THE TRACK IN THE FOREST.
Their camp was about a mile from the Kootenai River, and close to a stream
of depth sufficient to carry a canoe; while, a little way north of their
camp, a beautiful spring of clear water gurgled out from under a little
bank, and added its portion to the larger stream that flowed eastward to
the river.
There was a little peculiarity about the spring, which made it one to
remember--or, rather, two to remember, for it was really a twin, and its
sister stream slipped from the other side of the narrow ledge and ran
north for a little way, and then turned to the east and emptied into the
Kootenai, not a hundred yards from the stream into which its mate had
run.
The two springs were not twenty feet apart, and lay direct north and south
from each other. Then their wide curves, in opposite directions, left
within their circle a tract of land like an island, for the streams
bounded it entirely except for that narrow neck of rock and soil joining
it to the bigger hills to the west.
It was in the vicinity of the two springs that the rude sketch of Harris
bade them search; but more definite directions than that he had not given.
He had marked a tree where the north stream joined the river; and finding
that as a clew, they followed the stream to its source. When they reached
the larger stream, navigable for a mile, they concluded to move their
tents there, for no lovelier place could be found.
It was 'Tana and Overton who tramped over the lands where the streams lay,
and did their own prospecting for location. He was surprised to find her
knowledge of the land so accurate. The crude drawing was as a solved
problem to her; she never once made a wrong turn.
"Well, I've thought over it a heap," she said, when he commented on her
clever ideas. "I saw that marked tree as we went down to the Ferry, and I
remembered where it was; and the trail is not hard if you only get started
on it right. It's getting started right that counts--ain't it, Dan?"
There seemed fewer barriers between them in the free, out-of-door life,
where no third person's views colored their own. They talked of Lyster,
and missed him; yet Dan was conscious that if Lyster were with them, he
would have come second instead of first in her confidences, and her
friendly, appealing ways.
Whether he trusted her or not, she did not know. He had not asked a
question as to how that survey of the land came to her; but he watched
Harris sometimes when the girl paid him any little attention, and he could
read only absolute trust in the man's eyes.
Overton was not given to keen analysis of people or motives; a healthy
unconcern pervaded his mind as to the affairs of most people. But
sometimes the girl's character, her peculiar knowledge, her mysterious
past, touched him with a sense of strange confusion, yet in the midst of
the confusion--the deepest of it--he had put all else aside when she
appealed to him, and had followed her lead into the wilderness.
And as she ran from him with the particles of gold, and carried them, as
he bade her, to Harris, he followed her with his gaze until she
disappeared through the green wall of the bushes. Once he started to
follow her, and then stopped, suddenly muttered something about a "cursed
fool," and flung himself face down in the tall grass.
"It's got to end here," he said, aloud, as men grow used to thinking when
they live alone in the woods much. Then he raised himself on his elbows
and looked over the little grassy dip of the land to where the stream from
the hills sparkled in the warm sun; and then away beyond to where the
evergreens raised their dark heads along the heights, looking like somber
guardians keeping ward over the sunny valley of the twin springs. Over
them all his gaze wandered, and then up into the deep forest above him--a
forest unbroken from there to the swift Columbia.
The perfect harmony of it all must have oppressed him until he felt
himself the one discordant note, for he closed his eyes with a sigh that
was almost a groan.
"I'll see it all again--often, I suppose," he muttered; "but never quite
as it is now--never, for it's got to end. The little bits of gold I found
are a warning of the changes to come here--that is the way it seems to me.
Queer how a man will change his idea of life in a year or so! There have
been times when I would have rejoiced over the prospect of wealth there is
here; yet all I am actually conscious of is regret that everything must
change--the place--the people--all where gold is king. Pshaw! what a fool
I would seem to any one else if he knew. Yet--well, I have dreamed all my
days of a sort of life where absolute happiness could be lived. Other
men do the same, I suppose--yes, of course. I wonder if others also come
in reach of it too late. I suppose so. Well, reasoning won't change it. I
marked out my own path--marked it out with as little thought as many
another fool; but I've got to walk in it just the same, and cursing back
don't help luck. But I had to have a little pow-wow all alone and be sorry
for myself, before turning my back on the man I'd like to be--and--the
rest of my dreams that have come in sight for a little while but can never
come nearer--There she comes again! I'm glad of it, for she will at least
keep me from drifting into dreams alone."
But she appeared to be dreaming a little herself. At any rate, the scene
she had passed through in the tent left memories too dark with feeling to
be quickly dispelled, and he noticed at once the change in her face, and
the traces of tears left about her eyes.
"What has hurt you?" he asked.
She shook her head and said:
"Nothing."
"Oh! So you leave here jolly enough, and run around to camp, and cry about
nothing--do you?" he asked, with evident unbelief. "Were you crying for
joy over those little grains of gold--or over your loneliness in being so
far from the Ferry folks?"
She laughed at the mere idea of either--and laughter dispels tear traces
so quickly from faces that are young. "Lonely!" she exclaimed: "lonely
here? why, I feel a heap more satisfied here than down at the Ferry, where
the whole place smelled like saw-mills and new lumber. I always had a
grudge against saw-mills, for they spoil all the lovely woods. That is why
I like all this," and she made a sweep of her arm, embracing all the
territory in sight; "for in here not a tree has been touched with an ax.
Lonely here! Why, Dan, I've been so perfectly happy that I'm afraid--yes,
I am. Didn't you ever feel like that--just as if you were too happy to
last, and you were afraid some trouble would come and end it all?"
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 conceit, 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.
He stooped, took her head roughly in his hands, and turned her face up, so
that the light would fall upon it.
"_Him!_ Then you know who it is?" he said, grimly. "What sort of business
is this, 'Tana? Are you going to tell me?"
But she only crouched closer to him, and, sobbing, begged him not to go.
Once he tried to break away but lost his footing, and the soil and bits of
boulders went clattering down past her.
With a muttered oath of impatience, he gave up the pursuit, and stared
down at her with an expression more bitter than any she had ever seen on
his face before.
"So you are bound to protect him, are you?" he asked, coldly. "Very well.
But if you value him so highly you had better keep him clear of this camp,
else he'll find himself ready for a box. Come! get up and go to the tents.
That is a better place for you than here. Your coming out here this
evening has been a mistake all around--or else mine has. I wish to Heaven
I could undo it all."
She stood a little apart from him, but her hand was still outstretched and
clasping his arm.
"All, Dan?" she asked, and her mouth trembled. But his own lips were firm
enough, as he nodded his head and looked at her.
"All," he said briefly. "Go now; and here are your flowers for which you
hunted so long in the woods."
He stooped to pick them up for her from where they had fallen--the white,
fragrant things he had thought so beautiful as she came toward him with
them in the moonlight.
But as he lifted them from the bank, where they were scattered, he saw
something else there which was neither beautiful nor fragrant, but over
which he bent with earnest scrutiny. An ordinary looking piece of shale or
stone it would have seemed to an inexperienced eye, a thing with irregular
veins of a greenish appearance, and the green dotted plainly with
yellow--so plainly as to show even in the moonlight the nature of the
find.
He turned to the girl and reached it to her with the flowers.
"There! When my foot slipped I broke off that bit of 'float' from the
ledge," he said curtly. "Show it to Harris. We have found the gold ore,
and I'll stake out the claims to-night. You can afford to leave for
civilization now as soon as you please, I reckon, for your work in the
Kootenai country is over. Your fortune is made."