Two weeks later storm-clouds were flying low over the Kootenai hills and chasing shadows over the faces of two equestrians who looked at each other in comic dismay.
"Jim, we are lost!" stated the one briefly.
"I allow we are, Miss Hardy," answered the other, a boy of about fifteen, who gazed rather dubiously back over the way they had come and ahead where a half-blind trail led up along the mountain.
"Suppose we pitch pennies to see what direction to take," suggested the girl; but the boy only laughed.
"Haven't much time for that, Miss," he answered. "Look how them clouds is crowdin' us; we've got to hunt cover or get soaked. This trail goes somewhere; may be to an Injun village. I allow we'd better freeze to it."
"All right. We'll allow that we had," agreed Miss Hardy. "Betty, get around here, and get up this hill! I know every step is taking us farther from the ranch, but this seems the only direction in which a trail leads. Jim, how far do you suppose we are from home?"
"'Bout fifteen miles, I guess," said the boy, looking blue.
"And we haven't found the lost sheep?"
"No, we haven't."
"And we have got lost?"
"Yes."
"Jim, I don't believe we are a howling success as sheep farmers."
"I don't care a darn about the sheep just now," declared Jim. "What I want to know is where we are to sleep to-night."
"Oh, you want too much," she answered briskly; "I am content to sit up all night, if I only can find a dry place to stay in—do you hear that?" as the thunder that had grumbled in the distance now sounded its threats close above them.
"Yes, I hear it, and it means business, too. I wish we were at the end of this trail," he said, urging his horse up through the scrubby growth of laurel.
The darkness was falling so quickly that it was not an easy matter to keep the trail; and the wind hissing through the trees made an open space a thing to wish for. Jim, who was ahead, gave a shout as he reached the summit of the hill where the trail crossed it.
"We're right!" he yelled that she might hear his voice above the thunder and the wind; "there's some sort of a shanty across there by a big pond; it's half a mile away, an' the rain's a-comin'—come on!"
And on they went in a wild run to keep ahead of the rain-cloud that was pelting its load at them with the force of hail. The girl had caught a glimpse of the white sheen of a lake or pond ahead of them; the shanty she did not wait to pick out from the gloom, but followed blindly after Jim, at a breakneck gait, until they both brought up short, in the shadow of a cabin in the edge of the timber above the lake.
"Jump off quick and in with you" called Jim; and without the ceremony of knocking, she pushed open the door and dived into the interior.
It was almost as dark as night. She stumbled around until she found a sort of bed in one corner, and sat down on it, breathless and wet. The rain was coming down in torrents, and directly Jim, with the saddles in his arms, came plunging in, shaking himself like a water-spaniel.
"Great guns! But it's comin' down solid," he gasped; "where are you?"
"Here—I've found a bed, so somebody lives here. Have you any matches?"
"I allow I have," answered Jim, "if they only ain't wet—no, by George, they're all right."
The brief blaze of the match showed him the fire-place and a pile of wood beside it, and a great osier basket of broken bark. "Say, Miss Hardy, we've struck great luck," he announced while on his knees, quickly starting a fire and fanning it into a blaze with his hat; "I wonder who lives here and where they are. Stickin' to that old trail was a pay streak—hey?"
In the blaze of the fire the room assumed quite a respectable appearance. It was not a shanty, as Jim had at first supposed, but a substantial log-cabin, furnished in a way to show constant and recent occupation.
A table made like a wide shelf jutted from the wall under the one square window; a bed and two chairs that bespoke home manufacture were covered by bear-skins; on the floor beside the bed was a buffalo-robe; and a large locked chest stood against the wall. Beside the fire-place was a cupboard with cooking and table utensils, and around the walls hung trophies of the hunt. A bow and quiver of arrows and a knotted silken sash hung on one wooden peg, and added to a pair of moccasins in the corner, gave an Indian suggestion to the occupancy of the cabin, but the furnishing in general was decidedly that of a white person; to the rafters were fastened some beaver-paws and bear-claws, and the skins of three rattlesnakes were pendent against the wall.
"Well, this is a queer go! ain't it?" remarked Jim as he walked around taking a survey of the room. "I'd like to know who it all belongs to. Did you ever hear folks about here speak of old Davy MacDougall?"
"Yes, I have," answered the girl, sitting down on the buffalo-robe before the fire, to dry her shoulders at the blaze.
"Well, I believe this is his cabin, and we are about ten mile from home," decided the boy. "I didn't think we'd strayed as far north as Scot's Mountain, but I allow this is it."
"Well, I wish he would come home and get supper," said the girl, easily adapting herself to any groove into which she happened to fall; "but perhaps we should have sent him word of our visit. What did you do with the horses, Jim?"
"Put 'em in a shed at the end o' the house—a bang-up place, right on the other side o' this fire-place. Whoever lives here keeps either a horse or a cow."
"I hope it's a cow, and that there's some milk to be had. Jimmy, I wonder if there is anything to eat in that cupboard."
"I've been thinkin' o' that myself," said Jim in answer to that insinuating speech.
"Suppose you do something besides think—suppose you look," suggested the more unscrupulous of the foragers; "I'm hungry."
"So am I," acknowledged her confederate; "you an' me is most alike about our eatin', ain't we? Mrs. Houghton said yesterday I had a terrible appetite."
The boy at once began making an examination of the larder, wondering, as he did so, what the girl was laughing at.
The rain was coming down in torrents through the blackness of the night; now and then the lightning would vie with the fire in lighting up the room, while the thunder seemed at home in that valley of the mountain, for its volleys of sound and their echoes never ceased.
Small wonder that anyone's house would seem a home to the two, or that they would have no compunction in taking possession of it.
"There's coffee here somewhere, I can smell it," announced Jim; "an' here's rice an' crackers, an' corn-meal, an' dried raspberries, an' potatoes, an'—yes, here's the coffee! Say, Miss Hardy, we'll have a regular feast!"
"I should say so!" remarked that lady, eyeing Jim's "find" approvingly; "I think there is a bed of coals here at this side of the fire-place that will just fit about six of those potatoes—can you eat three, Jim?"
"Three will do if they're big enough," said Jim, looking dubiously at the potatoes; "but these ain't as good-sized as some I've seen."
"Then give me two more; that makes five for you and three for me."
"Hadn't you better shove in a couple more?" asked Jim with a dash of liberality. "You know MacDougall may come back hungry, an' then we can spare him two—that makes ten to roast."
"Ten it is!" said the girl, burying two more in the ashes as the share of their host. "Jim, see if there is any water in here to make coffee with."
"Yes, a big jar full," reported the steward; "an' here is a little crock half full of eggs—prairie-chicken, I guess—say, can you make a pone?"
"I think I can;" and the cook at once rolled up the sleeves of her riding-dress, and Jimmy brought out the eggs and some bits of salt meat—evidently bear-meat—that was hung from the ceiling of the cupboard; at once there began a great beating of eggs and stirring up of a corn pone; some berries were set on the coals to stew in a tin-cup, the water put to boil for the coffee, and an iron skillet with a lid utilized as an oven; and the fragrance of the preparing eatables filled the little room and prompted the hungry lifting of lids many times ere the fire had time to do its work.
"That pone's a 'dandy!'" said Jim, taking a peep at it; "it's gettin' as brown as—as your hair; an' them berries is done, an' ain't it time to put in the coffee?"
Acting on this hint, the coffee, beaten into a froth with an egg, had the boiling water poured over it, and set bubbling and aromatic on the red coals.
"You mayn't be much use to find strayed-off stock," said Jim deliberately, with his head on one side, as he watched the apparent ease with which the girl managed her primitive cooking apparatus; "but I tell you—you ain't no slouch when it comes to gettin' grub ready, and gettin' it quick."
"Better keep your compliments until you have tried to eat some of the cooking," suggested Miss Hardy, on her knees before the fire. "I believe the pone is done."
"Then we'll dish-up in double-quick," said Jim, handing her two tin pans for the pone and potatoes. "We'll have to set the berries on in the tin—by George! what's that?"
"That" was the neigh of Betty in the shed by the chimney, and an answering one from somewhere out in the darkness. Through the thunder and the rain they had heard no steps, but Jim's eyes were big with suspense as he listened.
"My horse has broke loose from the shed," he said angrily, reaching for his hat; "and how the dickens I'm to find him in this storm I don't know."
"Don't be so quick to give yourself a shower-bath," suggested the girl on the floor; "he won't stray far off, and may be glad to come back to the shed; and then again," she added, laughing, "it may be MacDougall."
Jim looked rather blankly at the supper on the hearth and the girl who seemed so much at home on the buffalo-robe.
"By George! it might be," he said slowly; and for the first time the responsibility of their confiscations loomed up before him. "Say," he added uneasily, "have you any money?"
"Money?" she repeated inquiringly; and then seeing the drift of his thoughts, "Oh, no, I haven't a cent."
"They say MacDougall is an old crank," he insinuated, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, to see what effect the statement would have on her. But she only smiled in an indifferent way. "An'—an' ef he wants the money cash down for this lay-out"—and he glanced comprehensively over the hearth—"well, I don't know what to say."
"That's easily managed," said the girl coolly; "you can leave your horse in pawn."
"An' foot it home ten miles?—not if I know it!" burst out Jim; "an' besides it's Hardy's horse."
"Well, then, leave the saddle, and ride home bareback."
"I guess not!" protested Jim, with the same aggressive tone; "that's my own saddle."
After this unanswerable reason, there was an expectant silence in the room for a little while, that was finally broken by Jim saying ruefully:
"If that is MacDougall, he'll have to have them two potatoes."
Rachel's risible tendencies were not proof against this final fear of Jim's, and her laughter drowned his grumblings, and also footsteps without, of which neither heard a sound until the door was flung open and a man walked into the room.
Jim looked at him with surprised eyes, and managed to stammer, "How are you?" for the man was so far from his idea of old Davy MacDougall that he was staggered.
But Miss Hardy only looked up, laughing, from her position by the fire, and drew the coffee-pot from the coals with one hand, while she reached the other to the new-comer.
"Klahowya!Mr. Jack," she said easily; "got wet, didn't you? You are just in time for supper."
"You!" was all he said; and Jim thought they were both crazy, from the way the man crossed the room to her and took her one hand in both his as if he never intended letting it go or saying another word, content only to hold her hand and look at her. And Miss Rachel Hardy's eyes were not idle either.
"Yes, of course it's I," she said, slipping her hand away after a little, and dropping her face that had flushed pink in the fire-light; "I don't look like a ghost, do I? You would not find a ghost at such prosaic work as getting supper."
"Getting supper?" he said, stepping back a bit and glancing around. For the first time he seemed to notice Jim, or have any remembrance of anything but the girl herself. "You mean that you two have been getting supper alone?"
"Yes, Jim and I. Mr. Jack, this is my friend Jim, from the ranch. We tried to guide each other after sheep, and both got lost; and as you did not get here in time to cook supper, of course we had to do it alone."
"But I mean was there no one else here?"—he still looked a little dazed and perplexed, his eyes roving uneasily about the room—"I—a—a young Indian—"
"No!" interrupted the girl eagerly. "Do you mean the Indian boy who brought me that black bear's skin? I knew you had sent it, though he would not say a word—looked at me as if he did not understand Chinook when I spoke."
"May be he didn't understand yours," remarked Jimmy, edging past her to rake the potatoes out of the ashes.
"But he wasn't here when we came," continued Miss Hardy. "The house was deserted and in darkness when we found it, just as the storm came on in earnest."
"And the fire?" said Genesee.
"There was none," answered the boy. "The ashes were stone-cold. I noticed it; so your Injun hadn't had any fire all day."
"All day!" repeated the man, going to the door and looking out. "That means a long tramp, and to-night—"
"And to-night is a bad one for a tramp back," added Jim.
"Yes," agreed Genesee, "that's what I was thinking."
If there was a breath of relief in the words, both were too occupied with the potatoes in the ashes to notice it. He shut the door directly as the wind sent a gust of rain inside, and then turned again to the pirates at the fire-place.
"What did you find to cook?" he asked, glancing at the "lay-out," as Jim called it. "I haven't been here since yesterday, and am afraid you didn't find much—any fresh meat?"
Miss Hardy shook her head.
"Salt meat and eggs, that's all," she said.
"Not by a long shot it ain't, Mr.—Mr Jack," said Jim, contradicting her flatly. "She's got a first-class supper; an' by George! she can make more out o' nothin' than any woman I ever seen." In his enthusiasm over Rachel he was unconscious of the slur on their host's larder. "I never knowed she was such a rattlin' cook!"
"I know I have never been given credit for my everyday, wearing qualities," said the girl, without looking up from the eggs she was scrambling in the bake-oven of a few minutes before. The words may have been to Jim, but by the man's eyes he evidently thought they were at Genesee—such a curious, pained look as that with which he watched her every movement, every curve of form and feature, that shone in the light of the fire. Once she saw the look, and her own eyes dropped under it for a moment, but that independence of hers would not let it be for long.
"Do you want a share of our supper?" she asked, looking up at him quizzically.
"Yes," he answered, but his steady, curious gaze at her showed that his thoughts were not of the question or answer.
Not so Jim. That young gentleman eyed dubiously first the lay-out and then Genesee's physique, trying to arrive at a mental estimate of his capacity and the probable division of the pone and potatoes.
"How about that saddle, now, Jim?" asked the girl. Whereupon Jim began a pantomime enjoining silence, back of the chair of the man, who appeared more like a guest than host—perhaps because it was so hard to realize that it was really his hearth where that girl sat as if at home. She noticed his preoccupation, and remarked dryly:
"You really don't deserve a share of our cooking after the way you deserted us before!—not even aklahowyawhen you took the trail."
"You're right, I reckon; but don't you be the one to blame me for that," he answered, in a tone that made the command a sort of plea; and Miss Hardy industriously gave her attention to the supper.
"It's all ready," announced Jim, as he juggled a pan of hot pone from one hand to another on the way to the table. "Ouch! but it's hot! Say, wouldn't some fresh butter go great with this!"
"Didn't you find any?" asked Genesee, waking to the practical things of life at Jim's remark.
"Find any? No! Is there any?" asked that little gourmand, with hope and doubt chasing each other over his rather thin face.
"I don't know—there ought to be;" and lifting a loose board in the floor by the cupboard, he drew forth a closely-woven reed basket, and on a smooth stone in the bottom lay a large piece of yellow butter, around which Jim performed a sort of dance of adoration.
What a supper that was, in the light of the pitch-pine and the fierce accompaniment of the outside tempest! Jim vowed that never were there potatoes so near perfection, in their brown jackets and their steaming, powdery flakes; and the yellow pone, and the amber coffee, and the cool slices of butter that Genesee told them was from an Indian village thirty miles north. And to the table were brought such tremendous appetites! at least by the cook and steward of the party. And above all, what a delicious atmosphere of unreality pervaded the whole thing! Again and again Genesee's eyes seemed to say, "Can it be you?" and grew warm as her quizzical glances told him it could be no one else.
As the night wore on, and the storm continued, he brought in armfuls of wood from the shed without, and in the talk round the fire his manner grew more assured—more at home with the surroundings that were yet his own. Long they talked, until Jim, unable to think of any more questions to ask of silver-mining and bear-hunting, slipped down in the corner, with his head on a saddle, and went fast asleep.
"I'll sit up and keep the fire going," said Genesee, at this sign of the late hour; "but you had better get what rest you can on that bunk there—you'll need it for your ride in the morning."
"In the morning!" repeated the girl coolly; "that sounds as if you are determined our visit shall end as soon as possible, Mr. Genesee Jack."
"Don't talk like that!" he said, looking across at her; "you don't know anything about it." And getting up hastily, he walked back and forward across the room; once stopping suddenly, as if with some determination to speak, and then, as she looked up at him, his courage seemed to vanish, and he turned his face away from her and walked to the door.
The storm had stilled its shrieks, and was dying away in misty moans down the dip in the hills, taking the rain with it. The darkness was intense as he held the door open and looked into the black vault, where not a glimmer of a star or even a gray cloud could be seen.
"It's much nicer in-doors," decided Miss Hardy, moving her chair against the chimney-piece, and propping herself there to rest.
"Jim had better lie on the bed, he is so sleepy, and I am not at all so; this chair is good enough for me, if you don't mind."
He picked the sleeping boy up without a word, and laid him on the couch of bear-skins without waking him.
"There isn't much I do mind," he said, as he came back to the fire-place; "that is, if you are only comfortable."
"I am—very much so," she answered, "and would be entirely so if you only seemed a little more at home. As it is, I have felt all evening as if we are upsetting your peace of mind in some way—not as if we are unwelcome, mind you, but just as if you are worried about us."
"That so?" he queried, not looking at her; "that's curious. I didn't know I was looking so, and I'm sure you and the boy are mighty welcome to my cabin or anything in the world I can do for you."
There was no mistaking the heartiness of the man's words, and she smiled her gratitude from the niche in the corner, where, with her back toward the blaze, only one side of her face was outlined by the light.
"Very well," she said amicably; "you can do something for me just now—open the door for a little while; the room seems close with being shut up so tight from the rain—and then make yourself comfortable there on that buffalo-robe before the fire. I remember your lounging habits in the camp, and a chair doesn't seem to quite suit you. Yes, that looks much better, as if you were at home again."
Stretched on the robe, with her saddle on which to prop up his shoulders, he lay, looking in the red coals, as if forgetful of her speech or herself. But at last he repeated her words:
"At home again! Do you know there's a big lot of meaning in those words, Miss, especially to a man who hasn't known what home meant for years? and to-night, with white people in my cabin and a white woman to make things look natural, I tell you it makes me remember what home used to be, in a way I have not experienced for many a day."
"Then I'm glad I strayed off into the storm and your cabin," said the girl promptly; "because a man shouldn't forget his home and home-folks, especially if the memories would be good ones. People need all the good memories they can keep with them in this world; they're a sort of steering apparatus in a life-boat, and help a man make a straight journey toward his future."
"That's so," he said, and put his hand up over his eyes as if to shield them from the heat of the fire. He was lying full in the light, while she was in the shadow. He could scarcely see her features, with her head drawn back against the wall like that. And the very fact of knowing herself almost unseen—a voice, only, speaking to him—gave her courage to say things as she could not have said them at another time.
"Do you know," she said, as she sat there watching him with his eyes covered by his hand—"do you know that once or twice when we have been together I have wished I was a man, that I could say some things to you that a woman or a girl—that is, most girls—can't say very well? One of the things is that I should be glad to hear of you getting out of this life here; there is something wrong about it to you—something that doesn't suit you; I don't know what it is, but I can see you are not the man you might be—and ought to be. I've thought of it often since I saw you last, and sometimes—yes—I've been sorry for my ugly manner toward you. White people, when they meet in these out-of-the-way places in the world, ought to be as so many brothers and sisters to each other; and there were times, often, when I might have helped you to feel at home among us—when I might have been more kind."
"More kind? Good God!" whispered the man.
"And I made up my mind," continued the girl courageously, "that if I ever saw you again, I was going to speak plainly to you about yourself and the dissatisfaction with yourself that you spoke of that day in the laurel thicket. I don't know what the cause of it is, and I don't want to, but if it is any wrong that you've done in—in the past, a bad way to atone is by burying oneself alive, along with all energy and ambition. Now, you may think me presuming to say these things to you like this; but I've been wishing somebody would say them to you, and there seems no one here to do it but me, and so—"
She stopped, not so much because she had finished as because she felt herself failing utterly in saying the things she had really intended to say. It all sounded very flat and commonplace in her own ears—not at all the words to carry any influence to anyone, and so she stopped helplessly and looked at him.
"I'm glad it is you that says them," he answered, still without looking at her, "because you've got the stuff in you for such a good, square friend to a man—the sort of woman a person could go to in trouble, even if they hadn't the passport of a saint to take with them; and I wish—I wish I could tell you to-night something of the things that you've started on. If I could—" he stopped a moment.
"I suppose any other girl—" she began in a deprecating tone; but he dropped his hand from his eyes and looked at her.
"You're not like other girls," he said with a great fondness in his eyes, "and that's just the reason I feel like telling you all. You're not like any girl I've ever known. I've often felt like speaking to you as if you were a boy—an almighty aggravatin' slip of a boy sometimes; and yet—"
He lay silent for a little while, so long that the girl wondered if he had forgotten what he was to try to tell her. The warmth after the rain had made them neglect the fire, and its blaze had dropped low and lower, until she was entirely in the shadow—only across the hearth and his form did the light fall.
"And yet," he continued, as if there had been no break in his speech, "there's been many a night I've dreamed of seeing you sit here by this fire-place just as I've seen you to-night; just as bright like and contented, as if all the roughness and poorness of it was nothing to you, or else a big joke for you to make fun of; and then—well, at such times you didn't seem like a boy, but—"
Again he stopped.
"Never mind what I'm like," suggested the girl; "that doesn't matter. I guess everyone seems a different person with different people; but you wanted to tell me something of yourself, didn't you?"
"That's what I'm trying to get at," he answered, "but it isn't easy. I've got to go back so far to start at the beginning—back ten years, to reckon up mistakes. That's a big job, my girl—my girl."
The lingering repetition of those words opened the girl's eyes wide with a sudden memory of that moonlit night in the gulch. Then she had not fancied those whispered words! they had been uttered, and by his voice; and those fancied tears of Tillie's, and—the kisses!
So thick came those thronging memories, that she did not notice his long, dreamy silence. She was thinking of that night, and all the sweet, vague suggestion in it that had vanished with the new day. She was comparing its brief charm with this meeting of to-night that was ignoring it so effectually; that was as the beginning of a new knowledge of each other, with the commonplace and practical as a basis.
Her reverie was broken sharply by the sight of a form that suddenly, silently, appeared in the door-way. Her first impulse of movement or speech was checked as the faint, flickering light shifted across the visage of the new-comer, and she recognized the Indian girl who had hidden behind the ponies. A smile was on the dark face as she saw Genesee lying there, asleep he must have looked from the door, and utterly oblivious of her entrance. Her soft moccasins left no sound as she crossed the floor and dropped down beside him, laying one arm about his throat. He clasped the hand quickly and opened his half-shut eyes. Did he, for an instant, mistake it for another hand that had slipped into his that one night? Whatever he thought, his face was like that of death as he met the eyes of the Indian girl.
"Talapa!" he muttered, and his fingers closing on her wrist must have twisted it painfully, by the quick change in her half-Indian, half-French face. He seemed hardly conscious of it. Just then he looked at her as if she was in reality that Indian deity of the inferno from whom her name was derived.
"Hyak nika kelapie!" (I returned quickly), she whined, as if puzzled at her reception, and darting furious sidelong glances from the black eyes that had the width between them that is given to serpents. "Nah!" she ejaculated angrily, as no answer was made to her; and freeing her hand, she rose to her feet. She had not once seen the white girl in the shadow. Coming from the darkness into the light, her eyes were blinded to all but the one plainly seen figure. But as she rose to her feet, and Genesee with her, Rachel stooped to the pile of wood beside her, and throwing some bits of pine on the fire, sent the sparks flying upward, and a second later a blaze of light flooded the room.
The action was a natural, self-possessed one—it took a great deal to upset Miss Hardy's equanimity—and she coolly sat down again facing the astonished Indian girl and Genesee; but her face was very white, though she said not a word.
"There is no need for me to try to remember the beginning, is there," said Genesee bitterly, looking at her with sombre, moody eyes, "since the end has told its own story? This is—my—my—"
Did he say wife? She never could be quite sure of the word, but she knew he tried to say it.
His voice sounded smothered, unnatural, as it had that day in the laurel thicket when he had spoken of locking himself out from a heaven. She understood what he meant now.
"No, there is no need," she said, as quietly as she could, though her heart seemed choking her and her hands trembled. "I hope all will come right for you sometime, and—I understand, now."
Did she really understand, even then, or know the moral lie the man had told, the lie that, in his abasement, he felt was easier to have her believe than the truth?
Talapa stood drying her moccasins at the fire, as if not understanding their words; but the slow, cunning smile crept back to her lips as she recognized the white girl, and no doubt remembered that she and Genesee had ridden together that day at the camp.
He picked up his hat and walked to the door, after her kindly words, putting his hand out ahead of him in a blind sort of way, and then stopped, saying to her gently:
"Get what rest you can—try to, anyway; you will need it." And then, with some words in Indian to Talapa, he went out into the night.
His words to Talapa were in regard to their guests' comfort, for that silent individual at once began preparations for bed-making on her behalf, until Rachel told her in Chinook that she would sleep in her chair where she was. And there she sat through the night, feeling that the eyes of the Indian girl were never taken from her as the motionless form lay rolled in a blanket on the floor, much as it had rolled itself up on the grass that other day.
Jim was throned in royal state, for he had the bed all to himself, and in the morning opened his eyes in amazement as he smelled the coffee and saw the Indian girl moving about as if at home.
"Yes, we've got a new cook, Jim," said Miss Hardy, from the window; "so we are out of work, you and I. Sleep well?"
"Great!" said Jim, yawning widely. "Where's Mr. Jack?"
"Out, somewhere," returned the girl comprehensively. She did not add that he had been out all night, and Jim was too much interested with the prospect of breakfast to be very curious.
He had it, as he had the bed—all to himself. Miss Hardy was not hungry, for a wonder, and Talapa disappeared after it was placed on the table. The girl asked Jim if that was Indian etiquette, but Jim didn't know what etiquette was, so he couldn't tell.
Through that long vigil of the night there had returned to the girl much of her light, ironical manner; but the mockery was more of herself and her own emotions than aught else, for when Genesee brought the horses to the door and she looked in his face, any thought of jesting with him was impossible; the signs of a storm were on him as they were on the mountains in the morning light.
"I will guide you back to the home trail," he said as he held Betty at the door for her to mount.
"Go in and get some breakfast," was all the answer she made him. But he shook his head, and reached his hand to help her.
"What's the matter with everyone this morning?" asked Jim. "There hasn't been a bite of breakfast eaten only what I got away with myself."
Genesee glanced in at the table. "Would you eat nothing because it was mine?" he asked in a low tone.
"I did not because I could not," she said in the same tone; and then added, good-humoredly: "Despite Jim's belief in my appetite, it does go back on me sometimes—and this is one of the times. It's too early in the morning for breakfast. Are you going with us on foot?" as she noticed Mowitza, unsaddled, grazing about the green turf at the edge of the timber.
"Yes," he answered, "I have not far to go."
She slipped past him, and gathering her dress up from the wet grass walked over to where Mowitza browsed. The beautiful mare raised her head and came over the grass with long, light steps, as if recognizing the low call of her visitor; and resting her head on the girl's shoulder, there seemed to be a conversation between them perfectly satisfactory to each; while Mowitza's owner stood looking at them with a world of conflicting emotions in his face.
"I have been saying good-bye to Mowitza," she remarked, as she joined them and mounted Betty, "and we are both disconsolate. She carried me out of danger once, and I am slow to forget a favor."
It was a very matter-of-fact statement; she was a matter-of-fact young woman that morning. Genesee felt that she was trying to let him know her memory would keep only the best of her knowledge of him. It was an added debt to that which he already owed her, and he walked in silence at her horse's head, finding no words to express his thoughts, and not daring to use them if he had.
The valleys were wrapped in the whitest of mists as they got a glimpse of them from the heights. The sun was struggling through one veil only to be plunged into another, and all the cedar wood was in the drip, drip of tears that follow tempests. Where was all that glory of the east at sunrise which those two had once watched from a mountain not far from this? In the east, as they looked now, there were only faint streaks of lavender across the sky—of lavender the color of mourning.
He directed Jim the way of the trail, and then turned to her.
"I don't know what to say to you—or just how low you will think me," he said in a miserable sort of way. "When I think of—of some things, I wonder that you even speak to me this morning—God! I'm ashamed to look you in the face!"
And he looked it. All the cool assurance that had been a prominent phase of his personality that evening when Hardy met him first, was gone. His handsome, careless face and the independent head were drooped before hers as his broad-brimmed hat was pulled a little lower over his eyes.
Some women are curious, and this one, whom he had thought unlike all others, rather justified his belief, as she bent over in the saddle and lifted the cover from his dark hair.
"Don't be!" she said gently—and as he looked up at her she held out her hand—"nika tillikum" (my friend); and the sweetness possible in the words had never been known by him until she uttered them so. "My friend, don't feel like that, and don't think me quite a fool. I've seen enough of life to know that few men under the same circumstances would try as hard to be honest as you did, and if you failed in some ways, the fault was as much mine as yours."
"Rachel!" It was the first time he had ever called her that.
"Yes, I had some time to think about it last night," she said, with a little ironical smile about her lips; "and the conclusion I've come to is that we should afford to be honest this morning, and not—not so very much ashamed;" and then she hurried on in her speech, stumbling a little as the clasp of his hand made her unsteady through all her determination. "I will not see you again, perhaps ever. But I want you to know that I have faith in your making a great deal of your life if you try; you have the right foundations—strong will and a good principle. Mentally, you have been asleep here in the hills—don't find fault with your awakening. And don't feel so—so remorseful about—that night. There are some things people do and think that they can't help—we couldn't help that night; and so—good-bye—Jack."
"God bless you, girl!" were the heart-felt, earnest words that answered her good-bye; and with a last firm clasp of hands, she turned Betty's head toward the trail Jim had taken, and rode away under the cedar boughs.
Genesee stood bare-headed, with a new light in his eyes as he watched her—the dawn of some growing determination.
Once she looked back, and seeing him still there, touched her cap in military fashion, and with a smile disappeared in the wet woods. As he turned away there crept from the shrubbery at the junction of the trails Talapa, who, with that slow, knowing smile about her full lips, stole after him—in her dusky silence a very shadow of a man's past that grows heavy and wide after the noon is dead, and bars out lives from sunny doors where happiness might be found. His head was bent low, thinking—thinking as he walked back to the cabin that had once held at least a sort of content—a content based on one side of his nature. Had the other died, or was it only asleep? And she had told him not to find fault with his awakening—she! He had never before realized the wealth or loss one woman could make to the world.
"Ashamed to look her in the face!" His own words echoed in his ears as he walked under the wet leaves, with the shadow of the shame skulking unseen after him; and then, little by little, the sense of her farewell came back to him, and running through it, that strong thread of faith in him yet, making his life more worth living.
"Damned little in my present outfit for her to build any foundation for hope on," he muttered grimly, as he saddled and bridled Mowitza, as if in hot haste to be gone somewhere, and then sat down on the door-step as if forgetful of the intention.
Talapa slipped past him with an armful of bark for the fire. Not a word had passed between them since the night before, and the girl watched him covertly from under drooped lids. Was she trying to fathom his meditations, or determine how far they were to affect her own future? For as the birds foretell by the signs in the air the change of the summer, so Talapa, through the atmosphere of the cabin that morning, felt approach the end of a season that had been to her luxurious with comforts new to her; and though the Indian blood in her veins may have disdained the adjuncts of civilization, yet the French tide that crossed it carried to her the Gallic yearning for the dainties and delicacies of life. To be sure, one would not find many of those in a backwoodsman's cabin; but all content is comparative, and Talapa's basis of comparison was the earthen floor of a thronged "tepee," or wigwam, where blows had been more frequent than square meals; and being a thing feminine, her affections turned to this white man of the woods who could give her a floor of boards and a dinner-pot never empty, and moreover, being of the sex feminine, those bonds of affection were no doubt securely fastened—bonds welded in a circle—endless.
At least those attributes, vaguely remembered, are usually conceded to the more gentle half of humanity, and I give Talapa the benefit of the belief, as her portrait has been of necessity set in the shadows, and has need of all the high lights that can be found for it. Whatever she may have lacked from a high-church point of view, she had at least enviable self-possession. Whatever tumult of wounded feeling there may have been in this daughter of the forest, she moved around sedately, with an air that in a white woman would be called martyr-like, and said nothing.
It was as well, perhaps, that she had the rare gift of silence, for the man at the door, with his chin resting grimly on his fists, did not seem at all sympathetic, or in the humor to fit himself to anyone's moods. The tones of that girl's voice were still vibrating over chords in his nature that disturbed him. He did not even notice Talapa's movements until she ceased them by squatting down with native grace by the fire-place, and then—
"Get up off that!" he roared, in a voice that hastened Talapa's rising considerably.
"That" was the buffalo-robe on which the other girl had throned herself the night before; and what a picture she had made in the fire-light!
Genesee in two strides crossed the floor, and grabbing the robe, flung it over his shoulder. No, it was not courteous to unseat a lady with so little ceremony—it may not even have been natural to him, so many things are not natural to us human things that are yet so true.
"And why so?" asked Talapa sullenly, her back against the wall as if in a position to show fight; that is, she said "Pe-kah-ta?" but, for the benefit of the civilized reader, the ordinary English is given—"And why so?"
Genesee looked at her a moment from head to foot, but the scrutiny resulted in silence—no remark. At length he walked back to the chest against the wall, and unlocking it, drew out an account-book, between the leaves of which were some money orders; two of them he took out, putting the rest in his pocket. Then, writing a signature on those two—not the name of Jack Genesee, by the way—he turned to Mistress Talapa, who had slid from the wall down on the floor minus the buffalo-robe.
"Here!" he said tersely. "I am going away.Klat-awah si-ah—do you understand?" And then, fishing some silver out of his pocket, he handed it to her with the notes. "Take these to the settlement—to the bank-store. They'll give you money—money to live all winter. Live in the cabin if you want; only get out in the spring—do you hear? I will want it myself then—and I want it alone."
Without comment, Talapa reached up and took the money, looking curiously at the notes, as if to decipher the meaning in the pictured paper, and then:
"Nika wake tikeghTalapa?" she queried, but with nothing in her tone to tell if she cared whether he wanted her or not.
"Not by a—" he began energetically, and then, "you are your own boss now," he added, more quietly. "Go where you please, only you'd better keep clear of the old gang, for I won't buy you from them again—kumtuks?"
Talapa nodded that she understood, her eyes roving about the cabin, possibly taking note of the wealth that she had until spring to revel in or filch from.
Genesee noticed that mental reckoning.
"Leave these things alone," he said shortly. "Use them, but leave them here. If any of them are gone when I get back—well, I'll go after them."
And throwing the robe over his arm again, he strode out through the door, mounted Mowitza, and rode away.
It was not a sentimental finale to an idyl of the wood, but by the time the finale is reached, the average human specimen has no sentiment to waste. Had they possessed any to begin with?
It was hard to tell whether Talapa was crushed by the cold cruelty of that leave-taking, or whether she was indifferent; that very uncertainty is a charm exerted over us by those conservative natures that lock within themselves wrath or joy where we ordinary mortals give expression to ours with all the language possessed by us, and occasionally borrow some adjectives that would puzzle us to give a translation of.
Talapa sat where he left her, not moving except once to shy a pine knot at a rat by the cupboard—and hit it, too, though she did belong to the sex divine. So she sat, pensively dribbling the silver coin from hand to hand, until the morning crept away and the sun shone through the mists.
What was it that at last awakened her from an apparent dreamland—the note of that bird whistling in the forest in very gladness that the sun shone again? Evidently so, and the Indian blood in her veins had taught her the secret of sympathy with the wild things, for she gave an answering call, half voice, half whistle. Silence for a little, and then again from the timber came that quavering note, with the rising inflection at the finish that was so near an interrogation.
It brought Talapa to her feet, and going to the door, she sent a short, impatient call that a little later was answered by the appearance of a comely buck—one of the order of red men—who lounged down the little incline with his head thrust forward as if to scent danger if any was about; but a few words from the girl assuring him that the coast was clear—the fort unguarded—gave him more an air of assurance, as he stepped across the threshhold and squatted down on the side of the bed.
"Genesee gone?" he queried in the musical medley of consonants.
Talapa grunted an assent, with love in her eyes for the noble specimen on the bed.
"Gone far—gone all time—till spring," she communicated, as if sure of being the giver of welcome news. "House all mine—everything mine—all winter."
"Ugh!" was all the sound given in answer to the information; but the wide mouth curved upward ever so slightly at the corners, and coupled with the interrogative grunt, expressed, no doubt, as much content as generally falls to the lot of individual humanity. One of his boots hurt him, or rather the moccasins which he wore with leggings, and above them old blue pantaloons and a red shirt; the moccasin was ripped, and without ceremony he loosened it and kicked it toward Talapa.
"Mamook tipshin," he remarked briefly; and by that laconic order to sew his moccasin, Skulking Brave virtually took possession of Genesee's cabin and Genesee's squaw.
Through the gray shadows of that morning Rachel and Jim rode almost in silence down the mountain trail. The memory of the girl was too busy for speech, and the frequent yawns of Jim showed that a longer sleep would have been appreciated by him.
"Say," he remarked at last, as the trail grew wide enough for them to ride abreast, "everything was jolly back here at Mr. Jack's last night, but I'm blest if it was this morning. The breakfast wasn't anything to brag of, an' the fire was no good, an' the fog made the cabin as damp as rain when the door was open, an' he was glum an' quiet, an' you wasn't much better. Say, was it that Injun cook o' his you was afeared to eat after?"
"Not exactly," she answered with a little laugh; "what an observer you are, Jim! I suppose the atmosphere of the cabin was the effect of the storm last night."
"What? Well, the storm wasn't much worse to plow through last night than the wet timber this morning," he answered morosely; "but say, here's the sun coming out at last—by George! How the wind lifts the fog when it gets started. Look at it!" And then, as the sunlight really crept in a great shimmer through the pines, he added: "It might just as well have come earlier, or else kept away altogether, for we're as wet now as we can get."
"Be thankful that it shines at all, Jim."
"Oh, the shine's all right, but it shines too late."
"Yes," agreed the girl, with a memory of shamed, despairing eyes flitting through her brain. "Yes, it always shines too late—for someone."
"It's for two of us this time," replied grumbling Jim, taking her speech literally. "We've had a Nick of a time anyway this trip. Why that storm had to wait until just the day we got lost, so as we'd get wet, an' straggle home dead beat—an' without the sheep—I can't see."
"No, we can't see," said Rachel, with a queer little smile. "Perhaps—perhaps it's all because this is the end instead of the beginning of acultus corrie."
In the spring that followed, what a spirit of promise and enterprise was abroad on the Hardy ranch! What multitudes of white lambs, uncertain in the legs, staggered and tottered about the pasture lands! and what musical rills of joy in the mountain streams escaping through the sunshine from their prisons of ice! The flowers rose from the dead once more—such a fragrant resurrection! slipping from out their damp coffins and russet winding-sheets with dauntless heads erect, and eager lips open to the breath of promise. Some herald must bear to their earth-homes the tidings of how sweet the sun of May is—perhaps the snow sprites who are melted into tears at his glances and slip out of sight to send him a carpet of many colors instead of the spotless white his looks had banished. It may be so, though only the theory of an alien.
And then the winged choruses of the air! What matinees they held in the sylvan places among the white blossoms of the dogwood and the feathery tassels of the river willow, all nodding, swaying in the soft kisses sent by the Pacific from the southwest—soft relays of warmth and moisture that moderate those western valleys until they are affronted by the rocky wall that of old was called by the Indians the Chippewyan Mountains, but which in our own day, in the more poetical language of the usurper, has been improved upon and dubbed the "Rockies." But all the commonplaces of those aliens can not deprive the inaccessible, conservative solitudes of their wild charms. And after those long months of repression, how warmly their smile bursts forth—and how contagious it is!
Laugh though the world may at the vibrations of poet hearts echoing the songs of the youngest of seasons, how can they help it? It is never the empty vessel that brims over, and with the spring a sort of inspiration is wakened in the most prosaic of us. The same spirit of change that thrills the saplings with fresh vitality sends through human veins a creeping ecstasy of new life. And all its insidious, penetrating charm seemed abroad there in the Northern-land escaped from under the white cloak of winter. The young grass, fresh from the valley rains, warmed into emerald velvet in the sunshine, bordered and braced with yellow buttons of dandelion; while the soil was turned over with the plows, and field and garden stocked with seed for the harvest.
Energetic, busy days those were after the long months of semi-inaction; even the horses were too mettlesome for farm drudgery—intoxicated, no doubt, by the bracing, free winds that whispered of the few scattered droves away off to the north that bore no harness and owned no master. All things were rebellious at the long restraint, and were breaking into new paths of life for the new season.
Even a hulking Siwash, with his squaw and children, came dragging down the valley in the wake of the freshets, going to the Reservation south, content to go any place where they could get regular meals, with but the proviso to be "good Injun."
They loafed about the ranch two days, resting, and coming in for a share of rations from the Hardy table; and the little barefooted "hostiles" would stand about the gate and peer in around the posts of the porch, saying in insinuating tones:
"Pale papoose?"
Yes, the spirit of the hills and grazing lands had crept under the rafters and between the walls, and a new life had been given to the world, just as the first violets crept sunward.
And of course no other life was ever quite so sweet, so altogether priceless, as this little mite, who was already mistress of all she surveyed; and Aunty Luce—their one female servant—declared:
"Them eyes o' hers certainly do see everything in reach of 'em. She's a mighty peart chile, I'm tellin' ye."
Even Jim had taken to loafing around the house more than of old, and showing a good deal of nervous irritation if by any chance "she" was allowed to test her lungs in the slightest degree. The setter pups paled into insignificance, and a dozen times a day he would remark to Ivans that it was "the darndest, cutest, little customer he ever saw."
"Even you have become somewhat civilized, Rachel, since baby's arrival," remarked Tillie in commendation.
Yes, Rachel was still there. At the last moment, a few appealing glances from Tillie and some persuasive words from Hen had settled the question, and a rebellion was declared against taking the home trail, and all the words of the Houghtons fell on barren soil, for she would not—and she would not.
"They will never miss me back there in Kentucky," she argued; "there are so many girls there. But out here, femininity is at a premium. Let me alone, Clara; I may take the prize."
"And when am I to tell the folks you will come back?" asked Mrs. Houghton, with the purpose of settling on a fixed time and then holding her to it.
"Just tell them the truth, dear—say you don't know," answered the girl sweetly. "I may locate a claim out here yet and develop into a stock-grower. Do not look so sulky. I may be of use here; no one needs me in Kentucky."
"What of Nard Stevens?" was a final query; at which Rachel no longer smiled—she laughed.
"Oh, you silly Clara!" she burst out derisively. "You think yourself so wise, and you never see an inch beyond that little nose of yours. Nard needs me no more than I need him—bless the boy! He's a good fellow; but you can not use him as a trump card in this game, my dear. Yes, I know that speech is slangy. Give my love to Nard when you see him—well, then, my kind regards and best wishes if the other term conflicts with your proper spirit, and tell him I have located out here to grow up with the country."
And through the months that followed she assuredly grew to the country at all events; the comparative mildness of the winters proving a complete surprise to her, as, hearing of the severe weather of the North, she had not known that its greatest intensity extends only to the eastern wall of the great mountain range, and once crossing the divide, the Chinook winds or currents from the Pacific give the valleys much the temperature of our Middle States, or even more mild, since the snow-fall in the mountains is generally rain in the lowlands. Sometimes, of course, with the quick changes that only the wind knows, there would come a swoop downward of cold from the direct North, cutting through the basins, and driving the Pacific air back coastward in a fury, and those fitful gusts were to be guarded against by man and beast; and wise were growing those eastern prophets in their quickness to judge from the heavens whether storm or calm was to be with them.
But despite Clara's many predictions, the days did not grow dull to Rachel, and the ranch was not a prison in winter-time. She had too clearly developed the faculty of always making the best of her surroundings and generally drawing out the best points in the people about her.
It was that trait of hers that first awakened her interest in that splendid animal, their guide from the Maple range.
He had disappeared—gone from the Kootenai country, so they told her. But where? or for what? That none could answer.
Her memory sometimes brought her swift flushes of mortification when she thought of him—of their association so pregnant with some sympathy or subtle influence that had set the world so far beyond them at times. Now that he was gone, and their knowledge of each other perhaps all over, she tried to coolly reason it all out for herself, but found so much that contained no reason—that had existed only through impulses—impulses not easy to realize once outside the circle of their attending circumstances.
Those memories puzzled her—her own weakness when she lay in his arms, and her own gift of second-sight that gave her an understanding of him that morning when she turned champion for him against himself.
Was it really an understanding of him? or was it only that old habit of hers of discovering fine traits in characters voted worthless?—discoveries laughed at by her friends, until her "spectacles of imagination" were sometimes requested if some specimen of thegenus homowithout any redeeming points was under discussion.
Was it so in this case? She had asked herself the question more than once during the winter. And if she had been at all pliable in her opinions, she would long ere spring have dropped back to the original impression that the man was a magnificent animal with an intellect, and with spirituality and morality sleeping.
But she was not. A certain stubbornness in her nature kept her from being influenced, as the others were, by the knowledge that after all they had had a veritable "squaw man" as a guide.
Hardy was surprised, and Tillie was inconsolable.
"I never will believe in an honest face again!" she protested.
"Nonsense!" laughed Rachel. "Pocahontas was an Indian and Rolfe was not hustled out of society in consequence."
"N—No," assented Tillie, eyeing Rachel doubtfully "but then, you see Rolfe married Pocahontas."
"Yes?"
"And—and Ivans told Hen he heard that the squaw you saw at Genesee's was only a sort of slave. Did he tell you and Jim that she was his wife?"
"I—I don't know;" and Rachel suddenly sat down on a chair near the window and looked rather hopelessly at the questioner. "No, I don't believe he said so, but the circumstances and all—well, I took it for granted; he looked so ashamed."
"And you thought it was because of a marriage ceremony, not for the lack of one?"
"Yes," acknowledged the girl, inwardly wondering why that view of the question had not presented itself to her. Had she after all imagined herself sighting an eagle, and was it on nearer acquaintance to develop into a vulture—or, worse still, a buzzard—a thing reveling only in carrion, and knowing itself too unclean to breathe the same air with the untainted! So it seemed; so Tillie was convinced; so she knew Clara would have thought. In fact, in all the range of her female acquaintances she could think of none whose opinion would not have been the same, and she had an impatient sort of wonder with herself for not agreeing with them. But the memory of the man's face that morning, and the echo of that "God bless you, girl!" always drifted her away from utter unbelief in him.
She heard considerable about him that winter; that he was thought rather eccentric, and belonged more to the Indians than the whites, sometimes living with a tribe of Kootenais for weeks, sometimes disappearing, no one knew where, for months, and then settling down in the cabin again and placidly digging away at that hole in the hill by the little lake—the hill itself called by the Indians "Tamahnous," meaning bewitched, or haunted. And his persistence in that work was one of the eccentric things that made some people say significantly:
"They allowed Genesee was a good man, but a little 'touched' on the silver question."
And for Tillie's benefit Hen had to explain that the term "good" had nothing whatever to do with the man's moral or spiritual worth; its use was in a purely physical sense.
After the snows fell in the mountains there were but few strangers found their way to the new ranch. Half locked in as it was by surrounding hills, the passes were likely to be dangerous except to the initiated, and there were not many who had business urgent enough to push them through the drifts, or run their chances with land-slides. But if a stray hunter did come their way, his call was not allowed to be a short one. They had already become too thoroughly Western in their hospitality to allow the quick departure of a guest, a trait of which they had carried the germs from old Kentucky.
What cheery evenings there were in the great sitting-room, with the logs heaped high in the stone fire-place! An uncarpeted room, with long, cushioned settees along two sides of it—and mighty restful they were voted by the loungers after the day's work; a few pictures on the wall, mostly engravings; the only color given the furnishing was in the pink and maroon chintz curtains at the windows, or cushions to the oak chairs. There in the fire-light of the long evenings were cards played, or stories told, or magazines read aloud, Rachel and Hen generally taking turn about as reader. And Tillie in the depths of the cushioned rocker, knitting soft wool stuffs, was a chatelaine, the picture of serene content, with close beside her a foil in the form of black Aunty Luce, whom only devotion to her young miss would ever have tempted into those wilds; and after the work was over for the night, it was a usual thing to see her slipping in and snuggling down quietly to listen to the stories told or read, her big eyes glancing fearfully toward windows or doors if the Indian question was ever touched on; though occasionally, if approached with due ceremony and full faith shown in her knowledge, she would herself add her share to the stories told, her donation consisting principally of sure "hoodoos," and the doings of black witches and warlocks in the land of bayous; for Aunty Luce had originally come from the swamps of Louisiana, where the native religion and superstitions have still a good following. And old Aunty's reminiscences added to the variety of their evening's bill of entertainment.
A mail-carrier unexpectedly sprang up for them in the winter in the person of a young half-breed called Kalitan, or the Arrow. He had another name, his father, an Englishman, and agent for a fur company, had happened to be around when his swarthy offspring was ushered into the world, and he promptly bestowed on him his own name of Thomas Alexander. But it was all he did bestow on him—and that only by courtesy, not legality; and Alexander Junior had not even the pleasure of remembering his father's face, as his mother was soon deserted. She went back to her tribe and reared her son as an Indian, even his name in time was forgotten, as by common consent the more characteristic one of Kalitan was given him because of the swiftness of foot that had placed him among the best "runners" or messengers in the Indian country—and the average speed of a runner will on a long march out-distance that of cavalry. At the military post at Fort Missoula, Kalitan's lines had first fallen among those of Genesee, and for some unexplained reason his adherence to that individual became as devoted as Mowitza's own. For a long time they had not ranged far apart, Genesee seldom leaving the Kootenai country that Kalitan did not disappear as well. This last trip his occupation was gone, for word had been left with MacDougall that the trail was not clear ahead, but if Kalitan was wanted he would be sent for, and that sinewy, bronze personage did not seem to think of doing other than wait—and the waiting promised to be long.
He took to hanging around Scot's Mountain more than of old, with the query, "Maybe Genesee send lettah—s'pose? I go see."
And go he would, over and over again, always with a philosophic "S'pose next time," when he returned empty-handed. Sometimes he stopped at the ranch, and Rachel at once recognized him as the youth who had brought her the black bear skin months before, and pretended at the time utter ignorance of Chinook. He would speak Chinook fast enough to her now if there was any occasion, his white blood, and the idea that she was Genesee's friend, inclining him to sociability seldom known to the aristocratic conservatives of the Indian race.
The nearest mail station was twenty miles south, and it was quite an item to find a messenger as willing as was Kalitan; storm or calm, he would make the trip just the same, carrying his slip of paper on which all the names were written and which he presented as an order to the postmaster. A big mail was a cause of pride to him, especially magazines or packages. Letters he did not think of much account, because of their size.
To Aunty Luce he was a thing of dread, as were all of his race. She was firmly convinced that the dusky well-featured face belonged to an imp of the evil one, and that he simply slid over the hills on the cold winds, without even the aid of a broom-stick. The nights that he spent at the ranch found Aunty's ebony face closer than ever to the side of Mistress Tillie's chair.
Another member had been added to the visiting list at Hardy's, and that was the sovereign of Scot's Mountain.
Along in midwinter, Kalitan brought a scrawled note from "Ole Man Mac," asking for some drugs of which he stood in need. The request brought to light the fact that Kalitan one day while paying visits had found "Ole Man Mac" sick in bed—"heap sick—crank—no swallow medicine but white man's."
The required white man's medicine was sent, and with it a basket with white bread, fresh butter, and various condiments of home manufacture that Tillie's kindly heart prompted her to send to the old trapper—one of their nearest neighbors.
The following day Rachel and her henchman Jim started on Kalitan's trail, with the idea of learning personally if any further aid that the ranch could give was needed at the cabin. A snow three days old covered the ground, in which Kalitan's trail was easily followed; and then Rachel had been over the same route before, starting light-hearted and eager, on thatcultus corrie.
They reached Scot's Mountain a little after noon, and found its grizzled, unshaven owner much better than he had been the day before, and close beside him on the pillow lay his one companion, the cat.
"Well, well! to think o' this!" said the old man, reaching a brawny hand to her from the bunk. "You're the first white woman as ever passed that door-post, and it's rare and glad I am that it's your own self."
"Why myself more than another?" she asked, rather surprised at his words. "I would have come long ago if I had known I was wanted, or that you even knew of me."
"Have I not, then?" he queried, looking at her sharply from under his wrinkled, half-closed lids. "But sit ye down, lady. Kalitan, bring the chair. And is that a brother—the lad there? I thought I had na heard of one. Sit you down close that I can see ye—a sight good for sore een; an' I have no heard o' ye? Ah, but I have, though. Many's the hour the lad has lain lazy like on the cot here, an' told me o' the gay folk frae the East. Ye know I'd be a bit curious o' my new neighbors, an' would be askin' many's the question, an' all the tales would end wi' something about the lass that was ay the blithe rider, an' ever the giver o' good judgment."
The girl felt her face grow hot under those sharp old eyes. She scarcely knew what to say, and yet could give no sensible reason for such embarrassment; and then—
"The lad—what lad?" she asked at last.
"Oh—ay. I clean forgot he is no lad to you. Kalitan, will ye be building up that fire a bit? When we have quality to visit we must give them a warm welcome, if no more. An' the lad, as I was sayin'," he continued, "was but Genesee—no other; though he looked more the lad when I called him so first."
"You are such old friends, then?"
"No so old as so close, ye might say. It's a matter o' five year now since he come up in these hills wi' some men who were prospectin', an' one an' another got tired and dropped down the country again till only Genesee was left. He struck that haunted hill in the Maple range that they all said was of no good, an' he would na leave it. There he stuck in very stubbornness, bewitched like by it; an' the day before his flittin' in the fall found him clear through the hill, helped a bit by striking into an old mine that nobody knew aught of. Think o' that!—dug into a mine that had been abandoned by the Indians generations ago, most like."
"I did not know that the Indians ever paid attention to mining. They seem to know no use for gold or silver until the white men teach them it."
"True enough; but there the old mine stands, as a clear showin' that some o' the heathen, at some time, did mine in that range; an' the stone mallets an' such like that he stumbled on there shows that the cave was not the result o' accident."
"And has he at last given it up as hopeless?"
"That's as time may happen to tell," answered the old man sagely; "an' old Daddy Time his own self could na keep his teeth shut more tight than can Genesee if there's a bit secret to hold. But o' the old mine he said little when he was takin' the trail, only, 'It has kept these thousand o' years, Davy—it will most like keep until I get back.'"
From that speech Rachel gathered the first intimation that Genesee's absence from the Kootenai country was only a transient one. Was he then to come back and again drop his life into its old lines? She did not like to think of it—or to question. But that winter visit to "Ole Man Mac," as Kalitan called him, was the beginning of an avowed friendship between the old hermit of the northern hills and the young girl from the southern ones.
Her independent, curious spirit and youthful vitality were a sort of tonic to him, and as he grew better he accepted her invitation to visit the ranch, and from that time on the grizzled head and still athletic frame of the old fellow were not strange to the Hardy household. He was there as often as was consistent with the weather in the hills and almost seventy years of braving their hardships; for of late years MacDougall did not range widely. His traps could find too many nooks near home for mink, lynx, and the black bear, and from the Kootenai tribes on the north he bought pelts, acting the trader as well as trapper; and twice a year making a trip to a settlement to dispose of his wares, with horses from his Indian neighbors to transport them with.
Rachel learned that for forty years he had followed that isolated life—moving steadily farther west or farther north as the grip of civilization made itself felt behind him; and he felt himself crowded if a settler's prairie schooner was sighted within twenty-five miles of him. The girl wondered, often, the cause of that self-exile, but no word or sign gave her any clew. He had come from the eastern highlands of Scotland when less than thirty years old, and had struck out at once for the extreme borders of civilization in America; and there he had remained—always on the borders—never quite overtaken.