LAVINA AND THE CAPTAIN.
As the day wore on, 'Tana became more nervous and restless. With the dark,
that man was to come for the gold she had promised.
Lyster brought it to her, part in money, part in free gold, and as he laid
it on the couch, she looked at him strangely.
"How much you trust me when you never even ask what I am to do with all
this!" she said. "Yet it is enough to surprise you."
"Yes, it is," he agreed. "But when you are ready you will tell me."
"No, I will not tell you," she answered, "but it is the last thing--I
think--that I will keep from you, Max. It is a debt that belongs to days
before I knew you. What did Overton say?"
"Not much, maybe he will leave for the upper works this evening or
to-morrow morning."
"Did you--did you tell him--"
"That you are going to belong to me? Well, no, I did not. You forgot to
give me permission."
Her face flushed shyly at his words.
"You must think me a queer girl, Max," she said. "And you are so good and
patient with me, in spite of my queer ways. But, never mind; they will not
last always, I hope."
"Which?--my virtues or your queerness?" he asked.
She only smiled and pushed the gold under the pillow.
"Go away now for a little while. I want to rest."
"Well, rest if you like; but don't think. You have been fretting over some
little personal troubles until you fancy them heavy enough to overbalance
the world. But they won't. And I'm not going to try and persuade you into
Haydon's house, either, now that you've been good to me; unless, of
course, you fall in love with Margaret, and want to be with her, and it is
likely to happen. But Uncle Seldon and my aunts will be delighted to have
you, and you could live as quiet as you please there."
"So I am likely to fall in love with Margaret, am I?" she asked. "Why?
Does everybody? Did you--Max? Now, don't blush like that, or I'll be sure
of it. I never saw you blush so pretty before. It made you almost good
looking. Now go; I want to be alone."
"Sha'n't I send one of the ladies up?"
"Not a soul! Go, Max. I am tired."
So he went, in all obedience, and he and the cousins had a long talk about
the girl and the danger of leaving her alone another night. Her sudden
illness showed them she was not strong enough yet to be allowed to guide
herself.
"I shall try hard to get her to leave to-morrow, or next day," said
Lyster. "Where is Dan? I would like to talk to him about it, but he has
evidently disappeared."
"I don't know what to think of Dan Overton," confessed Mrs. Huzzard. "He
isn't ever around, chatty and sociable, like he used to be. When we do see
him, he is nearly always busy; and when he isn't busy, he strikes for the
woods."
"Maybe he is still searching for new gold mines," suggested Miss Lavina.
"I notice he does seem very much engaged in thought, and is of a rather
solitary nature."
"Never was before," protested her cousin. "And if these gold finds just
twist a person's nature crosswise, or send them into a fever, then I hope
the good Lord'll keep the rest of them well covered up in future."
"Lorena Jane," said Miss Lavina, in a reproachful tone, "it is most
essential that you free yourself from those very forcible expressions.
They are not a bit genteel."
"No, I reckon they ain't, Lavina; and the more I try the more I'm afraid I
never will be. Land sakes, if folks would only teach their young ones good
manners when they are young, what a sight of mortified feelings would be
saved after a while!"
Lyster left them in the midst of the very earnest plea for better
training, for he espied a new boat approaching camp. As it came closer, he
found that among the other freight it carried was the autocrat of Sinna
Ferry--Captain Leek.
"What a God-forsaken wilderness!" he exclaimed, and looked around with a
supercilious air, suggesting that he would have given the Creator of the
Kootenai country valuable points if he had been consulted. "Well, my dear
young fellow, how you have managed to exist here for three weeks I don't
know."
"Well, we had Mrs. Huzzard," explained Max, with a twinkle in his eye;
"and she is a panacea for many ills. She has made our wilderness very
endurable."
"Yes, yes; excellent woman," agreed the other, with a suspicious look.
"And 'Tana? How is she--the dear girl! I really have been much grieved to
hear of her illness; and at the earliest day I could leave my business I
am here to inquire in person regarding her health."
"Oh!" and Max struggled with a desire to laugh at the change in the
captain's attitude since 'Tana was a moneyed individual instead of a
little waif. Poor 'Tana! No wonder she looked with suspicion on
late-coming friends.
"Yes, she is better--much better," he continued, as they walked up from
the boat. "I suppose you knew that a cousin of Mrs. Huzzard, a lady from
Ohio, has been with us--in fact, came up with our party."
"So I heard--so I heard. Nice for Mrs. Huzzard. I was not in town, you
know, when you rested at the Ferry. I heard, however, that a white woman
had come up. Who is she?"
They had reached the tent, and Mrs. Huzzard, after a frantic dive toward
their very small looking glass, appeared at the door with a smile
enchanting, and a courtesy so nicely managed that it nearly took the
captain's breath away. It was the very latest of Lavina's teachings.
"Well, now, I'm mighty--hem!--I'm extremely pleased that you have called.
Have a nice trip?"
But the society tone of Mrs. Huzzard was so unlike the one he had been
accustomed to hearing her use, that the captain could only stare, and
before he recovered enough to reply, she turned and beckoned Miss Slocum,
with the idea of completing the impression made, and showing with what
grace she could present him to her cousin.
But the lately acquired style was lost on him this time, overtopped by the
presence of Miss Lavina, who gazed at him with a prolonged and steady
stare.
"And this is your friend, Captain Leek, of the Northern Army, is it?" she
asked, in her very sharpest voice--a voice she tried to temper with a
smile about her lips, though none shone in her eyes. "I have no doubt you
will be very welcome to the camp, Captain Leek."
Mrs. Huzzard had surely expected of Lavina a much more gracious reception.
But Mrs. Huzzard was a bit of a philosopher, and if Lavina chose to be
somewhat cold and unresponsive to the presence of a cultured gentleman,
well, it gave Lorena Jane so much better chance, and she was not going to
slight it.
"Come right in; you must be dead tired," she said, cordially. "Mr. Max,
you'll let Dan know he's here, won't you--that is, when he does show up
again, but no one knows how long that will be."
"Yes, I am tired," agreed the captain, meekly, and not quite at his ease
with the speculative eyes of Miss Slocum on him. "I--I brought up a few
letters that arrived at the Ferry. I can't make up my mind to trust mail
with these Indian boatmen Dan employs."
"They are a trial," agreed Mrs. Huzzard, "though they haven't the bad
effect on our nerves that one or two of the camp Indians have--an awful
squaw, who helps around, and an ugly old man, who only smokes and looks
horrible. Now, Lavina--she ain't used to no such, and she just shivers at
them."
"Yes--ah--yes," murmured the captain.
"Lavina says she knew folks of your name back in Ohio," continued Mrs.
Huzzard, cheerfully, in order to get the two strangers better acquainted.
"I thought at first maybe you'd turn out to know each other; but she says
they was Democrats," and she turned a sharp glance toward him, as if to
read his political tendencies.
"No, I never knew any Captain Leek," said Miss Slocum, "and the ones I
knew hadn't any one in the Union Army. Their principles, if they had any,
were against it, and there wasn't a Republican in the family."
"Then, of course, that would settle Captain Leek belonging to them,"
decided Mrs. Huzzard, promptly. "I don't know much about politics, but as
all our men folks wore the blue clothes, and fought in them, I was always
glad I come from a Republican State. And I guess all the Republicans that
carried guns against the Union could be counted without much arithmetic."
"I--I think I will go and look for Dan myself," observed the captain,
rising and looking around a little uncertainly at Miss Slocum. "I brought
some letters he may want."
He made his bow and placed the picturesque corded hat on his head as he
went out. But Mrs. Huzzard looked after him somewhat anxiously.
"He's sick," she decided as he vanished from her view; "I never did see
him walk so draggy like. And don't you judge his manners, either, Lavina,
from this first sight of him, for he ain't himself to-day."
"He didn't look to me as though he knew who he was," remarked Lavina; and
after a little she looked up from the tidy she was knitting. "So, Lorena
Jane, that is the man you've been trying to educate yourself up to more
than for anybody else--now, tell the truth!"
"Well, I don't mind saying that it was his good manners made me see how
bad mine were," she confessed; "but as for training for him--"
"I see," said Miss Lavina, grimly, "and it is all right; but I just
thought I'd ask."
Then she relapsed into deep thought, and made the needles click with
impatience all that afternoon.
The captain came near the tent once, but retreated at the vision of the
knitter. He talked with Mrs. Huzzard in the cabin of Harris, but did not
visit her again in her own tent; and the poor woman began to wonder if the
air of the Kootenai woods had an erratic influence on people. Dan was
changed, 'Tana was changed, and now the captain seemed unlike himself from
the very moment of his arrival. Even Lavina was a bit curt and
indifferent, and Lorena Jane wondered where it would end.
In the midst of her perplexity, 'Tana added to it by appearing before her
in the Indian dress Overton had presented her with. Since her sickness it
had hung unused in her cabin, and the two women had fashioned garments
more suitable, they thought, to a young girl who could wear real laces now
if she chose. But there she was again, dressed like any little squaw, and
although rather pale to suit the outfit, she said she wanted a few more
"Indian hours" before departing for the far-off Eastern city that was to
her as a new world.
She received Captain Leek with an unconcern that was discouraging to the
pretty speeches he had prepared to utter.
Dan returned and looked sharply at her as she sat whittling a stick of
which she said she meant to make a cane--a staff for mountain climbing.
"Where do you intend climbing?" he asked.
She waved the stick toward the hill back of them, the first step of the
mountain.
"It is only a few hours since I picked you up down there, looking as if
you were dead," he said, impatiently; "and you know you are not fit to
tramp."
"Well, I'm not dead yet, anyway," she answered, with a shrug of her
shoulders; "and as I'm going to break away from this camp about to-morrow,
I thought I'd like to see a bit of the woods first."
"You--are going--to-morrow?"
"I reckon so."
"'Tana! And you have not said a word to me of it? That was not very
friendly, little girl."
She did not reply, but bent her head low over her work.
After observing her for a while in silence, he arose and put on his hat.
"Here is my knife," he remarked. "You had better use it, if you are
determined to haggle at that stick. Your own knife is too dull for any
use. You can leave it here in the cabin when you are done with it."
She accepted it without a word, but flushed red when he had gone, and she
found the eyes of Harris regarding her sadly.
"'Not very friendly,'" she said, going over Overton's words--"you think
that, too--don't you? You think I'm ugly, and saucy, and awful, I know!
You look scoldings at me; but if you knew all, maybe you wouldn't--if you
knew that my heart is just about breaking. I'm going out where there is no
one to talk to, or I'll be crying next."
The two cousins and the captain were in 'Tana's cabin. Mrs. Huzzard was
determined that Miss Slocum and the captain should become acquainted, and,
getting sight of the girl, who was walking alone across the level, she at
once followed her, thinking that the two left behind would perhaps become
more social if left entirely to themselves. And they did; that is, they
talked, and the captain spoke first.
"So you--you bear a grudge--don't you, Lavina?"
"Well, I guess if I owed you a very heavy one, I've got a good chance to
pay it off now," she remarked, grimly.
He twirled his hat in a dejected way, and did not speak.
"You an officer in the Union Army?" she continued, derisively. "You a
pattern of what a gentleman should be; you to set up as superior to these
rough-handed miners; you to act as if this Government owes you a pension!
Why, how would it be with you, Alf Leek, if I'd tell this camp the truth
of how you went away, engaged to me, twenty-five years ago, and never let
me set eyes on you since--of how I wore black for you, thinking you were
killed in the war, till I heard that you had deserted. I took off that
mourning quick, I can tell you! I thought you were fighting on the wrong
side; yet if you had a good reason for being there, you should have staid
and fought so long as there was breath in you. And if I was to tell them
here that you haven't a particle of right to wear that blue suit that
looks like a uniform, and that you were no more 'captain' of anything than
I am--well, I guess Lorena Jane wouldn't have much to say to you, though
maybe Mr. Overton would."
He grew actually pale as he listened. His fear of some one overhearing her
was as great as his own mortification.
"But you--you won't tell--will you, Lavina?" he said pleadingly. "I
haven't done any harm! I--"
"Harm! Alf Leek, you never had enough backbone to do either harm or help
to any one in this world. But don't you suppose you did me harm when you
spoiled me for ever trusting any other man?"
"I--I would have come back, but I thought you'd be married," he said, in a
feeble, hopeless way.
"Likely that is now, ain't it?" she demanded. And, woman-like, now that
she had reduced him to meekness and humiliation, she grew a shade less
severe, as if pretty well satisfied. "I had other things to think of
besides a husband."
"You won't tell--will you, Lavina? I'll tell you how it all happened, some
day. Then I'll leave this country."
"You'll not," she contradicted. "You'll stay right here as long as I do,
and I won't tell just so long as you keep from trying to make Lorena Jane
believe how great you are. But at the first word of your heroic actions,
or the cultured society you were always used to--"
"You'll never hear of them," he said eagerly, "never. I knew you wouldn't
make trouble, Lavina, for you always were such a good, kind-hearted
girl."
He offered his hand to her, sheepishly, and she gave it a vixenish slap.
"Don't try any of your skim-milk praise on me," she said, tartly. "Huh!
You, that Lorena thought was a pillar of cultured society! When, the Lord
knows, you wouldn't have known how to read the addresses on your own
letters if I hadn't taught you!"
He moved to the door in a crestfallen manner, and stood there a moment,
moistening his lips, and apparently swallowing words that could not be
uttered.
"That's so, Lavina," he said, at last, and went out.
"There!" she muttered aggrievedly--"that's Alf Leek, just as he always
was. Give him a chance, and he'd ride over any one; but get the upper hand
of him, and he is meeker than Moses. Not that much meekness is needed to
come up to Moses, either." Then, after an impatient tattoo, she
exclaimed:
"Gracious me! I do wish he hadn't looked so crushed, and had talked back a
little."