Just outside the gate, the blue of military garb showed the coming of the usual afternoon callers from Camp Kootenai, among them the Major, commander of the company, the only occasional rebel being his petite non-commissioned officer in petticoats. A tall young fellow in lieutenant's uniform halted on his way out to exchange greeting; and if the daughter complained of the young soldier's lack of deference, the father had no reason to, for in his eyes, as he saluted, shone something nearer affection than mere duty—a feeling that he shared with every man in the command, for Major Dreyer was a universal favorite.
"No later news of that scout, Genesee?" asked the younger as they separated.
"No; but we can expect him soon now for that red shadow of his, Kalitan, just loped into camp. And, by the way," added the older officer, "he mentioned that he passed our friend Stuart back at the settlement. He is coming up this way again."
"Tell Miss Fred that, Major. When I saw her, an hour ago, she needed something to put her in a good humor."
"Ah! Good-evening, Lieutenant."
"Good-evening, Major."
The minute the subordinate's back was turned, Miss Fred, with a running jump that would have done Jim credit, landed almost on the Major's shoulder. He gave her a ferocious hug, and dropped her plump on her feet with a stern—
"Attention!"
Quick as light the little hand was raised in salute, and the little figure gathered together its scattered dignity to make a soldierly appearance.
"Private Dreyer, I have been met on the outposts with a message telling me of a disorganized temper that should belong to your command. What have you to say for yourself?"
Instantly the role of the soldier was dropped, and that of the girl with a temper took its place.
"Oh, he told you, did he?" she asked, with a wrathful glance at the figure retreating toward camp. "Well, just wait until I go riding with him again! He's called me a camp follower, and—and everything else that was uncivil."
"Ah! And what did you do?"
"I? Why nothing, of course."
"Nothing?"
"Well, I did threaten to go over and turn them out of the cabin that was built for me, but—"
"But that was a mere trifle in this tropical climate. I've no doubt it would do them good to sleep under the stars instead of a roof; and then it would give you an opportunity to do some wholesale nursing, if they caught colds all around."
"Just as if I would!"
"Just as if you would not! And Lieutenant Murray would come in for the worse medicine and the biggest doses."
"If his constitution is equal to his impudence, it would take stupendous doses to have any effect. I wish he could be sent back to the Fort."
"Won't sending him up among the Indians do just as well?"
"Y-yes. Are you going to, papa?"
"Ah! now you grow inquisitive."
"I do think," said Tillie, "you all plague her a great deal."
"They just treat me as if I was a joke instead of a girl," complained Fred. "They began it before I was born by giving me a boy's name, and it's been kept up ever-since."
"Never mind, Baby," he said soothingly; "if I had not made a boy of you I could not have had you with me, so the cause was vital."
They both laughed, but it was easy to see that the cause was vital to them, and their companionship very much of a necessity. Its interruptions since her babyhood had been few and short, and her education, picked up on the frontier, had taught her that in the world there was just one place for her—in the saddle, and beside her father, just as her mother had ridden beside him before Fred was born.
The next morning, bright and early, Kalitan called at the ranch; and Miss Fred, accustomed as she was to the red men, grew rather enthusiastic over this haughty, graceful specimen, who gave her one glance at the door and walked past her into the house—as she afterward described it, "just as if she had been one of the wooden door-posts."
"Rashell Hardy?" was all he said; and without more ado Miss Fred betook herself up the stairs to do his implied bidding and hunt Miss Hardy.
"I rather think it's the grand mogul of all the Kootenais," she said, in announcing him. "No, he didn't give any card; but his personality is too striking to be mistaken, if one has ever seen him or heard him speak. He looked right over my head, and made me feel as if I was about two feet high."
"Young Indian?"
"Yes, but he looks like a young faun. That one never came from a scrub race."
"I'll ask him to stay to dinner," laughed Rachel; "if anything will cure one of a tendency to idealize an Indian, it is to see him satisfying the inner man. Come down and talk to him. It is Kalitan."
"Oh, it is Kalitan, is it? And pray what it is that—a chief rich in lineage and blooded stock? His assurance speaks of wealth and power, I should say, and his manner shows one a Fenimore Cooper spirit come to life. How am I as a guesser?"
"One of the worst in the world. Kalitan is really a handsome humbug in some ways. That superb manner of his is the only stock in trade he possesses beyond his swift feet; but the idea of importance he manages to convey speaks wonders for his strength of will. Come along!"
"Klahowya, Rashell Hardy?" he said; and stepping solemnly forward, shook her hand in a grave, ceremonious fashion. Rachel told him the other lady was her friend, by way of introduction, and he widened his mouth ever so little in a smile, but that was the only sign of acknowledgement he gave; and when Rachel spoke to him in English he would not answer, but sat stolidly looking into the fire until she saw what was wrong and addressed him in Chinook. "Rashell Hardy need not so soon forget," he reminded her briefly; and then went on with his speech to her of where he had been; the wonders he had done in the way of a runner, and all else of self-glorification that had occurred in the past months. Many times the name of his chief was uttered in a way that impressed on a listener the idea that among the troops along the frontier there were two men who were really worthy of praise—a scout and a runner. "Kalitan tired now—pretty much," he wound up, as a finale; "come up Kootenai country to rest, may be, while spring comes. Genesee he rest, too, may be—may be not."
"Where, Kalitan?"
"S'pose camp—s'pose may be Tamahnous cabin; not here yet."
"Coming back?"
Kalitan nodded, and arose.
"Come see you, may be, sometime, often," he said as if conferring a special honor by promised visits; and then he stalked out as he had stalked in, only checking his gait at sight of Aunty Luce coming in from the kitchen with a dish of cold meat. She nearly dropped it in her fright, and closed her eyes in silent prayer and terror; when she opened them the enemy had left the porch.
"Good Lawd, Miss Rache!" she gasped. "He's skeered me before bad enough, but this the fust time he evah stopped stock an' glare at me! I's gwine to complain to the milantary—I is, shuah."
"You are a great old goose!" said Rachel brusquely. "He wasn't looking at you, but at that cold meat."
There seemed a general gathering of the clans along the Kootenai valley that winter. With the coming north of Genesee had come the troops, then Kalitan, then their mercurial friend of the autumn—the Stuart; and down from Scot's Mountain came Davy MacDougall, one fair day, to join the circle that was a sort of reunion. And among the troops were found many good fellows who were so glad of an evening spent at the ranch that never a night went by without a party gathered there.
"The heft o' them does everything but sleep here," complained Aunty Luce; "an' all the other ones look jealous 'cause Mr. Stuart does that."
For Hardy and his wife had insisted on his stopping with them, as before, though much of his time was spent at the camp. There was something about him that made him a companion much desired by men; Rachel had more opportunity to observe this now than when their circle was so much smaller. That gay good-humor, with its touches of serious feeling, and the delicate sympathy that was always alive to earnest emotion—she found that those traits were keys to the hearts of men as well as women; and a smile here, a kind word there, or a clasp of the hand, were the only arts needed to insure him the unsought friendship of almost every man in the company.
"It's the gift that goes wi' the name," said MacDougall one day when someone spoke of the natural charm of the man's manner. "It's just that—no less. No, o' course he does na strive for it; it's but a bit o' nature. A blessin', say you, Miss? Well, mayhaps; but to the old stock it proved but a curse."
"It seems a rather fair life to connect the idea of a curse with," remarked the Major; "but I rather think he has seen trouble, too. Captain Sneath said something to that effect, I believe—some sudden death of wife and children in an epidemic down in Mexico."
"Married! That settles the romance," said Fred; "but he is interesting, anyway, and I am going immediately to find out what he has written and save up my money to buy copies."
"I may save you that expense in one instance," and Rachel handed her the book Stuart had sent her. Tillie looked at her in astonishment, and Fred seized it eagerly.
"Oh, but you are sly!" she said, with an accusing pout; "you've heard me puzzling about his work for days and never gave me a hint."
"I only guessed it was his, he never told me; but this morning I charged him with it, and he did not deny. I do not think there is any secret about it, only down at the Fort there were several ladies, I believe, and—and some of them curious—"
"You're right," laughed the Major; "they would have hounded him to death. Camp life is monotonous to most women, and a novelist, especially a young, handsome fellow, would have been a bonanza to them. As it was, they tried to spoil him; and look here!" he said suddenly, "see that you say nothing of his marriage to him, Babe. As he does not mention it himself, it may be that the trouble, or—well, just remember not to broach the subject."
"Just as if I would!" said his daughter after he had left. "Papa never realizes that I have at all neared the age of discretion. But doesn't it seem strange to think of Mr. Stuart being married? He doesn't look a bit like it."
"Does that state of existence impress itself so indelibly on one's physical self?" laughed Rachel.
"It does—mostly," affirmed Fred. "They get settled down and prosy, or else—well, dissipated."
"Good gracious! Is that the effect we are supposed to have on the character of our lords and masters?" asked Mrs. Hardy unbelievingly.
"Fred's experience is confined to barrack life and its attendant evils. I don't think she makes allowance for the semi-artistic temper of the Stuart. He strikes me as having just enough of it to keep his heart always young, and his affections too—on tap, as it were."
"What queer ideas you have about that man!" said Fred suddenly. "Don't you like him?"
"I would not dare say no with so many opposing me."
"Oh, you don't know Rachel. She is always attributing the highest of virtues or the worst of vices to the most unexpected people," said Tillie. "I don't believe she has any feeling in the question at all, except to get on the opposite side of the question from everyone else. If she would own up, I'll wager she likes him as well as the rest of us."
"Do you, Rachel?" But her only answer was a laugh. "If you do, I can't see why you disparage him."
"I did not."
"Well, you said his affections were always on tap."
"That was because I envy him the exhaustless youth such a temperament gives one. Such people defy time and circumstances in a way we prosaic folks can never do. It is a gift imparted to an artist, to supply the lack of practical ingredients that are the prime ones to the rest of creation."
"How you talk! Why, Mr. Stuart is not an artist!"
"Isn't he? There are people who are artists though they never draw a line or mix a color; but don't you think we are devoting a great deal of time to this pill-peddler of literary leanings?"
"You are prejudiced," decided Fred. "Leanings indeed! He has done more than lean in that direction—witness that book."
"I like to hear him tell a story, if he is in the humor," remarked Tillie, with a memory of the cozy autumn evenings. "We used to enjoy that so much before we ever guessed he was a story-teller by profession."
"Well, you must have had a nice sort of a time up here," concluded Fred; "a sort of Tom Moore episode. He would do all right for the poet-prince—or was it a king? But you—well, Rachel, you are not just one's idea of a Lalla."
"You slangy little mortal! Go and read your book."
Which she did obediently and thoroughly, to the author's discomfiture, as he was besieged with questions that taxed his memory and ingenuity pretty thoroughly at times.
He found himself on a much better footing with Rachel than during his first visit. It may have been that her old fancy regarding his mission up there was disappearing; the fancy itself had always been a rather intangible affair—a fabrication wrought by the shuttle of a woman's instinct. Or, having warned Genesee—she had felt it was a warning—there might have fallen from her shoulders some of the responsibility she had so gratuitously assumed. Whatever it was, she was meeting him on freer ground, and found the association one of pleasure.
"I think Miss Fred or your enlarged social circle has had a most excellent influence on your temper," he said to her one day after a ride from camp together, and a long, pleasant chat. "You are now more like the girl I used to think you might be—the girl you debarred me from knowing."
"But think what an amount of time you had for work in those days that are forfeited now to dancing attendance on us women folk!"
"I do not dance."
"Well, you ride, and you walk, and you sing, and tell stories, and manage at least to waste lots of time when you should be working."
"You have a great deal of impatience with anyone who is not a worker, haven't you?"
"Yes," she said, looking up at him. "I grow very impatient myself often from the same cause."
"You always seem to me to be very busy," he answered half-vexedly; "too busy. You take on yourself responsibilities in all directions that do not belong to you; and you have such a way of doing as you please that no one about the place seems to realize how much of a general manager you are here, or how likely you are to overburden yourself."
"Nonsense!"
She spoke brusquely, but could not but feel the kindness in the penetration that had given her appreciation where the others, through habit, had grown to take her accomplishments as a matter of course. In the beginning they had taken them as a joke.
"Pardon me," he said finally. "I do not mean to be rude, but do you mind telling me if work is a necessity to you?"
"Certainly not. I have none of that sort of pride to contend with, I hope, and I have a little money—not much, but enough to live on; so, you see, I am provided for in a way."
"Then why do you always seem to be skirmishing around for work?" he asked, in a sort of impatience. "Women should be home-makers, not—"
"Not prospectors or adventurers," she finished up amiably. "But as I have excellent health, average strength and understanding, I feel they should be put to use in some direction. I have not found the direction yet, and am a prospector meanwhile; but a contented, empty life is a contemptible thing to me. I think there is some work intended for us all in the world; and," she added, with one of those quick changes that kept folks from taking Rachel's most serious meanings seriously—"and I think it's playing it pretty low down on Providence to bluff him on an empty hand."
He laughed. "Do you expect, then, to live your life out here helping to manage other people's ranches and accumulating that sort of Western logic in extenuation?"
She did not answer for a little; then she said:
"I might do worse."
She said it so deliberately that he could not but feel some special thing was meant, and asked quickly:
"What?"
"Well, I might be given talents of benefit to people, and fritter them away for the people's pastime. The people would never know they had lost anything, or come so near a great gain; but I, the cheat, would know it. After the lights were turned out and the curtain down on the farce, I would realize that it was too late to begin anew, but that the same lights and the same theater would have served as well for the truths of Christ as the pranks of Pantaloon—the choice lay only in the will of the worker."
Her eyes were turned away from him, as if she was seeking for metaphors in the white stretch of the snow-fall. He reached over and laid his hand on hers.
"Rachel!"
It was the only time he had called her that, and the caress of the name gave voice to the touch of his fingers.
"Rachel! What is it you are talking about? Look around here! I want to see you! Do you mean that you think of—of me like that—tell me?"
If Miss Fred could have seen them at that moment it would have done her heart good, for they really looked rather lover-like; each was unconscious of it, though their faces did not lack feeling. She drew her hand slowly away, and said, in that halting yet persistent way in which she spoke when very earnest yet not very sure of herself:
"You think me egotistical, I suppose, to criticise work that is beyond my own capabilities, but—it was you I meant."
"Well?"
His fingers closed over the arm of the chair instead of her hand. All his face was alight with feeling. Perhaps it was as well that her stubbornness kept her eyes from his; to most women they would not have been an aid to cool judgment.
"Well, there isn't anything more to say, is there?" she asked, smiling a little out at the snow. "It was the book that did it—made me feel like that about you; that your work is—well, surface work—skimmed over for pastime. But here and there are touches that show how much deeper and stronger the work you might produce if you were not either lazy or careless."
"You give one heroic treatment, and can be merciless. The story was written some time ago, and written under circumstances that—well, you see I do not sign my name to it, so I can't be very proud of it."
"Ah! that is it? Your judgment, I believe, is too good to be satisfied with it; I shouldn't waste breath speaking, if I was not sure of that. But you have the right to do work you can be proud of; and that is what you must do."
Rachel's way was such a decided way, that people generally accepted her "musts" as a matter of course. Stuart did the same, though evidently unused to the term; and her cool practicalities that were so surely noting his work, not himself, had the effect of checking that first impulse of his to touch her—to make her look at him. He felt more than ever that the girl was strange and changeable—not only in herself, but in her influence. He arose and walked across the floor a couple of times, but came back and stood beside her.
"You think I am not ambitious enough; and you are right, I suppose. I have never yet made up my mind whether it was worth my while to write, or whether it might not be more wise to spare the public."
"But you have the desire—you must feel confidence at times."
"How do you know or imagine so much of what I feel?"
"I read it in that book," and she nodded toward the table. "In it you seem so often just on the point of saying or doing, through the people, things that would lift that piece of work into a strong moral lesson; but just when you reach that point you drop it undeveloped."
"You have read and measured it, haven't you?" and he sat down again beside her. "I never thought of—of what you mention in it. A high moral lesson," he repeated; "but to preach those a man should feel himself fit; I am not."
"I don't believe you!"
"What do you know about it?" he demanded so sharply that she smiled; it was so unlike him. But the sharpness was evidently not irritation, for his face had in it more of sadness than any other feeling; she saw it, and did not speak.
After a little he turned to her with that rare impetuosity that was so expressive.
"You are very helpful to me in what you have said; I think you are that to everyone—it seems so. Perhaps you are without work of your own in the world, that you may have thought for others who need help; that is the highest of duties, and it needs strong, good hearts. But do you understand that it is as hard sometimes to be thought too highly of as to be accused wrong-fully? It makes one feel such a cheat—such a cursed liar!"
"I rather think we are all cheats, more or less, in that respect," she answered. "I am quite sure the inner workings of my most sacred thought could not be advertised without causing my exile from the bosom of my family; yet I refuse to think myself more wicked than the rest of humanity."
"Don't jest!"
"Really, I am not jesting," she answered. "And I believe you are over-sensitive as to your own short-comings, whatever they happen to be. Because I have faith in your ability to do strong work, don't think I am going to skirmish around for a pedestal, or think I've found a piece of perfection in human nature, because they're not to be found, my friend."
"How old are you?" he asked her suddenly.
She laughed, feeling so clearly the tenor of his thought.
"Twenty-two by my birthdays, but old enough to know that the strongest workers in the world have not been always the most immaculate. What matter the sort of person one has been, or the life one has lived if he come out of it with knowledge and the wish to use it well? You have a certain power that is yours, to use for good or bad, and from a fancy that you should not teach or preach, you let it go to waste. Don't magnify peccadillos!"
"You seem to take for granted the fact that all my acts have been trifling—that only the promises are worthy," he said impatiently.
"I do believe," she answered smiling brightly, "that you would rather I thought you an altogether wicked person than an average trifler. But I will not—I do not believe it possible for you deliberately to do any wicked thing; you have too tender a heart, and—"
"You don't know anything about it!" he repeated vehemently. "What difference whether an act is deliberate or careless, so long as the effect is evil? I tell you the greater part of the suffering in the world is caused not by wicked intents and hard hearts, but by the careless desire to shirk unpleasant facts, and the soft-heartedness that will assuage momentary pain at the price of making a life-long cripple, either mentally, morally, or physically. Nine times out of ten the man whom we call soft-hearted is only a moral coward. Ah, don't help me to think of that; I think of it enough—enough!"
He brought his clenched hand down on the arm of the chair with an emphasis that was heightened by the knitted brow and compressed lips. He did not look at her. The latter part of the rapid speech seemed more to himself than to her. At least it admitted of no answer; the manner as much as the words kept her silent.
"Come! come!" he added, after a little, as if to arouse himself as well as her. "You began by giving me some good words of advice and suggestion; I must not repay you by dropping into the blues. For a long time I've been a piece of drift-wood, with nothing to anchor ambition to; but a change is coming, I think, and—and if it brings me fair weather, I may have something then to work for; then I may be worth your belief in me—I am not now. My intentions to be so are all right, but they are not always to be trusted. I said, before, that you had the faculty of making people speak the truth to you, if they spoke at all, and I rather think I am proving my words."
He arose and stood looking down at her. Since he had found so many words, she had seemed to lose hers; anyway, she was silent.
"It can't be very pleasant for you," he said at last, "to be bored by the affairs of every renegade to whom you are kind, because of some fancied good you may see in him; but you are turning out just the sort of woman I used to fancy you might be—and—I am grateful to you."
"That's all right," she answered in the old brusque way. To tell the truth, a part of his speech was scarcely heard. Something in the whole affair—the confidence and personal interest, and all—had taken her memory back to the days of thatcultus corrie, when another man had shared with her scenes somewhat similar to this. Was there a sort of fate that had set her apart for this sort of thing? She smiled a little grimly at the fancy, and scarcely heard him. He saw the ghost of a smile, and it made him check himself in something he was about to say, and walk toward the door.
She neither spoke nor moved; her face was still toward the window. Turning to look at her, his indecision disappeared, and in three steps he was beside her.
"Rachel, I want to speak to you of something else," he said rapidly, almost eagerly, as if anxious to have it said and done with; "I—I want to tell you what that anchor is I've been looking for, and without which I never will be able to do the higher class of work, and—and—"
"Yes?"
He had stopped, making a rather awkward pause after his eager beginning. With the one encouraging word, she looked up at him and waited.
"It is a woman."
"Not an unusual anchor for mankind," she remarked with a little laugh.
But there was no answering smile in his eyes; they were very serious.
"I never will be much good to myself, or the rest of the world, until I find her again," he said, "though no one's words are likely to help me more than yours. You would make one ambitious if he dared be and—"
"Never mind about that," she said kindly. "I am glad if it has happened so. And this girl—it is someone you—love?"
"I can't talk to anyone of her—yet," he answered, avoiding her eyes; "only I wanted you to understand—it is at least a little step toward that level where you fancy I may belong. Don't speak of it again; I can hardly say what impelled me to tell you now. Yes, it is a woman I cared for, and who was—lost—whom I lost—long ago."
A moment later she was alone, and could hear his step in the outer room, then on the porch. Fred called after him, but he made no halt—did not even answer, much to the surprise of that young lady and Miss Margaret.
The other girl sat watching him until he disappeared in the stables, and a little later saw him emerge and ride at no slow gait out over the trail toward camp.
"It only needed that finale," she soliloquized, "to complete the picture. Woman! woman! What a disturbing element you are in the universe—man's universe!"
After this bit of trite philosophy, the smile developed into a noiseless laugh that had something of irony in it.
"I rather think Talapa's entrance was more dramatic," was one of the reflections that kept her company; "anyway, she was more picturesque, if less elegant, than Mrs. Stuart is likely to be. Mrs. Stuart! By the way, I wonder if it is Mrs. Stuart? Yes, I suppose so—yet, 'a woman whom I cared for, and who was lost—long ago!'—Lost? lost?"
Rumors were beginning to drift into camp of hostile intents of the Blackfeet; and a general feeling of uneasiness became apparent as no word came from the chief of their scouts, who had not shown up since locating the troops.
The Major's interest was decidedly alive in regard to him, since not a messenger entered camp from any direction who was not questioned on the subject. But from none of them came any word of Genesee.
Other scouts were there—good men, too, and in the southern country of much value; but the Kootenai corner of the State was almost an unknown region to them. They were all right to work under orders; but in those hills, where everything was in favor of the native, a man was needed who knew every gully and every point of vantage, as well as the probable hostile.
While Major Dreyer fretted and fumed over the absentee, there was more than one of the men in camp to remember that their chief scout was said to be a squaw man; and as most of them shared his own expressed idea of that class, conjectures were set afloat as to the probability of his not coming back at all, or if it came to a question of fighting with the northern Indians, whether he might not be found on the other side.
"You can't bet any money on a squaw man," was the decision of one of the scouts from over in Idaho—one who did not happen to be a squaw man himself, because the wife of his nearest neighbor at home objected. "No, gentlemen, they're a risky lot. This one is a good man; I allow that—a damned good man, I may say, and a fighter from away back; but the thing we have to consider is that up this way he's with his own people, as you may say, having taken a squaw wife and been adopted into the tribe; an' I tell you, sirs, it's jest as reasonable that he will go with them as against them—I'm a tellin' you!"
Few of these rumors were heard at the ranch. It was an understood thing among the men that the young ladies at Hardy's were to hear nothing of camp affairs that was likely to beget alarm; but Stuart heard them, as did the rest of the men; and like them, he tried to question the only one in camp who shared suspicion—Kalitan. But Kalitan was unapproachable in English, and even in Chinook would condescend no information. He doubtless had none to give, but the impression of suppressed knowledge that he managed to convey made him an object of close attention, and any attempt to leave camp would have been hailed as proof positive of many intangible suspicions. He made no such attempt. On the contrary, after his arrival there from the Gros Ventres, he seemed blissfully content to live all winter on Government rations and do nothing. But he was not blind by any means and understanding English, though he would not speak it, the chances were that he knew more of the thought of the camp than it guessed of his; and his stubborn resentment showed itself when three Kootenai braves slouched into camp one day, and Kalitan was not allowed to speak to them save in the presence of an interpreter, and when one offered in the person of a white scout, Kalitan looked at him with unutterable disdain, and turning his back, said not a word.
The Major was not at camp. He had just left to pay his daily visit to Hardy's; for, despite all persuasions, he refused to live anywhere but with his men, and if Fred did not come to see him in the morning, he was in duty bound to ride over to her quarters in the afternoon.
The officer in command during his absence was a Captain Holt, a man who had no use for an Indian in any capacity, and whose only idea of settling the vexed question of their rights was by total extermination and grave-room—an opinion that is expressed by many a white man who has had to deal with them. But he was divided between his impulse to send the trio on a double-quick about their business and the doubt as to what effect it would have on the tribe if they were sent back to it in the sulks. Ordinarily he would not have given their state of mind a moment's consideration; but the situation was not exactly ordinary, and he hesitated.
After stowing away enough provender in their stomachs to last an ordinary individual two days, and stowing the remainder in convenient receptacles about their draperies, intercourse was resumed with their white hosts by the suggestive Kalitan.
Just then Stuart and Rachel rode into camp. They had taken to riding together into camp, and out of camp, and in a good many directions of late; and in the coffee-colored trio she at once recognized the brave of the bear-claws whom she had spoken with during that "olallie" season in the western hills, and who she had learned since was a great friend of Genesee's. She spoke to him at once—a great deal more intelligibly than her first attempt—and upon questioning, learned that she was well remembered. She heard herself called "the squaw who rides" by him, probably from the fact that she was the only white woman met by their hunters in the hills, though she had not imagined herself so well known by them as his words implied.
He of the bear-claws—their spokesman—mentioned Kalitan, giving her for the first time an idea of what had occurred. She turned at once to Captain Holt—not protesting, but interested—and learned all she wanted to.
"Kalitan does not like your southern scouts, for some reason," she said, "and I rather think it was his dignity rather than his loyalty that would suffer from having one of them a listener. Let them speak in my presence; I can understand them, and not arouse Kalitan's pride, either."
The Captain, nothing loath, accepted her guidance out of the dilemma, though it was only by a good deal of flattery on her part that Kalitan could at all forget his anger enough to speak to anyone.
The conversation was, after all, commonplace enough, as it was mostly a recital of his—Kalitan's—glories; for in the eyes of these provincials he posed as a warrior of travel and accumulated knowledge. The impassive faces of his listeners gave no sign as to whether they took him at his own valuation or not. Rachel now and then added a word, to keep from having too entirely the appearance of a listener, and she asked about Genesee.
The answer gave her to understand that weeks ago—five weeks—Genesee had been in their village; asked for a runner to go south to the Fort with talking-paper. Had bought pack-horse and provisions, and started alone to the northeast—may be Blackfoot Agency, they could not say; had seen him no more. Kalitan made some rapid estimate of probabilities that found voice in—
"Blackfoot—one hundred and twenty miles; go slow—Mowitza tired; longwau-wau(talk); come slow—snows high; come soon now, may be."
That was really the only bit of information in the entire "wau-wau" that was of interest to the camp—information that Kalitan would have disdained to satisfy them with willingly; and even to Rachel, whom he knew was Genesee's friend, and his, he did not hint the distrust that had grown among the troops through that suspicious absence.
He would talk long and boastfully of his own affairs, but it was a habit that contrasted strangely with the stubborn silence by which he guarded the affairs of others.
"What is the matter back there?" asked Rachel, as she and Stuart started back to the ranch. "Ill-feeling?"
"Oh, I guess not much," he answered; "only they are growing careful of the Indians of late—afraid of them imposing on good nature, I suppose."
"A little good nature in Captain Holt would do him no harm with the Indians," she rejoined; "and he should know better than to treat Kalitan in that suspicious way. Major Dreyer would not do it, I feel sure, and Genesee won't like it."
"Will that matter much to the company or the command?"
He spoke thus only to arouse that combative spirit of hers; but she did not retort as usual—only said quietly:
"Yes, I think it would—they will find no man like him."
They never again referred to that conversation that had been in a way a confession on his part—the question of the woman at least was never renewed, though he told her much of vague plans that he hoped to develop, "when the time comes."
Three days after the visit of Bear-claws and his brethren, Stuart and Rachel were again at the camp; this time accompanying Miss Fred, who thought it was a good-enough day to go and see the "boys."
Surely it was a good-enough day for any use—clear and fresh overhead, white and sparkling underfoot, and just cold enough to make them think with desire of the cheery wood fires in the camp they were making for. From above, a certain exhilaration was borne to them on the air, sifted through the cedars of the guardian hills; even the horses seemed enthused with the spirit of it, and joyously entered into a sort of a go-as-you-please race that brought them all laughing and breathless down the length of "the avenue," a strip of beaten path about twenty feet wide, along which the tents were pitched in two rows facing each other—and not very imposing looking rows, either.
There were greetings and calls right and left, as they went helter-skelter down the line; but there was no check of speed until they stopped, short, at the Major's domicile, that was only a little more distinguished on the outside than the rest, by having the colors whipping themselves into shreds from the flagstaff at the door.
It was too cold for ceremony; and throwing the bridles to an orderly, they made a dash for the door—Miss Fred leading.
"Engaged, is he?" she said good-humoredly to the man who stepped in her path. "I don't care if he is married. I don't intend to freeze on the place where his door-step ought to be. You tell him so."
The man on duty touched his cap and disappeared, and from the sound of the Major's laughter within, must have repeated the message verbatim, and a moment later returned.
"Major Dreyer says you may enter;" and then, laughing and shivering, the Major's daughter seized Rachel with one hand, Stuart with the other, and making a quick charge, darted into the ruling presence.
"Oh, you bear!" she said, breaking from her comrades and into the bear's embrace; "to keep us out there—and it so cold! And I came over specially for—"
And then she stopped. The glitter of the sun on the sun had made a glimmer of everything under a roof, and on her entrance she had not noticed a figure opposite her father, until a man rose to his feet and took a step forward as if to go.
"Let me know when you want me, Major," he said; and the voice startled those two muffled figures in the background, for both, by a common impulse, started forward—Rachel throwing back the hood of her jacket and holding out her hand.
"I am glad you have come," she said heartily, and he gripped the offered member with a sort of fierceness as he replied:
"Thank you, Miss."
But his eyes were not on her. The man who had come with her—who still held her gloves in his hand—was the person who seemed to draw all his attention.
"You two are old neighbors, are you not?" remarked the Major. "Fred, my dear, you have met Mr. Genesee, our scout? No? Mr. Genesee, this is my daughter; and this, a friend of ours—Mr. Stuart."
An ugly devil seemed alive in Genesee's eyes, as the younger man came closer, and with an intense, expressive gesture, put out his hand.
Then, with a bow that might have been an acknowledgment of the introduction, and might have been only one of adieu to the rest of the group, the scout walked to the door without a word, and Stuart's hand dropped to his side.
"Come back in an hour, Genesee," said the Major; "I will think over the trip to the Fort in the meantime."
"I hear. Good-morning, ladies;" and then the door closed behind him, and the quartette could not but feel the situation awkward.
"Come closer to the fire—sit down," said the Major hospitably, intent on effacing the rudeness of his scout. "Take off your coat, Stuart; you'll appreciate it more when outside. And I'm going to tell you right now, that, pleased as I am to have you all come this morning, I intend to turn you out in twenty minutes—that's all the time I can give to pleasure this morning."
"Well, you are very uncivil, I must say," remarked Fred. "But we will find some of the other boys not so unapproachable. I guess," she added, "that we have to thank Mr. Man-with-the-voice for being sent to the right-about in such short order."
"You did not hear him use it much," rejoined her father, and then turned to the others, neither of whom had spoken. "He is quite a character, and of great value to us in the Indian troubles, but I believe is averse to meeting strangers; anyway, the men down at the Fort did not take to him much—not enough to make him a social success."
"I don't think he would care," said Fred. "He impressed me very much as Kalitan did when I first met him. Does living in the woods make people feel like monarchs of all they survey? Does your neighbor ever have any better manners, Rachel?"
"I have seen him with better—and with worse."
"Worse? What possibilities there must be in that man! What do you think, Mr. Stuart?"
"Perhaps he lacks none of the metal of a soldier because he does not happen to possess that of a courtier," hazarded Stuart, showing no sign that the scout's rudeness had aroused the slightest feeling of resentment; and Rachel scored an opinion in his favor for that generosity, for she, more than either of the others, had noted the meeting, and Genesee's entire disregard of the Stuart's feelings.
Major Dreyer quickly seconded Stuart's statement.
"You are right, sir. He may be as sulky as Satan—and I hear he is at times—but his work makes amends for it when he gets where work is needed. He got in here last night, dead-beat, from a trip that I don't believe any other man but an Indian could have made and get back alive. He has his good points—and they happen to be points that are in decided demand up here."
"I don't care about his good points, if we have to be turned out for him," said Fred. "Send him word he can sleep the rest of the day, if he is tired out; may be he would wake up more agreeable."
"And you would not be ousted from my attention," added her father, pinching her ear. "Are you jealous of Squaw-man-with-a-voice?"
"Is he that?" asked the girl, with a great deal of contempt in her tone. "Well, that is enough to hear of him. I should think he would avoid white people. The specimens we have seen of that class would make you ashamed you were human," she said, turning to Rachel and Stuart. "I know papa says there are exceptions, but papa is imaginative. This one looks rather prosperous, and several degrees cleaner than I've seen them, but—"
"Don't say anything against him until you know you have reason, Fred," suggested Rachel. "He did me a favor once, and I can't allow people to talk about him on hearsay. I think he is worse than few and better than many, and I have known him over a year."
"Mum is the word," said Fred promptly, proceeding to gag herself with two little fists; but the experiment was a failure.
"If she takes him under her wing, papa, his social success is an assured fact, even if he refuses to open his mouth. May I expect to be presented to his interesting family to-morrow, Rachel?"
Rachel only laughed, and asked the Major some questions about the reports from the northeast; the attitude of the Blackfeet, and the snow-fall in the mountains.
"The Blackfeet are all right now," he replied, "and the snows in the hills to the east are very heavy—that was what caused our scout's delay. But south of us I hear they are not nearly so bad, for a wonder, and am glad to hear it, as I myself may need to make a trip down to Fort Owens."
"Why, papa," broke in his commanding officer, "you are not going to turn scout or runner, are you, and leave me behind? I won't stay!"
"You will obey orders, as a soldier should," answered her father. "If I go instead of sending, it will be because it is necessary, and you will have to bow to necessity, and wait until I can get back."
"And we've got to thank Mr. Squaw-man for that, too!" burst out Fred wrathfully. "You never thought of going until he came; oh, I know it—I hate him!"
"He would be heart-broken if he knew it," observed her father dryly. "By the way, Miss Rachel, do you know if there is room in the ranch stables for another horse?"
"They can make room, if it is necessary. Why?"
"Genesee's mare is used up even worse than her master by the long, hard journey he has made. Our stock that is in good condition can stand our accommodations all right, but that fellow seemed miserable to think the poor beast had not quarters equal to his own. He is such a queer fellow about asking a favor that I thought—"
"And the thought does you credit," said the girl with a suspicious moisture in her eyes. "Poor, brave Mowitza! I could not sleep very soundly myself if I knew she was not cared for, and I know just how he feels. Don't say anything about it to him, but I will have my cousin come over and get her, before evening."
"You are a trump, Miss Rachel!" said the Major emphatically; "and if you can arrange it, I know you will lift a load off Genesee's mind. I'll wager he is out there in the shed with her at this moment, instead of beside a comfortable fire; and this camp owes him too much, if it only knew it, to keep from him any comforts for either himself or that plucky bit of horse-flesh."
Then the trio, under guard of the Lieutenant, paid some other calls along the avenue—were offered more dinners, if they would remain, than they could have eaten in a week; but in all their visits they saw nothing more of the scout. Rachel spoke of his return to one of the men, and received the answer that they reckoned he was putting in most of his time out in the shed tying the blankets off his bunk around that mare of his.
"Poor Mowitza! she was so beautiful," said the girl, with a memory of the silken coat and wise eyes. "I should not like to see her looking badly."
"Do you know," said Stuart to her, "that when I heard you speak of Mowitza and her beauty and bravery, I never imagined you meant a four-footed animal?"
"What, then?"
"Well, I am afraid it was a nymph of the dusky tribe—a woman."
"Naturally!" was the one ironical and impatient word he received as answer, and scarcely noted.
He was talking with the others on multitudinous subjects, laughing, and trying to appear interested in jests that he scarcely heard, and all the while the hand he had offered to Genesee clenched and opened nervously in his seal glove.
Rachel watched him closely, for her instincts had anticipated something unusual from that meeting; the actual had altered all her preconceived fancies. More strong than ever was her conviction that those two were not strangers; but from Stuart's face or manner she could learn nothing. He was a much better actor than Genesee.
They did not see any more of him, yet he saw them; for from the shed, off several rods from the avenue, the trail to Hardy's ranch was in plain sight half its length. And the party, augmented by Lieutenant Murray, galloped past in all ignorance of moody eyes watching them from the side of a blanketed horse.
Out a half-mile, two of the riders halted a moment, while the others dashed on. The horses of those two moved close—close together. The arms of the man reached over to the woman, who leaned toward him. At that distance it looked like an embrace, though he was really but tying a loose scarf, and then they moved apart and went on over the snow after their comrades. A brutal oath burst from the lips of the man she had said was worse than few.
"If it is—I'll kill him this time! By God!—I'll kill him!"
Major Dreyer left the next day, with a scout and small detachment, with the idea of making the journey to Fort Owens and back in two weeks, as matters were to be discussed requiring prompt action and personal influence.
Jack Genessee was left behind—an independent, unenlisted adjunct to the camp, and holding a more anomalous position there than Major Dreyer dreamed of; for none of the suspicious current of the scout ever penetrated to his tent—the only one in the company who was ignorant of them.
"Captain Holt commands, Genesee," he had said before taking leave; "but on you I depend chiefly in negotiations with the reds, should there be any before I get back, for I believe you would rather save lives on both sides than win a victory through extermination of the hostiles. We need more men with those opinions; so, remember, I trust you."
The words had been uttered in the presence of others, and strengthened the suspicions of the camp that Genesee had been playing some crooked game. None knew the reason for that hastily decided trip of the Major's, though they all agreed that that "damned skunk of a squaw man" was posted. Prophecies were rife to the effect that more than likely he was playing into the hands of the hostiles by sending away the Major and as many men as possible on some wild-goose chase; and the decision arrived at was that observation of his movements was a matter of policy, and readiness to meet an attack from the hills a probable necessity.
He saw it—had seen it from the day of his arrival—and he kept pretty much out of the way of all except Kalitan; for in watching Genesee they found they would have to include his runner, who was never willingly far away.
During the first few days their watching was an easy matter, for the suspected individual appeared well content to hug the camp, only making daily visits to Hardy's stable, generally in the evening; but to enter the house was something he avoided.
"No," he said, in answer to Hardy's invitation; "I reckon I'm more at home with the horses than with your new company. I'll drop in sometime after the Kootenai valley is clear of uniforms."
"My wife told me to ask you," said Hardy; "and when you feel like coming, you'll find the door open."
"Thank you, Hardy; but I reckon not—not for awhile yet."
"I'd like you to get acquainted with Stuart," added the unsuspicious ranchman. "He is a splendid fellow, and has become interested in this part of the country."
"Oh, he has?"
"Yes," and Hardy settled himself, Mexican fashion, to a seat on his heels. "You see he's a writer, a novelist, and I guess he's going to write up this territory. Anyway, this is the second trip he has made. You could give him more points than any man I know."
"Yes—I might."
"Rachel has given him all the knowledge she has about the country—the Indians, and all that—but she owns that all she learned she got from you; so, if you had a mind to be more sociable, Genesee—"
The other arose to his feet.
"Obliged to you, Hardy," he said; and only the addition of the name saved it from curtness. "Some day, perhaps, when things are slack; I have no time now."
"Well, he doesn't seem to me to be rushed to death with work," soliloquized Hardy, who was abruptly left alone. "He used to seem like such an all-round good fellow, but he's getting surlier than the devil. May be Tillie was right to hope he wouldn't accept the invitation. Hello, Stuart! Where are you bound for?"
"Nowhere in particular. I thought that Indian, Kalitan, was over here."
"No; Jack Genesee came over himself this morning. That mare of his is coming up in great shape, and you'd better believe he's proud over it. I reckon he saw you coming that he took himself away in such a hurry. He's a queer one."
"I should judge so. Then Kalitan won't be over?"
"Well, he's likely to be before night. Want him?"
"Yes. If you see him, will you send him to the house?"
Hardy promised; and Kalitan presented himself, with the usual interrogation:
"Rashell Hardy?"
But she, the head of the house in his eyes, was in the dark about his visit, and was not enlightened much when Stuart entered, stating that it was he who had wanted Kalitan.
That personage was at once deaf and dumb. Only by Rachel saying, "He is my friend; will you not listen?" did he unbend at all; and the girl left them on the porch alone, and a little later Stuart went upstairs, where she heard him walking up and down the room. She had heard a good deal of that since that day the three had called upon the Major, and a change had come over the spirit of their social world; for where Stuart had been the gayest, they could never depend on him now. Even Rachel found their old pleasant companionship ended suddenly, and she felt, despite his silence he was unhappy.
"Well, when he finds his tongue he will tell me what's the matter," she decided, and so dismissed that question.
She rode to camp alone if it was needful, and sometimes caught a glimpse of Genesee if he did not happen to see her first; but he no longer came forward to speak, as the rest did—only, perhaps, a touch of his hat and a step aside into some tent, and she knew she was avoided. A conventional young lady of orthodox tendencies would have held her head a little higher next time they met, and not have seen him at all; but this one was woefully deficient in those self-respecting bulwarks; so, the next time she happened to be at the end of the avenue, she turned her steed directly across his path, and called a halt.
"Good-morning, Miss Rachel."
"Klahowya, tillikum," she answered, bringing him back to a remembrance of his Chinook. "Jack Genesee, do you intend ever to come to see us—I mean to walk in like your old self, instead of looking through the window at night?"
"Looking—"
"Don't lie," she said coolly, "for I saw you, though no one else did. Now tell me what's wrong. Why won't you come in the house?"
"Society is more select in the Kootenai hills than it was a year ago;" he answered with a sort of defiance. "Do you reckon there is any woman in the house who would speak to me if she could get out of it—anyone except you?"
"Oh, I don't count."
"I had an 'invite' this morning," he added grimly—"not because they wanted me, but because your new friend over there wanted someone to give him points about the country; so I've got him to thank for being wanted at all. Now don't look like that—or think I'm kicking. It's a square enough deal so far as I'm concerned, and it stands to reason a man of my stamp hasn't many people pining for him in a respectable house. For the matter of that, it won't do you any good to be seen talking to me this long. I'm going."
"All right; so am I. You can go along."
"With you?"
"Certainly."
"I reckon not."
"Don't be so stubborn. If you didn't feel like coming, you would not have been at that window last night."
His face flushed at this thrust which he could not parry.
"Well, I reckon I won't go there again."
"No; come inside next time. Come, ride half way to the ranch, and tell me about that trip of yours to the Blackfeet. Major Dreyer gave you great praise for your work there."
"He should have praised you;" and her own color deepened at the significance of his words.
"I met Kalitan on his way to the ranch, as I came," she said in the most irrelevant way.
He looked at her very sharply, but didn't speak.
"Well, are you going to escort me home, or must I go alone?"
"It is daylight; you know every foot of the way, and you don't need me," he said, summing up the case briefly. "When you do, let me know."
"And you won't come?" she added good-naturedly. "All right.Klahowya!"
She moved out of his way, touched Betty with the whip, and started homeward. She rather expected to meet Kalitan again, but there was no sign of him on the road; arriving at the house, she found that youth ensconced among the pillows of the largest settee with the air of a king on a throne, and watching with long, unblinking stares Miss Fred, who was stumbling over the stitches of some crochet-work for the adornment of Miss Margaret.
"I'm so glad you've come!" she breathed gratefully. "He has me so nervous I can't count six; and Mrs. Hardy is taking a nap, and Aunty Luce has locked herself upstairs, and I never was stared so out of countenance in my life."
"I rather think that's a phase of Indian courtship," Rachel comforted her by saying; "so you have won a new admirer. What is it Kalitan?"
He signified that his business was with the "Man-who-laughs," the term by which he designated Stuart.
"Mr. Stuart left the house just after you did," said Fred; "I thought, perhaps, to catch you."
"No, he didn't go my way. Well, you look comfortable, Kalitan; and if you had the addition of another crazy-patch cushion for your left elbow, you might stand a little longer wait—think so?"
Kalitan thought he could; and there he remained until Stuart arrived, flushed and rather breathless from his ride from somewhere.
"I was out on the road, but did not see you," said Rachel, on his entrance.
"This is likely enough," he answered. "I didn't want you to—or anyone else. I'm not good company of late. I was trying to ride away from myself." Then he saw Kalitan, propped among the cushions. "Well," he said sharply; "what have you brought me?"
Kalitan answered by no word, but thrust his hand inside his hunting-shirt and brought forth an envelope, which he gave into the eager hands reaching for it.
Stuart gave it one quick glance, turning it in his hand to examine both sides, and then dropped it in his pocket and sat down by the window. Rachel could see it was a thick, well-filled envelope, and that the shape was the same used by Stuart himself, very large and perfectly square—a style difficult to duplicate in the Kootenai hills.
"You can go now, if you choose, Kalitan," she said, fearing his ease would induce him to stay all night, and filled with a late alarm at the idea of Tillie getting her eyes on the peaceful "hostile" and her gorgeous cushions; and without any further notice of Stuart, Kalitan took his leave.
When Rachel re-entered the room, a moment later, a letter was crisping into black curls in the fire-place, and the man sat watching it moodily.
All that evening there was scarcely question or answer to be had from Stuart. He sat by the fire, with Miss Margaret in his arms—her usual place of an evening; and through the story-telling and jollity he sat silent, looking, Jim said, as if he was "workin' hard at thinkin'."
"To-morrow night you must tell us a story," said Miss Fred, turning to him. "You have escaped now for—oh, ever so many nights."
"I am afraid my stock is about exhausted."
"Out of the question! The flimsiest of excuses," she decided. "Just imagine a new one, and tell it us instead of writing it; or tell us the one you are writing at now."
"Well, we will see when to-morrow comes;" and with that vague proposal Miss Fred had to be content.
When the morrow came Stuart looked as if there had been no night for him—at least no sleep; and Rachel, or even MacDougall himself, would not think of calling him Prince Charlie, as of old.
She was no longer so curious about him and that other man who was antagonistic to him. She had been fearful, but whatever knowledge they had of each other she had decided would not mean harm; the quiet days that had passed were a sort of guarantee of that.
Yet they seemed to have nerved Stuart up to some purpose, for the morning after the burning of the letter he appeared suddenly at the door of Genesee's shack, or the one Major Dreyer had turned over to him during his own absence.
From the inside Kalitan appeared, as if by enchantment, at the sound of a hand on the latch. Stuart, with a gesture, motioned him aside, and evidently to Kalitan's own surprise, he found himself stepping out while the stranger stepped in. For perhaps a minute the Indian stood still, listening, and then, no sounds of hostilities coming to his ears, an expressive gutteral testified to his final acquiescence, and he moved away. His hesitation showed that Rachel had not been the only one to note the bearing of those two toward each other.
Had he listened a minute longer, he might have heard the peace within broken by the voices that, at first suppressed and intense, rose with growing earnestness.
The serious tones of Stuart sounded through the thin board walls in expostulation, and again as if urging some point that was granted little patience; for above it the voice of Genesee broke in, all the mellowness gone from it, killed by the brutal harshness, the contemptuous derision, with which he answered some plea or proposition.
"Oh, you come to me now, do you?" he said, walking back and forth across the room like some animal fighting to keep back rage with motion, if one can imagine an animal trying to put restraint on itself; and at every turn his smoldering, sullen gaze flashed over the still figure inside the door, and its manner, with a certain calm steadfastness of purpose, not to be upset by anger, seemed to irritate him all the more.
"So you come this time to lay out proposals to me, eh? And think, after all these years, that I'm to be talked over to what you want by a few soft words? Well, I'll see you damned first; so you can strike the back trail as soon as you've a mind to."
"I shan't go back," said Stuart deliberately, "until I get what I came for."
The other answered with a short, mirthless laugh.
"Then you're located till doomsday," he retorted, "and doomsday in the afternoon; though I reckon that won't be much punishment, considering the attractions you manage to find up here, and the advantages you carry with you—a handsome face, a gentleman's manners and an honest name. Why, you are begging on a full hand, Mister; and what are you begging to? A man that's been about as good as dead for years—a man without any claim to a name, or to recognition by decent people—an outlaw from civilization."
"Not so bad as that, Jack," broke in Stuart, who was watching in a sort of misery the harsh self-condemnation in the restless face and eyes of Genesee. "Don't be so bitter as that on yourself. You are unjust—don't I know?"
"The hell you say!" was the withering response to this appeal, as if with the aid of profanity to destroy the implied compliment to himself. "Your opinion may go for a big pile among your fine friends, but it doesn't amount to much right here. And you'd better beat a retreat, sir. The reputation of the highly respected Charles Stuart, the talented writer, the honorable gentleman, might get some dirty marks across it if folks knew he paid strictly private visits to Genesee Jack, a renegade squaw man; and more still if they guessed that he came for a favor—that's what you called it when you struck the shack, I believe. A favor! It has taken you a good while to find that name for it."
"No, it has not, Jack," and the younger man's earnestness of purpose seemed to rise superior to the taunts and sarcasm of the other. "It was so from the first, when I realized—after I knew—I didn't seem to have thoughts for anything else. It was a sort of justice, I suppose, that made me want them when I had put it out of my power to reach them. You don't seem to know what it means, Jack, but I—I am homesick for them; I have been for years, and now that things have changed so for me, I—Jack, for God's sake, have some feeling! and realize that other men can have!"
Jack turned on him like a flash.
"You—you say that to me!" he muttered fiercely.
"You, who took no count of anybody's feelings but your own, and thought God Almighty had put the best things on this earth for you to use and destroy! Killing lives as sure as if they'd never drawn another breath, and forgetting all about it with the next pretty face you saw! If that is what having a stock of feeling leads a man to, I reckon we're as well off without any such extras."
Stuart had sat down on a camp-stool, his face buried in his hands, and there was a long silence after Genesee's bitter words, as he stood looking at the bent head with an inexplicable look in his stormy eyes. Then his visitor arose.
"Jack," he said with the same patience—not a word of retort had come from him—"Jack, I've been punished every day since. I have tried to forget it—to kill all memory by every indulgence and distraction in my reach—pursued forgetfulness so eagerly that people have thought me still chasing pleasure. I turned to work, and worked hard, but the practice brought to my knowledge so many lives made wretched as—as—well, I could not stand it. The heart-sickness it brought me almost drove me melancholy mad. The only bright thing in life was—the children—"
An oath broke from Genesee's lips.
"And then," continued Stuart, without any notice save a quick closing of the eyes as if from a blow, "and then they died—both of them. That was justice, too, no doubt, for they stayed just long enough to make themselves a necessity to me—a solace—and to make me want what I have lost. I am telling you this because I want you to know that I have had things to try me since I saw you last, and that I've come through them with the conviction that there is to be no content in life to me until I make what amends I can for the folly of the boy you knew. The thought has become a monomania with me. I hunted for months for you, and never found a trace. Then I wrote—there."
"You did!"
"Yes, I did—say what you please, do what you please. It was my only hope, and I took it. I told her I was hunting for you—and my purpose. In return I got only this," and he handed toward Genesee a sheet of paper with one line written across it. "You see—your address, nothing more. But, Jack, can't you see it would not have been sent if she had not wished—"
"That's enough!" broke in the other. "I reckon I've given you all the time I have to spare this morning, Mister. You're likely to strike better luck in some different direction than talking sentiment and the state of your feelings to me. I've been acquainted with them before—pretty much—and don't recollect that the effect was healthy."
"Jack, you will do what I ask?"
"Not this morning, sonny," answered the other, still with that altogether aggressive taunt in his tone. "I would go back to the ranch if I was you, and by this time to-morrow some of them may make you forget the favor you want this morning. So long!"
And with this suggestion to his guest to vacate, he turned his back, sat down by the fire, and began filling a pipe.
"All right; I'll go, and in spite of your stubbornness, with a lighter heart than I carried here, for I've made you understand that I want to make amends, and that I have not been all a liar; that I want to win back the old faith you all had in me; and, Jack, if my head has gone wrong, something in my heart forbade me to have content, and that has been my only hope for myself. For I have a hope, and a determination, Jack, and as for anyone helping me to forget—well, you are wrong there; one woman might do it—for a while—I acknowledge that, but I am safe in knowing she would rather help me to remember."
Genesee wheeled about quickly.
"Have you dared—"
"No, I have not told her, if that is what you mean; why—why should I?"
His denial weakened a little as he remembered how closely his impulse had led him to it, and how strong, though reasonless, that impulse had been.
The stem of the pipe snapped in Genesee's fingers as he arose, pushing the camp-stool aside with his foot, as if clearing space for action.
"Since you own up that there's someone about here that you—you've taken a fancy to—damn you!—I'm going to tell you right now that you've got to stop that! You're no more fit than I am to speak to her, or ask for a kind word from her, and I give you a pointer that if you try playing fast and loose with her, there'll be a committee of one to straighten out the case, and do it more completely than that man did who was a fool ten years ago. Now, hearken to that—will you?"