Told in the Hills: A Novel

"And where is your Indian messenger of late?" he asked. "He has not visited you since my arrival, has he?"

"No; he left this country months ago," said Rachel. "Kalitan is a bit of a wanderer – never long in one place."

"Davy MacDougall says he'd allus loaf around here if Genesee would, but he's sure to go trottin' after Genesee soon as he takes a trail."

"That is the Indian you spoke of this morning, is it not?" asked Stuart, looking at Rachel.

"What!" roared Jim; and Hardy, who was taking a nap behind a paper, awoke with a start. "Genesee an Injun! Well, that's good!" and he broke into shrill, boyish laughter. "Well, you ought to just say it to his face, that's all!"

"Is he not?" he asked, still looking at the girl, who did not answer.

"Oh, no," said Tillie; "he is a white man, a – a – well, he has lived with the Indians, I believe."

"I understood you to say he himself was an Indian." And Rachel felt the steady regard of those warm eyes, while she tried to look unconscious, and knew she was failing.

Hardy laughed, and shook himself rightly awake.

"Beg your pardon," he said, coming to the rescue, "but she didn't say so; she only gave you the information that he was pure-blooded; and I should say he is – as much of a white man as you or I."

"Mine was the mistake," acknowledged Stuart, with his old easy manner once more; "but Miss Rachel's love of a joke did not let me fall into it without a leader. And may I ask who he is, this white man with the Indian name – what is he?"

Rachel answered him then brusquely: "You saw a white man with the Kootenais, did you not – one who lives as they do, with a squaw wife, or slave? You described the specimen as more degraded than the Indians about him. Well, Genesee is one of the class to which that man belongs – a squaw man; and he is also an Indian by adoption. Do you think you would care for a closer acquaintance?"

Tillie opened her eyes wide at this sweeping denunciation of Genesee and his life, while even Hardy looked surprised; Rachel had always, before, something to say in his favor. But the man she questioned so curtly was the only one who did not change even expression. He evidently forgot to answer, but sat there looking at her, with a little smile in his eyes.

Once in bed, it did not keep her awake; and the gray morning crept in ere she opened her eyes, earlier than usual, and from a cause not usual – the sound in the yard of a man's voice singing snatches of song, ignoring the words sometimes, but continuing the air in low carols of music, such as speak so plainly of a glad heart. It was not yet sun-up, and she rebelled, drowsily, at the racket as she rolled over toward the window and looked out. There he was, tinkering at something about his saddle, now and then whistling in mimicry of a bird swaying on a leafless reed in the garden. She could see the other men, out across the open space by the barn, moving around as usual, looking after the domestic stock; but until one has had a breakfast, no well-regulated individual is hilarious or demonstrative, and their movements, as she could see, were not marvels of fast locomotion. They looked as she felt, she thought, yawningly, and groped around for her shoes, and finding them, sat down on the side of the bed again and looked out at that musical worker in the yard.

She could hear Aunty Luce tinkling the dishes in the kitchen, and Tillie and Miss Margaret, in the next room, cooing over some love-story of dawn they were telling each other. All seemed drowsy and far off, except that penetrating, cheery voice outside.

"The de'il tak' him!" she growled, quoting MacDougall; "what does the fellow mean by shouting like that this time of the night? He is as much of a boy as Jim."

"Here awa', there awa', wandering Willie.Here awa', there awa', haud awa', hame!"

warbled the Stuart, with an accent that suited his name; and the girl wakened up a bit to the remembrance of the old song, thinking, as she dressed, that, social and cheery as he often was, this was the first time she had ever heard him sing; and what a resonant, yet boyish, timbre thrilled through his voice. She threw up the window.

"Look here!" she said, with mock asperity, "we are willing to make some allowance for national enthusiasm, Mr. Charles, Prince of the Stuarts, but we rebel at Scotch love-songs shouted under our windows before daybreak."

"All right," he smiled, amiably. "I know one or two Irish ones, if you prefer them.

"Oh, acushla Mavourneen! won't you marry me?Gramachree, Mavourneen; oh, won't you marry me?"

Click! went the window shut again, and from the inside she saw him looking up at the casement with eyes full of triumph and mischief. He was metamorphosed in some way. Yesterday he had been serious and earnest, returning from his hill trip with something like despondency, and now —

She remembered her last sight of him the night before, as he smiled at her from the stairway. Ah, yes, yes! all just because he had felt jubilant over outwitting her, or rather over seeing a chance do the work for another. Was it for that he was still singing? Had her instincts then told her truly when she had connected his presence with the memory of that older man's sombre eyes and dogged exile? Well, the exile was his own business, not that of anyone else – least of all that of this debonair individual, with his varying emotions.

And she went down the stairs with a resentful feeling against the light-hearted melody of "Acushla Mavourneen."

"Be my champion, Mrs. Hardy," he begged at the breakfast-table, "or I am tabooed forever by Miss Rachel."

"How so?"

"By what I intended as an act of homage, giving her a serenade at sunrise in the love-songs of my forefathers."

"Nonsense!" laughed Rachel. "He never knew what his forefathers were until Davy MacDougall brushed up his history; and you have not thought much of the songs you were trying to sing, else you would know they belong to the people of the present and future as well as the past.

"Trying to sing!" was all the comment Mr. Stuart made, turning with an injured air to Tillie.

"Learn some Indian songs," advised that little conspirator impressively; "in the Kootenai country you must sing Chinook if you want to be appreciated."

"There speaks one who knows," chimed in Hardy lugubriously. "A year ago I had a wife and an undivided affection; but I couldn't sing Chinook, and the other fellow could, and for many consecutive days I had to take a back seat."

"Hen! How dare you?"

"In fact," he continued, unrestrained by the little woman's tones or scolding eyes, "I believe I have to thank jealousy for ever reinstating me to the head of the family."

"Indeed," remarked Stuart, with attention impressively flattering; "may I ask how it was effected?"

"Oh, very simply – very simply. Chance brought her the knowledge that there was another girl up the country to whom her hero sang Chinook songs, and, presto! she has ever since found English sufficient for all her needs."

And Tillie, finding she had enough to do to defend herself without teasing Rachel, gave her attention to her husband, and the girl turned to Stuart.

"All this gives no reason for your spasms of Scotch expression this morning," she reminded him.

"No? Well, my father confessor in the feminine, I was musical – beg pardon, tried to be – because I awoke this morning with an unusually light heart; and I sang Scotch songs – or tried to sing them – because I was thinking of a Scotchman, and contemplating a visit to him to-day."

"Davy MacDougall?"

"The same."

"And you were with him only yesterday."

"And may say good-bye to him to-morrow for a long time."

"So you are going?" she asked, in a more subdued tone.

"I believe so!" And for the moment the question and answer made the two seem entirely alone, though surrounded by the others. Then she laughed in the old quizzical, careless way.

"I see now the inspiration to song and jubilance that prevented you from sleeping," she said, nodding her head sagaciously. "It was the thought of escaping from us and our isolated life. Is that it?"

"No, it is not," he answered earnestly. "My stay here has been a pleasure, and out of it I hope will grow something deeper – a happiness."

The feeling in the words made her look at him quickly. His eyes met her own, with some meaning back of their warmth that she did not understand. Nine girls out of ten would have thought the words and manner suggestive of a love declaration and would at once have dropped their eyes in the prettiest air of confusion and been becomingly fluttered; but Rachel was the tenth, and her eyes were remarkably steady as she returned his glance with one of inquiry, reached for another biscuit, and said:

"Yes?"

But the low tones and his earnestness had not escaped two pairs of eyes at the table – those of Mistress Tillie and Master Jim – both of them coming to about the same conclusion in the matter, the one that Rachel was flirting, and the other that Stuart "had a bad case of spoons."

Many were the expostulations when, after breakfast, Hardy's guest informed him that his exit from their circle was likely to be almost as abrupt as his entrance had been. In vain was there held out to him the sport of their proposed hunt – every persuasive argument was met with a regretful refusal.

"I am sorry to put aside that pleasure," he answered; "but, to tell the truth, I scarcely realized how far the season has advanced. The snow will soon be deep in the mountains, they tell me, and before that time I must get across the country to Fort Owens. It is away from a railroad far enough to make awkward travel in bad weather, and I realize that the time is almost past when I can hope for dry days and sunshine; so, thinking it over last night, I felt I had better start as early as possible."

"You know nothing of the country in that direction?" asked Hardy.

"No more than I did of this; but an old school-fellow of mine is one of the officers there – Captain Sneath. I have not seen him for years, but can not consider my trip up here complete without visiting him; so, you see – "

"Better fight shy o' that territory," advised Andrews, chipping in with a cowboy's brief say-so. "Injun faction fights all through thar, an' it's risky, unless ye go with a squad – a big chance to pack bullets."

"Then I shall have an opportunity of seeing life there under the most stirring circumstances," replied Stuart in smiling unconcern, "for in time of peace a military post is about the dullest place one can find."

"To be sure," agreed his adviser, eyeing him dubiously; "an' if ye find yerself sort o' pinin' for the pomp o' war, as I heard an actor spoutin' about once, in a theatre at Helena – well, down around Bitter Root River, an' up the Nez Perce Fork, I reckon you'll find a plenty o' it jest about this time o' year."

"And concluding as I have to leave at once," resumed Stuart, turning to Hardy, "I felt like taking a ride up to MacDougall's for a good-bye. I find myself interested in the old man, and would not like to leave without seeing him again."

"I rather think I've got to stay home to-day," said his host ruefully, "else I would go with you, but – "

"Not a word of your going," broke in Stuart; "do you think I've located here for the purpose of breaking up your routine of stock and agricultural schemes? Not a bit of it! I'm afraid, as it is, your hospitality has caused them to suffer; so not a word of an escort. I wouldn't take a man from the place, so – "

"What about a woman?" asked Rachel, with a challenging glance that was full of mischief. For a moment he looked at a loss for a reply, and she continued: "Because I don't mind taking a ride to Davy MacDougall's my own self. As you say, the sunny days will be few now, and I may not have another chance for weeks; so here I am, ready to guide you, escort you, and guard you with my life."

What was there left for the man to say?

"What possessed you to go to-day, Rachel?" asked Tillie dubiously. "Do you think it is quite – "

"Oh, yes, dear – quite," returned that young lady confidently; "and you need not assume that anxious air regarding either the proprieties or my youthful affections, for, to tell the truth, I am impelled to go through sheer perversity; not because your latest favorite wants me, but simply because he does not."

Twenty minutes after her offer they were mounted and clattering away over the crisp bronze turf. To Stuart the task of entertaining a lady whose remarks to him seldom verged from the ironical was anything but a sinecure – more, it was easy to see that he was unused to it; and an ungallant query to himself was: "Why did she come, anyway?" He had not heard her reply to Tillie.

The air was crisp and cold enough to make their heavy wraps a comfort, especially when they reached the higher land; the sun was showing fitfully, low-flying, skurrying clouds often throwing it in eclipse.

"Snow is coming," prophesied the girl, with a weather-eye to the north, where the sky was banking up in pale-gray masses; "perhaps not heavy enough to impede your trip south, to Owens, but that bit over there looks like a visiting-card of winter."

"How weather-wise you are!" he observed. "Now I had noticed not the slightest significance in all that; in fact, you seem possessed of several Indian accomplishments – their wood-lore, their language, their habit of going to nature instead of an almanac; and did not Mrs. Hardy say you knew some Indian songs? Who taught you them?"

"Songs came near getting us into a civil war at breakfast," she observed, "and I am not sure that the ground is any more safe around Indian than Scotch ones."

"There is something more substantial of the former race" he said, pointing ahead.

It was the hulking figure of a Siwash, who had seen them first and tried to dodge out of sight, and failing, halted at the edge of a little stream.

"Hostile?" queried Stuart, relying more on his companion's knowledge than his own; but she shook her head.

"No; from the Reservation, I suppose. He doesn't look like a blanket brave. We will see."

Coming within speaking distance, she hailed him across the divide of the little stream, and got in reply what seemed to Stuart an inextricable mass of staccatos and gutturals.

"He is a Kootenai," she explained, "and wants to impress on our minds that is a good Indian."

"He does not look good for much," was the natural remark of the white man, eyeing Mr. Kootenai critically; "even on his native heath he is not picturesque."

"No – poor imp!" agreed the girl, "with winter so close, their concern is more how they are to live than how they appear to people who have no care for them."

She learned he was on his way south to the Flathead Reservation; so he had evidently solved the question of how he intended living for the winter, at all events. He was, however, short of ammunition. When Rachel explained his want, Stuart at once agreed to give him some.

"Don't be in a hurry!" advised his commander-in-chief; "wait until we know how it is that he has no ammunition, and so short a distance from his tribe. An Indian can always get that much if he is not too lazy to hunt or trap, or is not too much of a thief."

But she found the noble red man too proud to answer many questions of a squaw. The fear however, of hostilities from the ever-combative Blackfeet seemed to be the chief moving cause.

"Rather a weak-backed reason," commented Rachel; "and I guess you can dig roots from here to the Reservation. No powder, no shot."

"Squaw – papoose – sick," he added, as a last appeal to sympathy.

"Where?"

He waved a dirty hand up the creek.

"Go on ahead; show us where they are."

His hesitation was too slight to be a protest, but still there was a hesitation, and the two glanced at each other as they noticed it.

"I don't believe there is either squaw or papoose," decided Stuart. "Lo is a romancer."

But there was, huddled over a bit of fire, and holding in her arms a little bundle of bronze flesh and blood. It was, as the Indian had said, sick – paroxysms of shivers assailing it from time to time.

"Give me your whisky-flask!" Rachel said promptly; and dismounting, she poured some in the tin cup at her saddle and set it on the fire – the blue, sputtering flame sending the odor of civilization into the crisp air. Cooling it to suit baby's lips, she knelt beside the squaw, who had sat stolidly, taking no notice of the new-comers; but as the girl's hand was reached to help the child she raised her head, and then Rachel knew who she was.

They did not speak, but after a little of the warm liquor had forced itself down the slight throat, Rachel left the cup in the mother's hands, and reached again for the whisky.

"You can get more from Davy MacDougall," she said, in a half-conciliatory tone at this wholesale confiscation; "and – and you might give him some ammunition – not much."

"What a vanishing of resolves!" he remarked, measuring out an allowance of shot; "and all because of a copper-colored papoose. So you have a bit of natural, womanly weakness?"

The girl did not answer; there was a certain air of elation about her as she undid a scarf from her throat and wrapped it about the little morsel of humanity.

"Go past the sheep ranch," she directed the passive warrior, who stood gazing at the wealth in whisky and powder. "Do you know where it is – Hardy's? Tell them I sent you – show them that," and she pointed to the scarf; "tell them what you need for squaw and papoose; they will find it."

Skulking Brave signified that he understood, and then led Betty toward her.

"He is not very hospitable," she confided to Stuart, in the white man's tongue, "else he would not be in such haste to get rid of us."

And although their host did not impress one as having a highly strung nervous organization, yet his manner during their halt gave them the idea that he was ill at ease. They did not tarry long, but having given what help they could, rode away, lighter of whisky and ammunition, and the girl, strange enough, seemed lighter of heart.

After they had reached a point high above the little creek, they turned for a look over the country passed. It lay in brown and blue-gray patches, with dashes of dark-green on the highlands, where the pines grew.

"What is the white thing moving along that line of timber?" asked the girl, pointing in the direction they had come. It was too far off to see clearly, but with the aid of Stuart's field-glass, it was decided to be the interesting family they had stopped with a little ways back. And the white thing noticed was a horse they were riding. It was getting over the ground at the fastest rate possible with its triple weight, for the squaw was honored with a seat back of her lord.

"I imagined they were traveling on foot, didn't you?" asked Stuart.

"What a fool he was to steal a white horse!" remarked the girl contemptuously; "he might know it would be spotted for miles."

CHAPTER IV.

A TRIO IN WITCHLAND

The noon was passed when they reached the cabin on Scot's Mountain, and found its owner on the point of leaving for the Maple range. But quickly replacing his gun on its pegs, he uncovered the fire, set on the coffee-pot, and, with Rachel's help, in a very short time had a steaming-hot dinner of broiled bear steaks and "corn-dodgers," with the additional delicacy of a bowl of honey from the wild bees' store.

"I have some laid by as a bit of a gift to Mr. Hardy's lady," he confided to Rachel. "I found this fellow," tapping the steak, "in one o' the traps as I was a-comin' my way home; an' the fresh honey on his paws helped me smell out where he had spied it, and a good lot o' it there was that Mr. Grizzly had na reached."

"See here," said Stuart, noting that, because of their visit, the old man had relinquished all idea of going to the woods, "we must not interfere with your plans, for at best we have but a short time to stay." And then he explained the reason.

When the question of snow was taken into account, Davy agreed that Stuart's decision was perhaps wise; but "he was main sorry o' the necessity."

"An' it's to Owens ye be taken' the trail?" he asked. "Eh, but that's curious now. I have a rare an' good friend thereabouts that I would be right glad to send a word to; an' I was just about to take a look at his tunnel an' the cabin, when ye come the day, just to see it was all as it should be ere the snows set in."

"I should be delighted to be of any service to you," said Stuart warmly; "and to carry a message is a very slight one. Who is your friend?"

"It's just the man Genesee, who used to be my neighbor. But he's left me alone now these many months – about a year;" and he turned to Rachel for corroboration.

"More than a year," she answered briefly.

"Well, it is now. I'm losin' track o' dates these late days; but you're right, lass, an' the winter would ha' been ower lonely if it had na been for yourself. Think o' that, Charlie Stuart: this slim bit o' womankind substituting herself for a rugged build o' a man taller than you by a half-head, an' wi' no little success, either. But," he added teasingly, "ye owed me the debt o' your company for the sending o' him away; so ye were only honest after all, Rachel Hardy."

Rachel laughed, thinking it easier, perhaps, to dispose of the question thus than by any disclaimer – especially with the eyes of Stuart on her as they were.

"You are growing to be a tease," she answered. "You will be saying I sent Kalitan and Talapa, next."

"But Talapa has na gone from the hills?"

"Hasn't she? Well, I saw her on the trail, going direct south, this morning, as fast as she could get over the ground, with a warrior and a papoose as companions."

"Did ye now? Well, good riddance to them. They ha' been loafing around the Kootenai village ever since I sent them from the cabin in the summer. That Talapa was a sleepy-eyed bit o' old Nick. I told Genesee that same from the first, when he was wasting his stock o' pity on her. Ye see," he said, turning his speech to Stuart, "a full-blooded Siwash has some redeeming points, and a character o' their own; but the half-breeds are a part white an' a part red, with a good wheen o' the devil's temper thrown in."

"She didn't appear to have much of the last this morning," observed Rachel. "She looked pretty miserable."

"Ah, well, tak' the best o' them, an' they look that to the whites. An' so they're flittin' to the Reservation to live off the Government? Skulking Bob'll be too lazy to be even takin' the chance o' fightin' with his people against the Blackfeet, if trouble should come; and there's been many a straggler from the rebels makin' their way north to the Blackfeet, an' that is like to breed mischief."

"And your friend is at Owens?"

"Yes – or thereabouts. One o' the foremost o' their scouts, they tell me, an' a rare good one he is, with no prejudice on either side o' the question."

"I should think, being a white man, his sympathies would lean toward his own race," observed Stuart.

"Well, that's as may chance. There's many the man who finds his best friends in strange blood. Genesee is thought no little of among the Kootenais – more, most like, than he would be where he was born and bred. Folk o' the towns know but little how to weigh a man."

"And is he from the cities?"

For the first time Davy MacDougall looked up quickly.

"I know not," he answered briefly, "an', not giving to you a short answer, I care not. Few questions make long friends in the hills."

Stuart was somewhat nonplussed at the bluntness of the hint, and Rachel was delighted.

"You see," she reminded him wickedly, "one can be an M. D., an L. S. D., or any of the annexations, without Kootenai people considering his education finished. But look here, Davy MacDougall, we only ran up to say 'klahowya,' and have got to get back to-night; so, if you are going over to Tamahnous cabin, don't stop on our account; we can go part of the way with you."

"But ye can go all the way, instead o' but a part, an' then no be out o' your road either," he said, with eagerness that showed how loath he was to part from his young companions. "Ye know," he added, turning to Rachel, "it is but three miles by the cross-cut to Genesee's, while by the valley ye would cover eight on the way. Now, the path o'er the hills is no fit for the feet o' a horse, except it be at the best o' seasons; but this is an ower good one, with neither the rain nor the ice; an' if ye will risk it – "