Told in the Hills

by Marah Ellis Ryan

  "I had an 'invite' this morning," he added grimly—"not because they wanted me, but because your new friend over there wanted someone to give him points about the country; so I've got him to thank for being wanted at all. Now don't look like that—or think I'm kicking. It's a square enough deal so far as I'm concerned, and it stands to reason a man of my stamp hasn't many people pining for him in a respectable house. For the matter of that, it won't do you any good to be seen talking to me this long. I'm going."

  "All right; so am I. You can go along."

  "With you?"

  "Certainly."

  "I reckon not."

  "Don't be so stubborn. If you didn't feel like coming, you would not have been at that window last night."

  His face flushed at this thrust which he could not parry.

  "Well, I reckon I won't go there again."

  "No; come inside next time. Come, ride half way to the ranch, and tell me about that trip of yours to the Blackfeet. Major Dreyer gave you great praise for your work there."

  "He should have praised you;" and her own color deepened at the significance of his words.

  "I met Kalitan on his way to the ranch, as I came," she said in the most irrelevant way.

  He looked at her very sharply, but didn't speak.

  "Well, are you going to escort me home, or must I go alone?"

  "It is daylight; you know every foot of the way, and you don't need me," he said, summing up the case briefly. "When you do, let me know."

  "And you won't come?" she added good-naturedly. "All right. Klahowya!"

  She moved out of his way, touched Betty with the whip, and started homeward. She rather expected to meet Kalitan again, but there was no sign of him on the road; arriving at the house, she found that youth ensconced among the pillows of the largest settee with the air of a king on a throne, and watching with long, unblinking stares Miss Fred, who was stumbling over the stitches of some crochet-work for the adornment of Miss Margaret.

  "I'm so glad you've come!" she breathed gratefully. "He has me so nervous I can't count six; and Mrs. Hardy is taking a nap, and Aunty Luce has locked herself upstairs, and I never was stared so out of countenance in my life."

  "I rather think that's a phase of Indian courtship," Rachel comforted her by saying; "so you have won a new admirer. What is it Kalitan?"

  He signified that his business was with the "Man-who-laughs," the term by which he designated Stuart.

  "Mr. Stuart left the house just after you did," said Fred; "I thought, perhaps, to catch you."

  "No, he didn't go my way. Well, you look comfortable, Kalitan; and if you had the addition of another crazy-patch cushion for your left elbow, you might stand a little longer wait—think so?"

  Kalitan thought he could; and there he remained until Stuart arrived, flushed and rather breathless from his ride from somewhere.

  "I was out on the road, but did not see you," said Rachel, on his entrance.

  "This is likely enough," he answered. "I didn't want you to—or anyone else. I'm not good company of late. I was trying to ride away from myself." Then he saw Kalitan, propped among the cushions. "Well," he said sharply; "what have you brought me?"

  Kalitan answered by no word, but thrust his hand inside his hunting-shirt and brought forth an envelope, which he gave into the eager hands reaching for it.

  Stuart gave it one quick glance, turning it in his hand to examine both sides, and then dropped it in his pocket and sat down by the window. Rachel could see it was a thick, well-filled envelope, and that the shape was the same used by Stuart himself, very large and perfectly square—a style difficult to duplicate in the Kootenai hills.

  "You can go now, if you choose, Kalitan," she said, fearing his ease would induce him to stay all night, and filled with a late alarm at the idea of Tillie getting her eyes on the peaceful "hostile" and her gorgeous cushions; and without any further notice of Stuart, Kalitan took his leave.

  When Rachel re-entered the room, a moment later, a letter was crisping into black curls in the fire-place, and the man sat watching it moodily.

  All that evening there was scarcely question or answer to be had from Stuart. He sat by the fire, with Miss Margaret in his arms—her usual place of an evening; and through the story-telling and jollity he sat silent, looking, Jim said, as if he was "workin' hard at thinkin'."

  "To-morrow night you must tell us a story," said Miss Fred, turning to him. "You have escaped now for—oh, ever so many nights."

  "I am afraid my stock is about exhausted."

  "Out of the question! The flimsiest of excuses," she decided. "Just imagine a new one, and tell it us instead of writing it; or tell us the one you are writing at now."

  "Well, we will see when to-morrow comes;" and with that vague proposal Miss Fred had to be content.

  When the morrow came Stuart looked as if there had been no night for him—at least no sleep; and Rachel, or even MacDougall himself, would not think of calling him Prince Charlie, as of old.

  She was no longer so curious about him and that other man who was antagonistic to him. She had been fearful, but whatever knowledge they had of each other she had decided would not mean harm; the quiet days that had passed were a sort of guarantee of that.

  Yet they seemed to have nerved Stuart up to some purpose, for the morning after the burning of the letter he appeared suddenly at the door of Genesee's shack, or the one Major Dreyer had turned over to him during his own absence.

  From the inside Kalitan appeared, as if by enchantment, at the sound of a hand on the latch. Stuart, with a gesture, motioned him aside, and evidently to Kalitan's own surprise, he found himself stepping out while the stranger stepped in. For perhaps a minute the Indian stood still, listening, and then, no sounds of hostilities coming to his ears, an expressive gutteral testified to his final acquiescence, and he moved away. His hesitation showed that Rachel had not been the only one to note the bearing of those two toward each other.

  Had he listened a minute longer, he might have heard the peace within broken by the voices that, at first suppressed and intense, rose with growing earnestness.

  The serious tones of Stuart sounded through the thin board walls in expostulation, and again as if urging some point that was granted little patience; for above it the voice of Genesee broke in, all the mellowness gone from it, killed by the brutal harshness, the contemptuous derision, with which he answered some plea or proposition.

  "Oh, you come to me now, do you?" he said, walking back and forth across the room like some animal fighting to keep back rage with motion, if one can imagine an animal trying to put restraint on itself; and at every turn his smoldering, sullen gaze flashed over the still figure inside the door, and its manner, with a certain calm steadfastness of purpose, not to be upset by anger, seemed to irritate him all the more.

  "So you come this time to lay out proposals to me, eh? And think, after all these years, that I'm to be talked over to what you want by a few soft words? Well, I'll see you damned first; so you can strike the back trail as soon as you've a mind to."

  "I shan't go back," said Stuart deliberately, "until I get what I came for."

  The other answered with a short, mirthless laugh.

  "Then you're located till doomsday," he retorted, "and doomsday in the afternoon; though I reckon that won't be much punishment, considering the attractions you manage to find up here, and the advantages you carry with you—a handsome face, a gentleman's manners and an honest name. Why, you are begging on a full hand, Mister; and what are you begging to? A man that's been about as good as dead for years—a man without any claim to a name, or to recognition by decent people—an outlaw from civilization."

  "Not so bad as that, Jack," broke in Stuart, who was watching in a sort of misery the harsh self-condemnation in the restless face and eyes of Genesee. "Don't be so bitter as that on yourself. You are unjust—don't I know?"

  "The hell you say!" was the withering response to this appeal, as if with the aid of prof
anity to destroy the implied compliment to himself. "Your opinion may go for a big pile among your fine friends, but it doesn't amount to much right here. And you'd better beat a retreat, sir. The reputation of the highly respected Charles Stuart, the talented writer, the honorable gentleman, might get some dirty marks across it if folks knew he paid strictly private visits to Genesee Jack, a renegade squaw man; and more still if they guessed that he came for a favor—that's what you called it when you struck the shack, I believe. A favor! It has taken you a good while to find that name for it."

  "No, it has not, Jack," and the younger man's earnestness of purpose seemed to rise superior to the taunts and sarcasm of the other. "It was so from the first, when I realized—after I knew—I didn't seem to have thoughts for anything else. It was a sort of justice, I suppose, that made me want them when I had put it out of my power to reach them. You don't seem to know what it means, Jack, but I—I am homesick for them; I have been for years, and now that things have changed so for me, I—Jack, for God's sake, have some feeling! and realize that other men can have!"

  Jack turned on him like a flash.

  "You—you say that to me!" he muttered fiercely.

  "You, who took no count of anybody's feelings but your own, and thought God Almighty had put the best things on this earth for you to use and destroy! Killing lives as sure as if they'd never drawn another breath, and forgetting all about it with the next pretty face you saw! If that is what having a stock of feeling leads a man to, I reckon we're as well off without any such extras."

  Stuart had sat down on a camp-stool, his face buried in his hands, and there was a long silence after Genesee's bitter words, as he stood looking at the bent head with an inexplicable look in his stormy eyes. Then his visitor arose.

  "Jack," he said with the same patience—not a word of retort had come from him—"Jack, I've been punished every day since. I have tried to forget it—to kill all memory by every indulgence and distraction in my reach—pursued forgetfulness so eagerly that people have thought me still chasing pleasure. I turned to work, and worked hard, but the practice brought to my knowledge so many lives made wretched as—as—well, I could not stand it. The heart-sickness it brought me almost drove me melancholy mad. The only bright thing in life was—the children—"

  An oath broke from Genesee's lips.

  "And then," continued Stuart, without any notice save a quick closing of the eyes as if from a blow, "and then they died—both of them. That was justice, too, no doubt, for they stayed just long enough to make themselves a necessity to me—a solace—and to make me want what I have lost. I am telling you this because I want you to know that I have had things to try me since I saw you last, and that I've come through them with the conviction that there is to be no content in life to me until I make what amends I can for the folly of the boy you knew. The thought has become a monomania with me. I hunted for months for you, and never found a trace. Then I wrote—there."

  "You did!"

  "Yes, I did—say what you please, do what you please. It was my only hope, and I took it. I told her I was hunting for you—and my purpose. In return I got only this," and he handed toward Genesee a sheet of paper with one line written across it. "You see—your address, nothing more. But, Jack, can't you see it would not have been sent if she had not wished—"

  "That's enough!" broke in the other. "I reckon I've given you all the time I have to spare this morning, Mister. You're likely to strike better luck in some different direction than talking sentiment and the state of your feelings to me. I've been acquainted with them before—pretty much—and don't recollect that the effect was healthy."

  "Jack, you will do what I ask?"

  "Not this morning, sonny," answered the other, still with that altogether aggressive taunt in his tone. "I would go back to the ranch if I was you, and by this time to-morrow some of them may make you forget the favor you want this morning. So long!"

  And with this suggestion to his guest to vacate, he turned his back, sat down by the fire, and began filling a pipe.

  "All right; I'll go, and in spite of your stubbornness, with a lighter heart than I carried here, for I've made you understand that I want to make amends, and that I have not been all a liar; that I want to win back the old faith you all had in me; and, Jack, if my head has gone wrong, something in my heart forbade me to have content, and that has been my only hope for myself. For I have a hope, and a determination, Jack, and as for anyone helping me to forget—well, you are wrong there; one woman might do it—for a while—I acknowledge that, but I am safe in knowing she would rather help me to remember."

  Genesee wheeled about quickly.

  "Have you dared—"

  "No, I have not told her, if that is what you mean; why—why should I?"

  His denial weakened a little as he remembered how closely his impulse had led him to it, and how strong, though reasonless, that impulse had been.

  The stem of the pipe snapped in Genesee's fingers as he arose, pushing the camp-stool aside with his foot, as if clearing space for action.

  "Since you own up that there's someone about here that you—you've taken a fancy to—damn you!—I'm going to tell you right now that you've got to stop that! You're no more fit than I am to speak to her, or ask for a kind word from her, and I give you a pointer that if you try playing fast and loose with her, there'll be a committee of one to straighten out the case, and do it more completely than that man did who was a fool ten years ago. Now, hearken to that—will you?"

  And then, without waiting for an answer, he strode out of the shack, slamming the door after him, and leaving his visitor in possession.

  "I've got to show him, by staying right in these hills, that I am in earnest," Stuart decided, taking the seat his host had kicked aside, and stretching his feet out to the fire. "No use in arguing or pleading with him—there never was. But give him his own lead, and he will come around to the right point of view, though he may curse me up hill and down dale while he is doing it; a queer, queer fellow—God bless him! And how furious he was about that girl! Those two are a sort of David and Jonathan in their defense of each other, and yet never exchange words if they can help it—that's queer, too—it would be hard telling which of them is the more so. Little need to warn any man away from her, however; she is capable of taking very good care of herself."

  There was certainly more than one woman at the ranch; but to hear the speech of those two men, one would have doubted it; for neither had thought it necessary even to mention her name.

  * * *

  CHAPTER X.

  THE TELLING OF A STORY.

  "But you promised! Yes, you did, Mr. Stuart—didn't he, Mrs. Hardy? There, that settles it; so you see this is your evening to tell a story."

  The protracted twilight, with its cool grays and purples, had finally faded away over the snow, long after the stars took up their watch for the night. The air was so still and so chill that the bugle-call at sunset had sounded clearly along the little valley from camp, and Fred thought the nearness of sound made a house seem so much more home-like. After the bugle notes and the long northern twilight, had come the grouping of the young folks about the fire, and Fred's reminder that this was to be a "story" night.

  "But," declared Stuart, "I can think of none, except a very wonderful one of an old lady who lived in a shoe, and another of a house marvelously constructed by a gentleman called Jack—"

  Here a clamor arose from the rebels in the audience, and from Fred the proposal that he should read or tell them of what he was working on at present, and gaining at last his consent.

  "But I must bring down some notes in manuscript," he added, "as part of it is only mapped out, and my memory is treacherous."

  "I will go and get them," offered Fred. "No, don't you go! I'm afraid to let you out of the room, lest you may remember some late business at camp and take French leave. Is the manuscript on the table in your room? I'll bring it."

  And scarcely waiting either assent
or remonstrance, she ran up the stairs, returning immediately with hands full of loose sheets and two rolls of manuscript.

  "I confiscated all there was in reach," she laughed. "Here they are; you pay no money, and you take your choice."

  She was such a petite, pretty little creature, her witchy face alight with the confidence of pleasure to come; and looking down at her, he remarked:

  "You look so much a spirit of inspiration, Miss Fred, that you had better not make such a sweeping offer, lest I might be tempted to choose you."

  "And have a civil war on your hands," warned Rachel, "with the whole camp in rebellion."

  "Not much; they don't value me so highly," confessed Fred. "They would all be willing to give me away."

  "A willingness only seconded by your own." This from the gallant Lieutenant on the settee. "My child, this is not leap-year, and in the absence of your parent I—"

  "Yes, I know. But as Captain Holt commands in papa's absence, I don't see what extra responsibility rests on your shoulders. Now, Mr. Stuart, all quiet along the Kootenai; go ahead."

  "Not an easy thing to do," he answered ruefully, trying to sort the jumbled lot of papers she had brought him, and beginning by laying the rolls of manuscript on the table back of him, as if disposing of them. "You have seized on several things that we could not possibly wade through in one evening, but here is the sketch I spoke of. It is of camp-life, by the way, and so open to criticism from you two veterans. It was suggested by a story I heard told at the Fort."

  Just then a wild screech of terror sounded from the yard, and then an equally wild scramble across the porch. Everyone jumped to their feet, but Rachel reached the door first, just as Aunty Luce, almost gray from terror, floundered in.

  "They's come!" she panted, in a sort of paralysis of fright and triumph of prophecy. "I done tole all you chillen! Injuns! right here—I seed 'em!"

  Hardy reached for his gun, the others doing the same; but the girl at the door had darted out into the darkness.

  "Rachel!" screamed Tillie, but no Rachel answered. Even Hardy's call was not heeded; and he followed her with something like an oath on his lips, and Stuart at his elbow.