“What’s the hurry?” she asked, with a slight impatience.
“I think,” he replied quickly, “there is but a short stop made at this station, and as there are several vacant seats in this car, please occupy one of them until I have seen the conductor. There may be some changes made as to the compartments engaged for us. Until that is decided, will you be so kind as to remain in this coach?”
She nodded rather indifferently, and looked around for Max. He was gathering up some robes and satchels when the older man joined him.
“We are not going to make the trip to Chicago in the car with those fellows if it can be helped, Max,” he insisted, fussily; “we’ll wait and see what car they are booked for, and I’ll arrange for another. Sorry I did not get a special, as I first intended.”
“But see here; they are first-class fellows—worth one’s while to meet,” protested Max; but the other shook his head.
“Look after the baggage while I see the conductor. ’Tana is in one of the cars—don’t know which. We’ll go for her when we get settled. Now, don’t argue. Time is too precious.”
And ’Tana! She seated herself rather sulkily, as she was told, and looked at once toward the river.
The canoe was landing, and the man jumped to the shore. With quick, determined strides, he came across the land to the train. She tried to follow him with her eyes, but he crossed to the other side of the track.
There was rather a boisterous party in the car—two men and two women. One of the latter, a flaxen-haired, petite creature, was flitting from one side of the car to the other, making remarks about the Indians, admiring particularly one boy’s beaded dress, and garnishing her remarks with a good deal of slang.
“Say, Chub! that boy’s suit would be a great ’make-up’ for me in that new turn—the jig, you know; new, too. There isn’t a song-and-dance on the boards done with Indian make-up. Knock them silly in the East, where they don’t see reds. Now sing out, and tell me if it wouldn’t make a hit.”
“Aw, Goldie, give us a rest on shop talk,” growled the gentleman called Chub. “If you’d put a little more ginger into the good specialty you have, instead of depending on wardrobe, you’d hit ’em hard enough. It ain’t plans that count, girlie—it’s work.”
The “girlie” addressed accepted the criticism with easy indifference, and her fair, dissipated face was only twisted in a grimace, while she held one hand aloft and jingled the bangles on her bracelets as though poising a tambourine.
“Better hustle yourself into the smoker again, Chubby dear. It will take a half-dozen more cigars to put you in your usual sweet frame of mind. Run along now. Ta-ta!”
The other woman seemed to think their remarks very witty, especially when Chub really did arise and make his way toward the smoker. Goldie then went back to the window, where the Indians were to be seen. The quartet were, to judge by their own frank remarks, a party of variety singers and dancers who had been doing the Pacific circuit, and were now booked for some Eastern houses, of which they spoke as “solid.”
Some of the passengers had got out and were buying little things from the Indians, as souvenirs of the country. ’Tana saw Mr. Haydon among them, in earnest conversation with the conductor; saw Max, with his hand full of satchels, suddenly reach out the other hand with a great deal of heartiness and meet the man of the canoe.
He was not so handsome a man as Max, yet would have been noticeable anywhere—tall, olive-skinned, and dark-haired. His dress had not the fashionable cut of the young fellow he spoke to. But he wore his buckskin jacket with a grace that bespoke physical strength and independence; and when he pushed his broad-brimmed gray hat back from his face, he showed a pair of dark eyes that had a very direct glance. They were serious, contemplative eyes, that to some might look even moody.
“There is a fellow with a great figure,” remarked the other woman of the quartet; “that fellow with the sombrero; built right up from the ground, and looks like a picture; don’t he, Charlie?”
“I can’t see him,” complained Goldie, “but suppose it’s one of the ranchmen who live about here.” Then she turned and donated a brief survey to ’Tana. “Do you live in this region?” she asked.
After a deliberate, contemptuous glance from the questioner’s frizzed head to her little feet, ’Tana answered:
“No; do you?”
With this curt reply, she turned her shoulder very coolly on the searcher for information.
Vexation sent the angry blood up into the little woman’s face. She looked as though about to retort, when a gentleman who had just taken possession of a compartment, and noted all that had passed, came forward and addressed our heroine.
“Until your friends come in, will you not take my seat?” he asked, courteously. “I will gladly make the exchange, or go for Mr. Lyster or Mr. Haydon, if you desire it.”
“Thank you; I will take your seat,” she agreed. “It is good of you to offer it.”
“Say, folks, I’m going outside to take in this free Wild West show,” called the variety actress to her companions. “Come along?”
But they declined. She had reached the platform alone, when, coming toward the car, she saw the man of the sombrero, and shrank back with a gasp of utter dismay.
“Oh, good Heaven!” she muttered, and all the color and bravado were gone from her face, as she shrank back out of his range of vision and almost into the arms of the man Harvey, who had given the other girl his seat.
“What’s up?” he asked, bluntly.
She only gave a muttered, unintelligible reply, pushed past him to her own seat, where her feather-laden hat was donned with astonishing rapidity, a great cloak was thrown around her, and she sank into a corner, a huddled mass of wraps and feathers. Any one could have walked along the aisle without catching even a glimpse of her flaxen hair.
’Tana and the stranger exchanged looks of utter wonder at the lightning change effected before their eyes.
At that moment a tap-tap sounded on the window beside ’Tana, and, looking around, she met the dark eyes of the man with the sombrero gazing kindly upward at her.
The people were getting aboard the train again—the time was so short—so short! and how can one speak through a double glass? The fingers were all unequal to the fastening of the window, and she turned an imploring, flushed face to the helpful stranger.
“Can you—oh, will you, please?” she asked, breathlessly. “Thank you, I’m very much obliged.”
Then the window was raised, and her hand thrust out to the man, who was bareheaded now, and who looked very much as though he held the wealth of the world when he clasped only ’Tana’s fingers.
“Oh, it is you, is it?” she asked, with a rather lame attempt at careless speech. “I thought you had forgotten to say good-by to me.”
“You knew better,” he contradicted. “You knew—you know now it wasn’t because I forgot.”
He looked at her moodily from under his dark brows, and noticed the color flutter over her cheek and throat in an adorable way. She had drawn her hand from him, and it rested on the window—a slim brown hand, with a curious ring on one finger—two tiny snakes whose jeweled heads formed the central point of attraction.
“You said you would not wear that again. If it’s a hoodoo, as you thought, why not throw it away?” he asked.
“Oh—I’ve changed my mind. I need to wear it so that I will be reminded of something—something important as a hoodoo,” she said, with a strange, bitter smile.
“Give it back to me, ’Tana,” he urged. “I will—No—Max will have something much prettier for you. And listen, my girl. You are going away; don’t ever come back; forget everything here but the money that will be yours for the claim. Do you understand me? Forget all I said to you when—you know. I had no right to say it; I must have been drunk. I—I lied, anyway.”
“Oh, you lied, did you?” she asked, cynically, and her hands were clasped closely, so close the ring must have hurt her. He noticed it, and
kept his eyes on her hand as he continued, doggedly:
“Yes. You see, little girl, I thought I’d own up before you left, so you wouldn’t be wasting any good time in being sorry about the folks back here. It wasn’t square for me to trouble you as I did. And—I lied. I came down to say that.”
“You needn’t have troubled yourself,” she said, curtly. “But I see you can tell lies. I never would have believed it if I hadn’t heard you. But I guess, after all, I will give you the ring. You might want it to give to some one else—perhaps your wife.”
The bell was ringing and the wheels began slowly to revolve. She pulled the circlet from her finger and almost flung it at him.
“’Tana!” and all of keen appeal was in his voice and his eyes, “little girl—good-by!”
But she turned away her head. Her hand, however, reached out and the spray of autumn leaves fluttered to his feet where the ring lay.
Then the rumble of the moving train sounded through the valley, and the girl turned to find Max, Mr. Haydon and a porter approaching, to convey her to the car ahead. Mr. Haydon’s face was a study of dismay at the sight of Mr. Harvey closing the window and showing evident interest in ’Tana’s comfort.
“So Dan did get down to see you off, ’Tana?” observed Max, as he led her along the aisle. “Dear old fellow! how I did try to coax him into coming East later; but it was of no use. He gave me some flowers for you—wild beauties. He never seemed to say much, ’Tana, but I’ve an idea you’ll never have a better friend in your life than that same old Dan.”
Mr. Harvey watched their exit, and smiled a little concerning Mr. Haydon’s evident annoyance. He watched, also, the flaxen-haired bundle in the corner, and saw the curious, malignant look with which she followed ’Tana, and to his friend he laughed over his triumph in exchanging speech with the pretty, peculiar girl in brown.
“And the old party looked terribly fussy over it. In fact, I’ve about sifted out the reason. He imagines me a newspaper reporter on the alert for sensations. He’s afraid his stupidly respectable self may be mentioned in a newspaper article concerning this local tragedy they all talk about. Why, bless his pocket-book! if I ever use pen and ink on that girl’s story, it will not be for a newspaper article.”
“Then you intend to tell it?” asked his friend. “How will you learn it?”
“I do not know yet. The ’how’ does not matter; I’ll tell you on paper some day.”
“And write up that handsome Lyster as the hero?”
“Perhaps.”
Then a bend of the road brought them again in sight of the river of the Kootenais. Here and there the canoes of the Indians were speeding across at the ferry. But one canoe alone was moving north; not very swiftly, but almost as though drifting with the current.
Using his field-glass, Harvey found it was as he had thought. The occupant of the solitary canoe was the tall man whose dark face had impressed the theatrical lady so strongly. He was not using the paddle, and his chin was resting on one clenched hand, while in the other he held something to which he was giving earnest attention.
It was a spray of bright-colored leaves, and the watcher dropped his glass with a guilty feeling.
“He brings her flowers, and gets in return only dead leaves,” Harvey thought, grimly. “I didn’t hear a word he said to her; but his eyes spoke strongly enough, poor devil! I wonder if she sees him, too.”
And all through the evening, and for many a day, the picture remained in his mind. Even when he wrote the story that is told in these pages, he could never find words to express the utter loneliness of that life, as it seemed to drift away past the sun-touched ripples of water into that vast, shadowy wilderness to the north.
* * *
CHAPTER I.
A STRANGE GIRL.
“Well, by the help of either her red gods or devils, she can swim, anyway!”
This explosive statement was made one June morning on the banks of the Kootenai, and the speaker, after a steady gaze, relinquished his field-glass to the man beside him.
“Can she make it?” he asked.
A grunt was the only reply given him. The silent watcher was too much interested in the scene across the water.
Shouts came to them—the yells of frightened Indian children; and from the cone-shaped dwellings, up from the water, the Indian women were hurrying. One, reaching the shore first, sent up a shrill cry, as she perceived that, from the canoe where the children played, one had fallen over, and was being swept away by that swift-rushing, chill water, far out from the reaching hands of the others.
Then a figure lolling on the shore farther down stream than the canoe sprang erect at the frightened scream.
One quick glance showed the helplessness of those above, and another the struggling little form there in the water—the little one who turned such wild eyes toward the shore, and was the only one of them all who was not making some outcry.
The white men, who were watching from the opposite side, could see shoes flung aside quickly; a jacket dropped on the shore; and then down into the water a slight figure darted with the swiftness of a kingfisher, and swam out to the little fellow who had struggled to keep his head above water, but was fast growing helpless in the chill of the mountain river.
Then it was that Mr. Maxwell Lyster commented on the physical help lent by the gods of the red people, as the ability of any female to swim thus lustily in spite of that icy current seemed to his civilized understanding a thing superhuman. Of course, bears and other animals of the woods swam it at all seasons, when it was open; but to see a woman dash into it like that! Well, it sent a shiver over him to think of it.
“They’ll both get chilled and drop to the bottom!” he remarked, with irritated concern. “Of course there are enough of the red vagabonds in this new El Dorado of yours, without that particular squaw. But it would be a pity that so plucky a one should be translated.”
Then a yell of triumph came from the other shore. A canoe had been loosened, and was fairly flying over the water to where the child had been dragged to the surface, and the rescuer was holding herself up by the slow efforts of one arm, but could make no progress with her burden.
“That’s no squaw!” commented the other man, who had been looking through the glass.
“Why, Dan!”
“It’s no squaw, I tell you,” insisted the other, with the superior knowledge of a native. “Thought so the minute I saw her drop the shoes and jacket that way. She didn’t make a single Indian move. It’s a white woman!”
“Queer place for a white woman, isn’t it?”
The man called Dan did not answer. The canoe had reached that figure in the water and the squaw in it lifted the now senseless child and laid him in the bottom of the light craft.
A slight altercation seemed going on between the woman in the water and the one in the boat. The former was protesting against being helped on board—the men could see that by their gestures. She finally gained her point, for the squaw seized the paddle and sent the boat shoreward with all the strength of her brown arms, while the one in the water held on to the canoe and was thus towed back, where half the Indian village had now swarmed to receive them.
“She’s got sand and sense,” and Dan nodded his appreciation of the towing process; “for, chilled as she must be, the canoe would more than likely have turned over if she had tried to climb into it. Look at the pow-wow they are kicking up! That little red devil must count for big stakes with them.”
“But the woman who swam after him. See! they try to stand her on her feet, but she can’t walk. There! she’s on the ground again. I’d give half my supper to know if she has killed herself with that ice-bath.”
“Maybe you can eat all your supper and find out, too,” observed the other, with a shrug of his shoulders, and a quizzical glance at his companion, “unless even the glimpse of a petticoat has chased away your appetite. You had better take some advice from an old man, Max, and swear off approaching females in this co
untry, for the specimens you’ll find here aren’t things to make you proud they’re human.”
“An old man!” repeated Mr. Lyster with a smile of derision. “You must be pretty near twenty-eight years old—aren’t you, Dan? and just about five years older than myself. And what airs you do assume in consequence! With all the weight of those years,” he added, slowly, “I doubt, Mr. Dan Overton, if you have really lived as much as I have.”
One glance of the dark eyes was turned on the speaker for an instant, and then the old felt hat again shaded them as he continued watching the group on the far shore. The swimmer had been picked up by a stalwart Indian woman, and was carried bodily up to one of the lodges, while another squaw—evidently the mother—carried the little redskin who had caused all the commotion.
“I suppose, by living, you mean the life of settlements—or, to condense the question still more, the life of cities,” continued Overton, stretching himself lazily on the bank. “You mean the life of a certain set in one certain city—New York, for instance,” and he grinned at the expression of impatience on the face of the other. “Yes, I reckon New York is about the one, and a certain part of the town to live in. A certain gang of partners, who have a certain man to make their clothes and boots and hats, and stamp his name on the inside of them, so that other folks can see, when you take off your coat, or your hat, or your gloves, that they were made at just the right place. This makes you a man worth knowing—isn’t that about the idea? And in the afternoon, at just about the right hour, you rig yourself out in a certain cut of coat, and stroll for an hour or so on a certain street! In the evening—if a man wants to understand just what it is to live—he must get into other clothes and drop into the theater, making a point of being introduced to any heavy swell within reach, so you can speak of it afterward, you know. Just as your chums like to say they had a supper with a pretty actress, after the curtain went down; but they don’t go into details, and own up that the ’actress’ maybe never did anything on a stage but walk on in armor and carry a banner. Oh, scowl if you want to! Of course it sounds shoddy when a trapper outlines it; but it doesn’t seem shoddy to the people who live like that. Then, about the time that all good girls are asleep, it is just the hour for a supper to be ordered, at just the right place for the wine to be good, and the dishes served in A1 shape, with a convenient waiter who knows how dim to make the lights, and how to efface himself, and let you wait on your ’lady’ with your own hands. And she’ll go home wearing a ring of yours—two, if you have them; and you’ll wake up at noon next day, and think what a jolly time you had, but with your head so muddled that you can’t remember where it was you were to meet her the next night, or whether it was the next night that her husband was to be home, and she couldn’t see you at all.” Overton rolled over on his face and grunted disdainfully, saying: “That’s about the style of thing you call living, don’t you, sonny?”
That Girl Montana Page 2
