“I suppose, now,” remarked Dan, witheringly, “that by all these remarks and giggles you are trying to be funny. Is that it? Well, as the fun of it is not visible to me yet, I’ll just keep my laughter till it is. In the meantime, I’m going over to call on my ward, Miss Rivers, and you can hustle for funny things around camp until I come back.”
“Oh, say, Dan, don’t be vindictive. Take me along, won’t you? I’ll promise to be good—’pon honor I will. I’ll do penance for any depraved suspicions I may have indulged in. I’ll—I’ll even shake hands again with Black Bow, there! Beyond that, I can think of no more earnest testimony of repentance.”
“I shall go by myself,” decided Overton. “So make a note of it, if you see the young lady before to-morrow, it will be because she specially requests it. Understand? I’m not going to have her bothered by people who are only curious; not but that she can take her own part, as you’ll maybe learn later. But she was too upset to talk much last night. So I’ll go over and finish this morning, and in the meantime, this side of the river is plenty good enough for you.”
“Is it?” murmured Mr. Lyster, as he eyed the stalwart form of the retreating guardian, who was so bent on guarding. “Well, it would do my heart good, anyway, to fasten another canoe right alongside of yours where you land over there, and I shouldn’t be surprised if I did it.”
Thus it happened that while Overton was skimming upward across the river, his friend, on mischief bent, was getting a canoe ready to launch. A few minutes after Overton had disappeared toward the Indian village, the second canoe danced lightly over the Kootenai, and the occupant laughed to himself, as he anticipated the guardian’s surprise.
“Not that I care in the least about seeing the dismal damsel he has to look after,” mused Lyster. “In fact, I’m afraid she’ll be a nuisance, and spoil our jolly good time all the way home. But he is so refreshingly earnest about everything. And as he doesn’t care a snap for girls in general, it is all the more amusing that it is he who should have a charge of that sort left on his hands. I’d like to know what she looks like. Common, I dare say, for the ultra refined do not penetrate these wilds to help blaze trails; and she swam like a boy.”
When he reached the far shore, no one was in sight. With satisfied smiles, he fastened his canoe to that of Overton, and then cast about for some place to lie in wait for that selfish personage and surprise him on his return.
He had no notion of going up to the village, for he wanted only to keep close enough to trace Overton. Hearing children’s voices farther along the shore, he sauntered that way, thinking to see Indian games, perhaps. When he came nearer, he saw they were running races.
The contestants were running turn about, two at a time. Each victory was greeted with shrill cries of triumph. He also noticed that each victor returned to a figure seated close under some drooping bushes, and each time a hand was reached out and some little prize was given to the winner. Then, with shouts of rejoicing, a new race was planned.
As the stranger stood back of the thick bushes, watching the stretch of level beach and the half-naked, childish figures, he grew curious to see who that one person just out of sight was.
One thing at last he did discover—that the hand awarding the prizes was tanned like the hand of a boy, but that it certainly had white blood instead of red in its veins. What if it should be the ward?
Elated, and full of mischief, he crept closer. If only he could be able to give Overton a description of her when Overton came back to the canoe!
At first all he could see were the hands—hands playing with a bit of wet clay—or so it seemed to him.
Then his curiosity was more fully aroused when out of the mass a recognizable form was apparent—a crudely modeled head and shoulders of a decided Indian character.
Lyster was so close now that he could notice how small the hands were, and to see that the head bent above them was covered with short, brown, loosely curled hair, and that there was just a tinge of reddish gold on it, where the sunlight fell.
A race was just ended, and one of the little young savages trotted up where the image-maker was. The small hand was again reached out, and he could see that the prize the little Indian had raced for was a blue bead of glass. He could see, also, that the owner of the hand had the face of a girl—a girl with dark eyes, and long lashes that touched the rather pale cheeks. Her mouth was deliciously saucy, with its bow-like curve, and its clear redness. She said something he did not understand, and the children scampered away to resume the endless races, while she continued the manipulation of the clay, frowning often when it would not take the desired form.
Then one of the sharp-eyed little redskins left his companions and slipped back to her, and said something in a tone so low it was almost a whisper.
She turned at once and looked directly into the thicket, back of which Lyster stood.
“What are you watching for?” she demanded. “I don’t like people who are afraid to show themselves.”
“Well, I’ll try to change that as quickly as I can,” Lyster retorted, and circling the clump of bushes, he stood before her with his hat in his hand, looking smilingly audacious as she frowned on him.
But the frown faded as she looked; perhaps because ’Tana had never seen any one quite so handsome in all her life, or so fittingly and picturesquely dressed, for Mr. Maxwell Lyster was artist enough to make the most of his many good points and to exhibit them all with charming unconsciousness.
“I hope you will like me better here than across there,” he said, with a smile that was contagious. “You see, I was too shy to come forward at first, and then I was afraid to interrupt your modeling. It is very good.”
“You don’t look shy,” she said, combatively, and drew the clay image back, where he could not look at it. She was not at all sure that he was not laughing at her, and she covered her worn shoes with the skirt of her dress, feeling suddenly very poor and shabby in the light of his eyes. She had not felt at all like that when Overton looked at her in Akkomi’s lodge.
“You would not be so unfriendly if you knew who I am,” he ventured meekly. “Of course, I—Max Lyster—don’t amount to much, but I happen to be Dan Overton’s friend, and with your permission, I hope to continue with him to Sinna Ferry, and with you as well; for I am sure you must be Miss Rivers.”
“If you’re sure, that settles it, I suppose,” she returned. “So he—he told you about me?”
“Oh, yes; we are chums, as you will learn. Then I was so fortunate as to see your brave swim after that child yesterday. You don’t look any the worse for it.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I suppose, now, you thought that little dip a welcome break in the monotony of camp-life, while you were waiting for Dan.”
She looked at him in a quick, questioning way he thought odd.
“Oh—yes. While I was waiting for—Dan,” she said in a queer tone, and bent her head over the clay image.
He thought her very interesting with her boyish air, her brusqueness, and independence. Yet, despite her savage surroundings, a certain amount of education was visible in her speech and manner, and her face had no stamp of ignorance on it.
The young Kootenais silently withdrew from their races, and gathered watchfully close to the girl. Their nearness was a discomfiting thing to Lyster, for it was not easy to carry on a conversation under their watchful eyes.
“You gave them prizes, did you not?” he asked. “How much wealth must one offer to get them to run?”
“Run where?” she returned carelessly, though quietly amused at the scrutiny of the little redskins. They were especially charmed by the glitter of gold mountings on Mr. Lyster’s watch-guard.
“Oh, run races—run anywhere,” he said.
From a pocket of her blouse she drew forth a few blue beads that yet remained.
“This is all I had to give them, and they run just as fast for one of these as they would for a pony.”
“Good enough
! I’ll have some races for my own edification and comfort,” and he drew out some coins. “Will you run for this—run far over there?”
The children looked at the girl. She nodded her head, said a word or two unintelligible to him, but perfectly clear to them; for, with sharp looks at the coins and pleased yells, they leaped away to their racing.
“Now, this is more comfortable,” he said. “May I sit down here? Thanks! Now would you mind telling me whose likeness it is you are making in the clay?”
“I guess you know it’s nobody’s likeness,” she answered, and again thrust it back out of sight, her face flushing that he should thus make a jest of her poor efforts. “You’ve seen real statues, I suppose, and know how they ought to be, but you don’t need to look for them in the Purcell Range.”
“But, indeed, I am in earnest about your modeling. Won’t you believe me?” and the blue eyes looking into her own were so appealing, that she turned away her head half shyly, and a pink flush crept up from her throat. Miss Rivers was evidently not used to eyes with caressive tendencies and they disturbed her, for all her strangely unchildlike character.
“Of course, your work is only in the rough,” he continued; “but it is not at all bad, and has real Indian features. And if you have had no teaching—”
“Huh!” and she looked at him with a mirthless smile. “Where’d any one get teaching of that sort along the Columbia River? Of course, there are some gentlemen—officers and such—about the reservations, but not one but would only laugh at such a big girl making doll babies out of mud. No, I had no teaching to do anything but read, and I did read some in a book about a sculptor, and how he made animals and people’s faces out of clay. Then I tried.”
As she grew communicative, she seemed so much more what she really was in years—a child; and he noticed, with satisfaction, that she looked at him more frankly, while the suspicion faded almost entirely from her face.
“And are you going to develop into a sculptor under Overton’s guardianship?” he asked. “You see, he has told me of his good luck.”
She made a queer little sound between a laugh and a grunt.
“I’ll bet the rest of the blue beads he didn’t call it good luck,” she returned, looking at him keenly. “Now, honest Injun—did he?”
“Honest Injun! he didn’t speak of it as either good or bad luck; simply as a matter of course, that at your father’s death you should look him up, and let him know you were alone. Oh, he is a good fellow, Dan is, and glad, I am sure, to be of use to you.”
Her lips opened in a little sigh of content, and a swift, radiant smile was given him.
“I’m right glad you say that about him,” she answered, “and I guess you know him well, too. Akkomi likes him, and Akkomi’s sharp.”
The winner of the race here trotted back for the coin, and Lyster showed another one, as an incentive for all to scatter along the beach again. It looked as though the two white people must pay for the grant of privacy on the river-bank.
Having grown more at ease with him, ’Tana resumed again the patting and pressing of the clay, using only a little pointed stick, while Lyster watched, with curiosity, the ingenious way in which she seemed to feel her way to form.
“Have you ever tried to draw?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Only to copy pictures, like I’ve seen in some papers, but they never looked right. But I want to do everything like that—to make pictures, and statues, and music, and—oh, all the lovely things there are somewhere, that I’ve never seen—never will see them, I suppose. Sometimes, when I get to thinking that I never will see them, I just get as ugly as a drunken man, and I don’t care if I never do see anything but Indians again. I get so awful reckless. Say!” she said, again with that hard, short laugh, “girls back your way don’t get wild like that, do they? They don’t talk my way either, I guess.”
“Maybe not, and few of them would be able, either, to do what we saw you do in this river yesterday,” he said kindly. “Dan is a judge of such things, you know, and he thought you very nervy.”
“Nervy? Oh, yes; I guess he’d be nervy himself if he was needed. Say! can you tell me about the camp, or settlement, at this Sinna Ferry? I never was there. He says white women are there. Do you know them?”
Lyster explained his own ignorance of the place, knowing it as he did only through Dan’s descriptions.
Then she, from her bit of Indian knowledge, told him Sinna was the old north Indian name for Beaver. Then he got her to tell him other things of the Indian country, things of ghost-haunted places and strange witcheries, with which they confused the game and the fish. He fell to wondering what manner of man Rivers, the partner of Dan, had been, that his daughter had gained such strange knowledge of the wild things. But any attempt to learn or question her history beyond yesterday was always checked in some way or other.
* * *
CHAPTER IV.
DAN’S WARD.
Mr. Max Lyster was not given to the study of deep problems; his habits of thought did not run in that groove. But he did watch the young stranger with unusual interest. Her face puzzled him as much as her presence there.
“I feel as though I had seen you before,” he said at last, and her face grew a shade paler. She did not look up, and when she spoke, it was very curtly:
“Where?”
“Oh, I don’t know—in fact, I believe it is a resemblance to some one I know that makes me feel that way.”
“I look like some one you know?”
“Well, yes, you do—a little—a lady who is a little older than you—a little more of a brunette than you; yet there is a likeness.”
“Where does she live—and what is her name?” she asked, with scant ceremony.
“I don’t suppose her name would tell you much,” he answered. “But it is Miss Margaret Haydon, of Philadelphia.”
“Miss Margaret Haydon,” she said slowly, almost contemptuously. “So you know her?”
“You speak as though you did,” he answered; “and as if you did not like the name, either.”
“But you think it’s pretty,” she said, looking at him sharply. “No, I don’t know such swells—don’t want to.”
“How do you know she is a swell?”
“Oh, there’s a man owns big works across the country, and that’s his name. I suppose they are all of a lot,” she said, indifferently. “Say! are there any girls at Sinna Ferry, any family folks? Dan didn’t tell me—only said there was a white woman there, and I could live with her. He hasn’t a wife, has he?”
“Dan?” and he laughed at the idea, “well, no. He is very kind to women, but I can’t imagine the sort of woman he would marry. He is a queer fish, you know.”
“I guess you’ll think we’re all that up in this wild country,” she observed. “Does he know much about books and such things?”
“Such things?”
“Oh, you know! things of the life in the cities, where there’s music and theaters. I love the theaters and pictures! and—and—well, everything like that.”
Lyster watched her brightening face, and appreciated all the longing in it for the things he liked well himself. And she loved the theaters! All his own boyish enthusiasm of years ago crowded into his memory, as he looked at her.
“You have seen plays, then?” he asked, and wondered where she had seen them along that British Columbia line.
“Seen plays! Yes, in ’Frisco, and Portland, and Victoria—big, real theaters, you know; and then others in the big mining camps. Oh, I just dream over plays, when I do see them, specially when the actresses are pretty. But I mostly like the villains better than the heroes. Don’t know why, but I do.”
“What! you like to see their wickedness prosper?”
“No—I think not,” she said, doubtfully. “But I tell you, the heroes are generally just too good to be live men, that’s all. And the villain mostly talks more natural, gets mad, you know, and breaks things, and rides over the la
y-out as though he had some nerve in him. Of course, they always make him throw up his hands in the end, and every man in the audience applauds—even the ones who would act just as he does if such a pretty hero was in their way.”
“Well, you certainly have peculiar ideas of theatrical personages—for a young lady,” decided Lyster, laughing. “And why you have a grievance against the orthodox handsome hero, I can’t see.”
“He’s too good,” she insisted, with the little frown appearing between her brows, “and no one is ever started in the play with a fair chance against him. He is always called Willie, where the villain would be called Bill—now, isn’t he? Then the girl in the story always falls in love with him at first sight, and that’s enough to rile any villain, especially when he wants her himself.”
“Oh!” and the face of the young man was a study, as he inspected this wonderful ward of Dan. Whatever he had expected from the young swimmer of the Kootenai, from the welcomed guest of Akkomi, he had not expected this sort of thing.
She was twisting her pretty mouth, with a schoolgirl’s earnestness, over a problem, and accenting thus her patient forming of the clay face. She built no barriers up between herself and this handsome stranger, as she had in the beginning with Overton. What she had to say was uttered with all freedom—her likes, her thoughts, her ambitions. At first the fineness and perfection of his apparel had been as grandeur and insolence when contrasted with her own weather-stained, coarse skirt of wool, and her boy’s blouse belted with a strap of leather. Even the blue beads—her one feminine bit of adornment—had been stripped from her throat, that she might give some pleasure to the little bronze-tinted runners on the shore. But the gently modulated, sympathetic tones of Lyster and the kindly fellowship in his eyes, when he looked at her, almost made her forget her own shabbiness (all but those hideous coarse shoes!) for he talked to her with the grace of the people in the plays she loved so, and had not once spoken as though to a stray found in the shelter of an Indian camp.
That Girl Montana Page 5
