“Well—yes, there is,” answered Lorena Jane, after a slight hesitation as to just how much it would be wise to say of the genteel gentleman who resided in Sinna Ferry, and was in her eyes a model of culture and disdainful superiority. Indeed, that disdain of his had been a first cause in her desire to reach the state of polish he himself enjoyed—to rise above the vulgar level of manners that had of old seemed good enough to her. “Yes, there is some high-toned folks there; the doctor’s wife and family, for one; and then there is a very genteel man there—Captain Leek. He is an ex-officer in the late war, you know; a real military gentleman, with a wound in his leg. Limps some, but not enough to make him awkward. He keeps the postoffice. But if this Government looked after its heroes as it ought to, he’d be getting a good pension—that’s just what he would. I’m too sound a Union woman not to feel riled at times when I see the defenders of the Constitution go unrewarded.”
“Don’t say ’riled,’ Lorena,” corrected Miss Slocum. “You must drop that and ’dratted’ and ‘I’ll swan’; for I don’t think you could tell what any of them mean. I couldn’t, I’m sure. But I used to know a family of Leeks back in Ohio. They were Democrats, though, and their boys joined the Confederate Army, though I heard they wasn’t much good to the cause. But of course it is not likely to be one of them.”
“I should think not,” agreed Mrs. Huzzard, stoutly. “I never heard him talk politics much; but I do know that he wears nothing but the Union blue to this day, and always that military sort of hat with a cord around it—so—so dignified like.”
“No, I did not suppose it could be the one I knew,” said her cousin; “the military uniform decides that.”
* * *
CHAPTER XVIII.
AWAKENING.
“Flap-Jacks,” said ’Tana, softly, so as to reach no ear but that of the squaw, who came in from Harris’ cabin to find the parasol of Miss Slocum, who was about to walk in the sunshine. To the red creature of the forest this parasol seemed the most wonderfully beautiful thing of all the strange things which the white squaws made use of. “Flap-Jacks, are they gone?”
Three weeks had gone by, three weeks of miraculous changes in the beauty of their wild nook along the trail of the old river.
“Twin Springs,” the place was called now—Twin Spring Mines. Already men were at work on the new lode, and doing placer digging for the free gold in the soil. Wooden rails were laid to the edge of the stream, and over it the small, rude car was pushed with the new ore down to a raft on which a test load had been drifted to the immense crusher at the works on Lake Kootenai. And the test had resulted so favorably that the new strike at Twin Springs was considered by far the richest one of the year.
Through all the turbulence that swept up the little stream to their camp, two of the discovering party were housed, sick and silent, in the little double cabin. The doctor could see no reason why ’Tana was so slow in her recovery; he had expected so much more of her—that she would be carried into health again by the very force of her ambition, and her eager delight in the prospects which her newly acquired wealth was opening up to her.
But puzzling to relate, she showed no eagerness at all about it. Her ambitions, if she had any, were asleep, and she scarcely asked a question concerning all the changes of life and people around her. Listless she lay from one day to another, accepting the attention of people indifferently. Max would read to her a good deal, and several times she asked to be carried into the cabin of Harris, where she would sit for hours talking to him, sometimes in a low voice and then again sitting close beside him in long silences, which, strangely enough, seemed more of companionship to her than the presence of people who laughed and talked. They wearied her at times. When she was able to walk out, she liked to go alone; even Max she had sent back when he followed her.
But she never went far. Sometimes she would sit for an hour by the stream, watching the water slip past the pebbles and the grasses, and on to its turbulent journey toward a far-off rest in the Pacific. And again, she would watch some strange miner dig and wash the soil in his search for the precious “yellow.” But her walks were ever within the limits of the busy diggings; all her old fondness for the wild places seemed sleeping—like her ambitions.
“She needs change now. Get her away from here,” advised the doctor, who no longer felt that she needed medicines, but who could not, with all his skill, build her up again into the daring, saucy ’Tana, who had won the game of cards from the captain that night at the select party at Sinna Ferry.
But when Overton, after much hesitation, broached the subject of her going away, she did look at him with a touch of the old defiance in her face, and after a bit said:
“I guess the camp will have to be big enough for you and me, too, a few days longer. I haven’t made up my mind as to when I want to go.”
“But the summer will not last long, now. You must commence to think of where you want to go; for when the cold weather comes, ’Tana, you can’t remain here.”
“I can if I want to,” she answered.
After one troubled, helpless look at her pale face, he walked out of the cabin; and Lyster, who had wanted to ask the result of the interview, could not find him all that evening. He had gone somewhere alone, up on the mountain.
She had answered him with a great deal of cool indifference; but when the two cousins entered her room, she was on the bed with her face buried in the pillows, weeping in an uncontrollable manner that filled them with dismay. The doctor decided that while Dan was a good fellow in most ways, he evidently had not a soothing influence on ’Tana, possibly not realizing the changed mental condition laid on her by her sickness. The doctor further made up his mind that, without hurting Dan’s feelings, he must find some other mouthpiece for his ideas concerning her or reason with her himself.
But, so far, she would only say she was not ready to go yet. Dan, wishing to make her stay comfortable as possible, went quietly to all the settlements within reach for luxuries in the way of house-furnishing, and had Mrs. Huzzard use them in ’Tana’s cabin. But when he had done all this, she never asked a question as to where the comforts came from—she, who, a short month before, had valued each kind glance received from him.
Mrs. Huzzard was sorely afraid that it was pride, the pride of newly acquired wealth, that changed her from the gay, saucy girl into a moody, dreamy being, who would lie all alone for hours and not notice any of them coming and going. The good soul had many a heartache over it all, never guessing that it was an ache and a shame in the heart of the girl that made the new life that was given her seem a thing of little value.
’Tana had watched the squaw wistfully at times, as if expecting her to say something to her when the others were not around, but she never did. When ’Tana heard the ladies ask Lyster to go with them to a certain place where beautiful mosses were to be found, she waited with impatience until their voices left the door.
The squaw shook her head when asked in that whispering way of their departure; but when she had carried out the parasol and watched the party disappear beyond the numerous tents now dotting the spaces where the grass grew rank only a month before, then she slipped back and stood watchful and silent inside the door.
“Come close,” said the girl, motioning with a certain nervousness to her. She was not the brave, indifferent little girl she had been of old. “Come close—some one might listen, somewhere. I’ve been so sick—I’ve dreamed so many things that I can’t tell some days what is dream and what is true. I lie here and think and think, but it will not come clear. Listen! I think sometimes you and I hunted for tracks—a white man’s tracks—across there where the high ferns are. You showed them to me, and then we came back when the moon shone, and it was light like day, and I picked white flowers. Some days I think of it—of the tracks, long, slim tracks, with the boot heel. Then my head hurts, and I think maybe we never found the tracks, maybe it is only a dream, like—like other things!”
She did not ask if it
were so, but she leaned forward with all of eager question in her eyes. It was the first time she had shown strong interest in anything. But, having aroused from her listlessness to speak of the ghosts of fancy haunting her, she seemed quickened to anxiety by the picture her own words conjured up.
“Ah! those tracks in the black mud and that face above the ledge!”
“It is true,” said the squaw, “and not a dream. The track of the white man was there, and the moon was in the sky, as you say.”
“Ah!” and the evidently unwelcome truth made her clench her fingers together despairingly; she had hoped so that it was a dream. The truth of it banished her lethargy, made her think as nothing else had. “Ah! it was so, then; and the face—the face was real, was—”
“I saw no face,” said the squaw.
“But I did—yes, I did,” she muttered. “I saw it like the face of a white devil!”
Then she checked herself and glanced at the Indian woman, whose dark, heavy face appeared so stupid. Still, one never could tell by the looks of an Indian how much or how little he knows of the thing you want to know; and after a moment’s scrutiny, the girl asked:
“Did you learn more of the tracks?—learn who the white man was that made them?”
The woman shook her head.
“You sick—much sick,” she explained. “All time Dan he say: ‘Stay here by white girl’s bed. Never leave.’ So I not get out again, and the rain come wash all track away.”
“Does Dan know?—did you tell him?”
“No, Dan never ask—never talk to me, only say, ‘Take care ’Tana,’ that all.”
The girl asked no more, but lay there on her couch, filled with dry moss and covered with skins of the mountain wolf. Her eyes closed as though she were asleep; but the squaw knew better, and after a little, she said doubtfully:
“Maybe Akkomi know.”
“Akkomi!” and the eyes opened wide and slant. “That is so. I should have remembered. But oh, all the thoughts in my brain have been so muddled. You have heard something, then? Tell me.”
“Not much—only little,” answered the squaw. “That night—late that night, a white stranger reached Akkomi’s tent, to sleep. No one else of the tribe got to see him, so the word is. Kawaka heard on the river, and it was that night.”
“And then? Where did the stranger go?”
The squaw shook her head.
“Me not know. Kawaka not hear. But I thought of the track. Now many white men make tracks, and one no matter.”
“Akkomi,” and the thoughts of the girl went back to the very first she could remember of her recovery; and always, each day, the face of Akkomi had been near her. He had not talked, but would look at her a little while with his sharp, bead-like eyes, and then betake himself to the sunshine outside her door, where he would smoke placidly for hours and watch the restless Anglo-Saxon in his struggle to make the earth yield up its riches.
Each day Akkomi had been there, and she had not once aroused herself to question why; but she would.
Rising, she passed out and looked right and left; but no blanketed brave met her gaze. Only Kawaka, the husband of Flap-Jacks, worked about the canoes by the water. Then she entered Harris’ cabin, where the sight of his helpless form, and his welcoming smile, made her halt, and drop down on the rug beside him. She had forgotten him so much of late, and she touched his hand remorsefully.
“I feel as if I had just got awake, Joe,” she said, and stretched out her arms, as though to drive away the last vestige of sleep. “Do you know how that feels? To lie for days, stupid as a chilled snake, and then, all at once, to feel the sun creeping around where you are and warming you until you begin to wonder how you could have slept so many days away. Well, just now I feel almost well again. I did not think I would get well; I did not care. All the days I lay in there I wished they would just let me be, and throw their medicines in the creek. I think, Joe, that there are times when people should be allowed to die, when they grow tired—tired away down in their hearts; so tired that they don’t want to take up the old tussle of living again. It is so much easier to die then than when a person is happy, and—and has some one to like them, and—”
She left the sentence unfinished, but he nodded a perfect understanding of her thoughts.
“Yes, you have felt like that, too, I suppose,” she continued, after a little. “But now, Joe, they tell me we are rich—you and Dan and I—so rich we ought to be happy, all of us. Are we?”
He only smiled at her, and glanced at the cozy furnishing of his rude cabin. Like ’Tana’s, it had been given a complete going over by Overton, and rugs and robes did much to soften its crude wood-work. It had all the luxury obtainable in that district, though even yet the doors were but heavy skins.
She noticed the look but shook her head.
“Thick rugs and soft pillows don’t make troubles lighter,” she said, with conviction; and then: “Maybe Dan is happy. He—he must be. All he thinks of now is the gold ore.”
She spoke so wistfully, and her own eyes looked so far, far from happy, that the face of the man was filled with longing to comfort her—the little girl who had tramped so long on a lone trail—how lonely none knew so well as he. His fingers closed and unclosed, as if with the desire to clasp her hand,—to make some visible show of friendship.
She saw the slight movement, and looked up at him with a new interest.
“Oh, I forgot, Joe! I never once have asked how you have got along while I have been so sick. Can you use your hands any at all? You could once, a little bit that day—the day we found the gold.”
But he shook his head, and just then a step was heard outside, and Lyster looked in.
A shade of surprise touched his face, as he saw ’Tana there, with so bright an expression in her eyes.
“What has Harris been telling you that has aroused you to interest, Tana?” he asked, jestingly. “He has more influence than I, for I have scarcely been able to get you to talk at all.”
“You don’t need me; you have Miss Slocum,” she answered. “Have you dropped her in the creek and run back to camp? And have you seen Akkomi lately? I want him.”
“Of course you do. The moment I make my appearance, you want to get rid of me by sending me for some other man. No, I am happy to say I have not seen that royal loafer for the past hour. And I am more happy still to find that you really want some one—any one—once more. Do you realize, my dear girl, how very many days it is since you have condescended to want anything on this earth of ours? Won’t you accept me as a substitute for Akkomi?”
“I don’t want you.”
But her eyes smiled on him kindly, and he did not believe her.
“Perhaps not; but won’t you pretend you do for a little while, long enough to come with me for a little walk—or else to talk to me in your cabin?”
“To talk to you? I don’t think I can talk much to any one yet. I just told Joe I feel as if I was only waking up.”
“So I see; that is the reason I am asking an audience. I will do the talking, and it need not be a very long talk, if you are too tired.”
“I believe I will go,” she said, at last. “I was thinking it would be nice to float in a canoe again—just to float lazy on the current. Can’t we do that?”
“Nothing easier,” he answered, entirely delighted that she was again more like the ’Tana of two months before. She seemed to him a little paler and a little taller, but as they walked together to the canoe, he felt that they would again come to the old chummy days of Sinna Ferry, when they quarreled and made up as regularly as the sun rose and set.
“Well, why don’t you talk?” she asked, as their little craft drifted away from the tents and the man who washed the soil by the spring run. “What did you do with the women folks?”
“Gave them to Overton. They concluded not to risk their precious selves with me, when they discovered that he, for a wonder, was disengaged. Really and truly, that angular schoolmistress will make herself Mrs
. Overton if he is not careful. She flatters him enough to spoil an average man; looks at him with so much respectful awe, you know, though she never does say much to him.”
“Saves her breath to drill Mrs. Huzzard with,” observed the girl, dryly. “That poor, dear woman has a bee in her muddled old head, and the bee is Captain Leek and his fine manners. I can see it, plain as day. Bless her heart! I hear her go over and over words that she always used to say wrong, and she does eat nicer than she used to. Humph! I wonder if Dan Overton will take as kindly to being taught, when the school-teacher begins with him.”
There was a mirthless, unlovely smile about her lips, and Lyster reached over and clasped her hand coaxingly.
“’Tana, what has changed you so?” he asked. “Is it your sickness—is it the gold—or what, that makes you turn from your old friends? Dan never says a word, but I notice it. You never talk to him, and he has almost quit going to your cabin at all, though he would do anything for you, I know. My dear, you will find few friends like him in the world.”
“Oh, don’t—don’t bother me about him,” she answered, irritably. “He is all right, of course. But I—”
Then she stopped, and with a determined air turned the subject.
“You said you had something to talk to me about. What was it?”
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear you speak as you used to,” he said, looking at her kindly. “I would be rejoiced even to get a scolding from you these days. But that was not exactly what I brought you out to tell you, either,” and he drew from his pocket the letter he had carried for three weeks, waiting until she appeared strong enough to accept surprises. “I suppose, of course, you have heard us talk a good deal about the Eastern capitalist who was here when you were so sick, and who, unhesitatingly, made purchase of the Twin Spring Mines, as it is called now.”
That Girl Montana Page 20
