming back to him, "you must get out of this. Mowitza is at the door; I have brought the things you will need. Can you make a dash for it and get away?"
He looked at her in utter amazement.
"I didn't know it until to-night," she continued; "this is your chance, before the others get back—if they ever do get back! God help them!"
"What do you mean? Where are they?" And his hand, tied as it was, caught her own quickly.
"They are in a death-trap, in that gully back of the Tamahnous ground. You know where—right over the peak from the old mine. They've been there since dark, hedged in by the Kootenais, who are only waiting for daylight to come. Heaven help our men when it does come!"
"The Kootenais? It can't be them. They are not hostile."
"Not yesterday," she agreed bitterly, "but they are to-day. They sent a messenger of good-will to camp this morning, the grandson of Grey Eagle. He was shot down, almost in sight of camp, by one of the soldiers, and the braves he had brought, the best in the tribe, attempted a rescue. Our cavalry pursued them, and were led into that ravine. The Indians knew the ground, and our men didn't. At the end of the narrow pass, the reds rolled boulders down the mountain and closed it up, and then cut off retreat; and there they are, waiting for daylight or starvation—God knows what!"
"Who told you this?"
"Kalitan; he met an Indian trapper who had passed the gulch but a little while before. He came directly to me. The whites here blame you for helping the trouble—the beginning it, the—"
"You mean the horse stealing?" he said, looking at her curiously.
"Yes." Her eyes were on the floor; she did not see that scrutiny. "And you must get out of here before word comes of those men penned up there. There would be no waiting for trial then; they would shoot you."
"And that is what you came for?"
"Yes;" and she drew a sharp knife—an Indian knife—from her belt under the shawl. "With a quick stroke, the severed the knotted cords and they fell from his wrists; then she dropped on her knees, a flash, once, twice, of the blade in the light, and he stooped and raised her.
"You are doing this for me," he said, drawing her to him, "without knowing whether I deserve shooting or not?"
"Don't speak of that part of it!" she burst out. "When I let myself think, I feel as if I am going crazy!"—then she stopped short. "And a crazy woman just now would handicap you some. No, Jack, we need all of our wits for to-night—here," and unfastening the belt from under her shawl, she buckled it about him. It contained two loaded revolvers.
"It's the first time I've armed you as I've seen sweethearts or wives do," she said, looking up at him. "It may be the last. I only ask one thing—you will not, unless it is the last means of saving your own life, turn one of these against my friends?"
Even then, the weakness of the man in him came uppermost.
"But if it is to save my own life?"
Her hands went quickly over her eyes, as if to shut out sight or thought.
"Don't ask me—only go—and—take care of yourself!"
He caught the hands from her eyes, kissing her fiercely—exultantly.
"Then I am first to you—nearer than all the rest! My girl, you've proved it to-night, and I'll show you! If you know how to pray, pray for me to-night—for me and the men in that death-trap. Do you hear? I am going now. Here is this letter; it will tell you all. If I never come back, tell Prince Charlie he is right at last—that I believe him. He will understand. My girl—mine—it is not an eternal good-bye. I will come back if I live, and I will have to live long enough for that! Here, just once, kiss me, my girl—my girl!"
The next instant she was flung from that embrace and fell with a faint scream to the floor.
The guard dashed in, and was dextrously tripped by an unlooked-for figure close to the wall, his gun wrenched from him, and a staggering blow dealt that sent him to his knees.
Clouds had swept over the cold stars, and the sentry could see but dimly the equestrian figure that came clattering down the avenue.
"Hadn't you better wait for company, Miss?" he called, but no answer was given; and in much wonder, he was about to call again, when pistol-shots from the shack aroused the camp. He called a halt; that was heeded no more than his question, and he sent a random shot after the flying figure—not for the purpose of hitting the girl, but to impress on her the duty of a sentry and some idea of military rule. Before the last dull thud of hoofs in the snow had ceased to be heard, Roberts had staggered to the door, firing wildly, and calling to stop the prisoner—to stop the horse-thief.
There was nothing in the camp to do it with. He was gone—everyone was blaming everybody else for it; but no one thought of blaming the girl who lay in a dead faint on the floor, where he had flung her, that none might think she had let him go willingly. And Miss Rachel was cared for very tenderly, and a man was sent to the ranch to assure Mrs. Hardy of her safe-keeping, waking Mrs. Hardy out of a delicious sleep, and mystifying her completely by the information. The only one about the house who might have helped elucidate happened to be remarkably sound asleep at the time the messenger arrived—an Arrow encased in the quiver of rest.
An hour before day in the Kootenais! Not the musical dawn of that early autumn, when all the woods were a-quiver with the fullness of color and sound; when the birds called to each other of the coming sun, and the little rills of the shady places moistened the sweet fern and spread its fragrance around and about, until one could find no couch so seductive as one on the amber grasses with the rare, all-pervading scents of the virgin soil.
Not any of those seductions solaced or made more bitter the watch of the men who stood hopeless in the snow of that treacherous ravine. Not even a fire dared be lit all the night long, because of those suddenly murderous natives, who, through knowing the secrets of the cleft earth, held their fates at the mercy of eager bronze hands.
"And one man who knew the country could have prevented this!" groaned Hardy, with a thought of the little wife and Miss Margaret. How would they listen to this story?
"If we had Genesee with us, we should not have been penned up in any such fashion as this," decided Murray, stamping back and forward, as many others were doing, to keep their blood in circulation—for what?
"Hard to tell," chimed in the scout from Idaho. "Don't know as it's any better to be tricked by one's own gang than the hostiles. Genesee, more'n likely, was gettin' ready for this when he run off the stock."
Just then something struck him. The snow made a soft bed, but the assailant had not stopped to consider that, and quick as light his knee was on the fallen man's chest.
"Take it back!" he commanded, with the icy muzzle of a revolver persuading his meaning into the brain of the surprised scout. "That man is no horse-thief. Take it back, or I'll save the Indians the trouble of wasting lead on you."
"Well," reasoned the philosopher in the snow, "this ain't the damnedest best place I've ever been in for arguin' a point, an' as you have fightin' ideas on the question, an' I haven't any ideas, an' don't care a hell of a sight, I'll eat my words for the time bein', and we'll settle the question o' that knock on the head, if the chance is ever given us to settle anything, out o' this gully."
"What's this?" and though only outlines of figures could be distinguished, the voice was the authoritative one of Captain Holt. "Mr. Stuart, I am surprised to find you in this sort of thing, and about that squaw man back in camp. Find something better to waste your strength for. There is no doubt in my mind now of the man's complicity—"
"Stop it!" broke in Stuart curtly; "you can hold what opinion you please of him, but you can't tell me he's a horse-thief. A squaw man and adopted Indian he may be and altogether an outlaw in your eyes; but I doubt much your fitness to judge him, and advise you not to call him a thief until you are able to prove your words, or willing to back them with all we've got left here."
All they had left was their lives, and Stuart's unexpected recklessness and sharp words told them his was ready as a pledge to his speech. None cared, at that stage of the game, to question why. It was no time for quarrels among themselves when each felt that with the daylight might come death.
Afterward, when the tale was told, no man could remember which of them first discovered a form in their midst that had not been with them on their entrance—a breathless, panting figure, that leaned against one of their horses.
"Who is it?" someone asked.
"What is it?"
No one answered—only pressed closer, with fingers on triggers, fearing treachery. And then the panting figure raised itself from its rest on the horse's neck, rose to a stature not easily mistaken, even in that light, and a familiar, surly voice spoke:
"I don't reckon any of you need be puzzled much to find out; hasn't been such a long time since you saw me."
"By God, it's Genesee!"
And despite the wholesale condemnation of the man, there was not a heart that did not grow lighter with the knowledge. They knew, or believed, that here was the one man who had the power to save them, if he cared to use it; but would he?
"Jack!"
Someone, at sound of his voice, pushed through the crowd with outstretched hand. It was not refused this time.
"I've come for you," was all Genesee said; then he turned to the others.
"Are you willing to follow me?" he asked, raising his voice a little. "The horses can't go through where I've got to take you; you'll have to leave them."
A voice close to his elbow put in a word of expostulation against the desertion of the horses. Genesee turned on the speaker with an oath.
"You may command in a quiet camp, but we're outside of it now, and I put just a little less value on your opinion than on any man's in the gulch. This is a question for every man to answer for himself. You've lost their lives for them if they're kept here till daylight. I'll take them out if they're ready to come."
There was no dissenting voice. Compared with the inglorious death awaiting them in the gulch, the deliverance was a God-send. They did not just see how it was to be effected; but the strange certainty of hope with which they turned to the man they had left behind as a horse-thief was a thing surprising to them all, when they had time to think of it—in the dusk of the morning, they had not.
He appeared among them as if a deliverer had materialized from the snow-laden branches of cedar, or from the close-creeping clouds of the mountain. They had felt themselves touched by a superstitious thrill when he was found in their midst; but they knew that, come as he might, be what he would, they had in him one to whom the mountains were as an open book, as the Indians knew when they tendered him the significant name of Lamonti.
Captain Holt was the only rebel on the horse question; to add those to the spoils of the Indians was a bitter thing for him to do.
"It looks as if we were not content with them taking half our stock, but rode up here to leave them the rest," he said, aggressively, to nobody in particular. "I've a notion to leave only the carcasses."
"Not this morning," broke in the scout. "We've no time to wait for work of that sort. Serves you right to lose them, too, for your damned blunders. Come along if you want to get out of this—single file, and keep quiet."
It was no time for argument or military measures for insubordination; and bitter as the statement of inefficiency was, Captain Holt knew there were some grounds for it, and knew that, in the eyes of the men, he was judged from the same standpoint. The blind raid with green scouts did seem, looking back at it, like a headlong piece of folly. How much of folly the whole attack was, they did not as yet realize.
It was not far that Genesee led them through the stunted, gnarled growth up the steep sides of the gulch. Half-way to the top there were, in the summer-time, green grass and low brush in which the small game could hide; but above that rose a sheer wall of rock clear up to where the soil had gathered and the pines taken root.
In the dusk they could see no way of surmounting it; yet there was no word of demur, not even a question. He was simply their hope, and they followed him.
And their guide felt it. He knew few of them liked him personally, and it made his victory the greater; but even above that was the thought that his freedom was due to the girl who never guessed how he should use it.
He felt, some way, as if he must account to her for every act she had given him the power to perform, as if his life itself belonged to her, and the sweetness of the thought was with him in every step of the night ride, in every plan for the delivery of the men.
At the very foot of the rock wall he stopped and turned to the man next him. It was Hardy.
"It's a case of 'crawl' here for a few lengths; pass the word along, and look out for your heads."
The next instant he had vanished under the rock wall—Hardy following him; then a flicker of light shone like a star as a guide for the others, and in five minutes every man of them had wriggled through what seemed but a slit in the solid front.
"A regular cave, by hooky!" said the moral guide from Idaho, as he stood upright at last. His voice echoed strangely. "Hooky! hooky! hooky!" sounded from different points where the shadows deepened, suggesting endless additions to the room where they stood.
Genesee had halted and was splitting up some pine for a torch, using the knife Rachel had cut his bonds with, and showing that the handle was stained with blood, as were the sticks of pine he was handling.
"Look for some more sticks around here, and lend a hand," he said. "We need more than one torch. I burnt up what I had in working through that hole. I've been at it for three hours, I reckon, without knowing, till I got the last stone away, whether I'd be in time or find daylight on the other side."
"And is that what cut your hands?" asked Lieutenant Murray. "Why, they're a sight! For heaven's sake, what have you been doing?"
"I found a 'cave-in' of rock and gravel right at the end of that tunnel," answered Genesee, nodding the way they had just come, and drawing their notice to fresh earth and broken stone thrown to the side. "I had no tools here, nothing but that," and he motioned toward a mallet-like thing of stone. "My tools were moved from the mine over to Scot's Mountain awhile back, and as that truck had to be hoisted away, and I hadn't time to invite help, it had to be done with these;" and he held out his hands that were bleeding—a telling witness of his endeavors to reach there in time. And every man of them felt it.
There was an impulsive move forward, and Hardy was the first to hold out his hand. But Genesee stepped back, and leaned against the wall.
"That's all right, Hardy," he said, with something of his old careless smile. "I'm glad you're the first, for the sake of old times; but I reckon it would be playing it pretty low down on a friend to let him take me in on false pretenses. You see I haven't been acquitted of horse-stealing yet—about the most low-lived trade a man can turn to, unless it is sheep-stealing."
"Oh, hell!" broke in one of the men, "this clears the horse business so far as I'm concerned, and I can bet on the other boys, too!"
"Can you?" asked Genesee, with a sort of elated, yet conservative, air; "but this isn't your game or the boys' game. I'm playing a lone hand, and not begging either. That torch ready?"
The rebuff kept the others from any advance, if they had thought of making it. Lieutenant Murray had picked up the stone mallet and was examining it by the flickering light; one side was flattened a little, like a tomahawk.
"That's a queer affair," he remarked. "What did you have it made for?"
"Haveit made! The chances are that thing was made before Columbus ever managed a sail-boat," returned Genesee. "I found a lot of them in here; wedges, too, and such."
"In here?" and the men looked with a new interest at the rocky walls. "What is it?"
"An extension I tumbled into, over a year back, when I was tunneling at a drift the other side of the hill. One day I found that hole there, and minded it this morning, so it came in handy. I reckon this is the original Tamahnous mine of the old tribe. It's been lost over a hundred years. The Kootenais only have a tradition of it."
"A mine—gold?"
"Well, I was digging for a silver show when I struck it," answered Genesee; "and, so far as I see, that's what was here, but it's worked out. Didn't do much prospecting in it, as I left the Kootenai hills less than a week after. I just filled up the entry, and allowed it would keep till I got back."
"Does it belong to you?" asked one man, with speculation in his voice.
Genesee laughed. "I reckon so. Tamahnous Peak is mine, and a few feet of grazing land on the east. Nobody grudges it to me up this way. Indians think it's haunted, 'cause all the rocks around it give echoes; and I—"
He ceased speaking abruptly, his eyes on the pile of debris in the corner. Then he lit a fresh torch from the dying one, and gave the word to strike for the outside, following single file, as the hill was pretty well honey-combed, and it was wise to be cautious.
"Because," said their leader, "if any should stray off, we might not have time this day of our Lord to come back and hunt him up."
Before leaving what seemed like the back entrance, he walked over to the corner and picked up the thing that had arrested his attention a minute before, and slipping it in his pocket, walked to the head of the long line of men, several of whom were wounded, but only one less than the number who had left camp. And the one lacking was the man who had fired the first shot and killed the messenger from Grey Eagle—he himself dying from a wound, after the ride into the gulch.
As the scout passed the men, a hand and a pair of gloves were thrust out to him from a group; and turning his torch so that the light would show the giver, he saw it was Stuart.
"Thank you, sir," he said, with more graciousness than most of the men had ever seen in him; "I'll take them from you, as my own are damaged some." They were torn to shreds, and the fingers under them worn to the quick.
The echoing steps of the forty men were as if forty hundred were making their way through the mine of the Tamahnous; for no living tribe ever claimed it, even by descent. The hill that contained it had for generations been given by tradition to the witches of evil, who spoke through the rock—a clever scheme of those vanished workers to guard their wealth, or the wealth they hoped to find; but for what use? Neither silver in coin nor vessel can be traced as ever belonging to tribes of the Northern Indians. Yet that honey-combed peak, with its wide galleries, its many entries, and well-planned rooms, bespoke trained skill in underground quarrying. From some unseen source fresh air sifted through the darkness to them, and the tinkle of dripping water in pools came to their ears, though the pools were shrouded in the darkness that, just beyond the range of the few torches, was intense; and after the long tramp through echoing winds and turns, the misty dawn that was still early seemed dazzling to the eyes, red and haggard from the vigil of the night.
"You will have to get away from here on a double-quick," said Genesee sharply, after a glance at the sky and up the sides of the hill from which they had come. "Once down there in the valley, the fog may hide you till sun-up, and then, again, it mightn't. Just mind that they have horses."
"We are not likely to forget it," was Captain Holt's answer; and then hesitated a moment, looking at Genesee.
"Are you not coming with us?" asked Lieutenant Murray, giving voice to the question in his commander's mind as well as the others.
"Yes, part of the way," said the scout quietly, but with a challenge to detention in the slight pause with which he glanced at the group; "but I have a beast to carry me back, and I'm just tired enough to use it." And disappearing for a minute in the brush, he led out Mowitza, and, mounting her, turned her head toward the terraces of the lower valley.
They passed the isolated cabin that brought back to Stuart a remembrance of where they were; then down the steps of the Tamahnous and along the little lake, all swathed alike in the snow and the mist leaving null all character in the landscape.
The cabin was commented on by the men, to whom it was a surprise, looming up so close to them through the cloud curtain.
"That's mine," their guide remarked, and one of them, puzzled, stated it as his belief that Genesee claimed the whole Kootenai territory.
The scout gave up his saddle to a man with a leg-wound, but he did not let go the bridle of Mowitza; and so they went on with their guide stalking grimly ahead, ready, they all knew, to turn as fiercely against them at a sign of restraint as he had worked for them, if a movement was made to interfere with his further liberty.
The sun rolled up over the purple horizon—a great body of blushes suffusing the mountains; but its chaste entrance had brazened into a very steady stare before it could pierce the veil of the valleys, and pick out the dots of moving blue against the snow on the home trail.
It had been a wonderfully quiet tramp. Most of the thoughts of the party were of the man walking ahead of them, and his nearness made the discussion of his actions awkward. They did not know what to expect of him, and a general curiosity prevailed as to what he would do next.
They learned, when at last the ridge above camp was reached, about the middle of the forenoon. He had been talking some to the man on Mowitza, and when they reached that point he stopped.
"Whereabouts?" he asked; and the man pointed to a place where the snow was colored by soil.
"Over there! I guess the boys buried him."
"Well, you can get down from that saddle now. I reckon you can walk down to camp; if not, they can carry you." Then he turned to the rest.
"There's a body under that snow that I want," he said sententiously. "I'm not in condition for any more digging," and he glanced at his hands. "Are there any men among you that will get it out for me?"
"You bet!" was the unhesitating reply; and without question, hands and knives were turned to the task, the man on horseback watching them attentively.
"May I ask what that is for?" asked Captain Holt; at last, as amiably as he could, in the face of being ignored and affronted at every chance that was given Genesee. He had saved the commander's life; that was an easy thing to do compared with the possibility of hiding his contempt.
He was openly and even unreasonably aggressive—one of the spots in his nature that to a careless eye would appear the natural color of his whole character. He did not answer at once, and Captain Holt spoke again:
"What is the object of digging up that Indian?"
Then Genesee turned in the saddle.
"Just to give you all a little proof of how big a fool a man can be without being a 'permanent' in a lunatic asylum."
And then he turned his attention again to the men digging up the loose earth. They had not far to go; small care had been taken to make the grave deep.
"Take care there with your knives," said Genesee as one shoulder was bared to sight. "Lift him out. Here—give him to me."
"What in——"
"Give him to me!" he repeated. "I've given your damned fool lives back to forty of you, and all I'm asking for it is that Kootenai's dead body."
Stuart stooped and lifted the chill, dark thing, and other hands were quick to help. The frozen soil was brushed like dust from the frozen face, and then, heavy—heavy, it was laid in the arms of the man waiting for it.
He scanned from the young face to the moccasined feet swiftly, and then turned his eyes to the others.
"Where's his blanket?" he demanded; and a man who wore it pushed forward and threw it over the figure.
"Denny took it," he said in extenuation, "and when Denny went under, I took it."
"Yes!" and again his eyes swept the crowd. "Now I want his rifle, his knife, a snake-skin belt, and a necklace of bear's teeth—who's got them?"
"Well, I'll be damned!" "How's that for second sight?" "Beats the devil out of hell!" were some of the sotto-voce remarks exchanged at the enumeration of the things wanted.
"I've no time to waste in waiting," he added. "If they're in this crowd and ain't given up, I'll straighten the account some day, if I have to hunt five years for the trail to them. I'm a-waiting."
His hand was laid on the breast of the dead Indian as he spoke, and something in the touch brought a change to his face. The hand was slipped quickly inside the fringed shirt, and withdrawn, clasping a roll of parchment cured in Indian fashion. A bitter oath broke from him as he untied the white sinews of the deer, and glanced at the contents.
"What is it? What is it?" was the question from all sides.
Genesee, in a sort of fury, seemed to hear most clearly that of the, for the hour, displaced commander.
"I'll tell you what it is!" he burst out wrathfully. "It's a message of peace from the Kootenai tribe—an offer of their help against the Blackfeet any time the troops of the United States need them. It is sent by Grey Eagle, the oldest of their war chiefs, and the messenger sent was Grey Eagle's grandson, Snowcap—the future chief of their people. And you have had him shot down like a dog while carrying that message. By God! I wouldn't have blamed them if they had scalped every mother's son of you."
To say that the revelation was impressive, would express the emotions of the men but mildly. Captain Holt was not the only one of them who turned white at the realization of what a provoked uprising of those joint tribes would mean, in the crippled condition of the camp. It would mean a sweeping annihilation of all white blood in their path; the troops would have enough to do to defend themselves, without being able to help the settlers.
"In God's name, Genesee, is this true?" and forgetting all animosity in the overwhelming news, Holt pressed forward, laying his hand on the shoulder of the dead messenger.
"Take it off!" yelled Genesee, looking at the unconscious hand that involuntarily had moved toward him. "Take it off, or, by Heaven, I'll cut it off!"
And his fingers closing nervously on the hunting-knife emphasized his meaning, and showed how stubborn and sleepless were the man's prejudices.
The hand dropped, and Genesee reached out the document to one of the crestfallen scouts.
"Just read that out loud for the benefit of anyone that can't understand my way of talking," he suggested with ironical bitterness; "and while you are about it, the fellows that stripped this boy will be good enough to ante up with everything they've got of his—and no time to waste about it either."
And Captain Holt, with a new idea of the seriousness of the demand, seconded it, receiving with his own hands the arms and decorations that had been seized by the victorious Denny, and afterward divided among his comrades. Genesee noted that rendering up of trifling spoils with sullen eyes, in which the fury had not abated a particle.
"A healthy crew you are!" he remarked contemptuously; "a nice, clean-handed lot, without grit enough to steal a horse, but plenty of it for robbing a dead boy. I reckon no one of you ever had a boy that age of your own."
Several of them—looking in the dark, dead face—felt uneasy, and forgot for the moment that they were lectured by a horse-thief; forgot even how light a thing the life of an Indian was anyway.
"Don't blame the whole squad," said the man who took the articles from the Captain and handed them up to Genesee. "Denny captured them when he made the shot, just as anyone would do, and it's no use cussin' about Denny; he's buried up in that gulch—the Kootenais finished him."
"And saved me the trouble," added the scout significantly.
He was wrapping as well as he could the gay blanket over the rigid form. The necklace was clasped about the throat, but the belt was more awkward to manage, and was thrust into the bosom of Genesee's buckskin shirt, the knife in his belt, the rifle swung at his back.
There was something impressively ghastly in those two figures—the live one with the stubborness of fate, and the stolidity, sitting there, with across his thighs the blanketed, shapeless thing that had held a life; and even the husk seemed a little more horrible with its face hidden than when revealed more frankly; there was something so weirdly suggestive in the motionless outlines.
"No, I don't want that," he said, as the man who read the message was about to hand it back to him; "it belongs to the command, and I may get a dose of cold lead before I could deliver it."
Then he glanced about, signaling Stuart by a motion of his head.
"There's a lady across in the valley there that I treated pretty badly last night," he said, in a tone so natural that all near could hear him, and more than one head was raised in angry question. "She was just good enough to ride over from the ranch to bring a letter to me—hearing I was locked up for a horse-thief, and couldn't go after it. Well, as I tell you, I was just mean enough to treat her pretty bad—flung her on the floor when she tried to stop me, and then nabbed the beast she rode to camp on—happened to be my own; but may be she won't feel so bad if you just tell her what the nag was used for; and may be that will show her I didn't take the trail for fun."
"That" was one of the gloves he had worn from his hands with his night's work, and there were stains on it darker than those made with earth.
"I'll tell her;" and then an impulsive honesty of feeling made him add: "You need never fear her judgment of you, Jack."
The two looked a moment in each other's eyes, and the older man spoke.
"I've been hard on you," he said deliberately, "damned hard; all at once I've seen it, and all the time you've been thinking a heap better of me than I deserved. I know it now, but it's about over. I won't stand in your way much longer; wait till I come back—"
"You are coming back? and where are you going?" The questions, a tone louder than they had used, were heard by the others around. Genesee noted the listening look on the faces, and his words were answers to them as much as to the questioner.
"I'm going to take the trail for the Kootenai village; if any white man is let reach it, or patch up the infernal blunder that's been made, I can do it with him," and his hand lay on the breast of the shrouded thing before him.
"If I get out of it alive, I'll be back to meet the Major; if I don't"—and this time his significant glance was turned unmistakably to the blue coats and their leader—"and if I don't, you'd better pack your carcasses out of this Kootenai valley, and hell go with you."
So, with a curse for them on his lips, and the dogged determination to save them in his heart, he nodded to Hardy, clasped the hand of Stuart, and turning Mowitza's head, started with that horrible burden back over the trail that would take a day and a night to cover.
The men were grateful for the bravery that had saved their lives, but burned under the brutal taunts that had spared nothing of their feelings. His execrable temper had belittled his own generosity.
He was a squaw man, but they had listened in silence and ashamed, when he had presumed to censure them. He was a horse-thief, yet the men who believed it watched, with few words, the figure disappear slowly along the trail, with no thought of checking him.
In the bosom of Rachel's family strange thoughts had been aroused by that story of Genesee's escape.
They were wonderfully sparing of their comments in her presence; for, when the story came to her of what he had done when he left her, she laughed.
"Yet he is a horse-thief," she said, in that tone of depreciation that expresses praise, "and he sent me his glove? Well, I am glad he had the grace to be sorry for scattering me over the floor like that. And we owe it to him that we see you here alive again? We can appreciate his bravery, even say prayers for him, if the man would only keep out of sight, but we couldn't ask him to a dinner party, supposing we gave dinner parties, could we, Tillie?"
And Tillie, who had impulsively said "God bless him!" from the shelter of her husband's arms, collapsed, conscience-stricken and tearful.
"You have a horrid way, Rachel, of making people feel badly," she said, in the midst of her thankfulness and remorse; "but wait until I see him again—I will let him know how much we can appreciate such courage as that. Just wait until he comes back!"
"Yes," said the girl, with all the irony gone from her voice, only the dreariness remaining, "I'm waiting."
The words started Tillie to crying afresh; for, in the recesses of her own bosom, another secret of Genesee's generosity was hidden for prudential motives—the fact that it was he who had sent the guide for Rachel that terrible night of the snow. And Tillie was not a good keeper of secrets—even this thoroughly wise one was hard to retain, in her gladness at having her husband back!
"The man seems a sort of shepherd of everything that gets astray in these hills," said Lieutenant Murray, who was kindly disposed toward all creation because of an emotional, unsoldier-like welcome that had been given him by the little non-commissioned officer in petticoats. "He first led us out of that corral in the hills and brought us back where we belonged, and then dug up that dead Indian and started to take him where he belonged. I tell you there was a sort of—of sublimity in the man as he sat there with that horrible load he was to carry, that is, there would have been if he hadn't 'cussed' so much."
"Does he swear?" queried Fred.
"Does he? My child, you would have a finely-trained imagination if you could conceive the variety of expressions by which he can consign a citizen to the winter resort from which all good citizens keep free. His profanity, they say, is only equaled by his immorality. But, ah—what a soldier he would make! He is the sort of a man that men would walk right up to cannon with—even if they detested him personally."
"And a man needs no fine attributes or high morality to wield that sort of influence, does he?" asked Rachel, and walked deliberately away before any reply could be made.
But she was no more confident than they of his unimpeachable worth. There was the horse-thieving still unexplained; he had not even denied it to her. And she came to the conclusion that she herself was sadly lacking in the material for orthodox womanhood, since the more proof she had of his faults, the more solidly she took her position for his defense. It had in it something of the same blind stubbornness that governed his likes and dislikes, and that very similarity might have accounted for the sort of understanding that had so long existed between them. And she had more than the horse-stealing to puzzle over. She had that letter he had thrust in her hand and told her to read; such a pleading letter, filled with the heart-sickness of a lonely woman. She took it out and re-read it that time when she walked away from their comments; and reading over the lines, and trying to read between them, she was sorely puzzled:
"Dear Jack: I wrote you of my illness weeks ago, but the letter must have been lost, or else your answer, for I have not heard a word from you, and I have wanted it more than I can tell you. I am better, and our little Jack has taken such good care of me. He is so helpful, so gentle; and do you know, dear, he grows to look more like you every day. Does that seem strange? He does not resemble me in the least. You will think me very exacting, I suppose, when I tell you that such a child, and such a home as you have given me, does not suffice for my content. I know you will think me ungrateful, but I must speak of it to you. I wrote you before, but no answer has come. If I get none to this, I will go to find you—if I am strong enough. If I am not, I shall send Jack. He is so manly and strong, I know he could go. I will know then, at least, if you are living. I feel as if I am confessing a fault to you when I tell you I have heard fromhimat last—and more, that I was so glad to hear!"Jack—dear Jack—he has never forgotten. He is free now; would marry me yet if it were possible. Write to me—tell me if it can ever be. I know how weak you will think me. Perhaps my late ill-health has made me more so; but I am hungry for the sound of the dear voice, and I am so alone since your father died. You will never come back; and you know, Jack, how loneliness always was so dreadful to me—even our boy is not enough. He does not understand. Come back, or write to me. Let my boy know his father, or else show me how to be patient; this silence is so terrible toYour Wife."Jack, what a mockery that word looks—yet I am grateful."
"Dear Jack: I wrote you of my illness weeks ago, but the letter must have been lost, or else your answer, for I have not heard a word from you, and I have wanted it more than I can tell you. I am better, and our little Jack has taken such good care of me. He is so helpful, so gentle; and do you know, dear, he grows to look more like you every day. Does that seem strange? He does not resemble me in the least. You will think me very exacting, I suppose, when I tell you that such a child, and such a home as you have given me, does not suffice for my content. I know you will think me ungrateful, but I must speak of it to you. I wrote you before, but no answer has come. If I get none to this, I will go to find you—if I am strong enough. If I am not, I shall send Jack. He is so manly and strong, I know he could go. I will know then, at least, if you are living. I feel as if I am confessing a fault to you when I tell you I have heard fromhimat last—and more, that I was so glad to hear!
"Jack—dear Jack—he has never forgotten. He is free now; would marry me yet if it were possible. Write to me—tell me if it can ever be. I know how weak you will think me. Perhaps my late ill-health has made me more so; but I am hungry for the sound of the dear voice, and I am so alone since your father died. You will never come back; and you know, Jack, how loneliness always was so dreadful to me—even our boy is not enough. He does not understand. Come back, or write to me. Let my boy know his father, or else show me how to be patient; this silence is so terrible toYour Wife.
"Jack, what a mockery that word looks—yet I am grateful."
This was the letter he had told her to read and give to Stuart, if he never returned; but she gave it to no one. She mentioned it to no one, only waited to see if he ever came back, and with each reading of that other woman's longings, there grew stronger in her the determination that his life belonged to the writer of that letter and her child—her boy, who looked like him. Surely there was a home and an affection that should cure him of this wild, semi-civilized life he was leading. She was slipping away that almighty need he had shown of herself. She grimly determined that all remembrance of it must be put aside; it was such an unheard-of, reasonless sort of an attraction anyway, and if she really had any influence over him, it should be used to make him answer that letter as it should be answered, and straighten out the strange puzzles in it. All this she determined she would tell him—when he got back.
While they commented, and wondered, and praised, and found fault with him, the day drifted into darkness, the darkness into a dreary dawn; and through all changes of the hours the outlaw stalked, with sometimes his ghastly companion bound to the saddle, and then again he would remount, holding Snowcap in his arms—but seldom halting, never wavering; and Mowitza, who seemed more than ever a familiar spirit, forged ahead as if ignoring the fact of hunger and scanty herbage to be found, her sturdy persistence suggesting a realization of her own importance.
A broad trail was left for them, one showing that the detachment of braves and the horses of the troops had returned under forced march to bear the news to their village—and such news!
The man's dark face hardened and more than one of those expressive maledictions broke from him as he thought over it. All his sympathies were with them. For five years they had been as brethren to him; never had any act of treachery touched him through them. To their people he was not Genesee the outcast, the immoral, the suspected. He was Lamonti—of the mountains—like their own blood.
He was held wise in their councils, and his advice had weight.
He could have ruled their chief, and so their nation, had he been ambitious for such control.
He was their adopted son, and had never presumed on their liking, though he knew there was little in their slender power that would not have been his had he desired it.
Now he knew he would be held their enemy. His influence had encouraged the sending of that message and the offered braves to the commander of the troops. Would they grant him a hearing now? or would they shoot him down, as the soldier had shot Snowcap, with his message undelivered?
Those questions, and the retrospection back of them, were with him as he went upward into the mountains to the north.
Another night was falling slowly, and the jewels of the far skies one by one slipped from their ether casket, and shone with impressive serenity on the crusted snow. Along the last ridge Mowitza bore for the last time her double burden. There was but a slope to descend, a sheltered cove to reach, and Snowcap would be given back to his kindred.
The glittering surface of the white carpet warmed into reflected lights as the moon, a soft-footed, immature virgin, stole after the stars and let her gleams be wooed and enmeshed in the receptive arms of the whispering pine. Not a sound broke through the peace of the heights. In their sublime isolation, they lift souls as well as bodies above the commonplace, and the rider, the stubborn keeper of so many of their secrets, threw back his head with a strange smile in his eyes as the last summit was reached—and reached in the light of peace. Was it an omen of good? He thought of that girl back in the valley who was willing to share this life of the hills with him. All things beautiful made him think of her, and the moon-kissed night was grand, up there above where men lived. He thought of her superb faith, not in what he was, but in what her woman's instinct told her it was possible for him to be. What a universe of loves in human hearts revolves about those unseen, unproven substances!
He thought of the time when she had lain in his arms as Snowcap was lying, and he had carried her over the hills in the moonlight. He was bitterly cold, but through the icy air there came the thrill and flush of that long-past temptation. He wondered what she would say when they told her how he had used his freedom. The conviction of her approval again gave that strange smile of elation to his eyes; and the cold and hunger were ignored, and his fatigue fell from him. And with the tenderness that one gives to a sleeping child, he adjusted with his wounded hands the blanket that slipped from the dead boy, raising one of the rigid arms the better to shroud it in the gay colors.
Then the peace of the heights was broken by a sharp report; the whiteness of the moonlight was crossed by the quick, red flash of death and Mowitza stopped still in her tracks, while her master, with that dead thing clasped close in his arms, lunged forward on her neck.
Within the confines of Camp Kootenai there was a ripple of rejoicing. At last, after four days lost because of the snow, Major Dreyer had arrived, pushing on with all possible haste after meeting the runner—and, to the bewilderment of all, he rode into camp on one of the horses stolen almost a week ago.
"No mystery about it—only a little luck," he said in explanation. "I found him at Holland's as I came up. A white man belonging to the Blackfeet rode him in there several nights ago. The white man got drunk, picked a row, and got his pay for it. They gave him grave-room down there, and in the morning discovered that the beast had our brand, so gave him up to us as we came through."
Needless to say that this account was listened to with unusual interest. A man belonging to the Blackfeet! That proved Genesee's theory of which he had spoken to Captain Holt—the theory that was so thoroughly discredited.
When word was brought that the Major's party had been sighted from the south, Fred and Rachel could hardly wait for the saddles to be thrown on the horses.
Tillie caught the fever of impatience, and rode down beside Hardy. Stuart was not about. The days since Genesee's departure he had put in almost entirely with the scouts stationed to note any approach from the north; he was waiting for that coming back. Kalitan, for the first time since Genesee's flight, came into camp. The man who had seemed the friend of his friend was again in command; and he showed his appreciation of the difference by presenting himself in person beside Rachel, to whom he had allied himself in a way that was curious to the rest, and was so devotionally serious to himself.
"Then, perhaps it was not that Genesee who stole the horses, after all," broke in Fred, as her father told the story.
"Genesee!—nonsense!" said the Major brusquely. "We must look into that affair at once," and he glanced at the Captain; "but if that man's a horse-thief, I've made a big mistake—and I won't believe it until I have proof."
As yet there had been no attempt at any investigation of affairs, only an informal welcoming group, and Fred, anxious to tell a story that she thought astonishing, recounted breathlessly the saving of the men by way of the mine, and of the gloves and the hands worn in that night's work, and last, of the digging up of that body and carrying it away to the mountains.
Her father, at first inclined to check her voluble recital that would come to him in a more official form, refrained, as the practical array of facts showing through her admiration summed themselves up in a mass that echoed his convictions.
"And that is the man suspected of stealing a few horses? Good God! what proof have you that will weigh against courage like that?"
"Major, he scarcely denied it," said the Captain, in extenuation of their suspicions. "He swore the Kootenais did not do it, and that's all he would say. He was absent all the afternoon and all the night of the thievery, and refused to give any account whatever of his absence, even when I tried to impress him with the seriousness of the situation. The man's reputation, added to his suspicious absence, left me but one thing to do—I put him under guard."
"That does look strange," agreed the Major, with, a troubled face; "refused—"
He was interrupted by a sound from Rachel, who had not spoken after the conversation turned to Genesee. She came forward with a low cry, trembling and passionate, doubt and hope blending in her face.
"Did you say thenightthe horses were stolen?" she demanded. All looked at her wonderingly, and Kalitan instinctively slid a little nearer.
"Yes, it was in the night," answered the Captain, "about two o'clock; but you surely knew about it?"
"I? I knew nothing," she burst out furiously; "they lied to me—all of you. You told me it was in the morning. How dared you—how dared you do it?"
The Major laid a restraining hand on her arm; he could feel that she was trembling violently. She had kept so contemptuously cool through all those days of doubt, but she was cool no longer; her face was white, but it looked a white fury.
"What matter about the hour, Miss Rachel?" asked the commander; and she shook off his hand and stepped back beside Kalitan, as if putting herself where Genesee had put himself—with the Indians.
"Because I could have told where Jack Genesee was that night, if they had not deceived me. He was with me."
Tillie gave a little cry of wonder and contrition. She saw it all now.
"But—but you said it was a Kootenai who brought you home," she protested feebly; "you told us Lamonti."
"He is a Kootenai by adoption, and he is called Lamonti," said the girl defiantly; "and the night those horses were run off, he was with me from an hour after sundown until four o'clock in the morning."
That bold statement had a damaging ring to it—unnecessarily so; and the group about her, and the officers and men back of them, looked at her curiously.
"Then, since you can tell this much in his favor, can you tell why he himself refused to answer so simple a question?" asked Major Dreyer kindly.
That staggered her for a moment, as she put her hand up in a helpless way over her eyes, thinking—thinking fast. She realized now what it meant, the silence that was for her sake—the silence that was not broken even to her. And a mighty remorse arose for her doubt—the doubt she had let him see; yet he had not spoken! She raised her eyes and met the curious glances of the men, and that decided her. They were the men who had from the first condemned him—been jealous of the commander's trust.
"Yes, I think I can tell you that, too," she said frankly. "The man is my friend. I was lost in the snow that night; he found me, and it took us all night to get home. He knows how these people think of him;" and her eyes spared none. "They have made him feel that he is an outcast among them. They have made him feel that a friendship or companionship with him is a discredit to any woman—oh, I know! They think so now, in spite of what he has done for them. He knows that. He is very generous, and wanted, I suppose, to spare me; and I—I was vile enough to doubt him," she burst out. "Even when I brought him his horse, I half believed the lies about him, and he knew it, and never said a word—not one word."
"When you brought him his horse?" asked the Major, looking at her keenly, though not unkindly.
Her remorse found a new vent in the bravado with which she looked at them all and laughed.
"Yes," she said defiantly, as if there was a certain comfort in braving their displeasure, and proving her rebellion to their laws; "yes, I brought him his horse—not by accident either! I brought him brandy and provisions; I brought him revolvers and ammunition. I helped him to escape, and I cut the bonds your guards had fastened him with. Now, what are you going to do about it?"
Tillie gasped with horror. She did not quite know whether they would shoot her as a traitor, or only imprison her; but she knew military law could be a very dreadful thing, and her fears were extravagant.
As for Miss Fred, her eyes were sparkling. With the quick deductions of her kind, she reasoned that, without the escape that night, the men would have died in that trap in the hills, and a certain delicious meeting and its consequences—of which she was waiting to tell the Major,—would never have been hers. Her feelings were very frankly expressed, as she stepped across to the self-isolated rebel and kissed her.
"You're a darling—and a plucky girl," she said warmly; "and you never looked so pretty in your life."
The defiant face did not relax, even at that intelligence. Her eyes were on the commander, her judge. And he was looking with decided interest at her.
"Yours is a very grave offense, Miss Rachel," he said, with deliberation that struck added terrors to Tillie's heart. "The penalty of contriving the escape of prisoners is one I do not like to mention to you; but since the man in this case was innocent, and I take your evidence in proof—well, that might be some extenuation of the act."
"I didn't know he was innocent when I helped him," she broke in; "I thought the horses were stolen after he left me."
"That makes it more serious, certainly;" but his eyes were not at all serious. "And since you seem determined to allow nothing in extenuation of your own actions, I can only say that—that I value very highly the forty men whose lives were saved to us by that escape; and when I see Mr. Genesee, I will thank him in the warmest way at my command;" and he held out his hand to the very erect, very defiant rebel.
She could scarcely believe it when she heard the words of praise about her; when one man after another of that rescued crowd came forward to shake hands with her—and Hardy almost lifted her off her feet to kiss her. "By George! I'm proud of you, Rachel," he said impulsively. "You are plucky enough to—to be Genesee himself."
The praise seemed a very little thing to her. Her bravado was over; she felt as if she must cry if they did not leave her alone. Of what use were words, if he should never come back—never know that he was cleared of suspicion? If they had so many kind words now, why had they not found some for him when he needed them? She did not know the uncompromising surliness that made him so difficult of approach to many people, especially any who showed their own feeling of superiority, as most of them did, to a squaw man.
She heard that term from the Major, a moment after he had shaken hands with her. He had asked what were the other suspicions mentioned against Genesee; she could not hear the answer—they had moved a little apart from her—but she could hear the impatience with which he broke in on their speech.
"A squaw man!—well, what if he is?" he asked, with a serene indifference to the social side of the question. "What difference does it make whether the man's wife has been red, or white, or black, so long as she suited him? There are two classes of squaw men, as there are of other men on the frontier—the renegades and the usual percentage of honest and dishonest citizens. You've all apparently been willing to understand only the renegades. I've been along the border for thirty years, and some of the bravest white men I've ever seen had Indian wives. Some of the men whose assistance in Indian wars has been invaluable to us are ranchmen whose children are half-breeds, and who have taught their squaws housework and English at the same time, and made them a credit to any nation. There's a heap of uncalled-for prejudice against a certain class of those men; and, so far as I've noticed, the sneak who abandons his wife and children back in the States, or borrows the wife of someone else to make the trip out here with, is the specimen that is first to curl his lip at the squaw man. That girl over there strikes me as showing more common sense than the whole community; she gave him the valuation of a man."
The Major's blood was up. It was seldom that he made so long a speech; but the question was one against which he had clashed often, and to find the old prejudice was so strong a factor in the disorganizing of an outpost was enraging.
"And do you realize what that man did when he took that trail north?" he demanded impressively. "He knew that he carried his life in his hand as surely as he carried that body. And he went up there to play it against big odds for the sake of a lot of people who had a contemptible contempt for him."