That Girl Montana

“Well – a girl he married. You may call her what you please. She had been called a good many things before he picked her up. Humph! Now that he has struck it rich, some one ought to let her know. She’d make the dollars fly.”

“It is not true! It is not true!” she murmured to herself, as if by the words she could drive away the possibility of it.

He appeared to enjoy the sensation he had created.

“It is true,” he answered – “every word of it, and he has been keeping quiet about it, has he? Well, see here. You don’t believe me – do you? Now, while I was waiting there at the door, a man came in to put your paralyzed partner to bed. The man was Jake Emmons – used to hang out at Spokane. He knew Lottie Snyder before this Overton did – and after Overton married her, too, I guess. You ask him anything you want to know of it. He can tell you – if he will.”

She did not answer. She feared, as he talked, that it was true; and she longed for him to go away, that she could think alone. The hot blood burned in her cheeks, as she remembered that night by the Twin Springs. The humiliation of it, if it proved true!

“But, see here, ’Tana. I didn’t come here to talk about your virtuous ranger. I want some money – enough to cut the country. It ain’t any more than fair, anyway, that you divide with me, for if it hadn’t been for that sneaking hound in the other room, half of this find would have been mine a year ago.”

“It will do more good where it is,” she answered. “He did right not to trust you. And if he were able to walk, you would not be allowed to live many minutes within reach of him.”

“Oh, yes; I know he was trailing me,” he answered, indifferently, “but it was no hard trick to keep out of his road. I suppose you let him know you approve of his feelings toward me.”

“Yes, I would load a gun for him to use on you if he were able to hold it,” she answered, and he seemed to think her words amusing.

“You have mighty little regard for your duty to me,” he observed.

“Duty? I can’t owe you any duty when I never received any from you. I am nearly seventeen, and in all the years I remember you, I can’t recall any good act you have ever done for me.”

“Nearly seventeen,” and he smiled at her in the way she hated. “Didn’t your new uncle, Haydon, tell you better than that? You are nearly eighteen years old.”

“Eighteen!” and she rose in astonishment. “I?”

“You – though you don’t look it. You always were small for your age, so I just told you a white lie about it in order to manage you better. But that is over; I don’t care what you do in the future. All I want of you is money to get to South America; so fix it up for me.”

“I ought to refuse, and call them in to arrest you.”

“But you won’t,” he rejoined. “You can’t afford it.”

He watched her, though, with some uncertainty, as she sat silent, thinking.

“No, I can’t afford it,” she said, at last. “I will be doing wrong to help you, just as if I let a poison snake loose where people travel – for that is what you are. But I am not strong enough to let these friends go and start over again; so I will help you away this once.”

He drew a breath of relief, and gathered up his blanket.

“That is the way to talk. You’ve got a level head – ”

“That will do,” she said, curtly. “I don’t want praise from a coward, a thief, or a murderer. You are all three. I have no money here. You will have to come again for it to-morrow night.”

“A trick – is it?”

“It is no trick. I haven’t got it, that is all. Maybe I can’t get it in money, but I will get it in free gold by to-morrow at dusk. I will put it here under the pillow, and will manage to keep the rest away at that time. You can come as you came this evening, and get it; but I will neither take it nor send it to you. You will have to risk your freedom and your life to come for it. But while I can’t quite decide to give you up or to kill you, myself, I hope some one else will.”

“Hope what you please,” he returned, indifferently. “So long as you get the dust for me, I can stand your opinion. And you will have it here?”

“I will have it here.”

“I trust you only because I know you can’t afford to go back on me,” he said, as he wrapped the blanket around him, and dropped his taller form to the height of Akkomi. “It is a bargain, then, my dear. Good-night.”

“I don’t wish you a good-night,” she answered. “I hope I shall never see you alive again.”

And she never did.

CHAPTER XX.

’TANA’S ENGAGEMENT

“And she wants a thousand dollars in money or free gold – a thousand dollars to-day?”

“No use asking me what for, Dan, for I don’t know,” confessed Lyster. “I can’t see why she don’t tell you herself; but you know she has been a little queer since the fever – childish, whimsical, and all that. Maybe as she has not yet handled any specie from your bonanza, she wants some only to play with, and assure herself it is real.”

“Less than a thousand in money and dust would do for a plaything,” remarked Overton. “Of course she has a right to get what she wants; but that amount will be of no use to her here in camp, where there is not a thing in the world to spend it for.”

“Maybe she wants to pension off some of her Indian friends before she leaves,” suggested Max – “old Akkomi and Flap-Jacks, perhaps. I am a little like Miss Slocum in my wonder as to how she endures them, though, of course, the squaw is a necessity.”

“Oh, well, she was not brought up in the world of Miss Slocum – or your world, either,” answered Overton. “You should make allowance for that.”

“Make allowance – I?” and Lyster looked at him curiously. “Are you trying to justify her to me? Why, man, you ought to know by this time what keeps me here a regular lounger around camp, and there is no need to make excuses for her to me. I thought you knew.”

“You mean you – like her?”

“Worse than that,” said Max, with his cheery, confident smile. “I’m trying to get her to say she likes me.”

“And she?”

“Well, she won’t meet me as near half-way as I would like,” he confessed; “talks a lot of stuff about not being brought up right, and not suited to our style of life at home, and all that. But she did seem rather partial to me when she was ill and off guard. Don’t you think so? That is all I have to go on; but it encourages me to remember it.”

Overton did not speak, and Lyster continued speculating on his chances, when he noticed his companion’s silence.

“Why don’t you speak, Dan? I did hope you would help me rather than be indifferent.”

“Help you!” and Lyster was taken aback at the fierce straightening of the brows and the strange tone in which the words were uttered. The older man could not but see his surprised look, for he recovered himself, and dropped his hand in the old familiar way on Lyster’s shoulder.

“Not much chance of my helping you when she employs you as an agent when she wants any service, rather than exchange words with me herself. Now, that is the way it looks, Max.”

“I know,” agreed Lyster. “And to tell the truth, Dan, the only thing she does that really vexes me is her queer attitude toward you of late. I can’t think she means to be ungrateful, but – ”

“Don’t bother about that. Everything has changed for her lately, and she has her own troubles to think of. Don’t you doubt her on my account. Just remember that. And if – she says ’yes’ to you, Max, be sure I would rather see her go to you than any other man I know.”

“That is all right,” observed Lyster, laughingly; “but if you only had a love affair or two of your own, you could perhaps get up more enthusiasm over mine.”

Then he sauntered off to report the financial interview to ’Tana, and laughed as he went at the impatient look flung at him by Overton.

He found ’Tana visiting at the tent of the cousins, who were using all arguments to persuade her to share their new abode. Each was horrified to learn that she had dismissed the squaw at sleeping time, and had remained in the cabin alone.

“Not quite alone,” she corrected, “for Harris was just on the other side of the door.”

“Much protection he would be.”

“Well, then, Dan Overton was with him. How is he for protection?”

“Thoroughly competent, no doubt,” agreed Miss Lavina, with a rather scandalized look. “But, my dear, the propriety?”

“Do you think Flap-Jacks would help any one out in propriety?” retorted ’Tana. “But we won’t stumble over that question long, for I want to leave the camp and go back to the Ferry.”

“And then, ’Tana?”

“And then – I don’t know, Mrs. Huzzard, to school, maybe – though I feel old for that, older than either of you, I am sure – so old that I care nothing for all the things I wanted less than a year ago. They are within my reach now, yet I only want to rest – ”

She did not finish the sentence.

Mrs. Huzzard, noticing the tired look in her eyes and the wistfulness of her voice, reached out and patted her head affectionately.

“You want, first of all, to grow strong and hearty, like you used to be – that is what you need first, then the rest will all come right in good time. You’ll want to see the theaters, and the pictures, and hear the fine music you used to talk of. And you’ll travel, and see all the fine places you used to dream about. Then, maybe, you’ll get ambitious, like you used to be, about making pictures out of clay. For you can have fine teaching now, you know, and you’ll find, after a while, that the days will hardly seem long enough for all the things you want to do. That is how it will be when you get strong again.”

’Tana tried to smile at the cheerful picture, but the smile was not a merry one. Her attention was given to Lyster and Overton, whom she could see from the tent door.

How tall and strong Dan looked! Was she to believe that story of him heard last night? The very possibility of it made her cheeks burn at the thought of how she had stood with his arm around her. And he had pitied her that night. “Poor little girl!” he had said. Was his pity because he saw how much he was to her, while he himself thought only of some one else? One after another those thoughts had come to her through the sleepless night, and when the day came she could not face him to speak to him of the simplest thing. And of the money she must have, she could not ask him at all. She wished she could have courage to go to him and tell him the thing she had heard; but courage was not strong in her of late. The fear that he might look indifferently on her and say, “Yes, it is true – what then?” – the fear of that was so great that she had walked by the water’s edge, as the sun rose, and felt desperate enough to think of sleep under the waves, as a temptation. For if it was true —

The two older women watched her, and decided that she was not yet strong enough to think of long journeys. Her hands would tremble at times, and tears, as of weakness, would come to her eyes, and she scarcely appeared to hear them when they spoke.

She never walked through the woods as of old, though sometimes she would stand and look up at the dark hills with a perfect hunger in her eyes. And when the night breeze would creep down from the heights, and carry the sweet wood scents of the forest to her, she would close her eyes and draw in long breaths of utter content. The strong love for the wild places was as second nature to her; yet when Max would ask her to go with him for flowers or mosses, her answer was always “no.”

But she would go to the boat sometimes, though no longer having strength to use the paddle. It was a good place to think, if she could only keep the others from going, too, so she slipped away from Max and the women and went down. A chunky, good-looking fellow was mending one of the canoes, and raised his head at her approach, nodding to her and evidently pleased when she addressed him.

“Yes, it is a shaky old tub,” he agreed, “but I told Overton I thought it could be fixed to carry freight for another trip; so he put me at it.”

“You are new in camp, aren’t you?” she asked, not caring at all whether he was or not. She was always friendly with the workmen, and this one smiled and bowed.

“We are all that, I guess,” he said. “But I came up the day Haydon and Seldon came. I lived with Seldon down the country, and was staggered a little, I tell you, when I found Overton was in charge, and had struck it rich. But no man deserves good luck more.”

“No,” she agreed. “Then you knew him before?”

“Yes, indeed – over in Spokane. He don’t seem quite the same fellow, though. We thought he would just go to the dogs after he left there, for he started to drink heavily. But he must have settled in his own mind that it wasn’t worth while; so here he is, straight as a string, and counting his dollars by the thousands, and I’m glad to see it.”

“Drink! He never drinks to excess, that we know of,” she answered. “Doesn’t seem to care for that sort of thing.”

“No, he didn’t then, either,” agreed this loquacious stranger, “but a woman can drive as good men as him to drink; and that is about the way it was. No one thought any worse of Overton, though – don’t think that. The worst any one could say was that he was too square – that’s all.”

Too square! She walked away from him a little way, all her mind aflame with his suggestions. He had taken to drink and dissipation because of some woman. Was it the woman whose name she had heard last night? The key to the thing puzzling her had been dropped almost at her feet, yet she feared to pick it up. No teaching she had ever received told her it was unprincipled to steal through another the confidence he himself had not chosen to give her. But some instinct of justice kept her from further question.

She knew the type of fellow who was rigging up the canoe, a light-headed, assuming specimen, who had not yet learned to keep a still tongue in his head, but he did not impress her as being a deliberate liar. Then, all at once, she realized who he must be, and turned back. There was no harm in asking that, at any rate.

“You are the man whom Overton sent to put Harris to bed last night, are you not?” she asked.

He nodded, cheerfully.

“And your name is Jake Emmons, of the Spokane country?”

“Thet’s who,” he assented; “that’s where I came across Lottie Snyder, Overton’s wife, you know. I was running a little stage there for a manager, and she – ”

“I am not asking you about – about Mr. Overton’s affairs,” she said, and she sat down, white and dizzy, on the overturned canoe. “And he might not like it if he knew you were talking so free. Don’t do it again.”

“All right,” he agreed. “I won’t. No one here seems to know about the bad break he made over there; but, Lord! there was excuse enough. She is one of those women that look just like a little helpless baby; and that caught Overton. Young, you know. But I won’t whisper her name in camp again, for it is hard on the old man. But, as you are partners, I guessed you must know.”

“Yes,” she said, faintly; “but don’t talk, don’t – ”

“Say! You are sick, ain’t you?” he demanded, as her voice dropped to a whisper. “Say! Look here, Miss Rivers! Great snakes! She’s fainted!”

When she opened her eyes again, the rough roof of her cabin was above her, instead of the blue sky. The women folks were using the camp restorative – whisky – on her to such good purpose that her hands and face and hair were redolent of it, and the amount she had been forced to swallow was strangling her.

The face she saw first was that of Max – Max, distressed and anxious, and even a little pale at sight of her death-like face.

She turned to him as to a haven of refuge from the storm of emotion under which she had fallen prostrate.

It was all settled now – settled forever. She had heard the worst, and knew she must go away – away from where she must see that one man, and be filled with humiliation if ever she met his gaze. A man with a wife somewhere – a man into whose arms she had crept!

“Are you in pain?” asked Miss Lavina, as ’Tana groaned and shut her eyes tight, as if to bar out memory.

“No – nothing ails me. I was without a hat, and the sun on my head made me sick, I suppose,” she answered, and arose on her elbow. “But I am not going to be a baby, to be watched and carried around any more. I am going to get up.”

Just outside her door Overton stood; and when he heard her voice again, with its forced independent words, he walked away content that she was again herself.

“I am going to get up,” she continued. “I am going away from here to-morrow or next day – and there are things to do. Help me, Max.”

“Best thing you can do is to lie still an hour or two,” advised Mrs. Huzzard, but the girl shook her head.

“No, I’m going to get up,” she said, with grim decision; and when Lyster offered his hand to help her, she took it, and, standing erect, looked around at the couch.

“That is the last time I’m going to be thrown on you for any such fool cause,” she said, whimsically. “Who toted me in here – you?”

“I? Not a bit of it,” confessed Lyster. “Dan reached you before any of the others knew you were ill. He carried you up here.”

“He? Oh!” and she shivered a little. “I want to talk to Harris. Max, come with me.”

He went wonderingly, for he could see she was excited and nervous. Her hand trembled as it touched his, but her mouth was set so firmly over the little white teeth that he knew it was better to humor her than fret her by persuading her to rest.

But once beside Harris, she sat a long time in silence, looking out from the doorway across the level now active with the men of the works. Not until the two cousins had walked across to their other shelter did she speak, and then it was to Harris.

“Joe, I am sick,” she confessed; “not sick with the fever, but heartsick and headsick. You know how and maybe why.”

He nodded his head, and looked at Lyster questioningly.

“And I’ve come in here to tell you something. Max, you won’t mind. He can’t talk, but knows me better than you do, I guess; for I’ve come to him before when I was troubled, and I want to tell him what you said to me in the boat.”

Max stared at her, but silently agreed when he saw she was in earnest. He even reached out his hand to take hers, but she drew away.

“Wait till I tell him,” she said, and turned to the helpless man in the chair. “He asked me to marry him – some day. Would it be right for me to say yes?”

“’Tana!” exclaimed Lyster; but she raised her hand pleadingly.

“I haven’t any other person in the world I could go to and ask,” she said. “He knows me better than you do, Max, and I – Oh! I don’t think I should be always contented with your ways of living. I was born different – a heap different. But to-day it seems as if I am not strong enough to do without – some one – who likes me, and I do want to say ’yes’ to you, yet I’m afraid it is only because I am sick at heart and lonely.”

It was a declaration likely to cool the ardor of most lovers, but Lyster reached out his hand to her and laughed.

“Oh, you dear girl,” he said, fondly. “Did your conscience make it necessary for you to confess in this fashion? Now listen. You are weak and nervous; you need some one to look after you. Doesn’t she, Harris? Well, take me on trial. I will devote myself to your interests for six months, and if at the end of that time you find that it was only sickness and loneliness that ailed you, and not liking me, then I give you my word I’ll never try to hold you to a promise. You will be well and strong by that time, and I’ll stand by the decision you make then. Will you say ’yes,’ now?”

She looked at Harris, who nodded his head. Then she turned and gave her hand to Max.

“Yes,” she said. “But if you should be sorry – ”

“Not another word,” he commanded; “the ’yes’ is all I want to hear just now; when I get sorry I’ll let you know.”

And that is the way their engagement began.

CHAPTER XXI.

LAVINA AND THE CAPTAIN

As the day wore on, ’Tana became more nervous and restless. With the dark, that man was to come for the gold she had promised.

Lyster brought it to her, part in money, part in free gold, and as he laid it on the couch, she looked at him strangely.

“How much you trust me when you never even ask what I am to do with all this!” she said. “Yet it is enough to surprise you.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “But when you are ready you will tell me.”

“No, I will not tell you,” she answered, “but it is the last thing – I think – that I will keep from you, Max. It is a debt that belongs to days before I knew you. What did Overton say?”

“Not much, maybe he will leave for the upper works this evening or to-morrow morning.”

“Did you – did you tell him – ”

“That you are going to belong to me? Well, no, I did not. You forgot to give me permission.”

Her face flushed shyly at his words.

“You must think me a queer girl, Max,” she said. “And you are so good and patient with me, in spite of my queer ways. But, never mind; they will not last always, I hope.”

“Which? – my virtues or your queerness?” he asked.

She only smiled and pushed the gold under the pillow.

“Go away now for a little while. I want to rest.”

“Well, rest if you like; but don’t think. You have been fretting over some little personal troubles until you fancy them heavy enough to overbalance the world. But they won’t. And I’m not going to try and persuade you into Haydon’s house, either, now that you’ve been good to me; unless, of course, you fall in love with Margaret, and want to be with her, and it is likely to happen. But Uncle Seldon and my aunts will be delighted to have you, and you could live as quiet as you please there.”

“So I am likely to fall in love with Margaret, am I?” she asked. “Why? Does everybody? Did you – Max? Now, don’t blush like that, or I’ll be sure of it. I never saw you blush so pretty before. It made you almost good looking. Now go; I want to be alone.”

“Sha’n’t I send one of the ladies up?”

“Not a soul! Go, Max. I am tired.”

So he went, in all obedience, and he and the cousins had a long talk about the girl and the danger of leaving her alone another night. Her sudden illness showed them she was not strong enough yet to be allowed to guide herself.

“I shall try hard to get her to leave to-morrow, or next day,” said Lyster. “Where is Dan? I would like to talk to him about it, but he has evidently disappeared.”

“I don’t know what to think of Dan Overton,” confessed Mrs. Huzzard. “He isn’t ever around, chatty and sociable, like he used to be. When we do see him, he is nearly always busy; and when he isn’t busy, he strikes for the woods.”

“Maybe he is still searching for new gold mines,” suggested Miss Lavina. “I notice he does seem very much engaged in thought, and is of a rather solitary nature.”

“Never was before,” protested her cousin. “And if these gold finds just twist a person’s nature crosswise, or send them into a fever, then I hope the good Lord’ll keep the rest of them well covered up in future.”

“Lorena Jane,” said Miss Lavina, in a reproachful tone, “it is most essential that you free yourself from those very forcible expressions. They are not a bit genteel.”

“No, I reckon they ain’t, Lavina; and the more I try the more I’m afraid I never will be. Land sakes, if folks would only teach their young ones good manners when they are young, what a sight of mortified feelings would be saved after a while!”

Lyster left them in the midst of the very earnest plea for better training, for he espied a new boat approaching camp. As it came closer, he found that among the other freight it carried was the autocrat of Sinna Ferry – Captain Leek.

“What a God-forsaken wilderness!” he exclaimed, and looked around with a supercilious air, suggesting that he would have given the Creator of the Kootenai country valuable points if he had been consulted. “Well, my dear young fellow, how you have managed to exist here for three weeks I don’t know.”

“Well, we had Mrs. Huzzard,” explained Max, with a twinkle in his eye; “and she is a panacea for many ills. She has made our wilderness very endurable.”

“Yes, yes; excellent woman,” agreed the other, with a suspicious look. “And ’Tana? How is she – the dear girl! I really have been much grieved to hear of her illness; and at the earliest day I could leave my business I am here to inquire in person regarding her health.”