That Girl Montana

by Ryan, Marah Ellis

  Overton caught him by one arm, and swung him around like a child.

  “Speak clear. No more of your blasted stuttering or beating away from points; who is the man you talk of? Who is playing with me? Now speak.”

  “Why, Monte, the girl; Monte and Lee Holly. He’s somewhere alive—that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I was hunting for him when I found her laying low here, don’t you understand? You stare so. It is Lee Holly and— Ah—my—God!”

  The last words were gurgled in his throat; his face whitened, and he sank to the ground as though his bones had suddenly been converted into jelly—a strange, shapeless heap of humanity as he lay at Overton’s feet. Overton bent over him, and after a moment of blank amaze, lifted the helpless head, and almost dropped it again, when the eyes, appealing and keenly conscious, met his own. There was a queer chuckling sound in the man’s throat; he was trying to speak, but could not. The secret he was trying to tell was buried back of those speechless lips, and one more stroke of the doom he feared had overtaken him.

  * * *

  CHAPTER X.

  THE STRANGER’S LOVE STORY.

  ’Tana sat alone in her room a few hours later, and from the window watched the form of Ora Harrison disappear along the street. The latter had been sent by her father with some medicine for the paralyzed stranger, and the girls had chatted of the school ’Tana was to attend, and of the schools Ora had gone to and all the friends she remembered there, who now sent her such kind letters. Ora told ’Tana of the lovely time she expected to have when the steamers would come up from Bonner’s Ferry to the Kootenai Lake region, for then her friends were to come in the summers, and the warm months were to be like holidays.

  All this girlish frankness, all the cheery friendship of the doctor’s family filled ’Tana with a wild unrest against herself—against the world.

  “It would be easy to be good if a person lived like that always,” she thought, “in a nice home, with a mother to kiss me and a father I was not ashamed of. I felt stupid when they talked to me. I could only think how happy they were, and that they did not seem to know it. And Ora was sweet and sorry for me because my parents were dead. Huh!” she grunted, disdainfully, in the Indian fashion peculiar to her at times. “If she knew how I felt about it she’d hate me, I suppose. They’d all think I was bad clear through. They wouldn’t understand the reason—no nice women like them could. Oh, if the school would only make me nice like that! But I suppose it’s got to be born in people, and I was born different.”

  Even this reason did not render her more resigned; and, to add to her disquiet, there came to her the memory of eyes whose gaze made her shiver—the eyes of the stranger whom Overton had carried into the house for dead, but whose brain was yet alive. He had looked at her with a strange, wild stare, and Overton himself had turned his eyes toward her in moody questioning when she came forward to help. He had accepted the help, but each time she raised her eyes she saw that Dan was looking at her with a new watchfulness; all his interest in the stricken stranger did not keep him from that.

  “If any one is accountable for this, I guess I’m the man,” he confessed, ruefully. “He told me he was afraid of this, yet I was fool enough to lose my temper and turn him around rough. It might have struck him, anyway; but my conscience doesn’t let me down easy. He’ll be my care till some one comes along with a stronger claim.”

  “Maybe there is some one somewhere,” said ’Tana. “There might be letters, if it would be right to look.”

  “If there are relatives anywhere in the settlements, I guess they’d be glad enough if I’d look,” decided Overton. “There is no way to get permission from him, though,” and he looked in the helpless man’s eyes. “I don’t know what you’d say to this if you could speak, stranger,” he said; “but to go through your pockets seems the only way to locate you or your friends; so I’ll have to do it.”

  It was not easy to do, with those eyes staring at him in that horrible way. But he tried to avoid the eyes, and thrust his hand into the inner pocket, drawing out an ordinary notebook, some scraps of newspaper folded up in it, and two letters addressed to Joe Hammond; one to Little Dalles, and the other had evidently been delivered by a messenger, for no destination was marked on it. It was an old letter and the envelope was worn through all around the edges. Another paper was wrapped around it, and the writing was of a light feminine character. Overton touched it with a certain reverence and looked embarrassed.

  “I think, Mrs. Huzzard, I will ask you to read this, as it seems a lady’s letter, and if there is any information in it, you can give it to us; if not, I’ll just put it back in his pocket and hope luck will tell us what the letter doesn’t.”

  But Mrs. Huzzard demurred: “And me that short-sighted that even specs won’t cure it! No, indeed. I’m no one to read important papers. But here’s ’Tana, with eyes like a hawk for sighting things. She’ll read it fast enough.”

  Overton looked undecided, remembering those strange insinuations of the now helpless man, and feeling that the man himself might not be willing.

  “I—well—I guess not,” he said, at last. “It ain’t just square to send a little girl blindfold like that into a stranger’s claim. We’ll let some one over twenty-one read the letters. You’ll do, Max, and if it ain’t all right, you can stop up short.”

  So Lyster read the treasured message, all in the same feminine writing. His sensitive face grew grave, and he turned compassionate glances toward the helpless man as he read the letters, according to their dates. The oldest one was the only one not sad. Its postmark was a little town many miles to the south.

  “Dear Old Joe: It’s awful to be this near you, and know you are sick, without being able to get to you. I just arrived, and your partner has met me, and told me all about it. But I’ll go up with him, just the same; and when you are able to travel we can come down to a town and be married, instead of to-day, as we had set on. So that’s all right, and don’t you worry. Your partner, John Ingalls, is as nice as he can be to me. Why did you not tell me how good looking he was? Maybe you never discovered it—you slow, prosy old Joe! When you wrote to me of that rich find you stumbled on, I was sorry you had picked up a partner; for you always did trust folks too much, and I was afraid you’d be cheated by the stranger you picked up. But I guess that I was wrong, Joe; for he is a very nice gentleman—the nicest I ever met, I think. And he talks about you just as if he was your brother, and thought a heap of you. He tried to tease me some, too—asked how you ever came to catch such a pretty girl as me! Then I told him, Joe, that you never had to catch me—that I was little, and hadn’t any folks, and how you got your folks to give me a home when you was only a boy; and that you was always like a big brother to me till you made some money in the mines. Then you wrote and asked me to come out and marry you. He just laughed, Joe, and said it was not a brother’s love that a wife wanted; but I don’t think he knows anything about that—do you? And, Joe, I came pretty near telling him all about that richest find you made—the one you said you wanted me to be the first to see. I thought, of course, you had told your partner, just as you told me when you sent me the plan of it—what for, I don’t know, Joe, for I never could find it in the wide world, even if there was any chance of my hunting for it alone. Your partner asked me point blank if you had written to me of any late find of yours, or of any special location where you found good signs. I tried to look innocent, and said maybe you had, but I couldn’t remember. I didn’t like to tell a story. I wanted to tell him all the truth, and how rich you said we would be. I knew you would want to tell him yourself, so I managed to keep quiet in time. But whenever he looks at me I feel guilty. And he looks at me so kindly, and he is so good. He says we can’t begin our journey to you right away, because he has provisions and things to get first; but we will set out in three days. So I send this letter that you will know I am on the road; maybe we’ll reach you first. He is going to take me riding around this camp this evening—I mean Mr. Ingall
s. He says I must get some enjoyment before I go up there to the mountains, where no one lives. He is the nicest stranger I ever met. But, of course, I never was away from home much to meet folks; I guess, though, I might travel a long ways and not meet any one so nice. He just brought me a pretty purse made by the Indians. I hope you wear a big hat like he does, and big, high boots. I never saw folks wear them back home; but they do look nice. Now, good-by, Joe, for a few days.

  “Yours affectionately,

  “Fannie.”

  “Well, that letter is plain sailing,” remarked Overton, “but there is only one name in it we could follow up—the partner, John Ingalls. But I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”

  “Wait! there is another letter—two more,” said Lyster; and the others were silent as he read:

  “Joe: I hope you’ll hate me now. I can stand that better than to know you still like me. I can’t help it. I am going with him—your partner. He loves me, too, Joe—not in the brotherly way you did, but in a way that makes me think of him and no one else. So I can’t marry any one but him. Maybe it’s a sin to be false to you, Joe; but I never could go to you now. And I can’t help going where he wants me to go. Don’t be mad at him; he can’t help it either, I suppose. He says he will always be good to me, and I am going. But my heart is heavy as I write to you. I am not happy—maybe because I love him too much. But I am going. Try and forget me.

  “Fannie.”

  In dead silence Lyster unfolded the third paper. The drama of this stranger’s life was a pathetic thing to the listeners, who looked at him with pity in their eyes, but could utter no words of sympathy to the man who sat there helpless and looked at them. Then the last, a penciled sheet, was read.

  “Joe: I am dying, I think. The Indian woman with me says so; and I hope it is true. He came to me to-day—the first time in weeks. He never married me, as he promised. He cursed me to-day because my baby face led him away from a fortune he knows you found. I never told him, though it is a wonder. All he knows of it he heard you say in your sleep when you were sick that time. To-day he told me you were paralyzed, Joe—that you are helpless still—that he has taken Indians with him there to your old claim, and searched every foot of ground for the gold vein he thinks you know of. But it is of no use, and he is furious over it, and so taunts me of your helplessness alone in the wilderness.

  “Joe, I still have the plan you made of the river and the two little streams and the marked tree. Can’t I make amends some way for the wrong I did you? Is there anywhere a friend you could trust to work the find and take care of you? For if you are too helpless to write yourself, and can get only the name of the person to me, I will send the plan some way to him. I know I am not to live long. I am in a perfect fever to hear from you, and tell you that my sin against you weighs me down to despair.

  “I can’t tell you of my life with him; it is too horrible. I do not even know who he is, for Ingalls is not his name. We are with Indians and they call him ’Medicine,’ and seem to know him well. He has left me here, to-day, and I feel I will never see him again. He tells me he has sent for a young white boy who is to be brought to camp, and who will help care for me. Anything would be better than the sly red faces about me; they fill me with terror. My one hope is that the boy may get this letter sent to you, and that some word may come to me from you before my life ends. It has taken me all this day to write to you.

  “Good-by. I am dying miserably, and I deserve it. I can’t even tell you where to write me; only we are with Indians camped by a big river. Not far away is a wall of rock, like a hill, beside the river, and Indian writing is cut on the wall, and holes and things are cut all along it.”

  “The Arrow lakes of the Columbia!” interrupted Overton—

  “If the boy comes, and is to be trusted at all, he may tell me more; that is my only hope of this reaching you. If you are not able to make another plan (and he says your hands are powerless) remember, I have the one you did make. If you can send me one word—one name of a friend—I will try—try so hard. He would kill me if he knew, and I would be glad of it, if I could only help you first. I feel that I will never see you again.

  “Fannie.”

  Mrs. Huzzard was crying and whispering, “Poor dear!—poor child!” and even the voice of Lyster was not quite steady as he read. Those straggling, weak pencil marks had a pathos of their own to him. The letter, crossed and recrossed by the lines, was on two pages, evidently torn from the back of a book.

  “It seems a sacrilege to dive into a man’s feelings and secrets like this,” he said, ruefully. “It is! My only consolation is that I did it with good intent.”

  “And, after all, not a plain trail found that will help us locate this man or his friends,” decided Overton—“not a name we can really fasten to but the name on the envelope—Joe Hammond. It is too bad. Why, ’Tana! Good God! ’Tana!”

  For the girl, who had uttered no word, but had listened to that last letter with whitened face and staring eyes, leaned against the wall at its close, and a little gasp from her drew their attention.

  She fell forward on her face ere Overton could reach her.

  “Tana, my girl, what is it? Speak!” he entreated.

  But the girl only whispered: “I know now! Joe—Joe Hammond!” and fainted dead away at the feet of the paralyzed man.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XI.

  ’TANA AND JOE.

  “Just like a part in a play, captain—that’s just the way it struck me,” said Mrs. Huzzard, recounting the affair for the benefit of the postmaster of Sinna Ferry. “The man a-sitting there like a statue, with only his eyes looking alive, and that poor, scared dear a-falling down on the floor beside him, and looking as white as milk! I never had a notion she was so easy touched by people’s troubles. It surely was a sorry story read from them three letters. I tell you, sir, men leave women with aching hearts many’s the time,” and she glanced sentimentally toward her listener; “though if there is one place more heart-rending to be deserted in than another, I think an Indian village would be the very worst. Just to think of that poor dear dying there in a place she didn’t even know the name of.”

  “Humph! I’ve an idea you are giving your sympathy to the wrong individual,” decided the captain. “It must be easier even to die in some unknown corner than for a living soul to be shut up in a dead body, after the manner of this Harris, or Hammond, or whatever his name is. I guess, from the looks of things, he must have collapsed when that second letter reached him; had a bad stroke, and was just recovering somewhat when he strayed into this camp. Yes, madame, I’ve an idea he’s had a harder row to hoe than the girl; and, then, it doesn’t look as though he’d deserved it so much.”

  “Mr. Dan is mightily upset over it, ain’t he?”

  “Mr. Dan is just as likely to get upset over any other vagabond who strays in his direction,” grumbled the captain. “Folks are always falling in his way to be looked after. He has the worst luck! He never did a bit of harm to this stranger—nothing but drop a hand on his shoulder; and all at once the man falls down helpless. And Dan feels in duty bound to take care of him. Then the girl ’Tana has to flop over in the same way, just when I thought we were to get rid of her. And she’s another charge to look after. He’ll be wanting to hire your house for a hospital next thing, Mrs. Huzzard.”

  “And welcome he’d be to it for ’Tana,” declared Mrs. Huzzard, valiantly. “She’s been a bit saucy to you at times, and I know it; but, indeed, it’s only because she fancies you don’t like her.”

  “Like her, madame! A girl who plays poker, and—and—”

  “And wins,” added Mrs. Huzzard, with a twinkle in her eyes. “Ah, now, didn’t Mr. Max tell me the whole story! She is a clip, and I know it; but I think she only meant that game as a bit of a joke.”

  “A twenty-dollar joke, Mrs. Huzzard, is too expensive to be funny,” growled the captain, with natural discontent. “But if I could only convince myself that the money was honestly
won, I would not feel so annoyed over it; but I can’t—no, madame. I am confident there was a trick in that game—some gambler’s trick she has picked up among her promiscuous acquaintances. And I am annoyed—more than ever annoyed now that there is a chance of her remaining longer under Dan’s care. She’s a dangerous protégée for a boy of his age, that’s all.”

  “Dangerous! Oh, now, I’ve my doubts of that,” said Mrs. Huzzard, shaking her head, emphatically. “You take my word for it, if she’s dangerous as a girl to any one in this camp, it’s not Mr. Dan’s peace of mind she’s disturbing, but that of his new friend.”

  “You mean Lyster? Ridiculous! A gentleman of culture, used to the best society, give a thought to such an unclassed individual? No, madame!—don’t you believe it. His interest about the school affair was doubtless to get her away from camp, and to keep her from being a responsibility on Dan’s hands.”

  “Hum! maybe. But, from all the dances he danced with her, and the way he waited on her, I’d a notion that he did not think her a great responsibility at all.”

  This conversation occurred the morning after those letters had been read. The owner of them was installed in the best room Mrs. Huzzard had to offer, and miners from all sections were cordially invited to visit the paralyzed man, in the vain hope that some one would chance to remember his face, or help establish the lost miner’s identity; for he seemed utterly lost from all record of his past—all but that he had loved a girl whom an unknown partner had stolen. And Overton remembered that he seemed especially interested in the whereabouts of the renegade, Lee Holly.

  The unknown Lee Holly’s name had suddenly attained the importance of a gruesome ghost to Overton. He had stared gloomily at the paralytic, as though striving to glean from the living eyes the secrets held close by the silenced lips. ’Tana and Monte and Lee Holly!—his little girl and those renegades! Surely these persons could have nothing to do with each other. Harris was looney—so Overton decided as he stalked back and forth beside the house, glancing up once in a while to a window above him—a window where he hoped to see ’Tana’s face; for all one day had gone, and the evening come again, yet he had never seen her since he had lifted her unconscious form from beside the chair of Harris. Her words, “I know now! Joe—Joe Hammond!” were yet whispering through his senses. Did those words mean anything? or was the child simply overwrought by that tragedy told in the letters? He did not imagine she would comprehend all the sadness of it until she had fallen in that faint.