But Overton stooped to lift the pick he had been using, and so turned his face away from her.
“Well, I’m glad you are not getting blue over lack of company,” he remarked; “for we have only commenced prospecting, you know, and it will be at least a week before we can hope to send for any one else to join us.”
“A week! Do you intend to send for other folks, then?” and her tone was one of regret. “Oh, it would be all different, then. My pretty camp would be spoiled for me if folks should come talking and whistling up our creek. Don’t let any one know so soon!”
“You don’t know what you are talking of,” he answered, a little roughly. “This is a business trip. We did not come up here just because we were looking for a pretty picture of a place to camp in.”
“Oh!” and surprise and dismay were in the exclamation. “Then you don’t care for it—you want other people just as soon as you find the rich streak where the gold is? Well”—and she looked again over their little chosen valley—“I almost hope you won’t find it very soon—not for several days. I would like to live just like this for a whole week. And I thought—I was so sure you liked it, too.”
“Oh, yes,” he answered, indifferently enough, evidently giving his whole attention to examining the soil he had commenced to dig up again, “I like the camp all right, but we can’t just stand around and admire it, if we want to accomplish what we came for. And see here, ’Tana,” he said, and for the first time he looked at her with a sort of unwillingness, “you must know that this gold is going to make a big change in things for you. You can’t live out in the woods with a couple of miners and an Indian squaw, after your fortune is made—don’t you see that? You must go to school, and live out in the world where your money will help you to—well, the right sort of society for a girl.”
“What is the use of having money if it don’t help you to live where you please?” she demanded. “I thought that was what money was for. I’d a heap rather stay poor here in the woods, with—with the folks I know, instead of going where I’ll have to buy friends with money. Don’t think I’d want the sort of friends who have to be baited with money, anyway.”
He stared at her helplessly. She was saying to him the things he had called himself a fool for thinking. But he could not call her a fool. He could only stifle an impatient groan, and wonder how he was to reason her into thinking as other girls would think of wealth and its advantages.
“Why were you so wild about finding the gold, if you care so little for the things it brings?” he demanded, and she pointed toward the tents.
“It was for him I thought at first—of how the money would, maybe, help to make him well—get him great doctors, and all that. The world had been rough on him—people had brought him trouble, and—and I thought, maybe, I could help clear it away. That was what I had in my mind at first.”
“You need things, too, don’t you?—not doctors, but education—books, beautiful things. You want pictures, statues, fine music, theaters—all such things. Well, the money will help you get them, and get people to enjoy them with you. I’ve heard you talk to Max about how you would like to live, and what you would like to see; and I think you can soon. But, ’Tana, you will live then where people will be more critical than we are here—”
“More like Captain Leek?” she asked, with a deep wrinkle between her brows; “for if they are, I’ll stay here.”
“N—no; not like him; and yet they will think considerable of his sort of ideas, too,” he answered, blunderingly. “One thing sure is this: When your actual work here is over, you must go at once back to Mrs. Huzzard. It was necessary for you to come, else I wouldn’t have allowed it. But, little girl, when you get among those fine friends you are going to have, I don’t want them to think you had a guardian up here who didn’t take the first bit of civilized care of you. And that’s what they would think if I let you stay here, just as though you were a boy. So you see, ’Tana, I just felt I’d have to tell you plain that you would have to try and fit yourself to city ways of living. And when you are a millionairess, as you count on being, we three partners can’t keep on living in tents in the Kootenai woods.”
She pulled handfuls of the plumy grasses beside her, and stared sulkily ahead of her. Evidently it was a great deal for her to understand at once.
“Would they blame you—you for it, if they knew?” she asked at last.
“Yes, they would—if they knew,” he said, savagely; and turning away, he walked across the little grassy level to where the abrupt little wall or ledge commenced—the one from under which the springs flowed.
She thought he was simply out of patience with her. He was going to the woods—anywhere to be rid of her and her stupid ideas; and swift as a bird, she slipped after him.
“Then I’ll go, Dan,” she said reassuringly, catching his arm. “So don’t be vexed at me for being stubborn. Come! let me look for the gold with you, and then—then I’ll go when you say.”
“It’s a bargain,” he said, briefly, and drew his arm away. “And if we are going to do any more prospecting this evening, we had better begin.”
He stood facing her, with his back to the bank that was the first tiny step toward the mountain that rose dark and shadowy far above. He had walked along there before, looking with a miner’s attention to the lay of the land. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation, and a light of comprehension brightened his eyes.
“I’ve got a clew to it, sure, ’Tana!” he said, eagerly. “Do you know where we are standing? Well, if I don’t make a big mistake, a good-sized river once rolled along just where we are now. The little creek is all that’s left of it. This soil is all a comparatively recent deposit, and it and the gold dust in it have been washed down from the mountain. Which means that this little valley is only a gateway, and the dust we found is only a trail we are to follow up to the mine from which it came. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I think so,” she answered, looking at the green-covered banks, and trying to realize how they looked when a mountain river had cut its way through and covered all the pretty level where the spring stream slipped now. “But doesn’t that make the gold seem farther away—much farther? Will we have to move up higher in the mountains?”
“That is a question I need time to answer, but if I am right—if there is a backing of gold ore somewhere above this old river bed, it means a much surer thing than an occasional bit of dust washed out of the mud here. But we won’t ignore our little placer digging either. There is an advantage to a poor prospector in having a claim he can work without any machinery but a pick, shovel, and pan; while the gold ore needs a fortune to develop it. Let us go back and talk to Harris, to see if his evidence substantiates my theory. If not, we will just stake out our claims on the level, and be thankful. Later we will investigate the hills.”
The girl walked slowly beside him back to their camp. The shadows were commencing to lengthen. It was nearing supper time, and their day had been a busy, tiring one, for they had moved their camp many miles since dawn.
“You are very nearly worn out, aren’t you?” he asked, as he noticed her tired eyes and her listless step. “You see, you would tramp along the shore this morning when I wanted you to stay in the boat.”
“Yes, I know,” she answered; “but I don’t think that made me tired. Maybe it’s the gold we are to find. How queer it is, Dan, that a person will want and want some one thing all his life, and he thinks it will make him so happy; and yet, when at last he gets in sight of it, he isn’t happy at all. That is the way I feel about our gold. I suppose I ought to be singing and laughing and dancing for joy. I said I would, too. Yet here I am feeling as stupid as can be, and almost afraid of the fine life you say I must go to. Oh, bother! I won’t think over it any more. I am going to get supper.”
For while ’Tana would accept the squaw as an assistant and a gatherer of fuel, she decidedly declined to have her installed as head cook. She herself filled that office with a good deal of girlish conc
eit, encouraged by the praise of Overton and the approving nods of Harris.
There had been a fifth member of their party, Flap-Jacks’ husband. ’Tana had bestowed that name on the squaw in the very beginning of their acquaintance. But Overton had sent him on an errand back to Sinna Ferry, not wishing to have his watchful eyes prying into their plans in the very beginning of their prospecting. And it was not until he had started on his journey that the pick and pan had disclosed the golden secret of the old river bed.
Harris watched the two approach, and his keen gray eyes turned with a certain fondness from one to the other. They were as guardian angels to him, and their mutual care of him had brought them closer to each other there in the wilderness than they ever had been in the little settlement farther down the river.
“Squaw not here yet?” asked ’Tana, and at once set to work preparing things for the supper.
Harris shook his head, but at that moment their hand-maiden did return, carrying a great load of sticks for fire, and then brought to the girl a number of fine trout she had caught almost at their door. She built the fire outside, where two forked sticks had been driven into the ground, and across them a pole lay, from which kettles could be hung. As ’Tana set the coffee pot on the hot coals, the Indian woman spoke to her in that low voice which is characteristic of the red people.
“More white men to come into camp?” she asked.
“White men? No. Why do you ask?”
“I see tracks—not Dan’s tracks—not yours.”
“Made when?”
“Now—little while back—only little.”
Overton heard their voices, though not their words; and as ’Tana re-entered the wigwam, he glanced around at her with a dubious smile.
“That is the first time I ever heard you actually talking Chinook,” he observed; “though I’ve had an idea you could, ever since the evening in Akkomi’s village. It is like your poker playing, though you have been very modest about it.”
“I was not the night I played the captain,” she answered; “and I think you might let me alone about that, after I gave him back his money.”
“That is just the part I can not forgive you for,” he said. “He will never get over the idea, now, that you cheated him, and that your conscience got the better of you to such an extent that you tried to wipe a sin away by giving the money back.”
“Perhaps I did,” she answered, quietly. “I had to settle his conceit some way, for he did bother me a heap sometimes. But I’m done with that.”
She seemed rather thoughtful during the frying of the fish and the slicing down of Mrs. Huzzard’s last contribution—a brown loaf.
She was disturbed over the footprints seen by the Indian woman—the track of a white man so close to their camp that day, yet who had kept himself from their sight! Such actions have a meaning in the wild countries, and the meaning troubled her. While it would have been the most simple thing in the world to tell Overton and have him make a search, something made her want to do the searching herself—but how?
“I was right in my theory about the old river bed,” he said to her, as she poured his coffee. “Harris backs me up in it, and it was ore he found, and not the loose dirt in the soil. So the thing I am going to strike out for is the headquarters where that loose dust comes from.”
“Oh! then it was ore you found?” she asked.
Harris nodded his head.
“Ore on the surface—and near here.”
That news made her even more anxious about that stranger who had prowled around. Perhaps he, too, was searching for the hidden wealth.
When the supper was over, and the sun had slipped back of the mountain, she beckoned to the squaw, and with the water bucket as a visible errand, they started toward the spring.
But they did not stop there. She wanted to see with her own eyes those footprints, and she followed the Indian down into the woods already growing dusky in the dying day.
The birds were singing their good-night songs, and all the land seemed steeped in repose. Only those two figures, gliding between the trees, carried with them the spirit of unrest.
They reached an open space where no trees grew very close—a bit of marsh land, where the soil was black and tall ferns grew. The squaw led her straight to a place where two of the fern fronds were bent and broken. She parted the green lances, and there beside it was a scraping away of the earth, as though some one walking there had slipped, and in the black sandy loam a shoe had sunk deep. The Indian was right; it was the mark of a white man, for the reds of that country had not yet adopted the footgear of their more advanced neighbors.
“It turn to camp,” said the squaw. “Maybe some white thief, so I tell you. Me tell Dan?”
“Wait,” answered the girl; and, kneeling down, she studied the slender outline of the foot attentively. “Any more tracks?”
“No more—only leaves stirred nearer to camp; he go that way.”
The full moon rose clear and warm in the east, while yet the sun’s light lingered over the wilderness. Beautiful flowers shone white and pink and yellow in the opaline light of the evening; and ’Tana mechanically plucked a few that touched her as she passed, but she gave little notice to their beauty. All her thought was on the slender footprint of the man in the woods, and her face looked troubled.
They walked on, looking to right and left in any nook where deep shadows lay, but never a sign could they see of aught that was human besides themselves, until they neared the springs again, when the squaw laid her hand on the arm of the girl.
“Dan,” she said, in her low, abrupt way.
The girl, looking up, saw him a little way ahead of them, standing there straight, strong, and surely to be trusted; yet her first impulse was to tell him nothing.
“Take the water and go,” she said to the Indian, and the woman disappeared like a mere wraith of a woman in the pale shadows.
“Don’t go so far next time when you want to pick flowers in the evening,” said Overton, as ’Tana came nearer to him. “You make me realize that I have nerves. If you had not come in sight the instant you did, I should have been after you.”
“But nothing will harm us; I am not afraid, and it is pretty in the woods now,” she answered lamely, and toyed with the flowers. But the touch of her fingers was nervous, and the same quality trembled in her voice. He noticed it and reaching out took her hand in his very gently, and yet with decision that forced her to look up at him.
“Little girl—what is it? You are sick?”
She shook her head.
“No, I am not—I am not sick,” and she tried to free her hand, but could not.
“’Tana,” and his teeth closed for a moment on his lip lest he say all the warm words that leaped up from his heart at sight of her face, which looked startled and pale in the moonlight—“’Tana, you won’t need me very long; and when you go away, I’ll never try to make you remember me. Do you understand, little girl? But just now, while we are so far off from the rest of the world, won’t you trust me with your troubles—with the thoughts that worry you? I would give half of my life to help you. Half of it! Ah, good God! all of it! ’Tana—”
In his voice was all the feeling which compels sympathy, or else builds up a wall that bars it out. But in the eyes of the girl, startled though she was, no resistance could be read. Her hand was in his, her face lifted to him, and alight with sudden gladness. In his eyes she read the force of an irresistible power taking possession of a man’s soul and touching her with its glory.
“’Tana!” he said very softly, in a tone she had never before heard Dan Overton use—a tone hushed and reverent and appealing. “’Tana!”
Did he guess all the stormy emotions locked alone in the girl’s heart, and wearing out her strength? Did he guess all the childish longing to feel strong, loving arms around her as a shield? His utterance of her name drew her to him. His arm fell around her shoulders, and her head was bowed against his breast. The hat she wore had fallen to the
ground, and as he bent over her, his hand caressed her hair tenderly, but there was more of moody regret than of joy in his face.
“’Tana, my girl! poor little girl!” he said softly.
But she shook her head.
“No—not so poor now,” she half whispered and looked up at him—“not so very poor.”
Then she uttered a half-strangled scream of terror and broke away from him; for across his shoulder she saw a face peering at her from the shadows of the over-hanging bushes above them, a white, desperate face, at sight of which she staggered back and would have fallen had Overton not caught her.
He had not seen the cause of her alarm, and for one instant thought it was himself from whom she shrank.
“Tell me—what is it?” he demanded. “’Tana, speak to me!”
She did not speak, but a rustle in the bushes above them caught his ear; and looking up, he saw a form pass lightly through the shadows and away from them. He could not tell whether it was an Indian, a white man, or even an animal scampering off that way through the bushes. But anything that spied like that and ran when discovered was a thing to shoot at. He dropped his hand to his revolver, but she caught his arm.
“No, Dan! Oh, don’t—don’t shoot him!”
He stared at her, conscious that it was no ordinary fear that whitened her face. What did it mean? She herself had just come from the woods—pale, agitated, and with only a semblance of flower gathering to explain her absence. Had she met some one there—some one who—
He let go of her and started to run up the side of the steep bank; but swiftly as he moved, she caught him and clung to him, half sobbing.
“Don’t go! Oh, Dan, let him go!” she begged, and her grasp made it impossible for him to go unless he picked her up and carried her along.
That Girl Montana Page 15
