"Just that; an' dear she would ha' been at most any price. But she was a braw thing to look at, an' young enough to be sorry o'er. An' so when he come across her takin' a beating like a mule he could na stand it; an' the only way he could be sure o' putting an end to it was by maken' a bargain; an' that's just what he did, an' a'most afore he had time to take thought, the girl was his, an' he had to tek her with him. Well," and the old man laughed comically at the remembrance, "you should ha' seen him at the comin' home!—tried to get her off his hands by leavin' her an' a quitclaim at my cabin; but I'd have none o' that—no half-breed woman could stay under a roof o' mine; an' the finish o' it was he hed to bring her here to keep house for him, an' a rueful commencement it was. Then it was but a short while 'til he got hurt one day in the tunnel, an' took a deal o' care before he was on his feet again. Well, ye know womankind make natural nurses, an' by the time she had him on the right trail again he had got o' the mind that Talapa was a necessity o' the cabin; an' so ye may know she stayed."
"In what tunnel was he injured?" asked Stuart.
"Why, just—"
"There's your horse ranging calmly up toward the timber," observed Rachel, turning from the window to Stuart. "Do you want to walk to the ranch?"
"Well, not to-day;" and a moment later he was out of the door and running across the terraced meadow.
"Don't tell him too much about the tunnel," suggested the girl, when she and the old man were alone.
"Why, lass,"—he began; but she cut him short brusquely, keeping her eye on the form on the hill-side.
"Oh, he may be all right; but it isn't like you, Davy MacDougall, to tell all you know to strangers, even if they do happen to have Scotch names—you clannish old goose!"
"But the lad's all right."
"May be he is; but you've told him enough of the hills now to send him away thinking we are all a rather mixed and objectionable lot. Oh, yes, he does too!" as Davy tried to remonstrate. "I don't care how much you tell him about the Indians; but that tunnel may have something in it that Genesee wouldn't want Eastern speculators spying into while he's away—do you see?"
Evidently he did, and the view was not one flattering to his judgment, for, in order to see more clearly, he took off his fur cap, scratched his head, and then replacing the covering with a great deal of energy, he burst out:
"Well, damn a fool, say I."
Rachel paid not the slightest attention to this profane plea.
"I suppose he's all right," she continued; "only when somebody's interest is at stake, especially a friend's, we oughtn't to take things for granted, and keeping quiet hurts no one, unless it be a stranger's curiosity."
The old man looked at her sharply. "Ye dinna like him, then?"
She hesitated, her eyes on the tall form leading back the horse. Just then there seemed a strange likeness to Mowitza and Genesee in their manner, for the beast was tossing its head impatiently, and he was laughing, evidently teasing it with the fact of its capture.
"Yes, I do like him," she said at last; "there is much about him to like. But we must not give away other people's affairs because of that."
"Right you are, my lass," answered Davy; "an' it's rare good sense ye show in remindin' me o' the same. It escapes me many's the time that he's a bit of a stranger when all's said; an' do ye know, e'en at the first he had no the ways of a stranger to me. I used to fancy that something in his build, or it may ha' been but the voice, was like to—"
"You are either too old or not old enough to have fancies, Davy MacDougall," interrupted the girl briskly, as Stuart re-entered. "Well, is it time to be moving?"
He looked at his watch.
"Almost; but come to the fire and get well warmed before we start. I believe it grows colder; here, take this seat."
"Well, I will not," she answered, looking about her; "don't let your gallantry interfere with your comfort, for I've a chair of my own when I visit this witchy quarter of the earth—yes, there it is."
And from the corner by the bunk she drew forward the identical chair on which she had sat through the night at her only other visit. But from her speech Stuart inferred that this time was but one of the many.
"What are you going to do here, Davy MacDougall?" she asked, drawing her chair close beside him and glancing comprehensively about the cabin; "weather-board it up for winter?"
"Naw, scarcely that," he answered good-humoredly; "but just to gather up the blankets or skins or aught that the weather or the rats would lay hold of, and carry them across the hills to my own camp till the spring comes; mayhaps he may come with it."
The hope in his voice was not very strong, and the plaintiveness in it was stronger than he knew. The other two felt it, and were silent.
"An' will ye be tellin' him for me," he continued, after a little, to Stuart, "that all is snug an' safe, an' that I'll keep them so, an' a welcome with them, against his return? An' just mention, too, that his father, Grey Eagle, thinks the time is long since he left, an' that the enemy—Time—is close on his trail. An'—an' that the day he comes back will be holiday in the hills."
"The last from Grey Eagle or yourself?" asked Stuart teasingly. But the girl spoke up, covering the old man's momentary hesitation.
"From me," she said coolly; "if any name is needed to give color to so general a desire, you can use mine."
His face flushed; he looked as if about to speak to her, but, instead, his words were to MacDougall.
"I will be very glad to carry the word to your friend," he said; "it is but a light weight."
"Yes, I doubt na it seems so to the carrier, but I would no think it so light a thing to ha' word o' the lad. We ha' been neighbors, ye see, this five year, with but little else that was civilized to come near us. An' there's a wide difference atween neighbors o' stone pavements an' neighbors o' the hills—a fine difference."
"Yes, there is," agreed the girl; and from their tones one would gather the impression that all the splendors of a metropolis were as nothing when compared with the luxuries of "shack" life in the "bush."
"Can ye hit the trail down at the forks without me along?" asked MacDougall, with a sudden remembrance of the fact that Rachel did not know the way so well from the "Place of the Tamahnous" as she did from Scot's Mountain. She nodded her head independently.
"I can, Davy MacDougall. And you are paying me a poor compliment when you ask me so doubtfully. I've been prowling through the bush enough for this past year to know it for fifty miles around, instead of twenty. And now if your highness thinks we've had our share of this fire, let us 'move our freight,' 'hit the breeze,' or any other term of the woolly West that means action, and get up and git."
"I am at your service," answered Stuart, with a graciousness of manner that made her own bravado more glaring by contrast. He could see she assumed much for the sake of mischief and irritation to himself; and his tone in reply took an added intonation of refinement; but the hint was lost on her—she only laughed.
"I tell you what it is, Davy MacDougall," she remarked to that gentleman, "this slip of your nation has been planted in the wrong century. He belongs to the age of lily-like damsels in sad-colored frocks, and knights of high degree on bended knee and their armor hung to the rafters. I get a little mixed in my dates sometimes, but believe it was the age when caps and bells were also in fashion."
"Dinna mind her at all," advised the old man; "she'd be doin' ye a good turn wi' just as ready a will as she would mak' sport o' ye. Do I not know her?—ah, but I do!"
"So does the Stuart," said Rachel; "and as for doing him a good turn, I proved my devotion in that line this morning, when I saved him from a lonely, monotonous ride—didn't I?" she added, glancing up at him.
"You look positively impish," was the only reply he made; and returning her gaze with one that was half amusement, half vexation, he went out for the horses.
"You see, he didn't want me at all, Davy MacDougall," confided the girl, and if she felt any chagrin she concealed it
admirably. "But they've been talking some about Genesee down at the ranch, and—and Stuart's interest was aroused. I didn't know how curious he might be—Eastern folks are powerful so"—and in the statement and adoption of vernacular she seemed to forget how lately she was of the East herself; "and I concluded he might ask questions, or encourage you to talk about—well, about the tunnel, you know; so I just came along to keep the trail free of snags—see?"
The old man nodded, and watched her in a queer, dubious way; as she turned, a moment later, to speak to Stuart at the door, she noticed it, and laughed.
"You think I'm a bit loony, don't you, Davy MacDougall? Well, I forgive you. May be, some day, you'll see I'm not on a blind trail. Come and see us soon, and give me a chance to prove my sanity."
"Strange that any mind could doubt it," murmured Stuart. "Come, we haven't time for proofs of the question now. Good-bye, MacDougall; take care of yourself for the winter. Perhaps I'll get back in the summer to see how well you have done so."
A hearty promise of welcome, a hand-clasp, a few more words of admonition and farewell, and then the two young people rode away across the ground deemed uncanny by the natives; and the old man went back to his lonely task.
On reaching the ranch at dusk, it was Rachel who was mildly hilarious, seeming to have changed places with the gay chanter of the dawn. He was not sulky, but something pretty near it was in his manner, and rather intensified under Miss Hardy's badinage.
She told the rest how he divided his whisky with the squaw; hinted at a fear that he intended adopting the papoose; gave them an account of the conversation between himself and Skulking Brave; and otherwise made their trip a subject for ridicule.
"Did you meet with Indians?" asked Tillie, trying to get the girl down to authentic statements.
"Yes, my dear, we did, and I sent them home to you—or told them to come; but they evidently had not time for morning calls."
"Were they friendly?"
"Pretty much—enough so to ask for powder and shot. None of the men sighted them?"
"No."
"And no other Indians?"
"No—why?"
"Only that I would not like Talapa to be roughly unhorsed."
"Talapa! Why, Rachel, that's—"
"Yes, of course it is—with a very promising family in tow. Say, suppose you hustle Aunty up about that supper, won't you? And have her give the Stuart something extra nice; he has had a hard day of it."
* * *
CHAPTER V.
A VISIT IN THE NIGHT-TIME.
Yahka kelapie.
The snows had dropped a soft cloak over the Kootenai hills, and buried the valleys in great beds of crystallized down. Rachel's prophecy had proven a true one, for the clouds that day had been a visiting-card from winter.
That day was two weeks gone now; so was Stuart's leave-taking, and at the ranch life had dropped into the old lines, but with an impression of brightness lost. Miss Margaret had not yet got over the habit of turning quickly if anyone entered the room, and showing her disappointment in a frown when it was not the one looked for.
Aunty Luce declared she "nevah did see a chile so petted on one who wasn't no kin."
All of them discovered they had been somewhat "petted" on the genial nature. Again the evenings were passed with magazines or cards; during his stay they had revived the primitive custom of taking turns telling stories, and in that art Stuart had proven himself a master, sometimes recounting actual experiences of self or friends, again giving voice to some remembered gem of literature; but, whatever the theme, it was given life, through the sympathetic tendencies of the man who had so much the timber of an actor—or rather an artist—the spirit that tends to reproduce or create.
If Rachel missed him, she kept quiet about it, and ridiculed the rest if any regrets came to her ears. No one minded that much; Rachel ridiculed everyone—even herself. Sometimes she thought Fate seemed more than willing to help her. One night, two weeks after that ride from the "Place of the Tamahnous," she was struck with a new conviction of the fact.
Andrews had gone to Holland's for the mail and domestic miscellany. A little after sun-up he had started, and the darkness was three hours old, and yet no sign or sound. The rest had finally given up the idea of getting any letters that night, and had gone to bed. As usual, Rachel—the night-owl of the family—was left the last guard at the warm hearth. Upstairs she could hear Jim's voice in the "boys'" room, telling Ivans some exploit whose character was denoted by one speech that made its way through the ceiling of pine boards:
"Yes, sir; my horse left his'n half a length behind every time it hit the ground."
Ivans grunted. Evidently he had listened to recitals from the same source before, and was too tired for close attention; anyway, the remarks of this Truthful James drifted into a monologue, and finally into silence, and no sound of life was left in the house.
She had been reading a book Stuart had sent back to her by Hardy, the day he left. She wondered a little why, for he had never spoken of it to her. It was a novel, a late publication, and by an author whose name she had seen affixed to magazine work; and the charm in it was undeniable—the charm of quiet hearts and restful pictures, that proved the writer a lover of the tender, sympathetic tones of life, rather than the storms and battles of human emotions.
It held the girl with a puzzling, unusual interest—one that in spite of her would revert from the expressed thoughts on the paper to the personality of the man who had sent it to her, and she found in many instances, a mystifying likeness.
She sat there thinking drowsily over it, and filled with the conviction that it was really time to go to bed; but the big chair was so comfortable, and the little simmer of the burning wood was like a lullaby, and she felt herself succumbing, without the slightest rebellion, to the restful influence. She was aroused by the banging of a door somewhere, and decided that Andrews had at last returned; and remembering the number of things he had to bring in, concluded to go out and help him. Her impulse was founded as much on economy as generosity, for the late hour was pretty good proof that Andrews was comfortably drunk—also that breakages were likely to be in order.
It was cloudy—only the snow gave light; the air was not cold, but had in it the softness of rain. Over it she walked quickly, fully awakened by the thought of the coffee getting a bath of vinegar, or the mail mucilaged together with molasses.
"Oh, here you are at last!" she remarked, in that inane way people have when they care not whether you are here or in the other place. "You took your own time."
"Well, I didn't take any other fellow's!" returned the man from the dark corner where he was unsaddling the horse.
Andrews was usually very obsequious to Miss Rachel, and she concluded he must be pretty drunk.
"I came out to help you with the things," she remarked from her post in the door-way; "where are they?"
"I've got 'em myself," came the gruff tones again from the corner. "I reckon I'll manage without help. You'd better skip for the house—you'll catch cold likely."
"Why, it isn't cold—are you? I guess Aunty left a lunch for you. I'll go and warm the coffee."
She started, and then stopped.
"Say, did you get any letters for me?"
"No."
With a grumble about her ill-luck, she started back toward the house, the late arrival following a little ways behind with something over his shoulder. Once she looked back.
"I rather think Andrews gets on dignified drunks," she soliloquized; "he is walking pretty straight, anyway."
She set the coffee-pot on the coals and glanced at the bundle he had dropped just inside the door—it was nothing but a blanket and a saddle.
"Well, upon my word!" she began, and rose to her feet; but she did not say any more, for, in turning to vent her displeasure on Andrews, she was tongue-tied by the discovery that it was not he who had followed her from the stable.
"Genesee!" she breathed, in a tone a little above a whisp
er. "Alah mika chahko!"
She was too utterly astonished either to move toward him or offer her hand; but the welcome in her Indian words was surely plain enough for him to understand. It was just like him, however, not to credit it, and he smiled a grim understanding of his own, and walked over to a chair.
"Yes, that's who it is," he remarked. "I am sorry, for the sake of your hopes, that it isn't the other fellow; but—here I am."
He had thrown his hat beside him and leaned back in the big chair, shutting his eyes sleepily. She had never seen him look so tired.
"Tillikum, I am glad to see you again," she said, going to him and holding out her hand. He smiled, but did not open his eyes.
"It took you a long time to strike that trail," he observed. "What brought you out to the stable?"
"I thought you were Andrews, and that you were drunk and would break things."
"Oh!"
"And I am glad to see you, Jack."
He opened his eyes then. "Thank you, little girl. That is a good thing for a man to hear, and I believe you. Come here. It was a good thing for me to get that word from Kalitan, too. I reckon you know all that, though, or you wouldn't have sent it."
She did not answer, but stooped to lift the pot of coffee back from the blaze. The action recalled him to the immediate practical things, and he said:
"Think I can stay all night here?"
"I don't know of any reason to prevent it."
"Mowitza was used up, and I wanted a roof for her; but I didn't allow to come to the house myself."
"Where would you have slept?"
"In my blanket, on the hay."
"Just as if we would let you do that on our place!"
"No one would have known it if you had kept away from the stable, and in your bed, where you ought to be."
"Shall I go there at once, or pour your coffee first?"
"A cup of coffee would be a treat; I'm dead tired."
The coffee was drank, and the lunch for Andrews was appropriated for Genesee.
"Have you come back to the Kootenai country for good?" she asked, after furnishing him with whatever she could find in the pantry without awakening the rest.
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